Ep. 144: "Gravy Fountain"
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Hello.
Hi, John.
Hi, Merlin.
How's it going?
Ahem.
Good.
So good.
I'm so grateful to you for sometimes being willing to push.
Oh, I can push.
You push, and sometimes, you know, there's a part of me that says, don't.
Don't.
Stay on target.
Stay on target.
I just want to bring out the best in you.
Yeah, but pushing sometimes helps.
Yeah.
I was on my way in today, and, you know, of course, I only have an AM radio in my truck, and so I'm listening to the radio station KIXI, which was my dad's radio station.
They used to play, like, a steady diet of just the... Oh, this is where you get all your Frank Sinatra music?
Yeah, just the big bands, just the blue hair, the blue hairs.
But all those people are dead now.
Yeah.
And so the radio station still exists.
And I've seen this before with radio station sort of play.
What do they call it?
The demographic.
Yeah.
Radio station.
I call it a demo.
Well, but I'm talking about like the music that they play on a radio station is called the programming.
Programming.
And the programming has switched.
I'm driving in and the DJ is talking to me and he says, you know, there are a lot of differences between men and women.
Did you know men are more likely to be colorblind?
Huh.
This is John Tesh for KIXI Radio.
And the DJ is John Tesh.
What?
Yeah.
Oh, it's like a franchise kind of deal.
No, he's giving the call signs for KIXI.
And so I listened to him for a while and he's like, Barry Manilow is the music of our generation.
I was just, I was like, what generation is he talking about?
Right.
Right?
Like this was the radio station of the greatest generation who are all gone.
And so now it's been replaced.
They've like, these people have kind of stepped in and taken over and they're not...
I don't think the baby boomers would characterize Barry Manilow as the music of their generation.
No, I don't think that even if they like Barry Manilow, I don't think that's the example they would probably call up.
So who is he talking to?
I don't know.
The radio seems, I guess it's always been a strange thing, but it really, it seems so odd now.
I listen mostly to public radio when we're listening to the radio, but sometimes we'll flip over.
And first of all, just the commercials are so depressing.
Do you get that on your KAXI station?
Well, the commercials are going to be very depressing on KAXI because they're mostly for, like, ensure the, like, vitamin-enriched milkshakes.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, sure.
Well, I feel like I hear a lot of, like, financial desperation ads.
Oh, right.
That's a pretty big one.
Losing your home?
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, there's all payday loans and stuff like that.
And that's typical daytime fare.
But it's strange.
I mean, it's amazing to think how much that industry must have changed.
But we've got a station here that I like a lot.
I like a lot.
It's very funny.
And for some reason, the entire concept of this station delights me.
You know how we've got Coit Tower here.
We have a station called KOIT, 98.5, KOIT.
And it's an FM station whose primary claim to fame is it claims to be the station that everybody can listen to at work.
Oh, right, because it never says anything or plays anything sketchy.
Yeah, it's basically, and what's funny is if you're in an elevator or a waiting room or anywhere where there is a radio playing, it's probably KOIT.
It's very relaxing.
Yeah, I feel like KIXI used to be that, for sure.
Maybe they'd play The Lady is a Tramp, which would singe some eyebrows.
That's a little saucy.
But now this change in programming to reflect the musical tastes of a generation I can't quite put my finger on.
They do play The Lady is a Tramp, but it's some later version of it.
Oh, okay.
Where it's like, hate California, it's cold.
And it's damp.
Is it Mr. Sinatra?
Well, no, it's an imitation of him.
Oh.
But it's like the instrumentation is a little bit more...
a little bit more Vegas-y, tubular bells-y, and it's... I don't know, I can't... It's like, is there actually a generation in between... I know there is a generation in between the World War II generation and the baby boomer generation that think of themselves as a kind of lost or silent generation.
But are they big enough to justify a radio station?
Yeah.
I mean, I have to imagine that all the decision-making that goes into that is extremely market-driven.
And in particular, I mean, I don't mean to sound just cynical, but I would have to guess that the greatest boon for any radio station is to very clearly be able to identify who's listening.
And I'll say one thing, you know, one thing that makes that hard today is when they do things like surveys.
First of all, old people love surveys.
Oh, right, of course.
So they get surveys.
It's the thing we can measure.
But also, they're the ones who have home telephone lines.
So when you call, they pick up the phone and we'll answer.
These kids today, they don't do that.
You can't call them on their selfie sticks.
No, you just Instagram them on their selfie stick.
I'm sorry, I'm eating a little bit of frozen bacon.
Oh, how is it?
Well, I didn't realize that it was going to create such a saucy sound.
I have these potato chips.
We don't usually eat on the program.
No.
These are dirty brand potato chips.
That's the brand?
Dirty brand?
Dirty.
Mm-hmm.
I'm saying quotes.
What makes them dirty?
I don't know.
They're pretty bland.
I've got to be honest.
They sing Lady and the Tramp?
Mm-hmm.
Or do they just not?
Do you think that really makes her a tramp?
Just because she... What is it?
She eats early.
Yeah, she goes to ball games.
The bleachers are fine.
Yeah.
She won't go to Harlem in ermines and furs.
Right, right, right.
Or pearls.
Yeah, I don't know.
I think that sounds... You know what?
That's an early example of someone re-purposing a slur.
Oh, you mean like a queer thing?
Mm-hmm.
That's an early example of somebody saying, you're going to call me a tramp?
I'll show you what a tramp is.
This is why I'm a tramp, because I'm down with the struggle.
Mm-hmm.
That's pretty good.
Yeah, one of the first.
You know what else is weird?
I don't know if this is a trend or a mini trend, but have you seen where some popular pop artists are re-recording their songs?
Yeah.
So they're out of their contractual obligation?
Maybe.
I think even more to the point, though, and the one I'm thinking of in particular, I think I actually did buy this, Jeff Lynne meticulously re-recorded a ton of ELO songs.
Really?
Mm-hmm.
And I think it's so that he gets the rights...
to those songs for those kinds of production things.
Like, you know, he probably, his catalog was probably owned by whatever Epic or whatever, a long time ago.
Yeah.
That's absolutely why they, uh, you rerecord it and then, and then you own the whole, you own the recording.
You know, every recording has, uh,
The ownership of every recording has two sides.
You know what?
You've explained this to me.
Lots of people have explained this to me.
I still find it incredibly baffling.
All I know is the people who write the music and then own the publishing are the ones who make the money.
That's all I know.
Yeah, right.
But they split it up into 200%.
It doesn't seem sustainable.
When you talk about music publishing, you're talking about 200%.
There's 100% of the recording, and there's 100% of the writing.
And you can own the recording, and the writer owns the song.
But if the only recording is the...
If the only way the song exists is in the recording.
Oh, so that's why something from New World Record or whatever could be owned by, I want to say Epic, but I forget.
Whatever his label was owns the actual recording that might get used in a commercial.
Right.
The master.
I get it.
And that's usually the producer or the music company that owns it?
Well, that's the thing.
It's whoever gives you the money to record it, traditionally, or whoever shouldered his way in there and said, listen, kid, if you want to make it in this business, you're going to give me some percentage of your... And I mean, a lot of that was, a lot of those people actually shouldered their way in and said, you're going to give me a percentage of the songwriting.
Okay.
oh yeah uh but but definitely if the if the label paid for you to go into the studio then they traditionally consider themselves to own the master okay i think squeeze did it squeeze uh like you know and again it's it's part does it sound does it sound yeah yeah it's it's almost completely identical wow
I mean, that would be a fun exercise.
God, it seems pretty joyless to me.
From a recording standpoint, I was thinking about this the other day.
I was talking to our friend Joko and recalling that the first real professional nerds that I knew were audio nerds.
And it was before there was a kind of nerd, but it was before nerd was a revolution in our minds.
But like audio nerds are just another form of nerd and are just exactly, they are just personality wise and in every other respect, very similar to computer nerds.
And from an audio nerd standpoint, to sit there and try and match exactly the sound of a classic album, oh my God, they'd just be spewing all over themselves.
