Your body isn't anymore, doesn't ask for much. A little music and a soft touch. Why don't you let it out to play?

Your heart is in a burr cave, singing in your chest. You want to shut it up, but give it a rest. You're gonna die one day.

Oh, yes, we are ladies and gentlemen, so live while you can. Because it's all coming to an end. It's like a video game.

Pinball machine. What have you? It's gonna end, right? It's just a question of how long you can string it out and how much fun you have along the way.

Remember reading a book a long time ago? I was like 11 years old. I think my dad gave me a copy of Zen in the art of motorcycle maintenance by Robert Persig.

I didn't comprehend 90% of what I read, but I plowed through it anyway because I wanted to impress my dad. And along the way, I sort of impressed myself a little bit because I knew I was punchin' way above my weight intellectually speaking.

But I stayed in the ring. Something my pal Joe Rogan would understand on a completely different frequency. But there's something about that. There's something about facing the unexpected, facing something that's intimidating or frightening and sticking to it.

I don't want to sound sexist, but I think there's something very essential to a healthy development of masculinity in that process. Now I know there's something very essential to the healthy development of femininity in that process as well.

But of course these things express themselves in different ways. But I do think there's, you know, all young men should face a snarling beast at some point in their lives because if they don't, they spend their lives running from imaginary beasts.

Anyway, this is the second episode of Talking Out My Ass and there I go, I'm already doin' it.

I last episode left you at high school, finished high school in Casanovia, New York, 1980. And largely because of the silliness that I told you about in that episode with my ex-girlfriend drop in my sorry ass and me getting all freaked out about it and depressed and negligent of my college applications.

I ended up going to a place called Hobart College, which was in most respects, you would say it was like a safety school. It was one of the only schools I think I actually applied to.

I also applied to Cornell and seemed I was getting in there, but I think I mentioned that when I had an interview on alumni interview with someone who lived near where I was and I think it was in Connecticut.

And she was great. I mean, the interview was at like 7 p.m. and I ended up hanging out at her place till 11 or something, you know, and met her husband when he came home and she was like, this is this guy's great, you know, and she told me, I'm gonna do everything, I'm gonna write you the best recommendation ever.

So I was sort of like pretty much in the door, I think I had very good SAT scores. My grades weren't great, but I'd gone to three different high schools.

So I think they were willing to give me a little leeway for the dealing with the social awkwardness of moving all the time.

But then when I got to Cornell and they put me in that room with the gorgeous 28 year old ammarasian woman, I was tongue tied. I remember her saying to me, so what are you interested in?

And I was like, you know, little of everything this and that.

Because of course I retreated into like cool dude, you know, posing. Not the thing to do when you're getting interviewed for an Ivy League education.

But anyway, so I end up at Hobart College. Now the thing about Hobart is it's in Geneva, New York.

You drive into Geneva, New York and there's a big sign saying welcome to the Lake Trout capital of the world.

So that's what they're famous for in Geneva, New York is the Lake Trout in Seneca Lake, one of the finger lakes.

...