Dom L'Amour speaks with Jacob Buckenmyer (@jabucke) about the actor/writers stike, how traveling shapes your world view, AI and so much more.
Can mindful caffeine consumption enhance your well-being? Join us as we kick off this episode with our guest, Jacob Buckenmyer, to explore this intriguing question. We start by sharing the vibrant atmosphere of live concerts, where the absence of phones fosters deeper social connections. Our conversation then transitions to the mindful consumption of caffeine, drawing inspiration from the traditional Japanese tea ceremony. Jacob opens up about his journey of reducing caffeine intake, emphasizing the benefits of moderation and balanced habits.
Our cultural observations take center stage as we compare Japan and the United States through the lens of personal travel experiences. We delve into the respect and care embedded in Japanese culture, from the meticulous upkeep of public cleanliness to the communal spirit seen in daily practices. A particularly poignant moment is Jacob's personal anecdote about the challenge of finding a hair pick as a black man in Japan, highlighting the unique and diverse experiences encountered during international travel. We reflect on these cultural contrasts, suggesting ways to incorporate greater mindfulness and community spirit into our often hurried American lifestyles.
We also tackle the sensitive nature of cultural engagement and historical awareness. From the sanitized portrayals of local cultures during cruise travels to the nuanced balance between tradition and modernity in art, we explore the importance of genuine cultural experiences. The conversation extends to the latest actor's writer strike, the transformative power of travel, and the significance of art and originality in the age of AI. We wrap up with heartfelt gratitude for the listeners' positive feedback, celebrating the joy of our shared connection and the enriching discussions that keep us all engaged. Tune in for a thoughtful episode that bridges tradition, modernity, and the essence of mindful living.
Opening quote by Michael Tippett
Opening and Closing Theme song: Produced by Dom L'Amour
Transition Music from Mad Chops Vol. 1 & Vol. 2 by Mad Keys
Featured song : "Beyond The Sea" Covered by Dom L'Amour and Jacob Buckenmyer
Cover art by Studio Mania: Custom Art @studiomania99
Please subscribe to the podcast, and give us a good rating. 5 stars please and thank you. Follow me on @doml_amour on Instagram. Or at domlamour.com
Dom L'Amour speaks with Jacob Buckenmyer (@jabucke) about the actor/writers stike, how traveling shapes your world view, AI and so much more.
Can mindful caffeine consumption enhance your well-being? Join us as we kick off this episode with our guest, Jacob Buckenmyer, to explore this intriguing question. We start by sharing the vibrant atmosphere of live concerts, where the absence of phones fosters deeper social connections. Our conversation then transitions to the mindful consumption of caffeine, drawing inspiration from the traditional Japanese tea ceremony. Jacob opens up about his journey of reducing caffeine intake, emphasizing the benefits of moderation and balanced habits.
Our cultural observations take center stage as we compare Japan and the United States through the lens of personal travel experiences. We delve into the respect and care embedded in Japanese culture, from the meticulous upkeep of public cleanliness to the communal spirit seen in daily practices. A particularly poignant moment is Jacob's personal anecdote about the challenge of finding a hair pick as a black man in Japan, highlighting the unique and diverse experiences encountered during international travel. We reflect on these cultural contrasts, suggesting ways to incorporate greater mindfulness and community spirit into our often hurried American lifestyles.
We also tackle the sensitive nature of cultural engagement and historical awareness. From the sanitized portrayals of local cultures during cruise travels to the nuanced balance between tradition and modernity in art, we explore the importance of genuine cultural experiences. The conversation extends to the latest actor's writer strike, the transformative power of travel, and the significance of art and originality in the age of AI. We wrap up with heartfelt gratitude for the listeners' positive feedback, celebrating the joy of our shared connection and the enriching discussions that keep us all engaged. Tune in for a thoughtful episode that bridges tradition, modernity, and the essence of mindful living.
