#453 - Molly Crabapple

[0] The Joe Rogan experience.

[1] Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night all day.

[2] Ladies and gentlemen, Molly Crabapple.

[3] Hey, thanks for having me. Thanks for coming.

[4] It's so cool.

[5] So cool to make contact with you.

[6] Cool to see your stuff on the internet.

[7] I first found out about you because actually a dispute that you had with Amber Lyon.

[8] You guys are buddies now.

[9] Everything got worked out.

[10] Everything got worked out, yeah.

[11] But I went to your page and I was like, holy shit, what cool art?

[12] Like really interesting stuff.

[13] like very distinct and fascinating.

[14] And I started reading your tweets.

[15] And I was like, oh, she's really fucking smart.

[16] Oh, cool.

[17] Man, thank you.

[18] So here you are.

[19] Thanks so much.

[20] Oh, you're welcome.

[21] And you were telling us about what was the thing that you did where you had to paint a mural?

[22] You were talking about it like right before that was like how many hours was it?

[23] So I was in London jet -legged off my ass reeling.

[24] And I had to paint a 50 -foot mural in three days, like up on a ladder, all, you know, intricate sharpies.

[25] and modafinil got me through this.

[26] The wonder drug that people don't want to...

[27] That's people to speak of in hushed tones.

[28] They don't want to admit they take it.

[29] I even had the guy who was one of the directors of maps on the show, and he was reluctant to talk about taking medaphanel before the show because he was tired.

[30] And I was like, do you know how crazy this, man?

[31] You're part of the multidisciplinary psychedelic studies group, and you're afraid to tell people that you took some medaninol before a show?

[32] Not afraid.

[33] but he was just a touch reluctant and then he devolved it but I'm like that stuff is great I think he could get very addictive though I think that's not physically addictive as far as what I've experienced but the effects are so real and so obvious that I would think that some people would like I want to be on it all the time man well it gets rid of like all of the weakness of your meat self it makes you just not tired it makes you focus you don't get distracted anyone would want to be on it all the time they'd be like I'm fucking Superman wow you you got a really powerful reaction to it.

[34] I loved it.

[35] I didn't have that same reaction.

[36] I didn't feel like, I just felt sharper.

[37] That's it.

[38] I didn't feel like, you know, like Superman.

[39] I just, I felt like I have less lag in my system.

[40] That's how I felt.

[41] You know, but it didn't make me feel any stronger or anything like that.

[42] But I do know it's outlawed the Olympics.

[43] It is.

[44] Mm -hmm.

[45] Yeah, it probably has some profound effects on the body as well.

[46] If you think about the effects that it has on the mind, that stuff is amazing i found out about it from uh dave asprey was the first person but after the fact like he did the podcast and was like this really sharp really fucking like smooth talking guy so much information and i was like god this guy never runs out of energy like this is crazy and then i watched this special that was like a special on provigil and he was on it and talking about taking this stuff and you know this incredible effect that it has and all these IT people are on it And I was like, oh, okay, I got to try this.

[47] So the first time I tried it, I called him up.

[48] But I was like, this is fucking crazy.

[49] Like, and I had the same feeling that, like, Tim Ferriss had.

[50] Tim Ferriss, who wrote that four -hour body and four -hour work week, he didn't put it in his book, specifically because he would worry that people would just be eating it like candy.

[51] Oh, that's so interesting.

[52] I didn't know that.

[53] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[54] He got to that part of the book.

[55] He was like, fuck this, man. They're going to just start eating it.

[56] But people are crazy.

[57] You can't give them this stuff.

[58] I don't think people understand.

[59] I think there's a lot of people out there that don't know about menafel.

[60] Well, don't get turned on to it, so there's more for those who need it.

[61] I think they'll be fine.

[62] I think the government knows how to make that stuff.

[63] I mean, that's the Uber Munch.

[64] It's going to come out of a medaphano bottle.

[65] Yeah, did you just...

[66] I gave one to Brian.

[67] He was in here, and he had a drive to San Diego, and he got like two hours sleep, and he was ready to conk out.

[68] And I was like, trust me, just eat this.

[69] Did I even tell you to eat?

[70] I thought you'd eat half.

[71] Half of it.

[72] Eat a half of one.

[73] Just eat a half of one.

[74] Immediately I went from like just having the worst day of my life to just like, everything's fine.

[75] Everything's great.

[76] I need to get more of that.

[77] It's fascinating.

[78] It's fascinating.

[79] I mean, where did that come from?

[80] I didn't even find out about that stuff until a year ago.

[81] You know, what's going to be a year from now?

[82] What kind of fucking, I mean, it doesn't even seem to have any negative side effects.

[83] Yeah, is there any?

[84] I don't know.

[85] I'm word, just like Tim Ferriss, though, like his quote that there's no biological free lunch.

[86] Remember who he's talking about it?

[87] Yeah, it's, I don't know.

[88] I hope it doesn't do anything to you because it's pretty awesome.

[89] I guess the only side effect would be if you just used it not to sleep, because if you can't not sleep, even if you don't feel sleepy.

[90] Allegedly, it allows you to go to sleep.

[91] I've never tried it.

[92] Every time I've tried the stuff, it's because I have a lot of work.

[93] to do when I need you know but I won't let myself do it more than once every couple of weeks like once once a month even it's just too delicious no same that's my um it's my special crutch for when I have some giant mural project where I know I'm going to be on a ladder for 14 hours yeah some people have a different reaction to it though some people just you know to them it's just like coffee it's interesting I've heard a couple people's different descriptions of what it does for them.

[94] I think there's also a difference between Pro Vigil and New Vigil.

[95] Have you tried New Vigil?

[96] No, I haven't.

[97] New Vigil is the stuff that I give you.

[98] Right.

[99] So that, the pro -vigil got you through.

[100] It saved me. Do you paint in it differently when you're on it or off of it?

[101] So, drawing at that sort of scale, like when I'm doing those murals, is like the mental equivalent of picking scabs.

[102] It is so boring.

[103] You're just making these tiny, repetitive lines over and over.

[104] And it actually makes me paint better because I get this hyperfocus and I can deal with the pain and boredom of what I'm doing.

[105] Wow, that's pretty cool.

[106] So when you're designing something like this, like this is an enormous mural, do you draw it out in a microscale first?

[107] Like, how do you go about making something like that?

[108] When I was doing the London thing, I just riffed.

[109] I had kind of an idea that I was going to do the decline and fall of civilization as told through this nightclub I was working on, and I just fucking let it pour out of my hands.

[110] Wow.

[111] So you've just free -balled it?

[112] I free -balled it, yeah.

[113] Wow, that is so cool.

[114] Do you ever free -ball something and get halfway into it and be like, e, I should have gone a different direction here?

[115] Well, with murals, it's easy not to do that because there's so much space.

[116] You could just kind of work around it.

[117] But I've had that all the time when I'm working on a piece.

[118] I'll, like, draw half of it and I'll be like, oh, man, I screwed up the head.

[119] The stairs are all crooked.

[120] This is failure.

[121] Let me burn this, like, like, a child who has failed to me. Yeah, I used to draw a lot as a child.

[122] And I originally wanted to be a comic book artist.

[123] I was really fascinated by comic book art and that Frank Frisetta type stuff.

[124] And when I started to draw a lot, like sometimes I would get on these periods where I would start something and then halfway in it, I'd be like, ugh, got to drop this one.

[125] And I realize when you start becoming a comedian, that it's sort of the same thing in everything.

[126] Like when you're being creative, if you're trying something out, whether it's writing or whatever, to really truly create, you have to kind of explore like whatever weird whims.

[127] And some of them pan out and some of them don't, right?

[128] It's so true.

[129] And also when you're a creative person, you have to just accept that your first like five years, you're just going to not be very good.

[130] And the problem is usually you want to be creative because you have kind of, you know, you have good taste, you have a vision.

[131] And you see so clearly the ways you fail your vision and you just have to learn how to stick through your fail.

[132] period.

[133] Yeah, I think the fail period's huge, though.

[134] It's so important for, I think, every art form.

[135] I think you have to suck at it to really appreciate what's magical about being good at it.

[136] Oh, God, yeah.

[137] And then there's this moment, this one happy day when it feels effortless just for one second, and it's, it was all worth it.

[138] And then other people are like, oh, it's easy for you, get a real job.

[139] Yeah, those people are hilarious.

[140] They get a real job.

[141] Why would you want to wish that on anybody?

[142] I know.

[143] Or would you want to wish a real job?

[144] That rude.

[145] Get a real job.

[146] Stop chasing your dreams.

[147] How did you become a famous artist?

[148] What happened?

[149] So I've been drawing since I was four years old.

[150] My mom is an amazing illustrator.

[151] She illustrated like cabbage patch kids or like, you know, stuff for gumball machines.

[152] She's super good, way better than I am.

[153] And so I was making all like the little kiddie mistakes that kids do.

[154] And my mom would just be like, no. No daughter of mine is going to draw a nose like an upside down seven.

[155] You're going to do this right.

[156] And then I just got good at it.

[157] And I got good at hustling money with it.

[158] Like, I'd be 17 and I would hang up flyers at Forbidden Planet offering to draw people's D &D characters.

[159] That's hilarious.

[160] That's a slick move.

[161] Thank you.

[162] Or I would, like, draw people's pets.

[163] I draw their kids.

[164] It's just when you're making art, you're able to take raw materials that cost $2 and turn it into something that costs $500 or $1 ,000 or $10 ,000.

[165] Everything is, like, all the value is in you.

[166] And so I just, I kept doing it.

[167] addicted both to drawing and also to the hustle of it.

[168] That's fascinating.

[169] I like that you admit that because a lot of people, oh, I'm just about the art. I don't even care about the money.

[170] That's a trust fund.

[171] That's their trust fund talking.

[172] I love the idea that you can be creative and pursue money.

[173] No, it's absolutely true.

[174] And I mean...

[175] Why not?

[176] Yeah, it's...

[177] The alternative is having some fucking gallery milking you and taking 50 % of what you make.

[178] Is that what they take?

[179] Yeah, they take 50%.

[180] Whoa.

[181] that seems like a lot I know right it's like worse than agents worse than anything 50 % wow that's crazy and then do you have to have like an exclusive deal with them is that like how a lot of them do it so like if they take 50 % you can't just go to another place and they also sell a different painting and then they take 50 % too do they have a piece of you forever it depends on the deal you have but if you were working with like some big gallery yeah they would have a piece of you and also you wouldn't be able to sell your work privately like they would like if someone came to you and was like yo Joe I want to buy one of your comics panels you'd have to go to the gallery and have them negotiate the deal and take their cut.

[182] It really is all dependent upon what you can get away with.

[183] You know, because if you're, like, we were talking the other day about reality shows where the people who go on those shows, they have to sign, you know, different shows of different contracts, obviously, but if you're on one of those, like, just name a show, it's a hairdresser show, you're making, you know, those people have to sign these crazy contracts where they can use your likeness for like the rest of their of your natural life they're like they they own a piece of like everything you do and show business essentially it's this weird thing that they can they kind of can say they kind of can say like we're making you so because we're making you we own a chunk of you and it's so sad now especially because if you want to be your own entity if you want to be famous you don't need those bastards like you can make a niche for yourself you don't need to sign away your soul to some like vampiric reality corporation that's going to make you look like a fool.

[184] Yeah, the thing is that system is already plugged in, runs smoothly, and extracts money.

[185] You know, that's the television system.

[186] It runs very smoothly.

[187] We all know we can go to A &E and get quality programming.

[188] We all know that we can go to HBO and watch Game of Thrones.

[189] So we're just, it's like completely plugged in.

[190] We're so completely used to it that there, if you're, especially if you're going to do a reality show, that's like where you would go.

[191] If you just like, just anything to get famous, boom, you know, that's where you would go.

[192] And you sort of have to become a part of that system.

[193] But if you're an artist, do you have to go initially with galleries?

[194] Like, how do you break out?

[195] Do you break out entirely through social media?

[196] Like, how do you...

[197] I never went through galleries.

[198] I mean, I've been in like a few group shows, but galleries never really wanted me. So I was pretty much entirely through the Internet and also through doing art about stuff that other people cared about.

[199] Like, it's one thing if you're just doing abstract pastel canvases.

[200] But, like, I would go to Guantanamo Bay and draw that.

[201] So people who cared about Guantanamo Bay or civil liberties would also be turned on to my art. Oh, wow.

[202] So now, and I'm sorry I connected you with reality shows.

[203] It's not intentional.

[204] It was probably a poor analogy, but my analogy of the struggling person who gets sucked.

[205] And it's all really what you can get away with, that, you know, a person, reality show like hey it could be you could be anybody else buddy sign the dotted line or as an artist has options and when an artist develops like a group of people that appreciate their art and then it spreads out then you totally have options so then you know you're essentially running your own show now right exactly and that's why they propagandized so much the idea that artists can't know anything about money the idea that talking about money makes you corrupt because if you believe that in your heart of hearts you're really vulnerable to bad shitty deals that take 50 % of what you make yeah because Because those people, they're like, listen, we're all going to make money.

[206] You need us and we need you.

[207] And that's true, but like 50%.

[208] It's like, that seems crazy.

[209] You just have a building, dude.

[210] You got a building?

[211] We put the stuff up.

[212] How did you get 50 % for putting a light on it?

[213] I mean, that is one of the weirdest deals ever.

[214] Like one person is actually creating the art. And the other person has a window and a roof and they get half.

[215] That seems like a rip -off.

[216] And the whole model is like you spend a year, two years, you know, slaving on your show.

[217] You put all of the money it takes to do it up yourself, like all the money in the canvas, the paints, you know.

[218] Then you hang your show for a month.

[219] What sells, sells.

[220] What doesn't usually can't be re -shown because it's kind of a failure.

[221] And then you get 50 % when the gallery deigns to pay you.

[222] When and how long is that sometimes?

[223] Like a few months, a year.

[224] A year?

[225] There have been stories.

[226] I've had friends who haven't gotten paid by their gallery.

[227] salaries like ever.

[228] Like they did a whole show, put up all that money, all that effort, and zero.

[229] And what do they do?

[230] They try to sue.

[231] They, you know.

[232] Oh, God.

[233] Yeah, there's a weird group of people no matter what discipline you're involved in, whether it's art, whether it's music, whether it's comic.

[234] You're going to run into people that are kind of swindlers, right?

[235] No, like in New York, in Times Square, there are always these guys that are like standing out in the snow giving out flyers for comedy clubs just in exchange for their chance to perform for a little bit.

[236] And like, sometimes I look at them and I feel so bad.

