A Geek History of Time - Episode 238 - Interview With Keith Lowell Jensen Author of Punching Nazis

Episode Date: November 18, 2023

I'm saying that we were going to be getting to the movies. Yeah, and I'm only going to get into a few of them. Because there were way too many to get to get to the movies. For me to really be interested in telling you this clone version or this clone version in the early studio system. It's a good metric to know in a story art. Where should I be? Or there's beast.

I should step over here. Uh, yeah. At some point, at some point, I'm going to have to sit down with you like and force you, like pump you full of coffee and be like, no, okay, look. And are swiftly and brutally put down by the minute men who use bayonets to get their point across. Well done there. I'm good, Aimean.

And I'm also glad that I got your name right this time. I apologize for that one TikTok video. Men of this generation wound up serving a whole lot of them as a percentage of the population because of the war, because of a whole lot of other stuff. Oh yeah. And actually in his case, it was pre-war, but you know, I was joking. Did he seriously join the American Navy? He did. Fuck it. 1.0-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1-1.5-1.5-1.5-1-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5-1.5- This is a geek history of the island.

So where we connect to another YouTube community, my name is Ed Layla, I'm a world history and I look to teach our hearing in Northern California. And my last name is Distinctive. Most everybody knows one of us, Blalock, maybe two. And interestingly, there is another Mr. Blalock in my district. He is a physical education teacher at a different site, also a middle school. It's worth noting. And this week, it happens occasionally that I will get emails that are intended for him.

And usually I forward them on, just I think this is supposed to be you. I don't recognize this kid's name. Well, and I opened my email like Wednesday of this week, and I had gotten a two-word email from a student. You smell. That was it. And I didn't recognize the student's name. I eventually found out it was the seventh grader in this other Mr. Playlocks class.

And I did something. I have not had the opportunity to do until this point. I wrote a response to the student. I cc'd that teacher. And I cc'd my vice principal because I told her about this. And she said, Oh, no, you need to cc him and include me because she's an old friend of his. And this will give her the opportunity to tell him apparently you smell. So I wrote back giving a kid a critique on their writing. This you need to use a, I am an English teacher.

So please, you know, I hope you'll accept some constructive criticism. You need to capitalize the first letter and add a period. Quote capital Y U smell period. Close quotes. Just keep that in mind going forward. You know, and I hope in future when you choose to, you know, insult a teacher on school time that you'll at least try to be a little more creative about it. Sincerely, Mr. Blaylock. Mr. Blaylock. Cool. And yeah, so that was I would be fibbing if I said that that was not one of the high points of my week because if you can't mess with the kids, why are you even doing this job? So that was me. How about you, sir? Well, I'm Damien Harmony. I am a high school US

history teacher up here in Northern California. First off I commend you on pulling a really cool name out of your ass to put in for a fake name for your middle school. Well done I teach of course at Millenville more high school and Thank you but the the Highlight of my week not highlight, but a fun little story is that I sat down with my children to watch Titanic tonight

because they've never seen it and Yeah, so we're watching it and I went and grabbed a piece of string cheese out of the fridge sit down take a bite out of it And my daughter just looks at me. Like what did I said on something and she's That's not how you're supposed to eat string cheese. I said oh really huh? And she's like it's called string cheese. It tastes better in strings. I said no kidding took another bite And she just looks at me and she's like I'm offended by the way you are eating cheese. I Asked my partner about this and he said, you're a daughter. I think there's a

great dividing line between people who eat string cheese, the orthodox way and people who do it like me, the reform way. No, heretic, heretical. Of course, you orthodox, just to call it heresy. Yeah. Actually, I'm just completely making a joke. I don't touch this stuff. But like, I mean, I have to. You're cheesy nonsense. Yeah. So it was kind of fun. The movie was success. My kids, okay, so there are a few things that I remember from watching it in the theaters. First of all, my kids are smarter than half the theater

goers and conquered. When I saw it in 1998, because my kids both recognized that, oh, this ship already sank, huh? Yeah. OK, so like half the people were shocked at it sank, which is roughly one third of how many people were shocked on Titanic that it sank. So fairs fair. But also when the guy goes tumbling and hits the propeller with his legs,

yeah, they both did the oh, so that is a universally wow. Yeah, apparently. So if you don't, I think you're a sociopath. Right. Oh, much like someone who bites the head off of his string cheese. Apparently, I know that's not sociopath. That psychopath. There's a difference. It's important to know.

Right. Good point. But anyway, so anyway, we have a guest tonight, actually. Uh, yeah, we do. We do. Uh, we have a guest, his name, well, he's an author. He's a comedian. Uh, we have a guest tonight actually. Yeah, we do. We do. We have a guest, his name, well, he's an author, he's a comedian, he's a all around swell guy, as well as he is his kid's dad.

Can everybody please give a warm welcome to Mr. Keith Lowell Jensen? Hmm. Oh, awesome. Oh, much for having me. That is, I'm a vegan and I know that that's not right. Just take a bite of string cheese. That's, I'm horrible. There you go.

Also, I think that the other Mr. playlock does in fact smell and the real reason that your vice principal wanted to make sure Was that she was thankful that this kid was finally telling him something that none of them could tell him Yeah, and the stupid kid sent into the wrong mr. Blaylock. Yeah, you need to get that message to him. He needs I blame the schools Yeah, yeah, and he's what over at Ubu Roy middle school. Yeah, Ubu Roy. Yeah, that's good. That's good. You know, an Emperor's new clothes type situation. It's that wearing the Emperor's new

Apparently and only a child to speak up and Say, uh, you know what he sticks. You know, here's the deal. I don't take opinions about personal odors seriously from anybody who wears the amount of ax body spray that roughly 75% of seventh graders do nowadays. I'm just saying. Yeah, I had thought about that. I didn't want to work with it more too much, and it drove me crazy. I can't imagine me getting a teacher on this group day. All factory fatigues are real thing.

I mean, honestly, it prepared me for open mics. Yeah. Teachers are bad people, though. And I just, as a class, we up on the show talk. We are. We do have the msuck. I mean, we spent a lot of time being like, teachers are heroes,, we up on the show talk. We are. We do a lot of stuff. And we didn't know that we spent a lot of time being like, to teachers are heroes.

And we need to respect our teachers. And it's like, yeah, one or two good ones like per school. And the rest of you are just horrible tyrants. Oh, yeah, operating on a complete sinic here too. Like there's, there's no, there's no real work involved in this job. No, absolutely not. Just totally phone it in. Yeah, it's I get all the time. Money for nothing and they actually

pay me. How are they? Small hands. So I get chicks for free. It's nice. Oh good, good. I wondered where that one was going to wind up. Like how you were going to land that one. Yeah, and okay. Lumsily. Yeah, well, but effectively, it's, you know where the landing was, and that's really that matter. That's, that's, yeah. Okay. All right, so, uh, Mr.

do we say Mr. Lowell Jensen, Mr. Keith, do we just call you Keith? How do, how are we gonna fuck this big? You may, you may, I won't. You may call me Keith. Oh, thank you. Thank you, sir. All right.

So Keith, I would, but when I fill out if they don't have a middle name, I would keep Lowell as my first name. I don't put Lowell Jensen. It's my last name. Oh, okay. Lowell is in fact my middle name. All right. And as long as we're talking about names, it came into use because I worked at Petco.

There was already a Keith there, and I knew from a past association with him that he was a thief. Keith, that makes sense. Oh, you know Keith, the guy that steals from Petco, and then to think it was me. So I was Lowell, the guy who did not steal from Peco and then to think it was me. So I was low. The guy who did not steal from Peco. It was smokeable. And then you got low, a little smokeable. Yeah. That was right again. So you're digging a hole. Lowell who dug the hole. Yeah. That's where I was going with that. It was nice. So for a long time,

like half the people in my life who knew me knew me me as low and the other half knew me as Keith. So when I started performing, I just put them together. That's kind of a nice little coach switch that you got there, though. Like I, oh, it's so handy. If people called on the unastated roles there, my wife knew the same now. It was work. That's perfect. That's great. No one's not here. Keith? Keith's right here. Yeah. It's crazy. Dave not here. Lentill.

Yeah. I had long hair a long time ago. And there is a segment of the population that only knew me when I had long hair. And I now have short hair. And there's a segment of the population who has only known me then. And so never know what long hair exactly. So so a key in a blow your mind, but I used to be a kid. I for here, like 18 years for a long time. And nobody knows me as a kid now.

It's very strange. I did. I did. By the way, I did. I hit my daughter with some truth or stuff where I asked her. I was like, you do know that the Titanic sinking was all fake.

