Ep. 498: "The Jimmy Carter of Jerusalem"
Hello.
Hi, John.
Hi, Merlin.
Rabbit, rabbit.
Rabbit, rabbit.
Rabbit, rabbit.
How's it going?
Run, rabbit, run.
Run, rabbit redux.
Hotel New Hampshire.
Things are good.
I had a stale donut.
Is that what she called it?
I don't love that man.
I'm only going to give him a stale donut.
I got sugar...
And lard, but without the sweet softness of a fresh donut.
I got it.
My family, I'm a savory man in a household of sweeters.
Sure.
And there's a thing I feel like I have to periodically mention just for my own sanity, which is that I don't dislike sweets.
You just want sage on your donut.
Sage or tarragon.
Yeah, I'll burn any kind of, you know, herbs.
But no, no, it's that if you get the donuts, I will eat all of them.
Oh, sure.
So, I mean, it's something where, like, I guess the healthy thing to do, there's probably several levels of healthy to this, but I'm just, I know that the other day they actually did go and get some donuts, like big ass fresh donuts, and I ate four of them.
Oh, ah, oof.
And then I get yelled at because I guess I didn't realize that that food was spoken for.
I'm also a savory.
I'm also a savory.
You know, at breakfast, I don't like a sweet.
I like something with some flavor.
Oh, no question.
But never the twain shall meet is the thing.
Like if you're stuck at some kind of like, you know, Holiday Inn Express.
And they have Froot Loops you like.
That's fine.
But I will take my breakfast of choice must include eggs.
It must include potatoes.
And it must include some kind of meat.
That's what I like.
Sure.
Minus the potatoes.
Same with me.
Oh, don't even put them on your plate, you say.
No, no, I don't want them there.
You're always very clear about that, John.
Let's be honest.
Yeah, but it's like I'm sure you have one of these where you ask for it without and it always comes with.
Well, and it's, I mean, honestly, I mean, having a, I'm a veteran of having had a child.
And sometimes people think it's cute.
Like when John Roderick says, hey, don't even bring them to me.
Don't put them on my plate.
I will send them back.
It's very important to me that you look at me and acknowledge that there will be no potatoes brought to me.
And then they bring you the potatoes and just go, oh, don't eat the potatoes.
Yeah.
And you're like, well, what if that was like, I don't know, what if that was like a, I don't know, Rasputin spleen or something?
I don't even want it on my plate.
Yeah, and the thing is, potatoes, they're very innocuous.
What are they?
They're just sart.
They're just, I'm sorry, sarts.
Yeah, no, they're just salt and lard delivery vehicles.
I like sart for the combination of salt and lard.
Yeah, salt and lard, sart.
Simone Bouval has a whole book about that.
And so I don't mind them on my plate.
They just salt and lard the thing they're touching.
Yeah.
I just don't.
And I would never send a thing back.
You felt this way since childhood, right?
You haven't liked potatoes since you were a kid, right?
No, they're just not appealing to me because they have the texture and...
and taste of dirt.
They are dirt.
They grow in the dirt.
They live in the dirt.
Is that a nightshade, John?
I'm worrying about nightshades.
I think it must be.
But you can't take the dirt out of the potato.
Nope, nope, nope.
You can take the potato out of the dirt, but you can't take the dirt out of the potato.
Just look at Ireland.
So I don't want to eat a dirty, like a dirty blob.
Dirty blob.
Everybody loves them.
Everybody wants them.
I do love them.
I love them almost anyway.
Put all the lard and the salt on the dirty blob and cut it up any one of a thousand ways.
Funny you should bring this up, though.
I have so many questions for you this week.
The thing is, though, that I had a realization, I think, over the weekend where I said to my family, who doesn't care what I think, I said, you know what?
I think I've realized one of my struggles with San Francisco life.
I guess that's a hashtag.
I don't know.
Where I'm from, baked goods are...
I don't want to say exclusively, but, you know, unless there's some exception that proves the rule, like all baked goods are sweet.
We don't have savory baked goods.
Let me think about that.
Well, but think about you get your- What about a piroshki?
Well, that's not one of my people don't eat that.
What are you talking about?
Oh, okay.
All right.
It's for bankers.
Well, what about like a steak and kidney pie?
Well, that came up secondary or tertiarily about like brought up your point about what's your original quote, which is not your original quote, but like every land, every people has a version of stew.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
We call it different things.
Meat pie is a huge one, especially in the UK.
No, but you know what it is?
And then I came here and I was like, oh, yeah, give me one of them little Chinese donuts.
And it's like it's it's full of like like Robin's eggs or something.
And I'm like, wait, what is this?
But that's I think I am unusual in being from a culture that does not have savory baked goods.
Wow.
Oh, okay.
All right.
I thought that was smart.
Is that an Ohio culture?
Which is the culture?
I think it's both.
It's one of those Venn diagrams where, you know, Ohio and Florida fit nicely into the diagram.
And no savory buns.
I'm not saying they don't exist.
What about biscuits and gravy?
Biscuits and gravy.
Biscuits and gravy.
I guess that's, yeah, I do.
I sought out Sunday morning to find gravy.
But, you know, they come in different containers.
So do I.
Shit, I almost had an ad spot there.
Hang on.
Hang on, Sean.
You ready?
So do I.
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No, you got me, you got me, you got me.
But I see what you're saying, though.
It doesn't come out of the oven covered with gravy.
That's the thing you... If only there could be the equivalent of a car wash mechanism, where as you're drawing out...
As you pull it out, it just layers the gravy on.
Wait a minute.
Have you ever made a bunch of biscuits?
Maybe this is a thought technology that's going to change our lives.
Make a bunch of biscuits and then put the gravy on it and then bake it with the gravy.
I mean, you'd have to raise the biscuits first, but then cover it with gravy and put it back in the oven.
I think you could do that, but I worry.
There's a phrase that we use in my family when we're ordering delivery food, which we do fairly often, which was, will this travel well?
Yeah.
So like there's a whole bunch of stuff where I've learned over time.
There are some foods that, you know, all of the things being equal, travel well.
Sushi does not travel well.
We've had pretty good luck with sushi because, I mean, as long as it's secured.
But like, for example, there's a place in our neighborhood that does fresh seafood and this new that I'm very into.
And they theoretically they have takeout.
But I'm like, you know, imagine like you sit down in like a fancy hotel and go to the Palace Hotel and you get that big like almost like a tea tray and it's got clams and it's got oysters and it's got shrimp and it's got a little vinaigrette and a dish and it's beautiful and it's on ice and it's got it's like, you know, like a pizza or a fancy pastry tray that except with seafood.
I don't think that would travel well.
No, no.
We were up in Alaska and there's this steak restaurant called the Double Muskie that my sister used to work at there at the ski resort.
Famous restaurant where they cook your steaks right on in a fireplace.
Oh, I love that.
And, you know, and so I was like, well, we're in Anchorage.
We got it.
But it was during the pandemic.
And so I said, well, we'll get the steak and I'll go pick it up and I'll bring it back to the hotel.
Oh, Jiminy.
The way you do it there, of course, is you burn the outside and then the inside is not burned.
You know what we call that in the restaurant biz?
We used to call that Pittsburgh style.
pittsburgh style some people tell you pittsburgh and black and blue are different things but the the classic is like rare very rare almost like just uncooked inside but like crusty not no it doesn't have to be burnt but like fully crunch on the outside yeah and i think i think i always order it so that it's not like cold on in the middle but i'll tell you what isn't the way to eat that is sitting in your hotel room eating it
with a plastic knife and fork like a half hour after it was cooked.
Oh, Jiminy.
John.
I have been through that.
I'm always so – well, I used to travel.
And when I would travel, I would be so – you remember that?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, you were a star.
I would be so –
thank you I would be so they never paid me enough I know I would realize like oh my god there's a freaking Outback Steakhouse like two big city blocks from here I could get that and bring it back to my room there are no rules you got no rules it's just right did you know that they have one of my all time favorite jingles
Is it the Bloomin' Onion one?
I don't remember their jingles.
It's a song probably from the late 90s that Madeline and I still like to sing.
Because we like to sing, I don't know, sometimes we like to sing self-reflexive, recursive.
We like to say recursive things.
And you know what they used to say?
They used to say this.
Outback Steakhouse.
Steak from the Outback.
Good job, guys.
Take a 20 out of petty cash.
But then you get it back to your room and you go.
Oh, yeah.
Well, you know, they used to hire Madison Avenue to write those songs.
They hired, you know, Dozier, Holland, and Dozier.
Oh, Carole King wrote the original Bloomin' Onion song.