[237] I'm like, man, this system is so disrespectful to you.

[238] Like, you're providing the talent and you're also standing out in the freezing cold, like handing these things, these flyers out.

[239] Yeah, that's not a fun system to be a part of the trying to get on stage system.

[240] But for the comics, like, you know, I always think, man, if they just do that, they'll have more funny shit to talk about, you know, if they just do that and make it through, you know, and then eventually become a professional, they could actually, like, talk about that.

[241] They could actually, you know, sit down on a talk show and talk about how they used to hand out flyers in the village for the comedy seller, you know, before they could ever get on stage.

[242] It's almost like a badge of honor that you did something like that.

[243] I could definitely see that.

[244] But only if you're, like, 21.

[245] Yeah, not if you're 40.

[246] If you're 40 and you handed out, well, I don't know, fuck it, man. You're even more of a hero if you're four and you quit your job and you're 40 and you're out there handing out flyers that's even more fucking crazy then I got some respect for you still in my heart of hearts I want there to be a way like for people to make it as comedians or to make it in any creative thing without having to do that sort of like bowing down handing out flyers in the snow well I think that the clubs are really vulnerable unfortunately it's not a lot of business in comedy clubs and I think they probably I don't know which clubs specifically pay people to hand out flyers or what have you but it's hard for clubs to stay open these days.

[247] It's hard for people to get people to come in and sit down and watch comedy shows.

[248] And I think a lot of it is the comedian's fault.

[249] You know, I mean, a lot of it is people that don't, they don't stay in touch with their audience enough.

[250] I think there's a lot of bad comedy out there, too, unfortunately.

[251] Like, you can't always find, like, a good show.

[252] It's difficult to find a good show.

[253] Like, you could, L .A. is pretty exceptional.

[254] I mean, L .A. has, there's hundred great comics that live like in and around LA like easily right wouldn't you say I mean a new one every day too yeah it's just not stop yeah so many funny people here this is unusual but it's like people don't want to take a chance and go to a comedy club on a Thursday night and that's a lot of times what you know these clubs need they need like a real big Thursday that a big Wednesday night a big to in when they can do that then they can pay their bills and stay open but for us without them life would suck.

[255] Imagine if you didn't have comedy clubs and you had to like organize like open mic nights to work out new material at the rocksy or some shit.

[256] Yeah.

[257] Next to a pool table.

[258] It'd be terrible.

[259] Without them, without the ice house and the comedy and magic club and places like that.

[260] But that's a different relationship than that of a gallery and an artist.

[261] Like you really don't need them.

[262] We need club owners.

[263] I mean, if I wanted to sell my paintings for a million bucks, which is its own thing, I would need them because Russian oligarchs and hedge fund guys, they work with galleries.

[264] I mean, they don't want to be fucking coming over to my studio and having awkward conversation with me. They want to, you know, go to like sleek white gallery and have somebody who speaks their language, assure them that it's a good investment.

[265] Right.

[266] But I don't sell work for a million dollars.

[267] So there is a niche for me just to be on my own.

[268] I think you can sell work for a million dollars.

[269] We just have to make it so that you can sell work for a million dollars.

[270] I mean, I don't mean we, but I mean anybody who's like involved.

[271] in deciding what things cost if they just decided your work cost a million bucks it's totally rational makes sense I mean there is work out there that cost a million bucks right why can't yours if for sure it could it's a weird thing it's like art it's like two things at once like on one hand it's like this object of beauty and pleasure but on the other hand it's also like a stock you know it's an investment and stocks like the prices of them it's kind of arbitrary and it's the same with art and it has everything to do with like who collects it what collections you're in, what gallery you're in.

[272] It's almost like the value is determined entirely based on the approval of certain people and has nothing to do with intrinsic qualities at all.

[273] Well, there's also really clever ways of getting people excited about the price of something.

[274] And who was it that was telling us about this?

[275] Oh, it was a friend that was talking to Tom Segura and I when we were in New York.

[276] He was talking about how they set up galleries set up an artist in one way.

[277] They'll gift these pieces.

[278] and he was talking about this particular photographer and they created this guy's entire career by gifting these really enormous, very beautiful pieces to famous collectors and saying this is a $50 ,000 piece the gallery would like to gift this to you just out of a token of our appreciation of your business, whatever.

[279] So they give him this beautiful picture and then he seeds these to a couple other people.

[280] Now if there's like art collectors, they're all keeping up with the Joneses type guys and if there's some new guy who's given out $50 ,000 pieces to that guy, and then Mike has one and Shelley has one, I need to get one too.

[281] Like, where is this guy?

[282] I need to go, oh, my God, he's amazing.

[283] And then, boom, next thing you know it, they do a gallery showing, and they put up this guy's stuff, and they've already established the price point.

[284] They told them, I'm gifting you a $50 ,000 piece.

[285] And then, boom, it's $50 ,000 for all these different photographs, and they're flying off the shelves, and they're making hundreds of thousands of dollars in a day.

[286] You know, obviously more than a day to take the pictures and print them and all that.

[287] But it's an incredible windfall of money, and it was created with a sort of artificial demand based on gifting things.

[288] No, it's absolutely ingenious.

[289] Also, Damien Hurst, when he did that skull covered in diamonds, he started kind of...

[290] Can you pull that up?

[291] Pull that up, Brian, if you find it online.

[292] He started kind of a, what do I want to call it, like a fund, a group of people, including himself to buy the skull.

[293] at auction so that it could be the highest priced artwork ever done.

[294] So he was spending his own money on his own art just to create this a webrus of wealth.

[295] Wow, that's hilarious.

[296] That's a smart thing.

[297] This is it right here?

[298] Wow, that's beautiful.

[299] God.

[300] You're a rapper.

[301] Is that a real skull?

[302] Yeah, it is.

[303] You can buy real skulls.

[304] Isn't that weird?

[305] Remember when I had that piranha tank?

[306] I had the real skeleton in it?

[307] I bought a skeleton.

[308] bought like a femur, a couple of human heads.

[309] you can just buy them Didn't that creep you out Like there was like spirits attached to that I don't buy it Energy I think it's just a bone Didn't feel a fucking thing It's very weird It's very weird You used to think Well not only not But who knows how they died Who the fuck knows how they died You know how are you getting a hold of bones Don't worry about it You know When you're buying bones from Malaysia Do you really have a direct line Of you know What was the term you would use Like a direct line of possession from the body, from the person being alive, to them being dead, to that you're having that skull on your desk.

[310] And do you just throw it away?

[311] How do you get rid of it?

[312] I just got rid of it.

[313] Wink, wink, wink.

[314] Wink.

[315] The bones were dissolving in the water.

[316] I found that fascinating, like very quickly.

[317] Like within a year, the bones were dissolving.

[318] And just regular, that's my, you know, freshwater.

[319] I had a freshwater tank.

[320] So imagine, you know, in the ocean, how quickly your bones dissolve.

[321] Probably even more quickly, right?

[322] Or would it be the opposite because of the salt content?

[323] Would it be the opposite?

[324] That is so, I'm just freaked out.

[325] I didn't know that was a real skeleton this whole time.

[326] Yeah, totally.

[327] So was it like a memento mori for you or is just decoration?

[328] Well, I'm an asshole.

[329] And I thought it would be cool to have piranhas in my house and to feed them things where there were skulls laying around on the bottom of the tank.

[330] That's just the true story.

[331] What do you feed piranhas?

[332] Goldfish.

[333] Oh, wow.

[334] Yeah.

[335] Yeah.

[336] They fuck up some goldfish.

[337] But, you know, what's way cooler than piranhas, though, is people who have those...

[338] If you ever been to someone who has, like, a reef?

[339] Like, they have a coral reef, and, like, all those, like, little reef dwelling plants and stuff, like, really delicate plants.

[340] Very difficult to grow.

[341] So it's hard to do correctly.

[342] We have, like, one of those really beautiful coral reef -looking things.

[343] But when they do have them, they have these incredibly colorful things.

[344] fish that's, I mean, it's this constant art. I mean, if you look at a coral reef, like, one of those really good tanks that people put together, they have that one reality show.

[345] That's, yeah, but mine was like a real school.

[346] Yeah.

[347] They have that, um, it was a long time ago, ladies and gentlemen, I've changed.

[348] I wouldn't do that today.

[349] I have kids.

[350] But the, um, they, they can make them so that it's like mesmerizing.

[351] Like, you're just looking at all these different colors of plants and these different colors of these weird little fish.

[352] that's way more beautiful than piranhas Paranas are boring They just sit there and wait to kill something Then when you throw a goldfish in there They fuck the goldfish up And that's it Yeah But they're not beautiful There's things that are beautiful And there's things that are not beautiful And I don't know I'm not sure I could define Why something's beautiful Why something's not And sometimes what's beautiful changes Like there's people that are so tired Of traditional beauty That ugliness becomes beautiful to them scars become beautiful to them character becomes beautiful to them you know people just they change what what they find beautiful in the world and what they see i think that's pretty fascinating and i don't know why you know it's a fascinating thing i mean like you take war like war is one of the ugliest things in the world you know it's the destruction of fucking everything but um i follow these guys they're these western muslim fundamentalists who're going to fight in syria right now and they all have Instagram accounts and their Instagram accounts are the most fetishes they're fetishizing war they are like taking these horrifying scenes from like Aleppo or Raqa and they're running them through filters and they're kind of making they're ripping them out of context and making them beautiful and it's this weird thing because it's like you know that if you were there this apocalypse this is death it's like the end of thinking beings but over the internet through all these filters, it becomes beautiful, like when you stand far enough away.

[353] Wow, that's an interesting way to think about it, that it really truly is what it is, going through a bunch of filters.

[354] And that's the only way you could ever watch, like, saving Private Ryan.

[355] It has to go through all these filters.

[356] Exactly.

[357] They have to, like, take the horror and make it aesthetic.

[358] Yeah, and detach you from it in some way, you know, put you, put you into it, but still detach you from it.

[359] Yeah, otherwise no one would ever accept it.

[360] accept it.

[361] I mean, the only reason why people accept war in this day and age is because it's nowhere near us.

[362] Exactly, yeah.

[363] I mean, why would you accept something that's taking living, thinking, loving people and turning them into red mash?

[364] Yeah, and all with dubious intent.

[365] I mean, there's, there's reasons to go to war.

[366] There's reasons to defend countries against invaders.

[367] And then there's, like, weird shit.

[368] We're like, wait a minute, why are we over there?

[369] What did the Afghanistan?

[370] What do they do?

[371] What do they do to us?

[372] This seems like a weird adventure.

[373] We're over there for how many years?

[374] What the fuck is going on?

[375] Yeah, and that it's still going on in 2013.

[376] It's very bizarre.

[377] 2014, still going on.

[378] I mean, part of the problem is that America, we like to go to war not with actual people, but with concepts.

[379] Like, we have the war on drugs, right?

[380] We're going to war with drugs.

[381] You can't, drugs can't surrender.

[382] Drugs can't give up and say you win.

[383] And then we go to war on terror.

[384] Terror is a tactic.

[385] Terror can't surrender.

[386] You know, and it leads to all these incredibly, incredibly dubious decisions, whether it's like New York, where cops are frisking young guys' balls just to look for marijuana or whether it's fucking Gitmo or whether it's this unending war in Afghanistan.

[387] Yeah.

[388] There's definitely more information about it today than ever before, too.

[389] You know, there's so many people taking little YouTube videos of people doing fucked up things.

[390] And just there's just more ways for people to sort of spread the truth than kind of.

[391] ever before.

[392] It's harder to keep a Gitmo open today than it was a long time ago.

[393] Like the more stories that come out of there and the more you're like, Jesus, what the fuck are they doing?

[394] Like, what are they doing?

[395] They're playing loud music and keeping them up all night and hog tying them and waterboarding them and like, what are you getting out of that?

[396] Like, this is, we guys are fucking freaks.

[397] What are you doing?

[398] Just, what are you doing to people?

[399] Like, does that work?

[400] When I was there, one of the things that I learned that I hadn't realized before was most of the guys there are people that we bought for bounties in Afghanistan.

[401] We bought them?

[402] Yeah, so this is what we did.

[403] War in Afghanistan starts.

[404] We're looking for Arab dudes in Afghanistan, you know, like bin Laden was.

[405] They called them the Afghan Arabs.

[406] There were these, like, guys who had, you know, they had fought the Russians and then stayed on and, you know, were fundies.

[407] So we're looking for these guys.

[408] So what we do is we drop fucking flyers on Afghanistan offering $5 ,000 bounties for any Arabs they capture.

[409] Now, $5 ,000 in Afghanistan is 10 years local salary.

[410] So what happens is they just bring in Arabs.

[411] They're not terrorists necessarily.

[412] They're not fighters.

[413] They're just fucking Arab dudes.

[414] They also bring in a bunch of random Afghan dudes who are like mentally ill or owe debts to people or use drugs or who otherwise have annoyed them.

[415] And then these guys, we buy them for $5 ,000.

[416] The locals are like, yeah, he's a terrorist.

[417] I'll give me my money.

[418] And then they go over to Gitmo and there's no way for them to prove that they're innocent.

[419] What?

[420] Wait a minute.

[421] Really?

[422] Really?

[423] How many of them are like that in there, you think?

[424] Well, how about this?

[425] Okay.

[426] Almost 800 people have gone through Gitmo.

[427] We've had eight convictions for war crimes so far.

[428] Wow.

[429] So, I mean, lots of, I mean, there are definitely scary, evil fucking people in Gitmo, like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or Nishiri.

[430] And then there are also probably like misguided teenage dudes who shot a rifle.

[431] once at us who, you know, I mean, they were shooting a rifle, but should they be like tortured for 12 years for it?

[432] No, I don't think.

[433] And then there's just people like this one Al Jazeera cameraman that we held there for a bunch of years.

[434] Just a cameraman.

[435] He was in Al Jazeera cameraman, yeah.

[436] They held them there for years.

[437] They did.

[438] And so Chelsea Manning, when she leaked the, um, the Gitmo files that show the, um, that show kind of our, our evidence against people and what we hope to get out of them.

[439] What we hope to get out of this guy was information on Al Jazeera.

[440] That's crazy.

[441] So how many people are in Gitmo currently?

[442] 155.

[443] There's 155 guys in there.

[444] And out of those 155 guys, how many of them are like really scary people and how many of them are these people that were, in your opinion, sold?

[445] So when I spoke to the chief prosecutor of Gitmo, General Mark Martens, he told me that 20 people are prosecutable there.

[446] 20?

[447] So the rest of them, it's just like they have them, they just have to keep them now?

