Ep. 497: "Where the Grocery Stores Are"
Hello.
Hi, John.
Hi, Merlin.
How are you?
Looks like somebody's got a case of the mundane.
I'm going to sleep in my lasagna.
No, it's too early.
It's, you know, I don't think... It's... It's... You skip over... I mean, do we really all need to be working?
No!
I read a statistic today.
Did you really?
Tell me about it.
You know how reliable those are.
It better prove my point.
It's...
I'm making a fist and turning my head a little bit.
Pow, right to the moon.
It said using the technology to see people's cell phones and tell where they are.
Uh-huh.
Right?
The spyware of watching.
The spyware of watching?
The spyware of watching.
I'd read a John le Carré book called that.
They say that only 35% of the population of downtown San Francisco has returned to work since the heyday before the pandemic.
Oh, it's a big thing here.
Nobody's downtown?
Is it a big thing there?
Oh, yeah.
Nobody is going to work in the buildings.
Yeah.
I feel like sometimes I don't pose or present myself as any kind of scholar of San Francisco history.
No, no, no.
As you know.
Far from it.
No, I literally don't care.
No, you gave me my first Muni t-shirt.
Oh, did I?
Yeah, you gave me a Muni t-shirt.
Was there a joke on it?
No, it was already pretty faded.
It had the logo of Muni.
Very good 70s looking logo.
Yeah, nice sturdy shirt.
And you said...
I might want that back, but you can wear it.
I feel like something that's becoming apparent, I need to start writing more things down.
I think I may have given you more, I don't want to say given you clothes, but I've given you more articles of clothing than I've realized.
Yeah, well – We might need to like eventually kind of like – just for fun, it would be nice to just – for the museum piece, the catalog.
You get the Henderson jacket, which I can't believe fit you.
Yeah.
The Henderson jacket was definitely like a – Were you fixing to go to Europe or something?
It was a size large, the Henderson.
I think it was big on you and sports.
Small on me.
Big on me.
But the thing is, and this is something I can't teach my goddamn kids today, something I learned a long time ago being from a cold place, layers.
Oh, yeah.
Layers.
You're going to get somewhere and you're going to take that off.
The Henderson jacket is not there to pull your look together.
Your Henderson jacket is there to keep you warm and dry.
And then you could say you could take it off and go Merry Christmas, hand someone a poinsettia.
Yeah.
And now you're at the party in your Christmas jumper, as they say.
There you go.
Layers.
But it's got to be big enough to accommodate a jumper.
In my case, I was lean then.
I was slim.
When I bought that, I weighed 140.
I think I was 149 when I bought that.
You've seen photos.
I was very narrow.
When you gave it to me, I was a strapping 210.
All cock.
It fit like a sweater.
But I don't know why you had an extra-large Muni t-shirt unless you were coming out of a 90s phase where you wore extra-large clothes.
Yeah, right.
Did you do that in the 90s?
Did you wear extra-large clothes?
I don't like to talk about the 90s because there's a lot about it that I think was kind of unfair.
No, just unfair to me in particular.
I mean, I have been wearing – I was wearing, like you, probably for different reasons, I've been wearing flannel shirts since I was a baby.
Yeah.
That's all they gave us.
That's all they had.
We had to share one between all of Pasco County.
No, I wanted to look like – I had a particularly sort of fruity look I fashioned for myself in 1980 because I wanted to look like – I think I've told you this.
I wanted to look like –
Who's the white-haired Nazi one?
Bo Duke or Luke Duke?
Bo, Bo.
Bo, Bo?
Bo, Bo, Bo, Bo, Bo, Bo.
Bo and Luke.
Yeah, Bo.
I had a look that I perceived to be based on Bo Duke, which was I would have a turtleneck.
My mom got me at Sears.
And over that, I'd wear...
A plaid shirt, partially buttoned up.
You didn't rip the sleeves off the flannel shirt.
Savage.
I'm not from Wakulla County.
Take that, Wakulla County.
I'm not from Lee County.
No, take that, Lee County.
I could do more.
I'm not from Seminole County, or you call it Seminole.
Take that, Seminole County.
Yeah.
Oh, look at me.
I'm from Pinellas County.
I'm fancy.
Blah, blah, blah.
I saw another statistic.
This claimed that a scientist had drawn a map of the best possible road trip in America.
Oh, I love that idea.
So did I. And then I saw that the map not only routed the best possible road trip in America through Denver, but also through Jacksonville.
And I was like, this can't possibly be the best road trip you could take in America.
That you visited both Denver and Jacksonville on the same trip?
Nobody even had to explain it to me.
Once I understood the indie rock version of the Chitlin Circuit, nobody had to even explain it to me.
Something that you have probably in your bones just as much as Dee Boone or Henry Rollins.
Which is like, if you want to play a show in some, like, you know...
in some hotbed where, like, you could maybe draw 100 or more people, you're going to have to lily pad your way there by going to places that probably have a lot fewer than 100 people, but you could still have somewhere to play, and you get somewhere to crash, probably.
Boing, boing, boing.
Right?
So I get – Gainesville is the ultimate example.
Oh, yeah, Gainesville.
Gainesville is really – I think that's Alachua County.
That's out in the middle of freaking nowhere.
Like, I don't know if you remember this, but when you leave the city limits of Gainesville, it's like falling off –
No, not in a mean way, but a lot of towns in Florida were like that for a long time.
I had a real sense in Gainesville that if you looked into the, if you look, like you're driving down the road, you look to the left, you look to the right, one of these towns is not going to be here at the end of the quarter.
But if you look through, if you look past the building on the front, it's just like, it's just swamp people walking.
Like 15 feet back from the road.
It felt like the swamp was ready to take Gainesville back at any time.
I am already so far.
I forget what we were talking about when we started, but now we're off in so many directions.
And on top of which, I can't remember how many of these stories I've already told you.
But did you know, for example, did you knew that we were north enough...
working and living in Tallahassee, that sometimes we'd take an extra long lunch and go get barbecue or, you know, like Brunswick stew.
We would drive up to Georgia to basically where James Brown is from.
We would drive into where James Brown is from and be back.
And we were with the boss, so it was cool to have a two-hour lunch.
But that's kind of what a lot of – you drive everywhere.
Yeah.
What was it like where James Brown is from?
I'm going to get it confused because last night I was watching the Little Richard movie.
Little Richard's from Macon, and I know this because it's right over the border from Tallahassee, right up in Georgia.
This is really embarrassing for my North Florida crowd.
Oh, it was really wild, man.
It's like pretty much like a lot of the... It's like the black neighborhood in Sarasota.
It's like the black neighborhood in Tampa.
It's like the black neighborhood everywhere is where you go and you get the best food you ever had in your life from super nice people for $6.
You know what I mean?
I'm looking at a map.
Was it Adapulgus?
No.
Was it Thomasville, Cairo, Bainbridge?
Believe it or not, it's pronounced Cairo.
K-Row?
Yeah, I think it was Thomasville.
Thomasville.
And actually, that's a great name.
That's where the name of the road comes from.
You go up Thomasville Road, and then that takes you up into Georgia.
I lived right off Thomasville Road.
You did?
Uh-huh.
Anyhow.
