Ep. 303: “Smzdrj”
Hello.
Hi, John.
Hi, Merlin.
How's it going?
Are you there?
Yeah.
Are you there?
Yeah.
Happy Labor Day.
Toot toot.
Beep beep.
Beep beep.
Beep beep.
Toot toot.
Toot toot.
Toot toot toot.
Happy Labor Day to you.
Happy Labor Day.
Yeah.
Have you been laboring?
I'm celebrating by doing five hours of podcast today.
Oh, really?
Yes.
Yes.
Because of the great Labor Day podcast, right?
1919?
1919.
1919.
Why even do we celebrate?
What is Labor Day, John?
People say it's a violent history.
What is Labor Day?
They chained a podcasting factory door closed, and there was a terrible fire.
Oh, the Triangle Short Podcast fire.
Yeah, and all the... People kept stealing the podcast.
They kept putting podcasts in their pocket on the way out.
Well, yeah, and they were like, you can't, you know, we need to... You can't afford guards around the podcast factory.
So...
Yeah, and then, you know, and then, of course, there was the time when the podcast, the floor of the podcast club fell.
Oh, God, that's so tragic.
Was that mostly Italians, John?
Was it immigrants?
Italian podcasters.
Yeah.
Yeah, they were doing, you know, they were doing shows about skiing and fast cars.
You know, the things that Italian-Americans like.
It's got just the right to sink and a bounce.
Yeah.
Computers and, like, Lamborghinis.
Yeah.
And downhill skiing.
The three things that Italian-Americans love the most.
Wait, what are the three things?
I was going to say, well, it's pretty common knowledge.
Skiing.
Is that northern Italy, John?
It's all Italians like this.
That's like blonde skiing.
That's the blonde Italians.
Well, there are, as we both know, a lot of blonde Italians.
But I think every Italian at one point or another loves to ski.
Okay.
And then Lamborghinis.
Lamborghinis.
A great Italian car.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
And computers.
Italians love computers.
That's not just a stereotype.
No, no, no.
I think it's, I mean, you know, everything, all stereotypes can be disproved.
Supposedly, when Mario Puzo was getting ready to do The Godfather, they said, look, you can do this.
You can talk about the family, but you cannot portray Italian-Americans using computers.
Because they're tired of that stereotype.
Oh, right.
There would have been protests.
Well, because that's the thing.
A lot of the, they came to our shores.
My grandmother came from Russia.
Everybody came to the United States and they knew this was the land where they could record audio with a computer.
They wanted to make a better way for their family.
Well, I mean, it says right there at the foot of the Space Needle there in New York City.
It says, you know, give me your tired, your C++ programmers, your disenfranchised who are yearning for some integrity in gaming journalism.
Michael Barbero, until very recently, they miswritten his name on the name tag at Ellis Island.
They called him Michael Daly Show.
And they had to change that.
And then he's gone back to Barbero because that's his family name.
Oh, that's so wonderful.
This is not funny.
This is not funny.
It's not even going anywhere.
No, you know what this feels like to me?
This feels like you look nice today.
Oh, I wish.
Except there's not another guy who's going to make it sound good.
I like to think we invented making things up.
Yeah, I think so.
You know, before whatever that was, 2000-whatever, you wouldn't get a lot of white guys sitting around making stuff up.
You know, three guys making stuff up like it was facts.
Back then, it was a different time.
Back then, the people only talked about computers on podcasts.
They talked about Linux.
Uh-huh.
Linux.
They talked about distros.
Oh, distros.
Mm-hmm.
They talked about code management and brackets.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
And now today, we're finally free.
We've, you know, we've shed that, and now... Now.
It's kind of early.
It's true, though, that this has been true since computers became the place where we practiced our culture, which wasn't that long ago.
Not really, no.
But the problem is that all of the people that are standing athwart the gate, who are the ones that know how to put things on computers, on the internet, they're also standing athwart the culture.
And they are not cultural people.
Let's just be honest.
I'm just going to come right out and say it.
They're not cultural people, the computer people.
They're not the first people you want as gatekeepers of the culture.
You know, that probably is true historically, culturally.
I mean, certainly you could look at something like journalism and publishing.
Right?
Especially publishing, because publishing was a business.
It certainly was.
It was a business that had its own needs and its own preoccupations and biases, but that's how the culture got onto paper.
It did, but to that point, the publishing industry generally hired people to do the gatekeeping jobs who were
In the, let's call it the people who have the ability to read family.
Okay.
Right.
You know what I mean?
Like if you were going to have somebody who was going to decide which books were going to make it through the pipeline.
I would prefer the people who decide which books we should read are in fact literate.
Right, sure, that they would be able to read, might even read the books themselves.
Or at least be able to, in a pinch, they could read if they needed to.
Right.
And I'm not saying that the people standing, the computer people standing toward the culture were necessarily standing there saying, stop.
What they were saying was, I like this, and so I will help facilitate its presence on the internet.
Right.
On the other hand, I don't like or don't understand this.
And so I'm not going to devote my time and energy to it.
This wasn't a conspiracy.
This was just the...
Well, and, you know, I know you don't like to be too culturally relevant, but what you're saying is very culturally relevant.
I mean, OK, you know, I know you like to be a man for all ages.
Ideally, someone should listen to this program and not know when it was recorded because it exists outside of time.
Whatever year is in the show is in the show.
That's right.
But certainly for a long time, the way that we did interact with the computers was, well, it's always been governed by the people who made the functionality and made the interface and made the storage and made the accessibility and all of that kinds of stuff.
And for the longest time, when you used a computer, it felt like it was made by somebody who made computers.
Like there were interfaces that you would have.
You're like, you look back at interfaces from the 80s and 90s and go, wow, this was designed by like an engineer.
This is not designed by a designer.
And I mean, if we were the sort of program that talked about things that were culturally relevant, and thank God we're not, one could also say that the platforms for disseminating information in our age that are at the center of dissemination are being run by computer people.
Who have a real different idea about... They want to make...
They want to make the glasses at scale without so much concern for what kind of liquid is in the glasses.
And they want to be out of that business and not seen as having any responsibility for that.
Now, this could have been recorded in 1967 and it would still be relevant.
Yeah, right.
And hopefully not in 2267.
Yeah.
Because hopefully, I don't know what will happen.
I do not know what will happen.
But definitely, we have been living through and are still living through an age where
where um there are a lot of things that are big and got big and remain big and accessible and we have practices our cultural practices are somewhat determined by the way we interact with machines and all of that is determined by people who have are who are speaking in a language that is not
universal and also their prejudices are like embodied in the way the machine is written, in the way the culture is written down, like you're saying, like the shape of the glass is determining
is determining so much and the lack of interest in what's inside the glass is just as um just as culture shaping it's not it's not that they're like oh we can only have purple drinks it's like we don't care it's not a non-issue i mean not a non-issue precisely i don't know anyway so here we are on the the self-same internet being listened to by a lot of those very people
I don't know what to tell you.
