Ep. 491: "The Adventurous Choice"
Hello.
Hi, John.
That's you.
Yeah.
It's also you.
It is me.
It's me, me.
And also me.
Miraculous.
I mean, on the one hand, it's truly defeating the way that life just bangs on and on and on.
But on the other hand, it's kind of miraculous that, you know, it's like, you know, leave a penny, take a penny.
Sometimes we miss a week.
We do a week.
We do a lot of weeks.
We miss a week.
And somehow we always end up back here, don't we?
Isn't that something?
Isn't that something?
I was thinking, we missed last week.
Yeah.
Did we miss the 15 weeks before that?
I wouldn't say I missed it.
I can't remember.
I just did a joke from Office Space.
That one goes out to my good friend, the guy who does Dilbert.
Oh, you guys know each other, huh?
Didn't you used to do a cruise together?
Yeah, we both work for the pointy-haired boss.
You and Dilbert.
Yes, me and Dilbert.
Yes, I was just reading a very interesting and, of course, as always said, piece about him.
Oh.
Yeah, he used to be like a normal self-effacing nerdy guy.
Yeah.
And then he got middle-aged and he became very, no.
Now listen, there's approximately half of the population gets middle-aged and is fine.
Yeah, sure, sure.
On the other hand, OTOH, the other 50%, they get a little bit weird and they feel like they aren't appreciated.
Wait, you're saying 50% of middle-aged people have gotten a little weird?
I think approximately, I mean, you have to allow for the P factor.
What's the P factor?
Oh, love?
That it gets harder to pee when you get to be middle-aged?
It gets like two walnuts.
They're angry at each other.
It's affected my politics.
Every time I stand there in front of the toilet and go, come on!
Let's pinch this one.
This one will be hard and you won't know why.
See?
I think my prostate might be from Tijuana.
Aww.
Aww.
Did you see your winces?
Did you see your winces?
I don't know.
Close the door.
Hey, Johnny.
All right.
Remember how funny he was when we were kids?
He was funny.
I thought about putting some eyes on my hand the other day and doing that for my kid.
Yes.
She's never seen it.
Oh, that is so rustic, John.
It would be a freaking magic trick to her.
Yes.
Wait a minute.
You just turned your hand into a face.
Well, you know, I got to say, I probably was not the first person.
Well, I was probably one of the first...
Few people to realize that Sr.
Wences is, in the business we call it, throwing his voice.
Yes.
And ventriloquism, you know, it's gotten to be a dirty word.
But it really is a gift to make you think that something is happening somewhere else with your voice.
Why is it a dirty word?
Oh, it's one of those words.
It's one of those...
basic people things to say to like make something sound like i would say for example if i want an easy joke i could say something about florida or i could say something about uh about donald trump sure or i could say oh or like my the my bet noir the bane of my existence of course is magicians
Right.
Of which a ventriloquist is a kind.
Okay.
I have to check in with John Hodgman on that, but I'm pretty sure all ventriloquists are magicians.
Okay.
Kind of.
No, but what I mean, they're lifestyle creepy guys, usually with facial hair.
But now, Senior Wentz says I picked up on the fact that he was, as we say, throwing his voice.
And a thing I used to do that I thought was very amusing in high school.
So are you doing the thing with your hand where you're making a little talky face?
Yes.
So your thumb is like a chin hat out.
And what I would do is I would take my Bic ballpoint pen because I didn't know better.
Eventually I went into Paper Mate and now today I use tool pens.
Back then I'd use my Bic and I would draw a big circle for an eye on the top half and another big circle for an eye.
And then there was a time when I would paint on a mouth, but I think that just kind of really, it kind of queers the effect.
You could do that right now.
You could draw, you could draw that on your hand and you could go greet, greet your youngster.
Yes.
Yes.
When she comes home from school or similar, or public community service, whatever she's working on right now.
Yeah.
I think you could put two eyes on your hand and go downtown and put on enough of a show that you could buy a bus ticket with the money that you would make.
A full bus ticket somewhere, like maybe Spokane?
Yeah.
Yeah, if you put your hat down and you were like, hello, as people walked by, I bet you could pay for a bus ticket by the evening.
Two eyes, full hearts, can't lose.
Hunger!
No, here's my suggestion.
Now, you know, I think sometimes you've got to be careful with bits.
Especially because the bit that becomes a bit is okay.
The bit that is a prepared bit
as with the bloody chicken baby, is the kind of thing you've got to be careful about.
Well, but you've been in show business a long time.
I've been so long.
Enough to know that a bit that gets hammered into the ground, that's the bit that you've got to look out for.
That's like the golden spike of comedy.
The hammered bit.
Well, it's where the rails came together mostly.
But you're saying that a prepared bit is a lesson.
You've got to be careful.
But I'm just thinking, my favorite line, the line that I thought was funny from Senior Wentz is you could borrow.
And you're sitting there, I don't know if you have a Barca lounger, if you have one of those large massage chairs, you're sitting there in a slightly menacing way, maybe in a darkened room, when your kid gets home.
And you slowly raise your left hand and turn, and your daughter could see that there appears to be...
eyes on your hand.
Yeah.
And your kid walks in.
It's like something from Poltergeist or maybe a John Ford movie framed in the door.
And you see a look of horror on your kid's face.
And then your hand says to your daughter, close the door.
Yeah.
It's all right.
I think, I think, uh, I think, you know, keeping her attention long enough to, uh, to, she's at that age, isn't she?
Yeah.
So I think what I'll, what I'll do is I'll put the eyes on the hand.
I'll pick her up at school.
Um, she'll get in the car.
She'll already have some, you know, there'll be something that she's.
We'd be dressed as Dilbert while you're doing this.
Nope.
Nope.
Just right.
I'm just going to be, I'm going to be, it's just going to appear to be as any other day, a normal day.
Oh, I see this.
It really hangs on this feeling like any other day.
Yeah.
And then, and then, you know, we'll drive around.
We'll do what we're going to do.
She's going to say, why don't we go to.
Ciao.
Why don't we go to Wendy's and get a Frosty?
I'm going to say we don't get to go to Wendy's every single day and get a Frosty.
It wouldn't be a treat anymore.
That's going to be an issue for a minute or two.
That's going to be my coffee cakes, John.
And then at some point, something will happen.
Uh-huh.
where at this point you've been now let's see okay i i'm sorry i should say because i'm a right-handed person in most of what i do sure so i would i said left hand and that was racist of me you could draw it on any part you want i would draw it on my left hand because i would need my right hand to draw it uh oh into that if i drew it on my right hand it would look like a puppet with dropsy
But can you make your left hand convincingly talk as well as you can your right hand?
Yes.
Hello.
I think so.
Sorry.
Why don't you turn the video back on?
Sorry.
Sorry.
Sorry.
Sorry.
And there's Johnny.
Johnny's the hand.
And then I forget the name of the guy.
There's the guy in the box.
And he's the one who goes, all right.
All right.
