Ep. 376: "Wrong Kind of Vacation"
Hello.
Hi, John.
Hi, Merlin.
How's it going?
Gimme, gimme, gimme a man after midnight.
Is that about gremlins?
What is that?
Oh, yeah.
You know more than I do.
How's day 97 of your quarantine?
Five by five.
Doing fine.
Oh, good, good, good.
How about you?
It's early, for one.
I've been sleeping a lot.
I haven't been.
I think my body's readjusting and gone into summer vacation mode, where I actually fall asleep around 10 and I wake up around 7.
Wow.
I take a lot of drugs.
That's nice.
Sleepy drug.
Well, you know, all kinds of drugs.
Sleep's in there somewhere, yeah.
That helps a lot.
Sleepy time.
Sleepy time tea.
That's for amateurs.
Wakey time.
So what are you doing with yourself right now?
Not right this second.
You got some coffee and you're recording your phony award-winning podcast.
Sure.
What do you do with yourself?
How are you occupying yourself?
Yeah.
Well, you know, as a bipolar person, even one who is currently medicated.
You have the best dependent clause.
You know, I have typically engaged in, how would you describe it?
Risky behavior.
Over the course of my lifetime.
And a lot of that risky behavior is, I've learned, as a way of kind of dealing with self-medicating.
Self-care?
Not really.
It's a way of.
Self undermine.
Yeah.
Well, it's a way of like sort of manifesting an attempt at control over what bipolar is doing.
And the risky behavior is, you know, now that I don't do drugs or.
smoke cigarettes or, you know, it's not, it's not substance stuff as much, you know, it, a lot of that energy transferred over to doing things late at night or to getting into small dramas with people or to, you know, have, it became interpersonal or social, the kind of, um, I was seeking danger.
But I wasn't able to seek danger in the same – in the venue of like, I'm going to go out and get high and go steal a car or whatever.
It became more like, I'm going to talk to this person and see if I can –
ruin this relationship seems like these crop up is what i'm going to call little projects and they're little projects you know what i'm saying though i mean like i don't know and so what you're describing just so i'm clear uh i i know we don't use these terms anymore but you're talking about when you're in a more how shall we say having an upswing oh well or downswings too you know downswing you might undermine a relationship upswing you might run for office
Yeah.
I mean, just hypothetically.
No, that's exactly right.
That's exactly right.
And then, you know, once I started taking medication for it, I felt a lot of balance come into my life.
But it's still definitely there all the time, a little friend.
And what being quarantined has meant is that I cannot do the...
I can't do the thing where I go over to somebody's house.
I can't do the thing where I put a rendezvous together or even the suggestion of a rendezvous or the danger of an upcoming or something that's got to happen on the down low.
All these little spy schemes that I was always...
uh, using to give my life.
Right.
You can't, you can't follow an impulse as much.
Right.
And, and you know, the thing is like, I have a framework of what my day looks like, which is get up.
I do the show.
I got the daughter.
I have the, I have work I do.
Uh, I have to think about my house.
I have to do, you know, there's appointments, but then there was also like a, an invisible framework, which was, uh,
relationships, you know, like I got to talk to this person, this person's expecting a call, you know, like I haven't seen this person in three or four days and that's going to be a problem if I don't do something about it, you know, like there's, and all of that is also in a way it's like the framework that's, that's the one that I'm, I'm really dedicating a lot of energy to.
And in particular, because it's not
Because in a lot of ways, I don't conduct my relationships in a way that's visible to other people.
You know, I found some pictures in my dad's stuff when he died.
And I think I've told you about this, but I kind of just was suddenly aware that like he had all these relationships with people, people I never met and would never meet.
And all those relationships were like tears and rain.
To him or to you?
To the world.
Oh, I see.
Yeah, there's no artifact, document.
Right, exactly.
He never wrote about it.
They never wrote about it.
He never talked about it to anyone that survived.
So what happened was, when he died, any of those people that were still alive...
They don't know about each other.
You know, it like splintered into a million pieces.
Everybody has their address book.
That used to be the skeleton key, right?
Right.
You know what I mean?
Back when everybody, my family always had an address book, and that was the canonical source of everything from Christmas cards to phone trees to whatever it was going to be.
But there was not any kind of... The way you and I could look back at, you know, even email or something like that.
Exactly.
And the lack of an address book or skeleton key...
particularly in not only in this modern world where you say, as you say, we have emails going back at least a decade for every person we know, but also, you know, at least like you and I live in a storytelling world and we talk all the time.
And this is the thing that
about being a super public person in one regard like you and i are very public about a lot of who we are and what we are but very private about other stuff and i don't appear to have a ton of stuff that i'm private about because i tell such revealing anecdotes but i'm i have an entire private life
Mm-hmm and it's and it's so locked down that no one knows anything about it or that it even exists, but it's extremely Vivid and it's where I devote a lot of my time and and some might say squander my creative energy And so some what do they know?
And the thing is, you know if I were to if I were to die
And if God forbid, God forbid.
And if someone were to do a forensic on my email, you know, like a whole world would be revealed, but who would want to right now?
Who would, when any of us die, who is going to want to go look at 20,000 emails or in your case,
43.
Oh, that's good.
Inbox 43.
Wasn't that a double one?
Oh, sure.
Yeah.
We're broken up for 10 minutes.
A little doubler.
But, you know, nobody's going to want to do that.
Nobody's going to want to go read these emails and piece together who these people were and how they fit in.
But right now, I cannot...
see any of those people or engage in any of that stuff.
Right.
I can't even, a lot of that energy is like, when are we going to meet?
How are we going to meet?
You know, what's the, like, we can't do it today.
We have to do it tomorrow.
All this kind of stuff where, where all that scheduling is off the table.
And it's just,
It's just quiet in the valley.
I also feel like, I don't know if you get this, but I also feel like things are necessarily becoming a little bit more kind of a little house on the prairie, a little more intentional.
We find ourselves having to think a lot more about how we're going to get, you know, even like sort of basic supplies and thinking about meal preparation.
And, you know, all the normal things that you would be concerned with,
disappeared rather for my, I can only speak for myself, but so many of the things that were my obsession hour to hour, day to day, week to week have just disappeared.
I mean, you know me, I'm a calendar guy.
I went in and I cleared out all the things that no longer exist on the calendar.
These pickups, you know, these events, these, you know, things that I was going to do, the vacation that we were supposed to be on literally right now, all that stuff is, uh, cause it's spring break.
Yeah.
I was flying to Japan in two days.
Right.
Exactly.
I just canceled the ticket this morning.
It was,
I just got the thing, hey, Remando, you got dinner tonight at the Madonna Inn.
And I'm like, I wish.
They bring you pickled vegetables, and it's pink.
I love Madonna Inn.
A lot of pink there.
Waitresses all stand on tiptoe.
Oh, God, I love that place.
We also had the best room.
We had the one where it's got two floors, and it's got like a cupola.
Oh, sure, sure, sure.
You've been to the Madonna Inn, right?
Oh, sure.