And she's like, what? I said, if it got hit by an iceberg, where's the iceberg now? And the indignation, I didn't know that was long. Yeah. I have not heard that one. Yeah. The indignation of an 11 year old is something.

He's like it was more than a hundred years ago. What is wrong with you? So I Long as we're on the subject, man, take a moment to say that that is just a masterpiece of film. It really is. It's all the American film Institute's top 100 for a reason. It is a great movie. I feel like people wanting to feel intellectual love to crap on it because

but it's fantastic. I absolutely agree. I actually so fun fun little fact. From the moment that the iceberg hits the Titanic until the moment it goes blah blah blah is within six minutes of the real time that actually took so they basically sunk it in real time in the movie. Nice. I think that's pretty cool. What? It really it really is. It's also a testament to just how absolutely psychotic James Cameron is. Oh, yeah. If you talked to anybody who's worked with him on any of these big technical masterpiece films of his, like everybody on the set of the Abyss had ear infections for months because they constructed a tank and they were literally filming in an underwater habitat, like the horror stories that came out of the production of that movie are kind of epic. But he's like, no, no, all of the technical stuff has to be like, we're going to, we're going

to do it for real. Yeah. So yeah. So. All right. That's cool. Keith, you wrote a book. You've written a number of books actually, a number of being more than one. But I wanted to get you on here to talk to you about the first book that you wrote, which came out, oh long about four years ago now. Okay. Yeah. And Trump was in office. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. It was called Punching Nazis and other good ideas. Other good ideas. Right. And other good ideas. And other good ideas, right? And other good ideas parts, very important. Good. Good. So in addition to a good recipe for a treacle fudge at the end, what were some of the other good ideas in this book? Yeah, not being a piece of shit.

That goes a the punching. Oh, sweet. But so punching not these and other good ideas was not the book that I would have chosen to wrote to wrote. I'm a professional word or I got I got an email from someone saying, Hey, Carrie Poppy, a big podcaster from someone saying, hey, Carrie Poppy, a big podcaster from Oh No, Ross and Carrie, Carrie Poppy tells us that you have a proposal for a book called Punching Nazis. And I wrote back and said, I have no such thing. But I'm getting attention from a big publisher, so let's talk. Here's something I did write. And I sent them, not for rehire.

I sent, because I have a book version of Not for Rehire, which is one of my comedy specials. I'm huge. You know, I sent them now and they wrote back and they said, well, we like you writing. We don't want to publish this. Will you write punching Nazis? And I'm like, really?

A whole book just about, because I was debating with people on Facebook a lot at that time over the ethical, you know, conversations of punching Nazis and whether or not it was it was moral and I you know, feels not only moral, but a necessity But I didn't know that I could write a whole book about the subject, you know? And so then I said, how about punching Nazis and other good ideas? And I will just talk about that strange period of time in the late 80s, early 90s, where I experienced the white supremacist movement encroaching on the punk scene. And that we had sharps in Sacramento who are skinheads against

British prejudice. There was a shooting of caros, there was a pipe bomb put in a motorcycle. I mean, it was a pretty crazy time in this town. And so then, you know, as people are talking about Nazis and the punching of a Nazi, like, Kerry's whole thing was, have any of us ever actually even met anazzi? And I was like, oh yeah, I had a ton of them, you know. I've got a flock man in our room just singing the way with her device, who would ever hear her mom or what I can hear that I'm doing a podcast. So they agreed with that. And that's what it became. It became, you know, It became just some essays on why I thought that it was a situation where violence was appropriate

that it could be called self-defense, just because they chose to associate themselves with people that were responsible for centuries of violence. And murdering millions of people. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, before Nazi, just even just white supremacists in general. ordering millions of people. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

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Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A pounding of prevention to prevent. Yes. Of your. So there you go. Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, having read your book, having given your book as a gift to teachers getting out of the credential program and becoming teachers, I was especially taken with the local aspect of the book.

Like it really honed in on the Sacramento area and a little bit further than that. But largely it was a Sacramento based book about white supremacy. And if I recall, it was in the 80s and 90s, like in that crossover period. Yeah, like the 80s, early 90s. Yeah. And there was a huge scene here, but it was also being infiltrated by Nazis and white supremacists. We're in a fascinating place because everybody thinks of California is so live. And if you live here, you know, I have

a joke that I do about the South not being in the South, but rather 15 minutes outside of any major metropolitan area. But that's so, so true in Sacramento. And where we're close to the Bay Area, Bay Area also fascinating, which I talk about in the book, because you don't have to get very far out of the city before the Bay Area is very Southly. Here we are with the state capital. We do, we are fairly liberal progressive city, and you don't have to go very far around us at all to find, you know,

Trumpers and what's the, what are they calling us as? You want to break off a part of California? Yeah, state of Jefferson. You do Jefferson, though. I've got one around the corner for me, and he flies the break off a part of California. Yeah, state of Jefferson. He'd be Jefferson though. I've got one around the corner for me. And he flies the flag out in front of his house. You know, you replace the gatson flag with the state of Jefferson flag.

Yeah, well, that's a logical progression right there. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So they're here. And they found something they loved in the punk scene. The punk scene was more male than any of us. It was violent, it was angry. You know, and since those of us that loved it loved being angry at what we were angry at. And they were like, well, we can vibe with the angry part of it. We're in, you know?

Mm-hmm. And so, yeah, it was one of the people I interviewed in the book. One of my favorite parts of the book was getting to interview and write about Dennis, the master bastard, yeah, who was a DJ. And he's mixed-raced, Asian and Anonki, and he would antagonize them to no end when they would come to shows and he would flick, flick, flick, let's cigarettes and hit him in their hands and he would play take the skinheads bowling by Kikram Beethoven just to piss them off and basically let them know they weren't welcome. So yeah, it was fun times.

Nice. I interviewed the big music, the big punk music promoter in our town at the time. I interviewed him, he's a good friend of mine. He had his face kicked in by Nazis and he didn't want to use his name. And I was like, dude, anyone reading this will know who I'm talking about. And he's like, I just, I need more trouble. And I said, okay, but I'm going to call you Farty McFuckbut in the book then. He's like, that's fine. I'm in my face, I can survive being Farty McFuckbut. So, yeah.

I'm very excited to be with Farty McFuckbut in the book. But he was legit still worried about reprisal. How real is it? Like, I don't, I guess this is, I don't want to sound irresponsible here asking you to judge another man's fear. But how likely would a reprisal be here we are 30 years later or 40 years later? Yeah, if I thought that it was like he doesn't even name names. If I thought it was likely, I wouldn't have wanted to run the interview at all. At the same time, having your face kicked in is a pretty traumatic thing. And so, you know, I'm going to let him decide what level of caution.

And I was just, he didn't tell me not to include the interview at all. He just wanted to say. And I think you were pretty respectful about it, calling him farting. But, but, but, but, nothing is not respectful. about it calling him farting with farting with farting. Farting with farting. Farting with farting. Farting with farting with farting. Farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting with farting or I mean, there's like some of these people are playing for keeps, you know, which is weird because some of them were kids that were just looking for some drama. And then others of them, yeah, this was, they were out for blood. So let me ask you this, in professional wrestling, there's a term called K-Fave. And that is the pretended reality that they all play with in, right? Otherwise, the police would have been called, right?

You know, in terms of like, you're punching a man well after the bell has rung. You, you have stopped agreeing to this combat and you're hitting him and stuff like that. Uh, so it's K-Fave. Or you ran a man over, uh, on behalf of another man so that this man won't be able to enter into a Caged to combat you with chains and shit so K-Fade You know, and it's it's the carny aspect of it. It's that you know always Keeping up some scrim of non-reality in front of the audience

Dear Bergen never ever referred Charlie McCarthy as anything other than his partner. Never called him in dummy, never called him in doll. Yeah. Yeah. Intriloquist version of K-Fa. Yeah, K-Fa. Yeah, yeah.

So how much of the young men who just wanted drama, how much were they just K-Faibing white supremacy? And then how much of those those if they were in fact at all and how much of those started believing their own K-fable, like living their gimmick to the point where they genuinely believed that they were white supremacists and became white supremacists? I don't know. I mean, I think that it definitely can happen that way. You find a family and you, I've always been fascinated by people who can adjust their beliefs according to, they'll get married and I watch their beliefs change and then they get divorced and they change their beliefs back.

So I would get the most fascinating to me at all was a group of people that I went to Roseville and Oakmont High School with who were sharps. They were skinheads against racial prejudice and became Nazi skins. Literally 180 degrees shifted their belief systems, but got to keep the same clothes. They just had to go by new, a different color shoe lace. I mean, that's kind of like being the Jedi

who studies vape had and then sliding over to the dark side by accident, you know. So, I'm so glad you're here. Put it in that. That was the collagen. It's also great. Yes. Yeah, that's the best Star Wars analogy. I think you could have come up with. Yeah, anybody could have come up with really but yeah. That would just blew me away.

