Ep. 322: "1 Infinite China"
Hello?
Hi, John.
Hi, Merlin.
How's it going?
Dropping that fat beat.
You sound good this morning.
It's interesting because I am reporting to you through...
Basically, I'm behind seven proxies.
I know.
I never even try.
But I'm talking to you through a proxy.
Okay.
Of the old computer, the Anna Banana computer.
You're on the Anna Banana computer now?
I'm on a facsimile of the Anna Banana computer that has been mounted onto the thin computer.
Did you do this all yourself?
You cloned a drive?
Yeah, and it's weird because half of the things that were in the dock of the Anna Banana computer, they just are question marks now over there.
They're not even recognized as whatever they were.
I don't remember.
You're entering a world of pain.
Oh, no.
And I found all my old flip videos.
Oh, I love those.
Yeah, but you have to convert them into Moves.
Because they were in some other format.
What did you want to do with them if they had to be moves?
Watch them.
Huh.
Well, let me watch them because they weren't moves.
Yeah, what are mine?
But I got all these other things, too.
I found all these other things.
And you can get to your old MP3s.
Oh, wow.
I haven't even tried my... Oh, yeah.
Well, maybe.
Who knows?
I haven't gotten that far.
I've just been backing up.
Have you ever backed up?
Yes.
Have you ever backed up?
It's like asking me if I've ever urinated.
I have two different backups running constantly.
And I'll do a clone.
I'll do a clone sometimes.
I'm a little off of clones right now.
But yeah, I mean, one should not speak of backup because that's like saying you haven't gotten a cold this year.
You know what I'm saying?
Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep
Well, let me get my vape pen.
All right.
So you cloned the drive of your fin computer and you booted up from that drive.
You booted up from a banana computer, and that's where you're getting blank icons, right?
Yep.
Yep.
Yep.
And I'm using an earlier version of Skype.
Oh, isn't it nice?
It's so nice over here.
I'm still on it.
Don't shh.
It's just like saying you haven't gotten a cold or gotten screwed by your backup, but I am on.
Don't tell anyone.
I'm on 7.59.
Let me see which one I'm on.
Copyright 2017.
About Skype.
You're on 7.
Which?
Where?
7.59 per N37.
7.5.
Don't ask me.
Okay.
How do you get it to keep running and not yell at you?
I have no idea.
I'm living on borrowed time.
I thought... I got all the nasty grams about how this one was going to go away.
Do you want to update now?
He said, no.
Not right now.
And somehow I'm still running.
Oh, still running.
I'm still... I don't want to update anything.
This is why you shouldn't update anything.
Running against the wind.
Oh...
I never update.
That's what I've learned.
Don't tweet, don't update.
John Sircusa has been very generous in offering to help me when all is said and done.
Because all has not been said.
Some things have been said and few things are done.
Yeah.
Right now, a lot has been said.
A couple of things have actually been done.
Okay, okay.
But not all has been said.
So you've just, I don't want to spoil it here, but you have returned to him after Todd's advisements about buying something off the shelf.
You've returned him.
Now, John was admonishing me because you had not gotten back to him.
You now have gotten back to him?
Oh.
I think he's very concerned, John.
No, I haven't directly gotten back to him.
You should get back to him.
But I've, I talk to him all the time in my head now, which I think is something that you were already in my world.
Yeah.
So, but I'm, so I went to the, I'm cataloging my own failures all the time and I'm still doing it wrong.
The voice tells me, I know, I know I'm doing everything wrong, but I'm even noticing it wrong.
I'm probably even telling you wrong.
Yeah.
You're telling me about it wrong.
I went to the Apple store.
Okay.
Did you talk to Todd?
I didn't know Todd.
Todd wear a utility kilt.
Todd does not.
Okay, my manager, who now has moved to the Big Apple, well, the Big Apple at Avignon, he's a kilt guy, utility kilt guy, very handsome guy.
Oh, he didn't move to the Big Apple.
He moved to the Big Apple.
One infinite loop.
Yes.
That's what I call it.
One up in place, yes.
That's what I call it.
No, no, Todd dresses like...
Like, he was walking through an outlet mall.
He got to the J. Crew outlet store.
Oh, so his pants fit.
He went in.
Someone very helpful came up to him and said, how can I help you?
And he was like, give me one of everything.
Okay.
All right.
Handsome guy.
He's a handsome guy.
Yeah.
I bet that helps.
I bet that helps a lot.
He dresses like a Scott Simpson.
Oh, sure.
A little handsomess goes a long way.
He has a very, very long torso, Scott Simpson.
Yeah, Todd does not.
Okay.
Normal size.
Okay.
Anyway, no, Todd works at a different Apple store than the one I go to, which makes everything a little bit more complicated because I'm always texting him like, what the fuck is going on?
How do you keep all this straight?
You've got a lot of balls in the electronic balls in the air.
I have 5,000 friends.
This is the fucking problem.
That's the problem.
So I went to the Apple store and I said, look, I got this thing.
I got this laptop and it stopped working.
And I know I wasn't.
I know that Apple care had expired.
Yeah.
I know there's nothing you guys can do.
But on the other hand, my laptop stopped working.
Yeah.
And when I bought it, that wasn't what I expected was going to happen.
Okay.
Right?
Well, I think ordinarily you'd expect it to keep working in some fashion.
Yeah, keep working.
Yeah.
And they were very nice.
Hmm.
They were very understanding.
I'm constantly interrupting you.
I'm so sorry.
We bought one of those white laptops a long time ago at the UCSF store.
That's where our show art comes from.
That got stolen.
That's right.
And then your friend.
It was stolen in Chile.
Oh, Chile.
And then, okay, and then you got a laptop after that, and that one got stolen, too, and got found in an iPad.
No, that one's lying around here somewhere with, like, the battery's not in it anymore.
It just kind of sits, I don't know.
Is that the one you're talking about now?
No.
Then I got a MacBook Air, which is the one that got stolen.
Okay, and that's the one Detective Fujiyama found, and then he would hit his butt on the security pad.
But he didn't find it.
He found everything else.
Oh, interesting wrinkle.
But the kid that got caught smoking crack in his car, we speculate, the detective and I, that he pawned the computer for the crack...
Even though he had a giant bar of silver.
Yes.
Basically like in his lap.
I think one thing, though, if I don't understand a great deal about the drug economy, but I think when somebody who's in a position to sell you crack.
Well, first of all, it's crack.
Let's be honest.
And so somebody comes along and goes, I really, really, really like some crack.
And they say, well, do you have American money?
He says, no, but I have this beautiful wedge-shaped MacBook Air.
He says, okay, I'll give you $15 worth of crack.
Yes.
Isn't that the way the economy kind of works?
Isn't that why stuff gets stolen?
It's because you get something for it.
Yes.
But he probably didn't get me like $800 for it.
He did not.
Okay.
He got some nothing for it.
But he got some dark nugs.
And he got whatever he got.
But it's not... I was not able to recover that laptop.
And so I went to the Mac store then, 2015...
And I bought a 2015 iBook.
iBook Pro.
Okay.
iMacBook Pro?
Probably.
MacBook Pro.
MacBook Pro.
This is different from the MacBook Air was stolen.
You book.
Telephone.
What happened was.
Okay.
I need a Washington Post infographic.
