Ep. 221: "Riding the Ham"
Hello.
Hi, John.
Hi, Merlin.
How's it going?
Well, I'm proud to be an American.
Or at least I know I'm free.
I like that song.
I'm proud to live in the land I love and that gave its life for me.
What is that?
I guess I don't have all the lyrics.
That's a pretty good song.
Yeah, it came under fire a lot.
Well, I'm trying to get away from the genetic criticism or whatever, how it got used, but I like the tune.
The tone.
The tune.
The tone?
I feel like... It's baseball players.
They got a lot of crazy names today.
I feel like it came under fire, just like the man who composed it.
Well, all I'm trying to say is, I mean, there's the famous line from the song, but there's a reason we sing that line, and it's because it's really catchy.
It's not what you expect in a chorus.
It's hooky.
And what it does is, I'm trying to, I mean, I don't have the song in front of me, I don't have a guitar, but I feel like it starts on the one chord.
Yeah.
Let me ask you, if you did have a guitar right now, would you be capable of playing it?
I have it, but it needs to be restrung.
No, no, I don't mean would you be capable of playing the guitar, but would you be able to play I'm Proud to be an American?
Is it a song that's in your repertoire?
No.
But you know how it is when you do enough, like, playing, well, we've talked endlessly about playing along with records and how you get a feel in your hands for, like, when it's the four and when it's the five.
Oh, you have that feel in your hands.
You know what I mean, though, right?
Yeah, it's like the feeling of victory.
Lee Greenwood in the morning on Q105.
Yeah.
But I feel like it's probably like a pretty much like a one in four kind of cadence for most of it.
It's not super interesting, but the arrangement and the fact that it starts on that, I'm proud to be an American.
It's just a, it's a very catchy, it's a catchy tone.
Yeah, it is.
It has catchy tones.
Yeah.
But that's how I am.
I'm that.
I'm proud.
Oh, that's nice.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think I am too.
Good.
Yeah.
Good.
Well, let's start off this podcast.
show with some american pride coming up on four minutes after the hour we're going to talk about pride pride pride is uh it's a fraught topic it is you know it's one of the seven deadly sins is that right yeah pride goeth before a fall huh oh actually technically i think it's pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall
Is that right?
Yeah, I think it's Romans.
So why do I have it?
Is it just a condensation of that?
It's sort of like a made the trains run on time type situation, I think.
I was trying to explain that.
And every time I try to explain that anecdote that you told, I don't tell it with the ferocity and clarity that you do.
because it filled me with so much joy.
It's so great, but it's like explaining a pun.
Yeah.
It's like going, no, see, if I said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?
See, it's a double entendre.
Yes.
See, they weren't actually saying that he made the trains run on time.
It's that, no, wait, no, is that, wait, forgive me, is that Mussolini?
Mussolini.
Yeah.
Mussolini, I, I, that,
anecdote made me cry when I first heard it.
And then it made me cry when I retold it.
And it was, it was one of those things like, uh, like, you know, you hear a song and it makes you cry and then you hear it again, it makes you cry.
And there were, there were three or four
Three or four times that I told that story where it made me cry before I finally got tempered.
I got two questions.
First of all, were you crying in different ways?
And second, is your daughter there?
No.
Oh.
Was I crying in different ways?
No, my daughter isn't here.
You can take the first question first.
Was I crying in different ways?
Yes.
I mean, I was crying with like...
I was crying tears of joy at the ludicrousness of humanity.
I mean, it just seemed like it was an anecdote that made me
just it just said so much it's spelled so much it's in line with that the reason i think one reason i keep conflating it or getting it wrong and thinking it was stalin is it's very much in line with that classic black russian sense of humor yeah you know what i mean we talked i think we talked about this but it's so in line with that and it's like it's such a perfect instance of that kind of black humor yeah and and and yet i and i don't know it just makes so much sense it's so
It's so hilarious.
I've been out of coffee.
How do you get out of coffee?
Well, see, this is the thing.
I don't order my toilet paper on Amazon Prime.
Okay.
I wait.
That's not, I'm sorry.
That sounded like it.
I'll take the hit.
You know, that sounded like a dig.
I'm not sure what that has to do with your coffee, but sure, bad on me.
It was a dig.
Okay.
I think logicians might call that a non sequitur, but we'll allow it.
You know, just a little, just a little dig.
No, I don't.
I don't wear a hat to go to the bathroom.
I don't, I don't shop very well or often.
And I don't – here's the thing.
Generally, I get my coffee for free because it's in swag bags.
Oh, yeah, right.
Right?
Like anymore, if I go do an event, they give you a pound of coffee and a pair of –
like cheap sunglasses and whatever it is.
Do you get a USB drive ever, John?
I have a few of them hanging on the doorknob right in view of where I'm sitting.
I can see like four USB drives hanging on lanyards.
But yeah, a pound of coffee is typically the gift that you give someone that you're not paying very well if they come to be part of your presentation.
And so I usually wait around until I'm invited to something like that.
I get my pound of coffee and then there's always another pound of coffee laying around that somebody didn't want.
That at the end of the event when I'm the last person to leave the dressing room, I'm like, no, there's that pound of coffee.
Right.
And then somebody – typically there are a couple of things where they give you a pound of coffee and a bottle of wine.
And I usually stand in the middle of the room at events like that and I say, trade my bottle of wine for a pound of coffee.
Oh, and also it's all trading places.
Everybody's running up.
I'll take that.
That's right.
Somebody's like, what, what, what?
And so I'll typically come home from an event like that with a bag of coffee.
I'm sorry, a bag of bags of coffee.
And that will putter me along until the next event.
But I had run out.
So this could also be a bellwether that maybe you should do more events.
Exactly.
Right.
I was thinking that same thing.
Like, wait a minute.
I haven't been to Portland in a month and a half.
And Portland is famous for this.
They'll give you a pound of coffee.
You know, just for showing up in a bridal shower.
I've never been to a bridal shower.
I'm not invited to those.
But anyway, so go ahead.
You were about to say something?
No, no.
Coffee is one of those things that I really try not to run out of.
Yeah.
It's one of those things like, I mean, the obvious ones.
You got your toilet papers and your paper towels and your whatnots or your milk for the kid that I usually have one in the chamber.
Yeah.
You don't want to run out of whatnots, especially.
You ever heard that phrase, three is two, two is one, and one is none?
It seems like it's sort of connected to the phrase, one boy can do the work of one boy, two boys can do the work of half a boy, and three boys do no work at all.
That's terrific.
That's so good.
That's some grandfather shit right there.
I think that the phrase that I was citing is, I think it comes from the world of materiel.
Like, you know, you're the, what is it, Sergeant Zale or whatever.
Like, you're the supply person.
Sure.
And I learned about it from... Yossarian!
Yeah, right, Yossarian.
I learned about it from the podcaster and videographer CGP Grey, whose videos I think you've seen.
And he says that when you have important things in your life...
And it's an excellent principle.
And it's something that's really stuck in my head.
Because the idea being that... Two is one, one is zero, and zero is negative one?
Right.
Yeah.
Three is two, two is one, and one is none.
And if you think about it in terms of, let's say you've got a deployed, like you've got a base somewhere.
And if you have... Moon base?
Well, it could be.
Yeah, sure.
More than ever in that case.
But let's say you've got, I don't know, arbitrarily, let's say you've got three generators that are available to run the unit.
You need this one generator.
Well, you have to basically act like that one generator is broken.
Oh.
Because once it's broken, you won't have three anymore.
You'll have two.
You'll have two, sure.
So to get to the bottom of the stack, you get to one is none, which means that once you have one bag of coffee left, you essentially have no coffee left.
Sure, you're screwed.
Well, just from a supply standpoint.
It's a sticky saying.
I like yours, too.
I bought the boys.
That's good.
Well, this is why I always think in increments of $4 million.
interesting um because if you had four million dollars and this applies to four hundred dollars but i like to think of it in terms of four million dollars because it's my daydream right yeah but if you have four million dollars you put two million dollars immediately somewhere that you can't get it you put it some you put it into bonds or you put it
You give to Barry Bonds.
You do something with two million of it, half of it, where it immediately goes away into some special place where you stop.
A special unattainable money hole.
Unattainable money hole.
But in particular, you do that only so that you stop thinking about it as belonging to you.
$2 million is gone.
So now you have $2 million.
Okay.
So now four is two.
Four is two.
Exactly.
And then with the $2 million, then you divide the $2 million so that $1 million is in – you still think of it as belonging to you as being like accessible money, but it's in a very –
difficult place.
It's like in savings.
It's deeper.
There's deeper levels.
You put a million dollars into like deep freeze.
It's not all the way into, I don't own this anymore in your mind, but it's in freeze.
Four is two, two is one.
Two is one.
And now within one, then you start having, you know, then you start having the one and into, I guess I would put it into thirds, right?
One third is what you're living on.
One third is your money.
And one third is your money that you are thinking about what I'm going to do with this money.
And then one third of it, you find a way to give it away.
Wow.
You should write an e-book.
Is that e-book level of think technology?
This is just my opinion.
I'll tell you why.
Because it's not an idea that really needs a 300-page book or a whole Blu-ray.
It's a larger-than-pamphlet-sized idea.
It's a pamphlet-sized idea, but the implementation of that idea is where all the texture is.
But you wouldn't want to necessarily put out something out of Walden Books, because I don't think they have Walden Books anymore.
