Speaker 1: Okay, we're barreling across Interstate A east into Arizona. We
just we crossed the California Arizona border about twenty minutes ago,
and we escaped one of the most miserable del Tacos
I've ever been to. It was like this the rectum
of depravity. We emerged from the rectum of the pravity.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It felt like like, you know, if if you had
done something filthy that you regretted it just being there al,
would you like to expound on this please? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I think this place really We spent forty minutes in there,
and I think really it might have been five years.
We like step out in kind of a Rip Van
Winkle time warp. Really, what was off right away was
the guy behind the counter. He would he just turned
right around and he was just like yeah. He didn't
say like, hey, what can I get you?
Speaker 1: He was like yeah, he'd pre been up for three days.
Speaker 3: The whole he was fucking meth out.
Speaker 1: All of southern California just feels riddled with methamphetamine. Dirty
Backstreet exchanged for sex methamphetamine. It just feels like the
fucking dirtiest, nastiest motel you've ever passed on the wrong
side of town, right, Like I think of this one
I sing in Lordsburg, New Mexico. Right, It's like you
just looking at it makes you feel dirty.
Speaker 3: And our first order went through fine. You got a burrito.
I got a taco to burrito and that went through fine.
The ladies in the back were making the food and
they were real busy. That drive through was clearly del
doc was the only thing going in El Central, California.
Speaker 1: Yeah, nobody in there looked like they were doing good.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 1: The ladies working there seemed like they were probably you know,
nicer and probably not on metal.
Speaker 3: They were working real hard.
Speaker 1: But the manager of their boss seemed like he was definitely.
Speaker 3: On mets, sweating just looking through us.
Speaker 1: And we you know, we were at San Diego earlier today.
Shout out to San Diego. Beautiful San Diego. They showed
us a lot of love. Three hundred plus people came
out to the show last night. It was fucking great.
And then we walked out with Mike Simpson today at
Torrey Pines looking at plants and feeling the cool oceanic
breeze off the Pacific, and then we went over a
mountains as we barreled ease today and the minute we
went over the mountains, we descended into the heat Dome.
Speaker 3: Who was ninety nine degrees at like ten pm.
Speaker 1: You have the Imperial Desert. Shit, it's eighty six now
at the twelve twenty, it's late. Now we're going, we're headed.
We're trying to make it to Mesa tonight. We're gonna
stay at our buddy Augie's house. And then we got
a Phoenix show tomorrow, and I guess there's like it's
like two hundred people. Maybe we'll sell a couple more
thickets and we're gonna attack, attack all the horticulture of Phoenix.
There's a lot of horrible shit out there. Shout out
to the Queen Creek, Botana, the Garden. Not really, We're
just I would like to find a way to sneak
in there, just to just to film some of this stuff.
It's like at the miniature golf course Epstein Island Landscaping.
But uh, you know, it's it's weird out here the
desert at night. The Interstate eight I've spent I've spent
a lot of time out here in these deserts of
southern California and I've got a certain a fondness for them, right,
but they do feel dirty, right, I mean even.
Speaker 3: From that Del Taco is clinging to us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is, but we haven't even escaped it because
Arizona's got this weird thing going on here too. Nothing.
You're not safe out here, right. There's a lot of
myth on the West coast, but it can't it's not
all It's not all myth though. It's not just the
meth that's the problem, right, there's other there's a cultural sickness.
Maybe I don't know what it is.
Speaker 3: I think El Central is like a prison town. There's
there like a prison outside of it, and that's always
a vibe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like if you were if you were like
bleeding wounded on the street, like very few people would
would stop to help you.
Speaker 3: It feels like it seemed like everybody for themselves. There
was a couple in there eating food that was like
the guy had like a handlebar mustache and the lady
was covered in tattoos, and they were like not like
it sounds like I just described like a hipster couple
from two thousand and nine. It wasn't like, oh they
were grizzled. Yeah, they were old and grizzled.
Speaker 1: There was some wear and terror.
Speaker 3: It was like David Lynch characters. It felt surreal in there,
and it felt really surreal.
Speaker 1: It's a really good way to describe it is ye
had David Lynch characters.
Speaker 3: Man, things went awry when you got that second burrito joint.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just and it was just a bean like,
it was just beans in the tortilla. I literally I
ordered a bean burrito and no, they didn't give me
any cheese or anything. But I wasn't complaining because you know,
you put the hot sauce on Eric. The hot sauce
can make a doctor taste good. So I was satisfied.
I just needed some sort of mild satiation and.
Speaker 3: He needed that second burrito. And we waited for about
twenty minutes when you after you ordered the second one.
Speaker 1: Now, I got up and said something to the guy
and he got really airanoid and he's like, I say,
you walk outside. I saw you walk outside with this
I gave you. And he was like, no, man, you
didn't give me the burrito. I gave you the burrito
and he's like, what you took it outside outside it's
like he was accusing me of stealing. It was like
I went outside to get my water.
Speaker 3: Jugg crazy vibe switched and then the lady was like, hey,
it's fine, and she just slid you a burrito over the.
Speaker 1: Tayb distracted the guy and then he went back to
pacing back and forth, fo by the sweating.
Speaker 3: He was wearing the drive through headset taking orders.
Speaker 1: It's been up for three days. They got these Employee
of the month. He's been up for three days. It's
a weird fucking dynamic. They didn't have a bathroom over there.
And then when I got the water out of the
soda machine, I took it back to the car and
it was ice cold and I put my mouth on it.
It was bad water. It was like salt water. They
come out of a fucking you know, four indard foot
deep well in the desert.
Speaker 3: It was like a sour Yeah, it was brutal.
Speaker 1: It was like from the depths of Hell. It was
fucking it's it's it's weird out here.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: When I used to Bonnie in the deserts, I would
only really come down here, you know, like prior to April,
like in in the cooler season, and it's it's lovely
and even now it's not that bad at night because
it's dryer. It's not humid like a nuts sc you
know where I live, and that sex a little bit.
We don't need to say that, you know, I could
say there's more descriptive terms I could use to describe
the balmy humidity where you have to spoon the air
in thr lungs and the knights don't really cool off
and sweating doesn't do anything, but you get the point.
But it's it's comfortable. But it was probably like one
fifteen during the day here and just a whole lot
of creoso bush.
Speaker 3: And the moon is the moon was hanging low on
the wane and it was and it was like reddish
orange and huge.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And as we barreled across this this Interstate eight,
this dark and mysterious, somewhat spooky internet eight in Interstate eight,
put we put on a frontline documentary about meth. Do
you know, just just for the ambience, just set the moon.
Speaker 3: You know, it's kind of like you know when in Rome,
you know you kind of got it, you know, you
learn about the local boy.
Speaker 1: Just fucking god.
Speaker 3: Now I didn't know biker meth the old way of
making meth. It's only about half his potent, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, with the well, well, no, it was more pure.
And they were coarse corresponding the boosts and purity as
they tested it with the meth that had been confiscated
by the cops. They were coarse but correlating that to
the spikes in meth arrests. And then when the purity
would taper off because like the government would shut down
if fedrin and then suit a fedrin, you know, buying
it in bulk, and then that in turn would cause
the purity to drop, and then people wouldn't get as addicted.
Speaker 3: They could get off ei.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then they had the cop that was talking
about the you know, the sequence arrests, sequenced arrests of like,
oh yeah, when she first came in here eight years ago,
she was looking pretty attractive and then you know, now
she said, by I wouldn't touch you with a ten
foot pole.
Speaker 3: And then like that, I had this whole vie where
he was just dying about you know, you know, these
they come in here and they're just you know, they're
really attracted.
Speaker 1: Like you gonna swipe right, she's he's gonna swipe right.
I would have swiped right on her eight years ago,
but now no way. Well, I'll pick the pandion and
Bear's got in me.
Speaker 3: Speaking of the progressive faces of Beth, we were saying
that that guy at Del Paco's employee of the Month
photo would be up and he'd be employee of the
month for like fifty months straight, and every month it
would just be like a progression into meth.
Speaker 1: He sleeeps like once every six and a half days.
He goes down. Fucking hey man, it's weird. It's always weird,
you know, and then you get that meth jaw thing.
I forgot what met zombies look like, right, I mean
I saw the first one I saw was a Tucson
because we don't really get met that bad in Texas.
It's just I don't know why. It's just the culture
that I don't think they could exist as you know,
as much. They have a harder time getting by because
I think the law cracks down on and people just
don't tolerate. I don't know, but the meth is real,
bad O west Man. I mean, it's a you know,
it's a it's a serious issue. To contend with.
Speaker 3: That meth jaw. It's like cokejaw, where they're eating an
invisible sandwich at all times.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they keep snapping their jawing shit, and then they
get the emaciated, you know, looks like they got a
face lift. They're like the zombie face. It's rough, man,
it's a very unfortunate Oh there's a little kopeia. But
I do I do like the spooky vibes out here.
You know, it's a very you know, UFO sighting spooky.
You know, someone hitchhiking on the side of the road
at do in the morning kind of vibes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you could see why there's all kinds of legends
about the spooky things in the desert. I'm not even
gonna mention some of the stuff because you know, you
don't want to bring that energy upon.
Speaker 1: You don't want to hex yourself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you don't.
Speaker 1: Just spook me out. Was the fucking six dollars gas.
Even though we're in Arizona now, the gas is still up.
It's a shakedown. But anyway, we did it. We did
a show in La that was fun. We played at
the Tree with or Dude. I kept thinking about how
much how much of gnorrhea and cocaine had had entered
and left that green room bathroom.
Speaker 3: That shower is cursed.
Speaker 1: The tributear Dude Dude bands on to it. You played
the tribute ar dude bands on.
Speaker 3: Your played the tributart is pretty cool.
Speaker 1: It was pretty, It was pretty cool. Pretty, it was
pretty cool.
Speaker 3: Everybody at work there was a little weird except Kyle shoutout.
Speaker 1: Kyle thought they were nice, right, yeah, which just there
was just a weird vibe, you know, but they treat
their employees good. It's it's evident. And then uh, yeah, yeah,
it was like I thought it was worried not a
lot of people come out because it's Los Angeles and
there's not and it was Monday night, yeah, and I
think there's you know, my perception is there's not going
to be a lot of plant people there, and it's yeah,
it's fucking Monday night and it's like a rock club,
a notorious rock club. No one wants to go see
some you know, wing the rant about plants. But apparently
they did, and uh had a couple hundred people out here,
and then we did San Diego last night, three hundred people.
Louis Pete on my hoodie.
Speaker 3: Uh, the stage fell down while you were.
Speaker 1: The stage collapsed, and then the poor soul work in
the a V like tried to put the podium back
up and it caused the to fall off and shit.
And I just kept going and they had projector trouble
at person, but it was all fine. Everybody was in
such a good mood. Everybody's so nice. So many people
came up afterwards too that were like the kind of
people like. Everybody who came up was like, Oh, there's
someone I could like. Wish I had twenty minutes to
sit down over coffee and talk with this person. They
seemed pretty cool and uh and kind and fun. And
San Diego is such a nice antidote to, you know,
spending too much time in La. I do like the dirty,
gritty side of La.
Speaker 3: It's got a nice edge to it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I do. And I went to Lebrea Tarpits. That
was fucking fun. That was really incredible. So many species
of MegaFon of that are now extinct. It's very it's
very confounding, right, I mean a lot. There was an
extinct caracara species. Uh, there was an American lion. There's
the saber toothed cat of course, three different species of
uh what's the word for elephant, uh, mammoth. Yeah, it
was a pachadermackderms. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was. It was.
That was fucking I love going there. I haven't been
there in a long time.
Speaker 3: I shouldn't walk in.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's so cool right in downtown l A. And
the like the bubbling tarpets are still there. And I
guess there's a fly that whose larva only feed on
insects that get trapped in the tar. Whoa, and so
it's but it's an awesome but it and it can
tolerate the tar, like the larva can tolerate the uh,
petroleum products.
Speaker 3: It's basically like a petroleum hot spring, is what's going on.
Speaker 1: Basically, I saw this like tar bubbling up from oil deposits.
I don't I should know, I didn't. I didn't actually
read it. The there'd be an interesting thing to explain,
it would be worth hearing. But uh, but yeah, but
you know, there's a bunch of oil wells, a bunch
of oil rigs off the coast. I mean, there's petroleum
throughout that whole area. There's you know, oil dereks, or
there used to be oil dereks throughout the La Basin.