And you know, these are. There's reminders going off around me. This is not a home studio. This is my There's daughters who sing along to their music. There's I don't could you hear the cat meowing at me a minute ago? No, good not yet. No, that one we missed. He was in a yelling at me that I was supposed to be giving him attention But yeah, like I have I have video because they were they were friends with the band that I was playing at being the manager of this band. And so I interview a bunch of them. I was the kid that always had a camera on his shoulders in a backyard when I first met them.

And again, they're sharps, you know? And so I said, well, what do you guys think of the Nazi skinhead presence in the punk scene? And they had plenty to say, like, those goons need to go away. This is not, you know, 1940s Germany. This is America and this night. And then those same kids, this group of like three of them,

all became Nazis. And it felt like the outfit and the music was more important than the ideology and supposedly deeply held beliefs that went with it. And I just couldn't understand how that happened. So, like, I guess, I guess my question there is because when you say, you know, it's more about the music, were they then like did they get sucked in by listening to Nazi bands? Was that part of it or? So are you guys familiar with the band minor threat? Yes, that's correct me if I'm wrong. That was the Henry Rollins

Washington DC based band. No, he so Rollins is best friends with the Mekai. That's okay I was the Mekai from Fugazi. That was his first band of his first band. Okay, baby song guilty of being white Okay, and Mekai has said that he regrets writing it that it was Taken by people and applied to a bigger scene than what he was talking about. He was literally just talking about being harassed for being a white guy at his almost all black school in DC and being him for racism and racist crimes that happened before or he was even born, etc, etc. And he was very young man when he wrote it as well. and etc. etc. And he was very young man when he wrote it as well. One of the few songs that they had before they made that switch that they got to keep. They just changed their perspective on it.

But yeah, did they go from guerrilla biscuits to screwdriver? Did they like the guitarist better in screwdriver screwdriver so they became Nazis. I don't know. But they still they got to be part of the punk scene still and they and listen to that aggressive hardcore music. So the punk scene accepted them? No. And that's so weird. There was there's always a clashing and there would be fights. But rarely did the punks unite enough. They were scary. I mean, I remember being at shows. There were two shows where I remember everyone standing up to them. And one show was Dennis, the guy I mentioned earlier, and this sounds like a scene from an inspirational movie. I swear to God, it really happened.

Dennis clandestine the microphone. And he starts chanting. There's more of us than there are of you. And as we all start chanting it with him, we realize it's true. And these big scary Nazis left. And we always stared him down or else, you know, someone told them there was a mod party going on somewhere else and they love to go crash those. They also had a really weird relationship with the mod scene. They'd go make fun of their clothes and make fun of their scooters. And I was always like, then why are you here? Yeah, so that was one time, the other time was when L7 played. And all these L7 is an all female awesome band.

And these, I'm stereotyping, but I'm pretty sure a good portion of them were lesbians, but all these mixed flannel wearing women see the skin had start behaving badly and literally just picked them up and threw them out the freaking door and I was just like that's awesome so um social distortion I remember seeing Mike Ness just get right up in their faces and you know I mean he he said the weirdest thing he told one of them, uh, you know, the scene and happy go more. The guys is like pieces of shit like you for breakfast. Right. You mean, Mike Nass looks at one of the skinheads and goes, huh, you're cute. I used to fuck a little boys like you in prison. And I thought it's like, you used to talk a little

long. Is that really, is that the line we want to use? Like, you're in Strangins, Salt Mike. Yeah, let's workshop that a little, shall we? Maybe talk about that one a little bit. Yeah. But he got into it again more recently. I mean, that was back in the late 80s

that I saw him get right up in their faces and he wasn't afraid of them. And then more recently, he was here at Ace of Spades. And a guy was wearing a Trump shirt in the audience and Mike Nestle was giving him the finger and stuff on stage. So for him, he's not afraid to call them out. He's not afraid to think that they're welcome. I think that's the whole thing. It's make it clear they're not welcome.

And in the punks scene, we didn't do enough of that. And that's why, so me and my little brother still, to this day, 30 years later, still argue about it. My little brother hated the sharps. And I'll admit that I didn't like a lot of them at the time either. We both felt like they were people who claimed this ideology that we agreed with, but really just wanted to fight. And they were more likely to show up and

get into fights with people who weren't racists than they were to go find the racists. But I've gotten to know a lot of them since and we did, we saw the worst of them. Any group is going to attract some guys that are just going to be trouble makers. But there was also a group of them that would literally get in a couple of vehicles and go to wherever they heard Nazis were making trouble and clear them out. So. All right. And all of that's happening in the Sacramento area. Like again, you said, late 80s. I mean, this was also happening in the Bay Area. The Bay Area, I'm complicated. There was a group called themselves Peace Punks, who I thought

were a little too fond of mace for people that usually did their fighting indoors. Mace gets indiscriminated. That's a group of around. It seems like a, like a little bit short-sighted. Yes. It's going to work really well. And so we're weird after getting hit by this.

Yeah. There were traditional skins in San Francisco, which we probably have trad skins in Sacramento, but I didn't know any. But I go at length in the book to write about skinheads. What's a trad skin, just so we know? Inhead was a beautiful culture. Racists don't come up with anything on their own.

They steal everything and then ran it for themselves. I mean, even the swastika is stolen. Yeah. So the skinhead culture, and people try to claim the original skinhead culture was anti-racist. And it wasn't necessarily. It just wasn't racist at heart. It was black and white.

It was white English kids and black English kids that had parents who were over in South America from Jamaica, yeah. And they were into the Jamaican music and they listened to reggae and scott and northern soul and it was closely related to mod culture. And it was cool. And if you look at Tutown and the whole second wave scum movement, like Jerry Damors of the Specials, it was his mission statement to convert the kids that the National Front was going after, the skinheads that they were trying to like breathe

as like racist skinhead movement. His whole point with two-tone was to win kids over to the anti-racist movement. He was very involved in rock against racism, calling that stuff out the name two-tone is because it was black and white. Right. So there've always been skinheads who were first,

not racist, and then later specifically anti-racist. Yeah, I mean, originally they were, they were working class people who espoused an overlapping set of values with the hippie movement, but they weren't at, they rejected the bourgeois. I'm only here until I get to college aspect of the hippie movement. I never thought, I never realized how bourgeois,

hippie and punk were until I heard it from the skinheads perspective of saying you kids can afford to your hairdos and those clothes because you don't have to go work at the factory every day like we do. Right. So we know boots and we shave our heads and we, you know, but I know there are only boots.

Right. Yeah. Because it's the only pair we've got. Yeah. I know a lot of skinheads are still who are awesome people and sweet and just super in the music. And so I interview in the book, uh, Manny Naysmith, who played in a band called Simmer Rip. And they had a song, an all black band. And they had a song called Skinhead Moonstop, you know, and they had a song called Skinhead Girl. And these are songs about their fans. And he said to this day, he plays festivals and stuff, and there's just miles of skinheads dancing to this black man's music and the skinnets. Or, you know, he said like maybe five percent black, the majority of them are white.

And they love him and they love his music and they have a great time, you know. So, and he, and the minute I talk about skinheads, skinheads get so defensive, because they're so... Maligned. Yeah, the racist ones are the ones we've seen. Right, yeah. So, my line, the racist ones are the ones we see. Yeah, these leads, they're the ones we talk about. And so I really wanted to make sure

to include that chapter in there. And even I got reviewing the book on Reddit, said something about me writing about racist skinheads and the comments just immediately lied out with death. And I had to go in there and be like, no, I write about you guys too. I did my homework. I studied.

So actually, there's a great free documentary on YouTube. And I think it might be called the story of Skinhead. But it's really good. And what's his name, the reg A DJ and the punk scene, who is a member of Big Audio, Dyn and Mike. I always forget his name, The Reggae DJ and the punk scene who was a member of big audio dynamite. I always forget his name, but he narrates it. No, very cool. If you're, you know, this being a history thing at all,

if you're into it. Yeah. Onlats, onlats, I couldn't believe I couldn't remember onlats' name. Yeah. So yeah, it was produced by the BBC and it's called the story of skinhead. And I highly recommend it.

