Ep. 124: "The Legend of Skeeter"
Hello.
Hey, John.
Hi, Merlin.
How's it going?
I'm self-conscious.
Why are you self-conscious?
Oh, God, no one cares, but I've got a different microphone and it's making me self-conscious.
It sounds good.
You notice a difference?
Yeah, it's clearer.
I think it makes me sound old.
You think it adds a few years to your voice?
No, I'm worried that it's accurate.
It adds a few pounds?
No, I'm worried that this is actually what I sound like.
Oh.
I haven't smoked in a really long time, but I sound a little bit like I've got some filterless camels in my throat.
Yeah, you've got a little Joan Rivers going.
I try not to talk as much.
I like to save my instrument, you know?
Oh.
um you thought you thought the old microphone kind of concealed that a little bit hmm the mic i had before this is really super interesting stuff uh like as inside baseball as they say uh the old one is a workhorse and the uh the road podcaster you know it's like the oh yeah right plug and play yeah it's like the sm57 of podcast mics that doesn't make any sense that's like saying the youtube of videos but
But this one, I've got to be careful because of my plosives, I think.
Is that a thing, plosives?
Plosives is a thing.
How did you learn to use a mic?
The hard way, for sure.
Yeah.
You know, you can tell a singer that doesn't know how to use a microphone, and you can really tell a singer that does know how to use a microphone.
And sometimes a guy or a gal will be a singer for years and never really figure out mic technique.
Mm-hmm.
But because I was a guitar player, I didn't have the option of a lot of mic shenanigans.
It's one of those things where, at least while you're still just getting proficiency at all the different pieces, there's so many... You probably never got this, but I just remember feeling like I had so many different things to do at once.
I had to, like, remember you only play it twice this part.
You got to play the guitar.
You got to make sure to turn your volume down on this part.
The pedals.
Don't even get me started on the pedals.
A lot of pedals.
A lot of pedal work.
Yeah.
And then, on top of all that, you have to remind yourself, if you're the singer, to, oh, right, also inhabit the emotion of the song and present it to the audience in a compelling way.
Yeah.
You've got to be the DLR out there.
You've got to really bring the emotion to the people.
And then once you start doing that, you forget all, you forgot to do the volume, you forgot to do the pedal, you forgot to even which chord was the right chord.
It's a lot of, it's a real juggling act.
Hi, welcome back to Mike Talk.
I think it's picking up the streetcar extra well.
This is nice.
That's good.
Yeah, no.
So what kind of, if you don't mind saying, what kind of Mike is your name?
I would be happy to say.
Before I was using the Road Podcaster, which I'll obviously still keep around because it's kind of idiot-proof, the nice thing about the Road.
It's good for podcasting.
It says it right in the name.
You know what?
It's true.
And it's got one of those funny Swedish O's, so you know it must be good.
Mood.
Someone on the internet who's a nice person, Ira Carey Blanco, sent me.
He works at a place called Samson.
It's a Samson C01U Pro.
Oh, nice.
I think they could have gotten a better name for it.
For the tech nerd engineer types that buy microphones, that's just like calling it the rose pedal.
Yeah.
That could also be the name of an Android phone, though.
Oh, Android phone.
Android phone.
Anyway, it's nice.
What do you use?
Do you use a snowball?
What do you use?
No.
No.
You've got one of those Jesse Thorne-looking ones like you're a crooner?
You've got a ribbon mic?
I don't use a podcasting mic.
you're a professional god oh my god i can't believe i said i'm gonna cut that out i feel really bad that i even said that i use an sm7 the great the greatest of all microphones that's the one with the big poofy thing you got two different covers i think i have one of those it's got a poofy thing if you have one
let me let me i mean i don't want to get in the way of your samson but listen the thing the thing about me uh and microphones is i've been to a lot of studios i've done a lot of tracking and every time the the producer or the engineer uh brings out all when it's time to do vocals to bring out have we talked about this before
I don't care.
Brings out all the microphones and lies them all out on a table.
And he's like, this is a $25,000 Sony tube mic.
And this is our U47 that we got from...
From, you know, the original Pink Floyd and, you know, everybody's so proud of their like really high definition, beautiful microphones.
And I try not to be the singer that's like, well, none of those are going to work.
So, I submit to a few hours of testing these microphones where they set it up and they put it through their best compressor and I sing and they track it and then we go in and we compare all the tracks.
And it's like, well, that's, you know, that mic sounds great on everybody.
But for some reason, it just doesn't sound very good right here.
And they eliminate that.
And then it's like, well, this next one, oh, it kind of doesn't sound very good either.
And they just start eliminating all the microphones until I'm back at the SM7.
Wow.
The Shure SM7.
And it's happened so many times.
It's happened 15 times.
And so I go into the studio now and I'm like, you know what it is?
Typically I just use an SM7 into an 1176 with all the buttons pushed in.
And the engineer or the producer is like, well, sure, but you haven't tried my amazing, sure, no pun intended, you haven't tried my amazing $80,000 microphone that I got from the East German government.
And we plug it in and we test it and then we end up back at the SM7.
That's strange.
So it's a microphone that is, I guess, made for me, and so I have come to think of it as the only good microphone.
It's helped a lot of people, no question.
Yeah, but other people, you know, and the thing is, when I'm recording other singers, the SM7 into an 1176 doesn't work necessarily for them.
They sound amazing on these beautiful microphones.
Yeah.
It's so strange how the different setups can make such a difference.
There's all the famous, I guess, examples with guitarists.
But I'm always amazed.
I used to play a Telecaster, and I was aware of the limitations and very specific sound of a Telecaster.
And I'm amazed.
People with fairly stock Telecasters can get so many different sounds out of it.
They don't just sound like Don Rich or something.
They can make it, or Alex Chilton or whatever.
They can really make it sound so different.
And I never found that easy to do.
The Telecaster is one of those rare events in human history where the guy that invented the thing got it perfectly right the first try.
The Telecaster is essentially the first electric guitar.
It was made to be portable.
You could take off the neck and put it in your trunk.
Wasn't that the original value proposition?
Yeah, it's just a slab of wood and you could unscrew the neck.
And
And yet, it is still as valid a guitar.
I mean, there have been 7,000 different kinds of guitars since then, or maybe 70,000.
But the Telecaster is still just as valid a guitar as any other, and in a lot of ways, better, more indestructible, more versatile.
It's astonishing.
If you can think of any other technology where the first one...
The first iteration of the thing continues to be the industry standard throughout the whole life of the thing.