Speaker 3: So he yeah, I said, wow, I said, we got.
Speaker 1: To see the English ivy covered in urine, which is,
you know, such a California thing for me, reminds me
of Oakland. You know that the hetero helix, the horticultural
atrocity planted along the freeway covered in urine, maybe with
the you know, used dope break, you know, uncapped needles
sticking up out of it. Definitely some human feces. The
smell of human feces after it's been baking in the
California sun for a few days. It's got that like
halatosis smell to it. I'm sorry, I get really descriptive
with this stuff. I can't help it.
Speaker 3: He's like a poet of filth.
Speaker 1: But uh, but you know, but now we're now we're
in Arizona, fucking tours almost over it. It's been really good.
Tucson was a blast.
Speaker 3: I was gonna say, Tucson was awesome.
Speaker 1: Cactus Store was great too. Cactus I thought I was
just doing a book signing, but then I ended up
speaking for a little while, and.
Speaker 3: You did the whole You did the whole set.
Speaker 1: It was out doors. Yeah, it was fun. Man, it
was a good it was really nice. Yeah, out of
the yard good. It takes me a day to get
into it though, Like I felt like Tucson, I was off.
People still loved it though, but I was, you know,
I'm always like, ah, people are gonna dip out early.
Nobody dipped out early. It was. It was a fun
fucking time people come up and then just doing book signing,
shooting the ship with people.
Speaker 3: It was.
Speaker 1: It's always really fun. I wish I wish we had
like another week of it maybe, but the Southwest is
far and wide and I've got to get back to Texas.
I missed my kid. And then going to Costa Rica
to help out with Allen and Mandy's tour in a
cloud forest up into Paramoe.
Speaker 3: We should do some more of these anyway.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, so we're uh, we got an hour to go,
an hour left, just filled up with six dollars a
gallon gas, you know, out a quarter tank, right, I
don't Yeah, I'm not paying for the whole thing because
it should only be four fifty.
Speaker 3: You go piece by piece.
Speaker 1: It was like four fifty at the border and then uh,
you know it was six bucks in the middle. Ere
fucking opportunists. You know, I don't want to hear it, right,
everybody's hurting these days. But yeah, I think I want
to stick around Phoenix for a while and film some
horrendous shit. How do we do you have time to
do that? Saturday?
Speaker 3: Are you gonna I'm gonna be hanging out with my cousin.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's right, Okay, hang out with my cousins.
Speaker 3: Argo.
Speaker 1: See if I have enough material in Phoenix to film
an episode of Spiritually Depraved.
Speaker 3: I think it might be like the Epicenter of the Head. Yeah,
it is a very special episode.
Speaker 1: It's crazy. You look at like a satellite map and
there's so much green in the middle of the deserts.
It shouldn't be there.
Speaker 3: It should go just like somebody's pool.
Speaker 1: Bo Ducks, Clinics, Personal Injury and thirty. But what's it like?
What's it like growing up in Phoenix? I wonder?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's gotta be rough.
Speaker 3: It's just like the weird. I feel like it's one
of those cities where the whole place is suburbs. Yeah,
a lot of those.
Speaker 1: Right, right, Like most of the development's been in the
last twenty years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just yeah, car centric an an insane amount of
you know, the city's on life support basically, like it
shouldn't exist. It's just has all this these resources piped
in and you can kind of feel it.
Speaker 1: You know, what aquifer are they draining to keep all
the all the turf grass and golf courses?
Speaker 3: Show Phoenix is the Colorado River? Isn't it? Is it?
Speaker 1: The Colorado River is everything? All the all the agriculture
that we just went through.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was looking at a satellite map of the stuff
we were driving through, and it's just like a plaid
grid of green that shouldn't be there in the driest
desert in North America.
Speaker 3: Are they selling them the Ogalalla aquifer? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think the water, I think that water is all coming. Yeah,
it's all Colorado River water.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, But.
Speaker 1: Then there's got to be I know, the tap water
here is probably filthy, dirty, and it's probably just ridden
with minerals and maybe some you know, trace carcinogens, god
knows what else.
Speaker 3: If the water at Del Taco is the indication in
El Central, it is fucking terrible.
Speaker 1: Tory Pines was really nice today. Pinus toriana, this rare
pine species that only grows in tory Pines State Reserve
and on Santa Rosa Island and the Channel Islands. I
remember going down there like fifteen years ago, maybe it
was a little bit longer. I went down there, maybe
it was two thousand and nine. I slept in the
back of my car in that neighborhood because it's in
like a fancy neighborhood. And then you know, you can
see all these rare plants that you see like ale,
a little nutlet, a little piece of vestigial landscape.
Speaker 3: This back when you were tree crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when I was first getting into botany. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
it must have been like two thousand and nine. But
so there's all this incredibly rare and beautiful shit growing
in tory Pine State Reserve, and then you go down
into the town and it's like just whack shit like limoniums,
like these corny, fucking out of context landscape, landscaping atrocities,
you know, just ship that's got like like nothing native,
nothing really having any context here. Ship from South Africa,
ship from you know, Mediterranean climates in like Western Australia,
which is oh cool stuff where it's native. But it's
just like why why do that? Like You've got all
this incredible ship here, and then all these cool insects
and birds that are depending on it. We saw a
peregrine falcon flying around above the bluffs just cruising. Seen
some nice composites there too, corith Rogeny philad genifolia, which
is macarantheray or macarantherine AIGs the Grendelia tribe that it's
like a chalky mint green leaf bastard with you know,
really pretty white daisy like flowers with white rays. And
then there was oh god, I just forgot the name
os Medina tanella, which I think is a tarweed. Is that, Maddy, Maddy?
Let me look at the tax on. Yeah, it's tribe
matti Aid's one of the tarweeds which are common in California,
the progenitors to the Hawaiian silver sorts. One of those
tarweeds made it to the Hawaiian islands five or six
million years ago and turned in like so many plants
do when they get to islands, to a much larger,
more robust because there's no rbivy pressure species of plant
that can live for years, whereas these are all annuals.
Most of the maddies are annuals. But it was really
cool to look at the flowers see the distinction between
ray florets and disc floorids. The ray florets instead of
being instead of the rays being strapped like with three lobes,
they were basically like these little three lobed corollas, the
three lobes like spread out the bunch. It was a
really really bizarre form for a compositi. If you don't
know what the fuck I'm talking about, that's okay. You
gotta become familiar with asta rac They're fucking everwhere you
need to understand composite morphology. I should do a YouTube
lecture just on asta racy. I think I have before,
but I'll do another one. And how about Mike Simpson though, Yeah,
hanging out with Mike Yeah, really, really really calm, gentle,
knowledgeable dude. The guy that wrote Plant Systematics, which I'm
always hyping up, wrote the entire like twelve hundred page textbook,
the fourth Editions in the Works.
Speaker 3: We were sitting We were sitting there in the little
town of Delmar outside of Tory Pines, eating sandwiches in
that little brick cord he brought us.
Speaker 1: He bought us sandwiches. That was really nice of him too. Man,
let me pay you for it. He's like, now, don't
worry about us. Okay.
Speaker 3: We were shedding there a little in the little courtyard.
You guys were talking about science. I felt, I said, well,
it was just I feel like Aristotle. Right now, we're
here in a public square, we're talking about science here
in a forum, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the free and open exchange of ideas, you know,
here under the tree, you know. And in the age
of declining intellect in this country, intentionally declining intellect, there's
the whole country's getting thumber. We're trying to keep the intellect,
the life, you know, for the public good. Yeah, he
was telling me about God. What was that three two
three or three five three? I think it was three
five three three five three. Sequencing it's some some shit
Q someone at Q Gardens made up it's or or
it didn't made up but invented. It's a Instead of
sequencing gene regions, they're sequencing sequencing nuclear genes that are
scattered throughout the genomen It provides because it's scattered throughout
the genomeens that of just one gene region. It gives
a more broad and a better idea because you're you've
got more data, a better idea of where something might
come out in a phylogeny. When you compare the genetic
sequence or those sequences of one species with those of another,
you can tell how closely related they are, if they're
in the same genus or or what. But uh, which
is what I really want to do with all the
West Texas and South Texas different ecotypes of plants like
you know too Trophi diaheca, or even peyote or Hamado
cactus hamatic cantus, which has two different ecotypes in each place.
Jo Trophi diaheka is same thing Sydney attenuafolia. They're not
classified into different subspecies, but they certainly look like different
ecotypes because there's totally different climates and mainly just in
the realm of humidity and nighttime temperatures between West Texas
and South Texas. So I want to see, you know,
how long has well, First off, I wonder how long
that climate, those climate climatic differences have existed and if
it has had much of an effect on the genomes
of all these different plants, especially like the peyotes, because
Aerocarpus doesn't really like you know, Areacarpus grows in West Texas,
but it doesn't really like South Texas is too humid.
It likes it more exposed, It likes cooler nights. I
imagine it likes it a lot more arid, not as humid.
It's a really interesting stuff. But uh again, it's not
as easy to sequence plants as it is the sequence mushrooms.
Some but I had never heard of the three five three?
Is that we am? I even giving it even, you know,
it wasn't three two three, wasn't those I was reading
about it. I gotta I still got to read more
about it.
Speaker 3: It's like a finer level of detail.
Speaker 1: Yeah, three five three sequencing for plant.
Speaker 3: Finally, ship you can really get down in there. You
can learn some stuff about when stuff started evolving different
different as far as I understand it, when it diverged.
Speaker 1: That I missed. I didn't miss the fucking turnoff, did I?
Speaker 3: Oh god, no, no, there's multiple it's a heela be over.
Speaker 1: So when don't we get out of here? Saturday Saturday?
I guess Saturday night or Sunday morning, will leave Phoenix,
head back.
Speaker 3: To Sunday morning coming down.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's getting fucking late. We got one more hour
left anyway. Yeah, well we'll let you go right now
and then we'll get back to you and when we're
continuing the drive. We got an eight hour drive headed
back to West Texas from Phoenix on Saturday or Sunday.
So we'll check back in with you. And you got
anything else you want to add, you know, I, uh,
Interstate eight.
Speaker 3: We got some blazing lights off to the left of US.
I don't know what they are. It looks very.
Speaker 1: Dystopic person or some ice attention.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it looks terrible. Uh, you know, it's just the
desolation of the desert and you don't really just thanks
to everybody who's coming out to these things, I said, wow,
you know they were they really like it. You know,
they're getting the shirts, they're getting the you know you'll
see me at the merch table.
Speaker 1: You know, thanks for it. Because I didn't get any message.
I didn't get any mean emails from someone named Barbara
that started off with, well, my husband seems to think
you're worth lastening too, but I can't really stand. You
haven't gotten any of those in a year or two.
Speaker 3: That was That was the lady who couldn't get a.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but she fucking hated She hated crime page anyway,
even though she came out. It came out just so
she could get angry. Why she wanted a good upset
people do. Everybody's hurting these days. Everybody needs to, you know,
a shrink. Everyone's got to talk to their therapist. You
can't blame them, right, We're all in a state of
mental and emotional and spiritual decline distress. We're never gonna
have healthcare, We're never gonna have affordable education. So this,
this is the best you got, folks. You got to
just learn to laugh at it and figure out to
get him where you fit them. I guess I don't
know takes you.
Speaker 3: We can do better, though, because at the end of
the day, at the end of the day, the end
of the day, I think collapse.
Speaker 1: Is all that's gonna eventually make things change. You know,
once the system collapses and you know, the dollar gets
completely devalued, you know, it's not used as the standard
anymore for currency, you know, for the world and whatnot.
Speaker 3: You know, that's why I'm investing in crime base coin
gotta be terrible. I'm sorry to even make that joke.
Speaker 1: That would be horrible.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry about that.
Speaker 1: We started a crime.
Speaker 3: Yeah, here's send me ten bucks. I keep it.
Speaker 1: You got permission to hit me in the head with
a wrench if that ever, if that ever happens.
Speaker 3: Crazy.
Speaker 1: What's that smell? It smells like it smells like bread
sticks kind of what is that? It's not a fart.
I don't know what that is. Where the fuck that
comes from? Do you have breadsticks? Do you like some
sort of like Italian season?
Speaker 3: I know it might just be the desert making smells.
