Ep. 582: "Safes Full of Chili"
Hello.
Hi, John.
Hi, Merlin.
How's it going?
Good.
You sound a little stuffed up.
Oh, it's the allergies.
Oh, no, I'm sorry.
The itchy eyes.
Do you know what you're allergic to?
Is it the outside?
The outdoors?
Yeah, it's the world.
Are you allergic to your ravine?
Other living things.
Ugh.
And they're in such a plenitude.
You know, we're the only minority that it's still okay to make fun of.
That's 100% true.
Those of us who are allergic to everything.
We thought it was fat people and then the Irish.
All that's left now are us.
Yeah, it's us.
We are us.
And how we are, you know?
Yeah.
Are we a protected group, John?
Do you think we should be?
At a certain point when everybody's protected Merlin.
Oh, thank you.
You know, nobody's special.
Yeah, that's right.
None of us are Harrison Bergeron all over again.
I can't.
You know, the thing is the, the, the, the allergens you see are not the allergens you're really allergic to.
Oh, tell me about that.
What is the sky up here?
The sky up here is full of stuff.
I thought you meant like people were barefoot on public transit or something.
You know, yesterday I was barefoot on a beach.
That's okay.
I'm not proud of it.
I was a little proud.
Yeah.
I mean a little bit.
Just don't go too far.
Don't go crazy about it.
Yeah.
But there's like pollen in the air.
There's pollen in the streets.
There's pollen on the windshields.
And that's not even, you know, there's pollen on the barricades.
Yeah.
But I don't even think that's what's getting me.
I think it's something else.
I bet your pollen is a leading allergic indicator.
I bet if you're seeing pollen, whatever it is you're allergic to is probably out there too.
I'm not a scientist.
That's right.
It's the pollen you don't see.
It's the pollen you don't see.
Yeah.
I really feel like if I could breathe, I say this probably twice a year because it's so dumb, but I feel like if I could breathe better through my nose, my life would be better.
You tell this to somebody, like a normal person, they're like, why don't you go to the O-N-G-Y-A or whatever.
We're like, we're covered for that.
You should go to this ear, nose, throat, and homework doctor.
Yeah.
And you know what they're going to say.
Sure.
Walk it off.
They're going to say something.
Well, yeah, they're going to roto-rooter you or they're going to electro-shock you or something.
They're going to give you some other thing to plug into the wall and stick in your butt.
Oh, my God.
You're right.
They probably would.
They call it a medical appliance.
Put this in your butt.
Maybe it'll help your nose.
We won't even sell it to you.
They're not going to sell it to you.
They rent it to you like a cable box.
Or your home telephone.
Yeah.
No, thanks.
I don't, you know, I want to get up and walk around.
I don't want something up my butt that's plugged into the wall.
You should get a portable model.
You can put that right in your back hip pocket.
Those are more expensive and they're not covered by your insurance.
Also, they're not available.
And in your head.
But, you know, I know you there in San Francisco.
There's lots of stuff I can't get here.
And you've got that view of the ocean.
Yes.
And you like to keep your windows open.
I do.
I love to air the place out.
And when nobody else is home, they're on those two cones.
Like, yeah, but like you got to get, maybe it, I feel like two, sorry to say it, triggering, two COVID things that have hung around for me.
I have continued to be pretty good about washing my hands in a way that I was when my child was young.
in a way that I was during COVID.
But I've tried to keep that up.
And the other thing is, like a crazy old woman, I've got this idea that we've got to get fresh air.
Remember, they talked about this during the COVID.
You've got to get the COVID out.
This is how you can have your outdoor dining and whatnot.
Yeah, you're like a nurse in a 19th century hospital.
I do.
I want you to just eat all your Kellogg's.
Open up the windows.
You don't masturbate, right?
That's the idea.
With the Kellogg's family, you eat the cereal, and then you're not allowed to jack your mean bone.
Isn't that what Dr. Kellogg's?
No, you've got to keep it all inside.
You've got to keep it, because it recirculates.
Because it lets out organons.
Well, and you reabsorb, you know, if you don't get it out, you reabsorb it and it goes back into the system.
I read about this in a DC comic.
This can totally happen to people.
If you don't find a way, if you have, if your body is covered with light bulbs of weird energy and you don't find a way to shed them, then they become a drain on your body.
And I think that's true for lots of things, including probably allergies.
But I've been doing things, I first started doing this, I think, around college, where when I was falling asleep at night, I would lay on my back and lay my left arm, excuse me, lay my left arm.
I have to do it to myself to remember what it is.
Bless you.
But I would put my arm, and eventually my bicep would kind of be resting on my cheek, and I'd be kind of pulling it open a little bit.
And people walk into it now, now, flash forward 60 years, people walk in the room and they're like, are you okay?
Because you're still doing it.
You're doing the thing.
You know like breathe right strips?
Sure.
I need a Breathe Right strip, but I want them on my cheeks, and I want them attached in the back like some kind of a cosmetic appliance.
So open your sinuses.
Hey, try this.
Take your index fingers.
You got index fingers, right?
There we go.
Must be nice.
Put each of those on a cheekbone, and then gently pull horizontally.
Do you notice a difference?
You probably don't.
You're healthy.
No, I do.
Are you kidding?
This is the soft bigotry of... I can do this.
Go on.
Nasodiversity?
Nasodiversity.
It was lying right there.
You may be the first person that ever said it.
Oh, man.
I don't even want the credit.
Six million people?
I don't even want the credit.
I just want to be able to breathe.
I think I'd be less anxious.
Not since the 19th century has someone said nasodiversity, and they meant something different by it.
It was probably some phrenology idea then.
Or about the Chinese.
You know, the Exclusion Act and whatnot.
We don't say that anymore.
We don't say Chinese.
Mexican.
Is that a slur?
Puerto Rican, it doesn't sound right.
Yeah, in my mouth.
I don't think you should say that.
I think you're supposed to say, you know what?
It's not funny enough to do a bit about, and it would get us in trouble.
So, you know, this is how you grow.
If I breathe better, I probably would have done a better podcast already.
You'd have six minutes and 35 seconds of something usable.
The amazing thing about pulling on your sinuses is you can sometimes, and I'm preaching to the choir here, I know you know this, and then all of a sudden you feel all the cavities in your skull open up and air gets in there.
You're like, should air have been in there the whole time?
And the answer is yes, I think.
Here's the thing.
And I realize this is not a peer-reviewed longitudinal study.
But when I have those moments, usually followed by me going, ah.
When I have those moments, I feel a little bit calmer.
Because I've also been working on breathing.
But I would breathe better and more.
And I would breathe more functionally, I think.
I don't know if it's even medicine at this point.
John, what's next after medicine?
There's got to be something.
There's got to be something apart from what we're dealing with now.
Shouldn't I be able to go to somewhere, preferably within walking distance, and just say, fix me?
We've got some witch doctors around here I can see.
