You know that feeling when a whiff of your favorite perfume takes you back to a cherished memory or lightens your day? That’s the power of fragrance, a subject that we, Myke and Ryan, tackle head-on in this unique podcast episode. Together, we explore the impact of scents in our daily lives, from how they can provide an escape to their role in stirring up feelings of joy and comfort. While we admit to being fragrance aficionados, we also dive into the debate around the need to keep up with the latest fragrance releases.
Ever thought about how busy life can get? Or how societal expectations can slowly weigh you down? As we reminisce on our shared experiences- from working together to making wedding videos and dealing with bride's family complaints- we touch on these pressing issues. We delve into our personal journeys of seeking happiness, emphasizing the importance of honesty, feeling expression, and the realization that wealth isn't a panacea for all problems. We also stroll through our thoughts on current meme trends and the strange state of the world, underscoring the relief we find in the little things.
At the heart of it all, we explore the role of family and relationships. Sharing heart-warming stories about our grandmothers, we reveal the timeless lessons they taught us about communication and building relationships. We also reflect on how the internet has connected us with people from all corners of the globe and how shared interests in fragrances have added a unique dimension to these connections. Whether it's sharing a laugh over the latest perfume release or engaging in a deep discussion about societal pressures, join us for an enlightening journey through the world of fragrances and life.
You know that feeling when a whiff of your favorite perfume takes you back to a cherished memory or lightens your day? That’s the power of fragrance, a subject that we, Myke and Ryan, tackle head-on in this unique podcast episode. Together, we explore the impact of scents in our daily lives, from how they can provide an escape to their role in stirring up feelings of joy and comfort. While we admit to being fragrance aficionados, we also dive into the debate around the need to keep up with the latest fragrance releases.
Ever thought about how busy life can get? Or how societal expectations can slowly weigh you down? As we reminisce on our shared experiences- from working together to making wedding videos and dealing with bride's family complaints- we touch on these pressing issues. We delve into our personal journeys of seeking happiness, emphasizing the importance of honesty, feeling expression, and the realization that wealth isn't a panacea for all problems. We also stroll through our thoughts on current meme trends and the strange state of the world, underscoring the relief we find in the little things.
At the heart of it all, we explore the role of family and relationships. Sharing heart-warming stories about our grandmothers, we reveal the timeless lessons they taught us about communication and building relationships. We also reflect on how the internet has connected us with people from all corners of the globe and how shared interests in fragrances have added a unique dimension to these connections. Whether it's sharing a laugh over the latest perfume release or engaging in a deep discussion about societal pressures, join us for an enlightening journey through the world of fragrances and life.
Hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Clone.
Speaker 1:Podcast. I'm Mike and I'm Ryan. We're two best friends going on that fragrance journey, giving you an uneducated opinion, and today we're going to be giving you some philosophy, fragrance, philosophy. We're going to be talking about philosophies and fragrances together as one married.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we were debating before we got on here what we're going to talk about, but we knew we wanted to do a fragrance philosophy and I called Mike about a week ago and had an existential crisis. Apparently, I feel like a lot of these start that way. Yeah, oh man, do fragrances really fucking matter? Bro? The world's just spinning. We're going to fucking die. The comments going to blow this piece of shit up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think we get to a point where real life hits, yeah, and then we go really, how important is it? And the grand scheme of things, when you're dealing with life, is it like you still wake up the whole world's burning down and you go oh my God, what am I wearing today? I can't figure out what fragrance I'm going to wear. Oh my God. Yeah so a little bit of that. Yeah, to me I'm just like whatever a Ventus? Yeah, I'll just wear a Ventus and he has been wearing it.
Speaker 1:I have been yeah, for like the past three or four days. Look guys, I know there's a new absolute out there. Yeah, that all you other really big time fragrance people are getting a slurp on the rocks cooking. Yeah, yeah, we'll eventually get to it. I almost bought a decant the other day, by the way. Really, it was like 50 bucks for two mil Jesus when at. I honestly don't even know, but I was tempted to ride them and tell them to take a long hydraulic suck, because that's fucking a lot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we'll get around to it whenever interest and price has dropped.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, will we ever be those YouTubers on the bleeding edge? Yeah, they get like everything instantly. You think we'll ever be that? I doubt it.
Speaker 2:We just can't, can we? But we have gotten some new Soma before it was released, new Kajal before it was released.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was because those people reached out to us, that was awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know what we are important.
Speaker 1:Hey Creed, get your shit together, Come on.
Speaker 2:You don't know about us yet. Keep up Fucking clown shoes, dude. Back on topic. Do fragrances really matter, Ryan?
Speaker 1:No, no, that's simple, we're done now. But yeah, okay Well until next time. I mean it's obviously a very opinion. It's an opinion, I mean. There's no factual to it. It's going to vary from person to person. There are some people that just can't stand fragrances.
