374. - Chuck Klosterman

All right, this episode of How Long Gone is brought to you by Stateside with Kai and Carter, a new podcast from The Guardian. And they are using this podcast to slow down the news and wrestle with the questions that we all have about what's happening in the world. And they do it three times a week, Jason. Does that sound familiar to you? We don't really talk about, you know, a lot of international global news items and climates and cultures and sports and things like that. We do talk about fashion and wellness, but for everything else, Kai and Carter are a great place. All right, so who couldn't use more news? Listen wherever you get your podcast. or watch on YouTube. It's a beautiful Tuesday, creeping towards noon here in sunny Los Angeles, California. DJ Them Jeans, what the fuck is going on? I'm sweaty, bro. I'm hot. I'm having a smoothie. Oh, wow. It really came down to the final seconds of our scheduled pod today. It feels good, though. I know. I like when you cut it close. You said something today, because there's been a picture going around of cursed Donald Glover. walking around shirtless in some yellow Nike shorts with a pair of Saucony running shoes, an Apple watch, and I believe a bucket hat in New York City. Shop the look, shop the look. And I was saying that to walk around in that state, you must look like you're chiseled from stone. Donald looks better than he has, but it's still... Not good enough, in my opinion, to go shirtless in public. And two, for clarity for our listeners, in that state, you're referring to the state of being shirtless. Yeah, it's shirtless in public in a non-beach or pool setting. Right, right, right. In an urban environment. And then Jason... Went on to share an anecdote about him driving shirtless yesterday. Hawaiian style. Yeah, yeah. You don't live in Florida. What was your reasoning for this, and how do you think you looked? Great little set of questions. Number one, the reasoning. I just finished hitting a little tennis ball against the wall for like an hour. Okay. So I was just drenched in sweat, and then I was driving to the gym where I would then work out some more. So I wasn't like cruising the boulevard with the top down.

Trying to be spotted. I was just simply doing it because it was hot as hell. If I put my shirt back on, it would just get drenched. So, you know, the five, ten minutes it took me to drive to the gym, I just did a little. Were the windows down so people could, all your Armenian homies could see you. Yes. The windows were down and I got some looks, sure. Okay. You know, some people did a little stop and. I'll take a peek at that, and then why don't we go back for one more kind of energy. Of course, yeah. I mean, how could they not? When they see something that white and odd in public, they must. I was wearing some Oakley shades. That was the only thing I had up top on. You know, my dad, when he would finish his run, he always had a nice beach towel in the car to put down on the seat. for that level of sweat. Did you bring a towel to sit on or did you just go raw dog without a bag? Raw dog without a bag. I didn't mean to disrespect the NeNe like that. Well, the seats are cloth, so you've got to be careful with that. It doesn't quite just wipe off the way that the smooth Napa leather kind of would, but I'm glad that you... Do you have Napa leather on your car? Oh, I don't know, dude. I have no idea. I truly They have no idea. I want everything stock. You know that. But I'm glad that you feel free. And I have to say, you look better with your shirt. I've seen you with your shirt off only once or twice in my life, but I can guarantee you look better than Donald Glover. So that's a victory for how long gone? I don't know. I mean, DG, friend of the pod, Donnie, I thought he looked great. Bro, he looks eye. Committing to Dijon head to toe, you're sort of asking for it. Like you're color blocking so much that it's a little bit of notice me queen. going on but then he has the the demeanor attitude and look on his face of like oh my god don't look at me i hope i don't get spotted i'm just trying to be a normal oh yeah human being walking around in the world shirtless wearing head-to-toe dijon jw anderson panties mixed with my

It's a lot, and luckily his look is as bad as his music, so it all kind of adds up for me. But I'm glad that there's, once again, some synergy between you and Donnie. Yeah, yeah, we're back on the same team. It's all good. It's all good. We love Yellow together. Speaking of musical artists, when I was just at Equinox, normally the music that they play in a gym, you've been to gyms a lot, it's usually not. Great, right? Actually, yesterday at Easton. I'm not looking for an actually. No, no, no. It was worse than I could have imagined. They played New York, New York by Frank Sinatra while I was hex bar deadlifting. That's the music they were playing? Yeah, and you know Hunter is a musical theater graduate from the Carnegie Mellon University. So this motherfucker starts harmonizing. You know what I mean? I'm like, bro, I'm trying to hit a PR. So you're doing deadlift squats or some shit. And it's just, New York! Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know this was a gay gym, but show tunes... And the chick working the front who's controlling the music, again, is a chick. It ain't even a gay guy. No, no, no. She's not controlling the music. I'm sure they have some service. No, it's Spotify, bro. Really? Yeah, you wish it was that. You wish it was advanced. What was happening at Equinox? You can't be playing Frank Sinatra in New York at a gym that cost a lot of money in 2022. Luckily, the gym is very affordable, so I didn't kind of register a complaint. It doesn't matter the decade or the membership fees. Never. Yeah, you're right. The music was... It was definitely like a playlist that went left, you know what I mean? Because I heard it building to a mistake, and then the mistake happened while I had three plates on either side of a hex bar. I wish it would have kind of delayed or maybe advanced. I don't know. You know how many DJ sets I've had in my lifetime that slowly built into a mistake? You know, some might say, Jason, that our lives have just slowly built into a mistake. No, no, no. I've been spiraling upward. The road gets steeper, tougher, and more difficult. But anyways, I'm over at Equinox. I'm in the locker room. And they play different music in the locker room versus the gym. I like that. Sometimes they'll do a good song every once in a while, like a drum and bass remix of a garbage song or something like that. But it's normally standard fare. And then the locker room, sometimes we'll have some...

Indie hits going on, you know, like a cheeky beach house B-side from the second album, something like that. But it's usually like TikTok, like saxophone, pool party house, like, you know, chain smokers type shit. And then today I come out of the sauna. They're playing Erland Oi, Kings of Convenience. Kings of Convenience. They're playing Kings of Convenience goes straight into cat power. Oh, baby. And I was like, this is sick. Way to go, Equinox. You got my letters. But on the downside, there's just something off. It felt wrong to be in a male locker room surrounded by people who have tattoos on their chest of different Armenian churches and words written in Old English that surely signify the number of people they've killed, not if they've killed. And I want to hear Chainsmokers in that environment. I want to see someone's dick from the back while Chainsmokers is playing. You're right. It felt wrong having Cat Power in the men's room with me. I think that Cat Power is something that can be shared among fellas, but only in the warm cockles of the Wiltern or AirPods. Not the Armenian killers in the locker room. Um, cat power and chest day don't kind of go hand in hand for me. No, I'm not talking about system of a down. You said the Armenian killers. Oh yeah. I'm sorry. Smile like you mean it. Smile or I'll kill your family. Armenian killer system of a down. God damn it. That's really funny. Oh, Oh, he did that. Jason did it again. Slay TJ. Yeah, so today we have a guest that we have been trying to get on for a while. We've had a little phone tag, a little back and forth, but he's a legendary writer, auteur. He's appeared on a zillions of podcasts. Unfortunately, talking about sports a lot, but... We don't recognize the Ringer Network here, but it's cute for other people. Yeah, he's written several...