Frosty door.
But then I'm going to whip it out.
Because you could, the point being, you could seal it up to this point.
You're hugging the wheel.
Maybe you're using your turn directional indicators.
And then somebody in the passenger seat pops up and says, hey, can we go get a Frosty?
Well, what's going to happen is we'll be long past the Frosty thing.
And then I'm going to, at some point, she's going to say,
Do I have to go to swimming?
And I'm going to go, we got to get back in the swing.
We've been traveling.
We've been gone for 10 days.
We landed last night at 1.30 in the morning.
And you got to get back into it.
You got to get back into the swing.
Into the routine, yeah.
The routine can be very difficult to get to, especially if you're kind of shagged out from travel.
Well, and we agreed last night, 1.30 in the morning.
Uh-huh.
She said- As soon as you got home?
Yeah.
And your kid still has to go to school the next day?
Well, so we're standing in the entryway.
We're looking at each other.
Oh, no.
You're about to have the conversation.
Well, no.
We've had a brutal day, you know.
Just the two of us.
Have you had mom?
Oh, it's just you two.
Okay.
We flew across the country, connecting flights, three hours in the Atlanta airport.
We did all the things.
Yeah.
And, uh, and it was good.
We did it, you know, we, we, we made it.
And not only that, but you know, her, her mom, uh, does the travel planning.
Um, even when it's just she and I flying the, the little one and I,
And her mom's a little Scottish, if you know what I mean, in terms of... I do.
I do.
She enjoys Brigadoon.
Well, yes, but she also wants to get a deal, and that's a little racist.
She's not afraid to save a Fenning here and there.
Yeah, and the way she saves it in situations like that is not putting me in economy comfort.
And so both.
So John gets folded into his chair.
Both times we were in row 30 plus.
Oh, no.
So you're back by the shit box.
Yeah.
But and daughter in my elbow, I showed her a couple of things.
And one of them was I booked us an aisle and a window.
when there was nobody in the middle, nobody between us.
And sports that's known as a screen pass.
And taking a risk, right?
Oh, absolutely.
We've done it at the movies.
I do competitive purchasing like that all the time.
Yeah.
Just without knowing, it's a little bit, I'm sorry, I'm interrupting you because I had a lot of coffee and coffee cake.
Which I'd like to return to.
But it's a little bit, you're right, it's a gamble.
It's the same kind of, a similar kind of thing to Prisoner's Dilemma, where you have to act on incomplete information to infer what other people will do as a result of your decision.
Will somebody pick up that seat literally next to me?
Well, a lot of times they don't have a choice, right?
On the first of the flights, the smaller of the two flights, it was just an hour-long flight.
That's going to be a rebooked person between you and your kid, yeah.
And I talked to her on the way to the airport, and I was like, look, somebody's going to end up in that middle seat, and then we're going to have, here's our three choices.
We can talk to the gate agent.
We can just let it ride and talk across a random person, or we can talk to that person and see if they want to switch.
Yeah.
And she decided that what we would do is talk to the person when we got on the flight.
Oh, I bet you love that.
Yeah, the person was a young man.
Any one of the three, because I put it in her hand, like, which of these do you want to do?
That's the adventurous response.
And so we got on the plane.
It was a young guy.
She said, do you want to trade?
He said, that's fine.
He sat by the window, went to sleep.
But on the flight, the long flight from Atlanta to Seattle...
I said, here, let's go up and talk to the counter agent.
And we went up, nice lady.
We got there a little early.
And I said, hello.
We booked our ticket so that there was an empty seat in between us for the long flight.
And the woman said, yes, I see.
And I said, I don't know if this is going to be a completely full flight.
I don't know how it's all going to shake out.
But can you tell us, does it look like there's anyone in that seat currently?
Mm-hmm.
And she went...
no, there's no one there now.
And I said, and I said, and my, and my kid is watching very carefully.
And I said, wow, huh?
Well, great.
Um, I guess, um, well, you know, we'll check back.
But you did specifically ask based on a certain, you said, damn.
Well, and the woman looked up, looked up at me and looked down at her computer and went,
And she said, I'll tell.
And when she said, she said, I'll tell her.
But what she meant was the stewardess that was in charge of the flight.
She said, I'll tell her to leave that one open.
That's so nice.
And my kid was watching and I said, now, do you see that?
All I did was humanize that seat.
for that particular person.
I didn't ask for it.
It went from being an inert, empty piece of aircraft material to being like a metonymy.
Yeah.
Here is a seat that actually is in between these two people that I've met that have talked to me in a polite way.
And so then that woman who has no skin off her nose either way.
I mean, if someone put a cage full of rat in that seat, it wouldn't make a difference to her, except it also doesn't make a difference to her to put a little checkmark by a thing and say, let's leave that one open.
As far as it's nice to be able to, power is too strong of a word, but it's nice to be able to deploy your power in ways that are kind of cool.
Yeah.
And so I said, you know, this sweetheart, like this is the opposite of being a Karen.
Right.
Because my kid is really zoomed in on Karens everywhere we go.
I feel like it's hot again.
She really loves it.
You know, she loves to see people in the wild who are making a fuss.
And it's obvious that they are not on the side of justice, you know?
She likes to see it because it stands out to her.
It's like, whoa, look, look, life lesson happening right in front of us.
And so I said, you know, this is, we didn't make a fuss.
We didn't ask for anything.
We just humanized ourselves and we made that blank box of which this person has seen thousands and thousands of those blank boxes.
And we just turned it into a space.
Didn't they ever gotten a thank you note ever?
I doubt it.
They just do their job.
They do their job every day.
That's right.
And I was grateful to them.
And we stopped short of winking at each other, but it was a little human moment.
It's just like, hi, I'm a thing, and this is my other thing, and you are a thing.
That's really the basis of most of my airport strategy is just to be myself and to be decent.
But it's such an easy...
I'm going to say ask.
I hate that word.
It's such an easy decision to say, like, I'm going to be less horrible than all of these other people who seem like they're trying to be horrible.
And the thing is, oh, and the key is, if that, if the woman was like, oh, sorry, there's a, I'm going to put a high school football player in that seat and there's nothing I can do about it.
Right.
You just go, thank you.
I mean, you know, you can't, no expectation.
They say you can't fight City Hall, but what they should really say is you can't fight the person who assigns your seat on an airplane.
You can't.
But so we got home at 1.30 or whatever, and we look at each other in the hall, and we've had a long day, but it's been a good day.
We had that empty seat in between us.
That felt like a victory.
And she said, can we, I want to go to school tomorrow, but can we push a little bit?
Wait, I'm sorry.
You're making this up.
No, she pulled a Merlin Mann.
Well, she also pulled a John Roderick with all due respect.
But also the way you tee it up to be like, listen, like somebody's had like the first day of a sales class.
First of all, make it seem like it's their idea.
Ha ha.
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I just want to be very clear.
I would love to go to school tomorrow.