Speaker 1: Over here by Paloma Road of Innish State eight. Hello,
Hello brether Yello, you gotta come up with the Google
nab voice that switches to the crusty old home bum
you know, instead of the the bubbly obnoxious Google lady.
It's like a It's like an old wino that like
continually re routsy to the recycling center, you know, or
like the liquor store to go pick up a fucking
a fucking forty ounce of Mickeys or a bottle of
Mad Dog or something.
Speaker 4: Bear left for five hundred ft swing by my old
lady's some some old rizzled wizard crawls out of the bushes.
Speaker 1: The tweakers on the back. He's clinging onto the under
under the chesseis in a truck. That guy from Yeah,
he's we took him with just like just like, just
like the Alien and the Sigourney Sigourney Weaver movies. You
know she's on there, Ripley, you know, you know, you
think you've made it away from the from the Alien.
It's actually clinging onto the side of the still there.
He's so fucking he's a a bug eye spun out,
hanging on for dear life to the roof. When we
stopped for gas. He's gonna get out and start trying
to choke us anyway. Okay, Yeah, we'll check back in
in a day or two. It should be a good
show tomorrow. And yeah, it's not like I gotta have
a gress to Daygo fuck you up out.
Speaker 2: Okay, Welcome to the second episode of Tony's how Stricts podcast.
Is We're barreling down Interstate ten going eighty five miles
per hour, mildly swerving all over the road at approximately
three thirty in the morning.
Speaker 3: Is that right?
Speaker 1: It's Mountain time.
Speaker 3: Right, I don't know why we chose to do this,
or if I chose to do this at all.
Speaker 1: I go to you into it. I don't want to stop.
We briefly considered stopping at the uh what was it
the days in in uh Denning.
Speaker 3: I was in favor of stopping, sleeping and continuing to drive.
Speaker 1: But you know what, the checkout times and at the
check in the time intervals wouldn't have worked. They just
wouldn't have worked. So instead we're driving again two days later,
two days past when we last talked to you. I
got the house music because it helps me stay away.
Speaker 3: Driving through tonight.
Speaker 1: And all the true there's not that many trucks out
on the road. That's another That's another alluring thing about
driving at night is you don't have to see when
you go through the city, Like we're gonna go through
all Passo. I don't want to have to look at
al Paso in the daylight.
Speaker 3: Right, we're gonna arrive arriving Outpie at eight forty five am.
Speaker 1: But that's only because we're gaining two hours since when
we left Phoenix. The Phoenix show is fucking great, by
the way, sold out, We sold out three of the
four shows we did on this tour. It was a
blast hung out with Marco.
Speaker 3: I told them we'd do it.
Speaker 1: Hung out with my buddy Marco. And you know, there's
like this gang in like four or five Chicano. Two
of them are brothers, the rest are just my brothers.
They're fucking wonderful people. I got people in Mesa, man,
and uh, they're all like in their mid forties, wonderful
human beings. You know, got to see Saul Hoggy Marco,
Uh fucking uh uh. Aggie's brother wasn't in town, but uh,
you know, I don't know. It was a wonderful time.
Marco's got a little if you're ever in Mesa, stop
at Republica and it's a real nice spot. And he
just opened up another little shop with all this artists
and ship in it that he brings in from Mexico.
Real nice stuff they got. It's called Cosa Coopal. You
didn't see that spot, did you.
Speaker 3: No. I was hanging out with my cousin, but I
saw pictures and it looked real nice.
Speaker 1: With your cousin's wife who got red pilled by Israel.
Speaker 3: We don't, you know, Yeah, you know, he's you know, bumbshout.
Speaker 1: I could see it.
Speaker 3: Bums. You know they're doing you know, they're doing this stuff.
A lot of people are real, you know, and they're
real uh, prejudice against Islam and I don't real license.
You know, there's a lot of stuff, but also.
Speaker 1: You know, they're whatever. We don't need to talk about it.
But this real ain't the victim here, it's true. But anyway, yeah,
but now it's looking real nice where you know, Phoenix
is fucking hot. Man with Phoenix and the palm trees.
I wanted to do Phoenix deserves its own episode or
a few episodes of spiritually depraved landscapes. But you know,
I looked once I got a good look at it.
El was not out here. He's with I'm still I'm
still doing this deal. But I think it's really the
wisest option. I haven't seen my kid in two weeks.
I want to see her. And you know, the sooner
we're off the road, we can't do the.
Speaker 3: Math about that town. Okay, so if we stopped and
slept the way we wake up, we keep driving, We
get to Alpine somewhat rested, and then you keep driving
to that night.
Speaker 1: I will go standing Monday morning, Monday, but this way
we'll get into the alpine early in the morning. We
won't have slept at all. We'll lounge around half sleeping
all day, making ourselves feel worse, and then we'll probably
sleep more in a night. But they got a track.
We can go on a walk. We'll go up to
the coffee shop. I think the coffee shops open past
and forward now he used to not be open. Passport.
We'll go see the little deers. You see the deers
in town.
Speaker 3: The little guy dogs.
Speaker 1: You know what I was telling all this story when
I was when I was a much younger man, and
I was in Dunsmere, California, first time I'd ever been
in Dunsmere. We met these old winos in the hobo
jungle there. One of them had like a twitching lazy eye,
like you was actively twitching. These were severe alcoholics. They
were nice guys, but I'm just being just called. What
is they were alcohol? It was a vere alcohol twenty
years ago. I'm sure none of them are alive anymore.
But I met this one guy and they were in
the jungle there and they where he was rolling a
cigarette and he looked at me and he said I
loved the women in Dungemere rather with his twitching, lazy eye,
and he was very right faced, and I stuck with me.
And then I thought about like duns mirror, because Dunemeir
is not known for, you know, beautiful people. I've just
put it that way, not that that they're ugly, but
I'm just saying.
Speaker 3: It's not you know, I love the women and rather.
Speaker 1: Anyway, so and it's kind of a rough time. There's
lot of tweakers in that town. That's actually the only
time I've ever been had my shit jacked in, like
in any large degree despite yeah, but but anyway, shout
out to Benny because he made it out of there
and he's sober now, he's not drinking no more. I
thought I was going to get the call that he
dropped any day now. But anyway, but it stuck with
me ever since, and on this long, lonely drive through
southern New Mexico, I kept thinking of it. I'm like,
where is that? You know, where are those where are
the where are the the Whinos? Today? Like where are
the Winos? Saying you know, how's the weather in Dunzmere.
Brother today in Dungemere. I don't think there's any alive anymore.
I don't think they're not. You know, it's just these
young kids. I don't know anyway, it was, it's there
was a very poetic moment for me. Even though I
looked at the man like he was great, I didn't
really know what to say when he said that. But
do you ever get a chance to go to Dunsmere, California.
They're in a Sacramento river, police do. It's a wonderful town,
right and look past if you can look past a
few blemishes, it's a wonderful town. Wait, well, hold on,
we were talking about Phoenix. Though Phoenix doesn't like trees. Phoenix,
Phoenix doesn't like trees just as much as South Texas
doesn't like trees.
Speaker 3: They hate tree.
Speaker 1: They got palm. What'd you see? You saw a lot
of palm trees there?
Speaker 3: I saw out of poem.
Speaker 1: It was a giant heat island.
Speaker 3: Why did they do it like that? Dot com? Log
on and find out the answer.
Speaker 1: Yes, so it's but Phoenix's lower elevation at two sounds,
so that makes it a little bit hotter. Two sounds
like twenty four hundred feet Phoenix, like twelve and uh,
and it's just it's a miserable fucking town. It's it's
just very hot, very hot. It's like it reminds me
a little bit of Fort Worth in a way, like
it doesn't. It's got the same like car dependent, large streets,
totally anti pedestrian friendly. But I wanted to do an
episode of Spiracy to pray of landscapes, and I just
felt like I couldn't have done it justice in the
one day I was there, you know, at Warrant's coming
back and spending a week there to really just go
throughout the Phoenix metro area, you know, go to the
Queen Creek Botanic Garden, film the miniature golf course, landscaping
they got there, filmed the palm trees, the complete lack
of trees in most places, and uh, and really nail
it down. But Marco's yard was, Man, I get to
see Marco's yard. He's got a wonderful fucking cactus garden.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: And he's got the man's got excellent style too. You
know with these we just got a really really good
sense of he brings. So you know, most of these,
most of my friends there that their families are from Sonora.
They came from Sonora, Mexico. And uh and uh, you know,
fucking Augie's house was nice. He bought this dilapidated house,
fixed it up impeccable style. He had a beautiful German
shepherd Belgian malinoa mix named Donna Summers. You know, it
was just it was just a good time, right, And
I remember I actually went to Mexico with this crew
in June of twenty twenty four, and I just spent
the week with you. After like a spending a week
with them, they had their dads with them too, which
are fucking hilarious, Like their dads are kind of unintentionally hilarious.
After spending a week with them, all I was just yeah,
I just I was just I was Chloe. I was
in a good mone. I just spent the week with
some really wonderful fellowship.
Speaker 3: You hit the fellowship, I.
Speaker 1: Think, yeah, they were wonderful people, man, I mean you
met them, you.
Speaker 3: Know, well they are wonderful, good.
Speaker 1: Guys, good fucking guys, good values, good people. But anyway, so,
uh so now we're blasting on into Alpine, you know,
just like a like a bad case at diarrhea, you know,
reverberating off of a bowld. What was your favorite show
that we did el.
Speaker 3: Merch lord? You know Phoenix Crescent Ballroom and Phoenix had
the best in house merch set up. That had a
tall booth. They had the grid wall behind everything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that might have been my favorite show. I felt
like I did the best of Phoenix because it took
me a couple of shows to get into it again.
Speaker 3: Getting juiced up. He's getting warmed up, and that venue
just felt nice. Yeah, you can really they had a
nice green room area. Yeah, they treat their people could Yeah,
we had nice you know they you know, we got
some sandwiches. I just made that part up because I
wanted to say it.
Speaker 1: But you know, then where we get a sandwich? Oh no,
Mike Simpson bought a sandwiches.
Speaker 3: Mike Simpson bought us.
Speaker 1: We went to Pines.
Speaker 3: What a classy guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I hadn't seen him. I went out to I
went out to dinner with him like four years ago,
maybe five years ago.
Speaker 3: But class act but plant systematics of the heart.
Speaker 1: Yeah. San Diego showed a lot of love. San Diego
was a fucking great time.
Speaker 3: Temple turned up and they and they turned out.
Speaker 1: I didn't think LA was gonna be two hundred plus.
That was pretty cool. That was nice.
Speaker 3: Monday night, two hundred plus going.
Speaker 1: To the True Wood order to listen to some crazy
wop rant about plants for two hours.
Speaker 3: You know, it was a special time.
Speaker 1: Nobody left in the middle. Nobody sent me any angry emails. Afterwards.
People seemed like the people said they enjoyed it.
Speaker 3: So everybody's having a good time. They I see them,
I watch them all. I see everybody in there.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't bullshit me.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't bullshit you.
Speaker 1: If people look they think it sucked.
Speaker 3: If people they think it sucked, Tony, if.
Speaker 1: People were falling asleep and boarded out of their minds,
they fucking you know they would leave.
Speaker 3: Tell me, yeah, no, I watch them. I watch them.
I mean, it's your people. They're coming to see the
laughing the as Ye.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 3: Anyway, but jokes are hitting. My favorite one is Epstein
island landscaping.
Speaker 1: Really it really is, man. I told that. I told
that joke in Saint Louis and there was a lady
from about there. She got all offended. She kind of
like ah. And then after the show She's like, yeah,
you really touched them digs and mobot and I was like, well,
you know, it's they've earned it.
Speaker 3: They didn't, you know.
Speaker 1: No, I wasn't personal this last cruises.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, here we go.
Speaker 1: Those the weather in last cruises seventy seven degrees methy,
this is another place we could sleep as well. Yeah,
but you don't want to stay in lost cruises. I've
stayed here before. The ViBe's not right. It's not you know,
it's not the worst. If you're gonna do lost cruses,
at least go to the east side of a passos.
You's don't have to drive through it. The next morning.
I'm good to go. Man, three or four hours. I mean,
we're fine, we'll make it all.
Speaker 3: He's all full of zazzle.
Speaker 1: You ever been to Valentine, Texas before. There's some freaks
that live there, like in a good way, some freaks,
you know.
