Ep. 584: "Adult Bangs"
Hello.
Hi, John.
Hi, Merlin.
How's it going?
I just started the dishwasher.
No!
Yeah.
It's okay.
Are you worried it'll make noise?
It's gonna make a little noise.
It's not terrible, but it's not what I normally would do.
I don't like to speak in software terms, but I think of that as a feature, not a bug.
Oh, okay.
Like when you can hear people outside arguing about their social life, or you can hear the streetcar, or one of my favorites in the morning, you can hear the little kids from the preschool walking around.
Yeah.
I think that's a gift.
Bless their hearts.
Yeah, I finally saw my leaf blower neighbor.
Oh.
Just yesterday, I heard them out there playing, and I actually put on my shoes and went outside.
They were there in the driveway and we had a marvelous greeting and they had some friends over and then Then you know my neighbor my pal turned to his friends and said yeah He thinks my leaf blower is too loud and I hadn't seen him in like a year And I said I knew you were stewing on that and he was like no not at all I just went to the hardware store just recently He's still full of shit a year later
No, no, he's like 100%.
He was like, I went to the hardware store to find him out.
John, that's his file card on you.
Your file card on him, well, you have a couple file cards, but his file card on you is your leaf blower mad angry guy.
Yeah, yeah.
But no, I think we're all, because his kid loves me.
What can he do?
What can he do?
I still think the angle you need to work is with the wife, but also ingratiating yourself with the child would be really frustrating to him.
Well, and I made friends with their friends.
This is what I want to know.
Tell me if you can, if you're comfortable.
Do you think he's trying to show off for his friends or his friends' ding-a-lings?
What were they like?
No, no, his friends are from San Francisco who moved up to Seattle.
Hmm.
And now they live up here.
And I said, how do you like it up here?
And they said, it's the same.
And I said, yeah, I know, right?
I feel like that's kind of a diss to both places.
It really is.
I have to think on it, but just off the dome emotionally, that feels a little hurtful.
I was like, it's not anything like there.
And they were like, yeah, I mean, for us it is.
Are you sure you live there?
Or no, what I probably should have said was, wow, you must have lived in a nice part of San Francisco.
Yeah, yeah.
I have a friend who lives there, and he's out with the poors.
The poors and the immigrants.
That's not nice over there.
The poors.
You're going to raise a hip-hop son like Jesse Thorne.
Oh, is that what happens?
Yeah, that's, you know, if you listen to him talk about his biography.
With a hip and a hop and a hippity hop.
Hippity hop.
Mm-hmm.
You don't stop rocking.
You can't stop rocking.
Well, my name's Jesse's kid, and I'm here to say my dad has cravats in a very weird way, and he keeps him in a case for a case cravats and a case for the case for his cravats.
Yeah.
I'm wearing a scarf.
I got a $9 scarf.
You're amazing.
That was amazing.
I've never heard you freestyle before.
Oh, man.
It's so much fun.
I didn't try very hard with that one, but I usually got to plan a little bit.
Well, because there wasn't anybody standing there glaring at you.
Or waiting for a bingo number to be called.
I wonder if any footage of that exists.
I did it every Sunday night.
I wish.
I wish.
It used to be that you could do things and people wouldn't.
Do you remember that?
And you remember people would come see things.
People would go see things.
You can see, I got a pal of mine, a guy, a fellow I met recently.
He's kind of an odd guy.
And what he does is he practices with his band, or as you say, rehearses with his band on Sunday nights, and he has a 12-pack of beer.
And then he comes to this bar, and he dresses up in a really stinky gorilla costume and calls out bingo numbers and insults the audience.
Wait a minute.
That sounds familiar.
That was me.
I know.
Yeah.
But you just said you met a guy that did that.
No, no.
I'm saying that's how you try and entice someone to come to Jungo.
Oh, yeah, right.
Right, right, right.
There's also the food.
There was art, you know, but mainly it was me rapping to a... Oh, who was that?
Who's the guy...
Um, uh, 3000, that one guy 3000.
No, it was MF doom.
It's one of those guys who wears a mask.
I think MF doom.
No, it was one of those, but if we had a 12 inch, it's early.
Yeah.
Well, you know, that was before people had things that they could do at home.
That's true.
There was almost nothing you could do at home.
There was zero to do at home and you had to get out.
You had to go to places.
That's how you call it a third place.
You need a place to go that's not your home or your office.
And that's how Starbucks is the original third place.
That's what I heard.
The first one ever.
Yeah, they're all the same.
San Francisco, Seattle, whatever.
My mom said, let's go to the symphony.
And I looked online and I was like, okay, well, symphony tickets are $150.
And she said, no, that's not possible.
And I said, well, I'm looking months out and the cheapest ticket is $150.
And she said, symphony tickets are $20.
And I said, Mom, symphony tickets haven't been $20 since the 60s unless they give you some kind of 80-year-old lady discount.
Maybe it's like when you go to a barber and you can go to a practice barber, you know, where they're learning how to cut hair.
You know what I mean?
It's not just that.
There's probably dentists like that.
You can go and get a young dentist.
For sure there are.
That was my rap name.
I was a young dentist.
I used to get my hair cut there at the dentist.
Yeah.
Now that, if you really want to cut corners and save time, you know, why are people not thinking of this?
I'm telling you, you know, you and I are famous for our haircut parsimony.
I feel like I've gotten over my skis with haircuts.
And I don't blame you.
You know what?
I credit you with giving me the courage to cut my own hair, which I never did until COVID.
And then during COVID, you were like, this is the greatest thing I have ever done.
It kind of is.
I mean, OK, listen, I don't want to feel so free.
OK.
All right.
Can I tell you an anecdote?
It's not a great anecdote, but I learned a little something about life.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
That's what this show's all about.
Okay.
Thank you.
I appreciate the space for that.
So here's what happened.
What happened was I used to go to Judy, and I'd go see Judy, and I can see Judy's sign from my front window.
That's number one reason to go to Judy.
How long have you been going to Judy?
Um, since Joey retired, so 2000, during my kid's life, so like 2007 or 8 probably.
And so before Judy, there was Joey?
It was Joey downtown, and I would take a train and I would go downtown.
It used to be it was near a place I worked, and I would go see a guy, and they had this little barbershop in the arcade of a building right next to a place that sold hot dogs.
So I would make a point of going to see Joey for a haircut.
And he charged, I don't know, 40, 60 bucks, like what people downtown do?
charge and it was fine but you know what was nice is he put on the hand massager and give me those big one the big you don't talk about the really big ones i don't but i can guess well it's the kind of it looks like something you would use to help a woman with hysteria in the 1800s okay like imagine you had like a planar saw like on your hand anyways okay i started going to judy did it have any belts did it have like a vibrating i was so relaxed john i didn't even notice okay like a nice fresh haircut
But nobody ever wants to shave me.
Nobody wants to shave me.
Anyway, but so I went, and then I go to Judy, and Judy charges $20, $25.
And we get along okay.
This is not downtown.
There's no hot dogs.
No.
No, no, no, no.
This is out with the pores.
This is a haircut for pores.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You're out there with the pores.
Yeah.
I sit down, and Judy says, busy?
And I say, you know, not really.
Yeah.
Not really.
Just for a quiet life.
Oh, my gosh.
God, crazy, right?
Are you busy?
Oh, so busy.
I'm so busy.
I'm like, no, Judy, I've spent 25 years engineering a life where I'm only busy because other people have made errors.
Yeah, I work six hours a week, Judy.
If we worked it all out right, we'd only be busy when other people fuck up.
But, um, but anyway, but then COVID came and, you know, it was, I'll try to make this fast, but you know, there's only so much you could do.