Great urinal.
Amazing urinal.
But I do find that with, I don't know if this jibes at all with yours, but like so much of that stuff has fallen away.
The number of things that we can do, it has obviously gone down for everybody.
The number of things that we can control in some ways has attenuated.
There's a handful of things we have some super control over, but also just the number of options out there.
And it's,
And on top of all of that is the... Even if you're not a manic or anxious person, there is all still the like, well, what do we need to be planning for that's not in evidence yet?
Which makes me more conservative than usual.
Right.
And in your case, you are a social guy.
You like popping in on seeing what Jason Finn's doing right now.
And it's just weird to have to recalibrate all of that to like, how do I minimize...
to the hugest extent possible, my exposure to other people and like, what are the things I do control?
So our little projects are like things around the house.
You know, there's no kid, you know, pickups and drop-offs.
There's no play dates.
There's no haircuts.
There's no any of that stuff.
And like, it's, I'm still very much in week three, still adjusting to like how to, um, how to be.
Well, and the, the, the thing that,
I was describing is that I have, you know, obviously all of that stuff and that whole, that whole, uh, um, you know, range of upheaval, but the, but the, a lot of this, uh, this quiet life that I'm describing, uh, involved danger and, uh, not subterfuge, but, but, um, uh, secret missions.
And that was that danger of,
was the thing that my bipolar needs to manage what is a tendency to seek danger in other places other ways that over the years i've i've i've managed to put into this world where it's not really dangerous right i'm not going i don't like you know i'm not going looking for uh
looking for sex on the street you know i'm not um looking to pick a fight or something i'm not going out looking for a fight that's right i'm not i i'm not engaging in any criminal behavior i'm not um you know all the all these things that i have done in the in my past and i do feel driven toward in in a sense of just like not because i want any of that but because i have these you know i have a kind of um
What a wildness that gets restless.
And so I have a world where that restlessness is sated or managed, tamed, not tamed, but managed.
And it involves going out at night.
And to have all of that gone...
I feel the restlessness, but it's not a restlessness of like, I'm bored.
I'm sitting around, you know, I'm just, Oh, what am I going to do tomorrow?
It's a restlessness.
That's like, uh,
you know, that's dangerous or risky or, or it's not being, it's not being fed or sated or there's no outlet for even non-dangerous adventure.
Right.
Let alone like whatever that voice in me that says there's, you know, there's that voice that's like, all this is bullshit, man.
You know, you gotta get, you gotta get out of here.
You gotta get,
Like you got to climb the highest tree ships ships are safest in harbor, but that's not why we build them.
You need to get that set sail.
John needs to set sail.
Yeah, get out into the ocean.
So and knowing that I'm not because I'm not somebody that is like going to flout.
the quarantine because i believe in the quarantine right i'm like and so evidence evidence today is that it seems to be working in seattle does it does right it seems to be well our problem here is there haven't been we have a denominator problem where we don't know how many tests have been done there's a bunch of tests outstanding in california but so far it looks like it's working in both places
Yeah, it's amazing.
And people up here were celebrating last night when that article came out.
Because the writer of that New York Times article is from here.
And he was like, he sent out a tweet.
He was like, are you guys all going to burn me to the ground if I use the term Seattle freeze in this New York Times article?
And most of the people that follow him were like, no, dude, you're absolutely right.
And it was, and it's great.
Like people are really celebrating it.
Like, yes, this is the thing that we are like, we've been waiting for this for, for centuries.
Yeah.
I mean, it feels a little bit like, I don't know.
This is bullshit, but like, it feels a little bit like, like, what was the low, what was the nadir for America in world war II?
Probably 43 somewhere.
Yeah.
Wasn't that still very much in that period of, like, there's no guarantee this is going to turn out great and it's not?
Oh, yeah.
Right?
But, I mean, you know what I mean?
Like, it's one thing to say, like, by 44, obviously 45, you're going, like, well, this is a positive direction.
But there were still lots of big losses to be had before the big light at the end of the tunnel came.
And I think that's part of what's so upsetting to people right now is just that uncertainty of not only knowing how it will end, but what will come next and how much worse it gets, you know, before we...
liberate the camps well technically the russians but don't you think that's part of it it's just the whole like you know one little bit of good news uh in that case is i hope very encouraging to people to keep doing this because there's no other way and nothing else works if this doesn't work yeah yeah yeah well and it's and it you know it it will work and just if we each like for instance we haven't
been in contact with anyone and so the other day I got a
Um, you know, the, ever since I got back from the cruise, it's like, am I sick?
Am I, you know, could I have my friend?
Max is taking his temperature every 45 minutes.
But you know, like we went on the cruise.
You are all I thought about you bastards.
I just thought about you though.
I know we don't want to go on and on, but I was just, I was so worried for you guys.
I was just so scared of you guys being, my main thing was like, I was just afraid you were going to be stuck on that ship for God knows how fucking long.
Yeah, we definitely thought that too.
But that was not really on top of mind for you guys, right?
I mean, you were sort of separated from it.
No, no, no.
We were thinking about it every day, but as the cruise went on, like at the beginning, there was all this like, are we elbow bumping or what's our, you know, like there was kind of a joke every time you'd encounter somebody, which was 80 times a day.
And March 6th was after the point at which people were starting to get infected, but it hadn't yet gotten into, there's a lot of stuff you read now where it's like, looking back, we realize that
But the 1st of March, things were already bad.
But this was the 6th of March that we were like, okay.
You guys were gone the first day after you guys took off, as we said, was when the State Department said, hey, don't go on cruises.
Like, okay, thanks.
Could have used that before.
That was great.
Thanks.
But we...
And we stopped elbow bumping pretty fast.
It was like, look, we're all on this cruise, and if we're going to get sick, we might as well hug it out.
And so, although we were all hand-washing, there was a lot of just hugging and, you know, I mean, the whatever, Tindar...
on the boat where all the sea monkeys are hooking up with each other, was just going great gangbusters.
Tindar's their bespoke sex app.
That's bespoke sex app, yeah, where most of the people are just looking for hugs.
But we got back, so the whole time I've been like, is this one of those 14-day incubation periods, et cetera, et cetera.
You never are 100% sure that you're not either one of the mild cases, one of the cases that shows no symptoms, or
that it's just waiting and it's going to leap on you in the dark.
And so about three days ago, my little girl and I were out for a walk and I got a heaviness in my chest and like a dry cough.
And for the rest of the day, I had this feeling of my chest being
compressed.
And it wasn't that I couldn't take a deep breath.
It was just, there was a band around my lungs and it hurt.
And I was coughing and I was like, well, what the heck is this?
Like this isn't, what is this?
Right.
This just does not bode well.
And I came home and I, I, you know, I went to bed with this heaviness and I thought,
I'd have done so many times in life.
I thought this is going to bear out in the next six hours There is every chance that I'm gonna wake up in the middle of the night and my bed Clothes will have been drenched with perspiration.
I'll have a hundred and two degree fever and you know, it's gonna come on me in the night basically or
It's not.