Speaker 3: So I hear they're doing butt stuff out in the desk.
Speaker 1: No, they're not doing butt stuff. They're doing fucking there.
I don't know what they're doing. They're doing weird artsy fartsy,
you know, they're making music and some ship I don't know,
they're being they're they're being eccentrics. Right, it's a little
a little bit better than being a stiff. But uh,
they're doing but stuff.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: They got these slings and ship dangling from the ceiling.
They foot long rubber dogs. They're slapping each other around
with them. You know. They're putting them on little uh
drones and stuff, flying them around.
Speaker 3: They got a piss fountain. I don't know why and how,
but they got a piss fountain.
Speaker 1: Speaking of which, I got another leader of green Tea
going through me. I gotta I got a.
Speaker 3: Man, they got my, I got my unhinged, unfiltered fucking
what time is it fucking four forty in the morning.
Speaker 1: Oh you're staying coherent. I'm impressed. Man.
Speaker 3: If you want to go talking about fucked up ship.
Speaker 1: If if well, that's good, that's what it brings that out.
You know, get loose. If you want to go to sleep,
I can just keep ranting.
Speaker 3: You know, I no, I bet, I don't want to
sleep through this. I want to participate.
Speaker 1: I saw a fucking coyote in La like in downtown
and not well not downtown. It was like an hour
or two, like an hour walk north of the tar
pits in one of the neighborhoods there, just running in
between the buildings. Man, it was crazy. The jacarandas those
those Los Anglesh residents really love their jacaranas. But nobody
notices that they're half dead. They all look like shit
to me. They're thinning, right, they're they're thinning up top,
just like just like a boulding man that denis friends. Yeah, yeah,
And and nobody notices they think they're They think they
look great, right, But jacaranas are from South America. They
get a lot more rain than than La gets. And
I don't think it. I don't think they're from a
Mediterranean climate either.
Speaker 3: Shut them all on fire.
Speaker 1: You know, people don't know. They don't notice stuff, right,
they don't.
Speaker 3: They don't know.
Speaker 1: It's so's it's supposed to be there. They're disconnected from
the land as it existed. This guy just turned his
fucking headlights. What the fuck what is he doing? God,
these trucks are terrifying. Holy shit, Oh my god, oh
my god. Fuck good thing get smacked off the road
by some guy with a fucking gallon jug of mountain
dew piss in the back of his truck. I remember
I got a ride from a trucker once. I forget
where we were. It was like early two thousands. It
was in Indiana somewhere, and this guy had a bucket.
He literally, literally a five gallon bucket of bourn just
porno mags. He was he's not a healthy looking man.
Speaker 3: A bucket, yeah, lid no, it was, he was the bucket.
Speaker 1: It was just an open bucket, you know. So he
so he could reach back in there freely.
Speaker 3: Well he's you know, he could just grab one and
he's just grab a.
Speaker 1: Copy of Swank and just yeah, man, you know the things.
You remember a lot of things, hipping on a rod.
Nice guy otherwise, you know, not a creeper or anything,
but just.
Speaker 3: The just had an open bucket of porno.
Speaker 1: Yeah, bucket of porn, like not one or two mags,
but a literal bucket.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: It was do a dope. Where we see the adult
bookstore in San Diego. I forget.
Speaker 3: I remember the bar next to it was called Alibi.
Speaker 1: But man, what are you doing? And it's just a
wank booth then, because everything's everything's digital porn now right, Yeah.
Speaker 3: It's for people who want the bootique experience of a
jack of.
Speaker 1: You can get you can probably get dildos and stuff there, right, Yeah,
it's so marital age sexual mass not like it's not
like one of the you know, because a lot of
dildo shops and they got these like hip lesbian dildo shops.
They're lesbian run where it's like you go in there
and they've created a very nice it feels like a tattoob,
like a clean tattoo parlor, kind of artsy, very clean, safe.
Speaker 3: Just like Hi, my name is Don, I'm gonna sell
you this so you could shove it up your ears,
tell your wife.
Speaker 1: This is this and that's what I got. You know,
it's a it's a it's an unsafe place. It's and
its smells. It smells like fabuloso like body grease. What
are they selling those places? What do you go? We
should have gone in and just taking a look around
and see what they got.
Speaker 3: Just showing VHS. You're selling DVDs.
Speaker 1: Las VHS tapes with the thick plastic. Remember how to
they to get that thick plastic. All the old VHS
movies used to have the thick plastic casing that opened
like a book, the clamshll Yeah, clam clamshell, the clam
shell for the porno moves. My friend Bessie, she used
to collect vintage porno movies. She had this one called
The Blower. It was about a guy that was a
hairdresser in New York. Need I say more? You know
where that goes? WHOA, Okay, the gas prices have dropped significantly.
Oh yeah, I wish you know a lot of there's
a lot of rank ship the film in Phoenix, Man
a lot of nasty uh, a lot of nasty landscape,
green grass. I guess you know, I didn't. I forgot
they were so close to They just got mountains to
the north, so they've got rainfall coming off of those mountains.
And that's where you know a lot of the uh
because there was actually in Mesa. There were some large
trees in you know, uh Aggie's neighborhood. But uh, you know,
it's still incredibly hot out. It was wow. Oggie did
it real and even did a real nice job on
us backyard. They bought this dilapidated house, put tile in
the backyard, made a little outdoor living room. You know,
plants everywhere. His brother's an artist, so they made like
a little warehouse style open warehouse. Uh you know, art
studio in the back and then he lives with his
kids too. Is They made the house really nice, got
like exposed brick with some of the stuccoffs still on it,
and ship they were but you know they know how
to do all that stuff. They're open floor.
Speaker 3: Plan, open staircase. Brother.
Speaker 1: That was so nice to man for him to receive
us at three in the morning when we got in.
You know, we did our last all nighter with the
Dell tak off.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I don't know what. I don't know what's
going on with these you know these night drives.
Speaker 1: You know, well it's when it's during the summer. It's
preferable to drive at night, so you know, auto merch
doesn't bake in the back of the truck. It's easier
to less traffic. And also for me, I thought I'd
like it because I don't get distracted looking at plants.
You know, I'll take my time.
Speaker 3: Okay, there we go.
Speaker 1: Where should we go next? What should we do a
tour at next? Where we're gonna go? We'll do like
a Faull tour. Where should we.
Speaker 3: You're gonna go somewhere? Maybe we should go.
Speaker 1: Northern California Northwest.
Speaker 3: We gotta do them both. We gotta figure out what
to do them both. Everybody going to Denver, right, Yeah,
they're going to.
Speaker 1: Denver in August. August fourteenth or fifteen, I'm gonna be speaking.
I think I'm speaking on the fifteenth. I'm going there
for a week and then uh yeah, then September, I'm
supposed to go to Miami for some aeroid conference. I
don't know, you know, I don't know what they want
me to do with the aeroids. You know, he's showing
pictures of wild aeroids.
Speaker 3: Didn't have it that, you know, you know you could,
You could always cancel stuff you don't.
Speaker 1: Want little burnt out. I want to go to fucking
Bolivia and Argentina. That's where I want to go.
Speaker 3: Get this guy down to south of RG.
Speaker 1: I want to go see that this joint uh Cobralineus
cobra lydius species in Bolivia. Got eight too many of
those dried mangos from Trader Joe's.
Speaker 3: But he's addicted the dried fruit back.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's backing keeps him regular high five.
You gotta clean your tubes. Both, don't be a sick.
Speaker 3: Fuck both in bowel movement in and psychologically.
Speaker 1: Remember when we came over the mountains from San Diego
and then it got really fucking hot on the other side.
Speaker 3: But we stopped and seeing that.
Speaker 1: That sage brush, and I picked some for you. I
could smell it now.
Speaker 3: He picked it for me like a flower.
Speaker 1: You go over those mountains, you go east from San Diego,
you ascend the mountains I don't even know the name
of that mountain range I should and then you descend
into the fucking the Sonoran Desert and it's just hot
as balls. And that's when we encountered the bleakest, the
bleakest del taco I've ever been to.
Speaker 3: Manuel.
Speaker 1: But while we was that his name, not just assumed
it could be a Manuel. He looked like he could
have been a man weel.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he had that energy about him.
Speaker 1: Methie Manuel, Methi Manuel and his magic burritos. Those mountains
are a fucking nice though, man. There's some nice stuff
up there, that's all. That's so, that's where the kuma
Yai Reservation was. This nice Kumaya lady invader us to
invited us to come to the reservation and then she
reneged that, and I thought, I think she you know,
people are really excited when they find find crime page
sometimes and they look a little bit deeper and under
the vibes them out.
Speaker 3: Do you know that though white, you would she say how?
Speaker 1: I don't know what she said.
Speaker 3: I just she said maybe it's not a good time
or no.
Speaker 1: She said she was busy, but I was, you know,
it was people could be. But she invited first, She's like, oh,
it'd be so great to have you guys out, blah blah,
Oh yeah, it'd be great. You know they do they
do burning and all kinds of cool stuff. And then
you know, I hit her up and say, hey, man,
we're in town. You know, it's still cool to come by,
and she just, you know, she waited till the next
day to be like, no, I'm really busy and okay,
all right.
Speaker 3: Might have been a big time, might have been a
bad time.
Speaker 1: Maybe the content pissed her off. You never know, you know,
not for everybody.
Speaker 3: In a bad time. Might have been bad time.
Speaker 1: Could have been it could have been but my paranoid fucking.
Speaker 3: Delusions sometimes yeah, yeah, you know.
Speaker 1: So now we just we we've blazed through last Crusades.
Now we got to go to a passover.
Speaker 3: Hell Pass, so you know, as long as we get there,
you know, I wake up. I look over. Joy's over
here shopping on Amazon for a new collapsible dog bull
for Louis. He's checking his Gmail back com going ninety five.
It's very safely swerving.
Speaker 1: Nothing you're gonna hit this.
Speaker 3: He's cranked out. He's blasting a technol. You know, you know,
I feel like I'm cruising Harlem with you. Guy.
Speaker 1: I got precious. I know, I got precious cargoing to
car rail. I know you can just like you sleep softly,
you can sleep comfortably and safely. You're in good hands.
Speaker 3: I don't know about comfortably, but safely. I know.
Speaker 1: We got a lot less uh ship in the back.
Speaker 3: Of Oh yeah, we sold some stuff, thanks everybody.
Speaker 1: Bunch of nice Yeah, we got a bunch of prince,
a bunch of prints of art work. We got the
giving Tree, shirty, the fucking Yaka shirt and uh unauthorized
the apartment apartment of unauthorized for street. There were people
into those.
Speaker 3: That was their favorite one apartment. Yeah. They like the green,
they liked the bird. We didn't run out of any
sizes almost.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh, I have plenty of ship.
Speaker 3: The self generous generous pre order.
Speaker 1: Was to go to Kuloe and uh and uh we
should book a Chicago show and.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I'll I'll do that. I'll do that. Well,
we've got some nice shroom.
Speaker 1: Find a spot.
Speaker 3: I'll find a spot. You know. We'll take you out
to the Cook County Forest Preserve. We'll show you a stash,
a bum porn, we'll we'll show you the empty duster cans.
Speaker 1: They really need to icp They got to burn.
Speaker 3: Woods and stuff. Yeah, we should go set the woods
on fire.
Speaker 1: Could we could? We could? You know, we could make
it look like an.
Speaker 3: Accident, something about making it look like an accident.
Speaker 1: Because there's ticks and all those fucking they're all fucked.
They're as.
Speaker 3: Buck thorn and ticks that should be the Illinois state flag.
Speaker 1: There's stuff, but they're afraid to burn. They just don't masticate,
but they won't burn. It's a shame because we had
this techno going. The last week we had his house,
Tony's house. Drinks. I only drive through less Crusad night. Brother. Hello,
you know this is one little drunks are maybe maybe
not drunks. There's not gonna be drunks out of four
in the morning.
Speaker 3: Fucking less Crusades.
