Ep. 258: "Ambition Hour"
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Hello.
Hi, John.
Hi, Merlin.
How's it going?
It's going good.
I pretty definitely did not make enough coffee today.
I can tell.
It's so weird to hear you in a state of undercaffeinated.
oh yeah i did not sleep my fitbit dingus tells me i slept okay i beg to differ bullshit yeah i think i didn't no i think the device lies i should make some coffee on the air i wonder if i have water in the pot do you mind uh i would i would be honored i don't normally do this but to hear you make coffee during the show we'll see if i got any
Oh, I could probably fake it.
Yeah, pull it off.
It'll be close.
I'll make a small little bit.
Do it.
How's your morning?
Well, you know, I got up, I went downstairs to this podcast studio that I'm building in my house.
Hang on, has Psalm's scope of work increased to official podcast studio building?
Psalm's scope of work has definitely increased.
And simultaneous to it, my scope of work, Peter's scope of work has increased and so has mine.
So the house looks like the mother of all bombs went off.
Last week, Sam came to me and said, look, I've got a friend who needs some work.
What if we pressure wash your house?
And I was like, sure.
I was like, sure.
So then they pressure wash the house, but of course, you know, you pressure wash a house like mine, and it strips all the paint off of it.
At least.
Now there's paint all over the yard.
Because they didn't put tarps down, so it's just like the house just...
Like, exfoliated.
Oh, God.
But no, I'm building a podcast studio in my house, completely separate.
But as I was setting up downstairs, like, I'm going to record Roderick on the Line in my brand new, uncompleted...
podcast studio.
Immediately outside, I heard Psalm roll up and be like, well, let's see.
How many of these gas-powered generators should I start at once?
Jiminy.
And so I had to come back and get back into my hidey hole.
Well, you know, I...
We got a lot of response, I have to say.
I heard from a lot of folks about last week's episode.
A lot of people seem to enjoy it.
They're putting it in the pantheon.
But I'm glad everyone got entertained by the tales of Psalm.
But is there anything you can update us on in terms of, so we left off last Monday morning, early.
Psalm was on your roof, I believe, at that point.
I feel a little bit like Peter Jennings or something.
What do we know this week that we didn't know last week?
Well, you know, the tale takes a turn because...
Did I tell you about Psalm's trip to the state house?
No, I haven't heard about this.
Tell me.
Well, so he didn't come one day.
His and my business relationship is...
is based around the idea that on any given day, maybe one or the other of us won't show up or maybe both of us won't show up.
Maybe somebody flakes, maybe somebody bounces.
Right.
But it's understood in the relationship that either of you might text each other at 9 a.m.
to say it's not going to happen today.
Exactly.
Which is, as far as I'm concerned, the best kind of business relationship.
Like, you know, that whole business of, well, I was all set up and waiting for you and you didn't come.
It just doesn't happen between me and Sam, because yes, I'm all set up and waiting for him, and also it's fine if he doesn't come.
But so he didn't come for a couple of days, and...
And when he did, I was like, hey, what have you been doing?
And he said, well, I went down to the state house.
I went down to protest at the Capitol.
No kidding.
And he said that he went to, I forget what town he said, but it wasn't actually the Capitol.
And it was clear that he actually meant that he'd gone to Olympia.
He just had his towns mixed up.
He said he went to Tacoma to protest at the Capitol.
And I was like, do you mean Olympia?
And he said, yes, Olympia.
And I said, what were you doing?
What were you protesting?
And he said, well, we weren't really protesting.
We were trying to raise awareness.
He really is a polymath, John.
He's got a lot going on.
He's a music fan.
He's a handy boy.
But this got very serious very quickly because I said, what could you possibly be raising awareness for?
I mean, I guess there's a lot of things.
And he said...
Well, the current government of Cambodia is very bad.
Oh, interesting.
And no one seems to know.
And so we're going down to try and get people to pay attention to the fact that the new guy running our country is bad and we need to watch out.
And I said, is he like old Khmer Rouge?
And then Sump took a big step back and looked very surprised and said, how would you know about them?
They're still around?
Well, so, yeah.
The remnants of them?
Are these like the Richard Spencers of America?
I mean, like, they've still got some holdouts?
So my understanding was that they just retreated into the mountains.
Pol Pot included.
Pol Pot.
And just set up a government in exile up there near the border of Thailand where they continued to be kind of a regional power or, you know, they were a – it was a little readout.
And, you know, the Viet –
kong or i'm sorry the vietnamese the north vietnamese army i guess which became the vietnamese army took over cambodia for a long time and fought for you know tried to absorb it and there were all these civil wars and you know just getting pol pot out and just getting america out of that region didn't calm everything down pol pot lived till 1998 yeah yeah yeah yeah that's right
And all of his lieutenants and all of his commanders, the entire group that committed all the genocide, never brought to justice, continued to live, I don't think in splendor, but continued to live and terrorize the region.
I mean, can you imagine?
Cambodia's not a big country.
And so you've got like some somewhat of a democratic government in Phnom Penh, but like the Khmer Rouge who killed millions are just sort of up there in a tree house, not far away, you know?
So Sam was like, you know about the Khmer Rouge?
And I was like, yeah, I mean, they were in all the newspapers.
And so then he was, you know, then he really
Well, I guess it's not that he wanted to talk, but he had not met very many people outside of his own community that got his references.
So we started talking about the government in Cambodia.
And he's not that much younger than I am.
And it comes out that, you know, and I'm like, well, you know, the genocide, and he's like, I was there.
I was like, you were there?
And he goes on to recount this tale.
Oh, God.
Standing on the front porch, where as a seven-year-old boy, he'd been one of the lucky ones because they gave him the job of cow herder, and he'd been herding the cows while...
they killed everybody he knew and everybody everywhere all around.
And he doesn't, I don't think, remember the U.S.
bombing of Cambodia, but he says it was all just potholes, is what he called them.
He said all that bombing campaign, all it ever did was kill farmers.
It never killed a single Viet Cong or
You know, it was just it was just we were just bombing farmers and I was like, I believe that.
But he just he started telling me these harrowing stories about what happened to people.
And he's like, you know, I saw that movie, The Killing Fields.
I've seen the movies, but they're just not.
They just don't.
They don't register the scope of it.
You know, it's just like, oh, yeah, that was one incident that happened.
And it's it's horrible.
But it was like it just was everywhere happened everywhere.
He said that.
that he knew some people.
I mean, it's unclear.
If you're in a small village, obviously you know everybody, but everybody was starving, and this woman he knew caught a frog and brought it home to add to the dinner pot, and her son, who was just a boy...
denounced her to the local cadre as a bourgeois because she had caught this frog.
Kept it instead of giving it to the collective.
Somehow, yeah.
They had a frog in their pot.
where others did not and so they killed her they killed his mom they could this kid was like eight years old denounced his mom to the and then like stood there at eight and watched her killed defiant as you know as a bourgeois element so so now i'm standing there talking to talking to some who's
who's digging a trench around my house and standing on my roof, but now the dynamic has definitely changed.
Holy shit.
Because as he's telling the stories, you know, I don't know that it's, it's, it's that kind of situation that you encounter in life where someone's experience is so astronomically extraordinarily different than anything you could know.
And yet the, the, um,
The trajectories of both of your lives have put you both in the same place at the same time.
The thing is, it could be the kind of horrible story you've heard about a hundred times.
But the fact that you've heard about it a hundred times, it doesn't prepare you for talking to somebody who's actually been through it.
And it's such a different magnitude to talk to somebody who's been through the Holocaust or the killing fields or whatever.
It's... It's...
I was watching Ken Burns last night.
The Vietnam War series just started last night.
Actually, it's been a very John Roderick week.
The Vietnam War series started last night starting in the 1800s up to 1961.
Really about, and I'm not talking Cambodia here at this point, talking about Vietnam, but talking about Ho Chi Minh and
so much shit i did not know i know it's crazy right holy shit he was writing letters to truman that no one was delivering yeah he was up there quoting thomas jefferson and saying look you know hey you got to get our back on this you know this is you know you got to help us fight the french because like we're the americans in this situation yeah and uh we need you to be the french to our americans sort of like you know revolutionary war style
Yeah, right.
You know what I'm saying?
That's a very mixed thing if you're not... Where's our Pierre little... Sure, give us a Lafayette.
And then on top of that, I started listening to a podcast about LBJ and Vietnam.
Well, you're really coming at it from all sides.
It's just coincidental.
I just consume a lot of media about terrible things, but...
That was very much on my mind.
As you're describing this, I'm not trying to change the topic, although we should change the topic.
This is very depressing.
Just the history of what was done to the people, in that case Vietnam, it's just astonishing.
The French were not very nice to them.
No, they were awful.
And then we made every kind of redoubling error.
And, I mean, all of Southeast Asia is still...
I mean, have you been following what's been going on in Myanmar recently?
Yeah, apparently it's not optimal.
No, it's also another sort of genocide.
And this time, the woman we all expected was... She's not talking much about it, right?
