Ep. 128: "Arcadum"
This episode of Roderick on the Line is sponsored by the brand spanking new Squarespace 7.
An amazing update to the all-in-one platform that makes it fast and easy to create your own professional website, portfolio, and online store.
For your free trial, plus 10% off anything you buy, visit squarespace.com and enter the offer code supertrain at checkout.
A better web starts with your website.
I think it's important to know the facts about tampons, to use them intelligently, and to know what you're doing.
Hello.
Hi, John.
Hi, Merlin.
How's it going?
You sound scratchy.
Oh, see, this is what I'm afraid of.
I do.
I sound kind of... I like it, though.
It's really, you know, Susan Sarandon-y.
I always think of Brenda Vaccaro in those, remember those ads in the 70s for lady products?
And she had like an improbably gravelly voice.
We were like, is she okay?
Did she just swallow a camel?
Open eye protection.
That, yeah, you know, the seasons have just changed here in Seattle.
And when the seasons change is when I start wearing lady hats.
Do you remember when Kangles were all the rage?
Oh yeah, when LL Cool J, when he loved his radio, he couldn't live without it and he had a Kangle.
That's right.
And back in, during that era, early 90s, I had a powder blue Kangol pith helmet that was made out of terry cloth that I just loved.
I loved that hat.
I just don't see that on you.
It was really, it was fly.
And, you know, particularly since in every other respect, I was wearing like, like forest colored wool.
Hmm.
Like basically like wool pants and logging boots.
The fact that I was wearing a powder blue Kangol, it was the little cherry on the top, right?
So anyway, I still have a lot of affection for that style of hat.
And the only way you can find them is in lady hats.
Oh.
The 1970s style of kind of...
like bucket hat, ladies, meant for ladies, made of wool or terry.
And every year I say, I'm going to, I don't care.
These hats are gender neutral.
I am making them, this is the year that I'm going to just wear.
You're reclaiming them.
I'm going to wear lady hats all fall.
They're not as good in the winter.
That's when you switch to your Cowichan hat.
A cohesion hat is a good winter hat, but fall is a nice time for a bucket hat.
So anyway, I'm wearing my lady bucket hat today.
That sounds like the name of a fresh new wrapper.
Lady bucket hat.
My hat is on my head.
My hat is on my head.
As soon as I walked into the cafe...
Because the cafe that I go to on the way down here is in the industrial neighborhood where everybody in there is in Carhartts and they all have like welding scars.
And I walked in in my lady hat and, you know, it was like the jukebox stopped and everybody turned.
And I was just, like, supremely confident, like, no, fuck you.
You guys, this is the way of the future.
And, you know, everybody goes, immediately turns back to their welding magazines.
New York City!
But it does, it reminds me of sort of that 1970s B. Arthur scratchy-voiced
You know, a woman in charge of her own destiny.
Yes, I know those women.
Yeah, wearing a kind of a felty, bucket-y hat.
Maybe an Adrienne Barbeau.
Thank you.
To refer to a Maude and Escape from New York character.
No, was she?
You know what?
I got so much to talk about, John.
First of all, I think I've told you before that I've started trying to rule out
I used to be like the way I feel right now, I would have said for 40 years, oh, I'm getting a cold.
Except now I'm pretty sure it could be allergies.
I get a lot of the same symptoms as a cold when I have allergies.
And so I have this super slow motion getting a cold feeling that I'm hoping is just allergies because that just goes away on its own.
I woke up in the middle of the night last night and had a seven-minute long sneezing fit.
Did you record it?
I didn't, although I think they did record it out at Mount St.
Helens on their seismographs.
But I do feel like something happened, and I was trying to picture the little plants all releasing their spores according to some cue, some atmospheric cue.
Like, it's October.
Something happens.
They don't need to get a specific message from a specific telegraph.
There's something in their plant DNA that just knows when these conditions are met, let's torture John.
That's right.
Here it is.
Or John and Merlin like all along the West Coast like and go.
Yeah.
And it's just like all of a sudden the air is full of some new pollen and you're just like, oh, no, what happened?
I was fine yesterday.
I think also our house is a little sick.
It's really old, you know, and I don't think anybody's ever really like cleaned out the ducks and stuff like that.
I mean, I know there's lots of toys in there, so I assume there's dust and stuff, too.
How many half-empty cans of flat soda water are there, like, in the rafters and kind of, like, sitting in the unfinished basement?
That's a really, really good question.
I am trying to be better about that.
I'm trying to implement some workflows because ever since I got off the SodaStream, for no particular reason, but I'm on the cans, and I'm going through about a 12-pack of cans a day.
Mm-hmm.
And those really, really pile up.
Yeah, they do, especially if you don't finish every one to the last drop.
How do you know this about me?
Because you found these around your house?
Then you got one quarter of a can of fizzy water, and then you open another one.
I think it might be all that keeps me alive.
I mean, really seriously, I drink a lot of water, and I just don't even want to think about what happens when I find out that it's not doing what I thought it was doing.
Yeah, I had two thoughts.
Okay, I was going to talk about lady product ads from the 70s and how much they freaked me out when I didn't really understand them.
But instead, I'm going to pivot to hats.
And, you know, you and I are both, if I may say, very fair-skinned.
I mean, for being as hearty and as hale and as hatted as you are, I think people who meet you might be surprised to know that you're very fair-skinned.
Are you not?
Yeah, my skin is in the pink category.
You're like a peaches and cream complexion.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's not – there's no olive component.
No, no, no.
Well, my wife is much more on that end of the spectrum.
Like she goes out into the sun for three minutes and she gets a tan.
I go out in the sun for three minutes and I have to be hospitalized.
I've got like bubbly blisters.
And luckily my daughter is more in her direction, so she doesn't burn as easily.
But, you know, this is – I don't want to make this about race, but, you know, you've got people from Asia in Washington, right?
And I mean, have you noticed, like, I think definitely with Chinese ladies, I think with Japanese ladies, like they are almost always wearing a hat everywhere.
Right.
Yes, absolutely.
The bucket hat is the classic local hat.
But are you getting this there where, like, there's a thing that started out as what looks like a tennis visor, except the visor is, like, made out of sunglasses?
Mm-hmm.
Do you know what I'm talking about where you've got a thing you put on, and then there's, like, a polarized translucent plastic thing?
Yes.
Okay?
And so I feel like I noticed over time that those were getting bigger, right?
Yeah.
Oh, right.
So that they go from ear to ear now?
Well, here's the thing.
Yeah, they got bigger and bigger because, you know, if you like a little protection, let's try a little more protection.
Do you get Chinese ladies wearing what looks like a welding mask now?
Have you seen this?
No.
You know, imagine, imagine, oh, it's kind of hot, I'm not going to lie, but imagine like a 65-year-old woman, and she's wearing what looks like that same kind of like a big piece of sunglasses that covers all the way over her face.
She can still breathe fine from what it can gather, but I think it must provide a surpassing level of sun protection.
It's part of the overall sort of Blade Runnerification of West Coast cities.
I think you're right.
And umbrellas, there's a lot of umbrellas.
A lot of Chinese ladies carry umbrellas too.
