Ep. 579: "Prescription Sleeping"
Hello.
Hi, John.
Oh, hi, Merlin.
How's it going?
Oh, good.
Good.
Good.
Good.
Good.
Good.
Good.
Good.
We're here.
It's so unlikely that the two people would end up in the same place every week for a long time.
It does seem fairly unlikely, but here we are.
Yes.
Yes.
I'm very happy to be here with you.
How's your day going?
I too.
Well, we have a, I wouldn't call it a situation, but my kid is spending the entire week with me while her mother is in California.
And so that just sort of changes the, we see each other every day and I pick her up at school, we have dinner together.
But then normally I go to my house for the period between 11 p.m.
and say 4 p.m.
Or I'm sorry, 4 a.m.
And then I wake up.
The usual sleeping hours.
Yeah, between 11 and 4 I have my time, daddy time.
And then I wake up whenever I want.
Yes.
Which is a key to my lifestyle.
Yeah.
But when there's a little one... It's practically prescription sleeping.
It's pretty nice.
Yeah, yeah.
And then when she's here, of course, I have to wake up in the very, very most morning-est time.
Doesn't get more morning.
And then like doing like a getting ready for school to start.
Yeah.
Doing all that.
And, you know, and, and, uh, because of her Montessori years, she makes her own breakfast out of blocks school lunch.
She does.
She makes it out of blocks.
What do you make it for block lunch?
And she does algebra as she's doing it.
Blocks.
Out of blocks.
My sense of Montessori is a little skewed.
It's all about blocks.
You're not wrong.
Don't you go to a private workstation and you hew things from the earth or something?
That's right.
And then you go to Princeton.
It's a direct pipeline.
But then, of course, she goes off to school because we have a carpool.
that takes the kids to school in the morning and then i pick them up at night so what that means is i have between three and four 14 year old girls in my car at 3 45 in the afternoon and boy do i do i learn that must be a very specific kind of energy it's very specific and the interesting thing is the 14 year old girls don't necessarily like each other very much
They're just stuck in a carpool because their parents have done it.
Oh, and you, you have no way probably of knowing like what, cause what you're describing though, is it's not just that though they get along, they don't get along.
It's just, um, oh, I mean, relationships are complicated, but especially at that age, it can be a little bit mercurial.
You know what I mean?
One of them has Trumpy parents.
One of them is, did they do carpool?
Did they do driving?
They do driving.
They do driving in the mornings because there are people that wake up in the morning.
And so it's all.
They have to go make videos in the parking lot at Target the rest of the day.
So anyway, so this week, you know, once I'm up.
Dr. and Mrs. Oakley.
Once it's, that's right, with the hat on backwards and the glasses on backwards.
And the trucks on backwards, yeah.
But so I'm up at 8 o'clock in the morning full of coffee by that point.
Yes, yes, yes.
And I have this whole day that I didn't even want.
I didn't even ask for it.
Oh, man, you don't plan for that probably.
No, so I'm, you know, I'm dressed, I'm walking around like, what the hell are you supposed to do at 8.30 in the morning?
What even is there to do?
Oh, man, I still have such ambivalent feelings about certain times of day.
Not bad or not like Sunday scaries or anything like that, but I'm never quite sure what to do with 1.35 p.m.
still.
I mean, that's just me.
That's just me.
You might have a time like that where I really enjoy me like a 5.50 p.m.
Oh, I see.
That's generally a time of day I like things are kind of winding down and that kind of stuff.
But in this case, for you, this is like when people have those dreams about living in New York and finding another apartment in their apartment.
You've just found a block of time that for practical purposes hadn't existed before.
Not at least in your timeline, correct?
Yeah, and what's weird is, you know, you try and go to a museum at 5 p.m.
and they're like, sorry, closed.
Sorry, the moose outside should have told you.
They tell you that.
That's ridiculous.
Yeah, 4.30 in the afternoon.
Unless you ride the roller coaster with John Candy.
And you're like, well, if a museum isn't open past five, who goes to a museum at 8.30 in the morning?
It's crazy.
John, this is my thought exactly.
Couldn't you just leave a box out for the honor system and let people wander around?
Yeah.
Are museums only for 80-year-olds?
Like, museums should specifically be open from 1.30 p.m.
to 9.30.
What are you, a bank in the 60s?
Yeah, exactly.
Jesus Christ.
Here I am.
It's 830.
I'm walking around.
I could go to every museum.
I'm sorry.
There's no art and culture anthropology about your history available right now because it's five.
It's 5 p.m.
So any kid that just got out of school, you know, why don't the kids get to go to museums?
Well, they go on field trips when the place is full of 80 year olds.
So I never get to go to me.
I join every museum in town.
I have a little card for every museum in town.
I go two times a year because I always show up there and the doors are locked and I look at my watch and it's like, oh, it's 6 p.m.
Like who's supposed to know what time it is all day?
You know, like how did sometimes know what time it is all day?
All day.
They expect you to know what time it is.
Even the times that you're not usually there for, because you found the equivalent of like, I don't know, you and I, I think, I feel like we've enjoyed talking about the shape of the year and the feelings of time and the kind of inchoate geometry of our internal world as regards chronology.
But so just for you, on the one hand, you might have three or four hours open up in the morning where you are literally fully dressed.
That does not mean you're going to go to the museum then.
You try to go to the museum like a gentleman, four, five, six, nine o'clock at night.
And you're just like rattling the doors and nothing's happening.
Yeah, there's a chain wrapped around a chain wrapped around it like What why can't I it's not like there are windows in the museum, right?
The museum is specifically not windowed because you could do it more like a Macy's like, you know Christmas display.
Maybe you could have some Paleolithic people there Tending to a fire
I mean, the museum could be open at one o'clock in the morning.
And I bet you it'd be full of exactly the people.
Another person could say, why does the museum close?
Why does it close at all?
You go to a Waffle House, they barely got locks on that shit.
Artists and anthropologists are up in the middle of the night.
I know that to be a fact.
And who else is going to museums except for the World War II airplane museums, which is also full of weirdos?
The only people that go to museums are kids and weirdos.
So why isn't it open 24 hours?
So why specifically is it not open 24 hours?
Because then that becomes a kind of microaggression toward the people, the museum, the kinds of people that a museum is really for.
People who want to sit down for a minute.
get their feet warm, maybe find a nice gift for a birthday party at that weird gift shop that's kind of overpriced.
But the thing I learned from Scott Simpson is there's a... We don't talk about this as gentlemen, but there's a hidden bonus.
I learned from Scott a long time ago.
Because it's really hard to find a place to urinate or defecate in downtown San Francisco.
And they've made it harder and harder.
What Scott learned a long time ago, you buy you, you go in there.
This is probably what happened to you, right?
You show up and you go, oh, I want to go to the Exploratorium or...
hey, I want to go to the Palace of whatever.
You go in and they're like, you know, but like you could buy the year long and blah, blah, you can always come in.
You're like, that sounds good.
Scott did that for MoMA, kind of over, you know, in sort of Soma, kind of over by.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And he says- Free bathrooms is what he got.