Yeah, she's the savior.
What's up with that?
Well, because we're talking about a Muslim minority in that country.
And so there's a sense of like democracy, I mean, there's a sense of like all animals are equal except some animals are more equal.
It feels a little bit like the first Gulf War, the second Gulf War, the post 9-11 era a little bit where it's like, well, all we know is that anybody with a turban is bad and anybody who doesn't have a turban is probably on our side.
and so we're going out we're beating up seeks on the street well you know what i mean it's it's one of those like oh you this i used to talk to my friend well not a lot but you know my friend grant um yeah who's from south africa and i would ask him like really dim-witted questions like you know so everybody loves Nelson Mandela right and he's like well it's really complicated because he did blow stuff up
When I was in high school, I thought the Irish Republican Army sounded so cool.
I was like, oh, they sound so cool, and it's very U2, and they're out there fighting for Ireland.
It's like, no, you poor child of Pasco County, you have such a mixed-up idea about how all this works.
It's so complicated.
There's not a lot of good guys in bed.
One of the guys they quoted in this, I want to credit the other director, because she's finally getting a credit, Lynn, I forget her name, but the woman who does as much heavy lifting as Ken Burns on these things at this point.
great interview with a guy i don't he might have been vietcong i think he might have been a regular but they were just he was just saying you know anybody there are no winners and losers in war and the way he said it it had real weight to it it's not the kind of like you know freshman dorm observation we would make with a bong in our hand he said you know any there's no winner or loser in war anybody who's ever fought in a war knows that there's really no such thing as a winner or loser there's there's there's nobody wins and nobody loses everybody just gets damaged and
And then just imagine that being your life and the subjugation that people lived under.
Happy Monday.
I got my coffee.
I'm glad.
You made it so fast.
I'm very happy with my Cuisinart water brewer.
It brews fast.
So he went to the statehouse.
Sure.
The Washington State House of Representatives, Sid Snyder Avenue, Southwest Olympia, Washington.
I do not feel that going to the Washington Capitol is really going to get the word out as much as maybe they want or might think.
The Washington State House is not very responsive and no one's paying attention.
Right.
But then this is what's crazy is that no one's paying attention to what's going on in Cambodia.
And I am the type of person, the type of U.S.
American who would know if anybody was going to.
Right.
I mean, that's the type of thing that should have come across my bow.
But it's just sort of like one of those things like, where are you going to keep your eye?
Like, how are you going to be current?
And it's not, it isn't getting publicized.
There are bigger problems just in the immediate region.
But so, Psalm's telling this story about how they got out of Cambodia during the era, during this era.
This is probably in the late 70s.
He and his mother and...
siblings He's like we went to the border of Thailand where everybody was trying to go and gradually we we got in but we were put into a We were put into a herded in to a camp like a like a refugee camp And he said there was 150,000 people in this refugee camp and no food.
Where do you get food in a situation like that?
We're all farmers.
Nobody has any money.
They're not giving us food and so
In everything that he described in this afternoon of me standing with him talking about what happened, he was like, the absolute worst thing is starvation.
And he said, the war and everything, it pales in comparison to...
Watching people starve into starving yourself.
And so I was the I was eight or whatever I was the boy So I had to go out and you know I would slip through the fence and go out into the forest and try and find whatever we could to eat And he kind of he didn't punctuate that but he said it again Later like find whatever we could eat whatever we could and that you know It doesn't take much imagination to just be like eat whatever we could right and
That's not he's not out hunting deer.
Right.
But somehow they made it to America by hook or by crook.
And I think it was part of, you know, one of those things that I remember as a kid watching in the news, a giant sort of sea lift that that managed to attract the attention of some some Americans.
And they made a place for them here.
And predictably, he is a huge fan of America, a total booster of it, thinks it's the greatest place in the world.
And he said, after I got here and realized what America was, I realized all I wanted was just...
for cambodia to just be left alone and allowed to like left alone by her own people like just let it let everybody live what's the problem what's the big deal i was like hmm yeah i know but where are people going to test out their political theories if nothing if not in cambodia if not by killing millions but so he said i i made a decision as a young person never to harm anyone
And now I'm just doing my life and not going to ever harm anybody.
At that point, boy, I was relieved because it meant that he wasn't going to screw me.
Right.
He'd said as much last time, but now you can really read between the lines.
You know you're getting a good deal on this.
Well, sure.
And when he gives me the bill, I'll be like, Sam, remember?
Remember what you said?
Listen to your anecdote.
Remember?
Oh.
Oh.
So, you know, for the rest of the day, all I could do was kind of walk around really chewing on on
my exposure to this guy and his firsthand experience and what, you know, and his continued desire to be useful to his, uh, to his home country and also like his take on America.
Like it was a lot to, it still is a lot to consider.
And I, and I feel like he's a resource for me somehow now.
And I'm not sure I want to go out every morning and say, let's talk more about Indochina.
No.
No, but you definitely got the beginnings of the Roderick Group Stage 2, or whatever this is at this point.
You got the beginnings of a super team here, for sure.
You just got a great origin story for the man on the roof.
Yeah.
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah, it's heavy stuff.
But in a practical sense...
It really does look like a bomb went off it.
It looks like my house is sitting in a crater.
So I noticed you talking to people about your basement on the Internet.
In the last week, what has happened?
So some strides have been made in certain directions.
Are you and Psalm still in the fact-finding stage, or are you beginning to execute on some things?
What's happening?
Is that the wrong question to ask?
Am I betraying the way this process works?
I feel like I still don't understand the process, and I sound like a little bit of a rube.
No, no, no.
The danger in everything like this, and this is my own personal danger, right?
In any situation in my own house, any new project that is begun later than midnight is almost certainly going to devolve into a problem of mission creep.
Oh, that's the ambition hour.
Yeah, like even if I have a mason jar that has...
been sitting there collecting pens, like it's got 30 pens in it, because it's like, oh, where do I put this pen?
In this mason jar.
Now I've got 30 pens in this mason jar.
I need to take that down and organize those pens.
Now what I'm learning from people...
What happens when you get 30 pens in a mason jar is that you should take the mason jar and throw it in the garbage.
It's trying to tell you something.
The mason jar is trying to tell you something.
Yeah, right.
I've been talking about building a trebuchet all weekend.
Maybe build a trebuchet.
Send the mason jar over the rooftops.
And who knows, maybe it'll find a home somewhere.
You could shoot it over at the Tyrells.
It'll go to live on a farm.
Exactly.
But what I do is always after midnight, sometimes after 4 a.m., I see that and I think, you know what that needs right now is to get sorted.
And if I start sorting a mason jar full of pens, almost certainly before I'm done, I will have...
Made a grilled cheese sandwich.
I will have re-strung a guitar.
I will have started fixing the plunger in the toilet, but then realized I didn't have the right tool.
So left the toilet half.
Okay, I see.
You're doing some power puttering.
Yeah, it's a little power puttering.
I think this is puttering around the house.
Puttering around the house for me, okay, this is my super junior league version of what you do, which is a couple days a week when I don't have too much to do during the day, and I don't really ever have that much to do.
As I do this combination of executing on all of these little, I call them mosquito tasks, all the little things that I know need to be done, especially things that need to be done on a regular basis.
This is stuff as quotidian as scooping out the cat box or like replenishing the supply of toilet paper, but all the things that are in my wheelhouse.
But as I putter, and I've tried to explain this with my wife, like we're planning on a camping trip right now.
And I tried to say to her, and I actually used the phrase my process in talking with my wife this morning.
I said, I feel like I should explain one thing about my process.
My process.
As though she doesn't know your process.
As though she doesn't know my process.
But her process is very, very different from mine.
My process is we go downstairs, we take out all of the camping equipment.
You don't make a list until you've looked at the camping equipment.
Right.
You've got to spread it all out.
You've got to spread it all out because the camping equipment is going to tell you what needs to go on the list.
You don't try to shove that into the camping equipment.
That's not where our list goes.
It's going to tell you, oh, you know what?
This one lantern, guess what?
You've got to get new batteries in that one.
Did you remember to check whether the air mattress is still working?
You should fill that up.
Fill it up and leave it for a day and see how it went.
Is that what you want to do when you're in a tent?
Is that what you want to do when you're in a tent?
That's not what I want to do in a tent.
You can't fill it up while it's still sitting down in storage.
You have to pull it out.
You have to lay it out.
And I hope you're sympathetic here because I say to my wife, I say, my process is that I need to get started with this puttering, or in my case, power puttering.
And when I'm power puttering, I'm getting stuff done.
But I'm also figuring out what else needs to be done.
Sure.
You can't do that until you start the putter.
To the layperson, it seems like you're just making a mess.
It seems like a mess.
If the toilet doesn't work anymore, it feels like an unsuccessful putter to a lot of people.
Right.
You've had a sandwich at this point.
You've emptied the jar.
Doo-doo-doo.
The cock is crowing.
So right now, I think if I started at the top of my house and worked down, if we just did like one of those sort of scans on the house, I could probably walk you around here and point out 50 projects in progress.
