Ep. 480: "Intake Engineer"
Hello.
Hi, Janet.
I don't want to die.
I sometimes wish I'd never been born again.
Yeah.
Hit those notes.
I used to be able to play that solo a long time ago.
Yeah, I learned it from, I think, you know what I learned it from.
You know what I learned it from.
I learned it from Brian May's Hot Licks.
Oh, did you have Brian May's Hot Licks?
I did.
Uh-huh.
Go.
30 years.
Oh, my God.
But see, the point I'm trying to make.
It's way up there.
Well, I'm on the acoustical.
You know, but the point I'm trying to make, John, is the album.
These kids today, they don't listen to albums, which is fine.
Yeah, sure.
It's fine.
But the whole album is good, John.
Yeah.
You can't just eat.
Well, of course, you can just eat the dessert.
You're a grown man.
Sure.
Sure.
But that and God Save the Queen, what a way to end a goddamn album.
Yeah.
Yeah, they were, you know, the first album I ever heard...
Where somebody had gotten the master tapes and had broken it out into tracks.
Yeah, isolated track stuff.
You know, because I'd seen those ones that you get on the late night TV or whatever.
I had those DVDs that were like, you know.
Can I guess?
Go ahead.
Linda McCartney soundcheck.
Oh, okay.
We're talking about a different thing, but yes.
Are you talking about like isolated running with the devil vocals kind of thing?
Yeah, that thing.
I mean, the video series that was on DVD was like you sat there in the control room with Judas Priest and they'd pull up the
the drums and then they'd show you the vocal tracks you know that i love that stuff well there's eagle rock do you remember john that when you used to tour you had a dvd wallet full of uh classic albums didn't you at one point did i had a dvd of classic albums that's right uh classic albums and behind well behind the music people sometimes i think concatenate those but classic albums whatever that series was that was one but they're now thanks how do you remember that that i carried that
Because I cannot even tell you how many times I've watched the entire episode on Steely Dan's A Show.
I know, I know.
Rick Morata explaining the hi-hat, the bass guy explaining how he got behind the partition to slap.
I could watch it every day.
We had so many conversations about all those different guitar players, all those different attempts to land that solo.
You're really nailing a certain zeitgeist, I think.
Really?
Honestly?
Well, okay, so it's funny.
So just, hello.
Hello, everybody.
Welcome to Roderick on the Line with your friend, John Roderick.
We're recording on a different day and at a different time.
Excuse me.
Yes.
Yes, we are.
We are doing that.
So it doesn't, and I'm just completely, I went to the gym yesterday.
My mind is not engaged.
Did you need to pick something up?
Why were you there?
Also, you know, fitness.
Fitness.
Fitness.
I thought you were a walker.
I mean, they're not mutually exclusive.
I want to talk more about Queen in a second.
Yeah, we will.
But yeah, no, it got dark here.
Oh, Jesus Christ.
Luckily, both of our kids, do you remember when you had a kid, and even if you're not using the phrase sleep hygiene, do you remember what it was like to have a kid who was like, say, six?
And it's like, okay, we got the kid to go to sleep at a normal time because school is starting.
And then after two weeks of that,
Then a week or two goes by, and then you have to do it all over again.
I hate it so much.
It's too goddamn dark.
And where you live, woof, it must get dark at like two there.
It's crazy.
And, you know, up in Anchorage, it was like, forget about it.
And then over here, it was like, hey, and then this guy.
But now, yeah, right.
Daylight savings time hits, and all of a sudden it's dark.
Oh, so it's not fun as much to walk at, like, 7 o'clock, huh?
No, because it was also— It's a different walk.
It was a long summer.
We had a long fall.
It was still 68 degrees and sunny, and then in the space of four days—
It was like pouring down rain.
The sun went down at 445, and it's 41 degrees.
It is so abrupt.
It's like Terry Gilliam had done the segue between two scenes, and it involves something falling down and going to thump.
Now it's something completely different.
Now, apparently it's winter and my child won't go to sleep.
The Lodge.
Anyway, so I went to a gym.
Antelope.
Gone.
There was a woman there with her purple hair and she had her hat said Queen on it and she was like, what are you looking for at the gym?
And I was like, I just want to join a gym.
I don't really want to...
Have an interview.
Oh, wait.
I'm so sorry.
You're talking to one of the intake engineers?
Yeah, intake engineer.
And she was like, let's walk around.
And I'm walking around.
Oh, these people.
I think they get a cut, John.
They must.
And she's like, any particular equipment you're looking for?
And I was like, it's just a gym, lady.
You know, you can lift these.
You have a Les Paul custom.
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It's the right thing to do.
You tell me if you've got something that no other gym has.
Yeah, pitch me.
You got medicine balls.
You got the free weights.
They have a cream for that now.
Anything in particular I can help you with?
So I signed up, and I brushed all the big offers back off the plate.
And I was just like, I just want to just start slow.
I'm not one of those New Year's Eve guys.
New Year's Day gym membership guys.
So you have an idea in mind that you, if I could say, you don't want to wreck your body and you're not mad at yourself.
You're not forcing yourself to go in and do something unsustainable that involves sit-ups on a Nautilus or something.
No.
Get something that works that you can live with, you know?
Yeah.
And the thing I'm worried about most, I think, is that my back and my, and honestly, Merlin, my legs, I have let
Don't get too small.
Anybody who ever had that phase in junior high or high school where you did a little bit of weightlifting for a while, you know how surprising it is the first time you learn what you can squat.
Like even if you're not a strong person, you can probably squat more than you think.
And I bet you can't squat as much as you can think now is what I'm thinking.
It's right.
You can't.
And I can't.
And I need that power.
You know, I need that power.
It'll come up.
Yeah, what happens if the mule dies?
I'm going to have to pull the cart.
Oh, how would you get it back up the hill?
Yeah, so I need to get in there.
I need to do that work.
What if the mule dies?
What if the mule dies?
Who's going to pull the cart then?
That's a good question.
Well, here's the thing.
there's one candidate that's going to rise above all the others.
You've got a lot of good, strong and strong-willed people.
I'm sorry about the construction.
You've got a lot of strong and strong-willed, let's be honest, females in your life, genders in your life, but you're going to be the one who's the substitute mule.
Let's not even worry about that.
Nobody's going to be looking at your kid going, huh?
A lot of the strong will in my family.
Let daddy stay worried with the heat.
The strong will is directed at telling me what it's time for me to do.
Hey, we all have a role.
so yeah the cart's gonna get hitched to me in fact i'm i'm not convinced because the mule is a girl too and she's giving me the side eye like why of course of course i know i know so yeah so anyway i went to the gym so i'm sore because i went in there and i didn't do i didn't get on the bike for 20 minutes i didn't clarify a clarifying question
So you – the time – so did you – because I think the day that I signed up for a gym in whatever that was, 1994, 1992, like I think I was probably in workout gear and drove my Mazda 323 to the gym –
cool car near my yeah it was a pretty cool car it was that was like when the miata was hot but there was a there was a movie theater when i lived in tallahassee uh on uh on the north side i was near i was near harvey's grocery store i was near the uh what was it called like the capital city movie theater oh i was near the yoga place where the little people got shot later and uh and i was right next to my gym i could but of course i drove there and my mazda 323 i was paying you know
Over $320 a month in payments on it.
