LIVESTREAM MAY 6, 2022
Published · 1:11:12 · 992 views
About This Video
A May 2022 live session. Van fields questions from patrons and discusses the channel's direction. Early days for the livestream format.
Transcript
good morning everybody um how many people oh 27 people watching
this great um weather's fine it's a perfect morning it's perfect like spring morning
if this was new york it would be the only thing anyone ever talked about all day long but it's la and it's kind of always like this so just like a perfect cool nice
morning uh i have covered i'm a late adopter i got i think i
started showing symptoms on monday and it's just basically wiped me out all week i've just been like in and out of bed wasn't very productive this week
and my son has coveted but isabelle does not have covid and so
[Music] last night for my birthday on march 22nd isabel bought us really good tickets good seats to the bert crusher
show at the greek uh and i couldn't go because i had covered so isabelle went with one of our
friends so very bummed about it but she said her face is all cramped up and like really tender and hurt hurts from just laughing
so hard like for an entire hour straight um and bert crusher i you know i went on his podcast he's like he's one of my
guys so it's very cool um i have some questions written down that you
guys sent in and i'll start with the one about what oh nikhil asked what comedian
podcasts do i listen to so i listened to two bears one cave which is bert christopher and tom segura
i listened to your mom's house which is tom segura and his wife christina pizzitzki who's also a stand-up comic
i listened to mark maron i listened to joe rogan i listened to
[Music] theo vaughn this past weekend um i started listening to um shane gillis who was cancelled from i don't really know why i think he made a joke about asian people or something but
he was he was fired from from uh saturday night live and he did
with this was like last week i think he did with louis ck also canceled a podcast
where they told like the history of america through the presidents they basically
went through all 45 presidents or 46 presidents and talked about like little anecdotes from each of them
um it was incredible i was astonished by how much those guys knew and i think they shot it in louis ck's
upstate new york house beautiful background of just like hardwood trees uh in this big room with gigantic
beautiful like um casement windows and then these blinds that were big
stained glass windows they looked like they were [Music] frank lloyd wright and it looked like they were also on a track that could slide and on his desk on louis ck's desk he
had my typewriter he had the um that's right there
he had uh it's like called the corona standard but his was like twice as wide as mine
was like 17 inches wide i think um i mean they didn't talk about it or anything it was just there it was like
because he was sitting at his desk sorry i'm rambling off those are the podcasts i listened to that one's called
shane and somebody's secret podcast and that was shane gillis and louis ck and on that particular i think they do history they talk about history
and these comedians talking about like american history through their weird comedic you know filter
uh yeah so those are some those are some of the ones
um oh alan stolberg's on here alan stallberg is the founder of
revival is it motorcycles motorbikes cycles anyway it's jay leno's favorite motorcycle shop [Music] and it's in austin texas i've never been there but i've been to allen's website or the shop's website and he's built some of the [ __ ] most incredible
motorcycles i've ever seen and uh so alan's on the live stream good to see you buddy we went on a ride it was so
crazy we went on a ride and no one rides my motorcycle um because it's weird and it's tall but allen's like a motorcycle builder
so he rode my motorcycle and i rode isabelle's husqvarna and it was so weird getting
like off the line just being beaten by him but he was on my bike and i was like you better be beating me because he that's a
650 and this little dinky thing's a 400 even though her bike feels faster than mine because it's so light
so he's here all right cycles okay so it's revival cycles jay leno's favorite motorcycle shop and
i'll bet he's been to a lot of motorcycle shops um okay so seth asked me a couple weeks ago
when does gimmick become style and i've been thinking about this question
and i don't really know what the difference really is except for gimmick sort of has pejorative
right like to me the quintessential gimmick right and i don't think gimmick is a negative thing but the quintessential gimmick is like
the happy meal at mcdonald's or um carrot top right with his his um props
but both of those things definitely have their virtues and it's more like innovation or something and if
people like it then i don't know why it's a pejorative but
gimmick i think if it's not if it's dishonest that's a different thing right so what
else is what's a gimmick what's a gimmick 3d like 3d glasses and that stuff that was
a gimmick that was gimmick for a while but then it got so good with like the real d is that what it's called
and avatar that it's just now it's a different now it's a style so maybe style is just the
more accepted it's like when gimmick sort of matures and is taken seriously
and that's that's that's the difference when does dimmick when does it become when does gimmick become style
yeah probably when people like recognize it as style and not as gimmick like
talking pictures like synced sound pictures that was a gimmick and now like good luck making a movie without
synced sound there was that academy award best picture movie that came out a few years ago called the artist and it was like the silent i was
like what the hell is this it's like what are you doing um uh somebody asked what the land cruiser
status is okay i do not have enough money to do the labor part of the of the engine swap i bought the engine i
bought the transmission the i think it's an h55f um toyota engine standard
i'm sorry transmission and um the shop has that it's in montana but now i just gotta save up it's like more
expense the labor is more expensive than the engine and the transmission so i just gotta save up i think september i'll have enough money to be able to
