Ep. 286: "Ginger Dagwood"
Go ahead.
Hello?
Hello.
Hi, John.
Hi, Merlin.
How's it going?
Good.
We have a new technical constraint.
Seems to be working.
Seems to be working.
I think I can hear you fine.
I can hear the streetcar.
I heard it nice and loud.
Oh, doctor, how's it going?
You got a little bit of a back problem.
Oh, no.
I was going to tell you about my customer support call, but I want to hear about your back.
What's going on with your back?
Oh, I don't think you do.
I don't think anybody wants to hear about it.
No, don't say that.
People are concerned.
No, that's the problem.
It's just, you know, we used to get on this show and I'd just be like, oh,
I'm killing spies and I'm, you know, like down in helicopters.
I was excited to hear that your trail cutting plan made it onto Omnibus.
That made me very happy.
Well, you know, the trail cutting plan is actually like going to make it into government policy.
Not very long here.
Yeah.
Maybe not this government, but.
Well, Ken seemed a little bit skeptical.
Well, it's his job, right?
Well, I suppose he kept looking at the, I don't know, trying to tease out the ugly side of it as being some kind of incarceration instead of seeing it as a way of helping.
Yeah, that's right.
That's true of the response to a lot of plans.
The bigger the plan, the harder the pushback.
And I was talking to somebody in Seattle not very long ago about my plan for like a...
You know, I'm talking about housing.
Let's be clear.
The plans so far.
The part you're willing to, you know.
Yeah.
Right?
Yeah, yeah.
It's like the graze.
You can't just bring it on people.
You got to go a little at a time, get them used to the idea of John's plan.
Yeah, it's a broad sketch.
It just involves, first of all, you got to procure the land.
And they're like, hmm.
I'm like, no, no, no.
Bear with me.
And then we employ the architects.
They're like, yeah, the architects.
So I've got a great plan, but that's the problem, right?
Everything works perfectly if
as long as everybody shares 100% the same beliefs.
I don't think that's too much to ask, especially if you go to, let's use the word, to vulnerable parents.
They're at wit's end, they're ready to pay for one of those costly places where the kids go groom horses and get off squeak.
But maybe John comes in, John's architect comes in, maybe dressed as a bishop, I'm thinking, comes in and says, John has a plan for you.
He's dressed as Smokey Bear.
Has he got one of those cool hats?
Yeah, Smokey Bear Bishop.
But you've got to earn it.
They don't just give those hats away.
No, no, no, no.
Bishop Smokey.
They smell like forest fire.
They come in with some brochures, maybe a couple forms to fill out.
Well, listen.
Are you going to cut the bureaucracy on this kind of thing, John?
Look, here's what.
There's going to be a blue school bus parked downtown.
Yeah.
Because it's the United Nations.
11.30 a.m.
It's not some 7 a.m.
thing.
It's 11.30 a.m.
downtown.
In San Francisco, it'll be right by Union Square.
You won't have trouble finding it.
Okay.
Show up at 11.30 with your kid with a small backpack.
We'll take it from there.
You'll see him in a year.
Maybe.
He'll come back when he's ready.
We'll know when he's ready.
They'll be allowed to write.
You can write them.
Well, you know, Smokey Mixed Determinations.
They'll be allowed to write unless they're in the hole.
Unless they're in the hole, but I'm imagining it a little bit like the flash dance rehearsal, where you're going to have to come into the room and reach a board of Smokies, and a board of Smoky bishops will decide whether it's time for Johnny to go home.
Well, ultimately, I decide.
Okay.
All right.
Under his eye.
I'm the voice behind the bishop, behind the smoky bishop.
There's someone behind the curtain.
Okay.
All right.
You're going to personally approve every exit visa from the program.
I come walking through with a tennis racket that's got two five-pound weights taped to it.
I'm just practicing my swing.
Shower down to get an A. I still say that every night.
My daughter just stares at me.
That wasn't KUFL.
That was somebody else that said that.
Oh, shower down to get an A was not KUFL.
No, that was coach.
Same school.
Coach, I don't remember.
I think it's the thing is like, again, I say it's like the grays in the sense that this is a plan that is obviously very ambitious, even just the parts that we know about.
And John's plan is going to have depth and breadth.
It's going to involve a lot of, I'm guessing, eminent domain.
Well, the problem is there are so many bad precedents.
This is the thing about socialism, right?
If you're talking about it, all your opponents have to do is point to the dozens and dozens of times when some socialistic plan has failed.
You're not going to be gluing pears to a tree.
No, we're not gluing pears, but it's a...
It's a situation where, for instance, when I talk about Seattle and how I'm going to solve the housing problem here, I get a lot of people say, hmm, well, and then, you know, they always love to say Cabrini Green.
Everybody wants to say Cabrini Green at you.
That's an example of public housing turning into a crucible of crime.
Right, right.
Public housing that became a terrible thing for all involved.
And I go, you know, listen, just because
Just because Chicago failed and New York failed and St.
Louis failed and San Francisco failed, all the many, many examples of public health failing, that doesn't mean that my plan is going to fail because I've taken all that in consideration.
No, that's very short-sighted.
Yeah.
And, you know, the youth re-education camps, I mean, certainly there are lots of examples of how
An autocratic government took a bunch of troubled young people away to a camp.
It's the rule that proves the exception.
That's exactly the case.
In this case, it's a natural environment.
We recognize that seventh and eighth graders are not human beings and that they need strenuous exercise.
You're more of a human being at six or seven.
than you are at 12 or 13.
Oh, I couldn't agree more.
And you can feel it in your bones.
You know that you need to get back into, become some kind of a poop-up.
Yes.
You're not done yet.
I have a question for you on the parenting tip before we get to my bad back.
I need to write all these down.
So we got a bad back, we got solo parenting follow-up, and we've got trying to get my light switch installed.
Oh, no, I want to hear about that.
Holy shit.
Is this an internet light switch?
Yes.
Oh, boy.
I can't wait.
Let's get Matt Howey on the phone.
So.
Oh, so my daughter found Archie comics.
The new ones?
Well, no, no, no, no, no.
I won't let those in my home.
No, classic Archies.
She found some of my classic Archies.
And then she developed.
So then Archie became a thing that she liked and wanted to see.
And so we were at the big comic book store in the Pike Place Market.
The big one that sells like life-size Batman.
Batsmen.
Batsmen.
Batsmen General.
And so she found some enormous classic Archie pocket book.
Is it a big book or like one of those digests we used to get?
It's a digest.
I love those.
Except it's got like 50 comic books in it.
So I bought it for her and then my mom
writes me and she's like, why is she reading Archie's?
And I was like, well, I mean, I read Archie's all through childhood.
He turned out great.
Yeah, exactly.
And she said, Archie is about teenagers.
And I said, well, yeah, I guess.
But I mean, they don't, I mean, they don't really have very sophisticated concerns.
And my mom said, well, it's all about being boy crazy and girl crazy.
I was like, well, yeah, I guess that's true.
It's about hamburgers, too.
They eat a lot of hamburgers and cars.
