Ep. 556: "Don't Get Cute"
Coo Coo Coo Coo Coo Coo Coo Coo Coo Coo
I gotta chew the donut.
What?
Did you say chew the donut?
Is that a euphemism?
Gotta chew the donut.
Gotta chew the donut.
Did you like the way I hailed you with an ad hoc bird sound?
It's okay to say no.
It's okay to say no.
How would you like to be hailed?
I just want to let you know my mic's working.
Donut.
Donut?
Mm-hmm.
John, John, is there any chance you're eating a donut right now?
Tell me.
With a donut, every chance.
Every chance you get, bring me a donut.
Do you consider that sort of a, I mean, it's difficult for you to say, leave it to the listener, do you consider that a vulnerability that you can be drawn by a donut?
Maybe you'd be floating on tiptoes like a, like a, like a, like a cat trying to get a pie on a window.
Ticka, ticka, ticka, ticka.
What if I did that?
What if the thing comes up and I see you're muted and I go... What if I made some Hanna-Barbera sounds?
I am a cat in a hobo hat trying to steal a pie off of a windowsill.
Save it for the next record.
I'm a cat.
What kind of donut?
I'm very vulnerable to donuts.
Oh, okay.
I make bad decisions based on them, and I think I'm, you know, I need, my blood sugar is probably a problem.
Yeah, but if you don't check it, you're probably fine.
See, that's the thing.
You know how many false negatives you get?
A lot of your life is a false negative if you think about it.
That's right.
Or false positive.
The thing is, it's the falsity that concerns me.
Two negatives don't make a negative.
No, that's, I think, Algebra 1.
Algebra 1.
Positive divided by a negative.
Oh, come on.
That's crazy.
My kid took his first SAT today.
He's already done like five practice tests.
A PSAT or an SAT?
No, no.
No, no.
No, no.
Well, he's been... I don't want to get into this, but he's... I just wanted to brag a little bit.
I'll tell you how fair what his score is.
That's a big deal.
Hey, listen, I want to ask you... Wait, did they tell you your score right away?
I had to wait like six months.
When you take the test score...
Yeah.
Yeah.
We took a test.
You took a test and it says, here's how you did versus last time.
It's all, it's all computers now.
Oh, it's computers.
All right.
Of course.
So wait, they don't make you sit in a, they don't make you go to a cold auditorium and not to practice.
If you practice, you could be sitting at the desk under your loft bed.
Right, right, right, right, right.
But when you take the test, you have to go to a cold auditorium and sit 15 feet apart from other students.
Geez, I don't even know, John.
I mean, after COVID, I don't recognize anything anymore.
You know, it's causing a huge housing problem in Las Vegas, you know, COVID.
COVID.
Yeah, I heard a podcast about that today.
But yeah, no, he's been practicing.
Listen, I want to ask you a question, and it's a very anodyne question that I'd like you to give a medium-length answer to, and it's really just the setup for a bit that I'd like to do.
Would you be okay with that?
Yeah, absolutely.
That's what I'm here for.
me anyway i it's like them them them them yummy tater chips we're like i've never had one donut of anything uh-huh do you know i'm saying i do i do i've never had one donut of anything title um okay what's your favorite donut
I like a cake donut.
You're a traditionalist.
I like a cake donut.
I like it with frosting.
And I like the frosting to have sparkles.
Yep.
Like a Homer Simpson donut.
Yeah.
A lot of people will call sparkles a sprinkle.
But I think a sprinkle it's just describing what you did.
It's not describing sounds like water sports, and I don't love it and Cincinnati call them Jimmy's And usually Jimmy would be gummier than a sparkle we could buy the really fancy ones from Whole Foods and those are those are called James's oh Nice
But anyway, I like to get them from any kind of truck stop place.
But I won't eat a non-cake donut.
If you put one of those... Cruller.
Bear craw.
Bear craw?
That sounds like some kind of Creole dish.
That'll get stuck right in your bear craw.
Guaranteed.
No, I don't want it.
I don't want any of those.
Okay, but you know what I love?
I love that you know what you like and you, by extension, I suppose, know within reason what you don't like.
You like trying new things, but donuts, you know.
Okay, look, I'm already going to contravene my bit.
Yeah, go ahead.
Well, in life, it helps.
It's nice to try stuff.
And John, I think one thing our listeners know about you is you do like to try stuff.
I do.
I do.
But you do know what you like.
You might try some kind of a brand of automobile.
Automobile?
Just to see what it's like.
But you know you like a big truck that mostly doesn't work and has electrical problems.
You know that's your bailiwick, your wheelhouse, your car.
100%.
All those things.
It's the wheelhouse of my bailiwick.
But when I eat any other kind of donut, it feels like, as soon as I take a bite of it, it feels like I want to be a cop or a fireman.
And I don't want to be a cop or a fireman.
No, all donuts are good.
I don't want those mushy, mushy things.
They're too doughy.
They're too bready.
I want a cake is what I want.
Well, before I do my bit, then, let me just ask you, are you coming in hot with anything today?
Or would a bit get in the way?
You know what?
I think today is perfect for a bit because I was a little bit worried.
I'm feeling not sad.
I'm just feeling a little bit.
I took a little bit of a hit, and I said to myself, don't talk about it.
Don't talk about it.
Okay, I think we got time for both.
Leave it.
We got time for both.
So I'm going to write down the bit.
The bit sounds more fun.
Let's see where we are when we're done.
Cause you do have a way, even after all of these, uh, these years that you do still surprise me with the way that you, it's what, uh, it's what turn a bit into something dark.
Yes.
Yes.
Oh, also shit.
Okay.
Number one is my bit.
Number two is, and you know, it bugs me that you can't just say to people, people who are like, like with me, I got anxiety and sometimes I have depression.
And I said, I said to my family, you can't have this conversation with people.
I said to them last week, week before last, it was during the hurricane and I was kind of, you know, having a tough time with all sorts of, before the hurricane hit, thinking about selfishly about all of these places I love and people I love in Florida.
And I was like, Hey, just so you guys know,
I told Alex this.
I told my family this.
I said, I'm just having a little bit of depression right now.
I think it's situational.
It's not going to be a big deal.
It'll go away.
Or like, you know, sometimes I'll say I have a little anxiety.
And then when you say you got a little anxiety, what do people say?
What are you anxious about?
And there's only one answer ever to that question.
It's not snarky.
It's real.
What are you anxious about?
I am anxious about two things, everything and nothing.
Have you any suggestions for me to make that better, perhaps?
I think it's a shame we can't talk about.
So number one, I've written down bit, comma, Merlin's.
And then we've got, how would you do it?
No, not blue.
That's my term.
What was the phrase you used?
You feel a little down?
What was your phrase?
A little down, I think.
That's what my dad always said.
You know, I went to see Not A Surf.
Madeline saw them just the other night.
They're an absolutely wonderful band.
She says Matthew is nicer than he's ever been.
And the band is better.
They're as good Not A Surf as you will ever see.
I will make a remark without mentioning any names.
Mm-hmm.
And before the show, he and I are sitting there on the little couch in the back.
Oh, did you visit with him?
We had a little time.