Yeah, and now these days.
Oh, my kid asked this question the other day.
Only you will know the answer.
She said all of the best because she loves TV jingles.
She wants me to sing all the McDonald TV jingles.
Ba-da-bum-ba-bum.
And she said, why are the only commercials now that have good jingles for insurance companies?
Oh, that's absolutely true.
Oh, I got a thought on that that I didn't know I had.
Do you have a thought?
Do you want to open?
Well, I did come up with a thought.
First of all, I mostly, I mean, off the dome, I totally agree.
And I think even if I thought about it a little bit, some of my favorite ones are either reworked versions of old ones or entirely new ones.
What do you think?
Well, my theory about it is that insurance is boring and unmemorable.
It is a commodity business.
Yes.
Which is what fast food and soft drinks used to be.
There you go.
So you got to really spend your money on trying to get...
Your version of this product in people's heads and keep it.
You get flow or you get the emu or you get lizard, the little lizard.
Just kidding.
Simmons does one for farmers.
Bum, ba, dum, bum, bum, bum, bum.
What about the what about the guy from 30 Rock that keeps getting the crashes?
The guy from 30 Rock.
I can do this.
Oh, wait.
I know this.
I know this.
You're talking about the guy that was on Rescue Me.
Mr. Danger.
Oh, you're talking about the guy, Bodie Miller.
Look at this maze.
It's so stupid.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Danger Mouse.
This is his boyfriend, the subway hero.
Exactly.
Danger Mouse.
Yeah.
Danger Mouse.
Yeah.
Like, you know, he was the one.
He was also in John Wick.
He had a good role.
He had a good role in John Wick, too.
The most recent one or all of them?
No, no.
In the first one, he works for Michael Nyquist and they're all real mad at Theon Greyjoy because, you know, he goofed.
I don't want no spoilers.
Sure, sure, sure.
Boy, that was a tough role to play, that Theon Greyjoy.
Can you imagine if you're like, this is the greatest role of my life, but, you know, I got to walk around for like three years.
Did you know that that's Lily Allen's brother?
Yeah.
lily allen the the musician and she has that song song called alfie yeah about how he just it's a really catchy song which of course just without credit samples a bunch of really good rock steady like most of her stuff but anyway um um yeah yeah that's her the song about the guy he's just he just sits around all day getting high that's about her brother ralphie allen who became theon grayjoy he paid the iron price he did he did he did
I think we need to really settle on what the iron price is.
Because sometimes the iron price means I stole it, but most of the time the iron price means I killed somebody just because I felt like it.
I always thought that that's what it was.
You took it in war.
It's kind of like you can't wield the Darksaber unless you win it in battle.
From Darth Vader.
Or apparently, no, talking about the Darksaber.
Oh, from Gus Fring.
Yeah, you'd get from Gus Fring.
But apparently, apparently...
you can either win it in battle or the mandalorian can just tell a bunch of underwear models that you that you want it kind of in battle and then just hand it to you even though it's a whole thing it's a whole thing that you build up about how you can't wield it unless you will john and then all of a sudden yeah i i i hand it over like three episodes ago i mean like very suddenly i wildly coyote'd on that shit yeah i
I didn't even mind the bouncing puppet.
I love the bouncing puppet.
But we're getting adrift here.
What I'm trying to say is that his name is Reek.
Yeah, Reek.
Well, his later name is Reek.
But yeah.
He's got to be one of the ultimate bad guys.
Reek killer.
Reek mutilator.
Want help?
Yeah.
Ramsey Bolton.
Ramsey.
He's got to be one of the ultimate bad guys.
And then he's got the dogs.
He hasn't fed his dogs.
He's like Mr. Guy.
He's like the brother of the kid who ended up the emperor in The Gladiator.
Oh, you're talking about the guy who's related to Rivers Cuomo.
What's the guy's name?
Yeah, the Rivers Cuomo.
The guy from The Master with the lip.
What's his name?
Yeah, he's... Jack Phoenix.
No, it's... Wazwaltz.
Wazwaltz.
Wazwaltz.
I think Ramsey Bolton... And Ramsey Bolton's sort of similar.
Bruce Bolton's a piece of shit, too.
But, like, yeah, and also Stannis.
I don't like Stannis.
You're a Stannis.
I'm anti-Stannis.
You don't stand Stannis.
I don't stand Stannis.
You know, I liked the Princess Shireen, I got to say.
Wow.
Sure.
I don't even have a Northern English accent.
And I can read, so I don't have that much to even gain here.
We've got to get to the trip.
But before we get to the trip, we're talking about potatoes.
Yeah.
Right.
And I'm a ginnum.
I'm not firm, I'm a ginnum.
Do you remember the place we used to go here?
Remember?
Sure.
Remember that?
It was called the Little Man.
Because that's what we called it.
Yeah, we go down to the Little Man.
He never washes his hands.
And remember, he had a pigeon in the kitchen, and he neither shooted away nor welcomed it.
He just was cool with a pigeon just being in the kitchen.
One that I saw.
I do feel like there's something – I don't know anything about Chinese culture.
I've never been there.
I barely know anything even though it's like half of the world.
But I feel like neither welcomed it nor shooed it away is I feel like emblematic of the culture.
Yeah.
It's emblematic of a lot of at least what we take away from the philosophical traditions of... Well, I mean, like, if we're going to leave Asia for a minute just to protect our ass, you get a little bit of Marcus Aurelius in there.
Go ahead.
He's the one who originally says it is what it is.
That was him.
Oh, it is what it is.
Are we going to talk about Epictictetus?
Yep, Epictictetus.
Dees, Parmenides.
Parmenides nuts?
Okay, I knew there was something in there.
No, no, I'm a Heraclitus man.
But the point...
It's a good thing I spent almost $7,000 on college.
Let's see.
Well, you know, a degree from that college is worth its weight in gold now.
Well, you know, people kid.
It's synonymous with like.
I wanted to correct somebody online and I thought myself, you know, I feel like Gloria Swanson.
I think my degree is still good.
You mean you can still apply it?
It's the colleges that got small.
Yeah.
You know, my college or the college I spent the first two years before they kicked me out, Gonzaga, has gotten only more and more prestigious.
Oh, that's awesome.
And now people talk about it like, whoa, Gonzaga.
I could not have gotten, I mean, I barely got in.
I think I might have gotten in with help anyway.
I've suspected for years.
But even at the time I was on the board as an alumni, like in 1992, I couldn't have gotten into that school.
It just got more difficult and more difficult.
And then this ding-a-ling in the Cuban heels comes along.
Sure.
He's fucking everything up, man.
He is.
We're talking about the new college of Florida.
I say new college.
New college.
You don't say of Florida.
That's a neologism.
Is it a chain?
Is there one in Arizona?
Is it a new college?
It's not a chain.
It's a college-tunity.
Here's the thing.
When you bring in new students to New College of John, then they're going to also then be bringing in new people.
That's called your downline.
Okay, okay.
And then do you, as one of the early students, start to profit?
Oh, fuck.
It's like Brian Eno said.
You know, only a thousand people ever went to New College, but they all started a college.
They all started a college, of course.
Okay.
$26 in my hand.
Go down to Lexington.
One, two, five.
Wait, I do believe that you have been running a college all this time.
Now I see it clearly.
Okay, fair.
You know what?
I've been running a college the whole time.
That's true.
You have.
You have.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I try to keep it on the down low for HIPAA reasons because we're also in medical school.
And when you're learning about medicine, you're not allowed to tell anyone about it.
I feel like five bucks a month is a pretty good deal for the college, for the people that subscribe.
I think it's one of those things.
Can you afford not to go to my college?
There you go.
New College of Merlin.
There you go.
The New College of Merlin.
That's a neologism.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So New College was independent from 1968.
Three or four, whenever it was founded.
It was independent from then until basically the bottom started falling out less than 10 years later.
And then it was adopted or purchased or subsumed or merger of equals with USF.
So technically, when I went there, I'm an old hand at not calling the college its real name.
Back then, it was called New College of USF.
USF meaning the University of South Florida?
Yeah.
But it's in North Florida.
It's basically, it's just, they have parking spaces and they accept checks.
Right.
And me too, except for the parking spaces.
Me too hadn't happened yet.
Right, right, right, right.
Suddenly I'm Chico Marx.
How am I going to find out what I got to find out?
If you're not going to find out what I got to find out.
Okay.
So potatoes.
Potatoes.
Jesus fucking Christ.
I like a savory pie.
I like a stew, as you know.
She's my savory pie.
I cracked that crust to make a grown girl cry.
I said the other day – I was driving in a car and somebody in the car brought up Motley Crue and I said that Motley Crue was the worst.
