Ep. 105: "Hippie Clean"
This episode of Roderick on the Line is sponsored by Squarespace, the all-in-one platform that makes it fast and easy to create your own professional website, portfolio, or online store.
For a free trial and 10% off, visit squarespace.com and enter the offer code supertrain at checkout.
A better web starts with your website, as you do.
Hello.
Hey, John.
Hi, Merlin.
How's it going?
Good.
Man, communication is complicated.
So, John, what are you up to these days?
You know, just doing some cleaning around the house.
I'm not really very good at staying on top of it.
and then the house gets dirty, and then I really don't want to deal with it, and then the house just keeps getting dirtier and dirtier and dirtier.
So it's spring cleaning day, but I also have to go to Portland today, so I can't really, you know, blah, blah, blah.
You know.
Are you kidding me?
Irma Bombeck, am I right?
Sheesh.
Being a housewife is not easy.
The grass is always greener.
Are there parts of the house that you enjoy cleaning?
Hmm.
Interesting.
Well, you know, you know, the problem with me is that I do not have a clear delineation in my mind between cleaning and organizing.
So I meet people all the time who describe this.
So not all the time, but I have I've had it described to me that there are people who are neat, but dirty.
And people who are clean but messy.
And I think that my instinct is on the clean but messy side.
I don't like dirt on things.
I'm kind of a little fastidious even about scum.
But there's a mess all over the place.
Right.
And part of that is the nature of your work as a collector, I have to imagine.
That's right.
A collector and an organizer and a BB stacker.
But then we have in my little clan here a term called the hippie clean, which is, you know, if you've ever been to the home of a married hippie couple...
Like particularly a middle-aged or late middle-aged married hippie couple.
The house is straightened, but if you look down by the floorboards, you look in the corners, it's just like grime of a thousand years.
Yeah, spider webs and stuff.
You know, and just like that kind of greasy dirt that's just been kind of like...
pressed into the floorboards pressed into all the joints and dust bunnies everywhere it's a hippie clean but the house is straight like things are organized things are you know it's not like there's there aren't soup cans you're not a monster but but it's a hippie clean they have dogs in the house like one time i was in england and i stayed in a woman's house uh there and uh and she had uh she had ducks in the house oh god
She left the back door open and I was sitting in the living room and some ducks walked in.
I can see that being kind of pleasant at a place I'm visiting.
It was very traditionally English because they really prized their eccentrics.
The ducks were embarrassed and spanking.
She was a classic English eccentric.
Uh, and she let, she had ducks in the house and I, I mean, I approved, right?
But it wasn't something I was going to have to clean.
So anyway, my house, I prefer to have it be, be like hygienic, but then stuff all over the place.
But the problem is when I start cleaning, I immediately start organizing and then I get off the track.
I get off the trail because I realized I don't have enough file folders, uh,
and then i say i don't want to buy file folders at the office depot because they are new file they're modern construction and they're flimsy and they're no good so i need to find some vintage file folders i know exactly what you're talking about if you're lucky enough to run across a box of old file folders at a goodwill you never go back boy i'll tell you so then it's like you can smack a bitch with one of those you know the other day i was at the goodwill
I found another typewriter that I had to have, but now I have... Well, I don't quite have a collection of old typewriters, but I definitely have a handful.
Let's say plus or minus five.
You're good for the environment, John.
And I love this typewriter.
It's beautiful.
But then I was like, oh, I'm not going to use my old paper anymore.
In this, I need new paper to go with this.
So I'm scanning the Goodwill, scanning, scanning, and I find this beautiful blue paper that was meant, it's like a heavy bond.
It was meant to be the front page of a report.
Like it's blue, kind of like a little bit, it's almost card stocky.
An entire box of it that was probably $50 in 1965, and it's like 99 cents.
And I said, you know what?
I'm going to buy this.
I'm going to buy this.
And I'm going to use it like Merlin uses file cards.
I'm going to write one word on one of these beautiful 50-year-old pieces of paper.
And I'm just going to crumple it up and throw it out the window.
Because I can.
Because fuck the world.
uh the hippie clean i never heard that term i like it and i am sympathetic in a previous life i uh lived with a person you were married once and we um we were neither of us particularly tidy people but one way that we could make ourselves kind of clean the house was to have a party so you plan a party and then you have to clean the house oh i see
Right.
It's a kind of, you know, like some people like to make deadlines for themselves and that like motivates them to do stuff.
And this worked like at least once a year.
We clean the house because we'd have a party.
But clean the house in advance of the party or you'd clean the house after the party?
No, no, no.
The idea was people are coming over.
We want the place to be nice.
You got to clean the house.
Yeah.
And, like, over time, I mean, you know, people change.
And I think things really kind of deteriorated with our feelings about the house.
But there was one particular party that's kind of famous amongst my friends where we did two things that were a little bit novel.
One was that all of the stuff that was all over the place, the, like, you know, the accumulation of, like, boxes and stuff and things.
Oh, do I?
Yeah.
We put sheets over all of those things.
Like it was like an English manor that we were leaving for a season.
But the real money shot, we took all of the dirty dishes and all the plates, all the glasses, all the silverware, we put it in a box and put it in the attic.
Right.
And then we didn't get it after that.
We just left it up there.
Oh, so it just sat up all the... Yeah.
Right.
I'm sure they're still there.
That's somehow kind of a perfect analogy for my life, I think.
I'm sitting right now.
I'm looking.
Let's see.
How many boxes can I see?
I see three milk crates.
Like four of those cardboard legal archive boxes.
That's a good box.
It's a costly box, but it's a strong box.
It's a nice box.
I have a box here of 45s.
Not pistols, but records.
That's in a different room.
I have a different place for a box of 45.
That's in the ordinance room.
I have a bunch of shoeboxes full of stuff.
I mean, I'm looking around.
I thought I was going to be able to count for you the number of boxes I can see from where I'm sitting that are full of...
Like projects that at one point were strewn across the floor and then got all collected and put into a box for later.
I thought I was going to be able to count the number of boxes, but then I realized as I turn around that there are too many boxes to count.
Oh, John.
I got boxes on boxes on boxes.
I got a box over here just full of wallets.
Check your privilege, sir.
I have a box.
I see a box full of wall work.
That's the ultimate first world problem.
You have an entire box full of wallets.
I have a box full of wallets.
I have a, oh, now here's one that I don't, I really don't know what to do with.
I have a huge crate full of slides.
Oh.
Now, what do you do with that?
You can't throw them away.
I have a slide projector.
I have carousels.
I could do the thing where you sit for a week and put slides in carousels and put your slide projector up and watch slides, but then...
then what do you do i mean you can i could have a there's a room in my house i could have just full of slides well yeah i know you probably are aware of this but you know if you find a box that looks like it's particularly good you know you can send those off and get them scanned yeah but i mean at what at what cost it's not it's not cheap to have that done have you ever thought of becoming someone's thesis
You would be – I can just think of probably half a dozen people who are probably casting about, oh, should I write about social media?