If you want to get well, do that after I put the kids to bed tonight. So, you know, I, but just one more thing that the racists were like, oh, we like that. Oh, right. Well, they're always appropriating, they're always scavengers, right? They're always appropriating and repurposing things that are catchy. Like they've got a really good ear and a good eye for what's catchy. And I've said this for a long time and you know when I teach the lessons on fascism in my class is

that those people are really good at branding and really good at getting a message to the vulgar masses because they have to be because their ideology can't stand up to any kind of scrutiny. So they have to short-circuit that. Right. The best way to do that is to find out what other people are already doing. Yeah, meaming and everything that they do is keyed toward getting some kind of evisceral emotional reaction. One way or the other, they want to either horrify you and drive you to get angry so they can point and laugh. Right.

Or they want to then capitalize on you getting all angry in order to get somebody on the sidelines to go, hey, look, look how, look how stupid, you know, the liberal looks over there. And or they're equally both sides. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's the big one. Like to, to cloak themselves in the, uh, the legitimacy that you have by virtue of

having pissed you off going, see,. And then they continue to take over public square. Yeah. I love the weird rebranding thing they did in Charlottesville, where people actually found emails and memos that went out that encouraged them to go buy Target and buy a nice polo and we need to present ourselves as more clean cut. Yeah, you know, we need we need to clean up. Yeah, we got low budget super cuts haircuts and they all have the same polo shirt. And it's just it was so funny.

I was just like, wow, you guys really tried to make a fashion statement. Yeah. And they looked around and they're like, what would work? Best Buy. Best Buy. Best Buy. Best Buy would do the trick. But with why? Cackies. Cackies. Yeah.

A little sure. It's, yeah, they look like the geek squad. Yeah. Or, or, you know, state farm phone reps. Yeah. Which, you know, if you think about it, one of the big lessons from the original Nazis is the banality of evil.

Of course they wind up wearing these vanilla, dorky outfits as they're new uniform. By level service workers, through that much work to like rebrand themselves and then chanted blood and soil and you will not lose like something. Maybe the memo should have been like because they're trying to present themselves as we're not racist. We're just trying to preserve our history and not what we're supposed to make for God. I don't think they forgot. I think

they were looking for, we know this will be good, be role footage. Yeah. And you know, people will platform us and we'll get our message out in multiple ways. I don't think it was ineffective in any way. I recently read a, a, a think piece, I forget by who, but basically saying like look at how people craft really stupid as things that they say, knowing that you'll recraft it and make a reaction video. And what you're doing is you're taking the piss out of them. But while you're doing that, you're also making them seem less

of a threat because everybody's making fun of them. But at the same time, you are getting their message out for them. So that their message then becomes less of a threat to anybody else who will sit there. Oh, he's got a cat. Anybody who who is looking at, oh, up and down the ballot, that person can't be that bad. There's a catchy song for them. You know, somebody named them. I mean, I mean, it's kind of, you know, and they they brought that up with Trump's mug shot. Um, is like, oh, the more you guys put that out there, the more people are going to think that like, you know, it's just as innocuous as a chagavara t-shirt. Right. And it's it's deeply disturbing to think and there are actual precedents for this in Italy, for instance. There's, I'm a woman, I'm a Italian,

I think it was, I'm a woman, I'm an Italian, I'm a fascist. Might have missed that last part, but that got mixed into a dance song. And then- That was exactly the line. Yeah. And now, they've got fascists again. And they've always had, like we didn't de-nazify them

We didn't defascise them because we're worried about communists there so but They they always had a group that like everybody on the right even looked at and said get the fuck out of here But now it's like oh, I could use that to get power. And again, that's how they creep back in. So yeah. So back to the music scene. Since you wrote the history of it, I'd like to kind of explore that a little bit more. What happened? Was there a cataclysmic event that shut it all down? Was there a gradual petering out? What happened from the late eighties through the mid 90s? Because I remember Green Day specifically refused to play Sacramento.

Yeah, I'm one of their singles. The Green Day does not play SACTO. Yeah. And I, so there's a great documentary about East Bay Pond called Turn It Around. And it's like almost three hours long, I think. But they, they really look at the Gilman Street, as is the heart of it. Okay.

So they had this story, they he had edited it and everything. The story of Green Day coming to Sacramento and getting their answers kicked by Nazi skins. Oh wow. And it got cut from his movie because otherwise, it would have been more than three hours. And so he generously gave it to me.

I used it in the book. I sat and looked at all the raw footage with him and all the raw interviews he had done and everything. The only thing was that I couldn't actually quote the members of Green Day. Okay. I had to say a member of one of the bands said, it wasn't able to get permission from them. They were on tour and the movie was wrapped up already. So he wasn't able to get explicit permission. And so I did him the favor of not quoting them directly.

But it was a member of Green Day who said, that was the day we learned the difference between Nazis and cops. The cops have mustaches. How much cooler would it have been if I could have mentioned the name of the person who said it? Yeah, except now in certain parts of Sacramento, those Nazis grew up and they have moustaches now. Right. And they're all cops.

That's the one. I'm not faking. Yeah, well, well, yeah, the connection I was trying to make without saying it was and they're part of the police department. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's their police in their PewPie form.

Yeah. You know, I mean, I don't know the answer to that. I know that there was a big event that shooting at caros, I think, was a big event. And I really think that what happened is it got bad enough that a lot of them started getting arrested going to prison. So let's unpack the caros thing. First off, for people that don't know, caros and lions were both late night diners. Think Denny's, but with less sadness.

And we all went there after. Right. And that was true for theater nerds. That was true for music folk. That was true for BBS meetup people. So think about that. It's so fascinating. Uh-huh. That this every subculture in Sacramento, uh-huh, ended on caros and lions. Right.

And, you know, uh, caros had that smoking section. I think they all had smoking sections then. And we get such a wonderful mixing of all these different groups. The shooting at Caros was nobody got shot. I don't think I don't think any bullets connected with any bodies. But there was a black family seated in one of the booths and the assumption was that they were the target. I'm relatively sure they were not. Because they were a group of, I don't remember if they were sharps or just, you know, lefty punks. They were a group of punks next to them. And I'm pretty sure they were the target.

You know, and it was during a period where honestly the Nazi skin spot with other white people more than they thought would black people because they have a little war with the sharps and when the general and maybe that was a favor that we did the black community was we kept the nonsense busy fighting with us. You tanked, you tanked for them. Yeah, now with that's cool. Yeah, so Dungeons and Dragons Keith, which I've tried to help you with, if you play of Arbarian or a Paladin or sometimes a cleric, you stand in the middle of all the enemies and they hit you. So all your friends can hit them. And you have enough hip points that you can take it.

And you've got to clear enough armor or bone for whatever. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, they did a lot of them went to prison. I think some of the biggest organizers, I think some of the others got scared because they started seeing people go to prison. We talked about some of them. I think it was a drama play.

And when maybe that level of things getting real made them tone it down a little. It was like the denim waffle for them. And they're like, okay, climax has happened. Now let's, yeah. Okay. But I do remember that things mellowed out, they got quiet.

Okay. And maybe 10 years later, like four or five of them all got out of prison around the same time. Now give me a year for that, please, or your range. Uh, so probably late 90s, really 2000s. Okay. Okay.

And at that point, I'm playing in a band called the ugly sticks. And I remember that this group of Nazis showed up. And I think they beat up Eric Bianchi, who's a beloved Sacramento sound man and played in some bands. We were sitting in the, now at this point, there's no longer traditional smoking sections, and caros went through all the trouble, but box in their patio and put an eventilation system. So, they had Sacramento's last smoking section, okay.

Oh, wow. We're sitting with this by the by. Where was this caros located? Oh, this is the caros that's now in IHOP. We're on Alhambra and and our capital. Oh, you and I sat and had divorce talks. Yeah. That's okay. Okay. So that could be a gym boys, a Starbucks, a pizza. I remember the french fry I really good that night. Most of my memories are food related. And I remember those really good fries. All right.

So we're sitting in the smoke section, which is right on the sidewalk. And all of a sudden I got four Nazi skinheads, like right here, right next to me, looking through class at me. And I look at them, and I'm dressed in my little like 60s rave up clothes, because that's a band. That's what we wore Sure, and I look at them in their blown kisses and stuff, you know, and I'm like I don't know what to do like how do I get out of this without getting my ass kicked by Nazis and then something

Distracted them and they ran off and then the next night I get all these stories of all the fights that they've been in and they You know, like I said, they I'm pretty sure beat up Eric Bianchi over at Old Iron Sides and we had just played Old Iron Sides early or that night. We barely missed them several times. And they all got violating parole or probation or whatever and went back to prison. So, wow. So, as in state or federal, you know, no idea. Okay. I'm just wondering who started putting the pressure on them. Was it a local? Was it a? Because so yeah. Oh, no, finish your statement. No, I need to look up the name to be perfectly honest. You're okay. Getting them for regal laws and like really going after them for being a racist organization. They were getting them for petty crimes

and violence. Yeah, that's kind of kind I what I wanted to remark on is it's like, okay, so these guys just got out of the joint. They've been in for a decade. They get out. And the first thing they do is they go out and violate, like blatantly violate their parole repeatedly. Like they're not very smart people. But instead ofism, I mean, that's, we don't have a rehabilitation prison system. Yeah, I mean, yeah, well, that's that's that's certainly true. But I

I was I was leading into making a statement about fascists kind of in general that just like I, you know, I think there's a smart fascist is most dangerous thing in the world. It is the truth. I say it about Trump all the time. You know, we were talking about his strategy with his mug shot and things like that. He stumbles into things like that.