I feel like there is some kind of thing that is being communicated on a global scale where people are saying, I'm going to do my part to make this urban dystopia
Extra trippy.
Let it begin with me.
That's right.
No one person can make any downtown area super trippy on their own.
Right.
They just make it a little weird and awkward.
If you're standing in an intersection throwing rice at birds and you're the only one doing that, that's not going to have an effect on actually creating a dystopia because you're obviously just a loon.
Right.
But if somebody's throwing rice at birds and a big guy in a wool jacket walks by in a lady hat and then across the street, there's a Chinese lady with the welding mask on.
And you get this guy over here.
You got a Jew over here.
Pretty soon, you are creating a Blade Runner tableau that no one person could have done.
God, it's such a good point because here's the thing about Blade Runner.
Here's the thing about any future vision is like we remember as people who saw it around the time it came out as being about space and spaceships and flying cars.
And so you say, how do you make this more Blade Runner?
You're going to say maybe flying cars or maybe the Voight-Kampff test.
Mm-hmm.
I think that's what most people would say.
That's what I would say.
Can I toss out a few other bullet points for you?
Yes, please do.
Carrying around umbrellas.
Wearing hats.
Clear plastic clothing.
Street food.
Origami or making things out of matchsticks.
People people write what like like street vendor carts, but that are actually practicing medicine.
Riding bicycles in the dark.
There's a lot of that.
There's a lot of that.
There's a lot of zooming in on photos.
Yeah, that's right.
Punk rockers.
Hard copies.
You'll notice in any crowded street scene there are punk rockers.
But then you also get all the way down to like, was it like a square glass with giant ice cubes?
Like you get an arsenal bar in Portland.
I'm just saying, here's what I'm trying to get at.
And I'm sorry, because I think I really am literally getting sick.
The devil's in the details.
Yes, absolutely.
I think everybody has something to contribute to this.
Just because you have a rocket car, don't have a rocket car, does not mean that you're not welcome.
Just because your skin may not be the smoothest does not mean we don't have a role for you as a police henchman.
That's right.
There are plenty of things.
There's dust all over the place.
I think everybody is bringing a little bit to the Brit Blade Runner Party today.
I don't think anybody could have predicted that I'm sitting here doing some kind of radio show.
But the key elements are that my desk is covered with guitar picks that have Jonathan Colton's face on them.
And I have an orange bell from a 1970s dice rolling game.
What is that?
Millborns?
What is that from?
That's not from Millborns.
Is it Clue?
What's the one with the orange bell?
I should know this.
Yahtzee.
No.
No.
I don't remember either.
But, you know, it's the accumulation of small...
like worn detritus that makes any uh futurescape look real and so every day i try to have at least one element uh of my on my person where if if it's a panning shot of a street scene and i'm just walking from one place to another the fact that i have like a leather bag with an like a visible octopus sticking out of it
is the element that's going to stick in some future kid's mind where he's like, I saw that panning shot and it seemed, you know, and did you see the guy in the suit with the octopus?
No, everybody does that.
It was dusty.
Yeah.
And it's just like, the first time I went to Morocco, I was walking through the Medina in Fez and a guy walks by me in a three-piece suit and he's carrying two live chickens by their feet.
Okay.
And I was like, I am here.
I am here now.
They got the set dressing right.
Yeah.
This is – I mean, before that when it was like a bunch of guys in jalapas with the – like pulling donkeys with –
sticks tied to the back words.
Now I was always like, I mean, you know, I'm walking through and I'm like, sure, of course.
Right.
I'm in a foreign country.
Right.
Sure.
But then the guy in the three piece with the two chickens, two live chickens by their feet.
I was like, okay.
Oh, I missed the three piece suit part.
That's awesome.
Three piece suit.
They were business chickens.
He's a business guy.
He's coming home from work.
It was the middle of the afternoon.
And he's like, oh, I need to get some dinner.
My wife asked me to pick up some live chickens.
Pick up a couple of chickens.
And he's just like... And that's the thing.
He's just going about his day.
The rest of the people...
We're there because it's like, oh, we're setting a Moroccan scene, so we've got to have a little old man with pointy shoes drawing a mule through the streets.
You're going to want some carpets that are hanging up.
That's right, carpets.
You're going to want baskets.
There should be a snake probably somewhere.
Meat is burning on spits.
Whether or not it is actually culturally appropriate, some women should be ululating.
I think that might be peculiar to Iran.
But uvulating became our vision of the Middle East at one point.
Yeah, it was not happening in Morocco.
But the guy with the suit and the chickens, nobody would have thought...
To include him.
Right.
He just was himself, and that's the detail that made it real.
And I was like, I actually am here now.
This is not a Truman Show situation because no one would have put this guy here.
It's funny you should say that.
That comes up a lot on you.
We end up talking about that a lot.
And what I was going to say also is like the Voight-Kampff.
Like I have to say the more I watch that movie.
I put that test to people all the time.
Do you have, I mean, do you have like a portable unit?
I carry, you know, actually it's an app.
Do you like our owls?
We'll be right back.
First off, Squarespace 7 unclutters your workspace.
It stays out of your way while you work.
That means you can now add or edit content.
You can tweak your designs all in one window.
You've got to see this to believe it.
It's really gorgeous.
But while streamlining the interface, they've also added a ton of amazing new features.
One of my favorites, they've added something called cover pages.
This makes it fast and easy to create one of those sexy modern sites where you put tons of useful stuff all on one beautifully arranged page.
They also give you a new site editor with a device view that lets you preview how your pages will look at different sizes on things like mobile devices.
And there's more.
You also now get integration for Google Apps and Getty Images.
There's brand new templates, updated mobile apps.
Plus, for the nerds out there, you now have access to Squarespace's robust development platform, which gives you deeply geeky control of your site's code.
There's a lot to see here, guys.
This is an all-in-one platform.
That's now even more all-in-one-er.
I guess they're just going to have to run with that.
But I'll tell you what hasn't changed.
You still get 24 by 7 support.
The plans still start at $8 a month.
And you still get a free domain name when you sign up for a year.
To learn more and sign up for your free trial account, please do yourself a favor and visit squarespace.com.
And when you're ready to buy, please tell them you heard about it from your pals here at Roderick on the Line.
Because as a listener of this program, you get 10% off anything you buy by using the very special offer code supertrain at checkout.
Our congratulations to everybody at Squarespace for this dynamite new release.
And thanks very much for their continued support of Roderick on the Line.
We could not do it without us.
Man.
She was handsome in that movie.
A lot of good-looking things in that movie, but she was very handsome.
Now, I'm a terrible judge of character, and I can't tell when anyone is lying, including myself.
Right.
So I'm not good at that.
If I had to face off with, what's the actor?
His name's Delroy Leroy.
What was the guy who stayed at the hotel?
Yeah, Delroy Leroy.
Delroy Leroy.
Delroy Leroy.
The first skin job they talked to, I don't want to work ping pong.
Yeah, Leroy.
What?
I should know his name.
Leonard.
Leonard.
Leonard.
Leonard the skin job.
Yeah, Leonard the skin job.