I'm beginning to think that maybe the idea that we grew up with, which is that progress is linear and things are going to get better,
uh is the thing that we need to we need to get over because i think we're going back to a time when uh for the next maybe 500 years the life expectancy of human males will be about 58 and we will cool number to pick thanks i see it going on to 40. i see it i see it being like the 1200s
Uh-huh.
Uh-huh.
You know what I'm saying?
It's on the aggregate, because people that can still get vitamins will continue to live to be 70.
Oh, of course, if they can get their powders.
But like, you know, oh, you know, Blessed Ugg has lived for, lo, these 38 revolutions.
but in terms of like me ever being called upon by the aliens to represent the human race and they're going to fix all of the broken things in me and take all the viruses out right i think the opposite might end up being true and in fact it's just like you non-aliens give you physical problems yeah it's the opposite
No, the aliens aren't real, and I'm just going to be living in a world of the 200 people that live around here, and we're all just going to be huddling around a fire.
Neighborhood stick fights.
I bet your neighborhood stick fights come back.
That's right, and my neighborhood is going to suck at stick fights, except Dave, my neighbor across the street, he's a real badass, but he's 90.
But I'd stand behind him in any stick fight.
And Dr. Vandele could get out there and coach at least.
And the family, remember last year when the dad got out here with a leaf blower a couple of times during the show and I sent him a text and I was like, you gotta not leaf blow during the show.
He was a tech dad with a home office.
And he seemed to be scheduling things.
Once he knew when you were recording a podcast, or theoretically knew and remembered, was when it seemed like he was scheduling especially noisome things.
Well, and it was strange because I love the family.
And he is from a Southeast Asian heritage.
Or no, I'm sorry, a South Asian heritage.
And he is a real badass.
I feel like he would be in a stick fight
a superhero the problem is since since the the kerfuffle about the leaf blower although we have texted each other friendly texts throughout the winter uh i have not laid eyes on them
And I miss them.
What about the wife?
I thought you and the wife really hit it off.
We are super.
They've got a new baby.
I feel like you should continue to work that angle just as a nice to have.
Hey.
Because it'll start coming up.
It'll start coming up.
That's so funny.
John talked about this earlier.
And he'll say, your South Asian friend will say something like, I don't know what the voice is, but he'll say something like, you're talking to John Roderick.
He'll be like a preposterous English character, or maybe like a Frenchman.
Why have you talked to my neighbor?
Now I'm out there in that part of them.
that part of the yard kind of conspicuously slow raking where i've got a rake and i'm like just kind of hoping that they walk out that sounds really creepy oh and they look over they look over and you're in a bathrobe with a rake
With a rake.
And you just look at them just dead in the eyes as they walk out.
Just staring in their living room window.
Uh-huh.
But no, because that's, you know, generally we have that kind of neighborhood relationship where it's like I'm out raking, he's out with the leaf blower, we see each other and wave, we stop, I don't have to turn anything off and he'll turn his thing off and then we sit and sometimes, and then she comes out and then it's two hours later and we're talking about the world.
Yeah.
But it hasn't happened in a while and I'm just...
i'm gonna you know what i'm gonna push it i'm gonna make it happen i'm gonna text them and i'm gonna say we need to see each other i need to see your faces oh that's good because because the world's coming to an end and we're gonna need one another uh because i want to live i'm already
Closing on 58.
Yeah, I can see it.
I can see it in you I look at you and I say yes, there is really seeing me whoop there it is Yeah, I finally figured out how to trim a mustache and I'm kind of loving it Looks good.
But then again, you're a very handsome guy and everything.
Thank you.
No, but thank you No, but I finally if I finally figured out, you know, so I wouldn't get a full Brimley, but You're gonna want people on your side
is prepping only for like tech nut job types.
For example, my family, family's going to do some, they're going to, this is one of the projects I'm not involved in.
They're going to go like me pack in, pack out camping, like bring all this stuff, bring all this stuff out, like a five mile hike to, to camp.
And yeah,
I was like, oh, yeah.
And they go, oh, no, don't worry.
You're not coming.
I was like, okay, cool.
But they've been testing out food.
They went to the REI and got some different kinds of food to test.
And listen, I'm not saying it's great food, but compared to the stuff you buy at the Aerospace Museum in the 80s, that astronaut ice cream, this stuff's come a long way.
You can add hot water and make a stroganoff, John.
Last night, my kid made a stroganoff with hot water and ate it up.
Yum.
Yum.
And what I'm saying is these are the kinds of things we need to catch up.
We need to catch up on where we are with dehydrated food.
We need to catch, like, should you bury a garbage can in your yard with all your supplies in it?
And do you want this family on your side for the stick fights?
Because once the stick fights start, it's going to be too late to recruit people.
Mm-hmm.
Oh, well, or maybe you just wait until the stick fights start and then you figure out your whole life.
Oh, then you have no problem recruiting people.
People don't like getting hit with sticks.
No, get the biggest stick, stand in the middle of the street, and you're going to find that the neighborhood rallies around you.
Biggest sticks.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I feel like one of the things about freeze-dried stroganoff is that I don't think you could find words that said where the subtext was processed food that were any more eloquent than freeze-dried stroganoff.
That has to have gone through so many processes.
Um, that, and it also at REI probably cost $24 a portion.
Yeah.
So I don't think it's a survival.
They have a rock you can walk on to test it while you're eating it.
It'll work while you're hiking.
What do you think you like distortion control?
What I, what I finally came down to was that my mom's philosophy of, of, uh, prepping was always prep for the volcano.
Um,
or prep for the earthquake, but not prep for the zombie apocalypse, because that's not how you're going to survive.
Because it's not something you can really... Oh, I see.
There's no point.
It's like preparing for nuclear war.
Yeah, well, and the thing is that if you have enough stuff to survive for more than a month...
then you're going to get raided by the first hungry people that come along.
I've seen TV shows about this, and you're absolutely right.
That's always what happens.
You think you're safe.
If you have a gun, the first person that knows more about taking guns from people than you know about keeping guns away from people trying to take them from you is going to take the gun from you.
Dear me.
So we should tell my mom that for me, what I say to my mom, mom, anyone who is interested in doing anything to you, if you can get your gun out in time to stop somebody who's hopped up from stealing your handbag, if you can get your gun, your pistol, you carry out because she carries a pistol.
If you can get your pistol out, and I'm imagining like a real Fredo situation, like, but anyway, you get it out because, you know, whatever, you're 90.
I said, he's just going to take that pistol and hit you with it until he's either tired or bored.
Yeah, and now he's going to have a new pistol.
And a nice handbag.
And a nice handbag.
This is the thing about political violence.
If you are violent, your violence will be successful until you come up against the first person that knows more about violence than you.
And then your violence is just an opportunity.
It's a strategy, a popular strategy that's hugely untested, especially by a lot of men.
It's pretty bad.