Opening quote by Michael Tippett
Opening and Closing Theme song: Produced by Dom L'Amour
Transition Music from Mad Chops Vol. 1 & Vol. 2 by Mad Keys
Featured song : "Beyond The Sea" Covered by Dom L'Amour and Jacob Buckenmyer
Cover art by Studio Mania: Custom Art @studiomania99
Please subscribe to the podcast, and give us a good rating. 5 stars please and thank you. Follow me on @doml_amour on Instagram. Or at domlamour.com
Everybody was cheering for him, like he was the biggest rock star in the world and the best sex symbol you'd ever seen, and all this kind of stuff where you were just like everybody's here, man, everybody's present. And it was also interesting too, because once you were in the venue, you show up to the venue an hour before the concert starts, or two hours before the concert starts, and then all of a sudden, you're just sitting next to your friend and you can't pull your phone out to look at Instagram and waste time until the concert starts, and so it's like well, now it's even forcing me to be like so how's it going? Just like have a conversation with the person you're at the concert with.
Speaker 2:Ladies and gentlemen, and anyone else who is here, my name is Don Lamour and you are listening to the Black man Talking Emotions podcast. On today's episode, I speak with my guy, jacob Buckmeyer, about the actor's writer strike, how traveling shapes your worldview, ai and so much more. My true function within a society which embraces all of us is to continue an age-old tradition. This tradition is to create images from the depths of the imagination and to give them form, whether visual, intellectual or musical.
Speaker 1:So I'm on day 12, no caffeine.
Speaker 2:You know I didn't do caffeine for years. Now I'm back. I'm not drinking like cold brews anymore or triple espressos, I'm not doing any of that but I am doing caffeine again. Going to Japan really reintroduced it to me, because you know they do tea and did this green tea ceremony.
Speaker 2:that's what we did, so we went to this room there was a couple other tourists and this lady in traditional clothing and she gave us pretty much the small version of what it was. One thing I noticed she said early in the conversation is that when we do green tea we do it in doses, because when we first started drinking it, of course we looked at it as medicine. So we look at caffeine kind of like it's a medicine that we use to help us throughout the day, and I don't know what about that stuck with me. But when I heard that I was like you know, that's a good way to look at it. I look at it like it's the devil and I shouldn't do it and I wanted to get away from it because it was a drug and I'm like, no, I can't. But it was like everything is good in moderation and if I could take two things the Tylenol, ibuprofen I can do a cup of green tea, especially good matcha tea that comes from flipping Japan. So I sat there and I watched how they put it together, I watched the patients, I watched a routine and I was already thinking of ways that I could change it, the ways that I could make it faster, how I could use a fork instead of the way that they mix it, or I could use my mixer that I use for my espresso, and I was like wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. The whole point is to honor every part of it and do it traditionally. And that's part of your morning routine, that's part of your everyday, that's part of creating good habits.
Speaker 2:And I sat there and I went through this whole thing by myself, going through this tea ceremony. By the time we were done I was like, okay, so I need to get the dose thing. I want to make sure I get proper matcha from the right region that I liked, and I want to make sure that I get the bamboo stir that you get with it. I want to make sure that I treat it as sacred as it was introduced to me. And so now you know when I make this.
Speaker 2:You know I didn't just get up and pour it into a cup and walk away. I made the hot water and I cleaned it up the way I'm supposed to do it. I'm not as delicate as they were, but I make sure I do my routine and I do a certain amount. I don't overdo it and I'm very particular about that. I do one cup of orange juice in the morning. I do one cup of caffeine in the morning and it's really been delightful. So props to you on taking some time from it, but don't look at it like it's horrible, because it could do some good sometimes.
Speaker 1:Let's say you talk about all that just like fired off, like three things in my head that I like immediately. It was like oh, I want to touch on that. I want to touch on that. I want immediately was like oh, I want to touch on that. I want to touch on that kind of in the same way, where you're like it's medicine, yeah, and not like viewing it as a medicine versus like viewing it as a drug or whatever. Like part of my problem, I think, and part of the reason I wanted to do this this month, was because I was kind of in a place where, on average, I was consuming caffeine like kind of an alarming rate, like literally on average a day would be like 600 to 800 milligrams if you were to do 600 to 800 milligrams of weed, you couldn't move.
Speaker 2:That's what that's the way you should think about. That's the way you should think and it.