And there's nothing I can do.
Six hours, though, is in your mental model of like, this will resolve one way or another.
It could be terrible or it could be great or it could be nothing.
But six hours will tell the story.
When it hurt that bad, right?
When there was something in me that was doing something like that, it's going to turn.
It's going to turn into a sore throat.
It's going to turn into a fever.
It's going to turn into a stuffed up head.
Something's going to happen.
It's not just going to sit there.
And I woke up the next day and nothing had happened.
It was a little bit still there.
And I coughed a few times.
But nothing went up or down.
And so I went that day and stayed really low.
Just stayed in bed and didn't mess around.
And woke up the next day and it was the lesser there.
It never bloomed.
I never got a fever.
You didn't have another.
So the feeling, the depressing feeling that you had when you were out, that happened, it went away, or you were still feeling that a little bit?
Still feeling it.
Oh, God, that's so menacing.
And I still feel it now.
So it wasn't like a panic attack or something.
No, no, no.
And I thought about that.
Oh, I was talking to Adam Savage that day, and he was like, you know what?
It sounds like stress.
And I was like, mm-hmm.
I guess, but I don't feel stressed that way.
And he was like, well, you know, stress manifests itself in a lot of ways.
And I was like, yeah, I know, but this feels like something.
And he was like, well, that's what stress does.
And so, you know, and then he was like on Mythbusters, we investigated stress 400 times and it always, and I was just like, yeah, all right, all right, all right.
But I don't, but I, it never went away, right?
It didn't turn into anything, which is the scariest part because it's there.
It's still all this potential energy.
But I kept running to burn all that adrenaline for what might be nothing.
Right.
Exactly.
Or just like, you know, and what was nice, I have to say, was that I did not verge on panic, which a year ago, I think I would have been in a panic crisis.
And so whatever trying to work on Aloha has given me, it was not a case where I was staving off panic.
I just didn't ever get there.
I didn't get to the threshold of the door.
I was just like, well, we'll just have to see.
You know what?
There's nothing I can do.
We'll just have to see.
And I didn't start running those scripts.
But I also was doing math.
It was like, it's been two weeks since I got off the cruise ship.
And I haven't talked to or touched another person in that time that wasn't in this house that day.
So unless I got it through the...
the internet unless it came through the series of tubes how what is it how could i even have a cold you know you're past the the window for when you would have had symptoms if you were sick on the show right unless this unless it came on day 14 right so right but the thing is right now here i'm sitting with that little teeny cough that i just shared
You want to cut that off?
No, no, no.
That's wonderful.
I don't have a compliment.
I have lots of time.
I can do more editing than I usually do.
Yeah, would you put in a music drop right there?
Yeah, what do you want there?
How about fairies wear boots?
Just put in a little.
Okay, give me one more cough.
Oh, I think you might be doing sweet leaves.
I'll see you next time.
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I want to throw people off.
I gotcha.
Okay, sorry.
Sorry, I didn't mean to step on your call.
No, it's okay.
So where does it lead you mentally when you're feeling that?
Well, this is the thing.
You've got this Max Temkin problem where it's like, well, now, wait a minute.
Do I have it?
Am I just one of the unsymptomatic people?
And I've had more than a few, and you probably have too, a handful of people say, you know what?
It would be the best if I just had it.
If I just had it and then our long national nightmare was over.
And I'm like, well, I don't know.
But in a situation like this where I'm feeling something,
God only knows what it is.
If it was a case of this virus that just didn't hit me the way it hits, however many tens of thousands of people have had it and walked away,
How would I know?
How would I know?
If I'm really coughing.
I'm not going to go squander a test on me.
They really get that swab in there.
I don't want it.
I don't prefer the swab.
And I'm not talking to anybody or touching anybody, so I don't need it.
I'm not going to go...
Like I say, I'm not going to go out in the middle of the night and go put my finger on people.
You're a hero, but you're not technically a first responder right now.
I don't want a parade because let's save the parades for the first responders.
Can you imagine how long a parade would have to be to do correct social distancing?
Oh, wow.
I think we're going to really have to look at colonizing Mexico for the extra six feet.
Because you'd also need six feet between each parade viewer.
Yeah, exactly.
So it would start in Seattle, and it would have to go to at least Shasta.
You've got a bunch of twinks and shorts up there.
You're going to have a lot of six feet.
You know what I'm saying?
No, no, but I mean, it's an inclusive parade, I'm guessing.
Yeah, sure, sure, sure.
Let's save the parade.
I agree.
It's not over yet.
We're going to have to save the parade.
And I think it might be one of those.
It might happen on Zoom, you know?
Oh, God.
We can all have our own backgrounds.
Barf.
You said something that made me think.
I don't love to use this term because, I don't know, it might be ableist or mean or whatever.
But, you know, there's a phrase, phantom limb, where after somebody's lost an arm or a leg, they might still feel pain.
They might feel an itch that needs to be scratched.
It's a useful metaphor, phantom limb.
Well, there's probably something better.
But what you're describing there, I think I also have some common ground with where you've got this adventure gene that makes you want to go out and have adventures.
And I think of a similar thing where, like, you know, I have to be honest with you.
I haven't taken Adderall for ADHD in...
it's got to be at least five, maybe eight years.
It's been a long time.
I still want Adderall so bad.
I can still, you really liked it.
It was so good.
And I can still feel this little like, uh, like a, like a little, like a child's little rubber ball of emptiness where I just know that's where the Adderall would go.
If I had it, it would go right into that slot.
And in 22 minutes, I would have the eye of the motherfucking tiger and
I know, I know, I know.
I mean, you can set a clock by it.
You eat that bad boy up, drink some water, and pretty soon shit is accomplished.
I know.
I know, man.
I think there's all kinds of things like that.
Boy, when you forget that you're broken up with somebody.
I remember when I got a job... This is a very long story, but the only part of the anecdote that's important here is that finding out that after I got...
split up with in 1999 I got a job and was going to move to California and the thing I wanted there were two people in my life I wanted to talk to you about that my mom and my ex and it hit me it landed on me so hard in one of those like this is the beginning of the third act of the movie it landed on me so hard that I can't celebrate this with my ex and
And that was like a little fun ball that was missing.
Like I knew I could, I wanted to fill that.
Obviously somebody dies, something like that.
You know, it could be, it could be something like I've got a new keyboard and I'm so goddamn confused about where my play and next track button is.
That's a very minor example, but I keep hitting it over here where I would normally, so right now I hit F18 over here.
That's where I'm used to having the volume knob.
Phantom limb syndrome is real.
So are feelings.
Yeah.
And I think that like we must, or it's beneficial to identify in ourselves where we've got a missing fun ball sized thing that we constantly want to fill, even when we don't know it.
And I think that comes out right now because there's all kinds of minor and major privations.
Even if you're doing great, every, even if everything is fine, even if you've got food and money, if you're fortunate enough to have that, there's still this like, ah, God, what the fuck?
