0:04

Hello to everybody who accidentally got

0:07

a rooster. It's to refer a

0:09

lot of this one hour your

0:11

phone call you name's. Right?

0:18

know? Now.

0:27

I have already. chris get through here. I

0:29

know not everybody loves a long trip. This

0:31

one I'm going to estimate. How

0:35

ten to twelve minutes of ensure and

0:37

skip ahead to that. If you just

0:39

want the phone call please consider beautiful

0:41

amount of this.com you're looking for more

0:43

content. Thanks so much. Everybody

0:51

Chris gathered here. Welcome to another

0:53

episode of Beautiful Anonymous! I feel

0:55

so lucky. To. Be Here! I

0:58

feel so lucky to be doing this and the other

1:00

phone call that you're about to here. Is

1:03

one that I figure out going to feel lucky

1:05

be here as well. This one was a great

1:07

reminder to me of the early days of the

1:09

show, where things were a manic and unpredictable and

1:11

where I never knew quite where it was going

1:14

and where we have now recorded it and I've

1:16

still not are always certain. Of

1:18

where. It. Went before I

1:20

get into any of that. Have to say

1:22

first of all a huge thank you to

1:25

everybody in Brooklyn who came out a little

1:27

field on Saturday. I did a. Benefit.

1:29

Show for the mental health education

1:31

nonprofit that I work for now.

1:33

Wellness. Together help me build the

1:35

program. Laughing Together Gary gone and clear.

1:38

Okay Christie summers business casual and we

1:40

packed that place out. Thank you are

1:42

so much for helping and if you

1:44

want to see me live we got

1:46

first will be of Vancouver to stand

1:48

up on the fifteenth of February and

1:50

March. First will be back at Littlefield

1:52

doing another Laughing Together benefit raising money

1:55

for mental health services As Ghouls with

1:57

Joe Para Joy L, Nicole Johnson Can

1:59

these mobley. Nichols, all

2:01

kinds of good stuff. And a beautiful anonymous

2:03

taping March 23rd in

2:05

Boise. All kinds of great

2:08

things happening. Thanks to everybody who supports and buys

2:10

tickets and comes out to see

2:12

things on the road. What

2:15

else do I want to tell you in this

2:17

intro? I don't think we need to make this

2:19

one a particularly long one.

2:21

Oh, I should also

2:23

say, of course, thanks to everybody who

2:26

listened to the audio

2:28

excerpt from the audiobook of my

2:30

new piece, Dad at Peace. If

2:34

you haven't had a chance to listen to it

2:36

yet, everand.com. You can go sign up for 30 days

2:38

for free right now. If you go to

2:40

my social media, I think there's a link for 60 days

2:42

for free. I've got three books on there. I actually think

2:45

they have a fourth one of mine as well, as

2:48

well as stuff by all kinds of, I mean, Stephen

2:50

King and Margaret Atwood. So if

2:53

you're looking for something to read or listen to, I've

2:56

got a new piece up there,

2:58

new little mini book. And this one,

3:00

Dad at Peace, a lot of it

3:02

is about how I came to sort

3:04

of struggle through some financial stuff, some

3:06

insecurity, the pandemic, the health

3:08

insurance, the questioning, the constant travel, taking a

3:10

step back at my life and saying I've

3:12

had a very lucky life and a relatively

3:15

successful life, but I don't know if it's

3:17

for me anymore and how I came to

3:19

start working at a nonprofit.

3:22

And along the way, you'll be happy to hear, I

3:24

think anybody who's listened will tell you, I

3:26

spill a lot of tea about what happened with

3:29

Beautiful Anonymous. I know there was a stretch where

3:31

we announced we were going independent. And then I

3:33

saw a lot of feedback from people saying, you

3:36

sound looser on the show again. I could,

3:39

now that I can hear that some stuff

3:41

was going, I look back and can sense

3:43

there had been some tension in some of

3:45

those episodes and that you had some weight

3:47

on your shoulders that's been lifted. If

3:49

you've ever wanted to know more about what was

3:51

happening with Beautiful Anonymous, I really do go pretty

3:53

in depth, more in depth than I've gone publicly

3:56

and probably that I will. I mean, the

3:59

stories of the that helped the

4:01

show survive are kind of baffling

4:03

and funny and Some

4:05

of the timeline of how everything started to

4:08

break that led to beautiful anonymous going independent

4:10

I get really specific in there. So if

4:12

you've ever been curious, you

4:14

can go get the thing you go to ever

4:16

and calm That's ev er and d calm you

4:18

can sign up. You can check it

4:20

out. You can listen to it You can read it check

4:22

out some other stuff when you're there and then if the

4:25

service is not for you No harm. No foul just unsubscribe

4:28

And yeah, thanks to everybody who has supported check it out

4:30

And this one I think will tell

4:33

get the heartstrings and I think beautiful anonymous

4:35

listeners Will read it and

4:37

go right? guy is

4:39

finally realizing How

4:43

to grow up and embrace who he is not

4:45

who it used to be and a lot

4:47

of you have always realized that Six

4:49

to twelve months before I have realized that as

4:51

I take these life turns. It's very strange It's

4:54

very strange to go on the road and meet

4:56

Beautiful anonymous fans and they'll say oh you said this

4:59

thing on the show and I said it to my

5:01

husband a year ago Like oh Chris should do x

5:03

y and z and I go I

5:05

wish someone had told me and they go no No, these

5:07

are things you have to figure out for yourself and we

5:09

listen and we listen to you figure them out We all

5:11

got each other's backs and it's wild

5:13

the consistency with which I

5:16

have conversations like that I

5:20

Do also have to say I had an amazing dinner

5:22

that Fans

5:24

of beautiful anonymous. I think we'll just like

5:27

that this happened I did San

5:29

Francisco sketch fest, which is a great great

5:31

comedy festival and every time I do it

5:33

I'm reminded of the reasons that

5:35

I fell in love with comedy in the

5:37

first place comedy Which can be so divisive

5:39

and strangely so culturally Influential

5:42

and negative ways and and

5:45

disappointing at San Francisco sketch fest Really

5:48

stands against all the annoying sides of comedy and

5:50

is reinvigorating So I went and I did it

5:53

it was awesome And I got to catch up

5:55

with a bunch of friends then I flipped to

5:57

Portland My flight was delayed

5:59

by over three hours and I was bummed because

6:01

my friend Murph, one of my dear friends, he was the

6:03

Reverend at my wedding. I was the Reverend at his. We

6:05

were on the TV show together back in the day. I

6:09

got to hang out with him and his wife and his beautiful

6:11

daughter for about 45 minutes. It

6:13

was supposed to be the whole day. It was

6:15

only about like 45 minutes and we had to go

6:18

get dinner and Murph came to the show and

6:20

that dinner, you'll be happy

6:22

to hear, I got dinner with the

6:24

callers from Love Is Everywhere and Parade

6:26

Girl herself and

6:29

I got to catch up with them, fill

6:31

them in. Murph had them laughing with some stories of

6:33

how I used to be in the old days back

6:36

when things were more wild with me. Got to

6:39

hear about all the

6:41

stuff Parade Girl's up to which is always a lot

6:44

of twists and turns as you would expect in

6:46

her life and she really broke down in person

6:48

as we sat and broke bread about how she

6:50

managed to take over the show for a long

6:52

while there and she was laughing

6:54

about how she knew that she was actively

6:57

pissing off the high priestess Andrea Quinn as

6:59

she manipulated the show and turned it into

7:01

her own and I was

7:03

left there catching up with both the

7:05

caller from Love Is Everywhere and her husband

7:07

with Parade Girl with my old friend Murph

7:10

and all these people from different eras of

7:12

life and different eras of my

7:15

creativity and I was just left really

7:19

really struck by

7:21

how lucky I have been

7:24

and sometimes I give in to the stress and sometimes

7:27

I give in to the dramas and

7:29

then every once in a while I managed to take a step back

7:31

and go I've lived this life where I've

7:33

made some stuff and I've managed to survive and the

7:35

most important thing about it is

7:37

it has connected me with

7:40

people in

7:42

ways I never expected and

7:45

all over the world and

7:47

now that I'm I've turned

7:50

a corner age-wise and where

7:52

being a father is a factor I now

7:54

get to have this other thing where I go to cities and I

7:56

go I'm sitting here having a dinner

7:58

with one of my oldest friends, Murph,

8:01

with Heidi and Rick,

8:04

love is everywhere, who have

8:07

been so deeply meaningful in my life. With Parade

8:09

Girl, who when you get

8:11

past the idea that she manipulated the show and

8:13

was my nemesis, it was actually this weird creative

8:16

back and forth that she and I had that

8:18

unfolded in a way that wasn't planned and that

8:21

I didn't even know who she was. And I

8:23

sit here and I go, okay,

8:26

if Cal ever winds up in trouble in

8:28

Portland, Oregon, I got multiple people

8:30

who are gonna have that kids back. I

8:34

know who I'll call if he ever has a

8:36

car breakdown in San Francisco or Denver

8:39

or Chicago or all

8:42

over the country and all over the world. There's

8:45

places where I know that if my little guy

8:47

grows up and he needs help, he'll

8:52

reach out to me and I'll

8:54

be able to go, okay, you

8:56

need help, okay, you need help in that part of

8:58

the world? Well, I got a 39 year old grandma

9:00

who I think will be there and will treat you

9:02

like her own grandson. I don't

9:06

know that you're even

9:08

intimately aware with this person

9:10

or, oh, you're broken

9:13

down in Toledo? Well, make your way to Culture

9:16

Clash Records and they will make sure that you

9:18

are fed and housed and have a roof over

9:20

your heads and that extends not just

9:22

to the community of this show but the community

9:26

of my life. And

9:29

I don't know why I'm in such a contemplative mood.

9:31

Sometimes I get in these moods where

9:34

I'm not trying to be too dark or I will

9:36

sometimes have these thoughts of like, cool, when I'm gone,

9:39

my son will have all these people to protect them

9:41

and I go, I'm 43, I don't think I'm going

9:43

anywhere anytime soon. I had a colonoscopy, clean bill of

9:45

health and it sounds

9:47

macabre but it's

9:50

not macabre. It's actually such a

9:52

piece, a sense of peace and such a sense

9:54

of zen, which is a lot

9:56

of what that piece is obviously about but also just

9:58

in life in general. I feel

10:00

very, very lucky to be in a phase where

10:02

the stress has lifted,

10:04

at least momentarily enough, that

10:07

I can offer a huge heartfelt thank you to

10:10

everyone who has been a part of my

10:13

community and who I know has not

10:16

just had my back, but where I go.

10:19

My little guy has this gigantic safety net

10:21

he could not even perceive for

10:23

many years. And

10:26

man, does that bring me a sense

10:28

of peace. Anyway,

10:30

that's that. We did the show plugs.

10:32

I should also obviously mention that beautifulanonymous.com

10:34

is up and running. It's going well.

10:37

I don't think we're going to get to that 2,500 subscriber

10:41

benchmark, but we're up above 600 and that's

10:43

not nothing. I don't want to get caught

10:45

up and say, well, if I could get

10:48

to 2,500, I get this big financial bonus.

