As Told By C.S. Beaty

We have nothing but prairie.[1]

—Henrich Egge, early Grand Island settler

Thanks for reading By C.S. Beaty! Put your email in this and I’ll be your best friend and never do anything wrong.

I grew up in Grand Island, Nebraska. If the name of our town is confusing to you, I understand. I’ve heard all the jokes and have made them myself. “It’s not an island and it’s not grand.” This isn’t the official city motto, but it might as well be. It would pair nicely with the State of Nebraska’s official tourism slogan: “Honestly, it’s not for everyone.” Yes, us Grand Islanders are fully aware of just how unremarkable we are. And we’ve come to terms with it. When I joined Facebook in 2008, our city couldn’t be selected as an option for “hometown” in your profile, so most of us just picked the closest alternative of “Grand Island, NY.” What’s a single letter difference in a state abbreviation?

Nebraskans get sick of hearing how boring their state is when they introduce themselves. If Omaha is good enough for Warren Buffett it should be good enough for the snobby Southwest Airlines passenger crammed into the middle-seat who feels obligated to ask where you’re from. But honestly, once you get past the second entry in the list of city populations, it’s kind of true. According to year 2000 Census data—the year I turned ten and was given a cool “Census 2000” lapel pin from my fourth-grade teacher—there were only two towns in Nebraska with populations larger than the 85,000 people who filled Memorial Stadium in Lincoln each Saturday to watch Husker football. ESPN loved this factoid, and us central Nebraskans were thrilled to see the name of our city publicly shamed in a TV graphic each week listing the game attendance next to population figures of Nebraska residences.

Every small town has its thing—that unique identity that sets you apart on billboards and gas station pamphlets from all the other small towns that are otherwise facsimiles of one another. The 24,064 citizens of Hastings, Nebraska celebrate themselves as the birthplace of Kool-Aid and hold an annual summer festival that boasts “the world’s largest Kool-Aid stand.”[2]

North Platte, Nebraska with its 23,871 people is also a birthplace, but not of a delicious drink adored by millions, rather the used-to-be-famous showman Buffalo Bill. It doesn’t matter that he’s buried in Cody, Wyoming and the Buffalo Bills football team is in New York—North Platte gets to keep him. But if dead cowboys aren’t you’re thing, North Platte has also capitalized on the fact that they’re conveniently located off Interstate 80 with the “get closer to where you’re going” tourism slogan encouraging stopovers on the way to Denver.

The hideous stepchild of Nebraska is Kearney, where 27,431 people made a terrible life choice by living there. You may know the place from the Oregon Trail eight-bit video game and buying supplies at Fort Kearny. The fort was christened after Stephen W. Kearny, but the dumbasses spelled the name wrong when they named their town. Grand Island and Kearney don’t get along.

And then there’s us. The 42,940 Grand Islanders.

…

In fourth grade history, we were taught the superhero origin story of our great municipality. Sort of. I got the impression it was more of a generalization that Mrs. Saunder did from a historical marker she once read while pulled over to let her dog pee.

Located in the middle of the Platte River there was once a big ass island.

How big?

No one knows. It doesn’t exist anymore. It probably never did. But as settlers traveled across country in their covered wagons they would reference “Le Grande Isle.” [3]

Why were all the settlers French?

Can’t help you with that one either.

Why were the French settlers so bad at French, since “the grand island” in French is actually “I’isle grande”?

Seriously, stop asking so many questions.

My fourth-grade self never bothered to ask about these details. Ambition and curiosity don’t really have a place in Grand Island. And my fourth-grade self didn’t get a dog until he moved away to the city of Omaha, so that Rosetta Stone of roadside markers has yet to be rediscovered. Regardless, the “Le Grande Isle” town name stuck and got de-Frenched. And then people’s wagons broke down or they got bored or had to use the bathroom and pulled over, but one way or another ended up living—not on this grand island—but kind of in the general area. And now we have a town.

The reason no one definitively knows where the town name came from is because no one really cares about anything in Grand Island. People just kind of exist there. It’s a very conservative town, which I never minded, except when this brand of conservatism seemed to spill into a general lack of ambition overall. Which I did mind. When my high school classmate David Nance moved away and started a moderately successful rock band, he described our hometown in an interview as “more or less a strip mall, so basically Anytown U.S.A.[4]”

And the type of people who settle in Grand Island are the type who love strip malls.

That’s not to say Grand Island wasn’t full of good people. Nothing could be further from the truth. They were salt-of-the-earth types. They weren’t simple in a pejorative sense either, just in a statement-of-fact sort of way. I once had a coworker in his late forties say he would never move from his farm outside city limits into Grand Island proper because “GI is just too big.” When I mentioned I had vacationed to New York City, he was incredulous. He gave me a look as if I told him I had taken a trip to one of Jupiter’s moons. It was equal parts disbelief you could actually go there and disbelief that I was still alive upon my return.

It’s kind of a lot of people like that.

But even that description’s a bit misleading, because as a farmer, this guy knew who he was at heart. And he leaned into that. Most of us Grand Islanders don’t. At least I didn’t know who I was, and the people I spent time around didn’t either. The town proper has a population slightly under 50,000 and none of us are farmers. Some of us know farmers, but most are completely clueless about agriculture. I still don’t know what a silo is for. I once asked a farmer what they put inside a silo, and he replied “silage.” Which didn’t help.

To complicate things, Grand Islanders are not farmers in a state where everyone is assumed to be. All the “non-farmers” are supposed to live in Omaha or Lincoln. Yes, we have cornfields next to our mall, and our cemetery, and pretty much any vacant lot. You kind of forget about them. And once a year my parents took us to a farm supply store on “baby bird day,” the day when they sold freshly hatched chicks and ducklings to people who needed to buy freshly hatched chicks and ducklings. We never bought any, but there is no greater day than the day you can pick up a baby duckling from under a heat lamp clamped to the side of a corrugated feed trough and hold it as if it were your own. My sister did buy my brother-in-law a full-grown chicken as an engagement present though.

And my church hosted a “Harvest Party” in place of a “Halloween Party.” All of us kids dressed up in costumes, played games, and asked for candy. If this feels like a “Halloween Party,” you’re wrong. Halloween is for the devil. At our church, we celebrated harvest—and our party just happens to get scheduled each year on the Wednesday night prior to October 31st. It’s just a coincidence, ok?

But, other than that, there’s nothing farm-related about us.

…

Grand Island has a few things uniquely ours. The most satisfying bout of diarrhea you’ll ever have comes after you taste the delicious chili dogs of the Coney Island Lunch Room. At least that’s the restaurant name according to the neon sign outside shaped like a chili dog—the menu, ninetieth anniversary drink koozies, and the banner for the racehorse they sponsor all say, “Coney Island Cafe,” but never “Café.” I don’t think anyone is aware of the inconsistency; we just call it Coney Island. The food here cannot be imp…

I didn’t have time to get a reply letter to Fudd before Book Report II showed up in my mailbox. He was prompt in delivering his self-assigned homework, and got the project back to me before I had a chance to send him a letter about whatever dumb thing I had noticed recently.