Speaker 2:Well, let's not speculate about the listeners, let's talk about you and I. Oh, you're wanting, just from my perspective.
Speaker 1:Yeah, does the fragrance matter to me? Yes, oh, yeah. Yeah, you bet your ass they do. I love smelling good man, I love smelling good things and I love smelling good all the time. What about you, brother, mike?
Speaker 2:I think we need to break the question down more because I'm struggling with in the itinerary of life, where does it fall in importance? You know? Hmm, that's it to a certain degree. Yes, it is important. Do I wear a fragrance every day? I actually don't. I don't wear a fragrance every single day. I do. I know you do. Yeah, wow.
Speaker 1:I feel like you do, though, because every time we've been walking the track more yeah.
Speaker 2:I do for you. It's something I do out of the sweetness We'll be doing pushups.
Speaker 1:I'm like, oh, what do you?
Speaker 2:wear today. Yeah, I'm like it's more of Vintas today, right.
Speaker 1:It's always a Vintas or Lunarosa.
Speaker 2:Carbide. Yeah, yeah, I did put that on the other day too, but I have a decent size collection now and I think I'll just, like you know the episode of curb your enthusiasm, where he goes to visit somebody and they have an office with a nice view and he sits down and he looks out the window and goes, hey, how long did it take for you to get used to looking out and seeing that? Oh yeah, and he's like I don't know a week or something. He's like take me about 15 minutes.
Speaker 1:Oh, so you're not impressed with fragrances anymore, is that?
Speaker 2:what you're kind of saying. No, I'm not saying that. I'm just saying I'm actually in a stage of life now where I actually have some real deep shit going on, yeah, and it's like I wake up thinking about that and not thinking about do I want to wear oh yeah, Santel 33, or am I going to wear Greenlee or you?
Speaker 1:know your own, your own, that Ryan season three ending tip.
Speaker 2:Absolutely yeah. Yeah, you got to a point too where you were just like life's too real for me right now to give a fuck about filling the blank fragrance.
Speaker 1:Honestly, though, I thought those are my favorite episodes so far of all of our seasons because it's like so real and raw. Honestly, it's taught me to be more real and raw going forward. I'm like does this shit really have to have this hoity, toyty bullshit with it, or can it just be real? Yeah, you know, either I don't love it or fuck that fragrance, you know right. So it's been more fun for me. So apparently you've been hating it. Thanks for letting me know, no.
Speaker 2:I don't hate it. It is nice when you can free your mind yeah, usually the rest will follow. But it's nice to stop and smell something new and go, oh, this was a nice little break from reality, yeah. But then when you kind of get back into it, you know, I think that's why we have the dumb reaches, because I want to smell good, I want to be clean. Yeah, I had to switch deodorants that I'm using, so now the deodorant that I'm using now has more of a scent to it, so now I'm like using less fragrances.
Speaker 1:Wait, so you're not using the Mont Blanc. You're not using that anymore. No, why.
Speaker 2:Well, let me just throw a little complaint out there for the listener. Mont Blanc. Well, I think it has more to do with fragrance, net and Texas.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know where you're going to go. Hey, I know where you're going with this, okay.
Speaker 2:So for us I would buy. They're like 12 bucks a piece. I would buy the Mont Blanc Explorer deodorant because I really like the smell. I felt like it went along with, you know, a lot of the fragrances that I do wear. It doesn't smell like a Ventus, but it does have a clean, a Ventus-y type vibe. Yeah, I would order them and in the colder months it's fine.
Speaker 2:But I guess because it takes so long in shipping to get to us and it's been so hot in the bottle, it like melts and reconstitutes and because of that, when I go to put it on now it's just like a slippery mess that stains my armpits and makes me look like an idiot. So I bought like four bars of it and I was like I can't use any of these. Damn, they all got fucked. Yeah, wow, for real. Yeah, so I just had to reach in the drawer to an old bar that I had of old spice. I need to go buy some more.
Speaker 2:But if you go buy them retail it's like $30, and a $30 for a deodorant is like way too much. Oh, that's fucking ridiculous. Yeah, so if you went to a department store and actually bought it, so it was nice. You know whenever I would buy it from fragrance net or wherever to get it at a discount, because it was like a more bougie deodorant and I enjoyed it and for that reason I wore less fragrances, because sometimes you'd be like man you smell good, what do you wear? I'm like my deodorant dog. So now I'm smelling like, you know, an old man.
Speaker 1:I can't, I don't want to like get things to compete, but yeah, you know, younger me used to actually be obsessed with of course I didn't have this, you know abundance of fragrance, knowledge that I have now, right, and I had a handful of fragrances, but I was obsessed with finding deodorants and lotions that smelled similar to those fragrances, yeah, and I would always lather up with all of it. So I smelled, you know, like a whore.
