Ep. 217: "Dick…AND!"
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Hello.
Hi, John.
Hi, Merlin.
How's it going?
Oh, good.
Good.
Good.
Happy Monday.
Thank you.
Happy Mondays.
Yeah.
Are you good?
Yes.
Yes.
Have there been any exciting new Apple events?
Well, I'm reporting live from the floor here at the major Apple event.
Yes.
We have updated the terms of service.
Yes, I've seen it.
It's amazing.
It's amazing.
Did you agree?
What choice do I have?
Whoa.
You okay?
I just agreed.
And you wouldn't believe what happened.
No.
You have to be a millennium to understand this breakup story.
You have to be a 90s kid to know how to use iOS 10. iOS 10 is neat.
I'm going to send you some stickers.
Listen, I haven't upgraded yet.
Oh.
And I keep hearing about it.
Oh, it was problematic?
No, no, no, no, no.
The opposite.
Oh, it's amazing.
I'm like, and somebody says, oh, sorry, I was just watching my phone tell me my own future.
And I was like, well, how does it do that?
Yeah, you're probably getting messages from people that say sent with lasers.
Are you getting that?
Or sent with confetti?
No, I haven't gotten that yet.
I'm talking about IRL.
I'm talking about I'm walking down the street with people IRL.
Lerp-a-derp-ing on the phone, and it's like, you're even lerp-a-derp-ing more than you normally do.
It's fun.
It's really fun.
Now, let me ask you this.
Is the resolution higher?
Did they increase the resolution from 1,028 pps to 400,000?
Well, once you get the update, you'll see it's about 1,029 pps.
Yeah, you want to get as many pps as you can on screen.
That's why it's waterproof.
It's a lot of fun.
There's a lot of neat stuff.
This is, except for you, who seems like poison with electronics, it's a fantastic, very solid update.
That's sweet.
Yeah, the stickers are fun.
There's lots of stickers.
And then there's an app you can get where you can remember your favorite animated GIFs and easily add them from any of your devices.
Really?
You can add GIFs?
Mm-hmm.
You just click.
That's all you gotta do.
Click a GIF.
Yeah, well, you know... I've always... Listen, this is a dirty secret.
I've always been confused by how to make and save and store GIFs.
Yes.
Well, the Photos app does not handle them well or consistently.
Right.
But I don't even know how to begin.
I've tried to save some, and then it saves it as like 4,000 pictures.
No, that's no good.
You don't want that.
But I can never get it to play again.
Have you tried rewriting the encryption?
I mean...
You know, it's weird because sometimes, you know, I'll just copy and paste a link and sometimes it works and sometimes it goes to a page and sometimes.
But, you know, start off easy.
Start off easy.
Easy.
That's what I've got to start off.
Do you back your phone up, John?
I should probably ask this off air.
Do you back your phone up?
Do you mean do I back that phone up?
Do you back that up?
Is that a hip-hop song?
I think it is a reference to an idea.
Back that phone up.
It's part of a hip-hop cosmology.
Get a little plug or get a little iCloud.
Back that phone up.
Have you ever had someone back an ass up to you?
Oh, I was at a bachelor party one time that I'd love to forget.
Yeah.
Now that you've even said those words, I want to forget it.
Yeah.
I still think about it once a month and I shudder at what I did.
I did terrible things at that and I didn't enjoy it.
Oh, no.
Spent a little more than I should.
It wasn't fun.
We've been in a strip club together, right?
Yes.
You know it's not my thing.
I know it isn't.
I think I am probably the greatest.
I'm the one that should have dollars put into his underpants because it's quite a show to watch how manifestly uncomfortable I am, and I can't even begin to hide it.
If I can recall correctly, you sit with your knees together, pressed together, with a briefcase on your lap.
Really?
And I don't mean like flat on your lap.
I mean standing up.
You like popcorn?
Yeah, with your hands on the lock.
Yeah.
Just waiting for the – looking through the gloom for an exit sign.
Yeah.
It's a lot like my posture from my early days of going to amateur improv shows where I just kind of – I have this rictus of a smile on my face as I gently rock back and forth.
Yeah.
All right.
I'm going to need something you find in a bathroom and pizza topping.
I'm smiling uncomfortably now, too.
Oh, my God.
You know, dick jokes are funny.
Just do dick jokes.
But don't try to make that improv.
Poop, poop, dick, poop, pooping dick.
Dick and.
Tell me this.
Yes, you there.
Do you?
Do you remember your dreams?
Yes.
You do?
Yes.
You wake up in the morning and you remember your dreams.
I can remember my dream from last night.
And you remember it clearly?
Parts of it.
There's an entire episode of the show I do with John Syracuse about this because he is utterly perplexed by why anybody would want to remember and record the, as he calls it, brain garbage that is dreams.
Yeah.
I'm intrigued by dreams.
I don't find them meaningful, but I'm intrigued by them.
Like, for example, last night I was eating fast food and I had made friends with a comically large fuzzy bear.
And the bear walked in front of the restaurant I was in and waved to me and had the voice of Leslie Jones.
So that's a nice feeling for me.
I like Leslie Jones.
Wouldn't you be pals with a big grizzly bear that talk like Leslie Jones?
I am.
I already am.
I know that bear.
Yeah.
But that's wonderful.
And do your dreams fade throughout the day?
So by the end of the day, you're kind of like, ah, that was a bear.
Talk like Leslie Jones.
But early on, are you genuinely curious about this?
I'll tell you a little bit.
I'm fucking really curious.
Okay, yes.
Well, what happens is I will have dreams, sometimes very intense dreams for what feels like a long time, and then I wake up and I've made a practice of trying to go back into the dream, and I have a methodology that I use for that.
But to answer your question specifically, yes, it does fade through the day, but...
A la the phenomenon of primacy and recency.
I'm not sure.
I remember dreams from the night before as I'm going to sleep sometimes.
Oh, you know what I mean?
Not primacy and recency.
What it's called, locus and locus parenti.
It's when you're able to remember a dream.
But no, they mostly fade.
Sometimes I write them down and they're very, very silly.
How successful have you been in pursuing a lucid dreaming strategy?
You see, not very.
We should talk to our friend Grant about this, because I think Grant made quite a study of this at one time and knows lots about it.
You're talking about Grant Balfour of the South African Balfour.
The South African Germanic tribe.
And I have been very—actually, I hate to admit it, because, you know, I don't know, it feels like we're getting into Morgelon territory a little bit.
Morgelon.
Yeah, but I—yeah, I'm very interested in that idea.
Yeah.
Because probably it's, I mean, I accept the idea that what we call a dream, I described this to my daughter, and I was trying to describe what I mean by brain garbage, which is that your mind, I don't say brain, is doing lots of filing and lots of figuring out.
If you're sleeping enough, stuff is happening.
And the thing is, it's not garbage in the sense that it takes useless images, but it is a fairly weird, as I understand it, a fairly weird thing.
random synaptic mishmash.
Like, why did I suddenly think of this person that I met one time in 1982 in a dream?
It's brain garbage.
I'm fascinated by it.
Did you ever work in a job where you filed things?
Yes.
Right.
You were good at this.
You could always find the Maisie Glotz file.
Yeah, I could get right to the Maisie Glotz file.
Well, I just think of it as like files, files, files on, you know, it's files all the way down.
I find it, there's certain kinds of things.
I think this is one way in which you and I are probably more alike than different.
There are certain kinds of what other people consider mindless tasks that I really enjoy.
I enjoy sorting Legos.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, fuck.
Just when you just said that, I realized that there's an emptiness in me.
How will we sort them?
Will we sort them by size?
Will we sort them by color?
Will we sort them by kit?
Will we sort them by how often they're used?
Don't sort them by kit.
That's lame.
I know.
But I mean, will we take the little things that could be used as lights or flowers and put them into this little tackle box that I bought for this purpose?
I don't have a bin.
I don't have a bin of Legos right now, so I don't have a tackle box.
As you know, I have several, several tackle box style boxes full of political pins and other things that probably many of our friends would consider garbage.