You want Haywood Fudd to be your pen pal too? Put your email in the thing!

When we read something that resonates, we take the author’s experiences and lay them on top of our own. Most people don’t write because they think they don’t have anything unique to offer—but focusing on the differences between our life and those around us is a mistake. We read to feel like we have something in common. Good writing reminds us of those things in common. Sure, a memoir about someone getting trapped in a boulder and cutting off his own arm with a pocket knife is interesting—but if that’s the whole story, if all it is is a guy who chops off his own arm, it’ll only be interesting. It’ll be like watching one of those SAW movies and thinking, “holy f**k that would suck.” And then we would intentionally force ourselves NOT to think about that story anymore. We wouldn’t have a reason to. We wouldn’t want to.

We remember the familiar. Because it is the familiar that makes us feel less alone. It is the familiar that makes us feel seen. It is the familiar that makes sense of our world.

We don’t want to be the only guy who sees things the way we do. We want someone who gets us. We want someone who sees the same things even when they look different.

So when Haywood Fudd responded with his second book report and it contained a dozen anecdotes about things he thought of while reading my essays—things that he felt we had in common, things that we could relate to, things that I reminded him of—I felt less alone.

I knew I had something in common with someone, even if those things were absurd. Even if it was a mysterious pen pal who I had never met in person.

But we had met on the page.

Book Report II: Things I’ve Been Thinking About

Probably like your sister, Denise, I grew up in the 1970s.

Memory: I, too, was a member of the Boy Scouts, which during the 1970s was analogous to giving teenage kids sticks of dynamite in a book of matches. It was divine intervention that one of us wasn’t killed or disfigured. None of the juvenile lunatics I was in the Scouts with achieved any merit badges because there wasn’t a merit badge for trying to set the woods on fire, throwing Spears at each other, and running amok like the teenage savages in Lord of the Flies.

Memory: My buddies and I crowded around the television when Evel Knievel was leaping his Harley over buses, cars, and fountains. We prayed Evel would suffer a fantastic crash. When the God of Crashes granted our wish, we shuddered with glee as Evel tumbled like a rag doll down the landing ramp. Excited at Evel’s “cool” crash, we would race outside and build ramps out of purloined plywood. We then leaped our banana-seat bicycles over this and that. In one dazzling crash I broke seven fingers that also turned my bike into a heap of scrap. So Evel. I own an Evel Knievel pinball machine.

Fact: My hearing is wrecked because during the late 1970s I fired at least 100,000 rounds of various calibers without wearing ear protection. None of my buddies wore hearing protection either because there wasn’t any high quality hearing protection to be had like what I now wear, and even if there was we wouldn’t have wasted money on hearing protection when we could have used the money to buy more ammo. My ears rang and rang due to glorious gunfire and loud rock music.

Some musings about where I’m at in your book:

· Never taken a polar plunge but I did leap off a bridge into a spring-fed river on March 1st, 1981. Not smart. Not smart at all

· Haven’t spent much time in Minnesota though Northfield is on my list

· Saw Blue Öyster Cult three times

· Own a t-shirt with the word “SPAM” on the front of it; I own Spam socks, too

· Gay jokes are still funny

· One of my all-time favorite books is Breakfast of Champions. Kurt Vonnegut gave birth to it

· Costco is my first choice for buying hooch

· Spend a lot of time and money in firework stands. I’m setting off 1,000,000 firecrackers this year period last year I set off 100,000. Go big or go home

· When our kids were small, my wife and I purchased a trampoline for them. They survived. I was terrified the entire time

· God bless you and your wife for adopting

Haywood

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Friendly Fire: The Day the U.S. Army Bombed Nebraska; Wall Street Journal

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When I sent Haywood Fudd a copy of my collected essays of 2024, it included one titled Hunting, Or Lack Thereof. It was about my attempts at competitive trapshooting and the time my dad shot a deer and gave me credit for it. That essay was split into parts and became a running storyline in my memoir about high school and growing up in Grand Island, Nebraska.

Writing is a feedback loop. You observe something, and then you think about it. Then you think about it, and your brain tells you what you think about it—but not all the way. So you attempt to vomit that primordial soup of words out of your head in the hopes that they’ll form on the page and reach the next stage of evolution—but the first draft is usually just a slug with one arm, three eyes, and an overbite. So you put those words back into your brain, microwave them in your subconscious, and vomit again. If you’re lucky, the creature will sprout another arm.

But as any parent knows, at a certain point, you get sick of your child. So, very, very, f*****g sick of them. You need a break. You’ve exhausted your patience of their bed wetting and constant b******g about the injustice of their ice cream portions in comparison to those ice cream portions of their sibling. You’re convinced that whatever beast is crawling around in your living room isn’t anything resembling a sentient being worthy of your pride and respect. They are just some offspring that bastardized all your hard work and best intentions. Your masterpiece is not before you. You don’t know what that thing is, really.

So, out of ideas of your own, you push the amorphous blob onto someone else. You can’t just give up on it, whatever the end state of this experiment is, you have to see it through. But you need someone else to watch it for a little bit, while you go off and question your worth as a creative and wonder why you ever thought you were worthy of attempting to make a meaningful creation.

But sometimes, when the babysitter reports back, you get a little bit of encouragement. They kind of enjoyed their time with your child. All those traits that drive you nuts because you spend so much time living with them without any break—well when this other person interacted with them for the first time, they thought they were kind of fun. It wasn’t a bad way to spend their afternoon.

And then you realize, you kind of missed your creature.

And you get back to work, hoping it sprouts a leg this time.

January 18th, 2025

Dear Mr. Beaty,

Having slayed some other books first, I have begun slaying your book. My first book report regarding your inviting tome:

I’m a hunter, too (or was), though I hunted with my trusty bow and arrows instead of scatter gun and, like you, I froze and froze—for decades. I recall being perched up in a tree one particularly wicked December morning and began wondering what all the sane people in Nebraska were doing. Though I’m not smart and you can’t make me, I arrived at the conclusion that all the sane people in Nebraska were tucked in their warm beds while I was freezing 15 feet up in a tree with the north wind howling in my face and questioning my limited sanity.

One time a large buck walked by me at 10 yards. I was much too cold to draw my bow and just barely sane enough to realize that if I killed him I would have to clean him which required getting my hands wet with his blood. I thought the best of it and let him live. He sauntered away as though he was enjoying the clobbering northwest wind that was busy lashing, punishing, and freezing me.

