July 14, 2025 • 36 mins
Dave is back from Heroes-Con, feeling fitter, happier and more productive. He shares his theory of small batch travel, finding authentic experiences beyond the beaten path and supporting local business. Dave talks Carolina BBQ, learning to love Radiohead, eating under the influence, Mission District Tacos, and the revolutionary act of introducing new people to new things.
https://www.westcoastdavengers.com/direct-edition-podcast
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:11):
Welcome back to Direct Edition, a podcast about nothing and
everything. I'm your host, Dave, and it's
been a while and it's been a while since I've, it's been a
while since we've done one of these where I've talked to you,
my listener, directly and spokencandidly about things like
(00:32):
Mother Nature, sexuality and other things.
I don't, I don't know. I have no clue.
It's, it's been a long week. It's been a long week.
If you follow both of my shows, this one, Direct Edition and
West Coast Avengers, you know, it's June 29th.
So I got back. We could go tomorrow from Heroes
(00:53):
Con in Charlotte, NC, my second year in a row going by far the
best comic convention in the country.
So, yeah, Charlotte, NC I will say that last year I went kind
of by myself. I knew some people that were
there, was nice meeting some people for the first time,
etcetera. This year by far exceeded the
(01:17):
amount of people that I knew that we're going to be there.
But one of my highlights was I ended up taking the same flight
as a friend who was going to thecon for the first time and he
lives obviously in the Northwestin Seattle.
And I was pretty adamant on wanting to go out and try some
(01:40):
BBQ outside the city the first night.
And he indulged me. And we went to a place called
the Smoke Pit. I believe it was called the
Smoke Pit. And we took an Uber out there
and it was, yeah, it wasn't in the sticks or anything, but it
was just in the suburbs. And it was fucking fantastic.
And it was a local place and it tasted like a local place.
And it felt like a local place when I travel.
(02:02):
And I know this is something that I talk about often.
And me and Sean Crystal talked about this when he was on the
podcast last season. But I don't do tourist things.
It is just not my nature. And maybe it's because I
travelled a lot when I was young.
We went on a lot of family vacations and did the tourist
(02:22):
things. Most of the tourist things that
we did when I was younger, at least to my recollection, were
national parks and and stuff like that.
But growing up in the East Coast, it is like that entire
kind of from north to South Coast through all the tourist
spots. I mean, New York City, obviously
the biggest, poorest city in the, in the country.
(02:42):
I didn't go to the Statue of Liberty, period.
I've never been to the Statue ofLiberty.
My parents, my dad did take me up to the the trade Towers when
I was younger. And then I've been up the Empire
State Building. But like Philly, you got the
Science Museum, you get the, theBen Franklin Science Museum, you
got the Liberty Bell, you got the, the Rocky Statue, the
steps, all that stuff. DC is everything American
(03:05):
history and the fucking garbage government that exists there,
you know, then there's Boston, then there's Baltimore and all
of these places and all the way down to Florida where I spent a
lot of time when I was a kid going to visit my grandma.
So that's tourist central too, in Florida.
Anywho, I think very quickly I rebelled against wanting to do
(03:27):
all of the things that everybodydoes in that regard.
And they're, they're popular fora reason, but they're always jam
packed. They're always so expensive.
You never really get much out ofit.
One thing that I think of kind of fondly at this point, my
parents took me to London in 2000.
(03:49):
I want to say or or 99. Somewhere in that era still 99,
2002, 1001. It wasn't the Millennium.
It wasn't the turn of Millennium.
It might have been 99 or it might have been 98 to 99.
But anyway, I was excited but I never experienced jet lag and I
was absolutely fucking miserablefor almost that whole trip.
(04:12):
And I had a friend that lived there and and I hung out with
her a bunch. So I must have been 21, I don't
know. Anyway, they took me to the
British Museum and I don't really.
My appreciation for museums and art specifically did not come
until later on, not too much later on, but I definitely
(04:35):
enjoyed the experience of doing this.
We went to the British Museum and I think I had a Discman and
I put in, I want to say it was both of the, it was Mechanical
Animals and Antichrist Superstar, the 2 Marilyn Manson
albums. And I listened to them both
while looking at this art that was hundreds and hundreds of
years old and it was awesome. It was awesome.
(04:59):
I never knew that I needed to soundtrack an Art Museum like
that. And now when I go to museums, if
I do go alone, I'm actually happy to listen to music because
you get to experience what you're seeing visually with your
own soundtrack instead of listening to the people around
you. But anyway, getting back to the
tourism thing. So when I start to travel for
(05:23):
work in the, you know, early mid2000s, I would try to use the
Internet the best I could to figure out places to go to eat
that were recommended by, you know, not like Yelp and stuff
like that You find either or in its early days or Reddit in its
(05:46):
early days. And Reddit's still great for
that or whatever you use to try and find places to go a little
bit off the beaten path. But I think what really kicked
that off and one of the reasons why I'm, I love showing people
my versions, my version of goingout to eat in another city.
(06:07):
Like everybody goes this way andI go that way.
And yes, I am showing you the the gun show.
And so I think it really startedwith coffee, though, when I
stopped drinking and I got soberin 2014.
I started drinking coffee. I started really falling in love
with craft coffee and small batch roasteries and the, you
(06:31):
know, the indie stuff, the stuffthat I was into in the movies,
the stuff that I was into in themusic, the stuff that as much as
I like mainstream movies, mainstream music or whatever,
I'm always happy to seek out something that I maybe not, not
everybody knows and see if you can introduce somebody to it.
So when I started traveling so much and I, I was drinking
(06:52):
coffee instead of booze, I really started to seek out food
that, that was local, local favorite.
And so our, our North Carolina experience, the smoke pit was,
was fantastic. And what was really funny, the
Uber driver that took us there, we were talking to her and she's
(07:14):
like, why? You know, she's like, oh, have
you ever been to this place before?
And I'm like, no, I just heard it was really good.
I did some research on the localReddit subreddits and in
Charlotte and found out this is what like one of the places that
people absolutely love. She's like, oh, I never heard of
it before, but I don't live too far from here.
She's like, oh, maybe I can, youknow, maybe I can get here, get
(07:35):
a ride here, you know, pick somebody or take somebody up
here and then take my break or take a break, whatever.
And so we ate, it was like a 45 minute meal.
You know, we took our time. We were in no rush.
And I called the Uber to get us back to the hotel, and sure
enough, it was a Tisha, the woman who took us there.
And we were just laughing about it the whole way.
(07:56):
But we told her how good the food was.
And she's like, I definitely have to try it.
I love also just exploring whether it's a city, a state, a
country via coffee shops and restaurants.
It truly is the best way to start getting into conversations
with people that if you're not adrinker, you know, when I used
(08:17):
to drink, I would go to bar by myself if I was in another city
and you know, not it wasn't liketo get hammered and, and
whatever it was just like, that's, that's the way to, you
know, like meet somebody or havea good conversation.
And one of my favorite experiences of literally as a
human being on this planet sinceI've been alive, this is one of
(08:39):
my favorite experiences that I've ever had.
I was in San Francisco. I can't remember what year it
was, but somewhere around the 2010 era, somewhere in there,
and I worked in an event at thismansion that these people rented
out to throw this party. It was a charity event.