When they're talking to him.
Yeah, he's getting pretty hostile.
He doesn't like the questions.
The tester guy had a much bigger role originally, and a lot of his stuff got cut out.
That's too bad.
I think he was also, Brady's bits, I think he was also maybe the original choice for the Rick Deckard part.
Oh, really?
There's one version where you can see him in like a space iron lung after he's gotten beaten up by Delroy Leroy.
I mean, I know there are already six versions of Blade Runner, but which versions are you watching?
There's at least four discrete versions, I think.
Yeah, there's the director's cut.
There's the actual director's cut.
There's the deluxe edition.
I know there's at least, I mean, I'm not even going to begin to get into this, but the ones I've owned, I've owned three.
I've owned the original one.
Yeah.
You know, with the voiceover that Harrison Ford really didn't want to do, and it shows.
Right.
Yeah.
Because, you know, when you start adding voiceovers to stuff, the voiceovers are like R2 dramas as laugh tracks are to comedy.
You know, they're there because the material was not where it needed to be.
Yeah, but I was convinced by the voiceover the first time I heard it.
I was fine with it until I heard it without.
And I was like, oh, it's like watching MASH without the laugh track.
It's like the show is twice as good without the laugh track.
But anyhow, there's that version.
In 1999, probably the second DVD I ever bought, third DVD, the first DVD I bought was Rushmore.
Second DVD I bought was the Radiohead movie.
And the third one was... That's a real picker-upper.
That's fun to watch on a plane.
You see people having seizures all over the plane.
And then the third one, I think, was the director's cut of Blade Runner, which was apparently, turns out, not really such a director's cut.
But it was the famous one that hinted more pointedly at the scene.
Ultimate vision of the maestro.
Yeah, they started adding the Unicorn Dream and stuff like that.
Yeah, Unicorn Dream.
The one that I will recommend to listeners as far as I know, the one that's really good came out a couple years ago.
I believe it's called The Final Cut.
Oh, really?
Which seems a little bit optimistic given the way that these things go.
Also, for a long time, my favorite Pink Floyd record.
Pink Floyd record.
And Maggie!
was that the one after uh took a cruiser with all hands you wow you wow i should listen to more pink floyd i really really should i know like three and a half i know four pink floyd records but it's really i know three full records and two half records yeah and i should hear more i should hear more i think i should listen to more animals is my sense
I think that Pink Floyd was a very talented band, and I feel that they contributed a lot to music and to guitar playing in particular, but also to dramatic music.
They really made it safe to be super dramatic in your music.
Yeah.
And I approve of that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, they're good for lots of reasons.
They're good because there's a lot of times where they're really, really good.
And they succeed at what they sought out to do.
They're also good at something that makes people so angry and provoked that they react to it.
You know, which, you know, say what you will about Gary Glitter.
But, you know, I think it's stuff like him that made people want to make punk rock.
And that's a good thing.
But also, I was watching, speaking of Blade Runner, I was watching, have you seen the documentary Jodorowsky's Dune?
No.
This is a very important film.
I won't go into this too much.
But basically Alejandro Jodorowsky, who did these Monkey Balls films in the early 70s, almost made Dune.
He spent two and a half years trying to make Dune.
And, you know, I'm not going to talk about it because you've either seen this documentary three times like I have or you haven't seen it.
I don't want to spoil it for you.
But I think you should see it.
But one of the things he did in addition to – I'm sorry to interrupt.
No, please.
But you know that I have never seen the movie Dune nor have I read the book Dune.
Yeah, I keep dancing around it.
I mean, I've seen the movie.
And the thing is, it's once you watch this documentary, Dune, which is already not a great movie.
It's a very interesting movie.
It is in the words of my favorite podcast, The Flophouse.
It's a good bad movie.
Like, it's really enjoyable, even with all of its faults.
And I think originally David Lynch did an Alan Smithy on it.
I think he was originally so unhappy with what the studio wanted and given his resources and stuff anyway.
But anyway, it's a very fascinating story.
And so he spent two and a half years on this.
And, you know, the nut of it is, if you watch the trailer, you'll get all this out of the trailer, which is basically the team that he put together to make Dune.
Yeah.
became some of the most influential people in the world of sci-fi movies, like Dan O'Bannon, H.R.
Giger, and Geiger.
Is that how you say it?
Giger?
H.R.
Giger.
I've always said Geiger, but I've never heard it pronounced.
I guess it's one of those words that you read and you just say it how you feel.
You know, almost all the names in this I say wrong.
Also, Salvador Dali.
Salvador Dali was going to be the emperor.
That would have been cool.
Yep.
Keith Carradine was on board for it.
And Jodorowsky had his 12-year-old son, 10-year-old son, 12-year-old son, trained for two and a half years in martial arts so that he could play Paul Atreides.
But none of this happened.
No.
Well, what happened – now I'm just reciting a documentary.
Don't tell me about it.
I'll watch the documentary.
I like documentaries.
I think you'd like it, though.
I think you'd like it.
It's about a guy who's incredibly passionate about changing the world but can't get his shit done.
Wow.
I mean, let me rephrase that.
I liked it.
That's a little close to home.
A little bit on the nose, Yodo.
I do sound dusky.
You do.
You do.
I like it, though.
It makes me feel like, you know, anything that humanizes you a little bit, Merlin, and takes you out of the realm of the God sphere.
Right.
You know, like it just, I think I speak on behalf of all of your fans when I say that.
Thank you.
We just put you up.
Yeah.
Up there in Valhalla.
It's complicated because obviously I have Valhalla.
Valhalla.
Valhalla.
Valhalla.
I don't think I know how to pronounce anything.
It's like when you start thinking about having a tongue in your mouth while you're eating and then you can't swallow.
You know, same thing.
Don't think of an elephant.
Your tongue?
Someone else's tongue?
You never thought of that?
Don't start thinking about your tongue.
I'm not going to start now.
You don't.
No.
Too late to start now.
No.
Well, I think I definitely belong in a certain pantheon, but it's nice to see me taking down a peg sometimes.
Yeah, it really is.
Sometimes, you know, it's like, oh, Merlin Mann has got a little bit of a dusky voice.
It feels like, oh, he's just like us.
Merlin Mann, I can get sick.
He puts his Utila kilt on one opening at a time.
I have been thinking a lot lately about, I know that this is, you know, I don't like to break the fourth wall, and I'm not going to do it now, but I've been thinking a lot lately about Super Train.
Oh, okay.
And I feel like we have not fleshed out the interim processes between now and Supertrain, right?
People are leaping to Supertrain, and you can't leap to Supertrain.
It's a ladder, right?
Yeah.
uh, I, I, I suppose, I mean, I think, I think it's going to be one of those things where it's like a hockey stick curve, right?
Where there's going to be buildup.
You don't notice for years.
And by the time you're aware of what's going on, there's going to be a big fucking train going by and then we'll see too late.
But what happens on the hockey stick?
Yeah, that's exactly right.