Oh, I can see it right here in Bradfordville.
Yeah, probably.
But when you leave, because Gainesville's very much a college town.
Very lively.
There's a lot going on.
There are a lot of, like, you know...
Unkind young men in pickup trucks there who are not associated with the college.
But it really, truly, like once you get past, like, I mean, I know that area from a time before Strodes, even though they kind of existed in their way back then.
But, you know, you get to that thing where like you get to the edge of like where the grocery stores are.
That sounds like a Shel Silverstein book.
But you go past where the stuff is, and you realize, okay, we're now passing into there's going to be two more Texicos before we're just out of luck for a while.
And there's not going to be much warning about it, right?
How often did you...
road trip to Gainesville.
Not that often.
Not often.
Like I've mentioned numerous times, I camped there once with some friends.
I bought my first futon there in 1988.
Because Gainesville had it kind of slightly going on.
I mean, it was way more of a college town.
Per se, like what you think of as a classic Southern college town, which are some good ass towns, much more so than any town I was familiar with.
More than Tampa.
I mean, Tampa had a lot going on.
It's big.
I mean, you know.
Sure.
Big for what it is.
Jamming town.
St.
Pete, fine.
Kind of old.
No, but like you would go there because if you wanted a futon, that's where the futon store was.
Yeah.
Or whatever.
That's where I bought my six-foot-tall Husker Dudes and Arcade poster.
Even more than Tallahassee?
I would think Tallahassee, all the maybe people.
That's a super good point, and you're probably right.
I know them from slightly different times, because I was going to Gainesville when I was in college more.
which would be up to 1990, and then I moved to Tallahassee in 91.
And it was pretty hopping.
So the band I was in, eventually half the band I was in worked at the best record store in town, and probably in Florida, Vinyl Fever.
My friend Mike managed Vinyl Fever for 15 years.
Take that, other record stores in Florida.
Well, you know...
There was a band called John Todd that was out of Jacksonville.
They were a good band, but super nice guys.
And one of the guys, John Todd, maybe the titular John Todd, had a really good record store in Jacksonville.
Okay, so back to your original point, though.
But Jacksonville's pretty far over.
I mean, Gainesville, say what you will, Gainesville may be a hive of scum and villainy, but it's a place where you can dock your ship, you know?
Yeah, you dock your ship.
Jacksonville's out the way unless you're going to the Treasure Coast.
I think the reason that it's on this map of best road trips is like everything.
They want to take you to St.
Augustine.
Because it's old.
And then you're like stuck there.
You can't get out.
They can't get you to St.
Augustine and then turn you around.
Just so our listeners know, and this is something somebody in Florida would know, but I don't know how well this is known outside of Florida and nerd circles, but that's considered...
It's definitely the oldest city in Florida.
I think it's the oldest city in North America.
In what is now the United States.
United States, anyway.
I believe so.
Probably not Mexico, too.
Well, and you know, you get to go down to Daytona Beach and drive your drag racer up and down the Corvette they gave you when you joined the Mercury program up and down the beach as fast as you can.
Like, hell, that's a road trip.
I got mine from Gemini.
Oh, from Gemini.
Sure, sure, sure.
I don't have a joke here.
Just like saying Gemini.
Oh, by the way, I got a haircut.
I look like an astronaut.
You do now?
Yeah.
It's a good haircut.
It's a mighty good haircut.
It's a mighty good haircut.
When Judy was done, she said, you look thinner.
I said, thank you.
Oh, I gave myself a little trim the other day.
The little Lord cuts his hair exclusively now.
Oh, see, there you go.
High fives.
What would you do to yourself?
Well, that's the thing.
The last, oh, knock on wood.
The last five times I've cut my hair, I have apparently not fucked it up too badly.
Remind me, do you have a problem spot?
Apart from just the back in general?
No, just the back in general.
The back in general, it's so hard to do.
I am so good.
I can just run a two and a half or a three all over my head, leave it a little long on top.
But the back, I'm such a fucking monkey, John Roderick.
Me looking in a mirror at another mirror, and I might as well be looking at the 12th dimension.
I don't understand how to move the trimmer.
And I even tried the U-Haul trick or the trailer trick.
Which is, you know, the thing they teach you, the most intuitive thing you can ever teach another driver, which is drive backwards when you're backing up a trailer.
Drive backwards when you're backing up a trailer.
Turn left when you want to turn right.
You've got to turn the opposite of how you do.
You know what I'm talking about?
Oh, sure do.
There's a trick to that.
If you do the intuitive thing, you're going to go into a tiny circle of you all.
Yeah, you're getting jackknife up on the clover loop.
Jackknife, big rig.
Back up to the maze.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Slow in pockets, car fire.
All things I've learned from traffic reports.
I thought I had a really good new system of cutting the back.
Okay.
Which was when I sit and run my hands.
Make your daughter do it?
No, no, no.
I wouldn't acknowledge that possibility.
You've been busy?
Step, step, step, step.
But I run my hand around the back of my head, and if I found a little clump of hair that I thought didn't belong, I would just take the scissors, no look.
Okay.
Because the long ones are what you want.
You can't do anything about the ones you cut too short.
But you must needs do something about the ones that you unintentionally left too long, if I might say.
But what it ended up was I'd been doing it for two weeks, and I was at an event.
Without breaks?
No, no, no.
Just like every time I was sitting there and I ran my hand down, I was like, oh, there's another thing I don't like.
See, you pass right by that.
That would have been an entire episode of You Look Nice Today.
I don't know about that.
We have our standards, but...
No, but I think our listeners might enjoy knowing that it's kind of, it's more like the way you might, well, trim a bonsai.
Or, I don't know, or decide how a room should be arranged.
Just slight adjustments over two to seven weeks.
That's a haircut.
Exactly.
Slight adjustments.
Minor, tiny little adjustments.
Is there a chance some of it grew in a little bit in the time since the haircut technically started?
No.
Probably, yeah.
It's like painting the Golden Gate Bridge.
But none of the big, that's the thing.
You run your hand and you're like, there are no more.
long hair there are no more problem areas and then two days later you're like wait a minute where where was this i was i bet it was hiding in the long grass so i was at a thing i'm standing there i don't know what it was i'm standing somewhere watching something and uh there was someone there and i said hey would you take a look at the back of my head and and tell me if it looks even well that sounds like a con job and they looked and they stifled a you know muffled laugh
And they said, well, define even.
And I was like, I mean, does it just look normal?
And they said, well, it looks Roderick normal.
Oh, so this is someone with whom you're acquainted.
Yeah.
And I said, what does that mean?
It's within the normal parameters of John's home haircut, but not what someone would scientifically consider even.
Well, and I think they meant it even more generally, like the haircut...
Is part of what I would call Roderick normal, which is like and you also have you're wearing a suit jacket, but it's tucked into your hip waders and With my tucked in blazer And my James Joyce cowlick in the back I said, well, what does that mean?
And they said well
I mean, that's what you're going for, right?
And I said, ooh, what?
And so they took a picture in the back of my head.
What a perspicacious question, John, for both of you.
I know.
Because doesn't that leave you a little bit, like, sure, you're going to fake shock.
Hey, hey, hey, yeah, but hey.
