Ep. 324: "Caged Wheat"
Hello.
Hey, John.
Hi, Merlin.
How's it going?
Good.
How are you going?
Good.
That sounded feisty.
That was hardy sounding.
I'm arguing with myself.
I'm arguing with the Internet.
Well, I'm looking at people's lists on Spotify and I don't know.
I don't want to be that guy, but some of the terminology I think people get a little bit wrong.
On Spotify about their song playlists.
I think everybody is entitled to like what they like.
Sure.
But, like, if I'm looking for chamber pop, I'll suck for some Baroque pop for shizzle.
Yeah, yeah.
But what I don't want is too much neo-psychedelia.
Oh.
Yeah.
okay i think i think on some level if you're writing a book we can all agree penny lane yeah oh well that's chamber pop song but like i don't need five beatles songs on this list no i know about the beatles i want to know some new things yes i've heard of the zombies they're quite good i want you to jazz it up a little give me some stuff some 90s 2000 stuff that i haven't heard you know what i'm saying yeah you want to jazz it up but you don't want it to be jazz i don't want see now jazz i could i could probably use some help i
I am one of those guys to jazz jazz jazz jazz jazz jazz jazz jazz jazz jazz jazz jazz jazz is a swoony syncopated beat over on the omnibus podcast uh I talked a little bit about um I did an episode on um uh what you might call uh
Classical, classical metal.
Classical, is that, okay, classical metal.
Now, is that like that band that does the Christmas song?
Well, no, no, not like that.
It's called Von Ryan's Express?
No, not Man, I'm Steamroller.
No, I was trying, the title of the episode was Yngwie Malmsteen.
Oh, shit.
And now I have to acknowledge, and I should have acknowledged, I think, right at the top.
I don't know that much about Yngwie Malmsteen.
You know he likes him some Paganini and some Bach.
I do know that.
I know that at the time I found him unlistenable and still do.
It's like watching somebody do their taxes really fast.
But I tried to describe, starting at Paganini, how that could have possibly produced the band Richie Blackmore's Rainbow.
And then through the sort of 70s, and I knew that I was in trouble immediately because I'm talking about Prague.
And the thing is, I'm not a Prague.
No.
I don't know that much about Prague.
But I'm talking about Prague as not.
But the thing is, I'm not an outsider, right?
I'm a musician and I'm a music.
This is like me and Harry Potter.
I've seen the movies, but I haven't read all the books.
So there's no country for old potters.
You're in the same situation.
You've heard a crap.
You know an ELP song when it comes on, I'm guessing.
I do.
I do.
You know, support a mento.
anytime somebody puts a portamento on a moog i even know how to pronounce moog okay you seem so qualified but now i'm just saying as an outcast from the harry potter community you're gonna you go even not even head to head you go finger to finger with anybody who's a serious prognator oh they're so mad what about gentle giant like i don't know what i waited right in and i was like so there was a whole so there was a german band called shit wind
No, come on!
People were just like, no, fuck you, you don't know what you're talking about.
I think Lenny wasn't let me in shitwind.
He was.
So many people so mad.
Oh, shit.
See, these guys are on the air.
Is that one word, shitwind?
I need it for my notes.
Well, yeah.
Is there a diuresis over the second eye?
It has Van Halen-like wings on either side, like shitwind.
Okay, I can stylize that.
It's the original shitwind where they were using wings, not the later shitwind where they were using a halo.
Yeah, okay, that's confusing.
It's like when there were two, there's been a bunch of bands that do that, where they break off and there's a West Coast.
For a while, there was a fake zombies.
as long as we're talking about the zombies, which is a fantastic band.
It was the zombies.
It was the zombies.
They broke up before Time of the Season or Odyssey and Oracle even came out.
That's right.
They were so mad at each other and everything and the system.
And then Freddie Mercury became the lead singer for a while.
As portrayed in that movie, Ray Charles.
Yeah.
Charles Song.
Shitwind.
Shitwind 2.
Shitwind original.
You want original shitwind.
Oh, don't go to another place.
You want original shitwind.
The thing is, you can't talk about Yngwie unless you talk about both phases of shitwind.
Yeah.
Well, I do have, as I think you might know, a vinyl LP copy of the album Stealer by Stealer from Metal Blade Records circa 1981.
I do have a copy.
That was Ron Keel on vocals.
His band, his preeminent band before Alcatraz and before Yngwie.
What's he famous for?
He's famous for, he's famous for Alcatraz for one record.
Was he in Rising Force?
Yngwie Malstein's Rising Force was, I think, the first.
See?
Now, here we go.
We're creating our own problem inside of a problem because now the Yngwie people are mad.
No, we don't need to go into this.
I only want to make a culpa of this whole thing and just say, I don't know enough about it to talk about it clearly.
And it is not interesting to a layperson at all, even like Yngwie.
And people are like, hmm.
I think there were some people on the internet that were like, thank you.
Thank you for teaching me about Yngwie.
Did you talk about unleashing the dragon?
See, the problem is, everything I did to prepare for that episode just confirmed in me that I did not find that music interesting.
I am not the target audience for... Did you talk about arpeggios from hell?
I am not the target audience for the Mixolydian mode.
So I think you mean Phrygian.
The Phrygian mode.
The Snake Charmer scale, as pioneered by Ritchie Blackmore, he invented the whole mode.
He did.
You know, Richie Blackmore, very, very talented musician.
He's got that one song on the One Rainbow album that's got the... It's not Star Wars, but it's got... Is it the final countdown?
No, it's the one that's got the Bach in it.
Doesn't he do a Bach?
Oh, yeah, the Bach.
I think he should play it live.
They're all throwing some Bach in there.
Everybody claims to like Bach.
Ah, Bach.
You know...
like deep purple was one of the first that was one of the first albums i ever got machine head people call that one of the one of the that what when we talk about heavy metal what do we talk about when we talk about heavy metal i think a lot of people say that machine head was one of the first legit metal albums here's an interesting thing that i didn't realize until i was researching this topic i did not realize that the lead singer of deep purple
Was very handsome man.
He's also in Jesus Christ Superstar.
So I would not have guessed He was like shockingly good-looking Yeah, all so much respect to England and heavy metal but it was not a genre that embraced the necessity of good looks No, this guy did not have you can be an Anderson's a poster boy as far as that's concerned Yeah, there was nothing there was nothing to indicate to me listening to the album and
uh as many years as i did because you know they didn't have a picture of themselves or if they did i never looked at it yeah but i looked at it later and i was like who's the who's the cute guy is he like some is he the third lead singer in deep purple no i mean he is the second but he was the one that did all the all the big tunes is it ian gillen ian gillen not david coverdale ian gillen i believe sang on the jesus christ superstar album
he does not ted i believe ted uh what's his name ted somebody plays him in the movie ted danson plays him in the movie yeah and then a lot of people don't know you know one night in bangkok murray head murray head murray head sound sang the very challenging uh judas part on the album yeah my mind is clearer now
Yeah, I know that you love musical theater.
I should do... You know what, John?
I love connections.
I love connections.
I should do an omnibus on musical theater, and I would get all those people mad at me.
Why don't you do an omnibus on me?
You never have me on your show.
I should be a guest.
Here's the thing.
If I didn't on the bus on you, you'd be so mad at me.
Why?
I don't know.
Don't you think you would?
Well, you keep threatening to have me be friends with Ken and it never works out.