But the thing I say to my little one is the only prep, the only survival thing
That is meaningful in any way is endurance Everything else endurance or shit endurance is the difference just grind it out well and you have to be able to you have to be able to travel long distances without Without food and water.
That's the that's the key.
You need to be able to survive and endure
because the people that want you know the what you'll see is all these all these ding-a-lings with guns and and um and you know safes full of chili are gonna get marauded and then they're gonna have zero percent body fat and they're gonna starve to death in two days because they don't have any they don't have enough blood sugar or whatever
Whereas my daughter... They're so tired, they forget the combination of the chili safe.
That's what happens, right?
Finally, they can thwart Travis Morrison.
Or they sit there, you know, guarding their chili safe and die from rocks being thrown at them by little kids.
And it's like, you know, don't locate yourself at your chili safe.
That's not where you belong.
One can of chili and it keeps you going.
endurance yeah that's the only thing you can and you can build endurance you just build it by constantly suffering a little and that's something you you do on on purpose you deliberately sometimes yeah yeah yeah yeah just like what am i going to do today well nothing fun
Because I don't want to get used to fun.
For people like me of a certain age who are men, I feel like the biggest dangers, people talk about this and that and your health stuff and whatever, the loneliness epidemic.
I don't know anything about that.
But I do know that the thing that men crave more than anything else, well, two things, I guess, really.
Well, relevancy, but we'll set that aside for now.
Sense and purpose.
Sense and purpose.
But I think men like gratitude.
Gratitude.
Yeah.
I mean, and that's the kind of thing where, like, do you have a plan for where you're going to get your feelings of gratitude, you know, after?
Because, like, you can't just boss everybody around forever.
You might get a Hannah-type situation, like that wonderful movie, where your kid becomes kind of like a 14-year-old assassin.
Like, has to become, you know, like... And then maybe, you know, maybe your advice isn't quite as useful, like it is with me and my kid.
You know, my advice.
Woof.
Woof.
Do you feel like you get so much gratitude in the course of your daily life that you don't – you're just – you're overflowing?
I am.
The gratitude that people show you?
Well, you know, secondhand, I hear about gratitude.
It's really sweet.
It's nice to hear secondhand.
As far as, like, firsthand reports or the word thank you, mm-mm, no.
That's okay.
That's okay.
Daddy won't make it through the apocalypse anyway.
Don't worry.
You know, the other problem with things not getting better –
A problem that I realized with perception, this is back to something from a little earlier, but you were talking about, you know, I said what's next, stuff from medicine or whatever.
Yeah, might as well forget about doctors.
Yeah, yeah.
One thing that's so difficult, I feel like it's kind of up your alley, is that a lot of...
Okay, here's an example.
Like, and it's a computer example, but hear me out.
When you've got a computer and you've got like an old computer, and then you put like a solid state drive in it, or you put a bunch of RAM in it, like, you know, time was, you do that, suddenly it's like a brand new computer.
It's the fastest thing you've ever used.
You love it more than anything in the world.
And all of the things being equal, you stop noticing how much faster your computer is in less than a week.
Whereas you spent years having it not be fast enough.
I mean, I'm not saying there's an infinitely fast computer out there that will make somebody happy forever.
But a lot of times we don't know.
We don't always see the delta between how we got to something that is already a great thing that we have.
And maybe I don't want to make it weird because of how things are right now, but there's a lot of like fairly good stuff we've done for a while, like deliberately trying to stop diseases.
You know, we had a pretty good track record on, not perfect.
But to me, that's kind of the bummer is that people are so quick at forgetting that they got a really good RAM update in terms of like, you know, the MMR vaccine and stuff like that.
Yeah, they're living on the top of a wave.
That's your jetpack.
Your jetpack is half of your brothers and sisters didn't die before you were 10.
Yeah.
I've been a little bit struggling with this because, because I've been trying over the last five years to recalibrate, um, over and over what I think success looks like, because of course I always felt like I was not a success and all of my little successes and, and even my big successes, I always was very quick to poo poo and say like, man, yeah, fine.
But you know, like still failure, still, everything is just still a failure.
And I realized that that was a voice in my head that was not necessarily accurate or true.
And that one of the ways that, Oh, and that every time I chased what I thought was going to make me feel better.
If I, if I accomplished it, it didn't often.
I could see.
Clearly it wasn't gonna make me happy.
Mm-hmm Even though I wasn't even close to it I could work and work and work and what would happen if I got there?
You already feel bad about it before it happened I already feel terrible about success wasn't successful enough before you succeeded and so starting to try and stop that voice and just say like actually Actually, you've done pretty well.
Actually.
You're doing pretty well Actually, you know like you were saying Merlin You get gratitude Secondhand where people are like actually you've helped me a lot
oh thanks and that isn't that isn't nothing you know that's real and what has what's been weird is that as that voice has ebbed a little and i sometimes go like oh you know i'm i'm okay i'm okay i've done okay um then i don't know how to talk about that with other people because nobody wants to hear you say i'm pretty i'm doing okay i did okay
Right.
It sounds like you're bragging.
Yeah.
And what you're really saying, well, I'm not saying what you're saying, but what I'm saying is, well, I'm just trying to get through the day without falling apart and ideally not hating myself.
I'm sorry.
Someone is having some kind of a...
A very loud meeting outside.
Oh, like yelling?
No, no.
No, I think some co-eds are catching up.
Just so sorry about that.
I think your compressor or your noise gate is taking care of it.
It's not like road work out in the street.
I'm stuck with the carefree giggles of the young.
Ah, the young, the carefree giggles.
Can you imagine?
Although if you ask them, I bet they would say these were the worst times ever.
Exactly.
Right.
Right.
Well, you know, how many of your siblings died?
But I've noticed, I've noticed when people are, are complaining about things that they can't control around me and they're like, what do you think about things you can't control?
And I'm like, I've been really trying to be okay with how my life has gone.
That's not a popular pivot.
Well, it's nice for you.
Yeah, I mean, I don't know.
We went away for a night, my lady and me, for a little glamping trip.
Wow, how romantic.
It was really nice.
Did you guys do any petting?
Did you do a little petting?
um i mean not per se we got coffee you know um but it was cool we were by a big dead tree it was super cool but like there was this kid they had this before we went out to dinner uh mounds like oh we'll just go by the it's one of those places where you sleep in a you know in an airstream and they've got like a little oh yeah yeah right right and it's really they're very cool
Anyways, but there's this kid.
I won't go into it, but I'm sorry I even brought this up.
But it's between four and six.
They're like, oh, you know, you can come and have some wine.
And I was like, she's like, you want to go get a glass of wine?
I'm like, sure, let's get a glass of wine.
And there's this kid there and he did that thing.
where he's one of those guys, like, waiter for life type, you know, the kind.
Like, slightly intense, let me explain the specials guy.
And he's like, he immediately goes into his story.
So he works for this vineyard, and the vineyard is there, and he can set us up with the bottles, and he's got the sheets right here.