And my hair was getting weird.
And then finally we were like, and remember there was the time where it was difficult to get things.
And I was like, I thought, well, it can't be that hard to like, cause we had a cat trimmer, right?
We've trimmed our cat.
Which is so hard to do.
Unfortunately, at this point, the cat was so gnarly from so long not being professionally groomed that it was useless.
But you couldn't get hair cutting stuff.
But, you know, the thing is, you know what a cat... You're saying the cat was so gnarly that the cat no longer had the use of a cat?
Like, it was useless?
Oh, no, I'm so sorry.
I put that so poorly.
I'm a German speaker, naturally.
My sentences are confused.
No, no, it's just that the cat was so knotty that, and like, you know, like the way our cat was, that it was, you couldn't even shave the cat.
You couldn't get to it.
But here's the thing.
What's a cat shaver?
Well, a cat shaver is just a shaver.
That's right.
The thing you use to shave a cat, there's no reason you can't shave a person with that.
Sure, it's just a shaver.
Yeah, and you got all the attachments.
You got the half.
You got half through six color-coded GTG.
And so the first, you know, sort of few times, actually it was my child who cut my hair.
And I have some very cute photos of my child cutting my horrible hair.
Long story short, I eventually got comfortable trying it myself, and I would spend like an hour on it.
And I still never really got the back right, but I got to where I could make it look mostly okay.
Yeah.
And something changed.
And you've got great hair.
It's very, thank you, it's narrow.
Okay, it's narrow.
I mean, I have a lot of, I've been told by my operators over the years, Judy doesn't say this because we just don't talk a lot once I tell her I'm not busy.
But I've got a lot of hair, but it's narrow.
It's densely packed, but the hair itself is narrow.
Narrow hair, yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Sure.
And then I, this is before I got over my skis, but then I started saying, you know what, there's got to be a system here.
There's got to be a way I can make this easy.
So over the last year, every month or so, you know, I cut my own hair.
And I just stand in the bathtub, and I use the shaving mirror in the bathtub, and I, or you know what I wear, I wear my Roderick on the Line hoodie as kind of a cape.
Because you don't want those little hairs making you itchy.
Okay.
Right, right.
It had never occurred to me to stand in the bathtub.
That's a major hack.
Otherwise it gets all over the floor and then your family's mad at you because there's hair on the floor.
Well, yeah, that's what I do.
Okay.
You get hair everywhere.
Mid-century.
It's a different scene.
I don't know how smart, but yeah.
But then I started in the last year or so.
So, you know, like I say, every month or so.
And I finally, and then I think the problem is I became a little too confident.
And I thought, you know what?
I'm Merlin Mann.
I can make this a project and I can come up with a system.
So I started with the end in mind.
And the end in mind was I wanted to come up with a haircut that was so easy to do and so flattering that it could be described with just the two or three sizes of guard.
Yeah.
Right.
Oh, oh, you're saying like, this is a, this is a, there was a time, there was a time when I, when I, for years, even in the Joey era title, where I would say, could I get three on the sides and just blend it on top?
Oh, three on the sides.
Yeah.
And it on top.
Got it.
And then I kept thinking, boy, it would be really neat if I came up with a system, I call it something like the 3-4-5 system, where I could like, you know what I mean?
It would be really memorable for me.
Three's back here, four at the crowning point, and then five, and you rough it up a little on top.
That was one of my goals was to come up with something clever.
So let me ask you.
All right.
That makes sense.
That makes sense.
Let me just ask you one more thing, which I kept dead at this point.
This is something that I guess I've never asked.
But you learn things on YouTube.
You study the world on YouTube.
You know a lot of things.
Do you ever convert that knowledge into a YouTube video yourself?
Oh, that's a really good question.
No, because I'm a grotesquerie.
And the kind of stuff that I'm good at in videos is not the kind of thing that people like anymore.
I think.
Like cultural criticism?
Like Gramsci.
Yeah, I had a series on Gramsci like fucking nobody watched.
Like, ah, he was in jail.
And I'm like, yeah, that's the point.
He's Italian.
Yeah.
No, but I probably should.
I don't know who anything's for anymore, John.
I like making stuff.
I don't think anybody sees stuff anymore, and it becomes a mitigating factor in how often I undertake an ambitious project.
But when you're talking about developing a 3-4-5 system, you're not thinking about that in terms of them promulgating it with Merlin Mann's 3-4-5 system.
No, and it's funny you should say that because I'm actively against most bits.
Like, I think if a thing becomes a bit organically, that can be great.
QED, this show.
But when you try to force it, you try to come up with a cute name for things, and you buy domain names and stuff like that, it gets a little bit too clever by a half.
But something like the 345 system, I thought.
And so over time, I've been getting better at that.
And I finally, in the penultimate haircut...
Which went fine.
It's a mighty good haircut.
Generation looks and chops a must.
No big hair.
I know him, and he does.
Then you're my fact-checking cuz.
You know, have you heard about the new movie, the movie that's out now?
Have you heard about the movie Pavements?
There's a pavement movie?
Google Pavements movie.
Um, so, so, so I, um, the penultimate haircut went fine and here's what I am pretty much down to.
Boy, this is really dull, but hopefully you'll find a way to make this interesting for me.
I don't think it's, I don't think it's dull.
I think it's, I think we're right down the middle of the plate.
I feel like that, John, but you know, I don't know who things are for anymore.
So one of the things I do, and I'm not really interested in notes about this.
You can give me notes about this, but I'm really not interested in having this critiqued by some sort of board.
But what I eventually do now is I get in the bathtub.
I put on my Roderick on the line sweatshirt, the super trans sweatshirt, which is capacious.
It's a wonderful sweatshirt.
And I get in there and first I run a four all over.
A four all over.
I go a little lighter on top, but first I want to get everything to where it's four-ish.
And then I would run a three in the lower areas in the back.
And remember, I still can't see the back, and my son won't shave me.
So I'm still on my own.
But I've gotten to where, and I'll be done, and I'll be like, huh.
A, that's not too bad.
And B, if I'm not happy with it, who cares?
I don't go anywhere.
No one sees me.
And three, like a hippie girl said to me when she shaved her head in college, it's like grass, man.
It just grows back.
It just grows back.
For some, it does.
Yeah, I'm fortunate in that way.
Yeah, I think you are.
I mean, I had a friend that she could cut her hair anything she wanted.
And four months later, it was down to her waist.
She's doing a pony.
She's got the little goody rubber bands again, I'll bet.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's just like boom, boom, boom.
She's like, oh, I think I'm going to give myself bangs straight across and, you know, like a whatever, a pixie cut.
And I'm like, wow, big commitment.
Oh, with bangs?
That is ambitious.
But four months later, it's down to her waist again.
And I'm like, I don't understand.
She could just do baby bangs.
Like 1992 style baby bangs and just say, hey, fuck it.
Baby bangs with the combat boots.
Do you remember that?
Do I remember?
But six days later, they'd be normal bangs.
And then, you know, three weeks later, they're down to her chin.
I don't understand that.
My hair does not grow like that.
I have fine hair.
It's fine.
I also have thin hair.
Narrow hair.
Yeah.
It's narrow.
That's what I mean.
Yeah.
It's thick but narrow.
Well, there's one thing we know about a pendulum.
It's that it swings.
Like England swings like a pendulum.
By definition.
What is a pendulum that doesn't swing?
What would you call that?
A medallion?
A medallion?
Okay.
Like a dewlap?
Or a dewlap.
You mean like the kind of thing?
Okay.
A dangler?
A meat beard.
A Lloyd dangler.
A meat beard.