So you replaced the stolen, the Dr. Fujiyama one got replaced with an iMac MacBook Pro.
What year did you buy that?
2015.
I have a 2015 MacBook Pro and I love it.
Yes.
It's a good-ass computer.
I wasn't so psyched about the MacBook Air.
It just didn't, I just had a little, I wasn't, I don't know what it was.
I didn't have all the confidence.
It's slight.
It's a little slight.
So when I went to replace it, because when I went to the store to buy it in the first place, I was like, and I took the air.
But then when I had a do-over, right?
I had a chance to do it over, and I got the MacBook Pro that time, and I never had a beef with it.
I liked it.
It was a good computer.
It was a fine computer.
I did a lot of things.
It's substantial.
It's a substantial computer.
It had a lot of inputs.
It had a lot of outputs.
Anyway, that one is the one that stopped working and they said it was the video card had gone out.
Oh, the video card.
And the first guy I talked to was like, look, you can get these on the open market for a thousand bucks and it's going to cost you 500, 600 bucks to fix it.
And I was like, you are nice about it.
He was nice about it.
But it felt a little bit like I was in a Moroccan carpet show.
I was like, you can get these for $1,000 on the open market?
Well, gee, I feel like you're right.
Well, pour me another glass of tea and let's talk about this.
So I talked to you.
I talked to John Sircusa.
Sircusa.
You guys both said, don't buy a new laptop.
Don't buy a new MacBook Pro.
It should be good, but it's not.
Right.
That's how they get you.
I'm going to be traveling.
I'm doing all this traveling.
But I used to podcast live from all kinds of locations, from Venice, California, and from my bathtub, and from all these places.
Over Wi-Fi.
Yeah, what happened to me?
When did I lose the laptop?
But then I get not good at doing things anymore.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I was like, oh, I need a laptop.
Okay.
That's one of the key elements of being able to podcast from your bathtub.
Right.
Right.
So I went in.
Anyway, I talked to them about it.
And they were like, all right.
We'll...
We'll fix your laptop.
Hmm.
And I was like, good.
I agree with your decision.
They offered to replace a video card in your MacBook Air.
MacBook Pro.
MacBook Air Pro.
Okay.
Not Air.
Sorry.
Yeah.
You know, not off.
It wasn't like, let us.
They weren't falling over each other to do it.
Sure.
But we arrived at an arrangement.
Okay.
Okay.
So I had to, but the problem was it didn't have a video card, so I couldn't see it to back it up.
Oh yeah, they'd like you to back it up before you bring it in.
Right, so I went down there and I had this four terabyte drive that I bought that was slightly bigger than a pack of cigarettes.
That's amazing.
And I was like, this supposedly has four terabytes worth of capacity.
And the guy was like, wow.
Wow.
And I was like, yeah, but I couldn't back it up before because I can't see the screen.
And he was like, no problem.
And he came out from the back with a giant monitor and he set it up right there on the Apple expert desk.
And we fired up the computer and here it showed up on the big monitor.
Yeah, I'm in firewire target mode.
yeah no well no i mean it was i could see my desk i could see my desk it wasn't just like it wasn't in target mode it wasn't targeting around it was just he brought it up though at the expert desk yeah and uh and then we started backing it up to the to the fire nice that's a nice thing to do i said this is going to take a long time you don't have to just sit here with me and he was like oh i'm happy to and we just sat and chatted for whatever 45 minutes how long ago was this
A couple of days.
Oh, okay.
A couple of days ago.
All right.
And so then my laptop was all on the little pack of cigarettes.
The four-terabyte cigarette pack.
But I didn't do the whole backup.
I just backed up the stuff that I wanted.
I didn't back up the OS anymore.
We had a conversation about this at the time.
It's like, I'm going to back up the OS.
It's going to take like three hours here.
What computer did you take a picture of where you asked me what the port was?
Is that Anna Banana?
That's the Anna Banana computer.
Oh, so I see.
So that's why you need to know what Firewire 400 was.
Right.
So I got home with my terabyte drive.
with my laptop on it because i sent the laptop away it's gone now it's flying it's flying on its way to one infinite loop or to one infinite china or wherever they're sending this is designed in california all right and
This is complicated.
Okay.
So I said, now I'm going to put the Anna Banana computer on this four terabyte drive.
I got four terabytes.
Put it on there.
You get your MP3s back and your zips.
What is it called?
Is it called a zip?
Is it a zip camera?
No, flips.
Flip camera, right.
I get my flips.
I get all my old, I get 1,000 riffs.
Mm-hmm.
um i have files here let's see what are some of the files i have general desktop stuff general desktop major confusion dad's affairs i have long winter's archive i have uh a file called interviews interviews a file called isbook uh you know all this stuff what i wouldn't want to lose any of these right no uh but
So I wanted to put the Anna Banana computer on this, but the Anna Banana computer only has FireWire 400 jacks.
Jacks.
And I sent you a picture of him, and you were like, FireWire 400.
And I went online.
I was like, FireWire 400 to Thunderbolt.
They were like, ha, ha, ha, no.
.avi is the format of Flip.
.avi, that's right.
And they wouldn't play, this thing at least won't play .avi's.
But it will convert them to Moves.
Oh, no, it wouldn't.
There was a website I went to.
And if you drag your AVI's into it, it converts them to Moves.
And I found a very nice video I took of my mom in 2008 of her sitting in her living room talking about how much money some neighbor made on their house flipping.
And she's just staring out the window just like, and then, you know, now the place is worth a million, too.
But back then, it was... She's back in her old house.
Yeah.
She's back in her... Oh, no, no.
She's in the living room of my house.
Okay.
And then at a certain point, she looks at the camera and she goes, are you about finished?
Yeah.
Classic.
Just all these treasure memories.
We got that camera when our baby was really a baby.
I've had two or three of them because they did break.
But like, oh, that thing was gold.
I took so many.
Well, partly because our baby was cuter then.
But like we took so many movies and it was so easy and so casual.
And like, God, that thing could not have been better timing for our family.
Yeah.
It was really fun.
Sadly, I don't have that many of those flip videos.
Okay, so.
Oh.
So it's going to Infinite China, the laptop.
You've got your four terabyte with all the stuff.
So I went back and forth, back and forth.
And I think I've talked to you about this before.
When I tried to get into the Anna Banana computer, the Anna Banana computer was like, input your password.
And I was like, password?
I never logged out of this computer, so I never had to log back into it.
It was just always on.
And so...
I don't remember what the password was.
And the hint, here's the hint I gave myself.
Oh, geez.
Because I set this password up whenever I got this computer in 2006 or something.
And it was, you know, it was used.
It was like a 2003 computer then.
The password hint was password from the Long Winters website.
Whatever the password was that I used to log into the Long Winters website.
You should have told me that XY.
Oh.
Was it a Ben thing or a me thing?
Well, so there is, at least one of my computers has a Merlin Mann admin account on it.
All computers have that now.
That I think might have gotten ported over from that one we bought in 2002.
Anyway.
So I couldn't get into it.
Couldn't get into it.
I mean, I could get into it, but I couldn't get into the administrative ability.
I had suggested a password to you.
As the word came out of my mouth, I was like, you know what?
Given where I was in life at that point, that is exactly probably the password I would have made.