It's Labor Day.
You know what I mean?
Anyway, this has been entry 075.XP3098, Cultural Relevancy, Certificate Number 39077.
On the Rodrigo line.
Do you guys pick your own topics?
You don't have a producer that does that.
You do that yourselves, right?
Is it like the Beatles, the one who mainly gets interviewed?
We're talking about John's other podcast, Omnibus.
I am anyway.
You haven't talked about it yet.
But you seem to alternate episodes where one of you is bringing in a topic and the other one sort of interviews them about it or in Ken's case keeps changing the subject and talking about X-Men.
And so I'm guessing you guys each pick the topic you're going to go read Wikipedia about and then you bring that into the other person.
That's right.
That's right.
I think if you go down, because we record two episodes a week and Ken's show is on Tuesday.
Every Tuesday is a Ken-driven show.
Every Thursday is a John-driven show.
But I bet if you went down and just looked at the lists of titles, knowing what you know about me.
I'm looking at an anarchist cookbook and I'm guessing that's you.
Yeah, right.
So, and listeners of Roderick on the line could go look at omnibus topics and be maybe not a hundred percent, but like 70% sure.
Oh, I bet you that's a, I bet you that's a can.
I bet you that's a job.
Go ahead.
Go ahead.
Try your luck.
Okay.
I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to scroll down a little bit so that I get out of.
Oh, come on.
June 14th, prison colon.
It's nine kuzel.
I can't break.
Okay.
Well now I got to scroll again.
Cause that's obviously you.
Yeah.
Tylenol murders.
Uh huh.
William Rufus King.
Backyard blast furnaces feels very John.
Yes.
Tylenol murders was too.
See, now I'm screwed up because I can see the alternation.
Okay, scroll, scroll.
Oh, the Washington generals.
Now that's Ken.
They're using a ladder.
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Stop with the email.
You get over to the Slack.
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Slack makes it easy and fun to consolidate the stuff that everybody needs to know about.
But this is really important.
It also lightens the load by using those channels.
Those channels, some people only need to know about some things.
It doesn't need to go to everybody.
So use those channels to communicate with people.
They just need to know a few little things.
And listen, don't tell Slack I said this, but you can make a channel for whatever you want.
It could be about the work stuff, but you could also have a Star Wars.
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Slack is actually really fun to use.
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In particular, it has made planning and releasing my podcast so much more sane.
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It's a really good place to be.
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Okay, John, we have to have that spot right here.
We have to talk for 30 seconds so nobody catches this.
So anyways, it's been a heck of a week here in the lake.
Everything is sublime.
Banjo pickers are thick on the ground.
Cindy Cashdoller coming into the theater.
We have a new sponsor.
Is it Hot Rise?
It's Hot Rise.
I'll tell you about something I like.
It's called Hot Rise.
How many times has this happened to you?
You can't get a good bake.
That's right.
And one of their provisions is there can't be any profanity 30 seconds before or after the ad spot.
Oh, I see.
So we're in the clear.
I think we're in the clear.
Tylenol murders.
Tylenol murders.
Got to be fine.
Okay, but we're going to let another 30 seconds go by since you said murders.
Burgers.
Tylenol burgers.
Our thanks to Slack, a collaboration hub for collaborating.
Really?
Slack?
Slack, pretty good, huh?
Oh, that's a great thing.
Thank you, Slack.
The Preppy Handbook.
I had a copy of this.
Of course you did.
I read and reread it voraciously circa 1981 or two.
Of course you did.
Oh, I loved it so much.
I did.
I would dive so deep on subcultures.
I was telling my daughter about this because, you know, she doesn't care about me or my life, but I'm inclined to sometimes tell her about things that are relevant to her age, like what I was doing at the time.
That, for me, was a maybe eighth or ninth grade thing.
I remember really getting into the novelization of the film The Warriors because I wasn't allowed to see the movie.
In fifth grade, I was very into The Warriors and Animal House, even though I had seen neither.
I am with you 100%.
But you can see the commonality there.
And it's not just violence against women.
It's also that I wanted to be part of a special group.
And I think I was obsessed.
At one point, I tried to create a fraternity, not really quite understanding what a fraternity was.
I tried to create a fraternity in fifth grade.
And it was very into the idea of having a gang with some kind of branded costumes.
Yes, right.
And a cool neighborhood associated with it.
Don't fuck with the Wongs.
Oh, yeah.
All right.
You get the baseball furies.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There were some kids in my high school.
They were a grade younger than me, but they were like juniors and seniors and came up with – they wanted to be in fraternities so bad.
They couldn't wait to get to the University of Arizona or the University of Colorado.
Maybe go to Chino.
Yeah, go to Chino.
So they started a fraternity at East High School called—get ready.
Yeah.
Buckle up.
Okay.
It's called Tap-A-Mega-Cake.
Tap-A-Cake-A-Brew.
Woo!
And they put TMK on the back of all their Carhartt jackets because this is Alaska.
Of course.
And, you know, big TMK letters, Greek-style letters.
and it's the type of thing god you look back on even at the time it was like wow that's really too that's really too bad but now you look back and you're like oh sure right like 17 year old with it like in in class could they like talk about it and have gear and get away with it they were popular boys that's happened in my high school we had the brew crew john yeah
We had a bunch of boys in bucket hats who drank way too much on the weekends, and they were called the brew crew.
They were kind of allied with the soccer team.
Okay.
All right.
Okay.
Soccer in Alaska was not that big of a sport, but these guys were all hockey player adjacent and downhill ski kids.
They were rich kids.
They were the rich kids.
All right.
The rich popular boys.
Okay.
And, um, yeah, tap and make a cake.
But, but, you know, it's little things like that when you realize like, oh, there's a reason that we don't give the keys to young people.
young people are not they really don't have all the great ideas right away right you know they gotta work through a lot of ideas before they land on a really sound like historically compelling idea yeah i mean you know something and again this isn't a generalization no a lot of a lot of very talented young people who didn't who never like chained the doors of a of a sweatshop
Yeah.
Closed.
But most young people are going to need a little bit more time with those with those ideas before they're really ready for the rest of us to bring bring them online, you know?
Yeah.
And I don't just mean online.
I mean, in the streets, in the streets and in the sheets into the bloodstream of society.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
Clean needles.
Clean needles.
That's right.
Well, I'm just saying, I'm saying, I mean, you get some toxic water in that glass, and who are you going to blame?
Jack Dorsey?
Certainly not.
He just wants free speech.
Hang on.
Wait.
Tapa Mega Kega.
Is that K-E-G-G-A?
Yeah.
K-E-G-G-A.