And they said, you don't like Motley Crue.
This is a generational thing, right?
They were just a couple years younger than me.
Couldn't imagine that I didn't like – Because for them, Motley Crue is a catchy band on the radio.
Yes.
Whereas for us, they were the beginning of really hurting metal's credibility.
Yes, they ruined metal in one afternoon.
Warrant and stuff came later, but like when you get that, what's that one song everybody learned to play on piano?
It was the one with the tour bus video.
Every band had a tour bus video.
Every rose has its thorn as poison, right?
Yes.
Oh, Home Sweet Home.
There you go.
Home Sweet Home.
And I think that's the one with the, that one has the tragedy and comedy masks on it.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I couldn't look at them.
You know, a Motley Crue record, if it passed me by on the street, I would have hurt my eyes.
Well, there was the one before that that was the one that slid in.
What, the cat dragged in?
No.
Is that a different band?
Wait, I know that.
Okay, hang on.
No, I'm thinking of the one that's like somebody with their thumb hooked into a belt and a crotch, and it's the one who looks to kill.
Yeah, the stripper one.
I mean, you know, it's – But, like, we were all into hair metal before it was hair metal.
It wasn't hair metal.
But it was better for a while.
Sure, they had hair, but come on.
John, have you – like, for example, I almost made a joke on Twitter, and then I didn't like how it would reflect on me and not for the reasons you think.
May I share it?
Yeah, sure, sure, sure, sure.
Are you familiar with Queensryche?
No.
Yes, they are a local band here in the Seattle region.
Not Seattle exactly.
They are from across the lake, as we say.
Here's the era of Queensryche that I like.
Are you ready?
Take hold of the flame.
Can't you see?
Life's a game.
Take hold of the flame.
Right?
Uh-huh.
Uh-huh.
Now, but here's the thing.
You're standing at the toilet, and you think you have to pee.
And then your apparatus hasn't started up yet.
And you're wondering if it'll start.
And you know what that moment is called?
What?
Silent lucidity.
Oh, wow.
But I didn't make the joke, even though it's a very funny joke, that a 56-year-old man is standing waiting for his dick to start.
Right.
And the phrase silent lucidity goes through his mind.
Hmm.
But the problem is that's from the era of Queensryche that I wasn't into.
And then people are going to go, you're a mid-80s Queensryche.
But you don't like an early 90s Queensryche.
I have the original vinyl of Yngwie's.
Oh, of Yngwie.
Yngwie's first band before Ron Keel was in Kiel.
okay he was in i have mark mike varney you know put out metal blade records i why do i remember this but i had the vinyl album of the not very good album of stealer's first album it includes his the incredible redonkulous yngwie solo i'm sure i've sent you this where he overrides the phaser at the end and he breaks a string on a on classical guitar and then and then he overrides the um the phase phaser i think
He overrides the phaser.
And then unplugs it and goes, boom!
And then it goes into a fairly generic, but not as Iron Maiden as that.
So I got bona fides.
Yeah, no, no, your metal is as F. You got nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Take hold of the flame.
Yeah, no, no, no.
You're a new wave of heavy metal, man, all the way.
New wave of American heavy metal.
New wave of American British heavy metal.
I listened to Bring It On The Heartbreak.
Yes, the original, the real one.
I listened to it, John, probably 12 times a couple weeks ago.
Oh, a couple of weeks ago.
Wait a minute.
When you say the original one, are you saying not the one that they re-recorded with the synths?
Well, you know, they did that because Rick Allen lost his arm.
That's not funny, man.
Hey, it's too soon.
No, I don't think that's why.
No, no.
It was before that.
It was before that.
It was when Pyromania got popular.
They re-released it with the fucking arpeggiated fifths on a synthesizer.
I could swear that Pyromania came out, then Rick Allen lost his arm, then it was like, are they going to be a band still?
Nobody's sure.
And then they came out with Bringing on the Heartbreak but with synths and electronic lindrums because they were like, we're still a band.
Oh, and you start easing the weight in.
Who was the driver?
Was it from Professor Pussycat?
Who was the person who died?
I don't think there was a Faster Pussycat at the time.
I think, no, who was driving?
Was Rick Allen driving?
I think it was, no, it was the girl from Sex and the City's Husband.
It was Matthew Broderick.
No, no, not on the show.
Talking about Cameron.
It was the kid from Brighton Beach Memoirs.
Let my Cameron go.
Rick Allen car accident.
Girlfriend.
Who am I thinking of?
Who died in Faster Pussycat?
I don't have.
Faster Pussycat's in the realm of bands that I did not follow.
Okay, that's fair.
You know what?
I'm going to let you clap out of that one, John.
Yeah.
Yeah, Tawny Katane was the last heavy metal girlfriend that I cared about.
Oh, she did that song, Holding On, and she was with the guy from Journey.
Yeah, she did the thing on the carpet.
The guy who wrote Faithfully.
She was with Jonathan Groff.
Jonathan.
Uri, Uri, Uri.
Russ Valerie.
Russ Valerie was the bass player.
Is that right?
No one understands what we're talking about.
Sure they do.
No.
This band was huge in 1982.
Yeah.
No, there's one person out there that has followed everything.
Ross Valerie was the bass player.
He sometimes played a Steinberger.
Jonathan.
Ross Valerie?
I think that's the bass player for Journey.
Ross Valerie?
Really?
How do I not?
I know every single person that ever walked across the stage of the band The Eagles.
Steve Sachs?
I don't know Ross Valerie.
Was he the drummer?
Who was the drummer?
I get them confused with Poco.
Oh, you know why?
Because you're a San Franciscan and they're San Francisco's most popular band.
That's correct.
But they did change the original song goes, as you know, as you know.
And not enough people know this, which is why we'll continue to repeat it here until you all learn.
I want to get back to the city by the bird.
Yeah, but did you know when the lights go down in the city and the sun shines on L.A.?
Oh, I did know that.
That's the original.
I did know that.
And then they flipped it around.
Oh, they fucked us.
So that means the most famous band.
Our Rich History, Moby Grape, Quicksilver Messenger Service.
No, The Tubes.
The Flywheels.
That's the most famous San Francisco band is The Tubes.
Oh, yeah.
And after that, it was Creeper Lakehead.
I just found out a friend, my kid's friend, her late father was in The Flywheels, which is a pretty good San Francisco power pop band.
That's a little too deep of a cut.
He passed.
Yeah, I can't go so deep in San Francisco.
You know, we talk, you and I talk offline about power pop.
The power pop is the most hidden genre of all time.
I am more into power pop, I was going to say, than anybody my age, than any adult you've met in America.
I am more into it, and there's still, there's 50 bands a week that I've never heard of that have the best power pop songs.
I was talking to you about the Greg Kin band the other day, and you were like, yeah, I never really got into Greg Kin, and I was like, Greg Kin band?
I know that and the breakup song.
There's a lot of pop.
There's a lot of good power pop in the Great Kin Band.
Did you ever get into Moby Grape?
Not really your thing.
No.
No, not Moby Grape.
No.
No.
I mean, you know, this was back in a time when all we had was record albums, and the only way you could get record albums was either to buy them or steal them from somebody's older brother.
And also you didn't know that labels were ripping you off, even small ones.
But that's how I got into John Prine was that Kel McCarl's older brother left a bunch of John Prine records lying around.
Like old ones?
Yeah.
And I was like, oh, nobody's watching over these.
I'm just going to take them because Kel didn't want them.
But, you know, it's not like I got really into John Prine.
But, oh, what was the band?
What was the band that I found?
It was, what was it, 10 CC that I found through this guy's record collection?
Probably, yeah.
I took a bunch of records.
10 CC.
They were from England, but I think they were pretty L.A.,
Yeah.
But they did.
I mean, I'm not in love, of course.
But then they produced a bunch of stuff, too.
They did.
Wasn't that like, didn't a band come out of that?
Like Godly and Cream or something.
Yeah.
Godly and Cream, who did Cry, which was mostly famous for the video.
That was such a beautiful song.
But Godly and Cream did.
They had some other good ones, too.
But like the Tubes, they were, or even for that matter, Split Ends.
They were, in their early days, pretty high concept and theatrical.
Go look up the video for Split Ends, My Mistake.
And you realize how theatrical the Tim Finn version of that band was.
John, I'm sorry.
I'm going to stop talking now.
I got you.
But see, that's when Neil.
That's all I want.
That's when young Neil, which is a name you probably know from, you know.
I've heard of him.
Scott Pilgrim.
Yeah.
Anyway, I'm going to stop now.
I like music.