But then you are going, God, what am I going for?
Well, that's the thing.
I thought what I was going for was a normal-looking haircut.
And so they took a picture, and I realized that every time I took one of these little –
things off, these little tags, these little skin tags made of hair.
I was not accomplishing what I thought I was accomplishing, which was a look of running a number three guide across the back of your head.
Were you doing it without context?
You're doing too much just this area, that area?
Had you gerrymandered, harrymandered?
I had harrymandered it.
Let's please not make that stick because that's horrible.
So that is the lowest.
It's pretty bad.
What it looked like was it looked like I had – the back of my head was a cheap trick guitar.
Like I just had these tiny little – Like maybe a houndstooth.
Yeah, it was.
It was a houndstooth.
Like a Sherlock Holmes cape.
Tiny little but completely randomly distributed so that it looked like a –
Oh, you had razzle-dazzle hair.
It was like a punk rock razzle-dazzle haircut.
But razzle-dazzle isn't like we're going to paint the ship this weird, erratic way so that you can't tell what shape it is from a distance.
Exactly.
You won't know how far I am, how big I am.
You don't know how much hair John's got.
Something that could be a drawing.
But what's crazy is that from the front, I've learned to do a pretty good job of making it look like a normal guy-ish haircut.
Yeah.
But the thing is, for the front, you don't need a plan.
If you were walking around me, if you were in an event and you were walking around me, you would have multiple different experiences of like, oh, this is business in the front, party in the back.
Except, wow, what kind of party is that?
And what kind of business is that?
Yeah, what kind of business is that?
You see, that's more like, I don't know, like Guadalcanal in the back.
But you don't need a plan.
Go like what Mike Tyson says.
If you're only just cutting from the front, you'll be fine.
I think that's what Mike Tyson said.
Yeah, he said, don't harrymander it.
Oh, boy.
But so what I did was I came home.
I found the dog trimmers.
I put on a number three guide.
Why do you use cut flippers?
And I ran the number three guide across the checkerboard.
And it brought the room together.
She's tight.
She's nice.
She's tight.
She's ahead of time.
She's tight.
Turn out the light.
Pull down the chain.
The high sign.
Ah.
That's what it did.
It did.
You did it.
You son of a bitch.
You did it.
You got a five neck haircut.
Yeah.
So anyway, I did a little trim yesterday around the ears.
And once again, after five, I feel like I'm still... I have not screwed it up beyond belief.
I'm going on a trip.
I'm going on a trip.
And I always screw up the hair, like, the night before the trip.
Oh, boy, that's a cautionary tale, John.
I used to do that with stuff involving, like, computers and data.
Like, one time I was like, I'm going to sync up my contacts while I'm waiting for the plane to take off.
And then all the contacts were gone, because that's what would happen at the time.
But you have to be...
Yeah, you really need to work only on – I feel you're different than I am, and you love adventure, so I shouldn't even say this.
But I think you have to really focus on critical path items that will get you where you're going.
And, boy, you don't want to do anything that could cause like a 2X –
a 2x amount of time to be spent in order to be able to get away and if you end up looking like i don't know like some kind like you've been in some kind of an automobile accident or you get free to carload you know yeah that's not good your family's not gonna like that if your family's going if you go find i'm not suggesting anybody do this but if you go find uh like a timeline of long winter's promo photos from 2001 to 2010
And you arrange them chronologically.
You can pretty much know that I gave myself a haircut one to two days before every one of those photos was taken.
And that's why I look like that.
I never it's not I did not have a plan.
I did not have an idea that I was.
That I was trying to style myself a cool way.
That's the corollary, the second rule of Tyson, is you don't talk about Tyson.
But the third rule of Tyson is that even if you didn't have a plan, you can still get punched in the face.
What's amazing about those promo photos is if you put a dot on that timeline equidistant between each of those promo photos, where I was on those dots the furthest away from each haircut,
And then you took all those data points and put them together in a photo... I may need you to dumb this way down for me.
I'm saying that in between... Is it a timeline or a map?
It's a time... Let's call it a timeline, but it's also a psychological map.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
Let's say there's two haircuts six months apart.
Right.
Then there's a middle point.
A little shaggy.
It's time to really do something about this.
Yeah.
Now I've got a photo shoot tomorrow, so I should probably shave my beard first in a comedy way with long sideburns and a mustache.
The comedy biker mustache.
You used to charge extra for that if memory serves.
And then eventually get frustrated and cut it all off and then keep cutting my hair until my head looks like a mushroom.
And then find the craziest glasses I own and show up for the photo shoot in a polyester jacket and be like, this is the look of the new record apparently.
But if you went to that three months later period.
between photo shoots and you and you did that over 10 year period and found those i'm imagining like draftsman's tools like maybe some like an isosceles triangle a t-square and then and then a compass is the final the final line is going to be that compass where they show you that that's the dot that's like the um the uh the the middle of the of the the radius and the circumference and whatnot is john at three months
Right, exactly.
Because sometimes it's going to be a year, sometimes it's going to be six weeks.
But only the compass knows.
If you took all of those pictures and put them next to each other, I would look the same in every one of them.
Because my natural state... Well, at least your watch is right two times a day.
That's it.
My natural state was kind of a scruffy beard and messy hair and normal glasses that I wear all the time.
And then every time I had a photo shoot, I would change, I would completely change it.
Based on the professional photos of the Long Winters, I look like an absolute insane person.
You look like, I mean, there's like two fairly, well, how could I, I mean, I wasn't there for any of this, but I know or believe based on information that there are sets of photos of the band that look like they were taken professionally at a sitting.
And the main impression I walk away with each time is that you own a lot of like, what's the guy's name?
Fred Perry, Fred Schultz, Fred Wertheimer.
What's his name?
Who's the shirt man?
Fred Perry shirts.
Okay, well, you got shirts with collars.
And then at some point, a photographer, who I imagine being a woman with lots of tattoos, walks in with a moving box full of props.
Not quite carrot top level, but more like posing for a Civil War photo at the Kmart.
And they say, guys, grab any kind of hat, walking stick.
It doesn't need to be related.
Just everybody grabs something.
You know what it's like?
It's kind of like a photo booth that, like, you know, your cousin, you don't like getting married.
A photo booth at her wedding.
It's like that.
You put on the big glasses that say 2023.
Here's the problem, though.
Here's the problem.
The problem is that that box of props I brought.
LAUGHTER
I was like, oh, we're going to a photo shoot.
Let's see.
I haven't been in one of those manual elevators for a while.
It's a long way getting up here.
What you got there, John?
I'll bring a top hat and some steampunk goggles and let's say like a little shovel.
I'm imagining something like that Steve Martin's character would be carrying from his home.
You've got a chair.
You've got a paddle ball game.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's right.
All that stuff.
And I would put it out.
There's only one with top hats, and it's Sean, I think.
Yeah, but the thing is, at that point, and I think you can remember this time, Sean thought, maybe I'll just be top hat guy.
Tom Petty did it.
Slash did it.
Who's the last top hat you saw?
Oh, the guy who was – the guy on Deadwood from Nuttall's number 10?
Yeah, but he's talking about a band.
He's a band top hat guy.
