Get Off My Lawn - Gavin McInnes - Get Off My Lawn Podcast #16 | Did you ever see someone go crazy?

00:00:00.000 Did you ever see someone go crazy? 0.99

00:00:04.000 I don't mean go crazy like fucking party dude and do a backflip at a party and then do a line and then jump out the window. 0.99

00:00:15.000 I mean mentally deteriorate to nothing. 1.00

00:00:19.000 I've seen it a couple times.

00:00:22.000 Mostly in my younger days.

00:00:23.000 I guess that makes sense because you know you get older and you're not going to be around crazy people.

00:00:29.000 And people who are 32 don't really go nuts.

00:00:35.000 I remember there was a bald guy in a ska band who was around 30 and he went nuts.

00:00:40.000 Me, Mom and Morgenthaler, I think they were called.

00:00:42.000 I remember he was at the airport and he said, he holds up his passport to his friend and he goes, who's that?

00:00:52.000 And his friend goes, that's you, John.

00:00:54.000 And he goes, no, that's a picture of me.

00:00:57.000 Uh-oh.

00:01:00.000 I had a buddy named Ryan.

00:01:03.000 I moved out when I was 18 and back then you just crash on people's floors and stuff.

00:01:10.000 It's really great being a young person.

00:01:14.000 You don't need food.

00:01:15.000 You need beer.

00:01:16.000 I wish I could get in a time machine and just go and give myself a six-pack because beer was such a commodity back then.

00:01:22.000 It was like Bitcoin.

00:01:24.000 And you would just, you worked so hard for it.

00:01:27.000 I remember going to parties and you would grit your teeth

00:01:30.000 And then chug the leftover beers.

00:01:33.000 And you grit your teeth because you didn't want to get cigarettes in your lungs, in your throat, in your esophagus.

00:01:41.000 So you're getting ash in there.

00:01:43.000 Luckily, this was Canada, so we didn't have to worry about tobacco chewers, but that must be a whole other ball of wax. 1.00

00:01:49.000 But, so when one of our friends went nuts, it was just like, that's okay.

00:01:55.000 It's like he got a new hairdo, or came out of the closet. 0.99

00:01:59.000 Maybe that is a form of going nuts, becoming gay. 1.00

00:02:02.000 That's an interesting dissertation research paper. 0.94

00:02:06.000 Of course, you'd never get the funding or the okay, but I think it's worth checking out.

00:02:12.000 Um, and he, he woke up once and he said, I smelt burning and he said, the color purple's trying to kill me.

00:02:19.000 Not the movie, not Oprah, but the actual color.

00:02:23.000 And he had a purple Lakers hat he would wear.

00:02:26.000 And he, he burnt holes in it with a lighter.

00:02:29.000 And the weirdest part about it was he, he held onto it.

00:02:35.000 He kept wearing it.

00:02:35.000 So you just hang out with Ryan and you could see his hair because there was gigantic like coffee mug sized burn holes in his purple hat.

00:02:47.000 If purple wants to kill me I'm throwing out the whole hat.

00:02:50.000 There's still the brim that could get you in the middle of the night, turn into a, I don't know how purple kills people, but I don't even want like a purple dot. 0.98

00:02:58.000 Couldn't that just go right through your head?

00:03:00.000 Like a little tiny grain of sand bullet? 0.89

00:03:02.000 That's gonna do some damage.

00:03:04.000 If you have a grain of sand go through your head, it's gonna give you a lobotomy.

00:03:08.000 Or maybe just take out some bad memories.

00:03:13.000 I also lived with this chick, Amy, for a while. 1.00

00:03:15.000 I saw her go nuts. 0.99

00:03:16.000 That was a very clinical example.

00:03:18.000 And in my book, Death of Cool, we talk about... I talk about this guy, Dr. John.

00:03:24.000 Now, that was a real serious case.

00:03:25.000 I won't repeat it too much here, because it's in the book, but he was amazing.

00:03:31.000 He had... There was Dr. John, and he was a doctor.

00:03:34.000 He taught at MIT.

00:03:36.000 If you ever got him talking about physics or astronomy, he'd blow your mind.

00:03:42.000 His real focus was an opera he was writing, and it contained all of his personalities, which included him, a little bit, but mostly Snuggles the dog and Superman.

00:03:54.000 Not Superman the superhero, but the Ubermensch.

00:03:57.000 The Nietzschean ubermensch, the perfect being.

00:04:00.000 And the perfect being was always tormenting Snuggles the dog.

00:04:04.000 And he would yell.

00:04:05.000 I'd hear him in his tent.

00:04:07.000 I'd hear the ubermensch screaming at Snuggles in John's tent, which was a child's tent, so his feet stuck out the bottom. 0.98

00:04:13.000 And he would say, You are a bear and you eat in the garbage! 0.72

00:04:18.000 That hurts, Snuggles.

00:04:20.000 Snuggles, by the way, had a doghouse that he lived in that had a picture of Moses in the doghouse.

00:04:25.000 And his arguments would happen face-to-face as he'd make sock puppets out of socks that were just socks on his hands.

00:04:32.000 And then he would crouch down low and put his hands over his head, and then these talking hand socks

00:04:38.000 Would scream at each other on the bus as we went back and forth to our land. 0.75

00:04:41.000 So that was a loony.

00:04:42.000 But um, now Amy was a good case.

00:04:44.000 She worked at Degrassi Junior High.

00:04:47.000 Now there's been several iterations of Degrassi Junior High.

00:04:49.000 But this was uh, this was number one.

00:04:53.000 Drake in the wheelchair, that was like number five or something.

00:04:57.000 I don't know.

00:04:58.000 That was a reboot.

00:05:00.000 You know, one time I was talking to a guy and I said, dude, I went to junior high with you.

00:05:05.000 Diabri Moody in Nepean.

00:05:06.000 Did you go to Diabri Moody?

00:05:08.000 And he goes, oh, God.

00:05:09.000 I go, what's the matter?

00:05:10.000 You didn't like it there?

00:05:11.000 It was a good school.

00:05:12.000 Remember the creek going through the back?

00:05:14.000 Did you know David McIntosh?

00:05:15.000 And he goes, uh, no.

00:05:17.000 What teachers did you have there?

00:05:19.000 Because I think we hung out.

00:05:21.000 You know Darren Alberti?

00:05:23.000 Uh, and Kevin Jessup?

00:05:25.000 Any of these names ring a bell?

00:05:26.000 Christy Bradnax?

00:05:28.000 And he goes, uh,

00:05:32.000 I was on a show called Degrassi Junior High.

00:05:34.000 I was in a band called Zit Remedy.

00:05:39.000 I thought someone from the TV was my friend and I hung out with him.

00:05:44.000 Homer Simpson did that.

00:05:45.000 He thought that the Fonz was his buddy and he would hang out at Al's Cafe with Patsy and Richard Cunningham. 1.00

00:05:53.000 I'm as stupid as Homer Simpson. 0.99

00:05:56.000 So Amy was in the first version and 0.99

00:05:59.000 She took Herbal E, which I don't recommend.

00:06:03.000 And she started to lose it.

00:06:05.000 Now, I'm not a very caring person, so I never even noticed the first third of her decay.

00:06:11.000 But, uh... Plus, they're all lugs. 0.92

00:06:15.000 I lived with lesbians in Montreal. 0.98

00:06:17.000 And it was, uh... This is post Ryan and the Color Purple.

00:06:21.000 This is probably 1990.

00:06:22.000 And, um...

00:06:22.000 I was 19.

00:06:27.000 I call them lugs, lesbians until graduation. 1.00

00:06:29.000 It's these lesbians that are just doing it for fun. 1.00

00:06:32.000 And by the way, homo college students, it's pretty easy to be a lesbian, to be gay, when you're gorgeous and young. 1.00

00:06:39.000 Let's see you be a lesbian when you got a gunt. 1.00

00:06:42.000 Your tits are long enough to fit into your front pockets. 1.00

00:06:46.000 That's a little more challenging. 1.00

00:06:47.000 Any drunk college girl can make out with a chick. 1.00

00:06:50.000 Just to shock people.

00:06:51.000 You're not a minority.

00:06:53.000 I know you want to be special so bad, so you just eat out a 10, but I'm not impressed.

00:07:01.000 But they would have, um, they'd have all these different names.

00:07:05.000 Like I'd get a call, hi is Leroy there?

00:07:06.000 I don't know.

00:07:09.000 These girls change their names so much. 1.00

00:07:10.000 Do you mean the weird chick with the short hair who makes stupid, funky hats for a living that just look like something that that band Arrested Development would wear or De La Soul when they... This was the early 90s when rap was about dressing like a couch and having orange Chuck Taylors on. 0.99

00:07:26.000 Everyone was so cute and cuddly.

00:07:28.000 It was really irritating.

00:07:31.000 Yeah, that's who I mean.

00:07:32.000 Okay, yeah, she's here.

00:07:33.000 Leroy!

00:07:37.000 That's my dog's name.

00:07:38.000 It's confusing, because I'm doing this from my home office.

00:07:43.000 But he doesn't come when called anyway, so don't worry about it.

00:07:46.000 So she was losing her mind, and I didn't notice at the beginning, and I go, Amy, what's with your face?

00:07:53.000 She goes, what do you mean?

00:07:55.000 I go, you look, it was like that video, that black and white video.

00:07:58.000 I don't get madder if you're black or white.

00:08:02.000 And faces are changing like, I'm an old Chinese lady.

00:08:05.000 Oh, I'm a young white boy.

00:08:07.000 I'm a black guy.

00:08:09.000 And they use CGI to morph the faces.

00:08:12.000 That's what her face was like.

00:08:13.000 And I go, stop making like 37 faces.

00:08:15.000 Just settle on a face.

00:08:16.000 Lock into it.

00:08:17.000 It was like Martin Short in that movie Clifford, where he's a 12-year-old.

00:08:21.000 And what's his name?

00:08:22.000 Goes, just be a normal kid.

00:08:24.000 And he goes, OK.

00:08:25.000 And makes an awkward smile.

00:08:26.000 And he goes, no, that's a weird smile.

00:08:27.000 Just make a normal kid face.

00:08:29.000 And he makes another face.

00:08:31.000 Martin Short's a genius.

00:08:32.000 That movie's awesome.

00:08:33.000 Very underrated flick.

00:08:35.000 Martin Short plays a 12-year-old.

00:08:36.000 Please check it out.

00:08:39.000 Uh, so she's doing that and then I go, I just laugh it off.

00:08:42.000 I was dealing pot at the time and this was college and I go downstairs and leave and I heard later that she ran into the bathroom and stared at her face in the mirror and started screaming and punching the mirror and smashed the mirror. 1.00

00:08:58.000 I guess I found that out because I was trying to figure out what happened to the mirror.

00:09:02.000 So she was going insane.

00:09:03.000 She was wearing her favorite sweater from when she was

00:09:06.000 In kindergarten, which was quite tight on her considering she was six feet tall.

00:09:09.000 I was crushing her ribcage.

00:09:11.000 I think my buddy Derek Beckles was dating her at the time and just totally abandoned her. 1.00

00:09:15.000 Eh, you're crazy. 0.80

00:09:17.000 Not interested, thanks. 0.98

00:09:20.000 So we're stuck with her.

