Ep. 244: "Super Cartoid"
This episode of Roderick on the Line is brought to you by Casper.
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Hello.
Hi, John.
Hi, Merlin.
How's it going?
Good.
How are you?
I'm doing great.
Wow, you do.
You sound great.
Yes.
I've decided that I'm peppy.
Today or permanently?
Oh, I don't know.
You know, just try to look on the bright side of life.
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah.
I mean, that lasted for a minute or two there.
Yep.
Yep.
You just keep looking at the chimneys.
You know what I'm saying?
Looking at the chimneys.
That's what they say.
They say, look at the chimneys.
When you're walking around, most people will like stare at the ground or stare at the middle distance.
Try to remember to look up.
Look at the chimneys.
You look at the chimneys.
It'll elevate your mood.
Yeah, you'll see the chimbley sweeps.
Barrow boy.
Oh, yeah.
Look at the chimneys.
I don't know.
It's like diets.
Who knows if those things actually work?
Looking at the chimneys.
Looking at the chimneys.
But if you tell yourself it works, it might work.
Yeah, smile when you sing.
That's right.
And smile when you're talking to the phone.
Not as good as a wink to a blind bat.
Is that right, smile, when you're talking on the phone?
I guess so.
That's my mom.
Try that.
My mom said that she's in sales.
She learned that when you're talking to someone, smile.
Yeah, how does this podcast sound better?
It sounds like two deranged clowns trying to sound happy.
It sounds pretty good.
It sure does.
I wonder if we could do the whole show like this.
I bet we could.
I bet from now on, if we just smiled through the whole show, it would be a much more enjoyable experience.
We sound scared.
We sound very scared.
Have you noticed that
I may have mentioned this before, but if you listen to a sportscaster talking about sports, the sound that they make is the same exact sound as if you were yelling at somebody because you're really mad at them.
You think it's heavily compressed, probably?
No, no, no.
I mean, I don't mean the sonically.
Their normal tone of voice, it sounds like you're yelling at somebody in traffic or something?
Yeah, exactly.
Like, here he comes!
And he's... You know, it's just like it's the same... It evokes the same... That is so interesting.
Like, if you were to, like...
You know, you think about when you listen to people calling South American, as they say, football games.
You can get that vibe clearer if you're not a native speaker, because the tone just sounds so manic.
Yeah, they're really upset.
I'm interested in the radio host, Alex Jones.
I'm very interested in him.
How so?
Well, I don't want to get too far into it.
I've talked about this a lot of places, a lot of times, very interested in Alex Jones.
But I turn to you as an industry expert.
I've heard him, when he just talks and yells, he has a very low...
and very kind of grindy voice in real life.
But when they record him for his show, for his YouTube stuff, for his radio show, they do something.
I think they do something to his voice.
I think it's something they do to a lot of talk voices.
It sounds bigger.
It sounds growlier.
It sounds more evenly growly.
Do you know what I'm saying?
Is that a quality of the microphone?
Do you think it's compression?
Like, what aural enhancement?
Like, what do you do to make...
somebody's voice out like this.
It's mega compressed.
Because it's compressed at the source and it's compressed up the chain and then it's got that crazy radio compression on it too.
When I think of AM radio especially and that particular kind of sound of somebody on talk radio you think that's mostly compression.
Well, so what's funny about that compression is I was having a very, very interesting conversation with the radio DJ not very long ago, a professional.
Was this someone at KEXP, John?
Well, he was describing an experience of going to KEXP.
He is himself not a KEXP DJ, but he was going there to do an interview and talk to
some KEXP people, you know, talk, talk to the professional KEXP DJs.
And he got there and he said, um, that little trick of the trade that the, the KEXP DJ, who's a, who's fairly famous person in these parts at least.
Is that your morning guy?
Well, you know, let's just say for the sake of
Yeah, for the sake of argument, let's just say it's a morning guy.
Do you have some legal reason that you're being so dicey about who these people are?
Well, you know, it's a small town here.
Oh, sure.
And people get really, you know, this is all very serious.
These are fraught times, John.
Fraught.
You want to be careful who you tell people you know.
Yeah, so... Anyway, KXP set up.
So here he is, and he's doing this interview with the guy, and he immediately recognizes that he's got...
the, uh, he's got the compression on, on their interview.
Like it's super slammed and he's got it so that his voice, the, uh, the, the, the host is just always going to be a little bit louder, a little bit like better than the guests.
He gets the alpha setting though, the gorilla mindset setting.
Yeah.
But, but my, my, uh, my, my, um,
My companion in this conversation says he recognized that the compression was so crazy that he just started talking really quietly.
And the compressor then, because he was talking so quietly, the compressor would...
would super, super grab onto his voice.
And it made him the louder of the two.
Because he was working with the... He understood that the compressor was set in such a way that the more quietly you spoke, the more the compressor would work.
And it was actually making his voice appear louder by virtue of just talking more and more quietly.
And so he was like gaming...
this guy's compressor settings in the interview and and you could by by the story you could tell that that the other dj recognized what he was doing but you know is some somewhat powerless because this is his tone and
This is his setting.
This is his tone.
He can't start to get weird.
That would be weird.
Get all like AOR.
Yeah.
FM DJ.
He had to maintain his tone, his vocal styling.
That's his vocal brand.
So this other, you know, this other character was just like, yeah, that's very interesting.
Good question.
And it was like, you know, his voice was really, I think, filling up people's ear holes.
Yeah.
So Alex Jones may in fact not be making that much noise.
He's got the gravel in his voice and he's talking.
Yeah, everything's crazy.
But he's.
But he's maybe not making that much volume.
It might be that his compressors are doing all the work.
Because if you talked like that all the time, you would... You'd blow out your voice.
I remember hearing a thing on public radio where I hear about these things.
I believe you could take a class to learn how to do shredding.
metal vocals in a way that doesn't wreck your voice apparently there's a method for doing that that if you do it the way it sounds like you should do it you'll just you'll shred your voice how did bobcat goldwood do that all those years oh i don't know i think he's just a little broken inside he's uh
But, you know, you're right.
That's part of the brand.
So it's probably also fairly heavily gated.
So every word, but like with a fast gate, like a strong but fast gate, right?
Strong fast gate.
I'm using words I don't really understand.
That was a great TV show, fast gate.
Also, didn't they do that song?
Fast, of course, fast gate.
Closing time.
What?
I'm still smiling.
Well, you know, the big reveal for us in the rock and roll scene was realizing that Chris Cornell made almost no sound at all.
Hmm.
Chris Cornell of Soundgarden.
Rumor was that he churned through monitor guys because
He had this sort of this impossible situation, which was he's fronting this massive band.
And if you listen to the records, you know, I'm going to reach down.
Yeah, is fucking killing it.
But in fact, he's making like.
he's moving very very little air and he's just like and he figured it out that wrote that means that in the midst of all of that very very loud noise they've got to be able to bring up his vocals without causing feedback correct that sounds very challenging correct they've got to be able to bring up his vocals in the monitors right like at the front of the house
particularly if you're playing super big rooms, you know, you've got a lot of, you can do a lot up there, right.
To make everything sound right.
If you're good at, at front of house.
But you know, I think especially before in-ear monitors, your monitor guy is just like, look, and I'm giving you all that I can.
And he's up, he's up there saying, I can't hear myself.
Fine.
Fine more.
Pretty crazy.
But, but,
That may have been true of that may actually be true.
This is and I've wondered this for a long time.
It may in some or another way be true of all those guys.
Maybe Kurt Cobain wasn't singing that loud.
Maybe none of them sing that loud.
Maybe I'm an idiot because I didn't understand that.
I didn't understand how microphones work.
John, you're working harder, not smarter.
That's exactly what I'm terrified of.
Like, I got up there when I first started playing rock music, and I thought that's what it sounded like, and I was capable of making that much noise.
I was capable of making as much noise as it sounded like.
And so I would just scream into these microphones.
I didn't need to.
I could have just been like, instead of, you know, I was really going for it.
At the end of a show, I lay down on the floor panting.
and did when I was 20, I didn't have to.
I could have just been using the microphone.
I could have just turned up the knobs.
But this isn't something we've revisited several times in the past, but especially when you're touring, and let's say you're in Europe, or really anywhere, it's really...
It's a different night every night in terms of the setup and the sound.
You know what all your stuff should sound like.
But, you know, it could be you just get the... You know, the sound man is too high and the bartender has to run sound or something, right?
Where you have to be... Don't you have to be very self-sufficient to, like, where you could almost do without monitors if you had to?
I mean, in the way that you prepare.
You can't assume that you're going to get those Radiohead earbuds and stuff like that.
Yeah, but you...
I mean, you work to, I think, what... You work within the house that you built in your own mind.
So if I had started out singing, you know, like...
Well, I just have these words to sing at this volume.
I would be adjusted.
You're so good at lyrics.
You're so good.
Thank you.
Some of them will just be sitting on the couch while they're recording.
You write a hit song.
I am looking out the door and I can see the outside.
Chorus.
Door, door, door.
Spoon, spoon, spoon.
Spoon, spoon, spoon.
But you see, spoon means different things.
It's different spoons.
Oh, yeah.
Right?
Teaspoon.
That's what I kept saying to people.
They don't understand.
They're not really listening.
Teaspoon.
Every time I say teaspoon, it means a different thing.
It means a different thing.
Yes.
It's your fault that you don't understand that there's five teaspoons and there are five different things.
Shame on them that you have to explain your teaspoons to anybody.
Boo.
Yeah.
Somebody's like, oh, it always says teaspoon.
No, it says five different things about teaspoon.
Teaspoon.
Baby wasn't down with the heist.
Teaspoon.