Yeah, like that guy from that one band that worked with Brian Wilson on Smile.
Remember they did a reconstruction of Smile?
It's that one guy from that pop band whose name I always forget.
But he worked very closely with the Brian Wilson people to come up with a totally re-recorded version of Smile as it could have been.
Wow.
Yeah, right.
That does seem like a very fascinating thing.
That's a real – but the thing is, the combination of being – I'm thinking almost like a John Bryan type person, like somebody who really loves the songs, but knows every – or like Jim on the cruise.
Those kind of people who have an ear for every little nook and cranny of a song.
But also then the challenge of trying to make it sound like it was recorded 40 years ago must be really enticing.
It's incredible, and just in the sense of the audio chain of which microphone, which preamp, which compressor, which amplifier, how were all those things set, and every single one of those things, if it varies even slightly, changes the tone.
Mm-hmm.
And so to go back and first of all, you'd have to do the research.
What mics were they using?
And then go get those mics at any expense.
Like already it's exciting.
And then put those things in a room, and the room is going to change the sound, so you have to go back to the original studio.
I mean, oh, I am turgid with excitement.
Really?
That would appeal to you?
I mean, just because you would do all that, you would do everything right, and then you would A, B, the guitar sound right to left, and it wouldn't sound the same.
And then you'd just be like, and at that point, I would have nothing more to offer, right?
I would have been excited about finding the mics and the room and the guitars.
Yeah, but then comes the drudgery.
And the vocal performances, I mean, most people's voices sound pretty different after 10 or 15 years, let alone like 30 years.
But again, I would be engaged in that.
After the engineers had gone through and said, all right, you're going to have to notch 4K about 2 dBs.
Wait a minute, let's bring that back.
After they did all that and got the tones.
than to go back in and sit and try and duplicate your vocal performance from 30 years ago.
From like two lifetimes ago.
That would be also very fun, you know?
But this is the thing.
What this is, is an example.
Another example.
I mean, I agree with...
I understand the impulse to re-record that stuff and take the money back from the man.
It's a very prince.
Especially today, my gosh.
A very prince-like thing to do.
But it's also another example of a thing where you are still a musician, you're in middle age or late middle age, and you want to find anything to do.
Other than to write 10 good new songs.
You want to find anything to do.
Any kind of busy work.
Just as a purely artistic distraction.
Yeah, you're just like, you're moving deck chairs around.
You are stacking and re-stacking 3x5 cards of...
And it's just like, I know, you know, this is why all these bands do an album of covers.
But if you could go and say like, you know what we really need to do?
Let's stop work on this new record that's really bedeviling us and go back and meticulously re-record our old records.
It's just, it's a complete, a complete like busy work.
Well, you know, I don't have the numbers in front of me, but just anecdotally, today, it seems like there's so much, I guess the stuff that you know you can sell is stuff that's sold in the past.
So you do the remastering, you do the box set, I mean, but that's not even that new of a thing.
I mean, in the 90s, it was all about the box sets.
Right.
You got to get all this stuff that you already have in vinyl, you know, in CD.
So to make that enticing, like for example, like the Beach Boys Pet Sounds box is actually a really good box because there's tons of great, you know, extra vocals and isolated tracks.
And I loved that.
That was a great Christmas present in 1995 or whatever.
But it's funny, ELL in particular, in my years of like...
spending so many hours in record stores, going through the entire store, looking at every album.
I knew the names, even though I never heard them.
I knew which bands did which albums.
I could tell which ones were popular.
But even then, ELO in the late 70s, early 80s,
mid-'80s especially, there were so many ELO compilations even then.
I mean, they hadn't had, I don't think, a monster hit since probably 1982.
Yeah, right.
That was the last big one.
That Hold On Tight song, maybe.
I don't think they had that many new songs.
That was, what, 30 years ago.
Yeah.
Isn't that amazing?
Well, those box sets with all the extra bonus tracks and the 25 different versions of Taxman and so forth, I mean, those things are great.
They're great for the Beatles.
To actually hear how different Anurberg can sing could sound is pretty fascinating.
It's a really amazing song you've heard a hundred times.
It's totally amazing, except that in the iTunes era that we live in now, basically, I find that in the CD era where you would put that on and be like, oh my God, listen to this.
it made sense to me, but if you just rip all that stuff
into iTunes with no distinction, then you're in that posture where you're making dinner and you turn on your music and you hear in the course of an hour four versions of Andrew Bird Can Sing, all of them slightly different, or you put your headphones on and you're like, oh, I'm going to listen to this.
It doesn't really work in a mix.
Or a shuffle, I mean.
It's bad for mixing, right.
And I'm sure that iTunes Masters...
who manage their playlists don't have this problem because they just manage it.
It's hard, though.
Another level of management.
I know you're a tagger, and I've been a tagger.
I will look at the databases that are out there for the best possible version.
But again, it's just not how people listen to music.
I'm looking at a website right now that I feel like you should know about if you don't know about already.
It's called Albums That Never Were.
Have you ever seen this?
No, I have never seen AlbumsThatNeverWere.com.
.blogspot.com.
But go check it out.
And it's this guy.
It's primarily this one guy, although he does put up other people's albums.
And it's given the available material, the best reconstruction possible of certain classic albums that never existed.
For example, here's The Who with Who's for Tennis, which is a 1968 album, and it's got stuff like Fortune Teller, it's got Magic Bus, it's got a whole... But basically, if an album... There's those classic albums, like Smile, right?
But then other ones, like a really good one they've got is the Weezer record that they wanted to do, kind of what became Pinkerton.
But what's his name?
Rivers Cuomo?
Is that his name?
I always confuse his name.
Is that his name?
You have his picture in your wallet.
Well, sometimes I call him River Phoenix and I get confused.
But it was before, I think it was before he went to Harvard.
But anyway, you should check this out.
It's a lot of 60s stuff.
Well, first, let me point out that, of course, this website is being maintained by an Italian.
Because that is the most Italian thing in the world is to have... When you go to Europe and you go to an Italian record store and there are...
Pretty much.
I mean, if you look in the Nirvana section in an Italian record store, there will be 400 records.
Like bootlegs?
And they're all bootlegs.
Or, you know, or like double, triple bootlegs, right?
I mean, somehow the record collector mentality in Italy...
really is obsessive in a different way, and they will commercially, because the copyright laws somehow are different, or at least used to be different, they'll commercially publish all this stuff where somebody will steal Chris Novoselic's Walkman off of a table in a cafe, and then they'll publish that as a nirvana.
They'll publish the tape that's in the... And they get away with it.
And they get away with it, right.
So there's all this fascinating stuff,
in record stores in Italy.
But this guy, I'm pretty sure, is Italian.
His name is Sonic Love Noise, but with a Z instead of an S. And all of his writing is without capitalization.
It's all, like, no capitals.
Here's one by Nirvana called Sheep.
Reconstruction of the unreleased 1990 Nirvana album Sheep.
Essentially the precursor to what would eventually be Nevermind.
You know, I actually had that cassette.
Oh, wow.
There was a girl named Lily who I dated for a little while in about 1990, 91.
She had...
Short red hair.
Very short, like pixie cut.
Oh, dear.
Sort of, what kind of red?
It's that light red hair.
Like a strawberry blonde.
Strawberry blonde, that's what I'm trying to say.
And she had a tattoo of a lily on her shoulder.
Which I complimented her on when we first met.
I said, oh, nice.
A Lily.
And your name is Lily.
And she turned.
We didn't know each other at this point.
She turned.
She was like, it's the stupidest tattoo ever.
I totally regret it.
I was an idiot.
I was like, oh, I'm going to talk to you a little bit more.
Lily worked at a bookstore that was owned by a guy who was a pervert.
It was one of those bookstores that was full of cats and all the employees were 20-year-old girls.
And he looked like Van Morrison.
I totally know this guy.
Yeah, right, right?
He's a type.
Yeah, and the bookstore kind of smells like cat pee.
Got dander everywhere.
He's dander covered, but all of his employees are like sophomores in college.
