Evan Leikam of Book Reviews Kill

Author and tiktok book influencer Evan Leikam comes on the podcast and, honestly, we mostly just talk about music. About the effect of playing in a band, trying to make a career out of it, and how to use the information you learn from that process in other parts of your life. 

Evan is the author of Anji Kills a King, please go read it out if you like fantasy books. Check him out at book_reviews_kill on tiktok and instagram. 

Please sign up at Klubhouse.gg

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:30

And again, I keep saying it. I think it's a really good podcast intro-outro song. So uh let them know. Go follow them on Instagram. They they'd very much appreciate it. They got a new album coming out. And also, uh, this podcast is part of what I call the worst marketing strategy of all time for my fantasy football app called Clubhouse Fantasy Football. Clubhouse with a K, K-L-U-B-H-O-U-S-E. If you like anything that I do, please just go there and sign up and give me your email address. I'll email you with a link to the Discord and a link to how to sign up to play the game when it's ready to go. But the more people that give me an email address, the more legitimate the company looks when I talk to people that have money. That is why I've been doing all of this. Just to get your email address. I know that this is a terrible idea. I'm fully aware. The whole time I was doing it, I knew it was a bad idea. But please bail me out of my own inability to execute on a reasonable plan. Speaking of reasonable plans and bad segues, we have Evan Lycam. I asked him to give me his last name. I spelled it out phonetically. I made a whole spiel about how I spell it out phonetically in my notes. And then immediately when I actually have to say his name, Lycam. Like him. Evan Lycam. Welcome to his smiling stream. Likeham.

SPEAKER_01 1:46

It's okay. I don't know why people throw an H in there. It happens like more often than you would think, actually.

SPEAKER_00 1:51

Well, my last name's R-O-S-S-E, and everyone my entire life has called me Rossi or Rose. Uh, but it's just Ross, uh, because my grandfather, who was born uh Anthony Rossi, and changed his name to Thomas Ross because he thought it would sound more uh more like less Italian at a time when you know being Italian was I guess worse. I I don't know. But now I I kind of present it. I like Rossi. I think it's a cooler name.

SPEAKER_01 2:14

But yeah, it sounds a little cooler. Ross is a little bland, I guess. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:19

It's got a bit of the um what's it called? Uh witness protection program thing. Two first names, like kind of blends in in a crowd.

SPEAKER_01 2:26

Totally.

SPEAKER_00 2:26

Not a not as big of fair.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

Yeah. The two first names thing.

SPEAKER_00 2:31

But uh Evan, name withheld. Uh go ahead and uh introduce yourself to all of the you know uh people that are listening to this podcast.

SPEAKER_01 2:41

Hey everybody listening to the podcast. My name's Evan Leckham. I run a couple of social media platforms called the Book Reviews Kill on TikTok and Instagram. Mostly I talk about books, which is uh obviously I got a lot of those. Um also I'm an author with Tor. I'm a fantasy author, and that is my first book right there called Angie Kills the King. Second one comes out in January. So uh yeah, I am I've been a full-time author now for a couple years, and uh every intention of staying that way. Uh so please go like uh like we said at the top, like Kyle said at the top of the episode, please go uh buy my book, please go give me uh your money. You don't even need to read it. You really don't. Please just buy it. Read it if you want. Yeah, yeah, just pay, just buy it, uh, and then tell your friends uh that you did read it in a in a conversation about books. Just uh just lie, say it was really good.

SPEAKER_00 3:30

That's fine.

SPEAKER_01 3:31

You know, we'll take it. That's fine.

SPEAKER_00 3:32

Yeah, I think if you don't need to read it, yeah. If you're listening to this and you like any of my reels and my content, if you know Evan's stuff and you like his reels and content, you guys do have to realize like they are not paying us any money to make the actual reels that you like. I'm telling you right now, I've been doing this for eight months every single day. I have made zero dollars off of this. Like, if you guys don't do this stupid thing, this is not good. It's not a system we like. We're not happy about the system, but it is true. If you don't go buy his book and you don't go and give me your email address on my stupid fantasy football app, I can't do this anymore. I can't do this every day. This is the justification. So, you know, um, this is a good marketing strategy too. Yell at your audience to give you their email address and to go buy your book and then shame them if they don't, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 4:19

I don't really know how shame. Thanks, everybody. Appreciate you.

SPEAKER_00 4:24

Um, but we are talking, obviously. Uh I've I've been turned on to your uh reels and TikToks and all that. Haven't gotten a chance to read your book yet, uh, because I'm waiting to get it from our mutual friend and former podcast guest, Tim Howe of Vista House, who you used to play in his band.

SPEAKER_01 4:44

I did. I played drums for Vista House for a little while, and I love Tim. I've known Tim since I was in high school. Uh Tim was the the prom king. And I was prom king? No, he was was he prom king? I think he was. I feel like he was. And he's about to. Yeah, I couldn't remember if it was homecoming or prom. Fairly certain it was prom. Um, but yeah, I was uh I was in the hallway of the school uh playing guitar by myself and eating eating my shitty little lunch uh while Tim was out gallivanting with all the uh all the real popular ones and he's and he's just he's just stayed super super cool this entire time. He's one of the coolest people I know.

SPEAKER_00 5:19

Gift of the gab guy now. Now he's uh dad of the year, Tim Howe, you know?

SPEAKER_01 5:23

Yep, now he's uh now he he was a perfect friend and a perfect guy, and now he's a perfect dad, a perfect husband. Like he's just he's just a flawless person, really.

SPEAKER_00 5:31

He's gonna either love or absolutely hate this. Uh the thing that I've loved about Tim's adventures in dadhood, uh in fatherhood, has just been that like uh all of us all of his other friends don't have kids for the most part that play music, obviously, because they're indie rock musicians, they're waiting to the last possible minute on that one. So like when he sends the text, like, I have the night off, I'm going out, it becomes an event for the rest of us who otherwise have been making up excuses not to go out for a while, and we're like, Yeah, okay, Tim's out. I guess we're going to a show tonight.

SPEAKER_01 6:01

Hey, if Tim's out, everyone's out.

SPEAKER_00 6:03

Tim's out, everybody's out. But yeah, uh, let's get into like your history with music first. So you said you were a guitar kid in the hallway that was uh apparently scooped up to play drums at some point. Uh yeah. What's your relationship? This is technically a music podcast. What's your relationship to uh to music? You were this was in Bend, Oregon, right?

SPEAKER_01 6:21

Mm-hmm. Yeah. So I mean, uh yeah, I started a band with uh a friend of mine from high school, his name's Dan Pantenberg, and uh we started a band called Autonomics, which uh did alright, you know, it was fine. Like we were we were grinding for like, I don't know, god, like 10 years. You know, we were started out in Bend and then we we were like we're gonna make the big move to Portland, and so we moved here. Uh I live in Portland right now, and uh yeah, we moved up to Portland and you know, we had we were all starry-eyed, and we were like, uh, once we're there, you know, it's gonna we were like 20, you know. I don't think we could even play in bars yet or anything, but um yeah, it was really cool. We got an apartment together, me and Dan and my twin brother Vaughn, who played bass, and uh started gigging around and it was it was going okay for like I don't know years. We were mostly just drinking and pour and you know playing what what whatever we could, right? Like you know, you know the grind. Like we were playing like literally we'd play we I think we played in like a half pipe in like an abandoned skate park. Yep, let's play in restaurants while people are trying to eat and like you know, all that stuff. We played in coffee shops where we shouldn't have been playing in a coffee shop. It's like two in the afternoon. You know, exactly all those really demeaning shows. We did that for a long time. Um, and then I don't know, like 2014-2015, we uh we did make a connection with uh a um a European booking agent who was really helpful and got us a bunch of shows in Europe, so we went back and forth between the states and Europe like four or five times. Yeah, it was great. Uh I mean we still like nobody gave a shit about us, right? Like it was just it was still like you know, we'd play some shows that like maybe we'd get on with like a cool other like European band who was touring, so we'd play in front of like 50 hundred people and that'd be amazing, and we'd have like a really cool night. Then the next night we'd be in random who gives a shit like area, and then who gives a shit bar for like the sound guy, you know. So it was like it was very all over the place, but it was so much fun, man, and it was just it was it was such an incredible experience, and like I got to like I got better at drums like as the band was going, and uh you know, I was I was really the weak the weak link in the band for a while. Like drums is like I'd been playing guitar for most of my teenage years, and then I got kind of like and I think it happens to a lot of people where someone needs to play something and you just kind of jump in on it. Um Yeah. So so it was it took a while.