Was that the hatchback 323?
Well, you had the 323, the 626, and mine was technically at that year, 1991, it was called the Mazda Protégé.
Oh, the Protégé.
I think there was a 9.
I want to say my boss.
So it was really a little bit weird.
I had a 323, a Protégé.
My immediate boss had a 626.
And then his brother, who was the big boss in the company, the guy used to pick his ass.
Had a 929?
Yeah, in 1990, the guy would pick his ass walking down the hall who said, I drove like Mr. Magoo.
But he did pick his ass in the halls.
Good man.
Yeah, but anyway, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I would go there.
But if memory serves, John, I just want to clarify.
When I strode in from my car to the gym that was about three blocks from my house, if memory serves, I was in workout gear the day that I signed up.
Oh, yeah.
Well, that I spoke with an intake engineer.
Now, were you ready to tuck into some exercise the day that you signed up, or was there an anoregonum?
Do the construction people out on the corner there, do they do other things besides back their equipment up?
I would be honored if you would let me send you a movie, because I do that with my other co-hosts, because it's so difficult to explain...
It's so difficult to explain what is actually going on out there.
But there are, we're not talking about Bobcats, dude.
We're talking about the Big Lody Boys.
We talked about this before.
Well, I think I called it the Bang Bang Machine.
It's that one that has the kid on the front.
You can switch out to be different kinds of things.
Yeah.
And then you could put a scooper on it.
Scooper.
And at night when they retire the vehicles to wherever they park them, they leave the scoopers out.
The scoopers are the size of a sixth grader.
And that size scooper, okay?
And there's two of the vehicles that use those outside.
And that's not even what's making the boom-boom noise.
That's a different noise.
They also have a saw for cutting concrete.
Uh-huh.
Now, if I'm not... Correct me if I... We're going to get back to Queen later after the workout, right?
I think.
Okay.
Because I think you hit something really important that's vital for the program.
But please continue.
Well, it's unclear to me...
Maybe I'm maybe I'm misremembering this project management change my I change my medication a lot, but oh, yeah, but weren't they?
Tearing up the street out in front of your question.
I think you're asking is hey didn't they already do this for a really long time?
They do this and then didn't they do it once before yes John listen for what is the one thing that we know about streets?
Well, there's one side of the street.
Yeah?
Oh!
They're doing it all over again, 20 feet south.
Oh, no, they're doing the other side.
It's the other side of the street.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, I've decided that I'm into it.
It's kind of like being in an abusive relationship in the 90s.
You just have to decide that you're into it.
Oh, but you haven't gotten a lot of air horn yet.
Because, of course, there's a guy out there in a high visibility outfit with a flap hat.
And he's got the air horn.
And if somebody doesn't slow down to...
He gives you a little bit of that as you're driving away.
It's the TSA of construction.
All those people are making $75 an hour.
I'm sure that that kind of improves your mood about it.
I'm terrified they'll find out I'm doing podcasts in here because they probably make so much more money than me.
Yeah, so I'm not going to apologize.
I've decided you should join me in this abusive relationship.
Yeah, somebody's backing up.
I'm not taking it out.
This is, what do they call it, diegetic.
This is all part, this is part of the miserable scene.
So you decided it's hard to take walks because of the dark.
No, so I got to the gym and I was just in a wool jacket with a wool hat with ear flaps.
You were worried about your pyloric valve.
I was, I was.
My valve kept slamming shut.
Uh-huh.
And that minx, you know?
And I signed up for a meeting.
I think tomorrow I'm supposed to meet with a personal trainer.
That comes with my membership.
Oh, they saw you coming.
Well, no, it comes with my membership.
It wasn't an attack on.
Yeah, sure.
But I'm only going to... That's what they said in the abusive relationships, too.
It comes with your membership.
It comes with your membership.
Well, so I'm going to say...
They're going to say, so what are your goals?
And I'm going to say, look, man.
When's that scheduled for, John?
It's for tomorrow, I think, tomorrow afternoon.
Tomorrow.
It's a Friday.
Friday, you're going to go in there and you're going to talk to a person.
And so you're anticipating what you need to prepare.
Do you need to bring in any documents?
Will you sign anything?
And you're going to sit down.
I remember Lonely Sandwich told me about the time he got his intake engineer was named Ray Ray.
And Ray Ray walked him through.
Ray Ray.
Yeah, you're going to go to your RayRay, your intake engineer, and you're imagining that they're going to.
So the notion is that whatever it is you come in with, they're going to come up with a plan for you.
Some kind of plan, right?
How do you utilize this membership you've just acquired?
A lot of people come in and they're like, I want to lose 30 pounds.
I think that's got to be really common.
And I'm going to, you know, but then, you know me, I like to, I don't want to be just a regular, right?
So I'm not going to be some, I need to lose 30 pounds guy.
You're not a fucking snork, John.
No, I've got to come in with a different, a different thing.
So I know a little bit about, you don't have divorced guy energy.
And what you're describing is divorced guy energy.
Don't have that.
Don't, don't be divorced guy.
No, and I know what they're looking for, what they're going to respect.
Right.
So I'm going to pander to them a little bit.
I'm going to be like, man, I need to strengthen my core.
And then they're going to go, are you going to need to do code switching and speak the Patois?
No, just a little.
Like, yeah, I really need some core work.
And they're going to go, yeah, right.
This guy's a real one.
He's not some lose 30 pounds guy.
He's a core guy.
Yeah, you're not supposed to say things like, I'd like to be able to shit without it hurting.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
Talk about your core.
That's nice.
And my intake friend, the queen, I used a swear word at one point because she was like, what are you looking to get out of this?
And I was like, well, I've gone to shit.
Oh dear.
And she was like, oh.
Oh, are we swearing?
I'm not swearing.
You're not supposed to talk like that to the queen.
You're supposed to come in and you nod and you say, ma'am, that rhymes with ham.
And then you never show them your back and you back out.
But you certainly do not offer up the word shit to the regent.
Yeah, I said shit.
So I'm not going to make that mistake the second time because I don't know if this is a Seventh Day Adventist.
Ray Ray don't play that.
Yeah, who knows?
I mean, Ray Ray might roll out right away like, what's up, dude?
Fuck!
Fuck you!
I didn't say he was black!
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Anyway.
Anyway.
I'm going to talk about my core, and then I'm going to point out a couple of unusual muscles that people don't normally mention.
Don't have or don't mention?
No, because if people are like, I want to strengthen my biceps, it's like, oh, yeah, you're such a noob, but I'm going to be like, oh.
Oh, you're talking about them small muscle groups.
My canonical example is what I call the roller skating muscle.
Oh, the roller skating.
Well, you ever go roller skating when you were a kid?