I'm not even meditating for a moment at 1.30 a.m.
whether I wouldn't go to school tomorrow, because of course I would, but I would request a push.
So she requested a push, and I said, you know what?
I think a push is in order.
Hell yeah.
And so we woke up at 9.30 instead of 6.30.
You woke up at 9.30 a.m.
today.
Yeah, after going to bed at 1.30.
My people, and this is high school, admittedly, but they leave at usually like 10 to 8.
Yeah.
That would be us, too.
And so, woke up at 9.30.
Because we'd been gone for 10 days, there was no food in the fridge, so I took a hot dog bun and put cheese on it.
Put it in the toaster.
And then I microwaved it.
But she had to figure out how to get the cheese.
No, no.
I sliced cheese in the shower.
I sliced the cheese.
I microwaved it.
So the cheese melted.
And then I cut up a land Yeager and I found a bunch of yogurt covered pretzels.
Just for our new fans, our new listeners, a Land Jaeger is like a Slim Jim with a master's degree.
Yeah, that's right.
It's a fancy German.
It's like a pocket.
It's a German for das walking around sausage.
That's right.
It's a sausage candy.
It's basically a candy, but it's made of sausage.
All right, all right.
And I, and I handed her the thing in like a, in like a Amazon bag, like a, like a plastic bag that.
You mean like a little puffy, a puffy spacer bag, puffy spacer bag, handed it to her.
And I said, look, there are no fruits or vegetables in this house right now.
So the closest you're going to get to a, to a vegetable is these pretzels.
So good luck.
God bless.
And she was like, I'm for one day, I think I can ride.
So that was our, that was our morning.
And I feel pretty happy.
I feel pretty good about it.
I think you should feel outstanding about that.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Boy, I got.
Oh, there's a lot of a lot of handles on that suitcase.
Yeah.
I mean, yeah.
When was the last time you went to.
Hello.
Hello.
Well.
Hello.
Hello.
Hello, John.
John, did you get the photographs I sent?
I did.
All right.
There's one of them is a little gift.
Yes.
And in this case, Johnny is wearing like a whole body person suit.
That's right.
When was the last time you were in the American South?
Geez, that's difficult to answer.
I'll tell you one that really pops out.
And I won't say this is the last one, but one that really pops is a guy who likes stuff like podcast stuff that I did invited me to do a talk at a real estate conference.
Oh, what's the South Carolina slave city?
Charleston.
Yeah.
So invited me to come visit down there in Charleston and do a talk.
And that was really super interesting because I guess if I ever knew about the history of Charleston, it fell off my brain and it was really quite amazing.
I needed a place to smug a cigar.
So I walked around in there.
I think it's called something like Charleston Marketplace.
And you're like, oh, this did used to definitely be a marketplace.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There's definitely, it has like an upscale flea market feel, but I think that was where they used to bid on people.
Well, they used to bid on people almost every street corner in Charleston.
No, that market is like a- That's like an old mercantile or something.
Well, it's like a Pike Place market, et cetera.
Anyhow, I, yeah, that was the last time I think I was there.
I mean, I've, I've dipped in and out.
I've gone through airports.
I'm trying to think that was the last time just, and that's at least like 10 years ago where like I had it, my destination was more than, you know, at least one evening in the South.
Yeah.
I think, yeah.
It's none of my business.
You flew through Hotlanta.
Was that also your destination?
No, we went to Charleston.
No kidding.
Charleston.
Did you know that I didn't know that?
I didn't know that you didn't know that.
Okay.
It's a pretty city.
But it is a pretty city.
I had never been.
Yeah.
Like Savannah, it is a funny mix of stuff where you're like, oh, there's a lot of new, but there's still a lot of old here.
Well, and we went to Savannah, too.
Savannah is incredible.
My band played at SCAD once.
No kidding.
Did they?
Mm-hmm.
You know, SCAD seems to run that town.
That's cool.
There's only five or six buildings in Savannah that appear not to be owned by SCAD.
Which is the Southern Continental Art Diversity.
Architectural Digest.
Yeah.
Some kind of... It's like the RISD of the South.
Savannah College of Art and Design, probably.
There you go.
And so, yeah.
So we spent... What was it?
Four days in Charleston?
Four days in Savannah.
Is it a good time of year to be there?
Is it a pretty time to be there?
It felt...
Yeah, it felt right.
Considering it was 40 degrees in Seattle, except for the couple of days where it was 30 degrees, it was between 75 and 80 degrees in both Savannah and Charlotte.
What?
In March?
Yeah, it was unseasonably warm.
I mean, so I grew up most of my post-12-year-old years in Florida, and
Yeah.
Wow.
That seems quite warm for March.
It was warm and everybody was commenting on how warm it was, but it was also, there was a pollen bloom.
So everybody was commenting on that.
You know, people like to comment on people love to comment on the pot.
Have you seen the pollen blooms?
So I had never been to either place because the long winters had no big audience in, um, in the genteel South.
and I'd never had a reason to go.
You know, there wasn't, I'd never did that road trip, that particular.
Those are two, I mean, there's a lot of beautiful cities in the South with some really wonderful people, but those are two that I have to say, like, just off the dome, if you made me name, like, my five favorite beautiful cities in the South, that would be two of them.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, Savannah, I mean, like, well, there's a reason that, you know, I remember that movie or the book, and then the movie Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.
Sure.
Like, the, you know, there is definitely, like, it was a look
And also Savannah has like, it has like those elements a little bit of like Austin or a little bit like parts of nicer parts of DC.
It's got the kind of like old buildings and it's just a nice place.
I wouldn't mind being like an associate professor who lived there.
Yeah.
And I was prepared for Savannah because people talk about it in that way, right?
Oh, the Spanish moss and the old architecture and it's beautiful and spooky and all this.
I had no...
I was not prepared for Charles.
I hadn't heard that much about it, I guess.
And what I had heard had didn't really, um, I hadn't seen a bunch of movies about it or there, I didn't have any romantic expectation of it.
Uh, well, you turn left at Albuquerque.
You know, I had a strong hunch that you were going to say that.
That exact thing?
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because I think what I do is I just did a variation, and I think a vaudeville joke.
Yes, you did.
How the elephant got in my pajamas, I'll never know.
I'll never know!
But I was, you know, you're always living here on the West Coast and feeling like, wow, it's really hard to live here now.
It's kind of hard to be a grown up and it's hard to know what to do.
What's that Page of the Lion song?
Is it something like it's hard to be a person or it's hard to be, maybe it's hard to be friends, but like, yeah, it's hard to be a lion.
Well, I had actually a little piece that I wrote, or depending on your point of view, didn't write a couple weeks ago about how I think in particular it's difficult to be a italicized person in Florida, especially.
