Ep. 136: "Goofus MacGroofus"
This episode of Roderick on the Line is sponsored by Cards Against Humanity.
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Hello.
Hi, John.
Hi, Merlin.
How's it going?
Good.
What a day.
Queso.
Queso-dia.
Queso.
Are you eating cheese?
No.
I have not had any food today.
I am subsisting entirely on pure energy.
Oh, God.
I'm a mess.
Are you?
Did you have some food?
Did you go down to the Taco Bell and get a couple hot dogs?
No.
Oh, woe betide me on the day they start having hot dogs at the Bell.
Can you imagine if they added just one more ingredient?
Hot dogs.
You know what?
Taco dogs.
You know what?
If they want this idea, it's going to cost them $700,000.
But here's my thought.
Introduce hot dogs.
So first of all, you know what you can sell?
Hot dogs.
Hot dogs.
As a thing.
Everybody likes those.
You could chop them into discs like the size of the tip of your thumb, and you can make it into a famous bowl.
Taco and Frank's.
Taco bowl and Frank's.
But here's the thing.
You could cut a hot dog in half lengthwise and make it a hot dog-go.
Hot dog-o.
Well, it would be a hot dog taco.
Oh, I see.
It's a thought technology.
Right.
You fill it with taco stuffings, but instead of a taco, you would have a hot dog.
Do you eat hot dogs?
I do eat hot dogs.
We go through phases at our house where we forget about hot dogs for six months, and then we get a couple packs of some Nathans, and we go crazy on hot dogs for a while.
Yeah, I've started eating the Nathans.
You know, they make jumbo Nathans.
Have you seen these?
Yeah, it's like five in a pack.
Yeah.
That's very confusing, but I do that.
I've been pretty happy with those.
Have I ever told you about chili?
I'm going to say no.
Have I ever told you my story of chili?
Oh, God, no.
I don't know the story of chili.
This is like a Marvel origin here.
Yeah, it is.
It really is.
Tell me the story of chili.
When I was a kid, I did not like chili.
I didn't like chili because it had beans in it, and I didn't like beans.
I didn't like beans because I didn't like vegetables, and beans were a vegetable.
Beans are a secret vegetable.
And so when I was a kid, I was an extremely picky eater.
I hardly ate anything.
And one of the things I didn't eat was chili.
And I was revolted by chili.
Well, at Mount Aliesca, where I was a member of the Junior Racers ski team...
On the top of the mountain was the original structure that was the top of chair one, the chair, the first chairlift.
The first chairlift went up and went kind of in underneath this building.
Actually, the you would get off the chair and then the chair would go.
It would rotate around its hub underneath the building, which was called the roundhouse.
Guess why?
Because of the roundness of the structure in making the chair pivot.
That's right.
It wasn't actually a roundhouse.
It was like an octagonal building, but it was effectively round.
The chair comes around, then that takes people down.
That's right.
The roundhouse at Mount Alieska, and the roundhouse was a, on the top floor, it was the
the place on the top of the mountain where you would go and get a hot chocolate.
It was the bar.
You could get some hot drinks.
And sometime before I was a kid, sometime in the late 60s, they added an addition to the back of the roundhouse, which was kind of a big dining area.
And it was all shingled in cedar shingles, including the roof.
And the furniture inside was in the, like,
heavy wood picnic table style of furniture i think in the bar they had tables and chairs but back in the in the roundhouse where the kids could go it was just big picnic tables anyway at the roundhouse one of the foods that they offered was chili and they made chili burgers and they made chili dogs and also chili and
And so I would go in there every day in the middle of the day at lunchtime with my friends.
We would ski up, kick our skis off.
I just want to say this is a pretty handsome looking building.
It's very nice.
Kind of old world.
Yeah.
We would clomp into the roundhouse.
You'd have to climb up some stairs.
And then there was a porch, a deck on the outside.
But you'd clomp into the roundhouse.
And you could get a hamburger, a cheeseburger, a hot dog.
And then all of those things with chili on them.
And then fries, which I also didn't eat because I didn't like potatoes because potatoes were a vegetable.
So my whole childhood... Just that curiosity.
It's conceptually that they're vegetables.
It's just the whole idea that they're vegetables.
That's right.
That's right.
There was a time when that was plenty for you to just not even touch them.
Well, and also because potatoes and beans share a commonality, which is that they have a mealy texture.
That's true.
And I don't like mealy.
Didn't like mealy, and I associated it with a certain kind of starchy vegetable, of which beans and potatoes, to me, were the exemplars.
So I would sit at the roundhouse day after day eating my cheeseburger or my hot dog while my friends across the table ate their chili cheeseburger or their chili dog.
And the roundhouse served these foods on big platters and it was a pile of chili.
You couldn't see the cheeseburger under the chili.
You couldn't see the hot dog under the chili.
It was a mountain of food.
And I sat across from this day after day throughout my entire childhood.
And then at a certain point in my adult life, I realized that I had been a fool.
And in addition to all the other new foods that I was trying and learning to like, I tried chili for the first time.
And I realized that chili is the perfect food.
It has all the ingredients.
It has beans.
It has chili powder.
So what happened?
Did you try initially just picking the beans out?
Well, no, it was too late.
I was not a kid anymore.
I was not living in Alaska anymore.
I could not go back in time.
I could not go back and have all those chili burgers that I had failed to have.
There was no going home again.
I'd blown it.
And when I finally did go back to the roundhouse as an adult and order a chili burger, it had changed.
There wasn't the same.
There wasn't enough chili.
