1 00:00:38,280 --> 00:00:40,359 Speaker 1: If you want to support the show and get the 2 00:00:40,439 --> 00:00:44,880 episodes early and ad free, head on over to Freemanbeyond 3 00:00:44,880 --> 00:00:48,600 the Wall dot com forward slash Support. I want to 4 00:00:48,640 --> 00:00:53,280 explain something right now. If you support me through substack 5 00:00:53,920 --> 00:00:57,960 or Patreon, you have access to an RSS feed that 6 00:00:58,039 --> 00:01:02,280 you can plug into any popod catcher, including Apple, and 7 00:01:02,320 --> 00:01:04,719 you'll be able to listen to the episodes through there. 8 00:01:05,359 --> 00:01:08,480 If you support me through a subscribe, star gum Road, 9 00:01:08,959 --> 00:01:12,359 or on my website directly, I will send you a 10 00:01:12,400 --> 00:01:14,879 link where you can download the file and you can 11 00:01:14,920 --> 00:01:19,159 listen to it any way you wish. I really appreciate 12 00:01:19,239 --> 00:01:22,239 the support everyone gives me. It keeps a show going. 13 00:01:22,519 --> 00:01:25,560 It allows me to basically put out an episode every 14 00:01:25,680 --> 00:01:28,480 day now, and I'm not going to stop. I'm just 15 00:01:28,519 --> 00:01:31,319 going to accelerate. I think sometimes you see that I'm 16 00:01:31,319 --> 00:01:37,680 putting out two even three a day, and yeah, can't 17 00:01:37,680 --> 00:01:40,480 do it without you, So thank you for the support. 18 00:01:40,599 --> 00:01:42,920 Head on over to Freeman Beyond the Wall dot com 19 00:01:43,040 --> 00:01:49,319 forward slash Support and do it there. Thank you. I 20 00:01:49,359 --> 00:01:51,400 want to welcome everyone back to you the Peking Yana 21 00:01:51,560 --> 00:01:54,439 Show for the first time. Lee Scribner's here. How are 22 00:01:54,439 --> 00:01:54,640 you doing? 23 00:01:54,719 --> 00:01:58,799 Speaker 2: Li? I am doing really well. Thank you for everybody 24 00:01:58,799 --> 00:01:59,519 a little bit about it. 25 00:01:59,519 --> 00:02:01,439 Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, no problem, tell everybody a little bit 26 00:02:01,480 --> 00:02:02,799 about yourself before we jumped in. 27 00:02:04,040 --> 00:02:08,280 Speaker 2: Well, my name's Lee Scribner and I just recently finished 28 00:02:08,319 --> 00:02:12,439 a novel that I've been working on for way too long, 29 00:02:12,520 --> 00:02:16,479 many years. But it takes place in Las Vegas. And 30 00:02:17,080 --> 00:02:20,080 I grew up in Las Vegas and was there in 31 00:02:20,120 --> 00:02:23,360 the eighties and nineties, mainly mainly the eighties actually, so 32 00:02:23,360 --> 00:02:27,240 I'm kind of old. But then I moved around a 33 00:02:27,240 --> 00:02:32,800 lot and traveled the world and finally finished writing this novel, 34 00:02:32,919 --> 00:02:36,039 and I, you know, I just want to get it 35 00:02:36,080 --> 00:02:40,319 out there. And uh, I think, you know, it's a 36 00:02:41,360 --> 00:02:43,960 it represents a lot of the kinds of things I've 37 00:02:44,000 --> 00:02:45,159 been thinking about lately. 38 00:02:45,280 --> 00:02:49,520 Speaker 1: So well, I think, uh, well, it's put out by 39 00:02:49,560 --> 00:02:55,439 Exeter House, which is Mike Maxwell's other house. He also 40 00:02:55,520 --> 00:03:00,360 has Imperium Press, and that's he's been in the show 41 00:03:00,439 --> 00:03:04,439 multiple times. I've had multiple authors from Imperium Press on 42 00:03:04,479 --> 00:03:07,479 the show. Thomas seven seven seven writes for Imperium Press. 43 00:03:07,560 --> 00:03:11,680 So yeah, I think it's it's cool that he's doing something, 44 00:03:12,840 --> 00:03:15,680 he's branching out and looking at doing other divisions for 45 00:03:15,759 --> 00:03:20,360 different subjects. So what would how would you How would 46 00:03:20,400 --> 00:03:25,199 you describe this novel? Were you looking to create metaphors 47 00:03:25,240 --> 00:03:27,919 for life, for you telling a story, or all of 48 00:03:27,919 --> 00:03:28,400 the above. 49 00:03:29,199 --> 00:03:32,520 Speaker 2: Well, before I go there, I just want to say yes, 50 00:03:32,599 --> 00:03:36,360 I do very much appreciate that Mike Maxwell has kind 51 00:03:36,360 --> 00:03:39,479 of taken me under his wing and given me a 52 00:03:39,520 --> 00:03:46,599 spot in his Exeter House publishing concern. I when I 53 00:03:46,680 --> 00:03:50,400 finished the novel, I put it out to oh gosh, 54 00:03:50,439 --> 00:03:54,960 like fifty different agents to try to get some to 55 00:03:55,000 --> 00:03:59,120 try to get some agent representation. And you know, I 56 00:03:59,120 --> 00:04:01,879 don't want to be one of the these sour milk sour 57 00:04:01,960 --> 00:04:05,719 grapes type folks. But I didn't get a whole lot 58 00:04:05,719 --> 00:04:08,879 of positive feedback, and I don't think. I mean, you know, 59 00:04:08,919 --> 00:04:12,879 it's it's hard to get an agent, and that's usually 60 00:04:12,960 --> 00:04:16,079 the first place you go if you're serious about getting published, 61 00:04:16,120 --> 00:04:19,879 unless you want to publish self publishing stuff. But as 62 00:04:19,879 --> 00:04:21,879 soon as you start looking for agents, you get a 63 00:04:21,879 --> 00:04:25,839 little bit dismayed because you start reading the kinds of 64 00:04:25,839 --> 00:04:31,000 books they're looking for, and those they're they're looking for 65 00:04:31,439 --> 00:04:33,279 the kinds of books that most of the people that 66 00:04:33,360 --> 00:04:36,600 probably are listening to your podcasts are not interested in 67 00:04:36,680 --> 00:04:39,839 reading or writing, so I think they're and I think 68 00:04:40,040 --> 00:04:45,720 Mike identified this problem as well, both in Imperium Press 69 00:04:45,759 --> 00:04:50,240 and in Exeter House, that there's a huge population of 70 00:04:50,319 --> 00:04:53,519 people out there who are not being served by the 71 00:04:53,560 --> 00:05:00,399 publishing industry. And so, you know, not only as readers, 72 00:05:00,399 --> 00:05:02,879 but as writers. You know, there's because if you go 73 00:05:02,959 --> 00:05:08,639 to some people who are you know, the New York literati, 74 00:05:09,879 --> 00:05:11,920 and you read the kinds of books they're asking for, 75 00:05:12,480 --> 00:05:16,879 you feel like, there they must get funding from USAID 76 00:05:17,160 --> 00:05:19,759 because most of the stuff that they're looking for is 77 00:05:20,800 --> 00:05:25,079 you know, transgendered stuff and stuff with a powerful female 78 00:05:25,199 --> 00:05:29,959 lead and all this stuff that's, uh, that's you know, 79 00:05:30,199 --> 00:05:34,480 of a certain type. And I just feel like a 80 00:05:34,519 --> 00:05:36,839 lot of you know, they wouldn't publish Lord of the 81 00:05:36,920 --> 00:05:41,519 Rings basically, And I think that's really a shame because 82 00:05:41,759 --> 00:05:48,079 you know, not everything is kind of ideologically acceptable, Not 83 00:05:48,160 --> 00:05:53,079 everything that's good is ideologically acceptable to the mainstream presses 84 00:05:53,079 --> 00:05:56,439 and the mainstream agents these days, and that's I think 85 00:05:56,480 --> 00:05:59,199 that's a shame because there's some good stuff out there 86 00:05:59,240 --> 00:06:03,199 that you know, counter to kind of the mainstream leftist 87 00:06:03,759 --> 00:06:08,480 agenda or narratives and stuff. So I didn't. When I 88 00:06:08,519 --> 00:06:10,519 set out to write this book. I didn't set out 89 00:06:10,519 --> 00:06:14,399 to write an agenda driven book or an ideologically driven book. 90 00:06:14,920 --> 00:06:17,240 I just started. I just wanted to tell the story 91 00:06:17,279 --> 00:06:20,439 that I felt like I was kind of destined to 92 00:06:20,439 --> 00:06:26,279 write or interested in writing. And so it's not it's 93 00:06:26,319 --> 00:06:28,600 a story. I mean, the first thing to know about 94 00:06:28,600 --> 00:06:32,079 my book, Casino Labs, is that it's a story about 95 00:06:32,160 --> 00:06:36,199 that's very close to me. It's it's got people. I 96 00:06:36,240 --> 00:06:38,759 recognize people in the story as almost people I know. 97 00:06:39,000 --> 00:06:42,839 You know, my father's a psychologist, and one of the 98 00:06:42,879 --> 00:06:48,120 main characters is a psychologist. So not to say that 99 00:06:48,120 --> 00:06:51,600 that's my father, but I think in some ways the 100 00:06:51,600 --> 00:06:57,839 book is what I would consider a like an autobiographical fantasy. 101 00:06:58,000 --> 00:07:00,800 So there's there's elements of autobiography be in the book, 102 00:07:01,199 --> 00:07:05,720 but it's like breathed through a filter of slight fantasy. 103 00:07:05,800 --> 00:07:10,079 It's it's augmented and are articulated in a certain kind 104 00:07:10,079 --> 00:07:12,839 of fantastical way. But I think that, you know, it's 105 00:07:12,839 --> 00:07:18,120 like artistic license that gives a little bit more symbolic 106 00:07:18,240 --> 00:07:19,839 power to the narrative. 107 00:07:22,000 --> 00:07:24,600 Speaker 1: You said a lot there, but one of the things 108 00:07:24,600 --> 00:07:28,519 I wanted to say is that those books that are 109 00:07:28,519 --> 00:07:34,120 being published for trans Oh this has a trans lead 110 00:07:34,279 --> 00:07:37,439 or something. No one's reading those. Yeah, no one's reading them. 111 00:07:37,680 --> 00:07:41,639 And the good the good news is no one's reading them. 112 00:07:41,920 --> 00:07:46,800 The bad news is they're probably using our you know, 113 00:07:47,199 --> 00:07:52,360 tax money to buy fifty thousand copies of them so 114 00:07:52,399 --> 00:07:58,439 that they can perform patronage to these maniacs that you know. 115 00:07:59,120 --> 00:08:01,920 Hopefully this the spirit of this age is coming to 116 00:08:01,959 --> 00:08:05,000 an end and these people can retreat into the shadows 117 00:08:05,000 --> 00:08:05,680 where they belong. 118 00:08:06,920 --> 00:08:10,040 Speaker 2: Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of money 119 00:08:10,120 --> 00:08:17,279 was being you know, changing hands in order to make 120 00:08:17,920 --> 00:08:20,279 make it look like there was a huge demand for 121 00:08:20,360 --> 00:08:23,319 these kinds of topics. And it actually reminds me, you know, 122 00:08:23,399 --> 00:08:27,639 I'm also in academia, and I've been teaching for you know, 123 00:08:27,720 --> 00:08:31,720 twenty years in higher education, and I've published a few 124 00:08:31,759 --> 00:08:35,919 things in that in that, uh, you know, in higher education, 125 00:08:36,039 --> 00:08:41,600 in academia as a literary scholar, and you know, looking 126 00:08:41,639 --> 00:08:45,120 at cultural trends and things like that, and so as 127 00:08:45,159 --> 00:08:50,720 as you do when you're a professor, you you you 128 00:08:50,799 --> 00:08:53,480 need to publish, and in order to publish, you you 129 00:08:53,559 --> 00:08:59,240 go to sources like you know, call for papers. The 130 00:08:59,320 --> 00:09:02,759 University of Pensilvania puts out a website called upen Call 131 00:09:02,840 --> 00:09:07,240 for Papers, and so it's like they basically describe the 132 00:09:07,320 --> 00:09:10,559 kinds of papers that they're looking for to publish in 133 00:09:10,639 --> 00:09:14,279 academic journals, and it's it's very much the same thing. 