Ep. 510: "Dr. Pole"
Hello.
Hi, John.
Hi, Merlin.
How's it going?
Hi, Merlin.
Hi.
You doing all right?
Well, you know, I adjusted my settings.
Oh.
And it's much better.
Oh.
I'm sorry, now I'm adjusting mine.
Your audio settings.
Yeah, I adjusted my audio set.
Can you tell?
I mean, you know, when you got a Fabergé egg, you know, you don't tinker with it.
That's right.
Well, but wait, you just adjusted your settings, so you can't tell whether I adjusted mine because you adjusted yours.
Oh, my God.
The call is coming from inside the device.
The Fabergé egg.
Actually, wait, you do sound a little more present.
Ah, see?
No, no, no, but that wouldn't be a volume thing, right?
Would it?
Oh, maybe not.
Maybe you're right.
Maybe it's a presence.
Are you present?
It's a presence process.
I looked at that album yesterday, and I couldn't recognize a single song on it.
That's the one that doesn't have any recognizable songs.
I think that's the one, and it's got a cover by those clever boys in hypnosis, and it's people sitting around a table.
Yeah, I definitely went through a phase where I felt like, oh, if you're not listening to Presence, then you're not listening to Zeppelin.
But I mean, you know, In Through the Outdoor is very good.
And if you want kind of, you know, some post Houses of the Holy Fun.
You're saying if you want Weird Zeppelin.
Kind of, but like, isn't the first song on In Through the Outdoor in the evening?
And then, oh, my God.
I said something on the internet yesterday.
I'm a little screwed up, John, because I may have drank some acetone this morning.
So just keep an eye.
If anything seems off.
I've got 911 on speed dial.
Hit 911.
And then when you stop hearing me, hit the other one.
But I'm essentially like Dr. Jekyll, standing here with a flask in my hand going, huh.
How did this happen?
I mean, I don't want to derail you.
No, no, no, you please.
We don't have a sponsor this week.
That's funny.
I've got to turn this up.
My mix is wrong.
My pre and PC are... Keep talking.
Say something, please.
See, so that's what I did.
I adjusted my... Your mix.
My pre's.
Yeah, yeah.
All right, that'll be all right.
All right.
So Dr. Jekyll grabs the flask and goes, huh, is it doing anything for you yet?
It's like the first time you take acid or the first five times.
This isn't working.
This is faking too long.
Oh, shit.
Oh, John, John, John, John.
Can this be a wide-ranging conversation today?
I think.
I think.
I'm open to it.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
I discovered something very important about Clone Wars this week.
The cartoon?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right.
All right.
All right.
Well, I can do this one pretty quick, I think.
We're going through it.
We're doing Star Wars.
Does this have to do with Ezra?
Actually, this is better than Ezra.
It was good having with you.
It's going to be wide-ranging.
Yeah, yeah.
No, no, no.
Go.
All right.
Lemon yellow sun.
Hit me with a surprise laugh.
No, no, no, no.
Sherpa derp.
Sherpa derp.
Sherpa derp.
Or, of course, you know, they don't like to talk about it now because they seem all like, oh, we hate Ticketmaster.
We're anti-corporate.
But a lot of people won't remember.
Trader Joe's.
So I'm sitting here like the doctor.
Yeah.
Dr. Jekyll.
Yes, yes, yes.
And I think a lot of people get confused about that, including me.
But yeah, so anyway, we'll see how that goes.
Dr. Jekyll is not the bad one.
Dr. Jekyll is the nice one.
Well, this is the problem with giving one guy a cooler name.
A cooler name sounds like the badass.
Yeah, right.
But no, Dr. Jekyll's a normal doctor.
Well, we'll find out in a bit.
Yeah, you know, the thing is, I should probably be a little more, how does one say, Judaic about separating the things that I use for painting and brushes.
No, is this one where you had a fizzy water and a cup of acetone and they were in the...
Well, what had happened was this morning, I, you know, this is a, as you may know, yeah.
Are you aware that the times that I'm drinking a beverage here at the office?
No, because you always, because you have a, you have a, I got a, I got a, I got a rat pedal for my voice.
Yeah.
So you're, you click it.
Yeah.
I try, but still it's hard because I've got, I've got very small ice.
I've got pellet ice and it's noisy.
Oh, I see.
But what happened was this morning I came in and I was printing the show with my friend John Roderick.
And I had the foresight last night because I was doing some 3D printing at the office.
I had the foresight to make iced tea last night.
It doesn't need to be oven fresh.
It's okay if it's like overnight.
I don't want it like three days old.
Do you let it steep?
Do you steep it?
Yeah, I got a method.
I mean, what I do is, oh boy, it's kind of wide ranging already, isn't it?
Are you writing all this down?
We're only seven minutes in.
I'm sorry.
Okay, well, I'm going to start writing.
Okay, damn it.
You're the one that writes things down.
I do that.
I've never written a damn thing in the 12 years we've been doing the show.
Well, consider me to have been knocked over by a feather in the wind.
I have never even touched.
Proud, Arianne.
I have never touched a writing implement.
No, no, no, no.
No, you always do dictation.
You're in the studio.
Her skin is cinnamon.
Did you get that?
Did you?
Did you get that?
Hey, you!
It's okay.
He mostly speaks Farsi.
Anyways, so what happened was I came in this morning and I put some pellet ice and some tea and some wine.
So when I make it, what I do is I do three family-sized tea bags, they're called.
You know, I've been to your studio.
I know how it is.
I know that you're prepared.
I know you've got a 3D printer.
I know you've got a door, and then you've got another door.
Yep, yep, yep.
And you've got that door in the back to your special room.
It's basically, it's like a shotgun shack, like two, well, there are two doors, but there's only one means of egress.
Right, exactly.
And then there's a solo by Don Felder.
The second door.
The second door is just to separate you from the street noise.
Oh, boy.
You should see the latest.
Save that.
Oh, God.
Let me write it down.
The very latest is interesting because, as I said the other day, I think the Terreville Street corridor entirely has shifted.
They've done a pivot to what they call sustainable farming because there's dirt now in the middle of the road.
You understand?
It's all just dirt right now.
They did the bang-bang machine.
They broke it all up.
By the way, I did steal myself a piece of Terravel Street as a souvenir.
Did you put it in a frame?
Not yet.
I might 3D print it.
It could sit there on your desk, and then you could put your acetone on top of it, and that's how you'd know which cup was acetone, because it's on Terravel Street.
Okay, so this is something that's really useful, I think, is whenever you have to carry two of an identical thing, like glasses of water or a toothbrush, always hold the one that's yours in your right hand,
And then you always say to yourself, the moment your hands touch those, whether it's whatever it is, you say, I'm always right.
I'm always right.
So if you have to carry, because like, isn't this a thing with, especially like kids, somebody's, there's a sleepover, there's a pizza party and you don't know who's is who's and it gets confused.
And I'm always right is what you say.
That's my cigarette.
That's my flask.
I'm always right.
I'm always right.
And then you'll always be right.
Well, you know, here in this house, in this household, my household,
I made a point.
Wow.
You're a little touchy.
I made a, well, that's the thing.
It's nobody else's household, am I right?
No, no, no, no.
Better not be.
You find out that's somebody else's household, there's going to be some problems.
There's going to be hell to pay.
I don't have a bat.
You don't have a bat like that?