Baby wasn't down with the heist.
Just trying to do what I thought was right.
Baby wasn't down with it.
She was not down with it.
She was not having it.
I was using street vernacular there.
Oh, that's true.
But, you know, I can't go back.
I can't go back and do that.
There's a house you've already built in your mind, and a lot of that mortgage is paid off, whether you like it or not, let's be honest.
You live in your house mind.
Yes, yes.
Okay, all right, as long as we're talking tech, and this is where we're really going to lose a lot of people.
You know, I don't know if you've ever noticed when we're recording, you have better ears than I. I don't know if you've ever noticed, but sometimes when we're recording, you may...
You occasionally hear the sound of a streetcar going by.
I don't know if you've ever noticed it.
If you go back and listen, you've heard it probably a couple times.
Ding, ding.
Hi, Crowley.
Here's my question to you.
There's only a minimum of things that I can do with damping.
There are some things I could do, but it's a multi-ton train.
Here comes one right now.
Rattling the ground and shaking where I am.
Let's set aside that I made a terrible decision to be next to a streetcar line.
Oh, there he goes.
You probably didn't hear it, but that was a train that just went by.
Yeah.
Would I be well served to get... These are words I've read on the internet and never said out loud.
Would I be well served to get a cartoid or super cartoid microphone?
Would that help minimize the amount of occasional streetcar sound that people hear on this program?
hmm i'm currently using a sure uh i think it's an 87a a beta 87a is what i use right now that's a nice microphone and you you are on a uh the the classic smb right no right now i'm on my um oh you're on your dingus my b caster remote microphone that's the one you can put on your tummy when you talk right
That's right.
That's right.
Currently, I have it staged on a book, a giant coffee table book about the history of the Brooks Brothers Company.
The people who make suits?
Yes.
Now, the people that make suits, you know, it's a venerable company.
That's one of those terms that we use when we don't know what else to say.
It's venerable.
And that's different from Bobby Brooks, like in the John Cougar song.
It's different, yeah.
You dribble off them, Bobby Brooks, let him do what he please?
That must be some kind of short short.
Bobby Brooks, okay.
Or maybe it's a saddle shoe or something.
Okay, sorry.
Some kind of Midwest thing.
Did you figure out what it is?
In one of the little text, doesn't matter, talking with some other people who do these things, they were talking about the need to do interviews and being in an environment where it picked up lots of background sound.
And one suggestion was to get something called cartoid or super cartoid.
Now, is that a super tight grouping of where it will pick up the sound?
Is that what that means?
A super tight cartoid, you're saying is a cartoid.
I'm going to look it up.
I think it's a kind of cartoid.
Super cartoid.
It could be further.
There could be hyper cartoids.
What they're talking about is cartoidality.
Oh, cardioid?
Cardioid.
Cartoid is part of the body.
Yeah.
Okay, so we'll edit that out.
Cardioid, yeah.
Cartoid is an artery.
Okay, so I should not get one that has narrow arteries.
That would not be good for me as a man of my age.
No, I think you're going to want one with as big cartoid artery as you can.
Put a stent in my mic.
In terms of your cartioid microphones, you can adjust that.
uh on a lot of microphones the one that you have right now you cannot the the the sure the the big dildo one that everybody likes the one you like for singing that wasn't that smb is that what it's called sm7 sm7 that one you got the little clickers on the bottom right yeah you can you can adjust i mean a lot of microphones like the one that i'm i'm talking into right now um has has settings it doesn't it it doesn't uh
It doesn't actually say cardioid, but it does say you've got your mono, and then you can switch it to your stereo.
Really?
And can you do the roll-off thingy?
The roll-off thingy.
Isn't there a thingy?
Yeah.
Like on the bottom of the Shure, there's a little wave.
I don't know what it does, but if you get yourself a little tiny eyeglasses screwdriver, you can scoot that over, and doesn't that change your amount of bass and whatnot?
Yeah.
So there are things called high-pass filters, and there are things called low-pass filters.
And just as they sound, if you put a high-pass filter on something, it lets the high sounds pass and does not let the low sounds through.
It'll roll the low off because there's... The thing is, in audio, there are... At the low end and at the high end, there are sounds that, although you can't hear them... Let's say you can't hear them.
They can...
take up a lot of space in your mind house.
So interesting.
There's all this low end information that can get put into a recording that, I mean, certainly there's a lot of it that you can hear, but there's also a lot of it that
Maybe you can't hear, but when you take it away, you can hear the absence of all this garbage.
It's sonic information that is below the level of a recognizable note.
Interesting, so it's not going to be jamming up the signal with something that doesn't need to be there.
Yeah, you cut it out, and you get...
And you cut it out up to the level that you're getting like, oh, that's a note that belongs there.
Or like in a kick drum, you know, you don't want
You don't want unlimited low end because it goes down there and it collects in the corners and it's full of dust and skin flakes.
Oh, and you have to probably like drain it or get like, you have to detail it.
Like you get like a Q-tip and get all that dander out of there.
It's all down there and it's going and it just adds garbage to your sound.
And it's true in our voices, right?
And if you have a double kick drum, you get, I imagine, at least twice as much.
It's three times as much.
Oh, it's an additive quality.
It's a logarithmic curve.
That's science, yeah.
Okay, okay.
And at the top end, it's also true that way, way up high, again, not stuff that you maybe necessarily can actually hear, like pinpoint and say, like, I hear that.
But way up there, there's all this stuff.
way way up at the top that is also clouding your sound and and and causing you disharmony and i think i think the way it's described is that that stuff will harmonically resonate with things that you can hear it affects the sound of the things that you that are
audible to you because sound interacts with itself, right?
And so high pass filters and low pass filters you put on in order to kind of collect the information that you want, which is here in this area where we can hear.
But you can add weird top end to things to make the
Make it sound brighter or make it feel like the roof is taller.
Sound is this crazy thing where you can make the room sound like it's a different room by virtue of how you...
how much of this strange top end that you put in it that you're not actually consciously hearing.
It's such a dark art.
I mean, I guess this is really obvious to somebody who's done this for a living, and I've done some of this, not so much for a living, but it's just amazing how many factors are involved.
I watched a pretty interesting YouTube video the other night, just in passing, that was about this guy in, I want to say, England, who has gone to great time and expense to essentially recreate...
every aspect conceivable a 1950s sun studio type setup and it was and it just even as an amateur it was fascinating to watch i'll find the link for you but basically he's this guy who wanted to say say like he's this he's trying this is his you know
His differentiating factor is that he has like a legit like operating 50s.
It's just all the whole stack is all like, you know, no later than the 50s technology.
And what the experiment they did was to see what you could do the best way to do like a Bill Monroe type one mic setup to record a band versus what you can do with two mics.
And it was so fascinating to hear him talk about like, I guess, you know, mics have different dead spots like having to do with the cartoid, as you say.
But basically like how you put the drums this far away and in this area so that they only get picked up by this part of the mic.
It was fascinating what a dark art it was to get that done right.
Unbelievable.
And what's crazy is that now we all are listening to stereo music, recorded stereo and mixed stereo.
Let's say mixed stereo, which means that across the stereo field,
Typically, what we do is we put the drums and the bass right up the middle, which means that they are equally present in both sides of the stereo field.
Because if you put the bass over one side, the low end, the bass information is so...
for lack of a better term, heavy.
It's really distracting.
The Ramones first album is like that.
I think, if memory serves, the Ramones is drums in the middle.
I believe bass is all on one left or right channel, and then guitar is on the other channel.
Yeah, it just feels unbalanced.
It feels poorly weighted.
Your attention is drawn over to the heavy.
Bass has gravity, and it pulls you.
It pulls your ear.
Now, on the Beatles records, of course, we've finally made it to the Beatles.
Hello.
Because those records were so pioneering, the original mixes of all those Beatles records were mono.
And when it was time to mix them for stereo, which was considered a novel, like kind of...
Weird experimental thing that only weirdos would listen to nobody had stereo music equipment at the time, but you know like stereo home listening equipment They made these stereo mixes and in those cases they did put the drums over here and the bass over there But it was just that we're dealing with George Martin who was a genius and somehow those are really fascinating to listen to But but we have we've fallen into these habits and
in recorded music bass and drums up the middle guitars panned wide this guitar over here that guitar over there and then your vocals right up the middle too but then harmony vocals spread liberally over here and then you're gonna get your little piano on the you know halfway over on the right where a little bit of it's on the left but it sounds like it's in the space right yeah and and the worst offenders are those drum
drum recordings where they actually record the drums and mix them stereophonically, so when the drummer starts his fill, it starts in your left ear and goes to your right ear.
It's like your buddy did this on Commander Thinks Aloud, too much acclaim.
Well, but that was a different trick, which was that we... Different parts, different spread, right?
Yeah.
Every one of those was a mono recording of a full drum kit.
Wow.
And we just situated those different mono recordings across the stereo field.
So it wasn't a like... In that same way of like, we have 10 mics on this drum kit and we have each one of them arranged differently in the
in the stereo field it was like no his kick drum is happening in six different drum tracks i don't know how you i don't know how a person's mind could work like that no it's not a mind it's a it's something else it's a you know is that chamberlain was that who that was matt chamberlain yeah but so your your cardioid what that is is it's a microphone it's a
It's a directionality of the microphone.
And if you're talking into just sort of an omnidirectional microphone, it's picking up everything all the way around it equally.
And that would be very distracting if you were sitting talking into a microphone like that because the train would go by and it would be just as loud as your voice.
That's no good.
I don't want that.
Right.
Well, that's not what you're doing.
You know, your little Shure Beta 87 is, it's very directional.