ship it up there and i just had to pay like so much money and taxes it was like it made me almost sick to my stomach but no
that's fine you know america thank you you know they'll send the blackhawks after you if you get stuck somewhere they will send the forces in and they'll
get you out so okay all right but it was like it was a heavy lift um so the taxes you know i my account was
like can you pay x and i was like yeah and it was like almost exactly the same amount as to get the engine and i was just like oh
oh no okay here so i don't know but thanks to you guys i'm getting closer every day to being able
to swap that engine um and then the the old engine works fine it's just un it's just underpowered
although on tuesday which was like a weird break from covid monday i was like super sick
tuesday i i ran i felt okay isabel called me battery's dead i had to go buy a battery and and change it and now it
works perfectly it was an old battery but the thing works fine the the it works fine it just doesn't have enough just doesn't have enough horsepower to
go on big adventure trips which is what i want to start doing with it okay so sam asked what happens when the
illusion melts away and that was i think in reference to the video i did about
the books like um mind altering books and i was there was this story called
the catastrophe of success by tennessee williams and i made a reference to
[Music] you know you know in a sense like you have these dreams and then when you live them like you know the illusion melts away and the the first
it's right here the first you know underlined um sentence in that story that i underlined was the cinderella story is our favorite national myth
and so what happens when the illusion melts away you know it's like when you find out
santa claus isn't real or what have you or the tooth fairy or something it's just like ah it's like a little bit
fanta less fantastic your your sort of your i don't know you just grow up a little
bit and you can become more mature and more grounded in reality which isn't as fun but
it's more helpful to everybody maybe okay so acid kawasaki which required reading books from tom
sachs's required lip reading list have i read and which do i like most i'm pretty sure
i've read them all i'm pretty sure i've read he has in one of his in one of tom's scenes he has a required reading list
it might even be in 10 bullets i don't remember but um
[Music] and he and acid kawasaki said he really liked the robert irwin book called um seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees by lawrence
i can't remember his name but i've met him and had meals with him and he's a watchler lawrence weschler
um that's a cool one it's very weird but um there's the autobiography of malcolm x i
think sticks out the most that's an incredible book because it's essentially about the theme of the of his life
is the transformation because he started out it's like a gangster in harlem called he
called him red and then he became malcolm little and then he became malcolm x
and my son's name is x but not necessarily after malcolm x but
not not after malcolm x um i can't remember the other books on there but that's the one that i remember
and saks is always hammering that one home the malcolm x1 home um
[Music] what happens okay oh this is also a good one what is my perspective oh this is from nathaniel what is my perspective nathaniel wrote i asked a bunch of good questions so we're gonna get to those uh what is my perspective on the tension
between aesthetics and function and so this is something i think about a
great deal but not when i'm making or building or fixing something
it's so ingrained i think through my training through like tom sacks in combination with my just taste with my
innate taste i'm like i'm you know new england stock all the way back to the you know the boats that cro that
cross the atlantic and new england is i think famous for its austerity i mean
it's like new england and what's the question again oh the tension between us i think you know the there's that cliche that form follows function i
very much agree with that i think that my favorite things are like aesthetically the things i like
best are where the like a bridge where it's all laid bare the function and the form are just one
um [Music] they're just one there's no barrier between the two i think apple is has is the problem is one of the best manufacturers of
mass-produced goods that is able to put the design the aesthetic
forward you know they prioritize the design it kind of seems but and i don't know i have mixed feelings
about that i think that the iphone 4 was the most beautiful phone it just looked like a piece of glass the new one
is kind of a throwback to the four but the four was smaller and it didn't have these bumps you know
for the lens and um it was just a beautiful little piece of glass and then there's the um
there's this guy named dieter roms and he designed the clock that the
is the clock um do i have this right the clock that's like the
no the first iphone one is based on adida roms super 8 camera which i actually have and and dieter roms designed it for brawn
but it was called a nizo but some of them say braun nizo on the braun b-r-a-u-n he also designed these incredible like record players
and so if you look at this it looks a lot like the iphone one like this rounded
aluminum that what goes to black and um you know it didn't i have to add all the i mean this is here's something okay the
design is so paramount that you know you don't know what any of this damn [ __ ] is you know i had to like
write all this stuff on here because it's it was so beautiful that
it wasn't as functional as i needed it to be i'm you know i think this is for smarter people than
me and like they just look at this and memorize it but so yeah i think above all reliability
above all and then i also had a discussion with somebody about um
like why the swiss champ because it's not really the best like pocket knife to carry around
and there's just like there's a tactile smoothness about it and then there's the like when i was a kid it was like the nicest thing and i knew
two people who had bought them in switzerland two kids my age who had swiss army knives from switzerland which