That's either the insurance company or the thing that Klingon fights with.
What?
A backflip?
The backflip?
Is that what you're saying?
But you find out.
You know, fuck around and find out is what they say.
No, I said I don't have a bat.
I don't have anything living here with me.
I just chose bat.
It could have been anything.
Oh, I see.
It sounded weird.
I should have said deer or porcupine.
I heard a good one.
I heard a good one recently.
When somebody... You know the funny thing...
Okay, so somebody says, we.
And then the racist joke that you would make a long time ago is you'd say, what do you mean, we, Kemosabe?
Yeah, right.
I heard a really good one, I think on a podcast.
Somebody says, oh, we need to do that.
Like you say to me, for example, let's say, oh, we need to change the way 50 things work.
And then I would go, let me do it, let me do it, let me do it.
Okay.
Hey, we need to change how 50 things work.
Huh, we?
Is there a mouse in your pocket?
Yeah.
Isn't that cute?
You say to somebody, is there a mouse in your pocket?
Because what constitutes we?
Wouldn't that be cute if you had a little mouse in your pocket and then take it out just for that?
Oh, so it's not a joke about the sound that a mouse makes.
No, no.
It's about what you mean, we, Kemosabe.
You understand?
How are you using we?
Oh, because you have a mouse in your pocket.
You're talking about you and your mouse.
Yeah, I thought it was funny.
But it had some acetone in it, I think.
Just a tiny little bit of residual acetone.
Oh, no, wait, but I was going back to my household.
Oh, God, your household.
Yeah, the only thing I wanted to say was, when I first established my own household,
I just made an aesthetic choice that none of my cutlery or platery or glassery was going to match any other.
That is such a crucial decision because once you have two of something that looks the same and everything else doesn't look the same, you've lost the wabi-sabi.
That's right.
You can't have two of anything.
Also, that's technically a collection when you got two.
See?
But it's also a collection when nothing matches.
That's the point.
If two things match and five things don't, then you just are a jumble.
Then you're a yard sale.
But if nothing matches, then it's a collection.
Yard sale.
You're just a yard sale.
I love that.
So anytime you're taking three glasses of something to somebody, you've got none of them are even the same shape.
You just remember your daughter is Bambi glass.
Your daughter is partner mother.
Exactly.
So this glass came from a 1970s Pizza Hut giveaway and it has Tweety Bird on it.
It came from Arby's where it came from.
This one over here says no soup.
It's from a local eatery.
Local eatery.
And then this one is from my dad's fraternity.
You crossed it out and it now says you're in my household.
It says Y Gamma Delta.
I was the dandy of Gamma Chi.
No, you were not.
Yeah, way back when, 67.
Wasn't that cute?
Queer vocal.
That was before you joined the Navy.
Yeah, I sailed the seven seas.
I sure did.
Okay.
So I'm always right.
You're always right.
Well, I don't know, man.
I think it's handy.
But anyway, I could probably do better at that.
I think it's if I drank acetone I mean drank I think it's probably you know like when people say they want a dry martini and then you like just swish around a little bit of vermouth and then throw it out throw it out like Hawkeye Pierce or whatever yeah and that's a pretty good way to make a martini as long as you don't put vodka in it because that's not a martini
it feels so it feels so precious i was looking at a thing the other day where that's my acetone that's my acetone well but you have to you have to know when you drink acetone right wouldn't you wouldn't once you had consumed it wouldn't you go oh that i read about it today i read this morning about a guy florida man i read a guy who's a a phd chemistry student in tamp tampa or you know he goes to usf so it must be near tampa
It might be in loots, but there was a stinky smell coming.
His neighbors were like, what's this stinky smell?
And they'd had noise complaints.
It turns out they set up a camera and saw this guy shooting chemicals under their door.
Whoa.
You can see the guy.
I think he's wearing a fanny pack, if memory serves.
And he's got a syringe, and he's also Johnny Chemistry, hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium, et cetera.
Yeah.
And he's shooting that under the door.
So who knows?
You could also do this with poisons on the door.
Like the guy in the movie where you have a little poison.
You probably did this as a spy trainee.
So you got to decide, like, what's my poison going to be?
Is this going to be Icarus stars or decathlon hydrochloride or whatever?
Is that where what's my poison phrase came from?
I don't know.
If you walk into a bar and say... I want your poison.
Is it just a holdover from when spies used to meet at private bars and exchange information?
What's your poison?
Yes, kind of like in the John Wick thing.
I bet you go there and you do get a nice drink.
And maybe what they do is they make... Well, don't call it a martini because if it doesn't have vermouth, it's not a martini.
Thank you.
But maybe you swish around a little bit of...
Acetone?
Your poison.
Oh.
Throw it out.
Top that off with some, I don't know.
What's a gin?
Michael Bublé.
I think that's a gin.
That's how you develop immunity to Iocane powder.
That's the one.
You do a little bit every time.
Yep.
Land war in Asia.
See?
And death on the line.
Now I understand.
I understand so much.
All right.
Yeah, that's – anyway, take whatever's useful, you guys.
Like, you know, if it helps you – if you're trying to not drink acetone if you're on the wagon, like, be careful what you throw away and what you keep.
Sure, sure, sure, sure.
I mean, I'm recalling this event that happened.
I was standing out –
You know, in my hometown, there was a strip.
Was there a strip in your town?
Did people cruise the strip?
Like a main drag, my mom would call it.
Yeah, but did they, on Friday night?
Oh, you mean like a Modesto George Lucas kind of drag?
Yeah, with all the hot rod cars go up one end and come down the other.
Well, we would go, if we wanted to do that, we would go to Clearwater Beach.
And that was the place where people would drive around in their cars.
But we didn't personally, I don't think we had one of those that I was aware of.
We're talking about here in Alaska?
oh yeah oh yeah the alaskan drag they call it all through uh all through the 70s and 80s and i don't know when it ended but uh downtown not downtown i'm sorry northern lights boulevard going one direction okay and uh and benson come in the other direction these are four lane roads four or five lane roads
Each one, separated by a block.
So they're roads, right?
Oh, full on.
Yeah.
Well, because Alaska was built, or Anchorage especially, was built, you know, post-car.
And actually during the era of big American cars.
So big, big roads.
Plus probably trucks, right?
Probably have a lot of trucks go through there.
You know, honestly, I was explaining this to my daughter the other day.
In America...
We did not drive trucks as non-working vehicles.
We did not drive them as family vehicles.
You looked like a farmer.
If you had a pickup truck when I was a kid, you looked like a farmer.
And so my kid was saying, well, what did you drive?
And I said, we drove big-ass American cars, and you drove a truck if you were at work.
And she said, but are those big American cars good in the snow?
And I said, not at all, not even a little bit.
And then her mother was interrogation.
What do you want me to get a time machine?
What am I supposed to do?
I'm just telling you the story, you little shit.
Her mother said, what kind of car did your dad have?
And I said, he had a Cadillac DeVille.
He's not a farmer.
We had a four-door Pontiac Catalina.
Before that, we had a two-door Pontiac.
pontiac uh what was it we had it was it was a two-door with the heaviest next to the the oldsmobile cutlass i think the heaviest doors in the world of course you drove it and it was terrible and they didn't work they were bad cars the cars that we drove in the late 70s because we were committed to american cars everybody but my uncle bill who had all he had a jag and a vw a bug what oh my god yeah he was cool in world war ii what the hell what what is he doing
People are alive right now.