Are these your cigar box type system?
Well, except I have larger boxes, bigger than cigar boxes, that are not meant for like tied flies exactly, but they're a cut different from like somebody's little wooden wall decoration where they keep all their thimbles.
Oh, I know what you're talking about.
Like a box, like one of those wall boxes.
What do you call that?
There's a name for that.
Yeah, some kind of display.
A memento mori.
Yeah, those were very popular.
A menagerie.
They're a little menagerie.
When we were kids, those were very popular.
We had some friends that had one for their late lamented dog and had a photo and his favorite chew toy, and that was on their wall.
Yeah, and the thimble, you remember in the 70s, people displayed their thimbles or their, you know, the little.
Spoons.
Spoons, right, or the bells that you would get in truck stops for different states.
And you'd need a box for that stuff.
Well, this, my collections, if you'll allow me.
Please.
but in a similar like structure, but it has a glass lid.
So you can see the stuff, but it's under glass and I don't mount them on the wall.
I keep them stacked.
Kind of like a modified little map rack, but miniature.
I like the sound of that.
Full of pins.
But I don't have... I have not solved the Legos conundrum.
Because Legos are a thing, obviously, to me, as they are to you and to everyone.
And I desperately want Legos in my life again.
I think probably 70% of the reason I was excited about having a kid was that I could get Legos back in my life.
You get trains and Legos.
Trains and Legos.
Mm-hmm.
But when I go to the store to shop for Legos, when I go to the Lego store to shop for Legos, when I make pilgrimages to Lego places, I become so confused and baffled and dismayed by what I find at Lego stores, by which I mean they are fucking shit-tastic expensive,
Yeah.
It is – they're entirely built around kit.
There's a whole like brand and marketing thing.
Like I don't want to build an Eiffel Tower.
I want a box of Legos.
Yeah.
And then you can go to those places where they have the Legos independently in bins –
They're like $14 a piece.
They're incredibly costly.
And so I don't know where to begin.
I wander around the Lego store for like two and a half hours.
I pull things down.
I'm like, if I took this Lego Princess Castle apart, can you make other things with them?
And then I leave empty-handed.
I've gone online and I've said, sell me your 1979 washtub full of Legos, which is what I'm imagining.
But I've never pulled the trigger on one of those.
Are you looking more – first of all, if you'll permit me, I will gift you with something today.
I will send it to you through the Amazon because I'd like to do that for you.
Are you interested in just a whole bunch of classic like eight-nubbin Legos, that kind of thing?
You want classic bricks.
You're not looking for a lot of flibbity-jibbity.
That's correct.
Okay.
What I was looking at right here that's a good one is the Lego Classic Large Creative Brick Box.
This is 790 pieces.
Oh, that seems like a lot.
It comes with a lot of standard old-style bricks, many different colors.
It comes with wheels.
It comes with screens.
It comes with windows and doors.
You can make houses.
That's nice.
But it's just a big-ass box shaped like a Lego.
Oh.
That has 790 pieces in it.
Okay.
I'd like to gift you that to start, and I'd like to gift you with the classic sand base plate on which you can build these things.
Sand base?
Oh, so it's sand colored.
Yeah, you can get the big green one, too.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But you know what also is neat?
Did your daughter get into Duplo at all?
Well, we did get into Duplo and we built things out of Duplo, several princess castles, as you can imagine.
Yeah, yeah.
She likes to build rooms and bedrooms and kitchens and garages and bridges.
But the Duplos just didn't have the precision.
Yeah.
Well, they're for little hands.
Yeah.
And then people started giving her Lego gifts.
But they were like, here's a cool motorcycle mama.
She's got a dirt bike.
And this is a little, it's like a little diorama, right?
There's a palm tree.
There's a tent where she's spending the night.
There's her motorcycle.
And then there are 50 tiny, tiny little chocable cars.
chocable upon little things like here's her little here's her little matchbook and here's her little you know like her magnifying glass sounds like the franchise called friends which is seems super lame but has some of the best weirdo pieces ever
But, you know, all I was going to say about Duplo was the cool thing, because they're Lego and they're awesome, the Duplo and with accommodating size pieces with bricks, you can use your Duplo and your Lego together.
No.
So if in our case, we've got a butt ton of big bricks.
So if you want to have the base of your castle, like your wall, your fortification, you could make that out of Duplos.
And then you could sexy it up with, you know, turrets.
Come on.
This is crazy talk.
Yeah.
I thought the same thing.
It occurred to me one day, this is Lego.
I should see if this works.
Now, it doesn't work for all of them.
It's got to be the same size and everything.
But they do work together.
It's kind of brilliant.
So are you still at a five-digit address starting with one?
Yes.
Okay.
I'm going to send you right now.
It'll be delivered today.
You're going to get the classic large creative brick box, 10698, the classic sand base plate, and the classic green base plate supplement.
May I do that?
I mean, that's wonderful.
It's wonderfully thoughtful of you to do this, to try and solve my Lego connection.
I'm not trying to solve anything.
I just want you to have Legos.
Because, you know, here's the thing.
Okay, it's ordered.
Here's the thing.
It depends.
It's a Sisyphean task, like all things involving parenting.
Well, unlike everything I do, I use the word Sisyphean 15 times a day to describe something I just did.
Right, right.
And it just keeps rolling back down.
Sisyphe, Sisyphe, Sisyphe.
Sisyphe's all the way down.
Every day.
I mean, so I should say, I should say my way of disclaimer.
Our entire house was professionally cleaned on Friday.
Our entire living room table is currently covered with Lego.
It was professionally cleaned in order to make a clean agar base.
Because you know what a kid loves to mess up more than anything?
A professionally cleaned room.
That's right.
Perfectly professionally cleaned room.
I want to get to the Sisyphus, but here's the thing.
It depends on – I've said this before.
As you know, I'm a productivity guru, a retired productivity guru.
I think a big part of success in one's career is to figure out –
What about one's occupation is necessarily hard?
Because that is the reason, as they say, you get the big bucks.
Because this part of it is necessarily difficult, and there's a reason that not everybody can or will do it.
Some people are really good at fixing automobiles, and other people write excellent pop songs.
or what have you, then you have to figure out the part of your job that is not necessarily difficult, but you find it to be difficult.
And can you improve that?
And the part of success is figuring out how much you can tolerate the stuff that's difficult, but not making your job good.
How much of the stuff is difficult that you can fix.
You see where I'm going with this.
So this goes for parenting too.
So if you just happen to be a person who likes sorting Legos, but don't mind that it won't matter in 10 minutes that they were organized,
You're good to go.
The problem is if you think that the flower and light nubbins should always stay in this drawer and you think, you know what I'm saying?
Pretty soon you're like the guy in the Lego movie and you're putting the craggle over everything.
Right.
And then this guy over here.
You got this.
I cannot tolerate racism.
I have evolved in the course of time.
Yeah, because of evolutionary biology, John?
I have personally evolved into a different species because of evolution, right?
I have naturally selected within myself.
Oh, you're talking about that, the hidden arm that causes evolution.
You've been the arm and the armed upon.
I think it's the will itself.
of something that wants to evolve in its next generation, that wills that evolution to happen, right?
That wills the natural selection to take place in a certain way by virtue of choosing.
Interesting.
Yeah.
And so something like a lobster hasn't evolved to that yet.
Well, a lobster is just a mosquito that evolved into a lobster, right?
The first mosquito- It's like a tasty sea roach.
Well, it sort of, you know, something, some bug, let's call it, landed on the water and was like, nice.
And then said, in the future, I hope my kids can swim.
Huh.
And then those kids were swimmers.
Okay.
Oh, you want better for your kids.
Yeah.
And then the swimmer kids were like, what's on the bottom?
Mm-hmm.
One day, I hope that my kids can swim to the bottom.
And then they did.
Their kids did.
You know what?
I'm tired of having the short life of my progenitors.
I would like my kids to live longer than me, maybe upwards of 100 years.