A band top hat guy you got – well, it depends on – you know, I've been noticing more and more, maybe because of Deadwood, maybe because of other things.
See, there's kind of had Abraham Lincoln – Abraham Lincoln.
Abraham Lincoln wore, which I believe is called a stovepipe hat.
And that is different from a – there are many kinds of top hats.
There's a kind of top hat that was a pretty prominent top hat for a long time that is tapered, right?
It isn't just the stovepipe is where it goes straight up like skinny jeans.
But you take somebody – Captain Beefheart wore a hat like that a lot, right?
The guy from Nuttall's number 10 a lot.
Do you know the kind I'm talking about?
It's not as tall as a Lincoln.
Now, do you call that a top hat?
What do you call that?
Well, so the Captain Beefheart one— It tapers up, right?
Well, and the one that Sean was wearing, I think of those as Mad Hatter top hats, which go— Oh, it's got the— It's narrower in the middle, and then it comes out in broad.
Yeah, like a lady's high heel in 1962.
It's got a little bit of a taper to it.
Yeah, yeah.
I get it.
But then it gets fatter again at the top, and it's pretty sassy.
It's not like a Johnny Go to the Opera.
I think it's very slenderizing.
Yeah, yeah, right.
It's something that somebody, you know, somebody like a Slash or a Sean Nelson.
Or Sean, yeah.
The thing is, Slash started getting them made in leather pretty early.
And that's a bad look on anybody.
I mean, without, oh, my God, I almost did a meta hat on a hat joke.
Because I was about to say it's like putting a hat on a hat on a hat joke.
Oh, boy.
Putting a hat on a hat on a hat joke?
On a hat joke, yeah.
Oh, wow.
I may have to remove that.
Do you know that anecdote?
Beep.
The which one?
Hat on a hat.
The hat on a hat anecdote?
Yeah.
Anecdote?
Tell it again.
Can I tell it real quick?
Do you mind?
Yeah.
Oh, no, no.
I love it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
is kind of a visual joke but you'll get it and he says there was some kind of a really asinine premise to something where it was going to be like well like you know I'm an alien but I'm also in the Rolling Stones or something like that and whatever and you'll know exactly what this term means and Seth Meyers goes hmm I don't know that's kind of a hat on a hat
Meaning that you've got a funny thing here, but when you put a hat on a hat, unless you know what you're doing, it's not going to make it funnier.
It's going to make everybody very uncomfortable because it's much less funny.
He went out in dress, he did it, and it bombed.
His first thing he'd ever written and performed on SNL before he got famous for James Mason and Vincent Price, right?
And from the side of the stage, purportedly, he sees Seth Meyers kind of pinching his thumb and his forefinger together, raising it to his forehead and lifting a make-believe hat from his head and another hat with his other hand.
Yeah.
Because he put a hat on a hat.
He took off, he tipped his hat, and then under it, there was another imaginary hat, and he tipped that one too.
Now that, see, now that is, on the face of it, a funny hat on a hat joke.
It says, as John Syracuse says, the exception that proves the rule.
But Sean is, I think the thing with Sean, there's, again, more things we talk about all the time here, is that you're both taller than people might realize, especially Sean.
Sean, wouldn't you say, it's not fair to say, somebody imagines Sean six feet tall, probably.
Like, he looks kind of tall.
Yeah.
But he's taller than that.
There are a lot of tall Seattle rockers, you know, Ben Shepard.
He's a big presence for somebody who can be very, like, reserved and, like, I don't know, it's hard to describe Sean.
I like Sean a lot.
But, like, he's big in a room.
Like, even though he slouches, you know, like, you know, the BFG or something.
Like, he's trying to, like, fit into the space that's there.
Whereas you, you expand to inhabit the room.
I do inhabit the room.
Yeah.
What kind of hat is that?
I'm going to find out.
Ben Shepard of Soundgarden, the bass player, and Chris Novoselic, the bass player of Nirvana.
Oh, I know.
He's tall as shit.
And Duff McKagan, the bass player of Guns N' Roses, who's also from Seattle.
They're all really tall dudes.
Tall, tall, tall.
Huh.
Taller McTollersons.
Yeah.
And then Sean, of course, also tall, taller than me.
And like you say, he's big.
If you give him a chair, he'll use every inch of the chair.
oh like my people in the buffalo that's right that's right they there will no there will be no part of that chair that sean isn't isn't you know you're kind of making it sound like he's heavy no no not big like uh is the chair reinforced john not chonky he chonk he's just uh he's just he fills you know he fills the garment oh i just sent you something that
Whenever you're ready to get back into the music stuff and all the promotion they're into, I would be pretty into you getting one of these for somebody in the band.
Yeah, well, that's the thing.
If you look at that, the picture you're talking about, the Longwinters picture where Sean is wearing a top hat.
When I was like in, I don't know, sixth grade, I used to walk home from elementary school along Fireweed Lane.
This is when you would conjure fireballs.
Oh, that was later.
That was in seventh grade.
Just real quick, though, before I drop the thread, can I just read you what this is called?
Oh, God, there's a whole bunch of these.
Steampunk hat here.
Retro style steampunk, top hat, cosplay, headgear, black costume, Halloween.
So it's a fake, well, all steampunk is fake.
Again, prima facie.
But it's got goggles.
It's got, for some reason, like a, not even a Boy Scout, a Cub Scout.
No, it's just above a Cracker Jack level compass.
Yeah, compass.
And then there's gears.
And the important thing about this, the gears are not attached to each other, John.
The gears are not driving anything except for your inflated sense of worth.
They're just glued to this fiberglass top hat.
Yeah.
But the picture, I don't know if you have the long winter's picture called up.
I'm going to get it.
When I was in sixth grade, I used to go to the Army Navy surplus store there on Fireweed Lane that was run by an old Vietnam vet who didn't like kids in his store.
And I would go in and hang out there and ask questions about, I'd pull out gas mask and say, what's this from?
And he'd be like, get out of here.
and I bought a lot of things there.
I bought an old orange flight suit from the Korean War that I wore all the time.
Did you get one of those German jackets with the flag still on it?
I got all of that stuff.
What about a bag?
A bag that's a little too small to do anything good, but it's from Germany?
Yeah, because it was a gas mask bag from when you had gas masks.
I was in there one time, and he had a little bin of pilot helmets that had
that were like fabric and they had leather ear pieces.
So kind of like the classic Snoopy or Ellie in Up.
Very much.
Or for that matter, Tom Hardy in Dunkirk.
Very much.
That is exactly what they were supposed to, that was what this was.
It was a bin of those from some Air Force somewhere that obviously had upgraded to wearing helmets, real helmets, and they didn't need these leather-eared things.
And I was like, whoa, you mean I could just buy one?
And he's like, how many times do I have to tell you don't come in here?
But also, like, no, at first, wouldn't you be thinking, like, oh, no, you'd have to, like, show some identification that you're a pilot to get this?
That would be my thought.
Well, and the thing is, I was in there every day.
He gave me that treatment every day.
It was like my first girlfriend's dad.
I don't want to sound defiant, John, but who's a better customer than you at this point?
He wanted me in there.
He was a lonely old man.
Yes.
He probably loved you.
When I say old, he's probably 40.