Up to and including the, you know, like some major ones like I'm building a podcast studio.
Also, I'm refurbishing the basement also.
But, you know, there's also really small ones like this mason jar is in the process of being either.
Usually what happens is I look at the mason jar and I think I'm going to reduce this.
I'm going to reduce this mason jar because it's this is thinning the herd of pens.
Well, there's pens in here, obviously.
They don't belong in this mason jar.
This mason jar is on the counter.
What we need to do is reduce this problem.
I'm going to take it off the counter.
I'm going to disseminate the pens.
I'm going to figure out which ones work and which don't.
The mason jar is going to go into the recycling and there's going to be less.
That's the ultimate goal.
Yes.
What ends up happening is that it all gets spread out and it just creates more.
because i think okay all the red pens are going to go into this smaller jar and all of the you know and all of the and these things that were in the jar that work pens like chopsticks and those those ear picks that scott simpson gave me from japan all the time in the worst case though it becomes like organizing a barrel of sand where it's like well you know it was already pretty organized before you started putting the sand everywhere
But then, you know, and then I'm Mr. McFeely, right?
I'm going around the house making deliveries like this goes here and this goes here.
Speedy delivery.
This one goes into then this belonged in the medicine cabinet the entire time.
And that feels very great.
It feels like I'm distributing the problem.
Yeah.
What's the word I'm looking for?
You're repatriating.
I'm repatriating.
You're taking each item back to its homeland.
Right.
So my mom came into the house the other day and she was like, oh my goodness, you cleaned off that like two by two part of your counter.
There's a two by two section of counter between the refrigerator and the wall.
That really, as I went through it and sorted it, I was like, wow, this really has been here for seven years.
I mean, the last time I thought of this thing, this particular thing, it was that long ago.
That this corner had just become a place where there was still action there.
It wasn't static.
Yeah.
No, but it's an accumulator.
Yeah.
The stapler came and went.
But somewhere down in the back, there were these things like, oh, those were the numbers that I took off the front of the house when I put on new house numbers.
Why didn't I throw those away at the time?
Why did they end up here?
Did I think I was going to use them again?
Yeah.
Sure you did.
Like that kind of problem.
But so she's like, I'm so impressed you cleaned off this corner.
But she is very definitely turning a blind eye to the fact that I took that material and spread it all over the kitchen.
So now I have little, you know, little jars of tacks and little jars of picture hangers.
Yeah.
And they all need to, like, condense back.
It's like an exploded diagram of, like, here are all the parts.
You're Dr. Manhattan, except you can mentally take them apart, but you can't mentally put them back together.
They need to go mentally back together or mentally out the door, right?
Like, out the door.
Yes, yes.
I know the feeling.
I know the feeling.
Oh, God.
Yeah, so I've got, you know, but I have so many...
I occupy so many worlds, right?
So many realms.
I've got my this, I've got my that, I'm building this, I'm taking that apart.
I'm envisioning a new government of Cambodia now, and that requires that I get some reference books out.
That's completely understandable.
And I feel like the new government of Cambodia is, you know...
There's going to be a lot of overlap in my plan for Cambodia that I've already been working on for the American schools.
You'll be able to reapply a lot of that thinking you've been doing.
You've been applying to a notional school system in America, to picture hangers in a mason jar.
That is going to be broadly applicable to whatever's going on in Cambodia.
One imagines.
I think globally a lot of this is only...
We're only going to know later, right, when the UFOs come.
That's, you know, that's one of the reasons that they're going to ring me up.
Because I've been making these plans.
Everybody's like, oh, my God, roll eyes.
Cue roll eyes.
Yeah, but I mean, it's not so different than Richard Dreyfuss and his mashed potatoes, right?
Except what if you actually were making whatever at Devil's Mountain?
What if it turned out that you were actually making the all-important location with your mashed potatoes?
The thing is, you might get frustrated.
People might look at you and say, John, why do you keep playing with your mashed potatoes?
And you say, just wait.
Just wait.
Half of my face is sunburned.
Right.
And I'm out yelling at people that the dead sheep are a plant.
Right.
Yep, yep.
Got a hearing aid.
It's definitely going to be, you know, they just re-released that in theaters.
What, Close Encounters?
Yeah.
Well, I told you my experience of Close Encounters, didn't I?
No, tell me about it.
It was a good movie.
It got a little bit lost in the lights because it was the summer of Star Wars, but that was a good-ass movie.
It didn't get lost in the lights.
It was like a massive, massive hit.
Yeah, I mean, you had Star Wars that year, too, you know?
Well, yeah.
I didn't have any Close Encounters action figures I was waiting on from Kenner.
No, that's true.
That would have been funny, though.
They should have done that.
But that scene where some...
Like some gaffer was rattling the refrigerator and somebody else had a flashlight in it.
And it was like, the aliens are here.
They're rattling the stove.
That was pretty scary at the time.
Now it looks a little corny.
No, I showed Close Encounters.
last year during the uh the millennial girlfriend era oh when you were trying to catch her up you were catching her up on all the important media that she hadn't seen i sure was i was like you haven't seen close encounters she was like no it came out like seven years before i was born or whatever uh i was like oh well you got to sit down you know we'll go through it all and i i successfully got her through the godfather
Didn't she fall asleep?
Yeah, it took four watches.
John, in retrospect, Monday morning quarterback, that should have been a tell.
Yeah, well, you know.
That's a little soon, but that's a really good movie.
You know, we all tilt at the windmills we tilt at, right?
You don't tilt at the windmill you want, you tilt at the windmill you have.
No.
No.
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I'm going to be thinking about that all day.
I'm not happy about it.
Uh-huh.
Uh-huh.
Yeah.
Put that in a mason jar.
You don't go to war at the windmill you'd like.
You accept that you're going to be obsessed with something that might even not be a windmill, and you might have to wake your girlfriend up a few times.
That's complicated, John.
Just start over.
You know what they always say?
Getting old is not for sissies.
That's what they say.
My dad actually got that poster on his 80th birthday from some well-meaning cousin.
That must have made him feel real good.
Oh, we all laughed.
We laughed.
But we sat down to watch Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and what you don't...
realize if you've never watched it with somebody for whom it isn't a touchstone is that like a lot of the movies of the 70s it's pretty slow pacing is a little bit deliberate and this was the era where a married couple bickering angrily was somewhat played for laughs and for me watching it I got very uncomfortable with
with just the tone of their marriage.
Oh, Jesus.
And so much of the film... It really is from a different time, especially in terms of what you would present and how you would present.
I'm cribbing a little bit of this from a recent episode of Culture Gab Fest where Steve Metcalf was talking about this.
But, you know, I love that movie.
But if you go back and watch it now, like you did, and the idea that it is essentially a movie... On the one hand, yes, B, it is a movie about this big universe.
But it's also a movie about a man having a...
at least a midlife crisis and probably a full nervous breakdown who basically leaves his family yeah and his wife who just takes care of stuff it's like oh i'll just stay here with the kids you go to space well but it's you know it's played as a domestic comedy in a way but she's also in like a classic movie shrew
She just complains.
She's always cucking our protagonist.
She's completely impatient.
She doesn't listen.
He's just not appreciated.
And he's freaking out and making mashed potatoes.
mountains in the living room while the kids are throwing their dirty diapers around.
But the whole thing, the whole tenor of that was not
Funny and it didn't feel realistic to me like it did at the time or like Remember watching E.T.
and it was so cool.
It opens up.
It's a divorced mom.
You really buy that family They're playing D&D they're getting pizza like the whole beginning of E.T.
I think still feels I mean that was a touchstone the way that the relationships between those kids I think you're still seeing played out today and things like stranger things because it really it felt real and you felt the pain of that but you're yeah, it's
You know, I gotta watch it again.
Now, did she stay awake for it?
Yeah, yeah, did she stay awake for it as far as you remember?
No, no, absolutely not.
I mean, an hour in... Because, you know, the special effects, which were incredible to us at the time, those special effects, the good ones were taken and digested elsewhere, and we've seen them a hundred times.
It's hard to watch a movie like this when it's been re...
Combobulated in so in so many different ways and it's like almost a little bit like the matrix is like that Where it's it's hard to go back if you have seen all the movies that have like borrowed from this It's hard to go back to the source material and feel great about it.
It's like wow.
This is really This is a pretty watered-down version of stuff.
I've seen better in anime or yes, slow motion fighting big deal Right, but but you know close encounters.
I mean the first half of the film it's just you just see lights in the clouds and
And watching it with someone who didn't have that experience.
Because if you remember, it's very hard to explain what it was like to talk about UFOs, Bigfoot, and the Bermuda Triangle in the 70s.
We've talked about it before.
But the feeling that we had then that those things were the unexplained mysteries.
And also...
Just the chill up your back at the mere mention of the Bermuda Triangle.
Yeah, it was such a thing.
Where planes would fly in and not fly out, and what could it be?
Is it aliens?
Is it a time hole?
But the culture was really open to all of that stuff.