It was a shit show, but I had friends that told me I should go
(09:04):
to Pancho Villa's Tacquerie in the Mission district and have
tacos. And so I was like, all right.
But I think it was it was not the night of the event.
It was the night after the event.
I went to a beer place. I can't remember it was on, it
was on Haight Street, but it wasup a bit and it was around the
(09:25):
block from upper Playground Walrus.
And it was like almost next doorto where there's your friends
store used to be. I forget the name of this beer
place. I'm sure somebody knows it.
Most of this stuff was, you know, small, small breweries.
A lot of it was just on draft, but it was not cold.
(09:45):
I forget what that's called Again, it's been so long.
But anyway, I'm sitting there and I want to say the Warriors
were playing and I'm sitting next to a dude and I think he
had said something about New York.
And we just started chatting because we was like, oh, you
know, something about New York. And then we both were talking
about how we were from New York.And he asked me what I was doing
(10:07):
in town. And I told him I was working
this event. And I asked him what he was
doing in town. He's like, oh, I play, I I play
in a band where we got a gig. We had a gig last night.
I think he had, you know, his day in between gigs.
I'm like, oh, who's the, the person that you know, like who
do you play with? He's like, oh, this guy from New
York, Joseph. I was like, yeah, what what's
his name? Joseph Arthur.
And I was like, oh, I know who he is.
I saw him play with, he's in a band with Danny Harrison and,
(10:31):
and Ben Harper. And so we just started chatting
and I, the guy's name is Renee Renee Lopez, who also he's a
fantastic musician. And I told him about the Taco
place. I'm like, I got to get some
food. My buddies told me to go to
Pancho Villa's taqueria in the Mission.
He's like, let's go. I'm pretty sure I drove.
(10:55):
Probably not a good idea. I wasn't like hammered or
anything, but I shouldn't have driven.
Anyway, we get to Pancho Villa'staqueria and, you know, you just
get online and and this is like real Mexican food.
Like this is like there, there'sno fancy bullshit.
There's no $10 burritos. And if there is a $10 burrito,
(11:15):
it's like, you know, it's, it's 12 inches long.
That's what she said. And you get your platter and
it's just like these people are just pumping out tacos.
Like the guy on the grills got like 10 lbs of every type of
meat. And so we sit down and, you
know, we weren't he Renee was definitely drunker than I was
because I knew I was going to drive, but we were like hungry
(11:39):
and also had been drinking. And you know, that kind of like
what food like that feels when you're that hungry and you're a
little bit tipsy or whatever. Oh my God, it was so good.
It was so good that I, I was like, dude, I'm getting more
tacos. Like get me some.
And we had a couple more tacos because they're not huge.
(11:59):
But that was the first time I think I'd ever experienced the
mission in and going to get Mexican food.
I mean, I might have been there when I was younger, but this was
definitely my first experience as an adult.
And I've been back after that toPancho Villas like 3 or 4 times
because every time I went there for work when I was with a Co
worker, I'm like, come on, we'reget get in the car loser.
(12:20):
We're going for a ride and you know, go get Mexican food.
I mean, I definitely went there high off my ass once and it was
the best meal I've ever had. But Pancho Vias Taqueria is just
one of those things. It's like one of my friends in a
band told me to go there becausethey tore and and I would go
there. I got to give a shout out to to
a band named Sainthood Reps Derek Chesco, Yanni and Brad.
(12:48):
We used to be really good friends when I lived on Long
Island. They're a Long Island band, but
they would tour, you know, nationally and I would hit them
up, whether it was talking to them, this band or, or just like
on message, whatever, like what spots in this city.
And they're the ones who open mymind up to cold brew coffee
because they told me about Stumptown before I even knew
(13:10):
what it was, even though it was like, I can like four blocks
from my office in Manhattan. But that's like that's the best
experience for me is just going somewhere and eating somewhere
new, maybe with somebody I just met or maybe with a Co worker or
friend and taking them there andspreading that joy.
You know, I harp on that. I harp on that quote from Into
(13:33):
the Wild. Happiness is only real when
shared. And I feel like, you know,
sharing experiences or the things that make you happy with
others creates more happiness. But yeah, so the North Carolina
trip, that was that first night.I mean, I haven't eaten that
(13:55):
much meat in one sitting in a long time.
And let's just say I was not feeling too hot the next day.
But it was worth it. It was worth it.
Found good coffee in Charlotte, at least downtown.
You know, it's interesting. Like a lot of cities in this
country, if not most cities in this country, the downtown's
(14:17):
just aren't the best, or they just aren't what they used to
be, or they never were good. I mean, New York is really the
exception to the rule because New York is just everything's
everywhere. Chicago kind of the same.
Like everything's everywhere. You can make a case for San
Francisco, but nobody really wants to hang out in downtown
(14:41):
San Francisco. Come on, come on, London is like
that bloody hell. Anyway, and you know, the
weekend, the weekend was good despite some bad news.
And I'm not even going to go into that.
If you follow me on any of my other stuff on West Coast
(15:01):
Avengers, I I don't need to repeat myself.
So yeah, we're, we're this is the first, this is the first
episode of the fourth season. I know I'm like 20 minutes into
this episode already, but this is the first episode of the
fourth season that I'm talking directly to my, my audience.
I think I'm starting to understand that I have to
(15:23):
really, really spend hours in a day messaging, emailing and
trying to get interviews. But I really happy with having
Alice Darrow on my first episodethis season.
I know that that a lot of peopledon't know who she is, but I
think that's I think that's kindof like the idea of part of this
(15:47):
podcast is to introduce an audience of people to somebody
that they don't know. I mean, I think that's been my
path to discovering so many things that I love in the last,
you know, 25 years. It's just like sitting down and
trying something new. Whether it's it's like ATV show
(16:07):
that introduces me to a new actor or new writer or a comic
book that introduces me to a newcreator, a song that introduces
me to a new band, so on and so forth.
I think trying new things is something that you have to in a
(16:27):
way, force yourself to do at a certain point in your life.
And once you get past that kind of hump of, you know, like I'm
used to this, but I'm going to try this.
I think it really opens your world up in general.
I, I think about certain things in my life that have opened my
world up to just trying new things.
(16:52):
One pivotal thing, it, it seems trivial.
It seems really trivial. But one pivotal thing, when I
took my job in 2008 working for the auction company and I, I
started to work events. One of the 1st events I had ever
worked was a Jewish event on Long Island and it was kosher.
(17:13):
And so the food options are obviously a little bit different
than you would find at normal events.
You know, you're not going to find anything with bacon and and
you're not going to find dairy and meat mixed together in
anything like cheeseburgers or whatever.
But sushi is very, very much a prevalent thing at kosher events
(17:34):
because sushi fish is kosher. And so I never really eaten
sushi and I maybe had tried it once or twice and I just, I
didn't get get over that hump. And that night I had a bunch of
different sushi. Mostly it was just like tuna,
salmon, you know, just just a sushi roll, not a roll, but you
(17:57):
know, piece of sushi. And it, it, it did something.
It did something that I, I, I still to this day, like still
think about that night because here we are almost 20 years
later and like, what did I do last year?
