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Post Video Hang Out with Jon Peters
3 Plays1 year ago
We sit down with our good friend Jon Peters after shooting a video in the shop.
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Transcript
Introduction and Sponsorship
00:00:01
Speaker
The American Craftsman Podcast is sponsored by Hayfla. Hayfla offers a wide range of products and solutions for the woodworking and furniture making industries. From hinges and drawer slides to connectors and dowels, sandpaper, wood glue, shop carts, and everything in between. Exclusive product lines such as looks LED lighting and Slido door hardware ensure that every project you create is built to last. Learn more at hayfla.com.
Reaching Episode 144 with John Peters
00:00:47
Speaker
All right, we're back. I'm still learning the timing. Yeah, because we've had that same intro for 144 episodes. This is episode 144. That's quite an achievement. I'm sure you guys recognize that voice. I'm sure it'll be in the title. So we got John here with us again.
00:01:11
Speaker
Yeah. It's great to be here. Welcome. John Peters. Yeah. Always good being here. We just shot a video. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, I guess, uh, when do you think that'll be out? Uh, probably Tuesday. Yeah. So we can, I guess we can give the people a sneak preview,
John Peters on Clamps and Minimalism
00:01:30
Speaker
right? Sure. Sure. Yeah. So, um, did a video all about clamps. Yeah. I think that there's a lot of clamp videos out there, but
00:01:40
Speaker
The older I get, the more I become a minimalist with woodworking and sort of like just the bare minimum of what you need and anything else just takes up space and wastes time. I was going to say that fits a lot of things.
00:02:00
Speaker
You're still talking about clamps? That's so true. I think you go through your life collecting stuff like a squirrel and then you get to be my age and you're like, what do you do with all this stuff? Yeah. And we gave a pretty unvarnished and unbiased review of a whole host of clamps. I think so. I think that there's so many
00:02:25
Speaker
products that you're getting kind of a skewed review because there's often a sponsor attached. And so there's no sponsor here. It's just really just trying to get good information out. And I think that's pretty refreshing. It's, you know, kind of just an unpolished look at what do you really need? You know, because that's when it comes down to it, that's really what you want. What you need is what you want.
00:02:54
Speaker
Yeah. Um, and we use a lot of clamps for a lot of different things. We don't just like build one style of furniture or cabinetry. You know, it's, you never know what we're going to need a clamp for around here.
Clamp Comparison: Dubuque vs Rockler
00:03:08
Speaker
But if someone were to say to you three years ago, uh, if the Dubuque clamps would be like the only, the majority of the clamps that you'd really need, you would have been like, what? Yeah, I wouldn't have believed it. It's a, it's like the old dog new trick thing. Yeah. What do you mean? There's another clamp that's better than these things that I've been using for the last 30 years.
00:03:29
Speaker
Yeah, and we were pretty vocal about Bessie's being the best clamp. But you only know what you know. That's it. Yeah. When we brought them into the shop, I was a skeptic too. I thought, I've seen this design before. This can't be better than the one I've kind of invested my belief in. My belief system on clamps was based around the K body.
00:04:00
Speaker
Well, I know that, so I got the Rockler clamps maybe five years ago. I did a few projects for Rockler and it was so funny because the person I was working with, I haven't talked to them in a long, long time, but he was like, well, just let me know what you need and I can send you a few things. So I pick out like one little clamp thing. I'm like, I guess I could use that because I really am like an old dog.
00:04:28
Speaker
who doesn't want to learn any new tricks. So I'm like, I guess I could use that. And literally like a week later, two pallets of stuff shows up in my driveway and I just really can't use any of it.
00:04:47
Speaker
So those clamps were some of the things that came in and I thought, well, I'd really do like these clamps because they're light. And they became the main clamps that I used for so long until I was over here one day, maybe two years ago, and you guys were using the Dubuque clamps. And you can tell that the Rockler clamps are just a cheap knockoff of the Dubuque clamps. Yeah, an imitation. They really are. I mean,
00:05:15
Speaker
I would always use them because they were lightweight, but I would often get aggravated because they would not function properly. And so say I had like five or six of them, there was one or two that just would not work. You know, something about them would not work. So anyway, I like the lightweight, but the Dubuque clamps are just a much better clamp.
00:05:41
Speaker
It's a shame too, because not a lot of people really know about the debukes.
00:05:47
Speaker
But a lot of people, especially, it's such a widely accessible place, Rockler, like a lot of people probably know about these Rockler clamps. And if you were to pick up that clamp as your first introduction to this aluminum body, universal clamp or whatever the hell they're calling it, you'd be like, man, this kind of clamp sucks. Cause I mean, feeling that Rockler clamp, that thing, it's pretty bad. There's
Social Media Challenges in Woodworking
00:06:12
Speaker
something wrong with the threads and every one of my clamps, like the threads,
00:06:16
Speaker
you have to hold the body of the clamp while you're turning the knob or whatever. Otherwise the clamp will turn because the threads are so, you know, just they're not machined well. Yeah. That's what it is. I mean, we've, what would you say? We got those Dubuque's like two years now. Yeah. We still just spin them with one finger in and out. Yeah. Well, you can tell just by looking at them. They're just, I mean, they're, they're actually beautiful. They're actually like,
00:06:45
Speaker
like a little piece of artwork. If you think about, I mean, you could kind of go off the deep end with artwork, but. It's, it's minimalist done, you know, perfectly. Yeah. Really nice. And it's a shame because like, I've tried to like look up some information about Dubuque and it's, there's really nothing out there.
00:07:06
Speaker
So what is it? Just like a factory somewhere in, uh, I guess banging these things out. Yeah. They make those, they make, um, wooden block clamps, like the Jorgensen that we were looking at and they make, um, another clamp. It's like a wooden cam clamp. So it's got like a F F clamp style bar, wooden top jaw, wooden bottom jaw. And it's got like a little cam to do the final clamp. I think they don't, they use those like building guitars a lot. Yes.
00:07:37
Speaker
So you never picked one up? No, it has a name. It's like, is it like a moose clamp or something like that? But it's called Dubuque clamp works. Dubuque clamp works. Lee Valley is selling them now. Yeah. Woodcraft sells them. I think Rockler bought a few and then had them manufactured over in China. Probably.
00:08:03
Speaker
Well, that, that style of clamp has been around. I mean, my first, uh, experience was also the Rockler clamp. The blue one. Yeah. Yeah. How long ago was that? Oh, shoot. Um, they don't even have a website. Almost 20 years. Maybe it's not, it's a little bit different than yours. Okay. Um, but they still had blue. The, the clamp body itself was silver. Okay. And then it had little blue fixtures on it.
00:08:33
Speaker
And I think they actually work a little bit better than the ones you probably do. Yeah. Yeah. Dubuque doesn't even have a website. No, I can't find one either. Yeah. I'm surprised they don't go direct to consumer today's.
00:08:50
Speaker
world. Why not? Yeah. I mean, you know, I mean, I get the feeling it's probably, you know, some older people who own the business. They've probably been in it for a hundred years or the family, whatever. Been making plans for 50 years. They don't have no desire. They have no desire to be on social media and they don't need a website because they're just selling to Woodcraft and Rockler. I don't know if they're selling a rock. I bet they don't sell the Rockler.
00:09:17
Speaker
McFeely's. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Was it Rockler stealing the Dubuque design and sending it to China? Or was it J. Katz Moses stealing the Veritas router plane? Shots fired across the valve. I saw some of that going down. I was kind of
00:09:41
Speaker
I don't know, I don't do that much getting involved with the social media stuff. I saw someone, I think Walter filled me in on it. I like to poke a little bit of fun when I feel the ribbing is deserved. I hear you.
00:09:57
Speaker
And Walter said, he goes, Jeff doesn't hold any punches.
Woodworking Preferences and Online Opinions
00:10:00
Speaker
Oh, I hold a lot. I just let some of them fly. You should hear what goes on here when we're not recording. Yeah, we'd be in big trouble. This is our best behavior. I hear you. Yeah, you got to be diplomatic. You have to be.
00:10:23
Speaker
There's so many things I don't share on social media and Instagram. A lot of that is because I was like, who even cares? That's true. I mean, there's so many things you see and you're like, really? Sometimes I'll just put stuff up because I haven't posted in so long. I'm like, well, maybe I should say something. I don't know.
00:10:39
Speaker
Yeah, and it's like what we were talking about before off off camera or off recording, whatever, like, you know, certain people. It's like I'm not here to hear you talk about this. It's like talk about woodworking. Right. You're a woodworker. I'm here for you to talk about woodworking. I don't need your opinion on all these other things, you know. Yeah, I never share my opinion on any of the.
00:11:00
Speaker
social matters that are going on just because, um, cause I don't want to get into a conversation that's going to require thought. I just like, you know, I already spend too much time on social media, but if I responded or said something, then next thing you know, I'd feel compelled to defend my position. And at the end of the day, it's like, who cares? There's enough people talking about enough nonsense. I don't have to get involved in that.
00:11:29
Speaker
Yeah, and these conversations via social media are not effective on any level, you know, if we're if the three of us are here talking about whatever the new hot button social topic.
00:11:42
Speaker
We might be able to share some insight with one another and maybe you might convince Rob of a good point. I might convince you of something. That doesn't happen over social media. It's all anger and vitriol. I agree with that. People are going way off topic here. Some people think that if you have a platform, you have an obligation to
00:12:05
Speaker
speak out against injustices and comment on whatever things that are going on. But those sort of interactions are very nonproductive. I agree. And then you run the risk of talking about something that you're misinformed about or uninformed about. And now you have to dedicate energy to that.
00:12:28
Speaker
And so there's definitely things I'm passionate about and things I feel pretty strongly about, but I don't want to get into those conversations. I mean, I don't mind. I mean, we, we've had some conversations about some things like political, maybe not political things, but just about books and stuff. And that's fine. But I wouldn't share like some of the books I'm reading on social media because
00:12:53
Speaker
Some people might think like, what are you reading that book for? And I'm like, well. You got to defend. Yeah. I'm trying to broaden my worldview. How dare you. Yeah, just what was your expression, though? I keep trying to remember, like, when you talk about how the the posts and videos do well, when people really get angered.
00:13:17
Speaker
If you're getting hate, your video's doing well.
00:13:24
Speaker
you get hate over which glue you're gonna use, let alone. So there's a change though, you'll get hate on shorts, but I very rarely get hate on an actual project video. I might get a constructive criticism, but on a short, it's like this idiot doesn't know what he's doing, just whatever. And then as soon as I get that video, that comment, I'm like, okay,
00:13:54
Speaker
This video is going to do well. Yeah. I did. I love it. I did a short video about fixing a, I had the, all of a sudden the brick started to fall into the ground. I saw that. I was like, this has got to be a chipmunk, but how's this chipmunk getting in here? So sure enough when, and we just talked about this, when the guys did the gutters, they didn't connect the downspout.
00:14:21
Speaker
And instead of making it into a thing, we just let it go because we decided the downspout kind of didn't look great there anyway. So when I did the brickwork for the patio, but when they did the driveway, they did brickwork that's actually set in mortar. When those guys did that, instead of like cutting the pipe and capping the pipe, they just broke it. Maybe five feet into the work that I did and then just relayed the brick.
00:14:48
Speaker
So, of course, the sand would have washed down that brick anyway, or down that pipe anyway. But Chipmunk came along and gave it some help, and that's why it started to fall.
Wildlife Encounters and Toughness
00:15:00
Speaker
I don't know if you ever had that game, like Ice Break or whatever, when you were a kid. Oh, yeah, don't break the ice. Don't break the ice. All of a sudden, the brick is falling, like, don't break the ice. So I'm like, you know, I'll just shoot a quick video. I'll kill two birds with one stone. I'll make sure I'll get the brick fixed.
00:15:18
Speaker
And we'll see how it does. And it actually is doing really well on, I think it's like 60 or 70,000 views on Facebook right now. And I think maybe 2 million views on, no, 2 million views on Facebook and 60,000 on YouTube. So. Yeah, I left a comment.
00:15:37
Speaker
Didn't somebody say something like, oh, a quick creed is only for, I thought I saw, cause you know, like when you're watching now, like when you watch a video, a comment will pop up. It's like, they want you to like see these negative comments. I didn't see that. Yeah. I didn't see that feature. I might be thinking of something else, but trying to incite interaction of the negative kind.
00:16:01
Speaker
I don't know if that plug is going to work. I just made a handful of concrete and threw some stones in there and plugged the hole. It was done by eight 30 in the morning. So I was like, you know, just slept the rest of the day. I was in the pro chipmunk camp. I know you were. Are you friends with the chipmunks? I am. I'm friends with all the animal life. Even the ones that get into my house, I somehow have to befriend them.
00:16:26
Speaker
I was friends. I chipmunks are cute, but man, they are, they're rough on the house. Yeah. Yeah. The raccoons are the only ones that I go out there and actually assault. And how do you do that? I was big broom. Like one was on my front porch and they're really smart.
00:16:45
Speaker
He, I have like this little, um, opening in the front porch roof. It's got a board over the top, like, you know, like, uh, you have an attic. Sure. And so it was like, there's a board that's held down by gravity and it's like picture framed out a scuttle hole. Yeah. So I have a scuttle hole in the porch ceiling and he's climbing up the side of my house with his eyes set on getting into that scuttle hole.
00:17:11
Speaker
So I go out there with a broom and I, I did my best Reggie Jackson on him.
00:17:20
Speaker
That's funny. I'm sure that'd even affect him. Animals are so strong. Oh yeah. No, he was probably about two and a half feet long with six inches of fire. I hit him with the soft end of the broom. I mean, I hit him with a stick. I can't get much bat speed on the thin end of a broom. No. I think that animals are just so tough compared to humans.
00:17:48
Speaker
Like a deer, if a deer wants to kill you, it'll kill you. I'm talking like a hundred pound deer. It doesn't even have to be that. And unless you have a stick.
00:17:58
Speaker
How do you defend yourself against a deer? Cause it's just going to go up on its hind legs and kick you. Yeah. And the hooves can be, you know, they're sharp. You can hear them pounding through the woods and they're outside. I mean, they're just so tough. So I was mountain biking a couple of days ago. It came around this corner and there's a mother deer and two fawns, I guess is what they're called. And the mother just stayed right in the trail and I was maybe seven feet away from it.
00:18:26
Speaker
I'm like, go on, get out of here. And I'm just like, holy shit, I hope this thing gets out of here because I'm going to be using my bicycle as a shield or something because they're just tough. Yeah. I mean, I grew up deer hunting and like sometimes you would, you would either just see a deer or you would shoot a deer and find out that like it had been shot with an arrow before the arrow went straight through it.
00:18:50
Speaker
and it survived or they get hit by a car and they're like have like a gimped out leg. Are you allowed to say gimp, is that? If not, I apologize. If you're talking about a deer's leg, I think it's okay. I'm not even sure the origins of that word, but like, you know, they have a real mangled leg that, you know.