was like the most fancy concept in my mind was this nate this nation of
of switzerland and like going there and like wow how what is that what is that like to go to
switzerland and i you know i don't think that those
knives are the most they're pretty functional but you know the plastic on the outside kind of breaks if you drop them on the ground
but i think the most beautiful stuff generally speaking is because like the
form and the design serve the function of the thing i can give you an example of something that's rotten
and that's that um sodastream machine i for one of these videos i took it apart and like
no i had already done it but i took a soda stream apart and then mounted it to a piece of plywood so you could see all of the machinery within the soda stream
and it's such a beautiful mechanism but they just cover it in plastic whoever makes that thing they just cover it in plastic and it just
looks like this crappy appliance that goes on the on the on the you know on the kitchen counter
that's a terrible example um yes like pants with like zippers that
don't do anything on them things like that but then you know things get too functional and so you know when you see a
formula like a contemporary formula one fire suit they're just built so well to protect those racers and then
you see the old ones from like the 60s and they're so much cooler because they were just more for style so you know i don't know you win some
stuff you lose some stuff but all in all i do love the
like i love those land rovers because they're just the old ones as opposed to the new ones because the new ones are just you know they're just rounded and
they look like kind of every other car but the old ones it looks like you know i could fix the whole thing with a screwdriver or
or vice grips or something so there's that question um
oh my gosh acid kawasaki asked what to do if one has accumulated too much stuff
this happens to all of us i i had the studio in the bronx and i had to like liquidate it when i before i moved to los angeles
and i just like when in doubt throw it out and i threw always i'd paid 500 bucks to
have hauled away like thousands of dollars worth of things and i'm not it's like after you have a kid
you have all of this stuff that you use for like a month or two that cost two or three hundred dollars like car seats and baby bjorns and all of
this stuff and now it's all in storage like in a storage thing that i rent and it's like if we have another kid
it'll be worth keeping it all but if we don't have another kid what a waste of money on the storage and then it's just oh there's so much garbage in there i
hate it so so so so so much and one of the things i fantasize about when i have my rich man fantasy like my rich man
fantasy like unlimited rich man fantasy is like have almost ab absolutely nothing
because most of the stuff i keep is to and so i don't have to buy it again
and it's you know to earn money with but when you have too much stuff you
have to go really microscopic and just start throwing things away
i think i mean don't do the you know try to give away what you can but oh it's such a hard thing to do it's so hard i mean i have the problem right
now just so much stuff and i also have this i can remember like one of my talents is i can remember
where things are and so you know if i'm making a video and i'm like oh i need that poster
that josh saftey gave me in 2009 that giant one like i know exactly where it is and then i can go get it and then if i
throw something away and i knew exactly where it was it's i kick myself especially if i need it for
for a video and i think my fantasy is to get like a big bigger place like a bigger studio that
has like a storage built into it but ah i don't know i can't stand it i can't stand all this stuff
drives me crazy i never really i don't really understand collectors like
what is that all about like no no no that's the opposite um
but what to do it i don't know i don't know i think you just go through it and you um
there's that great maria condo those videos on netflix where she's like does this spark joy and then if not you
just throw it away and she has that you put all your clothes on your bed and then you go through and even all that i mean
i'm past that and also when you live with someone and you have you know a kid it's not your stuff anymore it's like
that's so i don't know but when in doubt throw it out you're probably not going to regret it how do i approach my repair process
this is from kc and how do i find the best solution so usually my driving
um cr my driving principle or when i'm repairing something the first thing i think about is how much time do i have how much time do i have to fix
this thing like if it's a saturday can kind of have all day and so then i'll just indulge in the repair and just
isabel and x were away a few weeks ago visiting grandma in florida and i had like the whole house to myself
and i just would like i just got in this like like like a like a drunk uh in this
bender of like fixing and repairing and fixing and tweaking and putting away and e-e all these little things and i just
got like intoxicated by all of these repairs like from the time i woke up till the time i went to bed and it was really really fun
but usually i how much time do i have and can someone else do this in less
real time than me like one of the things i don't fix is shoes i don't fix shoes because there's a whole there's shoe
people you just bring them to shoe people but you know the truck is like a thing that it's like weird and it's like how much
time do i have to invest in how much real time is this truck going does this repair gonna you know is is this repair gonna take like i think i made him my i made mistakes i replaced the battery
on last month tuesday i replaced the battery on the on the land cruiser
and i [Music] was so screwy all i had to do is drive to the bottom of the hill go to advanced auto parts they had the battery
in stock and buy the battery bring it back to the land cruiser put it in
but my options were like call triple a have a battery delivered or go and i didn't know that the
advanced auto parts existed because of pet boys that had been going out of business and liquidating for months and