I mean, I guess, like, Stradivarius.
Yeah, I mean, the conventional wisdom, at least with the computer maths, is that it takes two or three tries to get something to be the version that we really remember.
Like, we loved the first iPhone because it was amazing, but it's not... Boy, if you look at it compared to, you know, an iPhone 4...
It's such an evolution forward.
I get what you're saying, though.
It's pretty crazy that at that time you could have something with that many evolutions.
And knowing what we know about what made that sound good, you still can't make it sound that much better.
It's pretty crazy.
I guess, I mean, there are probably a couple of nerds listening who are like, well, what about the Rickenbacker frying pan guitar?
And what about the, you know, and there were hollow body electrics with microphones glued to the outside of them or whatever.
I mean, there were prior...
Right.
But what you're saying, though, is how many things that were made 60 years ago can you take and plug into a standard interface for its market today and have it still sound better than a lot of the stuff that's made today?
That's astonishing.
Yeah, it's incredible to think that they didn't make that Telecaster to be –
It was just... They took a bandsaw to a piece of wood and they... I mean, but not just... It's not just the usefulness of it.
Think of the shape of the Telecaster.
I mean, you look at it and it's still a beautiful thing.
Like, it is still a gorgeous... They just... Leo Fender just drew a shape...
Where I was like, huh, well, you want to reach up high on the neck, so I guess we'll cut it out on that side.
And then pick up here and pick up there.
It's gotten pretty in my mind because I've seen lots of my favorite guitar players using it, but it's not like looking at a Gretsch or something where you go, ooh, that's like a work of art.
Right, but in fact, it is the ultimate gorgeous... I mean, the Telecaster was the first guitar I coveted.
Really?
Because of Pete Townsend?
No, because of Chrissy Hine.
Oh.
I saw those original Chrissy Hine music videos for that first Pretenders record.
Oh.
And that was right when, you know, you could see the Clash playing them, too.
And it was just like, what is that incredible, cool guitar Chrissy Hine plays?
And I wanted one immediately.
And I went down to the guitar store, and they were like, yeah, it's $900.
And I was like, $900?
You could buy a Dodge Dart for that.
Yeah.
I didn't even know what a Dodge Dart was, but I knew.
Another classic car.
I saw a Swinger.
I saw a Dodge Dart Swinger.
You remember the Swinger?
I think it was the lady version of the Dart.
It had the little daisy for an eye.
You know what?
You hold your tongue, sir.
No, I love the Swinger.
It was a sporty little car.
The Swinger was not a lady car.
Why'd they put a daisy on it?
Well, I think you might have seen somebody who put one of those bathtub daisies.
Probably because it's the inner sound, y'all.
The sticker on the side?
I don't think the swinger necessarily all came with it.
We had a swinger.
My friend Sam got one when we were in high school.
So at that point, it was 20 years old.
Mm-hmm.
And, you know, it was one of those things, it was a little bit like having my VW bus, where, like, you could definitely kill it, but then you could also resuscitate it with almost alarming ease.
Sure.
Slant 6, the greatest motor ever made.
Is that right?
The Slant 6.
I'm telling you, if they still made the Slant 6, we wouldn't have all these problems today.
It'd all be different.
We wouldn't have all these problems with the youth of America if we just were making the Dodge Slant 6 motor.
Yeah.
I remember my mom had for a long time, long time had a Pontiac Catalina.
And I just remember every time you'd open up the hood, it looked like many of the parts had been removed.
There was like so much space.
Like you open up our VW that we've got now, which is, you know, a new car.
You open it up, you look inside and it's what I imagine like an iPhone looks like.
There's no tolerances for anything anywhere.
It's all nothing serviceable.
Sure.
No, it's just covered with a giant plastic carapace.
It just looks like a robot cockroach made its home inside of a matchbook.
That's really unpleasant.
It's terrible.
And that's what those cars sound like, too.
The Slant 6, you know, there was room in there to spread out a picnic blanket.
Inside the engine compartment.
You know, and you could work on it with the standard set of tools.
You didn't need a special, what was it called?
The cloverleaf wrench?
What's it called?
What is it I'll need to change the tire?
Oh, right.
The Star, Starbolt.
You know, that's a killer band name, Starbolt.
Starbolt is a fantastic, that'd be a good shoegaze band.
Starbolt.
Dude, take it.
You got the music done.
I love that.
Starbolt.
It's very evocative of a lot of things.
Starbolt.
It is.
And if you put a D in it and spelled it like Humboldt, but Starbolt.
I thought you meant S-D-A-R.
S-D-A-R.
Starbolt.
S apostrophe D-A-R.
How about Starbolt County?
Oh, now it's a jam band and it got terrible.
Doopity boop.
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at checkout our thanks to our friends at squarespace they are so good to us thank you for supporting roderick on the line we could not do it without us oh did you have car trouble today is anything you can talk about i had some car trouble i'm the problem i can't believe you recovered so quickly i would still be crying on the side of the road trying to get my phone to work yeah i couldn't get the car to start it was uh the battery was dead but more importantly i'm very worried about my next door neighbor or across the street neighbor the karaoke years
No, no, the little... The lady with the van.
The lady with the van.
Oh, dear.
I'm very worried.
About four days ago, five days ago, all of a sudden, a bunch of people started being around that house, coming and going at all hours.
People piling out of the house and getting in her car and driving away.
Five people in her car.
And then an hour later, coming back.
Parking the car on the grass.
And then there was some kind of what I hesitate to call a party.
It was an unsuccessful party.
Well, definitely like a Saturday night where there were a bunch of sketchy people going in and out of the house.
And it was probably a party to them.
But to me, it looked like a bad scene.
You know what I mean?
Was she in evidence any of this time?
I have not seen her in a week.
Oh, no.
But the thing is that she often would go, I would go a week or two without seeing her because she's, you know, a little disabled.
Like she walks with a cane.
She's pretty slow.
Right.
Her boyfriend slash fiancé, the guy with the giant neck tattoo of a mosquito with its mosquito proboscis buried in his neck vein...
I'm talking about a giant.
It's the size of a... You can see it from across the street.
It's the size of a Folgers coffee can tattooed on his neck.
Giant mosquito.
And this is the mosquito.
This is the tattoo that he chose to get on his neck.
Is he called Skeeter?
Well, you know what?
I should start calling him Skeeter.
He has a long white beard that he has put rubber bands in a la Keith Richards.
Captain Lou Albano?