That's the place where you go and you sell your gold.
Were those Christopher Walken?
Walken books?
This Zagat's Guide has been in my ass.
Or did they only sell Thoreau?
I didn't even get it.
That's hardly a courtesy laugh.
So my mom, a frequent character on this podcast, my mom said, you're out of coffee.
She came by the house.
You're out of coffee, she said.
Yeah, I know.
She said Bartels, which is our locally owned drugstore chain here.
Yep.
She said Bartels has a sale on coffee.
It's like $4.99 a pound for a brand of coffee that's pretty darn good.
That's pretty good.
And I was like, whoa, that's pretty good.
And she said, you want me to get you some?
And I said, yeah.
And she said, well, I can't go to my Bartels because I already got – I already used the coupon.
Oh, I see.
She'd have to wear a fake mustache or something.
That's right.
They all know me there.
But I can find another coupon and go to a different Bartels.
It's starting to sound like a little bit of a –
George Costanza move now.
Mm-hmm.
She's going to go to a different Bartels and get me some, you know, max out the coupon for four pounds of coffee.
Is this a Folgers?
No, no, no.
It's like, this is a tight, this is beans.
It's a bag of beans.
Oh, wow.
That's a very good deal.
It's a very good deal, and it's a brand you would recognize, but they're not advertising on our podcast, so why would I give them the extra?
No, I totally agree.
You know what I mean?
I do know what you mean.
Do you remember a time when people were taping over the word Fender on their Stratocaster because they
because they didn't want to be, they didn't want to advertise.
Yeah, yeah, or their amps, and you still see it in TV shows a lot, where in order to show reality, you want to show everybody using either an Apple or a Dell,
usually because that's what people use for laptops.
But an Apple laptop is very distinctive, not least because it has a large Apple on it.
And so you'll see people putting stickers and whatnot on there.
I've been asked to cover my Apple on video things, yes.
I've definitely been told to turn my water bottle in my hand during a photo shoot
Oh, so they don't see that you're an Aquafina man, not a Dasani man?
That's right.
Well, you can tell I'm not a Dasani man just by looking at it.
I want to circle back to that because I got some updated thoughts on Dasani.
Oh, okay.
So let's see.
Three, two, one, coffee.
Mom's going to go to Bartel.
She's going to scare up another coupon.
Right.
She did.
Well, so wait, I jumped ahead.
I'm sorry.
Okay.
Let's go back.
We don't know if mom has done that or not.
Okay.
In the timeline of this story.
I'll edit that out.
Then I go to a wedding.
I went to a wedding this weekend where every person at the wedding, waiting for them at the dinner table, was a coffee mug with the emblem of the wedding party.
It has its own kind of little mark?
Wedding party had their own brand or their own watermark, and it's on the coffee mug.
That's nice.
It's a delightful little thing.
Okay.
And then within the coffee mug kind of set in the mug at a jaunty angle is a pound of coffee.
Oh, nice.
A pound of good coffee.
Wedding coffee.
It's wedding coffee.
So I walk in, there's 200 people at this dinner and I survey the room and I'm like, there are 200 coffee mugs and 200 pounds of coffee in this room.
and I know for a fact, and I'm one of the groomsmen.
Oh my gosh.
So I'm there early, and I know I'm gonna be there late, and I know there's gonna be some rogue coffee bags.
You know people are gonna, John, you know how this works.
First of all, you're in a position of extreme privilege, in a good way.
You should be allowed, I think this is in the Magna Carta, I think you're allowed to go up and basically get people's coffee.
Here's the other thing.
A lot of people are gonna have some drinks, they're gonna take off their shoes, they're gonna dance, and they're gonna leave
without remembering to take their coffee.
That's right.
And you just sit there like a crow on a wire, just waiting and watching, watching and waiting.
It's three o'clock in the afternoon, and I am already planning for 1.45 in the morning.
And I'm marking the people in my head who are going to get carried out of that wedding reception on a gurney.
And I feel like... What are they going to do?
Ooh, I don't want to forget my logo mark on my coffee.
They're not going to do that.
No, they're not.
They're going to be like, woo, call an Uber.
And I'm going to... I'm going to swoop down.
And so I walked out of that wedding.
And at a certain point, the...
the receptions come into a close and the staff, the people who are going to tear this, this party down are swooping in and they're starting to clean up and they're sweeping up the debris and they're taking, they gotta, they gotta, they gotta, what do you call that?
When you, uh, you strike the set, they gotta get ready for the Abramowitz bat mitzvah.
That's exactly right.
That's happening tomorrow morning.
Well, no, tomorrow morning there's a, there's like a flower show.
Oh, okay.
Then the bat mitzvah happens in the afternoon.
But,
They're swooping in.
They're striking the set, and I'm saying kind of in the four is two, two is one, one is none.
Yeah.
One is one-third.
I'm saying, you know, I've got to tithe some of this coffee to these people because I'm looking around.
There's probably –
Nine unattended bags.
Oh, you're at the point where you're having the one, and you're figuring out, now how do I spread the wealth?
That's right.
That's nice, John.
These guys are cleaning up the place, and they're kind of looking around like, is this coffee just going to... The phrase you would use in the cafeteria, you'd say, is this for anyone?
That's right.
Is this for anyone?
No.
Is this going to get binned, or is this going to find its way into my messenger bag?
And so, again, as you say, I have the authority, I have the privilege of being one of the people in a pink tie, if you will.
So I swoop in, I swoop across the room, I survey the room, and I'm like, that one, that one, that one.
So anyway, I come home with six pounds of coffee.
Jiminy Christmas.
Good quality coffee.
And I arrive home to find there are four pounds of coffee in my refrigerator that my mom bought with a coupon.
Oh, my gosh.
That is so nice.
But now I have 10 pounds of coffee, which is too many.
I don't want to introduce triangulation here, but I'm guessing you're recording from home today.
Oh, uh, asking in terms of the coffee situation.
Oh, oh yes, that's right.
Okay.
So, so you have access to coffee now.
I have access to coffee and I'm, and I'm feeling pretty caffeinated.
Okay.
But I'm, but I'm concerned.
I'm concerned about my wellbeing because now I have too much coffee and I'm concerned about the coffee's wellbeing.
Cause I don't know if I have the, I don't know if I have the facilities that
to maintain 10 pounds of coffee in a state of readiness.
Right.
Like I feel like I should put five pounds in a place where I don't even think I have it.
I got it.
I got it.
But where is that where the coffee isn't going to be
isn't going to spoil it in some way.
Yeah, that's the kind of thing that makes me wish I lived in a rich people suburb and had a second refrigerator and a deep freeze and all that kind of stuff.
Because that's kind of like your unattainable money hole in some ways.
Not precisely.
But another thing they say, out of sight, out of mind.
And also, let's be honest, it's a lot like cats.
It's one thing to say, I'd like to have a little cat for companionship.
It's another thing to have 12 cats.
So that's not good for you or the cats.
And in this case, the coffee's going to be saying, what's going on with me?
Speaking of cats, I noticed that the latest update of the iOS is Sierra?
Yes, that's correct.
Did they run out of cats?
They chose to do a pivot from big cats to locations in California.
And there's a kind of a subtle way that they...
So telegraph how important or big the change in the release is by, for example, like Yosemite is a big deal.
And then El Capitan is a smaller deal because that's just a place in Yosemite.
So who knows how far they're going to go.
I miss the cats, though.
I've always enjoyed the cats.
So do you think there's going to be like an iOS Compton?
An iOS Long Beach?
That's iOS, but no, I don't think they would.
I think they're sticking with the numbers.
But it can be very, very confusing.
And then this also extends to their different models of computer things.
Hmm.
Those get confusing names too.
And so a lot of the hue and cry right now is about like, oh my gosh, what's going to happen?
What are they going to announce on Thursday?
Is there going to be a MacBook?
Is there going to be a MacBook Air?
Is there going to be a MacBook Pro?
Or are there going to be the features of what we used to call a MacBook Air in something that's no longer called a MacBook Air?
This is something people have podcasts about.
Did you want to talk about that today?
You mean – well, the thing is it's important that I talk about these things with you because I keep telling people when they say, what do you do for a living again?
I say I'm kind of –
I'm kind of in the tech sphere, and they tilt their heads quizzically, and their spouse does too.
Like a dog that just heard a harmonica?
Yeah, and they say, and I go, I'm kind of disruptive within the tech sphere.
Oh, sure.
And then they took their heads the other way and go, hmm.
Only Nixon could go to China.
That's right.
And so periodically, I think it's important that I talk about tax.
Oh, that's a terrific idea.
Yeah, because it repositions me centrally in the disruptive –
quadrant of the tech sphere.
Right.
Because every sphere is divided into quadrants.
That's right.
Every sphere has quadrants, and over here you've got a normative quadrant.
You're not interested in that.
There's no future in the normative quadrant.
No.
You want to be in the disruptive quadrant.
There's the dominant...
quadrant.
And then there's the, what would you call it?
Submissive?
No, I don't think submissive.
I think it would be subversive.
Oh, I see.
You're going to subvert the dominant quadrant.
Subvert the dominant quadrant of the sphere.
Right.
Okay.
So that's where I like to locate myself or be located.
I don't know if you can locate yourself.