And, like, if you only go roller skating once a year, twice a year, when you get home, brother, you're going to feel a muscle you didn't know existed.
You're talking about shin splints?
No, I'm talking about, like, up in your taint, between your taint and your thigh.
There's that one muscle you never, ever use for...
I think one of the ways you get hurt in life, I don't know about sports, but in life, and this goes back to squats in some ways, they say, you know, lift with your knees, not your back.
Well, like there's muscle groups that are, as I understand it, have evolved for certain uses.
Some of the small muscle groups are the ones that'll fuck you up.
Because they're just control.
It's about control, right?
Yeah, I mean, they've got a role.
I mean, basically, it's like asking Elon Musk to run Twitter.
Like, you're going in and you're saying, like, hey, there's this group here that does perfectly fine.
It's like me in the dot-com days.
I rose too fast, too hard.
And, like, I'm a small muscle group.
I'm not there to make you good at roller skating.
I'm there to make it so it doesn't hurt when you shit.
But you know what I'm talking about?
Think about your Achilles.
I know these are not all muscles, but think about all those little things that eventually fuck you up.
It could be stuff, like you say, in your core.
It could be, think about your lower back.
You ever take out the recycling and hurt your back?
That's wrong.
Well, I haven't, but that's, maybe I turned too quickly with an empty bag and then I had to lay down for a week.
I see what you're saying, but you go in, it could be something like, certainly, all the snorks are going to come in and say, my wife is leaving me, I want to get ripped.
You might want to come in and say something like, are you going to take baby steps, John?
Are you going to get ready to set you up with something that's sustainable?
Or are you willing to tear something quickly?
That's not my, I'm not a baby steps guy.
You know, I went in yesterday.
I sat down at, because I'm not, you know, I'm not a guy that's going to be like, oh, I only work with freeways.
I like the machines.
The machines are cool.
John, also, you like talking to people.
I do.
You're intake engineer, Ray Ray.
Well, Ray Ray, well, yeah, you're telling me.
Sure.
You'll talk to a Croatian cab driver for the entire ride, but you're not going to talk to Ray Ray?
I want to know about Ray Ray's life, too.
I bet he might be a DJ.
Yeah.
I don't even know Ray Ray's gender, frankly.
I have no idea who Ray Ray is.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Yeah.
So I went in and sat down at the machine.
The first machine I sat down at was some kind of rowing machine.
and i pulled back on it and it was too easy so i looked down and it was like well okay so famous last i'll put i'll put the weight up you know it was at 60 or something i'll put the weight up to 70 and it was pulled again and i was like well that's too easy so i put it up to 80. no so i put it up to 100. and i pulled on it and i was like okay i can do because i always am thinking can i do three sets of 10.
That was what I was taught when I first was going to the gym.
I remember hearing, I don't have a stake in this factoid from the 80s, but I always heard it said that if you lift the very heavy stuff, you get bulky.
And if you do multiple repetitions of the smaller things, you get like toned.
Right.
Right.
I heard that too.
And I don't know whether that's true or not.
And I don't know whether I want to get bulky or toned, frankly, and I never did.
I didn't know then and I don't know now.
It's a process.
It feels like I want to get bulky and toned.
Well, different things, different ways.
You don't put cilantro on your Cap'n Crunch, but that doesn't mean you won't put it on a taco.
Yeah, right.
In the case of the machines, I feel like I want to do 10 pulls or pushes.
Three times.
And on the... Just take a break in between?
Take a little break in between.
And you get up, you put your hands on your hips, you lean back, you go, oh, yeah.
It doesn't matter what you were doing.
Step to the right.
Yeah, you do a little bit of this.
Ah, shh.
Breathe it in, you know, rest and then do it again.
And then each time.
After the first one, do you go, shoo, and then squirt water into your mouth from one of those squeezy bottles?
There you go.
There you go.
See, you've seen this.
I feel like I've seen this.
Yes.
And then on the last one.
So you're up to, do you stay at 100?
Well, so I did 100 and I did 10 and then I kind of sat there.
I didn't feel like getting up and making a big show.
I just sat on the machine because it's not a full gym.
And then I did 10 more.
And then on the third group of 10, you want to be, you want to have picked the weight that was, I'm just shooting this into the sky, but that when you get close to, when you get to five on the third time through, you're thinking to yourself, am I going to make it all the way to 10?
And then you get to 10 and then you try and do
Two more, you just try and get to 12.
You know, and by the time you get to 12... There's a Ray Ray in your mind saying, push it, John.
You can do more.
You can do more.
Self-coaching, if you like.
Exactly.
And so 100 pounds on that thing felt like...
Right at the end, I was like tired and I, and I was like, am I going to make it?
Yes, I did it.
I got all the way to 12.
And so then I went to the next machine, which was a completely different muscle group.
And I was like, let's start at a hundred.
And I put the thing at a hundred and
I did 100 pounds of whatever that weight was three times.
And then the last one, I was like, I can do it.
I can do it.
And I got there.
And so I just went around to every machine and started on 100 pounds, completely irrespective of what the exercise was.
Well, to go back to cilantro, it's one thing to buy 100 pounds of potting soil and another thing to buy 100 pounds of cilantro.
They're pretty different.
Yeah.
Exactly.
So some of the exercises I was doing yesterday, I was like, I'm really good at this.
I'm just saying, man, for that roller skate muscle, I think it's called the adductor.
There's one where you sit on.
No, there's one machine you sit on, and it looks like a German sex machine.
You put your legs straight up, and then you try to... You squeeze your knees together?
Well, you draw your legs straight, and you kind of draw your legs together, and there's resistance in how hard it is to draw them together.
That works that...
Just, John, if you haven't done it yet, I'm going to say consider starting below 100 on that one.
Okay.
Well, so because there were a few of these.
Where were you challenged by the rule of 100?
A few exercises where 100 pounds was not a reasonable starting place for me for whatever I was doing.
But I didn't do all the machines because I also learned 35 years ago.
or what, 40 years ago, that you have a leg day and then you do a chest day.
Here's where we talk about you've got different muscle groups, and this is another piece of lore from the 80s, is that you need to let a muscle group rest for at least a day between sessions.
Right, right, right.
So somebody like you, who's a real, I think the phrase you all use in the community, a real gym rat, you're going in there every day, but you can't do, if you do your arms every day, you end up looking like some kind of cartoon character from the Pink Panther.
Right.
You don't want those little skinny legs that really peg you as going through a divorce guy.
And also, for me, going in, because I was doing all the ones that were like, this is kind of your lats and your other lats.
Is that your tummy?
No, it's your back.
Oh.
I was trying to do all kinds of back things, because I feel like I need to get my back strong.
But also, the real frosting...
Workout stuff the the the bit real showboaty stuff is all the you know the put the the push-ups and the pull-ups and the chest stuff chest chest and shoulders Like when we sit and you put you push the thing or pull the thing, right?
Yeah, you push the thing or you pull the thing right and that's the one that's the stuff where you're like I'm lifting weights.