Yeah.
He looks exactly like Captain Lou Albano, actually.
And he's got one of those alcoholic cigarette voices that's just like...
So he's out there kind of running the show in and out.
Some real cracky people.
There's a guy that looks like Wilt Chamberlain.
If Wilt Chamberlain was a mega stoner and was completely bald on top, except had a kind of a fringe, pretty, pretty, pretty fluffy fringe around his ears.
Always wears a headband increasing.
And he's six foot ten.
Wow.
But then a bunch of other new sketchers, and they're coming and going in and out of the house late at night, kind of trying to keep quiet, except for this one gal that obviously is this younger gal, probably 40-year-old gal that's kind of queen of the scene, so she feels like she can talk better.
At any volume at any time and everybody's going to approve of it.
And so I'm surveying these goings on and there's a lot of whispered conversations in the driveway and then somebody does a fast walk back into the house and somebody else does a fast walk up the street.
And I'm like, what's going on over there?
I don't like it.
I don't like it.
But there are enough problems.
One, I routinely don't see my neighbor for weeks at a time.
So I can't really say like, well, one day I stopped seeing her and all these people showed up.
So I had to call the community service patrol.
Yeah.
And the second thing is like there's enough sort of class and cultural difference between me and them that I am routinely looking out the window going, those are scumbags.
I know scumbags.
And yet, maybe I'm being classist right now.
Maybe they aren't scumbags.
Maybe they are just people, just good folk, working folk who are struggling to make ends meet.
And then the other voice in my head is like, working folk don't walk like crackheads.
The crackhead walk is a very distinctive cockroachy walk.
But then I'm like, you know, I'm second guessing it the whole time because I'm like, you know, what if I called somebody and said, I'm worried about my across the street neighbor and they said, well, what makes you worry about them?
And I was like, well, a bunch of sketchers going in and out of her house and I haven't seen her in a week.
And they're just kind of like, and they're like, well, are they...
are they setting the house on fire?
Do they appear to be stealing her stereo?
And it's like, not exactly.
I mean, people are moving things in and out of the house, but it's not a clear... There's no moving van pulled up and...
The fact that it's happening in slow motion like that.
I know exactly what you mean.
Over the years, for any number of reasons, I've gotten much less trigger happy about saying, oh, let's call the cops.
Because I'm realizing as I get older and see more stuff, how complicated that decision can be in the moment and over the years after that.
Suddenly you're the guy who calls the cops on people.
You do want to be that guy.
Unless there's a good reason.
So on the one hand, it could be she's...
like not well.
She's particularly not well.
She's bedridden and a bunch of sketchy people are helping out, but you don't, you're, you're worried about like an elder abuse type situation where maybe she's sitting there with sores or something.
Well, or just, I mean, there are a lot of things going through my head and, and the other voice in my head is like, well, what,
What if she is in trouble and you've been sitting watching this go on for four days?
Like, she doesn't have anybody to count on calling and alerting the authorities except you.
You're the only person with eyes on this.
Nobody else in the neighborhood pays attention to anything that's going on.
And, you know, what are my responsibilities to her?
Yeah, but what's the worst thing?
If you call it, you've got knees, the welfare call.
Like, what's the worst thing that would happen, you think?
You go and you say, hello, I am using a voice modulator.
No, maybe not do that.
But you would say, you know, I haven't seen my neighbor for a few weeks.
You might want to just drive by and check it out.
Yeah, right.
So anyway, so last night...
And the thing is, they all come running out, jump in the car, and drive somewhere.
So yesterday, they're standing in the driveway, and Skeeter is saying, like, we got ripped off, man.
We got ripped off.
We really got ripped off this time.
And I was like, okay, all right.
Now I'm getting to the bottom.
I'm listening to this through my head.
Could have been multi-level marketing.
Yeah.
Now I'm getting to the bottom of this.
And then he starts whispering and he's like, you know, they got all my weed.
And I'm like, oh, that's not a reason to call the cops that they stole his weed.
But who?
I mean, it's like people coming in and out of the house stole his stuff.
The other drunk guy that lives in the van in the front yard is nowhere to be seen.
And he's normally my biggest problem.
Wait, so Skeeter's not the guy in the van?
Skeeter lives in the house.
No, the dude in the van is a totally different guy.
And the dude in the van is like, and I would expect him to be out doing his usual act, which is like, fucking police took my kids!
He rants in the middle of the road, right?
Isn't that his thing?
Yeah, he rants in the middle of the road, but he's gone.
I don't see him at all.
His van's still there.
Anyway, so last night I'm driving by, I look in the driveway of the house, and there is a display unit of fascia for Windows phones.
Fascia for, you know, like cases, different cases for Android phones, I guess.
And it's obviously a store display that someone has boosted.
What?
Like somebody stole Windows phone cases?
Someone stole a display of 25 different colored Windows phone cases, perhaps thinking that they were phones.
Oh, no.
And then got them to the house, realized they weren't phones, and just dropped it in the driveway.
So I'm like, okay, that's not that cool.
And then this morning, I wake up, and there is a landscaping truck with a wood chipper.
Oh, no!
That drives up in front of the house.
There are now three cars parked in the grass.
And just in a way that I can't quite see through the hedge, something goes in the wood chipper.
They spend a minute grinding something up, and then the wood chipper truck drives away.
It's some kind of emergency shredding service for a handful, an armful of items.
Now, where... But the thing is, it's a proper landscaping truck.
It's not like... You wouldn't have thrown an old computer printer in there.
It was...
It was a landscaping truck.
Now, in my whole life, I have never seen one of those pull up somewhere, shred one thing for one minute, and then drive away.
For a million reasons.
I mean, usually it's like a tree or a bunch of bushes, something.
To call that thing out, you'd have to want enough stuff to get shredded that needs to be shredded.
It's got to be something.
That guy's going to be standing there supervising.
Yeah.
It's not like you're throwing in a dachshund or something.
He wants to know that it's something responsible that you're throwing in there, and then he drives away.
Drives away.
That's super weird.
At this point, I'm looking through the hedges like a total super peeper.
And, you know, I feel like Mr. Furley or whatever.
Mrs. Kravitz.
Mrs. Kravitz.
What are we doing in there?
And the truck drives away.
And then, you know, again, all the cars scatter in every direction.
And I'm like, okay, what if my neighbor... Because I had already been thinking, like, what if she died?
And she's...
And there's enough shit in that house and enough like weird stuff to figure out that she died and her fiance is gradually stripping all the copper pipes out of this place.