00:09:22.000 And she was talking to her cat a lot.

00:09:24.000 And this was all herbal-y, by the way.

00:09:27.000 She's talking to her cat and she starts writing on these pieces of paper.

00:09:31.000 For four days.

00:09:31.000 I don't think she slept until the room was about two feet deep of just papers that had random thoughts on them.

00:09:39.000 Sometimes they'd have drawings and just piles and piles and piles of paper.

00:09:43.000 It was like the feds were going through a hospital's records and just emptying everything on the ground.

00:09:49.000 Just paper everywhere.

00:09:50.000 She must have bought, you know, boxes and boxes of it.

00:09:55.000 And, uh...

00:09:57.000 She says to me, in a moment of sanity, look, my parents are probably going to pick me up soon.

00:10:01.000 They're going to want to put me in a mental institution.

00:10:03.000 Don't let them do it.

00:10:04.000 It's my last wish.

00:10:07.000 And I go, got it, Amy.

00:10:09.000 And then her parents show up soon after, a couple days later.

00:10:13.000 And we're all sitting down.

00:10:14.000 And she's got these weird sort of swirling eyes that have a sort of catatonic stare with this distant smile.

00:10:22.000 Hello.

00:10:24.000 I don't

00:10:41.000 You don't wear blue jeans, you wear green or yellow jeans.

00:10:44.000 Everyone dresses like they're in a kid's show and they're the host.

00:10:49.000 So even a secretary going to work on Monday won't just wear a wool hat because it's cold.

00:10:54.000 She'll have a court jester's hat with little bells on it. 1.00

00:10:57.000 Everyone is in a kid's show there.

00:10:59.000 It's romper room.

00:11:01.000 And if you're slightly punk, well that's a whole other level. 1.00

00:11:05.000 So you just look completely ridiculous. 1.00

00:11:07.000 You look like a lazy clown. 1.00

00:11:10.000 And I'm there, a lazy, off-duty clown, collecting unemployment. 1.00

00:11:15.000 I wasn't literally collecting unemployment. 0.95

00:11:16.000 I mean, that's what I looked like.

00:11:18.000 And I said, the way 19-year-olds do, to her brother, Yeah, actually, um... Amy made it very clear to me that she doesn't want to be institutionalized, so I would be remiss if I didn't convey that to you.

00:11:30.000 It's something that means a lot to her, and it was... As her friend, I'm imparting that to you.

00:11:37.000 This guy's about 15 years older than me in a suit and his little sister lost her mind. 1.00

00:11:45.000 Just get the fuck out of my face. 1.00

00:11:48.000 And I don't know what happened to her after that. 1.00

00:11:50.000 I think she stayed in Toronto and got fixed.

00:11:52.000 I think she fixed, meaning her brain was repaired.

00:11:55.000 She's opened a cafe, I believe.

00:11:57.000 The way it worked with Degrassi Junior High is they didn't pay the kids the first round. 1.00

00:12:02.000 Typical Canadian socialist crap. 0.99

00:12:04.000 They would just pay them with lunch. 1.00

00:12:07.000 And then they became a massive success.

00:12:09.000 Biggest show in Australia.

00:12:11.000 Worldwide hit.

00:12:12.000 And they go, oh, we have some money.

00:12:14.000 We can't just give kids money.

00:12:16.000 Come up with a project and we'll pay for it.

00:12:18.000 So Amy's project was a cafe.

00:12:21.000 I think it worked, I'm not sure.

00:12:23.000 But Joey Jeremiah, remember him from Zit Remedy, the cool guy with the fedora?

00:12:28.000 He took his money and he made a documentary with it about gun violence in Canada.

00:12:37.000 That's like doing a documentary about the serious voodoo problem we have in Ontario. 1.00

00:12:44.000 That's like doing a documentary about the history of Canadian cricket. 0.99

00:12:52.000 It's dumb. 0.97

00:12:54.000 The only people who suffer gun violence in Canada, and this is back, I'm talking about the late 80s, early 90s, are deer. 1.00

00:13:02.000 And deer are dicks. 0.99

00:13:04.000 Deer are losers. 1.00

00:13:06.000 I've said this many times. 1.00

00:13:07.000 They are a biological abomination.

00:13:10.000 Basically, look, I'm a Western chauvinist. 0.65

00:13:12.000 I'm a human chauvinist, too.

00:13:13.000 And let's not kid ourselves when we see a hammerhead shark.

00:13:16.000 You are the initial formula, the microchip, gone awry.

00:13:21.000 You have gone astray.

00:13:23.000 The design after the Big Bang was, I'm gonna make these humans, and they're gonna get better and better, but it's kind of a crazy piece of toxic sludge I'm throwing into the mix here, so there's gonna be abominations. 0.59

00:13:35.000 And everything that's not human is an abomination. 0.97

00:13:37.000 A pygmy shrew is a cursed being. 0.92

00:13:40.000 It has to eat five times its weight every day.

00:13:43.000 It's always running around in a constant state of panic.

00:13:46.000 It's living in hell.

00:13:48.000 Humans literally rule.

00:13:52.000 So Joey, that's the only people who should be worried about gun violence and they're not people.

00:13:56.000 So that was a strange move. 0.99

00:13:59.000 A dumb cafe would have been better. 0.97

00:14:04.000 But it was a time when... You know what I just realized? 0.98

00:14:08.000 Sorry to interrupt myself.

00:14:10.000 When I said that to that guy about, yeah, she's not going to be going to a mental institution, just so you know, when I had that sort of patronizing tone to someone who has a lot more skin in the game, higher stakes, basically an authority figure, it reminds me of I went skiing recently.

00:14:30.000 And this is going to relate to insanity.

00:14:33.000 I went skiing recently, and I hadn't really been.

00:14:35.000 As Canadians, you grow up skiing all the time.

00:14:39.000 It's a blue-collar thing.

00:14:40.000 It's not a she-she sport. 0.99

00:14:42.000 The bourgeois people in the ski pants in Aspen, it's cheap in Canada.

00:14:46.000 And rednecks go because they live right there. 1.00

00:14:48.000 The farmer's kids are all skiing.

00:14:49.000 They wear jeans, no gloves, no hat, just a ski coat and jeans, and they whip down the hills.

00:14:57.000 We used to play this game, Chinese Downhill, where we would destroy each other. 1.00

00:15:01.000 Like, you'd see your buddy... The rule is to get to the bottom of the hill first, and that's it.

00:15:05.000 So you'd see your buddy about 20 feet away, and you'd just... Just swoop in on him like a seagull and just nail him!

00:15:12.000 Send him flying off the skis! 0.98

00:15:14.000 Or we'd go off the trail and just in through the woods.

00:15:17.000 That was fun, too.

00:15:18.000 And then, even waiting in line, we would smash each other's skis with our ski poles, leaving them looking like Swiss cheese in the back.

00:15:27.000 Everyone's skis were totally destroyed behind the ski boot.

00:15:34.000 So that's how I grew up with skiing and the idea of wearing a helmet was so unfathomable that if you saw someone with a helmet on, your heart would break in two.

00:15:44.000 And then I go back, revisited after a 20-year hiatus, and I get my son a snowboard, and I get my daughter and my youngest son skis.

00:15:53.000 I don't know why.

00:15:54.000 And I rent some skis.

00:15:56.000 You know, you don't really forget it.

00:15:57.000 It doesn't take long to bring it back.

00:15:59.000 I did snowboard for about 10 years.

00:16:01.000 Sorry, you can't snowboard as a 47-year-old man.

00:16:03.000 It's not a good look.

00:16:06.000 It's like being a 47-year-old skater and bending over at this age, fixing your bindings.

00:16:12.000 No.

00:16:14.000 But my son didn't want to do it. 1.00

00:16:17.000 He said, this is stupid. 0.99

00:16:18.000 I want to switch to skis. 1.00

00:16:19.000 You switch to skis.

00:16:20.000 They always do this thing, kids, where they go, you got to do that.

00:16:22.000 Yeah, I get to drink a bottle of bourbon and piss myself.

00:16:27.000 I get to drive cars.

00:16:30.000 I get to fly first class.

00:16:32.000 You're not me, dude.

00:16:34.000 It's not a democracy.

00:16:35.000 It's a benevolent dictatorship at best.

00:16:38.000 So I signed you up for lessons and he said, no, don't do that.

00:16:45.000 And then I went and I got the lessons and I said, OK, you got to go walk over to that guy with the red coat and he's going to take you down the hill with a different group.

00:16:52.000 And my nine-year-old son goes, why did you sign me up for lessons when I explicitly told you not to?

00:16:57.000 I explicitly?

00:17:02.000 You were explicit in your instructions were you little Lord Fauntleroy? 0.70

00:17:07.000 Holy crap did I laugh when he said that but it was exactly the way I talked about Amy.

00:17:12.000 And skiing is relevant to this conversation and so are helmets because people are going up and down that hill trillions of times all over the world right now. 0.95

00:17:22.000 Hordes and hordes of people whipping down the hills.

00:17:25.000 They're not dying.

00:17:28.000 Sonny Bono died.

00:17:29.000 Liam Neeson's wife died.

00:17:31.000 People are not bonk, ping, tonk, bonking their heads into those poles that run the chairlift. 0.85

00:17:38.000 Or they're not hitting their heads against trees.

00:17:40.000 How many deaths do we get a year from skiing?

00:17:42.000 Six.

00:17:43.000 Every single person on the hill is wearing a helmet.

00:17:48.000 That's just bad math.

00:17:51.000 The odds of an air conditioner landing on your head are higher.

00:17:54.000 The odds of dying from a spider bite are higher.

00:17:57.000 What are you doing?

00:17:57.000 It's like these women in New York with their giant water bottles.

00:18:01.000 Why are you doing that?

00:18:05.000 You're not going to die of dehydration.

00:18:08.000 That's absolutely insane.

00:18:11.000 I know, you know what it is, it's a hustle.

00:18:13.000 People, they just get, I don't like seeing people get hustled.

00:18:18.000 I don't know why I care.

00:18:19.000 But when I see you drinking water, I go, how many people in New York have suffered, have died from dehydration?

00:18:25.000 Oh, zero?

00:18:26.000 Okay.

00:18:26.000 What's the, where's the fire?

00:18:28.000 Why are you carrying a giant purse with three liters of water?

00:18:31.000 And these helmets everywhere. 1.00

00:18:32.000 You look like retards. 1.00

00:18:34.000 We used to build jumps for our bikes in the 70s. 0.98

00:18:36.000 The idea of wearing a helmet.

00:18:38.000 I was a bike messenger in Montreal through the winters for five years.

00:18:42.000 Never wore a helmet.

00:18:44.000 Yeah, I wiped out a bunch.

00:18:45.000 So what?

00:18:47.000 No one ever ran over my head.

00:18:49.000 That doesn't really happen. 1.00

00:18:50.000 And then I say that to people and they go, you shit the bed there, buddy. 0.98

00:18:54.000 Did you know that 98% of downhill skiing deaths are from someone not wearing a helmet? 0.99

00:19:00.000 I'm like, yeah.