Well, somewhere along the line, some mosquito, I don't know whether it was intentional, whether they just went to the bottom because they were looking for pearls and then realized that the cold water kept them alive longer.
Okay.
Or whether on the surface, the proto-mosquito, proto-lobster, I'm sorry.
Yes.
Post-Skeeter proto-lobster said, I want to live longer.
I know that cold produces longer life.
Oh.
I sense it.
I'm going down.
You get what I'm saying?
I'm going down.
One ping only.
I am broadcasting to you from California.
What?
I have now established my mobile podcasting rig.
You sound great.
Are you plugged in?
Oh, so plugged in.
I'm plugged into the whole... Fuck me gently.
You sound so much better this way.
And it all...
fits into a small bag.
Into a small bag.
My entire podcasting operation now fits into my shoulder bag, which goes in the overhead compartment in an airplane.
Does this include your fancy podcasting mic?
The whole thing.
Hmm, hmm.
Everything.
It all goes into a couple bags.
One of the bags, actually, that goes in the small bag, because the bag, the small bag is very small, but one of the inner bags, which is smaller, is an old padded laptop bag that you gave me one time.
Back in the day when laptops needed to be ensconced in their own special bags.
Yes.
That you needed to take out of the bag and then take the laptop out of that bag.
Is it that SF bags, that Wakefield, is it like a foamy Velcro bag?
Yeah, it's kind of foamy, but it's not Velcro.
I think it was one of your earliest ones.
Oh, sure.
A bag that you used when your laptop was as thick as a paperback book.
Like a Russian paperback book.
Yeah, that's right, like a Russian book, a trade paper bag from Russia in 1890.
Estravia.
And that bag actually does not, it contains the microphone and the headphones, which are in a separate small bag.
It all goes into that small bag, which goes into the small bag.
I love a bag and a bag.
It's a bag and a bag and a bag.
go ahead and say it bags all the way down so here i am and i'm in california and it's all but you know the number of um the number of opportunities to feel like sisyphus in california uh it's exponentially more opportunities because there are all these people in california that i have to correct because they're
profoundly doing it wrong.
Yeah.
And, uh, and then are you, are you, I'm just guessing in the Los Angeles area?
I am in Los Angeles area.
Oh brother.
But what they say must be, you must be exhausted, John all day long.
Just what, just what you see, you go outside to get a newspaper, pick up a coffee, the kind of stuff that you're going to see people walking around and acting like that is normal or acceptable behavior.
It's insane.
You could, if you tied a copper wire, uh,
around the top of the first man bun you saw and then as you walked you're spooling i'm talking a very thin copper wire as you're walking every time you saw a bun on a man or a woman a top bun i'm talking about not a back bun sure you wrapped the copper wire one more time around the next bun you saw and then you let those people keep going you're spooling wire
wrap it around every button you see for an hour, and you're kind of trying to make somewhat of a loop.
You run back into the first person,
You wrap that copper wire around their bun one more time, you've made a Tesla coil.
You know, Tesla was on my mind as you were saying that.
That's like Tesla's dream right there.
Right.
And it's happening in LA right now.
All that energy, it's tears and rain.
It's not going anywhere.
No one's harnessing the energy of the man bun circle.
And there are so many man bun circles of different things that people could be taking advantage of here and they're not.
so many I mean obviously I've made a big I've made a big to do about how California coffee culture drives me crazy but
There are so many other things to be insane about down here that I can't even worry about the coffee people.
I went to a Whole Foods in California last night.
Very, very interesting experience.
There was a lot more shouting.
Everyone's angry.
My experience at Whole Foods is that everybody is very angry and impatient.
yeah impatient angry there were some people walking around seemed to just be shouting which just seems normal but then there were other people that were shouting at others it was just a very tense situation i was like hey man we're all rich this is water buddy yeah just chill chill chill the fuck out you're paying 14.99 a pound for salad bar i put on my kale just like everybody else why are you upset
Yeah.
Nothing to be upset about.
They got a hot bar.
You can go there.
They'll just, they'll just sell you macaroni and cheese in a box and you take it home.
How, how, how can you be mad about that?
How could you be mad about that?
Jesus Christ.
You paid $25 for macaroni and cheese.
Have you ever done that?
You ever buy a hot bar?
Um, brother, that'll put a dent in your wall.
You get two nice slabs of meatloaf and some macaroni.
That's like 60 bucks.
Yeah.
You know, back in the touring days, Mike Squires used to – he went through a phase where he decided on tour he was only going to eat food that was from the hot case in gas stations.
So we would drive and we'd pull into a gas station.
That's such a bad idea.
Well, this was – it was Mike's – Is it just a thought experiment?
Yeah.
It was during Mike's period of like how much self-hate can I put into a basket?
In my mouth.
And so we'd pull into a gas station and it's like, you know, everybody jumps out.
You're going to go get a bottle of water or you're going to go into the bathroom, pee, get a coffee or whatever.
But you could get like, what's that awesome one the New York Times wrote about?
You could go get cheddar and sour cream ruffles, which I've discovered are possibly the greatest food in the world.
I am barfing at the thought of cheddar sour cream ruffles.
But no, he would go in.
But there are known things you can get.
You do not need to explore the spinny meats.
So obviously JoJo's everywhere.
JoJo's are what tie hot cases together.
And then you've got your.
The community of JoJo's.
It's just like everywhere and every JoJo's different.
Don't think that JoJo's are the same.
Not all JoJo's.
Not all JoJo's.
And then you've got your little like enchiladas or whatever.
They're not quite, it's not clear what, what are they?
They're taquitos.
For legal reasons, they have to call them like enchiladas.
Yeah.
So there's them.
And then there's egg rolls sometimes.
Yeah.
Right.
Cause it all goes in a hot case and you've got your fried chicken.
Sometimes you'll have just a, like a German sausage and
And then all the things that get put into like a bread, like a deep fried bun, right?
Sausage, deep fried sausage.
Yeah.
And then the little hot wrapped sandwiches in tinfoil, chicken sandwich, sausage sandwich.
Try and say sausage sandwich five times fast.
Sausage sandwich.
Sausage sandwich.
Sausage sandwich.
It's making me hungry just saying it.
Sausage.
And so Squires lived on Hot Case for a while.
And it was like, remember?
And none of the rest of us supported it at all.
It was just like, stop doing this.
It was like that McDonald's.
guy who ate at mcdonald's every day for a year except it happened way way faster his all the color went out of his face except for like red blotches oh and he both gained weight and also lost definition oh god right he was he was transforming before our eyes he became a schmoo he did it was
a shmoo.
Tell me what he was.
I don't think, see, you know, one thing that we, I think we talked about this when we were having our weird Chinese lunch, but I had this impression that, especially when it comes to Asian foods that are served in America, a lot of the stuff that gets served is, first of all, yeah, heavily Americanized to our palates and tastes, but also it's the kind of food that you would eat every five years at a wedding on like a tiny plate.
That you would not have all you can eat anything of what gets served at those kinds of places.
Yeah, we did talk about that.
My girlfriend who lived in China, who was a vegetarian, and she would go to these meals...
And they would serve like a big platter of meat parts or whatever.
And she would say, do you have any just like vegetables and rice?
It's kind of what I would prefer.
And they're like, what?
We would never serve an honored guest the food that we eat every day.
It's like asking to sleep on the dog bed.
Yeah.
She's like, no, that's what I want.
Just the food that you normally eat.
And they're like, ha ha, fat chance, American tourist.
Yeah.
You're going to get our once a year meal.
Yeah.
And then you go to, I went to my favorite, not favorite, let's not call it favorite.
Every Christmas Eve for the last
dozen years, my mom and I made a plan, made a, made a pact a long time ago that we weren't going to play Christmas anymore.
Oh God, I love your family.
And we went to House of Hong.
My mom and I would go to House of Hong and then we would go to the movies, like 10 o'clock movie or something on Christmas Eve.
House of Hong, we'd get some almond fried chicken or whatever you do and then go to the movies.
And you go to House of Hong on Christmas Eve, you see all your Jewish friends there.