The new recipe, the resort had been purchased by a Japanese conglomerate.
Oh.
And they built a new hotel.
Everything smaller.
They built a new roundhouse.
No, not everything's small.
They tore it down and they built a... I mean, I think the roundhouse itself maybe still sits there.
That's sickening, John.
But the dining room is this giant poured concrete area with lots of Coke products and branding and all kinds of foods.
And it was gone.
The smell of cedar, the cigarette smoke, the chili burgers...
And so because of that, I've spent the rest of my life trying to eat every chili burger I can to try and make up, to fill that chili burger sized hole in my heart.
That's miserable.
Right?
I hate when stuff changes.
Well, and the thing is, I wish that I had changed and the chili burger had stayed the same.
This is like a Harry Chapin song.
The cat is in the chili burger and the silver spoon.
You couldn't see the chili for the beans.
That's right.
That is exactly what it was.
My boy was just like me.
And so, talk about memory.
Well, now the nice part for me growing up in Cincinnati with our weird-ass chili.
Oh, right, with cinnamon in it.
Yeah, I've told this story a hundred times, but the nice thing about going and getting Cincinnati chili was you, you know, did you know about the different ways?
Oh, sure, you got the six-way and the five-way and the two-way and you got it with ketchup on it.
I think a three-way is spaghetti, of course, because you put chili on spaghetti.
Right, spaghetti, chili, and onions.
Cheese.
Cheese.
Oh, cheese.
I think a four-way.
Four ways with onions.
And then, of course, five ways when you're really getting grown up.
And that's when you get the beans.
Get the beans on top of the chili because Cincinnati chili doesn't have beans.
You can get it.
Yeah, it's all in there.
And I think it comes on a plate.
It says Skyline Chili.
Or you could go to Empress if that's how you roll.
But I think the whole thing was like $1.35.
Yeah.
I personally really like Cincinnati-style chili.
Oh, I do too.
I do too.
You know, it's interesting, all the different regional variations.
You got the chili, you got barbecue, you know, everybody's got their own little imprimatur.
That's a shame that you missed out on that.
Well, so anyway, so I buy these hot dogs, these Nathan's Famous Hot Dogs, these giant ones, because when I make chili...
I kind of can't conceive of it.
Or rather, it is exponentially improved if I pour it over a hot dog or over a hamburger.
Because I'm trying to get back to the roundhouse in Girdwood.
This is your Madeline in the tea.
That's right.
This is my rosebud.
It's the chili dog burger in the roundhouse.
And so I'm always trying to make it.
And so I eat hot dogs, but I eat them entirely as a... It's basically what you're saying.
It's a taco dog, except with chili.
And I do the thing that I like, which is I cover the whole plate with chili and you can't see the food underneath it.
Oh, I bury it.
It's like a political prisoner.
You just can't even see whatever I'm covering with chili.
And I've told you, you know, now in the modern era, in the contemporary era with the wolf chili, I'll just take whatever we got in the fridge.
Throw it in the chili.
You got rice, you got noodles, you got whatever.
I'm just saying, I'm two minutes away from pleasure.
Pleasure country.
Well, let me give you a little life hack.
I'm ready.
Throw in half a bag...
Of frozen chopped kale.
Oh, that sounds good.
Frozen kale is better than it sounds.
Right.
So you take a one-pound bag of frozen kale.
You throw a half a pound of frozen kale into your chili.
It basically just thickens it.
It darkens the taste a little bit.
And using the inescapable logic, you are also now eating super health food.
Life hack.
That's a good life hack.
You know, you just ate a quarter of a pound of kale.
And you didn't even notice it because you were busy trying to smother this chili dough.
You were waterboarding this hot dog with chili.
You're going to get a lot of reading done the next morning.
Oh, my goodness.
That's the thing about chili, though, is that, you know what, we're probably the only people that care, but this is something that needs to be said.
I think people in Australia and England and Germany, they have their pens out, and they are writing every word we say about chili down.
Well, here's a couple nice things about chili, is that chili is a pivot.
So on the one hand, you can put chili on almost anything, and it will improve.
You could probably put it on a banana.
I don't care.
It'll be better.
Now, the other nice thing is you can add stuff to your chili.
I know this seems obvious, Americans, but you notice, if you've got a little bit of leftover ribeye, cut it up.
Right in the chili.
Oh, my God.
That's flavor country.
The other day, I was making some chili.
And in my cupboard, I had several cans of Heinz beans.
Classic English beans.
Classic English beans that they eat with their breakfasts.
Their English breakfasts.
Their uniformly gray-colored English breakfasts.
They always have some beans.
Some hot beans in ketchup is basically what it is.
Get a slice of tomato.
And get a gray slice of tomato.
Some blood sausage if you're being fancy.
And you got some eggs.
And a gas mask.
You got some bacon.
You got the other kind of sausage to go with the blood sausage.
And then some of them don't have the beans, but I think the beans are pretty canonical.
So somebody gave me some canned Heinz beans because they're like, oh, you're a man of the world.
And I'm like, really?
This is how you express man of the worlddom?
Heinz beans?
They're imported beans from England.
And I had them in my cupboard, and I was like, ah.
I kind of sometimes do crave a classic English breakfast.
Oh, God, me too.
I get the full Irish.
I just go in and say two words, full Irish.
Full Irish.
Where do you get a full Irish breakfast in San Francisco?
It's a place my daughter and I refer to simply as Irish breakfast.
It doesn't matter what the place is called.
We call it Irish breakfast.
Why have I not visited it?
You go in there.