for maybe over a year so every time i would go down there i would regret it i was like oh yeah this place is going out of business they have nothing in stock
and so i mean that would have taken an hour or two maybe less but to go and take care of that but instead i spent all day looking for this one specific battery i just did it stupidly
and that probably the smarter move maybe would have been like i don't know if triple to do a little research does triple a there's like a is
there a battery replacement program with triple a and so the point is i i do it based on time am i even gonna
do this repair oh like i need to do the brakes on the on the land cruiser i'm not doing them i'm not doing them i'm bringing him to the guy and i'm gonna
have him do him do them um you know it takes like an hour to bring it to the guy and then
and come back and it'll take more than that but so that's that's the first thing and
then trying to think of specific examples how i approach something
i've just been doing it for so long it's really hard to be conscious about how i how i do it
let's see okay so this this thing broke okay there's a little plastic knob in here that releases this handle see this is
locked but you push this thing boom and e and so i guess my approach to this
was okay how do i get in there you know you can't buy the replacement part so i made it out of wood i like carved it out of something and then i had to screw a little tiny screw into there
jesus i don't remember my approach i just kind of did it but it's like can this be fixed can
somebody else fix it faster than me um is it worth fixing should i just throw it away like just i don't i don't want to fix i
try not to buy anything cheap sometimes you don't have a choice sometimes there's only cheap crap to buy for certain things
um so i try not to fix cheap stuff and then um it's just sort of a trance
you try one solution you try and it doesn't work you keep going you keep going you keep going it's not a very satisfying question answer
um what did i learn from my time in the bronx did it shape my thinking god i don't know i think um i had the
studio in the bronx in port morris it's like the worst neighborhood in new york all five boroughs of new york um
i don't know that i learned anything i don't know that the bronx taught me anything um
maybe just to be more focused i don't know i don't know i don't know uh
so greg asked uh a story about having to switch tactics in the middle of a project did i have a story
and i thought about this and i just try to really really plan
and prepare really really well for for things and i don't i can't think of really any i couldn't really think of any specific stories of having to switch plans in the
middle of a project um there's i mean there's improvisation like
but that's like everything i mean everything has improved you don't have enough butter or whatever you know the forks are all dirty and you know uh
you know it rained um [Music] but i think with this filmmaking stuff it's so like complicated that you really really have to be prepared and have a really concise game
plan and sort of execute it and then like certain equipment breaks
you're just kneecapped like if your hard drives break or whatever there's almost nothing you can do um
[Music] i think you just have to have this mindset of like finish no matter what just you have to finish the damn thing
no matter what and by a certain realistic time or maybe it's before you start the next
thing you have to finish this thing no matter what and uh
is jb weld steel stick the same as plumber's epoxy i don't know but the reason i love plumber's epoxy is
because it's it's dry in like 15 minutes like it starts to get hard in like five minutes and so you don't have to wait a long
time and so like what that's what you fix the motorcycles and [ __ ] with is uh it's called plumber's epoxy but
probably jb weld steel stick is probably the same thing but that'll be that'll be what that's how you know if it's like dry in
15 minutes and like a rock hard that's that's the plumber's epoxy you want that's what you want oh martin asks do i wear the boots
button up and pants when i'm not making video a video yep i'm just lazy i wear it all the time yep
um okay and then time is okay um and nathaniel has a couple more
questions um [Music] you and tom have done tom sacks you and tom have done a lot of work together within the vocabulary of the studio code and it appears you and casey both seem
to default to that way of making things in those aesthetics even today i'm curious if there are things you do
differently when you make something for yourself versus if you make that same item for tom strictly to code do you and
tom have any interesting differences of opinion on some aspect of making things are you a torx head screw guy and he
swears by allen head or do you have a fun running joke of a disagreement about how to do something in the shop
okay let me think all right so he refuses i don't know if he still does he refuses before he solders two wires together he refuses to twist them
he puts them in these little vice grip things and that holds them together and then solders them like that and i twist them so you don't need the vice grip
thing and solder them um oh no his coat is so precise no it's just [ __ ] pain in the neck you've got
to be paid to do it his way because it's too [ __ ] crazy it's too like no so i do you know linseed oil and and
plywood and he paints his plywood first and then cuts it um
i don't know i can't i can't think of anything i can't think of anything specifically
um yeah um yeah i don't know i don't know um but yes i do make it differently oh wait i printed this same thing out twice
all right so i have a hard out at 10 because i think isabelle needs to go do something and i have to watch x because he has
coveted so he couldn't go to school so okay eric vega eric vegas says man i have committed to my art career i quit my job and now have
no other distractions from achieving my goals how do you manage the anxiety and happiness of doing what you love
the usual things like meditation exercise um goals finite non-woo very straightforward i want to have this
amount of money by this date goals not like i want to be living a more free and connected life no straight