Is it Pops they go to?
Yeah.
Well, and what about Veronica's dad?
He's like a rich guy.
Mr. Lodge.
Mr. Lodge.
We never see Archie's parents.
We see Mr. Lodge.
He's a well-to-do land developer or something, right?
Isn't he some kind of big shot?
Yeah, well, I feel like he's like Richie Rich's dad.
He's got a finger in every pie.
Sure, distant rich father.
And then, you know, the teacher and the crazy lunch lady.
Yeah, Miss Grundy.
Miss Grundy.
I have not read this in years.
This is all from memory, so I might be getting some of this wrong.
The principal, the big kind of principal fellow.
Principal Wigglesby.
Principal Wigglesby.
Hinklebottom.
He looks exactly... Weatherby.
Weatherby.
Weatherby.
God, you're good.
Oh, my God.
And Principal Weatherby looks exactly like... I can't get my light switch connected to the unit, but I remember the Principal from Archie.
Principal Weatherby.
He looks exactly like the owner of WKRP in Cincinnati.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Gordon Jump.
Gordon Jump.
Actually, I think technically Mother owns it, but...
Holy shit.
Wow.
Anyway, so your mom sees it, and all she sees is a bunch of shucking and jiving about giddy dating stuff from the 60s and 70s.
Yeah, and she's like, you know, Moose is really jealous of Midge.
And I'm like, yeah, Moose and Midge, that's the template of all my romantic relationships.
I'm Moose.
I'm always looking for my Midge.
Is that Hegelian, do you think?
Yeah.
I think it's more Kantian.
Kantian.
All right.
All right.
Yeah.
I can't.
I can't.
That's just pure reason.
It is pure reason.
Yeah.
Well, it's more of a critique of pure reason.
I'm missing a tooth and I can't say pure.
Oh, no.
Still.
Critique of pure reason.
You're so cute.
My little mouth can't even make the shapes.
So now I'm on the fence.
So I sat down with her.
She was reading her Archie.
Oh, and the great thing about Archie is that it communicates immediately to a child that they are a teen.
So I came in, and she's reading her little Archie curled up on the couch.
And I was like, hey, let me talk to you about that Archie.
She didn't reply.
I was like, hey, teenager, I want to ask you about your comic book.
And she was like, what?
What?
I'm like, oh boy, okay, so Archie then.
And I said, Nana's concerned that Archie's too grown up for you.
She's like, it's not.
I'll pass that along.
Well, she says that it's teenagers and that it's a bunch of boy-girl stuff and that you shouldn't be exposed to that too young.
And she was like, ugh.
I'm fine, thanks.
Goodbye.
I know that sound.
And I was like, all right, well, I guess we're in agreement then.
You're fine and it's fine.
Are you able to isolate Nana?
Yeah, Nana.
Are you able to isolate the specifics of Nana's concern?
Is it a general sense of this is just too old for her?
Or is it more a sense of, like, that there's bad or problematic values and attention in this?
I think both.
I mean, I think my mom is conscious of intrusions into childhood, that kids aren't allowed to be kids.
Yep, yep, yep.
And, you know, my mom is opposed to letting little girls get their ears pierced, opposed to them wearing makeup.
Yep.
Somebody in the family bought her a little packet of what could only be called like little – they're not bras, but they're little training tops.
Yeah, we get those.
And my mom is like, absolutely not.
The day a young woman gets her first bra is a is a is a day where you go where the women of the tribe go out to the yurt and they burn.
They burn squirrels alive.
It's a day of portent and shame.
Well, it's something, you know, it's it's not just, you know, six year olds don't just go running around with bras.
Yeah.
OK.
I was like, I said, that's one of those things where I'm like, look, I have absolutely no idea what.
I cannot even comment like I don't even know the language.
And so I just have to like I have to take a step back, you know, but it's something that my mom feels strongly about.
It's something that my daughter's mother also has feelings about.
Oh, really?
Well, just the general idea of like let her be a kid.
For sure, the general idea, but every specific thing, they also have very strong feelings about it.
Okay.
And, you know, in a general way, I do believe in ritual and I believe in, like, on this day, you become a person who can use the computer by herself.
And on this day, you know, I believe in that.
I put on my bishop robe and my smoky bear hat, and I hold my scepter, and I say, from this day forward, you can do this on your own.
But there are some of these things that I'm like, I don't know, man.
I was reading, you know, Mad Magazine was way more sophisticated than I was at seven.
Oh, yeah.
But I was reading it and nobody was supervising it.
It's right there on the shelf.
You just go pick it up.
Yeah.
And no one ever asked any questions or answered any questions.
I was just sort of like.
I'm reading Mad's parody of Kramer versus Kramer, and that's not a movie I would be allowed to see, but I'm reading the parody of it.
So I have to understand it.
Not only am I understanding it, but I'm understanding what's ridiculous about it.
That's asking a lot of a kid, but that's... Also, when we were kids and you picked up a Mad magazine, I mean, I don't know if it's exactly the same, but given the limited number of things...
How can I put this?
And yeah, you had three, three big stations.
You had three news stations.
Like it was, it was about Nixon.
Like you understood that there was like a Nixon thing.
Like Nixon is this crooked guy.
And like, you knew what that was about.
Or in the case of Kramer versus Kramer a few years later or Rocky or whatever, you knew what they were parodying because there were like ads for it on TV and magazines.
It was all like knowable.
Right.
And things your parents would know about.
Yeah, right, and things that you would overhear people talking about.
Or, like you say, it's in Time Magazine, so you can read about it if you're interested, right?
So part of it might be the attitude or worldview that it espouses.
Like, there are some things where I waited a little while.
Like, actually, this is another one that's a mommy-daughter series, but they've read, I think, two or three books into...
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
And that was one where I held off for a while because I thought, I want to wait until she's a little older.
She's not going to know what a digital watch is.
She's not going to understand the Jesus jokes.
But at least wait until she's a little older because ditto for Monty Python.
I've limited the amount of Monty Python because there's such a kind of a meta layer to it that I want her to appreciate when it's time.
Agreed.
And knowing that kids, this is something I believe to keep myself sane, which is that there are stuff kids will be exposed to that they will filter out.
It's going to be like a Westworld host.
They're just going to go, it looks like nothing to me.
There's certain things they're going to see that's just going to be lost bits because they don't have a context for what that dirty joke means.
But my point being, it could also be you got to be careful the cheekiness, like what kind of issues are taken lightly.
Just the general idea that this is going to encourage a worldview beyond the tender years.
And I feel like that's my mom's complaint about Archie.
But from our standpoint, what are the main concerns in Archie?
The idea is that Betty and Veronica both want Archie.
Mm-hmm.
For reasons unclear to everyone, Archie is neither handsome nor rich nor competent.
The back of his head looks like a waffle.
Yeah, he looks like Dagwood, like a ginger Dagwood.
Oh, he does.
You're right.
He's a ginger Dagwood.
He's the ginger Dag.
And his car isn't cool.
He's not great at sports.
Like, Archie is just kind of a, just a, you know, he's not, he never says anything interesting, really.