And it's not a good password.
I'm not going to say what it was.
You have to go find it yourself.
My password, I discovered, I finally figured out what it was, was I remembered the password.
The right password, but I had overcomplicated it because in the intervening years, we decided that once you got on a set of proxies, you started getting real leaked.
I did.
I did.
And so I had to go, I had to reverse engineer my new thinking and get back to a time when I, when my passwords were really weak and
And so I got in.
But what I discovered was I could not use – I couldn't target disk mode because I couldn't hook it to the other computer because I didn't have any cables that went between.
I couldn't use Migration Assistant because Migration Assistant didn't exist on the old computer.
It wasn't functional.
And, but I, but I figured out you could hook them together through Ethernet.
Ethernet.
Ethernet.
Ethernet.
John discovers Ethernet.
Ethernet.
And then.
Seven and a half years into our podcast.
Then the migration assistant would work if I had them connected by Ethernet.
It's magic.
It's magic.
Yeah.
So I let, so I set them running and I went and made a pot of coffee and then I went to sleep.
And when I woke up in the morning, the Anna Banana computer now existed on the Jason Finn computer.
It was in the middle of it.
But it had built itself a new...
user yeah that's why yeah that gets confusing and that's one reason i always do like a separate admin account from the person account it gets confusing and i still have i did one time i didn't do that and i still have my two laptops ago my laptop still had my name misspelled as the home directory and i could never it said i was melon i
And I had to live with that.
Wrong password.
Try user melon.
N-E-L-I-N.
Melon.
Somewhere around here, there is definitely a world which is on my computer that's like a folder or something called Melrin.
Doug, I had to make a text expander shortcut to stop myself doing that.
Look at your text.
Don't say it out loud.
That's the best word for an old version of longwinters.com.
oh wow it was up to the listener basically it's a real stupid leet version of a long winter's title there is so much leet in my life yeah i really leeted it up it's because you're on 4chan all the time right heck doing your pete townsend research yeah uh that's where i learned you're a reporter you're you're a journalist cmj denies they ever paid you but let's be honest you're a journalist
Oh, did you see that?
I did see that.
CMJ declaims any knowledge of ever having paid you to make fun of the Hold Steady.
I think that's big pop money we're talking about.
Well, it's nice for one that CMJ listens to our podcast.
Well, they probably have an intern that does stuff like that.
Joel, were we mentioned this week?
Joel!
Yes, sir, Mr. J. They said something that might not be true, Mr. J. Do we have any of those Glenn Gary accounts still available?
Grace?
Grace?
Grace, where do we stand with the Cullen and Loy follower situation?
And the German bearer bonds.
I thought that was very nice to hear from them, to hear from CMJ, even though they were saying that I was wrong.
CMJ used to be a pretty big deal.
They were a big deal.
If they didn't pay me, then they gave me like gold-plated something.
I don't remember.
Went free attaboy.
No, I never get any of that.
Oh, so now, but the problem is, so I mounted this terabyte thing now on the Jason Finn computer, which already I felt was, was like super overburdened, like just lagging because I had made the mistake of updating the operating system.
Now it has three accounts, three users on it.
It has banana Mac.
It has, it has Finn Mac.
Okay.
And it has Mac.
It has laptop Mac.
Okay.
It has Melrin Man.
No, it has the laptop on here too now.
And they're all... And they're fighting.
They're fighting.
One of them only has three under one leaves.
Three under one leaves, but what I want... What I want... It's a guarantee.
Get me my MP3s.
What I want is all of them melded together with no duplication.
And then... There's apps for that, but they ain't pretty.
And then meld it together with no duplication.
Okay.
Then I want all of that.
One single identity that belongs to me that has all my MP3s.
You want to be made whole.
I want to be made whole.
Yes.
I want all the pictures.
I want all the documents.
All the flips.
All the riffs.
All the riffs.
I want them all on one.
Then I want that.
put onto the new computer i'm going to buy that john circuza designed for me that apple now has to have specially made for me okay and they oh so apple says something when some of this has been said how much has been done
Well, so Apple now says... We're pivoting to a, by my calculation, fourth computer, which is a notional computer right now.
That's the one that John Cercusa designed for you.
Right.
And Apple says, if we build this computer for you, you will come.
But here's when you need to come.
You only have 14 days to pick it up.
Uh-oh.
If we build it and it arrives here, you have 14 days to pick it up.
Otherwise, they just give it to whoever.
I don't know what happens.
They give it to Joel, the intern.
I didn't ask that, but I mean, they're like, yeah, after 14 days, we wheel it out into the center of the mall.
First kid that skateboards by grabs it, and you still have to pay for it.
And I was like, well, sometimes, you know, what if I go from the Couve to the Arubes to the Cruz?
Yeah.
I'm going to be gone for 14 days.
I don't know when your things are going to show up.
We're back now to thinking about all the things.
Got to think about things.
But when that happens, so that's going to show up one of these days.
I want to put all this stuff on it.
And then John Thiracusa says, I think I can help you put the Jason Finn computer back on an earlier OS.
And I was like, look, I just want to wipe it clean.
and then put it back on an earlier OS, and then just use it like Merlin uses his 7.9 Skype.
Just use it until nothing, because it was a fine computer.
This is some Mission Impossible level shit, my friend.
It was a fine computer, and I just want to use it.
You're going to need a rubber mask and some suction cups?
This is a lot going on here.
And then I'll just use it to surf the web, or I'll use it to whatever.
It was fine before I updated it, so I want to backdate it,
I want to take all the stuff off of it.
I don't want 17 different iterations.
You're going to retrofit it.
Yeah.
And then the Anna Banana computer.
Yeah.
Boy, I don't know, man.
I could just... Shoot it into the sun.
No, I'll put pictures on it and I'll put it on screensaver so it just is a constant slideshow of all of my pictures.
Okay.
And I'll put it in the corner of a room.
You've got a real Batcave kind of situation coming here.
Yeah.
You've got a lot going on.
You're going to have three computers.
If I have the identity...
If I have my entire identity, all in one identity, on the new computer designed by John Theracusa, then I'll get my laptop back.
And then I'll be able to get that single identity, but shared on two computers where if you update one, it goes right to the other.
Through the cloud.
Through the cloud.
Okay.
I don't know if I... I don't feel like I've ever remembered you thinking this ambitiously about notional technology.
This is an exciting time.
Yeah.
Well, thinking about this stuff, John, but I want it to all.
So I don't know how normally you got the iCloud syncing.
You got the Dropbox.
There's various ways.
It is.
We've come a long way from where we were at the time you and I met where there was a lot more drudgery to doing these kinds of things.
It's gotten way better.
I got Google Docs.
You got Google Docs, yeah.
I got an Amazon Prime account.
That's true.
I have Google Photos.
Love Google Photos.
Everything goes into Google Photos now.
That'll suck up your AVIs, pretty sure.
Oh, grab those AVIs?
Right.
And if you're doing the Amazon Photos, if you got Amazon Prime, you might as well let them do it, too.
Right.
What?
Is that right?
Amazon can do it too.
Shit, dog.
So then all your photos are two places.
You get no belt, seven suspenders.
Like, you're going to be fucking in your corn, my friend.
It is going to be up in the cloud wherever you go.