You haven't talked about Korean fan death.
I don't know what the fuck's going on.
Okay.
I'm sitting here with my dick in my hand.
I'm trying to improve the medium and I'm making connections.
I'm talking about unleashing a dragon.
I could tell you the story about Snort and Rush at an Yngwie concert.
I have a lot of anecdotes that could make your little show real good.
There are a lot of people that don't understand how important you are.
Singing sister.
This episode of Roderick on the Line is brought to you in part by Keeps.
That's K-E-E-P-S.
You can learn more about Keeps right now by visiting keeps.com.
slash super train losing hair sucks and two out of three guys will experience hair loss by the time they're 35 well introducing keeps the easiest and most affordable way to keep the hair you have these fda approved products used to cost so much but now thanks to keeps they're finally inexpensive and easy to get for five minutes now and starting at just ten dollars per month you'll never have to worry about hair loss again
Getting started with Keeps is so easy.
You sign up, it takes less than five minutes.
You just answer a few questions and snap some photos of your hair.
A licensed physician will review your information online and recommend the right treatment for you, and then it's shipped right to your door every three months.
Keeps offers generic versions of the only two FDA hair loss products out there, and some of you have probably tried them before, but you've probably never gotten them for this price.
Keeps is only $10 to $35 per month,
And plus, now you can get your first month free.
That's one heck of a deal for keeping your hair not too shabby.
To receive your first month of treatment for free, you go to keeps.com slash supertrain.
That's keeps.com slash supertrain.
For a free month of treatment, keeps.com slash supertrain.
Keeps.
Hair today.
hair tomorrow.
Our thanks to Keeps for supporting Roderick On The Line and all the great shows.
Uh-huh.
Okay.
Continue.
Continue.
No, no, no.
I'm not just... I can think of some.
I can think of some just from this morning.
I'm not just talking about podcasting.
You know, I'm talking about...
Lot X is just not appreciating the legacy.
The long brown stain that I have left across the United States.
Like a comet shooting through the stars.
That's like America's skid mark from a chopper.
I should say that if you're listening to the program and hear jungle noises in the background, I am recording from the jungle.
I feel like I hear like a Pacific bird.
Yeah.
Yep, there are some Pacific birds.
Here, let's be quiet for a second and listen.
Okay.
Isn't that nice?
That's so nice.
Do you have chickens there?
Do you have the morning chickens?
There are chickens here.
Yeah.
That was my most frustrating Hawaiian fact.
There's chickens everywhere.
Well, roosters.
Sorry.
Sorry, I didn't mean to misgender them.
No, but there are chickens everywhere, too.
They birds.
They birds.
I had no idea there'd be so many fucking birds in the morning in Hawaii.
That and shave ice just ruined me.
There's some story about how there used to be the fowl, the chicken and rooster combo.
They used to be in cages, but then there was a hurricane and it broke up the chicken coops.
And they all roam free.
You're kidding me.
It's like the story of Hamilton meets Nutria.
Because that's what happened with Nutria in New Orleans.
They said nobody wants these fucking fake beaver jackets anymore.
Just let them loose.
Get them out of here.
Yeah, just have these giant rat.
If you imagine the worst parts of a beaver and a rat, they run around in New Orleans now.
And now you're facing the same thing with fowl there.
You know, the New Orleans cooks, the big fancy Cajun cooks.
The football team?
No, no, no.
I thought that was their amateur hockey team.
Now they're the Utah Cooks.
No one knows why.
That's funny.
That was funny.
I wish I had a bell.
I wish I'd brought it in my suitcase.
I just can't believe you're doing this.
I don't want to talk to our listeners on the show, but you're doing this under great duress.
You're doing this early, and you're doing this from our latest state.
Yes, that's right.
Our most recent state.
I was going to say about the Nutria that the New Orleans Cooks, their amateur baseball team,
They they put tried to put nutria on the menus of restaurants there Wow, they were like we have too many nutria.
Let's start inventing dishes Cajun dishes that but anybody that's ever seen a nutria knows that they don't want to order that You don't want to you don't want to eat a giant rat you have to think about what it used to look like those yellow teeth and
But what I don't understand, and this is the thing, in Hawaiian food, chicken plays a role.
It's not like a major role.
It's not like a chicken-based food culture.
But they do eat chicken.
And there are free chickens involved.
Everywhere you look here.
They're just free.
You can just run it around.
You could just grab what I could in my I gotta tell you we ran into a lot of roosters and a lot of cats There's a lot of feral cats where we were we were on.
I think it's Maui Is it the verdant island?
Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau Mau
So, contextualizing my problem here, my cousin Libby, who was here a month and a half ago, here at the house, she began a tradition of feeding the feral cats.
Oh, Jesus.
And she went to the store and bought cat food, not just...
dry kibble but a case of wet salmon canned salmon and then when uh when we arrived now low many moons ago yeah my daughter embraced this as like one of her special projects we have to feed the cats three times a day it's like buying food for ghosts like ask yourself do you really want more of this well so so the roosters have been have been plaguing me to the degree that i needed to buy earplugs
Because there's one rooster, and I can't tell whether the rooster that lives outside my window is, he's either a very young rooster who has not figured out how to crow, or a very old rooster who has lost the ability to crow musically.
Oh.
So he goes, Oh no.
Oh.
And I can hear other roosters in the distance.
Jesus Christ.
And then this guy goes.
I don't know.
He should see a neurologist.
I want to go out and talk to him about a lot of things, about his choice of where to crow.
Yeah.
Which, like, outside of my window, he's not reaching the largest possible audience.
Mm-hmm.
Also, he's kind of busking.
Yeah, he's like busking outside of a police station.
Like the cops are never going to put any money in his app.
And also, I want to look at him and see, like, is he like a threadbare rooster on his way out?
And if so, maybe we could hasten that process.
Or is he a new rooster who needs to go start a new life somewhere?
Yeah.
Either way, I ended up getting earplugs rather than go out and confront him at four in the morning.
But the cats now, they now congregate here because the word has gotten out in Cat Town.
And right about the same time that the rooster first starts his mournful plaintive cry, the cats also start either fighting, which as you know is one of the great sounds,
Stray cats fighting.
No, no, no.
Or fucking.
Or just talking.
I don't know what they're doing.
They're making an awful lot of noise in the middle of the night.
And we have attracted this nuisance.
We have brought ghosts into the home.
Are you still feeding wet food?
I have nothing to do with it.
I stand there and shake my head and mourn.
As other women in my family, of which there are too many to mention by name, encourage her in her – because she's carrying on a tradition.
She didn't start this.
My cousin Libby started it.
And Libby is a full-grown person who should know better.
And so now, of course, it's part of our family tradition now.
I guess what we do is we spend $80 feeding stray cats so that they can fuck outside my window in the middle of the night.
I don't want to deny any animal food or a child pleasure, but it's got to stop.
Somebody in our park obtains corn and spreads corn.
You know about the library, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
But they're spreading corn for what?
There's all kinds of things you wouldn't want to feed in that park.
You know, let me ask you this, John.
Civil War ghosts.
There's an entire army of Civil War ghosts that live in that park there.
I do not recommend feeding.
You can still hear the rebel yells in your sleep.
I don't want to feed them corn or anything else.
Yeah, well, ask yourself this.
You live in a semi-urban environment.