But you're right, on the West Coast, I think life's getting difficult in new and unexpected ways and ways.
things used to change slower and used to go a little bit less weird do you think it's a pace partly a pace is it a economy like jazzed up economy issue because trust and i say again i'm not trying to rely on i promise you and i'm not trying to make broad generalizations or rely on like stereotypes but it is more genteel the people there are very nice in that southern way where it helps to learn the code but there are they are generally like very kind people everybody i met there was really nice to interact with
Um, but it also, it has a different, um, pace, different feel.
Like it's, I don't want to say that it's just less hurried.
I'm not saying they're like all taking naps or something, but it definitely got a different feeling than like, uh, you know, trying to get a, an F train in Manhattan.
Yeah.
Or trying to get, uh, trying to get on the BART.
Yeah.
Uh, to, to make it more of a San Francisco reference.
Trying to get to the Oakland airport.
Let's call it.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
I don't know.
You know, I used to, 10 years ago on this program, I used to talk a lot about what I thought was everybody's obligation, obligations as like citizens.
Civic, civic obligation.
Civic obligation.
That's a word we really brought back, I think.
Yeah.
No, honestly, civics.
Yeah.
And all of that kind of led up to me deciding that I wanted to run for office because I felt like I do believe this, that we have these obligations to one another.
And what I realized in running for office was that, oh, that's actually a profession.
Being a politician is a professional job.
What I should...
And I thought what running for office was was an obligation that was maybe a 19th century idea that like, well, you know, I've been I've been running this this Grange Hall for a long time and now I'm going to go to Congress.
I'll tell you what you think of a movie I watched finally last week, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
which is a very good movie especially it's a western from like 1962 with Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne and it's maybe probably for better or for worse the movie where John Wayne calls Jimmy Stewart Pilgrim a lot but
What I wasn't prepared for is like Jimmy Stewart is this nerd who's graduated from law school.
Like he's really wants to do everything by the book and with the law.
I think that's the model.
You're talking about a guy who ends up, it's the story.
It's like my darling Clementine, you know, okay, corral kind of thing sort of, or Deadwood.
We're like, except instead of showing up and being the guy, the, the, the courageous guy with a gun, you're an even more courageous guy with law books.
Yeah.
And I think the law books are the key there, right?
Because what I realized in running for office is like, oh, no, it isn't just it isn't a citizen thing like stand up and and and do your civic duty because it's a because it's a job.
What you should do is what I was what I should have been encouraging people to do.
And I think I'm doing now is like apply your skills.
Some people should be politicians and you should start at a young age and make that your job.
It's just like being an entomologist.
Or in my world, a manager.
Being a practitioner and a manager can and often should be very different things.
Not everybody who's a good practitioner will make a good manager.
There you go.
But it really is a very important job to do well.
But I feel now like the experience of going to Charleston and Savannah and just experiencing the American South
As a person who spends a lot of time, I think as we all do in the United States, but I think around the world, thinking geographically about the United States or about whatever country you live in, right?
I'm sure if you live in Hamburg, you're thinking about the Bavarians in a certain way.
And whatever that way is, you know, the Bavarians are not you, right?
The Bavarians are making these decisions.
I'm now, I've only just become aware of this because of some of my, I was about to say studies, watching a lot of things about World War II.
But those subtleties between the Prussians were often the officers, right?
Bavarians were sort of the, like, isn't, the Bavarians were sort of like the robust...
Like when you think of, well, Germans, you think of Bavarians, right?
But then you've got like the East Germany stuff and like Eastern Germany stuff.
And like those all have, in the same way that somebody who knows the difference can tell the difference between a Charleston accent and an Atlanta accent, you would know the difference.
When you met this guy at a party in Stuttgart, you would know probably whether he's from Prussia or Bavaria or whatever.
Yeah.
Right.
Well, sure.
Whether if he if he if he ordered five more beers and he held up his his thumb gave him away.
But for me, as somebody who thinks about America... I really think that doesn't fuck me up Sunday.
It was Jude Law that happened to you.
It's going to get you.
Not Jude Law, the other one.
Who did it happen to?
No, it was the other one.
The handsome guy.
The handsome Magneto guy.
And that undid the whole thing.
That undid the whole thing.
Do you think you could pull it off if you were down in a Ratskeller?
There was a lot more about that movie that I'm going to call bullshit on.
I have been given to believe that Inglourious Basterds may not have been 100% factual exactly.
That's the thing.
That's the thing.
I think... Shoshana did have a lot of nitrate prints.
though the thing that that bothered me the most about it was its lack of historical accuracy and some key in some key elements some key element i don't i didn't get to see the jew bear kill i don't think hitler got shot in the face 800 times oh yeah i don't think that that's just trying to enjoy a nice evening at the movies but going to the south was really important like it really affected me and i'm i'm still processing how
Oh, I'm still processing all the ways.
Oh, OK.
This is sorry.
I keep gibbering and jabbering because I don't know where we're going.
And now I know we're going.
And that's I'm going to hang back because that's fascinating.
Yeah.
And I think it's something it's got me thinking now.
Is that what is that what brought you there?
I mean, again, none of my business.
Were you there for a specific reason or just a general like going there reason?
Well, so it's a little bit— I'm just saying, did you have to go there for a funeral to settle in a state to bury somebody or something non-death related?
It's a little bit comfort zone, challenge zone.
Oh, yellow zone.
In the sense that I'm trying to figure out how to have travel reenter my life
But not connected to going to the same cruise and Comic-Con events every year because I'm no longer invited to those.
And does that mean I've been and we've talked about this already.
Like, am I in retirement now?
Am I somebody that just goes to vacation?
I don't know how to vacation.
It does make you start to realize, especially for somebody like me, less so for you, but especially for me, how much I would really prefer not to travel.
And if I do travel, it's something I prefer usually not to be doing.
I can get into it.
But how much travel have you had in the last 15 years that's been just because you really wanted to go somewhere?
And felt challenged by it even.
But I feel like what I've always done is, what I've wanted to do is either...
gin up an adventure, like walking across Europe.
I wasn't trying to accomplish anything, but it was an event.
It was not just like, I'm going to go to the beach or I'm going to go from museum to museum.
No, because it's weird when that guy climbs the side of a Yosemite mountain.
Oh, they think it's weird.
He's very weird.
I don't like that guy at all.
But the point is, like, ginned-up adventure is what adventure usually is.
Yeah, right.
Otherwise, it would be a tragedy.
You put a framework together.
You buy some treks, and you build a thing that looks like a water wheel, and then you fill it with your flesh and blood.
Yeah.
And I've always tried to do that, and now I'm realizing, like, oh, I have all these new... They're not just options.
Some of them are obligations.
I need to keep...
engaging with the world, and I'm going to have to gin it up because I'm not going to Lake Arrowhead every year.
Does the ginning up involve – it means the making of a plan, but does it also involve certain rules or guardrails about how you'll conduct yourself?
Well, the rules and guardrails are I don't generally –
just roll the dice on like, well, I've never been to Turkmenistan.
Oh.
Like I want, I want there to be.
That guy seems like kind of a dick.
He is a dick.
Yeah.
I want there to be some reason, a raison,
if you will.