And if it's up in the cloud, the cloud.
then the computer doesn't need the latest operating system.
It's a dumb device.
I don't care.
Fuck, I don't care.
It's just a cloud-obtaining interface.
Right.
So I could go, oh, the problem with the Anna Banana computer.
You could go to the Cabos and the Labos, all the places you need to go, and I'm assuming they have cloud there.
I don't know if they have cloud.
Here was the ish, though.
The ish with the Anna Banana computer was that the latest iteration of Chrome and Safari was
Neither one were supported on that computer.
So I was like, well, I just want to go to the cloud.
And they were like, sorry, we can't we can't put the new Chrome on your desktop.
So therefore, got to get Netscape Navigator.
Right.
You have to get Netscape Navigator.
And I was like, well, what about Linux?
Yeah.
And they were like, you don't know what you're talking about.
Yeah.
They say this is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop.
Really?
Oh, yeah.
It's going to be coming this year.
2019?
Eh, you know.
Is it going to have a user interface, you mean?
Instead of just, like, bleeps and bloops?
You think typing's not a user interface?
Barely.
Okay.
No, no, they have an interface.
It's like watching... It's like watching, I don't know, a community theater play about computers.
Mm-hmm.
Hang on.
I'm going to rewrite the... Hit me off this merry-go-round.
I'm in.
I cracked the encryption.
I kid.
I don't know that much about Linux.
Yeah.
There is a form of Unix.
Unix underpinning your systems.
Oh, yeah.
I don't want to hear about that.
You got Unix under your hoods right now.
Yeah, I got Unix under my Unix.
Unix all the way down.
It's Linux's all the way down.
so this is a very this is a very ambitious program you have going plus you're gonna travel wait wait wait there's more no i have the iphone and the i watch okay and somehow they're all gonna get so that when i when something happens on one of those yes so for instance
I have a little group of people that gets lunch every once in a while because I have 5,000 friends.
Okay.
And so I have to keep them going.
I got a young dads group who are all dads in their 50s.
Cool.
We call ourselves the young dads.
Cool, cool.
I got the Dim Summit.
Okay.
That happens.
Then I have a secondary Dim Summit that's much more punk rock than the first Dim Summit.
Oh, okay.
So the secondary Dim Summit is not called Dim Summit.
Okay.
But that involves certain members of the Murder City Devils and Deep Creep and some adjunct punk rock bands.
We also go to get dim sum, but at a different restaurant than the dim sum.
You want to keep those separate, like mentally, physically.
It's important you keep that stuff in its own little kind of file jacket.
You don't want to get into a situation where you're like... You don't want to mix up that and the dads.
That's going to be a real French play type situation.
The dads aren't even sophisticated enough to get dim sum.
It'd be kind of funny if you had to do a Mrs. Doubtfire, though.
Kind of run between the two.
Oh, right back and forth.
You get so much dim sum.
I had my little, like, Jughead hat that I put on when I went to the punk rock side, and then I would take it off and run over and talk to the other guys.
Don't you have hamburgers?
Yeah.
I'll gladly pay you Tuesday.
Yeah.
uh anyway i gotta keep these all and some of these people use mimes so i get mimes in my or i don't know if you guys pronounce them mimes or whatever they are on the maze yeah mimes oh you get like a funny thing like ah everything's happening um
Right, click on it.
The guy that was running for president.
Yeah, click on the Meme, and then it populates your calendar.
Oh, so these are conducted in the messages program.
You get groups, and the groups are going to be bioavailable on all of your various devices.
Yeah.
And then one of my things, whatever thing I'm looking at is going to say, you have a meme.
You could spin your chair and go to the other computer.
Right.
And it goes like, when you just sent me that text, it showed up on...
And a banana computer that I'm running on.
It showed up on Banana Mac, which I'm running on FinMac.
Okay.
Right?
You're virtualized.
It's all happening.
It's a lot closer.
But the thing is, did it show up on my watch?
This is the million-dollar question.
Supposedly, there are some secret sauces, some Chinese sauce, that will send it to the thing it thinks you're using.
And it sends it to all of the places, but it ding-dongs on the ones it thinks you're using.
Oh, that was the crazy thing when I woke up this morning.
Because it didn't used to do that, and it was crazy-making.
It's not like your whole house is blowing up.
Yeah, yeah, that did make me crazy.
Yeah.
But BananaMac, when I sat down this morning, BananaMac thought...
What I wanted was every time something came through for it to go, bing.
No, that's not good.
And I said, when did I ever want that?
When did I ever want it?
I think it makes some people feel alive, John.
I think it makes some people, yes, it makes people feel alive.
If they don't get the ding, they don't know.
Am I alive?
Bing.
Is this life on?
It's a little red thing over in the corner.
It shows up.
It's there.
It tells you when something's happening.
No, that's hell.
You don't want that.
Anyway, so this is all some of this is nascent, right?
The John Siracusa computer.
No one's pulled the trigger on that.
Because I got additionally confused, right?
Because Todd said, well, why don't I just send it to your friend in Portland?
He's really got a heart on for Portland, doesn't he?
Yeah.
He wants you to go to Oregon.
I was like, look, man, I pay my taxes.
Yeah.
I'm not like a scofflaw.
Yeah.
But you can pick up a nice Pendleton shirt while you're there.
It confused me.
I got a lot of Pendleton shirts.
Me too.
I've been thinking about a new thing.
Mm-hmm.
Have I talked to you about this?
No.
What if I am not preppy anymore?
If you're not preppy anymore and you realize it.
If you're preppy and you know it, clap your hands.
No.
If I make a conscious decision to not be preppy anymore.
Okay.
Okay.
Now, I've always been preppy.
Hmm.
From the time that I became aware of Preppy.
From the time that I got the Preppy Handbook in 1980 from my deeply, deeply, deeply professionally Preppy cousins who gave it to me as a joke, not a joke.
That was a good book.
Sorry, not sorry.
And I was like, oh, thank you.
Here's a guide for how to be.
Now I know exactly, like, I know whose shirts you wear.
I know...
Say hello to the new boss, same as the old boss.
Yeah, you fix Mr. McAdoo's old BMW by adjusting the anti-sway bar.
Precisely.
I knew how big the collars needed to be on everything.
Pop, pop.
I knew which colleges I needed to rush.
Which animals to have on which article of clothing.
Yeah, what kind of Volvo is preppy and what kind of Volvo isn't.
Trick question.
Choosing your next Muffy.
Which is your next Muffy.
Which preppy guy am I?
Am I the cute one?
Am I the chunky party boy?
Are you the little conic one?
Yeah, the little nebbishy.
The nebbish prep.
But since that time, I've always just adopted that because enough of my family was honestly that.
That I felt like, oh, because I was also trying to make it with them.
Right.
I was trying to like show up and be like, hey, you know, like you guys are rich and have horses and stuff.
But if I if you gave me this book and then I show up dressed that way, like I'm in.
Right.
Absolutely.
Turns out.
Turns out.
No.
It seems like that should work.
Yeah.
Turns out.
No.
But I was like, okay, well, so I'm transitioning, right?
I'm transitioning to a more Marie Kondo life.
I'm sleeking it up.
I want a more dramatic living space.
What if I got rid of all of my preppiness?
Entirely, you're not talking about a sequestration.