It's not like, I mean, Jughead at least is fascinating.
You can tell Jughead's got layers.
He's got layers.
And for that matter, Reggie is fascinating.
Oh, I agree.
Yeah.
I mean, he's shitty, dude.
He's like he's rich and suave and handsome and and he's up to no good.
Today, we look at Reggie and say to avoid the P word, we would at least say that he's entitled that he feels like because he's like, I think he's kind of a well to do guy with cool, shiny hair, like he deserves certain things in life.
He certainly cannot.
He's, in a way, an audience proxy because he, like we, cannot understand what they see in Archie.
Do you think different people see themselves in different Archie characters?
I was absolutely a Jughead.
Okay.
Oh, yeah.
Sure, sure, sure, sure.
What were you?
I mean, I always... I mean, I was such a weirdo.
Like, when I saw Star Wars, I liked Luke.
Like, all the cool kids liked Han Solo, but I thought Luke was really cool.
Yeah, I liked Archie.
There was something in the, like, competent everyman...
Or, you know, somebody, you know, the typical kind of confidence porn.
Anybody who's able to not get killed doing something kind of normal was really impressive to me.
Like, I basically wanted to live in the Brady Bunch house.
Like, my aspirations were very, very quotidian.
And I could put up with the waffle hair.
I had home hair, like you, I had home haircuts.
I wouldn't even know how to ask for a waffle head.
In my case, I identified with Jughead...
Primarily, well, because Jughead's the anti-hero, right?
He's sort of the Maynard G. Krebs to Archie's Dobie Gillis.
Well, yeah, but Jughead is a character out of a Western.
Jughead, the hero of the Western...
at the end when they've run the bad guys out, you know, when they won the railroaders out or the cattle men out of town and the credits are rolling, the hero, the white hat, the sheriff or whatever, goes back and marries the, you know, like the last scene we see, he's got his arm around the, the, the madam or the hotel lady or the, you know, the, the farm wife or whoever is the heroine and the, and the Jughead character is,
hops on his horse with his kind of dirty hat and he says something quippy and then he rides off alone.
And I was like, oh yes, that's me.
That's me.
I'm not, I'm not the, I'm not the sheriff.
I'm not the townie.
And Jughead never, he's, you know, he has everybody's confidence.
The girls are as close to Jughead as to anybody.
But Jughead is always a man apart.
Always his eyes on the horizon.
He's sort of the townie.
He's not the guy that goes off to the Ivy Leagues.
He's the guy who stays in town.
Oh, well, I see what you're saying.
If you're looking at it through the breaking away lens.
Okay, yeah.
He's a cutter.
I mean, he's definitely in the cutter category.
But in terms of the Archie universe, he is immune to the problems.
Everybody else has got problems, problems, problems.
The only problem Jughead has is hamburgers.
He floats above it.
He wants a hamburger.
Hamburgers are so easy to get.
Yeah, right.
You can satisfy Jughead, but he also... He's a kind of crowned Buddha.
He's a Buddha.
Veronica and Betty hold no attraction to him, but also...
He's never going to be in trouble with Midge.
He's never going to be in trouble with.
I mean, I guess he gets in trouble with Mr. Wheatley.
Mr. Wheat.
Mr. Wheat.
Whistle.
Whistle.
Whistle warp.
But anyway, so I always identify.
And it's not because I'm fixated on hamburgers.
I don't I didn't identify with Wimpy.
No.
Well, no, I think I think he gets a bad rap.
Do you think Wimpy gets a bad rap?
It's hard to be a secondary character because you don't get as much backstory.
Right.
Like, we don't know why he's the way—I feel like I don't know why Wimpy is the way that he is.
I mean, I don't know if he has the money and doesn't want to spend it.
I don't know—I mean, trigger warning, I don't know if he has some kind of an eating disorder.
I don't know if he's just, like, feeding the pain.
But, like, do you think Wimpy likes being Wimpy?
Yeah.
I think he's feeding the pain, but, you know, this is the thing.
There's something to Wimpy, there's something in his manner that suggests that he does have the money, or at least suggests that he has other means beyond just mooching.
Yeah, yeah.
But, you know, he's a character from the...
from like the depression it seems like he's got a he's got a little butt of a cigar on a toothpick and he's like he reads his hobo a little bit yeah but he's all you know he's like he's got he's got high manner right he's like he's highfalutin oh can i just tell you something i just sent you the link for this i just learned uh what jughead's cap is called
Oh, his little paper crown?
His crown with the little buttons on it?
It's called a whoopie cap.
A whoopie cap?
A whoopie cap is a style of headgear popular among youths in the mid-20th century.
It was often made from a man's felt fedora with the brim trimmed with a scallop cut and turned up.
In the 20s and 30s, such caps usually indicated the wearer was a mechanic.
It's also referred to as a Jughead hat, a Palookaville cap, devil's cap, clubhouse cap, dink cap, rat cap, or kingpin.
And also famously worn, as you'll see in the Wikipedia photograph, by George Goober Lindsay.
Also had a whoopee cap.
A whoopee cat.
Well, now I know what it's called.
I love it.
I love it.
Oh, of course he, of course, Goober you're talking about.
Yeah, it's like a mechanics crown or a Buddha.
Sure.
George Goober Lindsay.
Well, now that makes a lot of sense, doesn't it?
He kind of floats above it, though, in a lot of ways.
I mean, I haven't read these in years.
And like I say, right now there has been a, there's a TV show, which I haven't seen, but I've heard some people like.
But my daughter reads the current Archie comics, which I would definitely put more in the teen comics.
uh arena oh so what are the what are what makes what are the current ones what do they do well you know they're having fun they've updated it it's a little bit more there's one where archie died a few years ago which was a big deal uh i personally am not reading them but but but but she is but you feel like you're looking for like you're trying to figure out what to do next about this well you you remember when she when archie uh found jesus
Archie, I feel like I don't.
Well, so in the 1970s, somebody took over Archie.
Oh, dear.
And all of a sudden... Yes, here we go.
12 Craziest Moments from Archie's Christian Comics.
Yeah, the artwork changed and got kind of almost like psychedelic, like trippy laugh-in almost.
Like characters started to have like...
like sort of epiphany bubbles around their heads and, you know, and they were just like tripping balls kind of, but they were tripping balls on Jesus.
These are basically, I'm just looking at some screen grabs here.
They are thematically and to some extent graphically a good deal like chick comics.
Oh,
Yes.
There's a lot of like, oh my God, well, like, you know, everybody on TV is fighting with each other with a big montage of TVs in the background.
You get a devil and an angel on the shoulder and just a whole lot of like, oh my God, this is about to go horribly wrong for you.
And Archie giving advice about out of my way, Beelzebub.
Geez Louise.
So a Google Archie Rapture picture.
There's this picture that I have.
I want it framed on my wall.
I want the original artwork or I want a poster six feet tall.
Because it's all these kids in like mini skirts and like really groovy, beautiful, like Brady Bunch kids that are just being fucking raptured.
Do you have the picture?