And, and this is, and this is the thing, like you start to see, you start to see welding helmets as, as fashion accessories, uh,
uh being pioneered by suddenly lots of men in cafes are wearing terrycloth kangles and you're just like what's going on what is happening around me i'm but it's all you know it's all of a piece um and you know you know about me that i'm always trying to solve the homeless problem
I'm always trying to revolutionize our mental health programs.
You know, I'm trying to make the world a better place.
You're always trying to connect people.
You're trying to help people understand the importance of living freely in a world of ideas.
That's right.
That's right.
Mostly you're trying to help the homeless problem.
That's what I get from you most of the time.
I'm trying to make pre-K music education more equitable from a social justice standpoint.
But really, I'm trying to solve the homeless problem.
And I'm trying to solve the mental health problem that's endemic in America.
It's the fallout from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
We closed all the asylums because we didn't like Nurse Ratched.
And now the streets are crawling with people who need more help than they're getting.
And all we're doing is putting Band-Aids on it.
We can't solve the problem because we have disempowered ourselves.
Yeah.
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah, I think I do.
You live in San Francisco.
I do.
You know what I'm saying.
Yeah, most of the band-aids are donated, and we're low on them.
There's literally poop everywhere, and a man who stands in the street throwing rice at birds.
I think it's as current as today's headlines.
If you try to put a band-aid on that guy... You're going to get a face full of fucking rice.
Well, you're going to get a face full of rice, and then somebody's going to... You're not going to have filled out the right forms, and it's going to end up being... You're going to end up being subpoenaed, not the guy throwing rice at the birds.
Yeah.
Oh, I see.
I go in.
I try to help.
I lend a helping hand.
And pretty soon, I'm the one who's being trotted down to district court because I forgot to fill out the right form.
That's right.
That's right.
You can't just go helping people freelance.
That'll teach me.
That'll teach you.
So what are you thinking about?
What's the interim?
Well...
You know, I've always been a proponent of... So we just legalized the marijuana here in Seattle.
And it feels like we're sort of tottering down this road where there were certain neighborhoods.
There's a neighborhood that I drive through on the way home that had already appointed itself the medical marijuana neighborhood.
Because we passed the medical marijuana law several years ago.
And those dispensaries were, you know, you had to have a card or something.
You had to claim that you had glaucoma.
What a clusterfuck.
And then you could go into these little, like, dispensaries that had green crosses that looked like European pharmacies, and you could get your pot in there.
But it was all still, like... Basically, it became, like, what?
Like, a cross between, like, a government office, a methadone clinic, and a dive bar.
Yeah.
Where, like, you could just go in there and go, you know, hey, you know, Dr. Nick gave me this note.
You know, give me my Matanuska Thunderfuck.
Right.
Right.
But the law that just legalized pot in Washington had all these caveats, like it couldn't be within 15 miles of a school, and it couldn't be within 150 miles of a church or something like that.
And so...
Somebody made a map where they drew circles around all the schools and all the places that you weren't allowed to have a pot dispensary close to.
The circles all overlapped.
There were only four tiny little places in the city where you could even remotely build a pot store.
Two of them were at the bottom of an iron smelter and one of them was in the middle of the bay.
And so we've got these neighborhoods that were like, we're pot dispensary neighborhoods and those places still exist and seem to be doing a thriving business.
But now we're opening pot, legal pot stores where just any guy can go in and get some pot.
But of course, the one on Capitol Hill that just opened was, turns out, next door to a church.
Next door to a church with a very vocal...
minister who is having big demonstrations in the street that he doesn't want.
Why did they put the pots door next to our church?
And answer, in his estimation, because they are a black church.
Right, right.
And the city doesn't give a hoot.
And he's like, well, why wouldn't you put this?
He wouldn't put this pot store next to the Episcopal Church.
And in that sense, he is very right.
They would not do that.
But it makes me feel like we're trying to...
We're trying to accomplish a kind of distribution of low-level sin that I really feel like would be better for everybody and more exciting, certainly, if we just concentrated it in sin cities.
Like a, like a cross between like a strip mall and a stadium where you can get high and buy guns and porn and stuff.
But I feel like, I feel like a sin concentration, a sin concentration, let's say, but, but let's, let's not call it a sin concentration camp.
No, that'd be too far.
But like, so, so we used to have Las Vegas where a normal person could go and it, and it seemed like the kind of rules were suspended there.
Yeah.
And it wasn't, you didn't have to be rich to go there.
You could just be a schmo and go to Las Vegas and it was dirty in the right ways.
And you could get your dirty times on.
Right.
But Las Vegas realized that if they Disney-fied themselves, then they could bring families there.
And so they cleaned up Las Vegas and they made the dirty, you know, they put a cap on how dirty they would let it be.
Like if you want that stuff, go downtown.
If you want to be on the main part of the strip, like you've got to really buck up.
Like they're cleaning up the streets.
The cops are there and they're saying like, we're going to bring in more money if we make this like Pirates of the Caribbean.
Right.
Exactly.
And what they've also done then is they've raised the threshold of dirty so that now vaguely dirty stuff, namely gambling and drinking and sin and whatever, is like considered a family activity.
But as long as it doesn't go all the way over into like total vice, right?
So Vegas has compressed the spectrum of like allowable dirty.
And that's true kind of in meat space all around America.
It's like they've social engineered sin.
Right.
They've done some kind of like compressor limiter where you may not be able to go out and get like a Peruvian dwarf delivered.
But, like, if you want to go out and, like... But you can bring your kids to, like, a place where he plays an elf.
Not in a mean way.
Right, sure.
Or, you know, he plays an elf while dad is playing the slots and mom is smoking cigarettes and drinking unlimited watered-down drinks.
So it's not nice there, but it's not dirty enough that he did that.
And I think that is depriving us, you know...
I look across the street at my neighbors, Skeeter and Vandura or whatever.
And I'm like, these guys are chronic alcoholics.
All they want to do is drink.
And the city is full of them.
And our only response to people like that is either to try and get them help, which they don't want, or lock them up when they...
when they commit a crime like we wait for them to commit a crime and then we lock them up and what they really want is just to be in a place where
honestly, where drinking all day is considered kind of normal.
And they construct... How long did you see this as a public service?
Well, you know, they construct a kind of mini world for each other.
They glom onto each other where it's like, I like to drink all day.
So do you.
We're not weirdos.
Like, it's not... I mean, it's not the best thing, but it's not the worst thing.
You want to concentrate...
Things like, unless substance abuse is such an ugly word, but being able to be fucked up all day, but that's okay in this neighborhood.
Maybe the housing is a little bit less expensive.
I think what you're describing is a ghetto.
Well, but here's the thing.
What's going to elevate it?
If you make it, if you get it out of town.
You go out to one of those farm towns where all the kids graduated from high school and got the fuck out of there because the farming had been mechanized.
There were no jobs left.
And dad was like, don't leave.
Who's going to fix the tractor?
And the kid's like, bye, dad.
I'm going to Hollywood to be a fucking dancer or whatever.
And so you got these great little towns that have 50 square miles of nothing around them.
Low occupancy, lots of places you can move into.
That's right.
Pick a place like that and say, all right, it's kind of a free zone, a little bit of a border town.