What about Martin Borman?
No.
What if somebody were to turn you into their thesis project?
Imagine some smarty from UW comes out there, probably a young woman, will come out there and just – and work on you.
I like how this is going.
I am too.
It's going somewhere different than I expected and I like that.
At one point recently, I realized that I had too many baseball hats.
I mean, I could wear a different baseball hat every day for a year.
And there's no... I can't just... If you put baseball hats in a drawer, in a box, or in a closet...
You don't see them.
You don't think about them.
You're not like, oh, where's that one baseball hat?
You have to kind of have baseball hats out so you remember them and so that you wear them.
And I hit on this great idea, which is I bought some rope.
And I attached the rope to the end of the curtain rod.
And I just let it hang down.
And then I found some very nicely made vintage clothespins.
And I have clothespinned my baseball hats to this rope so that on either side of the window, hanging from each side of the curtain rod...
is like a little chain of baseball hats.
That's clever.
And I find it very appealing.
Now, I think this is a case where if a stranger came into the house...
The stranger might look at that and say, weird.
Someone's special little boy lives here.
This is making me very uncomfortable.
It is.
It's kind of Silence of the Lambs meets somebody's grandma.
But I can't see the world like they see it.
I can only see the world like I see it.
And for me, this decorative element framing the windows in chains of baseball hats...
It's very nice.
I'm looking at it right now, and I'm just very proud of myself.
Is part of it a space issue?
Because, I mean, like, for example, a typewriter, it takes up a lot of space.
You would need some special shelving for that or something.
Yeah, I have a typewriter closet.
We'll see you next time.
All their designs are responsive, so they look great on every device.
If you do get stuck, Squarespace offers 24-7 support through dedicated teams based in New York and Dublin.
Squarespace plans start at $8 a month, and they include a free domain name if you sign up for a year, which I highly recommend.
Also, every plan comes with the ability to create your own online store.
So yeah, you can sell the stuff you make right from your very own site.
So whether you're a podcaster, a musician, writer, photographer, or what have you, please go check out squarespace.com and tell them you heard about it on Roderick on the line.
In fact, you get a free trial plus 10% off any package you choose by using the special offer code super train when you check out our thanks to Squarespace for supporting Roderick on the line.
We could not do it without him.
Of course you do.
One of the things, one of the reasons that for a long time, I wanted to have a downtown loft, one of these, one of these lofts with like 30 foot ceilings.
Now, at one point I did live in a loft like that for, for, for six years, I lived in a loft with, uh, with really high ceiling.
Was this when you, when you peed in, um, yeah, right.
When I, when I, uh, that, that loft did not have a bathroom.
Right.
Let's just say that.
But as an adult, I've always kind of wanted to live in a loft that was properly done that had a kitchen and a bathroom.
And one of those enormous walls was just shelves all the way to the ceiling with a ladder on wheels.
And on that set of shelves, I imagined that there would be typewriters and there would be cowboy boots and there would be places for LPs.
You look like a Bennigan's.
Yeah.
Yeah, right.
It would absolutely look like a clinker daggers, binker staff and pits.
Could I get you started with some appies?
And yet all of those things would not just be like tchotchkes picked out by a set designer for a theme restaurant.
They would be things that were part of my life and that I would actually go up sometimes and take that typewriter down and use it.
I have a cursive typewriter.
Oh, sweet.
Which is pretty nice.
But I do not live in a loft with a giant wall that looks like a Bennigan's.
I live in an old farmhouse, and it's much harder to have everything on display and not look like, well, like a crazy person.
And that is something I fight against every single day.
Better just keep it in boxes.
Keep it in boxes stacked around the living room.
Have you seen my baseball caps?
Come upstairs.
Come upstairs.
I want to show you my hats.
No, the problem lately is I got it in my head that I was going to start eBaying stuff.
Oh, boy.
Because you need a project.
I've never done it before.
But I started to feel like, look, I've gotten rid of all the trash.
All that's left is good stuff.
I don't want to cut into the meat and bone here.
But if I was selling it in an online marketplace where people could really, where I would be appealing to a wide audience that really appreciated the value of some of these things.
You might be providing somebody with the one piece they needed to complete their collection.
Thank you.
It's a gift.
Precisely.
So...
what i did was i i went on ebay and i looked at it and i was like oh i don't know i don't understand how to operate this this is uh this this is confusing and so i stopped looking at ebay but i did start compiling things that i was going to sell on ebay and so now right in the center of my living room there's like five big boxes of stuff that
I need to get out of the house because if I don't, eventually I'm going to forget what's in the boxes.
Then I'm going to walk past them one day and say, what's in those boxes?
And then I'm going to look at them and it's going to seem like a treasure hunt.
And I'm going to pull all the stuff out of the boxes and be like, oh, this old thing.
Why was I ever getting rid of this?
And then all the stuff's going to come back out and it's going to all go back into circulation.
And that's not what I want.
I chose some things.
They're in some boxes.
It's time for them to go.
Yeah, it's not one simple thing that you're doing here.
It's part of a larger thought technology.
I mean, the getting rid of it is part of it, to have it out of the ecosystem, and that kind of makes everything else that's in your collection all the more valuable.
That's right.
These are the things that survived the culling.
I went around and I dabbed a little bit of lamb's blood on the front door of everything I had.
Because who uses tape anymore?
This is why you need a master student in there, John.
Somebody who could come in there and catalog all this on a computer.
Right.
Somebody that's doing a thesis.
I don't want to just get rid of this stuff.
I also want to tell the story of it.
That's also part of the eBay idea was that I would be able to tell the story of a thing on eBay and then somebody could appreciate the story and buy the thing and say, like, I didn't just buy this thing.
I also bought the story that goes with it.
But if I had somebody that was getting college credit for that, everybody wins.
I've been attracted to the idea of those services that will put stuff on eBay for you.
Not for heirloom quality typewriters or anything necessarily, but something that's slightly more than a tangled USB cable and slightly less than an heirloom underwood in cursive.
But there's that stuff in between where you're like – you just think like even if I don't make a lot of money off of this, it will be out of here.
I won't have to have a yard sale, which is incredibly undignified.
The worst.
Every time we do that, I swear I'll never do it again and I think it's stuck.
You sit at a card table and people come up and say, I'll give you a dollar for this?
A dollar?
I don't know what kind of yard sales you've been going to.
No, you get people out there.
I mean, this is a whole business.
This is a whole racket people do where they come out and you say, okay, come out at 8 a.m.
on Saturday, no early birds.
