Native plants, Bowen Yang, jockstraps

Native plants, Bowen Yang, fawnslop, gay people should be meaner, the Rush Limbaugh of f***, and jockstraps 

I am uploading this days after I recorded it, sorry to keep Jack Heads waiting <3

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

I don't like this. I don't like this. I don't like this podcast. This is a spoken word interpretation of the theme song that you know and love to this podcast. Hi everybody. Hi, everybody. Hi, kids. Hi, beautiful people. Beautiful people with good taste. And um discerning ears. How are you doing? Is everybody good? Are you grand? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know that you are, and it's okay if you're not. I sort of expect you not to be. I sort of don't expect anyone to be doing too grand in the world today, so if you're just getting by, that's a-okay with me. Don't feel any pressure to be anything other than who and what you are today. How are you how are you showing up today? How are you showing up today? How am I showing up today? It's hot. It's hot, but we don't complain. Well, I try not to. Maybe you complain, I don't complain. Would never do anything like that, surely not. I think we're gonna make a smoothie. I think I'm gonna make a smoothie, but my cup is really dirty, and I don't know why. I'll use that one. How is everyone doing? It's summer. It's summer, gang. It's summer. It's summer in the northern hemisphere. Check your privilege. Check your privilege before you come for me. Um and it's hot. I'm back in New York City. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Only for like a week, so if you wanna say hi, you have about a week to do it, and then I'm away again. Away again upstate. Which is a joy and a privilege. Let's get away. Take it away. I always uh always feel not great coming back to New York City. I don't know why. It's not intellectually that I have bad thoughts. It's just like come when I'm like ubly. I don't feel good. I don't feel good, I get anxious. I don't get ang I get anxious, irritable, kind of tired. Maybe it's just because I lose my connection to nature in my apartment. You really don't see any trees. You don't even see sky from my apartment. It's like being in a spaceship. Which is kind of cool. It is kind of cool. But you know, nature heals. So they say. And maybe losing that healing bit disconnects me. So I don't know. I don't know. New York, New York City in the summer. Such a thing of mixed blessings. You know, everyone's out and about, but it's also really hot and disgusting. And everybody's kind of disgusting, and I don't know. I don't know. I'm not a summer person. Cards on the table, full disclosure, I'll get that out there. I know a lot of people are, you know, a lot of people love summer, and a lot of people are obsessed with summer. Summer, summer, summer, summer, summer, summer. Woohoo! Summer's kind of hot though. I mean, summer's really hot in New York. I sweat a lot. So it's just not my thing. I'm not a huge beach person. I don't care. Come at me, bro. I'm not. Again, it's hot, sweaty, dirty. New York City beaches. New York City beaches. Play the I don't like this sound effect. The New York City beaches are not great. The New York City beaches smell like doo-doo caca. And it's time that everybody just accepted that and was open and upfront about that. That the New York City beaches smell like live sewage. There's just always a hint of live sewage. Even if you go to New Jersey, it's better. But the it just it smells bad. They just smell bad. And that's unsettling. I don't really like to be at a beach that smells like a camp toilet that backed up for 12 hours. You know? It's not good. It's not good. It doesn't make me want to get in the water, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_01 4:41

So I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 4:44

Can we all just can we all align on these objectives? The New York City beaches don't smell good. Um and New York is really hot in the summer, it gets kind of miserable. You gotta leave. I think that's the secret, is you just gotta go. You gotta get out of here, man. Even though there's supposedly all this like stuff going on, I think it's like the number one time to leave New York City. If you can. If you can. And I guess I can, so I do. Hold space for you if you don't, and let's hang out. Let's socialize. Let's socialize because I miss my plants. I miss my plant kin. Kinstellatory community. Um no, I I mean I do. I do actually. I'm really into native plants, guys. Can we talk about this? Can we talk about this? I like this. Where's the I like this sound effect? I like this. I like this. More accent work. I like native plants. I like native planting. I've learned the phrase yardening. I've learned a lot of different stuff lately. I think I'm getting into a hobby here. Not sure how I feel about that. Uh it doesn't feel relaxing and it feels kind of like pressure or sort of. I get this weird anxiety of like, okay, so I have this like family cabin upstate trying to do native plants. But it's always sort of like, okay, who is this for? What is this for long term? Is this just for me? And the next person who comes to this place is just gonna like tear this all down. It'll all be for naught. You know? And I guess, you know, it's a hobby, you're supposed to enjoy it in the moment, but I'm such a my blueberries, my smoothies. I'm such a long-term planner and sort of type A.