Several books. As I said before, if you had a Friendster profile, a Makeout Club profile, and you didn't list sex, drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, I'm sure you were not getting laid. His other, Fargo Rock City, which was a memoir, is also a classic. And then his new book, The 90s, is available on Amazon, where I shop for my books. Let's give Chuck a jingle and see what's going on. Oh, this is huge for me personally. This episode of How I'm Gone is brought to you by TaskRabbit. Oh, baby, let me tell you something. This is not a joke. I use TaskRabbit a lot because I can't do anything. You need some art hung? TaskRabbit. You need something put together? A cabinet? Got to reach that cheese grater on the top shelf? TaskRabbit. Anything you need, TaskRabbit can take care of it for you. How it works, TaskRabbit connects you with skilled taskers in your area. They can help you move. They can assemble furniture, repairs, yard work, mounting, and more. You can search for a tasker based on cost, skill set, availability, and past client reviews so you know exactly who's showing up and can have confidence that they know what they're doing because taskers have assembled over 3.4 million pieces of furniture, completed 700,000 home repairs. handled 1.5 million moves, and the numbers are just going up, Jason. Yeah, throw a little money at the problem. It's not so expensive, and that job that you really don't want to do is something that another person out in the world is very good at doing and would gladly do it in exchange for a little bit of money. So when life happens, your to-do list grows. Get ahead of it now and get $15 off your first task at TaskRabbit.com or grab the TaskRabbit app using promo code how long taskers book up faster, especially for same-day tasks. So book trusted home help today. That is $15 off your first task using promo code howlong with the TaskRabbit app or at TaskRabbit.com. This episode of How Long Gone is brought to you by Squarespace. Obviously, Jason, you and I spend a lot of time on the World Wide Web, sort of our peers, our listeners, our friends, our colleagues, maybe even your parents if they're freaky. And if you're doing anything in the world,

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That is Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash how long. That'll get you free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince punto com slash how long. We're going to do a tight 15 on your Bob Barker mic. So go ahead. Let's get this moving. Well, you know, my wife has got one of those, like those, they're called the Yetis or whatever, you know. It's a big one. Like a cooler or a cozy? A cozy one. Those are prosumer. Looks like what you got over there is a little more true professional, like you bought it in Burbank or something. Hey, thanks for having me on this. It's a pleasure. Are you sure about that, Chuck? Are you sure? Do you know who we are? Have you heard of this podcast, or are you just doing this? Well, you know, you get a lot of media coverage. Yeah? So, yes, I do. That's right. If you want to pitch a story about us, just let us know. We're happy. We're open to whatever. Maybe there's some outlets in North Dakota that we haven't kind of touched yet, so I feel like you have some connections there. Maybe all of them, yeah. That's true. What's the name of the local Portland paper? Hopefully it starts with a P. Well, the Oregonian. Okay, the Oregonian. That's fun. I really like that. That's a lot cooler than Los Angeles Times, I'll tell you that. No, it's not, bro. Come on. The Times is a cool name. It's a little more fun. Where are you? Are you coming to us from Minnesota? No, I live in Portland, Oregon. Oh, I thought you... Okay, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I knew Jason was asking about Portland. I assumed you had some connections because you're an indie rocker at heart, but I didn't know you actually live there. No, I live in the forest. Yeah, I live here in the forest. Like Unabomber style or like Portland style? Well... My working office is kind of Unabomber style. That's a cabin outside of my house. But I'm actually in my house because the Wi-Fi is better, and I did not want to put you guys in a position. Also, do I need to tape this on, like, QuickTime? We're doing it, and you sound good, so we should be fine. Okay. When you said Wi-Fi, I thought you were going to say the wife. No. And then I was like, oh, Chuck's going down a different – he's like, I'm ponding from inside the house today because the wife's letting me.

Can you walk us through your Unabomber-style creative cabin? What do we have? Is there a mini-fridge, or what are we working with? No, there's not even a fridge. There's a fireplace. Whoa. There's no water. Okay. There's electricity. It's just when I bought this house, there was this little log cabin in the backyard. I don't even know what the fuck it was used for because the door is like a standard front door, so you couldn't put a lawnmower in there or anything. But there's no running water. There was nothing – there was no carpeting. There was nothing on the walls. I don't know if it was like a high-end playhouse maybe. But then I had a contractor come in. He painted all everything orange, put the carpet down. Orange? So hold on, hold on. Is orange a known like creative color or is that – Did Virginia Woolf have her cabin orange? Yeah, what is the – or is this the color of your hair and you wanted it to match? Well, do you know like how Prince was with purple? Okay, yes. That's how I am with orange. And anything that can be a color, I always take orange. Okay. Always. So you're pushing. So the Range Rover is orange is what you're saying. Well, if I was buying a Range Rover for myself, yeah. But it's like you've got to make compromises. You end up getting blue things and black things and white things. But if I have total autonomy. Okay. For example, here's my cell phone case. That's orange. Anything that I'm buying for myself. If it comes in multiple colors, I'm always going to pick orange. Okay, and have you talked to your therapist about the psychology behind this? Or is it just you like orange? I'd like to think that it's rooted in something more deep. I think I know the psychology behind it. Because when I was in college, I took like a visual communication class. And I was told at that time, orange was already my favorite color, that orange represents hunger. Physical hunger, but hunger in every context. So I guess that's what they say. If you like orange, you're a hungry person. As they always say. Yeah, as they always say. So you mean hungry for success and like a beautiful life, not necessarily hungry for like a slice of pepperoni, or is this across the board? For any and all forms of hunger. The latter is definitely true. I suppose that's the pejorative way of looking at it, that I'm just like a glutton. But I think I'm just hungry for anything.

For anything that's out there, if it can be consumed, I want to consume it. This is interesting because do you know about other colors? Because I would love for you to diagnose me live on air. Forgot them all. Learned them once. Only remembered orange. Okay, that makes sense because college is kind of a waste of time. Thanks for proving that to us here quickly. Very much. I mean, that's the kind of things you pull away. I'm an orange lover myself. I also lean purple sometimes. It's pretty interesting. I do have like kind of a... A deep sexual hunger as well, so that kind of all checks out. Yeah. But purple is the color of royalty, which makes me want to like it more, but I do find it slightly offensive to my, like, aesthetic palette. So, Chuck, you're in the cabin, and then you're solo. When you're in the cabin, does the old ball and chain know not to come a-knockin' when the old typewriter's clackin' away? Well, she's a writer, too, so she's writing in the house. She writes in the house and I write in the cabin. So because of your chivalry, you allow her to sit in the beautiful home while you're kind of out back with the cattle. I can have one space that's just all my stuff. I've got trunks out there with my stuff in it. You know, things that wouldn't really be practical. Where do you keep – so are you saying you keep the CD collection in these trunks or where is the CD collection? Don't have CDs anymore. Oh, I thought – I really took you for a CD cat. I had them for a long time and then – okay, well, here's what happened with that. Okay, so they obviously took up a huge amount of room. This is when my wife and I – this is before we were married. We were still living in the Peter Cooper village in Manhattan. So I had this entire wall of CDs. And she was like, this is insane. You know, you know, why don't you digitize them? And I really fought it. But I finally did it. I kept I kept about 300 arbitrarily ones I wanted. I tried to digitize the rest. And at first I was like, this is great because it turns out I like music. I don't like cylindrical metal discs. I didn't miss them at all. But now as time has crawled forward, as we had moved into the future, I now have a growing suspicion.