Speaker 1:It was one of those things where I'd be like I don't, like I'm I feel so exhausted and so worn out and wrung out and all this kind of stuff, and I kind of started to realize it's like now. It's like keeping you wired even when you're trying to fall asleep and your body just can't, it's lost, it's reset. So that was a little bit of it, and so I'm feeling better, like I still definitely wake up and be like, oh man, it'd be nice. You know, I woke up this morning at four and it would have been nice to like be able to get a Starbucks cold brew or whatever at you know 5am or something like that. But I'm doing okay with it and I'm kind of enjoying the like kind of mental place it puts me in, to be like you don't need it, push through for another hour and you'll be fine, yeah. And then the other thing is you're talking about so I've also been to Japan.
Speaker 1:I was mainly in Tokyo. You traveled a little bit more throughout the country and I didn't get to do a lot of like. You know, I was a little envious listening to you talk about taking part in the tea ceremony, because I didn't do a lot of like spiritual things there. We did a lot of like fun, crazy stuff that I thought was great. But there is something of like being able to like touch a culture in that way and I actually, kind of interestingly, was talking to a friend who is japanese and she was talking to me. She has like her stuffed animal from childhood. She's like taking care of him for decades and decades and it's basically been like I want to think that I've given him enough love right now that he's like developed a spirit. Yeah, and I like was taken aback a little bit and I was like what do you mean by that? And she was like well, a lot of in Japanese culture, a lot of things are like we want to put love and care into places and things and you know ceremonies and things like that and we believe that and I might I hope I'm not like bastardizing this but like if we put enough care and love into something, it can develop its own spirit. And like she was explaining to the like the trees that you would see in Japan that have the like wraps around them I guess you know what I mean that have like the bands around them. She was saying those are trees that are like old enough and have had enough significance that like they're believed to be like gods. Now that was like a really interesting like perspective on that and like care, because I like specifically had an experience and a notice thing when I was in Japan, and I don't know if you notice the same, but like I'd get my Starbucks in the morning to go on our caffeine conversation and I'd like walk with it and I drink it and then I'd be stuck with a cup for like an hour and a half after I was done drinking it, cause there were like no trash cans anywhere. They sit down and they enjoy their coffee, they enjoy their tea. It's a thing that they've put work into in attention. Yeah, yeah, and it's not something like you pick up and go and you know we have a lot of like trash everywhere and like trash cans out that are like overflowing.
Speaker 1:Living in la, I see it all the time, you know. But it's encouraging to be like this city of tokyo that's like twice the size of la, is like so clean and pristine. Yeah, purely because like it almost seems like it's just out of the perception of like no, no, no, no. You've got food, you've got drink, you're going to sit down and enjoy it and give it its due attention. And like, the other part of that was I actually had one where it's like had a cold brew and the ice had melted and I just was like, well, I'm gonna have to have this cup. I don't want to just like carry it around with the melted, you know, ice in it, the water in it. So I took the cap off and I poured it into a gutter when we were in like the fashion district and then this woman gave me the like nastiest look and I was like, oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize I was my bad but, it's like that, like that has a purpose and you're just like dumping your trash into it.
Speaker 1:Essentially, it's like I you know I was trying to hold on to the cup, but it was something where you're like oh, this is just like a much different viewpoint and I feel like so many people out here are just like I need I grab the thing and I go and I need I'm, I'm on my track versus it seems like they are much more of like no, no, you take care of stuff. Yeah, you put love into it. It has significance, even even if it's not something that will affect you. Like this is a communal thing. We're all here. There is a lot of that. We all could take on more and be like it's important to take care of your community, not just because it services you, but because there are other people there.
Speaker 2:Now, every time I would see somebody in Japan and they would see me put something in the trash can this is not an exaggeration. We were in Sumego and we had just done the hike from Magome to Sumego. I was at the bus stop Actually, adrian was still up eating and so I walked over and I threw my bottle. I was like asking people like where's the trash can? I don't know what trash can is. And the lady finally pointed to me and I put it over there and this old man was like thank you for throwing that away. And I was like, okay, dude, like.