You know what I'm saying?
He's giving his money to the Nazis.
Look at the Nazis.
They had to turn in their inner tubes.
You were a Pontiac family.
I didn't know that.
Yeah.
Well, what's funny is my, I don't see, I'm not going to look this up, but I, you know, this is the stuff you're told.
There's the stuff you're told and there's the stuff you remember.
And a lot of it's wrong.
But I know there was something having to do with my late grandfather who died in 1946.
He had something to do with an AMC dealership.
So that particular cell of the family, like my god, my grandmother's last automobile before she died was an AMC.
Is there such a thing as a Rambler?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
But it has those doors.
It has those door openers like a, like a, like a gremlin, you know, the little finger grab door handles.
You know what I'm talking about?
Like gremlins and pacers.
Yeah.
So I think they had, I think that's what it's called.
It was a bit of comfortable enough.
I think a four door, but yeah.
So that's why in those cases, also we all had, we all had license plates that were sequential, which I thought was kind of cute.
And you did that on purpose, or they did that because you lived in a small place?
Well, I shouldn't say for OPSEC, but 1111CA, 2222CA, 3333CA, us, my uncle, uncle's family, and my grandparents.
Oh, see, that's some American... That's some American shit.
That's some Ohio shit.
That's American Ohio shit.
Imagine getting a... You couldn't write it.
Well, especially because now, like...
God, you know, I guess Teslas have become more available than they'd been.
So like everybody around here drives a Tesla and they almost all have custom license plates to try to spell something funny.
I think it's kind of boss to get a license plate that doesn't spell anything.
You know what I'm saying?
Do you know your license plate?
Of the car my wife drives?
Yeah, of your current car.
Oh, per car, yeah.
But, I mean, you have it memorized.
I need help sometimes.
She taught me a mnemonic about it.
And it's such a dumb... Yeah.
Do you know your credit card number?
I know your credit card number.
I know you do because you're on the internet.
You're on the dark web.
You're behind seven proxies and you found all my information.
I'm behind seven modems.
14-4.
I don't know that.
As I told the lady at the bookstore last week, I think I know two phone numbers now mostly.
I know a few phone numbers.
I know my cell number.
You know every single phone number from your childhood.
I demonstrated that for her on the spot.
I'm not going to say, because, again, this is already what they call a honeypot on the dark web.
Oh, sure, sure, sure.
I'll just say it starts with 513, and then there's seven digits after that.
The mighty 513.
I probably have 60 phone numbers still rattling around in there.
None of them have been working since 1990, but they're all there.
That's so interesting to me.
That's just wild that you can't reclaim those blocks for something... Etched.
Well, just something like, oh, is Dope Sick on Hulu?
I never remember.
I would rather have that than know a phone number.
Oh, by the way, speaking of something on Hulu, so I was on the internet somewhere.
I was on some message board, local message board.
Okay, okay.
And they said... A BBS, right?
Yeah, it was a BBS.
Yeah.
It's like a knitting group that I'm in.
It's called KnitNet.
It's the KnitNet.
Okay.
And somebody said, oh, you know, because I'm always saying in various places like, oh, I really I don't know how to decide what to watch for TV.
You are giving me recommendations all the time, but I forget to write them down.
I don't have them in one place.
That's on me.
And so I sit down.
Jason and I started a shared notes document for this.
So maybe you and I could do that as well.
That's the thing.
And if we did that, I wouldn't know where to find it, but I would know it was there.
Maybe I could give it to a more responsible person.
I'll have someone look up the phone number for you.
But so I was sitting in front of the TV and I remembered, oh, somebody on the discourse message board said that I needed to watch The Last of Us.
Or no.
Was it that?
Something like that.
HBO zombie show with Pedro Pascal?
Okay, so that was what we ended up with.
So they did say that we should watch something about a spaceship that was going to Mars.
And we tried to watch that, but I didn't like the guy's hat.
And so I was like, I can't.
We watched four episodes.
That's a deal killer.
This guy with the hat, I can't do it.
That's one bad hat, Harry.
So they said, we should watch this show.
And so I turned it on.
I like Pedro Pascal.
I like everybody.
I'm halfway through the first episode.
Did you recognize the girl?
It was enjoyable.
No.
Lady Mormont.
Lady Mormont.
Lady Mormont from the show where everybody wears fancy clothes?
Mm-hmm.
Oh, no, that wasn't.
So that's Lady Mormont.
She's the one who says, Ned Stark's blood runs in his veins.
Jon Snow is king of the north.
No.
Wow.
That's a little girl from what's called Turtle Island, or is that the Gary Snyder book?
It's from an island.
Well, so no, but wait, wait, wait, wait.
No, I didn't even get to that girl because I'm only in the first episode.
Yeah.
And, um, and, uh, and halfway through it, it turns into a zombie movie where people are like biting each other's faces and stuff.
And there's upsetting mushrooms.
No, no, no.
The mushrooms are very upsetting.
It doesn't get less upsetting.
Well, that's the thing.
I didn't like it.
Yeah.
I don't blame you.
I don't.
So we're halfway through and I said, whoa, whoa, whoa, stop this.
And so we paused and I said, I didn't, I didn't sign off to watch this.
How'd your partner mother feel?
Well, who knows?
You know, she's just.
Is she inscrutable about TV?
Well, she watches it.
And so, so it's a more, I think the relationship is more, more passive in the sense of just like, I, I. Oh boy.
I can't relate to that.
Oh, and I and I'm no no listen well Chris Fleming does this bit about how for five dollars you can buy Raspberries or a gerbil.
Could you please just it's like five minutes.
Could you please just watch this?
Mm-hmm.
My wife is busy looking at what I call sad Twitter because occasionally I just hear her going oh
I'm like, oh, what happened?
Oh, a baby was born without arms, and they tried to attach dogs to it, and now it lives in space.
Oh, God, what a shame.
Why is she doing this?
This is her kink.
Oh, is this like the gals that come home from work and watch the pimple popper ladies?
I became aware of that recently.
Yeah.
When I was flipping through, one of our garbage services, cord cutter services, has just fuck tons of channels that, John, I'm just going to say a phrase, and I hope this doesn't sound unkind.
It's basically hotel room channels.
And it's a lot of things about people who wash boats or people who throw wine on each other.
It's just a lot of that stuff.
And then I saw there's one.
Oh, Incredible Dr. Pole.
I don't know what that is, but the National Geographic Channel has it on.
It's my nickname in college.
Wait, hang on.
Did you just do a pun on hole?
I'm not a real doctor.
I am a real pole.
I am a real pole.
I think I'm getting good.
I can handle criticism.
But Dr. Thin and the marathon all day, it's Dr. Paul.
Dr. Paul.
I want to see fan art of Dr. Paul.
But then there was a pimple popper MD or whatever it's called.
I'm like, so this is really a thing.
I thought this was just like a YouTube thing.
I thought so too, but I know a gal.
A gal pal.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, who says after a hard day's work, she comes home and nothing helps her unwind like a little lady cocktail and Dr. Pimple Popper.
It's people who have pretty bad, like, we're talking about whiteheads here, right?
Or blackheads or whatever.
Oh, yeah, but some of them are just like.
But don't they have like a lot of them and some of them are really big?