I mean, there were the Time Life books, there was the Leonard Nimoy series.
A lot of it was silly pop culture.
But also, my family bought books of horoscope predictions.
Mm-hmm.
Which is weird.
I mean, we were a Christian family, and we still had these horoscope things, and it was in that weird twilight between, like, this is ridiculous, and I totally believe this.
It was somewhere in between, like, this is good fun, right?
Same way you'd open a fortune cookie and go, well, I hope it turns out that way.
But what's nuts now is that we're living in a world where all of that was so broadly disseminated that there's no surprise left in it.
We're talking about cryptozoology.
I mean, I even remember when I worked at the newsstand now 20 years ago, the cryptozoological magazines and the nutcases that came in and bought those things who would stand at the counter and talk to me about –
you know, uh, Koopa Chabras.
Yeah.
You catch them when you get a five gallon bucket, you put it out there.
There's like a whole system for catching a Chupacabra.
And, and so now even to sit and talk to somebody about like, Oh yeah, Koopa Chabra.
Those are fucking, you know what those are.
They're like, uh, space dragons that live in the jungle.
Um, it's, there's no mystery about nothing seems interesting like that.
Like, because, because,
There are 25 people dressed as Koopa Chobras at Comic-Con this year.
Right?
And so, like, UFOs?
Really?
UFOs are going to be... I mean, they're everywhere now.
But they weren't then.
So the lights in the clouds and that whole scene where it's like, they're here, they're here, and then it turns out to be a helicopter.
Like, none of that is spooky the way it was.
Uh, now, or it wasn't, it wasn't in this, in this viewing.
And so the, the, the terrible part was halfway through my co viewer was asleep and I didn't, I didn't have that thing of like, well, I'm going to watch it because this is great.
I had the thing of like, oh, I sort of there's nobody in this movie that I like.
Yeah, I don't I don't like Richard Dreyfuss anymore because he is like not doing a very good job by his people.
I don't really.
He's what's wrong with middle aged American men.
He's like he's not helping.
Nobody's helping.
And and the lights in the sky aren't scary anymore.
So I'm not going to hang around waiting for the scene where, you know, where the French guy comes up on top of the mountain in India and all the people go like, yeah, I remember that being so spook.
Yeah.
Where did the set?
Where did the sound come from?
And then everybody points to the sky.
You know, I'm even giving myself chills now remembering what it was like to experience it.
But I do not like this phenomenon where I will I will even present I do this too much.
Probably I probably do this too much, but I'll say like, oh, can I introduce you to this thing?
Can we listen to this podcast that I really like?
Can I introduce you to this thing?
And then especially if it's a TV show, like, I'm trying to find the right balance of, I don't want to be a dick.
But what I really want to present it as is, like, it's important to me that you just watch this thing.
And I understand that's a lot to ask, because this is an hour-long TV show or a two-and-a-half-hour movie or whatever it is, but, like, I've seen this nine times.
you have seen this zero times if you would be willing to watch this i would love that and if you're not it's okay i'll put on something we could both look at our ipads at while it's in the background but but but it's it's and then and then the thing is though then you're again again with the twilight you're back to this whole like um
i'll rewind that because i'm pretty sure you weren't because really to appreciate it you're going to notice that it very subtly changes in the background and you'll see look at his expression really look at his eyes look at look at michael you can see him twitching and it's like and it's like okay fine all right let's just put on a mr show and we'll just shuck and jive
There's no there is no way to accomplish turning someone on to the Godfather if your context is that you've seen it 40 times.
Right.
You can't sit down and say, like, you're going to love this movie.
The first four times you watch it, you're never going to really understand who Pauly is.
But eventually you'll put it together.
And that'll be a great moment for you.
It's just like, no, that's not how it works.
And I don't know why it worked that way for us, except that I remember watching it on television that time when they stuck the two of them together in chronological order.
Oh, right, sure.
The Godfather's been with me since I was a kid.
And initially, I think it was...
When when it came on TV that time in the mid 70s or late 70s, I guess the message I received from grownups was you're not going to get this.
This isn't for you.
This is for this is for adults.
Right.
And maybe that is what planted the seed in my head that I mean, because I sat in and watched the shit out of it.
I would just stop.
Anytime, especially in college, when it would show up on USA in one version or another, I would just always stop what I was doing and just watch it.
I mean, this was a time when you didn't have a videocassette of everything, or you didn't have access to anything.
If it came on, you'd go, holy shit, the Godfather's on, cancel everything.
Me too, and we've watched it 60 times, and so has Paul Saboran.
And so have so many other people, because all you have to do is use one word that also appears in the Godfather script,
And Paul Saborin will come out with the next line from the film, right?
He's very knowledgeable.
And then you'll reply with the next line.
And then we all fall on the floor laughing.
Not at the fact that anything is funny about it, except that we are ridiculous people.
And that's not a thing.
That's a cult, basically.
You can't introduce anybody into it.
No.
You have to pursue that on your own, which is very confusing, because it's like, no, no, no, do you see Fredo?
Okay, look, let me explain Fredo.
Nobody wants to hear Fredo.
Yeah, that's me in the Big Lebowski, where it's like, I don't want you to watch it once, I want you to watch it 16 times.
You can't get to where I am
With one viewing, you're going to be just annoyed.
And now you're going to have to go on your own and do some homework.
Come back in a year after you've watched this this many times and we'll have the conversation.
Because that's a great way to make friends is through that kind of an ultimatum.
Have you watched the entirety of The Sopranos all the way through a second time?
No, no, not at all.
Have you watched The Wire all the way through a second time?
Many times.
When my wife was pregnant, we went through the first four seasons.
This is one of the stories that grows in memory.
I can promise you my hand to God.
We watched the first four two times, but I want to say up to four times we've seen some episodes.
Season five, good.
But yeah, multiple times for especially the first two seasons.
Have you watched Game of Thrones up till now all the way through more than once?
Not.
No.
No.
How about The West Wing?
No, absolutely not.
I love that show, but I have not.
No.
So, you know, each one of those in their moment was described as the greatest television that ever happened, right?
I mean, it was...
The Wire came along and supplanted The Sopranos as the greatest thing that had ever happened on television.
But now it seems like Game of Thrones is the greatest thing that ever happened on television.
I don't know if you went back and watched The West Wing from the start.
Whether it would have the same resonance now?
Some episodes, the Two Cathedrals episode is still very, very good.
The more we smoke in church, that's still very, very good.
It's great.
It's great TV.
It's just like the Sopranos seemed...
So real.
And now I imagine it would seem really comic booky.
Well, yeah.
And I mean, that was the one that really broke through in so many ways.
We're like, I agree with you.
It would be hard.
It would be hard to.
That's one where I think it's hard to go back and watch it again and have it feel like the first time, I would guess.
But I don't know.
I don't know either, because I haven't done it either.
Sex and the City, not as much fun as it used to be.
I mean, back when that was more like popcorn TV.
What are other things from that time?
Gary Shandling's show.
Mr. Show, obviously, silly, but I think it still holds up.
A lot of it does.
I mean, the stuff that the stuff about Mr. Show that doesn't hold up didn't hold up then.
Right.
There was always that that part where you're like, whoa.
Yeah.
And that still sticks out like a sore thumb.
Gary Shandling show sort of like curb your enthusiasm.
Those always felt like watching Dick Cavett and watching Dick Cavett.
always felt to me like why am i doing this to myself it's a different yeah that that's one where and you know i was talking to somebody about this with seinfeld because when you go to a party with grown-ups you end up talking about seinfeld talking about how we were we've been watching it with our daughter and like there's so much stuff on that show that you could just watch one episode but where there's payoff over time you know whether something like you know
Martin Van Nostrand and Art Vandele or like whatever it is there's these things that pay off over time and I think that's how Gary Shanley was like the idea that he wasn't he was pretty sure that David Duchovny was attracted to him like it got funnier and funnier over time but you couldn't just watch one of those and appreciate why that was fun you could do it a little bit but are you really it accumulated over time do you want to know something embarrassing yes I have no idea how this happened I'm trying even now to put it back together and
in my head and I cannot get back to where on the internet I hit that little tiny rock in the road and my bike tire went over to the side.
But two nights ago, I sat and watched, you know, I was doing my usual thing, which is like, why don't I go watch...
uh rich little on the johnny carson show in 1974 talk about the nixon administration that's a lot of my nights which was so many letterman episodes up i hope they never get pulled down but i'll just go and watch letterman episodes well and i was you know i i got into that thing of like wait a minute the nixon administrate the watergate was being also played out on all of this late night talk show media and
I really wanted to see like the comedians of the day do their take on it.
Because in a way, like Rich Little talking to Johnny Carson, where they're both wearing big lapel jackets, it feels to me sort of eternal or out of time now.
It's just like Cary Grant.
It just feels like something that always existed and always will.