Everybody in Seattle that wasn't celebrating Christmas is in Chinatown.
So it's a pretty fun time.
And House of Hong was the reliably bad Chinese restaurant.
I know exactly what you mean.
Yeah, you wouldn't take your friends there if they were coming in from out of town.
It's not a thing you go to on a regular.
It's just like, we want almond fried chicken at 8.30 PM on Christmas Eve.
There's no other place to go.
We went to House of Hong the other night because it was my birthday and my sister wanted to take me to House of Hong.
And we went and it has changed hands.
And everything about it is different.
And like the old menu had 400 things on it.
And the new menu has 40 things on it.
And they came and they were all no good.
Isn't that disappointing?
I mean, it was meant to be no good.
You end up marking the passage of time by the little things that go away like that.
Do you remember House of Hong?
Remember all the Christmases we spent there?
I was talking about this just this week where there's all these restaurants that we used to go to on a regular basis that are just gone.
It's such a tiny thing, but it's still like, oh man, I miss the Hofbrau.
Yeah, sure.
I miss.
Oh, you know, the little, you know, the little man's gone.
I told you that.
No.
Yeah.
So the dim sum's gone.
Well, we, we, we walked by there and saw that happening.
Yeah.
Now it's, now it's like Asian bread.
Yeah.
We saw that go down and we were like, Hey, I think we, I think we actually walked in and said, Hey, we did.
I forgot about, you know what?
We were high on house trotter.
Yeah.
What happened to the little man?
What happened to the little man?
They were like, what happened to the cats in the kitchen?
Times change.
Cats in the kitchen, silver spoon.
This is an Asian bistro now.
We wash our hands.
Have a nice day.
Gross.
Yeah, I miss Tori's Egg Cetera.
Tori's Egg Cetera hasn't been around for 25 years.
I still miss it.
Brutal.
Torrey's, etc.
was the place that every single hipster in Seattle had breakfast on Saturday and Sunday mornings.
There were very few hipsters then, so they could all fit in one restaurant.
Oh, that's convenient.
But I had that experience one time of walking down the street, somebody that I vaguely knew bumped into me and said, hey, come have breakfast with me at Torrey's, etc.
And I was like, oh, sure.
Didn't really know the person, but had good feelings about them.
Went in, and they were meeting two friends, both of whom were very charming, pretty young girls.
I was a young man at the time.
We sat down at the table, and I just had one of those magic mornings.
I was hungover, so I had that halo of magic that can sometimes be upon a person when they're hungover.
It's like a little special extra drink because you get a certain kind of Deportment toward the world that can be that can be kind of nice can be kind of relaxing Exactly kind of dials you down a little bit and this was one of those mornings It was just like that that time when you walk into a bar and your pool game is just on top and you're just school and everybody in pool and you're chill about it and so everybody in the bar
is just loving you by the end of the night because you can't miss.
But you got nothing invested in it because you're like, I've never seen this before.
But you don't give your secret away either.
You're just like, hmm, want to play another game?
Pow, pow, pow.
It only lasts, the spell is very brief.
It just lasts for one night.
But this was one of those mornings where I sat at this table and I just, I actually charmed the clothes off of all three of these people in the restaurant.
J.J.
Eggington's?
What's it called?
It was Torrey's Egg Cetera.
Okay.
All right.
And by the end, it was clear that I could take these three people anywhere and have them do anything.
And instead, I stood up
at the end of a lovely meal and said, this has been lovely.
Toodaloo.
And they said, wait, wait, don't go.
And I was like, I must ado.
I must anon.
And waltzed away.
And I've always thought back.
to how my life would have gone differently if i had just either taken them sliding doors or gone with them yes and instead it was just like this has been perfect i do not want you to know that i'm not this perfect all the time right and so before i say the dumb thing that i surely am about to say before i ruin this before my hangover wears off
and all of a sudden I'm talking to you about World War I, I'm going to float off, and you will always, hopefully,
Look at the drinking fountain and remember me.
Oh, I still do that.
You still remember my friend Eric Spurlock?
Oh, yeah.
I'm going to start doing that to other people because it totally works.
Yeah, it does.
It's crazy.
Oh, my goodness.
But you're like your Ultraman, except they can't see your blinking chest.
You know the clock is running.
You got to go because maybe it's a little bit George Costanza, but you know that's it.
You've done the best you can.
It's all going to be downhill from here.
Get out.
Yeah, that's right.
Anything – if I keep talking –
I'm gonna lose my cool, right?
If I keep talking, eventually you're gonna look up at the cool barometer and the winds will have changed.
And a depression will have moved in.
And you're like, whoa, my joints hurt all of a sudden.
And it's because this guy that I thought was amazing has been talking about the Battle of the Somme for 45 minutes.
And the thing that a lot of civilians might not understand, if you've never been charming in a restaurant, is that once you've set that high bar, it's extremely disappointing to people.
When you fall off of that, because then they actually hate you.
It isn't that they go back to a neutral feeling.
They really hate you after that.
I think I'm pretty sure I've told you the story, but the time, another charm night where I was walking along with some friends and for some reason I was in a suit.
My friends weren't.
And there was a pizza parlor that was also an art gallery and it was closed, but the lights were on and music was playing.
and we walked by and sort of just walked in waltzed in and there were a half a dozen girls in there who worked at the pizza parlor who were just kind of like playing some music having a you know wiping down tables or whatever and we came in and
And they said, we're closed.
And we were like, yeah, we know.
We just heard the music and thought we'd pop in.
And they were like, oh.
And somehow, right away, we were all dancing.
Wow.
This is like a 90s film.
Yeah.
It was like an instant dance party.
And we're dancing.
And the girls are dancing.
And we're dancing.
And it was some music that I would never, ever, ever have danced to.
It was like Moby or something.
And one of the girls is someone that I had seen for years and been intrigued by in the neighborhood.
Oh, come on.
Really?
Yeah.
Yeah.
She played bass in a band.
She had her hair.
Her hair was like wild and tangled and teased up kind of, but not teased up, uh,
It teased up in a way that gave the impression that she never combed it, not that she had ever worked on it for a second.
Oh, man.
She looked like Lori Petty, except with big hair.
Chimney.
And we're dancing and dancing and like I'm in a suit, like a pinstripe suit, but I've got like crazy dance moves.
I'm backing that ass up right and left.
and the music's loud and my friends are doing it my friends are into it too and my friends are you know my friends normally are like we can all agree on cheese or whatever they're not like dance this spontaneous dance party with some girls that work at the punk rock pizza place so the whole thing's going like what is happening nobody can nobody in the room knows what the hell is happening and the and the girl the amazing girl
is now dancing where she's like she's uh dancing with me right she separated me from the herd a little bit oh man and she's like cleared out the space around us so we're not it's not just like seven people dancing with each other it's like now we're dancing and at a certain point and i'm just like dancing and she's dancing and she leans in and she goes who are you
and are you ready are you ready for this yeah are you comfortable i mean like up till now this is this is unheard of everything everything's coming up roderick so she says she says who are you like whispers over the loud music in over my in my ear who are you and i go
like sort of like super chill face.
I shrug and go about, I'm about to say,
I don't know myself.
I don't know myself who I am.
And she steps back, waiting for the answer to her question.
She sees me prepare to say, I don't even know.
Who am I?
and she and her face falls oh god and before I say it she goes she mouths to me like with a super contemptuous face like oh I don't even know right that's your that's your dude bro answer or that's your like and
I was just like dead to rights, right?
I mean, my pants basically fell to the floor.
The spell was broken.
The magic just fell off the suit.
Yeah, because she... You paused.
You fucked up because you paused.
She looked at me and was like... And in pausing, she could easily suss out of all the array of things that you could say.
You were going to say something really dumb and she figured it out before you even said it.
Yeah, and she could see as that corny reply formed on my lips that I was not the person that she thought I was.
then you turn back into a pumpkin yeah i waltzed into this pizza parlor started a dance party in a three-piece suit was an excellent dancer and like a and just like a fucking sorcerer but in my corn in that in in that one little moment of possible corn right and the answer to that question is hi i'm john
Right?