That's exactly what he got.
And Scott, what basically Scott got was a cool little car.
You can still go up and look down at the bridge and all that stuff.
It's a beautiful museum, but you also got a warm place to shit.
Oh, isn't that nice?
That's very valuable.
Now, you go out with that wallet full of cards, and you should also, at that point, you should also get a magnet card that's there or whatever they do that lets you, first responders, get into buildings.
You should be able to use that bathroom whenever it suits you.
It's technically part of your bathroom.
It's basically like a shit timeshare.
This is another thing that I often complain about on social media when I get two or three likes for these posts, which is there are 10 museums in Seattle.
I just want to buy one card at the beginning of the year that costs $500 that gets me into every museum in the country or in the city at least.
Okay.
And I don't want to have to be digging out for cards.
Okay.
And there's got to be a business model that
where you go around all the museums, you say, look, your membership is $100 a year.
If you give it to me for $75, I'll sell it for $85.
And you're still mostly not there.
In some ways, it's still a lot like, let's be honest, we've talked about this, the model of the gym, where you join the gym.
It's January 6th, and you stop liking how you can feel your gut when you sit down, so you get a gym membership, and then you go twice, and then you don't go anymore.
Yeah.
You're still amortizing that with being torpid.
The crash road is ching-chang every January or whatever that's still happening.
It would be nice for you, a la the Bay Area Transit System.
You probably got that there.
They finally got the shit together, and you have one car that you can use to run in different places.
You want a big car, maybe an oversized car that says museum.
You want a big car.
One big car.
I'll pay the same amount to every museum.
I don't want a discount.
But, John, you only need one car, then.
i just need one one card and you flash that or you scan that and that lets you in and and they're like here he is yeah and and i can go to the mopop i can go to the airplane museum i can go to the art museum i can go to the other art museum
That's right.
You can go to the Rock Pack.
You can go to the... I want one card that gets me on the ferry boat.
You can go to the warehouse.
It gets me on the bus.
It gets me on the little train.
It gets me on all the things.
On the Ferris wheel.
Like, just give me one thing I don't want.
And it's the same on the internet.
I don't want 50 passwords.
I just want the one.
Just give me the one password.
You're saying just have the one...
Except the one.
That's a good idea.
It looks into my eyeballs.
The computer, you know, now you go to the airport.
Yeah, I heard about this.
They don't even want to see your ID.
You walk up and they're like, bleep, bloop, bloop.
And they're like, we know everything about you already.
Like, welcome aboard.
Oh, God.
And it's terrifying.
The first time, the first 15 times they asked me, do you want to bleep, bloop?
I was like, no, hell no, I don't.
Well, we may have to pat you down.
Yeah, and then they just make it harder and harder.
They're like, all right, get out your blurb.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so eventually, I don't know what I was doing, but I was like, yeah, okay, all right, quit hassling me.
You know, yeah, bleep blurb me.
Oh, no, do they got your eyes now?
Well, no, it's not even your eyes.
They just, they look at your face.
It's like the thing that Google Photos does where they find you in the background.
You know, they did that to the Uyghurs.
The Uyghurs?
You know about that?
In China?
The Uyghurs.
Oh, they just go from village to village scraping cheeks and like photographing eyeballs and doing biometrics on like every person that they want to mess with.
Yeah, they're trying to get rid of the Uyghurs.
And, you know, it's just one of those things where nobody is really protesting at universities about that.
You know what's funny is a lot of the people who get treated badly end up being the people who are Muslims.
I don't know if you ever noticed that.
Oh, huh.
Interdasting.
And it's fun to think about.
And the other nice thing is like when you get old, I think you can get away with more.
Like we were still not, except we are certainly to a lot of people considered old.
That's fine.
But like I'm talking about like when you get to the point where you get away with shit.
Like if you can go, ha ha, oh, you don't think you're old.
Well, it doesn't matter if I'm old.
What I'm saying is I'm not old enough to get away with shit.
Do you follow what I'm saying?
If you're 15 years older and you got like, if you're good, you could maybe go in those walkers with tennis balls on it or you're like salivating.
People kind of get out of your way.
If I had a tweed jacket with elbow patches, I could probably walk into any museum in the country and then just be like, oh, the docent is here or whatever.
The docent.
No one told us the docent was coming.
The other night I did a show where I covered a Bruce Springsteen song.
I don't believe that.
Let me guess.
Atlantic City.
No, I played Born to Run, which has a lot of lyrics and it's very complicated.
That's a stranger song that people realize.
It's a good song.
It's a really good song, but it's weirder than people realize.
Also, Max Bloomberg didn't play on that.
Marvelous, marvelous songwriting.
Highways Jam with Broken Heroes on a Last Chance Power Drive.
So I'm standing on the side of the stage watching the multitude of other musicians, including Nancy Wilson of Hart and all these people.
No, no, no.
I was the only Bruce Springsteen song.
The rest of them were other people.
Unfortunately, everybody there played Born to Run.
Spin Magazine had an article, I remember, from 1986, pretty specifically, I remember.
Where Bruce was talking about the
No, there was a, they'd done a contest, a Sweet Jane, a contest of people covering Sweet Jane.
And Sterling Morrison was like the guest judge and he couldn't make it more than like 30 minutes before he just had to leave.
If anyone had a hug!
If you look online, I'm sure you can find a video of me covering Born to Run, and I think you'll find that it is among the best covers of Born to Run you'll ever see.
I think Frankie Goes to Hollywood did that.
I think they covered Born to Run, too.
Interesting.
Well, anyway, I'm on the side of the stage and I'm taking pictures of people on stage.
Mix-a-lot was there.
You know, it was all the usual local suspects.
Oh, wow.
That's funny.
That is two of the people you've already named are two people that because of my knowledge through you, I know of as being canonical people from Seattle.
Isn't that funny?
I'm trying to think.
Are there others from that, from this, you know, that's so specific.
But Chris Novoselich, does he still live there?
And he was at the show, although he didn't perform, but he did.
He did.
He's too tall to perform.
From his home that's down by Portland or whatever.
He flies up in his own little 182.
What was the event, John?
Oh, it was a funeral for a guy named Charles Cross, who, among other things, wrote the Nirvana book, Come As You Are.
He wrote, he started the Bruce Springsteen fan magazine Backstreets.
What?
Wait a minute.
Okay, that's from like the mid-70s he started?
Well, he started in 1980.
Oh, shit, because that's really, that's...
That's super famous.
Okay.
Well, and he, and the first issue of it was just like a photocopied four page thing that he went to a, he went to the boss concert.
Just four pages.
He's finally out of his contract and can do darkness on the edge of town.
But he, you know, he's passing them out to everybody and it turns into a whole universe.
He wrote a great Zeppelin book and he started the rocket, which don't you miss when people did stuff like this.
Don't you miss when people would write books about rock music?
And Charles and I used to meet for lunch all the time.
So you really were acquainted with the guy, huh?
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And the thing is, he's all over the scene.