And he was always trying to get Lily, because Lily was like a combat boot and baby doll dress, early 90s person.
And he would come to her and he'd say like...
I know the people, you know, like he was connected somehow to left bank books in Paris or whatever the, uh, you know, the Shakespeare and company, he was connected to those people.
And he was like, let's just get out of here.
Let's just, you know, I've got, I've got $80,000 in a shoe box.
You and me, let's just go to Paris.
And Lily was like, you're a creep.
Yeah.
And so he would ply her with GIFs.
And one day she climbed in the window of my apartment.
She was like, you've got to hear this.
And it was a cassette of all the demos for Nevermind.
Which I assume was this thing that this guy's talking about.
Their smile.
Smiley smile.
Completely different versions of every tune.
And this bookstore guy had acquired this somehow and given it to Lily as an enticement for her to run away to Paris with him.
And she brought it over to my house.
And we sat and listened to this cassette over and over.
And Nevermind had only been out a few months at this point.
And it was a total revelation to hear those tracks done differently.
And at the time, this cassette seemed like one of what would only have been 20 of these things that were in existence.
You know, like it should be worth a million dollars.
And I, in the ethics that were in operation at the time, I considered stealing it from my girlfriend.
Ooh, that good.
It was that important.
Less good, it felt that important.
And then I didn't.
I didn't steal it from her.
I regret it to this day.
Lily ended up moving to Marrakesh where she got somehow walked up just, you know, like... I don't know how she got to Marrakesh.
And I don't know how she... I mean, because she didn't have any money.
And...
She didn't have any friends, but somehow she got to Marrakesh and walked up to the front door of Paul Bowles' house.
Paul Bowles at that time was probably already 75 or 80 and knocked on the door and started working as his assistant.
Yeah.
I know that name, but remind me who that is.
He wrote The Sheltering Sky.
Oh, wow.
And she just showed up.
Just showed up.
And he's my favorite of the beat writers.
He's the only beat writer I can stand.
And his writing, he did a thing where he translated...
Well, he had a translator, but he wrote a series of Moroccan folk stories.
He brought this young Moroccan guy named Mohamed Mourabet, who wrote some amazing books.
Paul Bowles' short stories are the best of all of the beats.
By head and shoulders.
He was a guy I really admired.
And I get a letter in the paper letter from Lillian.
She's like, I work for Paul Bowles now.
I'm in Marrakesh.
You should come.
Wow.
I regret not going, but very shortly after, I believe that she was arrested for smuggling heroin into Europe inside of her vagina.
Oh, no.
Oh, that's an awkward call to your parents.
Yeah, really.
I don't think her parents were still around.
I think her parents had maybe driven a Volkswagen bus off of the...
off of the Highway 1 in Van Ness.
How long do you think you have to keep it in there?
Is it just to get through security or do you have to for the whole flight?
Oh, for the whole flight, for sure.
I don't think you take it out and put it on your folding table and wait until you're about to land and go put it back in.
But I'm pretty sure she took a boat
And, you know, the boat ride is, yeah, it's as long as a flight.
You have to really work your kegels.
Boy, this gal's got some character.
I fell out of touch with her.
The last time we saw each other, I had quit doing drugs.
And so we had that awkward...
sort of awkward weekend where it's like, well, let's get high.
Well, I don't get high anymore.
Oh, alright, well, um, hmm.
Yeah, that's a lot of change to have to digest.
That's all we used to do.
I know, but I don't do it anymore.
We're still two people.
We're still two humans in the world.
We know each other.
So, what's on TV?
So, but I mean, how are we going to have sex if we're not high?
I know, right?
Wouldn't that be weird?
We should try.
So, uh,
That's a common problem.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Paul Bowles, though.
Paul Bowles.
I don't like the beats, but I do like him.
And his wife, also a very amazing writer.
Man, I can't imagine doing what she did.
That's so gutsy.
Yeah, but you're young.
You don't give a fuck, you know?
You think it's all adventure, and it is.
And it keeps working over and over, right?
It's like, it's all adventure.
I'm a fucking drug smuggler now.
Man.
And, you know, I never...
I never sold drugs, and because I had that thing that's kind of haunted me, or that chainmail shirt that I've worn my entire life, where I had some core ethical lines that I wouldn't go across.
The idea of selling drugs...
to make a living was disgusting to me even when i was the most disgusting because i just couldn't ever picture myself as a drug dealer because just the words drug dealer like from the from the youngest age right and that was just a thing i was never going to be it net the excitement of it the the um
It's almost like being a child molester.
It's got that kind of a mark on it.
Yeah, and some people rush into drug dealing as fast as they can, right?
It's just like, oh, I can get high and make money?
Duh.
And it's simple, and they don't think of it...
They don't put a moral halo around it at all.
It's just like, right, well, this guy had extra drugs, and so I bought them from him, and now I'm selling them to you.
What could be simpler?
We're all doing drugs.
Why would you take a moral stance on me selling them to you?
And there were many, many, many opportunities for me to get into that racket, but I just was like, no way.
You never did any courier, mule type work?
One time...
I set off from Spokane, Washington to Washington, D.C.
So I hopped a freight in Spokane, took the freight train to Missoula, stuck on my thumb, hitchhiked to...
what uh fort collins colorado you know one of these trips across america where it was like and then i fucking got on a donkey and i rode it across the bend then i the guy came along with a long skateboard and we both got on it but when i left spokane this guy i knew whose name was oh jesus what the fuck was that guy's name um not treebeard
Tree something.
Tree man?
No, fuck, what was his name?
He was a really tall guy.
Is this a mythic character?
No, he was a real person.
A Spokane, sort of legendary Spokane hippie.
Oh, like a local character.
A local character.
And a super nice guy.
And a little bit older than us.
And his name was, yeah, like Tree Funk.
It's embarrassing to me I don't remember his name.
But he was trimming some pot.
He was trimming a recent harvest.
And he had five pounds of shake.
Yeah.
Well, except it was good bud, so it was five pounds of good shake.
It wasn't like ditch weed.
Right.
But it was still shake.
It was leaves and the little nubbins and all the detritus, right?
But he had five pounds of this stuff, and he liked me.
And so he gave it to me.
And I didn't have any money.
He gave you five pounds of pot?
Yeah.
That's so much pot, John.
Well, because he was interested in the buds, which were valuable and good.
And this shake was just like... We did not get a lot of the buds.
We got a lot of the shake, as you say.
This was the era.
This was the transition era between when most of the pot you got was shake...
in the United States to the current era where most of the pot you get is bud.
And what's funny is in 1986, there were whole, you know, the majority of the United States of America, you couldn't get good pot no matter how much money you had.
And so there were places, and the Northwest was one of those places.
Northern California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska had great
Pot.
Fantastic pot.
And when I would travel across the country and meet stoners, they would be like, you're from the Northwest?
Oh, man, have you ever smoked blah, blah, blah, blah?
And I'd be like, have I ever?
And then you'd be down in Arizona or something, you'd be smoking this stuff that just was like, come on, you guys seriously smoke this?
Like, you even bother?
Yeah.
So I had this giant quantity of shake that was way better pot than you could find in most of America.
Oh, so you could do a little bit of pot arbitrage.
Right.
Take it somewhere where the market could bear it.
And frankly, I liked...
You know, I'm one of those people that is going to smoke it.
If you got it, I'm going to smoke it.
And so really heavy-duty weed, I would just get super baked and wouldn't be able to function.
I don't know how people do it.
I really don't.
And I was one of those guys that would just like, oh, wow, you've got like medicinal... It's not entertaining.
You're just in a corner.
You're in a corner, you're paranoid, and your mind is leaping from false idea to false idea.
And you're just like, I'm so baked right now, fuck.
And I was traveling.
So in most instances, I was the stranger, right?
I'd come into a situation and I was like the one guy, walk into a party, I'm the one guy nobody knows.
And I had this weed that was really good by their standards, but actually pretty mellow by my standards.