I think you need to be located.
by by others by the culture by the conventional wisdom and in order to do that you have to maintain a foot in the in the disruptive quadrant okay you know what though i'm gonna allow it i'll tell you this i'll tell you tell you the one thing i don't like about about bill clinton was that he introduced the word grow as far as i know into the parlance as a transitive verb i do not like when people use grow as a transitive verb
You don't want to grow our quadrant in the tech sphere?
See, I think that's going to be happening in the counter-revolutionary, non-dominant hand of the sphere.
I think what we're doing here, correct me if I'm wrong, but if you want to use locate as a reflexive verb,
To talk about where you decide to, how about this?
How about you situate yourself?
I'm pretty sure Althusser said you can situate.
You can situate others.
And I imagine with a little bit of effort, you could situate yourself.
I think I try to situate myself within your and my context.
So it's like a Venn sphere.
A Venn sphere.
Spheres upon spheres.
Spheres all the way down.
Mm-hmm.
I try to be – I try to situate myself with you within our tech – within our sphere, which is within the tech sphere.
Okay.
Okay.
I think I got it.
I'm situating myself with you as the disruptor.
Mm-hmm.
But I am – but I think that it's not capable – I'm not capable of – well, for instance, I don't think you can say about yourself that you're woke.
Oh, yeah.
It's like calling your own verse poetry.
Yeah.
I think only someone else, only a stakeholder –
can describe you as woke.
You want to know another one?
Thought leader.
You're not allowed to call yourself a thought leader.
If somebody else calls you a thought leader, you can punch them in the nose.
But I think if you call yourself a thought leader, you're going to have a heap of problems.
And let's be honest, just because you have one bag of coffee, two bags of coffees, three coffees bags, that doesn't mean you can't also have a larger bag in which to situate those coffees vis-a-vis weddings or speaking events.
Now, if you are Steve Aoki, can you call yourself a thought leader?
Steve Aoki.
Is he the guy in Fargo?
I think he's – isn't he an electro house musician?
Yeah.
I don't mean he's like a musician in houses.
You're not saying like he's an electrician.
He might be an electrician.
Like an electrical engineer.
I'm thinking of the guy that Francis McDormand goes to visit in the Twin Cities.
I thought that was Steve Aoki.
Who weirdly creepily wants her to cheat on her husband.
That's a really good movie.
That is a nice movie.
You like that movie?
I do.
That's a fine, fine movie.
Oh, boy.
I like that movie a lot.
I like those guys that make those movies, the cones.
I like those guys, too.
They're the kind of artists where, regardless of how I feel about every single thing that they make, I always will be attracted to their point of view.
Yeah.
You know, I didn't make it even all the way through Hail Caesar.
That's okay.
That happens.
I might try it again.
It wasn't fair.
Yeah, really?
My daughter really wants to watch it because the trailer looked funny.
The trailer looked funny, but it was not funny.
It was hard to watch because they...
They land so many punches normally or throughout their career they have.
And this was just a swish and it had everybody in it.
And frankly, I honestly, this is hard for me.
This is really hard for me to say.
OK, say it slowly.
Not so sure about Clooney.
Not so sure about Clooney.
Yeah, yeah.
I don't like to say it.
Yeah.
I don't like to say it.
I'm going to have to ruminate on that one.
Because I'm pretty... He's kind of in the pantheon for me.
For me too.
I'm kind of pro-Clooney.
I look out into the world and I go...
Clooney right if there was a knock on the door I opened the door and there were two people standing there in dark sunglasses and black suits and they said Clooney and
I'd say Clooney.
Yeah.
Right?
You're not going to stand there and be like, no.
And I feel like, you know, barring any information to the contrary, my gut is that he's a good guy.
A good guy, right?
I feel that same way about Pitt.
If these two guys at the door were like Clooney and Pitt.
Clooney and Pitt.
I'd say, yeah, they do my taxes.
Yeah.
Like, I love Clooney and Pitt.
But there's, I think, ample evidence to say...
about Pitt, at least.
There's ample evidence where you could be ambivalent about Pitt.
But Clooney, I always felt like that charm, that smile, he's going to get away with it.
There's something a friend of mine likes to say about why I'm not on a lot of his podcasts, which is that he likes to deploy me tactically, which I think is a very nice way of saying he just doesn't want too much of me on his shows, which I think is an entirely reasonable point of view.
Is what you're saying here that maybe Clooney is something we should deploy tactically?
What I'm saying is Clooney as a comedic actor.
I feel like that's the leap that we are making unreflectively, and we need to stop.
We need to take a step back and say, Clooney is very charming.
He's wonderful.
He's handsome.
Is he truly a comedic actor?
Oh, brother, where art thou?
Well, this is what I'm saying.
Oh, brother, where art thou is a very, very interesting film.
that a lot of people love.
It's sort of like Moonrise Kingdom.
Oh, that's a very good... Or I would even say Steve Zissou.
It's one of those, like, if you don't like the general Wes Anderson deal, don't start with Steve Zissou.
But I feel like Moonrise Kingdom is one of the films where, like, fans...
of the director can differ.
A lot of people think that's the apotheosis of what Wes Anderson is capable of.
Right.
I mean, people who are fans are like, this is the one.
Right.
And then there are others, like me, who feel like, no, that is not true.
That is not.
This is
It's not the nadir either, but it's like, I have strong criticisms of that film.
And Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?
I feel is very similar in the sense that at the center of the movie is an actor that does not belong there.
It's a little bit like, see, I'm one of those weirdos, though, that I like the great Coen Brothers movies that everybody likes.
And I also, I really, really genuinely enjoy some of the slider films.
Like, I really like the Hudsucker Proxy a lot.
And some people really don't like that movie.
And I think it's wonderful.
But in that case, is it a little bit too Coen Brothers and that's not helped by the Clooney?
What about Lady Killers?
Lady Killers, you got Tom Hanks with a stutter?
I feel like...
I feel like Clooney is clowning.
Clooney is clowning.
Clooney is clowning in that movie.
He is hamming.
He's hamming it up.
And the thing about the Coen brothers is that everybody's hamming it up all the time in all their movies, but they're not smirking.
John Goodman is like swinging from the rafters, but he's committed.
He's committed.
Yes.
John Goodman is really hamming, but he's not clowning.
You believe it.
Mm-hmm.
And you look throughout all the Coen Brothers movies, who's clowning?
And it's Clooney's clowning.
Clooney's clowning.
Yeah.
So you can see all the way through Oh, Brother, Where Aren't There, which is a great film.
Everybody else is like –
is all the way inhabiting their ham, their Virginia ham.
Inhabiting the ham.
And Clooney is riding the ham.
Oh, I see.
He's like Slim Pickens on the bomb.
You don't fly a rocket ship, you ride it.
That's right.
That's right.
And he's doing that with the Virginia ham.
You need to be in the ham.
You need to be the ham.
Inhabit the ham.
Not ride the ham.
That's right.
Don't let the ham ride you.
Don't let the ham ride you.
Intransitively.
So if the – if O Brother Where Art Thou, Clooney is – he's playing the role but he's riding the ham.
Yeah.
At Old Caesar or Hail Caesar.
Yeah, right.
Clooney's not even – he's just like –
He's sweating through the oldies, if you know what I mean.
Does he have jokey kind of fake teeth in Hail Caesar?
Did they do things to make his teeth more funny in that?
I feel like yes.
Although, when you comment on Hollywood actors' teeth... No, I mean in a like, this is obviously...
fake teeth sort of like like matt uh matt not matt damon um uh uh the kid from the 80s movies matt dylan in uh that one movie with uh the other guy oh yeah with the girl with the girl with the uh the semen in her hair yeah so like okay and i'm kind of going somewhere with this and this is a this is a large unified field theory that might be a ham but i'm thinking also think of the
which owes us a lot of fucking money.
Very good movie.
But Tilda Swinton, she has a character with fake teeth.
She's clowning the ham too.
She's transformed by those fake teeth.
She is.
I think in many of these instances, the teeth make people a little clowny.
Yeah.
And it doesn't always work.
I'll fight anybody in the Snowpiercer fight ring.
You don't like it?
There were interesting, Snowpiercer is a series of interesting vignettes stitched together.
with an incomprehensible one page.
The one page of Snowpiercer makes no sense at all.
The 4-3-2-1 on that is, I feel like the first quarter of it is riveting.
Yeah.
The second quarter, maybe half of that.
And then by the time you get to the end, you get to the front, you're like, ooh.
Yeah.
You really had me and you lost me a little bit.
Yeah, you lost me here.
I've been wondering – we've talked about this quite a bit.
Like how do scripts get made?
In particular, how do shitty scripts get all the way to made?
I've just been recently watching the very popular television show Strange Things, Strange Ways.
Stranger Things.
Stranger Things.
So you got a new password.
I reestablished my old password.
Oh, that's good.
Oh, you've been mending fences.
Yeah.
I made – that's right.
That's right.
And I watched the show and it was a thing where at first you're like, is this just a TV show?
And then things start happening.
You're like, this is an interesting TV show.
And then a little while in, I started to feel at least like there's acting happening here.
Some of what I thought was just not very good acting is good acting.
Then I got a little bit like, that relationship between those people is annoying me now.
I feel like if I were in the writing room, I would have done that.
I would have handled that a little better.
Put a little bit of backspin on that.
And then...
About what would you what would you say four-fifths of the way through?
I said this had better not be one of those shows where the writing falls apart four-fifths of the way through the show because nobody thought about how to end it I remember getting I want to say into the penultimate episode and thinking Wow, they have a lot of loose ends to clean up in an hour That's right
And, and it felt very much like you guys didn't think this all the way through.