He was writing a book about the Seattle scene in the 90s and 2000s, and he was interviewing me among other people over the...
You know, just kind of one of these things where it's like, well, everybody says Jason Finn's a real pain in the ass.
What do you say, John?
And I'm like, well, I can confirm that, Charles.
But also everybody that you talk to with their weird memory can sometimes lead you to someone else in their weird memory.
And then that can lead you somewhere.
Every interview is also a set of leads in some ways.
So he died suddenly unexpectedly for no good reason.
And so all the music people all came out and did like a, you know, Mary Lambert and all of the, uh, like thunder pussy.
It was a, the whole, the whole band was, had played in heart or with Prince at one point, just a great show.
So I'm standing on the stage, I'm taking pictures of all the peeps, and I look out into the audience, and there is this woman, Niffer Calderwood, who is taking pictures of... That's a great name.
I know.
Her name is Niffer Calderwood?
Yeah, Niffer Calderwood.
That's going on the list.
She's got a big lens on her camera, and she's taking pictures of all the people.
Does she have big comedy glasses?
No comedy glasses, although they would fit.
You're not wrong that she should.
And so then I'm on stage with my little iPhone camera and I zoom in on her and I start taking pictures of her taking pictures of people.
And then later on, I said, hey, never check it out.
And I showed her these pictures of herself, blurry, grainy pictures of herself taking pictures.
And she was not happy with the representation of herself because they're bad pictures.
And I was like, ha ha ha, I took bad pictures of you.
She didn't look a way that she would like other people to see?
I think, probably.
But it's not like I'm going to put them anywhere.
You know, I was just doing it as a gag.
But then when they started publishing pictures of artists from the show, I noticed, I think, that Niffer was editing the pictures of me so that I looked like a museum docent who had spent the night outside.
Okay.
Yeah.
And I was like, Niffer, come on.
You know, like I'm already, it's already hard enough.
You think was Niffer Miffer?
Was Niff Miffed at you?
I'm not sure.
No, come on.
She's a pro, man.
She's not going to do that.
Well, you want to think.
But, you know, I'm missing a tooth.
Still, what's a tooth?
God, John, I'm so sorry.
you know i'm covered with uh i just look like like an ice cream uh like soda with a cherry on it except the cherry is my complexion and the ice cream is the is the it's no i got it it was a very impressionistic idea that instantly i could see i could see your cherry there you go and uh so i'm like come on and she's shooting from below so that's not a great you get the meat beard
yeah so anyway but that's what happens when you take pictures when you when you when you turn the lens on the lens yeah yeah yeah who uh who photographs the photographers yeah that's right as the ancient romans said exactly do you think if there was a museum in your neighborhood that was open 24 hours a day that you would not only go there
You know after 4 p.m.
Or whatever, but that may be depending on the museum.
You might volunteer a little time there.
I Love this.
I love this question and I'm gonna just I don't mean this is a bit Let's just say like for today this the now times.
Yeah, probably one the other both something I mean my gosh But let me just say when I was just a little bit younger and had a little bit more energy and was very like out
actively interested in learning about my neighborhood like i would just there's a synagogue near our house and my kid and i would talk to the rabbi and he would tell us about coming in and then you go to the you know of course you go to the dim sum place with the pigeons you get a lot of local color that kind of stuff um i think at some time maybe less now but absolutely the thing is though it becomes in the same way that i still miss that walgreens because of 24 years of habit i bet i would get in the habit of going to the museum in the middle of the night
I would no longer fear waking up in the middle of the night because I knew I could go there and push a broom for a while to help out.
And the thing is, John, have you told me what the museum is about?
No, you have not.
But it's a museum and that's all I need to know.
It could be a bird museum.
Did I ever tell you about the museum that my kid and I went to once?
Did I ever tell you about this?
I think it's called the International Museum of American Art, I want to say.
It's called the International Museum of... Oh, sorry.
Now it's the International Art Museum of America.
Now, first of all, doesn't that sound kind of odd?
It sounds a little bit like a mall.
Do you remember where I ate?
Well, our group, sorry, not only makes it about me, but our group was hanging out together and I have photos of this if it would help.
Do you remember the night where I was eating several submarine sandwiches over a sewer?
I sure do.
It's basically across the street from there.
Really, that's not a great location.
No!
John, just do me a favor.
Sorry, just do me a kindness.
Please look up International Art Museum of America.
And I don't want to go on about this, but my little kid and I, we used to have, well, back then we called it Daddy-Daughter Day.
You go downtown, usually on Sundays, like whatever, Sunday was usually our hangout day.
And one time we go by this place, and it's like, huh, I wonder what the deal is with this place.
And you look inside.
International Art Museum of America.
International Art Museum of America.
Now, first of all, you go in, and there's this kind of thing that I would associate with going to the Natural History Museum when I was like eight in Cincinnati.
They've got like a jungle in the lobby of the building.
There's a little bridge that you can walk across.
And me and my young elementary kid were like, what is this?
Like, what's going on here?
This is the largest collection of colonial...
And Asian, certain kind of specific Asian art in America.
It's some weird collection.
And basically, it's a lot of paintings from the late 1700s.
And a lot of this weird, sorry, I don't, I really, I'm not trying to sound unkind, but...
A kind of Asian, I think Buddhist adjacent sculpture that I have difficulty describing.
I would describe it as half paintings of old white men and then a bunch of things that look like coral.
And the museum is really nice and it's really fancy.
And I think it might be run by some kind of...
Special interest.
Falun Gong?
Falun Gong.
Okay, you're already on the right path.
I didn't want to use the C word, but I'm pretty, I don't know if it's Falun Gong.
I think they got that.
The top three, when you go on the website, it says Timeless Art Collection, International Art Museum of America, and all of the permanent exhibitions are of Chinese artists.
Okay, okay.
And you might see somewhere, if you flip around a bit, you're going to keep seeing this.
Oh my gosh, what's that with those red doors?
They've got this thing, I think it's called the Treasure Room.
Hmm.
You can rent and it's a special room.
Anyway, what I'm saying is with the right budget and a good location, you can make a museum about fucking anything.
And I'll take my kid to it at least once.
Yeah, that's right.
Me too.
And I want to be clear about this.
I'm not forcing a kid.
I love going to museums.
It's something I really, really enjoy.
I like the whole experience of going to a museum.
Yeah.
Out of museums in town, I mean, Academy of Art, it's kind of like an expensive alligator theme park, but still it's beautiful.
We performed there once.
Oh, John.
Oh, yeah.
Do you remember when we performed in that room and you yelled at the people having a cocktail party by the penguins?
I do.
Okay.
We used to belong there.
And there's a white crocodile.
It's like $35 to get into that joint.
It's nuts.
No, I'm sorry.
I took you way off this.
I guess what I'm trying to get at is, like, you know, once you've got... Here, let's write the headline, as we used to like to say in my public relations firm I just made up.
Let's write the headlines.
Hey, new museum opens.
Sorry, new museum will never close.
New museum will never play.
She's just spitballing.
Oh, my God.
The headline, new museum.