Meat beard.
You know, when you smash your chin down real hard and try to give yourself extra meat beard.
I don't know if I ever tried it.
Oh, boy.
My friend Michael's the best.
I'm the second best.
So, here's the thing, though.
A pendulum, we need pendulums.
Because, you know, B...
Okay, a pendulum swings back, but A, sometimes the pendulum swings too far and it's got to come back.
And that's what happened last night, where I officially got, as you and Syracuse say, I officially got over my skis a little bit last night.
Oh, boy.
Oh, boy.
Because I got a little too confident last night, and I flew a little bit too close to the sun.
I'm not mad with the results, but the way that I arrived at the results...
are funny to me, and I'd like to share.
Did you use a 543?
No, dude, I went even simpler.
I said, fuck it.
I put the sweatshirt on, I stood in the bathtub, and I went straight in, because, okay, truthfully, I had done a 345 earlier this week, but I still had some Dennis the Menace cow licks in the back, because I want to be super clear about this.
I ask him every time, my son will not shave me.
I say, shave your father, and he won't do it.
And my wife is just as reluctant, but I... No, I... But your kid, you could say, like, earn your keep around here.
Ugh, God.
Don't get me started.
All right, okay.
He only uses utensils that are of unusual size.
I'm always cleaning things that are weird.
Is it one of these things where he eats soup with like a wooden spoon, like a stirring spoon?
That would be rustic.
No, a lot of times, like today, getting ready for work, he microwaved a very, very fragrant meal at 7.30 a.m., and then I had to smell that.
You had to wake up to a fragrant meal.
Oh, my God.
It smells like somebody's celebrating the last goat.
Oh.
His name is Morris, and we loved him.
Okay, so here's the thing.
I did a three, four, five, and everything was fine.
But I said, you know what, I'm going to go.
And the thing is, the truth is, I've been wanting to go a little shorter on the side.
So you know what I did?
I took out the thing.
I took off the guard.
I put on the number two.
Oh, boy.
See, so this is what happens to me.
You know, I get a fine haircut.
It looks great.
And I'm like, I'm just going to do a little mod.
How big of a mod could it be?
I'm just going from a three to a two.
I can't because, like, the thing is, it can't be that bad.
And, you know, you do the thing.
It's just one.
It's only one.
And the other thing you do is, you know, you have to even sometimes.
And that's where a lot of people get into trouble.
But here's the problem.
I started doing it.
I ran that two over my sides and my back.
I looked fucking great.
I looked slender.
I looked aerodynamic.
And I had just a little bit of a Muppet-like wisp on top.
And then I did a choppa-choppa-choppa.
You know how they do when you want to make it spiky like the singer Sting?
And you do like a choppa-choppa-choppa.
I did a little bit of that.
And it was fucking fantastic.
And then I thought, okay, I'm going to do one last pass.
And I found myself, I was standing there and I was thinking to myself,
This is where the hubris comes in.
Leave it?
Yes, but worse.
Because I started thinking, huh, there might be a wisdom here that I can put in the document.
And I said, I was thinking to myself, because I thought to myself, hmm, what would it be?
What's the wisdom?
The whole time.
Yeah.
At this point now, I'm realizing how soothing it is to use this device.
It's like 11.15 and I'm cutting my hair.
And I'm thinking, huh.
And in my head, it blasted into my head what the wisdom would be.
Once you're really good at cutting your own hair, it can be a relaxing way to unwind or something like that.
Like once you get good at cutting your own hair, you may find it out to be a form of self-soothing.
Okay.
But inherent in that, implied in it, was that you had gotten good at cutting your own hair.
Very critically, John, implied in that is that I had gotten good at it, because then here's the other sentence at the end.
This is the kind of thing I do in this document.
I say something, and again, now I'm writing it in my head.
I'm like, oh, that's not too bad.
Now, how would I write that?
right the whole time i'm just thinking i'm self-soothing and i'm thinking um you know hey once you get really good at cutting your own hair it can be a great form of self-soothing period but first make sure you're really good at cutting your own hair and i got to thinking about it and i forgot i guess that i'd taken the guard off
Oh, but you hadn't put on a two?
Well, I'd done the two, but then I took off the guard because I said, I'm finally going to go fix it.
I kind of look like Imogen Poots in that movie Green Room.
Oh, because you were doing the stingification.
Yeah, but I also had skinhead girl wisps in the back that I didn't think were flattering.
Kind of like our president has that little, I don't know, aileron, is that the term?
No, a flight wing, tail number.
He's got that thing in the back that flips up a little bit when you see him in profile.
And I didn't like that.
You know, Joe Biden had that, too, where I was like, just cut your hair in the back a little more.
He absolutely did, where it looked like somebody was trying to make a swan.
Yeah.
So I forgot momentarily that I'd taken the guard off.
And I was going jit, jit, jit, jit, jit on the bottom.
You know what I'm talking about?
You know that sound?
And then you went.
And I thought, oh, you know what?
I'll just do another quick pass on this right side.
I want to be clear here.
I'd forgotten at this point that I took the guard off.
And I'm still cutting like the guard is on.
And I made a...
What would you call it?
I did a pass on this, my right side.
I'm clicking over here on this side.
And it was shorter than a two, John.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You made a divot.
I call those divots.
Divots.
But I also thought I could look a little bit like Reed in the Fantastic Four because I already have the gray sides.
And I thought maybe I can, with the new movie coming out and the fact that it's my favorite comic book cartoon family, I thought maybe I'll do a tribute to Reed by giving myself a Reed-style haircut.
Yeah.
And playing up my gray in a Dan Quail way.
No, but I just took out a big chunk.
And then I says to myself, I says, you know, you got to remember, it can be very self-soothing, but what did I forget, John?
You have to be good at giving yourself a haircut first.
That's right, John.
That's right.
You've discovered, you've found the error in my process.
But I'll still write it up.
But now I can also write a bit about, you know, so related pendulum swing both ways.
And sometimes you're tingling and it grows back like hair.
Just like that girl said.
Just like that girl said.
Well, you know, if you think about the 90s being back.
Oh.
And you think about 90s haircuts having those vanilla eyes.
1890s?
Lines.
No.
Sorry, I'm doing the Portlandia bit.
Are you doing the... The dream of the 90s is alive in Portland?
It's alive in Portland.
It's alive in the sunset.
But no, I'm saying get some hammer pants, put some lines in the side of your head.
Oh, got it.
Like one, two, three.
Oh, can I put nicks in my eyebrow like the singer Vanilla Ice?
And then nicks in your eyebrow.
Nicks in eyebrows.
Nicks in eyebrows.
You know what I'm saying?
I think I do.
I didn't know the 90s were back.
But now that I know that, this might just be a Buddhist gift.
If you rolled into your fragrant kitchen in the morning with that look, maybe your son would help out a little bit.
Maybe what you need to use is the power of embarrassment and say like, yo, yo, yo, what's up, dog?
And your kid will turn around.
I fall over because the crotch in my pants is so long.
I just tumble over.
Just fall over.
And then I nick my eyebrow on the fridge.
You have a pompadour except with your eyebrows nicked and the side of your head.
And it's like, even though you don't go out.
Listen, stop what you're doing because I'm about to ruin the image in this style.
Actually, I think that's Humpty Hump.
Well, how does his go?
All right.
Doesn't he have a stop in his?
Chance to do the hump.
Okay, wait.
No, I'm sorry.
I need a quick alcove here.
Hammer time.
He says stop.
Hammer time.
Hammer time.
And then what's his name?
Rob Van Winkle.
How does his song start?
Oh.
Does he say stop at the beginning of his song?
Stop.
Collaborate and listen.