I'm, I'm picturing you in the writing room and no, there's no person in the writing room who's sitting back in their chair and saying, now, wait a minute.
What, why in the universe of this all happening?
Like why?
Why?
Or furthermore, like not just what, but like that thing has motivations too.
Yeah.
No, no.
That's the most interesting kind of story is that when the thing has motivation.
See, it's like what you, I mean, another, just to go to an old example, alien and aliens.
Like, you know, the titular alien, it has things that it wants.
It sure does.
Like so many of these, so many monster movies now.
The thing is just a thing.
Yeah.
I mean, Jason had a motivation.
Michael Myers had motivation.
I'm not sure about the one with the sweater and the Wilberforce guy with the striped sweater.
Yeah.
Who came into your dreams and did bad things.
Yeah.
uh what what was his motivation he was he was dream he was in a dream and he was mad i think he was a child molester who got thrown in a furnace i think and then he gets in your dreams yeah yeah child molester in a furnace that's terrible i know i know i sought the meat i take the heat i deserve it
But then the Stranger Things arrived at its end and I was relieved of my – relieved of the horror of having spent a season with this and then needing to hate it.
Yeah.
Like it arrived at the end and I went, all right, television, you have –
You succeed.
I'm not sure you stuck the landing, but you made the landing.
You arched your back, put your hands in the air, and now it's up to the judges.
Yeah.
Did they stick it?
Yeah.
Now it's up to history to judge you.
I don't feel ripped off.
Good, good, good.
I didn't watch Lost ever.
One time early on, we were on tour in a very delightful band.
We were opening for a delightful band, and they gave us iPod, the first iPods that had TV screens.
Oh, Neato.
Yeah, those are neat.
Was that the iPod Neato?
Mm-hmm.
iPod Neato came with a sock.
Mm-hmm.
So we all got iPod Neatos, and the other guys in the band loaded their iPod Neatos with things immediately, and I don't know how they did it.
Probably online.
Yeah.
And all of a sudden, their iPod needles are full of things.
They knew how to use the Ethernet cable.
They did.
Somehow.
We were in Europe.
I don't even know how they did it.
Well, it's a whole different voltage there.
Well, yeah.
Exactly, right?
You can't even play Betamax tapes over there.
It's all PAL.
But I kept mine in the box probably for a year.
And then my mom, a frequent character on this podcast, she found my iPod Neato in the box and she was like, what's this?
And I said, that's an iPod.
And she said, oh, it's mine now.
And then she took it and loaded it up with stuff.
She loaded it up with the history of indie rock.
Put a creed on there.
And she's been, that was pre-creed.
And she's, I don't know, she used it until it caught on fire.
But anyway, one time we were driving through Austria or something and I was maybe sick.
And I was just mad.
And Eric Corson, the bass player of The Long Winter, said, here, why don't you watch an episode of Lost, the very popular television show, on my iPod pad Nito.
iPod Nito.
They hadn't invented the iPad Nito yet.
No.
I don't know.
I don't.
The timeline is very confusing to me.
We were sick.
That was I, I, I, X, uh, Kitty Cat.
Yeah.
Caraval.
I, X,
American short hair.
So, so I, I sat in the car and I watched, I tried to watch lost on this little teeny phone thing in a moving vehicle.
And I became very frustrated, uh, with, with every stage of the, like, what is this incomprehensible television show?
It's like, I'm watching somebody play the video game missed.
Mm-hmm.
but on a thing that is like the size of a large pack of candy cigarettes and this vehicle is moving through space and I'm getting a little car sick and I was sick already.
So that... Not an ideal introduction.
No, it was a little bit like a clockwork orange introduction.
My eyeballs were pinned back.
I was taped to a chair.
Ludovico technique.
And I was like, I don't want to watch this lost.
And I was grateful later when there was a cataclysmic sigh of disappointment throughout the
Culture I inhabit or inhibit.
The culture you inhibit.
In which you choose to locate yourself.
That's right.
The culture in which I'm located that I choose to inhibit.
I said, ha ha, fools.
I didn't watch your dumb show because I wait until the jury is in.
And now you all feel like you've been hoodwinked.
Like you were gaslighted.
by some people that didn't write the story in advance.
And that's not a thing that I like.
I don't like to watch a thing where the story wasn't written in advance.
I listened to a wonderful thing this weekend, which was a 1960 interview, Studs Terkel interviewing Buster Keaton in 1960.
Oh, my God.
Which is pretty interesting if you think about it in lots of ways.
I mean, Buster Keaton was still kicking around at the time.
He's talking about trying to re-release his films in Europe.
But it was, of course, his Studs Terkel.
I love that guy.
I just love his whole deal.
And there was just lots of interesting little tidbits and little – just really talking about – you think about his movies were 40 years old at that point, but he was still kicking around.
But it was very interesting just talking about how you make those movies and what went into it.
And one of the things he said that I thought was so remarkable was that in this gravelly voice from the cigarettes that would eventually kill him, he's like, yeah, when we would do this, we would always – we had to have a really –
a very good start and a fantastic ending.
And then we can fill in the middle easily, but you've got to know how it starts and you've got to know how it ends.
And they never used a script, which is if it's, if true is amazing.
Cause you think about, you know, today, like there are a lot of people who use, you know, primarily like Mad Max famously had storyboards rather than like a written script, but like, what an ambitious idea.
What an, what a different time.
And I don't know.
I've been turning that over in my mind, like wondering if I think that's entirely true.
Um,
I assume it is, but also thinking about the implications of only really having a beginning and an end and then how that governs what you do for the parts in the middle.
Are you familiar with the author Maria Semple?
She wrote a popular book.
Oh, she's the friend of a guy who we've talked about.
She's a friend of a guy who we've talked about.
Isn't she the daughter of Lorenzo Semple Jr.?
Is that what I'm remembering?
That's correct.
Okay, Maria Semple.
Yes, you've talked about her.
Tell me about Maria Semple.
Well, Maria Semple is a writer.
She has written a popular book, Where Do You Go, Bernadette?
which was in the bestseller sphere.
Bernadette.
And she is married to George Meyer, one of the people who invented the Simpsons.
Yes, yes, yes.
And he was a writer.
He was, I guess, head writer on the early David Letterman show, the David Letterman show that we all loved.
The one we love, yeah.
Yeah.
When they weren't allowed to do anything normal.
Can we have guests?
Nope.
Can we have a big band?
Nope.
Can we have anybody who's ever been on the Carson show?
Nope.
You better send the receptionist from a drug clinic to the bus station.
Hey, you there, you there.
All the hot dogs and free peanuts in the world aren't going to fix that.
would you like a hot i'm sorry i love that show so much oh anyways yeah so she wrote a book about uh funny funny kind of place bernadette what am i thinking of why am i singing that that's uh who's that guy the the guy from georgia in the wheelchair passed away what was that guy's name uh you know that one guy plan huh
Tony Orlando.
Tony Orlando.
Let's save Tony Orlando.
I'm thinking of Vic Chestnut.
Vic Chestnut.
He had a song that goes, Bernadette.
Did you ever enjoy Vic Chestnut?
I did a long tour of Europe with Vic Chestnut.
I bet that was colorful.
It was extremely colorful.
And I loved and adored him, but I felt like when he died, he and I were estranged.
He was a pretty complicated guy, wasn't he?
Yeah, and lived in a world of complicated people.
Yeah, and surrounded by complicated people.
I saw him in Noe Valley, probably 1999, 2000, saw him do a show there.
It was pretty riveting.
Yeah, he was a great performer.
He's an intense performer.
Yeah, he was for sure.
He did an album with Lamb Chop.
That's right.
And that was in that era that was in that that exact era that I toured with him the lamb chop lamb chop era.
Oh neato in fact, we all played a show together in Bartholone Bartholone, uh Yes, simple herpa derp.
Oh Maria Semple gave just gave a talk where she was describing her writing process and it was that she imagined some characters and
And then she decided what was going to happen to them.
Here's what she has.
She has the characters and then she knows what she wants to happen to them at the end.
She knows where she wants them to end up.
And then the book writes itself.
And I thought about that as she was speaking, and then I walked away with it, and I've been turning it over in my hands ever since.
She said, you know, I've got this character, a callow, shrill woman, and I want her to get her comeuppance, and I want her comeuppance to look like this.
And so here we go.
And here's her journey on her way to her comeuppance.
I was like, hmm, that's –
that's very different from like starting in the dark and feeling your way toward like 900 pages of gibberish and then trying to filter that down into 10 songs.
Yeah.
The whole idea of creating a fiction book, a novel in any way is just seems like such a staggering idea to me.
And I wonder, I wonder, I wonder if that process works for more than one book.
She's describing it as, as working for,
now successfully for her through three books wow she that's that's she's got a good mind yeah you need a good mind to do something like that she's very smart and writing a novel i i god i wish i could yeah i've never tried so i don't know if i could you think you have to start with short fiction
So short fiction, I think as an outsider, as an outsider, somebody who enjoys fiction, uh, from as an outsider point of view, it kind of seems like that's the, it feels like in a really, um, perhaps dumb way.
That's the training wheels for learning how to tell a story is to write something, you know, 10 pages long before you write something 300 pages long.
Well, I, I may have done this because it was very self-serving, but a long time ago I said the novel was,
is a high art, but then the short story is a higher art because you have less room, fewer words to tell the entire tale.