I'm literally lifting this weight literally lifting weights and
And so I saved that because I didn't want to just walk in and be like, you know, again, total new move, lay down on a bench press and be like, check me out, you know, in my dress shirt or whatever.
Here I go.
Start with 100 pounds.
I have no idea whether I don't know what I can.
I don't know what.
I don't know what I ever could bench press.
That's a thing when you meet other people.
When you meet another gym rat coming through the ride, it's the first question they ask, right?
How much can you press?
Well, I know this.
What I'm giving you here with factoids about before the 90s was the 80s, and that's when I was in high school.
That's when I was in high school.
My friend Rich was, there's a phrase we don't use so much.
He was wiry.
He's one of those guys that, like, you'd look at him, and he seemed like a pretty normal, skinny 15-year-old kid, but, like, he was hard.
Like, his body was hard.
And Rich, you know, he had some trouble with family and stuff, and he spent a lot of time at school.
He was a dear friend.
And Rich would do weightlifting.
which is really weird, because we were the weirdos.
We were the kids who were listening to The Who and being weird.
But he would hang out and go, and he could, Rich, who, like me, weighed probably 140 pounds soaking wet, he got to where he could bench press 200 pounds.
And 200 pounds, I think, was kind of, at least in 1982, was kind of, if you like, the bar.
Like, if you can bench press, without regard to your size, if you could bench press over 200 pounds, you were in some kind of notional 200-pound club.
right see i don't know if that's still the case john no i think it is i think it's a lot to ask of a child but but that's what that's what rich did so i remember i remember feeling like you should be able to bench press your weight oh interesting so and and in high school i was 200 pounds and i think if you can bench press
Yeah, if you can bench press your weight, then you're... What are you, 6'2"?
6'3".
6'3".
You're the same height as both Gwendolyn Christie and Elizabeth DeBecky.
Really?
Brienne of Tarth.
Yeah.
And I learned this last night, and I think it's going to be feeding into my interior world in numerous ways.
Brienne of Tarth is 6'3", and Elizabeth DeBecky, who plays... You've seen her in things, but she's Diana on this season of The Crown.
Oh, uh-huh.
6'3".
You're kidding.
How do they make all the other actors look normal-sized around her?
Well, they're not even trying.
Jimmy from The Wire, who is English in this, he plays Charles.
It's pretty funny, and I think they just kind of glide right past it.
She's so good at playing Diana like Emma Corrin was in the previous season.
I love that show, I'm sorry to say.
Yeah.
No, it's a good show.
It's a really good show.
The very first scene where Emma Corrin shows up and she's dressed up as, you know, the Shakespeare character.
And oh, my God.
And she looks out the window.
I love that fucking show.
I've seen Elizabeth Debicki in other things.
You definitely have.
I've seen her in a thing where it was like, wow, she's much bigger than the other people in this scene.
Yeah, yeah.
She was.
Oh, now I got to look.
Oh, she was in Tenet.
Yeah.
She was in Tenet.
That's right.
That's right.
Yeah.
She was in that movie.
I understand it's difficult to understand that movie both forward and backwards, from what I can gather.
Did you understand that movie?
Well, I worked real hard to understand it as it was happening.
And then I spent, like you do sometimes, I spent a few days afterwards working it out.
But I did notice the other day I was in some situation where I was flipping through channels.
I might have been in a hotel.
Yeah.
And I came in halfway through it, and I watched it for a little bit, and I was like, you know, I don't have the – I don't just have the energy right now.
Somebody came in and kind of shook your shoulder and said, what's happening right now?
Our family is super into Better Call Saul, and we're basically on these –
we're in the black and white last three episodes right now and kind of taking, I'm making everybody go slow because I really enjoy it.
But every single goddamn night I say to my family and my wife has seen the whole show.
She finished it like two months ago.
My kid has not seen it, but the three of us are watching it.
Every single night I go, look, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I thought I was an okay smart guy.
I think this show is too smart for me because even when I pay 100% attention to this show, I still feel like there's things I'm missing.
Like I forget who knows what about what.
You know, it's that kind of show.
Shifting time stuff all going on.
That's a show that I feel like I may not understand it because I'm not that smart.
With Tenet, I wonder if I'm supposed to understand it.
And don't send me an article.
Listen, don't send me an article from something called Vulture about it.
I'm merely asking John, and then I want to hear more about your reps.
And then I'll talk about Queen.
Excuse me.
About Tenet, I definitely... There are a lot of shows now and a lot of media properties that are smart, and I'm not putting scare quotes around smart, but I am putting... Like smart stories, good storytelling, that kind of smart?
Yeah, well, let's just put smart in italics.
That are smart...
Where it's very clear that the show itself is telling you, look, we've thought this through.
You've chosen well, and this is a show for smart people that's right in your wheelhouse.
But listen, don't worry about it.
We've thought it all through.
We're going to send you all the signals that all of the paradoxes that are here, all of the, you know.
Right, right.
We've done all that.
We've sat around in a room and said, yeah, but what if the cars are driving backwards?
Is that really how it would go?
Well, that's why I have to say to my kid who's playing with a phone the entire time, I have to say, listen, just so you know, there's nothing here that you're missing.
Right.
It's not because you missed something.
It's because there's something that you're really not supposed to completely know or not supposed to completely understand.
Right.
But that's the hardest thing for me to do.
I cannot sit in a thing that was made by somebody else's imagination and just go, oh, sure, I trust you.
to have done all the thinking.
Yeah.
Because I just don't, right?
And that was what I... And I've said it a million times, what I loved about that line in Inception, when Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon-Levitt are sitting next to each other.
Yeah, yeah.
In the booths, yeah.
And one of them's like...
Is this going to screw anything up with our timelines?
Yeah, and Bruce Willis is like, don't talk to me about time travel.
I don't want to talk about time travel.
It was such a beautiful moment because it was like, oh, that solves everything.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for the gift of not trying to pretend.
Six foot three, eyes of blue.
You were 200 and 200.
And so now, I don't know, what are you, probably 205?
And you'd love to be able to lift that again, I'm guessing.
Yeah.
I am more than 205.
Oh, come on, John.
And it is not clear.
You're a snack of a man.
It's not clear to me if tomorrow when I lay down on that bench press and I start at 100, whether I'm going to be able to get it up.
There's something I like to say to my people.
I say this a lot of times to Alex.
I say, you know, be careful about what you do, the choices you make in life.
Try to never do anything that might end up
having to be discussed on a medical or government form by someone you love.
And I think you might be getting a little bit into medical form territory there.
If you just tuck into 205 tomorrow, sight unseen, even if you're wearing your sweats and your Yeezys or your Yeezys, and you lay down there at 205,
there's a number of ways that could, especially, you know, what if you don't get on the first try and then you go, ah.
Yeah, you don't want to do that.
If you go, ah, right before you lift, I don't think that's a beginner move.
For the last several years, of course, I periodically go down into my ravine and I lift up a log, like a training montage in a Rocky movie, and I carry the log.
It is like that.