I went to Japan and I ate sushi probably 20 times while I was in
(18:18):
Japan, you know, and my palate just increased that night that I
tried sushi and I was like, wow,this is really good.
Now I have my preferences in what I like and what I don't
like. I prefer fish versus like things
like crab or, you know, eel and stuff like that.
I just like things that are moremeat, you know, like a, you
(18:41):
know, just I could Gollum fucking salmon, you know, and
you know, from there, like I I my my mind opened up a little
bit more to just other foods andyou know, it, it it's it's
interesting. I think about music and how I
(19:02):
was, you know, my buddy Scott's going to laugh at this, but how
I was very shut off to a lot of things that I didn't want to
like, or I said to him, the famous quote that he always says
to me is I, I said to him, I don't have any room for more,
you know, like for new music or some shit like that.
Like just the most asinine thingthat I said when I was 20 and I
(19:24):
got to stop beating myself up over the the way I acted when I
was. 18/19/2020 1:22 You know, like I beat myself up a lot for
for some of the things that I closed my mind off too.
But anyway, Radiohead was a bandthat in high school I really
loved. I mean, I loved Creep when it
came out, right? Everybody loved that song.
(19:45):
If you didn't, you're lying. Then The Bends came out, you
know, high and dry and you know,although they had like 5 singles
off that album. But but then OK Computer came
out and I loved the first two singles, which would have been
Karma Police and Paranoid Android.
(20:05):
But when I listen to the album, I know what it's fitter happier,
which is that song that's you know, it's a computer, you know,
and something about that song like shut me off from them.
It just like completely. I never could get into that
whole album and. For years I just was so
(20:29):
resistant to them, Kid a amnesiac.
Like I missed a pivotal point oftheir music when it was new, you
know, I knew some of it. I heard it obviously because it
was everywhere, permeated through not just the radio and
MTV, but it was a like every store or you know, every record
store was like whatever. And it wasn't until In Rainbows
(20:51):
came out and there was a girl. Of course there's always a girl,
but she was like, oh, do you like Radiohead?
I'm like, I stopped listening tohim and she's like, and In
Rainbows brought me in back intothem.
And you know, obviously that was2000 and I think that was 2004.
Maybe it's 2000 and eight, 6-7. Fuck, I can't remember.
I was drunk for most of those years.
(21:11):
And you know, here I am 2025 andthere's still, you know, I love
that band. Absolutely.
I think they're one of the greatest bands of all time.
I've seen them act, you know, four or five times.
And I think OK Computer is one of the greatest albums of all
time. But there was a point in my life
where I, I was just closed off to it and I, you know, I can't
(21:33):
go back in time. I, you know, I did other things
and I liked other things, but there's just, I just feel like
when I hit my 30s, really like when I hit my 30s, I really
stopped actively shutting my mind off to things that I didn't
know or didn't like. I would try things.
(21:54):
And I think I'm, you know, I think we're all better off if
we, we, we act that way. If we act a little bit more like
like the time on this earth thatwe have that our life is not
infinite. It is finite.
And I harp on this a lot in the podcast and I harp on this a lot
in my real in in in life is thatI just don't really have the
(22:19):
time of my life to sit and be negative anymore and and dislike
things just to dislike things. Like even the things that I
dislike, I can still figure out a way to enjoy or laugh at.
And I think that's also the big point is laughing at things that
you don't enjoy. Now this is when I speak about
(22:40):
this. I'm not talking about like, I
don't have time to hate the genocide that's happening.
No, no, it's, it's it when it comes to like the things that we
consume, the things that we watch, listen to play, read, all
that stuff. But I think life is too short to
like sit there and push through something you don't like.
(23:00):
And I've said that before, like if you're reading a book and
you're like 3 or 4 chapters in, you're 40 pages in and you're
like, I'm not enjoying this. I'm going to keep reading it
though, see if it gets better. Don't just put it down, go on to
the next thing. If you're not enjoying the show,
turn it off, go on to the next thing.
(23:21):
I mean, that's what the hate watching thing.
I've talked about that before too.
Like I think the last thing I truly hate watched all the way
through was True Blood. I loved the first season and
then I hate watch the rest of it.
But then Westworld came along, the absolute amazing first
season, and then the rest of it was just shit.
(23:43):
And so I stopped after the second season.
Life's too short for it. So I'm trying to think there's
other things that it's like opened my mind up to to other
things. I think there was, you know,
comics was when I read Sandman, it opened me up to a lot of
(24:03):
other things that I probably would never have looked at.
Which by the way, if you're wondering what's going on behind
me tomorrow, which will probablybe in retrospect as you're
hearing this, the episode beforethis is going to be recorded
tomorrow. I'm interviewing chips that are
ski again and Chip is awesome. I've had him on West Coast
(24:24):
Avengers, but then it was one ofthe first episodes that I put on
this podcast when I was still using those interviews to pad
the episodes here. But anyway, I, I think when it
comes to books, what's interesting to me and, and I
laugh about this because like inthe grand scheme of literature,
this book is not high literature.
(24:46):
But I never had problems readingwhatsoever.
But I was never a reader becauseI just didn't have the patience
to enjoy a book as much as I would enjoy a comic or a movie,
you know, etcetera. But I read in 2004, I read The
Da Vinci Code and yeah, I never read anything like that.
(25:07):
I never read any like mystery novels, you know, any, anything
of the sort. And I read that book like it was
the greatest thing in the world.And I got through it so quick
and I had so much fun reading it.
And that's when I started to kind of be like, all right,
maybe it's time to start readingsome of these books that I've,
(25:28):
I've heard about or, you know, Ipicked up a lot of Neil game and
stuff back then and some StephenKing stuff.
And I just, I, I really enjoyed.That's when I really started to
enjoy reading. Granted, I was 25 years old and
it's like I said, it's not like I never read before, but I
never, up until that point, likeall the books that I had to
(25:49):
read, I had to read. I didn't have the choice.
I think the first, maybe the first book that I read by choice
before that was Stardust, which was gay man's book.
And I love that too, but might have been around that same time,
like 2000 and three, 2004. But like everything I was forced
to read in high school, it was like, yeah, I'm being forced to
(26:11):
read it. I didn't read Catcher in the Rye
until I was, I want to say maybe, maybe 2930 years old.
But I loved it. Although, you know, I understand
why people want to beat the shitout of Holden Caulfield.
But then I started exploring stuff like the beatniks.
I started exploring, you know, on the road Kerouac and never
(26:32):
really took to, what's that drunk it guy's name, Bukowski.
Never took to Bukowski. Because as soon as I started
reading, I'm like, this dude said I got to give a shout out
there to my old roommate Charis,because she was the one who's
trying to get me to read Bukowski.
There's something about like certain bands, certain writers
(26:53):
that are like these asshole men that women love, and he's one of
them. Bukowski, and this is my
experience. I'm not blanket statement saying
that about women, but in my experience, a lot of the women I
know love Bukowski. They also listen to Glass Jaw
and love Glass Jaw. So I don't fucking know.
(27:15):
Not that I have anything againstGlass Jaw.
They are the Long Island, you know, legends of my, my youth
and, you know, into my, my, you know, my teens into my 20s.
