TAGQ (That's A Good Question)
TAGQ (That's A Good Question)
Snoqualmie Falling
This episode reveals unexpected connections between concealed talents, consumer curiosities, and profound artistic insights, all while celebrating the adventures of life. Our conversation shifts from electric drums and budget mushroom powders to reflecting on the invaluable impact of David Lynch’s creativity and sharing exhilarating stories from a duck hunting trip.
• Exploring the unique journey of an electric drum set
• Unpacking the mystery behind cheap mushroom powders
• Engaging in thoughtful Reddit discussions on product integrity
• Reflecting on the life and artistry of David Lynch
• Sharing thrilling experiences and lessons learned from duck hunting
• Considerations for cooking freshly hunted duck
Join us in this fun and enlightening exploration where art, life, and the unexpected intertwine!
Oh my god, it's disgusting.
Ben:Hello, I need to not eat in here.
Scott:I know you're not there.
Ben:Oh, I think I'm not awake. Shit on my desk. Oh, I'm here now. Can you hear me Can?
Scott:you see me? Yes, can you hear and see me?
Ben:You know it's good lighting when it is depressing me. You know that the lumens are real, really out of this world. I can hear you.
Scott:I can see you. I'm trying out these new headphones. Maybe they, maybe they'll work. We'll see. Yeah, I got to drum in a four-hour practice today with a group. Yeah, and I took the Four hours. I took the electric drum set that's been dismembered in the garage for half a decade and put it together and, wow, that still works. Use that somehow. Um, a few parts are missing, but I think they are all the ones that uh peter wanted to get rid of because he didn't like the cymbals or the snare, so he threw them into the pool probably yeah.
Scott:I don't know that electric drum set has been around California in various places.
Ben:It's been all over, Came across the Pacific at one point I imagine Could be Destined for a life.
Scott:Is Roland. A Japanese company Should know that.
Ben:Roland sounds like European to me.
Scott:But it was probably made in Asia. Maybe or.
Ben:Massachusetts, you're right, right.
Scott:We could sponsor them and have it be, you know get it out of the way.
Ben:Anglo-American. What is Anglo-American? Have it be, you know, get it out of the way. Anglo-american what? What is anglo-american?
Scott:how can we sponsor something? I don't know? I guess is that a term that people use is my is my point. We sponsor something by mentioning their products, like the electric drums or the, I guess drum machine, or even you sponsor someone.
Ben:You don't know the ins and outs of their business model or their geographical location, their manufacturing or their soft headquarters where they do the soft things Like my design of my drums, things like designed in California, made in China, softly made in California.
Scott:We're not talking about. I know who you're referring to, but we don't have to Refer to them.
Ben:I don't know who I'm referring to, but we we don't have to refer to them, um I? I don't know who I'm referring to.
Scott:So let's. Yeah, we don't have to do that. Yeah, how's? How's life in the north woods?
Ben:good, I got um, I have a reddit post and for those listeners that don't know what Reddit is, it's a really big website. Probably I don't know, would you call it. Might be in like the top 10, just like most used websites on the internet.
Scott:It's like the most down to earth or retro, you know web chat place.
Ben:Yeah, but it's large Decentral place, yeah, decentralized.
Scott:I don't know if it's decentralized, it's just not that fancy of a user interface. Yeah yeah.
Ben:Somehow it's just more than other websites in which people interact a lot. I put a post on it a couple years ago because I was buying these mushroom powders. Mushroom powders are very expensive. The reason they're very expensive is because there's a high demand for them and they you know it's not that easy to go out and harvest superfood mushrooms. But Grocery Outlet sells a lot of different mushroom powders for like very low prices, for like very low prices, and when I tried to do Google searches on the company, I would pretty much come up with nothing. I found the address of their headquarters somewhere in.