Oh, collaborate and listen.
Right, exactly.
Yeah, so my brain, the synaptic grid in my brain went right to, all right, stop what you're doing, because I'm about to ruin the image and the style that you're used to.
I look funny.
Arguably, maybe the best of the three.
Oh, my God.
But yo, I'm making money.
See, so I hope you're ready for me.
So gather around, because I'm the new fool in town.
Sounds laid down by the underground.
I'll drink up all the Hennessy you got on your show.
And I was pointed out to me by Scott Simpson.
I called you fat, but look at him.
He's skinny.
Never stopped me from getting busy.
That's right.
I'm a freak.
Is there anywhere you've gotten busy once?
Me or him?
The Burger King bathroom.
But Scott Simpson says that my Humpty Hump sounds too much like Project Runway's Tim Gunn.
Oh, no, I don't think so.
Stop what you're doing, because I'm about to ruin.
Make it work.
I think you sound a little bit like MC Blowfish, frankly.
MC Blowfish?
What the heck?
MC Blowfish.
What?
If you listen to the entirety of that digital underground record, there's another character that appears on the album called MC Blowfish, who is a blowfish, but also an MC.
Oh, is it also Hank G?
It's Shock G. I get confused because there's a Hank Shockley in Public Enemy and then this is Shock G is that fellow's name, right?
Is he named Hank too?
No.
Okay.
Oh, he died.
That's another thing.
I'm the one that said just grab him in the biscuits.
Grab him in the biscuits.
I love that album so much.
Yeah, it's good.
Sex packets.
John, what is to... I'm not going to say... Not what is to be learned from this, John.
What all is to be learned from this, if you can say?
I feel like there's a couple, three, six things to learn from this.
What are the big takeaways, as the New York Times says?
I feel like you learned a key thing, which is don't think you're good at giving haircuts.
Dunning-Kruger.
And for me, after now 30 years of it, I've just settled on, don't ever think you're good at giving yourself a haircut.
Because you never will be.
Because that's the... Maybe it's one of those, like, it's... Because you know the way... Of course you know this.
But, like, the way the pilots...
that the airline industry in some ways was transformed by the use of checklists, where you check all the stuff that we don't really need to check, quote unquote.
You're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, I know, flaps, thrust.
I know, close the door, I know, I know.
I know, yeah, yeah, and then like say it out loud, and somebody agrees that they saw that happen, you know, and you're like, ugh.
But apparently in medicine and flight stuff, it actually has made a big difference, and that's part of it, is like don't assume you can't fuck up.
That's right.
Is that what I, did I, I assume that a little bit, didn't I?
I got, when you say, when you and John say that, then I'm getting over my skis.
Do you think that's an instance of me?
Is it, is it confidence?
Was it hubris?
Well, what happens is, you know, you're developing a system.
You've got a system and, and the problem with systems is you think they're foolproof.
It's the foolproofness of it that you think, right?
So never think anything's foolproof because we're all, we're such fools that we can get past any foolproofness.
It's only other people.
You ever notice that?
You ever notice that, John?
Lots of people think it's always other people getting fooled.
All the concern trolling that we do, all the tone policing, all that stuff is generally about how dumb other people are and that we've seen through it.
But then we get hoist by our own cat trimmer.
We're the wise ones.
I mean, I've been talking to my kid about this where she's talking politics with her 14-year-old friends.
And I said, listen, the easiest thing to do is be cynical.
And you're going to see that a lot in young people because it sounds smart.
Cynical always sounds smart.
It always sounds smarter than hopeful.
Cynical always.
That's a really deft way to put it.
Say it again, cynical what?
Cynical always sounds smart compared to hopeful.
Right?
Hopeful seems dumb if you're having a pithy argument with somebody.
And so you can always say like, well, nothing matters or everything's awful.
You're not going to feel as vulnerable.
You're acting tough, right?
You're trying to like take some kind of a position that probably people are inclined to agree with reflexively.
Yeah.
And you can, you know, you can never lose if you end every, you know, if somebody's like, well, but maybe things are going to be good.
You can always lose or you can always win by saying, no, they won't.
Like nothing ever changes.
Nothing is ever.
Oh, if you hadn't noticed this, you weren't paying attention.
Yeah, exactly.
You always sound smarter.
So cynicism is like the first refuge of people who are trying to seem smarter.
And you don't have to be smart to do it.
Not at all.
Right.
No, it's middle brow is what it is.
It's the same people that are freshman year have a poster of Hemingway on their dorm room wall.
It's like, oh wow, there you go.
Look at you.
But it's, but it's like, uh, it's, it's always early stage.
And I said, hopeful is harder, you know, hopeful.
Everybody wants you to prove it.
And, you know, and, and they're, you know, they're trying to knock you down.
so that's the that's the hard thing with with uh with with foolproofness and with arguing against ding-a-wings and with you know with thinking you've got it all figured out and what if what if i'm the fool you know what if i'm the fool right and that's the thing hopeful requires that you not know the future cynicism
Yeah, and you know, something I, I don't know when I realized this, probably some point in my 20s or 30s, but this is not super insightful, but I think it's adjacent to what you're saying, which is that, like, at least one, I'll speak for myself, when I was a teenager, and feel free to just, you know, extend this to all teenagers and most young people, but what I knew was, what I knew with Clarity, well, let's go to the easiest one, I knew what I fucking hated was
More subtly put, I knew what I didn't like and I knew who I wasn't.
And that would have to be okay for a while when I was a teenager.
And I don't know if you agree with that, but I think that one, and this is not a criticism at all.
I mean, it's just kind of how it is because that's all you have the tools for is to know what you hate and to know who you aren't.
or who you think you aren't, right, whatever.
But you know what I'm saying?
But if we can take it as right that that's possibly a true thing for some of us, including me, well, then the corollary becomes, well, at what point in your life do you figure out what you maybe even don't hate or what you love that takes vulnerability, too?
What is it that you love uniquely or singularly or in a lonely way?
And more saliently, well, who the fuck do you think you really are?
You can't, and this is, well, you know what?
We're going to have to self-cancel.
This is also about punk rock in some ways.
Punk rock was a sword and a shield for me in a lot of ways.
And the times that it became a shield is when I could say, well, you know, when I was cynical and when I was, you know, hoping that people would see me as being more thoughtful, sophisticated, and unconventional than I ultimately was.
You know what I mean?
You don't know.
You don't know what you are.
But at some point, you do kind of need to start figuring out what it is you don't hate and what it is who you'd like to be.
Well, I can't remember whether it was David Sedaris or... No, no, no.
Who's the one that does the NPR show out of Chicago who's like... Peter Sigal?
No, no, no.
Oh, Ira Glass.
Ira Glass.
Somebody and I quote this all the time and now I've somehow lost who it was It's about going to school and realizing you're not the only cool art kid Well, no, it was the quote was the first thing you learn when you're a teenager the first thing that comes online Yeah, is your ability to tell good art from bad?
You can see what's beautiful and what's not huh a long time before you develop the skills to make something beautiful and
Oh, oh my goodness, right and so you start life being able to say that sucks and This is cool, but you're not yet able unless you're one of these Prodigies to to actually make a beautiful thing better than a shitty thing And and that's what stymies most of us right because we start making things and you're like interest I have the ability to tell that this sucks and
Just because you can criticize the Phantom Menace doesn't mean you'll be good at writing mainstream science fiction.
Right.
Right.
And just because you know that this painting is awesome and every other painting sucks doesn't make you a good painter.
And you know that as a kid because you put your pencil to the page and you're like, this is terrible.
And it's where a lot of people quit making art.
They quit making art too soon.