Well, and if you like, in Hitchcock terms, a MacGuffin.
Like I used to say, a simple way to motivate yourself to take a walk is you get to get a Starbucks coffee when you arrive there.
But you need a MacGuffin.
You need something.
You need a Maltese Falcon for your film.
Yes, right.
There has to be a gem that we're seeking.
There has to be a mystery we're trying to solve.
Oh, the case of the missing diamond.
But in this instance, my daughter's mother right now is an executive in the cybersecurity line.
And as you know, cybersecurity people, oh, I've already said too much.
Yes.
But there's a lot.
Just say it's regular security.
It's regular.
She's a Pinkerton.
Yeah.
Oh, God, she was such a hot Pinkerton.
She's a vice president at Pinkerton.
Whoa, does she have an outfit?
She's breaking strikes.
Oh, man.
Are you saying that she's an executive goon?
She's an executive goon.
Yeah, she stands on top of the warehouse.
Boring, boring.
But so she's going to all these different conferences now.
That are in a kind of global, like, oh, well, this year it's in Singapore and next year it's in Iceland type of black hat, white hat, although we don't say that anymore.
Master bedroom.
I would definitely turn off your Wi-Fi when you're there, though.
Yeah.
Just FYI, a little tip, a little pro tip.
No, we all have suits made that are Faraday cages now.
And I just, I look out through a little tank.
If you go to Charleston, you could get a hoop skirt that's a Faraday cage.
That'd be a kind of a fun look.
Maybe you could have a servant under it.
My stars and garters.
So anyway, she had a conference that was only a three-day long thing, and it was in Hilton Head, South Carolina.
Mm-hmm.
And I said, now, let me just hitch my wagon to that star.
There is no earthly reason why this particular, what would be considered by most to be a kind of drag trip out to a golf resort to sit around a conference room with a bunch of people and put up your slides.
I've been to San Diego that way.
I've been to a lot of places as the plus one.
And I think a lot of people listening to the program probably have to go to Hilton Head at some point this year and put up their deck.
Make sure you bring your clubs because the golfing is outstanding there.
So amazing.
I'm sure you can rent clubs if you don't have them.
But so I said, look, if you're going to be there, that's all I need.
That tiny little pin in a map.
Right.
Now, instead of...
You know, you going and having this thing be as short as you can possibly make it in order to get back in time for a swim on Friday.
What if we took our child, who is no longer little, but is now middle, is now medium.
She's a medium child.
Take medium child out of school for a week.
Go to school and say, look, we're leaving school for a week.
I know that's terrible because this is the week that you're covering...
Whatever the latest thing is.
You're covering not learning multiplications tables.
Here is the not learning multiplications program that you were going to... I had to ruin this whole table for this.
But what we're going to do is we're going to go and we're going to visit Fort Sumter.
Oh, boy.
And we're going to tour a plantation.
That's where it all started, John.
I know.
And we're going to go down to the... We're going to go look at...
The slave quarters behind the manor house, we're going to go and we're going to do a week in Charleston and Savannah.
And, and she's going to keep, she's going to keep notes on what she's experiencing and she'll be ready to, to deliver those to the class when she gets there on her return.
But that's secondary even that's just to keep you keep the school off my, off my trail.
And so we, the little one and I pinned ourselves to what would have been an otherwise unremarkable, um, conference room based three day trip to, um,
uh in and out of hilton head were you i mean like but were you hmm i i'm this is i'm trying to ask a question to be polite but really i want to assert something here i think on trips like this whether it's going on the jonathan colton cruise or going to hilton head for a business thing you have to have such a clear idea up front this is something nobody talks about in public but everybody talks about behind the scenes oh my god i can't believe i brought my family to this thing like that was such a bad idea had you worked out ahead of time
how you would be dividing up the experience and even accommodations and stuff like where she would be able to concentrate on her work and you guys would be able to concentrate on your adventure.
So here's the trick with that.
The, the, the, this is, you're exactly right.
And the problem is that when she's right, but it's really been true in my experience when she's in her three to four day long conference thing, that's 100% consuming, like a thousand percent of her attention is required.
And, uh,
And unfortunately, bringing us along, the danger is that we will actually subtract from her attention.
It's so much more difficult than it sounds.
And the problem is if you're like me and you're not a... Before I was a... I wouldn't call myself a veteran of these things, but when I was really just a raw recruit at these things, I would make the category error and go like, oh, you know what?
Hey, listen, I'm pretty sure...
this will wrap up in an hour.
Well, I'm not sure of that at all.
So why don't you guys go ahead and get dressed up or you go ahead and go to the beach and I'll meet you there.
And do you know what I'm talking about?
And you're so, and you're not, of course you're not sure, but you figure you'll be able to pull it off.
And then you have some kind of like a succession type situation where you're like, Oh, not only will I not be joining you at the beach, but I didn't contact you for two hours because we went into some kind of low ropes course tunnel or something.
And like,
And you're standing there with your corsages on, and where's daddy?
That's partly the reason why, John, I know we get more takeout than y'all do, but this is why I now say things like, I'm not in charge of what time the food's going to be here.
I don't make promises anymore.
I'm out of the business of making assurances.
And while they used to be entertaining and fun, I realized it's just a way to set both of you up for disappointment, to kill your own credibility, to hurt your career, and to hurt your family.
oh it's okay i'm just gonna you guys you guys just go hang out here i'm sure nobody's gonna come up and get selfies with the baby in a way that would be weird what we what because we've made all those mistakes right and and the and the the biggest mistake the worst mistake you can at least you can leave lake arrowhead you can't leave a boat you can't really leave lake arrowhead are you kidding me oh you just roll straight down the hill
The biggest mistake is to think that you can have it all, to think that you can have your family there, also do all the touristy stuff and devote your time to your job and get all the sleep you need.
And so what I...
Came to a long time ago was this kind of principle, which is, look, we know this is a business thing.
And so we're going to have separate accommodation.
So smart.
It sounds so weird and wasteful, but it's the only way to fly.
It's separate.
Yeah.
And while you're in business mode, you have no responsibility to us.
The only challenge for you is going to be that you have to put whatever...
envy or desire to be with us while we go do things you have to kill that because if you were on this if we hadn't come along you would be on this and we would be checking in at about 430 most afternoons to say hi and then maybe do it like tuck in or something but that's
Yeah, you'd be Zooming with us and you'd be in a conference hall and there'd be somebody in the background, a lot of noise in the background.
And so even though we're in the same place as you, you just have to act like we're not.
Yeah, act like we're not.
And what that means is that when you're done with your job,
then we're actually, you don't have to fly back.
We're here.
We've, we've worked where we get used to it.
Yeah.
But we also know stuff about the town now and we're ready to receive you for the next.