What's a creature you'd like a lot more of?
Not rats, but close pigeons.
Pigeons.
You know what we need?
We need to feed the pigeons.
I've never fully understood the feed the pigeons thing.
I mean, can't you go to a nursery school and feed some kids?
Like, give them some corn.
Spread corn.
Not hate.
But I don't know.
I don't know.
But, you know, the family traditions are a complicated thing.
Because once those get some velocity, they are very difficult to stop, regardless of any kind of reasoning.
What kind of monster would I be if I walked into the center of the household and said...
Listen, we're going to stop feeding the cats.
History's worst.
You'd be history's worst monster.
How would I survive it?
I'd be attacked on all sides.
No.
So I just have to – increasingly in my life, I'm just sitting in a chair with a newspaper pretending to read it while things happen around me.
And I'm suddenly understanding the archetype of the American father that looks up over the top of the newspaper, takes a puff on his pipe and goes, I say, what?
And then goes back behind the newspaper.
Yeah, we've reached that age where you really, if you wanted to know where you stand, you don't really need to ask where you stand because the entire world is constantly reminding you where you stand.
And where you stand is there on the chair looking at a paper just trying to have a minute's piece.
Oh, we're feeding the cats.
Okay.
Whatever.
What?
This is me.
This is everything that happens in my life now.
What?
What?
What?
Why?
We're going to, we're going to, we're, what are we going to, how will we get there?
What, what, what are we doing?
We just went to a cat show.
You know, the reason we're having this whack-a-tube recording, we're both out of town.
I was at a cat show.
What is a cat show?
You're talking about a dog show?
It was like that, but cats.
And it was fucking great.
It was one of the best family trips we have had.
They don't do tricks, right?
They're just in boxes.
That's the funny part.
People think they will.
There was an agility course.
An agility course.
An agility course.
Yeah, it was an agility course for cats, and we met a very famous agile cat.
Oh.
Yeah, it's a Japanese bobtail named Zoom.
We met Zoom in person.
I want to meet Zoom.
Zoom can do the whole course in like 20 seconds.
It's pretty amazing.
Can you Zoom, Zoom, Zoom, Zoom?
Mm-hmm.
But, you know, that's the kind of thing where I know me.
I would not have come up with that on my own.
I would not have put that on the calendar.
I would not have booked the hotel.
But as you know, we've now reached an age where people just let you know about things when it's time.
Oh, by the way, this weekend, we're going to a cat show for a couple of nights.
How far away was the cat show?
A little over an hour.
Santa Rosa.
You had to travel.
Yeah, up in Velveteen country.
And yeah, it was actually one of the greatest family outings we have had.
It was close.
It was low pressure.
It was inexpensive.
And we got to see cats.
We got to see people trying to make cats do things.
Now, you made the transfer from a young family that did not have a cat to a mature family that had not only a cat, but a cat with problems.
She's a precious angel.
I absolutely love the cat very, very much.
She is a grotesquerie.
And so now you have a cat with problems, and I'm assuming that you are preparing for the inevitable when the cat with problems becomes a dying cat.
We don't do it while she's deaf anyway.
She can't hear.
But it's definitely discussed very often, and this was probably from my POV, the worst possible environment.
For when that is a paragraph that is in the air, like week to week, month to month, this is probably not the greatest place to go.
Cat show, you mean?
Do you have the Internet in front of you right now?
Are you able to look at the Internet?
I can find the Internet from here.
Go look at my page on Twitter.
I think you know my handle.
If you go to that, you'll see the header is something as a photograph I took yesterday that will give you a flavor of the cat show.
Okay, let me go.
I'm going to navigate to that.
It's hard.
Don't worry about it.
It's essentially from one of the judgings.
And that judge is a very famous judge.
He's a nationally renowned judge.
But this is what it looks like when you go to a cat show.
Wow, look at him.
Oh, my goodness.
Look at that cat.
Can you see there's kind of a lot going on there?
Well, yeah.
I mean, every cat in the picture has a story.
Every kitty has a story, don't it?
And there's like a Harlequin mask.
Oh, that's because it's Mardi Gras-themed.
Oh, did I mention it's a Mardi Gras-themed cat show?
No, you didn't.
Okay, I should have mentioned that.
There's Mardi Gras stuff everywhere.
The judge looks like the actor who was in the Jason movies.
Oh, absolutely.
Donald Pleasance.
He's a dead winner for Donald Pleasance.
Looks like Donald Pleasance.
Yeah.
His shirt has been
Very laundered.
Oh, he's super clean.
He's constantly spraying to clean things up and he's holding a very very So that is the breed of cat that we have but it don't look like that.
He's holding a very fluffy It's a very fluffy cat and he's holding it.
It's a it's a what's it called a Persian holding it you guys like mushy faced cats Hey, look, let's just be super clear about this Like the trip to the cat show.
I was informed.
We're getting a cat
You want to know how I learned we're getting a cat?
Let me tell you.
Coming FaceTime.
Hey, girls, what's up?
Look at this.
What?
I can't.
What are you saying?
They will give us the cat.
And I said, okay.
So what do I say?
They're FaceTiming me with a cat and saying this is the cat we'll be bringing home.
Oh, no.
Yeah, they said she's nine.
And it's not the cat that you would have chosen, I'm guessing.
The cat I would have chosen is, it's so nice that people have cats and enjoy them.
But I love her.
She's a precious angel.
And I love her very much.
But this is the cat show.
So there's lots of people with cats.
And the cats get judged.
There's a house pets competition.
This is where they're trying to find the champion.
Now, that's number 51.
That was my favorite cat.
And I went and talked to number 51's owner.
I said, why did number 51 not win?
And I said, well, the problem is you've got champions and grand champions.
When you're a champion, you have to go up the ladder and beat 200 cats before you go to, not beat, you know, but you've got to go up the ladder to become a grand champion.
And that's really, he's just doing that grind right now.
He and number 51 are just doing a grind to try and move up the ladder.
Yeah.
But these people, they're real serious about it.
And it makes it extra fun that they're real serious about it.
Well, as you know, I think we've talked about this a lot.
Growing up, I was a cat person.
I love cats.
I love kitty cats.
I love all kinds of cats.
Yes.
I like kitties.
I like cats.
I like kitty cats, I said already.
Do you like floofs?
I like a floof.
Do you like a chunky boy?
I do.
I like a rangy ratter.
I like a jumper.
I like a sleeper.
And the problem was that I was allergic to them the whole time.
So the reason that I was a sickly child was not that I had plurzy, but it was that I was just allergic to the cats that were sleeping on my face the whole time I grew up.
Was that ever interrogated at all?
John doesn't seem so good now that we got a cat.
I wonder if we should talk about that.
No, because we always had a cat.
No.
And I was always not good.
Oh, you're the latecomer.
You're the Johnny-come-lately.
That's right.
I guess, yeah, we had Simba Jacoby and Tiffany Michelle.
Uh-huh.
Tiffany Michelle.
I know the names.
Was that cat named by a woman, John?
No, it was named by some children.
Okay.
Okay.
But I think what it was, my mom is one of those people that if you, when a kid does a job or even a grown-up person does a job, she's not above coming along and redoing it.
And I think there was some dispute in the family at the time.
Some people wanted to name the cat Tiffany.
Some wanted to name it Michelle.
My mom solved the problem.
She cut the baby in two.
But in this case, she grafted the cat names together.