There's people there at 6 o'clock looking in your mail slot trying to figure out what you got.
because they figure it's going to be usb cables but but there might be like pearls that we didn't notice sure grandfather's old omega constellation yes that's a watch yes it is yes exactly and and then they want to use the bathroom you know what i mean they come in they're touching everything and they want everything they want to pay a nickel maybe
And to me, the coup de grace, having somebody come in and just take all that stuff away, it's like calling a hauling service.
There's very few things in life that I find more fulfilling than calling a hauling guy.
Because the hauling guy, it's real simple.
You give him $150, and he fills the bed of a truck.
Mm-hmm.
And he doesn't care what it is.
And I don't even know where it goes.
He might just go drop it off on the next block.
I don't even know.
But you know what?
The only creepy thing about it is he does look through the bags as he's putting them on the truck.
Because he wants to make sure you're not throwing away any pearls.
Well, obviously, see, I told myself it's because he wants to make sure that there's no paint and batteries.
Oh, right.
Because he's a good citizen.
But I think ultimately, yeah, he just wants to touch my stuff.
The thing is that all those guys, all the junk guys and the garbage men, you know, they all have collections at home of other people's photo albums and like other people's homemade porn.
Sure.
I mean, that's why you become a junk man.
We talked about this.
I had a friend who worked at the drugstore.
And everybody who does – it used to be back in the day, back when you go to the local drugstore to get your film processed, as you do.
And everybody who worked there had a book.
Oh, yeah.
You know?
Where they made double prints of the – Oh, are you kidding me?
The terrible, terrible homemade porn.
One to keep and one to trade.
Pictures.
Pictures.
24 exposures of the local news lady.
Yeah.
Yeah.
A friend of mine's dad used to bring in a roll a week of Gail Searins from the local NBC station.
Just pictures of her on TV.
Oh, you're kidding.
Nope.
Oh, yuck.
Yeah.
But isn't that funny, though?
Because what does that say about me, though, when I call the junk guy?
And it's like I want to still have some attachment to my stuff and have it be private when he takes it away.
Don't look at my bags.
Don't touch our trash.
That's one of the reasons that I don't go to yard sales.
Because over the years, you go to yard sales, and it seems like...
it seems like all that's for sale in those things are like supportive undergarments you know what i mean like it's a foundation wear of the recently deceased yeah like you're poking through it and i feel like like sheets selling sheets and stuff no uh no no stick is long enough to get me far enough away from this stuff poking through it's just like oh what is that is that an
Ankle brace?
Oh, what, a heating pad?
Hot water bottle?
Who sells this stuff?
It's an orthopedic piggy bank.
Who buys it?
Like, no thanks.
So I stay away from that.
And people ask me all the time, like, do you go to estate sales?
So depressing.
Do I want to line up and fight like brassy women with big round glasses for beanie babies?
No.
All of this is beneath my dignity.
While the decedent's children sit around looking at their watch.
Yeah, I don't want to paw through somebody's house.
Like, I don't care about their collection.
That's the weird part about an estate sale.
We did that when my grandmother passed away in 1987, and I'm so glad I wasn't there.
But we had – I don't know if you've been through this process with people, but I'm sure you have.
You've had lots of people in your family.
I don't know.
I don't know how that goes with you.
But, like, you go through.
You go and pick out all the stuff you want.
And the first time you do one of these dead relative things, you way overbuy.
And, like, I ended up with all this, like, cheap furniture from the 40s that I was just – I couldn't have room for it.
It was Anne Jane's.
I can't – we can't get rid of this.
Oh, my God.
That goes away pretty well after about four hours.
Photo album, plump, photo album, plump.
You're like, who's going to hold all of this stuff?
But then you're right, they come through.
The part that freaks me out, though, is how it's like a little, it's like a dead person museum for a day.
And everybody comes in, everything, all the silverware is like, if it's not fancy, it's like still in the drawers.
I mean, it's real creepy.
You could go in and, like, pick out which foundation where you want, like, right out of their drawers.
Yeah.
No.
No.
I mean, the amazing ones that I've been to are, like, these ones where, oh, granddad collected swords.
Like, oh, okay.
I'll go look through this guy's sword collection.
But, just like, this was grandma and grandpa's house, and they never threw anything away.
Come, and we've now put price tags on everything.
Like,
sorry i would much rather go to the goodwill where the last ultimate dregs of that sale finally got dumped off and somebody in a smock sorted it and put a colored tag on it and it sat on the shelves and was touched by 1000 people
I would much rather have that experience.
I like that section.
I haven't been to Goodwill in years, but I used to go a lot to a lot of thrift stores run by charities.
And there would always be one section, a very large section of wooden souvenirs that people bought on vacation.
So you get like a little coconut guy or something with googly eyes that holds pens.
It's strange to me that they would dedicate floor space to that stuff or something made out of popsicle sticks or something like that.
Yeah, right.
Where it's like a souvenir, but and its only value is as a souvenir of an experience that you had firsthand.
And yet people are buying them secondhand.
Like it's a garbage thing.
It was garbage when they bought it, but at least they could remember that time they took a vacation to Yosemite.
Right.
Well, and increasingly now, one of the things that happened a few years ago, and I think it was exacerbated when the economy crashed, was that a lot of people started shopping at Goodwills.
Um...
A lot of normals that would have thought it was kind of too low class started going.
And then, of course, the collector side of the equation just keeps growing and growing and growing.
And so Goodwill started...
Well, they all bumped up their prices about six or seven years ago.
So a thing that for years had been $1.99 all of a sudden was $19.99.
Right.
And there was a period of adjustment where I was like, I will never pay $19.99 for this.
They started washing them and pressing them, selling the good stuff to hipsters in New York and in bulk.
That's the other thing.
They all opened this little store within a store.
Right.
Where they sell the good stuff.
Right.
And I love going into that just because it's a glimpse behind the curtain into people's minds of, first of all, what is good stuff?
Yeah, what is valuable?
And so much of it is this stuff that you're talking about, the slightly higher grade of collectible commemorative plates.
Right.
Bicentennial stuff.
You know, like... There wasn't much of that.
That's rare.
Anybody who ever goes to Germany has to buy a Stein and then they bring the Stein home and they realize that a Stein is an inefficient way of drinking a beverage.
You don't need a lid because we've conquered the fly problem for the most part.
Or whatever the fuck... Whatever reason a Stein has a lid...
Uh, it's not, it's not handy anymore.
So the Stein ends up at the thrift store and the thrift store people think, Oh, this is, this is a cup of the lid.
This is nice.
And they put it in the special area.
So I go through that special area.
I'm not even looking for it.
I definitely do not expect to find Granddad's Omega Constellation.
Just in the times I've gone in the last dozen years, you certainly don't find those paydays like you used to.
Where you could go like, whoa, this is somebody's whole pretty cool record collection is here.
Or like, oh my gosh, they have all these Motown 45s or something like that.
I don't think you see that anymore.
You don't.