But also not too showy.
yeah that's right it's not like I've got a you know I stole this bud from the US government right it's like no I got this really kind bud and it's very nice to roll into joints and then you pass some joints around a party like like you don't give a fuck like here I just I'm just sitting here rolling joints and passing them around how do you like that and everybody's like this pot is so great it's so chill and so I was so I used that pot as a to be a hero
for a long time because it was a lot of weed.
And at one point, some guy came up to me in Durango, Colorado, and he was like, I've got 10 capsules of MDMA.
Will you trade me these 10 capsules of MDMA for some bag of pot?
And this was when MDMA was three bucks a capsule or something.
Before, I think it was right on the cusp when they made it illegal.
86-ish.
And so I was like, yeah, right?
I mean, this started to feel like... You're going places now.
Right?
I'm moving on up in the world.
And so I got this MDMA and I gave him some weed.
And then I had two kinds of drugs that belonged to me that people wanted.
But you can't just walk into a party and start handing out MDMA.
Also, I didn't have enough to give to everybody.
So long story short, I did not, I never sold any drugs, but I did start to feel like I was wheeling and dealing in them.
And I burned through the ecstasy pretty fast.
And then I was just back to being this guy that was like schlepping around kind of a Santa Claus bag of drugs.
Was it broken down into separate bags, or was it just like a bag of potatoes?
Five pounds is a lot of pounds, John.
Yeah, I had those big freezer bags.
Oh, God.
That could make you a target.
Well, yeah, but this is the thing about me when I was young.
I was so naive about...
And I keep attributing this to Alaska, that somehow growing up up there, you're worldly in one sense, that you can't help but see a lot up there and be exposed to a lot of different people and a lot of different kinds of danger.
Yeah.
But it was so isolated and it felt like it was 20 years behind the rest of the country.
And so there's this kind of like opium Mayberry thing too.
And so I was constantly getting in situations when I was in my early 20s, late teens, that I look back on and go, oh my God, why didn't somebody just hit you over the head?
And take all your stuff and rape you and throw you in a river.
Mm-hmm.
And... This is like in... This is around the time that you were hanging out with the Grateful Dead people?
Yeah.
Is that in there?
Somewhere in here is that time.
Well, and they are less likely to murder you, but, like, hobos, too.
Like, just living outside the town...
Well, sort of like what happened to you when all your stuff got stolen.
Was it in France?
In France.
So what happened was the gradual education that I received in the dark side of the world where I did start to get hit over the head and I did start to get robbed.
It happened, when you look back at it, in a kind of gracefully incremental way.
So my first experience was not that I was knifed in a park.
By a couple of guys.
I mean, I was... At one point, I was riding a motorcycle across the country.
And I was sleeping in parks.
And I was asleep on a picnic table with my motorcycle parked next to the picnic table.
Wow.
That's an image.
And I woke up... And the motorcycle is loaded with... Like, I had all my stuff in an old... What are the big bags that you get in the army?
The...
Oh, yeah.
Duffel bag.
I had all my stuff in a duffel bag, bungee corded to the back of this motorcycle.
And I just pulled up into a park.
You're like a pinata.
Right?
I mean, I was lucky that I didn't have anything.
There wasn't anything in the duffel bag but dirty clothes.
But I did have a fucking motorcycle.
Yeah.
for this brief period.
And I'm parked next to this sort of... The reason I chose this picnic table was it was covered and it was raining.
So I pulled the motorcycle under the little roof and got out and rolled my sleeping bag out on top of the picnic table and went to sleep.
Well, I wake up in the middle of the night and there are two guys standing over me, one on either side of me.
And they're asking me questions in Spanish.
And I wake up and kind of sit up in my sleeping bag.
And I'd never been robbed at this point.
And they're talking to me.
And I mean, I kind of woke up and they were already in mid-conversation with me.
So I didn't know where the conversation started.
And I only spoke a little bit of Spanish.
And they're asking me questions really calmly and
And it's the middle of the night, and I realize at this moment that in choosing this park on the edge of town, I chose a place where I could shoot a flare gun off and nobody would know.
Oh, like isolated.
Yeah.
And they just kind of stand there with their hands in their pockets.
And we have a conversation for five minutes, you know, during which time I'm saying like, not really sure what you need and I'm not really sure what you want.
And I hope you're having a really nice night.
And, you know, I knew that it was a dangerous situation, but I didn't know what to do.
Like, I had already made all the decisions that precluded me from doing anything.
And for whatever reason, these guys just sort of looked at each other and sauntered off.
And maybe they were just being nice.
I mean, maybe, who knows?
That's so weird.
But when I looked, and at the time, I was like, well, good thing I handled that situation.
Laid back down, went back to sleep.
But later on, I looked back and was like, were they asking me for the keys to my motorcycle?
I mean, that was certainly a possibility that somebody would come along and be like, hmm, there's a motorcycle and there's a kid.
Let's take it.
But that never happened.
And that never happened through many, many, many iterations of that, right?
Where I look back now and go like, oh, they were trying to kill me.
And when it did start to happen, when I did start to get ripped off, it was always in a way that was like...
It hurt.
It stung.
But not so much that I said, I'm going to go join the priesthood or whatever.
Did it feel personal?
When I started getting hurt?
Yeah, well, I mean, like, the thing is, it's... It always does.
Yeah, yeah.
Anything that involves an incursion into your person, I think, kind of can't help but feel personal, even if it's, you know, in their... Like, even the guys in France, I mean, that sounds like that was all business.
Like, something they'd done over and over and over again.
Oh, yeah.
And every time I've been... Derek, tell you about the time I was walking across the chain bridge in Budapest.
Have I told you this story?
No, no.
I don't know this one.
I'm walking across the Chain Bridge, which is the big central bridge in Budapest or Pest, depending on who's listening.
Did you get yelled at by that guy from Ukraine?
Like I did?
Yeah, I don't acknowledge that note.
But Budapest.
I like the way he broke down his various grievances with us by person.
Lots of exclamation points.
Did you notice that I got heat for stuff you said?
Of course.
I hope you do.
You are responsible.
I am.
I'm the editor.
I allowed you to be how you are.
You did.
You continue to.
And two guys come around.
So when you're walking across this particular bridge, you get to the stanchions in the middle of the river, of which there are two, one on either side, the big pillars.
And the path, the pedestrian path, goes around these pillars.
So the pedestrian path is not just a continuous sight line.
of guardrail along the bridge.
Oh, I see.
There's like a little blind.
A little blind, right.
And the Manhattan Bridge is like that.
Wow, what a beautiful bridge.
Yeah, oh, it's a beautiful bridge.
It's one of the great bridges.
But I'm on the Buddha side.
I'm headed to the Pesce side.
And I come around this corner into this little blind on the Buddha side.
And there are these two guys about my age.
And they're fashionable young guys.
And...
As I come around the corner, one of them kind of looks at me with surprise and delight.
And he goes, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and speaks to me in Hungarian.
And I'm like, oh, sorry, I'm American.
And he's like, oh, American, of course you are.
You are a very fashionable guy.
And I was like, really?
And I stop.
And he's like, we are reporters for the local Hungarian youth newspaper.
And I'm like, uh-huh.
And he says, would you mind if we took your picture?
for our fashion spread of like street fashion for the local paper and i was like i would not mind i would be you know i would i will take five minutes of my day to help people to help you guys and i was wearing a levi's jacket and some denim some levi's and some boots and a shirt and
But I did agree with them that I was pretty cool looking.
And so I stand there, you know, kind of looking pretty seasoned.
And the other guy's got a camera, the guy that's not doing the talking.
And he's like, you know, takes a couple of snaps.
And the guy goes, okay, you know, like, you know, turn around.
Like, give us a little bit of, you know, give us a little action.
Show us, you know, let's get shot from the back.
And I turn around and kind of, he's like, look over your shoulder.
And I look over my shoulder at him.
real fashion shoot, stick out my butt a little bit, like, hello.
Hello, ladies.
And he's like, now, like, flip the collar of your coat so we can see the tags, so we can see the brand.
And I'm like, oh, it's just Levi's, you know?