SPEAKER_00 8:49

I tell people all the time, because I'm in a very similar boat of like play guitar for a long time, started learning how to play drums in college just because I was tired of trying to find somebody to drum for me when I wanted something recorded. And then I moved to Portland and was originally trying to make it as like a guitar player writing my own songs, what yada yada yada, whatever. And uh then met my wife who starts singing and playing guitar, and I'm like, oh, I can play a little bit of drums behind this, and then immediately got pegged as like this slow core drummer. It's like, oh, he does very simple drums very slow, slow.

SPEAKER_01 9:22

Nice, dude.

SPEAKER_00 9:23

It's great. Man, I can do it. You know, it taught me a lot. There is something to be said about drum drumming minimally and having to like really think about each note that you play, but it is easy, it is not super difficult.

SPEAKER_01 9:35

I'm not gonna like look at like I don't know, look at the drummer for like like Beach House, right? Like that the like his phrasing is like very creative, it's exactly what it needs to be. You know, like I'll take a pocket drummer any day over Virtuoso, like most guitar players will.

SPEAKER_00 9:51

They like they just kind of want uh somebody that will like play the song to play the song, which I get too. It's like if you are a very, very good drummer, right? If you are like at my best, I've I've definitely fallen off of what I used to be able to do on a drum set just because I don't practice that stuff anymore. Uh but it's like sometimes you sit there and you're like, I this is kind of boring to just play four four time, even if the song is calling for four four time. It's like you just want to try to fit in this new little toy that you invented for yourself, and it doesn't fit, and it's like you just that realization that like alright, you're writing your you know, you didn't write the song, you're playing somebody else's song, you have to play the song as it's intended to be played. That's a tough thing to a tough pill for a lot of people to swallow or whatever because they would they want to be creative, but that's what I like about Portland is if you have ideas of your own, just start your own band, you'll find somebody else to play.

SPEAKER_01 10:42

You throw a rock and you find a musician in this city. But yeah, I mean, um I loved playing in bands. Like I was also the drummer for a band called Ghost Frog for a few years, um, and that was really great. I love those guys. Um, they make really awesome, really unique music. Um, and yeah, then I played around with Vista House for a little bit, but then um like COVID went down, and then I think this is a the same story for a lot of musicians in town. It's just the scene completely imploded, obviously. And um but like and it's it's come back quite a uh in quite a quite a lot, obviously, in the last few years. Um I've been out to a few shows and seen some really great bands, uh, but I never like jumped back into any bands really. Um but I did start writing books and I started making content um in that time too. Wow, so that kind of my life went from trying my very best to become a career musician, which didn't really pan out, to trying my best to become a career author, which kind of did pan out. So that's kind of nice.

unknown 11:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:46

Hey, look at uh look at that professional segue he did right there. That was phenomenal, Evan. Well done.

SPEAKER_01 11:51

Uh I run a podcast of my own, baby.

SPEAKER_00 11:55

Which is called, by the way.

SPEAKER_01 11:57

It's called Book Reviews Kill. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:58

Book Reviews Kill, yeah, and that's the name of uh the TikTok channel as well.

SPEAKER_01 12:01

Um uniformity of brand, baby.

SPEAKER_00 12:04

Yeah, hey man. Listen, I'm in a very similar boat. Of I moved out here to Portland, Oregon, the big city of Portland, to try to figure out some way to make music and and play songs and play shows and stuff like that. Had a modest amount of success in the city playing in these shows. I made a bunch of friends, made a lot of cool memories, all that fun stuff, and then all of a sudden one day just started posting stuff on the internet uh originally about fantasy football, but has since fallen off that. And now I just kind of post about whatever, mostly somewhat music related, so at least I kind of brought it back. But very similar of like, this is now by far the most success I've ever had doing anything.

SPEAKER_01 12:42

Yeah, just just keep keep grinding at it and you know, like it's uh you never know what'll happen. I mean, like I was just posting as much as I could about books. I mean, I love reading fantasy and science fiction, horror, comic books, all that stuff. I was reading constantly while I was on tour. Um, you know, I had big I was re I read like the Wheel of Time, Michael J. Sullivan stuff, bunch of Stephen King stuff, like while I was you know stuck in a van for hours a day. Uh and then I started kind of I brought my laptop on one of those tours and started writing my own stuff, which was just like garbage. Just I was just trying to get scenes together, you know. I was just like I was like, it would be cool if like this happened, and then I'd write out the cool thing that this happened, and it was just bad. And um, but I kept working at it, and I kept working at it through COVID and everything, and um, you know, it took a long time. It was it's still, I mean, still like goddamn, like I still have like really bad writing days where I'm just like, damn, this was like it's like pushing shit uphill. Like it's just it's so shitty. Um But it's been a really cool process, and I feel like it's very similar to the route of trying to improve your craft as a musician. It's similar, like the literature industry is fairly similar to the music industry, uh at least parts of it that I've seen. Uh the literature industry doesn't seem to be quite it's still very competitive, but it's not quite as competitive as the music industry, which is gnarly. Like the music industry is. Yeah, it's still, you know, I mean like I could I guess, you know, people still people hate my books just as much as people hated our music, you know. So like it's just it's you'll never get away from it. But um you know, the music industry is is we were trying we were we were really trying to crack it, and uh it's it's a tough nut to crack for sure. Like becoming a career musician, if anyone is out there listening and you've managed to do it, I have so much respect for you. And if you're trying to do it, I have so much respect for you. Like it it is just um it will it it'll gut you, like it'll really carve out your soul and throw it on the ground, like it and stomp on it. Like it is a very brutal industry to try to be in, and um you know, like it's hard to to stay positive and keep it keep an open mind of like the possibilities that can come to you when you've gotten nothing but disappointing emails for like months, you know. Like I remember I would I would be like afraid to open our inbox, you know, like because it's just like one thing after another, like no, this didn't work out, no, they didn't like you. Uh you know, this show fell through. Uh you know, this like now this venue that booked you and booked somebody else, or like double booked, or like what just constant.

SPEAKER_00 15:30

And I'm sure at the time when you're reading these emails, you're not reading them as personally addressed to you, like everything you've ever tried to do in your life is a failure, everyone's making fun of you behind your back. Uh I just I feel like especially early on, I was so afraid to show anybody music that I made because I was just like I took every every bit of criticism as a critic critique of me, the like indelible spirit of myself getting chiseled away. But now, you know, you that's part of I think one of the messages I try to give people on this, because they'll they've asked, like, oh, should I you know exactly the music industry is a tough nut to crack. I am worried about like you know, failure essentially. Uh but I try to emphasize there's a lot of lessons you can learn from this. You don't really know, even if you start the ship pointed in one direction of like I'm gonna be a professional musician, you don't really know what you're gonna end up doing off of this. You know, there's a variety of other things, the skills transfer over, even just learning that this isn't something you want to do, learning like I don't want to sit in a van for the rest of my life. It does make other jobs that otherwise would have seemed unpalatable because you thought you wanted to live in a van and tour forever. It just makes them seem more palatable. It's like actually my my sense of self gets developed through the process of ultimately failing at being a musician. Uh, but also, you know, shout out to anybody that actually makes it. It is really brutal. It is really, really brutal, especially in the Pacific Northwest, because I I just feel like nothing gets out of here anymore, you know.

SPEAKER_01 16:59

Yeah, I'm like trying, I mean, geez, like uh like as far as like Portland bands go, I mean, like we got the Starfucker, which is great, like they're fantastic. Uh like Amina's from here, which is really cool. Uh I mean the thermals from like 20 years ago, right? Like, I mean, it's been it's been a minute since we've had like a really big like pop-off Portland band. It's wild too, because uh, I thought Holy Life's doing pretty well, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 17:26

Like the Pacific Northwest has such a relationship to indie rock, right? Like there is such it seems so tied into the culture out here, especially Portland, Seattle, whatever. Uh but for whatever reason, it feels like an island, and part of that is like physical geometry. If you've ever toured out on the West Coast, you are in it takes you eight hours to get to your awakening, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:47

Yeah, I used to be so jealous of like bands from the east coast, oh my god, yeah, like pop like one big city to another in a matter of hours. Like uh, but also, I mean, I feel like it depends on like your definition of success, your definition. You know, it's like I was perfectly happy to be playing empty rooms in Berlin because I was in Berlin, yeah, and I was amazing, like it was like really, really cool, and I was with my best friends, and you know, we were getting into all kinds of trouble. I should have died like a hundred times while I was over there, like in even here in the States too. Like, um touring is really, really fun. Uh and playing music, and you know, you you know, you get to it, you've been driving all day, you load out, you set up, you sound check, you wait for people to show up, and then sometimes, hey, people showed up. Oh my god, this is great. And then you can play a really cool show, and it's uh it's amazing, it's such a high.