Tap Omega Kega.
And I think some of the dudes in Tap Omega Kega went to the University of Colorado together.
And I believe that they maintained and they joined actual fraternity.
That's UC, not CU.
CU.
It's so confusing to me.
It is because it's not Colorado University.
I know this.
I know this.
Not Aurora.
No.
Where is it?
Oh, well, it's the University of Colorado system, but the University of Colorado itself is in Boulder.
Boulder.
Okay.
Is that a party school, John?
It is.
It is a party school.
This is not a generalization.
Once again, we don't really do generalizations on this show.
I mean, University of Colorado is a storied institution of higher learning.
I had a friend who went there and he became a scientist.
Yeah, they're very smart.
It's not a party school like...
like arizona state or whatever any school in arizona basically which is just indefensible except for a place to to to like they say that they say that it just warehouses kids when they can't go to lake havasu they just go to the school and they stand around you know what you just bader meinhof me girl girls go wild you bader meinhof me just now because is that is that is that a branch campus of an arizona college university
What, Lake Havasu?
Yeah.
I think it should be.
I'm pretty sure I heard that as a throwaway joke on Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
I think you just Bader Meinhof me.
Boom.
Zip.
Lake Havasu is the place where during spring break... See, Lake Havasu is not an actual lake.
Well, wait a minute.
It's an actual lake.
It's not a natural lake.
That's what I meant to say.
It's a lake with no, there's nothing redeeming about it, but there's an entire culture of people that have little flat-roofed, sometimes two-story houseboaty kind of places.
It's very pleasant.
The life on them is very pleasant.
They're not boats in the sense that they're meant to go fast.
They're slow boats.
And you've got, it's a great boat to drink all day on.
I think that's the primary purpose of those boats is to give you a place to drink all day in the hot sun.
Drinking boats.
And they're drinking boats.
And this is true, I think, all year long.
You get up on the top of one of these two-story boats.
You take off your top.
Somebody gives you some Mardi Gras beads.
Oh, okay.
You dance to lasciviously to some lavaciousness.
EDM?
Yeah, something like that.
People pour beer on each other and then you, I guess, jump into the lake and then get back out.
I've never been...
So I'm describing a spring break culture that I don't want to, I don't want to appropriate it.
I don't, I don't, I don't know enough about it.
Yeah.
I don't know enough about it to speak really informedly, but I've, you know, I've,
It's not like this is our first time around the sun.
Am I right, Merlin?
No, no, no.
This is not my first day.
So... They're talking about how dumb this guy is.
They're talking about this is season 5, episode 11.
And they say this guy's real dumb.
He's the weak link in the family.
They call him the Fredo of the family.
His driver's license picture is him on a roller coaster.
And he went to the University of Arizona.
And the other guy inhales.
He goes, Lake Havasu Campus.
He's like, my God.
Yeah.
So drinking boats.
I bought her Meinhof gang.
You Meinhof'd me so hard.
Sorry, I took you off your boat.
I don't know if drinking in boats should really be in the description.
That's, you know, you could do some bad stuff drinking on a boat.
That's what's great about these boats is that they're not fast.
You know, if you're drinking on a fast boat.
It's a go slow boat.
This is just, this boat just goes putt, putt, putt, putt, putt.
And you just putter out into some, because it's like, what Lake Havasu is, it used to be a canyon.
And so, you know, under the water, there's like a Grand Canyon under there that that that won't be seen until after the apocalypse breaks all the dams.
Wow.
So you know that you're there.
You've ruined a whole world.
They're like Native American artifacts under a billion gallons of water.
And you're up there just drinking Kerr's Light and going crazy.
They're probably not drinking Kerr's Light anymore.
Times have changed.
They're slowing down when the silver bullet's on your boat.
I'm sure they're drinking some kind of Mike's Hard Cider, whatever it is.
Oh, sure.
Sure.
That's like a millennium version of like a wine cooler, right?
I think that Mike's Hard Cider actually has probably not been popular for 15 years.
So I'm making a generational reference.
Current Indy Rock baths like the shins.
Totally trying to shut him down with a joke that's like dad joke.
Our music teacher in college, whenever he wanted to sound relevant, he would mention the Talking Heads.
Talking Heads.
So he'd be like, well, you know, Schoenberg and Stravinsky all the way to Talking Heads.
Like, well, they're still around.
Yeah.
Yeah, the Talking Heads.
All the way to the Talking Heads.
All the way down.
I went to a music festival this weekend.
Really?
Yeah.
The Bumbershoot Music Festival.
Bumbershoot.
And, you know, when they announced the lineup this year, three straight days of music, everyone in my culture in Seattle, including all of the people who run the festival and book the festival, all in when, you know, because when the lineup comes out, it's always been a thing.
It's not like...
It's not like the day the new iPhones are released, but in the music business, when somebody when Coachella releases their lineup or Bumbershoot or Sasquatch or all tomorrow's parties.
Right.
Everybody sees it that day.
Also, they put out that poster with the increasingly tiny text on it and you decide how excited you are.
You also draw conclusions about like what's happening with the festival.
Right.
Exactly.
Were there any gets?
Is there a Beyoncé?
Is there a Shins?
Right.
And those big festivals, Coachella's been famous for bringing bands back from the dead, or bands you never thought you'd see again, Tupac in Hologram, all this stuff.
I mean, that's all pretty corny, but you remember old Chella a couple of years ago where it was like every classic rock band that was still alive.
But so Bumbershoot comes out,
And it's three days, and nobody has ever heard of any of the bands.
Oh, was it a prank?
It wasn't a prank.
It's just that... When you say nobody, is that like a Donald Trump nobody?
Or you're saying, honestly, like legit people who are up to date and still read Pitchfork?
No, no, no.
They all know.
I'm talking about all of the people in my... Oh, I hate that feeling.
I hate that feeling.
My culture are the people now... What's so great about the festival now is that all of the people that I knew...
Coming up in music are all they've all they're all 50 and they're all running everything now I mean I ran into a guy who had who had for years been the door guy at the showbox who was just every time I'd show up at the showbox be like what's up, man, and he's got his black t-shirt on and his
And he's got his flashlight.
Sometimes you can't imagine they're even still alive.
And they've got an actual like a job with with import.
He's been doing that.
He's been doing that job forever.
And he's you know, he's a super wonderful man.
And the only reason he's a door guy is that he just happened to be born did.
6'7 and 290 pounds.
Just as God made him.
That's right.
So he's just somehow, one time he walked in the door of a club and somebody stopped him and said, would you just keep standing at that door and keep trouble out?
And he was like, sure.
Now scowl.
So for 20 years he's been doing that job.
So I'm walking across the festival grounds and I see him sitting at a table and he's wearing civilian clothes, which I'd never seen him in.
I've been friends with this guy forever.