You could do like, if you can have a day tacked on at the end,
that is firewall yeah yeah yeah but i mean like in the sense of like no there's no we don't need to like i know you're not like this but i am i'm sorry no i'm not sorry this is how i am like the thing is it it oughtn't be a day when you have to leave right it oughtn't be the day you have to check out it ought to be like to me the best thing would be two fully clear you get a night before you get a night after or at least one probably two full days of like there's nothing pressing us on either side of this
That's how you have fun.
You say, okay.
And you clap and you say, I'm done with work.
Let's, let's go to the market.
Yeah, exactly.
And, and, and it's hard.
I won't, I won't pretend that it is not harder on my daughter's mother slash partner because, because they're at work, you know, like she's
She's bringing home the bacon and frying it up in a pan.
Well, it's none of my business, John, but does she, I don't know, never let you forget you're a man?
No, no, no.
Oh, you forget a lot.
I'm 100% forgotten, and whether or not I'm a man is irrelevant.
May your first amnesia be a masculine amnesia.
But it is...
And so this is something we're still trying to work out.
Oh, yeah.
This is not simple or easy or anything.
And it's so easy to accidentally hurt somebody's feelings on any side of this or everybody's feelings to get hurt.
It's so easy to come out of this going like, these two other people do not care about me.
And so we had an incident on this trip where she's got some Zoom calls.
She's got some business meetings where they're talking about deliverables.
Oh.
Are they drilling down?
And everybody's got their deck.
And they're talking about their deck because they're going to present their deck.
And my daughter pokes her head in to her mother's business space.
And says, hey, Daddy and I are going to go out to the coast to look at lighthouses.
Because, whatever, that's what you do.
There are a lot of lighthouses out here.
Daddy and I are going to go look at some lighthouses.
And her mom goes, and bless her heart, bless her heart, she says, I want to come.
Oh, no, no, you can't come.
We would have planned something different.
She puts her Zoom...
call on her phone oh no john did john what did what did i just say i know john this is why we don't do this i know and we get in the car it's the worst and the and the the medium one and i yeah are looking at each other and we're doing the like we're doing the look over the shoulder at one another like oh boy is she right in front
No, no, she's a medium, so she's in the back, and Mom is in the front with the Zoom call whammo right there on the dash, and the entire drive out over Hill and Dale and Dune.
Is she mostly listening?
Who?
Your sister partner.
Well, no, because she's, you know, she's VP of.
She has to participate in the call?
She's VP of VPing.
So, and we're driving by Fort Pulaski and I'm like, so over there, over there.
I'm leaning over the back of the seat.
So that's Fort Pulaski.
And, you know, and meanwhile, the conference is happening.
So we can't talk.
The medium one and I can't talk.
Of course.
And we drive out and then we're out on the beach and we're looking for the lighthouse and the conference.
And so by the time the conference is over, like technically we've seen the lighthouse.
And so we had to have, you know, over dinner, we were like, ah, that didn't really work.
Well, are we able to talk about it or was it a sore issue?
No, we have to.
We have to talk about it because, yeah, because it didn't work for- It wasn't wholesome.
For mommy either, right?
But what-
What she was worried about was that we were going to go, well, it's just natural, right?
I worry about it, too.
That one day you're going to be at some Raising Arizona Christmas feast with your 60 grandchildren all around the table, and your grown daughter is going to go, Daddy, remember all the lighthouses we used to tour?
Did I ever tell you where I was when my kid took his first step?
No.
No.
Were you showing your deck somewhere?
Worse.
Well, I see.
I mean, I want to walk past that very good joke and make a different joke.
But no, they were at the Bellagio.
I was at the very, very purple house of the founder of Cirque du Soleil.
In a different part of Lost Wages.
Because I was there to talk to their senior management team at their annual meeting.
I remember.
I remember that being your thing.
Oh, by the way, the kid just took some steps here at the Bellagio.
Maybe we'll catch you at the buffet later.
But I came home just the other day.
So much like a man, I don't want planes to catch.
There were bills to pay.
Me, I'm driving in my taxi.
It's really not easy, and especially given, and you know, given that I have always paid a living as an alternative.
Yeah.
And I've never made a deck.
Not a single time in my whole life have I made a deck.
I don't even know what it means.
I just say it because it sounds funny.
It is.
It's very funny.
What is a deck?
I don't know.
It's a thing.
They talk about it all the time.
Well, it used to be actual slides, and now it's just a bunch of pictures that don't mean anything that you watch in order.
Yeah, it's pictures with words written on them, and then you read those words aloud, and then go, next slide, please.
It would be like trying to do your quarterly paper on an eye exam.
So it's hard.
I think the main character is E. What?
E?
E from the E?
Because I'm doing a paper on an eye chart.
Wouldn't that be funny?
Oh, that is good.
The next issue.
I'm going to start a show with the guy from Dilbert.
There was a, there was a, there's, there's some, something came down the pipe, pike, something came down the pike.
And she said over one of these dinners, like, oh, well, there's a, there's a big meeting in Argentina.
And I said, a big meeting in Argentina.
Oh, wait a minute.
Okay, sorry.
I responded to that like me, not you.
That's dangerously close to where you wanted your Jeep to break.
Yes.
Oh, you said there's a meeting in Argentina and not in Buenos Aires?
I heard they have amazing steaks there.
A different place in Argentina?
Very good.
I heard you'll be sick of steak for the first time in your life is what I heard.
They do.
They stick them on a sword and then they stick the sword in the fire.
And then you have to fight.
It's like a Dio song, the world's greatest Dio song.
You have to fight the man with the stake sword.
I'll bring you a stake on the sword right now.
The way you get a stake is that you fight him and then whatever stakes fly off of his sword belong to you.
Oh, every battle is a high stakes battle.
I used to have a bell.
I used to have a bell around here.
I hate it all.
Anyway, you're going to dry Tortugas.
But then there's the thing where she goes, but I have to work, and I don't want you guys to come down here and have an amazing time while I'm showing a deck in a hotel somewhere.
Oh, that's a twist.
Okay, yeah, because of the decks.
And I go, yes, I understand that 100%.
For me to rejoin that with this remark, we will be coming with you.
But it's a terrible missed opportunity for you to go down to the Dry Tortugas and for us not to come.
The challenge is, how do we do both without trying to have it all?
How do we do both without doing both?
How do we get you...
the fun as well as runway for your deck as well as runway for your deck how do we give you the space you need and the respect that you have earned this is a project john this is not going to be a get in get out this is gonna be like us in new zealand this is a long enough trip that this is worth really planning
Because, because naturally she's going to go, well, yeah, of course our child doesn't want to sit and watch me put together a marketing deck.
Of course she wants to go with you to look at lighthouses.
There's so many options, John.
You could, she could be in that, at that destination.
Yeah.
for the first whole part of the family's trip.
You and your kid could stop somewhere north and drive.
Like, it's the, you know, again, I call it the first Toyota problem.
The first Toyota off the line costs $120 million.
The second one costs $1,800.
Like, it's the getting out of the U.S.
and to South America that's the big part.
Once you get there, I mean, Jesus Christ, dude, just think, anywhere between here and there, flying between major airports, you could have such an adventure.