That's the answer.
The answer is not anything corny.
You don't have to say, I'm the wizard from the north.
You just say, hey, I'm John.
You could have just said, I'm John.
I am in my corn.
I'm John.
What's your name?
That would have been fine.
Shit, we'd be married now.
We'd be married.
We'd be living on a fucking dirigible.
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We'd be known around the world.
Her hair would still be wild, but like turning a little gray.
Yeah, it's fucking tank girl.
And they're having a dance party, a pizza parlor dance party on a dirigible around the world.
She looks like Bride of Frankenstein now.
Oh, God.
I'm so intrigued.
Yeah.
But in that moment, what it was was my insecurity was revealed.
That this was a night where I was playing a super cool game of pool.
But I didn't actually – I was not actually that cool because I was corny.
And ugh.
Ugh.
It's like me at the bachelor party.
Now you got to think about that.
Yeah.
Well, yeah.
Well, shit.
That happened – I mean I was still drinking, right?
That happened in –
Oh, and you still remember it.
Isn't that part of your curse?
Isn't that part of your Sisyphean curse is you have a pretty good memory for even stuff you did when you were pretty drunk?
When I was drinking, I never blacked out.
I never blacked out and I very seldom vomited.
I, that was part of the part of, you know, every, every alcoholic is different.
Right.
And I was one of those, I was a battleship.
You could put all the booze in me and I would just keep like, I was a, I was a D nine Caterpillar.
Like I would just, and never black out, never forget a thing.
So I saw all the – I was at every horrible bachelor party where everybody was a bachelor, right?
No one was getting married anywhere.
It was just awful times.
And all the blessedness that is – that quality in most people where they wake up the next morning and they're like, what happened last night?
I was like, I'll tell you what happened.
Yeah.
I've been sitting here all morning thinking about it.
It was a fucking bloodbath is what happened.
I never went to sleep because I'm just sitting here replaying the whole.
Oh, that's a nice feeling.
And so a lot of that stuff is still with me, right?
I mean, I remember I laid down in an alley one time.
because i couldn't walk any further and i was like this is a nice alley there's probably no cars ever come down here i'll just sleep a little bit little sleepies little sleepers
and i laid down in the corner of this alley which was absolutely full of rats like where like i found the probably found the place where people pissed the most often for the last 120 years curled up there but in my moment was aware enough that i took my glasses off and folded them and put them
on my night table which was a pile of garbage and when i woke up an hour or two later now because this is in the middle of the day this isn't uh this isn't like two in the two in the morning this is two in the afternoon wake up in this hot garbage strewn piss strewn alley
I'm like, that was a refreshing sleep.
Birds are singing.
Still absolutely shit-faced.
I stand up.
And off I go down the street, but I forgot my glasses.
Oh, they're still on your nightstand.
Still on the nightstand.
My vision is blurred enough already that it's not like, whoa, I can't see.
I'm just like, woo.
And I get wherever, somewhere, the next place.
And I go, oh, shit, my glasses.
I better go get them.
Turn around.
Back to the alley.
The glasses are gone.
Oh, no.
What are the chances?
Who steals a pair of garbage glass?
And these were glasses that I had made because a friend of mine worked as a like an orderly at the hospital.
And he came home and he was like, there's a program at the hospital where they make glasses free for poor people.
And I was like, that's me.
And so I went because I didn't have glasses at the time and I went and had my glasses made and they were amazing because this was an era where I think you remember this time sometime in the 90s where all of the shop glasses and like government issue glasses that they made in proliferation back in 1961, they were all just like 25 cents a piece.
And this government program to make glasses for people had these incredible 50s style, like black on top, clear on the bottom.
Oh, right.
Like a style that would become – it's almost like the – what do they call them in England?
NIH glasses?
Yeah.
Then became kind of fashionable like Morrissey glasses?
That's right.
Yeah.
And it was a thing where those glasses were fashionable because they were cheap, like free glasses.
But so I lost that pair of glasses.
And who would pick up a pair of glasses from that fucking piss hole?
I don't know.
Probably somebody else that stopped by to sleep there.
Or maybe it was the Little Birds.
Maybe it was the Song of the South Birds.
Maybe you were in somebody else's bed and that was their nightstand.
Yeah, that could be.
What the hell are these glasses doing on my nightstand?
That's my pile of garbage.
These will do.
But that's right.
Like that scene in New Adventures in Babysitting.
Hmm.
Where the girl takes her glasses off and then the little homeless lady comes by and puts them on and is like, I can see, and walks off and then the girl can't, then she can't see.
You really do remember everything.
She's stuck in the bus station.
Oh, no.
Adventures of Babysitting.
That sounds like a big part of the adventure.
Well, but she's just like a, she's a tertiary character.
Oh, I see.
She's the one that's like in, she's the emergency that causes the babysitter
to take the kids into Chicago.
Oh, see, I don't know this story.
So she's the MacGuffin.
She's the MacGuffin.
So they have to leave the comfort of their suburban, like, John Hughes neighborhood, and she has to take these three irascible kids, one of whom, the oldest, the little boy, is...
younger enough than her that he needs a babysitter but he's old enough to be in love with her i know that one and then the little the little girl is uh she's you know not very old six or something seven but she's in love with thor the comic book character and so she spends the whole movie in love with thor until she finally meets thor in the in the person of a auto mechanic
in like the grittiest downtown chicago thor played by wait for it so who is the uh actor that you least would think of as thor well sean
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Oh, that was fast.
That was so fast.
No, it's... Never go up against somebody from Asgard when death is on the line.
No.
Now I can't unsee it.
He'd still be super strong, but he'd be fucking Wallace Shawn.
Wouldn't that be great?
I would so watch The Avengers with Wallace Shawn as Thor.
Wallace Shawn as Thor, but in the character of my dinner with Andrek.
Yeah, exactly.
Okay, so I'll try and be more realistic.
This is a movie that's made, what, in the early 90s, probably, right?
No, I think late 80s, but... Somebody you least expect.
And is it an actor that I know?
Yes.
Okay.
You know, I can't even guess.
I'm just going to jump right in.
Go.
Vincent D'Onofrio.
Vincent D'Onofrio.
Huh.
Why is that an interesting career?
Okay, now I'll let myself look it up.
Vincent D'Onofrio at that very same moment was also playing the guy in Full Metal Jacket who was Born Again Hard.
Born Again Hard.
He'd already been in the Bodyguard.
Wasn't that him or is that the other guy?
That's the other guy.
That's the Gamergate guy.
He was in Vincent D'Onofrio.
Yes, he was born again hard.
What was he in before that?
Oh, he was in Men in Black was later.
He was in Men in Black, but that was later.
Do you confuse Adam Baldwin and Vincent D'Onofrio?
No.
Adam Baldwin is like some kind of distillation of Baldwinism.
He looks like a conceited fart.
Yeah, like it's all the stuff about Baldwin's, all the Baldwin-esque characteristics that I don't like.
Like, I like Alec Baldwin, despite all the reasons not to like him.
Oh, gosh, yeah.
I mean, he's one of those, he's an American antihero.
Yeah, that's right.
But like the other Baldwin's, you remember when the Baldwin's were a thing?
Oh, the Baldwin's were huge.
People talked about the Baldwin's as if it was a thing that mattered.
They were the Luntz of the 90s.
Full Metal Jacket and Adventures in Babysitting both came out in 1987.
He was in two episodes of The Equalizer as two different people.
He was in Mystic Pizza.
This is when he was still Vincent Philip D'Onofrio.
And then what would I next know him in?
He's in JFK.
I don't remember that.
He's in The Player.
I don't remember that.
But if you look at him... Oh, I remember him being Orson Welles in Ed Wood.
If you look at a picture of him as Thor in Adventures in Babysitting.
Right.
And then you look at a picture of him as the Born Again Hard character.
Same year.
You realize that Vincent D'Onofrio is the greatest American.