He's like, maybe 22.
Maybe.
But he's just, the whole time, he's just selling himself in a way.
In a way that's like, has become familiar to me for
hearing it from other people, but that makes me, I mean, if it's not obvious, pretty uncomfortable to do with other people.
But then I was like, you know, I bet that's what you got to do.
I don't know if there's LinkedIn for wine boys.
Like this guy, he's got to keep hustling and doing his thing.
And it's just, it's all so dreary.
Was he hoping that you were in the wine business and we're going to say, you know what I need?
I'm going to poach you from this Airstream party.
And take you with me to Napa Valley.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, this is, this is up at the Russian river.
So he probably, but you could tell, you could tell.
And then he told us about where, where his family's from and, you know, and it was nice.
And I was doing the nod and Madeline continued to ask him questions and I was still doing the nod and kind of like turning my body just a little bit, not to be rude.
Cause you know,
But the nod was very much like, okay, let's wrap this up.
So my wife and I... He's like Todd or Brandon or something.
And it's just like... But I walked in, we went and sat and drank our little plastic half cup of rosé.
And it was actually pretty good.
And I was like, man...
On the one hand, like as an old man, I go, what an unseemly way to conduct yourself with a stranger.
But on the other hand, because I'm trying to grow, it's like maybe that's what that dude has to do.
Or maybe he's a sad tomato.
And that's like a thing.
I'm not sure how this directly connects with what I was telling you.
But we went away and we did that.
And it was really nice.
And there were some things that I think I handled well.
I'll talk about this with Syracuse probably on the next rec disc because we always talk about how badly my vacations go.
It's like a thing you guys talk about.
We call it vacation results because I'm always bitching and moaning about it.
But as I struggle to remember what my original point was, we did go away and we did this and it was really swell.
Exposure to other people is good, but I...
I realize I have less face-to-face with people than I've had at other points in my life, partly by design in a lot of ways.
But I do feel like there's been kind of a bit of a lapse that we haven't caught.
We hear about why boys do bad in school and everybody's bad at math and COVID.
Yeah, I think that's all true.
But also, I think people still are, for a variety of reasons, are a little uncertain about how to talk to each other.
So I always fall back on like the nicest, easygoing, non-assertive person possible.
I always, whenever I talk to people, I try to be supportive and get them to talk about like what they're interested in.
And hopefully that'll make them want to talk to me about something I'm interested in.
And like, who knows how this will go, but like, you know, but you also got to protect your neck as the Wu-Tang says, like you can't just be out there all the time.
Anyways, um,
I don't know.
It'll probably occur to me later what I was going to tell you, but it had to do with that kid and the wine and the dissolution of society and nasodiversity, but I don't remember what it was.
You know, when we were that age, we, if you recall, thought that trying to sell yourself was basically the lamest possible thing you could do.
And most of us would rather live the rest of our lives sheltering under a skateboard
And eating literal bugs, eating grubs, then eating grubs under a skateboard for a second saying to anybody, anything that might feel like a hustle of even the smallest kind of hustle.
Because hustle was like, it feels at the very least disingenuous, if not full on, like a phony, you know, to like Holden Caulfield terms.
And not just that, but like complicit in, I mean, we were just as against capitalism as anybody ever was.
And that was a kind of complicity in it.
And, but we thrived on being poor.
and i the narrative that you have to hustle because these are unprecedented times and somehow it's that like otherwise it's like no i know what it's like to not survive and not hustle and be poor all the time and the thing is that this 22 year old feels like he's got to hustle because he's got a 500 cell phone and he's got a 500 this and a 500 guy someday that's how they talk yeah
But the thing is, I'm not against him hustling.
Hustle all day.
But I'm against the narrative that somehow he and his cadre have got to hustle in a way that we didn't.
Because we just, we knew their hustle was there.
We knew it was there.
I read in the paper it's now called polyworking.
We don't call it side hustle.
It's called polyworking now.
Polyworking.
I mean, and you polyworked.
I polyworked.
It was just called multiple jobs because none of us wanted to work more than 24 hours a week because we had a lot of time.
We needed to sit around all day and talk about the plays we were never going to write.
And in your case, you know, hooking up like seven different computers to, I don't know, like generate an orb.
And in my case, a lot of sitting around, you know, in like 50 cent Filson jackets.
Trying to make sense of when the apocalypse.
Trying to conjure your own orb, if memory serves.
Yeah, that's 40 years I've been waiting for the apocalypse.
I got so much wool here, survival wool.
Yeah.
Do you have extra wax in case you need to re-wax some pants?
So much.
I got stacks of it.
Stacks of wax.
She's like, all these natural fibers that you have, we're not allowed to bring them on our camping trips.
Because of allergies?
Well, no.
Apparently, they don't dry or something.
Oh, you want your clothes to dry.
Oh, wow.
Why don't you buy an umbrella and move to New York City?
She's living in this outdoors culture that's all about polypropylene.
And I'm like, polypropylene.
You're wearing a technical, they call it.
It's a technical thing.
It's a wicking fabric.
But I feel like that stuff's going to catch on fire if you get too close to the firestorm.
Oh, they're all made out of oil.
That's all it is.
It's all oil.
But here's what a woe is going to do.
It's going to keep you warm in winter, cool in summer.
Yeah.
And she's like, you might as well.
be a prospector with a mule as far as come on you ever you ever see you ever see rob stark wearing one of those technicals he didn't need that and he was king of the north that's that's exactly right and if we didn't live in such net stark's blood runs through his veins i would have i would have a wolf jacket a jacket made of wolves if it wasn't so freaking 62 degrees here year round
There's no wool jacket I can wear.
It's fucking 62.
There's no reason I'm imagining you looking like Luna.
Is it Luna Lovegood?
Remember the woman, the girl, and she makes the Gryffindor costume so she looks like a little lion?
You'd look so cute like that.
Thank you.
Except I would look like a big lion.
Rawr!
I was walking through the forest with a friend the other day, and she said, what's your spirit animal?
And I was like, come on.
She was like, no, what is it?
Seriously.
And I was like, ugh, it's so boring to say what your spirit animal is.
I thought we weren't supposed to say that anymore.
Well, we're not, but this is the thing.
It's our question, not yours.
Yeah.
She's a younger person.
And apparently now the younger persons are going against the logic that they've been living according to the last 15 years.
Because now they're like, you know what?
We just need to lighten up.
What's your spirit animal?
I'm like, wow.
I love it.
Wow.
Okay.
Sure.
We back to this.
Spread the word.
Spread the word, young people.
Spread it.
Calm down.
Everybody calm down.
I didn't have one back when it was not before people said it wasn't okay.
I still don't have one.
But also, you should be able to look at me and tell what it is.
I'm not a bird.
And I'm not a fucking squirrel or a fish.
I think you're a vertebrate, probably.
I think you might be a mammal.
I think so.