You have to really ratchet back.
what you what you think is a big score you know in the old days i remember yeah right you'd go in and you'd be like oh there's all these different 60s levi's in here it's blue folder covers i'm only gonna get the 60s levi's that don't have any holes in the knees you know every one of those pairs of jeans is worth 20 grand now and at the time it was like oh no these leave oh this this got an oil stain on the cuff you know
Yeah, and now exactly.
It's like, I found some blue paper.
This is like, look at these stickers.
I used to buy vintage office supplies.
Anytime that I saw a bunch of something cool, you see how the world used to be in offices.
And those things, those are probably, I'm thinking of large medical office file folders that weighed a couple ounces a piece.
Like big, heavy...
Things that were meant to be in heavy cabinets with heavy information about heavy cancers.
And you could just gobble that stuff up.
You could fill a car with it.
I used to work at a stock brokerage.
And the brokerage had two floors in an office building downtown.
And then there were another two floors somewhere kind of high up in the building that were just given over to those cardboard boxes full of heavy files.
And I would get sent up there all the time.
Like, take this pallet of...
files up to deep storage.
And you think about, I mean, imagining all the hoarders who have an attic full of unwashed dishes that they took up there during a party and never got down.
But now think about all the office, all the companies, all the law firms and stock brokerages and banks that are more than 100 years old that have those
that have that space already earmarked for that.
And no one has ever said, why are we paying to heat this warehouse full of paper?
Just like copies of correspondence.
Right.
Triplicate copies of receipts.
I'm not talking about stuff like for financial records that you'd have to keep, but stuff, you know what I mean?
Just like you always had a copy of everything because that's what you had to do, receipts.
Right.
Yeah, while you were out.
Ah, the little pink while you were out.
And so, you know, you think about like this one office building, and the more I think about it, the brokerage was on...
Like the 10th and 11th floor.
But the archives were up on the 26th, 27th floor.
The archives had a better view?
Well, that's what I'm saying.
That is counterintuitive, right?
The higher floor is the better one in an office building, isn't it?
I think so.
I don't understand that at all.
But I would go up there and, you know, the blinds were always closed and it was just...
row after row of these shelves of hard copies.
And presumably most of those, most offices now have transitioned to computers.
So these are just the dead stacks of,
that will stay there until, well, for all eternity, probably, in some cases.
Wow.
Yeah, it's amazing how quickly all of that has changed.
You think about stuff today with HIPAA laws and stuff around, at least theoretically, around things like privacy and things like that.
I remember when I was in college, when you got your student ID card,
I think when I started in the mid-'80s, it was the last year of a few things being done a certain way.
But one of the things was – I don't know if it was like this for you, but your student ID number was your social security number.
Everybody in Florida who went to college, that was your student ID number.
And so your student ID that you used to check out library books – you update the little barcode each time you register on the back.
That was a really big deal when we got barcodes.
But we still had – when I worked in the library –
In 1986-87, we still had cards in the books.
You could see everybody who had ever checked out the books.
If you wanted to check something out, you'd leave your student ID with your social security number on it sitting around.
I mean every document you ever receive from the college has your social security number on it.
Right.
I mean it's – I must have blocked this out but then at one point I had to deal with a bunch of old stuff of mine and getting rid of it and I was amazed at like how many hundreds and hundreds, like every evaluation I'd ever gotten.
Obviously things like financial aid.
Your security number was on every single piece of paper.
Was it like that for you?
No.
I'm trying to remember.
We used to put our social security number down as primary identification for a lot of things.
Absolutely.
I mean, if it wasn't such a banana system where so much was riding on that one string of digits, it would make sense.
Yeah.
If it just became an easy way to make you into a number in a way that was public, it's just that that's not what it was.
Yeah, right.
There weren't all those ways to exploit it before, too.
My favorite thing about that mid to late 80s period in colleges...
When I first got to college, all the seniors were talking about the era right before they started college, where there was a bar in the student center.
Like that era that we just missed.
Right.
That ended in like 82 where it was where college was really something, you know, where you could, where you had keg parties that were sponsored by the college and stuff.
You know, nobody, no college had ever been sued yet before.
Because somebody drove a truck through the dining hall.
And it was like still the Wild West.
And we were the first generation...
After that first wave of like, well, wait a minute, we better close down the bar that is in the, you know, that's like on campus.
But, but in retrospect, it was still the wild west.
Like the first couple of years that I hitchhiked around the country, I could go into any college, walk into, walk right into any dorm and
And in most cases, like, walk kind of right into the dining hall and help myself.
Or in those cases where the dining hall required that you have a card, it was like, it was, you borrow somebody's student ID, flash the card, and then hand it back to them, you know, through the turnstile, and then they would flash it and...
You know, there was no security of any kind on campus, and it was all done in this, like, sign in.
Sign in, and you take what you want.
Like, basically, you could write whatever... You could write any social security number.
Right.
It wasn't like they scanned a card and waited to see if it was... Valid.
Valid, right.
And so...
I mean, at the time, I remember thinking, God, this sucks.
Why can't it be like it used to be when it was just open country?
But now, of course, I don't – I mean you can't even – You probably can't get in the building at certain times of day.
At the University of Washington, you can't even park.
Really?
They've instituted this whole thing where it's like, oh, yeah, this used to be parking, but it's not parking.
I remember when I very first saw – this still seems so – I understand this, but it still seems so weird.
It was probably in Manhattan.
It was the first time I ever saw one of those – an ATM where you had to slide your car to even get the door to open to go into a little – that seems so strange.
Yeah.
I think you're right.
I think a lot of stuff happened and this is probably just basic self-absorption on my part, thinking I was there when stuff changed.
But I remember – you'll remember that – I remember it was during the early Reagan years.
Federal law was created that said everybody needs to raise the drinking age to 21.
Right.
It was 19 in Idaho when I started at college.
Because if you didn't raise it to 21 by something like, I think, 1985 or so, this becomes important in a minute, you would no longer get federal highway funds.
Federal highway funds.
That's right.
Big deal.
So everybody changed the drinking age of 21.
But...
If you were in this certain window – it was 19 in Florida.
And if you were in this certain window – You were grandfathered in.
You were grandfathered.
I missed it by I think like three months.
So all my friends – and I hung out with kids who had just graduated.
And so I was always behind until I turned 21.
But I think you're right.
I think it used to be – I mean can you imagine being in some places where the drinking age is 18?
Can you imagine that?
Okay, so when I first went around America, it was the summer of 86.
And in Colorado... That was the summer that I was 18 and too young to drink.
Yeah, summer of 86, right.
I was still 17, but, you know, was like... Sorry, 19 and too young to drink.
In Colorado, you could drink 3-2 beer if you were 18.
That's right.
