Ep. 474: "The Dracula Protocol"
Hello.
Hi, John.
Merlin.
Hello.
Hi.
Ooh.
Boy, it's late.
That's cringe.
Oh, did I do a cringe?
You did cringe.
So many parts of speech are being repurposed, and if you like, reclaimed by our youth.
Yeah, what is to do cringe?
Oh.
Am I due cringe?
Well, you know, for the longest time, at least in the world of business, politics, and tech, I feel like you would get a lot of nouns made into verbs.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
You know, like we're going to, I don't know, table that.
Or we're going to, you know, what was the one I ran into not long ago?
I'm going to prioritize this for candidization.
I say all the time, you know what?
I'm going to Merlin this problem.
I'm just going to Merlin the shit out of this.
Is that like a community when you're British something?
Is that a euphemism for screwing up?
I don't want to know.
Is that right?
Brita is a way of screwing up?
I still can't get my kid to listen.
Even though we are so deep in community now, I still cannot get my kid to listen to the All the Great Shows episode.
It breaks my heart.
Your story about chatting with that lady about LA architecture?
Yeah.
Wonderful.
No, this one, I think now cringe.
Another one that was used in my home where I live, where my children play with their toys just today.
So cringe, I think, is used often as a noun.
That's cringe.
I think.
And then one that I encounter is aesthetic used as an adjective.
Okay.
Oh, oh wait.
Okay.
So that's cringe.
Or, or maybe it's, maybe it's a, well, yeah, but like aesthetic.
Oh, it's, well, that's, it's a very, uh, it's, it's a, I think you could say something like that's a very aesthetic, um, meme.
Right.
I see.
I see.
You know what?
I'm, I'm hitting eject.
I'm hitting eject.
I went out of this.
Use cringe as a noun.
Use cringe as a noun.
I want to hear that.
Oh God, John, the way, the way, uh, uh, well, I guess it would be an adjective.
John, the way you greeted me was very cringe.
Yeah.
That's adjective though, right?
I guess.
Are parts of speech still a thing?
Do we still do that?
You know what?
Ken Jennings did an episode of Omnibus where he said that parts of speech that, that, um,
That what policing language is intrinsically discriminatory.
I can see that as a point of view.
He meant it the other way, which is when you say that's bad grammar.
Now, I don't think he meant it.
Policing people's grammar is discriminatory, but I don't think policing people's language the way it's done, where it's like you can't say that anymore, I don't think that's considered discrimination.
There are a lot of ways.
Yeah, there's like a thousand ways it can go wrong.
Yeah, defund the police that are telling you they're there there.
But then refund the community policing.
That is, you can't say that anymore because it's racist.
I can't begin.
I'm going to tell you what I told my shrink the other day.
I assumed that you always did.
Oh, okay.
Tell me what you told your shrink.
I said, you know, because basically it's a monthly thing.
You know, I think sometimes about people who encounter you, only in certain circumstances, dentists come to mind.
Your whole life is mouth to your dentist.
Yeah, your life is mouth.
Your life is mouth.
And to my shrink, we meet once a month, and I tell him how I've been disappointing.
There's things I was supposed to have done, John, you know, scheduling things with doctors and things like that.
You know, it's...
It's a whole thing.
And so, yeah, I basically pay him some money each month.
He doesn't see it that way.
Thousands of dollars.
You know, it adds up in the end.
But I'm not against language changing.
I think it's exciting that language can change.
Just go Google for all the words that Shakespeare either invented or popularized.
It's why English is so great.
We take everything.
We do.
We do.
We're like an omnivorous language beast.
But what I'm asking us to do is just take a beat and say, are we sure we really need a neologism for something where there's already a pretty good word?
And I think a little bit of pushback from one middle-aged guy in San Francisco asking you to please just take a minute and make sure there's not already a better word for that is...
I just... I'm being terrible or not.
Am I being cringe, John?
Be honest.
I don't know.
I can't even tell anymore either.
I don't know.
I don't know up from down.
I don't even know if those are still the terms we use to describe up from down.
I like the phrase... This is a very big Wikipedia word.
I like disambiguation.
And I like a certain amount of precision.
Precisement.
Precisement.
Les mots just.
I went...
Back to my psychiatrist.
Okay.
After several months of going to a psychologist, and this just happened last week, because the psychologist had spent a lot of time saying, look, as you talk about your childhood and your high school years and the problems you've had all along,
Uh, your failure, failure to thrive in many ways.
Oh, you hate to hear that.
He said, well, no, that's just me describing it to him.
He would never say that about me.
Well, that was our number one fear when we had a baby.
You didn't want to become one of those failure to thrive people.
No.
Finding out retroactively you have, you have a late onset failure to thrive.
That's the thing.
But you know, you can't tell, I can't tell my whole story.
Oh, I, so I watched singles last night because it was the 30th anniversary of singles.
Is that Matt What's-His-Head?
Matt What's-His-Head, yeah.
And Bridget Fonda, maybe?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's right.
That's right.
It was filmed in Seattle.
It was presented, at least in the mainstream media, as being a kind of grunge-influenced movie with a grunge-style music product in it.
You've got Pearl Jam are in the movie.
Oh, you know, uh, Chris Cornell appears in the movie.
Tad is in the movie.
Wow.
They, they use mud honey music.
Um, and it was filmed in Seattle in the spring of 1991.
When I worked at the off ramp, they filmed some scenes there.
I remember, I remember being told that for the next three days, the venue was going to be closed.
and so they weren't going to pay me for the next three days.
Just real quick, because you never know when there's somebody who doesn't know the background.
Could you just really quickly, why is that place well-known amongst people of our age?
Were you like a bar back there, or what was your job?
No, I started as like a, yeah, just like a busboy, but it had been a gay club before, and the owner realized that there were two other clubs in town that were making all this money,
booking bands this is this is january maybe well no that crocodile didn't exist yet it was the central tavern and uh the vogue tavern and they were you see it's called the the off ramp the off ramp that does have a gay bar vibe oh yeah and it was it had formerly been a brothel and then it was this place you know and and he ran it like
The way a lot of gay bars used to do, which is like Monday night is leather daddy night.
Tuesday night is drag queen.
Wednesday night is lesbian night.
I bet you Tuesday night was new wave night.
It was always like the redheaded stepchild of nights.
If you wanted to get your sister of mercy on, you had to go for usually some kind of like Saturday night spoken for.
Tsk tsk tsk.
Well, and the thing is, this was not a disco that welcomed straight people.
So it wasn't one of those crossover places.
Oh, I get it.
They weren't just trying to do a little bit of side hustle.
This was a gay bar.
And Saturday nights and Friday nights were like disco.
It was like pickup hotspot scene.