00:19:16
Speaker
Just got cancelled. Oh man. That's funny. Yeah. I saw this video the other day of the moose chasing a big bear. Jeez. Like I've heard that moose are really, really ferocious or not ferocious. I wouldn't want to run into a moose. They weigh like over a thousand pounds. Like they'll just run you over. Right. And they'll stomp you out.
00:19:45
Speaker
They're really territorial. It's like hippos. Hippos I think are more dangerous than crocodiles. And like lions and stuff. They kill more people in Africa than any of those. Yeah.
00:20:00
Speaker
Yeah. Then I see at the zoo, like a video from the zoo and the guy's like feeding the hippo and he's like slapping his tongue. I'm like, you're crazy. Like, I don't care how docile this hippo is right now. We've all heard about who, what was the gorilla that like, you know, the lady worked really closely with. Yeah. And then it just one day just tears her limb from limb.
00:20:22
Speaker
chimpanzees are way scarier than the gorillas as far as I'm concerned. Yeah. Joe Rogan did a thing on that. What was that movie?
00:20:32
Speaker
Uh, it was a Jordan Peele movie that came out with the aliens with the UFO. Uh, I didn't see that. Yeah, I forgot what it was called. It came out recently, but there, there's a part in the movie where there's like a chimpanzee that's like in a movie star and they're on like the set of a, um, like a talk show and it just.
00:20:52
Speaker
Something happens, a balloon pops and it loses it. It just kills basically everybody on the set. I think they just rip your face off. Yeah. I mean, they just their hands are so strong. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like there's.
00:21:07
Speaker
There's a documentary on Netflix right now, I think called Chimpanzee World or something. And when you see them in the trees just swinging, I mean, you imagine having that kind of strength in your arms and they're swinging from their arms, their legs, and they are meat eaters. They're not strict vegetarians.
00:21:28
Speaker
I think gorillas are strict vegetarians. I think so, yeah. Yeah, like chimpanzees will like murder other chimpanzees and like eat them. Yeah. They are closest to humans. Yeah. Crazy.
Taylor Ham vs Pork Roll: A Humorous Debate
00:21:42
Speaker
Yeah. I was trying to find the origin of the word, but I just found it's a derogatory term. Well, I didn't mean it. It's the intent behind the word. I was talking about deer.
00:21:58
Speaker
That reminds me of that movie from who's the usual suspects. Oh, yeah. And that was the one guy. Yes. I'm not going to say it's what Jeff said. Yes. And that was Kevin Spacey played that part. Yes. Yes. That was a good movie. It was a great movie. I've seen it, but I can't. It goes back there. Yeah. It was like Kaiser Sosa, right? Yeah. Kaiser Sosa.
00:22:21
Speaker
Yeah. There you go. Yeah. That had come up just recently in another conversation I was having, I think with my wife or something that that movie title came up. It's so funny that, you know, how things get linked in your, in your life, you know, that happened to me the other day. Um, so I'm in this group chat with a bunch of guys on Instagram, a bunch of other woodworkers and
00:22:48
Speaker
The one guy was he was somewhere out West. He sends a picture of or a video of pork roll and a lot of the guys in this group are from Jersey. So you have all the North Jersey guys who call it Taylor Ham. And then maybe I'm the only one that calls it pork roll. I call it Taylor Ham. Yeah. I'm from North Jersey. Yeah, that's true. So I sent a picture that I had like come across. It's this guy, Hard Rock Nick.
00:23:15
Speaker
And he's this real like Guido looking kind of like in New Jersey. Guido has a, it's a whole other context.
00:23:34
Speaker
This real Guido guy, he's got like the, you know. What are we gonna call this episode? G is for cancels. Till last episode. I have to do it. That's funny. Where is it? I have to do this. He's a, he's a real looking guy.
00:23:49
Speaker
And you know, he's got like the chin strap mustache. He's got like he's like wearing lip gloss. It looks like he's got like fake eyelashes on. You know, he looks like one of those Jersey Shore kind of guys. Oh, God. And I said, this is what guys who call it Taylor Ham look like. But then later that night, it's like a couple of hours later, I'm I'm watching this YouTube video. And it's just like, you know, these guys who make these stupid commentary videos and they're they made a video about this guy. And it was this whole like a
00:24:19
Speaker
30 minute video about this guy. And I'm like, well, and it just came on like organically crazy. I'm like, it's so weird.
00:24:27
Speaker
Oh man. I have to say that Taylor ham is way better than pork roll. It's not the same thing. No, pork roll is like a generic brand and I think Taylor ham is actually the brand name. It doesn't say ham anywhere on it though. Wait, if you go to the supermarket. It says Taylor pork roll. Oh, you're right. Okay. But it used to be called Taylor ham. Like back in the 1800s when it first came out, it was John Taylor's, uh,
00:24:56
Speaker
John Taylor's ham or something like that. And I guess the FDA or the USDA came in and said, well, legally, you can't call this ham because the percent, you know, it's got to be a certain percentage, whatever. So he had to change it. So if you go to Costco, you can get pork roll. Yeah.
00:25:14
Speaker
I don't know if they sell our Taylor pork roll there, but if you put the two together in a taste test, they're vastly different. Oh yeah, I bet. The Taylor pork roll has almost like a tang to it or something. Yeah, they actually put lactic acid in it or something like that. In my view, it's just way better than just regular pork roll. My wife buys the ShopRite brand and they have a mild and a tangy. I like the tangy.
00:25:43
Speaker
Maybe I'll have to try that. Yeah. So ShopRite brand, it's going to be, I'm assuming less money because Taylor, yeah, expensive. Oh yeah. Growing up, like my, my mom always bought like the log. Yeah. Um, and I don't, I think the log is like, it's gotta be like 10 or 15 bucks now. Easily. Easily. And that's if you can find it. Uh, I can only find the short ones now because usually it's like,
00:26:10
Speaker
It's expensive. So we don't buy it that often. It's like a special thing. I'm like, Oh, you know what? Everyone's here. I'll go get some Taylor ham from the food town. And they're like, food town is the worst place. That's the worst place. And my wife always says, don't go there. But I, cause I'll go there for four or five items.
00:26:31
Speaker
And it's like 50 bucks or 60. Yeah, it's crazy. You're almost just as close to Whole Foods, which is probably the same price. Yeah. Whole Foods is pretty close, but I know Whole Foods is like a great place to go. People watching. Yeah. It's like, holy shit. Nice thing about Whole Foods is they have a pretty good like beer and wine. They just huge. Yeah. I never heard of the pork roll until I moved here. Do you prefer one over the other?
00:26:59
Speaker
I only had it once and like I took a bite and I didn't finish it. OK. It was something like it was it was like a native eating, you know, spaghetti for the first time or something like that. Yeah. Like just something weird about it. Well, in New York, it's all it's all bacon, like where we would have a pork roll egg and cheese. New York, it's a bacon egg and cheese. Yeah. Which I like, but it's not as good as a pork roll egg and cheese. I'm with you 100 percent. I think it's an acquired taste.
00:27:30
Speaker
It's definitely unique. I mean, like I've had, um, I tried spam once just cause I was curious. I'm like, I've seen this my whole life, never eaten it before. And I was an adult. It was probably just a couple of years ago and I thought it would be similar to pork roll, but it's really not that close. I tried it. I don't like it. Yeah. I mean, I didn't dislike it, but it wasn't, I wouldn't buy it again. What about scrapple? I like scrapple.
00:27:55
Speaker
What is scrapple? I mean, I've heard it. I can't explain it. You could explain it. It's, you know, an emulsified, it's like pork livers. I think there's some meat in there too and cornmeal. Um, so it comes in like a block and usually you slice it and like you'll dredge it in flour and then fry it. It's good.
00:28:15
Speaker
It is good. You probably wouldn't like it. No, I'm not. I'm not a mystery meat kind of guy, except I do like salami. We used to have it when I was a kid and my mom will still make it from time to time.
00:28:29
Speaker
I think that's the last time I had it down the shore and my, I still eat it because for me it's sort of kind of like going back in time and I remember it being good, but my daughter didn't really like it. She likes Taylor ham. Yeah. Like the scrapple thing I think is a, it's mostly a mental block for people, you know?
00:28:46
Speaker
It's like pate. Like if you, if you were to just eat it with zero preconceptions as to what it was, most people I think would like it, but they're like, Oh, liver, I don't like liver. So did you, like, you're automatically predisposed to not like it. I've eaten liver on more than one occasion. We used to, my ma used to make it growing up like every now and again, like, you know, it was like a health meal. Liver and onions. Yeah. Like,
00:29:13
Speaker
Generally speaking, we had what you would call Italian food. That was like our regular food. But the first time I had fried chicken, I was instantly in love.
00:29:25
Speaker
I got to try the fried chicken place that you guys are talking about. Oh, Claudie's. Yeah, it was good. Yeah. Where is that? Really good. So it is, you know, the gas station on Cooper Road in 35. Yeah. It's in that. Really? Yeah. But they're moving the sabbatos in the junction that just closed. Okay. The butcher shop. Okay. Wow. Yeah. They make good chicken. Oh, the butcher shop closed? Yeah. About, um,
00:29:53
Speaker
three, four months ago, maybe. Across the street from Swagger? With the big cow on the top. They're keeping the cow. That's where I get my haircut. Do you get your haircut there? Yeah. At Swagger? Yeah. Oh, I thought you were going to that place on 35. I went there once or twice, but it was, it's, I'm like a guy at convenience. Like, I got to go like, Oh, I'm going to get my haircut today. I feel like at my haircut today, I got an opening. I can go there. I can park in the front.
00:30:21
Speaker
Otherwise I won't go. I like you're going to get some super special hair to run smooth. Otherwise I don't go. That other place was like one too many little things for me. Yeah. So I used to get my hair cut at swagger and my son Michael gets his hair cut at swagger. Does he see a regular guy? He always goes to, um, should I forget her name now?
00:30:46
Speaker
He's got blonde hair. I see some. I see like the one old guy there. Well, I went there a couple of times and, you know, I would do a walk in and they're like, oh, yeah, he's going to. And I'm like the last chair, the old guy in the back. He just cut like some child. I'm like, oh, God, I'm going to get a terrible haircut.
00:31:04
Speaker
Was it not the bald guy? It's been, it's had to have been, you know, six or seven years. Yeah. Ever since I met my wife, she's been cutting my hair. Yeah. That's a great thing because I should say that it's been over 10 years. Getting your hair cut is. Oops. I'm betting a thousand on this. Good thing my wife doesn't listen.
00:31:26
Speaker
I think getting your haircuts a huge time suck. It is. And it's not cheap. So I went to, so I used to go to Swagger, but then I, it was never convenient. Cause I would just be like, I just got to get my haircuts. They're booked all the time. I'd call them and they'd be booked. Yeah. So then I'd call, um, air cuttery and you can always get in there. Where's that? Or by Levotes? That's over by Whole Foods. Okay. And, um,
00:31:53
Speaker
I would just go in there and I don't care. My hair grows back fast. Just just cut it short and it'll be what it is. And I guess I went about a week and a half ago.
00:32:05
Speaker
And my hair was really getting pretty long. And I could tell like the girl did not really care. Like she barely looked up from her phone. So when she's cutting your hair, she's like, Oh, are you John? And I was like, yeah, she goes, okay, I'm ready for you. But just the demeanor, I was like, okay, I'm not thinking I'm going to get much here. So she had this pair of clippers on the counter.
00:32:32
Speaker
And usually they cut it with a scissor. I said, why don't you just use those clippers? What's that, like one inch? And she goes, yeah, it was inch and a quarter. I said, do the whole thing with that and then just clean up the back with maybe three quarters of an inch. So here I am like micromanaging my haircut. So she does that and while she's doing it, I get the name of the clippers that she's using. And so $35 later, whatever my haircut was with the tip,
00:33:02
Speaker
I said to myself, okay, I'm getting a pair of clippers and I'm cutting my own hair from now on. And I'm going to try to convince my wife to like, maybe clean up the back a little bit. But I feel like I can get away with just like using the clippers 90% of the time. And again, it's not the 35 or whatever the haircut is.
00:33:22
Speaker
It's just finding that it's burning an hour. Yeah. And it's not burning an hour. It's like burning an hour and a half to two hours because you kind of have to get ready to go there, the drive there. You might have to wait. Yeah. So it's I think it's made by Wahl or Wahl or something. Yeah. W-A-H-L. Yeah. So I'm going to I'm going to buy a good pair of Clippers. Oster. It makes a good one. O-S-T-E-R. They make all kinds of appliances. I can cut your hair. I'm good at cutting hair.
00:33:51
Speaker
It's only 20 bucks at Swagger. I can see my sister-in-law has 20 bucks. It takes 20 minutes. 20 bucks, but I give the guy 10. So 30 bucks. Yeah. Yeah.
00:34:03
Speaker
He goes, what do you want? Cause it's always so long in between the haircuts. Funny thing is we shut this video. Rob's hair is like down to his shoulders in the first scene. I take out my phone and go, this is the last haircut you gave. He goes, man.
00:34:27
Speaker
My wife goes, always don't cut it so short. I'm like, no, no, sure. It's going to grow back. It's especially in the summer. And I love having the short hair. I love it. It's just, you get, you know, you get in the shower, the little dab of shampoo, rub, you're done.
00:34:46
Speaker
So I, so there it goes. Like if you have the Clippers, you'd probably just do it yourself every three weeks. That's what I did for the first, uh, whatever 20 some odd years of my life. Oh yeah. You self clipper. Yeah. I had just like a buzz cut, you know, I would just put it on like a one and just buzz the whole thing. Yeah. You know, it's funny cause we had, not we, I had a crew cut growing up, like my first,
00:35:13
Speaker
10 years, 12 years of my life. It wasn't until I was old enough to like have my hair the way I wanted that I realized I had curly hair.
00:35:25
Speaker
That's funny. Yeah. Cause you know, back then it was like the parents decided, you know, at a convenience how your hair, you probably had straight hair as a, as a kid. And then your hair got curly as you got older. Cause that happened to my son. Okay. His hair, he was one of those straight haired kids, just like really just straight hair. And then all of a sudden he's got this really wavy hair. Same thing with my, with my brother, Will. Hmm.
00:35:52
Speaker
I just got like a thick paintbrush on my, it's like, uh, if I don't kind of plaster my hair down with a little product of something, it just stands up like a cuter. They call that pokey. I think that's what I got. Yeah. That's funny. I'll see if I can find him. Yeah. I had, um,
00:36:16
Speaker
I had little, little, my mom used to, she was a dressmaker. And so she used to cut my hair with those big old scissors. You know, just like one thing. She would take like three minutes to give me a haircut. I still get a little nervous with my wife with like the scissors sometimes I'm like, cause you know, she's got all these crazy Japanese scissors. They're like $900 a pair. Yeah. And they're like razor sharp.