You could go to the liquor stores and there were separate sections for this half beer.
that you that you could get if you were 18 which now seems like quadruple crazy to me and there were there were there was another state that you could drink three okay but you can only buy filtered cigarettes but idaho was still 19 and you and there was a grandfathering clause uh but i mean yeah i was like i was out i was out of the running of that but you know when i was in 1986 marijuana was still legal in alaska
Can I ever tell you this story?
No.
That's insane.
Marijuana was legal all through the 70s and 80s in Alaska.
They legalized four ounces and less at some point, and it just felt like...
It never really got very much national publicity, but it was just a kind of a typical Alaskan move of like, this is beneath our dignity, we got bigger problems, and it's just an enforcement thing, and we're just not going to bust you for less than four ounces.
Even though it was a federal law?
Well, it wasn't in the... Well, I'm not exactly sure how they manipulated it or how it all worked.
But all the way through high school, I mean, it was kind of like it is in Amsterdam where technically it's legal, but don't push it.
Don't push anybody's buttons.
Don't wave it under anybody's nose.
And at a certain point in the 80s,
Well, I remember exactly because my dad took me to the Rotary Club meeting where the Alaska State Troopers spokesman was making the case to the Rotary why we should criminalize marijuana.
and it was a case he felt like he needed to come to the Rotary Club and make this case to the people.
And he gave a whole presentation, and Dad used to take me to Rotary Club meetings all the time, and I think largely he would do it just to piss off the other Rotarians, because nobody else ever brought their teenage son.
I'm not sure what he... They were at home polishing their bolo ties.
This was just one of those things where he was just like, of course I bring my son!
He's a...
He's going to one day he's going to run this town.
But so I'm sitting in this in this Rotary Club meeting and the guy gets up and he's like, listen, it was it was also the criminalization of the recriminalization of pot in Alaska was also tied to federal highway funds in some way.
Although we didn't have this is the other thing.
We didn't have a federal highway.
Because there was no there's no interstate.
Take that, Obama.
Right.
So it was all state highways.
But the but the you know, the feds were and oh, and the other thing, of course, is that the oil money in Alaska means that we don't need federal money for stuff like that.
They instituted a 0.1% tax on all the money that came out of the Prudhoe Bay.
And by 1980, the state of Alaska had a surplus of like $40 billion or something like that.
I mean, that's why they started doing that permanent fund.
I mean, they could hand every Alaskan a one-ounce bar of gold every time they fill up with gas at the service station, and the state of Alaska would never run out of money.
Yeah.
But so this guy gets up and the thrust of his argument was by having marijuana legal here in the state of Alaska, we are sending a message to kids that we do not care about them.
And that drugs are fine.
And that marijuana is a gateway drug.
And that they're going to start using pot because it's legal here.
And then they're going to become heroin addicts.
And they're going to be sex workers.
And then they're going to end up in like a Bombay opium den giving blowjobs.
Uh, and this is an inevitable course of action.
And as this guy is giving this speech all around the, the, the, uh, the Sheraton conference center where the, where these Rotarians are sitting all around, I can hear like the room really agrees with this guy.
And a lot of like assenting moaning from old men.
Yeah, that's right.
That sounds perfectly reasonable.
And it was the, you know, it was the height of the Reagan years.
And I remember sitting there with this like smug look on my face, like...
No way, man.
No way.
It'll never happen.
You're never going to.
That's not the Alaska way, man.
Pot's legal here, man.
I don't even know if I'd probably smoked pot like four times by that point.
Yeah, but I mean, just, you know, the principle.
And then it was put up, it was one of those things where I don't think that they had enough votes to put it on the ballot, but they put it on the ballot anyway.
And they probably didn't have enough votes to pass it, but it passed anyway.
And all of a sudden, pot was illegal in Alaska.
And it remains illegal there, even now that it is legal in Washington, which I find is a personal affront.
Yeah.
I kind of wanted to ask you about that.
What, the legal pot in Washington?
Yeah.
I was wondering how that's going.
Well, I mean, it's going great.
I was surprised when I tweeted about it not very long ago, the number of people who really had never tried pot because the fact that it was illegal inhibited them.
Really?
It was an astonishing, because I sent some tweet out saying, who in the world didn't try pot just because it was illegal?
That seems like, if you wanted to try pot, it wasn't, the barrier to entry was not that high.
But I got a ton of replies from all over the world of people saying like, well, no, I didn't try it because it's illegal.
And also, since it's illegal, the only people that have access to it are criminals.
And drug people.
That is fascinating.
And I didn't want to deal with criminals and drug people, so I have never tried it.
But now that it's legal, maybe I will.
And I was like really fascinated by it.
Because that's not even probably a representative sample of the people in the world.
That's just people that follow me on Twitter.
Who are, I mean, definitely a lot of nerds, but they're not the squares.
At least they're on Twitter.
I mean, there are tons and tons and tons of squares out there that are...
that who knows maybe the fact that pot is legal now they're like maybe i should give this pot a try i mean that whole idea that the the legality or illegality of that thing would that that now that it's been made legal again people would say oh well it must be safe right it's just crazy to me but in any case there are pot stores now
There already were pot stores opening all over the place because of that medical marijuana thing.
But they were those bullshit dispensaries with the green cross that are made to look like a pharmacy.
That I just, I find it so insulting.
Like, let's just call a spade a spade.
Pot is to get stoned.
If you have glaucoma or, you know, or stomach cancer, by all means, get pot and I don't for a second, like, begrudge...
But when you say that, people act like you're telling little kids that Santa Claus isn't real.
You sound like you're being a karma suck.
Right.
All the people who are like, I have anxiety disorder.
And the only thing that helps is pot.
Tons and tons of pot.
It's like, first of all, if you have anxiety disorder, the last thing you need is pot.
But, like, that, a lot of... I would say... I would say 85% of that argument is baloney.
Or, if you are making that case, like, okay, the case is made, right?
Like, pot as a medicine is the same as cedar bark as medicine.
And now that it's legal, great.
Like...
Grind it up with your hammer and pestle and make a tincture or whatever it is you think you need to do.
Finally, I can have my cedar bark unguents.
That was not a persuasive argument for me.
That was a backdoor way to ending the ridiculous prohibition on podcasts.
Yeah, exactly.
And now that it's over, let's put that baloney aside.
But the state is doing what the state does with all things, which is trying to regulate and tax the shit out of it.
And I imagine most of the people I know who smoke pot are still buying pot from their pot dealer.
Yeah.
And they just feel a little bit more relaxed about it.
But I can't believe that very many people are going down to the pot store.
I mean, they're rolling it out gradually.
And I think most of the ones I see are still in this dispensary category, which involves way too much signing up.
For most stoners.
Yeah, right.
It's like, oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, I gotta sign something?
Oh, hey, man.
We've talked a lot in the past about how you don't want to become too much of an old guy.
How we don't want to become an old people who just kind of write stuff off, whether that's music or whatever.
I'm trying to keep my powder dry about this, because my immediate reaction is a little bit like, what is going on?