I'm really, is a great documentary called Fast Cheap and Out of Control. And one guy in the movie that said he's robot science says that the big thing to crack was was walking. And so they were really trying to perfectly calculate the mathematical, you know, walking. And then he watched bugs walk and realized they're just falling and catching themselves. And that was his big breakthrough when his robot started to log because he stopped trying to be so precise and let them just kind of bounce a little and be able to catch

themselves. That to me, it's the best analogy in the world for how these boneheads, including our bonehead and chief work, is that they, and it served Trump for so long. It's amazing to finally see it blowing up in his face to see him actually not catching himself. Boy, your lips to God's ears. I tell you what, I hope. I really hope. But yeah, I think that whole falling backwards into brilliance is a theme we revisit all the time here. Yeah, in different contexts. And yeah, I think, yeah, I definitely think that applies with a lot of the kind of people

that you're talking about here. Well, and what have I often said about the word genius? We need to treat it like the noun that it is again. You can have a genius for something that does not make you a genius. And if you think of people as having a genius for certain things, Trump has a genius for the type of communication that is very effective in that way. He is a stone-cold moron who is functionally illiterate, but he has a genius for getting earworms into the ears of the people who are the most

agreed. A very evil genius. Yeah, quite so, right? But like, you know, you have a genius for something. And it helps also because we tend to lionize people who are really good in one field, and suddenly we're disappointed that their dog shit and another. And it's like, no, no, like, yeah, he was terrible to the women in his family, but he had a genius for theoretical mathematics, you know, stuff like that. Like, you know, you don't have to transfer expertise when you talk about a genius as being a noun. And I think I think that really applies, especially to Trump, but to monsters throughout history. So what I was thinking was that when these guys went away, and you said it was the early 90s, right? So what was the year of the caros incident?

Well, that's a good question. I don't remember. That was, Oh, that's a good question. I don't remember. That was, I'm going to guess that it was like 91, 92. Okay. Because Joe Surner became mayor of Sacramento in 93. Okay. And if you start to see these cases going, Joe Surner was very connected in the assembly and amongst the state and federal offices, not to say that Anne Rudin, whom he'd replaced, wasn't, but Joe Surnor was very connected and the guy had a genius for governmental policy. And I just wonder if that's not somewhat tied to his capabilities and efforts at the time. But okay, so there's that incident and then things kind of petered away. These guys came out, had one more flash in the pan and all but disappeared after that. Or I felt like one weekend was literally like, oh my god, but disappeared after that or like one weekend.

It was literally like, oh my god, Nazi's a wreck for like a weekend. Wow. Oh, as far as being midtown. Okay. I also just want to say here that I tried to look up caros shooting Sacramento. You do this so many. Yeah. I never, I never, I never, I was fine. Yeah, I've never visited a caros again. I just, not, I'm not the, the statistics.

Are there any more? I, I don't think there are, but if there were, I'm not going back. That's like looking at waffle house fight, fight, including kid rock. Like, you're still have way too many, you know? So. being kid rock, like you're still have way too many, you know. This is wild. This is just shooting after shooting. Well, that's what happens when you're open until, you know, three in the morning.

There, I remember living in Sacramento in the early 2000s, and there was a few safeways that were open 24 seven. Still are. Yeah. The one down on what? Like that one in the earner catering. Yeah. Yeah. They stopped being open all night long because specifically. And that would have been like the mid 2000s. Stop being open all night long, specifically because they were tired of getting robbed so often. Yeah. Yeah. My, my very first apartment where I lived on my own was in 99, 2000. And that, that, that safe way was one of the grocery stores I frequented on a regular basis and I'd be in there at 11.30 a night and you'd see shit man like yeah yeah.

Oh and and as far as caros goes this would have been in 96 I was still in college and a couple of friends and I were out late hanging out and we were in Roseville. We went into a carose in Roseville and when the waitress set coffee down in front of us, she had a very small but noticeable swastika tattoo on her hand between her thumb and forefinger. Wow. And all of us being who we were we we made remarks to each other's about to each other about Roseville Nazis. I fucking hate Roseville Nazis man. I know a loose one I hear. That's right. And Tim remember that.

So that fuck you. Like come on man. But I remember I grew up in Southern California and I then got regaled by my best friend who has been on the show with us Sean with his own memories of going to high school in the Citrus Heights area, and him hanging out with sharps and, and, you know, dealing with, you know, trying to find ways to avoid getting caught in the middle of fights between them and actual like Nazis. Yeah. And it was a school up there. Since my teaching career has started, there was like, there was still a gang called the Pecker Woods up in that area. Yeah. So which makes a lot of sense considering I remember we had a training on be careful of gangs.

This would have been about 2006 2007, right? Yeah. Had a training on be careful of gangs and here's what to look for and stuff like that. Now where I teach the the gangs will be largely from poorer neighborhoods, they will largely be from the Sacramento midtown to outer reaches of that kind of neighborhoods. And they brought up sharps as being one of the most violent gangs. And I was like, wait a minute, we're highlighting that first. Well, we highlighted Hispanic and Black gangs first, but then we highlighted sharps.

And I'm like really kind of interesting and then they mentioned the Pekker Woods out in places where there's petting zoos. So it was just kind of a interesting thing. So Keith, let me ask you, when this was going down, when they came back, okay, so first, I guess, what did it feel like when they all seemed to have gone away? Did you suddenly realize your shoulders were up by your ears and finally relaxed? Or what? And then also, how did it feel when they came back? And then again left? Like, what were those? Because you were living in that world right in the midtown scene. If you can remember well, I was going to say if you can remember but I don't know how similar our

catalysis were, but I didn't even care. I didn't even have one at Creek for most of my adolescents. I didn't have a lot of time to think about the shift when they left because I discovered road tripping in the Volkswagen bus. And I'm like, moving on really fast. No, I'm still going to punctures and stuff, but I was just like, oh, cool. The Nazis seem to be going, hey, look, I got a bus. I miss, I miss being an age where my world view could be that simple. Yeah, it was, you know, and it's one of those things that then like four or five years later, you look back and go, here, remember these me Nazis everywhere?

Oh, yeah, what happened to those guys? Well, these three went to prison and then this guy moved. And, you know, when this guy got shot in the head and is dead, it looks nice. They do often kill each other. Yeah, that does seem to be where they hurt until then is the problem. Yeah, right. Yeah, it's good when you can get them to. And that was the thing even with the sharps that I had a problem with. I was like, as long as you can point them, it's not.

Sure. I say in the book, there are people who just like to fight. And if those people do like my brother John and become professional fighters, good on them. If they do like the sharps and go fight Nazis, good on them. That's a piece of use it productively. But I think the fear was what happens when they didn't have any Nazis around.

So yeah, I can't like, I mean, it felt good. It felt like you could go to shows without being worried that you were going to get in a fight. That was nice. So and I remember it being less intense and less scary. That weekend that all of a sudden they were back, there was a, oh no, how long is this gonna last? Is this the beginning of a new thing?

It turned out to be a fluke. It turned out to be a very short-lived thing, but you didn't know that at the time. I thought we've done with this. I thought we did this. And, you know, maybe there was a period where I had stepped away from the music scene a little bit. At that point, I had joined the band.

I think when the music scene moved into bars, I stepped away from it a little bit. I've never been a bar drinker, even during the period when I drank. I'm going to go hang out on the beach with a bottle of wine. So I was never in a bar culture, but then I started playing in a band, I started getting back into the music scene and then Nazi show up again. And I'm just like, really? Now, is it not just so bizarre? Yeah, did I bring this out? So bizarre. Yeah, did I bring this out?

Okay. Oh, Shucks, I had a thought, a question about one of the things you'd mentioned, but it done left me. When I get on something like this and I don't mind us preaching to the choir. But I do want to make sure that anyone who is asking themselves if they'd be interested in this book or not, it's mostly a collection of stories. It's interviews and even in the interviews, people tell their stories. I mean one of my favorite stories in there is the Burgundy tops where this like Scooter Club in town. I think they're still around.