I think I saw a photo one time, but I've tried to block it out.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's a whole thing.
So I was trying to figure out what it was, so I sat down, again, with my little girl, because I wanted her to experience the wide breadth of human experience.
You know, you don't just teach the good news, John.
That's exactly it.
Teach the controversy, is what I assume Howard Zinn said.
The thing is, you know, she is just entering into her teen years, and so she's very curious about pimples, because she's starting to get little ones on her nose, and she's like, what's going on with this?
And I'm like, well, listen, pimples are an opportunity.
Pimples are an opportunity.
Yeah, they're not a mistake.
They're an opportunity state.
Oh, is it sort of like you with the cigarettes on the door jam?
Don't touch it.
Don't touch it.
It'll get infected.
You pop it.
You get a scar.
No, so a lot of people believe that.
All the lady people in her life are like, don't pop your pimples.
Don't touch them.
Because you're going to give yourself scars and all the stuff.
We've all agreed that this is something you should be scared about.
Yeah, they jump all over.
Pimples.
And, you know, and so I'm the I'm the voice that's like, popping pimples is fine.
I've been doing it my whole life and I don't have any.
I mean, I'm sure I look how I turned out.
I look a little battle scarred, but it's not from popping pimples.
Shit.
No from other things.
Oh, God.
Yes.
And so there's nothing quite as great as, you know, dealing with some of these things.
It takes a while.
You've got to learn a certain kind of confidence and follow through.
I think, again, of the great Bruce Lee who says, you know, first of all, don't hit boards.
That's silly.
But if you're going to hit a board, your fish should be aimed like five inches behind the board.
Right, through the board.
You're going through.
It's sort of like in, what did I just watch?
Oh, we just watched the Star Wars.
Was it Star Wars?
No.
You were talking about Ezra.
It was good, but there's one where somebody hyperspaces.
Oh, you know what it was?
It was the last person on the ship and yeah Yeah, it was Laura Dern and she hyperspaces through all the bad guys.
Do you remember that?
Oh, yeah, I do.
It's kind of a badass scene Yeah, yes, but like that's what we're talking about here You need to get Laura Dern your way through that shit.
Like don't try to hit My hands gonna hit the board.
Well, don't hit boards.
That's silly
You break your hand doing that.
But if you're going to hit the board, hit five inches behind the board.
Yes.
Or something.
So I'm explaining a lot of that to her.
But you do it on your own, though.
You can't do it while the others are around, right?
They can't be around because they're going to yell at me and they're going to say, no, don't let it happen.
You're outnumbered.
But I'm like, listen, here's the thing.
You have to understand about pimples.
Each one has the
its own architecture there there's nothing uniform about them you have to understand what's going on inside the pimple before you can even begin to to know what's and then you're going to find ones that really hurt and then the next day they're gone what happened sebaceous without us wow just it's a freebie take it when you say us do you mean is there a mouth in my pocket
Did you sleep a lot last night?
We're playing put differently.
Did you sleep well last night?
You seem oddly cogent today.
I played a music festival yesterday.
I drove two hours to Port Townsend.
Here we go.
Here we go.
We throw it in Merlin's face.
Oh, hey, have you ever heard of this band?
I did a big rock show.
Oh, yeah, there's this band.
I don't know if you ever heard of them.
That's like me going, oh, Rob Halford.
I just had some drinks.
Are you referring obliquely to the fact that I stood next to the side of the stage and watched a whole Beth's?
show yesterday?
Yeah, whatever.
Talked to him in the line at the catering.
You maybe got to meet Liz and she knew you from music you'd done?
Yeah, she was like, oh yeah, aren't you the one?
So that was all fine.
But then of course I had to drive two hours home with my family and then sit and watch half of a zombie TV show before I was like, I'm punching out of this.
I don't want to watch this.
How did your kid feel about it?
about the zombie show no she doesn't get to watch zombie show oh she's sorry okay that's a that's a dan showed his kid uh the the logan movie which is a hard r showed it to him when it first came out that's a rough movie and it's really it's like you've ate or something it's one of those ones where they said you know sort of gloves are off like when you're when you're unleashed that's a very good movie that wasn't patrick steward great was and and uh laura the little girl x23 wasn't she great
She was great.
She's on the HBO Golden Compass show.
You know?
Put that on the list of the ones I'm supposed to watch.
Well, you really need to.
Have you watched Patriot yet?
Or how many times have I suggested?
Have you watched Patriot yet?
You suggested it.
And I watched the first season of Patriot.
Oh, shit.
Never mind.
Okay.
Okay.
That's all fine.
So Pimples are Opportunities, Dr. Pole, NitNet.
I think you've got the ball.
You're writing all this down.
I've got to remember it somehow.
I can't just go listen to the whole thing all the way through.
Sure, sure, sure.
I mean, I could.
I could do a lot of things.
Cruising the Strip in Anchorage.
Oh, right.
It used to be a super, super big deal.
Four lanes of traffic, but for...
Two miles in either direction stop-and-go traffic every single car on the strip is some kind of hot-rodded
Like muscle car or crazy.
And each one has five teens in it.
Is it like a low rider type culture?
Well, it's Alaska.
You can't have low riders.
So it's like a white guy version of low riders.
Oh, I see what you're saying.
No, I mean like, you know.
Can't get over the snow berm.
Well, there's been like, there's a big Mexican-American community thing to car shows.
They just had one in the Mission recently that's like a really big deal.
Right?
I mean, it's like Morrissey, right?
People are like oddly into it.
So there wasn't any kind of clubs.
It was just the place to be, like the mall for me.
Yeah, and it was American car culture, and maybe the last... I mean, by 1985, I don't know if that was still happening around America.
Well, by 1985, you know what you got, buddy?
What?
You're two or three years into...
You mean like Richard Lloyd?
Tom Verlaine.
Oh, no.
No one in Alaska had ever heard of Tom Verlaine.
No, no, no.
Even now, I don't.
They see no evil.
But the, wait, what was I saying?
Television?
Oh, you were saying something happened in the 80s that we were two years into.
You know what it was?
I feel like, because my girlfriend and I used to talk about this, like there were cars, there was two developments that we would talk about a lot.
First of all, there was those Toyota-esque cars in, say, 83, 84, where the back looked like an ATM.
It was kind of like Nissans.
They started looking like an ATM in the back.
But the biggest bad development was when all the Fords, a lot of the luxury sedans, all started looking like ibuprofen.
Oh, yeah.
My mom called it the lozenge era.
Do you remember when they first redid?
1984 Thunderbird, of course.
My next-door neighbor had one.
It was such a bummer.
And she calls it the porpoise era, the lozenge era of American cars.
She said we like box on box you put a box on top of a box.
Yes, that's the kind of cars we drive cars that ship two boxes in a driver hole Yeah, two boxes in a driver hole not a lozenge.
You're not trying to put it's not a suppository What am I what am I future space like what am I doing in this thing?
Do you remember when cop cars went from box on a box tilt to to suppository?
My girlfriend's father was a deputy and he brought his car home.
So she got to see it right outside her front window.
All the time.
I swear to Christ.
He was a Pasco County Sheriff.
I think that's right.
He might have been Newport Ritchie Police.
But anyway, he was a cop and he drove his car home.
And we got to see it go from box on a box with a cop hole.