And you combine a kind of Burning Man aspect to it where it's like this is going to be more or less a self-governing place.
And there's going to be a lot of economic opportunity here because...
Especially under the stewardship of Mayor Skeeter.
Right, because cigarettes are going to be cheap here.
All your own, yeah.
And we're going to apply a little bit of the independent nation status of Indian reservations to this place.
And we're going to give a certain amount of autonomy to everything that happens within this 50-mile radius.
And, of course, it's still going to be under federal auspices in the sense that you can't murder somebody there.
But more or less, it's going to be like a spaceport border town.
Like a deliberate Deadwood.
A deliberate deadwood.
It takes a certain kind of pioneer spirit.
You could go off the grid a little bit.
There's still a grid.
They're going to need ways to recharge their vaping pens.
Oh, absolutely.
I mean, it's still... It's a modern society in most senses.
It's a modern society and, you know, like normal...
Rules apply in the sense that you will be able to buy and sell property.
Your credit card will work there.
Although there may have to be a certain amount of special currency.
Some kind of a reservation script.
Yeah, where you buy a company store script.
But we're so fascinated by Deadwood and Game of Thrones where we are voyeuristically watching societies where...
There there's there's more freedom simply because there's less institutional control.
We watch these TV shows and we're like, oh, wow.
You know, they're they appeal to us in part because we are romanticizing.
A time when, like, shit was running in the gutters.
Right.
I mean, the thing that you never... When you're watching Game of Thrones, the thing that you never realize is that those Night's Watch guys smell like shit.
Right?
Everybody in that show would smell like shit.
And we're watching it.
We're just like, oh, this is just... Why is this so appealing to me?
And it's appealing because people are living by...
Much more basic rules and – It definitely seems simpler, not just in like some kind of like Amish sense, but in the sense it's less complicated.
But I think when people fantasize being in those things, as with people at like Ren Fairs or whatever – not Ren Fairs, but I don't know much about the LARPing community.
But like I wonder how many people like want to be bed bug boy.
I think most people want to be the king and have the turkey leg.
I think there's a lot of appeal to being just a wench.
You know what I mean?
Simpler times.
Simpler times.
There's less wench shaming.
Well, and you also have no responsibilities.
And that's what Skeeter is looking for.
That's what so many people in the city are looking for.
And they want to have no responsibilities.
And we're already, as a society, spending...
tens, hundreds of millions of dollars sending out the paramedics every 10 days when Skeeter thinks he's having a heart attack.
And we are...
You know, pouring money into social services and these guys are kind of, you know, they're on parole for their pot bust.
And so they have to come in every 10 days and do a urinalysis test.
Right.
You got to go to the parole officer.
You got to pay for the ankle thing.
Like there's a lot of costs to society.
A ton of costs to society where we're not seeing one of those ankle monitors on Game of Thrones.
I don't think so.
No, you either have ankle chains and you're in a dungeon.
You're lucky to have a foot.
And somebody's flaying you or you're running free covered with shit.
Yeah.
Which is how we're meant to be.
And I just, I feel like if there was a way that we could just re-envision it a little bit where we say we're spending these resources already.
And so on behalf of society, we're going to open a sin town in every state.
Every state, we already have a state prison in every state.
Let's open a state sin town where it's subsidized.
Like, housing is subsidized for certain, you know, certain percentage of the people.
And it's just a place where you can go and kind of stay fucked up if you want.
And you can go and just, you know, the normal rules don't apply.
The expectation, the decorum rules are different.
And you just get to go be your dirty dog.
You get to be a mud duck there.
Yeah.
And people – there will be people that go there on the weekend, but there will be people that choose to live there.
And it's not a situation where we're busing people there.
It's just a situation where it's like, hey, guess what?
Over there, like outside of Soap Lake now in Washington, there's a town where you can do whatever the fuck you want.
It combines so many elements of classic American –
History and society.
I mean, it's a little bit like Pleasure Island from Pinocchio.
Let's be honest, it's a little bit like a jail.
It's kind of like a ghetto.
It's sort of like an enforced Las Vegas.
What it is, is it's a frontier.
Frontier.
It is an artificial frontier.
Because we have run out of frontiers.
Now you're talking artificial frontier.
Hey, guess what, you guys?
We found a new frontier.
That's right.
We should totally live there.
On the new frontier.
Now, will they play a lot of Donald Fagan and Steely Dan in Frontier Town?
Are you fucking kidding me?
Of course they will.
They'll be playing Donald Fagan everywhere.
At least on the bus ride there.
But, you know, when I think about going to Burning Man, which I, every year, think about for one and a half minutes...
But the appeal of going to Burning Man is like...
Right.
These are utopians, and they have created a frontier-like society, and it's a new frontier, right?
It is a kind of anything goes with an eye to the future.
And I know that the people that run Burning Man and that think about Burning Man and are part of that culture are trying to imagine a way to make a Burning Man town.
They want it desperately.
Oh, I see what you're saying.
Like the people that are running Burning Man, I know for a fact, are driving through Winnemucca, Nevada and thinking how hard... Why can't it be like this all the time?
Right.
How hard would it be if we just came into Winnemucca and just took it over?
Like the people that are in Winnemucca right now are going to be like the lumberjacks and the auto workers in the 80s.
And they'll be like, wait a minute, you can't just... Or they'll be like the Palestinians probably.
You can't just come in here and take our land.
Right.
So in this book.
And the Winnemuckans will be like, this is the land that our forefathers gave us.
And it'll be an amazing little intractable war.
Nobody said it was going to be easy to move out to the new frontier.
But that's, you know, the Burning Man people, they are really, I swear, I feel it vibrating in the air.
They want to
now build a civilization and really every state should have one right the thing the thing is that the one of the many ways that burning man is like las vegas is you get to look forward to going you get to be this certain version of yourself that you're kind of excited about for a while and then you get to leave
That's the thing I love.
Nothing makes me happier than driving to the airport in Las Vegas.
Because I'm so, I haven't told you this before, but like for the first hour I'm in Las Vegas, like it's the best thing I've ever done in my life.
The first night there, pretty fun.
But after like maybe two and a half days, I'm really ready to leave.
I can't stand Las Vegas.
When I see the lights of Las Vegas looming in the distance, my heart starts to beat faster, and I'm just like, please, please, God, let me get through this town without starting smoking again.
Oh, God, it's like the civic version of a vagina dentata.
It's just sitting there waiting for you.
We were there for my daughter's first birthday.
We had to go through a smoky casino to get to our room, and I just remember thinking, this doesn't seem wholesome.
No, you go to Bellagio.
It's a nice place.
You've got to go through the casino to get to the hotel.
That's how it works.
Of course you do.
It's almost impossible.
You can't see any signage.
There's no clocks.
It's very dark.
Everybody's wearing fucking cutoffs and drinking out of giant cups.
Coors Light.
But you and I are the type of people who would go to our state sin city, our frontier town, if you will.
We would go there for a weekend and then we'd be like, I don't know.
It's OK to just stop in for or maybe, you know, I would be open.
I don't know if they'd have anything that I could share with them, any wisdom, but I would be very happy to go in and be some kind of an adjunct professor in Pioneertown.