I've only met him a couple times, but he seems really nice.
Like, genuinely, like, a nice guy.
And some of the stuff, like talking about the song where he was bullied and he got the good chord and the bad chord, he probably did a similar bit with you, right?
By the way, that record's pretty fucking good.
The new record's great.
It is really good.
It's very catchy.
But we're talking, and we're talking because he also has Anxiety HDDH, or whatever it is that you have.
Well, part of the problem is you don't even know how many A's, H, and D's go in it.
D's, Anxiety?
What are the A's and the H's?
Exactly.
What are the orders?
A's, D's, and H's.
ABC is IADB closing.
And so I'm talking to him.
And then I said to him after a little bit, I was like, you know what?
I never put this together before, but you and Merlin man are very similar in some of these ways.
Yeah.
Because he has sort of, he's very capable, he has some free-floating anxiety that will attach itself to anything, and it really, in a way, it motivates him, right?
Dealing with his anxiety actually kind of charts his path through life.
There was a time I was staying at his house and there were little pieces.
I maybe have told this story before.
There were little pieces of tape, little tiny pieces of tape.
Scotch brand tape.
No, no.
They were little colored tape.
It was like tape that you would use on a record on a mixing board or something like, yeah, like tape or masking tape.
Yeah, but small, like tiny.
Okay.
Like little tiny pieces.
Maybe that's what you're saying.
But like light blue and yellow.
And always together, light blue and yellow.
Like the Ukrainian flag.
Like the Ukrainian flag.
But there'd be one on the windowsill, and there'd be one by the bathroom door.
And it was clearly two pieces of tape.
And then there was one like on the, you know, in the kitchen, like up.
And so I'd been there for, you know, for staying in his place in Brooklyn for about a week.
And when I talked to him, I was like, hey, I was there for like three days before I noticed, before I started to notice these little pieces of tape.
And I couldn't figure out what they were doing.
And he said, oh, well I put the tape
places to remind me when I look at it to, and then he said, you know, then he explained what it was.
The tape was reminding him to do, which was some version of calm down.
It's fine.
Get it done.
You know, take, take charge.
This is your turn.
Oh my God.
You know, this, this type of thing.
Oh my God.
Really?
Oh, right, right, right.
Okay.
And I said, how does that work?
And he's like, well, I mean, I don't really see them anymore.
Yeah, and and now that I think about it you have all kinds of little Not not like green hoping mechanisms little things taped to the wall You're talking about maladaptions maladaptation
Yes.
But he and I had the same conversation.
My amygdala is like the world's worst radio station.
Like, no matter what's on the charts right now, that little almond-shaped piece of shit on my brain will turn anything into the worst.
But he and I have that conversation that you and I have, which is like, okay, we have, they call it the same thing, this A-H-H-H-D-D-D-H-D.
But it manifests on completely different, it's not even sides of the spectrum.
It's just like different rooms in a high ride.
Some someday they're going to figure out because we all, you know, you and I have been on through the journey.
Anybody's been through the journey with mental and emotional health knows.
Well, we'll learn perhaps.
You know what?
Sorry.
Starting over.
Anxiety is part of almost everything.
Anxiety.
You know, like when you see a drug ad on TV and talk about headaches and, you know, diarrhea and stuff.
Like everything gives you headaches.
Everything gives you diarrhea.
Well, like everything gives you anxiety.
And like people think, well, anxiety, you must be really keyed up.
Do you know how fucking exhausting it is to have anxiety?
Ask Matthew Cause.
I mean, I don't know personally, but I can tell you that like managing, we're trying to unmanage.
Anxiety is a very effortful thing.
On my right wrist.
I have a rubber band.
Is there a piece of gaffer tape?
No, I've got a rubber band.
Oh, what's the rubber band do?
Reminds me I'm alive.
Oh, that's nice.
How's a donut?
Is that a good donut?
I'm moving my bit down to number seven, if time.
I know not to eat food when I'm doing a show.
I don't care.
But there's this donut over here.
Yeah.
Well, so what I had was, okay, let's talk more about Matthew Koss.
No, let's go into the bit.
We got all the time in the world.
I'll come back to it, but let's talk more about Matthew Koss.
And I just want to talk about, like, I know you're not a fan, but I really like music.
And I think Nata Surf is really neat.
And I really... So, wait.
For 25 years, I've been trying to figure out what exact mix of musical chemicals...
They add together to make their spectacular little cake.
I know.
You walk away feeling like, oh, that's really pretty and smooth.
But, like, that does not encompass all that they do.
Like, there's a lot of, like, the fruit fly thing.
There's all these, like, deeply sort of emotional things going on.
A mix of, like, even take, like, my...
I don't know if it's my favorite.
My putative favorite, if you held a gun to my head, shook me awake, if you Luca Bratzied me in the middle of the night, I would say that Hyperspace is kind of my favorite Not A Surf song.
Now, you play me any of 90 other songs, and I'm going to go, oh, no, that's actually my favorite.
I love the backup vocals on Transatlanticism by Death Cab for Cutie.
Does that help?
Did you sing on any Not A Surf songs?
No.
Did I'm on a couple of not a surf record enough on the on that album that has the same name as the as the other album What's called let go?
No, I'm not on let go.
I don't know I'm bad at that.
I'm bad Oh God, I'm almost saying a Coldplay song because Coldplay just basically sounds like other bands Now what's the song I'm thinking of not not the only love.
What's the one?
What was the big hit?
Always love always.
No, no, no.
No, it's love
The other one, Love Me Do.
No, Love... That's the first one.
That's the first track where they had harmonica on the album.
Always Love was the one that came afterwards that I was like, you can't have another song that says Love.
No, it was the one, the big hit from Let Go.
Yeah, it was... Yeah, it doesn't matter.
Yeah, but I wasn't on Let Go.
That was how I met those guys, was Let Go.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But no, one of the other things, like you're saying, I used to stand on the side of the stage and watch them, and I would say to Matthew, why does your guitar sound so much better than mine?
And he said, at one point.
He plays it like a musical instrument.
Well, there's that.
Do you know what I'm saying, though?
It's like, I don't know about you, but like me, I'm just like, bah, bah, bah, bah.
I might as well be like fucking Barney Rubble out there.
But like, they make a sound.
Well, that's it.
He said, he said, I was watching you and thinking about your guitar tone and, and the difference is that I use a lot of distortion and nobody hears it as distortion because it's because I put it in.
It's always on, and it's a kind of warm distortion.
But it doesn't read as, because it doesn't read as, ooh, like Angus Young, it doesn't read as loud.
Right.
It's texture.
He said, your guitar is loud and clean.
My guitar is really dirty, but it sounds warm and enveloping, not harsh.
And I was like, it is.
What you say is true.
And so then I went through a phase where I took a distortion box that was like the one he had and I set it to like he set it.
And I put it on my pedal board.
This is 20 years ago.