Those were the good old days of freezing. Now I’m old and can’t do cold like I used to be able to do when I was a much younger and much dumber guy who convinced my dumb self that if I dressed warm enough that I could conquer the bitter cold, the biting northwest wind. I, of course, was dumber than an old cedar fence post when I was a younger man. One does not ever conquer the Nebraska cold; conquers you.

Lady luck shone on me a few times and I let the air out of a couple large box whose stuffed heads adored my living room walls. When I stare at them like I’m doing right now (and typing blindly), I’m reminded how lucky I was and am: I have an understanding wife who permits those heads to stare down at her while she plays solitaire on her Googler-enabled device. Think of it this way: how many homes have you been in with deer heads perched on the living room wall and not perched on the garage wall?

Sadly, I lost my deer hunting honey hole a few years ago. Some guy pays thousands and thousands of dollars each year to hunt my old stomping grounds. When I think about him, I hope he’s getting every freezing dollar bill worth of enjoyment. While he’s freezing and hoping a giant buck will saunter by looking for a hot doe, I’m home tucked snugly in a warm bed. When I wake up, I pour myself a hot cup of coffee, sit in my recliner, and then watch YouTube videos of other guys sitting in freezing in trees. That’s what old people do: live vicariously through young dumb people.

Much obliged,

Haywood

Your email needs more than just Amazon delivery notifications.

Today’s guest is a mentor and hero of mine who convinced me to give up on a career

(00:00:36):

as a structural engineer in order to follow him to the dark side of sales.

(00:00:41):

We talk about that along with a bunch of his favorite stories from a three-decade

(00:00:44):

career in corporate leadership,

(00:00:46):

including his interactions with Walter Scott,

(00:00:49):

Tommy Frazier,

(00:00:50):

Indomitian Sioux,

(00:00:51):

Warren Sapp,

(00:00:52):

Donald Trump,

(00:00:53):

and King Kong.

(00:00:55):

I’m very excited to present Gunther DeVanus.

(00:01:01):

So you can do like,

(00:01:04):

if you just wanted this particular type of mic,

(00:01:06):

you can plug straight into your laptop.

(00:01:08):

So you could like get started for like a couple hundred bucks.

(00:01:12):

How do you find time to do all this crap?

(00:01:14):

Seriously.

(00:01:15):

I don’t know.

(00:01:16):

I just, well, I don’t go into the office anymore.

(00:01:18):

Yeah, that’s nice.

(00:01:20):

Yeah.

(00:01:20):

So before I forget, so I was at Prep Today yesterday and today, and I’m coming back in the fall.

(00:01:29):

And I’m bringing Dean Perez and Tony Villan, do you know who that is?

(00:01:33):

Tony Villan’s on our board.

(00:01:35):

He’s an ex-Husker player, was on the 94-95 championship team, so he wears a big championship.

(00:01:43):

So I took my grandson to the Colorado-Nebraska game two years ago when we beat them in Lincoln.

(00:01:50):

My grandson lives in the shadow of Boulder.

(00:01:53):

He’s taking basketball camps on campus.

(00:01:55):

So he was kind of a Colorado fan.

(00:01:58):

So I said, I got to fix this.

(00:02:00):

It was a night game.

(00:02:01):

Before the night game, I toured him through the new Keywood Hall building.

(00:02:05):

I haven’t been in that yet, but I saw it under construction.

(00:02:10):

Dean Perez’s office is on the top floor of that thing.

(00:02:12):

I forget how many stories it is.

(00:02:14):

He’s got a balcony.

(00:02:16):

By C.S.

(00:02:16):

Beaty

(00:02:46):

But he’s got this big ring on it.

(00:02:48):

I see Owen staring at his ring.

(00:02:50):

Yeah.

(00:02:51):

Because he’s got to be what?

(00:02:52):

Is he 18 yet?

(00:02:52):

No, no.

(00:02:53):

He’s like, he just turned 13.

(00:02:56):

13.

(00:02:56):

Okay.

(00:02:56):

Yeah.

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Okay.

(00:02:57):

So he was, and at that time he was 11.

(00:03:00):

Okay.

(00:03:01):

So he’s staring at Belen’s ring and I said, it’s a pretty cool ring, huh?

(00:03:05):

Owen?

(00:03:05):

And he goes, yeah, that’s really cool.

(00:03:08):

He said, what is, what kind of ring is it?

(00:03:10):

And so Tony takes it off and Tony’s got big fingers so he gives it to Owen.

(00:03:13):

He says, put it on.

(00:03:14):

So Owen puts it on.

(00:03:15):

Big red

(00:03:16):

Yeah.

(00:03:17):

Jewel in there.

(00:03:18):

National Championship.

(00:03:19):

And Owen goes, wow, how did you get this?

(00:03:21):

And he explained it to him.

(00:03:23):

He goes, I have two of those.

(00:03:25):

And then Owen goes like, wow.

(00:03:26):

And he goes, you know what else I have?

(00:03:29):

And he says, no.

(00:03:30):

He says, I have a Super Bowl ring, too.

(00:03:32):

Oh, wow.

(00:03:33):

But anyway, I’m bringing him, Tony Villan, and Perez to prep.

(00:03:40):

But I’d love to have you come because I’m pitching Nebraska Engineering.

(00:03:44):

And

(00:03:45):

Most of the kids that go to prep, 99.9% of them all go to college.

(00:03:50):

You can’t go to, I mean, it’s called Creighton Prep, prep you for college.

(00:03:53):

And you have to take an entrance exam and all this other crap.

(00:03:56):

But,

(00:03:57):

so,

(00:03:58):

a bunch,

(00:03:58):

and they’re really,

(00:04:00):

their robotics team,

(00:04:01):

their high school robotics team came in fourth in the world.

(00:04:04):

Did they go to the, they have like a national competition in Iowa.

(00:04:08):

This was international.

(00:04:08):

Oh, international, yeah.

(00:04:09):

They came in fourth in the world.

(00:04:10):

That’s crazy, yeah.

(00:04:11):

And the kid that leads the team is,

(00:04:15):

He’s been offered to go to Harvard and all these other places.

(00:04:21):

And a lot of those kids that graduate from there,

(00:04:23):

their parents have money,

(00:04:24):

which my parents never had.

(00:04:26):

I had to take a bus up there.

(00:04:27):

But anyway, so a lot of them go to Ivy League schools or Notre Dame.

(00:04:33):

And Perez graduated from Notre Dame.

(00:04:35):

Did you know that?

(00:04:36):

No.

(00:04:36):

So Dean Perez has got his undergraduate and his Ph.D. from University of Notre Dame.

(00:04:40):

Okay.

(00:04:41):

He has Notre Dame football tickets, season tickets.

(00:04:43):

Oh, come on.

(00:04:44):

No, and he goes to the games.

(00:04:45):

I mean, he’s a huge Notre Dame fan.

(00:04:47):

Well, there’s more to root for than Nebraska at the moment.

(00:04:49):

Yeah, yeah.