that a lot of the streaming services that currently have everything and give me access to everything are going to change or shift, and there's going to be a whole bunch of stuff that's just going to be lost forever, at least to me. Okay, so you're saying some of your maybe more underground releases will not be available in the AirPods Pros? Is that what you're saying? Well, not just underground things. Just old things? Mainstream things that have absolutely no meaning outside of the time that they existed. For whatever reason, there will be, I don't know, disputes over the ownership, what label owns this. Sure, sure, sure. And they'll just be gone. and then there'll be something, you know, a Kula Shaker record or something stupid I'll need to listen to for whatever reason, and I won't be able to find it. It'll just be gone. Although it'll probably still be on YouTube because YouTube will survive. YouTube is the bomb shelter for Kula Shaker. I think you're right. I was dying for an example, and you dropping Kula Shaker couldn't have been more perfect. That's why this podcast exists. We made a CD. Actually, we did it. an album last year a double album a double cda was charlie does his homework not melancholy and infinite sadness like the stack more of a modern less plastic use vibe um but i think that the uh you know i think that a lot of people bought it the way that teens are buying vinyl as just a a way to support us and a collector's item that they're not going to crack and throw in the CD changer because they don't have one. Did you sell it in an extremely long cardboard box? I wish. I wish. I tried to find some of those in bulk on eBay because I would. I mean, that's like a use your illusion style long box. Yeah. That would have been obviously ideal, but. What was the purpose of the long box? Was it just stylistic? Anti-theft. Same reason. I mean, because cassettes used to come like in that plastic arm, you know, it was dead. Which is the whole idea. I don't know. I think that wasn't there a long box that was just purely cardboard before the plastic security thing was in there. And like because it was hard to kind of cascade CDs.

Like that to flip through them like you'd flip through vinyl? I could be wrong. It's possible. I just thought they were anti-theft things. How much theft have you done in your life, Chuck? You a shoplifter? Not real. No, I wasn't a shoplifter. For me, it's a power thing, Chuck. Yeah, I mean, you got a Whole Foods out there. You don't like to maybe, you know, one for you, one for them when you're ringing things up at the self-checkout? You know, I go to New Seasons, which is just a... Closer to my house. And there is no self-checkout option. There is, at like the bigger, kind of more conventional. New Seasons kind of feels like a new age church to me, Chuck. It's like a mosaic kind of vibe. New Seasons is like Whole Foods, except you can also get Frosted Flakes. Oh, okay. They have some items. They have some regular items. But other than that, it's almost like you can get Mountain Dew there. You can get – you can get – Like Pringles there. Okay. But you can't get everything. It's like they have all organic sort of healthier stuff and then a few of the kind of traditional processed items. So you can grab the good stuff for the kids, but then when you're feeling like a bad boy, you can gulp down a monster energy and have a can of Pringles, and it's no problem. They have it all. Yeah, I guess that's one way of looking at it. Yeah, kind of like a Sprouts here. strange sort of conversation for the podcast though this can't be what your audience this is exactly are you strange meaning wrong strange meaning mind-numbingly boring you're right chuck and don't worry yeah whenever i go through and i edit the whole show oh really so if nothing if if something doesn't make the cut we're just throwing baloney at the wall right now and seeing what's gonna stick so like a one time you know rick rubin has a podcast where he normally talks to musicians So he asked me to be on his podcast. He interviewed me for I think it was like three and a half hours. Jesus. And then I was like, I got to go. And he was like, well, I kind of have the same philosophy I use in the studio, which is you just keep going because you never know when the magic is going to happen. And I was like, I can't do that, man. I got to go. It's like I got to go. Did you listen to it? My kids are upstairs or whatever. And then the podcast never ran. It never ran. So I guess.

So I guess we never got to the part. That's fucked up. Well, it was interesting, too, because he was in Hawaii. He had went out to Hawaii and got stranded during the pandemic and then just stayed there. But I had assumed that he must have been in New York or something. So there was a big confusion over time zones. Yeah, if I'm in vacation in Hawaii, I do not want to podcast, do a four or five hour marathon with Klosterman or anyone. just to get some sweetness. And I also think that he should be so lucky to have you on a pod. I think you would have been, I mean, Rick doesn't know what he had, what he's lost is what I'm saying. Well, I mean, maybe I probably wasn't interested because I spent most of the time asking him questions. Certainly there were more things about his life that I was interested in that he seemed to be interested in my life, which I don't think he knew much about. I think he knew I was a music writer. I think that was about as far as it went. It was a fun conversation. I mean, I learned some things about Black Sabbath. He's an incredibly insightful bro. Had you talked to him before? No, I never had. Chuck, do you have beef with Malcolm Gladwell? Are you guys cool? You know, I haven't talked to him in a bunch of years, but we... I don't have any issues. Why? Why do you think that we would be at war? I don't think that you would be at war or have beef at all. It's just a fantasy that I would like to see happen. A couple weekends ago, I went to the World Track and Field Championships in Eugene, and I assumed he would be there. So I thought I would run into him and talk to him, but I didn't run into him. I never saw him. Yeah, he's a member of the running community. Why were you there? I kind of like track. You know, it's not too far from here. Some friends of mine from college in the middle of the pandemic. We're like watching this on television. They were like, we should all get together when the pandemic is over and go to the World Track and Field Championships. And we're all like, sure. It seemed like it was a thousand years in the future. So then he bought tickets. So then we ended up going to it. It was fun. It was nice being there. Nice stadium. Couldn't these guys just watch Friends like everyone else? We had to get into track and field during COVID. It was surprising. It was surprising to all of us, I think, to find ourselves at a track meet.

since none of us had ever really went to a track meet since high school. So are you, like, drinking beer and stuff at this thing, or is it a little more buttoned up? No, I was drinking beer. Okay, that's what I thought. That's why I asked. No, it wasn't a buttoned-up track meet. It's not like the dog show or whatever in MG. It's like people running. It's a sporting event. No, it is. No, I know it's a sporting event, but it seems, you know, it just seems a little, it seems more buttoned up in my mind. But maybe that's because I haven't been to one before. Well, it's a little, I mean, the crowd is filled with people who are the type of person who likes track so much they will go to a track meet. So it is a different kind of sports fan. You know, there didn't seem to be a lot of, like, casual sports fans. in the in the crowd you know no i was just going to say that's kind of how much of a sports fanatic you are is that you'll even you know you're like drake with his bedding if it's on you're going to watch it you have espn ocho package on the tv in eugene you're whatever you know women's volleyball let's get it popping you know are you like that yeah i mean i don't i don't i don't watch everything there's a bunch of sports i don't watch at all but i mean i do watch a lot of football a lot of basketball Because you don't do fantasy shit, do you? I play fantasy college basketball, college football, and then I'm in a couple fantasy basketball leagues. Okay, but fantasy doesn't count. We're talking a little, you know, don't tell the wife type of sports betting, you know what I mean? I do this thing called pigskin mania. You got to pick five games against the spread every week, college or pro. Like three college, two pro, or like three pro, two college. And you've got to get all five right to get anything back, and it's almost impossible. Yeah, that sounds – I mean the thing is I would love – This is mania. I would love to understand how they set the lines in Vegas because the level of accuracy is just befuddling to me. I mean it will be the first game of the year. Ohio State is playing like –