And I would put it on and I'd be like, warm and smooth.
and i couldn't play i couldn't play it with i couldn't play my songs songs and arrangements are this is not a value judgment your songs and arrangements are pretty different from theirs like they write something closer in retrospect kind of closer to like a classic pop song in some ways although they're always surprising me with their little chord changes and their little fruity chords and like mixing it up and stuff like that um
but and i think it i think that's i think you're right and their songs are surprising but one thing i noticed and i noticed this about green day i noticed this about a lot of bands that have this kind of enveloping sound is although not a surf songs do go up and down there's not a ton of dynamic in the sense that the songs mostly are you know the guitar is like on
Again, it's not like everybody hits the rap pedal and suddenly it's 20 decibels louder and you know it's the chorus.
There's all the classic things.
I mean, it's something I'm going to write a thesis about this, about minor and major, easy and hard.
Like, I first realized this, of all things, listening to Sonic Youth and King Crimson R2, like where you're like, you can either have poppy major chord versus with a minor chord chorus or more often the opposite.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, take a song like Three of a Perfect Pair, which is like such a... No, what's the song?
Model Man.
Model Man is the most extreme version of this in the world from Three of a Perfect Pair album, where it's like the most chaotic, no wave, what is happening verse.
And then remember, and then the chorus goes, I'm ready to leave.
I want to be... And it's just the most exultant major chord thing.
That's about dynamics.
Dynamics can also be about major and minor, if you ask me.
But it's not like it gets that much louder.
They seem like a real band, a professional band.
Professional band.
That's the thing.
Madeline said, so Madeline and Christine went, and they had a great time.
But one thing, it said that, I'm not going to say anything.
I have nothing to say about this, but one of the members of the band has aged and consequently calmed the fuck down a lot.
And apparently Madeline says this...
more enjoyable on that side of the stage.
Although she still wants to shave his head so fucking hard.
Oh my goodness.
Dude, when you see a picture of him, don't you want to shave his head?
I mean, everyone in the band has his own, they all have their own journey through life.
A lot of stuff been going on in that camp.
Did Daniel look like one of those dogs in a YouTube video that was missing for a year and then they had to shave all the hair off?
Well, I mean, I've always, even when Daniel was only 40 years old, even when he was only 35 years old.
He's 73 years old now.
You never know.
Sean Nelson famously said, you know, he's a 35-year-old Spaniard, but he looks like a 60-year-old lesbian.
Yeah.
And I was like, well, that did come up.
Sort of.
But now a couple of them are kind of getting that look now.
But, you know, that's all fine.
But, you know, it's clean living.
The fact that he never smoked.
I think that makes a big difference.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, you know, he still had cigarettes around, but he couldn't smoke them on stage.
He's finally given into that.
He's done the Obama where he admits the optics are not good.
Well, no, it wasn't that.
It was that for years he would get up on stage in clubs with huge signs that said no smoking and the club had told him not to smoke and he was like, I am from Spain.
And he'd lean back and be like guitar guy, bass guy.
Anyways, Madeline had a great time.
But he stopped doing that, I guess.
Good for him.
Good for him.
Well, I'm glad they're still out there and kicking it.
They make me very happy.
If y'all haven't checked out Nodis, or if you know who, I don't know, we might have had this conversation literally last week, and I don't remember.
But your friend or ex-friend or provisional friend, Sean Nelson, should have him on the podcast.
Because I think of them being very much in a similar boat from around the same time.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
They had the one hit.
It's a goddamn shame that you only know that's a great song.
That's an underrated song.
But, like, popular.
But, like, man, that ain't the whole story.
Then they come back.
They come back with the proximity effect?
Holy fucking shit.
It's a good record.
I think that Sean probably has made a pretty long list of one-hit wonders.
Because he has an encyclopedic knowledge of those things.
And now he's going down the list trying to contact all those people.
And I bet you he'll get to Matthew pretty soon because he's like trying to talk to a soft sell or whatever.
And those guys are like, we had like seven hits in the UK.
I don't know what you're talking about.
And he's like, oh, right.
You know, I'm Mark Almond, right?
You realize that I'm Mark Almond, right?
We didn't just do like two halves of Motown covers.
Like we actually were a real band.
Well, the thing is, Sean's smart enough.
He knows that, too.
I love that song.
It's a great song, and you know, he can't sing at all, and that's what makes the song great.
Oh, but see, but he's from that time.
If you watch a lot of old BBC rock specials, you really get that that was a time.
Not just for New Romantics, not just goth, not any of that, but like, even, who's the other guy?
Steve Strange.
You see, the guy who's in Visage, who was mainly, I think, a
a club guy like a club owner guy you get the scene people like you know boy george or maryland but like there was there was so much happening that was more punk than punk because you know it's one thing to go like oh i want to be like joe strummer who's from middle class upper middle class that's fine but like you come back and you're like no no no i'm just i'm just a gay guy who borrowed a keyboard and that's the story of so many amazing bands from the late 70s
Human League, you know, they've got a lot of good songs, too.
No, they just had the one.
Just one hit.
Did you know they were fans, the two girls?
I did.
Believe me.
I've heard it all.
You can hear it on a song.
I've read every rock story.
I've read every rock story.
Oh, jeez.
Here we go.
There's not a single one I haven't read.
Yeah, but I'm trying to share that with our audience, Jeremy.
Sean.
Oh, I see what the audience.
I'm bonding with you.
Instead, you're going to Syracuse me.
We talked about this in episode 53.
Okay, well, I guess we'll just re-release that every time I want to talk about this.
The last thing I'll ever do is remember if we talked about something once.
Thank God.
Because who cares?
who cares the problem the reason i interrupted your human league story is the idea of going out into a club and saying to the two cute girls that dance to your band yeah hey when there's when there's 11 people there those two are there those two are there they're dancing with each other with their egyptian makeup on and you go out and you go
Hey, would you like to be in the band?
He's not even German.
I don't know why.
And they're like, sure.
And then they become humanly.
I think he's from the Midlands.
It makes me so mad inside that things like that happen to some people that I don't want to hear it.
I don't want to even hear the story.
I feel like he was more prepared for that.
We're talking here about Phil Oakey and who's the other guy?
The two guys.
The two guys who are the main guys.
Yeah.
Well, yeah, right.
But they were like, there was a band there that ended up going away, right?
Wasn't that the thing that...
Well, see, I don't remember the story.
No, it's okay.
But like, it wasn't too long after that, that like, well, it's always been like Phil and whatever his interesting haircut at the time was later a shaved head.
And then the, I think there's the blonde guy.
For some reason, I'm thinking of to think about like, oh gosh, you'd never realized that they were just fans who they called it to sing.
Yeah.
You ever heard the song fascination?
That's a great song, but it's not, you know, it's Andrea, not Andrea Bocelli.
it's got the detuning that little like detuning on the um uh wait now where are they from there are they from they're not from the ska city right are they from i want to say that they're from where did they send uh where's lady godiva are they from they're not from coventry are they i know but what area
I don't know.
You don't care about what area of England they're from?
Oh, I'm from Hull.
It's like, I guess.
Okay, well, do you know why that's a big deal to be from Hull?
Yeah, because the Germans bombed you and then they rebuilt it all to look like a hockey rink.
Is that right?
I thought it was because it was shaped like the bottom of a boat.
Oh, I see.
Yeah, well, they made boats there.
They made a lot of boats.