And people go like, oh, my fucking A. The museum's like, what does that mean?
At this point, they're not asking what the museum's about.
They're asking, what does that mean?
And you go, dude, it's a fucking 24-hour museum.
And also, if I could say I haven't thought about this yet, but also to several different kinds of museums inside the museum would be nice.
You know what I mean?
If we had a way to compartmentalize different museums into a meta museum that would grow in a kind of Borges sort of way.
But nobody's asking, oh, is this about foam sculpture?
Is this about, you know, bartending?
You know, is this about Shen Yen?
You ever go to that, John?
You know, that's got a little C word to it.
Yeah.
Looking here more at the international...
The International Art Museum of America is not funded by the government in any way.
It's privately funded.
Privately, you say.
The more you read into it, although they talk about artists from all over...
They really keep coming back to Chinese artists.
Chinese artists.
Yeah.
It just sort of like keeps coming back around.
So I'm going to say, I mean, it looks like a beautiful museum.
Can we agree, though?
Sorry.
Well, here in Seattle, we have the Museum of Old Computers.
Oh, wait, have I been there where you walk by outside and there's windows, there's computers in the window?
Yeah, with computers in the window.
And it's kind of near an arcade or something.
And it's always closed.
And it's kind of dirty looking.
It's very dirty looking.
Yeah, I remember that.
And it's full of Commodore 64s, and it's got all of the other things, too.
A lot of probably donations from people, yeah.
Yeah, and just like every kind of thing, and they're all in great condition.
They keep them all working.
That should be open until never close.
Who's going to go to that museum at 2 o'clock in the afternoon?
Let's worry about what the museum's about later.
Not later, but secondarily.
Let's start with how do we get this thing open all the time, and how do we get some bodies in here 24-7?
I love your idea of the mall of museums.
It's going to be, so like, you know how you can go like omakase, charcuterie, like some kind of appetizer for the table, something like that.
Absolutely, you could have a thigh or a breast.
Well, this is going to be like that, except for various different kinds of culture.
And so like, let's take the model of not a flea market, maybe a farmer's market.
Let's take the model of a farmer's market.
I like it.
Shen Yun, they make a lot of money.
Let's take all these different models.
You're seeing like a food court.
It's not a full commitment to foam art.
You don't have to like, but the thing is, it is, it's larger than a farmer's market tent and smaller than a Shen Yun performance.
If you think of all the abandoned malls in the United States.
They need so much help right now, John, so much help.
And they are good for several things.
One, laser tag.
Because you need room for that.
The children like to run.
Yeah, that's right.
They like to run.
You turn the lights off, so right there you're saving money.
And then you fill it with fog or smoke or whatever.
But other than that, you could not pay to keep a mall open.
And have it just be full of flea markets, because those people... They're trying.
At our mall, the mall by our house that you've been to, Stonestown, where we've got... They're actually, as malls go, I think considered a fairly amazing success story.
And it's kind of boring, but just real quick.
On the one hand, it seemed like they were going to be super fucked after COVID, because they just, right before COVID, they'd started building a new movie theater...
A new, like, bowling alley fun center.
Like, just, like, probably 30, 30.
Fun center, yeah.
But it's, like, 30,000.
It's, like, 30.
Okay, so I'm just going to say this straight up.
They've realized that their future is in Asian young people.
Okay.
Okay.
And they love laser tag.
Well, is there math involved?
They...
I'm sorry.
Bing bong.
No, it's okay.
No, no, no.
No, no, no.
Here's the thing.
All kinds of drink things.
Gachapons.
Things where you can go and like a Japanese thing where you put money in and get a toy out.
Like all kinds of food and culture.
Because I think also it's kind of hot right now.
Bubble tea?
Bubble tea?
Oh, bubble tea out your butt.
Japanese pancakes.
Like that was a whole thing.
But what was my point?
That...
But then they're also they're also some of them.
It's pretty close to a flea market.
There's one that's like best of California.
And it's all just like it's like a flea market with solid walls.
It's just people selling their stuff, let alone the tables in the middle.
And I feel like was this something we would do privately?
You know, is it too early to figure?
Should we first build the top story in the sky and then worry about the foundation later?
Like, what's the headline?
How does this end?
Here's the problem with everything.
Okay.
How are you going to make any money at it if you're not supported by Falun Gong?
Like, how are you?
I defy our listeners to come up with anything that succeeded in the last 20 years that wasn't ultimately funded by Falun Gong.
Do your research.
Right.
And with the National Endowment for the Arts being gutted, there's no way we could get a grant that's like, we're going to take over malls.
There's probably not even a place to send grants anymore.
They probably don't even open them.
They don't even open them.
No.
So if we could say, this is the thing.
Once again, we have to go to our billionaire friends and say, listen, give us $100 million.
We're going to open up flea markets and quirky museums in malls across America.
We're going to call it the International...
Mall Museum of Art.
Okay.
Oh, wait.
Okay.
Hang on.
Oh, this is good.
It could also be one of those.
It could be also one of those names.
Like, for example, in Providence, they did this thing that I think...
I think it's actually coming to an end.
They had this thing called Firewater, and it was almost like a parade on the water.
Did they set the river on fire like they used to do?
Like in Pretender's song.
That's right.
Madeline says it all the time.
My city was gone.
But you follow what I'm saying?
Cuyahoga.
Oh, that one.
I see.
We went two different.
You went Life's Rich Pageant, and I went.
Okay.
I'm really pushing Chatty G on this, and I haven't done any of my tricks yet.
But I said, what's the deal?
What's the deal with the International Art Museum of America?
Who runs that?
And here's what it told me.
It's a nonprofit art museum founded in 2011 by H.H.
Dorje Chang Buddha III.
Okay.
H.H.
Dorje Chang, the third.
H.H.
Dorje Chang Buddha II must have.
Electric Boogaloo, yes.
This guy, this is third of his name.
Yeah.
And they never say that, do they?
An artist who claimed to be a reincarnation of the Buddha, Va-Vara-Dhara?
Initially the museum primarily, and then so I said, yeah, but what's really going on with that joint?
Because his grandfather was the reincarnation of the Buddha, and then he passed it down.
Like my father before me.
I will make a rebel stand.
Okay, so then you said, Chatty G, what's the real deal?
I said, what's really going on?
And it wasn't much better, but the first is a one-sentence paragraph on its own.
It says, yeah, it's a bit of a trip.
It was...
I'll get down to the cult stuff later.
I just want to get this part out of the way.
Adding to the intrigue, there's a, quote, treasure room in the museum that's typically closed off.
I just want you to just put a pin in this, okay?
Okay, all right.
Because, like, let's think about this.
Think about, can I just say, you go in a museum, especially with that oversized card of yours that says museum, you go in the museum, and then there's an area with two red doors that are locked.
Okay.
Called the treasure room.
Well, let's just start with two red doors in any building you enter.
Aren't you a little curious to find out what's going on?
For sure.
That's where I want to go.
Yeah, I don't think Falun Gong is going to have any problem at all funding us to add some red doors to our mall.
