Ep. 512: "American Horoscope"
Hello?
Hello?
Hello?
Grog, here's you.
I mean, what?
What?
Gotta mix it up a little sometimes.
Boy, it's really early is why.
Yeah, I guess it is kind of early.
Yeah, perma-early.
Yeah, form of early.
Shape of an ice monkey.
Oh, man, it's early.
Yeah.
I'm a little bit whacked out on Ambasol.
Is it Kiefer Sutherland?
Sullivan?
No.
Kiefer Sutherland?
It's Kiefer Sutherland.
Kiefer Sutherland.
Kiefer Sutherland.
Kiefer Sutherland.
Imagine you're a chav.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Do we say Asbo?
What do you call it?
That sounds very ableist.
Yeah.
You say Kiefer.
Kiefer.
Kiefer.
Sutherland.
Kiefer.
Kiefer Sutherland.
Kiefer Sutherland, innit?
Yeah, right.
Kiefer.
Oi.
Hey, you.
Hey.
Kiefer.
Kiefer Sutherland.
Ha, ha, ha.
We selling a matched pair of neurological events today I more and more yes Sound like someone who's just having small strokes Yeah, yeah, I like to think of it as a it's like my own personal web series of mini episodes I'm I am saying words now
in place of other words, as though I don't care.
As though I don't care whether people around me... Oh, doctor, yeah.
Yeah, you know, I'm just saying things like... Do you find yourself gesturing to indicate that this is the word you know?
Yeah, and just like, oh, give me... You guys, you know the word.
You know what I mean, you know?
Give me that box of poth-tarps.
LAUGHTER
And put them in the bath stick.
Say what?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And it's just because I can't – my mind has decided to not go all the way to knowing what things are or saying things properly.
Yeah.
It's just been even more recent – just recently –
I just catch myself just saying, you know, like I do the thing where I'm trying to talk to my daughter and I go, hey, Susan, I mean.
Oh, no, no, no.
You only have one kid and you're doing that.
Oh, no.
I just, I name every woman I know.
Oh, title.
And then I get to her eventually.
And everybody in the room.
She's late in the rotation.
Yeah.
You know, you've known her name less, fewer times.
Yeah, I have known her name less for your time.
It's like I'm throwing a Bastic of raspberries in there and hoping to catch the one.
Yeah, because that means you get married next.
Yeah, exactly.
You know, I'm not reaching into the Bastic to get a raspberry.
I'm just throwing the raspberries at the wall and hoping one ends in my mouth.
Yes, your Johnny Raspberry seed.
Even that, even that what I just said.
Oh, I know.
What kind of talking is this?
This is bad talking.
I remember pretty clearly an interest like when I first learned about aphasias.
I'd never heard of aphasias.
And then I heard about the two or three, a couple kinds of aphasias.
And it just, to this day, is so terrifying to me.
The idea that there's one kind of aphasia where it sounds like everybody else is talking gibberish.
Right.
Which, you know, is already kind of how it is for me.
The one that drives me crazy, though, is the one of where you think you're making sense, but you're actually speaking gibberish.
Yeah, that sounds like half the people in America.
Am I right?
Those ding-a-lings in Congress.
Yeah, got a little bit of political humor.
Snuck it in there.
You sure did.
You know, it's something for everybody.
A little politically incorrect.
Yeah, you're a regular Will Rogers Waters.
Whee!
All right, I'm going to put on some more Ambesol.
I did something in my mouth.
I don't know why.
I had some dreams last night.
I had memorable dreams.
Dreams where I was... Can we do dreams?
I had a good dream two nights ago.
I would love to... Can we exchange dreams?
Yeah, yeah.
I was in a very amazing...
world uh you know castles but you know like modern europe not like fantasy castles but like modern europe except except kind of like a miyazaki kind of village like what the architecture is up to date or never mind forget it's a dream just tell me how it feels yes yes no no it wasn't a cartoon it was it was uh i know better than to ask questions about dreams it's a dumb thing to do yeah there you go there you go i was just like being in switzerland except it was a little bit like serbia too and i was
I was bouncing around.
I had all these adventures.
There was one of those big slides.
Remember the old slides that you'd get on with a little carpet and go down the slide several layers?
But it was part of the city.
Yes, Grandpa, I remember that.
It was part of the city infrastructure.
What they would do is they would take an old, what's it called?
What's it called?
A rag.
A remnant.
A remnant rug.
Ragnarok.
Ragnarok.
I love you, too.
And then I was like, oh, yeah.
And I feel like every city should have one, especially Seattle and San Francisco.
It's like a reverse vernacular, yeah.
You get down fast if you're a law office at the top and you've got a court meeting at the bottom.
Probably the other way around.
They give you a helmet with a flashing light on it.
You just ride your rug down.
It's like a flying carpet.
We've all wanted those.
Maybe you have to say, wee-oo, wee-oo, wee-oo.
Wee-oo, wee-oo.
And, you know, there were a lot of people I knew in the dream.
It was mostly peaceful.
At one point I climbed up a thing and I was holding a suitcase, but I was also climbing up a kind of ziggurat and I was doing a very good job, a very muscular job of both climbing and holding this suitcase.
And I remember even in the dream, as I, as I surmounted the top of the, of the climb, I
thinking to myself, now, how did I just do that?
I mean, like, as I was doing it, I lifted myself up with one arm, and then I somehow... That's the feeling where you're like, where you go like, huh, right?
But even then, it was like... This is what I'm doing here.
I pushed myself up with one arm to standing on my feet, and I thought, even in the moment, you cannot push your... You can pull yourself up,
to your waist with your arm, but you couldn't keep pushing yourself all the way up to standing on your feet, especially if your other hand had a suitcase.
The suitcase is part of what really throws it off for me.
Just because it changes your balance, you only got the one hand at this point.
Yeah.
I carry a bag usually.
I don't usually carry a suitcase.
You carry it in your hand?
Well, I had the suitcase in my hand.
I mean, it was a roller bag.
It was like a stewardess bag.
Anyway, you were saying you wrote.
Oh, no, no, no.
We were watching once upon a time in Hollywood last night and you know Brad Pitt plays a stuntman and he has to fix the antenna on Leonardo DiCaprio's roof and he does this weird like this not weird this a beautiful like parkour thing to jump up from ledge to ledge like he's in like a 1983 video game like
And he jumps with a tool belt on it with a beer in it, and he's able to do that.
That's what it kind of reminds me of.
I'd love to be able to do that personally.
Yeah, I mean, he's a beautiful man.
He is, and it's a really good movie.
Now, I'm always interested in how a dream feels.
How did it feel to you?
Did it feel odd, like scary?
What were the feelings?
No, it was a kind of dream I wanted to stay in.
It wasn't like great things were happening.
It's not like I, you know, nothing momentous happened.
It's not like you were finally appreciated or something.
No.
No.
In your dreams.
No, in my dreams that I haven't had yet.
But no, there were like, you know, people I've known, people I haven't seen in a while.
People, you know, it was just sort of a... And it was nice.
There was a kind of...
Oh, you know, just sort of a flirty vibe in the air where everybody was like friendly and funny.
But it was kind of like a last day of school feeling.