Simba Jacoby.
She did a reverse Solomon.
She took two parts of the baby and then made a grotesquerie out of the two parts.
And those two cats would actually follow Manushka around the neighborhood.
It's delightful stories in our family that I could regale you with for hours.
Mm-hmm.
So there were always cats.
I always had a sniffle.
And I guess in the 70s, people didn't understand about allergies, didn't know that they existed.
I think they just didn't acknowledge them.
They just didn't acknowledge them.
There's no way that peanut allergies exist in 2019 and didn't exist in 1979.
I think they just ignored it.
Well, yeah, kids died right and left.
They died in storms.
People forgot them at the mall and didn't come back.
You just make more.
You need them for the farm.
I was on a plane the other day, and they came on the intercom and said, there's a person on the plane with peanut allergies.
So not only are we not serving peanuts, but no one, if you brought peanuts, you can't eat them.
I think, supposedly, you're not even supposed to bring them.
But I mean you can't not bring them.
You're saying that maybe there should be a separate legume TSA Well, no, but I mean like if you're just traveling and you and peanuts are part of your travel kit.
Oh put casual nuts But you just don't you just don't bust them out.
Oh, I hear you.
Okay.
It's no different from shaving cream Yeah, don't I mean if you're allergic to shaving cream You're exposed even to a little bit of it, you know that you're the only one now You're the only one in the household that's having these symptoms
Well, no, I think everybody's allergic to cats.
But the thing, as you know, is people will suffer all manner of indignity to be proximate to cats.
Because cats give us so much.
So, so much.
And, you know, my last cat.
So I had a cat that I loved very much in recent years.
During the lifetime of this show, you had a cat, right?
Yeah, that's right.
Louis was a wonderful cat.
Louis died in a manner that was very tragic to me.
And then I tried to replace Louis because a friend of mine had a young daughter.
This was before my daughter was born.
She had a little girl, and she had a cat.
So the little girl's father...
Left the family in a way that enraged the mother.
And then tried to resolve the issue of having left by bringing an unwelcome cat and saying, I got you a kitty.
And so the mother already enraged at the father for various reasons.
Now had a quadruple rage because he'd brought a cat into their home and then he left.
Oh, my gosh.
So she hated this cat.
And the cat was emotionally injured by something that happened perhaps in an earlier life.
Maybe the cat was carrying some baggage of its... I get that.
I feel like our cat definitely has PTSD.
I imagine there's a lot of ways you could damage a cat's brain.
But I feel like this cat maybe has its people.
were driven from their lanes oh driven i see okay so the cat has like uh like pain reverberating through generations it's not nothing bad actually happened to this cat i've heard about this they say that it can be passed along it's passed along people people who's uh you know i don't get into a thing here but there's a pretty good number of people in this country that are descended from people that had a pretty bad situation and they say that that that that can get passed along
And I think that's what happened in the case of this cat.
Yes.
Anyway, my friend said my friend who was seething about this cat.
Apparently, the cat also would attack her little one and a half year old.
Gosh.
And so she called me and said, will you do something?
And I had just recently lost a cat that I loved.
And I said, you know what?
I tell you what, because she because I know the father also.
And she was like, will you resolve?
You have to help here.
I was like, I don't actually, but I will.
I'll take the cat.
So I took the cat and the cat was named Lucy.
And Lucy was terrible.
Just terrible.
Just terrible.
She was the kind of cat that you would pet her and she would purr.
You'd pet her a second time and she would purr a little bit more and kind of like nudge into your hand.
And you would think, oh, oh.
And then you would pet her a third time and she would maul you.
without warning you didn't do anything different it's not like you grabbed her tail you didn't try and stick a finger in her pooper it's like adopting a political science major
It was very challenging.
And, you know, and I'm somebody that doesn't mind getting mauled a little bit.
No, no, no, no.
You're not going to shy away from a little mauling now and then.
Oh, no.
It's the cost of doing business.
You know, any of my lady friends, you know that they've all mauled me at one point or another.
And so the cat and I, so then the thing is with Lucy, I would sit and let her shred my arm a little bit because, hey, right, we're sharing a house.
But then Lucy also not only is a cat that has the schizo mauling, but then is a cat that goes too far.
Right.
Like once she gets into it.
I mean, I'll interrupt you, but like a lot of times when the cat does that, I've heard it said from pet people, animal people, that what happens is the cat gets comfortable and then the cat gets so comfortable it realizes it's vulnerable.
And that's when it bites.
It gives you a little nip or that's when it gives you a little scratch.
It's because it got too comfortable.
And that wild, the feral part of that animal is saying, wait a minute, you dingus.
You've got to get back to being in a ready state.
You're saying it wasn't just to take your finger away.
This is more like more a more punitive.
Yeah, like let's get I mean or just I don't even know punitive.
I think that the cats just like this is my time.
This is my time to shine.
And so it became a situation where I didn't want any more of this cat.
And but then but then you got a cat.
You can't just take it out behind a woodshed, right?
Can't just it's not like a it's not like a Hawaii rooster.
You can't just put it in a pot.
Fortunately for me,
eric corson bass player of the long winters would come by and he thought lucy was amazing how did lucy feel about eric also she she really liked eric i should i should also mention that lucy so one of the great things about lewis was he was a beautiful cat and he was small he was very small when you looked at him you were like he seems like he's not done growing like he's a
Like he's a teenage cat.
Lewis was, he was always going to be a small cat.
But he was very, he was very, he was very attractive.
He was very proportionate.
Not to say that disproportionality is unattractive.
Not saying that at all.
But in a cat, when you look at a cat, if the cat is proportionate, it's one of the things that I look for in a cat.
It's why I don't like smushy face cats because their nose is not proportionate.
Sometimes you don't get a vote.
But Lucy was one of those cats, and I know you're going to know what I'm talking about, whose head was too small.
Yeah.
you know what i mean no there's a curb appeal of a small-headed cat just it's not there it's a small head it's like uh it's like a weak chin yeah yeah i do know yeah and you know and i would fluff her hair her head head hair up a little bit to try and like make her head look more proportionate yeah but as as time went on of course she also liked to eat so her the rest of her kept growing also
So there was only so much like hairstyling you could do.
Anyway, Eric thought she was beautiful and they loved one another.
And one day I said, and this is, it only happens once or twice in a lifetime.
I said, Eric, would you like Lucy to come live with you?
And Eric said, really?
You mean it?
And I was like, Eric, I love you so much that I'm going to give you my beloved Lucy because the connection between you two is so strong.
Wow.
Wow.
Well, here we are.
Yeah.
Nine years later, ten years later, and Lucy and Eric still live together happily.
Eric comes home and calls out to her when he walks in the door.
So Lucy's getting up there.
Oh, yeah.
Lucy's definitely like a mature cat.
Mm-hmm.
Eric and Lucy have a game they play, which is that Eric wakes up in the morning and goes into the kitchen, and Lucy waits for him around the corner and then shreds his ankles.
Aw, like a pink panther.
And Eric goes, aw.
Aw.
That is so sweet.
It's wonderful.
It really is the best possible ending to this story.
I think it's good for Eric, too.
I haven't seen Eric in a while, but I bet that's good for him.
It is.
It's nice.
Keep him sharp.
And every once in a while, I will go over to Eric's, and I'll see Lucy.
We'll have a little reunion.