So many.
And the problem is that in most of these situations, it's very natural for the person that is going to the conference to say, look, I'm going to do this and I'm flying to this place, but I'm not going to get to enjoy it.
It's just a long flight for me and then a windowless conference.
It's almost worse than a destination wedding.
Why would you make all those people go to another continent to have a meeting?
To have no fun, right?
To just have a meeting.
It is especially cruel when you think of it that way.
And so then the person whose job it is that's forcing them to do that is like, and frankly, I would like it if you guys also had a bad time during that time, you know, like somehow, right?
Like just at the very least, just stay home.
But don't come and make and really put an exclamation point behind the fact that I'm in an interesting place and can't enjoy it.
I've been on that side, too, and it is pretty miserable.
Although, me being how I am, you'd have to ask my family to get their side of this.
But I think the truth is that I have such a difficult time than keeping my head in the work
whatever that work is but also like I'm just racked with guilt about all the minutes I'm not spending with my family for this trip that was the whole reason we're there is because of the thing I'm doing but it's just you know nobody ever means nobody ever really means it when they say bring your family along it'll be fun
Right.
It can happen, but I don't think they ever actually mean that.
Or they would make accommodations to turn this into something that makes more sense for everybody, not just the big, strong executive men who get to pick the dates, the place, and the conditions.
And I think what we're trying to figure out as a family is we have to
We have to really put a strong border around one thing here, which is some of this isn't going to be fun.
If I could say, John, protect the deck at all costs.
Protect the deck.
Or as Wu-Tang would say, protect your deck.
Protect your deck.
Well, you could get inspect the deck on it.
It's protecting your deck.
The hardest part is to say, look, part of this is going to suck.
That's true.
It's not a thing we can work around.
It's not a thing that we can avoid.
It's a thing that we have to lean into.
This is going to suck.
It's part of the adventure.
It's part of the adventure.
Mm-hmm.
That's part of a challenge, though.
That might even be a danger.
We don't do these things because they're easy.
We do them because they're hot.
Thank you!
Although I would have said difficult.
And in the...
In the long run, right, what we're going to remember is the good part and not the bad part.
And even if 80% of it is bad and only 20% of it we manage to make good.
But that's what the adventure is.
This is what I did not get for so long, John, is that like, and if it helps to make the most reductive thing in the world, let's talk about Nora Ephron and this idea that everything is content.
This will be a funny story someday.
Yeah, but it's already a funny story right now if you're better at this.
If you're better at this, you would understand that when we're in the yellow zone, we're probably not risking death any more than we would be in many other situations in life, but we are risking inconvenience and we're risking funny stories.
That's really, if you think about it, that's kind of what it, I mean, what are you going to be like, like wound up in some kind of like, what is, oh God, what was that?
Bananas, the Woody Allen movie, like where you're going to like be taken up in some kind of a revolution.
I doubt that's going to happen.
The worst thing that's going to happen is that how will you, how will you look in the funny stories?
How did you conduct yourself?
Think about that before you make the plan.
Well, that's the best part.
Even the story about driving out to the lighthouse while she's in a marketing meeting.
Was she working on her deck or pitching?
She's probably watching other decks at that point.
You know, there's a lot of people, you know, like head of sales is there and she's trying to figure.
Oh, her deck's amazing.
The CTO shows up and it's like, wait a minute, this is a product conversation we're having.
And like, where's the head of product?
We don't even know.
Head of product is somewhere.
You got to move from parks to cruises.
Head of product is right now on LinkedIn.
Uh-huh.
Man, yeah.
And so that's an anecdote, right?
Two years from now, we're still going to be taking that story.
We spent a quarter million dollars on this trip.
God.
So that's where we're at.
Did you have a car?
You drove to the lighthouse?
We rented a car.
How many sides and what was it made of?
The lighthouse.
Was it a round lighthouse?
It had 14 sides.
Oh.
And it was made.
Ziggurats.
It was made of two lighthouses made of dream.
Whoa.
Yeah.
And we saw all kinds of crazy stuff.
But you had a car and you could drive there?
Oh, yeah, we had a car.
We drove to a lot of different lighthouses.
We went to different places.
In Charleston, I had a meetup.
I know you don't like these.
Oh, no, no, no.
Why don't you say something like that?
Oh, I didn't mean that.
Oh, no, no, me neither.
No, no, I just don't like performing about buzzwords.
So what I did was I went on the internet in a couple of different locations and I said, I'm going to be in Charleston.
Does anybody want to hang out with me at a cafe?
If anybody wants to ask kicking, meet me at the slave market in 45 minutes.
Somebody wrote me, a man who is a professor of psychology, psychiatry, wrote me and said, there's a cafe in the middle of the town that's a cool cafe.
And I said, okay.
And then I sent out another message on the social medias.
And I said, yo, social meds.
It's your boy.
I'm going to be at this cafe at noon.
Six skate moves.
Break dancing.
Yo, yo.
Yo, yo.
And then as my... T-shirts and bumper stickers.
As my medium-sized child liked to say, there were nine people there.
That's a lot.
Two of them were under the age of three.
So seven full people, two...
Very child.
Interesting.
And a completely interesting, amazing, weird gathering of totally awesome people.
We all sat around for a couple of hours having coffees and talking about our lives.
Were there people there that you were personally acquainted with or was it all folks who were new to you?
That's exciting.
Did many of them know each other?
None of them knew each other.
What's crazy is that the professor of psychiatry is working in the same medical college as there was a young PhD student
who was also working brand new to that program.
What's the program there?
I want to say there's UNC in North Carolina.
In South Carolina, is it USC?
No, this was something called Charleston Medical.
It's called CHUD or CHOD or CHUMP.
It has an acronym, but it's a well-regarded medical program.
uh, facility.
Like I'm a certification over at Chode.
Yeah.
Right.
Right.
I went to, I took two semesters.
Chode.
I know that I went to something called, I think, Chote.
Chote.
Chote.
That sounds like Chode.
But so they were like, uh, they started a cross talk about like, Oh, you know, I'm probably going to work with that person.
Oh, you're going to love that person.
You know, you'll see them next semester.
And then you're all, Hey, Hey, Hey.
And I'm like, no, over here.
But it was great.
Was your middle-sized child there for this?
Oh, she was.
Oh, I love that.
And this was what social media used to be.
Do you remember this?
I do.
I do.
And it was the best of those times.
I know.
It was not the worst of those times.
No.
Where I would go to a town.
I remember doing this in St.
Petersburg, Florida, where I was like, I'm in St.
Pete.
I went to military school there.
Yeah.
Somebody said, let's go.
Why don't you meet us at this bar?
I went.
There were like 24 people there.
And this was back at a time when if you had 8000 followers on Twitter, you were like some kind of big deal.
See, but here's the thing.
Like, OK, I'm going to drop a name to you.
I don't think it's not like you're trying to like say, oh, that's not a lot or it should be more or anything like that.