Well, it was like a rainy day in Serbia, and I know I've never been to Serbia, so I don't know what a rainy day in Serbia is like except for this dream.
Well, Montenegro.
Yeah, a rainy day in Montenegro.
That's right.
That's my favorite Scott Walker album.
I haven't crashed my Aston yet.
Oh, true.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That'll happen in Montenegro.
Is that where Paul did it, supposedly?
Yeah.
Paul.
Paul.
My kid has the poster from the White Album on his wall, and I always point out those skeleton arms reaching out to Paul when he's dancing.
Oh, that's so scary.
It's so scary.
Yeah, I don't...
You know, we don't traffic as much in the Beatles around here as we once did.
Sometimes you got to take a rest.
Yeah, there might be.
It'll come back.
Oh, I'm not worried about that.
And then we'll eventually move on to Sloan.
Well, you know, I tried to play the Rolling Stones for my daughter the other day.
And I realized.
That's why you were thinking.
Hmm.
That's why you had a Keith in your head.
Well, kefir, kefir, kefir, kefir, which is a kind of yogurt drink.
I listened to the song out of time four times yesterday.
Stand in the place where you live.
Close.
Very, very close.
Baby, baby, baby, you're out of time.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, oh, oh, oh, you're talking about Out of Time.
Yeah, I'm talking about Andrew Lou Goldham.
Out of Time.
Out of Time, yeah.
Yeah.
I'm not sure.
Was that some unreleased talking heads?
What was that fever dream?
I'm going to impress upon my daughter that the Rolling Stones are a great rock band, but unfortunately for me, I...
I realized and am realizing that the Rolling Stones are more important to me than I want to acknowledge and also much more important to me than I will ever be able to effectively communicate to a teenage girl.
Especially remember you're not a fan.
Exactly.
And not really, no one wants to hear it.
The only people that want to talk about the Rolling Stones at the level I want to talk about them are Bill Janovich of the Buffalo Tom.
Anybody who's written a book about the Stones might talk to you about it.
And just the other old sitting at the table.
Oh, I know.
The only people who want to talk are people who've already loved the Rolling Stones for as long as you.
And it's like World War I veterans.
We lose a lot every day.
Well, and the thing is, I don't want to talk to them.
Not only not about the Rolling Stones, but about anything.
Oh, that's a pickle, isn't it?
It is.
It's like they used to say in Alcoholics Anonymous where they would say,
Look, you can't drink anymore, so you can't hang out with people that drink.
But people that never drank are insufferable.
You can't hang out with them.
And the only people you can really hang out with are people.
It's like going to a parent's night out of school.
The only thing you can hang out with are the people that used to drink, but you hate them more than anyone.
Yeah, they're a little too close to you, aren't they?
Oh, my God.
They're just, oh, they're so annoying.
How do you start?
Do you have a sense of where to start if you're going to begin this process for your young person?
How do you start installing the Rolling Stones?
Well, this was the problem.
You know, I went right to...
I went right to like, well, listen, there's a lot of people who can argue this, but Sticky Fingers is the best Rolling Stones record.
It's a pretty good record.
A lot of people argue.
There are people listening right now who just spit milk all over their computer screens because they're like, what?
No, there probably aren't because our fans are not that kind.
We're just saying words.
We might as well be reading out binary code.
Yeah.
Nobody cares.
If XLM Main Street was a little shorter, you know.
Well, you know, there you go.
There's a lot on there.
You get what you get, you don't get upset.
A lot of great stuff on there.
And you can use that riff I showed you, the second riff I showed you.
Oh, yeah.
That's number one.
Then number two is...
That's a tall order.
Boy, I've become a really aggressive cultural maven lately.
Nobody likes it.
Nobody likes it.
Oh, dear.
I keep trying to install good culture on people, and they're very resistant.
Everybody's always got their reasons.
Well, and so, you know, the problem is I'm working here with some Spotify.
No, no, no.
Yeah, it's a Spotify, but it's also going through a Sonos.
And it's over in the corner of some living room.
The whole house hasn't been tuned for high fidelity.
There's no real-to-real player in this stereo system.
And I'm like, listen to...
this and i put on sway one of the one of the greatest of all songs and i go listen to this now you know you're going to notice that the vocals are not mixed all the way forward like a lot of the pop music drops out you know you hear these days it's not like it's not that's not going to sound like a pink song it's got a whole and the reason it listen to the claustrophobic and the other thing this guitar is being played by this guy who doesn't like that guy and she's just like
I mean, already as I'm talking to you about it, it's hieroglyphics.
You might as well be reading her like an office supply catalog.
But there's music playing that is truly moving music, but there's a lot to go through.
You have to go through a lot.
You have to smoke a lot of pot in your garage.
I think before you have the epiphany that I did at least where it was like smoking pot in your garage and listening to this on a record player that's in the garage is all of those elements are key to
To live a life where you have a record player in the garage is somehow key to fully being able to say... That's hard to recreate.
You know, like, this is the best Rolling Stones record.
To even have that opinion, do you need to have once...
had a record player in the garage right right right or or is are there people now that are like i've never had a record player but i well if you were talking about people like like to really understand xyz feeling in america you have to have lived through something like world war ii or the depression like you can't just you know no no i'm agreeing with you i'm saying you can't just say to somebody like well imagine you lived through world war ii and you're like um okay yeah now i now what i have done it i have done it
Yeah, I was listening to my favorite John Vanderslice album, Time Travels Lonely.
And I was thinking, like, something I never noticed at the time that I really notice now was the influence, not the lifting from them, but the influence of Neutral Milk Hotel and Spoon, which I know are two bands he loved at the time.
So how do I explain this to somebody?
Yeah.
I'm in a very similar position how you are.
How do I make the child understand?
The kid's seen me sit on the couch and cry when Holland 1945 is on, but, you know, that's not persuasive.
No, no, no, right?
Because Daddy sits on the couch and cries about a lot of things.
Well, that's Daddy's crying couch.
That's Daddy's crying couch.
You sit here at his pleasure.
We were sitting at dinner just the night before or after the Rolling Stones thing, and she said...
she said, what was your college degree in?
You know, she's always, because it's a confusing jumble of words.
It sounds like, saying comparative history of ideas just sounds like you didn't really go to college.
But I said, yeah, that was my major, but I minored in Russian literature.
And she said, do you speak Russian?
And I said, of course, I do not.
You would know that if I did.
I would be speaking Russian constantly.
and she said then how can you read russian literature and it's a very good question it is because of course russian literature is full of illusions and full of little jokes and and cockney rhyming slang and all this stuff that if you don't read if you're not reading it all the names kind of sound the same and it gets a little overwhelming well that but but all those names are also illusions it's like reading hebrew you don't you know you change you change one vowel and all of a sudden the word means something else
And so Russian lit is really impossible to read in translation because you just miss half of the jokes because that's so interesting.
This person's name sounds like this word, which would be hilarious.
But of course it's not, it's, that's not in the translation at all.
And it wouldn't even be hilarious.
It just sounds like a lot of very hard consonants smashed together in a long word, right?
Well, well, but you know,
Think about how... I mean, when I tried to read... I think it was... Wasn't it Dusty?
It was Crime and Punishment.