And these are guys who had put some time into their hair. They had cool clothes. They wore suits with parkas over them. They had these badass vespas that they put all their time and energy and money into. And the one that is people assume that someone like that can't fight. And it's kind of like when people try to go gay bashing and they assume that gay people are feminine men, like I'm sorry, you don't walk around

like this and not learn how to do that. And not, and not, yeah. So the Burgundy tops were all hanging out over by Tower Theater and Tower Cafe. Okay. The Nazis heard they were there and came to jump them. And the Nazis got their asses handed to them. The Bernabé was crazy. You flush it out of a bunch of skinheads through one of them through a plate last window. I managed to find people that had witnessed it first hand because we all talked about it. I wasn't there when it happened the next day.

Oh my God, you were burning the tops and beat up the Nazis last month. And they weren't sharps. There was some overlap but the burger tops the warrant necessarily a go Hunt the Nazis and beat him up organization. They were let's ride our scooters and dress cool and listen to music So for them to be targeted and then just defend themselves so beautifully, you know, it's a great story And I enjoyed being able to tell it. And to kind of capture that unique period in time where we did have all these

different subcultures all operating within the Sacramento Plunk soon. Wow. Yeah, I just say having gone to those places, it's wild to think about what has happened there. You know, you're saying it? Well, I wanted to, I wanted to kind of clarify. So, so the burgundy tops based on your description of assuming they were a mod group. Yeah. Okay. I don't know. So they were scooter boys. Okay. All right. I did. I was a a lot they look like mods to me. Okay, but so so punk the the punk scene then was this umbrella under which you had these the product of suburbia like me. And then was in this remarkably sheltered as as a young and let me let me speak to the there was so many different subgroups

of cultures that did operate under this big umbrella. I'll speak to the the suburban aspect of it. Okay, if you think of it as a swim team, I'll speak to the suburban aspect of it. Okay, if you think of it as a swim team, there are your relay swimmers, your medley swimmers, your one-lap swimmers, you got your concession people. You've got your only butterfly, you've got people with breast strokeers, and then you know, you've got, you know, we all aspire swimmer, you know, we're teenagers, we all aspire to be breast roakers. That's not lie. You know, the hard, you know, you know, the hard times newspaper. Yeah, yeah, like the onion. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I feel like they really capture, Skaw, even some metal, the whole, you know, I mean, the kids in our punks, seen all this into slayer also. Things that people thought were more

disparate, right, all kind of functioned around each other. Okay. And like I said, skinheads were always at mod parties. And even later when I was in the band, mods liked us because we played like kind of 60s garage type stuff. And so we would get invited to mod parties and there would be these skinheads there. And I was like, you guys hate this. How are you part of it? And the answer was that the mods had the best dressed and prettiest female members. Yeah, well, there you go. Yeah. They were like all there to harass and make those women uncomfortable, which I think is what they call flirting.

But if you flip through the hard times, you see, they do a really good job of hitting all those subcultures. So, and always from this place of knowing, I love when they make, I asked a huge scoffing and I love when they make fun of scoff because you can tell that they love it. You can tell they know all the fountain. You know, right. Some name inside. Ed, did you have another question or no? No, that was, that was basically it. I just wanted to, you know, clarify for, you know, people who came from my background. And by the way, the swim team metaphor is a really good one,

even though I was never part of a swim team, I felt, I felt both seen and attacked simultaneously. So well, I never was either because I didn't, I lived like where the help lived. So, yeah, but I visited all my friends in their enormous places in the Rudgear area of Walnut Creek. Yeah. So all right. So these people, they flash up, they leave finally for good. No, no, not for good. Oh, I think it's them and their children who show up more recently as proud boys. Yeah. I think it's them and their children who show up or recently as proud boys. Yeah, I think there's a direct line. Okay. Yeah. And

geographically, I'm just thinking of like where where the biggest motions against drag queens reading stories to children are or children's museums, or attacking pastors who say, it's all right that you're gay kid. Jesus is still pretty rad. Or doing actions against teachers who say that a reasonable stance is to be against Nazis. So those areas seem to be the areas kind of to the outskirts of Sacramento, the places that perhaps where police forces tend to live. I'm trying to look it up. There was a huge, they said it was gonna be one of the biggest in the nation.

Ku Klux Klan Rally in Auburn, California. And again, people outside of California just so surprises them. You know, you know, California. You know, California, I'm like, yeah, Auburn, California. Yeah, if you're listening from Auburn, beautiful place, I love visiting. But yeah, you got a lot of horrible people there. Yeah. Sure.

You know, just down the street, I'm teaching in one of those, let's call it exerben parts of Sacramento. And, you know, it's, I mean, those people haven't really gone away because just a couple of blocks away from my school on a major through fare. One of the homeowners on that through fare has taken the time to hand paint these, you know, six foot by eight foot pieces of plywood with QAnon conspiracy theory, shit. That's been up like since I started at my current site and this is my third year, and it's, and it's expanded. It's grown like moss on this fence. Like it was first, it was just one. Then it was the second one,

and I, and I found out at the end of last year, I happened to look at my rear view mirror at one point, and they've actually put more stuff up on the other side of their property, facing the other direction on that throughfare. And it's like, you know, I mean, not everybody is going to be that far divorced from reality. But when you have that being put out there that openly, it says something about where the overton window is in that community. I was trying to remember the name of the overton window earlier today. We were talking about extremists and why even on our own side, like the firebrands are important. We need them to keep tugging the other direction. Oh my god, yeah. You've anchoring. Yeah, you know.

and like, oh my god, yeah, you've anchoring. Yeah, you know, and yeah, it's, it's, it's, you know, when, when you know that you have that going on in the neighborhood, that means that everything from that point to wherever, you know, the, the purported middle is, is, is going to be, is going to be present. And it's worth noting, for anybody who's just listening to this outside of California, the January 6th uprising, one of the things that came out of doing studies of the people that were there is the majority of them weren't

from red states. Right. They were from the red parts of predominantly blue states. There were a lot of Californians there. Yep, there were. You know, the highest number of people that were from out of the area were from California. Yeah. Well, that's because The highest number of people that were from out of the area were from California. Yeah.

Well, that's because the highest number of people period are from California. Yeah, all that red and all that blue. And it's like you adjusted for population. Yeah, blue is where the people live. Yeah. Yeah. And the red parts of the blue. Like, I'm not saying there aren't a good number of them here, but yeah, it's very purple. Yeah. So, all right, so that it,

they didn't end, they're still proud boys. How did the punk scene in Sacramento evolve or did it disappear? Is it no longer a relevancy because of all the other stuff? I think they would do the punk scene at disservice to talk about the white supremacist movement within it and not also say that there was this like and not also say that there was this like queer friendly movement in the punk scene way before that went mainstream. Okay. It was a lot of like anti-racist, like a multicultural space and and was it that as good as it could have ended? They do as good a job of making women safe and welcome as they could have known. But there was an attempt, there was an awareness, I think there

was more of an effort than in other scenes, there were people fighting for that, you know. We're fond of quoting our friend, Gabriel Cruz, by saying, progress is a series of problematic steps forward. Yeah, you know, so, but yeah, go on. And then there was a big echo by Curious George. Uh miss. That's sorry, uh, projects, uh, I think Pam Smith, which sounds like a made-up name, but I'm pretty sure that was her name, was in by Curious George and she really pushed for a feminist queer friendly punk space. I remember budding heads with her because she was so against slam dancing, but she was

like it's slam dancing that makes the whole front of the punk show just dudes. Yeah, it's like, okay, as much as I love it, that's true. Yeah, all seven comes to town and then I'm on to women, which will go. Yeah. You know, and then a little later, a little past my time that the younger scene, you start seeing the riot girls and this feminist punk thing blowing up.

You know, so I think that that part of the scene has, the metal scene is super progressive, I mean, inclusive, which I did not see happening. So I feel like progressives are winning the battle for that subculture. So, but I don't know that as much firsthand, as 51-year-old man with a kid at home, I'm not out at the punk clubs through your four nights a week like I used to be. Right. All right. So we've covered the punching Nazis portion of your book. What about the and other good ideas? What else what else is in there for for the dozen of our listeners? Um, but

actually, I don't know if you know, but according to one metric, we were 95th in Austria last week. And I think it's because of Ed mentioning one of their most famous cities, fucking so often. Um, that's. because they've changed your name of the city because of all of American tourists being so shitty, but the mayor himself has said, no, we are fucking here. We will always be fucking here. Well, I've been to New York, Nebraska. Was that? I've been to North, Nebraska. Nice. Which is spelled like Norfolk. Uh-huh, but they say Norfolk. In the town's history, they will tell you that that's because the postmaster mispelled it. And Nebraska's are too nice. They didn't want to hurt his feelings. So they were like, we can spell it that way. It's not. They pronounce it Norfolk. There you go. You know what's up, Norfuckers? But yeah, what are some other good ideas?