Two bits to being yeah to to to getting that weird rounded the crown Vicks even got that weird rounded look Barf But what I'm trying to say is like do you want to who's gonna that's not fun to just go and drive those or you go if people are there But you're not gonna wait you showing off your ibuprofen.
That's unseemly Well, that was what was oh it was it was RoboCop RoboCop was the was the first time remember when they had the new cop cars and
But they weren't actual cop cars yet.
What was it called?
The SUX 2000 or something?
Yeah, they got the advanced versions of it to use in the movie RoboCop because they looked so futuristic.
Oh, interesting.
No kidding.
Yeah, so they weren't on the streets yet.
They just got some, because it's like a Detroit movie.
They got these modern bubble cars.
And then two years later, every time, all the taxis were driving, you know, looked like that.
And it was like, oh, the future is here.
Really, really, really ugly cars.
That's the future.
Yeah.
Yeah, it used to be also that, like, it's funny, I had a friend in college who grew up in Colorado and went to see you, and he said, you know, because the thing is, you know this, right?
Like, you're old enough to remember that if you see lights, pretty bright lights in your rearview mirror, and they're square, or like rectangular, there's a pretty good chance it's a cop car.
Yes.
Like at the time I was around and thinking and worrying and fussing about things.
You know what I'm saying?
And like, but then also you could.
So you get to memorize what headlights look like.
Yeah.
Of your enemy.
And it takes you decades to unlearn.
Look at that Errol Morris movie.
That Errol Morris movie is kind of just about the shape of like Dodge Headlights.
That was clear and present blue line.
That one.
But anyway, and then the other one was, if you were real good and you had the eyes of the young, you could sometimes clock whether there was, what do they call it, a banana machine on top of the car?
And Chris said it was hard in Colorado because why?
Ski racks.
Yes.
Oh, yes.
I remember it well.
They had 3-2 beer legally at 18.
Is that what it's called?
3-2 beer?
3-2, yeah.
They called it near beer when I was a kid.
Yeah, 3-2 beer.
You could drink it all day.
Terrible, terrible stuff.
Yeah.
Yeah, well, then the cops then, and they still have it now, they use those low-profile light bars.
It's up there, but it's like, I can't tell what that is.
But, you know, you learn so many things.
Like, oh, I was on the road yesterday.
Yeah.
And...
And my daughter's mother slash partner was like, is that a cop?
Because all the cops are driving Ford SUVs now.
So they look like everybody else.
I know.
And she said, is that a cop?
And I said, no, look at the license plate.
The cops have special license plates.
In Florida, it became a problem how many different, very obvious license plates there were.
The most famous example was all rental cars.
I think it started with, I want to say, a letter Y. I forget.
But anyway, people would just hang out.
At least the lore was that the no-goodniks would hang out near the exit of the Miami airport and just look for cars that were obviously a rental car because of the license plate.
Oh.
And what would they do?
Treat it like a fucking pinata, with all respect.
If you've just been flying somewhere and got a rental car and you're driving on the highway, that's a pretty probably non-resistant person to rob.
Oh, I see what you're saying.
I don't know.
That's what they say.
Anyway, so look at the plates.
Now in Washington... Wait, was this from the era where they said, don't flash your lights at a car without their lights on because they're gangsters and they're going to kill you?
Totally.
And there was a rest stop in Florida where some shenanigans like that happened.
But then also, it's like, no, no, I was flashing my lights because every time there's a guy in your backseat with a knife...
And I flashed the lights, and that way he would duck back down.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Was it Mr. Clickety-Clack?
He had a hook for a hand.
Yeah.
Oh, you mean Freddy Krueger?
You know, Rod Stewart had to have seven gallons of semen pumped up.
I know he did.
Spider eggs and bubblegum.
I remember where I was when I first heard it.
I do, too.
I was at Ann Weigle Elementary outside Mrs. Huseman's class when someone told me that.
I will always, from 1978, I will always remember that.
That is incredible.
I absolutely remember where I was.
I was standing next to the tennis courts in the parking lot of Wendler Junior High School.
See?
That's just like Eric all over again.
It is.
It is.
And I was like, wow, what?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Dr. Pohl, pimples are opportunities.
Your house is your house.
Yeah.
Uh-huh.
Oh, but so the thing about cruising the Strip in Anchorage is that before you could drive...
You're riding, right?
You're the passenger.
You ride, you ride, you ride, and you ride.
And so the first time you cruise the Strip, well, probably the first time, you're a kid and your dad is taking you somewhere on a Friday night.
Right.
And he's like, God damn it.
Oh, that's such a weird feeling when you're somewhere with your parents that's cool.
Yeah, and it's like, oh, all around us, they're, you know, like jacked up SS Novas.
And your dad is like, beep, beep, get out of the way.
People cursing and bottles of beer and stuff.
You know, the first time that you're cruising the strip where you're a 15-year-old or 14 or 15, and you're riding in the back seat of some...
older kids car and you're watching it all happen and you know it's it's just it's uh it's a place it's a it's a universe that doesn't exist anymore it's it was it was so exciting especially when you're not old enough to drive and your friends are it's so exciting incredible and then the first time you actually are in your own car boy you are piloting yourself down the strip oh wow so all of those major major uh moments in my life
But then later on, after you're out of high school and you are cruising the strip as a as a elder teen.
All right.
All right.
Even someone in their young, young 20s.
And you're like, that's what I love about high school girls.
Mm hmm.
It starts to be.
They never press charges.
It starts to be a little sad.
It starts to be a little pathetic.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But you don't have much of a window, kind of, right?
By the time you can afford a car that you can afford and be out there with, it's already a little bit like, hmm, you know.
Well, but it's a class thing, right?
Because if you're a motorhead, you're going to be cruising the strip as long as they let you cruise the strip because you're a motorhead.
That's what you're doing.
I mean, you're working on your car all week.
What are you going to do with it if not take it down and show it off?
But if you're somebody like me, a kid on a college path, a kid that took French in high school, at a certain point, you're going to be like, why am I not a doctor yet?
I should be a doctor, or at least I should be studying to be a doctor.
And instead, I'm sitting out here smoking weed on the strip.
You know, it becomes an issue.
It does.
It does.
I was thinking this morning.
I was thinking about something this morning when I was getting some prints off the 3D printer.
And I was thinking, like, I'm not saying.
You mean some fingerprints?
No.
Are you dusting for prints on a 3D printer?
Models.
I really just about covered it.
Just one more question.
Why did you have all this blue plastic molded?
I was thinking that this is not a good... I would not use this as an ongoing parameter for your life, but you're kind of lucky in life.
People get mad at you in life.
I don't know if you know that.
Sometimes people get mad at you in life.
And consider yourself lucky if everybody's mad at you for different reasons.
Go on.
Explain that.
Well, I feel like when everybody's mad at you for the same reason, like, that's... Oh, maybe they're right.
I don't know.
Who's to say who's right?
If everybody's mad at you for the same reason, they might have a point, but if everybody's mad at you for a different reason... No, I mean, I'm talking more in terms of, like, real politic.
Like, shit, they're probably talking to each other about you.
And they're all like, oh, that thing.
He does that thing.
He or she or they do that thing.
And you're like, I know.
I've been talking to them about the thing.
And you know what I mean?
Do you think that people talk about me like my friends talk about me with each other?
Wait, say that again?
Do you think... You're one of my friends.
I hope so.
Do you think that my friends talk about me with each other?