Never seen him in a shirt with a collar.
Hmm.
And he sees me and we stand up and, you know, big, big, like American hug.
And I'm like, what are you doing in this shirt?
It's got a collar on it.
And he was like, dude, I'm not doing security anymore.
And I said, that's great.
What are you doing?
And he's like, I'm in charge of ticketing for the whole festival.
Wow, that's a lot of responsibility.
Well, not only that, but it's wonderful, right?
He's been in the rock business forever, and people in Seattle take care of each other.
In the music scene here, it really is a family.
We really do take care of each other.
And at a certain point,
Instead of finding some kid right out of college to do the ticketing, they were like, this guy is great and he's smart.
And he's somebody we can trust.
And he's somebody, you know, he's like family.
Let's just, you know, let's make this transition.
And now he's got benefits.
He's got a real job.
He's doing like things that are interesting.
Yeah.
And so the, so the whole festival is like that.
The head of production is somebody that I, you know, I'm like super close with the guys that are doing the creative work, but also the people that are doing the technical stuff like we, and we all have known each other for decades.
So it's like, right, exactly.
This is exact.
Like they're corporations have let us down.
The world has let us down, but we have like,
We've every single one of these people at one point or another stapled a flyer for their band up on a telephone pole in 1992.
And now they they all have like they've built it.
They built a real thing.
But when you get us all in a room and say, have you heard of any of these bands, even the person that is booking the bands, who's a good friend and we talk about him on the show and sometimes he listens to the show.
He's like, I mean, I've heard them because I had to hear their music in order to agree to have them be on the concert.
But I have no I have no actual idea like who they are.
I know they're popular and their music is good ish.
And so would you be able to pass like a like a ha ha test, like a like a late night comedy show kind of test where would you I know I could be very easily bamboozled if somebody read me a list of names and I was supposed to say whether that was a band or not.
I could not pass it.
Oh, not at all, because now a lot of bands don't even have vowels in their names.
Oh, that's difficult.
Their names are just like Smizdrick.
And you're like, what the fuck is Smizdrick?
Is that a rock band or a hip-hop band or an EDM band?
What is it?
And it's like, no indication.
Forget it, Grandpa.
S-M-Z-D-R-J.
Look it up.
It's Dutch.
It's Dutch.
But so I walked around the festival.
I spent the weekend just kind of popping into shows and checking them out.
It was like, okay, Smizdrick is next.
Like, let's go check it out.
And obviously, like, a lot of great music.
A lot of great music that I would not... That I'm just... I am just not keyed into what's going on.
And a lot of stuff where I was just like, all right.
All right.
You know, it is... You know, like, I'm sure if you had walked around...
an indie rock festival in 2002 without a knowledge of the subculture, most of the time you'd be like, yeah, okay, yeah.
I mean, yeah, Mates of State.
I didn't know what that was, but it's good.
I know that band.
Yeah, Mates of State.
They used to live in my neighborhood.
They're wonderful.
Yeah!
That's my very few syllable impersonation.
Want to hear it again?
I guess that's one syllable.
I think they're siblings.
Anyway, go ahead.
Not siblings, married.
Married.
Oh, well, you know, it's hard to tell in San Francisco.
But anyway, so it was a really, it was beautiful.
It was a beautiful weekend.
It was, you know, the festival's well run.
There's a
There's a lot of controversy in Seattle now because the company that employs all these people is actually a national company run by a man from Denver who is an old guy from Denver that started a big company that books festivals and owns stadiums and all such.
And he is a Republican.
Yeah.
And he gives money to Republican.
That's sneaking into a lot of stuff right now.
You got the Microsoft guy.
You know what I'm saying?
You got the In-N-Out burger.
You got the Marvel guy.
There's a lot of ding-a-ling spending money out there.
And so he is like an unapologetic.
Did you see that about Paul Allen?
Did you see that?
I did see it.
All right.
Moving on.
I did see it and we can talk about it.
It's very upsetting.
Please continue.
It made me not very pleased because that's not who we thought he was.
But...
As the great writer in the sky said, if you make a bunch of money, you're going to put that money...
with the people that are gonna help you make a bunch of money you're gonna put that money with the people who represent you even if it hurts the others and others others mothers you're gonna put the money on them well you started a company with bill gates and everything pretty much turned out great you bought a van and you bought some spray-painted shoes and now you're gonna give our country the blues hey
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That's it!
Now you're a bill, and you're always a bill, and you're sitting there on Capitol Hill.
Well, now I'm off to committee where the process is fucked.
Now, this sponsor did not have a specific admonition against cursing, so we'll see how that goes.
Oh, okay, great.
Build it beautiful.
Oh, so anyway, everybody in Seattle that's part of the political spectrum now that doesn't believe...
Well, there is a political, in America there's always been this political tendency, and it's really popular right now on both the right and the left, which is to say,
We don't have any ideas about what we're going to build.
We just think that the world would be better if we tore everything down.
We know what we're mad about, but we don't have any solutions.
We're super mad about it.
And if we just destroy it.
That's our campaign slogan for 18 and 20.
It's one syllable.
Meh.
Meh.
Meh.
If we just break it, if we tear it down, if we break every single thing, then I'm sure what will come up out of the ground with no plan at all will just be great.
It's a kind of terraforming?
Yeah, the natural impulse of people is to only build beautiful things, and those people are kept down by the man.
So if we destroy the man, then the beautiful things will grow out of the ground, Merlin.
Big flowers and cultural wonder.
You just need to clear out the weeds.
Yeah, democracy.
We need to drain the swamp.
But we also need to, you know, eliminate the bad man who's on top of everybody and keeping him down with his boot.
And so there are a lot of people like that in Seattle that are on the liberal side who believe that they don't really have a plan.
They just want to be against everything.
And they are against this company because this guy is a Republican, the big bad guy.
Mm-hmm.
Well, but what happened when he came to Seattle and started and took over here was he just bought the show box, which was the kind of very cool downtown venue.
And he hired everybody that worked there.
And he said, okay, you guys are AEG Seattle now.
Well, everybody that worked at the Showbox were the exact people that you would want because they were the exact team of people that all knew each other, were keyed into the whole city.
They worked on a successful team for years.
For years.
And it was one they built themselves.
It wasn't their first day.
It wasn't their first day.
I mean, they were the ones that turned the Showbox into this thing that we value.
Is that where we did our show?
Our Turns Out show?
That's exactly where we did our Turns Out show.
Okay.
That was a nice place.
It's great, and it was reliably always great.
I mean, when Death Cab for Q got to a point where they could play the biggest house in the town, the Paramount, they often instead would play four straight nights at the showbox rather than move up to the big venue.
That's cool.
So anyway, so what we have now in the city... So you got the guy, he's in Colorado.
Yep.
AEG.