Oh, my goodness.
Look at.
Oh, my goodness.
Look at him.
And then he ends up on CSI, you know, like New Brunswick or whatever.
Right.
It's on that show where he tilts his head a lot.
But there he is.
That's where he got his start.
He's wearing a blue, like, undershirt.
And he's got long, like, very blonde hair and a red baseball cap.
Red baseball cap.
And he comes down out of some smoky sky.
He's carrying a big hammer.
And the little girl is like, it's Thor.
You're my Thor.
He's actually kind of mean.
Thor's kind of mean, too.
Thor's very conceited.
That's how he ran into problems.
Oh, see, I didn't know enough about Thor when I watched Adventures in Babysitting to get all Thor.
That makes sense.
When we watched the Avengers, my wife turned to me and said, Thor is basically every guy I tried to avoid at parties at Santa Cruz.
oh sure you know and so the problem with thor is thor is very conceited he felt pretty positive that he was going to be the heir apparent to odin and then he got really conceited and that's when he took away mjolnir and he said he said you can't have it i'm just stripping of your powers i'm you're going to go to earth and you're going to be you're going to be a slightly disabled doctor he was a doctor though which is nice
uh but he's he's stripped of his powers he's stripped of his powers he has to go to earth but then he has he figures something out something something he redeems himself he continues to be a doctor he's got it he's got a cane because he has a walking problem and when he smashes his cane really hard on the ground it turns into mjolnir and he becomes thor i see that's back when we used to do more transformation of the superheroes and mjolnir is the hammer yeah yeah mjolnir mjolnir and loki is his brother who's also bad
oh yeah he's really bad news no see he's the problem the thing is thor is a dick but loki is perfidious he is disloyal perfidity is the worst kind of badness it's the worst kind of disloyalty for sure and so he's he uh and that's the reason the avengers were formed is because loki who has he's he basically has he's escaped from his mental jail that he was put in he goes to earth and he makes it look like a train is going off the tracks
He gets into Bruce Banner's head.
And so Hulk goes to try and save the train, but it looks like he's attacking the train.
The Avengers are formed in circa 1961.
The Avengers are formed to go after Hulk because he's a bad guy.
So they bring in Ant-Man because he's a guy who can send his ants all over the world to find where Hulk is.
You know, I'm fighting ants right now.
California ants.
Oh my goodness.
Sugar ants.
You know my experience with Northwest ants.
Yes.
And spiders.
I am legend in the Northwest as like ant holocauster, but here.
Yeah, and they go in your sink.
holy shit the ants in southern california do not kid around yeah um when they come upon you a lot of them are waiters while they're looking for work well that's the thing they're the most beautiful ants i ever saw but uh and they and they maybe are they're the most here's what it is they were the most talented ant in their own communities oh sure like the best ant they're big and a small pond
I'm looking out the window.
Two people with buns went by.
I've got my spool here, but I can't get out there.
You know, they could probably power an iPhone for a couple hours with those buns, but they're not.
They're just walking around like that's normal.
Now, think about that.
If you and your significant other both have top buns,
Why wouldn't you tie them together?
One's positive, one's negative.
Right?
Why wouldn't you just run a little spool, even if it wasn't metal wire?
What if it was just ribbon?
People already share headphones, John.
You ever go on public transit and there's a couple Chinese kids sharing their iPod?
Same deal here.
That wire could be, I think it's in electric, it's called a transducer or a modem.
And that would be used to, one of you's positive and one of you's negative.
And then that would generate enough power for the iPod with some leftover for the grid.
If you saw two people walking on the beach in Venice, California, they both had buns and they were both flying kites from their buns.
Okay.
How would that make you feel?
Because it would fill me with joy.
I would say, here are some millenniums who are not self-centered.
That would lift me up for a minute, for sure.
Wouldn't it?
Because the kite would be pulling the bun up.
I have a Venice beach problem.
Uh-oh.
Well, it's willful unusualness.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, there's a lot of that.
But you're going to find that in Ann Arbor, too, or all the other Arbors.
But you've got to wear more layers there.
True.
True.
But like the willful.
I mean, the thing about Venice, I think, is like the the the the kumquats are thick on the ground here.
You know what I mean?
Like you don't have to.
Do you remember when being a wasteoid burnout seemed like it was a valid job?
Yes.
Yes.
Right?
1982.
Remember?
1982.
Oh, it was something to aspire to.
And, you know, we talked about the origins of various kinds of valley speak and surf talk.
I mean, some of that has antecedents in, well, in our groups, they call them loadies.
But you could say burnouts.
I don't know where that came from, loadies, but I guess because they got loaded.
But you got the Judas Priest drawn on your folder.
You usually got a flannel shirt.
You fall asleep in class.
You're always in the smoking area because, yes, high schools used to have smoking areas.
You're like Wayne and Garth, except you're not – Canadian.
Yeah, Wayne and Garth are too Canadian, first of all, and also like too –
Whatever.
They call them Heshers?
Is that what you call it up there?
You call them Hesher?
Is that considered a slight or a slur?
Hesher, I feel like Hesher came later.
Hesher.
In Anchorage, we call them stoners.
Stoners, okay.
And stoner was a blanket term for any kind of sort of burner.
Anybody that was...
Anybody that was – because a stoner would look at you – and I'm not talking about like a 65-year-old burnout stoner.
That's what they aspired to.
But when you're an 18-year-old stoner – Yeah.
You still got to really fight it.
I mean you got to really – to kill those brain cells permanently, you're going to have to really stick with it.
And there was a tremendous element of defiance.
The stoners would look at you and say, I choose nothingness.
This is a valid life choice.
I do not care about your bullshit.
These men are nihilists, Donnie.
That's right.
Right.
There are no Nielsen and Foxhole.
Nope, nope.
That was Bertrand Russell.
It's totally true, and it was a life choice, and it was, contrary to what it appeared to be, it was not simply a reaction to straight culture.
It was seen as an affirmative stance.
And that, I remember very distinctly,
I mean, we've all stood at the crossroads.
And we've all looked down one as far as we could until where it bent into the undergrowth.
But there was a moment, right, where you're thinking, like, Spicoli is the coolest character in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
Perhaps that coolness...
is also available to me.
But Spicoli has made a life choice.
Spicoli is on a path.
Spicoli, his rapprochement with Mr. Hand at the end of the film does not mean that Mr. Hand has converted Spicoli to caring about his life.
That would be a different film.
It's a different film, right?
I mean, the fact that Mr. Hand comes to his house in the way that he does, that's a wonderful turn.
But also the fact that they don't end up jumping into a pool together.
I like that a lot.
Well, and who is more changed, Spicoli or Mr. Hand?
I haven't thought about it in a long time.
You know what I mean?
I feel like Mr. Hand is the one.
That's right.
Mr. Hand is changed and evolved by the end of that film.
So I'm walking down Venice Beach, and I'm looking around, and I have this like...
There are stoner burnouts here that are from my time.
There are people here who came to that Spicoli crossroads and they took the other as just as fair.
They got to the crossroads and they decided to just sit there and smoke a doobie.
Fuck you, crossroads.
They came to the crossroads and they tried to hitch a ride.
And they saw the devil and they said, take me to the other side or whatever.
That's my broom.
And so they're there.
They're sitting around.
They're walking around.
They're fucking riding a unicycle.
And it's not just the guy that looks like Jimi Hendrix on roller skates.
And it's not like I sat down there the other day and there were maybe 10 black guys about my age sitting around on the on the stands around the basketball court.
And they were arguing loud about basketball teams from the 80s.
Who was the best?
yeah and i knew all i knew everything i knew every name that they were saying and they were really up in each other's face about it like
But you're guessing this probably isn't the first time this has come up.
This is like your old guy sitting on a stupid turkey.
Yeah.
These guys, I think, probably have a version of this argument every day.
And part of the loudness of it is that it is a performance.
They're conscious of being, we are the Venice Beach middle-aged guys that sit around the basketball court.
And what we do is argue loudly about...
things from our childhood or whatever.