And I kind of flip the tag, and I'm going to show the Levi's tag.
Like, see?
Levi's.
It's not that weird.
I mean, I guess it used to be here in Hungary.
And so far, everything seems this is all just totally fine.
We are having a blast.
All alone out here in the middle of the bridge, the three of us.
And then he says, you know, shrug the shoulders off of your jacket and kind of pull it down a little bit and show the tag.
We can't quite see it.
And I shrug the shoulders off the jacket.
I'm trying to be a helpful guy.
And I shrug the shoulders down, and now I have tied myself a little bit in my own coat.
Oh.
Yeah, I get it.
It's down.
Your arms have restricted movement now.
Yeah, I'm gradually incapacitating myself.
And something, some wind off the river or some little thing in my head, maybe I see just like a tiny spark in this guy's eyes.
Something happens.
But I mean, I'm also running a script, a side script, where I'm like, hmm, this is weird.
Like, really?
The tags are what you want to see?
And I suddenly get like a chill.
And I flip my jacket back up and turn around and look at this guy.
I kind of square off and look at him.
And then all of a sudden, it's like one of those vampire movies where the guy's eyes go white and the fangs come out.
And he's like.
Oh, my God.
And he and the other dude like.
Like.
Take.
Jump into a posture where they're.
They're not kidding anymore.
They are looking for their... Like, they were two seconds from grabbing me when I was incapacitated.
And now I was recapacitated.
And they were, you know, fangs out.
Like you were prey.
Total prey.
But I had regained my footing.
And I was facing them both and had...
my legs apart and was like, went into a combat posture and we sat there and hissed at each other.
Oh my God.
They were literally hissing at me.
And, you know, and honestly, most of the most of my feelings were rooted in being kind of disappointed that they had lied to me about being fashionable.
Yeah, that would have been a nice break for you.
You know, I was like, oh, but I did that.
You know, I did that thing where I where we we circled each other until pounce on you.
No, because this is the lucky break.
When I examine the moments in my life where I acknowledge that I have tremendous privilege, one of those privileges is that I'm big.
I'm big and I look capable.
But it seems like in an incident like that, the whole value of being any good at their job would be to quickly...
you know rob somebody and have it be over with and be gone like the whole idea of this this you know eastern european ballet movement about vampires seems really strange well and so what so their game i think was get a guy turn him around get him so he pulls his jacket down around his uh around his elbows and then whack him
from behind and grab his wallet and his passport.
Oh, while you're in your Coppertone Girl pose.
I get it.
Well, you know, whack you from behind when you're, yeah, when you're, like, when you're, if I had not been looking over my shoulder, if I had turned and just showed them the tag that they were hoping for, they would have whacked me probably with the dummy camera.
And all they, you know, all they're trying to get is your wallet and your passport because
Because you're an American tourist and you've got... That's their job.
That's what you steal.
You've got 300 euros or something.
Now that they were facing me and it was like going to be actual combat, they had a second, a third, a fourth thought about it.
And in that amount of time, I was able to circle them around until the opening presented itself for me to head on up the path.
And then once I started to move, you know, it was over.
And they went the other way and we never saw each other.
Jeez Louise, what a strange incident.
Yeah.
Lots and lots of those in the course of, you know, over the years.
They sound like they might have been kind of new to that racket.
They were trying out some new things.
Tonight we try the trick where he pulls down the jacket.
Yeah, maybe.
Maybe they had done it once and it worked, and then they thought, this is our game.
I mean, at no point did somebody, you know, at no point did they pull out a Soviet-era pistol and point it at me.
Right.
But, you know, some famous gangster once said to me, if a guy's got a pistol, it's a pretty safe bet he's also got a car.
And I was like, is that true?
And he was like, well, the first thing you do with a pistol is get a car.
You understand me?
And I was like, hmm, right.
Of course, if you had a pistol...
It's worth more to you as a tool to get a car than it is as a tool to take $20 off of a tourist on a bridge.
Oh, I see.
Right?
Like, the first thing you would do is go stick it in some guy's face and say, give me your car.
Right.
Okay.
I guess so.
If you've got a pistol, it's a safe bet you've got a car.
And if somebody's just standing there with a pistol on the sidewalk taking $20 off of people, it's a pretty safe bet that it's not a real pistol or an operative.
Oh, I see.
See, I was getting lost in this if you give a mouse a cookie thing.
Okay, that makes sense.
I see what you're saying.
So maybe not a real pistol.
Okay, that makes sense.
But, you know, and I've had some pistols pointed at me, one in particular on the sidewalk.
And when a pistol's pointed at you, you don't think to yourself, if the guy's got a pistol, he's probably got a car.
You just go, oh, right, all right.
Well, this is this situation.
Maybe he just got the pistol.
He's on his way to getting a car, and he thought he'd stop and rob me.
Yeah, I used to go through this with my mom, who's like a big Second Amendment gun carrying person.
And she had all these, you know, once you're a Second Amendment person, you can come up with all kinds of reasons that you need to have a gun.
And in her case, it was that she was doing depositing stuff at night.
Mm hmm.
you know, at the bank back when you go to that big, big door and deposit the money.
I've just always feel like I hate to burst your bubble, but like, unless you're going to have a gun pulled Marshall Dillon style before you ever get up to there, you don't have a chance.
Right.
Right.
You're going to like, hold on.
Let me get my gun.
Yeah.
Yeah.
With, with somebody who's like enough of a nut job to stand around by a bank and, and rob people who are making deposits.
Like that's probably somebody with a little more skin in the game than you.
Yeah.
Yeah, right, and so your only option is to walk up to the bank with your deposit in one hand, already ready to go.
Like your fucking Mannix or something, like going in a circle with the hand and the gun in his other palm, you know.
And that's going to attract attention.
You've got to do it every night, you know.
A policeman is going to see that one time.
Yeah, I don't know.
Even carrying a knife around, which I tried to do for a while, I feel a little bit vulnerable having been robbed as many times as I have.
I'm talking about a certain period of my life post-Golden Era where I never got in trouble, but before the present day.
Where you would sometimes maybe be a little bit out of your senses, perhaps?
Well, there was a period even after... You were probably pretty robbable for a while.
There were a lot of times I was robbable.
Probably got robbed many times that I don't even remember.
Yeah.
And got robbed a lot of times in drug deals gone wrong.
That were some of the worst robberies.
Because you have scraped together some money to get some drugs.
And all you want is some drugs.
And you're so close.
You're right there.
You're talking to the guy.
It's right there.
You're about to have the drugs.
And then everyone goes home.
And everybody is happy and fine.
And all problems are resolved.
And then the guy robs you.
And then you're like, now not only do I not have the drugs, I also do not have the money that I managed to scrape together.
So I have no, there's no like plan B. It makes it hard to trust people.
It's so hard.
And then also the humiliation of getting robbed.
And then invariably I would chase the drug dealer.
And so then there was the fourth problem, which was that then that then I would be in a worse situation.
Oh, did you ever catch him?
No.
What happens is you chase the drug dealer and he leads you into us.
He leads you into a blind alley.
He basically leads you into a canyon.
And then there are snipers on the canyon.
And you're like, whoa, hoss.
And then he turns around and says, now what are you going to do?
Classic misdirection.
How do you like me now?
And then you're like, you know what?
The reason I chased you was that I wanted to apologize.
I wanted to apologize for not having more money for you to steal.
And I'm just going to back out of this canyon now.
There are a couple of those.
That's got to be a depressing night.
Super depressing, and it's super depressing to get ripped off by a drug dealer that you know and think is your friend.
That's no fun.
Oh, gosh.
So there was a while there where I was carrying a knife because I thought, oh, sure, you're a dummy to be out here in the world doing all these things and not have something.
Did you have an intention of using it?
It seems like if you're going to carry a knife a lot, it really helps to have stabbed people a bunch to just kind of get a feel for it.
The thing is, I did some Travis Bickling.
You know, you talking to me?
You talking to me?
You can scare off the amateurs a little bit, right?