What's called New Frontier?
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, you know, each state could name their own frontier town.
Oh, and it could be regional, like a sports ball team.
But, you know, you think about all the people, like, I have been over the years radicalized in terms of being an advocate for sex workers, right?
You meet enough people who do... I didn't know that.
Good for you.
Well, you know, I mean, I grew up on Capitol Hill here where a lot of the people I knew and some of the people that I was in relationships with were also in the sex trades.
Hmm.
And hearing them talk about it, I mean, it's obviously very complicated and everybody has their own path through it.
Historically not very sympathetic.
Well, because the people who want to live in Virtue City...
cannot even abide the idea that it's happening somewhere, anywhere in the world.
Right, not in my backyard.
And so, I mean, so Sin City would not just be a place where people would go and be chronic alcoholics.
It would be a place where all kinds of commerce was happening.
Because Seattle, for years and years, said you cannot have a titty bar that also serves alcohol.
If you're going to have dancers, you have to drink Pepsi Cola.
I think I had to buy like a $20 Pepsi at one of those places.
Yeah, you have to buy a $20 Pepsi and then, you know, and it's just like coming from Alaska, of course, where alcohol and naked dancing was maybe after oil and fish, maybe the third biggest economic driver.
That's unfortunate.
Yeah, that's right.
Oil, fish, and...
But, you know, in Seattle, this was a way to try and keep our neighborhood safe or whatever.
And it's just like, come on.
You're nanny-stating yourself into a situation where you're just being ridiculous.
And so, anyway, Sin City.
Sin City, Pioneer Town.
Just over the mountains.
Just over there.
Just far enough away.
It's a little bit like a landfill, though, right?
You want a far enough way that you can't, like, you have to deal with it and smell it.
Well, and that works for both parties, right?
Yes.
They get a buffer.
They get a buffer from the normals.
Right.
Exactly.
Mom's not going to be popping in to make sure you don't have bed bugs.
Yeah, and you can somewhat control access by virtue of it just being a little bit off the beaten path, right?
You could protect the citizens by having like a wall around it.
Maybe a giant wall.
Yeah.
Maybe a giant wall with some delightful searchlights.
Searchlights, and there'd be a way that families could share housing.
I think it's got lots to recommend it.
And then the adjunct to that is that every town should have, or every state, I think, should have a kind of arcada where...
I don't think I know what that is.
Is that a garden?
Or an Arcadia, I guess.
There's an I in that word.
Oh, that's okay.
I like Arcadia.
Arcadia is a great name for that community.
Arcadia is pretty nice.
I think one of them would be an Arcadum.
I think I'm talking about a place maybe that was a former convent or perhaps even a former mental institution.
Hot.
That is now repurposed as a mental institution.
A place with some rolling hills, a calm respite, where people who are troubled can go live and be under a doctor's care.
I can't believe nobody's ever thought of these before.
Right, right.
It's kind of a novel idea.
It's a very modern take on an old problem.
Yeah.
A place where people who are struggling to live amongst other people can go have a break.
That's kind of like college.
That's right.
From the stresses of modern life and benefit from all the new developments that we've made in psychopharmacology.
John, there's so many expectations from other people.
You don't get to pick other people's expectations, and that's the problem.
It could be expectation town.
It's a place where nobody expects you to do fucking anything.
Exactly.
And I feel like there's some kind of like Quaker Protestant idea that runs through America.
Yeah.
Where we expect everybody to fucking do something.
And there are some people that we should just not expect anything of.
They get to go live in Arcadum.
Caleb, where is thy chair?
I have not made a chair, father.
I'm moving to Arcadum.
Liza, there's a hole in the bucket.
Fuck you.
I got a thought technology on this, and this is where super old-fashioned Midwestern Merlin comes out.
But here's the thing.
I love old-fashioned Merlin with his straw hat and his weathered overalls with one strap hanging.
Time was.
A man could live in an institution and still draw a salary.
That's the only place in which a person could legitimately be named Merlin.
Here he comes.
What's your boy?
What you going to name your boy?
He don't make no chairs.
I'm thinking Merlin.
Here's the thing.
I have to say I'm very interested with one of these civic ideas that on the face of it 100% makes sense, but I'm not sure stands to reason.
And that's what you're describing here, which is – let's call it the radius problem.
Okay, so like for example, if you're a registered sex offender in California –
Which?
For which?
You could be on that list.
Do you know this?
Do you know you can be a registered sex offender if you were convicted of public urination?
Whoa, really?
It's a thing, yeah.
So you can go to maps and find out... Is George Michael a registered sex offender in California?
Say again?
Is George Michael a registered sex offender in California?
I think – I'm not a jurist, but I'm pretty sure they just went ahead and put him on the list everywhere just as a precaution.
I think they have a basic kind of filler list whenever they're starting up a program like that.
I don't know if this is a Megan's Law thing.
Here's all I'm going to say about this is that you can go and like look at a map in a neighborhood and find out where – with pictures and addresses like where registered sex offenders live.
And I think in this way you're describing –
This may not be the perfect place to start with this example, but you're not allowed to live within so many feet of a school, within so many feet.
In this case, you're saying, okay, you're going to have this phony baloney pot dispensary.
Like that can't be too near a church.
What about guns?
Can you buy guns?
Oh, no, no, no.
You can't have a gun.
You can't have guns that are too near a school.
You can't have guns and so on and so forth.
And there's all kinds of things like this, liquor stores, all of those different things.
Now, I don't have an answer to this, but what goes through my night mind is like I think –
almost anything, excluding the people who have to find someplace to live.
But like, you know, for all of those things, like –
The idea that like there's some places where it's okay for these things – here's the problem.
There's either a problem with the idea that churches shouldn't – what is the problem with churches having guns nearby?
If we like guns as a society, why the fuck can't we be selling them everywhere?
If we like pot, why can't we be everywhere?
I think it's very indicative of something that is a real on the bubble kind of issue, right?
It's not something that's going to be illegal.
But it's not something that's super legal.
It's not something you can just do everywhere.
And I think it's interesting when you look at whether that's titty bars or gambling or any of that stuff.
It's interesting to me how you decide to parse what's allowed to be near that.
And maybe there are new angles here.
Maybe we could find out that the church people are actually super into guns, but they don't want the pot.
Maybe you could do something like carbon offset credits where you could move your thing someplace else.
You could do a trade with one of the other neighborhoods.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't do Frontierville.
But I think it's very interesting to go like, well, you know, there's some stuff that like almost nobody wants in their backyard.
And maybe that's when your backyard really literally becomes Arcadum.
And we have the gunsters and the titty bars and you just go out there on kind of like a chartered bus.
But I'm very interested in anything with a radius because to me that shows ambivalence about whether it's a good idea at all.
Well, and I think – That was a lot of thoughts.
No, I think you've hit the nail on the head that –
If you surveyed the entire population of any size city, you would find that the number of behaviors that passed muster with every single person were incredibly small.
Because there are going to be people in one part of town who think that disciplining your kid with a ruler is an essential part of the way that you conduct business.
That's a good point.
That's a complicated Venn diagram.