But he realized, wait a minute, there are these clubs that are booking these long hair bands and they're making a mint.
And the guy that owned the bar, Lee Ray,
he did not he used to own a pontiac dealership and then he retired and was like i i had to pretend that i was not gay to sell pontiacs uh in kitsap county for 40 years now i am no longer pretending i'm gonna spend i sold my pontiac dealership now i'm opening a gay bar and i am gay now yeah all that money spends the same it was very exciting at the time and so he was like i want to make this money
And so he said, I'm going to start booking bands, but I don't know anything about that world.
So I have to hire some straight kids who have leather jackets to come work for me and tell me who the bands are.
He's bringing in a transitional leather scene.
And I was the second or third straight kid, but he realized right away that I was useless because I was so new.
It was so peach fuzz.
Probably a lot to pick up.
A lot, right?
And I was just like, whoa, I just moved here.
And he's like, okay, well, here's what you're going to do.
Stay out of trouble.
Did you feel a little bit like Country Mouse there?
I was Country Mouse because the rock shows were only going to be two nights a week and the rest of the night it was still going to be a Leather Daddy scene.
And he was like, look, just go pick up beer bottles and ask people if they're doing okay and empty the ashtrays.
And I was like, but they all look so fierce.
And he's like, trust me, they're not.
And so I remember the first day I walked out into the room, 400 guys wearing chaps and nothing else.
And I was like, I don't know.
They're going to eat me alive.
And he was like, maybe, but in a way that you're not.
that you're not even thinking of they're not going to hurt you you don't even know how to know what you don't know at that point that's exactly right i was like i how do you mean it's like the motorcycle gang and peewee's big adventure you know but they they seem to be kind of pairing off in a friendly way well and that's and the thing was i remember the long walk i did for the first time from one end of the bar to the other emptying ashtrays and picking up uh empty glasses and i
I remember halfway through walking across and I was like, it smells like lavender in here.
And everyone was so, it was, and they were so nice to me.
And by the time I got to the other side of the bar, I was like, wow, that was really fun and invigorating.
Wow.
And, of course, the other – I mean, the gay employees of the bar were like, you have no idea.
You have no idea what the rest of tonight – There's a lot of levels with which you're going to need to acquaint yourself.
Don't imprint too heavily just on lavender.
No, and I looked like a sea lion to them.
I was just –
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In any case, keep moving and get out of the way.
I was so sleek and young.
But anyway, so this bar, in a very short amount of time, because Lee Ray realized, look, on Wednesday night, I can have lesbian night, and 600 people come in here.
And they all buy one beer and nurse it all night because they're just here to dance.
Oh, I... Whereas the long hairs come in and they're buying a lot of, what, PBR or something?
Yeah, he's like, I can book Tad, a person I've never heard of before.
Do they have a liquor license?
They do, yeah.
That makes a big difference.
And he said, then I can have 600 greasy kids...
in here and I will make 50 times the money.
And you're not going to waste time on Amaretto Sours.
This is just going to be people buying six of something cheap, but it's going to move, but make it up in volume.
Boom.
Oh, shots.
He, he, he, all he had to do.
Shots are money, John.
There's a lot of money in shots.
He took that bottle of Chambord and he moved it up to a top shelf and he replaced it with four bottles of Jim Beam.
And he was just like, woohoo, making money.
So right away, within the first four months I worked there,
The drag shows and the lesbian nights and all of that went away and got replaced.
You know, first it was two nights, then it was three nights, then it was seven nights.
Right.
Of just straight up like my sister's machine and steel pole bathtub.
Uh-huh.
And cat butt.
Cat butt.
Cat butt was real.
Yeah.
And so anyway, they filmed singles there during this period.
Okay.
And I remember Pearl Jam who, they were called Mookie Blaylock at the time and Matt Dillon.
were there and Bridget Fonda.
And then we didn't hear anything about this movie until the following year, like 18 months later, this movie comes out.
And a lot of the people that worked at the bar at the time were like, Hey, I'm in the movie.
I'm like in the background in that scene.
And there was a girl that I knew really well who was very prominent in
There's a scene where the two romantic leads are like, he's meeting her in a bar and he sidles up to her and he's like, hey, you know, I was going to use a line, but it turned out I was just going to be myself.
And she was like, that's kind of a line.
There was a really close friend.
Kind of Cameron Crowe feel to it.
Super Cameron Crowe.
And this friend of mine was standing right next to him.
Wait, did Cameron Crowe do this movie?
Yeah, it's Cameron Crowe.
Oh, shit.
Okay, well, a good Paul Merlin.
I didn't remember that.
I think of him for Almost Famous, I guess, later on.
But, oh, wow.
This was a big film.
And he was with the lady from Heart at the time.
Is that right?
Nancy Wilson.
Weirdly, he didn't put her in the movie.
There are very few, by which I mean no female musicians in the movie.
He's all seven from Seattle.
l7 was a seattle band now whether they were kim from kim from uh the singer from fastbacks was also in uh in another grunge band too right well the the people in the fastbacks were in other grunge bands kurt block definitely and musburger was in the band but no kim was pretty much straight up fastbacks okay and
But anyway, watching the movie was so crazy because... Here's... Are you ready for this?
Well, I'm thinking it must be a little bit... I mean, the closest thing I could think of just straight off the dome was going... This is so silly, but going to Edinburgh Castle here in town where they shot... So I married an axe murderer.
And it's like, oh, it's this place.
But it was different the way they set it up.
It must have been a little surreal for you to forget about...
the fact that your place of employment would be in a movie and then suddenly it is.
And I've correct me if I'm wrong, but this is also at the point where Seattle's well and truly over the whole quote unquote grunge thing.
Yes.
Well, no, at the time it was just like, are you kidding me?
Like here we are.
It was, you know, summer.
It was still part of the Annis, uh, Annis Mirabilis, like still pretty exciting.
Okay.
All right.
Yeah.
I mean, Pearl, I think Pearl Jam's 10 was one number one or, or nevermind was when the movie came out.
So it was lemon yellow sun.
Yep.
Uh, lemon yellow sun.
Yes.
Hit me with a surprise.
Pow.
Yeah.
No, no, no.
Yeah.
Uh, but, but watching it now, there's one particular scene where, uh, where one of the, uh, the stars is on a bicycle and she's riding across town.
And it's one of those where it's like, wait a minute, she was there and now she's over here.
San Francisco and bullet.
Yeah.
One of this.
No, but watching it was crazy because although Seattle is nothing like that anymore, that Seattle doesn't exist.
It's on film.
And so it, that Seattle, and those people look pristine.
It looks like it was made yesterday.
Oh, like captured in situ, like under glass, like this is a moment.
Yeah, but for me, it's all in sepia in my memory.