Ben:Southern California, yep, and so I was able to see like a Google Street View, but it was in some industrial park somewhere. It's just, you know, just any old warehouse building, and it just seems so weird to me. It's like why is this company selling me a seven dollar bag of lion's mane mushroom powder, whereas if I buy it from anywhere else, the same bag is 35 dollars?
Scott:have you discovered some more information on this?
Ben:not really okay. You just asked me how my day was and I revisited the post because someone so here's, here's the thing. I uh was just on my computer today doing life admin things and someone made a. People have periodically been posting on it because it's quite a popular post. Um, I put it on the on the page consumer, and the post is titled Sherry Sweetheart Products and Potential Toxins. That's what I titled the post, and when you Google Sherry Sweetheart, this is on the front page of Google and everything else is just their website saying like we offer low, low cost, affordable superfoods and but anyway.
Ben:And so people have been being like, yeah, why, why is it so cheap? Like I don't really get it. And there have been different prop 65 warnings about them. But if you know anything about prop 65, one thing that came out of this was that it's like oh, prop 65 is actually kind of questionable in the first place, for that's the one where different companies have to say this facility or this product is known to contain chemicals that can cause cancer and other reproductive harm or what have you.
Ben:But a couple of the products were listed by lawyers as being potentially harmful and someone posted on it today and said this is complete BS. Please email me from ClarkSherry89. And I'm like, okay, sherry, actually. And I found out that their name is actually Sherry Clark and I emailed them to be like, oh, this is interesting, this is weird, like why the whole point of Reddit is that you can have these. You can discuss whether or not something is bullshit. Right then and there that's kind of like, but it exists to have a dialogue. And so this person emailed me back and all that they said is that they're just really, really worried that there's someone who's potentially started a company in their name and they're really, really concerned and they want to have more information for what's going on.
Scott:That's all story right so you don't know.
Ben:I have to reassure sherry that everything's fine and that well I'm. You're not first name and people make companies with your name.
Scott:Yeah, but their name on their email doesn't prove they are that person. Well, they signed off.
Ben:Pardon they signed off.
Scott:Sherry, after they responded to me, they signed off. Is that what you said?
Ben:Yeah, they responded to my email being like okay, here's's my email to you. I'm curious what you mean. I'm eager to hear more about why you say this post is complete BS. And then they responded with a lot of you know. I don't want to for what they said. They actually gave me a lot of interesting personal information that I'm like okay, this is great. It's kind of oversharing, that's okay.
Ben:And then they signed off sherry okay, yeah, that doesn't solve any mysteries, but but, you know it does solve the mystery, because they posted on the thread saying this is complete BS, Please email me. And the mystery was like OK, what's complete BS about this? And what's complete BS about it is that they found out that there was a company that has a name that's kind of similar to their name.
Scott:OK, I guess we'll learn more about this in the future.
Ben:It's not much of a mystery to begin with, but I'm not sure how should I respond to say I can assure you, Sherry, everything is okay. Well, what do I do? How do I let her know that it's?
Scott:all you did was make a post about a product that had the name on it and asked why it was so cheap. Yes, and then? Why is that complete BS?
Ben:So I think something we might need to know about this person, Sherry, is this is also a fine. I keep saying Sherry, but I actually have no idea how any of this is pronounced.
Ben:The company's name is spelled C-H-E and then that E has an accent over it, so it's C-H-E-R-I an accent over it, so it's C-H-E R-I-E. So I don't actually know how to pronounce that. And this person that emailed me, their name is C-H-E, no accent, r-i, c-h-e, r-i. And I think the thing that we need to know about Sherry is that she doesn't seem to quite fully understand how just cause and effect and where it's appropriate to write things on the Internet. I think it's, you know, kind of like your grandma posting on facebook something that's completely irrelevant. It's like, why did you have to post to my wall about how you're going to send me a message? Why don't you just send?
Ben:me a message, grandma. Does this make any?
Scott:sense yeah, or or it could be an ai doing it. I mean, how do you know?