SPEAKER_00 18:43

Dude, we uh uh I've played a couple shows in Sacramento, which every time I would go on these tours, people would be like, Oh, Sacramento's gonna be rough, it's a tough place to play. And we would get there on like a Thursday night or something like that, and play this the one bar that everybody would go to, and it was just packed wall to wall. You know, there's one time we played and I had to stand by the entrance because the stage was too small, and I was playing bass and uh how strange it is, the band that does the the theme song here. And like I literally it felt like I was the bouncer to the show. People just kept sneaking by me, and it's like, you know, yeah, it took us 13 hours to drive there, and then there were other shows on the tour where we played to the sound guy or whatever, but it's like I don't know, that one good show on tour can carry you so far sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 19:27

Yeah, man, like I miss it. I really do miss playing shows like a lot. Um I have since become uh distanced, I will say, from the singer of my old band. Uh we haven't talked in a long time. The the breakup, the band breakup was not super clean. Um a little bit on my part and a little bit on everybody else's, but mostly on my part, I would say. Uh I didn't I didn't do it very well. I just wanted to be done. Um and I was, you know, I was in a relationship and I was, you know, I was like 29 and I was just like, oh man, that's a rough age. I'm looking down the barrel at 30, and you know, I don't have any money, and you know, we broke up two weeks before the lockdown started for COVID. So I was like, eh, you know, we were gonna break up anyway, you know, like what were we gonna do? Like, you know, um, but any, but who knows? We might have stayed together, but um, you know, it got it did get to a point where I was kind of like, all right, so I've been doing this for since I was 18. Yeah, 10 years, 11 years. I think it might be time to like hang it up. Um, which is a weird decision to come to, right? Like, I mean, you you know, if I if when you when I was 25, if 29-year-old me had been like, dude, yeah, you're gonna we gotta be done when we're almost 30. I would have been like, fuck that. Like, I'm going forever, right? Like I'll um, you know, we ball till we fall, man. Like, let's go. Uh but uh I don't know, it's just something about it. I just didn't want to do the um I didn't want to do that grind anymore. But I did it didn't mean I wanted to quit making music. I still make music today. Like you know, um I love making music and I I I really, really enjoy the process a lot, even though again it can be a little bit frustrating sometimes. Like, you know, uh I hate that feeling where you've been working on something for like hours and you're like pretty stoked about it, and then there's just like this weird switch that flips where you're just like, oh, it's garbage. Like and I don't know what the fuck that is. Like I really don't understand.

SPEAKER_00 21:26

Oh, yeah. I always tell people when I'm recording my own stuff, because I love to just go down to the basement and just go from zero to like a full re fully recorded song. Totally. And I always tell people it's like what I do, my process is I start recording and then I record until I hate myself. At the moment that I just generally cannot even look myself in the mirror, then I save the song and I put it away for like at least two weeks, preferably like six weeks or something like that, and then I listen to it after about six weeks and I go, Okay, actually, that's not that bad. I like this. This had parts that worked. I don't know why I was so mad at myself, but it's like that was just I'm trying to get better at that part because I don't think it's helpful to be that negative on yourself. But it, you know, that is part of why you do these things. You're wrestling in the same way that I like sports, because when you play sports, you are always playing yourself. Even if you're playing basketball, you're always going up against your own limitations at some point. Part of music, part of creative, part of writing is this idea of yourself clashing with the actual reality of who you are. And that space in between what you think you can do versus what you currently are able to do either drives you to work excruciatingly hard to close the gap or it kind of crushes you. And sometimes it does both. This is like I don't think there's any creative person that has not felt both. There's no one that just goes I'm just gonna keep grinding. I don't even care. No, sometimes it like literally just it sends you into a fucking tailspin and you have to find a way back from that and it's like that but that's life man.

SPEAKER_01 22:57

That's that's how that's why you get up in the morning right yeah totally and and and uh honestly like I'm really happy about my time being a musician a working musician for so long because like obviously I mean I still play music like I said um in my spare time but when I was really grinding at it um and learning especially learning drums which is a rough instrument to learn oh yeah or at least it's a rough instrument to level up to the point where you can play proficiently enough to play in front of people uh like it's a it's a tough instrument to learn uh I always say with drums uh the hardest part one is just finding a place to be shitty at drums. Right like everyone can hear you. Like that's the trouble with it. Like you know um with a guitar uh you just turn the volume down. Yeah the acoustics aren't that loud and then with an electric guitar you can just plug into a an interface on your computer and you can it you actually sound pretty decent if you can play a few chords put together like throw some reverb on there you know like it sounds actually pretty good. So um that's not to say that like I mean like learning guitar is also it's a it's a rough start if you've never even tried before like a different thing.

SPEAKER_00 24:02

I feel like with the drums though like there's this uh this leveling up factor with it where it's like you start off and it just sounds awful. You can't keep a beat you can't do anything. Yeah and then but like it's kind of pretty quick to go from terrible I've never played drums before to like good enough to actually play with people. Because as soon as you can hold four four time do a fill and get back into that four four time now you can play with somebody. I think Meg White's a brilliant drummer yeah I like yeah I think she she's got some really good but that's like what I started out with is just trying to play White Stripe songs because it's like she she breaks it down to the absolute essentials of what a drum kit needs to do. But it's like you know once you get to that point you can actually just kind of hang out there and then you can be a slow core drummer like myself and you never really have to learn any fills. Nobody wants fills in a channel nobody wants fills.

SPEAKER_01 24:56

I uh I taught myself uh I I played along to is this it by the strokes oh it's repeatedly yeah like it really taught me you know like um like putting those uh the like those eighth notes together those sixteenth notes and then like lining up the kick and snare on those sixteenth or eighth notes uh the Fabrizio Moretti like that's I mean most of the beats on is this it are really linear beats and really like you know that you can you can hear like every single thing he's doing usually uh like Nicolai's bass line is like matched right up with uh Fabrizio's bass drum and so it's just that was like a really really important uh album for me to like really sit and learn like okay so if I approach this maybe I need to change my approach to this like I was just trying to like really think about syncopating all my limbs and stuff and that wasn't working so like what if I looked at it as like it's like a grid right oh nice and I realized like when I was listening I was just like like listening to strokes like all the time and I was like man like every one of his snare hits lines up with with a hi-hat hit and I hadn't really ever put that together really like and it's funny because I was playing drums for like a while but um I was overcomplicating it and I was like wow this is so like I can keep myself in time with just one hand. I'm not keeping all my other limbs in time like I just use one hand to keep the time the meture that those other hits line up on those hits or what got really when it got really cool was I was like oh some of them are in between the hits. Yeah and you know and then it's like oh it's but it's still all on like a grid system um and then you know me being shitty at drums it kind of helped along with having a little bit of swing too you know like so it wasn't super robotic and didn't sound like it was totally on a grid. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:48

I love that right there because it's like I feel like uh you know the act of creating the act of learning how to do something yourself gives you a level of appreciation that just goes so far beyond what you really thought. You know you you can be somebody that's never played the drums and you can listen and you can really love a drum part but like there's something to me where it's like the first hand experience I feel like that's honestly it is it takes it from a third hand appreciation of he is doing this this is really cool to now I have this kind of first hand opinion. I tried to do this it didn't work. I tried to do it like this guy was doing it that's where I had to learn you know you start seeing things in a different way you start seeing things empathetically the way that other people see it and the idea that like you yourself are uh creating from first principles notation for drumming right it's like oh yeah it's on this like four four grid maybe that's what these numbers have to do with I still know what the fuck the numbers mean I didn't learn that shit but like learning from first principles for some people that is a far more effective strategy than if you had sat them down talked them through why notation exists the way that it does and then taught them the drums it's like no I'm playing the drums now I have this necessity for this so I don't know I think it's cool.

SPEAKER_01 28:00

Yeah cheers man yeah I mean uh like like I was saying before I mean like the whole process of learning and teaching myself instruments and being in bands and being in that grind and everything I feel like was very very helpful for the work that I do now. You know like learning how to write books has been like I've kind of had to do it on the fly right like I mean like I was writing for a while but like it wasn't in like a really really serious way like I mean I was trying my very best and trying to stay consistent but I wasn't getting paid for it. It wasn't my job so you know I didn't really treat it like my job. I was I was trying but now like I got kind of tossed into the deep end of the publishing industry after um I signed my first deal and um yeah like I've had to kind of teach myself not really how to not really how to write books like with in all caps but like how to I had to teach myself how I write books.