And not calling it in yet.
Right.
They're in that kind of that bye period where if they can keep people from knowing that she's gone, you've still got a place to live and you've still got a copper pipe to repurpose.
Right.
But watching them, there is a kind of...
A sort of unperturbable calm to them that maybe is because they're crackheads and so they have a constant level of tense anxiety, but it never flares.
But that's not true of crackheads.
Crackheads go bonkers when things are even a little bit out of whack.
So, and I'm trying to think, like, it's been four or five days.
It's been pretty hot days, in fact.
If somebody was dead in there, it would be intolerable to live there.
Maybe she... I mean, but if she went to visit a relative, she would have taken her car...
I mean, I honestly... And the problem is I'm enough of a busybody and I'm a total cop caller.
I call the cops all the time.
But I don't know what my... I don't know what case I can make.
And there's a part of me that is inhibited by a feeling that a lot of the things I'm seeing that I'm making judgments about...
fall into this category of like, well, is that a legitimate judgment you're making or are you making some kind of weird?
Are you not a member of the culture and so you are like casting aspersions?
Yeah.
Oh, I think about that all the time now.
When I was a kid, back to guitars, I remember one afternoon, our neighbor, who was a semi-professional guitar player, was cool enough to let a couple teenagers hang out with him, and he would show us Jimi Hendrix licks and stuff.
One day he let me borrow his tube screamer.
And in the time that it took me to walk from his yard to my yard, we had adjacent yards, pretty much almost by the time I walked into the house, my mom called me from the office because our nosy next door neighbor said that I was bringing beer into the house.
So, you know, the thing is, you know how it is to be a busy buddy.
You've been Gladys Kravitz.
You're waiting for any reason to call.
And she was waiting for some reason.
She had nothing better to do.
And so she called me in, called my mom because I had a guitar effect in my hand.
Right.
So you don't want to be that guy.
You don't want to be the, you know.
Funny that you would mention Jimi Hendrix.
Because a big part of the culture of...
of my neighbor.
She's a black woman in her 60s.
Her husband was about 15 years older than she was, or 10 years older.
And he was a Seattle musician who had played with Jimi Hendrix.
And one of the calling cards of all of these
uh seattle african-american dudes in their 60s if they have if any of if you are a guy in his 60s who's lived in seattle his whole life and you ever smoked pot you have a story about how you used to hang out with jimmy hendrix right so every one of these guys the wilt chamberlain guy totally has bored me to tears with his all his stories about how he and jimmy were you know thick as thieves and
Jimi Hendrix, famously introverted guy who just sat in his house and played guitar alone a lot.
But he knew every one of these guys, and they all knew his mom, and it's like he didn't know his mom.
Jimi Hendrix was raised by his dad.
But every one of these guys has got 25 stories.
So the thing is that in addition to like your normal sort of cracky, weird vibe going on over there, every once in a while, a guy will walk in with a fedora with a giant fucking feather sticking out of it.
Or like not just a feather, but like a peacock feather, like a feather that's four feet tall.
Yeah.
We'll call him Mr. Hat.
Yeah, and then a guy comes in in a suit made of scarves.
And it's just like, I don't know what I'm seeing over there.
It's hard to know how to filter all of that.
I'm a rock musician.
I've seen some crazy shit.
But this house is just like... So anyway, Skeeter...
I never thought the day would come, but when I see Skeeter, it's a relief to me because at least he is a guy that I know is reliably a broken-down, unreliable alcoholic.
At least I know I got his number, right?
The rest of the scene, I have no purchase on.
And everybody's super friendly.
Even the guy that looks like Eazy-E
When I come out into the street, you know, kind of like, oh, hello, good morning, taking the garbage out or whatever, he wants to come over and chat and, like, everybody's really friendly.
So I don't feel like they have the body of my neighbor wrapped in a carpet somewhere.
But then the fucking wood chipper truck.
That's a curveball, man.
If this were a young adult novel from my youth, I think the answer is clear.
Obviously, if you're a grown-ass man, you should just call the police because clearly something's not right here.
But I'm just saying, I guess there's probably always maybe probably somebody inside.
But maybe you need to go and do some reconnaissance.
Just to get your own, maybe you need to put your nose against the window and see what's really going on in there.
See, this is the thing.
Over the last four years, there have been a lot of people come in and out of the house, and it's always turned out to be
benign you know there was a guy there with a moving truck for a while and i was like this two years ago turned out it was her dead husband's long lost cousin who found him in the phone book and came and stayed for a week and he was he was like a deeply charming guy from uh from atlanta and i was like oh please don't go i want you to stay here you are he's a good influence he was a good guy but then he was like i live in atlanta i gotta go home
I actually said to him, like, please don't go.
And he was like, this has been really great.
I love it up here.
It's a place I could see myself retiring to, but I got to go.
But going around the back of that house or peeping on it, that doesn't feel safe.
Mm-hmm.
You know, not to mention the fact that, like, cranky guy who lives in the van, I haven't seen him, and he's the one that scares me.
This sounds like a really immersive video game.
This guy.
I mean, you might spend two weeks before you ever even go onto the property, just figuring it out before you ever level up to where you would go and get past the guy in the van.
It's The Legend of Zelda.
Yeah.
The legend of Skeeter.
The guy in the van, he's the type of alcoholic that he will have a long conversation with you and then the next day not remember ever having met you.
And he really hates the cops because they took his kids.
You could use that to your benefit.
If he's that forgetful, maybe you could sort of intimate.
See, you don't want to make yourself a target.
But if you could let him know that maybe you had some things that could help him out.
When you get that into that kind of serious alcoholic delirium, he might really open up.
I'm directly across the street, though.
I have one of those 3,000 candle power spotlights that basically is a spotlight from a battleship that could illuminate a whole theater of war.
And I keep it on reserve for those moments when I really want to light up the street.
Because it's a little bit of a shock and awe situation.
Yeah, it sounds like a heavily weaponized light.
Yeah, it's just like, boom!
And then everybody scatters.
But the problem with a light like that is there's no question where it's coming from.
No, no.
Now, how will you know when it's gone too far?
Let me put it that way.
Obviously, you're a thinker.
You think these things through.
When do you think you would know – I mean apart from the obvious sort of people shooting guns in the air kind of thing.
When do you think you would know that it was time to do something?
I've been waiting for there to be one of those situations where a bunch of people are coming out and loading up a car with things that seem like they belong in the house.