Are there three things that everybody thinks should be legal all the time everywhere?
Yeah, there are people who take their shoes off on the bus.
There are people who think people who take their shoes off on the bus should be in jail.
There are people that talk on the phone in restaurants.
There are people who think that those people should be in jail.
And when you get down to the nitty-gritty of what we all agree on, it's like beats the shit out of me, frankly.
I mean, there's always somebody in any situation who's offended.
Yeah.
And these big-picture things like drinking, guns, sex, or whatever, I mean, they are polarizing.
Drinking, drugs, something sexy for money, whether that's pornography or handies or whatever.
What are the other kinds of things?
Well, I mean –
Most American cities, I don't know if you've ever been to anywhere in Oklahoma.
No.
But you go to these towns in Oklahoma and there are 600 churches.
Starting back in 1910, they were building churches everywhere.
Every denomination has 25 different venues.
It's just within the center of town.
And...
That was a very aggressive effort to build the physical plant of this place and say, like, this is church town.
And there's not going to be room for bars here.
You can't drive down the street without seeing a church everywhere you look.
And that is going to be our method of keeping everybody on the straight and narrow.
Right.
Keep going.
Keep driving.
You're not stopping here.
But there are other towns, the one in Iowa that Harvey Danger ended their last great tour in, where it was just liquor stores and tinny bars, and across the river, the town was all churches.
They were way ahead of the curve on this.
Yeah, so the two towns had this back and forth, like churches, bars, liquor stores...
And, I mean, we're always playing these games with ourselves.
But the solution always seems to be that we compress in a Las Vegas style.
We use a compressor limiter on what we think is...
And then that's the way that we're going to find peace with each other.
We're going to let everything get a little bit dirty to appease the people who want to just live how they want to live.
But we're going to put a limit on how dirty they can be to appease the people who think that none of us should be able to get away with anything.
And it's not working.
that it's not actually creating a city where people feel like we have shared values.
You know why?
Because it's almost like don't ask, don't tell, which to somebody seemed like a really good idea in the 90s.
But it's really unsatisfying to everyone involved.
Because what you're describing with Las Vegas is, like, you can get away with some stuff here, but we want to make sure nobody who doesn't want to see it sees it.
Like there should not be obvious like sex worker people, you know, walking around here.
There shouldn't be people hanging out on the streets because they blew all their money on gambling.
Like this has to look above board.
Right.
But if you go to the concierge at the Bellagio and say, hey, my daughter's turning one.
I want to show her a good time.
Yeah.
Or like, I'm really into ladies that dress like elephants.
You've got any of those?
You got somebody like that in your Rolodex?
You know what he says?
Hmm.
Going down to King Jumbos.
The idea that was put out there in the 90s by the Aryan nations that somewhere in North Idaho, they wanted to construct a white homeland.
And it was so...
It's disgusting to us as a culture, these guys that were up there trying to create a white homeland in North Idaho, that we really devoted a lot of resources in terms of FBI and just culturally.
They took a lot of bandwidth for a couple of years.
Oh, this is kind of like the people who became the...
Kind of – what's the phrase they used to use?
Like compound people.
Yeah, exactly.
Right.
The Branch Davidian kind of feeling.
And the Hayden Lake white supremacist gangs.
And we really, really busted those people down and in some cases like –
burned their compounds and killed them by the hundreds.
Thanks, Janet Reno.
Because, because, you know, we have these echoes of the Confederacy or whatever.
You're not allowed to, you're not allowed to secede from the United States.
Um,
But there is this tremendous desire for there to still be a frontier.
Like, that's really in our DNA.
We want to be able to go out to the edge of town and do whatever the fuck we want.
And until very recently, I mean, I'm talking very, very recently...
Throughout all of human history, there was always a place for you to go where you could go to the edge of town and still be considered a citizen.
Right?
You lived out kind of by your own rules on the frontier.
But when you came back to town, you weren't considered a criminal.
Right?
Right.
And that territory is gone now, like even in Alaska, right?
I mean, I suppose if you went out to Siberia or you went up the Amazon or something, you could find a place where you could be your own person and come back to town and be...
Well, if you were willing to go somewhere where there wasn't a road, I don't know why this makes me think of this, but back in Tallahassee, it seemed like about every year or so, the city moved out about two miles in one direction or another.
And it went along, as you say, the arterials.
So, you know, you could go another mile up Thomasville Road, and there weren't any publics anymore, and there weren't any more lights.
But if you really wanted to go be on your own, you're going to have to go to Georgia and go down a dirt road.
Uh-huh.
Right.
But eventually, like within five years, you would be living in the city because where you are now, like people have moved past that.
Now, the new pioneers have created someone just somewhere just beyond that.
And now you're in just another suburb.
Yeah.
People keep coming.
And we like to we think of we think of people that are out on the fringe as wanting to be away from people.
But in fact, they're they're.
There is a whole component of human beings who want to both be out on the fringe, living more or less by their own rules, but not away from people.
They want to come in and go to the bar.
They want to be a part of a culture and the culture even.
They want to play with others, but they also want to go kind of make their own way.
Yeah, and in some ways we've gotten that in a backwards way with air travel or with the idea that you could fly to somewhere and be away from your family and under your family's eye, but you could still get back home.
It's just that it used to be if you made that decision – tell me if I'm wrong – it used to be if you made that decision, it was a lot harder to go back.
Right.
Or you had to... There were all kinds of... You couldn't go back to St.
Louis and move back to your family's house.
But if you went out to Oregon, you could... There was still...
There was still somebody who knew how to play the piano in Oregon, right?
It wasn't like you had gone and were living in a house made of bark.
Or even if you were, you could take your horse in and hear somebody play the piano.
And we have started thinking of everybody who wants to live outside as being kind of criminal, right?
And we've criminalized, in a way, the desire to not live according to this minutiae law that we're all sort of little by little acquiescing to.
It definitely makes you seem suspicious.
Right.
It makes you seem suspicious.
And what we're not recognizing, or I guess what we do recognize in some part of ourselves, is that all the big laws are taken care of, right?
We've got the structure of the law now that we really don't have...
We don't have any gaps in what the law stipulates, except when new technology invents a new situation where it's like, oh, we kind of do need a new law to govern this because it didn't exist before.
But because lawmaking and law enforcing is such a massive business...
We're constantly making new laws, smaller and smaller laws, governing smaller and smaller little pockets of behavior.
And every year... It's not so different from Chris Anderson's long tail idea.
You know, when you hear all the things about whatever civil forfeiture or about, you know, the modern equivalent of debtor's prison for people getting all these fines, it's like if you pile up enough of those $200 fines and you can run a pretty good small town.
Oh, for sure.
Speed traps, like the speed traps in Florida.
There's towns that just run on nothing but stopping people on 75 for going 80 miles an hour.
Yeah, because they put up a sign that says, for the next 14 miles, the speed is 45 miles an hour.
And you're just driving along at highway speeds, and it's like, oh, I didn't see the tiny sign that...
said it was a 45-mile speed line.
That is really real.
I mean, there are places, like, I think about going maybe near Gainesville.