John, can I bring up something you mentioned last week?
Yes.
And if you want, we'll talk about this.
But you gave me the impression last week for the very first time that you were going to Israel.
Oh, that's correct.
Is that still a plan, John?
In fact, I'm leaving on Thursday.
You're leaving this Thursday as we record this.
That would be one, don't be creepy, two, three, four, the fourth.
That's four days from now, the fourth.
No, don't do it.
Don't do it.
Don't do it.
Oh, sorry.
I thought you were going to do a Star Wars joke.
No, although it is that day and my kid is so mad that I'm going to be gone that day.
You wait for the holidays.
Well, yeah, the thing is that the that the EMP, which we now call Mo Pop here, is having experience music project.
Right.
Which is now called the Museum of Pop Culture, because Paul Allen had all he also collected all the Star Trek stuff.
And he was like, well, I got to put this somewhere.
Holy shit.
Really?
Yeah.
So in the United States, I could go to this.
Yes, and— I could see the presidents.
I could see—what would I see?
Whose van would I see?
The presidents?
Oh, that's in a warehouse somewhere.
No, they have a big display of Nirvana-era stuff.
They have a big display of Jimi Hendrix's guitars.
But also Star Trek?
And then they have Star Trek, and they also have horror movie stuff, and they have—
like the throne from, not from Game of Thrones, but from another throne show.
It's one of these things where, because it's Paul Allen, there's a whole section of it where it's like, look, it's an original paperback copy of Ray Bradbury's Princess Diary.
But also, like, it would be like me.
I just, why was I so able to pull out that name, Tawny Katane?
She was really cute.
She was, like, a model.
And she had a song.
But, like, that's the kind of thing where, like, if you were super into Tawny Katane, you could make a sub wing just about Tawny Katane if you were Paul.
Sure you could.
You could make it about Ross Valerie or whatever his name is.
I mean, the thing about Paul Allen is he did he did the thing where and this is a wonderful it's a it's an incredible like a gaslighting when you're a when you're a billionaire.
He said, I'm going to build this museum because I love Jimi Hendrix.
And it's going to and it's going to house all my Jimi Hendrix stuff.
And everybody was like, sure, man, sure.
The foot in the door is this combination of one of the most beloved and to a lot of people, most important rock artists of the of the rock and roll era, but also kind of some Seattle claims him as a native son.
Right.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Although he was like, get me out of here.
The San Francisco angle is very dicey on him.
There's a lot of question about whether the house they call his house was ever really like his house.
Oh, there's one of those.
So the foot in the door is Mr. Paul Allen, the guy who invented computers, is going to give you this wonder.
It's a gift that he's giving to you because everybody loves Jimi Hendrix and rock music.
Everybody loves Jimi Hendrix and rock music and Paul Allen.
And, you know, at the time he seemed old, but now he – but he was probably 40, right?
I remember when that seemed old.
Right?
Like he's this guy.
I mean, it is old, but I remember when it seemed old is the important one.
He's got all the money in the world, right?
So he hires Frank Geary, the architect of the Bilbao Museum.
He did the one in Spain.
He did that beautiful one, the crazy one in L.A.
Yeah.
And so he builds this thing or he designs it, right?
And then Paul Allen is like looking over his shoulder and says, yeah, but wouldn't it be cool if we made it like this?
red and blue and frank geary's like no that's not you hired me to do this and anyway he he he meddled because paul allen was neurodivergent i've met him several times and let me tell you he was uh he was not he was on the spectrum and so he's like no no no i i want it to be pink because i'm paying you a billion dollars frank geary was like you do what you want and took his name off of it it's not even on his it's not even on his twitter bio that he did the emp and
But here's Paul Allen's genius.
He was like, I built this thing.
I'm putting all my Jimi Hendrix guitars in there.
I also have a weird Mary Lou Henner collection, and I'm going to have a little wing for Mary Lou Henner.
I don't love that.
And so forth and so on.
And then he goes, and now, and he hires a nonprofit board, and at first he does this thing where he's buying everybody's old tour van and Chris Ballou's old shoes.
But just to be clear, just to bring us up to speed, that's the one I was thinking of.
But so far, so good.
So far, we're very much within the promise, the remit, the portfolio of Dr. Allen.
Absolutely.
Oh, sure.
He's quirky.
He's fun.
He's fun.
He's rock and roll divergent.
Nobody here ever thought he was fun, but he's weird and quirky and rich.
Hands on the hard body.
And a lot of people were like, this is awesome.
And so many people I know got jobs at EMP.
Everybody was getting rich.
And then he says, this is the greatest.
He says, now I want it to be self-sustaining.
Right.
Oh, see.
Now you're a nonprofit and now you have to pay.
That's that's true.
That is John.
Forgive my saying.
I know you're close with Mr. Allen.
That is that's that's shenanigans.
It's shenanigans.
And so now they're like, whoa, we got to lay everybody off and whoa, we got to like only turn the lights on.
Sell one of Chris's shoes.
Yeah.
So they finally got it.
And calling it the Museum of Pop Culture.
Now there's, you know, on a Saturday, you can't get in there in the summer.
It's so packed full of kids.
And it's a fun time.
But on May the 4th be with you.
they are opening a new
a brand new display of Empire Strikes Back artifacts.
Oh, my God.
So do you get like Phil Tippett at ads and stuff like that?
Well, see, I don't know.
See, if I can see a Phil Tippett.
Oh, my goodness.
It's all secret.
And because I'm a member of it, I'm a member of the organization.
And the reason I'm a member is that it costs whatever, $29 to go.
And so if you buy $150 membership and you can bring five people, you pay for it in one time.
But really the reason is I was standing there because my kid likes it.
She's like, let's go to the thing.
I'm standing there.
Well, I mean, like if nothing else, the very bottom rung, something I learned from Scott Simpson, get a membership.
Yeah.
I shouldn't even say this here on the program.
It's a great museum, great gift shop.
Get a membership at the MoMA downtown near Moscone.
You get 10% off.
Yeah, but it's also a bathroom.
Oh, how smart.
When you have a child, you have a place to go, and there's a bathroom.
Yeah.
I mean, Westfield Center, they closed the bathrooms.
It's basically just Michael Kors bags and crime now.
Yeah.
How many junkies have to die before you realize that you can't have a public bathroom?
One, two, three.
Yeah.
anyway so i was standing there at the ticket line i was like one adult one child and the person uh working the other side of the counter said are you john roderick and i was like yeah and they said it was your mom oh i'm a huge fan no i'm a huge fan oh wow you know and then i was standing there and my daughter was like get a membership and
And I and I got a membership mostly just to seem like a cool John Roderick to the person working there.
I had to stop eventually.
I used to do stuff like that all the time.
Well, now I'm on the hook to be cool dad.
Yeah.
So I'm standing there and I'm like, actually, you know what?
Family membership.
Like, you know, round for the bar.
And the person, you know, I don't know whether they went home and said, wow, he's amazing.
I got another award set.
It says to her girlfriend at home, I got another one.
I got another one.
Every musician in Seattle that comes in against their will.
So this thing's coming, but I'm going to be on my way to Israel.
And my child was like, you're not even going to be here for Star Wars Day?
And I was like, sorry, sweetie, I'm leaving that day.
But I'll see you in the morning.
I'll kiss you on the head and I'll say...
May the fourth be with you.
Isn't that anything?
It's just like Merry Christmas.
You don't have to be there the whole day, do you?
Couldn't you do like with some plate reverb on and say the fourth will be with you always.
So it's momentous.
And then blow up a robot planet.
I bet what I could do is put a bunch of – I found a – because AI art is really blowing up right now, I found somebody had made a bunch of AI art of really fat Darth Vaders.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
That sounds like something I would do.
I'm into that.
It's really great.
And so I found – And you say that's you?
Where's your boyfriend?
No, I don't do that.
But I have been sending her just – because she's got an email now and she really likes to get email.
And so I've been sending her fat Darth Vader's every once in a while with no explanation, just like here's another fat Darth Vader.
I don't even say that much.
It just shows up in her inbox.
Here's a fat Darth Vader.
She knows.
Well, but the thing is she's like, why do you keep sending me these fat Darth Vaders?
And I'm like, you know, who says it's me?
You know what I mean?
That's true.
Who says it's me?
But so maybe what I'll do is I'll set up a script or a script where all of May the 4th, she just gets a steady every five minutes fat Darth Vader.
Why don't you hook me up?
If you want to change your password before you give it to me, just give me your accounts.
And then I will go in and I will be like the IG-11 to your child.
Like at first I seem dangerous, but I'm actually there to protect.