Trying to read that.
I was just like... I was very overwhelmed by the names.
The names... You know...
Absolutely.
There are a lot of things to get over.
There are a lot of very long – it's like watching Deer Hunter.
There's a very long wedding scene.
Like there's a lot – That should count as three movies.
There's a lot to go – to get through to read these amazing books and you don't even get a single one of the biblical references because they were all encoded.
Anyway, I'm trying to explain this to her who's taking, you know, Duolingo German.
Yeah.
And I'm like, that's the problem with other languages.
You're never going to get the jokes.
You know, the jokes are a whole part of every, you know, to a non-English speaker.
Especially in Russian culture.
Oh, my God.
But, like, how many jokes have you and I made already on this show that, you know, our German listeners are like, say what?
Well, I mean, if you translated this, it would sound like Shonen Knife.
Like, you know what I mean?
It would...
You know, it would sound like, you know what I mean?
Hamburger, hamburger, bang, bang.
Uh-huh.
So where'd you land on it?
So you're going to listen to books on tape over the Sonos?
What are you going to do?
Oh, geez.
I don't know.
I mean, I honestly don't know.
Maybe there's nothing to be done.
You just got to read the room and figure out, you know, what the uniform of the day is.
Yeah, people are going to find their own thing.
I mean, right now, of course, she's a teen, so she's starting to tell me things.
And I'm starting to go, oh, yes, I am also the drip.
And I am the drippiest.
And she's like, that's not how.
Yeah, you go to the mid or whatever.
Yeah, she's like, no, Dad, that's not how it's said.
And then, of course, like my father before me and his father before him, surely.
Yeah.
I go, what?
What do you mean?
What do you mean I'm not the drippiest?
I'm driptastic.
And she's like, dad, please stop.
And it's a fun game.
So wait a minute.
I'm daddy and your baby?
What?
Girl.
Please don't do that.
Please don't yell girl in my house.
Please don't do that.
Oh, she came back from a camping trip.
And we were sitting and talking about something.
She was like, bro, let me tell you about that.
I said, let me stop you right there.
Yeah.
Do not call me bro under any circumstances.
There's a part of me that really wants to start carrying around one red card and one yellow card.
And I really want to start wielding them both online and in my home.
I need to start giving people much more frequent yellow cards just so they know where they stand.
I gave her a yellow card.
She talks back to her mom.
And we were sitting in the living room getting ready or something.
And I said, all right, we got to get going.
And she was like, I'm getting going.
And I was like, okay, but we are actually going.
And she, as she went around the corner, she said, shut up.
And I said, come back here.
And she came back, you know, kind of slowly.
And I said, in your life,
There's a limited number of times where you are going to be able to tell me to shut up.
Don't use them up frivolously like you just did.
There is not a limitless number of times you can say that to me.
And this was not one of those times.
So save them.
And I'm not telling you how many there are.
It's like knowing you got money in the bank.
It's a good feeling.
It's a small number.
Even though you're not spending the money, it's nice to know it's there.
And there's always so many shut ups in your account.
Well, because what I'm realizing now as she's becoming a teenager is to say something like, you never can say shut up to me.
is to show the weakness, is to say something that we both know is untrue.
And as a father... Especially because your bee stood up too fast and your pants fell down.
Exactly.
Don't ever like, what?
Don't look at your father.
Look somewhere else.
You drop your Metamucil all over the floor.
Oh no, my pills.
I'm very conscious now.
I'm not saying things to her where...
where it's clear that maybe that'll fly for a little while, but the center can't hold.
And you've got to be careful what the effect... I mean, for myself, I've learned this.
I knew this when my drama teacher wrote in my yearbook in 1985.
Merlin, you know, you're very funny, you're very smart, you have a great sense of humor, try to always use it for good.
And she, because she was always trying to low-key, like, tell me, low-key, listen to me, I'm so mid.
Like, use your powers for good.
Use your powers for good!
Don't be unkind to people, and I still think about that, because to me now, and I think about that with my kid, because I'm generally...
I think pretty cool with my kid.
I have been, but there's times when I've needed to issue a yellow card.
I feel like the problem is my kid was what one might call sensitive.
See, that makes it sound like a weakness, but very like empathetic.
And so there's one I've used perhaps as much as a dozen times ever, ever, ever, which is I look the kid straight in the eyes and you know what I say?
You can still save this.
And the problem was, that was a little bit too effective.
Because, boy, I think I really, I think I really, the mask slipped with that one, and they saw the kid who used to be mean in drama class.
Oh.
You know what I mean?
Like I'm getting a little bit like a little bit Sarah now.
Oh, you're telling me to shut up?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Put on his gloves.
Get in the ring.
I didn't actually do that.
We don't have gloves.
No, no, but you can still save this.
That's pretty heavy.
But I like it.
Of course you do.
But keep it in your bank.
You only get so many of them.
You only get so many of them.
That's right.
I definitely feel...
I definitely feel now that I – like as I'm losing my grip, as I'm clearly no longer really in charge of even my own – I mean, you know, continents.
Yeah.
Right?
As I'm just like – as I look out the window here and watch the old people in tracksuits walk up and down the street –
And think to myself.
All the birds move too fast.
Yeah.
The wind is wet.
It's all difficult.
Very difficult.
The wind is wet.
Remember when?
Remember when?
Remember when we were kids?
Wind used to be drier.
Remember that?
Remember that?
Remember that everybody wore belts?
Remember that?
It's so wet now.
Oh, my God.
You remember that?
Jukeboxes?
Ah, these kids today.
So I've got to keep, you know, I've got to keep my powder dry.
Oh, 100%, especially now, especially now, because there's going to be times when you, when you super need, you know what the thing is here?
Okay, here's an example.
So like, I just want to say for the record, we were not a hitting family.
No.
But you know, the thing where like, especially I'm going to, this is sexist, but little boys, you know, little boys are crazy.
You know how crazy?
They hit a tree with a stick for an hour and people just applaud them.
And they're always the ones tearing ass into the street to get a ball or to discover a dog or whatever.
No question.
And you need to, at a certain age, at that age where they can move around of their own volition, but they haven't acquired the soft skills of knowing just because there's nothing in the road right now means I can run into it.
Mm-hmm.
And when I was a kid that would at least not with my family I think you'll smack on the butt or like a you grab them by the scruff a little bit and you're like you need to let you feel like you need to make an impression on them Not because they broke a rule, but because you want to you know what I mean?
Yeah, that's hand on the stove kind of thing and I I under I understand why people do that, but I do think you have to be careful otherwise You just become that kind of dad who's like I hate you because I love you.
You just gotta be real careful
Yeah, yeah, well obviously hitting no no no no no I'm sorry But I'm talking about that whole like that whole like the thing that always continues to drive me crazy John where people are like hey look my father Drank and beat the shit out of me and look how I turned out and you're like if you think you turned out fine Man just ask around well, but that I think I think I'm you know, I've been thinking about my dad a lot lately and
And realizing that there is no turnout fine.
There's not a one of us that did.
There's not a one of us that turned out fine.
No human being has ever been fine.
That's a young person's game to go like, oh, look how I turned out.
You're not really done turning out yet.
It's only a now thing that there's even the idea of a fine.