Adding to the intrigue, there's a treasure room.
It's typically closed off.
Access requires scheduling a viewing and paying a fee, which has raised eyebrows among critics and visitors alike.
So that could be a revenue stream for us.
However we do it.
It could be a portcullis.
It could be a haunted house.
It could be a secret room.
It could be a monk hole or a sally port.
It could be like a haunted house where you stick your hand in and you say, oh, it's eyeballs.
Right.
Glory hole in the bathrooms.
Glory hole can mean so many different things if you think about it.
That's right.
Because it's like a gotcha pond.
You know what I mean with a gotcha pond?
Think about those like, you know, like any kind of like coin operated thing.
You put a quarter in and out comes one of those little bubbles with stuff in it, right?
Yeah, stuff.
And sometimes you're like, wow, that's amazing that I got this cool stuff.
Super rare.
Super rare Pokemon or maybe it's a yo-yo that didn't work particularly well.
But think about that.
Now we're also entering... There's the element of surprise and money in the machines that dispense treats of whatever it is the museum is about.
I'm not really worried about it at this point.
We've also got the doors, red doors, poor color source, similar.
But also, people are going to be fucking...
begging us to fill their mall with a little museum.
If we were to do malls, and I think there's very good reason to think, because even if we get like a six month, until we put together the funding for whatever this museum is about, and maybe Falun Gong might want a proof of concept before they go fully in.
Sure, sure.
I think they would.
Do we support Falun Gong?
I never remember.
I get confused.
I don't think so.
Well, there's the energy one.
There's the energy one.
There's Qi chargers that you use for your phone.
There's Qi Gong, which I think is the thing sort of like Tai Chi that you see people doing.
And then Falun Gong is different.
And they're persecuted by the Chinese government.
Is that correct?
Well, and that's the thing.
I think it's one of those things where you're like, oh, well, they're persecuted by the Chinese government, so they must be great.
But yes, you're like, I don't know, though.
There's a lot going on there.
It's complicated.
I'm not sure if it's all.
I don't know if I know enough.
I bet you we could get away with a lot of shit for up to three years.
But I'm not sure how much that would be cultural appropriation if you and I are partnered with Falling Gong.
And we got a museum in a mall where I'm selling my old cowboy boots.
And it's just like... Oh, I like this.
Oh, I like this even better.
No, wait a minute.
Behind the double red door is a secret thing.
It's all your boarding passes.
Now, to call this the Museum of John on the face of it does not sound, it doesn't sound, I guess I'm unintentionally cutting to the chase, John.
What if we found a way to have some kind of a building with a door about you that's open 24 hours a day?
And you wouldn't have to work there.
Well, the thing is, I think the way to make money is to gather data on people, bloop their face when they walk up.
Oh, like what they do at the airport.
Yeah, this isn't like some airport bloop.
They do that to the Uyghurs.
But Falun Gong people are not going to like it.
Well, no, this is the thing.
It's in solidarity with the Uyghurs.
Also, it's part of an art exhibit.
We're just bleeping all your data.
And then we sell the data.
It's not appropriation.
It's a pro-propriation.
A pro-propriation.
Yes.
And then we sell it to... I scan the eyes of everyone who comes to my museum.
I did a podcast last night in the middle of the night with a guy in Germany.
Was anyone else there?
A guy in Germany who called me and I talked to him for an hour or so He actually told me that he was he's in the uni as they say university there You know that means if you say you're in college that means you're going to Oxbridge And if you say uni it means you're going to a regular school
I see.
Also private and public have backwards meanings.
I mean, that's in England.
I'm not sure.
In Germany, it seems like it's all Universidad.
Oh, Universidad das Kraftwerk.
That's right.
But he told me two things.
One, he said that Bean Dad is actually in a textbook in his German university.
Frihole Ombre?
Frihole Ombre.
Frihole Ombre.
Frihole Ombre.
Frihole Ombre.
uh i don't know i don't know but he said why does that sound like the most that's like frito bandito my god frijole hombre is what they must have called it in mexico right or the father who is like into a bean yeah yeah
Well, anyway, I'm in a textbook there as an example of some kind of social media floofadoop.
But he said they got it wrong because they said it was a conspiracy.
Bean Dad was meant to distract attention from the January 6 riots.
By whom?
As you and I know, the January 6 riots were a year later.
No, no, they were the thing.
Oh, is this that same January month?
yeah they were they were actually a psyop that ended uh being dead not not so you are you offering a counter conspiracy john well the other thing that my german friend said last night was that the next president of the united states is going to be mark zuckerberg
Huh, I hadn't heard that.
Or John Zuckerberg or whatever the guy's name is.
I know you mean the kid with two haircuts.
Yeah, and I said the thing about that guy is nobody likes him.
I've never heard a single person say that they like him.
And the more that he changes his personality, the less we like any of his personalities.
We didn't even like the one he had at first, let alone third and now.
The Germans are, I don't know, they have a very different outlook on life.
and uh this he was you know he he he threw this out there as like oh well you know you know next president of the united states if the democrats don't figure it out was that news to you that was that's news to me john was that news to you i mean both things the the fact that i'm in a textbook in germany was like i'm not sure that's how i want i wanted to be in a german you know i did before they put you in the textbook
I don't know.
There was that gal that was doing the podcast series last year where she was looking at every example of people getting canceled.
And she actually used Bean Dad in her intro.
Oh, that's nice.
We're going to do all the things.
Did she apologize on behalf of everyone?
Well, no.
And she said she put something out there where she was like, the most requested show is Bean Dad.
And so all year long, I'm waiting for the phone call.
it never came she didn't do it she she was like i don't know man it's just too much i just can't you're just i don't know what you're just too incendiary you're just like i don't know too like like white hot yeah or maybe she's like i'm a huge long winners fan and i don't think i can be objective i mean i don't know she might have been like i've seen a lot of pictures of him and he's i got a crush on him he's kind of got a dad bod and that's one photo of him shot from kind of below where he's got like a little bit of a meat beard that
That's the thing about dad bod, you know, you can't, you can't really out yourself as like, that's actually what I'm into.
Uh, because it's, uh, because you know, it's not a neurodivergence that's recognized.
It wouldn't be like being into, I've seen, um, there's porn where you can like, uh, where like a lady farts in your face.
Oh, there's like farting porn.
And it's one of those things where like, in person, big in Germany.
Well, I don't know about that.
They had a rough time.
And also, they don't put up with a lot of bullshit there.
They'll just outlaw health treatments there.
Like, you know, bullshit.
They'll just be like, no, sorry, no St.
John's Wort.
We're done with that.
We're not even going to fuck around with that here.
Get it out of here.
No, that doesn't really do anything.
And it's probably full of shit that you don't want.
But, you know, somebody likes farting.
Somebody likes at least the idea of a lady farting in their face.
Maybe that could be part of the museum.
I'm willing to bet that 5% of our listeners are secretly right now going like, I kind of like that.
But it probably depends on the, and I'm going to put this in a sexist first-person way, it probably depends on the lady, depends on the fart.
It might depend on the night.
