Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 308: Ramin Nazer
Episode Date: October 13, 2018Ramin Nazer, artist, comedian, and host of the [Rainbow Brainskull Hour](https://www.raminnazer.com/blogs/rainbow-brainskull-hour), joins the DTFH to discuss businesses that **REALLY CARE**, the rea...lity distortion of entertainment, and the how cool it is when your dumb parents _finally_ die. This episode is brought to you by [Squarespace](https://www.squarespace.com/duncan) (offer code: DUNCAN to save 10% on your first site). This episode is also brought to you by [Charlotte's Web CBD Oil](https://www.cwhemp.com/) (use offer code DUNCAN for 10% off your order).
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Hey look I'm sorry I know you told me not to do this anymore that I'm supposed to let
you go through the dream where you think you're a monkey descendant but um I miss you and
I know I always do this I guess it's I should I know it's rude I'm sorry it's selfish what
am I even doing let if somebody okay I'm sorry I swear I'm not I'm gonna go right back
in to being the person that you're dreaming that I am a podcaster why did you make me
a podcaster in your dream you could have made me a high-pitched but you made me a podcaster
so I'm just gonna I know I have a rotten voice but I'm just gonna see the song that you used
to see me when I was sleeping and and then I swear I'm just gonna go right back to being
Duncan Trussell man what a weird what a weird name what a weird dream you are a very very
strange dream and I'm really sorry I'm sorry I always do this I miss you
you're all just riverbeds for a love older than time and all of this love touches eerie
finds those dark clouds inside of you that you've been hiding from they're the things
that make this river run you're a squid inside the warps suspended above a fountain hey what's
up guys it's me Duncan Trussell and you are listening to the Duncan Trussell family hour
podcast I'm really sorry if you're getting like some kind of like background hum I've got a UFO
that has been hovering over my backyard for the last I don't know two days and it's beautiful it
looks exactly like UFOs look in pictures silver disk it's truly the most beautiful thing that I
have ever seen in my life and I can't believe that I've been given the great honor of witnessing
it I love the UFO and I'm really excited that it's hovering around me but it is a little
frustrating because I would like to be able to talk about all the aspects of the UFO and some of
the things that I've seen inside the UFO and some of the things that the UFO is helping me construct
and some of the beings within the UFO but I signed an NDA don't do that the truth of the matter is
that the UFO captains know what they're doing and I trust them I trust their strategies and I know
that they know the best way to colonize this planet and I'm gonna help them if I can but until
then let's do a commercial sweet friends if you've listened to this podcast for any amount of time
you know I sometimes I try to do like you know creative commercials but I've run into a weird
paradox which is that one one I'm truly one of my favorite companies Charlotte's web
onto the podcast and I have to be very careful about how I talk about it so I'm just gonna read
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do I find it odd that I live in the dimension where I have to be careful when I talk about
hemp extract oils yes I'm not gonna rage against the machine here though it would be very easy for me
to point out the Kafka level absurdity in the fact that I cannot talk about
certain things related to hemp extract oil that I would like to talk about because of the time period
they were in but I'm honestly grateful that Charlotte's web hemp extract oil is available
these days because when I was growing up it wasn't Charlotte's web is offering a unique
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by cwebsite for details research research these statements have not been evaluated by the food
and drug administration this product is not intended to diagnose treat cure or prevent
any disease a massive thank you to the lord of procrastination Carleton Blanche
for sponsoring not only this podcast but also everything that I've ever done
I really appreciate all of your help in keeping me from finishing things boy does it feel good
to procrastinate also a big thank you to my sweet patreon patrons I worship you
and I love you and of course I am your eternal servant and I hope you continue to show me the
right way to be your many spankings and wonderful corrections have taught me how to truly be an
obedient servant to your iron will if you'd like extra episodes of the DTFH if you're interested
in hearing me ramble for an hour or more in a disorganized way or if you just feel like listening
to half baked songs that I'm excited about only because I just recently learned how to use Ableton
or if you just want to hang out on the discord server which is connected to the DTFH why not
head over to patreon.com forward slash DTFH also we have got a whole bunch of new stuff in the shop
in fact all new stuff check it out by going to dunkitrussell.com and we've got some new stuff
coming including I'm pretty sure ghost cubes which will allow you to haunt your house this is one of
the main complaints these days because of the problem of new construction and the extension of
the human lifespan as well as what appears to be a general diminishment in the violent crimes that
created so many wonderful ghosts that so many families are enjoying in their very haunted homes
a lot of us don't get to have a poltergeist wraith or any kind of specter in our house you
got an unhaunted house it's very similar to having an unheated hot tub it's like really
nothing there just feels good and cheery and warm and light and bright there's not a heavy resounding
sense of something horrific there's no smells of boiling blood and no sounds in the middle of the
night no footsteps walking across your floor no sleep paralysis and of course you never get that
wonderful sound of a laughing child when you get up at night to stand in front of the mirror and moan
go over to dunkintrestle.com and just click on the store link and you'll see a lot of stuff we don't
have the cubes in there yet also i'm not positive they're going to be cubes they could be tetrahedrons
decadohedrons quadrahedrons or any of the various wonderful and amazing hydrants that are showing
up these days they could also be triangles or pretty much any shape including ambiguous shapes
or shape shifting things such as balloons filled with mayonnaise we'll find out i don't know i'm
still waiting for the shipment to come in it's uh not not quite as easy as you might expect
to harvest ghosts especially in countries where the regulations are a little different you end up
you know trying to get a batch of poltergeists and you end up with demons or banshees which of
course uh we're not allowed to sell in america yet but hopefully as uh the wonderful deregulation
that happens continues i will be able to sell all varieties of spiritual entities but until
then we're going to just do your basic moaning ghosts and some poltergeists and we'll see we'll
see friends we have got a wonderful podcast for you today these days one form of art that i really
appreciate is the kind that uh simultaneously transmits deep inspirational dharmic ideas without
seeming sanctimonious naive idealistic or just generally sappy as someone who has deeply guilty
of um transmitting some spiritual message that is wrapped up in all kinds of
melodrama and uh extra sap i really love it when i find an artist who
is conveying really big ideas in a simple way that is also beautiful edgy cool and just grabs
your heart and pulls it out of the ice cave that it might be imprisoned in temporarily because
you are afraid to melt the ice cave as abraham lincoln used to say today's guest
is one of those kinds of artists not only is he a hilarious comedian he's also a prolific
progenitor of beautiful beautiful comics and books and pictures and also a pretty amazing
podcast which i've had the good fortune to appear on it's called the rainbow brain skull hour
and it is at his website which is located at ramine nasir.com that's r-a-m-i-n-n-a-z-e-r.com
i'm gonna have links to that at dunkintrussell.com but i would invite you to take a deep dive into the
wonderful ocean of art and comedy that this sweet human being is exploding into our dimension
now without further ado please stretch your wings out jump off of that rugged cliff face that you've
been clinging to and fly straight into the glowing beautiful hypercolored undulating hypnotic spiral
of sweet compassionate glorious love that makes up every single atom in today's guest body a massive
welcome to ramine nasir
um
You
You
You
Ramin
Welcome to the DTFH this episode is brought to you by square mattress square mattress is the only sure design you can get on
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You know how every every company has a Twitter like personality now like everything is kind of funny every
Every brand has a voice and it's right. That's the new thing, right? Yeah, it's going to just that's not gonna go anywhere
You think it's like you're gonna meet Wendy for met Wendy's well
We have to deal with it. It's like, you know the thing is is like all right. Well, they're not quite hypnotized anymore
They are aware of the fact that ultimately what's happening is it could be anything
But we're just trying to draw their attention to this particular thing because the more attention we get on this particular thing
The more we can convert that attention into money and the money is what pays for everything
So they know that kind of now. It's not serious anymore. Like yeah, you know, so you you know the serious commercials
When you see them kind of feels like wait, what the fuck like what are you guys talking about?
Like serious commercials all state cares all state gives a shit everyone else doesn't that's a terrible impression of it
But whatever I love terrible impressions perfect impression or the new one is actually the apology commercial
What's that one like uber and like some companies? Oh, yeah
Moving forward. We actually care now. Yeah, we fucked up remember when Domino's like just completely
Redid their whole pizza recipe like we're starting from scratch and it's so weird that no one there was no public outcry
They're like no bring back the original recipe not a peep. Everyone was like, yeah, okay cool change your whole
Recipe we weren't pizza. We don't care man. We're gonna keep eating it. It's like a phone number that I know
It's like a website. I can easily get to
But yeah, so now it's like and you see it also
You know at the Emmys wrestle with it a little bit like you see any anything that is
attempting to
Give an aura of
authority or importance
these days
Seems a little ridiculous. Yeah, can you tell me about the Emmys because I don't know anything about what that?