Like Iverson, you know, they're just like screaming at each other.
The Celtic Celtics were the, you know, Celtic Meltics.
I don't know.
Right.
Do you think it's like Apache, Esperanto, Fortran, any other languages?
Is it something, are they teaching it to young people?
Are they bringing in new people?
Or do you have to be of the vintage to argue about Larry Bird?
Yeah, you have to care because young people are just rolling their eyes at him because there's been
Four or five complete iterations of, like, basketball culture since Michael Jordan met.
But it's kind of like an old black guy version of, like, Slacker.
Like, sit around and, like, talking about Scooby-Doo.
There's this moment in time from, like, 25, 30, 40 years ago, you're still, like, just turning over.
Because there was never, in their world, right, there was never a better...
moment not just in basketball but in history of uh the bulls versus the the celtics right or or la right who was the big rivalries or whatever well i think in the 80s it was the lakers and the celtics yeah you got magic versus larry bird and and so that was such and i that is just like cast in iron in my own mind and i didn't care about it like
The idea that there would ever be a bigger moment in sports than that rivalry, which was like so profound.
And I felt like I felt like, you know, turn around and being like, well, what about, you know, the Utah Jazz?
Which name still really gets under my skin?
The Jazz.
The Jazz.
Yeah.
Utah, famous for its jazz scene.
Right.
John Stockton.
John Stockton.
He played for the Bulls, right?
Well, he played for the Jazz.
Oh.
And John Stockton went to Gonzaga, where I went.
Interesting.
And Gonzaga is a college, as you know, that's like basketball is the big thing for Gonzaga.
You used to talk a lot about Detlef Schrempf.
I learned about him because he's on several episodes of Parks and Rec, and he used to play for the Sonics.
That's right.
That was a long time ago.
So in the early 90s, that was Sonic's heyday, and these guys got into the Sonics.
They were yelling at each other about it, and I sat there because I was loving it.
I did not want to be anywhere else.
And they yelled at each other about 80s basketball until they were yelling at each other about the Sonics and early 90s basketball, which I still could follow along.
Like I understood the terms.
Yeah.
But so waltzing around down in Venice, I see the culture down there and like underneath the –
Underneath the level of people selling like Guatemalan pants, underneath the level of, you know, of sideshow Barker, Barkerism, the like whatever creepy like sub, like the real Muscle Beach is in Santa Monica, right?
But there's another Muscle Beach at Venice sort of like feels like a Muscle Beach at Avenue.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Yeah, it's like, yeah, it's the, it's Surla Muscle Beach.
I feel like, yeah, Surla Sansa, the beach.
I feel like I want to rescind my remark because I have not been to Venice in a long time and I realize I sound like a dick.
There's a culture of performance to what those people are doing and now I feel like kind of a dick that I said anything.
No, no, no, because I've been to Venice Beach and Venice, California 1,000 times and I drive down Albert Kinney and I go to the beach and I walk around and I go, there's nothing here for me.
And then I leave.
And then I came back and I did it again.
I was like, there's nothing here for me.
And then I leave.
And then there's a, you know, we stop and get coffee and intelligentsia.
And I'm like, I don't like this either.
For years, I've been coming here and saying there's nothing here that interests me.
But now I'm here more as a local.
and spending the days here.
And I find that there are levels upon levels.
It reminds me a little bit of living in the suburbs, like going to the mall.
Going to the mall was its own thing.
You were not there to buy a dress shirt.
You were maybe kind of there to get an Orange Julius, but I frequently went to the mall without a nickel in my pocket just to go to the mall.
And that was the thing that you did.
You knew somebody that worked at the Squire shop.
It was kind of our version of cruising, like in a car.
Like you walk around the mall for like three hours.
That's what it was.
We would do that.
We would just go to the mall.
And that sounds somewhat similar.
This is the third place.
This is the third location for people.
Yeah.
I bought a bicycle from a guy.
I said, I need a bicycle.
And this guy had a rally, an old Raleigh.
three-speed Raleigh that I recognized immediately as an older Raleigh.
Those are British bikes.
And so I said I'd give him $100 for it.
And he said, okay.
And then I, you know, I did some searching, did some online searching to try and identify the Raleigh.
It turns out it's a 1966 Raleigh, which I'm in the process of sort of cleaning up and fixing up.
But so now I've got this little vintage-y sort of ding-ding kind of bicycle.
Oh, look at that.
Do you have a basket on yours?
So I have a rack in the back, and I want to put a basket on it.
But I want the front basket to be one that you can put a bunch of stuff in, right?
I want you to be able to put like a gallon of milk and a loaf of bread and a stick of butter.
it'd be nice to be able to stick in a standard grocery bag without having to fiddle yeah like just put it in and it's like that's kind of a delivery guy bask bastic so i'm trying to find the right one so i haven't i haven't committed to it yet um but so i'm riding around so now i'm a local right this isn't some dumb beach bike that i rented from somebody this is my quirky 60s like three-speed british bike
And so now I'm already feeling like, what's my quirk?
Am I going to get a bowler?
Yeah.
Now you're getting to that point where you've got to go like, oh, do I always want to sit on the side and watch everybody else dance?
Exactly.
If this is going to be a party, I should get in there and dance.
So yesterday I was having breakfast here in Venice Beach and a guy rolls up.
You ready for this?
Motorcycle.
Sidecar.
Now what's in the sidecar, Merlin?
Bulldog.
Bulldog.
That's right.
And what's the bulldog wearing?
Is he wearing an aviator helmet?
Was I close?
This guy's got a, he's got a pair of goggles.
It really happened?
On the dog.
And a handkerchief, you know, a neckerchief around.
That feels like something Jungian.
Like as you went down that path, there was no way that wouldn't end with a bulldog dressed as an aviator.
So here I'm watching this guy.
It's up there and it's like a platonic form of bulldog.
That's exactly right.
It's a platonic form.
You might not put it in a tutu.
You might not put it in a baseball cap.
That dog needs to be an aviator.
So watching the whole thing unfold, he pulls up in front of this sidewalk cafe where I'm eating.
He talks to some people.
They take his picture with the dog.
He looks like a normal guy.
He's not wearing a sunflower costume, right?
He's not Peter Gabriel.
uh he's like just wearing a jean jacket he's got a normal haircut and but he doesn't come into the restaurant he's he's out front of the restaurant for a while talking to people it's not clear that he knows any that he saw somebody and was like hey there's my friend i'm pulling over and then he gets on the motorcycle and he and the dog drive off and it's like does he just is he just touring all the restaurants it's like sunday sunday morning and
i've seen i've seen people who do that i've seen belly dancers that do that i've seen people who just go from place to place doing their performance yeah doing their work and so as i as i sat and watched him and i watched this unfold i was like wait a minute this is a this is a platonic form
This guy has chosen to be that guy, the motorcycle with the bulldog, with the sidecar, with the goggles guy.
Now, he didn't invent this.
This is a thing that we all – He's as the Hindus would say, he's an avatar.
He's an avatar, right?
He is the Mark Twain impersonator.
But right now in Venice, California, he may be the only one.
He may be the guy.
And if I were 19 years old.
Do you think it's like a Century 21 franchise?
Are you limited to a certain territory?
This is what I wonder.
What does he do if he rides up into Venice Beach and there's another guy with a motorcycle, with a sidecar, with a bulldog, with goggles?
What if you want to be the parrot guy and there's already a parrot guy?
If you want to be talks about the deficit guy, you're going to have to go toe to toe.
If he dresses like Mark Twain guy, there's a very good chance there's already a dresses like Mark Twain guy where you are.
What if you're Jimi Hendrix on roller skates guy?
There's been a Jimi Hendrix on roller skates on Venice Beach for 40 years.
Is it the same guy the whole time?
Does he play guitar while he's skating?
He does.
He has an amplifier on his back.
And he's a good enough guitar player that you identify the guitar parts as Jimi Hendrixian.
But is it the same guy?
Does he anoint the next guy?
Do you try out for that job?