It's like the Drogo.
Drogo?
Drogo.
Drogo, Drogo.
Yeah, but a little bit like a Scottish games kind of thing.
Yeah, I run up to the top of a snowy hill.
I raise my arms in triumph.
Then somebody makes some weights out of a chain.
So I'm doing all that.
You've got to walk across the rice paper, snatch a coin.
Exactly.
Lift up a burning urn inside of my arms.
That's how you get your dragon tats.
Yeah, it says monkeys.
Monkeys.
Forward and backwards.
So I do it sometimes, and I come out of the ravine, and I'm all dirty and drenched in sweat, and I see the ladies that are out speedwalking.
They all turn, and they look, and they go, who is that Fabio guy?
And then I'm like... Who is that sexy Sasquatch?
Yeah, you know, like, rawr, coming out of the... I got a headband on.
And then you squirt that water in your mouth from your bottle.
Yeah, but I had the bottle kind of... You got a wine skin.
No, you got a wine skin.
Squirts me right in the eyes, like...
So I'm going to lay down on the bench tomorrow, and I'm going to – I think I'm going to start at 170 and just see what happens.
Sorry.
Sorry I made that noise.
That was construction.
Beep, beep.
Sounds like they're taking a break.
Are they having a coffee break right now?
170, that should be no problem.
So I'm just going to put it on 170.
Sure.
The thing is, you don't have to do a bunch of reps.
I'm going to finish Ulysses tonight.
Wait a minute.
I shouldn't start at 170, should I?
I should start at 150.
I'm going to start at 150.
And I'm just going to say, OK, 150.
Let's see what happens.
And if I can do 150, then I'll be like, I haven't bench pressed something in 15 years.
So anyway, that's my goal for tomorrow.
We'll see what Ray Ray says.
I'm going to tell Ray Ray that I really want to work on my core.
On your core?
Yeah, I want to get strength and stamina.
Oh, that's another thing I want to say.
Stamina.
Because that's not something that a newly divorced dad says.
They're like, I want to get buff.
I want stamina.
He would phrase it as staying power, I think.
Oh, staying power.
And he would use it.
There's a phrase I remember, again, that lore from the 80s and 90s.
They call it your stack.
And it's like all the shit you take.
No, no, no.
You take your Joe Wiedemann powder and you add some hydroxy beta blockers on that.
Like whatever all that bullshit.
Oh, you're talking about a smoothie.
Well, a stack can also be your ephedrine back in the day.
I don't know what they do now.
And it's all complimentary because now you don't live with a woman anymore.
And you have lots of time to concentrate on scooping powder into blenders and stuff like that.
But I feel like it all becomes very – do you see yourself becoming a kind of gym rat?
Will you become like the enlightened, the wise old man?
Here's the problem.
I cannot live for the next 40 years in power, in strength and power and health and happiness if I spend as much sedentary time as I currently do.
sitting on this green couch that I love very much, but now has a John-shaped dent in it.
You joke, but my part of the couch absolutely has a Merlin-shaped divot.
It's my default.
To put a fine point on it, what you're describing, I think, is one has to ask oneself before you make a giant change in life, what's my default mode?
Not default mode as in the way the mind works, but default mode as in, well, for me, default mode is sitting in front of a screen.
To suddenly say to myself, well, I've decided by fiat that tomorrow I'm going to be lifting 300 pounds guy, I don't know if that's the best approach to it, but it sounds to me like what you're saying is you're not going to Donald Jr.
this.
You're going in and saying, hey, listen, I'm going to use words like core and stamina.
And I got to say, John, you know, because I've had I had a really good friend that went through this with trying to avoid disc surgery.
And it's those tiny fucking muscles in your lower back.
Yeah.
Like that.
Or like my wife takes Pilates three times a week.
I know.
She she's she's like, I don't know.
I mean, I'm not going to describe my wife on a podcast, but she's really fit.
Yeah.
And it's a lot of it is that area.
Like, I think her body's changing shape because of Pilates.
It's wild.
Well, and all those things, people say to me all the time, well, why don't you do yoga?
Everybody does yoga.
And I'm like, I know.
And then they're like, why don't you do CrossFit?
You're down in a ravine already flipping truck tires over.
Why don't you just pay somebody money to yell at you while you do it?
And I'm like, I know.
Why don't you just become a Scientologist?
What an odd thing to say.
But the problem is, I know a lot of people that have exercise as part of their regular routine, and I...
If I went in the ravine every day, that would be one thing.
But then we'll spend three days trying to make it to the bottom of a large Fritos bag.
while i follow ukraine war uh tweets and what does that take stamina for like six six hours stamina john you have the mental as we used to say in professional wrestling you've already got the intestinal fortitude to focus on on draining that bag but but but but the thing is you're looking for a more holistic approach right you're looking for a way to be able to get through these next whatever 40 years good luck yeah 40 years okay sure
40.
Let's just shoot for 30.
But you get to 30 and you're like, I can do two more.
I think it's fun to really, I guess, kind of spoil the bit here.
I do think that there are, I suspect, I know I have been that guy that goes into a place like a gym with a very ambitious idea.
They see me coming.
It's really not that different from getting cornrows in Jamaica.
They're just going to go, yeah, that's a good idea.
Well, yeah, sure.
We'll get you on the 200-pound bench lift program.
And, of course, I abandoned it like everybody else.
And now I have a laminated card in my wallet that just makes me feel bad and all that kind of stuff.
I guess what I'm curious about, this is not a suggestion.
It's certainly not advice.
But I am curious about what would happen if you went into RayRay and were just dead fucking honest with him and not trying to throw a shape.
And I'm not saying you would do that.
But if you went into RayRay and said, hey, look, I'm not in the shape that I used to be.
I plan to live for 40 years.
What's your plan for me?
Yeah.
Obviously that's what's going to happen.
Do you think so?
Well, yeah.
I'm proud of you already.
The whole, uh, I'm trying to game the system thing is, uh, that was a bit, you know, the, it's the whole thing of like, why would you go to a psychologist and lie to them?
I'm not paying to go to a gym to impress Ray Ray, who I'm only going to see.
So you say, but a lot of people throwing a lot of shapes out there, John.
well yeah but i got nothing to prove i'm 54 years old look at you you're exquisite i've always looked like a pile of dirty clothes and i am now still and the thing is i'm not trying to do it to get on the dating scene i'm not trying to do it because you're trying to get that ron ron de santis physique if i look back at all of the photographs that were taken of me from age 28 to age 48
I could have been doing a lot better in terms of showing up with a proper haircut and a little bit leaner and make eye contact with the camera type of stuff.
You know, like it's too late for me to – if I was vain –
In that way, I had my chance.
Yeah.
And now I'm just trying to survive.
I'm just trying to live.
I'm trying to convert.
Because the thing is that if I go in sincere, then they're going to try and put an eating plan in front of me, too.
Oh, so you need to create... Boy, here's a word I love that I wish had not become so fraught, but you've got to set up some boundaries.
Oh.