You mean it's like trying to get serious of like and we care and we're going to save the climate change thing because we're actors
You mean that kind of thing. So the Emmys are like, well, I mean, you know the the business we're both in is
I guess one way you could put it is it's like a part of what we do is
reality distortion, you know, so
Comedian a dramatic actor a
Producer-director-writer anybody
Uh-huh
Generally, who's like creating some form of entertainment is in some way shape or form
emulating reality and then distorting it to some degree even
News reporters do that too. Yeah, you know to make it entertaining. So
The Emmys are a gathering of people who are experts at distorting reality. It's a it's a room filled with some of the greatest
reality distortion
Wizards, yeah, and they all wear black and they all wear black but to celebrate that their craft of distorting reality for
Us because we love to watch
Distorted realities. I do. I mean, oh, yeah fucking movies are the best thing ever love it only getting better
Yeah, only getting better
And so that's the Emmys the Emmys is when all the great reality distortion wizards of the kingdom gather together
To get to celebrate the best reality distortors. Yeah, and so
And because their craft is, you know, truly magical in the sense that like not only are they
Distorting reality, but from the reality distortion that they're doing it produces ripples in matter
So, you know, one of the sad examples of it is whenever a talking Chihuahua movie comes out
People adopt Chihuahuas because the kids see it and they're like mommy. I want a chihuahua or like with the owl and Harry Potter
There's so many abandoned owls when Harry Potter movies came out
There was a big spike in owl purchases and then when they turned 18 or whatever and had to go to college like a lot of like
What am I gonna do with this fucking owl? That's it. Yeah, that's the that's one of the
byproducts of some great reality distortion is that it ends up getting things killed and
Or abandoned, you know or or you know in a less sinister way of saying it is it just produces
Turns a phrase, you know, so all of a sudden people will start saying groovy, baby all over the fucking place like what the fuck it's like
the great reality distortion wizards they
You know create entertainment and entertainment is sticky and it reflects into the minds of the people and then the people
imitated so you get these for a little bit the
The great mass of humanity in whatever country your thing is the most popular in
begins to
reflect the thing you made and
Evolve that thing like kind of like what you're saying with like the new form of commercials, which is yeah, we're seeing these absurdist
commercials that are you know all kind of like
Replicating this absurdist form, you know and that
trend is
really interesting because when you think about it, it's like okay, so I
Don't know. Can you think of something that's super popular right now and in the culture?
What's something that's like Ariana Grande? Okay, Ariana Grande fidget spinners, or I'm probably late on that
That's probably 2015. Let's go like so like Ariana Grande
Slime slimes huge with 12 year olds line. There you go. Okay slime so
Slime the creation of slime
Making slime selling slime all of that stuff like some really cool fucking nanny or babysitter mom
Figured out a way to mix. I don't know how you make it
It's like cornstarch and something makes no idea that you can make it pretty easily
Yeah, it's like it's something that seems like you don't want kids hands in it
But it's actually safe like borax or some shit. I can't remember don't do it by the way sound safe
I don't remember don't do that. I don't know how you make slime
But you so like so, you know suddenly around some certain homes people are making slime
Right and this is all happening because of the internet and you get slime
Like recipes and like because you go to the store and you see slime for sale and you're like whoa, that's it's cool
And then you realize like wait, I can make this shit and then you start making it at home, right? And so
What in inevitably starts happening is
They're these scouts that are sent out into the
smaller
Shared reality tunnels of people and so the scouts in some way or another pick up like okay. Yeah, they're doing slime
Are they doing slime slime? Yeah, and then that
Becomes a trend so the idea is like if I can predict
cultural trends
Before they like really get big then I can start producing slime and have it out there
Right when the wave peaks. Yeah, and so then now I'm gonna sell the most slime
Right. So anytime you see a thing that's popular what you're looking at is actually the beginning of the things end. Oh, yeah
it is it's so especially with comedy and it's
You see so many jokes that were like
Just I don't want to say being useful. Whatever. Yeah, just like people saying like oh
That's a thing or said no one ever like said no one ever was just oh, that's so funny
And then you see you know an all-state ad using it and then of course it's over and I always think of a
Commercial in ten years like you and I will probably think it's so funny if someone showed it to us now a commercial from ten years ago
That's taking comedy from five years from now. Did I say that right? Yeah a commercial that's or it'll probably be accelerating even more
By then it'll probably just do you get that feeling of especially in recent times of like oh, man
I learned more in the last year than I did in the last ten years and then oh, man
I learned more in the last month and I learned in the last year
Oh, man
I learned more in the last week than in the last month and it's just like that constantly like McKenna refers to it as the
the history as a
Basketball dropped and then it hits once then that time before it hits again again again again again until it's just going to be like
Flickering so fast that it'll just feel like now again
I think the changes are happening so quick that it'll eventually be so quick that it feels like not change again
Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about like if a light flickers very very fast
It looks like it's not flickering. It just looks like that's what your TV does
I think it's just a bunch of flickering
At least the old-school TV that cathode ray type TV. I it's it's like such a cool
Thing that you're talking about and the way to like really and there needs to be a word for the
strange woozy feeling that comes from observing a thing from
Like 10 or 15 years ago and looking at it and realizing like this is fucking weird
Oh, man. Have you been to my 80s TV comm or my 70s TV comm or my 90s TV?
So it's it's just a TV on your browser and you have a channel flipper that you can go through like
You know the music station and the comedy station the game show station
Commercials you can filter it out
but what you get to do is you get to see a whole decade in its entirety and
If someone stood out as like the best artists of that decade during that time
They still just sound like a 90s performer or they just sound like an 80s performer
It's got its own flavor and the 2000s or it hasn't settled yet. It's like wine or something
It's got to sit for a little bit before we look back and be like, oh, yeah
The early 2000s did have a yeah flavor didn't it and I'm sure this one does too and yeah
It's really fun to look at especially commercials like in the 70s
There's a commercial for just dove soap like a bar of soap and that's like the the beginning of now
There's a billion women's like soap products. You need this specific type of thing like there's never an ad for just
Buy this bar of soap and rub it on your body. That seems just so pedestrian now
It's yeah, you need like 18 of them
But back then it was like do you want to be beautiful then own soap use soap on your body
Yeah, this is cool because you you know, we do this thing with like what are the ice cores, you know
You can like or I actually just read this. What's ice cores ice cores when you pull up ice from the like ancient ice
You can look at the different layers of the ice and tell what the world was like
How hot what think what things were happening or another way to put it is sedimentary layers or I just read this awesome
article about the
Magnetic shift that happens on the planet and how they figured this out by finding a stalagmite tight
No, he's getting confused. I don't remember which is which the stalagmite stalactite problem
One comes from the ground one comes from the roof of a cave, but tight and might tight and might okay
But also a wonderful comedy duo
Fucking hilarious, but the so the iron filaments and these stalagmites or tights. It's some point
Change direction that you can actually see the iron filaments changing direction based on the
Shift of the poles. Do you know how often it shifts? Well, that's one of the scary ideas. I think this one happened
150,000 years ago 90,000 years ago, but I think one of the arguments is the shifting is
Slow in the sense and because in geologic time over 150 years is not a long time
Yeah, so to see it shift that quickly is really like fucking weird because all of our technology is based on the poles
being a certain way and if the if the
shit shifted
All of a sudden then we would like a lot of what we use to run society would no longer function in the way
We need it to function. So anyway, the point is these cultural stalactites, which are the
the digitized records of things that
Exit are on the internet now actually show us the
Sort of cultural north and south the cool
And we could see where the filaments were being drawn to this thing or that thing, you know
And at that time the influencers were people who had access to the technology, right?
So NBC ABC CBS Paramount Warner Brothers the studios is their call these things
They had access to the tech and the tech is the what creates the magnetism, which draws the culture, you know
Oh, yeah, right, right and now we all have access to the tech
So we're dealing with all these fucking magnets that are all over the fucking place. So everybody's compass is going spinning around
Yeah, there is no central thing anymore, and it's good
It's good, but it's a little fucking confusing if you're somebody who's entire existence or
Modalities was you know being taught to you by the studios by the state. That was another compass, you know the school systems
You know you go into school. It's a compass. It's like it's a rather. It's a magnet. It's like here's what's
Law
Here's what's good. Here's what's bad
Yeah, but for the space cadets like you and I and listeners of this podcast like because I imagine at least
98% of listeners of this podcast are space cadets. I don't know. They've got to be
Like I think they're gonna they're they're gonna be fine and the upcoming changes because we're already spaced out anyway and thinking about this stuff
But the people in like the very rigid state are having the most trouble with it
Well, this is a problem because what so I was just having this great conversation with a friend of mine
Jason Lou he's really cool. Oh, yeah, ultra culture.org. Yeah. Yeah, I gotta
Man, we were chatting you should have him on your show. He's wonderful, but we were talking about
You know a thing that happens to people like us as space cadets as you call them when you're young
So you sort of like look around and you see people who are like in a deep hypnotic trance, right?