Oh, isn't that sweet?
You know what I'm saying?
I think I do.
I think I do.
I have to self-destruct now.
Meat move.
Oh, man.
So that's something you'd be willing to talk about a little bit.
Oh, yeah.
I think it'll interest our friends, our listeners.
Yes, absolutely.
Well, so, you know, I'm going.
Did you watch Hypernormalization?
Yeah.
Well, no, not yet.
Watch it on the plane.
Okay.
I will.
There's a lot of good Assad content in there just for what it's worth.
I talked to Michael Chabon quite a bit on the internet back and forth.
That's so interesting.
I do too.
But he has been to Israel.
He and Ayelet have been to Israel a lot.
I mean, when I say he's very Jewish, I don't mean that in a – but like his Cavalier in Clay is a wonderful book that my kid and our family loves.
But there's something wonderfully like – what's the word I'm looking for?
Jewish about his stuff, right?
It's about Jewish superheroes.
Yes, it is.
And his book, The Yiddish Policeman's Union, is about what if all the Jews move to Alaska.
So it's a theme.
But of course, he's a liberal leftist.
And like a lot of people I've talked to in advance of going to Israel, I've talked to a lot of friends and
And a lot of them are liberals and they don't like Netanyahu.
But also there's a kind of like, I don't know, there is a, I don't want to call it performative, but there's a guilt culture around how the Palestinians are treated.
And so much so that it seems like there are whole tour groups whose purpose is to take Israelis into the West Bank and make them feel bad.
like you you pay a bunch of money to have a tour group take you into ramallah and show you how bad it is and then you go home and so in talking to my friends i'm like i'm really excited to go to israel the response i've gotten from a lot of them is is why and i'm like wow it's the cradle of civilization and they're like yeah but and they have all these reasons why and they're all zionists right i mean so it's this it's this internal conflict
And I'm really interested in that now.
So I'm going to go, and I don't have any super plot about it.
I feel like the whole point – actually, the whole point of everything I've ever done is to just go stand on a corner and watch people go by.
And this feels like one of the great places to just stand and watch people go by.
Oh, my goodness.
Wait, what is that?
Wait, is that Daenerys Stormborn you sent me?
I'm afraid so.
Did I get it right?
Yes, you did.
It's Daenerys.
John sent me a Zoftig Daenerys.
A Zoftig Daenerys.
Muzzletop.
Can we talk general shape?
General shape of the mission?
General, like, what your plan is?
Are you staying in one place?
How long are you going to go?
Like, oh, dear.
Oh, no, you sent me a Zoftig Snow.
Oh, man.
I get all the softings.
You know, in the last season when these two go at it, call the cops.
Yeah, I know.
Because Jon Snow is only five feet tall, right?
He's only five feet tall.
She's only five feet tall.
He's supposed to be like 14 in the books.
Oh, really?
Oh.
Everybody's always younger in the books.
Yeah, that's the thing.
Oh, no, that's a funny fat Darth.
Are you using Mid Journey?
No, I'm not doing anything.
I'm just sending these to you.
See, I was going to say, these are really good.
No, I stole them from the internet.
Oh, that's good.
That's the way to do it.
I'm going to steal your meme is my meme.
So I'm going to go up to Hebron.
I'm going to spend some time in Tel Aviv.
It's real close to Jerusalem, so I'm going to go over there.
People say, you know, you got to go to the Dead Sea, but also why bother?
And then I'm going to – I hope to go over – I hope to go into the West Bank and apparently there's a hotel where Banksy did all the –
You know, Banksy is like the housekeeper.
He changes all the sheets.
Housekeeping.
Housekeeping.
And then he's wearing a mask so he can't tell that he's actually in massive attack or whatever.
That's funny.
They did that song from House.
They did.
That's a good song.
But then I'm going to go over into Jordan, the great nation of Jordan, and visit Amman.
I'm going to open a map.
I hate to admit it.
I don't know.
There's part of me that wants to go down to the Red Sea just to go down there.
But I also hear from people like, man, don't bother about that either.
I'm not going to go to the Sinai because my child has made me promise that I don't go to Egypt without her.
And this was the problem.
This was always the problem.
Oh, I see.
I see.
You've made a separate piece here.
I understand.
Yeah.
And I would say, well, I want you to come with me to Israel.
And both she and her mother were like, man, we're not that interested.
And I'm like, why?
It's got all the things.
And they're like, yeah, but it's all the things that you care about.
Old religions, people that are mad at each other about whether or not God ever rode a white horse.
This would be like our family going on a two-week vacation that's ultimately about long-distance running.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Some people would be more into it than others.
Yes.
And in this case, they're like, we love walking around a town that you kind of know about and kind of can talk about.
But we definitely don't want to stand on a street corner in Jerusalem for four hours watching people go by and have you go.
See, they're Druze.
And the thing about the Druze, they have to remember is, you know, and so they're like, no, we'll do that if you take us on a cruise up the Nile where we can see.
Oh, quid pro quo, Clarice.
If you want to tell me about Sunnis and Shias, you better be ready to get me a mimosa.
And the problem for me, of course, is that I always – I usually have a pretty clear-eyed view of how much people want to hear about ye olden times.
But I just assumed that everybody –
Wants to go to Israel and just walk around.
Well, I think that with something like – and again, I'm being a little silly here and making jokes and saying funny names.
But like with something like Iraq in particular, like that is – that's the – dude, I've been here in Tigris and Euphrates since I was in Sunday school.
Yeah, there it is.
Like there's areas in there in Afghanistan and in Israel that really are – have a claim to being the cradle to a certain part of our civilization.
Oh, for shizzle.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I don't want to exclude Africa.
No, of course not.
But, you know, there are fewer – we don't worship the old gods.
You know, we worship the new gods.
Yeah.
We worship the six or whatever.
It's the seven.
The seven.
Yeah, the seven.
Anyway, so then because what I also want to do – because you're supposed to go to see Petra and I want to go see Petra.
Petra Hayden?
Oh, Petra's a city.
Yeah, Petra Hayden.
No, Petra, the city that's in the second – or no, the third Indiana Jones movie.
Oh, yeah, for some reason it's on my head with the omen.
Is it in the omen too?
Oh, I don't know.
The original omen?
Well, the moment the guy's head gets cut off by the sheet of glass.
Oh, yeah.
Is it in there?
I don't know.
It's been a long time since I saw that.
Please don't listen to me.
Keep talking.
Anyway, so – but that seems like one of those things where if you go at the wrong time of day, it's just a place that you pay somebody $25 for a camel ride.
Like there's too many people standing around, you know?
And I don't want that.
I already spent a nickel on this mustache ride.
I don't want that.
But the thing is I think you have to either get there at 6 in the morning or be there at 11 at night in order to just have your moment with it, which is what I like.
But then here's the thing.
I want to go to Beirut.
And this is the one where everybody in my family starts to, you know, starts to not roll their eyes at me, but starts to glare at me because they're like, don't you go to Syria?
And I'm like, no, no, no, I have no intention.
I'm going to Beirut.
And they're like...
What does the State Department say about that?
And I have to say, the State Department's not that thrilled about it.
I think the favorite is Lebanon.
There's Damascus, which I'm pretty sure is in Syria.
You're correct.
Okay.
Oh, man.
Damascus is all screwed up now, and that's a tragedy.
I've got a whole bunch of Adam Curtis movies I can send you if you want to watch them all on the plane.
Maybe I should.
I'm saying hypernormalization is going to get you in the right state.
But I want to go to Beirut, and they say, the State Department says, don't.
But of course, they're wrong.
They're so often wrong.
They've told me not to go so many different places that were all great.
So interesting.
But the only way you can get there is if you go from Jordan, because Beirut and Israel don't have a you know, they don't have a like an exchange program.
They don't want to see each other, even though they're right next to each other.
Oh, and I read a thing that said that the lower part of Lebanon that touches Israel is controlled by Hezbollah, but they apparently really nice, really nice to tourists.
Hey, come on, welcome.
That's the kind of thing you're not going to see in Zagatz.
Right.
Or maybe these – no, probably not Zagatz, but Lonely Planet or something.
Lonely Planet or that guy with two first names, Rick Steves.
Rick Steves, yeah.
Definitely a made-up name.
I was on his program one time, Rick Steves.
Really?
That's too many first names.
He and I hit it off really well.
Well, he likes to take in hits from the bong, if you know what I mean.
He's a big-time star.
Are you serious?
I always thought the winner of the most first names was a woman at NPR named Carol Ann Clark Kelly.
Um, but then there was a guy who got arrested for, he was a security guard who shot somebody at a Walgreens here in San Francisco.