10:51

At the end of the day, over 600 people

10:53

signed up who want a little more bang for

10:55

their buck. We put

10:57

out an episode with Tim from Culture Clash

10:59

Records, catching up with

11:01

him, doing the five questions, hearing how the store

11:03

is going, hearing how life is going. The

11:06

caller you're about to hear, the five

11:08

questions afterwards are just lovely and

11:10

surprising and fun. Once a month,

11:13

we get to go out there and give

11:16

a secret number for the people at

11:18

the touchtone tier of beautifulanonymous.com. You

11:22

don't have to compete with so many people to be on

11:25

the show. It's just really lovely. If

11:27

you buy for a whole year, there's big massive

11:29

discounts. Every day, I type out

11:31

two or three letters to the people who

11:33

sign up at that cellular technology thing. That's

11:35

where if you have disposable income, it's 150

11:37

bucks for the year and

11:40

you get a hand, not a handwritten

11:42

because my handwriting sucks. I typed out

11:44

note from me. I type every single

11:46

one individually. Many People

11:48

would be tempted to copy and paste the intro

11:50

and outro and then just do a little blurb

11:52

in the middle. Every Single one is different. I

11:54

Love doing it. I Love schlepping to the post

11:56

office. I've sent some off to the UK and

11:58

Canada. It's so cool. So thanks Everybody

12:01

has been signing up. Test

12:03

everybody who's been listening. Thanks to everybody

12:05

who's about to enjoy this call, which

12:07

is an all time classic. I'm calling

12:10

it now. You're gonna love this guy.

12:12

Energy From the start I'm never certain

12:14

where it's going. It has all the

12:16

benchmarks of the types of beautiful anonymous

12:19

calls that become embraced by all time

12:21

classics meaning a clear phone connection, a

12:23

good sense of humor, and unpredictable nature.

12:25

Arm I ask questions that don't get

12:28

direct answers, but they lead to like

12:30

six new questions. There are animals that

12:32

show. Up, I know that that's a

12:34

lot of stuff is gonna be one

12:36

your favorite. Cause if there's not a

12:39

random animal, course it's not. There's random

12:41

animals and that standard random animals. Weird

12:43

random animals. And then of course there's

12:45

also talk of. Things.

12:48

Diving. Deep in a way. That

12:51

we won't see and that okay, if there's one regret

12:53

I have, I wish we had more time to try

12:55

to get into some specifics, but it's almost for the

12:57

best that we don't because the color comes to talk

13:00

about something that is very. I

13:02

don't want to say very unique to the nineties

13:04

because it's still goes on today. But

13:06

it was very much. Shattered

13:09

About and Invoke and a Thing in the

13:11

Nineties. And that kind of a defining thing

13:13

that when you think back to those nineties

13:15

talk shows. On I

13:17

feel like it needs a little bit of a had

13:19

a heads up. You. Might remember

13:21

that back then. It would be like our Jerry

13:23

Springer have an all these kids that have to

13:25

go to some school that's like. Basically.

13:28

The military and they seem harsh and

13:30

dark. Or. Color went to

13:32

one. Now. I don't want to spoil

13:34

it, but I know that my piece of the

13:36

some people need to brace themselves for if you

13:38

had experience with these because they don't have a

13:40

reputation for being pleasant places for color was but.

13:43

You. Will hear that we get into in a way that's not. The.

13:46

Drawn out narrative of his time, there it's more just a

13:48

fact of his life and how it affected him then and

13:50

how it affects them. This. one

13:53

is very real in that way it's not well on

13:55

this day i went in on this date this happen

13:57

and i'm then i got out on this day it's

13:59

more yet This was a thing

14:01

that kind of became a weight

14:07

that gave gravity to the entirety of my

14:09

childhood experience that I had to then unwrap

14:11

as an adult. And

14:13

then you'll also hear that the caller is who he is today.

14:17

It's kind of mind blowing. So

14:19

anyway, I feel really

14:21

lucky. And I think you're going to love

14:23

this one. Feel lucky that I have to get this

14:25

call. I feel lucky that I get to live this life. I feel lucky

14:27

that I get to connect with all of you. And

14:29

I hope you're out there feeling lucky about your

14:32

own things as well. And if you're down on your

14:34

luck, having some bad luck right

14:36

now and you're decidedly not feeling lucky, I hope

14:38

at the very least this helps

14:40

you connect with someone else for

14:42

an hour to take your mind

14:44

off your own troubles. Thank

14:49

you for calling Beautiful Anonymous. A beeping noise

14:52

will indicate when you are on the show

14:54

with the host. Hello?

14:58

Hello? Hey,

15:00

Chris. Yeah, what's up? Oh

15:04

my gosh. Not

15:06

much. I was just the music

15:09

ended so abruptly. I was called off-star. You

15:11

were there? Here we are. We're

15:13

in it now. We're really in it now. Yeah,

15:15

yeah, yeah. Oh,

15:18

I was going to try to make a cup of

15:20

coffee before he comes back. But let's look. What

15:23

if you need

15:25

to make coffee? I can hold. I'm

15:28

not going to put you on hold. How

15:31

are you doing today? How is

15:34

winter weather where you are? Winter

15:37

weather is not great. There

15:40

was a lot of snow and stuff a couple of weeks ago, so

15:42

we don't have that. But it's just been gloomy here. As

15:44

far as how I'm doing, I will say the answer

15:46

is you really don't want

15:49

to know and I'm always honest about it,

15:51

so don't ask. So don't ask.

15:53

Okay. Yeah. That's

15:55

fair. Yeah, and not because I'm

15:57

in a bad place. I'm not trying to figure anybody out.

16:00

It involves, I recently had

16:02

a colonoscopy. So just let's not ask

16:04

about, let's not even ask. No,

16:07

no, that's listen. I'm, um, we're,

16:09

we're close in age. So the adult, uh,

16:13

adult healthcare is a real thing. It

16:15

can definitely catch off guard. For sure. And now I

16:17

feel like I'm scaring everybody and they all think

16:19

that I have been diagnosed with, I have not, it's

16:21

just, what

16:25

the hell, you got a rooster? I

16:28

do. I have about 20 chickens. One of them was

16:30

a rooster cat noir was not supposed to be a

16:33

rooster. We got this re-up

16:35

and on, on ladies, we thought it was,

16:37

you get these straight runs and yeah, I

16:40

thought cat noir was a

16:42

boy. He had the right to be around the straight run

16:44

of that. Yeah. He's named Kat

16:46

and my kids named him Kat Noir. Yeah. After the French

16:49

cartoon. Wow.

16:51

Are you familiar with Kat Noir and

16:53

ladybug girl, the adventures? No. This

16:56

immediately, immediately taken some turns.

16:58

No one expected. Yeah.

17:03

We can, we can, we can zig away

17:05

from colonoscopy. I can chat about chickens. Yeah.

17:08

People are a lot like dog people. Yeah,

17:11

go for it. Well,

17:14

so, um, when

17:16

you get chickens, um, a

17:19

lot like people like us are kind of like backyard

17:21

hobby farmers. You just get them from like factor

17:23

supply or the hardware store, you

17:26

know, places have chicks and it's

17:28

hard. A lot of times you get them a little

17:30

bit older as pull-ups where they're guaranteed to be ladies,

17:33

to be egg layers. But sometimes you

17:35

figure you'll save a couple bucks, which was a

17:37

mistake for good with one of these batches. And

17:39

you're like, Oh, I'll get us what's called a

17:41

straight run and they're unsexed. And so we

17:43

got a straight run of eight on time. Four of

17:46

them were roosters and four were hens. The

17:49

cat noir was small and he escaped our

17:51

detection. The other three roosters got rid of

17:53

on Craigslist, but, um, the

17:55

cat noir persist. He's been here a couple of

17:57

years now. Cause he can't

17:59

have More than one rooster they'll start fighting.

18:01

Yeah, Well

18:04

some of that is is miss. Try and

18:06

like the idea that roosters or mean and

18:08

nasty a lot of is like you know.

18:11

We've got about twenty chicken total to the

18:13

hands of the pecking order is real and

18:15

the older hand don't suffer fools. they'll They'll

18:17

put Cat nord a place like he'll try

18:20

a mob. Or

18:22

take or is that you know as the kids

18:24

a whole time ride. Them

18:26

of the older ladies and first of

18:28

they're not lay eggs anymore the just

18:31

and retirement and then they will. They

18:33

will fight back with like if a

18:35

diminutive size rooster. Or how to

18:37

make. No,

18:42

I'm not bringing food at the other thing that

18:44

they all line up when I come on the

18:46

porch because they think I'm bringing scratch. Team

18:48

that rooster has good timing. The every time

18:51

there's a pause in the conversation, a bruiser

18:53

Mr. insert himself. Right

18:55

there Now that can get a goddamn

18:57

walk. Around

19:00

it's what it's like. It is funny

19:02

at mm. But we have We have the

19:04

my chickens we had to get am. Another

19:07

got the a threat the machine right on time

19:09

as well. As. We.

19:11

Have we have to get a yeah chicken that the

19:13

come out and. He sort of

19:16

explain the. Roosters

19:18

actually level a bit longer. Than

19:20

the hand because they really don't work as hard

19:22

you know they'll they'll put I got other than

19:24

to everyday. Do

19:27

for you for the article. Know

19:30

brother I live in a Poet

19:32

Anonymous by the I live in

19:34

of a large metropolitan area, but.

19:37

Because of the state I live in as

19:39

a state happens to be an agricultural fate

19:42

and it's very. By the sword

19:44

metropolitan area, you're allowed to have as many.

19:47

Chickens as you want because the state

19:49

was built. By to the to a

19:51

strange loop hole. Them. didn't

19:53

our chickens we could have go to we

19:55

want to be could have taken like you

19:57

and work really like a city in

20:01

like a proper suburb and like there's

20:03

no HOA though so you can do these sort

20:05

of things. Can't have horses that's where they draw

20:07

the line but if I wanted to

20:09

add goat or we looked at getting pig pre-pandemic

20:12

we thought about it for a little while. We

20:14

just we have a little over a half acre

20:16

but we also have like a proper you know

20:18

ranch home like suburb

20:21

people. So you have a half acre

20:23

which is respectable but it's certainly

20:25

not huge. How close is your closest

20:27

neighbor? You

20:31

see why I'm asking. Well

20:34

so my closest neighbor on one side

20:36

is a delightful retired Greyhound bus driver.

20:38

I love him and he hangs out

20:40

and scraps all day. He does a

20:42

scrap metal scrapping. So he's out

20:45

there with an angle grinder constantly and

20:48

one of the chickens, Cinnamon Girl, she's the only

20:50

one that's forgot how to fly the fence. So

20:52

she'll go over to his yard and lay eggs

20:54

in his yard and then come back and he

20:56

loves that. So that neighbor's cool and then

20:58

the other neighbor immediately on the other side is just

21:01

never there. It's like a it's

21:03

a family home they're just keeping

21:05

alive but no one lives there full time and

21:08

then the backyard directly

21:11

behind me is just wetlands so

21:13

no issue. And to be

21:16

honest more annoying than rooster

21:18

is people leave their dogs

21:20

outside like still in this day and error.