I mean, if you turn the mic away and talk into the side of it, it's going to,
It's going to pick up your voice not as well.
Right.
Right.
And that and your microphone is actually very like proximity effect is very important.
If you get right up on that microphone, it sounds very different than if you're five feet away from it or if you're even two feet away.
Right.
Yeah, I mean, you know, wheel your chair back a foot and talk into it.
Okay, here's me back here.
And when I get closer to it, now I can speak quietly and I'm in proximity now.
Yeah, it's absolutely, you know.
I don't know how to do these things.
If you use that microphone properly, you know, your lips are not going to be that far away from it.
It's got a windscreen on it.
I got this really cheap windscreen thing that Marco recommended.
That's going to keep the sibilance and the topping.
What about my plosives, John?
My plosives?
Your plosives sound amazing.
Thank you.
Thank you, man.
But the closer you get to that microphone, the more the microphone is going to pick up and the better it's going to work.
So all this cardioid stuff, it's like earbuds.
You're not going to be able, I don't think, with adjusting the directionality of your mic to hypercardioid, I still think you're going to get that train in the background.
I think people would miss it.
It's mostly a thought experiment, because I think people would miss the train, let's be honest.
I would miss it.
You could put a weird noise gate on what you're doing, but if you're talking, the mic's going to be open.
Um, if you're, if you're worried about like the train interrupting your co host, you could put a, you could put a, uh, like a, some kind of noise gate on it.
But I think that would sound weird too.
You would hear this gate opening and closing unless you had it set really, really nicely.
Um,
I think it's just your sound.
I was going to make a terrible dad joke about something, a notional Joe Pass filter.
It would be too obscure of a joke to make.
But I did discover that Joe Pass' full name is Joseph Anthony Jacobi Pasalacqua.
Oh, my goodness.
Isn't that a fantastic name?
Pasalacqua?
Pasalacqua.
That is nice.
Bebelakwa is drinking water.
What is pasalakwa?
People love it.
By the way, in passing, people love it when we guess what words mean in other languages.
You know who really loves that in my experience?
The Germans.
The Germans love it when you guess what things mean.
We stipulated.
We know what Wehrmacht means.
It means make war, right?
It means, well, who knows?
Maybe that's what pasa l'aqua means.
Pasa l'aqua means make war.
Wait a minute.
Maybe it means passing water.
Oh.
Huh?
Pasa l'aqua.
Yeah.
Pasa l'aqua.
In English.
I'm passing the water.
Transitively.
According to Urban Dictionary, Pasolacqua is a baller.
A person... See, Urban Dictionary has gotten real fast and loose about what it'll accept.
Pasolacqua.
Urban Dictionary has turned into... You know, it's a great resource, but it also, like...
I don't know, there are 40 entries all saying essentially the same thing, but everybody gets to say it in their own way.
And that's starting to get boring.
It happened when the Republican candidate made a remark on Twitter about something being easy D.
What's up, EZD?
Don't email me.
I don't care.
But several people very confidently gave very different conclusive readings of what that means.
Some people said it's a sex thing, obviously.
EZD.
Yeah, I'm going to go out and get some EZD.
And I think it's maybe some people think it's like a sports term.
You know, maybe it's like easy defense or something.
But, you know, Urban Dictionary, you know, I actually haven't looked up easy D on there lately.
Let me see what it says.
Easy D. Uh-huh.
Easy D. Easy D. According to Urban Dictionary, top definition.
It's just really nice to say easy D. You see, this is a mess.
This is a mess.
Now, see, the jackals have gotten in here.
And now they're monkeying around.
Top definition, EZD, the penis deeply desired by Donald Trump.
See, EZD.
Second definition, a man that is easy to get sex from.
As in a woman saying, gosh, I could really use some EZD right now.
EZD stands for douchebag president.
See, you guys, your standards are really dropping here.
Yeah.
Yeah.
A guy that's easy... The thing is, the D has got to represent something.
Does it represent D's nuts?
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Like, what is the D?
Does it represent D's nuts?
If somebody says, give me the D, what is the D in this case?
Well, I don't, in the vernacular, in the parlance of our time, I'm guessing it means dick.
Oh, dick.
Yeah.
Easy D. Yeah.
Also, in my experience, dick is a word, and I'm not trying to be normative here, but I think dick is a word that men use
more often than women when specifically referring to a penis of note uh in my experience they don't say dick as much who girls yeah dick sort of sort of a boobs and tits type situation i mean don't you feel like there's differences and and and who uses that in a not meant to be offensive way but just like this is how i talk about my body i've never heard a
I don't think.
Really?
I've heard very few women say tits.
It's ugly.
It's tits.
Tinny word.
I knew a woman that would write the word boobs B-E-W-B-S.
That's really cute.
She would send that in written communications.
Beebs.
But I don't, you know, this is the thing, right?
I mean, dirty talk.
How do you pull it off effectively?
How does it even work?
It's very confusing.
You don't know exactly where, because it's all very, all the words are bad.
You've got to be careful when you're exploring that kind of thing.
You need to be real careful.
Well, careful just because it is spell-breaking, right?
Like, it's not that it's offensive so much or not offensive or whatever, but you don't want to make the other person laugh when you are being serious.
Right?
When you're like, my dick, and they go, and you say, what?
That's something bad has happened.
It's gone off the rails, you know?
And if she says, like, oh, I'm sorry, the only person that ever used the word dick was my grandfather.
You know, like, I mean, I knew a girl who said one time, like, her grandmother used the word twat.
What?
Just as a descriptor, just as you now would say vagina.
It was just some fucking Appalachian thing.
where she would be changing like the little girl's diaper and like oh well here wipe her a little twat or whatever oh my goodness really so this girl like that word which a lot of us would feel like was like a pretty tough word that's pretty edgy um to her it was just like a sweet little old comfortable like country grandma word so everybody's got a different
Everybody brings a whole different bunch of suitcases into that mind room.
And how the hell do you do it?
For a long time, I would never use vagina in that context because it sounded like something that your OBGYN would say.
Yeah, it does.
It sounds a little bit gynecological.
But...
But it is the term of art.
That's true.
And so I think there are a lot of people that are like, listen, there's not a lot of good words here.
So just stick to the main one.
Stick to the road.
Don't go off into the bush.
I had.
I was fortunate enough to be seeing a girl in college who had a really cute one.
She had a little sister who was one of those miracle babies.
Like, she was 21.
Her brother was 19.
And then... And her baby sister was two?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Her mom got pregnant at like 42, like out of nowhere.
Can you imagine the surprise?
Oh, surprise.
Guess what?
We're going to need to move a few things around.
Yeah, you thought you were going to live on a cruise ship, didn't you?
Nope.
Nope.
and uh and uh her her mother would when referring to her her swimsuit area downstairs we'll call it her girl bottom and i still think that's really cute yeah but that's you don't want to you don't want to be interacting with a girl bottom i think it's sweet unless it's a yeah well this is the thing this is the thing girl bottoms and boy bottoms
Well, I mean, that also means another thing.
I don't mean it in a fraught power exchange way.
No, no, no.
I've got to get a girl bottom.
There's also a bottom that's also part of the mix down there, like an actual bottom.
Hang on.
What?
Yeah.
You're right.
So for a while, I was like, look, the word pussy, it's a nice word.
It's a sweet word.
It means like a kitty cat.
Yeah.
It's like a sweet little it's it's so much better than the other words.
Can I just at least eliminate the confusion in my own universe by just using that word?
Well, just that's.
it's a fine word i don't mean anything bad by it it's just like it just seems sweeter and i'd like to refer to that uh part of your body let's say i'm saying to someone as an introduction like hey now that we're uh getting close let's work on some vocabulary yeah um and i encountered quite a bit of uh like about the word pussy which seemed very sweet and
But at least to people I know, it's cringey.
At the same time, it is a word that many women I know would use to privately refer to their girl bottom.
I'd say more so than twat.
Well, I don't think anybody uses twat unless you're an Appalachian grandpa.
Yeah.
Clean out her toilet.
What a horrible word.
It's so ugly.
You get so many letters from the McElroy brothers.
You know, not all West Virginians.
Pounce on it.
But, you know, like, I can't use the word dick with a straight face because it just, I don't know.
That's passed on to the others.
That's like the word ass.
Like, that's now a term of art.
Dick.
I mean, it's somebody who behaves like a dick.
Oh, I see what you're saying.
You know what I mean?
Oh, don't be an ass.
I use that.
I use it that way.
Butt has come a long way.
Butt.
Butt.
B-U-T-T.
That's another very tricky thing because everybody thinks about their butt, right?
Everybody's got some thoughts about their own butt.
Yeah.
And...
It's unclear who wants what aspect of their butt, who wants attention called to what aspect of their own butt.
I'm so glad you brought this up.
Yeah.
I really, really am.
Because I think you can run into some real danger zones if you're not fairly specific about what you mean, what we talk about when we talk about butts.
I think you can say you have a nice butt.
Which in that case might mean that the shape of your posterior looks good in pants.
Right.
I mean, I think everyone at a base level...
wants to hear that they have a nice butt oh yeah yeah if you're getting intimate with somebody to say just casually sometime like not you know like you can say it in the uh in the boudoir but even if you're just like out on the town and you've been dating for a while you know to lean over and say like you know what you've got a really nice butt that will i think
40 years later, that will still be in their mind room as a really nice thing you said one time.
That might be their favorite mind room in their mind house.
Yeah, that's a freaking oil painting over the fireplace of their mind house, right?
Like, my other...
once said that, you know, just sort of like offhand, you have a really nice butt.
I got a compliment along those lines having to do with the swimsuit area.
I got a compliment in 1986 that I still think about.