00:19:02.000 98% of what number?

00:19:02.000 12?

00:19:03.000 Do you know how many times people go down a hill?

00:19:06.000 It's a miracle that they don't crash more.

00:19:08.000 It's a miracle that planes don't crash more.

00:19:11.000 It's a miracle.

00:19:12.000 I think we have something like 35,000 deaths in cars every year.

00:19:17.000 And, you know, you got Techsters now, I think that's 2,000, and drunk driving, and bad weather conditions.

00:19:24.000 But the fact that all these billions of opportunities are there for that car, just turn the steering wheel just a little bit to the left, and then you go onto the other road, that guy doesn't notice, wham, head-on collision.

00:19:37.000 How many head-on collisions do you avoid every time you drive?

00:19:41.000 I think it's a miracle that 320 million Americans don't have more deaths.

00:19:47.000 And it's like the human brain.

00:19:50.000 There we go.

00:19:50.000 Turned it all around.

00:19:52.000 One of the reasons I'm not an atheist anymore is just I'm so grateful to be alive and I'm just in such awe of not just my children and the fact that they're healthy and all their parts work, but that life exists. 0.91

00:20:05.000 That a giant explosion 3.5 billion years ago, with the plague, with two world wars, with all this conquest and destruction and famine and droughts, and I'm sitting here and all my shit works. 0.95

00:20:17.000 Thank you, God. 0.95

00:20:18.000 Thank you, first domino that was pushed.

00:20:22.000 And the brain is just like a ski hill or a highway.

00:20:26.000 There's all this opportunity for things to go wrong.

00:20:29.000 You can wear a helmet, but that's not going to change anything.

00:20:34.000 And all these synapses are firing.

00:20:36.000 And it's even a trip to think about your brain, because you're using your brain to think about your brain.

00:20:39.000 It's like Twitter, not shadow banning.

00:20:43.000 We're good to go.

00:21:01.000 You know what?

00:21:01.000 I've been having some technical difficulties here today and they've been very stressful.

00:21:05.000 I'm not going to bore you with them, but I need to go and check and make sure that this is being recorded.

00:21:12.000 The engineering room is about 15 feet away, so that means that there's going to be a

00:21:19.000 A lull here as I run and get it.

00:21:21.000 Why don't I pull up a song that's relevant to this podcast so this time won't be wasted.

00:21:32.000 But I'm sorry, I have to go and check.

00:21:35.000 Be right back! 0.92

00:21:54.000 Okay.

00:21:56.000 It's recording.

00:21:56.000 Everything seems to be working.

00:21:58.000 We'll see.

00:22:00.000 I might have just jinxed it.

00:22:03.000 So I'm just very thankful that I'm not insane.

00:22:07.000 And, um, that's the miracle.

00:22:09.000 That's already happened.

00:22:11.000 And it's a miracle that we can drive and not crash into each other.

00:22:13.000 It's a miracle we can ski and not die.

00:22:16.000 I know you're in awe of it, by the way. 1.00

00:22:17.000 That's why you wear that stupid helmet. 1.00

00:22:19.000 Because you're blown away. 1.00

00:22:23.000 So when I was around 19, there was no jobs.

00:22:27.000 I lived in Montreal, and the way it works in Quebec is it's apartheid.

00:22:31.000 Sorry.

00:22:32.000 It's legal to marry an English person, but hiring them, there's no jobs for anyone who's English. 1.00

00:22:38.000 And when I say English, I mean speaks French with the slightest accent. 0.99

00:22:42.000 You know, people say Vice was started with a welfare grant.

00:22:45.000 What?

00:22:45.000 Vice was started despite a welfare grant.

00:22:48.000 Think of it as communist Russia.

00:22:51.000 Where the only jobs you can get are through the government.

00:22:53.000 So you have to do some sort of government scam, get your foot in the door, and then take off.

00:22:57.000 And we paid them back, by the way, to the tune of $35,000.

00:23:02.000 But you can't just start a business there.

00:23:06.000 It's impossible.

00:23:07.000 You can't get a job there.

00:23:08.000 So I would bike message or I would go up

00:23:11.000 To the North, where the deers are victims of gun violence, and plant trees up there where Dr. John went nuts and get some money.

00:23:18.000 And I was sick of it.

00:23:20.000 So I said, let's go on a trip to Europe.

00:23:23.000 Let's go gallivanting around Paris, darling. 0.94

00:23:27.000 But I only had about 800 bucks.

00:23:29.000 Ticket was 500.

00:23:31.000 So the reason that this was possible is punk rock.

00:23:35.000 Now, not exactly punk rock, but hardcore.

00:23:38.000 That's what we just played.

00:23:39.000 That was Minor Threat.

00:23:40.000 And I think it was a dude from Dag Nasty that was also in Minor Threat.

00:23:45.000 What's his name?

00:23:47.000 Guitarist guy?

00:23:50.000 He said,

00:23:52.000 Hardcore is just American punk.

00:23:54.000 And what Americans do is they strip it down. 0.83

00:23:56.000 And they go, so what's this?

00:23:57.000 What is this thing?

00:23:58.000 Oh, it's punk.

00:23:59.000 You've got to have green hair, and you have to have bondage pants from Boy of London, and you have to have 14-hole Dr. Martin.

00:24:05.000 Nah, I'm not doing that.

00:24:06.000 I'm just going to wear jeans and a sweatshirt and shave my head.

00:24:08.000 Oh.

00:24:09.000 Well, you have to have these lyrics that are talking about society.

00:24:14.000 Nah, I'm not doing that.

00:24:15.000 I'm just going to scream, and I'm going to go super fast.

00:24:17.000 OK, bye.

00:24:18.000 It's like the word color.

00:24:20.000 They see British people spell it C-O-L-O-U-R, and they go, nah, we're not doing that.

00:24:25.000 It's color.

00:24:25.000 It's C-O-L-O-R.

00:24:27.000 Come on, guys.

00:24:27.000 Let's move it.

00:24:28.000 I'm not wasting time.

00:24:30.000 I have a giant six course meal here, and what we do is we spend, what, three hours eating it.

00:24:35.000 Maybe some Italians can do that. 1.00

00:24:36.000 I'm not doing that.

00:24:37.000 I'm just going to have a cheeseburger on the run.

00:24:38.000 Bye.

00:24:40.000 We're taking care of business every day!

00:24:44.000 Taking care of business, working overtime.

00:24:47.000 That's right.

00:24:48.000 Even the music.

00:24:49.000 My friend Marcus pointed this out to me.

00:24:51.000 He goes, British people are sedentary.

00:24:53.000 They're not adventurous.

00:24:54.000 All the adventurous people left, so they just get into fantasy.

00:24:56.000 That's why you have Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter and all this imagining stuff.

00:25:00.000 And he goes, look at the music.

00:25:01.000 It's like, Satan laughing spreads his wings.

00:25:06.000 Oh Lord, yeah.

00:25:07.000 Or,

00:25:08.000 We're good to go.

00:25:22.000 One of the, there's a lot of great things about hardcore.

00:25:24.000 It took a lot of the great stuff about punk, stripped it down, but they maintain this DIY thing where we wanted to get this band, Oi Poloi, the skinhead band, not racist, to play this actual Rock Against Racism festival.

00:25:36.000 So we just started the festival in our town and flew them down.

00:25:41.000 You know, if you want to have a show, print out the posters yourself, make the show.

00:25:44.000 You want to have a magazine?

00:25:45.000 We would print fanzines and sell them for 50 cents with interviews with our favorite bands.

00:25:51.000 And here's the best part.

00:25:53.000 With punk, there was New York, London, a little bit of LA.

00:25:57.000 And that's it.

00:25:58.000 Everyone else could dare to dream of going to New York.

00:26:03.000 I mean, Chicago, I guess, had the Dead Boys, or where were they from?

00:26:06.000 Cincinnati or something?

00:26:07.000 But they would go to New York and play CBGBs.

00:26:10.000 That's all that mattered.

00:26:11.000 The big cities.

00:26:13.000 Hardcore was the opposite. 0.87

00:26:14.000 It said, screw those dinosaurs. 1.00

00:26:16.000 They're just repeating the same rock bullshit, rock star shit, that we're supposed to be rebelling against. 1.00

00:26:23.000 And you cared about your town. 0.99

00:26:25.000 So my town, Ottawa, had Honest Engine, and Grave Concern, and Dead Trout, and Neanderthal Sponge, and my band, Anal Chinook.

00:26:33.000 That's all we cared about.

00:26:34.000 We all hung out together, and we often lived in the same big house.

00:26:37.000 And that was our little scene.

00:26:39.000 Fighting Nazi skinheads, who, by the way, were Nazis.

00:26:42.000 They had swastika tattoos.

00:26:44.000 You hear about the Nazis today, and it's like the Tea Party are Nazis.

00:26:50.000 Anyone. 0.99

00:26:50.000 Trump's a Nazi. 0.99

00:26:51.000 No, we had guys with Klansmen tattoos who wanted to stab us. 0.99

00:26:56.000 And we were rich.

00:26:57.000 We were middle class kids from stable families who took the bus into the city.

00:27:01.000 Those skinheads, they grew up in foster homes. 0.92

00:27:05.000 There was always something wrong with them.

00:27:06.000 Like they'd have sneakers on.

00:27:07.000 You go like, you're a skinhead.

00:27:08.000 You're not supposed to wear sneakers.

00:27:10.000 And you realize they can't afford to be as perfect as, you know, as true to the brand as you can.

00:27:16.000 You buy all your stuff and get the right gear and you mock someone who doesn't have it.

00:27:19.000 They were starving.

00:27:21.000 That's why they beat us up for our boots.

00:27:24.000 Remember when I got the call that the skinheads were going to get me because I had Doc Martens on and you're not supposed to wear those?

00:27:28.000 Those are only for skinheads. 0.65

00:27:30.000 And I got the call from Krista Sandregret that Wolf was going to come to the show tonight and I better not wear my boots.

00:27:35.000 And I just remember sitting on the bowl and having explosive diarrhea that was like someone shot a Roto-Rooter septic emptier with a bazooka.

00:27:43.000 It was just... They got them eventually.

00:27:49.000 But, um...

00:27:51.000 So, there was a magazine called Maximum Rock and Roll, and that was sort of our internet, our Reddit.

00:27:55.000 It was run by a guy named Tim Yo, and he was pretty PC, so he filtered out a lot of stuff.

00:28:01.000 And he didn't get that, that sort of scene, that alternative rebellion back then.

00:28:06.000 Right now, it's so myopic, teenage rebellion.

00:28:09.000 I mean, there's the alt-light, and there's the new right, and these kids who like to meme and stuff.

00:28:14.000 They're cool. 1.00

00:28:15.000 But so much of being a young person now is just following the dotted line and that's Trump sucks, Trump sucks. 0.99

00:28:22.000 And this is so true of artists and musicians and even like thrash. 1.00

00:28:26.000 Like there's this band Power Trip that are threatening to kick my ass and I was looking at them on Twitter and they're talking about how we don't tolerate transphobic or homophobic speech or something. 0.96

00:28:37.000 I'm thinking, you're a metal band? 0.99

00:28:38.000 Like, you're supposed to be a scary metal band and you're worried about offending trannies? 1.00

00:28:43.000 That's not Eddie from Iron Maiden.