134 00:09:14,360 --> 00:09:18,600 It's like, you know, trans this, and gender studies that, 135 00:09:18,919 --> 00:09:24,080 and a lot of a lot of racial studies, you know, 136 00:09:24,720 --> 00:09:30,399 African American studies and stuff like this, and you know, 137 00:09:33,200 --> 00:09:37,600 of the papers that are asked for from scholars to 138 00:09:37,639 --> 00:09:42,440 be produced and published, even at that first stage are 139 00:09:43,879 --> 00:09:48,240 seemed to have some kind of left leaning agenda to them. 140 00:09:48,480 --> 00:09:51,240 And again, like I don't know that there's a huge 141 00:09:51,679 --> 00:09:56,279 population of people clamoring, you know, to read you know, 142 00:09:56,919 --> 00:10:04,159 the queering of Shakespearean mulattoes in you know, you know 143 00:10:04,200 --> 00:10:08,679 what I mean. It's like, these are these, these titles 144 00:10:08,720 --> 00:10:16,600 and these subjects are seemingly being dictated from the top down, 145 00:10:17,879 --> 00:10:22,480 and they don't. And I think that's partly why academia, 146 00:10:22,720 --> 00:10:25,440 especially in the higher humanities, has had such a bad 147 00:10:25,480 --> 00:10:28,279 reputation lately as being kind of totally out of touch, 148 00:10:29,279 --> 00:10:33,240 disconnected and only reserved for you know, people who are 149 00:10:33,240 --> 00:10:36,759 independently wealthy or you know, elite speaking to each other, 150 00:10:37,519 --> 00:10:39,480 and they leave out a lot of people. I think, 151 00:10:39,559 --> 00:10:45,919 who are you know, literate and competent and articulate and intelligent, 152 00:10:46,320 --> 00:10:48,600 And I think that's a real shame. And so I 153 00:10:48,639 --> 00:10:51,480 see a lot a big parallel between the kinds of 154 00:10:52,720 --> 00:10:55,360 the ideological hoops you got to jump through in order 155 00:10:55,440 --> 00:11:00,399 to publish, both in academia and in the in fiction. 156 00:11:03,000 --> 00:11:06,039 Speaker 1: I assume you don't mind talking about where you what 157 00:11:06,080 --> 00:11:07,919 you've been doing for the last ten years, where you've 158 00:11:07,919 --> 00:11:10,840 been teaching. I mean, you have a Wikipedia you have 159 00:11:10,879 --> 00:11:12,039 a Wikipedia. 160 00:11:11,519 --> 00:11:13,559 Speaker 2: Page, right, No, I don't mind. 161 00:11:14,039 --> 00:11:19,240 Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty I mean it's prestigious. I mean I know, 162 00:11:19,519 --> 00:11:22,120 I know the university. I know people who've gone there. 163 00:11:22,480 --> 00:11:26,879 I know a lot of people, a lot of powerful people. 164 00:11:27,000 --> 00:11:30,039 Some powerful people have gone there. So what's it like 165 00:11:30,159 --> 00:11:31,759 teaching an American? 166 00:11:33,399 --> 00:11:36,000 Speaker 2: Actually, I don't teach at American anymore. I taught there 167 00:11:36,039 --> 00:11:39,919 briefly right before I moved it. Probably the Wikipedia might 168 00:11:39,919 --> 00:11:44,559 be a little out of date, but I taught there 169 00:11:44,679 --> 00:11:48,399 briefly right around the first Trump term I think it 170 00:11:48,440 --> 00:11:53,960 was twenty sixteen seventeen, and then moved to Moscow. Actually, 171 00:11:54,399 --> 00:11:56,679 and this is another thing I'll disclose. I don't mind 172 00:11:56,679 --> 00:12:00,879 disclosing it. It's my wife's in the State Department and 173 00:12:00,919 --> 00:12:05,720 she's been there for sixteen years. So I I we 174 00:12:05,720 --> 00:12:09,200 we got posted to Moscow. So I left American University, 175 00:12:09,440 --> 00:12:13,679 and you know, and it's it is hard, you know, 176 00:12:14,440 --> 00:12:20,559 working through some of these institutions. I feel like, you know, 177 00:12:21,320 --> 00:12:24,200 I one thing I'll say is like I never treat 178 00:12:24,200 --> 00:12:27,440 a student like if I have a student, I subject 179 00:12:27,440 --> 00:12:30,840 them to the same scrutiny and the same rigor, intellectual rigor, 180 00:12:31,519 --> 00:12:34,679 you know, kind of no matter who they are. And uh, 181 00:12:36,000 --> 00:12:39,279 but it's it's I don't know if it's a way 182 00:12:39,320 --> 00:12:44,600 to weed out like ideological dissent or whatever, but they 183 00:12:44,919 --> 00:12:47,679 they do. I don't know how I stayed in academia 184 00:12:47,759 --> 00:12:51,960 so long, but because every once in a while I'll 185 00:12:52,000 --> 00:12:55,559 run into someone a colleague who is, you know, has 186 00:12:55,600 --> 00:12:58,080 a little bit more of a wider view of reality 187 00:12:58,919 --> 00:13:04,360 than than is the norm. But but you kind of 188 00:13:04,840 --> 00:13:07,960 kind of fly under the radar a little bit and 189 00:13:08,559 --> 00:13:11,679 do a lot of these training courses that teach you 190 00:13:11,720 --> 00:13:15,919 how to be inclusive and stuff like that, and I 191 00:13:15,919 --> 00:13:19,559 feel like I don't need those really, but but they're 192 00:13:19,639 --> 00:13:24,080 They're just part of the zeitgeist. Everyone has to go 193 00:13:24,159 --> 00:13:27,039 through that. And I don't know if everything's going to 194 00:13:27,120 --> 00:13:30,159 change now with the lack of funding from USAID or 195 00:13:31,480 --> 00:13:35,279 or whatever. But so anyway, I was in Moscow for 196 00:13:35,320 --> 00:13:37,759 a few years and then came back and taught at 197 00:13:37,759 --> 00:13:42,240 different colleges and then went back to Moscow. So I've 198 00:13:42,240 --> 00:13:44,960 been to Moscow twice. And you know what, since Trump 199 00:13:45,039 --> 00:13:52,559 is now reconnecting diplomatically with the Russians, I might be 200 00:13:52,799 --> 00:13:55,080 going to Moscow again in the near future. I don't know. 201 00:13:55,960 --> 00:14:03,120 Speaker 1: Interesting. Interesting, All right, let's jump into Casino. It takes 202 00:14:03,120 --> 00:14:06,679 place in the early nineteen nineties Vegas. What was it like? 203 00:14:06,879 --> 00:14:10,039 What was it like there in the early nineteen nineties. 204 00:14:10,399 --> 00:14:13,080 Speaker 2: Yeah, So, like I said, I grew up in Vegas 205 00:14:13,120 --> 00:14:18,039 in that period, my dad was a psychologist, and not 206 00:14:18,120 --> 00:14:22,519 just any psychologist. He worked in the graveyard shift at 207 00:14:22,639 --> 00:14:27,480 a crisis unit at like the University Medical Center hospital. 208 00:14:28,120 --> 00:14:32,200 So basically people who would try to commit suicide or whatever. 209 00:14:32,240 --> 00:14:35,279 He'd be the police would bring in people to him 210 00:14:35,279 --> 00:14:38,759 that were either threatening to commit suicide and he would 211 00:14:38,879 --> 00:14:42,879 psychologically evaluate them determine if they were kind of a 212 00:14:42,919 --> 00:14:46,799 harm to themselves or others and you know, send them 213 00:14:46,799 --> 00:14:50,440 on their way to you know, a rehab center or whatever. 214 00:14:51,000 --> 00:14:54,000 So he I think he kind of saw some of 215 00:14:54,039 --> 00:14:59,080 the refuse, the wreckage of the twenty four to seven 216 00:14:59,360 --> 00:15:04,440 party atmosphere of Las Vegas during that time period. So 217 00:15:05,840 --> 00:15:08,080 he also, I think, I said, he just worked at 218 00:15:08,080 --> 00:15:11,879 the graveyard in the graveyard shift, so he was gone 219 00:15:11,919 --> 00:15:13,519 a lot at night and sleep slept a lot during 220 00:15:13,559 --> 00:15:19,679 the day. But I just remember one of my formative 221 00:15:19,840 --> 00:15:22,679 kind of thoughts on some of my ideas that I 222 00:15:22,840 --> 00:15:26,759 explore in the book. I remember walking around Vegas at 223 00:15:26,840 --> 00:15:30,960 night with friends or alone and not you know, I 224 00:15:30,960 --> 00:15:33,720 lived in the in the suburbs, so as a lot 225 00:15:33,759 --> 00:15:35,480 of people think of Vegas and they think it's just 226 00:15:35,559 --> 00:15:39,120 one giant casino, but of course there's this a suburban 227 00:15:39,360 --> 00:15:45,039 kind of sprawl around the strip of Yeah, there's Henderson 228 00:15:46,000 --> 00:15:48,799 in the kind of south east, and then in the 229 00:15:48,840 --> 00:15:53,879 northwest there's another Henderson esque community called Summerlin and this 230 00:15:54,039 --> 00:15:56,759 is actually before Summerlin was built. There there's a place 231 00:15:56,799 --> 00:15:59,000 called the Lakes. But basically I lived on the west 232 00:15:59,000 --> 00:16:03,879 side and kind of just a suburban area and uh, anyway, 233 00:16:03,879 --> 00:16:06,279 I was just I remember walking around just in the 234 00:16:06,320 --> 00:16:08,519 outskirts at night, and I would look down to the 235 00:16:08,559 --> 00:16:11,159 city the night, you know, you could see kind of 236 00:16:11,159 --> 00:16:13,720 the glitz from the periphery of the city and look 237 00:16:13,799 --> 00:16:16,639 down and you could see the glitz, and for some reason, 238 00:16:17,159 --> 00:16:18,399 you know, I was, I was on a bit of 239 00:16:18,399 --> 00:16:19,919 a I'll get back to that in a second, but 240 00:16:20,000 --> 00:16:23,919 I was on a bit of a a purity kick 241 00:16:24,279 --> 00:16:27,679 for many years during my high school years. Like I 242 00:16:27,720 --> 00:16:32,240 didn't I wasn't really into you know, drugs or alcohol 243 00:16:32,519 --> 00:16:35,159 so much, not that I really We. 244 00:16:35,120 --> 00:16:36,360 Speaker 1: Used to call that straight edge. 245 00:16:36,639 --> 00:16:40,639 Speaker 2: Yeah, No, I wasn't straight edge. I mean, yeah, so 246 00:16:40,879 --> 00:16:44,360 I guess I acted straight edge. But in my experienced, 247 00:16:44,360 --> 00:16:48,200 straight edge people would like fight people for smoking, like, hey, 248 00:16:48,200 --> 00:16:50,279 you're smoking a cigarette, I'm gonna punch you in the face. 249 00:16:50,879 --> 00:16:53,679 I never did that, but uh but I did, Yeah, 250 00:16:53,679 --> 00:16:56,519 I was. I wasn't even farther like I would. I 251 00:16:56,559 --> 00:16:59,440 didn't like touching plastic. I was kind of a hippie. Actually, 252 00:17:01,759 --> 00:17:06,160 I would remove plastic threads from my shoes and replace 253 00:17:06,200 --> 00:17:10,039 them with cotton threads. That might have been an extreme example, 254 00:17:10,079 --> 00:17:12,440 but I was a little bit weird like that. So 255 00:17:12,599 --> 00:17:19,359 I felt this urge to seek purity. And so I 256 00:17:19,440 --> 00:17:22,960 remember walking around at night. And the reason I'm walking 257 00:17:23,000 --> 00:17:25,680 around at night is because in Vegas in the daytime, 258 00:17:25,680 --> 00:17:28,359 it's too hot in the summertime, So like you know, 259 00:17:28,359 --> 00:17:30,880 when I was a teenager, i'd be out of school 260 00:17:31,640 --> 00:17:34,640 for the summer, and my friends and I would spend 261 00:17:34,680 --> 00:17:36,960 a lot of time during nocturnal hours when it was 262 00:17:37,000 --> 00:17:39,839 a little bit more conducive to kind of being outside 263 00:17:40,079 --> 00:17:42,839 because during the day it was too damn hot. So 264 00:17:42,880 --> 00:17:46,359 I just remember looking down at the city landscape and 265 00:17:46,359 --> 00:17:49,279 seeing all the glitz and lights, and I got this, 266 00:17:50,480 --> 00:17:52,759 I don't know, almost this theory that if I was 267 00:17:52,799 --> 00:17:56,640 going to be a creative person, I had to turn 268 00:17:56,680 --> 00:17:59,720 away from the stimulation of the lights of the city 269 00:18:00,200 --> 00:18:03,799 and look out into the void of night where there 270 00:18:03,799 --> 00:18:08,119 were no lights, and almost create light out of nothing. 