Speaker 2:Well, I think for me. That's why I liked the Mont Blanc, because it complimented the fragrances that I was wearing.
Speaker 1:By the way, I didn't. That's not where I thought you're going to go with this. I thought you're going to talk about how shitty the shipping is, and it's not necessarily their fault, the USPS is fucking garbage.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, for us. We've had multiple things get lost and it's like, hey, on four bars of deodorant, no problem. But if you spent 350 bucks on different fragrances that were supposed to come in, that's a nightmare.
Speaker 1:I mean, it gets rectified, Don't get me wrong. So that's like again, it's not fragrance, nets fall. You get it eventually? Yeah, you get it, but it's just like we've. I've waited a month for something to come that should have been in like less than a week.
Speaker 2:So me like right now, I think, because I am like really just dealing with some shit, just with anything, you go through a season where, because you're going through harder things, stills the joy out of the things that were like lighthearted in life, that you got to enjoy more of, yeah, and I just, unfortunately, I just, I, just, I, just, I, just, I, just I, just I, just I. I wake up in my mind with the heavier things of life to handle, yeah and uh. And so I haven't been just like so crazy about. Oh, today I want to. I'm just like, uh, we're the same shirt I wore yesterday. What I wear, a Vintis. Okay, spray it on again.
Speaker 1:You know, here I go, I'm like hey, Mike, the mustard stained shirt again, huh.
Speaker 2:Uh, it's a, it's a style choice, no he's not that disheveled.
Speaker 1:No, I don't know, he's the most put together I've seen him in a while. He's been trimming down.
Speaker 2:I have been. I actually want to talk about something, not to brag, but just to say if you are needing some clarity in life. I read this book called the 12 hour walk. Yeah, and it's basically a challenge to walk for 12 hours straight and not listen to any music. You can't have your phone on you. It's like just you and your mind and you walk for 12 hours nonstop. Did you unlock anything? I think I did. That's cool. I thought a lot about a lot of things, but I think the thing that I took back most was there's a study, ryan, that Harvard, harvard actually put on. Okay, and I think it's the longest scientific study. Shout out to Harvard, yeah.
Speaker 1:Thanks guys. We have one friend that works at Harvard, so basically, we work there.
Speaker 2:You know we work there now, yeah, by proxy, but they did this study over the course of multiple people's lives, all the way throughout their life. It took multiple generations of scientists to do this study. It's a long term study I think it's the longest term study ever done but they would interview them throughout stages of life to see where happiness came from. Right, it's like the biggest question to the human mind, yeah, is how do I be happy, you know? And the thing that they found that created the most happiness in life throughout any.
Speaker 2:Some of these people grew up and became really wealthy. Some of these people became poor. Some of these people had huge families. Some of these people were single when they passed, yeah, so, like all this thing, but the thing that came down that most said that translated across all different lifestyles of everything, was that where does happiness come from? Where does happiness come from? And it was relationships. That was the main thing that, throughout any stage of life, any person, if they were finding the most abundance of happiness and joy in their life, it was based on relationships.
Speaker 1:I can totally get behind that. I understand why Like immediately.
Speaker 2:I think that's why our friendship is so important and I feel like we try to do as good of a job as we possibly can to continue to like foster that friendship. We try to do things outside of the podcast and if you're on Patreon, you go. God, these guys are doing this other podcast idea or this other podcast idea. It's because Ryan and I are still living our lives outside of the fragrance podcast and sometimes we go. Maybe people want to interact with this like we do, and so we put some mikes up and chat about it, you know, but just dwelling on that, so on the walk, the only things I thought about were the relationships in my life and where have I spent the extra time to find understanding for that other person? Where have I allowed hurt to block my intent to find understanding? And how can I get more understanding so I feel less hurt by things?
Speaker 2:So it was, uh, it was a lot of that. It was very like, uh, introspective and by 12 hours in I'm like hobbling and my ankles are bleeding and as soon as I finished, I ran home and literally created an ice bath and sat down in it and like iced my legs for like 20 minutes, but it's not something I want to do all the time, but if you are in a place where you really need to deal with some shit, just giving yourself hours to just fight with thoughts yeah, that really did it for me. Just being able to spend hours Didn't fix everything, but at least gave me a starting point. Yeah, to say like I can't see the direction that I'm going, but now I see my next step and I can take that next step and that's all you really need in life is like you don't have to see your way through the jungle, you just have to see the next step and see the next step. Take that, take that.