But I want to make sure that there's not new information I need to take in, but
I guess it's what?
Decriminalized in California.
In San Francisco, it's always been – as long as I've been in San Francisco, it's pretty much more acceptable to smoke a joint than a cigarette most places.
And that's how San Francisco is.
But man, I don't know if this is just me noticing an availability heuristic, but –
there's a park near our house that high school students walk through, you know, after school.
And I mean, the evidence is there.
Um, it's just, it, there's something really weird to me about walking by and there's this, uh, like, uh,
tornadoes like just like like funnels of swisher sweet wrappers just like like spinning around and there's a bunch of like 16 year old kids just sitting there just smoking pot and and my daughter and i walk by and we you know hello how are you and keep going they're not bad people i smoked a ton of pot but something about it rankles me a little bit they should be scared i don't know why i think that but they should not be allowed to roll blunts in the park and something about it really bothers me well i i feel like even if i didn't have a kid even if i were merely an old guy i think it would bug me
We're going to, as a nation, I think, go through a transition period that may be 15 years long, where pot is decriminalized, and we have two whole generations of people who grew up during this prohibition period who feel like...
Now, smoking pot in public, smoking pot proudly in front of everybody is still some kind of resistance movement.
And that walking around smoking pot is there right now, and it's going to be like...
This kind of proud let my freak flag fly business.
But so you're saying, though, it's symbolic of something more than just getting intoxicated.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
I mean, the fact that they can do a civil right.
It's a civil right.
And also one where they are.
They're very conscious of the fact that people are.
still shocked by it and it feels like very new and it feels very um you know i i said i think when it first happened i mean i almost want to go down and buy an ounce of pot at the store just because of all the years that that wasn't possible and it just feels like yeah i've just buy it and and throw it on the ground but like to go do it it's probably way higher quality than this stuff we oh
customarily risked arrest to get it's ludicrous yeah but i think you see what happened in the netherlands is that there became a real social a real social divide within the culture um the the dutch people stopped being impressed with
with pot culture and with like, whoa, I'm smoking pot outside, dude.
You know, like the Dutch were not impressed with that after a very short amount of time.
Is it fair to say it's kind of a live and let live kind of place?
Well, in some ways, yes.
In some ways, no.
I mean, the Dutch themselves are very, like, personally reserved and I think extremely judgmental of each other and of themselves.
You know, they're personally very, very reticent and very put together.
Their live and let live aspect of their culture is founded on a kind of like, is this worth...
is this worth worrying about?
Is this worth directing resources toward?
It's more practical.
It's, it's, it's, it's strictly practical and it's also kind of like a core libertarianism in them.
That's just like, this is beneath contempt or like, why, why would we worry about this?
Why would we like, they're, they're, they're not a,
They're not a police-y culture.
They're self-policed, I guess.
And part of being self-policed is that you don't really empower the police to be an army.
But if you walk down the street in the Netherlands smoking a joint, you will get a lot of... I mean, not like weird looks, but you will definitely feel...
unappreciated you know like unwelcome basically because you are you're not violating the law but you are violating the social compact and you are identifying yourself as
A low life, basically.
So within the Netherlands, if you want to smoke pot, that's fine.
And anybody that smokes pot is fine.
They're not bummed out about it.
But it's also not, you don't get a sense of like, that the country, that the mentality in the country is, do whatever you want, man.
Welcome to the Netherlands.
Do whatever you want.
The culture is very much like, welcome to the Netherlands.
Please deposit your garbage in the proper receptacle.
Can you please keep it down after 8 p.m.?
And, like, if you don't, you're just going to get, I mean, they will basically tsk, tsk you to death.
Sounds like Switzerland.
Well, except the Swiss are way more law and order.
And the Dutch are much... They are much more free and easy.
But it's... But there's also a kind of assumption.
I mean, there are a lot of people from other places in the Netherlands.
And so the people that are from there feel a cultural divide.
Like, if you walk through the Leidsplain...
There are people smoking pot and people drinking beer and it's a rowdy, rowdy place.
But if you step back and lean against the wall and watch how the Dutch behave...
They're just walking through.
They're on their way to somewhere else.
There are whole places in Amsterdam or in any Dutch city where it's just Dutch people going about their business, and it does not feel like a renaissance fair in those places.
It feels like an architect's office, an open-air architect's office.
Orderly.
Orderly, and people are very well-groomed, and they are very...
they're on their way somewhere and they have a, they have a, a methodology and it's not, it's, it is not like just go for it, bro.
And so I feel like that's going to happen here too.
There's going to be a period where, where people are smoking pot and doing their thing and everybody's real proud of it.
But the natural, at least in the Northwest, the natural social media,
uh, overlay is to say, okay, man, you know, I, I see that you're smoking pot and that's fine and everything, but like I'm walking through the park here with my kids and like straighten up and fly right.
This is, I, I mentioned it not just because it's embarrassing and pegs me as an old man, but because it just to kind of unpack it a little bit, it, it's,
There's so many things that it's not to me.
Well, first of all, I don't really care if people smoke pot.
I've smoked pot, and it is really pretty harmless.
I definitely, by and large, by and large, you know, but I also... Did you ever smoke pot and rub tiger balm on your tempers?
Not as much as I should have.
That window closed.
And it's also – and it's absolutely the case that like, gosh, I mean I don't want to turn into like a system of a down record.
But like – no, I think that the drug – but all the drug policy stuff is crazy.
The number of people who are in jail for asinine amounts of time because of silly drug – stupid, stupid, stupid.
All stupid.
Wrong way to do it.
So it's not that either.
It's not like I'm saying, oh, you're doing drugs.
You should get in trouble.
I'm not even saying that.
It's something where like there's it's almost there's this part of me that's that's the two things I can distill it down to is, first of all, it does seem weird that it's just OK for kids in high school to smoke pot and not be worried about it.
I don't know why that bothers me, but that does seem strange.
And the other one is I think it's going to kind of become like the new cell phone.
I think it's going to be a little bit like cell phones were in like 1996.
Hmm.
Where it's just going to be something that annoying people are doing because they can.
Right.
It's like, oh, I'm on this bus.
I'm going to smoke some of my marijuana.
Yeah.
It's the thing that annoying people will do because they can.
That's exactly right.
But you see, you hear me struggling with it, though, because it isn't something I don't want people to get in trouble for it.
And yet there's this part of me that thinks like it's – and this is just the old guy in me, I think.
But there's a part of me that thinks – like I guess I'm in retrospect –
Grateful?
Probably the wrong word.
But I wonder how I would be today if I kept smoking as much pot as I could smoke all the time with no repercussions.
I'm just picturing this scene.
Well, this is the problem.
We like him nervous and paranoid.
Matt, have you seen Merlin?
No, nobody sees Merlin.
No.