00:36:43
Speaker
And, you know, they get close to your ears and everything. And she's like, oh, let me trim your nose hair. I'm like, you're not putting those scissors inside my nose. I'm like one one little miss snip. And I've just got like a Jack Nicholson in the Chinatown. That's such a great. Yeah. You can't find that movie. I keep I keep trying to find that movie on a streaming service because I want my kids to see it. What is it? Chinatown. Yeah, that's a good film. Really good movie. So it's Jack Nicholson. And who else is in it? And John Houston.
00:37:15
Speaker
Uh, is who plays the woman? It's not Angelica Houston, is it? Faye Dunaway. Faye Dunaway. Yeah. There you go. Roman Polanski. Um, John Houston, Diane Ladd. Did you see, did you see Quentin Tarantino's last film, the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood? I did hear it was good though.
00:37:41
Speaker
God, I tell you, I really liked it. It's because you said, um, Roman Polanski and that was, that was Sharon Tate's husband or boyfriend. Yeah. He got, uh, like, you know, what do you call when somebody's kicked out? He, that was statute. He got a statutory rape thing, I think. Yeah. And then he, uh, like, didn't he leave the country or something like that? I'm pretty sure he did. Yeah. Exile. That's the word I was thinking of.
00:38:11
Speaker
Before that, I think he was engaged or married to Sharon Tate and she was killed by Manson. Yeah. By the Manson family. Oh yeah. And so that's what this whole once upon a time in Hollywood is. Oh really? And so it's all about this. I didn't have no idea. So I, I think the show, I think that movie came out during COVID or maybe right before, but I took Walter and Michael to see it in the Atlantic Highlands theater.
00:38:40
Speaker
And it was like just great. And like the, the ending is awesome. I haven't been there. Well, it wasn't, it wasn't redone yet. But it was just like a little, you know, it's a little theater. And, um, I mean, just like Brad Pitt plays the, the, uh, the role just so good. Who was he? He plays the stunt man. So I have, I'm not going to give up the, I'm not going to give up the plot.
00:39:08
Speaker
But Quentin Tarantino like rewrites history. Oh, okay. It's just wild. And the other guy is the guy from Leonardo DiCaprio. Leonardo DiCaprio. You guys ever been to like an old movie theater like before they made these multiplexes?
00:39:26
Speaker
when I was I saw Rocky in the theater. Oh, yeah. Have you, Jeff, are you too young?
Nostalgia for Drive-in Theaters
00:39:31
Speaker
I don't know. I mean, I think the Atlantic Islands, it's been updated, but that was like like an old theater. Yeah. I'm not sure. I can't recall. I got one for you. You guys ever been to a drive in?
00:39:44
Speaker
No, I've been to one, but barely like so long ago. I can barely remember it. Yeah. There was a, there was a drive-in in Arizona. I lived out there and went to school out there. That's a lot of fun.
00:39:57
Speaker
They actually had one, they still might have one in Bethel, Vermont. And my wife used to go there and we kept saying, oh, we should go to the drive-in, but I'm not sure if it's still going, which, so I think Bethel is just a little bit south of Randolph and they're connected by route 12. And I think that the drive-through is like right off route 12 there.
00:40:23
Speaker
It might, it may still be there. Yeah. We used to go all the time. It's a summer thing. You can't go all the time. Well, in Arizona, you could probably go all year round. Arizona is perfect for that because it's dry and there's no bugs. Well, at least they're warrant back then. I don't know what it's like now. Did they give you like a little speaker or the speakers were at the screen?
00:40:42
Speaker
No, no. Speaker hangs on your window. Yeah. The, the old ones, the speaker was in the box and you hang it on your window. And then there were some where you could tune to an AM radio, uh, frequency, but you know, you, I used to have a Volkswagen bus and you back it in and like, they have the humps there. So you can like kind of point up at the thing, flip open the back of the Volkswagen bus. Yeah. It was great. You know, you got your girl in there.
00:41:12
Speaker
That's great. Now you just Netflix and chill. That's right. I'm watching a crazy show now. I'm watching a show on HBO called
00:41:25
Speaker
righteous gemstones. Oh, I've heard great things about that. Danny McBride. Yeah. He's a riot. Funny. It's funny. It's just a, it's just total madness. What they're like evangelists or something. Yeah. They're like one of the, yeah. It's kind of like a Jim Baker kind of knockoff where, you know, just a stadium theater almost or stadium church. Yeah. Stadium church.
00:41:48
Speaker
And of course, you know, they're just like the most morally bankrupt people. So it's a true story. Yeah. Well, see, I remember the whole Jim Baker, uh, Tammy Fay, Tammy Fay. But what was the woman's name who she ended up modeling and playboy. She was on Howard Stern all the time.
00:42:10
Speaker
I don't know. That's a Jessica Hahn. That was Jessica Hahn. Don't you remember Jessica Hahn? Yeah, I didn't know that. I thought she was a politician. No, Jessica Hahn was like a secretary or something working in the church. So it was the Baker scandal. And she had an affair with I guess.
00:42:28
Speaker
I guess I'm just going to say allegedly with Jim Baker or whatever. I hope I got these names right. Yeah. This is what like the nine nineties, eighties. Yeah. Eighties into the nineties. Let's do a fast check on this. Jessica Hahn was on Howard Stern all the time. And then she did a spread and playboy. And then she had a bunch of work done on her and did another spread. And she was always on Howard. And then I think, you know, just like all things, she just sort of faded away. Yeah. Yeah. Jessica Hahn.
00:42:57
Speaker
How much money did Jim Baker pay? So here's the searches. How much money did Jim Baker pay Jessica Hahn? You know, it's funny, like at the time that that was like major news by today's standard. It's like, okay, that would be a news cycle. That would be gone in like a couple of days. Yeah. Well, it's like we were talking about Elliot Spitzer, you know, how he was client 49 at the brothel. Yeah.
00:43:24
Speaker
He's the governor. And he was always, he was a real hard-ass, really. Sticking the law to everybody. I mean, talk about like a major hypocrite. Yeah, that seems to be the theme, isn't it? Unreal. Yeah. I don't think we talked about last episode, it was a couple episodes ago, but we listened to this multi-part podcast about corruption in New York state and it was like,
00:43:46
Speaker
Spitzer and these like two or three other guys, Joe Bruno and something silver all went down and in six months on federal corruption charges, like in separate events. Yeah. I want the name of the podcast because I like that stuff. It's from Wondry. W O N D R Y. It's awesome. Let me see. I have it right here. Um, they have all these like five or six part
00:44:13
Speaker
podcasts on all these different things. Prohibition, the civil rights movement, the Great Depression, the Cold War. It's really, really good. Well, you know what the thing is, like, like that kind of stuff. You can really go down a rabbit hole. It's like the best way to learn about history because you you'll listen to something like that. Then you'll do a couple of searches and watch the YouTube videos and read some articles like the macaroni wars. It's called American Scandal.
00:44:41
Speaker
All right, cool. Yeah. My daughter loves podcasts. Like whenever we go on drive somewhere, we'll listen to a text it to you. We'll find. Thank you. You know, um, on the topic of the gym and Tammy Fay and Jessica Hahn, you ever read Elma Gantry? No, that's a good book. All right. Um, it was actually a pretty good film too with, um, who was it? Uh, Mitch.
00:45:06
Speaker
Robin Mitchum, I think. Okay. I like him. Yeah. It's black and white. That's so it's, you know, it's fairly old, but it's all about a, um, a preacher and, uh, the, the duality of his, his existence and his nature. And, you know, he's a womanizing drunkard one minute and, you know, true believer of the next. Yeah.
00:45:31
Speaker
God, yes, it's wild. This righteous gemstones is like right up that alley where, you know, yeah, you know, somebody doing like the most ridiculous stuff and then convincing them that convincing themselves that they are sort of above and able to guide other people in their total mess.
00:45:51
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Beyond reproach, as they say. Do as I say, not as I do. I see that. I watch a lot of British television and this one crime series is set in Oxford. And so there's all these Oxford University students and they're all like the children of like the prime minister and all the judges and everything.
00:46:19
Speaker
And they're taught through, you know, their upbringing that they're untouchable, that they could do whatever they want. And, um, like, you know, it's literally, do you know who my dad is? Policeman, you know, we'll take away your career. Well, that stuff probably goes on over there more than here. Yeah. There's, there is that class of people.
00:46:45
Speaker
I mean, it does go on over here. I think the internet is sort of bringing more things to light though. Maybe that'll happen less and less. Here it's more about money, I guess, you know, to sort of, uh, pave, pave your own road. It's funny in England how they're, you know, you can have these people. I was watching this thing about basically this con man who got in with this family, but there's like these, these Royal sort of families.
00:47:11
Speaker
who have like these titles as whatever might be Duke or something, but they don't have any. There's no money associated with it. They just landed gentry is what they call. Yeah. Because the money ran out a long time ago. Yeah. There was this guy theory stern or something was the guy's name and he got in with his family and conned everybody and then like turned him into a cult and they were all, you know, doing all these nefarious things.
00:47:36
Speaker
Yeah. Cause the family has all this, have these estates where they literally own like a town and everybody who lives in the town is leasing the property. Like there are no real homeowners. You just, you, if you have a store there or a house there, you pay rent to the Lord of the manor. And that's really his only source of income. And
00:48:00
Speaker
So let's say like 500, 600 years ago, the king gave this land grant to your great ancestor. And so it's just passed down to the eldest son till this current day. And for the most part, they wind up selling off chunks of the property because these places are enormous financial liabilities to keep up.
00:48:29
Speaker
I saw something about that and they're always trying to figure out a way to marry into some more money. So they're looking for, you know, a rich American who wants a title. Well, the interesting thing about Europe, and I don't know what really what I'm talking about other than watching a few shows is me either. It's really difficult to do anything. Like if you have a piece of property, like just to get to do any kind of little project on it,
00:48:55
Speaker
You have to, there's so much more permitting that goes on over there than over here. And there is quite a bit over here as well, depending on where you live. But I think I was watching, I forget, it's the guy who does like the cars. He's like a car show. Is that the guy up in Connecticut? No, this is the guy who's over in Europe now. Are you talking about like Top Gear? Jeremy Clarkson. Jeremy Clarkson's farm. Clarkson's farm.
00:49:21
Speaker
I actually enjoyed that show. Yeah. I've never seen it. Uh, so he's like turning it into like a farm, but there's definitely a lot of hoops that you have to go through. Yeah. And it's funny because you kind of side with him until you think about it a little bit more and you think, well, maybe I do agree with the town folk who actually don't want all this and hold on to chain. Look at our town.
00:49:43
Speaker
What in here? Oh, yeah. Middletown development and stuff. Yeah. I'm, I'm, you know, my knee jerk reaction without thinking is I'm against it all. All the building. Yeah. I want, cause I wanted to re I'm gangplank mentality out the whole way. I'm here now. I don't want anything to change. I'm pulling up the gangplank. Well, like with that development that we were talking about. Yeah.
00:50:09
Speaker
That's gonna be a lot of stress on the schools, on the roads, but if you're the town, I mean, we're paying a lot of taxes. Miltown taxes are ridiculous. If you're the town and you have the decision to make it open spaces, which would have been great and they could have done that,
00:50:28
Speaker
but I'm sure they're thinking, okay, let's get 150 new dwellings here. And I think that those things are at a minimum of five or $700,000 a piece. Think of all that tax income. And so that's, they're like, it's a no brainer for them. Is it the best thing for Middletown? No.
00:50:50
Speaker
Well, the thing that I don't, you know, we're, we'd like to have the mayor on actually. Yeah. He did say he would come on. Um, there's, there's a little town. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Well, that's our, that's our award right there. Nice.
00:51:05
Speaker
We're on a first name basis with Tony. Yeah. Oh, great. Um, there doesn't, if there is anything set aside, it doesn't seem to be enough to offset, um, the impact. Like what about the roadways? And as you mentioned, the schools and, and everything that has to do with the infrastructure of our town and the quality of life by infusing, let's say if there's, let's say there's 200 units, that's 400 cars.
00:51:35
Speaker
Easy. Yeah. And 400 children. Yeah. And all concentrated in just that one area where you have very limited amounts of, you know, egress, we'll call it. Yeah. Yeah. Because that only dumps out to what King's Highway in 35. That's it. Yeah. And maybe, uh, what's the road where, uh, Kane's Lane, maybe does it dump out there too?
00:52:02
Speaker
It does dump out to Kane's Lane. But Kane's Lane is not a road that can handle traffic. It's a tiny little. That's just a little area for recycling. There's a dead end there. There's a landscaper back there too, right? Yeah, that's not pre-vatera. It begins with C. Oh, Capelli. Yeah, Capelli's back there. And you've got that climbing gym there. Yeah. I think that's where Hunter went to Ninjas. Oh, okay.
00:52:27
Speaker
Yeah, so I don't know. Well, I mean, that's another Toll Brothers project. Yeah, they built some real hack. Well, they got creamed in 2008. Toll Brothers. Oh, really? I thought they did. A lot of people got creamed in 2000. Is that Toll or is that K-Hov? No, that's Toll. I've seen the flags. Oh, the one that they built, the other one that they built on King's Highway. Not like right on the road. I think that's K-Hov. OK. Those are more like houses, though.
00:52:57
Speaker
I think so. It's like right past the Normandy road. Okay. I don't know. I don't think I, I'm thinking of small house and not small houses. Uh, I'm thinking of a housing development, not an apartment. Yeah. Like, I mean, look at the thing they put by target.
00:53:17
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Across the street. Across 35. Yeah. That was just a big swath of forest. Yeah. Yeah. I was hesitant to call it that because it feels weird having a, you know, woods. Yeah. Yeah. Woods. Yeah. It was a big swath of woods and they just leveled it and put up all these townhouses or condos, wherever the hell they are.
00:53:39
Speaker
Well, that was a pretty big area at the end of King's Highway where that development is now. And they definitely displaced a lot of animals there. And so people wonder, why are there so many deer? Well, there's nowhere for them to go and they don't have any natural predators. I mean, there are coyotes. We do have coyotes. How many gimp deer do you think lifted?
00:53:59
Speaker
Is that a breed of deer? I'm a city slicker. So no, there's the mule deer and the white tail, but I'm not familiar with the gimp.
00:54:09
Speaker
Yeah. There's, um, there's a lot of deer. That's for sure. I had one in my backyard like a month ago. Do you usually not get deer? There's no way on the, on the left side in the back. I have, well, I have a six foot fence all the way around. Well, they can jump that. Yeah, they jump clear. So I got food town on the driveway on the left food town, behind food town, behind me. And then I got the neighbor on the right.
00:54:38
Speaker
Oh, they're traipsing through everybody's yards. I don't care. I'm happy that we don't have a huge black bear population now. I didn't think we had any black bear until my neighbor sent me a picture or maybe he posted on an Instagram story of a black bear in his neighbor's yard. So that means like right down the last year around this time. Yeah, I remember there were, you know, it was in Atlantic Highlands and then move. I mean, you're basically in Atlantic Highlands. It was all throughout there.