SPEAKER_01 6:44

Really type A.

SPEAKER_02 6:46

Really type A and like thinking about the future, and it's like, well, what is this all for, man? Man, you know? Almost 40. What's this all for? I'm trying to get involved in more like community stuff with native planting, but then it's like, okay, then I've got to like go places. You know, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. It's a lot and and not a lot at all at the same time. I realize that. But but I am into native plants. Somebody talked to me about native plants. Okay, kind of that's gonna be practices. I don't know. For some reason I don't like to talk about it. I don't think it's fun. I don't think it's fun, and I don't think it belongs to this forum necessarily. Tell me if I'm wrong. If you're interested, give your boy a shout. But maybe it's because I'm like too earnestly into it. You know, but I'm earnestly into things and I get excited about talking to them here. It's not an intellectual joy, maybe. It's a spiritual joy. Do you feel spiritually connected to the plant world? We're all part of the plant world. I mean, we're not plants. Maybe maybe you are. I am not. I don't think. Don't identify as such at the current moment. But, um, you know, we're all part of we're all part of the world. The natural world, the human world, it's all one thing. We're all interrelated. You know? Construct of Western society to try to separate us, man. Decolonize yourself, man. I don't know. I don't know. Stay the stay with me on this journey of native planting. We're gonna see where it goes, where it takes us. To community. To joy. Um. To land back? I don't know. It's kind of intersect with landback in a way. There's just so much. There's so much pressure on this little hobby. And I'm writing a book, man. Let off me. Get off my jump. Let me just write my book. Just bumped into something. Um, it's going wemble. It's going wemble. Over halfway done to my draft. Target length date. Hold for blender. It's an immersion blender. Thanks for holding. Oh, should I put any nuts in here? Do I have any walnuts? I don't think I do. I don't think I do. No, the book is going well, but it is kind of a lot of pressure, and I my emotional well-being is really tied to my writing well-being. So however well a writing project is going with however good I feel in the moment, for better or worse. And I'm trying to figure out. I'm trying to figure out the protagonist's voice. The narrator's voice. It's in first person present. We talked about that for the moment, most of it. Some of it's not. Um and trying to get his voice down. At first I thought it was gonna be really snarky. Oh, this is bad. Bad smoothie. Um at first I thought it was gonna be really snarky, but then that's kind of one-dimensional. Doesn't really go anywhere. Sort of flat. It's sort of flat. So now I'm thinking he's just gonna be kind of weird. Because he's in this future worlds drone pilot program. And he's supposed to be like not buying into all the propaganda, even though it's supposed to be like he starts out not buying into the propaganda, and then over time he does buy into it, and then you realize by the end, or maybe you don't realize, that the whole thing is is a work of propaganda. It's supposed to be propaganda for the drone pilot program. In the guise of not being propaganda, and that's how it gets you over. So you're you know, you're supposed to be someone who's like supposed the narrator is supposedly like above all the rah-rah, PR, and then he gets sucked into it, basically. So that's the vibe. That's the vibe. So I think instead of him being like snarky, he's just gonna be weird. He's gonna be kind of a weird, intense guy. And then I'm thinking of like um Moby Dick. Because Moby Dick, protagonist, is just kind of weird. He's not like snarky. Oh, because the thing with like a snarky person or whatever, it's like over the course of a novel, I think you'd get bored if someone's just always snarky. There's no like depth, you know, the snark is a shield from emotional interiority. So I think you need something a little more. Not necessarily like a whole lot of interiority, but just like complexity. Snarky's one note. Weird can be really multifaceted. Weird and intense, you never necessarily know which way he's gonna go. Zigzag, right? So that's what I'm kind of thinking with Moby Dick, you know, somebody who's willing to go on a weird adventure for intense really intense situations. But you believe that this person just goes along with it, because even they're not, you know, drawn to be weird. There's attention isn't being drawn to the fact that they're weird, they just are weird. You sort of step back and you're like, oh, this is kind of a weird person, but they naturalize all these weird situations that they're in, so that's how they suck you in, man. So I'm trying to suck you in. We'll see. That's been the crisis in the mind about the book. As of late. I know you're interested. You didn't ask. You didn't ask, you don't have to ask with me. Not when you hear an I don't like this podcast. You don't have to ask for anything. You can't ask for anything, actually. Hmm. So I guess Moby Dick. That's something I like. Do you like it? Do you like it? I'm not obsessed. I know a lot of people are like obsessed, obsessed with Moby Dick. I think it's fine. I think it's I no, I think it's probably good. I don't know, I haven't really I thought about it. I don't really. We can't do it. I've I've really hardcore fallen off on Infinite Just. In fact, I left it upstate. I sort of forgot about it. So I ooh. I don't and I don't have the interest in rereading Moby Dick. I guess maybe I do actually for this narration thing. So maybe I will. Maybe I will. Maybe I will. You know what gets my goat? You know what gets my goat? Pivoting back to the native plant thing. Maybe this is the first I don't like this. I don't like this of this episode. Or I guess I already had something else. No, I had a do like this.