This is, I think, one of our reoccurring themes, and it is a question that it's very easy to put this into the camp of, like, we're a couple of old guys, and we are making the transition now to old guy concerns.
Yeah, like you like to say we're on the wrong side of history, potentially.
Yeah, but what we keep coming back to, what is a major thread running through everything we ever talk about, is the idea of self-governing.
And our perception of the current world as being one where self-governance is no longer taught or prized, and the world that we not necessarily came from, but the world that existed before the one world,
And the one we aspire to.
And absolutely the one we aspire to is a world where self-governance is highly prized and taught and practiced, you know?
And...
What happened in the 60s and throughout the 70s and 80s, and certainly now, it's just been this gradual process of... And this may be true, I mean, I think if you look at the popular culture in the 20s, it was true.
It's always true of teenagers and people in their early 20s to say, to equate self-governance with uptightness and unhipness.
And why can't you just be free?
Why can't you just be creative and be free?
Oh yeah, you want everybody to be tightly wound like you.
Right, exactly.
And that's deeply unhip and uncreative and inhibiting.
But what has happened is there's all this psychological science and pseudoscience and generations and generations of people now with...
With quote-unquote evidence to support that all you need to do is give a grown-up a crayon and some mushrooms or whatever and look out world because he's finally free.
And he quits his job at IBM and he becomes a fire dancer and a pornographer and hooray.
And this is the world that we want to live in, this world of ultimate freedom where everybody is just fully alive.
And the way to accomplish that is through art and through destroying these strictures and structures that used to bind us to one another.
And in fact, what it does is it creates two separate classes.
One, the class of people who keep moving and get out of the way and are conscious of their surroundings and are trying to...
not be a burden to other people and are aware that like society dictates that we not all do whatever we want at any given moment and then an entire separate class of people who live in the world as though
Anything that inhibits the momentary expression of their whim is some kind of either evidence of a police state or a religious state.
Or is some, like, worse, some inhibited, uncreative, bad vibe land?
I frequently get the feeling that people think that it is anytime that what you're describing happens, they want to find a way to frame it as an organized attempt to attack them personally because of how they are.
Right, right.
Oh, and then precisely, then you introduce the idea of identity politics to it, which is that not only is it a question of creativity, but a question of their identity and how they were born and shaped and who they really are.
And so now, yeah, you're attacking their core.
Like, they will look you right in the eye and say...
I cannot keep moving and get out of the way because I am differently abled and you are body shaming me or whatever.
It's just like, well, no, really.
You're still capable of both moving and getting out of the way because you got here.
You got to this supermarket somehow.
So I...
I don't know how to, other than through our podcast, your and my philosophy podcast.
I mean, how to, and we wrestle with it all the time.
Like, are we super unhip?
I'm sure there are people who listen to the podcast and reject it immediately because they hear it as two old guys who no longer are free.
Yeah.
But I really do believe that self-governance is a philosophy.
And in my case, it includes a little bit of masochism and self-abnegation.
But it is a valid way of constructing a society.
And it's why I admire the Dutch.
They are self-governing.
And part of that is that their social contract implies a lot of that, you know?
Like, if you step out, you are noticed, and they don't want to be noticed in that way.
Right.
But I don't know what, I don't know how else to... It's probably like a self-esteem, almost?
Absolutely.
Or self-image.
They see themselves as doing the right thing, and I wouldn't want to do something that made you even think that I was doing the wrong thing.
And not just because they're afraid of being noticed, but because they think it's moral.
You know, I remember getting into an argument not very long ago on Twitter.
If you can imagine me getting into an argument on Twitter.
This is you?
On Twitter?
In an argument, huh?
Where I said something to the effect of, if you wear shorts and flip-flops on an airplane, you are a garbage person.
And they should put you in a chute and send you out into the sky.
And I get some reply from a guy who's a college-educated person who works in software, probably, or has a good job.
And he replies very haughtily that...
Why shouldn't he be comfortable on an airplane?
Why shouldn't I just come to your cube and fart?
I wrote back and said, your comfort is at the expense of everyone else's comfort.
And he says, I fail to see how me being comfortable impacts anyone else.
That's the problem.
And I said precisely that.
There's the problem.
You're not aware of your flip-flops and your shorts intruding on other people's space.
And we went back and forth until I realized it was pointless.
But I've been in that argument with a lot of people where...
Where the perception of the social contract from their end is that the onus is on me to not be grossed out.
rather than being on them to behave with what we used to think of as decorum.
Like, don't go out in public in your pajamas.
Don't pick your nose.
Don't put your feet up on things.
And it's like we were talking about before.
It's not just that Miss Manners is...
trying to like rob you of your comfort you know this is the this is this this it's a it's it's social libertarianism in a way like oh that's a good way to put it it is like it is then kind of like the person who is not only talking really really really loud into their into their mobile phone but that talking really loud into their mobile phone kind of feels like they know exactly what they did they're doing they are on purpose trying to have a conversation that everybody will have to hear
for whatever reason right right although i got into a big fight with a guy in a hotel lobby one time who was sitting it was one of those one of those love seat kind of hotel couches where i'm sitting with my back to a guy but he's right there his head is right almost touching mine sitting on a couch on the other side having a very animated phone conversation and
I looked around the lobby and everyone else in the lobby is sitting quietly reading a book or looking at their computer.
And this guy is just, and he's not talking about anything.
He's just talking loud.
And I, and I leaned back and I said, Hey guy, could you take your phone conversation outside?
Because look around, no one else is talking.
It's a quiet lobby.
Ooh, hate crime.
And he was a young guy, you know, young enough in his 20s.
And it was like I said something about his family.
Mm-hmm.
And he did get up and leave, but not out of politeness.
He got up and left because he felt like he was being assaulted.
and um and he you know he went and stood outside and like glared at me through the window but like kind of a little bit scared but really mostly mad because i said you get that from time to time uh it's like it's like photosynthesis to me
The chlorophyll in my skin just fills with vitamins.
Yeah, he's out there, you know, and he's talking to the phone.
I'm sure the rest of his phone conversation.
Now he finally had something to talk about.
He talked about this hate crime guy who told him that he couldn't do what he was doing.
And the only reason he didn't make a stand, the only reason that wasn't his little bighorn, was that he was afraid of me.
Which added to the problem.
And it's not like I didn't even... He didn't even see me.
He just heard my voice.
So you were essentially harassing him.
Absolutely.
I was interrupting his personal phone call to...
Like, make some comment about his behavior, which is not my right to do.
And at the time, I saw that moment as like, oh, right, this is a kid who has grown up in this world where he never got less than an A in school.
No one ever told him he did anything less than a great job.
Never got that punch in the nose.
Never got a punch in the nose.
He is not accustomed to anyone ever saying bupkis to him.
He does what he wants, and he is praised for it, for the most part.