And then poems, as Colin Malloy would say, are an even further, an even higher art because you have now reduced it, you have reduced the
short story to, or rather you've reduced the novel's worth of story to stanzas.
And then the highest art is the pop song because now you've taken the poem and cleansed it of all of its impurity, washed the filth out of it and made only the gold of
Only the little shining nuggets.
And that is why the pop song sits atop the pyramid of all writing as the true condensation.
Now that may be self-serving, but I don't think so.
I think that within the sphere that I grow,
I grow the sphere in the one in which you've located yourself.
That's right.
I be the sphere.
I, I see the sphere.
I be the sphere.
I grow this.
Hmm.
And within that grown sphere, I, I think I've reduced the, I've reduced the sum total of all human knowledge to, uh,
to a poster that could go on the wall of a dentist's office.
I don't think that sounds self-serving.
No, not at all.
My dentist shows photographs of furniture that he's made.
On the walls of his place?
Oh, no, it's much worse.
It's much more clockwork orange.
It's why I don't go there anymore.
He's very nice.
Does he play his son's band over the intercom?
It's kind of worse.
He's very gregarious.
Strike one.
Well, yeah.
I mean, I...
I don't want to talk to the Uber guy.
I definitely don't want to talk to my dentist.
He's a very nice guy, but there's a very, very large screen in your face that's, I guess, nominally there so a kid could watch Dora or something.
But he has his screensaver for it.
TV screen.
It's a big, big, big TV screen that you have to look at because you can either look at him while he's in your mouth or you could look at this screen.
Oh, no.
Right, right.
Yeah, exactly.
Hobson's choice.
And so, but up on the screen is a canny mix of furniture that he has built and cartoons about dentistry that he regards as funny.
Oh, no.
Yeah.
I can't listen to Beethoven anymore.
It's like kind of blue.
Mm-hmm.
Have you listened to the new Prairie Home Companion yet?
Ding!
No.
That's good.
I haven't listened to the old Prairie Home Companion except when I was over at friends' houses and their moms were cooking for us.
Really?
This is where you're going with this.
You've never listened to Prairie Home Companion?
Not voluntarily.
Okay.
Never mind.
Well, it's now hosted by that funny, nice, hilarious, talented man who plays mandolin in the band that's not Nickelback.
He used to be in Nickel Creek.
That's right.
And he's extremely talented and funny.
And they've made the show fun.
A friend of the show, John Hodgman, was on this week's episode.
Oh, that's fun.
It is fun.
And they've had great.
They had Lake Street Dive, which is my favorite band I've discovered in 2016.
They were on.
Oh, good.
But they're not being too cute about it.
It's still got a lot of flavor of the old show you never listened to on purpose.
Right.
All the kids are beautiful and all of the trucks run on time.
Yep.
Ethanol.
Lake Wobegon.
At least Garrison Keillor made the trucks run on time.
Well, so I would consider myself pretty darn good friends with Sarah Watkins.
She's very talented.
Oh, my goodness.
And she used to be on the old show you didn't listen to quite often.
She's no Cindy Cash dollar, but she would be on fairly often.
Yeah, well, she and her brother and the other guy that's now hosting it.
That's right, the other one.
And they were Nickelback, the three of them.
They were Nickelback, and they are amazingly charming, wonderful talented people.
You ever heard them cover pavement?
They'll curl your hair.
They cover Spit on a Stranger and it's sublime.
There's a lot of sublimity in what they do.
Subliminal, yeah.
And I thought when he got that show that if there was a chance for someone to come in and take over for a garrison, that this was... You call him garrison.
Garrison.
He garrisoned himself in that St.
Paul Public Radio building.
And I thought that there was a very good chance that that would be a success because of the sublimity and the talent.
He has good taste, too.
And it sounds like it's happened.
Also, he can rip.
I've never heard anybody play a mandolin like he plays.
He plays a mandolin like if Jimmy Page was a good guitar player.
His pull-offs are crazy.
The thing about the mandolin is that as mandolin playing gets better and better, it becomes clearer and clearer that the mandolin is...
The mandolin is just there to make note clouds.
Yeah.
Problematic.
Bad mandolin playing is like – Is mandolin playing?
Bad mandolin playing is fairly musical, right?
Because it's someone that's used to playing the guitar, picks up the mandolin, figures out four or five chords, and then it's just a really high little guitar.
Is it the same setup?
Yeah.
Oh, no kidding.
Oh, you mean is it the same setup?
No, I don't know.
Is it the same for like four?
Okay.
But I do think that if you're used to playing the guitar, you can sit and noodle on it and be like, well, if I put my finger here, it sounds like that.
You know, you make chords.
You find chords.
I'm going to learn about mandolin tunings.
But as you get better and better at the mandolin and you get faster and faster and your pull-offs get faster and faster, it becomes just that, you know, that like it's every note all the time.
I bet it's hard.
I bet the tension on those strings is pretty high.
I bet you don't get a lot of slack.
It's not like a Les Paul.
Right.
It's not like a fretless wonder.
It's not like a Black Les Paul custom.
But the advantage is that the notes are really close together.
Oh, sure.
So if you have tiny hands or something.
Tiny hands.
It looks like it's the opposite of a guitar.
Upside down guitar.
So it's G-G-D-D-A-A-E-E.
G-G-D-D.
He used to throw shit all over the stage.
Oh, I remember him.
He used to cut himself.
G-G-D-D.
Yeah, cut himself and then smear his poop in it.
Yep.
Something.
And that was art.
Research Magazine.
G-G-D-D-A-E-A-A-E-E.
Is that the same as a ukulele, John?
What's a ukulele tuning?
Ding, ding, ding.
Telephone, telephone.
Ukulele tuning.
I don't know how ukuleles are tuned, even though I play them all the time.
Because I pick them up and I tune them...
To my best guess.
Oh.
Yeah.
So all instruments that are left in my hands long enough for me to take ownership of the tuning.
Mm-hmm.
I end up tuning at least in the form of the high four strings of a guitar.
Interesting.
And do you ask a person before you tune their ukulele?
You don't tune another man's ukulele, right?
If someone hands me their ukulele and says, here you go, I do what I'm suggesting is what I would do on the mandolin.
I would never try to tune a mandolin.
But I just sit and I...
Yeah, I just play notes until I find chords and then I'm like, hmm.
Tune the mandolin seems like a circle of hell because you got doubles of everything.
It's like a 12 string, but with none of the 12 string guitar-ness of it.
Yeah, an 8 string that's tuned some other way.
But that's what I mean when I say if someone leaves their ukulele with me long enough that I would take over possession of the tuning, which is to say more than overnight.
If you leave your ukulele with me overnight, I'm not going to – Somebody lent you a ukulele.
Right.
If somebody said like, hey –
I left my ukulele at your house.
I'll be back in six months.
Enjoy it.
Yes.
I would take over the tuning of it.
Sure.
I would sit and look at this thing and just be like, hmm.
And so at that point, I would tune it like a like a guitar.
And I and I'm not sure I would even know.
DGBE.
DGBE.
Yeah.
So that's just like it's just like a guitar.
I get it.
You know, I've got a I've got a ukulele guitar.
that I like a lot.
Did I tell you about this?
Ukulele guitar?
Yeah, so it's a guitar that's like the size of a big ukulele, and you can just have it sitting around in the family room.
Does it stay in tune?
Not too bad.
It just uses classical guitar strings, basically, and it really needs a change.
I've had it for almost a couple years now.
I love having it around, but here's the baller thing I did.
Normally, you tune this thing, the E is an A,
Yeah.
I'm doing drop G. I tune it down.
My first string's a G. It sounds great.
Totally, totally, exactly, totally baller.
That does sound cool.
Now, you can pick one of these up.
They're not very expensive, and it would be ideal for someone like you.
A little backpacker?
Yeah, like a backpacker if you're a lock and welder, anything like that.
Mm-hmm.
Lock and welder.
We also got something in our house the other day that's a lot like, what are your meat sticks called?
What are those called?
Yeager Meisters?
Land Yeagers.
Lawned Yeager.
Lawned Yeager.
We have a new salami product in our house.
It's basically about the circumference of a Q-tip, but it's made out of salami.
And it's a delicious treat.
Did you snap into a Slim Jim?
You can snap into it.
You get it from Trader Joe's.
Uh, hmm.
Hmm.
I'm not, hmm.
Anyway, it must be hard to write a book.
Somebody, a good friend of mine, a good friend of this program that you might not know.
Okay.
Um, gave me, very generously gave me a basket of Land Yeagers.
Oh boy.
And said, you know, we drove all the way across town in our town, different from my town, and bought these Land Yeagers and we'd love you to have them.
That's so nice.
It was incredibly nice.
Were they good?
This is the problem.
I did not prefer their land yeggers to my own land yeggers.
Hmm.
There because land yeagers, you know, they can go a lot of different directions.
Absolutely.
And so I figured like, I mean, think about that.
Really what you're saying is like, there's a form factor here.
We want this thing.
That's like circumference of what, like a husky pencil.
Yeah.
Now, what are you going to make it out of?
I bet there's a lot of options there.
A lot of options.
And how are you going to grind up this stuff that you're going to put in it?
And how are you going to casing, seasoning, casing, uh,
And so I figured, you know, these were originally meant to be carried around in the pocket of a farmer for however long.