Yeah.
Turntables, you know, furniture.
Quilts.
Quilts.
Like somebody where it's clear that they are dismantling the house.
Right.
But I haven't quite seen that yet.
For a while, the woman in her 40s that was kind of queen of the scene, she sat on a plastic lawn chair in the front yard for like three hours one time between the hours of one and four in the morning.
in a way that felt like she was posted there.
You go sit on the chair out front.
Wow.
And watch.
Watch the road.
And I'm not even like really delving into the cars that are just driving up, pulling up out front of the house, stopping in front of the house, idling for five minutes.
No one gets in.
No one gets out.
The windows are tinted.
And then the car drives away.
I haven't even gotten into telling that part of the story.
It's very concerning.
I couldn't write something with this many trap streets, with this many, like, feints.
Yeah.
There's so much stuff here.
And, you know, there's probably one thing that just explains it all.
Maybe it's a halfway house, unlicensed halfway house.
Well, it's definitely been an unlicensed halfway house for a long time, but things are out of control now.
Yeah.
You know, sometimes you can feel like...
You can feel like when somebody's influence is waning.
Here's a funny thing when people get a little bit older and you start to get something like empty nest syndrome, even if that's a deceased spouse, where you love having people around.
You want to hear people around the house.
It's a great thing.
But I think there's another thing.
You see this a lot in older women, I think, where they're like, you know, I really like being left alone.
I like having – I want to be secure, whatever.
But, like, you know, I kind of like the fact that I get to have my own space and do it the way that I want.
And so it sounds – I mean, is the stuff that's going on now sound like the kind of thing that she would welcome or enjoy three years ago?
No.
Hard to tell?
You know, she's – she was always a pretty respectable lady in the sense that she – like, the whole reason that Skeeter came into the house was that she was –
that she characterized herself at one point to me as a drug and alcohol counselor.
And I was like, really?
I don't know about that.
Or rather, I took it in the same way that when somebody says to me that they are a sex educator,
A serial entrepreneur.
Yeah, right.
Anytime somebody says that they're a mental health professional, they go like, really?
Are you?
Really?
And she was like, I'm a sort of drug and alcohol counselor.
And I was like, everybody who ever went to a 12-step meeting kind of says that about themselves.
But it doesn't make it true.
And so Skeeter was there ostensibly, originally, to get clean.
She was walking him through the, but I mean, he's out there right now just drinking Sterno and spraying hairspray into a plastic bag and like all kinds of that.
Nobody's sober.
I hope nothing's up.
It's causing me some anxiety.
And then I got out there this morning and my car wouldn't start.
And I was like, okay, what's that?
Is somebody sleeping in my car and they're leaving the door cracked open so that they can read the in-flight magazine?
Or like, how did my car battery get run down?
And then I went and checked the trunk to see if the trunk was ajar, because sometimes that will run your car battery down.
I realized that my guitar was in the trunk and had been in there for 10 days.
Oh, my God.
And I don't lock my car, because if you lock your car, they just come break your window.
Now you're paying for a window.
So I leave my car unlocked.
Well, any num nut in the town could have come by and popped the trunk, and there was my guitar.
And I wouldn't have noticed it was missing until later on this week when I needed it, and I would have been like, huh, where's my guitar, I wonder.
And because I have three houses, there's always that possibility that it's somewhere else.
Right.
That's such a harrowing feeling.
I'm like that with my backpack because my backpack really feels like my outboard brain.
It's got all the stuff in it that's not just immediately on my body.
And when I leave it somewhere, it's like leaving my kid.
When I get it back, I feel better, but not that much better.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Because you're still vulnerable.
Yeah.
I mean, the stupid's still with me.
So what's in your backpack?
Computer?
Well, at various times, yeah, computer.
It could be an iPad.
It could just be everything that I like to keep a pretty light wallet.
And so I will outboard some of that, as we say, into the backpack.
But I'm pretty dogged about it.
I mean, I've really – I think like the way a lot of people would be with a purse.
I just don't forget that.
But what was it?
So you think it was your accessory light inside?
It's me.
It scares me to think about.
But it's been an eventful week.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I could have, I don't know.
I don't know what.
I didn't have the headlights on.
I don't know how I ran down the battery, but it causes me great concern.
I used to be so much more confident about everything.
I used to really – falsely.
I used to really feel like I understood a lot more than I do today, and it gets worse like every week.
I have more and more self-doubt about all the angles.
I'm probably getting wrong about something, and sometimes it – I'll say it cripples me.
But like in a case like that, I mean if you were 10 years younger, would you hesitate for a minute?
Like you'd either do it yourself or you'd like call the police, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, I feel like 10 years ago, and that's the problem, I think, a major problem with getting older is that I feel like the same person, and yet I'm not responding to things the same way, and I wonder if I am the same person.
I remember a kid said to me, a guy I'd known in high school, when I was 24 or something, he came through town and stayed with me for a week.
And he said, you know, you're a funny guy, but you're not nearly as funny as you were in high school.
And I was like, well, that's a shitty thing to say.
And he was like, no, I mean, in high school, like, you were hilarious, but you were also cruel.
Like, you're a lot better now.
Because you were funny, but you were terrible.
And now you're not.
Terrible.
Not so terrible.
And from within, I could kind of understand what he was saying.
Because there was a moment where I made somebody cry and I felt bad about it.
I told you the story.
I was running for freshman class president in college, and we were all in the lunchroom, and the principal, or whatever, the dean of the college, I guess there's not a principal of a college, the dean of the college was announcing the results, and
And he announced that my opponent had won the freshman class president.
And I saw a guy that I knew and a guy I'd known from Anchorage who coincidentally went to my college.
I saw him make the like pumped fist hand motion of like, yes, yes.
And I knew that it was not that he was so excited for the other person to win.
He was just excited that I lost.
Right, right, right, right.
And I was like, I was a little devastated by that.
This was a guy who, I mean, we weren't friends, but we'd gone to high school together.
There should have been at least enough loyalty just from that to carry it through that he wouldn't wish ill upon me.
That's way worse than wanting the other guy to win.
Yeah, to want you to lose.
And I realized in that moment and kind of, you know, that was one of a series of moments where I was like, oh, maybe there are people who genuinely don't like me because I'm mean or bad.
But within my mind, I still feel like the same person.
And now I'm in my 40s and I can't trust anything, I think.
I know.
I mean, I trust you, Merlin.
I trust you to tell me.
Well, you shouldn't.