(00:04:50):

So,

(00:04:50):

but anyway,

(00:04:51):

so my pitch to these kids is going to be,

(00:04:54):

so I know a lot of you have parents that can afford to go to these great schools

(00:04:59):

like Notre Dame and Carnegie Mellon and places like that.

(00:05:03):

I said, but in my case, when I went to school, my parents didn’t have that kind of money.

(00:05:08):

And maybe some of your parents don’t have that kind of money.

(00:05:11):

And there’s a golden, there’s a gem of a school right here in Omaha and also in Lincoln.

(00:05:18):

And so

(00:05:19):

I’d like to pitch Nebraska engineering in general,

(00:05:23):

and I’d like to have you talk about going to school here.

(00:05:26):

Sure.

(00:05:26):

I mean, you’re not from Omaha.

(00:05:28):

No.

(00:05:29):

Right?

(00:05:29):

And how your career’s just launched off.

(00:05:33):

Tell them some of the cool things you’ve done.

(00:05:34):

I’ve been to Guam, this and that, you know.

(00:05:36):

Because we’re just not getting our fair share of those kids.

(00:05:38):

What put the icing on the cake for me is, you know, I was a kid from Grand Island.

(00:05:43):

I knew about the engineering program here.

(00:05:45):

I didn’t know much, but I met, if you remember...

(00:05:49):

You recorded?

(00:05:50):

Yeah, we’ve been recording for a while.

(00:05:51):

This is good grade A content, if I can get my microphone to stop moving.

(00:05:55):

If you remember Alma Ramirez,

(00:05:57):

she was the main recruiter at,

(00:06:00):

for Peter Kiewen Institute,

(00:06:01):

for all the College of Engineering in Omaha.

(00:06:03):

Her father-in-law is actually Johnny Rogers.

(00:06:06):

She’s Alma Ramirez Rogers.

(00:06:07):

Oh, really?

(00:06:08):

So the Rogers is her, Johnny Rogers is her father-in-law.

(00:06:11):

But she was the first person who told me about the AE program,

(00:06:14):

the architectural engineering program.

(00:06:15):

And the way she sold it was,

(00:06:17):

She’s like, what do you want to go to school for?

(00:06:18):

I’m like, well, I’m leaning towards engineering, but I don’t really know what.

(00:06:21):

She’s like,

(00:06:21):

oh,

(00:06:22):

you go to architecture engineering,

(00:06:23):

you don’t have to know what you’re going to do.

(00:06:24):

I’m like, really?

(00:06:25):

And so she kind of explained how it works.

(00:06:26):

And I was like, we don’t want you to declare until your junior year.

(00:06:29):

So then I went to the visit at PKI, the Peter Keywood Institute Open House.

(00:06:33):

And then I was like, I was sold.

(00:06:35):

It was fairly new then.

(00:06:36):

Yeah, it was.

(00:06:38):

So I think the building opened around, it was less than 10 years old.

(00:06:41):

So my freshman year was the 10-year anniversary of the architecture engineering program.

(00:06:46):

And I think it was the first year,

(00:06:48):

I don’t know if the building was built yet or not,

(00:06:50):

but it might have been.

(00:06:51):

But yeah, I was about 10 years old.

(00:06:53):

I mean,

(00:06:53):

and I will say I did a visit at Lincoln and part of the main reason I didn’t go to

(00:06:56):

Lincoln is because I thought their engineering building was terrible.

(00:06:58):

I mean, compared to the two.

(00:06:59):

You should see this new one.

(00:07:00):

Yeah, but I’m sure the new one would have been, you know, it’s completely different.

(00:07:04):

And that program…

When you promote a book, you end up telling the same stories a lot. It’s easier that way. Despite how repetitive and canned they feel coming out of your mouth yet again, you’d be fooling yourself to think that as a self-published, first-time author your following would be big enough for someone to have heard the story enough times to get annoyed by it. So you relive it. Again and again and again even though the ending never seems to change.

“So I was with my seven-year-old daughter at McDonald’s and I saw a young couple who looked like they were on a date, and I thought to myself, ‘who would ever go on a date at McDonald’s, what a trashy thing to do.’ Then I remembered, ‘ohh I did that.’ I took my first homecoming date to McDonald’s on the night of the homecoming dance. And I thought, that would be a funny essay.”

Want to read more about some of those bad dates? Subscribe and get the opening chapter of my book Loser*: A Survival Guide to High School Popularity.

The easiest way I found to describe what the book turned into was the story of all the girls I had crushes on in high school. And there were a lot of them. All of them knew some of my feelings for them, but no one knew all of them. So that was what I wrote about—those painfully awkward and embarrassing emotions that live within any self-conscious adolescent trying to figure out who they are and what they feel. The book became a confessional of sorts, and I was really proud of how it turned out.

But I figured I probably needed to give a heads-up to some people before it came out.

I was now married with three kids and most of these old flames were now married or at least in some serious relationship of their own—and with a far more suitable match than I likely would have made. But regardless, I noticed how easy it was to feel some of those feelings again. There was almost an arbitrary nature to it. Each one of these women had a quality that had attracted me to them in the first place, and it wasn’t hard to remember what it was. It was slightly different with each girl, but when I listened to one of them get interviewed by Ari Shapiro on NPR’s Fresh Air about this amazing nonprofit for refugee education she worked for, all it took was the sound of her voice. I could see her. Not just be reminded of her, I was there with her. I don’t know if I could have conjured up a memory of what her voice sounded like before that moment, but once I heard it, I was back in my high school bedroom. Talking to her on the phone. Pleading with God not to let her dad find out that she was still awake. We were never meant to be together, I knew that even back then, but the emotion I felt for her—whatever it was—was real. And it was still there. Whatever it was.

So I sent her a message on Facebook Messenger. The only form of communication I still had to reach her.

Then I sent an email to the girl I invited on a ski trip.

And I sent a LinkedIn message to the girl who worked with me at a frozen yogurt shop.

And I sought out the husband of the girl I asked out on MSN messenger and got their home mailing address.

And I sent another Facebook message to my homecoming date. The one I took to McDonald’s.

All the messages started out with the same first sentence: “so I wrote a book about high school and you’re in it. Sort of a lot.”

From there I wrote something a bit more personal but ended each note asking for their address so I could mail them a copy of the book before it was released. I heard back from one of them within an hour. Again, I was transported. I had once asked this girl out via e-mail, it had taken her several days to get back to me that time, but on this occasion, I could tell she replied as soon as she saw the message. And it was really, really great to hear from her.

It took a little longer, but I heard from all but one. I tried that girl several more times, enough to where I’m pretty sure she saw the message at some point, but maybe not. I did have a dream about her the other night. In it she told me she thought the book was funny.

But I got a hold of everyone else and mailed them a copy of the book. And a letter. I told them some things I had never admitted to. And I warned them that in the book they now had, there would be many more things I had never said before.