271 00:18:08,440 --> 00:18:10,759 Because when you have a creative act, you need to 272 00:18:11,400 --> 00:18:14,359 create it in a vacuum. Or I mean not that 273 00:18:14,559 --> 00:18:17,119 all creativity comes out of a vacuum, but there is 274 00:18:17,160 --> 00:18:20,000 a sense in which it comes from nothing. Uh. And 275 00:18:21,240 --> 00:18:23,920 since that is the case, if you over if you're 276 00:18:23,960 --> 00:18:27,200 surrounded by overstimulation all the time, it will stifle your 277 00:18:27,200 --> 00:18:30,079 creativity and it will stifle your your the life of 278 00:18:30,119 --> 00:18:34,480 the mind or whatever. So that that's like really the 279 00:18:34,519 --> 00:18:38,680 first step into some of the ideas that informed this novel, 280 00:18:41,079 --> 00:18:43,799 and there are there are many others, but I want 281 00:18:43,839 --> 00:18:46,000 to just say that, you know, again, this is a 282 00:18:46,079 --> 00:18:49,400 story that is you know, it's like a fictional story 283 00:18:49,440 --> 00:18:53,640 with characters and interactions and plots, and it's not it's 284 00:18:53,680 --> 00:18:56,519 not really a It wasn't meant to be a theoretical novel. 285 00:18:56,559 --> 00:19:00,160 Although after I started writing this novel, I started noticing, hey, 286 00:19:00,559 --> 00:19:05,079 you know, I'm actually articulating some of these kinds of theories, 287 00:19:05,720 --> 00:19:08,480 and so maybe I went with that. So it does 288 00:19:08,559 --> 00:19:12,559 have a theoretical framework or some kind of philosophical ideas 289 00:19:12,559 --> 00:19:14,960 that are embedded in it. But at the end of 290 00:19:14,960 --> 00:19:18,880 the day, it's not just an ideological piece of text 291 00:19:18,960 --> 00:19:22,079 or writing. It has a story of very human story 292 00:19:22,559 --> 00:19:27,519 of you know, you know, family ties and and betrayal 293 00:19:27,759 --> 00:19:34,880 and feelings of you know, feelings of betrayed loyalties and 294 00:19:34,960 --> 00:19:37,359 things like that that are that are in the novel. 295 00:19:37,599 --> 00:19:42,480 Speaker 1: So, well, start talking about Martin Waterhouse. 296 00:19:43,920 --> 00:19:49,839 Speaker 2: Okay, great, Okay, So so Martin Waterhouse is like, you know, 297 00:19:49,880 --> 00:19:52,599 the main character or one of i'd say that one 298 00:19:52,640 --> 00:19:56,200 of the two main characters, but probably he was probably 299 00:19:56,599 --> 00:20:02,000 the main character. He he works in. So let me 300 00:20:02,079 --> 00:20:04,839 just talk about the first chapter. And I don't want 301 00:20:04,880 --> 00:20:07,880 to like give the whole game away. And there's some 302 00:20:08,079 --> 00:20:09,759 chapters at the very end of the book that are 303 00:20:10,680 --> 00:20:15,880 it's like an m night Shylaman some very surprising things 304 00:20:15,920 --> 00:20:17,799 that might happen at the end that I won't give away, 305 00:20:17,880 --> 00:20:22,559 so spoiler alert. But but I'll talk more freely about 306 00:20:22,559 --> 00:20:29,039 the first few chapters. So Morton Waterhouse is a greeter 307 00:20:29,799 --> 00:20:34,559 at like a Caesar's Empire, a Caesar's Palace clone casino 308 00:20:34,640 --> 00:20:40,200 called Caesar's Empire, and he's dressed in a toga and 309 00:20:40,319 --> 00:20:44,400 he wanders around the casino all day and greets the 310 00:20:44,720 --> 00:20:49,880 incoming tourists, who he sees as kind of riff raff 311 00:20:49,880 --> 00:20:53,319 and rabble, but he'll greet them in Latin. And he's 312 00:20:53,319 --> 00:20:55,480 walking in a toga. He sees himself as a Caesar. 313 00:20:56,519 --> 00:20:58,480 And they have these in Vegas, or they used to. 314 00:20:58,599 --> 00:21:00,400 They don't really have them anymore, but it used to 315 00:21:00,440 --> 00:21:04,440 be in the eighties they'd hire people to dress as 316 00:21:04,480 --> 00:21:07,519 Julius Caesar and they would greet guests coming in from 317 00:21:07,640 --> 00:21:11,119 the strip and they'd come in and the Caesar employee 318 00:21:11,359 --> 00:21:14,599 of the casino would say, greetings, welcome to Las Vegas. 319 00:21:15,799 --> 00:21:19,119 Well Morton Waterhouse, I don't know whether it's because he 320 00:21:19,200 --> 00:21:21,880 started working at Caesar's Palace and he is of a 321 00:21:21,920 --> 00:21:26,640 certain kind of temperament, but he he starts to become 322 00:21:26,720 --> 00:21:31,000 obsessed with Rome, and so instead of greeting everyone in English, 323 00:21:31,279 --> 00:21:35,880 welcome to Las Vegas, Welcome to Caesar's Empire, he he 324 00:21:35,920 --> 00:21:40,920 greets everyone in Latin and he says salawet day achivis Romani. 325 00:21:41,039 --> 00:21:44,880 And he's basically saying greeting, says hale citizens of Rome. 326 00:21:44,960 --> 00:21:47,640 And he gets in trouble for this, so he gets 327 00:21:47,640 --> 00:21:51,039 called to his boss's office and the boss is like, Hey, 328 00:21:51,160 --> 00:21:56,119 I'm getting lots of complaints here that you're you're you're 329 00:21:56,160 --> 00:22:01,200 yelling gibberish at our guests. And he says, you're supposed 330 00:22:01,240 --> 00:22:05,960 to call everyone Caesar or Caesar's plural. And this actually 331 00:22:06,039 --> 00:22:09,039 refers to something that you know, when Jay Sarno opened 332 00:22:10,440 --> 00:22:14,799 Caesar's Palace in sixty six, he required everyone to be 333 00:22:14,839 --> 00:22:18,519 greeted as a Caesar. And so the word in Caesar's Palace, 334 00:22:18,599 --> 00:22:22,680 the word Caesar's Palace is not possessive like the Palace 335 00:22:22,759 --> 00:22:28,160 of Caesar. It's actually Caesar's plural palace. And that was 336 00:22:28,160 --> 00:22:31,480 done intentionally to imply that everyone who comes to visit 337 00:22:31,599 --> 00:22:35,039 Caesar's Palace is a is a Caesar. So everyone's a Caesar. 338 00:22:36,599 --> 00:22:40,640 So Morton Waterhouse's boss is telling Morton Waterhouse to call 339 00:22:40,680 --> 00:22:45,200 everyone a Caesar, not just you know, hale citizens of Rome. 340 00:22:45,359 --> 00:22:50,200 He's telling them to call everyone a Caesar. And Morton 341 00:22:50,240 --> 00:22:52,960 Waterhouse kind of just goes back down to the ground 342 00:22:52,960 --> 00:22:57,039 floor with his tail between his legs and he's like, man, 343 00:22:57,079 --> 00:22:58,839 I got to call everyone Caesar, so I thought I 344 00:22:58,960 --> 00:23:03,880 was a Caesar. And this bothers him and he has 345 00:23:03,920 --> 00:23:08,200 this identity crisis because now he feels like, what's the 346 00:23:08,279 --> 00:23:11,599 distinction between him and everyone else that comes to Caesar's Palace. 347 00:23:11,599 --> 00:23:13,039 He used to think that he was a Caesar and 348 00:23:13,079 --> 00:23:17,440 they were just the citizens, and now he's he's a 349 00:23:17,440 --> 00:23:23,039 face in the crowd, and and of course I think 350 00:23:23,079 --> 00:23:25,359 there's you know, it's it gets back to that kind 351 00:23:25,359 --> 00:23:31,359 of neoliberal ideal ideal of everyone gets a trophy. There 352 00:23:31,400 --> 00:23:36,160 are no hierarchies, so the hierarchies of society have all 353 00:23:36,240 --> 00:23:39,559 been flattened, and everyone's a caesar and everyone gets a trophy. 354 00:23:40,359 --> 00:23:42,160 And so this is kind of step one. And this 355 00:23:42,200 --> 00:23:45,000 is the first chapter in the novel that I just described. 356 00:23:46,440 --> 00:23:50,839 Speaker 1: Well, the I mean, he you're also he also has 357 00:23:50,839 --> 00:23:55,759 to deal with with a father who has issues, and 358 00:23:55,839 --> 00:23:56,640 he has a sister. 359 00:23:57,440 --> 00:23:58,359 Speaker 2: Yeah. 360 00:23:58,640 --> 00:24:02,400 Speaker 1: Yeah, And then of coursers doctor Stephen Nichols, who is 361 00:24:02,799 --> 00:24:07,519 a psychiatry or psychiatrist. Who would it be a stretch 362 00:24:07,680 --> 00:24:12,480 to say there is some inspiration, even even if it's 363 00:24:12,599 --> 00:24:14,880 very small from your dad. 364 00:24:15,920 --> 00:24:19,200 Speaker 2: Oh no, it's not small at all. Actually it's funny 365 00:24:19,200 --> 00:24:24,400 because you know, he's very much a mirrors my dad. 366 00:24:24,440 --> 00:24:27,200 But but also Bill Moore, see you know, of course, 367 00:24:27,400 --> 00:24:29,440 if you want to, if you want to just cut 368 00:24:29,480 --> 00:24:32,319 right to the chase, I see kind of Morton Waterhouse 369 00:24:32,359 --> 00:24:36,880 as a as a a mirror image of myself, as 370 00:24:36,920 --> 00:24:39,880 a lot of authors do. I maybe it's maybe it's 371 00:24:39,920 --> 00:24:41,720 not cool to say that, and to kind of let 372 00:24:41,759 --> 00:24:44,279 the cat out of the bag. And then but the 373 00:24:44,720 --> 00:24:51,559 father in Morton Waterhouse's father who's crippled with with munchause 374 00:24:51,559 --> 00:24:54,400 and syndrome. And he thinks we'll get into that in 375 00:24:54,440 --> 00:24:58,240 a minute. But he's kind of my dad, and you know, 376 00:24:58,279 --> 00:25:00,359 he's kind of modeled after my dad. So Bill is 377 00:25:00,359 --> 00:25:03,359 modeled after after my dad, the father of Morton Waterhouse, 378 00:25:03,359 --> 00:25:08,519 so Bill Waterhouse. But Nichols, his psychologist, is also mirrored 379 00:25:08,759 --> 00:25:11,319 or modeled after my father. So my father gets to 380 00:25:11,359 --> 00:25:15,359 play double duty. And it's like two roles. I mean, 381 00:25:15,400 --> 00:25:21,480 you know, I maybe that's a generalization or an exaggeration, 382 00:25:21,519 --> 00:25:24,640 but there's elements of my father in two of the 383 00:25:24,799 --> 00:25:29,640 other main male roles in this book, you know, for 384 00:25:29,680 --> 00:25:32,119 what it's worth. And my mother funny, funnily enough, who 385 00:25:32,200 --> 00:25:34,240 I love and everything, but she doesn't appear at all. 386 00:25:34,319 --> 00:25:39,119 So I don't know what to make of that anyway. 