Yeah, isn't that nice?
You're right, it's an oil painting in my mind house.
I was like, what a nice thing to say.
And she said it in a way that didn't feel forced.
It seemed like she offered it freely and of her own accord, just in passing.
And I still think about it.
That was a long time ago.
That's, what, 30 years ago?
Yeah.
I mean, that's the key.
I was walking with my girlfriend one time and a group of guys, a group of all my friends...
And we're kind of bringing up the rear, if you will.
And we're on the way down to the bar.
We're going to the Gnar Tavern.
And there's, you know, six guys ahead of us.
And we're walking along.
And she just sort of casually under her breath says, you know, like, six guys and not a single good butt.
And I was like, whoa.
It had not occurred to me that she was looking at
It was a casual remark, but I looked ahead and I was like, okay, all right, so looking at these six butts, none of them are good.
Okay, okay, memorize this.
Memorize these butts and understand that these are not good butts.
Oh, so you're going into Terminator heads-up mode at this point.
You're just gathering information about this new environment that you will later use.
You're like an AI, John.
You're gathering all this corpus of information to apply in other circumstances.
Looking at these six guys ahead of us, I would have made a lot of assessments, right?
Like, oh, this is a bunch of, you know, like this is a bunch of ding-a-lings or none of these guys has any fashion sense or, you know, whatever.
They look like a bunch of soccer players or whatever.
But I would not have said.
That's got to be up there with, is this your first day?
A bunch of soccer players.
What are you, a bunch of soccer players?
Yeah.
Hey, hey, soccer player, keep driving.
Why don't you put a soccer on your head and play?
But I but now, yeah, she had given me this whole new field of information to consider, which was six guys, not a nice button in the bunch.
And, you know, and of course, the next information rich sentence.
Yeah, but here I am.
It's got levels.
I'm the seventh guy, right?
And she's walking next to me.
If I was up there with those soccer players, would she be like, there's one nice butt in the group?
Or would there be sort of a blanket?
And at a certain point, if you're in a crowd of six guys with not a nice butt, how nice does your butt have to be to stand out?
Yeah.
If your butt is being assessed all by itself,
It might be like, yeah, it's a nice butt.
But if you're in a group of bad butts, maybe you get lumped in with them.
Interesting.
Okay.
Yeah.
So that's the type of thing.
But if you go any deeper into a...
into what you like about someone's butt.
It gets tricky right away.
Oh, boy, does it ever.
Oh, there's just levels and levels.
It's a minefield, the butt.
It's really tricky.
And particularly now, the fashion for the millenniums is these high-waisted jeans that we wore.
Those were the fashion when I was in high school, too.
And they are not the most becoming style.
Because they look really good on someone who has a very pear-shaped bottom.
But they don't really look good on everybody.
Because they're designed for a narrow waist and a sort of very curvy...
They're meant to look like a pear.
Exaggerate that particular curve.
Do you think they go up high, could it be to cover up a lower back tattoo?
Or do you think it's mostly to provide a certain shape, a suggestion of shape?
Good question.
I find them to, in the main, create less shape.
than other pairs of jeans.
Because in the early 2000s, the late 90s and the early 2000s, the gene technology, I think, really focused your attention strictly on the butt so that your lower back was not engaged properly.
And your, you know, like your, even your, your, I mean, I guess your, your thighs are engaged in a, in a sort of general butt frame.
This is part of the problem is the continuum.
I don't know if it's a synecdoche or a metonymy, but there's, there's a whole lot of pieces and parts to, to, to talk about here.
So much going on.
But, but if you, if the, if the genes were focused strictly on making the butt seem high and tight, which I think was the, that was the version of like seven genes or whatever.
That was that 90s,
2000s late 90s early 2000s like gene technology you could have a narrow waist or a wide waist you could have a You could be hourglass shaped or you could be square and
And none of that was being, the gene was not interacting with the rest of your body, really.
It was just focused on making your bottom look good.
You're just the bottom.
And so those genes were very successful, and I think they're very popular with people my generation because we'd been struggling, always struggling to figure out how to make your bottom look good and making the maybe classic error of thinking that your bottom starts up under your arms.
Mm-hmm.
And how do I make my bottom look good when I don't have a waist?
Or how do I make my bottom look good when I have a high waist?
Or, you know, and all this stuff.
And it was just like, oh, no, these jeans are low-waisted.
So they're not trying to be up in your back.
And they just start thinking about, like, how to make your bottom.
Well, so now we're into these high-waisted jeans.
And the high-waisted jeans are, just by their very nature, they are including your back and your bottom.
Mm-hmm.
They're including waist in your bottom.
And there are a lot there's now there's a lot more going on.
And it's part of it's part of norm core.
I feel like.
Is that still a thing?
Well, I just feel like in general, the millenniums are less fashion.
I mean, they fashion still matters, but they're less give a damn.
You know, I just I feel like they're a lot more free.
With, you know, you rep whatever you want to rep.
I agree.
I think there's a lot to admire about the Millenniums.
They don't give an F, as they say.
They don't give an F. But the High Waste of Gene, I think, is an error.
If I can just be like a ghost of Christmas past here.
If you have a choice...
Just leave it unless you are unless you really know for a fact that you are one of the rare, rare individuals, you know, in the 1970s, you had those Gloria Vanderbilt jeans and they looked bad on everybody except for one out of a thousand people.
If you know for a fact you're one of those, like, yes, you can wear anything.
Yes.
But just in general, you're not going to find happiness, I don't think, in high-waisted jeans.
I just don't think it's there.
But, you know, like, for instance, if you are somebody who's like, if you ever were to say to somebody, like, you've got a really big butt, I feel like you just pulled the pin out of her grenade and
And you're holding it in your hand, and you're also holding, with your other hand, you're holding on to the edge of a cliff, and your feet are just swinging in the air.
Oh, but the grenade is also tied to a string, which is tied around your neck.
So if you let go of the grenade... I was wondering how you pull out the pin if you only have one hand.
Do you use your teeth like a sergeant in a movie?
That's right.
You pulled out the pin, and now you're holding the grenade.
If you let go of it in order to grab the cliff wall, then you've got a live grenade tied around your neck.
What if you're holding onto the cliff by the grenade?
I don't think you can.
How do you hold onto a cliff with a grenade?
I don't know.
I've never been in this situation, but I'm saying it would really work for the narratives.
Maybe there's just one little bit that got stuck on there.
Maybe it's on a root, right?
You know what I'm saying?
But your only way, your only survival is going to be keep holding the grenade.
That's a lot like talking about somebody's butt.
I see.
You went a different direction with it.
I was going in the, like, there's no way out here.
Oh, I see.
I see.
But you were saying, like, now you're permanently lodged on the side of this cliff.
Maybe the cliff is made of grenades.
Maybe if you zoom out far enough, you realize that the whole cliff is a grenade.
maybe the whole maybe the world is maybe the universe it's it's not so different than like the when are you expecting gaff oh that's bad i mean you know the pattern that runs through all of this i think is like before you open your big mouth make sure you understand what the play is right what yeah i mean i have i have had success with the
I've had success with the, listen, within the larger context, you have a very small butt.
But within the context of small butts, you have a nice big butt.
Do you understand?
Yeah, it's nice that you explained it.
Pull out a PowerPoint.
The thing is, you can't explain it.
But if you can create an atmosphere where you are able to say, you have a big butt.
But it's within the context of having, like, a very small butt.
Well, yeah, but, I mean, couldn't you go with something—I don't know.
Well, see, it depends on what you're trying to— Not very small.
Well, not, like, comically small.
Not, like, disablingly small.
Yeah, like, you have a weirdly small butt, but within that context, it's pretty large.
Right.
That would just be affluent.
I mean—
Depending on what you're trying to accomplish.
Like if part of what you're trying to accomplish is to just pay a compliment and walk away, which could be kind of weird.
Like to a stranger?
I don't think you can refer to their butt at all.
I think just talking about people's bodies is dangerous in any circumstance.
I'm talking strictly within the context of somebody that you are romantically involved in because you should not be commenting on the body of anybody else.
Yeah.
Unless you are just unless you are strictly like in a situation where you are either naked with them or on your way to being naked with them.
Yeah.
And in that case, I think it should always be only complimentary.
You know, it's like high-waisted jeans.
Unless you have a reason, I would stick with complimentary.
I don't think there's any way you can make a remark about someone else's body that you are sexually engaged with.
Is that supposed to be like that?
Yeah, that's going to be considered.
There's so many ways that you can offer someone constructive criticism, but not in their body.
Not while they're literally naked.
One of the oil paintings in my mind house, which is not over the fireplace, it's one of those oil paintings that you're like, do I put this in the bathroom?
Where do I put this oil painting?
But a girl in college said to me, it's one of these great compliments.
You have a great body.
If you just did a few sit-ups.
Oh, wow.
That's.
And I was like, I have a great body.
Thank you.
If I just did a few sit-ups, which I know already, I knew that.
I knew that I should do some sit-ups.
And thank you.
You know, like.
You consider that constructive?
She meant it.
She was a terrible person.
It sounds like consolation.
She's consoling you.
Like, hey, buck up, little guy.
Oh, no, no, no.
It wasn't that.
It was that she was trying to make me.
I have dated a lot of women.
She was fixing you.
That's right.
Who are trying to shape me into, they love me.
90% of who I am is exactly what they want.
John is a project.
That's right.
It's the 10% that's a project that's very exciting to them.
And in her case, the 10% was she was just going to shape my body a little bit, just craft it a little bit so that it was more to her liking.
And that involved a little bit of sit-ups.
Now at 23, I had a dad bod.
And at 48, I have pretty much exactly the same dad bod.