Speaker 2:But in his head, like, like you said, I took. I'm an American, we're impatient, we move fast and you know we don't care about anything. And that was one of those moments where he saw this black guy in the middle of Japan truly trying not to just litter, like hey, I'm going to really find the trash can. And I asked four people and he watched me and that's just something so small. But that attention is something that they're kind of shown from day one. It's put into their brain. I took that away from that trip more than I took from any other trip I've taken when I went to the Bahamas when I went to Mexico, when I was in Ireland, japan really captured my imagination on what America truly could be. I left there and came straight to LA. Think about that. I left Tokyo, came to LA and we drove up the coast to San Luis Obispo.
Speaker 1:Oh, I love San Luis Obispo.
Speaker 2:When we left we went to the valley because I needed to find a pick, because my hair was rough after Japan and, being a black man in Japan, trying to find a pick is very difficult. So we went to the Valley and I'm like I know exactly where we're going, go here. I stopped by this place. I went to the bathroom at the Starbucks, got my pick and I was putting some pink oil moisturizer in my hair, just getting it to look like normal hair, and I put a wave cap on and it was able to lay down. I was like thank God, but the whole trip up there after I used the bathroom I was able to really just take some time to be like, oh man, we're in the old neighborhood, we're close to my old job in Woodland Hills and I'm like, oh man, being in Tokyo, being in Kyoto, being in all these incredible places in Japan, being on the train there everything compared to just driving down the street in LA was so much cleaner, so much taken care of. You could see more community when you're on the street. We were driving around Hakone it's a mountain town and we got down from the mountains and I remember we saw these groups of people cleaning up trash on the side of the road and I was like this is the first time I've seen trash on the ground. One and two, what are they doing? And the person that was driving the bus explained to us. He was like oh, families get together and clean up the communities and it's kind of like you're assigned certain days and that's what your family does. And I was blown away. Imagine if we had that kind of mentality here in America, how dope the country could appear to someone that comes from that. But when you come from Japan to LA and this is the second biggest city in the country and they say you need to go to New York or LA because that's where more people are, and you can really get to understand what Americans are like and I wouldn't want to come to America after being born and raised in the countryside of Japan and you jump on the bullet train that's been there for over 50 years, that gets you to the airport in 30 minutes instead of four hours. And then you come to LA and you can't even get on the train at the airport. You're like, where am I supposed to go? You got to get a Lyft. Oh, I got to get an app for Lyft to get on someone's stranger's car. This person, oh my God, I can only imagine and see Adrienne and I. She's one of the people. She's just like me. She wants to see the history, she wants to see the culture, she wants to feel like she's engulfed in it.
Speaker 2:And Japan was always high on my list because in first grade I learned how to use chopsticks and Japan was our country of the year. Each year we did a different country. So Japan was first grade, Second grade was Germany, third grade was Mexican, fourth grade was Indian and fifth grade, I believe, was Brazil. It was like South American country, but I remember those so big because they were such a huge celebration of these cultures and I was like I'm so pumped to travel and see those places. And I finally got to go to Japan and it was so incredible and I didn't want to just go there and be like, okay, we're going to the Disney World. Right, I was like I could go to Disney World in America. We're going to to get on a golf cart and technically it's going to be like a go-kart for Mario and that's what we're going to drive around.
Speaker 1:Tokyo the exact same thing. That was so much fun.
Speaker 2:But I bet you it was fun, but it was like, also, I just want to be in Tokyo Also. I want to just go to that corner ramen spot where you put the coins into the machine they start making it. You sit at the bar, you eat, you slurp as loud as possible and then you get up and you leave. There's no lollygagging whatsoever. But on top of that, I go in there thinking it's going to be one thing. And then I hear Marvin Gaye and I'm like what. And then I hear James Brown I'm like what. And then I hear all these incredible songs and I'm eating this ramen like this is a vibe.
Speaker 2:I did not think I was going to get in Tokyo and the guy behind the counter heard I was an artist and wanted to get my music. Oh, let me hear it. I didn't expect that and I needed that. I needed to see that the world was different than I imagined. And even in Ireland when we went there, of course we went to drink Everyone gets a Guinness or some whiskey, this and that but we went to Kilmanham. Have you heard of that jail?