Eastern Michigan or something, and they'll set the line at 48 and a half points. And I'll be like, well, how can you – and then the likelihood that that game is like decided by like 45 or 49 points is crazy. Like they are better. The guys setting the lines in Vegas are better at their job as far as I can tell than anyone is at anything. Like their ability to make every single game regardless of who is involved and the notoriety of the team. teams involved, to make it a 50-50 proposition, it blows my mind. I mean, it is incredible. And of course, there's never really been a good story about this or a documentary about this that's really accurate because those guys are smart enough not to talk. They'll never explain what's really going on. Yeah, I mean, because they'd have to be in some type of witness protection because someone with nefarious desires will kidnap them and use their powers. For evil, maybe it's, you know, one of those octopies in a tank. Blink twice if the Steelers are going to take it in four. Smart people like to explain why they're smart, but geniuses do not. The people who are really smart, you can tell when someone's really smart because they don't tell you anything. It's like big brain energy as opposed to big dick energy. I guess. If you're really letting your nuts hang, Chuck, you don't really talk about it. You just kind of let gravity do the talking for you. Of course, yes. You're just about it. What do you think? I mean, I think one of these guys could defect eventually and do something. You know what I mean? I think that they could get spit out by the system, possibly. Yeah, and the guy who made Moneyball can make the movie about it. We're going to break the fourth wall. It's going to be fucking sick. Let's get riding on this one, Chuck. I mean, it's possible. I don't know. It seems like it would have happened by now. When my friends that do gamble talk about it, it's very confusing. Like it's really hard to understand what they're talking about. If you don't know the terms, it would have to be watered down or at least half the film would have to be educational, I think, to get regular people. Half the film will be Brad Pitt telling us what an over-under vig is and stuff like that. Yeah, exactly. The core question is how do you look at an event that hasn't yet happened?

and figure out a way to become so close to the actual outcome that you can balance the better. So you get half the people betting on one side, half the other, because they just make their money on the juice thing. Like they just want to have a balanced ticket. And they're just – their brilliance at balancing these things are just – it's like there's – I don't see how if Air Force is playing – the universe is playing Georgia. Like Air Force is playing Georgia. They haven't played in I don't know how many years. Obviously one team has a program that is built around football. The other team is a bunch of guys who are playing football before they become whatever they become in the military. How can you look at those rosters and be like, well, it's going to be a 26-and-a-half point game and then be so close so often? I mean like the number of backdoor covers that happen in football, it's just mind-blowing. And I would love to know who these guys are or who these people are. who are doing this and how they're doing it. I don't know if it's all computer-assisted now and that's sort of like this is what AI is doing or if there is – like if they have – I guess we all work from the premise that they have information that I don't have, that they know things that I don't. But even if I had that information – I wouldn't be that accurate. I think there's some people using AI and then there's some old school cats that are doing it with like a pencil. That's what I like to imagine. And it's new versus old is kind of the dichotomy. Like I wouldn't even know – I wouldn't really know how to go about it. I mean outside of what any other conventional journalist would do is like go to Vegas, try to talk to these guys, try to convince them that they can trust you and that you're going to reliably sell what they're doing. They don't want this information to be known. There's no reason they would want this information to be out there. Maybe Caesars or MGM Grand did them dirty and they want a little revenge or something like that. You get Bill Simmons to put out a little dog whistle on one of his little podcasts over there. They all listen to it. You know what I mean? What's his name? Fat Sal? Or the cousin Sal is going to call his guy in Cleveland. And next thing you know, we've got the voice detection software where it's all lowered and it's blurry. This thing's in the can. I was just in Vegas, Chuck. How was it? I went to see Morrissey. Oh, really?

Alone. I've seen him a couple times. And I've got to say, it was good. Yeah, I saw him at the Apollo Theater, actually. Oh, I think I might have been there in like early 2000s. Oh, yeah, I was there. David Johansson was the opening actor. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I remember his back sweat formed a heart on his shirt. That's right. Only who else could do that? Who else could do that? We were like, did he use antiperspirant to make this happen? And I saw him again. I saw him in Akron one time. He wasn't as good in Akron. What is? Is that a surprise? I don't know if I rise to the occasion on a Tuesday in Akron the way I do at the Apollo Theater. Chris, is that the show where you got arrested afterwards? No, I got arrested after a Third Eye Blind show, sadly. Not quite as sexy. I wanted to lean a little bit more into the book, into the 90s, so we can talk about it. First of all, what are some 90s subjects or maybe some chapters that you wanted to cover but they didn't make the cut? Maybe they weren't big enough or you didn't really crack it. I would have liked to see a little more rave culture in there or something like that. I know that's not your forte though. But it wasn't so much – the problem being it wasn't my forte. I mean like I wasn't – the biosphere wasn't like my forte. Could have fooled me. Could have fooled me. But like this is what – so okay. So in the book – Okay, so I write a lot about grunge and nirvana. There's this chapter on grunge and nirvana, okay? So then people are like, well, how come you didn't put that much emphasis on the rise of hip-hop? That's a good argument. Then there are people who will be like, well, rave culture, this is actually what was happening sort of underneath the surface that was probably involving more people. And they're like, you know, at the end of the decade, there was all those boy bands and Britney Spears, and you never talk about that. There was also the period before nirvana when, like, you know, Firehouse... was still touring with Warrant and these things. The 80s were still happening. The fact of the matter is I could have written about all those artists. If that would have happened, well, then the book would be the size it is now but only about music. So I had to make decisions. Like coverage of the 1996 presidential election is just kind of folded.

into the middle of an essay about Bill Clinton. Because I talk about the 92 election, I talk about the 2000 election, but the off-year elections, I barely touch on. I mean, the thing is, if anybody were to read this book and their reaction would be like, you got everything. This is exactly what it should have been. This is the exact amount on every subject. I would think that that person was insane. Like, that's not going to happen. So when you say like, What are things that – Maybe I'll rephrase it. What was something that you had to cut that maybe stung a little bit more than some other thing? Oh, like something that I really wanted to do and then I couldn't? Nothing like that because I had done it then. I mean I obviously could have just kept working on this book. I mean there would have been, I suppose, an argument to be made that I could have just kept going and that eventually I would have an 800-page book. Where like the main takeaway would be this is a very completist look at the 90s. But I just sort of made a decision that I wanted to be the size of a normal book. I didn't want someone to not consume it based on the premise that it just seems like too much. I mean it's a weird thing. If you think about your own life, you can probably think of situations where like you didn't buy a book or you didn't finish a book because it was just too much. But I would doubt there have been many situations where you didn't buy a book or failed to finish it because you felt it was too short. It never happens. Nobody's ever not bought a book because they're like, that book is too short. I mean, it would be weird to, say, find a book on, like, I don't know, history of the 19th century, and it's 106 pages. That would be odd. You'd think to yourself, like, why did they write a pamphlet about this? But for the most part, I mean, my goal was to sort of have nothing in the book that was filler. So, you know, that that to me almost seemed more important than kind of stretching out in every direction just to satisfy the person who's like, why didn't you talk about Love Jones or like, like, why didn't you talk about, you know, Kennedy for MTV or whatever the case was? You know, there's all these things. I was I was really upset at the Kennedy erasure. And I'm glad that you brought it up and I didn't have to, Chuck. I mean, some people have said, like, well, you don't talk at all about like David Letterman.

Jay Leno and all that stuff. And I was like, I don't know. I feel like that actually is something that is just like, there's a book about that. You can read that book. I was about to say there's multiple books about that, only that. I would have liked to write a little more about the movie Slacker, actually, which I think has a lot of meaning in terms of how the 90s kind of unspooled. But my wife had done a book about Dazed and Confused. I had interviewed Richard Linklater. But what if we're wrong about like a section on dreaming from a book I wrote in 2016? So to write a bunch about Slacker, which I've also written about before, it sort of seems like, well, this is this is a little strange. It's like this is too much in my household on this one guy's life. So I didn't write about that movie. But, you know, also it was that was an easy one not to do because that wasn't really part of the monoculture. That was something that was sort of smaller than that. the repercussions sort of of its ideology or whatever moved on. Were bigger than the, yeah. You know, I want to talk about Nirvana with you a little bit. Okay. Because I'm not a believer. In what? In that they existed? They existed. No, I believe they existed. I believe they existed. Whereas I was listening to In Utero in preparation of today's episode. I would never listen to Nirvana. Like I would never think to put that on. And I don't know what that says about me or if it's just like, I lived through that. I mean I'm about to be 40. Like it's kind of my – it's reasonably my generation I think. I don't know. I found it to be a little bit corny even at the time. You know what? That's a completely understandable argument. And the fact that you don't really listen to it but brought it up in this conversation kind of illustrates why I wrote about it because Nirvana's non-musical influence was much greater than their musical influence. Damn. No, you're right. You're right. The most lucid example of underground culture becoming the mainstream culture, feeling this sort of tension with what that means, perceiving their own success as ridiculous, and that becoming actually the biggest thing about them. Their distaste for being the biggest band in the world, and that what you really see there is rock in general.