Yeah, AEG.
Mm-hmm.
And if you Google him, you'll see, you know,
All kinds of bad things.
But the people in the city who are on the political side want to protest things.
They want to picket things.
They want to boycott things.
They're really mad that AEG has taken over Bumbershoot because Bumbershoot used to, Bumbershoot when it first started was one of those city festivals that was free and you could come and see like
you know, Mott the Hoople or whatever for free.
Is Bumbershoot in the Seattle area?
It's in the center of Seattle.
It was the first thing after the World's Fair.
Where's Bonnaroo?
Is that like Tennessee or something?
Yeah, it's in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
Okay, okay.
Which is, Murfreesboro isn't a thing.
It's just like a, it's a wide spot in the road.
Oh, it's a constructed town like Celebration.
I mean, no, it's not that.
There was a town there, but it was just a place where moonshiners would get gas.
It wasn't a place that was like... Pesky Revenuers.
It didn't have a... It's not like Murfreesboro College.
But it's beautiful there, Murfreesboro.
It's beautiful.
It's absolutely beautiful.
So that's been around, Mott the Hoople, it's been around that long, huh?
Bumbershoot.
Bumbershoot has, it started in 1970.
Bobby Warren swoggled.
Who knew?
Bumbershoot.
So there was actually an event at Bumbershoot where one of the candidates for mayor, Seattle mayor, last year, or yeah, last year, one of the candidates was given a forum to speak to an audience at Bumbershoot.
wherein she criticized Bumbershoot, basically.
She got up and tried to get the crowd chanting, which is actually a form of politics now.
And, uh, and it was, it's really hilarious because, you know, you get into those situations and again, I'm 50 years old.
I am not 22.
So I don't even know what we're protesting now.
Exactly.
Cause it changes every day, but they were protesting Bumbershoot at Bumbershoot and they're not, I don't think they understand that the actual people that are making this thing are like as Seattle as you could be.
Okay.
Um,
But they're protesting and it's like, oh, now our great festival is owned by these outside interests.
It's like, I guess, man.
I guess ultimately the money goes up the chain and it gets to this guy and he gives it to the NRA.
I'm sorry about that.
I really am.
But like, you know, please don't make it hard for my friends to put on their rock show.
Just please, please.
But apparently nobody went to her thing.
So it's not that big of a deal.
Yeah.
Unfortunately, nobody went to see the Fleet Foxes either.
Fleet Foxes, that's a band.
Yeah.
Nobody went to see the Fleet Foxes.
But they did go to see Portugal the Man, and that was very exciting.
Oh, my daughter likes that song.
Yeah, a lot of daughters like that song.
A lot of people don't understand that Portugal the Man is really like a stoner jam metal band.
A stoner children's band.
They're not a children's band at all.
They're like... And they got this song that it absolutely sounds like them.
He sings like that in all the songs, but it's a super pop hit.
And so it was wonderful to watch like 10,000...
like 18 year olds really excited to see portugal the man and portugal man played some sabbath they played some sapling oh wow they put it must be a real mixed blessing when you get famous for a song that's not like your other songs there are a lot of people that have been called one hit wonders where uh they had the one song that they they're going to be forever remembered for is really different from a lot of their oeuvre
It's tricky, but these guys have been a band for over 10 years and they've played and played and played their touring band.
They're like road, road, uh, hard.
And so hung up wet.
Yeah, they weren't, but they weren't put away wet.
They're still, they're still, they're still out there.
Dry as a bone.
But so they're not, they're not susceptible.
Like they have each other.
They're all from Alaska and
And they just, they're loving it.
Wasilla, Alaska.
They're from Wasilla.
Wasilla.
They know to play their big hit last.
That's smart.
And that in the hour or whatever, between when they begin and when they play their hit, they can basically play anything.
So they played like She's So Heavy by The Beatles.
Wow.
They had a very, very long guitar solo portion.
Like, they just don't care.
They're having fun with it.
It's wonderful to watch.
They are.
They are.
They're having fun.
It was nice.
It was a good rock festival.
I saw Blondie.
You saw Blondie?
How much original Blondie?
You got like two Blondie members, right?
You got the drummer and her?
Bass player, drummer, and Debbie, and then the guitar player was about our age.
Is he still a super good drummer?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The band sounded amazing.
And you're reminded, like, they're one of the first bands, the first rock bands to go,
You know, like to disco beat it.
Oh, sure.
Sure, sure, sure.
There was that year.
There's that one year.
That time between 78 and 79 where everybody had a disco hit.
But they did.
They were weird from the beginning.
I mean, there's so many ways in which they got.
It's so funny because like, what is a CBGB's band?
Like, arguably, I'm going to say television.
Yeah.
might be the most canonical one but all the other ones that get looked in there they're so well yeah but they're so different i mean ramones talking heads patty smith i mean patty smith was working with fucking blue oyster cult like she was she was a weirdo but then put blondie in there it's like what line do you draw apart from appearing in the same place on the planet that has any of those bands doing similar things it's so bizarre
Because they were a power pop band.
They weren't a punk band.
Take the top five Seattle 90s bands and actually, I mean, I guess if you were...
if you weren't in rock and roll you'd listen to them and go like oh yeah it all sounds the same but like from within rock and roll it didn't sound the same at all mud honey doesn't sound anything like pearl jam yeah uh but or that band with the honey song i like what's that band called what's the three guys what are they called taste like honey no those guys in the band i like the guy with the buzzer what's that what's that band called oh the melvins the melvins were a good band they're the they're you must have seen them live what the melvins sorry
I'm sorry.
I live far away.
Come on.
I still have bruises on my body from seeing the Melvin.
Did you ever hear the Melvins?
I think they're from Washington.
I don't know if you ever heard them.
Did you ever see the Melvin?
I recall the kind of pie that I had with blueberries in it.
Have you ever had a blueberry pie?
Houdini.
That's that album I like.
Honeybucket.
Honeybucket.
That's a really good song, that Honeybucket.
You know, Houdini is a great band.
Houdini...
is a great band.
This is the 1993 Melvins album I'm thinking of.
Yeah, yeah, that was a great Melvins record.
I got mixed feelings about people naming their band after things in other bands.
I'm going to give it to the Beatles.
They can have it.
But I think a lot of times this was a little bit frustrating.
I'm going to give it to Death Cab because that's a very obscure reference.
Yeah, in fact, that was the reason that Scott McCoy even went to see them in the first place.
But Houdini was... Because he's a Neil Innes fan.
Houdini was a band from 1981.
Oh, Houdini with a W. Houdini with a W. Oh, fucking A, right, of course.
And he had that cool hat.
Didn't he have a cool hat?
He had a very cool hat.
He had like a bullfighter hat.
He had a gaucho hat.
Gaucho.
He was the one that explained to us that it's the freaks that come out at night.