Now you like to pretend you're not in one you're in a different type of trance and they are but at the time you're like
I'm not that trance. Yeah classic cheesy movie example that I think really did just like impact a lot of us
Sort of like psychedelic
Narcissists who all wanted to be Jesus at the time was when Jim Morrison climbs on top of the car in the doors movie and says
And we see that
Man
But what we would do is we wouldn't get on the car we'd go to the shopping malls, right?
And we would like take acid and we'd look around to the people and they're sort of like
Materialistic hypnotic state with their bags or doing the mall walking thing and just
experiencing the uncanniness of that level of consumerism through the lens of like LSD or whatever
Yeah, that's how we would do it, right?
But the point is on top of that because we've been given a kind of extra footing so to speak which is like we had
tethered ourselves from the
Gravity well of whatever was being you know broadcast by the studios or by the corporations
We then had this extra little ability to sort of go to these people who were in a trance stay and fuck with them
Right. Yeah, and so for a lot of us that it for me. This is what I was telling
Jason is like I can remember I was like, you know
Just I've been like doing a lot of like going back into my past and like thinking
Remembering stuff, but one of the things I can remember you feel like it's it's coming back more like you're being able to remember
More of your past as you get older
Well, I'm what it is is like because now that both my parents are dead. I can free finally I can
For many people that is
That's just a joke. I mean I just yeah, oh god
It's not I mean the thing about it is the only the only reason I clarified a joke because of course
It's a joke, but I'm just wondering if it could be construed as like oh he wishes his parents are dead
Of course, I don't wish my parents were oh
Well, I mean watch watch out my friend explore that a little bit more
There's a the thing is we exist on so many different levels. How many times do you have you?
I mean, I don't know if you ever did it, but certainly one thing that a
Toddler in the midst of a kid in a chantra might yell at their mom or dad. I wish you were dead
Oh, yeah, of course
That's like saying cunt when you're a toss I have us
I have a very clear memory of like telling my mom like you hate me and like the I
Remember her face like changing in that moment because the toddler or not toddler, but little little little me was anticipating her
Trying to convince like no no, I'd you know coming back with something
But the amount at which it hurt her and like shocked her in that moment stuck me for oh man forever
I'm like, oh, I'll never I'll never say that to anyone again. That's not a that's that's even though it's tiny
It's still manipulative and not good and of course not true unless you do have one of those parents that you know
The secret hating there's a there's a little bit of them, right? There's
What's there's a term for it? It's an Italian term like the mother that
Spights the that is mean to the kids to spite the father. There's like a specific old term for it
I don't know if only Daniela Bolleli was here. He would maybe know it. Oh, I mean the the the variety of
strange games being played in the human nests all around this planet
I think are as infinite as grains of sand on the beach. There's so many different strains
I mean when you say, you know, look at my mom's face when I said I
What is it? What is it? She said to you? Oh, I said I said to her
You hate me because she was trying to get me to practice violin, which is of course in my in my benefit
Yeah, but you know again like so now you've got this so your mom looks you mom here's that
She this triggers all kinds of things in her feelings of like fuck. I must not be a good parent or oh my god
What am I doing wrong or all this stuff? She reacts, right?
But you see a thing that trembles in her face
You don't know what that's connected to that could be connected to some memory of her mom her dad
That could be connected to some past trauma
But because you're a little kid and you see that look on her face
You think I have caused this ripple in the pond you didn't cause it you just said a certain thing
But you're a kid whatever you're saying come on am I gonna really take it that seriously? Yeah, you're shooting foam arrows, baby
It's like the thing is when that foam arrow hit your mom it rippled the pond you see the ripple
I must have done it
I'll never do that again because kids are hyper fucking sensitive, right anyway
The point is all those little moments that happen to us there's a little micro traumas happen to us
Based on the way the environment reacts to us as children form the way we act in the world
You know everybody's like I want to look at my past lives. Yeah, it's tough at first, but I'm drawn back to
This is when I first learned about who you were
I think it was early Joe Rogan experience and he's talking about how he let you stay at his place when you were going through a bad
Breakup or something and you were going in his flotation tank for the first time and you try to hide stuff from yourself
But if you're in that flotation tank, it's going to especially if you eat an edible or something before
It's going to bring out every little thing from your past and show it to you like what's what's this thing?
How can we haven't talked about this? What's what's this one? Oh, this is a big juicy one. Let's talk about this
There's no escaping it
You
You
You
You
You
You
You
Yeah, that's right and and all those things are like
You know many of many people see these things as
Something to be avoided for their entire lives and or they have to avoid it because they can't look at it
You know because it's it's like you're not ready to deal with it, you know and
I think probably at that phase. I was like summoning up a
pretty
Idealistic idea of how memories work or you know, but you talking about flotation tank you
Okay, because I also want you to go back to when you were saying that your your parents died
And then I said finally and because I wanted you to finish that thought too because I'm I try to be a I try to be a
concept Sherpa and like get
Like revisit the stuff we might have missed in case the listener is like what happened to that thing that I was listening to
A minute ago one thing I hope is by now my listeners know that like you never might believe in that
We could definitely end up in some weird tributary. Yeah, it's mr. Toad's wild ride for sure. No, but
the essence of the thing is
And this isn't a concept I'm working with right now and it does connect to your
Finally that your parents have died which by the way
You said it as a joke
but
There are
Countless people on this very day
Whose mother or father has passed away after a long battle with this thing or that thing and
One piece of them is going finally
For sure and then that piece chirps up and they think that's all of them and so they're like my god
I must be a monster. It's like no, that's just a piece of you. That's okay to think that
It's okay to think that because that is a part of it. We do
celebrate sometimes when our parents pass away because
the
Death is
For the living a very very very difficult process and there is a relief that comes now
Anyway, that being said and some people man, they're actually celebrate when their parents die
because their parents are
Were like abusers. Yeah, and there's a sense of being like freed, you know, so
the
past
the
exploration of the past is
Our own personal past. I think is a very very
Worth while exploration, right and I've been thinking about it in terms of
inheriting a
Familial home
Okay, dude, I love this fucking game darkest dungeon. Have you played that game? No for what steam? It's on steam. Okay, is it new?
It's old. It's an old RPG. It's an old Lovecraftian horror RPG
Where you go back home?
You're you've been summoned back to your familial home this old decrepit fucking like
Manor house and you have to go into the dungeons and the
Attics and the forests and gather up relics and heirlooms that are somehow become scattered all about and you don't know
What's going on? You don't really know what you're you figure it out as it happens, but it's a classic HP Lovecraft shit
It's like, you know, it's it's really
Really what I love so much about the game is it's incredibly difficult and you get one life
So you have all these various characters when they die. They're dead. You don't get them back
It saves on the cloud the fucking guys are dead
so
But then also what I like about it is the encounters that happen
Can you say that again? It goes in they go in the cloud after you die you get a random saves it
You don't see you like in other words like you're not auto saving
But which which guy dies your player will you assemble parties?
So you have this never-ending roster of people who keep coming into the town in a caravan
To try to make money helping you do this work of essentially
Oh, so it's trying to set it up that if a person dies, it's like that actual randomly generated person is gone
Okay, I like that you just one life. You have one life. It's a game where you have one life
I like it to go back
So any fucking decision you make is permanent, but then also the characters they go insane
Right so because they're stressed of seeing these horrific beings and the shadows there
They actually start losing their fucking minds and you have to put them in like mental
Asylums and you have to like they get diseased. It's just a fun game, right? But I love that game
not just because it's fun, but because it's like
When you begin to go down into your past, it's very similar. You're going back. There's all these relics
Scattered in your past, right? Yeah, a lot of those relics are buried underneath
layers of amnesia
Layers of shit that intentional distraction from people in your life who didn't want you to remember that or see it because it's so bad
Yeah, or just you know protective membranes constructed by your psyche because you can't deal with it and so
This is the thing man, you know, so many people are
Going to hypnotists or doing their own meditative practices to try to remember their past lives
While not going into their
fucking life's past
Dude who gives a fuck if you were Napoleon
How about the fucking fact that you know when you were 11 years old you were exposed to hard core pornography?
How about that? How did that? Yeah as opposed to seven, which is when you're supposed to get it nowadays
But no, you don't have to be so like that's a purse personal and anecdote like so the
the
exploration of the past is a
very
Scary for some people it is like taking a lantern and going down
Do you ever have you how far back have you gone personally?
Can you do you ever end up uncovering stuff that like wow?
I thought the earliest I could remember was three, but it turns out I have a little bit of a memory when I'm two I
Dude my like I you know my
Now that my parents have passed I'm like able to like open this vault up and really go deep down in there
so it's like
The so far I can like tell you the exact you mean just mentally or going through objects
So like I can like I've actually been sort of charting it out. I think I have it here somewhere
I've I've like gotten back to I
Was born in 1974
So I can get back to
Right around
You know with scattered memories here or there on 1982, okay
And then I can sort of like wait six is your earliest memory
What's that? I think I was eight right eight your earliest well not earliest
I've got early early once right, but eight's where it all starts getting real clear
That's when the divorce happened before that it's a big old fucking fog
Scary fog to you. So that's what I'm kind of like working on like are you the only child brother?