You know, there's this weird, I don't know, Rubicon between like all the stuff I used to think I knew really well.
And then this other side over here where it's me like, you know, slouching toward responsibility, even though I'm not really that good at the responsibility stuff.
So when there's something like, you know, loud music that's keeping my kid with a cold awake, even I'll sit on that because I'm not sure exactly how to handle that.
Because there's the 20-year-old version of me who doesn't want to be a dick and tell somebody to turn down their music.
And then there's the other version of me that goes, man, if you were a real dad, you would just walk over there, treat that other – treat that kid like a kid that you respect and say, hey, do me a favor.
Could you turn it down?
My kid's sick.
But I still – I'll debate that and I'll sit there and mull that over for a couple hours.
So what do I do?
Am I going to call the police and have them be my dad for me?
I don't know.
When I knew less, I had more confidence.
I was probably less effective, but it felt more effective.
I felt more like I was getting stuff done.
I was getting stupid stuff done, but I really thought I knew what I was doing.
I feel like we're not representing megalomaniacs very well right now.
We used to be better at it.
I think we need to really, we need to step back.
Well, I'm a little embarrassed.
No, that's not true.
I'm a lot embarrassed.
that I have somewhat been concealing the fact that I got into a fist fight the other day.
What?
Oh, John.
You haven't done that in a while, have you?
No, it's been a long time.
Oh, my God.
It was at Bumbershoot.
Oh, my God.
And there were a couple of drunks, drunk 25-year-olds, who were... I was waiting in line in the drinking fountain, and this...
you know, drunk kid with like shark eyes is leaning next to the drinking fountain and he's just kind of eyeballing everybody.
There's a line of people looking at the drinking fountain and he's just weaving and staring and he's making everybody uncomfortable.
Oh God.
And I'm talking to a friend.
And somebody asks me if, you know, there's two drinking fountains, a short one and a tall one.
And somebody asked me if I'm, the short one is available, and they asked me if I'm going to go on the short one.
And I was like, no, I'm waiting for the stand-up tall one.
And this guy, leaning up against the wall, goes, did you say something sexist to my girlfriend?
No.
And I was like, what?
And it was a hilarious provocation, right?
He's not saying, did you look at my girlfriend?
He's saying, did you say something sexist to my girlfriend?
Like, it's a total millennial...
thought process, right?
He's a millennial bully.
He's a millennial bully.
Like, he has figured out he's still a bully asshole, but he's been raised in this culture where you have to couch your bullying in
This thought process of like, I was just defending her because you said something sexist to her.
My head is spinning, John.
There's so many levels to this.
Yes, well, now he's got a really righteous reason.
It's not his fedora-wearing male ego.
He's a warrior now.
That's right.
And the thing is that at any other time in history, his righteous reason would have been that he was defending her because you were like...
Coming on to her.
Yeah, and you were disrespecting his male authority.
Yeah, you were disrespecting his property.
But now he's a social justice warrior and he's defending her because you said something sexist to her.
And I was like, I didn't say anything to her or you.
And he's like, did you say something sexist to my girlfriend?
Oh, Jesus.
And gets up off the wall, squares his shoulders up.
And I'm standing there in a suit.
And I was like, I have 25 different strategies at my disposal to defuse this situation.
And I'm choosing to use none of them.
Wow.
And I was like, you know what, kid?
You're too drunk to be in public.
You're hostile.
You're gross.
And you need to get out of here.
This is a music festival.
People are having a good time.
And you're a piece of shit.
You need to go home.
And he was like, whoa, you want to fucking talk to me about you go home?
And, you know, and he steps to me and I'm like, seriously, you're drunk.
You're too drunk to be out.
And you need to either go sit on a bench until you sober up or you need to go home because you're a pain in the ass.
And he's like, oh, you some kind of fucking fuck you, man.
Fucking 40 year old.
And I was like, I am 40 years old.
And I'm telling you, they need to go home.
And his friend is there and his friend jumps in and is like, he's just drunk, man.
He's just drunk.
And I was like, yeah, he's drunk.
You're drunk.
You're too drunk.
Go home.
And then the girlfriend is like, stop it, Steve.
And I'm like, all of you.
You need to get out of here.
And then his friend is like, well, who the fuck are you?
Why don't you get out of here?
And then it's like two of them, right?
The drunk guy and then his drunk friend that was trying to be the peacekeeper.
And then at a certain point, the guy's like, you know what?
Fuck it, man.
Just shake my hand.
Just shake my hand.
Oh, God.
And I was like, I'm not going to shake your hand, dude.
I got nothing to shake your hand about.
You need to go home.
That's all I'm telling you.
And then it's like, well, I wouldn't shake their hand, right?
So then it's like, you're a fucking bitch, man.
You're a bitch.
You won't shake my hand.
I'm like, I'm a bitch.
I'm a 40-year-old bitch.
What?
Who's telling you to get the... And now there's a crowd of people.
I'm a 40-year-old bitch.
I'm telling you to go home out of here.
Go sit down on the grass.
But don't stand here by the freaking drinking fountain picking fights with people.
And then he pushes me.
Pushes me while calling me a bitch in such a way that he kind of like spittle.
Like spittle bitch.
Like, bitch!
Pushes me.
And I fucking punched him right in the face.
And then I punched him again in the face.
And then I took him down to the floor.
And then his friend punched me.
And then I... I don't know.
Then I don't remember.
But in the end...
So then I was embarrassed.
You're wearing a suit.
You're a 40-year-old bitch in a suit.
I'm a 40-year-old homeowning bitch in a suit.
God, John.
And then I'm standing there, and this kid is a mess, and his friend is, like, running.
And...
I popped a button off of my suit and I'm embarrassed.
I'm like, what the, how did this happen?
How am I standing here now in a huge crowd of people?
And so I go, so I turn around to go and I'm just like, I need to go splash some water on my face.
I go into the bathroom.
I look down and my finger is all fucked up.
Oh no.
And I'm like, not only.
that I get into a fist bite, but now I've fucked up my finger.
I do not even anymore have the karate skills to not hurt myself on this guy's head.
So I'm in the bathroom and I'm like, oh, this is bad.
This is bad.
This is embarrassing.
I'm a full-grown man.
There were a lot of ways I could have dealt with that.
So I sit in the bathroom for a little while and I'm like, I don't even want to come out of the bathroom.
I'm so fucking embarrassed.
But eventually I come out of the bathroom and my friend is waiting there.
And he says, we should leave by the back stairs.