The freaks come out?
The freaks come out.
The freaks come out at night.
What about who said we shouldn't park on the dance floor?
Who was that?
Oh, I don't know.
Wasn't that Debbie Harry?
No parking, baby.
No parking on the dance floor.
As I was walking over... I like early rap.
I like jam on it.
I still think jam on it is a very good song.
It's a great song.
You know, Young MC, that's a very enjoyable sound.
Well, also, isn't there... That's not even early rap.
But, like, who was it?
There were those two breakout...
mainstream was a tone loke and young mc but they were produced by like the dust brothers am i remembering this right i don't know i don't know no but before paul's boutique and before their dust up with the chemical brothers over names i'm pretty sure the dust brothers did some uh did some mainstream production how many brothers can you have i don't know there's generally if it's in hip-hop you got two brothers
Well, unless you, if it's America, you could have three bad brothers, you know, so well.
How many doctors are there in hip hop?
One, two, three.
A great indie rock lyric.
How many doctors will there be?
You got Dr. Dre and the other Dr. Dre.
There were two Dre's, Dr. Dre.
There's the one guy on UMTV Raps, and I think eventually he had to accede the name to the other, Andre.
Yeah, I mean, maybe he, it's not like he, like, took the knee.
Right.
It's more just that people, when they started talking, when they referred to Dr. Dre, they just never meant him.
According to the Internet Science site, the Dust Brothers developed writing and producing skills creating music for their show and DJing Diddly-D.
In 1987, they began writing and producing for Delicious Vinyl.
They wrote and produced tracks on Tone Loke's album, Loke After Dark, with a long O. You knew this.
Yeah.
Young MC's debut album.
You had it, Merlin.
It was there.
I got it.
It was right there.
I got it one.
The Dust Brothers.
Then they had some kind of mix up with the Chemical Brothers because of the naming.
Yeah.
Block rocking beats.
A lot of Doctors, a lot of Bigs, a lot of Littles.
Nowadays, a lot of little.
You got a lot of little.
Now you're little.
Used to be you want to be big.
Now you want to be little.
Now you're little.
You could be little Wayne.
You're young.
You're little Jeezy.
You're little.
Young Jeezy.
Young Jeezy.
Is he little Jeezy now?
I don't know.
No, it's young Jeezy and then little Jeezy's cousin.
There's like little 100 bucks.
There's like.
Yeah, tiny bankroll.
But interestingly, Blonde did not play her innovative, cutting-edge rap tune where she references Fab by Freddie.
And maybe that's too hard to do or maybe she doesn't do it.
Maybe it's not as popular now.
But as I was walking over there, I was talking to somebody also like –
uh a woman uh who is in her adulthood does she have a certain age she's yeah of a certain age i don't think that you say that about uh women who are about who are younger than me but we're not allowed to call them dowagers no no no she's just a she's you know what she's a lady you know she's she's a foxy gal she's a she's a she's an age-appropriate gal for me let's let's say wow
And she said, I said, I'm going over to see Blondie.
You want to come over?
And she was like, well, you know.
I said, what?
How do you have anything other than total two thumbs up feelings about Blondie?
What are you doing instead of Blondie?
And she said, they were always a little too punk for me.
And I was like, whoa.
That is not a thing I ever thought I would hear.
But there are people my age or a little younger who
who still feel like blondie is a little too punk sunday girl hanging on the telephone denise denise come on these are pop songs they're basically a french pop band yeah you just want they make you want to roller skate but not but that's the thing or uh merlin you and i are you know you're very uh we're very edgy
Well, you and me, I mean, by the time we knew what punk rock was, and it was featured on shows like Quincy, you would look at a band even like Blondie, and you'd go like, well, yeah, The Clash, we'll let them be punk rock, whatever that means.
The Clash is a reggae band, let's just establish that.
Yeah, they needed an editor.
Yes.
Don't you think?
Yes, they did.
Don't you think they could have used a mate?
Oh, they could have used a friend.
You know what they needed?
They needed Bill Barry.
Bill Barry.
Just say we're not going to do that.
I'll quit.
I'll do it now.
He holds the drumstick to his head.
I'll do it.
I'll do it.
No, you are not using those lyrics.
This is not a good song.
No.
No one ever... I think Bill Berry was the genius of the band.
I really do.
I think he was the one.
I don't know.
There should be some laconic character in the band that everybody wants to impress.
Yeah.
Bill Berry could... The thing is, he'd raise an eyebrow on the whole wall of the building.
Boy, he had good taste.
He had such good taste.
Dude, he had good eyebrows, too.
He had terrific eyebrows.
I think he's on the cover of one of those records.
Dust Brothers also did... They did Beck's Odellay.
Beck kept coming up in conversation.
And they did Mbop by Hanson.
They did Mbop.
Mbop.
That's also the Dust Brothers, which are not the Chemical Brothers.
Mbop.
yeah i don't know why i had a crush on that kid the mbop kid yeah well not a crush i mean i was a 30 year old man but that video got real popular and i said to the other guitar player in bacon room i said have you seen that video with it with a hansen it's like i know it's not right but that girl's pretty cute he's like dude that's totally a dude and i was like wow this is really so much more awkward than i could have imagined
Hanson's an example of, you know, like three brothers where one of them at the time was really pretty.
Yes.
One of them was not at all pretty and one of them was just cute.
They had a condensed Osmond situation going on.
They did.
You remember what the Osmonds looked like?
Do you remember the way the Osmonds looked?
Weren't those two Osmonds?
Oh, no.
My eye blotted them out.
It was like some kind of a terrible genetic experiment.
Well, it's true of the Jacksons, too.
They're not all beautiful.
No, and they were a lot older.
They weren't nearly as cute.
But if you look at Hanson now...
You'll find that the one that was awkward looking has really grown into his looks.
Oh my goodness.
They look like the Bee Gees now.
Yeah, they look like the Bee Gees.
And the one that was beautiful has kind of like... What happened to that little girl?
Look at that.
He's also grown into just being a normal guy.
He looks like he should be in a band from New Zealand.
Doesn't he?
Doesn't he look like he should be a crowded house?
They all do.
They're all from New Zealand.
This is so New Zealand.
Look at them.
Look at the super little one.
Look at him.
He's still got floopy hair.
He's all grown up.
Oh, look at that.
If you were to go back... This is an example of a thing where I feel like you should go back to...
And child Hanson grow back to go back to them and say, hey, one day you're going to grow up and like like awkward older brother is going to look great and like beautiful younger brother is going to be fine, too.
So, like, don't don't sweat it.
Chew on that.
Don't sweat it.
Everybody's fine.
Everybody grows into what they're going to grow into.
That's true.
And you never know what you're going to grow into.
You never know what you're going to grow into.
There's no way.