But in those moments where it's not just...
you know they're not just teasing frank sinatra about about something but punching somebody yeah they're really talking about the news of the day and rich little is doing a an impression of ehrlichman and everybody's laughing hysterically because everyone in the country knows ehrlichman's mannerisms enough that this guy can you know this this uh
This comic can do an imitation of him and they're rolling on the floor.
I was just like, I have got to see more of this.
And so, you know, spend a little time in that space.
But somehow, I don't know whether YouTube made the choice for me.
or or what happened but all of a sudden i'm watching seinfeld bloopers oh oh i i watch those very very often have you seen that you have the seinfeld bloopers yeah somebody's basically ripped the dvd extras and put them up and yes i blooper wheels for every season i know it's like the new isolated guitar uh you know i will watch i will watch many many of those
And I was embarrassed because I'm like, oh, my God, sign flow bloopers, really?
Is this what the Internet has to offer you?
It's a terrific use of the Internet.
I mean, you could be on here looking at the current government of Cambodia and educating yourself, but you are watching Elaine.
do 40 takes.
Because she keeps cracking up.
Doesn't she seem like a nice person?
They all do.
Especially, well, Michael Richards, I think he seems a little genuinely frustrated when they break up.
He does, yeah.
But she seems, Julia Louis-Dreyfus seems like a genuinely, like she would be a good person to work with.
She's so, she has such a
She's so warm.
She seems really in the bloopers, I'm saying.
She seems really nice.
And Jerry Seinfeld also seems like a really nice person.
You're right that Michael Richards sometimes does get frustrated.
I heard him a couple of times say, like, you know, we're running out of film here or something.
Right, right, right.
A little testy.
Also, he had a lot of the hardest stuff.
I mean, some of the physical stuff that he had to do, I would not want to do six times.
No.
When they're waiting for the limo with the Nazis and he has to do the layup shot and land in the garbage cans, I wouldn't want to have to do that six times.
Well, and also his brand of of like his triple take like.
Right.
I mean, if you do that three or four times, it loses it.
Right.
It gets a lot harder.
I wish you hadn't told me.
Whereas, you know, Jerry's just kind of standing there like with a smirk.
Right.
It's not as hard to do.
but uh but that was yeah i was when kramer's turned his apartment into the cigar bar the cigar don't look at me i'm the one with the red light where he's like what the red with the kenny rogers roaster oh my god
So, and then that's the thing where I look up at the clock and it's four in the morning and I'm like, oh shit.
I lose an hour every night and I think this is why.
I lose an hour because of YouTube videos.
Yeah.
They really are.
It's like, there's some days where you think there's no way I could eat a whole Snickers bar.
Other times you think I wish I could find a seventh Snickers bar to eat.
They just go by.
I don't think that's so bad, John.
You've got a lot of things to do.
You're busy at night and you need a way to be able to unwind a little bit.
Well, you know, it was my birthday the other day.
Yeah, I didn't say anything.
I wasn't sure if I was supposed to say anything, but happy birthday, buddy.
No, it's all right.
It's all right.
It's one of those things where, you know, you get to a certain point.
I just get tired.
I get overwhelmed by the whole, like, I saw it was your birthday on Facebook, and therefore I'm going to say happy birthday.
I just, I don't.
Yeah.
Anyway, happy birthday.
Thanks.
It's great.
It was super amazing.
My mom said she was like, we're having a birthday dinner for you.
And I was like, yeah, yeah, I know.
OK, fine.
I'll be there.
You know, like, do I have to do anything but but come?
And she was like, no, no, no, just come.
But what do you want?
And I was like, already, already, you're asking me to do something more than just come.
You're asking me to tell you what I want.
And so she was like, okay, all right, all right, I'll make the dinner.
You don't have to say anything about it.
And she made a great choice.
She made Swedish meatballs, which was exactly what I wanted.
Oh, good choice.
Right?
I would never have thought to say Swedish meatballs.
She made them.
I don't know where she pulled that down.
I don't know how she knew Swedish meatballs was exactly right, but she did.
It's like if it came from the back of a can of cream of mushroom soup that you found in a grocery store in 1978, I will eat it, right?
Oh, God, yes.
I hope we never lose those recipes to time.
I just don't see as much green bean casserole as I used to, and it kind of breaks my heart.
Nobody is using fried onions on the top.
The turkey onions.
Where's the turkey onions?
Bring them out.
History is being lost by sheaves every day.
It's like Apache or something.
It's just going away.
How are we going to keep it alive?
But so in my family, there's a lot of trouble around the idea of what is a good cake.
Oh.
Interesting.
There's a lot of disagreement between us on what constitutes a good cake.
And it's very frustrating to me because I think it's clear what a good cake is and what a good cake isn't.
But no one seems to agree.
And I don't know how that could have happened.
We all came from the same place, basically.
But no one in my family likes a chocolate cake except me.
What?
My mom likes white cake, which I don't even know what.
It's not angel food.
It's not vanilla.
It's just that white, airy, spongy, not sponge cake.
But yeah, I get what you mean.
Just white cake.
But, you know, my daughter's favorite cake is carrot cake.
And what seven-year-old has carrot cake as her favorite cake?
You should get her looked at.
That's not right now.
And so anyway.
Personally, I love a carrot cake, but that's odd for a little kid to want.
It's a weird cake for a child.
So anytime there's a cake event, I go to it kind of preloaded to be disappointed in the cake.
Sure.
The other cake that sometimes appears at family parties is a strawberry cake.
I'm not talking about a strawberry shortcake.
I'm talking about a cake...
That's like strawberry.
That's weird.
That's very weird.
It's very terrible.
Well, I don't know if it's terrible, but it's very... Strawberry is weird as a standard cake.
Yep.
I've never heard of that before.
And if you put coconut on cake, I'm going to leave your party.
Sigh.
but i'm just gonna get it this is another one of those things like to me the canonical example of this is baker's chocolate in the fridge and you're like holy shit we've got chocolate in the fridge and you're 10 and of course you you bite into that thing and it's the worst to me what is it german chocolate where it looks like it's gonna be normal chocolate icing but guess what it's not really normal chocolate icing and guess what it's got fucking coconut in it yeah it's full of somebody's toenail clippings just you know just just why don't you just urinate on the cake oh i made chocolate urine cake
It's really good.
No, even if you're not a big fan of urine, there's just a little bit in there.
It's really good.
It just gives a little hint of urine.
Yeah, or cake with rum in it.
I don't want either.
Stop doing that.
That rum goes in a drink.
Make a cake.
Cake should have cake in it.
Yeah, have a cake and a glass of rum, but don't... So...
So she does say, look, I'm not going to deal with your, I'm not going to ask you about the menu.
I'm going to handle that for you.
But what kind of cake do you want?
And she knows what kind of cake I want.
But she asks, right?
It's hanging there in the air.
And so what I say is, all right, you want to play this game?
You want to do the what kind of cake do you want game?
Fine.
There's a six-layer chocolate cake at Safeway that you can't buy.
They only make it to sell it in slices.
You can't buy it.
I cannot fucking believe you said this.
You can't buy it.
So that's what I want for my birthday.
I'm a man of a certain age.
None of the presents that any of you are going to get me are anything other than...
things that you found on the remainder table at costco right because you're you're a man in your 40s super interesting because i was going to pick as my well there's two kinds of chocolate cake you can get from safeway you're talking about the bigger thicker one they have another one it's called chocolate fudge ice box cake another one it is a square fucking square of safeway chocolate cake with fudgy icing on top and it's my favorite cake yeah you could tile the floor of an airport with those
You know... They're substantial slices of cake.
They are super substantial.
It's like, what, three or four bucks, but it's like a mini cake.
You get a cake.
You get a square fucking cake of your own.
It's probably about six inches by six inches, maybe five inches, probably two inches thick, and it is glorious.
And there's no fucking coconut on it.
There's no rum involved.
There's nothing cute.
There's no surprises.
You don't eat a baby.
There's nothing weird about it.
It's just cake.
No cream cheese in the frosting.
It's just a frosting in a cake.
It is large batch delicious.
Delicious.
But the six layer super cake, which I treat myself to periodically, I said, that's what I want for my birthday cake.
Vaya con Dios.
Good luck.
Godspeed.
Well, so my mom, not one to be daunted by an impossible project, went to Safeway.
The person there at the bakery said, we don't sell those.
She said, let me speak to your manager.
Well, actually, first of all, she misheard me and she went to the QFC and yelled at the grocery store managers at two different QFCs until she realized that they don't sell those there.
They have terrible cakes at QFCs.
And what I meant was Safeway.
I think she called my sister.
My sister was like, no, no, no.
It's Safeway cake that he wants.
They're the good cakes.
So then she went to Safeway and she went up the chain until she arrived at the person who said, we will sell you one of those cakes, but it's going to cost more than
than it would to just buy that many slices of it.
And my mom said, fine, price is no object.
My son challenged me to show up with one of these cakes.
I'm going to do it.
Now, it turned out that the bakery manager didn't know what they were talking about.
And in fact, it still was cheaper than buying all the slices.
That was just some, I don't know what, that was some inner internal Safeway legend.
that they had never really looked at, like these cakes would be more expensive.
unsliced than sliced.