And then I moved on. The book came out. People seemed to like it. A man I admire told me I “did a really brave thing.” I had former classmates ask me who the pseudonyms for each character were, but a lot of them could figure it out without my help. As much as I left unsaid during those years, I wasn’t really fooling anyone.

And then I heard back from a few of those letters.

One girl wrote me a letter back. Like an actual letter. She was pretty upset, but I understood why. I wrote her back. I told her sorry, but also clarified it was going to be one of those unsatisfying apologies where I say I’m sorry for how it made her feel but not for what I did. Because I stand by what I did. I was glad I said what I said.

Another girl sent me an e-mail. She told me she was surprised by what she read. She said that when I told her she was in it “sort of a lot” she was taken off guard by how much that “sort of a lot” was. She knew we had some sort of thing going on during high school, but admittedly it meant a lot less to her than apparently it did to me. At least not in a romantic sense. She thought we were just really close friends, and she felt a little sad to lose that version of me who meant so much to her. She really liked the version of me that she remembered, a version who didn’t obsess over her for years and clinged to her every word, desperately wanting to find their personal worth solely in her opinion of me. That wasn’t the person she thought she was friends with. And she really, really liked the person she was friends with. And I understood. I told her I understood. And I did.

Another girl loved the book, including the parts she was in. And she appreciated even when she was “called out” by me. And we started chatting a bit on Instagram afterward. Including on the day of her wedding, while she was getting her hair done. I got a chance to tell her how happy I was for her. How highly I thought of her. And how I hope she finds nothing but more happiness. I didn’t think it was a coincidence that we spoke on the day of her wedding. It felt fitting. I thought I might have married her at one point, but I married someone else. And so did she. And now we’re both happy. And both happy for each other.

But there were a few people who didn’t say anything. Nothing good, nothing bad—but I didn’t ask anyone to say anything. I wanted to say something, but it wasn’t mandatory that they responded. A lot of them probably felt weird about the whole thing and didn’t know what to say. Sometimes nothing needs to be said.

…

On the morning of my book release party, I was nothing but anxiety.

It would be a lie to say I was overwhelmed by the turnout. Frankly, I thought there would be more people. I thought I would sell more books. But I was overwhelmed by the individuals who came. By my first boss who drove over three hours from Kansas City just to see me and buy a book with more curse words in the introduction than he had said in in his entire adult life. By my 6th grade drama teacher who re-gifted a Barbie that I had painted to look like a cyborg—and given to her as a going away present when I last saw her over twenty years ago. By the friends, family, work colleagues, and former bandmates who didn’t need any pleading or coaxing to show up. Who just came because they wanted to be there. Because they were excited about this book that I wrote. Because they were in my corner.

I was thick in discussions with my old boss, I hadn’t caught up with him since he retired and I was eager for an update. But I had to ask him to give me a second. Someone had just walked in who I hadn’t seen for years. A beautiful young girl, with her husband and her two kids in tow. She looked a little unsure if she was in …

Put your email in the thing and meet more interesting people.

Today’s guest is my very first work friend,

(00:00:38):

who went on to quit that job,

(00:00:40):

join a cool Silicon Valley startup,

(00:00:42):

and move in with homeless people.

(00:00:45):

Kylie Sheehy.

(00:00:47):

I can’t hear you.

(00:00:48):

This is off to an awesome start.

(00:00:51):

Here, is it?

(00:00:51):

Did I fix it?

(00:00:52):

Yeah, there you go.

(00:00:53):

There we go.

(00:00:54):

Okay.

(00:00:55):

I got a lot of microphones.

(00:00:56):

I’m just like very savvy and technologically advanced.

(00:01:00):

Well I can tell because you got like some weird headset and what’s your fake

(00:01:04):

background fading in and out of?

(00:01:07):

This is actually a screenshot I took of a team’s background that I like better but

(00:01:16):

then when it’s too small for Zoom so it’s so vixly it looks absolutely fake but

(00:01:23):

that’s what we got.

(00:01:25):

So you’re like pretending to be in some random apartment?

(00:01:29):

It could be my apartment.

(00:01:31):

Yeah,

(00:01:31):

but we know it’s not because it’s like every time you move it goes like the

(00:01:34):

background is this.

(00:01:36):

Maybe I live in the future.

(00:01:39):

Where nothing works.

(00:01:41):

Technology is even worse.

(00:01:43):

It’s all been broken and it’s going to kill us.

(00:01:46):

Yeah, that sounds like the present day and the future.

(00:01:50):

See?

(00:01:52):

Get on my level.

(00:01:54):

I think we’re recording.

(00:01:55):

I don’t even know.

(00:01:56):

This is the first time I’ve ever done anything on Zoom,

(00:01:57):

and I’ve discovered that the lighting in my office is awful for this.

(00:02:01):

So I think this is going to be an audio podcast.

(00:02:04):

I don’t know what I prefer.

(00:02:06):

Well, good, because your background is making it definitely audio podcast worthy.

(00:02:14):

It’s like you’re doing a snow angel in your background, everything you move your arms.

(00:02:20):

Kylie Sheehy, what makes you interesting?

(00:02:22):

All kinds of things.

(00:02:26):

All right so you were born where are you even from yeah great question that’s the

(00:02:35):

first thing that makes me interesting I think uh so it’s really just one of my

(00:02:39):

superpowers uh that I can be from any hometown at any moment in time I was born in

(00:02:46):

Kansas City Kansas and then uh not even the good Kansas City the bad one

(00:02:52):

The good one.

(00:02:53):

They’re all fine.

(00:02:53):

They’re all top notch and they’re all tied for first and then moved to North

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Carolina and then moved to Georgia and then Texas and then Kansas for a short stint

(00:03:08):

and then Washington State and then D.C.

(00:03:13):

then like Northern Virginia area and then Michigan and then back to Kansas for

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school and then

(00:03:20):

Cincinnati for a couple of years and then uh San Francisco and then Austin Wow I

(00:03:28):

didn’t I thought it was like three places it’s even worse than I thought no it’s

(00:03:32):

better than you thought yeah did you say Detroit don’t you live in Detroit too um

(00:03:38):

my parents live in Detroit Michigan is Detroit is in Michigan so when I said

(00:03:42):

Michigan that’s what I meant yeah

(00:03:44):

Okay, I wasn’t, this is already a really boring podcast.

(00:03:47):

I wasn’t even really listening to all that.

(00:03:49):

No, that’s interesting.

(00:03:50):

So anytime I get into an Uber, someone’s like, oh, I’m from like, whatever.

(00:03:53):

I just moved here.

(00:03:54):

I’m like, oh my God, me too.

(00:03:55):

And then we’re best friends.

(00:03:57):

What, yeah.

(00:03:58):

What makes you want to be from the Midwest so bad?