SPEAKER_03 28:55

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 28:56

Right like I define like the way that I put these things together. Everybody has a completely different process and one of the biggest conversations or the the the most uh frequent conversations I would say that that authors have with each other and that authors have on podcasts is process right like how do you put how do you do this? Um a lot of authors will put they will spend months on an outline um and then they'll draft or uh or some people will just not make an outline at all and they just kind of like do it all right there like in their chair with like just just throwing ideas down and that's kind of closer to my process but I've had to figure out through trial and error like what works what's what am I what am I struggling with you know and I'm s and I have a feeling just like with um being a musician um you are never going to really be you're never really gonna arrive at like a place where you're like yeah I have complete mastery over this. Oh yeah. And even if people think you do you won't feel like you do. Which I actually look at that as like I think that's great. Like personally like I would rather it was that way than the other way. Like because what do you do once you're a master at it? Like what are you supposed to there's nothing else to improve it's like playing a video game where there's a level cap and then you like cap out in the game and it's just like okay well now I'm just walking around like kicking the shit out of everything. Like what's the point? You know uh and you know it's it's like the the process of of uh failing over and over again with music and you know uh like even you know I have had a handful of rejections as a writer too um lots of rejections as a musician um and like kind of growing that skin and like trusting yourself and trusting your taste and trusting your ability uh trusting that you know just because you haven't mastered something or just because you haven't uh developed a lot of confidence in one aspect doesn't mean that you can't develop it eventually. You just have to stay consistent, keep working on stuff. Um and at the very center of all of it is artistic expression. It's not like you don't get that if you're not amazing at something. That's like a really cool thing that I've learned is like I'm still surprising myself with scenes that I write. I'm still and just like when you're playing music too you surprise yourself sometimes and like that discovery is the point of it all. Like that's like that's why you keep coming back to it is like you know I I I'm sure you have sessions where you're like alright cool I'm gonna record some music and you're not totally sure it's gonna go well right there's a little bit of like anticipation and like a little bit of dread where you're like oh fuck like this is gonna I don't know but then you sit down and you do it and you know you turn your computer on connect your interface plug everything in and then you're like alright here we go and maybe a few hours later you're not happy with the result as a whole but there's some gold in them hills.

SPEAKER_00 32:09

There's something there. Yeah there's something there you can work with that yeah and honestly every once in a while it's the whole thing is something you know there's some uh yeah every once in my phone recordings that I have that I'm like that was the best thing I've ever recorded I can't release it because I did it on my phone or whatever. But uh like looking for the endlessness of the craft of it all right that like you can't master that's the point. It's like why would you do something that you could master fully and you know uh walk away from like if you could solve it you know uh it's it's similar to like tic tac toe not tic tac toe connect four right it's a solved game at a certain point you will get so good at connect four that there's nothing else you can do everyone will play optimal strategy wise or they'll lose that's a solved game that's why it's not chess the reason that chess still exists is because I've been getting really into chess lately actually yeah yeah I haven't gotten into chess because I'm worried where chess is one of those games is like if I like it for like five years during the pandemic I played Settlers of Catan online every single day I played so many versions of Settlers of Catan that I kind of got bored with it because at a certain point the game does come down to dev card luck. What cards do you pick up on the dev cards is going to determine whether or not you win or lose the game do you have night control versus did you pick up a couple early VPs and the other guy got a road builder early it'll kill you. But I learned that through a lot of trial and error so I'm worried about chess because like what if I really like it and now I have to devote my entire life to this thing. I'm not gonna be good at it.

SPEAKER_01 33:43

It's kind of ruining my life right now like I mean I really and I'm bad too like it um you know we were talking earlier about the more that you the more that you kind of involve yourself in something the more you sink into a hobby or uh an art form whether whatever it is uh you start to gain a lot of appreciation for not only how bad you are at it at it but for for how good people are yeah for the greats man yeah and so you know it's like before I was like oh like Magnus Carlson like how good could he possibly be and now that I've played thousands of chess games I look at what he's doing and I'm like dude this is absolutely like it's on so many levels higher than like what I'm trying to do. And it's the same thing with you know when I when I was learning how to play drums and I listened to like Mars Volta or something and it's like dude like I don't even know what what the fuck is he even doing like oh my god like this is like how did he for one thing like how did he think of this yeah like like uh the I You have to think it and then execute it.

SPEAKER_00 34:43

These are two different parts that kind of are magic like that they came up with the idea and still execute it is fucking wild.

SPEAKER_01 34:50

Yeah like there's like a there's like a phrasing like uh there's a part of uh take the veil serpentacts uh by Mars Volta where like I was trying to like learn the song uh and I was like getting most of it and then there's like this one section if you're a Mars Volta fan you know what section I'm talking about there's like this one section of the song I was like I can't maybe it's just the recording like I can't really hear like exactly what's going on right here. So I looked up a YouTube video of some guy covering it and I was watching it after years of playing drums and I'm watching it I'm like I literally don't know what this person's doing. Like I don't know I don't know what the fuck is going on on this beat right now. Like it looks like he grew a fucking fifth appendage.

SPEAKER_00 35:29

Like I don't know uh but it's just uh it it leaves you with so much appreciation for like how far you have to go and um you know like just having that moment where you're sitting there thinking of the amount of work you would need to do to get to that level for me there's this weird part where I like feel a self-satisfaction about the version of me that would actually have done that amount of work but like I'm never gonna do it. Like I'm not actually gonna sit there and grind this out. But I have this like little I get to have this nice little fantasy for like 20 minutes of like yeah I could be just as good at the guitar as J Mascus. Like I could do it if I just practice my scales every single day for like you know but it's like it's not gonna I I I had this moment when I was learning how to play the drums uh there's this band Mice Parade that I really like because the front guy is a drummer so he's like played in you know uh the swirlies and a bunch of other bands or whatever. Uh and so I really like the band because the whole band is percussive. They use the guitars in a percussive way and all that but I was like trying to learn how to do well how to drum one of their songs by playing along to it and it wasn't until I watched the live video did I realized like there's two drum kits going on here.

unknown 36:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:38

I was like oh okay like how is he hitting all these things at this thing insane man what's going on it's like oh there's two of them yeah totally and both of them are better than I am at the drums too so it's like it would take two versions of me cloned that both practiced nonstop for like three years then I could play focus on the roller coaster you know but it's cool because like um you know like I feel like in the attempt or on the journey of trying to get better it's not binary right and that's like a really cool thing about making art is that there's no like there's no like you're you're either good or you're bad right like it I don't believe in that I feel like there's you're either you've either just started or you're on your way or you're much more advanced but you never really arrived uh but like it is cool like especially when you're just starting out and just learning stuff um you're the the feeling of progress comes more frequently which is really cool um and like I don't know I I just I try not to look at it in a sense of like I know like like writing books is really hard right uh and I get frustrated with it sometimes but I try to keep in mind like man you have have come a long way you've got a long way to go you're kind of right in the middle of everything as as Jimmy Eatworld would say you're in the middle man and the middle's fun like the middle's cool like I oh yeah I like that I um you know like I I go over and read some of the stuff that I wrote like a year ago and kind of like we were saying with like you know your phone recordings and stuff um like I feel like it's the same with writing too where uh you know you you put a draft away for a little while and then you come back to it and you're like oh shit I don't even really remember writing this but this is cool and then you kind of like now that you've been at it for a while you've kind of refined um you know not not only your taste but your ability uh you know what to look out for a little more and so I'll look over a draft that I had had uh shelved for a little bit I look back through it and I'm like cool like I like the way that this looks but also I don't know what I was thinking right there. Like that's not right. You know I don't need to end this sentence with a preposition. I use two adverbs in one sentence like that looks like shit. Oh yeah you know just stuff like that. And um you know I try not to ever like when I'm in the process of drafting I try not to ever like get too overly critical. And I feel like this is a little bit of a difference between writing books and writing songs a little bit is that with writing songs it's like you know it's two, three, four minutes long.

SPEAKER_00 39:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:26

Um but uh but with a book it's like hundreds of thousands of words. Uh it takes it it takes a lot longer to beef a book up to a certain quality than it would for like a song. Not saying that the effort isn't the same but it's it takes longer. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:42

It's a bigger piece of work. It's a different type of ambition. You know it's like it's yeah I think that's something I always think about when I think about art uh whatever it is is like all right well what are they trying to do? If you're just trying to write one song that is gonna be easier than trying to write a double album concept album or something like that. And it's like a book is just a different thing. You are you're setting out you're not trying to write a short story either you're trying to write it's like a concept album.

SPEAKER_01 40:06

It is it's just it's like working on a concept album.

SPEAKER_00 40:08

The criticism has to be or like whatever criticism the digestion of the thing also has to digest the uh you know the scope of the work or whatever. In the same way too that even like two movies could take the same amount of work to make but there's a big difference between there's something about Mary and 2001 a space odyssey right both great movies. Both phenomenal movies I love watching both of them like I I I just I try to appreciate everything as like even if I don't like it I might like it in the future.