Speaker 1: They got a real nice public bathroom over here, this
rest stop between Alpasso and uh Less Crusades. But anyway,
so we were this morning, we woke up and we
were talking with Augie. He works for a nonprofit that
does a lot of like community work in Mesa and
uh and he's reel up to date on Mexican politics,
and he was telling us about all the shit going
on on there. I don't know if you know, it's
been underreported in the news, but basically the CIA has
been working with I think it was the state of Chihuahua,
you know, going around Claudia Schinbaum, you know who I
hear good things about. I mean she did, Lady just
put in a fucking universal healthcare system. She created a
pension uh system for Mexicans like for you know, they're
trying to get people to come back to Mexico too,
like who came to the United States, like especially if
they're not documented, because basically, you know, her whole thing
or what she's saying, but I think it is being
being said, is you know, like they don't. They're Trump
doesn't even care really about about the legal status, right
because like they know the economy would collapse if they
got rid of all these you know, undocumented migrants that
they can exploit for cheap wages. They just know it's
a wedge issue to get all the you know, the
uh somewhat xenophobic base worked up. You know, the Republican voting.
Speaker 3: Illgals are taking out Walmart greater job.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, exactly, see, and so and it's a nice
distraction from the issues that really matter, right, just like
all the other shit, like the left has its own
version of you know, identity politics, issues that distract from
what really.
Speaker 3: Matters millionaires and billionaires and so. So.
Speaker 1: Uh, that was a good That was actually a really
good Bernie impression.
Speaker 3: Thanks, say, I got a pretty good Bernie.
Speaker 1: What was the LEO and pro we were doing? What
was Oh, it sounds like sounds like an LSD deficiency.
Speaker 3: I'm just I'm just a gun dumping, Bible smoking hippie man.
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm just a gun gun throup, a Bible
smoking Mexican hippie man.
Speaker 3: God blessed.
Speaker 1: But anyway, so, uh, but yeah, so I guess the
CIA has been going to They're not happy about what
she's doing because this is like leaning towards socialism, right.
Nothing terrifies the American ruling class more than that word.
And so the CIA was going into uh Chihuahua. They
said it was for some cartel shit. Probably not, maybe
it was, I don't know, but it's pre It's always
the car. They always do it, you know, the auspices
of crime. But it seems like what they might have
been doing is just trying to you know, basically a
basically create like the the the what a the word
I'm looking for the pretense for a coup to trying
to like create unrest against Shinbaum, et cetera in Mexico, right,
and it certainly wouldn't be breaking with much of the
history of the United States or you know, that's CIA.
I've been doing this ship for sixty seventy years, dirty shit,
interfering in other countries, autonomous affairs.
Speaker 3: You know, if our handlers at the intelligence agencies here
this sorry guys, you know where we stand. We're still
sending you guys at Christmas.
Speaker 1: But anyway, if you follow that guy, if you want
to look learn more, look up that guy J. C. Frees,
he's I think he's out of a Rio Grand Valley,
but he posts a lot of shit about this stuff,
and uh, it's fucking dirty. It's dirty, man, It's whatever
the US is doing down there, especially if it's the
Trump administration mood. It's fucking dirty whatever they're doing down
in Mexico. Right, I guess there was worse. You know,
you always hear me at about the ahiito system and
how that's the reason why there's actually still a lot
of land left that's not turned into a fucking dump
like you know, most of the land anywhere there's a
heavy populace in the United States, Right, we do urban
sprawl like no other. Okay, we've absolutely destroyed most of
the land that's not public. And then they're actually coming
for the public land too, of course, that's their big thing,
the right way. The Republicans are already trying to do that.
I'm sure that Democrats would to at some point. Maybe
maybe they're not asporny for it, but Republicans really want
to take up the public land and privatize it so
they can extract more from it. Right, They got like
a cash into chips, loot everything mindset right right now,
at least because they know it's all they know the
empires in decline. And so anyway, the Ahito system, I
guess there were some weird, finicky shit going on where
like some corporate interests or I think it was the
the the one of the other political parties in Mexico
that's more right, leading was trying to interfere and basically
get the you know, find a way to circumvent the
collective ownership of the Ahito system so they could get
the land sold off to private parties and then find
a way to take it over and and and then
end up developing it too. So they're coming for the
fucking land. And I guess, uh, Shinebaum and Amlo just
the and this is what Augie was telling me, and
based on someone what I've read too. They just basically
there were there were some contracts that had gone through
that were shady as hell that the goal was to
to base basically yeah again, you know, go around the
Ahito system and privatize some of that land. And uh
and they basically you know, caught them doing it and
said in these contracts are null and void. Now this
is illegal. I'm butchering the ship out of this. But
it sounds like there's some shady shit going on, and
it's a it's a Meanwhile, Shinebaum's going like the complete
opposite direction that the US is right, public health care, pensions.
He's trying to actually get shit done.
Speaker 3: They're doing all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 1: For the people, you know, but uh, Americans, America's not
going to any place good.
Speaker 3: They're not getting any We're not getting any more stuff here.
Speaker 1: You want to you want to make the news digestible,
listen to it through Tim Dill. I like him despite
the fact he's had some goofy bullshit in the past,
you know, having fucking JD Vans on a podcast with
a misstep critical miss. I don't know what that was about.
But he's got some he's got some very good takes,
and they're you know, especially the ross. Satire makes it
very digestible, very easy to digest terrible things when it's
put put to you in that form. I think satire
is the only the only way that I can swallow
a lot of this stuff. Now, look, it's the Franklin Mountains,
Oh ship, that might be the sun. There's sunlight over
there too. Is is that the dawn light? I don't know,
God damn it. Fuck.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, here comes the dawn.
Speaker 1: We're gonna be going through Sierra Blanca like six in
the morning.
Speaker 3: The moon is very bright tonight too.
Speaker 1: The Sierra Blanca checkpoint. Oh yeahs are you both citizens?
Speaker 3: Are you both citizens? Yes? Brother?
Speaker 1: With my with my my twitching lazy eye is brother?
Speaker 3: Weird citizens?
Speaker 4: Brother?
Speaker 3: Have you ever seen the dolls of dune Mere brother?
The sweet names of Dungee Mere Brother?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's here. Phoenix and Tucson Night and Day had
the gut right, and the guy.
Speaker 3: One's a small hippie burgh filled with progressive politics O ones.
Speaker 1: In Phoenix plant life too, Yeah, and then a lamp
Lance and then Phoenix is just like stuff phen with
ten lane roads and no trees.
Speaker 3: A bunch of fucking palm trees.
Speaker 1: They love the palm trees and they hate the they
hate like actual trees, like any of the Pallo brea, Parkinsonia,
pray cocks or miscuits or any of that. There's none
of that. There's very very little, a lot of stuff.
Giant fucking heat island. Can you imagine living in Phoenix,
Jesus imagine fifteen yeah. Imagine you're like a gamer that
lives in Phoenix. You're a gamer and you occasionally go
to the gym to lift weights.
Speaker 3: All you do is, all you do is eat funion,
some jacket.
Speaker 1: And you work in a Where would you work if.
Speaker 3: You lived in a Phoenix, Like you're working at a
call center?
Speaker 1: Yeah, call center.
Speaker 3: Work at a call center in Phoenix.
Speaker 1: I'd be on fucking pills.
Speaker 3: Probably chant the life you don't want. I work at
a call center and I live in Phoenix, Arizona.
Speaker 1: Uh, the Franklin Mountains and go look for Sylvia pinguinfolio.
Speaker 3: There's records there is that the Is that the one
that makes you trip? Dude? No?
Speaker 1: Man, there's like eight hundred species of selva?
Speaker 3: Hell yeah, dude, you know Hell yeah, dude, you're pulling dogs,
right sel Via di bro.
Speaker 1: There's grow in the comments you mentioned species.
Speaker 3: Like yo yo bro. I had like a whole trip. See.
Speaker 1: Now we're going into a passa. Look at all this,
Look at all these lights. See aren't you glad we're
going through this when it's dark? You don't want to
see how pass in a daytime?
Speaker 3: You know, I'm glad there's no traffic, But I am.
I am physically exhausted.
Speaker 1: You're gonna sleep good when we get back to Dale.
Speaker 3: I don't know if that's true. And in the bright daylight, you.
Speaker 1: Gotta get an. I got an. I'm asking tomorrow. You
ever do an im asking?
Speaker 3: You know, only for puffiness? You know I do a
cosmetic one, but I never did one for sleep.
Speaker 1: God, puffs, what do you get? What's your what's it puffy?
But you have allergic reactions?
Speaker 3: No? No, you know, just tiredness, fatigue. You know, you
do a little eye mask, calms down the bags under.
Speaker 1: Your Eysautiful Sierra Blanca brother.
Speaker 3: Welcome to the duns Miry.
Speaker 1: Throw off the sunset route and Seerra Blanc of Texas.
Speaker 3: I had to walk fifteen miles with my dog Rupert.
Speaker 1: Are you gonna lurk an out by for a while?
Speaker 3: All?
Speaker 1: Are you gonna drive back to Chicago?
Speaker 3: Well, you know, as soon as I'm recuperated enough to drive.
Speaker 1: There's gonna be you're gonna get back on the road.
Speaker 3: Is that the Chicago from about twenty hours?
Speaker 1: You're gonna go through what do you go through? Tulsa
and Oklahoma City?
Speaker 3: Go to touls go through Whichita? Falls, go through Saint.
Speaker 1: Louis Wichita Falls.
Speaker 3: Is that Texas, Texas? That's the Texas town right before
you go to Tulsa.
Speaker 1: And then's where Martin Terry's daughter ship the month.
Speaker 3: Then you know who's in.
Speaker 1: Martin my friend of mine, a famous peote researcher.
Speaker 3: Have you ever shipped the bid until sa? Brother? Have
you ever one down between the sheets?
Speaker 1: I don't think I have, Well, I don't think I've
been to tols I have I've been to Tolsa. I can't remember.
I got you know, I got some plant or fasciata
and I gotta stretch.
Speaker 3: You gotta stop at this guy.
Speaker 1: Go stop in a parking lot of a Flying Jane
do downward dog? Right where where all the truckers fits
on the pavement? Could you believe that that's what they do?
They piss on the pavement, Oh, a lot of truckers
do You should piss on the soil so that it
could be absorbed by the plants and it's not going
to get all filthy thirties.
Speaker 3: I'm a PhD candidate. In my field of study is
the pissing abbots of truckers.
Speaker 1: And mountain dew. The mountain dew and the kid it's
the effects of the effects a mountain doing the kidney's
instant diabetes. We're we're just degrading now, the conversation's degrading.
Speaker 3: We're you know, it's criogenically frozen.
Speaker 1: Early hours into the morning.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm glad, I'm glad we got this stop?
Speaker 1: Did it just say? Beaumont? Eight hundred and fifty miles
the bump? Well, the that's a fucking brilliant look of that. Bam,
that's a random town to put on a road sign
and a passa.
Speaker 3: Let you know, brother, just give you a perspective, brother.
Speaker 1: Leub Levins, I don't know who this is. I don't
know what she's supposed to be doing. This is uh,
what's up? A listen to the fucking supposed to be
outlaw countries? She don't sound to like too much of
an outlock right al dip that we part of ways
Today I'm driving through the limestone maces of West Texas,
headed back to the south to South Texas, so I
can you know, experience the pleasure of seventy five percent
humidity Again, speaking of humidity, I just spilled half a
bottle of Minaragua in my crotch, which is good. That's nice. Great.
I was open. I could find the way to make myself.
Uh you know, get a fucking make it feel like
I'm sitting in a wet satchel for the next eight
hours on this drive. You know it's ah. These remnants
of the western interior seaway though. I tell you, the
landscape changes. You get a little bit of undulation. Get
these the limestone maces everywhere. You could see the triations
in them. You could see that rock from a mile
away and know it it's made out of limestone.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: You got those those betting planes that made it, made
them like little staircases.
Speaker 3: So nice.
Speaker 1: I just passed the spot where I saw that the
desert box tortoise or that desert box turtle, excuse me
two weeks ago. So anyway, that's so nice being out
west where there's public land. But now we're returning to
South Texas. We continue the fight to convince the city
and municipalities down there, like Mission Texas, McCallen, et cetera.
The trees are in fact good, and covering the asphalt
and concrete with shade is also good. And that asphalt
and concrete are in fact not very clean, even though
they look clean, and that plants are not messy, and
I it's like trying to reverse and doctrinate people from
you know, the classest fear of native plants because they
remind you of the rancho. It's fucking you know, I
think that's it's it's a there's a multitude of factors
affecting the hatred of native plants in South Texas, but
you know, reminiscent making it feel like too much like
the rancho, you know, and and associating with poor stat
is a big part of it. That's a that's a
part of a lot of a lot of Mexican culture.