You got to say to Ray Ray, you know, across this line, you do not.
It's, it's, it's got, it's the, all the boundaries are internal and they must be, but they're real.
Like you don't want him changing your, you too though.
Right.
Oh, no, no, no, no.
Oh, fuck.
Dude, I have a whole thing about this that I'm building toward, which is the importance of boundaries.
And the way that now, I mean, I don't have time for this because we've still got to talk about Queen.
But the problem is when people talk about, like, oh, quiet quitting and shit like that.
No, it's not quiet quitting.
It's fucking boundaries.
It's people who spent the last three years feeling, realizing, finally realizing, seeing the matrix and realizing how fucked around they were by this job they thought they had to have and are now realizing that to have a sustainable life, you have to have boundaries.
You have to have boundaries with your job and the people who are there and the expectations you've accepted on yourself.
You have to have boundaries with the people in your life and not be afraid to pull a hodgman on somebody and say, no, actually, I'm going to go back to my hotel room and I don't want to talk to you anymore.
Not to be mean, but like boundaries are so critical.
And yet we're always so discouraged from having and holding boundaries because it makes us seem rude.
Don't let Ray Ray change your bag is what I'm saying.
In my case, you know, I'm just trying not to eat spaghetti every day.
And I know that if I did yoga every day and I know if I did Pilates or I did CrossFit or I didn't eat sugar or I went back on Atkins or a thousand other things.
And my mom comes over every other day with a hundred other things she wants to talk about, like how the mother tree talks to all the other plants in the forest.
And what does that mean about what I should be eating?
Can you take that?
Because I would super love to hear that.
Honestly, I would legit, I love listening to your mom talk about anything.
Because your mom is exactly how she is.
I've never seen your mom anyway, but exactly how she is.
If you don't know how she is, that's okay.
It would take you about five seconds to realize how John's mom is.
It's amazing.
It's impressive.
It's somewhat terrifying.
It's extremely entertaining.
And she's like, there's no bit that she's participating in.
Your mom is who she is.
And if she wants to talk to you about the mother tree, sit the fuck down.
My sister right now is in Bali.
B-A-L-I?
Yeah, and is leading a self-improvement course that a dozen people have signed up for and have flown to Bali.
Balinese people or people from other countries?
No, people from other countries.
I see, I see.
And my sister and her friend Kenna lead this wellness and mindfulness retreat.
Wow.
And they do a few of them a year.
And, you know, it's legitimately like a dozen people who have who have paid for my sister to guide them.
That's I mean, I'm impressed that on so many levels that she's I hope this doesn't sound condescending.
I just don't mean it that way.
But like just the managerial stuff and the like what's involved in planning that that that's incredible.
And then or the marketing, if you like to put in that together.
That's a lot of fucking work.
Oh, it's a lot.
It's a lot.
It's a huge undertaking.
And two days ago I was here at the house and I hadn't been to the store in a long time and I opened up the pantry.
And I saw that the only spaghetti left in the house was whole wheat spaghetti that I had bought at one point.
Has my wife been shopping for you?
Oh, this is fun.
It's macaroni, but it's made out of cauliflower.
Then it's not macaroni.
It's cauliflower.
Yeah, I was at a grocery store.
I think I was with my daughter.
And I was trying to be a good example.
And I was like, look, let's get the whole wheat spaghetti.
And she was like, and she rolled her eyes at me and kept trying to put fruit roll-ups in the shopping cart.
And I was like, no, no, no.
Look, we're going to eat whole wheat spaghetti.
And then I, of course, put it in the cupboard and ignored it, ate all the food around it.
You know, I was eating canned corn and still trying to pretend this wasn't there.
But it was all that was left.
And I was like, you know what?
I'm feeling virtuous.
I'm going to make whole wheat soup.
are you gonna do something are you gonna give it a treat i used to eat whole wheat pasta in college i have to say it's it's fine but it's different like i enjoy it you cook it a lot longer yeah it's much more hearty it's obviously a more rustic it's like eating bread in some ways a little bit more but that that's that's one thing but now my question is what's your treatment are you gonna do like some kind of fancy extra evoo and uh and fresh uh minced garlic on or are you gonna sploosh some uh some prego on there what are you gonna
Well, so here's what I normally do.
I normally cook a pound of hamburger and I put it into Paul Newman's saccarouni sauce.
That's a hell of a sauce.
And we just walk from there.
But this was one of those like everything's gone.
There's nothing in the cupboard.
And what I had was one of those large tin cans of diced S&W tomatoes with Italian seasoning.
Oh.
So it wasn't scabetti sauce.
It was diced tomatoes.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
With some seasoning.
Okay.
And I had one of those little cans of tomato paste.
That's going to do fine.
Add a little water to that and Bob's your uncle.
And then I had a pound of hot Italian ground sausage that I don't know how got into my freezer.
Okay.
However it got in there, that is a hell of a meal, John.
So you're out of hamburger.
Your protein in this is going to be the sausage.
That sounds so good.
Well, no, because I wasn't out of hamburger.
And so I said, here's what I'm going to do.
I'm going to clean out the cupboards.
I'm going to put everything in one pot that has any kind of tomatoes in it that's in a can.
So I'm going to fill up this sauce pot with just all the leftover pastes and dices and chops.
I get it.
I get it.
They all go in there.
And then in this pan, I'm going to cook a pound of hamburger and a pound of hot Italian ground sausage together as if it's one meat.
And I'm going to smoosh it all together.
I do the same thing.
When I make scabetti sauce, I'll cut.
If I can't get just the loose sausage, I'll cut up some sweet Italians and gut them out of their little intestinal homes.
Oh, pull them out.
Okay.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then chop it up real small and then brown that.
But, oh, I'm into this, John.
Yeah.
And then all I have is whole wheat, so I made it.
And it was super good, even better than what I normally do.
But different.
Different.
It's different.
That's the problem.
It's because if you do it with fucking, like, I don't know, out of okra or something, it's just like, oh, you made weird spaghetti.
But whole wheat spaghetti is still good.
It's different.
But this was me sitting at home eating it out of a soup bowl alone sitting on the couch.
No, I was even there to see it.
No, and that's the good thing, because if I put that in front of my daughter, she would have gone, ugh.
What if she didn't see you making it and you didn't have hesitation?
Hesitation is a tell.
I think the hot Italian, she would sense the – she would not like that it was spicy.
And she would say, this is spicy.
But would you say?
Because like last – yeah, last night.
God, Madeline's been on a fucking tear.
I got to get her to send you her recipe for one pot pasta where you cook the pasta with the sauce.
It's really interesting and super good.
What?
No, it's fucking crazy.
But she's on a tear right now with this New York Times app.
She made something last night that was amazing with real good, like wild salmon, with this really good sauce that, you know, but it had mayonnaise and mustard in it a little bit.
And it was delicious.
But category error, don't tell the kid, don't make a face and tell the kid, you might want to scrape it off because it's got mayonnaise in it.
Oh.
That's a rookie.
That is a rookie mistake.