Up until very, very recently, there was no fine.
That was not even a concept.
There was, are you surviving?
I think we forget that in the lives of people who are alive, people used to just drop dead from childhood diseases.
Oh my God, people used to drop.
Well, they still, God, they're dropping dead.
No, no, you know what I mean.
I know, I know, I know, Florida.
No, no, people are dropping.
People in my own life, you know, you get to be 55 and it's like every day you open up the computer.
It's like, oh, I'm literally reapplying Ambosol right now.
Yeah.
But I do think, you know, like prior, it's like all those advertisements from the 1930s where a restaurant would say like, come into our restaurant.
Here's a picture of a really overweight guy sitting at a restaurant.
Like that was a sign.
Look how pleased this drawing is.
You know, that rich people were fat.
Oh, absolutely.
Poor people were strong.
And the questions were not, are you fine?
It was always like – or are you good?
It was like, are you in power?
Are you – do you have people that do what you tell them?
Like those were –
There was no like, are you well?
Are you happy?
Are you?
Nobody ever asked my dad if he was happy until he was 65 years old.
Right, right, right.
And no one ever asked his parents if they were happy.
And before that, I don't think the concept existed.
If it's time to wake up and slop the chickens, nobody's going to ask you if you're fine.
No, and so but we just be clear because I imagine there will be at least one person who just went out to get a drink and came back I'm not saying it's a good idea I'm saying that like contra what a lot of people believe today It's okay to talk about the way things used to be and lay it against the way things are now and go isn't that better well and the thing is I'm not I definitely am super fed up as you are with
opening up the internet and watching this this wave of self-satisfied gen x like we turned 30 when we were nine and all are still 30 at 59 it's like you guys come on shut up have some dignity i understand what you're saying and we never got our due and that's fine but just go gently into this good night yeah please just be quiet like you're the ones that are going to be restoring i
We find that whole generational thing exhausting to begin with, and it's something that younger persons... We do it.
We've done it.
We've done it, but it's a real big deal.
I'm not going to say the names of the generations that are used, but friends of mine who are in their, let's say, 30s... Friends of mine.
And people who are younger than that, boy, they're very tuned into this whole generation thing.
I know.
The whole sort of white people be talking like this thing about generations, and it's like...
Wait, so, huh?
I mean, how much identity about strangers do you really derive out of what year?
Is this your version of some kind of American horoscope?
It's weird.
Looking at the classic car market and realizing that
I mean, people are always going to like 60s muscle cars because they're super rad.
What's crazy is that all those weird fox body Mustangs that no one even cared about in their time.
Like type twos?
No, like the 80s Mustangs.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
They're like soaring in price.
What?
Because Gen X people are starting to retire.
That's a used car they give you to go to college.
Yeah, but these are the ones that are in their memory as like, oh, I needed a 5.0 because, you know, Dr. Dre mentioned it on a, or no, somebody mentioned it on that.
What are you talking about?
Some guy on that one record.
Who's that?
The one out of Compton, those.
Who's the fellow?
Record.
Who's the fellow?
5.0.
He and Lorenzo were rolling in a Benzo.
And so watching that and realizing like, oh, Generation X, they're not going to build train sets.
They're going to build out like the malaise era of like Ford Thunderbirds or whatever.
But no, when I say there was no fine, I'm not saying that that was –
that that was something that made us strong or anything.
I'm saying that the idea of fine is thought technology.
It's a new idea.
It's a fashion.
Yeah.
It's not necessarily true.
It's just as much a fashion as the humors were.
Not true as in it doesn't exist or it doesn't make sense.
How do you mean?
It's something that's around now saying, hey, how are you doing?
Are you fine?
What is it that's at odds with what's really going on?
Well, not only that, but it's not just like, are you fine?
Am I fine?
Oh, you turned out fine because your parents spanked you, or you didn't turn out fine because your parents spanked you.
I see that.
Of course.
I'm sorry.
Yes, that's fine.
I was thinking of the fine of like, you know, the way you sort of dote on each other in college and go, are you okay?
Are you drinking enough water?
You mean fine as in like...
You passed through the... You made it out of the crucible.
And now you've come out and you are tempered by life.
And now you have turned out fine.
But I think we're now using it... I mean, this is no...
trenchant observation, but we have all this psychological language and we're just using it against each other.
Oh, that person's sick in this way, that person's sick in this way, the presumption and then turning on yourself, I'm sick in this way, I'm sick in that way, but my sickness is better than their sickness or my sickness is worse than their sickness, depending on whether I'm looking for
this or that, you know, depending on whether right now I want sympathy or I want to be righteous.
But, you know, my stack of illnesses differs from yours in the following ways.
And all the people our generation were like, ah, my dad used to... It becomes like some kind of medical game of Magic the Gathering or something where you're whipping out all these different cards with like different powers and go, well, you know, and I'm not going to name any of these things, but you all know what we're talking about, where you go like somebody says something to you and you're like, hey, boy, it's weird how you're always late for everything and go, yeah, well, I'm nervous
You're like, oh, okay, well, sorry, I wasn't aware of that.
I'll change my calendar.
I'm going to trump that with this card, right?
But none of it's real, right?
Those are all words that we're using to describe things, and people who are in certain sciences that will make proclamations about things based on a sample size of 40 people that all happen to go to the same college—
Those science, those sciences, write a, write a paper in a magazine that has the word science in it.
And then, then the New York times writes an article and pretty soon I see this when I do omnibus with Ken all the time, where I start researching a topic and I realized that there are, there's a bibliography of 50 articles about it and they all have one source.
And if you look at that one source, it was just a reporter that day.
Did you watch Dope Sick by any chance?
No, I haven't.
Oh, it's awfully good.
And it's about, you know, it's about both what the Sacklers were doing with OxyContin, but also the fact that they had so heavily targeted, and one of the salespeople figures this out, that they were targeting places with lots of...
occupations that lead to injuries that require pain management.
Right.
And it's, it's really, it's very sad, but it's really well done.
Uh, the cast is really great, but one of the critical things with this, and I've watched now watch two of these, um, mini series about, you know, uh, Sackler family stuff.
Uh,
And the linchpin for this was they were able to, and I won't spoil it for you, able to persuade the FDA to basically create this label that had never been created for any other drug before, saying that Oxy was uniquely less likely to cause addiction and that it happened in less than 1%.
of cases, which, if true, would be a really big deal.
Long story short, I will spoil this part.
If you go all the way back to what they're citing, to what they're citing, citing, citing, citing, if you go all the way to the bottom, it was one, a single one paragraph letter to
like JAMA or New England Journal from this doctor who had no idea that his letter was being used as the basis for a very special label on Oxy.
And it's everything, almost everything he described.
It was under, it was people were, people in the hospital who were being actively monitored.
Do you follow what I mean?
That you're like, yeah, if you actively monitor like whatever, 40 people who were in the hospital, guess what?