21:22

People leave dogs outside all night and all

21:24

day and those get loud. Those

21:26

get crazy. So

21:29

you got this guy grinding metal next to you.

21:31

You managed to get the one neighbor noisier than

21:33

you so he can't really get mad.

21:36

Yeah. Well

21:38

I think too this is the thing about the

21:40

rooster over the phone. I think the cell phone

21:42

is making him seem more

21:44

aggressive. Also I've left

21:46

the screen porch door open so now the cats are

21:48

out there so he thinks the cats are going to

21:50

bring him food. You know it's a real menagerie here.

21:53

A real uh we got

21:55

an animal situation.

21:58

But the chickens man you know I don't know what

22:00

your situation is like, but it's like, uh, I

22:03

grew up without, like, it's sort of

22:05

funny. I make this joke, but

22:08

the house I grew up in, there

22:10

were like these couple hard fast rules

22:12

and it was like, one of them was

22:15

no, no pets of any kind. We just never had pets,

22:17

no call waiting, which this sort of ages me,

22:19

but like, that was like an advanced technology when

22:21

I was a kid, like, so no call waiting

22:23

and no cable TV, not for

22:25

finances, just all like on principle, we

22:28

didn't believe in cable TV or my folks didn't

22:30

believe in cable TV in their house. And even

22:32

for a couple of years, we were like a

22:34

TV free house in the eighties. So the

22:36

TV free house kids, I mean, that means

22:38

you didn't have a Nintendo or nothing. The,

22:41

the no TV kids back

22:44

in the eighties, um,

22:47

you had a sense that their parents were on

22:49

like, correct. Like it's going to make them smarter

22:51

and more successful and more well adjusted people. But

22:54

man, every other kid felt

22:56

bad for the no TV kid. Well,

23:00

it's funny that lasted the no

23:02

TV lasted about, I want

23:04

to say it was a gimmick. Like we moved,

23:06

let's just not get a TV once we move

23:09

into this new place. I was in like, like

23:12

for sir, this grade, but, but

23:15

there's like, like any good junkie,

23:17

like there's loopholes, like my grandparents who lived

23:19

in the neighborhood had cable television, like with

23:21

the push buttons on top, you

23:23

know, like the big brown cable

23:26

box. Do you remember those? Yeah, I remember those.

23:30

Yeah. So I could, I could get a hit of

23:32

it. Like when we stayed the weekend

23:34

at the grandparent's house. So like, and

23:37

I would, I would indulge, like, like

23:39

stay up for like two hours

23:41

at a time. I remember, um,

23:44

feel like what staying up to watch fire live with a

23:46

friend and a blanket for it. So it's like, you know, it

23:49

fell its way in. And then when I

23:51

was in fifth or

23:54

sixth grade television came back in our house because

23:56

my brother had to watch the news for

23:59

his homework. I got a TV

24:01

and came back and which was lucky

24:03

because I was just in time to Participate

24:05

in the Simpsons and all that, you know, the

24:07

greatest TV ever. There you go. There

24:09

you go. I I had

24:12

a good friend growing up named Jeremy Really

24:15

good guy and he had a

24:17

no TV house So

24:19

certainly a no Nintendo house and

24:22

I remember at my birthday party Fifth

24:25

grade birthday party a bunch of kids came over And

24:28

everybody was like playing and running around in the basement

24:30

and going outside and he just sat and played Nintendo

24:32

the whole time and that's when I I was

24:35

like, oh, yeah Moderation is a good thing

24:37

because he's been deprived of this and he just like

24:40

Every second that he can ignore all of

24:42

us to play some Mike Tyson's punch out

24:45

like he is He's gone

24:47

for there's no human interaction here, but he

24:49

actually turned out great. I think his parents

24:51

turned were correct I forget if

24:53

he's an ambassador or a diplomat now, but

24:55

he's like killing it So they were correct,

24:58

but I did see a moment of like,

25:00

oh if you take away something totally Then

25:03

the second a person gets it they go

25:06

250 percent in all in on it. Yeah yeah,

25:11

well that I mean that sort of it's

25:14

kind of sometimes the cycle of addiction like if

25:16

people are deprived or aren't exposed to stuff or

25:19

Compulsive eating all that sort of stuff that

25:22

we get it that we sometimes run into Sometimes

25:25

some of it, but it's funny. I was telling

25:30

before you came on when I was chatting It's

25:33

hard. It's hard to organically bring up things that are on the mind,

25:36

but it's funny that Actually,

25:38

like it's now that I'm an adult and a

25:40

parent of my own. It's sort of like And

25:44

I am very lucky to still have my now

25:46

elderly parents in my life, but they get to be

25:49

grandparents You probably are experiencing some of this, too, and

25:51

it's like Yeah,

25:53

it's like whatever Be for

25:55

problems they had with me as a youngin

25:57

and whatever difficulty

26:00

I have with them, I'm okay with

26:02

them being the grandparents to

26:04

my kids. You know what I mean? Like

26:06

it's kind of a great closed

26:09

the loop. So like, I

26:11

know I'm making really

26:13

what I think of the terrible choices

26:15

with my kids sometimes like around stuff.

26:17

But then I'm like, you know, in the

26:20

end, it all it's all at the moment worked out.

26:22

And I'm fortunate to have both my parents alive and

26:24

in my life to be grandparents to my kids. So,

26:28

you know, yeah. Yeah, the

26:30

few years of physical television

26:32

and actually, like

26:34

I said, we got one back just in time for

26:36

the Simpsons for, you know, like to sit and watch

26:38

the trace on the show to be the first Simpsons

26:40

short ever in like, after

26:43

the races with good television. They you know,

26:45

at the Golden Age, Simpsons and

26:48

Seinfeld. Yeah, pretty good stretch of

26:50

comedy for our lives growing up.

26:53

Yeah, it is funny like, oh, no,

26:57

you go ahead. It's funny. Yeah, like my

26:59

my life is also close to my eyes. We talk

27:01

about when we encounter people younger than us who like

27:03

scream and binge watch

27:05

the shows from our youth. It

27:08

feels weird because it's like they weren't engineered for

27:10

you to watch every single episode in a row

27:12

on time. It's like, you know, we caught it

27:15

in syndication or we caught the reruns in the

27:17

summertime. Like the like,

27:19

like, like my kids, the idea that

27:21

you see everything you watch from episode

27:23

one, that's the least two episodes. So you

27:25

get to see it all in order. It's still

27:28

foreign to me, you know, but I

27:31

don't know. I got to be old

27:33

and let the new ways come in. I

27:35

also miss I have very fond memories

27:37

of and

27:41

there's a few shows in particular, but one

27:43

that stands out to me is I

27:45

remember my mom was a big fan of the 18.

27:49

Remember the 18? Oh, God, yes. Don't

27:52

stop. Remember, you could phone in and choose a

27:54

different ending. No, the A team

27:56

had an interactive show. There

28:00

was a special episode, a very special A-Team,

28:02

where you could call like a 1-900 number

28:05

of something which we weren't allowed to do. But

28:07

we watched, yeah, and then you could choose a

28:09

different end. You could vote for whether someone, I

28:11

think it was Space finds a spot. Oh, guys,

28:13

we'll have to Google this. Someone's

28:15

screaming at the phone right now. No,

28:17

but I'm pretty sure that was, there

28:20

was an episode, yeah, I love the A-Team. Sorry, yeah. I

28:23

got to experience the A-Team, huge A-Team. I love it when

28:25

this plan comes together. I loved it.

28:28

I love that show, and my mom loves that

28:30

show. I have

28:32

very fond memories. I don't think my dad was a

28:34

fan, but once a week, when

28:37

it was in season, my mom would sit

28:39

in her bed and she would watch the A-Team, and

28:41

I would go and sit at the bottom of her bed

28:44

and we would watch the A-Team together. Like

28:47

you said, not only

28:49

is the idea of, hey,

28:51

anything I want to watch largely from the

28:55

entirety of the history of pop culture, I

28:58

can go find it and consume all of

29:00

it at my leisure, but

29:03

there was also something

29:05

to be said for things being appointments, that you

29:07

and your family had little rituals. Who

29:11

was I just, what was I just listening to?

29:14

I was just, oh, just listening. Conan O'Brien did

29:16

a great interview with Rob Reiner and Albert Brooks,

29:18

and they were talking about All in the Family,

29:20

which Rob Reiner was obviously on. He played Meathead,

29:22

another show that I, that was reruns for me

29:24

growing up. That was before my time, but the

29:26

reruns were great. And he was

29:28

talking about, it was, when you look at the

29:31

numbers, it was like 15%, 20% of all Americans

29:36

were watching All in the Family at the

29:39

same time, once a week, and then

29:41

discussing it and waiting for the next one. But

29:44

I can't think of anything that happens right

29:46

now where 20% of America comes together on

29:48

a weekly basis to do

29:51

a thing at the same time, let

29:53

alone something as frivolous as an episode

29:55

of television. Well,

29:59

you're absolutely right. Like I have, I think

30:02

it was when I was in eighth grade the second time, the

30:05

Simpsons were still on Sunday nights. And

30:07

so if you hadn't stayed up and watched them

30:09

on, I think that's when

30:11

the Simpsons were on Sunday night. Oh yeah.

30:14

It's like the water. It's like, yeah.

30:16

So like on Monday morning

30:18

and you know, you show up, if

30:21

you didn't know what happened, I get it. What were

30:23

you doing? I have a feeling we're similar age. I'm

30:25

43. I have a feeling

30:27

you're within spitting distance of each other. Yeah.

30:30

I'm, I'm 47. So you're, you're my

30:32

wife's age. You get it. It's

30:35

like, you're like a year and a half older than

30:37

my brother. And it's like, if

30:40

you miss the Simpsons back then and you

30:43

try to come into the lunchroom on Monday, what are

30:46

you doing? Like that's like showing up with a gun

30:48

with no bullets. Like you got no ammo to keep

30:51

up. Well,

30:53

here's the crazy stuff. The

30:55

Simpsons are, the reason that my mind

30:57

is my, might

30:59

be a little too young, but my nine year old

31:01

discovered it on Disney plus. And it's like, it's

31:05

hard for her little brain to understand that there's

31:07

already 750 episodes in

31:09

the can when like, as a family, you know,

31:11

we stream the Disney plus shows when they come

31:13

out and there's 10 episodes. But so she's discovered

31:16

the Simpsons as this endless Reese. And

31:18

it's funny, like we started with some of

31:20

the old stories. Older

31:24

episodes and the references, some of them

31:27

are evergreen, but some of it is

31:29

so hilariously dated that they

31:31

prefer the newer episodes of the Simpsons that are

31:33

fully foreign to me. There's

31:35

episodes of the Simpsons. Bart now wears like a

31:37

hoodie, like a proper zip up hoodie, like

31:39

a stylish Brooklyn hipster

31:41

hoodie, like on the newer episodes.