All those bands from Seattle, but sort of everything that would happen going forward, sort of coming to full consciousness and self-awareness. And self-awareness is what kills art. And the reason rock music moved out of the center of the culture was because of what happened in the early 90s when rock became self-aware. And all these ideas that it once meant were now things that the band was completely conscious of and uncomfortable with. So they're more of a hinge point in this. Like that was the beginning of the recession of rock from the culture, which nobody really noticed for 15 years, but really started happening in 1991 and 1992. Well, we're still in it right now. Do you agree? In what? In the rock music recession. I mean, it's not really part of the conversation. It's closer to the way, say, jazz was in the 1980s. I mean, they'll always be people making rock music. Of course. They'll always be able to go to Omaha, Nebraska and find rock stations on the radio just in the way you can go to any city in the country and find a jazz station. There will be people. But now it is sort of a simulation of itself. I mean, like there's a real limit to what – there was a limit to what rock could be to begin with because we don't use a lot of instruments, basically guitar, bass. drums some keyboards hell yeah bro that's right and that's all you need yes well but there's a real limit to what you can do with that eventually you're going to use all the possible combinations of that outside of just like kind of going like frank zappa-ish and just be weird to be you know to be strange um we don't like so there was there was like a limit to what to like rock and roll's potentiality begin with and then that was reached while it was still the most popular art form in the world And now it is not. So do you but do you think there's an opportunity for it to return or will that be if and if it does, will that be purely like nostalgia based or will that be actually like an excitement about new music being created in that genre? I mean, it could happen, but I would say it's incredibly unlikely. Like, I mean, it's it is it is as likely as as jazz becoming the biggest music in the country again, almost. I mean, it's I guess because of the way.

I mean, you know, it's just there's all these kind of weird things like, OK, so rock music is really the only 20th century art form where the idea is this is for young people almost exclusively. Like so it kind of comes out of after World War Two. The idea of the teenager is invented. Kids are driving cars now. You know, we moved away from this idea that you're a kid until you get a job or get married. Then you're an adult. There's now this middle period of life. So now we have this art for them, this rock music, you know? I mean, you look, you can find interviews of like Mick Jagger in 1971 getting asked questions about Mark Bolin of T-Rex. Like, how are you going to do this? You're so old and this young person is coming in to take your job. And then like, and then you can see him again. And like, like when the, like the undercover record comes out in like 1980, you can find interviews on like Friday night videos. where Mick Jagger's like, well, you know, I know we're too old to be doing this, but it's like we're just kind of doing it anyways. Well, now it's normal, right? Now it just kind of keeps going. Now, like, you know, the Hold Steady or whatever has existed much longer than the Beatles existed. Like, all of these things now kind of exist in perpetuity. And that has also changed, like, the meaning of this. Like, it's hard for rock music to have, like, any kind of transferable. emotion to it or whatever if you know their parents like the exact same music or if their parents are paying to go see U2 and the Eagles and all these things for $180 and that's still part of this universe that they're supposed to exist in that's supposed to be like this kind of not necessarily rebellious but like kind of a transgressive thing like you know new. Yeah Chris I think you might not like Nirvana and bands like that because you think it sounds ugly. I mean, I don't think it sounds ugly necessarily. I just think that it's... I think you're just such an aesthetic-based person that, you know, like the squelching voice and guitar and screaming and imperfections going on, maybe your brain doesn't respond well to that or something. It's definitely a Chris problem. I would agree with that. Like all things that I don't like, people love to tell me that it's my fault. So thank you for kind of, thank you for doing that. I think you're right.

for the most part, and I think that it is the, I do think music sounds too perfect now, actually, Jason, and I think that is something that maybe a younger generation doesn't even realize that they are accustomed to, if that makes sense. It's like everything feels like it's made with a computer, but they grew up with a computer, so maybe they're just okay with that and they don't know what else exists. Well, there's a huge backlash of that, of, you know, lo-fi everything. Sure, sure. Fucked up everything and I want to film this on a shitty video camera. Well, I mean, but they're sort of trapped by their own technology in a way. I mean, okay, so like, okay, when say Pro Tools, when Pro Tools was a new thing. When people were using Pro Tools for the first time. Pro Tools is a computer software that you use to record music for listeners who don't know. Exactly. And, like, you can have it on your computer. And, like, right behind me, there's my son's drum kit and his guitar. It's like if I had Pro Tools, I could start recording right here. And when that was new, the complaint was like, well, it's going to sound clinical. It's going to sound like a computer. It's not going to sound natural. It's not going to sound like it's. being recorded in an Abbey Road or whatever. And then they found, well, actually it is. We can change and manipulate these sound waves so it actually does sound like Abbey Road or whatever. But what that means then is the sound of music kind of reaches this static point where instead of the technology being this new thing and this new sort of new landscape, it's can this replicate the way things were in the past? And that's why it feels like, you know, this idea like the slow cancellation of the future that I talk about in every interview is because it's the most pressing thing that's happening now or like, OK, or digital film. OK, so in the past when they would shoot on film, you would be limited by like the what you know, what you can do with light and what you can do with filters and all these things. Now on digital, you can be like, well, I want this to look like Barry London and you can make it look exactly like that. But as a consequence.

The innovation in like the appearance of film is not following kind of the linear trajectory it did for most of the 20th century. Now it's – when you see things from five years ago or 15 years ago, like you might be able to pick up cultural references that tell you which came first. But just from the way it looks, it's just kind of the taste of the time. You could swap those two time periods and nobody would be confused. Speaking of the old stuff, I was reading, I don't know where I read it, but it said around the average age of 33 is when people stop checking for new music. Is that something that you're conscious of as you get older? Do you have to kind of... Do you physically remember to check for new music? Is that innately inside of you and you just do it subconsciously or have you stopped checking for new music? First of all, I don't think the age can be 33. It's got to be more like 24 or 25 because it's pretty rare to find somebody who's outside of the media world who's really into finding new music at the age of 29. Those people exist, but that's kind of rare. For a lot of people, I think the majority of the U.S. populace. mysteriously music stopped being good during their sophomore year in college like that's often where it stops like for me personally well it's not my job anymore right when it was my job i sort of had to do that now i find that these things come to me like somebody i know will tell me to listen to turnstile or whatever they'll say listen to this it's kind of like i know you don't like hardcore but this is what it would be like if a hardcore band was produced by bob rock okay good good description yeah That was what it was told to me. So now it seems as though there's no motive for me to look for new things because I know if I wait, the good stuff or the things that are interesting to me will get there eventually, and there's no time element.