Now, are your eyes close together or far apart?
I mean, I can see things in stereo.
Okay.
Because, I mean, sometimes if you've got eyes on the side of your head, like some people do, that means you're prey.
This is the thing.
You can narrow it down.
You know I am not a prey animal.
I know you're not a prey animal.
I am not the prey.
Are you a buzzer?
Of something else.
I'm not a bird.
Okay.
Oh, so you said that.
Sorry.
At some point she was like, I'm a bird.
I'm definitely a bird.
My spirit animal is a bird.
And I could absolutely see like, yes, actually you are a bird.
Your heart is beating a lot faster than mine.
Yeah.
My heart is beating very slowly.
I'm slow to turn.
Skittish, if she's skittish.
She's skittish.
I am super not skittish.
You could set off a grenade right next to me and I would slowly turn in its direction and go, but I have endured.
All right, so now you're sounding like a slow loris or possibly.
What are those cute things with the long claws that climb the trees?
What are those cute things?
Oh, those sloths.
Yeah, you could be a multi-toed sloth.
No, but I'm a predator is the problem.
Oh, you said that.
Yeah.
So what are you?
Am I supposed to guess?
No, but I'm just feeling like, you know, like I don't need to, I'm not going to identify with a freaking animal.
I'm going to call bullshit on one thing.
And this is sort of like something, you know, this is one of those dumb distinctions that, you know.
Whatever.
Well, a costly versus expensive, one of those things that I'm a pill about.
But, you know, it's like verse versus poetry.
Well, verse is something that you write, and, like, poetry is what someone else calls it, right?
Similar kind of thing.
I mean, do you get to pick a spirit animal?
Shouldn't the spirit animal have to choose you?
Because, like, you don't see that many people.
You see a lot of people going, like, my spirit animal is the eagle or the lion.
And you're like, well, how come nobody's the tardigrade?
Right.
I don't even know what a tardigrade is.
I don't think we say that anymore.
It's one of those little microscopic guys that looks like the Michelin Man or a manatee.
Yeah, that's an animal.
But you know, in the same way that the UFOs would be the ones picking you to be the anchorman, doesn't it seem like the animals would let you know that you're their spirit human?
Well, this is the thing I've been saying for years.
The first time I heard someone say that they themselves were woke...
my feeling was woke is something that people say about you like oh that guy's pretty woke they mean in the original sense of stay woke yeah yeah yeah but you don't say it about yourself it's like saying i am one of the righteous or like i'm really i'm really it's it's a form of of of praising yourself which is something that we don't do
Oh, and he's selling jewels in Pulp Fiction, talking about the righteous man, and he's got his wallet.
That kind of thing.
You don't want to give a speech about yourself in a restaurant in short pants.
That's unseemly, too.
And also, woke isn't a rank.
It's not like, I've achieved woke.
It's something that gets said about you by people who are looking for allies, and it's a way of... And you don't say, I'm an ally.
You wait for them to say, that person's an ally.
Just as long as we're splitting hairs.
The other...
You know, you're the sky, not the weather.
You're not defined by your situation.
And you're not really defined by what you say you are.
Like, again, a la poetry and verse, the cool thing would be to say, oh, that's really cool how you decided to do that.
That seems like a really nice way to show your progressive values in what you do day to day.
Like, does that mean the person is woke?
Well, this is part of our problem is we keep trying to strap adjectives to people and say, okay, that's who you are.
This is what bin you fit in.
And we all fuck up.
Well, and 100% what being woke or an ally is, it's action-based.
Did you do a thing?
You can't just sit there and- Yeah, we are what we frequently do.
Yeah, you can't say like, oh, I have done nothing, but I am these values.
It's like, no, it can only be a way of describing something you have said or done.
I've been described by many people as kind of an ally, I guess.
Or, you know, or the thing is, a lot of it is when the Nazis come, I know I'm going to be one of the people that does right.
Yeah, I know.
I know.
I know.
I've fallen way short of that a long time ago.
I know.
And a lot of the woke talk is, is, uh, is conjecture.
It's like, if it were ever to happen that I would be called upon to be, uh, like actually actively supportive, I know I would be because those are my values and therefore I am an ally.
And it's like, ah, yeah, I know.
But you know, when, when you actually are called upon, it turns out there are always stakes where you're going to lose something.
And a lot of people, it turns out when the stakes are high are like, Ooh, I didn't know I was going to lose something.
Right.
And that's the hard part is, is deciding that you're going to lose something or
um in order to like stand by your values and it turns out oh that's a lot harder and it happens a lot less frequently i'm you know i was i was i had a front row seat for that well you know and this is really probably kind of seems like sort of a simple and boring thing to say but you know life is complicated and people people have stuff to do and you have to make trade-offs all the time i make
I mean, I don't want to exaggerate, but I make at least half a dozen choices each day depending on my energy.
And like trying to best utilize the energy that I have for a task at a given time because it's not an unlimited resource.
So I don't want to, I don't love that phrase, shoot my wad, you know, by 8 a.m.
What's not to love about that phrase?
It's so awful.
But, you know, it's – we can't actually – I don't know.
I keep bringing up other things.
But it's something we're encouraged to believe is that we can all have it all and that we should all be seen to be having it all and without even getting into the whole, like, Instagram problem.
But, you know, whatever.
Like, we're constantly seeing and comparing, and comparison is the death of joy.
We're always looking around for ways to see how we're doing and to make sure we haven't been clocked as a loser yet.
Yeah.
And I don't know if that helps that many people.
Ultimately, if that's your baseline goal is to like be admired by people you don't know and care about.
I'm starting to look at my whole collection of books as just ways to keep the cooking fire going.
Oh, see, that's so smart.
It doesn't mean you burn them now.
It just means you've got an option now.
Some prepper guy in my neighborhood probably has a bunch of stay-puffed lighter logs stacked up to keep his home fires burning, and what he doesn't realize is that I have all of these Rudyard Kipling collections, and they're going to burn really slow, and it's a nice, even flame, and I'm going to be able to cook...
What him and his children over my cooking fire when you cook your actual bodies for food Yeah, because I know how to take a gun away from him better than he knows how to keep a gun away from me Yeah, a lot of these I don't know.
There's just the male masculinity
On the one hand, as we've discussed many times in the past, I am, as a human being and as an American man, I am thrilled that men who are losing their hair and don't want to be losing their hair have options for doing something about it now that they didn't used to have.
It is nice.
It's fantastic.
It calms him down.
Yeah.
What was I watching?
I was watching something recently.
Oh, it was one of Conan's writers.
And this guy looks so different when he had the little, like, Lobot, you know, side hair thing that all men used to have.
Everybody used to look like Herb Edelson.
Lobot.
Nice pull.
Cool dad.
Close down Cloud City.
Yeah.
Oh, man, Billy used to hate it when the door would open and Darth Vader was standing there.
That scene's so scary.
I hate that scene.