Speaking of Long Island bands, that was something that happened
(27:35):
about a month ago now. Brand new came back and I went
to their first two shows of their first tour in seven years
with my friend Ashley and her friend Jordan.
And fuck, it was like it was just Immaculate.
We were on the barricade for both shows and it just sounded
amazing and made me really miss going to see them live because I
(27:58):
used to go see them live all thetime.
I probably seen them like 15 times.
I don't know, something like that.
Anyway, that's neither here nor there.
But that was a, you know, like certain bands like them.
Actually, I could talk about them a little bit.
They were a band that I knew about when I was younger and I
(28:19):
had a lot of friends that would go see them at these small
shows. And then one day, probably
around 2005. No, it can't be 2000, but it's
got to be before that. All right?
Let's just say it's 2002 becausethat would make more sense.
One of my friends asked me aboutthem and I said I never really
(28:39):
listened to them. So you burned me A copy of Deja
and Tendu, their second album, and I listened to it and it's
this is kind of similar to otherbands where like I was like,
this is all right, all right. Third song hits Tommy Gunn and
I'm like, oh, what the fuck is this?
(28:59):
This is good. And then he gave me a ticket to
go see them. We went to go see them and that
was that. That was taken.
Ever since. The same thing happened with one
of my favorite bands, FrightenedRabbit.
God, that's probably 2009. My friend Bob had told me about
(29:22):
this band. And you know, like Bob's one of
those people that like he would always find the indie band that
you never heard of and he would talk about the non-stop and he
would listen to them. And my music taste and his music
taste definitely crossed over a lot.
So he typically when he was talking about a band and then he
(29:42):
showed them to me, I was like, yeah, this, this great band made
me a copy this, this band frightened Rabbit, Their their
second album, Midnight organ fight.
And I put it on in my office. What one day while I was working
and I was like, this is interesting.
I don't know if his I like his voice.
And then a certain song hits Keep yourself warm.
(30:03):
It's like the 9th song on the album or whatever.
And like, I stopped what I was doing to listen to this song.
The lyrics of this song were like, I've never heard anything
like this before where Scott says, you know, like he sings
the line and it takes more than fucking someone to keep yourself
warm. And I'm just like, what?
Literally, I was like, I, I stopped.
(30:24):
And so it was like 2 weeks lateror something like that, Bob's
like, yeah, I was supposed to gosee Frank Rabbit with this girl
that I was like kind of seeing. And she, whatever it was the
situation. So he asked if I wanted to go
see the band play a show at Maxwell's in Hoboken, in Jersey,
across the river. And I had never been there,
(30:44):
heard so much about that Maxwell's.
And I was like, yeah, let's go. So he met me in my office and
we, we went over to we took the train to Jersey and went to the
show. And that's where my friendship
with Scott begins, because he said something about Billy Joel
and everybody in the crowd was like, Boo because like, you
(31:07):
know, you say Billy Joel in Jersey, people Boo because
they're Bruce Springsteen people.
You know, it's it's it's just a funny thing.
People don't actually dislike Billy Joel in New Jersey.
And I was like, yeah, long aisleBilly Joel.
And he's like, he points right at me in this crowd of people
who said this song is for you, Billy Joel.
And yeah, that night after we, we just hung around and I
(31:30):
started talking to him. And I was like, can I buy you?
Buy you drink? And he's like, yeah, whiskey.
And we started drinking. And that's like I said, how if
you ever want to become friends with a Scottish person, just
have a drink with him is literally all you have to do.
And we were friends until, untilthe end of his life.
(31:50):
And I tell Bob all the time. I tell Bob like, you know, thank
you. Thank you for bringing this band
into my life which I ended up becoming, you know, friends and
going on tour with him and all this shit.
Just like, you know, if it wasn't for Bob suggesting me
listen to that band and that girl kind of standing him up,
(32:12):
hey, I might not have ever gone to Scotland.
So that's why you should try newthings because you truly, you
truly, and I mean this from the bottom of my fucking heart.
You truly never know where that thing is going to bring you.
And and I will Fast forward to like this correlation this this
little chain of events of me watching cartoonist kayfabe and
(32:37):
me starting talking to Ed. He introduces the cartoonist
kayfabe crowd, you know, in intoSean Sean Japan book hunter.
I invite Shawn on my show and then a year and a half later or
whatever it was a year later, I was in Japan hanging out with
him and you know, I I was never a manga person.
(33:00):
I I never even thought that I would be interested in going to
Japan too much. I talked about it a couple
times, but not not not I'm goingto pull the trigger and go and
fuck if I didn't watch cartoon escape favor if I didn't decide
that I was going to invite Sean on my show to like learn more.
That's why I invited him on was literally to learn more about
(33:23):
manga because it was so fascinated by like what he does
and like the things that he's into because it's not like all
the mainstream stuff completely.And my inquisitive nature hadn't
led me to Japan and I'm five months away from going back.
And all of this just stems from opening my mind up.
(33:45):
And I don't know how I got here in this point of the podcast
from where I started, but I think, I think it was like, it
won't like this from point A to point B.
It just went squiggly. But anyway, that's just one of
those things. I, I, I try something new and it
brings me somewhere. It's because of the fact that I
want to explore it as it is. So, yeah.
(34:08):
So keep your mind open, be good to people, keep your mind open,
ask questions and listen. Those things get you pretty far
in life. They really do.
So thank you for listening to this wildly all over the place
episode that I apparently didn't.
(34:29):
This is the thing. If you're listening to this and
you're newish to the podcast or or not whatever.
But if you're newish to the podcast, when I record a solo
episode like this, I don't writeanything down.
I have no notes, 10 out of 10, no notes.
I, I, I actually had written twothings in my phone.
(34:50):
I didn't talk about either of those things.
It's, it's kind of like this is not, this isn't therapy because
I actually have a therapist, butthis isn't therapy for me.
This is like just see what you want to talk about and if it
makes sense, we'll let it ride. So thank you for listening to
(35:10):
this fourth season. This is going to be episode 63,
I believe, or 64. I I, I didn't even think this
was going to go this far to tellyou the truth.
But if you are still listening to this as I'm talking and you
haven't done so, I'm going to talk about this until I'm blue
in the face. Please give me a star rating on
(35:32):
either Spotify or Apple. If you're subscribed on one of
those two, you can leave comments on Spotify now, which
they're trying to compete with YouTube, same as Apple, but
Apple doesn't need to compete with YouTube because they're
both kind of like the big dogs. Fuck Spotify, by the way.
And then if you're watching thison YouTube, hit the like button,
watch to the end, drop a commentdown below, catch up, watch an
(35:54):
old episode if you're if you haven't watched it.
I mean, it's still me thankful that people are still here and
listening. I'm thankful to the new
subscribers and the old, thankful to my guest so far this
season, Alice Darrow, Chip Sedarski and Stan Sakai.
And yeah, that's going to be it.So keep your head up and I'll
see you next week on Direct Edition.
(36:14):
I don't know what to do with my fingers.
God, what's wrong with me?
Welcome back to Direct Edition, a podcast about nothing and
everything. I'm your host, Dave, and it's
been a while and it's been a while since I've, it's been a
while since we've done one of these where I've talked to you,
my listener, directly and spokencandidly about things like
(00:32):
Mother Nature, sexuality and other things.