But anyway, so I bought this thing, and I would wear it.
I wore it all the time.
And I kept it along with my flight suit and my bags.
Oh, that's what Eric's wearing.
And so in high school, I had it.
And this friend of my sister's, Matt Parch, was over.
And he was like, oh, I love that.
Can I borrow that?
And I was like, sure, you can borrow it.
And he took it.
And it was gone.
I thought I would never see it again.
I thought it was like the Muni shirt that you gave me.
I'm never going to see that again.
My impression was this was a long term loan.
But six months later, he shows back up at the house and he's like, oh, hey, man, you know, I wanted to give you your helmet back.
But I modded it.
And I was like, you modded it.
Oh, no.
He was like, yeah, I put headphones in it.
Oh, what?
Like from a Walkman?
Yeah, he had taken a part of a set of Walkman headphones and put it actually wired it for sound.
That's clever.
So now you can put it on and plug it into your Walkman.
And feel more like a real pilot, because you could always, at the right time, once the switch has been installed, you could flip over to the local comms channel with your procedure words.
That's right.
You'd be ready.
That's right.
You'd go from Adam and the ants right into like Tora, Tora, Tora.
If I was more, and we've talked about this on the show for years, if I was just slightly more colorful.
And could have just won that every day all the way through high school.
Just been the guy that was like, it's like your Jughead hat, right?
Because it's not like you can't commit to things.
You've committed to a lot of very odd, very strange things.
You just probably didn't commit to the right thing.
Yeah, that's right.
I committed to cutting my own hair for 25 years.
Committed to that.
The thing is, committing to a theory like cutting your own hair looks to the outside world like you have no plan at all because every time you walk out the door, you look completely different.
That's a Bush League response, John.
Well, but they don't realize that there's a theory behind it that's been engaged the entire time.
But if I had just picked this hat, I could be the bombardier hat guy.
I could be like D-Day in Animal House.
No, what's the whistle?
That was Mr. Fox.
Doesn't he have a whistle?
D-Day?
Remember he rides a motorcycle down the steps?
He was always my favorite.
Yeah, he was fun.
Did you know he's the bailiff in the Ralph Macchio murder movie?
My Cousin Vinny?
Did you know he's the bailiff in that?
No, really?
He's the bailiff.
It works for Herman Munster.
Oh, no kidding.
Who I always thought looked a lot like Alan Ruck.
So I pulled up this photo.
You're wearing what I would call, and this looks better on you than it should.
So first of all, just to get the big ones out of the way, Sean is wearing what I would consider a classic top hat.
Not a stovepipe, but it's got to taper.
Eric is wearing the Walkman helmet.
You have what I would describe as a, don't get mad at me, is that a Panama hat?
That is a Homburg.
And that Homburg belonged to Sean Nelson's grandfather.
It's the one bit of flair in that whole thing.
Oh, he bought it when he moved to Argentina?
Yeah, it didn't come in my basket of fun tricks.
Sean was like, oh, this hat doesn't fit me anymore because I got too much hair.
Do you want it?
And I was like, do I want it?
Sure.
It's a little bit moth-eaten.
Yeah, but like the thing is that that's one of those hats where there's just there's so many guys who think they can wear a hat and they oughtn't wear a hat.
And if they put that hat on, they would look so stupid.
It looks really I sound like Rodney Dangerfield, but the hat actually literally does look good on you.
Yeah, I liked it.
And again, if we could have... Unfortunately, somebody did write... It presages a future look.
I mean, I don't think of you as a guy that would wear this hat at that time, but today in the cruise and aftertimes, this is right up your alley.
Well, so I've been thinking about this because, as I said, I have decided to go on a trip.
And as a man of a certain age, now I have to think about
Do I just go on a trip with a bag that's just got my normal clothes in it, some jeans and some shirts?
And do I, on my trip, just dress like myself on a trip?
Or do I take trip clothes?
which are not what I would normally wear, which are somehow aspirational of a kind of trip I want to be on.
Oh, I 100 percent.
There's that line when Jerry's going to take George to L.A.
with him, fly there.
And George has all the bags.
And Jerry says, who are you, Diana Ross?
And I always think—I think of that every time I pack, because, like, I pack a version of myself that has no relationship to do with my day-to-day life.
Yes.
I will wear the same clothes for days.
Or not.
The problem is there's not even a plan.
Not even a plan.
Like, it'll just be—I could change three times a day, or I could change in a couple weeks.
I don't really—I'm not paying—but, like, I dress for the many moods of George, and I'm bringing along all of my Supremes costumes.
So you're saying—
It's because you're talking about identity is what you're talking about.
Yes.
You're talking a little bit about presentation, but really you're talking about identity.
What show is it that you will take on the road?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, and all those years on the cruise, the cruises that I did.
um i took a whole costume and for a lot of the time so much more clothes requirement for that trip than i'd ever realized i was utterly incurious about it i don't know what i would have done different i certainly would not have brought quote-unquote fancy pants with me let alone like five tuxedos but i made a joke earlier about mikey movies with mikey who i had dinner with a couple nights on the cruise really liked him yeah did you knew um
Mikey, he looked great in everything he did.
He showed up.
He looked sharp as a tack.
Great hair, great everything everywhere.
And everybody, our usual dinner companions, dinner people, everybody always looked great.
And I looked like I just got thrown out of a frishes.
Well, but this is the thing.
If you were on those cruises a lot…
you would know that Paul Soborn went to a Kmart in the port of debarkation the night before the show and spent $25 on an entire wardrobe.
David Reese brought one pair of shoes, one blazer, and three ties.
Not everybody brought, some people, Paul F. Tompkins brought 17 tuxedos.
But most people just wore their normal clothes and they dressed it up with – like Paul thought he could fool you if he put like a plastic carnation in the lapel of his Gaia Berra shirt.
You can zhuzh it up a little bit.
But for me now, like going on a trip, I feel like –
Do I want to be, let's say, for instance, that I went to Tokyo.
Do I want to be me, Seattle John, who's just slumping around?
Or do I want to be Tokyo John?
And who even is Tokyo John?
Never been to Tokyo.
I don't know who Tokyo John even is.
It's all about like – maybe a dumb guy way to put it that makes sense to me is am I going to think a lot about what I'm saying to the people there or am I more interested in what it is that they sort of see in me?
In other words, am I going to announce who I am or am I going to go in a little more smoothly?
You're not going to wear like a full samurai outfit or something probably.
Yeah.
No, no, no, but it's also like when I walk out.
How do you want to distinguish yourself might be another way.
Yeah, well, and even if it's never about them, but it's about, like, am I in Tokyo as...
Just me?
Or am I there as the me that I always hoped to be when I was in Tokyo?
And which me am I even talking about?
I think you should assume that you're an emissary for something.
Yeah, but I feel like, am I an emissary for the Tokyo that is the Blade Runner Tokyo?
Or is it the hyper salvage gene menswear Tokyo?
Or is it the... Lost in Translation Tokyo.
Lost in Translations Tokyo?
Is it like, I'm a creepy middle-aged American in Tokyo?
Is it the, I'm here because I'm a weeaboo and I love the culture?
Like, which of them?
And could it be all of them?
I think they're called, you could be a Harajuku girl.