00:55:08
Speaker
Yeah. I don't know where, I don't know where they live. I don't know. Hartshorn woods maybe. But Hartshorn is not huge, you know? And like Huber woods and Hartshorn woods, they're not, they're not big places. Look a day. They're vegetarians for the most part. Yeah. I think they, you know, they eat some bugs and stuff maybe, but yeah. I mean, I think they will eat meat and they'll still kill you. You know, you get, there was a black bear,
00:55:33
Speaker
killing maybe three years ago, some Rutgers students in North Jersey. North Jersey is full of black bear. Yeah. Yeah. What do they say? Black bears, you run and grizzlies you fight.
00:55:50
Speaker
I think you have to have bear spray for anything. Like I just sent my sister a short video of a guy using a bear spray on a black bear. So he's, the guy's walking backwards. He must be holding his phone or he's got a GoPro or something. And he just keeps going, whoa bear. You know, that's what they always seem to say. And he's walking back and the bear just kind of keeps following him and following him.
00:56:18
Speaker
And then sometimes like jumps up a tree and then jumps down the tree, just kind of toying with this guy. And it's a three minute video and at like minute 250 or 230, the bear gets within like 10 feet of him and he gives us a blast of the bear spray and the bear takes off. But I was like, holy cow, this guy's pretty mellow.
00:56:40
Speaker
So what I got from that is have bear spray and don't turn your back on the bear. Yeah. Yeah. I think what it is is a grizzly bear. You're supposed to play dead, but a black bear, you're supposed to like get real big and try and scare it away.
00:56:54
Speaker
Grizzly bears. I mean, just the eye. Did you see that documentary? Oh, the, uh, grizzly. I think it's grizzly man. No, but I know of the guy. Yeah. Got eaten by his buddies. Yeah. That's a Bernard Herzog film. It's like a maybe 10 or 15 year old film before all this internet craze. So maybe it's 20 years old, but he was like living with the bear. And I guess,
00:57:20
Speaker
One of the bear got hungry eventually, you know, and just killed him. And I think his girlfriend. Yeah. I never encountered a bear, but I've been in situations where I had to take a lot of precaution. Like when I was working up in Wyoming, where you have to like you camp. It was almost a mile away from where you cook.
00:57:44
Speaker
Wow. And you can't keep anything in your tent. No toothpaste. No toothpaste. No deal or anything with the scent because they might think it's food. Sure. And of course you got to take all your clothes off and put them up in the tree in a bag.
00:58:01
Speaker
The food stays over in the cooking area, in a box, in a bear box, completely away from where you're going to sleep. And so you're in this little one man tent in the middle of the darkness, in the mountains, and all night you hear snapping twigs. This will stop bear claws.
00:58:25
Speaker
This nylon. Oh my God. Just like some like banana sized grizzly bear claws. They're huge. The claws are just... Mr. New York. What are you going to do against a grizzly bear? Got a $2 pistol in your boy span.
00:58:41
Speaker
Well, that's the other thing. I think if you're going to shoot a grizzly bear, you have to have like a real gun, too. Yeah. You know, anything else is going to be like a BB gun with like a 22. What's that going to do? There's stories of like guys out West who have like, you know, shot a grizzly bear, like two magazines of 45. And it's like they're just getting lodged in their fat, you know. Oh, my God. Yeah. Yeah. What's your opinion on the Sasquatch?
00:59:06
Speaker
I don't think it, I don't think it exists. Not according to our cement Mason. Yeah. Oh really?
Sasquatch Sightings and Skepticism
00:59:12
Speaker
He says he's got them in his property down in where? Virginia, Virginia. Yeah. He has some other crazy stuff to say too, but we can be pretty sure he's not listening to the podcast. Definitely not.
00:59:24
Speaker
Um, but we, we had, you know, the gas pipe had to be run to the building, the gas line. And so they dug up the sidewalk and temporarily covered it with blacktop. And then eventually they hired a sub to come out here and put a nice new piece of cement sidewalk. So Jeff says,
00:59:46
Speaker
Find it, you know, if you want to patch our, uh, our apron out front. Now I thought he meant the, the big crack we had a front. Jeff was really talking about the other apron, but I led him over to this front and he's like, yeah, we'll do that. I'll do that. And so he's here all day tending it. You know, he's, he did a nice job actually. He's like, you know, he works for New Jersey natural gas as a sub. So he's, he goes and does all these little concrete jobs for you. Yeah. Yeah.
01:00:14
Speaker
So, you know, we kind of befriended each other and he's talking and little by little, as you know, the day wears on, he's revealing more and more about his personality. That's awesome. Not inadvertently, but inadvertently. Sure.
01:00:34
Speaker
That's great. It's so funny. That goes to my saying to my friends and families, be careful who you let into your life.
01:00:45
Speaker
I don't know where the story is going to go with this guy, but you can meet somebody at eight o'clock in the morning and think one thing. And at three, you could be like, okay, I'm never going to want to see this person again. So you just got to be careful. Yeah. Yeah. He started out just this, you know, nice older guy, you know, and then he starts saying, I mean, he was saying some crazy stuff, like real crazy.
01:01:08
Speaker
Isn't that wild? Like, it's hard to know how to react sometimes. You just listen and nod. Smile and nod. Yeah. He's like, you know, those tattoos, he's like the Bible. I'm like, all right, let's just stop right there. But the cherry on the Sunday was he had a family, a Sasquatch living on his property down in Virginia. They were setting off his cameras. He's like, they never get in the camera, but they're right on the outside. So they're super smart. Really? Yeah.
01:01:38
Speaker
We're just like, I think it's time to go. Yeah. Not just once. And, you know, he was, uh, he was like, like trying to lead us into it. He's like, Oh yeah, my cameras keep going off, but you wouldn't believe me what it was if I told it. So I wouldn't engage. I don't ask. I just let, I'm just going to pretend I didn't hear you say that.
01:01:57
Speaker
And it took about five or six exchanges before he finally, he couldn't help himself and blurred it out that it was Sasquatch. Oh my gosh. Not just one, but a whole family of Sasquatch. Yeah, I don't know. I don't think I can believe in Sasquatch. And I'm up for at least entertaining things. Me too. But I've seen enough and there's been enough time where I just think, okay,
01:02:22
Speaker
Like as far as aliens and maybe aliens living in the ocean could be. Yeah. I mean, there's some unexplained things out there. Yeah. Some out of place artifacts. Yeah. I'd be curious to see what would be under, um, Antarctica after all the snow melted.
01:02:43
Speaker
Is there like, yeah, I guess there's like rock ground. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hunter's convinced that Sasquatch is real, but he's only five. So you smart kid. Yeah. He loves, you ever watch monster quest on history channel? Oh yeah. Of course I watch it. I think we used to watch that when the kids were little. He loves that.
01:03:03
Speaker
He absolutely loves all that stuff. That's fun. It's good to enjoy that time with them when they're a little like that. I remember when I was a kid, like I, you know, when you're in school, they bring it down to the library. I wanted the books about UFOs and weird, you know, whatever. I read Chariots of the Gods when I was like in third grade. And I was like, man, this is the best. You guys got me on.
01:03:30
Speaker
I don't even know it. He's the father of the ancient alien theory. Okay. You ever see ancient aliens on history channel? That's another one of those. No, I don't have history channel. Oh man. I mean, we might've had it years ago, but now we're just.
01:03:45
Speaker
like smart TV, like Netflix and whatever. It's like a total pseudo science, you know, claim that which, you know, there's there are some legitimate takes on it. The all these guys, obviously, it's just made for each other.
01:04:03
Speaker
But that, you know, there were ancient civilizations that were highly advanced. They were brought to all this technology from aliens. And, you know, they say, oh, look, this is Machu Picchu. They have these stones. There's no way that humans could. And a lot of it is BS. You know, they could very easily. There's a couple of people that are more. What's the word when you're not as deep into it where you're sort of. Shoot, just dabbling.
01:04:30
Speaker
No, no, like they, they're not, they don't think everything is an alien. They're more objective. Yes. There's some people that are more objective. And then there are some that no matter what you have to ask yourself,
01:04:47
Speaker
gotta be aliens. Like no matter what the answer is aliens. I tell you the, uh, the pyramids is definitely a bit of a mind bender. Just the, just the fact that the stone came from something like, I don't know, 500 miles away or something.
01:05:02
Speaker
Yeah, there's that and there's like the number of stones. Because I don't know enough about it, like you don't know if somebody's actually using correct math when they say something like, well, the number of stones and the number of people you do the multiplication, it would take way too many years to build it. See, I don't know if that's correct or not.
01:05:26
Speaker
Yeah, that's a problem with everything, you know, TV and the Internet. It's like you could say anything. Right. There's so many conflicting viewpoints. It's hard to get to the bottom of anything. Right. And even, you know, within and these are just people who are like non-professionals. This is this is a TV guy, Giorgio Succolos, talking about something that he's saying a science, you know, whatever an archaeologist said.
01:05:48
Speaker
But then there's archaeologists who one guy says this, the other guy says this, and they're both professionals. It's like, which professional is right? And you could say that about anything. That's how it is today, especially everybody's. That's what's like amazing to me is the.
01:06:06
Speaker
the confidence that some people have talking about things that they obviously know nothing about sometimes. Oh yeah. That's, that's the internet. It's like, holy cow. Nobody gives a caveat that like, I'm not a hundred percent on this, but this is, this is the opinion that I've, I've formed, you know, I feel like that's something that we've always tried to do, you know, when talking about like woodworking. It's like, listen, we're not,
01:06:30
Speaker
We'll change our opinion on a dime. Like we were talking about before with the besties and the debukes. It's like this is what we know now. This is, you know, we're totally open to changing our viewpoint. It's like this is just where we're at right now. I think it's so important to
01:06:46
Speaker
be able to change your mind, admit you're wrong when you're wrong, self-evaluate. I think those things are so important. On my drive here, I was talking to my cousin about that. And I was like, I said, that's it. Not getting into what we were talking about, I said, it's such an important trait to self-evaluate and admit that you're wrong. And once you can admit you're wrong,
01:07:13
Speaker
Like this is the easiest thing, right? Cause everybody gets an arguments, whether it's with your family, whether it's with a coat, whoever. The easiest thing to do is just say, you know, I fucked up. I'm sorry. And, and, but nobody does that.
01:07:28
Speaker
But if you can do that, you could just go forward. You know, that's the thing. Like, so do you, do you know, um, finished carpentry TVs, YouTube channel, Richard? I really liked Richard does a very nice work and he was talking about, um, DeWalt. So he's pretty heavily invested in DeWalt tools. Plus he's got that whole shirt deal walkie. Like he, he kind of, he made like a shirt and anyway, so he's been using DeWalt tools forever on his miter saw.
01:07:59
Speaker
He's got a cordless miter saw, and of course you can also run it with the power. So you can bypass it, but the batteries still stay on, I guess. And he's had to replace the motor twice now. And the second time, each time being like 350 bucks, whatever. And maybe I'm wrong on the numbers. I think I'm close.
01:08:22
Speaker
After the second repair, the rep said, well, you know, you really should just run it with the battery and not use the cord. It'll burn the motor out if you do that. And that's why it's happening. Then why do you make it? He's like, okay. So then, but then after he's using the saw, he realizes that he's got an aftermarket fence on it. He realizes that the aftermarket fence has been cut. He wouldn't know if he did it. So it must've happened there and they wouldn't own it. They should know. There's nothing we can, our guys wouldn't even start your saw with the blade on it.
01:08:49
Speaker
You know, just kind of BS. We both know that if we were working on a machine, you'd be like, okay, let's start it up and see if it works. So my point, so I never leave comments on things just because I often don't. Uh, unless I got something nice to say or something agreeable. And, uh, so I said, it's just a sad state of sad state.
01:09:13
Speaker
of where we are today, nobody will admit their mistake and own up to it. And that's how it is. So accept people like, and I'm not patting either of us on the back, but you and I, because we really don't have a choice.
01:09:28
Speaker
We're a small business. If we screw somebody over, they're gonna be like, you gotta make it right. Yeah, you gotta make
Honesty in Business and Marriage
01:09:35
Speaker
it right. Otherwise they're gonna tell their friends, you're not dealing with that big of a pool of clients in the first place. So even if you have to eat something, you have to eat it. But what we're seeing today is in every level, people just do the most ridiculous, obviously bullshit stuff.
01:09:57
Speaker
and then just deny it. I mean, it's just that that's where we're living today. It's like hard to believe. And it's funny because I'll say to my kids, I'm like, there's no good representation of how to be
01:10:13
Speaker
out there in the world today because everybody's full of shit. And they just won't own their mistake. They just, so anyway, I'm going on a tangent, but that's- I mean, not only is it the right thing to do, but in my experience, not that I've, I mean, I'm an old dude, I'm 61. I'm not too far behind you. In my experience, it's good business because as you're describing, it's not that common a trait.
01:10:43
Speaker
So the next time that person that you've made the mistake right with needs work, they're going to come straight back to you. Yeah, because honesty is like so hard to come by.
01:10:55
Speaker
They, now they trust you even more. Yeah. Absolutely. Sometimes you have to, you know, admit you were wrong even when you weren't wrong. You know, that's sometimes you do it not just being the bigger man. I found that's one thing I've learned in marriage. You really. The door has been opened. At least, you know, me, I fought it in the beginning. Yeah. But it's like sometimes, you know, you get in a little Yeah, you get in a little spat.
01:11:24
Speaker
And, you know, and I was right, you know, and it's like not like a question of opinion. It's like, no, I was right. But sometimes you got to say, you know, I'm sorry, you were
Time and Challenges in Marriage
01:11:33
Speaker
right. It's just I agree with you 100 percent. Sometimes you have to admit you were wrong even when you weren't wrong.
01:11:40
Speaker
more in marriage than anywhere else. It's a grind. You said that, not me. That's funny. This is a recent phenomenon I've noticed with my wife, is that like stuff that we've disagreed about, but she's come over to my side and the retelling of these stories, it's been her idea. Like she had the original idea. That's so funny.
01:12:09
Speaker
That is so funny. And a couple of years ago, I made the mistake of trying to say, no, that was me. And it got so out of hand so fast that I didn't even, now every time I just back as a conversation. That's a smart move. That's so funny.
01:12:34
Speaker
Yeah, but I mean, I think after she did it one time successfully, she just kept doing it. She's like, hey, adopt this. Yeah, it's it's funny. It's definitely a fine line there. Oh, man.
01:12:52
Speaker
That's too much. Yeah. Being married, I got married pretty late. How many years you've been married? I've been married now 22, 23 years. Goes by quick, doesn't it? Yeah, I think so. But it's a lot harder than I thought it would be. That's almost a life sentence. That's 25 years. You mean I'm getting out until...
01:13:21
Speaker
No, you'll be eligible for parole. Yeah, I'll be married 26 years, I think. I might be married close to 30 years. What year did you get married? I'm pretty sure it was 94. I think I got married in 99. I think I was 94, so I guess next year is my
Raising Children Close in Age
01:13:44
Speaker
30th. Wow.