I'm not coming up with anything for Archie Comics Rapture, so I'm looking for Archie Comics Heaven.
See if that might be it.
Oh, wow.
You do get some weird images when you put in Archie.
Yeah, a little more goth.
Is Midge the one with the little turned-up nose?
No, it's Sabrina.
That's Sabrina, probably.
Okay, do... Oh, my God.
Do Archie the Great Snatch.
The Great Snatch.
Yes, Your Honor.
I did Google that.
Okay.
No, here.
I get the rapture picture right here.
Archie rapture.
Okay.
Let me see if I can send this to you.
Oh, thanks, Pinterest.
Oh, the great snatch.
Oh, my God.
But wait, the great snatch is a picture that accompanies the rapture picture, but is not the entirety of it.
No, you go down a little bit and you get the girl in the blue jean skirt.
The girl in the blue jean skirt is fucking going to heaven.
Jesus promised that his people who are living when he comes will go from earth to heaven without dying.
Bum, bum, bum.
These stories are ripped from the headlines.
Wow.
Bum, bum, bum.
So, I mean, honestly, like, I have no idea how to get that image in high res.
Yeah, this one's a little bit, it's got some bend days.
Looks like our show art already.
Yeah, there it is.
That's the one.
Oh, that's beautiful.
Yeah.
Look how, like, groovy they are.
I found a lot of consolation in these ideas as a youth.
I'm not going to lie.
Do you see the epiphany bubbles and stars around their heads?
Like, they're all fully tripping.
Jeez Louise.
Do you see that?
And that was a main feature.
Well, they got the big eyes.
They look like they've had some LSDs.
but see the stars like the little bubbles and stars floating around their heads yeah yeah yeah oh i see what you're saying like do get it do get it do get it yeah like those yeah in the in the archie jesus comics they will have those around their heads when they're just talking to each other and archie's just like but then jesus just solved them and it's just like he's just got this like tripping ball stuff so these are all dead teens well they're not dead teens they're raptured teens
Well, this is like chick comics.
There's a lot of foreshadowing.
They had their chance.
They got the warnings.
Right.
So this isn't actually happening.
This is just like, this is what's gonna happen.
And you don't want to be on the wrong side of this when all the girls in jeans skirts...
like go into like oh no let's be clear i want to go even if i'm unworthy i want to go wherever the girls in the jean skirts are going i had a large interest eschatology loomed large in our family in my kind of latest childhood my grandmother was very into this guy what's his name i think his name is how lindsey i want to say and he had written all these books these christian like kind of like apocalypse books
And then there was a whole series, there was a series I read called, there was 666, was a book about the, oh God, I always forget the name, the time on Earth, like the 666, there's the time after, and there's the Millennium, you got the Rapture, you got all that stuff.
I found that stuff super interesting.
And was it comforting or scary?
Both.
Both for sure.
Well, 666 was... It was kind of a backdoor pilot for, like, what's wrong with the 70s.
So it went through all of the... Because, you know, did you ever read Revelation?
I mean, it's a pretty...
it's one thing to go and read romans it's one thing to go and read luke you know you go read john you go read one of the better gospels but revelation is a shit show it's a mess it is it is so fucking weird people love to quote it out of context but revelation as a book is pretty crazy
Um, and so basically, I think it was in 666.
It describes the rapture.
People disappeared.
I think their clothes stay behind.
I've seen, remember, it was like exactly half of the earth gets raptured, something like that.
But like, what happens after?
That's more than I would have thought.
Well, people get branded.
You get UPC codes put on your head.
Yeah, because that's what the UPC code is.
Oh.
Right?
The UPC code is another version of the Grays.
Yeah, right.
That's right.
My mind was blank, right?
Whole situation there.
But the reason I say this is that it was meant to be this, like, okay, here's what's going to happen after the rapture.
You need to get your shit right.
Because when you're left behind, I remember there being some black and white line art of a very high-tech guillotine that was really fascinating and terrifying to me.
If you get left behind, do you have another chance?
Is there another shot at it, or is it just too late?
Yes.
So if memory serves, and your denomination may vary, you get raptured up if you've done everything right in Protestant Christianity.
And then the people who are left behind go through a period called—I forget the name of the period—
I want to say, is this in all Protestant Christianity, or is this like... Definitely tribulation.
Ah, the tribulation.
Ah, tribulation.
I think it's the tribulation.
Let's learn about the tribulation.
And that's when stuff is not very good.
And that's when everybody gets a UPC code.
The great tribulation in Christian eschatology, which is a terrific word, is a period mentioned by Jesus in the Olivet Discourse as a sign that would occur in the time of the end.
Dedal-e-dee.
Indicated periods spoken by Jesus.
oh man oh yeah you get the temple building you get all kinds of stuff yeah so then you got this period of tribulation you got to get through and then i think there's something called the millennium and that's a thousand years of sort of like a pax romana before the finally final settling of accounts but now this is post rapture oh yeah rapture kicks it off
Okay, so now let me ask you this.
Yes.
And this is a big question that I've had for a long time, right?
If you had a rapture, let's say, for instance, we're just hanging out here.
Yes.
And all of a sudden, the car in front of me with the bumper sticker that says this car will be unmanned during the rapture.
True to their word, they get raptured.
Poof, gone.
People all around me, gone.
Yeah.
And I'm living in a millennia of post-rapture.
Mm-hmm.
Wouldn't that be a clue to everyone left that everything in this book was true?
And therefore, wouldn't everybody be super good immediately and convert immediately?
I mean, wouldn't you just fall to your knees?
Because at this point, we're way beyond a burning bush type situation.
Clearly, some shit has gone down, and you were warned, and now, oh shit, what am I going to do?
You did not turn in your paper.
It's not like Prince came to your house in Beverly Hills and Jehovah's Witnessed you, where you're like, huh, maybe there's something to this.
Was that Prince?
This would be like
holy shit, like millions of people have just gone.
Like straight up to heaven in their jean skirts.
Like you saw them go.
Yeah.
You know, like, forgive me, Lord.
Seems like at that point you're going to get your mind right.
Yeah, you're not going to be like, I don't know about this religion thing.
I'll just think about it.
It seems like there's certain geographic distributions, and let's be honest, certain vocations.
This is going to affect it very, very heavily.
Do you know what I'm saying?
Well, yeah.
Like in areas where there's still lots of church-going people who are legit doing pre-rapture stuff the right way, they're going to be hurting.
And now occupationally, who's that going to affect?
Cake decorators who don't like gays?
That's right.
Hobby shops?
You're still going to have a full complement of Jewish bankers because none of them are going.
That's true.
That's true.
So we can still have Hollywood and the world government.
But you're going to drive through Alabama and not be able to get gas anywhere.
No gas, but you'll be able to find somebody to play D&D with, no problem.
Absolutely.
Well, it actually kind of sounds like a better world.
It doesn't sound that bad.
No.
Yeah.
Frankly.
You know, there's more people employed by museums than coal mining.
Can't be true.
Read it yesterday.
More people employed by museums than in coal mining.
Musea.