I don't, I don't know. I have no clue.
It's, it's been a long week. It's been a long week.
If you follow both of my shows, this one, Direct Edition and
West Coast Avengers, you know, it's June 29th.
So I got back. We could go tomorrow from Heroes
(00:53):
Con in Charlotte, NC, my second year in a row going by far the
best comic convention in the country.
So, yeah, Charlotte, NC I will say that last year I went kind
of by myself. I knew some people that were
there, was nice meeting some people for the first time,
etcetera. This year by far exceeded the
(01:17):
amount of people that I knew that we're going to be there.
But one of my highlights was I ended up taking the same flight
as a friend who was going to thecon for the first time and he
lives obviously in the Northwestin Seattle.
And I was pretty adamant on wanting to go out and try some
(01:40):
BBQ outside the city the first night.
And he indulged me. And we went to a place called
the Smoke Pit. I believe it was called the
Smoke Pit. And we took an Uber out there
and it was, yeah, it wasn't in the sticks or anything, but it
was just in the suburbs. And it was fucking fantastic.
And it was a local place and it tasted like a local place.
And it felt like a local place when I travel.
(02:02):
And I know this is something that I talk about often.
And me and Sean Crystal talked about this when he was on the
podcast last season. But I don't do tourist things.
It is just not my nature. And maybe it's because I
travelled a lot when I was young.
We went on a lot of family vacations and did the tourist
(02:22):
things. Most of the tourist things that
we did when I was younger, at least to my recollection, were
national parks and and stuff like that.
But growing up in the East Coast, it is like that entire
kind of from north to South Coast through all the tourist
spots. I mean, New York City, obviously
the biggest, poorest city in the, in the country.
(02:42):
I didn't go to the Statue of Liberty, period.
I've never been to the Statue ofLiberty.
My parents, my dad did take me up to the the trade Towers when
I was younger. And then I've been up the Empire
State Building. But like Philly, you got the
Science Museum, you get the, theBen Franklin Science Museum, you
got the Liberty Bell, you got the, the Rocky Statue, the
steps, all that stuff. DC is everything American
(03:05):
history and the fucking garbage government that exists there,
you know, then there's Boston, then there's Baltimore and all
of these places and all the way down to Florida where I spent a
lot of time when I was a kid going to visit my grandma.
So that's tourist central too, in Florida.
Anywho, I think very quickly I rebelled against wanting to do
(03:27):
all of the things that everybodydoes in that regard.
And they're, they're popular fora reason, but they're always jam
packed. They're always so expensive.
You never really get much out ofit.
One thing that I think of kind of fondly at this point, my
parents took me to London in 2000.
(03:49):
I want to say or or 99. Somewhere in that era still 99,
2002, 1001. It wasn't the Millennium.
It wasn't the turn of Millennium.
It might have been 99 or it might have been 98 to 99.
But anyway, I was excited but I never experienced jet lag and I
was absolutely fucking miserablefor almost that whole trip.
(04:12):
And I had a friend that lived there and and I hung out with
her a bunch. So I must have been 21, I don't
know. Anyway, they took me to the
British Museum and I don't really.
My appreciation for museums and art specifically did not come
until later on, not too much later on, but I definitely
(04:35):
enjoyed the experience of doing this.
We went to the British Museum and I think I had a Discman and
I put in, I want to say it was both of the, it was Mechanical
Animals and Antichrist Superstar, the 2 Marilyn Manson
albums. And I listened to them both
while looking at this art that was hundreds and hundreds of
years old and it was awesome. It was awesome.
(04:59):
I never knew that I needed to soundtrack an Art Museum like
that. And now when I go to museums, if
I do go alone, I'm actually happy to listen to music because
you get to experience what you're seeing visually with your
own soundtrack instead of listening to the people around
you. But anyway, getting back to the
tourism thing. So when I start to travel for
(05:23):
work in the, you know, early mid2000s, I would try to use the
Internet the best I could to figure out places to go to eat
that were recommended by, you know, not like Yelp and stuff
like that You find either or in its early days or Reddit in its
(05:46):
early days. And Reddit's still great for
that or whatever you use to try and find places to go a little
bit off the beaten path. But I think what really kicked
that off and one of the reasons why I'm, I love showing people
my versions, my version of goingout to eat in another city.
(06:07):
Like everybody goes this way andI go that way.
And yes, I am showing you the the gun show.
And so I think it really startedwith coffee, though, when I
stopped drinking and I got soberin 2014.
I started drinking coffee. I started really falling in love
with craft coffee and small batch roasteries and the, you
(06:31):
know, the indie stuff, the stuffthat I was into in the movies,
the stuff that I was into in themusic, the stuff that as much as
I like mainstream movies, mainstream music or whatever,
I'm always happy to seek out something that I maybe not, not
everybody knows and see if you can introduce somebody to it.
So when I started traveling so much and I, I was drinking
(06:52):
coffee instead of booze, I really started to seek out food
that, that was local, local favorite.
And so our, our North Carolina experience, the smoke pit was,
was fantastic. And what was really funny, the
Uber driver that took us there, we were talking to her and she's
(07:14):
like, why? You know, she's like, oh, have
you ever been to this place before?
And I'm like, no, I just heard it was really good.
I did some research on the localReddit subreddits and in
Charlotte and found out this is what like one of the places that
people absolutely love. She's like, oh, I never heard of
it before, but I don't live too far from here.
She's like, oh, maybe I can, youknow, maybe I can get here, get
(07:35):
a ride here, you know, pick somebody or take somebody up
here and then take my break or take a break, whatever.
And so we ate, it was like a 45 minute meal.
You know, we took our time. We were in no rush.
And I called the Uber to get us back to the hotel, and sure
enough, it was a Tisha, the woman who took us there.
And we were just laughing about it the whole way.
(07:56):
But we told her how good the food was.
And she's like, I definitely have to try it.
I love also just exploring whether it's a city, a state, a
country via coffee shops and restaurants.
It truly is the best way to start getting into conversations
with people that if you're not adrinker, you know, when I used
(08:17):
to drink, I would go to bar by myself if I was in another city
and you know, not it wasn't liketo get hammered and, and
whatever it was just like, that's, that's the way to, you
know, like meet somebody or havea good conversation.
And one of my favorite experiences of literally as a
human being on this planet sinceI've been alive, this is one of
(08:39):
my favorite experiences that I've ever had.
I was in San Francisco. I can't remember what year it
was, but somewhere around the 2010 era, somewhere in there,
and I worked in an event at thismansion that these people rented
out to throw this party. It was a charity event.
It was a shit show, but I had friends that told me I should go
(09:04):
to Pancho Villa's Tacquerie in the Mission district and have
tacos. And so I was like, all right.
But I think it was it was not the night of the event.
It was the night after the event.
I went to a beer place. I can't remember it was on, it
was on Haight Street, but it wasup a bit and it was around the
(09:25):
block from upper Playground Walrus.
And it was like almost next doorto where there's your friends
store used to be. I forget the name of this beer
place. I'm sure somebody knows it.
Most of this stuff was, you know, small, small breweries.
A lot of it was just on draft, but it was not cold.