You're saying full on zoop, out it goes.
Take it to the curb.
The prep life is behind me.
Yes.
That could be a shocking change.
Yeah.
So what if I start wearing gray jeans?
What if you start wearing gray?
Gray, if you're preppy, gray is a color that you wear.
That is the color of your suit.
But you don't wear gray shirts.
You're not going to have a gray shirt.
I mean, I guess you could have gray wool worsted pants.
But you're not going to be like one of these guys that's in girls versus boys.
That's wearing like gray and black.
Does this include mod looks?
Yeah, mods.
No, so mods aren't.
So the mod preppy thing, I never considered preppy.
Mod is some other thing.
And I could be a little more mod.
The problem with preppy is it's not very fitted.
everybody's wearing fitted clothes now yeah preppy's not very fitted it's much looser casual but yeah yeah it's like you know you're you're meant to be able to like stretch it out you you're relaxed in your clothes it's a relaxed look at least as i interpret it but but so but mod is tailored everybody everybody that goes to the j crew outlet store and walks in and says give me one everything it's all very tailored okay
So what if I get more tailored and then all of a sudden I can wear all these things that I never used to wear?
Well, I'm not going to go as far as to say hats, but other things.
What are you talking about?
You wear hats.
Well, yeah, but I mean, I'm talking about hats.
Oh, like a hat.
Like a hat.
Okay.
You're talking about really committing to becoming like a hat guy.
Oh, I'm not ready to be a hat guy, but right now I can't wear hats because there's no... You can't wear hats.
Not really.
But you wear Stetson sometimes.
I'm so confused.
Around the garden.
Oh.
I don't go to town.
I don't have a going to town hat.
I'm not Paul F. Tompkins.
Yeah.
Yeah, would you call him a preppy?
Would you call him a preppy?
Yeah, I would.
He's like, probably Tompkins' preppiness is some kind of South Carolina preppiness.
Oh, we had that in North Florida.
There was definitely a certain kind of Southern preppy.
Yeah, and that's not the kind of preppy that I am.
Definitely, you're going for like, what do they call them, docksiders, like boat shoes?
That thing, there's a lot more pink and... There's not as much pop collar stuff, but there's some serious khaki culture going on in the South.
Big time, big time.
And I'm Northwest preppy, right?
Which is like a different thing.
Our horses up here... A little more slept in?
A lot more slept in.
The horses have to ride through the mud up here a lot, so they're stronger, heartier, bigger.
They have bigger haunches.
Bigger horses.
Bigger horses for bigger haunches.
Yeah.
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.
It doesn't make sense, though.
Yeah, absolutely.
You're going to get different shoes, different horses, different colors.
It's, you know, in short, it's a land of contrasts.
Yeah, you get caught in a squall out here.
Whew.
It's also, there's a lot more waxed cotton.
No umbrellas.
No umbrellas.
No, thank you.
No umbrellas.
And frankly, if you're going to wear a hat, make it a Cowichan Cowichan hat.
Oh, isn't that problematic?
Didn't we talk about this?
No, a hat isn't.
Hat's a different deal than the sweater.
Well, no, the sweater isn't either.
You just don't, you're not, if you're wearing one with a totem pole on it, you have to think about it.
Somebody sent me a picture of Bob Hope in the exact same sweater.
Louis C.K.
in blackface.
That is definitely not.
That's cultural appropriation on many levels.
But what if I just went monochrome?
That's the key.
Modern, like future.
Future.
Fitted clothes, gray in color.
Yeah, that's like future, like Buck Rogers.
Oh, well, yeah, okay.
Because I got a watch that...
that i can lift up to my arm and go siri what time is it yes or siri is it raining outside do you remember that ad with zoe deschanel yeah i feel like i do yeah where she was like siri is it raining outside she's sitting in front of a window and siri was like i don't know what siri said in the commercial i don't remember but there was a thing where you know zoe was she was right on the cusp right on the cusp of her big
oh okay okay okay and she got a little bit of an apple ad or a syri ad or something some little thing just probably added more attention to the house let's be honest well it's tough it's tough to keep it's tough to keep a relationship together
Have you talked to other people in your life about this, John?
Have you talked about transitioning?
Have you talked about what this would mean and how... I'm afraid to bring it up.
I'm not saying you asked for permission, but don't you feel like that could be kind of startling to the people around you, to all the women in your life, if you suddenly show up and you're from a film noir?
I'm kind of afraid to bring it up.
So, for instance, let's say... You know, like... If I... So, lately...
I bought a gray shirt.
Okay.
And it was flannel-y.
Or it was, you know, it was fuzzy.
Okay.
It had some nap to it.
It had a little nap.
It wasn't all the way to like an L.L.
Bean style.
Was it kind of an Orvis?
Well, no, but that's the thing.
It was slicker.
It was from one of those companies that's like designed in California, and then you read the tag and it's like made in China.
But I decided this year I wasn't going to get anything made in China.
Okay.
Wow.
Wow.
Not even used stuff.
You're still taking your medicine?
You got a lot going on.
Well, that's it.
That's it.
You got to draw some.
This whole Marie Kondo thing is just about drawing lines.
You just have to draw lines.
Just got to draw a line.
And so my line is, I'm not going to, I'm just not, it's not that I am against China.
I'm just not going to get anything from there.
I think that's a very principled, very nuanced view.
It's nothing against China.
It's not China.
It's me.
It's not China.
It's me.
I'm just making it because there's so much stuff from China.
A lot of stuff from China, John.
If you just eliminate stuff from China from contention, then all of a sudden you've got a much smaller pile of stuff that you have to think about.
Oh, interesting.
Oh, you quantified.
Okay, I see where you're going with this.
A little bit.
A little bit.
It doesn't bring you joy.
And if it says made in China, it just doesn't bring me joy.
the other day I said, I've been threatening, I've been threatening my daughter that I'm going to walk her to school in the rain for an entire year.
And she's been saying, if it's raining, you're going to drive me to school.
And I have said, oh, that's where you're wrong.
Little Missy.
How long time wise is that walk on a normal day?
15 minutes.
Get in the fucking rain.
That's what I'm saying.
Because again, to quote, sometimes kids got to do it because they don't want it.
That's the point.
You have to go play Bastic Ball because you don't want to do it.
Because you don't want to do it.
It's so important.
said one of these days it's gonna be raining and we're gonna walk to school and we're gonna and I'm not talking about it's gonna be her first day John well I'm not talking about like monsoon season but like she needs to go be unpleasant for a while unpleasant yeah that's right if you I do not admire people that cannot that cannot handle adversity mm-hmm
But the problem is it's always raining here.
What it almost never does is really belt you.
Like pissing, penetrating rain.
It just never does that Ohio rain where you look out the window.
Oh, I've been in the cold Ohio rain.
Nothing lasts forever.
That's tornado season, my friend.
That's when everything's beige outside, and that's no fun.
No, no, no.
Beige.
Remember Xenia, Ohio?
Yeah, exactly.
It's never beige up here.
It's always gray.
Hmm.
But that beige that you're talking about.
You know what I'm talking about?
Tornado colors.
That's crazy.
Have you seen tornado colors you know what I'm talking about?
Sure.
I chased a tornado across Ohio.
I get triggered.
I get triggered.