A lot of my favorite stuff is just happenstance.
You run into somebody.
I can think of two examples right off the dome.
Well, I'll give you one.
I don't remember exactly how this happened, except it was at a Mac thing.
And I think I was doing something with a group, a company I was working with.
And I did like a little presentation in their booth.
And this guy walks up and he's like, hey, I'm Joe.
And I'm like, oh, hey, hey, Joe.
And it's like, oh, yeah.
And so like he has to do the thing.
He's like, Joe, you know, I put out Death Cab Records and I'm friends with Josh and Roderick.
And I'm like, oh, shit.
You're like the Elsinore Records guy.
And he's like, yeah, yeah.
Joe Chilko.
Yeah, yeah.
I work at.
No, literally he was in, you know.
I mean, like, he's a big deal in our small deal.
Like, for me to be, it's like learning, like, the other day, you know, like, Spot from SST died.
And it's like, wow, you know, Spot, he ruined a lot of good records, but God bless him.
But, like, Joe had quite, oh, boy, the Husker Du could have been produced so much better.
But Joe, you know Joe, he's like a really cool guy.
He's a really nice down-to-earth guy.
And he's like, yeah, I work at Adobe now.
And we got to bum around that day.
And it's like, talk about a goddamn mitzvah.
And now, like, we're not, like, tight.
But we've seen each other a couple times.
And we talked to each other on the internet.
And it wouldn't have happened if, you know, the phrase again, Ron Vonnegut's phrase from...
slaughterhouse five meet again someday if the accident will well the accident willed that and that's nice like one meeting getting to meet one cool person who then becomes your pal it's the best thing and you're right the social meds are used to be good for that yeah yeah well and and
It used to be good for it because it felt like, I don't want to go into this whole like what the promise of the internet used to be or whatever, but that feeling of like- We should cover that someday though.
I don't think we've ever touched on that, have we?
But like all these people that I never would have met that are just there living their lives in Charleston that I didn't know about until- That's the adventure you need, John, right there.
Yes.
Honestly, these are shit.
I know you want to go out there and have to climb out of a hole or something, escape an oubliette with your medium-sized daughter, but I'm saying that that might be one of the more enduring memories, positive memories of that experience.
Well, and it's a constant reminder that the nine people, including two children, babies, that came, are just the ones that came.
There are people listening to this show right now that are like, what?
You were in Charleston?
I didn't even know.
You were selling a t-shirt?
And it's, yeah, like, or no, the ones.
No, no, you can't announce anything enough because you will have already exhausted the patience of anybody who pays much attention to what you do while deriving zero benefit from the people who don't pay as much attention to you as they think.
The one I was waiting for was when I posted a picture of myself in Savannah, a comment under it going, come to Charleston.
That's the one.
When are you coming to Charleston?
I was just there two days ago.
Oh, classic Roderick false flag operation.
Just played there, actually.
But no, that was... It's so life-affirming.
It is.
It's life-affirming to meet people that... You know, the PhD student is 21 years old.
This might hurt your feelings.
That can't be right.
21 years old.
No, no, no, no.
That's an undergrad age.
She's... Well, she's... Oh, she's smart, right?
She's smart.
Okay.
And she grew up...
listening to roderick on the line with her father and brother wait so she's oh john she was 10 oh that is so nice but so bad when she's 21 our show started 11 she was 10 when our show started and she'll she's grown up listening to it well and is she's she's survived she's 21 years old and she is she ever cut trail did you find out that would be so inspiring she's doing it right now
I don't want to give too much away, but her program, her PhD program, is that she's feeding psilocybin to mice and then looking at what their brains do while they're tripping.
So basically, in an academic context, she basically said, let's get the mouse high.
It's a whole new world.
Because we used to do that with a dog.
I know.
You ever make a dog do a bong?
Don't do that.
They don't have the higher brain functions for that.
My poor dog, Dave.
When I lived in Pokhane, we had a dog named Dave.
Dave was a lady dog.
And she loved beer.
And also, people gave her drugs.
She was a great dog.
For a while.
It was tough.
It was tough for Dave.
Dave saw a lot.
A thousand yard stare.
Dave saw through the curtain of the world.
This veil of tears.
But so this young person, this 21 year old person knows as much about all the great shows as anybody does.
Well, if I, I don't know if that's a person who still listens to the show, but like, I want to step out of my persona in the pit for a minute and say, hello.
And thank you.
Hey.
Sorry for any damage we've done.
Well, you know, Chris Ballou's children grew up listening to the show and now they're fully grown people.
The vice presidents of the USA.
Yeah, they're the...
I got nothing.
They're not even medium-sized.
All right.
I want to leave.
Give me a good lesson to bring this all home on.
This is a fantastic story.
The reason I'm stopping you, John, is because I want to leave.
Yes.
I ate two large coffee cakes.
I thought I was saving one for my kid, but I guess I wasn't.
They're both cakes, and they're both also coffee.
Here's the lesson that I want to get out to everybody.
Are you guys listening to Fuck Up?
Hey, Dr. 21, are you listening?
I think we now all have an obligation to travel within our own country.
We all need to go to the other side of the country from what we think of as home.
Oh, maybe like pick the part where you roll your eyes.
Exactly.
Is it Utah?
Is it, you know, again, maybe Mississippi?
If you had asked me two weeks ago to picture Charleston, South Carolina and the people that live there.
Mm-hmm.
And where they are in politics and what the country needs and how the people of South Carolina are standing.
Oh, you would have made this noise.
I would have had a lot to say about it that would have been almost entirely bullshit.
A lot of reckons.
A lot of reckon.
And going to Charleston, South Carolina for three or four days and meeting people in a cafe has done more...
in terms of giving me food for thought and also challenging my... But is it a good feeling also?
Do you allow yourself to have a nice feeling about it?
It's the best.
Yeah.
It's the best.
I feel more invigorated
In a long time, because I realized how little I knew and what a dumbass I was and how I don't know anything about South Carolina.
I know more now than I ever did.
And that makes me feel better, not worse.
It makes me feel more hopeful, not less.
Oh my gosh.
I love this.
It really, it's so difficult to stay dumb when you meet new people.
Bah, there it is.
And I don't need to, we used to say like, oh, go travel, broaden your mind.
And it's like, oh yeah, go to Goa and take a bunch of ecstasy and dance to the happy Mondays.
That's what I thought in 1988.
Now I feel like go, go to the part of your own country where you feel like
they least resemble you and spend a week there just living with them and getting to know people and just just just going to bars and cafes you'll forgive my saying i think that sounds like a very uh healthy and wholesome trip for everybody who you've told me the truth about yes i bet it was so fun from some more than others but you know it's nice to have a deck done and have it be a good deck that people like it is and i think it's good in the end you get a better you get a better sense of product
He's over there working on product, huh?
I think that guy's not... What about integration?
He's not working on product anymore, frankly.
Uh-oh.
Okay.