I think based on my watching of many British game shows and panel shows, I get the feeling that Hull, like Coventry, is kind of seen as sort of like the sticks.
Oh, ditto Liverpool.
Liverpool also seen as the sticks.
Oh, the super duper sticks.
Okay, so where's Human League City?
We played there a couple of times.
There's a bar in Hull.
This is one of these Merlin Man bars where you walk in.
And it's low and it's grody.
And it's dark and it smells like smoke.
And you look around and on the walls are all the little posters of all the bands that had played there.
Oh, I love that.
And it's every band except the Beatles.
Like every band has played in this like 250 person.
They're just like, here's the first time that Oasis played here.
Here's the first time that the Sex Pistols played here.
And I'm walking around, I'm like, this can't be real.
The guy that has owned the bar the whole time well comes over, you know And he's got like he's got really thick glasses that are covered with tobacco smoke So it's like, you know, he just sort of looks like that guy in the Jerky boys like a guy who needs a trailer park boys Trailer park boy, but you're saying he's a man who needs to be detailed and he's yeah And he's got like one temple of his glasses is tied on with a with a bread tie or whatever and he's like Bah Go to the store come with me fucking NHS
And I get into the passenger seat of it.
He's got some Porsche 924, but it's got like cigarette packs on the floor.
We went to a Costco or something to get a hundred jugs of soda water.
And it was insane.
The legacy of English pop music that was contained in this man and his very strange abode.
I think I spent the night in his apartment.
He sounds like one of those English eccentrics you hear about.
Yes, and he's like Kurt Block in the sense that if you go to Kurt Block... A lot of institutional wisdom.
Institutional wisdom, thank you.
Kurt Block has a room in his house.
You go upstairs and it's like... And Kurt Block's house is... He's a bachelor.
I wouldn't say it was clean or tidy.
I imagine him living in Kiwi's Playhouse, kind of.
A little.
You go upstairs and he has one of those attic rooms where there's kind of like a small door.
That opens into a pointy roof room, but a big one, a long, big, pointy roof room.
And inside, there are... Half a dozen co-eds.
Well, yeah.
All tied up.
No, I did not even imply that about Kerr Block.
It just seemed like that's what the story was.
He puts on his clown makeup and goes up and reads in the Bible.
Yeah.
Yeah, there's eight coffins all standing up.
Did everybody sleep okay last night?
No, what it is is 800 guitar cases and not stacked, but just as though he stood in the doorway and threw the guitar.
Like he just got home and was tired and he just flung them?
Yeah.
And it's a pile.
It's like a mountain of them.
And if you go in and pull out any one guitar case and open it up, there is a like a historic jazz master.
Seattle punk rock guitar.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
That one was played by.
Yeah.
and uh and i don't understand all you can do is close is slowly close the door because it's too much to get your head around let the girls sleep and that's the thing that so i have this i have two images of hull i have that guy and that club and that and his house which if they burn down so much would be lost yeah yeah it all belongs in a museum
And then I did actually play a hockey rink there where they had put plywood down over the ice.
In hull?
In hull.
Wow.
And put plywood down over the ice, but not in a way where the plywood was connected from one piece to the next.
They just put plywood down and then they put a piece down.
They installed it the way the Kurt Block puts away his guitars.
Yeah, yeah.
And then they filled up this hockey rink with people, but the ice was like, you could feel the cold air coming up.
Yes, yes, yes.
Because you still need the ice.
It's not like you can get rid of the ice.
That's still hockey.
Yeah, you're going to use that tomorrow at the hockey game.
When you stack all this wet plywood out back.
And I was like, oh, huh.
Yeah, sure.
Well, you know, that's where House Martins are from.
And consequently, House Martins.
What a good place to be.
You don't believe it.
They speak a different language, but it's never really happened to me.
I don't know.
I'm not familiar with their work.
And, you know, that's got Fat Boy Slim in it before it was Fat Boy Slim.
I saw a picture of Moby today.
I always think of those two guys.
I always think of one.
Yes, because they both had big poppy electronic hits in like 1998 or nine.
And they both looked like very unlikely pop stars.
Yeah.
Like they were clamoring through record bins.
That was during the clamor through record bins years.
Yeah, sure, sure, sure.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The DJ Shadow era.
Yeah.
I saw a picture of Moby.
He was talking about that he's 15 years sober today or something.
Oh, good for him.
And Moby's got a bunch of neck tattoos.
No, really?
And I was like, when did Moby get neck tattoos?
I mean, it could have been 15 years ago, and I just haven't been keeping up with the trades.
Couldn't he just get shirts?
The guy's got money.
Couldn't he just get shirts he likes?
I don't know, man.
Neck tattoos, you know?
Yeah, but if he has to go to a wedding...
I mean, the first time I saw a neck tattoo on a friend, I said to him, do you never want to have a job again?
Yeah.
And he said, man, you don't know anything.
That also limits your girlfriend potential.
I don't know if it does anymore.
Not anymore.
Oh, sure.
Everybody's getting old.
Just tattoo anything now.
You go into a bank and the teller's got big gauges and neck tattoos and you go, oh, hi.
Yeah.
The manager has a Prince Albert that he insists on showing you.
I don't think you can do that.
That's against the law.
It's almost cleared up, isn't it?
That's against the law.
Here are bands from Sheffield, England.
I don't even know.
Sheffield is where they make the knives.
Well, there's one you definitely know that's probably on the tip of your tongue.
Human League.
The one I knew, Def Leppard.
Oh, yeah.
You also get Pulp, ABC, Arctic Monkeys.
Easy as one, two, three.
Oh, come on.
That's the look.
That's the look.
Sisters and brothers!
You listen to that record lately?
It's still pretty good.
And it's got that video.
You know, Trevor Horn.
Okay, forget it, forget it, forget it.
I got my bit.
Trevor Horn's in the video.
He has a cameo in the video, you know.
Let's pivot to the bit.
Here's the thing.
If you know one thing about me, don't tell me.
But I suspect that if people know one thing about me, it's one thing to be clever.
It's another thing to be cute.
And I don't like it when people get cute.
I don't like it when... No, you do not.
I mean, like, if it's clever, that's fine.
But, like, this is the ultimate... When you hear Merlin say, ah, they got a little cute.
This is, I think, a very relatable example...
Well, now I want to just ask, just before we get into the bit.
It's about donuts.
Do you ever think, do you ever get t-shirts made?
Yeah.
Do you ever get it?
Would you get a t-shirt made that said, don't get cute?
Because I think you in a t-shirt that said, don't get cute would be so cute.
Yeah, I mean, it would be a lot about the typeface, for sure.
It would be about the typeface, exactly.
All right, I'm writing it down.
Maybe that could... See, if we could turn this into an actual bit, we could make some money from it.
See, don't get cute.
Okay, I'm writing down don't get cute.
All right, never mind.
I'm dragging this out.
I still want to hear about your situational depression.
No, no, no, I want to hear about the bit about the typeface.
John, the setup for the bit was I asked you, because you were obviously eating at least one donut that I could hear, and I was asking you, do you have a kind of donut you like?
Now, here's the thing.
You ask most people...
about donuts.