SPEAKER_01 40:36

This is where it is too right like meet it that that's that's always been like my my approach to um yeah you know I review books uh not as much anymore but I you know I built my pages reviewing books and essentially reviewing other people's art like art that I didn't make I am telling people what I think about it and what uh sometimes like whether or not they would like it or like whether or not they should read it or buy it or whatever. Yeah um and it feels like a weird responsibility to have right yeah but like my approach to it has always been like I'm trying to meet this work where it is I'm trying to understand what was trying to be done with it. I'm trying not to compare it to other work right so if I'm if I'm reviewing an Adrian Tchaikovsky space opera book I'm not gonna compare it to Gormangast right it's not gonna work like that you have to meet stuff where it is and understand where the author try try your best I should say to understand what what the author's trying to do. Yeah right and that's why you know I'm not gonna compare a Rooney album to a radiohead album.

SPEAKER_00 41:37

Like it's not it's silly like it's just like I'm not gonna I'm not gonna bring my my uh in rainbows expectations to a weezer album like that's not how those things work those they're not they're actually not in competition with each other they're not fighting over anything they're fighting over uh they're fighting over your attention at different points in your life exactly that are totally different types of attention totally the thing that uh I I'm interested in in terms of your history uh getting started like reviewing books and your TikTok account and all that do you how do you feel your past as somebody that tried to make it in the music industry uh affected your relationship to reviewing other people because I always think of this concept of like the man in the arena right I I actually made a reel about this once I was at a uh geese concert and I was just saying it's like hey I don't feel comfortable telling anybody what to listen to unless you guys understand that like I wanted to be him I wanted to be Cameron Winter and everyone you hear that talks about this album's a six out of ten this album's a seven out of ten they wanted to be Cameron Winter and then they failed and now they're reviewing Cameron Winter.

SPEAKER_01 42:44

It's always that direction yeah I mean take that into account you know like the way that I try to come out everything is like I try not to ever really speak in objectivities. If you do you'll get more views for sure. Oh yeah because people will argue and it's tempting but I try my very best to come at everything is like I try to for first and foremost I if I'm going to critique stuff I try to do it from within the fandom and not from without right so there's that and then also I try my very best to say this worked for me because of this it didn't work for me because I don't like these things right like it's trying to keep it as much like you know I I'm trying to establish a relationship to my audience where they eventually are like okay so Evan doesn't really like um like dream sequences he's been really consistent about that right so when I review a book and I'm like oh man like this whole thing was really cool but I feel like I for like half of it I didn't really have both feet on the ground because it got really ethereal and I personally don't really like that kind of writing. If you like that kind of writing you would really like this book. So I try to stay as referential uh and objective about what the book is actually about as I can and then give my opinion on my experience with the book and not really I don't really like critique quality. Like I I don't know what the I don't know what that is. I think that I think some I'm not gonna I'm not gonna sit here and say that nobody can objectively critique quality in a book. I think that that can happen if you with with some caveats. So like I think that um if you have a master's degree in English literature sure like I think I think that your opinion I don't want to say it holds more value than like the the the than whoever but like it I can understand the your approach to this and like your taste and there are certain conventions to books right like um but also people break them and still write good books too so it's it's all kind of like a big wash. I feel like for me personally my approach is just like what has my experience been with this how honest can I be about that experience and how consistent can I be with my audience over lots and lots of content so that when they see a video of mine they're like oh cool so Evan really really liked this book but of course Evan really liked this book because it's seafaring fantasy and he loves that shit. Right? So like they know that that that's a thing.

SPEAKER_00 45:16

Um but like I yeah just uh on that point uh like in terms of authenticity in the short form content thing I've been operating under this principle I've I've told I've mentioned on my pod and I mentioned in my reels every once in a while it's like I go for a walk every day and I make the reels then yeah and I don't think of anything before that I don't come in thinking oh I'm gonna talk about this today I'm gonna talk about that because in my mind I think there's this uh ability for the audience that's watching all these short form videos to pick up on some level of authenticity right because they're watching so many of these things they can kind of tell when somebody's selling them something when somebody's selling them and it's I've tried explaining that to companies so many times I get reached out to every single day for people who want me to sell shit and I'm like dude like I can do it.

SPEAKER_01 46:03

I mean if you want to pay me for a video that's not going to take off like sure you know what I mean but it's not gonna take off because people know when they're being sold something like it's and they don't like it.

SPEAKER_00 46:14

Natively too the way that I look at it is like in the same way that your parents would click on all the pop-up ads because they didn't know they were pop-up ads but you would see the pop-up ads and go that's clearly a pop-up ad and you'd find the little X the little hidden X every single time and they would just click the wrong ones I think that's happening with these people that watch a lot of these native content stuff is they can kind of figure out very quickly uh that somebody's being kind of inauthentic and it sounds like in your review your review process you were bringing everything back to you your only expertise really at the end of the day is your own personal opinion and you're letting that be something that the audience can reflect off of. He says these things these are the things that he likes this is the kind of guy he is and then this is my personal experience let's see like what the book is probably somewhere in between what he's talking about and like what I personally like you know totally yeah and I think people pick up on that I think that's not to say that you can't create inauthentic content that does really well on these dreams you know Mr Beast is the example of like you can make your entire life inauthentic although he's kind of come back around and Mr Beast is authentically inauthentic in the same way that palm trees are for LA you know sure uh but it's like do you feel like it's a bit of a struggle sometimes because you've had you've had way more success on this than I uh probably ever will have or whatever but do you feel the pull do you feel the little Mr. Beast on your shoulder whispering in your ear of like start the controversy get the views go viral.

SPEAKER_01 47:42

I know how to do it too I'm I I'm a thousand percent certain I think at this point it's a little late for me because I feel like I have gained a reputation of sincerity and honesty um and somewhat some consistency. Not with everybody a lot of people fucking don't like me but like uh but that's just what you get when you're posting on the internet all the time but you gotta I feel like if I suddenly took a turn for the for the lulls like for the views you know for the gram and I was just like alright so I'm gonna just start like really being a dick about stuff and like really trying my very best to make content that I know is going to be incendiary. I don't know. I don't know if I could like like obviously I think the money would be cool like I'd get so many more views and I'd get more ad deals and stuff and that'd be that'd be great. But I don't know if I could really sit with it man I just don't know if I have like the personality for it and like um you know I don't know if you've ever had anything like really pop off like into the millions before no it's ever had like it sucks man like I it's very exciting but it's also like really weird because your phone like you open up the app and so what happens is like when something goes really viral especially with short form content I'm sure it happens with YouTube videos too but when something goes really really viral what happens is that the the virality comes with people that are far outside of your audience.

SPEAKER_00 49:10

Oh yeah right I call it breaking containment you know it's like you've broken containment how to save a life I was talking about that song and Zach Braff retweeted it and it's like oh and it totally broke containment luckily everybody fucking loves Zach Braff so this was like a positive one.

SPEAKER_01 49:28

You get the trolls and you get the people who are like people will be mad at your existence people will make fun of your face people will make fun of your voice people will say you're fat people will say you're too skinny like people somebody called me David Foster no bitches once it was hilarious.

SPEAKER_00 49:45

I'm not mad at that so good it's so good that's really I gotta make a t shirt damn like that's gotta make a t-shirt that's so good.

SPEAKER_01 49:54

Man that's a sometimes yeah like they uh uh they getcha someone called me fatter Seth Rogan once uh which was like pretty gnarly no it's good it's good it's good shit it's so mean yeah someone said uh Jim from the office ate too many frozen pizzas which I did uh but no man like it's I love a frozen pizza me too it's weird though like I like I think that like posting on the internet consistently um you know like I've I've developed a great community around it I was able to find a a literary agent because I was posting so much and that literary agent uh helped me uh get Engie Kills a king up to snuff enough so that it could be first rejected by a couple publishers but then taken by Tor. You know and I got money and I and I got to quit my job and like a lot of cool stuff happened. And so like that's so cool man. Yeah and so like more to your point though I mean of of um that that kind of like Mr Beast on my shoulder um it's tempting to not only to make incendiary stuff but it's also it's tempting to grind out videos.

SPEAKER_02 51:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:04

Like I I used to do that uh years ago and that's how I built up the pages. That's one of the best ways to build up the pages. Yeah if you post two or three times a day the eventually one of those videos is really gonna pop. Like it's you know it's just a numbers game at that point. If you are posting authentically and anything you say is even remotely interesting something is going to pop a lot harder than your other videos. And then all of a sudden you got twice as many followers as you did before and then the next time something pops it pops a little harder and that's really cool. But I don't I don't grind the content anymore which is really nice.

SPEAKER_00 51:39

I mean it takes a long time to make this stuff right it's it is a uh a genuine like skill set that I've developed you know I talk to people about it every once in a while and it's just like it you know it is uh I'm I mean I am just walking around talking into a phone I don't even do cuts like I just fucking do that.

SPEAKER_01 51:58

You don't do cuts?