[448] Yeah, they're not, they're not prosecutable.

[449] Because the thing is, like, just because someone shot a rifle at American forces in Afghanistan doesn't mean they did a war crime.

[450] Like, that's not a war crime.

[451] That's just, you know, that's just being like a Taliban soldier or whatever.

[452] And so you can't, you can't try them for shooting a rifle at you 12 years ago.

[453] So their logic is that they're holding these guys until the end of the war.

[454] But the war isn't against Afghanistan.

[455] that they're holding them against until the end of.

[456] The war is against terror.

[457] So they are holding these guys until the end of the war on terror.

[458] Whoa.

[459] Wow.

[460] That's like the war.

[461] That is such an insane statement.

[462] That war has been going on forever.

[463] And it can end.

[464] I mean, terror's a tactic.

[465] Right.

[466] And when did it start?

[467] I mean, is there a defined begin point to the war on terror?

[468] I mean, didn't it?

[469] When?

[470] When?

[471] When did this start?

[472] I think 9 -11 is when they started the war on terror?

[473] Is that what, but couldn't they backdated to other terrorist activities?

[474] Like, couldn't they backdated to the Iranian hostages from the Carter administration if they really wanted to get crazy?

[475] I mean, couldn't they back date it to, you know, the attack on Israeli athletes back in the Olympics?

[476] They could back date it all the way if they wanted to.

[477] I mean, the war on terror has been on from the beginning of time.

[478] It will never end.

[479] Meaning, like, this is not a war that is going to be over anytime soon.

[480] No, it can't.

[481] So they're just locked up.

[482] Yeah, they're just locked up.

[483] And it's this weird bureaucratic thing.

[484] And part of the problem is like, okay, let's say you have a dude, right, who either is innocent or he's like some low -level grunt.

[485] And he's been to Gitmo and he can't go back to his home country for whatever reason.

[486] And no other countries want to take him because we've made a big deal about how these guys are the worst and the worst in the world.

[487] And we can't resettle them to America because Americans are fucking cowards who.

[488] who are so terrified that, like, a 50 -year -old man might, I don't know, blow something up.

[489] So they're just stuck there.

[490] By the way, people, like right -wing people, are going crazy right now.

[491] America's bunch.

[492] You think we're cowards?

[493] Because we don't want a man who's in Guantanamo Bay walking amongst my children.

[494] Okay, so here's an example of what I'm talking about.

[495] There are these dudes, and they finally let them out after 12 years.

[496] but they're Uyghurs.

[497] So they are Chinese guys fight.

[498] They're a Chinese ethnic minority.

[499] They were fighting against China.

[500] They had no problem against it with us.

[501] They were swept up in the war in terror.

[502] And they were put in Guantanamo.

[503] Immediately we realized that these guys weren't fighting us.

[504] They were fighting China.

[505] Multiple tribunals decided this.

[506] The Bush administration said these guys, you know, not fighting us.

[507] There were church groups that wanted to take them in America and resettle them here.

[508] China wanted them back.

[509] China wanted to torture them to death.

[510] But we were so fucking scared as a country that we would not allow the resettlement of anti -Chinese people in America.

[511] So what did we?

[512] So we kept them in Gitmo.

[513] We slowly got rid of them one by one.

[514] I put them in like Albania.

[515] We put some of them in like a fucking, where was it?

[516] It was like some, like some Polynesian island took some of them.

[517] We put the last of them in Slovakia very recently.

[518] It sounds like if somebody one day writes a book on Guantanamo Bay, it's going to be a doozy.

[519] Yeah.

[520] Right?

[521] That book's going to be a doozy.

[522] That sounds nuts.

[523] That's a terrifying thing that humans can do.

[524] We touched about a bit yesterday with the immoral technique that the way that people can dehumanize the other.

[525] You know, whether it's another gender, whether it's another race, whether it's another nationality, whether it's another sexual orientation, whatever the other that we can justify, like, dehumanizing, people are capable of incredible ugliness.

[526] It's so strange, the broad range of what we're capable of.

[527] Like, amazing, loving things and the worst.

[528] Like, I have a friend, and he has these neighbors, and they're an old couple, and they come over, and they're like his kids long -lost grandparents.

[529] They're so nice.

[530] It's like they've always been a part of the family.

[531] They're just really sweet people who live next door.

[532] And they buy the kids like presents for Christmas and they do little cute things with them and they'll like babysit them.

[533] And they love these kids like family.

[534] They just got lucky.

[535] Just got lucky and moved next to some beautiful people who are super cool and friendly.

[536] But you could also move next to someone who wants to eat your kids.

[537] You know, I mean, we're capable.

[538] of so much of a range it's it's hard to wrap your head around sometimes it really is no it's the most fascinating thing like we have you know this little bit of light between these two voids and we can do anything with it we can you know we can make the most amazing art we can like fucking save kids and we can love each other and then we can also turn each other into red mash I wonder if if it's important to have both wonder if it sounds like a weird thing to say but if everything is natural I mean, the way giraffes form herds, the way birds fly together in the sky and what something looks like it's orchestrated, if all that stuff is natural, why would we assume that human behavior isn't natural too?

[539] And although it's like super complex and way more complicated than what we see in the animal world, all these like pushes and pulls and struggles and accomplishments, all that stuff together, the evil and the good, it's almost like you can't appreciate one without the other.

[540] without the evil it almost seems like the actual good would just wouldn't have the same feeling that it has it has this amazing feeling because we understand loss because we understand evil we understand aggression we understand all these really uncomfortable unfortunate aspects of humanity so when we find someone who's awesome you know it's just that's why it feels so good if everybody was awesome we'd be like a bunch of fucking like a nation of spoiled lottery winners you know like we're we have just no idea how lucky we are just stumbling through the whole thing but it's almost like to see the evil and to hear about things like guantanamo bay it's horrific of course but it almost like it gives the loving part of humanity more energy it's almost like inspired to perform stronger acts of love in the face of the most fucked up shit available in 2014 it's it's real weird Because I think there's a relationship there that's unavoidable.

[541] And I don't like that feeling.

[542] I don't like the idea that we're never going to get our shit together.

[543] I'd like to think that people will get their shit together.

[544] I'd like to think that within my lifetime, I would see a massive change in the way people interact with each other.

[545] Because I think it's possible with individuals.

[546] If it's possible with individuals, it should be possible with all of us.

[547] But then the other part of me, the more rational part that's not going on emotions and hope, says, I think that this is always how it's going to be.

[548] This is how shit keeps moving.

[549] If you don't have this, you don't keep moving.

[550] If you don't have murder, if you don't have rape, if you don't have horror, you don't have people assaulting people, if you don't have drug overdoses and car accidents, then you don't appreciate peace.

[551] Then the lake doesn't look so beautiful.

[552] Then the bird's chirping don't mean as much.

[553] The whole thing is reliant upon each other.

[554] And the love that you get, the strength of it, is almost depended upon your understanding of evil in the world, dependent upon your understanding of death, dependent upon your understanding of misfortune.

[555] Well, just by being human, you're kind of born into that tragedy.

[556] We're the only animal that understands that we're going to die.

[557] Yeah.

[558] And we think, right?

[559] We don't know about dolphins.

[560] That's true.

[561] They might know what's up.

[562] So, like, my cat, who I had since I was 11, I love this little beast so much.

[563] And we just had to put her to sleep finally.

[564] She was, like, 20 years old.

[565] And I don't think she knew.

[566] Like one day she's just like sproying around being bad, stealing shit.

[567] And then the next day her like back legs stop working.

[568] And yeah, poor little beast.

[569] I was so sad.

[570] But I think it was like kind of merciful.

[571] Like she didn't she didn't know.

[572] Like we had to know and kind of decide for her, you know.

[573] Yeah.

[574] Well, it would have just been really slow, especially if she's in a protected environment where she has good food in a warm place to sleep.

[575] And it takes a long time for their little bodies to quit.

[576] But we were both talking about how I have a cat who's, she's 17 now.

[577] I've had her since she was a little tiny baby.

[578] My sister gave her to me. And she was like a little fluff ball.

[579] And she does this howl thing at night.

[580] We were talking about it's like, you know, they say that it's like cats don't know what they're doing.

[581] It's like a form of cat dementia.

[582] Like they might even have like cat Alzheimer's.

[583] She's old as fuck.

[584] 17 is really old.

[585] But what was the phrase that you used?

[586] That it was like the opera song of death Meow Oh yeah, mine does that How old's yours?

[587] About 15 Those old cats Man, that's a weird thing they do She never did that when she was younger I think it's also Like you know how when people start to lose their hearing And then they start talking louder and louder to compensate I think this might be the cat thing She's like, human get me food But she doesn't hear herself So she has to just scream at the top of her lungs Maybe.

[588] Maybe they just, maybe even darker.

[589] Here's where it gets really dark.

[590] Maybe that is like nature trying to set them up to get killed.

[591] Because it's a nighttime thing.

[592] They're out there moaning and howling.

[593] I mean, maybe unbeknownst to them that that's sort of like a calling card for predators to let them know that there's some sort of a suffering animal.

[594] And, you know, some coyote hears that It's like, oh shit, it's the dinner bell You know?

[595] Maybe they just get horny or the older they get Yeah, like they're all cougars Yeah, like, come on, I haven't had sex ever I'm about to die, I want it now Yeah, right?

[596] A lot of them have never had sex ever That's a good point My cat's never had sex except for my dog Yeah, meow But they don't do that when they go outside So my theory sucks because if they're in danger and fear outside when my cat goes outside she doesn't make any noise it's only when she's inside in the comforts of the house and she lets out that whale but it might be just to attract predators to figure out a way in through the doggy door you know you imagine you woke up and you saw a coyote eating a cat in your house that's happened before do you hear about that lady in Chile recently she came home fucking there was a cougar in her house like in her she took all these photos of it it was like wrestling with the the lamp shades or the shades to the window it's just a regular cougar like an older lady just fucking around a lamp like I'm here drunk one shoe on lipsticks all fucked up fucking with lampshades get out of her lady what are you doing in my house you crazy bitch no I don't know how we got in that subject cats old cats dying yeah imagine having Bruce Jenner in your Look at this guy.

[597] Yeah, something's going on.

[598] This is TMZ's alleged discovery that Bruce Jenner is becoming a woman.

[599] Well, he supposedly got his, what, larynx scraped off?

[600] He got his Adam's apple shaved down, allegedly.

[601] That's why he's got a band -aid on it.

[602] But who knows?

[603] That shit could be photoshopped.

[604] Wow, this is TMZ.

[605] I mean, it looks like he's getting boobs lately.

[606] Or did he always have that?

[607] He's an old guy.

[608] Old guys like that.

[609] Their gravity starts hitting them.

[610] Look, I mean, Sylvester Stallone is one of the.

[611] the few guys that's like deep into his 60s that still works out on a regular basis most people quit and Bruce Jenner was this amazing athlete he's an Olympian he's an Olympic old medalist he was on the cover of fucking Wheaties and now he's been it's one of the biggest blows to masculinity in our time is the fall of Bruce Jenner is like what's happened to that guy just the way he gets yelled out on that show the way he gets demoralized he's a fucking Olympian you crazy freaks are just attention horse.

[612] This guy is a goddamn Olympian.

[613] You treat him like shit.

[614] And he wants to be a woman now.

[615] You're Bruce Jenner.

[616] What if this is all just a joke though, like a part of like a troll that the Kardashians wrote?

[617] That would be hilarious.

[618] It could be.

[619] I mean, who knows?

[620] I mean, we're playing right into it.

[621] The whole reality thing, the whole reality show thing is a fascinating aspect of our culture.

[622] It's absolutely fascinating.

[623] I know a lot of people think that it's base and stupid and idiotic, most certainly it is.

[624] It's also quite fascinating that that's become something that people are really attracted to, is watching the lives of people who have nothing going on that's exceptional.

[625] There's no singing, there's no dancing, there's no entertainment, they're just like you and I, allegedly, and that that's become something that people are into.

[626] That's really weird.

[627] Well, don't you think it's also because reality shows are so cheap to make Because, like, you don't have to hire writers.

[628] You don't have to hire talent.

[629] You just have to take, you know, people who you don't really have to pay a lot of money, put them in really stressful situations, get ununionized producers who you don't acknowledge or scripting the entire thing, and put it together.

[630] It's just so much cheaper to do.

[631] There's such an economic impetus behind it.

[632] I think it's also just that it's really effective, too.

[633] They're really high -rated.

[634] Like, the Duck Dynasty show got like 16 million people to watch it.

[635] I mean, that's a lot of goddamn people.

[636] It's economically effective because it works.

[637] People like watching stupid shit, you know.

[638] That's a fact.

[639] People are tired of thinking when they get home from a job that drains them of any creative juices that they might still have left from their childhood.

[640] Every day, it's like a fucking bad battery slowly getting drained down to zero.

[641] And they don't have the energy, a lot of them, to watch anything, you know, challenging or fascinating.

[642] or read a book or, you know, partake in a hobby.

[643] No, they want to drink a beer and they want to watch really stupid shit, whether it's the real housewives or any of that stuff.

[644] It's really fascinating, though, this attraction that we have to it.

[645] It's a weird symptom of where our culture is that there's only so many hours of programming on every network in a day.

[646] So many hours.

[647] You know, you only get like, you know, 12 hours that people are really actually paying attention, right?

[648] and what are you putting on during that time?

[649] What are you putting on?

[650] You're putting on shit.

[651] Everybody's putting on shit.

[652] Like, there's got to be a better way to do this.

[653] Like, the way you guys are doing it, like it's almost like you're creating stuff that only idiots would like.

[654] And it's a strange thing because it's at the same time as the most beautiful and amazing things are happening on TV also.

[655] It's at the same time as like Mad Men and Breaking Bad.

[656] Yes.

[657] So there's the most high fucking beautiful art and madness on one hand.

[658] And then there's just stupid swill where vain people are being humiliated on the other.

[659] But the people who are making those shows, I met them.

[660] They're really nice folks.

[661] They just have a job.

[662] Their job is to make reality TV.

[663] I mean, that's where it becomes a catch -22.

[664] I know a lot of them.

[665] One of my neighbors is a producer who makes reality shows.

[666] Nice guy.

[667] I think most people are nice.

[668] I mean, so I was in Lebanon recently doing this piece for the New York Times about sectarian militias in Tripoli.

[669] And so I interviewed these sniper dudes.

[670] And these guys are like the sharks and the jets, but with rocket launchers and with grenades and stuff.

[671] They're two neighborhoods.