And they're going to say, I think, if they're the kind of person who eats donuts, they're going to say something pretty similar to what you did without much prompting, which is, yeah, I got a couple strong feelings about donuts.
I like this kind of donut, almost to the exclusion of others.
And I super don't like these two, three, four kinds of donuts.
Like I don't like surprise donuts.
I don't like joke donuts.
I don't like the kind of shit where my wife buys food that doesn't have food in it.
Like she buys like, oh, it's try these new chicory snaps.
And I'm like, what the, I don't even, what the fuck?
And she comes home with these weird snacks that are like, oh, they're made of salt and spider corn.
And it's like, why don't you just buy potato chips?
You horrible woman.
Why would you bring home chicory snaps?
Did you say spider corn?
I was kind of stealing a Mr. Show joke, but I changed it just enough.
Remember the tofu?
It's made of spider sugar, so it's good for the spiders.
Yeah, but spider corn is... An ad hoc concert.
It was an improv concert from Boss Gags.
Everybody remember the butcher tree.
You remember that one?
Yes, of course.
Grass Valley Greg.
All right.
Sorry, I'll get to that one.
I just found out that the first Dumble Amp was made for Lowell George.
First Dumble Amp.
What'd that mean?
What's a first Dumble Amp?
I'm just having a stroke.
I'm just having a stroke now.
There are six people saying, what?
Really?
Wait a minute.
In my head, and I still haven't gotten to my bit.
In my head, I don't know why, but in my head, I make an association between... Oh, shit.
What are the poo-made pig-nose amps?
What are those called?
Pig-nose...
Oh shit, now I'm spacing on it.
But Frank Zappa.
I always think of Frank Zappa playing like a pig nose.
I think about Jimi Hendrix maybe playing a marshall.
Or like Hiwatt.
Who do you think of when you say Hiwatt?
Oh, you think of Pete Townsend.
Pete Townsend, right?
You say Roland, I think of Adrian Ballou, who very courageously played a solid-state amp with the way that he plays guitar, which is fucking insane.
I think of Andy Summers when you say Roland.
Oh, I can see that.
They had a really nice warm chorus on it.
So...
I think if you ask people about donuts, like if we do to do, like we've gone out and gotten food together.
We've eaten more dim sum than most of you have had hot meals.
Like you get food and you say to somebody or like I say to my fucking family, like, what do you want for dinner?
Like, what do you want for dinner?
Like, if I could, I would just order what I feel like all the time and just listen to you people whine about it.
Nobody wants to participate in that part of the meal.
But sometimes I'll say, what would you like for dinner tonight?
Or...
Maybe ambitiously I'll say, what would you like?
And sometimes people have a feeling about that, especially people who are hungry.
Here's the thing about donuts.
You ask most people, do you have a preference for a donut?
And do you have a feeling about the donuts you don't prefer?
And I think almost everybody, with any fucking sense, you say that to me, and I'm going to say, yeah, I really like, if it's very fresh, I like a glazed donut.
Even if it's not that fresh.
Like a warm.
You want it to still be warm.
When you say fresh, do you mean warm?
But you can, you know, the thing is you can heat them in the microwave.
Right.
I've heard that.
You give a Krispy Kreme 10 seconds in the microwave and Bob is literally your uncle.
Wow.
But I also, so like you like a cake donut.
Yeah, I won't go to a Krispy Kreme.
They don't have cake donut.
There you go.
Well, it's not in their bailiwick house.
I won't even drive.
I won't even drive by one.
I'll take a different route rather than drive by and see the line of people out in front of a Krispy Kreme.
Another example would be bagels.
I'm weird.
I'm basic.
I'm white.
I like an everything bagel.
I like an onion bagel.
I don't necessarily like an egg bagel.
I just find them aesthetically unpleasing.
But like, you know where people get cute, John?
I like a sesame seed bagel.
You like a sesame seed bagel.
Do you have cream cheese on that?
You heat it up, put some cream cheese on it?
I do like cream cheese on it.
I do.
Well, yeah, I guess I would toast it.
Are there bagels you don't prefer?
Oh, yeah.
I don't want a bagel with fruit in it.
A fruit bagel.
I don't want like a bagel with raisins in it.
Oh, my God.
I just had the worst flashback.
I just suddenly remembered I once saw a fruit bagel.
I want to say it was a blueberry bagel, which was masquerading on the face of it as one of the great donuts, which is what's called a chocolate glazed, which is kind of cakey, but it's got that sugary thing on it.
You know what I'm saying?
It kind of looks like that, but that's a bagel and it's blueberry.
This is not just applied to food with assigned holes at birth.
I don't like it when people get cute because what happens?
You say, hey, let's get donuts for the office.
Let's get bagels for the meeting.
Now, what do you think I mean?
So let's assume an unknown amount, but let's say we don't know how many people are going to be there.
We can't be fucked to ask people what they actually like, but assume there's going to be, you know, eight to 20 people.
Maybe it's Janice's birthday and we're going to get donuts.
Two dozen donuts.
Now, when I say to you, I don't like it when people get cute.
Can you infer what I mean in that context?
Oh, for sure.
Because I think people get cute, and I'll tell you how.
They order donuts like they've never eaten a donut in their fucking lives, and as though they have no conception that there are people.
This could be an entire behavioral economics book.
So if I go to the donut shop, don't get fucking, oh, that's it, and I'm going to make it.
It's going to have a Malcolm Gladwell-style cover.
Don't get cute.
It's a shirt now made into a book.
First it was a shirt, then a best-selling book.
Now you can buy the shirt upon which the book is based.
Don't get cute.
This is the thing.
I know this because as a cake donut eater, two dozen donuts show up at a meeting because Janice's birthday.
Oh my God.
You know what they did at John?
They asked for a variety.
You know what?
Nobody wants a variety.
And the first people that get there get the cake donuts.
Every time.
And then there's like a bunch of elephant ears.
But then they get joke donuts.
Because they're like, oh, there's going to be, we need to get two dozen donuts.
Or three, let's say two dozen donuts.
That's a reasonable amount.
And they'll say, oh, just mix.
Give me a mix.
And well, first of all, never do that.
Because that's like, you know, that's why you always go inside McDonald's instead of the drive-thru.
That's where all the shitty food goes.
You ask for a variety.
And they're just going to grab all the nasty ass shit they want to get rid of.
And it's all the joke donuts that nobody but like some old Teamster buys.
Yeah, or like licorice and salt or whatever.
Oh, well, it's so good when you melt chocolate on it.
It's so good.
This is why you don't let the vegetarian order the pizza.
Nope.
Because there's 15 of us.
We need five pizzas.
Yeah.
The vegetarian orders.
By the way, I'm going to change the name of the event on our calendar from pizza dinner to wet bread dinner.
Okay.
Hey, anybody wants some wet bread?
Let's go get a... Broccoli?
I'm not against broccoli.
I enjoy broccoli.
Broccoli's fine.
Oh, no, no.
Broccoli and broccolini, I've mastered that.
I roast that in the oven, and it's really, really good.
But here's the thing, and what I'm trying to get to, and I've labored way too long, and I should close this page about Sheffield.
But here's the thing...