Like, it's like when you go on a diet,
And you're like, for the first time in years, I really, really want tater tots.
You know what I'm saying?
I haven't eaten tater tots in two years, whatever.
But now I'm like, oh, I wish I could go out for sushi.
I never go out for sushi.
But that's a phantom limb now.
It's full of Maguro.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Phantom limb full of Maguro.
You can use that if you want.
Yeah.
Does that jive at all?
Where you feel like, oh, there's kind of an itch I want to scratch, but that arm's not there anymore.
Well, it's weird because my sister called me the other day, and she was just laughing, laughing right at me, laughing at my expense.
And she said, I was just sitting here thinking, like, this is the scenario you've been waiting your whole life for.
Hmm.
Where you don't have to do anything at all.
And yet.
You can't do anything.
And yet.
You're not allowed to do anything.
You're not allowed to make a doctor's appointment.
Exactly.
There is no fear of missing out.
Because you cannot.
Right.
And she said.
And it's being wasted.
Because you don't have your house fixed.
And you are staying with everything.
Your daughter and baby mama.
And so you do not get to enjoy the quarantine.
You have to wake up every morning and deal with people.
You have to like make lunches.
It's the wrong kind of vacation.
You have to listen to people talk.
You have to watch television with them.
And she's saying all this laughing, just heaving with laughter.
And she's like, she's like, she said, this quarantine is a nightmare for me.
And this is your dream.
And yet you're you don't get it.
You don't get to have it.
Thanks, Susan.
That's the worst.
And she was like, no, no, no.
It's amazing.
Like, because you have to suffer just as much as I'm suffering because you don't actually have the freedom that.
And she's absolutely right.
As soon as she said it, I realized, oh, obviously, I do not.
I do not for a second regret being in quarantine with my little girl.
I'm seeing so much of her.
We're doing all this work together.
I totally agree.
You know, just like we're working on stuff.
We're working on fractions.
We're improbably getting along better than, I mean, we've never not gotten along, but like we're chummy and we've got projects and she lets me put my arm around her a couple of times a week.
You're going to miss that, John.
There's a point when you're not allowed to touch your kid anymore.
Because they're tweens and everything is weird.
You don't touch them anymore.
Every Wednesday morning we'd lay in bed and cuddle and read comics.
And now she's a tween with a fun haircut and I'm not allowed to interact.
But I agree with you.
Of course, the other side of that is, shit, what's that going to be like in a month?
I hope we don't drive each other completely insane.
Sure.
I got in an argument with her mother.
And incidentally, her mother has said that me describing her as my daughter's mother is not acceptable.
Oh, you need a new nom de guerre for her?
Yeah, and I was like, well, then what?
What would she prefer?
Well, she was like, partner, I'm your partner.
And I was like, well, now wait a minute.
Oh, pump the brakes, huh?
And so I was like, what about co-parent?
She was like, I don't like that either.
Well, what about baby mama?
Co-parent sounds like the fuzzy thing that the monkey hugs instead of getting the milk from.
It does.
That's what a co-parent is.
The little metal monkey.
Is she looking for more, not affection, but more... She doesn't want to be quite so sanitary sounding.
Is that it?
Right.
Well, what she wants... What she wants is a...
She wants the amount of intimacy and affection that we have to be broadcast in the name.
And I've noticed this my whole life.
People like to be credited.
They like to have the title match the job.
I'm not a hookup.
I'm a boyfriend.
I'm a boyfriend.
Exactly.
Like, when are you going to start calling me your boyfriend?
And the other person's like, oh, are you my boyfriend?
You know, like, there's always... Right, right, right.
No, no.
But that's so real.
That's so real.
The conversation of, well, am I your boyfriend?
Like, is this... This is very much like a bim-bam kind of question.
It's like, I go out to dinner with this person.
Are we seeing each other?
Like, we haven't kissed.
I can't tell.
It's like...
But if you say it at the wrong time, boy, you sound like a real ding-a-ling.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, I'm not your girlfriend.
Pump the brakes, guy.
In the 90s, I was out with a group of people, and I gestured at Megan, and I said, oh, this is my girlfriend, Megan.
And Megan was like, am I your girlfriend?
I was like, well, yeah, that's what I thought.
And she was like, and we'd been dating nine months.
we had been dating uh-huh if you put the uh if you put the wrong label on it oh and then the next day was everything was completely different if she was like well i guess i'm your girlfriend and i was like i guess you are okay well so yeah so it started breaking up all but anyway the the idea you know like
Like my daughter's mother, my baby mama and partner and co-parent.
She and I, you know, we're living in the same house.
We're making dinner together every night.
We had a big fight yesterday about stew, about the making of a stew.
Yeah, you know what you got there?
You got a wife.
I walked over.
She was burning some stuff in a pot.
And I was like, oh, you know what that needs?
And I grabbed a bottle of Merlot and I threw about a cup of wine in it.
And I was like, you need to deglaze that pot with some wine.
And she stepped back with her hands in the air and she said, I no longer take any responsibility for how this stew tastes.
And I was like, well, what?
It's, you know, put wine in the stew.
And she was like, I was following the instructions and now it's all screwed up.
And so there was a big, you know, a big hullabaloo where I was like, well, look, you know, the instructions still are fine.
It just has a cup of wine in it.
And she was like, I don't know.
You broke her streak.
She's a very organized person, right?
She was making it happen.
If she was following the instructions, it was all going, except she had, except, except she didn't have any beef stock.
And so we're in this all of a sudden we're in this world of like, well, does chicken stock?
I was in that position a week and a half ago.
I added wine.
I added Worcestershire and I added some tomatoes for for savoriness.
But yeah, we make do with what you got.
What am I going to do?
I'm going to operate.
I'm going to Harry Potter some fucking beef broth.
So I got this recipe from this girl in Australia.
She was bragging about her stew online, and I was like, well, why don't you send me that recipe?
Yeah, we'll see about that.
She wrote out her recipe, and she was like, oh, yeah, well, here it is.
And she wrote it out all Joy of Cooking style, like, oh, like, here's how you do it.
It begins with a long anecdote about Grandma's porch.
And so I took it, and I'm like, this is Australian stew, so let's see how that goes.
Well, what she did was she added a little dab, just a little dab will do you, of anchovy paste.
That's so savory.
It's so savory.
That's like umami.
That's just like umami waiting to explode.
It's just umami in a squeezer.
That's why I do the tomato.
Mamedos give you all kinds of umamis.
And then you get that worst to shear.
And then sometimes we sneak in a little bit of secret salt.
We don't tell mom.
No, no, no, because it's got the mudge.
The mudge.
Yeah, well, she thinks it gives her a headache.
Sure, don't put mudge in there.
Super racist.
Oh, my God, Australian stew.
I'm dying.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, anyway, a teaspoon of worst sh-sure-sure.
Worst is Chester.
Anchovies.
Anchovies.
A little bit of anchovy.
You don't taste it.
You don't taste it.
It's just like fish sauce in your Thai food.
You don't taste it, but it's there.
You taste it when it's not there.