00:28:45.000 That's not... Can you imagine Lemmy from Motorhead saying, Lemmy would collect Nazi memorabilia.

00:28:58.000 His whole house looked like Adolf Hitler's compound. 0.75

00:29:01.000 He wasn't a Nazi, but he just thought those Kaiser helmets looked cool and stuff.

00:29:06.000 But back with punk in the 80s, there was, and hardcore, you had Johnny Ramone who was an anti-communist, and you had this New York scene that the San Franciscoites in Maximum Rock and Roll thought was racist, because they'd sing with American flags and stuff and make fun of people on welfare.

00:29:24.000 But inevitably, when you look this up, you go, oh, it's Cubans. 0.93

00:29:28.000 Cuban exiles who know socialism firsthand and are very happy to be in America.

00:29:34.000 And they don't like commies.

00:29:35.000 You know, crass! 1.00

00:29:36.000 The anarchists don't like commies. 0.91

00:29:38.000 You're not supposed to like commies if you're an anarchist. 0.98

00:29:40.000 But today, we talk to anarchists who are carrying hammer and sickle flags.

00:29:44.000 They hate the government, but they want more regulation.

00:29:48.000 They hate the government, but they want it to take rich people's money and redistribute it.

00:29:53.000 Okay?

00:29:54.000 I trust the government to do a great job of that.

00:29:56.000 I'm sure they'll be very fair.

00:29:59.000 And I remember Tim Yo, the guy who ran Maximum Rock and Roll, would, you know, criticize and censor Agnostic Front and the Cro-Mags. 1.00

00:30:06.000 These were Manhattan hardcore bands.

00:30:08.000 And those guys, I think they were Cubans or the singer was or something, but those guys lived in Manhattan.

00:30:14.000 You can't be a homophobe or an anti-Semiter racist in Manhattan.

00:30:17.000 People who don't live in the city don't get that. 0.99

00:30:20.000 It's a gay bar.

00:30:22.000 Hell's Kitchen is not scary anymore. 0.97

00:30:24.000 It's men in white leather pants and literal feather boas. 0.97

00:30:28.000 It looks like a bad Hollywood representation of a gay village. 1.00

00:30:32.000 It doesn't look real. 0.99

00:30:36.000 And it's obviously very black. 0.97

00:30:37.000 It's obviously incredibly Hispanic. 0.77

00:30:39.000 I mean, Washington Heights is just a huge big Dominican party with people listening to music on the streets of the hijacked to their ghetto blaster from the streetlight. 0.72

00:30:48.000 I mean, it's it's you're in the Dominican Republic in Washington Heights.

00:30:52.000 You're in you're in Puerto Rico and in Williamsburg.

00:30:55.000 You're with the Hasidim in this on the same street next to the Puerto Ricans. 0.97

00:30:58.000 If you had any kind of prejudice, you'd be exhausted.

00:31:02.000 But when other people from the West Coast hear us talk, they don't know that we know these people and we hang out with them, and we're ball-busting.

00:31:09.000 We're not criticizing.

00:31:12.000 So, that's a tangent that's not relevant to anything.

00:31:16.000 But Tim Yeo, Maxim Rock'n'Roll, great magazine, pushed the DIY thing and pushed the Your Scene Matters.

00:31:21.000 In fact, most of the magazine was scene reports.

00:31:24.000 And it was a thrill to be in them.

00:31:25.000 I was in the Ottawa one and I was honored.

00:31:28.000 And it would just be about like, here's the Portland scene, here's the Boise, Idaho scene.

00:31:33.000 And you got to know these bands and you'd start trading tapes.

00:31:36.000 Like, I want to hear this Boise, Idaho band that screams about how horrible drunk driving is and stuff.

00:31:42.000 We're good to go.

00:32:03.000 I trade tapes with this guy in Britain who was sending me bands like Death by Milk Float that I've never heard of and I would send him all my local bands.

00:32:10.000 So we had circumvented the music business and we were sending, actually there's a punk band called Bow Wow Wow that has a song about it called C30, C60, C90 about cassette tapes and how we would just record our own music.

00:32:21.000 Some as it would be a live show and send it to each other and we had this whole world where we didn't care what bands were popular and

00:32:31.000 We were really into our own stuff.

00:32:33.000 And that we had built ourselves. 1.00

00:32:34.000 Very healthy shit for a young man. 0.99

00:32:37.000 And moshing too was a very healthy thing. 1.00

00:32:39.000 And we would even argue about that!

00:32:41.000 I remember Fugazi, remember the band I just played you?

00:32:43.000 So they evolved into Fugazi.

00:32:45.000 And they had a big thing, they would stop the show if women weren't moshing. 1.00

00:32:48.000 And I remember writing in to Max from Rock and Roll going, this is ridiculous.

00:32:52.000 I was having the same fights I have today. 0.85

00:32:55.000 Moshing is dangerous, it's violent, there's arms flailing, plus skinheads will show up and start punching us from the perimeter of the mosh pit. 0.99

00:33:02.000 Women don't have to be there. 1.00

00:33:03.000 We don't need some fat chick getting her head stood on. 1.00

00:33:07.000 Uh... 0.99

00:33:09.000 Remember Aidan Gert, the drummer of Godspeed, You Black Emperor, and I?

00:33:12.000 There's this thing they do in the pit where when you fall, it's about unity! 0.99

00:33:16.000 So you reach down, you scoop up the guy and help him, but we were jerks and clowns. 0.98

00:33:21.000 So we would fall on purpose and then be really hard to pick up. 0.98

00:33:25.000 Like, it's supposed to just be a nice hook.

00:33:27.000 You reach down like a big arm hook, like Popeye, and then the other guy has his arm and you whip him up!

00:33:32.000 Mac, you're up!

00:33:33.000 But we would sort of be slippery and sloppy.

00:33:37.000 Funny stuff.

00:33:39.000 Isn't that a healthy life for a young man?

00:33:39.000 See?

00:33:41.000 Being a doofus? 0.97

00:33:44.000 He once got beat up by the top skinhead in the town, Joff. 0.98

00:33:48.000 For three hours straight.

00:33:50.000 Three hours.

00:33:51.000 I wasn't there.

00:33:52.000 Three hours he got beat up by Joff.

00:33:55.000 And all he would say is, what can I say, man?

00:33:57.000 I'm Aiden Girt and you're Joff.

00:33:59.000 And then just pound, pound. 0.95

00:34:00.000 Joff ended up blowing his head off with a machine gun, by the way.

00:34:03.000 Because his baby mama wouldn't let him see his daughter. 0.73

00:34:08.000 Juicy stuff.

00:34:11.000 So, I've got all these addresses.

00:34:13.000 There's no work in Montreal.

00:34:15.000 I think, let's just go.

00:34:17.000 Let's go there.

00:34:18.000 And I can get some guys to come, but they'll go, I'll come for a month or something.

00:34:21.000 I go, I might go forever.

00:34:23.000 It's that age.

00:34:24.000 I think I went to a doctor that age and said, I want my tubes tied.

00:34:27.000 The world's overpopulated.

00:34:30.000 And luckily he said no.

00:34:31.000 Now I've got three kids.

00:34:32.000 It's my little boy's, my five-year-old's birthday today.

00:34:37.000 Um, so I said, I'm just gonna be punk forever and I'm gonna go to this thing and there's a real movement going on there.

00:34:43.000 The scene's dying here.

00:34:44.000 Everyone was really serious.

00:34:46.000 But it was a scene.

00:34:47.000 It was like Hasidic Jews. 1.00

00:34:49.000 It was like the Amish where you stand on a street corner and someone else sees you and like the Hasids in Williamsburg, they'll stand on a street corner and they'll just, uh, 1.00

00:34:58.000 Some other guy would say, what are you going?

00:35:00.000 Oh, we're going to the Hushnow. 0.99

00:35:01.000 I have to get some shtukas. 1.00

00:35:03.000 And they'll get in the minivan and just get a drive.

00:35:05.000 Because they're such a homogeneous culture.

00:35:08.000 I assume it's the same with Amish.

00:35:09.000 Although, getting a drive from an Amish is no big favor, right? 0.98

00:35:12.000 You just hop on his little buggy.

00:35:13.000 You'll be there in two hours.

00:35:15.000 I'll walk, thanks.

00:35:16.000 But the punks had that scene too.

00:35:19.000 So I hop on a plane and I didn't really spend much money after that.

00:35:25.000 I went to Darby, stayed with this band Concrete Socks.

00:35:30.000 They were named after their drummer Socks because he wouldn't change his socks ever.

00:35:33.000 And they would be so stiff they could stand up on their own.

00:35:40.000 And then you'd hear about a band that was going to another town, so you'd just hop in the back of the van and go there, to some other squad.

00:35:46.000 There was this one in Sweden, and then I met my buddy Steve there.

00:35:50.000 And, uh...

00:35:52.000 We're set up.

00:35:53.000 Women are beautiful. 1.00

00:35:54.000 We do a few jobs, odd jobs around there to earn your keep.

00:35:57.000 You dumpster dive, get food from the garbage.

00:36:00.000 The beer was cheap.

00:36:01.000 It was super fun.

00:36:02.000 And we hear about another group that's going to Berlin.

00:36:07.000 And I go, let's hop on that ride.

00:36:09.000 And he goes, weirdest thing, I'll never forget this.

00:36:12.000 He says, wouldn't it be so awesome just to fast forward to the end of this trip, the four months, and just walk into the Biftec and be the Europe guys?

00:36:22.000 Biftec was our local bar at the time.

00:36:25.000 Uh, what?

00:36:27.000 That's like a virgin looking at a naked lady and going, God, I wish I could just fast forward past this lay and be the laid guy. 1.00

00:36:35.000 Everyone would look at me, hey, did you get laid?

00:36:36.000 And I'd go, yeah, I sure probably did.

00:36:38.000 Uh, no thanks.

00:36:41.000 I don't care about being known as the laid guy.

00:36:43.000 I want the laid part. 0.97

00:36:45.000 I want to finally have boobies in my face. 0.99

00:36:47.000 I've been waiting for this for 17 years. 0.53

00:36:51.000 And I thought that was sort of what punk taught us, you know?

00:36:54.000 It taught us to not be worried about what other people think.

00:36:57.000 Not be worried about fame or your reputation.

00:36:59.000 Are you a celebrity?

00:37:00.000 Ooh, you wanna be on Big Brother?

00:37:02.000 Like, these reality shows, all these women get divorced. 1.00

00:37:05.000 Their lives turn to shit. 1.00

00:37:06.000 And what do they make? 1.00

00:37:08.000 Fifteen grand?

00:37:09.000 I don't think they make any kind of money.

00:37:11.000 So it's just fame. 0.99

00:37:13.000 Fame sucks! 0.97

00:37:14.000 It's just getting hassled in the street by strangers who want a selfie and can't work their phone properly. 0.98

00:37:22.000 So we went to Berlin, and that was heavy duty.

00:37:25.000 I mean, Britain has punk and stuff.

00:37:27.000 There was a squat there in London we went to where Steve got body lice, or the guy I was with got body lice.