It might just be how you feel that night.
Because certain nights we all are a little bit more full of frijoles where we'll try different things.
And that could be the one where you finally say, well, honey, it seems like you're having a lot of tumult intestinally right now.
Is there a way that you could just relax and maybe have a heating pad, and I could just put my face near where it's coming out while I pleasure myself?
As someone who periodically is backstage at a large concert that features a lot of people, including Mix, and also every once in a while just—
And also every once in a while just likes to crop dust an entire area where there's like 90 people.
Will you do that?
Will you just lay down some ordinance?
Just be like, I'm on my way to catering and just go.
Just like a slow motion Vietnam film where I'm just nuking.
This is the end.
Exactly.
I have found that the number of people who are like, yeah.
Yeah.
It's very small relative to the number of people who are like, oh my God.
But there's no way for you to know how many people.
I'm going to speak frankly because we're adults.
You can't speak to how many people have either flooded their basement or are currently rocking huge wood because...
You just drop some ass right in the room because they're embarrassed about it.
Well, it's true.
It's true.
I think you're right.
There's this amazing artist, I think from the 50s.
I think his name's Art Fromm.
And this guy was a bit of a sensation at least 20 years ago or so on the Internet.
Have you ever seen those photos of beautiful commercial art like you'd see on a poster or an airline ad or something?
Women...
Walking down the street carrying groceries, exactly one bag of groceries.
The one bag of groceries always has a celery stalk sticking out of the top.
I recognize this image, yes.
F-R-A-H-M or similar.
And every, but ultimately, I'm sorry, I'm leaving out one part, which is it's usually a beautiful woman.
She's walking down the street.
She's carrying a bag of groceries with a celery stalk.
Also, her panties have fallen down while she's walking.
Oh, wow.
Could you please Google art from and if I got the name wrong, I'll find out what it is.
So Merlin, have you ever been to a Comic-Con?
I've been to South by Southwest.
Not the same.
Okay.
What happens at a Comic-Con is you get a lot of people wandering around dressed like superheroes except with bikini bottoms.
And you've got a lot of... I mean, I'm aware.
I watched, John, I watched a four and a half hour video about the Star Wars Hotel for a second time yesterday.
So I'm familiar with fan cultures.
Yes.
Okay, good.
If you haven't seen Jenny Nicholson's four hour video on the Star Wars Hotel, it was really good.
But then there's also the Star Wars Hotel that was like $6,000 a night and nobody went and then they shut it down.
That one?
Absolutely.
Oh, yeah.
Complete debacle.
Four hours is incredible.
And that feels like another one of these museums that should be open for 24 hours.
Which part?
Which part?
Which part?
The Star Wars Museum, they should just open it up and let people wander through.
It didn't need, you saw the Star Wars.
So you could still, the gift shop could be honor system or self-serve.
Yeah, and you just sort of wander through and take your picture in there.
That's all people want.
If you want a scale model of, I don't know, Dagobah, like in the middle of the night, you know, you can go.
I wonder if we have characters there, like interactive big head characters.
Absolutely.
We could get like a big, like Eric Corson who greets you.
Oh, welcome to George's.
but anyway sorry uh the the thing about um uh comic cons is that there's despite all the things where you're like oh i met geordie from star trek and no there's you know like art spiegelman was here and signed a comic book for my mouse there's usually a section of it where it's just old dudes like the guy from the simpsons who have boxes and boxes of comic books that they're selling it was probably the original reason for a comic
Yeah, sure.
And that one in San Diego, I've been to it a bunch of times.
And the first few times I wandered around and I was like, there's nothing here for me.
It's all video games and beep boop.
Yeah, beep boop, people in bikinis.
And then there's like, you can buy Wilber forces or whatnot.
But then I went through another door and here was this
paradise of of comic books and they have everything they have you know Fritz the cat one of those things we're like as long as there's something that you that you like and that you know you like you could probably find it
Oh, yeah.
Oh for that's a nice feeling.
It's a really nice feeling and I've got and I went to all the booths There's a there's a great picture of me that was taken by a friend Jesse
and it's a picture of me talking to a woman in a in a cat girl from batman cat woman costume oh dear and it's like a perfect cat woman except it's the one where she's it's the michelle pfeiffer one where she's stitched together yeah yeah she's she's cat woman but she's also working at a comic book store and she and i are standing in front of a bunch of cardboard boxes looking through and i'm asking her questions about like well i don't know this is zapper
You can just do this.
You can just walk up.
There's no ID.
You don't pay.
And like a lady dressed like Michelle Pfeiffer in the Batman movie will just talk to you about comics.
We'll just sit and talk to you about comics as long as you want.
And I was, although talking to a Catwoman, was much more interested in how much she knew about like 60s alternative San Francisco comics than I wasn't even aware of her being Catwoman.
But Jessie saw the photo and she was like, I got to take this picture.
But in those booths, there are also a few that are selling commercial art from the 50s and 60s.
Oh, my God.
That would be drawn.
The way people buy, like, sells from The Simpsons.
Like, you could go and get, like, I might be able to find, like, an original art from of a woman, say, walking onto a bus as her panties are falling down.
There are for sure, because I've seen them, and they're a little, you know, a bit more money than I could afford.
Yeah, yeah.
But I have bought so many illustrations at those things that were like the small illustration in a Playboy magazine of like a bunny, except she's like slipping on a banana peel or whatever.
Like spot illustrations.
I've got so many of those from commercial art because, you know, it's like a hundred bucks and you get this thing where you can, where it's like a painting.
Basically you put it in a frame, put it on the wall.
Absolutely.
And it's way better than other art.
It's way better than Falun Gong art.
It's, you know, it's like better than any art you can get at the, at the target at least.
I mean, is it art?
I mean, we say art, but like something you put on the wall cause you like to look at it.
Like, is it something you really like looking at or is it something you feel obligated to display?
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Like this picture of my kid in front of me at a little baby activity table wearing a pink tutu and a t-shirt with the face of Gallagher on it.
That is right in my line of sight.
And I'll send it to you right now.
It's right in my line of sight because it just makes me happy to look at.
You know, there's other kinds of stuff.
Like there's some stuff my wife's put on the wall so I don't completely understand.
I'm afraid to ask.
If you were to have a painting of a pretty lady with a celery stick in her grocery bag whose panties have fallen down, and you wanted to display it in your home, where would you be allowed to display it?
That's a good question.
I think a lot of encouragement would be tacitly in play to say, I love that for your office.
I love that for your office.
Yeah, they don't even really say it like that anymore.
It's just really more like if you bring home one more plastic thing you printed at work, there's going to be a problem.
I did a purge over the weekend.
I filled an entire Ikea Fracta bag with old 3D models at the house yesterday.
But where I could put it, I think right now there's a painting of a dog in the lounge that I like, but if we got something better there, you know, part of it is like if it's in your living space, like it can't be too crazy.
You don't want like Guernica or something.
Because it can be a little, you know, off-putting.
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Art from... Now, if I were going to do art from... I don't know if you know this, but in our lounge, we've got some of our old Fillmore posters in frames on the wall.