Do they say things like, oh, John, can you believe that guy?
Gosh, I don't even want to say anything because I'm very... I don't know if you've ever picked this up about me, but I don't want to know fucking anything about anybody.
No, I know.
You're very circumcised.
Do you know how actively I...
Just I'm repelled by any kind of, you could call it gossip, but I would call it talking about somebody behind their back.
I really don't like doing that.
Are you asking me if I know that about you?
Well, that's if you know that about everybody.
Do I know about you that you don't like to gossip?
Yes, I do know.
Okay.
But I imagine they do.
I mean, you know a lot of people and you're really interesting.
Yeah.
Oh, but I mean, like, I've always, so one time, I was with you, in fact.
We were playing Sketchfest.
We were down in that part of lower San Francisco, down there by the pyramid building.
Right.
Where that little theater, that little black box theater.
Yeah, yeah, that place, that Embarcadero adjacent theater.
Yeah, and we were standing out in front of the place, and there was a, you know, a motley group of people that we've known a long time.
A little ragtag fugitive fleet of friends.
And somebody makes reference to the fact that I have an unusual walk, a gate, an unusual gate.
Oh, dear.
And I was like, I have an unusual gait?
And then everybody laughed.
What?
And I said, you know, there's half a dozen people.
And I was like, what?
There's something about my gait that is distinctive?
And then each one proceeds to do... An impression?
What is clearly a long...
Practiced.
Oh, John.
I don't walking down the street.
No, and what one each subsequent one was a comical in implementation a lot of the walks Yes, and each one makes everyone crack up even harder because they're all variations on Apparently I look like when I'm walking down the street and we were we aware that you have an unusual walk.
Oh
I was not aware of it.
Let's take it further.
Were you aware that you have an unusual walk that's unusual enough that people impersonate it and they recognize it as your walk?
Not only not that.
I just did an Edgar.
What's the guy's name?
Who's the guy?
The guy from the Chief Wiggum guy.
Shit.
What's the guy's name from 30s movies?
Edward G. Robinson.
Edward G. Robinson.
So if I go, I mean, like, and of course, it's so well known as an accent that if you do it wrong, it can be funny.
You know?
Or like, you go like, because like, it's so clear that's Edward G. Robinson.
That's kind of how he talked.
And people who've seen gangster movies would know that's how he... Yeah.
Yeah.
Change it.
It's the cops.
Right?
It's...
You spend your day, I was about to say walking around, but I think it's a little soon for that.
You spend your day ambling with your unusual gait, not knowing that people are out there impersonating you.
And it's an amble.
That's exactly what they were doing.
They were ambling.
And it was a thing that... And I said, well, do you have impersonations of other aspects, right?
Like my voice or whatever?
Everybody had a walk.
That was the thing.
It's not like Jason Finn where all you have to do is go and everybody knows what you're talking about.
No, nobody had that.
He does kind of talk like that a little bit.
How do you imitate my husky baritone?
It's not, or not baritone, but, you know, it's hard to do.
You don't think you have a baritone?
Do I have a baritone?
You think you have a tenor?
Husky, oh, clearly not a tenor.
Husky baritone.
Husky baritone.
It's hard to.
So that's that band where the guys have beards, right?
Husky baritone.
What a great stage name that would be.
I'm husky.
Husky bear.
But so the walk apparently like my hands are turned a certain way.
I'm like my feet are.
Everybody had a walk and I had no.
I'm from here.
John.
I mean, how would these people know how you walk?
That's weird.
Well, apparently it's so distinctive that everybody.
And so.
So what it was was when a bunch of people are standing around talking and somebody is telling a story about me, then somebody does the walk and everybody laughs.
And I had, at 45 years old, or however old I was at this time, I had no idea that I either had a distinctive walk or that everybody would know it and recognize it.
It's like finding out that you have a nickname that everybody has used for you for years that you've never heard.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
If I have one, don't tell me.
I don't want to know any of this.
There's no benefit.
You and I are impossible to nickname because you're Merlin Mann.
Don't give the internet a puzzle, John.
Never give the internet a puzzle.
No, please tell John.
I think I could really have some great success with that if I could do the funny with man.
The man name is very funny.
Garbage man.
Everybody knows not to email you or at reply you.
Shut up.
Shut up.
I like people.
I just sent you a photo of my kid with a baby.
Oh, oh, oh.
You can see.
And also, I wanted to send you what the road looks like right now.
But that, boy, I have so many things.
Husky baritone.
That's weird.
You know, I feel like I have this project that's about things I've had to learn with much difficulty over time.
And one of the ones I'm still kind of banging my head around is this, you know, don't tell people.
But one of them is just don't remark on people's appearance.
Like, if you can avoid it, try not to remark on people's appearance.
And there's a thing that people say that I think is mostly a pretty nice thing, which is only compliment people on things that were a choice.
But also, just maybe don't talk about the way people look.
That's not nice.
You know, one that I really believe to be true is, and you feel free to disagree with this, never tell anyone that they look like someone else.
Oh.
That will, like, give me an example where that turns out great.
Because here's what most of them are.
And let's just keep it simple and say it's a guy saying that to a guy.
Because the whole guy saying that to a girl thing is a whole other thing.
But a guy saying to another guy, like, oh, you know, oh, you look like Joe Rogan.
Or whatever.
It's like, oh, fuck, man.
Do I look like George?
Or like, hey, you look like George Clooney.
But no matter what, you're like an ugly George Clooney.
People who say that to girls, you're never not going to sound like an insane creep.
What do you say?
Oh, you look like Rosie O'Donnell.
Or like, oh, my God, you look like Cheryl Teagues.
Why don't you just take your dick out and masturbate right in front of her?
For a long time, the two things I heard were, oh, you're just like James Spader.
In the 80s?
Yeah, in the 80s.
Or Kiefer Sutherland.
And those were the two movie stars that I heard all the time.
Kiefer Sutherland and James Bader.
And I was like, well... I'm suddenly remembering.
I'm not going to say it.
I am suddenly remembering there is, in fact...
A person whom you do not prefer to be compared to in terms of looks.
Oh, that's an old, no, you can't, that's terrible.
Right?
Am I right?
I'm not going to say it, but that's, you get what I'm, no, no, but you get what I'm saying now, right?
Oh, for sure.
People say it to you, it's like, hey, you look like this and such, and you're like, oh, man, well, no offense, but like, what?
Oh.
It's Eric's water fountain.
Now it's in your head.
Thankfully, until you just mentioned it, I had almost completely erased that from my mind.
Now it's back.
No, it's not back because we didn't say what it was.
George Clooney.
I watched Pretty in Pink with my little girl, and when the movie started, I said, oh, there's a guy in this movie.
I'm totally the guy.
I'm totally this guy.
Yeah.
And she was like, which guy?
And I was like, you'll see.
You'll see.
And so she didn't think that.
So the movie starts.
We're watching it.
I'm like, I don't know whether to shit or go sailing.
What a great line.
And all of a sudden, I realized James Spader is awful.
He's an awful, awful person in this movie.
His name is Blaine.
And I kept saying to her, no, no, no, I'm not anything like him.
Because what people used to say was, not only do you look like James Bader, but you are that character.
Okay, you know what?
That's preppy clothes.
Preppy clothes, preppy clothes.
Preppy clothes.
And was your hair long?