[672] They shoot at each other.

[673] They kill each other.

[674] They train like nine -year -old boys to shoot to, you know, shoot RPG launchers.

[675] Like, it's fucked up.

[676] And I interviewed these guys and they're really cool.

[677] Like they're just like nice, chill dudes, like joking around with you, like sharing cigarettes.

[678] um showing off their you know weapons stash they're they're nice everyone is nice wow except except when they're not nice you know what a great statement everyone is nice except when they're not nice that's like roadhouse reversed remember patrick swayie from roadhouse be nice till it's time to not be nice oh god you remember that was that was this the big fucking tough guy statement and roadhouse one of the great pieces of american cinema.

[679] Man, I'm so culturally illiterate.

[680] But I just, I just think that it's, most people are pretty cool, unless, until they're in a context where they're like, where it's not to their benefit to be cool or where the rest of the group, you know, is doing something horrible.

[681] And then they go along with that.

[682] But just like an average everyday life, most people are, most people are great.

[683] They're real fun.

[684] They'll, like, joke around with you and have coffee and are cool.

[685] Yeah, that gives me hope.

[686] It gives me hope when I look at how many humans there are.

[687] There's 300 million of us in this country and how really how little violent crime there actually is because if you know we we know that people just working beside each other on a daily basis in offices and wherever you work in there's going to develop inter -personal conflicts there's you know there's inter -office dating and then there's drama that comes from that there's inter -office friendships that go sour people loan people there's there's potential for violence like literally in every office in America all day, every day.

[688] There's always someone who doesn't like someone.

[689] If you have an office of 200 people, for sure there's like a few disputes.

[690] For sure there's a guy's fucking always parking in my fucking parking spot.

[691] There's this or that.

[692] He always handles my paperwork different.

[693] Fuck him.

[694] People are, it's amazing how little we kill each other.

[695] I mean, it really is quite incredible.

[696] The sheer numbers.

[697] The problem is we get hit with the news of the entire country and the world in fact.

[698] Anything extraordinary that happens in other parts of the world, especially cruel, especially nasty or evil.

[699] We hear about that too.

[700] We want to know all the most fucked up shit.

[701] So we're dealing with this impossible to understand number of essentially 7 billion human beings.

[702] And then we're hearing a surprisingly low number of horrific things for 7 billion fucking people.

[703] But our brains are still these caveman brains that are designed for uses of tribes of 150 people.

[704] So when we keep hearing about all this bad shit, we're like imminent danger, dangers around the corner, which is the reason why the government can still pull off something like the NSA and say, we need to protect you from terrorism.

[705] So we're going to look at all your girly pictures and all your emails and we're going to listen to all your phone calls because we need to protect from terrorism.

[706] What terrorism?

[707] What terrorism?

[708] What are you talking about, man?

[709] There's 300 million of us.

[710] More people are dying every day from aspirin than are dying from fucking terrorism.

[711] What are you doing?

[712] What's really going on?

[713] Because if you were really trying to protect people, this is not a good way to do it.

[714] It's not a good way to listen to everybody's fucking emails.

[715] You guys can't figure out who the bad guys are?

[716] Didn't they do bad shit already?

[717] Does people just wait their whole life and their super goody two shoes and then one day do something really bad?

[718] No, not usually, right?

[719] So follow the fucking bad people.

[720] Find them from the jump.

[721] You're going to miss a few through the cracks.

[722] But don't take away our rights.

[723] that's ridiculous that's some terrorism shit right there because you're making people aware that you're listening to everything they do you're watching over them you're looking through their fucking laptop webcam and you're justifying it how get the fuck out of here that's some creepy weird stalker shit that you're allowed to get away with because you're the government and I say no the government is just people and we vote them in and allow them to have power.

[724] We don't allow them to do all this stuff.

[725] This is crazy.

[726] You can't just look through people's email.

[727] That's ridiculous.

[728] That's not effective.

[729] It's not, it's ridiculous.

[730] It's insanely rude.

[731] Like there's so many things about it that are wrong when you're dealing with people who have committed no crimes and in fact pay taxes, follow rules, contribute to society, and you're looking through their stuff too.

[732] You look through everybody, stuff you hold all their phone calls who are you you're just a person like you're a person in an organization no one granted that organization that kind of power you guys are criminals this is criminal activity you can't just do that and then they always justify it by kind of pointing to a scary other like making a bogey man maybe the bogey man is like scary arab terrorist maybe it's scary inner city black guy with guns like they always paint this picture of someone else and be like, oh, look over there.

[733] We're only looking at him.

[734] We're protecting you.

[735] You're the good people.

[736] But in reality, I mean, we're all the fucking, we're all the fucking same people.

[737] Well, there are for sure, some horrible people out there in the world.

[738] Absolutely.

[739] And we have a, you know, we have a real issue as a society in recognizing how much of it is caused by the resentment of the United States occupation of these countries.

[740] How many of these evil people have been motivated.

[741] by things that our own people have done.

[742] Like, we need, you know, we really need to look at it in an honest way before we decide, like, what's good and what's bad and what we're going to tolerate and what people are going to go after.

[743] Like, who started all this?

[744] Like, why is this going on?

[745] No, unsurprisingly, when you drone a wedding party and burn some, burn people alive, they don't like you, just shockingly.

[746] Isn't that crazy that you're telling me that, okay?

[747] But there's a lot of people who would hear that statement and go, oh, my God, she's exaggerating.

[748] No, they're not.

[749] No, there's no exaggeration.

[750] That's just factual, yeah.

[751] You're telling just one of many stories where innocent people were murdered in this incredibly ineffective way of doing war.

[752] And they had the balls to call any of that stuff surgical.

[753] There's no surgery in war.

[754] Bombs are not surgical.

[755] These are things that destroy buildings.

[756] They burn people alive.

[757] You can't pinpoint things like that.

[758] But my boyfriend went on a program where he got to do illustrations at a drone base.

[759] And he actually got to like look through, you know, to hang out in the cockpit where they have the drones and to see what you see on the camera.

[760] It's not surgical.

[761] It's like it's like a blurry, blurry video image.

[762] And that's what you're putting decisions of life and death on.

[763] Well, did you see the recent thing where the NSA was using metadata?

[764] I did, yeah.

[765] They were using metadata to locate cell phones that they believed were in the possession of people that they wanted.

[766] So they would shoot a missile towards the cell phone.

[767] And then they do crazy things.

[768] Like, they redefine what winning means.

[769] Like, they'll be like, oh, such and such number of militants were killed.

[770] But the only way that they know they're militants is because they're men between like the ages of 16 and 60.

[771] That's like that's the, that's the only definition of militant that you're a man and you're standing on the spot of land.

[772] Is it the issue that almost all the people, that are of that age in that area resentful of the American troops and they all become militants?

[773] I mean, you can't burn people alive just because of what's in their head.

[774] Yeah, but no, but I mean, what I'm saying is like, let's imagine it the other way.

[775] Yeah.

[776] Let's imagine if we were being occupied.

[777] If there was Afghanistan sent troops and they were in Kansas.

[778] You don't think those Kansas farmer dudes would get fucking fired up and go and want every one of them would want to kill the Afghanistan invading army?

[779] Of course they would.

[780] So they all would become militants.

[781] Well, that's how they define it.

[782] I mean, I'm sure that some of them would just be like, I'm up in my hills.

[783] I just want to mind my own business and have my family and don't want to risk my life.

[784] And I'm sure some of them would be like, fuck you occupying army.

[785] But, yeah, if you occupy a country, they're going to be resentful of you.

[786] Everything about an occupation is awful from making people go through checkpoints to searching them, to raiding people's houses.

[787] and breaking their shit to hauling people off to jail.

[788] Like, that shit makes people not like you, unsurprisingly.

[789] Yes, unsurprisingly.

[790] But it seems like, I mean, it doesn't even talking about that.

[791] It's, you can hear the wheels spinning on the other side.

[792] You can heal people say, oh, listen, you're exaggerating.

[793] We're making, there's a few unfortunate casualties, but hey, that's the price of war.

[794] And if it wasn't for that, the war wasn't going over there, it'd be going on over here.

[795] Molly Cramaple, whatever your real name is.

[796] Well, it's interesting the metaphor of a few bad apples, right?

[797] In real life, if you have a few bad apples, they don't just, like, stay isolated.

[798] They poison the whole barrel.

[799] That's true.

[800] It's actually a really apt and interesting metaphor for problems during an occupation or problems on a police force.

[801] We just don't view it the right way.

[802] But, I mean, everything I'm talking about is factual, documented.

[803] They're, you know, acknowledged by our government.

[804] I mean...

[805] Except the fact that you said that we're...

[806] such cowards because I don't think you understand your history young lady if you went back and looked over the accomplishments of this great nation people get very upset of you if you try to like lump americans to say america we're cowards i fucking love america i fucking love new york i was born in new york like when i was in the courtroom drawing colleague sheikh mohammed all i could think was like you're the man who murdered two thousand of my fucking neighbors and you blew up my city fuck you but how very girl of you that was like That was like such a chick statement.

[807] Fuck you.

[808] You know, I guess dudes would do it too, but it would be a little...

[809] You'd have deeper dude voices.

[810] My vocal range is somewhat higher than yours.

[811] But you know what I'm saying about...

[812] But, no, but it's...

[813] I don't think Americans are...

[814] How about this?

[815] I don't think it's the American way to be cowards, but I think that cowardice has been foisted upon us to excuse horrific shit by our government.

[816] I think there's some of that.

[817] for sure.

[818] And there's also people that feel incredibly disenfranchised and don't know what to do.

[819] There's also people that realize that voting itself seems to be wholly and effective.

[820] And then people get into office that you thought we're going to make great changes and turn out to be an extension of the past administration in many ways.

[821] Oh, God, I agree with you.

[822] Like, I was hoping so hard when Obama was elected.

[823] Like, you know, I worked for his campaign the first time.

[824] I, like, gave way too much money for him.

[825] And I remember that night when he was elected, everyone was dancing.

[826] on the streets and the next morning like the sky was bluer and then slowly but surely you realized that the same old shit was happening or even being intensified yeah um i wonder i wonder what the story is i wonder if he tricked us or i wonder if that is just the job like you get in there and it's a machine that you you you have a little influence you can move things a little bit but look things are in place and they've been in place for a long time and you start talking to international bankers and you start realizing the the profit motive behind this decision or that decision and you know how it could be justified and rationalize that and spit it out in a speech and then that's your day to day and then you're on that fucking path you're on that path of justifying and rationalizing shit and then one day you find yourself talking about Syria and you find yourself on TV talking about Syria and the entire country goes, no fuck this.

[827] There's no support for it.

[828] Zero.

[829] And everybody's like, okay, okay, I guess we won't go to Syria.

[830] And then it just stops.

[831] I mean, there's never been a better indicator that this whole thing is a charade than Syria.

[832] The fact that it was of utmost importance to the fact that the president had to make a big press conference and stand in front of everybody and talk about the imminent military invasion of this horrible nation that's killed people and just that's it they just killed people so they did they did essentially what a lot of people do but we got to get over there and the entire country went no you didn't hear even like the conservative pundits no one was for that no one was for that man Syria's such a fucking tragedy so like when I was over in Lebanon a quarter of the population of Lebanon now are Syrian refugees like they're just fucking blanketing the mountains there.

[833] Like, you go to the Becah Mountains, and, like, there's literally, like, a fucking tent with a family in it every few feet.

[834] And I'd talk to these people, and they'd be like, well, that was stupid that he said chemical weapons are a red line.

[835] Like, why is it any better to be killed with, you know, shrapnel than it is chemical weapons?

[836] And they'd be like, why'd he say he was going to help us, and then he didn't?

[837] And I would say, well, because no one in America wanted him.

[838] him too because we shot the bed so much with Iraq.

[839] I think there's a lot of people that we could go over.

[840] I mean, if we really wanted to do good in the world and save some people, wouldn't we invade North Korea?

[841] Wouldn't that be like number one?

[842] Man. Doesn't that seem like?

[843] That's the bad one.

[844] That's so many people, though, that they would have to do something with.

[845] You know, they're broken people.

[846] Are they, though?

[847] They're just trapped.

[848] They're trapped in a horrible, sick environment where they have a real dictator who is a murderer who just kills his own family members because he thinks they're plotting against him he didn't just kill his uncle he killed his uncle's family like that guy's alive today in 2014 he's not like Alexander the Great he's not like some Hitler character that we're talk about in history books he's around right now and he kills his family like he's suspecting they were trying to have a coup against him so he murders them all he's our fucking Caligula He's dark And no one talks about going over there There's no talk about it Well I mean South Korea wouldn't want it Could you imagine having to like Try to deal with that many Starving deeply brainwashed people Well it would definitely suck But I think that It would definitely suck But I think that it's better than the alternative The alternative is these people stay in prison You have a million plus people I mean how many people live in North Korea How many millions These poor people are fucked.

[849] I mean, they're in one of the most evil dictatorships that we know of.

[850] They're in a dictatorship where if you didn't cry loud enough or convincingly enough when his dad died, you go to jail for six months.

[851] So I've got to give a shout out to one of my best friends here, Michael Malice.

[852] He just did a book on North Korea.

[853] And he's a celebrity ghost writer.

[854] And so he...

[855] You don't mean he writes about ghosts.

[856] I don't mean he write it that's about ghosts, except in this instance.

[857] He ghost wrote the autobiography of Kim Jong -il.

[858] Oh.

[859] He called it Dear Reader.

[860] Whoa.

[861] I like it.

[862] Dear Reader, that's rude.

[863] That's almost racist.

[864] I am the reader of this country.

[865] Right?

[866] It's almost.

[867] If you found someone super duper sensitive, they could say that that would be, are you trying to be racist?

[868] No, he's just talking to the reader.

[869] I understand.

[870] But it's like a double entendre.

[871] Yes.

[872] There's a double entendre to it, you know?

[873] If someone super sensitive would really use that as an excuse to blow up at you right now.

[874] Not you.

[875] I mean, if you were him, if you wrote that story.

[876] But his book, one of the things it raises money for is there are actually organizations that encourage North Koreans to defect and give them resources when they do.

[877] How do they get out of there?

[878] It's really hard to escape.

[879] Yeah, it's really hard.

[880] But there actually are North Korean defectors living in South Korea right now.

[881] They don't feel so lucky.

[882] I watched the whole piece.

[883] It was horrific about this guy who left and left his family behind.

[884] He tortured his family and hit the knowledge that he had of what happened to his family because he got away.

[885] It was horrible.

[886] It was so hard to watch.