That sounds like it turns out.
It turns out, no.
In fact, I did the math.
It wasn't that hard to do the math.
All you have to do is do the price of the cake times eight.
Oh, I see.
Final life hack for that.
That's good.
But, so, I arrive at this birthday party, this Swedish meatball birthday party with my family.
And all of the presents I got were just delightful things that were, like, on the table at the
On the table at the fireworks store.
At the mall.
But like with a sale tag on it.
Which is great.
Thank you everyone.
Thank you my daughter.
One of my family members bought me a book.
That was about famous guitars.
Like the famous guitars.
Oh like a coffee table book?
Yeah the famous guitars that made America great.
I love that kind of thing.
I've got a bunch of those.
But then when I opened it.
It was clear.
There was a little bit of a cultural divide.
Because.
No one in my gang would know enough about the famous guitars genre of book.
to have recognized that this was a book about the famous jam band guitars.
Oh, I see.
It's not evident on the cover.
It just says the guitars that built the pantheon of rock.
You got wall-to-wall warlocks.
And I was like, wow, the guitars that built the pantheon of rock.
And I opened it up, and it was like Jerry's number one axe.
and then i'm like whoa right bc rich warlock was that no no they were these were custom-made guitars and i think the i think the one that looks like a warlock was made even before bc rich was a they're custom made by some guy obviously in the bay area out of like hard to find south american coa woods and inlaid with a special you know like mother of pearl that jerry found on the bottom of the sea floor and
Anyway, and so then the second page is like Jerry's other number, Jerry's number two guitar.
And I was like, huh, two pages devoted to Jerry.
And then the third page was Bob Weir's number one.
I was like, whoa, what book is this?
And so it's a huge book.
What about the string cheese incident?
Aren't they a jam band?
They are in there.
And what's crazy about this thing is I'm flipping through.
And when was the last time you saw a coffee table book with like 250 different guitars in it, played by 250 different
nominally famous guitarists, and I really don't know any of them.
I'm looking at them like, who is this guy?
How did a guy with a baseball hat
get to be famous enough to have a picture of himself with his signature guitar.
And all this guy looks like to me is just a guy with a baseball hat on.
And none of them are rocking very much stage flash.
They're jam band guys.
They're wearing fleece.
Yeah.
Or, you know, like, I don't know, dad jeans.
They don't have, like, platform dragon boots.
None of them.
None of them.
Not at one.
Yeah.
And there's a lot of Paul Reed Smiths in there.
And what's great is a lot of their signature guitars are like the 1997 Paul Reed.
I'm like, a 1997 is this guy's signature axe?
Yeah.
Anyway, so that's one of the presents I got, just by example.
But then on the table, here is this six-layer chocolate, like Tower of Babel.
Beautiful.
She accomplished it.
And then, as in all great things, at the end of the party, she said, get that cake out of my house.
I never want to see it again.
And the thing about it is you can only eat...
You can only eat four bites of this cake before you are having a diabetic emergency.
It's pretty rich.
And so I was allowing myself, I was allotting myself half of a normal slice because it was my birthday era.
It was my birthday week.
I was giving myself half a normal slice.
And...
At four o'clock in the morning, I was lying in bed and my feet were going like I was playing double kick drum on the on the footboard because I was so jacked on chocolate and sugar.
And so you were hopped up on cake, hopped up on cake.
Like if you eat a piece of this cake anytime after 6 p.m., you are just you're flying.
And so my sister said, no, no, no, no, no.
You don't want to eat cake before bed.
Eat it in the morning.
Eat it for breakfast.
And so the following day, I was like, I'll give myself half a piece of cake with my morning coffee.
I'm reading the newspaper.
And I was completely jacked for the rest of the day.
Like my stomach was churning.
I've eaten this sugar bomb.
So I have half of the world's greatest cake in my refrigerator right now.
And I do not know how to approach it.
I open the refrigerator and I look at it.
I'm like, I want you.
But I feel...
like you are gonna fuck me over big time i mean it's like a real it's like the it's like i'm sitting look i'm unrolling my works it's like you've got an ex-girlfriend in your fridge really you know what you should do you should do a miranda speaking of sex in the city do what miranda does you go in there you get that cake you remove whatever's covered on it you take a knife and you give yourself a little sliver a little sliver just slice it off treat it like a turkey give yourself like a little sliver of cake
A little sliver.
If you want more later, you have a little bit more.
You know, you're breaking the Prozac in half.
You know what I'm saying?
You know how many giant slices of cake I've eaten one sliver at a time?
No.
How many?
That's so many.
All of them.
I was at a party yesterday, and the host of the party was like, how many of these hamburgers should I make?
And before I even had a chance to say, make all the bacon, somebody from across the room was like, make them all.
Mm-hmm.
And I obviously instantly went over to talk to that person because I understood they were a kindred spirit.
But then he did make them all.
And like four of them went uneaten.
Oh, no.
Every time I walked through the kitchen and saw these four slowly coagulating hamburgers.
I was like, oh, wow, I'm really glad I was not the one that shouted, make them all.
Yeah.
Every once in a while, you make them all.
I mean, the thing is, if it was my house, I'd put them in the freezer.
It'd be great.
Yeah, that's the problem, though, is like, you know, if you have too much food, especially with something like hamburgers, you've got essentially two options.
You can either freeze the patties and then hope that you don't run out of cooked burgers, or you can cook them all, in which case, now you've got to decide what to do with some hamburgers.
Yeah.
So you air in the direction of, I'm going to have lots more cooked hamburgers.
You repurpose those into other dishes, correct?
You do your own little Wendy's chili type situation.
Yeah, you're going to crumble one of those burgers into a big thing of macaroni and cheese.
Yes.
That's going to make everybody happy.
We had baked ziti last night, and it was really, really good.
See?
My wife makes a great baked ziti.
She makes a really stellar macaroni and cheese.
You can crumble anything into that, and it's delicious.
You could crumble bacon into that.
You could crumble an old hamburger into that.
You could crumble an old hamburger into a thing of spaghetti sauce, and the spaghetti sauce will just gobble it right up.
Oh, they'll start making out right away.
They are happy to be in that bowl, buddy.
So many things you can crumble an old hamburger into.
But this is not your burger.
This is not your house.
Now that I'm thinking about it, I could have said, hey, you want me to take those four burgers off your hands?
I'll have them.
But I bet you that he had enough good sense to know that those were still viable burgers.
Mm-hmm.
He could put them back to use.
But as for what I'm going to do with this, I mean, this enormous, even eating a sliver at a time, it's going to take me six months to go through this cake.
I'm proud.
I'm proud of my mom for accomplishing it.
I'm proud to have it in my refrigerator, but I just don't have, I don't have the walk-in freezer that you need.
I'm the same way.
This is going to sound a little crazy, but can I suggest you offer a slice to Sam?
He might like some cake.
I'm going to bet that this cake is not part of Somme's... Weltanschauung?
Yeah, general sort of like food...
family.
But maybe, you know, it took me a week of having Sam at the house before I realized, you know, Sam has never come in the house to get a drink of water or use the bathroom.
So I went outside and I said, Sam, are you not coming in the house because you haven't been invited?
Because you work here all day.
I'm sure you need to go to the bathroom sometimes.
And he was like, oh, well,
You know, he kind of did a little like church and state thing.
Like, well, you know, I'm working outside and don't want to come in too.
And I was like, Sam, listen, I want you to use the bathroom if you ever need to use the bathroom.
And he was like, okay, thank you.
But he didn't offer up what he had been doing as an alternative?
Or using as an alternative?
I think he was either.
No, I don't think he was going to the bathroom like in a milk carton.
You don't think he was cold jugging?
No, no, no, no, no.
He's a guy with a lot of class and style.
I think he was going to the bathroom when he went to lunch.
Okay, okay.
Like, he just was somebody that knew how to not need to go to the bathroom all the time, which is, I don't know how you do that, but...
I peed twice while we were recording today.
There are all kinds of people who don't have to go to the bathroom, or who, even if they do have to go to the bathroom all the time, don't.
They might as well be mind readers to me.
They might as well be Magneto.
I don't understand that power at all.
And I just marvel at it.
If you work in a giant construction crane...
You've got to take one of those little pilots helpers up there.
Oh, yeah.
You can't possibly.
I mean, if you work in a giant construction crane, you go up in the morning and you come down in the afternoon, right?
Right.
Like you're not up there.
You don't go up and down those stairs 15 times a day because you have to go to the potty.
Right.
But it certainly means you don't have to go poop during the day.
Have I ever asked you about that?
What do you do when you're up in a Cessna or whatever?
What do you do if you've got to drop a deuce?
You don't.
Just keep flying.
You stay focused.
The thing about flying a small plane is that it doesn't actually last as long as you might think.
You go up and you fly for...
Four or five hours, and then you come down.
Okay.
You don't get up there.
You don't top off those tanks and fly for 12 hours.
It's not... I see.