Oh, how's that go?
Oh, it's fine.
It's fine.
I know not to.
Do you think Lucy remembers you, John?
Don't know or care.
Okay.
But I know I remember her and I know enough to like – That's funny.
I pat her twice, right?
I don't go into that third pat.
Yeah.
But I'm happy for them.
And the problem is I – and now I have a question about the cat show.
Yeah.
did they have any of those siberian forest cats i don't think so they um there were i mean i i have heard it said that persians are a very popular breed even though they're very costly and have health problems i hear um there were a lot of what you described the kind of uh hypo hypocephalic uh tiny head like egyptian type cats there were some of those there were a lot of like tuxedo cats there were a few main coon stop pardon my saying
Like there were a few of the larger cats.
I don't think there was one that claimed to be a Bengal cat, but if it was, it was a pretty small Bengal cat.
I did not see a Savannah cat, for example.
I did not see any of the very, very large, nearly feral type cats.
These people are like cat breeder people, and I'm going to tell you a secret.
I don't want to ruin the tone of this wonderful show, the wonderful cat show, but a lot of it's about making money and getting status.
So there's the status part.
If you try to win a contest, a lot of people trying to sell us a cat.
Oh, as you're walking around, they're coming out and handing you their business card.
We saw a sweet precious angel that looked like Crookshanks from Harry Potter, which I haven't read.
And we went over and visited with it.
And she was so nice.
We said, we have a precious, we have a precious little person.
And she's like, yeah, yours is covered with tumors, right?
No, no, no, no tumors.
She does have knots.
I mean, she's not that bad yet.
Why did you say that?
No, I didn't think about that.
This episode of Roderick on the Line is brought to you in part by Casper.
You can learn more about Casper right now by visiting casper.com slash super train.
You guys know Casper.
It's a sleep brand that makes expertly designed products to help you get your best rest one night at a time.
Casper is designed for humans and that means Casper products are cleverly designed to mimic human curves, providing supportive comfort for all kinds of bodies.
You spend one-third of your life sleeping, so you should be comfortable.
Guys, a third.
The experts at Casper work tirelessly to make a quality sleep surface that cradles your natural geometry in all the right places.
Big fan.
The original Casper mattress combines supportive memory foams for a quality sleep surface and all the right amounts of both sink and bounce.
It has a breathable design that helps you sleep cool and regulates your body temperature throughout the night.
With over 20,000 reviews and an average of 4.8 stars across Casper, Amazon, and Google, Casper is becoming the internet's favorite mattress.
All kinds of selections.
You got options, guys.
Casper has two other kinds of mattress, the Wave and the Essential.
The Wave features a patent-pending premium support system to mirror the natural shape of your body.
And the Essential has a streamlined design at a price that won't keep you up at night.
Casper also offers a wide array of other products like pillows and sheets to ensure an overall better sleep experience.
And you know, my favorite, they're all designed, developed, and assembled in the United States of America.
They have such affordable prices because Casper cuts out the middleman and sells directly to you.
They have hassle-free returns if you're not completely satisfied.
And wow,
They deliver it right to your door in a small, like, how did they even do that, sized box.
And, of course, they have free shipping and returns in the United States and Canada.
And you can be sure of your purchase with Casper's 100-night risk-free sleep-on-it trial.
You know, I'm a big fan of Casper.
We have three Casper mattresses in our house, and everyone likes them.
The cat even sleeps on him.
It's super-duper annoying.
Now, here's the thing.
We need you to go to casper.com slash supertrain, and you can use the offer code supertrain at checkout, and that is going to get you $50 towards select mattresses.
Once again, you go to casper.com slash supertrain, offer code supertrain.
Please do this.
Go and get yourself a Casper.
You're living a lie.
Go.
Do it.
Casper.
Our thanks to Casper for supporting Roderick on the Line and all the great shows.
Cost me a pretty penny.
No, no, but she was, this woman was, she was real friendly, as long as we were talking about sweet precious angels, and then as soon as I had the Temeria jump and say, uh-uh, we're not getting a cat today, pew, she was gone.
So I think it's a lot of that.
Now, what is the one you're describing, a polar vortex cat?
What is it called?
So I think a Maine Coon is very related to a Siberian or Scandinavian forest cat.
Bigger than you'd think is probably reasonable.
Three and a half feet.
Yes.
They're massive.
If you look at that photo, John, you'll see now he's just holding up this terrified Persian here.
But you'll see there's a little kitty nail thing.
What he does is every time he gets the cat, he holds up a feather or other magic wand device and waves it and tries to get the cat to climb up there so we can get a good look.
Oh.
Right.
Now, if you deal with a Maine Coon, that's going to be bigger than a toddler.
They're big.
Well, so one of the great things about a Maine Coon, my understanding is, they're nice cats.
They're sociable.
Oh, that's cool.
Yeah.
They're like the big guy on a sketch comedy team.
Oh, lovable.
They're lovable.
They're fun.
Look how big these things are.
They're big, and their heads are large like a bear.
Yes.
Yes.
That's right.
You want a large head on a cat.
Look at that.
I think we've covered this already.
Yeah.
You know, we did.
We did.
But they act like dogs.
Yeah.
And apparently, now this is a posposable.
This is a posposable, yeah.
Siberian cat.
But they are hypoallergenic.
Oh, oh, oh.
Well, they got a beard.
Yes.
They do, but apparently the fur is a kind of, it's an other kind of fur, a fur that is... If it makes a dander, it's not a dander that hurts John?
Or maybe they have hair.
You know, like, you ever have that conversation with pet people where they're like, oh, this breed doesn't have it?
Fur, it has hair.
Oh, I've had a lot of those conversations.
And I've always been like, hmm.
What is the... I don't know.
I don't want to ask.
I really don't.
I don't want to ask what the difference is between fur.
Because you know what?
They'll tell you.
They will.
And I won't remember.
It's like talking to somebody about being a vegan.
You're going to find out.
Well...
With all due respect.
No, no, it's true.
My sister on this trip.
So we've been in Hawaii for eight or nine days by this point.
I'm going to be here now again for another week and a half or something.
I will be in Hawaii for a total of 19 days.
You will have been.
Yes, I will have been.
By the time this show airs, which could be in March of 2015.
This is coming out today.
It's coming.
This is a special President's Day episode that, unless this file breaks, will absolutely, positively be coming out today.
It is President's Day.
That's wonderful.
Happy President's Day.
I haven't even sent out my cards.
Happy President's Day to you.
Your sister.
She has decided.
You know, my sister is 48.
Plus.
That's hard to believe.
And she's decided just in this moment of her life, oh my goodness, there's some kind of parrot in the tree.
No kidding.
There's like a live parrot.
You just see a bird just flying around there.
Yeah, it's like a, well, there are birds all over, but this is a parrot.
Anyway, she's decided to have this season be another season where she has difficult food problems.
Oh, she's racing the bar on what goes in her food hole.
That's right.
And so now what meets the standard, the rigorous standard for consumption by Susan is
It's always been a short list.
Shorter than mine, certainly, but shorter than most grown-up people's.
Part of it is, like, is it something you can explain in a sentence without confusing someone, right?
Well, and her new one, it only is equivalent to, like, I don't know what's pornography.
I'll know when I see it.
I can't tell you what it is.
So when you present her with food, she rejects it.
When you suggest food that we all might get and enjoy, she rejects it.