Ben:What are they trying to accomplish by just sending me? There's no link and there's not going to be. I'm pretty sure. I think it's just an uninformed Internet user that is just now learning how to use computers.
Scott:Did you use the name in any of your posts?
Ben:Did I use my name? No, the Sherry.
Scott:Use my name, no, the product name, sherry no. So why is there a connection here? Why? Why do you think this person is a credible speaker for the mushroom, cheap mushroom powder people?
Ben:oh, I definitely don't think they're a credible speaker, for that's not that. That's not the concern. It's just that they're a concerned individual that there's a trademark with their name.
Scott:I don't know.
Ben:It's like what if your name was Jack. It's like if I made a post about Jack Link's Beef Jerky and I'm like what's going on? Is there a lead in Jack Link's beef jerky? And then someone named Jack Link said like this is this is really frightening, please email me immediately. And I emailed them and Jack responded like I'm I'm just concerned. Someone is operating a company with potential toxins under my name. This is not what I stand for.
Scott:I'm a good person AI bot that says read this thread and then write something back to the initial why? Because then they engage with you and eventually they're going to ask you for some money from your checking account.
Ben:That's fun.
Scott:Yeah.
Ben:Okay.
Scott:I'm sorry. Oh, I didn't you know, yeah, but anything that starts out with this is BS, is like okay.
Ben:It's already okay. Ai is so much more this interchange. Ai has come out with so much more sophisticated communication, though, or are they just using their own model?
Scott:we just broke the new rule oh, oh ding ding doge alert.
Ben:Okay, different topic.
Scott:The topic now is Roland drum and percussion company yeah, I guess most of Roland's products are Roland Drum and Percussion Company. Yeah, I guess most of Roland's products are percussion related and they're good and you can sit on them or bang on them or plug them into your MIDI piano. Wow, things that we've done with our Roland products, maybe.
Ben:Maybe they should be our sponsor. Pardon, maybe they should be our sponsor, yeah.
Scott:Anyway Pad 9.
Ben:Yeah, what, I'm sorry. You're right. That's the topic we chose. We have to keep talking Pad 9.
Scott:We have a Pad 5. Peter has a Pad 9. Just great for drummers. Quality drumming apparatus, especially electronic drum machine.
Ben:It's not going to be apparatuses, because it's Greek group, yeah, or?
Scott:would it be apparatuses, because it's Greek root? Yeah, the drum throne is kind of like oh, they're crossing over into physical gear. You know they usually are more digital gear, usually better physical gear. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So just about that too. Yay, yay. Yay, roland, and we don't know about too. Yay, roland, and we don't know about, sherry, yay.
Ben:Roland, but we're not sure about Still. Yeah, we're still investigating that?
Scott:Yeah, what's that? You didn't find a new topic.
Ben:Sherry, no, it's. I mean you need to? Yeah, if you need to pull one, yeah, go for it. You can do it.
Scott:Here it says where are the colored pencils? Discuss amongst yourself Do you have any colored pencils? Did you take my colored pencils?
Ben:Where are the colored pencils? Yeah, that's what my piece of paper said I have a few over here.
Scott:Okay.
Ben:Do you need them for a minute?
Scott:No, I just bought myself a set recently. Oh, you've got a whole briefcase full of them. Not that briefcase, sorry, this one, okay the code for this briefcase for if I ever die is 147 for both of them, so that anyone here what can hold are going to be coming from people, are going to be coming from china and breaking in.
Ben:Are these the colored?
Scott:pencils you're looking for. Oh no, mine were not, as we're not made by a large brand name.
Ben:So they were in a tin.
Scott:It's just what was written here. What about these ones? Nope, not those either. These are even more off-brand. Are you making use of colored pencils? Yeah, those.
Ben:Oh, these are it. Should I mail them to you?
Scott:Open it up. I want to see the inside. You know this is really.
Ben:No, I haven't been making use of these colored pencils.
Scott:That looks like the set I bought. No, I haven't been making use of these colored pencils. That looks like the set I bought.
