Mario Manopapa Changu!

Greetings, Earthlings. How are you?

I'm a reminder to those of you who are paid subscribers. We're doing the book club this Saturday at 10 a.m. Mountain Time.

Check your inbox, your spam folder, wherever I just sent out the Zoom link.

This round, this go around, we read or are reading The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler.

I'm about two thirds of the way into it. I've never read Raymond Chandler before, although I've heard, you know, he's been on the radar screen forever.

It's interesting. It's like a time capsule. There's a particular kind of vibe. This world-weary post-World War II California, hard drinkin', sort of masculine but also strangely passive.

It's really interesting. I don't read a lot of detective. I don't know if I've ever read a detective novel. So this genre, the energy, the writing style, everything's strangely familiar because so many movies have been made in this style.

You know, China Town, for example, is one of my favorite movies. It's sort of a home-free bo-guard energy. But anyway, so that's a little bonus thing for paying subscribers.

What's going on? This episode is, this is where the cool guy Rich Ayers is. One of these episodes has just popped up out of nowhere. I think Anya told me, hey, there's this guy she saw on Facebook or something who's traveling through. He's a muralist.

He just sort of travels around the country and paints murals. I thought, well, that's a cool way to get around and see the country and practice your art. Anyway, so I got in touch with him and he came into Crestown. He was camping somewhere near here. We sat down and did this interview. It was great. He's a cool guy.

He's very artistic, very creative. You can see you'll hear it in his voice and his spirit. So he sat there with his dog and his little backpack. What do you call a backpack when you wear it on the front of chest pack?

Anyway, the little dog was very chill and hung out and listened to us talk for an hour or so. It was great. Very interesting. I apologize to Rich because I said I'd get this up right away and then a bunch of shit came up and it's been a few days. But I did want to get it up.

I kind of bumped everybody else back. I've got a bunch of really good conversations in the can, but I wanted to get this up right away because Rich could use some works of anybody out there is in this part of the country anywhere in the Rocky Mountains, Southwest. And you're interested in maybe getting a mural painted. I hope you'll reach out to Rich.

You can check out his work at rich heirs dot art. That's rich. A Y E R S dot art. And you'll see what he's up to.

Anyway, before I get into this conversation, I thought I would say a few words about RFK Jr. Because that seems to be the topic of the week and a lot of people have been reaching out to me and saying, what do you think about this? And you know, have you heard the conversation on Rogan and all this?

I think it's, you know, like so many things that are happening in this culture, I think the issue for me is more about the response than it is, whatever the particular personality or event is.

You know, it's as if American culture is suffering from autoimmune disease. And so, you know, something happens and the reaction is so over the top that the reaction itself is the threat to the health of the democracy or of, you know, the political system or whatever the viability or the respectability of the institute.

And the solution, the credibility of the institution, I guess is the word I was looking for. So as an example of that, I mean, I listened to the conversation. I've listened to it over the last few days. And I got to say, you know, there's some things I agree with, some things I don't agree with, some things I think are kind of silly and and misinformed.

But it's a three hour conversation. And I can't imagine a three hour conversation between any two people where I wouldn't have that range of responses.

And I think that overall, RFK junior came across to me as a pretty reasonable, pretty down to earth, given what kind of life he's led, you know, ranging from being in the room when his father has murdered.

As a 14 year old, you know, to just being a Kennedy, to being in the center of the total shit storm that it must be to be this guy, right, to be so famous, have your ass kissed constantly.

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