That's right. Okay. You are your parents brother. Yeah, they're together your parents have been together your whole life. Uh-huh
Wow, okay, cool. Yeah, I remember a couple of like serious fights, but never like not I think there's there's
There's bickering sometimes, but it's never like
Anything more than you'd see in any other marriage, but I've had together parents. It's been good in that sense
Good and did you guys?
Move around a lot. We moved from Sarnia, Ontario to Edmonton, Alberta in Canada
Then all the way to Lake Jackson, Texas
Then I went to college in Austin, Texas then here in LA
So I had like half Canada and then half like small town. Why the move?
Dad's job. What was the job?
Chemical engineer for Dow Chemical
Well, your dad's smart your parents are smart is your mama? Uh-huh. Yeah
My mom's got a PhD in physics actually
But she ended up not doing that which is funny because I always try to talk to her about
Quantum physics stuff because I'm like I said space cadet and I'll watch like a nasim haremine
Holo fractal like two-hour lecture about why you know
The proton is the jewel of Indra's net and like why all the information in the proton is the same as though the whole thing
And I like try to show her this thing. It's like have you seen this? Have you seen that we're all but she's just much more into
Newtonian like material science like cares more about that and I'm just so much more woo woo
So it's always this interesting dynamic
It tests out my knowledge of of that woo woo because it's easy to watch something whether it's pyramid
Stuff or or holo fractal or simulation theory and then be inspired by it and have it light you up
And then to go talk to someone who hasn't seen that video try to relay what you just saw to them that tests what you're
What your understanding of it is and it's good for you. It's a fucking physicist
I mean, it's like it's not like you're going to your you know
I mean it's like you're going to your friends and like relaying some shit
It's like somebody who's got a trained scientific mind. Yeah, he's gonna hear whatever it is that you have to say and like
Look at it like I don't know man like let's explore it a little deeper and then the next thing you know
It's like oh shit. Yeah, it's just sounds cool, right?
But I think it's there you can stand in two places
You can stand in the material and it's real or you can stand in the ethereal or spiritual or whatever
The word you want to call it the not material and they're both just as real as the other
But they're on opposite sides of the coin so if you're standing on one you're not
Standing on the other, you know that Joseph Campbell quote where it's at the end of a long thing
But he goes like are you the light shining out of the bulb or are you the bulb?
And I asked that to my mom and she's like the bulb and I was like, oh
It's so funny that you'd pick the bulb as the answer and not
Not the light shining out of the bulb. Do you remember when you were coming up?
Your parents explained to you the scientific method or did you when they were teaching you as a child?
Do they like try to impart a kind of
Rationalistic approach to interpreting reality not overly like I guess
We would
They wouldn't try to like push religion away because there wasn't like a lot of religious like coming into me
I guess there was just kind of nothing
But my mom loved Carl Sagan and they just loved sci-fi and and books and we had a telescope and would look at the stars
And be like that's Jupiter and that's like, you know a hundred thousand times bigger
I know it's not a hundred thousand times bigger than earth whatever size bigger than earth
It is they would describe that and then I think when I started to meet religious people or when I went to Bible camp for a
Few weeks because I was staying with family friends
And then we went to this Bible camp thing and when I'm learning all these new concepts of like God is everywhere
God can hug you right now if you reach out your arms you can hug
God and then I remember going to my dad and asking like what is what's all of this stuff here?
And then then you had to say like yeah, don't tell anybody this but I'm what they call an atheist
So I don't I don't believe in that stuff, but people are sensitive about it
And you know no one knows the answer. So I mean he's really wise
Philosophically and isn't to poetry and room me and all that kind of stuff. Oh, yeah, the best dad. Yeah, holy shit
What a perfect response. I'm putting that in the fucking soon to be a dad bank. Oh, yeah
Do you think about like I mean really there's not much you can do but there's so many parents thinking about like how am I gonna stop?
My kids from seeing, you know, adult things. How am I gonna stop them from seeing porn or violence?
Like I don't know man. How so their eyes shut
I'm gonna cover my child's head with a sackcloth
What about in 2032 when they can transmit images directly into the brain not through the the retinal
Cavity 2032. Yeah, you know probably sooner. I'm just giving that ballpark. I'm gonna use a
quadrillion lance to disrupt his
synaptic cleft to prevent him from receiving any kind of data from the
He just blocked that with a level three cloak of fuck you dad
That's gonna be so cool just I mean you've probably already thought of all this but he gets a record
Your your your son that's not even born yet, which he's maybe just floating around in the DMT world or something right now
He exists just he hasn't come come into or the soul is in the womb or who knows the things
But he has so much record of his father
Speaking like there's you on record saying yeah, we're trying to have a kid right now
And then there's you on record on a podcast going like yeah
And we're gonna have a kid now
And he's got a record of him talking to his grandma that he never got to meet with his dad. That's super cool
He's got all this he probably won't care when he's seven or nine or something
But oh man like when he's a little bit older
That's a big like treasure trove of like look at all these conversations of like we don't have that you and I don't have that
No, we don't I mean we do have it. It's just the way we have it is in a different form
But it's it's like seven black and white photos or something
I think it's like epigenetics and like there's a way to like come commune with them probably but it's the
the
Trick I'm trying to use when it comes to my son
is
To be in the moment and so the mind wants to prognosticate
Well, fuck what am I gonna do when he's a teenager? What I'm gonna do when he wants to drive
What am I gonna do if he like wants to play football?
All these things you know George Harrison's son was in a military school and like that drove his dad quite crazy
Just that all of it. Yeah, all the potential things, but I keep thinking like well if there's a what one thing
I would love to impart
on him is the
Wonderful quality of the present moment and that we can plan and it's good to plan
But it's better to be like in this place, you know and
To teach that you have to be in it as much as you can
So that's one thing is like I just you know when my mind starts trying thinking about this shit
It's like let's just be here right now. Yeah, and then when I'm with my wife
You know and I and I'm laying with her and I'm like talking to my son through a belly
You know, it's like I'm here now. We're here now and then or you know, this is where we are now
Yeah, that's what it is and otherwise man. I'm gonna freak the fuck
Idea some goddamn teen
Yeah, you can't operate in that way and we all we all know not all of us
But I guess you and I know that we have to be here now and it's all about the present moment
But like I'm sure you experience the fading of of that stuff, right?
Like the first time you read be here now and you read about Bogvandos telling him like don't worry about the future be here now
Don't worry about the past be here now and then it resonates with you
But then after a few months that books on your shelf and you're having trouble being here now
Even though the book says be here now and it's got all the that's an interesting thing to bring up
Which is it, you know, I think of this in terms of this is when the gravy is congealed, right?
So like we've got this wonderful
It's kind of a gross example. Scoot do it talking slime gravy congeals
It like you get a gravy if like you're at somebody's Thanksgiving dinner
And they got gravy and it's been sitting there too long it gets this gross film on the top
Right and so when it comes to ideas of the present moment or be here now or any of that shit the shit congeals
In your mind, so it's like you're like, I don't even know what that even you don't even know what it means anymore
Yeah, because it's your because the present moment is now
It's not the present moment that you experienced two years ago like that present moment. This is now now this one rules
Yeah, this is I'm on I'm on the DTF H
Yeah, I'm I'm literally on the DTF H right now. Yeah, and listener. You're listening to the DTF H
That's like that's a good moment right there. You found an episode
here, yeah, exactly and
That thing
You know it like finding it is it's like a wonderful
Easter egg
Hunt which is like all this right now is fucking cool, man. I'm getting to hang out with you. I'm here in my studio
It's nice. It's but you know at some point
Turbulence will come right and it'll seem crazy and all these things will happen to us
Our minds are gonna be pulled in a million different directions
Yeah, that place we go back wait. I think oh here it is again
And then you find it. Yeah, right, but it's just this is now and
This now is so wonderful and this now is actually all you got like
Marcus Aurelius, have you read any Marcus Aurelius? I've seen gladiator
Is that what you're referring to? Is Marcus Aurelius the emperor and gladiator?
Isn't he I thought he was the Russell Crowe character, but I'm a dumbass. Oh, no Marcus Aurelius was an emperor. No, you're not dumbass
But it's funnier to say that, you know talk about your art yet, man, but like Marcus Aurelius
Is a stoic philosopher emperor guy who
Was max Aurelius the guy, I don't know. I don't know
I don't you know I
For some reason I did enjoy gladiator, but I can't remember too much of it
Now doesn't seem like he'd quote or it doesn't seem like he's the quote kind of guys more like the silent wise kind of guy
But go on what's his quote?