SPEAKER_00 51:59

Oh wow oh I I which is annoying at times because sometimes you get about 45 seconds into a minute long video and then you mess up saying words or you just don't know how to land the plane and you just have to do it again.

SPEAKER_01 52:11

You just cut it nobody even notices.

SPEAKER_00 52:13

Haven't you seen those videos where it's like every fucking couple words is cut you know like no I know well that's the thing is like I just it's the fun for me in this whole situation is like the limitations of it all right the fact that the algorithm is set up to turn you into a brand to do Mr. B shit I like that. I want them to try to do that so I have something to fight against right I'm trying to figure out some way to like grasp authenticity away from you know this system that's trying to turn me into the guy that talks about modest mouse and like uh class or something like that. It's like whenever something works for me I try to I you know I don't do it again. I move away from it oh you should you absolutely should if you want to know page like yeah like yeah it's like it's keeps keeping it's a weird thing where it's like I could just talk I I could just call Billy Corgan a dork every single day.

SPEAKER_01 53:04

And I've done it multiple times but most of them actually throw shade at Kevin Durant you know I mean I think that like the my my my policy personally with it um that has seemed to work fairly well for me is I just try to stay as honest and like as much myself as I can do like I mean as you can be because people are going to make fun of you no matter what people are not going to like you no matter what people are going to unfollow you no matter what people are going to block you no matter what it's something that you can't really avoid. Like if you are putting your face out there the judgment is going to come there's no amount of makeup or filters or you can't like you can type up the post uh you know you can read from a script you can do whatever you can you can try to avoid all these things as much as you can but at the end of the day somebody is going to DM you and tell you you're a fucking moron. So you might as well be yourself right and and I find that like being as much myself as I can be it takes a little bit of the pressure off you know I don't have to put on a face I don't have to put on a a persona or anything and then it's it's like I move forward through this space knowing hey you know what at least I'm being myself at least I'm doing it in my comfortable way I'm talking about stuff that I'm interested in and if people want to hate on it that sucks for them but I'm gonna keep talking about it and then I kind of move that over to the writing process too where it's like look man um if I put out if I put out something that I thought was like no one could possibly not like this. People will still not like it. Absolutely it doesn't matter like it's just you will never ever avoid not only criticism but cruelty you are not going to avoid cruelty. I'm sorry like it's just you're not going to and I don't mean that in a in a sense that I'm not trying to make anybody not want to do this. I'm saying do it anyway. Like fuck those people because anybody that's making stuff that you're making won't be cruel to you. Right? Like anybody that's trying uh the in the way that you're trying is not going to try to cut you down like usually like 90 for 90% of the time. Sometimes people do. But like just remember like this stuff is true to you and if you keep it true to you it's very cliche but like you know that's why I feel like some of the best artists you know like uh camera winter for example yeah dude is pouring his heart out right talented and it bothers talented well I think that geese uh I haven't listened to a bunch of geese but I think that here's my here's my theory on geese.

SPEAKER_00 55:43

Ooh we'll get the we'll get the TikTok camera up because I will tell you I I do have a thing I call pushing the geese button which is like if I do want something to go off a little bit I just talk about geese.

SPEAKER_01 55:53

My theory with geese this is this might piss some people off but like my theory is that geese sound so different that I think that some like millennials are hearing them and it's like holding up a mirror and saying look how old you are yes like you you finally got to the point where you don't understand something and it's scaring the shit out of you. Right?

SPEAKER_00 56:15

And you've been able to understand it all this time and especially with millennials we we were making we were you know we had like the the the rock revival of the early 2000s yeah we had we had all kinds of of music movements we were like the the gatekeepers of music for so long we were in and it happens with every generation right I mean like uh you know when the grunge movement hit and everybody was like oh all this like 80s power metal like in glam metal that stuff it ends eventually you know you know but like uh I feel like with geese specifically geese I think is they're so good and they're so different and they're doing it so weird that that well that people in their 30s are like this isn't real music and it's like oh we we finally arrived man like we've see that for me because I've been listening to a lot more zoomer music because I really enjoy it I like that these kids don't care about genre at all. Our generation did the millennials cared about genre these kids don't care about it at all they mix and match things because they grew up on the internet just listening to whatever they wanted to but I like listening to something like there's this band Robber Robber that it sounds like the music from SSX tricky when you're like selecting a character to me. It sounds so cool in that like Y2K aesthetic or whatever but like I'm also like listening to it and I'm going like this isn't for me. This is for Zoomers this is for younger kids and I don't in I didn't instinctively get it when I first heard them I don't what didn't put it on I'm like oh this is amazing I put it on I'm like this kind of sounds like noise to me you know that artist Pink Pantherus uh she does like British pop or I don't even know the the genre name for it or whatever. When I first heard it I didn't really like it and then that recognition that I don't like it because I'm 35 and I'm not supposed to like something that's made for a 20 year old. This is their thing and it's like they're gonna like it regardless of what I think. If I want to keep myself open if I don't want to calcify my own understanding of music and like what music is and what music is good and not I actually am the one that has to do work for them. And I think part of the geese thing that you hear is people saying like geese has to win me over. It's like no they don't you're 30 no one cares. They don't have to do anything for you you either have to like them or figure out what's going on with them or you have to like get out of the you're no longer your taste doesn't matter now.

SPEAKER_01 58:35

That's kind of what the I I understand not liking something just fine. There's plenty of stuff that I don't like I think that when you take it a step further and you're commenting on Reddit posts you're commenting on YouTube posts you're commenting on the band's profile or whatever and you're and you're being and you're you're throwing that negativity around in my head I'm like what's the point? Like what is your end game here? Like why why? Because like it's not like it's not like geese's existence and you I think you can you can parallel with this with books and movies and TV shows and everything. It's like the existence of something that I don't like does not mean that I can't enjoy the things that I do. So what's the point what's the problem here like you can like if I I have a Spotify account you know like I I can choose not to listen to geese and I can choose to listen to turnover right yeah no one's gonna stop me from doing that. I can do that all day long without interruption yeah it's not like every time I log into Spotify they're like okay but before you listen to peripheral vision you have to listen to this geese album or we won't let you listen to it.

SPEAKER_00 59:37

Then I'd be mad I'd be like fuck this band like what the fuck like you know what I mean or not even this band I'd be like always gets me when I get these uh comments about people they're like this band sucks I hate this is like I always want to be like I you guys realize you don't like most bands right the majority of bands that exist right now you think suck. Why do you care about this one? And it's like part of it is it's their popularity. It's popularity it's also just one thing that like you need to come to terms with especially if you get a post online it is fun to be mad online. Sometimes you're having a bad day and there's a guy who looks like me and you can say something mean to him and he'll feel worse about his day and you might feel a little bit better about your day. That is fun to do. Is it right to do?

SPEAKER_03 1:00:20

Probably not right is it fun though?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:23

Absolutely we all do it because it's fun yeah and the other part is uh I always think I remember I I work at a a school and I coach there and there's this one girl once who was all upset because these other girls were being mean to her they didn't like her anymore. They like exclude her from the group and I just uh remember telling her it's like well do you not like other people you know not these girls you like there are other people you don't like and she's like yeah and I'm like all right well in order for you to be able to not like other people you have to give people the right to not like you right if you want to hold on to the power to say I don't like you go away you have to let somebody be able to say that to you. You can't expect it to work both ways and you also absolutely would never want to live in a world where you have to like everybody. That would be awful I would never expect that of you but the the the negativity of it especially as like a content guy now is I'm very well aware that some people think that I look stupid that I'm not as smart as I sound and that I talk for you probably not as smart as you sound yeah I'm definitely not as smart as I sound which is when we talk to buddy our buddy Tim Howe when I get to hang out with him and the rest of the people that have known me before I was internet famous uh they consistently point out how I'm not as smart as I sound on uh so I just say like I play a smart guy on the internet in reality I'm actually very dumb so yeah man I don't know I I just feel like uh and the take that I have on this I feel like uh can I don't know maybe I maybe it'll bug people I'm not really sure but um I just don't understand throwing the hate around when there's so much to love right like I don't I don't get it like I just I just don't understand like um you know now that I've been kind of I've seen how a lot of the sausage gets made on the music end of things on the writing end of things um a lot of the time when I'm you know like a good example I just watched that movie uh Disclosure Day I haven't seen it yet it's okay it's fine like that's what I've heard it's yeah there's parts of it that are good that I really enjoyed and then there's parts of it that um I was kind of kind of bored and I was just like what the fuck like and I felt like the writing was just kind of like stilted and just like a little bit too like hammered like right on.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:30