You don't get like a direct message from the Lord that says, don't worry so much about that.
You're going to be fine.
Don't worry about your dingus.
You're going to be fine.
You're going to be fine.
It gets better.
You're going to grow into your dingus.
Don't worry.
Don't worry about this.
Don't worry about the smells.
We will have ways to take care of that.
If you went back, if your young self could see you now.
Yes.
With all of the things, it's hard to try and communicate to your younger self what exactly you are, right?
I mean, I think it would take an hour and a half for my younger self to even understand what I am.
I've had this conversation at length with our friend John Syracuse, and he seems to stipulate that the hardest part is going to be the proving that you are the you from the future.
If you can prove that, everything else kind of falls in place a little bit.
Although, let's be honest, you now have a middle-aged man still talking to a teenager, and it's weird.
But if you could, do we want to take it as red?
You, for whatever reason, TK reason, you are able to know that that is absolutely you from the future.
I think you could establish that very quickly.
Syracuse would not accept that stipulation, but he's not on this program.
He's also a computer programmer.
You know things about yourself that no one else could ever possibly know.
And if you have thought about your childhood at all, you know what those things would be.
You know, you walk up to somebody and say, look, I know.
You shake the shoulders and you say, listen, the first time you ever committed the sin of own and you were watching soap on ABC and you go, holy shit.
how did you know that look it's not that i've been watching you it's that i am you and i know exactly how it felt that one time or whatever and you're chasing the dragon aren't you buddy you're 15 you're still chasing the dragon never gonna be that good again i know what you did last summer but not only that but like i know how it felt and the kid would have to be like because the thing is you're not now you got him back on his heels he's back on his heels at that point
Because you're not standing there as a like a like a five foot tall woman with like a with like a white afro.
You do look enough like yourself that you're like, look, I know I look kind of like I should be related to you, like an uncle, like a really close uncle or like a like a missing dad or something.
Yes.
But it's because I'm you.
And then you're your younger self who is already into.
science fiction or already like your imagination's like certainly pondering the possibility of these things well like you imagine you went back and you were trying to conjure conjure an orb on the way home from school you walk up to that young john you say here's your orb and you go what who even are you yeah guess what guess what here's your orb guess what i know what you think about right now and that is that somebody should make you a three-quarter scale rolls royce silver shadow
that because it's three-quarter scale, you wouldn't need a driver's license for it.
Nope, it's a loophole.
And the seventh grader in me would be like, I'm completely within the law.
It was just some like richy, rich idea that I had.
If I was driving around my neighborhood in a three-quarter scale Rolls Royce, that would be perfectly normal.
I would like it to be just a little bit smaller than that.
I would like it to be bigger than a ride at the park with a wheel that doesn't do anything, but not too much bigger.
It would be, you know, it would be appropriately scaled for me in sixth grade.
Yes.
It would be built to John's scale.
Yeah, John's scale.
Okay.
If I were to say that to myself walking home from school trying to conjure an orb, because that's the same era.
Yep.
Orb, conjuring era.
100%.
That child would have said, I never told anybody about that.
Mm-hmm.
And I would have said, I know you didn't know that.
And he would have said, how do you know about that?
And I would say, look at me.
Look at me.
Look at me.
I know everything.
I know everything.
I even remember this happening right now.
Yeah.
See?
That's right.
I remember this.
I remember this.
Now it's like I turned the camera onto the mirror.
You've accepted.
And so what are we getting at here?
We're getting at what is the thing you try to warn them off of?
Don't worry about your dingus.
If you just were to sit that person down and go, look, you're just going to be fine.
Everything's going to be fine.
You're going to be fine.
but here's the thing like because i was riding my vespa the other day yeah i saw and i realized that as i'm riding it around i was like i've had this vespa since i was 15. and then i was like and that's like 10 years did you like when you were in your uh your your bi years did you just keep it at your mom's house over the years it's been everywhere uh i left it in alaska
And then when my folks, or when my mom moved to Seattle, I brought it down, I rode it around Seattle for a while, and then it kinda like quit working, and I put it under the stairs at her house in the basement.
And then it got covered with blankets, and then other things got stacked on top of it, and for a while it lived down there under a pile of guitar cases.
And I knew it was there, but we were like, we were spending all our time playing guitar.
And then I pulled it out and got running again.
And then I bought my own house and that was running for a while.
We had we had many great years together here and then it stopped running again.
You know, it's like I'm not a great maintainer of my things.
So when something like runs out of gas or gets a flat tire.
Yes.
I generally throw a blanket over it.
Boy, I don't know how that's going to get fixed.
Anyway, moving on.
But the Vespa and I have, you know, we have lived many, many lives together in Alaska and Washington.
34 years, it turns out.
My goodness, that's amazing.
Because I am almost 50 years old.
And I was like, 34 years I've had this Vespa.
Like, I know all kinds of people who are not even that old.
Yeah.
And so...
I was trying to think, how would I say to the 15-year-old that first bought this Vespa, like, if I rode up to him through the mists of time on this thing, like... What if you showed up in a full-size Rolls Royce?
That'd be hard to refute.
Said, hey, Ricky Schroeder, look.
This is it.
This is what it turns into.
But, like, the Vespa looks like shit now.
It's got rust on it.
Like, I beat it up over the years.
But it's still running.
Yep.
And I'm still running.
You're still running, John.
No, I beat up.
Still running.
Still running.
Still running.
Still running.
And what would that younger self say?
That younger self would never occur to me at 15 that I would still have that Vespa at 50 and that I would have taken such poor care of it.
Yes.
And to just be like, look, this is it.
I'm here to tell you, you never bought a really nice Vespa.
You just kept this one and managed to keep it running.
And things aren't bad.
Things aren't bad.
Like, you're not a senator, but that's cool.
Oh, man.
That's rough.
You're fine.
It ends up being fine.
Think how things would be different if you always knew you wouldn't be a senator or a chief of the CIA.
Imagine how differently you would have conducted yourself.
Oh.
The line between loser and okay was so... There were so many things that were on the wrong side of that line.
Because you start out with such a deficit.
You start out so far behind, you feel like you need to get some really big points on the board to just even be normal.
Well, and it's so confusing because, I mean, at least the way that I grew up, there were so many perfectly fine, reasonable jobs and outcomes that I...
was either taught were not enough or determined were not enough.
So whole swaths of being a, being a perfectly fine, valid human being, I just eliminated from contention because, well, it's not like I could,
you know, I don't know what, drive a truck for a living.
And it's like driving a truck for a living is perfectly great job.
And frankly, I would have been great at it.
I think that life would have been a lot better if I had just spent some some years driving a truck.
Right.
Yes.
It's like very, very upright up what I should have done for for for a period.
But I could not I couldn't have conceived of it at that age.
And to go and say, like, you never got rich.