And I say, why?
And he says, there are a bunch of cops and paramedics around the corner.
And...
There's like blood all over.
Oh, so it was pretty bad.
I mean, I was mad.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, I wasn't there, and I don't have the skills, but you were, I think, in a pretty defensive position.
You did what you had to do, I guess.
I mean, the thing is that 99% of people, I think, would have said that the actual thing to do in our contemporary society would have been to say, Hey, guy, I didn't say anything to your girlfriend.
It's cool.
Or, you know, like, you're right to defend her against people saying sexist things to her.
That weren't actually said.
Or that no one was talking to you.
Or, you know, or just like avert your eyes and not say anything and wait for him to take on the next person that he encounters.
or let him sit by the drinking fountain for 45 minutes and scare everybody in the building, or whatever, go get in a car, or whatever his plan was.
But in any case, so we go out via the back stairs, and my friend says...
Listen, I don't want to glorify that at all.
But the best moment of it was two guys walking through, you know, kind of skirting the devastation.
And one of them says, what the hell happened to those two guys?
And the other one goes, I heard they got their asses kicked by a 40 year old.
That's awful.
That's terrible.
I've seen you.
You've lost weight.
You've cut your hair in a sensible way.
Your beard is trimmed.
You look kind of like Tom Wolfe.
And you're a fucking 40-year-old bitch in a sense.
And I'm like, I lost a button off my suit.
And my friend is like, they're mopping his blood off the floor.
You should be grateful.
And then I watched as they put him on a gurney and carry him to an ambulance.
Oh, no.
And so I'm embarrassed and I also feel bad.
And every minute of the day I have a reminder of it because my finger is in a fucking splint now.
Oh no, which finger, which hand?
My first finger, my pointer finger of my right hand.
So I can still play guitar with my second finger.
But I have a gig this weekend.
Oh shit.
And also, so I get home and I'm like, well, you know, I've broken my hands before and you just go to the doctor and they just, they just tell you, you know, they charge you $700 to tell you what you already know.
So I made a splint out of a couple of chopsticks and some band-aids and
And I wore that around for a while, and I was like, well, maybe that's not the right.
Maybe chopsticks are too straight.
You don't want to make your fingers too straight.
So I took the chopsticks blint off for a couple of days, and I was just like, I'm just going to use it until it gets better.
And then I think I re-injured it in a way that makes me think that maybe it's broken.
And so then I went to the drugstore and I bought a proper splint and put proper tape on it.
Okay.
You're making circles.
You're getting a little closer.
I think, John, I don't want to be ego-assertive.
I think you might want to get that looked at.
The thing is, what happens?
You go look at the doctor x-rays.
He's going to tell you things you already know.
Yeah, $700.
Yeah, it's broken.
You should put a splint on it.
And it's like, I got a splint on it now.
I should have had it on there the whole time.
Oh, God.
But so it hurts.
And I feel like I did break it.
And it's been a week.
And it doesn't feel like it's... For the week that I was kind of walking around in either my chopstick splint or just using it,
I was like, it hurts an awful lot, and it's pretty swollen, but I feel like the best thing to do is just ice it and use it.
Those bones are really small, John.
Yeah, and ultimately, I'm most embarrassed at the fact that I don't even know how to beat up a drunk without breaking my own hand.
Oh, give me a break.
Yeah.
God, my heart would be in my throat in that situation.
I mean, it was upsetting.
I think it was upsetting to everyone.
But it's just one of those situations where as I replayed it, it was like, I'm such a paternalist.
This kid obviously didn't have a good dad.
And I was going to be his bad dad for that half an hour.
And I don't know, I don't, who knows if, you know, like I got beat up a couple of times when I was that age.
I was never like sit by a drinking fountain, pick fights with people.
I mean, I got beat up for legitimate reasons.
That I was an asshole who needed to be taken to the carpet.
Well, it sounds like a – I mean not to defend the experience, but it sounds like he was a predator.
And maybe he was too drunk to know he was being a predator, but that's not a way to behave in public as an adult.
Yeah, yeah.
And I could have gone and found a security guard and then what – like come on.
What would have happened there?
Nothing.
Maybe a 40-year-old bitch with a security guard.
Yeah, then I'd be like a 40-year-old bitch in a suit that went and got his mom or whatever.
It sounds like it wasn't exactly the name-calling.
It was the pushing you and the provoking you that basically now two guys are going to fight you and you're wearing a suit.
Yeah, right.
I mean the push was not benign.
It was a – it was like the – it was the provocation of the fight.
He sounds like a classic – such a classic bully though.
I mean because the really classic bully is not somebody who succeeds for 20 years at it.
The classic bully is somebody who's gotten away with it.
And gets away with it enough and it becomes their own kind of malignant therapy for trying to deal with power in their life.
And then they just beat up who they can or threaten who they can.
When he made the transition from did you say something sexist to my girlfriend to just shake my hand and it'll be cool, what was missing in the interim was any kind of apology.
Yeah.
Right?
And if he had said or his friend had said, hey, I'm sorry.
I got that wrong.
I apologize.
Let's just shake hands and be done with it.
Yeah.
You know what?
This is stupid.
Let's just move on.
Yeah.
Okay.
No.
Right?
No, no, no.
No, no, no, John.
I like this.
I don't like this anecdote, but you know, he had said if he had made it, but what he did was the classic bully move, which was kiss my ring.
Yeah.
Now he's, he's trying to get out of it.
He realizes that he is, that he's out of his depth.
Basically you've now, he sees it as you've successfully negotiated to where a tough guy doesn't have to beat you up.
And now all you have to do is, is admit that he was right all along and shake his hand like a gentleman.
Yeah, right.
Exactly.
And the fact that I wouldn't shake his hand then became the issue.
Of course.
Now it's about like you're not even a normal gentleman.
Yeah.
And that's the classic sort of bullying redirect.
And people do that all the time.
It's also a classic way to trick somebody into getting sucker punched.
Well, yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
I know he loves signs.
I know he loves signs at my daughter's school.
One that I noticed the other day that I think was pretty good was like a very short sign that just said how to apologize for something.
And there's three steps.
Oh, you say, well, no, I'm just saying if a genuine apology goes like this, you say, I'm sorry for what I did.
Number one.
Number two, it was my fault.
And number three, what can I do to make this better?
And I have to tell you, as signs go, I think that's a pretty good sign.
Yeah, that's a good sign.
Because nothing sucks like a bad apology.
You know, the I'm sorry you're offended kind of apology?