Pow.
Kapow.
Get ready for the umami bomb, bitch.
But she didn't like that.
Now you're screwing up, you're screwing in.
Now wait, is she following your Australian recipe or is she going wildcat here?
She was following the Australian recipe, which already was problematic because she was like, you got this from a girl on the internet?
And I was like, yeah, she's in Australia.
It's not like she's coming around.
Her toilet's flushed backwards.
She was like, I've heard that before.
And you know, that's right.
I'm always flying girls from Australia.
But we're like making some other girls stew.
But the problem is we don't know...
Did you make her dress up like her?
Put on this Catwoman suit.
But the whole time I'm DMing the girl in Australia, it's so good.
Thank you, babe.
She just smiled and gave me a Vegemite sandwich.
But it's already fraught.
But anyway, we made the stew, and it was great.
I love a stew so much, and it was so wonderful.
Me too.
Me too.
But so we have all this.
We're totally a family here.
I mean, it's absolutely 100% a marriage.
Yeah.
Except, you know, I've got this, like, because I'm, whatever, I've got a lot of complications.
I've got a ton of complications, Marlon.
As you know, I'm like a lockpicking kid.
You're saying somebody comes in, an alien comes in, looks at this from above, like you're in Sims, and they go, oh, those are married people.
And they got a baby together, and they're making Australian stew.
But there's a lot more to it.
There's a lot of asterisks to that game of Sims.
There's a lot of asterisks.
A lot of asterisks.
So anyway, the amount of not sequestered I am relative to the amount of sequestered I could be is my sister has introduced a, she has seeded this oyster with the little bit of sand that now I'm like running my little oyster parts over it.
coating it with precious sputum.
Okay, I see.
Hoping to make a pearl out of the fact that I am not actually sequestered.
And so...
Not only am I not actually sequestered, but I don't even have a good bathtub here.
Oh, gosh.
So I'm walking around.
I'm not a ghost or a ghoul.
I am firmly rooted here because, you know, as you know, a child does not allow you to be a ghost or a ghoul unless you're prepared to really be suffering a mental illness in front of other people.
Yes.
Which, believe me, I have.
Sure.
But at least these days, I'm like, front and center, okay.
You're available.
You're there.
But trying to be, I mean, Seattle Freeze is still operable.
Sometimes she'll come in and say, you know, can I tell you every Star Wars character in alphabetical order?
And I look up from my magazine and I go, no, honey.
For me, that's my daughter explaining what just happened on Grey's Anatomy.
I'm like, I don't know any of these.
I don't know.
Alex is the last name that I learned on there.
I don't know.
I don't know the McSteamy's and Dreamy's.
They're all gone now.
Or she'll want to describe the entire plot of a book about dragons.
And I'm like, can you just give me the high level?
Just give me the log line on the dragons.
This one's got mud, and this one's got sky, and this one's got water.
And I get it.
I get it.
It's Tolkien.
Yeah, it beats me.
She was sitting reading some encyclopedia the other day and just started reading it aloud.
And I looked down at the end of the couch, and she's just reading it aloud.
And I was like...
Sweetheart, I'm also reading a different book.
Making it, and it's hard for me to read my book when you are reading your book aloud.
And she was like, well, I just, she didn't stop.
She just continued to read her book aloud.
So I put my book down and listened to her read her book aloud for a while.
So anyway, that's not sequestered, is it?
No, that is not.
I am not quarantined against everything.
Oh, I see.
Yeah.
Imagine if this happened 10 years ago.
I would be in my house.
The blinds would be drawn.
I could be stacked.
Just you and your red yarn on the wall.
Making connections.
I would go out to the barn, and I would get a bucket of rusty screws, and I would sort them by size and rustiness.
You could make a grid.
Yeah, into 50 different piles where it was like, you know, X-axis is rustiness, Y-axis is size.
Think about tagging your MP3s.
You could just sit there and tag MP3s all day.
Tag, tag, tag.
Oh, yeah.
Go through my photos.
This one's country rock.
I don't.
And in a way, I think that it's a major evolution for me.
Because 10 years ago, I would not have been able to conceive being like this.
in this house with these people, first of all, with that degree of intimacy, second of all, without the outlet of like night ranging, and how could I have, right?
Ten years ago, I wouldn't have even been able to see, I would have thought, kind of like when you're
Kind of like when you're suffering from something and someone suggests that there's a drug that can help you.
And you're like, well, if I take that, then it's going to make me, you know, it's going to take all the fun out of life or whatever.
It's going to make me not have any... Yeah, you get like Robert Lowell.
You get like Robert Lowell.
Like you're not running around conducting the orchestra anymore, but also maybe your poems aren't as good as they used to be.
Exactly.
I mean, that's the concern, right?
That was the fear.
That was the fear.
And so if you had told me this 10 years ago, I would have said, oh, the only way that could have worked...
For me to be in quarantine with two other people and also not able to explore or range or adventure, the only way would be that I was medicated to a point that I was a zombie.
Like I couldn't have conceived of it any other way.
And yet here I am 10 years later, like pulling it off and not even really, my skin isn't really crawling.
You don't see any fingernail marks on the walls for now, like for now.
Right.
I'm just, I'm puttering long.
And every day we go for a walk, we go out, we put our jackets on and everybody.
And it's, it's really funny.
I, it's, it has not brought the community together in any way, but it has given the
It's given the Seattle freeze, a healthy outlet, which is we walk past each other on the street, 25 feet apart.
We nod and smile and go, how's your quarantine going?
And the other people go, ha ha, not much to do, is there?
You go, not much.
And you walk past each other.
And you're both like, we did it.
We socialized.
I had to just look this up.
Could you tell, if it's what I think it is, could you please tell our listeners what Seattle Freeze means?
So Seattle is famously extremely friendly.
But nobody actually wants to do anything with anybody else.
It's hard to make new friends.
And so people move here and they meet somebody, let's say a job or, you know, at a thing.
And that person will say the following.
Oh, man.
We should totally hang out sometime.
Like, we should totally get together.
And the new person goes, yeah, totally.
Let's get together.
Like, what about next Tuesday?
Yes.
And the Seattle person will go, oh, Tuesday's bad.
But, you know, like, call me.
We definitely got to do this.
We have got to get together.
It's been too long.
And the new person then contacts that Seattleite and is like, so anyway, you were saying we should get together.
Like, what's a good date for you?
At that point, the Seattleite is going, God, why doesn't this person leave me alone?
And the new person is like, keeps trying.
Like, you said you wanted to get together.
I thought we were going to get together.
And the Seattle person at that point is like, this person is a massive drag, right?
And so the new person goes, what is right?
And it happens to them over and over.
And they start to feel like Seattle is a terrible place.
Now, when two Seattleites see one another, they both go, oh, dude, this has been great.
We should totally hang out.
And the other person's like, dude, totally.
I have missed you so much.
We need to see each other.
You know what?
From now on, we're going to do this once a week.
We're going to get together.
And the other person goes, you are 100% right.
Just send me a message.