They used to have the mixed grill.
They discontinued the mixed grill.
The mixed grill was even better.
That was way over the top.
No, but I think there's a part of me that wonders if beans are almost like the British version of macaroni and cheese.
It's a cheap comfort food from childhood.
I believe it's true.
And it's also a vegetable.
Anyway, so I'm making chili, and I was like, what happens if you put Heinz beans in chili?
Because I'd already put a couple of cans of beans and some other beans.
He's a monster.
Various beans.
You're like Dr. Frankenstein.
I was like, you know what?
I'm putting kale in this chili.
I'm going to fucking put some Heinz beans in there.
And I dumped a can of Heinz beans.
And they're white beans or they're a different kind of bean.
They're a whiter kind of bean.
Which is my favorite Procol Harem song.
I wasn't going to say.
And then all of a sudden the chili just lifts off.
into this other realm of like it became a kind of chili that i wanted to put a bowl of this chili in front of someone just to register their surprise and delight like oh this is chili but it's not the chili you think it is that's right and they would look at and they'd be like there's what's going on in this chili there they're they're they're 40 different realities you know what i find john i find that people really enjoy it when you put a plate of food in front of them while you're smiling and you go try this
Hey, you think you've had food?
Try this.
Welcome to Chili Hacker.
Welcome to Chili Town.
I have a concern.
My favorite Dan Harmon show.
Where's my bell?
Up high.
There was a piece of paper stuck in it.
I just want to say
You know, every man has a little bit of pan man in him.
Right?
Because you can't have a pan man without being a man.
There may be pan ladies, but I think it's canonically a pan man.
I'm following you so far.
I've known some pan ladies.
People ask us about this.
And I don't know if people say, well, what are you going to say about Pan Man?
Like I can go to some one episode and go like, let me explain what a Pan Man is.
I don't know if we've ever exactly described.
All you need to know, it's Sammy Hagar.
It's Guy Fieri.
Fieri.
Did you not get to say it like that?
No, really?
What a fucking Pan Man thing to do.
Fieri.
Does he really say Fieri?
I think he says Fieri.
Okay, so here's the parts of being a pan man, I think.
I'm going to jump in.
I think the classic pan man things, you should probably have a very silly goatee that's maybe a little long.
Almost that you can't help, right?
Like a goatee that you just almost can't help.
Right.
No, no, no.
It's not like you're a guy with a full beard and you shave it into a goatee.
It's like your face just makes goatees.
Yeah, you've got a genetic goatee beard.
And then you should have some kind of stupid hair, maybe frosted.
Could be ginger ringlets.
Could be ginger ringlets.
It could be spiky highlights.
Right, spiky highlights.
Some kind of fucked up hair.
Okay, and then from there, it spreads out a little bit.
It could involve Hawaiian shirts.
It could involve jam shorts.
You probably wear flip-flops.
For sure.
And I think one of the canonical things, wouldn't you say, is you can't get it hot enough for them.
Ha ha ha ha.
I think you can't get it hot enough for them.
And so I think you actually have a canonical test.
You have a Turing test, a Pan Man Turing test, which is, do you want jalapenos with that?
To which he always says.
Pan Man always is going to say, yeah.
Fuck yeah, I want jalapenos with that.
I think a Pan Man says woo.
An awful lot.
Does he call you bro or dog, maybe?
I think he calls you dog.
I think he calls you bro.
I think he's going to, you know, in a way, this is what's weird.
In a way, maybe George Bush is a little bit more.
I'm talking about George W. Bush.
He's a closet pan man.
He's a little bit closer to pan man because of his habit of nicknaming everybody.
It's kind of like, hey, what's up, Pantsy?
Why, because I'm wearing pants?
Yeah, Pantsy?
What's the matter?
You don't like being called Pantsy?
Oh, also, not just sunglasses.
They should preferably be wraparound mirrored sunglasses on one of those douchey froggy things.
Or you wear them on the back of your neck.
Now we're getting into douche country a little bit.
Anytime you wear your sunglasses on the back of the neck, you're very, very close to pan man.
And I would say there are no ectomorphic pan men.
Oh, like nipped at the waist.
You're usually a little bit... Pan men are typically endomorphs.
I'm just going to throw that out there as a kind of like...
and there may be some mesomorphic pan men but i think most of them are endomorphs you could be a pan man with a macklemore haircut but that's a very that's a very modern offshoot that would be yeah i i you know there are macklemore haircuts they are proliferating they are they are like oh my god merlin they are like uh they're like dandelion seeds just since we talked about it i've seen so many more now i see it everywhere
but i don't think that that is that's not a typical that's not that's not all the way pan man i think pan man has has a lot of body hair and um and i think i think what it is ultimately is that they feel connected to the spirit of having fun living in the now being here now
And this is what's so confusing about Matthew McConaughey.
Because Matthew McConaughey is, by all appearances, a fairly normal human.
But he's had some kind of pan man personality transplant.
He's a pan man living inside the body of a normal man.
And that's why I have such a hard time grappling with Matthew McConaughey.
Yeah, he doesn't really fit the dominant paradigm.
No, and yet, as soon as he opens his mouth, you're like, pan man.
Yes, all right, all right, all right.
So it's Michael Anthony of Van Halen, ultimate sort of pan man.
I think if you have a musical instrument shaped like a liquor bottle, you're probably a pan man.
If you look at Van Halen, you look at them standing against the wall in 1977, and you look at Michael Anthony, and you think like, aw, buddy...
God, I'm sorry.
That's that guy that used to work at the hardware store.