Well, the quote is more like it's not the idea is like this frame that you're in right now is
It this is it this is where you're at and so a lot of people get really connected to
One thing that I in the past have been very
Really stupidly thought
Is when I die
I lose
My past so when I was conceiving death
I was conceptualizing death
Is the complete
Disengagement or collapse of all the other moments that have passed right? Yeah now this is
Absolutely insane
Because those moments have already passed
They're gone. Yeah, and people can think of death. I'm like, I'm gonna lose it all. No, no, it's gone
You're dead. It died. It's gone. Bye. Bye. It's gone. It's just stored up in your mind
Now what there is is this moment and then there's your mind, right?
And the mind is going into this vast
Library or familial mansion
Right, and it's pulling out books
And it's reading the books
Into the present moment. Yeah
This is the play of what you are
So scared and numb of your name and what you like and you you did and how it happened and oh, fuck
You're gonna get fucked when you do that thing. Why just say what did you do?
You know, that's the temple of the self is these weird monks pulling down strange tomes that have been
Written neurologically and stored in this archive and they're pulling the fucking tomes out
And they're like, there's a person who's gonna hurt you. Don't you see the pattern you're in
Don't trust that person. This reminds me the person who did the thing, right? And so that's
That's what we're doing. We're basically dropping these colored neurological memory drops into the present moment
Yeah, and that is what defines us as a being, right? So anyway, oh man, I like that a lot the um
You you've heard a lot of Eckhart toll, right? Yeah
The the one that helped me a lot was the way he described that
Anything in the future
Even if it's in the future 100 years from now or 10 weeks from now or whatever is going to be experienced as the present moment
No matter which place you're in everything you experience is as present moment. So if you don't that's right
If you don't train to do that then you're not going to do well in the other one. So there's only one place you can
train
This is it
Oh man
and and you know to like the the
Marcus Aurelius
The stoics they remind us of that. So it's just like this reminder of like, okay
Why are they called stoics because they just sat and thought great fucking no
No, the term stoic is that that comes after I don't know why they ended up calling stoicism what it is
There was like a whole branch of philosophy that like
I always thought of is like, oh that must mean it's austere
But it seems to be it reminds me a lot of like greek buddhism or greek Taoism, you know, it's just more
Based on like but it's the weird thing is Marcus Aurelius. I think tortured christians, but i'm not sure. Oh good
See going with the parent-dead thing again
It's the it's the easiest and kind of most fun if you're around the right people
Thing and I guess jim norton does it a lot. He's not the only one but just the
Anytime anyone says anything just if you say the most horrible thing you can think of just immediately afterwards
It's like, you know, if someone's saying like, oh, what should I what should I do this afternoon hang hang yourself?
Yeah, yeah, that's mitzi or gary shanling. I kill you. So yeah that thing the darkling trip. It's like
Dude, I did that for a while. I still do it sometimes like it's fun to like, you know
Pull out a dead cat in the middle of the party or whatever and then it's just like I have to analyze my like the intentions behind it
you know, it's like
What it's okay to pull a dead cat out though
And some people are really good at it. I like particularly jim norton man like when like to see the
hissing horror
In the eyes of people who have been offended by one of norton's characters or just
General sense of disease or like when you if you're lucky enough and you get offended by jim norton, you know
Like if that moment happens where you're actually
That's a joy, you know, I love that feeling but
Yeah, that queasy feeling is so cool and somewhat to master it like administering that sense of nausea
Uh, whatever you want to call it. It's fucking cool, man. But it's to you know, the you you are
You know
Something that I am
Perplexed about because you're so many different things, you know, and I only understand some of them
One of the one of them in particular your art
Holy fucking shit, man. Oh, thank you. You you you you have produced
uh
A really beautiful way of transmitting
What I consider to be the great data
Uh, the the or you know, it sounds so cheesy to say no keep keep going dharma
You know through your art and in the way you're doing it is
I think uh skillful means, you know, which is that when I'm looking at your art
and I'm
Reading the points that you're making
I don't feel like you're being sanctimonious, you know, I don't feel like I feel like it makes sense
It's inspiring and what's really the other thing that I find quite beautiful about it. Is it simple?
It's really not a complex
The equations you're presenting to us are very very simple
Which to me is the most difficult thing to do
There's not a lot of fucking like
Fat there, you know, yeah, it's difficult in the getting in your own way part of it
Like it's but it's the easiest thing to do if you actually get there and find the thing because we all have it inside of us
the deep
I mean sometimes they call it shower thoughts or something but like we all have that or maybe we don't I don't know
some people maybe just have nothing going on but
Uh, what are you creating? What what is the what what is the medium you're using to make what the image is?
Yeah, I draw them by hand and I color them in photoshop
And sometimes clean them up a little bit if I screw up the ink drawing
But just ink pen on paper
Scan using my phone used to use a printer scanner and then I discovered the phone scans at 600 dpi
So just scan it in like that and then color it which came first stand up or the art
Oh art because I've just always I started
uh
So I've played violin since I was five and I've drawn cartoons since I guess also that age
so I used to just be all about music and
Then was just doodling a lot in in classes and I didn't start doing like comic books till college
and I started drawing a strip called strippy for
My university newspaper and they used to pay me I think like 10 bucks a strip and I remember thinking like oh man
It's it's easier for me to draw one of these than it would be to draw a $10 bill
That'd be like really hard to draw a $10 bill so I can draw my own type of $10 bills
And it wasn't just for money, but I liked that I did that and I had a little an audience
This was pre like social media. So I would put it out people would read that newspaper
I'd have my email there. So if people really liked it sometimes they'd reach out through email or something. So I got that going and
stand up
Happened after I got uh, I got a dwi
I didn't get an actual one, but I got pulled over for drunk driving and I had to go to the jail for
24 hours wasn't wasn't convicted of it got the travis county jail in austin texas. How many people are in there with you?
um
30 there was one guy I was chained to for like 12 hours and then I got unchained from and I got to have my own cell
That was the best part because then I got to be in my own place
The worst part was just thinking about like having to
Tell my parents about it, which I was already independent from them, but I didn't want to hide it from either just
Yeah, and I called my dad the next day and I told him that uh, yeah
Are you sitting down? I got something bad to tell you and he's like sure I said I got arrested last night
I got a dwi charge and uh, I was in jail for the last 24 hours
And then the first thing he says is did you give breath test and then I go
Yeah, I breathed because I thought I was under and he goes you never give these bastards evidence
That's the first thing he said is just you never you don't ever give the bastards evidence
and uh
Yeah, that was that was a good lesson, but off the hook off the hook of the thing. Oh, that was um
My my blood alcohol level was just so close to the legal limit
It was just barely over
So if I pled no contest and because I was young and no criminal record and you know an
Upstanding citizen of uh, blah blah. I guess technically I'm white then right if I can get off like that
I joke about it's an old patrice O'Neill joke about like how there's different white people like how
Japanese are the white people of asians and you know persians are the white people of of middle eastern people so
Uh, I mean I've had I've had if you were like more complexed you would have been fucked. I think so. I think that's
It's been uh shown not that you're always fucked. I'm sure there's like plenty of probability goes. Yeah, and there's great
There's great cops too. I mean not to go down all that rabbit hole
But just you know, you hear about uh a gang shooting like I heard someone recently got like was in an uber
I don't want to out their name or anything
But their uber driver was shot in the head because of a gang drive by and you know
We spent all this time being like a stupid cops and like just power tripping bad things
And then you hear about gang shooting random innocent uber driver and it's like, okay
Yeah, it is kind of good to have cops sometimes but then there's the argument of like
Yeah, the gangs wouldn't have to do that if the cops weren't in it's the endless cycle
What do you mean the gangs wouldn't have to do it?
The gangs wouldn't have to shoot uber drivers if there are no no cops
Well, there that wouldn't exist if there wasn't a weird drink. Yeah
We gotta keep killing these uber drivers until it's fucking anarchy
No lift drivers only uber but hold that whole tangent of stand-up started because I I got the dwi and then in the jail
Cell like I had a lot of time to think about what I was doing with my life
It's like is this really what I want to do just work
I was at the time doing web development
So just web developing and then going out at night with friends and drinking and then driving
Home is like that's a stupid life. That's not what I want to do here
It's like what do I want to do and then like at the time stand-up seemed like this impossible one
Like I was a musician, but I wasn't a I wasn't a comic that takes like how does that even work?
How do you even start where do you go?
And then me and my friend my best friend in the whole world Mike Sears was
You know he sat with me by a river and we had a long talk about stand-up
We decided to start stand-up together
We were like we'll just go to this open mic and if there's no one they're great if everyone's they're great
If it's who cares we'll just see what it is and it turned out to be just the best night of the whole year
Who knows if it was a shitty night? Maybe I wouldn't have done stand-up
But it was packed and everyone was not everyone was doing well like half the people were
Doing well. There was like a few stand-outs. I remember a Doug Mellard if you don't know Doug
Mellard
He was one of the the guys that stood out to me
Brendan Walsh was there at the time in Austin
He was Brendan was like in the big kids table like it was that table of like oh, those are the seniors
You don't go sit at that table like that's the that's the big scary ones and then you know you start doing the open mics and then the open mics turn into
MC spots turn into feature spots eventually you get to headline off nights and the one day you wake up and you're like
Oh, shit. I'm at that table and Brendan and them are they haven't lived here in years
How did I become sitting at this table and then you grow from even sitting at that table till leaving your home base?
