Episode 181: Saltin’ Up

• John recently purchased a GMC RV and drove it to California
  • When you’re living in an RV, you’re not living a normal life.
  • "They’re not homeless because they have a car, with a bed in it. And now thats me.” 
  • In LA at the corner of Melrose and Despair 
• Millenials: They get in Ubers that appear mysteriously and poof! They’re off to an Airbnb somewhere!  (9:07)
• John is podcasting from the industrial American Cement building (10:47)
  • "I don’t like to mention other things on the show. It’s gratuitous.” — MM (13:04)
  • Sub-brutalist
• Discussion of John’s Bipolar 2 medication, Lamictal (which, when mal-dosed, can result in a deadly skin disease)
  • Street name of Lithium: Saltin’ up
  • "Trying to join the normals. Tryna be a snork.” — JR
  • John’s “Fugue state:” he immediately wrote a song for Aimee Mann and bought an RV. Making some “very, very exciting decisions across the broad spectrum of my life.” John is considering that these are the symptoms of a manic “tear” or episode, but he doesn’t feel the usual ramifications. Adventure choices! 
  • Blackberry smoothie + extra carpet for the Ramada Inn (26:00)
  • John once, on a tear, rode a motorcycle from Seattle to Kansas without any tools. Or luggage. (30:00)
  • As you get older, bottoms get lower and tops get lower, too. At best: Coping and worst: scraping. Doing damage to the undercarriage. 
• "Lipitor helps your Dick Cheney Heart. Helps your heart fats." -MM (36:03)
• John doesn’t want to see his psychiatrist because he fears the psychiatrist will consider his reaction DSM-5
  • "I’ve always felt like a person capable of driving an RV. This could be the day. This could be the RV day. I might fall in love with an RV today.” — JR (36:43)
  • "If I wake up in Morocco at any point, I know it’ll have gone too far.” — JR
• 43:00 John wrote a song for himself and sent it, "unformed and slightly dissolved," to Aimee Mann. It was falling down around him like a sugar castle. 
  • Aimee doesn’t let any grass grow. She finished it in two days.
  • "And then the gasfires of the refinery on the edge of the coast created a wave of black night. Sound of gong.” — JR’s original lyrics
• John hasn’t christened the shower in his RV. "Once you started showering in there, you’ve crossed a kind of Rubicon. You have to take Rome at that point, because you’ve declared war just by crossing the river." — JR (56:45) 
• GMC RV culture has a thing called the Blacklist, a nationwide group of GMC aficionados who “Pay it forward.”(~59:00)
  • John had a water pump crisis in Eugene ("You don’t have to be a mechanic to know that anti-freeze pouring out of the engine is contra-indicated for continuing down the road”-JR). He had to call Kelvin, from the Blacklist.  He goes to Kelvin’s house while they’re watching the Oregon game. Its Friday, at 5:00. No place is open. The temperature was plummeting. 
  • “You can sleep in my barn, but don’t touch my daughter” — MM
  • (1:03:00) Kelvin & John begin to disassemble the front motor. “For me, all of that still seems a little bit like… magic.”
  • Kelvin is afraid of shearing the head off the very last bolt. After that, "Every bolt we put back in was a bolt of thankfulness. Thank you engine for receiving this bolt.” (~1:08:00)