Yeah, like, it's gotta be tough to be Michael Anthony.
And yet...
In no photograph of Michael Anthony at any time do you ever register the sense that it is tough at all.
He's smiling.
He's having the best time.
He's enjoying being in fucking Van Halen.
He really, really is.
And not for a second.
He's not standing in front of a brick wall looking sad.
Nope.
Not for a second does he think to himself, I'm the only guy on stage right now that's wearing a shirt.
What?
Right?
Yeah.
There are those times when you're like, something from the Chess King.
Michael Anthony's got to wear a shirt because everybody else has got their shirt off and Michael Anthony's a little bit of an endomorph.
He's got payment boobs.
He's got to keep his shirt on, but he doesn't give a fuck.
He's having a great time and that is characteristic payment.
And then give no fucks.
So here's my concern, and John, this is a secret shame, but I feel like it's something I need to bring to you, something I've been noticing about myself, and I want to get your thoughts on what it might mean.
I have been adding hot sauce to foods lately.
Yeah.
But I mean, isn't that worrisome a little bit?
And specifically, let me just say it, I've been adding sriracha to things.
Right.
And as we all know, sriracha is the new bacon of the internet.
But sriracha or a little bit of tapatillo, but I've started saucing things, and I find that worrisome.
You're afraid in the same way that if somebody doesn't slap your balls with a leather luggage tag, you can't come?
Yeah.
I'm not German.
Is that what you mean?
It's called Das Tag.
Das Lappen.
It can mean day or luggage tag.
There's a fear that if you slap your balls once with a leather luggage tag, you're going to be like, fuck, now I can't.
See, now I'm curious.
I'm tag curious.
I don't know.
It's just weird, though.
I mean, like chili, I add it to chili sometimes.
I add it to other things.
I still, like, you know, I'll add a soy sauce to something.
But I do find myself, and okay, it's the worst.
So I've heard some people say, maybe it's Churchill who said this, but somebody said, you know, you can judge a person.
He will judge a person by whether they salt their food before they've tasted it.
Because that's a sign of poor character.
Sure, of course.
And I do find myself sometimes putting on sriracha before I've even tasted it.
Is this worrisome?
Should I worry?
The thing is that you, in me, you have found a man of solidarity.
Because I, when Sri Raja is available, I just grab it and matter of course...
I just give it one huge squeeze.
Squirt the rooster.
Into whatever I'm doing.
And that came about, I think, as a result of being trained in the art of eating pho.
Pho?
Pho?
Pho?
It was explained to me once by a Vietnamese lady that you should always, when you say the word pho, I don't mean this to be like fieri, but when you say the word pho, you should always say it like a question.
You should always turn it up at the end.
Oh, hi.
Pho?
So now I do that, and everybody's like, what?
I'm pho?
But when I first was instructed in pho,
This lady, I've told you this story, I'm sure, right?
Where I went into a restaurant and the woman came out.
It was right at the time when Pho was being introduced to American audiences.
I remember it kind of came out of nowhere in the late 90s.
Yeah.
Well, and in Seattle, it was the early 90s.
There were a lot of Vietnamese here.
Oh, sure.
And they initially opened restaurants where they served Chinese food or whatever because it was all that their audience could understand.
Yeah, a little mugu guy pan.
Yeah, they do, you know, like chicken cashew nuts.
And then they started introducing, and I remember this happening at a little restaurant that I used to eat at all the time.
You'd see a new item on the menu.
And you'd be like, huh, I wonder what the heck that is.
You know, what's a banh mi or whatever?
And they'd be like, oh, would you like to try our sandwich?
And you're like, I guess I'll try a sandwich.
And then out comes this thing and you're like, this is the most amazing thing in the world.
This is Chinese food.
It shouldn't work.
It absolutely should not work.
And they're like, well, we're not actually Chinese.
We're Vietnamese.
And it's like, oh, yeah.
They pull away a latex false face and it'll be exactly the same underneath.
And you're like, oh, I see.
And so one day I walked in and there was a little sign on the table and it said, try our beef soup.
Oh, yeah.
And it was a rainy day, cold, rainy day.
And this was a restaurant where normally the waitresses were their 10-year-old daughter and their 12-year-old daughter.
Yeah.
And I had a very good relationship with both of the girls.
But on this day, it wasn't the mother that came over to take my order.
It was her mother, the grandmother, that I'd only ever seen in the back, like, making the food.
And she came out and I was like, I'm curious about this beef soup.
And she said...
Done.
And off she goes into the kitchen.
Kind of excited.
And I was kind of excited.
And then she came out with the soup.
And she said, you've never had this before.
And I said, no.
And she sat down...
at the table with me and i i i have this i have this recollection that she actually sat in my chair like she scooted my butt over and sat on the edge of my chair it's a nice memory and i'm like hello and she proceeded to prepare my pho my pho for me
And she went through this whole, like, and then you do this, and then you put in the plum sauce, and then you hit it with the hot sauce, and then the jalapenos, and then pepper, and then fish oil, and then, you know, she's just like... And I was watching the whole thing and just, like, a little horrified because I would not have put any plum sauce in it myself, nor certainly no fish oil.
I wouldn't have squeezed a lime in it.
I wouldn't have done any of these things.
I would have just eaten the soup and left all that roughage on the plate.
But she did it for me, all the basil and stuff.
And then she's like, she did that thing that that woman in Austria did to me where she stood up, gestured at the soup, and then indicated that she was going to stand there and watch me eat it.
And I ate it.