It seems, oh fuck, the cast de laya is going
off right, depending on where you are, at least in
the north, the north of Mexico, by the border lands
where I live, right depends how much of the you know,
the actual indigenous cultures left and uh, you know wherever
wherever said issue is taking place, right there's it seems
like there's not a lot left, and much of the
north they really want the Spanish colonial style garbage, the
fucking neat and orderly gardens with the boogain vas and
the crape myrtles and all that. You know, the suicide landscaping.
I call it suicide landscaping because it's ecological suicide. The
plant it, and then it kind of makes you feel
like committing suicide when you're surrounded by it. That's what
I feel like in much of the human landscape in
South Texas. This caste laya that's going off on a
side of the road, I said, wow, I forget what
species I think is at Lenana. I have to look
it up again. I forget. It's been fucking you know,
I don't see these things for a year. I forget
the species name. And then in between that time, I've
seen like fifteen other species of caste lea, uh, you know,
all all throughout the continents. So Sapendis tramundia is going
off everywhere. That's a nice one. The soapberry, and I
plan on stopping up here near near the spot where
I guess there's a roadside spot where there's Mexican red
butts going off too. I want to see if I
can get some seed. I just visited my friend's house,
the late Patty Manning. I stopped by and seen her,
her wife and got up, picked up a bunch of
seeds and there, you know, their yard is like a
fucking botanic garden onto itself, just an incredible She had
a bunch of zenni, a grand to flora going off. God,
these fucking maces, these these pillars of rock, these pillars
of lithified calcareous ooz. Oh so nice to see this landscape.
It's just so it's nice to see it's so green
instead of crispy and dry. You know, it's always so
hard leaving West Texas for South Texas, it really is.
Or even you know, even if you got to go
up through Central Texas just where all the development is
and in humidity. It was so nice to be out
of that humidity, right, the Phoenix style heat, it's almost
tolerable when you're not just perpetually sweating all the time,
or like when the sweat is actually cooling you, right,
because it's the sweat doesn't cool you when it's seventy
five percent humidity out. Oh god, I gotta go back,
get back to fucking I forget fall out of shape.
You go on tour, you fall out of shape. You
gotta go back. I got the the the ten dollars
membership at the gym because it's too hot and nasty
to go outside, you know, even like biking. I mean
you can, you could like bike or run in the
early morning hours, but it's still just the same thing.
It's just like sweat bath. It's gross and the sweat
doesn't evaporate. So I gotta go back to the gym.
You know, hit the rowing machine, listen to the bad music.
Here to meatheads, grunting, dropping weights and shit, you know,
people checking each other out. It's like a cruising bottle.
I'm convinced half the people that go to the gym
aren't even going there to really do anything. They're just
going there to cruise and look good. They look they're
like looking at themselves in a mirror lot. That's that's
what they anyway. Yeah, so this will be a fucking
nice A nice drive, A nice drive. If I cannot stop,
that's always the issue. Try not to stop nine thousand times,
you know, to look at all the cool stuff, which
it's you know, if you're traveling for that, it's one thing.
Stop all the time. But I got shit, I gotta
do in place to be in. I haven't seen my
kid in two weeks so Sanderson, twenty miles.
Speaker 3: Here we go.
Speaker 1: Oh, we'll stop there, get up some fill up on
some gas and then uh and then continue burreling south
from the transition of the arid parts of North America
to the humid parts of North America right there on
the hundredth meridian. I just stated at Taco pee in
uh Kotula, Kotula, Texas, I just say, it's weird, man,
you enter. I just entered. I went to the Taco
Pee in Kotula. There's all these tejanos, and I felt
bad for these guys because it brought me back to
the culture of South Texas, the culture of repression and
fucking you know. It's it's sad man, because I've been
I've been out of I've been out of state for
a while. Now I'm back in here, back to where
I live, you know, and you're back to like the repressed,
colonized mind almost liked nice you know, not everybody, of course,
but I'm saying, you know, it's it's a it's a thing.
You see, these these poor working class dudes, they're getting
fucking used by the system. They don't know what they're
being propagandized to vote against their own interests. All the
machi's most shit down here too, you know, like it
just this fucked A friend of mine told me a
story about some uh I was talking to a friend.
She was like, yeah, one of my friends was like that,
like grew up like heavily, you know, wanted to be macho.
All this, you know, not true masculinity, fake masculinity, like
the shit that they that society tells you is mass
depending on what say you grow up in. Right, I'm
not I don't buy the whole toxic masculinity thing. There's
a toxic form of masculinity, but saying toxic masculinity implies
that masculinity itself is toxic and that's fucking stupid. But anyway,
you know what I'm saying. She was like, there's a friend,
you know, if buddy of mine was you know, grew
up kind of like that, and uh, I guess his
girlfriend or whatever, his lady friend like kind of inadvertently
got him into butterflies, right, which I mean, fuck man,
people in this state, depending on where you are, they
think going to therapy makes you a pussy. They think
trying to like better yourself or become self aware makes
you a pussy. Again, I'm being this is a heavy generalization,
but it's true. It's a Texas thing. I don't be
a fuck don't be fucking abduced about it, right, So
imagine that. I mean, especially like butterflies, appreciating nature, all
that shit that's got this you know this the meathead,
the meathead anti nature of view, you know, is abundant, right,
Appreciating this stuff makes you a pussy. You're supposed to
be so anyway. And that's a lot of the culture
around I mean especially you know, when I worked for
the railroad, I saw that there. I saw you know,
these kind of like the people construction workers, working class
slobs like myself. I would never do this, of course,
but people complaining about you know, the environmental regulations, things
like that. Right, So it's like a common worldview among
like the shit for brained meathead that doesn't know himself
because he's been propagandized to want to be macho, and
you know, have the giant lifted truck that he doesn't
really need because his job doesn't entail any kind of
work like that, you know what I mean. Again, generalizations
not always and not everybody, but this is fucking real.
But my friend was taking you know, so this this
this guy that my friend his friends with. She was
telling me, you know, he got into butterflies recently and
it kind of woke him up. He got into butterflies
through his girlfriend, and you know, stopped being afraid to
appreciate nature because his meat head friends would think he
was a pussy. I should I should have asked her that,
because I don't know what wakes someone. What makes somebody
wake up? Right? Is it just like an LSD deficiency,
like or or resolving an ls DE deficiency. Is it
getting hit on the head? Is it having a midlife crisis?
Is it finally realizing that you're fucking miserable and you've
been living the last thirty years of your life repressed
and trying to impress other people. I don't know, but
people wake up. And he woke up, this person in question,
and so, you know, and he was like, I guess
he was in a startling moment of self awareness. Was
telling this friend of mine. He's like, yeah, you know,
I used to be into all this stuff, bugs and
butterflies and shit when I was a kid, And now
you know, I kind of felt like, you know, I'd
suppressed that, I was told that that wasn't cool, that
that made me, you know, a wuss whatever. And because
there's all this subconscious shit. You know, humans are hurt animals.
We're conformists, all right, That's the that is the lowest
common denominator. If it's not corrected for, or if it's
not you know, an intellect isn't cultivated. That's like the
state you regress to, or just the baseline state you
start off with if you never build upon that or
try to be better better than that. Right, And so
if you're surrounded by a culture that tells you caring
about nature or finding butterflies to be interesting or to
find birds to be interesting, you're surrounded by a culture
that tells you that makes you a pussy, which is
they're just like laughably fucking meat at it, just like
laughably embarrassingly fucking stupid. But it's real. If you're surrounded
by culture like that, then that's what you're gonna be.
You're gonna be You're unknowingly being sculpted and having your
interests and your personalities sculpted by the people around you.
And that thought alone can be very depressing really because
you look around you like these fucking people, this society,
these unthinking slobs whatever, and this kind of again not
to be too much of a cynical, but a lot
of society is really disappointing. You know, they're the ones
that are dictating what I'm interested in. Shit, you know,
you have that moment where you wake up. So anyway,
I was just, yeah, I was an I thought all
of this while I was sitting in Taco Pee eating
a fucking burrito, which is you know, I'm probably this
is probably a form of mild psychosis, coming up with
this whole story in my head. Maybe I don't know,
maybe the people that maybe these like you know, Macho
Tejana working class dudes that were all rubber necking me
and looking at me like I had shit on my face,
Maybe that's not what they were thinking, right, Who knows,
I don't know, just a wild guess, right, you never know.
But uh, but it's it's reminiscent that the culture, you know,
depends where you are, right, But I certainly remember that too,
Like when I was working for the railroad, like you'd
meet these these especially the rednecks, goddamn right. They'd be
complaining about some fucking environmental regulation they had to follow,
or how the railroad their boss that was fucking them
to begin with. Uh, you know, the railroad had to
curtail some behavior it was engaged in that was, you know,
adamantly destructive, and the curtail it because it was impact
negatively impacting some endangered plant or animal, you know. And
these these dudes I work with again, who are getting
screwed by the company that had to follow these regulations,
you know, they'd be complaining about it. Speaking of butterflies, man,
I am driving through so many of them right now.
They're ended up by my windshield. I feel bad, but
you know there's plenty luckily so. And speaking of fucking meatheads,
there's somebody on my ass right now. What do you
want me to do? I'm going seventy on a road
that's filled with potholes and fucking it's a two lane road.
Buddy oncet you settled down? Where where do you gotta be?
Speaker 3: Huh?
Speaker 1: Dipshit? Need more offensive bumper stickers, you know, I mean
one of those unless you're a hemorrhoid, Get off my ass.
Bumper stickers I haven't seen one of those in a while.
That was kind of Oh, there's a fucking tarantula. Oh,
I gotta go nice. I drove right over it. I
think the meat head behind me didn't too, Thank God
didn't kill it. All of Texas, all of South Texas
is so.
Speaker 3: Green right now.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful, real, beautiful, ungulate, rolling green hills. I stopped
near Del Rio and I saw this area of like
bright white colliche soil. I think it was colleci so
just calcareous settiment's kind of like a natural cement. And
I looked at it and I said, I bet that's
got some cool stuff on it. So I part for
a second, I need to stretch my legs anyway, part
for a second. And found a nice population of ancestral
cactus brevatus brev hematus, which is like a little spherical
ancestral cactus. All the ancestral cactus species, which I think
in the United States you only get in Texas, all
of them produced a tuber a tuberous potato like root
that makes them so dizzy. Iroed among the uh the
local feral pig population, which I think we've completely eradicated
from thorn scrub.
Speaker 3: Now, you don't know. You don't know what.
Speaker 1: Work is until you've shot a two hundred and fifty
pounds feral pig and then had the dragons assed out
of the trap. Its tusks keep getting stuck on a
fucking the cage of the floor of the trap, and
you're getting bit by fleas on it. Then it can
get in gnarly. Yeah, go around me, Go around me. Huh, Junior,
fucking massive, These fucking giant trucks. You know, I see
these trucks. They don't they don't have a scratch on them.
They're shiny, they're shiny and nice pink job, how princess
I wear my My truck has beat the shit. I
got a fucking h bumper and iron bumper. A friend
of mine welded on there. It looks sketchy as hell.
Every once in a while the cops roll me because
I don't have a light over the license plate. But
you know, and I tell him, officer, I'm not gonna
I'm not gonna put a light on this thing.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: It's a reflective material, sir. So you know, unless someone's
headlights aren't working, they shouldn't have any trouble reading the
plate and they say, well, all right, you're gonna keep
getting stopped, And I say, okay, that's fine with me.
Nobody's ritten me a ticket yet I get a warning.
Not I said that they'll probably I'll get a fucking ticket.
Speaker 4: But uh.
Speaker 1: But anyway, So I found a population about a klai
Zanti's crassifolia there as well, which is a rare nicktag
I don't know if I talked about this in the
last podcast, but it's a wonderful fucking species. It's aklais antes.
I think all of them have opposite leaves. Most members
of Nicktageneci the bougain Villa family. You're familiar with bougain Villa,
aren't you. It's Daniel Ducacas's one of his favorites, one
of his favorite plants for the.
Speaker 3: Good and.
Speaker 1: It's a horticultural atrocity, to be honest with you, but
they do give a little bit of nectar to the hummingbirds.
Nick Tagenecy to four o'clock family. You got, Nick Tagania.