We'll put it on the calendar.
We'll do it.
And then neither person does anything.
And you both are familiar enough with the vernacular that that's not weird or bad or disappointing.
It's just what you do.
You feel exactly 100% right.
Okay.
When Jason and Finn and I see each other every time, it's like, dude, we got to do this every week.
And the other person goes, absolutely, 100%.
And we never do a thing.
We don't see each other for a month and a half, and it's fine.
Okay.
And it's just the way.
We don't want to hang out with each other.
It takes something like your dim summit, right?
For me, I used to do this thing called gentlemen who dine, where it was like every month, these same four people plus one guest would go out to dinner, and that was my social...
event was like once a month i would go out to a nice dinner with some friends and apart from that i would do a lot of i can't believe it's been this long we have to do this all the time right why don't we do this all the time all the time it's so great you don't it's a freeze i've got dim summit and i've got my rock and roll poker game okay both things ostensibly happen every month
Neither thing happens any more frequently than every four months.
And everyone is fine with it.
For middle-aged people, though, that every four months is like every month.
It's pretty hot, right?
It's the new every month.
It's the new standing, yeah.
But what people that move here or that aren't from here don't understand is that all of that talk is just social.
It's just a social necessity around here, and it is absolutely meaningless.
And if people really said what they're thinking... Mm-hmm.
It would be like, this was great.
I have no intention of doing this again, except by accident.
Please don't contact me.
Don't contact me.
Please don't contact me.
That's right.
Put me on your do not call list.
And if we all said that to each other, it would be a bummer to live here.
You know, one time Chris Ballou and I were standing in a parking lot.
And you know, Chris Ballou is a man of a different, he's a different shade.
And we're standing in a parking lot and we were having this fun conversation.
It had been a fun day and we hadn't done anything fun together.
It was a sunny day out in the spring and we'd both been having a good day and we ran into each other in the supermarket and we were talking and laughing and goofing.
And I said, we should totally get together and hang out.
And Chris said, in violation somewhat of the Seattle compact, he said, you know what?
That's never going to happen.
Whoa.
And I was like, real talk.
I was like, you are, you are 100% correct.
Yeah.
And he was, I think he was proud of that because he retold that anecdote several times because I heard from other people, but it was, that's his MO, huh?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Whoa.
But it was the first time that, um, that anybody had, had just like
like put it out on the table that that's uh succinctly and the funny thing is that was it did it feel freeing it did it did it was just like it was like oh right we don't have to pretend but what's interesting is chris blue and i have the what what it felt like at the moment was there was a finality to it like we're not friends
Right.
Like there's a danger of that communicating like we're not friends.
We're not going to hang out.
Okay.
Like it's a little too real.
But in fact, that was 15 years ago.
And Chris and I have remained what I would consider us friends.
And in fact, I would consider us, I mean, I don't think anybody up here would say that they were close friends with somebody unless that person had spent a night in their house.
But I would say that I would consider Chris Ballew a good friend.
And I think there's an inflection difference between I would consider him a good friend or I would consider him a good friend.
Two different kinds of good friend.
Oh, sure.
But he's a good friend.
Okay.
Oh, there's so many ways.
Yes, there's so much to that, because that could mean this is a good person, a good person who is my friend.
Another one is this is the kind of friend that I need.
Another one is it's somebody that I feel like I have some sort of intimacy with.
Like a close friend implication, but they can all mean different things.
And that's confusing.
There's the kind of person who maintains the friendship well, right?
Like manages the friendship well.
Or, for instance, in the case of Chris Ballou, I feel like if I needed something from Chris Ballou, he would...
It's happily provided.
But part of our friendship is that I never need anything from Chris Ballew and he never needs anything from me.
And that is a good friendship, right?
Because if he asked me for something, I would say, 100%, what do you need?
I'll pick you up at the airport.
I'll take you to freaking, I'll drive you to Vancouver.
But he's never going to ask me to do that.
And so it remains in this realm of like, this is wonderful.
We both are, this is a good friendship.
By Seattle terms, which means neither person ever needs anything or asks for anything.
And so that whole thing, in terms of social distancing, we're all already like that.
We've just been waiting for basically the liberation of the world saying in Chris Ballou's voice, we're not going to hang out.
And so we can just...
I think probably what people up here are doing now is like, hey, after this is all over, we should totally hang out.
Oh, that's so good.
And it provides so much cover, though.
Oh, yeah.
Because, like, what are you going to do?
What are you going to do?
You can't even stop and talk, really.
Somebody on the street the other day tried to stop and talk.
Yeah.
And I was like, we've got to stand 15 feet apart.
And...
The natural thing when you're standing and talking to somebody is to get closer to one another.
You just want to step.
When Americans talk to each other, the average distance that they stand apart is just close enough that you can put your thumbs in the person's ears.
Is that right?
Yeah.
Well, it's the rule of thumb.
Yeah.
Is it really the rule of thumb?
Is that where we get that?
It's necessarily like the Seattle freeze.
It's necessarily, you know, it can mean a lot of things.
I am going to tell my daughter from now on that the phrase rule of thumb comes from the fact that we stand a distance apart where we can put our thumbs.
She would have no way to disprove it.
How would you?
How do you disprove that?
I mean, you'd have to get the Oxford English Dictionary.
You'd have to have Ken Jennings sitting there with you explaining how to use it.
And you still wouldn't be able to.
You know what you say?
You say that's the English Dictionary.
I'm talking about America.
America first.
Can I put in an endorsement for Chris Ballew?
Yes.
Chris Ballou is a person whom I've never met.
I only know him electronically through this program, which I'm led to believe he sometimes listens to.
You know what I love about Chris Ballou that fits into this whole thing?
I get maybe three, four times a year.
Out of nowhere, I get a super nice short email from him about a thing relating an anecdote from his life to something that we talked about on the program, and it makes me extremely happy.
I love a short email three or four times a year.
That's plenty.
That's enough of a Seattle thaw for me.
That's all I need.
I don't even need to say, hey, we need to hang out.
I think that's a nice interaction, and I think more people should consider it.
What we can never know is the degree to which Chris Ballou is shouting at us during our program, because he does.
People think we get a lot of stuff wrong.
think they're wrong of course they're wrong this is our program we've been doing this since 14 years now but it isn't even i think a lot of people who shout at us are not uh correcting us so much as that they really want to interject something you know like it's almost like if you can't remember something both hosts of a show can't remember a thing and everyone's you know just just yelling and yelling it's fog hat it's fog yeah slow right take it easy come on
Well, and of course, you and I do a lot of that not being able to remember when we actually are able to remember.
I think it's a lot of the charm of the program.
But Chris, I think more importantly, Chris is a philosopher, and I believe that he often has a philosophical solution to one of the problems that you and I are wrestling with.
that we haven't considered and sometimes i think he's in his uh space going like all you need to do is stand on your head and balance two oranges on the soles of your feet that's all you got to do and we're like uh we don't come to that independently right because we haven't read the same jason finn i'll get a text about how he tried something we talked about and liked it and that's very positive too
We get a lot of response.