[887] He was weeping and weeping and thinking about his children.

[888] I can't imagine that that's going on today.

[889] You know, and I know that there's horrible atrocities that are committed in Afghanistan.

[890] It's not simply a couple.

[891] cut and dry thing that, you know, the United States wants the resources that country has.

[892] There's also some horrible human rights violations going on there, the oppressive regimes, the fundamentalist religious groups that run various sects of whatever parts of that world that you're talking about, whether it's Afghanistan, whether it's Iraq.

[893] There's a lot of bad people over there that it would do the people that around them much good if they remove those bad people.

[894] But those North Koreans, they got an extra bad.

[895] because there's no plans.

[896] There's nothing over there that we can take.

[897] If we found like a billion dollars in diamonds under North Korea, if we found some sort of natural gas pipeline that was like the greatest supply ever of pure energy, we'd figure out a way to work with that little fuck.

[898] We'd figure out a way to get in there.

[899] He doesn't have anything.

[900] If they had something, we'd already be there.

[901] If they had something, we would slowly weasel our way in there.

[902] We would give them some nice things and take care of them.

[903] and send over some teachers and give him some food and slowly weasel our way in and then we would eventually be like allies with North Korea we'd chop it up we get to figure it out but he doesn't have shit so we get to see what happens when a country has no natural resources there's no reason why anybody wants to invade you and you're being run by evil like the worst the worst possible progression of what a human can become an evil dictator controlling a nation with fear.

[904] The amount of pain and suffering that comes directly from that fat little head is insane.

[905] I mean, it's insane the amount of power that a guy has if he's a dictator.

[906] And that's all going on right now.

[907] It's weird.

[908] Dennis Robbins over there playing basketball.

[909] That's the weirdest thing.

[910] It's like how they worship the bulls.

[911] Guy's a basketball fan.

[912] Hey, maybe his uncle's a douchebag.

[913] Maybe we're at a lawn.

[914] Maybe he killed that guy because he was an asshole.

[915] Well, Kim Jong -Yil was, you know, a super movie buff, and he actually kidnapped a South Korean director and his wife to try to bring him over there to start North Korea's film industry.

[916] Oh, my God.

[917] Did they get him back?

[918] I think he eventually escaped, yeah.

[919] Oh, my God.

[920] He had to escape?

[921] He had to escape.

[922] Oh, what a crazy fuck.

[923] So, yeah, the dictators there, like, they have their hobbies.

[924] They're really passionate about them.

[925] We have no reason to go over there.

[926] That's a fascinating thing.

[927] when you deal with someone who has in one hand extreme power because they have this really disciplined army and then they also have nuclear power.

[928] They have nuclear weapons and really bizarre that that's also going on in something that's a total complete dictatorship.

[929] It's a it's a it's a rare thing to get to see a nation with that kind of power that also has this really unbelievably brutal dictatorship but it has it to.

[930] today in this time, you know, where, you know, we look back at Nazi Germany or we look back at, you know, any of the evil empires of the past.

[931] It's all sort of blurry and it's all sort of, well, you know, back then things were different.

[932] No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, it's right now.

[933] It's right now with the civil rights movement of the United States happening, you know, decades ago.

[934] It's right here in this day and age.

[935] It's right here after the space shuttle was retired.

[936] I mean, it's going on right.

[937] now and that guy's just running shit over there and we don't ever talk about that place nobody talks about going over there and fixing that we only go somewhere if you got some good shit like what do you got you got some oil okay we'll bring democracy we got democracy you got oil let's work it out so much fucking democracy we bought to Iraq so much democracy hey listen miss pessimistic it takes a little time for our work to plant seeds and take root.

[938] Al -Qaeda just took over Fallujah in Iraq.

[939] Did they really?

[940] Yeah.

[941] Oh, that's not good.

[942] Well, yeah, what happens now?

[943] I don't know.

[944] We're out of there.

[945] Maybe we go back in because Al -Qaeda's in Fallujah.

[946] That'll be the next.

[947] Play ping pong in the Middle East.

[948] Pull out of Afghanistan, back in our back.

[949] Maybe that's the move.

[950] Do you think that that actually goes on?

[951] Like, that's the, the grand conspiracy theory is always connected to the idea that there's governments that will create conflict in order to finance a war to go after that conflict and to make sure that people unite against some greater evil.

[952] And that in the face of peace, like people become unruly and they want to take over government, they want to like make too much reform.

[953] And that the way to keep people in line and in check is to constantly keep them in conflict.

[954] That's what I've always thought about the war on drugs.

[955] Because drugs aren't a military problem.

[956] They're either people putting something in their body recreationally or their addicts, you know, struggling with a disease.

[957] They're not something that you deal with with the metaphors of war.

[958] And yet we use that so that we can justify civil liberties violations.

[959] Not only that, it doesn't necessarily ring true with everyone, because we know that there's good drugs too.

[960] I don't like the idea of you saying the war on drugs because I think it's stupid.

[961] Because what about you're going to take away my coffee?

[962] Guess what?

[963] I can handle coffee, dude, and I like it.

[964] I like it and I can handle it.

[965] You're not You don't have a war on coffee, okay?

[966] Oh, no, we don't count caffeine.

[967] Oh, okay.

[968] Well, what drugs do you have a war with?

[969] And then let's sort it all out, logically.

[970] Let's find out which ones you have a beef against that makes sense, and which ones you don't.

[971] But how about a war on assholes?

[972] Everybody hates assholes.

[973] When's that coming?

[974] You have a war on these ambiguous things.

[975] You have a war on these open -in to things like drugs.

[976] There's a lot of good ones.

[977] There's a lot of...

[978] You can't have a war on drugs.

[979] Maybe you don't even say a war on bad drugs.

[980] You don't even say, let's have a war on addictive drugs.

[981] No, it's the war on all drugs.

[982] Fuck you, I'm on drug side.

[983] I like drugs more than I like assholes that want to universally go after all drugs.

[984] Because I think that's stupid.

[985] Because drugs represent human ingenuity.

[986] It represents intelligence.

[987] It represents the ability to extract chemicals and form things that may very well be beneficial.

[988] May extend the lives of people you love and care about.

[989] May reduce suffering in people.

[990] May cure people of certain illnesses.

[991] Drugs are not bad.

[992] The problem is there are bad drugs.

[993] So the war on drugs is just a stupid idea.

[994] No, it's so foolish and misguided and justifies so many evil things.

[995] So I look at Stop and Frisk in New York, which is this program where cops hassle black and Latino guys and grope their balls.

[996] Usually under the pretext of trying to find guns.

[997] Where do I sign up?

[998] Groper, gropey.

[999] Gropey.

[1000] Just for the experience.

[1001] Just for the experience.

[1002] But it's all about finding drugs.

[1003] Right.

[1004] And it's like we have a program where we're having cops feel up teenage guys to find drugs.

[1005] Is that what it started out as?

[1006] Do you think that there was any motivation to just try to reduce the amount of thuggish people that were harassing folks?

[1007] I mean, was there like a motivation behind it?

[1008] Because it's always nice to say that it's always the cops that did something terrible.

[1009] and they're going after these young Latino kids, but was there a rash of crimes or people feeling intimidated?

[1010] I mean, sometimes it's a gray area.

[1011] Sometimes there's both.

[1012] Sometimes there's a lot of cops that they use it as a green light to go after kids and they're just racist.

[1013] And then sometimes there's stop.

[1014] I mean, the idea of stopping first might have been like initially because they had people that had found people with weapons.

[1015] It might have been that they were worried that people would bring weapons in certain areas.

[1016] So they say it's for, weapons but it's guns are kind of big you know what i mean like you don't need to do the super invasive searches like they're doing to look for guns they're big pieces of metal you know some dudes are really good at hiding stuff you got to be really careful about that you got to check their balls yeah i mean look i think it whenever you have a position of power like the cops which pretty ultimate position of power and then you have people that are already feeling disenfranchised because they're minorities and then you put those together you're going to have like this instant resentment anyway, especially if, you know, the young kids know someone who's in jail or they've been to jail themselves or they've known someone who's been abused by cops.

[1017] And for the cop and for the guy, it might be totally a different circumstance.

[1018] The cop might not be a racist at all.

[1019] You know, the...

[1020] I mean, I don't think that it's about like the individual cop's feelings.

[1021] Like a lot of cops are black and Latino themselves in New York.

[1022] I think it's that systematically it's a racist thing.

[1023] Right.

[1024] White guys who are stopped and frist are about 10 times more likely to actually have something on them than black and Latino guys.

[1025] White guys are stupider.

[1026] Or maybe you have to be like really fucking sketchy looking to be stopped and frist if you're a white guy, whereas just being black or Latino gets you stop and frisked.

[1027] Or maybe the stop and frisk has made black and Latino guys stop carrying drugs.

[1028] They just like leave it places.

[1029] That's possible.

[1030] If I was a black or Latino guy and I was like really into weed, I'd probably stash my weed all over town.

[1031] I'd probably tuck it under garbage cans and shit somewhere.

[1032] I wouldn't want to have it on me. If somebody takes it and they find it, fuck, at least I don't go to jail.

[1033] You know, it's not that hard to get weed.

[1034] But if you were constantly getting bugged by cops.

[1035] No, it's fucked up.

[1036] I mean, I don't think the TSA should be fucking groping people either.

[1037] And stop and frisk is basically the TSA, but every single day, every time you leave the house.

[1038] Yeah, believe me, I'm in no way trying to justify stop and frisk.

[1039] But I think that it's, first of all, it's not the cop's ideas.

[1040] The cops get their ideas from whoever decides and dictates policy.

[1041] It's not the police officers themselves.

[1042] It's whoever's in charge.

[1043] Whatever reason they have, I would like to hear it.

[1044] I would like to know why they would think that it would be okay to just stop and frisk people.

[1045] Maybe they've got a legitimate argument.

[1046] Fascinating it would be to hear.

[1047] But it's already hard as shit to be a minority and to grow up in this haves -and -haves -not world that we're living in now.

[1048] It's already hard as fuck.

[1049] And if you think that the cops are constantly looking to go after you, When you, if you're stopping and frisking someone who's not doing anything, like, you're going after someone who's absolutely not committing a crime.

[1050] Like, you're just finding a person walking and you're going right to them and just choosing them as someone that you're going to harass.

[1051] That's crazy.

[1052] Like, you're telling me you're that bad at finding crime that you've got to look for it in places where it's absolutely not happening right now.

[1053] Are you an investigator?

[1054] What are you doing?

[1055] You're going to dig deep into this guy's life and pull up hard drives and find out what he's done?

[1056] You just find someone and search and search and search until you find a crime.

[1057] No, you don't, dude.

[1058] You catch people that either did crimes or in the middle of crimes.

[1059] You're not future crime.

[1060] You're not preventing crime.

[1061] You just decided he might have weed on him.

[1062] You can't do that.

[1063] That's just creepy.

[1064] You just can't walk up to people and take their shit.

[1065] But for the cops, I feel bad for them.

[1066] I really do.

[1067] It's a shit position to be in where you're being told that you have to do that.

[1068] And who knows if they have quotas?

[1069] I mean, I don't know.

[1070] I don't know.

[1071] know that they have definitely had quotas in the past when it comes to arrests, when it comes to speeding tickets, things along those lines.

[1072] It's abusive.

[1073] It's abusive to those officers because they're going to be the ones that are the face of this shit policy.

[1074] They're going to be the ones that have to go out there and enforce these stupid rules.

[1075] If we had, you know, a better group of people that were in charge of dictating policy, I think we'd probably have a better relationship altogether between people and police.

[1076] no i i agree with you and yeah i just think that things like banning drugs by their nature lead to those sort of police abuses oh yeah for sure well especially when you're looking for pot like come on every cop knows every cop if a cop's in his 30s he smoked pot he just has you know he's tried at once i mean the odds of him not are like one out of a thousand so maybe one out of a thousand really hasn't smoked pot maybe it's one out of a hundred let's go crazy Let's give them as much room as possible.

[1077] So they all know that it's not killing anybody.

[1078] You know it's not a real issue.

[1079] So what are you doing?

[1080] Like, why would you have to arrest somebody for that?

[1081] It's crazy.

[1082] It's nonsense.

[1083] That's the number one nonsense contributing factor for why people don't take other drug policy seriously or warnings about other drugs seriously.

[1084] It's the outrage that we have about being told lies about marijuana.

[1085] And the fact that you're arrested.

[1086] A cop can just pull your pockets up and find this.

[1087] Oh, look what I found.

[1088] And then you're locked in a fucking cage.

[1089] And that he thinks he's doing the right thing.

[1090] Yeah, busting perps.

[1091] I hate potheads.

[1092] I put him in jail as much as I can.

[1093] I had a friend who was a cop.

[1094] And he was telling me how he loves to arrest people for pot, even if they have a medical marijuana license.

[1095] Why?

[1096] And I was like, why would you do that?

[1097] I go, why would you do that?

[1098] I go, do you really think that guy's doing something horrible?

[1099] Or are you just taking advantage of the fact that you can lock him up?

[1100] And he's like, you know, when you're on the job, you know, I just run into so many of these fucking annoying people.

[1101] I go, they're so annoying, you should lock them up.

[1102] They have medical marijuana.

[1103] It's like, come on, man, don't do that.

[1104] Like, that's fucked.

[1105] And it's like one of the fucked up things about America is that we take locking people up so lightly.

[1106] Yeah.

[1107] Taking away people's freedom, locking them in a fucking cage where they might be subjective to violence.

[1108] Like, we're just cool with that.

[1109] We imprison the highest percentage of our population of anyone.

[1110] And this is a grave thing to lock someone in a cage.

[1111] Like, I don't think it should be done unless someone's fucking violent or a thief or someone who's actually done something bad.

[1112] It's not for people who do drugs or hookers or stuff like that.

[1113] I agree.

[1114] Both of those things are awesome.

[1115] There's no reason, yeah.

[1116] Hookers should be awesome.

[1117] It should be just like massages.

[1118] It should be something that people can choose to do for a living.

[1119] It shouldn't be so stigmatized, you know?

[1120] The problem is it's so stigmatized that the whole situation is just sketchy and icky for everybody.

[1121] No, it should be decriminalized.

[1122] It is so fucked up that we are locking women up because of what they do with their bodies.

[1123] Yeah, it's fucked up that you could do it for free, but it's, you can't, I mean, it's a zero victim.

[1124] Because not only can you do it for free, it's one of the most desirable things you could do to a person.

[1125] Like, people love it.

[1126] Like, they sell cars because of it.

[1127] I mean, how many movies are sold with a woman's legs, long legs stepping out of a car?