Ben:No, I definitely bought these.
Scott:Yeah, so mine might just be like that.
Ben:Yeah, okay, I bought these to help me with landscaping back in the day, uh-huh Well, yeah, those are my colored pencils. Yeah, have you ever thought about, like, those are my colored pencils. Yeah, have you ever thought about, like, what do you do when I guess I'm locked up? My Facebook account is just locked out, period. David Lynch died yesterday. Yes, or two days ago.
Scott:Yeah, friday, friday yeah.
Ben:Right, and when I Googled it there was a. There was a Facebook post from his family using his account, or maybe on his page. I didn't actually click, that's how it went out. It was. It's kind of scary to be on a dead person's Facebook page.
Scott:Yeah, memorial Facebook page. Yeah, memorial Facebook page. Yeah, that's a thing I guess. Yeah, there must be a lot of them.
Ben:Yes, it is. There must be a lot of those out there. There are a lot of people out there, it's true.
Scott:It's true, it's true. Well, you can only look at the public pages, right? Maybe David Lynch had a private Facebook page?
Ben:Unclear. He probably had both. He was a boomer. He probably still had Facebook.
Scott:I read something by Kyle McLaughlin who said that without David Lynch he wouldn't have a career and his main advantage in working with David Lynch was that he could understand the word-free way that he wanted to give direction. It was just more like make the unrealized gesture. I mean, david lynch thought that words were far too restrictive, because why do you make, why are we making a movie, if words were enough, you know, right, yeah. So when he was directing he kind of felt the same way and uh and uh, well, kyle, yeah, knew how to do it.
Ben:I think that's why I loved him so much was because he created. He created worlds and scenes and stories that went so far beyond like just rationality, and the plots were just like never, they were.
Ben:They were always what's the word? They were completely enigmatic, right, not completely. They, you know there was enough where it was like you could, enough to keep you sustained, to keep you interested. For you know, depending on the, the show or the movie in question during the season of twin pigs might have been a slightly different story, where it was just like what the david, what right? Going on and at the same time, like I loved it. But that was a pretty unpopular opinion, I feel like. But that's, I think that's why I loved him so much, but because he didn't really care to like restrain himself with logic or rationality and he kind of understood that like life and truth goes so far beyond that thinky, thinky brain. You know, it's just kind of just the whole yeah, he didn't want to.
Scott:he would never answer questions about what he meant. Yeah, like what did you mean in this scene in Dune?
Ben:Yeah right, I remember reading an interview from him Watch the movie, watch. Yeah, I remember reading an interview with him about the third season of twin peaks, when people would ask him yeah, exactly what did you mean by that? He would? He would just tell them there's not a chance in the world I'm gonna say any of that. Yeah, yeah he, uh, he made it a little bit more. Okay for me to just be weird yeah he.
Ben:I feel like he's one of the first famous people that has died where I like really feel like a. There are many famous people that I feel like have really actually sort of like coaxed out like this extra little bit of Ben, and I feel like David Lynch is someone that like has helped me take certain steps on my just life journey and life's path, and I can't really say that for any other famous person, is it?
Scott:because? Is it because he modeled how to take action on creative thought, like, without it being constrained?
Ben:It's really hard for me to say why. The fact that I think part of it's that he could take action on. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry everybody. There are other voices happening. I don't, we don't, we don't operate this podcast in a studio, can you? Can you hear anything?
Scott:I didn't hear anything. What about?
Ben:now.
Scott:Yeah, I heard something. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ben:Yeah, roommates I have. I swear there's nothing other than just two pieces of drywall and all of these walls intermission, okay. This episode is also brought to you by thin walls keeping keeping undergrad students and grad students connected since 1970. Tate took action on creative ideas that just didn't fit into regular Hollywood expectations and conditioning and yet somehow he still kind of caught people's attention, like across the board Maybe I mean not across the board- but to an extent where it's like we are happy to give you prime time spots on television.