31:44

I didn't know that till about a month

31:46

ago. It is wild to realize, oh, this

31:48

thing that's so beloved by us, but my

31:50

son, there's hundreds of episodes of it. And

31:53

I'm sure many of them are good. I'm sure many of

31:55

them are not, you know, I think a lot of us

31:57

like to go, well, the Simpsons have that golden age. And

31:59

after the episode where he goes to New York

32:01

City, that's where I stopped watching, where Homer drinks

32:04

the crab juice instead of the Mountain Dew. Good

32:06

joke. That was the cutoff point. Like a lot

32:08

of people say that and it's like, oh no,

32:10

there's hundreds of episodes more similar

32:12

to Weezer, right? Like people our age,

32:14

those first two Weezer albums, these are,

32:17

you either, you loved them or hated them,

32:20

but you didn't have no opinion. They got

32:22

like 14 more albums that most of us

32:24

have never heard. Well,

32:27

you're going to step in it. Yeah, I

32:29

was 47. Now I haven't formally played in

32:31

a band since the mid nineties, but pretty

32:34

much a dividing line when you played in bands in

32:36

the nineties was whether the rest of the

32:38

band liked Pinkerton or not. And so I was very lucky

32:40

in the mid nineties to be in a band where Pinkerton

32:42

was considered a bellwether. Like you had to

32:45

hit that or you weren't,

32:47

you weren't shit. You know, that's, yeah, you're

32:49

absolutely right. But it's funny. My

32:51

kids, my 11 year old adores,

32:53

uh, whatever. There's a Weezer album

32:55

that I think came out when he was a toddler.

32:58

So like he heard the, it's like in his

33:01

conscious, a song from, I

33:03

don't know, four summers ago that we were put

33:05

out. That's the one he knows. So yeah, that's

33:07

not the Deborah Green. That's for the

33:10

kids, man. It's not for us. So now we're called

33:12

Ratatouille or something like that. Yeah.

33:15

Well, I mean, now your,

33:18

your kid is not old enough

33:20

to discover his own music yet. Or

33:22

is he or you're like, somebody used

33:24

to be in a band. He has

33:26

discovered his first favorite band that he

33:28

decided was his favorite band, a

33:30

band that neither. Now my wife

33:32

is a musician as well. So she, there's always music

33:34

on in the house, but she,

33:37

she would not claim herself to be this kind of

33:39

person or what I, he

33:41

is four and a half years old and

33:43

he recently decided he is

33:46

all in on kiss. And I

33:48

think it's the best funniest thing in the world.

33:51

Oh, did he see it visually or

33:54

hear it audit, like auditorily first? He,

33:56

I don't know if maybe a song

33:58

came out on shuffle. I know that the flashpoint

34:01

was when he saw them. My wife showed him a

34:03

video. I think he heard a kiss

34:05

song in the background somewhere and was like, mommy, this

34:07

is good. And she was like, oh, wait till you

34:09

see these guys. And then

34:11

he sees the

34:13

demon and star child and cat man

34:16

and space man. And he was

34:18

just like, yo, this is my thing.

34:22

This is it. This is my

34:24

thing. He wanted to be Gene

34:26

Simmons for Halloween. He insisted that

34:29

having star child Paul Stanley, I

34:31

was cat man Peter Chris. I

34:33

was like, oh, I guess we just won't have an ace freely because we're

34:35

only three of us. And he goes, well, uncle Greg

34:37

has to come from Philly. I was like, uncle Greg

34:40

has his own kid. He's not driving up from Philly

34:42

to dress up as ace freely. He goes, well, then

34:44

grandma has to do it. We were like, Cal, your

34:46

grandma is not painting her face like ace freely and

34:48

wandering around the neighborhood on Halloween. But

34:50

he was all about it. And then Kiss's last

34:53

concert was at Madison Square Garden.

34:57

And we really wanted to take them. But

34:59

the tickets were hundreds of dollars. And

35:02

I never ever do this. If you

35:04

asked my manager today, he'd tell

35:06

you probably more than maybe any client in the

35:08

history of the entertainment business. Like, I got all

35:10

these buddies who will get nicks tickets from their

35:12

agents and stuff. I'm just like, I think that

35:14

whole side of entertainment is gross. I want to

35:16

make stuff. I want to move on with my

35:18

life. I don't want to get caught up in

35:20

this thing where I owe you because you

35:23

were able to get me reservations at some

35:25

restaurant, blah, blah, blah. But

35:27

I reached out to my manager. I

35:29

was like, is there any, do you

35:31

know any back channel to Kiss tickets?

35:33

And he was able to find me a way to

35:35

get them at like the cheapest possible price, but it

35:37

was still just too much for a four

35:39

year old. But we got it on pay-per-view. And

35:42

then we took him. There was like a Kiss

35:44

pop-up store in New York. So he's all about

35:46

Kiss. And I never liked Kiss. Kiss was

35:49

real, you know, like real crazy over the

35:51

top. And a whole thing about Punk Kids

35:53

is like Punk really stripped it back down

35:55

to just like three chords go. So

35:58

the indulgence of Kiss. was

36:00

like offensive to my sensibilities. But now I'm listening to

36:02

a bunch of these songs and I'm like, bunch

36:05

of these kiss songs are fucking great. And

36:07

I was real pretentious. Like crazy,

36:10

crazy nights, great song. But

36:12

sometimes we'll have him out in the car and

36:14

I'll go to like skip one that's just like

36:16

nine minutes of, you know, Spanish guitar fingering. Or

36:19

I'm like, this is not my thing. And I'll go forward it and

36:21

Cal will be in the back seat and he'll be like, what are

36:23

you doing? Play that song. And

36:26

he's not messing around. He's like, you don't skip a kiss

36:28

song. He won't skip, he won't.

36:30

Oh, that's great. What if we just skip forward

36:32

to Detroit Rock City or something? He's like,

36:34

no, this one. I'm like, okay, we have

36:36

to listen to every kiss song in its

36:39

entirety all the time. Let's

36:42

pause there. One thing you might know about

36:44

Kiss, legendarily the

36:46

most commercial band of all

36:49

time, unapologetically capitalist. You

36:51

know who else is a capitalist? Me with this show, cause

36:53

we have ads for products and services, check them out.

36:55

Use the promo codes. It really helps when you do. We'll

36:58

be right back. Hi

37:01

everybody, Chris Gethard here. And I think you

37:03

all know how important the conversation surrounding mental

37:05

health is to me. Not only is it

37:08

something that I've had to walk my path,

37:10

I've been extraordinarily public about that. And I

37:12

now actually have a job with

37:14

a mental health based nonprofit trying to make

37:17

things easier for kids in schools surrounding this

37:19

conversation. So I take it seriously and I

37:21

think about it a lot. And

37:23

I will tell you, I feel very lucky

37:25

that our longest partner as far as

37:28

sponsors is TalkSpace

37:30

because therapy turned my

37:32

life around. And I remember so acutely how

37:34

hard it was back in the late 90s,

37:37

early 2000s to even

37:39

have a conversation about how

37:41

to think about finding therapy. TalkSpace

37:43

is out here making it easy.

37:46

You can find a therapist you like, you can make

37:48

it convenient for you and your lifestyle. You can be

37:50

online, you can be at home, you can be

37:53

on a break at the office, you can cut out

37:55

the commute time and it can make a huge difference

37:57

and kudos to them. A

37:59

lot of people. the barriers of entry. They think seeing

38:01

a therapist or psychiatrist might be helpful, but what if

38:03

you don't have the time? What if you don't have

38:05

the money? Well, TalkSpace is there.

38:08

It's waiting for you. Okay. They

38:10

cut down on those costs. They make things

38:12

easy, accessible, and affordable, and you

38:14

do not need to sit and wait for something

38:16

awful to happen in your life. If there's storm

38:19

clouds on the horizon, don't wait

38:21

for the storm to come. Get ahead of

38:23

it. Start thinking about therapy right

38:25

now. That way you can shift your perspective,

38:27

avoid things hitting that rock bottom. Get

38:29

going. Get the tools you need to cope

38:31

in difficult times. You can

38:33

sign up online with TalkSpace. You get a personalized

38:35

match with a provider right for you. That usually

38:37

happens within 48 hours. Think about it. You

38:41

can have appointments from the comfort of your

38:43

home. You don't need to take off work.

38:45

You don't need to line up childcare. It's

38:47

mental healthcare made easy.

38:51

You can shift perspective. You can

38:53

have help with specific challenges. There's

38:55

therapists out there with over 40

38:57

specialties on the TalkSpace platform. Whether

39:00

it's anxiety, depression, substance abuse, relationship issues,

39:02

there's people who focus on these things

39:04

who can help you right

39:06

now. As a listener of this podcast,

39:09

you'll get $80 off of

39:11

your first month with TalkSpace. When

39:13

you go to talkspace.com/beautiful, you

39:15

want to match with a licensed

39:18

therapist today, go to talkspace.com/ beautiful.

39:21

You'll get $80 off your first month and

39:23

show your support for the

39:25

show. That's talkspace.com/ beautiful.

39:29

Thanks to our advertisers. Now let's get

39:31

back to the phone call. He

39:37

won't skip. He won't, I'll be like, what

39:40

if we just skip forward to Detroit Rock City or

39:42

something? He's like, no, this one.

39:44

I'm like, okay, we have to listen to

39:46

every kiss song in its entirety all

39:49

the time. That's fun. Well,

39:51

uh, when my kids

39:53

were that young, I mean, they're not much of it. I

39:55

have an 11 and a nine year old, but like

39:58

my son at that age for whatever. reasons

40:00

he glommed on the modest mouth, he even had a

40:02

little modest mouth t-shirt. It was like, it's some of

40:04

the most... Yeah, he

40:06

really... Something about the voice

40:08

and the like dissonance and the extra

40:10

instruments, he would have a... He

40:13

would hear a certain part and have us rewind

40:15

it to just like... It would

40:17

be a song that was like the third track on an album

40:19

and it ends with just a drum break. He'd be like, I

40:21

want to hear that one. The one that ends with just drums.

40:23

Like that's how he would describe them. And

40:25

now as an 11-year-old, he's a full...

40:29

He's really into scores from movies

40:32

and he's so strong into it

40:34

that he'll tell you John Williams

40:36

sucks. He's that into modern movie

40:39

comp... He's got an

40:42

ear for it. He can pick it out

40:45

right away. Did you watch that

40:48

live action one piece on Netflix yet? Have you

40:50

seen that? Live action one piece?

40:52

No. Well,

40:56

again, kids... This is the only... Not the only...

40:58

This is one of the cool things about being

41:00

an old out of touch parent is who

41:03

used to be... Well, you're learning this. We

41:06

used to be the ones that were in touch

41:08

with what's happening, but they introduced the things. It's

41:10

just like Japanese animation that I knew nothing about,

41:12

but it was made into a live action show.

41:14

But we watched

41:16

it as a family, which was fun. And then he's like, yeah,

41:18

I really liked... He was just... He can just pick

41:21

out the songs and he picks the adolescence.