Yeah, and I would pop the knife out.
And for a while, I had a switchblade.
And then I had one of those Spyderco knives that a guy had modified the Spyderco.
Wow.
So that, you know, a Spyderco, you flip it open with your thumb.
Yeah, a thumb knife, yeah.
But he had somehow taken this Spyderco.
I don't know how he did it.
But he made it so that you could just pull it out and flick your wrist and the knife would flip out.
Mm-hmm.
It loosened the action.
Mm-hmm.
And so I had this Spyderco that was very impressive.
You pull this thing out, flip it like you're in West Side Story.
And then it's not a switchblade.
It's this serrated, like basically like table saw.
That knife raised some eyebrows.
I'll bet.
It's good for dramatic effect.
I miss it.
I miss that knife.
I lost it.
But I carried a knife around for a while until I realized, just as you're saying, it's one thing to pull your Spyderco out, flip it, and look in the mirror and say, now who wants a...
But yeah, that's like me at 12 with a pair of rubber chucks going like, aha, you ready for a piece of this?
How about I just take these from you and hit you with it till I get tired?
But the prospect of actually getting in a knife fight, I mean, the danger of getting in a knife fight with somebody is if they are even slightly better at knife fighting than you are,
Oh, and you could very easily hurt yourself in a knife fight.
Well, I think the danger is that you get into a knife fight with somebody who is, as you described, has more skin in the game than you, is more desperate than you.
You are mad that they stole $30.
They are desperate to stay out of jail and desperate to live.
And what they'll do is take your knife away from you and then stab you with your own knife.
And you want to talk about losing some dignity.
All I wanted was drugs.
Now you took my knife too?
Yeah, I went into this to get $30 worth of drugs and now I'm dead?
Yeah.
Talk about a bad plan.
That's a tough night.
I did keep carrying a knife because it's good to have something to cut cheese.
Yeah, that's true.
But I stopped remembering that I was ever going to pull a knife out and point it at somebody.
Many, many years ago, because I just I pictured the scene like I am not a knife fighter.
And if I encounter one, I don't want to show him my knife.
People get such fantasies, you know, such fantasies about, you know, how stuff is going to go and what's going to happen in that situation.
And I just my impression is that the more often you've been in fights or the more often you've had violence visited upon you, you've tried to defend yourself.
Like, it seems like you get more and more realistic about how much of that fantasy action.
You know, you're not really going to do like a roundhouse kick and end the fight.
Ha ha.
Did you know that my broken finger of several months ago still pains me?
Give me an update on this.
Now, remind me how this happened?
Well, the fist fight I got in with the two kids.
Oh, right, of course.
And I was counseling you gently to maybe go have that looked at.
And it was getting worse and worse.
And then you put something together with, like, chopsticks and Band-Aids.
That's right.
That's right.
I finally went to the doctor and...
The doctor said, well, I don't think it's broken.
You've been walking around for three weeks with it tied to some chopsticks.
It's probably just a sprain.
Yeah, but he doesn't know your background.
He doesn't know what kind of stock you're from.
He did the x-ray and he was like, oh, it's fractured.
And, uh, since you've been walking around with it for three weeks, uh, tied to some chopsticks, there's nothing we can do.
It's not, we're not going to re-break it.
So he said, you just need to start stretching it now.
And so he was like, you know, usually it takes, what did he say?
90 days to
To completely heal.
And so for a month, for two months, I'm just like, oh, agonizingly working this stiff, broken finger.
And is the idea to coax it or tease it into being in the right position or that it doesn't swell?
Or what's the function?
What ends up happening is, you know, the bone starts to rebuild itself.
And then you just, the muscles and the scar tissue, you know, the scar tissue just wants to adhere to the heel, to the place where it was broken.
And if the scar tissue succeeds in doing that, then you can't move your finger.
You won't be able to move it and use it.
And so you have to, every day, kind of break apart the scar tissue.
Oh, God.
And so I was doing this for two months and then three months.
And I was like, come on, what is wrong?
And I went into the doctor and I was like, you know, this can't possibly be what happens when you break your finger in the movies all the time.
Guys do things where it's clear they broke their hand and the next day they're out fighting crime.
Yeah, they might do this flexing thing a little bit.
Yeah, they're like, ah, ooh, you know, like Mel Gibson goes, oh, ouch.
And it's clear that he broke his hand in five places, but the next day he's like solving mysteries.
And they're like, no, it really, you know, if you break your finger, it takes 90 days to fix it.
And then the doctor looks at the chart and he says, oh, oh, but I mean a guy your age
It could take six months.
Oh, criminy.
And he doesn't offer to break it and fix it.
That's not on the table.
No, he said, you know, it's fine.
It's like it was fractured.
It was slightly displaced, but it's healing now.
And it's not, you know, it's not a, it wasn't a compound fracture.
It wasn't like radically displaced.
It was just a little bit, the bone was just a little bit.
sideways, and then it filled in in between, and now the bone, if you took the bone out, you know, when people look at your skeleton, they will be able to see that it was broken, and that bone will have a little bump
This is your right forefinger, right?
Yeah.
Oh, God.
So anyway, that happened in like, you know, the first of September.
First of September, right?
Yeah.
And now here we are in February and I am still every day exercising this finger.
It is still stiff and, you know, hurts.
And so since September to now, there have been probably three or four instances where I was like in a situation where
overseas or in a strange town or wherever, where I was like, this guy, this guy's gaming for a punch in the nose.
And then I'm like, I look down at my hand and I'm like, oh, what's up?
What's up, nose puncher?
You're not the guy to give this guy a punch in the nose.
You're still recovering from the last time you gave a punch in the nose.
Oh, John, that's tragic.
And it's just like, welcome to the Terror Dome.
And then I start looking around like...
Hey, hey, who can give this guy a punch in the nose?
I can't do it.
I got a busted hand.
I would have done it myself.
You know what, guy?
You know what, guy?
I would punch you in the nose right now if I didn't already have a busted finger.
And I'm pointing at him with my crooked finger.
If I didn't already have a busted finger from the last guy's nose I punched.
So don't toy with me.
Yeah, that's a speech you want to really practice.
That's so lame.
It so sucks.
So basically, I'm just like becoming increasingly just a guy in a wheelchair with a blanket over his legs.
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Ping pong.
Tell me the story about punching the guy again.
Oh, no.
Yeah, I have my nurse wheel me out on the deck of the ship.
There I was on the chain bridge.
It was a night just like this.
Oh, so depressing.
It's so depressing.
What is happening, Merlin?
What's happening to us?
Oh, man.
You've got all kinds of problems.
You've got entropy.
You've got gravity.
You know what it is?
It's free radicals.
It's free fucking radicals.
Now, you want to get those to bind to something?
Is that how it works?
I think you want an antioxidant.
An antioxidant?
Huh.
And what that does is it antioxidizes.
Huh.
I should look into that.
I've got to do something, John.
Huh.
For a long time, Merlin, they were talking about building spaceships that traveled interstellar distances on solar wind.
And that same solar wind is pummeling us every day with free radicals.
And yet nobody's making a spaceship.
Yeah, right.
Where are our... It's all downside.
Sailing ships.
It's all downside for us.
Interstellar sailing ships.
We're just getting pummeled with solar radiation, and we don't even have interstellar sailing ships.
You would punch the solar winds, but you can't.
You're still healing.
That's right.
Who's going to defend this planet, John?
Hmm.
I feel like, so in our lifetimes, yours and mine,
There did not used to be health nuts, except in the Jack LaLanne model, where you would go tow a ship across San Francisco Bay.
You could be an enthusiast, but if you were, like in our childhood, you were like a nutty person from California, if you thought about that stuff.
If you thought about it at all.
The kind of person who would buy whole wheat bread.
Like somebody who was a real fringe character.
Why would you buy brown bread when you had perfectly good bread?
It's already got wheat in it.
You got rainbow bread.
It's soft.
You can make a sandwich and smash it.
But what we're coming up upon is the proof of concept era, right?
Where people that started eating vegetarian and vegan diets and practicing Eastern medicine and...