[1128] A man takes his shirt off and shows his rippling six -back.

[1129] It's all sex, but if you pay for it, it's a crime.

[1130] Can we barter?

[1131] You know, are you allowed to barter?

[1132] Can we use a barter system?

[1133] I wonder if Bitcoin works with prostitution.

[1134] I wonder if they could prosecute you.

[1135] If they don't even believe in Bitcoin's money, if it's not real money, if it's not real money, maybe that's the argument.

[1136] Like, man, I don't even believe in Bitcoin.

[1137] We just play.

[1138] We have sex together, but we pretend like we're giving each other money.

[1139] Well, I mean, sex work is another example of how making victims.

[1140] Victimless crimes leads to police abusing people.

[1141] I did a piece on the fact that in New York, if you carry multiple condoms, police can arrest you for loitering with the intent to be a prostitute.

[1142] Well, you're either that or you're a woman of loose morals, and we would like to lock you up, keep you off the street, because you might be out there dishing out pleasure everywhere you go and do it in a safe manner.

[1143] Oh, God, no. I got that's time for you, you flusy.

[1144] Yeah, God no. God forbid people have joy in a safe way.

[1145] That would be terrible.

[1146] It's a weird thing.

[1147] It's a weird irony that we all enjoy sex.

[1148] Like almost everyone.

[1149] Doug Stanhope doesn't have sex anymore.

[1150] He's the only person I know.

[1151] Doug's probably not the healthiest guy in the world, except mentally.

[1152] He's very mentally healthy.

[1153] But he treats his body like a can, just throws things in there.

[1154] He's a maniac.

[1155] But he doesn't need sex, apparently.

[1156] But most people like it.

[1157] I think most people look forward to it.

[1158] most people enjoy intimacy and the idea that that somehow another could be a crime just because money's exchanged it's very strange couldn't there be like a really good working relationship that a man and a woman could have where like it was like yes the guy paid the woman money but they actually enjoyed each other's company and they were really good friends and they just had sex like every couple weeks or so and the guy gave her money and then everybody's cool with it and the girl just has a few relationships like that so So she's sort of a professional prostitute, but really what she is, is just a girl who has sex with a bunch of guys that she actually likes.

[1159] And she, that's her job.

[1160] You know, I mean, people would say, no, that's awful.

[1161] But why is it awful?

[1162] Everyone's just having sex.

[1163] Like, why is that awful?

[1164] That was the old school model of courtisans.

[1165] You know, they would have.

[1166] What is that?

[1167] Cortisans were, they were sex workers, but they also were kind of like very beautiful, like fancy, like escorts.

[1168] And they were almost like living luxury objects would be the best way to describe.

[1169] them.

[1170] What year was this?

[1171] What this is going on?

[1172] It lasted for a long time.

[1173] I'm going to talk about the 1890s in Paris.

[1174] So you would like, let's say you were a rich dude.

[1175] You would hire a cordon to sleep with her, of course, but also to have this like gorgeous woman on your arm at the opera and also to like cover her in diamonds so you could show how much of your own money you could waste on her.

[1176] And she would just be like this cool, smart woman who is also fucking gorgeous, who was also a great lay.

[1177] And these women would maybe have like three, two or three like, you know, super rich protectors.

[1178] They were business women, they would, um, you know, like, they'd begin and end relationships of their own accord.

[1179] They'd maintain awesome households.

[1180] And these women were some of the richest and most liberated women of their time.

[1181] Powerful rich hookers.

[1182] Why not?

[1183] Why not?

[1184] Why wouldn't it be?

[1185] Cortisone?

[1186] Cortisans.

[1187] Cortisans.

[1188] Cortisols is the shit that you get nervous, stress, right?

[1189] Yeah.

[1190] Cortisans.

[1191] That's interesting.

[1192] I've never heard that before.

[1193] So it's like just a really, intelligent version of prostitution and really effective.

[1194] Yeah, like a mixture of a prostitute and someone who's an escort, you know, in the original sense of, like, escorting you places.

[1195] Yeah.

[1196] Yeah, professional escorts.

[1197] That's such a weird thing because until everyone sort of figured out that it means prostitution, a lot of people, like, thought, okay, so people just hire people for dates.

[1198] That makes sense.

[1199] Like you say, if you have to go somewhere and you're supposed to bring a date, just hire this person to be your date.

[1200] I guess that's effective.

[1201] I guess people need that.

[1202] And then I realized, oh, no, it's just people pay for sex.

[1203] Some people still do it, though.

[1204] Some people still use them as a day where they, like, or in town for a business meeting, and then they take them out to dinner, and then they nail them and then wash them off and some way.

[1205] Oh, well, that's sex, though.

[1206] That's sex.

[1207] Yeah, but it's like a whole, like, six hour, eight hour.

[1208] Oh, so you know what I mean?

[1209] It's not just, like, straight to the room, and it's like, oh, how many flowers?

[1210] You know, it's not like that.

[1211] That's weird.

[1212] Yeah, it's weird that we have this giant stigma about sex.

[1213] so much so that it's illegal to sell.

[1214] And it's completely culturally, like, how we accept it, how our culture accepts it.

[1215] That's all it is.

[1216] I mean, it's not, it doesn't make any sense logically.

[1217] It's just something that we've sort of, like, chosen.

[1218] But then again, if any one of my friends turn into a prostitute, it would be really sad.

[1219] Really?

[1220] Yeah.

[1221] Why?

[1222] I think, I'm just being a hypocrite.

[1223] I'm telling you.

[1224] I'd be really sad.

[1225] I'd be like, just can't.

[1226] I can't believe someone, you know, like, is forced to sell their body for sex.

[1227] But, I mean, they're not being forced, like, you know, except in the way that, you know, all of us are forced to work for a living, you know?

[1228] No, you're right.

[1229] I'm just being honest.

[1230] I really wouldn't be happy.

[1231] Like, if someone I used to work with, someone on the set of a show that I worked on, all of a sudden she became a prostitute.

[1232] And everybody was like, remember Wendy?

[1233] Yeah, she's a prostitute.

[1234] You'd be like, what?

[1235] Remember Esther?

[1236] I mean, some of my friends are sex workers, and they're, like, fucking.

[1237] Some of your friends are sex workers?

[1238] Party.

[1239] me at Molly Crabber.

[1240] No. But they're...

[1241] They're okay with it?

[1242] They're fucking amazing badass women.

[1243] Some of them like their jobs.

[1244] Some of them are just doing the jobs, you know, to make money the same way anyone does a job to make money.

[1245] Right.

[1246] But they're not forced.

[1247] They're amazing, badass women with agency.

[1248] Well, look, that's logical.

[1249] Your way of describing it is powerful and empowering and logical.

[1250] Me, I'm going with emotion and I'm saying I'd be sad.

[1251] If I ran into someone, they found out there.

[1252] a hooker now.

[1253] I think you'd meet some people who are sex workers and you'd be like, oh, you're really cool and then you get over it.

[1254] I'm sure.

[1255] I definitely would.

[1256] I know I would.

[1257] I don't think there's anything wrong with it.

[1258] I really don't.

[1259] But I'm just, I think that a lot of people are doing it don't want to do it.

[1260] And I think whenever I see someone that doesn't, look, if I ran into someone that I really knew and they were working at Wendy's behind the counter, I'd probably be bummed out at them too.

[1261] You know, that's not what you want to do.

[1262] What's worse?

[1263] Being a hooker are going to work at Wendy's.

[1264] I don't know.

[1265] They both suck.

[1266] If you're a massage parlor hooker, then, yeah, that's horrible because you're probably just every 30 minutes having a new stranger.

[1267] But if you're like one of the high -end, I squirt call girls, you know, that's probably pretty nice.

[1268] You know, you're making $3 ,000, $4 ,000 eat up, you know, some nights.

[1269] Yeah, logically, I mean, it's really all about perception.

[1270] The perception part is where it becomes a big issue.

[1271] Because I've said this many times.

[1272] Why is it totally acceptable to be a massage therapist?

[1273] But if someone says, what do you do?

[1274] All right, jerk off guys.

[1275] You know, like, that's terrible.

[1276] Yeah.

[1277] Like, but if you're like a massage therapist, like, oh, okay, you give pleasure with your hands.

[1278] You jerk off guys.

[1279] Oh, oh, you give pleasure with your hands.

[1280] I mean, it's the same thing.

[1281] Yeah.

[1282] Very little is different about it.

[1283] You're paying someone to do something to you that they probably wouldn't do for free.

[1284] They want that money, so they give you a rub down.

[1285] They, you know, work their elbow in your back.

[1286] It feels great.

[1287] I mean, that's the whole idea.

[1288] It's pleasure.

[1289] But we're okay with that unless it's, oh, not this area.

[1290] This is a bad, bad, naughty area.

[1291] Don't you touch that?

[1292] for money.

[1293] We have to be in love for you to touch that.

[1294] Fascinating.

[1295] Forty bucks.

[1296] That's all.

[1297] Will you guys talk so I can pee?

[1298] Sure.

[1299] I'm sorry.

[1300] I drank too much coffee.

[1301] Give me five minutes, not even.

[1302] Your artwork, you also had a, you worked with DC online, didn't you at one point?

[1303] Yeah, I did.

[1304] Unfortunately, the imprint got canceled, but yeah, I did, me and my best friend John Levitt, we did a story with DC Online.

[1305] And you also have worked with Pat and Oz what I saw you did like a poster of his?

[1306] Yeah, I did the key art for his, for his new show, A Tragedy Plus Comedy is time.

[1307] That's great.

[1308] He's so fucking cool.

[1309] When he asked me to do that, I like squealed.

[1310] I was so excited.

[1311] Yeah, here's the, if you look right on the screen, the poster right there.

[1312] That's awesome.

[1313] How long are you in town for here in Los Angeles?

[1314] Are you here for any work or get?

[1315] I'm just doing doing meetings, like meetings with my agent, meetings with some producers and production companies and just bullshitting with my friends.

[1316] But I'm just here till tomorrow night, unfortunately.

[1317] Just move out here.

[1318] I should move out here.

[1319] It's fucking warm here.

[1320] Unlike New York, which is this hell of sleet.

[1321] I couldn't deal with that at all.

[1322] That's too much.

[1323] I don't know how anyone lives in that, especially when you could just live here and have this every single day, the same weather.

[1324] I don't get why you would do that.

[1325] Is there a reason that keeps you in New York?

[1326] Do you just like the scene?

[1327] Have you always lived in New York?

[1328] I'm from there.

[1329] I'm like a fish that's used to deep sea, pressurized environments and I'll explode if I'm somewhere else.

[1330] Really?

[1331] Yeah.

[1332] So you have to have the constant energy of the city.

[1333] I have to.

[1334] Stuff like that.

[1335] Yeah, I mean, it just like makes you jagged and sharp and it's really hard to live there.

[1336] Like, it's the only city where if you move into an apartment with a washer dryer, you have made it.

[1337] You are the elite with your washer dryer there.

[1338] New York, you mean?

[1339] Yeah.

[1340] It's a crazy place to live.

[1341] But that's what you get.

[1342] If you want that big hive thing, you want that being a be, beep, bein a part of it all.

[1343] Did you do that?

[1344] Pat and Oswald?

[1345] Yeah, I did that.

[1346] That's for his last thing.

[1347] Wow, that's beautiful.

[1348] he's he's so awesome i was so honored that i got to do that he's a very cool guy i love that you have such a distinctive style like i can see your stuff online now after finding out about your work and i immediately recognize it as yours it's like there's only a few people that that works with like alex gray is a big one obviously you know you're familiar with alex i'm i fucking love him i saw his work the first time i was 18 it was at tebat house and you should meet him i want to meet him you got to meet him you got to go to that place no the way that he like takes these people and he makes them into like these hyper -colored veins and tendons and he kind of shows like what everyone is under the skin he's amazing yeah what were you saying before I interrupted you that the first time you were introduced to him where you found out about yeah I was at this place called Tibet House that had exhibits of Tibetan art and they had a whole show of his because he had something that was kind of influenced I think by the Tibetan Book of the Dead yeah and I was like 18 and I saw that and I was like oh my god this man is a master yeah he's a really nice guy too I've been I don't want to make this week Alex Gray Love Fest because we were talking about him yesterday, but he's just such a real sweet, gentle guy, like a real loving guy.

[1349] And he's also the only person that I've ever met that created his own religion.

[1350] Like he has a religion that's tax -free status.

[1351] He is exempt, like the federal government gave him tax -free religious status.

[1352] And he's serious about it.

[1353] He's building this intense temple.

[1354] And it's essentially all based on visionary psychedelic experiences.

[1355] and this really pure, like love that he has for people and for the world and for just the way he interacts with people.

[1356] He's a, like, real legit guy.

[1357] I mean, he really is a guy who's been over to the other side on numerous occasions and brought back an incredible amount.

[1358] To me, I don't think anybody's ever captured psychedelics in visual form like he has.

[1359] He's captured them in this most amazing and representative world.

[1360] way is the it's so representative of the the actual real psychedelic experience itself that it'd be impossible for someone to create if they hadn't had those experiences no it's absolutely true i mean i am like such a neophyte to psychedelics i've done mushrooms once in my life that that's like my entire experience and even that this all what is this it's Alex grace oh is it really yeah oh damn all of sacred mirrors or something chapel you should do mushrooms with Alex gray.

[1361] Fingers crossed.

[1362] Listen, we can introduce you for sure.

[1363] He's got a place in upstate New York that he's building this what does he call it?

[1364] I think that's what this is, the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors or the Codleyside Orca.

[1365] No, that's the place that he had in New York.

[1366] He's got the place that he's building.

[1367] He's building this temple, but the outside of it is his art, like three -dimensional images, like these fractal faces that Entheon?

[1368] Yeah, Entheon, yeah.

[1369] Pull this, the image of what Entheon looks like.

[1370] That's it right there.

[1371] That's the actual building itself.

[1372] And he did a Kickstarter and funded the construction of this thing.

[1373] And it's going to be insane.

[1374] I mean, he's going to build this in gigantic, three -dimensional piece of art. And if you scroll back up where you just were, there was something with him standing with a guy.

[1375] See, like, he's doing stuff like that.

[1376] I think that's three -dimensional as well.

[1377] Because it is, right?

[1378] That's like a sculpture, right?

[1379] And so he's going to use the kind of technology that you use to create these gigantic sculptures and they're going to do the entire building in it.

[1380] Like that's what the actual building.

[1381] Scroll back up, that's what the actual building is going to look like.

[1382] That's going to be insanely beautiful.