01:13:46
Speaker
Guess we'll have to set up a fishing trip. I was going to say, put the reminder in your phone now. That's right. Oh man. I can't remember if it was 99 going to 2000 or if it was 2000 that I got married because I got married at the end of the year. I've been married seven years this year. Seven? Yeah. That's pretty new. So and Hunter is five. Yep. Yeah. 2016 we got married.
01:14:12
Speaker
I think we were married for about two years, a year and a half before Laurel got pregnant with Jack. Cause Jack's going to be 26 in September. That's usually what I use as my gauge. There you go. Got to have markers. You do.
01:14:27
Speaker
The longer you go, the blur here it gets. Yeah. I wanted to wait until we bought a house to have a kid, but I'm glad that we didn't do it that way because he would be two now and dealing with a two year. I mean, it's bad enough dealing with five year olds sometimes, but a two year old man. That'd be rough right now. Two year olds. It's so funny because the three boys are all within, I think a year and a half or two of each other.
01:14:57
Speaker
And just like any boys, they would play hard together and fight hard together. And we were just laughing about it the other last night because they were all over the house. And, you know, sometimes they just go at it and and just.
01:15:14
Speaker
the veracity of like a seven and a 10 year old, like just screaming at each other. I was just being like, holy, I mean, I did the same stuff with my kids. I grew up with eight kids in the house. And so only two brothers and one sister, but then my cousins lived with us as well and my aunt Kathy.
01:15:36
Speaker
But I don't think we, I think because the three brothers are so close in age and playing with the same things, you know, sometimes they play great, but then all of a sudden something happened and they're like chasing each other around. And I was just like, holy cow, yeah, there were times. That reminds me of Keith telling, I won't go into the specifics, but Keith tells us the stories on the fish and turf about him and his brothers, the stuff that they would do to each other. Holy cow, you gotta hear this stuff. I mean, vicious. Oh yeah. Put each other in the hospital.
01:16:05
Speaker
Yeah, no, they didn't do anything like that. That's craziness. And the stories just kept getting better and better. You'd think that would be the top one. And then he comes out with another one. And another one. And he's deadpan too. Oh yeah. Yeah, he was great. You gotta come on the fishing trip with us. Yeah, I love to fish.
Fishing Trip Adventures
01:16:32
Speaker
How'd you guys do this year?
01:16:33
Speaker
Oh, better than the year before. I feel like you're going early in the season. Well, no, we were in like prime time for Dropback Steelhead and Smallmouth. So this is one of the few places where the Smallmouth migrate from a lake into a river. It's actually, it's like, you know, it's world-class fishing. We're just not very good, you know? Really? I think that's part of it. I thought it has nothing to do with timing.
01:16:58
Speaker
No, I mean, it depends. I mean, fishing is fishing. So some days you go and the fishing is no good, but the fishing was pretty good when we were there. I mean, I hooked one and lost it while Willie landed one and hooked up on a few. I mean, there was one guy that caught like 10 fish that day, right? Oh yeah. I mean, there were plenty of guys catching lots of fish around you. Yeah. Wow. You know, it's I, I have the most experience up there.
01:17:25
Speaker
And I have barely any, you know, how far up north is it? What's your drive? As far as you can go in America. Yeah. It's, it's pretty close to Canada about four and a half, five hours. That's not too, too bad. Yeah. That's not, yeah. Cause when I 30, 45 minutes north of Syracuse, okay. Like you drive right through the middle of Syracuse and just keep going north.
01:17:47
Speaker
I do like fishing. It's like, I know that I've said to both of you before that at
Retirement Dreams and Woodworking
01:17:53
Speaker
some point I want to retire and just fishing mountain bike and would work, but, um, and somehow make that like my life, maybe even create a destination. That's like an Airbnb. That's what I, I could really get excited about that.
01:18:08
Speaker
Would people come to Woodwork at this place? No, I don't think so. I think I would just fill it with stuff that I've made or bought that other people made. So it would be a bit of an experience that you're staying at something that's kind of special and made. And I'd have the ability to advertise it on the channel and Facebook and all that and kind of tap into the
01:18:31
Speaker
the mountain biking group, which is somewhat a lot, similar thinking to woodworking and fishing. I noticed a lot of people who are sort of, and then especially the older guys with the pedal assist mountain bikers now. I used to be a big mountain biker out West.
01:18:49
Speaker
I got to get you on a pedal assist mountain bike because you haven't ridden in a while. So the hills aren't going to be fun. No, but on a pedal assist and it's not a free ride. You're getting a little bit of workout. So the thing is you can decide how, like if you're just kind of having an off day instead of.
01:19:07
Speaker
using just the most, whatever, level one, you could pump it up to level four and kind of let the bike, you're still gonna be winded at the top of the hill, but not as winded. Yeah. Does a bike have gears too, or is it just? Yeah, it's got 12 gears. So I think they're designing other bikes now that are gonna be automatic. I don't think, that doesn't really appeal to me. You have to shift.
01:19:35
Speaker
So if you're going to approach a hill, you need to be in the same kind of gearing that you would be if you were in another bike. There's a little bit of a buffer. So the beautiful thing about like a pedal assist, if you don't make it up the hill, you probably have a hard time restarting on a regular bicycle, but with a pedal assist, you get enough assist that you can start like midway up a hill plus.
01:20:01
Speaker
I don't know if this is with all bike motors, but the motor on my bike is a Bosch and it has something like, um,
01:20:12
Speaker
It's like an auxiliary boost or something like that, or an after boost. So if you stop pedaling, it's still going to rotate the wheel, like maybe one turn. So that gives you a little bit more help over an obstacle. So extended boost, that's what they call it. For me, it's a game changer. So it's funny because I always look at everything as when I'm spending money, is this something
01:20:41
Speaker
I can pay for with my business.
Viral Video Success
01:20:44
Speaker
So someone's in the shop. Yeah. Lou's bringing his stuff in. It's about the rain. Okay. It was actually, it was like a sun shower just now. Okay. Yeah. All right. Um, so with this, with this bike,
01:20:56
Speaker
most of the expense of the bike has been paid for with sponsors. Uh, just, and, and I had that one viral video blow up and that paid for like half the bike. Yeah. What'd you say? 200 million, 122 million so far. Now it's averaging like 400,000 views every 48 hours. But there was a time where it was averaging like
01:21:19
Speaker
I don't know, like 500,000 views a minute, an hour, something crazy like that. Did you say that the laser video has 400 something thousand? I think that's got 400,000 views. Yeah. So that's doing pretty well. So the difference is shorts. So like, I don't know how many subscribers the laser video has made, but let's just say like my last project video.
01:21:45
Speaker
Let's say I got 30,000 views. Maybe I got 20 or 30 new subscribers, maybe a hundred, I don't, but I can find out by going to the analytics. With this short, I got 134,000 new subscribers in like six weeks or something like that. And it paid a couple of bucks. It paid like for a good portion of
E-Bikes and Content Creation
01:22:09
Speaker
that bike. So I wasn't expecting that, but because I had the bike,
01:22:13
Speaker
I was able to make that content and I like making content around things that I'm going to use. So it's not only a place to store the bike, but it's an electric bike. So you need like a charging station. So it needs to be, Oh, I never even thought of that. So now I like park the bike, plug it in and there it sits. So
01:22:33
Speaker
My wife knows that I always sort of figure out ways for whatever I want to do to sort of pay for themselves. So I just said to her the other day, I said, I think I might buy another bike just so I can take other people on rides, including my 14 year old daughter. So my bike is a large, which you could easily ride. I ride it. Might be a little tall for you. It might be a little uncomfortable. I could get a medium, which I can still ride. So could you and be perfect for you.
01:23:02
Speaker
So I could take somebody on a ride and then maybe I could talk to a bicycle company and say, hey, do you want to give me a deal on this bike and I'll be a brand ambassador for you or something like that. But I want to get a decent bike. I don't want to buy like, you know, the bike I have now is a good bike. I'm not.
01:23:22
Speaker
You don't want the Alibaba special. No, I'd probably try to find something with a local dealer around here. Like I used to do some stuff with Cannondale, but that door may have closed, although I'm still friends with one of the guys there on Instagram who's a woodworker. Maybe I can open that up again and get a deal on that bike because there's two Cannondale dealers
01:23:44
Speaker
within, you know, 20 minutes of where we live. So Cannondale is making electric. Oh, everybody does. Yeah. I didn't know that. Yeah. So the, so when I kind of got into this, I started to notice them and a friend on Instagram reached out to me and said, Hey, I'd love to do something with you one day. If you, you know, I see you riding a Cannondale because my regular bike's in a Cannondale and um,
01:24:12
Speaker
And so when COVID happened, we had planned this before COVID, but all sudden COVID happened. And, uh, they sent me, uh, I think it's a Matero. It's a, one of their electric pedalists is mountain bikes. And I had it for, I think two months in the summer of COVID. The downside was, I think I got the bike and the parks shut down like a week later. Remember they shut the parks down.
COVID-19 and Government Critique
01:24:39
Speaker
They shut the beaches down. I've blocked most of that period of time out of my memory. I didn't know that either. They shut down. You couldn't go in any of the parks. We lived in our own little world. We were still working. I mean, I was still working too because making content was great. A lot of people were just watching content.
01:24:57
Speaker
But it was crazy because what happened with COVID is when it started, all of a sudden everybody was walking in the woods. So everybody, all the parking lots would be jam packed.
01:25:12
Speaker
And everybody was going to the beach. And so for whatever reason, they said, oh, people are too close to each other. Let's shut everything down and keep everybody in their homes. So I think that was like limit, you know, maybe put a put a capacity or something, you know, only half as many people don't remember like that's smart. Yeah. Do you remember? This sounds like a pain in the ass.
01:25:33
Speaker
Well, so this is the irony of it. Um, my wife would still go walking in the woods and then she would get kicked out by the park ranger who was walking in the woods with her daughter and her dog. So the park ranger would be like, you can't be in here. Meanwhile, she's there with, but
01:25:49
Speaker
Do you remember the guy getting all these boats, all these police boats in California, arresting the paddle surfer? He's like the only guy in the ocean. There's footage of it. He's just paddling a board out in the ocean.
01:26:05
Speaker
and it gets arrested. Oh, because there was like a stay at home order or something. Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. I think, I think what's going to happen, and I could really go off on a tangent. My kids know this. I think what's going to happen is a lot of shit's going to come out and people are going to be pissed. We're already pissed. We're going to be pissed. But I think a lot more is going to come out. I mean, just the whole like overreach, I think was insane.
01:26:33
Speaker
Yeah, I think in hindsight, it probably seems worse.
01:26:37
Speaker
I'm not saying it wasn't bad, but it probably seems worse than it was. Like, you know, it's like a once in a century event. Not all the right, you know, decisions could be made 100% of the time. Like there was definitely overreach, but I feel like maybe a lot of it was probably done with the right intention, but it just, you know, we all screw up. Yeah. I would say there's some of that. It's easy to be a Monday morning quarterback.
01:27:05
Speaker
right, and say that now. But at the same time, common sense and logic to anybody close to it who actually was like there and like making these rules kind of knew what was going on and what happened. And the fact that they were shutting anybody down with a dissenting opinion or idea
01:27:32
Speaker
is kind of un-American. You know what I mean? If you didn't go with their thought process, if you didn't step in line, I mean, it's like we were just talking about 1984. It was total doublespeak.
01:27:49
Speaker
Yeah. I think there's certainly, you know, look at how incompetent people
Power and Greed in Decision-Making
01:27:54
Speaker
are. I mean, you can't even trust somebody to come over and like fix your sink or something like that. This is the same level of people running all these. We can't even get the Amazon delivery driver to, you know, deliver the packages properly. It's like about the most simple task that. And so now you put that level of, you know, human, uh,
01:28:18
Speaker
in charge of something really important. There's gonna be that. And then there's gonna be the greed. People are gonna say, well, how can we monetize this as best as possible? It's like a perfect storm of ignorance, incompetence. And power. Yeah.
01:28:44
Speaker
Anyway, see, I'm going off. Yeah. It's a banner episode where we're just, we're hitting every, every, like I said, it's your last episode. I did. I did see come up on my Instagram feed or whatever, you know, as I'm scrolling through Joe Rogan talking about, um, the, the Kennedy book.
01:29:08
Speaker
So now we're really going to get into it. So I just read the real Anthony Fauci written by RFK Jr. And it's an eye opener. That's what he said. He said, well, if everything was true, why isn't he getting sued?
01:29:26
Speaker
Yeah. I don't like that argument though.
RFK Jr. and Media Narratives
01:29:30
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, it's like, what about the lady with the kitchen and never got delivered? You know what I mean? And sometimes chasing that lawsuit isn't the best avenue. Yeah. I don't know. I'm open. I mean, I believe in aliens, so I could think anything could happen. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting. Like,
01:29:54
Speaker
I think that we're going to see a lot more of RFK. We talked earlier off, Mike, that the incumbent doesn't need to debate anybody, anyone. That's a weird rule. It is a weird rule. But I wouldn't be surprised
01:30:17
Speaker
I wouldn't be surprised if there's like a groundswell of energy under RFK because it's pretty refreshing to hear somebody. People are fed up. People are fed up and it's pretty refreshing to hear somebody actually say that that big pharma is basically in bed with the media and controlling the narrative under most situations.
01:30:46
Speaker
And so he, he's a, um, environmental lawyer. So he, he's saying it's analogous to the fact that a lot of the biggest polluters would have, would have
01:31:04
Speaker
people working in the government. So the people in the government also work for the biggest companies that were doing the most pollution. Yeah. There should be something to stop people from, you know, Congress going sit on the board of directors. I mean, that that's part of the problem. Don't you think? I do. And I think that I forget about separation of church and state.
01:31:30
Speaker
Yeah, you know, members of the government can't trade public, you know, can't be. Well, that's like investments in public trading. Nancy Pelosi's like made more money in the stock market. Yeah. I mean, all of them. Yeah. You don't get the Supreme Court justices. They're they're not allowed to own stocks, but they're allowed to own index funds. I didn't know that.
01:31:52
Speaker
That's crazy. Well, that's the other thing is just taking money out of politics. Yeah. That would be the main thing because every decision is, is getting decided with who's got, who's got the most money, the most money, right? The primary is like this war of attrition where whoever has the most money at the end, that's why it runs for a year and a half. Like if you don't have enough money to put up a, you know, 18 month campaign, you can't even entertain running.
01:32:22
Speaker
I do think, though, that the Internet will change that.
01:32:29
Speaker
Somebody like, well, RFK might not be a good example because he's got such a famous name. Yeah. But I don't think he would even have any kind of momentum if it, he wouldn't have any kind of momentum if it weren't for the internet, because now you've got people like a lot of podcasters and a lot of people. Right. That's how I saw Joe Rogan. Exactly. And he's been on a bunch, like he was on Theo Von's podcast. He was on Bill Maher's podcast recently. So he's taken that whole route.