They're less likely to get addicted than people who are having like entire giant
Tureens a pill served in them every month But isn't that kind of what we're talking about here where becomes this telephone where you're like, I don't even know how this thing started it is except that I'm I basically feel this way about the entire world our entire culture that is based on a misunderstanding of psychology and
a like popular somehow a dsm-4 fell into the wrong hands and now every single person walking the streets feels capable of diagnosing people and and themselves that the internet is just well that just tells me you have narcissistic personality exactly and and not only that but that that i mean and i the reason i i this hit me so
hard when my dad died was that realization that i'd spent the last i'd spent my whole adulthood lecturing him on how on what his problems were and how he needed to get better and as i like sentences that begin sort of like you just need to dot dot dot yeah or like dad how can you still be living in this state of resentment um when you know
Here, here are your crimes and here are your punishments and watching him die and realizing like, oh my God, he died as he lived.
He was a, he was a, uh,
he he was an elegant man the the whole arc he didn't need to get better he was fine like what was i on about right i was talking about myself that whole time and here he goes and i'm watching him and what you know who who the hell did i think i was right but just recently that's such a shameful feeling
Well, you know, except he and I were fine.
I'll speak for myself.
He deserved every kick in the ankle he ever got.
Yeah, he's a father.
So bring him down.
I could have spent the whole time just going, fuck you.
And he would have said, fuck you.
Fuck me.
Fuck you.
Fuck whom?
Fuck, I got a half a dozen guys.
I'm going to say, fuck you.
That guy right there.
But no, I've been thinking a lot about ADHD.
And somebody said a really interesting thing to me because I was sitting and cataloging all the ways in which ADHD has kept me down and kept me from building a media empire and kept me from having a clean house, kept me from the love of a beautiful woman.
And this person knew my story a little bit, a little bit well.
And said, how do you know that ADHD isn't the reason that you didn't die in any one of those seven car crashes you had between the ages of 16 and 22?
And I said, huh?
And they said, ADHD and the hyper attentiveness that it brings, the constant scanning of the horizon, the looking at everything, seeing and noticing everything because of this hyper attention.
Mm-hmm.
How do you know that it didn't absolutely keep you from death's jaws?
How would you know one way or the – really, one way or the other?
So, like, you apply this codex about, you know, oh, if it's a real diagnosis.
We apply that across our life and look for all the instances where it's like, wow, look how hard that was.
And this person is saying, well, have you also leavened that with the times that it might have been a useful adaptation?
Well, and then – and it went – so, exactly.
It went from there where they were like, how could you describe your career –
your entire career, without the incredible palette of skills that are only available to you as a result of attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder.
That's a tough and very good question.
And they were like, you do not exist without it.
There is no John Roderick without attention deficit disorder.
And so to sit and catalog all the ways that it is a handicap seems like
real Selective bias right and you're not there is no long winters without it.
There is no there you know you you've got a good life that you have built entirely on the backs of Attention deficit disorder and bipolar disorder for somebody with ADHD you turned out fine I mean my psychiatrist says that I
a lot he's like you know all these problems you seem to have like you've turned out pretty fine and i'm like i guess he's like no there's no i guess i always think of the german soldier in one of the first chapters of slaughterhouse five and billy pilgrim says something like why me and the german the german soldier goes why you why anybody that's so true
So fucking true.
But this was one of those moments, one of these thought technologies that came to me as a cantaloupe.
Oh, that's not even fair.
Boy, that's a real punch to the back of the head.
Well, except I've been walking around holding this cantaloupe for now, for three weeks.
Yes.
Looking at this cantaloupe like a Yorick skull.
Yeah.
And I hold it up and I go, alas, poor...
Horatio.
Yeah, a poor myriad of... Oh, sorry.
I'm sorry.
Horatio to whom he's speaking.
I apologize.
Yeah, he's speaking to Horatio.
I turned off fine.
Yeah, no, you're fine.
You're absolutely fine.
Super fine.
No, no.
So just jump in with a Shakespeare reference that you got wrong.
Go ahead, ADHA.
Pull it on my hands.
Pull it on my hands.
So I hold it up and I go, I look at the cantaloupe and I go, alas, poor multitude of diagnoses.
Okay.
what am I meant to do with the, with the idea that I'm inextricable from, they're inextricable from me.
And also they're all actually advantages.
Uh,
What does the cantaloupe say?
It remains mute.
The cantaloupe is mute, right?
As you know.
But it has an expression that says, I think you already know the answer to this.
It kind of looks like it's winking.
It's going like this.
And a lot of this is down to this injury I had on my knee where I went to an orthopedist and...
he was a funny guy he's a funny guy although he's a guy that he's a doctor he's he's like the orthopedist for the seahawks he's like a very good doctor and a and a powerful doctor but he sees some shit but he's the he's also one of these guys that says well her and me went to the thing and you're like wait a minute her and me like that's not even a that's not even like her and i it's like her and me but anyway he's funny guy
And he said, look, here's the problem.
There's no other joint in the body like the knee.
You can't fix it, really.
I work for the Seahawks.
And if you could fix a knee, it's a billion-dollar industry.
There are so many people who would pay any amount of money to hear me tell you that you can fix a knee.
But you can't.
You're born with a certain amount of meniscus and a certain amount of cartilage.
Good problem, Mr. Roderick, because you're all out of knee.
You're all out of knee is exactly what he's saying.
And so he said, look, I'm a surgeon.
If I can fix your knee with surgery, oh, my God, I'm going to do it.
I'm going to tell you I can.
But maybe I can't.
And maybe nobody can.
And so the question for you is, what are you going to do if this is your knee?
And I said, okay, I get you.
What you're saying is, what am I going to do if this is my knee?
And I walked out of the hospital and I walked down the street and I said, okay, if this is baseline pain now for me, then what we do is we do the thing with you do with the little scale where you just change the zero and
And you're like, this is not baseline pain.
This is just zero now.
I just zero it out at this.
Recalibrate almost.
Recalibrate.
And now... You have to figure out... Your knee now represents a tear weight that has to be... Oh, sorry.
That was a homonym.
T-A-R-E.
Whoa.
Sorry.
That was... I know knee people don't like knee talk.
But yeah, right?
You've got to account for that now in your smiley face scale.
Yeah.
And...
I am not going to be there.
I cannot afford to not be as mobile as I can be.
I cannot sit and go, I've got a fucked up knee, so I can't do that.
As long as I can do it.
And he, what he was saying, he said the funniest thing.
He said, listen, motion is lotion.
I was like, what?
He said.
It's one of the ironies of the human body.
Yeah.
Motion is lotion.
It hurts.
It's fucked up.
You got to move it.
Especially with, I don't know, with stuff like some of the knee stuff, that's not so much muscle stuff.
With muscle stuff, I've heard that's very true.
Annie Lamott tells a great story about when she got her tonsils taken out and it was the most painful thing she'd ever experienced.
It was like, doctor, please fill me with drugs.
And he said, you're not going to like this, but you need to chew gum because those muscles need to move.
Oh, yeah.
And then the pain went away forever, and that feels like a lesson.
It's just one bird after another.
Am I right?
Bird by bird, buddy.
It's birds all the way down.
But I'm sitting here holding this cantaloupe in one hand, a psychological cantaloupe, and then I have a doctor sit there and say, well, what if this is your knee?
Welcome to the new knee.
And I look at the cantaloupe and I go, are you my knee?
Yes.
I look at the butterfly and I say, is this, is this, uh, is this cantaloupe?