When I was at Spin Magazine or whatever, there was this pressure to sort of know about everything that's happening while it's happening. I'm not like that anymore. Like if it turns out that I don't hear the best record from this year until 2028. You're going to be good. Doesn't fucking matter. I'm going to have the same experience then as I would now, except maybe with the security that there's a reason this is still around. I see what you mean. It made it through the gauntlet and somebody's still telling me to listen to it. How old are your kids? I mean, he's old enough to play drums, but are they putting you on to music or are they too young? Well, they're eight and six. Okay, they're young. They're not really to the age. I mean, he's learning guitar, right? So he's learning to play Smoke on the Water and Dirty Deeds Done Cheap. The songs you learn as a guitarist are still... Classic rock song. It's still that. House of the Rising Sun, all that stuff. Well, yeah, I mean, I think that over time, a song like Smoke on the Water will become akin to like playing chopsticks on a piano. I think we might be there already, unfortunately. Yeah, that if you like, if you want to take up this instrument, the first lesson that you have with the song is the song, which is why it's always, you know, it's confusing when people say like, well, what music of today will still exist in, you know, a hundred years or whatever? And it's like, well, you can't. Look at it based on how good you think the song is. I mean, the Mariah Carey Christmas song is still going to last in 100 years. So that's a good song, but it also has a reason to be played every year. Like a Seven Nation Army is going to exist over time because they play that at soccer and football stadiums with the band. So people are going to be familiar with that melody and they'll be like, oh, this is a regular song too. Both of those reasons, that those songs are going to exist, have nothing to do with their merit in terms of how good they are compared to the rest of music or even the rest of those artists' catalogs. But there's a place for it. No, that makes sense. Quickly, just a sidebar, what do you think about Jack White?

Well, I – what do I think about him? That's right. What do you think about this blue-haired freak, Chuck? I do think the blue hair thing was a strange decision. I mean you talk about a guy who likes color, but that's a dude who's into colors. I, like many people – I mean this is no – Super insightful opinion. For whatever reason, he has never made music outside of the White Stripes as good as the music in that band, even though there's a real limitation because it's just two instruments and Meg White's a very straight-ahead drummer. But somehow within those constraints, within those obstacles, that was the best work he does or has done. Every time he has a new record come out, very often the first single kind of really grabs me. You don't hear guitar. in public spaces much anymore in that way. So it's like, oh, if I hear it on the radio or whatever, it's interesting. When I interviewed him, he was a young artist and he was extraordinarily adversarial. And I don't think he would be that way now. Was this Spin era? Yeah, it was the first time they were on the cover of Spin. And he had this interesting, I don't know if it's a quirk or whatever, but this is how he was. If he felt... In any way, the question you were asking was in any way leading. He would say the exact opposite. So like there's like there's like a song on their second record called Little Bird. And it's got a very Jimmy Page like riff to it. And I started asking him about that. And as soon as he sees me that I'm asking him this question about Jimmy Page. He tells me he's really never listened to Led Zeppelin. He has no interest in Led Zeppelin. Jimmy who? That's just sort of his natural inclination. At the time, he was a younger person. He was still one of these people, I guess like Jimmy Page, who still had an almost famous view of the music media. That somehow this is the enemy who's trying to humiliate me and change the meaning of how my music works.

is sort of absorbed by audiences, which with younger audiences and younger musicians, that's not how it is at all. I mean like you interviewed Taylor Swift or whatever. Like she sees this interview as part of her – in a way almost like part of her catalog. Like I want to say things in this interview that's going to help me sort of promote this music the way I want it to be heard or whatever. And he wasn't like that. He was the old way, which is like – people should sit in their bedroom and stare at an Elm cover and play this record and imagine what it means. And that's almost entirely gone now. It's been a long time since I've done a feature. or even any kind of article on a young musician. Probably Taylor Swift was probably the last one, actually. Where was the Taylor Swift story? Where was that? That was GQ. Okay. And what era of T-Swift is this? The good one. Shake It Off had not come out yet. Did you find her to be professional to the point of you didn't ever feel like you were getting a real look at her? Was the sheen too strong or do you think you broke down the walls? Well, you know, she kind of has two ways of talking. She has the way of talking that she normally does. And then if you ask her a question that she doesn't like or that she feels is a meaningful question, she kind of talks in this different way. So you could always tell in the conversation. She was kind of bothered by the fact that I had once met someone who knew her pretty well. And this person had described her as calculating. And she, she, she really hated that because to her, she was like, calculating is just like negative, a way of saying a negative way of saying, I think about what I do. So then when, you know, and like, you know, there's a lot of artists now, like I, you know, who like, you know, you do an interview with them, like they'll send you stuff. I see, you know, like she, nothing like that. I didn't get anything from her. And in fact, like when the story then came out, she promoted the photographs.

from GQ on Twitter. But she didn't promote the article, and it turns out it was because I wrote about the calculating thing. Because after we had talked about it, I think that she sort of described why she didn't like the idea of being calculating. She kind of felt like I was not going to write about it. Yes, yeah. I mean, I think that I would describe anyone of that level of fame as calculating. I think that's kind of part of the job a little bit, and I also don't see that as negative. That's what she would argue, I think, too, although I am of the opinion she's a little more calculating than most, but she's also more successful than almost all. Yes, yes. Robots don't like to be called robots, I guess. I mean, it's tough to get an answer out of someone like that that feels authentic. I know what you mean. Like as soon as the tape recorder turns on, like the tone of voice changes, you know, the whole thing has a shift. Well, yeah, you know, and it's hard because, I mean, she's got someone like her. She's got like a lot of a lot to lose and a lot of concerns, a lot of things, you know, like, you know, it's kind of talking about the idea of like someone listening to her music, you know, someone who feels like they're outcast or whatever and relating to her music. And I was like, you know, I look at you. You almost seem the opposite. So I was like, but everybody has those feelings. So what are you writing about? And she told me this story about how she had an issue with a friend of hers once when she was young. And so her mom took her to the largest mall in Pennsylvania. And she remembers this whole thing to make up for it. And then someone told me, well, that's a song of hers. Like what she's describing, she's written about in the song. Because here I am. I'm asking her a question basically, essentially, if we really reduce it. I'm saying be vulnerable right now. Tell me something about yourself that is going to humanize you to people who think that you are somehow separate from the normal experience of living. And she's like, I've got the perfect song for that. If you asked me that question the way I just said it, I wouldn't answer it. I wouldn't consciously tell you something.

sort of deep and sad about my own life just because it would make for an interesting podcast. You know, I wouldn't do that. But do you think that when you're, I mean, I know you haven't done it in a while, but I feel like you were, I mean, you've done it more than most people on this earth. But I mean, I think that probably in the early days of spin, the canned response, you saw the canned response or maybe the repeated anecdote, you know, the way. you know, when somebody goes on Letterman or whatever, it'd be that kind of thing. I'm sure you saw the increase in that as people got more protective over their image as social media kind of came to light. I was at spin from 2002 to 2006. So the only social media was Friendster and then MySpace. So in terms of being a celebrity, they were not involved with Friendster and MySpace. So if I was talking to like, oh, I don't know, Beastie Boys or whoever, you know, it's like things like social media, they weren't, it wasn't even something. I mean if you had said to them, what do you think of social media? They would probably be like, well, all media is social, right? But I'm saying you did that era where it wasn't there and you continued to do it afterwards. And I think that that is – that had to be the big – I feel like as an interviewer that had to be the biggest shift in behavior or one of the biggest shifts in behavior from subjects. Yeah, because for a lot of people, their idea was I will sit through this interview. about you know what i mean culturally and who i am as an artist and what my motive is to get out the one message which is that my record is coming out may 18th that's right that's right but now they're like well that's that's one message like i that's like the one thing you can do on twitter is you can tell people that something you're doing is coming out and here's the date like it's like this idea that somehow like Celebrities have now like taken control of their image. There is absolutely nothing that celebrity Twitter accounts and Instagram accounts that are doing that has any significance to anyone who cares about them except their most ardent fan. Like for anybody who is actually intrigued by the meaning of these things, no one is going to self-promote that. But they can just avoid the interview now because the thing that they wanted to get out when the thing was in existence, how you could buy it.