We stop thinking like people.
We stop thinking about persons.
We stop thinking about people, as in persons.
And we start thinking about some vague fucking reversion to the mean group.
And you go like scattershot, like, I'm going to buy 24 donuts of whatever.
And you know who that makes happy?
Exactly no one.
The first person who gets there that gets the one that they like, then everybody else is picking around with the rhubarb squares.
Because you got cute.
You don't know.
Here's what you get.
Here's what you get.
Oh, also, can I also just say, it's so funny you said that, John, because my third thing about this, you got donuts, you got bagels, you nailed it, is pizza.
And like one of the best things about having a kid is that you learn something about life that you should have learned a long time ago, which is very few people like it when you get cute with pizza.
You know who really hates it is kids.
So you go out after soccer.
Tyler's soccer team is going to go to Roundtable's shitty pizza place because for some reason, I don't know, I don't know whose cat was saved, I guess, was saved from a tree.
Now everybody goes to these shitty pizza places after pizza.
Don't get cute.
You know what you get?
You get a cheese pizza.
You get another, you might get a pepperoni, but you know what?
You gotta get a pepperoni.
Here we go.
High ceiling, high floor is a cheese pizza.
Like meatballs, it's hard to screw up, right?
Yeah, but we cannot all agree on cheese.
I will not go.
No!
Why would we agree on cheese?
Can you make it half serrano pepper and half human misery?
Like, oh, the kids are going to love this.
No, cheese pizza, because kids are picky eaters.
And that is something people can sort of get along with.
What I'm saying is if you don't know, don't just say yay variety.
You don't say to the guy at Roundtable...
The theme, by the way, is the Knights of Camelot is the theme of Roundtable Pizza.
Do you have Roundtable up there?
Yeah, there is one.
And I drove by the other day.
No, they're not good.
They're not good.
And I looked at it and I was like, how's that still a business?
And it looks like a sit-down restaurant inside.
And I see that they're open.
Yes.
People must be going in there.
It seems like people are going in there.
I think like during the day they turn the salad bar into like a dental practice or something.
I don't really understand it.
Don't get cute about donuts.
Don't get cute about bagels.
Don't get cute about pizza.
Ha ha.
End of lesson.
Fuck you.
That is not the end of this lesson.
There is so much to draw from this.
Think about this.
When you travel, maybe you're not like I am.
When I travel, the last thing I want is somebody getting fucking cute.
Yeah.
Which sounds like it makes sense.
Because if you got six glaze, six chocolate, six cake, and six wackadoos, I'm not accounting for vegan or vegetarian or whatever, but that's just separate for the second.
You know what I'm saying?
It's not really about that.
I love vegetables.
I just don't want... Really?
Whole tomatoes on a pizza?
Or, you know, sliced tomato.
It just makes you wet bread.
Anyway, John, I'm almost done.
All I'm trying to say is that Def Leppard is from Sheffield.
The House of Martins are from Hull.
And you shouldn't get cute by treating people like they only exist of a mass of people who don't have opinions.
You've now got 24 different, at least 23 donuts that almost no one wants.
I just read a thing the other day.
It was a very interesting one of these, like a table, right?
A three-column table trying to describe the differences between what we would have once upon a time called the lower middle class, the
upper middle class and the high class or the lower lower classes middle classes high class or wealthy class like if you watch a movie about like old times and like in england you would talk about like not royalties that's not the term but the peerage maybe you've got the people who god wants to run the country you've got trades people you've got peasants like right and that's kind of not too far off you maybe eventually you get you get fiefs
With, what do they call them?
What do they call the people who are like land for hire slaves?
What do they call those?
Vassals.
Vassals, perps.
Did you say perps?
Surf.
Surf, right.
I'm missing a tooth, so it sounds like I'm saying perps.
You're so brave.
You ate at least one and probably three donuts on air, and you're missing a tooth.
I'm missing a tooth.
Oh, you sound so cute.
You sound so little.
Thank you.
It's important.
Yeah.
Oh.
you know, I don't want to get mad about this, except I see this keep happening and nobody learns.
So what this table told me about food, because it said all these things.
It said that three different classes have these different attitudes about money, social stuff, food, time, education, language.
Rich people be walking like this.
Exactly.
And it said that, you know, I'm sure that when I say lower classes, that it's ringing somebody's bell, and I'm sorry to ring your bell,
And I don't want to tell you that that's on you.
But anyway, the lower classes are worried about— It's going to be so difficult that you're the first person who's told any number of people today that there are some people who have less money than others and always will.
Isn't that weird?
Well, it's to use the word lower.
Right?
Because they're not lower, Merlin.
Well, they're not higher.
If they were higher, they wouldn't live where they live.
We shouldn't rank people that way.
Boo.
There shouldn't be a master bedroom because, you know, there's no slave bedroom.
You call them solidly working class.
Solidly working class people are concerned about the quantity of food, right?
And the middle class is concerned with the quality of food.
Oh, that's a false dichotomy I love.
And then the upper class is concerned with the presentation.
There's a question of whom you're eating.
Well, it's the question of like, how does your food look and how is it presented?
How does it fit into your lifestyle?
Is it made of moose?
Did they take some butter?
Is it, as you would describe, not eatable?
Yeah, like chicory bits or whatever I call it.
Is it cute?
Is it too cute?
Too cute.
And it's one of these tables where you're like, oh, wow, there's a lot of wisdom here.
But the thing is like quantity.
And then what absolutely consumes my middle class friends is the quality of the food.
Oh, the quality.
It's all.
We're talking about stuff like where it's been sourced.
Oh, yeah.
We used to say where you found it.
But now we say it's been sourced.
So you want to make sure it's locally sourced or it's artisanal sourced.
Artisanal farming, you know, I'm sure you know plenty of people I do really I know you do that are a spotter.
I mean you did I Realized literally this morning.
I woke up and I took a bath and I had this realization You know what I only just today this morning realized this Monday the 21st of October I should probably talk to more people than just the people I do a podcast with
yeah i was wondering i never i never want to ask you but i sometimes want to text you and say when was the last time you looked someone in the eye a human person that's not in your family and i but i don't want to i don't want to send you that text because i don't want you to uh you know like well because you're you're old enough and smart enough to one ought and ask a question that one doesn't want to know the answer to
just look someone in the eye I want you to start keeping a log where as you say journal where you will write down each time you have an interaction with a live person and I'm not talking about a policeman that you walk past on your way home oh yeah I throw a magnet at his car or something yeah
But I realized I have no interest in the presentation of food.
If you just put it all on a plate and if you put a lid on the plate and you shook it up.
I find it a little off-putting sometimes.
Yeah, I don't want it all done.
I want it just like a big, I want my food served in a bowl.
A big glorify bowl.
If everything could just go in a bowl.
And so I think I'm still somewhere down between quantity and quality.
So where are you on the table?
Do you aspire to a higher fiefdom?
Well, I mean, because we're Americans, we're all over the map.
Everybody's a little everything, right?
I'm very formal in the way that I want to speak, but I'm very informal in what I think are the...
Pronunciations of words.
Another unnecessary false dichotomy.
And I totally agree with you.