Those people that do those cross-country flights, you know, those planes are specially modified, and also even that doesn't really...
Nobody's flying the spirit of St.
Louis across the Atlantic anymore.
I will sometimes take mental note, and I'm just saying, maybe this is a post-9-11 thing, you do not see pilots coming out of the cockpit very often.
And I don't think they're cold-jugging it.
They're gentlemen.
Most of the flights that you take in the United States are five hours long.
Yeah.
Right?
If you...
If you need to go pee in the space of five hours, sure.
But if you can't figure out, if you can't get your timing enough that you can manage to sit in one place for five hours without having an emergency, you know, and probably pilots.
You throw a little bit of shade at me.
You're saying I could never be a pilot is what you're saying.
Just because I pee three times in a five hour flight.
I pee freely.
All right.
That's, you know, that's fine.
I mean, I'm the same way.
If it was an overnight flight, I would have to get up six times because I'm one of those characters now that if you read the back of a bottle and it says, if you need to go to the bathroom more than twice in the middle of the night, then you have a medical emergency.
Wow, emergency.
That's a medical preference.
If you have any of the following symptoms, consult a doctor.
Like, oh, you just described all of my feelings from top to top.
He would never have time to organize your mason jars if you were constantly consulting a doctor.
Oh, so I'm going to the doctor.
Oh, nice.
So I haven't been to the doctor in a while.
And for a while, I did go to a doctor.
You had your little heart scare a while back.
Well, and so after that, I started seeing a doctor at the cooperative.
And he was kind of like a scatterbrained hippie doctor.
And whenever I would ask him a question about something, he would say, well, yeah, but there's really no point in worrying about it.
And I would say, really?
Seems like that's what you do.
You go to the doctor when you're worried about something.
Sounds more like a bartender than a doctor.
Yeah, the doctor worries about it with you.
Was he wiping the counter while he was telling you this?
He was saying, wait a minute, he wasn't a doctor, he was a bartender.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
No wonder I still have this Goyer.
Can I top you off?
No, he was just like, you know, he said to me one time, he's like, you know, we don't have really the ability to test people for cancer.
Is that a fact?
You know, if you have symptoms of cancer, then we can go in and do a battery test.
Oh, because you're still looking for that beam that's going to scan you.
You're still looking for the scanner beam.
It's just like, oh, I'm kind of worried about this.
And he's like, I mean, no, that's not how it works.
You don't come in here and say you're kind of worried about cancer.
Can we test if you have it?
It seems like something they should offer.
It seems like something a lot of people would take them up on.
Right.
Right.
It seems like a way they can make a little bit more money.
Right.
Cancer scans.
But but for most of the things I came in and said, like, well, I don't know about this.
He's like, it's probably fine.
And on the one hand, that's reassuring.
But on the other hand, I felt maybe a little bit like I wanted more handholding.
But then my insurance changed.
I no longer can go to the co-op and deal with this doctor.
And so I went back to my normal state of affairs, which is no doctor.
Yeah.
Well, it should be.
As people keep telling me in your...
In your 40s, in your late 40s especially, you need to have a doctor to go to something.
Yeah, I suppose.
And I was like, all right, fine, I'll get a doctor, fine.
And then the question was, well, what doctor do you want?
And I looked at all this stuff and I picked... Yeah, you go through it like a fucking yearbook.
Yeah.
Oh, here, flip through here and see which one of these people you want to take care of your health from now on.
Exactly, exactly.
It's crazy.
And so I found somebody, I liked their face...
I was like, I'll call this one.
I like their face.
I don't like this one.
I don't like this doctor because it looks like this doctor is a cross-country runner.
And I do not want a doctor that is a cross-country runner.
They can't turn that off.
They can't even pretend that that's not who they are.
Right.
And this doctor obviously thinks they're hot cheese.
And I don't want to go to a doctor that thinks they're hot cheese.
And this doctor is never going to look me in the eye.
I don't want that.
I don't want a doctor that's not going to look me in the eye.
Think to all that just from a little directory.
Yep.
Yeah.
So I find a doctor.
He looks like Kevin Seal from MTV.
And I go, this is the one for me, right?
Yeah, Kevin Seal then or Kevin Seal now?
Kevin Seal now is amazing.
Yeah.
But the fellow you picked out, does he look more like 1988 Kevin?
Okay.
Wow, nice.
But, you know, Kevin Seal now kind of looks like Kevin Seal then.
Is that right?
Yeah, he's retained his handsomeness all the way through.
Good for him.
I'm pulling for him.
Yeah, he's one of the greats.
But then I call this guy and the person that answers the phone says, I've never heard of that doctor called this number.
And I call that number and that pretty soon I'm talking to somebody out in Issaquah.
They patch me through to somebody else, and that person tells me, oh, that doctor doesn't do internal medicine.
He's a surgeon.
Sounds like they really got this whole thing figured out.
Like, okay, you know what?
Run him like a top.
Screw this whole system.
Trust us with your health.
We don't know how to update a phone number.
Right, right.
Exactly my problem.
And so I'm like, what am I going to do?
I don't even want a doctor, but I need one.
And then I remembered...
I went to the doctor during my campaign.
She was the doctor from New York.
Oh, that doctor.
I'm not the one who came to see you, doctor.
Yeah, I'm not the one who came to see you, doctor, who sat there kind of impatient with me and said, why are you so suspicious of doctors?
And I said, why don't I just go to her?
There is a part of me that feels like as a as a like a grouchy gramps that I wanted.
I'm always looking for a doctor that's older than me.
Sure.
And maybe grouchier than me.
But.
But this woman who's not, she wasn't any older than I was.
She really got my attention with that.
I didn't come to see you lying.
Touché, lady doctor.
Right.
And her impatience with me really resonated with me because I'm also impatient with myself.
Yeah.
And so I was like, I'm going to go see...
Grouchy lady doctor.
And so I made an appointment with her.
So I'm going to see her next week.
I'll see if we maintain that rapport.
You've got a lot going on right now.
You've got a new podcast you're working on.
You've got a lady doctor going on.
You got Psalm, and now on top of all the Psalm work, you're coping with Psalm as a situation.
You're thinking about that.
You got cake you need to finish.
You still got jars full of pens.
There's probably some clothes right now that probably aren't in the situation that you'd like them to be in.
You have a lot of balls in the air right now.
Do you want to promote your new program?
Are we at that point yet?
Well, I mean, we can certainly talk about it.
I don't know if I'm promoting it quite yet.
Sorry.
You're not a fan.
No, it's okay.
It's all right.
When you're ready, tell us about your new program.
So I'm working on a new program.
You know, I start to get podcast envy, right?
Because you've got like five great award-winning podcasts.
Wow.
And a lot of people have a lot of podcasts, right?
I mean, the My Brother, My Brother and Me guys and their wives all together as a collective have 40 podcasts.
I don't think that's wholesome.
Doing so many podcasts with people that you're related to, blood or otherwise, is just not healthy.
Well, they're from West Virginia.
That's a good point.
But Justin McElroy, he started a podcast just in the time that we've been doing this podcast.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Like, I don't know how many podcasts my other co-host Dan Benjamin has.
Dan is not as busy as he used to be.
He does more development now.
I've got four regular shows.
I'm looking into maybe getting another.
Oh, you think about going for a fifth?
Oh, one never knows, does one.
I have capacity for it.
Do the people that you're talking to about doing another podcast, do they know you're talking to them about it?
No, they don't know it yet.
I see.
Okay.
That's important.
No, it's very important.
The listeners don't know.
The co-hosts don't know.
And that's the way I like it.
So tell me about this show.
Tell who you're doing this show with.
The people at Stuff You Should Know, which is a venerable podcast network.
Stuff You Should Know.
Stuff You Should Know.
Stuff.
Stuff.
Stuff is a big part of their network.
Stuff You Should Know.
And they have several podcasts, some big ones.
one of them starring our friend Chuck Bryant.
Mm-hmm.
Right?
Isn't that called Stuff You Should Know?
I don't know who that is, but I'll find out.
Chuck Bryant is a good friend of mine, and I think his podcast is called Stuff You Should Know.
Oh, you're talking about Chuck Bryant, right?
Charles Chuck Bryant?
That's right.
Yeah, he does a show called Stuff You Should Know.
Right.
I think it's probably on the Stuff You Should Know network.
But no, the network has a different name.
Stuff You Should Know.
We're learning so much here.
How Stuff Works.
How Stuff Works.
How Stuff Works.
So I know Chuck for a long time and I think he's one of the most wonderful dudes.
And so the HowStuffWorks network reached out and it kind of was it kind of was funny.
Right.
Because for a long time I've been talking to Ken Jennings, my Seattle based pal.
about why don't we do a podcast and ken has always been like ah everybody thinks i'm like mr trivia because i won jeopardy 1000 times and i don't want to do trivia and i feel like if we did a podcast there would be all this energy directed at me to just be like it's jeopardy podcast with jeopardy guy
And I was like, yeah, I know.
It is a problem.
Figuring out what to do with your podcast is really hard.