That is the one thing that social media is well-designed. You're right. I love shopping. I mean, yeah, I think that the – we talk about this a lot on the show, though, a little bit, the thing that's happening now where there's no real interview. It's basically like your fellow celebrity does it or you write – Beyonce writes an essay for her Vogue story, and it's like – I think that level of control is – I think it might hurt in the long run, honestly. I think it might hurt in the long run because it, again, plays into what you're talking about, about the calculating thing. It makes it so much more obvious. But I think the rise of the Hive has made it matter less. Like I think that fans don't actually give a shit about anything once they're locked in in the way that it happens now. Absolutely. I mean it's – I don't know. You could say it's almost kind of a – a consequence of just how even the biggest things in the culture matter less than they had during previous eras. Because of like, you know, the kind of the splintering of culture and sort of, you know, it's a strange thing. So when I was a journalist in the 90s, I was obsessed. with like postmodernism. You know, I wonder how many articles I wrote where I just kind of like threw the term postmodern into the piece, right? Because that's what everyone was doing. That was the thinking of the time. And at the time, you know, it was just like, it's an interesting idea. It's like a new way to think about a celebrity or a movie or a book or all these things. And now I feel kind of weird because I suppose I helped make that the only way to think about anything. I mean, obviously I played the tiny role in this. But I was one of the people I think who sort of probably pushed the media in this postmodern direction and now that is the media in totality. That's sort of the only thing that there is and that makes things both harder to understand but also that understanding is less significant because it's like it's what almost your most cynical projection.

It's probably part of the answer. Oh, you're right. You're absolutely right. I don't, I mean, it's hotly debated. It's one of those things that was like hotly debated for like six months. I feel like, you know what I mean? That style of like the way that it was, there were no other voices except the celebrity voices. It's like all these documentaries that come out that are produced by the celebrity. And it's like, uh. I just watched two hours of MGK like complaining about his life, and then I noticed that he paid for this basically. And nobody likes that, right? But I will say lucky is the only way. I was lucky that I've kind of been on both sides of this now. So I spent most of my career interviewing people. Then there was a period where I was interviewing people and being interviewed, and now most of it is me being interviewed more often than I interview anyone else. And there are certain things. that I would have never allowed as a journalist that now seem insane to me that somebody wouldn't allow with me. I mean, like, well, I mean, now it just seems kind of crazy. It'd be like, I mean, I now realize that very often, like, you know, I'd be, say, interviewing, I don't know, Dave Perner or something from Soul Asylum. Let's go. Thank you for saying Soul Asylum. And like what I think I was unconsciously doing was almost trying. to trap him into saying something that was more interesting than he wanted it to be. Like I was trying to get him to feel comfortable and also sort of take the question seriously and in a way somehow that would coalesce with him saying something that he'd never said before that would be interesting to other people. But it wasn't necessarily how he felt, right? If I convinced him to talk about dating Winona Ryder or whatever, which was a minor relationship in his life, but to the public it's a bigger deal because they're both famous, then it was somehow a successful story. So now when people interview me, I realize that if I misspeak or if I say something that on paper is going to seem arrogant even though I was joking at the time, I know that I'm never going to be able to go back and say like, well, that's not actually like what I felt. So if you print this, you'll consciously be printing something I don't believe. That's just how it is.

The only journalists who are generally allowed to let their sources read the material are science reporters. If you're doing a genetics piece, it's totally understandable to take the piece to a geneticist and say, is this true? Because you want it to be right. But somehow in every other aspect of journalism, it's like buyer beware. It's like if I talk to you and you fuck up, that's your life now. So I feel very strange about that. If I went back to profile writing now, I would be much, much better at it, and the stories would likely be less interesting. Or at least they would get less attention. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They would not be the kind of thing where it's like, oh, can you believe Val Kilmer said this or whatever? I don't know if that would be part of a story I would write now because if I felt like that was in the piece, I would talk to the dude and make sure it's like, no, this is actually how you feel about this, right? Like this isn't. This isn't me sort of interpreting what you're saying because other people are going to interpret it and some people are going to willfully misinterpret it, which is just part of the world now. I mean, you have to now expect that anything you do will not just be misinterpreted but willfully misinterpreted by a sector of the population. Could you argue or would you agree that podcasts are like one form of interviewing somebody where you do have that control, where you can? Say like, hey, I meant to say this instead of that. Can you cut that out? And usually they will say yes. It's not going to be like a gotcha moment and I'm going to – Absolutely. I mean like I feel 25 times more comfortable doing this than if you guys were just tape recording this and you were going to write a piece for Bandy Fair or The Atlantic or whatever. Then I'd be like, well, I got no idea what they really want to do here and like what I'm really – How is this going to be used? But here, it's sort of like even if you have bad intentions, like even if you go back and like if like the intro to this podcast is you just saying terrible things about me, you know, people are still then going to want to watch the thing and they're going to see or listen to the thing. I guess it's only audio only, right? They're going to listen to it and they're going to hear how the conversation went. So, I mean, I feel much.

safer in that way you know whereas on paper yeah i can't do will you ever go back do you think are you good are is this you're gonna write books forever is that where you're at now probably i feel like you could have a return to form you know what if somebody is so compelling that you feel a magnetic pull well that's absolutely i mean there are some people i guess if i was offered the opportunity to interview them i would still say yes sure you know but but the number of those people yeah yeah is um is you know they keep dying Smaller and smaller, they keep dying. And that's true. Every place I have ever worked, every single one, from Fargo to Akron to Spin to GQ, Esquire, New York Times Magazine, every one of them has put in a request for me to interview Axl Rose. And I will be honest. I think that I am probably as qualified to do that as anyone. In terms of like being able to actually do the interview and write something kind of about it that wouldn't just be like a transcript of the conversation. He's always said no. And now we've kind of moved to a phase where my desire to do that has sort of waned a bit because he's a different person now. And the things that we would be talking about would now be seen to the prism of his modern view. Like one thing that I told this line other places, like you'd mentioned like seeing Morrissey, right? Yeah. How mind-blowing would it be to go to, like, the most progressive kid you could find in 1989 and say, like, do you know who's going to really support all your views in the future? Axl Rose. But you know who you're going to hate? They would have been like, what? Like, what do you mean? That's like Ohio State versus Air Force. Yeah, actually, speaking of that, I think we're going to have Bob Guccione Jr. on the podcast in a little while. I think he's buying Spinback or something. I think so, too. I believe so. How long gone exclusive? How long gone exclusive. But wasn't the Axl Rose thing back in the day, the whole reason why they had that beef is they would ask for a full creative...