Ben:You know, it's like be true to who you are and although I mean, there were always certain sort of concessions that he had to make and at the same time there were plenty of movies and stuff where he was giving like full creative so that the hero's journey is in like, oh yeah, being being weird and sticking to it in the face of uh, a conforming, yeah, business environment.
Scott:It's gonna say could you? Do something less weird.
Ben:Just I just felt like he was constantly just breaking down, like, yeah, breaking down the expectations and conditioning, just constantly throwing stuff out the window and renewing and renewing and everything just ended up being completely surprising. Yeah.
Scott:Yeah, maybe he wasn't doing it to provoke, but he had to endure the provocations. That happened, I imagine, or maybe he didn't. It just seemed like a racer head. It's like oh, that's a really weird movie, dave. So yeah, not that I've seen it or anything, but I know where it was shown. The first time I ever heard about it. It's like, oh, that's an art film.
Ben:All I've done is seen different shots from that movie, but I still actually haven't seen that movie. It would always show up in my recommended on Netflix or whatever I was like. Now is not the time for me, I'm not ready for this one right now, and so I just maybe it's appropriate for me to go to his very first film it seemed like you'd want to see it in a theater.
Scott:you know watch it with what? Watch it in a theater, you think so I would get more absorbed into it that way yeah.
Ben:Having it projected would be, I think, finding a friend's house where they have a projector. I think that's a really good idea for that movie. Yeah, yeah, there was just Such a yeah, yeah, there was just such a yeah true artist, I guess. I guess I've said everything I will. I just could be more. Just want to make sure I give him credit for credit as well. I lit him a candle on Friday night and put some quinoa in a bowl. Supposedly he really liked quinoa. There's an amazing video on YouTube of him making quinoa and it's just like the whole process. He just follows, he takes you through the process from start to finish and then it doesn't cut while it's cooking. You just hang out and you just listen to him talk and it's the quinoa's cooking and then it finishes. Highly recommend it. It's a very lynchian video, for sure. It's so absurd you could.
Scott:You could drive out the naqumie Falls, you know yeah, I still haven't done that.
Ben:First time I ever went to Washington.
Scott:I wanted to do that, but it just didn't fit in my memory it's like right next to the road, like your interstate goes through the same place where the, the river and the falls are. I could be making that up.
Ben:I wouldn't be able to tell you. I would not be able to tell you. I could tell you actually.
Scott:You could, but you know Googling while you're.
Ben:That's correct and it would be entirely meaningless, and that would be you asked me how I was doing and, for whatever reason, the reddit thing first came to mind and I really just brought that up to brag because I made a popular reddit post. Hey, that's pretty cool, just trying to look out for the people. But the other thing is I got back last night from a hunting trip. I was out trying to murder some ducks.
Scott:That's not the language to use.
Ben:I shot one that was probably already dead. Oh, but I might have made it doubly dead by shooting it. I not that great with a shotgun. I'm not horrible, though I was still connecting. The night before we went hunting we shot some clays, which might be not a new favorite hobby, but something I could be like want to like future friends, or whatever like a good first date be like want to go shoot some shotguns.
Ben:It's like oh, I can add that one to the list of potential activities to talk to and you hit some clay I hit some clay.
Ben:It took me a while to kind of figure it out, but once I did, I'm like oh okay, things are clear, you gotta lead it. Well, that wasn't even it. I didn't even really I couldn't figure out how, figure out how the sights actually worked for a while it's just so fast I was putting the gun in the wrong spot, I was putting my head in the wrong place. It's actually quite. I wasn't leaning the right amount. I knew what they meant about leading, but that just it just wasn't. That little tidbit just wasn't helping me. And then it didn't even matter. Like, once I got all those other things clicked, then the leading was kind of second nature.
Scott:So this duck has a lot of buckshot in it.