So in that sense, I mean, I'm not one of those 48 year olds that still has a flat stomach, but it's because I never had a flat stomach.
Not a single time in my life.
It's just you doing you.
Yeah, that's right.
I'm doing me.
I think you can tell somebody that they have a cute butt.
Again, they'd better be somebody you're dating.
I do not think you can say that to someone on the bus.
I don't talk about bodies at all, John, with anybody ever.
This is all just speculative.
I could not imagine saying any of these words to people.
To your secretary?
To my secretary.
At your office?
Janice!
Janice, come in here.
Give me a twirl.
Working nine to five.
You have kind of a big ass, Janice.
I mean, within the context of having a small ass, you have a big one.
Get back to that dictation.
If someone said to me, you have a cute butt, and I have heard it over the years, but not enough times... I was waiting for you to work that in.
I had a feeling that was coming.
That's one of your smaller oil paintings.
But not enough times that I believe it.
You know what I mean?
Like if it was something that was said universally...
I would be like, hmm, that's one of the things that I know about myself.
Like, universally, women have said that I have good legs.
Is that right?
Yeah, and so I believe it.
Because unbidden, it's just one of those offhanded comments like, you know what, you have good legs.
I feel like you can think about your life and what to believe in your life a little bit like my daughter was recently looking at some of my old yearbooks from junior high.
And so many of the things people wrote in my yearbook are nearly identical.
And taken as a whole, they form a certain truth.
I could choose not.
Stay sweet?
Well, I could choose not.
Well, see?
Stay sweet.
Even that.
You get enough of those, that means something.
That's not people filling up a whole page with that time we made out at the roller rink.
Most of them, many of them, are you're weird but cool people.
You're weird, but cool.
You're weird, but nice.
You're weird, but smart.
And the thing is, the consistency to many of these remarks is that I am weird.
That is the predominant characteristic.
If you were to put these into Excel, what would emerge is that when I was 14, I was weird and everyone said so.
Right.
So in that case, I feel like that is whether I like that or not.
or feel that's distinctive or not.
The point is, that's the people speaking.
I heard that enough.
Now, nobody said in there, you know, and you have sexy legs.
That was never in there.
And you have nice legs.
Right?
I could choose that.
Again, I don't know if it's a synecdoche or a metonymy or making things up, but I could just choose to believe that about myself.
But I have not heard that often enough that I think it's meaningful.
But you have.
You've heard about your legs.
If you look at my yearbook, I think what you would put together over all the comments, it would be, you were a bastard to me for four years, but for some reason, everyone likes you still.
Good luck.
And this continues now on Facebook, right?
Don't you still get remarks from people who are like, God, you're still such an asshole?
You were absolutely terrible to me, but for some reason I could never hate you.
That is very confusing.
I hope I never see you again, but I also wish you well.
Did you ever give that girl her license plate back?
Yeah, I did.
We're friends now.
I feel like when I first met you and when I would look at pictures of you, particularly pictures of you when you were in college, my feeling was that Merlin Mann was a very handsome guy.
I've heard several of my friends have said this.
I don't see it.
I appreciate you saying that.
That was your impression at the time.
Well, you know, the thing is, I feel like you've aged well.
You have aged into a very appropriately interesting-looking middle-aged man.
You have not fallen apart as that.
Oh, well, you know, there's always time.
You've become more intensely... I've become more me.
If I were casting a catalog, a modeling session, you'd be one of the type of people that I would think could sell...
Sell things still just with your face.
Wow.
And that's not, you know, a lot of people like their face falls apart.
And it's just it's just that God it's just what God chooses.
You know, it's not like it's not that for any for any particular reason.
But I always felt like you were handsome and did not believe it, did not know it or believe it, such that you never really capitalized on your handsomeness.
Is this your sit-up statement for me?
I could have been good-looking if I cleaned myself up a little bit, probably.
No, no, no, it wasn't that at all, because I think dirty is handsome.
No, it was that you didn't believe that you were handsome, so you never exploited it.
You never went into a situation where you said, well, I'm handsome, so I'm going to pull this off because I'm handsome, right?
You always carried yourself as though the last thing you believed was that you were handsome, or at least it wasn't like a primary thing.
Well, that's a good conclusion.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think for me, I did not think I was handsome.
It was clear I wasn't.
I was because I was under I was under cooked.
But at a certain point, I feel like a scallop.
I did.
But at a certain point, I think I grew into my looks enough that now.
I bamboozle people because I have, you know, charismatic.
Yeah.
Charismatic.
Right.
Which is, you know, which is this, which is another kind of awful comment.
Really, really nice personality.
Yeah.
You make a lot of your own clothes.
Good cook.
Exactly.
Exactly.
This is the type of thing that my friend's parents said to me in high school.
You know, you're going to grow into your looks.
You're very handsome in the sense that as an adult you will be handsome.
The things people say to other people.
Yeah, where you're just like, hmm.
I'm just trying to be helpful.
I would have preferred to be cute in high school, but I guess that wasn't my fate.
So we played a show the other day.
Yeah, I want to ask you about this.
Three guys from my high school showed up.
And, you know, three guys that had never seen me play.
Actually, one guy wasn't from my high school.
He was from my ski team.
But he was, you know, within Anchorage, if you were on the ski team, by which I mean initially the Alyeska Mighty Mites, and then ultimately graduate to the Alyeska Junior Racers.
Yeah.
It was not a ski team in the sense that it wasn't like a high school ski team where you competed against other ski teams.
It was a ski club, a ski culture where you competed against one another.
And then the great ones went on to compete nationally and then internationally.
It was like a farm club for the world.
And I think now in Alaska, the high schools have ski team, downhill ski teams I'm talking about.
They always had cross-country teams that competed against each other.
But now I think they have downhill teams.
And it might be a club sport.
Like a, what, intramural sport.
But so one of the guys from the ski team who went to a different high school, but he was part of our larger gang because we were all skiers together.
So these three guys came to my rock show.
And in particular, the one that I knew from Ski Club that was not from my high school.
He looks exactly the same.
He looks the same as he did when he was 16.
We're reaching an age where that's strange now, when that happens.
But, I mean, he looks like a man.
He doesn't have a sweet face or something.
He looks like a full-grown adult.
uh but he looks he looks the same he would be instantly identifiable as himself in a way that a lot of people my age aren't a lot of people i see that are my age and i'm like i know you don't i and they're like yes we know each other very well and then i'm like it's you hi you know like they've changed considerably he just looked exactly like himself and what's amazing is that
Of everybody I know, he has created exactly the Alaska life.
He's a doctor, and I grew up in a neighborhood that was close to the hospital and the college, and most of my friends' parents were doctors.
And a lot of my friends went on to become doctors, but they all moved out of Alaska, right?
So they're a doctor here, they're a doctor there, they're a doctor there.
Okay.
And they're living some other doctor life, some Bellingham doctor life or some, you know, California doctor life.
But he's a doctor.
He has an airplane, which he uses all the time.
A ski plane in the winter and a float plane in the summer, which is very Alaska thing to do.
And he uses that airplane both to, or I'm sorry, he uses it to hunt.
Mm-hmm.
And so he'll post pictures on Facebook of like, we just went out and shot this giant elk or this mountain sheep or whatever that is that they're just out like hunting as part of one of the things that they do as Alaskans.
Or they fly in somewhere and catch giant king salmon.
Wow.
They also put skis on it and fly way up on the side of mountains and everybody jumps out.
and you know and my friend then flies the airplane down to the bottom of the mountain and everybody skis down the mountain and then gets back in the airplane and fly back up and land on the glacier and do it again like this is the life that he is providing for his children his teenage kids are like let's go skiing dad and they get in the airplane and they fly up and land on a glacier and ski down like it's a
It's so Alaskan.
It just blows me away how completely successfully he has created this thing that seems almost almost fantastical to me now, having lived in Seattle as long as I have, but was exactly kind of what that was the environment I grew up in.
Right.
Your friend's dad had a plane.
He flew you up to their lake cabin and you
then you went water skiing and then he would fly you up on the mountain and drop me it's just like what kind of universe somebody sent me a link to a video the other day about this young woman who's like a she's a young mother now and she'd been an alpine guide on mount mckinley for many many years and then after she had her daughter
She felt like being an Alpinist was no longer, I know, was no longer a safe job because she had a little daughter.
And every time you go up on the mountain, you risk dying.
It's just the nature of going up on the mountain.
The mountain decides whether you get down or not.
And so...
Up until that point, she'd been living a life where every time, you know, her job was to go up on the side of the mountain and try to keep these people that are paying her from dying.
And also, as a corollary to that, try to keep herself from dying.
But now she's a mom and that doesn't feel right.
So she decided that she was going to transfer her energy into becoming a bush pilot to fly the climbers up and land them on the mountain.
And her description of it, why it's way better, is like, well, every night I get to come home and sleep in my own bed.
Every morning I get to be up at 14,000 feet on the side of this mountain.
Wow.
You know, like dropping climbers off up there.
And then I get to fly home and go to bed in my little house in Talkeetna.
And I was watching this and just like, Jesus, this is totally another version of this same weird Alaskan life.
But when I was a kid, it was always the grownups doing it.
Now I'm watching this video.
This, to me, she still reads as a young woman, right?
She's younger than I am.
She's like a young mother and she's flying this to Haviland Beaver and landing it on the side of the freaking mountain.
And she's flying with her little daughter.
It's super cute.
There's a shot where they're in a little cub and they're taking off and her little four-year-old is in the backseat like, the sun is in my eyes!
And one of the things about being in an airplane is that
uh, there aren't in a small plane that you don't have window shades.
You want a lot of windows because you want to be able to look out and make sure you're not going to fly into anything.