SPEAKER_00 14:35

I like this.

SPEAKER_02 14:36

I don't like this. The New York City Parks Department. Yeah, they're my new enemy. They're my new enemy. Let's take them down. No. They're fine. They just plant all these non-native plant species. And it really is outrageous. It's outrageous that we're out here planting tulips and daffodils every year. And you know what my friend told me? I don't know if this is true, I haven't fact-checked it. But what she told me is they plant the tulips and daffodils every year, even though those bulbs are perennials, because squirrels and things will dig up the bulbs and eat them. So when you see those big banks of tulips and daffodils out there, they're being planted every year, which is so labor-intensive and time-intensive and money intensive, when all we really need to do is just plant native plants that are going to grow every year. They don't have to be bulbs, they'll just reseed themselves every year, and you get beautiful flowers. You can get beautiful spring flowers from things like the native columbine, which should be growing everywhere. And you know, New York City, before the Europeans arrived, was this beautiful forested, mixed ecology wonderland with all these different species meeting here. You know, you have the river and the estuary, and you have wetlands, and you have woodlands and highlands and lowlands and everything in between. And now it's all flattened out and paved and covered with these stupid invasive species. Not all invasive, I guess, but non-natives. Non-natives that are for some reason more aesthetically valued. You know, a lot of them are more aesthetically valued because they're cultivated, right? So a lot of those European Asian plants have been cultivated to be very different from their, you know, natural form, the form that they exist outside of human contact or whatever, because you know this idea, or the the the tricky thing is that the quote-unquote wild nature isn't really wild. What does wild mean? Because humans have been interacting with nature for thousands of years, and like before the Europeans came to the Americas, the Americas weren't wild. A lot of these landscapes were, you know, intensively maintained and cultivated and interacted with in ways by the people living here. So they weren't wild, but people living here weren't also like creating these weird cultivars of tulips with a thousand petals or whatever. You know, they weren't they weren't tweaking nature necessarily in the same way. So that's sort of that's sort of why it's tricky to get the nomenclature right. But that's why I think all these tulips and daffodils and blah blah blah are so popular, is because they've been cultivated to have these giant blooms and crazy colors and blah blah blah. But you know, native plants are beautiful too. And just because they're not over the top and always super cultivated like that to have these weird things doesn't mean they shouldn't be grown and fostered everywhere. And it'd be cheaper, and they'd be drought resistant, and you wouldn't have to plant them every year, and they would attract native pollinators and support local ecology. Whole city should be native plants. Boom. Take that, mom Donnie. Take that, mom Donnie. Make it happen. You listening, Kathy Hokel? What if she were? What if she were? My goodness. Hello. Hello, govna. I don't think she's listening, unfortunately. She should. She should be edifying to the soul. As it is for everybody. Um Bowen Yang. We gotta talk about him. We gotta talk about him. We gotta talk about him. Do we? No. No, obviously we don't. I'm being glib. I'm in a glib slot mode. No. Bowen Yang was on Twitter recently because he's in, you know, the actors on actors discussion talking about how at SNL at some point he realized he was never, he was always, I guess like being pigeonholed as like an object or an other, kind of, though he didn't say that. He never got to play the straight man. Not like heterosexual man, but like the the straight man in comedy terms. And so he was kind of pigeonholed. The thing is, we gotta talk about it. We gotta unpack. We gotta unpack the phenomenon that I've described before with friends about gay people who perform gayness for straight eyes. To appeal to straight eyes. And I do feel like there's a generation that of comedians that Boen Yang is in, comedians and performers, who rose to fame being a kind of gay that appealed to straight people. And if you watch any time I've seen Bo and Yang on SNL, a lot of the times he's in. It's a gay stereotype. It's a gay stereotype, it's a gay caricature. It's not even very it's I hesitate to say caricature, because it's not even, I don't think, that accurate of gay people. It's just sort of like the straight conception of what gay is like the sort of mincing and sassy and like completely non-sexual, um, non-threatening, mincing gay sidekick. Gay clown. And so I do sort of feel like he made his bed. You know, if you're if you're gonna be doing, you know, it's it's it's a bit like it's a bit like a minstrel