Ben:A bit not as much asshot in it A bit Not as much as I thought it would. Honestly, yeah, it's not too bad, but I really I got to be careful. Yeah, definitely, when I roast up this little widgeon Widgeon, it's what it's called. It's not a pigeon, but it's a wigeon, like a water pigeon, different kinds of ducks. We shot wigeon, we shot pintail, we shot mallards where did you go?
Ben:about an hour 20 minutes north of Seattle. We were on private property. The expert hunters that took us out. One of them was friends with the guy that owned the property and so he got special permission. We were in the middle of a fallow potato field. I set up our decoys every night.
Scott:Near water.
Ben:We were right in front of a little channel through the ag fields. It was close to water. The field was a little bit flooded, which is why migrating birds would be stopping in On different days. We could have been seeing like a lot of Canadian geese, but for whatever reason they just weren't really flying through. Yeah, yeah, it was scary and I am not very quick to the trigger. I found that out by the time it's like okay here they come, here they come.
Ben:We're also in a duck blind which is really just like you know a little. There were eight of us in this duck blind and it was just kind of this row of dead tall ryegrass all kind of stitched together and kept up with a metal stand, and so the idea is that you don't want the ducks to know that there's a human there at all, and so we all hide in there and some people are like on the lookout, looking for where there are ducks flying, and then they start doing their little. I can't do it, but you know, special little duck call and then that's supposedly, you know, that helps.
Scott:It's like oh, what's over there there are ducks eating over there.
Ben:Let's go hang out with them.
Ben:But they were actually not really all that crazy about landing, so all day long there were like a few here and there flying through. But really the way you want to have it as a duck hunter is to set it up so that they like fly and land in the shallows right in front of you so that you have a really good, clear shot, and they're like flapping their wings coming to land, and so then you get up right as they're landing and then shooting them from like 30 yards away or less, typically, um, maybe not that close, but somewhere in that range, and the whole day they were just kind of like seeing the spot, but weren't? None of them were really wanting to land, and so we spent all this time with hunter safety and everything, just being told to stay within our lanes because there were eight of us all with fucking shotguns, right, and so it's like well, no, no way, you know, don't shoot too far to the right or the left, you know, don't shoot in someone else's lane.
Ben:but then, when we actually got into the day, ducks were flying overhead and all these mentors that's what they call us, that's what they call the more expert hunters, um, that are teaching us newbies how to hunt the ducks are flying overhead and they'd be like, okay, shoot. And I'm like, okay, we're. I couldn't see anything up to this point either.
Ben:I'm like because they're the ones on the lookout and they're like don't move, ben, don't move, don't lift your head, they'll see your white-ass face. And so I'm like, okay, okay, go shoot. And I'm like, okay, I don't know where the duck is, so I have to look everywhere and then it turns out it's right above me and everyone else is shooting straight up in the air.
Ben:Oh God, I'm like wait, what happened to the lathes? What is going on? What the fuck? And I'm like I'm not no, shane, you're not going to pressure me into shooting this like straight in the air, god, so it's just like what, uh, I was, it was a lot, it was quite the day. Uh, it was fun and also I'm kind of overwhelmed.
Scott:But I would love to go hunting again.
Ben:What a time.
Scott:Oh, wow, well, okay.
Ben:I slept really well last night. I slept for like two straight hours, the first time I done that. How?
Scott:are you going to cook the duck before we're done here? How am I going to cook the duck?
Ben:Well, I only got a little. Plucking them is really hard. Yeah, we have less than a minute, plucking them is really hard. We have less than a minute, plucking them is really hard. So I only plucked one small bird and then the rest we processed and we just skin them and have their breast and their little tiny legs.
Ben:So we had duck fajitas last night and I kind of want to grind up the breasts and the legs to make burger duck duck, like ground duck meat. I think I might do duck burgers. And then the little widget I'm just going to roast really hot, kind of like those like old guinea hens that you and mom used to make for dinner.
Scott:Oh, okay, yeah, that's awesome. Happy hunting yeah.