And the way that you're like, just by the nature of it, you're up in the sky.
There's no trees shading you and the sun can come into a little plane and it's just really blinding.
My dad used to fly with two sets of sunglasses and
He would have his sunglasses on, and then the sun would just be like, I need to put another pair of sunglasses on.
Wow.
Double sunglass.
Anyway, so I'm watching this video, and I'm just like, fucking God, Alaska.
There's a part of me that really feels like I have done a poor job because I'm not a bush pilot.
It's the weirdest thing.
I hadn't expected that.
That's very interesting.
Yeah, it just feels weird.
It feels weird to watch those videos and be like, oh, my pals are up there just, you know, flying up to get a burger in Tall Keaton.
It's very muscular.
It sounds like a very muscular lifestyle.
It doesn't feel like that to them because they feel like the plane is a necessary tool.
It's just like learning to drive a car.
If you want to get up there where things are interesting...
Then that's what you need.
And of course, you want to get up where things are interesting, because once you've skied up in the glacier, why do you want to go ride the chairlift?
I mean, the only reason you ride the chairlift is because you do that Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.
But if you have all day, why not fire the plane up and go get the real pow pow?
You go, right, I guess.
No, I mean, it's so utterly foreign to me.
I mean, all these different modes of transportation and leaving the house so often, it's all very, very foreign to me.
Yeah, leaving the house with the expectation that all day long you're going to be putting in effort.
It's not easy to get the plane going and fly up into the mountains.
It's tough.
It's just so much danger.
My gosh.
Yeah.
Danger okay, so let's explore this then you so you feel like you she maybe should have been a bush pilot No, because if I had wanted to be a bush pilot I absolutely could have you know I stood at the I stood at the crossroads I I looked at the the road Bending off into the wood and then took the other as just as fair I was
perfectly positioned to be a bush pilot and i just felt like well yeah or i could go ride freight trains yeah and the riding freight trains felt more interesting because being a bush pilot felt somewhat mundane just like going to medical school did and then having gone and ridden freight trains for a couple of years then i followed then i went where the day took me
And ended up where I am.
Because, you know, honestly, Merlin, I went where the day took me.
You went where the day took you?
Yeah.
I never had a plan.
I don't know if you did.
Did you have a plan?
I mean, I had notions, but I never had a plan.
But I think the day is a very important unit for you.
The day is... There's important patterns to the day in your life.
Things like what is the uniform of the day, right?
You've got these things that reflect how you slept last night.
Where do you have to be?
I'm not saying you think merely in days, but the day is a very significant quantity of time for you.
Yeah.
I approach each day as though it is a new...
Well, yeah, each day is new.
I didn't... So, for instance, yesterday...
My plan for today was to do this podcast with you.
That was the thing.
That was the tentpole for the first.
That was the reason I was going to get up in the morning was to do this podcast.
And then after this, I immediately had immediately my notion of the rest of the day became very vague.
It was like, I got to get up.
I got to do the podcast with Merlin.
Now, after I'm done doing the podcast with Merlin, do I get dressed?
Well, we'll figure that out when we get there.
But also, isn't that governed partly by, like, what are you getting dressed for?
Yeah.
I mean, are you going to wear something where you can go out into the bush?
But do I even need to?
If I don't need to get dressed, why go through the whole rigmarole?
That's true.
Am I going to play guitar tomorrow?
Could be.
That's a pretty good idea.
Put on your guitar pants.
No, no, no.
You don't need pants for a guitar.
Is that sanitary?
Do you put down a napkin or something?
The thing is, that guitar, it's not like I'm going to hand it to somebody else sometime and be like, here, play the guitar that I was playing by my nakedness.
But yeah, I do feel like a lot of people in life had not just more of a plan than I did, but that they had a real plan, that they had a plan.
This is where I was trying to differentiate between having a guess or a reckon.
There were people who really had a plan.
And by which, like we're talking about here, like you're the red-haired girl and going to medical school and stuff.
People where there are dependencies to what you're going to do.
There's time commitment.
There is stick-to-itiveness and grit.
And with those kinds of people, a funny side effect is that those are often the kind of people that if the plan goes wrong, they very quickly have another plan.
They're ready to stick to.
I think there are planned people, but the good planned people are executing on the plan, not merely ruminating about the plan.
That's the difference between them and me.
I feel like the danger for me of a plan was always that, well, the plan can go sideways right away.
So if you want to make God laugh, right?
Woody Allen's famous line, if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.
it's a pretty good assessment of where i come from although you have to look at woody allen's accomplishments and say like well he had a plan yeah or at least he had multiple plans every time he started a new film it must have been a new plan but i am i am maybe one of the more planless and
And I come up against people with a plan all the time.
People ask me questions that suggest that they think that I had a plan or that I have one now.
That's hard to answer.
The simplest question that people ask you is like, well, what do you want?
And it presumes that I really want anything or that I have a particular interest in one or another outcome.
And that's a weird presupposition, because if today I followed the day where it took me, and it ended up that by the end of the day, something had arrived in my life where it made sense for me to move to Ankara, Turkey, if it made sense for me to do, then that has its own logic, and I would be making preparations to move to Ankara.
Because it doesn't conflict with a plan that I have already.
I see, I see.
And I think there are a lot of people that if at the end of the day it made sense for them to move to Ankara, they would say, what?
No.
I mean, it doesn't make sense.
That conflicts with my plan.
It conflicts with the plan.
Yeah.
That's right.
And the only reason I haven't made sense
uh like the decision to move to turkey at any point in my life is that at the end of every day it never made sense and i and i never made it my plan but it is it's very different because i'm because confronted with the question what do you want my answer is always like the best or most sensible option of those presented
And that doesn't satisfy.
There's all kinds of parts to it.
I mean, I'm projecting here, which is all I really can do.
But I think, again, it's important to distinguish between a plan, which has several aspects to it that are important, and then versus having something like a lightly structured sense of hope about how things will go.
That feels like a plan, but it's not really a plan.
That's an intransitive plan, like where you're kind of like mostly hoping things turn out a certain way.
If I stay at this job long enough, surely I will make more money and get promoted.
That's maybe a silly example, but I think it's a common example, right?
Like I get the security of having a job.
Plus, it just seems reasonable that I will move up and make more money here.
Well, that's not exactly a plan.
If your plan requires you not changing very much or doing things by a certain time, it's not really a plan.
I mean, it's just doing stuff.
Yeah, I feel like you got to the core of it really fast.
And I think this is a weird thing I've discovered just very recently in examining...
the choices that I make.
And it maybe relies on optimism.
Like, I never would have thought of myself as optimistic because I, because I'm, you know, I trend toward thinking darkly, thinking darkly about
myself thinking darkly about the you know the contemporary world thinking darkly about human interaction with one another like i'm i'm i tend to be not misanthropic but certainly i have my suspicions about other people you're human agnostic a human agnostic right i'm just you know like life is definitely somewhat of a scramble and i embrace it but
What I've realized recently is that I am an optimist in that I wake up every morning and assume everything is going to sort of just roll.
Like, when I get in the car and start the engine and imagine making the trip to wherever it is that I'm going, I don't have... What was that little toot?
What was that little toot from your end?
You probably didn't hear that.
That was the train going by, and they didn't like what somebody was doing on the road, so they gave a little toot.
Sometimes they give a little toot out front.
Ain't no mic that's going to prevent that from showing up.
But so your model, the day sort of unwinds the way that it does?
You've got a general trajectory through the day?
Well, I mean, I know that I have to be certain places at certain times.
That's what I have.
My planning consists of when I have to be somewhere at a certain time, mostly.
Yeah.
But I'm operating on the assumption that I'm going to get in the car and I'm going to drive to where I'm going.
And that drive is going to be largely event free.
I don't assume someone is going to cut me off.
I'm not afraid that I'm going to get into a crash.
I don't worry about getting there, you know, like late.
I'm not worried about getting lost, you know, all of those anxieties about what's going to happen.
In the immediate future and in the long-term future, I just don't have.
I assume that everything's probably going to roll.
And that, I'm realizing now, is actually a kind of optimism that I bring to events.
I assume... You know, when people...
Like, when my daughter was born, her mother said, like, it's going to cost her a million dollars a year to go to college.
What are we going to do?
We should have been saving money this whole time.
And I was just stunned by this because my feeling was, well, when she needs to go to college, when it's time to go to college, she'll be fine.
She'll go to college.
There'll be some solution to the problem.
And that has, that has been my attitude throughout my entire life.
And, and, and it is, you know, like I know that there are listeners right now who love, who love it, love, love that I have arrived here where I can now make a statement about privilege.
And now having made that statement, like it is also like, and maybe my optimism is also a function of privilege because that is the lens through which a lot of people want to look at everything now.
But I also feel like there are a lot of people whose nature, like they have just as much privilege as I do in the world, but their nature compels them to be anxious about all these things that they can't control, the drive, the other drivers, whether or not they're
You know, whether or not things are going to go well all day, they're anxious about them.
And that anxiety makes choices for them.
And so the plan helps alleviate that anxiety because they know, you know, that there are steps to follow.
And if something goes sideways, you know, you just get on to the next step.
You follow the plan.
Mm-hmm.
And so I am at liberty, and a lot of the liberty, I guess, that I have or that people perceive in me is, I think, rooted in that spiritual confidence that it's going to turn out.
Even if I have a heart attack and die tomorrow, that's fine.
It's all going to work out.
My daughter's going to be fine.
Somebody's going to have to go through all this stuff.
But that's, I mean, it'll probably be my mom and she'll just put it all into the dumpster.
Yeah, just bend it all.