We get in South Texas a whole host of wonderful
desert species. Many of them are desert adapted, many of
them are mouth pollinated, as well, uh, Nick, taganea is
butterfly pollinated. It's got long red tube flowers, you know
for the proboscis, you know the thing that to put
that on furros on a butterfly's face. But I found this.
I didn't expect to see that. I was lurking around
looking at all the cool stuff they got. They had,
you know, Thai Mafoa as rosa was there, thy Mafoa micropooroides,
and Delis sperma was there as well. All these are composites,
some guahios, some Senegalia berlanda. Right, all your favorite thorn
scrub in West Texas, uh plant species right the well,
the Del Rio area really is like the gateway to
the to the trains trans pecos from this from South Texas.
There was sniso everywhere. Luco found Protestants you plock a
tory I et cetera. Yeah, and then those ancestro cactus
with the tubers with the potato roots that they can
dive back to. But uh, and then there was this
rare a claisantis, a fucking rare plant. Oh. There was
a needlegrass everywhere. Aristota as well, one of my favorite grasses.
You like the aristotas, don't you So that was fucking
I have no idea. I mean it was really accessible
spot too kind of near. It was near a major
Inn Highway intersection. It'll probably be gone in ten years.
It's owned by some ship back development company. So, you know,
in keeping with the theme of Texas, it's got to
be ruined. You can't have nice stuff here for too long,
you know, say, especially if it's standing in the way
of any obscene development that could could be. So I
got stopped at an intersection. Uh had the had this
figure out where I was going? But anyway, so we
were talking about the colonized mind, the repressed mind. But
to TANO, not all theanod's ash tag, not all theano's,
just the everyones who are quite visibly distraught and have
every reason to be. You know, my uh fellow working
class mooks. Yeah, what do you do?
Speaker 3: Man?
Speaker 1: You gotta get like you know, they need like an
MDM a therapy program down here. All you need is
one or two of those sessions. It'll take away all
your PTSD, It'll take away all your repressed tramis. You know,
do you ever see horned lizards in the middle of
the road, fuck, there's all these birds. Get out of
the road. I don't want to kill you. I don't
want that way. And am I conscious? Every once in
a while you see a horned lizard. Night. They're out here,
got it. I can't get over how nice and green
it looks. It's gonna be time for seed collecting in
a month or two, I tell you what. Just outside
of del Rio too, I passed this place called Boiling Mountain,
which I think that was it Boiling. I looked on
the it was a little hill coming, like a big hill,
like three hundred feet tall, noticeably distinct from the surrounding
already undulating landscape of hills. And I looked on a
geologic map, and it was all intrusive igneous rock.
Speaker 3: It was. It was.
Speaker 1: I guess it was a granite, I would assume, or
some sort of large grained igneous rock. But you know,
surrounded entirely by limestone. But the whole thing is private,
so no chance of getting up there. But still interesting
to note. Right right there on the Balcone's escarpment, you
get some uplift, you get some igneous anomalies in the
otherwise sedimentary limestone environment. Anyway, in other news, The fucking
border wall is still going in on around Big Bend, right,
They're still gonna, they're gonna. I guess. I guess because
there was so much opposition to it. It wasn't just
it wasn't just you know, one one side. It was
both left and right complaining about this because no one
wants to see one of the most beautiful landscapes in
the Condell of the United States destroyed if they especially
if they own property there, Like all these rich focks
who probably you know voted Trump voted for this shit,
they didn't, you know, they don't want to see their
landscape fucked up. Uh, And they realize that it's just performative.
There's no you don't need to build a border wall there.
It's one of the most remote and hard to cross
areas of the country, of the whole border, like they like,
there's no reason to do this. I think a large
reason for this is the same ship that a lot
of stuff gets built in Texas construction contracts and nepotism.
So there's been a lot of opposition to it, and
I guess at one point that had been you know,
the Department Homeland Security and said Okay, no we're we're
next to it. We're not going to do it. That's
all bullshit, of course, because they're they're waving a bunch
of environmental loss to build roads there. It's fucking obscene.
It's so obscene, right, I mean, this guy Trump knows
it's he knows he's unpopular now, he knows he's alienated
a good amount of his base. There's always gonna be
people that are dumb enough to still support him. But
and he's cashing into chips. He doesn't care anymore. He's
I mean, he's looting the whole country and selling it
for parts right the place is it's I mean, it's
kind of funny in a super dystopian way because it
is the end of empire and he's gonna wreck the
shit out of this country. But and he's really just
selling it off. He's just trying to cash in. That's
this whole thing. All these people that say they they
didn't you know, they didn't see it coming. How are
we supposed to know? Really, with all due respects, So
you're a fucking idiot. Guys had like a fifty year
track record of being a con man. How are you
supposed to know? You know like whatever, anyway, I don't
I don't see how it can be stopped. If you've
never been to that region of the country. It's not
just Big Ben National Park, it's Big Ben Ranch, the whole.
I mean I just drove through half that area. It's
fucking gorgeous. Like, what are they gonna They're gonna build
a wall around the lane tree area too. You know
these are really remote, hard to cross places. Nobody's gonna
want to come into the country after he's done it then, anyway,
after he's fucked it up so much, right, he's gonna
be returned. It's like he's It's like you get a
rental car for four years and then you return it's
missing a bumper, fucking it's you know, the transmissions all
jacked up, it does the coolant, the coolant's gone. The
thing is, the thing barely runs, you know, you like,
you wheel it back into the you push it back
into the fucking rental agency you bring up. I mean,
no one's gonna want That's what the country's gonna be like, right,
four years of this fucking guy, it's it's done. You
know that wall is gonna be keeping people in. That's
that's the purpose of it. Mexico's got fucking healthcare and
a pension system. Now right, Trump's gonna loot the loot
all of that loot, loot whatever pension systems left fired,
how many public employees. He's doing a great job. I mean,
he's really he's getting it real dinged up and nice. Right,
It's like running a hotel room and knocking holes in
the wall, throwing meat in between the walls, you know,
dog shit all over the place. I mean, he's doing
great work, great work, Bravo, really really impressed. So yeah,
border wall everywhere. I mean, it's fucking it's it's insane.
And Texas is so known for construction contracts anyway, I mean,
you know, they'll just keep building lanes, pointless roads to
nowhere whatever. Uh, there's there's so much corruption in this state.
It's crazy. But I you know, it is nuts to
see it. It's still going through because there's there's so
much opposition. No one who lives in that region wants
a fucking border wall there, nobody. All Right, I'm back,
I got I got back on the nice mic. Now
I'm not using those road mics anymore. But uh, anyway, Yeah,
it was. It was, uh, how about that got back
and uh, just a landslide of shit. Found out that
a spigot outside my bedroom wall has been slowly leaking
for the last month. So it's you know, the that's
basically through capillary action, water has uh has is basically
soaked into the trim around my like six feet in
either direction, six feet in either direction from where this
spigot is on the other side of the wall outside.
So I gotta go get a I gotta go get
my oscillating tool cut up in the concrete board on
the outside fucking around you know, where I live, the contractors,
and I think it's like this in many places, the
contractors will just fucking rob you. And then you meet
these guys and no offense to them at all, But
half of them where I live don't seem to know
what they're doing anyway, Like you know, they probably aren't
that aren't that smart, no offense to them, and so
you're paying for low quality work and then they're fucking
taking you for a ride anyway, So you might as
well just learn to do it, do it yourself, right.
And then in other places, like when I was living
in West Texas, it was different story. You could never
find anybody to do anything, so you had to figure
out how to do it yourself. Anyway, you're always better
off trying to figure out how to do it yourself, right,
and just really thinking about what you're doing and what's
gonna happen, what could go wrong? Murphy's law all the time.
That's what we thought on the railroad all the time.
Whatever can go wrong will go wrong. So think about it.
Take it into account. What you know, could there be
a wire behind this concrete board when I cut it?
What does the leak look like? Visualize it in your head.
I don't know. The fucking plumbing is shoddy, and the
spigot wasn't even attached to this U on the other
side of the wall. It wasn't like anchored into the ground.
So it's just wobbly. And they literally just saw a
hole in the concrete. Word, it's all fucked up. It's
all jacked up. I should have known it was gonna
happen because the thing's been wobbly for a while.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 1: In other news, I'm going to Costa Rica in a
week to help with Allen and Mandy's tour for my
Sina it's like as a it's a fungal foray uh,
there's a fucking fungal four ray going on inside my
walls right now? How about that? I got the mildew
just fucking taking over some really beautiful rhise of Morris
on the plywood once I cut away the initial bits
of concrete bord, beautiful fan of fungal hyphae eating the
rotting and mildewy lots of trichoderma. You know, the trichoderma
actually eats the fungie. I think it was, you know,
now that I know so much about the the backyard
food webs, I've been following, you know, Damon Tye, learning
what things like springtails are. I saw when I looked
under my bed, a whole community if we could. We're
still on We're still on this because this has given
me anxiety. This shit that's going on outside with the spit,
the leak and spigott and shit. I couldn't find the
leak though it's not actively dripping, so it must be
only going on, you know, But the whole the board
is wet, so I don't know where it's coming out.
It's it's really confounding, I really got to get in there.
I've got a little bit more concrete born to cut away.
I was doing this last night at like ten o'clock.
My daughter was sleeping on the other thank god, kids
sleep really uh really lightly.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: She was sleeping on the other side of the house,
so she couldn't hear it, but in a different room.
But either way, it was fucking loud, you know, just
doing like out there, like a tweaker cutting his house
apart at ten o'clock at night, because otherwise, if I
didn't figure out what was going on, I knew it
was just going to have anxiety about it. But I,
you know, because I know about all this the you know,
my local backyard ecosystem. I saw abundance of spiders, and
then I saw all the roly polleys that had somehow
come in the house, probably through the trim. And then
I saw actual springtails, which are known for eating fungus,
on the bottom of the trim as well. I had
to get under there with a flashlight, and shit, it's
just gonna be it's gonna be a fucking mess. I
gotta air this stuff out too, and then it's supposed
to rain in four days. Oh yeah, and then I
go to Costa Rica. I'm getting paid to do it.
It's work, you know, because if I like Costa Rica,
but it wouldn't be the first place I would go.
I've already been there. I love the cloud forests, I
love all that the oak forests up there, but I've
already been there. So but I'm going there to help
with Allen and Many's tour. And then I think we're
gonna drop down into the lower elevations. We're gonna be
at nine thousand feet for most of the time. Then
we're gonna drop down into the lower elevations.
Speaker 3: Later.
Speaker 1: And then I'm gonna be home for another week, and
then I leave for Chicago again. And then I'm gonna
be at Kolowe, North Carolina, to be their plenary speaker
in mid July, which I think is like the last
the last year they're having it at the college. I
don't know, I need to stuff saying notice stuff. And
then Alan I might do a book tour on the
East Coast, like Philly, New York, Boston, Fuck, I don't know,
maybe some other cities along the way. But the tour
we were just on was so fun and it was
so good sold out every show, but la that it
made it and it's just nice to meet people and
you know, get out there and talk to people, et cetera.
Up anyway, So anyway, another on another note, I got
back and I saw that this cloning machine I got
it was just one of those basic ones with the
little foam inserts and it sits in like an eight
inch deep tray of water with a bubbler in it.
Speaker 3: You know. A lot.
Speaker 1: Some stuff roots really easily. Some takes a while. But
the quadrilla and cana that rare Caparis quadrillas. It's a
tropical caper basically right different instead of being caparists like
the true cape you know, caper genus, it's in the
same same order the Caper family cap race. Instead of
being that it's it's it's the New World version of that,
because Capris, I think is old World. It's on east
side of the Atlantic Ocean. Quadrillas on the west side.
I've seen one of the Dominican Republic, you know, the
Costa Rica's got one in the lowlands in the dry lands,
lowland drylands. But anyway, that the quadrilla and kana from
the from here from the south Texas borderlands had finally rooted,
so now I but it was I think it's only
because the water level got low enough, so the humidity
was maintained because it was in this closed system with
the water bubbler, and but it wasn't in the water
because the water level had dropped, and so it was
it finally rooted. Took forever. It took like two months.
So now I've got it in soil and I'm trying
to basically just keep the humidity up. I've got it
in a clear plastic bag under lights at low temperatures.
Hopefully it'll get established. But that's the kind of the
that's the hard part is transitioning them from the those
water roots to actual soil and doing it without rotting
them as well or letting them dry out, you know,
because there are those roots they have are not that great.