387 00:25:39,160 --> 00:25:42,039 But let me just say one kind of slightly interesting thing, 388 00:25:42,119 --> 00:25:47,680 if I if you don't mind, absolutely, Yeah. So the 389 00:25:47,720 --> 00:25:51,799 origins of writing this book actually are a little bit 390 00:25:51,839 --> 00:25:56,079 funny and almost mystical, because, uh, you know, I lived 391 00:25:56,079 --> 00:25:59,440 in Vegas most of my early earlier years, but I 392 00:25:59,440 --> 00:26:02,119 went to colle in a few different places. But I 393 00:26:02,200 --> 00:26:04,799 ended up in Salt Lake City as an undergrad and 394 00:26:04,839 --> 00:26:07,559 went to the University of Utah, and there I was 395 00:26:07,640 --> 00:26:12,160 living with a woman. And this was like ninety eight, Okay, 396 00:26:12,680 --> 00:26:18,920 and when I was there, I had this dream, a 397 00:26:20,279 --> 00:26:24,400 very clear, vivid dream that seemed so significant, right, And 398 00:26:24,759 --> 00:26:28,359 the dream was an image or a vision of someone 399 00:26:28,440 --> 00:26:32,880 floating through space in a toga. And this was long 400 00:26:32,920 --> 00:26:35,839 before I had any idea about writing this book. Right, 401 00:26:35,920 --> 00:26:39,119 this is like the first glimpse of what this book 402 00:26:39,200 --> 00:26:42,960 was to be. He's floating through space in aatoga And 403 00:26:43,000 --> 00:26:45,079 I woke up and I thought, what does that mean? 404 00:26:45,119 --> 00:26:46,839 You know what it reminds me of? It reminds me 405 00:26:46,920 --> 00:26:49,759 of Las Vegas, where you have guys in atoga and 406 00:26:49,759 --> 00:26:53,240 they're on a moving walkway and they're floating through space 407 00:26:53,559 --> 00:26:57,440 like they're not taking any steps, but they're actually going 408 00:26:57,440 --> 00:26:59,319 through space in a moving walkway. So that's what it 409 00:26:59,359 --> 00:27:03,440 reminded me of it. And I thought, Hm, that's weird now, Mike. 410 00:27:03,680 --> 00:27:05,720 It's this girl and I broke up, and a few 411 00:27:05,759 --> 00:27:08,039 years later I find myself back in Las Vegas. I 412 00:27:08,119 --> 00:27:12,079 was working at UNLV as an adjunct professor, teaching English 413 00:27:12,680 --> 00:27:16,319 at UNLV, and then another girl I was dating, who 414 00:27:16,400 --> 00:27:19,359 was a who worked at the front desk at Caesar's 415 00:27:19,359 --> 00:27:21,839 Palace called me one day and she's like, Lee, I 416 00:27:21,880 --> 00:27:25,000 know you need a summer job because your adjunct job 417 00:27:25,000 --> 00:27:29,079 at UNLV doesn't pay you over the summer. So here 418 00:27:29,079 --> 00:27:32,759 at Caesar's Palace, it looks like there's a job opening 419 00:27:32,839 --> 00:27:36,799 up that you might be interested in. You you tour 420 00:27:36,960 --> 00:27:41,759 the moving walkways and you greet guests as they come 421 00:27:41,799 --> 00:27:45,920 into the casino. And when she and so I, for 422 00:27:45,960 --> 00:27:50,880 one summer I did that. I walked around Caesar's Palace 423 00:27:50,920 --> 00:27:54,880 and sometimes the moving walkways would break down, and you 424 00:27:54,920 --> 00:27:58,960 would I'd restart them with my key, and uh, pretty 425 00:27:58,960 --> 00:28:01,799 soon they they broke down and they wouldn't start back 426 00:28:01,880 --> 00:28:05,480 up again. So they had some mechanical problems. So I 427 00:28:05,519 --> 00:28:07,839 had nothing to do. I would just walk wander around 428 00:28:07,839 --> 00:28:11,640 Caesar's Palace and get paid for it for months and 429 00:28:11,680 --> 00:28:15,440 months and uh. But the whole time I was like, yeah, 430 00:28:15,440 --> 00:28:17,480 this is this is weird that I had that dream 431 00:28:17,640 --> 00:28:20,960 of the guy wandering around Caesar's Palace and here I 432 00:28:21,000 --> 00:28:24,559 am wandering around Caesar's Palace getting paid for it. And 433 00:28:24,640 --> 00:28:27,599 so I started thinking, Hm, you know, I like writing fiction. 434 00:28:27,759 --> 00:28:30,839 Maybe I'll write a story about a guy that wanders 435 00:28:30,839 --> 00:28:34,039 around Caesar's Palace and great guests and he thinks he's 436 00:28:34,119 --> 00:28:39,559 Julius Caesar. So that's Uh, that's when I started writing 437 00:28:39,599 --> 00:28:40,079 this story. 438 00:28:42,039 --> 00:28:45,319 Speaker 1: When you describe that job. When I look at, you know, 439 00:28:45,880 --> 00:28:49,279 the job that's described from Morton Waterhouse, and I think 440 00:28:49,279 --> 00:28:53,480 of other jobs you do in a casino. Uh, it 441 00:28:53,599 --> 00:28:57,000 seems to me are most of these jobs. When you 442 00:28:57,039 --> 00:28:59,079 describe most of these jobs, and now we're not we're 443 00:28:59,119 --> 00:29:01,599 not talking about the novel at all, would you describe 444 00:29:01,640 --> 00:29:05,680 most of these jobs as just most people are thinking 445 00:29:05,680 --> 00:29:09,759 they're temporary. These are not. These are jobs you do 446 00:29:10,200 --> 00:29:13,680 while you're going to college, before college, save money for college, 447 00:29:14,119 --> 00:29:16,960 maybe after college if you can't find a job. These 448 00:29:17,799 --> 00:29:20,319 I'm not saying they don't sound like serious jobs, because 449 00:29:20,359 --> 00:29:22,640 I mean, obviously they can pay the bills, but it 450 00:29:22,680 --> 00:29:26,880 doesn't sound like anything long term except for maybe a 451 00:29:26,960 --> 00:29:27,799 couple people. 452 00:29:29,200 --> 00:29:34,440 Speaker 2: Well, you'd be surprised, because I don't know if that's 453 00:29:34,599 --> 00:29:38,079 this is still the case. But all through the nineties, 454 00:29:38,920 --> 00:29:44,079 Vegas it was growing hugely, and one of the reasons 455 00:29:44,440 --> 00:29:47,599 for that was because you could move to Vegas with 456 00:29:47,759 --> 00:29:51,960 no college degree and make eighty ninety thousand dollars a 457 00:29:52,039 --> 00:29:56,920 year parking cars as a valet. And I don't know 458 00:29:56,920 --> 00:29:58,759 if that even sounds like a lot of money now, 459 00:29:58,799 --> 00:30:01,039 but it was a lot of money then for you 460 00:30:01,079 --> 00:30:03,160 know that a kid out of high school. 461 00:30:03,799 --> 00:30:07,400 Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I was working, you know, working for 462 00:30:08,079 --> 00:30:11,759 a large company in the nineties. That's especially for a 463 00:30:11,839 --> 00:30:13,839 kid right out of high school. That's that's a lot 464 00:30:13,839 --> 00:30:15,240 of money, especially. 465 00:30:15,119 --> 00:30:17,720 Speaker 2: A ton of money. And so I knew tons of kids. 466 00:30:17,799 --> 00:30:19,440 I mean, so it was kind of a disincentive to 467 00:30:19,480 --> 00:30:22,480 go to college because hey, you could just go right 468 00:30:22,519 --> 00:30:24,720 into working down at the casinos. You could be a 469 00:30:24,799 --> 00:30:28,319 knot runner, you could be a whatever and just start 470 00:30:28,319 --> 00:30:31,720 making money. And so in a way, it's Vegas has 471 00:30:31,759 --> 00:30:34,599 gotten a reputation as being not a very intellectual town 472 00:30:35,319 --> 00:30:37,839 because you know, there's no I mean, there is a college, 473 00:30:37,839 --> 00:30:39,720 but not to say that you need to have a 474 00:30:39,759 --> 00:30:42,160 college or a college agree to be an intellectual by 475 00:30:42,240 --> 00:30:47,039 any means, but you know it it it rewards or 476 00:30:47,200 --> 00:30:51,240 incentivizes just you know, parking cars and being cool with 477 00:30:51,279 --> 00:30:54,839 it and having a job where you're flipping cards or 478 00:30:54,960 --> 00:30:58,960 you know, collecting dice. You know, you work at the 479 00:30:58,960 --> 00:31:01,799 craps table. And most of I'd say most of those 480 00:31:01,880 --> 00:31:05,960 kinds of jobs, like a pit boss, casino manager, those 481 00:31:06,279 --> 00:31:10,279 are long term careers. Actually, my you know, close friends 482 00:31:10,319 --> 00:31:13,160 of mine, Like my best friend's dad was a casino 483 00:31:13,480 --> 00:31:17,160 boss in Caesar's Palace. Like I said, my dad is 484 00:31:17,200 --> 00:31:21,279 a psychologist. But a lot of people's parents growing up, 485 00:31:21,319 --> 00:31:24,000 their parents career was in the casinos. 486 00:31:25,519 --> 00:31:26,000 Speaker 1: Interesting. 487 00:31:26,240 --> 00:31:29,279 Speaker 2: Interesting, Yeah, And I don't know, I don't know how 488 00:31:29,359 --> 00:31:32,359 much that's the case now because like anywhere, I think 489 00:31:32,440 --> 00:31:38,240 the the wages have stagnated for various reasons, and you know, 490 00:31:38,279 --> 00:31:42,160 a lot of people came in from other countries, and 491 00:31:42,920 --> 00:31:46,359 you know it, Vegas looks a lot different than it 492 00:31:46,400 --> 00:31:50,880 did in the nineties. But and I assume the kinds 493 00:31:50,880 --> 00:31:54,000 of pressures have had the same results there as well, 494 00:31:54,039 --> 00:31:56,640 where wages have kind of stagnated. And then two thousand 495 00:31:56,640 --> 00:31:59,480 and eight was a big problem for Vegas and it 496 00:31:59,559 --> 00:32:03,319 put there on a lot of construction. And actually it's 497 00:32:03,400 --> 00:32:06,640 funny because I think that the Vegas I describe in 498 00:32:06,640 --> 00:32:12,480 my novel is a nineteen nineties Vegas, where Vegas in 499 00:32:12,519 --> 00:32:17,200 the nineties was an interesting place and it's quite different now. 500 00:32:17,319 --> 00:32:22,599 And that this is a theme that is explored in 501 00:32:22,640 --> 00:32:27,559 the novel of how every casino in Vegas in the 502 00:32:27,640 --> 00:32:34,599 nineties was built to look like a cultural manifestation or 503 00:32:34,640 --> 00:32:39,759 a simulation rather of some distant, far away culture or 504 00:32:39,839 --> 00:32:46,039 other culture. So you had the Paris which had its 505 00:32:46,039 --> 00:32:50,599 own little mini Eiffel tower, and you had the Venetian 506 00:32:50,799 --> 00:32:54,400 was built, and inside the Venetian you had little gondola rides, 507 00:32:55,440 --> 00:32:57,400 so you could visit Paris in the Venetian and they're 508 00:32:57,400 --> 00:32:59,279 just like a block away from each other, less than 509 00:32:59,319 --> 00:33:01,559 a block. You don't have to get on a plane. 510 00:33:03,640 --> 00:33:05,839 They don't really do this anymore, but they really had 511 00:33:05,880 --> 00:33:09,319 like everything they had. The Luxor was built in the nineties. 