Thinking... Oh, you're saying we're getting a cohort at this point.
We've got 40 years of this under our belt, so now we should start to see some real results.
That's right.
People who have been living mindfully since the 60s, right?
So there should start to be this cohort, as you say, who are exceeding life expectancies.
And we can't see it yet because the data is still...
But there should, if those life philosophies have any validity, there should start to be people who routinely live to be 130, right?
It sure seems like if that pattern, if it works, we should start seeing it for sure.
Right, because there have always been people that live to be 118 years old.
Remember the old ladies, the old Romanian ladies in the yoga commercials?
Right, exactly.
I mean, there's always some lady in France who's been smoking Galois for 95 years.
She washes herself with cooking oil once a week.
She smokes and drinks.
Everything's fine.
She's never worried in the world.
So what we need to start seeing is some of these Pete Seeger types who are still doing naked yoga.
And at 118, 120 years old.
And then they're just like, not dying.
And you go, wait a minute.
There's something to this.
This guy's been eating bean sprouts and like some kind of hummus with no honey.
And now he's 150 years old, and look how happy he is.
He's still having sex, this guy.
That's right.
But if we don't start to see those people pop out from the herd pretty soon, then we're going to have to reevaluate the whole concept of that style of health.
I remember a guy saying to me, I was cooking a steak in a frying pan at some guy's house, and he walked through and he was like, enjoy the hormones.
Okay.
He was a guy that was living on wheatgrass juice.
Oh, sure.
He's on the way to naked yoga.
Yeah.
Enjoy the hormones.
And I was like, ugh, I'm not going to now.
Yeah.
That sounds disgusting.
I have fried hormones.
But I'm watching this guy.
I still know who that guy is.
I remember his name.
I'm going to be watching.
Well, those guys are dicks.
Yeah, they're dicks.
See, but here's the thing.
How do you control for that?
How do you control for the improvements in health care and being a dick?
Right?
Oh, right.
You think that maybe he might live longer just because he's a dick?
You know the type.
He's got his little net bag that he takes to the Whole Foods or whatever.
You know the kind?
Absolutely this guy.
He's a massage therapist now.
Oh, my God.
So all the massage and everything.
Now, I'm not saying that living a life where you're having massages and you're eating stuff out of a bin...
at the supermarket, maybe that's a wonderful life to live anyway, for its own sake, even if you die at 65.
But, like, contrasting myself, imagining myself, like, you know, imagining dying of a heart attack, kind of like Goldie Hawn's husband in Private Benjamin.
Oh, just, or like the running guy, Jim Fix, right?
Remember him?
Remember the guy who wrote the book on running?
Did he die of a heart attack?
He totally died.
He had like a congenital heart failure.
You hear about congenital heart failures all the time.
Why are we not finding congenital heart failures before they happen?
Answer me that, yoga boy.
I think that your main demographic of people that want to discover a cure for congenital heart disorders are people who have just recently died of a congenital heart disorder.
All those hormones.
Yeah.
God, that's tragic.
So anyway, I'm watching the culture very carefully to start seeing... Because Pete Seeger did live to be a ripe old 98.
But the country is full of skinny guys who ate nothing but Jell-O.
And like smoked dime store cigars who lived to be 98.
My grandfather put a new roof on his barn when he was 98 and he never ate a vegetable.
I barely had the energy to get coffee today.
Yeah, I know.
Oh my God.
It's the free radicals.
I got to find a way to bind those.
Somebody on my Twitter said something the other day that blew my mind.
A Japanese girl, like a girl born today in Japan has a life expectancy that will take her into the 22nd century.
Wow.
Right?
Figure you can live to be 85 at least.
So I was talking to a kid recently who went to Japan for the first time.
And he's a tall guy.
Teenager.
And he said, I was really anxious about going to Japan because I'm tall.
But he said, all the kids that are my age in Japan now are also really tall.
No.
And I was like, is that true?
And he was like, yeah.
I think it was just some kind of thing where... You sure it wasn't Holland?
No, no.
It was Japan.
He was like, young people in Japan are tall now.
And so this whole business of going to Japan and everybody is five feet tall is like a...
In 50 years, that's not going to be true.
See, I'm on the horns of a dilemma here, John, because I can't decide whether I should just start refiling and reformulating all of my stereotypes about Japan or whether I should start over.
Because maybe it's because they live at home with their parents.
Maybe that makes them tall.
My sense was my great-grandparents were 4'9".
And then my grandparents were in the mid-fives, and then my dad was 6'1".
And I remember when I was a kid, and my dad was 6'1", or 6'2".
That was tall.
And people remarked upon it.
Like, your dad is 6'2", or something.
And 6'1".
and uh and at a size 12 foot and it was like hell yes look at us like that we're we're big americans and then when i got to be six three and let's not talk about let's not talk about the oh i know you're changing rulers are you still seeing discrepancies well no i haven't been back to a doctor after you i just i was like you know what quacks i'm not let them fix their measurements and then you come back that's right that's right fix your fucking rulers and i'll be back
But, you know, and I was like, well, the difference is, my dad and I both ate Kraft macaroni and cheese, and all the generations before did not have access to Kraft macaroni and cheese.
And Kraft macaroni and cheese is a growth hormone.
It's the only thing I can explain.
It's the only difference.
I mean, they had pork chops.
I had pork chops.
Some people are going to say that's anecdotal, but I'm with you.
My daughter's huge, and she loves macaroni and cheese.
Kraft macaroni and cheese.
Now, for a while, I thought it was tabbed.
soda because my dad drank tab and i drank tab and the generations before did not have access to tab but the problem is that nobody drinks tab anymore no you never see it do you no but people keep growing so it can't be tab it has to be craft macaroni and cheese it's the only reasonable explanation and i'm sure that in japan uh today craft macaroni and cheese i mean i have no evidence of this but if you do a little research i'm sure you'll find that it is very popular
Oh, I would have to imagine that it's extremely popular.
There's no other plausible explanation.
Right.
And in Canada, for our Canadian listeners... They call it Kraft Dinner, right?
Kraft Dinner, that's right.
That's what you're thinking of.
It's got to be different.
Well, yeah, Kraft Dinner, right?
If you buy a Pontiac, well, they don't sell Pontiacs anymore, but in the old days, if you bought a Pontiac in Canada, it would have a different name and a slightly different grill, and it would have been made in Canada.
It's just like, what are you doing up there?
That seems like a lot of overhead for a very minor distinction.
Right?
Build a whole – but the thing is they do other work in the fact.
They've got the Canadian content rules, right?
You've got to play lots of Nickelback on the radio.
They have laws about this, John.
That's why people like Sloan because they're forced to.
All right.
You know, it's incontrovertible.
His body was covered in coke fizz.
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, man.
You know, I've been back for... This is an important day because it's around two weeks now we've been back from the cruise.
Yeah.
And I still miss the gravy.
It's one thing... It's one thing I... I don't have anybody to talk to about this.
And I'm so glad that you said that.
Yeah.
My whole life...
Up until just very recently, if I just had a hot tray of gravy on the stove at all times, and no matter what the meal was, if it was Kraft dinner, if it was fried chicken, if it was noodles and butter, I mean, all the great foods.
If I could just, on my way to the table, stop at the...
at the hot tray no question and put two ladles of gravy on it life would have been so much better and then you get on a cruise ship and they got like four kinds of gravy so much gravy and they have great they have a gravy for every meal the sausage gravy i see john i realized this in the 90s i realized i think i've told you this before but i realized that if i ever became successful which i have not
But if I ever did and I had the means, I would have – my one stupid white guy thing to do is I would have sort of like a drink machine at a 7-Eleven, something along those lines, probably a bespoke product built to the purpose for me.
But it would be a gravy serving fountain.
I would be able to have hot, like a white sausage gravy, right?
You get a brown, like a mashed potato kind of gravy.
Do you want chunks in your sausage gravy?
A little bit.
A little bit.
Not a lot.
Not a lot.
But enough.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It should be a little bit substantial.