(09:45):
I forget what that's called Again, it's been so long.
But anyway, I'm sitting there and I want to say the Warriors
were playing and I'm sitting next to a dude and I think he
had said something about New York.
And we just started chatting because we was like, oh, you
know, something about New York. And then we both were talking
about how we were from New York.And he asked me what I was doing
(10:07):
in town. And I told him I was working
this event. And I asked him what he was
doing in town. He's like, oh, I play, I I play
in a band where we got a gig. We had a gig last night.
I think he had, you know, his day in between gigs.
I'm like, oh, who's the, the person that you know, like who
do you play with? He's like, oh, this guy from New
York, Joseph. I was like, yeah, what what's
his name? Joseph Arthur.
And I was like, oh, I know who he is.
I saw him play with, he's in a band with Danny Harrison and,
(10:31):
and Ben Harper. And so we just started chatting
and I, the guy's name is Renee Renee Lopez, who also he's a
fantastic musician. And I told him about the Taco
place. I'm like, I got to get some
food. My buddies told me to go to
Pancho Villa's taqueria in the Mission.
He's like, let's go. I'm pretty sure I drove.
(10:55):
Probably not a good idea. I wasn't like hammered or
anything, but I shouldn't have driven.
Anyway, we get to Pancho Villa'staqueria and, you know, you just
get online and and this is like real Mexican food.
Like this is like there, there'sno fancy bullshit.
There's no $10 burritos. And if there is a $10 burrito,
(11:15):
it's like, you know, it's, it's 12 inches long.
That's what she said. And you get your platter and
it's just like these people are just pumping out tacos.
Like the guy on the grills got like 10 lbs of every type of
meat. And so we sit down and, you
know, we weren't he Renee was definitely drunker than I was
because I knew I was going to drive, but we were like hungry
(11:39):
and also had been drinking. And you know, that kind of like
what food like that feels when you're that hungry and you're a
little bit tipsy or whatever. Oh my God, it was so good.
It was so good that I, I was like, dude, I'm getting more
tacos. Like get me some.
And we had a couple more tacos because they're not huge.
(11:59):
But that was the first time I think I'd ever experienced the
mission in and going to get Mexican food.
I mean, I might have been there when I was younger, but this was
definitely my first experience as an adult.
And I've been back after that toPancho Villas like 3 or 4 times
because every time I went there for work when I was with a Co
worker, I'm like, come on, we'reget get in the car loser.
(12:20):
We're going for a ride and you know, go get Mexican food.
I mean, I definitely went there high off my ass once and it was
the best meal I've ever had. But Pancho Vias Taqueria is just
one of those things. It's like one of my friends in a
band told me to go there becausethey tore and and I would go
there. I got to give a shout out to to
a band named Sainthood Reps Derek Chesco, Yanni and Brad.
(12:48):
We used to be really good friends when I lived on Long
Island. They're a Long Island band, but
they would tour, you know, nationally and I would hit them
up, whether it was talking to them, this band or, or just like
on message, whatever, like what spots in this city.
And they're the ones who open mymind up to cold brew coffee
because they told me about Stumptown before I even knew
(13:10):
what it was, even though it was like, I can like four blocks
from my office in Manhattan. But that's like that's the best
experience for me is just going somewhere and eating somewhere
new, maybe with somebody I just met or maybe with a Co worker or
friend and taking them there andspreading that joy.
You know, I harp on that. I harp on that quote from Into
(13:33):
the Wild. Happiness is only real when
shared. And I feel like, you know,
sharing experiences or the things that make you happy with
others creates more happiness. But yeah, so the North Carolina
trip, that was that first night.I mean, I haven't eaten that
(13:55):
much meat in one sitting in a long time.
And let's just say I was not feeling too hot the next day.
But it was worth it. It was worth it.
Found good coffee in Charlotte, at least downtown.
You know, it's interesting. Like a lot of cities in this
country, if not most cities in this country, the downtown's
(14:17):
just aren't the best, or they just aren't what they used to
be, or they never were good. I mean, New York is really the
exception to the rule because New York is just everything's
everywhere. Chicago kind of the same.
Like everything's everywhere. You can make a case for San
Francisco, but nobody really wants to hang out in downtown
(14:41):
San Francisco. Come on, come on, London is like
that bloody hell. Anyway, and you know, the
weekend, the weekend was good despite some bad news.
And I'm not even going to go into that.
If you follow me on any of my other stuff on West Coast
(15:01):
Avengers, I I don't need to repeat myself.
So yeah, we're, we're this is the first, this is the first
episode of the fourth season. I know I'm like 20 minutes into
this episode already, but this is the first episode of the
fourth season that I'm talking directly to my, my audience.
I think I'm starting to understand that I have to
(15:23):
really, really spend hours in a day messaging, emailing and
trying to get interviews. But I really happy with having
Alice Darrow on my first episodethis season.
I know that that a lot of peopledon't know who she is, but I
think that's I think that's kindof like the idea of part of this
(15:47):
podcast is to introduce an audience of people to somebody
that they don't know. I mean, I think that's been my
path to discovering so many things that I love in the last,
you know, 25 years. It's just like sitting down and
trying something new. Whether it's it's like ATV show
(16:07):
that introduces me to a new actor or new writer or a comic
book that introduces me to a newcreator, a song that introduces
me to a new band, so on and so forth.
I think trying new things is something that you have to in a
(16:27):
way, force yourself to do at a certain point in your life.
And once you get past that kind of hump of, you know, like I'm
used to this, but I'm going to try this.
I think it really opens your world up in general.
I, I think about certain things in my life that have opened my
world up to just trying new things.
(16:52):
One pivotal thing, it, it seems trivial.
It seems really trivial. But one pivotal thing, when I
took my job in 2008 working for the auction company and I, I
started to work events. One of the 1st events I had ever
worked was a Jewish event on Long Island and it was kosher.
(17:13):
And so the food options are obviously a little bit different
than you would find at normal events.
You know, you're not going to find anything with bacon and and
you're not going to find dairy and meat mixed together in
anything like cheeseburgers or whatever.
But sushi is very, very much a prevalent thing at kosher events
(17:34):
because sushi fish is kosher. And so I never really eaten
sushi and I maybe had tried it once or twice and I just, I
didn't get get over that hump. And that night I had a bunch of
different sushi. Mostly it was just like tuna,
salmon, you know, just just a sushi roll, not a roll, but you
(17:57):
know, piece of sushi. And it, it, it did something.
It did something that I, I, I still to this day, like still
think about that night because here we are almost 20 years
later and like, what did I do last year?
I went to Japan and I ate sushi probably 20 times while I was in
(18:18):
Japan, you know, and my palate just increased that night that I
tried sushi and I was like, wow,this is really good.
Now I have my preferences in what I like and what I don't
like. I prefer fish versus like things
like crab or, you know, eel and stuff like that.
I just like things that are moremeat, you know, like a, you
(18:41):
know, just I could Gollum fucking salmon, you know, and
you know, from there, like I I my my mind opened up a little
bit more to just other foods andyou know, it, it it's it's
interesting. I think about music and how I
(19:02):
was, you know, my buddy Scott's going to laugh at this, but how
I was very shut off to a lot of things that I didn't want to
like, or I said to him, the famous quote that he always says
to me is I, I said to him, I don't have any room for more,
you know, like for new music or some shit like that.