And this guy super has four first names.
I, you know, I've been very interested in Millie Bobby Brown lately.
Oh, that's a great name.
It's a great name.
Millie Bobby Brown.
She does this show.
She's doing this TV show where she's, um, sure.
No, it's a movie show where she's the little sister of Sherlock Holmes.
And, uh, Noah Gay.
Yeah, that's right.
And and she is she's just fabulous in it.
And those movies, I did not expect to think that they were fun, but they are fun.
And and so we've been watching those.
But Michael, Michael Earl Wayne, Anthony, Michael Earl Wayne, Anthony.
Yeah, I don't want to rag on the guy.
He plays he plays bass in Van Halen and beautiful girls.
Michael and Earl Wayne.
Yeah, definitely.
That's like a serial killer name.
Anyway.
Sure.
Bobby Billy Brown.
Bobby Billy Brown.
Mm-hmm.
So I'm super excited.
I'm not nervous exactly because I know everything is always going to turn out.
When you say you're not nervous, you mean like if you're me or people like your family, you're probably going like, hey, you should be more scared about this.
Yeah.
Right.
I think what it is is I'm antsy and part of the reason I'm antsy – did I tell you this?
No.
Part of why I was able to just do it or just pull the trigger and do this was that I looked at my delta –
Right.
And over the years, I've never used my Delta miles because I don't have that many of them.
But also, you know, you threaded a needle inside of a needle with this.
You worked out something.
If I remember last week, you said you'd worked out a thing where it was not going to get in the way of family stuff and your family's life stuff.
But also you had this improbable like, like, you know, like get the sleep out of your eyes.
Kind of like, wait a minute, I can actually do this in Delta might help me out.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, not only that, it's all free.
Like, it just paid for itself.
And what was crazy was, because in the past, I'm like, well, what if I wanted to fly first class somewhere and Delta is like, great, that's 60,000 Delta miles.
And I'm like, 60,000 Delta miles to fly to Atlanta?
Yeah.
First class, I don't want that.
Especially like once you spent them.
I've done this where I've had a little bit of miles and I've spent for the upgrade.
But then you don't get the upgrade because whatever.
Something didn't work out.
You know, the classic is your flight was delayed, meaning canceled.
And we stuck you on another plane.
You should be glad we got you on a plane.
Oh, by the way, you don't get credit back for that money.
Like you got to watch it because that's how they get you.
That's how they get you.
Well, in this case, they said I had 100,000 miles and they said for 80,000 miles, we can get you to Tel Aviv and back.
But for 100,000 miles, we'll get you there and back in comfort plus.
That's so nice.
And I was like, it was 80,000 miles just to upgrade to first class on some trip to Philadelphia.
Like, how is that?
So anyway, I said yes.
But the one thing I'm antsy about is the flight from JFK to Tel Aviv.
The plane's setup is a 3-4-3 across, wide-body jet.
So you're in, but you're in comfort.
So it's basically this similar setup, bigger seats.
It's not in a separate cabin like business or first.
You're up at the front near the bulkhead for, but in that big like Brady Bunch style, a bunch of seats across thing.
Yeah, you get free cheese doodles or something, but it's slightly bigger, you know, slightly bigger chairs.
You're probably not going to get a lot of overhead storage.
Yeah, but I don't carry a lot of bags.
But the problem was they did not have an aisle.
So I am one in, in the middle four.
Like I'm in seat, you know, row 12 seat.
What was that?
And they take out the C or they move.
So a group of three could be next to you to your right?
Yeah.
To my right, there's a group of three.
And to my left, there's a person.
Oh, no, no, no.
I'm sorry.
To my left, to my right, there's two people.
And to my left, there's one person.
That's not that bad.
As long as you got leg room.
Well, I know, but I don't like it.
I don't want to.
I don't.
But the reason I say is like you're in the middle of the open area.
It sucks to be in a three across on the side of the plane.
You're really you're so stuck in the literal middle seat.
At least with that, you don't have the stuff over your head, you know?
Yeah, right, right, right.
You can stand up and stuff.
It's going to be fun.
Yeah, okay.
But the only other antsiness – you know, I have a little bit of antsiness because –
one of the problems of having a plan that is just go stand somewhere and watch the people go by is that then later you talk to your friend and they're like, oh, well, you were standing right in front of the great cistern where if you go down... Or even worse, it's the one week per year that this flower blooms on top of this, you know, kind of like an Edelweiss moment where you're like, oh, shit, I can't believe I didn't plan ahead to do that thing.
Yeah, and I got to do a little bit more of that.
You know, Josh Rosenfeld's brother...
Avi, is a rabbi, and he became a rabbi.
In the U.S.
He's an American rabbi now, but he became a rabbi because as a young person, as a 20-year-old, because Josh is a very secular man, but his brother, who liked to smoke weed out of an apple and listen to metal, was like, I'm going to go to Israel and work on a kibbutz.
For the summer.
And he got over there and they were like they got the the religious ones got their hooks in him.
And then pretty soon he was, you know, eating red beans and rice and became very religious and then became a rabbi and I think came back and he's a rabbi in a hospital somewhere.
Something related.
Jewish kids – I've learned this from Wet Hot American Summer and Life.
Jewish kids – and I know this – I also know this from the TV show Dave that I'm currently obsessed with.
Jewish youngsters love sleepaway camp.
Oh, yeah.
Do you think the kibbutz thing could be slightly adjacent to like enjoying –
Like summer camp?
Yeah, that's where they lose their virginities.
And unlike me, I didn't go to sleepaway camp.
I never lost my virginity.
Oh, you fucked up.
I still have it.
Yeah, I did.
Yeah, you fucked up.
But I have not yet talked to Avi, right?
I haven't texted him and said, hey, hello, my friend.
I'm actually going to Israel, a place that you used to live and have probably very strong feelings about.
Because he's conservative, right?
One five-minute call could give you a gem to not miss and probably like a real dumb thing to not even go near.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Or even one of these things like, oh, well, you can't go to the Temple Mount, except I have a friend that runs the ticket office.
You know, that type of thing.
I mean, when I went to New Zealand, just my friend Mike explaining like which jokes to make to which kinds of people.
And don't make a sheep joke here, but do make a sheep joke there.
Like some kind of a sensitivity or an awareness of something that gives you surprisingly more context than you thought you needed.
It's so nice to have the inside view on that from somebody like Avi.
Yeah, like I can say shalom to this person and salaam to that person.
I got that much.
But I don't quite know what the – and I think part of the trick is that right now, if I understand correctly, there are massive protests happening.
in the streets against Netanyahu.
Against Netanyahu.
Yeah, I think you're right.
And massive protests, you usually associate... And like escalating, like, okay, guys, we're going to be nice about this for a while.
But like, it could get kind of bad, right?
It could get bad.
Yeah.
And of course, I'm excited by that.
I like to be in a place where things are going, things are happening.
But I also don't... You know, like, I'm not sure...
As an American and as a guy that likes to stand on street corners, my take is always going to be to just stand there and go, like, I'm listening.
Like, I'm watching.
I'm listening.
But this is not your usual, like –
sort of throwing rocks at each other kind of protest.
This is like a major referendum on democracy and so forth.
Yeah.
So that's fun, but I'd like to know more so that I'm not just, so I'm not standing there in a University of California, University of Southern California sweatshirt
Going like, hey.
Because I despise the Avatar movies with a hot, hot raging heat.
I hate every, well, I mean, I appreciate that they were difficult to make and stuff.
But for some reason, and one of the things, for some reason I was thinking, I don't know if you've ever seen the Avatar movies.
They're not very good.
Only the first one.
They're terrible.
But do you remember the first one where Sigourney Weaver shows up and she's one of the blue people, but she's wearing a Stanford half shirt?
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
See, that's you.
Yeah.
I'm seeing I'm seeing you and you're there as a citizen observer.
You're the Jimmy Carter of presumably Jerusalem.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That should be your next unpublished book.
I think the Jimmy Carter of Jerusalem.
I might use that for this one.
That's pretty good.
The first time I went to Prague, I remember walking through the town and I was, you know, by that point I was a seasoned traveler of the world and I had, you know, scars and all the, I was covered in dirt and so forth.
And I'm walking through the town and there's this group of four students who,
who are playing hacky sack in the middle of the, of the cobblestone streets where people are just trying to go about their day.
And one of them's wearing like a Colby college sweatshirt.
They all have, uh, they all have like a Varnay's on or something.
One of them's, uh, one of them's got a shirt that's like, you know, university of Minnesota.