And so it was very weird to see that Seattle.
Can you come back to that movie first?
Did you say 30?
30 years?
30 years later.
I hadn't seen it in 30 years.
Oh, my God.
And so... Doesn't Matt... Matt Dillon, right?
Matt Dillon.
Doesn't he have, like, a kind of objectionable, pretty generic, like, rectangular soul patch?
He does.
He does.
Doesn't he have, like, a strap-on soul patch?
He actually looks exactly like Jason Finn looked at the time.
He basically modeled his look on Jason Finn.
He's doing the whole thing.
He's got the long underwear and the shorts and the long hair and the beanie.
Yeah.
Layers.
The early 90s were all about layers for me.
They were about layers here, for sure.
That's one of our things.
But watching it, I was like, wait a minute.
When they were filming this scene, I was two blocks away.
And A, had no idea they were filming this scene there.
And B...
I remember myself at that time as a failure to thrive person because you're sober at this point, right?
No, no.
And there are people in the movie who are like, I'm 22 and oh my God, you know, like I can't get my life together.
And I was 22 at that very moment.
And these people looked incredible to me.
They have jobs, they have apartments, they're in relationships.
They seem fun.
You really can have it all.
And watching it from my perspective at the time, I was like, I do have a job, but I don't have a girlfriend or an apartment.
And I...
I am wasted all the time and, and I don't, but this is my memory.
I think I dropped a decade because Russian state hurricanes and that stuff was sub pop.
That's like 98 ish.
Yes.
Okay.
This is okay.
Yeah, of course.
Yeah.
This is 92.
Anyway, watching it and thinking, I thought then, and I think now of myself as failing to thrive, but I was like,
I was a kid living his life, having all the things that a kid does when he's 22 at that time.
I wasn't failing to thrive.
I was one of the many people.
I was just one of the many people.
And I was living in that town.
I was essentially.
Just one, uh, just one, uh, one shiny thread in a big tapestry.
I was just a guy in the background of the scene where these two were hooking up.
And so in talking to my psychologist, uh,
And saying, oh, you know, I never, I just, it always has been just like missed connections and a clusterfuck and a dumpster fire.
He has been saying repeatedly, you have attention deficit disorder and you have it, you have, you have it profoundly, but it is not hyperactivity.
Right.
That's mine.
Yeah.
Right.
And that is a lot of people I know, the hyperactivity side.
He said you have the attention deficit.
Oh, I'm sorry.
Just to say, I put that poorly.
What I'm trying to say is I may strike the listener as a hyper person, but I have the full-on attention problem.
I cannot always be counted upon to have the executive function to put this where I would prefer it to be.
And then check in to make sure that it's still there.
And then all the other stuff that, you know, is attendant with that, which can include things like anxiety and failure to thrive.
Yeah.
Right.
And so he's been saying over and over, like, the problem is, you know, for people our age, it's so hard to
To say, to hear someone say you have bipolar disorder and attention deficit disorder.
Yeah.
At a certain point, I hear the voice of my father go, I killed 16 Japanese.
Pick a lane.
And you've got, and you can't get a goddamn job.
I shot down a zero with a goddamn pistol.
Yeah.
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But he's saying, like, the problem is if you have attention deficit source,
Just in passing, I just would mention that another show that I co-host with a person with a bipolar diagnosis also got diagnosed with ADHD after the bipolar.
I wonder if this is a thing.
So he says the problem is that attention deficit disorder, we did know what it was in the 80s.
And we knew what manic depression was, but the, but the problem is if you had, this is what's weird.
If you had actually been treated for ADD in 1981, it might have.
thrown your bipolar way out because the two medicines do not work well.
My shrink told me a long time ago when gossiping about other people that I know said that it's not uncommon at all even among psychiatrists not just psychologists but for psychiatrists to I don't know this is just what I've heard and this is what he says but that there are that if you get the especially with bipolar if you get that diagnosis wrong and try to treat it for just depression you get the same problem
Same.
In the sense that, like, I mean, obviously, giving somebody a ton of Ritalin may not be the thing to stabilize their emotional jelly, but that's another one where even if you do get, like, oh, we got the depression part, but, like, do we still call it cycling?
Is that still what it's called?
Yeah, cycling.
Yes.
You can actually, you can make it worse if you, if you treat that, just that what appears to be.
So you stop at the diagnosis of like whatever generalized depression is.
Exactly.
That's the other problem, right?
If, if I had actually taken the depression medicine that they gave me, then he, they, they say the psychiatrist says that might've thrown you into a wild mania.
You dodged some bullets, buddy.
Yeah.
And then a terrible crash where you wouldn't even be able to see the bottom.
And so what I did, I dodged the bullet by not taking any medicine during the Hades.
See, see.
Sometimes nothing's a pretty cool hand.
No one can eat 50 eggs.
Ain't no man can eat 50 eggs.
What we have here is a failure to medicate.
And what they're saying is, look, all that failure to thrive may have been a bonus because the other options might have been either that you burn out or fade away.
So now I go back last week.
I haven't seen my psychiatrist in a year because I was seeing a psychologist.
Is that somebody like, is that maybe not synonymous with therapist, but is it a primary talk, primarily a talk therapy experience with a therapist?
Therapist.
That's right.
So he's can't prescribe anything, but he can, but he likes to talk.
And then the psychiatrist is the prescriber.
And, you know, my psychiatrist is good at talking, but he's not, he's not like, he doesn't have a ponytail, you know, he doesn't.
It's, it's, it's, I mean, I realize this is not, I'm not saying I believe this, I kind of believe this, but to me, like, you say, you say, you say, hey, I need a plumber because my pipes are all fucked up.
All I need for proof of that is that there's shit everywhere.
So I may not know how to fix that, but I do know to call a plumber about that.
But there's this part of me, and I shouldn't even say this, but sometimes therapy seems like this much longer thing where it's like, well, let's talk about how you feel about your pipes.
Whereas the psychiatrist is like, why are we doing this?
Just take this.
Yeah.
We're not going to make the shit go away by talking about your childhood.
Yeah.
Well, that's exactly right.
And the thing was, I went over to the therapist because I'd been taking bipolar medicine and it clearly worked.
Yeah.
It clearly has kept me out of terrible places, but I'm still not.
You're still failing to thrive, John.
I'm still failing to thrive.
So I was like, maybe I need to talk about my feelings.
And then he is saying, oh no, all of your feelings, it's not as simple as this, but
All of your bad feelings seem to come from a place where you feel like you don't finish anything.
Everything you start ends up sitting half done on the dining room table for nine months until you sweep it into a box.
Right.
And your desktop on your computer is full of half-finished essays.