Hey, or just like there's a thing Syracuse said a long time ago.
I'll misquote him and he'll get mad.
But he was talking about something having to do with technology.
And he said, what does he say?
Something like, you know, no one cares about this, but I do.
And that's how I feel about a fair number of things.
And just because I want a big glurpy bowl of food doesn't mean either that I'm hung up on from where the glurp was sourced.
Nor, like, is your little dash of mint on there going to make me particularly happy.
Also, again, can I just say, John, because it keeps coming up context.
It's all about context.
Some food is not good movie food.
Some food is not good airplane food.
Oh, but I love to eat a sub on an airplane.
Really?
Well, you should be put in Dick Cheney's underground shipping container, and you should live there with him eating hoagies forever and see how you like it.
Yeah.
It's the person that brought a can of tuna on an airplane.
That's the one that I sent out the airlock.
For me, it was often hoagies, and I felt really bad one time.
We were so late for a connecting flight a couple years ago.
I forget what we're going through, but was it Firehouse Subs?
And I just had this bizarre assumption that if you go to a place that sells food in an airport, it'll be relatively efficient, no matter how busy.
I mean, I worked at McDonald's.
The busier McDonald's is, the more efficient it becomes, right?
But in this case, it took 35 minutes to get these three fucking sandwiches.
My family's texting me, where are you?
I'm like, oh, I left you.
I left you for a sex worker because I hate you.
Where do you think I am?
I'm sitting here next to somebody who smells really bad outside Firehouse Subs, hoping the sandwich I never wanted will be ready soon.
And then you take that out, I'm eating the sandwich.
But you know, I did, one time a woman did bring a large pizza onto a plane next to me.
See, I admire that.
That's just like, fuck the world.
She's just a little thing.
A little thing for pizza.
FTW is what that says.
Do you feel like pizza toppings are related to donuts and bagels?
The other day, we're sitting at home.
So as many of you will know, my daughter's mother slash partner is in Indonesia right now.
Oh, she was in Singapore, and now she's gone to the second, as you say, leg.
Yeah, she's second leg.
She's in Indonesia.
She's picking some clove cigarettes.
That's my file card on Indonesia.
Yes, right and so so my daughter and I are now deep into our second week of Just no mom no mom around and my sister came I've been through this and when mom says Texan because hey, how is everything going?
What'd you have for dinner?
And as one we go salad
And she knows what that means.
No, that means we either had Outback or Popeye's or something really objectionable.
So the little one says, I want pizza for dinner.
And I said, oh, okay.
And you know, it's mom who has strong feelings about where the pizza should come from.
Where it was sourced.
What kind of quality, how the presentation is.
It's mom that wants a wood-fired pizza.
It's mom that wants all this.
It gets the oven so hot, John.
It makes wood-fired pizza.
All this pizza that's like burned at the edges and all this stuff.
No, it's great.
It's like burnt matzo bread.
But dad is the one that thinks that Chicago deep style pizza is better than New York pizza.
And he'll fight anybody.
That is very interesting.
You're talking about the ones that are full on, like a big pie with red sauce in it.
Oh, yeah.
The ones that all the New Yorkers are like, that's a castle.
I think some people think deep dish pizza as in like it's like an inch high and it's got stuffed crust, whatever.
But real Chicago pizza, it looks like two apple pies made out of tomato sauce.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's what it is, and that's better than that greasy, like, terrible tomato-y dollar-a-slice crap that New Yorkers think is the best pizza.
You know, Seattle just won a contest.
Seattle is on some food magazine's list.
Best pizza in America.
And some reporter went around the streets of New York with a microphone and was like, how do you feel about this?
And you can imagine all the hilarity that ensued.
They didn't even mention famous original Joe's, too?
Which I'm assuming is the name of every pizza place in New York.
That's every place in New York.
And the thing is, they're wrong.
Whoever made that list is wrong.
Seattle doesn't have great pizza.
Our pizza sucks here.
Our pizza's so bad here.
We're sitting on the couch and she's like, I want pizza and I don't want.
And she lists off all the pizza that her mom wants.
I'm sorry, just real quick in passing.
Is part of that, I get what you're saying, that puts her squarely into one of those rows of your table, I guess, your mother's, your daughter's mother partner.
But is it that she'd like, does she like healthy ingredients or novel ingredients?
Will she do like a straight up whatever the one with the cheese and the basil, the basic pizza?
Or does she like, but I bet she doesn't like meat lovers.
I bet she's never ordered something called meat lovers like I do.
You're talking about my daughter's mother slash partner.
Yeah.
What is it you think she's optimizing for in her pizza order?
Well, you know, I was talking to Mike Squires one time.
Mike Squires is from Granite Falls, Washington, which is a town that has...
I think their main, their main like income driver is the hell's angels.
I think they're the, they're like the thing that keep the lights on in Granite Falls.
As the great Richard Hugo said, our, our magnesium and score insufficient to support us.
Yeah, I feel, I mean, I've been into, I've been into a bar in, um, in Granite Falls.
And as soon as I opened the door, I recognized that I needed to, that I was not welcome in this bar.
And Mike Squires, who grew up there, said that... Who's a Marine.
Who was in the Marine and whose dad and uncles were all like dangerous, dangerous men.
Mike's like, oh, I would never go in that bar.
Why did you go in there?
You shouldn't go in there.
That type of thing.
Like you should have known.
You should have known.
And the thing is, the richest family in Granite Falls is probably the family that works at the gas station.
Right.
That's not that's not like the one that nobody owns.
This really does.
This does sound like not just a Richard.
If you could add fish and some more Indian names to it, this would sound like any number of Richard Hugo volumes.
Yeah.
Oh, and you're talking about the Capalds and Tavern with the big goat on the wall.
Like you go in there like this is for men who are serious about drinking.
Yeah, I think on the wall of the tavern, instead of like what would normally be like the head of a deer or something, I think they have a Washington State Troopers uniform stapled up there with a staple cut.
But anyway, I don't know where they got the uniform.
That was funny, but it was the stapling that made it.
Yeah, it's the stapling.
But Ari grew up in Bellingham, the town to the north that everybody in Granite Falls would consider like already the town.
I mean, I look at Bellingham with as much disdain as a person can have.
The main driver of their industry used to be a toilet paper factory that was built down on a pier.
And the whole town smelled like a toilet paper factory.
People don't know this.
People may not know this about paper products.
They stink.
My uncle was a VP at P&G.
And used to have to go to Perry, Florida, like they're on the panhandle all the time, which is where they made a ton.
So he was like, he was all about paper towels and toilet paper and whatnot.
And boy, you have no idea how bad.
paper manufacturing smells.
Yeah, it's a poopy smell.
And they have a hippie college there.
Is that right?
And the town was like a Victorian sailing town.
So there's some houses with towers or whatever.
At some point.
Okay.
I know.
I'm just imagining people on very, very, very large Admiral Nelson style ships where they've got doilies around the feet of the furniture so they don't get too provoked about it.
And then they stop by and get an all veggie pizza there in, what's it called, Granite Falls?
Granite Falls.
Well, so from my perspective as someone in Seattle, I would go up to Bellingham and be like, oh, my God, you hayseeds up here who, you know, you've got a college.