And it's behind a lot of punk rock philosophy.
It requires such a realignment of your perception to be good at.
Yeah.
I mean, it took me until I was 27 before I made a thing that I was like, actually, that's okay.
And prior to that, every single thing I made, I could tell it just stank.
But I mean, I persevered because I didn't have any other thing I was going to do.
But, you know, I mean, I'm not trying to change the topic or invert this, but like it also is funny that at least when you and I were coming up, like, well, I mean, we could go on forever about nuclear war and gatekeepers and media and all those kinds of things.
But the truth is, we also didn't have as many resources for immediately knowing whether something was bad.
Mm-hmm.
except from our own taste so you could look something like the demoiselles of avenue and go like those women are ugly those aren't even pretty prostitutes but like it's so it's so ineffable are you watching did you watch the gilded age last night are you watching gilded age no last night i watched the peewee herman documentary oh john we need to talk about that did you watch both i did oh my i'm writing it down oh we talked about it on another program i do i think that documentary is really something
It's a lot to think about.
You think and think and think.
Oh, the levels.
I mean, if that was just, I'm sure I'm repeating myself now, but like if you'd just gotten to see his collection of stuff, it would have been amazing.
But once you see his collection of stuff and you learn what actually happened those two times, it becomes more and more upsetting what happened to him.
No, those are just muscle man magazines.
That's a picture of his assistant's daughter whom he loves.
Like, don't make this fucking weird.
He likes muscle men.
He's never, I mean, you know, it's okay.
It's okay.
They're just muscle men.
What's crazy is that it was 30 years before now, and now it seems like that happens every day, but at the time, like, he basically invented getting canceled for nothing.
but also the whole way that he just looks at the camera and you're like you're fucking with us you seem so sincere right now but I know you're fucking with me or am I or am I not I don't know and then at the very end he's like but am I and you're like fuck dude stop doing that there's a wonderful piece by the director in Vulture about long piece about the making of that that I would commend you to we were watching Gilded Age last night and um
Is this like a New Sopranos best thing on television?
It's a show in its third season and it's about what it says it is, which is like tycoons in New York and their fancy houses and they're trying to build the railroad and crush unions.
But mainly it's about wealth inequality.
It's by Julian Fellows.
It's by the downtown Abbey guy.
Okay.
And it's got Carrie Coon, who might be the best actor.
She's wonderful.
The lady from The Leftovers.
But there's a scene where Mrs. – what's her head?
Mrs. Bennett?
Mrs. Abby.
Mrs. Abby.
Dr. Abby, downtown Abby, has to be – is going to be painted.
And they bring this guy in.
And, you know, I hate this shit except for when I don't.
And they say, blah, blah, blah, Mr. Singer.
And I made – aloud, I made a squee noise.
I think the guy's name is John Sergeant Singer.
Singer Sargent.
Yeah, something like that.
Anyway, they mentioned this guy and I went, squee!
And Madeline goes, oh!
And I was like, he did the most amazing... Like, if you ever want to watch some good YouTube videos, like how that guy...
technically did what he did because he kind of he's like his brush strokes are not what you would expect and anyway it's incredible but he did that famous portrait i think it's called portrait of madame x and it came up on the show and i was like oh my god this guy did one of the great portraits and oh my god you got to know it's this woman and this woman and he painted her with the strap falling off of her gown and then he had to read and madeline goes yeah honey watch the show they're talking about it right now
And I was like, so now I'm pulling up pictures of that wonderful portrait.
Honey, wash this.
I like to think I'm helping.
And in that case, the pendulum swung back.
That's robot boy.
I'm looking this up.
I'm pulling it up.
I'm pulling it up and I'm showing Billy this.
But you've got to really appreciate it.
Zoom in.
You've got to see.
But of course, also in that time, I'm like, well, okay, so before I realized it, I was dadding out about something that nobody else is as interested in.
Not that they're uninterested, but it's so difficult to describe why, like I'm struggling right now, talking about the art you do like and why you do think it's special and the context for it.
And the biggest thing I took away from my 20th century painting class was the way that so many of the early 20th century artists that we...
renown are so heavily relying on people, what the people of 5, 10, 15, 20 years earlier were doing.
Like how Gauguin ended up, his little dumb houses had such a huge influence on Picasso in particular.
And anyway, I love that kind of stuff.
I'm
There's a reason I've stopped doing pop culture podcasts.
That's because no one invites me anymore, because I'm terrible at talking about this stuff.
I'm terrible at talking about why I think this piece of art is special.
So I'm 50-something.
I'm 50 old.
I'm 40 years beyond being in junior high and high school.
Is that right?
Yeah.
And yet I'm still growing into my love for stuff.
Like, you know, and in fact, I mean, if I were going to try and be cute about it, I would only say this to you and our listeners.
A big part of what I do today is to deliberately make myself vulnerable, to deliberately open myself up to ideas that sometimes are a little uncomfortable for me, but like really trying to like not be 14 anymore.
Because what we're describing in some ways is the canonical 14 year old.
Like the, you know what I mean?
When you're like, oh, that's stupid.
Like, or that's, you know, or that's, oh, that's corporate.
Or again, if you only know what you hate, you don't always feel the incentive to open up to things that are not just the thing you hate.
Do you know what I mean?
Maybe I'm trying to tie too many things together here, but I feel like that's part of growing up.
is maybe not even caring what it is that you love and hate quite as much, just being a person.
But also that you don't identify a la punk rock.
You don't identify quite so heavily with people you've never met who just play music really loud and are sometimes a little violent.
I think, too, that there was a thing when we were...
When we were kids that we knew all the things that we hated and all the things that were corporate and all the things that were wrong with the world But there were these mysterious worlds.
We didn't know downtown gg allen right everything everything in research magazine
Everything in research magazine.
Didn't you like pour over every, every like perfect bound edition of, I mean, whether that's the like cocktail music one or the body modification one, like those books were like a shibboleth in my community.
They were phenomenal.
And I even think in the early 2000s, like Vice magazine was still presenting downtown New York and downtown Toronto.
The style of a skate magazine, the stylishness of like skate photography, like really bold looks for things, you know.
Yeah.
And, but just the implication that there were scenes of grownups that were making things that didn't always make it onto MTV and they were better and you didn't get to see them because you weren't there.
You weren't at studio 54 and not only that, but you weren't part of whatever scene it was that produced Jean-Michel Basquiat and you don't know.
Yeah.
And now I think the problem is kids know that everything's corporate and everything's bad and American whatever, blah, blah, blah.
But they don't.
Well put.
Thank you.
That's exactly how I feel.
Blah, blah, blah, especially.
American blah, blah, blah.
You're mad.
Everybody's mad.
But what they don't think that there is is anything that they can't see or you know They don't they there is no idea that like somewhere.
Yeah, yeah It's not just a secret stuff off screen you haven't seen yeah, but there's a way to be an adult It's not even just that there's a scene It's there's a way to live as live as an adult that isn't visible to your parents That is invisible to the schools and it isn't on the internet
And part of that, I think, is that there isn't anything.
You know, that adults out there are like, put it on the internet.
It's the only way I can sell it or whatever.
And the idea that there's a secret life that you might aspire to that's bigger than your ability to say that this painting sucks or that band is lame.
is a reason to get out of your town, and it's a reason to try harder, and it's a reason to bet on yourself.
I overstate this sometimes in a way that probably I'm doing to aggrandize myself, but the way I've tried to put it
In several places, I've tried to write about this with regard to growing up in Florida, going to new college.
I mean, if people were trying to show me broader horizons than the ones that were sort of the default, I wasn't picking it up a lot.