And to bring the Merlin Mann angle, it's one thing to have unfinished projects, and it's potentially another thing to have unfinished projects and to feel terminally bad about it.
You know what I mean?
The feeling bad about feeling bad cannot be overstated in terms of importance.
And there it is, right?
And as he said it, I was like,
Oh, right.
I wake up every morning and I start to write an essay and I write six pages of it and I'm really in love with it.
And then all of it, because I can do that in an hour and a half.
And then all of a sudden I remember that I needed to water the garden and I go outside and I turn on the water and then I wake up an hour later and I'm building a tree house.
Yeah.
And I get that you're still developing the plans for your seven sided lighthouse made of dreams.
Yeah.
And then I get halfway through.
I only get four sides of the seven sided lighthouse and I leave it still exposed to the elements.
And then I accidentally leave the electric drill, the battery powered drill out in the unfinished tree house.
And then it rains.
And then, you know, and then by, by an hour later, uh,
You know, like I'm building a piece of furniture and I'm like, wait a minute.
And then I leave that unfinished and I'm like, what am I doing?
And then I sit and I'm like, you suck.
Well, and I'm guessing potentially you get a little bit of David Roderick voice somewhere in your head, right?
I mean, it's not your dad specifically maybe, but that idea of like, how could you possibly be failing to thrive at this point?
Just focus on one thing and go do it.
And I shut down at zero and you can too.
Yeah.
Well, and so in the part of this process, I looked around and I was like, wait a minute.
My family is healthy and happy.
Everybody's doing great.
I have a house.
Every aspect of my life is doing well.
I'm doing well.
Yeah.
But I am so sad.
And I have so many things I want to do in life that I can't do.
And every time somebody online says, well, I used to, you know, I used to support him, but now he never like puts anything out.
So anyway, I took my $1 and put it somewhere else.
I'm like, but I have all these half finished things that I want to make you happy with random dude on the internet, you know?
So I went to the psychiatrist and he was like, haven't seen you in a year.
How you been?
Yeah.
Hint, hint.
And I said, I have attention.
He's like, like, like Bob Fosse, just suddenly shaking a bottle full of pills.
Well, no.
So, so I said, I have attention deficit disorder.
And he said, I've been telling you that the whole time, but we still have the try hard nerds.
Shut up.
We still have the problem of bipolar.
Yep.
And I can't give you Ritalin or Adderall.
Because I'm afraid, he said, you run so hot already.
He said, look at what your foot is doing right now.
And my foot was fucking tap dancing a whole thing on the floor.
And he's like, you're so hot and so close to like hypomania all the time.
I don't want to put anything in you that fucks you up.
And so what we have to judge is, can you
Is it better, just like your childhood, is it better for you to not be medicated than is it possibly so much worse that we try and treat it and then all of a sudden you're in Las Vegas and you don't know where your shoes are?
And I was like, right, right, right.
You're not even like, you're not at the Bellagio, you're downtown.
Yeah.
I'm downtown.
You're downtown in a place that like, we're like three of the tables are open.
Yeah.
You know, a casino boss with a toupee says no shoes, no shirt, no service.
And I go, what?
I'm wearing a shirt.
Who the fuck are you?
So he says, okay, let's try something.
And he gives me a drug.
He says, I don't think you're ready for Wellbutrin drugs.
Because that blocks your dopamine, and I don't even know if you can handle that.
That's a dopamine reuptake inhibitor, and you've got to be careful with those.
No, thank you.
But he said, I'm going to give you…
Atomoxidine or it's called sidufus or something.
It's got the word atom in it.
A-T-O-M-mexine.
Atomoxidine.
Something.
But not a dream.
Not a dean.
Not a dean.
Okay.
Anyway, if you're interested, you can.
It's not a... I'm way out of my depth at this point.
No, but it's not meth.
It's no form of... Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, I mean, that's the thing with ADHD, as most of us learn, is that
It might be fun to take Adderall, and it is fun to take Adderall.
But really, as I understand it, there's an unfortunate side effect, which is all the things that stimulate the kind of production of dopamine that makes somebody like me feel more normal also has a big side effect of only being available usually alongside a stimulant.
So the stimulating part is kind of a deleterious side effect.
Yeah.
Except to the person taking it.
Right, right, right.
But we're talking about different systems.
We're talking about different pipes.
Just because the pipes and wires doesn't mean they're all the same pipes and wires.
There's not like, you know what I mean?
There isn't like, that's some complicated stuff going on.
And you're doing some stuff with electricity and water that you really need to understand how those pipes and wires work.
Exactly.
And he's saying, you already start seven projects every day.
Now imagine if you were on methamphetamine.
And I'm like, oh, I don't have to imagine.
I remember very clearly.
I can help you get rid of those if you want.
It actually made me really focused.
And what that means is that I sat with a notebook and a number two pencil and I sketched my hand for six hours.
And now if you look at that hand, boy, is it, you know, that's a crazy, that's a crazy hand.
And he's like, right.
So that's what we don't want.
We don't want to focus you and also make you a danger to your community.
So anyway, I'm taking, he said, I'm just going to give you a little bit of this just to get you acclimated to it.
And then I'm going to, and then I'm going to, we'll, we'll see how you take it.
So I started taking this.
Of course you look online and online, all it says is, well, there are these other drugs that aren't,
Amphetamine that you can give people for ADHD.
Not a lot.
Sometimes they might even work.
You know, it's they're very.
Oh, no.
I mean, absolutely.
It's like one of those kind of like I don't say a damn Benjamin thing, but it's one of those things of like when you try to substitute something when you're making cookies and you're like, well, you know, applesauce can work, but like you're really better to get the actual ingredients for the thing.
And, like, it's something where we're keeping an eye on my blood pressure right now.
So I'm off of my usual, like, not Adderall, but a stimulant-based ADHD thing.
And that's why my brain's so fucking manatee smooth at this point.
But, you know, but this is adulthood.
Adulthood is contraindications, you know?
Exactly.
And I also, well, so I started taking this little thing.
And I don't think, I think that my chemistry is so tightly wound that even if you give it a little something, because I remember this with the
I mean, basically applesauce will throw me into a new emotional state where it's like, you just ate a cup of applesauce.
Why are you behaving this way?
And it's like, because I had a cup of applesauce.
Yeah, you're having a real Marcel Proust type situation.
Jesus Christ, it's full of apples.
What kind of question is that?
Who made this?
What is this?
So I started taking this stuff and I do feel different.
Ooh, how long?
It's been two weeks, I guess.
Oh, wow.
That's great.
So much of this stuff takes fucking forever, and you got to dose up and dose down and try.
The whole story in the 90s of half the people in my band were on then-new antidepressant depression drugs.
And it was early days of figuring out, you know, you fixed this one thing.
Again, Dead Kennedys, right?