You have to give them a minute until they can
actually grow into the soil. And so I've got a
couple other things rooting, but I'm gonna I'm gonna try
a different system. I used to never take cuttings, but
now a lot of the stuff that I'm growing is
so rare, and I just want to produce a bunch
of them, and seeds can take a while, so but
we got a shit ton of rain in South Texas lately. God,
it was such a beautiful drive I just did right
just along Highway ninety. You go through Uvaldi and then
you come down, you go through the trans Pacos, you
go through Tarrell County, through Sanderson. It's just it's fucking
this beautiful countryside, beautiful Chihuahua desert, southern Edwards Plateau, and
then as it drops down into the thorn scrub, the
thorn scrub of the South Texas Plains. But yeah, I'm
editing the Brad Lancaster videos right now. That was incredible,
the dry land rainwater harvesting videos, the all the work
he's done, I mean, the streets. I visited his neighborhood.
We did a podcast together probably six months ago, and
then I visited his neighborhood when I was in Tucson,
in Dunbar Spring that's the name of the neighborhood, and
saw what he's done, and man, it was fucking great.
I've got like four videos I'm doing this on his work,
his work creating street trees, traffic roundabouts with street trees
in them, it's you know, walking down his street in
his city feels like a desert botanic garden. It's just
really beautiful. And it's shady, the whole street is, and
you're in the Sonoran Desert, but there's shade. And I
was there during the dry season, so it's not as
green as it would be after they get the monsoon rains,
you know, but he's it was still really really nice.
He's got edible native plants everywhere. He's got catch basins,
these little stepped catch basins, so it looks like terraced
catch basins and chicanes that call them, which are like,
you know, extensions of the sidewalk that go into the street.
The kind of bottleneck traffic at either end of the block.
Because the streets for residential streets, they're really fucking wide
where he lives. It's insane, like way wider than they
need to be, almost like three four lane roads, and
no one should be going that fast anyway, So they
put roundabouts in there, and then the chickanes kind of
forced traffic to slowe on. It's not a bitch to
drive in at all. It's easy. It's still easy to
get around, but but you know, I went to.
Speaker 3: It was wild.
Speaker 1: Filming this, I felt something I hadn't felt in so long,
which was hope. It was like, Wow, cities don't have
to suck. The world doesn't have to suck. You've created
a really beautiful neighborhood and just used all the native
plants from this neighborhood. You know, suarrows on the street.
He had little signs and plant labels in front of
all these things. He's got desert iron wood, which is edible.
He's got the lyceum, the native goji berry, which is edible.
He's got just so much shade. It's just fucking beautiful,
and he's got you can see both photos from the
street of what the street looked like before, and it
just looks hot as fucking bleak, concrete, no trees. And
then you can see satellite photos as well, and it
also looks bleak, just hot as balls. And then you
know from twenty thirty years ago, and then you can
see satellite photos now and there's all this tree canopy.
It's such a model of what could happen in other places.
But you know, coming back to South Texas, I was
reminded of just I don't know it's it's gonna it's
a long uphill battle here, right forcing trying to get people,
trying to force people to be in the trees, to
plant street trees. There's a lot of residents in the
neighborhoods who want it, but you know, people at city
Hall are highly resistant to it. So somehow we need
to organize people in the neighborhoods to ride into city
Hall and let their opinion be known that yeah, we
want more street trees, we need more street trees, or
we want more tree cover, more shade. It's you know,
it's just it's insane to not have it's insane to
have this attitude that doesn't want trees unless they're palm trees.
They plant plenty of palm trees. I went to Oblique
parking Lot yesterday to get a swimsuit for my daughter
because we were gonna go swimming, and you know, we
had to go to targe and there's no trees there
except palm trees. These the most the most useless tree.
It doesn't help water infiltrate, there's no canopy. They don't
do anything. It's more of this just unthinking garbage man.
It's like I saw the same thing in Phoenix. They
love palm trees in Phoenix. They're beating you over the
head with palm trees in Phoenix. Doesn't make any sense
to be planting, to using, to be using palm trees
as urban infrastructure.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Our native palm actually can give habitat because the skirt
of dead leaves houses bats and owls, which help keep
pest populations down. But they never plant the native palm.
They never plant sable Mexicana. They plant Washingtonias, which are
from the Mojave Desert where they only grow an oasis
is and they're beautiful there, but they they're again, they're
they're growing in like narrow desert canyons. Right, they're cool
as a part of that habitat. They don't do anything here.
It's it's just boggles the mind. And so you've just
got these open heat islands, and especially here, like nobody
seems to care, Nobody thinks about it, nobody goes outside anyway.
I tried walking to the coffee shop today. I fucking
I just gave up and said, fuck it. It was
too hot. It's ninety eight degrees seventy five percent humidity.
It's only an eight or ten block walk, but there's
no shade. So I just said, fuck it, I'm just
gonna drive. I got shit to do, I don't have
I don't want to roast in the sun. I'm not
in the mood. I didn't sleep too well last night
worrying about this rotting wall, and so fucking I'm just gonna.
I'm just gonna. I'm just gonna drive. Right, So I'm driving,
you know, at eight block distance, which is pathetic. That's
a very texting thing to do, by the way, it's
it's because especially because there's in most places there's no
infrastructure set up to walk anyway. But you know, being
seeing Brad's neighborhood gave me just a little shred of
hope how things could be different. Here's a perfect model
for what can be done. So it's gonna be like
a four or five video series. The first two videos
should be out when this podcast. The first one's already out,
the second one should be out when this podcast airs.
And then it did another video just on his house,
like his evaporative cooler, the shit composter, he's got, you know,
his like edible gardens, he's got cassama Edgilist the white
sappothe which is in the citrus family Rutasi. But the
fruit doesn't taste like a citrus at all. It's like
a banana, custard kind of papa taste to it. It's
one of my favorite fruits. It's so incredibly delicious. And
it's a drought tolerant plant too, it's drought deciduous. I
can't believe more people are not planting that species. It's
it's wild to me. You know, that should be like
a choice, choice plant. And it's from Mexico too, so
it's not you know, the worst invasives generally come from
other continents, not from only a few hundred miles south.
So it's basically it's basically like a like a regionally
native plant if you live in the southwestern United States
and nobody plants it. It's it's so it's so wild,
and I think like all of them taste good. I
don't think it's like a phenotypic thing where one one
tree might produce good tasting fruit in the other does
and I think they all I think there's pretty uniform
consistency across all the different phenotypes in this in the
species for fruit taste, so Anyway, the whole the whole
project was pretty remarkable to see everything that dude is
doing is is such a good example of what could
be done in other cities and what should be done
in other cities. Right, Like you should have prairie prairie
plant things on this on you know, the hell strips
in Chicago. It's in certain neighborhoods you should have, you know,
certainly along the freeways, you know, native savannahs. I mean,
the world could be so different. All we have to
do is break out of this this mindset that we've
all been indoctrinated in, especially people that you know, work
for cities, which is that you know, all the only
plants that should be around human developments or human habitations
or in cities in general. Are you know, the landscaping,
horticultural atrocities, like everything neatly hedged, everything a cultivar, everything
purchased at a commercial nursery. Shit that you know, evolved
six thousand miles away. I mean, all that shit just
looks whack as hell, right, That's it's just fucking bleak.
It's stupid. It's fairy tale garden shit, it's golf course landscaping.
It's fucking Epstein island landscaping. It's it's ridiculous. I hate
seeing shit like that. I hated shit like that since
I was a kid. It looks bland, it looks boring,
doesn't do anything for anyone. It's none of it's edible,
none of it's useful to wildlife, none of it brings
in wildlife. It's all dead zone. It's dead zone shit.
It's suicide landscaping, right, just like I said before, because
it makes you feel like it makes you feel like
committing suicide when you're in it, and it's ecological suicide
to continue planting that shit. You got to bring back
the native living world around you and learn how to
steward it in a way that works for people. It's
not that hard to do, and you're not going to
figure it out unless you start doing it. And every
time you hear some knob or some dipshit say it's
you know, it's messy or it looks like shit, right,
you gotta just I mean, i'd say ridicule. What point
them out?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: What about it? Like there's no this is just pragmatism,
Like why does everything need to look like a hurged
a hedged berberous. Why does everything need to look like
some fucking oleander. Why are we planting palm trems? They
don't do anything. Does anyone stop and think about this?
Why are we planting non native palms? Why auld they're skinny?
They don't provide a lot of service area, They don't
provide any shade for parking lots? Are we doing it
just because it implies this idea of paradise because everything's
just been the only reason most stuff has been planted
is again based on esthetic, And that's the aesthetic that
they're basing it on. Isn't even a local one. It's
candy ass English Victorian garden bullshit, it's Spanish colonial garden shit.
It's this Tuscan villa gardening. That's a really bad aesthetic.
People try to fucking attach themselves too, right, just unthinking
landscaping stuff. And it's even more offensive that people go
to school to learn this stuff, Like what are these
fucking landscapers learn in school? They don't learn about plants
as infrastructure, they learn about design, They learn about esthetics,
all subjective shit that doesn't matter, right. Some people think
that people who have lip fillers in botox are attractive.
Other people look at them, those kinds of people and
think they look like a lizard. Just two different esthetics.
Why are we going with this aesthetic that's not rooted
in anything practical? That ben if it's anybody, it's just
looks alone and it's shitty looks too. It's unthinking. So anyway,
that's my spiel. That's also a lot of the tour,
the presentations I've been giving. So if you want to
hear me run my mouth for two hours, talk some shit,
throw some jokes out there, and also teach you about
some really cool plants from all over the globe. All
this shit is part of that tour two hour presentation.
Hit up Alscorch at gmail dot com or you can
email me and we'll book some shows. Again. We're thinking
about an East Coast tour. We're thinking about maybe a
Northwest tour. I don't know, it just depends where we
can make it out to them, and so I think
East Coast would be really good. East Coast really needs
to hear it more than anywhere else because the botanic
gardens you see on the East Coast all promulgate this
kind of aesthetic I was just talking about before the
woods are generally the shitty woods. It's where the Death
Cult's been the longest, you know, that's where the death
Cult landed, this idea that we're better than nature, that
we don't need it, that we need to dominate and
control it, and we can improve it rather than steward
it and learn from it. That kind of shit. It's
that mentality has been on the East Coast the longest,
so they've had a lot more time to get to
work fucking it up over there. So maybe we'll do
the East Coast, but we got a book shows, if
you know, venues we'll do. I mean, it's almost better
for us to stay away from the botanic gardens because
they can be really hard to work with. Their pr
teams are normally a pain in the ass. And instead
work it, you know, work with like breweries or show
spaces ever. I mean, we played Crescent Ballroom in Phoenix
just now. That's like a big you know, it's like
a bar and show space that did the Troubadour, which
was a little weird because it's like a famous you know,
I think Bowie played there. I know, a bunch of
punk rock bands from La and the back in the
day played The Troubadour, but that was actually great too.
We had like two hundred and twenty person turnout. It's
the only show that didn't sell out, but it's la
and it's a rock clib so I was surprised we
even had the draw that we did were we played
Congress Theater in our Congress Hotel. That was a three,
three hundred and twenty persons sold out show in Tucson. Yeah,
it's been a good it's been a good run. And
then we did like a more actual, more more of
what is considered like an actual convention space presenting center
in San Diego, which was so great. Everyone there was
so fucking lovely. What a wonderful town. So yeah, if
you if you got leads on anything like that, bars
or show spaces, breweries, venues whatever that normally host bands
or whatever, let us know and we'll find that. Reach
out to us. We'll book an East coast tour Pittsburgh,
We're looking anywhere, fucking Cincinnati, We'll go anywhere right anywhere.
It's it's got the you know, got the space. We
definitely need like two or three two two to three
hundred person capacity for you know, the two to three
hundred people at least larger if we can make it work.
So anyway, all right, well hopefully you got some out
of that. And uh, you know rantis alway, but I
guess that's why you listen sometimes. What are you doing,
You're fucking at work, you're driving anyway, you know it
doesn't matter. I bet you know you'll forget half the
shit I said. Anyway, It's okay, that's what podcasts are for,
just something to distract the mind from the ongoing dystopia. Anyway,
that's all I got. Have a good rest of the day.
Go fuck you, stup By