And so she's now – she's one of the kinds of people, and there are a lot of them in the world now, who makes a separate meal.
To accompany the meal that everyone else has said.
So no matter what the situation is, I'm familiar with that.
I do that a lot.
Does she eat pasta with just salt and cheese on it?
Well, the thing is, now the pasta needs to be other.
How is it sourced?
How's it sourced?
How did you source this pasta?
Did the wheat have a name?
Did the wheat have a free range?
No wheat with a face.
Was it caged wheat?
I love that movie.
And she didn't caged wheat.
The problem is I didn't like Brad Pitt's accent.
It was bullshit.
He was so not from Louisiana.
Yeah.
But but so so that that's a complication.
Yeah.
And I also have a seven and a half year old daughter.
So, as you know, that's a separate meal, too.
So then you're dealing with.
All right.
Now, now, too, you're living in a word problem.
So two of us need separate meals.
The separate meal that each of them needs is not the same as the other separate meal.
See?
You know what I'm saying?
James is seated in the second car of the train.
He is going to Baltimore.
This is going to be hard to show your work on.
That's complicated.
Now, your mom's a gamer, right?
She's going to get along.
No, not anymore.
Not anymore.
Mom has decided that she also needs not special meals but cannot eat all kinds of foods across a wide spectrum of foods.
So even drawing a Venn diagram for this is tricky.
Because you don't even know if it's going to pass muster until it's food.
Mom's list of foods that she can and cannot have does not follow the normal lines where somebody might say, I don't eat dairy, or I don't eat nuts, or I don't eat meat, or something.
Mom does not eat certain nightshades.
Mom does not eat certain nightshades.
Oh, so like a tomato.
Beans.
Certain tomatoes are nightshades, right?
Yeah, they are.
Okay.
But like, if you... Can you name all the nuts?
Tom Woods, I could name every kind of nut.
Well, my father would say to me... Some of the nuts...
She can eat.
Okay.
Believe me, best in show came up a lot in the last 24 hours just in passing.
Potatoes, tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, chili pepper, goji.
These are examples of nightshade vegetables.
Right.
So, so potatoes, potatoes and tomatoes.
Potatoes and tomatoes.
Okay.
They all grow in the shade of the night.
In the shade of the night.
We got back.
We got back to David Coverdale.
So anyway, so it has become very difficult to eat with my mom, but she is someone who travels with a Tupperware.
So when my mom arrives somewhere and business is being transacted, things are happening, and then someone says, well, it's that time of day where normal people eat.
Should we eat?
Shall we eat?
So she takes care of herself?
My mom pulls out a Tupperware.
It's like somebody who vapes or needs insulin.
Like, she knows when it's time.
That's right.
She does her own thing.
She has her own kit.
She has her own, what do they call it, a rig?
Yeah.
She has a rig.
Okay.
And she doesn't do the thing where she's like, well... Yeah, yeah, yeah.
God bless her.
The great trick is when you say, it's time to eat, and the person goes, yeah, let's get some food.
Yeah.
And then you say, great, let's get Mexican.
Oh, I can't.
Mm-hmm.
And then you're on the trail.
You will know me by the trail of dead.
Oh, I know.
See, I have so much, pardon my saying, I have so much aloha for the person who doesn't even bring it up, and that's just the thing that they do.
Now, I do this in a different way, which is before we go out to quote-unquote dinner at someone's quote-unquote house, I eat dinner.
I eat dinner before dinner.
Because I don't want to hear about, oh, it's scheduled now, the host had some drinks, and now we're eating five hours later.
I assume the food will not even appear, and I don't talk about it.
I don't talk about it with anybody.
I eat a meal before I eat a meal, and that way, if there's no meal, I'm still good.
I have a pre-meal and a post-meal.
There's nothing wrong with that.
That's like your mom.
Like, this is a form of, like, taking care of, like, what your deal is.
You're not there to, what do the academics say?
You're not there to problematize to, as Jeff Bezos says, to create complexifiers.
No, I don't want to complexifiers.
Don't do complexifiers.
You're making it easy on everybody because you bought your own Tupperware.
That's right.
That's right.
You know what?
I've got a landgager in my back pocket, whether you need it or not.
That's not for you.
That's for me.
That's right.
That is for you.
That is for me, you.
It's tertiary for you.
This is for me and the Lord.
I'm just taking care of myself.
They call it self-care.
Well, I should also mention that in addition to my sister and my daughter, we are also living here with my 93-year-old Uncle Jack.
Uncle Jack.
Now, Uncle Jack only eats American food.
And within the category American food... Like hardtack and nettles?
He only eats the subset of American food, which is American food where you can look at it and in a glance tell all the ingredients.
Yeah, so like a steak and a baked nightshade.
Yeah, but a steak would be too much... That's too much work.
Okay.
So he's right at that point in his life where he wants a bowl of tomato soup...
and a toast or something.
Sure, sure, sure.
He doesn't have complicated needs.
No, I understand.
But when it's time to have dinner, I don't want tomato soup every night.
No, especially at like 3 o'clock or something.
Right.
So what ends up happening is I'm in a household with five people, but only two of those people are actually ready to get dinner at any point in time.
You've got to just start eating separately.
You've got to start doing pre-dinners.
But the thing is, the little one cannot prepare her own meal.
The oldest one cannot prepare his own meal.
So we're being orbited by moons that need care.
Yes.
And then in the center, there's this very small group, a much smaller subset of the family that's like, what if we got sushi?
Hey, there's an Indian food place.
Yeah.
And so, but also we can't abandon them.
We can't say like, tonight we're going to go get Indian food.
You guys, here's some bread and cheese.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because, you know, like.
Yeah.
Arguably, they're the center of our lives, not us.
We're not here for us.
We're here for them.
I'm not going to bring it up since this is your bit.
There's a million ways to deal with this that are not very pretty, but are very effective.
But when you're on a vacation with the family, you want to do stuff together and have a thing.
And you're going out to dinner.
I can't even imagine how you choose a restaurant to go out to dinner to.
Trying to account for the timing.
What would everybody like?
Shaved ice.
Yeah, that's the only thing I could eat there.
The Hawaiian cuisine just felt like a prank to me.
And they hated me so much.
They really, really hated me.
They put a chicken on a rice.
They cover it with an egg.
And then they put gravy on it.
You make a spam and a gravy.
It sounds like a Merlin man fantasy dinner.
It sounds like, uh, that's how they get you.
That's how they get you.
That's the tar baby is it looks like something you want to go and grab and believe me at eight.
And then what happens?
What was the part of you that was like, wait a minute, this, I just could tell myself we'll be home in eight days.
This has pineapple on it and it doesn't mean pineapple.
It just, I don't know, man.
It's like living inside like a movie poster.
Like it doesn't taste good.
Not my thing.
Now, I'm curious, though, now, okay, so the shave eyes can get you along.
Now, it sounds to me, though, you have not given up like I would.
And just, see, now I'm getting into galaxy brain.
If I got that many options going on, I'm in galaxy brain.
First of all, you know what, kid?
You're getting noodles.
Because you like noodles.
Here's your noodles.
That takes one person off the board.
But you still have a lot of factors here.
Now, does Uncle Jack like going out to dinner?
Well, most of your meals, you're going out to dinner or you're eating at home?
We've been eating at home a lot.