And so from that moment on,
Whenever I sit down at any meal and there are condiments on the table and other things, I just sort of go, you know, fish oil, and I just make everything like pho.
I'm very attracted to foods that you get to fiddle with.
It might be a form of eating disorder, but even like when I have pizza,
Like I have lots of, you know, different kinds and measures of things I'd like to put on there in a certain way.
I think it's fun when I get like takeout from the Thai restaurant and it comes with this additional, like you get the little paper thing full of all the stuff to put in.
It's fun to me.
I like that.
I like building my own soup.
Now let me ask you this.
If you have a plate of food with like six different things on it, do you want those things to touch each other or do you want those things to not touch each other?
I don't have a strong feeling on it.
I've never been concerned about the food touching.
And I always, honestly, again, just to disclose, I've always thought it was kind of weird how many kids would freak out about it.
But I'm guessing you're a non-food toucher as a child.
If you're eating uniformly white, non-vegetable food, you were probably pretty picky about your plate too.
Well, what I do is I eat in order.
Do you eat one thing at a time or do you like it all to finish at once?
Well, so if a plate arrives and there are five different discrete foods in five different discrete piles, I go around and I eat some from each pile in a sort of clockwise until it's all gone.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
I move in a pattern.
I do kind of like them all to finish at the same time.
But I'm also a goulash lover, and if there's any way that I can get a babim bap thing going on, where it all... You and I have had some babim bap.
Oh, is that the place with the shavy noodles?
No.
Bim Bap.
What the hell is that?
Bim Bap is the Korean dish in the super hot stone bowl.
Oh, yeah.
I'm looking at it now.
I love that.
It's like beef and an egg.
Wasn't that fun, that place we went where we got to make our own food?
It was very fun.
I love that stuff.
And little bowls.
I love little bowls.
If I can stir my shit up into just a mush...
I'm really into that too.
And that's a thing my dad would not tolerate.
If my dad couldn't tell each item of food in his food, he didn't want anything in a, he didn't want it all covered in sauce.
He did not want, he wanted to see, he wanted the meat and vegetables to be separate.
He wanted to see it all and know it.
He and I are different people.
Yes.
Bibimbap.
Bibimbap.
Did I tell you?
I found a bunch of cassette tapes of my dad.
I saw your dude about this.
His recordings of your dad doing, what was it?
So he was an administrative law judge.
Is it like negotiations or something?
Well, labor disputes.
He was an arbitrator.
But rather than being an arbitrator where he's trying to reach a compromise, as an administrative law judge, when disputes between management and labor or between a professional person and the licensing agency or whatever, when those disputes would reach the point where there was no...
Oh, sure.
They would appear in front of my dad, and he would actually make a binding decision.
It's like arbitration.
Arbitration.
But he was a hearing officer.
He would hear cases presented by the lawyers of both sides, and then he would arbitrate.
And so there are cassettes and cassettes and cassettes and cassettes of these...
cases from the 1980s, and I found them all in a bag, and I was like, well, I'm cleaning the house.
What the hell?
And I start popping them in the stereo, and it's like the most boring episode of Law & Order ever.
Like, would you say...
That when you first read the contract, it stipulated that management would pay for the time that it took employees to go to the DMV and get a copy of their driver's record.
Yes, I would say that.
Do you have any notes to that effect?
Well, as a matter of fact, I do have the notes.
And it's just like, are we seriously?
Everybody who ever uses a sentence involving suing someone should have to listen to all of those.
It's insane.
It's insane because the whole process.
It's unreal.
I mean, the difference to the company was a difference of $500, let's say.
And yet there's this protracted dispute with the union that goes on for months.
50 people testify.
And my dad is sitting there and I'm listening to this cassette and it's like being at work with my dad.
And I never knew, I was not interested in this phase of his career, right?
When he got to, when he was an administrative law judge, it was after he left the railroad and
And I was just like, so what do you do?
And he's like, well, sometimes like a doctor will get accused of malpractice.
And there's a suit that's happening where he's being sued.
But then...
There's also the case of the state deciding whether or not to revoke his license, and that portion of it appears before me.
And I hear his lawyer and the state's lawyer, and they argue whether or not he should be allowed to practice medicine, and then I make a determination.
And in a way, it's like, wow, that's pretty gnarly.
But also, oh, so boring.
Dad, I'm fucking 23 years old.
I want to do some Molly and go party.
We didn't call him Molly then.
But so I'm listening to these tapes.
And Merlin, I swear to you, I can't stop listening to them.
You like playing in the background?
Yeah.
I mean, I'm really thinking about it.
Do you do it the way you listen to music?
Do you really sit down and headphones on?
I mean, no, I'm not headphones, but I mean, I'm folding laundry or whatever.
But I listen to the guy present his case, and I'm like, well, this guy's got an airtight case.
And then the next guy presents his opposing case, and I'm like, huh, well, as a matter of fact, I kind of agree with his case.
I'm like, oh, this is kind of a hard job.
And then my dad will say something.
My dad, he sits up there on the bench and every once in a while he's like, well, counselor, I think you might have made your point.
And everybody in the room laughs because he's making some lawyer joke.
And all the lawyers are like, ha, ha, ha.
Yes, sir.
You are right.
And I'm like, wow.
It's like they're having fun in there being lawyers with each other.
Yeah.
They know what they're talking about.
Yeah.
Yeah, and they're boring as shit, but they're trying to have some fun while they can.
And they're deposing all these witnesses, and you can tell there are people that are nervous.
They don't want to say the wrong thing.
The union is watching and all this stuff.