And I, uh, and I'm so, so for the last couple of weeks, I've been walking around in this kind of charmed state where I've been, because then of course I ate a piece of raspberry pie and it broke my tooth and my tooth fell out.
I got some ambisol if you need it.
And so I'm walking around and, you know, my daughter has not seen me that many times.
As you know, it used to be pretty, pretty apparent.
There were a couple of years there.
I was like, ah, it's too much trouble.
But she hasn't seen me a ton without the tooth.
And, you know, it's I mean, it's a it's a one of the two big teeth, one of the front teeth.
So I'm walking around, I'm limping and I'm missing a tooth and I'm holding a cantaloupe.
Yes.
And I've got a paddle ball game and a chair and, and some Opti grips.
He hates these cans.
Opti grabs.
He eats these cans.
And she's like, what's happening to Daddy?
Yeah.
I go to school for six hours.
I come home and he's got some kind of, you know, Dorian Gray situation going down.
Yeah, it's like he's made out of Legos, and every time I go to school, somebody remakes him.
And with the Lego hammer.
And I'm holding up this cantaloupe, and I'm looking at it and going, is this my knee?
Is this my knee?
But it's been very clarifying because I've been basically walking around going, what if there's nothing wrong with me?
That's an existential moment.
Right?
What if my alcoholism and my introversion and my bipolar disorder and my attention deficit disorder and my sleep apnea and my broken body from all of my teenage whimsy and also...
The fact that I never understood what people mean when they say love.
What if all of that is fine?
And there's nothing really wrong with me at all.
And the drugs I'm taking to manage the bipolar, that absolutely makes sense to me.
But it's not a description of something wrong.
It's just like, hey, we found a pill that will make you not sometimes drive to Spokane for no reason.
I'd be like, yeah, I'll take that pill.
And that's what I found.
I found a pill that makes me just 10% more reliable.
And so I don't know what to do with that information, honestly.
Right.
I'm walking around.
I'm like, hmm.
Boy, talk about a very deep and thorough actual thought technology.
Hmm.
What if there's nothing wrong with us?
Like what if there's I mean there's a million ways to look at it but like what if what if the things that are quote-unquote wrong with me are Not something that's addressable and that actually constitute a lot of who I am Well, but if that's true, then that's what I mean by there is no fine.
Yeah in the sense that if it constitutes who you are It's got to be great
Like all of the things that make you Merlin.
I see this all the time online because I go to all the Merlin sites and read people arguing about you.
I wish you wouldn't.
And it's really wonderful.
It fills my head with joy.
All the people that are like, well, Merlin is this, Merlin is that.
And then there's always somebody that's like, you know, Merlin hates it when people talk about Merlin.
And then somebody else is like, you don't even know Merlin.
You don't know Merlin as well as I know Merlin.
You don't know how much Merlin hates this as much as I know how much Merlin hates this.
I don't do it about them.
One time in 2005, I wrote Merlin an email, and he yelled at me when he saw me at Comic-Con.
And I love it.
I love it.
I read it all.
And in that universe, there is a school of thought, a Merlin thought.
Like let Merlin be Merlin.
Oh Jesus, John.
I hate this.
Let Merlin Merlin is basically what it is.
Why would, why would you not, why would Merlin Merlin and you have any comments on Merlin Merlining?
Okay.
And I'm like, I share this feeling.
Not let Merlin be Merlin.
God made me sorry.
I'm just trying to get through the day like everybody else.
The thing is, I say, no, it's not Merlin be Merlin.
Merlin is Merlin.
Let him Merlin.
Okay.
Yes.
Celebrate Merlin.
I'm in so many parts of speech and I dislike all of them.
Let Merlin Starbucks.
Let Merlin Amazon.
Yes.
Let him Merlin.
Merlinly Merlin along.
Merlin.
Merlin.
You're so drip.
You're the drippiest.
I know.
It's just when I'm goaded for baby.
And so me, I mean, because I can't be reduced to a nickname, right?
It's just like I have to be John Roderick in all things.
But can John Roderick also be a verb?
Can you John Roderick something?
I am not going to get involved in this.
The last thing I'm going to do on this program is talk about you.
That is not a thing I'm going to do on this program.
Okay.
Well, and you don't go to the sites, right?
You don't go to all the... What would that be in service of?
I know.
I know.
What would I want to do differently tomorrow knowing what people speculate about me?
You look at a cantaloupe and you see a universe.
Why would you need a second cantaloupe?
Right, right.
Just one, Ned Beatty's candy wrapper, right?
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
Right?
Yeah, I don't know.
It's complicated.
You know, the park's closed.
The moose out front should have told you.
Sorry, folks.
Okay.
See what I'm saying?
I guess.
I mean, I think you do.
Yeah.
Yeah, no, I do.
I think it's weird that people talk about other people.
I never talk about other people.
I really go out of my way not to talk about other people and people who really deserve to be talked about, but I don't do it because I think it's unseemly.
Well, I know, but you're very fascinating.
Why can't everybody be from Ohio?
You're very fascinating.
This happens a lot.
Stop noticing me.
Some people are super fascinating.
Okay.
All right.
All right.
You're out going through the... A body meets a body coming through the rye, but you're both bodies and the rye.
Huh.
You've never seen so many phonies in your whole life.
You see what I mean?
Yeah.
I can't stop it.
The call is coming from inside the house, except you are in the house.
Oh, it absolutely is.
All that David Copperfield crap.
I know that you don't like to gossip.
There's a whole school.
You know, when I was in rock and roll, I used to have this problem all the time because I would meet people from Texas in rock and roll and realize that the fact that they were from Texas trumped that they were in rock and roll.
Rock and roll is a very gossipy universe.
It's full of gossip.
And Texas...
is very culturally opposed to gossip.
I mean, they gossip, but they do it in a Texas way that to the rest of us seems like it's anti-gossip.
And it's a real problem because you're in L.A., everybody's gossiping.
You're in New York, everybody's gossiping.
You get to Texas, you want to share the gossip, the latest gossip.
Hey, did you hear about so-and-so?
Did you hear about so-and-so?
Text the goss.
Bring it on.
Guess what?
So-and-so said so-and-so about so-and-so.
And then this one's over here.
And the thing is, rock and roll gossip is extremely interesting because people are really, really, really on drugs.
When one tours, it must get a little wild.
Like, no, I don't necessarily mean in, like, a Led Zeppelin hotel window way.
But in, like, it's just, like, you know, it's funny.
I was looking at pictures from booty shots.
You remember the Pirate's Booty photos?
I do.
And thinking about, like, you know, looking at you, Travis Morrison, and, like, all these different people.
And it's, like, man, these people, just their whole life is, like, that loadout song.
Like, just going from one thing to another, and everybody's got expectations of you.
And, like, it must just get so strange.
And I could really see becoming...
Maybe just in the early days, but for me, almost always, I would feel very unmoored from a sense of self a lot of the time.
And that seems like that would lead to a lot of good gossip.
Well, yeah, and you know, you're... You make odd decisions, you know?
You're constantly compared in rock music.
Yeah, sure.
Because every show that you play, somebody is going to say, well, I just saw Travis Morrison the night before...