forward like quantifiable goals by x date i want to have x number of dollars in the bank or
whatever or within 18 months i want to have this show at this gallery or whatever the
thing is and then it's just like chopping wood and carrying water um
but the anxiety i don't know you just work through it but the pressure of the money jesus it's very very difficult it's definitely the
hardest part is the uncertainty um yeah and i think you got to have really straightforward revenue or cash flow strategies
[Music] but that's where my stress of the thing comes i think people have different stress points i don't know what their process but mine is always like finances because to me you know money like to
quote to quote michael saylor money is the most wait money is the highest form of energy
that human beings can channel money is the highest form of energy that human beings can channel
and so with money you can do anything basically anything that can be done you can do it with money
basically so the anxiety for me usually comes from
[Music] or the pressure is the money over time like how much time is it going to take to make x number of dollars so forth
and so how do you how do you manage the anxiety and happiness of doing what you love
um happiness is a very tricky word happiness is a very it's a very
americanized like it's almost as if happiness is supposed to be the goal of everything and it's and everything is supposed to be in
service to happiness it almost has that rip well at least he's happy well whatever makes you happy well is she happy i don't know as long
as he's happy and it's like well happiness is this very fleeting um
emotion that you really only deserve for kind of um
you know rare and extraordinary uh experiences i think
i i don't know if happiness is it's i don't know it's not really a sensation i
it's not really an emotion that i experience very often i'm not there oh i don't think i've talked about the tony
hawk thing the tony hawk documentary called until the wheels fall off i think it's on hbo
it's [ __ ] unbelievable because tony hawk when i was a kid he's a few years older than me six years older than me but he was like the he's
one of the younger guys on bones brigade and bones brigade the skateboard team basically was what made modern skateboarding and they had the best
videos and they had the coolest boards and they had the best writers and tony hawk would like kind of split
everyone because he was so good and i didn't realize this when i was a kid is that he was so great and he was such a
technician that we all a lot of us felt that he didn't have cool style and he wasn't like a druggie
or whatever and there was like this split between christian asoy and tony hawk and christian soy was like more renegade but
the truth was that tony hawk was the most disciplined and like the bravest one and he was making
all the he was like the guy that sort of he he was the guy who like really um exploited no like pushed getting air out of the pool like a lot of the tricks had been you know along the coping of the pool but tony
hawk figured out all like to ollie right before he got to the coping and that he could launch out of the pool and land in it and it was
so much pain so much injury so much pain physical pain and fear and bravery for
him to get as great as he did and you're watching him i mean this documentary i was crying in the first five minutes
and he talks he reflects on these times you know he's 17 he's making hundreds of
thousands of dollars he bought a house when he was like you know 19 years old or 20 years old or something bought a house um
touring all over the world and he never talks about being happy never and you see him and he is you see him when
he's a kid he's 17 16 14 he is not happy and he you know
and reflecting back upon it now at 53 years old he talk he i don't know if he explicitly says i wasn't happy
but he talked about more about like what it was and it wasn't about happiness
and so i i found that i when i found out like i think jordan peterson talks a lot about
this about it's not happiness that you're after it's most people it's not that they're trying to be happy it's that most people are trying to free
themselves from misery they do not want to be miserable and
meaning is really what we're trying to find and what is makes us feel fulfilled
and allows us to endure is that meaning and purpose and so you know
paying the rent and just doing the work and you guys your responses and um
finishing the videos every week and so forth just getting in a routine i think is how you mitigate the the stress of it and then the happiness
is just a rare nice little surprise every once in a while and then you know i think people are
just there's just bars of happiness that people are just they just have like a default level of happiness and like yeah they hit bumps
in the roads but like you know i don't know that people are really there was this famous happiness study
and they said that like the guy who dropped out of the beatles over the long haul was just as happy as
as as paul mccartney was like you know so it kind of seeks his own level but
um daniel says van i bought shop class as soul craft and i'm really getting into it what's your take on the auto
automation of things i've been thinking about that for the last few days
some things it's great like dishwashers and clothes washers and um
the toll booth thing where you just drive through like easy pass because stopping and paying for the coins was ridiculous
um the the gps stuff um some of it's really really great
specifically with cars i like to drive the car and i like all the knobs and stuff so i don't really like the idea of the
autonomous vehicle like you know i don't know just call it uber you know
if that's the point just call uber and don't buy a car but i want to drive the son of a [ __ ] um
i don't know i don't really understand the you know that there's that gigafactory
and it's almost entirely robots building these although this is what it seems i don't really know but it's like
it's like an almost uh fully automated car manufacturing um
process and you hear musk talking about automating this and automating that and then people won't have to do the work