I see a tornado color, and I know there could be no tornado here, but I still get triggered.
Yeah, it's crazy out there.
Well, but there are those rains in the Midwest where you say, I'm going to walk out there, and it's going to kill me.
Like the rain is going to do it anyway, because this is how I was raised.
But never happens here.
But every once in a while it does.
And that's what I'm saying to her.
We're going to walk to school in the rain.
I'm not saying we're going to walk to school in the normal amount of rain that just rains all the time.
Do you do that now?
Oh, yeah.
Okay, good, good, good.
I see what you're saying.
It's going to be a conflagration.
That's a fire?
No.
It's going to be pissing rain.
She's going to walk no umbrella.
Right, because we don't use umbrellas.
We don't use umbrellas, yeah.
You taught me that.
I got nothing against you now.
People like Jesse Thorne, they get all touchy about this.
I'm not saying it's a masculinity thing.
It kind of is.
I live in California.
It's kind of a masculinity thing.
But no, don't umbrellas.
Sorry, just a quick side note.
Umbrellas.
There's three situations with an umbrella.
Okay, let's say three.
It's not raining at all.
No umbrella.
No umbrella.
Okay.
It's raining a little bit.
You bring an umbrella.
No.
If it's raining a little bit, you're fine.
Put up your hood like a gentleman.
Okay.
Situation three.
It's raining a lot.
Guess what?
It's going to be fucking useless because the wind is going to blow it inside out and you're going to look like somebody in a fucking Benny Hill short.
Thank you.
Don't get past the umbrellas.
If you're a third grade girl who has one of those cute bubble umbrellas, by all means use it because they are very fun.
Those are cute.
Don't count on an umbrella.
But you have to also have... Don't count on it.
The thing is, umbrellas come with so much umbrella etiquette that no one in our modern day is even capable of holding in their brain.
You think people can't drive in the rain?
My friend, people cannot walk in the rain.
Walk down a sidewalk?
I nearly take one in the eye every time.
Every time it starts drizzling a little bit, and these monsters are three people wide with their umbrella.
Like a fucking golf umbrella.
They're 5'7", and they're not conscious of anybody being taller than 5'7".
It's like the first time you wear a very, very, very large and heavy backpack and you don't realize all the things you're knocking into because you're not used to having basically a back gut.
Right.
Same deal, except it's your whole fucking circumference.
Thank you.
You don't need an umbrella.
Unless you live in a place where the rain is trying to kill you.
Like if you're in mini... But by the time it's going to turn inside out, it's going to do that thing and you're going to look like a cartoon character.
But what I realized is that we get that rain so infrequently that I actually didn't have a coat anymore that could withstand that kind of rain.
That's the one time when your wool jacket...
is not quite what you want i got a marmot that i like for this it's not like a rain suit but like my marmot does me good i've i feel like when i've been into your area i see people who wear rain suits like just that's a thing you got the pants you got the jacket you're fully protected you don't make a big deal about it right
But it is very different from just having like an extra layer or wearing like a supersonic sweatshirt or something.
Yeah, sure.
And that's the thing is, I've over the years, I've had many marmots.
I've had many spiders.
I've had north faces.
I've had many marmots.
Yep.
I've had, I like a Marmot.
A Marmot also makes a light jacket.
My Marmot, which I got for my birthday approximately two calendar years ago, it's got a liner that you can take out that makes it extra cozy.
Otherwise, it's just a substantial rain jacket with a hood that works.
Yes.
Not an umbrella.
Well, so I realized all those things had passed through my universe, and I didn't have one anymore.
So I went online, and I was like, I'm going to try and get a rain jacket that will withstand a monsoon not made in China.
Go.
Oh, hang on.
Hang on.
Let me do the math on this.
Go ahead.
You want something that protects you from the rain, looks pretty good, can't be untouched by Asia.
Yeah.
Right.
Isn't that part of it?
I mean, it's really more of like, I don't want Tiny Fingers making this.
That.
And also, I need limitations.
This is part of the tonification.
I don't want to just go on REI and be like, bleep, bleep, bleep.
Now I have a thing.
Boy, REI can get costly.
Well, sure.
It can get real costly there.
And here's the problem.
They sell that Asterisks or ApterTix.
ApterTix.
That shit's costly.
$900 a thing.
They just have it out there like that's normal.
Millennium girlfriend had an after X. Oh, well, it's a hairy bird with the hairy feathers.
It's a flightless bird with hairy feathers.
I was birdie.
Okay, and I was like, why are you wearing that dumb thing?
She was like, it's fine.
It's a good thing.
And I was like, it's the cut back cause $800.
Those are that's some snob stuff Snob outdoor stuff is the thing that gets that makes me mad.
Mm-hmm And she was like you're a dummy and she maybe wasn't wrong.
I
About that so the quest begins and you're looking you're sourcing you're figuring out whence whence came this rain where well, so And then I realized that's you on one of your four compute three three four computers.
Okay, I realize oh everything's made in China Doesn't matter how expensive doesn't matter how many layers of bonding it has to keep the rain out of the shoulders and
It's all made in China.
And a lot of it is made according to a principle that I don't necessarily adhere to, which is that because it's sports goods, they say that it needs to be light.
And I'm like, not necessarily.
Not necessarily.
Oh, you're getting your chocolate and your peanut butter mixed up.
You're mixing up the world of rainwear with the world of what my wife calls technicals.
It's technicals.
People like a technical.
Technicals wick.
Technicals are light.
They like it to wick.
They liked it to wick.
They like it to breathe.
They like it to be light.
They like it to have what, I don't know what, the wrong kind of Velcro.
Performance characteristics.
Right.
And because it has performance characteristics, they want it to be eggplant colored or they want it to have graphics.
Sure.
My little girl said the other day, why does that person, everything on that person has the name of the brand.
And I was like, welcome to the world.
Teachable moment.
And she said, here is a thing I hate.
And I was like,
darling i'm all ears yes and she said my american girl doll says american girl on her and i said go on and she said her dress somewhere on it says american girl and i was like that's op like like uh what's ours rachel like the the girl from uh the girl from poland or whatever she wouldn't have that on her dress that's op well because this because her american girl doll actually was who she got who she got
It was a gift from the oldest Hodgman girl.
Oh, that's so nice.
Do you know her name?
Yeah.
Who, the girl or the Hodgman girl?
Sorry, the American girl.
Oh, I don't know.
Because they each come with a story and you get books and stuff.
Yeah, but she renames them and doesn't care about the American girl.
Good for her.
Whoa, man, she's a culture jamming.
yeah her american girl doll is called petunia or something i mean she's not aware of the or she doesn't dive into the whole so you don't get the catalogs we're a company that's going to tell you how to play you don't want those catalogs keep those away from her she's never seen it oh there's a really uh we have one that has ski injuries she's got a whole ski injury set she has a cast she's got they got little crutches
We went to New York and she was like, she knew about the American Girl doll store.
That's such a scene.
Did you have to take your doll there for tea?
No, and that's it.
We do.
We were walking around New York.
They have a rack in the bathroom you can set her on while you're taking a leak.
She said, I want to go to the American Girl doll store.
And I was like, honey, why don't we go to the Statue of Liberty instead?
And she was like, I don't care about the Statue of Liberty.
Let's go to the 9-11.