01:32:59
Speaker
In the old day, going back 15 years ago, mainstream media basically controlled the narrative. You couldn't get around it. And he basically burned his bridges with mainstream media in 2004.
01:33:17
Speaker
when he wrote an article about the potential for connection between autism and vaccines, the mercury in vaccines.
Censorship and Alternative Narratives
01:33:26
Speaker
And he wrote this article with, or actually rolling, he wrote an article for Rolling Stone and then Rolling Stone edited it and published it. And I think within a couple of weeks it got taken down.
01:33:40
Speaker
because it just pissed off too many people. And again, it's not about like, Hey, this is what's happening. It's about like saying, Hey, this thing is happening. Let's look into it. So it's not a, it's not a black and white thing, but what I think's happened with, with the, the, the, everyone trying to control the narrative is you,
01:34:07
Speaker
discussion is closed. It's, you know, it's like, wow, we're really getting into it. Yeah. So then like, if you were to say, Hey, like in 2001, Hey, you know, there's a lab over in Wuhan, China, doing all these tests. Maybe there was a leak in that lab shut, shut that person down. You can't talk about that. But now we know that there's pretty good chance that that's what happened.
01:34:37
Speaker
So anybody who's kind of inquisitive would say, well, maybe they knew it right from the beginning that that's where this came from, but that doesn't look good for us because we funded some of this with taxpayer money. So let's shut this conversation down so we don't look bad. So like you couldn't have that 15 years ago.
01:35:01
Speaker
And they tried to keep it from happening now because Facebook and Twitter and everybody was shutting down anybody with a dissenting opinion. Yeah. It's like Watergate. The cover-up's worse than the crime. Well, that's it. That's the story as old as the hills, unfortunately. It's another one of those things though, where, you know, who, who do you believe? You know, I believe, I believe in having a conversation.
01:35:29
Speaker
That's healthy and getting to the bottom of it and not just shutting the person down. You have to be open to, you have to be open to it. So what I believe in is.
01:35:42
Speaker
logic, common sense, and accountability. And that's what we're not seeing. No. I mean, in general, when was the last time you had a group of people together and they were like different opinions and people could have like a legitimate dialogue and like everybody involved said, you know, not literally, but said,
01:36:10
Speaker
Let's talk about this. Convince me you're right and I'm wrong and vice versa. Let's exchange ideas in a healthy way. I don't think people are ready to do that or capable.
01:36:25
Speaker
I think it's really important to get to that point. Yeah, obviously it is. And that's that's why you can't just say like, I like this person and whatever you say, I don't whatever his faults are, I still like him. You know, I think that's part of the problem is I agree with you. I think that, you know, no, no conversation should be shut down just on principle of that. It differs from another one. But I think a big part of the issue is
01:36:53
Speaker
You know, a lot of the reason things get stifled these days is because people are presented with facts a lot of times and facts that are like indisputable facts, but they still believe the falsehoods that they've subscribed to. Yeah. Is there a word for that now?
01:37:11
Speaker
I don't know. But yes, I read something about that where it's like. False narrative. No, there's like a it's like a real thing like like I use like a flat earther as an example, like somebody who says no, the earth is flat. It's it's a lie that it's a globe. NASA's behind it, blah, blah, blah. Maybe this isn't a good one.
01:37:33
Speaker
That person just fucked up. And they could say, no, look, here's the science that proves we could measure all these things. This is real science. And they just say, no, there's flat. That guy should be shut down. You can't reason with someone like that. Yeah. And like we were saying before, people are naturally stupid. So there's a whole slew
01:38:03
Speaker
just going to believe they're taking this flat earth guys opinion as gospel. They're saying, man, he's charismatic. He sounds like he knows what he's talking about. He said the earth is flat and NASA's trying to cover it up on us.
01:38:20
Speaker
And they just believe this guy. Yeah. So it's a big the disinformation and misinformation. And I'm not don't I'm not making any illusions to what side is what. But because it's rampant and all the entire spectrum of whatever political. Whatever parties. I just lost my train of thought. But I know what you're saying. It's like.
01:38:46
Speaker
There's enough people out there who are just looking for someone to follow that they'll just get on the train, whether or not that person is making any sense or not. And I mean, you can see it in like, with like the David Koresh followers. So it's always has happened before that. Who was the guy? Jim Jones. So you had all this, but now with the internet, you have the potential for a much, much bigger audience.
01:39:10
Speaker
There are the now it's monetized. That's the thing. Yeah, you have obviously YouTube. You got all the crazy conspiracy theorists on there who are making ad revenue. Then there's websites like Gaia, which that's like a big thing for these flat earthers and these like that's just crazy to me like that just goes against.
01:39:29
Speaker
Logic and common sense. It's like this new age mysticism and stuff like that.
Monetizing Misinformation
01:39:35
Speaker
These people and Patreon, these people are making serious money. The secret space program that we talked about, these people who claim that they were abducted by the government and they were taken to Mars and they're fighting wars against vampires and zombies. These people are making money peddling these
01:39:55
Speaker
stories to people. They have Patreons making thousands of dollars a month. People just say anything they want and people, you know what I mean? Yeah, it's a whole other world out there. It's so funny because I'm like, that's so foreign to me, like the whole idea of like,
01:40:12
Speaker
You know, following one of those. Yeah, there was some. But it sounds fascinating. I mean, like fighting vampires and Mars, it's like it's like a whole book. Yeah. What was the one now in California where they were waiting for the end of the world and they were all found dead, like with their sneakers? That wasn't too long ago, right? Zoltar. It was a weird one. Yeah.
01:40:35
Speaker
But they all committed mass suicide, you know, to get beamed up. They left two people back. Mm hmm. And I know what you're talking about. And they're like, they have a website and it's like still active. Yeah. Yeah. So like within the last three years? No, no, I think it was like in the maybe late 90s or 2000s. But that's pretty recent for something like that. Yeah. They thought, you know, the UFOs were going to come take them away. Wow.
01:41:04
Speaker
Yeah, it's easier. People are easily led. Um, you know, historically revolutions are created by a surprisingly small group of people, you know, whether it's like the French revolution or the Russian revolution, like big revolutions you think about it's, it's a small, small brain trust of people and the rest of the masses just get swept into it. Yeah. Wow.
01:41:32
Speaker
It's pretty wild to think about, but yeah, I can see that. Yeah. It's, I mean, we're definitely living through interesting times. I would, I would love to read about this, see how history remembers this time period is this past, let's say starting in 2000.
Global Changes Since 2000
01:41:51
Speaker
Well, look at the changes in 2000. I mean, it's just so astronomical, like,
01:41:57
Speaker
the interval, the internet just changed everything. Yeah. I mean, there was the internet, there was, you know, world straight, 11 bombing. Oh yeah. Yeah. Well that too, you know, how that changed. I think that worked right into Osama bin Laden's hands because I think if Osama bin Laden could have like a master plan and he was like looking at it now, like, yep, worked exactly as I wanted, you know, because there's so many bad decisions made.
01:42:27
Speaker
because of reacting too quick. Right? Yeah. I mean, a move. I mean, and I don't want to, I just remember thinking like, geez, I'm going to like, come on one side of the fence or the other. But I just remember thinking, what's the rush? Let's think about this before we go into Iraq.
01:42:52
Speaker
Like I think it was all about getting oil. No, but the, the idea was the, the, the reason that was explained was weapons of mass destruction. Right. Right. But here I am. I was a pretty young dude at the time. I was in the thirties. Yeah, they never found. Right. So, but I just remember thinking to myself, like, this is a chess game. This is like a chess game on the ultimate scale. Okay. Yeah. The buildings came down. This is what happened.
01:43:21
Speaker
within a year we're going into Iraq. So I'm thinking to myself, why are we rushing this? Aren't we going to separate our, aren't we going to lose our strength by separating our forces? You know what I mean? And just the whole thing that happened by going into Iraq after we left Iraq and left all the Kurds to get slaughtered. Oh yeah. I mean, I just looked at it. I was like, man, why are we doing this?
01:43:47
Speaker
this quickly, why don't you just give it three months and take a deeper look for these weapons of mass destruction? Because I mean, it definitely didn't play out well. I mean, I don't know what the final count is, but the billions and trillions of dollars spent billions and trillions of dollars, more than 3500.
Afghanistan Withdrawal Critique
01:44:09
Speaker
soldiers I think were killed. And then you kind of lose your mission in Afghanistan and you don't keep your focus there. And then why would anybody trust the United States after we left Afghanistan the way we did for all those women and children in a society that was sort of holding on
01:44:34
Speaker
to get basically massacred, raped, and I mean, it's just, it's the decision making that had happened. It seems, well, do you remember, do you remember the like the two or three week countdown before we pulled out of Afghanistan? So again, I'm not a military guy, but I'm like, this sounds like a shit show.
01:44:58
Speaker
What, what, why would you do it this way? So there's a total layman reason. Meanwhile, that's what happened. It's a total shit show. People falling from planes. You leave all this stuff over there. People are getting killed left and right. We, we put ourselves in a super vulnerable position. Yeah. And now anybody around the world says, fuck the U S they're not in it for the long haul. They, they're just,
01:45:25
Speaker
You know, they're just going to get out. Short-termers. I mean, it's I think that's a pretty commonly held opinion. But I don't think I think that's in the last like 50 or 60 years. Yeah. You know, so I think it started with with not. I mean, pulled out of Vietnam. I mean, it started with Vietnam.
JFK and Vietnam Conspiracy Theories
01:45:41
Speaker
Had a friend who was actually involved in that.
01:45:44
Speaker
But that's where I think it started. So I'm not really that familiar with the Korean War. But obviously, World War II, you had to go into it. And if we didn't, you know, the world would be a much different place today. But then, you know, you get into Vietnam. And well, so according to according to RFK Junior, John Kennedy was trying to get out of Vietnam.
01:46:11
Speaker
Yeah, I've heard that he was trying to get out and I think there was 1500.
01:46:18
Speaker
Green Beret or something, or peacekeepers or something in Vietnam. And he asked for a report of how many people had been killed, and I think 78 people had been killed. And he said, that's enough, let's take all our people out, we're not gonna be here. And then he killed himself like two months later. So that's why there's all this discussions on whether or not that was an inside job.
01:46:48
Speaker
And I mean, we can go down that rabbit hole too, if you like. Do you think that he was killed by the CIA?
01:46:53
Speaker
I don't know if it was the CIA or, uh, I don't think it was the one bullet. I don't think it was as described, you know, from the book room. I was actually, I went to the book room, the book depository. Yeah. Um, it's an incredible shot, right? Yeah. I don't think that's really what happened. They call it a magic bullet. Don't they? Yeah. There's so many entry entry and exit wounds. And when you look at the, I guess the subruder film didn't get shown immediately.
01:47:21
Speaker
And I think when the Sabruder film came out, then they started to have to get creative with where these bullets came from. Yeah. And if you look at like a larger view, you think it's a coincidence that his brother's killed. See your hand, see your hand. And Martin Luther King is killed. They said, see your hand, see your hand was under MKUltra. Yeah. Under mind control.
01:47:47
Speaker
Okay, so I've heard Sir Han, Sir Han didn't kill Robert Kennedy and that he was actually killed with a different gun and he was shot from the back, not from the front, from Sir Han, Sir Han. So, I mean, there's all these things you can go into. Martin Luther King was definitely killed by the CIA.
MLK Assassination Skepticism
01:48:11
Speaker
So there you go. Yeah, so I don't think- You're pretty emphatic about that.
01:48:17
Speaker
Yeah, I read and watched a couple of things that it's like, you know, the Patsy that they had that, you know, was the guy that took the fall was like totally incapable of pulling something off like that. Well, I mean, it goes down the line with like what happened with John Kennedy when he gets when
01:48:38
Speaker
Who's the guy who assassinated John Kennedy, who, or from the book depository? What's his name? Lee Harvey Oswald. So he's conveniently killed a day later. Jack Ruby. Yeah. Jack Ruby dies conveniently within a certain amount of time. So I mean, I mean, it's, it's happening all this stuff like Epstein. Oh my God. Did Epstein kill himself?
Epstein's Death Conspiracy Theories
01:49:01
Speaker
There's no way.
01:49:04
Speaker
I mean, I don't mean to laugh at the death of somebody, but he was a pretty shitty guy. Right. And the connections, the people that he, you know, catered to. I mean, the way I would see that story playing out is that he's on the phone. He's like, uh, yeah, come and get me out of here. Or I'm going to start naming names.
01:49:28
Speaker
next phone call was he's gonna start naming names I think you better quiet him down over there yeah that was it I mean he everybody's on that list yeah I think I think Bill Gates like when he heard the news is okay you know what I mean cuz he's on that list mm-hmm so it's
01:49:46
Speaker
It's a pretty disturbing fact that all these people, uh, you know, have one, not even one step removed. They're directly directly related to both sides of the aisle. Yeah. Like, and business and, and government, it's like, he was another, he was another scammer. He, um,
01:50:08
Speaker
But he scammed his whole way up to his fortune. Yeah, yeah. He took over for the guy that owned Victoria's Secret. He basically got signed on as like his power of attorney. And that's how he got to where he was, is he was handling and selling things off and all this. I forget the guy's name. He owned Victoria's Secret. Isn't it funny? Like, that's definitely a like a psychopath, somebody sociopath, sociopath, yeah, who's somebody who
01:50:38
Speaker
believes their own lies and just continually spins them into a whole actual reality. It's wild. And it's not jizzling. How do you say it? Oh, the sidekick's wife or whatever, girlfriend. What?
01:50:59
Speaker
I thought you said just lane. Yeah. Well, it's spelled G. It's spelled G H I S L A I N E. It's not just lane, but it's, it's, I forget how you pronounce it, but it's something like that. It's not two separate words.
01:51:16
Speaker
The last. She she was like born into money and then like lost it all. Somehow, like her, you know, her father had a bunch of money and then I don't know, he went to prison. Ghislaine, Ghislaine, Ghislaine Maxwell. Yeah. Why has it got an S in it?
01:51:34
Speaker
I don't know. Now I've remembered it. Yeah. The lane, just lane. Um, she was looking for a way to scam her way back to the top. You know what I mean? So she was another hanger on. And I mean, these people are despicable and just brutal people like, yeah, I mean human traffic. I mean, it doesn't get much worse than that, especially with, uh, children. And I mean, it is like the lowest rung in hell.
01:52:02
Speaker
You're not kidding. Anyway, we better pivot before. Like if we watch something, you know, on TV, just like that's disturbing.
Balancing Heavy and Light Topics
01:52:16
Speaker
And my wife goes, Oh, we got to watch like a cooking show or something before I go to bed. That makes sense. Cause you will relive that. I mean, we watched some show that was like just going through my mind.
01:52:38
Speaker
like it can be kind of hard
01:52:47
Speaker
Yeah. So how are we going to end this episode?