I just have some stuff in there about like, I profile a lot of the interesting characters that I intersected with during that period of time. I really liked the gentleman who was down in, it was somewhere in Southern California where they have low riders. Okay. And there was a barbecue where. Yeah, so Jamie is fascinating.

Jamie is a kid that I grew up with. I mean, from very young. I remember Jamie as early as second and third grade. And he looked like Ricky Schroeder. And he was a, the girls loved him. He was just cute little blonde kid. And then we go down there, me and my friend Dan, who's now a doctor, who's this like kind of subculture,

but like very geeky like Jewish kid, like curly hair and thick glasses. And we show up, saying I was my old friend Jamie and the guy that shows up as a shaved head and suicidal tendencies tattooed on his belly and he's huge buff. And he's a gangster. He's a member of a gang called the suicidals until he ends up in prison. And in prison, he gets white supremacist gang tattoos. And then after he gets out of prison, he's at a barbecue, grilling, and my little brother's there. And just to confuse the story, my little brother is James, the guy's Jamie. James looks so Jamie. I'm bad man, I'm seeing you in a while. The James is like, oh, good to see you, bro. And then James looks around. It's a very diverse party.

A lot of Mexican people, a lot of black people, especially. And then James looks around. It's a very diverse party. A lot of Mexican people, a lot of black people, especially Corona is a heavily Mexican town. Y'all grew up together. And James goes, Hey, um, what's with all the Nazi shit? And Jamie goes prison. That's called surviving. James was okay, but why don't you cover it up when you're at a barbecue. And Jamie laughs and goes, These guys all get it. And just then like a Mexican dude is over it up when you're at a barbecue and Jamie laughs and goes, these guys all get it. And just then like a Mexican dude is over there getting, you know, a burger from Jamie. And they're like, we know Jamie.

I mean, it's just this like understanding that in prison, there are associations that will keep you alive. Right. I actually think it can get you in trouble to not respect those associations afterwards, but I guess that you can get in trouble in both directions. Yeah. And you also, there was also mention of, and I want to bring this up because you and I went to this together. There was the, the convention in my town. And would you mind sharing that story for free on this podcast?

A guy is just walking around with Aswastika clearly visible through his tank top. And he chose to wore a take wear a tank top. He chose to let that be visible. And he's taken pictures with Captain America, which I found particularly ironic. And all the other characters, you know, getting his selfies and the woman that organized this con is Jewish. I had one of the worst sets of my life performing. Oh, I killed there. I know you didn't get better. I'm I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. I'mian bombs and I kill. Yeah. Yeah. I caught. I caught the one to make crystal clear. Okay. Got it. I understood. Damian's very funny. And yet a really good set and all I did was bomb and make my tire ride.

Well, you made fun of a guy that looked like he was dressed for Logan's run. Okay. I think you lost the crowd. At that point, yeah think you lost the crowd. It's at that point. Yeah. That's a big thing. I don't think I should have gotten geek points for knowing that he was dressed like someone from Logan's run. Come on.

I agree. I agree. I wouldn't disagree with that statement either. I should have looked for you more probably. You should have made great credit. But I like, okay, to be clear, when it comes to punching Nazis, I don't think you should do it if you're going to get your ask it. I'm not saying that you owe it to them to engage them in a fair fight.

There's no honor to being a Nazi. And if you want to sneak up behind him and punch him and run, I'm all for it. Okay. Yeah. I'm all for it. Okay. Um, and I think that about fighting in general, I'm like, if two guys agree to fight in a consensual situation, then great, there's rules or whatever, but if someone is pushing you into a fight, you don't want, you don't know them anything. There's no kicking in the balls, there's no honor, whatever bullshit. If you're making me fight, I'll bite your nose off.

I'm kidding. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm looking at this guy and thinking, I should do something. And I look at security and security, African-American security guard is looking at him, doesn't know what he can do.

And I've got my daughter with me. And I'm like, am I doing right by my daughter, by not going and getting into a physical altercation with her, where I might go to jail and who's gonna take her, or am I doing wrong by her, by not showing her that you can't stand here and let people walk around with swashed goes on their chest. Ultimately, I decided to, you know, let someone know and leave.

And I still feel crappy about the decision. No, but yeah, yeah, and that it does. And it opens up this whole sort of conundrum of like, what is the right thing to do in these scenarios. There were a bunch of good people having a good time there at their event and he shouldn't have been there, but also what do you do to all of this event and these other people? How do you handle it? Yeah. Well, and, I mean, Jean Paul Sart would point out the, the politeness of what they're doing,

AIDS and Abetz, his Nazis. Right. And that there are way too many polite people when a Nazi is around who are otherwise kind of rude pricks when other people are around. Yeah. There is a layer of that, but at the same time, like you said, you've got your daughter there. It's not like honey, go with mom, sit in the car.

I'm gonna put on my esotoners and let's go, you know. And there's no DJ who is saying there's more of us than there are of you, right? Right. And I'll be very clear, engaging in this this guy in a fair fight I would have lost I knew that looking at it right is the guy who's fought more recently than I have and is bigger than me yeah yeah but I could sucker bunch him for sure and just hope that other people are of the same mind about the notness. Or that could render him unconscious.

Right. Yeah. So a well placed bunch should be all it takes to spot scene in the movies. Yeah. Yeah. So okay. Um, so I think, I mean, we've covered most of the book. What was, did you get any splashback on the book? What if the review has been, have you gotten any negative commentary? Have you gotten largely positive? Largely positive. Very little negative,

which was disappointing. I really, I wanted, it's carried in several public libraries. And so I would always try to be very loud and vocal about that. I tried to get the attention of the right. I wanted them to get mad that public libraries were carrying a book that advocated violence so blatantly. Did you wish a motherfucker would?

I wish the motherfucker would. But I'm virtually a motherfucker, didn't I? Not yet, not yet. Now that this podcast has aired. Yeah. If one of your dozens could start a fake campaign against my book and hopefully fool some right-wing people into playing their part, sure. There you go.

There you go. Well, you know, there is no such thing as bad publicity. some right-wing people and to playing their part. Sure. There you go. There you go. Well, you know, there is no such thing as bad publicity. So it's so not true. I think that's not. It's not. Yeah, of, of, of, that has been proven wrong. Yeah.

Ask Joe Jonas. I, I did think that I don't know about Joe Jonas. What, what happened to poor Joe Jonas? I was swallowed by a whale, I think. Nice, nice, nice. Well played. Now, what is he got? He got, he, he and his wife whose name I forget, right?

X wife soon to be. They are, they are getting a divorce and he, he and his PR people worked really hard in the media to try to portray her as a bad mom and use a lot of misogynistic kind of stuff against her. And it has come back around and bitten him very hard in the ass. And I could also, another example, I could point out, would be Ashton Kutcher, who made the really poor, well, I mean, you know, there's, there's, there is, there is, speaking up to, you know, help out your friend, and then there's choosing to help out your friend who's, you know, literally convicted fucking rapist. So-

Oh, conviction. That was, yeah. And I don't think it was Aston's letters, but one of the other people that knew him from his acting career comment that on him always, I think it was from that 70s show. Always picking up his clothes, yeah, helping him grieve for throwing his clothes on the couch and being like, not that's disrespectful. I thought in contrast to rape, wow, like, yeah, like, like, it's close. Yeah, well, hiding your honor.

Jeffrey Dahmer was a homeowner and I mean, in this economy, you know, like, that guy, you know, like, what the fuck? Yeah. So yeah, no, it is, it know, like that kind of, you know, like what the fuck? Yeah. So yeah, no, it is, it is certainly true that there is such a thing as bad publicity, but, you know, in this context, we want to, we want to, you know, do everything we can't to help you out. So, uh, I think that I would get threatened or perhaps even beaten up by locals. I mean, you asked if I thought that, partly my thought about was right, being afraid, and I didn't think that he was based on what he said,

but I thought that I might be targeted. And during the period when the book first came out, I definitely kept my eyes open. And the proud boys were going out of their way to make their presence known in Midtown around that time. But they've, they've largely just been targeting teachers for the last few years. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Sorry. We stole the thunder for you there. That's weird What's that? Oh, we're the main Yeah, I like you teachers What I'm working on is all about school Okay, okay, and being ADHD in my public school career. And there definitely are some stories

of some pretty awful teachers. But one of them, the teacher that I hated the most that I carried this hatred around in my heart for 40 years. So, you know, almost, I befriended her on Facebook and she is Bible thumping, weird, right wing conspiracy theory. And it actually let me let go of some of that. Hey, because I realize this woman is teaching gifted and talented education. fucking moron This poor woman had to deal with us and we have so much smarter than her not to be a complete snob Which I am but we were obviously feeling with someone who was way out of her depth Sounds like it that might be why they gave her that class Maybe I can you do yeah?

maybe I grew up, can you do? Yeah. Do you remember me? And she wrote, of course, I remember all my students. And I was like, oh, bullshit. And she wrote, remember that time you blew up a battery in class. And I was like, oh, you really do remember. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, wild. Yeah, well, yeah, wild. So at so how to put this with this book, it obviously opened you you money, first of all. But also it does. Yes, it does. It's so nice to have merchandise because I used to sell CDs and DVDs it shows. Sure.