And so you feel like, oh, wow.
Look at me.
Wow.
Look at us.
We got a college.
Yeah.
But Mike Squires from Granite Falls, when he went shopping for school clothes, he went to Everett to the Kmart.
I said to him at one point, both you and Ari are from up there in Yeehaw County or whatever.
And he said, oh, well, I mean, I never knew anybody like Ariella, but if I had seen her in high school, I would have said, rich girl.
Mm-hmm.
And I was like, rich girl.
She's mostly got her own teeth.
When I met all those people down here, I was like, oh boy, hitched up the wagon and came to town, did you?
And Squires was like, oh no, no, no.
Those are the girls that have clean socks.
Can I just say, John, context.
It's when two things are next to each other.
It gives you context, contrast.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So anyway, she's a rich girl from Bellingham who's going to want, I don't know what, some kind of green leafy vegetable on her pizza.
Because she loves it or because she feels like it's the right thing to do?
Who even knows?
I mean, Nabeel... I certainly can't tell.
I don't know why.
If you want a snack, why don't you buy potato chips?
Nabeel travels around the world now and takes pictures of his food everywhere he eats because he's a fancy lad.
He is.
And he sends these pictures of it's just like, what is that?
Is that mashed potatoes with fish eggs on it?
And he's like, no, it's...
No, technically it's a row bumper chute.
The avocados were bleached.
It's like sun bleached avocados.
Oh my God, are you still eating unbleached avocados?
That's not a thing.
So the kid says, I want pizza and I don't want any mom pizza.
I'm like, well, you know, we're living down here in the suburbs.
Did you just use the phrase mom pizza?
Yeah, and all the pizzas around here.
That's so mean and so funny.
Yeah.
All the pizzas around here are mom pizzas now.
And she said, what about, and she, there's right up by the grocery store, absolutely incongruously, the Starbucks closed because they built a new Starbucks right in the parking lot of the old Starbucks.
And the old Starbucks became a pizza hut.
And there's nothing around it.
Do they still have those red cups?
Do they still have the red cups?
I don't know.
I've never been in it.
Okay.
But nobody, you look at it and it's like, why is there a pizza hut here?
Yeah, that is a freestanding pizza hut.
Because usually, doesn't evolution tend to work the other way?
Like Pizza Hut becomes dental office?
I think so.
Taco Bell becomes podiatrist.
But in this case, that's super interesting.
And just a Pizza Hut, it's not a combo with anything else.
I said to her...
we're getting pizza hut.
What do you think about that?
And she was like, okay.
And so I ordered some meat lovers pizza or whatever.
And I got her a personal pan pizza.
One of the great adventures.
Super great airport food too, personal pan pizza.
You can fit in a backpack.
What?
And it shows up, it shows up at the door and she's never seen a personal pan pizza.
So she opens the pizza box and she sees that I've gotten some, some, I've gotten cute.
I've gotten some non kid appropriate thing.
Yeah.
And she looks at me with those big keen painting eyes, you know, with the water welling up the bottom.
What did you do?
And I pointed to this, this box that she I'm sure thought was a, some kind of a cinnamon roll.
and she opened it up and there was a perfect little pizza and she the the look on her face of delight like it's the cutest pizza i ever saw and i'm like it is a cute pizza and it's all for you look at this it's your can i ask what the toppings were it's plain
so cheese pizza regular like normal crust nothing cute there weren't chicken nuggets in the crust or anything pizza nope and she picked up her little personal pan pizza she never knew till now she never knew no she walked off holding it what took it over to the to the uh dining room table set it down i got this uh you know this pizza just fucking uh meal on a garbage can lid and uh you know
Did it come with sides?
Those side sauces like at Papa John's?
Ranch.
All the ranch you could ask for.
It's like hydrogenated rabbit oil and cream.
And everything had been triple oiled.
Like they oiled it, they baked it, then they oiled it again.
Or if you dabbed the top, you'd fill up a whole napkin, yeah.
And it's a perfect example of what your bid is trying to tell us, Merlin.
It is.
It is.
This was the simplest possible thing, and she couldn't have been happier.
Boy, there's so much to learn from that, John.
Part of it is, you know, judges better by the suite, right?
Like, she's had mom pizza her whole life, and now she gets to see, like, what it can actually be like.
And let's just be really clear about this.
For you fancy types out there who are from Bellingham, shitty food can be great.
Like, sometimes Arby's can be fucking great.
I don't want to eat Arby's all the time.
Arby's more than once a year is too much Arby's for me.
But sometimes...
I mean, like after band.
Although I got to say the chicken sandwich is pretty good.
You'll never get a chicken sandwich at Arby's.
Nobody does.
Why would you go to Arby's?
Well, they have the meats, John.
But the chicken sandwich is pretty good.
But even if we can't always have, I call it the triple P, the personal pan pizza that we would desire, we do not improve the situation by just saying, let's just get four pizzas that have everything that will fit onto them.
Or, again, to be cute.
Like, why would you?
I mean, unless you know specifically that it's Janice's birthday and, you know, she has a good taste allergy.
So it's just going to be.
Oh, she wants a chickpea pizza.
No.
But the thing is, when you say variety or mix it up or whatever, I just want to be clear, John, you're not buying food.
This is one of the takeaways, as the New York Times would say.
This is one of the seven takeaways of this episode, is that when you buy something for theoretically everybody, you're buying nothing for positively anybody.
Like, you're getting cute, and you're going to disappoint everyone, and you would have been better off just buying... Listen, listen.
You understand context, John.
I'm saying for little kids or office workers, cheese pizza's probably fine.
For five guys in a band...
First of all, we need to get past that agreement part about the cheese, right?
The crux of that is not simply just that you didn't want cheese pizza.
If I take away, this is a very old episode I'm talking about.
Sorry, Syracuse.
I guess we talked about this on a previous episode.
In 2012.
And somebody said to you, we can all agree on cheese, which was his way of saying...
What?
His way of saying, like, I don't want to talk about this.
I don't want to argue about this.
And I feel like that bothered you on several levels that I grok.
Don't assume anything.
Scott Musgrove.
And no, what he was doing was his famous thing, which was he wanted a cheese pizza.
But didn't say it.
He was presenting it as the best option.
And the reason we were even discussing it is that there was a tabletop
uh thing that said three topping pizza 10.99 and you get to choose i bet you get to choose those three toppings don't you yeah peter and i were talking about toppings on the table we couldn't agree and scott kept saying well we can all agree on cheese as though that was even as what are we talking about we're not cheese we're talking about a three topping pizza you want you want triple cheese
But what he wanted was a cheese pizza because he's a vegetarian.
He should have gotten a triple P. He should have gotten his own fucking cheese pizza while Peter and I hashed it out.
And then we ended up getting a half and half.
And that is also a viable option.
But people got to sign off on it.
We're not gonna, you know, and now our whole friend group says we can all agree on cheese anytime they're talking to or about Scott.
And Scott actually has adopted it as a motto.
Scott's like, well, you know, we can all agree on cheese.
He says it about everything.
I think he says it to his wife in bed.
Oh.