These shop stewards that don't know how to use a microphone.
It's amazing.
They're really...
The thing is, my dad doesn't appear that often because he's mostly listening.
But I kind of want to play the tapes for my daughter.
Just like, well, you never knew your grandfather, but here's a glimpse.
He was more interesting in person.
When he was yelling at you about your eggs.
Yeah, this is more of a lawyer joke.
You'll get it one day.
Let me explain this to you.
You should hang on to those.
Yeah, it's one of those... I know you're... It seems like you're maybe in a phase where you're thinking about what you can let go, but that's a nice thing to have.
Yeah.
I mean, it's maybe not... Maybe when I'm 80 years old, I'll be listening to these Alaska labor disputes from the 80s, trying to reconnect with my dad.
Pretty funny fucking life.
So you don't think I should be worried about becoming a Pan Man, though?
I mean, I really do like the first four Van Halen albums a lot.
Here's the thing.
Shit, I like Standing Hampton.
I mean, you know?
Listen, if I was sitting on... Is that what it's called for the Sammy Hagar record?
Stanley Hanson?
Are you talking about... Standing Hampton.
Isn't that what it's called?
Jesus, I don't know.
Are you talking about Hagar, Sean Aronson, and Shreve?
H-S-A-S?
Lies, no more lies?
No.
I was talking about the one that's got... What's this got on it?
There's only one way to rock on it?
Oh, that's a good tune.
Does it have three lock box?
No, that's on three lock box.
That's also the one with your love is driving me crazy.
There's my band used to cover.
There's only one way to rock.
Honestly, if I was sitting on a BART train, on the BART train, on the BART train, and you were sitting across from me, I...
And I don't mean this in the wrong way, but I might say to myself, I might say to myself, hmm, is that a pan man?
Really?
Just because there are certain characteristics that you have that are shared with pan men.
Hmm.
Hmm.
You tuck your jeans into your socks.
Hmm.
There's the thing about your face is kind of goatee-shaped.
I do have a somewhat goatee-shaped face.
There's a goatee shape to your face.
And over the years, some of your hairstyles were fairly pan-ish.
Holy shit, you're right.
But I do not find... You know, and the fact is that maybe...
Your pan personality got switched with Matthew McConaughey's actual personality somewhere.
You should look at your guys' birthdays.
Yes.
And see if maybe it wasn't a personality transplant that happened somehow with the storks.
Mm-hmm.
That your personality belongs in Matthew McConaughey and his personality belongs in you.
Because you have not, I don't think, a pan man personality.
No, I don't think so.
I don't think you do.
I wonder if he's riddled with self-doubt.
I don't think he is.
I don't think he is either.
You look at that guy.
Okay, so there you go, though.
Isn't that a good... That's a Pan Man quality.
Not riddled with self-doubt.
Precisely.
Not on the surface, anyway.
Right.
Like, a guy like Matthew McConaughey living in Texas, right?
He should be... He should have been born probably with your, like, hyper... Well, let's see.
This argument is kind of not holding water with Matthew McConaughey having your personality.
Yeah.
But maybe you should have had his personality.
And then there's somebody else.
There's a third element, a third person that should have had your personality.
Right.
Right?
It sounds like a Marvel thing.
And then you would have had their personality.
Maybe that's what it is.
Sammy Hagar, 67.
Doesn't look a day over 64.
The pictures of him on Google, he's giving a thumbs up.
He's singing real loud.
He's got a shit-eating grin.
Oh, what about puka shells?
Puka shells, that's kind of a Pan Man thing, right?
Listen, don't talk shit about puka shells.
In the 70s, I wore puka shells.
And then in the 90s, my sister...
in a gesture of early nostalgia, which is uncharacteristic for her, she bought me some puka shells and said, remember when we used to wear these?
She's so thoughtful.
Back in 1976 when Leif Garrett was on the cover of Teen Beat magazine.
Oh, he was frequently puka shell-ed.
And he's kind of a little bit of a pan man, actually, when you think about it.
And so I was like, aw, Susan, how cute.
And so I wore puka shells.
And I wore them throughout the 90s when they were not acceptable.
And my puka shells broke at one point, and I re-threaded them on mint-flavored dental floss.
So if you happen to be somebody, let's say, for instance, who was kissing me on the neck...
which happened sometimes back in the day, you would get a little minty... Because of all the molly?
A little minty, like, bazing.
You're like, what the... Wow, why is your neck so minty?
You're always offering surprises to the people who are intimate in your life.
That's right.
Life hack.
My necklace is made out of dental floss.
But anyway, so I got a lot of shit for the puka shells.
And the more shit I got, the more I doubled down on the puka shells.
And if you look at some early Long Winters promo shots and footage, I am still wearing those fucking puka shells even into the 2000s.
I feel like, I don't know why, but I feel like maybe...
in that Western State Hurricanes thing when you guys are on local TV?
Why do I feel like you might be wearing puka shells?
It is entirely possible that I was wearing puka shells because I never took them off and I had them on pretty much from 1995 to 2003 until finally the dental floss gave way and then I was like, am I really going to rebuild these puka shells?
I'm a 35-year-old man.
And so I put them in the keepsake drawer along with the little black crystal wrapped in silver.
I like the idea that you have the keepsake drawer.
Well, for little keepsakes.
Did a girl ever give you a crystal?
No.
No, I don't think I ever got a crystal.
I never got that far.
I had a lady friend who was very crystal-y.
Yeah.
I'm pretty confused by crystals.
How so?
Well, I mean, there's supposed to be an energy thing with chakras.