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:So this is a jail in Ireland where, during the Irish Civil War, most of their revolutionary heroes were executed at this jail. And so you go to this jail and they have all of this preserved history about these people who just were trying to be treated equally from Britain who can't relate to that? And you got all of these stories and you got to see letters and you got to see clothes and things that they wore and things that they touched and areas that they were like this is where they hung one of our heroes, this area. Here you're standing in this place and I'm like wow, like this is something I can't even begin to describe. We were listening to this tour guide and he was very delicately speaking about the conflict between Northern Ireland and he was really particular. He was like I'm not trying to do this. And then some idiot in the audience, an American who watched a TV show. He was trying to speak to him like he knew more about it and he was questioning him and he was like listen, once again. I just said I don't want to press it because it's very sensitive conflict and they're looking at it like it's just a game, it's a TV show, but once again and we're in this space where we can see and feel exactly what their culture and the meaning behind everything that they're doing is, and I don't feel like a lot of people care about that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:Like you said, I feel like most people would go to a different country. We're going to Haiti in June for a cruise and I feel like the way that cruises are set up really tell you the way that people in America think. This cruise takes us to the Dominican Republic and to Haiti, and sometimes, when you go to certain countries, you get an idea of what that country is like. On a cruise, If you're willing to get off the beaten path and not follow all the tours that the boat tells you, you just go into the country and explore yourself. You get to explore the cities and you're like, OK, this is a little bit of what the Bahamas is like. Oh, this is the history stuff.
Speaker 2:Yes, but also sometimes they just say we're going to take you to Haiti, but really what that means is we're going to take you to a designated area in Haiti that we control and own and we're going to put stuff there that makes it feel like you're in Haiti, but really this is just the boat off the boat and you don't have to worry about the true dangers about going to one of the poorest countries in the world. And in my head I'm like, wow, I thought we were going to Haiti. And then I read the thing and I'm like, oh, we're not. Even I can't really tell people.
Speaker 1:I'm in Haiti, You're going to Haiti and then I read the thing and I'm like oh, we're not even. I can't really tell people how I'm going to Haiti.
Speaker 2:You're going to Disneyland Haiti, yeah, Essentially like yeah. I can't tell. But most people who get on that cruise are going to go home and be like oh, this Haitian girl did this and wonderful, and I got some jewelry and it was made homemade there and it was so nice and everyone seemed so happy and it was so beautiful and this and that and this and that. But then also they have so many warnings saying if you leave this area, beware of this horrible country that you decided to take a cruise to.
Speaker 2:we are not responsible for yeah, it's mind-blowing to see how people will truly just negate anything outside their comfort zone. They won't go to these countries, and truly I mean mind blowing. I'm very fortunate and happy and proud that I've been able to truly get to explore and go out and do different things like that.
Speaker 1:I've been fortunate enough I've been to a few different countries I lived in actually I don't know if you knew this, but I lived in Europe for a period of time and there is something when I've gone on my trips to be fortunate enough that even when I went to Japan and like I was doing you know touristy things and you were talking about hearing you know Marvin Gaye and all that kind of stuff, I actually weirdly like walked into a restaurant and they were playing. Like there was a guitarist on the stage playing Michael Jackson. Yeah, oh, okay, and that's, I think, one thing that's interesting about Japan too is, I think, the reason why, like you know, this might sound reductive, but like I like anime, I like you know a lot of like Japanese films. I'm a huge fan of the director Kira Kurosawa. He's made one of my top, you know, favorite films of all time.
Speaker 1:And I think one thing that's interesting is especially like post-war, for everything that happened during World War II, japan and America almost kind of became these two cultures that kind of talked back and forth to each other a lot.
Speaker 1:Like I was really struck going into, like the anime district in Tokyo where it's like, yeah, you're going to see Naruto and Yu-Gi-Oh and Yu-Gi-Oh, hakusho and all these other animes that I love.