(00:03:59):

I feel like maybe it’s just you saying that to be like,

(00:04:04):

trying to like find some common ground with me.

(00:04:05):

But I feel like you always want to claim the Midwest,

(00:04:07):

even though it’s like the fourth most frequent place that you’ve lived at.

(00:04:13):

I would say I really lean into being one of the supervillains who moved from the

(00:04:17):

Bay Area to Austin.

(00:04:18):

That’s one of my favorite things.

(00:04:19):

That’s like what I like to claim as my my my home, just like as like a concept.

(00:04:28):

And then I actively tried to remove the Midwest from my my pedigree.

(00:04:32):

Yeah.

(00:04:34):

Oh,

(00:04:34):

so you’re not Midwest now because you were all about it when we first became

(00:04:37):

friends,

(00:04:37):

but you moved on.

(00:04:38):

It’s tough.

(00:04:39):

It’s tough because it like comes out of me because it’s just who I am and who my family is.

(00:04:43):

But yeah, like on paper, I prefer to be much more glamorously from elsewhere.

(00:04:52):

Okay, nevermind.

(00:04:53):

I’ve already like, you’re already a different person than I thought you were.

(00:04:55):

So your dad, your dad was, all right, it was, was it an army ranger?

(00:05:00):

What was your dad?

(00:05:01):

Okay, because I think everyone could probably figure this out.

(00:05:03):

Whenever you’re from a thousand places, you’re either like homeless or in the army, military.

(00:05:09):

So I’m guessing it’s the latter of the two.

(00:05:11):

Yeah.

(00:05:13):

Which, what is former and latter?

(00:05:15):

I don’t remember.

(00:05:15):

But like,

(00:05:16):

interestingly,

(00:05:16):

another thing that makes me interesting is that I do live among the homeless,

(00:05:19):

formerly homeless.

(00:05:21):

So like, we’re kindred spirits in a sense.

(00:05:24):

Okay, we’ll get to that part.

(00:05:25):

I got like, I got like notes, okay?

(00:05:26):

I made notes here.

(00:05:28):

So what was your dad’s job that made you like never at home anywhere you were ever at?

(00:05:34):

He was in the army.

(00:05:35):

He was doing army stuff.

(00:05:36):

We actually like had a very long conversation the last time I was home because I

(00:05:39):

was like,

(00:05:40):

you never told us what your job was.

(00:05:43):

And he was like, well, I wasn’t allowed to.

(00:05:45):

And I was like, okay.

(00:05:47):

He was a ranger, right?

(00:05:48):

Because I remember like he used to put around an army ranger water bottle.

(00:05:51):

Yeah, my sick water bottle.

(00:05:53):

No, Wayne Garrett got mad one day because he was like, what are you doing?

(00:05:57):

And I was like, my dad is a ranger.

(00:05:59):

And he was like, oh, sorry.

(00:06:01):

Yeah, so we were at a work.

(00:06:05):

Yeah,

(00:06:05):

for all my three people that are going to listen to this that weren’t in the room

(00:06:08):

at the time that happened.

(00:06:09):

So we were at a work training where Kyle and I became friends.

(00:06:12):

And you had an Army Ranger water bottle.

(00:06:14):

And we had this former, what do you know, West Point grad.

(00:06:18):

He was a West Pointer, but I don’t know what he did beyond that.

(00:06:21):

I don’t think I don’t think he did anything beyond that.

(00:06:25):

Because he went to West Point,

(00:06:26):

but then he pretty much jumped ship to 100% tailored suits and corporate American

(00:06:33):

private jet life.

(00:06:34):

To be the director of sales for any product line that they thought that he should

(00:06:39):

be in charge of,

(00:06:40):

even though he may or may not have known what that product line was.

(00:06:43):

He was one of those.

(00:06:44):

Yeah, and he saw your water bottle.

(00:06:46):

He was ready to just jump down your ass about having this illegal water bottle that

(00:06:50):

you don’t deserve to have.

(00:06:52):

And then you pulled rank on him.

(00:06:54):

Yeah no big time I did.

(00:06:56):

So what makes a ranger cool?

(00:06:58):

I feel like something about what he said was like you didn’t earn that or something

(00:07:02):

and I was like okay and then yeah and then dunked on him.

(00:07:07):

I got it from my dad who’s way cooler than you.

(00:07:11):

I never had a home my entire adolescence because my dad was busy serving the

(00:07:15):

country and defending your rights wing from the jungle and doing rangery stuff.

(00:07:22):

So what does an armor range even do?

(00:07:23):

Like, I know, like, the Green Berets and the Navy Seals.

(00:07:25):

I thought this interview was about me.

(00:07:27):

This is not my job.

(00:07:28):

Yeah, but this is the interesting stuff.

(0…

Introducing retired newspaper reporter, Wahoo, Nebraska historian, and not my real uncle: Uncle Bob Copperstone.

You know Bob is fun to listen to, so are my other friends. You’ll want to subscribe.

Today’s guest is retired journalist,

(00:00:33):

Wahoo,

(00:00:34):

Nebraska historian,

(00:00:36):

and not my real uncle,

(00:00:37):

Uncle Bob Copperstone.

(00:00:41):

All right, you ready for this?

(00:00:43):

Ready as I’ll ever be.

(00:00:45):

Okay, so the idea behind this podcast is to convince people that they’re interesting.

(00:00:50):

Do you need to be convinced that you’re interesting?

(00:00:52):

I feel like you probably already know that.

(00:00:54):

What makes you interesting?

(00:00:56):

Oh, hell, I earned it.

(00:00:59):

How’d you earn it?

(00:01:01):

By being interesting for so long.

(00:01:03):

Okay.

(00:01:04):

When did you first start being interesting?

(00:01:06):

I never stopped.

(00:01:08):

You were born that way?

(00:01:09):

I was born that way.

(00:01:10):

All right.

(00:01:11):

So you’re born in Wahoo, right?

(00:01:13):

Isn’t everybody?

(00:01:14):

Oh, I guess I was wrong.

(00:01:15):

Everybody that matters, huh?

(00:01:16):

That’s true.

(00:01:18):

All right.

(00:01:18):

So here’s the list.

(00:01:19):

I made a list of things that I knew about you.

(00:01:20):

So you’re born in Wahoo.

(00:01:22):

You helped run the family-owned Wigwam Cafe as a kid.

(00:01:26):

At some point, you moved to California, and you became a newspaper reporter.

(00:01:31):

You’re married at some point, I think.

(00:01:33):

You don’t really talk about it to me.

(00:01:34):

And then at some point you drove a truck cross-country picking up antiques.

(00:01:38):

You told me that once.

(00:01:40):

And then you moved back to Wahoo to retire.

(00:01:42):

Was that about right?

(00:01:43):

That’s about right.

(00:01:44):

Okay.

(00:01:44):

Why did you decide to become a reporter then?