It sure is.
It sure is.
You're preemptively scaring the child into a mayonnaise scrape.
Yeah.
The kid will never now eat it because it's got mayonnaise in it.
Well, now it's marked forever as being a mayonnaise fare.
Yeah.
And then the next time you make it six months from now, they're like, is that the one with mayonnaise in it?
Yeah.
Anyway, when I go to the gym, I am not going to say, I want you to transform my life.
I'm going to say, look, I'm not going to go on an eating plan that is any more complicated than every once in a while.
having whole wheat pasta because it's the only thing left in the freezer.
And honestly, I'm so- That's important codicil, John.
Just so you know, I'm not going to go on your thing.
And if it does happen, it'll happen for this reason, not an arbitrary gym guy reason.
I'm powered up right now by the experience of having had a success with this whole wheat pasta enough that I might go to the store today and buy more of it.
In which case I will be setting because this is present John fucking with future John Right.
This is yeah, this is how you build This is how you build a personal infrastructure is you have to utilize the different parts of who you are When future John though because I know future John really well and I know that he's gonna open that cupboard He's gonna go where the where the Fritos?
And then he's going to hear me, past John, say, no Fritos, bro.
Guess what?
Whole wheat pasta.
And future John's going to be like, fuck you, past John.
But it's me, present John, that's making the decision.
You know what, though?
They're all John.
They're all John.
They are all John.
They are all John.
Yeah, they're John.
They're John.
It's John all the way down.
John.
Queen is very good.
Queen is so good.
That's all I wanted to say.
Actually, that's not all I wanted to say.
I wanted to talk about how important it is when you're coming up.
So here's what happened.
This might be the show.
I can't decide.
But like, so I, you know, I don't know.
So how did this start?
Something started.
It doesn't take a lot to get me on to, God, I hate this word, classic rock.
But like listening, like an album will finish on Spotify and then it starts playing stuff that it knows that I'll like.
And it always works.
I mean, I...
You know, I was telling my kid the other day, like, I can listen to Bohemian Rhapsody maybe five times a year, but I don't want to do it too much more than that because I want to keep it special.
I was saying how, like, I only listen to Stairway to Heaven once per year because that's how you keep it special.
You got to keep it special.
If you do it once a year, you're going to appreciate what a fucking good song, weird fucking song that is.
But if you just let it play in the background, like, but anyway, anyway, anyway, the point being, I was, I was like Lion Eyes.
Lion Eyes.
Lion Eyes is a fascinating song.
I know it's funny, and you've seen it in a movie.
It's funny to make fun of the Eagles.
The first, like, especially the first Eagles album and Ticket to the Limit are both really, really good albums with really good songs.
And Lion Eyes is just a wonder of performance and production.
And I got off on a jag.
And, of course, the thing that it takes least of anything to get me back into for whatever reason is Queen.
Yeah.
Because I love Queen.
It's one of my favorite bands.
And without Queen's influence, half a dozen of my favorite bands would not be as good, including shit like My Chemical Romance, which I know sounds weird for me, but I love them.
They would just be another emo band if they didn't have that Queen influence, where they obviously love that thick sound.
Oh, Muse.
Muse does it.
Wait, is Muse like a – wait, I know Muse.
Are they like an industrial or goth band?
What is Muse?
Muse is like a UK like stadium rock level – Do they have a big hit that I should know?
I'll look them up.
I'll look them up.
I think if you really took the time – Muse is one of those bands that kind of slipped between the cracks and –
They can sell at stadiums, so they didn't slip between the cracks, but like the critical cracks because sometimes Muse is like the best of what you hoped Radiohead would have done after.
I know this band.
Like when Radiohead pivoted at Kid A and everybody at the time was like, what?
What are you doing?
Yeah.
Muse kept going.
Along the lines of what if Paranoid Android was the future of rock?
Well, maybe in a similar way to like, I'm not the first person to say this by a long shot, but ELO, especially the early ELO when Roy Wood was still in the band, it was in some ways like an extension of like what if the Beatles had kept trying to do stuff similar to but expanding on the 66 to 68 era.
You know, there are those bands where they pick up kind of where somebody left off and run with the ball.
Right.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, yeah, right.
But Muse kept it like prog?
Well, yes.
If you went, I mean, because there are going to be a lot of people that are like, Muse, that's just Coldplay for rock.
And in a way, it... There's worse things in the world than Coldplay for rock.
Yeah, you could make that argument and you wouldn't be wrong.
But just like Coldplay for whatever Coldplay is, is often really good, I think.
Muses so anyway, my mom loves muse and she made me one time take her to a music of a sticky note about this Remind the listeners what your mom does Well not anymore cuz she doesn't listen to CDs anymore But she used to put yeah post-it notes on CDs that was like drum suck or whatever like this
This man's boring.
But she really loved Muse.
She really loved Zach Wilde's Black Label Society.
And she really loved Slash's Snake Pit.
The guitar, the boodily boodily guitar guy?
Yeah, she liked it.
It was Zach Wilde.
She likes all that stuff.
But I took her to Muse.
And it was a hell of a rock show.
Big, big rock show.
And I think all of the vocals are triple tracked and all the guitars are quadruple tracked, but it sounds really cool.
I love that.
Rock, rock, rock.
And it sounds like Queen.
It sounds like Queen.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And the Roy Thomas Baker touch of those magic records.
Oh, but I was saying about Queen, the first one of those where I ever was sitting in a studio, like a recording studio, and the engineer said, hey, want to see something cool?
I was like, yeah.
And he pulled up this.
this file.
We were working on a record I was working on, but he pulled up a file and it's an album.
You see all the tracks and he starts to play it and it's Bohemian Rhapsody and he has the individual tracks.
Oh my God.
And he's like, what do you want to hear?
I've watched like four different documentaries that involve
Bohemian Rhapsody, talking about how the tape was so thin you could see through it.
Yeah.
Right?
Because it literally has, get me on this, but like Counting Bouncing, it literally has like dozens or like hundreds of tracks on it.
They would do nothing for a day but just go, let me go.
Or, like, that would technically be Roger Deacon doing that part, I think, too.
But, like, you would just all day long.
They said that, too, about Fleetwood Mac's rumors, right?
That was the story they told about that, too.
That was because of the cocaine.
They'd worn the tape so down by going.
But, you know, you can dupe the tape over.
And, I mean, every one of those is a generation that you lose fidelity.
But when you listen to those tracks, do you hear a loss of fidelity?
Like it sounds amazing of course and so we had the track so it was like, okay Well shit solo the bass line and then we would just sit and listen to the bass line for the whole song all the way through with no other references and then it's like Okay, well of course you want to hear just the backing vocals and yes those tracks
Sure, it's just the backing vocals, but those tracks also have tons of other shit going on in them.
They're so thick, you can't tell how... I mean, to overdub guitars, to sound like Steve Vai, you have to have this extraordinary ability to play something...
98% exactly the same way.
It's the 2% that's not exactly the same way, but that creates that chorus-y thickness.