control final say on the whole piece. And then I think they charged money as well. Is that, is that true back in the day? Well, I mean, okay. Like you, you had boots on the ground back then. I was just a wee lad. Yeah. Well, no, I was during the period you're talking about. This is like the use your illusion period, right? Where they're at the height. I'm in the ring motherfucker. Yes. Yeah. So like during that time, you know, like in that, in that song, get in the ring, he basically attacks every place that covers him with any consistency. I guess he saw it all. I don't think – I think it would be – although you never know because celebrities tend to look at publications as like monoliths. Like this will happen. Like I'll meet a writer and he'll be like, I hate the New York Times. They gave me a terrible review of my book in 1988 or whatever. I was like, well, that person is probably not there now. You're good. I don't think that there's any institutional knowledge of that review that still kind of moves through. So but maybe Axl Rose still is like spin fuck me over in the 90s. Fuck them. But I don't think so because he seems like a dramatically different person. Like not everybody changes as the age. He's changed more than most. So a lot of the things that I would be really interested in asking him about, I think he would probably now be closer to almost someone like. Kind of like using therapy speak or whatever, sort of like, well, I was very fearful at that time and I was fearful of the world. So I don't know if it would be the same. I would have liked to interview Prince, but obviously he's dead. Allegedly. Yeah, allegedly. And he would have been a great person to interview because he had this policy that you couldn't tape record the interview and you couldn't take notes. you couldn't you couldn't bring a pen or a pencil in anything had to go off dome yeah yeah you had to just kind of go you know because he felt that he wasn't worried about being misquoted he was being worried about being quoted accurately in a way that would seem not not a reflection of what he meant but he's like if i just talk to the guy and the guy has to sort of describe what i'm like i'm gonna come off better prince is coming in vibes only as the kids say nowadays

That's smart. I didn't know that. I've never heard that about him before. That's very smart. I was listening to a previous podcast interview with you earlier, and you mentioned something or you said something that sort of reminded me a little bit of Chris and maybe podcasting in general. You said the consumer prefers someone whose opinions are almost too strong, inflexibly certain, and you said you don't trust people like that. Yeah. First of all, why do you not trust people like that? And second of all, I mean, I guess maybe that's it. If you're talking to someone in real life, you would rather have a rational person than a bombastic person in most cases. But if you're listening to something, and it's already a one-way kind of – like people can't talk back to this podcast, right? Thank God. Strong opinions that you were inflexible about. But the fact of the matter is it's like problems are complex. So if somebody has an opinion and they really feel forceful about it, it probably just means they haven't thought about it that much. Because the more you think about something, the more you're going to be pushed to a centrist position. I mean this is why I just find it mind-blowing to me that people will use the term centrist. or pragmatist as an insult. That's just so weird to me that somebody would be like – Maybe it might lack passion. I mean I agree with you 100 percent. To be intelligent, you need to remove the passion from the conversation. I mean it's like we can't decide if we're trying to figure out like should a state have capital punishment. It wouldn't make sense to make that decision, to have that decision made. by 15 people who just had a family member killed. If there was 15 people who just had a family member murdered, those are not the people you ask, should capital punishment exist in this state? You need to ask people who are outside of that. So to me, if somebody says, it's troubling to me that you have this kind of centrist position because you lack passion, I was like, well, that's not an accident. Maybe I was passionate when I first thought of the thing.

And now I've slowly moved to a point where I've considered the possibility that passion is usually misplaced. I've considered both sides so carefully. It is. It's definitely made it tougher to be an essayist because people like polemics. They think it's really – they love it. Thank God for me and this podcast. Also, it's more work to be a centrist or a pragmatist, I guess, and it's easier to just choose one side and then go on with your life. Yes. Last question for you, Chuck. Now that you have a wife, you are with child, do you consider yourself to be more of a wife guy or a dad guy? Okay. The way you're asking that question makes me think that there's a meaning to this that I don't fully understand. Don't? No. No, because I see this term wife guy. Twitter. That's right. And it's and these are guys who often reference their wife. They like their wife. They like their wife too much, basically. And is the idea that if that that or I thought it was maybe I guess maybe this is I jumped to conclusions. I thought when people were accused of being a wife guy, it was like people kind of like who say, like, I'm a feminist. I have a daughter. Like because I have a wife, you have to somehow take what I say about feminism more seriously. No, no. No, no, no. To me, the meaning of a wife guy is somebody who's maybe devoted a little too much of their life to their wife to the point where their happiness hinges on the happiness of their wife. Well, okay. And they've become a little too obsessed with being in a relationship. Then, okay. So, but the thing is, you know, like my wife and I are both adults, right? Good to know. Thank you for clearing that up. Thank you for clearing that up. We both have agency over how we feel in a way that kids don't always have. Like a lot of times kids don't understand why they're upset or why they're having fun. They just don't get it. So like that old adage is like you can only be as happy as your least happy child. That's absolutely true. There's like no way around. Like you're never.

If one of my kids is having a bad day, I'm having a bad day. If my wife is having a bad day, I'm sad and I'm trying to help her out in a sense. But I also know that she is smart enough to figure it out. So I think that's kind of the difference, I think. I mean it's just – and just the amount of time you invest thinking about your children, it's just wild. Like I can't – I can't – it's hard for me now to understand what I was thinking about before this. I guess that's why I was writing about Saved by the Bell and that shit. It was like I had so much – I had so much fucking time. I could actually invest that much thinking into like Zach Morris, and it's like it didn't matter. It was easy. Like that would mean – like Six Drugs and Cocoa Puffs, that's a lot. That book is old now. I never think about that book, but people bring it up to me because it's the most popular one. It's a book I wrote like in four months. I can't believe it. I just did it. Just did it. And now I don't feel like I'm that kind of person at all. There's no way that I could do anything, any book-like thing, like in four months, because it's not the most important thing in my life. I mean, for most of my life, writing was the most important thing in my life. Now my wife and my kids are more important. Sounds like, Jason, it sounds like the answer is kids guy. Which is good. Which is good. That's the right answer, Chuck. Is it the right answer? Okay. That's the right answer. That's the right answer. I knew you would get there, and I'm glad that you walked us kindly down that path. Chuck Klosterman, thank you for joining us today on How Long Gone. It was a pleasure. It was a pleasure. We both read your stuff for years and years, so it was nice to sit and chat with you on this Internet platform. Thanks for having me on. No problem. In the 90s is in stores now, wherever you buy books. I guess that's it. Jason, is that it? Chuck, is that it? Unless you have any new things to announce in your life that are absolutely fucking insane. Well, you know, they're making that book Downtown Owl into a movie. Oh, are they? It's coming out next year. They already made it, I guess. I wondered how you afforded that house. That's good to know. Congratulations on that. That's good. Oh, you know what I got? I sold the rights to that book so long ago at a time when it seemed so impossible that it would ever become a movie.

There was like a floor and a ceiling to what I could make, and the floor was $5,000 and the ceiling was $50,000. And that deal never changed. So this house has nothing to do with that movie. Okay, so it bought you a couple cold brews down at the local Blue Bottle. That's still good. You know what I mean? It's still good. Do you know who's starring in the movie? I don't know if we can say all that, Chris. How can I? Suddenly I can't think of his name. He's a pretty famous actor. I would hope so. He was in Apollo 13. Tom Hanks. No, no. Ed Harris. Ed Harris is the biggest name. Whoa, Ed, this is good. This is the biggest name. Lily Rabin. Lily Rabe, I guess. She's like more of a theatrical. She was in like American Horror Story and stuff. She's in it. Boy, I can't. Do you get a cameo or no? No, I do not get a cameo. Do you get a little script supervisor check or anything? Well, you know. If it had been a nonfiction book, I might have been more interested in being involved with it. But when it's a novel, I feel like you just got to tell people, be creative. Do what you want. Yeah. No, you're right. That's a smarter way. Because if I was trying to make a movie or trying to do something and somebody was on my case about how it should be, it would not help. So I just let it go. Smart. You're an involved guy, Chuck. Thank you for joining us. You bet. Kyle Long Gone. We'll talk to you soon. Have a good day.