Speaker 1:That's awesome man. Yeah, hard just to go back a little bit in this conversation or what you were saying. Our friendship has been great. I've always found happiness in our friendship. We have just to be candid with you guys. We have literally not incomplete all of it with Mike, so I'm an asshole for this but we have literally, very early on, have done jobs where we worked all day long for seventy five dollars to split between the two of us. Yeah, yeah, and even at that time, just to be fair to show you how awesome Mike was, I remember, I think, mike just giving me the seventy five dollars and he basically worked for free. Yeah, but we had fun with that. Same thing, like when we started doing weddings. Look, hold on, let me get open up a tall boy for these conversations. Let's do it. We start talking about weddings and stuff. Yeah, yeah, so weddings are the single most funnest thing that we loved like kind of doing for a while. Yeah, not really the editing, not dealing with brides and their family.
Speaker 2:That shit sucked. Yeah, that was hard to end. To clarify, we made wedding videos for couples.
Speaker 1:But we always had fun at every wedding We'd be like why don't you try those fucking chicken wings over there?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, but dude, the cake they got up, they got two cakes over there, they got a vanilla, they got like we were constantly, always comparing things, like hey, remember that last wedding they had the chocolate pudding biscuit thing going on.
Speaker 2:Oh my, God, the chocolate cobbler. Yes, chocolate cobbler, and I've only had it once in my life and I've been chasing that. Was it that one time?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it was ridiculous. I don't know how to describe what it was, but it was good. But long story short, we, even when we would have bride's zealots and they're like you, fucking rowan, you bitch, fuck you. We'd be like God damn, this is going to be a great video.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's going to be a lot of fun trying to edit a love story out of this and we had such, we had we did good with that, I think. I think it's because we had constant obstacles. We were trying to like get through and that, like builds camaraderie, it so does. We're like trauma bonded from it.
Speaker 1:And the best is, mike would fuck up something and it was never a big deal. But if I fucked up something, man, mike, mike would drive home white knuckling the whole way, whole grudges against me. The fucking Star Wars wedding I forgot to get the exit.
Speaker 2:No, no, here's the difference between Ryan and myself. If I miss something, I was distraught. I was like how could I let myself do this? Why wasn't I prepared? Ryan would be like that's fine and I'd be like you bastard.
Speaker 1:I'm like you got another angle of it right. Yeah, you got it. Huh. I'm like man, I thought I hit record, actually stopped the filming.
Speaker 2:Yeah, half the half of the last half of this reception he's talking about. Every time he thought he was recording he was pressing stop, and then every time he thought he pressed stop, he was recording. So it's all like the camera pointed at the ground.
Speaker 1:I'm like holding it between my arms taking a piss yeah dude, I was like good God.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but we've had so much fun through adversities, yeah. So, as we've progressed along and we've done a lot better, thank God. To kind of go back to the depressing side of everything and I think this is kind of what sparked this conversation before we got on air like a week ago is how busy life is for everybody to where it doesn't really allow you to kind of have happiness. We're like as a society. I really think we're like in a weird funk. I don't think, and I mean, look, I don't know how other countries are Just kind of speaking about America. We've mentioned it a couple of times. I don't give a fuck about sides of politics. I'm not a conspiracy theorist on anything. I just think the whole system pretty much sucks, yeah, and I think we're all so busy, we're all chasing a dream, but everything's under a microscope. At the same time, I think about how we think about this, everybody that's listening to this episode and the millions of people that aren't. But billions.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but when everybody every day is literally getting online to find some type of relief in comedy yeah, I don't mean movies, I just mean like in memes. And we just did a we saw. I saw Clements and Andrea had did a yearbook thing, so I did it and showed Mike and he just did it. We're all looking for these things to kind of like forget about Dull the ache. Yeah, we're doing so much to like forget about things. You know.
Speaker 2:And it's like the problem with it, too, is I look at people, even ones that are close to me, and the things you want. You're like doing the opposite things to get what you want, yeah, like I look at relationships and people go like I want this person to be more open or I want more of this person's attention yeah, but instead of going hey, ryan, I miss you, I want more of your attention. Yeah, they go. I'm going to ice Ryan out and see if he comes my way, and it's like all these like mental games without any transparency of just going. Here's how I feel, here's what I want. You know, like all the things that you're scared about, you're running from, you're doing the things that are taking you further away from what you actually want. That's the frustrating part about life is we're all playing a game.
Speaker 1:Man? We definitely are, it's so true. And I remember when me and Mike were starting to make some decent money, I was like man, I can't wait to make some decent money, fuck that 75 dollars. And I'm like it'll change. This will change that, mike, of course. You know always positive one he was. He was actually negative about that. He was like man, it doesn't matter how much money we make, they work, still have like the same problems. And actually, you know, it is kind of true. Yeah, I was like, oh, it'll make things happier, but it won't. And I think there is a breakdown in communication and a lot of people have feel like nowadays.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because life is hard, and so you always go it'll be better when. Fill in the blank, yeah, life will be better, I'll be happier, our marriage will be better, whatever. Fill in the blank when this happens, we all live like a year ahead or five years ahead and we go like I'll be happy when that yeah. And there's somebody who tweeted a quote that said you've already achieved a lot of things that you thought were going to make you happy and you're still not happy.