And I was just like, you guys are not, uh,
at a frat party here like have a little respect like things think about all the all the horses that that rode through here on a foggy night with a with a headless horseman on it and you're just sitting here playing hacky sack in your colby college sweatshirt like anybody cares yeah and it just got in my head forever even though i'm sure that i was sure that whatever i was repping did not did not communicate to the local population that i was one of them
But, I mean, at least I wasn't playing hacky sack.
You know, one consolation in life is even if you're not right, sometimes it is a consolation to know that at least you know you're not completely wrong.
Yeah, and that's all I try to do.
You have to go to an event and wear shoes.
Okay.
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah.
Well, no, because if you don't wear shoes, you're always going to be wrong.
You know what I'm saying?
In your case, you're trying.
Like, if you packed up one good, like, seersucker suit, you could show up almost anywhere in Israel and be welcome.
I think that's true, although maybe at Hezbollah they're going to associate that too much with those three-letter agencies and say, Oh, I see.
You look like a man from the company.
From the company, right, which is something I definitely want to look like if I'm sitting— You'd like to be retired from the company if memory serves.
If I'm sitting on a terrace out in front of a hotel and drinking coffee out of a little cup,
And speaking French to the waiter, I want to look like I used to work for the CIA.
Right.
But if I'm touring the Hezbollah museum and saying salaam alaikum to everybody, I do not want to look like I'm in the CIA.
I don't think because I don't want to end up, you know, like with masking tape over my face.
Yeah, well, that's a whole other thing.
Yeah, but, like, who's the guy in the Humphrey Bogart movie, the Fat Man?
Yeah, the Fat Man.
You know what I'm talking about?
What's his name?
Sure.
We just call him the Fat Man.
It's one of the names I don't know, but he's the big guy as parodying on The Simpsons.
You could be, like, a very svelte and handsome version of that, I think.
Well – That just says I'm a guy – notwithstanding the Stanford half shirt you're wearing under that.
You are somebody who makes deals.
You know people.
You know what I'm saying?
But the problem is – and I learned this back when I was a participant in the street culture of the late 80s, early 90s, which is that if you are in the company of drug dealers and drug people and violent people and dangerous people –
Do not make crazy eyes thinking that crazy eyes alone are sufficient to get somebody off your case.
Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
No, you're totally—because, like, the first time anybody—I guess what?
Everybody else has made the same realization that you have, speaking to me here, which is that isn't it funny that, like, people who are, like, street people, like, never scream at each other?
Well, don't think that that's your entree to go—
eyeball to eyeball with somebody who's having an event.
Well, that, and also there are crazy eyes and then there are crazy eyes.
And if you make crazy eyes at someone, you had better be prepared to go the distance because there's always going to be somebody that's like, Oh yeah.
Yeah.
And you can make crazy eyes at somebody around, you know, at a citizen because they're just trying to get around you on their way to someplace.
But don't make crazy eyes at somebody.
If you get away with that in Manhattan, that's not a great victory because that's a city that takes pride in how little they look at each other.
And so I don't want to go into a situation because, you know, you can be George Clooney with a beard and go there and make crazy eyes.
He didn't even make crazy eyes.
Are you talking about Michael Clayton?
No, the other one.
Where they covered him with masking tape and took his fingernails off.
Oh, I didn't like that one.
I remember that.
I like Mike Clayton better.
Yeah, that's a lawyer one, right?
Or a sports one?
Oh, it's a lawyer one.
Yeah, no, it's not sports, but it's got intrigue and it's got the woman from Orlando in it.
What's her name?
Tilda Swinton.
She's terrific.
Oh, yeah, she's a great actress or actor.
Okay, I'm starting to understand.
Yeah, so I don't want to go there and be like and rep any kind of like I can call in a helicopter.
Because I can't call in a helicopter.
And everybody there...
Even if you could call in a helicopter, I don't think they care.
They're hoping you do call in a helicopter.
Oh, do that.
Do that.
Please, please, please call in a helicopter.
Please call in a helicopter.
Oh, we're dying for you to do that.
So I can't rep any of that.
All I can do is say, hey, I'm going to talk about you on a podcast.
You better be careful.
Like, treat me with kid gloves.
Because I know Merlin Mann, and he used to travel.
Are you familiar with a television program called Jeopardy?
Ha, ha, ha.
Exactly.
I'm very, very excited.
I could have him write you a letter right now.
A strongly worded letter.
A strongly worded Mormon letter.
I still have a letter from 1986 signed by Senator Ted Stevens, RIP.
I have a letter from 1986 signed by Jonathan Richman.
Oh, really?
He's so nice.
He's so cute.
I was thinking about this the other day.
Okay.
You know, I'm trying to know—
What to do.
I'm trying to know who to be.
How to be.
Which one of me to be.
Not just on this trip.
Just in life.
Oh, dude.
I'm sorry.
I'm glad you said that to our listeners, but I immediately knew what you meant.
Yeah.
Which one of me to be going forward.
Sometimes it's hard to know how to be.
I mean, I got a decade in front of me that I can start to see come out of the fog where I'm like, I'm going to live longer than a decade, but I got this decade in front of me because I've started to think of decades.
You really are over your skis, aren't you?
Yeah, I'm like, oh, from, you know, from 86 to 96.
You should work on that cough if you want to live that long.
It's so wet.
So I say to myself, so I say.
Says to myself, I says.
I went to the war college.
Once I was there, I realized that was exactly where I wanted to be at the time.
But the problem was I was trying to, I was getting all this information that would have been very, very useful to me.
Making the friendly fire program, which I no longer retired.
And I'm going to Israel now in order to fill up my reservoirs with Israel.
But what is the killer app?
for this stuff.
What am I doing?
I'm a little bit lost.
You sound kind of like a character on Succession.
What?
Yeah, well, no, but yes.
But no.
I can't just go do things just to fill up my soul because I feel like I have a responsibility to...
Oh, because you said – sorry.
Two weeks ago and last week you said in both instances in a way that was not cryptic but not totally clear to me that this needs to be part of your work.
Yes.
Basically, I think to the listener it might have sounded like you were saying, well, I need a way to write this off.
But no, no.
I think what you were saying was whatever work – my work needs to be whatever this is.
Yeah.
I'm trying to help people, right?
That's true.
And so I so I can't judge things just whether or not I had fun.
I can't judge things just based on whether or not it is interesting.
Right.
I have to find a way to put to quote an old pickle ad by Jewish people.
You answer to a higher authority.
A little bit, or I hope to, or I aspire to.
Yes.
But like everything that ever happened, when you first wrote me or called me on the telephone, the little phones, the ones that flipped open and couldn't take pictures, and you said, we talk every week and we yell at each other about the Beatles and Hitler, I'm going to start recording those phone calls.
And I said, okay, fine.
I don't know what that is.
And you said, I'm going to put that on the internet.
And I was like,
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The internet.
It'll never last.
It'll never last.
Why don't you lay down for a little while?
And here we are, right?
Here we are.
And think about everything that happened as a result of that.
Oh, you don't have to convince me, my friend.
I think work is, I mean...
Gosh, I feel like it was me and my friend Alex who said this, and I'll mangle it, but it is a bummer.
There's so many things that are a bummer about work, including all this side hustle stuff and all this stuff and the need for that and the name for that and all those things.
But ultimately, it shouldn't...
feel i mean it sounds so dumb to say like oh if you love what you do you never work that's not true you work every fucking day of your life you do what you do but like it doesn't here's what don't listen to those fat cats who tell you that it has to suck and be out of your control yeah those green streets well it's like john paul sartre said you know the sydney green streets thanks sorry about that i just you sent me several fat men and then i wanted to send you sydney green street was the actor i was trying to remember
Yeah, Sydney Greenstreet, but also Jean-Paul Sartre for the Dodge Dartra.
Oh, that's pretty good.
Yeah.
I like that.
My friend had a swinger, which is a dart for girls.
No, the swinger is the car that I learned to drive on.
The swinger is the car you learned to drive on, and it's got a daisy on the side.
It's the daisy, the inner sound, y'all.
So I'm so glad that you asked and are interested in this, because I know that...
Not that many people that I've talked to have been just blanket interested without also having some spin they want to put on.
We just watched an old episode of The Simpsons, and I was so happy to see it.
It's a season I love, but it's a phrase I use all the time, and I sometimes lose track of where I first heard it.
It's when they have a leak in the basement.
Yeah.
Marge and Homer, and they have to call someone in the truck.
It says Stern Lecture Plumbing, right?
Which is the story of my life.
I'm just always getting a Stern Lecture from somebody.
That's what you're talking about.