Mine was Austin some people's it might be portland, seattle
Chicago
Dallas anywhere and then you
Move out and start over pretty much if you moved to new york or la you kind of have to start over
Because there's just too much good talent and yeah, there's not enough spots
No one's going to call you up like hey, we need someone to fill the spot. No, that's filled
You got to you got to reach out to people about it. I'm fascinated by that. You know, this is a when I was really getting into vr
Um, that was the thing I kept thinking like whoa, man. This is gonna redefine so many
artistic industries and and you know, it's we're not
There
Yeah, 10 years it'll hit scale. That's what gary v says and some other people 10 years
Yeah, like a lot of people are jumping on it now the same way that
You know the phone took a little while to become mainstream now you have to really it's weird if you don't have a smartphone
Someone's a kook if they're like well, I've got a phone, but it's not a smartphone. I have a well
The problem though with stand-up in particular is
sound
It's like it's not so much it is it's a lot of things but they're you know,
Clearly the problem is like getting across like yeah, Todd glass could do a whole number on
on the
The you know how specific he is about the mic set up the audience set up the ceiling's got to be low the
It's it all. Yeah the lighting stage tuner. He doesn't just play the piano
He fucking tunes it and he tunes it in this great way. It's I love that. I love that. He's right too, but it's like
uh
The the technologically one of the problems with it is that
If you're going to perform for a virtual audience
These are all people who are in different places all over the planet
And they all have different mics
And they all have different ways of transmitting sound you're talking about doing stand-up in a vr setting. Yeah
Yeah, it's like because you know what you're talking about there the moving that so there's the pilgrimage that inevitably happens for the
stand-up comic which is that
Before you're ready
Or too late or just when you're ready
Whatever you get the call and you drive to new york or you moved in new york you moved to la to
Begin to like refine your talent
And so that is a huge that's a mystical journey that pilgrimage is a mystical pilgrimage for so many comics
I mean it really is truly a like
Fucking holy goddamn. Yeah. I remember the plane flight over here just seeing that grid of lights
Like that now i'm used to it
But the the grid of la light stretches as far as the eye can see and just everywhere else
It's like oh, there's the city, but here it's like where is the city?
It's this it's this whole span of everything. Yeah, and those beginning
Months or years and the feeling of like whoa
What the fuck am I doing the first year is worthless and the first three are kind of worthless
I feel like I've just kind of found my stride here and it's a
beautiful
Path and it's a scary path for a lot of people but like
when you know, I love thinking about technological disruption. Yeah, and
um
Particularly, you know, like the place I live at
You know, we just got a you know, one of the problems is the ways is determined that this is like a through a through way
So suddenly a street that maybe at one point didn't have a lot of people now
It's got a river of cars going up. That's weird because that's such a hilly area
Yeah, and you wouldn't think it is but I guess ways doesn't factor that in happened right and then on top of that
um
So we see that's a technological disruption
uh
And so many
To get back to the idea of like history being a fucking
Basketball on the on the bouncing on the fucking floor of time the gymnasium of time or whatever
The gymnasium of time
Now we're seeing all these like other forms of technology like almost any
crazy problem that's happening in the world right now
Is in some way shape or form related to disruptions being caused by interconnectivity and so
When it comes to comedy
Stand-up comedy in particular
It is only a matter of time
before
The technology emerges
Where you could put on a show in VR space
That is indistinguishable from a show in
actual space
We can't do it right now. Yeah, because
You can't there's no fucking way to create
some
Unified microphone field for the audience. So if you want to know what like next time you go on stage
apply some mindfulness to
How important not just how you sound is
But your ability to hear the audience
And you realize like you're doing some very deep listening
You're listening to shuffles and rustles and you like, you know, you're listening to something
Very deep, which is the sound of a unified crowd. Yeah, and especially like the different scales of it
You understand this better than I do probably because you've gone on the road with rogan and stuff like seeing those
Like thousands of people audiences and the way you have to
Change yourself and your timing to fit within those waves of laugh as opposed to like a room with 300
Did you find yourself having to really like recalibrate like oh, I wasn't expecting that like big amount of love energy
I just fucking giant rooms little rooms all rooms. There's always a kind of like my like some
It's like it's surfing or it's a wave and you feel like you're it's a temporal wave made up of a
Gestalt so to speak and so you've got a sort of like, you know
You're always going to be within that wave
And attuned to it in some way way
But you don't want to attune too much to it because now you're like
You know, that's when you fall into like the realm of saying what you think they want to hear and it's like don't
Fucking do that, but then don't fall too outside of it
I'm not gonna say what they want to hear and like do like sort of like unskillful
Jim Norton style things just like no, I'm just gonna fucking just say whatever I want by the way
That's not a gym
Good at it when people aren't good at that jesslin that good at it
Yeah, people aren't good at it
And it's like wait you're just doing the opposite of saying it's a tightrope man
If you're if you miss it a little bit you suck
But if you nail it like yeah, just so nick nails it. There's nothing more
Well, there's so many annoying things but it's very annoying
And I think any of these things I'm allowed to say because I've been it at some point
But there's nothing more annoying than seeing
A fucking
Unfunny edge lord. Yeah on stage
Who's like burping out some bullshit offensive quote offensive shit and people aren't laughing
And then they say
I know why you're not laughing. It's because you're afraid to laugh
That you see I've seen it so many times. You're just afraid. No, they're not afraid to laugh. It's not funny
I never did that on stage, but I was guilty of it internally where like a booker of something would be uh
you know
Upset with me for doing a particular joke on a showcase night and I was like really defensive
I'm like what it did well and like what george carlin said this and this and this and this and now looking back on is like
Oh, did you a stupid four year in comic just compare yourself to it's okay to do that because george carlin did it
Fuck you piece of shit one of the signs one of the signs whenever i'm comparing myself to george fucking carlin
It's time to just fucking stop and get the notebook out and start writing
Fuck you eat your own ass
It just is like so yeah, so yeah that kind of
Um ability to attune yourself to the audience and then from that attunement
Understand sort of the shape of the canvas and then paint your own painting
This is you know, it takes a lot of different input variables and the sound is crucial so like
With doing shows in virtual reality space
To attune yourself to avatars
To attune yourself to people who are like potentially, you know sitting on their mattress, you know
Yeah, or what if even farther they're occupying like like one time you had a ginger man watching you a gingerbread man watching you
What if his ear is like it takes in sound differently through those gingerbread man ears to the to the receiver
It's like oh, I got to speak in a lower tone so he can hear me
That's it. But one day this all these will be worked out because live performance
is um
You know such a massive fucking industry and if suddenly you could
in whatever particular
performance field you're in
You
Create a
infinitely
Large venue to perform with it and charge tickets for it
And not leave your house
Infinitely large venue. Yeah. Dear Christ. Did you see maria bambford's last special old baby? I haven't seen she starts
Performing in front of a mirror. So it's just her then it's her in front of her parents in their living room
Then it's her in front of a park bench with like four friends
Then it's in front of just a little like coffee shop
Just a few people then it's in a like small divey club
Then she's performing in front of a comedy club a big one
Then she's performing in a theater
Then she's performing in an arena and then finally she's like out in the galaxy
He's like just performing in front of it all and the yeah, she's one of the greatest and her reasoning for that was that she said
A friend saw her do the exact same set with the same
You know kind of response, but when she saw her during the coffee shop
She was like
And then when she saw her in the theater is like whoa, that was that was something else
That was really good when it was in fact the same thing
But she was influenced by the amount of people
Laughing at it. That's what made it feel like it was. Oh, yeah that better phenomena
And it's like now it's it's so curious because it's like shit man when you know stand up was
You know growing and evolving or when any kind of performance was growing and evolving
In the early days this stage was the most advanced technology
That was advanced technology getting on stage and having props or a lot of lights or any kind of like
Artificial lighting or anything like that that was cutting edge, right?
So now what we're seeing and it kind of goes back to this like what we were talking about in the beginning
is that now
The stage is appearing
Everywhere
Now it's fucking instagram now. It's your podcast now. It's your tweets now
It's your facebook and there's the physical stage and there's the stage
So now what we're witnessing is like this thing is happening, which I just read it's a great term
Opticon. Have you ever heard of that? No, what's it mean? So an opticon is a is a name for a
type of fascist state where
Everyone's watching everyone else. It's called an opticon. That sounds great
Well, it's great unless the people who are watching you are also
Simultaneously turning you in or like, you know snitching on you
But if everyone can see everything then then the truth is right then there's no distortion of the truth
Opticon would be fantastic. Isn't that what bitcoin is essentially and isn't that what interest net is?