Like just the most asinine thingthat I said when I was 20 and I
(19:24):
got to stop beating myself up over the the way I acted when I
was. 18/19/2020 1:22 You know, like I beat myself up a lot for
for some of the things that I closed my mind off too.
But anyway, Radiohead was a bandthat in high school I really
loved. I mean, I loved Creep when it
came out, right? Everybody loved that song.
(19:45):
If you didn't, you're lying. Then The Bends came out, you
know, high and dry and you know,although they had like 5 singles
off that album. But but then OK Computer came
out and I loved the first two singles, which would have been
Karma Police and Paranoid Android.
(20:05):
But when I listen to the album, I know what it's fitter happier,
which is that song that's you know, it's a computer, you know,
and something about that song like shut me off from them.
It just like completely. I never could get into that
whole album and. For years I just was so
(20:29):
resistant to them, Kid a amnesiac.
Like I missed a pivotal point oftheir music when it was new, you
know, I knew some of it. I heard it obviously because it
was everywhere, permeated through not just the radio and
MTV, but it was a like every store or you know, every record
store was like whatever. And it wasn't until In Rainbows
(20:51):
came out and there was a girl. Of course there's always a girl,
but she was like, oh, do you like Radiohead?
I'm like, I stopped listening tohim and she's like, and In
Rainbows brought me in back intothem.
And you know, obviously that was2000 and I think that was 2004.
Maybe it's 2000 and eight, 6-7. Fuck, I can't remember.
I was drunk for most of those years.
(21:11):
And you know, here I am 2025 andthere's still, you know, I love
that band. Absolutely.
I think they're one of the greatest bands of all time.
I've seen them act, you know, four or five times.
And I think OK Computer is one of the greatest albums of all
time. But there was a point in my life
where I, I was just closed off to it and I, you know, I can't
(21:33):
go back in time. I, you know, I did other things
and I liked other things, but there's just, I just feel like
when I hit my 30s, really like when I hit my 30s, I really
stopped actively shutting my mind off to things that I didn't
know or didn't like. I would try things.
(21:54):
And I think I'm, you know, I think we're all better off if
we, we, we act that way. If we act a little bit more like
like the time on this earth thatwe have that our life is not
infinite. It is finite.
And I harp on this a lot in the podcast and I harp on this a lot
in my real in in in life is thatI just don't really have the
(22:19):
time of my life to sit and be negative anymore and and dislike
things just to dislike things. Like even the things that I
dislike, I can still figure out a way to enjoy or laugh at.
And I think that's also the big point is laughing at things that
you don't enjoy. Now this is when I speak about
(22:40):
this. I'm not talking about like, I
don't have time to hate the genocide that's happening.
No, no, it's, it's it when it comes to like the things that we
consume, the things that we watch, listen to play, read, all
that stuff. But I think life is too short to
like sit there and push through something you don't like.
(23:00):
And I've said that before, like if you're reading a book and
you're like 3 or 4 chapters in, you're 40 pages in and you're
like, I'm not enjoying this. I'm going to keep reading it
though, see if it gets better. Don't just put it down, go on to
the next thing. If you're not enjoying the show,
turn it off, go on to the next thing.
(23:21):
I mean, that's what the hate watching thing.
I've talked about that before too.
Like I think the last thing I truly hate watched all the way
through was True Blood. I loved the first season and
then I hate watch the rest of it.
But then Westworld came along, the absolute amazing first
season, and then the rest of it was just shit.
(23:43):
And so I stopped after the second season.
Life's too short for it. So I'm trying to think there's
other things that it's like opened my mind up to to other
things. I think there was, you know,
comics was when I read Sandman, it opened me up to a lot of
(24:03):
other things that I probably would never have looked at.
Which by the way, if you're wondering what's going on behind
me tomorrow, which will probablybe in retrospect as you're
hearing this, the episode beforethis is going to be recorded
tomorrow. I'm interviewing chips that are
ski again and Chip is awesome. I've had him on West Coast
(24:24):
Avengers, but then it was one ofthe first episodes that I put on
this podcast when I was still using those interviews to pad
the episodes here. But anyway, I, I think when it
comes to books, what's interesting to me and, and I
laugh about this because like inthe grand scheme of literature,
this book is not high literature.
(24:46):
But I never had problems readingwhatsoever.
But I was never a reader becauseI just didn't have the patience
to enjoy a book as much as I would enjoy a comic or a movie,
you know, etcetera. But I read in 2004, I read The
Da Vinci Code and yeah, I never read anything like that.
(25:07):
I never read any like mystery novels, you know, any, anything
of the sort. And I read that book like it was
the greatest thing in the world.And I got through it so quick
and I had so much fun reading it.
And that's when I started to kind of be like, all right,
maybe it's time to start readingsome of these books that I've,
(25:28):
I've heard about or, you know, Ipicked up a lot of Neil game and
stuff back then and some StephenKing stuff.
And I just, I, I really enjoyed.That's when I really started to
enjoy reading. Granted, I was 25 years old and
it's like I said, it's not like I never read before, but I
never, up until that point, likeall the books that I had to
(25:49):
read, I had to read. I didn't have the choice.
I think the first, maybe the first book that I read by choice
before that was Stardust, which was gay man's book.
And I love that too, but might have been around that same time,
like 2000 and three, 2004. But like everything I was forced
to read in high school, it was like, yeah, I'm being forced to
(26:11):
read it. I didn't read Catcher in the Rye
until I was, I want to say maybe, maybe 2930 years old.
But I loved it. Although, you know, I understand
why people want to beat the shitout of Holden Caulfield.
But then I started exploring stuff like the beatniks.
I started exploring, you know, on the road Kerouac and never
(26:32):
really took to, what's that drunk it guy's name, Bukowski.
Never took to Bukowski. Because as soon as I started
reading, I'm like, this dude said I got to give a shout out
there to my old roommate Charis,because she was the one who's
trying to get me to read Bukowski.
There's something about like certain bands, certain writers
(26:53):
that are like these asshole men that women love, and he's one of
them. Bukowski, and this is my
experience. I'm not blanket statement saying
that about women, but in my experience, a lot of the women I
know love Bukowski. They also listen to Glass Jaw
and love Glass Jaw. So I don't fucking know.
(27:15):
Not that I have anything againstGlass Jaw.
They are the Long Island, you know, legends of my, my youth
and, you know, into my, my, you know, my teens into my 20s.
Speaking of Long Island bands, that was something that happened
(27:35):
about a month ago now. Brand new came back and I went
to their first two shows of their first tour in seven years
with my friend Ashley and her friend Jordan.
And fuck, it was like it was just Immaculate.
We were on the barricade for both shows and it just sounded
amazing and made me really miss going to see them live because I
(27:58):
used to go see them live all thetime.
I probably seen them like 15 times.
I don't know, something like that.
Anyway, that's neither here nor there.
But that was a, you know, like certain bands like them.
Actually, I could talk about them a little bit.