You know, Han just starts shooting.
He doesn't even look around.
That's how he rolls, man.
He's never even met Darth Vader.
He's never even met Darth Vader.
But the door opens and he's like, that's fucking Darth Vader.
Yeah, yeah.
He shot first.
It's like right in his bio.
Yeah, no, it absolutely is.
But what was I talking about?
Lobot?
And I'm glad.
But on the other hand.
You know, again, life is balanced.
But it seems like ever since guys started shaving their head, which I'm glad they can do.
Right, high fives.
A lot of guys who used to just be considered fat are now considered tough.
You wear a tight shirt, like one of those weird tight shirts.
You skip every leg day.
You're probably eating powders.
You're definitely divorced.
And everybody's like an angry bald guy now.
Now, has there always been angry guys with hair problems?
Or are they newly emboldened by the ability to shave?
I was saying this the other day that I feel like a lot of it is that most people only have the capacity to have very localized politics.
And none of those guys ever saw themselves as part of a community.
You were talking about this.
Yeah.
This is what you're talking about last time that like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
This is okay.
Yeah.
This is interesting.
Yeah.
And so, so now it's not just that they shave their head and wear a tight t-shirt and eat powders.
It's that they feel like they're a member of,
of some kind of group that has shared values.
And that those values are something that they need to turn their masculine power to defend.
And that was not a, you know, that was, the only people that had that was like Christians, kind of.
But that was so general that it was like, yeah, well, all Christians are ready to defend.
And like the reason it was, one reason it was, well, I don't know if this is your point, but like one reason it was Christians is because there was a lot of stuff in various Christian communities that were very allied with that circle the wagons feeling, whether that was reproductive rights or maybe not so much gun control.
But like any kinds of those issues, like just think about everything we went through with Satan stuff in the 80s and, you know, 50,000 children are abducted every year, which is physically impossible.
Like all those kinds of things that really fed into a certain kind of narrative about the barbarians at the gate.
And what a promise-keeping man needs to do to protect his brood, his 14 known children.
And the Mormons for sure can point to recent history at a time when, well, everybody in this part of Missouri, they were throwing us down the well if they could get a hold of us.
And so that's why we kept headed east.
They're doing Jeopardy Masters right now.
Tommy's doing a good job.
Oh, it's a good show.
It's got that guy, the guy that pushes in like each time when he does the full Daily Double, he does the pushing thing.
That guy who's like the famous winner.
Also on Game Show Network.
Thank you.
On Game Show Network, when the show reruns, a lot of times they show Ken reruns from his initial run.
He was good at it.
He was good at it.
I'm still proud of him.
What a kid.
Yeah.
But does he think he does that a lot?
Do you think he's out there...
So he's different.
He's more urbane, as the Mormons go.
Yeah.
Well, and he didn't... That was before Holtzauer gamified the game, and Ken played it your fashion way, which is like... Yeah, which is being good.
No, I can't.
100, you know, like, give me... I heard that controller's pretty tricky.
That's what I've heard.
Ken says it's the whole game.
Everything that's in the game is in the game.
This is the thing people don't realize.
People think you can look at one aspect of any game, and you can't.
All of the game is in the game.
That's what makes it the game.
During the GOAT tournament, Ken said, look, all three of us know.
That was so good.
It was so good.
And he said, all three of us know the answers to all these questions as soon as they're asked.
The only way to win is to be first on the buzzer and then to luck into the daily doubles or to hunt for the daily doubles.
And then, you know, if you're playing chess at an elite level where it's just a completely different game.
And I was like, what, all three of you know the answers?
And he's like, literally all three of us, as soon as Alex starts asking the question, we all know the answer.
And I'm like, I'm not even making sense of the words.
Two hours later, I'm still thinking about the question, trying to understand what the question was.
And he's like, yeah, well, that's why you're not.
Once you get down into Daily Double territory, that bottom half, I get a lot stupider.
No, it makes no sense at all.
But for whatever you're in your house in your house when you yell the answer Do you have to do sorry?
It's real quick when you're in your house if you yell the answer out Do you have to say what is or who is when you say we don't we don't watch television?
Okay, you don't even have a television Ari has a television but she doesn't watch Jeopardy and lately I've been coming downstairs with my bowl of ice cream to watch and or and it turns out that she's watching some Kardashians show
In the interregnum, as we say.
And that's popped up on your little tile there.
Between when dinner is over.
Keeping up with the Cardassians.
Yeah, and then she goes downstairs.
My daughter, or our daughter, and I will sit and talk about the day, and she will say things about the day that children, apparently, teenagers only want to talk to you about the day at 9.35 when you're like, okay, time for bed, and they're like,
Oh, you know, somebody said this to me today and I was, and I'm like, okay, well now, now here it is.
So I'm going to sit quietly in the chair.
You tell me about the day.
And then I get my bowl of ice cream.
I see.
And then I go down the stairs and she's down there, not only with some kind of Kardashians or child dance show or, you know, this type of thing.
Oh, it sounds like she's watching some basic ass cable.
And then in the background, there's people that are like, oh my god, I can't believe she's wearing that.
And I'm like, I'm going to cut the power to this whole house.
I'm going to go out to the junction box and shut it all down.
There's nothing honorable happening in this house right now.
This is brain rot.
There's brain rot happening.
I'm going to shut it all.
I'm going to shut the system down.
We're going to go back to using these books on the shelves to make a fire so that we can cook our neighbors.
Well, first we're going to cook all the chili in the chili safe.
And then we're going to start getting the chili out of the...
We're going to get the chili out of the neighbor's chili steak.
Finally, you're going to have all the chili to yourself.
Yeah.
Then we're going to cook their spirit animals first.
The good one.
Oh, I love that.
But you go over there and you find a secret Sally Port.
You get in through a monk hole.
You go in below.
You find out that that family with the tech leaf blower dad.
Well, first of all, he's going to...
He's going to drop like a bad habit.
Don't worry.
You're going to take that guy out.
No problem.
But you might discover that, I don't know, maybe they've got a sexton dungeon.
But even better, I bet they've got a basement full of chili with beans.
And the problem is it might be freeze-dried stroganoff.
It might be all the techs.
It might be veggie-freaking-fucking-tarian stuff that if you leave it out of the fridge for an hour, it melts and just turns into, like, paste.
Oh, no.
Some kind of non-food food.
That's a shame.
You know, because you look at it and you're like, oh, look at that.
It's chicken cetruzzini, but it's made out of beans.
And it melted.
Yeah, and it melted because it's the most processed thing that anybody ever thought.
Okay, you've made me realize something.
And you know I love my wife.
You're not my wife.
You love my wife.
She's wonderful.
I do love her.
No, she's wonderful.
But like.
I don't want her to be in charge of buying survival food.
Because that's what I said before.
I realize this is a bit, but it's not a bit.
She buys food without food in it.
She does a thing where she often gets what appears to be the upscale healthy option.