Same with those vocals.
They're hitting those notes so right that you wouldn't know how many times they recorded it, but that leads to this ineffable fullness to what they're doing.
Let me go, you know, kind of stuff.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, that was on the radio yesterday.
And my daughter and I were driving in the car.
And I was going through the channels, you know, because we listened to terrestrial radio in my car.
And I was like, the Jack.
And then I switched the next one.
And I was like, the end.
And I switched the next one.
Another Boneyard classic.
It's the bone.
And then I punched into Bohemian Rhapsody for just a second as I was.
And then I punched the next one.
and she from the backseat was like no go back go back yeah and i was like well we know bohemian rhapsody is waiting there for us just want to see what else you know like you know and then i go hey it's you boom it's ricky in the mood hey you may be entitled to compensation and she was in the back going go back
And I was like, okay, okay, okay.
Every second you're not doing this, we are missing Bohemian Rhapsody.
So I went back and we listened to Bohemian Rhapsody.
It just, you know, it couldn't have been 30 hours ago.
No, less than that, 20 hours ago.
Yeah, we, I've had to, this is one of those things where I've had to explain why I am how I am to my kid, where I'm like, you know, one reason I'm so attached to Queen, well, Queen is one of those things where like I've encountered them at so many points in my life.
I mean, like, what's funny is, yeah, sure, I remember Bohemian Rhapsody in 1975, but you know what I really remember from 1975, if I'm being honest?
Like, if you were actually fucking there, you know what you'll remember is You're My Best Friend.
That song is so fucking good, that was the radio hit that you would hear, and it's still an astonishingly good,
well-written, beautifully arranged Queen song.
But of course I loved We Are The Champions.
Of course I bought a 45 of We Will Rock You On One Side.
I mean, I had all of that, all the way up to the disappointment of Hot Space, because of my homophobia and the fact that it wasn't a good album.
All of those things, and going forward all through Live Aid, and how many times I've gone back to Queen.
I have a relationship with this band.
But we would listen to their whatever the gray one is, platinum hits or greatest hits, whatever their first two-volume greatest.
We used to listen to that one.
I'd drive my kid home from nursery school.
And so when my kid was verbal but not super verbal,
They'd be in the back seat.
I'd be in their front seat.
Find me somebody to love.
Find me somebody to love.
Somebody, somebody.
Find me somebody.
Find me somebody to love.
That stuff.
Or like just, ah, it was all just so gold.
Tell me this, though.
Yes.
I remember in 1977, and I don't know if this was a formal rivalry or if this was just true in my life.
If this was just true in my elementary school.
Queen versus Kiss?
Thank you.
Yes.
Are you Kiss Army or are you Queen Army?
And although I felt like Kiss Army had a better name, I was 100%.
Cilantro and potting soil.
They're both really good and they're different things.
And Kiss, ooh, did you hear Kiss's blood is in the Marvel comic book?
I think what's funny is Kiss kind of knew.
Well, Kiss, just watch any fucking interview.
Go watch the Tom Snyder interview from 1978 where Paul and Gene are totally in character.
I'm sure you've seen this.
You've seen this, right?
Yeah.
There's a Tom Snyder interview from... Oh, yeah, of course, of course.
It's around the time of I Was Made for Loving You, and they're in makeup, they're on stage, and Ace and Peter are obviously insanely high and cackling.
And at one time he says, Gene Simmons, Gene Simmons who plays the bass, and Space Ace goes...
Yeah, I play the trout!
Because that's how Ace Frehley sounds when he talks.
Yes, I remember.
Crazy high, and you can just see Gene.
I remember, I remember.
Gene and Paul look so goddamn angry that they're not doing the bit in character.
They're businessmen in makeup, those two guys.
They always have been.
Since whatever Queens in 1972, they've always been businessmen.
I think they knew they were making music forever.
for latchkey children.
But Queen, on the other hand, oof.
Yeah, there was.
I feel like there was kind of a, it's like almost like a Beatles versus Stones kind of thing.
I mean, God, Queen was just, Queen's a band and Kiss is a comic book.
Yeah.
I don't know.
In the 90s up here in Seattle, there was all this Kiss revisionism.
Everybody was, everybody my age was like, Oh, here we go.
So you're going to end it on a sad note because you're going to do your bit about Kiss.
Kiss.
Kissed.
You're saying, okay, but you're, okay.
You know what?
I don't have time for this.
Sometime I want to talk about Kiss and Queen.
Sometime I want to talk about the importance of lore and in-jokes when geeks are in a band.
The importance of a bit like, well, if I could count myself as part of the Long Winners for just a moment, Whitesaw's not a problem.
We still say that.
Yes, of course, of course.
One day you say that.
But, like, the importance of, like, why Mike Coleman and I would make jokes about no synthesizers were used on this album.
I was just not explaining.
I was telling somebody about this on the internet just a minute ago.
Or, like, the whole, like, Kiss only uses Pearl drums and Gibson guitars because they only want the best.
Or whatever that line was that was, like, a product placement on every album.
But that's something that only a music nerd, a geek, who sat around reading the back of albums because they don't have, you know...
friends remember and then you meet somebody else who knows that bit and that becomes that becomes part of your lore and we're listening to linda god bless her r.i.p to a real one listening to linda mccartney at soundcheck listening to the trog say i know it needs bloody strings you know like all that stuff like becomes the venom tapes oh my god or you know the classic the paul the paul stanley i want
know!
Woo!
How many of you are here tonight?
Woo!
You've heard that, right?
Which is just a Kiss concert that's just Paul Stanley's particular banter.
Cutting out all of the music.
Woo!
I want to know!
That's right!
How many of you tonight?
Like the drink!
Tequila!
i i went to see kiss a couple of times and uh there was a distinctive i have a very distinct memory of paul stanley looking out at a half full uh auditorium what did he want to know and he he said well all right everybody this isn't our biggest show
You want to make it our best?
I was like, never acknowledge that the room is half full, man.
Never acknowledge it.
And then finally, the thing I was going to say, and this is not a commitment, it's mainly an idea, but we've talked before about trying to do something fun for Patreon.
I'm not committing to anything at all.
Oh, no.
but one thing that I'm not committing to, but would be funny is if we did a pilot project to see if the, the big project would be John and Merlin do commentary on every good classic albums episode.
Oh, but we should, we could start with them all.
I have them all.
I, you have the wall.
Do you still have the wallet?
Send a cigar box somewhere.
We could do night at the opera or we could do Asia.
Oh,
I mean, I think it's all on YouTube now, right?
You don't have to actually find a DVD player.
Oh, I've got them all.
I mean, I've stolen all of them.
Of course.
But yeah, lore is important, John.
You know, a lot of people in bands are nerds.
I think not a lot of people know that.
Oh, boy, you're so right.
I thank God you have the courage to say it.
Thank you.
Thank you for appreciating my courage.
And listen, let me know how it goes with Ray Ray.
Will, are you kidding me?
I'm going to be talking about this every week from now on.
I'll look forward to that.
All right.