They were a band that I knew about when I was younger and I
(28:19):
had a lot of friends that would go see them at these small
shows. And then one day, probably
around 2005. No, it can't be 2000, but it's
got to be before that. All right?
Let's just say it's 2002 becausethat would make more sense.
One of my friends asked me aboutthem and I said I never really
(28:39):
listened to them. So you burned me A copy of Deja
and Tendu, their second album, and I listened to it and it's
this is kind of similar to otherbands where like I was like,
this is all right, all right. Third song hits Tommy Gunn and
I'm like, oh, what the fuck is this?
(28:59):
This is good. And then he gave me a ticket to
go see them. We went to go see them and that
was that. That was taken.
Ever since. The same thing happened with one
of my favorite bands, FrightenedRabbit.
God, that's probably 2009. My friend Bob had told me about
(29:22):
this band. And you know, like Bob's one of
those people that like he would always find the indie band that
you never heard of and he would talk about the non-stop and he
would listen to them. And my music taste and his music
taste definitely crossed over a lot.
So he typically when he was talking about a band and then he
(29:42):
showed them to me, I was like, yeah, this, this great band made
me a copy this, this band frightened Rabbit, Their their
second album, Midnight organ fight.
And I put it on in my office. What one day while I was working
and I was like, this is interesting.
I don't know if his I like his voice.
And then a certain song hits Keep yourself warm.
(30:03):
It's like the 9th song on the album or whatever.
And like, I stopped what I was doing to listen to this song.
The lyrics of this song were like, I've never heard anything
like this before where Scott says, you know, like he sings
the line and it takes more than fucking someone to keep yourself
warm. And I'm just like, what?
Literally, I was like, I, I stopped.
(30:24):
And so it was like 2 weeks lateror something like that, Bob's
like, yeah, I was supposed to gosee Frank Rabbit with this girl
that I was like kind of seeing. And she, whatever it was the
situation. So he asked if I wanted to go
see the band play a show at Maxwell's in Hoboken, in Jersey,
across the river. And I had never been there,
(30:44):
heard so much about that Maxwell's.
And I was like, yeah, let's go. So he met me in my office and
we, we went over to we took the train to Jersey and went to the
show. And that's where my friendship
with Scott begins, because he said something about Billy Joel
and everybody in the crowd was like, Boo because like, you
(31:07):
know, you say Billy Joel in Jersey, people Boo because
they're Bruce Springsteen people.
You know, it's it's it's just a funny thing.
People don't actually dislike Billy Joel in New Jersey.
And I was like, yeah, long aisleBilly Joel.
And he's like, he points right at me in this crowd of people
who said this song is for you, Billy Joel.
And yeah, that night after we, we just hung around and I
(31:30):
started talking to him. And I was like, can I buy you?
Buy you drink? And he's like, yeah, whiskey.
And we started drinking. And that's like I said, how if
you ever want to become friends with a Scottish person, just
have a drink with him is literally all you have to do.
And we were friends until, untilthe end of his life.
(31:50):
And I tell Bob all the time. I tell Bob like, you know, thank
you. Thank you for bringing this band
into my life which I ended up becoming, you know, friends and
going on tour with him and all this shit.
Just like, you know, if it wasn't for Bob suggesting me
listen to that band and that girl kind of standing him up,
(32:12):
hey, I might not have ever gone to Scotland.
So that's why you should try newthings because you truly, you
truly, and I mean this from the bottom of my fucking heart.
You truly never know where that thing is going to bring you.
And and I will Fast forward to like this correlation this this
little chain of events of me watching cartoonist kayfabe and
(32:37):
me starting talking to Ed. He introduces the cartoonist
kayfabe crowd, you know, in intoSean Sean Japan book hunter.
I invite Shawn on my show and then a year and a half later or
whatever it was a year later, I was in Japan hanging out with
him and you know, I I was never a manga person.
(33:00):
I I never even thought that I would be interested in going to
Japan too much. I talked about it a couple
times, but not not not I'm goingto pull the trigger and go and
fuck if I didn't watch cartoon escape favor if I didn't decide
that I was going to invite Sean on my show to like learn more.
That's why I invited him on was literally to learn more about
(33:23):
manga because it was so fascinated by like what he does
and like the things that he's into because it's not like all
the mainstream stuff completely.And my inquisitive nature hadn't
led me to Japan and I'm five months away from going back.
And all of this just stems from opening my mind up.
(33:45):
And I don't know how I got here in this point of the podcast
from where I started, but I think, I think it was like, it
won't like this from point A to point B.
It just went squiggly. But anyway, that's just one of
those things. I, I, I try something new and it
brings me somewhere. It's because of the fact that I
want to explore it as it is. So, yeah.
(34:08):
So keep your mind open, be good to people, keep your mind open,
ask questions and listen. Those things get you pretty far
in life. They really do.
So thank you for listening to this wildly all over the place
episode that I apparently didn't.
(34:29):
This is the thing. If you're listening to this and
you're newish to the podcast or or not whatever.
But if you're newish to the podcast, when I record a solo
episode like this, I don't writeanything down.
I have no notes, 10 out of 10, no notes.
I, I, I actually had written twothings in my phone.
(34:50):
I didn't talk about either of those things.
It's, it's kind of like this is not, this isn't therapy because
I actually have a therapist, butthis isn't therapy for me.
This is like just see what you want to talk about and if it
makes sense, we'll let it ride. So thank you for listening to
(35:10):
this fourth season. This is going to be episode 63,
I believe, or 64. I I, I didn't even think this
was going to go this far to tellyou the truth.
But if you are still listening to this as I'm talking and you
haven't done so, I'm going to talk about this until I'm blue
in the face. Please give me a star rating on
(35:32):
either Spotify or Apple. If you're subscribed on one of
those two, you can leave comments on Spotify now, which
they're trying to compete with YouTube, same as Apple, but
Apple doesn't need to compete with YouTube because they're
both kind of like the big dogs. Fuck Spotify, by the way.
And then if you're watching thison YouTube, hit the like button,
watch to the end, drop a commentdown below, catch up, watch an
(35:54):
old episode if you're if you haven't watched it.
I mean, it's still me thankful that people are still here and
listening. I'm thankful to the new
subscribers and the old, thankful to my guest so far this
season, Alice Darrow, Chip Sedarski and Stan Sakai.
And yeah, that's going to be it.So keep your head up and I'll
see you next week on Direct Edition.
(36:14):
I don't know what to do with my fingers.
God, what's wrong with me?
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Cardiac Cowboys
The heart was always off-limits to surgeons. Cutting into it spelled instant death for the patient. That is, until a ragtag group of doctors scattered across the Midwest and Texas decided to throw out the rule book. Working in makeshift laboratories and home garages, using medical devices made from scavenged machine parts and beer tubes, these men and women invented the field of open heart surgery. Odds are, someone you know is alive because of them. So why has history left them behind? Presented by Chris Pine, CARDIAC COWBOYS tells the gripping true story behind the birth of heart surgery, and the young, Greatest Generation doctors who made it happen. For years, they competed and feuded, racing to be the first, the best, and the most prolific. Some appeared on the cover of Time Magazine, operated on kings and advised presidents. Others ended up disgraced, penniless, and convicted of felonies. Together, they ignited a revolution in medicine, and changed the world.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.