Yeah.
Musea.
Turns out.
Right.
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the great show.
I believe it.
You know, during the 1980s when all the hullabaloo out here in the Pacific Northwest about the spotted owl was creating an awful lot of yelling.
There was so much yelling out here.
I was thinking about this yesterday and tried to coin a phrase, although when you try to coin a phrase, it's... Yeah, it rarely works.
It never works.
But what I was... Instead of causus belli, I tried to coin nostalgias belli.
Oh, that's good.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Casus belli means the thing that started the war, right?
Yeah.
The reason we're shouting.
And so nostalgias belli was like, oh, remember when we were mad about...
x like remember when all we could talk about yeah or or now my daughter and i are are dipping because of a popular dnd podcast my daughter is expressing an interest in dnd which leads me back to watching youtube videos from the 80s oh man how soon we forget
Yeah, Omnibus did a show on backmasking.
It was so good.
Oh, thank you.
Yeah, yeah, I think for a while, actually, you inspired a Twitter bio of mine from that episode.
It's so good.
There was a little tool shed where he made us suffer, sad Satan.
LAUGHTER
That's got to be one of the all-time, that's their way to heaven, right?
Yeah, you listened to it, right?
You listened to the MP3?
It really says that?
Oh, yeah, no, you guys did, it was very funny, and you did a whole bit, you did a funny bit where you talked backwards.
There was a little tool shed where he made us suffer, sad Satan.
Sad Satan.
But it was impossibly real.
There was the daycare molestations.
There have been so many of these panics that were, like, you ask anybody at the mall, and to a person, they will all say, this is a real thing, and here's why this is happening.
Oh.
Well, and we are still living because I said the other day something to the effect of, you know, like.
uh nobody nobody being able to see snuffleupagus is my hand shot first and i know we're i know we're sitting here and talking about references that no one will understand well and also we're talking about our tweets so people are like great it's just like are we really are we talking about our tweets it's like people whose instagram account nowadays is just like screenshots of their own tweets these are like arms
Okay, so wait, wait, wait, boop, boop.
What are you talking about?
So at one point, so there was a wonderful character, one of the big, giant, oversized person inside of it, Muppets, called Snuffleupagus, who was adorable.
Two people inside of Snuffleupagus.
It's like a pantomime horse.
Yeah, except it's a pantomime furry elephant.
And the trick was Snuffleupagus was only visible and audible to children, correct?
And Big Bird.
Interesting.
And the thing was, Snuffleupagus never stood there while Mr. Hooper was standing there, and Mr. Hooper was like, I can't see any big elephant.
But Snuffleupagus had been on the scene for a while, and I think was somewhat beloved.
And Snuffleupagus would, he would turn and amble off.
And then Mr. Hooper would walk up and say, what are you guys doing?
And they're like, we were just talking to Mr. Snuffleupagus.
It's a Clark Kent type situation.
Right.
Yeah.
But Mr. Snuffleupagus at a certain point began to be seen by everyone.
And the logic was, the thing is, like, I knew this already.
Because I'm not dumb and I've lived for many years.
But I started to get Snuffleupagus-splained by people on the Internet who were like, um, actually, the reason that kids can see Mr. Snuffleupagus now is that it was decided...
It was agreed upon.
It was a theory that was accepted that if kids didn't feel like adults could see Mr. Snuffleupagus, then maybe they wouldn't believe their stories about being touched by the youth pastor.
By the bad touch, right.
And it was like, yeah, that is a thing.
That's like the daycare center hysteria of the late 80s, where daycare centers across the country were suddenly under scrutiny for being satanic.
Satanic.
uh satanic like children molesting factories like crazy factories and we all collectively believe that this was a real thing and some people were put on the photograph of that guy he's obviously a child care child molester he's got to be satanic look at that guy but there are there are things that come
The fact that Snuffleupagus is no longer magic, even though he's a big furry elephant, he exists in the world along with this big bird, came from that, but we don't recognize the origins of it in a hysteria.
There are still people online who are going to tell me that daycare centers are satanic.
Yeah, sure.
Child molesting factories.
But there were enough people that were like, erm...
um, her derping me about it that I felt like, Oh, right.
We don't ever, a lot of the time we don't bother to trace back, um,
our craziness to its origin.
Oh, absolutely not.
And say like, where did this come from?
Oh, this is paranoia about Judas Priest.
See also the vaccine hysteria.
Like nobody wants to hear that that was one paper from a guy who's now not allowed to practice medicine anymore.
That doesn't make it.
But you know, part of what's galling about that in some ways is like, I don't want to come off as, you know,
I'm not even going to say the words.
The problem is with these kinds of things where... And this is the big problem to me.
The big problem is feeling like you are doing something substantial about something that everybody can agree is a problem by doing something a little bit dramatic that in the end doesn't really help that problem.
Like, are the people who really lobbied for... And don't email me.
But like, are the people who...
Was that decision informed by a flight of child psychologists and law enforcement officials?
Or was that retconning?
Was it just trying to play safe?
It comes from a good place.
It comes from a good heart.
But there was a really good podcast I listened to the other day about shutting down Backpage.
The place that was heavily used by sex workers.
And there's all kinds of layers that turns out to this that were just fascinating.
The people leading the charge on shutting down Backpage, in some cases, where there's a law enforcement angle, but there's also the trafficking angle and the child trafficking angle.
But in shutting down Backpage, you've also made life a lot less safe and healthy for sex workers.
Well, what they're doing is illegal.
Well, once you start scratching the surface of that just a little bit and go beyond your 1972 idea of what somebody's supposed to do, you realize it's really fucking complicated.
And you've just caused a lot of people's lives to become a lot, according to this podcast, which must be true, it's the single highest mortality occupation for a female in America.
By an order of 50.
The second highest mortality was, was it like a firefighter or something?
Coal mining.
Museum employees.
Museum employees.
anyways all i'm saying is like there's this whole sort of like you know hashtag i'm helping angle to this where i don't know maybe maybe that did help a lot but i think it also except for the very youngest kids i mean is that the way a kid is going to make a determination about that it's way more difficult and complex or or the corollary and i'll shut up in a minute the corollary now that the kid knows that everybody can see snuffle snuffle up i guess are they more likely to come clean on what happened with the youth pastor i think not no
I don't think that in itself is going to proactively, positively affect any kind of a change.
You know what you need to do?
You need to talk to your kid.
You need to make changes.
You need to do stuff.
And you need to be bluntly realistic and clear-eyed about what the actual problem is rather than the thing that's easy to solve.
Right.
Well, you know, I get in trouble on this program.
Oh, come on.
We're doing so well.
I get in trouble talking about computer maths, right?
Because I say that computer maths are not really a thing for college.
I think what you said is that it is a vocation.
It's a vocation.
And the trouble that I get into, and I think about this hard, is the...
is sciences, like sociology and psychology, we call them sciences, and we lump them with biology and chemistry, and we agree that these are all sciences, but they aren't.
Like, chemistry and physics are very different from sociology and psychology.
And...