You're talking about, well, I'm going to sit here and nod like somebody you work with and appear interested in your blah, blah, blahs while I'm just waiting for the opportunity to give you a Stern Lecture or tell you the thing I like to say in my document.
Stop telling people they're being scared of the wrong thing.
Stop telling people they're being scared wrong.
People who want to tell you you're not scared enough, right?
Right.
Is that part of it?
Well, it is.
You're not scared of the thing I am, and so I need to bring you around.
Yeah, and I'm not – and this is the thing, right?
The –
The Arab Jewish, the Palestinian Israeli, the Middle Eastern problems that everybody has a hot take on and everybody thinks they know how to fix and everybody knows who's the bad guy and everybody knows who to blame.
Like I honestly, even after a year – I'm sorry.
Even after a lifetime of my fingers soaking in the palm olive of all of that stuff –
Back in the old days when I was a kid in Open Time Magazine, I was like, who's Anwar Sadat?
Like all of that, I still am not prepared to sit on a toadstool and tell you what's wrong and what's right.
And I want more.
I want more information.
I want to go and stand there.
And I'm going to go on the tour where my Israeli tour guide takes me to places and goes, aren't we ashamed?
We are.
Anyway, back to Israel.
I'm going to go to that.
I'm going to watch the movies that you sent me.
I'm going to feel bad.
But I'm also going to not let myself be made to feel bad about a thing that I don't understand yet.
And that, I think, is key, right?
So part of it is the firsthand experience being in the place rather than just reading a pamphlet about it.
Well, and I feel like nowadays—
Nowadays, a lot of us are told which side we're on before we even read the top line of the manuscript.
And you go into learning new information already sure of what side you're on in it.
So as you read the information, you're just reading information to confirm that you're on the right side.
Right.
We none of us go into stuff now because there's nothing on Twitter that's like, hey, welcome to the story of the Ukraine war.
We're going to give you the none.
You know, like it's that's not how it happens.
It's all because there's no such thing as objective journalism or whatever.
Everybody's a partisan all the time.
And I feel like more and more.
That is just what people assume is how information is exchanged.
To the point where I don't have a strong opinion on whether I agree or disagree with what you're saying.
I do think it's interesting.
But it's also where I feel like – I'll speak for myself.
I feel like I'm always waiting to be challenged about like, well, let's establish your bona fides on why you're doing this and let's make sure you agree with me about why that is.
Yeah.
So, you know, even just going at all, you better have a persuasive, as Tom Wolfe would say, a persuasive theory about why it is you're going.
And it better align with my view on that before you even go over there to find your own information.
Yeah, this is some of the issue that I've been talking to people because I'm like, well, you know, I don't have a dog in that race, so I'm not going to bet on a dog.
And I hear back from people the kind of modern refrain, which is, well, if you don't go in picking a side, that means you've picked the wrong side.
And I go, I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know about that.
I am not, because I'm not wearing a keftia.
I can see why somebody would say that.
Yeah, it doesn't mean that I'm pro-genocide, pro-anybody's genocide.
Any side.
I'm not pro- Oh, that's pretty good.
Any side.
Huh.
C-I-D-E, right?
C-I-D-E.
That's pretty good.
But I don't know.
What does your college cost?
Yours is like $7,000, right?
Yeah.
Well, when I was going to the University of Washington, it was $700 a quarter, and you could take a full load.
That was in-state tuition.
That's funny, because it's usually the priests that like getting the full load.
You were saying.
No, so in-state tuition, which I kind of had to fight for.
Well, all I had to do was live in the state for a while before I enrolled.
Yeah, that's what Madeline did with Santa Cruz, yeah.
But, you know, $700 a quarter.
Now, I don't think that's what tuition at the University of Washington is today.
Oh, dear.
Oh, deary me.
We're starting to have conversations around this, and boy, it's very sweat-inducing.
Tuition.
Let's see.
Oh, so it's $40,000 out of state.
But look, in-state tuition is only $12,000 now.
You can do that standing on your head.
Yeah, $12,000.
Oh, my God, I got that here on the coffee table.
Just the right sink, just the right bounce.
But, of course, you've been putting $50 a month into your child's college fund since they were born, am I right?
Before I was born.
Yeah, so it's worth like a half a million dollars.
Oh, are you kidding me?
Yeah.
It's compound interest, you know?
Compound interest.
They can buy their first home in San Francisco right there in the Mission.
Just easy piece of lemon squeezing, nothing down.
Yeah.
Bad credit?
No credit?
Call me.
Oh, San Francisco.
One of the great cities.
So, I want to leave soon.
You are, but it's very important we fit this in.
Because, you know, I'm not even saying, just to be clear, I'm not even saying, like, yeah, what if something happens when you're there?
Yeah, yeah.
Because, you know, I hope something happens.
I hope it's nothing Roderick ending.
But we should get this all on the record.
Yeah, I typically do not.
You've got a good state of mind, it sounds like.
As you know, typically when things start happening, when rocks get thrown, when cars get overturned, like at a punk rock show, I always went to the front of the stage because I was trying to get hurt.
In a protest in Beirut or in Jerusalem, I am not going to go to the front.
Of the crowd, because I don't want, first of all, don't want to get hit with a rock.
And second of all, if you die on May the 4th or even like during Force Week, I guess it's probably called, I don't know.
Force Week.
Your kids, I mean, you know.
That's maybe week.
I mean, that's like, well, I don't want to say, but that's like a character in a TV show dying on the day of your wedding.
Like, you know, or like being born on 9-11.
I have a nephew that was born on 9-11.
Oh, ouch.
So everybody remembers.
I know a person that was born on Christmas and when they had a child.
My friend Dave, he hated being born on Christmas.
Born on Christmas.
But when she had a child, that child was born on the 4th of July.
Was it a masculine child?
Yeah, it was a masculine child.
Masculine child.
So, but, and this is the thing, my daughter's 12, right?
If I die in the Middle East, she will always remember me.
She will know.
And I've told her before, if for whatever reason, daddy doesn't make it back from the bathroom,
Remember this.
Planetary in Israel for me.
You will always be able to call.
Listen to the podcast.
Well, that.
You'll know everything about me.
Just go listen to my podcast.
But no, you will always be able to call upon me because I live in your memory.
So you're up there with Anakin and Obi-Wan.
I'm a force ghost.
Obi-Wan.
You can say, what would my dad say?
about this situation and you will know what I would say.
And then you can take my, you can take me into account as you make your decisions.
You know, I'm there.
I'll always, you're old enough to know who I am.
Your problem is you can't give, like I used to tell my kid, your problem is I trust you.
Like that's what you're dealing with.
What you're dealing with, a child who can't even understand my words because you're an infant, I trust you.
That's your problem.
In that case, you can't get rid of daddy.
Yeah.
Well, my dad's still around.
You can't force this force ghost out.
Oh, yeah, he's still there.
Counselor.
I don't consult my dad because he's there all the time anyway.
I'm not like, hey, dad, what would you do in this situation?
Because he's already told me.
He's there in the background going like, God damn it, don't let that guy get in front of me.
Don't sign that piece of paper.
Are you kidding me?
That's the last time I hear it.
I'm going to be so sad.
It gets weaker.
He's farther away.
Obi-Wan.
I have some photos of us together at a rock show.
You and my dad.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I wasn't his main hang.
Oh, what's your name?
That wonderful girl from a local girl who was a shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot.
The pretty girl with the pretty eyes was kind of like his main hang that night.
But I would I would I would dip in and out to hang out with your dad.
Oh, mom was there, too.
It was one of your big like homecoming shows.
And it was one of the times I got to spend like a more time than usual with your dad.
Well, you know, my mom, my mom and dad went to all our shows.
My mom would go to the front of the crowd and.
Immediately, a bunch of fans would recognize her and form a protective circle around her, which she would be unaware of.
We do that here with Steph Curry.
You form a protective circle?
Protective services, yeah.
And then, so my mom would sit there.
Marcia Protective Services.
And then if somebody was smoking a cigarette and blew smoke on her, she would turn around and go, you know, don't blow smoke on people.
And then my dad was always leaning against the back wall.
He was in the back holding court.
Going like, hey, you know, it's my son up there.
He's a good guy.
Hey, come here.
Hey, you.
Hey, come here.
So yeah, he, so they had very different methods.
And then when the show was over, my mom put on her little white backpack and was out of that venue and, and hiking her way back up Capitol Hill before the stage.
She doesn't need to hang out and meet Ira.
No post hang.
And my dad was there until, until they ran him out of the, you know, it was like, sir, where's the bathroom?
Hey, Hey, you, you still serving fries?
Oh,
I missed it the first time but you nailed it.