show, is what he's doing. You know, that's maybe a bit far, and obviously it's a very different historical context. But there are aspects of that that he's doing gay minstrelcy. Or he was, and I think he still is. I mean, look at him in Wicked, like he's he's doing gay minstrelcy around, and then to see him be like, oh yeah, I got put in a box, and straight people never really saw me as anything more complex, and it's like, well, my dude, my dude, you built your whole career by pandering to this desire to see gay people in this box. So, what did you think was gonna happen? You know, you haven't really cultivated gay audiences. You've cultivated straight audiences by putting yourself forward in very limited ways. So what do you expect? What do you expect? And what do you deserve? What do you deserve? Not that much, I don't think. Of course they're gonna ditch you. Of course they're gonna ditch you. Of course they're g not gonna respect you. Of course they're not gonna see you as anything more complex. Because you don't present yourself that way. You don't bring that to the table. I'm really talking right at him. Love and light. Love and light, but I do feel like. He's probably a net negative for gay people because he does perpetuate that stereotyped image of what gay people are. So it's a tough love. It's a tough love and light. You gotta shape up. They gotta stop doing that, man. And I guess he's not an SNL anymore. But like, as you perform in future roles, because he doesn't seem to act like that on his podcast, though, though, caveat being, I mean, I do not listen to that podcast, no judgments, no offense, love and light. Um, though again, it does seem to be pandering to gay to straight audiences and straight people. You know, how many straight female actresses do they have on there and they're just like, oh my gosh, you're amazing. You know, it's just fawning. It it's fawn slop. Fawn slop, maybe. Everything is slop. So I don't know. You know, I also think. Let me think about this. I've been thinking that gay people have been too nice. Gay people have been too nice for a while. I think maybe in like the post-marriage equality, the Barack Obama era, you know, we got ahead by being very nice. We got quote unquote ahead, whatever, more visibility. And the, you know, the gay caricatures, the nice fuzzy gay caricatures have risen to prominence and gotten star power appealing to straight people. But I think gay people should be a little meaner. And not like bitchy, dumb, twink mean, but like insightful and cutting and criticism to make things better. And I think gay culture has gotten a little bit too nice. And I think we should demand better of gay culture and more explicitly. So the whole thing where I think everybody's afraid to be everyone's afraid to be direct. Because I think maybe if there's a shade of like call-out culture trauma, and nobody wants to be doing like call-out culture stuff, because that was not productive, usually. And now nobody wants to talk about anybody else or anything or any negativity, especially like I feel like in entertainment or media, maybe because all those options are contracting, so there's no like institutional support for that kind of direct criticism. And then, you know, what are you left with? You're left with social media where you just need as many allies as possible to build your network and your audience, and you know, whatever. And we're not doing that here, man. We're independent, we're free-range voices. This is the talk radio. Uh-oh. This is the rush limbaugh of fags. That's me, man. You know, we're gonna tell it like it is. We're gonna speak truth to power, man, to make things better. I think there's room for that. I think there's demand for that, and it's not hateful. I guess I'm not the rush limbaugh of you know I say that in jest. But it's not hateful. It's not like I hate these people, but I do think we've let some stuff slide for way too long, and it's time for it to stop. And it's not just cutting people down to cut people down, I think it's constructive criticism so that as we go forward, we can do better and be better. That's I don't even like that. That sounds a little too millennial. Optimist. It's just do different. I think we gotta do things a little different. We've gotta learn as we go, right? And if we're not criticizing and engaging that way, I think we end up with just too much slop. That being said, I do want to see you stop that train. I do think it looks funny. I do laugh when I watch the trailer and I see the clips. So there's that. There's that, but maybe it could be even better. And I think it probably could be even better. We gotta take these little kernels of talent around around gay people and shape them into diamonds. You know? Where are our gay diamonds? We have a lot of gay fluffernutters, you know, and we need the diamonds. Where are our diamonds? We should have so many diamonds. We as a people love jewels. Our jewels should sparkle, shine bright like a diamond. That was Rihanna talking to all you gays out there.