Speaker 1:And the. I guess I don't want to say it's the morbid side of me, but funny enough, I've said this for a long time in my life and I may have said this on the podcast before no, we did it on our other podcast idea but I have stated this and then, you know, years later I've seen a couple of comedians kind of say the same thing, one that outlined this out perfectly. Look up a clip about Stephen Colbert and he talks about life and actually the beauty in even the hardships. Yeah, because for me I've always like man. Even when I feel the bad parts of life, it's still like I'm existing. It's a painful thing to feel, but I feel it, and so I'm appreciative of that.
Speaker 2:That's why it gets so irritated at the backbiting, even in the community. Because here's the thing when Ryan and I some snafu happened or you know, we were really going to have to work hard to fix this thing or that thing or whatever. Whenever we're working together, yeah, it was like an external problem that you and I solved together. So these type of like oh shit moments would bring us closer together because we were working together. And what I get so frustrated about is like life is hard, it's going to throw you barrels to jump over and you're spending time creating problems between you and other people. That then makes life a lot harder, and I say this a lot.
Speaker 2:I say that fighting with does not mean fighting for, and that's the truth is like some people think that, look, we go through hard times as a couple and we're going to grow because of those hard times. It's like not if we're making the hard times with each other, it's different when somebody loses a job or God forbid loses a family member or a child or something, and then it's like you go through that thing together. That's a lot different than the hard times that you create between each other because you don't grow together through that. So I'm like I've said it before on the podcast I'm really interested in building bridges between us and other people, because the reality now we joke around and obviously we're being very serious now and you know we're very lighthearted at times, but for real, I'm really interested in finding a way to connect and not to create decency between people, because that is the antithesis of what life should be. I agree.
Speaker 1:I can't really expand on that, man, because you said that really well, I agree.
Speaker 2:And that's why fragrances are not important.
Speaker 1:I mean, you want to get back on the topic of fragrance.
Speaker 2:Let's do it. Sorry. I'm like like I'm in a mode right now of life where I'm just like going so deep on shit. You know here, hand me that gun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you don't need that anymore.
Speaker 2:Okay, just wanted to see how it tastes.
Speaker 1:I mean that's why, kind of going back a little bit here but it's like I have always enjoyed fragrances, been a part of my life. So this is kind of my release to like I love smelling different things, good or bad. I like to go build a having opinion on it. Like that smells like piss, you know right, I guess? Yeah, it is important to me to have fragrances in my life.
Speaker 2:It does what TikTok does. It does what YouTube shorts or Instagram or whatever does. It's a break, it's like a distraction, which at times is needed. Sometimes you really just need a moment where you're like man. Life is kicking me right in the testicles and I need something that's going to take my mind off of my aching testicles.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I think that's why a lot of us in this community we love fragrances. For one, I mean just one simple reason. I mean it's like your grandmother had a fragrance. You can now reach to that. She's past, but you can still have a little bit of her around you to some degree. You know, at some point my dad's going to pass away he's, he just turned 85. He's always smelled like, you know, giorgio's Beverly Hills or Aquadigio. So I will have you know I'll still have him around. So there's some importance to it.
Speaker 2:I agree I do. If I can sew it all up together, I'll say this like life is hard, Fragrances provide an opportunity to get outside of the difficulty and just enjoy something. So then the frustrating part becomes in the community. Why would we not all just try to build camaraderie with each other, instead of creating factions that we're going to fight and argue against, you know, on Reddit or in YouTube comments or whatever it is? Why not just go? Wow, this thing is so awesome. It gives us an opportunity to step outside of really the hardships of life, no matter what stage of life you're in or what socioeconomic background you have. There's one thing that we all can kind of enjoy, and why not enjoy it together?
Speaker 1:you know, give peace of chance, buy a Coke and I'm kind of fucking with this model you're putting out.
Speaker 2:I agree with it.
Speaker 1:I agree with it, no doubt. Yeah, but for me, some things that I mean I will always be bothered by people, the people in the community, that have a podium to speak with a little bit of authority on fragrances. I will absolutely always have a problem. Now we'll not go after them and attack them or whatever. Just subconsciously I'm like man, that's fucking wack. But I really do hate when people are just preaching that every fragrance they ever run into is great. Get it this and the other. Yeah, I want the community for me because I'm selfish to be more about like us being able to offend somebody with something and we like it personally. They can still hate it. Dan was a great example when he came on the show we talked about. We did not like the Rajah, what's it called? The oh boy.