41:23

But it's like, he's got this crazy

41:26

developed ear and he's already a better

41:28

musician than I ever... I'm

41:30

a purely self-taught drummer who played

41:32

my ear, but he can read

41:34

piano, he understands theory and

41:37

scores. He hears them well. That's

41:41

so cool. And you were like a 90s

41:43

indie rocker, it sounds like. Yeah,

41:46

I was... Yeah,

41:49

straight up. And

41:52

I'm old enough that 4-track

41:54

recording demo is playing some club

41:56

shows, but then I had a real... bumping

42:00

the road right on age 17. So a lot

42:03

of that stuff got put by the wayside.

42:05

And then I came back to it

42:07

briefly in the 90s and then I kind of switched

42:10

mediums, I guess. But I still, I mean,

42:12

there's still a drum set in the house and there's

42:14

still an, I still have like a kind of

42:17

a developed ear, I guess.

42:19

But like my wife plays cello and reads

42:21

music, both of the kids take piano

42:23

lessons and can read sheet music. I just like, I

42:26

never learned to properly read music, which was such

42:28

a prideful thing at that time. But now I

42:30

kind of, you know, I sound like every adult

42:32

music plays that ear. I just wish I had been

42:35

mature enough to take every option. Yeah.

42:38

It's got to be cool to come

42:41

up as a player for your

42:44

wife to be someone who plays music and

42:46

then to have your kid to be like,

42:48

Oh, your first favorite band is Modest Mouse.

42:51

You must be like, wait, this kid cool.

42:53

And now the kid's reading music and

42:55

understanding theory. That's got to be such

42:57

a great feeling. But

43:00

it is cool. And also like, I mean, he's

43:02

11 and he's not, I mean,

43:06

he's better than I,

43:09

as a person, he's already better than I was by 11.

43:11

You know what I mean? Like, As

43:14

a person or a musician or both? As

43:18

a human, as a human. No, at

43:20

11, I'd already quit. I'd already quit

43:22

violin and was 11. I was

43:25

more into like, when I didn't, drums

43:27

sitting in my life and maybe a little

43:29

bit after that, like I thought, like

43:32

the first time I saw a drum

43:34

set being played live, I got

43:37

like the first time I ever played drums with the

43:40

guys like, here, you want to try? I literally never

43:42

held drumsticks. And it was like in a setting in

43:44

front of people. I'm just that

43:46

rest of the game. I don't know. But no, he's a

43:48

better person than me than I was at 11 for sure.

43:52

Now I will tell you, this is

43:55

the fact that we've already had roosters and

43:58

gone down the music road. and

44:00

talked about how

44:02

your neighbors grind metal and therefore they can't complain

44:05

about the roosters. I will listen

44:07

to you talk about anything forever. And I have

44:09

a feeling our fan base feels

44:11

the same way. I will say we

44:13

have a document where Andrea and I type back and

44:15

forth and Andrea has let me know that we haven't

44:17

even touched the stuff you actually talked about

44:19

on the phone with her, which we

44:21

can either do or not do, but I just

44:23

love knowing how much you have to offer. That

44:26

is correct. Well, I don't

44:28

know how to short circuit it. It does,

44:30

let me take back up. So like, yeah, around

44:32

11, around when I was the age my

44:34

son is now is when I began, and

44:36

even a little bit before that, I had my

44:38

first real troubles in school. Like I

44:41

was in fourth grade,

44:43

I was asked to leave the

44:46

Orthodox Jewish day school I was at that kicked

44:48

out of there. Then I went

44:50

to a fifth grade. And then by the time I made

44:52

it to high school, I'd been to

44:54

like four or five other schools. And then I

44:56

never fully finished high school because

44:59

I skipped school and dabbled in substances so

45:01

much that I was sent

45:04

off into what was kind

45:06

of called the troubled teen industry. Like

45:08

in the nineties, you probably remember Desert

45:11

Tuff Love programs and stuff like that, where

45:13

they would send kids. Bootcams. You're lonely other

45:15

than. But you know, I remember

45:18

them because you'd see like Jerry Springer would

45:20

have episodes on them. All those

45:22

shows from that. Sally Jesse Raphael, what happens to, yep,

45:25

Sally Jesse Raphael would feature them. Yeah,

45:28

and so, but I mean like, yeah. So

45:31

like, and this is the thing

45:33

like why I emphasize enough, like I'm

45:36

a grown man, I'm 47, this stuff is 30 years. But

45:39

these are my

45:41

strong formational memories from

45:44

30 years ago is, you know,

45:47

thinking it's cool just to skip school a bunch. And

45:49

then like, and

45:51

you know, doing the drugs and all that

45:53

good stuff. But I've been sober

45:55

for 24 years now. So you can run

45:57

that clock back. But yeah, I got, for

46:00

like one day, let's see

46:04

how to piece the timeline together. Yeah, basically after,

46:07

did you, in New Jersey did they have sort

46:09

of the like teen

46:12

mental lockup kind of hospital places where

46:14

they would send troubled teens to like,

46:17

ours were called Charter, they were like

46:19

a brand name. Did they have a place like

46:21

that in New Jersey where? I

46:24

remember the

46:27

levels I remember were that our

46:31

high school had a wing called Horizons, which

46:33

the rumor was that they locked the door

46:35

from the outside and that's where the troubled

46:37

kids went. And then if you

46:39

were too bad for Horizons or if you were

46:41

younger then they had the county school and

46:44

the county school was supposedly a place where you'd just

46:46

like go get bust and all the worst kids from

46:48

every town in the county would be there and you

46:50

play pool all day. That was the rumor about that.

46:53

And then I do remember, you know, there

46:55

was a couple kids that got sent to

46:57

like a military school which is starting to

46:59

flirt with what you're talking

47:01

about. Yeah, and

47:05

here's the thing, like I can't emphasize this enough.

47:07

I'm a 47 year old grown man now, two

47:09

kids of my own, amazing my

47:12

elderly parents in my life and it's sort of

47:15

like the half joke is when those years

47:17

come up, they're sort

47:19

of referred to as the late unpleasantness of my family,

47:21

which is a funny

47:23

historical joke. But

47:26

I've put in the work in, you

47:28

know, but the memory. So the

47:31

Desert Tough Left program, just

47:33

a short circuit, basically you

47:36

have to be sort of asked where you're flown to a desert

47:39

in, this one was in Idaho. And

47:41

so it's like you go from like my

47:43

many weeks of skipping school and you know, sleeping in

47:46

my station wagon to basically being scooped up in this

47:48

system, you know, I'm 17

47:50

years old and you

47:52

get off the plane and I don't know

47:55

how to describe it because it's

47:57

done so much writing. of

48:00

the main instructor or counselor, I don't know what to call

48:02

the guy, looked like Neil Young on

48:04

a bad trip already. You know, like the

48:07

guy that greets you had like giant mutton

48:09

chop stringy hair. Yeah,

48:12

and then they strip you down, naked,

48:14

had you comb out your pubic hair and like shake

48:17

out your, like you'd like a jail, it's like an

48:19

entry into jail, but it's a desert. And you make

48:21

a bedroll and you're basically spending

48:23

like, that one was a couple weeks, you

48:26

know, marching around the desert. But what, I

48:29

was 17 for that one, but that's just

48:31

the beginning. I

48:34

was 17, yeah. And

48:38

then from there I was sent to the

48:40

next stop on the train is

48:43

what we're called academic therapeutic schools.

48:46

But that's kind of a 90s term

48:48

for reform schools that had

48:50

a vaguely therapeutic

48:53

background to them, I guess, I don't know. These

48:57

terms will make me seem dated and old fashioned

48:59

because the world is I think far more sensitive. You

49:01

know, the age I

49:03

am, it's like if a kid couldn't pay attention

49:05

in school, it was a huge problem with

49:07

the kid. And then these days, my kids

49:09

are real lucky. Like if a kid has a

49:11

problem with school, we assume there's something wrong with

49:13

the structure and the way we're teaching. You know

49:16

what I mean? Like we're more open now, I

49:18

think, to people who learn differently. I

49:20

definitely think that there was, when we

49:22

grew up more

49:25

of a predilection to label

49:30

a kid bad and treat that as

49:32

final. You know what I mean? Right.

49:36

There's a lot more of that. And here's the crazy shit. I

49:39

don't know how to say this without sounding

49:43

retrospectively innocent, but I didn't feel

49:45

like I was a bad kid.

49:49

I didn't feel inherently mischievous. I

49:51

wasn't mean spirit. And in fact,

49:53

I was picked on when I was younger. And like,

49:56

even at the time that I got scooped up in that system,

49:59

I didn't. relate to some of that

50:01

like some of the people at that

50:03

desert tough love were like through

50:06

criminals like i had never like you know i

50:08

mean like they were like criminal teens and like

50:10

had like criminal mischief quiet relax you

50:12

guys why does the rooster now the cats have

50:14

entered and

50:18

like um i don't know i just

50:20

didn't uh i was mischievous to the

50:22

point of like like i

50:24

made good examples in middle school one time i was acting

50:26

my parents loved to retell this story one time i was

50:28

acting out the teachers like sit down and sitting

50:31

down on my desk i sat down in the middle of

50:33

the floor but you know in 1989 that's like a revolution

50:35

that's like a terribly disruptive

50:37

child in 2024 i'm sure someone

50:40

would film a pick-up of that you

50:42

know i just yeah it's hard to

50:44

explain how different how different also when

50:46

i tell people that like i was

50:49

in seventh grade people would that the

50:51

people making fun of us the most were the

50:53

teachers themselves like i don't know if

50:55

you've ever experienced that where teachers were the ones bullied oh

50:59

i i mean we had a teacher in

51:01

high school who he

51:03

was pretty beloved i actually grew to really

51:06

grow tired of him throughout my high school

51:08

career but he used to

51:10

routinely tell us oh i live in livingston i

51:12

would never live in westerns like i'll teach here

51:14

but i would never live in this place like

51:16

he was actively making fun of

51:18

us for living in the town we

51:20

lived in where he taught and it

51:22

was like you what you look back

51:24

now you're like what are you you

51:26

can't if a kid came to my

51:28

kid's school it was like i would never live in

51:30

this shithole of a town we wouldn't find that funny

51:35

no like i said like in seventh grade i had a teacher

51:37

that just made fun of

51:40

my name and provided basically fuel for

51:42

other kids to taught me but what's

51:45

good you know and discovered like i said discovery of

51:47

the playing band so it's like um it's

51:49

like my sense of mischief i never had

51:51

like this like bart simpson

51:53

was never a relatable character to me let's put

51:55

it back to the simpsons you know i mean

51:57

like i probably related more to lisa Yeah,

52:01

just being like eternally curious, you

52:03

know, but also

52:06

definitely defiant of authorities. Like I

52:08

even now as an adult, if

52:10

I run into someone in a position

52:12

of authority, and I know they're wrong, I do

52:14

I do they can't get to me, I guess,

52:16

you know, I mean, like, I've definitely had an

52:18

instance where people, they think they're gonna

52:21

bully me, but I don't still not like a, I

52:23

don't bully back, but I don't I don't. What's

52:27

the word? I don't intimidate easily either. Yeah.