00:37:34.000 But the beauty of this whole maximum rock and roll thing was I had a cigarette tin.

00:37:39.000 It was like

00:37:40.000 Four inches by four inches and it was just replete with addresses of all the people I've been corresponding with and trading tapes with from the scene.

00:37:48.000 And it was a tight-knit scene.

00:37:49.000 I remember we were in Stuttgart and we'd just seen this band Toten Hosen.

00:37:54.000 I think they're called Dirty Pants. 0.92

00:37:57.000 I'm talking to some guy, I'm going through his records, and it's big black songs about fucking, and you know, crass, and Poison Idea, and all these bands, and I'm going, wait a minute, this is my record collection! 0.93

00:38:10.000 You just have my record collection, the Dead Milkman, all these bands, MDC, and he goes, in a typical German fashion, they really know how to ruin everything, he goes, yes, well don't you understand that's what you're on right now? 1.00

00:38:22.000 This is what everyone calls it, they call it the same record tour.

00:38:26.000 That's a lame name, by the way, dude.

00:38:30.000 Oh, I can almost remember his name.

00:38:31.000 Werner.

00:38:32.000 I believe his name was Werner, yes.

00:38:34.000 You're on the same record tour.

00:38:35.000 Everywhere you go, you'll have these same records.

00:38:38.000 Thanks, dude.

00:38:40.000 By the way, the proper response Germany is, I know, cool, eh?

00:38:46.000 So, in Berlin, there's this squat, I think it's called the Meinza squat, and it's been there so long that they basically fought the law and won.

00:38:56.000 In fact, there was a giant siege.

00:38:59.000 This is M-E-I-N-Z-A. 1.00

00:39:01.000 A giant siege with the police where they dug, the punks dug a trough in the road so the police couldn't get their SWAT team giant tanks, basically.

00:39:11.000 You know, those things that have the battering rams?

00:39:13.000 They couldn't get them to the SWAT because these giant holes in the road had been dug.

00:39:17.000 I mean, six foot trenches!

00:39:20.000 Amazing!

00:39:20.000 And we go there.

00:39:21.000 My girlfriend had shown up at this point.

00:39:24.000 That annoyed Steve.

00:39:25.000 We ended up having a falling out over it, really.

00:39:28.000 Didn't speak for a while.

00:39:33.000 My girlfriend showed up and we went to this anti-Nazi rally.

00:39:35.000 It was a Nazi rally that was a real-life Nazi rally. 0.97

00:39:37.000 I wish these whiners, these snowflakes, could see real Nazis. 0.98

00:39:40.000 And I'm not talking about World War II. 0.95

00:39:42.000 Obviously, the Greatest Generation has done a lot of serious Nazi fighting. 0.60

00:39:47.000 But we did, I'm going to say, a thousandth of that.

00:39:51.000 The Nazi bashing going on today is like a millionth.

00:39:54.000 But at least our guys had swastikas and were scary and a direct threat to us.

00:39:59.000 So these guys are marching, and by the way, I totally condone that.

00:40:02.000 They should have the right to march.

00:40:04.000 Pedophiles should have the right to march.

00:40:06.000 And they're marching on, they're escorted by the police.

00:40:08.000 God bless their cotton socks.

00:40:10.000 And all the punks have bottle rockets.

00:40:11.000 I guess bottle rockets are legal in Germany?

00:40:13.000 So, pshew, pshew, pshew, pshew! 1.00

00:40:15.000 They're shooting these things off.

00:40:16.000 I have a camera, and because I have a camera, it's a force field.

00:40:20.000 They're very good with the press over there.

00:40:22.000 And so, I'm going up to fights, and wrestles, and bottle smashing, and I'm a foot away, and the cops don't touch me.

00:40:30.000 Nor do the skinheads and the punks, by the way.

00:40:32.000 I'm just I'm a camera makes you magic there the other guys had like signs that said press on them, but I got under their moniker and It eventually became a standoff

00:40:42.000 And the punks and the skins were staring at each other. 1.00

00:40:44.000 The police were with the skinheads because they were fighting for the right to march because it was the law. 1.00

00:40:49.000 And the police start pushing forward.

00:40:51.000 The punks start pushing back.

00:40:53.000 Eventually, the punks overpower them.

00:40:56.000 Again, what is this?

00:40:57.000 Taiwan?

00:40:58.000 Why?

00:40:59.000 Japan?

00:41:00.000 Why are the cops such wimps in Germany? 0.76

00:41:03.000 And so they put all the skinheads in a paddy wagon and sent them away. 0.99

00:41:07.000 So this trip is life-changing, obviously.

00:41:08.000 It's totally thrilling.

00:41:10.000 Perfect thing for a 20-year-old to be doing.

00:41:13.000 Exploring the world, meeting all these different people, and there's nothing like traveling when you stay with people who live there.

00:41:19.000 You know, you're sleeping on the floor, you're drinking schlop from a giant thing, you don't even know what it is, some sort of miso soup.

00:41:26.000 You're eating a pile of chickpeas that have just been mashed into a huge barrel that's feeding 15 people.

00:41:31.000 You're getting body lice, but you don't care about any of that. 1.00

00:41:34.000 I didn't really get any pussy. 1.00

00:41:35.000 Oh yeah, I brought my girlfriend. 0.99

00:41:39.000 And you don't care about any of the inconveniences.

00:41:42.000 You're just really getting to know the place.

00:41:43.000 You're getting to know the town with really interesting people too.

00:41:46.000 Anarchists.

00:41:47.000 Bonafide anarchists who are in bands and making things.

00:41:50.000 We went to this one squat called Forte Prenestino near Rome.

00:41:54.000 And it was an abandoned officer's barracks.

00:41:57.000 And they were powered by bicycles.

00:42:00.000 So what you do as a new person is you got your backpack with your sleeping bag and you go, Hi, I'm here.

00:42:04.000 I want to stay for a few days.

00:42:06.000 All right, to go downstairs in the workout, maybe you do an hour, okay?

00:42:10.000 Okay.

00:42:10.000 You go down there, you pedal these bikes, the bikes generate electricity for the fort.

00:42:15.000 And so you go down there, it's like a punk rock soul cycle with all these punks just peddling their asses off generating electricity.

00:42:21.000 Then you go upstairs and there's some food and there's artists on stilts and they've got a band going.

00:42:27.000 You know who was big on that?

00:42:28.000 You know Manu Negra?

00:42:30.000 You know that Manu Chow?

00:42:32.000 He's got a solo career.

00:42:34.000 He just had a big hit.

00:42:37.000 God, what's his name?

00:42:38.000 Mano Negra was his band, and then he went solo and had a huge hit recently, and he was part of that scene.

00:42:44.000 Or Chumbawamba!

00:42:45.000 They were, they, that, I get knocked down, but I get up again!

00:42:48.000 They were part of the Krusty Punk, uh, Anarcho Squatter scene with Krass and all that.

00:42:54.000 It's funny seeing these people occasionally get hits, but that's kind of what I'm getting to with Hugo.

00:42:59.000 And, obviously, the G-Dog, me.

00:43:02.000 So, uh...

00:43:04.000 We do that.

00:43:05.000 We travel, we go down to Sicily.

00:43:06.000 My girlfriend there is wearing pants, which is unheard of in Palermo. 1.00

00:43:10.000 That's for whores. 1.00

00:43:11.000 So, uh, I just got a bad feeling that this system crashed again. 0.99

00:43:16.000 I'm going to go run and check it.

00:43:18.000 Give me 30 seconds.

00:43:19.000 Okay.

00:43:19.000 Just pretend you're going to have to deal with this soon with ads.

00:43:22.000 Cause I'm going to start taking ads.

00:43:24.000 CRTV wants me to go up to two podcasts a week, cut down to 45 minutes, which I'm having trouble doing.

00:43:29.000 I'm obviously way past that now.

00:43:30.000 We're good to go.

00:44:03.000 Go recording!

00:44:06.000 That's good news.

00:44:08.000 I'm tempted to stop it and then press record again.

00:44:11.000 Whatever.

00:44:13.000 How am I going to get these things down to 45 minutes?

00:44:17.000 I haven't even started the story yet.

00:44:18.000 This is all building up to Yugo de Luchi.

00:44:21.000 We're in Palermo.

00:44:22.000 My girlfriend's wearing pants. 1.00

00:44:24.000 Everyone's staring at her because a woman wears a dress. 1.00

00:44:26.000 But there's such Catholic hypocrisy down there. 0.98

00:44:30.000 These religious Puritans shocked at pants. 1.00

00:44:33.000 Meanwhile, everywhere I walk, I'm walking in syringes.

00:44:39.000 So heroin seems to be okay, but not pants.

00:44:42.000 I think heroin's killed a lot more people than pants.

00:44:45.000 And is to this day.

00:44:50.000 So, I'm drinking Bud Light, by the way, which is... How are you supposed to... My dad drinks this because he's such a drunk.

00:44:56.000 He needs an anchor, so he'll have like 37 Bud Lights and get a tiny buzz.

00:45:02.000 I just, I could drink 1,000 of these.

00:45:06.000 It just makes you bloated and you fart.

00:45:07.000 Do people get a buzz off of this?

00:45:10.000 Even Budweiser.

00:45:11.000 I was on Keith the Cop's boat on the 4th of July.

00:45:14.000 I must have drank 20 beers.

00:45:16.000 I got off there and I just, you know, peed 20 beers.

00:45:19.000 That was it.

00:45:19.000 Zero buzz.

00:45:21.000 And then of course there's Maker's Mark, which is just, you have three and then you start slurring, so it's gotta be a happy medium.

00:45:27.000 But anyway.

00:45:29.000 So we go on our way out of Italy.

00:45:31.000 We stop in Genova.

00:45:34.000 Now Genova is, if Italy is a boot, Genova is, if a knee-high boot, it's where your knee is, the front of your knee is.

00:45:40.000 It's just when you're running out of Italy.

00:45:41.000 You're almost done.

00:45:44.000 Beautiful little city.

00:45:45.000 It's not, I like sort of the city next to the city, like Utrecht.

00:45:51.000 Is a city next to Amsterdam.

00:45:52.000 It's got all the greatness of Amsterdam, but without the drunk jocks. 0.99

00:45:56.000 And the junkies that want to murder you. 1.00

00:45:58.000 The weird Somali immigrants that say, psst, come here! 1.00

00:46:02.000 None of those are in Utrecht. 0.88

00:46:03.000 Although, I haven't been since 91, so maybe they're terrible now.

00:46:07.000 I heard it's been islamicized.

00:46:09.000 That bad dream machine were just there and they said it's over.

00:46:12.000 But anyway.

00:46:15.000 We're down there and

00:46:17.000 Of course I have in my cigarette tin, Hugo DeLucci.

00:46:21.000 Every city I went in, I got my cigarette tin.

00:46:24.000 It was awesome.

00:46:25.000 And that's, you know what that is?

00:46:26.000 That's from caring.

00:46:28.000 Like I cared about the music and the culture and I was really into it.

00:46:32.000 People recognize that.

00:46:34.000 I think that's why Vice was so good when it started out.