512 00:33:10,440 --> 00:33:12,599 Caesars Palace was built in the sixties. Actually, think I 513 00:33:12,680 --> 00:33:14,319 go into this a little bit in the novel that 514 00:33:15,759 --> 00:33:18,319 you know. Prior to the nineteen sixties, which is actually 515 00:33:18,400 --> 00:33:23,119 really interesting, all Vegas casinos had what I would consider 516 00:33:23,200 --> 00:33:26,519 a very self referential theme, and by self referential, I 517 00:33:26,559 --> 00:33:29,680 mean it the theme was, hey, you're gambling in the 518 00:33:29,720 --> 00:33:31,920 Old West, so you had the Four Queens and the 519 00:33:31,960 --> 00:33:37,559 Golden Nugget and you know, prospecting and the California, like 520 00:33:37,599 --> 00:33:41,559 all the all the casino themes and branding was very 521 00:33:41,680 --> 00:33:45,440 much like, hey, this is where you are. You're in 522 00:33:45,680 --> 00:33:50,519 You're in the West, you're gambling, you're playing cards. But 523 00:33:50,559 --> 00:33:54,559 then in the sixties, Jay Sarno opened Caesar's Palace and 524 00:33:54,640 --> 00:33:58,720 also around the same time period, the Aladdin was opened, 525 00:33:59,160 --> 00:34:02,960 and both of these were the first casinos that had 526 00:34:03,000 --> 00:34:07,839 like kind of an extra curricular casino theme attached to it. 527 00:34:08,039 --> 00:34:11,800 So in Caesar's Palace, you could be suddenly like in 528 00:34:11,880 --> 00:34:15,280 ancient Rome, and in the Aladdin you can be in 529 00:34:15,320 --> 00:34:20,000 the Middle East on a on a on a carpet ride, 530 00:34:20,960 --> 00:34:26,719 magic carpet ride with its own like with its own 531 00:34:26,760 --> 00:34:31,840 aesthetics and everything. And so that took off now in 532 00:34:31,880 --> 00:34:37,280 my novel. So let's again, I let me just cut 533 00:34:37,320 --> 00:34:40,079 to the chase about some of the parts of the 534 00:34:39,639 --> 00:34:46,320 novel that Casino Labs the book what that refers to 535 00:34:46,480 --> 00:34:51,960 as a company called Casino Labs, and they are a 536 00:34:51,960 --> 00:34:56,400 casino theme design firm or a casino architecture firm, and 537 00:34:56,400 --> 00:34:59,559 they build casinos. And their big stick is they're going 538 00:34:59,599 --> 00:35:04,320 to build casinos, you know, from all over the world. 539 00:35:04,400 --> 00:35:07,119 So they build the Luck, they built the luxor they 540 00:35:07,159 --> 00:35:12,159 built the Aladdin, and they built Caesar's Palace or Caesar's 541 00:35:12,159 --> 00:35:15,440 Empire what it's called in the book. Uh, And so 542 00:35:15,559 --> 00:35:20,440 they're going to build all these different casinos that represent 543 00:35:20,760 --> 00:35:28,239 our simulations of other uh, other civilizations and uh and 544 00:35:28,280 --> 00:35:32,480 I just think that that is becomes kind of a 545 00:35:32,960 --> 00:35:39,079 metaphor like Vegas is, I think both a metaphor and 546 00:35:39,199 --> 00:35:46,679 the real thing of uh like cultural decline of postmodernity. 547 00:35:47,440 --> 00:35:53,519 So so Vegas in the in the fact that all 548 00:35:54,440 --> 00:36:00,960 casinos are a are like a simulacra of they refer 549 00:36:01,039 --> 00:36:09,199 to events, historical events, civilizations, cultures of the past, but 550 00:36:09,519 --> 00:36:13,639 they are devoid of the history and meaning of those 551 00:36:13,760 --> 00:36:20,159 civilizations or those histories or those cultures. So the book 552 00:36:20,199 --> 00:36:26,199 actually refers to Jean Baudriard in some of his theories. 553 00:36:26,239 --> 00:36:30,639 I don't know if you're familiar with Boudriard. I'm familiar, yeah, okay, 554 00:36:30,719 --> 00:36:35,400 and uh so for those of for those of your 555 00:36:35,400 --> 00:36:37,800 listener listeners who are, and I'm sure many of them are, 556 00:36:37,840 --> 00:36:39,719 so I don't want to be condescending or anything, but 557 00:36:39,760 --> 00:36:50,719 I just don't know. So the idea of the simulacra 558 00:36:50,920 --> 00:36:55,360 is basically this that like in normal history, I guess 559 00:36:55,360 --> 00:36:59,960 you could say you had let's say Excalibur's sword or something, 560 00:37:00,599 --> 00:37:03,960 and that's an object from you know, when the Brits 561 00:37:04,239 --> 00:37:09,079 fought against the Anglo Saxon invasions. King Arthur, the sword, 562 00:37:10,039 --> 00:37:16,119 the the the EXCaliber sword represented you know, British nationalism 563 00:37:17,320 --> 00:37:25,119 and the ability to fight simply. Now, that image gets 564 00:37:25,159 --> 00:37:28,239 passed down through the generations, and it gets taken up 565 00:37:28,280 --> 00:37:32,400 in the Middle Middle Ages by like Cretian detroits or 566 00:37:32,440 --> 00:37:36,320 wolf from von Eeschenbach and those medieval tales of King Arthur, 567 00:37:36,719 --> 00:37:39,079 and then they get retold again in the in the 568 00:37:39,159 --> 00:37:44,400 nineteenth century with Tennyson and mort Arthur and once in 569 00:37:44,480 --> 00:37:49,679 future King E. B. White or whatever. And then now 570 00:37:50,599 --> 00:37:54,559 we have a casino called the Excalibur in Las Vegas. 571 00:37:55,360 --> 00:37:58,840 Now you can go to the Excalibur, and you can 572 00:37:58,880 --> 00:38:01,679 go to buffet and the and you know they'll be 573 00:38:02,719 --> 00:38:06,199 there'll be guys on horseback having jousts at the ex 574 00:38:06,280 --> 00:38:10,960 Caliber like you're at a medieval times Renaissance fair thing. 575 00:38:12,559 --> 00:38:12,719 Speaker 1: Uh. 576 00:38:12,760 --> 00:38:14,599 Speaker 2: And you could and a guy could be wielding ex 577 00:38:14,639 --> 00:38:18,360 Caliber in front of you while you eat your buffet meal. 578 00:38:19,639 --> 00:38:23,039 But whether or not that that ex caliber has any 579 00:38:23,599 --> 00:38:27,320 reference to the original ex Caliber that signified, you know, 580 00:38:27,599 --> 00:38:31,119 British nationalism or you know, the fighting off of enemies 581 00:38:31,199 --> 00:38:34,679 or anything like that, it's devoid. It's been stripped of 582 00:38:34,719 --> 00:38:38,880 that meaning. And Now everything in Vegas is takes that on, 583 00:38:38,920 --> 00:38:42,119 that significance or that lack of significant significance, And as 584 00:38:42,159 --> 00:38:44,880 Baudriard said, it is just as kind of a it 585 00:38:45,079 --> 00:38:51,639 precedes from a simulacra. It's a procession of similar simulacra. 586 00:38:51,760 --> 00:38:55,559 So it's just these images that are constantly being replicated 587 00:38:55,639 --> 00:38:59,119 and regurgitated time and time again without any sense of 588 00:39:00,159 --> 00:39:06,199 meaning or purpose. And Morton Waterhouse in the novel gets 589 00:39:06,199 --> 00:39:10,880 subjected to that, and I think ultimately fights against fights 590 00:39:10,920 --> 00:39:14,840 against that because he's looking for you know, not maybe 591 00:39:14,840 --> 00:39:17,119 not in a pompous or pretentious way. And I didn't 592 00:39:17,159 --> 00:39:21,679 even realize this was his his goal or his motive 593 00:39:22,079 --> 00:39:24,400 when I started writing the novel. But as I started, 594 00:39:24,559 --> 00:39:26,760 as I kept writing it, I just got the sense 595 00:39:26,800 --> 00:39:29,880 that he was he wanted to look for something a 596 00:39:29,880 --> 00:39:33,280 little bit more deep, because he was really into the 597 00:39:33,320 --> 00:39:36,440 inheritance of the past. And some of his colleagues when 598 00:39:36,440 --> 00:39:38,519 he goes to work at casino Labs start to mock 599 00:39:38,639 --> 00:39:42,400 him for wanting something deeper, and they're like, dude, we're 600 00:39:42,400 --> 00:39:46,920 building casinos here. Like hello, this isn't We're not building 601 00:39:47,000 --> 00:39:53,079 museums or trying to re you know, bring new cultural 602 00:39:53,119 --> 00:39:57,320 manifest new cultural meaning to the world. We're just building casinos, 603 00:39:57,360 --> 00:40:01,639 so you're, you know, you're you're trying to look for 604 00:40:01,719 --> 00:40:04,440 something that's a little too deep, that's not actually there. 605 00:40:05,239 --> 00:40:12,719 And so he he wants to build casinos that that 606 00:40:12,840 --> 00:40:15,480 actually help people, as if he's taken kind of a 607 00:40:15,559 --> 00:40:20,920 hippocratic oath, like he wants to heal society with the 608 00:40:21,000 --> 00:40:23,599 kinds of activities you get to you get to engage 609 00:40:23,599 --> 00:40:26,159 in when you're at one of his casinos that he designed, 610 00:40:26,239 --> 00:40:32,480 So you have like bull leaping and like, I don't know, 611 00:40:32,599 --> 00:40:36,159 something a little bit more ancient and ritualistic that feeds 612 00:40:36,159 --> 00:40:38,199 into something a little bit more deep and meaningful. 613 00:40:39,639 --> 00:40:43,960 Speaker 1: Would it be Would it give too much away for 614 00:40:44,079 --> 00:40:50,719 me to ask if the former program called mk Ultra 615 00:40:50,960 --> 00:40:53,079 was at all a inspiration. 616 00:40:54,400 --> 00:41:00,000 Speaker 2: Funny, you should mention that. I'm glad you did, because 617 00:41:00,000 --> 00:41:06,840 because you know, the National Security Archives just released some 618 00:41:07,000 --> 00:41:11,400 new documents that were requested of them. Uh these literally 619 00:41:11,440 --> 00:41:14,599 just came out like the day before Christmas, that just 620 00:41:14,679 --> 00:41:17,320 passed like a month and a half, two months ago. 621 00:41:19,639 --> 00:41:22,760 So they released all these new documents on the mk 622 00:41:22,920 --> 00:41:29,599 Ultra program. And I mean it is a little bit 623 00:41:29,639 --> 00:41:34,280 of a spoiler alert. But as Morton Waterhouse gets deeper 624 00:41:34,280 --> 00:41:38,840 and deeper into Casino Labs, he realizes the actually, actually 625 00:41:38,920 --> 00:41:40,960 the whole thing is just like a front for a 626 00:41:40,960 --> 00:41:45,039 CIA operation or an mk Ultra operation. There's more to 627 00:41:45,079 --> 00:41:48,679 the spoiler alert, and there's more to uncover, so I'm 628 00:41:48,679 --> 00:41:51,639 not giving away the whole story, but that is one, 629 00:41:52,480 --> 00:41:54,920 you know, one layer. You get past that layer and 630 00:41:54,960 --> 00:41:59,079 you realize, hey, this isn't what I thought it was 631 00:41:59,119 --> 00:42:05,960 at first. But I actually think it's interesting that the 632 00:42:05,960 --> 00:42:12,159 the mk Ultra operation is actually connected or seems to 633 00:42:12,239 --> 00:42:19,280 be not too different in effect to this kind of 634 00:42:19,639 --> 00:42:22,239 this kind of thing that I was just describing with Bowdreyard, 635 00:42:23,599 --> 00:42:29,480 because one of the one of the purposes of mk 636 00:42:29,639 --> 00:42:34,880 ulture was to try to break down people's identity. You know, 637 00:42:35,280 --> 00:42:38,800 you go to these newly released National Security Archives documents, 638 00:42:39,440 --> 00:42:43,000 and you know, they use drugs and they use sensory 639 00:42:43,039 --> 00:42:48,880 deprivation to try to break down people's identity. And I 640 00:42:48,920 --> 00:42:57,000 think the idea of of Casino Labs would be to say, Okay, 641 00:42:57,039 --> 00:43:00,000 all these cultures that you thought you were, that you 642 00:43:00,079 --> 00:43:03,960 thought were significant, your background, your cultural inheritance, are nothing. 