[1383] To me, this is what art is.

[1384] I hate the idea that art is just this thing that you pin to a gallery wall like a dead butterfly.

[1385] To me, art is something that you have to live with and you have to interact with and what he's doing is fucking art. well he's definitely doing he he's definitely doing art but he's definitely doing his own thing I mean I've never seen anybody's work that looks quite like that but that's what I was saying about your stuff too you have a very distinctive style and it's hard to describe a distinctive style when you like if you see like Alex Gray and like how do you know it's Alex Gray oh dude you just recognize it right away but your stuff is kind of like that too like I don't know why I know that it's your stuff but when I see it, I can pretty, pretty accurately tell.

[1386] Man, thank you so much.

[1387] Well, what is that?

[1388] You're welcome, but it's awesome stuff, obviously.

[1389] It's beautiful artwork, but it's also so distinctive.

[1390] And I'll never really truly understand what it is that you pick up on.

[1391] So Picasso has this line that style is the residue of trying to get it right.

[1392] It's, I think with a lot of artists, well, we're trying to, like, get reality, but then who we are filters that.

[1393] Like, it's like our handwriting, you know?

[1394] Right.

[1395] And like my eyes, they see things curvy, they see things hyper -detailed, they see things kind of subversive and perverted, they see things kind of like whimsical and mean.

[1396] That's just like how my brain works.

[1397] And has your style changed in any way as you've grown older?

[1398] When you mean you've been drawing for so long, when did you start developing this sort of subversive style?

[1399] Well, kind of one of my big formative moments as an artist was there was this club in New York, or there is this club called The Box, that was the sexiest, most depraved, most perverted, most waste of money, most gorgeous club in New York.

[1400] Like, it was a place where people would blow through, like, 10K on bottle service, and there were, like, porn stars hanging from hoops over the bar and world -class circus performers.

[1401] And when I was 24, I got the job as the house artist there.

[1402] I got to sit down next to the stage, and I got to just sketch people.

[1403] And this, like, this kind of, this is how I came of age, you know, sitting on that nightclub stage, drunk out of my fucking mind drawing beautiful girls and fire eaters and you know like fucking crazy depraved Weimar Berlin style performances like that that's what made me wow and so uh when you look back which i've always found really fascinating about artists that they go through periods like this is like you know Picasso obviously went through very many classic periods do you have like different uh different periods of your art where you recognize like this is what I was young and I, you know, this is how I saw the world.

[1404] And did it represent that to you?

[1405] Oh, God, so much.

[1406] Yes, you fucking nailed it.

[1407] I mean, a few years ago, I started doing more journalistic stuff where I would go to a place like Gitmo or to Lebanon and I would draw it.

[1408] And I mean, it's still the same because I'm making it.

[1409] You know, the style is still very similar.

[1410] But it's different because it's not just this crazy surrealist, you know, blah out of my head thing.

[1411] It's trying to capture reality.

[1412] It's trying to capture what that kid looked like with the rocket launcher over his shoulder.

[1413] Wow.

[1414] And so what led you to this like socially conscious work that you're doing now?

[1415] Like what led you to try to expose all this stuff that's driving you crazy about the world?

[1416] So I was always pretty political, but I didn't want to do political art because I felt like it would just be this preachy lie because a lot of it's really bad.

[1417] A lot of it is like preachy and bad and it's like a certain demographic, you know, or even it's good, but it's just for a certain demographic.

[1418] What demographic gets the preachy art?

[1419] Well, like.

[1420] white people right for sure yeah something like that white people want to show you how awesome they are but i mean even like like shepherd fair is a really cool graphic designer and everything like his stuff you know this isn't a diss to his stuff but if you look at a shepherd fairy thing you know like either i'm of the demographic this is for or i'm not you know it it looks like how we expect activist art to look like and i um i just i just didn't want to do that like my work was always more girly more whimsical more fucked up and then um when occupy wall street happened and when wiki leeks happened.

[1421] And when a lot of sort of the shit that went down in 2011 happened, I felt like it was this real moment where I had to take sides.

[1422] I felt like I was being a fucking coward, not taking sides.

[1423] And so the first thing I did was I started drawing people down at Occupy.

[1424] Because there is this media image that everyone down there was, you know, a white guy with dreadlocks hitting a bongo.

[1425] But when I went down there, there were fucking construction guys.

[1426] There were teamsters.

[1427] There were nurses.

[1428] There were teachers.

[1429] There were all sorts of people down there.

[1430] And I wanted to show people what that looked like.

[1431] Wow, that's interesting.

[1432] Yeah, everybody always has that immediate image.

[1433] You know, what I have the image of, did you ever see the video where Peter Schiff goes down to Occupy and he's representing the 1 % and he has like, he debates all these different people?

[1434] You know, I might have.

[1435] I'm not sure, though.

[1436] It's a brilliant video because Peter Schiff is a financial genius, you know, and he makes all these people look really stupid because a lot of them really don't know exactly why they're there.

[1437] I mean they do.

[1438] They think that the world is ugly and that greed is terrible.

[1439] But when they start defining capitalism to him and he starts explaining to them what's actually wrong with the system and what they think is wrong with the system and why they're incorrect, they get tongue tied and they start talking and cliches.

[1440] And there's no real clarity to what they're trying to say.

[1441] So we always assume that it's like those highlight people.

[1442] The way I've always described Wall Street in Occupy especially Occupy Wall Street is that it's like white blood cells moving to a sick area like they know there's something wrong there and they're piling up all around it like that's there's never been more clear like it's hard to get people to stay somewhere yeah it's hard to get people to group up and like camp out and stay in one and all agree to keep meeting back at this one area you got to have a really fucked up spot.

[1443] lot to give people to do that because that's just not normal human behavior people have lives they got shit to do they got friends they got family you can't get them to hang out in a park in winter no in fucking new york winter yeah you have to have some serious devotion for that yeah you have to have a real issue there's got to be a real issue and i mean something up and i think like what that guy did it was a little unfair because of course it was unfair that's what peter ship does and also it's like mass movements you can't have a mass movement where every single single member of that mass movement is an articulate genius who can spell out the theoretical basis for it.

[1444] Of course.

[1445] And look, Peter Schiff is a fantastic speaker.

[1446] It's a total mismatch.

[1447] Yeah.

[1448] It's horrible.

[1449] I mean, I had a hard time when he was on the podcast.

[1450] Like, he doesn't, he's, first of all, he's very well read, very smart and very opinionated.

[1451] And he's used to these shows where you do these like seven minute bursts.

[1452] So you have to like just go, go, go, go, go, go with your points and he has the ability to spit out information and you know and relevant information like incredibly quickly and very strong cadence and a regular person who's like can't believe they're even on camera and then there's a microphone in front of their face and they know that the cameras they hope they don't want to look stupid but they're not accustomed to this feeling so they're they're very out of place they feel very weird they feel nervous and insecure that's not an accurate representative of a real debate or a real conversation between those two you're dealing with you're like catching them in a really like weak and vulnerable place.

[1453] You're flustering them.

[1454] Yeah.

[1455] And how you look good in the media, it's such a skill, you know, it's such a performative thing, like being able to do that.

[1456] Like most people don't do that.

[1457] They are not trained in that.

[1458] Yeah, that's something that people don't recognize because it looks easy.

[1459] You look at someone like Ryan Sequest, okay?

[1460] Ryan Sechrest when he's on television, does that guy ever flub his words, you know, Ryan Sechrist, what he does looks incredibly easy.

[1461] But if a regular person had to go and do Ryan Seacrest's job.

[1462] You would do it so badly.

[1463] It would come off so awkward.

[1464] It would be so strange.

[1465] You'd be reading cue cards and you'd fuck up.

[1466] You would say someone's name wrong.

[1467] There'd be a lot of things you would get wrong.

[1468] It just looks smooth.

[1469] So you assume it's easy because it looks like it's fairly easy for him to pull off right now.

[1470] This doesn't look like coal mining, but it's still quite difficult to do.

[1471] So if you take a guy like Peter Schiff, who's a black belt in talking and you just feed him to these poor people who have no idea that they were going to be in a debate when they woke up that morning he put a camera on him he's gonna feast on them he's just and he's he's also super successful so he can kind of back up what he said with with proof talk about how many people he employs and he's like how many people do you employ 150 people like do you don't think that I'm contributing I have 150 people that have worked directly and then what does someone say to that you're greedy man like it's not they need to have time to Research this debate.

[1472] It's not fair.

[1473] Yeah, it's just not a fair.

[1474] It's not a fair thing.

[1475] No, it's not fair.

[1476] But it's funny, though.

[1477] It's funny.

[1478] But that's what most people think of when they think of Occupy.

[1479] They think of those guys.

[1480] You're greedy, man. They don't think of the people that are just circling this disease and looking at this and going, okay, you know, I can't stand anymore and stand by and pretend that this isn't an unfixable system that is so easily manipulated and so obviously corrupt.

[1481] And this is what runs the country.

[1482] This is what runs our financial system.

[1483] This system of politics, the system of special interest groups, influencing politics, corporations, spending money on things, people altering the regulations and the rules in order to profit more and make more money and the ability to set up fake things that affect the price of stocks and derivatives where you're betting on things to fail.

[1484] and there's a whole economy based on betting on things to fail.

[1485] It's even bigger than the real economy.

[1486] Stop.

[1487] Yeah, it's just bullshit built on air.

[1488] Like, I have a company.

[1489] I have employees.

[1490] You have a company.

[1491] You have employees.

[1492] We do not fucking get bailouts from the government if we fail at our company.

[1493] Yeah.

[1494] That like pay back not only, you know, what we lost, but all the profits we would have made.

[1495] What is going on in Wall Street has nothing to do with the way that businesses were supposed to run.

[1496] It's just a giant Las Vegas casino.

[1497] of madness and shit built on air where no one can possibly lose because the government will step in and pay things back.

[1498] It's just weird that there's one business that's too big to fail and it's the business of controlling the money.

[1499] That's the only one because there's other businesses that took gigantic hits during the economy, during the economic collapse.

[1500] One of them that you're never going to hear about any bit of bail on out is the porn business.

[1501] Porn business disappeared.

[1502] I mean, not totally disappeared.

[1503] Obviously they still make porn.

[1504] but they um when the internet came along and all their content started being uploaded on bit torrent and uploaded on all these free sites these guys lost some untold millions of dollars because the industry itself like like shrunk down this totally different kind of thing they they were making money hand over fist selling DVDs before the internet came along It's totally true.

[1505] And like girls who, you know, girls and guys, you know, who a generation ago would have been making fucking bank are making so little per scene.

[1506] Also, now, um, this one company, Manwin, controls so much of the market and they control the camsites in addition to...

[1507] Wait a minute.

[1508] Man win?

[1509] Man win.

[1510] Manwin.

[1511] Google the shit.

[1512] But what a name.

[1513] I know, right?

[1514] Man win.

[1515] And, you know, people are just having to work harder, do, you know, tougher things.

[1516] for less and less money.

[1517] Tougher things.

[1518] I love when you say that.

[1519] Tougher things when it comes to porn.

[1520] That's dark.

[1521] Dark images.

[1522] It is like being a fucking athlete, being a porn star.

[1523] Like you're...

[1524] Much like an Olympian.

[1525] I think so.

[1526] Well, I guess so.

[1527] You mean, you have to perform.

[1528] You're physically doing things.

[1529] You're using your body in a really demanding way that can potentially be injurious.

[1530] That's for the enjoyment of other people.

[1531] I mean, it's not that different from, you know, playing football and, you know, fucking bashing your head against someone else be getting a concussion for, you know, the joy of other people.

[1532] Well, it's probably safer.

[1533] I would say it's safer.

[1534] Yeah.

[1535] It's harder to get into that football thing that is put the porn thing probably.

[1536] True.

[1537] Fair dues.

[1538] It's, you don't, you don't get drafted to be in porn.

[1539] If we had drafts for porn, boy, that would really step up the quality of the porn.

[1540] Could you imagine if there was a draft, if we were so open as a society that, like the NFL draft, we had a porn draft?

[1541] I'd do it.

[1542] What would you do?

[1543] What would you do?

[1544] Are you like one of the actors?

[1545] Just solo masturbation.

[1546] Are you that you're that confident?

[1547] Do you have a style or a flare to the way you do it?

[1548] I do like one this way and then one like on the tip.

[1549] So it's like Dragon Ball.

[1550] Hmm.

[1551] So you keep performing magic.

[1552] Yeah.

[1553] I don't want to pay you that so I don't think you have a business proposal.

[1554] I don't think you have to pay anything.

[1555] You're my buddy.

[1556] Oh, that's so sweet.

[1557] So I can get a password?

[1558] Yeah.

[1559] Yeah.

[1560] Who knows how much money the porn business lost.

[1561] They vanished.

[1562] But you're not allowed to say that.

[1563] Man, I know girls that are making shit loads of money on cam right now.

[1564] Oh, that's the new thing, right?

[1565] Yeah, all cams.

[1566] Yeah, the new thing is, what do you think is going to happen with this virtual stuff?

[1567] Because I'm really fascinated by Oculus Rift.

[1568] Ever since Duncan Trussell let me try his on.

[1569] He has an older model, apparently, which is a lower pixel, lower resolution.

[1570] Yeah.

[1571] It's still incredibly impressive.

[1572] And I think that's the future point.

[1573] for sure is those things like completely interactive pornography I can see that where you actually like we're looking at through like a POV thing yeah like you could be the woman or you could be the man you know you you would you would see this person having sex with you you'd put on this this thing where the camera was probably in glasses that you were wearing or something and watch someone have sex with you and have watch you having sex with them and then you know I mean that would be like the ultimate POV for someone.

[1574] And that's, I would think that that would be the way your brain would get the most turned on.

[1575] Because that would be the way that you can most relate to.

[1576] It just seems like that's just what's going to happen.

[1577] Because the Oculus Rift is so bizarre.

[1578] When you're looking up and looking around, you realize this is a true three -dimensional environment they've created.

[1579] I haven't tried it.

[1580] I tried Google Glass, which was oddly disappointing and it's kind of do you know what's hilarious?

[1581] They don't voice recognition on it, so you can go up to someone else who has Google Glass and be like, image search, Goosey, and it'll totally fucking pop up.

[1582] You can direct other people's Google Glass by talking close to them.

[1583] Oh, no. I did not even think about that.

[1584] I used it.

[1585] I have a friend who works for Google, and I used it.

[1586] I didn't think I would ever use it in real life, though.

[1587] I like a phone.

[1588] I'd like being able to text someone.