You know, Matt Howey is always... Howey's always there trying to get in his garage.
He's still right now.
His lights are flashing on and off.
His blender's on.
God damn it.
There's a delivery man at the front door and the camera's recording him.
Putting it on the internet.
The dog's on the roof.
Oh my God, what's happening?
And I have always been a proponent of the Seattle freeze and also an apologist for it.
But more than that, just sort of an explainer of it.
Because when I used to work at Steve's Broadway News, I was right in the center of town.
And it was a newsstand.
So people would come in and say, hey, you got the Boston Herald or whatever.
And I would say, then, you sound like you're from Boston, even though that was not a good Boston accent.
That's fine.
And the guy would say, yeah, I'm out here.
I want my Boston paper.
And I would go, yeah, here it is.
It's the same paper as every other paper.
It's just from Boston.
And then so often...
The person would lean on the counter and go, what's the deal with you people out here?
And I loved these because I would go, what do you mean?
Well, what do you mean?
Tell me more.
And sometimes it would be something like, why does everybody wear Boris Karloff shoes?
What are you talking about?
In the 90s.
In the 90s.
Everybody wore Boris Karloff shoes.
Whether you were into the Spice Girls or Minor Threat, big, big, big shoes.
Yeah, you've got to have big shoes and they've got to be black.
I'll tell you what I want, what I really, really want.
I want to...
but a lot of times it would be they would have an anecdote like there was a guy was supposed to hang out with so-and-so and they said that they would totally wanted to hang out and then and then they didn't want to hang out why didn't they just say they didn't want to hang out and i'm like well because they're from here they're not from boston and here's what you need to know nobody wants to hang out there there's no one no one here wants to hang out with you it's not anything to do with you it's that they just don't want to
And they're like, well, why do they say they do?
And I'm like, because it's how it's, you know, like, it's two totally different cultures.
It's basically an accent.
There's two things I feel like people on the, on the two left and right coasts just have a lot of problems, but at least me, I'll speak.
Okay.
I'll speak for myself.
Here's two things.
One is that.
It's super annoying that everybody on the East Coast assumes that everybody else is on East Coast time.
So you always have to treat them like babies and get them to explain.
And so it's a habit everybody outside of the East Coast does is you learn that these monsters always assume that everybody, I guess, is in Boston.
The other big difference, I am told, especially between New York City and, say, San Francisco or, to an extent, L.A., is that if you make a plan with somebody...
in New York, you show up or that relationship is in danger.
There's a lot of like, people don't just flake or people, you know what I'm saying?
You don't, you don't make half plans.
It's like, Hey, you said we'd be at the pizza place.
Like, Oh yeah.
Well, in Seattle, we do that all the time.
We never go.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, and I think, I think that is considered more of a betrayal on the East coast, but the bigger, the bigger issue I think is that if you have cultural cues that you're familiar with from your area, it's not,
safe or smart to assume that all those cultural cues mean the same thing everywhere.
So that could be people talking to you a lot in line, like in the Midwest or people in the South, never saying anything negative, but being very coded.
You know what I mean?
Every area is different and it takes a while to get used to it and then learn, you know what?
These people aren't assholes.
They're just people in New York.
Just got places to go.
Like they, they are on the move.
Get out of the way.
Don't you think that's part of it?
Is it just different cultural cues?
You know, when I lived briefly in New York, I remember I went to an AA meeting down around the Russian bath on the Lower East Side.
And after the meeting, there were a bunch of people standing around outside.
One guy was one of those characters that had decided he was going to tattoo...
a jigsaw puzzle on his entire head okay including his face um which was even then that's a little project for sure it was quite a project and i think even even even in the age of um of prodigious facial tattoos i think that would still be quite a gesture but we were standing out in front of this a meeting and you know and it had been a productive meeting and i had
spoken for some reason.
Someone called on me.
And so there was a little group of people.
It was a lot of meetings.
They empty out and then everybody stands out front and talks for a minute.
And this was one of those.
And it's a group of like five or six people.
Were most people smoking?
We were all smoking.
And somebody said like, oh yeah, we should all go hang out.
And I was like, totally.
And then we did.
And at the end of the going and hanging out,
We exchanged phone numbers, which of course absolutely happens here in Seattle exchange phone numbers But then I got phone calls from all those people I Didn't know you'd use the number what but I was new in New York and I was trying I was trying something else out so I went and met them and had a great day and
And it was obvious after that that a handful of those people thought that we were now friends, that we're going to do things together.
and it was a real culture shock for me because i was like how are we friends but also you're in your 20s i was third but you're still in that range where you're the kind of person who would go out and do stuff and let's just go see a french movie that's a thing we could do exactly right and i did that type of thing let's go see a french movie let's go over here let's go over there and then every one of them was interesting but
But, but then I, then I had to be, then I had to say like, well, I don't want to, you know, like I got other, I got thoughts to think.
Like, I don't want to hang out all the time with, with, with, with, with anybody.
And, and I was stunned at how quickly.
People were prepared to be pretty good friends, I would consider, right?
Like pretty good buddies.
Like we're pretty good buddies.
We've only done a couple of things together and it's just like we're making plans.
And so I don't understand how that culture could possibly operate.
I don't know what's going on over there.
People making friends right and left.
I don't know how you stop being friends with somebody.
And I know that all those people don't have 10,000 friends.
So I don't know how their friend relationships work at all.
I don't even want to be friends with Jason Finn.
I just have to be.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because, you know, I've been friends with him for 20 years.
He's a royal pain in the ass.
Yeah.
There's no going back now.
No.
But, you know, if he calls me up and says, drive me to Vancouver.
Like, yeah, I got to.
Yeah.
Yeah.
How many friends do you have?
I have next to zero friends in the way that I used to consider friendship, but I also have dozens of people who I consider, like, see, when I say it that way, it sounds terrible.
No, it's fine.
I understand.
Well, I think about when I was a kid, I had a couple of best friends.
I had a best friend, John Patton, and my friend Eric Hayden.
And John Patton and I slept at each other's house regularly.
every weekend, like either his house or my house.
And we read comics and we, you know, just did all the things that, uh, you know, an eight year old and a 10 year old would do.
And we were just incredible.
I mean, we went on vacations.
Our families like, you know, or like, like Eric and me sang in choir together.
And like, you know, uh, in those cases, like, let's go all the way up to college where like, I was just constant companions.
My school had 520 people.
I knew the name of every person who lived on campus.
And there were people that I just spent all of my time with.
That, to me, is what I think of, because I had the benefit of those kinds of relationships, thank God, at times when it was really important.
That's still kind of my bar for friendship.
I don't have anybody like that here that's not my family.
but I do have a lot of friends that are like more than acquaintances, but like Matt Howie, I see Matt Howie once a year, but we talk all the time.
So it's, it is, it's so different.
How many friends do you have now?
You're, you're, you're a go out person.
You're a go places person.
You, you, you, you do do things and you do see people.