643 00:43:04,000 --> 00:43:08,039 They're just like they're just flashing lights, used to sell hamburgers, 644 00:43:08,159 --> 00:43:15,039 used to entice people to gamble in Vegas. But at 645 00:43:15,079 --> 00:43:17,480 the end of the day, let me just put out 646 00:43:17,639 --> 00:43:22,440 another catchphrase or whatever. But like Marshall mccluan would call, 647 00:43:22,599 --> 00:43:26,320 would say something like, the medium is the message and 648 00:43:27,719 --> 00:43:30,840 the meaning what's the meaning of the casino medium? The 649 00:43:30,920 --> 00:43:38,320 messages just just you just sit there and give give 650 00:43:38,360 --> 00:43:42,920 your money away. I mean, I like gambling, but I 651 00:43:43,000 --> 00:43:45,800 used to kind of make fun of people who would 652 00:43:45,800 --> 00:43:51,599 sit there and and just pump hundreds and hundreds of 653 00:43:51,599 --> 00:43:55,360 dollars into the slot machine and just sit there, hour 654 00:43:55,440 --> 00:43:58,679 after hour after hour. I'd call it a sit calm, 655 00:43:58,719 --> 00:44:00,800 Like these people were just sitting it was like a 656 00:44:00,840 --> 00:44:03,599 sitcom and they just give their money away and ha 657 00:44:03,599 --> 00:44:05,119 ha ha at the end of the at the end 658 00:44:05,119 --> 00:44:09,159 of the sitcom, they kind of saunter out of the 659 00:44:09,199 --> 00:44:15,079 casino penniless. And again, if you think I'm being judgmental, 660 00:44:15,079 --> 00:44:16,840 I was that person for a few years. For a 661 00:44:16,840 --> 00:44:20,400 few years, I was actually pretty much addicted to gambling. 662 00:44:24,760 --> 00:44:29,519 Speaker 1: Is that is that common around Vegas? If even if 663 00:44:29,519 --> 00:44:32,559 somebody is not working in the casinos, that they're a 664 00:44:32,599 --> 00:44:33,400 strong draw. 665 00:44:34,519 --> 00:44:38,280 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And I think my friend thinks that it 666 00:44:38,440 --> 00:44:42,320 only gets people who aren't from there, because I think 667 00:44:42,320 --> 00:44:46,639 people who are from Vegas either they know better or 668 00:44:46,760 --> 00:44:50,559 they realize that. See with with people who just visit Vegas, 669 00:44:51,119 --> 00:44:54,800 they gamble, and then they could always go away and 670 00:44:54,840 --> 00:45:01,280 then the draw to gamble is no longer. There by 671 00:45:01,360 --> 00:45:04,519 you know that they're just not proxy. They're just have 672 00:45:04,719 --> 00:45:08,559 no proximity to gambling, so they don't do it. But 673 00:45:08,719 --> 00:45:13,119 for those people who do live in Vegas, sometimes they'll 674 00:45:13,159 --> 00:45:16,440 go on a bender and uh just like for six months, 675 00:45:16,480 --> 00:45:19,440 they just they go through a gambling phase, which I did. 676 00:45:19,960 --> 00:45:22,880 It was a few years actually where most of my 677 00:45:22,960 --> 00:45:25,800 spare money was like and it sounds stupid and it 678 00:45:25,800 --> 00:45:27,679 sounds like something you should know better about. But like 679 00:45:28,760 --> 00:45:30,960 if you've ever have you ever won like a thousand 680 00:45:31,000 --> 00:45:33,360 dollars in gambling or anything like that? 681 00:45:34,880 --> 00:45:37,920 Speaker 1: Never a thousand, but I mean I was I was 682 00:45:37,960 --> 00:45:42,159 at a casino recently and one a few hundred. I'm 683 00:45:42,199 --> 00:45:43,960 like one pole, one pole. Wow. 684 00:45:44,400 --> 00:45:49,480 Speaker 2: See that's a thrill. Huh oh yeah, it's it's like 685 00:45:49,599 --> 00:45:50,559 a dopamine. 686 00:45:51,880 --> 00:45:55,199 Speaker 1: Yeah, oh yeah, that's easy. 687 00:45:55,280 --> 00:45:58,840 Speaker 2: Yeah. But like yeah, I remember, you know, I never 688 00:45:58,880 --> 00:46:00,840 went to the casinos like I said, I grew up 689 00:46:00,840 --> 00:46:02,840 in the suburbs, and you know, the casino was just 690 00:46:02,880 --> 00:46:05,239 a world that I didn't even know about. And then, 691 00:46:05,840 --> 00:46:09,039 you know, when I came back to Vegas later in 692 00:46:09,079 --> 00:46:13,599 the nineties, I uh, you know, my friends would just 693 00:46:13,599 --> 00:46:16,719 go and drink and gamble, and I was like, you know, 694 00:46:17,280 --> 00:46:20,079 I've been such a purest Ivory Tower type person for 695 00:46:20,119 --> 00:46:22,239 so long, I'm gonna see what this is all about. 696 00:46:22,320 --> 00:46:27,800 So I went through a hedonistic phase, and uh, and 697 00:46:27,840 --> 00:46:29,800 then I one day I was down at the casino 698 00:46:29,840 --> 00:46:31,480 and I won like a thousand dollars, and then the 699 00:46:31,519 --> 00:46:35,840 next day I just could not sit still. It's like 700 00:46:35,880 --> 00:46:37,719 you have that money burning a hole in your pocket. 701 00:46:37,760 --> 00:46:39,639 You think, oh, I got this thousand dollars, let me 702 00:46:39,679 --> 00:46:42,760 go back down and try to win more. And then 703 00:46:42,800 --> 00:46:48,079 you're chasing the dragon. You're so and I kind of 704 00:46:48,079 --> 00:46:49,760 feel like I was doing research because if I was 705 00:46:49,800 --> 00:46:52,199 going to write a book about Vegas, I had to 706 00:46:52,400 --> 00:46:55,960 actually know what it was about on some some level, 707 00:46:56,039 --> 00:46:58,039 some deeper, some real level. 708 00:46:59,360 --> 00:47:03,159 Speaker 1: But yeah, the movie Casino tried. The movie Casino tried 709 00:47:03,199 --> 00:47:07,800 to portray that with I believe the the Japanese Businessman 710 00:47:08,920 --> 00:47:13,639 where he they he is supposed to be on a 711 00:47:13,639 --> 00:47:17,000 private plane out after he had won. I think it 712 00:47:17,039 --> 00:47:20,280 was close to a million dollars, and they faked like 713 00:47:20,320 --> 00:47:24,360 it had you know, like there was mechanical difficulty. They 714 00:47:24,360 --> 00:47:27,559 get him back into the casino. He starts playing it 715 00:47:27,719 --> 00:47:31,000 but like ten percent of what he was playing before, 716 00:47:31,360 --> 00:47:35,360 and as he's winning, he's feeling the loss of oh, 717 00:47:35,400 --> 00:47:39,119 I'm not winning, I'm losing because I'm playing less. And 718 00:47:39,159 --> 00:47:41,440 then he just starts playing more and more and more. 719 00:47:41,880 --> 00:47:45,199 So there was anyone who's seen that movie can get 720 00:47:46,119 --> 00:47:49,440 a peek into the mind of a gambler, even if 721 00:47:49,480 --> 00:47:53,079 that's a somebody who's going to be betting a little 722 00:47:53,079 --> 00:47:56,360 more than you know, five dollars on black track or something. 723 00:47:56,800 --> 00:48:01,639 Speaker 2: Right right now, I think it's very psychological. There's so 724 00:48:01,679 --> 00:48:03,880 many different I mean, I can't tell you how many 725 00:48:03,920 --> 00:48:06,559 times I sat there, and you know, like I said, 726 00:48:06,599 --> 00:48:09,960 I was an English teacher, English professor, and so I 727 00:48:10,000 --> 00:48:12,039 wasn't I don't have a lot of money, you know, 728 00:48:12,760 --> 00:48:15,039 but I was so curious about this whole gambling thing. 729 00:48:15,800 --> 00:48:20,639 And I just remember sitting there, like while gambling, just 730 00:48:20,639 --> 00:48:23,880 thinking like, what is this? Why do I pursue this 731 00:48:24,039 --> 00:48:26,719 when I know it's like a dead end and a 732 00:48:26,760 --> 00:48:31,400 death spiral. And on some level, I just I kind 733 00:48:31,440 --> 00:48:33,480 of got off on the idea that here I was 734 00:48:34,679 --> 00:48:38,360 Lee Scrivner, who used to be so ivory, towery and 735 00:48:38,480 --> 00:48:42,880 lofty and high minded, and I'm becoming degenerate just like 736 00:48:42,920 --> 00:48:47,599 everyone else, and that that idea itself, I was kind 737 00:48:47,599 --> 00:48:51,480 of thrilling to me. It's terrible, but. 738 00:48:52,400 --> 00:48:55,119 Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I actually know, I actually know somebody 739 00:48:55,199 --> 00:49:01,119 who basically gambles for a living. Right listening to this, Hey, 740 00:49:01,199 --> 00:49:03,360 how's it going? Yes, I'm talking about you. 741 00:49:04,679 --> 00:49:05,920 Speaker 2: Read casino Labs. 742 00:49:06,960 --> 00:49:12,360 Speaker 1: Yeah, but but yeah, it's to people like that, it 743 00:49:12,480 --> 00:49:16,360 just becomes very technical. There's there. I don't know how 744 00:49:16,480 --> 00:49:19,239 much of the rush is there anymore. Yeah, it's just 745 00:49:19,519 --> 00:49:23,480 it's sort of like Robert de Niro's character in uh 746 00:49:23,599 --> 00:49:29,440 in Casino, where he could win thousands and tens of 747 00:49:29,519 --> 00:49:33,280 thousands on a weekend and it was all math to him. 748 00:49:33,639 --> 00:49:36,440 Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, Like I mean when I told you that 749 00:49:36,519 --> 00:49:39,079 I got this huge rush winning a thousand and couldn't 750 00:49:39,079 --> 00:49:42,039 sit still the next day, that was just my entree 751 00:49:42,079 --> 00:49:45,440 into casinos and gambling. But I got to be like that, 752 00:49:45,559 --> 00:49:48,199 you know, I'd be gambling and i'd win a thousand, 753 00:49:48,239 --> 00:49:50,400 I'd lose a thousand. I'd win five thousand, I'd lose 754 00:49:50,440 --> 00:49:53,400 five thousand. And you get stoic about it pretty quick 755 00:49:53,440 --> 00:49:56,519 because it just starts to lose meaning. It's like, you know, 756 00:49:56,719 --> 00:50:03,199 it's the fun speaking of the simulacra, like money itself, 757 00:50:03,239 --> 00:50:08,760 it loses meaning, it's you start you stop thinking about 758 00:50:08,800 --> 00:50:11,480 all the things you could buy with that money. I mean, 759 00:50:11,519 --> 00:50:14,239 I've lost. I don't want to tell you how much 760 00:50:14,280 --> 00:50:16,239 I might have lost, but you know, I have kids now, 761 00:50:16,840 --> 00:50:19,599 and so when you have kids, you're like, why would 762 00:50:19,639 --> 00:50:21,880 I waste so much money when that's that might be 763 00:50:21,920 --> 00:50:25,880 my child's college tuition someday. This money has value and purpose. 