Speaker 1:But then it would also be like you're Superman, you're Spider-Man and it's this thing where we've traded these ideas back and forth with each other a lot and it's created this kind of fun melding where it's like we can separate out the pieces a little bit, but it is interesting sometimes to see how they influence each other. Thing. That struck me that where you're talking about going to that prison and like kind of feeling the weight of history from it, especially like a place that has been, uh, the center of like tragedy, yeah, is you can almost like feel it in the air a little bit. And there was something that was interesting too when I was walking around japan that I I'm sure you might have noticed too. But you'd like walk in and you'd be like this is supposed to be the oldest Buddhist temple in Tokyo and you're like, wow, this is so. And then you find the plaque that's like it was bombed to splinters in the 1940s, during the war. This was rebuilt in like 1956.
Speaker 2:And you're like oh Well, all right, so the thing we had, that was that in kyoto, the imperial palace, yeah, was built in like 900 and it had burnt down like 27 times, so it kept. I was like, what is? What is happening with that? Yeah, it totally was one of those things where we rebuilt this space for you to enjoy now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it is something, though it still has purpose, it still has meaning, it still was the site of this thing.
Speaker 1:But you do feel like a little bit of a loss with that and there's a lot of discussion back and forth, I think, especially this year with this specific conflict, because of Oppenheimer coming out and all of this kind of stuff and a big piece of history, a lot of pieces of history were lost in Europe and in Japan and China and these places during specifically that conflict.
Speaker 1:And you know, like that's the thing, I don't think the U? S has had to reckon with a, because we're such a young country that I don't think has the at least the western version of the united states hasn't had that like deep history to land yet, because it's such a young country. It's like the war of 1812 was the last time that we were invaded as a country, yeah, and had like enemy troops on our soil and so like we lose that perspective of being like we've always had to fight over there, what that means for the long-term conversation of history. And I'm not trying to advocate one way or the other for any of these things, but it is always a sad thing to be like this was a true place of importance. It was destroyed and this is our best approximation of what it was.
Speaker 2:Enjoy. You know what you're saying, something that I struggle with, I think. A little further into the trip, I started to truly feel this. I remember we were walking through one of the shrines in Kyoto, and this was the only time that I actually vocalized it to Adrian, but I had been thinking it since we had left Sumego, where I realized, especially in Kyoto, kyoto has thousands of temples and Buddhist shrines and they're just scattered throughout the city. You could be walking to a bar and then to your left there's a temple and it's like, oh, there it is, it's just randomly there and it's everywhere. We were on the top of the roof and we looked over to our right and we saw this huge Buddhist statue and I was like, well, I want to go there and it's just there. It's so much. But one thing I noticed is what you're saying right now the way that we see everything is going to be so different than what it originally was intended For me walking through those, especially when you saw the native Japanese people there.
Speaker 2:They were walking and they were bowing their head and they were actually doing legit prayer and offerings each time, but then everyone else has their phone out. Everyone else is like taking selfies and getting the perfect picture and wearing these rented outfits that are the traditional clothing of Japanese people, and they're just walking around like look at me, I'm just this white lady from Ireland and I'm really like overstepping, which what I saw? I felt like it was just an overstep. It was almost as if there were kids walking through the zoo, but the zoo instead was a country, and they were admiring. Look at that. The zoo instead was a country and they were admired. Look at that. Oh, what is that? Oh, they eat the fish with the eyes on it Wild. Look at these crazy people. But then next to them is someone who actually eats food and actually eat the things that they're judging out loud in English.
Speaker 2:And we went to one of the shrines in Kyoto. It's the one where you walk through this whole path and there's a bunch of orange shrines in Kyoto. It's the one where you walk through this whole path and there's a bunch of orange shrines that you're walking under, multiple of them, where most of the temples had just one of the shrines at the front as the gate, but this one was like tunnels of it. We walked through this forest with all of these incredible shrines and I just kept thinking, wow, I'm sure this was built as just sacred grounds. I feel like there's no way this was built for white people and black people and randoms from across the world to come through and take selfies and take video reels of them enjoying it. I know this is not why this was built, and yet I'm a part of the problem walking through it. But granted, but then that same mentality is like this is a sacred ground for some. But also there are Japanese people there making money and they're doing what they're supposed to do to live, and this is more than likely most of the money that comes into their household, because all of these tourists want to do this. So it's like you can be upset, but then also it's like but they're also benefiting from it.