One thing's fixed, another falls apart.
Like, you...
will I get to be a whole person with this or do I just give away the whole... Give it away now.
Sorry, that was Les Claypool.
But no, you know what I mean?
We were like, okay, well I can fix this one thing but now I've got these other three small things and maybe I'm developing dyskinesia or something and you can't just go in and do a lightning strike at this point.
You've got to try stuff.
That's fantastic news though for you.
Are all of those former bandmates that tried antidepressants in the 90s, are they all still alive?
Because I know a lot of people who are like, hey, I got this new antidepressant.
And, you know, and eight years later, they're like, they're not here anymore because of what you said.
Somebody tried to lightning strike one thing and it pushed a button that made the whole thing go off the rails.
Yeah.
Yeah, well, knock on wood, so far so good.
But the brain is a complicated thing, John.
That's all I'm saying.
Well, so I don't actually feel any different.
That's how I felt when I first started taking Lamictal, where I would only notice the difference, which I don't take anymore.
I haven't taken it for years.
But when I did take Lamictal,
Ask your doctor if Lamotrigine is right for you.
Well, in addition to all the blah, blah, not blah, blah, the extremely serious black box warnings, it was just this dosing up, dosing up, dosing up, dosing up.
And then by the time it did something, I had arrived at a point where I would only notice it in its absence, which you don't want to do.
You know what I'm saying?
Like being normal, it does not...
If it worked, it doesn't really feel like an elevated state one way or depressed state one way or another.
You've fixed the leak in that one pipe, kind of.
But in this case, I, after a week of...
After the first week, nothing, but after the second week, I looked around and I was like, wait a minute, did I finish that tree house?
Holy shit.
How did I, when did I finish the tree house?
That sounds kind of profound.
Well, a little, and I'm, and I'm really.
Yeah, but I mean, if you've stopped moving the wrong way, that's, that's a start.
Yeah.
Well, and then it was like, wait a minute, did I just do the laundry?
I didn't even notice that at no point in the process of doing the laundry.
How did that happen without me overthinking it?
Yeah.
At no point did I go start changing the oil in my truck.
I know.
I just did it.
And then I was like, well, this bedroom is so disorganized.
I better clean it, which is something I say every time.
But in this instance, I cleaned it.
And now I walk past it and I'm like,
Wait, wait, wait.
That bedroom is still clean.
Yeah.
So it's too early to say, but I'm doing this interesting thing.
I want some Atomazine.
Atomatine.
Yeah.
Naxle Pro.
And so I don't know what it is.
I don't know how it works.
And I don't think they do either.
Yeah.
And if you go online, of course, it says, well, it doesn't work because nothing works except for Adderall, which would turn me into a junkie within a week and a half.
And anyway, so I believe the children are our future.
Does your psychologist miss you?
Your therapist?
So now I'm going to both of them.
Oh, boy.
And I don't think that's sustainable.
I mean, you should really only pick one team to root for.
Well, and what do I need?
Merlin, do I need medicine or do I need to talk to somebody?
I mean, they're not mutually... I was actually going to say, as I try to correct myself and not sound like a total asshole, I think both are extremely useful, but I think they're useful at and for complementary but ultimately different things.
If you've got a raging pipes and wires problem, realigning and reframing how you feel about things is going to be a quick fix at best.
Well, you know, I was talking to a lot of army guys who were saying that they had real recruiting problems right now because they just cannot get enough people to join the army.
And they said one of those problems is that there are a lot of people who want to join the army, but the army won't let you join if you're taking psychological medicine.
Hmm.
Because they say, look, we don't want you out on the battlefield to have a psychological episode.
And we don't want, you know, we don't want the army full of people that are all.
Like Hitler did.
Just give them some.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Exactly.
What they don't want.
Call in Dr. Morrell.
A Wehrmacht.
They're trying to get, you know, the best and the brightest.
And those people also feel like, well, I could get a job making video games.
And so I don't.
It never occurred to me that one thing that would be keeping me from ever being the retired director of the CIA was that I was taking too many meds.
Yeah.
But here we are.
Hmm.
Here we are.
And I'm going to start.
Well, I don't know.
I don't know what I'm going to start, but right now I'm taking a handful of pills that is, that just keeps getting stronger every day.
Yeah.
Uh, and I, I, but none of them are, none of them are, are, are supposedly psychoactive.
None of them are like controlled schedule three anythings.
They're all just like, oh, we don't know what this is exactly.
It's kind of a salt.
That's also an anti seizure medicine and maybe a blood pressure medicine and maybe it's a vitamin.
But that's how, that's how a lot of this, I mean, a lot of this stuff works.
I'm not, I'm not a physician, but
It's complicated stuff, and it's all exacerbated by the thing I was talking about, which is the dearth of project management.
As we've talked about so many times, one thing that at least is frustrating for me, and I think it's frustrating for you, is the extent to which you have to manage this whole project.
You have to keep everybody talking to each other.
You've got to make sure you're checking in on the right things.
You've got to make sure, I mean, like...
they're just like, they're waving you out of there.
And when you pick it up at the CVS, the Walgreens, the Fred Meyer, whatever, they're kind of just, Hey, any questions, blah, blah.
It's like, no, no, no, it's all, it's all fine.
But like, nobody's there to be your forward looking consultant.
And on top of it all, sorry, if I get in trouble for this, I do think some people in medicine have maybe not an agenda, but definitely have a way they like to do things.
Yeah.
And if you're not aware that this person is looking more into this thing than that thing, do you follow what I'm saying?
The problem they like to solve or choose to solve, I'm not going to be mercantile and cynical and say it's about extending the length of care, but I am going to say it's difficult to get treated as a whole...
and changeable person in a way that is both successful and not, you know, disruptive.
Yeah.
It's like, do you remember, do you remember reading John Berger's ways of seeing the,
Surely, at some point, you read Ways of Seeing.
Sounds familiar.
Remind me what that is.
Ways of Seeing.
It was a short book.
I think they made it into a TV show.
It was just about ways of seeing, different ways of seeing.
And just the idea that there were ways of seeing was pretty new in 1972.
Now, of course, it's all we talk about is that there are ways of seeing.
And I think that doctors have a way of seeing.
Oh, absolutely.
You know, and I...
And also, and you and I both talk about this a lot, where it's like, I feel like I'm caught in a trap and I can't walk out of a certain way of seeing right now.
And I don't want to be in this way of seeing, but I'm walking around in circles in this way of seeing.
And all I need is some one person to just say some random one thing that makes me go, oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
That's just a way of seeing.
And get out of there and get back to what I hope is a broader way of seeing.
Part of the – I mean, I'm not a therapist, but it strikes me that part of your – as one of my clients – I don't say patient.