It's not going to come out.
Smooth, thick brown gravy for your mashed potatoes.
That's right.
That's right.
And some au jus I'm going to want to have.
And a new one that I don't know if you've gotten into.
You ever had maitre d' butter?
That's not what it sounds like.
What?
Well, if you ever go to a steakhouse.
I feel like I've given some people maitre d' butter.
Boy, I'll tell you, those walks could be very long and warm.
But you can make it at home.
Get a couple sticks of butter, put in three teaspoons of fresh lemon juice, a little bit of salt, a little bit of pepper.
And then you let it congeal.
I put it in like a Ziploc bag.
And so they can squeeze it out like a pastry thing.
And you put that on a steak, brother.
You have never had anything like it.
Now, see, now to me, that would be part of the gravy phone.
Oh, I see.
Put it on a steak.
Put it on a steak.
It's good for everything.
It's like extra salty butter with lemon in it.
And boy, is it ever good.
So to me, still, I continue to say if I ever become successful, it's not looking great right now.
But if it ever does happen, gravy.
Never know, Merlin.
Never know.
Life is long, although not very long.
Well, I don't do yoga.
And if I did, I'd do it like a gentleman with some fucking clothes on.
So you're saying like a four nipple gravy pound.
Yeah, four apertures.
It might come from above.
It might be like on hoses, like an oil change place where you pull it down and just splurp it right on.
The white one's a no-brainer.
Boy, I'll tell you, you ever have Whataburger?
You've had Whataburger probably, right?
Oh, for sure.
You've got to order off the menu at Whataburger.
Well, what a burger also, they do great breakfast.
They got taquitos, and they got a really good sausage gravy.
So something like I think I'm going to go with sausage.
I'm going to go with brown.
I'm going to go with juice.
Anything I'm missing?
See, I'm not thinking not a tomato sauce.
Tomato sauce, that's a day-to-day sauce for me.
It's not like a big deal.
It's not a thing that you want in a tube.
It's not something where I would not find myself as I'm walking to the table putting tomato sauce on things.
I would put sausage gravy on virtually everything.
Well, you know what I'm going to say?
I'm going to say cheese sauce.
Oh.
Where's your cheese sauce?
Cheese sauce would be nice.
And that would also just be nice through the evening when you're enjoying some TV with your family.
You just go get a little bowl of cheese sauce.
Well, and so here's the thing about cheese sauce, right?
You want cheese sauce for your nachos.
Yeah.
But you don't want to have two cheese sauces, but you also have to have a non-nacho cheese sauce for your Welsh rare bit.
Well, what kind of gravy is that?
Well, it's like a... Welsh rarebit's like cheese toast, right?
Yeah, it's like a sharp cheddar cheese sauce.
Oh, God, that sounds good.
Right?
And, you know, of course, the meal that we make, my special family meal, is a version of Welsh rarebit.
It's like biscuits with ham...
And then a fried egg and then cheese sauce.
Oh, boy, I would enjoy that.
It's insane.
And, you know, you can put some thick ham on there.
You can put some thin ham.
I think the Windjammer has created unrealistic expectations.
So you got your four sauces.
You got your white gravy, your brown gravy, your au jus, and your what was the fourth one?
Cheese.
Well, was cheese going to be a fourth?
No, for me... See, I'm on the bubble.
I'm on the bubble.
The white and the brown, I would introduce into almost every meal.
The butter sauce, maybe?
Oh, butter sauce.
That's right.
That's right.
So, for me, I think I would take the butter sauce out.
I'd put a cheese sauce in there, but it would be a tough... It would have to be a non...
jalapeno flavored cheese sauce, and then I would just add the jalapeno flavor.
Like a nice cheese sauce, not like some kind of industrial cheese.
No, no, no, no.
Not a Velveeta cheese, but a cheese sauce that's very hard to keep from separating.
Yeah, and I mean, I'm just imagining it.
You know, maybe like when you work in a bar, and you got the little spritzer, you know, for Coke and soda.
Yeah.
Tell me, is there a meal, is there a plate that you think does not want a sauce?
No, every meal could be improved with some kind of a sauce.
In fact, it could make the meal.
I mean, you take some very simple meals, the kinds of meals we're talking about.
Noodles, try that with some brown gravy on it.
So good.
You know what I'm saying?
So good.
When I was in college...
I would get two boil-in-a-bag Salisbury steaks, which were, what, 50 cents at the time?
Mm-hmm.
50 cents a piece, two Stouffer's boil-in-a-bag Salisbury steaks.
I'd make a huge pot of noodles and just throw the Salisbury steaks and gravy in the pot.
in the pot of noodles.
That sounds so good right now.
It's insane.
It's insanely good.
And for, for less than $2, I could feed an army of one myself.
I think I'd still, yeah, I'd still want to keep chili special.
I don't think I'd want, you know, I guess you could get pumped chili.
It's something that's, it's a technology that's out there.
No, no, no, that's a different thing.
No, I think you should keep it nice.
I think you should, you should have some, some nice canned chili.
That's easy enough to do.
And you wouldn't, chili is not a thing that you would, well, you put the cheese.
I don't think of chili as a sauce.
Yeah.
Chili is the special guest at dinner.
It's going to be good with anybody, but it is the center of the event for me.
Right, right.
Yeah, and for me too.
Sometimes I make a hot dog and put chili on it, but the focus is on the chili.
The hot dog is just like a topping except it's underneath.
That's so true.
Right?
Yeah.
And so I'm trying to think of a single thing that I would want that I wouldn't augment with one of those four sauces.
I think you could put some sauces on other gravies.
I think if you had pretty good mashed potatoes, buttered mashed potatoes with brown gravy, you put a little bit of sausage gravy on top of that.
See, I do this all the time.
I get a plate of food that already has a gravy or a sauce, and then I put a second sauce on it.
I did it last night.
I want to go on the cruise again.
I did it last night.
I was in a Thai restaurant, and I ordered a swimming Rama.
But in this restaurant, for whatever reason, they called it showering Rama.
And I was like, I want a Rama to swim.
I don't want a Rama in a shower.
That's not an image I want.
But anyway, so I ordered it, and I used their own nomenclature.
I didn't do the thing where I was like, oh, yeah, can I get a bathing Rama?
Oh, you didn't Thai explain?
No.
And I just said, I would like showering Rama, please.
And then I got a panang, and I mixed the sauces.
Oh, brother.
Put a little bit of the panang.
You let them touch in the middle, and then you're having a peanut panang party.
Yes.
Gravies.
Man, kind of low energy.
Low energy today.
Are you feeling a little bit... I'm feeling kind of low energy.
You feel like you want to be on a cruise, don't you?
Oh, my God.
That fucking gravy.
Every meal, you just go there and there's gravy.
Those little fried eggs.
At first, I was resistant to the little fried eggs.
To just grab a fried egg.
You don't know who fried it.
They felt kind of mass-produced, which kind of put me off at first.
And eventually, I was like, wow, these are totally mass-produced.
I can just have a little over-medium egg anytime.
Isn't that incredible?
Just go and get one.
And that's, I mean, when I go to the grocery store and I see those hard-boiled eggs in a bag.
I just discovered these.
I went to my friend, the place I went in Portland.
They go to Costco, and they buy a big thing of boiled eggs in bags, and they just eat them.
Yeah, and I was very suspicious of that.
I was like, that's not a thing.
I was like, there's no way that's ever actually been fresh.
That looks like it's got to be old and gross.
And I had like five of them.
You don't even have to peel them.
You're just eating eggs.
Yeah, they're just there, and you can make a chopped salad.
Oh, I got to get that.
I got to get that.
Man, maybe if I just kept a little bit of gravy on a low heat all day long, you know, a little bit of sausage gravy all day long.
How do you think the rest of your family would feel about that?
I mean, the house would smell amazing.
I think they wouldn't say anything for a couple of days.
Did you mean to leave that on?
Shut up.
It just keeps getting better.
It tastes better on day three.
It's a reduction.
It's a reduction.
Alright, that's it.