You're not that important.
You are fine, though.
Boy, that would be the hardest pill.
But your conception of fine at that age, it would be really hard to sell.
Yeah, because it's like, you never got married, but you're fine.
And I would be like, I never got married, but I'm fine.
All right.
But it's not like you didn't get married and you live in a house on the hill with your dead mother either.
You're in the world, right?
You're a member of the world.
He used to live in a hill with your live mother.
Yeah, that's right.
I mean, your mom's still alive, so that's not applicable.
She's staring down from the window.
And you know what?
We are running a motel, but so what?
So what?
I like birds.
Is that a problem?
Please continue.
You want to keep going?
What time are we?
5811.
I don't know.
You've got places to be.
Listen, we've got to make this real quick.
Yeah.
Okay, first of all, now, with that said...
Well, I had one thing to say about this, which is I still feel like the single hardest thing to talk somebody out of for any number of reasons is social anxiety.
I think there are all kinds of messages that if you coded it right, you could pass on to somebody.
But really, it's still a middle-aged guy's advice.
I think one of the hardest things is social anxiety, which a lot of people suffer from in some form or another.
I'm realizing how many people have some form.
It's not like you talking about like...
What's the phrase you use?
Whether you're an extrovert or introvert.
I think there's a surprising number of people that manifest some version of social anxiety in some way or other.
I do not have a single fucking thing that I could say to young me that would save that one.
I think that might be one of the hardest ones.
And it's a thing that you see all the time.
Just like people trying to talk about other people's depression.
Yeah.
where the solutions stay safe other solutions that other people offer to whatever various permutations of social anxiety you may or may not have those solutions those proffered solutions are useless they don't take anything into account that anything useful is the basic reality of what the thing is exactly and and that's something that i've
Really had to continue to learn and learn and learn and learn over and over because you find there are there are social anxieties you hadn't considered.
They debilitate people in ways that you hadn't imagined.
And the world is sympathetic or not, depending on where you're standing in the world.
They have effects that can be invisible or weird.
The effects, I mean, when things are, when the effects of something are invisible or to you irrational, it's very difficult.
You look at something and say, oh, come on, buck up.
That's crazy.
That wouldn't happen.
He goes, yeah, I know it's crazy.
That's the problem is I know what I'm feeling is wrong.
Right.
Right.
And to say like, look, you've been through this a bunch of times because the sensible thing, even if you even if you are aware of it at a deep level to say, like, you've done this a lot.
And every time, you know, it turns out OK.
So you can do it this time and be assured that it will turn out OK.
That still doesn't help.
Nope.
Doesn't get at that basic, that basic feeling that if there's a feeling you have that is the default background hum of your life, it is your life.
You know, whatever that whatever that overriding feeling is that you have lacking any other intervention, there's your default state will be this and that you can't talk somebody out of their default state or just give them a little chuck on the shoulder.
Well, you know, you arrived at a place when you were like realized that you were fully an adult that you decided, oh, you know what?
These things that I don't like to do, I'm just not going to do anymore.
And a lot of the things that caused you anxiety, you just decided that you weren't going to do them.
It's difficult to work hard and not do known good things in the pursuit of something you feel like you have to do that's not actually a good thing.
Yeah, right.
I mean, you started to say no to things that everybody was like, what?
You can't say no to that.
You have to answer all your email today.
Yeah, that's the thing.
And the thing is, I'm still...
wrestling with it because I still say yes to things that I have no interest in doing and that will cause me pain.
But you're an adventurer.
You're different from me.
You're an adventurous person.
Well, and that is, you know, we are different in that respect, but there are a lot, I mean, I had a thing earlier this year.
I think you and I might have even talked about it.
Oh, yeah, we did.
They offered you the thing and you were going to prep and do all the stuff.
Yes!
And it was all presented as like a big favor to you.
And my mom did a similar thing to you in her life.
When she retired from work, she said – and she retired pretty young, I think.
By today's standards.
By today's standards, right?
She was like 65 or something.
And she said, I'm not –
ever going to dress like anybody else wants.
I'm not going to dress for anybody else anymore.
And I'm not going to go do anything.
I'm not going to do things that I don't want to do.
I'm not going to go to people's cocktail parties just because they are my neighbors and they invited me to their party.
I don't want to go to the party.
I like you.
I see you all the time.
We're fine with that.
I don't want to go to a party.
My not coming to your cocktail party is not a reflection of our relationship.
That's right.
I'll see you tomorrow.
We're good.
And I, you know what, any of your friends that you think I should meet, I just don't want to meet them.
And I'm fine with that.
And please, you be fine with it.
And she's never been happier.
She's lived the last 20 years of her life just like absolutely the happiest person.
She's a model.
She's a model in so many ways, really, honestly.
But she's the one that said to me, like, why are you agreeing to do this thing?
It's already causing you problems.
And I was like, I'm considering doing this thing you clearly don't want to do.
She was like, you just tell them no.
And I was like, but you know, if I tell them no, it'll make them sad.
And you know, and what if I, uh, what if maybe they won't ask you again?
Yeah.
Or, you know, in my thing, the adventure thing is like, what if this turns into something that I couldn't have imagined?
What if this, what if I end up leaving this event and getting into a sleigh and it takes me to the North pole and I, and it turns out I'm Santa and I was all along and she's like, you hate to leave that behind.
And she's like, you wouldn't even like being Santa.
She's very wise.
Oh, wow, I wouldn't like being Santa.
You're so right.
I mean, parts of being Santa would be cool.
Well, yeah, I mean, I don't think, I think probably the, you know, the...
The OSHA issues are probably kind of minimal there.
But you're responsible for so many people's happiness.
It's human rights, not elf rights.
Well, and that's the other thing, right?
I mean, who can... I mean, elves are... I bet they're hard to deal with.
I'll bet they're fucking super horny.
I bet those elves are just fucking... They're just fucking everything in that place.
It's the anime problem, right?
Would you call it the Olympic village problem?
Imagine being in an elf village.
You work all day basically as a slave laborer making toys.
At night, you're going to do some finger banging.
Well, but this is the thing.
Between elves, that's fine.
But what happens if Santa gets involved?
Oh, no.
Right?
Oh, no.
See?
Because you think you'd be tempted?
Would you feel like... I mean... The laws are probably pretty lax up there.
I don't know what our advertisers are going to think about this, but...
You know, if you're Santa, you're the law.
You're the law in the North Pole.
And so what happens then?
You know, like, do the elves call him Santa?
They do.
See, we watched Adam's Family Values last night, and I felt uncomfortable about how they were trying to set up Uncle Fester with the new nanny.
That's nothing compared to the shit Santa could get away with.
Of course.
That big giant belt buckle gets undone?
Oh, man.
The name Santa is just an anagram for daddy.
Santa daddy.