764 00:50:25,920 --> 00:50:29,679 It's not to be just played with for dopamine rushes 765 00:50:29,719 --> 00:50:32,480 and stuff. But when when I was at a certain 766 00:50:32,559 --> 00:50:34,599 level and I was gambling a lot, it, yeah, I 767 00:50:34,679 --> 00:50:37,199 was very stoic about it and very much more mathey 768 00:50:37,239 --> 00:50:40,519 about it. And and then there was even a time 769 00:50:40,559 --> 00:50:45,719 where that same girlfriend actually that worked at the at 770 00:50:45,719 --> 00:50:50,199 the front desk at Caesar's. Her father was a notorious 771 00:50:50,239 --> 00:50:53,519 gambler in Vegas, and he did a lot of kinds 772 00:50:53,519 --> 00:50:58,039 of gambling, poker and whatnot. His name was Magic, and 773 00:51:00,719 --> 00:51:04,320 he my same girlfriend was like, hey, can you run 774 00:51:04,360 --> 00:51:09,400 some bets? This might be kind of controversial, but like 775 00:51:09,440 --> 00:51:13,119 he was. He was blacklisted from the casinos, this guy. 776 00:51:14,079 --> 00:51:17,639 And anyway, so this is this guy. This girlfriend's father 777 00:51:18,559 --> 00:51:21,679 was like, hey, Lee, can you I'm gonna give you 778 00:51:22,000 --> 00:51:25,280 sixty five thousand dollars and you need to go down 779 00:51:25,320 --> 00:51:31,039 to the uh the the Mandalai Bay and put some 780 00:51:31,079 --> 00:51:34,840 sports bets down for me. And this is back when, 781 00:51:35,119 --> 00:51:37,880 like cell phones were just those little flip phones, and 782 00:51:37,920 --> 00:51:41,000 I just remember going to the casino with like sixty 783 00:51:41,039 --> 00:51:44,360 five grand in cash and he would call me on 784 00:51:44,400 --> 00:51:48,280 these little tiny, first generation slip flip cell phones and 785 00:51:48,360 --> 00:51:52,079 be like, yeah, could you do like the over under 786 00:51:52,119 --> 00:51:54,880 on the Raiders and want the over? And I'd like 787 00:51:54,960 --> 00:51:57,519 lay five thousand dollars in an over under. Bet ten 788 00:51:57,559 --> 00:52:00,320 thousand dollars on a you know, you know it's the 789 00:52:00,320 --> 00:52:04,920 line they're Cowboys by five or whatever, and you just 790 00:52:05,400 --> 00:52:09,960 at Cowboys. And after an hour or two, I call 791 00:52:10,039 --> 00:52:12,000 him at halftime at a big game and be like 792 00:52:12,280 --> 00:52:15,679 he's like, did you bet ten thousand dollars on this game? 793 00:52:15,719 --> 00:52:18,280 Like I told you to? So I was like a 794 00:52:18,559 --> 00:52:22,159 money runner at that level for a while. None of 795 00:52:22,159 --> 00:52:25,119 that's really in the in the novel, but maybe that's 796 00:52:25,159 --> 00:52:27,119 something like that'll be in my next novel. I don't know. 797 00:52:27,159 --> 00:52:28,559 I don't know if I want to be the guy 798 00:52:28,599 --> 00:52:32,320 that writes about Vegas, but a lot of interesting stories 799 00:52:33,360 --> 00:52:35,280 with that whole operation as well. 800 00:52:36,280 --> 00:52:38,599 Speaker 1: One of the things you mentioned when you talk about 801 00:52:38,679 --> 00:52:41,800 how you know you can go to you can visit Paris, 802 00:52:41,840 --> 00:52:44,719 you could do this. It's almost like it seems to 803 00:52:44,719 --> 00:52:49,039 be an adult version of like Epcot Center where yeah, yeah, 804 00:52:49,079 --> 00:52:53,760 they have the Walk of Nations there and yeahcot Epcot 805 00:52:53,800 --> 00:52:57,119 Center to me is it's four kids, but it's really 806 00:52:58,719 --> 00:53:04,239 it really cater a lot of it caters more towards adults, honestly, 807 00:53:04,920 --> 00:53:10,639 And it just seems it's that whole thing of you 808 00:53:10,679 --> 00:53:13,159 get to live in a fantasy for a little while, 809 00:53:13,519 --> 00:53:15,920 you get to you get to visit somewhere else for 810 00:53:15,920 --> 00:53:19,000 a little while, but you don't have to travel. But 811 00:53:19,079 --> 00:53:21,679 really what it is is you're stepping outside of reality. 812 00:53:22,719 --> 00:53:26,840 It's you're you're getting to escape reality. And there's a 813 00:53:26,840 --> 00:53:30,239 certain level of like when you're winning, like if you're 814 00:53:30,239 --> 00:53:34,280 in a casino and you're up, you've pretty much escaped 815 00:53:34,320 --> 00:53:40,159 reality because you're winning, you're you know, people are looking 816 00:53:40,199 --> 00:53:44,800 at you. You're also having a if you're remember last 817 00:53:44,800 --> 00:53:47,360 time I was in a casino, there was there was 818 00:53:47,400 --> 00:53:50,920 a woman who she was playing one machine and her 819 00:53:50,960 --> 00:53:54,320 account was up to well over like four or five 820 00:53:54,400 --> 00:53:56,800 thousand dollars at that point. I mean that's not a lot, 821 00:53:56,880 --> 00:54:00,440 but for for you know, just these video machines, that 822 00:54:00,519 --> 00:54:02,400 kind of you know, that kind of is especially when 823 00:54:02,440 --> 00:54:05,519 someone's on a roll like that. Yeah, And and she 824 00:54:05,559 --> 00:54:09,920 almost she almost became like like she's a rock star 825 00:54:10,360 --> 00:54:14,840 in that in that little niche, in that little place, 826 00:54:15,039 --> 00:54:18,519 in just this little corner of the world, for you know, 827 00:54:18,559 --> 00:54:22,960 for an hour or so, and it is it's it's 828 00:54:23,000 --> 00:54:26,719 not real. It's you're you're not experiencing anything real. 829 00:54:27,440 --> 00:54:30,119 Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you feel like a rock star with 830 00:54:30,159 --> 00:54:32,400 the all the dopamine and adrenaline and stuff. But you 831 00:54:32,440 --> 00:54:36,000 could be hooked up to the oxygen tank and you know, 832 00:54:36,119 --> 00:54:39,280 you could be on your last leg and uh, your 833 00:54:39,360 --> 00:54:41,639 last penny. But as long as you got four thousand 834 00:54:41,719 --> 00:54:46,000 in the in the machine you're in, you're a caesar. 835 00:54:46,360 --> 00:54:49,960 You know, you're an emperor. And I think that's that's 836 00:54:49,960 --> 00:54:52,679 a bit of a trap. You know, you can you 837 00:54:52,679 --> 00:54:56,039 can feel this way. Meanwhile you're just sitting there throwing 838 00:54:56,079 --> 00:54:58,519 everything away, but you you know, for a moment you'll 839 00:54:58,519 --> 00:55:01,960 feel great U And I think that's one of the 840 00:55:01,960 --> 00:55:05,639 the ways they trap you. But but that that idea 841 00:55:05,679 --> 00:55:08,239 that Vegas is like a theme park was again very 842 00:55:08,280 --> 00:55:11,159 much a nineties thing, and it was super imposed with 843 00:55:11,199 --> 00:55:13,679 actually a little catchphrase which is like, you know, make 844 00:55:14,119 --> 00:55:17,960 make Vegas family friendly. And that also is actually explored 845 00:55:17,960 --> 00:55:21,079 in the novel where you know, Casino Labs, the firm 846 00:55:21,199 --> 00:55:24,920 is trying to like give your the casino, give your 847 00:55:25,159 --> 00:55:29,599 casino a a theme, an aesthetic, but also to make 848 00:55:29,639 --> 00:55:33,079 it family friendly. They're trying to make it family friendly. 849 00:55:33,199 --> 00:55:35,840 Speaker 1: So there that was a that was a theme in 850 00:55:35,880 --> 00:55:38,199 a lot of places at the time. I lived in 851 00:55:38,239 --> 00:55:41,639 Fault Lauderdale and faul Lauderdale most famously for people, our 852 00:55:41,679 --> 00:55:45,360 age was it was spring break. It was where people 853 00:55:45,719 --> 00:55:48,440 where you had spring break and it was debaucherous and 854 00:55:48,519 --> 00:55:51,480 it was just one long party. And right around the 855 00:55:51,519 --> 00:55:53,719 same time, I mean this was more eighty seven ish 856 00:55:53,800 --> 00:55:56,199 eighty eight ish, they just decided, well, we want to 857 00:55:56,239 --> 00:55:59,559 be more a family friendly, we want to attract we 858 00:56:00,599 --> 00:56:05,519 want to attract a different clientele here, and that seems 859 00:56:05,559 --> 00:56:07,280 like it was a theme. It seemed like there was 860 00:56:07,320 --> 00:56:11,320 a spirit. There was a spirit as such, because I 861 00:56:11,360 --> 00:56:17,400 know when people people have described Vegas in like the sixties, 862 00:56:18,039 --> 00:56:22,239 how it was much more people wearing suits, men wearing suits, 863 00:56:22,239 --> 00:56:24,480 and women getting dressed up, where it was a little 864 00:56:24,519 --> 00:56:29,119 more seen as glam. Yes, and then it and then 865 00:56:29,360 --> 00:56:35,079 as it became let's just call it cheesy as everything 866 00:56:35,519 --> 00:56:39,719 as time went by, and it also as as you're 867 00:56:39,760 --> 00:56:43,199 losing as as the culture is losing any kind of 868 00:56:43,239 --> 00:56:49,360 formality whatsoever, and it's just degenerating into the casual nature 869 00:56:49,400 --> 00:56:54,000 that we see now. And I'm and believe me, I'm 870 00:56:54,280 --> 00:56:58,960 as guilty of it as anyone else. I mean, I 871 00:56:58,960 --> 00:57:00,639 don't want to put a jacket on to go to 872 00:57:00,679 --> 00:57:03,360 the UH, to go to the grocery store like that. 873 00:57:03,519 --> 00:57:07,239 Speaker 2: Yeah, Vegas has like become a microcosm of the country 874 00:57:07,840 --> 00:57:11,280 or the you know, the civilization itself. Where Yeah, I 875 00:57:11,280 --> 00:57:13,960 mean you look at you look at pictures of people 876 00:57:14,519 --> 00:57:17,719 in the sixties on airplanes or in New York or 877 00:57:17,719 --> 00:57:20,719 in Vegas, and yeah, they're all they look much more, 878 00:57:21,079 --> 00:57:25,119 they're healthier, they look more formal, they're thinner. And then 879 00:57:25,480 --> 00:57:28,719 if you just look at Vegas now everyone's just wearing 880 00:57:29,599 --> 00:57:35,079 shorts or sweatpants and overweight. And yeah, it's just it's 881 00:57:35,079 --> 00:57:42,639 a microcosm really, but uh, yeah. 882 00:57:40,599 --> 00:57:43,719 Speaker 1: How do you if you were to look at the 883 00:57:43,800 --> 00:57:49,079 culture and how much the culture has changed, how when 884 00:57:49,119 --> 00:57:53,280 you look at your this novel? Uh, what can you 885 00:57:53,320 --> 00:57:54,960 make any correlations? 886 00:57:56,559 --> 00:58:02,320 Speaker 2: Well, the novel I think it's uh, it presents Vegas 887 00:58:02,760 --> 00:58:09,719 as a a metaphor for this degradation of culture, and 888 00:58:09,760 --> 00:58:13,559 not just a metaphor, but like the thing itself it is, 889 00:58:14,199 --> 00:58:16,679 it is what we've come to. Vegas is what is 890 00:58:16,719 --> 00:58:20,519 what we've come to and there, Yeah, there's it's it's 891 00:58:20,559 --> 00:58:26,880 basically like the post war neoliberal order writ Large and 892 00:58:27,159 --> 00:58:31,559 Morton Waterhouse. It's kind of like this, this Promethean hero 893 00:58:31,719 --> 00:58:37,159 figure is trying to like, you know, somehow create a new, 894 00:58:37,599 --> 00:58:40,199 create society, a new I mean that might be quite 895 00:58:40,199 --> 00:58:43,920 pretentious of an assessment of the novel, but that's kind 896 00:58:43,920 --> 00:58:47,880 of how I see it. Yeah, there's all there's another 897 00:58:47,880 --> 00:58:49,280 whole I mean, I know we're running out of time, 898 00:58:49,280 --> 00:58:53,559 but there's a whole other aspect where Bill Morton's father. 899 00:58:53,480 --> 00:58:55,960 Speaker 1: I have time, I have time, Go right ahead. 