Essentially too. It's that if everyone is watching everyone everyone has the data of everyone else
Well, no, I think interest net bitcoin you could say are more related to the concept of dependent origination, right?
so
Like
Everything's connected to everything else one part of the net trembles all the net trembles, right?
And this is like goes back to this cultural magnetic filament thing
Which is that the tremble and the net tremblers formerly were the studios
formerly were the
TV shows the the musicians and who had but they did to tremble the net
You needed to have an amplification device powerful enough to tremble the fucking net, right?
And now we all have the amplification device to tremble the fucking net. Yeah, we're all net tremblers, right?
We're all like blast in the net. It would now we don't need to get on stage. We don't need to go to
Madison Square Garden anymore. You could literally
Upload a thing you theoretically you could turn the camera on and upload something that just popped into your head
You know, you could upload a thing and say it
Uh life is suffering
The cause of suffering is attachment
Get rid of attachments suffering ends to get rid of attachment. Here's a path. I've come up with you know
You could say the before this message is brought to you by attachment. That's the pre-roll in the middle of it
I'm saying like when the buddha
You know gains realization under the bodhi tree
And spreads the four noble truths of buddhism. It took a long time for that data field to sort of get around the planet
It's just now
Getting around the planet. Yeah, the popcorn has started to actually like there's less space in between each kernel popping off
A more negative way to put it is when fucking mel Gibson, you know, like gets drunk and we realize he's like in some way shape or form
Apparently completely anti-semitic
Right. Is that recent or from 10 years ago happened a while ago? Oh, really?
You know, he's like bitching about the jews or whatever. He's all hammered and it's like the amount of time it took for mel Gibson's
like anti-semitism
To echo around the planet was approximately 24 hours where if mel Gibson's carriage had crashed and he'd started spending about the
Jews in the 1600s
There isn't a single soul
In england that's going to know about that until a fucking ship makes the voyage and someone gets off the ship and is like
Yeah
And that's a good thing back then too, right?
Just being anti
That's right
Who was talking about um trying to articulate this right, you know onyx ashanti
just super futurist guy, but um
Uh, I won't even go into it. Just look up look up the guy. I was trying to relay something he was saying about how
No matter how far into the future we go if there's any way of distinguishing one thing from another thing there will be like
Basically, there's no end to racism
But you can you can help it
But there's always going to be that sense of racism or tribalism or something you can't completely
Estinguish it because that's just what interesting. Yeah, that's a pretty big prediction
It's like any kind this is the other things like any of these future predictions
It's like who the fuck knows and that's why I love this stoic concept or god's teachings
Which is like, all right. All right. Okay. So like let's just get back here again, right?
And I think that the in the same way there's an imperative
that you begin to realize
If you're me later on in your life to like figure out a way to find that moment
The jewel in the heart of the lotus to find that moment again and again
Not because it's like cool or it makes you feel better because it's gonna like, you know
Make you like a better person or make you sexier or whatever
But the reason it's it's like good to do that is because every time you land in that spot
you're going to be far more adept at
Reducing suffering than you are if you're not in that spot, right? Yeah, you can just get a little little bit little better
Yeah, something else about that when you were talking about
Madison Square Garden, you can just make it happen now
it's
that that
It used to be that way like with photographs like only the rich had a photograph of themselves or a portrait of themselves now
Now like think of how many different artistic
portrayalers
Portrayals
Portrayalers of your face you've seen have you even seen all of them?
Like just on there's probably people who've drawn your face. There's more than you can count by now that thing. Yeah
That's like that's ridiculous and that's happening to everyone across the board now before like you would have to
infinite variation infinite digitization and
Yeah, and now like you need to be Amy Schumer or Kevin Hart or something to perform at Madison Square Garden
And that's going to be just what anyone can perform it in front of a million people if you wanted to
That's going to be an equalizer potential is always there for you to get sucked into an updraft
Where suddenly the thing you're doing is being broadcast to the entire planet and this is the opticon as they say
Which is that and this happens you see some, you know fucking pilled up hopped up
hyperracist at a gas station in fucking alabama
Yelling at some
Complected person to get the fuck out of the country and that comes on that that gets filmed
And now that person gets in that person is forever
Radiating out as an example of yet of true racism and we see and we're like what the fuck it's horrifying. Yeah
So I guess my point is
This present moment idea
It's wonderful
not just because it makes us relaxed
but because
at some point
Someone
Is going to have like an epiphanous moment
derived from the present moment, right? Yeah, and
The difference between that person and the buddha
Is that that person is going to make the announcement on instagram?
They're going to make the announcement here or there in some way
and in the same way the
Gio the magnetic field of the earth shifts over 150 years and not thousands of millions of years
It's going to shift the cultural landscape
Instantaneously. Yeah, it's already doing it. Yeah, so I just feel like there's a really good like my theory behind it is like
Well, it's what neem curly baba said, which is like we do this
Thing we're doing right now
Not necessarily because it's what it's gonna do for us
But how it helps other people
Do you think he meant what he said to ramdas when he said like don't don't tell people about me
Don't talk about me. Do you think that was a little like trickster in him going like
Of course, you're gonna talk about me. If I say don't talk about me
It's going to want you to do it even more. He's a very funny man. Yeah
Some of those stories are so like I mean
I'm not a critic of it because I I believe it
I think there's crazier things than to have an old man in a blanket be magical and be
The reincarnation of hanuman or however you want to describe it his cities has his all that but I love reading the stories of
You know, well, I'd never met neem curly baba and one day
I I went to his ashram and he didn't talk to me the whole day
And I was about to fly back to the states and then as I was packing my bags
He showed up at the door and there was an aura around him. He was just kind of lit up
He was glowing and then the next thing I knew he was in front of me
And he just slapped the top of my head and just started beating the shit out
I mean, you're just like, oh my god. Who is this? Who is this awful man?
And I just started tearing up
I just started crying more than I've ever cried in my whole life
And then I just wanted to touch his feet and it's just such strange accounts like that
That if you told someone that didn't already know about, you know, ramdas and the
The mix of it if you told just that story in isolation, it's like who the fuck is this this guy
I think that's baghvandhasa's story of neem curly. I think I might be misplacing it
But baghvandhasa is the big, you know beard guy with
Uh, who who's the guy who said be here now? Actually, he's the guy telling ramdas be here now
Have you had him on before not yet? Oh, you gotta have him. He's a great fascinating being and and the but to get back to the
question of the miracles
The cities the demonstrations and I can't remember who said it. You know, it's called miracle stories
Very similar to ayahuasca stories
It's like you get around somebody and they aren't going to tell you about how they went into the pyramid and they saw the thing
With it open their chest up and redid their metaphysical dna and replace their
Darkness with light and on on on you're like, all right. All right, whatever. I don't care. Fuck. It's like you're having a dream
You know, like I don't want ayahuasca stories. It's like anytime. I'm conveying some
story of some great vision I had and underneath like
Some uh strong tea that I was drinking and I see the person's like eyes glazing over. I totally understand it
It's like, you know, why not just pull out some soap?
Yeah bubbles in front of him. It's like non different to me, right? But you know, um
One thing that I noticed
Is that like when my dad was dying and I was applying some of the tools that came from neem krolibaba
From his teachings to comfort my father
Because I really didn't really talk to my dad at all about neem krolibaba
but what I did do
is I
Was with him in the moment and I was
Giving him as much as I could what he needed
In that moment to gracefully transition. Yeah
And my father in that moment met neem krolibaba without me mentioning it at all
and so there's a
one of the um
In what way just in the in the pure blissfulness way or in the
From seeing his son
Who he is formerly known
as a miscreant
As someone who is like very selfish and self-absorbed or a retreater someone who like
retreats from problematic situations
suddenly
being there with him
And doing and like loving him and expressing love and being in the moment
But not like trying to shove him
Towards love or make him open his eyes to just use a chance for this and for you to I need that just in being the
My dad saw it
And that thing is to me that is neem krolibaba
It's like the visions are beautiful and the stories I've heard about him
I do believe them and I think they're real and I don't understand how that works
But it it's real
but to me
What's impressive about this being
Is that because of this man in a blanket
I was able to comfort my father who was dying. That's so cool. That's to me the guru, you know, and um
There's a saying and I can't remember which guru said this which is
I give them
I give them what they want
So that they'll take what I give
Which is the miracles and stuff
are
of
They're the they're I guess you could say the bait
And this wonderful trap in fact an opposite the opposite of a trap
Which is we're drawn to them. What the fuck he's telepathic opposite of trapping that it's a release. Yeah. Yeah
It's the maybe you could say it's the lure that gets us out of the trap
Oh, that's cool. So he puts these lures out and it's like, oh my god. He could translocate. What the fuck
I can't be real and the best is when he would fake it for some people that not didn't deemed worthy, but it was more about
Making sure that rom dos isn't using him as a parlor trick. You know that story where he's like saying like, oh, you're from
You're from canada and he's like, no, I'm actually from the states like oh, you're an engineer
No, I'm actually a I'm a doctor and he just intentionally got everything wrong about getting it all the prediction
And then he to him. He just thought it was just some old, you know sham
Right and that I you know all those stories and you know, I
These people are my teachers
And I love them and their stories of neem krolibaba. I like to listen to but to me what I love more than that
Is that when I'm in their presence
there is just this sense of
compassion
that
Is so healing
The stories are fucking cool, man. Don't get they're awesome
but man the stories are just the
Very the flower. Yeah, but those roots they go so deep
and um
And I like it all I like the entire the the whole tree of the thing. I guess you could say, you know
It's just like the fireworks the fireworks the fireworks
You watch them. They're awesome. You know, they're cool. They're beautiful, but you still got to go home
Yeah, the real thing is the not the firework machine. It's the guy at the machine that guy
That was my attempt at that or is it the bulb?