Speaker 2:Parfum Dayline. We won yes.
Speaker 1:And he was like, oh my god. I was like, yeah, it smells like piss. And he's like you know what? That's actually true and it can still smell good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can love it, and it can still smell like piss.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, because that's the fun part to me. That's what's been great, when we've had episodes where you really hate something and I really love it, or I really hate it and you really love it. Those are honest opinions and I love that, back and forth. You know, right, it's kind of like talking about your favorite teams and somebody's like, oh man, that press cop fucking sucks, dude, but it's so, I don't know. For me, that's fun. In fact, we just got an email from Doug, which is a friend of the podcast. He has a Patreon. He's one couple of things there for sure. Yeah, but he wrote us talking. Which? Which phrase did you? Oh, the cajoles, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the new cajole fragrance is three and four.
Speaker 1:He liked three and the four. He was like it's okay, but then it after 10 minutes he like really loved it, yeah. And then he said his wife said I don't know what you're wearing, but wash that off. And he was like she hates it. I'm absolutely going to buy this.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Sometimes you got to do things for yourself, you know.
Speaker 1:I just I just feel like in this community sometimes I may be getting off a little subject here, but I do feel like sometimes people are afraid to really speak an opinion about something. Yeah, and that's the part that's disheartening to me that I want to be more of. Right, if these people that put out fragrances really stand by, like I'd rather some may have a strong negative or a positive fragrance, not a review of something, not just a meh, then I think we're allowed to be that way without it coming off like we're just being assholes to the community, right? Yeah?
Speaker 2:Like you're allowed to have your own opinion. It's like when we were in grade school and like, oh, you can't not like that or you're not cool, you can't not like the things that.
Speaker 1:And I feel like are we past that, yet we're adults. I mean you can have an opinion and not like something, it's OK.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I just feel like we are kind of conditioned to be against each other a lot.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. That's why I was like man, life is so crazy. We really are. We get online and we all can kind of like the same thing as far as comedy goes, yeah, but then we split off into factions over the dumbest shit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's tough man. Look, life sucks and it's hard, but it can be rewarding. And the way you make life rewarding is to enjoy people. But I think it takes quite a bit of transparency and honesty to really enjoy a relationship. That's what I love about mine and yours it's like I know exactly how you feel, because you'll tell me exactly what you're thinking and you're not afraid to offend me, tell me I'm wrong, tell me that you completely disagree. But do we ever really fight about anything? No, we have heated conversations, we have robust dialogue, but we don't actually fight to the point where we're angry at each other.
Speaker 1:No, not at all, but I have had Mike on the ropes where he was like you're a fucking idiot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, and I felt like I was being honest and truthful and transparent with you when I said that this is like Ryan, you are so dumb when it comes to this specific. He was so mad. I was like dude, you have no clue what you're talking about.
Speaker 1:I have this really great gift to like lock in and like never budge on a debate.
Speaker 2:You're awesome, Crazy. It's like no matter what evidence you know, it's like I don't know. I feel like that evidence was planted, yeah, OK.
Speaker 1:I guess let's. I know this has been supposed to be one topic. We've been kind of all over the place, but I just don't give a shit, dude, this is our podcast. Yeah, if I want to turn this into a hamburger or appreciation podcast, kind of it will do it, we will do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think this is. You know, you guys, we don't really get to open the curtain all the time and and really talk about heavy shit. You know, I feel like we do try to keep it as light as possible, because that's who we are, honestly, for the most part. But specifically in my own life, I am like kind of processing some heavier things and so it does put me in a different place and I think it's good to be honest about that. Like, the episodes that have previously aired are from a few weeks ago.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we were so fucking proud to be like you know what we're finally caught up, we're five weeks ahead.
Speaker 2:So I feel like this is a good precursor for, like, maybe, episodes in the future to where I'm, just, like I may be, in a mood. Guys, I'm not trying to be, you know, I'm trying to handle life with grace and patience, but sometimes, just like Ryan, it gets you up against the ropes occasionally and and it starts throwing some haymakers and you just got to, you just got to keep going. It fucking sucks.
Speaker 1:And then you die.
Speaker 2:If you're not nurturing great relationships.
Speaker 1:According to that Harvard study guys really think about this for just a second. If we're all blessed enough to live to be 100, which would be a fucking long time yeah, it just wouldn't be enough time here on earth, that's. We all live a short life. Whether you die in your 50s, 70s, 90s, it's never going to be enough time. Yeah, there's not really anybody.
Speaker 2:I don't know this to be true, but I'm just assuming from what I've heard. I don't think anybody lays on their deathbed and goes I'm good. Most of the time they're like how can I squeeze out a couple more days or a couple more hours? Or you don't have to be like nobody is like I think I'm good.