And it was better or worse than this show that I just saw.
That's me and Elliot Smith.
I saw him one day by himself at Amoeba.
And I've seen him a few times, but one day by himself at Amoeba, which is still there, by the way.
And the next day with a small band at Great American.
And it's not like the Amoeba show was the greatest thing I've ever seen.
But the, you know, the...
The show with the band was sad.
It was a man in decline.
So there's going to be those kinds of things.
I'm telling you right now, which show was better?
You know what I mean?
Which tour was better?
Oh, I really like the opening act better.
Right.
I mean, I remember very distinctly reading those reviews that were like, I really love the new Long Winters record.
Until I heard the new fruit bats record.
Oh, that's not cricket man But you're also people are coming up to you and saying oh man I saw Ted Leo last night and your show blew him out the water and I'm like well first of all I know that's probably not true, but also the audiences are manic Well, yes audiences are upsetting he's post hardcore.
He's never he's always gonna be more exciting than me and
I mean, my show is only more exciting if you are.
He's got that drunk Chris.
That guy's really good.
Well, the whole band is great.
They are great.
You're only going to find my show more exciting if you're prepared to go on the emotional journey with me, which I would expect you would not be.
Or I would not recommend that you do.
But then the problem is the following night, Ted Leo and I are standing next to each other.
Oh, I get it.
You know what I heard.
Watching a third band.
Yeah.
Well, no, you can't do that.
You can't say, hey, guess what?
Some rando said that my show is more exciting than yours.
But it's in your mind.
Sure.
And then you guys are watching, you're standing there together watching the drive-by truckers.
And you're like, well, these guys have more people at their concert than either of us, or than both of us put together.
Yeah.
And he's an amazing guy.
Like, I love that guy to death.
I wish him only the best.
Oh, wait a minute.
Drive-by truckers.
Wait, no.
Drive-by truckers.
Sean likes them.
That's the country-ish.
I'm confusing them with granddaddy.
Okay.
Never mind.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, granddaddy is.
Oh, my God.
They're great.
Yeah, they're great.
But, you know, they're sadder.
They're weirder.
They sound like Alan Parsons in a way I find hard to describe.
See, no, I just described them.
See, I like that.
I know.
You think I'm complaining?
I listen.
They're on my Elephant Six and related bands list, and I'm constantly pimping to people.
I think that's the right place to put them, too.
That one, you know, now it's on.
I struck up a very minor relationship with their drummer at Noise Pop, and we corresponded briefly, Aaron, and he was extremely nice, and he's a really good drummer.
Noise Pop, first of all, the only time the Long Winters were ever invited to play Noise Pop, which is to say zero times, but one time we played a Noise Pop adjacent show during Noise Pop.
a show that was there and it was noise pop, but we were not on the poster and it was playing with the Jason Lytle.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The guy with the hat.
Granddaddy.
Yeah.
And he was playing solo and it was at a time when,
You know, we were playing as a full band, but opening for a guy with an acoustic guitar.
And that's always that always feels like a little bit of stomp on the toes.
Like, hey, you guys got enough with all five of you and all your amps.
You got enough to support this.
This guy who's playing the harmonica by himself.
Only the harmonica.
But that gossip, that gossip thing.
The way you're describing it is it's unavoidable.
It's almost like talking about the weather in your business.
Because the whole thing boils down to how many records did you sell?
And how many records did they sell?
And they sold enough records to have a career, and you didn't sell enough records to have a career.
And there's a line.
Where on one side of it, you have a career, and on the other side, you don't.
And, you know, it's separated by 50 records in some cases.
Right.
It's not purely an issue of vanity at all.
It's a, and I remember you talking about this in the run-up to records coming out.
It's like there's somebody, the way I felt like this, you tell me if I'm wrong.
I feel like the way you described it, everybody, including you and your label, have kind of a number in mind for week one.
And if it's shy of that number, one tends to be kind of bummed out.
You hear all the stories of bands.
If we don't hit 15,000 this week, it's going to be bad or whatever.
Yeah, their record came out.
The first week's sales were disappointing, and the label stopped supporting the band.
Speaking of Travis Morrison, not that I'm mad.
Yeah, right.
But that's what happened to Harvey Danger.
It happened to a lot of them.
Yeah, that's such a good record, too.
Oh, they got dropped.
But you go to Texas, and they have that whole, like, well, we don't talk about other people.
We don't gossip about musicians here in Texas.
And it's like, well, wait the fucking minute.
You guys are also trying to sell records.
Yep.
But that's, you know, record.
So and it's not Colin Malloy's Montana.
Like, I think it's very gauche to talk about record sales.
Thank you.
No, it's it's that other thing where it's like, well, if you don't, if you ain't got a thing where you need to say it, why would you even say it?
I think that's a good way.
I don't follow it, but that's a good way to conduct yourself.
I forget who said this, and it's definitely not me that originated this, but somebody's saying like, oh, you know what it was?
I think it was fucking Queen Elizabeth said this in The Crown.
Like, does this need to be said?
In The Crown, in her docudrama.
In her docudrama that a lot of people say isn't all that true.
But whoever said this, without regard to who said it, three things.
Does this need to be said?
Does this need to be said by me?
And does this need to be said by me right now?
And I think there's worse ways to think about how to conduct yourself.
I agree for other people.
I do too.
But I think I really benefit from that.
I don't follow any of those.
Me neither.
I say all the things and the less they need to be said, the more likely it is I'll say them.
yeah about about every goddamn thing and i i don't know you know i am as god made me sir yes twisted this was not a thing i chose no it's a life that chose you as jay-z says i was at a i was at a baseball in the projects roaches and rats in the projects i was at a baseball game with uh with the television's george meyer yesterday oh we're looking out yeah please tell him i said hi i will
We were looking out at the baseball field and he said, what do you think it is about you where you can just get up and improvise in front of an audience?
But to me, it feels like a nightmare.
That's such a good question.
And I said, well, I have no idea.
It involves ADHD.
It's absolutely true that if you gave me a microphone and pushed me out on the pitcher's mound right now,
With the baseball teams on the field.
Yeah.
Pushed me out there so that they were like, who the fuck are you and why are you out here?
He gave me a microphone and said.
They dropped you down like a Cirque du Soleil type situation.
Yeah.
Dropped me down right on it with a parachute.
And you're now performing for 40,000 people.
And all you have to do is stay out there for five minutes and get one laugh.
And I would be like, do it.
Let's do it.
Absolutely.
You know one thing that is that's a fucking guaranteed dopamine surge and you'll be fine Oh, I would be so happy.
Oh, I was like I'd be tripping balls on dopamine Please throw me in the throw me in the briar patch.
He said, you know, there are three thirty nine thousand and and nine hundred and fifty people here who would consider that the worst nightmare and
But somehow there's like 50 of you super broken people that are like, get me out on that mound and give me my five minutes.
I want to distinguish that from extraversion because I think those are different things.
But the thing is that one of the things with AD, who cares?
Who cares?
But maybe you can give me one of those keyboards that plays that sound you like.
Lift up the cantaloupe and say what you're about to say.
Well, I'm going to say one thing about me, and I hate to get serious, but I was in many ways a pretty lonely kid, and I was kind of an odd.