My 25 pairs of vintage Levi's that have holes in the knees, she doesn't see the value in them.
You have nice legs.
She doesn't recognize that there's a lot of value there.
And that's fine.
Yeah.
I sometimes wonder if the absence of...
of anxiety feels like optimism.
We're like, you know, it's funny because, like, you know, we tend to think in these sort of... What's the word I'm looking for?
Like, Hegelian, I guess, sorts of ways.
I don't know.
Like, we're trying to always see, like, the two sides, this bicameral approach to life.
And are you an optimist or are you a pessimist?
And it's like, well, you know, that's really very, very general, you know?
But as somebody who is anxious about lots of things, I sometimes wonder if, to repeat myself, if...
If not having anxiety is what optimism feels like.
Yeah, or maybe there isn't a distinction between those things.
Well, there's a certain kind of, and I'm sorry to keep using this word that is a term of art, and I'm not trying to be ableist, but there is a certain kind of mania to optimism that I'm very suspicious of.
People who are too optimistic or people who are too happy are very suspicious to me.
They just seem like they're up to something.
Or they're just not wired, right?
Like, how are you like this all the time?
And there are some people who are just charming.
And that's just their personality.
And they're not somebody who, you know, again, the absence of something makes you seem like it's a thing.
Like, just people who don't bitch about everything.
People who aren't snarky.
People who don't talk behind other people's backs and stuff like that.
You know, I mean, that's a nice, you know, kind of a person.
I don't know if that makes them necessarily an optimist.
So I guess one version of optimism is that you tend to see the positive side of a situation, that you tend to assume that things will go well rather than not, that you have a kind of rosy prospect about a given situation or the future in general.
Yeah.
And all this seems true and opposite of pessimism.
I mean, is that roughly fair to say?
Um...
pessimist tends to look at, to pick nits with the negative side of things.
They tend to assume that given all the things being equal, things will probably get worse.
Yeah.
No, that's, that, that doesn't describe me at all.
It's the, it's the other thing.
Yeah.
And I, but I, but I'm not a Pollyanna, right?
I mean, I either, like what if, or what if you have it in like, I don't know.
I just, this kinds of like polar things are so, it's such a blunt instrument, right?
It is, but it's,
It's very, I mean, there needs to be a way to describe, because it's one of those, like, is the green that you see the same green that I see?
Right.
You know, if you're having a conversation with somebody about something that you're undertaking...
And they honestly feel like the chances of it failing are much greater than the chances of it succeeding.
And you feel the opposite.
And those are just sort of native feelings, not based on the actual facts of the of the moment, but rather the intrinsic interpretation of what those facts mean.
We don't have enough money to do this, but it's going to be fine.
We'll find the money.
I'm thinking of something like maybe if you're an entrepreneurial type and you're somebody who wants to start a theoretically, potentially very profitable, high-value company –
in some kind of an industry that is risky or costly to get into.
But if you're that sort of person and you decide to start a company like that and then hew to a developing but...
still very well thought out plan.
Like if you have a plan for what you're going to do, like, no, does that make you an optimist or a pessimist?
Because everybody says, well, obviously that person's an optimist because they think they're going to be that rare person who's able to pull off success in this thing that's very difficult to do.
And I would say that another person might say, well, no, they're probably a pessimist because they realize that in order to get the things they want, they have to have a contingency plan and risk management that gets them where they want to go without assuming that everything will go perfect.
So I don't know if either one of those labels really fits in that situation.
I don't know.
I mean, there are companies, right, that begin that process and then somewhere down the road in their development, they realize that what they thought the product was isn't the product.
What they discover is that the thing that they were making in order to make the product was the actual product.
And in order to be that flexible, I think you do have to
I think you have to have a rough plan and not a strict plan.
And that flexibility, which isn't true of most startups, I guess, is the thing that...
you know would describe my approach which is like you get in there and it's when we were making you know it thought we were making straw hats but it turns out we're making the framework to make straw hats because that's what the world really needs you know we now we can sell that right and that's interesting not being but not being so uh so wrapped up in your plan that you lose track of
not only like whether it's working the way you expect it, but that, you know, there are things that you should be picking up about how to, as they say, pivot what you're doing.
Yeah.
And I think, I think it is a question of, is your plan something that you put in place in order to dispel fear or is your plan a thing that you put in place in order to, um, limit, uh, either, either put like,
artificial limitations on what you're doing in order to keep focused or limit the amount of chaos that can intrude.
But I really do think there's a difference because, because, you know, there are a lot of plans out there that are just to shore up, um, the number of, you know, of different, like paralyzing anxieties, right?
Like, like, um, and to like, almost like a form of OCD a little bit.
Yeah.
Like I've got this, I've got a plan and therefore like it, you know, I cannot be, I don't, I cannot know all the things that are going to happen, but I know that I'm not going to get, get,
derailed this way because I have a plan to to account for it and my problem being planless is that I'm derailed by I mean I'm literally derailed by everything literally I often get to the door of my own room reach for the doorknob and then take another look at the doorknob and go huh interesting I never in all the years noticed that about this doorknob and then I then my next thought is I should get a tool
and start to work on that doorknob.
I can't believe you're saying this because just this morning I was putting my shoes on, I was sitting on the side of my bed, and I noticed a part of my house I never noticed before.
And I became a little bit in trance because I'd never paid any attention to the area between where these two doors are.
And I was just looking at it and thinking, I've never really looked at this.
I've never really looked at the nails inside.
In the paneling, I've never really noticed like, you know, and I felt it felt very strange.
It felt like something from Westworld, you know, where like, you know, it doesn't look like anything to me.
Like I suddenly looked at it.
Hey, this is a very minor part of my house that I've never given any thought to.
Has that gnome door always been there?
Are there gnomes coming in and out?
I doubt my own perception so much.
There's a quote that I have quoted many, many times, and I just took the time to actually look it up, and I will now provide it in full.
For once, this is actually a quote that is an actual thing that was actually said by an actual person.
It was not Mark Twain.
This is... Was it Abraham Lincoln?
Abraham Lincoln.
Yeah, you got Carl Sandburg.
No, this is...
Eisenhower in 1957 I tell the story to illustrate the truth of the statement I heard long ago in the army plans are worthless but planning is everything there's a very great distinction because when you are planning for an emergency you must start with this one thing the very definition of emergency is that it is unexpected therefore it is not going to happen in the way that you are planning plans are worthless but planning is everything what a great quote yeah
Yes, and that is what's missing for me.
I do not have plans, and that is what makes me feel that I'm at liberty.
I think it's more complicated than that.
I think you're more complicated.
You're more complicated than that, because it isn't that you lack a plan, it seems to me, but you have a gnawing sensation that you're not sure what you want that destination to be to even plan for.
Yeah.
Which, if true, I sympathize.
You can't just have a plan to just, you know, well, you could.
I mean, you could sit around and move, you know, Mick Thomas train tracks all day long.
But like ordinarily, you would think of a plan as something that you execute in the service of a given goal over time with a given budget, at least as a project manager.
That's how I would think about it.
Yeah.
Well, so for instance, about five years ago, six years ago, I was standing around with my mom who's very plan oriented and she said, look, here's a plan for you.
Why don't you, why don't you just decide to make a million dollars?
Like you have made money in bursts before that in ways that suggest that you would be able to make a million dollars if you set your mind to it.
Because you throw some stuff off, and then some money comes, and then you live on it for a while.
And then when it runs out, you're like, oh, shit, I should do something, and you do something else.
You toss something else off, and money comes in for a while.
But what if you decided that your number one plan was just to make $1 million?
That's it.
You would just do whatever it took to do this, to make this $1 million, and then you would have $1 million.
And after that, you could say that that was the goal you had accomplished and you could do whatever the hell you wanted, but you would have this million dollars.
And I said, huh, interesting.
And I went around and I chewed on that for a while.
Like that seems like a that is an example of a plan that doesn't restrict me very much.
You know, it just gives me a reason.
Is that a plan or a goal?
I guess it's a goal.
I guess it's a goal.
Our goal might be to land a man on the moon and bring him home safely within the next nine years.
That's a goal.
But the plan to get that to happen is a pretty different animal.
Yeah, right.
But the goal would then...
would then necessitate various plans right i would have to yeah well i mean a lot of ins a lot of outs a lot of what have you if you want to make a million dollars you're probably going to have to do some things you know again you got to move it's like having a baby when you're 40 you're gonna have to move some things around
Yeah, upstairs, downstairs.
Yeah, you change a little bit about your budgeting and invoicing system.
You figure out a way to make a million dollars.
You start planning the things that you're going to buy, right?
I mean, you'd probably want to write it down, maybe get a legal pad.
I think you would.
I mean, I think in my case, what she was trying to do is she said, you've got all these projects, but...
All you have is the only reason you would complete any one of those projects right now is just to have the satisfaction of having completed a project.
And yet you get, it seems like equal satisfaction by just staring at a doorknob all day.
Like it doesn't seem to be more gratifying to you to complete a record album than it does to just sit with the, like the other day I got down on my hands and knees at my dishwasher and I took two toothpicks and I cleaned all the little nozzles of my dishwasher out.
Yeah.
with the two toothpicks i was there for you know for half the day just humming along putt putt that sounds very meditative yeah i was making i was having success i was successfully clean the dishwasher works better now nice and i and i felt like using the toothpicks as tools was also like this is fun i'm that's innovation that's a that's a that's a thought technology yeah i could have found other tools but these are the tools that i found
You go to war with the tools you have, not the tools you want.
It was Abraham Lincoln that said that.
And she said, if completing a large-scale project doesn't really scratch any itch in you that's any different than just waking up in the morning and saying, you know what I'm going to do today?