anymore but then what are people gonna do that's kind of what i wonder it's like what the hell are people gonna do
you know i don't know um so it's like anything you know it's got its
plus side and it's minus side but for certain things thank god it's automated like the bank like transferring stuff
from your bank with your phone and doing payments oh thank god it's so much better um
oh kathy asks what made you decide to name your son ex
[Music] i'd love to know the story thought that led to that decision um we didn't know when isabelle was pregnant we were waiting until he was born to unders to
how do you say this we didn't know the sex of the baby we've purposely remained ignorant about the sex of the baby until he was born
and so is it and we were going if it's a girl it's going to be this if it's a boy it should be this should it be this should it be this should it be this and
isabelle's godfather sent us a bunch of presents and the card just said two baby x
because we didn't know if it was girl or a boy and so i think isabelle and i both were like that's
kind of great let's just let's just call him that and you know there's like there's b
there's k there's d there's g there's like all these names that are letters names um
uh and it's just the coolest letter it says and so i think that and then you have
all of the cultural phenomena i'm generation x there's malcolm x there's uh all the like a lot of the
cool motorcycles are x's like my bike is a g650x country
my my bmw it's just like the cool so yeah we agreed on it and he's
it's so strange i was listening to lex friedman podcast with grimes on it and grimes i don't know if she's married
to elon musk but she and elon musk have children together and they named their son x
and it was so but my boy's older we did it first and it was so strange hearing a woman
talking about her baby her kid x it was very strange because automatically i just think oh
you know i just picture my ex oh he's mad that they're talking about him but yeah that's how he that's where the name came from
okay um so colin asked have you ever looked at your repairs as a form of kintsugi the japanese art of repairing
pottery with gold so each repair makes it unique and tells the story yeah yeah
but i can't figure out how to like parlay that into like a museum show you know i think sax has
me [ __ ] beat on that like i can't i can't figure out like maybe just when i'm dead i think the
strategies just give a lot of cool gifts away and then people
i mean that's what the repair station is kind of about when i've only done it once but that's like i sign all the repairs kind think i think i sign them
sign a lot of them maybe and i kind of want that to be like a thing like it's like it kind of is like an art because the
like how the problem solving comes from the subconscious it's like the same well um
the technique though the thing about art is like the mastery of technique the thing that you know that we universally recognize as art
is the mastery of the technique and the repair stuff i don't know where it falls it seems to kind of fall short of you know some perfectly made
i don't know what so yeah i don't know but yeah i do try to think
i try to think of how could it be that how could it be art artists run away from us it's a little
it's crazy um [Music] what's your favorite bmw car um i like those 2002s those are pretty cool i like the 3.0 do you know that thing um uh
there's something called an alpine which is like its own manufacturer but they start with bmw and they do these
like 20 spoke wheels those are pretty cool um ever been to burning man no
no interest i'm like i'm fancy i don't like uh primitive anything um
no burning man does not appeal to me at all i i don't know i think i'm too old it's like no that's not true there's
lots of older people there man just like i said there's a guy he's 87 years old he's been going for no yeah but it's for young people it's like i'm too old for
that i don't i don't want to go out in the hot desert and like barter for wha i don't know it doesn't
appeal to me i mean from the east coast um [Music] um [Music] do you have a recommendation on a cheap entry level typewriter to start with no do not do cheap entry level ever for
anything ever get the best one because the best one's gonna be like 300 bucks you know or whatever just get a great typewriter
there's the there's a movie called american typewriter um
[Music] tom hanks is in it and there's this corona smith corona silent and he said that that i think it's called like the silent
or the whisper or something it's the generation after the one i have mine's this like a 1936 to 1941
smith corona standard um it's also called a flat top a sterling flat top
that's the i love that one the best there's the hermes makes good ones i would say stay away from
olivetti don't be tempted by them they're very they're just flimsy and cheap even though cormac mccarthy wrote all of his books on a litera 32 olivetti
i would stick with the american brands or maybe the hermes i don't know those seem to be really well made there's swiss um
but there's the smith corona it's like green and brown has like brat green keys and brown and that's the one that tom hanks says is his like if he was
stranded on a desert on an island that would be the the one he would choose that one i'm curious about um
it's called like the whisper or the quiet or the silent or something like that um but yeah you don't need to go entry level because there's billions of them
they're all used you're going to spend 200 i think mine was 100 bucks or something maybe you spend 200 or something but
yeah just get the good one um manual though get a manual and don't get
an ibm selectric i had one of those once they're really cool they're really great but they're too they're just too unwieldy they're gigantic
but i would get like a portable manual typewriter yeah and i like i like smith corona
um [Music] um if you replace the word happiness piece every statement you made becomes true instead of false right
i don't know um yes his full name is x just the letter oh so ralph's uh you should really look you should really look into the ethos behind burning man you're a burner and don't even know it read the scene that became a city
all right i mean it just doesn't really seem like my thing but i know