52:30

And now going to this situation where it sounds

52:33

like you were in over your head, you're seeing

52:36

other kids where you're going, because again, and one

52:38

of the things that one

52:41

of the things we've also unwrapped that we were trained

52:43

to do back then is to make everything sort of

52:45

a comparison and pissing contest. So you're

52:47

sitting here going, there's kids who are actual criminals here,

52:50

which again, it's bad that we were

52:52

even trained to start gauging who quote unquote really

52:54

deserves to be here because I don't know that

52:56

those programs back on fun. No,

53:00

but I like I felt, yeah, go ahead. No

53:02

you self what? I

53:05

self identified back then probably is just like

53:08

a stoner musician, you know, goofball like

53:11

I didn't see myself at

53:13

like there was people at these programs

53:15

who like this one guy, this is

53:17

pre columnine, this is 94. So

53:20

there was one guy who had stolen weapons and stolen

53:22

a boat. And like that was

53:24

like facing grand, he was, he was

53:26

there on a judge's order to avoid

53:29

jail. And I'm like, yeah,

53:31

I just smoked pot and skipped a lot of

53:33

school. I mean, it turns out I

53:35

got clean when I was in my 20s. There

53:37

was a lot more underneath all that, but the

53:40

proponents we at least, but

53:42

but but anyway, so it's like, I was

53:44

definitely being like, that was the initial

53:46

exposure to it. But then

53:48

I went to this, the school and then

53:51

eventually I ran away from that. And

53:54

this, this is all basically like between

53:57

age 17 and 18. And by the time I

53:59

was 18. I had made

54:01

it to Alaska

54:03

also through these convoluted

54:06

programs my parents and God love them

54:08

because like I say they're the greatest

54:11

grandparents my kids could ever ask for

54:13

they Literally

54:15

like it is It

54:17

is healing watching my dad with my kids, you

54:19

know, yeah, like it's a it's

54:22

really cool. Like he's He's

54:24

pop-pop and it's like that's gonna cry

54:28

Pull back but like it is cool.

54:30

Like there's no And

54:34

like I got to heal

54:36

stuff but it is it's this memory it's sort of funny

54:38

like and the only time I'm reminded of

54:40

like my unusual Adolescence

54:43

is you know a lot of the adults

54:45

I meet in my life or other parents and

54:47

I have very little in common with them

54:49

other than the Parenting thing and occasionally when

54:52

they talk about like high school or their

54:54

youth Sort of have to shrug, you

54:57

know, like oh, well, you know, I'm

54:59

I missed my junior prom because I was

55:01

in the desert When

55:05

you think back to those days Where

55:08

it sounds like you're instinct still today

55:10

is I don't know that this

55:12

was a program meant for me Compared to some

55:15

of the other people These

55:17

programs overall which I think there are

55:19

still versions of them that happen Famously

55:22

the rapper Earl sweatshirt was sent to

55:24

like a school in Samoa. That was

55:26

a similar like school for troubled kids

55:29

There's also you know, not

55:31

a lot of Yahoo went through a system like that, too

55:34

There's also, you know, there is also a

55:36

very dark version of it in modern times,

55:38

which is conversion camps for LGBT kids

55:40

Which is yes a

55:43

version of what you went through with a specific

55:45

aim I think you could you know, and there

55:47

might be people who say no, they're very different

55:50

But I think they fall into the same umbrella

55:52

of take a type of kid and send them

55:54

to a behavior modification Camp

55:57

that is dark. Yeah, and yeah

56:00

go and send them saying my school. Yes

56:03

and the school system that I was plugged into what

56:05

what I know now that the years have

56:07

gone by and um yeah

56:10

I don't want to break my anonymity literally

56:12

and figuratively but um I do know that

56:14

a lot of what was exposed about that

56:16

industry was sort of that troubled teen history

56:18

is that it it preyed on desperate parents

56:20

and like to my

56:22

parents credit they for whatever reason

56:24

by the time I was 17 given

56:27

all the um already

56:29

all the consequences of things I'd faced by then

56:31

they felt out of options and I do think in

56:34

some ways that system preyed on them

56:36

as much as it preyed on us as

56:38

much as it preyed on the teens you know what I mean

56:40

but um and

56:42

and and now that I'm a parent

56:45

like I get it if in five years my

56:48

kid seems unreachable and someone swoops in

56:50

and says we can fix

56:52

this I don't know if I wouldn't you

56:54

know like it's like even knowing what I know even here's

56:57

to recovery and healed relations like but

57:00

I I still so I get how that

57:02

but I think that's also what was exposed

57:04

a lot about those places they weren't effective

57:06

they didn't really um do

57:08

I actually it's funny it was on my mind because I

57:10

heard something on NPS

57:12

this is so this is so

57:14

middle-aged Chris I heard something on NPS on an NPR

57:17

were a dad who had tried to help his

57:20

kid with tough love and stuff eventually came around

57:22

to a different approach and the

57:24

kid actually got and this was more recent so it

57:26

was the oxycontin evidence that did the thing to be

57:29

clear in 94 this is slightly more an

57:32

instant time when the Grateful Dead still existed that

57:34

was still an option you know you could still

57:36

drop out of high school and go on the

57:38

road and then drop back into college you know

57:40

I may I found my way back to college

57:43

to college at like I started at 21 so it's like

57:46

I do think the world is less innocent now

57:48

that some you've shared that or maybe you

57:50

don't feel that way in

57:53

some ways yes in some ways no I

57:55

mean I certainly think I

57:59

go back and forth because I sit here and I go, as the

58:04

parent of a four-year-old right now, I know

58:07

that there was one kid in our neighborhood when

58:09

we moved here who used to like jump on

58:11

a bike and drive all around and his parents

58:13

wouldn't know where he were and it was kind

58:15

of like, oh man, this kid is like

58:17

stressing out his parents and everybody's worried.

58:20

And I go, that was just the standard of get

58:22

on a bike and go and your parents don't know

58:24

where you are. Now it is expected that parents

58:26

know where you are and oversee you. In

58:29

some ways that's good and in some ways that

58:31

bad. But we also grew up in an area

58:33

you and I where anyone

58:36

in a van was trying to kidnap

58:38

you and there were constant satanic rituals

58:40

and D&D was secretly trying

58:43

to turn you into a Satanist. So we

58:46

look back behaviorally as these innocent

58:48

times but we were also constantly drilled

58:50

with fear throughout all of that. So

58:53

I don't think it's as simple as a lot of

58:55

people like to put those rose-colored glasses on and say.

58:59

Let's pause there. I want to underline that because

59:01

there is such a dialogue right now. Like back

59:04

in our day we go to the free and

59:07

it's like, yeah, but we were

59:09

all terrified of being kidnapped all the time

59:12

and also people just said homophobic stuff

59:14

freely and it was fine. Like

59:16

times are better and progress has been made everybody. We

59:19

can let our kids go on bikes and explore

59:21

more and not romanticize times that also had some

59:24

dark edges. Anyway, I think about

59:26

it a lot. I also think about different

59:28

products and services that might improve my life

59:30

and luckily for you we've got some commercials

59:32

coming up with things you might enjoy. We'll

59:34

be right back. Thanks

59:37

again to all our sponsors. Now we're

59:39

going to finish off the phone call.

59:46

We look back behaviorally as these

59:48

innocent times but we were also constantly

59:51

drilled with fear throughout all of that.

59:53

So I don't think it's as

59:55

simple as a lot of people like to put those rose-colored

59:57

glasses on and say. Yeah,

1:00:00

yeah, no, no, I that

1:00:02

rings true. It's funny you brought the state

1:00:04

to the Satanic Panic I distinctly remember the

1:00:07

year that the Judas Priest suicide article landed

1:00:09

in the Rolling Stone magazine because

1:00:11

I used to go to this magazine

1:00:14

store Well, that's really outdated

1:00:16

But like a magazine store that I could ride

1:00:18

my bike to and I remember that was like

1:00:20

the first really good long-form article I finished in

1:00:23

Rolling Stone. I remember after finishing I was

1:00:25

like, gosh, I never I still don't like

1:00:27

Judas Priest But you remember that there they

1:00:29

blamed it a backwards masking. It was that

1:00:31

whole ordeal Yeah,

1:00:34

that was the same time but I Also

1:00:37

want to say to you about the type of

1:00:39

program you were in and it sounds very clear

1:00:41

like you have referred to it as they preyed upon

1:00:43

your parents and I Get

1:00:46

the sense that your opinion is these were not

1:00:48

effective for anybody and also want to point out

1:00:51

to there's been some very famous cases of In

1:00:54

Pennsylvania in particular as a judge Who

1:00:57

went to prison because it came out that he

1:00:59

was taking kickbacks By sentencing

1:01:02

kids to these camps and then they were

1:01:04

paying money on the side because they were

1:01:06

for profit I actually have a good friend of

1:01:08

mine Murph who Used to appear

1:01:10

on my TV show with me who went before

1:01:12

that judge maybe six months before

1:01:14

he sold his first kid into Into

1:01:17

that whole boot camp system and his kids would

1:01:19

come out of it There's documentaries about that Pennsylvania

1:01:21

case in particular because there's so much, you know,

1:01:24

I mean there was criminal behavior by a judge

1:01:27

But all these kids saying I smoked pot

1:01:29

on my way in and I was a

1:01:32

criminal on my way out and I abused

1:01:35

while in there and Yes,

1:01:38

there is no world about if it

1:01:40

improved my life. It absolutely

1:01:42

made my life worse than I went there Yeah,

1:01:46

the school that ended up with for a couple months on

1:01:48

17, I Mean

1:01:51

in the intervening years has had a lot

1:01:53

of exposure, but

1:01:56

at the same time like when

1:01:59

you're troubled teen like

1:02:01

a charismatic therapist

1:02:04

for lack of a better word which there should never be such

1:02:06

a thing. It impacted

1:02:09

briefly but like I was also very lucky

1:02:11

because like I said my sense of a

1:02:13

sense of

1:02:15

mischief wasn't that strong but I like I

1:02:18

still kind of even in my darkest

1:02:21

days knew some form of right

1:02:23

from wrong you know I mean like I was

1:02:25

chasing something else I don't know and I don't

1:02:27

know what that was you know like the

1:02:30

restlessness and then it but by the time

1:02:32

I put myself back together at least

1:02:35

like there's enough resources available for

1:02:37

free even today you know like that if

1:02:40

someone wants to put themselves back together they can.