We used to go out to dinner a lot, but Uncle Jack now – It's hard to get around.
At 93, he's like, going to dinner is a bigger deal.
The problem is I don't have – I'm not invested at all in Uncle Jack growing up healthy and strong.
Mm-mm.
I would like him to stretch more often and stop yelling at the gardeners.
But my daughter, I still am in a fatherly mode where I'm like, you cannot eat noodles and salt every day of your life.
You have to have one other element.
Does she have a green that you can slip in?
For me, that's broccoli.
Broccoli's not usually objected to.
Do you have a green you can slip in?
She will eat broccoli.
Okay.
Um, she will eat.
She has gotten to the point where I can slip a third ingredient into a thing and she will go.
Yeah.
Okay.
Never go with a dad to a third ingredient.
That's right.
Uh, but the third ingredient cannot be a foreign ingredient.
It can't be a green that she can't identify.
It can't be any sort of seafood unless it's tuna with mayonnaise.
Mm hmm.
somehow tuna with mayonnaise how did tuna get in there although it smells like fish to me yeah somehow it is exempted by all the people that don't like fish i don't understand how that is huh because it does smell very fishy yeah another thing is i mean eat a halibut boy you eat a halibut and boy that's better than steak a lot of the time halibut brother give me a halibut any day
With the halibut.
Come on.
It's the best.
I'm crazy with the halibut.
I sous vide the halibut now.
But the tuna on the side.
You have literally five different requirements in play here.
It feels like there may not be a way to solve your tile puzzle.
There's not.
And I think it does not simplify it.
It actually...
It actually complicates it further that the adults in the room that do want to eat interesting food are not good cooks.
Right?
Like, I'm not a good cook.
This is an AP word problem at this point.
So we're here at the house.
Cooking at home is the simplest solution.
But the only thing that the adults in charge know how to cook is spaghetti and tacos.
and and and then with a land okay spaghetti you got a problem with nightshade tacos you're definitely going to have a problem with sourcing and content well and spice too you can't you can never spice things where everybody's happy no um there's nothing worse i don't think than a taco that doesn't taste like a taco that's just shaped like a taco and then inside is just some some other food just taco shaped food no no that's the there's already been way too much fake innovation in the taco environment that has to stop
Oh, it does have to stop.
If you wrap something in a chicken patty, that's not a taco.
That's literally a holocaust.
What was the thing I got the other day where it was called a taco?
And it was so not a taco.
It was like the anti-taco.
Was it there where you were staying?
Well, no, I did have a fish taco the other day here.
I had a fish taco last night.
It was great.
Well, see, the fish taco here was not great.
Also, you notice this about a fish taco?
It doesn't travel.
Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
If somebody makes you a fish taco, eat it immediately.
Part of what made this, I won't go into it, part of what made this visit such a resounding success was that we had four eating out meals that were all terrific and perfect for what they are.
And one of those included a Mexican food meal.
We usually get Mexican and bring it home.
Even eight minutes of travel time on a fish taco.
Now you've basically made a tortilla stew with fish in it.
Everything's moist.
It's already pre-dressed.
There's white sauce on it.
Not a problem.
But if you eat it at the source this morning, tell you what, we had fucking McDonald's straight out of the McDonald's, and it was glorious.
So I'm just saying there's a big difference.
Straight out of the McDonald's.
Yes.
Now, if you notice, there's a rooster now who's decided that now is its time.
But this is not the same rooster.
There are, as you remember from Maui,
There are so many roosters.
That sounded like a cartoon sound effect from the Hanna-Barbera library.
Yeah.
Oh, my God.
He just keeps going, doesn't he?
He does.
We're in an interesting posture here because in 1970... That sounds like the Jungle Cruise.
It is.
It really is.
There's a guy on a boat.
He's about to shoot a hippopotamus.
In 1970, my aunt and uncle came here to Maui, and to the very, very south of Kihei, right on the border with Wailea, where Kihei Road was made of dirt, and only tiki lamps lit the way.
They bought an acre of land here across the street from the beach with three other families.
Oh, my goodness.
The four families built four matching homes.
That's so cool and sweet.
Yes.
And they are...
They sit on the acre in a kind of semi-circle.
And they all look down together.
Like a little compound.
A compound that has a wall all the way around it made out of volcanic rock.
So you can't see in.
And then they all share a tennis court because they all loved tennis.
Wow.
Now, at the time, across the street, there were just sand dunes.
And when I was a little kid and...
and a medium kid uh we would come and we would walk down and this was you remember in the 70s and 80s um if you were a group of kids that wanted to go to the beach the adults said get out of here go to the beach and don't come back until the sun comes down right sure so we would run down and we would spend all day on the beach and the adults i don't know what they did they sat up here and drank played tennis it was a nice life uh but then time passages
And, uh, and, and other things.
Yeah.
And then it was many years later and uncle Jack decided, so uncle Jack was not the uncle that owned the house, but uncle Jack decided that he didn't want to be in Alaska all winter anymore.
And he was going to come to Hawaii from January to March because it's better than Alaska.
And he said, I'm just going to go back and I'm going to rent the house.
Not that the, not the Knutson house, but the Ketchel house.
Hmm.
So the Knutson house was the last one of the four.
The Ketchel house is the second of the four.
So we stay here every year.
And it's very familiar to us.
It just feels like home.
It feels like where we used to come.
Now the beach side is all mansions.
It's no longer, you don't walk across the street and...
And you're in the sand dunes.
You walk across the street and there's like a public walk.
Oh, I get it.
That sucks.
And mansions on either side.
Yeah.
We were over there the other day and there's a house for sale right on that side.
And it's a very humble little bungalow that was there back in the old days.
A little mid-century modern bungalow.
And I was like, oh, it's perfect.
It's like, I remember that house from the old days.
And...
It's small and it's manageable.
I wonder what they want for it.
$12 million.
Hang on.
Is it mansion-y?
No, it's like 900 square feet.
It's just house-y?
They don't want it.
They're selling the house with the presumption that the first thing you will do is bulldoze the house.
And build a 15,000 foot house.
place with a you know with a bar and a oh my gosh it's a great location is what that's what they would say in real estate oh it's all about the selling location house house is free a house is free i get it i get it you give us a you give us a dollar you get a nut and a bolt and we throw in a beer i bet you that the price is reduced to 250 000 because the house is on the land it would be more expensive without the house oh god
But when we used to come here, what we had was there were geckos everywhere.
There were mongoose.
There were giant spiders and dinosaurs, creepy crawlies.
All of those things seem to be gone.
I haven't seen a gecko the entire time I've been here.
What we have now are roosters.
You need to do a documentary, John.
This could be a documentary.
It's got multiple levels to it, right?
It's the change.
You're seeing the change.
What's happening?
What is happening?
What is happening?
You could interview people.
I've been on a tropical vacation with you.
At least one.
Do you get aloha?
If you're here for a week, will you achieve Aloha?
I'm going to say something.
I'm going to say something that's complicated.
Yeah.
That's not out of character.
No.
They did not like us.
And B, I totally get it.
I've never felt so unwelcome somewhere in my entire life, and I totally get it.
Did you get that?
You get a certain hostility.
Because, you know, I recently learned, I heard on a podcast what we did to Hawaii, and it weren't nice.
No, it wasn't.
We basically took the queen and we stuck her in a room and kind of kind of put her in like a fancy jail for a while.