So when a physicist says something that's kind of hard to get, and they say, this is a theory about how particles work, we all go, hmm.
Wow.
And and and when the physicist says that implies this other crazy universe and it's all real hard to get our heads around.
But, you know, like this is the theory we go.
OK, you know, it's like scientists are doing some science over here.
It's not necessary that we question them.
We don't quite understand how to question them.
So, you know, we're going to let that ride because scientists have done amazing things with their theories.
They've come up with stuff like water purification and rockets and computer phones.
And so we're just going to trust the scientists.
But on the other side, we've got the sociologists and psychologists who are saying things like, I've got a theory about what makes kids...
uh feel secure with uh you know with their youth pastors and we go huh that's a weird theory sure we'll go with it and the psychologist says all you need to do is accept to accept this premise is that um i mean all we have to do is change absolutely the way that
daycares run or that children's television works or that public housing works.
And, and, and we sit back and kind of go, sounds good, I guess.
I mean, we can lower the crime rate if we just change the phone number at the police station.
Yeah, right.
Or, you know, here's what we're going to do.
We're going to take all the kids in this neighborhood and we're going to bus them all the way across town and send them to those schools and that'll cure racism.
What about the whole phenomenon of kids thinking that people actually live inside of a little box in their house?
How are we going to address that?
If we don't explain it to them.
And so it's hard to question those things because they cloak themselves in science language.
But
But to your point, you're talking about, you know, these are things that are impossible to test.
And people are making claims that if we change this one little thing, it will solve giant problems.
Like if we just make it, if we just say that people can't use these five words, then bullying is over.
If we just say that kids, you know, that Snuffleupagus can see adults, then no kid will ever be afraid to, or it will change this thing.
This incredibly complicated dynamic that's rooted in a thousand things.
And we do it, you know, I mean, honestly, we do it across whole great waves of what we think is going to help society now.
And it, you know, and the problem is to challenge it, you get immediately on the wrong side.
And that's like, it's very frustrating.
And somebody wrote me a thing the other day and they were like, listen, if you challenge, what were they saying?
If you challenge something like this snuffleupagus thing, you are empowering anti-vaxxers.
And I said, how?
I mean, I wrote back.
I was just like, what are you talking about?
They're like, well, you're questioning science.
And if you question science, then... Don't question science.
Yeah.
And to this person, it was a very clear delineation.
Like, they were on the side of science as opposed to people who are against science.
And if you're on the side of science, then you should be on the side of all science.
And if something calls itself a science...
And if it's called a science at universities, then it is a science.
And therefore, if you question it, then that empowers all the different branches of anti-science people.
including people that work at creation museums, who I guess are part of this number that outnumber coal miners.
You've got to take in the creation museum people as well.
Now we're getting to Venn diagrams, yeah.
Or the coal museum where they recently switched to solar.
Tell me what side those people are on.
Are they on the coal museum side?
They're on science.
Do they work in the coal industry?
They're on science.
So anyway, it's very frustrating to me because I want to still be able, I want to say to people, look,
Or I want to say to the world somehow, and it's hard to do, to say sociology and psychology are very new disciplines.
And...
You know, like cultural anthropology was all the rage in 1950.
It was the coolest of all sciences.
Everybody wanted to practice it.
That was very, very hot when I was in college.
That was a very cool thing to be studying.
Cultural anthropology was big.
Well, now nobody studies cultural anthropology because we realized like, oh, shit, we're a little over our heads here.
And there's a lot of colonialism in what we're doing and in how we're thinking.
And we've been like doing unintentionally bad things, although we had very good intentions.
And you have to look at sociology and psychology and these disciplines which are trying to untangle and tease out.
human society and individual human minds and love and sex and all this stuff and have prescriptions and proscriptions about these things that definitely are trying to create a world, an ideal world rather than look at the world as it is.
And I feel like we have to be so much more cautious about
about adopting theories, implementing theories that come out of that world, but the intentions are so good that if you say, slow your roll on this... Right, it sounds like you're against fixing the problem.
Right, you're against the intention.
While you were very ably framing that, you heard me typing, I've just come up with something I'm calling the hot take and nutty theory criteria, which is...
One is, I am, I think we all are, more likely to accept either a hot take or a nutty theory if it meets most of these criteria.
Number one, it is, it turns out.
It is clever and surprising.
And maybe a little bit against the grain.
But you go, huh, that's interesting.
Number two, it has to still be somewhat immediately understandable, as it turns out.
Right?
You go, oh, figures.
I always wondered why people wanted to work with kids.
Of course they're Satanists.
Right?
Sure.
Sure.
Number three, adoption of the hot take or the nutty theory does not disrupt your own life or repot your own thinking.
And number four is a bonus.
It doesn't always have to be, but it helps if the hot take or the nutty theory more or less proves that you were right all along.
Yes!
So when one of these things comes along, if it's clever and surprising, still understandable, and it doesn't cause you to rethink something in yourself, but basically just shows that you were right all along, the hot takes and nutty theories that match those criteria are much likely to be something that you share on social media.
Let alone on 2020.
And we'll sit and like, because I think the component and your number four, what you're getting at is that these things are emotionally resonant.
But it gets in by way of what feels like intelligent facts.
Right.
Intelligent facts open the door, but then emotions welcome it in.
And it's why, for instance, the idea that video games cause violence.
Yep.
Well, that is emotionally...
That feels very true.
Just to put it in a slightly different way, seemingly random, violent things happen because of teens.
What do teens love?
Teens love video games.
What do we know about video games?
Video games are violent.
There's a syllogism in there somewhere that goes, like, these kids who are playing first-person shooters are obviously the reason the first-person shooters take these tender children and turn them into monsters.
Right.
And we can prove that because look how violent the video game is.
Well, and we do this all the time.
Right now in our culture, we're so focused on little boys.
And we're absolutely certain that there is... We can't even...
We can't even.
There's something, something between a little boy being born and that little boy becoming a full grown human that that little boy turns into a monster somewhere along the way.
And whether or not it is that, I mean, and there's a billion theories, right?
True facts about Snuffleupagus.
Yeah.
But he somehow, right, he didn't read the right Archie comic or he did read the wrong Archie comic or he got on the wrong school bus or he watched the wrong television show or something or, you know, or he was standing Reggie.
He was or he was moose or his or his his dad and his uncles took him into a room at some point and they said, ha ha ha.
Now you join the club.
It's a real American beauty type situation.
Right.
And so so we're we're jumping into this like both feet from every direction.
Like, what are we going to do about little boys?
We're going to this we're going to that.
And the thing is, we've been doing that for.
50 years.
I mean, that happened to me.
What are we going to do about little boys?
As though there's really something, A...
a conspiracy or that the world is a conspiracy, but that we're living in a, in a satanic daycare center of a, of a culture and that we're, that we're doing something to little boys that keeps them from being their natural selves, right?
That's the premise that little boys would be gentle and kind and, and, and all this stuff, but we're doing something.
Our culture is doing something.
And that little girls would be empowered and ferocious and, you know, and that little boys and girls would be equal, except we're doing something.