I say client.
As one of my clients, one thing that I would think about with you is what feels like a resistance or –
rejection of like certain kinds of maybe not explanations but like even when so like what you're what I think what you're describing from my way of seeing is that no matter what happens in some ways you still feel like you're fucking up and you're disappointing and you're down on the count and that there's somebody out there who thinks that you should have done better including you and like the question what that becomes and one way the certain kind of Buddhist might approach this is to say well
could there ever be a state where you feel satiety about where you should be in life?
Or is that something that's always going to be a wobbly wheel for you?
And, you know, but the thing is, here's the irony, knowing that can actually improve the situation.
If you know that, like then that feeling, and forgive me, this is something I'm thinking about and reading about a lot right now, but that doesn't have to be who you are.
It doesn't have to be a part of you.
It's, it's the same way that you could have a scar or a mole or an X. Yeah.
Or something that has a role in your life but doesn't define it.
Unless it's our, in my case, I'll speak for myself, my fucked up mind that has this reversion to the mean where it always wants to get back to, okay, so then what's the thing that I'm freaked out about?
Regardless of how things are going.
Like as you describe, I've got a house and I've got a family and it's actually not going so bad.
But like there's something about, you know, and this book I'm reading now, which is by an evolutionary psychologist and it's called...
Why Buddhism is True, and set aside the title for a minute.
But what the guy's saying is something that I think makes a lot of sense, which is things that, from an evolutionary standpoint or natural selection standpoint, stood us in good stead for a long... I know a lot of Syracuse if we used it right.
But that... Is it a noun, though, or an adjective?
Oh, you're being so cringe.
Oh, that's so natural selection.
That's so raven.
You... But we... The things... We're...
One way to put it is that feelings... I don't like saying evolved.
Feelings came along as a way deliberately to fool us.
Are they real, though?
Feelings are real, and feelings feel real, but feelings are not everything and they're not the only thing.
And if we unintentionally trust that our feelings are always telling us the right thing...
that's a good time to check in.
Right.
Because that's no, that's certainly no, to state the obvious, that's no guarantee.
It's no guarantee that because you feel something strongly means it's true, let alone useful.
Right.
But like, that's, I feel like that's the problem.
And what this dude is saying in a way that at least makes sense to my cognitive bias is like, are things that would have served us well in a different time, less so now.
Right.
Just the number of people we encounter who like, we don't know, but we still, we worry about status.
We worry about all these things.
And like that, it's understandable that that would lead whatever we call this to that constant hum in our head, that constant buzz of like, are you sure you're okay?
Like, cause it seems like you're pretty fucked up.
And I don't know, I think becoming, in the case that I'm trying to make to you here, becoming aware that, hey, you know what?
Maybe you'll never feel like you've arrived.
Maybe you'll never feel like you are no longer disappointing people.
But, like, there's a difference in my mind between that being a way things are likely to stay, barring changes in how you operate or think.
But, like, you're not, like, stuck with that as a death sentence, especially if you decide that you're not going to feel bad about it, which is...
simple, but not easy.
And that is the premise of
Of switching over to a therapist psychologist.
Okay, well, that'll be $480.
Well, but that's the thing.
On the one hand, you know, everything's going great.
Yeah.
And there are a lot of people in my life that are like, feelings, nothing more than feelings.
Yeah, raining down on my face.
And so go over.
Trying to forget my feelings.
Go to the man, and then maybe you can have a new way of seeing him.
And I go and I spend time and I'm like, I'm just looking for a new way of seeing.
Give me some stratagem where I can say things to myself that make me not feel bad about myself.
And we work on that for a while.
And I'm like, okay, well, I could say that to myself that, you know, all the mantra and all of the changing my way of seeing and my way of thinking, but I still have a kitchen table full of unfinished shit.
And it's never not going to be a kitchen table full of unfinished shit, no matter what I tell myself.
Because if I could tell myself something that would get me to finish something, I wouldn't have all these three by five cards that have words on them I can't even read.
And so I don't...
think that there's a mantra or a affirmation or, uh, uh, Derek Smalley, um, like encouraging word that is ever going to make me silence all the Welsh trolls that are singing violin music to me from under a bridge in Cardiff about how I'm a fuck up.
Mm hmm.
And I honestly think, Merlin, if I finished a project, because I know this from past experience and I think you do too, you finish a project and you feel good for a while.
It's the best thing.
It's better than anything.
It's better than a drug.
The best gift you can have in this world is what I'll just call a good day.
And a good day for me usually involves having done something that I procrastinated about doing or avoided doing.
And suddenly I feel like a super person.
Thank you.
Yes.
I feel really, really capable.
And just to be clear, I'm not trying to counsel or advise that you should go out there.
No, because you're not a doctor.
I'm not a doctor, but I am a real worm.
I'm an actual worm.
I know you are.
I think I'm getting pretty good.
Great.
Now that'll be in my head for two weeks.
But no, I'm trying to say this.
The goal is not to delude yourself.
The goal is not to just sort of, you know, if there is a goal, it's not to fool yourself into thinking things.
Because we're not foolable.
We can't be fooled.
You and me, let alone fooled by our own dumb selves.
I think I'm – I was listening to a podcast the other day about this insane scam that involves human trafficking and hiring Chinese people to, like, basically catfish people and get their financial information.
And the case that's being made in this very good podcast was, hey, you know what?
Nobody thinks that they're –
susceptible to stuff nobody thinks they could be fooled how mom dad how did this ever happen used to be a professional person yeah and like how did that happen to you you're so dumb and old and you should probably be in a home and it's like i am somewhat persuaded that maybe unlike you or probably unlike you i am persuadable because there are various ways around what i would like to think is a an impenetrable magino line that turns out to be exactly like the real magino line
which is just slightly inconvenient to get around.
Right.
If your, if your, uh, if your tractor or I'm sorry, if your horse drawn cart actually has an engine, you just go around.
And I mean, there's, there's a lot of, there's a lot of tubas right now that are all set up in the art den and that shit's going to go wild.
That's what I'm saying.
Yeah.
uh when you're talking earlier about the uh that bar and it's funny i so associate going to see like you know going to a well we used to call new wave night that sounds silly but that's what they called it that's what it was yep and almost every single one of those i've gone to on the reg has been at a gay bar and i'm trying to like test myself on that there was one in sarasota
I want to say it was Tuesday nights.
There was another one hilariously at the Ramada Inn in Sarasota, right near where our school was.
Was it a hotel or a motel?
It was a motel.
Hotel, motel holiday?
Motel.
That was probably the first time I ever heard gigantic.
Yes.
You spin me right round, baby, right round.
Oh, come on.
Ha, ha, ha.
I was in high school when that came out.
No, you were not.