yeah um silent super smith corona silence super that's what i have this is what rachel
padilla said oh you repair uh frank d says you repair a lot of objects does this have an ecological objective no no it's more it's more economic and time
saving and it's just a habit i can't imagine i just can't admit like everything
breaks all the time all the time what is it it's 10 a.m i've already fixed like four things today like i don't get how
people can not know how to fix things it's so crazy how do you live how do you stay alive like how do you i
don't know um i guess i don't know it's so it's crazy to me to not
i wouldn't be able to i just wouldn't be able to function if i think maybe because i don't buy
brand new things generally speaking most of my stuff is just like gifts or like things that i've had forever
um and then i find the things that are like like iphones and so forth
they're just in a permanent state of broken like they are never fixed like uh
it's just download this this oh then the battery and this new operating system and it doesn't work with this and then
the type this and then oh my gosh they're just in a permanent state but it's a different kind of broken that you you get no
satisfaction from rep from fixing it and it's just like laziness and oversight on the
part of the software developer or whatever and it you can't that knowledge of fixing it
doesn't apply again it's it's like wasted um education because like in the next version you're not going to be able to
fix it that it's so infuriating um but i'm not that smart like if i was
smarter i think i'd love computers more i just i'm very very very very slow learner like i really i honestly i've
been doing email for 25 years i really can't figure out how how to do it like i don't i ca
i cannot figure it out like it's just all spam it's all no matter how much i you know so i don't know maybe it's just refuge
is the repairing of the real world things i just don't want to go shopping and i
just don't want to throw things away i guess i don't know i don't know
yeah i don't know that's crazy um but no it's not really
it's a nice that it's ecological but it doesn't really i don't really have an ecological objective
um uh okay thoughts on ultramarathons oh my god i can't i did rich so thatcher asks thoughts on ultra marathons are people who run hundred mile races
crazy or just freaks of nature so i went on like last year i went on rich rolls
podcast and he's like an ultra his autobiography or his memoir is called finding ultra and he's like a
champion ultra or whatever endurance athlete and i've run one marathon and like i think if you're i don't know i think it has something to do with your body being able to do it or something that makes you more interested in it
it's like any other kind of talent it's like an interest pursued but i just cannot i do
not get it because the training is a full-time job it's eight hours a day or something six eight hours a day to train
for those things and like first of all that's a lot of money that's a lot of resources a lot of time
and uh oh my god and the injuries and the i don't know
so yes they're freaks of nature but they also will work i mean it's pure work it's pure just endurance it's
called endurance um oh my gosh chad baptiste writes i was gifted an adler j5 for my birthday and i hadn't realized until i started using it
that the keys are cursive i didn't know that was a thing is it possible to switch them to a normal sans
font oh my god if it's the little if i don't know this particular typewriter but if it has a little ball like a selectric
you can just lift the tab and pull the ball out and then you have all these different fonts i used to have
like a shell i had a selectric and i had shelves applied like 50 fonts and you could change it and that was kind of fun but if it's the kind that go
you ain't changing them i mean if you started now and gave yourself a year and quit your job and woke up at five o'clock in the morning and worked till
you know no that's not fair you would have to like make each key from scratch and then take
that son of a [ __ ] apart with all those springs and all that linkage and put it back together it could be
done but it would be extremely thousands of hours of labor maybe hundreds hundreds of hours of labor but no if
it's if it's the kind where they go then no you ain't you ain't changing that maybe it's got a little disc in
there with a hammer and a disc that goes around there's that kind too you probably change that disc for a different font i'll just look it up
um oh zach kerlick why the bmw x country uh electronic fuel injection is great power rate weight is good but maybe the ultimate maybe the ultimate bmw 650 but you strike me more
as a klr guy or even a dr 650 klrs they're low quality they're like the cheap 650 my brother dean had two of
them they're kind of junky um in relation i mean they're japanese they're amazing but
in relation to like bmw is not even no comparison and they're heavy and they're no
and then the drz the dr 650 is also kind of heavy and yeah fuel injection
anti-lock breaks but i think maybe next i'll get a husqvarna i don't know if there is a
next but um yeah also i don't like the way that those klrs look
the dr is pretty cool i think that's a cool classic bike i could see myself owning one of those those are pretty cool but um
yeah but i just think that the bmws are they're just great they're really great they're super boring and there's no aftermarket stuff for them but they're
they're really great what's my opinion on teslas um
[Music] elon musk said that the model x oh gosh i hope i have this right the one with the gullwing doors
i think that's the model x there's the x the three and the s um
elon musk said that the model x with the gullwing doors he says it's the faberge egg
of automobiles meaning just like the most artistic um
phenomenal precision perfect sculpture and i believe him my brother had
one um and it had like the automatic parallel parking
and the you know the floor is completely flat because there's no drive shaft so it's just a flat so you
can like lie down on the floor and the chairs are built in such a way the seats that like when you're
when you're like sitting you can't see i think this is right you can't see any how it's attached to the ground it just looks