Is that right?
Chakras, yeah.
And you're supposed to... You want to sleep under a pyramid of copper pipes.
Okay, I could do that.
And then you have your crystals aligned with your chakras and the energy streams that are invisible to you until you do these other things.
Then you see the streams.
That seems like a lot of work.
Yeah.
You ain't kidding.
That's the reason I'm tired all the time.
I feel like the pan man equivalent in the lady land, they would give you a crystal, and I got a crystal from one of the pan ladies.
Did it represent anything?
It was a black crystal wrapped in silver.
It's about as long as a cigarette butt.
Oh, like a pointy crystal.
Pointy crystal on a necklace.
Nice.
And I was meant to wear it because it was the right kind of crystal for my energy level.
Oh, I see.
It's a palliative.
I was at somebody's house not too long ago, and I noticed that they had crystals on several of their windowsills.
Is that a crystal thing?
Oh, I think those are crystals that are supposed to send rainbows into the room.
Oh, yeah.
You know, I got one of those for Christmas.
Recently?
Yeah, yeah.
I got one from MailChimp sent me this thing where you suction cup it and it's got a solar panel and the solar panel makes the crystal turn around and shoot rainbows into your room.
This most recent Christmas that's just passed a couple weeks ago.
A few weeks ago, the one from a few weeks ago.
Oh, by the way, Happy New Year.
I forgot to say Happy New Year.
Thank you.
Glad to be here.
John, do you have any New Year's resolutions since it's almost the new year now?
Definitely not December 15th.
Do you have any thoughts on the new year 2015?
Mm-hmm.
Do you really want to know?
I'm kind of troubled that that seems to be your new sound.
Yeah, that is kind of... That sounds like you're right on the edge of giving up, but not quite giving up.
Do you really want to know what my New Year's resolutions are?
Yes.
I mean, I don't want to bait you.
Well, I think you can know the kind of resolutions I wouldn't want to hear about.
How long are we into this episode?
Is it time for me to start talking about that?
All I know is it's almost fucking January and I haven't eaten.
But no, John, what are you resolving to do in the 2-0-1-5?
So...
Do you want a music bed here?
Yeah.
What kind of music would you like here?
Do you have a little, like, Rhodes piano?
Yeah.
A little soft Rhodes piano.
I figured you'd do that or I Was Made For Loving You by Kiss.
Just play very quietly.
No.
I don't think that's what I want.
You weren't made for loving me.
And conversely.
Pan men.
Every one of them.
Oh, my God.
Paul Stanley.
Fucking pan man.
He wants to know how many of you like to drink cold gin.
It's a really straightforward question.
Ha, ha, ha, ha.
I want to know.
Hey, you having a good time today?
I want to know.
Have tequila?
I'm 67.
He's 67 years old, too.
No.
And he still gets on stage and takes his fucking shirt off.
Yes.
He is a badass.
I bet he's vegan and just doesn't say so.
Who knows, man, that whatever he is, I hated for 40 years.
But now I can give.
I give his proper is not even grudging.
I say, Paul Stanley, whatever you're made of.
Good lord.
I wish it could be bottled and sold.
Gene Simmons, you get the sense that they wheel him to the stage in a hand cart and shoot him full of vitamin B and there's some kind of little Wrath of Khan ear caterpillar, ear scorpion that's in his head that's like,
Sing, motherfucker, sing!
But Paul Stanley, I mean, right now, he's probably on a fucking jungle gym somewhere.
I don't know how he does that.
Oh, man.
Can you imagine the torture, dangerous intercourse that he has at his age?
Oh, my God.
It's so horrible.
I remember seeing a video of them in the 80s around the time of the, I want to say, when they, you know, lick it up, took off the makeup.
And I just remember seeing this video where they were – I think it might have been on VH1.
In a very straightforward way, they were being interviewed for a documentary –
And Paul Stanley, in my head, he was in a hot tub.
He might have been on a bare rug.
But there actually were like six girls in bikinis around him.
It was the most ludicrous thing I've ever seen.
Terrible song.
You should let me make you a tape.
You should let me make you a tape of some good kiss stuff to really get you rolling with it.
I've heard all the good kiss stuff.
You should come back.
Now that you have your newfound appreciation for Pan Man Paul, you should let me bring it back around.
There is a surprising amount of good kiss music.
I will not deny it.
Some of the ones that Peter sings are really good.
It's only overshadowed and contextualized by the fact that the lion's share of Kiss music is A, garbage.
This keeps dropping out.
I feel like I was hearing you.
B, performed by people who are non-musicians.
and see it's being performed by angry vending machines see also somehow reprehensible right i mean it's like kiss is reprehensible yeah they seem more gross every year even in retrospect yeah they're not it's not that they are it's not that they are diabolical which is what they think they are and it's not that they are uh like
Somehow, they're certainly not sensual, but whatever it is that Def Leppard and Led Zeppelin had, where you get the sense that really bad things are happening backstage, bad in a good way.
Yeah.
With Kiss, it's just like, no, they're just... This is where time is not on their side, as Polvo would say.
They belong in family court.
That's the thing.
It's like if they had stopped in the 80s, you would go, oh, look at that.
It's a bunch of sexually potent elemental creatures that got older and decided to call it quits.
And now in retrospect, all you can see is like...
creepy uncle pinky butt like for the entire time now in retrospect you go oh my god you've always been like the creepy uncle yeah right well it's like it's like you can just once you've heard gene simmons talk in the last 10 years you and then you see an interview from 1975 you go oh my god you were already an old creep he was already that way yeah we've said it before gene simmons is uh is uh donald trump and dragon boots it's no good
Anyway, so my New Year's resolution is serious.