Or in the pocket of a goat herd or somebody.
Somebody that goes up into the mountains and then comes down some indeterminate time later.
And so I put them in my pocket and walked around.
Figured they needed a little bit of pocket curing.
Pocket cure, sure.
And it didn't improve them.
And so they sat in my refrigerator a while and I said, maybe what they need to be is they need to be desiccated because these things are, are better when they're desiccated.
But no, that didn't help them either.
And that would be like you stick it in a bag with like some silica packets?
Well, I think if you leave a thing in the refrigerator long enough, it will self-desiccate.
It self-desiccates, yeah.
So that didn't improve them.
And the whole time I was covered in a little bit of shame because I like the people that gave me the Land Yeager's.
And I and I did consider it a supreme act of generosity, but I just could not stomach these land yeagers.
And eventually they went down the river.
Yeah, which was, you know, terrible.
I just looked up land yeager for the first time.
It's bigger than I thought it would be.
It's not a Slim Jim.
It really is.
It's like a it's like a smallish like legitimate sausage.
Yeah, it's – well, and the more that the moisture goes out of it, the more it becomes – it's like if you're – let's see.
It's bigger than your finger.
Yeah.
It's bigger than – it's like if you took a candle, your typical candle.
Mm-hmm.
You burned it for an hour and then you carried it around in your pocket for a couple of weeks.
You know what I mean?
Like a pocket candle.
That's right.
It's a candle that has had wax drip down the side of it from having burned for an hour and then you took it out and you carried it around in your pocket for let's say the length of time it took you to get these goats over the mountains.
But it matches the performance characteristics you'd look for in this kind of thing.
It's not like you're going to carry around poached eggs or a porridge in your pocket.
You need something portable, something that's going to be hearty.
Let's be honest, if you fall off the tractor, it's not going to ruin your lunch.
Well, sure.
It's like if you could carry a pickle in your pocket.
I'd love that.
I'd love to have a pocket pickle.
Yeah, you can't carry a pickle in your pocket.
The brine is going to give you a rash.
Oh, that's a shame.
But a land yeager is not going to give you a rash.
And it's –
Yeah, I carry them around.
The thing about beef jerky is beef jerky gets – it's hard to eat.
It gets stuck in your teeth.
Yeah.
Is this a little more moist?
Desiccated as it is, is it a little more moist than a jerky?
Absolutely.
It snaps like a Slim Jim.
There's more to it.
It doesn't involve any kind of pro wrestling element.
Yeah, I understand.
When you bite into it, you imagine – I mean like if this was a television commercial –
And I've never seen a commercial for Landyager, but if this was a television commercial, I'd be like a guy, just a normal guy, walking around in his normal guy clothes, and then I'd snap into a Landyager.
Instantly, I would be wearing lederhosen.
Would you wear a Tyrolean hat?
And a Tyrolean hat, and I would go, what?
And the commercial, the tagline would be, Land Yeager turns you into a Tyrolean.
They could probably workshop that a little more.
Land Yeager, welcome to Garmisch Partenkirchen.
And, well, yeah.
I really want one of these.
I'm looking at them right now, and they look really toothsome.
You've never had one?
I don't know if I have.
If I have, I forgot it.
You have to go find the Bavarian butcher shop.
You go to like the Bavarian quarter of the sphere.
You go to the Bavarian quarter.
Well, yeah, San Francisco's famous Bavarian quarter, which is right over there by Italian town.
And you walk the streets.
And you, uh, you, uh, yodel for a land Yeager.
That's the phrase.
Yodel for a Yeager.
Yodel for a Yeager.
Yeah.
Oh, which is more of a fog.
Oh,
E.coli.
E.coli.
I think that the process of making a land, Jaeger, kills E.coli.
I'm going to just come right out and say it.
You went on my friend's food podcast, right?
John Schaffer is not going to – he may agree or disagree.
He's got a lot of thoughts.
He does, and the consensus on that podcast seemed to be everything you put in your mouth, there is an element of risk.
And all we can do as eaters is to measure the risk and bite into those things where we've determined that the risk is manageable.
Life would be so much better if we acknowledge that that's the way everything is.
Yeah.
It's thinking that there is not an inherent risk in things that causes problems.
Everything is risky.
Everything's risky.
You just haven't quantified it yet.
Yeah.
That's why anxious people are technically right.
Hello.
And so a capacity.
Oh, it's so nice to be technically right about how I'm how I am.
you're technically right.
The capacity to live in the world is determined by your ability to, or where on the sliding scale of risk management, you're going to, you're going to put the marker, uh, where you say, this is the amount of risk I'm willing to take.
And my risk marker is way out.
I think relative to others, I'm willing to take a lot of risk.
Um, um,
Not knowing that knowing that everything could everything can potentially kill you.
I mean I have a basket full of swords in this house.
Yeah.
Which is not when you know when when my child was born and there was all that all that talk in the culture of the people who were around me at the time who were helping me manage the transition between not having a child in my house and having a child in my house.
I think if they had known about the basket of swords, they would have said, you need to get that out of here.
They call it baby proofing.
Yeah, baby proofing your house.
They were telling me I should put things in the electrical outlets and I should take all the cleaning supplies out from under the sink and all the things you're supposed to do.
You didn't do that?
They didn't even know about the basket of swords.
I didn't really baby proof my house.
I house proofed my baby.
Oh, that's so smart.
But what I did do was I took all of the vintage barristers bookcases out of what became the baby's room because that the glass in the fronts of those cases is fairly thin.
Oh, yeah.
And it's not exactly like shatterproof.
And I said, maybe I should transform this library into
That is now the baby's room into an actual baby's room and take all the things that could kill her out of here.
And I moved all of my vintage poisons to higher shelves in different.
That's smart.
That's smart.
We just I think as far as I know, I've removed as of this weekend, I removed the last piece of baby proofing we unintentionally kept around.
It's all gone now.
We've been doing it for years.
Well, it starts out with like the first thing you got to get rid of is that bullshit that makes it hard to open things.
So like the things that keep your poison drawer, like I know you don't have this with your vintage poisons, but a lot of times you'll put some kind of a clasp on there where you got to know the secret knock to get into where the Windex is.
Wow.
and you take those off as soon as you can, because that's the worst, because you're living with that every day.
And then eventually, like the doorknob things that won't let you lock a door and that kind of stuff, you get those off.
But I finally took off the last one.
It was a safety, well, because it didn't matter.
It was an inert form of baby-proofing that we didn't need to worry about.
It's one of those things where you put it over a light, like a little two-pignose light outlet, power outlet, and it allows you to snap a cover onto it so you can still have stuff.
Yep.
Yeah, so I removed that so we could put the cat relaxant diffuser into there without it bumping up against the edges of the plastic.
You have some kind of electric device that diffuses your cat?
We have two electric devices in our house that dispense, through a diffusion method, diffuse a chemical into the air that relaxes the cat.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
And I couldn't do that when it was baby-proofed.
So it's like a Febreze for cats.
It's a Febreze for cats' emotions.
A cat emotion Febreze.
Does it...
Does it counteract the Triscodeca plasmosis?
Oh, right.
The thing where you don't want to eat the poop because it'll get, yeah.
It turns you into a cat lover?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I don't know.
I can't tell.
This is, again, this is one of those, you know, one of those things where you can't, it's hard to tell if it works.
You know, the guy says, what are you doing?
He says, I'm here scaring away the alligators.
And the guy says, there's no alligators here.
He says, see, it's working.
So we got two of these, and within a week, we noticed the cat seemed calmer.
So it's difficult.
We don't have a control cat.
Once again, we're back to that old problem.
There's no control group.
Does your cat suffer from anxiety?
Sure she does.
She's very skittish.
I see.
And I think she does it on purpose to provoke me.
She's been living with us since February, and she knows that we walk through the house.
We walk through the house on a regular basis.
And so here's what the cat does.
The cat stands in the hallway, and she stares.
She stares at something.
In a state of readiness.
Yes.
At first, she just kind of looks like some kind of a hairy cake, and she just sits there, and then she looks at me, and her face is like, what, what?
And I walk a little bit, and then she goes into a ready position.
And then she starts walking in the direction that she knows that I am walking one step in front of me.
She stops, acts terrified, jumps a little bit to where she knows I'm going to walk more, then does kind of a 180 and starts running in abject fear.
Yeah.
And does this keep your does it does it impede establishing a gentle pace for you?
Oh, are you trying?
You're trying not to step on her.
You're trying.
You're like, I'm also kind of startled now.
There's one thing you know about me, John.
You know, it's that I like velocity.
It's important to me to get in motion.
You can't stay in motion until you get in motion.
Right.
A body at rest stays at rest.
It's very hard to get out of the house on a weekend morning because I lack velocity in the form of my child.
She will not allow me to have any velocity until at least 1230.
So it's like, you know, you got to get the shoes.
We got to do the thing.
We got to go do that thing.
You're cranking up an old air raid siren.
And the cat, she knows what she's doing.
She knows.
And then at night, she comes in and I pet her for two hours.
so we have a very good relationship but um but no i i think she's just i think she's just riding the ham to be honest yeah yeah yeah you know what i mean i think i think she knows what she's doing at some point in the 1980s my mom because in the 1960s my mom raised borzois and uh
And considers herself – my mom is a frequent character on this podcast and she considered herself to be – Can we get her a grant or something?
Is there a way she could get maybe like some kind of a MacArthur thing?