Current Painting Projects
01:52:49
Speaker
We're going to, we're going to say anything about woodworking. Any next projects? Yeah. Well, let's, let's talk briefly about some of the positivity in this world. I mean, Lou's been out there in the last two days. He was getting rained on sporadically, but he's still working on painting the shop. He, I don't know if he, yeah, he probably went home, but it was just short, just sort of, uh, is that short pro, short pro or pro painting. Reach out to him if you need any painting done.
01:53:16
Speaker
And I mean, one of the best painters I know. Yeah. And he, I mean, he's been out there scraping the building by hand for like three and a half days. Yeah. It's going to look great. Do you know what color you're going to go for? Yeah. Yeah. Soft fern. Yeah. That's what it's called. Soft fern. Nice. Yeah. It's something bucolic.
01:53:35
Speaker
soft burn. That's exactly what I'm imagining. It's kind of like a creamy Bay, Bay berry. Yeah. Kinda. Yeah. Something in the green palette. We couldn't go too dark. Landlord just said nothing too dark. Smart. Yeah. And we'll probably do like a, we'd doing a similar color and this gray sea haze it's called. Yeah. It's like a for the trim. Yeah. The, the, the brick stacks. Nice.
01:54:05
Speaker
So that'd be nice. Yeah. John needs it. Yeah. Lou's been working really hard. That's going to look nice. Yeah. A dark color would look stand out, stand out too much. Yeah. I mean, I would have liked to do like a dark green, maybe like the van colors with the dark gray as a, you know, kind of be a little imposing, but do you do any kind of lettering on the building with your logo or anything?
01:54:28
Speaker
Um, and we'd like to do a sign, you know, yeah, it'd be nice. We're going to do like, yeah, we're going to have a, we're going to hire muralists. Yeah. We'll rent out and get a four by four, but you know how easy it is to find good quality help.
01:54:48
Speaker
Why wouldn't you just make a sign and hang it on there? I would love to have like a big, like an eight foot diameter of the round logo. Maybe we'll have Walter make, make sure timber gets it done for us for free. There you go. At an HDU and paint it, put it up there on the tower. Nice. That'd be cool. Yeah. And put some lighting underneath. Yeah. Or behind.
01:55:15
Speaker
Yeah, we can have it coming off the roof down. Cool. Like a nice 3D carved. It's amazing what you can do with these solar lights these days. Oh yeah. Yeah. Cause you don't, you know, you're thinking if you light it, you could just get two little solar lights and I just put two of those out and I was like, wow, these things work really good. Oh yeah. It's like 25 bucks or something. The LEDs now, you know, they're amazing. The tiny little battery. Yeah, they work good. Yeah.
01:55:42
Speaker
Yeah. I got a couple of bionic solar lights. Oh God. Right off the infomercial. Yeah. My wife picked them up. Did they come with those sunglasses that when you put them on, you see a screaming eagle. They ought to though. The Bell and Howell tactical flashlight. Yes. The tactical can opener. Oh my God. Yeah. Lou's working on painting the shop.
Large Banquet Piece Logistics
01:56:07
Speaker
We're working on Bankette built in.
01:56:12
Speaker
waiting on some finished samples of the finish. Yeah. Cause we're matching to some existing stuff. So that'll be fun. Tomorrow we're taking a drive up north. Oh yeah. Yeah. We got to pack the van. Where are you going? Uh, Jersey city. Yeah. Okay. That's not too far. We're going to deliver that 47 foot bank head. That's been in the shop for about four months for two seasons. I keep waiting. When's this going to leave? So that's going today.
01:56:37
Speaker
Tomorrow we're going to pack it up. Nice. Yeah. Going out to our buddy, Jim. Oh, so it's going to get upholstered. Yep. Yeah. Originally it was going to be upholstered on site. Um, now he's upholstering it in his shop.
01:56:52
Speaker
And his shop is probably like about this big 12 feet wide and it's got to be 50 feet long, but you don't have a space for it. It's yeah, it's going to be tough. It's, it's tight in there. I mean, well, when we unload it, you're going to wind up putting it outside in front of the shop. Wow. On the sidewalk. Yeah. I think you got good weather tomorrow. Yeah. And the next day so they can figure out how to get Thursday and Friday. Yeah.
01:57:18
Speaker
Because I don't know if he's fully aware of how many pieces this is. Well, originally, you know, he was saying that the, they're going to a restaurant that the, the people who own the restaurant or whatever, the builder, whatever, they wanted three, they wanted it in three sections. I'm like,
01:57:34
Speaker
What's the point of making it? We're going to make it in six sections so that they're less than eight feet. You know what I mean? I'm like, you want to screw them together on site to make them three? Have at it. It's a good thing that we kept it in six because then we'd be bringing these 14 no more. Yeah. They'd be like, uh,
01:57:55
Speaker
How long would they be? It's 47 feet divided by three. They'd be 15 feet each plus 15 at one and two at 16. Yeah. So he's going to upholster them and do they go from his shop right to the job? Yeah, which is right down the street. That's great. Yeah.
01:58:14
Speaker
Yeah. They'll have channeled backs. It'll look just like the one we built a 16 footer a couple of months ago. And we got to get those saw horses in there somehow. Yeah. We made them some soul horses. That's nice. Yeah. We can't forget the legs either.
01:58:31
Speaker
Yes. He, he sent us a picture of some old ones that, you know, so his grandfather made. We made two for him. Exactly. Like replicas. Sort of, but a little beefier. Yeah. Some little added features that he got to ask for. Um, but we sort of offered him. Yeah. You know the way we are. And we're figuring we'll, uh, if you're listening, Jim, we'll call in that favor one day.
01:58:59
Speaker
Yeah. He does nice work. He does. Oh yeah, he's great. Jamal Fostery for sure. Does he work mostly for commercial guys like you guys?
01:59:11
Speaker
I don't know. I don't think so. I see a lot of stuff on his Instagram where he's just doing a chair or, you know, sofa. More often than not, we're working for him. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. He gives us the job. That's great. We've, uh, we've hired him for, uh, at least one.
Collaboration with Upholsterers
01:59:29
Speaker
That's the one that comes to mind. Yeah. So that's a great source of, uh, new projects. Yeah, it is. The bank head stuff is cool too. It's pretty, it's pretty easy. Yeah.
01:59:40
Speaker
So is he working with a lot of designers? That's great. That's a great connection. Yeah. And he works with Jacqueline from Donnie Douglas, who we work with a lot. So like we've built a lot of stuff that he's upholstered. That's great. Or rather he's upholstered a lot of stuff that we've built, I should say. Built that radius sofa. He upholstered that.
02:00:02
Speaker
What was that? All those ones, is that what you're talking about? That we delivered up north? Oh, those two, the booths. We built these four round booths for an office building, like almost like you would see in a restaurant. Were they red? I think it was like an orange. Okay. Yeah.
02:00:23
Speaker
Oh, the channeled back one is red. Like a red like that, almost like a cherry red. Yeah, he does, him is a great word. Yeah. Just him, one guy? It's him and then he has the main upholstery guy and now he has a seamstress and he has, I think, another person who's, you know, they do the grunt work kind of stuff, I guess, yeah.
02:00:51
Speaker
That's a good business. Yeah. Cause it's probably not that many tools. No. So a machine full of cutters. His family's been in it for two generations now. Yeah.
02:01:04
Speaker
That's probably pretty satisfying work, too, that with quick turnaround, you know, you see something come in a couple of days later, it goes out looking beautiful. Yep. And he does a lot of work with I think it's Lenovo Design. It's a company in Jersey City. They are Danish, but they go back every so often and they'll buy like, you know, let's say grandma dies in
02:01:32
Speaker
Sweden, Finland, Ireland, Norway. Denmark. Denmark. They'll buy up the whole house full of furniture. Okay. All true mid-century Danish furniture. And they'll refinish them, they'll reupholster the chairs. Is that your favorite style?
02:01:49
Speaker
Uh, I'm like the winds, you know, I like it favorite. Probably not. I mean, if I had to choose one thing, I'm always enamored by the green brothers. They are a namesake. That's just sort of coincidence, but there's just so many, there's just not that many examples, you know, like they only built, they only could build so much stuff.
02:02:09
Speaker
and the craftsmen that pulled off their design. So like, oh my God. I mean, it's, but it's, you know, we don't have the luxury for the most part of spending that amount of time on a project. You know, it's, we, it might be an interesting topic for another podcast or something, but the difference between, you know, creating
02:02:33
Speaker
something for content or for yourself or home use or as a hobby and creating something as part of a business where you have limited resources. Like there's a price that comes in affixed to this piece. Sure. And now you have to then produce it in the given amount of time so that it's profitable. Yeah. It's a complicated equation. It's not just like, I'm going to do this and, you know, bust out every trick in the book.
02:03:03
Speaker
No, you can't do that. Yeah. I'm just curious of like what, um, you could do your dream house. What would it would with you? It sounds like it'd be like the green brothers.
Dream Home Ideas
02:03:15
Speaker
It's green and green. Yeah. Um, I like an eclectic, I think I'd go with more of an eclectic, uh, so a little bit of green and green maybe, but definitely some mid-century modern. Yeah. I used to think I wanted to live in an old gas station.
02:03:30
Speaker
That funny with like the kind where you have the overhang where you pull in where the pumps are out there I used to think I'd if I could find one of those that would be cool. That would be cool actually to to uh Turn into a home. Yeah, because you have that would you turn that into a the outdoor space glass it in or would you keep it open?
02:03:49
Speaker
I keep that part where the pumps are open, but you know, they always have that glass window out front and everything. I always thought that'd be pretty cool. I lived in a loft for a while in Brooklyn. It was, it was brutal.
02:04:04
Speaker
because it was like, it was like living, you know, no, he, no, not the known, you know, none of the amenities you'd find in a normal house.
Shaker-Style Minimalist Living
02:04:18
Speaker
Um, it was, you know, for musicians. I think a kind of a peaceful way to live would be a relatively smaller house.
02:04:30
Speaker
and just furnished really simply with Shaker furniture. I mean, for like peaceful mind, just all about sort of living simply. Shakers. You got a wife. Good luck. I know. That's the thing. I mean, like.
02:04:51
Speaker
Just getting rid of stuff, that's the thing. That's my biggest thing, stuff. I brought home, we had these two side tables that we used to have the microphones attached to. And we moved in here, I brought them home. And I thought these were gonna replace the two side tables that are, now there's four side tables in the living room. In this expansive living room. Yeah, my whole house is like a thousand square feet.
02:05:17
Speaker
It's basically the entire the entire downstairs is the kitchen and the living room. So would you think that in retrospect, you should have sold them without saying anything on Facebook Marketplace?
02:05:29
Speaker
I don't know. I'm done fighting. I'm just going to, but that, I mean, that's not fighting. That's just kind of bridging it before it even happens. Like don't even mention that we have new end tables. Just there all of a sudden you don't have them. Yeah. The other ones are so, so junky though. Yeah. Oh, okay. You want to get rid of the old ones and keep them. Or you just, um, or just make them disappear. You're talking to an experienced married guy here.
02:05:51
Speaker
Disappear what you do is what I do with the kids toys The old ones are going back to the shop to get refinished and we'll use these new ones in the time being It's like when you take a cat for a ride I've never done that our finishing machine is over there Republic comes once a month
02:06:13
Speaker
What is that over there? The refinishing machine. What is the refinishing machine? That's the dumpster. That big blue can over there. I thought you were talking about that business around the corner. No, no, it's the dumpster over there. Those are good. They always do a good job. There was a terrible accident. Something fell on them and they smashed into a million little bits. There's nothing like getting rid of stuff. Yeah.
02:06:38
Speaker
Uh, my wife says that to me sometimes she's like, let's go up in the attic and see if there's anything there that we can get rid of. And she always wants it. You're like, let's let us, you know? Oh, so she's the less is more person. Yeah. So that's good. She, well, I'm less is more too, except I don't want to do the work. Okay. I, I, my thing is I've just came home from work. You're here all day. You go up and do it.
02:07:06
Speaker
That's good. That's my attitude. Yeah. You know, if that's what you feel like you want to do, I'm not going to stand in your way. Something's really heavy. Let me know. Put it off to the side. I'll carry it down. I guess I have to agree with you on that. Yeah. I say you don't need me to make any vital decisions. You see something, if it's up there in a box and I haven't touched it in 22 years, I'm not going to miss it.
02:07:36
Speaker
Yeah. That's, that's the thing. You just get rid of it. You got car blanche, all the stuff I want. I already have it in my life down here in the real house. Right. It's accessible. That's like leftovers. You know, my wife never eats leftovers until I throw them out. And then she's like, where's the, or if I eat them, that's, that's when it really, when she really wanted it.
02:08:01
Speaker
Does she tell you, my wife says she'll get me a watermelon and she go, Hey, I got this watermelon for
Unique Food Preferences
02:08:08
Speaker
you. I'll say you want any, you know, because I'll eat the whole thing. Like she buys a quarter of a watermelon. I'll eat the whole thing in one sitting.
02:08:16
Speaker
She's like, you didn't save me any watermelon. Like you said, I got you a watermelon. I got us a watermelon. You ever have watermelon with cottage cheese? No. No, it's really good. I got, I like cottage cheese too. I eat that like crazy. What do you do? Chop it up and put it inside? No, I just kind of have them next to each other. You know what? Sometimes I'll deal with the watermelon.
02:08:38
Speaker
If I get a whole watermelon, I'll cut a slice, it's maybe an inch and a half thick. And then I'll go around the inside and pull the rind off. So now you just have this watermelon, like the, just the four. And so that's on the plate, barely fits on the plate. And then you could put a scoop of cottage cheese right on top of it. And then eat it with, actually before you do that, then go over it with a knife to make cubes.
02:09:04
Speaker
Oh, you're saying take like a round slice like this. Just a round slice. Yeah. Just slice it. So you got a big circle, like a wheel on your plate. And then you cut it into slices or cubes, put the cottage cheese on it. That's, that's good. That sounds good. I love my watermelon. That's good for you too. I like cottage cheese a lot. Yeah. So do I. Yeah. You have watermelon in a salad. Like a, with a, like a vinaigrette salad. Yeah.
02:09:31
Speaker
I never have. I don't think I have, but it sounds like it would be good. Yeah. How about anchovies? You ever have anchovies in a salad? Uh, yeah. I like anchovies. I'm one of those. You have to tell, you can't tell me they're there. So I went to some bar in Vermont, maybe four or five years ago, and we ate at the bar, my friend Peter and I, and the couple next to us got a salad with anchovies.
02:09:58
Speaker
but instead of it being like the little anchovies that you get in a can, it was just like fish. So it was a Caesar salad with anchovies. So I got the same thing. It was great.
02:10:08
Speaker
Yeah. And, and my mother's dialect, that's Ali each. All right. And so we, we have a pizza. I'm growing up. We would have pizza and I would say, I don't like this pizza. What's the, you know, cause they break them up and break up the little pizza. Like what's this black stuff? That's nothing. That's Ali. That's all I can think of.