How many friends do you have?
Okay.
I have a lot of friends.
I don't know what the statistic is, but people are like, you can only have 14 friends or something like that, whatever the rule is.
Um, it's not true.
There are, there are plenty of us who are outliers who have a lot of, of, of close friends, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like you and I lay eyes on each other once a year.
Oh yeah.
But I knew instantly the moment I met you, I knew I wanted to be friends with you.
Yeah.
It felt unavoidable because you were like a rock star who toured and stuff.
But I instantly loved you guys and the whole bunch.
But especially, let's be honest, you and Sean.
And I was instantly attracted to you guys.
The time that we spent sitting at my desk working on your website, the three of us, is like one of the happiest times, whatever that weekend or whatever it was.
Yeah, I instantly knew.
Well, and think about all the times we spent, all the laughs that we had in the next 10 years.
Our friendship has always felt very easy because we didn't have the pressures that other relationships have.
It was like you would come through town touring twice a year or whatever, and you'd stay at the house.
And then we'd hang out in our underwear watching TV, and it was impossibly easy.
Yeah, right.
What could possibly go wrong, right?
I like line readings.
Yeah.
Not too much.
We would.
Unfortunately, that TiVo's gone.
I've found it in other places, but the exact perfect amount of Charlie Rose interviewing Jeff Bridges is lost to time.
Yeah, I mean, whatever that loop, whatever that loop is, you'd have to go frame by frame to get it just perfect.
And I just posted a link to the Dr. X Doomsday Telethon, which is the source of, of course, we got no soup.
You got the Jewish guy in the back.
Yeah.
Oh, you posted that?
I posted that because every time Trump does one of his things at the White House and everyone sits around and compliments him, it always reminds me of Dr. X. England is one of the places that would be gone if I chose to push the button.
We've started watching Monty Python.
With the TV show with the little gal.
Yeah.
The TV show.
And, you know, like 80 percent of it is unintelligible to anyone who wasn't alive in 1975.
Right.
I mean, it was bizarre at the time and it might be more bizarre now.
Well, it's super bizarre.
And, you know, there were all those references to like Harold Wilson or something that even we didn't get, let alone, you know, so much.
I'm a little fun at Mr. Heath's expense.
She's she's going.
She's she's she's loving the frenetic energy.
And of course, there's a lot of violence.
Are you showing her confuse a cat?
She loves Confuse a Cat.
Confuse a Cat is a great, I feel like is a very good entry point in the classic way that I'm into, which is like, I think it's extremely funny.
But if you don't think it's funny, you might as well stop there.
Well, and what's amazing is...
Is that confuse a cat?
So I put it on and she's like really, really enjoying confuse a cat.
And then I hear a sound and I look over at her mother and her mother is trying to stifle.
Her mother is dying, like absolutely choking.
on trying to trying to not laugh like a hysterical person and i know for a fact that she has watched monty python one million times yeah so it's not it's just what's she covering up it just triggered her because she's you know she's she's a mom she's trying to be cool tell your wife to lean into it she's just like she's like gasping for breath at confusing cats and i'm like
How is Confusing Cat surprising you?
It's so dumb in so many ways.
You've got the military guy, and then you've got the monkey's Hard Day's Night-style dumb edits.
It just shots of the cat doing nothing.
Jumping in the air and disappearing.
It's so perfect.
It's really wonderful.
But there are also an awful lot of things in Monty Python that make...
almost zero sense there are some things that are truly not funny they just tried something and it didn't work yeah my daughter asked me the other day what is anti-comedy and it was very difficult to explain but the closest i have of stuff that we watch a lot is tim and eric and it's like tim and eric is anti-comedy like watching beef house or watching bedtime stories or awesome show great job is like that's that's in some ways that's what they're doing or like you know the interstitial scenes in like um uh uh the the life movie
You know, like with the fishy, fishy, you know, like we're just like, this is just pure Dada.
Well, and so we haven't, obviously you can't show her.
Even Holy Grail is a little iffy.
There's a lot of spanking.
Life of Brian, you can't see.
But what you can do is watch Time Bandits and Jabberwock.
He's been a very naughty boy.
I explained to her that a guy gets his throat ripped out by a rabbit.
And that was why we might not be able to watch that movie.
You gotta lob the holy hand grenade.
And you know what she said to me?
She was like, look, I've watched all the Star Warses.
Like, there is no amount of violence I haven't seen.
Is this your daughter speaking here?
Yeah.
And I was like, huh.
She was like, I've seen people blasted and cut in half.
And, like, the Star Warses are just... A lot of amputations.
That guy's got a hard-on for amputations.
Yeah, right.
She's like, I've watched 100 hours of people getting brutally murdered.
Yeah, even Nick Fury gets an amputation.
So what the heck?
A rabbit ripping a guy's throat out.
Isn't that scary?
I was like, yeah, there's spanking, though.
There's a lot of spanking.
I don't know.
But Time Bandits, Baron Munchausen, you can watch all those Gilliam ones that are on the outskirts.
Yes, the offshoot-y ones.
I do feel like showing individual sketches is a pretty good entry point in some ways.
Because the full episodes can be a bit much, but...
You know, I've said this before, but, you know, people tend to confuse their strong emotions.
And this is a good time to choose to confuse your strong emotions.
If you're feeling a lot of anxiety, you're feeling a lot of, like, frustration, like, watch something that will make you really laugh or really cry.
It's okay.
Yeah, what was it?
Something made me really cry.
Oh, I did.
I had this a couple of weeks ago where I watched some old Coldplay video and made me cry.
But I was listening to a song that I wrote that I had on my voice messages.
Um, like I was scrolling through them like, what's this, what's this?
Or, you know, because I, I'll write a little bit of a song and I'll record it into my voice memos and then kind of forget about it.
Like, Oh yeah, yeah.
I was pick up a guitar and do a little thing.
All you see is a file and a date.
It's like, it's hard to know like what the stuff is, you know?
Right.
And so I was, so I was doing that and I, and I hit on some song that I'd written six months ago or something.
And you know, every once in a while I'll, I'll listen to a thing and, and, uh,
And I'm like, wow, you know, I'll have written something good.
And that happened.
And and I was, you know, and all of a sudden I was just like at that how the song had had worked.
You know, it had it had it had done the job that it was trying to do.
And I was sitting down in the basement just like sobbing, going, okay, all right.
Is something going on here?
And I was like, yeah, you're in the fucking third week of the quarantine.
You're very vulnerable right now.
Don't start playing threes.
You're sitting in the corner and you're crying.
Yes, absolutely.
100%.
How kinds of dumb shit makes me cry now?
Well, you're a middle-aged dad.
I almost cried today because Marina Sirtis got a Zoom meeting with a bunch of the other cast from TNG for her birthday, and I almost cried a little bit.
Did you participate in it?
I wasn't invited.
No.
I'm in a different timeline.
You're in a different time zone.
Ha ha!
Ha ha!
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Here's the thing.
If it's noon where you are, it's nine where I am.
It's always nine.