I mean, I think everybody feels lonely.
Everybody feels odd, and that's okay, but here's what I'll tell you about that, regardless of whether that was earned, deserved, smart or not.
Man, there were times in my life, I'm very ashamed to say, when I would throw anybody under the bus to be liked by somebody.
Yeah.
I would like maybe especially in like late, not so much elementary school, but definitely junior high.
Like I would, I would say the cruelest things about people and the funniest, cruelest thing I could think of, because if it made somebody more popular laugh, maybe they'd let me hang around a few more minutes.
And in retrospect, I really hate that about myself, that I did that, because guess what?
I also suffered from that, like everybody did.
So I'm not trying to cover myself in glory.
I'm just trying to say that, like, I think that... And so why am I saying that?
No one asked.
I'm saying that because gossip is a form of that, except you're a nominal adult when you do it.
You're taking down other people, and you're binning them.
You're taking other people and trying to put them into some kind of fucking drawer that suits...
How you see the world and ultimately makes you look better.
And you get to be, you get to try them in absentia and say shit about them.
You hope they never, ever hear word for word that you said.
So part of it's just practical.
Like, I think it's a bad idea to gossip about people.
But also part of it is like, I'm still, I'm still offering the world in amends for the times I was unnecessarily cruel to somebody.
Because they were poor or because they were strange or because they didn't read very well.
If I could score a point off of them, boy, that's a point for me and not for them.
And I'll spend the rest of my life feel like that.
And again, as somebody who suffered from that very directly as a weird kid.
This is what we do.
I know it's not Lord of the Flies exactly, but there is that thing of like, hey, it's all against all in some situations.
And you'll do one, me, I'll do anything I could to like have somebody want to hang out with me on the weekend.
And it's so sad and it's so unkind.
And then when I see other people doing it for what I see to be a somewhat similar purpose.
Because we learned this.
What happens in my environmental ethics class, they talked about some of the problems with Genesis, and the idea that once we get to name all the animals that kind of belong to us, and I think we do that when we tell others what's wrong with somebody or how they are, or we...
zoom way in to highlight somebody else's perceived afflictions it just makes me very uncomfortable and like I think this is probably the first time I've ever said that I hope it'll be okay that I've said that that's why I don't do it I think it's I think it's unseemly that's why I'm not in rock and roll you use your powers for good now can I tell you about my dream
I definitely want to hear about your dream.
Yeah, I know because I typed it up as soon as I woke up and sent it to Syracuse.
This is Friday night.
And this is one of those dreams.
I have a lot of dreams.
I dream about airports.
I dream about airplanes.
I dream about Las Vegas.
I dream about my family living in a hovel.
And this one is one of the common ones, which is going back to an old job.
So I go back to my job from the 90s, except it's me now.
And, of course, some of the same people were there.
Anyway, long story short...
I have a desk that actually has a window.
You look outside the window and you see a giant like dilapidated falling down building for religious materials.
And it's called the Ministry of Ministry.
And even in the dream, I thought that's kind of a clever name.
The Ministry of Ministry.
And then I was introduced to the admin.
They said, this is the admin.
And the thing was, the admin was very obviously like speed era Sandra Bullock.
And nobody was acknowledging that, which was kind of strange.
So I extended my hand, and I said, hello, person.
It's nice to meet you.
And like some kind of a slightly concerned forest creature, she grasped my hand by the fingers, pulled it up to her face, and scratched her nose with one of my nuggets.
What kind of forest creature?
Oh, like a fawn?
Or a Horatio?
Uh-huh, uh-huh.
Or a Yorick?
Uh-huh.
So she scraped?
She did this with my knuckle.
And then I went over, Fred Willard was over by the big board, and I went over and met him.
Yeah, he didn't remember the time we met at Sizzler.
Then I woke up and I texted John Syracuse.
But I wasn't gossiping about anybody.
And it wasn't a sex thing.
John Siracusa does not seem like somebody who would be interested in hearing about your dreams.
Am I wrong?
He hates it, yeah.
I didn't say I'm perfect.
See, if you texted me about it, we would then talk about it, probably.
But you're just antagonizing him.
I wouldn't say that.
You're doing the thing where you're, like me, where we talk about evolution just because we know he's listening in.
Right, because he knows a lot about natural selection and evolution and how quickly it can happen, really, even in the summer afternoon, you know?
I feel like your introduction of me to John Cercusa was...
was all just a way to antagonize him further.
He's like a brother that you are constantly poking at.
That's probably something I need to hear.
I need to hear that because I hadn't thought of that.
By saying, oh, you need to talk to John Roderick.
You were just trying to make him...
Well, you guys are like, there should be some Bokanon in its name.
It's not a caress.
It's probably not even a grand balloon.
But you guys definitely participate in some kind of system where you don't realize you're either working for or against the same thing.
You don't know that.
And you're going to need to work that out.
Not my circus, not my monkeys.
Right, sure, sure, sure.
Just get on the horn with Squidward and work it out.
But you think it's like one of those statues in Washington, D.C.
where there's two rhinoceroses holding up a globe?
Yes.
And one of them is wearing shoes and one of them, you know, has glasses or something like that?
Where is that?
Is there a place I could see?
Yeah, it's in front of the state department.
Oh, it's in one of the museums.
Probably one of the museums.
Oh, no, no, it's part of the architecture.
It's like holding up the Department of Commerce out front, you know.
Legally, probably.
Legally.
Yeah, it's big.
If it took out the rhinoceri with the shoes and whatnot, the whole economy would turn to NFTs.
Each one of the rhinoceroses represents one of the continents.
Just one lies and one tells the truth?
Yeah, there's 11 rhinoceroses for all the continents.
Because they're not 11, yeah.
Exactly.
They're all wearing different items of clothing, but they represent the humors.
Oh, I see.
It's kind of like it's a small world with an armored creature.
Right.
And the problem is that Circusa is over here, and I'm over there, and we each think we're, you know... Yes.
We each think like, oh, I'm... You're both holding up something, but you don't know what.
It's like the man and the elephant problem.
Yes.
Exactly.
We have the whole world on our shoulder, but we don't realize there are nine other rhinoceroses also holding it up.
Do you guys talk about me?
Me and John?
Yeah.
No, the only...
The only times that we communicate directly to one another is when I text him and say, what kind of file is this?
Oh, you text him about your exec, your unit exec file.
He says, he says, you need a, that's, that's Unix and you need a, no, he, did he say add a soft fix like I did?
I said, no, no, I didn't know the file type.
I said, uh, the last time I talked to him, I said, oh yeah, I, I, uh, that computer that you helped me buy, I never took it out of the box.
And he said, well, it's obsolete now.
and and i i said stop devolving stop devolving days ago i'm still using this laptop from 2014 and he like rolled his eyes to death and then he resurrected himself long enough to tell me that that was a bad idea and and i said well what should i get and he said you know there's not enough bandwidth on your
phone no no no no that's the thing it's just like asking him to pronounce his name he will not he withholds not only does he withhold praise and affection he withholds he leads you right up to the point of like well it's not this it's not this it's not this and you say well john then what is it and you go like i can't really answer that beetlejuice beetlejuice ah quit