Oh, yeah.
You know that size, though.
Yes, for sure.
Something like...
half that size that's a lady with her underwear falling down while she carries a bag with celery in it if i if i did it like three or four of those at a smaller form factor size doesn't that seem a little more subtle so yes to answer your question there are four photos of fictional women with their pants or panties around their ankles but they're small not as not as large as the dog right right
Well, I also have a few.
What about you?
Where'd you?
Like, if you decided, like, let's say, and by the way, did you do anything special yesterday for Daughter's Mother Slash Partner Day?
She's out of town, so you didn't do anything special, right?
Yeah, we went out on Saturday and had a nice meal with my mother and my daughter's mother slash partner, and it was very fun.
Oh, that sounds lovely.
But let's say she comes back from her visit to Los Angeles or wherever it was.
And she's you're trying to write your headline for this because you've done some work at her house, which I'm sure she would love if you worked on her home.
Right.
And let's say you found a piece.
I'm not saying it has to be Art Fromm's incredible commercial art of women's panties falling around their ankles in the 50s.
They're all very frilly.
A lot of the panties.
Yeah.
It seems like they should have taken some of the frill budget and put it into elastic budget.
I see what you're saying.
More's the pity.
What would you put up?
Let's say, hey, hooray!
Partner mom's back!
And she comes in.
Have you done anything to update the look of her place?
Maybe start thinking in terms of museum brain.
We're working towards that.
Would she like that?
I for sure found that there's not a ton of patients in my family in general for naked pictures.
And I have a few in my house.
that are wonderful, just marvelous.
But they're put in places where it's not public space.
It's just, you know, it's like a private space.
Oh, so you could put them in your den.
Yeah, you put them in the den.
I have a picture of a naked lady
That has been shellacked to a large piece of wood.
This would have been a poster-sized picture of a naked lady from the 1970s.
A naked picture of a naked lady shellacked to a piece.
And so is it shiny?
It's shiny shellacked to a board, and then the edges of the board have to be burned.
This is probably done in the 70s or 80s.
That sounds like an old technique.
That's the thing.
It's been burned around the outside and kind of carved.
It's like a pirate map.
Like a pirate map, exactly, except it's a naked lady that's been shellacked to a board.
And it's just big enough that it's no longer... What's she doing?
What's she doing in the picture?
She's just standing in a field.
Is she looking at you?
She's looking right at you.
And it's a field of corn or wheat or something, so it's just natural.
How does the corn go?
Well, no, it's wheat.
It's wheat.
How does the wheat go?
I mean, can you see downstairs?
It goes...
Oh, no, no, no, no.
It's just from the top up.
It's just the waist up.
Oh, it's tasteful.
It's a tasteful farm.
It's tasteful.
It's part of our agrarian tradition.
That's right.
It's just a lady with her... Oh, that's absolutely... You could totally put that up in her house, and she'd love it.
Yeah, it's a lady with her fronts exposed, but... And I bet she doesn't feel... She doesn't look like she's... I bet she's not embarrassed about it.
No, she's very proud, and rightfully so.
But the problem is that my 14-year-old daughter, when she was like 6, 7, 8, 9, I wasn't going to have that up on the wall.
When she was 9, 10, 11, 12, I wasn't going to have it up on the wall.
Not because of the seeing, but because of the discussing.
There's a lot of stuff where you can see stuff, but if that's there every day, at a certain point, it might occur to a kid to see it.
Wow, that's a lot of square inches of wall.
For a laminated corn lady.
And also she's got friends over.
I don't want, you know, they don't know what you're what you're getting into.
So I have not been displaying it since she was, you know, born or since she was aware.
Like all museums, you probably rotate it out.
There's times where you go to you go to like, you know, the Met and like, I'm sorry, that's not on display right now.
You know, would you like to see this Jeff Koons doc?
I have it in the stacks though.
And I keep thinking permanent collection.
Yeah.
And I keep thinking, well, you know, one of these days I'm going to be able to bring this back out.
And so far, uh, it has not, that's not an option so far.
That's not an option.
Um, so I, I'm just, I'm waiting for a day basically waiting for a time when I can really truly live my life the way I was meant to live.
Um,
Oh, what have you sent me, John?
I just sent you a little picture.
I have several Catswomen on display here.
Yeah, well, that's... No, I don't know if you know that, but I've got one from the animated series.
I've got a Batgirl, too, who was my first crush.
I've got a Batgirl, a classic 66 Batgirl.
My little friend here was a classic, some kind of cat girl.
Oh, man.
She looks like she rides a bike or something.
She knew so much about comic books.
Okay.
All right.
Oh, look at you.
You're wearing men's shoes.
And look at her.
I got men's shoes on.
Look at her.
Okay, I'm going to close that up.
Put that in my permanent collection.
I mean, I know you collect show art.
What if you hang that up?
Let me hang that up at Ari's house.
No, I don't think.
I don't think it's going to fly.
Do the eyes fall low to you?
No, you can't see the eyes.
Can't see the eyes.
We're looking at comics.
I got two up here.
You know what I'm saying?
I said that to my daughter the other day.
I was like, you know, practice this line.
My eyes are up here.
It's always funny.
It's always funny.
She just rolled those self-fame eyes.
It doesn't have to be about boobs.
It could be about anything.
It's funny when a dorky guy says it, too.
Because you're like, well, nobody cares.
In my room, I do have a framed photograph of Louise Brooks.
Oh!
And it's on a shelf.
I am a fan.
Yeah, and it's a magazine-sized framed photograph.
Her look is so modern still.
It's a wonderful look.
And she is in the all together, and she's doing some kind of modern dance.
Yeah, and nobody objects to it.
It's a silent photo.
Yeah, it's a black photo, a black and white photo, silent photo.
And none of the people in my life object to it, although there has been some eye rolling and sneering.
But who can tell I get eye rolling and sneering about everything?
Yeah, I wouldn't start running your life based on who eye rolls and snares.
And can I also just say in passing, I don't know why, I'm still looking at all these photos of the lady with the celery, but I keep thinking of Scott Van Crothers in The Shining.
Yeah.
And we cut to him in Miami, and there's those wonderful shots of the two giant paintings of naked ladies that he has on his wall, and how classy it is.
It's very classy.
A lady with a really, I saw, people have done reproductions that you can buy, but like a lady with a big afro who looks like she's, you know, not concerned about her state of dress.
I mean, if anything, it's empowering.
She could go shopping.
She could go shopping.
She could buy some celery and there'd be nothing to fall down, if you know what I mean.
I do know down.
I do know what you mean.
This would all go in the museum.
Maybe we start small.
You think about places who are really, I mean, like, are there other kinds of damaged businesses that we could get into?
Oh, vape shops aren't doing very well.
No, I don't like those.
I don't like vaping.
But can we make that into a museum?
I see the vaping on the streets now, and I'm like, hey, there's too much of it.
What are you doing with that?
Stop that, whatever that is.