So all these kind of muddled ideas, like if little boys would be gentle and little girls would be ferocious, but they also would be totally equal if we weren't doing things to them, that's also kind of contradictory, right?
It's like, well, wait a minute.
Something doesn't add up.
Yeah, if they're totally equal, then why would they be like...
So we're jumping in and we're like, we're going to, you know, little girls have to do this now.
Little boys have to do this now because we're trying to create a world in the future that's closer to what it would have been if we hadn't fucked them up before by jumping in on them somehow that we're not exactly 100 percent sure how.
Yes.
We're teaching.
Now we're theorizing.
Yeah.
And we're but we're implementing those theories where those if you go to the elementary school now.
There are signs on the walls about what we do and what we don't do.
And it's all very, very well-intentioned desire to create, to turn children into adults that are better adults.
But
But it's canary in the, you know, it's like a butterfly in China.
I know I use that.
Butterfly in the coal mine.
I know, I know, it's serious.
Listen, you can't make Morrissey comments anymore because it's problematic now.
But, yeah, so that's very frustrating.
Kanye and Morrissey, they've become problematic.
You know, they always were for me.
I feel, like, very validated.
I feel very validated.
Okay, okay, okay.
Number one, clever and surprising.
Vindicated.
Still understandable.
And three, it absolutely does not disrupt your own personal theory's life in thinking about Morrissey.
That's right.
And number four, shows you were right all along.
That's exactly right.
Classic.
Clap, clap, clap.
Join my cult now, if you haven't already.
Oh, please wait.
If a smoky bishop appears at your door, please welcome in.
It's like a Dracula.
You've got to invite him in.
Look, if Prince shows up at your house in Beverly Hills carrying Seventh-day Adventist papers, what are you going to do?
Say no thanks?
No, wasn't he a Jehovah's Witness?
Yeah, I guess he's a Jehovah's Witness.
Seventh-day Adventist.
If he shows up with any kind of... You're saying today.
Well, right now, especially invite him in.
Right.
Nothing compares to you.
He would be a Dracula now.
Did you hear that?
Did you hear that?
Nothing compares to you?
Did you hear it?
You know what?
It's not as good as the Sinead O'Connor.
No, it's probably not, but it's better than the family version.
Well, what's amazing about that video is those... I didn't watch the video.
I just listened to the audio.
The audio was on Spotify.
Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
There's a video.
Isn't he kind of tricked out in his Purple Rain gear?
Purple Rain gear.
That's stupid.
That's dumb.
Yeah, you get that when you go up to Alaska to work in the summer.
Nothing compares to you.
It's Healy Hanson.
But I like that riff.
The riff got smoothed out for Sinead, but I like that... It's a good riff.
It's good, and it's in the Sinead version.
It's just chilled out.
But she has a much better...
To you!
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
She leaves all that tension hanging in the air.
When she gets to the... Once the doctor hears what he told me, guess what he told me?
That's very... That still gets me.
Well, and you can hear... I mean, you know, not to be...
You know, as a person who suffers from mental health issues, I feel like it's okay.
Look, look, look, look, look.
We have established that Morrissey is problematic and that Prince is a Dracula.
So you don't need to say anything.
The rapture is going to happen and girls with denim miniskirts are going to go flying into the sky.
I think the groundwork is here for you to take your smoky bishop any way you want.
here's my hot take and this is definitely going to comport with your emotional take on this already which is that you can hear that Sinead is bonkers in that track and that is really good that's what makes that song great is that Sinead is banana pants and you hear it you feel it it's just like yes
there's definitely a lot of emotion to it i definitely want to be in a relationship with this girl oh god yes oh i would have followed her for six months yeah yeah oh no question you watch this video and it is prince and the revolution rehearsing in their studio their cement floored uh fluorescent lighted studio and
rehearsing all the freaking dance moves oh my god this is cool and all the others all the videos his all the 80s dance and they're all there you got whoa this is cool you got that's des right you got oh look at him the guy you got wendy and lisa right you got the surgeon the surgeons there and they're all doing all the dance moves that honestly i feel embarrassed to say
Man, that guy is smooth.
But watching that rehearsal video, I was just like, oh, fuck.
It made him so much more impressive and that band so much more impressive.
Put it as they say in my veins.
I could take a ton of releases from this era.
I would be fine with that.
That estate was really greedy about letting stuff on the internet, right?
Oh, boy.
Let me get my oven mitts.
He liked controlling his IP, if you know what I mean.
Yeah, he did.
He did, and he does even now from his Dracula lair behind the big rock.
All the cosmologies confused.
No, no, it's all coming together.
Today, you will receive a package from Amazon.com.
Who?
You.
Who, me?
Yeah, I just ordered it for you.
This is almost, certainly by Meemaw's standards, this is certainly far too old for your daughter.
But there's a comic that my daughter and I started reading at exactly your daughter's age that is tremendous.
And I'm passing it to you now for you to read.
It's a trade paperback that I would like you to read and decide when it's right for her because it's great.
And it's called Lumberjanes.
by Noelle Stevenson et al.
And it's about these five girls and their counselor at camp where supernatural things happen.
And it's really, really good.
It's everything positive.
And it is fun.
And it's just lots of cool girl stuff.
But it's...
It's cool.
Lumberjanes.
Lumberjanes, Volume 1, Beware the Kitten Holy.
It has been sent to you.
It is probably only just barely too old for her, actually, but I would like you to look at it, at least read through the first issue, and see what you think.
I don't think you ever read that Watchmen I sent you, and that's okay.
I bought my wife a Watchmen.
She didn't read that either.
But this one, have a look.
Hodgman sent me some big thing from... Probably DC Comics.
DC.
I was like, I don't know where to start with this.
Oh, really?
There's two Supermans?
Wow, that's crazy.
It sure is strong.
Anything that has the Silver Surfer and the Fantastic Four in it really confuses me, and I don't know.
Holy shit, John, they're coming back.
The Fantastic Four is finally coming back.
They're back in the fold, and they have the woman who is drawing.
The Fantastic Four is one of my favorite comic artists, Sarah Pacelli.
It's going to be so goddamn good.
It comes back in August.
Really?
Oh, God, the Fantastic Four is so good.
I never understood it.
It's The Incredibles before The Incredibles.
Well, that's right.
And I do understand The Incredibles.
But I don't understand.
And I think I understand The Incredibles because one of them is Sarah Val.
You're not associated with me.
It's not Buddy.
It's Incrediboy.
That's right.
You're friends with Sarah Val.
I saw that on the internet.
Yeah, I'm fortunate enough to be friends with Sarah Powell.
Don't turn this into Instagram.
Don't do it.
No, I won't.
But I had an interesting encounter with her.
You know, I'd known her for a long time.
We'd met and had dinner a couple of times.
She loves history.
Yeah, we had history and it was all we were all fun and fun and just knew each other, you know, like in America.
We were Americans that were doing the same same.
You would say you had an American life.
Yeah, we had we had some kind of of an American life.
It could be this.
It could be that.
And then I was I was in an airport.
I was walking along.