And it'll be something like, oh, it's potato chips, but they're made of chickpeas and they don't have salt.
Or you're like, look, if you want chocolate, don't eat carob.
No.
eat a little I know this is considered an old idea but I heard from a supermodel who was being interviewed on television this is probably not an awesome thing she used to say you can learn to eat like a supermodel you can eat anything you want but you can't eat all of it you can't eat like you can't go to like the Bellagio buffet and just sit there and this is true for everybody so you know I just have a little square of chocolate is what I think but the stroganoff I'm okay with because I think that is a pretty durable dish it's a high floor it's a high floor dish
It's fun, but you're not going to, this is the thing, you're not going to live for long on that.
And I remember, I remember I went to, when I started dating Millennium Girlfriend, I was down there and we were at some fancy grocery store there in the neighborhood that was just to the east of your neighborhood.
And we're walking around, she's filling up the cart.
Oh, I bet you went to Andronica's.
Yeah.
Was it?
Yep.
Which is now owned by Safeway, but it used to be really nice.
Really?
You probably went to the Andronica's near Irving, right?
Yeah, that's right.
And she's filling up the thing and I'm looking at it.
Olive bar.
She looks at me at one point and she's like, what?
And I'm like, well, is this really dinner?
And she was like, yeah.
Dinner for Trader Joe's.
You just bought like $80 worth of snacks that aren't good.
That's your dinner?
But the thing is, she'd been a vegetarian at that point for 20 years.
Okay.
Oh, so she has low standards already.
Yeah, and it's already, it's this thing.
And she was like, well, and she looked at the basket and she's like, well, what?
What?
It's made of bamboo and guar gum.
Yeah, I'm like, nothing in here is dinner.
No, this is dinner.
And this is the problem for you.
This is like culturally for you and me.
When you look at this basket, you see like a delicious dinner.
When I look at this basket, I see food that I wouldn't feed a cat and a cat wouldn't eat.
Yeah.
You know what?
You know what?
You waste the cat's time and you're annoying yourself.
The cat would turn its nose up on this shit and walk away with its tail held high.
Yes.
And we've been through this.
We've been through this with dinner.
I know how you're the one who helped me relearn the importance of noodles.
If you have steak, you make noodles.
Because I like a meat.
I like a protein.
Let's say protein.
That's the woke with it.
I like, here's what I want.
I want a steak and I want noodles and I want frozen peas.
What I want is a guarantee that I will always have, I can make frozen peas with butter, noodles and steak.
And like that's a meal that makes me happy, you know?
And so, but like the thing I've been trying to socialize for, oh, I guess about 25 years now is I am from a background that is admittedly, like if I'm gonna have a meal and I haven't eaten a lot, I want a meal to have parts.
I want to have like three parts.
Like to me- Yeah, this is the Ohio thing.
Kind of it's real basic like 50s dad shit to be honest.
I mean like maybe I just I learned it from hungry man dinners or something.
Where's my cobbler woman?
This was the amazing thing about this early stage of Relationship with Millennium Girlfriend because she said well, what would you get for dinner?
And I turned my head and looked over and there was a whole roast chicken.
Yeah.
And I said, well, for instance, that roast chicken is a dinner.
Yeah.
Or it's the fundaments of one.
Yeah.
Ladies and healthy people go to the middle of the store.
Boys and unhealthy men go to the perimeter of the store.
And over there's some cheese.
But also... I could get six pounds of fake crab for like $4.
I could just eat that.
Some of the things that are in your Bastic...
Will go with that chicken very nicely.
Yes, but the chicken is in the center of the of this plastic of Like brussel sprouts that you have acquired.
No brussel sprouts would be too cool It would be something like again brussel chips brussel chips.
I mean am I wrong am I wrong John am I am I working from an old idea because we have these bags and it's Madeline and I bonded when we bonded first over a pavement song and one of the second things that we ever bonded over was being a child and
There was not of great means and when you would see the Baker's chocolate in The Baker's chocolate and it sat there and it was a bar of chocolate in Madeline's case in a family of Nine people nobody had eaten that chocolate yet.
No, and you're like not chocolate You're like I look I know I know it's Baker's chocolate but still still twice a year you take a bite of it and it's not like a Hershey bar
But you keep doing it anyway.
You keep trying because one day, you know, that's the thing about insanity.
It's doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
Yes.
Yes.
Like like like just like us and women in general, you know, but but, you know, the thing is, you don't really know until you get it home.
I was looking at my Cape Cod chips last night, which are potato chips made of potatoes.
And I looked and I was really pleased.
The ingredients got three ingredients.
It's got potatoes, salt, oil.
Yeah, that's the whole thing.
And it's a crispy, yummy chip.
That's the thing about Fritos.
Fritos have three ingredients.
But that's the problem.
It's like I go and I look and I see a bag and it's the baker's chocolate all over again.
I see a bag that looks like a tasty treat.
Oh, look, somebody got a bag of cookies.
And you open it up and it's, I don't know, made out of like... But if you subject it to heat or to water, it will immediately turn into just nothing.
Melt.
Well, anyway, so to conclude that story.
However you arrived at this, it's great.
I really love this idea that all this, you know, the problem with that food is it melts.
Well, that's the thing.
I knew somebody that worked at Arby's back in the 80s, and I was talking, I was like, oh, you work at Arby's, you know, do you eat Arby's?
And they said, here's the thing.
If you take one of those roast beefs, those giant roast beefs.
Oh, you've heard it before.
No, tell it.
It's so awful.
Your description of what the big... So they got a big slicey beef thing.
They put on the slicer and go shukka, shukka, shukka.
But please describe that big chunk of beef.
If it doesn't start frozen, if you leave it on the counter for too long and it thaws, it turns into a bag of liquid.
You get a beef slurry?
It's a beef slurry.
It's a pink...
Flurry.
That's what you're eating when you go to Arby's.
Because the thing is, if they slice it and then fry it, then it hangs together.
Oh, because you know, steakums are probably kind of like that.
I used to like a steakum.
I think I'd get them on Fridays at school.
You can get them like a dollar.
You get a steakum.
But like those, when those come out, that's like some beaks and claws shit.
You know what I'm talking about?
Well, so Millennium Girlfriend.
Millennium Girlfriend.
She says she puts the bastic of olive chips down.
She walks over.
She picks up a chicken, a roast chicken, and she's like, this?
And I'm like, yeah.
And she goes, okay.
And we buy the roast chicken.
We go home, and she eats the first chicken.
Meat that she's eaten in 25 years what and and she immediately is like this is the best and she becomes a match She's just like the most carnivorous person.
I ever saw she's just like it doesn't always go that well for people some people get really sick tummies she needed it because Apparently like the that was her chemistry or whatever and then she's the girl that's carrying a land yeager in her pocket and
And every night she's like, we've eaten at every barbecue restaurant in all of Long Beach.
Where do we go now?