You know, we don't we'll never know the answer
But was it on was it on here where you had not jason louve? I think jason silva and it surprised me that he was
Going down the very materialist route where he very much thinks that
You know, it's it's all a trick of the brain and we need to do what we can to keep the brain
Going and like he's very which there's truth to that but it surprised me how
How bought into it he was well he that's his you know from his reality tunnel and I don't know where he's at now
but his reality tunnel is
based on um
Yeah, the concept weird that I do that where I'm like I'm referencing something that someone in the past
Said and I'm trying to like make sure that that guy in the past isn't materialist because then that conflicts with my
Wanting it to be not material. We don't want to get our heads chopped off
I mean, this is a transhumanist concept of eternalizing the physical body
Because there's no guarantee that after we die there's anything after that and they want to they want to you know
They want to embody they want to be embodied in the material universe eternally
As that form and because that's that's all they they based on their
The way that they're categorizing the universe is based on data
From the material universe and physics and like they're they're the woo-woo stuff for them
It's just like they're pretty skeptical of that. They're like, okay, okay, sure you take that bet
But I'm if I can yeah, I want to keep my body going. I'm gonna keep it going. You know, it reminds me a little bit of uh
People who figured out ways using MAO inhibitors to
To um
Make smoking DMT last longer. Oh, I think Shane might have done that. He did. Yeah with syrian roux
That's the antidepressant, right? syrian roux an MAO inhibitor. I don't think it's an antidepressant
But it definitely like helps the dimethyl tryptamine stay in your body longer. This is same thing with ayahuasca
You know, it's like the I feel like five minutes is enough
Right five minutes is a lifetime right and some people think that a lifetime's enough
Here in this particular
Wonderful hallucinatory experience we call human incarnation, but some people are like, I want to stay high forever
Yeah, these are the transhumanists. They want to stay here forever. They want their physical form to maintain
They want their consciousness to maintain forever. And I think that's a testament to their love of life
I don't agree with it. You know as far as I've always one of my favorite things about
LSD is coming down. It's like, holy god, that was fucking intense
But Jesus the next day when everything's colorful and bright. Oh, yeah, you've done the work and you're like, wow, this is amazing
That was incredible. You know, I like that
Yeah, I'm definitely one of the people that looks forward to coming back like in the middle of the the trip
Yeah, and I think that because there's so much to work with afterwards and I think maybe yeah, you and I both were workers
we like to do and
also not do but
Like it would be you don't do this for money. You do this because you love it and for money probably
But you would probably still do this if there was no money anymore
Oh, yeah, no question. If you didn't need it. If it was just Star Trek land, they figured out money
There's a matter synthesis machine a holodeck. How depressing would that be if one day?
I just like do a very short podcast opening where I'm like, hey guys
Not making money on this anymore. This is the last episode
And you'd probably never end this right because this isn't a show like Seinfeld world. Well, we did it. No, it's at the top
We gotta leave it's like you're probably gonna always be doing this because this is just you communicating with the world
And you having no, I don't know the conversation. Yeah, I love the conversation
I grow from it
And it me too. It's it's it's it's the you're you're and I'm yeah you at what are you 24 apps into your podcast now
Uh, yeah, so like you're experiencing. I'm sure the the reality of podcasting, which is that
Uh, yeah, there is potential for
Making money and but and there's potential for material success and there's potential for a lot of those things
but really
What is happening is it's a transformative medium. So you're sort of like every single conversation
It's helping you become a better person
Yeah, people are drugs like and not even in a not even in a like, you know
Neurochemistry sort of way that way too, but also in a way that they they change you just when you came on my show
There's just there's a couple of things you said that just stuck with me from that day
Like burned into my brain that really helped which you don't even probably remember
Having saying I'm just something like like, oh, yeah, you're trying to squeeze out little love turds
Like and just get as many out as as you can and it made me like just compare it to like, oh, yeah
This like obsession this fetish fetish fetishization of
Releasing whatever books or albums or or things as being the most important thing when really you
It's the it's the being it not that releasing stuff is bad either
But just the getting caught up in it. It's it's a process
And it's like there's moments in the process that grab our minds
There's either the moment of success the moment of failure
And worst the yeah the in between is the worst the nothing
Yeah, all these things grab our attention and in the and so all of a sudden it's like now
We're doing it for this reason or that reason
And it's in it and and you know, again, it just it just infinitely goes back
To like, okay, okay
Well, now I got lost pretty good in that pursuit of that thing or that or that worry over that
But it all just keeps going back to okay, but now I'm here. Yeah, here we are. Oh, there it is. Yeah
Oh, uh, did we talk about um, we this might be a repetition of a we've either talked about in real life or on a podcast or something
But how you know, the earth never revisits its spot. Oh, yeah
Yeah, so like movement. Yeah infinite movement. So if something takes place it literally takes that spot that now has that like if it's
Writing onto a disc. It's got that spot twice brother. Yeah, that's it. And it's like and and that that's a very liberating thing
You know, it's a liberating thing. It's just
The idea is back to the moment. It's like here we are
We're fucking dropping
weird dyes
neurological dyes into the
clear water of self
And that's an interesting thing to look at it's like, whoa, what fucking colors am I dropping in my water? Why am I?
Always nervous
Why am I always angry? Why am I always remembering these things? But then more importantly
Who is remembering who is dying the water? Who is the one experiencing? Yeah, and these you know
questions, uh, I think are tricks
mnemonic devices gifs various ways to get our fingers a little more
pried off of the electrical fence
of
the
Various things that are we get attached to and you know, hold on tightly. Let go lightly
Yeah, what a beautiful way to end the show
How could people find you?
You can go to remain nasir.com or rainbow brains skull.com
Instagram is the most active one. Just remain nasir on
Instagram and
Where do you go up these days and comedy wise I do a show at
The at alternate universe in echo park. This is in los angeles and I do uh like 15 minute animated
Intro, uh, I'd love to have you on sometime and not to put you on the spot on the ask on there
Grief hiatus from stand up. I'd love to make that. How long have you taken because I've I've been doing that too like taking
And it's it's good hearing other people talk about being
You know taking a break. Don't use me as a reference. I'm a lazy car
Okay, like jarad karmichael like jarad karmichael was asked how often he's been on stage this year and he's like
I think I've gone up
Two and a half times and he's like I'm just more about hanging out in music studios nowadays
And just other people like I don't want to out them or anything in case they don't want to be seen as an
Unactive stand up, but I've been seen as this kind of person to some people that they come to me for advice
Like you're you're good at not putting what you do in a box and doing all the things
I'm interested in taking a break from stand up and doing this. What do you think of this thing?
And meanwhile, I was thinking I was being a failure at stand up but to answer your question
Yeah, alternate universe is my show that I do to plug in other places that I might be
Let's see a dynasty typewriter plug the new dynasty typewriter theater the west side comedy theater in Santa Monica
My friends go see this genius perform and definitely check out his art on his website brother. Thank you so much
Thank you, man. It's been a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you all so much for listening to this episode of the dtfh which
Just got an award
I'm opening the envelope up right now from the american awards department
And wow yet again
uh
The dtfh was awarded best podcast
Of the week, uh, and that's been happening for about three years now. So
I'm so I couldn't do this without my wonderful writers. Thank you so much gregg or michelson
enormous, thank you to
terry
and of course
lady
Is not only a wonderful writer, but one of my dearest friends
I want to thank you guys so much for writing the scripts for this
And also, of course a big thank you to ramine nasir
for uh flying over here in this hot air balloon and
Doing this episode all the links you need to get to him will be at dunkartrezzled.com
along with the links to charlotte's web to square space and
Uh, of course, uh, there will be several missing links
There which uh, everybody's looking for them, but when you find them you realize that there's a reason they
are missing
I hope you guys have an incredible weekend week
year millennia
Century and of course if you enjoy this podcast
Don't forget to pet a dog and kiss it on
His or her sweet sweet wet nose for me. Thank you so much
Until next time
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