I heard my name and I turned and it was Sarah.
And, you know, she's a twin.
Yeah.
Oh, she looks like a twin.
She has a fraternal twin.
She totes looks like a twin.
She does.
And they were traveling, I think, with her nephew, who was a teenager.
And they were like, hey, what are you doing?
And I was like, oh, hey, you guys.
What are you doing?
And they said, we're going to far off land.
They were on some trip, some family trip, just the three of them, like,
The kind of fun thing that you kind of wish you would do where they're like, we're going to Nepal or something.
You know, they were like a big trip off on a big trip, a big adventure to somewhere where they were all a little bit anxious and going into the unknown.
And they had like some time to kill.
And so did I. So we spent not not, you know, five hours or anything, but we stood there together and talked and chatted and had a very nice conversation.
moment.
Uh, and, and she was with her family.
So it like, uh, it, you know, intensified and, and, and made it more intimate because she was there with her people.
And it was one of those things.
And you have these in life, right?
Where you, you bump into someone that you've known for years, but you bump into them in a weird place and you have a, and you spend 40 minutes together and it,
And it just clarified your relationship in a huge way.
Right.
Like I remember there was a guy in Spokane.
He was a Native American guy who who was like kind of a he was a leader of his I think he was like a Yakima elder.
And he would come to Gonzaga, and he was a teacher there, but he also was kind of active in Spokane community.
And he had two long braids that went down to the small of his back, and he was very incredible looking, like intense, looking tall.
That's a terrific look.
Native American guy who was probably 40.
And we saw each other all the time.
We passed on campus.
We would see each other downtown.
We were only at the level of, like,
i mean maybe head nod he wasn't he'd had no reason to head nod to me i was just some 20 year old freaking dingus but we one day five or some some number of years later bumped into each other on the street in amsterdam what he was coming this way i was in the era of the lady in the window this was lady in the window era
And we were both like, Oh my God, it's you.
What are the odds?
Yeah.
And we stood there and talked and, and just had a lovely, you know, sort of moment with each other.
And unfortunately I never saw him again.
I never went back to Spokane after that.
So it was like, I didn't, you know, I, we, we didn't, I didn't get the chance to see him in Spokane and be like, what's up.
But you know, we had that meet cute, I guess.
And from then on,
I think we would have been friends.
And anyway, with Sarah Vowell, we are now closer than we should be by virtue of this 40 minutes in an airport.
I've had that with people on jury duty.
Say what?
Well, you know, just that sense of like there's something, there's an intensity of being in a room with people where you can like kind of make friends with people and a deeper relationship than you would have over the same amount of time in like a, you know, mechanic class.
You know, I've never successfully completed a jury duty, so I have no clue what it feels like.
And I know that you've done it multiple times.
I shouldn't even have mentioned it.
I don't understand why.
Yeah.
It's going to be a Beetlejuice situation.
Why don't I get picked?
I don't know.
You're so good.
You're so civic.
And I sit around all day just wanting the jury duties to call.
Call to the bigs.
I want to get called up.
I know.
Sorry, I took you off your topic.
So you saw this guy in Amsterdam.
Oh, well, that story wrapped up.
Oh, sorry.
Moving on to jury duty.
I know you were just like, jury duty, jury duty.
I want to do jury duty, and the only time it ever happened, I'm sure I've told you this.
Yeah.
When I was 23, I got called.
I went down.
I sat in the box.
They never even called me up.
Sickening.
They paneled a jury before they even talked to me, and I had all my answers ready.
I was going to be like, innocent until proven guilty.
Yes.
And, you know, America and USA.
Open mind.
I am a blank slate, a tabula rasa, ready to be filled by the languages of these attorneys.
I do not even see color.
No.
Oh, black people love hearing that.
Really?
Not at all?
Some of my closest friends are gay.
Some of my best friends are counselors.
Oh, you could have been, you know, I could see you getting tossed out just on the basis of your dad.
They probably never even got to that with you, but I could see that being a thing.
I mean, I imagine being an attorney and looking at a potential bunch of jurors and they see me, well, especially now that I'm missing a front dude, but they just see me in any situation.
You got your bindle on a stick and your moonshine joke.
Let me take a look at this.
We got a 50-year-old guy with a white beard.
He's, uh, he's
I should have been a senator head of the CIA.
Any questions?
He's dressed like a 1930s Hollywood director.
Let me just be clear about this, Mr. Roderick.
It says here that you regard yourself as what you call the ankle man.
The ankle man is the person who's going to be in the mirror interlocking with the grace from the alien species.
Could you tell me a little bit more about your interest in being the ankle man?
They're not going to do that much due diligence, but they're going to be able to tell because I'm going to be wearing jodhpurs.
Well, like, you know, Skynet, you know what I'm saying?
Like, eventually they're going to know everything.
I think they'll just see it in my eyes because I'm the one person in the jury box who's like bouncing up and down with big, big eyes going, I can answer that question.
I can answer that question.
Ask me, ask me, ask me.
They're going to say, no, thanks.
We would like something.
It works the opposite of you would think.
I do everything to make myself as unappealing as possible as a juror.
I'm a real sad sack, a real droopy about, no, I don't know any things I feel strongly about.
And like, oh, that'll be great.
Bring him on up for a month.
I've steered clear for a while, but I'm jury crack.
Jury squeak?
Jury squeak.
If I could do a six-month-long crazy murder trial, I'd be so glad.
I think you get like $14 a day.
It's a pretty good gig.
Plus mileage?
Mileage?
Mr. Rogers, just a couple more quick things to roll down.
Since you have some kind of a plan for incarceration of every youth of middle school age so that they can be compelled to a threat of violence to build trail.
Well, let me explain.
You think they've got to make their own wristwatch and trousers out of things that they find on the road?
Is that accurate?
Your Honor, can I answer?
Your Honor?
I'll allow it.
Let me explain.
It's not incarceration.
You pull out a whiteboard and a diagram.
Here you have.
We excused you at 26 without thanks.
But, but, but, but, but, wait.
This is my venue.
I care about civics.
I care about civics.
It dragged out of the room.
Now that's when you're going to get your UPC code.
They're going to be like, do not let this person juror again.
I'm sure it's already in me.
I'm sure that they punched a little tracking code into my ass at some point.
Oh, like when you go through at TSA and they give you a special code.
Well, or when I was running for city council, I was so exhausted for the last half of that.
So like just heat exhausted.
Most of the time, because that whole summer, it was 104 degrees.
Every room I went into, I'm going into all these.
This is the time when your life consisted of going several places a day where you just listen to people complain.
Yeah, just 20 places a day where I was expected to talk for one minute about my entire worldview and then have 20 minutes of people yelling at me.
And then like 20 minutes of actually it's more of a comment than a question.
I have a question.
It's actually more of a comment.
Yeah.
I'm sure that somebody in a dark suit came up behind me and shot some tag into my ass that can be seen from outer space.
I wouldn't have even noticed.
You could have hit me with a boat paddle.
Oh, this is such a good episode.
I don't want to ruin it by talking about anything else.