Speaker 1:Who do you think feels like they wasted more life? The people that don't do a lot with their life and just feng shui through it all like a breeze? Or do you feel like the people that really work their ass off and maybe don't even like have time for anything but work and money who really wasted their life?
Speaker 2:I think it goes back to time, because every billionaire on their deathbed would trade it all for another go. You know, I don't think most people get to the end and say, god, I wish I'd worked a little bit more, I would not be the first. I think they go. I wish I wouldn't have held these grudges. I wish I would have spent more time with my kids. I wish I would have fill in the blank.
Speaker 2:It's all in like the most valuable resources are time and that's the one thing we just give away. That's why I have no social media apps on my phone, because I'm like I'm not going to give away two or three hours a day to an algorithm or somebody else. And look, it's funny, you send me stuff from time to time. It's funny, it's good, it makes you chuckle. There's hilarious dogs on there that like give you like all the good feels, and I know it's great, it's built to be that. But we are typically more stingy with our money and more generous with our time, and it probably should be the opposite, and I think that's what people regret.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree with that. Like anytime, I'm a hypochondriac people. So anytime I've ever gotten like really sick and there had been those one time probably, actually my 10 years ago, it was over 10 years ago I got really sick. I was exposed to black mold.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I probably ended up getting cancer daily and, yeah, you are living in an apartment with it and, man, I got hospitalized for a week.
Speaker 1:I had, like I could not bring down, like 104 or 5 degrees, some crazy temperature. Yeah, doctors are doing every fucking test on me. Possible. Felt like Dwayne the Rock Johnson was sitting on your chest. Dude, it was insane. It was insane.
Speaker 1:They were like they thought I had Mediterranean fever. They're like, have you went to this before? All this other COVID and bullshit. But like they could not figure out. Here's the crazy thing. It was so crazy and so shocking. And I mean they had me in.
Speaker 1:They were like doing tuberculosis prep, like make sure I didn't have that. Yeah, had me in a room. I was so hot guys, they had me in a room. It felt like you walked into it. I didn't know this shit was just in a hospital. But they have special rooms that feel like you were walking into a walking cooler and then they have fans in that room that are blowing on you and I would not have any sheets on me. It would blow me and I wasn't breaking any temperature.
Speaker 1:Wow, but that was like to save me. You know, yeah, and that was when my daughter was. She was only she would have been three years old then and literally thinking I was going to die. I can tell you 100 percent, that's all I cared about was like just let her make it here, right, yeah, and because they thought I had tuberculosis at the time, for whatever, or they would think they just thought they were just being precautious until they got results back and in the meantime they had to pretend like I had it and treated as such. Yeah, so I wasn't allowed to have any visitors and, honestly, can give a fuck on what anybody thinks about COVID and shit.
Speaker 1:It does really kind of put in perspective right now, in this moment, you know, when it was popping and people were not allowed to see family members, it is a, it's an empty feeling. It's very scary. If I'm going to die, I would love to be surrounded by loved ones, you know right, and so she couldn't see me for a couple of days and it felt like eternity. And then I can remember seeing her and it just felt so good, you know, yeah, so so I can't tell you guys for sure, when you do get to the end of this rope one day or think you're at it at least you're going to want to surround yourself with, especially like your immediate family. I'm not saying you had to have kids, just your immediately close family, very close friends. You're going to wish you spent as much time with them as possible. You're going to wish you had that one last hug, you know, yeah.
Speaker 2:I remember my grandmother. I was in college this is part of the reason why I actually have never completed college. I was in college and my grandmother got really, really sick and I was coming home every weekend I live. I was going to school about four hours away and I would come home and she got really close to dying and she said like she's really, really just. She just said I just kept praying, if I could just live to see Mike get married, then you could take me on home.
Speaker 2:And she ended up pulling out and it was a long road so I ended up moving back and then, before she, a little bit before she actually passed, she was in the hospital in pneumonia again and it was looking pretty bad and she couldn't open her eyes. But and I didn't hear about it till like I guess she'd been checked in my aunt took her. She had been there and I was out of town and like I got there as fast as I could and I remember I came in and and she heard my voice and she said she said, mike, I'm about to go, but I prayed that God would let me live long enough for you to get here, just so I could say goodbye, and I just it's stuff like that which I've always seen in my grandmother's life the importance of family and the importance of relationships. I've talked about this a lot actually here recently, but part of why I love what we're doing is I love the thought of being able to communicate with people, and I just remember growing up that you know how difficult it is to talk with kids. Oh yeah, it's tough, even when you love them so much.
