Three Seriously Messed Up People Behaviors And The Black Keyes. Jerry Seinfeld Is Afflicted Just Like Me

He can't figure out how to put a t-shirt on.  Life is hard for some people.
Switching from cotton woes to sheer cliff faces, Blade recounts how the Black Keys struck a chord in his life, thanks to Heather's rockin' musings, and how this led to an appreciation for the poetic rawness of the Mountain Goats. Then, while he might not understand the siren call that drives adventurers to free solo El Capitan, it's appreciated (we think) as climbing up a rock is explored. 

Transcript

Blade: 0:00

All right, every song reminds you of one person, and that's the Black Keys Howlin' For you, who I love, and that's the Black Keys Howlin' For you, who I love. And the person that reminds me of that particular song is my hair stylist maybe 2008 something. Her name is Heather and she would tell me about these bands that she loves, and she was a school chick and she was a rocker. And she said have you heard of the Black Keys? No, and I went and listened to them and they were great. And then they opened for somebody at walnut creek and I went and watched them and they're fabulous. Someone else did that to me too. When someone has a fervor for a certain band you've never heard of and they say you got to go listen to the mountain goats I will, and the mountain goats are great there's bound to be a ghost at the back of your closet, no matter where you live.

Blade: 1:22

I've got a new series of podcasts and they're basically a rerunning of many of the interviews that I did in the last 32 years. I saved as many as I could, although not all of them, but I just want to let you know that I never liked myself as an interviewer. I was never a good interviewer, even though I interviewed hundreds and hundreds of rock people and other people, because I could never ask the question. I never dug deep to try to find the answers to the personal questions and the other questions, of the touchy questions. I was never able to do that. The style I always took in all my interviews was conversational. I loved having guys in and play a couple of songs and just have a conversation with them. So that's the style that it is, but maybe a little bit too casual. I always thought but that's up to you. But there's a new series on buzzsproutcom of the interviews that I've done over the years.

Blade: 2:18

Now I'm not trying to make fun of people like this and I'm looking right now at my National Geographic magazine, which I love so much. It's like somebody bringing in a box of donuts when that National Geographic comes in the mail. I'm just so happy and I couldn't tell you why. Sitting down with a clear head and reading the National Geographic just makes me happy. And again, I'm not trying to make fun of people like this. And it's the second edition in a row of some rock climber you know Hans or Nordic, some guy or something but he's climbing up El Capitan, which is in Yosemite, and this time it's not just climbing up a rock, for whatever reason. He's climbing up this rock with no gear. I mean like Spider-Man. And you just look at these things and think of the magnitude of this statement. It's like the man has this inner desire and obsession to climb up a rock.

Blade: 3:16

Now I can understand that when it's a small boulder, when you're three years old, an obsession with climbing up a rock, and you see the picture and your first thought is what an idiot you do. You know, and I thought into the, into the. I went to the deepest crevices of my brain, of what's left of it, to try to find a rational, reasonable rationale for why somebody would do something like this. And I'm a reasonable guy. I can come up with a reason. I can understand why people do a lot of things that are not socially acceptable or weird, but this is one I can't come up with Rock climbing. The best I can come up with is well, so they can say that they did it. Okay, all right, let's just assume that that's the reason, so they can say that they did it. You can imagine one guy at a social party, you know, with five or six people around him sipping their little cocktails and he tells someone I climbed up El Capitan with no gear, just my hands and slippers. What kind of a reaction are you going to get from people like that? The best I can think of is, really, somebody may say really, and then you can watch them all scatter as they try to find someone else to talk to. That's not as weird. Okay, so you can say that you did it. Who cares? Well, frankly, I guess National Geographic cares. You know, and congratulations to.

Blade: 4:39

For the first time ever, I'm congratulating Sir Edmund Hillary and Tibetan mountaineer Tenzing Norgay. Those were the first two guys to reach the summit of Mount Everest 1953, the highest mountain in the world. Why they did that, I have no idea. You go up and you put your flag on top of Mount Everest and I guess you scale the highest mountain in the world. But when I think of someone like that, I'll go okay, whatever, and I guess they're proud of it and all that. But I mean they did it too, at the risk of, you know, losing their toes and fingers from frostbite and dying of hypothermia and perhaps being eaten by, you know, a polar bear. But but they did it. I'm sure they're proud about that.

Blade: 5:19

You know, when I think about this living in Arizona, you know you got rock climbers and you got people that want to scale mountains, and I am this close to putting hikers into that category. I just don't understand the allure, the appeal for hikers. I really don't, because it's a lot of work, all right, I call it trudging. You're not going hiking, you're going trudging, and you got all this gear you got to have and you got to be stocked up with, you know, the right shoes and the right clothes and all that kind of thing, and all you're doing is getting tired. When someone you know in a party or someone in a circle of people says, hey, you want to go hiking, I start looking at my watch. Oh gee, look at the time. No, I don't want to go hiking, no, and I go. Nah, you know. And then when I hear someone else talking about being an avid hiker, I just I can't run away fast enough.

Blade: 6:15

You know why do the hiking thing? What's the point? Is it because you want camaraderie with a couple of people you know, quiet, soulless? You can do that at home in your own pool. Here in Arizona, everybody has pools, has pools, you know? Is it for the exercise, where you can go running or something like that? There's a lot of ways to get exercise besides hiking up and then down on a mountain. You know, and you know, trust me, you can slip on gravel at any time and crack your ankle in half.

Blade: 6:42

Why do they do that? For the scenery. Look, there is so much scenery here in Arizona and the entire state you can get in a car, jumps to where, get out of the car, take a look, snap a couple of pictures. There you go for your scenery. What is the deal with hiking? I don't get it. Is it the freedom to go potty anywhere you want to? Is there some underlying need to find Bigfoot? Am I the only one that does this? Am I the only one that sees the prescription drug ads on my 4K Ultra TV while I'm watching a streaming network and I see the prescription drug ads pop up and I pause them to carefully read the side effects and the disclaimers and minuscule print at the bottom, because I find them interesting and, frankly, applicable to me. Am I the only one that does that? Jerry Seinfeld has IBS2, you know, irritable bastard syndrome. He's one of the afflicted, one of the damaged.

Jerry Seinfeld: 7:55

But I don't like vacationing, family vacationing I hate it. I hate going. My wife hates going with me, the kids hate going. I still go, because what is the difference of doing one more thing I don't like, on top of not liking anything anyway?

Blade: 8:13

And so that's it no-transcript.

Jerry Seinfeld: 8:16

I'm going to complain about it, which is something I do enjoy.

Blade: 8:19

Okay, I completely understand that because it's funny. Well, really, it's only funny to me. When I complained this morning, I woke up and I laughed at myself because I didn't know how to put my t-shirt on. Why wouldn't you know how to put a t-shirt on? I buy these cheap t-shirts and after two washes the label on the back wears off. So I don't know if I'm putting them on inside out or not, or frontwards or backwards, and so it's a 50 50 90 shot.

Blade: 8:48

That's part of the 50 50 90 rule. You have a 50 50 chance of putting the t-shirt on right and a 90 chance of putting it on wrong. It just works out that way. And you put them on inside out oh well, that's fine, you wear them inside out. Now that's what happens when you get older, because you don't care what people think anymore and you just put it on now frontwards, backwards. Now that's a different story, because then, if you put it on backwards, your neck gets all choked. So what I've gone to is buying v-necks, so so that eliminates half the problem. And listen, hey, my thoughts and sympathies are with you if you're an irritable bastard, but that's how it is. Thank you.