It's really, it's actually, I don't usually make resolutions.
Is it super serious?
But I'm making a resolution.
Oh, it's honest.
It's legit.
It's legit.
Okay.
I'm making an honest resolution.
And I hesitate to say it because I've said this type of thing before, and I have no authority over myself somehow.
But I do not intend to direct my energy any direction this year other than in the direction of making music.
Whoa!
I'm not going to direct it in the direction of being a talk show host or a feature writer or a dumb comedy persona or a Goofus McRufus or a Dingbat McDonaghy.
Goofus McRufus.
I'm going to just...
I'm not going to do any of that.
Going out to the shed.
I'm going to see what lies in the music bed, in the music grave.
That's an exciting decision, John.
Yeah, because I've never stopped playing music and I've never stopped tinkering with music and...
It's what people want from me.
But more importantly, it's this idea of like, did I stop writing new music because I wanted to stop writing new music?
Or did I stop writing new music because I just...
succumbed to not writing new music?
Was it a decision or was it a fait accompli?
Give yourself a year to figure that out.
Yeah.
Do I want to live the rest of my life having made that decision just as a sort of like, eh, well, bleh.
No, I don't.
If I don't want to write music anymore, I want to say like, you know what?
I'm not going to do this anymore.
I'm going to do something else.
But not this like mealy-mouthed kind of non-decision.
And so I spent a year last year doing my talk show every week in Seattle.
And I learned a lot.
But one of the things I learned was that
what I ended up doing was going in the direction of what I already knew.
Huh.
Right?
Like, whenever I came to a crossroads, and it was like, well, you can...
You can start to try this thing, which is like uncomfortable.
And, you know, like basically what it was, was that first show that I did my first talk show where I wrote my monologue and I got up there and I was covered in flop sweat and I, I didn't want to read the monologue.
So I was trying to recall it.
Mm hmm.
You can't combine it.
You've got to go one way or another.
Yeah, it wasn't funny.
I was reaching for this thing that I'd written, and I couldn't lay my hands on it.
And so over the course of the next month or so, I did less and less preparation and more and more improvisation, and the show got better and better, and I was happier and happier.
And I took that as a lesson.
Like, well, go in the direction of your happiness, right?
You didn't do this show to make yourself unhappy.
And so I pursued the direction of my happiness, which was in the direction of what I already knew how to do, which was get up and tell a 25-minute story about a 10-minute walk.
And if I had said, no, you know what?
The structure of this show is that every week you're going to write a monologue and you're going to figure out how to deliver it.
The show would have been super uncomfortable and super hard.
But now, a year later, I would know more.
I would have learned more.
Because I would have been learning something, learning a new skill instead of luxuriating in a thing I knew how to do.
I know what you mean.
And so I don't feel like the year was wasted.
I don't feel like the show was wasted.
It was all a good learning experience.
But when I look back at it, the key component in my life that's missing is a relationship to work.
And I did everything I could to make that show not work for me to do.
And I need to... That isn't what I need to do.
I need to learn how to work.
I don't want to work.
I don't... I do not want to have to work.
I bought a lottery ticket the other day.
Oh, you're kidding.
I bought a fucking lottery ticket.
Because every little cell in my body is saying, oh, please, please, please, please find a way to not have to face work.
Not even to not have to work, but to not have to face work.
And I just can't, I can't do it anymore.
I can't do it for the rest of my life.
Yeah.
So that's my New Year's resolution.
That's a great resolution, man.
Face work, which to me is writing songs.
There's a lot to that, though.
You got the writing, and you've got the recording, and the playing, and now I'm talking like Bill Cosby.
But you're ready to embrace really kind of immersing yourself, it sounds like.
You know, and it's a huge process.
It involves a lot of financial investment.
It involves a lot, I mean, a tremendous risk in the sense that...
I mean, in a way, not a tremendous risk because the way the world has changed, if I put out music now, somebody will want it.
It's not like before where I could hand in a record and the record label would say, well, we can't support this.
And then that would be the end.
Like I can Amanda Palmer it and put it out there and there will be people who find us.
The risk is only the same risk I've always been taking, which is what if everybody in the world doesn't love me unconditionally?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And you know what?
That's not any different.
That risk isn't any different.
Yeah.
Yeah, and, you know, finding the answer to that question is never going to be as satisfying or useful as you might hope, however it turns out.
You're right.
You're absolutely right.
Which, you know, I happen to know.
Yeah, right.
I'm aware of this.
And so I just have to do it.
Wait a minute, wait a minute.
Turns out that not everybody in the world likes me?
Shit, I guess I better go make something.
Now, wait a minute.
Are you sure that not everybody in the world likes you?
Easy.
I like you.
Thank you.
I like you too, John.
Yeah.
It's only three more days left in the year.
Isn't that amazing?
Let's make it a happy shiny new year.
I have three more days to sit in the bathtub and say, work works for jerks.
You could use that.
Write that down.
Put that in your lyric book.
Works for jerks.
Works for jerks.
And then in the new year, I'm going to have to wake up and say, work is not for jerks.
It's the only thing, really, that gives life meaning.
Work is the only thing.
Leisure does not give life meaning.
Yeah.
The hard part is getting started, and then the other part is the hard part is continuing.
Yeah, and then finishing.
Those are the three hard parts.
The three hard parts.
The three hard parts are actually the name of my backing band.
The three hard parts.
Oh, God.