02:10:30
Speaker
It's like, I don't like the pizza. It's a plain pizza. That's Ali. I don't like, I don't like to eat like the whole filet. Like I feel like it's too salty and I like salt. Like it ends up too salty, but like broken up like that. Or if it's cooked in something, I like it. Yeah. You got to melt it in. Yeah. I'll break it up into a salad. Yeah.
02:10:48
Speaker
but that was the first time i had a sound with it was like actually the fish yeah yeah yeah yeah they're great it was good yeah wow this is so good sardines are great like that too like a bowl you can get them like a like a portuguese grocer frozen that does sound good they usually they grill them over like green wood man
02:11:09
Speaker
Well, have you ever eaten, uh, snapper blues on the grill? Uh, it's been a long time, but I have had it a handful of times. So good. Just catch the snappers. Like it's a bluefish, but it's a snapper. So it's small. Like the baby. Clean it and a little garlic salt and just kind of flash them on the grill, you know, on both sides and, uh, you don't have to scale them or anything. Delicious. You ever eaten a big bluefish? So
02:11:38
Speaker
My thing with the bluefish is like 20 inches is great. Yeah. You start to get into big ones. I haven't had them because I've heard bad things. Yeah, they're not very good. But they call those like 20, 20 and less are like cocktail blues. Well, like 18 to 20 because I was catching them off the shore and I kept two of them. I cleaned them and stuffed the inside probably 17 inches. They weren't quite 20.
02:12:08
Speaker
fill the inside with pieces of cut lemon, again, garlic salt, and then put it on the grill, hot grill. And you have to, you can't be impatient, you have to let it cook, or if you try to flip it too soon, it's gonna peel the skin off. Let it cook, let it cook, it was great. So that's what everybody says, like 16 to 20 inch, or whatever, 12 to 20 inches, you're okay.
02:12:37
Speaker
You get into the real big ones, they're really oily and kind of gamey or something. Yeah, the alligators at home. Yeah, I tried to eat a big one once it was bad. I don't eat fish. Apparently smoked is good. Smoked bluefish. That probably would because it would cut out the, um, like the gaming. Some of that fat out, you know, cause I mean, fat and fish is good, but.
02:12:58
Speaker
It's very strong flavored bluefish. I had bluefish in South Carolina, delicious, but they're eating different stuff down there. Well, that's it. You know, y'all eat. Yeah. Well, I'll eat cod like, like fish and chips fried. And the weirdest thing is like, I don't, I don't really like fish, but I like tuna fish. And everybody always says that's the fishiest fish going. Who says that?
02:13:23
Speaker
I love tuna fish. I like tuna fish too. Tuna is so mild. Okay. So it is. Yeah. I like tuna. Tell us people are crazy. I get, I get the Italian, the dark tuna with the oil. I like to mince up an onion. I like to have a little minced up celery in mine too. So you know why? It's a really good texture. Yeah. Yeah. I like tuna salad. Yeah. That's why I make it. But we didn't grow up with mayonnaise. We had it like with the oil and vinegar. Oh wow.
02:13:53
Speaker
So when you had a tuna sandwich, you didn't have mayonnaise in it? No. Wow. Red wine, vinegar.
02:13:59
Speaker
I could see that being good, but no replacement for that good old helmets. That's the way my wife makes it. So I, I learned to adjust, but that's the way I had it growing up. Pickle relish in tuna fish. No, I like it that way. I like pickles, either pickle relish or pickle celery, red onion or white onion or yellow onion, whatever. Um, I like tuna anyway. I can get it pizza places or like a sandwich place, like
02:14:29
Speaker
What the hell are they doing to the tuna? Why is it all mushy? That's a whole different animal. I would never get a tuna sandwich at any kind of a deli or anything. I would get chicken salad. I don't know. I'm just different suspects. It's different, but it's good.
02:14:46
Speaker
I tell you what, I like, I like chicken salad and with chicken salad, I don't like it when it's all mushed up. I like it like big chunks. Yeah. Whole Foods has pretty good chicken salad. Making chicken salad is so easy. You know what I love making chicken salad from? Those roaster chickens.
02:15:02
Speaker
Yeah, that's pretty good. You could just poach up the split chicken breasts that still have the rib cage and everything. If you have homemade chicken stock, you can poach it and that makes it even better. But with the bones and everything, it cooks up real nice and you just chop it up into
02:15:21
Speaker
cubes. What you posted was it last week on the grill. Oh, those. Yeah. I'm still eating that. That was a, so my mom, we went, I went to my parents for father's day. My mom sent me home with, uh, from the garden chives, rosemary, parsley, mint.
02:15:42
Speaker
That might be it. And it was sitting in the fridge for a week. I'm like, what the hell am I gonna do with this? So I chopped it all up, real fine, olive oil. I micro planed like an entire head of garlic. Microplane, all the lemons, that's off of one lemon, the juice. And I marinated the chicken in that. So it was like a lot of herbs and it was chicken thighs that I cubed up. And then I put them on the skewers and grilled it like real hot.
02:16:09
Speaker
My grill doesn't get that doesn't get hot enough. Yeah. Mine doesn't get hot enough either. It's got like one little tiny hotspot where stuff will get burned. I have to buy a new grill. Actually. I've been using that grill.
Modern Grills and Longevity Issues
02:16:21
Speaker
I did some, I did like a promotion for coyote grill a couple of years ago and it was a great grill, but
02:16:26
Speaker
Like all grills, they kind of go their way. Yeah. Mine's disintegrating rapidly. I'm going to have to buy one. They're not that cheap. Like nothing's that cheap anymore. And I just got a new grill last year. What was it? How much about, uh, 900 bucks or something. And it's not even, it's a pit boss. So it's not like, so I went with, uh, I had a pellet grill. I had a green mountain grill.
02:16:48
Speaker
which was nice, but the first one rusted out in less than a year. They replaced it, luckily. But then after another two years or so, it stopped working completely. So then I got the pit boss, which is pellet grill on one side and charcoal and propane on the other, which is nice to have both. But the the cooking surface is probably only 20 inches on either side, you know, 18 by 20 or something. So it's not not huge.
02:17:15
Speaker
which is pretty much all you need until you're having a party or something. But then, you know, you could, you could use both sides if you have to, but my wife doesn't really like the smoked flavor that much. Well, that's what I prefer. Yeah. I like it. Um, she likes the propane. What would you get John? Um, what, what kind of grill am I going to buy? Yeah.
02:17:36
Speaker
I'm probably going to go with a Weber and I'm probably going to go to my local hardware store to get it. What? Like a kettle or a grill? Regular gas grill. I had the kettle. The kettles are fun. Yeah. You have natural gas out there or propane? I do have natural gas now. It's on the road so I can convert because I'm oil.
02:17:56
Speaker
Oh yeah, man, you should get on that. I know. Well, I got to talk to you about that. You'll probably pay for your furnace. I converted too. I'm going to convert because it's just a hassle. Oil is expensive. And it fluctuates the price of oil. I hate having to barter with these people and not barter, but you know what I mean? Yeah, you kind of have to work it.
02:18:17
Speaker
have some issues with the company. Petro is my company. I ended up going like to task with them a couple of times and finally got rid of them. They had me over a barrel because I had an insurance policy with them in the beginning when we bought the house. But then when I bought the oil tank inside and got rid of it, I was able to get rid of them, but they continually tried to fill my tank.
02:18:41
Speaker
for, for literally double what oil was going for. So I would always keep an eye out and I would actually talk to the driver and say, it wasn't the driver, it was the office sending them there. Yeah. And they were, they were trying to fill the tank, you know, a 275 gallon tank. And I think at the time they were trying to sell oil at least a dollar and a half more.
02:19:03
Speaker
than what I could get it from Global in Red Bank. And then I just went to Swanton because Swanton's nice people and they're pretty comparative with the pricing and they furnace the thing. But now I've got this
02:19:19
Speaker
double lined plastic tank, whatever for oil. And I guess I'll try to sell that on Facebook marketplace when I convert to gas because then when I put gas in, I can then turn the fireplace into a gas fireplace, which I think would be the wood fireplace is great, but it's messy. Yeah. Yeah. You gotta be careful with the free so and all that stuff, you know,
02:19:45
Speaker
Yeah. And I mean, with my asthma and my son, Jack, who doesn't live in the house, but it definitely, I can feel it. Like sometimes you'll get it. You can't have a fire on a windy day, a windy day. You'll get the smoke in the house. So, uh, we put an insert in.
02:20:01
Speaker
That's what I'd like to. Well, we got a stainless steel flow and the insert. So you can do gas or no, it's just wood burning. Oh, but it's an insert. So it's ink. You know, you shut the door like a pot belly stone. Does it really give heat in the house? Oh.
02:20:17
Speaker
my wife hates it because she maintains that it makes the radiators not come on okay but well yeah it would do that if yeah but that's because it raises the temperature above the thermostat exactly like if you keep a fire going 24 hours it'll it'll heat the house
02:20:36
Speaker
How many how many logs would you burn in 24 hours? I don't know. I mean, I mean, he just burns the scrap wood. I mean, you can burn a lot. You can. I can. But this thing, once it gets going, it burns like red hot. Yeah, that's nice. Stays in there. And I might call you about who you used for that because that place down by mama's racetrack. OK. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But by Sipperstein's. OK, I don't know about it. So maybe I'll look into that because.
02:21:05
Speaker
We have a fireplace in the basement. What kind of horse do you have? Like my whole heart is all stone, like from floor to ceiling. Mine's brick. And it, the whole thing gets warm. Okay. And it's got a little fan in there. It'll actually blow out hot air if you want. So it's hooked to electricity. Yeah. It's got a little plug, but you don't have to run it. Okay. Yeah. I need to look, I need to upgrade. I've been like,
02:21:35
Speaker
doing all the little projects around my house. So my wife started a job maybe nine months ago, which she's way busier than she used to be.
Juggling Home Projects
02:21:46
Speaker
So I'm doing a lot more just with like the house with my daughter and just like with the house. So I haven't been, I'm still working like I always work.
02:21:59
Speaker
But she's just super busy. So I said, okay, well, I'll just get, I'll take this time to try to chip away on all these projects that I have around the house. And that's why I just did the door, painted my front door. I'm trying to deal with the water situation, doing projects in the yard. And then the next thing is maybe I'll renovate my basement.
02:22:20
Speaker
Yeah, I'll tell you, it wasn't inexpensive and that was back quite a while ago. That's what I'm afraid of. Nowadays, I bet it's prohibitively expensive. Yeah. So that's why maybe I'll just go with the, I don't know. We'll see.
02:22:34
Speaker
I can always, I could do the gas to the furnace and then down the road, think about it and maybe switch over to, because the basement doesn't have any heat in it, but it stays warm because it's like below ground kind of, but it does have a fireplace in it. So I could put an insert in there or a gas burning fireplace. It's actually a shame that the basement isn't being utilized the way it should be.
02:22:59
Speaker
And part of that actually is, and I keep saying this, I said, our biggest hurdle is the stuff I'm not going to do.
Basement Workshop Setup
02:23:11
Speaker
I'm not going to do it. I can't do it if I can't get rid of the stuff. And I said, if I can get rid of all the stuff, this is going to be a dream job for me because I'm going to set up a table saw in the basement. I'll set up, you know, an extra chop saw in the basement because
02:23:25
Speaker
I know I've said this before at any time I do any work in the house, I walk back and forth to the barn a couple hundred times. And it's not that, I mean, it's like what, a hundred yards? At least. Yeah. And it's just like a screwdriver. I can't open a paint can. You know, like, cause yesterday I was trying to work on Jack's boat and I bring the fiberglass out into the boat and I, you know, I've already gone through the thing back and forth to the boat, like three or four times I get in the boat.
02:23:54
Speaker
And I'm trying to open the can of fiberglass with a plastic spatula. I'm like, shit, I guess I gotta get out of the boat again and walk over to the barn.
Clearing Basement Clutter
02:24:04
Speaker
Yeah, like where do you put all this stuff? If you need to work in the basement, where does all this stuff in the basement go? It's gotta be gone. It's gotta be gone. And you know what? We don't need it. And I'm as big, because I got clothes in my closet. I mean, I got a tiny little closet.
02:24:21
Speaker
but I'm only wearing a quarter of the stuff that I've got in my closet. Well, that's fine. That's your closet. You can do with it what you want, but it's everybody's basement. But I'm saying, so I'm, I'm a little guilty of not taking the time to get rid of stuff and downsize a little bit. Yeah. You're going to come across all the kids stuff down there too. Probably most of there. So now it's like adult kind of like adapters, wires,
02:24:47
Speaker
some adapter, whatever, some kind of cord for something. I don't know what it goes to. An iPhone box from 2012. Yeah. I have one of those. I think Michael got a job down next to where he went to school. So he went down to school in Maryland and he's working
02:25:08
Speaker
I don't know, whatever, 20 minutes from where he went to school. And when he, before he leaves, now he's in a sling now because he had soldier's shoulder surgery, but he's getting his mobility back. But I think I'm going to say to him before you leave, anything here, put some tape on it. If you want to get rid of it now, or I'm going to get rid of it.
02:25:32
Speaker
because that's what has to happen. And the funny thing is you can get rid of stuff because when we bought the house in Vermont, it came with all of the stuff in the house because the woman had passed away.
02:25:45
Speaker
And, uh, at the time I'm young and dumb. I'm thinking, this is great. There's all kinds of cool shit in here. And within like three weeks, I'm like, Oh, I want to do all this stuff. And that's, I ended up getting a dumpster. Couldn't do anything with it. You know, I couldn't move. I got pictures of the old house and just like stuff like,
02:26:07
Speaker
And you know, I'm like, that's kind of a nice thing. Maybe I'll spend my entire week on eBay to try to sell this $8 product. And then you got to pay 12% to eBay and shipping. And then it's like, forget it. There you go. I mean, I did put a lot of stuff on the road and stuff just disappears.
Creative Ways to Rehome Items
02:26:27
Speaker
The perfect free sign. The free sign makes it. Anyone who's inquisitive, if they see free, that's gone.
02:26:35
Speaker
Oh yeah. We get rid of anything on Craigslist for free. It's always kind of a question. You know, you drive by like a pile of stuff on the side of the road. You're like, can I take that? Like you see, you know, you see something that you might want and you're like, is that actually like, are they throwing that out? Is somebody coming to pick it? You know, but if you put the free sign, it's gone. Yeah.
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
02:26:55
Speaker
I think that's where we're going to end it. Cool. This was fun. Yeah. It was a good one. Two and a half hours.
02:27:01
Speaker
I'm looking forward to listening to it. Let me know how it is. It's like, it is like 1984, the book divert, you know, it goes off and back, but we won't. Yeah, we won't get into another one. I want to thank everybody for hanging with us today. Thanks for tuning in.
02:27:23
Speaker
As always, Rob and I, thank you for tuning in and we'll see you next week. If you want to help support the podcast, you can leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. Again, we appreciate your support. Thanks for tuning in.
02:27:53
Speaker
chain.