1:02:43

You sound remarkably well adjusted like now you

1:02:46

sound like a guy who's just living with

1:02:48

his family raising your family and a bunch

1:02:50

of animals and you are great conversationalist you

1:02:52

sound like you really landed on your feet

1:02:56

in a way that my guess is you would not

1:02:58

have predicted for yourself when you were young. 100%

1:03:03

I never knew what I wanted to do when I

1:03:05

grew up and by

1:03:07

the time I found myself

1:03:09

clean off drugs

1:03:11

and enrolled in college

1:03:13

I stumbled into something I had never

1:03:16

participated in my life and then got

1:03:18

off on a path that

1:03:21

baffled even me and yeah there was a

1:03:24

point where I was

1:03:26

being paid to speak on this discipline

1:03:29

that I had learned at

1:03:31

university level and it was a it's

1:03:33

a trip because my professional

1:03:36

and human and personal resume reveals

1:03:39

none of that you know I mean like my all

1:03:41

of that like what everything I went through

1:03:44

between age 11 and you know

1:03:46

23 doesn't exist

1:03:49

other than stories I choose to tell you know I

1:03:51

mean like it's a it is sort of

1:03:53

great that like when people judge me they judge me on

1:03:55

all these things I've done with a clear sober head you

1:03:58

know like the I'm accountable for 24

1:04:00

years of my life and it's

1:04:03

hilariously bizarre. But yeah, that's

1:04:05

some saying, like when I meet other parents and every once in

1:04:07

a while I do, like I have one of my best friends

1:04:10

now I met through

1:04:12

parenting and I actually could

1:04:14

relate to him on other levels. Like he, it was

1:04:16

really, it's neat, like I've made a good friend and

1:04:18

his kid is good friends with my kids, but in

1:04:20

a lot of times parenting man, it's

1:04:22

just sort of like this blank slate where all, you

1:04:25

know, have to befriend, but you meet

1:04:27

some weird people when you're a parent, that's

1:04:29

for sure. I have to say, so I

1:04:32

mean, it sounds like you're keeping it vague because you

1:04:34

don't want to out yourself and if that is the

1:04:37

case, that's fine, but I

1:04:39

am very intrigued when you say that you wound

1:04:41

up professionally doing

1:04:43

something where you were like being hired to speak

1:04:45

at a very high level that you never saw

1:04:47

coming. I'm very intrigued to ask what it is,

1:04:49

but if you're like, I'd rather keep that private,

1:04:51

also totally get it. Well,

1:04:56

I can still make it an honor. It's

1:04:58

in the art and it's not, it's

1:05:00

not the self-taught music. Like I had to

1:05:03

learn and self-teach something else and I ended up

1:05:05

getting a couple degrees in it and then, um,

1:05:12

the joke I always make is like in, um,

1:05:16

like 2007, 2008, some

1:05:18

of the work I did went bacterial because it

1:05:20

didn't really go viral, but it went bacterial. It

1:05:22

touched enough people that were already in my

1:05:24

network that then it sort of turned into a many

1:05:27

year Odyssey, you know,

1:05:30

chasing that. But yeah, I have

1:05:32

a feeling that if anyone knows me

1:05:34

personally, they'll be like, oh my God, I'm sure I'll

1:05:36

get some text messages, but also I

1:05:39

don't know. I don't know if

1:05:41

I know anyone personally in my current life who

1:05:43

actively listens to Beautiful Anonymous, you know, like people

1:05:45

say that, like, I think my mom used to

1:05:47

listen to it, maybe she's fallen

1:05:49

off. I don't know. But,

1:05:51

um, my mom too, my mom, but, but, uh,

1:05:54

yeah. But also the other thing, me

1:05:56

personally, I deleted all my social media a couple

1:05:58

of years ago. I had

1:06:01

enough of it, you know, save for one.

1:06:04

It's funny, I, this is, again,

1:06:06

this is the magic of the world, Chris. I

1:06:08

still have my Twitter for some unknown reason.

1:06:10

You kept the worst one. So it's

1:06:14

funny, but I perceive it as the oldest one. And

1:06:16

I had, this is, this is how my brain

1:06:19

works. I associate it with a good

1:06:21

friend from graduate school who told me about it like

1:06:24

a month after it premieres. I was like, Oh, you

1:06:26

got to get this thing where you can send text

1:06:28

messages to the internet. I was like, why

1:06:30

would I want to do that? It's so cool. You can

1:06:32

just send a text, like from a flip phone, you could

1:06:34

send a text message and it would show up on the

1:06:36

very early version of Twitter. So I have a warm, fuzzy

1:06:38

experience. Sure. So

1:06:41

that's how you called today. That's

1:06:44

exactly right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That

1:06:47

was a, that made

1:06:49

my, I know less about, I asked you what you

1:06:51

wound up doing professionally. I do feel like I know

1:06:53

less based on that

1:06:55

answer. Good. Well,

1:06:58

I don't know. Well,

1:07:04

I don't, I

1:07:06

don't give it. It's in the arts. All right.

1:07:08

Relax. It's not going to eat you. Can

1:07:10

you hear that? Walking in the background? Yeah.

1:07:12

Yeah, I hear it. No, the, the hands,

1:07:14

the hands, that's the hands. They make, they

1:07:16

make different noises. Yeah. No, I

1:07:19

mean, it's in the arts, man. It's, but it's,

1:07:21

it's a, it's a weird thing too. Like on

1:07:23

the other side of it, I guess everyone says

1:07:25

it when they

1:07:29

get through to you, like

1:07:32

I have it better than most. And

1:07:36

then even the pandemic kind of hit me for a

1:07:38

wallet where it kind of like the thing I

1:07:40

did the best was help people to put

1:07:43

a sort of a spectacle based thing in their

1:07:45

space to invite in crowds. And then it's like,

1:07:47

oop, surprise 2020 to 2022. We

1:07:49

don't need that anymore. Yeah.

1:07:52

But, but yeah, it's

1:07:54

cool. Like I, I definitely

1:07:56

am surprised about how things turned out, you know,

1:07:59

but I have. It surprises me. I

1:08:01

mean, they weren't surprised. We're

1:08:03

trying to have them. How

1:08:05

much do you know about your past?

1:08:10

So it's funny. I try and be

1:08:12

honest with my kids. My kids know

1:08:15

that I got in trouble in school a lot. They know

1:08:17

that by the time I was in fourth grade, I was

1:08:19

asked to leave my first school. And they know that I

1:08:22

was paddled when I was in fifth grade. I mean, I

1:08:24

tell them the stories, but they seem real abstract of them

1:08:26

because like my son is, like I said, at 11 years

1:08:29

old, he is already a better

1:08:31

person than me. He saw his

1:08:33

first fight

1:08:35

with his own eyes, like a couple of weeks

1:08:37

ago. That's a fifth grader. He's managed to not

1:08:39

see any like, you know, but he headed the

1:08:42

middle school next year, which I worry about for

1:08:44

other reasons. But he was shaken.

1:08:46

He was like, oh, my God, I felt, you know, like

1:08:48

you didn't know what to make of it. And then,

1:08:51

of course, the next day, fifth graders who fight

1:08:53

are friends again. But he just, you

1:08:56

know, but yeah, they know, but they don't

1:08:58

abstract to them because they're such good kids.

1:09:00

They're such good students, you know. In

1:09:03

the other direction, do you ever you're still in

1:09:05

touch with their parents? You say they're great. They're

1:09:08

like awesome at being grandparents. Is

1:09:11

there any ever is there ever any discussion of

1:09:13

like, why did you send me to that weird

1:09:15

desert punishment school? Do you just yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:09:17

No, no. So

1:09:21

like like I said, we've

1:09:23

had years of healing around that. That

1:09:26

that's there. I know

1:09:28

the reason I

1:09:31

put in years of work with that and like to

1:09:33

rebuild and build a new relationship with them. Man, I don't know

1:09:36

how to put it in. The coolest thing

1:09:38

happened a few years ago. I

1:09:40

was talking to my mom and she's like, I don't know if

1:09:42

I've told you the story yet, but I think if you were

1:09:44

friends, I was going to play the story again. And it's like

1:09:46

if you ever make it to adulthood

1:09:48

and have had an ongoing relationship with your parents and

1:09:51

your mom's put stuff and says, I think of you as a friend.

1:09:54

I hold on to stuff like that now. Like it's

1:09:57

it's cool. And I'm not I'm not super well-adjusted.

1:10:00

still like struggle,

1:10:02

you know? Yeah, it sounds

1:10:04

remarkably well adjusted, but I also know we're

1:10:06

just talking for an hour. Yeah,

1:10:09

we're only talking for an hour and also, I

1:10:12

don't know, maybe, well, like the things I struggle

1:10:14

with the most these days, that was sort of

1:10:16

funny, like it's like these core issues struggle around

1:10:18

food. It's so funny, right before I called into the

1:10:20

number, I had just made a

1:10:22

mistake with some food. I ate more than I

1:10:25

should have. And I know you know that feeling because you have

1:10:27

struggled with food and exercise. Like, I didn't need to eat

1:10:30

that. Like I started off with a

1:10:32

good lunch, just had like a sweet potato and some

1:10:34

vegetables. But then I was like, Oh, I'll

1:10:36

have a second lunch of crackers and hummus, which isn't

1:10:38

inherently unhealthy, but I've got like cracker

1:10:41

and hummus belly, like it's like, oh, waste

1:10:44

you down after a while. I would

1:10:47

dream of eating as healthy on a

1:10:49

consistent basis as you just described between

1:10:51

those two lunches. No, but I can

1:10:53

still like it's become this obsession. And

1:10:56

like I exercise today, which is like,

1:10:58

but also the older I get, I think

1:11:01

I'm more comfortable with my physical form, just being

1:11:03

what it is, you know, like I

1:11:05

put in the exercise eight healthy and so

1:11:07

what I had to go up a pant

1:11:09

size like people tell me I look young for my age. So

1:11:15

Do you are you in touch with any

1:11:17

of the people from those from those strange

1:11:19

years where you were kind of sent off

1:11:21

to fend for yourself, whether that

1:11:23

other kids that were there, counselors?

1:11:28

No, and there's a self

1:11:30

protective reason for like, no,

1:11:33

and I have occasionally in the

1:11:37

midnight hour when awake have Google to see

1:11:39

what's become of some of those characters. But,

1:11:42

but in general, anyone,

1:11:45

unless it's like family or a

1:11:47

lifelong friend or someone, there's no one from

1:11:50

before getting

1:11:52

clean that I stay in touch with. There is no, there's

1:11:55

one person I met along the way on

1:11:57

that journey that I occasionally will. email

1:12:00

list, but he's not related

1:12:02

to the he's related to the time when I ran

1:12:05

away from all that stuff. But no, I have

1:12:07

a whole like I say it's a it

1:12:10

really was like once I made

1:12:12

the choice myself, I got like a new fresh

1:12:14

life. But but

1:12:17

I occasionally like when when some of the people

1:12:19

who ran one of those programs passed away, it

1:12:21

made it made some news and

1:12:23

when lawsuits pop up like I do sometimes

1:12:25

Google to see Oh, yeah, I wasn't completely

1:12:27

even my sense

1:12:29

of the 17 year old wasn't completely off

1:12:31

about this place is something dark was happening. But you

1:12:33

know, at the time, like I

1:12:36

said, at the time, those whole industries were

1:12:38

were, I mean, they were preying

1:12:41

on parents who were desperate. And I don't

1:12:43

fault desperate parents, you know what I mean? And

1:12:46

I mean, there's, you know, I don't want you to relive

1:12:48

anything. But just to be clear to anybody who's like, I'm

1:12:50

not sure what they're doing that.