00:46:37.000 It was done by people who made mixtapes for girls, and knew about bands, and were really into it. 1.00

00:46:43.000 You know, when you're not into it, you can't, especially young people, they can smell when you're full of shit. 0.99

00:46:49.000 So, I've got my Hugo, and I give him a call. 1.00

00:46:52.000 Hey, yes, yes, I remember you.

00:46:54.000 Yeah, come upstairs.

00:46:55.000 You wanted this address.

00:46:56.000 I go up there, and it's not a squat at all.

00:46:59.000 First time, really, at someone's house.

00:47:01.000 Actually no, about 20% of them were someone's house, but it was getting rare in Europe.

00:47:07.000 So we go in, and he's got a rap band going.

00:47:13.000 Now, rap today, you wouldn't ever think of it as anything close to punk, they couldn't be farther apart.

00:47:19.000 But back then, 1990,

00:47:23.000 1991.

00:47:24.000 Punk was dying.

00:47:25.000 It had sort of split. 0.99

00:47:27.000 And it was this crusty core, which was these homeless Antifa kids who, you know, smelled like crap and had dreads just by accident.

00:47:36.000 And they would listen to grindcore, this earache record stuff, like Napalm Death and all these bands that were just a cacophony. 0.69

00:47:43.000 Chaos UK.

00:47:44.000 You couldn't, I mean, it hurt your ears.

00:47:46.000 No hooks at ever.

00:47:48.000 Just go listen to Napalm Death and get back to me.

00:47:51.000 And then the other side was this SoCal big short wearing, like, they all looked like they worked at these customs.

00:47:58.000 You know these reality TV shows where they customize your car and add flames on it?

00:48:02.000 Pimp My Ride type of stuff?

00:48:03.000 They all look like that.

00:48:04.000 Like Fat Mike at Fat Records and singing these really earnest songs that are trying to sing well. 0.98

00:48:10.000 And it just wasn't, uh, and this ironic white trash thing where they have bowling clubs and I'm totally white trash. 0.97

00:48:16.000 I don't know. 0.99

00:48:17.000 It's not my cup of tea.

00:48:18.000 It didn't seem punk to me.

00:48:19.000 It seemed like pop.

00:48:22.000 So it was either pop or death metal, basically.

00:48:25.000 So then NWA were coming out and swearing and stuff and saying, kill cops, which sounded cool to me as a 20-year-old.

00:48:35.000 So I'm at work!

00:48:39.000 So, uh... See, now he threw me off my train of thought. 1.00

00:48:45.000 Stupid. 1.00

00:48:46.000 He's lucky it's his birthday, man, or he would be getting 20 lashes. 1.00

00:48:52.000 So, rap was kind of interesting, and Hugo Delucci lived with these two hot chicks.

00:48:57.000 He was, like, three's company.

00:48:59.000 He had a terrible hairdo.

00:49:00.000 He had, like, a little mushroom cut, but because he was the cool guy, it seemed neat.

00:49:04.000 You know, when you can be... When you're so cool that ugly makes you even cooler?

00:49:07.000 Kind of like Harmony Corrine.

00:49:10.000 And they did a rap band, and it was like anarchist, activist, creative artist dudes who would go to these rallies and they'd do rap songs and they would beatbox and stuff.

00:49:22.000 And I know it sounds queer right now in the context of 2017, but it seemed really interesting back then.

00:49:28.000 Like they were, you know, bringing a new type of music into the movement.

00:49:32.000 And he says, you could sleep up on the roof, which I did with my girlfriend.

00:49:37.000 Steve was with us then, and he slept with one of the girls, I think, which was rare. 0.98

00:49:41.000 There wasn't a lot of poontang going on in the punk scene, probably because everyone's genitalia stink. 0.99

00:49:46.000 And we were just so transient that no one had a chance to meet us. 0.96

00:49:50.000 It wasn't like a Motley Crue tour, that's for sure.

00:49:53.000 But anyway, we get up there and I remember the first night, they just start beatboxing. 0.98

00:50:00.000 Beatboxing so gay! 1.00

00:50:12.000 And they're doing it, and they're passing around. 0.98

00:50:13.000 So they're sort of going, you, you, you.

00:50:16.000 And they're like, oh, ciao, tesoro.

00:50:21.000 Now I'm sounding Japanese.

00:50:24.000 And then they point to me, right?

00:50:26.000 It's kind of like our initiation into the group.

00:50:28.000 So I did this trick, which I highly recommend.

00:50:31.000 I took a song from my own band.

00:50:34.000 And pretended I was thinking of the lyrics as I said them.

00:50:38.000 So I'm like, there's thinking going down, not happening together, while there's people going around, thinking about the weather, yeah.

00:50:45.000 Don't forget your mind with your money and your dark. 0.92

00:50:47.000 You can booze it if you lose it, don't forget to make your mark.

00:50:50.000 Once is once, but it's not the only time.

00:50:53.000 If you blow it on a nickel, you can spend it on a dime, yeah.

00:50:57.000 Just pausing a song I'd sung a hundred times.

00:51:02.000 Yeah, that's great, Gavin.

00:51:04.000 Good rap.

00:51:05.000 You make good rapping.

00:51:07.000 Steve came up to me later, by the way, after that.

00:51:09.000 Second worst thing he ever said was he goes, uh... Can I ask you something?

00:51:13.000 Is it hard to rap?

00:51:16.000 I don't know.

00:51:16.000 I would imagine it's quite tricky.

00:51:20.000 I didn't do that.

00:51:20.000 I cheated.

00:51:22.000 So Hugo and I got along great because I was a cartoonist at the time.

00:51:26.000 And cartoonist, by the way, in Montreal and Europe, it's not superhero.

00:51:30.000 Superheroes are the antithesis of what we liked.

00:51:32.000 I guess you would call it graphic novels today.

00:51:35.000 But it was like cool drawings, autobiographical stuff, you know, Chester Brown type stuff, Peter Bagg, Dan Klaus type of guys.

00:51:43.000 And he worked with Libertoire.

00:51:46.000 Who was one of the greatest cartoonists of all time.

00:51:49.000 Libertoire worked for Heavy Metal, which was called Metal Hurlant over there.

00:51:53.000 It was a French thing.

00:51:55.000 And he was just such an incredible artist and his drawings were so intense.

00:52:01.000 Look up Ran Xerox.

00:52:02.000 R-A-N-X-E-R-O-X. 1.00

00:52:05.000 And I go, holy shit, you knew Libertoire? 0.99

00:52:07.000 He's a Yoda of heroine. 0.99

00:52:09.000 And, uh, he succumbed to the crunchy heroin streets.

00:52:13.000 Um, but he said, oh yes, I know Libertoire.

00:52:16.000 He come in, he have nothing.

00:52:17.000 He have maybe a piece of liquid paper.

00:52:19.000 He have a crayon.

00:52:20.000 He have a charcoal.

00:52:22.000 You know, maybe three things.

00:52:23.000 And then he use that and he make a masterpiece.

00:52:26.000 I go, yeah, I know. 1.00

00:52:27.000 God damn it. 0.99

00:52:28.000 You did cartooning with him? 0.99

00:52:30.000 Oh yeah, I show you some.

00:52:31.000 He showed me some cartoons.

00:52:32.000 They were great.

00:52:32.000 Not obviously in Libertoire's range, but really cool little simple things.

00:52:36.000 Then he said, I work at a TV station.

00:52:38.000 You know what I do?

00:52:38.000 I come up with the idea we have a little logo in the bottom right.

00:52:42.000 And I'm sounding like Mario.

00:52:45.000 He used to jump on these turtles.

00:52:47.000 He was trying to save this princess woman.

00:52:49.000 She lived over a bunch of smokestacks. 1.00

00:52:52.000 And I think, and I don't want to look this up because I don't want to know if it's not true.

00:52:56.000 I think he invented the whole idea of having a logo of your station ID in the bottom right.

00:53:02.000 I had never seen it before then.

00:53:03.000 He told me he did it for his Italian station and now it's everywhere.

00:53:06.000 Give me that, please.

00:53:08.000 And I just, like, with these hot chicks that he lived with, and he was so happy all the time, he was like Roberto Benigni, you know, in that movie where he's dying in the Holocaust.

00:53:18.000 So I'm hanging out with Hugo, and he's talking about his, you know, his chibi job, which is just some dumb job, and the guy's just so effusive, you know? 1.00

00:53:25.000 And sometimes, I'm into egalitarianism, and I was talking about how hardcore says, no, no, you're special.

00:53:31.000 But, by the same token, sometimes you just meet some people and they're extraordinary.

00:53:37.000 Like Sean Lennon. 0.99

00:53:40.000 He's a fucking genius. 1.00

00:53:41.000 And sometimes I can't... I've hung out with him a few times and I can't help but think, are you just better than other people? 0.99

00:53:46.000 I mean, I believe Yoko Ono comes from a long line of samurais.

00:53:50.000 Maybe you just have better samurai skills.

00:53:54.000 He once said that he got in a fight and he was blown away by how good he was.

00:53:58.000 He was like, I didn't know I could fight.

00:53:59.000 It was like Jason Bourne.

00:54:00.000 All of a sudden he's just going...

00:54:05.000 And so I'm hanging out with Hugo, and look, most of us can be great.

00:54:10.000 But there are certain people that are just gifted.

00:54:13.000 Like Andrew Breitbart.

00:54:14.000 When you hung out with him, you felt just sort of like this glow.

00:54:18.000 And these guys are always really benevolent and interested in you.

00:54:21.000 And, you know, they don't brag.

00:54:23.000 They just like want to, let's go do stuff.

00:54:25.000 You know what I mean?

00:54:26.000 It's like they're, they're, they almost died. 1.00

00:54:28.000 And then God said, all right, you can go back to earth, but don't be a bitch. 1.00

00:54:31.000 Okay. 1.00

00:54:31.000 Thank you, God. 1.00

00:54:32.000 I'm going to be awesome.

00:54:33.000 Like Scrooge after the three ghosts, you know, those kinds of people.

00:54:36.000 So he was that kind of guy.

00:54:38.000 And I knew he was destined for greatness.

00:54:41.000 Um,

00:54:42.000 And he took us to his mother's house.

00:54:44.000 Pesto.

00:54:44.000 Christopher Columbus comes from Geneva, but also pesto.

00:54:47.000 And his mother makes the pesto, you know, the nonna.

00:54:50.000 And it's delicious and he's laughing with her.

00:54:52.000 He's got a great relationship with his family.

00:54:56.000 Just an amazing guy.

00:54:57.000 I got along with him great.

00:54:58.000 One of the highlights of the trip.

00:54:59.000 And so we keep traveling.

00:55:02.000 We go to some squats, more squats, and you know, eventually the money runs out and people have to go home and it was time to return to reality.

00:55:11.000 And I think I was there for about five months.

00:55:13.000 And I'd been all over Spain, Germany, France was fun, back then in Paris.

00:55:19.000 The cops hated punks for some reason. 0.99

00:55:23.000 And they would just, if a cop saw a punk rocker, like someone with a mohawk or blue hair, he would just beat the living shit out of you for no reason. 0.99

00:55:31.000 It was like what, what, you know, we hear about being black in America in the 50s. 0.99

00:55:36.000 I mean, you were just reviled.