Like, I didn't feel hugely encouraged to go out and try a lot of wild things.
I felt very constrained, in fact, by like, don't break the rules.
You know what I mean?
All those sorts of things.
And like, the thing is, if we all have to survive...
we've all had those horrible times where we feel like we're growing up in a small town, even if we haven't.
And like, do you know what I mean though?
There's those ways just to like, keep your sense of self.
You have to come up with really strong feelings about like how this is the good Applebee's world.
Or, you know what I mean?
Or like, oh, you know, we never park in that part of the, you know, of the Walmart or whatever.
And you know what I'm saying?
Like, I'm not trying to be dismissive because I've lived it.
But you have to find ways to project some vision of yourself offline or on.
But, like, that's always kind of been true.
And unless you've got people and things around you to sort of provoke you out of those default responses...
in the absence of people presenting those options to you, you're kind of on your own to discover those and curate and love them.
Yeah.
I, I remember when D lights groove is in the heart.
1989.
Yeah.
Love that song.
That's the thing, right?
Here comes this song.
Dance floor fills up every time.
Yeah, here comes this song.
Now, nobody's heard this song before, and it's implausible that this song is what it is.
Are they from, like, Cleveland?
I think they're from, like, Cleveland.
But what they are, what they looked like to me was, here's this gal, but she's not...
what you, she's, she's beautiful and she's cool, but she's not, she looks more like she's in the B-52s.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Then she does that.
She's like some dance manufactured dance star.
And then there's a Russian guy and a Japanese guy.
Yeah.
And just the pro and they look like they were like, almost like even before the gorillas became like a cartoon band, they really, they look like more like Scooby-Doo, uh, than say CNC music factory.
Yeah.
And although they may have been from Cleveland, my remembrance of the story was that this was coming out of New York.
Okay.
And I think people are, people now, it's very hard to remember that in this moment, the idea that a Japanese guy, a Russian guy, and a Scooby-Doo girl...
would know each other would have even met each other absolutely would how did a japanese guy even meet a russian guy or like just to put it sharply like i'm not even sure where i would go on the same night to meet people like this these two people i don't if i if i were the red-headed girl like i don't know a lady miss kier or something like that yeah i i i wouldn't even know where to go to try and find a a russian man
so reading up on it behind the wheels of steel in the moment right i'm like what is happening where did this come from i know where the pixies came from right i understand where the minute men came from i understand where uh sound garden came from but where did this come from and the story was they were part of a club scene in new york okay and they met
It felt very much like that where human league came from where the guy in the human league was like I need to do something else And these two girls are dancing and he's like one of these two fans of ours and then they're in the band for 30 years And then it's just like anybody else to sing and they need a girls.
Yeah.
Hey, what about you girls?
And they're like
So that was to me like a real eye-opener.
Wait a minute There's a place in New York where grown-up people are Like it and it's such a crazy place that that Japanese and Russian people are there at the same time You never see that where I am.
Let's put let's put again.
Let's put it sharply frankly I don't see this happening other places and
It was like the first time I went to an actual party in San Francisco in 1997 when I was visiting here.
And I was like, you've got to be kidding me.
This looks like some kind of central casting thing.
Like there are so many different kinds of people of so many different backgrounds and nobody's making a big deal about it.
That was the part that I found really.
I was like, wow, did you know there's this many Asian and black people here?
We don't get this in North Florida.
I mean, we'll get a couple.
We'll get some stragglers.
My friend Marcus used to come to stuff, but that was about it.
Well, that was the thing about Seattle in 1990 is that there was still almost no diversity.
You'd walk into a club and it was all the same white kids, all dressed the same.
But that also had this revolutionary impact on people because there were so many of them.
Like there's 800 kids in here that are all wearing chain wallets.
And two days before this, I had never seen a kid with a chain wallet and it's not in the newspapers yet, right?
This isn't a thing.
There's no JC penny catalog chain wallet yet.
This is just a thing that's spread around this town.
And I didn't know there were that many chain wallets in existence, and every one of them came from a thrift store.
And you just are like, how is this happening?
And it's a scene that doesn't exist yet in the popular, and it's localized, and it's just a little bit smarter than you, but not quite so smart that you don't feel like you can get there.
It's also subtle.
And you don't know the mojo and the, you know what I mean?
Like, yeah, it all feels so foreign.
And I don't know how to manufacture that.
Yesterday, I hate to tell these stories because, of course, they're all going to get me put into Pee Wee Harmon prison.
But yesterday, my kid says, I want to go play mini golf with my friends.
And so once again, I'm driving a truck with a bunch of 14-year-olds in the back.
This is like when you got the mirror.
When I got the mirror, that's right.
But this is a different one.
Now I've been given a mission.
We're going to play mini golf.
And these kids live all, they're spread all over town.
I have to, you know, it's like it took me an hour and a half to pick up all the kids.
And then they're in the back and they're practicing all their stuff and all their, you know, all their new terms.
And one of the kids is gay.
One of the kids is trans.
One of the kids is, uh, is, is a lady gay, but in a relationship with the trans kid.
And so it's a lesbian relationship.
That's even crazier than Asian people at a party.
I mean, Asian people and Russian people?
What?
And they're in the back, and there's a conversation where they're deciding which slurs they're entitled to use.
Had you approved cursing for this trip?
Well, this is another one where I'm just like, I'm just completely quiet.
I'm not saying anything.
As long as that one kid doesn't mouth off to you again.
Well, and he was there or she was there or they were there.
Somebody was there.
And oh, because I heard that kid changed their name to a lady name.
Okay.
But then in the back is like, but I'm not trans.
I just like lady names.
And I'm like, right on, right on.
And I didn't say anything when they were talking about the French Revolution five minutes before.
I'm not saying anything.
I bet they fucked that up good.
But they're they're going around and they're like you can say this but you can't say this I can say this word But I can't say that word and my little kid who's who's permitted certain slurs.
Yes That's a complicated sliding scale.
It's very complicated because you know because again like so much in culture It's hierarchical like because i'm this number of identities and also neuro spicy
I can say this word, this word.
And there are all the slurs that we used in 1981, right?
That have been off limits completely.
But these kids have decided like, you can use this.
I can use all four of those slurs.
And my daughter is there and she's like, what slurs can I use?
And they all turn and they're like, none.
None.
And so she's just like, I want one slur.
I want one slur.
And so anyway, we're driving around.
We go to some thrift stores.
We play mini golf.
And I let them play mini golf without me.
I was just like, you guys go do that.
I'm going to sit in the clubhouse and smoke cigarettes.
Looks good on you, though.
But when we get back in the truck, I opened the tailgate first.
Yeah.
Um, because I was going to load some stuff in, but I did it with my key fob.
So I did it.
I was still 20 feet away and the tailgate opens and the kids all climb in the back and they put down the seats before I even got there so that they're all in the back with no seats, like in the back of a pickup truck.
And so without saying anything, I just got in, started it up and, and started to drive.
And they're sitting around in the back, and I can hear from the tittering that none of them have ever been in a car without a seatbelt on.
I was wondering.
Because they're just rattling around.
Like, if you went into some kind of a...
Snowback or something.
So well, so I'm, so they're rattling around and I'm thinking to myself as I'm driving, like I didn't wear a seatbelt until I was 13.
I'd never had one on.
I didn't know they existed in cars.
They were the ones that were in the cars were tucked so deeply down into the seat cushions that I didn't even know they were there.
Yeah.
This is before shoulder belts.
Used to be there was a time when there was the ones where you could attach for a shoulder belt, but it was lap belts that were both ends of it were utterly subsumed into the car.