A Harajuku girl?
You could hang out on that bridge with a pretty parasol.
I could be a waifu pillow or a husbandfu pillow.
Oh.
Waifu.
Now, did you just make up that word racistly?
No.
No, waifu is... Because it sounds like you just said... It's kind of like when I talk about the way Atari speaks in the movie I Love Dogs, and he says, Sputza.
He holds up a picture of his dog Spots, which, by the way, is a really good movie if your kid can stand a little bit of dog danger.
Sputza.
I think she can.
And what was yours?
Oh, so Waifu is a kind of... And those are big-ass anime pillows, right?
They're not for fucking, right?
No, I think they're for fucking.
It's just like furries are... It's not about sex.
No, it's about sex.
No, come on.
Furries?
What?
But no, Waifu is a whole concept.
It's a whole universe of like, I don't leave the house, but I am married to this anime character.
Oh, I see.
This sounds made up.
And they're my perfect mate.
And you don't think it's made up a little bit.
Who even knows now?
How could you find out without going to Japan yourself?
Could you dress as a waifu pillow?
How deep would I have to dig into the culture to be confident that anything wasn't completely made up at this point?
You know, I don't normally say things that are this.
I hope I don't normally say things that are this broad because I'd like to think the context and subtlety is really it's the ultimate seasoning in life is like understanding those kinds of things.
But if there's anything where you're thinking about doing something in Japan, I would say don't do anything in Japan.
Keep doing less than you think you should.
Oh, do less.
I had a lady friend that used to say it's true.
With makeup, it's true.
Take out all the jewelry you want to wear and put half of it away.
Take out all of your makeup you want to wear and put half of it away.
In your case, I think you should put away almost everything that you plan to do.
Well, so I'm not going to Japan.
What I did was I decided... Oh, fool me once!
I know, I fooled you.
God damn it.
Fooled you, I fooled you.
I fooled you.
Wait, wait, I know that.
Rock Island Line!
There you go!
Ha ha!
I love the name Lonnie Donegan.
I just like saying Lonnie Donegan.
Because Donegan, Doyle Lonegan was the guy in the sting.
And I've always loved that name.
Yeah.
Doyle Lonegan.
Doyle Lonegan.
No, so what I did was I bought a ticket to Israel.
okay and i'm gonna go to israel and then to jordan and i think it's a lebanon and i've been thinking about being this is the first time hearing about this it's really neither here nor there we're still on the calendar for next uh monday but that's that's fine okay so it's two weeks from now two weeks from now so we're they're gonna be but i might be able to do a show from there
which would be very weird.
You know, are there Israeli podcasts?
Well, technically they're all Palestinian podcasts, but let's talk about that offline.
Oh, that's right.
And I'll also be going to Palestine in the book, but I can't go to Gaza.
I've tried, I've looked into it and they're like, no, no, no, no, no.
You can't do that.
But you can go to the West Bank.
That's where that's I think Gaza Gaza Strip, right?
That's that's where Scarlett Johansson personally makes all the soda streams Oh, is that right?
Yeah, she had she had actually she's like a very hitchhiker's guide She shows up and says the plans have been here for a while.
Y'all got bounce because we need to make some fizzy water Did you read about that on the internet?
Is that where you?
Yes a couple years ago back when I was a soda stream man Oh, and they're made in in in Gaza
You know, I'm not going to air this episode.
Okay.
So it doesn't matter what I say.
Who knows?
I know.
I know.
Really.
But, well, you know, on the other hand, let's just keep it between the lines.
Palestine, eh?
Yeah.
Jordan.
You know, the thing is the distances are very small there.
Well, that's – yeah.
So you can go – did you know there's a train from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem that's like 25 minutes is all it takes to get from one side of the country to the other?
I'm not doing this to be silly.
Tel Aviv was until very recently the capital, yes?
Yeah.
Tel Aviv is the modern city on the beach.
And then everybody wants Jerusalem to be the capital of their country.
But where's Jerusalem?
I mean like – okay, let me put it this way.
What is the –
Hey, you know what?
There's no wrong answers.
Oh, that's good.
Yeah.
It's like improv or brainstorming.
Listen, in Palestine, there are no wrong answers.
Palestine is going to make the 2020s.
But what's the consensus opinion on the country in which Jerusalem is?
it is extant is it considered israel this is the thing so isn't it really hot what in the temperature wise or i mean isn't it i mean i'm not i'm not trying to be a dick about this but you know palestine used to be a thing that england had and then it became a thing that israel had and then right so like but is it considered is it considered everywhere including palestine to be in israel i don't know the answer to this
No.
So – It's very contested.
It's the holiest site on earth, all that, right?
After the Israeli war of 1948, the war of independence, let's call it, the war of existences, Jerusalem would have been divided –
Half of the city would have been in Palestine and half of the city would have been in the new Israel.
We really thought that worked in the 40s, didn't we?
Oh, there was a lot that we didn't understand.
We did that with Berlin.
We did a lot of the city dividing.
Yeah.
And then that stayed.
And then there were several different wars that are all in the history books.
And Jordan took over the West Bank.
And then in 1968, everybody got pushed out of there.
These are the 68 borders we keep hearing about.
Those 68 borders.
Different from the 68 comeback.
Don't confuse those.
That's right.
That's right.
The 68 comeback.
Elvis knew how to dress for that, let's just say.
Elvis was a hero to most.
Yes.
Elvis Presley was a model citizen.
He never meant shit to me, straight out racist, that mother was simple and plain.
Motherfucking man John Wayne, because I'm black and I'm proud, I'm hype, plus I'm amped, and most of my heroes don't appear on no stamps.
Come on.
It's the story.
Come on.
It's the story of... Sorry, you're going there.
But no, this changes everything, because I was imagining you deciding whether you're going to bring your camo kimono, which sounds...
Whose album would that be?
Oh, oh, Ted Nugent.
Camo Kimono.
That's Ted Nugent.
It is Ted Nugent.
At first I thought Sparks, but then I'm like, no, Sparks already has Kimono My House.
Kimono My House.
Camo Kimono.
Wow, wow, wow, wow.
Well, so anyway, just to answer your question.
Sorry, you go all the way now.
Just bring it all.
Both the Israelis and the Palestinians both claim Jerusalem as their capital, and...
The problem was that the international community in trying to keep the peace did not agree to like super-duper recognize it as the capital of any nation –
And then Donald Trump.
But it wasn't, right, right.
But back in the day in the 40s and 48, all in the 40s.
But it was just, it was never an easy, it was never an easy thing in the midst of a lot of other not easy things, including the Shoah.
It was not an easy decision to have the events of 1948 happening.
Yeah.
And that's still fresh in your memory in 1968.
Oh, you're talking about the fact that the Jews came to Israel?
Yeah.
And also it was all owned by England before that, right?
Oh, well, it was an Ottoman territory for hundreds and hundreds of years.
Turkey.
So the Turks controlled all of it.
Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan.
It was all part of the Ottoman Empire.
Who was the Judea people?
Judean people's front, of course.
The Judean people's front.
No, but like the Judea, the Jesus lands.
Was that Britain as well?
Oh, so after the war, if you watch the wonderful film, you may have heard of Lawrence of Arabia.