(00:01:48):

Ever since I was in high school, I was a bad student.

(00:01:54):

Mediocre Ds and Cs.

(00:01:59):

And I thought,

(00:01:59):

well,

(00:02:00):

at one of the classes,

(00:02:03):

a civics class,

(00:02:05):

the teacher asked us what we want to do when we get elderly.

(00:02:15):

And I thought, well, I want to be a reporter.

(00:02:20):

Well, that goes back quite a way.

(00:02:23):

Did you know any reporters?

(00:02:24):

Why did you tell her you wanted to be one?

(00:02:28):

Well, wasn’t Clark Kent a reporter?

(00:02:33):

So you saw a little Superman in yourself?

(00:02:35):

Probably.

(00:02:38):

At least a close friend.

(00:02:42):

Anyhow,

(00:02:45):

I started,

(00:02:47):

when I went to California,

(00:02:49):

or before I went to California,

(00:02:52):

I worked at the Bellevue Press.

(00:02:55):

right after graduation and I had that in front of me and I worked in a print shop,

(00:03:05):

a newspaper print shop here in Wahoo and in Bellevue.

(00:03:12):

And in Bellevue they let me work,

(00:03:15):

they let me interview a guy who lived in a trailer court and had a thousand

(00:03:23):

Tropical Fish in it and then their name was Trout.

(00:03:27):

And so I made a little story out of that and they printed it on the front page.

(00:03:32):

Since I was working on the press,

(00:03:36):

the big cylinder press that printed the paper,

(00:03:41):

I was able to print my own first,

(00:03:43):

my first byline.

(00:03:47):

I both wrote it and printed it.

(00:03:52):

And I still have that.

(00:03:54):

Anyhow,

(00:03:54):

I started with the newspapers there,

(00:03:56):

then I went to California after a year in Bellevue.

(00:04:00):

I had gotten a Triumph TR3 sports car, an English sports car, and I drove that to California.

(00:04:12):

I mailed the passenger seat ahead of time and put all my belongings on that spot.

(00:04:25):

I drove to California.

(00:04:27):

Got a job at a print shop there.

(00:04:30):

While I was looking for work, I didn’t know how to type.

(00:04:38):

And I asked the managing editor of the paper that I wanted to work at.

(00:04:43):

He says, fill this out.

(00:04:44):

And I said, can I use, can I write?

(00:04:48):

Can I fill it out with a written one?

(00:04:51):

And he says, yeah.

(00:04:53):

But, of course, I didn’t get that job.

(00:04:57):

What made you want to go to California?

(00:04:59):

Why didn’t you just get a job closer to Nebraska?

(00:05:02):

Well,

(00:05:02):

I did work as a printer’s devil at the Wahoo newspaper in the print shop when I was

(00:05:08):

still in high school.

(00:05:12):

When I worked in Bellevue, I lived in a flop house on 13th Street in Omaha.

(00:05:20):

And I had my time off tier 3 then.

(00:05:22):

And I spent one winter in Omaha driving through that little sports car,

(00:05:29):

trying to drive that through the snow.

(00:05:31):

This ain’t for me.

(00:05:34):

California calls.

(00:05:35):

Took off between snowstorms.

(00:05:38):

I drove as far south as I could to get out of that blizzard and carried it all the

(00:05:44):

way to California.

(00:05:46):

In your sports car?

(00:05:48):

Yeah.

(00:05:49):

Did you have a job then or you just decided to get out of the winter?

(00:05:52):

I stayed with my aunt and uncle.

(00:05:53):

They lived there since the 40s and that was my shelter.

(00:05:59):

Did you get a job after you moved or did you have a job lined up already?

(00:06:02):

No, I went job searching.

(00:06:05):

I ended up at a print shop in San Gabriel that printed wedding invitations and so

(00:06:12):

forth and that carried me through for about a year.

(00:06:18):

And I decided to, I wasn’t making it at that print shop.

(00:06:23):

I wasn’t making enough money.

(00:06:25):

So I quit there and decided, my cousins were fuller brushmen.

(00:06:37):

And I became a fuller brushman.

(00:06:41):

Of the door-to-door salesman?

(00:06:43):

Selling brushes?

(00:06:45):

Selling brushes.

(00:06:47):

Were you good at it?

(00:06:49):

Well, I went from door to door.

(00:06:54):

I didn’t, I was too shy to meet people.

(00:06:58):

I’d go door to door.

(00:06:59):

I’d say, nobody home, I hope, I hope.

(00:07:02):

You’d mutter that to yourself?

(00:07:02):

I’d mutter that and then plow it on through.

(00:07:05):

And if I got somebody’s attention,

(00:07:07):

I just held them there with,

(00:07:09):

practically grabbed them by the collar and told them to listen to what I have to

(00:07:12):

say.

(00:07:14):

And I didn’t do well at all.

(00:07:18):

I drove back to Wahoo.

(00:07:20):

What was your pitch to sell fuller brushes?

(00:07:24):

They last for a good long time.

(00:07:27):

Did they?

(00:07:28):

Whatever they’re looking at, that’ll last for a good long time.

(00:07:32):

Somehow I thought that would be magic, but it didn’t work.

(00:07:39):

It’s, uh...

(00:07:42):

So I went back to Wahoo.

(00:07:43):

So you went to, you’re a fuller brush salesman in California, you went back to Wahoo after that?

(00:07:47):

Mm-hmm.

(00:07:48):

Okay.

(00:07:48):

Yeah, I was kind of discouraged.

(00:07:50):

Oh, I was going to go to school.

(00:07:51):

Okay.

(00:07:52):

And I did.

(00:07:53):

Okay.

(00:07:53):

I went to the University of Nebraska.

(00:07:56):

Back to Lincoln, went to school.

(00:07:59):

Oh, when I came back from California, oh, I took, taking classes by mail.

(00:08:06):

From California?

(00:08:08):

No, from Wahoo.

(00:08:09):

Did you ever actually go to class in Lincoln?

(00:08:12):

Or was it all by mail?

(00:08:14):

Yeah, I did.

(00:08:14):

I took French class about a semester.

(00:08:18):

There was a print shop course.

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Okay.

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It was in the basement of one of the buildings there.

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And I really took to the print shop work, type of work.

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I did that real well.

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So I thought well I’ll quit my job here but my grades were falling real bad at the university.

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That’s when I went to Bellevue.

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I was doing real well at the print shop there at the university that I thought I’d

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get a job doing the same thing and get paid for it.

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So I worked for the Bellevue Press for about a year and decided I’d go back to

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California and look for a job.

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All right.

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So you grew up in Wahoo.

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You went to California, became a fuller brush salesman, came back.

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Went to school,

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got a job,

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took a bunch of classes a…

I’m very excited to introduce my friend, author and illustrator Ben Lueders on a brand-new podcast from the As Told By C.S. Beaty empire.