When my mother bought a new car in 1975, a new Pontiac Catalina.
with my dad's insurance money, she went to a filling station and had them unhook the buzzer for the seatbelt.
That was 1975.
I didn't wear a seatbelt until 1982 when my dad bought a German car.
And it came with lap belts and shoulder belts built in.
And we got in and we just fastened the safety belts.
And it was the first time any of us had had a shoulder belt.
And it was funny because for a long time, there were cars I would wear a seat belt in and then cars where I never would.
Like I didn't put on a seatbelt in a taxi until, I don't know, a year ago.
That's interesting.
That's a really good point.
Yeah, yeah.
No, it's interesting.
Whereas if you're going to be in somebody's MG or something, you might.
Yeah, right, right, right.
Anyway, we're driving around and they can't believe it.
It's almost like they haven't been caught.
well yeah and oh and i hear them start to say if we get pulled over if a cop comes here's what we're going to do here's what we're going to say and they're not consulting with me no they're just they're just coming up with this like here's what's going to happen if a cop pulls us up and so they're back there they're giggling and and i say all right well we're it's just this is chatham house rules like we're just going to drive and um and so i'm driving them around
And at a certain point, and so I never do the thing where I like evasive maneuver them.
But as we're driving, I start to make lane changes or turns.
Oh, God.
Just a little bit.
Oh, John.
With a little bit of momentum.
You sure you want to do this?
And I'm not doing the like yank.
Is this going to be in your book?
I'm just going.
This is going to be in your parenting book.
This is in my parenting book.
Uh-huh.
I just do a little bit of.
Is it going to be called being there done, John?
Yeah.
That's the first cut.
That's the one I'm going to send to you to edit.
When I'm managing the project.
Hey, Merlin, you want to take a look at this?
Take a quick look at this.
Yeah, yeah.
Also, aren't you going to send me some demos to flip through?
Just flip through these demos.
Listen to these tunes.
Also, would you read the first 200 pages of my book?
And so the kids...
They slide.
Now they don't slam, but they can feel themselves.
Bench seats, Naga high bench seats.
You go flying all over the place.
You bounce around on the inside of those cars because they also had 1970 shock absorbers, which is to say none.
Hmm.
But so these kids, they slide a little.
The kids on that side slide a little.
So they run into each other?
Yeah.
Oh, that's fun.
Not with force, just with a little bit of like, oh, momentum.
And they can't believe it.
They're losing their minds.
And so I got off the, you know, the whatever, the two lane road.
And I got down onto a one lane road.
And I just made a little, I made a turn around a stop sign where I kind of just didn't let all the way off.
And the kids slide into each other and they're laughing so hard they can't breathe.
The whole group are laughing so hard they can't breathe because they've never, they've never experienced like any kind of centrifugal force in their lives.
And they'd never been in a car without a seatbelt.
And it was all they could talk about.
And so I drove him home.
It was, I drove him home and at every drop off, I was like, listen, I'm not the kind of person, this is the first words I've spoken in the whole day.
I'm like, I am not the kind of person that's going to tell you not to tell your parents about this.
I'm just saying.
Chatham House rules.
Chatham House rules.
You've got to explain what that means to people.
And you've got to say, it's also important that you not say that I said you shouldn't tell your parents this.
No, no, no.
Not all of that can get me in trouble.
I'm never going to be that person.
You can tell your parents anything that happened.
But you guys talked about a lot of weird shit today.
And so anyway, Chatham House rules.
Oh, so you're saying just be careful because maybe I'll start spilling the beer.
Well, no, not that, but I was just saying, I was saying like you all.
John, John went down spilling the beans.
That's two.
That's two.
Spilling the beans.
Oh.
I feel like that's got to be.
I mean, it's not good, but it's a contender.
Maybe for like a Chinese market or something.
Really up there.
But what I was saying was you guys are already had better be aware of Chatham House Rules because within your friend group, there's been a lot of gossip.
There's been a lot of talk about things.
It's not just protecting ourselves.
It's protecting each other.
That's right.
There's only seven kids in this car or whatever, and there are 14 kids that got mentioned.
And so what happened in the car stays in the car.
Did you use the phrase snitches get stitches?
I didn't because I don't believe in that phrase.
You don't believe in that?
I'm against it.
Okay, just to be clear.
All right.
I'm against it.
But I do feel like in there, somewhere around the what slurs can we use conversation is also don't tell anybody that I was driving you around with no seatbelts on for half the day.
But I came home and just sat and thought about like, that was so crazy to them that they laughed and laughed and laughed and it never got old.
I did it.
I did it three or four times.
Suggesting that this was a new ish experience for more than one of them.
For all of them.
Well, I couldn't say.
But it sounds like that's not something that happens.
Like, when we would go on vacation, we would sit in the back of a pickup truck, and Bill Bradshaw would deliberately swerve on the road to make us go from side to side, and the dog would fall down.
Like, it was the funniest thing in the world.
Everyone did it.
In high school, we were all in the- It's worth the dog so much when he swerved.
we were all in the back of a pickup truck and one guy and we were all so wasted one guy was like i gotta take a piss and he goes to the back of the pickup truck and thinks he's gonna pee off the back of the tailgate while we're driving and of course the the kids in the front that are in the front see him do it oh no they try and knock him out of the truck and they succeed and we thought it was the and oh but before that they slammed on the brake so he slides peeing the whole way and
Blides all the way up to the front.
You know, that fella probably learned some stuff that day.
He learned a lot about who you can trust and who you can't.
Sliding happens.
Yeah.
The idea that he was going to get his dick cut off was the funniest thing any of us had ever seen.
But this was at a time when we'd sit in the fireplace.
But you lock people in things.
You abandon people at things.
The shit that we used to do was so fucked up.
I don't know if you did that, but we would do some pretty fucked up stuff.
Oh, really?
Well, no, not actively harmful, but stuff that sure could turn... Well, stuff that sure could... I mean, just drinking in cars is one.
You weren't allowed to... Okay, fine.
We're not allowed to go underage drink anywhere.
We're underage drinking the car driving over a bridge where we're very unlikely to be pulled over.
How do you like them apples?
You like that?
That'll be in my book.
But so...
but but the but that just that difference because we talk about this gen x thing all the time where it's like ah i was just set loose in the forest and all i had was a bear trap and you know and a bunch of peppermint schnapps but the idea of that being basically the craziest thing that had ever happened to them because they're all back there have you ever been in a car without a seat belt no have you no even my daughter had never
And that alone was just like the world that we lived in not only doesn't exist, but the world that they live in has never existed before.
That's the crazy thing.
It's not that we lived in this different world.
It's that they're living in an unprecedented world.
Oh, I see.
And none of us have any capacity to understand what
what their future looks like because it's not, they don't have any of the inputs.
Of all these kinds of things and these sorts of differences and these kinds of like, even sometimes very like, you know, literally demonstrable differences between things that happened at, I don't like to talk about generations, but things that happened at this time versus things that happened in that time.
Like, I think the jury is really still out on how much, how many valuable things and which valuable things we can draw from those kinds of comparisons, not least because,
And every generation like adds new compounding factors to the fact of like either that, yeah, things have never changed or things have, you know, are constantly changing.
You know what I'm saying?
It's like it's cumulative.
So it's what we're comparing stuff to is stuff where you could compare that to other stuff as well.
And it's really hard to know.
I guess with the internet, you can post everything.
That helps.
It's really hard to know.
And it's another one of these things where cynicism about it sounds smart.
Cynical always sounds smart.
Is that what you said?
Yeah.
Yeah.
It always sounds smarter than hopefulness in the pithy, right?
You have to explain hopefulness where you don't have to explain cynicism.