But also I can't help but feel sometimes when I'm watching stuff or when I'm reading stuff or when I'm listening to stuff okay so this is filtering through my brain and I've spent ten minutes with this scene or whatever a couple hours with this book a few minutes with this song. Yep but somebody who made it with a completely different brain than mine right like this made sense in their brain so like I feel like I can say and this leads to a um a a hotly debated topic obviously but like I I can say I personally didn't like this but I can't say objectively this is bad. Yeah right and I think that that really it it it's it's an it's a it's a thing that I've gotten a lot of pushback on is this kind of like rejection about of objectivity with our critique um and I think that there's a there's a spectrum of of of valid subjectivity right I I would say that right like uh I there there are opinions that I would trust over others in a in certain lights right but I do think that saying something is objectively bad I don't I don't know it just it doesn't hold with me. I don't really like it.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:48

My thought on this because I I've obviously gotten into a million online arguments because I'm like an argumentative person uh it's fun for me. That I have fun arguing online or whatever. Um is because when you say like oh you can't I can't say something's objectively bad the response to that from the troll would be well I'm gonna say I can say it's objectively bad it is bad. It's not necessarily about like whether or not you can make the claim with everything that you get online it's always comes down to on what authority are you making this claim? If it's just your opinion on something that's fine but I don't care. Like you have not justified why your opinion matters to me. The great uh leader of the Communist Party of China Mao Zedon uh once said in his little red book no investigation, no right to speak. And so it's like if you want to sit there and say like oh disclosure day sucked but you don't know anything about how movies are made the authority of your claim only extends as far as your investigation into that claim. And if it's very little investigation then your the authority of that claim is very little and it's just like all right cool. You said a thing and I don't care now what? Now what do we do? You said it now what do we do? I don't care what do you want to do do you want to try to convince me to care? Because we can talk about that it's gonna be hard because I just told you unless you investigate it I don't care. Or do we just move on because I'd rather move on but like if you want me to say something because a lot of times I get into arguments with people in my own comments where I'm like it feels like you just want me to say that you're right and I'm not gonna do that. That's not a service I provide. That's not a service I provide is I make my commentary videos and I'll discuss things with you. I'm not a parrot you can't just put a fucking nickel in me and then I'll say the thing you want to say you could put a few thousand dollars into me maybe I'll do it but absolutely oh my god give me a few thousand dollars I will say whatever the fuck you want me to say I'll say juice is totally overrated in a sign up just but let's have the discussion if that's what you want let's talk about how we can get there and one of the ways is money.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:41

It will I will do it for money you know but that's like what I mean about what that's what I mean about like the like the spec the the sort of like spectrum of of uh of subjective like validity and value right like it's like but I feel like it has a ceiling right so even like the most learned person In let's just take books, for example, um, you know, a a a master's degree in literary fiction or or in English literature or whatever. Like, yeah, I trust that person's opinion a little bit more, for sure. But it's like all objective critique I feel like is a is a summation of collected subjective uh convention, right? Like and like so like like people have over the years subjectively, collectively decided on what convention is, right? And it's like so It's like that's not quite enough for me to say it's objective.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:41

I don't know, like so I've thought about this a bunch myself.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:44

Me too, and I'm I'm still in the process of landing on like a total, like you know what I mean. I'm talking out my ass right now. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:50

Oh, no problem, yeah. But uh I've thought about this a million times as well, like the idea of like everyone has a subjective opinion, right? But certain things appear to be objective, right? The factor that doesn't get thought about, and you mentioned it a little bit, is time, right? In time, the truth tends to come out. There might have been people when Shakespeare wrote Hamlet that thought this is fucking trash, right? And then the person that said, no, this is brilliant, you gotta believe that it's brilliant, and they had their subjective opinion, the other person had the uh another subjective opinion. But I feel like somewhere along the way, in the annals of history, it does become objective that Shakespeare is important to the canon of English literature, right? That you cannot have the canon of English literature without uh Shakespeare. So whether or not you think it's good is now unimportant. And there's a part of it that it becomes sort of an objective thing. Like you can still think, I think Hamlet's trash, but it's like, okay, so it's trash that has echoed through the halls of everything else in English for hundreds of years afterwards. Who gives a shit if you think it's trash? Isn't that important? And that I think becomes the object. The object becomes, weirdly enough, it's like a subjective object that is known as the canon of English literature, you know? And I think like in time the truth tends to win out in these things, even though everything is subjective. In it's like looking at a bunch of coin flips, uh, you can break each one of them individually into heads or tails and be like, all right, this one could have been one way or the other, but if it's a hundred heads in a row, you're like, there's something wrong with the tail with the coin, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:08:22

Sure, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:24

So it's like it the truth. I like that take a lot. I haven't heard that before.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:27

I like that. Yeah, that's cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:28

You know, and so like think that when you're talking to the Reddit troll or whatever that's like trying to give you crap.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:33

I feel like whenever I get on this track, like they're just yeah, go ahead. Uh I was just saying, like, I I feel like whenever I get on this track, like I mean, it it it boy it gets down into a lot of semantics, right? And uh and I think uh mostly I'm not pretending to be an authority on objectivity versus subjectivity. Uh I didn't go to college, I didn't take any philosophy classes, I don't know much about Kant or any I don't know this shit, right? Uh I don't know aesthetics rules, I don't know color theory, I don't know music theory, I barely know how to write books. Um but I think that the just this conversation existing, I think, and then somebody like me um claiming like I don't think that objectivity and art critique really exists, I think it bugs people because then it's like okay, but then how do we know what's good? And it's like I think that that's a fairly valid argument, but it's just it it seems kind of pearl-clutchy to me. You know what I mean? Like like art has always withstood the test of time, like uh well, not all of it, but you know what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:31

It's like no, but yeah, the act of art, yeah, like art is art is not art.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:36

The only time that art is ever in danger, I feel like, is AI. Like that's that's the one. Like that's up until now, it has never really been in danger. When people are like like when when spaghetti westerns were coming out in the 60s, people were like, Oh, it's gonna ruin cinema, you know, and it's just like no, it didn't. And like the same thing happened with novels when novels first came out. Um, like novels are actually a pretty novel thing. Like novels are novels are fairly new. Like people were reading poetry, they're going to plays, and then novels started coming out, and people were like, Oh, this is fucking horrible. Like it's gonna ruin everything. Like, no one's gonna be liter literate anymore. They're just getting you know, it's just like they're getting like this big chunk of a story that's got all these like superfluous words in it.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:18

It's like, and you know, like even like you know, like like Charles Dickens, uh, you know, he was like there was a whole thing back in the day where adults would get mad at their kids, like teenage kids, because they were wasting their lives reading books, they were like reading too much Charles Dickens, and now it's a comic books or whatever, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:36

Exactly. It's just you know comics in my mind are like amazing art projects. Yeah, I love them.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:43

I this is one of the things I don't understand. It's like, guys, if the printing press had the ability to print comics, all the novels would have been graphic novels, right? Like it's just like I get that you want language to be good, but like you know who else gets that the language should be good? These people that are writing phenomenal graphic novels, they just also have pictures with it. Like they're not unaware of the critique of graphic novels, they're doing both, man. It's a different art form, and that's like I mean, to me, my hope with AI is that one, it can't think, it doesn't have a fucking soul. Uh there's not gonna be an AI David Berman. You know, there's not gonna be an AI Silverjuice, it's just not gonna happen. Uh I just don't think it can. That's I just the brain is not a machine, and I think the people that are most worried about AI tend to think of like maybe your brain is just a computer and there's like a matrix type thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:30

I mean, I think that the worry to it. I think the worry with AI is that there's um I've talked to a couple other artists about this, and it's the it's the good enough thing. That's what's bugging people, right? It's like, no, AI might not be silver juice, but it'll get close enough that people won't care, right? And like that's the problem.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:50

I think that can drown out the areas where that already kind of happens. A lot of pop music is already just good enough that nobody cares, you know?