And I'm like, we go back and eat it all again.
We go back around.
And she's like, oh, my God.
What if we stalk, kill, and butcher our own roast beef?
Yeah.
Well, so I was having lunch with somebody.
I took him to Le Pichet and she was like, I'll have the oofs.
Because she's never been there and she was like, what's good?
And I was like, well, the oofs.
And she said, I'll have the oofs.
And the oofs are eggs and cheese.
But they came out and she had said oofs to the French lady that works there.
And French lady was like, right, oofs.
And they came out with ham.
I remember fairly specific because they memorized almost everything Steve Martin ever said.
Steve Martin in 1977 said, he's French.
It's like they've got a different word for everything.
Oof means egg.
I seem to remember Steve saying.
Well, but this is eggs and cheese, but with heart.
Oh, like a, there's a name for this.
That kind of croquette?
Not a croquette.
Madame Croissant?
It's one of those sandwiches.
It's not a croque, Missouri, but it is.
But this is baked.
Croque, Missouri.
And I said, oh, oh, oh, God, I'm sorry about this.
You know, we can send this back and get your oofs.
Oh, because of ham, yeah.
And she said, no, you know what?
It's okay.
Wow, good for her.
And then, I didn't know that she had not had ham in 25 years.
And then she ate and she was like, that was really good.
And it was only like three days later that she said, yeah, I haven't had any really not really meat in a long time.
Wow.
And I was like, for how long?
And she was like, most of my adult life.
That's a gutsy broad.
I mean, honestly, that's pretty big.
And so I'm wondering, is this something about me?
Am I the person that's a safe space?
Oh, a lot of guys think they can make lesbians be straight.
Maybe your special power is you make a perfectly healthy, naso-normative people.
Yeah, vegetesmians.
Vegetesmians, or their companions and lovers.
I'm not judging, but somehow you find a way to bring them around to the other side, and pretty soon they're scarfing down some big beef and cheddar.
And I don't know what it is.
Maybe it's just that I give off a nonjudgmental vibe.
It's a safe space.
I do like that idea.
Yeah.
Maybe it's that my spirit animal is so much of a slow carnivore that it's like, look, if you're around me, you'd better eat me because that's all there's going to be.
Because everything is prey.
Like an alligator.
I think alligators, don't they take a long time to digest?
Or a sarlacc.
Sarlacc takes them a thousand years to digest.
We already decided that I was a mammal.
You're not a bird.
Is that right?
Not a bird.
Not a lizard.
Not a... I really want you to be a bird.
I'm not a rabbit.
I'm not a mouse.
You made a noise earlier that sounded a little bit like a curious owl.
And I kind of, I don't hate that.
I think you've been drawn as an owl for this program with your pillows.
I suppose that's true.
If I were a bird, it would be because I'm not majestic.
Like picking a spirit animal.
That's like making the Yankees your favorite team where you're like, well, what did that cost?
You know what I mean?
Yeah, exactly.
A Yankees hat.
Really?
That's your maybe it could be an extinct animal.
My daughter's eighth grade prom had a theme of like New York City.
And the most, the most like New York, the most like super flamey trans kid in her school who really is leaning into what we would have called like in 1988, like just being a super flamer.
Flamboyant, I think we say.
Flamboyant.
And I, you know, I have been describing myself lately as a flaming straight because, you know, I will wear a pink belt.
Yes.
But this kid is great.
And they came to the prom dressed all in Boston Red Sox gear.
Oh, wow.
Really?
But like had flamed it up, right?
With a scarf and stuff.
Boston Red Sox gear.
Oh, to be like, to make fun of New York.
What they thought of as the most opposite and transgressive thing to wear to a prom-themed... And everybody else is in what they think of as putting on the Ritz.
And this kid... And I expected, because sometimes this kid will wear a freaking wedding dress.
Going yard!
Green monster!
Green monster!
What's Camille going to wear, you know?
And, uh, and it turns out Boston Red Sox.
Well, of course no one, their age gets that at all.
It doesn't get the joke.
And I don't know.
I don't know how 14 year old is coming up with this, but you know, I'm standing there like, okay, slow clap.
Uh, and, and it's, it's like a prom outfit.
that needs 20 minutes to explain to a kid that's only ever seen the Mariners.
And I'm like, you know what?
I have faith in your generation.
I have hope.
That's a fun joke.
You have brought back the kind of dumb and pointless irony that we, that was the food, that was the melty olive chips of our era.
Oh, melty olive, yes.
Was dumb stunts that did nothing but indicate that we never felt like we were gonna have a job.
You know, Bruce Springsteen, take a dirt road.
John, I think you've already got lyrics for your new album.
Just as Carl Yastrzemski.
All our food melted.
All the chips have melted.
No, it's not.
It sounds more like Tom Waits, I guess.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, you can lead them to water, but you can't make them go to the prom.
That's a shame.
I don't know.
I don't eat that much food.
It bums me out, though.
You know, I don't know.
Are you taking Ozempic?
No, I'm not.
I heard people are microdosing it.
Yeah, they love it.
I think a lot of people take one of those, or the Wegovy.
I've seen ads for that.
The ad for that makes it seem like slightly Zoftig people are drawn into a giant parade.
You probably don't watch cable TV like I do, but they get drawn into it.
I bet you've already seen these ads where there's a Zoftig lady painting, and then Wegovy, she goes and she joins in, and it looks like maybe they're going to go beat the shit out of somebody.
Maybe they're going to go find some skinnies, send them straight.
It feels like everybody's going to start looking like the aliens have come down and chosen them to be the anchor people.
Yeah.
Especially if it's fast.
When it happens fast, it's kind of jarring.
Like, good for them.
Yeah.
But if you heard about... Because it looks like virtue.
It looks like all of a sudden you're so virtuous.
Of course.
That's how we were raised.
That's how we were absolutely raised.
Did you discover Jesus?
Like, what happened?
Why are you so good now?
I heard it causes problems in relationships is what I heard.
I heard two things.
I've heard one thing is you start...
All you want to eat are different and usually healthier foods, supposedly.
I read that somewhere.
And the other one is that I heard it's hard to be in a relationship with somebody who's on that stuff.
And I haven't looked into it because I don't really care.
But it's interesting that that's a kind of trend piece now.
Like, should you both be on a Zempick?
What happens if you can you share needles?
I've heard you shouldn't do that.
Hmm.
Don't share needles.
I don't know a lot about it.
Is it like a hundred bucks a month?
What do they charge?
That was like 900 bucks a month.
I don't know enough about it to comment.
Yeah.
I bet you that there are listeners that are on it and they're talking about it right now.
Well, that's why I say good for them so no one can criticize me.
Yeah, that's right.
That's what you do.
You say good for them.
Oh, I love that for you.
Bless your heart.
Bless your heart.
Look at you.
Good for you.
Oh, you're not hungry anymore.
Good for you.
Melty olive chips.