SPEAKER_00 27:36

Shining bright like a diamond.

SPEAKER_02 28:07

That was the abridged version. I could go on. Oh no, we're gonna get demonetized. I don't think the algorithm is gonna recognize that as a song. I think that's I think that's a parody. I think that's clearly parody, okay? That's clearly parody, which is in fair rights usage. So don't get at me. Don't get at me, legal lawyers. No, we gotta shine bright, we gotta uh we gotta advance, we gotta move on. We gotta move on. Um I also want to see I love boosters. While I'm in New York City for this next week, I wanna see a lot of movies, partially because it's really hot and I like a cold movie theater. Partially because I can't watch these movies upstate because they're not screening there. Partially because I just want to see some movies. I just want to see some movies, man. Don't make it a big deal, man. Um jockstraps. Jokstraps, we gotta talk about it. We gotta talk about it. Oh, also, yeah, I was gonna say, I I don't think we put the sound effect, I don't like this boon yang. Because it's not him as a person, it's it's the it's the gay minstrelcy. So I don't like this gay minstrelcy. Um, okay, sorry. Jockstraps. Jockstraps, there's a version of gay minstrelcy, gay performance that we address, I think, as a community. I okay, I'm not gonna lie. I had a little comedy bit in my head. I don't know why. Sometimes you ever think about like jokes, you know, and you're like, oh, I'm gonna tell a joke, and what would it be? What would be in my like stand-up? Never want to do stand-up, please. Don't get any ideas. Um there's a reason I write. There's a reason I write to uh middling effect. Um, and I'm not on stage, but it was about jog straps. It was about like I love jock straps, you know? I love the idea that gay guys wear them for sex. You know, they're like they're whimsical. Jock straps add a note of whimsy. You know, gay guys where it's like, let's play dress up. Let's play dress up and have sex. Let's put these on and let's fuck. You know, it was something like that. It was something like that. Again, I'm not a stand-up comedian. Even just doing that was chilling. Um, maybe that's good. It's so hot out. But there is something. There is something weird about jackstraps. I don't I don't know if I would say I don't like them. I'm fine with them. I have a couple. Because I know people are into them. But it is weird. I think they are weird. What's going on there? Gay guys in underwear in general is really kind of a mind-blowing technological experiment, you know, all these straps and pouches and things. Oh, and then there's this gay guy, this model, RJ King, who's developing this new underwear for your balls, so there's a lot of ball support. And have I missed something that people want a lot of balls? Are your ball just like swanging around all the time? Is that should my balls be swanging around all the time? Do I need a lot of ball support? That is maybe you have really like giant balls like pendulous because the s the skins get stretched out? I don't know what's happening there. It's never once crossed my mind that I need more ball support. Um, I mean, even when I'm running, it's not really the balls, it's like the penis is more what you gotta. That's sort of what flops around. The balls sort of retract into the body when you're doing a lot of stuff. I mean, even the penises, too, but so I don't get it. I don't get it. And I don't totally get the jock strap thing. I guess it's the jock fetish straight fetish masculinity