Speaker 2:But my grandmother would sit for so long and she would just communicate very deep things about life to us as kids and she would take so long to make sure that we were understanding each other and it takes a long time to really communicate that and so, like the communication is everything and it's part of why I love what we do here, because we are getting to enjoy this technology that allows us to communicate things all over the world. I mean, I'm shocked at all the places we have listeners, so fragrances. They're important for that too, because they have opened up a door. So, man, there are things about life and this may be something little and it's not like it doesn't fit on the list of priorities when the shit hits the fan, but it is such a great thing to have and enjoy and it's such a bridge builder to people around us, and for that it is important.
Speaker 1:Very much so. I mean, it's led us to connect with people we would have never connected with, ever, yeah, and just realizing the good humans that they are and honestly, that's been a real joy more than anything. Yeah, it really has just just to go. Man, we had the, we had this. You know, nobody outside of this probably gives a shit, but I love going. We're just out and about. I'm like man, there's some beautiful chiseled British guy named Chris that messages Mike and not me, but you know, talks all the time to us or to you and communicates. We have conversations with Steve. Tony, you've built these connections. We've have built a connection with Mo from Kajal. Yeah, very realistic human beings that are just very supportive.
Speaker 2:It's great to actually get to interact with people and you get, like we said on a conversation with Justin Copeland we were saying that when you start building an audience, it's easy to like just see these numbers as numbers and instead instead of people.
Speaker 2:And I think it's also easy to see that with content creators as well, like they're just creating this thing that you consume and they offer this one sliver of who they are as a form of content.
Speaker 2:But they're so much deeper than that, and just being able to actually interact with them and get to know them and see them as deep, thoughtful human beings, you know, instead of just whatever some face that was talking about Lamala licks or something, you really get to know them.
Speaker 2:I think that's what I appreciate about all of that, especially like the times that we have got to interact with, like Steve, for example, who went through this weight loss transformation, and like we were talking back and forth and he was trying to encourage me but I was totally, you know, breaking my diet all the time he was killing it and then, like me and Chris, would talk about like fatherhood and you know he was talking about, you know all the steps he was taking to build these memories with his kids and that was like inspiring me and I was like God I need to like, I need to have that mentality.
Speaker 2:You know, like there's not a second to waste. I've got to capture every moment I can. I've got to build every opportunity into. You know, enjoying my kids before they're off, experiencing life as individuals. You know so like you get to interact with these people and then they're not just like somebody who's giving you information about a new fragrance, but you're like they're real people and they're real deep and we appreciate that For sure and honestly, just to put a little cap, like on our friends of the podcast, everybody that writes us, from hate mail to love mail, I mean we genuinely.
Speaker 1:I mean we really try, guys, to respond to everything. So if we haven't responded to you as quickly as you'd like, it's not that we're ignoring you. We have real life, jobs and stuff that goes on and, and sometimes they're big projects, sometimes they're small, it doesn't matter, but we're always, we're usually pretty busy and then when we have free time, we're trying to make content, but there are plenty of times where I'll just be laying in bed. I'm usually the laid out. Mike goes to bed by like eight or nine, but I'm usually up Well, I wish by 1030.
Speaker 2:I'm definitely trying to be asleep.
Speaker 1:But it is throughout the day. I'm serious. We have a 24 hour cycle over throughout the day. We constantly get messages or emails sent to us and it really is nice to connect with people that have their like minded and things that we like and can laugh about stuff we've said in episodes prior. Making connections with people like Doug, who him and his wife, I believe foster children. It's like him writing I mean this may seem so trivial, but it's not him writing. We just gave a fragrance away, yeah, and he really was just beside himself that he wants them. It's like it was a relief from the stress of everything going on in his life.
Speaker 1:Connecting with a young lady in Australia named Helen, who just sent us a bad ass gift box of dark chocolate, which a couple of them were actually amazing. I'm not even a fan of dark chocolate. It's crazy to think and sorry, helen, I'm about to say something really creepy. No, not that I love her, but I'm that weird content creator here.
Speaker 1:Whenever we get new followers, I like to look and kind of look at their life on Instagram and see who they kind of are and something like Helen, who's like, looks like they're really well versed and well dressed, like I feel like, honestly, they probably wouldn't say hi to us on the street that it does, but I'll blame them. I'm not saying they mean here, but I do think it's so cool that they connect this person that it's kind of judgmental on me as a human, me going there's no way something like that would connect with us. But they connect with this podcast enough to listen to it, and not only that, but to send something so thoughtful and connect. I just I love that, this kind of thing, that this, it provides shit like that, and that's that's what I love, that connection with other people. Yeah, it's what it's all about.
Speaker 2:So sorry if I got a little rambly there God, I'm the rambly one but I'll just say that fragrances do build a bridge and that is important, because relationships are the most important thing, and if we can utilize fragrances to build relationships, then fine. They're important.
Speaker 1:And until next time, spray it up y'all.