I'm going to wear all pink.
She said, you'll never get any of these things done.
What if the overarching project
Thing was not finish this project for its own sake, but finish this project as part of this larger project.
Very simple one sentence project.
Make a million dollars.
Right.
And and it was the first kind of over the top overlay.
that I'd had in a long, long time.
And I think the only other one that I ever had was one that I got when I was 16 or something that was just like, be famous.
Big man on campus.
That's right.
Big man on campus.
Right on the blotter.
Wrote it on the blotter.
And then everything I did that year was under this, like, does this help me be the big man on campus?
Yeah, I think it does.
Like, I mean, even sitting and monkeying with this doorknob is part of that, I guess.
I guess.
But since that time, I never had another tall flag.
I just had a forest of small flags.
So I have not still fully embraced the, like, make a million dollars, a million of them.
That's a lot of dollars.
It's a very clear metric.
Yeah.
And the reason my mom said a million dollars is that she has this lifelong thing.
She said to me at one point, your father spent his whole life thinking that success was to have $50,000 in the bank.
If you had $50,000, and $50,000 meant a lot, something else in 1965.
And that you were paid up on everything, and that that was free and clear.
Yep, you had $50,000 in the bank, and if you had that, it was smooth sailing from then on.
And she said in his entire life, he never, ever, ever had $50,000 in the bank.
And...
He just couldn't put it together because as soon as he had some money in the bank, he spent it on something.
He was like, oh, shit, you know, I'm going to buy a boat or whatever.
And it was just like, no, just stop.
Just keep doing your $50,000 in the bank thing.
And so in my mom's mind, if you had a million, million dollars and didn't tell a soul, you wouldn't say nothing about it to no one because as soon as they see it, your money gets stole.
Mm-hmm.
No, her idea was that if you had a million dollars, you could live on the interest.
Sure.
You become like your own endowment.
Yeah.
You get 5% interest.
You get $50,000 a year in free money.
And then that becomes like the fear foundation.
And so you never touch the million dollars.
You just get this steady sort of.
5%, 6% interest.
And I think she originally conceived of this plan back when the interest rate was 14%.
Right.
Get yourself a certificate of deposit.
Right.
Right.
You know, you buy some bonds.
Get some T-bills, whatever those are.
And in her logic, in her mind, if you had $1 million, which to a lot of people nowadays...
Even people that do not have anywhere close to any of that kind of money, but when we imagine being wealthy, a million dollars doesn't seem like wealthy now.
You can't buy a house in Seattle for less than $600,000 now.
Yep.
But $1 million actually represents, like, you could live on that the rest of your life, or it could certainly keep you comfortable the rest of your life.
Somewhere.
Somewhere.
Right, right.
I mean, certainly if you move to... If you move to Thailand or something.
Thailand, yeah.
But even living in, even if I had a million dollars, if I made it in a burst, I could continue to do this, make podcasts and put out records every 10 years.
I would have to put out a record, I think, in order to accomplish making a million dollars.
Okay, you write that down.
Put that in the legal pad.
That should be part of the plan.
Make a record.
That's part of the plan.
Make a record and find a way.
Ted Leo just got $160,000 in a Kickstarter for his record.
I kick-started that.
I did the Jonathan thing, too.
His record's already done.
He made it at home.
The $160,000 is part of putting the record out, and it's also just like paying him for the record.
This is a distinction I had not heard put this.
I'm so out of the loop.
I hadn't heard this distinction made until this week.
Who was talking about this?
Oh, hello, Internet podcast.
Talking about the difference between, and forgive me if I'm mangling this, but basically the distinction between being a consumer of the product and a funder of the production.
Which I think is such an interesting distinction.
Because, like, obviously, historically, you've voted with your wallet by buying the finished product.
But the model today is much more along the lines of, well, maybe a much smaller but more generous group of people, it is hoped, will fund the production of whatever it is you want to make.
That's where you get into stuff like Patreon and things like that.
Isn't that kind of interesting?
I mean, that sounds dumb and obvious, but that's a pretty different distinction rather than going, well, gosh, I sure hope the economy for how you get paid for streaming vastly improves in the next 10 years.
I mean, it's completely novel to us, but when I look at the money that I made from any given album...
Just in terms of album sales.
Like I was thinking, you know, we played this show the other day, which was a fun show.
And inevitably, as you do, you put something like that on the internet and then you get 500 comments from people like, come play Essen, Germany.
Right.
It's been years since you played fucking, you know, like Worms Gap, West Virginia.
It comes from such a nice and such a generous place.
But it's still all I can do not to respond to that with a little bit of snark.
Not to be mean, and that's why I don't say it.
I don't want to be mean.
But when I say, hey, we're having a comic meetup, you know...
Yeah.
Let me get somebody else to take care of my daughter every afternoon for the next 10 days.
Oh, I'll just have my wife do that.
She has a big lady job where she goes in office.
But I'll say, honey, here's the thing.
I'm wanted.
I've received the Merlin signal has been shot into the Gotham City sky.
I am now needed in Wiesbaden.
So, of course, you don't say that, except here amongst friends.
But, no, I mean, like, you know what?
Here's the thing.
Anybody who wants us to do this podcast where they live, we will totally do that.
There's only one thing that we ask.
That's right.
That we not go into debt in order to do it.
It's not super complicated.
Well, and that's what's crazy.
If I look at the money...
Because I toured extensively, right?
And a lot of times I did go to Wiesbaden and then came home at the end of six weeks.
And after I paid everybody, I had made $2,000.
Right.
And it was like, ah, look.
You know, that is a terrible feeling.
You're paying for all the infrastructure of doing all that.
You're funding it out of your pocket up front, hoping nothing goes wrong, hoping the van doesn't explode.
Right.
And you're doing it because the promise is you are being promised by a system that if you do that enough...
The word will get out and then you will make $1 million.
It's probably good in life to not count on too many promises that come to you via a system.
A system, right?
So for six years, I went out and I went to Munster.
And I went to Dresden and I played my songs for the people in those places that came to hear them.
And we had a wonderful time together and it was awesome.
And I ate a lot of pretzels and I ate a lot of sausages with mustard on them.
And I made really good friends in those places.
And I loved to see all those things together.
And feel like a citizen of the world.
But at the end of the day, if I played one show in Seattle, I made more money than that entire tour.
And so I truly was being paid in experience, which is a thing that gets old after a while.
You can't go to the bank in cash exposure.
No.
And even if you take all of our American tours, by the end of our long career as a touring band, not the longest career, but, you know, 10 years of it, the shows that we played in Chicago, Boston, well, not even Boston, but yeah, kind of Boston, Chicago, Boston, New York, West Virginia...
Austin, LA, San Francisco, and Seattle, they were the shows.
And everything else, even when we got to a point where we were getting paid pretty well for an indie band, everything else was fucking gas money.
And if we had just...
If we had just gotten in an airplane and flown to those five to eight cities and played our shows, we probably would have made about the same.
Because flying there, spending one night in a hotel and coming home is the same as spending three days driving there.
And that's what the presidents were able to do at scale, right?
Was that whole drop in for a Saturday night show with a really big audience.
Yeah, the presidents could fly to Stockholm, make $40,000 and fly home.
And to them, you know, what it was basically was we're going to spend 30 hours doing this.
And for 30 hours, we each get $15,000.
Yeah.
Ready?
Go.
And even that ended up being too much work for them.
They were just like, nah, that's 30 hours that I'd rather spend doing something else.
And we didn't have that option.
We had to do those shows.
But it's true of my record sales, too.
If you look at the record sales over the course, when I Pretend to Fall came out in 2003, between 2003 and now, I have the data to say how many dollars that record has produced for me in toto.
All of the records I've sold from the first one I sold out of the back of the truck to a girl in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to the download that probably happened today.
And if you think about Kickstarter or Patreon and you think about the successful versions of that, I could make that amount of money from those funding sources exclusively.
You know, if Ted Leo makes $160,000 on his Patreon or his, whatchamacallit, his Kickstarter, that is more money than he would have made putting that album out on a label and touring it for two years.
And so you go, wow.
Okay.
It truly is.
If you can do a successful one, I mean, and the, and the terror is that I would put up a Kickstarter for my new album and then make $11,000 and then it would be like, Oh, okay.
I guess I'm going to sell these out of the trunk of my car.
Yeah.
Right.
Like, well, maybe they got to do another thing to make a million dollars.
Yeah.
but that was not part of the rules that had to be only one thing you were allowed to get there right yeah yeah then i'd be like well i guess i gotta write a novel whoa another 11 grand okay i'm really gonna have to kick it into high gear here if i'm gonna make a million dollars but but you know this whole thing of like uh for the last
10 years of the music business of saying like, well, you know, bands really sell t-shirts or they really sell kazoos.
That's what the real business model is.
And you're just like, no, fuck you.
But now it really is possible to make $160,000 just on your Kickstarter.
And I guess that there's some fulfillment in
He has to do.
He's promised people that he'll come play piano in their living room or he's done.
I mean, I didn't follow the Kickstarter very carefully, but right there.
It's like at the five thousand dollar level, I give you my car.
Yeah.
At the ten thousand dollar level, like I will I will donate sperm to the to the.
to the sperm bank of your choice or whatever.
That's a nice gesture.
You know what?
I'll put that in my Kickstarter.
Put that on the legal pad.
Listen, at the $10,000 level, I will give you two vials of sperm and you can do whatever you want with them.
Will you deliver them personally?
Do you know what I mean?
I'll come to your house.
I didn't tell you how I was going to give it to you.
I'll go into your bathroom for 15 minutes.
Yeah.
And then I will give you a Coke can full of sperm.
He's here groaning.
I love my fans.