And I don't anymore, because no one has a DVD player or a CV player anymore. Right. Yeah. Those sales were drying up, you know, 10 years ago. And now they're gone. And those sales were drying up 10 years ago. And now they're gone. And selling books, bookseller caulks.

And I wish I could say that Greg Proop's advice is why I published a book. It isn't, I just got lucky. But coincidentally, just a few months before I got the book deal, I was lucky enough to feature for Greg Proops at a weekend of shows at the punchline. And his advice to me afterwards,

he was like, Keith, you're one of the few comedians I've worked with who's got the gift of words. It's funny that I was trying to think of the right words to wrap it up on stage, you have it. Yeah. No, sitting on the fly, I don't, but sitting on the think of the words and use it the sores I can come up with something.

Anyway, he told me I should write a book. He was like, CDs and DVDs are dead. Stop hauling them around in your backpack and write a fucking book. And so I was stoked to then write him and be like, hey, I got a book deal and he's like, ah, good deal, kid. And so then when I got the second book,

he agreed to write the introduction to him. So very cool. Very cool. Awesome. Well, cool. At this point, normally I would ask Ed what he's gleaned or tell him what I've gleaned, because normally we teach each other something.

Ah, I mean, I'd know I do there was gleaning going on. Oh, always. Oh, yeah, constantly. Oh, face mean, I know I do there was Gleen going on. Oh, always. Yeah, constantly. Call off. He's for Gleeners. Yeah, it's, it's, it's just how it's like a lemon party of learning. Yeah, well, it's our pledge in the beginning. And then yeah. So Ed, what have you gleaned? What have you gleaned? Um, I think I've just had my all already formed kind of my theories about the level of actual tactical thinking or strategic thinking on the part of most fascist. I've had my prevailing theory proven by the,

we just got out of jail. We're going to go through trouble and get ourselves but right back in jail again, story basically just just confirms my bias, which I feel like I feel very justified in that now. So I don't know if that makes me a bad liberal somehow, but I'm gonna go with that. And of course, I knew that Keith was, you know, a funny and the engine guy, and that's just been proven. I mean, he'd true, as well as insightful.

So yeah, that's pretty much what I'm taking away from this. Cool. Um, I remember after he published his book, I went to Berlin, and got an in argument with a history teacher from Manassas, and got an inargument with a history teacher from Manassas, as well as I think a few from one from Portland, one from other places, with varying degrees of being on the spectrum politically.

And all of them disagreed with me that punching Nazis was in fact a moral good. Some I think because in the same way, one of them probably because of the same reason that some people would say not all men. Right. Because you know, he said not all Nazis. He didn't, but you know, it was very much, you know,

that makes you just as bad as they are. And I'm like, they committed genocide. I'm saying break noses. Like I literally had people who are proposing to break commit. I've had my broken. I much prefer that to the possibility of my whole family being wiped out. And then there were other people are like, well, you know, I mean, they just hate because they're afraid. I'm like, make them more afraid. Like, let's do this. Let's, let's solidly make that a thing.

And it was after we had gone to the museum, the, what was I called, the topography of terror, which is the old SS building turned into a museum showing you how the Nazis grew. And I'm like, it was in English. Like they had it in German and English force. How were you not getting this? Like, you were seeing brown shirts, brown shirts, they as well have been skinheads. Yeah. Yeah. They marched women up and down in front of the public square with like placards saying,

I'm a race trader. I'm like, if you look, that's about 140 characters like. Yeah. You know, and there was somebody who is in that in there, she was a nice white lady from Ohio. And she even said, she's like, are you comparing our president to Nazis? And I said, yeah. How could you do that? I'm like, they have visual aids.

They made it really easy for me. It's right there. I'm, are you, are you not a social studies teacher? She's not a social teacher. Yeah, well see. Yeah, but this is kind of my jam. Right. This is what I do. Yeah, like parallels. What we need to discuss my toast is I'm coming to you, but and trust me. We're in my realm. Like, I don't know why you're here. Are you just going for beer gardens? What's going on? But, but then I did comedy there. And I started my, my, my, my set with it's so nice to be in a country that knows what to do with Nazis could do you have any tips that you could give us How'd that go over it went great. Oh my god the German the Colombian dominatius who was running the the open mic She the wonderful

Oh, well, it was as a showcase, but, you know, that changes at all. But she loved my set. One of the teachers who came with me loved the set. She's like, we walked all the way back to the hotel and she's like, you were amazing. And, you know, that was great. And I got to plug your book to several teachers who were in the listen.

So I'm hoping that your book has made it across the country because I made some friends. I clearly didn't make all the friends, but I made some friends. Well, my next book was gonna be called ADHD AF, but I'm just based on this conversation. I'm changing the name of it to punching teachers and other good. I'm an equivalent life.

You're going to get Nazis buying your book. That's what's going to happen. Because they're going in your office again. I really are. Yeah. So I've never, I never actually punched a teacher, but I haven't had a teacher hit me. I'm so sorry. teacher, but I haven't had a teacher hit me. I'm so sorry. I was the best. I'm a big half of our entire profession.

You know what's funny? I'm sorry. Of every teacher that I have a problem with, he's the one I have the most sympathy for where I was the best at shop team. I really was awful and he shoved me. He didn't even hit me. He shoved me.

And as he did it, I looked at him and he looked at me and we both knew like, okay, I have all the power now. Right? And he says to me, what do you want? And I said, give me an A and let me transfer out of your class and he goes an A and I said, see? And he's all a D, it's still passing. I was like, I'll say, yeah, sure.

I mean, if he punched you, you could argue for a B. You could argue for a day, yeah. And he got me into, into home act. And I was, boy in home act. And we had a dude in the middle. Oh, okay. And I was like, hanging out with a bunch of women eating cake, and he was, okay.

Oh, sorry. Yes, yes, I'm 110 eating cake. That is cake. I'm sorry. Yes, yes, I'm 110% gay. Coloring in the room full of women. Yeah. That's when we got to make delicious food every day. Yeah. I skipped the part where I made an apron that my mom still asked what place it was. You know, I'm. We took out.

Well, I was making cake, I think it all worked. Yeah, I was not meant for metal shop. And what's funny is just a few years earlier, my brother Eric had been his star student. He actually built a side car for his bicycle in Wattlesh. A working side car for his bicycle. That's pretty cool. You guys are excited to get another one of the

Jensen boys and I didn't go well. Well, in lieu of us telling everybody what we're reading, Keith, would you like to plug your book so that people know where they can find it, the full title, feel free to read the ISBN really slowly. What's nice about punching Nazis and other good ideas is that it was actually put out by Skyhorse Books and they are a big publisher, so it's very easy to find. You can go to any bookstore and ask for it. They don't have it, they'll get it for you, which was nice.

It's nice that it's very readily and easily available. But if you want to buy it directly from me, that's the best place to buy it. Come see me at a show. I always have it with me. I never perform without it. And then I'll sell you a copy at a discount and sign it. Very nice. If you want to mail you a signed copy, I will not. Okay. I don't want to talk with me, but I just can't put things in the mail. I and it wasn't until I got into my 40s that I accepted this about myself. I've been feeling many times to mail things that they had asked for. Yeah, but come see me live. I'll hook you up with a book. Is there a place that they can find where your performances are going to be

lives? Keith and Oldjensen.com. Okay. And I think, yeah, we're just Google my name. All right. Cool. And I said, I am still not fully back from the pandemic. You know, I'm not performing like I did pre-pandemic.

Still. No, all right. But I'm heading there. I'm okay. I'm getting that itch. You know, I had five shows last weekend. Like, oh, I remember how much I love this. So I mean, Johnny, you're talking about sweeping through Kentucky and some other places that have those beautiful little blue marble cities.

Yeah, absolutely. Nice. Find your people kind of things. Well, cool. Thank you very much for being on our show. For a geek history of time. Thank you. And I'm Damien Harmony. And I'm Ed Blalock. And until next time, keep punching Nazis. Amen. you