Well, it's also, this is a slight change.
This is a tone-related thing, maybe, but I can't tell you the day it happened, but I remember the first time I ever heard my kids say something, a particular thing, which is a thing that I think I probably have said more than I realize.
I'm not unproud of myself for this phrase, but I'm proud of myself for this phrase, and the first time I heard my kids say it, it made me happy.
I don't have a particularly strong opinion about that.
Oh, that's a nice one.
You almost never hear that.
And so what I'm trying to get at is not just – I agree with you on all this stuff, but it isn't that the solution to rote cynicism is to become Pollyanna.
Things don't actually turn out that great for Pollyanna.
A lot of people don't know that.
But it's not just that you have to invert it.
Well, they had to carry her around because she's paralyzed.
Yeah.
But it isn't just to invert something that isn't the way you'd prefer it.
Sometimes it's really a different kind of thing.
And I've become a less unhappy person when I realize how many things I don't need to have a constantly updated strong opinion about, which is something I think is an option a lot of people aren't considering as much as they probably should.
I believe that is also true.
I think most people should have very little opinion about most things.
Wouldn't that be the dream?
It really should be.
It really should be.
Can't we just argue about any consequential things?
Does it always have to be the big stuff?
Nobody has to say anything.
Can't we just talk about who is the better Darren on Bewitched?
Just talk about the weather and the crops.
Talk about the government?
Yes.
No, not the government.
Leave the government.
Ah, yeah.
but I, but you know what my daughter is saying to her friends and this is, I'm not, I'm not prompting her.
I'm not whispering in her ear.
Right.
Right.
Right.
But she's saying being hopeful is not polyamish being hopeful is a general principle.
It is not.
I'm, I, I read the same news you do.
I know things are the same.
I know exactly what you know about things.
It's well distributed.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's not, it's actually not an opinion about it.
It is a, it's a, it's a mentality.
And the number of 14-year-olds that honestly, sincerely said, well, we'll just leave the country.
And this is the time when I'm just biting my fucking knuckle.
Because, you know, I want to say, do you know how hard it is to leave the country?
New Zealand is loosening things up.
They're making it easier.
And now people are... Oh, that's sweet.
That's sweet of that.
No, I agree with you.
No, it's not as simple as that.
Do you know how rich you have to be to say something like that?
Yeah, you also know you're a fucking American?
Like...
That's right.
Leave the country and go to New Zealand where they're really going to love you.
It's not like a party full of Hollywood producers.
Like, it's our country.
Like, we need you here.
Yeah, that's right.
You can't just leave and go home.
It isn't just basic self-preservation for a young actress.
It's also that, you know, it's just...
I don't know.
Well, so what my kid ultimately said that kind of quieted everybody down was she said, we're the smart ones.
Look at us here.
We're the ones.
Like, it's going to fall to us.
And everybody was like, hmm.
And then somebody said, well, you can't say the F word.
Then they were back to like, have you noticed that what's her name is such an S-L-U-T?
Oh, now who's allowed to say that?
Who gets to say that?
Wow, yeah.
I mean, I know a couple of girls that could say it.
Because of... Because they've earned it.
They come by it honestly, if you know what I mean.
Yeah, yeah.
On the hierarchy, sure.
Sure.
Sure.
I mean, you know, sure.
I'm not going to say it.
I haven't heard the right.
They've stared down some situations.
Yeah, I'm a young person.
Oh, no, I know that person's a slut.
Believe me, I know.
Yeah, I don't say that much anymore.
No, you don't say it.
The young people, you know, are very, my kid, one of my kid's three summer jobs, again, is working at the Exploratorium, which is a really cool kids museum here in town.
which happens to be financially supported by a lot of famous people, including the singer Kanye West.
And last year, I remember, my kid was working there the day that Kanye West and his lady friend, Bianca, came to show up.
Oh, he showed up at the place?
Yeah, yeah.
You know, she wears lots of fun outfits.
And so I had a bit prepared before his first day at work.
And I got a knock, knock, knock.
I said, okay, I say hi.
I said, hey, listen, break a leg today.
Also, I have some material for you.
If it would be helpful to you, I said I said some stuff like oh, you know if anybody gets, you know get stabbed in the eye You could say more like explore agorium Nothing, nothing.
No, no terrible.
Just like looking straight ahead and finally and listen if you bring some Bianca in again, you could say more like explore a horium oh He just turned to me looked at me dead in the eyes and goes withering that's cruel
I said, you know, well, maybe you shouldn't say it to her.
You can try the gore one.
I have other words that rhyme.
But that's how my kid is.
My kid's like, wait, you just wait.
We call it inside house.
That's what I call it.
All the things that are Chatham House rules type things.
Like what we say about, oh, for example, what we wish would happen to certain people in government.
But, you know, the kind of things you don't talk about.
And I thought we were just having regular in-house talk sometimes.
And the kid's like, wait, what are you talking about with me?
Like, why are you talking about Tulsi Gabbard's skin?
And I'm like, I don't like Tulsi Gabbard.
I don't like her skunk hair.
And on top of it, all her skin freaks me out.
And he's like, her skin.
Well, see, I shouldn't have said it.
I shouldn't have said it.
Because my kid's like, that's not very nice.
And I'm like, you're absolutely right.
That's not very nice.
This was a car with three sizes that day.
that none of the kids have ever kissed anybody, nor have they been kissed.
So the S-L-U-T word kind of is like we used it when we were.
Oh, I know the way that I would use it when I was 13 and a girl didn't like me.
Oh, Donna's a slut.
Yeah, it's just a mean word that actually has like awful ramifications if it goes out into the world.
Word gets around when you say names like that.
No one in this car has ever been kissed.
And none of the people they're talking about have ever been.
And that didn't make a kissing party break out on the spot.
No, no.
And I think it's unimpeded by belts, John.
Nobody was sure what everybody's alignment was.
You know, like, who are you going to kiss?
I'm not sure.
I don't even know what slurs I'm allowed to use on you, let alone what the kissing situation would be.
Yeah, here we are.
I mean, we're just starting to use slurs against each other.
But the only people that can use slurs are the ones that those slurs would hurt.
So what good is a slur?
Well, it's like white privilege.
If you don't use it, what's the point?
If you don't use it, it's just a word that you can use that nobody else can.
You can mutter it under your breath and then claim you didn't say it.
That's right.
A mean person, a person with nothing to lose could use it.
And then, you know, and then they're going to get...
They're not as effective as – slurs are not as effective as they used to be.
I guess they can be very effective if you deploy them right.
But I think slurs – it's right in the name of the word, slur.
It's probably something we should avoid, I'm guessing.
I shouldn't have said that about Kanye's friend.
A slur is something to avoid.
Yes.
There are no slurs.
A slur is a compliment that grows in the wrong place.
That was George Washington Carver.
That's nice.
It grows in the wrong place.
Yeah.
I mean, you and I, could we even use cracker?
I don't think I can.
Oh, I don't know.
Cracker, because that's a way of, I'm showing my alliance with you.
I just sent you a picture of my black friend in the 90s.
Like, I could show my alignment, my alignment with somebody by calling somebody a cracker in a way.
Was that what I'm doing?
Would I be demonstrating value?
No.
What's it called?
What would I be doing?
I'd be, oh, I'd be repping.
You'd be throwing shapes, testifying.
But the thing about you is that you are Appalachia adjacent in a way that I'm not.
I don't have, I can't, I can't use that.
I've been to Cade's Cove.
Yeah, exactly.
I've watched adults churn butter.
Whereas me?
No, I'm from, all I can say, I can't even say Yankee.
All I can say is like, sorry.
New York City!
Get a rope.