And in a lot of cases, like, you live that way, you get a good job somewhere, you're conscious of the rules that matter to them now.
You know what I mean?
Like, he would never, ever, ever say something that might be construed as sexual harassment.
He would never, ever, ever say something that might be construed as racially insensitive.
So by his matrix, he's following the rules.
He is obeying the social rules that matter.
And...
He's unconscious has never even been taught these archaic social rules like don't sit in the middle of a quiet lobby and yell into your phone about God damn it, John.
Where's our rights?
Where's our parade?
Why is nobody standing up for us?
And it may very well be a generational thing to the degree that
There was not that long ago a time where I'm sure somebody sat on an airplane and a woman got on and she was not wearing elbow length gloves.
And that person said, oh my God, the world is going to hell.
Uh, it, and, and it may very well be that these standards that we feel are, are somehow core and basic are just, are just ancient standards now.
Yeah.
And we are not, we're going to be ill prepared to live in a future world where everyone is, I mean, where people get on airplanes in G strings and flip flops and
Are you body shaming sex workers?
And I, I, I absolutely hate to refer.
Can you imagine that?
Can you imagine the kind of germs you would get from that?
A G string sitting down on one of those plane seats?
Well, the problem is they're going to change.
They're going to very quickly replace all the seats with just standing up, uh, like handlebars.
Like an ironing board with a seatbelt on it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so, you know, so why not be in a G string?
It's your comfort after all.
And I honestly don't want to refer to the movie Idiocracy because it's too easy.
I know, it seems so on the nose, except...
Right.
It really is.
It really... You can't unsee it.
You can't unsee it and you can't unthink it.
And... Hurry up, Thomas!
And I don't... I don't want to be... I don't want to be standing on some principles that don't actually matter.
But I do feel that we are...
We are animals, and that civilization and a lot of its precepts are in place to keep us from being animals.
Yeah.
Totally.
And the more of them we decide are unimportant, the closer we are not...
It is not just a zero-sum game of like, oh, let's just release ourselves and become more creative.
No, you're not doing anything original, dude.
Everybody knows that you could choose to go be a freak.
That's never been out of reach to you.
It's just that everybody else was raised.
I mean, it's like anything having to do with expertise.
You have to start out by learning things that are presented to you as rigid rules that must be followed, recipes that must be followed down to the teaspoon.
And eventually you get good enough that you can shuck and jive.
But the thing is, that's the thing about expertise is you end up making better food by not following the recipe.
You don't make crappier food because somebody is trying to food shame you.
You end up getting better at it.
And that's the idea of being an adult and getting older.
And it does seem like small stuff to say, hey, could you treat this as the common space that it is?
Like everybody else here, everybody else here is getting along.
But doesn't that make you feel a little bit like the crazy one, though?
I feel like I'm in a different movie.
I feel like, to quote the fantastic Mr. Fox, I feel like I'm losing my mind.
I just want to say everybody here, doesn't everybody see this?
I feel like George Costanza.
Why is everybody not just asking this guy to shut up?
It's so disruptive to everybody, especially when you go to the airport lounge and you're in the quiet room and somebody's on the phone.
You ever had that one?
No, I don't go to the lounge.
Oh, my God.
But I do very much perceive... I mean, the last time I got into this was I pulled into some airport waiting area for my flight.
And there was a guy there doing calisthenics on a seat.
And he very clearly thought that what he was doing was...
He's stretching out and getting ready for the flight because he didn't want to be tense.
Get a blood clot.
Yeah, and he needed to be relaxed, and this was important, and we should all be doing that.
You could see it in the way he was dressed and the way he was acting, that he thought we were the dummies, that everybody in the airport wasn't taking up four seats and dripping sweat on them.
Yeah.
Like stretching out.
Like yoga kind of stretches?
Yeah, yoga stretching to get ready for the five-hour punishment session he was going to be undertaking with the rest of us in this fart tube.
And I was, you know, I'm there with my little girl and I was just naturally like, oh, right.
This guy thinks that this is his workout room and he's
violating the social contract he doesn't think he is he thinks he's smarter than we are i think he thinks that he's he's an individual he's an individual but he's also a role model like this is what we if we were all as in touch with our body as he is yes we're all as healthy how's that feel america have a little that in your face that's right we are a bunch of fat slobs he's the only one that is really taking advantage of this opportunity to get stretched out and get clean
And so I made a short little video of him, and I posted it on the internet.
And I was like, here's this guy.
Here's this guy doing this.
And he sees me making the video of him, and he gets ashamed, and he ducks his head down and hides.
Yes.
And I got 50, 50 responses.
50% of the people were like, fuck that guy forever.
And 50% of the people were like, I can't believe that you would do that, that you would post a video of that guy without his consent.
We should have a dialogue about this.
And those people, I wrote back and said, well, he did not have my consent to sweat all over those chairs.
By stepping outside of what we agree are the rules, he is making himself a spectacle.
He is making himself a public person.
Like I am not walking around putting my video camera in people's faces who are sitting in the airport like a person sits in an airport.
Yeah.
But if you are putting on a show,
Like you, you cross the line into like, Hey, look at this guy.
He's putting on a show for us.
And so here he goes, here's his moment.
He's going to get on the internet and I'm going to say, fuck this guy.
And I went back and forth with a couple of people and a couple of people that even people that I like and admire whose work I am familiar with, who their version of the social contract is you don't take a, you don't shame somebody on the internet.
Right.
You don't take a video of somebody without their consent and shame them for their behavior because that's the real danger.
That's actually not something you do very often, is it?
I don't do it at all.
I don't do it unless there's somebody who is behaving shamefully.
Like this guy did not.
And what's amazing is that I found out later that he, and I guess I should have thought of this.
This was a flight to Seattle.
He's a guy coming to Seattle.
And there were people on Facebook that were like, I know that guy.
Oh, God.
That guy is, like, VP of somebody for this tech company.
And I got a couple... He's the chief thought officer over at Yoga Crunch.
Exactly.
And I got a couple of DMs that were like, that guy is the biggest fucking prick that ever was.
And of course he is, you know?
But that idea that... And in a way, the whole concept of, like...
the public performative aspect of everything we're doing now is really opt in.
You know what I mean?
If you want to stay, if you want to stay anonymous, that is as easy as can be because no one is walking around picking people at random and anonymously like, and, and, and spoiling their anonymity.
As a kind of blood sport, because there are far, far too many people dressing like dragons and masturbating in public places because they have a prescription for it.
How far are we from that?
I wish I had a video of that.
My doctor says that I need to masturbate under a blanket on a park bench for my anxiety disorder.
And the dragon costume is part of my new identity.
There's transitioning?
The two aren't connected.
The dragon costume is part of my dragon identity.
And the masturbating, I have a prescription for it.
Stop!
This is not going out.
Stop looking at me!
Stop videotaping me!
Stop.
Stop.