00:55:38.000 And I just remembered that punks were banned from pubs in England around that time.

00:55:43.000 Peter and the Test Tube Babies have a song about it called Banned from the Pubs.

00:55:47.000 Ban, ban, ban, they don't like punks, ban from the pubs.

00:55:49.000 Ban, ban, ban, they think we're drunk, ban from the pubs.

00:55:54.000 Meanwhile, Proud Boys are always banned from pubs every time we get out.

00:55:57.000 But we probably deserve it.

00:55:59.000 Anyway, so the trip peters down, and, uh, peters out.

00:56:04.000 And then, sort of like herpes, uh, I would call Hugo when I was drunk and stuff, maybe like once a month after I got back, then once every two months, and then the outbreaks would get less and less, and I'd call him once a year.

00:56:16.000 But I thought, I'm going to hear about this guy in the future.

00:56:18.000 He's going to start a movement.

00:56:20.000 He's going to be a mogul.

00:56:22.000 He's going to create something big.

00:56:24.000 He had that vibe about him.

00:56:28.000 So fast forward 15 years, and I'm married, and it's time for the honeymoon.

00:56:33.000 We got $3,000 in gifts at the marriage.

00:56:37.000 I thought, let's go party.

00:56:39.000 And so my wife wants to go from London to the bottom of Italy, back up. 1.00

00:56:45.000 She wants to do south of France.

00:56:48.000 No, not the bottom of Italy.

00:56:49.000 Just dip into Italy, sorry.

00:56:51.000 But all over the south of France.

00:56:53.000 You know, Toulouse, Paris, Barcelona.

00:56:58.000 Okay, whatever you want, babe.

00:56:59.000 What are you going to do after a marriage?

00:57:01.000 Say no?

00:57:01.000 No, I want to go hunting.

00:57:04.000 I want to go investigate gun violence in Sudbury, Ontario.

00:57:10.000 So, uh, we agreed to do that.

00:57:13.000 I agreed to do that.

00:57:14.000 Rented a car.

00:57:15.000 Go down there.

00:57:16.000 Great time.

00:57:17.000 This is no cigarette tin trip either.

00:57:19.000 We just sort of, we stay at various hotels.

00:57:22.000 Sometimes we keep it cheap.

00:57:23.000 We go to Beaujolais.

00:57:25.000 One time, I saw this, uh, this, they had this big tap with this big drum that was like five feet by five feet of just red wine.

00:57:35.000 And I see the red wine in it. 0.95

00:57:37.000 And I go, holy shit, I'm just going to steal this. 0.95

00:57:40.000 We're at the vineyard where they make this Beaujolais. 0.99

00:57:43.000 I'm just going to fucking chug it. 0.98

00:57:44.000 So she keeps a lookout and I put my mouth under it and just start letting it pour in. 0.99

00:57:48.000 It's the diesel dispenser, Gavin.

00:57:50.000 That's where the trucks get their diesel from. 0.58

00:57:54.000 I remember from tree planting, because we used to siphon gas, getting gas in your face is one of the worst experiences.

00:58:01.000 It's like pouring bleach into your body.

00:58:03.000 I mean, it is.

00:58:04.000 It is.

00:58:04.000 It gets in your sinuses.

00:58:06.000 Fuck, it sucks. 1.00

00:58:08.000 One of the worst- I wouldn't- I wouldn't get gas in my sinuses right now for... $79,000. 1.00

00:58:16.000 You'd need $80,000 for me to do it, and I'd be in a bad mood for two days.

00:58:20.000 Anyway.

00:58:22.000 So we're traveling and traveling, and we're having a nice time. 0.96

00:58:25.000 I would have- I could have afforded to have a little more sex on that honeymoon, actually. 0.83

00:58:29.000 If we'd just gone to, like, some 0.96

00:58:30.000 Some Hawaiian place where we're just in a shack?

00:58:33.000 I feel like it would have just been like three times a day.

00:58:35.000 But when you're traveling and stuff, you really... I don't know.

00:58:39.000 But anyway, you do what your wife says with marriage and honeymoons.

00:58:42.000 It's not a... It's not a place you want to start arguing, especially when you've been married for a day.

00:58:47.000 And... I go, wait a minute, we're near Genova.

00:58:50.000 I wonder if Hugo de Lucia is around.

00:58:52.000 This is now 15 years after

00:58:55.000 I don't

00:59:16.000 Punk chose them.

00:59:17.000 I think they chose punk.

00:59:19.000 You know, a goth is still gonna be a little unusual when she's 40. 1.00

00:59:24.000 Gays sure are. 0.97

00:59:26.000 So... 0.96

00:59:27.000 I go into this, there's a second-hand clothing shop, and I confess to my wife that I really want to find Hugo, and she's not excited about it.

00:59:35.000 It's not romantic.

00:59:37.000 It's like Dog the Bounty Hunter all of a sudden. 0.99

00:59:40.000 And her tits are not big enough for that role. 1.00

00:59:43.000 So we go into this second-hand clothing store, and I say, hi, I'm looking for a guy named... It's good to have the accent of the locals. 0.99

00:59:51.000 It helps them understand the English better.

00:59:52.000 I'm looking for a guy named Hugo Delucci.

00:59:56.000 And she looks at me weird, she goes, Hugo?

00:59:58.000 And I go, yeah, Hugo.

01:00:00.000 Hugo Delucci.

01:00:01.000 Yeah, do you know him?

01:00:03.000 Si, si, everyone knows Hugo.

01:00:05.000 And then she's looking at me weird and I realize, he's Tony Soprano now.

01:00:11.000 He's Tony Sopranionio.

01:00:13.000 And now he doesn't have two women, he has a harem. 0.55

01:00:17.000 And he's the Donald Trump of Genova.

01:00:20.000 He probably owns hotels, businesses. 0.90

01:00:23.000 And we're going to have some weird Scarface party with him with like a big pile of coke on a thing and naked ladies everywhere and I'm not going to cheat on my wife. 0.99

01:00:32.000 But, you know, maybe she'll want to like horse around.

01:00:34.000 Who knows where this night's going to go, but it's going to be decadent.

01:00:39.000 And so she's looking at me weird.

01:00:40.000 She probably thinks I'm like a hitman for him or some, you know, high powered pitbull attorney that's here to sue gold for not being expensive enough.

01:00:50.000 And so she goes, uh, hold on a second.

01:00:52.000 And she goes, okay, here is an address.

01:00:54.000 This is his ex wife, uh, from many, many years ago.

01:00:56.000 She know him and she maybe tell you,

01:01:09.000 So she goes, we go to this other restaurant.

01:01:12.000 And I'm condensing a lot of dead ends here to expedite the story.

01:01:17.000 But it was about a five, six hour quest to get him and a lot of waiting.

01:01:23.000 But so we go to the ex-wife's restaurant.

01:01:26.000 She's not there.

01:01:28.000 But the manager calls her.

01:01:30.000 at her country house or whatever. 1.00

01:01:31.000 You see, Europeans are always on fucking vacation. 1.00

01:01:35.000 I have no idea how Italy, Spain and France have any GDP. 0.99

01:01:40.000 I think France has nuclear power, maybe that's why they do, but every time you call a European, they go, yes, well, we just finished the Christmas vacation, but in

01:01:52.000 January's we go to the Black Forest with my family.

01:01:55.000 We stay at our cabin for six weeks.

01:01:58.000 Six weeks?

01:01:59.000 That's called retiring, dude.

01:02:01.000 Grab a cheeseburger, get to work.

01:02:03.000 For the weekend!

01:02:04.000 Aren't you taking care of business?

01:02:06.000 Working overtime, that's right!

01:02:09.000 No, I'm going to the Black Forest with my father.

01:02:11.000 We're going to make gnomes out of one piece of wood. 1.00

01:02:15.000 You know, a lot of people will do a head, and then a body, and then little shoes.

01:02:19.000 But my father is a carver.

01:02:22.000 He uses mahogany and old oak, and we make these gnomes.

01:02:27.000 I've been working on mine for five years now.

01:02:30.000 Five years now!

01:02:31.000 I am from China and Europe!

01:02:34.000 Cheer up!

01:02:35.000 Cheer up, dude!

01:02:36.000 I'm from cheer up! 0.98

01:02:39.000 So we go, she calls, Hi, I'm at my, we are here on the Italian fucking version of Black Forest. 0.75

01:02:46.000 And, uh, but Hugo would love to see you. 0.88

01:02:50.000 He would love it so much.

01:02:52.000 Oh my God.

01:02:54.000 I go, you guys aren't together.

01:02:55.000 Oh no, no, no.

01:02:56.000 We, we divorced me 10 years ago.

01:02:58.000 It's actually, uh, 12 years ago.

01:03:00.000 Yes.

01:03:01.000 But here's his address.

01:03:02.000 Tells me the address.

01:03:03.000 So I go to the building where he's supposed to be and

01:03:06.000 I'm kind of jealous.

01:03:07.000 Like, I love the cheeseburger thing, but I'm also kind of jealous of the just whole family sitting down at a huge table.

01:03:12.000 There's your cousins, your mother, you know, your uncles and your seven siblings.

01:03:16.000 You know, that must be great.

01:03:17.000 It must be great for your mental health, which we'll get to.

01:03:21.000 So I don't know what apartment he's in.

01:03:23.000 She didn't tell me.

01:03:24.000 So I go up to the top and there's about three apartments per floor and they're all beautiful old stone architecture, you know, like the walls.

01:03:30.000 If you punch them, you'd break your knuckles.

01:03:32.000 And they have these steel gates on them because it's Italy and it's junkie town. 1.00

01:03:37.000 So it's weird seeing, it's kind of incongruous, right?

01:03:40.000 Seeing this beautiful old wood door and all this wonderful floral architecture and these little details, these ornate details with just a cage on front of the door.

01:03:50.000 The cage looked like those old-timey elevators, you know, that sort of open up.

01:03:53.000 And I would be like, Hugo!

01:03:56.000 Hugo!

01:03:57.000 Hugo!

01:03:59.000 Up and down, you know, the three, the four floors.

01:04:03.000 At one point, some woman came out and said, hello.

01:04:06.000 No, she said, what are you doing, honey?

01:04:10.000 Honey is pretty much the only word I know, so that's why I'm repeating it. 1.00

01:04:13.000 I said, Hugo.

01:04:14.000 No, no, maybe Hugo.

01:04:15.000 No, I don't think he'd live here.

01:04:17.000 No, no.

01:04:18.000 So I go back, and I have two other leads, and eventually I get a hold of someone who knows him, and she says,

01:04:25.000 He's going to, I'm going to call him, he's going to call me back, and then you call me back.

01:04:30.000 I can't, his number is a payphone or something?

01:04:32.000 I'm like, oh, I get it, because he's a dealer, and he doesn't want to give out his number.

01:04:37.000 So I say, okay.

01:04:38.000 So I wait by the payphone for a call, and he tells me to meet him at this outdoor men's, like, cafe.

01:04:45.000 Which, by the way, I've never really understood these people who drink coffee at 10 p.m.

01:04:48.000 What's going on there?