He's got floopy John Hughes hair in that, doesn't he?
He does.
He does.
But also, you know, I was, I don't know, I was a little smug.
I was tall.
I was certainly not like the rich swell, the rich drunk pretty boy.
I wasn't any of those things.
The douchey soche.
Well, yeah.
I wasn't a soche.
That's exactly right.
I was a conserve.
But anyway, halfway through the movie, I was just like, no, no, no.
Whatever I said about me being that guy, don't get that stuck in your head that I'm him.
I was basing that on something people said in 1986.
Well, yeah.
I've been compared, honestly, actually.
I'm not saying this to try and sound cool because I don't look good, but I've been consistently compared with usually three actors at a certain point in my life.
And I
I say something to my kid, and I say, hey, look at that.
People used to think I look like that guy.
And he's like, what?
You look like the guy from Princess Bride.
That's the only one you look like.
That's one.
Michael Palin.
I used to look like Michael Palin.
Michael Palin.
Michael Palin.
Am I saying something wrong?
Michael Palin.
Michael Palin from the comedy group.
You.
People would say you look like Michael Palin.
Okay, wait a minute.
Let me think about that.
But no, there's one particular photo of... Michael Palin.
One photo from Princess Bride where he's got like a ponytail and a bad mustache.
I think it's from the early part of the film, you know, the As You Wish part.
Yes.
Boy, that's a good movie.
Yeah.
You can just tell how cheap that movie was.
It's just, it feels so cheap, but it's so cheaply made, but it's just so...
Have fun storming the castle.
It's a little bit like Wes Anderson, where it feels like they really did cut out a lot of pieces of cardboard and make it look like a castle.
Carol Kane is on the current Star Trek series that I am obsessed with, and she's still just terrific at it.
Carol Kane is one of those actors.
She's in Woody Allen, dude.
I know.
No, that's not the name of the movie.
She's in three, two.
She's in Annie Hall, dude.
She's in Annie Hall, dude.
She's the Adelaide Stevenson girl.
I always found her impossibly beautiful.
Her face is so, like...
It's so interesting and soft and enveloping.
Her face looks like you're like, it's just, she's really her own thing.
She's her own thing.
You know, she's from Cleveland.
I didn't.
Yeah, it's one of those things.
You know, if you're a true Carol Kane stan.
Oh, the Kane stans.
The Kane-yaks.
Yeah, the Kane-yaks.
You guys can just have that in the community if you want.
Put that on your BBS.
I think people would enjoy that.
Put that on the BBS.
I'm going to do it right now.
I'm going to do it.
You know, there are several, we talk about 70s actors and actresses a lot.
But there are some, I should make a little spreadsheet of all of the ones that really matter to me.
Bernadette Peters.
Oh, I know.
We just watched The Grey's Anatomy with Bernadette Peters.
I love her so much.
Or can I guess a few here?
Terry Garr, Madeline Kahn.
You got them.
There it is.
Young Frankenstein.
Oh, my God.
That's the whole bit.
That's the whole bit.
Young Terry Garr.
Every time somebody in my family says it could be worse, I immediately say it could be raining.
And they don't know what joke I'm making.
Oh.
Do you remember that joke?
Yeah.
They're digging up a Frankenstein, and they're in a literal grave.
It could be raining, and then it immediately starts to be boring.
And then Marty Feldman says, it could be worse.
It could be raining, and then a torrential downpour starts.
She's so funny.
We watched Young Frankenstein, but my little girl was just a little too young and actually...
And not steeped in Frankenstein.
Yeah, and not steeped in Frankenstein.
Oh, the first movie that scared the shit out of me, I talked about this in the very first episode of Back to Work.
It's where the title of the first episode of Back to Work comes from.
Alligator in the Bathroom, which sounds like an English beat song.
Gator in the bathroom.
Please don't think your teeth are just so big and white.
No, no.
It was, believe it or not, it was a universal film with universal monsters.
But it was Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein.
And this scared you?
But this is the chain.
This is how the human mind works.
My dad was alive, so I must have been six or seven.
And I became convinced that the guest bathroom...
had an alligator in it and I could not be dissuaded from the idea and the point of that in the in the lifetime of back to work and talking about creativity and fear so much of the time is that that alligator only existed in my head but I you could I could not be more certain of anything in my life that my fear conjured that up and it became incredibly real to me you had an alligator in your head yeah
so she yeah it is it is it well he does again let's just say it i gotta say it once a month young frankenstein and blazing saddles came out the same year they did not 74. they did not yeah so like and they're so i mean they're both so mel brooks hey you fell on my keys they're both so mel brooks that was just for you sean
How is it possible that they both came out in the same year?
Well, they were probably shot, you know, I mean, I don't know much about the production of them.
I've seen a little bit about it, but, you know, they must have one done and the other one.
I don't know.
I don't know.
Do you ever think that maybe your best year has already come and gone?
I have so many angles on that phrase, John.
Yeah, absolutely.
But the problem is the best was not that great.
I'm a very low floor, low ceiling person.
I'm capable of only capable of so much, but boy, I can fall far.
Oh, I see what you're saying.
So you're still wondering about that, huh?
Well, I just, I feel like I never, it never once occurred to me that my best years weren't still ahead of me.
Yeah.
And I'm still... It's too late to really do much about it now.
Because there are times I can look back and go, oh, those were good times.
Those were good times.
Yeah.
But, you know, the other day I did a, I interviewed Nabil at this music festival for, we talked about his book.
And, and...
During that era when you were always talking about cameras, every time I get you on the phone, you got some new camera.
Camera, camera, camera this, camera that.
It was right before we all had cameras on our phones.
But it was after digital cameras had gotten good enough that you could have a good one.
Yeah, Canon had some really good, like in the early 2000s, the first one I ever had was this Pentax.
And if you look, I mean, it just basically looks like a grease stain, these photos from 1999.
But then I had that Canon, it was an L for a power shot or something, that would take the terrible photos at your shows.
But it was such a leap forward.
forward over the previous digital cameras but then there's just that period of like when the flip camera came along and like thank god for the fucking flip camera so many of my best baby stuff was with a flip camera because it was there and all you had it was even easier than iphone you just hit a button you're right though i was all camera camera camera that's camera camera well but but so two of the guys in the long winters during the very peak best tours that we ever did two straight years
of being on tour multiple trips to europe canada tours all 50 states and these two guys both had cameras probably eric corson's uh totem one that you recommended and then nabeel had one and they did that thing where they just forgive my interrupting you could we say a word about who nabeel is because i think it helped because people who know him from one thing may not know him from the other thing can i suggest clarifying who nabeel is
Yeah.
Well, what's your top line item?
My impression would be that Nabeel's a wonderful guy.
Yes.
A really, really nice, very funny, very smart guy who owned Sonic Boom Records.
He did.
He owned Sonic Boom Records.
Which is a terrific place where you've played and your albums have been sold.
And in the fullness of time, I guess after Michael left, after the other Michael left, Nabeel became the drummer for The Long Winners.
Yes.
And I mean, I love them all.
But like he really he was very subtle and very he had a lot of dynamics.
Really, really cool guy.
A pleasure to hang out with.
So long winter's drummer.
But then he had a little funny career pivot and he became what the American head of for 80 records.
He became the American head of 4AD Records.
The label that, just so we're being clear about this, not just Pixies, that was late in the game.