Lawrence of Arabia.
It really covers all of this.
Okay.
And part of what Lawrence was doing in Lawrence of Arabia was he was going around trying to get all of it.
Look when he blows out the match.
See, he's so good.
Yeah.
But he went around under false kind of pretenses that he wasn't aware of.
He went around promising all the disparate Arab tribes of the region that they would have independence from the Turks if they helped the British fight.
The Turks who were sided with the Germans.
Was Omar Sharif like his Sherpa, so to speak, for that?
No, no, no, no.
He was a prince.
He was a lord of his tribe.
I haven't seen it since college.
Oh, I highly recommend it.
Have you ever seen the movie Master and Commander?
Oh, it's so good.
It's really good.
But anyway, what happened was at the end of World War I, as part of the whole project that the British and the French did of dividing up the world, they promised everybody all the different...
Places in the world.
Oh, you know, we'll we'll let you have your independence and then they were like, oh except we weren't being sincere about that and they cut the Middle East So the the French got Syria and Lebanon and the British took Jordan and Palestine Chimney and they didn't want the Jews in there either but during
But in the 19th century in Europe, the Zionist movement started where European Jews were like, you know what?
We got to get out of Europe.
It sucks here.
We need our own country and we're going to take this ship back to Palestine all the way.
And it needs to be nicer than Liberia.
It has to be nicer than Liberia.
I know.
You guys keep talking about Liberia.
I had a friend who went to Liberia, and I heard it's not really all that nice.
Michael Chabon would suggest that maybe Alaska would have been a good place.
There was some suggestion that the Jews— Who said it?
Cavalier or Clay?
I never remember.
Oh, it was his later book.
Oh, Das Wonder Boys.
Das Wonder Boys.
Yeah.
that's wonder boys in the band there was some suggestion that that um that arizona and new mexico be made a like a jewish homeland but the jews were like now it is if we're gonna live in a thank oh wow where's my bell don't worry it's not we're not putting it out don't worry uh they were like if we're gonna live in a in a sandy wasteland what what it's gonna kill me to be somewhere with a dry climate
Oh, my, I'm feeling a little keflempt.
I've got keflempt.
So anyway, so the Zionists were already going there without, you know, without getting permission from anybody, but they were doing it on the download, like one at a time.
Like, no, no, no, let's work.
We're going to go.
We're going to buy it.
We're going to buy a little farms.
We're going to set our shit up so that when, so that in 1948, it was like, basically everybody looked around and went, wait a minute, what?
And then it was too late.
And then it was like, boom, now there's a war and now there's two countries.
And then here we are and now here here we are today now here We are and here and there you go and this is why I want to go right because I I really like everything I was not that wrong by guessing maybe Theodore Herzl was involved with this stuff Oh, yeah, it's all it's all it's all tied together if you will it it is no dream But I've got I've got Palestine syndrome
Which is – That's different from Jerusalem syndrome.
There's a part of me that wants to be in Jerusalem in 1948 and in 1968 and in 1972 and in 1978.
Right.
And I definitely want to be in Beirut in 1982 and all of those inmates –
Like, I'm packing my bag and I've got my 1950 flight suit.
You want to be there the year before the shit went down, basically?
I want to be there in the shit.
You want to go meet those Marines.
I want to see Beirut when it was the Paris of the East.
I want to be on a kibbutz in 1950.
People are hard on Assad, but that could be a very pretty country sometimes.
You know?
I missed my chance to go to Syria.
That door is closed.
That's a shame.
He's on a lot of billboards there.
I know.
Also, I listened to NPR for the second time in a year today, and I heard that the Erdogan— They don't have a blue check, you know.
They didn't get a blue check.
I know.
That's a goddamn shame.
Erdogan is running for re-election, apparently.
Oh, I'm sure that'll be a fair and free election.
Speaking of the Ottoman Empire, yeah.
I'm sorry, keep going.
Are you keeping this under your top hat?
Are you going on your own, it sounds like?
Yeah, I am.
And I wasn't mentioning it to anybody, but I just realized, well, first of all, I'm not going to be here in a couple of weeks for a couple of weeks.
But also, I'm excited about it because I have not made my own trip
where somebody didn't send me an email and say, hey, can you play at our thing?
And I say yes.
You think this has been bubbling for some weeks now.
Well, it has.
In retrospect, I mean, I think one could, if you ever, this episode won't air, unfortunately.
But if you were to go back and listen to the last six weeks of this program, I think you'd...
Whether that's talking about, you know, there's different ways in which I think you have been tackling as ever your fighting or wrangling with your idea of like, what is your place in the world, let alone history?
But also like, what do we do to make sure that we get into the right colors of our zones to keep pursuing the world?
It's all been, and yeah, I think this doesn't strike me as out of nowhere at all.
It sounds like the result of a lot of thinking about this.
Yeah.
Well, yes, but all the thinking produced a flurry of action, which was me going online and realizing that I had enough Delta miles to get a ticket to Tel Aviv for free.
And I didn't know that I had enough miles.
And it was weird because, you know, sometimes you go on and you're like, oh, I want to go up to economy comfort.
And Delta is like, oh, that'll be 75,000 Delta miles.
Yeah.
Anytime you ask for like a diversion from that, like it's almost like resetting, restarting.
Right.
It was insane.
Like what?
I would never.
But for 100,000 Delta miles, which is what I have accumulated over the course of 15 years of flying on that stupid airline.
Yeah.
There just happened to be.
A ticket to Tel Aviv and back in economy comfort.
Not even in steerage.
You threaded a needle, my friend.
Not even in steerage.
And if I tried to do it a day before or a day later, I don't even know if it would have.
It's probably three times that much money.
Jesus.
Or that much fake money.
No, no, no.
I mean, I'm agog that this worked out seemingly as well as it has.
Well, so, but here's the thing.
That was something I could do at two o'clock on the
Oh, you know what?
Fuck it.
I'm just going to do it.
Let's, well, here's what I'm going to do.
I'm going to see.
Why don't I just go see?
And then once I saw.
Doesn't cost anything to look.
It doesn't cost anything to look.
Once I saw and I was like, whoa.
And then I closed my computer and I paced around and I was like, well, now there are a thousand reasons not to do it.
And, but there are a thousand reasons to do it.
What do you do when you have a thousand versus a thousand?
Well, you, you cancel them.
You slice off all the zeros.
Then it's one against one, right?
Then it's like a one plus one equals equals one.
Or does it equal zero?
Or does it equal?
How many does it, I don't even know.
I'm not good at algebra.
And then I just opened the computer back up and I was like, buy it.
Boom.
Bought it.
All my best decisions have been made.
You had not talked about this with any family members?
Well, so I'd been saying to everybody, kind of like I'd been saying to you, like something, I got to do something.
I don't know what.
I have to do something.
Wanderlust.
I'm going to hankering.
All right.
I don't even know.
It wasn't wandering.
It's discovering.
Discover lust.
Something.
Something.
I don't like the sound of that.
And discover lust.
Mm-hmm.
And, and everybody, everybody in the, in the, in the, my larger world was like, uh-huh.
Okay.
Well, that sounds a little scary to us because sometimes you go off and on a two week motorcycle trip in the mountains where there's no phone service.