01:04:50.000 Aren't you going to be up all night now?

01:04:53.000 And so it's all these men drinking coffee.

01:04:55.000 At a, it looks like a bar, but there's no roof or walls.

01:04:59.000 It's just like, imagine that you take a cool little cafe and remove the roof and the walls and it's just a bar with tables.

01:05:05.000 And I don't know, it never rains in Geneva?

01:05:07.000 I don't understand how that works.

01:05:09.000 And so he says, I'll meet you there in an hour.

01:05:12.000 And an hour later, we're sitting there and I managed to have a beer, um, at the cafe place, the Wallace Cafe.

01:05:19.000 And I see, I see a figure coming towards us.

01:05:22.000 There's tons of alleyways down there.

01:05:24.000 Great place for an action movie.

01:05:26.000 There, Jason Statham.

01:05:27.000 If you want to chase some dudes, that's a good place to be chasing people.

01:05:30.000 Liam Neeson.

01:05:31.000 If you want to get your daughter kidnapped, I would suggest Genova.

01:05:34.000 It's a good place to find the guys. 0.98

01:05:36.000 And I see the silhouette of the man with his silly little mushroom hairdo. 0.86

01:05:39.000 He's still got his look. 0.97

01:05:41.000 And he's walking towards us.

01:05:42.000 And I'm thinking, is he going to, like, pull out two big bags of Coke or something?

01:05:45.000 Or a joint?

01:05:48.000 And say, let's party!

01:05:49.000 I'm confused where his entourage is.

01:05:52.000 But as he slowly comes out of the darkness, the streetlights hit him.

01:05:57.000 And he's no longer a silhouette, he's a person.

01:06:00.000 And Tony Soprano meets Donald Trump, meets Andrew Breitbart, meets Libertoire, meets every cool and interesting person I've ever met. 1.00

01:06:10.000 The most interesting man looks like shit. 1.00

01:06:17.000 He has sores on his face. 1.00

01:06:19.000 And I don't know if he's a junkie, but, you know, they look like they've been picked at.

01:06:24.000 So he's got some weeping sores on his face.

01:06:27.000 He's wearing similar clothes to what he was wearing when I met him 15 years ago.

01:06:33.000 He doesn't smell fantastic.

01:06:34.000 He kind of has that homeless smell that's like part dick cheese and part B.O., but also has a sweet, tangy smell to it. 0.81

01:06:42.000 It's like, you know how bums smell like rotten cotton candy sometimes? 0.96

01:06:46.000 And his jeans are so old they're leathery.

01:06:50.000 You know crusty punks, you look at their black jeans and they have a sheen to them?

01:06:56.000 I think that's leather in a sense.

01:06:58.000 They've been wearing their pants for so long that their dead skin cells, you know, have had nowhere to go and they get embedded in the cotton twill.

01:07:04.000 And the next thing you know, you have human leather pants.

01:07:09.000 That are, you know, 90% denim, 10% you.

01:07:13.000 That's your dandruff is embedded in the fibers.

01:07:18.000 And like spilled ketchup and stuff. 0.59

01:07:21.000 I mean, they talk about the Nazis with the Jewish skin lampshades.

01:07:27.000 You're wearing human pants. 0.86

01:07:29.000 Those pants should be illegal. 0.99

01:07:31.000 That's like cannibalism.

01:07:32.000 You shouldn't be able to wear human leather.

01:07:35.000 Even if it's your own dandruff, leg dandruff.

01:07:38.000 So he's got that look and his eyes are broken.

01:07:42.000 And I realize, and this has been my very long way of saying this, I realize that Hugo DeLucci has lost his mind.

01:07:50.000 And the reason that woman was staring at me is because I am someone from his past when he was the king.

01:07:56.000 And like all nice people, she probably hoped that me, you know, someone from his past might snap him back.

01:08:03.000 Or maybe he's a junkie and she's hoping that, you know, I might help him get clean.

01:08:07.000 He's probably ripped off everyone he knows as junkies do. 1.00

01:08:11.000 It was fucking pathetic. 1.00

01:08:13.000 Uh, he pulled out a joint. 1.00

01:08:15.000 I said he'd have two big bags of Coke or whatever.

01:08:16.000 He pulled out a joint.

01:08:18.000 And I didn't want to smoke a joint.

01:08:19.000 I'm not a big pot guy, unless I'm... Even back then, if I was safe, inside, watching a movie that was funny, maybe.

01:08:27.000 Or gonna horse around with my lady? 0.76

01:08:29.000 Sure.

01:08:30.000 But, like, walking around a new city?

01:08:31.000 I don't want to be baked.

01:08:32.000 I want to be ready to fight a mugger.

01:08:35.000 So, he pulls out his joint, and we smoke it, sort of, as a friend.

01:08:40.000 And that was a very nice gesture. 0.98

01:08:41.000 I'm sorry to shit on the guy, I mean... 1.00

01:08:43.000 Calling him a pathetic lunatic, but it's sad. 0.99

01:08:48.000 And, you know, we did the courteous thing, hugged him. 1.00

01:08:50.000 Hey, hey.

01:08:51.000 And he smokes a joint.

01:08:52.000 He goes, I have something I want to show you.

01:08:54.000 I think he, one of the reasons he took so long, I think he went to go get this.

01:08:57.000 Or maybe he carries it with him everywhere.

01:08:59.000 He pulls out a magazine.

01:09:03.000 And I recognized the magazine because he showed it to me in 1990.

01:09:08.000 It was an interview with him.

01:09:12.000 And he said exactly what he said in 1990.

01:09:15.000 He said, this is a magazine.

01:09:17.000 It's like the Time Magazine of Italy.

01:09:20.000 It's a big magazine.

01:09:21.000 It's kind of a big deal.

01:09:22.000 You know, the date was still 1989. 0.87

01:09:23.000 It was the same magazine when he was showing me all this shit and all his drawings and all this stuff. 0.69

01:09:30.000 One of the many awesome things he showed me was an interview in a popular Italian magazine. 0.97

01:09:34.000 I went, oh, that's cool.

01:09:35.000 Yeah, right on.

01:09:36.000 Great.

01:09:37.000 This was now his teddy bear.

01:09:41.000 This was now his security blanket.

01:09:44.000 And I just feel like this crazy person was looking at the old Hugo and thinking, could I make this a portal?

01:09:53.000 Could I somehow go through this magazine back to when I had a brain that worked and I was sane?

01:10:01.000 And the pages looked like the Constitution.

01:10:03.000 They were yellowed and it looked like I could snap them.

01:10:07.000 And the pages were brown and, you know, brittle.

01:10:11.000 And big sort of cracks in them and stuff and very few right angles.

01:10:15.000 There was few straight lines.

01:10:16.000 It really did look like, you know, an old pirate map.

01:10:20.000 And he shows me the same things he showed me before and says the same things about them.

01:10:24.000 It was like, are you a coffee or a tea man?

01:10:26.000 I'll take a beer anytime, blah, blah, blah. 0.93

01:10:28.000 Silly little interview jokes like that. 0.81

01:10:31.000 And he goes, you see? 0.95

01:10:32.000 And that's me.

01:10:33.000 That's me, Hugo.

01:10:34.000 And I didn't have the heart to say, yeah, dude, I remember you showing me this when it wasn't a tattered keepsake that was clearly kept under the mattress at the homeless shelter.

01:10:47.000 This is heartbreaking.

01:10:49.000 And then, you know, I'm about to get dumped by my wife.

01:10:52.000 This is a honeymoon and I'm watching a man who lost his mind.

01:10:57.000 So he disappears down a different alleyway and slowly, you know, resumes his silhouette.

01:11:02.000 We both know we're never going to speak again. 0.94

01:11:05.000 You know, it's the elephant in the room with the mentally ill. 0.99

01:11:07.000 It's like people with Down syndrome. 0.96

01:11:09.000 They must know that abortion is trying to eradicate them from the planet. 0.96

01:11:12.000 They're currently undergoing

01:11:16.000 Ethnic cleansing. 0.96

01:11:18.000 Or not ethnic cleansing, genetic cleansing.

01:11:20.000 They're undergoing a form of genocide.

01:11:22.000 And that's gotta get in there at some point, you know?

01:11:26.000 And I think Hugo recognized that I'm not blind.

01:11:29.000 I see your human pants. 0.83

01:11:31.000 I see your Constitution security blanket. 1.00

01:11:34.000 I see your fucking zit face. 1.00

01:11:36.000 I see your silly bowl cut. 1.00

01:11:39.000 And it's funny how the bowl cut seemed so cool in 1991 when he was a god, and now it just looked ridiculous. 0.99

01:11:44.000 He looked like an eraser.

01:11:46.000 And he walks off into the darkness. 0.92

01:11:48.000 And, uh, not a lot of sex going on that night. 0.63

01:11:51.000 My wife and I, we're not that horny. 0.95

01:11:53.000 Believe it or not.

01:11:55.000 And I just thought, the takeaway here isn't that you could lose your mind at any time.

01:12:01.000 It isn't that we need to pay more attention to the mentally ill, that we need to invest in lunacy, and we have to go get vans and pick these people up and get them in rehab if they're junkies. 0.61

01:12:10.000 I'm not saying that.

01:12:12.000 I don't think that's true.

01:12:13.000 I think it's an inevitability.

01:12:14.000 There's going to be a percent, a tiny percent, one percent.

01:12:20.000 Sure, one percent of us are going to go nuts.

01:12:22.000 And usually it's, you know, in your early 20s, late teens to early 20s when the schizophrenia kicks in.

01:12:29.000 And it is as rare as a skier hitting his head on a tree.

01:12:33.000 It is as rare as a woman drinking, dying of dehydration in New York City.

01:12:41.000 That's a miracle.

01:12:43.000 We should thank God, or if you're an atheist, thank nature, or just thank your lucky stars, or whoever you people thank, that this incredibly complex organism in between your ears is firing correctly.

01:12:54.000 Sure, you get depressed sometimes, you might have your own demons, I don't know, if you smoke, you're a drunk, whatever, you can't hold down a relationship, that's irrelevant, okay?

01:13:02.000 Hugo DiLucci's carrying around the same magazine he had 15 years ago.

01:13:07.000 That's a breakdown.

01:13:08.000 People cry when you mention his name.

01:13:10.000 That's a breakdown.

01:13:12.000 But we are all saying, you downloaded a podcast, you're curious, you just listened for over an hour.

01:13:16.000 You're a curious person who wants to learn about stuff.

01:13:19.000 What a blessing that is!

01:13:22.000 And, you know, this is what I love about church, but I know you hate church, so let's just say the Native American church.

01:13:27.000 Does that make it sound cooler now that there's Indians involved? 1.00

01:13:29.000 The Native American church, a big part of it is just thanks, gratitude.

01:13:33.000 Thank you for this.

01:13:34.000 Thank the North, thank the East, thank the West, thank the South. 0.99

01:13:37.000 And that's how I feel when I see a lunatic. 0.72

01:13:40.000 I just go, there but for the grace of God, go I. 0.96

Get Off My Lawn - Gavin McInnes - January 13, 2018

Get Off My Lawn Podcast #16 | Did you ever see someone go crazy?

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