That was unkind.
No, you weren't.
Sure I was.
Well, I was right after.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Right, right.
I remember I was dating a girl named Marion.
We didn't like each other very much.
Yeah.
Stuck Aiken and Waterman, you know?
Very litigious.
You remember how...
groove is in the heart hit like a bomb yep yep in the gay clubs of the time second or third year of college yeah that was that that was one of those like well there were these certain songs like like that one i would say that harley david son of a bitch song um the brothers cowboy
Of course, it had, like, a hole.
There were these certain songs in, like, 88 or so that you could just, you know, fill the dance floor.
And then other places.
I mean, where was the other one I was thinking of?
There were clubs, like, in St.
Pete that, like, they had a big, like, kind of goth club.
But that goth club was also, that's where I saw the Feelys.
I mean, it wasn't like they didn't have live music.
But it's kind of interesting to think about, to me, like...
Uh, I can think of off right off the dome.
Oh, place in Tampa.
I used to go with my friend DJ Sean.
We go in that place.
Oh, they got, they had all you, all you can eat, uh, all you can drink, uh, well drinks for like $10.
Whoa.
Sounds like a cruise ship.
Oh dude.
I had so, I had so many Amaretto cigars.
Ha ha ha.
But anyway, it's just interesting to think about, like, that's, you know, the same way that, like, a Pizza Hut, and it sounds like, I feel like a David Byrne song, but, like, you have a Pizza Hut that turns into, like, a dentist's office, and it's just interesting to me that at least, for music that was really, really, this was music that was really crucial, like, very important in my life, and I still associate it with places that are or were a gay bar.
Right.
Which is not to say anything except like, you know, it's like, you know, a lot of times you get your teeth cleaned and it used to be the hut, you know?
It used to be the one place that you could go and really just cut loose.
But the problem with that, of course, is that then there was that
whole thing of like, well, wait a minute, this is a gay space and now all you straight kids are in here slumming and listening to cool music and that's like a drag.
And literally, not a drag show, but a drag on the vibe.
Because a lot of straight girls would go to gay bars because it was the one place they wouldn't get hit on.
Oh, they could dance in a circle with, yeah, exactly, with six other girls.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And buy one beer and nurse it all night.
I went to a show, Merlin.
Yes.
No, you there.
I went to a show.
It's the first show I went to since
The pandemic.
Oh.
I went to a rock show.
Oh, you recently went to.
Just went to a show.
Oh, you met my friend Carl and you went to a show.
That's exciting.
I met your friend Carl.
There were all these shows right in a row.
There was The Shins and The Gorillas and The Pavement.
Oh, Pavement was just here like a week or so ago.
Yeah, all these shows.
And I was like, nope, nope, nope, nope.
I'm not going to go to any of those.
Nope, nope, nope.
And then fucking, I don't even want to call him a friend of the show, because he's not a friend.
He's a big piece of shit.
Mike Squires.
Oh, Mike, yeah.
Mike Squires is playing bass.
He's kind of your Bette Noir, is he?
No, that's Colin Malloy.
Oh, shit, you're right.
But is he sort of like, do you see him as like an agent?
I'm using a lot of foreign phrases, and I think I should get double credit for that agent.
agent provocateur.
Precisement, he's, you know, it's like Vendando says, you know, he's the stone in your shoe and underneath your feet.
You guys go after each other hammer and tongs, but it's out of love.
Yeah, but he's always welcome at my house, you know.
Huh.
You sure you want that out there?
Well, that's the thing.
It's too late, right?
I get a text from him a couple of times a month and it always makes me happy.
Yeah.
He comes in and he just is like, well, I'm always welcome in your house.
And I'm like, God damn it.
When did I, I invited him.
Yeah.
So he is playing in Peter Hook's band.
Oh, right.
Yeah.
Peter Hook and the Light is the name of the band, but it's Peter Hook basically playing Joy Division and New Order cover, or not covers.
He's the guy from the band.
I might have just accidentally very briefly transliterated Jason and Mike, and I apologize.
Oh, no, no.
I know they're different.
I know they're different people.
And I don't even want to go back and see if I fucked that up.
But you told me that he's playing with hooky.
But Jason Finn, Jason Finn, just to be clear, my dear friend, friend of the show, Jason Finn.
Yes.
He's not your bet.
No, I either.
Definitely stick with Colin Malloy.
Jason Finn is also a pain in the ass.
And he's also welcome in my home at any time because I invited him in a long time ago.
The difference between Mike Squires and Jason Finn is Jason doesn't actually want to come over to my house.
He's got art in his place.
Yeah, Mike Squires wants to come over.
Jason's over at his house trying to find a new way to barbecue.
You're saying that even if you use the Dracula Protocol, there's people out there that just may not want to even come in at all?
I mean, Jason will come if you force him and he'll stand in the doorway and he'll be like, hmm.
He'll look around and be like, eh.
Is it beneath him, John?
He just doesn't like the suburbs.
He's a city kid.
But so I go to this show, and I was so anxious about it.
I didn't want to go.
But Squires wouldn't let up.
He was relentless.
I don't think of you as a big New Order Joy Division fan.
That's the other thing.
New Order is one of my all-time favorite bands.
And that's it.
New Order had hits, and they were fantastic.
And in all the clubs at the time, that was fun.
I really loved the kind of sprockets sort of style of like, oh, we are so cold.
Like, you know what the future is?
Cold.
It's cold.
It was a nice combination of like Bowie or Berlin, but with just so much cocaine.
Yeah, like you can dance.
A lot of cocaine.
You can dance if you want to.
But you're never going to find love in new order.
And, and I believed it, you know, and I loved it, but because they've got, because they had hits, right?
I mean, uh, but so I go and the show, uh, the show, uh,
was i don't know four hours long they played four separate sets and would take like that's three times too long they would take 15 minute long cigarette breaks because everybody in the band still smokes and they're all they're all british and so they have that thing where you know how all british people are i do they can talk to pans but also
they can fly also they can fly that man's gone now they're so beaten down the british are so beaten yeah they're going through it right now on another screen here i have the uh they'll call it a casket it's a coffin i'm watching the coffin with the stander being carried around oh it's that's today it's happening today i think that this might be this might be the hipster rebroadcast but i'm not sure did you see the editorial cartoon of the
The old man sitting in his living room and he's looking over at an empty chair and he's watching the funeral on his television and he looks real sad.
It's a very sad drama.
That's very family circus.
Yeah.
That's kind of a dead grandpa vibe.
Oh, so sad.
I'm up here, Jeffy.
But anyway, you know, the thing about being backstage.
I love you, Jeffy.
Who, me?
Not me.
There's a thing about being backstage with a bunch of middle-aged British rock stars, which is they're so beaten.