thing. But it's funny because it's like, let's just dress up, let's dress up as boys. Let's dress up as jocks. Let's dress up as jocks and have sex. And it's like, okay, well, why do we have to play dress-up? We're playing dress up, which is not necessarily, you know, the most masculine minding. It's not putting me in a masculine mode. Like, let's let's put on costumes. Though, of course, you know, masculinity is a construct, and you know, the performance of it doesn't involve clothes like jock straps, etc. But it is kind of a weird thing. Um. I don't mind it. I don't mind it. It's not an I don't like this. It's not an I don't like this. I just brought it up because I think we need to talk about it. I think we gotta talk about it more. To what end, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe uh to improve the underwear innovation, the technology and underwear, you know, we have to be upfront about our criticism. We have to be discussing these things. It can't all be drag race. What else do you give people talking about? It can't all be Charlie XEX and Madonna, it can't all be Equinox, it can't all be Raves, it can't all be ketamine, it can't all be basement, it can't all be Instagram, it can't all be sniffies. You know? It can't all be these things. It's gotta also be critical discourse on jock straps. And I'm advancing that. I'm advancing that, though I admit I really don't have like a congealed take. I don't have a I don't have a hot take, a jock strap hot take. You know? Maybe they're not that important, but it is it is kind of weird. I don't know what I don't know what made me think of it, but something was going on where it's like, what is what is this? What is this? What are we doing? What are we doing, everybody? You know, I'm not gonna lie with you. I think that my smoothie is is gonna make me have to use the bathroom. And I'm not gonna take you on that journey. I really do want to take you on a journey down the street. Oh! And an interview with my friend! I need to do an interview. Let's do an interview. I'm gonna try to do an interview. And try to take you on the street before I go. Maybe next week if it cools off. We have things to do. We've got a lot to do. We got a lot to do, gang. There's too much to do. I gotta do like native plant community. There's also this. There's so much. There's so much going on. There's so much going on. Book, book to write, jock straps to unpack. Will you help me? Will you help me? Will you help me do these things? I hope so. I hope so. I hope so. I adore you, and I hope you stay cool. And cold. You're cool. You're cool. You're cool. You're cool. Hopefully this week goes well for everybody. It's kind of a weird vibe in the world. Kind of a weird summer. Weird summer vibe, I feel like. What's what's going on? No one really knows. Sorry. Sorry. I don't think it is. I think something's happening. I think something's a foot. Don't you get the sense of something's a foot? I mean there's a lot happening in the world, but I don't know. Oh dear.

SPEAKER_01 36:20

Big piece of tape just came up on my foot. Maybe that's what was a foot. Maybe that's what I was sensing. Oh, I think it was like caked on dirt. Oh, there's so much dirt caked on as a piece of tape on here. Or I think the tape is just decomposing. Whoa. Gross man, gnarly. That's pretty grody.

SPEAKER_02 36:44

Alright. I don't like that. I don't like that, but I like you. I like you. Let's hang. Give me a call. Talk to you soon? Hope so. I don't like this. I don't like this. Okay.