[1589] I like be able to pull up an image, and I see it on this big phone.

[1590] I don't want to see it in this weird thing that it's here, and I see it in front of me and it's just goofy I mean I'm sure like in five years there are going to be fucking contact lenses that like make you suction you into the network at all time but as like a first generation device it's just I didn't even have any preconceptions but man it is fucking it is doofy it is a doofy fucking device totally put perfectly doofy it is a dofy device but I think it's a it's a it's a predecessor to the finished product like you said it's like okay like if I had to tell you that you know your your trip back home to New York is going to be by horse and buggy.

[1591] He'd be like, what the fuck are you talking about?

[1592] That shit's going to take months.

[1593] Yeah, that's how you do it.

[1594] That's how you get to New York.

[1595] Like, no, no, no. You get in a plane stupid.

[1596] Like, what are you talking about?

[1597] Like, someone had to do a horse and buggy for someone to invent a plane.

[1598] They didn't just invent a plane right off the jump and figure out, there's got to be a place called California.

[1599] Let's hope that when we fly over there, there's runways.

[1600] No, they had to build runways.

[1601] They had to set up the fucking gas stations for the airplanes over there.

[1602] Before they can talk somebody in the flying.

[1603] So there had to be steps.

[1604] This Google Glass is the wagon train.

[1605] This is a covered wagon.

[1606] And then one day, there's going to be a Ferrari.

[1607] And that fucking thing is going to be somewhere inside your head.

[1608] It's probably, they'll just probably insert it behind the back of your neck, right into your skull.

[1609] And it'll integrate your fibers, your tissue, your neural fibers will grow over it or something.

[1610] And it'll become a part of your brain.

[1611] You'll be able to access the internet 24 -7.

[1612] It'll work on the electricity of your own body.

[1613] There'll be no need for a power source.

[1614] Occasionally people have a bad reaction.

[1615] Yeah.

[1616] But those would be like, it would be funny if those were cigarette smokers.

[1617] Only cigarette smokers.

[1618] Everybody had to quit smoking cigarettes or you couldn't use a neural implant that killed the tobacco industry.

[1619] A win -win.

[1620] A win -win for everybody.

[1621] You see this, this is seeing the road through your partner's eyes.

[1622] So what you do is you get your girlfriend.

[1623] And you're both sitting there with the Oculus Rift.

[1624] So that's all you can see is each other's bodies, though.

[1625] So it's like, all right, now move your hand down your chest.

[1626] So you're looking down in the Oculus Rift, and it looks like you have boobs, but you don't.

[1627] but you've...

[1628] Whoa.

[1629] Yeah.

[1630] I did a project in December where I was wearing glass and I had my friend Tim Poole hack them so they could live stream and I was drawing this porn star Stoya.

[1631] And the idea was I wanted people to see what it was like for me to draw through my eyes.

[1632] And I was thinking about it.

[1633] Like they did.

[1634] I mean, they literally were looking through my eyes, but it almost felt more like they were staring over my shoulder instead.

[1635] you know like it was it was almost the experience but not quite and i feel like the oculus rift it must be kind of the same like just this uncanny valley realm of or of almostness that's a great phrase uncanny valley they they use that in the video game industry there because uh like invidia they allowed me uh when i was doing that sci -fi show to come through their studios in northern california and they showed me this new technology that they have that's based entirely on like a real person's face and it's so insanely, insanely realistic like incredibly incredibly realistic and it's just about bridging that uncanny valley that's how they kept talking about it but I think that once this Oculus rift gets to that point things are going to be very very very strange because they're going to be able to recreate worlds in there.

[1636] I don't think we understand or we can even grasp that kind of impact it's going to to have when you have an indistinguishable world that you can enter into with putting on these oculus riffs and you all of a sudden are on Oz and you're going down the path and you talk to Dorothy and you might even be wearing a suit that covers you with sensors that allow it to replicate physical touch so Dorothy might grab your hand and you might be on this treadmill that can move in any direction and you're moving forward like they have these things where the only thing that's going to freak you out is the fact that you know you're kind of moving on a treadmill.

[1637] Once you get that becomes normal, like the normal way you walk, you're going to accept the fact that you're in this fucking weird mystery fantasy world.

[1638] And no one's going to want to live in real world anymore.

[1639] Real world's going to get very strange.

[1640] So like when I was 17, I read, I was reading Plato.

[1641] And, you know, he has the cave metaphor, right, where the people are watching the shadows on the wall and they're getting into fights with the shadows on the wall.

[1642] And they think that those shadows in the wall are all there is to life.

[1643] And if you would try to get them out of the cave, They even, like, fight you because they want those fucking shadows on the wall.

[1644] And at 17, it was before the internet was quite so immersive.

[1645] And I was, like, trying to make the cognitive leap and imagine what that would be like.

[1646] And now, here I am, you know, 13 years later, getting into earnest fights on Twitter with shadows on a glowing screen as if that's real life.

[1647] Well, Twitter is somewhere on the other end, though.

[1648] That is sort of real life.

[1649] It is, but we're still, it's absolutely real life, but it's also still flickering lights at the same time.

[1650] it is definitely that well it's also the disconnect that's not present in nature this when human beings are interacting with each other we're supposed to be able to see each other yeah we're supposed to feel each other when you say something it could be very subtle and you see someone like maybe take it the wrong way and you're like oh no no no I don't mean that I mean and they go like oh like all that's missing when there's a video or text especially text like if you ever send someone a text and you were totally joking and they're like what the fuck asshole and And, like, you being serious?

[1651] Like, no, I'm not being serious.

[1652] Like, come on.

[1653] You don't know that I'm joking.

[1654] You're like, but if someone just reads your words with a, they put a different intent in it, they can decide you, like, the worst piece of shit ever.

[1655] They can just decide.

[1656] And with the same words, can decide you're completely different.

[1657] Can you say, oh, that's just Tom.

[1658] He's fucking silly.

[1659] He sends me these silly things.

[1660] Like, me and my friends, like, Ari Shafir will send me something.

[1661] He'll, like, the other day, he, uh, I sent him a tweet.

[1662] And he says, thanks, brother.

[1663] I'm going to let you eat the heart of my name.

[1664] next abortion.

[1665] Okay.

[1666] I don't think he's serious, all right?

[1667] You know?

[1668] He's actually serious.

[1669] He's not.

[1670] He's not serious.

[1671] But you know what I mean?

[1672] It's like, I don't even know what I mean at this point.

[1673] I do, but it's kind of pointless.

[1674] People look to be upset.

[1675] That's my point, I guess.

[1676] There's too much of that.

[1677] I definitely want to see that.

[1678] It's great.

[1679] He actually sings his own...

[1680] in the sky and now you're not coming down it's slowly turned you let me burn and now where ashes on the ground don't you ever say I just walked away I will always want you it's shot by shot I can't live a lie running for my life I will always want you I came in like a wrecking ball I never hit so hard in love Is this a real Miley Cyrus song?

[1681] Is that what this is?

[1682] Yeah, he did a shot by shot so it's exactly like the same original video.

[1683] I wonder whose idea that was.

[1684] It's a great idea for him.

[1685] There's also a really good Robocop remake that Channel 101 has done I don't know if you've seen yet.

[1686] Yeah, everybody keeps telling me about that but I haven't watched it.

[1687] There's a good scene where it's just a bunch of dicks getting shot.

[1688] Hey, I think you're supposed to say spoiler alert Before you say something like that.

[1689] I'm sorry.

[1690] Yeah, Rod Jeremy's a nice guy.

[1691] There's a guy who's been around.

[1692] It's also, this will sound kind of strange, but, like, I find his version kind of touching because, like, no, like, Millie Serious.

[1693] I mean, she's, like, this polished product of, you know, like, perfect.

[1694] You know, it's a perfect fucking thing.

[1695] You know, she's like this auto -tuned voice, you know, his gym -tone body's perfect.

[1696] And, like, he's this kind of, like, this, like, flawed, you know, old, out -of -shaped dude.

[1697] And he's, like, you know, with not a great voice.

[1698] And he's, like, singing these, like, canned, market -tested lyrics.

[1699] And there's, like, something almost like...

[1700] Like, it actually seems like maybe Ron Jeremy actually wasn't love with someone once.

[1701] I don't know.

[1702] There's something touching about it.

[1703] I'm sure he was.

[1704] I feel that, too.

[1705] I feel real love in his words.

[1706] Yeah, he's not that polished thing that is Miley Cyrus.

[1707] Have you ever heard Miley Cyrus sing Dolly Parton?

[1708] Jolene?

[1709] Yeah.

[1710] I actually really liked it.

[1711] Yeah, I thought it was...

[1712] It was fucking lovely.

[1713] I love that song.

[1714] She's got a great voice.

[1715] Like, someone should write shit like that for her.

[1716] You know?

[1717] I mean, she's got a great voice.

[1718] like who knows who orchestrates all this stuff she's a young kid you know i mean who the who the fuck at 18 can you know tell record companies what kind of music you want to make and what producers you want to work with you know who knows maybe she'll turn out to be a great singer she's got an unbelievable voice though yeah the jolline thing was fucking extraordinary yeah really incredible like like real soulful like it's uh not not like you know there's there's songs where people sing and you know that they have like a good quality voice but it just feels manufactured.

[1719] It feels fake.

[1720] And then there's Janice Joplin.

[1721] Yeah.

[1722] Where it's just so authentic.

[1723] Like to this day, if I'm in my car and I'm listening to like X -M or something like that and Janice Joplin comes on, take another little piece of my heart that come on, that you think about her, just singing that, take it.

[1724] Take another little piece of my heart now.

[1725] Ugly, fucking weird, hippie bitch who just can sing.

[1726] like an angel just this weird lived voice she had this quality of her voice that you just never heard before just so authentic just undeniable like you couldn't there's no way that janice joplin couldn't have been a star you you could have heard her at a coffee shop and just dropped everything you're doing call everybody you got to get a record guy over here you got to record this like this is this is some unusual shit and there's some other people that they do that they have this beautiful voice and they have to do the little fluctuations but you don't care they don't feel anything when you see those fucking people like those janus joplin types that can just they can make you feel things i mean making people feel things in an authentic way not in like the bullshit mechanical you know tear -jerker way but an authentic way is such a rare fucking gift being able to do that and you need to like fucking grab those people and elevate them because my god they can take you out of yourself no doubt and the music especially to me there's something about really good music that completely changes my state of just my state of body my state of feeling like it can give me goosebumps a really good song can give me goosebumps like the other day i was driving home and radar love came on you know that song you ever heard that song no oh god it's it's a like a one -hit wonder band from the 60s or 70s pull that pull that up brian is the greatest driving music of all time And when I was 18 years old, I had this girlfriend that moved to Western Massachusetts.

[1727] I was living in Boston.

[1728] I was living in Newton.

[1729] And she moved like an hour and a half away.

[1730] And I used to have to drive to go visit her.

[1731] And my cars were always pieces of shit.

[1732] So it was always a death drive.

[1733] And one time I broke down in a snowstorm halfway to visit her.

[1734] It was a fucking huge disaster.

[1735] But I had a cassette.

[1736] And I would play this song, Radar Love, because it's all about driving.

[1737] It's all about driving when you're exhausted and just keeping your foot on the gas.

[1738] This song came on the other day, and my whole body tingled.

[1739] Like, I'm driving, and I heard it come on.

[1740] Like, as I changed the channel, it was right where the drum starts beating right here.

[1741] Right here.

[1742] And that's right when I hit the channel.

[1743] And I was in the car, and I was driving, and it was late at night.

[1744] And first of all, my whole body started tingling, and it brought me immediately.

[1745] back to being some half -retarded 18 -year -old driving my piece of shit Audi Fox that could fall apart at any minute wheels could fly off and I go in the fucking oncoming lanes Listen to this shit though dude Some dude did this Decades ago It's fucking perfect And it's half pass when I'm shifting gear That's a powerful fucking song.

[1746] They have radar love that.

[1747] She sends it out and he gets in the car and fucking guns it over there.

[1748] That is fucking beautiful.

[1749] It's beautiful.

[1750] It's beautiful.

[1751] It gives me tingles.

[1752] I've got to get going.

[1753] I have another fucking appointment.

[1754] Get the fuck out of here, Molly.

[1755] Is there anything we can do to promote?

[1756] Is there anything we can say?

[1757] Is anything people should visit?

[1758] Is there anything people should buy?

[1759] Okay.

[1760] My website is mollycrabapple .com.

[1761] I have some prints on there if you'd like to get them.

[1762] I'm working on my memoir for Harper Collins, drawing blood.

[1763] It'll be out in 2015, so that's a while.

[1764] And you can follow me on Twitter at Molly Crab Apple.

[1765] Molly, thank you very much.

[1766] This is a lot of fun.

[1767] We've got to do this again.

[1768] I would love that.

[1769] This was amazing.

[1770] Let's do it again.

[1771] She has a lot of collection art books also on Amazon.

[1772] Oh, okay.

[1773] Well, tell us which, what are the names, so people should go out and get those.

[1774] I've got two art books out.

[1775] Devil in the Details, and Weak and How.

[1776] Beautiful.

[1777] I will be buying those as soon is this podcast.

[1778] Oh, ladies and gentlemen, Amazon one click, make it happen.

[1779] Molly Crab Apple, you are the shit.

[1780] That was a lot of fun.

[1781] You were the coolest.

[1782] Thank you for having me. No, you're the coolest.

[1783] I can't be the coolest when you're alive.

[1784] Thank you also to our coolest sponsors.

[1785] Thanks to lumosity .com.

[1786] Go there.

[1787] Use your computer, your iPhone.

[1788] Get the free Luminosity iPhone or iPad app.

[1789] Go to lumosity.

[1790] Lumosity .com slash Joe.

[1791] That's L -U -M -O -S -I -T -Y .com.

[1792] Slash Joe.

[1793] Click to start training.

[1794] and get your freak on.

[1795] We're also brought to you by 1 -800 flowers.

[1796] 1 -800 flowers.

[1797] Enjoy, 1 -800 -flowers .com and use the code word J -R -E for a special offer of 18 beautiful Valentine Roses for only 29 -99.

[1798] And for just $10, more, you get a full two dozen, son.

[1799] Thank you also to onit .com.

[1800] O -N -N -I -T, use the code word, Rogan, save 10 % off any and all supplements.

[1801] We will be back tomorrow with the one and only war machine.

[1802] And then Thursday, Joey, motherfucking Cocoa Diaz.

[1803] We love you all.

[1804] Thank you very much.

[1805] And be good to each other.

[1806] Muha.