And you're right.
We shouldn't do a thing that isn't fun and cool for us both.
But I think it would – he's a very funny man.
I think it would be good to do a show.
We should keep thinking about it.
And so for a couple of years, we've been thinking about it.
Well, so HowStuffWorks reached out to me and said –
You know Ken Jennings, right?
And I said, yeah.
And they said, well, we were thinking about getting him to do a podcast.
Could you put us in touch with him?
And I was like, yeah, I'll put you in touch with Ken.
So I sent that across Ken's desk, but I attached no post-it note to it saying, yeah.
here's our here's our shot i made no i used no uh collective pronoun i was just like uh stuff you should know or uh how stuff works a lot of stuff how stuff works wants to talk to you ken i'm making stuff and then i and then i just like did the old i wash my hands of this motion so how stuff works said hey ken we want you to do a podcast and ken said
Well, I've been working on a podcast with my friend, John, who you who you contacted to get in touch with me.
And they were like, what a great idea.
And then you did a Dick Cheney.
Yeah, that's right.
You totally Cheney them.
I Cheney them a little bit.
My suggestion for the best candidate.
And so but then they were like, great, let's do this.
And both Ken and I were like, well, we still have this problem of not wanting to do a trivia podcast.
And how stuff works was like, you know what?
We got no we got no dog in that race.
You guys just do whatever you want.
So we came up with some ideas, and then they flew us to Atlanta.
What?
This is this new podcast world, Merlin, where people have... Find people around.
How about that?
I think what's happening is that people are realizing that podcasting is not only not going away, but it's becoming a bigger thing.
And yet, still, the biggest podcast network is NPR.
Like, we've been talking about this for a long time, right?
There's no, Budweiser does not advertise on podcasts, right?
It's all, it's still a small world.
Just as a note here to John Sirkisa, this is going to be one of those times where I just go, hmm, a lot and let me talk.
the conditions of everything you're describing i i wouldn't want to vet one way or another i think you are correct that the public radio writ large has historically and will continue to be a large source of both podcast and talent for podcasts i wouldn't say it's just npr uh as far as being flown around i have not been flown many places before look it's an evolution and i'm sure john you don't get texts about this i get texts about this why don't you tell him why don't you tell him that's not correct
The number of people in my life who have tried to get me to make a distinction between public radio and NPR.
Well, and how would you distinguish between that and the slate and panoply relationship?
You get into things like American public media.
It gets very complicated.
Yeah, I heard all those people over onto the same couch at the fraternity mixer, and I reintroduced them to one another, and I say, have a great time.
John, what's the name of your program going to be?
You're not very good at this.
I want people to know where to go to listen to your program with Ken Jennings.
Now they know the history, where can they go and listen to it?
Well, so it's not going to debut for a while because we're doing some preliminary work.
But what we decided was that there is a real problem.
You want your podcast to solve a problem, right?
You're not going to say the name, are you?
Jesus fucking Christ.
There's a problem.
There's a problem that needs the following resolution.
We see an apocalypse looming.
We all do.
You spend all day watching zombie programs on TV.
I know it.
Yep.
All day.
And what's going to happen is that the apocalypse is going to come.
And a certain amount, the apocalypse is going to end up being an aperture, a filter.
And on the other side of the apocalypse, some things are going to be remembered, but a lot of things are going to be lost, right?
Like we're going to have to redevelop the technology to make maglev trains because it's going to, that technology is going to be lost in the cataclysmic fires.
Mm-hmm.
Or like how to hit the top of a 13-inch black and white TV to make the picture come back.
Yeah, right.
Nobody's going to remember that.
People are going to remember the Beatles, right?
Because they're going to be digging around and they're going to find enough Beatles ephemera.
Yeah, that'll come up a lot.
Yeah.
But nobody's going to remember the animals.
You know?
And so what Ken and I both have in common is a tremendous amount of back catalog knowledge of sort of what
how we got to where we are.
And so we're making a time capsule to be opened by the futurelings of Earth, the future beings, whoever they are.
And maybe they're big, like, steampunk cockroaches, or maybe they are, you know, maybe it's Planet of the Apes or whatever.
But so we're trying to catalog as much of the, like,
What we consider to be very important, but potentially ephemeral knowledge that wouldn't make it through this apocalyptic aperture.
Okay.
So that when you open this time capsule sometime in the future, you'll be able to flesh out and fill in your knowledge of human history up to this point.
Okay.
And our listeners are going to be able to have access to this in advance, right?
That's a good idea.
I can see a demand for that.
It might not be a demand now, but there will be a demand later.
You've already got it ready to go.
Right.
You're a little bit like Marlon Brando on one of those ice cube sticks inside the fortress, right?
You've got it all ready.
When it's time, Kal-El will discover that he can stick an ice cube in a hole, and he'll know.
And then Marlon Brando will tell him about how to be a good person.
Yeah, we're basically putting these, we're making these gold records, and we're stapling them to the outside of a box, and we're sending them into space.
And they have a little recording of Chuck Berry on them, and they have the... See, I'm thinking of Sugar Bear.
I'm thinking, remember Sugar Bear, the post-cereals?
You used to have a, you get a record, you get cut out of the back of the cereal box.
Of course no one remembers that.
This is the kind of thing your program would cover.
There used to be a time when a sugar, a literal Sugar Bear, would have an album, or not an album, a 45, on the back of a breakfast cereal that you could then go play on a record player that you guys don't even have anymore.
Right, or a plastic record that came inside of a Mad Magazine.
A plastic record, yeah.
Flexidisc, yeah.
Flexidisc.
So the podcast is called Omnibus.
Omnibus!
That's a great name for a podcast.
Yeah, thank you, Omnibus, with Ken Jennings and John Roderick.
And it's going to debut sometime soon-ish.
But, you know, within what's increasingly becoming this whole, like...
Big time international showbiz podcast world soon could mean a lot of things.
Right.
It could mean like six hours.
It could mean like 60 days.
It could mean like six years.
Hopefully it'll be somewhere between six hours and six years.
Omnibus.
Podcasting giant HowStuffWorks announces four new shows, expansion of genres, and fresh talent.
Omnibus, co-hosted by Ken Jennings, the winning guest, Jeopardy!
champion of all time, and John Roddick, frontman of the indie rock band The Long Winters and legendary raconteur.
Together, Ken and John will pick a couple topics a week for a mind-blowing deep dive into obscure stories they fear might be lost to history.
What's crazy is that every time somebody would send me some copy to edit, it would always say, like, Ken Jennings...
Best-selling author and most winningest Jeopardy!
champion of all time.
And then it would say John Roderick...
And there were all these superlatives added to my accomplishments.
John Roderick, like beloved front man of everyone's favorite band, The Long Winters, and hilarious raconteur.
And I would look at this copy and I would take all that out and I would say, John Roderick,
frontman of the indie band long winters and podcaster or whatever you want to say but do not attend it with any like flowery language because you're not doing that to ken no no it has like these real like best-selling author ken jennings and and pitiful eminence beloved and hilarious and i'm just like
No, fuck you.
And so I did it three or four times, and every time I would send it back to the next... World's greatest grandpa.
They would send it back to me with this world's greatest grandpa shit, and I would comb it out.
and then that when that press release went out somehow that word what was the word it's not beloved right they used some oh something about you are uh front man of the indie rock band and legendary legendary rock and tour somebody slipped that back in and i'm just like stop it you guys gather around children and i will tell you the tale of john roderick don't even use rock on tour just say like podcaster it's fine it's fine
I don't feel bad.
I feel worse when you try to puff it up like that.
It kind of just says, bless your heart.
It does.
It says, bless your heart.
I don't need that.
I know that the thing about Ken's fame, which is astonishing to me, is that he's truly famous still.
That all happened 10 years ago or more when he was on TV, but...
When he was on TV, he was in the newspaper every night.
Like, can you believe this guy is still going?
And my mom said at one point, I've never watched a game of Jeopardy.
The only thing I know about Jeopardy is that one guy won it a bunch of times.
And I'm like, that one guy is our friend Ken.
And she was like, oh, that's the one guy?
That's all I need you to know.
So, but everywhere we go.
So Ken came over to the house the other day.
He gets up on the steps and Psalm is there and Psalm looks at him and goes, do I know you?
Aren't you the guy from Jeopardy?
No shit.
I'm like, Psalm knows?
Oh man, this is a hell of a super team you're getting.
You're going to do some amazing stuff.
Yeah.
So I'm building this podcast studio at my house where Ken is going to come every week.
And now Peter's in the basement.
Psalm's on the roof.
Ken's in the fucking... Ken's in the...
Not going to do it.
So that's the basement project.
Now it can be told.
Yeah, it's all, it's all, everything's going.
Everything's going all the time.
It's just like it's going to be a Ken Jennings delivery system.
Ken and the legendary raconteur John Roderick.
That's right.
And whatever possible is living in the walls right now.
You know, I got the, I got the, the, the whole game.
All right, let me edit this up.
All right, good job, Omnibus.