900 00:58:56,039 --> 00:59:01,639 Speaker 2: Yeah, Bill Morton's father complains that he's been brain rattled 901 00:59:01,679 --> 00:59:05,199 by seeing a nuclear bomb. So just north of Vegas 902 00:59:05,639 --> 00:59:09,079 there was the Nevada Test site, and so they were 903 00:59:09,280 --> 00:59:14,480 launching or detonating nuclear bombs above ground for many years 904 00:59:14,559 --> 00:59:17,320 and then below ground up until ninety two when all 905 00:59:17,360 --> 00:59:24,920 that stopped. And so Bill Waterhouse complains that his brain 906 00:59:25,079 --> 00:59:28,960 has been rattled irreprievably too, because he was in close 907 00:59:29,000 --> 00:59:33,880 proximity to one of these nuclear detonations, and so all 908 00:59:33,960 --> 00:59:36,760 his problems he kind of blames on the bomb and 909 00:59:36,840 --> 00:59:39,880 he forgets himself. He has amnesia. And again this is 910 00:59:39,920 --> 00:59:45,360 another kind of layer of this whole thing throughout the novel, 911 00:59:46,119 --> 00:59:50,679 where there's this sense of identity, an identity that has 912 00:59:50,760 --> 00:59:56,639 been stripped, memory that has been stripped away. Everything's amnesiac, 913 00:59:56,800 --> 01:00:02,159 and you know, so there's there's some kind of correlation 914 01:00:02,320 --> 01:00:06,119 between Bill Waterhouse's memory has been deteriorated by this seeing 915 01:00:06,159 --> 01:00:09,400 the nuke and then kind of the cultural memory that 916 01:00:09,480 --> 01:00:16,920 has been deteriorated in the in these casino themes, and 917 01:00:16,960 --> 01:00:22,440 then the mk Ultra project that they uncover, like literally 918 01:00:22,559 --> 01:00:27,440 tries to subject its test subjects to you know, sense 919 01:00:27,480 --> 01:00:34,280 re overload, symmetry, deprivation, drugs, and all kinds of In fact, 920 01:00:34,360 --> 01:00:36,800 it's like if you go to these interestingly enough, if 921 01:00:36,840 --> 01:00:40,039 you go to these national security archives that were again 922 01:00:40,039 --> 01:00:42,880 were at least just a month ago, uh, they still 923 01:00:42,920 --> 01:00:45,960 are redacted on some level. And so I I just 924 01:00:46,000 --> 01:00:48,400 read them a few days ago. And it's very interesting 925 01:00:48,480 --> 01:00:55,760 because there's Sydney Gottlieb was one of the people that 926 01:00:57,719 --> 01:01:02,639 spearheaded the mk Ultra project, and in these newly released documents, 927 01:01:02,679 --> 01:01:06,880 he's being asked like, you know, what were your methods 928 01:01:06,920 --> 01:01:09,679 to try to erase people's memory, What were your methods 929 01:01:09,679 --> 01:01:15,199 to try to get people to question their identity, their 930 01:01:15,360 --> 01:01:19,960 deeply held thronness, and their their sexuality and all kinds 931 01:01:20,000 --> 01:01:25,480 of like identity manifestations of identity. The the mk Ultra 932 01:01:25,559 --> 01:01:30,360 Project was trying to strip those away, and and one 933 01:01:31,480 --> 01:01:35,320 redacted portion was like, oh, we're using drugs and LSD, 934 01:01:35,440 --> 01:01:41,800 but we're also using redacted And I was thinking, like 935 01:01:43,480 --> 01:01:50,639 under that reaction was probably like video poker. Of course, 936 01:01:50,639 --> 01:01:54,440 that's just my imagination running away with me. But if 937 01:01:54,519 --> 01:02:00,280 my novel Casino Labs is a serious account, and I 938 01:02:00,280 --> 01:02:02,239 think it's fanciful on some level, but there's a lot 939 01:02:02,280 --> 01:02:04,400 of truth to it, and it's not out of the 940 01:02:04,400 --> 01:02:08,960 realm of possibility. But you could imagine that under that 941 01:02:09,039 --> 01:02:15,360 redaction they used slot machines and video poker and other 942 01:02:15,920 --> 01:02:23,719 casino esque modalities to degrade people's sense of identity. And 943 01:02:23,800 --> 01:02:26,119 if my novel is true, that would actually be what 944 01:02:26,280 --> 01:02:27,400 was there under that redaction. 945 01:02:29,599 --> 01:02:32,840 Speaker 1: That that's pretty much what I was. What I was 946 01:02:32,840 --> 01:02:40,159 hoping to hear some go a little bit deeper. Yeah, 947 01:02:40,320 --> 01:02:44,679 let me ask you this were you? Is it true 948 01:02:45,599 --> 01:02:49,079 that at one time you were in a in a 949 01:02:49,119 --> 01:02:51,559 band with the drummer for the Killers. 950 01:02:52,239 --> 01:02:55,119 Speaker 2: Yeah, I was in a band for it was you. 951 01:02:55,599 --> 01:02:57,880 It was your band, right, it was my band. I 952 01:02:57,960 --> 01:03:01,519 was the singer and the guitar player. Yeah. We didn't 953 01:03:01,559 --> 01:03:03,840 go very far, but we were very close to going 954 01:03:04,400 --> 01:03:06,840 maybe far, but it never happened. It was one of 955 01:03:06,840 --> 01:03:10,440 those almost famous situations. But you know, like I've been 956 01:03:10,719 --> 01:03:13,360 in proximity to fame a few times in my life. 957 01:03:13,400 --> 01:03:15,880 When I was about twelve, I played tennis against Andre 958 01:03:15,960 --> 01:03:20,679 Agassy and he was thirteen, and he went on to 959 01:03:20,760 --> 01:03:24,239 of course have a huge career in tennis. But you know, 960 01:03:24,280 --> 01:03:26,599 I was an okay, twelve year old and he grew 961 01:03:26,679 --> 01:03:28,719 up around down the street from me in Vegas. 962 01:03:29,400 --> 01:03:31,760 Speaker 1: All Right, I don't want to bore people with tennis talk, 963 01:03:31,800 --> 01:03:35,079 but okay, weeks after we stopped recording, Oh, I want 964 01:03:35,079 --> 01:03:37,119 to have it. I want to have a tennis conversation 965 01:03:37,239 --> 01:03:37,519 with you. 966 01:03:37,840 --> 01:03:40,400 Speaker 2: We could do a whole episode on tennis. 967 01:03:41,119 --> 01:03:41,320 Speaker 1: No. 968 01:03:41,360 --> 01:03:45,440 Speaker 2: But then, yeah, the Killers, Like so we played gigs 969 01:03:45,440 --> 01:03:50,159 with the Killers before they got signed, and we kept 970 01:03:50,239 --> 01:03:54,119 losing members. One guy, one of our drummers, was from 971 01:03:54,159 --> 01:03:57,480 Liverpool and he had problems with the Ions. So the 972 01:03:57,519 --> 01:04:00,159 I S is like a really really effective and your 973 01:04:00,239 --> 01:04:07,239 drummers from Liverpool for some reason, and uh so we 974 01:04:07,239 --> 01:04:11,360 we uh you know, Ronnie Venucci sat in on a 975 01:04:11,400 --> 01:04:14,000 few practices with us and we were kind of like, yeah, Ronnie, 976 01:04:14,039 --> 01:04:16,159 you want to join our band. And this is before 977 01:04:16,199 --> 01:04:19,760 he joined the Killers, or he was we didn't know this, 978 01:04:19,880 --> 01:04:24,199 but he was in the process of being like, uh, entertained, 979 01:04:25,599 --> 01:04:32,360 what's the word like auditioned, auditioned, Yeah, courted by the Killers, 980 01:04:32,519 --> 01:04:34,440 and uh yeah, like a month later he was in 981 01:04:34,480 --> 01:04:37,440 the Killers and and you know, they were just starting 982 01:04:37,440 --> 01:04:40,079 to get a lot of buzz in Vegas and we 983 01:04:40,159 --> 01:04:44,320 played shows with them several times, and uh, and then 984 01:04:44,519 --> 01:04:48,519 they they got signed and flew to London and did 985 01:04:48,559 --> 01:04:52,000 a little UK tour and started playing and their manager, 986 01:04:52,639 --> 01:04:58,480 actually my wife's brother was their manager's roommate. Who is 987 01:04:58,880 --> 01:05:01,519 I'm sorry, I'm going through all the the connections, but basically, 988 01:05:01,880 --> 01:05:05,519 the manager of the Killers, his brother is the lead 989 01:05:05,519 --> 01:05:07,440 singer of the of Imagine Dragons. 990 01:05:08,079 --> 01:05:09,079 Speaker 1: Look that up. It's true. 991 01:05:09,519 --> 01:05:14,880 Speaker 2: So so the manager, Robert Reynolds, brought us into his 992 01:05:15,119 --> 01:05:18,599 brought my band into his office not long after he 993 01:05:18,679 --> 01:05:21,679 signed the Killers, and he's like, you got any demo 994 01:05:21,760 --> 01:05:25,760 tapes a CD at the time, And he sat and 995 01:05:25,800 --> 01:05:29,159 listened to a CD of my band and he's like, 996 01:05:29,199 --> 01:05:31,880 I'm not hearing any immediate hits here, but I kind 997 01:05:31,880 --> 01:05:35,760 of like this one song and it didn't really go anywhere. 998 01:05:35,800 --> 01:05:38,880 And then a few weeks later he had an emissary 999 01:05:38,960 --> 01:05:44,320 come watch us play a few gigs and his impressions 1000 01:05:44,320 --> 01:05:46,840 were largely positive. But then our band broke up and 1001 01:05:46,880 --> 01:05:49,000 I ended up moving to London like a like I 1002 01:05:49,039 --> 01:05:53,679 don't know a few months later. So it's, uh, you know, 1003 01:05:53,760 --> 01:05:57,360 it never happened, but it's very interesting to speculate. 1004 01:05:58,679 --> 01:06:03,119 Speaker 1: All right, Well, I guess, Uh, do you think there's 1005 01:06:03,199 --> 01:06:06,800 anything else we need to add before we can start 1006 01:06:06,800 --> 01:06:08,840 doing the promotion the promotion part of. 1007 01:06:08,840 --> 01:06:12,519 Speaker 2: This, Yeah, I think I think we're good. I think 1008 01:06:12,559 --> 01:06:16,159 we covered most of the major topics. I guess. 1009 01:06:17,519 --> 01:06:21,400 Speaker 1: Cool. All right, So Exeter House is at If you 1010 01:06:21,480 --> 01:06:26,960 go to Imperium Press, you'll see up on top up 1011 01:06:27,039 --> 01:06:30,760 in the banner, you'll see a link for it. You 1012 01:06:30,760 --> 01:06:33,519 can click on that and you'll see the I guess 1013 01:06:33,559 --> 01:06:37,480 three books so far that have been released, and yours 1014 01:06:37,519 --> 01:06:41,000 I believe is the latest, or at least the second, 1015 01:06:41,639 --> 01:06:46,400 the most one of the most recent. And yeah, no, 1016 01:06:46,519 --> 01:06:50,400 I this is a great talk. Look forward to asking 1017 01:06:50,440 --> 01:06:52,880 you a couple of questions about tennis after we finish this, 1018 01:06:52,920 --> 01:06:55,320 because very much, well we might we might even have 1019 01:06:55,360 --> 01:06:59,719 some connection, We might have some connections there. But yeah, 1020 01:07:00,039 --> 01:07:04,039 but Lee, I really appreciate it. And yeah, good luck 1021 01:07:04,079 --> 01:07:06,599 with good luck with this, and I encourage everybody check 1022 01:07:06,639 --> 01:07:11,199 this out. This is uh, this is fiction like like 1023 01:07:11,320 --> 01:07:14,320 we would want fiction to be written, not like when 1024 01:07:14,320 --> 01:07:18,480 you get here. Yeah, well, I mean all you have 1025 01:07:18,559 --> 01:07:21,960 to do is walk through. All you have to do 1026 01:07:22,079 --> 01:07:27,519 is be subscribed to thrift Books or any of these websites, 1027 01:07:27,559 --> 01:07:31,119 and then you get the email and it says, oh, 1028 01:07:31,199 --> 01:07:33,239 here are the books that are on sale for you 1029 01:07:33,320 --> 01:07:35,320 this week, and you look at it and you just 1030 01:07:35,480 --> 01:07:39,559 know it's the most it's either vile trash or it's 1031 01:07:39,760 --> 01:07:42,199 absolute problem. Right. 1032 01:07:42,719 --> 01:07:45,000 Speaker 2: No. You walk around Barnes and Noble and like, all 1033 01:07:45,039 --> 01:07:46,960 the covers are just looking at you, and you're like, 1034 01:07:47,440 --> 01:07:50,320 unless you're in the you know, classics section, which is 1035 01:07:50,360 --> 01:07:53,239 smaller and smaller every time I walk in. But yeah, 1036 01:07:53,320 --> 01:07:56,039 everything that's new is like, oh my god, this is 1037 01:07:56,119 --> 01:07:56,719 just terrible. 1038 01:07:58,800 --> 01:08:00,880 Speaker 1: All right, Lee, I appreciate Thank you very much. 1039 01:08:01,079 --> 01:08:02,639 Speaker 2: Thanks, thanks so much for having me