The thing about vaping, the first time I saw it, it was those ones that looked like cigarettes, except it glowed at the end, except it glowed green.
That was the second wave.
The first wave looked more like a little R2-D2 that took up your whole hand.
Okay, so second wave, but that was the first one I saw.
I've had those, those black ones that just look like a little monolith you suck on.
And there were some rock dudes.
that were doing it oh i could see jason vaping i could see that well and i never saw him do it but it was like the guys in the band get a voice like that not putting stuff in your mouth well he smoked cigarettes like a like a gentleman but uh but no it was the guys in the band the lashes they were just young enough and they wore a bunch of belts and i know i know the belts yes yeah
But I said to them at the time, I was like, look, if you're going to smoke a space cigarette, then you got to dress like a space person.
Like this is a future cigarette, but you're dressed like a bunch of gutter bones.
At least even if you're not wearing like a full on Uhura, like you could at least accessorize.
You could have like a communicator pin or...
Or maybe some kind of like a children's lightsaber.
But something that would let people know you're from space.
Do a dystopia where you go all the way and you dress like Catwoman.
But don't just be here with a denim jacket.
That's no dystopia, John.
That's no dystopia.
But I'm talking about Catwoman that's been stitched back together after being, I don't know what, caught up with a propeller or something.
Hello there, the sign used to say.
You know, you must know the backstory.
Why is her suit so cut up?
Was there some kind of is she also under the suit?
Oh, it's very related to the story of doctor who the doctor who character the doctor and falling through a glass ceiling No, no, it's all shredded up because like that's her deal She's a seamstress and like, you know, I think it was I want to say Christopher Walken Whoa, yeah Christopher Walken in that movie Didn't Christopher Walken try to kill her and that's how she's got nine lives
Nine lives.
Kind of like Beric Dondarrion.
Beric Dondarrion at this point, he's on his sixth life.
Thoris of Myr has brought him back.
This is very important, John.
Thoris of Myr at this point has brought back Beric Dondarrion with the blood magic.
It has brought him back six times now.
It feels a little bit Buffalo Bill to me.
Like, what is she making that suit out of?
Oh, I get that.
Is it human skin?
Like, what is the, why would it be?
You ever kind of wish you had a place like that to yourself?
You ever wish you had a complex downstairs like that?
Well, I do have a complex downstairs, but it's not full of bugs and it's not wet.
Well, they're not bugs, John.
They're insect samples.
Oh, right.
I don't have any of those either.
Every once in a while, a lizard gets in, and I have to shoo it out.
At least you're not getting those grasshoppers, you know what I mean?
The lizards up here are tiny, so it's not like it's a threat to anybody, but I'm just like, how did you even get in here?
This is hermetically sealed.
This is my apocalypse.
How much longer are you taking care of Junior by yourself?
Oh, she's here all week because Zari's gone all week.
You got a plan?
Have you got stuff planned out?
You got ideas for activities or time alone for each other?
Have you worked out anything for the trip?
That's the thing I said to her.
What museums do you want to go to this week?
Because if I pick you up at school, we have to go immediately to the museum.
Otherwise, it'll be closed.
Just so you know, honey, I'm going to tell you about the world.
Fucking museums are closed at five.
And she said, what makes you think I want to go to any museums?
And I was like, well, I would just say, well, respond by saying, well, what makes you think I care whether you want to go to a museum?
Last night we sat on the couch for two hours.
We sat on the couch with a box of trivial pursuit cards.
Oh, I used to trading off going back and forth, like asking each other trivia questions until, and we're not playing the game or anything.
It's just like, no, dude, we did the same thing in like, even in like 1985.
When everybody I know was obsessed with Trivial Pursuit, the Genius Edition, as we called it, we would all, we would just sit around and card each other.
Yeah, we couldn't even tell what the game was about.
It's got pie pieces or something.
Yeah, it's awfully complicated.
So it's just, it's super fun to just be like, oh, and the thing about it is she knows a lot of weird things.
I mean, you know, you ask her these questions about the Carter administration and somehow she's absorbed the information.
I don't know how, I honestly don't know where it all came from, but she's not, it's not like you have to just ask her questions about Cardi B.
You can, you know, you can just play.
I mean, she's not going to know who Louise Brooks is.
Oh, fucking A, Louise Brooks.
She's probably going to be one of those kids.
If I could say it, I'm not trying to treat your child broadly here.
But she's probably one of those kids, like a lot of kids, like say some kids I know, where like at first they don't want to do it because they don't want to do anything.
But then if it works out okay, I'm not even going to say if you do it right.
If it works out okay, they'll find themselves not hating what they're doing.
Yeah, I think.
But you got to give him a little bit of a, not a push exactly, but a little push.
Well, I said to her, we can play a game.
We can play a card game.
Yeah.
And she went to the game closet and pulled out Trivial Pursuit.
So it was her idea.
Oh, that's all right.
That's cool.
Yeah.
So I was like, I didn't.
Let's play Uno.
Uno can be very competitive.
Well, but it feels like Uno's only good if you have three people, because if it's two people, you just keep reversing each other back and forth.
Yeah, it just means the same thing.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
This woman, her panties have fallen down.
I sent you on a photo.
I sent you on a photo.
This is one of my favorites, just in terms of the... I love the way it just...
It's hard to talk about this without sounding like a pervert.
I just love this style of illustration.
Yeah, I know.
So, like, the top half of this is just, it's so glorious.
It's a woman bowling, and she's wearing a rather abbreviated skirt for the occasion.
And as she's dressing the ball and walking up to the line, her panties fall down around her ankles.
yeah i it happened well this the art of from i've followed it now to the art of from uh website yes and there's a james lilacs i sent the s so if you look at that one james lilacs introduced the world to this as far as i know on that website celery plus graffiti equals art
Yeah, this says an artistic study of the effects of celery on loose elastic.
So it's very science.
It's very science.
He also did a wonderful feature on, before I'd ever heard of it, on the Madonna Inn.
Have you ever been there?
He documented a ton of the best.
A couple of nights I spent at the Madonna Inn.
Are you kidding me?
Hope to shout.
I've stayed there.
I've slept in a cave at the Madonna Inn.
Yeah, in a treehouse.
I bathed in a cave.
This picture I'm looking at, the woman's getting on the bus.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Her celery's falling out of the bag, and not only are her panties down, but she also dropped her wallet.
But what's crazy is the bus driver's looking not at her.
What do you think he's looking at?
He's looking at her shoes or her panties.
And the panties aren't the thing to look at, are they?
Maybe.
I think what you're supposed to look at is...
I mean, if I'm being honest.
Her eyes, you're supposed to look at her eyes.
Yes, I think you're supposed to look at her being scared.
I think this is, it's kind of like when you get one of those flasher guys who likes to show his weenus and then remember how the lady looked when she saw the weenus.
I see.
It's the way the lady looks when she sees it.
That's the point.
Maybe the bus driver is taking a little snapshot for his journal to take back to the garage, if you know what I mean.
For the spank bank, you're saying.
He's a public service employee.
Shows him respect.
I'm going to ding us out.
Bye.