Yeah, the big city apology.
The big city apology, exactly.
But in that case, you know, that guy, that was not about that.
And the thing is, you know this.
You've been that guy, in a sense.
You've been the dumb, drunk guy who was watching himself from outside his body do something stupid.
Somewhere in that guy's little pinhead, he probably saw what a dumbass he was being.
I don't want to try and defend it, but I really doubt that's the first time this has ever happened.
I doubt that he said, Bumbershoot is going to be my bully coming out party.
I bet he's been pulling shit like that for years.
And people usually back down.
He absolutely has.
And the fact that his girlfriend and his friend were so ineffective in controlling him.
Stop it, Steve.
Yeah.
Stop it, Steve.
And then his buddy decided he was going to get on board the bully train rather than... And I think, I hope that the lesson that they take away is that 40-year-old guys...
have 20-plus more years of kicking people's ass than they do.
You know what I mean?
Like, at least in that situation, I hope the takeaway was there are a lot more people to watch out for than we previously thought.
Well, yeah, I wish it would be something even more humane, which is like, wow, I was acting like a real shitheel.
Well, no, because they will never go back and reevaluate their own behavior.
Probably can't remember it.
But if they just think to themselves, oh, there are more people watching and prepared to intervene and capable of...
of stopping me than I previously thought, right?
Because they were so contemptuous of the fact that I was older than they were, like 40 years old, that you should have seen the looks on their faces.
Like, you're fucking 40, dude.
What are you going to fucking do about it?
Well, it's probably not so different than us going to a punk rock show and going, God, look at that guy.
Why is that guy here?
Doesn't he know that this isn't for him?
Well, I know, but there were always those guys at punk rock shows who were 40 years old that you sure as shit didn't tangle with.
Those guys with mosquitoes tattooed on their necks.
You don't mess with Skeeter.
Where you were just like, no, thank you.
Are you, how do I say?
Do you have concerns for the consequences of this?
Oh, there was some suggestion.
Well, so I got a tweet from somebody who was like, hi, big fan, really excited to meet you and was about to say hi.
Yeah.
uh, at the center house when you got into a strange altercation with a drunk and I decided to split.
And I was like, I'm really sorry that you had to witness that, uh, debacle.
Um,
And she said, well, you know, I'm a teacher and I realized that this situation wasn't going to get any better if there was a crowd of people.
So I just got out of there.
Right.
So I imagine that she I am hoping that she split before she split even while it was just sort of an ugly back and forth before it turned into a like a one way back and forth.
Yeah.
But my friend did say, like, does it concern you that 25 people could have videotaped that and put it on the Internet?
And in a way, it would just be embarrassing in the same way that it was already embarrassing, which is just like, what am I doing?
Right.
But it was not unrighteous.
No, no.
I was thinking more from a legal standpoint.
Right.
Well, that's the thing.
And this is the problem of a videotape, right?
If somebody had turned on their phone just in the last five seconds, they still would see him push me and then me respond.
And that is sort of like beats me what the...
total breakdown of the rules is, but I feel like if somebody pushes you hard and spits in your face, kind of, that you are entitled to punch them in the nose.
But the problem of any kind of video is that you wouldn't have the whole spectrum of this guy's provocation, right?
There wasn't a film crew already watching him be a shitty thug.
Right.
So, but again, I think about this stuff all the time.
I still have a whole section, a whole shelf of books that I'm just saving for prison.
I am always waiting for the phone to ring, and it's somebody with a subpoena.
Oh, God.
And so, you know, and I've considered myself in...
and i think everybody has to have done this at one point or another considered myself in an interview room with two cops across the table from me and they think i committed a crime that i didn't because you hear about this all the time oh yeah you get you're being interviewed by a good cop bad cop and somehow after 24 hours they they convince you to they only really need you to say it they only need you to say a different one time right
That's the thing.
And so I've played that scenario in my mind all the time because it's like there are people on death row that just made the wrong move in a room.
And I've watched a lot of Law & Order.
Not recently, but back in the day when that was socially acceptable.
So I feel like whatever legal consequences, well, there wouldn't be any.
The legal consequences would be that he would also be culpable for fight-starting.
We should just start listening to see if he has a podcast where he talks about it.
Right.
A lot of people have podcasts, John.
That's one of the advantages of not being that famous.
If I were Eddie Vedder...
my bodyguards would have just beat the guy up um but if you're like somewhere in between there like who's who is not as famous as eddie better and more famous than me who conceivably like jack white is a perfect example there's a guy who actually did get into a famous fist fight with a guy with another position he was like producing the guy's record right
Yeah, and that guy put that picture of himself all black and blue from Jack White.
That picture was everywhere for six months.
I mean, he used it to promote his record.
The Von Bondies.
Oh, the Von Bondies, of course.
And I was like, boy, if Jack White beat me up at a party, I sure as shit wouldn't put the picture of myself all over the place.
But I guess if that's what you need to promote your band.
Would you ask for a rematch?
I don't know.
Jack White did some pretty bad damage.
I think he's a pretty big guy.
But Jack White or who's the bald guy from the Smashing Pumpkins?
Oh, Jimmy Corrigan?
Yeah, Jimmy Corrigan, the world's smartest boy.
Either one of those guys, I could see them getting into a bar fight or into a fight at a festival with a couple of drunks.
Sure.
And...
I imagine there'd be a lot more videotape of it if Jack White was boxing some kid.
I hope your finger's okay.
I don't like to give you medical advice, but you might want to get that looked at before it goes too long.
You're saying that I should go to a doctor?
I'm saying it's probably too late, but you need that for your work.
You need that for writing.
You need that for guitar.
An American doctor, you're saying.
I should go see.
You mean like a licensed doctor?
A licensed doctor.
I don't know.
That's a good question.
A professional doctor who's going to say, let's get that x-ray.
All right.
Fill out these forms with your broken finger.
And then he's going to say, oh, it's been a week already and it's already flanged.
Take these chopsticks.
I'm going to give you a prescription for some unnecessary pain medicine that you won't take and that's going to sit and be an attractive nuisance to house burglars.
laughter
that might attract skeeter yeah and uh then you're gonna uh and then you're i want you to wear this 700 chopsticks maybe physical therapy would you enjoy that physical you go someplace with with old people and large rubber bands i can do that myself you know my mom broke her foot one time in the and uh she walked like eight miles to the doctor and the doctor was like there's no way you could walk here eight miles if you had a broken foot so she punched him