And sometimes that just means that you go get married and then, then claim to be divorced.
And what, what, we don't know what this is going to be.
So we're just going to nod and smile.
And so then when I arrived the next day and was like, I bought a ticket to Israel and
Everybody said, that's fine.
And I was like, I know, right?
And they were like, sort of fine.
What are your intentions, sir?
And I was like, I don't intend to get kidnapped by Hezbollah.
It's not that I don't intend to, but if it happens, it happens.
Just make sure you got the right clothes for it.
So I'm now in the state of both trying to pack, trying to decide which me I'm taking or which me's I'm taking.
And also in negotiations around here with everybody so that me being gone for not an entire two weeks, just shy of two weeks.
So that isn't going to be super disruptive.
And I picked it in a time where there's not much going on.
It's a static time.
Like this week, for instance.
My daughter's mother is in your fair city, San Francisco.
Oh, because it's the annual RSA conference.
Oh, secret.
I'm not maintaining OPSEC except there are 75,000 black hats wandering around there or whatever.
But she goes every year.
This is her 11th year or something like that.
She's down there staying in a hotel on Union Square if you want to try and find her.
So it sounds like you found, the best you could in the middle of the night, you found a spot that was not going to be overly disruptive to the Klan.
Yeah, and the only thing is that...
Like, within the family now, there's, I mean, we've always traveled, both of us.
Both Marlo's parents have traveled.
And it was always for work.
I always went out of town 15, 20 times a year, sometimes gone for a week or two.
But it was for work because I was doing a show.
I was at a festival.
I was on a thing.
And now, since the pandemic, I realized the other day the pandemic really aged me like it did a lot of us.
Since the pandemic, I haven't done anything.
There hasn't been any work and I haven't done it.
But her mother still travels a lot.
She goes on 10 trips a year to different security conferences and whatnot.
And so the psychological obstacle or thing I had to overcome was saying to myself, in some oblique way, I need to go and it's a work trip.
Right, right.
I'm not going to get massages.
It's not a spot trip.
You've been talking about wanting to – not wanting to.
What's the word I want to use?
You've been working your way towards something big about, like, I need to be more assertive about doing stuff I don't need to, quote, unquote, do with travel.
I felt like there's a sense of adventure I need to tap back into that's about more than just the quotidian here to there of going on a cruise or whatever.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, and, and understanding that that is for work for lack of a better, well, I mean, what do I do for work?
What do you do for work?
You know, um, I can't just have my work be sitting and looking at the internet until it's time to record a podcast.
That can't just be how I spend the next 20 years.
I got you covered for that.
See, thank you.
And most of, and I know a lot of our listeners are like, Hey, I'll watch the internet for you while you're gone.
Yeah.
So anyway, so not this week, not next week, but the week after, I'm going to, so the 5th of May, whenever that is, that may be three weeks from now.
I don't know because I don't know what the date is.
It's still early days for this journey.
Yeah.
I'm sorry about the beeping outside, by the way.
Sorry about that.
Oh, that just comes with the territory.
Fifth of May, I'm going to go, and then I'll be there, and then, you know, and inshallah, I'll make it back.
I'll make it back here, and I'll be back in America, but I'll know more.
Have you... So when did you decide to do this?
When did you pull the trigger on this ticket?
Not that long ago.
Over the last few days.
Since we last recorded.
Yeah, since we talked.
Okay.
Do... This is so difficult to ask.
Do you have a governing thought technology about this trip, either in the sense of are there, like, 50 different things you're debating for, like, what this trip is about or for, or the completely understandable corollary, which is, like, this is a non-planning trip, a non-goals trip.
Like, what do you have – how will you know if it's going well while you're doing it?
I don't think there's a way for me to be there where it won't be going well because I can just pull over to the side of anywhere, lean up against a wall and just watch everything that's happening and be, I think, in hog heaven.
I think I could just sit
on the Temple Mount on some, I don't know, some rock somewhere.
Be careful.
Be careful.
Just, you know.
And just watch.
I just watch.
And it would be, and I would be getting everything that I needed.
And I'm not somebody that's like, well, I want to go to Petra and I want to go to the Dead Sea and I want to go to floating the thing and I want to climb up to the top of the thing.
But I, in general, usually when I'm on a trip, I end up doing those things because you go where the day takes you.
Yeah.
The problem now is that I'm 54.
And I no longer feel exactly like I should be getting off an airplane in Tel Aviv on a Friday night without anywhere to stay yet planned.
Oh, I see.
Especially since, you know, the Sabbath comes crashing down on Friday nights.
They're pretty good about it there, aren't they?
I think for the most part.
Yeah.
And so what I'm not good at is advanced planning.
Like, oh, I've got all these reservations and all these, you know, like a calendar.
So I'm having to scramble a little bit just to put those technologies under my fingers.
You've gotten one vector of this mostly, okay, as far as you know, which is the getting a ticket and the being away, but now there's still a lot more roughing in.
You've got the basic, if this were a barn raising, you would have the timbers that make the walls, but no walls and roof yet.
Yeah, and I think...
i'm not sure but you know how long has it been since i had a trip what since i went on a trip where somebody wasn't at the other end holding a sign that said roderick and and wanting to pick up my bags and take them to the hotel for me that i and i'd and none of that was planned by me yeah like that's been my life for the last 15 years and
So like throw a bag over your shoulder, get off the plane, march down the causeway and, and like walk out the doors and be like, hello world.
I don't know.
That was me until I was 45.
But now I'm 55, 54.
And so I need a base of operations and a little I mean, like, for no other reason, then I don't know, my thought would be, yeah, of course, I want to be comfortable.
But I would also be thinking about in terms of I don't want my family worrying about me.
Like if you know, yeah.
That you're just going to go like wander around the Middle East until you come home.
I feel like I do have a phone and I've looked into T-Mobile's international plans.
Oh, neat.
So, you know, so I'll be able to like, hi, you know.
No, no, no.
There's not going to be.
It's a wonderful place.
And as far as I can tell, everybody is wonderful.
Even, you know, the U.S.
government, for instance, says don't go to Lebanon.
Right.
They've got some level of advisory.
Like, there's just no good reason to go to Lebanon, says U.S.
government.
But, of course, that's not true.
There are all kinds of places they say don't go that I've been, and it was fine.
Yeah.
So, like, don't go to the Syrian border with Lebanon and shoot off fireworks.
Like, okay, sure.
I wasn't going to do that anyway.
Don't go back to Rockville.
But, you know, Beirut's a modern city.
They have discotheques.
They probably have an Israeli version of Wi-Fi there.
Well, I hope they don't have an Israeli version because that's going to make some people mad.
But yes, everywhere you go.
I'm just saying you can't search for blood and milk on the same connection.
I read a thing online that was like, you know, Hezbollah actually has a museum, a museum of Hezbollah.
And it's actually pretty good.
And they're really nice there.
That's cool.
I feel like going to that.
We still have one more episode to be able to, if you choose to, to be able to talk about this.
Okay.
Before you go on your billabong.
I don't want to obligate my billabong.
I don't want to obligate you to just be talking to a crazy person about like an ill-advised thing.
You told me that in 2011.