I'm sure you've been through these places where it goes from 65 to 35, like in less than a mile.
And the sign is, like, hidden behind a tree.
Hidden behind a Dairy Queen.
Yeah.
West Texas keeps the lights on by the same method.
But it's not just that.
It's also the desire that we have, even on top of the laws that are being made,
I mean, when you think about all the constituencies in America who are like, there should be a law.
There should be a law that prohibits people from spanking their kids.
There should be a law that prohibits people from teaching.
astrology there should be a law that prohibits this and that mentioning mentioning abortion as an option right we're all trying to add more and more laws to what is already like a spider web of laws because it's just it feels good to do it and we want to we want to limit everybody else and we want to we want to create the utopia that that
That comports with our mind the best.
And so we're, you and I and all of us are surrendering every day a little bit more of what would be, of what is essentially adult autonomy.
Yeah.
To this like convoluted set of law.
Every time you click accept on an Apple, on an iTunes legal document, it's just like, I don't know what I just accepted and I don't give a fuck.
And that's happening in every aspect of our lives where it's like, you know, like the whole idea that...
the whole debate about gay marriage is just like, well, this is adult autonomy.
This should not even be, I mean, it's a common thing to say, but why are we even fighting?
It used to be, it wasn't that long ago.
And so that's right.
And, and, and, you know, and the law, like we're, we are, we are debating the law.
We're, we're discovering new truths in the law.
And that is, that's a constant process.
And that will always be how we evolve.
Right.
But adding new laws is another, it's a game that we're, it's a game that we can't win, right?
And you and I both feel every day, and I think everybody that probably listens to our program, feels that there are certain laws that we are empowered to ignore in the course of a day, right?
There are certain things where it's like, yeah, okay, sure, four-way stop, right?
I know technically I need to come to a complete stop.
I'm an observer of those, but I respect your deeply held Thoreauian beliefs and not needing to follow the unjust law.
I'm going to roll on through here.
There's nobody around.
John, I don't want to derail you, so to speak, but now how does the Happy Village, how does Frontierland, how is that the stepping stone to Supertrain?
Or is it?
It's something we need to do.
It's a practical first step toward the dystopia we can all live with whether we like it or not.
Yeah, the thing about Supertrain is that it's coming in the ashes of our inevitable doom, right?
It's going to look great on a poster.
But on the way to this inevitable doom, there are certain steps we need to take.
There's still false hope.
There's a lot of shit we need to try, right, as we are hurtling.
Yeah, for the montage scene that shows all the things that went wrong over 150 years.
Yeah, as we're hurtling toward our destiny, we need to have some cool graphics.
Yeah.
And I feel like the counterpoint to Sin City, to Frontier Town, is going to be Church Town somewhere.
People are going to come along and say, well, if in Soap Lake they are...
They're having this free for all that over in Moses Lake, we're going to just have a we're going to make a town where and I mean, you know, this is the beginning of a kind of like fracturing of civil society that's ultimately going to herald.
The doom that brings super training.
I'm thank you.
I might have a suggestion here that I think gets to I know if I think about all the things that you help people with and all the things that you wake up every morning literally saying, what can I do about?
Obviously, homelessness number one.
That's the thing you most worry about.
The other thing you think about, I don't want you to leave yourself out of this.
Let me just give you a quick thought technology here.
You're going to have – over here in Frontierville, you're going to have the need for some infrastructure.
You're going to need a place for the bus to stop.
There's going to need to be a sheriff.
Well, you're going to want a lot of like convenience stores.
You're going to want a lot of – even if you overtake an existing city and piggyback on its infrastructure, there's still going to be the need for stuff to happen there.
Sure, there's already probably a vaping supply store in Soap Lake, Washington, but you're going to need a couple.
But think about this.
I mean, no matter what, even in this idyllic landscape, even in this literal utopia that we're creating for people who don't really feel like doing anything, you're still going to need somebody sober to run the cash register.
Running a cash register does not require you to be sober, sir.
Is that from experience?
Yes, it is.
I used to keep a 32-ounce cup, a 32-ounce soft drink cup.
Like a big gulp.
A big gulp full of wine under the counter.
Well, it's just wine.
That's a social drink.
And all day long, I would just be sipping at the wine.
Every once in a while, somebody would be like, that Dr. Pepper is really red.
And I'd be like, yeah, well, I didn't change the hose.
Somebody is going to need to bootstrap the infrastructure for this, and I don't want the government involved because, frankly, I don't think they can handle it.
I think they can mishandle it.
What I am thinking that is if you were to become – Nope, even better.
I'm thinking this is finally your chance to be on a board.
I think you go get some Elon Musks and some Mark Zuckerbergs and some Jeff Bezos and you get on the board for bootstrapping.
an entire franchise of these cities in interested places.
Now, maybe there could be a ballot initiative where they say, hey, bring on Frontier Town, but you're still going to want somebody there.
I want to say a grown-up, but I mean, a grown-up who doesn't mind being around a bunch of drunks who don't feel like doing anything.
Nothing, there's anything wrong with that.
That's the whole reason we made Futureville.
But when you do that, think about that.
Now you are, if I may say, you are really positioning yourself for things to happen in the future.
Financially, obviously, there's going to be a windfall for you here.
But much more interestingly, you're getting into the corridors of power.
You're getting the right people on your side.
More importantly, they're getting you on their side.
And I think when Supertrain comes along, you're going to have a, you know, a Bayer and BMW type situation.
You're going to have a Krups and Braun type situation.
Here's what we do.
Here's the first product that Roderick Zuckerberg Bezos and Musk.
RZBM?
Roderick Zuckerberg Bezos and Musk.
Our first product is a Sin City Gaia device.
Yeah.
This is your Genesis bomb?
It's the Genesis bomb.
We fly over the middle of a state somewhere.
We drop the Sin Genesis bomb.
And it creates... I think it's called the Future Seed.
Future Seed.
It impregnates the Earth and creates just like, you know, kind of like the opening sequence of Game of Thrones.
This little, like... Oh, suddenly little paper pop-ups start coming up?
This Deuce Ex Machina of, like, Sin Town.
I kind of like Deuce Ex Machina as the name of your interim holding group.
And it's built in kind of a mock tutor, but it looks a little bit like Venice also, like houses on top of houses.
I also like the idea of having some kind of robot avatar whose name is literally Deuce, middle initial X, last name Machina.
Hello, I am Deuce X Machina.
And he looks like Billy Corgan.
Man, people are going to be flocking there.
Yeah, they will.
With their rucksacks.
You know, it's going to be...
I would go there, and the thing is, early days, it'll be amazing, and then it'll go to shit.
Yeah, and you make a new one.
And you make a new one.
That's the other part of Las Vegas, the fixed cost.
That place is already built.
They know where to deliver the prime rib in the fountains.
Sometimes you just want to pull up stakes like a fucking degenerate mash unit.
You want to just be able to move on to the next town.
Burn it down, and all the skeeters that can't move anymore just get burned with the town.
Become fuel.
That's right.
Call them Skeeter Logs.
Oh, dear.
Fun times.
I think that's pretty good.
That's pretty good.