SPEAKER_01 1:11:56

But like, yeah, but it's made by people, right? Like, I mean, at least we have that.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:00

Like is uh that's the thing that I get to is like, all right, is the job of writing a pop song that means nothing to nobody, right? That is just purely written as a cynical cash grab. Is the job of that, is that really worthy of the human of like the dignity of the human experience, right? Being David Berman and the Jews, uh the silver Jews, wow. Uh that's worthy of the of being a human. That's like a worthy endeavor. You know, you're trying to write something honest, you're trying to write something good. If you are just writing cynical, like Coca-Cola commercials, like no one should make Coca-Cola commercials, they should take care of their kids.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:37

You know, like who gets been in a club while I got a feel-in by black eyed peas is playing and you had a few drinks? Like, I'm just saying, like, there's a place for for all kinds of stuff.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:48

I mean, like, I I see I'm I'm talking about the purely cynical music. There is stuff that gets made right now that is purely cynical, and it's just like, alright, cool, make the robots do it.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:58

Like, make the robots do the background music for build for Taco Bell. Yeah. But it's still putting people out of work, though. Like, that's the thing that bugs me is like, you know, um and I'm not trying to be like, oh, these poor millionaire pop stars or anything like that, but it's just like I'd rather humans were doing it than robots. Uh, even if it was cynical, like you say, like even if it was cash grab, like you say, that's bad enough without it being robots.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:26

My whole political philosophy on everything is always just the idea of free time and nothing else, right? Like this you have your macro political philosophy and your micro political philosophy. And it's like on the micro, it's like all these people that are gonna lose their jobs, we've got to do something that helps them out. We can't do the same thing we did with the coal miners in West Virginia, where we told them to code and then shipped all their jobs overseas. Oh my god. On a micro level, that's unsustainable, that's not how a society can operate, right? But on a macro level, the point of an economy, in my mind, is to inevitably get to the point where the toil of labor is down to the absolute minimum, where we can pinpoint exactly what needs to be done that requires humans to do, which might be like, you know, managing nuclear reactors or something like that, and then the job of being the guy behind the counter at uh at Taco Bell. It's like I don't think we need to solely the human experience. Give that make that a robot, do it, and then give people more free time.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:22

I would agree with you in a vacuum, but unfortunately, we don't have the infrastructure to support that kind of free time, which is like I I agree with you in theory that like we should all be laying around uh glowing each other, like you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:38

I'm just talking about the theoretical. I think the the call comes from a person, because again, you go to the authority of my opinion. This is my opinion. What's my authority? I'm a guy who makes TikToks where I talk about Kevin Durant being the Billy Corgan of the NBA. I don't really have the authority to change him.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:55

That is such a uh such a take. Like that's it's such a good one, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:14:59

They're both balding in the same way, too. Oh uh they have the head the head shape. I don't know, it's like a phrenology thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:04

I was curious actually about your um uh you you mentioned fantasy football. I was curious who you're uh do you have an NFL team that you really like?

SPEAKER_00 1:15:12

I I grew up in New England, so I'm a Patriots fan. And I can look at it. I I accept your booze, I accept the uh the criticism that we have.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:19

Um I mean you know if you want to cheat, that's cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:22

Nobody let any air out of those footballs. You guys want to do a true crime thing? You guys want to be a true crime? I'll tell you right now, nobody let any air out of those footballs. Everybody goes. Tom Brady, he destroyed his cell phone and the truth shut me down once again. Uh, but one day I will do my full I will do probably a full podcast breaking down Deflake because I'm an insane person. But who's your football team?

SPEAKER_01 1:15:40

Uh I mean, I'm in the Pacific Northwest, so I'm a Seahawks guy myself. Like uh which has been cool lately.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:47

Um but they were the best team in football. I do it's hard I mean for that.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:52

There's been some games that I've watched to where I've been like, damn, like that was rough. Like that was you guys could put could you guys could have played a million times better than that, but I feel like a lot of people that watch football feel that way about that.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:05

I mean, that's the nature of football, you know. Right, yeah. And I'm also like a Blazers fan, too. Like it's such a small sample size. Every game is only so many plays, every there's only so many games, and it's it's what makes it fun.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:18

I like watching sports a lot, man. I think it's really fun. Like, I I don't I I I feel like I I like I like sports at the the same amount that I like Star Wars.

unknown 1:16:26

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:27

I love that comparison. That's right.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:29

Yeah, where it's like I really like it, and if it's but I don't let myself get to a point of rage when something's not going correctly, or like when you know what I mean? Like I I when I when the Seahawks win uh the Super Bowl, it's like fuck yeah, that's awesome. It's the best. Like, that's great. Uh when the Blazers make it into the first round and get shut out every time we're gonna be good next year.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:54

We're gonna be good next year. Dude, David Murray's coming back, he's gonna be able to do that.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:56

It is so wild how we just inch our way, it's so Portland of us. I know right to just like like it's just so I almost don't want us to change, right? Because it's just like it's so representative of our city that we would like edge our way into the finals and or the playoffs and and then just just lose. Like just yeah, every single time.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:19

We just every time. Well, I mean, we were going uh I say we because uh even though I'm from Boston, like I am a bigger Blazers fan after 10 years of living out here than I am a Celtics fan in part.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:29

Wow, don't tell anybody else.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:30

There's just something about the there's something about the way that the Celtics conduct themselves where it's just they think they're so fucking smart, and it's like, guys, you know how smart you are? The New Jersey Nets, the New York Nets, the Brooklyn Nets gave you a bunch of lottery picks, and then you decided to build a contender around getting a couple of picks for absolute free. It's the most one-sided trade anyone can remember. I'm sorry, give any other team three extra lottery picks, like top uh top three picks, and see how good they are. All right, it's not that hard. It's the NBA, chill the fuck out. Uh but then the other part of it is just like I I I'm in Portland and I have all these friends that are Portland Blazers fans, and it's just like I want them to be happy. I want to high-five the people that are around me.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:15

I mean, it you gotta manage your expectations, I feel like, with sports a little bit, like especially with uh with a basketball team that hasn't won a championship uh since the 80s.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:27

76, I want to say.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:29

Oh my god. Yeah, yeah. It was uh it was it was happy to see I'm the I'm happy to turn on the fine the the the playoffs and see the Blazers in the playoffs. Like it's like that's just me personally. Uh have you ever read any uh Chuck Klosterman?

SPEAKER_00 1:18:42

Oh, obviously, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:44

Okay, yeah, totally. Yeah, like I feel like uh he is like if you hadn't read him, I'd be actually kind of uh really shocked because he's like this perfect marriage of like nerd pop culture critique and and sports assessment. And sports stuff yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:57

Yeah, I uh I always say there was uh a he was on the Bill Simmons podcast when Michael Jackson died. And it's like there are very few podcast episodes that I remember the actual episode itself. And in that episode, he said that he brought up the question to Bill Simmons of Did Michael Jackson live the most unique American life ever? And at the time I was, you know, young enough that that question absolutely hit, but it's like that idea of like, oh yeah, Michael Jackson's life might genuinely be the single most American life ever lived from start to finish. You know? That this is something that every part of his life could not exist in any other time or culture ever. And I like that's interesting.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:41

I really like Kosterman's other thing. I think it's in one of his books where he talks about the most accurately rated bands, which I thought was so funny and like so Oh, his books right up there.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:52

It's no good.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:53

But like, yeah, I think uh his number one, if I'm remembering correctly, I think it was Van Halen, was like the most literally the most accurately rated. Not the best, not the whatever, but it's just everyone's opinion of Van Halen is the most legit.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:06

And like I feel like that's one of those ones where it's like I think everybody knows enough about Van Halen to even if you just passively enter interacted with them, you kind of know enough about them to have the appropriate opinion of like what were their goals, how well did they execute those goals?

SPEAKER_01 1:20:21

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:22

They kind of want to party, they want to write songs that you listen to at a party in the 80s, and it worked. There were a lot of parties in the 80s where you people played Van Halen, so it's like what skilled at what they're doing, they're a good band, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:20:34

Like they're they're it's it's inter it's interesting.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:37

Their ambitions, their talents, and their execution all align perfectly, and that's very rare, right? That's very rare. It's very rare. Anyway, speaking of rare and segues out of things, uh, I should probably get going. This is a long uh nice long conversation. I really enjoyed this, man. I really enjoyed talking to you. I think uh if you're in Portland, which it sounds like you are, let's go uh hang out with Tim sometime and go bother him.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:00

I would love that, man. I I need to get out of my house sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:04

I'm sure he does too, you know, when he's uh when he can ditch his baby with uh his body. Yeah, come on, we'll watch it.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:10

I've got a baby. Oh, look at my baby, he's growing up. I've got a perfect life and I'm really happy. I made all a bunch of really good decisions in a row.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:21

Like oh anyway, man, that was great. Uh yeah, thank you very much. Uh thanks for having me on for uh for a nice ramble.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:30

Appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:31

Just uh before you go, plug everything. Plug uh books, appearances, channels, everything you got.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:36

Totally. Uh yeah. So I wrote a book called Angie Kills the King. It's out, it's in bookstores. It's at it's at Barnes and Noble, it's wherever you buy books. Uh then the sequel for that comes out in January. I have a horror novella coming out later this year, so keep an eye out on that. Um and then also uh if you want to watch me talk about stuff uh in the same way that Kyle does, uh, you can follow me at Book Reviews Kill or just type in Evan Lycom into Instagram or TikTok. I'm on threads, but mostly uh just kind of politics posting on there every now and then. Like it's not it's kind of a cesspool. Uh so don't follow me on threads. There's nothing good on there, actually. Uh but follow me on everything else and um yeah, just uh remember my name because I'll be in the fantasy community from now until I stop breathing.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:22

Whether or not you like it. That's the best part, you know.