Yeah, a Pell Grant or a Pell Grant would be nice.
She raised Borzois and I think maybe not inaccurately credits herself.
Partly with reestablishing the Borzoi as a viable breed in the Americas.
Wow.
Because the Borzois were fairly endangered because during the Russian Revolution –
The Russian peoples, the revolutionary Russian peoples, killed the Borzois en masse because they were the dogs of the czars.
Oh, you got to kill the symbol.
Yeah, kill the symbol, kill the dogs of the czars.
And so the Borzoi only survived in the population of Borzois that had been given to other kings as gifts by czars.
And so my mom raised borzois and sold borzoi pups to the people who are now credited with having reestablished the breeds or the breed.
So she reads the history of the Borzoi in America, as you do, and it sort of goes back to the Johnson family and the Percocet family or whatever.
Sure.
The Percocet Borzois.
Yeah, the New England Percocets.
Okay.
And it's the Walla Walla Wallas.
And she says, you know what?
I sold three puppies to the New England Percocets, and that's where they got their dogs, right?
Yeah.
So now they're coming back to the well.
That's right.
The Percocets are coming up dry, and they have to go outside New England to find a Borzoi now.
And who are they going to call?
Oh, no.
I think it's even earlier than that.
I think they were sitting up there in New England, and they were reading a magazine, and they said, oh, we want Borzois.
Oh, I see.
And my mom had one of the few populations.
Okay.
I get it.
This is in the 60s.
She got rid of her – She got rid of her –
It bit me like 42 times in the face in the face of one and a half seconds.
I blocked that out, but now I remember it.
That's horrible.
So we didn't have Borzois for a long time.
But then in the 1980s, when I was in high school, mom decided that she wanted a Borzoi again.
And so she bought this Borzoi puppy.
And let's be honest.
She wasn't that worried about you anymore.
Yeah.
At that point, if a Borzoi bit me on the face, it was probably my fault.
You probably had it coming.
That's right.
You were antagonizing the Borzoi.
That's right.
Don't antagonize the Borzoi.
And I wasn't antagonizing the Borzoi.
But she bought a Borzoi puppy.
And if you know anything about Borzois, even as a –
Even as a puppy, a Borzoi is about the size of a comfort horse.
And so here you have a comfort horse in the form of a dog.
Are there comfort horses?
You're not aware of the comfort horse?
Well, I saw the comfort duck the other day.
I've seen comfort pigs.
Sure.
We remember all too well the comfort horse.
I don't want to be ableist, but taking a horse on a plane seems like asking a lot.
I just want you right now to Google comfort horse.
Okay.
Because they're small horses.
Oh, like little Sebastian.
Okay.
But it's still a horse.
So you can't make a horse as small as maybe you would want to.
If you had a comfort animal, I mean, but apparently people who want comfort animals who need comfort animals find the comfort horse to be very comforting.
No, no, no.
Listen, I get that.
If you happen to have stables and require comfort, a horse seems like a great fit to me.
Well, but a comfort horse doesn't need a stable.
A comfort horse, I think, can curl up in a basket.
Oh, my goodness.
But it's got to be a big basket.
Okay.
And so the Borzoi puppy was the size of a comfort horse, but it was a dog.
And it had – it was – it suffered from an anxiety disorder that –
meant that any time it saw you, it immediately ran in every direction simultaneously.
Oh, no.
Because the paws are, you know, going – each paw going a different direction because it's an enormous wolf-hunting dog that's living in a home.
Oh, my gosh.
And then it would hide under – it couldn't fit under the couch.
It would have tried to hide under the couch if it could because it thought it was the size of a rabbit.
Oh, the poor thing.
It was terrible.
And so I was living in the house –
with a comfort horse sized dog that wanted nothing at all to do with me.
It never allowed me to touch it.
And I was a rambunctious teen that was myself the size of a comfort horse.
I was even bigger than a comfort horse.
How many hands?
You were probably a good 10 hands high.
I was 10 hands.
And, you know, I behaved, I was the size of a comfort horse, but I behaved like an African cat.
Yeah.
But even so, I was a little bit of a leaping predator.
You know what I mean?
Like an African cat can leap.
That's just how you're bred.
You just go straight up in the air and you can catch a comfort duck.
that was in the process of taking off.
You could probably get a lot of small comfort animals.
I mean, if pickings are thin, you could get probably like a comfort rat.
If you had enough African cats, you could take down a wildebeest.
And I'm not talking about a comfort wildebeest.
Of course, I'm talking about a full-size one.
And nothing's more comforting than a small wildebeest.
Especially if it has a big basket.
Wilbur Beast in a basket, I know, I know.
I pet the mane, it feels the same, la la la.
So it was very – I felt anxious and I hardly ever feel anxious.
This sounds like quite a toxic hell stew for everyone involved.
Well, sure, because I was the first – And your mom's got to – she's got to arbitrate, right?
Well, she was – Did she favor the Borzoi?
She was able to communicate with the Borzoi because the Borzoi bonded with her as some sort of parental –
Or at least the Borzoi perceived my mom as the feeder.
They did a Carl Lawrence.
The Borzoi imprinted on your mom.
Imprinted on the mom.
That's right.
My mom would ring a bell and the Borzoi would get the – would stand on the stool to get the banana.
So – but I was the first one home every day, right?
I got off of school and I could transport myself and my sister would –
just go hang out under the statue of Captain Cook and smoke clove cigarettes.
But I went home because I wanted to take a nap on the, on the sunroom couch.
And so I would walk in and who knows what the Borzo was doing all day, but then there would be this like clatter of hooves as it ran to find shelter somewhere, you know, where it couldn't somewhere.
I guess it thought that it was,
It was prey for eagles because it would hide under things.
Oh, I see.
Animals that hide under things are scared of eagles.
Oh, that makes sense.
Right?
If you were hiding from a cat, you wouldn't hide under a bed.
You want to go where eagles won't dare.
That's right.
So you go under for eagles, over for cats.
Okay.
Smart.
Or what about behind?
That's like if you're being attacked by a deer?
Or a Wilberfeast.
Or a Wilberfeast.
Okay.
If a Wilberfeast is in your house... Is that a comfort Wilberfeast?
No, I'm talking about a... A standard or a... Okay.
You don't need to hide from a comfort Wilberfeast.
But if you're looking – I think in order to hide from Wilberfeast and bulls and boars, that's a behind situation.
All right.
Because I don't know about their eyesight.
This is making a lot of sense to me.
Yeah, right.
Up for cats, down for eagles, behind for boars and Wilberfeast.
And you just want to nap.
I'm just trying to get on the sunroom couch.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And do you think the dog was intimidated by that?
They thought you were an eagle?
No, I just think the dog had an anxiety disorder.
And eventually, after nine months, which in the life of a teenager is a long time.
Oh, God.
And this thing got bigger and bigger until it was the size of a comfort piano.
Yeah.
Can you get a comfort animal for your animal?
Because I know I saw a really sweet picture of a dog that has its own seeing eye dog.
I mean, is it comfort all the way down?
Can you keep providing layers of comfort by adding new animals to the situation?
Do they have to be animals?
Do they have to live together?
Could it just be like a correspondence?
But is there some way that you could bring in maybe an ironic animal?
Maybe you could bring in a really nice eagle.
At first, you'd be really scared.
But then pretty soon, it's petting the eagle.
You've seen the videos of the cat and the owl.
The owl and the pussycat?
Yeah, that's right.
He has a pet owl and a pet cat, and they play with each other.
The owl will swoop down.
This is a swooping owl.
This isn't like a house owl.
It's not a comfort owl.
This also ties into your cat and possum situation where you go, hey, turns out it seems like these guys should be going after each other, but they're sitting around playing canister in their underpants.
Sure, because they understand.
That's right.
They're in the Boca Raton of animal mentality.
That's right.
So the owl swoops down and the cat leaps up because they're leapers, jumps up in the air to like bat at the owl and the owl keeps going back and forth on purpose.
So that the cat can leap at it and they both are having a merry old time and then they retire together to sit and groom one another.
Oh, that is so sweet.
I would love to see that.
Well, I think it's on the internet.
Okay.
And you've seen the big dogs with the little kittens.
This is my entire day.
My entire day.
Now that my spirit has been broken by this election cycle, all I do is look at cute animals on the internet.
It's pretty much all my family looks at now.
And there are so many cute animals on the internet.
Oh my God.
It's insane.
There are a lot of cute animals.
Yeah.
We did that to ourselves, of course.
I know.
I know.
We need our own comfort animals.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
Where's my duck?
We took angry hunters and we natural selected them.
We evolutionized them.
Evolutionized because of the hand, the unseen hand of evolution that we've located in this particular sphere.
Yeah, we found the hand.
That's right.
We found the hand.
Mm-hmm.
We took the beasts and we turned them into big-eyed does and moo cows that give us milk.
Now, we have an owl and a pussycat.
It's only a matter of time before they figure out a way to mate.
And what are you going to do when you see one of those in your barn?
I couldn't tell you.
What would you say is the difference between, you play D&D, what would you say is the difference between a familiar and a comfort animal?
Is magic required?
I really, really, really wanted a familiar.
I could see that.
Well, in the course of trying to make an orb, it seems like maybe having a cat that you could talk to might be useful.
I feel like a familiar is somewhat under your either under your direction or at least you're able to consult with it.
Okay, I'm looking it up here.