like it's they're floating and musk said it was a super hard problem to to address and i think so i don't know i
well i think they're masterpieces i think it's unbelievable what they were able to do and i you know i live in california it's like
they're they're like the most popular car in la i mean like you just they're they're everywhere i think my neighbor like both neighbors
have them um i think my brother has maybe he got rid of all of his but yeah they're
everywhere but um musk also said there's only two company two american car manufacturers in
history that haven't gone bankrupt and that's ford and tesla and so
um so they're basically the perfect car right um sad thing is
their computer and they're very weird to drive i don't know if
you know they have regenerative braking which means when you take your foot off the gas it's kind of like you're putting the brakes on and that's to charge the batteries
there's like little alternators or generators or something in the brakes i don't know exactly how it works but so they're a little weird like you take your foot off the gas and they like they
slow down um and there's all that screen [ __ ] there's like a giant ipad there i mean they have beautiful you
know the the the windshield is incredible it's like a helicopter windshield um
obviously state of the art but i like things that last a long long time and i don't know how long those things
last and you know there's like two there's like a rich person's world and then there's like a regular person's world and like
in the rich person world where like a car is like like to buy a car
would be like for me to buy a meal um or less [Music] there's a whole different way of living there's a whole different way of living but i've never been in that personally
i've never been in that paradigm i've never been in the paradigm where you i could just lease a car every two years
you know i could just buy a car i buy a new car every four or five years or two years or whatever and so it's a matter
of picking out the late the newest model car and sticking with that for two years and then i get to find the next one in the
next two years stuff i have lots of friends who live like that but i've never lived like that
so for me it's like the tesla i you know i'm not in a position where i
could just buy the tesla and then whatever get a new one in a few years i would want to like i kind of want to keep in my mind i'm always like buying the lat like i'm going to keep this
thing forever it's very stupid i'm not going to but like in my mind i'm going to keep the land cruiser forever and um
and then like through lean times like if i'm not doing well i'll still be able to keep it going i'll still be able to like scratch the money together if something
break like that battery like the land cruiser broke on tuesday you know the battery is 200 bucks just
popped it in works perfectly now and that you know um i have i have to replace all the brakes
on the land cruiser it's like i think i bought new drums new
for the rear new drums new shoes new cylinders new spring kit for the rears new
pads for the front because the rotors are relatively new and uh you know it's like a couple hundred bucks
it was like you know a few hundred bucks and then you know i'm gonna bring it to my guy and it'll be two hours of labor or whatever another couple hundred was like
400 bucks 500 bucks and i don't know what how much does it cost
to fix it i mean there's less part there's less mechanical stuff that goes wrong with those teslas and they probably have a whole system they
probably just give you swap out a car yeah it's better i mean if you're smart that's what you do you get a tesla so my opinion of tesla's they're
we're all idiots to not drive one if we're in a position where we have to drive a car and we don't drive a tesla we're dumb to not drive them but i want
to go on big vacation a big big trips you know where there aren't charging stations and so forth
not very often i don't know i think they're incredible but just not really my style but i could definitely foresee myself having one in
the future as like an la car and then a net for a for a for a um adventure car the like the
trucks or whatever all right i should probably get going um tesla also has right to repair issues
look up rich rebuilds oh i know is rich rebuilds the guy he took he put like an ls engine in the [ __ ] tesla he put
like a v8 and a tesla all right all right i'm calling it you guys have a great weekend um thank you for coming and watching this
and um the video launched at 10 today's and it's about my gripes with new york and
it's it's like it's a good one i like it that's good so go check it out all right take care everybody
Products & Tools Mentioned
- Husqvarna (motorcycle) uses — Isabelle's motorcycle discussed
- BMW G650X Country uses — motorcycle discussed
- Corona Standard typewriter uses — typewriter discussed
- Smith Corona mentions — typewriter brand discussed
- Hermes typewriter mentions — typewriter brand discussed
- Olivetti Lettera 32 mentions — typewriter discussed
- IBM Selectric mentions — typewriter discussed
- Braun/Nizo (Dieter Rams) mentions — camera brand discussed for design
- iPhone 4 mentions — phone referenced for design
- Tesla Model X mentions — vehicle discussed
- Ford mentions — vehicle brand discussed
- KLR 650 mentions — Kawasaki motorcycle discussed
- Suzuki DR 650 mentions — motorcycle discussed
- Yamaha TW200 mentions — motorcycle discussed
- BMW 2002 mentions — classic car discussed
- BMW 3.0 mentions — classic car discussed
- Alpine mentions — classic car brand discussed
- SodaStream mentions — appliance referenced
- JB Weld Steel Stick uses — epoxy product discussed
- plumber's epoxy uses — repair material discussed
People Referenced
Bert Kreischer, Tom Segura, Christina Pazsitzky, Marc Maron, Joe Rogan, Theo Von, Shane Gillis, Louis CK, Tom Sachs, Isabelle, Casey Neistat, Dean Neistat, Allen Stolberg, Cormac McCarthy, Tom Hanks
Books Mentioned
- Shop Class as Soulcraft
- The Catastrophe of Success
- Autobiography of Malcolm X
- Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees
Films & Media Referenced
- documentary about typewriters
- skateboarding documentary
- Coppola making-of documentary