When the guy's ready to retire.
But the motorcycle guy, I was like, which element came first, right?
Did he have the bulldog?
And then he said, haha, I'm going to put goggles on you.
And then he was like, wait a minute.
Yeah, this feels right to me.
And then he bought a motorcycle with a sidecar.
Oh,
or yeah did he have a motorcycle and then he was then he felt like you know i've always wanted a sidecar because i was a i was a motorcycle person and i wanted a sidecar i'm gonna guess it went motorcycle for a long time bulldog for some time oh you strap on a sidecar
And at that point, it's just a trip to the flea market to deck out your animal.
So you feel like he sandwiched his way into it.
I don't see how it goes backwards.
We were watching a Project Runway where somebody made a pattern that was based on their own tattoo, which I found very convoluted.
I think it's like, I don't know if it's like an Occam's Razor thing.
Like, you know, what's the most likely order that went in?
Because it would be very sad if he started with a pair of goggles.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
We're going to back solve from the goggles.
I I I looked at it and felt like it was a very real possible.
Oh, my God.
A stoner burnout just walked by the front there.
I mean, they're real here.
They're that close.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like, clearly, he had no.
He was like.
He seriously was the dude.
Right.
The titular dude.
Yeah.
Just missing the sweater.
Oh, man.
It's 82 degrees or whatever.
But I looked at the motorcycle sidecar guy and I felt like the whole thing came to him in a fever dream.
Like tomorrow.
Like today I am myself.
Tomorrow I'm going to set in motion a chain of events that will transform me.
into motorcycle side bulldog guy.
Right?
Yeah, I'm thinking because last night there was a movie I watched for the fourth or fifth time, which is called, I believe it's a movie you've seen called Deceptive Practice about Ricky Jay.
I think you might have seen it once or twice.
I watch it fairly regularly because it's amazing.
And he talks in particular about his relationship with Charlie Miller and Di Vernon and how he would go to the Magic Castle and there was like this, it was like Fagin.
In the 70s, there were all these aspiring young magicians who would hang out with these guys and try and get the information.
They'd never give away their secrets.
No, he totally messed with him.
Like one time, according to Ricky Jay, you know, Ricky Jay does that amazing thing where he throws a card and it boomerangs back to him.
And Di Vernon said, I've done that 39 times.
I've never been able to do 40 times.
If you can do 40 times, I'll tell you this effect that you want to know.
And he did it.
And the 40th, he caught it behind his back just because he's a magic guy.
Point being, like, they're all jockeying, they're playing them against each other, they're grooming the magicians, basically.
But, like, I wonder if something similar happens.
Do you have to go and apprentice with somebody else who's a motorcycle sidecar bulldog man?
Here's, I mean, the thing that scared me.
I bet there's a lot you can get wrong, and you might not learn for five years something you've been doing wrong.
This is what scared me.
The guy, first of all, two things.
One, he's wearing a denim jacket, but it's a sand-colored denim jacket.
And I was like, okay.
I haven't seen one of those in a long time.
It sounds like kind of a dad jacket.
A little bit.
You mean like a classic Levi's, but it's in that sandy color.
It's in a sand color.
Like a desert kind of color.
Do you remember when Levi's was making sand colored denim?
I think I do.
This is one of those.
But it's in nice shape.
It's not like ratty.
It's nice.
Second problem.
Guy looks like Tom Hanks.
Okay.
Oh, that's an interesting wrinkle.
Right?
Didn't that just put you back on your heels?
I'm thinking he looks like one of the biker guys in Pee Wee's Big Adventure.
Right.
Or maybe somebody like the Malachi Brothers or somebody in an episode of The Monkees.
I got that wrong.
Yeah.
He looks like Tom Hanks, top to bottom.
Oh, my goodness.
Skinny butt, sand-colored Levi's jacket.
I didn't see his shoes, but...
I'm going to say like not boat shoes, but in the larger boat shoe fan.
But like a slip-on shoe.
Do you think there's any chance at all the whole thing was the dog's idea and that guy's just catching up?
That's what I wonder.
I mean, the dog submitted to the goggles.
The goggles came off and on like three or four times.
But every time the goggles went on, the dog was just like didn't bat an eye.
I feel like he saw a movie.
And he had the money to accomplish this task, and he did not seem at all like a roller skate Jimi Hendrix.
He seemed like a guy that works on the admin side of film.
Yeah.
Right.
Like all day long.
He's around.
He works on designing women or.
Sure.
Or another another contemporary web series.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He works on a show where the on camera people are quirky and the writers are quirky.
And he's saving up for a while.
Yeah.
He's in it.
He's in the game.
Right.
But he's you know, he's like the second assistant accountant person.
Yeah.
And he's like, I'm not going to get, you know, I got to up my quirk game here to play with the big boys in Santa Monica.
And the dog seems to like it.
The dog likes it.
The dog gets all the attention in the world.
But he, see, in my head, I thought, and maybe I'm being a little on the nose here, I guess I figured that they would, in my head, there's a 90% chance they're dressed almost identically, which is, you know, a thing people do, especially motorcycle people.
They like to all look kind of the same.
Right.
You know, maybe it's you and your mall.
Right.
Or it could be you and your crew, but there's a uniform, you wear the colors.
I thought that would be kind of a cute thing if maybe they were dressed the same.
Or, you know, it would also be funny if there was a lot of contrast.
Maybe he's Harpo Marx.
But he would inhabit a certain character beyond the guy who looks like Tom Hanks.
Yeah.
That surprised me.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, and that's, it's a world of surprises and they're not all surprises in the, they're not all surprises in the amps.
Sometimes they're surprises in the volts.
You know what I mean?
I think I do.
Yeah.
So, you know, you're used to being like, whoa, so many amps, but it's like, it's not really the amps here.
It's the torque.
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah.
I mean, it's, I,
Maybe he doesn't want to distract from the dog.
I don't think that's it.
He was soaking up the dollars.
Maybe they take turns.
People are throwing dollars at the dog, but they're going into the garter belt of the dude.
I get it.
I get it.
It's Star 99, Star 69 all over again.
Yeah, it's Star 69.
What's her name?
Rosemary Stratton?
What was her name?
Was she in the Manson family?
Who am I thinking of?
Rosemary Stratton.
No, I'm thinking of Leslie Van Houten.
It was George Clooney's mom, right?
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Rosemary Stratton.
Come on to my house, my house.
It's like, Grammy.
Dress you like a bulldog.
I do not remember my dreams anymore.
Yeah.
Oh, at all.
Okay, so you know you have them, but you don't remember them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I never have nightmares.
I never have bad dreams.
My dream life is like this wonderful, wonderful landscape.
I can't wait to get there.
I love staying there.
It's like a vacation without photos.
Right.
When I wake up, the dream, like in the moment I wake, the dream is there.
And then it...
completely gone with no residue like like just crumbles to dust and when I well except except there's no like there's no death to it it's not like it turns to like crumbled bone it just goes like not for you and what that's me learning somebody's first name
terrible at that it doesn't stress you out though you don't sound stressed by it I always remembered my dreams I loved my dreams I tried to do lucid dreaming I got two shots at it I lucid dreamed two times wonderful wonderful nights I wish I could go back and live there all the time remembered my dreams thought about them cherished them reveled in them I haven't had a nightmare since the 80s probably
At some point in the last 10 years, I just don't bring them into my waking life.
And I feel a sense of loss.
But also, I know that my dream life is still ongoing and still very pleasant.
And so I have to just, I guess, surrender.
Boy, that's kind of weird and sad, though.
Maybe it's like Dave Edgar says, that's not for you.
Not for you.
It's like iTunes reviews.
Yeah.
Whatever files were thrown around.
There's like 14 chimpanzees in a bank, and they're just throwing files in the air.
And that's what your dream life is.
Boy, I'd love to have that one.
but uh every morning you wake up the vault door closes and all you see is the last glimpse through the door of the chimpanzees throwing files and you're like and then the door is closed and you're like what can i do i don't know the combination all right well