Their hearts are so destroyed, and they have been for decades.
Hookie got his heart broken by the... I think there's a lot of acrimony between him and his former bandmates.
Oh, I know.
I know there is.
And all of the guys working for him are... You remember when I was Elvis Costello's driver for a weekend, and I would drive the...
the attractions around when Elvis wasn't there and all they would do is bitch about him and then he would get in the van and they were like, here he is.
Was Pete the drummer then, that guy?
Yeah, I know.
Those guys, that's a fucking good band.
I can't tell them apart.
I can't usually take that much Farfisa, but like, oof.
But so, so I really enjoy that sense of humor that like, there's nothing left to live for.
So all there is to do is joke kind of half under our breath.
It's a big, it's a big thing for me.
I just love, I love, uh, I love British people, not just because the British people are very self deprecating, but they're also very other deprecating.
Yeah.
They're super mean.
And I, and I love that.
They're still, it's like hanging out with middle-aged gay people.
They're still so mean.
Yeah.
A kind of meanness that you can't find anywhere else, and they can only do, you know, you can only have those small cocktail parties where it's like, you look around and you go.
My wife is acquainted with a super, super duper gay couple who loves Donald Trump.
Oh, yeah.
If you think about it, that's a pretty wild cocktail.
There's some loathing in there.
It's a beautiful house.
You know, they're dressed somewhat similarly, and Fox News is on very loud all the time.
I have a pretty close relationship with a lesbian couple who are in their 60s and they are maybe the least tolerant people I've ever met.
Why is no one talking about this, John?
You look around the room and everybody kind of looks at each other and it's like, okay, are we in agreement that we're going to be super mean?
And everybody nods and it's like, wow, this feels like a cult.
But, but so backstage at a concert where everybody's middle-aged and British, it's the same thing.
You know, like the, like I got 10 minutes, uh,
out of these guys where they were just telling me that i was pronouncing the word twat incorrectly and i was like pasta i was like pump the brakes guys you know and i would say it and then they would say it and i would say we're saying the same word and they're like we are not saying the same word you are saying it like it's like it's an italian word i'm like twat and they're like twat anyway so i'm at this show
And I was so worried that all of the security people that used to let me go hang in the rafters like the Phantom of the Opera, like they had all retired and I was going to meet all these jerseys that have been raised to the room.
Exactly.
And there were going to be a whole bunch of new security people that were like, can I see your ID?
And it's like, I don't need ID in this club.
Do you know?
Do you know?
Google me.
Look, they painted –
They painted around my shoes right there.
Yeah, how many problems I've caused here.
I was kicked out of this bar before you were a twinkle in your parents' eye.
I've been thrown out in the street.
More times literally than I can remember.
I cannot remember.
Literally.
But it was great.
There were still security people there that were like, hey, it's you.
And they put me, you know, they wheeled me over into my regular spot.
And I watched the show.
That's amazing.
It's like, I don't know, like Eric Von Stroheim shows up on the set.
They're like, wheel him in.
They did.
They put me on a hand cart and they wheeled me through the crowd.
Coming through, you know.
The circuitons of temptation.
So I watched the show all four hours with my, you know, standing in the spot where they painted around my shoes.
And I'm looking out at the crowd, and it's all the people that were at the Scoochies Dance Club in 1985.
You know, all the kids that had gone to the gay night, new wave night.
Only now they're 50?
Now they're 57.
And they're all crowded together, and they're singing every word to every song on the Joy Division record.
Yeah.
And I, although I did like all the New Order singles, I don't know if you've listened all the way through.
I don't talk about this a lot, John, but you'd be amazed given how much you would not believe the way 1987, 88 academic year went for me because that kind of covers both substance and
the new order, like it is a best of, but it's a big sprawling two record best of with, you know, alternate versions than what you would have heard on like low life or, or whatever.
Right.
But then like when technique came out, I was like, that's it.
I'm out like fine time or the, like the soccer song.
No, that's, that's not my tempo.
Well, they, the Peter Hook Band, played Unknown Pleasures from start to finish in order.
Did you dance, dance, dance, dance, dance to the radio?
It was not in a new order.
It was in the old order.
Were they smashing glass on stage and stuff?
They weren't.
It's a great show.
Yeah, yeah.
It's a great show.
But, you know, and watching the crowd.
Who said?
Who said?
Well, Peter.
Oh.
And I said to Mike, wait, Peter Hook is not really the world's real vocalist.
And he said.
Neither is Bernard Sumner.
He said exactly the same thing.
He's like, was Bernard Sumner?
And I'm like, well, no.
No.
And he's like, was Ian Curtis?
And I'm like, I don't know.
Oh, wow.
Wow.
Wow.
Wow.
It's that Mancunian sense of humor.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, he was no Beyonce.
So anyway, it was a great, it was a great debut to go back out into the clubs and to, and to be there to see, you know, and at one point I actually did the eighties, uh, uh, side to side dance.
Oh, you didn't, you didn't commit to a full way back dance.
I didn't, but I, but I did the like one, two hop to the other foot, one, two hop to the other foot.
Did you wear a brace or any kind of a prosthetic that could help you with that?
I wasn't, I stayed in my shoe marks, but I, but I definitely, it's the only way you can dance to new order.
Is to go like one, two, and then one, two, you know, with a little bit of a side twist.
Yeah, they're not going to diverge from four, four.
Can I wrap this up?
Can I say something that I think that I regard as funny and then hit the bell and we'll be done recording?
You absolutely do.
Because I want to bring it all together for you.
Yeah, please do.
Please do.
I'm trying to remember exactly what the name of this club was.
Michael and Tony and all of our friends, we would always go to the same.
God, I wish I could remember the name of the gay bar in...
Sarasota.
But, you know, you go there often enough and you get to know faces a little bit.
You know, I didn't, like, get, like, super tight with people there because, you know, it really wasn't for me.
I was a visitor there.
But it was a, you know, and, but there was this guy who worked the door who was, I mean, in retrospect, almost like a John Mulaney character.
He was the most hilarious, like, down and out, like, kind of, like,
low-key gay guy, gay guy with a full southern accent and everything.
He'd be sitting there smoking a butt and, gee, I want to check your, let me check your license.
Oh, Lord, I can't believe you're 22.
And he's doing, but we get to know him, and I don't remember the guy's name, but I knew it at the time.
I'd say, you know, hey, Rudy, or whatever.
And I was like, you know, it must be pretty wild.
Like, you work here all the other days, too.
You know, is it pretty weird to go from, you know, gay bar to this, to our group?
And he goes, well,
As far as I'm concerned, all you new waivers are in purgatory.
Happened in 1988 and I still think about it.
Can't pick a side.
You got to pick a team, my friend.