Speaker 2:I was in just this crazy limbo of a mind state because I didn't want to disrespect the shrine. I finally got to the point where I was like this is beautiful history that I'm getting to walk through and experience. But I feel like I shouldn't be walking through and experiencing this way because it wasn't meant for me to do this, and I had that feeling throughout the rest of the trip. When we went back to Tokyo. We went to multiple different places here and there we were going through the Imperial Palace. I just kept feeling like I feel like I am following all of these people at a zoo, watching them react to a culture as if, look at this funny, weird culture that I'm getting to look at from the outside in. I can't wait to get back home to normal life and it just it really took me aback. It was an interesting development for me to experience that, but then also I'm very grateful and blessed that I got to be in a different culture to actually see people living their lives in a different country.
Speaker 1:I never thought I would get to do something like that, coming from St Louis culture and appreciate it and not be disrespectful and not, you know, do the thing where you're the big, bombastic person in a setting where everybody needs to serve your needs in terms of what you're there to enjoy. It's interesting and I think that there is something where, like when you gain that respect of this is someone else's space, and I'm not there because it's public, I'm there because they're allowing me to be there sort of thing, and I'm not there because it's public, I'm there because they're allowing me to be there sort of thing. And like those certain things might be public, but I have like a feeling about when you were talking about going to the shrines and things of A. Have you ever seen the movie Lost in Translation, the Sofia Coppola movie? Loved that movie before I went to Japan, but after I came back it took on a different significance for me because that movie is so much about two white people in Tokyo who feel very alienated and isolated from everyone around them.
Speaker 1:I was somebody who like sort of stuck out in Tokyo as well. Like I'm over six feet, so I was fairly tall. I was a little bit more built because I'm a trainer and I'm walking around and doing all these things and like I would have people look at me as I walked down the street, and I'm sure you had a similar experience and I think being under that microscope, like my feeling when I was there, was like I need to be on my best behavior Mine was, too, I a valuable feeling. It's not something you want to live in day to day, but it's a valuable feeling to have that sense of alienation and be the outsider in a place because it teaches you to tread carefully and be respectful. And you're going to trip up and I tripped up. Like I said in the story earlier, it was nice and strange and weird to be in a place where I am so utterly surrounded by humanity. It's a town, it's a city that's incredibly densely populated, like it's like twice the population of Los Angeles and they're on top of each other and it's weird to be around so many people and yet still feel that isolated and people watch more and you guess and try and pick out what's happening and interactions and things like that. And it was a very kind of like sobering, melancholic experience that I like really valued and you know I, when I talked to people about it. I almost felt like they would get the sense of like well, I don't want that. So maybe that's not what I wanted and it's like no, no, no, I think it's, it's great, I think it's a. You know I use the word melancholic, but it was just kind of a like this is interesting.
Speaker 1:I don't live in this space that often. That played into a lot of it, and I think there's also like a side that I Catholic and that is the I feel like penultimate church experience of like sit down and shut up, don't talk unless you are asked to speak and have respect for this place, and so when I walk into any like house of worship, it is a thing where I'm like I am here to be reverent and like it's. Things have evolved a little bit as time goes on, but I remember, like as a kid it was weird when somebody had a camera in a church. Even if you were taking pictures for, like, a baptism and stuff, it was like a thing you were very careful about and so, like if I was a tourist going to a church, I wouldn't immediately have the thing of like I need to take pictures and I need to share my experience and you know that's.
Speaker 1:We talk a lot about social media in terms of like, don't let it ruin you living in the moment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and there's a little bit of like what you were talking about when people were in these spaces of like I need to take the selfies and the pictures to prove I was here and to show everybody how great and cool and beautiful it is.
Speaker 1:And it's like, can you just live in the space and be here, appreciate it? Yeah, like the space is not here for you to take with you, the space is here to be here. It's something that you can also gain a deeper appreciation and grandeur for, because you realize it's like well, I need to pay closer attention, because now it needs to live in my head as opposed to going home with me on my phone. Yeah, going home with me on my phone, yeah, and I I was telling you too in a phone call a little while that guy had a concert this year which actually like weirdly had like somewhat religious bend to it. