347. - Sloane Crosley

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 podcasts. or watch on YouTube. Let's go, baby. How long gone? Straight off Delta One. I'm back in this bitch. TJ, how are you? Straight off Delta One? That's right. Straight from the airport to the lab. It's nothing to record a podcast. A little bleary. I have a gallon of water. I was lucky enough to have time to grab a coffee. So what time? Right now it's noon or not even noon in LA. What time did you... Wake up in New York to get on this flight, to get here so early. I know there's obviously a time zone difference. 5 a.m. ET. Flight leaves at 7.05. We got to LAX a little early, 30 minutes early. Vic was there to whisk me away, so it was no problem, Jason. But I do have a little, the air hostess, the head. Air hostess? The head steward on this flight. Flight attendant. Yeah, yeah, I'm kidding. He sounded like, I swear to God, this guy was like, he sounded like Lin-Manuel Miranda doing like a self-tape for a period piece. Okay, like when he was on the loudspeaker, you mean? Yeah, and then he said, when the pilot chooses to extinguish the seatbelt sign. I'm like, bro, you mean turn off? Extinguish? Yeah, who extinguished? He pushed the button. It was very dramatic. It was very dramatic and it was upsetting to me. That's like an interesting kind of SNL character of guy who talks as if he is a learned scholar.

but he gets every word kind of wrong if he thinks he's sounding very intelligent, but nothing's really grammatically working out for him. I will say, I looked. So Lin-Manuel Miranda. Yeah, exactly. I peeked around the corner. He was going off dome, so that means he's been in the game quite a long time. You know what I mean? Because you see new people and they have to read it off their phone, which is reasonable because it's a fucking... It's like Chris with the Nissan ad. Exactly, exactly. I've printed out. uh and a document that shows the script is what they call it in the in the ad biz and he says no no no extinguish that script from my gaze i shan't need it i shan't be reading i'll be coming off the top of the dome okay so okay well I like it when people, when head flight mistresses get on the mic and get a little chatty with it, as long as they have good news. I hate when they come with that fun-spirited attitude to let you know that we're going to have to go back to the gate. Yeah, yeah. You know I'm a pilot guy. I wouldn't say read the room. Read the tube. We're going to start our descent into LAX. It's a beautiful day in LA. It's about 65 degrees Celsius. We hope you enjoyed your time with Delta Airlines today, and we'll see you next time. Chris Black, we know you have a decision. What is it called? We know you have an option. Oh, yeah. We know you. Yeah, it's basically you could be in the world tonight, but you chose to be here with us is basically what they're saying. Congratulations to Friend of the Show, Justin Timberlake, on his big boy publishing deal. Valued at well over $100 million, according to my sources. It hits Daily Double. So we've got to celebrate that. He's on his suit and tie shit. You know what I'm saying, Jason? Yeah. Congratulations to Friend of the Show, Justin Timberlake. Unfortunately, Suit and Tie, probably my least favorite Timberlake song. I think he would know that, too. The remix package, abysmal. Oh, I don't even want to think about that. That's for a separate podcast. Frankly, I'm sorry I brought it up.

Speaking of disappointing music, how about that new Sky Ferreira? Oh, my God. I was waiting for this for eons. Couldn't be a bigger fan. And even when it kicks in, I'm like, oh, this has got some fucking gonads on it. This thing's got some teeth. I thought we were going into something. And it builds, and then it... builds and it builds and it never it doesn't deliver right right right what did i say yesterday it's it's a song all pre-chorus pre-chorus into the bridge into a pre-chorus into a bridge i mean it has all the trappings of it does it's crazy song yeah her voice sounds good the music has some grit to it it doesn't sound like some Phineas Logic Project type of music where everything just sounds so... Phineas ain't on it. Antonoff ain't on it. Basically, that means I'm good to go, in my mind. And your use of the word gonad, I would applaud. I think that was the right way to do it. But I think, you know, much like many a Delta flight, it never really gets off the ground. Oh! I hate to say it. I hate to say it. But, I mean, I love Skyfarer, and obviously you do too. And, you know, she'll never listen to us talking about this. She'll read the Pitchfork review probably. When I was listening to it, I feel bad because I know that she's a real artist. Agreed. It served as a humbling reminder of how hard it is, 2022 or any time, to really make a great hit song or album. Almost everyone fails. Even your beloved Harry and his house failed to make a good album. You would agree, and you're a Harry stan. I would say there's three songs I really like. I mean, of course, the thing is with him, he's too big to fail. It's like broken every record. on earth for sales and streams. He broke a record for vinyl sales. But it's yet to break into your heart, though, hasn't it, Chris? No, it's true. It's true. It's no fine line. But yeah, I mean, I have hopes. I have high hopes for the Sky album because there's at least 12 more songs. There's got to be three or four in there that are... As do I. Yeah, I mean, I simultaneously feel bad for people in that situation because you do wait so long, years and years, and the fans are ravenous.

The tweets and the memes and the art and where's the product and the blah, blah, blah. And there's so much pressure to make a good song. And when it doesn't land, you just want to crawl under a rock and say, what the fuck am I even doing? I thought this was a good song, blah, blah, blah. But also, you know, it's on you and it's on your team and it's on all of your friends who are yes people instead of maybe you shouldn't do that people. to be like hey this i know exactly what an amazing song sounds like you have it in your power to do it and this ain't it so back to the drawing board i think well i think for her it's more about honestly getting a song ripping the bandit off and getting something out there than it is you know than it is like this is the best song i've ever written You know what I mean? I think that's more the point, probably. Let's just get some numbers on the board. Yeah, and then we'll go from there. But, yeah, I mean, I don't know, man. There's a new MIA song today, too. I would argue it might be better than the Sky song. Shit. I don't know what year it is, but, you know, this is what's happening. And RIP to famous actor Ray Liotta. You might know him from Goodfellas and, of course, his Kith campaign. Yeah. He'll be most remembered for. We hate to lose him, but I think that it was his time. God takes, God takes. There's nothing we can do. I guess, I mean, it is a bummer that he did pass. It is also a bummer that it seemed like my timeline was more concerned with the passing of an actor than a school shooting where 20 kids died. That's a whole other podcast, isn't it, Chris? Yeah, it is. But I mean, you know, I've been reading all morning about how many doors should be on school buildings to prevent shootings, which seems like a nice logical way to kind of go about it, you know? So I'm learning a lot about kind of city planning and also building design. I predict that this is the lobbyist of big lock and key trying to get...

Some more door dollars into their pockets. They're the ones actually lining the Republicans. They're donating to all these Republican campaigns. That's what's happening. Liberal people do not own companies that make locks and doors and stuff like that. That's actually true. That's all red state money. No, red state. If you get a locksmith at your house and you ask him who he voted for, we know the answer. And it ain't. No, not a locksmith. There's some good blue locksmiths out there, I'm sure. I disagree. I disagree. Locksmiths, they call them Sleepy Joe still. No question. Unfortunately, everyone calls Sleepy Joe, Sleepy Joe. That's a good point. No matter how you feel about them, that's what you call them. That's a good point. The most blue motherfuckers. That's a good point. So you were talking about, I want to talk about this more with our illustrious guests, of course, but you said that you were back in L.A. You got your coffee. You're suited and booted with your gallon of water. And that reminded me to kind of give a little bit of a state of the union on my water fasting. Oh, yeah. Not where you fast to only drink water, but where you remove water from your diet. And I got to say. It's a pair of red bottoms that I don't mind wearing so far, Chris. What are the benefits? Because I don't think we kind of went over what the benefits were or what the point of this was, but I would love to hear more. So the point of it was that people that carry around water bottles are soft pussies, and we should be more thirsty more often. The uprising of drinking fountain culture, things like that. You remember that. kind of through line so far right i do i i remember that yeah i remember that now um okay so but again that's that's great and i'm glad that you like to experiment uh with your your body um yeah you know not unlike a teenage girl begging her parents for a belly button ring i don't even have to ask i can get it if i want i can do whatever i fucking want my mom doesn't listen to this podcast what i've found so far is you know similar to you know edging in general it's

it kind of creates an environment where you, you really get to quench a thirst. If you always have your, your, I'm my big baby water bottle with you and you're always sipping it. It becomes like a compulsive. I understand. I never feel, and I'm loving it. I'm just saying I like it. I understand all that, but I think that the negatives outweigh the positives, like feeling good when you drink water instead of doing it out of habit. Means that you drink. My pee-pee color is still healthy. Absolutely not. Your pee-pee color is looking like Margo's fur. That shit is brown. You don't know that. Come over to the crib and watch me piss, baby. No funny business. I'm going to start making you piss in a cup for me, but not for drug tests, just to see what color it is. I wish you would. I wish you would. There's just something nice about... And I also think it's like relearning or reteaching maybe an atrophied muscle where it fits into the eating and snacking as well. This is one of the stupidest how-long-gone theories to ever arise, and I think that's hard to do. I know, I know. I wouldn't really call it a theory as much as an experiment. I'm obviously not dehydrating myself beyond medical limits. I still drink water every day. If you start wearing the Gucci aura ring to test your sleep while you're not peeing, I'm going to be really concerned about kind of where you're going. All I'm doing is... I'm just a traditional person, a regular person where you go about your day doing your things. If you get thirsty, you go over, you fill up a glass with water, you drink it, and you go back to doing your shit instead of being kind of tethered like a child to your wah-wah. And you never get the feeling of fear. That you won't have something to drink. And I think we need that more. This is one of the stupidest. Jason, the fear of having nothing to drink. You're an upper middle class white guy in the suburbs. You're always going to have something to drink. No, that's exactly what I'm saying. And I'm removing that. Oh, really? That fridge full of Ghia and La Croix and whole milk?

I'm saying when I'm at home with my refrigerator and my water and my glass, then it's fine. But back in the day, you'd be driving on the freeway, and you'd be thirsty as a motherfucker, and you don't just get to reach in and get your little Nalgene and take a sip, and everything's all good. So now you have to earn it. You have to switch five lanes in the Tesla, pull over to the 7-Eleven, run in, sweating, looking like... the Paris, Texas, the movie. Oh, yeah. And you just and you and you beg them to give you or you or you just sit with your thirst and drive home and fill up a glass of water. And then when you drink that water, it's so much better. That's what you do. That's what you sit with your thirst when you're on your fucking explore page. I don't think you need to do that. That is wrong. That is wrong. My explore page sits and thirsts after me. I hear these cool experimental procedures that I inflict on my hot little body. Procedures. You're a doctor as well as a podcaster and maybe a little bit of a healer. We do have a guest today. Sloane Crosley, you probably know her from her hit books. I was told there'd be Cake, a collection of essays, The Clasp, How Did You Get This Number, Look Alive out there, and her new book called Classic, A Novel, is in stores June 7th. June 6th. It says June 7th on our website. I'm reading it right here. But, yeah, you go off. It's a suspenseful. It's a rom-com with suspense. New York City kind of downtown. Dime Square ripped from the pages of Klando. Actually, you know what? Today we're making the decision before she joins us. We're never going to say Dime Square in this podcast again. After the last. 10,000-word think piece about someone not liking their life and blaming it on a podcast, I can't do it anymore. We're done. We can go there. You can go there. Chris, that's literally what you do about your own podcast every day. Yeah, but I get to do that. Oh, the sweet irony. I get to do that. Let's get Sloan on the hone, and we're going to get into it. Okay. Thanks, Jason. Thanks, Jason. You got it, brother.

All right, this episode of How Long Gone is brought to you by Quince. Jason, the temps are warming up. It's getting hot out there. Summer always changes how I get dressed. I need pieces that feel lighter, more breathable, and that are just easy but still put together. I don't want to look like a slob. That's why I keep coming back to Quince. They focus on high-quality essentials that feel and look amazing. Breathable linen and soft organic cottons. Well-made basics but without the luxury markups. That rare balance where everything feels elevated. but still effortless. Yeah, Chris, linen season is here. I wore a linen blazer to dinner a few nights ago in the warm California sun. But, you know, you got that Italy trip coming up this summer and quality European linen pants and shirts. upgrade that look starting at just $34 you know if you get a nice linen suit a little t-shirt underneath it some chill shoes you're looking good but you're staying cool the inside of your special areas are nice and dry as you turn up with your besties. So, elevate that summer wardrobe. Go to quince.com slash howlong for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns, even on a nice holiday, now available in Canada. That is quince.com slash howlong. That'll get you free shipping and 365-day returns. punto com slash how long this episode of how long gone is brought to you by a new podcast from the guardian stateside with kai and carter this is covering a lot of our bases jason it's a it's trying to slow down The news and wrestle with the questions we all have about what's happening in the world. And I know you particularly have quite a lot of questions. A lot of questions. But how often? Because we do this podcast three times a week and that's a sweet spot. How many times do they do? Three times a week. And I have a feeling just based on the platform and these talking points that they're maybe going to be covering different stuff than we do. That's just a guess. The Guardian is not some billionaire owned.

They're not afraid to say what they want to say, brother. Yeah, Rupert ain't sniffing around in what journalists Kai Wright and Carter Sherman are up to over there at Stateside. But yeah, listen wherever you get your podcasts. You can watch it on YouTube. It's three times a week. And who couldn't use more news? Especially when it's not from here, let's say. Give it a listen. Give it a listen. 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, so do 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, writing, taking pictures. I do topless boxing. You need a website. Exactly, a website that works, that does what it's supposed to do, that allows you to be creative but also business-minded. Jason, there's one place to go for that, Squarespace. Yeah, Chris, I'm over here. I'm modifying calculators and putting Claude inside of them so you could cheat at school. And I just want a place where I could, you know, have everything all in one place. I can have the SEO tools so those future graduates can find me. And, you know, I'm able to accept, quote, unquote, donations for my services that might be gray area. You know what I mean? And then email campaigns. Hey, I got a new 2.3 version upgrade. Boom, boom, boom. Get the analytics going. Raise some money. Show your investor all of your cool analytics of what's going on. They're going to want to get in early. And we can use Blueprint AI to make your website look as professional as your competition, if not more. So head to squarespace.com slash howlong for a free trial. When you're ready to launch, use offer code howlong to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or a domain. I'm sitting in this very boring background because my refrigerator is literally running right now, and I normally do all interviews in the kitchen. Well, let me tell you this right now. This ain't a regular interview, so it's probably best that you went somewhere with a door that closes. Sloan, this is actually going to be a conversation and not an interview. I don't know if you can handle that.

What? What? I'm going to flip this laptop. If you need like a sub-zero service person, Jason probably knows somebody who can service the sub-zero. I can come take a look at her. It's probably a filtration issue. We can get that cleaned out. You know, I've tried whacking the side of it. I have a slight, this is really gross, I have a slight moth problem that came with this apartment, I emphasize. And so I keep all my sweaters in the... In the freezer. Oh, I like this. Wait, how long have you been keeping sweaters in the freezer for? Is this a temporary thing? Ten years. Ten years of cold-ass gear. And you do live in New York City where you should have a lot of sweaters. In theory, you have a lot of sweaters because of the weather. Yeah, I do, though I don't get cold. I'm like a wolf. I don't have a winter coat. You know, we can talk about my wardrobe because it is a conversation. She's not wearing a shirt. Yeah, Jason, look. Well, I just finished an outdoor fitness session, so you should see what my shirt looks like. You don't want it to be on. It's all dirty and wet. Your one shirt. I'm not going to put a clean shirt on. I haven't had time to shower or sauna yet. There's a whole process, guys. Sauna. If you start doing a podcast, you can get a sauna right in your home office. Wow, look at that. Why don't you do a podcast? I feel like that's a lost revenue stream for you. I know you're a little better than that. You're probably shopping around some TV deals and stuff, but something to think about. First of all, I'm better than nothing. Second of all, I actually did... bat around and i'm using bat around quite purposely not for baseball but a pet podcast i'm out like a kitten i really wanted to interview we're passing i know i'm not i'm not passing i have two beautiful puppy doggos and i love them i heart them i wanted to talk to famous artists about their pets Or like they're crazy pet instructions because I do think it's a psychologically – You mean instructions meaning when you like leave the pet with someone? Yeah. Yeah, when you leave the pet with someone and, you know, you have this sort of push-pull where you're like trying to imbue it with personality, entertain the person that you're probably paying to stay with the animal and you don't want to seem too crazy and you only make it longer. Yeah. Like this explanation for the podcast, for example. And it never took off. The note – yeah, I'm not surprised.

Margo Xanax. That's the only thing he leaves for me when I have to feed the dog. Chris knows that you have to take four dog Xanax to equal one daddy Xanax, and that is tough. But it sounds like this is just a situation that you have been in before with instructions that you've given to different pets, and you wonder how neurotic you might be? Yeah. Like any person who primarily writes narrative nonfiction, I sort of superimpose my own personality on everyone else. And I assume that if I'm doing this, Other people are doing this. But it also comes – did you guys know who Mark Spitz is? Yeah, of course. Yeah, of course. Diver? No, not the – The spin magazine. Yeah, rock critic, not Diver. Got it, got it. So I'm more of a sporty guy. Yeah, no, I can tell from the lack of clothing. But I guess – But music is also life for me. I know, and sauna life too. Carry on, carry on. But no, I was going to say, Mark – used to leave these very funny instructions about his dogs, about their personalities, and say, you know, don't let this one off the leash. She'll go halfway to Mexico. This one doesn't even recognize the other one as a dog. It was so imbued that it made a... made a fun game out of picking up another animal's shit. You're bringing me back to this a little bit just from a monetary perspective because I know most pathetic people in this country love their pets, so I think we could monetize this a little bit. Well, yeah, I definitely thought Chewy would do the ads, right? That's what I was going to say. I'm seeing a monetary kind of path. for me here so we can talk off mic about this. I don't want to give her too much IP with this because Jason can produce. I can kind of do the sales side. You can do your little creative stuff. You can do whatever the hell it is you do. Whatever it is that you do. What do you think it is that Chris does other than coffee meetings? I think he writes a little journalism. We both have contributed to Vanity Fair. That's right. I know that. Unfortunately, my 300-word articles about cool stuff I find aren't quite the hard-hitting journalism that you do, but I appreciate it.

you giving me the charity of putting me in the same category. Thank you. I appreciate it. I think your pendulum has swung way too far, or your flattery pendulum has swung way too far. The last piece I did was a, I mean, it was a cover story, but it was a profile of Laura Dern. Or no, it was Anna Darmus. It was a cover story, but it was an actress. It was an actress, so. I'm trying to say 300 words, but hard hitting. I saw her on the street in New York last week. Anna de Armas? Did she see you? Yeah, she might have. I think she didn't wave or anything, but that could have just been... It was dark. It was like dusk. It's hard to see sometimes. But she was doing the My Favorite Celebrity thing where she's so hot and with a guy who is so hot, but she's wearing a really bad Yankees hat as if that will disguise her from being recognized. Doesn't it make you want to wear... A Yankees. I mean, it's so ubiquitous, that technique. I mean, it feels like it's been around for so long, this sunglasses, that it makes me want to wear sunglasses and a hat so people think I'm a model. It works. I always had that theory. Whenever I would go to the gym and there would be somebody who was wearing these very skin-tight sports bra and booty shorts, but then they would have the hat pulled down to their nose and a mask and sunglasses and everything. And I'd always feel like the bigger the sunglasses and the further down the hat is, the hotter they must be. You just got to scream like, Elliot Gould, I love your work. Elliot! Elliot! Can I work in? I just need to do a couple sets. I just need a couple sets. Or just someone who's like really, I don't know, just like, uh. someone who they don't want to be i mean jason's jason's gym i feel like your gym there could be some celebrity sightings there besides the guy from system of a down like are there any real actors or actresses there or just kind of john mulaney goes there every once in a while you're telling me john mulaney works out he does the he does the the exercise bike where you sit down and he probably reads the new yorker on his ipad that doesn't count he gets the blood moving but he's

He's not doing a super set. He's not doing a hit class. Well, he's inching. He's inching. He made one giant leap and then several small steps inching towards an L.A. lifestyle. Yeah, that's true. He went beast mode in a different direction. What did you think of her film with a friend of the show, Ben Affleck? Because I quite liked it. Oh, I was like, Olivia. I saw the first. Five minutes of that film. And she, when I interviewed her, she had not, um, she actually genuinely, I think had not gotten together with him yet. Although they had, they had taped, they had wrapped it. Oh, trust me. If Affleck, look, if Affleck's taping, you know what else he's doing. Come on now. Come on now. What exactly is he taping? Exactly. We should get you over to the house sometime. Yeah, we should. Yeah. Let's watch the dailies. Let's watch the dailies in Britwood tonight. I couldn't, I couldn't. I found it unwatchable. I found it like... Unwatchable? You snot. I think most people did. I think most people found it unwatchable. I found it unwatchable because I feel like I was being led too strongly to the suspense of it. I was being told... It was like... The way I would describe it is the Ed Harris problem where I am not a huge fan of Ed Harris and I hate to just drag him into this conversation for no reason. If you're listening, Ed, fuck you, Ed Harris. Fuck Ed. Nobody likes Ed. No way. Nobody likes Ed. All the acting, it's all very... I just acted. Did you see me act? I'll do it again. It just feels like you're being escorted so strongly to what your emotions are or the reaction you're supposed to have. I feel like a dog who's fighting a leash. Do you think Ben's doing that or DeArmas is doing that or the entire cast? I don't know. I didn't give it the chance I should have. This is how disinterested I was in it. I did not get to the sex. Is there sex in it? apparently there's a good amount the cool part of it is she just can't stop like fucking young dudes in town and like he knows and then he kills them that's the whole movie you know so it's like there's always some hot guy but she kind of does it in front of him so you don't know if he likes it but then he kills them so obviously he doesn't like it that much what's the movie with diane lane and richard gear betrayal no fatal attraction no no no the one

I can't believe I can't remember a single word. Unfaithful. Unfaithful. Unfaithful. Oh, I've seen that. I've actually seen that. That, I mean, that was done to great effect. Well, you don't want to see Ben Affleck and his back tattoo drowning Jacob Elordi pre-Euphoria? I mean, that's pretty, if that doesn't get to give you a chub, I don't know what will. I mean, you know, that's audio, audio. Auto-erotic asphyxiation and Jacob Elordi. That's breakfast, lunch, and dinner all rolled into one. The guy is 6'5", for Christ's sakes. And a tattoo of a griffin? Or what the hell is on Ben Affleck's face? It's a rising phoenix. A phoenix. To symbolize his career, I'm assuming. He's not Armie Hammer. That should be an Armie Hammer tattoo. That shouldn't be on Ben Affleck's face. When do you think Armie's comeback is going to start? Because it's definitely going to happen. Armie's coming back. I don't think that's... Not in our lifetimes. Who's going to touch them? I don't know who's going to touch them. I think a lot of people are touching them. Who are some of the cannibal positive studios operating right now? You know, Warner Brothers hasn't taken a stand yet, so we're going to kind of start there first. They've been oddly silent on their stance on cannibalism. Yeah, they've been oddly silent. Maybe their mouths are full. I don't know. I'm sorry. That's good. I mean, how else are you going to have a blood ritual? Yeah. I actually, you know what's funny? I forgot. I think the nature of his career or his skill set is such or not there that I actually forgot about the cannibalism. And when you said, who's going to touch him? I thought, oh, because of the acting. Absolutely. It had slipped my mind. That's how much you hate actors and acting and poor storytelling. You totally forgot about the part where he sort of cuts women and drinks their fluids. I completely forgot about that. It's time to take a long, hard look in the mirror, Crosley. I can't. There's no mirror in this room. I'll keep a mirror in the bedroom. What is that photograph behind you? It actually looks really familiar. Really? I can sort of look this up. Is it from Jake Michael? It's not from Jake Michael. No, it is from the one time I went to Art Basel. It's one of Gregory Crutzen's students.

Oh, it's not a Crudson. It's his student. I like that. It's a Crudson student. Was it Schindler? Well, it was Schindler's first assistant. After he died, he kind of kept it going. Schindler's post-it note. I don't mind. What neighborhood? You don't need to give it all away, but what neighborhood are you in? Yeah, I'm not going to give away. I can't give away my addresses. I used to willy-nilly, clearly, because I was burglarized a couple years ago. I'm in the West Village. Oh, shit. I want to hear about the burglarization because I know you're working on a book that's a big part of it. That's not the book that's coming out soon. That's the next book. We're doing two book deals over in Crosley Land, Jason. You hear that? Yeah, we are. I can't wait until I get burgled. Maybe my fucking career will start taking off. Yeah. You should throw yourself headlong into the tragedy of the world. See what pops out the other end. I'm going to start tweeting like, I think I forgot to close my bathroom window. I'm going to go on holiday now for two weeks. Is this is this Kardashian style? Did someone find see a picture of me in a five hundred thousand dollar engagement ring and break into like. The Plaza Athenae in Paris. They saw you walking into the brownstone with a big old Zara bag, and they're like, I've got to see what's in there. I know. She has Zara in one hand, Tender Joe's in the other. It's like, this is a Target. What's the low-rent version of a Target? Yeah, no, I left my house for a couple of hours. This was late 2019, and I left my house just to do some errands, came back an hour later, and... There was all these drawers and things smashed, which I thought, that's weird. I mean, the first instinct is confusion, right? Like, haven't you ever walked into your house, someone else is like, you have a guest staying there and they put a towel in a weird place and you're like, that's interesting. It's a choice. But if you have a cat, then it might not be that odd to see some things out of place, maybe. Well, she is aged out of chaos. She's 19. Got it. There's not a whole lot of acrobatics. That's what we call sobriety, aging out of chaos. That's the name of my memoir. That's Chris's oxycod memoir. Colon essays. That's a collection of essays. I'm not going to steal your swag. There's nothing left.

Oh, you mean the actual... Oh, yeah, yeah. He's not going to burgle your swag. Okay, so you came home, drawers strewn about, there was a little too much destruction, and why are you breaking shit, steal shit? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so it was every piece of jewelry I've ever owned gone. Which is weird, because to your Kardashian point, there's not some literal crown jewel that... Anyone would have been after. So the mystery of why is what gets you. So do you have, I don't want you to give away the hardback version, but do you have any of these answers? What answers? Whodunit? Yeah, whodunit. No. Do we at least have any leads? What we have is a friend in LA, actually. Beautiful, beautiful city. I posted a thing on Twitter right afterwards, which I always find kind of annoying. That the. Sort of, hey, Delta, find my bags. I find that annoying too, but I guess it's an act of desperation that you only do when you need to. Yeah, but it's almost like you do what? To flex the muscle of a bootstack? When there's nowhere else to go and you are in a desperate situation, you have to take it to Twitter. I would never do it. You could shoot me in the leg and I would never crowdsource the information. If I shot you in the leg, you absolutely would crowdsource anything I saw. Nope, that's not true. That's where I draw the line. Anybody at... Delta, you really fucked up. Where's my bag? It's the worst. No, I don't do a public, but I've done private DMs and it gets the job done. It gets the wheels of justice a turn in. Because then they reverse engineer it and they see that you're a very important individual. They see the check and they say, hey, I just think it's funny that my awesome blossom came out cold and the server didn't take it back to the kitchen. Oh, Mr. Stewart, I'm so sorry. It's a weird choice. This is a serious situation. This guy does sponsor. content for fucking Hendrix Jen. We need to get this sorted ASAP or we're going to have a fucking problem. It always goes back to the dollars, doesn't it, Chris? It does. I mean, it does. It really does. Okay, so you had a friend in LA. Yeah. A gumshoe, I hope. A gumshoe who, well, so first, the reason why the Twitter thing came up is because I put a photo of me and the jewelry on Twitter and I was like, I don't know.

This is more ridiculous than any other normal request of this nature. But if you happen to be passing a pawn shop in your local town and are bored and don't have anything to do, go in and look for my jewelry. And obviously nothing came of that. But then a few months later, this guy wrote to my general email address. And he's like, put in some descriptors into eBay. Not strange. Put in some descriptors into eBay and was like, hey, I think this might be your jewelry. And it was three. pieces of my jewelry on an ebay listing and so i don't want to spoil it too much but a bunch of things then happened and it ended with me shaking down a bunch of hasidic jews in the diamond district weirdly the night before i'd seen a screening of uncut gems and i was like this is a documentary about i was gonna say wow wow i did get i did get some stuff back but i shouldn't even admit that not uh because i'm spoiling anything book wise because now people can come steal it again I didn't even think about that. You do? Once you find your window open and your shit broken into you, you think about it. Did you have to pay to get it back, or did somebody do it out of the kindness of their heart? No, I guilted them. I basically listed the stuff that was... I even said I was like, you know, my grandmother's Jewish star from the war was stolen, which is patently false. Not true. Hey, sometimes you have to sensationalize to get your jewelry back. Yeah, all's fair in love and felonies, right? That's what I always say. I'm glad it had a partial happy ending. Partial, yeah. Well, also, with all that money you got from your advance, I'm sure you can buy all that jewelry back if you need to. So much money. Like Scrooge McDuck. You know what book publishing is like, right? It's so much money. It's big stuff. It's big stuff, and you'll be able to replace. No, I rent my house. You'll be able to replace all those. I don't want to hear you guys complaining about being poor, okay? I'm not complaining about being poor. I'm complaining about not being rich. It's totally different. Yeah, that's a good point. It's a fine line, fine line between those two things. Yeah, and I don't have a sauna in my house. You could. You know what I'm saying. It's the cost of half a Rolex, guys, you know, and can you put.

of price on your health is adding years to my life. And I'd like to see somebody try to steal this. Hundreds of pounds. Doesn't even fit through the door. You could steal it bitly quicker than you could steal that thing. It's like a bored ape NFT. Try and steal it. It's in the blockchain. How many NFTs do you have, Sloan? What's your wallet looking like? Sloan, you taking a hit right now in the market? Not just crypto. The whole market's taking a shit. I don't know where your investments lie. I'm a completely... I'll tell you. Fucking tell me, bro. I'll fucking tell you where I'm investing. I feel like I'm filibustering like a politician. I'm so happy to laugh at that while I think of the answer. I did buy $300 worth of Ethereum and Bitcoin at some point, which I'm now proud to say is worth approximately $280 billion. Okay, so we're down, but we're not out. You're down, we're not out. No, I have no interest in NFTs. I think they are... It's weird to see something that is abominable from every angle. That's right. From the art angle, from the finance angle. from the monoculture angle, from the celebrity. It's weird. It's like, it's got so much going on that I wouldn't be surprised. It was like, if it was like secretly funding the war in the Ukraine somehow, like there's something, it's so sort of universally bad. And so in that sense, I'm a fan of them. But I will say that, no, I just have a little bit, the only thing when the, right when the market crashed in 2000, 2020, right around April. I bought like $5,000 worth of various stocks that had done pretty well. But other than that, I'm very conservative. So we're up. We're up total. We're up total. Yeah, but the upness is really funny. I guarantee you it's not sauna money. You know what I mean? Check Craigslist. Check Craigslist. It could be. It could be. The idea of a Craigslist sauna feels like the most. No, no, no, no, no. The heat kills the diseases. Yeah, I got this on it because COVID can't live inside of it. Do you understand? I don't. It's actually killed a lot of the diseases that I suffer from.

You're like, it's made them more chronic but less bad. I can't quite figure out. Yeah, look, you win some, you lose some. For some of my diseases, it does only kind of piss them off more. It actually inflames my diseases, but others it kills. Some of them are quite pissed. Yeah, everything I do, though, on the whole is, I mean, you can tell the headphones I'm wearing are because I don't have earbuds. Like, I don't have, like, basic. I keep a paper calendar. I'm like a Luddite. But I'm not prideful. Are you a Gen X? Are you a member of Gen X like me? I am. I always say I'm ex-millennial rising. I'm in that weird loss. I'm 78. So I'm in that weird, that sort of Borscht belt. I'm unfortunately clearly defined as a millennial, but I identify. What are you, 80? My pronoun is Gen X. My pronouns are Gen X. You can't just go around borrowing pronouns. You're going to get canceled. Oh, yes, I can. You can't tell me what to do, okay? I can listen to Liz Fair in my car all I want. You're like, you don't know my life. Yeah, exactly. You defining me is actually hurtful. Oh, I'm so sorry. Okay, well, in that case, you're the greatest generation as far as I'm concerned. So Chris wanting to identify as Gen X, is that kind of like... like steampunk kind of like nostalgia fapping traditionalism going on chris like i guess not now but maybe somewhere down the line i mean i just think that we all would like to identify with what we think is the greatest time you know what i mean so it's like when you see somebody walking down the street in la it's 95 degrees outside and they're wearing like flared jeans and they look like they they listen to led zeppelin and their airpods you know they're trying to cosplay as their favorite time You see me walking down the street. I got pavement in my AirPods, and I'm wearing an REM shirt. You know where the fuck I'm coming from. Is there anybody who wants his favorite time is now, though? Yes. Yeah, for sure. Me. Yeah, Jason's loving it. Yeah, Jason's loving it. Really? I mean, I always try to live in the present. I think it's very healthy, Sloan. I think it's healthy, and I will let go of the view of the sauna, but it does have a time machine effect. But you're not using it. You are not using it. It does have a time machine effect. I think it's good to take what you like about the past.

and enjoy that but obviously you can get too far down that rabbit hole and then you turn into a steampunk person or a civil war recreator or whatever yeah yeah you can get too far into the past where it's just a source of all of your anxiety it's it's hard to live in the present but it's the most healthy way to live i think i do have friends i have to say that are that you know i've dated a couple of guys who are obsessed with like You know, Criterion Collection movies of the 70s. That's some good dick, though. Some good dick. Those guys won't even turn off the movie if you're trying to get it popping. They're like, no, babe. Babe, I'm so sorry. Gina Allen. Did you not see what's happening? You're like, we're three hours into this and I'm drunk. This is fucking boring. Can you please get it popping? This is crazy. Can you please get it popping? Can you please? I've put in a formal request and not for the first time. I agreed to watch one of your Blu-rays again. Yeah, if you go over to a dude's house and he's got a full Blu-ray collection, I'm sorry. You've got to turn around. That's very un-Gen X of you, Chris. Yeah, right? No, you're right. CDs get a pass, Blu-ray, I'm out. I did a, for the Princess Bride Criterion release, I did the front essay they released with the Princess Bride. It was fun. And the best part about it is they let you go through the closet and just take a bunch of movies. They don't film the plebs like me. I think they film like Tarantino doing it. They're just like, do this. We won't tell anyone. You didn't get some content out of it. You just got some free stuff. Did you have to buy a Blu-ray player afterwards or did you have one? Do you have a DVD player already? Total nightmare. I had to buy like two. I had to return one. The app that takes up most of this laptop I'm talking to. Do you write on this old laptop? Yeah. Oh, you do. Okay. I didn't know. I'm sort of like riding the lightning. I'm going to wait. It might die in this conversation. It's really past its prime. But I refuse to get new technology until it's into the ground. I bet you guys aren't like that. I bet you get the new thing.

Not that much, actually. Really? Because it's too much of a dorky trait to do that. We're somewhere in the middle between Luddite and... Yeah, I can't have the old, old shit, but I can't... I mean, I don't do it. Jason, like, needs real machines because he does actual work. DJ. Well, not even that. Editing this podcast, I fucking write emails. I could do that on any computer. I use a lot of high-performance software compared to the average person that he pays for, I would like to say. Legally, he's licensing my software. I subscribe to the Adobe Creative Suite. It's a small monthly fee. Luckily, it's a tax write-up for my small business. When he says, do you want to come back to my suite? It means something totally different. Unfortunately, unfortunately for him. You want to download a PDF, maybe? Is that it? I just need one room key. He does boast about his acrobat reader from time to time. That's true. It's my favorite way to view documents. So sue me. They do look more official. I actually am always dubious of anything that makes... Because what I do is not art, not design, whatever, anything that makes things look better. Like I tend to write in the ugliest font or big font or like programs that make stuff look more like a book will make you think bad writing is good. What program do you write in? Microsoft Word, Old Faithful. Loser. And what is your go-to font then, if you don't mind me asking? No, it's fine. A Courier New, a Cambria. Oh, not Cambria. Jesus Christ. What if I was like monotype Corsiva and I am my mother? No, I mean, I need to look up Cambria. Cambria, first of all, sounds like a Nissan we'd be doing an ad for. Oh, come on. It just looks like shit. Cambria is not that bad, guys. It's fine. It's just like it looks like you don't see it. Doing Courier is worse because it's like typewriter. Oh, you think it's sort of a self-important thing? I'm just trying to make it look bad because then I think that if something can sort of shine through. uh, narratively speaking through this crappy font. And I still think it's remotely amusing. I'm like, well, it might actually might be good in normal font. That's very cool. Actually. I've never thought, I've never thought about that. That's a, but it's also quite self punishing. Like there's a lot of things I do when I write that I think are not like, I try to, sometimes I imagine someone who I respect.

but don't like, and I know for a fact they don't like me reading my work. And if you can mentally get them. Yeah, exactly. If I can have them, and I imagine the sort of begrudging, like, all right, that was funny, you know, from this phantom. All right, Chris. So, Chris, if you were to do that, if you were to imagine somebody who does not like you and is very smart. Hypothetically. And you were going to show them a page of your writing, who would that person be? Well, that's the problem. I don't think anybody respects me. That's the case. key to her thing is they respect her but they don't like the key you that's that is negotiable what is non-negotiable that you respect the other person so surely there's someone you respect yeah you have to want their respect and adoration yeah you probably think they won't like your writing right but you're you're holding your own feet to the fire i don't think i care enough yeah i don't think i care i honestly don't think i care enough I mean, I just, it's not, it's also not my like, enjoy, enjoy your writing career, Chris. It's not my life's work. That's the thing. It's like, that's your, it's a, it's a very different, she's playing, you're playing in a very different space than, than a lot of people are. Maybe, but the, the muscle you use is the same muscle you use when you walk into a party. I think that's a, I think that's a great activity for any form of art on any level of success. Like I've, I've been DJing, you know, an art form that is constantly ridiculed as elementary or whatever. But somebody who I respect walks into the room that I know does not think what I'm doing is good. And I immediately am like, I just have to win. If I'm DJing and Tom York walks into the club and he's like, who the fuck is this fucking piece? My only goal is to win that person over. I don't mean you're trying to impress somebody so much as you're trying to have them just sort of think differently of you for a second. Like impress them is almost like, oh, and now we can be friends and now they will hire me or now like, oh, he's going to tell other people about me. They're going to let you live to fight another day. Exactly. They're going to not totally trash talk you behind your back. I would say that happens more when we do the live show, Jason. Like if I see somebody in the audience and they're not fucking smiling or cracking a laugh at all, I'm like, this motherfucker is going to, I'm going to get one before we leave here. This is a line from Almost Famous.

You see the one guy who's not getting off and you make him get off. Wow. Thank you for that. I hadn't thought about that movie in a while. Thanks for bringing that back to my attention. Do you notice that I've only referenced movies and not books? I think my brain is sort of mushed right now. It's like free book tour and I'm making all these lists that are like, oh, what are your favorite books? And it all feels like a giant, like, what are you reading right now? And I'm like, here's the seven novels on my... It all feels like a big lie. Don't feel bad. I avoid books all the time, Sloan. Had to buy this hot box behind me. That's the only way I can get anything read. You're like, listen, if you play your cards right, I'll avoid yours too. It's not like I haven't read them. They're just not at front of mind the way that it comes off in all these lists that you have to make. So you're making a lot of lists to promote your new book. So you're talking about other books to promote your book. Hopefully people will buy it. just books. It's books, restaurants, music. You just have to become this weird expertise cyclone and it feels really disingenuous. Just because it's everything. It hits every topic. It's like every genre. These are my favorite sweatpants. This is my favorite dog food. This is my favorite local restaurant. This is my favorite natural one. But I feel like, frankly, I don't actually enjoy keeping track. This sort of flies in the face of this entire podcast. But I don't enjoy keeping... track of the things I like to that degree. Like I want a pathway back into them so that I'm not like. looking at my bookshelves or going through Spotify being like, what the hell was that song? So I want some sort of memory, but the idea of being super up on everything I find to be the antithesis of entertainment. Right. You can go too far where it's like, hey, I'm going to Paris next month. What's your favorite restaurant? And you're like, oh, I have a document that was on thestrategist.com in June. I'll just send that to you instead of thinking about it and having a conversation. But it seems really exhausting to me. And so that's why I find these things actually, you know, Genuinely, like not everybody gets asked this crap. So in a way it's great, but also I feel like I'm doing.

I can almost feel like 1,000 music publicists or 1,000 clothing brands being like, I can't believe they're asking this idiot. Well, no. I mean, I think the idea and the rise of that trend is because people think that if you're interesting and talented that you must like good stuff that they should know about, which sometimes is true and sometimes is not. But there are people who do that. Like, David Sedaris is a real expert in the Holocaust, World War II, and taxidermy. He really knows about this stuff. And Trash Picker Upper Claus. I'm sure he knows all the modern numbers. And his Fitbit, yeah. Well, you, of course, would be very attuned to David Sedaris' Fitbit. That's not surprising to me. But I just, I don't... Gotta get my steps in. Gotta get my steps in. Just anything that's workout related. But I, yeah, I don't have, like, this is my interest. It's almost embarrassing where I'm like, no, I'm interested in reading and writing. I don't have any other interests. I play tennis sometimes. Yeah. Did you grow up playing? Yeah, yeah. I grew up playing. My father was like a real sports dad. He would stand us, my sister and I, on the street and teach us hand-eye coordination. I remember one was when it left the racket, two was when it bounced, and three was when it hit our racket. And he would just go one, two, three, one, two, three. Let's get that sweet sound. That's good. Yeah. And I remember my mother sort of appearing on the porch and just being like, you're going to make them hate you. So this is very Will Smith and Venus and Serena style going on. Venus and Serena. Yeah, there are some, I would say, marginal differences between their story and mine. But this was in a cul-de-sac, not like on a court. You were just out in the street doing this? We're on an angled street, actually. It's not even a flat street. Don't tell me there was a slope. Yeah, there was a slope. That's interesting. That makes it a little more difficult. That's like... But then I played altar college. It's like the David Foster Wallace book about learning how to play tennis in a tornado or whatever. So you're bad. You're terrible at tennis when it's on a flat ground court. Yeah, it shares a border with the changing of the fonts. Do you know what I mean? Where you're like, I'm going to make this more difficult. I've always heard stories about swimmers who grow their leg hair.

Or grow their head hair and then they shave it right before a race to somehow get a little bit like a minute amount less drag. This is very similar to my water fasting. A lot of the similar through lines going on here. Wait, wait, wait. What is water fasting? You don't drink water? It's an agenda he's pushing now that is not getting traction, but he's going to continue. He's like a politician. He's going to run this into the ground. I think that we drink too much water. We have a water bottle with us at all times, and I think we've grown. I'm sure you have one right there. Yeah, look at her go. Look at her go. You can tell she's Gen X because it's just a plastic water bottle, not a reusable Nalgene. That's cool. That's the coolest thing you've done. Hell yeah. Stand up. There's a water bottle you might get if your family's been displaced. Oh, yeah. That looks like something they give you at the airport. You got a FEMA water. What brand is that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It is almost impossible. It is the purified water brand. It's almost impossible to discern a brand from this label. It seems to be the nice. No, that's a Walgreens or Duane Reade in-house brand. No, I live in New York. I feel like I wouldn't – I'm not carrying a bunch of – I don't get my groceries delivered. I don't enjoy it, and I wouldn't carry a bunch of water to my house. But wait, so you think water is what bloats everybody? Is that why? I mean, bloating is an issue that we don't want to talk about, but yeah. I just think that it sort of creates like a new neural pathway where if you always have water, at the ready, then it kind of turns you a little soft. And I think back in the day when a man was a man, you would be really thirsty and you'd go take a pull off the hose on a hot day and you're really quenching a thirst. And so we never really get a chance to be actually thirsty because we're always drinking. So I want to deprive myself from the drinking and then drink a nice glass of water and it's like a big ceremonial quench. Versus like a little drip throughout the day. It's going to be like being hung over all the time. And when you wake up and you're like, that glass of water has never felt better because you need it so badly. But I think you have to do it in conjunction. It has to be in concert, if you will, with what you eat. Okay. So you can't have, I feel like you would almost have to weirdly eat less. Well, that's the next.

phase or the next part of it i don't want to encourage this i'm trying to think of how to do it without you you know the natural i'm working from home all day like i'm sure you do as well so if i always have the water i'm sort of trained while i'm working to like grab something and put it inside of my mouth and that goes inside my body and that could also translate to the ease of snacking on almonds or a little chip and a hummus or whatever. So this sounds like it extends beyond snacking. If that sounds like you have a oral fixation, it could also be to avoid me smoking cigarettes. I don't know. Ah, there we go. Yeah. I mean, I don't even think of food when I think of water is where I start crying and talk about my mommy. No, I mean, obviously I know that it's a ridiculous thing to like restrict the amount of water I'm drinking, but I think that all I'm doing is taking, you know, like I was drinking. 10 times as much water as I need to be drinking. I'm trying to reduce it back to the normal amount of water that I need. So everything in moderation, including water. Including water. I do understand what you're saying. I just think that you need to... get yourself to a place where you're not actively doing what you're doing right now. It just has to be natural. Because I think if I was over-conscious of natural, it's like, don't think of an elephant. That kind of... And it'll come with time. It'll come with time. Yeah. And I'm trying to not have a water bottle when I'm at the gym or working out. Like, wait till I'm done and then drink. And Chris does that too. No, I hate people. People show up at the gym, they got a duffel bag full of waters and towels and fucking... They carry it around with them and sit this. It's like a go bag. Like an army medic. Radio in there. Yeah. I got my telescoping IV tube where I put my fluids up there. Exactly. Let's tie you up. I got a kettlebell in one hand and an IV in the other arm. Get my fluids in here. I'm replenishing. I'm replenishing while I work, guys. Could you scoot over a little bit? Just scoot over a little bit. What do people think is going to happen? It's funny. That panic people get, I mean, maybe in LA. There's no really before earthquakes. It just happens. But before some sort of storm, people stock up on food or they go to the gym with all this stuff. We have an island. You have a driving city.

What do they think is going to happen? What are you going to do? They're not going to starve. You'll be okay. See, Sloan gets it. Sloan gets it. It took a bright mind like yours to help explain it to Chris. That's right. I'll eat the toilet paper. I don't go to the gym, though, so I don't have this frame of reference. I haven't gone to the gym in many years. I don't believe in it. What do you mean you don't believe in it? You believe in, let me get it. You're not a step counter, are you? Yeah. No, but I do try to. Leave the house. I guess I just don't. I do. I do try to leave my house. I will say that. I try to talk to my family too, but I don't. No, I just, I mean, I don't want to now do like a bit on the, on the gym. I just feel like I don't, um, I feel like my time is spent better. Just not. eating like a horse and moving. What about the mental aspect though? The, the, cause that's a big part of it for a lot of people. I go, I go for, I go on the Hudson river. So there's that like Hudson river park. I'm familiar. I'll, I'll take, I'll take long meandering walks. Think about where my life went wrong. You know, I think people like you who don't feel the need to go do a crazy workout type of thing is, I think that's a sign of a healthy mind where you don't necessarily need to. Yeah, I think I do actually, I actually, I'm going to go with a, The fucked up theory. I think the more you have to work out, I mean, the more you have to work out, the more you have to try to kind of silence the demon inside of you or unclench the tension inside of your body. Right. And you're like, I can't do drugs because that will kill me and ruin my life and family, so I'm forced to do crazy CrossFit or deadlifting or powerlifting. I think the people who work out more, ultra marathon runners, mountain climbers with no ropes like those are the people who have the most well that's the thing inside of them that they need to get out and you seem like just a normal healthy person let's go for a stroll you're absolutely you're absolutely wrong jason you're absolutely wrong in this case in this case in this case i think you are wrong about the normal the normal healthy thing i just think i channel it through other

things and not necessarily drugs. How many Diet Cokes do you have in a day? I can't really have caffeine. I can't have caffeine. I'm vaguely allergic to it. So I can have like a half a cup of coffee a day. Oh, what happens if you're allergic to caffeine? I'll get like a heart thing. I get like a trachocardia thing. I'm not going to die. It's weird because it builds up in your system. It's very hard to have an allergy that isn't an immediate cause and effect. I'm grateful that I don't have to carry around an EpiPen, but it is hard. to keep track of something where you're like, this is just going to build up until it's a problem. Yeah, I've never heard of that because we have a friend who has a nut allergy and he sounds like a fucking dork every restaurant we go to because he's got a, you know, like, oh, we can't do that. No, I have a friend who had a nut allergy who has this story. He went on a date with a girl. Yeah, I know. Already bad. Oh, no, it's not an allergy. I'm so sorry. It's an egg allergy. He went on a date with a girl. They had cocktails, no food. He walks her to her door. They make out. His throat starts closing up. Not the egg white whipped. Egg white cocktail. Egg white inner cocktail. See, that's why you don't take chicks to employees only. You know what I mean? You can't go to these mixology places. You know what I mean? You never know what they're putting in those drinks. That is why you go nowhere with filament lug building no matter what. But also, I feel like if you have an egg allergy and you're a member of the mixology community, you should know about egg white. Oh, he's a member. He was a participant. I know, but if you're there, you kind of have to. Yeah, if you're going anywhere that doesn't have just like beer on tap, you know, you got to be careful because there was a time where a whipped egg, they throw that thing in any grain alcohol, any grain alcohol. I enjoy an egg. It's disgusting. You know, it's funny. I went to a couple of years ago, I did this piece, obviously pre-pandemic on Cape Town. Have you ever been there? Have you ever been anywhere in South Africa? South Africa? Yes, South Africa, which is how we see it. I haven't, but people seem to really like it there. It seems to be beautiful. Yeah, it's stunning. It is really shockingly sort of everything feels like a really beautiful Potemkin village where it's just every image feels like it's going to be rolled up at any minute. It's just shockingly pretty. But it is actually wild how the racism is.

trickle down in these bizarre ways. And the reason why I'm bringing this up as it pertains to cocktails. So I went out with a friend and I went to this fancy restaurant and there were 12 kinds of gin martinis with different kinds of mixtures, just different elements, different flourishes. I don't know. I didn't know Africa got down like that. That's like 11 too many kinds of gin martinis. Like what is happening to this menu? And a friend explained it. Well, you know, they folded in like cocktail culture pretty late. They're playing catch up. I thought I thought Canada was behind. Yeah. Nobody, nobody would trade with them for good reason. You know, they have the wine industry. And so he explains this whole history of like why now mixology is like only recently popular in Cape Town. And I'm like, let me get this straight. So I asked you why there were this many cocktails and you said racism. It's such a weird place, but every time I think of bespoke cocktails now, I think of Racine Love. As you should. Luckily, I think it's dead. I mean, you can still get that stuff, but it's been normalized, so it's not like a tourist attraction the way that it was five years ago. I think it is in other parts of the world. In America, not so much. I think if you go to Europe, they're still putting black lights underneath your glass and doing foam and smoke and all that shit. That's probably true. I did go to a restaurant in Europe like that. What do you normally drink, Sloane? Are you a martini girl, gal? Actually, I had martinis. I had a martini last night. I did, too. It's going to sound crazy. It's something I shouldn't share because of how it's going to come off. Okay. But I went with a friend of mine who was in town. Did you drink it out of a bottle? She's friends with Gay Talese. We had martinis with Gay Talese. Oh, shit. At where? At the Carlisle? So you and Gay Talese and all the other TikTokers in New York? Gay Talese, yeah, I know. Well, I feel like that's when you have a legit entry point into the Carlisle. Did Gay bring his ring light or did he leave it at home and get the ring light? Gay was shocked. He kept on being like, he was very shocked that I was going on book tour.

and going on the subway so much. I've been on the subway like three times that day. Because he's like a COVID freak because he's 150? Violence? Yeah, violence. It's a little bit the sort of a... You're a little more spry than gay. You can kind of shake and bake a stabber. My shoes got pissed on the other day, but I don't think it was about me, personally. Are you saying you think somebody was offended by your spiked Louboutins? Every time somebody pees on my shoes, I'm like, is this about me? Oh, sorry. Hold on one second. I just... My cat just got caught on this cord. That is why you do a cordless thing. She just tripped. Sorry, baby. You're a wired it girl. That's abusive. That's abusive to the animals. I'm sorry. No, it's actually, yeah, the Louboutins. I do not own any of those. It is a very retro thing, Carl. I don't think it feels like I should have seen a, a what? I asked Santa Claus if he was listening. Santa doesn't like the juice. He wouldn't. responds to you and responds to me. No one talks about Santa's. That's a great point. But there's eight days of Hanukkah. We start with Manolo. We end with Louboutin. It'll be a great holiday season. Do you think I grew up in Long Island? I don't know. I just think that nice shoes. Everybody likes nice shoes. Chris just likes nice shoes. That's all. I think you're imposing a lot of hopeful motivation on the man who pissed on my shoes. You're giving him a lot of credit in that sense that you think it was a political act. But he was actually just... He was sort of pissing in a circle. Been there? And like many people's shoes got hit. Wait, was this on a train or like in a train station? Platform. It was on a platform. And he was doing the classic pissing in a circle. I usually do that in the backyard by myself. You know how it goes. You just kind of get going and you can't stop. Maybe he was like a witch and he was going to like read the droplets once they were imprinted. Oh, nice. Like a Turkish coffee reader? Now he's giving him too much credit. Yeah, I just, I just, but it was very funny. Gay was just extremely like.

freaked out that I was going to the subway, but I think it sort of belied the idea that Aiden's been on the subway in a while, which he has completely earned the right to not ride the subway. I mean, I don't take it. I love Uber. I won't go anywhere unless I can walk, really, in New York. If it's within 30 minutes from the East Village, then I'll go there. Chris walks to the airport. He's that committed to this. It's crazy. I go through the Hasidic neighborhood that you only see when you're walking. You know what I mean? That's kind of part of my New York. Chris knows a lot of parts of New York that you can only see on foot. You should be answering all these goddamn questionnaires for me. You'll be like, let me tell you what the secret thing is in East Williamsburg. I love, well, East Williamsburg, actually, for some reason, I can't walk there. It's like I have a silent dog collar on, and when I get to Bushwick, I get shocked. There's an invisible wall. Beep, beep. Can't get into it. Yeah, I just, I hit it. So where are you going on this book tour? What beautiful markets are you hitting? Beautiful markets. I'm excited to go. and genuinely see more than everyone's torsos. I really am actually, in that hokey way, very excited to go. I get it. I don't really love reading to people that much, but I love a Q&A. I feel like that's where I shine. I like a Q&A. Chris does not like a Q&A, whereas you do like a Q&A. Why? You don't like... The duality of woman. Lecturing people? No, I don't like a Q&A in the podcast format because I think people are... Because of the parasocial relationship, things are very strange. I think a book Q&A is very different. Because you feel like you've already had the conversation and what more can you offer? Is that it? No, they have a level of comfortability that they shouldn't have. Oh, are you kidding? Okay, so this is a novel. So we have a novel coming out. The People's Republic of Disappearment. We have a novel coming out. But, you know, I'm mostly the first three books are, well, mostly the first three are narrative nonfiction. So, like, that's a lot of people thinking that they know you. They're very familiar. They raise their hand and they know you more than your close friends and family might know you. So they think. Or at least they think they do. What do they ask you? Do they want to know? What way does your dick curve, to the left or to the right? I heard the Betty Blanco episode. I get that, but over email. I get that from people that are like, you know, you're writing, you seem sort of like a piece of shit like me.

Like, they want to put themselves out. I like that. That's cool. Thanks for being a good voice for us, awful humans. Or it's like, you know, it's just sort of, you know, kind of cool blog writing, which I'm not normally into, but I'm kind of into yours. Oh, we love, they love a backhanded compliment. Yeah, it's like, I don't know why. It's the game. It's like they all read Neil Strauss, but like the literary version, and it's very weird. It's all necking. But it used to be, it's also just... It obviously says more about them. I used to work for a literary agent. That was my first job out of college. And we would get these query letters, you know, may I send you my manuscript? And they would actually say, they would have lines, like, I'm really worried that this is a little bit too much like Tobias Wolfe meets Alice Munro. And I'm like, why don't we jump off that bridge when we come to it? Yeah, bro, relax, Chief. Damn. It's the same muscle, but just exacerbated as everything is by... Are you saying that writers might be neurotic a little bit? I'm saying that writers might be just... It's very... To think that everything is out to get you, to think the world is not for you, is a form of narcissism. You listening, Chris? To think that the world has taken a stance on you. That feeling is a form of... I don't think it's the world. I think it's just the losers that listen to this podcast. The world doesn't give a shit about me. I'm not worried about that. I just get asked the first question at every reading pretty much, or the first to the third is, who's mad at you? Who's mad at you? Who's mad at you? Everyone's mad. Like who hurt you kind of style of who's mad at you? No, no, no. Like Adele? No. It's more like basically they ask because they want to... I think they're conflating... It doesn't matter what I write in a way, which is incredibly freeing. People will say I write about dating when I don't, except for this new novel. But they don't... They're so used to like... I can never say is right, but Augustine, is it Augustine or Augustine Burroughs? Oh, Burroughs. They're used to that sort of tell all or can you ever forgive me? Or they're used to this idea of like the dramatic essay collection or autobiography or memoir. And so they know that like, you know, he in Running With Scissors sort of betrayed that family. Or they know about James Fry. Or they know about these sort of like huge stories or JT Leroy. And so once you write narrative nonfiction.

There's just this assumption that like your whole family and all your friends are mad at you. And, um, it is, you know, isolated instances, correct, but it's like not what they're thinking. I'm like almost no one to my face. So clearly now we'll just add you to the list, but like, I, you know, it's not, they're hoping you can give them an explanation as to why all the people that they know hate them. Yeah. I think they want, they're hoping I can give them, um, a get out of jail free pass for writing about their families or their ex husbands or their ex wives. And I'm like, I can't, it's between you and your God. I can't help you. I saw that today. There's some, there's, uh, a book coming out where like the guy writes about fatherhood, Emily Gold's husband writes about fatherhood. And it's like a whole, I mean, it just sounds like a nightmare. The writing of the book or fatherhood? Well, fatherhood, definitely. But I mean, like, I just think that that subject is so like, people just don't really reward honesty in that realm very much. You know what I mean? Even though we like want to read it in some ways, like I think. Overall, if you say anything that is too negative or even too honest, you'll get killed for it. Because people just don't want that. By losers. By pussies who are too safe. That is also true. Objective. It's different for a podcast. It's a different medium. When you're writing, you have so much control. You can balance it out by being horrible to yourself. Or you can balance it out by being legitimately self-deprecating. And so by the time you take a crack at somebody else... and say something cruel or say something inappropriate, everyone is on your side. I think at one point it was like that. I agree with you. You think it's over? No, I don't think it's over, but I think people are looking for a reason to not like something versus looking for, and I'm guilty of this too, versus looking for a reason to like something. If you read something and like a book about fatherhood and somebody says something too honest and like kind of fucked up about their kid, it's like that will be the thing that people talk about no matter what else is in the book. I think it depends on the person. I mean, Jesse Klein has a book out right now about being a mother. That's a huge bestseller. And part of that is her platform or whatever. But she's also a very good writer. And I think that like to me, it just feels like they have to be interesting admissions. Yeah. Yeah.

Negative. I think it matters if they're interesting. So the whole, you know, oh my gosh, I'm so crazy. I danced on a bar and fell down and I lost my like credit card, you know, for a single girl is, is, is highly irritating. Um, and that's not real. Uh, but if the interesting admission is that you like, I don't know, like you dropped yourself on your baby's face and like it had to, and you like lied to the doctor about why they got a scratch. I don't know. I can't think of it because I don't have to. Like how a 9-11 joke has to be truly funny for you to be able to say it or it just doesn't work. Yeah. This admission has to be at least interesting or novel or else, okay, you're just shitty. I want to agree with you. You just have to try harder. I want to agree with you. I think that's giving the public a lot of credit, but clearly there are cases where that's true. I think if you're an author and you're admitting something terrible that you did about... your parenting methods, you kind of know how that's going to come off and you're biting the bullet and you're taking the ride knowing that you're going to separate yourself from a lot of people and being okay with that. Yeah, sure. No, you're right. All the other people whose brains work like yours will be like, this is my guy. Because it's on purpose. No one assigned you that book. Yeah, you're doing this by choice. No one said you must write this. I mean, granted, in some respects you you have to write because at this point it's your career right so you're not just going to be like it's not like you can hurt somebody and they think maybe they're thinking god couldn't you do anything else and you're like what be a cta like this is what i do you know but yeah i got but also if it's that bad, you can always write a novel. The thinly veiled novel. The thinly veiled novel. Oh, this is based on, this is just a composite of people in my life. You could never pin this to anyone. Are you crazy? I have to say, it's funny because I feel like most of every time I've written fiction, what's weird is that starts as bullshit, right? I totally agree. It starts as a lie. And then it becomes a true composite. And then the second, it's so much faster than everyone thinks it is.

Do you know what I mean? I think a lot of people think, oh, you should comb back to this manuscript and change some details for legal reasons. But it's actually the second you give them, at least I find, a name. And the second you change their features and try to write dialogue for them. So that's within about a paragraph. They really are somebody else. I don't think writers are actually lying about that. They're just lying about... You only use them for the spark, and then everything else is fabricated. And then you discard them as much as you did in real life. On the side of the road. Amen to that, Sloane. All right, well, thank you for taking the time to pod with us, Crosley. It was an honor. That was a joy. A joy. Thank you for having me. Hopefully you'll come back on again one time, the next time you have a book, or even just for fun. Listen, I feel like I... Enjoy talking to you guys. I'm a fan. God bless. Great to meet you. Well, we'll be out of New York in a couple of weeks. Maybe we can grab a Martini. Come grab Martini. I think we also have a... like maybe 50 friends in common. I'm sure we do at this stage, for sure. You know the Nomi Fry? She's our friend. Who doesn't, you know? I know. Cult classic. Are you going to be here June 7th? No. Well, Christmas. I am, yeah, I am. Is that when the New York... All right, well, you probably have things to do, but there's a launch and a party if you're interested. Well, I like parties, especially when I feel a little out of place, you know what I mean? A little above my pay grade, so you just let me know. I love this conception of me wearing designer shoes. I mean, that's why I knew the Gay-to-Lease thing was going to help. one, but I'm like, that's rare. Mostly I'm just in life. Yeah, it's so weird I was with him at the hotel last night. I never do stuff like this. It's crazy. Actually, I did have a martini last night. It's funny you asked. It's funny. It is really, but it's almost hard not to... mention it. No, hey, this podcast... No shame. The whole point of this podcast is mentioning stuff. That's what we do for an hour, so it's not a problem at all. I know. It's good. All right, so the book, Cult Classic, is in stores the 6th, the 7th? Soon, right? The 7th. June 7th. It's a Tuesday. It's a great day to buy a...

A novel. I'm sure you can pre-order wherever you buy books, your local book merchant or bookseller. Wherever fine books or even mediocre books. I'll be reading mine in the sauna. It'll be well-worn. Oh, that's great. Covered in piss. Thanks, Sloane. God bless you. Bye. Thank you.