And so I took her to Muji.
Oh, Mooji.
I've been to that Mooji.
I was there with Scott Simpson.
It's very inexpensive.
I said, let's go into this Mooji and we'll buy all the notebooks you want.
He can give me a $3 shirt and a notebook.
I was just doing the thing where I was waving my arms in the air until she forgot about the American Girl.
Oh, no, no.
I understand.
What do you want to call it?
A competitive bribe.
It's an attention deflector.
It's like, hey, you know what?
You get a thing that might be chocolate if we walk this way.
Yeah.
What if we go this way and we'll go to the Carnegie Deli?
Yeah.
Why would I want to go there?
It helps to just say you're going to get something that costs around $20.
Let's go that way.
Yeah.
Well, anyway, we didn't go to the American Girl doll store.
But she was very conscious of the fact that her American Girl doll said American Girl and she didn't want that.
And I don't know if she could fully articulate why she doesn't want it.
But she doesn't want it.
And I was like, I don't want it either.
I often take the tags off of things that I don't want to see the tag.
Oh, me too.
She was like, yes, I didn't know that we could do that, but let's start doing that immediately.
I was like, okay, but the problem is we can't do that on Nike things because they impregnate it.
It's like a poison pill.
Yeah, it's put into some kind of electronic hyperpress.
Okay.
You're not going to get it off there.
You'll ruin it.
I used to have a pair of Nike shoes where I just took the swoops right off of there.
I liked them better.
Rebecca.
Sorry, her name's Rebecca.
Rebecca.
She got into a ski accident, and she's from Poland.
Wait, I think Rebecca, she has the Judaic.
Rebecca Rubin.
Oh, I know her.
She came over from the shtetl.
Yeah, I think so.
And my daughter's read some of her books.
But you know what's really weird, though?
Look at this page.
To illustrate the dolls, they use real girls.
Rebecca Rubin was a real girl.
Well, scroll down.
You got Felicity, you get Caroline.
Wait a minute, but she's not a real doll.
No, no, no.
That's a different kind of thing.
But like Melody, the 60s girl, like look, they're all like real girls.
Not real dolls, but real girls.
Kit Kittredge, she's the OG, I think.
Oh, they do look like real people.
But not quite.
Oh, uncanny valley.
Uncanny.
I want to know about Kit.
She seems very.
Kit Kittredge is, I think she's the OG.
She is so preppy.
I can't even stand it.
You know how old her.
We have the Kit Kittredge desk and typewriter.
Her bulbo is so rusty.
So, anyway, I'm online.
I'm trying to find a jacket that wasn't made in China.
And I realize, okay, how far back do I have to go in vintage rainwear to find the perfect place
which is after the era where Gore-Tex was not properly understood and became delaminated over time.
Oh, it's so gross.
You don't want that early Gore-Tex because it's gross.
It looks gross.
It looks like it has a skin affliction.
Yeah, it looks like it has plaque psoriasis.
So you want post that, but before everything was offshored.
There's a moment.
Okay, okay, okay.
In the middle there.
A window.
Things are still made in the U.S.
of America.
Yeah.
But not out of stuff that they didn't understand, where the technical fabric was not technical yet.
Okay.
Did you find a range?
So I'm on there.
I'm going to guess late 90s.
No, because in the late 90s, everything already was... It was already... All that stuff was already offshore.
God damn it.
early 90s early 90s offshored no yeah it's made in bangladesh the devil you say that early i'm telling you this is this is a face full of cold water for me so here's what i found huh online oh and the and the first thing i found was you can buy national ski patrol jackets from 1987 on the line what what nationals a company
No, the jackets that say ski patrol.
Oh, like you'd see in a movie.
Yeah, they have big yellow crosses on the back.
Oh, that's kind of cool.
Well, those were the things when I was a kid.
You might as well have been wearing a uniform that said general in the U.S.
Army.
Oh, absolutely.
It would be like being a lifeguard or something.
Yeah, 100%.
But everybody knows, everybody that owns one of those also knows that people like me want them and they charge 400.
You're actively trying to steal valor.
I was like, sorry, I'm not going to do it.
But I found...
In this whole, because there's a course, an entire universe of people that are collecting sportswear from the time before, from the before times.
I found an 80s.
what they call brown tag North Face jacket.
And this is the demand satisfaction era of North Face before it became a made in Bangladesh.
Brown tag North Face.
Let's also just stipulate for the record that this is not a bad thing, but you're a tall guy.
You're a big fella.
You're going to need, I'm guessing, probably an XXL?
Yep.
Well, somewhere between XL and XXL.
Because when I buy sweatshirts, I'll get an XL sometimes.
I like them roomy.
But for you to be able to, you're going to need at least an XL.
But this era, the 80s, I have a brown, and I didn't even know it was called this, but I have a brown label North Face vest, the one I was talking about, the old vest that I have.
It's a size large, and it mostly fits.
I see, I see, I see.
You got kind of a white background, and it's brown.
The logo is in brown.
And it's got a big logo.
It says Gore-Tex right here on it.
And it doesn't have a ton of little tags on it that say... Well, they got to do that now.
You know why?
Why?
Asia.
That's why there's so many tags.
You got to have tags that comply with all the countries.
So many tags.
That's why you buy a child's toy and it has nine tags on it.
So this, this jacket, only has one tag.
It says North Face and then in little letters it says Made in the USA.
Made in the USA.
Brown tag.
And whoever it was that was selling this thing, it was a beautiful jacket.
Hmm.
It was solid red, no stripes, no eggplant, no swoops, no jingers, no little things that says technical, expert, extreme.
No loops?
You don't have loops to hang things on?
Nothing, nothing, nothing.
It was just a red jacket that you could stand in a monsoon.
It was made in the United States of America, and I just went ahead and bought it.
In the middle of the night, I bought it.
Whoa.
And I was like, this thing's coming in the mail now.
It is not – it's just – it's representing a whole other thing.
No one – there's not a single person in the world that's ever going to walk past me and say, nice jacket.
Or if I do see that person, I'm going to stop them and I'm going to say, marry me.
I don't care anything else about you.
But the fact that you saw this jacket and said nice jacket means something.
I don't know what.
I don't know what it symbolizes.
It's definitely coded.
It is like wearing a green handkerchief in your left back pocket.
That means he likes snot play.
Yeah, it means skateboard my swimming pool.
It means you get bronchitis and you're down to clown.
It means both of us admire Tony Hawk but never wanted to actually be Tony Hawk.
Oh, interesting.
That's very subtle.
Do they come in different shades so you can express how strongly you feel about it?
It's like, I like missionary position, but not that much.
Somebody my age has a lot of strong feelings about Tony Hawk.
Oh.
Because Tony Hawk, you've got to give it to him.
Yes.
He is 50 years old, and he is still grinding the cope.
He is still pushing the envelope.
He's still cleaning the cube.
Yeah.
He's getting mad, mad, mad airs.
He's pulling Madonnas.
Oh, jeez.
He's, you know, Bones Brigade, brah.
Sure.
And you definitely got to hand it to him.
You got to hand it to him.
Got to hand it to him.
He's got kids.
He's got kids.
He's still got snark.
I bet they blow sick ollies, too.
I bet they do, and he's got top snark.
Oh, really?