1:12:52

These were extensively schools that were like supposed

1:12:54

to be a lot of discipline and tough

1:12:57

love and almost militaristic. But the

1:12:59

stories would come out that outright abuse,

1:13:01

but there was outright abuse. Yeah, how

1:13:03

much we have six minutes time to

1:13:05

have left. Okay, in six

1:13:07

minutes, I'll put you this way. One of the times I was

1:13:09

there, one of the penalties I

1:13:12

got because I didn't understand what I was being asked

1:13:14

to do is to go sit in a basement in

1:13:16

the dark and scrub with a toothbrush in this creepy

1:13:18

old mansion. And I should say

1:13:21

at that time when I was 17, I

1:13:23

was still instinctively afraid of the

1:13:25

dark and the head therapist

1:13:27

that school knew that I was still scared

1:13:29

of the dark. It was one of my

1:13:31

greatest fears. So I was left alone in

1:13:33

a basement to scrub a floor with a

1:13:35

toothbrush. So yeah, that should happen. So they

1:13:37

find out about your greatest fears and then

1:13:39

exploit them to punish you. Like it's it's

1:13:41

as punishment as punishment. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And

1:13:43

then also, yeah, and a lot of yelling,

1:13:46

they called it confrontational therapy.

1:13:50

And then, you know, but

1:13:52

some people went through those programs and had stellar

1:13:54

lives and other people, like myself,

1:13:56

bounced in and out of them and

1:13:58

then found Heindler gentler. You know, and

1:14:00

like there's I Don't

1:14:03

know how to say it in so

1:14:05

many code words, you know, but Yeah,

1:14:09

those memories are there but they're not like you

1:14:12

know, it's funny like Do

1:14:14

you ever look obviously you write for a living? But

1:14:17

like sometimes I just write on a

1:14:19

blank document just to barf up Memories

1:14:21

of any type and I do like the

1:14:23

activity of writing. So You

1:14:26

know this stuff comes back. Yeah. All

1:14:28

right, so we got five minutes left About four

1:14:30

and a half. I did want to ask too

1:14:32

because you've mentioned that The

1:14:34

timeline of this you mentioned that you did get

1:14:37

clean from drugs at some point You've

1:14:40

also said on your way into the desert program.

1:14:42

You were just kind of like a stoner kid

1:14:44

from the 80s That's

1:14:46

right. So do you feel that the program by the

1:14:48

time? Accelerated you into yeah

1:14:50

further drug abuse Once

1:14:54

I left well, yeah one This

1:14:56

is the thing about those confrontation school one

1:14:58

of their approaches was to psychologically break you

1:15:00

down and kind of Wrench

1:15:02

open that void even further. So when

1:15:05

you run away from that place, you're

1:15:07

like, well, I must be a complete degenerate and scumbag

1:15:09

So I might as well, you know

1:15:14

Live on the land and do this every

1:15:16

yeah. Yeah. Yeah act as if but

1:15:19

then in the inverse when I finally Was

1:15:22

done. I was able

1:15:24

to seek help and And

1:15:27

like I said even even through all that

1:15:29

I managed to Get

1:15:33

get high school out of the way as a very

1:15:35

old age and then I'll be applied to college and

1:15:37

and then somewhere

1:15:40

during my I dropped

1:15:42

other college ones and then when I dropped back in it

1:15:45

really it really took off something coalesced around I

1:15:49

Studying art in college. So I know people always say

1:15:51

I'll drop out but I say go to college and

1:15:53

study something You know nothing about This

1:16:00

has been one of my favorite calls in the history

1:16:03

of the show. We still got three minutes left. Oh

1:16:06

my God. Okay. Well, music. You

1:16:12

know, this is the funny thing about getting

1:16:14

old and losing touch with what's relevant. I

1:16:16

do want to say that my nine-year-old is

1:16:18

a massive twisty. So by extension,

1:16:20

I've had to listen to the whole catalog of

1:16:23

Taylor Swift music, and I'm here to say as

1:16:25

an old person, it's great. It's a

1:16:27

good inroads to other music. Like there's

1:16:29

a song by Taylor Swift called Anti-Hero.

1:16:32

It's a great way to introduce the cure to your children.

1:16:34

So if your kid likes Taylor Swift, they're ready for the

1:16:36

cure. How's that? How much time left?

1:16:40

Drop another bomb. Okay. Well,

1:16:45

it's also in the Taylor Swift wheelhouse. It's

1:16:47

a good way if you aren't already playing

1:16:49

Carole King's tapestry for your children and they

1:16:51

like Taylor Swift, play them Carole King's tapestry.

1:16:55

And you know, in terms of like exciting

1:16:57

things, like I ended up with when my parents

1:16:59

sold their house, I ended up with their record

1:17:01

collection. So I have like my childhood record collection.

1:17:04

Oh, Philip, listen to Philip's records. Here, you

1:17:06

know who he is? The old folk musician?

1:17:08

Yeah, Philip's OCHS. OCHS? I ain't

1:17:11

marching anymore. I played that for my kids. I grew up listening to

1:17:13

my parents' records. I knew the words to Draft Dodger Rags starting at age 12. So

1:17:23

do terrible things like that to your family. We've

1:17:26

got 90 seconds left. 90 seconds left. So

1:17:28

everything that I could squeeze out of you

1:17:30

is gold. Okay. And

1:17:33

chickens. You want to start with two and it's

1:17:35

sort of, they call it Chicken Max. Once you

1:17:37

have two, you're going to end up with four

1:17:39

and then you'll end up with 20 someday. And

1:17:42

it's worth it. Get two chickens to start with because they

1:17:44

need a friend. How

1:17:46

often do you eat eggs that

1:17:48

your chickens gave you? Every

1:17:52

other day, we more often give them away. If

1:17:56

we ever meet you, we'll hand you a dozen eggs free of charge.

1:17:59

Can you get tax? abatements as being a farm

1:18:01

based on your chickens and eggs?

1:18:05

No, no, no. It's just my yard

1:18:08

is half chicken run and the other

1:18:10

half is garden and children's

1:18:13

debris. Nerf darts. This

1:18:16

has been an absolutely

1:18:18

incredible conversation. If

1:18:21

you're down, what we do these days is we say

1:18:23

goodbye to the people on the free feed and then

1:18:25

we got a little subscription service where

1:18:27

I'll ask you five random questions. If

1:18:29

you're into it, does that sound cool? That

1:18:33

sounds fine. Let me just look at the old wristwatch. Yes,

1:18:35

I've got I've got the time because I do

1:18:37

have to run the target before I see that the kids from

1:18:39

school but I've got time. Okay,

1:18:42

we're gonna say goodbye to everybody on the

1:18:44

free feed for everybody who signed up at

1:18:46

beautiful anonymous.com Thanks so much for signing up.

1:18:48

Just keep it rolling. We'll hear our

1:18:50

five questions for everybody else. Goodbye

1:18:52

from this really fascinating call and

1:18:55

caller. Thank you so much. Thank

1:18:58

you. Caller,

1:19:04

thank you so much for calling and

1:19:07

being open and being unpredictable and funny

1:19:09

and also talking about some stark realities

1:19:11

of life and also just honestly for

1:19:14

owning some weird roosters, man. Thanks for

1:19:16

that too. Thanks to our

1:19:18

producer, the High Priestess Andrea Quinn. Thanks

1:19:20

to Shellshag for the feed music. chrisgest.com

1:19:22

if you want to know more about

1:19:24

me included tour dates, which

1:19:26

is a live taping in Idaho coming

1:19:28

up, which is Vancouver, Canada, which is

1:19:30

another benefits show for mental health in

1:19:33

schools in Brooklyn on March 1st. It's

1:19:35

a goodness out there. Tickets for

1:19:37

all those at chrisgest.com. Hey,

1:19:40

our voicemail line is at

1:19:42

973-306-4676. If you have a

1:19:44

call, you feel like it needs to be heard

1:19:47

on the show. We are down accepting voicemails at

1:19:49

all times. I left a cat out of the

1:19:51

bag on this recently. We have a caller in

1:19:53

Israel who wants to talk about Israel

1:19:56

and I want this show to reflect

1:19:58

modern time. I'm hoping

1:20:00

that maybe someone who's Palestinian or has

1:20:03

Palestinian roots wants to close well. Because

1:20:05

I've actually talked with the Israeli caller

1:20:07

and made it clear I'm not trying

1:20:09

to play any games, but this is

1:20:12

a show with human stories and everything happening

1:20:14

in that part of the world right now

1:20:16

is so dark and so intense that

1:20:18

I feel like those stories should be told in

1:20:22

quick succession with each other to make

1:20:24

sure that this

1:20:27

show is the best it can be. That's

1:20:29

my instinct sticking with it. Not

1:20:32

that I want to dictate what anyone says, but

1:20:35

I just want to make sure there's such a

1:20:37

clear dividing line. I want to make sure

1:20:39

we have perspectives from both sides of the line. I

1:20:42

don't presume to know what those perspectives

1:20:44

might be. We also have an

1:20:46

Instagram out there. It's a beautiful anonymous pod. Andrew

1:20:48

does an incredible job on it. Follow it. Check

1:20:51

it out. You can follow that if you want to

1:20:53

know when calls are happening. You can also follow me

1:20:55

on Twitter at Chris Gethler. Thanks

1:20:57

everybody. This

1:21:10

week on Beautiful Anonymous Plus, here's

1:21:13

some of what you'll get from the five

1:21:15

questions. Now,

1:21:18

we've landed on a question that has

1:21:21

come up before. It

1:21:25

hasn't always had a lot of weight to

1:21:27

it, but with you, I feel like it's actually a question

1:21:29

that now that I've heard enough about your background, this one

1:21:32

might be a tough question to answer, but

1:21:34

I'm fascinated. It

1:21:37

has landed on a question asking, who

1:21:41

is a person you feel really saw

1:21:43

you when you were young? Oh

1:21:47

my God, I have the answer right away. Oh,

1:21:49

because I thought it sounds to me like nobody

1:21:52

did and that you fell into a system. Are

1:21:56

you ready, Chris? I am such a good little pack rat.

1:21:58

I'm walking to the back of the house. to

1:22:00

find my fifth grade yearbook and

1:22:02

it was it was

1:22:05

my fifth grade art teacher

1:22:08

and she saw how everyone bullied me

1:22:10

and she saw that I never didn't like the

1:22:12

work that I made but she was so encouraging

1:22:15

her name was Mrs. Irwin she was a saint and

1:22:17

I've got my fifth grade yearbook do you want to

1:22:19

read what she wrote in a fifth graders yearbook a

1:22:22

fifth grader who by the way got titled

1:22:24

by the principal because that was illegal

1:22:27

back then you want

1:22:29

to hear what she wrote my fifth grade yearbook I

1:22:31

have to know don't

1:22:33

forget to sign up for beautiful anonymous

1:22:35

plus at beautiful anonymous comm