And then we kind of took over and made it a large fruit company.
A fruit company.
We did a number on Hawaii.
Sugar and spice and everything nice.
The thing about Hawaii that I learned from when I was young is don't try to pretend that... Oh, is this like the Brooklyn accent problem?
It's a little bit of the Brooklyn accent problem.
That's an old story from one of our classic episodes.
But yeah, part of it is you go in there and what are you going to do?
You're going to be fucking Don Ho?
Yeah, right.
I do not...
I will not initiate a mahalo.
If someone mahalos me, I will mahalo them back.
But if I'm in a transaction with someone, I do not say mahalo.
Because it's like speaking Spanish to your waiter in a San Francisco Mexican restaurant.
Now here, there's a lot of... That's so bad.
More like Hurricane Tortilla.
There's a lot of aloha here.
So much aloha.
And I really want to get... You're talking about literal aloha.
Not aloha, the noun, but aloha, the word you say.
Well, and also there's the aloha, the word you say, but there's also aloha, the verb.
I like aloha, the concept a lot.
Yeah.
And I try to aloha the shit out of stuff.
Like, for instance, when I'm on this island, I drive 20 miles an hour.
Oh, that seems like good aloha.
Because no one else is in a hurry to get anywhere.
And anyone that is in a hurry is from somewhere else.
Oh, so you know what?
Let it begin with me.
You're doing Hippocratic driving.
You're saying the least I can do is not actively exacerbate the problem.
Right, but that also includes like when you're... You're not honking and yelling aloha.
No, but also when you're in a service situation where someone is waiting on you or bringing something or you're waiting in line to get a shaved ice or something, I just go full aloha.
I'm not impatient.
I'm not in a hurry to get anywhere.
You encompass aloha without saying it.
I do.
That's a sexy move.
I try to aloha everybody.
Oh, I love this.
I love this.
I'm not in your way.
I'm not trying to steal your wave.
I'm not trying to steal your wave.
If this is your area of the beach, that's fine.
The other day, two ladies who were my age...
and seemed to be married, set up next to us on the beach, and turned their stereo on.
Brought a stereo to the beach and turned it on.
If those were Millenniums, you wouldn't abide it.
Well, the thing is... Because they were home Millenniums.
When it first started, I looked over my shoulder thinking, fucking Millenniums.
And then I realized they were Generation X people who had adopted...
the idea that the entire rest of the world was just a Truman show around them.
The rest of the world is an audience for your Instagram.
Yeah.
And Instagram is literally your life.
And it felt like they were performing happiness, too.
Like they had the music on and they were just like, oh, ha ha ha, like ting, like they were making a male enhancement commercial, except there was no me.
Oh, I know what you mean.
That might have a ukulele in it.
Was that kind of thing?
They were in two bathtubs side by side, like two outdoor bathtubs side by side.
And every part of me wanted to say, if we wanted to hear Paul Simon's Graceland...
We would be listening to it on our headphones.
We don't want to hear it because we're enjoying the sound of the waves.
Well, a middle-aged man comes into my state, doesn't know what kind of food to make.
But we're not enjoying the sound of the waves anymore.
Now we're listening to Lady Smith, Black and Babasa.
Except we can't really hear it because the wind is blowing it and we only hear a little bit of it.
Oh, no, that's a bad environment for that.
It's bad.
The beach is not where you bring a stereo.
I don't know how much hiking you do.
Hardly any.
But lately, if you're hiking on a trail in a forest, you almost certainly will encounter some millenniums who have a stereo in their pack.
And it's playing Drake as they hike through the forest.
I get a lot of the phone has become the new anti-jam box where people are just jamming out on their fucking Android phones to whatever.
They take their calls on speakerphone and they wear it around their neck as like a little speaker.
But no, I agree with you.
Wherever you go, you're going to hear some kind of music.
Not even you don't even get a diamond on the sole of your shoe.
It's going to be more like a male enhancement kind of song.
But here's me.
Here's me in Hawaii.
Hey, everybody.
Look at me.
I'm Instagram.
Shut up.
I'm so freaking woke here that I just aloha'd the shit out of it.
Now, what was your process for that?
You noticed this.
You went, internally.
Yes.
And you turn, and there's some ladies there enjoying Paul Simon on the beach.
Yes.
They're performing happy.
Yes.
And then I said, as I got ready, as I started to construct the scenario where I –
First of all, a white man on a beach in Hawaii was going to walk over to these two performatively happy women and say, Can you turn your music down so that I can enjoy the Hawaiian sounds with my family who were sitting here already?
I'm trying to think of all the ways in which I'm going to prepare for the blowback.
I can't hear the clever things my white daughter is saying.
And then I said, wait, are you being aloha?
The aloha.
You know who was here before you?
The aloha.
Oh, pre-existing aloha.
Oh, wow.
All I have to do is just inhabit the aloha.
I don't have to bring the aloha.
I don't have to generate it.
You just discover it in situ.
It's already his aloha everywhere.
Love is all around.
No need to waste it.
Let it wash over you.
So smart.
And so when I'm walking on a trail here and I see some Hawaiian people coming the other way, I don't try to get them to be happy or friendly to me.
Right?
I don't go like, hello, or aloha.
I let them set the tone.
And the tone is generally that they pretend that I'm not there.
Right.
Right.
But they're not pretending I'm not there.
They're like very consciously like –
wishing that i wasn't there and you know as as as the years go on i'm in more and more situations where i'm conscious of the other person wishing i wasn't there oh it's such a it's such a it's such a good move and i think don't don't need to be reminded of that anybody don't don't get to our age without realizing people don't really want you there when i was young i didn't people didn't want me there then either but i didn't notice it or i didn't realize right because you're like everybody wants me here
Now I'm just like, you know what?
I don't even want to be here either.
And honestly, I don't want you here.
I don't want to.
Hell is other people.
And so we meet on the trail.
Hell, I don't want anybody here.
I don't even want myself here.
It would be better if none of us were here.
I'm not going to bite my lip and give you a head bob.
You don't want that.
We don't want that.
So in essence, you decided to hang loose.
so i'm just hanging loose i'm shaka shaka brah and i'm aloha as much as i can be wow and i'm trying the thing is that this is the longest vacation i've been on in a long time and it's past the point of vacation length into some other kind of length and it's not it was not planned it was a situation where uncle jack who is very very capable yes
is just past the point of being fully capable.
I've had trips like that where it takes a slight turn of like, hmm, there may be more kinds of things to do and house tasks and office visits than I had expected.
And everybody else has to go back and get back to work, right?
Oh, shit, yes.
Everybody else was just here for a vacation.
Oh, this is a distinct turn.
Oh, John.
So today, everyone's leaving.
Oh.
Except for me and Uncle Jack.
Ah.
Ah.
Okay.
Uh-huh.
For the next nine days, I will be making nine days, which is in addition to the nine days I've been here already.
I'm going to be making ham and cheese sandwiches for Uncle Jack.
Okay.
And he's going to be explaining to me how his father bayoneted a German, and that was why he became an alcoholic, and that was why
Uncle Jack needed to run for mayor in the 70s.
Nine days, you say?
Because, of course, he needed to be mayor of Anchorage in order to make up for the fact that his father had killed this German with a bayonet, supposedly.
Oh, man.
Your family took down a lot of Axis men.
Aloha.
Aloha.
Aloha.
Aloha.