So if you had a capuchin monkey that could put your food in a microwave and cook it, that's getting pretty close to familiar.
Okay, so today we might call that a helper monkey.
A helper monkey is, I feel like, getting into the familiar zone.
Okay.
That's more of a blowfield cat.
Okay, so we've identified you have an animal in the wild, like a Wilverfeast.
You've got animals in the wild.
You've got animals that have been domesticated for work.
You have animals that are domesticated for pet things.
You've got animals that can be, from one of those things, I guess you pivot and you convert them to, I guess, a comfort animal.
Yeah.
But then you also have helper ones.
Now, would it be ethical to have two horses in your house, one of which is a helper horse and one of which is a familiar?
And just for fun, I'll throw in a third.
What if you get a third one that's even cuter that's a pet?
Would they get along?
Should they get along?
Do they sleep in different baskets?
I don't feel like a comfort animal is much aid to you other than being friendly.
But you wouldn't ask it to make you eggs.
I wouldn't say, like, comfort animal, can you get up on that high shelf and bring me down that tchotchke?
Okay.
Bring me down the jar of sugar.
Bring me that sword.
Bring me the sword from the sword basket, comfort beast.
I would not ask that.
And yet, even the niceness, I think, is...
is called into question by the presence of a comfort turkey because I do not believe that a turkey can be nice.
Turkeys are pretty mean-spirited.
They're mean and I don't think that a turkey has the capacity to be nice.
Whatever part of the brain locates the niceness, wherever niceness is located, within the sphere of the brain of an animal, the turkey is missing that part of their brain.
Okay.
So apparently a comfort animal doesn't even...
into which you project your desire for comfort, your desire to be comforted, and then the animal reflects your desire to be comforted back to you.
It's a cipher.
That's right.
So you're looking at the turkey, and if you see comfort in the turkey, it is prima facie, a comfort turkey.
Precisement.
Whatever you find comforting is comfortable.
Precisement.
You could have a comfort wastebasket.
If you bought an extra ticket for a seat on an airplane for a wastebasket.
Okay.
Wouldn't have to wear a vest.
It could fulfill that role.
What is the largest comfort animal you would personally feel comfortable?
How do I put this?
What's the largest comfort animal you would be willing to take on a plane?
I see.
Assuming, let's assume, you know what?
Let's assume economy plus.
Right.
Is that fair?
Yeah.
What about a comfort sow?
Now a sow is a big male hog.
Is that right?
I think a sow is a big female.
It's a big lady hog.
A lady hog.
Here's the question.
It's the thing I don't know about hogs.
Can a hog sit in a chair?
That would be so cute.
If you put a hog on its butt and belted it in, would it sit comfortably?
Can its architecture support itself sitting on its butt?
Can it have its little hooves in its lap?
Yeah, right.
Or maybe the way that they're built, the hooves would just be sticking straight out.
Maybe you'd have to put the tray down.
They could put the top hooves on the tray.
Right, right, right.
And then it's like you pull the curly tail under so the little tip of the curly tail is sticking out.
They could probably get an orthopedic seat that could accommodate a curly tail.
What happens when more of us exercise our right to put a vest on an animal and bring it on a plane?
What happens when we get into something a little more, as John Syracuse would say, Darwinian?
What happens if one person has a comfort eagle and the other person has a comfort borzoi?
Or a comfort rabbit.
A comfort rabbit.
What if you've got an owl and a rabbit in the two aisle seats across from each other?
Do we expect...
That they're just going to leave each other alone because they got the vest and they know what the deal is?
It seems like a lot to ask, John.
Are you introducing a problem?
Right.
An owl is not going to be friends with a rabbit.
Let's just stipulate that.
And of course, you're going to give your comfort animal the aisle seat.
I think so.
If it's a helper animal, you want it in the aisle.
We're probably a little introverted.
You'd probably like to have the window.
So, yeah, right.
Do extroverts have comfort animals, John?
Sure.
It must happen.
It must happen.
Statistically, I think almost everyone has a comfort animal now.
So I would have to imagine we've now gotten to that point, like homosexuality and veganism, where it's crossing broad spectrums of the sphere.
We're moving way beyond this quarter, that quarter, this Venn, that diagram.
Now more and more people are going to find comfort in an animal.
And let's be honest, it's good for the airline industry.
A lot of times they can't fill those seats.
That's right.
And they're going to charge you full price.
If you bring a sow on an airplane, they're going to charge you full price.
Absolutely.
If he wants to check a bag, that might be 75 bucks.
My sense is that there are actual comfort animals that are actually providing needed comfort to people who need comforting.
And then there are fake comfort animals.
That are the comfort animals that you are kind of referring to.
Well, I want you to get all the email for this, but it's my understanding that this has actually become a problem.
And I'm not saying any of this is right, wrong or whatever.
I honest, I don't want to get involved.
But it's my understanding that a lot of people are making vests at home.
Because they want their pet on the plane.
Yes, right.
I mean, it's like – so we talked about this I think even last week, the testing of your child to see if they are gifted.
Did we talk about this last week?
We talked about it previously.
They should be in some program with an acronym.
That's right.
If your child needs to be in a program with an acronym, they get tested to see if they qualify.
And so they sent us an email saying, do you want to have your child tested?
And we said, I guess.
And then they immediately wrote back and said, your testing is Sunday morning at 7 a.m.
October 28th or whatever.
I don't know.
Yeah, I follow.
And we said, what?
When we said, I guess so, we didn't know that that meant that we were supposed to report somewhere for an SAT test for a five year old.
Seems a little presumptuous.
And right.
And what kind of I mean, they can't write.
You're not going to give them a thing that says pick the pick which which example doesn't fit with the others.
This is how they pick the Dalai Lama.
They might take him out to a picnic, put some things on a blanket.
If you pick up the right Altoids, you grab the right set of USB headphones, that's how they'll know that you're the next gifted child.
Yeah, then a monk throws some confetti in the air, and they're like, it's you!
Right, the white smoke comes out of the monk.
But in this case, we were startled by this, and we talked to some other parents.
Well, so here's the anecdotes.
Uh, we talked to two different people who said we had our child tested and they didn't get into the gifted program.
So we hired an independent tester and in the Seattle school district, I guess you have to have your child tested by the city first.
But if your child doesn't pass the city test, you are able to hire a private tester.
to verify the city's findings.
And in both cases, the parents whose child did not get into the gifted program when they were tested at five years old to see if they were gifted, then hired an independent tester.
And guess what?
I'm going to guess that the child turned out to be gifted.
That's exactly right.
The independent for hire tester determined that the city was mistaken and their child was in fact gifted.
Do they get a vest at that point, John?
I think they do get, they get, well, you know what they get?
They get a Robin Hood hat.
Oh, that's a nice hat.
But there should be some way to distinguish them.
And I'm just going to be honest with you off the record.
This to me sounds like one of those jam ups.
This to me sounds like a who's who among American high school students.
Like they're going to get you.
They got you.
We got a live one here.
They want the testing.
I bet you're going to get a lot of weird mail.
Be circumspect.
You might want to use a fake name.
It seems to me that if you can pay to have your child tested into this program, then it is just a place where busybody rich people are putting their kids.
It's a vest mill.
It's like vanity printing.
You go in there, you want a vest, we'll make you a vest.
That's right.
You're a novelist now.
You paid somebody to copy and paste your book into something.
So we decided as a family last night
uh that we were not going to go to this test that our child was going to the public schools and let the chips fall because this all sounds baloney and uh no thanks no good for you i i you know for what it's worth i think you did the right thing because like what what are you supposed what are you going to get like if they are gifted what changes yeah well they go over to a special place where they get to play with uh you know where they get to make origami
swans or cranes to get to make cranes.
Probably when I was in the gifted program, uh, in fourth grade in Seattle, which was called the dig program, the acronym stood for damn interesting, uh, uh, gadflies.
I don't remember what it stood for, but we, they actually taught us to use slide rules.
Because it was the last gasp, the dying day of the slide rule.
And they taught a bunch of fourth graders to use slide rules, which was obsolete before.
They found these slide rules in a dumpster behind the jet propulsion laboratory.
And which was, you know, they all had digital calculators at that point.
And they were like, what are we going to do with these?
Let's give them to gifted kids and see what they make.
And, you know, if they'd left us alone for three more minutes, we would have made like a toothpick Eiffel Tower out of these slide rules.
But in fact, they had somebody come in and teach us how to use them.
I couldn't use one now.
I think you and I could slam dunk this today.
If we got the resources, if we got your mom behind us, got some help from her, I think we'd go way beyond Montessori.
I think we'd go basically, we'd get the cheapest building.
Maybe the place your band used to practice by the Hugo House.
Maybe you can get that back.
We get that.
It becomes a one-room schoolhouse.
And here's what you get.
You bring your kid in.
And what we have, we have encyclopedias.
We've got atlases and we've got three or four horses.
And that's the school day.
And you have to test into this program.
I don't know.
I'm not sure how you would.
You definitely need a vest.
But you come in and basically you read through the encyclopedia all day long.
If you don't get a dictionary, go look it up in the dictionary.
We've got atlases.
And then periodically you go and get comforted by a horse.
So there are horses, small horses, just milling around in the room.
Where the shelves are just full of atlases and encyclopedias.
Of course, of course.
And, you know, if you don't get an education in there somehow.
Forget it.
You don't deserve to be educated.
Give me that vest.
Comfort horse.