You think he vapes?
He's like Mark Arm, except slightly friendlier.
I can do this.
Mudhoney.
That's right.
He's slightly friendlier than the guys in Mudhoney.
He's slightly more approachable.
Okay.
Okay.
He's also like super famous and rich, but I never wanted to be Tony Hawk.
Okay.
Because it involved being a skater, which is not preppy and also not very good.
It's not very good.
You don't want to be a skater.
You definitely don't want your kid marrying a skater.
Nope.
No skaters.
Even dating a skater.
Nope.
But at the same time, I have to be a kid, male or female, is a skater.
Now your kid's a skater.
What are they going to do?
Run behind them while they do their sick ollie?
Or skater adjacent, which is even worse.
Oh, God, a skater hanger on.
The kid with the red hair that does sick nose grabs on his snowboard.
Oh, yeah, I know who you mean.
He wins all the medals?
Yeah, I know.
I've seen a documentary with him in it.
Yeah, I know who you mean.
Johnny Nunes Dive or whatever.
He's just a kid.
I don't want him around.
He looks like Carrot Top a little bit.
A little.
But now he also looks like Rachel Flotard.
I mean, the thing is all redheaded people look the same.
Ann-Margaret?
Ann-Margaret is not a skater.
She could blow some sick ollies.
The thing is, Ann-Margaret is like the people from before that when you look at pictures, you're like, why doesn't anybody look like that anymore?
Why doesn't anybody look like that anymore?
Nobody looks like Ann-Margaret anymore.
Why doesn't anybody look like Francoise Hardy?
Why don't people look like Gene Shrimpton?
What's happened?
Why don't people look like Gene Shrimpton?
Not everybody.
I'm not being normative, but there should be way more.
Men, women, I don't care.
There should be way more people look like Gene Shrimpton.
You ever get into Francoise Hardy?
uh what do you mean shit dog i mean what do you mean into well just enjoy the the culture and the materials around her she has she's a wonderful singer she plays guitar and she's totes french and she's got a sedia in her fucking name she's got a sedia right there i'm probably saying it wrong oh jean shrimpton jean no i'm talking about francoise yeah but but let's talk shrimpton
The thing is, nobody has a name like Gene Shrimpton anymore.
They change it.
She would change her name to Gene Rosemary.
Right?
I guess.
She's like, I don't want to be Shrimpton.
There's nothing about that.
Oh, I see what you're saying.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
The thing about Tony Hawk is he's got a name that is already super cool.
He didn't have to do anything about it.
Tony Hawk.
You think that's his real name?
This was before you... Here's one thing about skaters that you have to know.
I bet it's actually like Tony Baumhockenstein or something.
Nope, I don't think so.
Skaters will work all day on a trick.
Okay.
And when they finally land the trick...
The goal is, because you're filming every trick.
They're filming you all the time.
They've got the handy cam, and they're watching you do the curb jams and stuff.
They want to watch you land that curb jam.
Yep, yep.
And then they're going to put that out there like you just pulled it off without ever trying.
I mean, you know what I mean?
I see.
Yeah, no, no.
There could be multiple takes behind that.
Oh, so many takes.
Before you drop in your, what, DRI?
I don't know even what kids listen to.
Yeah, you put on some... Circle Jerks?
I don't even know anymore.
No, I think it's Bad Religion.
Oh, yeah.
Or maybe even back then, who knows, maybe it was Captain Sensible.
Anyway, I will take Gene Shrimpton every day over Francois Hardy.
Really?
Yeah.
Did you look at the photographs?
Yeah, but it's in the eyes.
It's something in the eyes.
Oh.
Gene Shrimpton's English, I think.
Well, they're both.
Yeah, I think they're both... Oh, no, Francois Hardy is... He's from France.
That name sounds Swedish.
Yeah.
Anyway, when they land a trick...
Then they're supposed to this part of the culture.
They're supposed to look like they don't care at all.
They're supposed to look like they are so bored by their own.
Right, right.
So they landed that old thing.
Yeah, that's right.
And then there's always like three seconds of them kind of skating away and they're skating away and they look like they're thinking about something totally else.
Like they just look like they're thinking about how much homework they have to do before Monday.
Wow.
And it's such a put on.
Yeah.
But it's so integral to the thing.
And that joylessness seems like it's really part of it.
Do you want your daughter dating that?
No, you don't want somebody that's like, I just landed my trick and I'm not even going to give me a guy who looks like Carrot Top.
It doesn't even care.
He doesn't care.
Now, the Carrot Top guy, he actually, I think, will do a fist bump now and again because and that's one of the things I like about him.
Yeah.
Did you watch that movie?
No.
About the guy who gets hurt?
No.
A guy got hurt?
A guy got hurt.
He's doing the half piping.
This isn't the agony of defeat guy that crashed into the fence.
Oh, no.
Was he a check?
Remember that guy?
Every Saturday you'd see that guy, the agony of defeat.
The agony of defeated right into the fence.
Wouldn't that suck?
Wouldn't that suck you spend your whole career working to get good at skiing?
And then like one four-second tape of you defines your entire career.
Well, yeah, but I think it's one of those things where when it first happened... I mean, he was just what?
What would you call what he was doing?
Pinwheeling.
Yeah, it was a, well, what you call that is yard sale.
okay he was like from slovenia and it was a ski jump it wasn't he wasn't doing the downhill it was like he's right and then yard sale yard sale and what yard sale is as it sounds you leave every single piece of your gear somewhere on the mountain as you all sales final and the worst yard sales i mean i've yard sailed a couple of times which is to say crash at top speed
And your body is just thrashed.
It just goes up and over and up and over.
And I've seen people yard sale where their ski boots came off.
That sucks.
Such a gnarly crash that the centrifugal force or the centripetal force takes your gloves off.
It takes your fucking ski pass off.
It takes your underwear off.
And I bet it sucks.
But I bet it takes long enough that you realize how much it sucks while it's happening.
Oh, it sucks.
It's not like you Sonny Bono into a tree.
This is something where you're going to have a couple seconds to really inhabit the space of the yard sale.
And you're going to need all your friends who hopefully are above you on the ski hill.
You're going to need them all to hike around and pick up all your shit and bring it to you.
Go find my flip phone.
That is if the ski patrol isn't putting you on a sled and taking you down.
And the only thing that saved that Slovenian ski jumper was he yard sailed into a fence.
He was going fast enough that if that fence hadn't been there, he would have just yard sailed right into the forest.
So he got lucky is what you're saying.
He got lucky.
And the thing is, I think that at first he would be...
embarrassed to be the agony of defeat guy yeah but but now that he's probably 70 years old and he can the rest of his life just be like you know yeah i'm the agony of defeat he's still dining out on that yard sale i bet he's like wide world of sports do you remember and everybody's like yeah i remember wide world of sports he's like remember the guy agony of defeat guy
Oh, of course I remember that guy.
That's me.
I'm Dimitri Yartzel.
Oh, you like me now?
Mm-hmm.
Who's picking up the drinks for today's session?
Everybody but me.
Yeah, unfortunately, Team Transylvania stopped playing this year because they tested positive for vampirism.
This sucks.
All right.
Woo!
Boy, look at that.
Gene Shrimpton and Terrence Stamp.
Look at them.
Oh, so attractive.