There are way more interesting people coming who you’re not going to want to miss. Subscribe to make sure you don’t miss them!

Today’s guest is the guy who designed my book,

(00:00:33):

was in a band with me,

(00:00:35):

and sold me this podcast gear.

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Author and artist, Ben Looters.

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I don’t.

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I bought this stuff from you and it took us two hours to do it and we didn’t make

(00:00:46):

it any farther.

(00:00:47):

And that was the story of the worst podcast purchase I’ve ever made.

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Is this on?

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Are you recording right now?

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I am.

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I mean, this may not make it to the end.

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I got this magic audacity feature where for the next seven hours you can

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individually cut certain things and change it and delete it.

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It takes a really long time and it doesn’t turn out very well, but it’s awesome.

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Oh man, I want to make sure I’m not like way over here like Bob.

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Well, just like, should we put you in a rocking chair?

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Because that’s how he did it.

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Oh dude, that does sound good.

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Yeah, he loved it.

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When was the time you felt like a loser?

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I didn’t

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But I got a lot of matted fur cut out of my dog for that.

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Well, hey, any time, bro.

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Is that what it takes?

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That’s the kind of show this is, just so you know.

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It’s also the show that I’m getting really hot in this sweatshirt, so I’m going to take it off.

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Oh, man.

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I feel like this is why it needs to be a video podcast.

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It is.

(00:01:57):

Every five minutes, Chris takes off another piece of clothing.

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I reveal another tattoo.

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Is that the only tattoo you... No, I got many.

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You actually?

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Yeah, you want me to do a naked podcast?

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Is this going to be like the strip poker version of podcasts?

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The thing about you,

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Chris,

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is like,

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I think I know you really well,

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but I don’t know you well enough to know sometimes when you’re joking and when

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you’re not.

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I never tell a lie.

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That’s true.

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I’m usually very odd.

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I usually just try to frame things that makes you wonder if I’m telling the truth.

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I think you say things that I hope you’re lying.

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Yeah, they’re almost always true.

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Yes, I have additional tattoos.

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Would you like to see them?

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Here’s one.

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Oh, sure.

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Here’s this one.

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You should recognize this one.

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Oh, that’s beautiful.

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That’s the asterisk that I designed on the cover of your book.

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I already told you that one’s below the belt.

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No,

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this is the tattoo from my wedding reception that you were at that apparently you

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didn’t pay very good attention to.

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Not enough to get it tattooed.

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I have the arbitrary Greek tattoo that says,

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hey,

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this isn’t Greek and I don’t know what it means,

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but it’s not Chinese,

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so it’s trendier.

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And then I have on my back, I have That one’s harder to do.

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I can come over there and undress you a little bit.

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It’s going to be hard to get on this mic here.

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That one’s got cocaine leaves on it.

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That’s the seal of where my kids were born.

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And literally the outskirt of it, this is another, is he telling the truth?

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It’s cocaine leaves.

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Is it actually?

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Yeah, coca leaves, not cocaine.

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Oh, it’s because of Coca-Cola.

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They’re big fans of Coca-Cola and Tuluwa.

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Yeah, Tuluwa.

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Do they make you get that when you adopt someone from there?

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It’s part of the process.

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It’s paperwork.

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That’s why it takes so long.

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Stand in line for your tattoo.

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Yeah.

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Yeah everyone’s got a good tattoo we adopted three kids so all of them have the matching tattoo

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Make sure you’re a bad parent by getting a tattoo right away.

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Literally,

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I waited to get this tattoo until after the kids were adopted because I had this,

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we were watching it,

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my kids were adopted from Columbia,

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so we had watched a lot of Narcos before we went,

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which is all about- Is that required viewing?

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Yeah, that’s another part of the problem.

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That’s also why it takes so long because there’s a lot of seasons to get through.

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And I literally thought through my head,

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because you know they have gang tattoos and I’ve always heard people,

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maybe not always,

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I’ve heard that people will get gang tattoos and they’ll be like,

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you don’t have a gang tattoo then they get like I don’t know what kind of show this

(00:04:24):

they get their ass kicked I don’t know what my level of if I’m gonna do the e or

(00:04:27):

not on this podcast we didn’t swear with Bob I think oh I’ve heard these stories

(00:04:32):

they like get their ass kicked for having like fake gang tattoos by real gang

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members I don’t know if that’s an urban legend but like so my first thought was I’m

(00:04:39):

gonna get this tattoo of where my kids are from and find out that that’s some

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Colombian drug cartel logo and like

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Either that or it’s going to save your life.

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Probably.

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They’re going to be coming at you and you flash your tattoo.

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And they’re going to be like, oh, he’s one of us.

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El gringo.

(00:04:58):

It’s like the thing that saves you.

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It’s like, yeah, that would be really good.

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I just knew that I was going to be in a pool with my kids that I couldn’t speak to.

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And they’re either going to offer me cocaine or I don’t know.

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I’ve seen a lot of narcos and they never repeat a murder twice.

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So I don’t know what they would come up with.

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Oh, man.

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So this is what podcasting is like, huh?

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I guess so.

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It kind of feels like just talking.

(00:05:20):

So far, it’s been very visual.

(00:05:22):

I do think this,

(00:05:23):

I think if you’re going to keep going in this way,

(00:05:25):

where you’re taking off layers of clothes,

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you’re showing tattoos,

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giving people questionable drinks,

(00:05:33):

this is something people need to see.

(00:05:34):

Well,

(00:05:34):

so far,

(00:05:35):

the only hookup I have with podcast equipment is you,

(00:05:38):

and you’ve proven yourself to not be a very good source.

(00:05:41):

Hey, I told you to get the right cables.

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You got them.

(00:05:44):

You made it work.

(00:05:45):

Yeah, and

(00:05:46):

Those didn’t set you back too far, did they?

(00:05:48):

Yeah, those Amazon Basics $7 a cable really did the trick after two hours of troubleshooting.

(00:05:55):

All right, Ben Looters.

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What makes you interesting?

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Oh, man.

(00:06:00):

What makes me... That’s the first question?

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No, the first question was, when did you feel like a loser?

(00:06:04):

And you already did that.

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Oh, that’s true.

(00:06:05):

And the second question was, do you want to see all my tattoos?

(00:06:07):

That’s true.

(00:06:08):

We’re like halfway through the show.

(00:06:10):

We’re five minutes.

(00:06:11):

This is a seven-minute podcast.

(00:06:12):

Yeah.

(00:06:13):

We’re at the end where you reveal why I’m not, why I’m interesting.

(00:06:17):

The trick to editing this is you do everything in like reverse chronological order.

(00:06:21):

Oh man, what makes me interesting?

(00:06:24):

I mean, I think I’m like moderately interesting.

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I think I have like,

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when I talk to other people,

(00:06:32):

like I do feel like I have a pretty interesting job a…