We're talking about the label that put out the Cocteau Twins.
Like, a pretty big deal.
That's right.
The number of bands that 4AD put out, well, it's the whole history of the 80s.
But now, now, he wrote a book.
Well, he wrote a book, but also he's now the American head of the entire beggars banquet group.
including not just 480 is that universal universal universal no no no it's still privately owned oh really matador no shit xl records 480 do they like like uh the the the the drag city and stuff like that are they on there i don't know about drag i don't know but it's so fucking great oh my god what a weird job i know so he's running the whole record he's basically running the whole music business
But also, yeah, wrote a book about his experience because he also is the son of jazz vibraphonist Roy Ayers, whose famous album Everybody Loves the Sunshine still gets sampled by Dr. Dre to this day, even though Dr. Dre doesn't even make records anymore.
He just sits at home and samples Nabeel's dad.
Nabeel's dad.
But what Nabeel did... Hey, check this one out.
Because I've never let anybody else drive.
I did all the driving, especially in Europe.
At one point, I think the morning that we met, you said something, if anyone else tried to drive you, I believe the phrase you used was 2003, probably, two or three.
You said you would shove, I believe, a broomstick up their ass, is what you said.
Don't even get in my chair.
The chair is made... That's the captain's chair.
That's why it's called that.
It's called that because it's the captain's chair.
But what Nabil and Eric did was they took pictures of everything.
They took pictures of every time somebody put a plate of food in front of them.
They took a picture of it.
They took a picture of whatever I ordered.
They took a picture out the window of the van as we drove and then at the venue and then of the band.
And Nabil was sitting behind the drum kit during shows when I would start telling a story about Waterloo.
Nabil would take pictures from behind.
And so these incredible pictures of me...
And you see just the back of me, but the whole crowd and everybody out there looking up at me going like, what the fuck are you talking about?
Play another song.
You can even see people going, play a song!
And me going, all right.
Anyway, what happened?
Hang on, just a second there.
Settle down.
I have the microphone.
Anyway, now I have them.
And I think of those times as some of the best times.
And I have incredible photographs to prove it.
And I'm worried a little bit that the fact that it's so well documented is going to influence my memory of my own life when I'm 80 years old.
And I'm going to go, oh, well, those were the best years because look at all the pictures of the dinners I had.
And all the years that I don't have very many photos, including early in my daughter's life, because all I had was flip phone camera, and they were terrible.
They're just like a grease stain.
Yeah, but it doesn't – what the documentation or the existing document – in my case, like I lost almost all my photos to water damage.
Oh, wow.
Like, yeah, yeah.
Basically, I have one block of photo that I just can't even bear to look at.
But but you know, I'm saying they all fuse together.
Yeah, yeah.
But the but that's OK.
So whatever it goes.
But the but the thing of it is like it's.
We've talked about this so many times.
Everybody, you, me, Syracuse, we all have that similar experience of like, John loves taking photos, especially of his family on vacation.
And I think you and he and I have similar backgrounds of like, okay, remember this?
Like in my case, Kodak Instamatic with flash cubes.
You get the family, you jam the family into the living room.
And you take a photo.
A photo.
And almost everybody's eyes are closed.
And that was Christmas or whatever.
Right, right.
Then there were some times where you're like, the way I've, honestly, I hate to make this about materialism, but I think there were times I have to imagine, because...
film wasn't free so like there's something concomitant there of like if we could afford film maybe it was a slightly less stressful time so we took more photos you know what I'm saying there's those kinds of associations you make as you get older where you're like oh wow I wonder if there's no pictures of us eating out because we couldn't afford eating out and taking pictures of it
Do you know what I mean?
Okay.
Amazon and photos are three ways that I fact check myself on when something happened.
Because somewhere in stuff I bought, and I'm not saying this, that's not a flex, obviously, I'm just weird.
I do have geolocation, have for years had geolocation and time and date on photos.
Even if it's not geolocated, I still have a time and date.
I can go see photos from around that time.
What about OPSEC?
Well, I can remember things like, for example, what order something happened in.
Like I was talking this morning about when we were in New Zealand and like, oh, I'm pretty sure, yeah, we were in Wellington.
And like, I was like, we never, speaking of the best, I was like, I don't think we've ever been to Auckland.
Did we go to Auckland?
I don't remember.
But I can go look at my photos and see the order the photos were taken in.
And at least I get, you know, a sequence of events.
But like I get, I got receipts in Gmail.
But what I'm saying is like, when I do sometimes fact check myself, think about airline flights.
Like, if you don't have TripIt or whatever, still you can go and see, like, when you bought a flight, you changed a thing.
When did I go to Lake Arrowhead for the MaxFun thing, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Do you know what I mean?
Those all act as a support mechanism for not simply memory, but for the way memories have been integrated into your life.
So you know what I mean?
And like sometimes it's weird Unfortunately for us.
We're old enough that it only it goes back so far It only goes back so far and so much of the stuff that I'm like, well, when did that happen?
It's like well that was before any of this So all I have to go on like I don't have a single photograph of myself when I was 18 Right, right, right.
Yeah passport though, right?
Well, I didn't have a passport yet at that point.
I don't shit
I don't have a single photograph.
You said this before, but for the period of like a year, there's just no photos of you that you are aware of.
My entire walk across Europe, not a single photograph.
So how do I...
Based on the importance of a thing in your life, I don't have any way of even demonstrating to anybody that it happened, except I have a bunch of ticket stubs.
I don't know, man.
The story about the girl in the window, I don't think you can make that up.
No, and in fact, you know, Jade Gordon made a comic out of it.
It's one of the greatest things.
God bless you, Jade Gordon.
Yeah, God bless you, Jade Gordon.
That's probably here somewhere if the site's still up.
I can't even tell anymore.
But yes, that's a great point.
You've written about that trip.
You have, seems to me at least, a pretty good, mostly sequential memory of what happened when.
And it helps a lot that when you walk from west to east,
That's right.
You know where the order stuff goes in, right?
Because it couldn't have been before that other place.
That's true.
You're absolutely right.
I worry, though, because I do exactly what you're saying.
I do the thing where I go into Gmail...
And then I go look at my photos.
And I don't take enough photos.
I really wish I took more because there are all those days where it's like, well, there are five days here that I didn't take a single picture.
But I was emailing.
Mine's all funny signs.
Funny signs, animals.
Funny signs and animals.
Right now, what I've got in here is I've got several pictures of Admiral Ackbar for a bit.
I got a screen grab of when I went to level 131 in my solitaire game.
I've got Otis and Superman reading a candy wrapper.
Again, congratulations.
And some photos of a Bacon Ray 7-inch I was talking about last night.
To find that picture of my kid... Wait, did you guys put out a 7-inch?
Yeah, I put out several.
You put out vinyl seven inches.
Bacon Ray did.
Every cover was this one from 1995.
Every cover was different because they were made from cutouts from the record store.
How do I not have any of those?
No, you don't need them.
It's all good.
I was talking to my pal about maybe putting up everything.
Last night, I was talking with the other guitar player.
Yeah, anyway, long story short.
So, yeah, yeah, yeah.
We had two CDs, three or four singles, two or three cassettes.
Yeah.
It was a small town.
It was a small town and a small time.
Taught the fear of Jesus.
I need to go to the bathroom soon.
Yeah, you're welcome to go anytime.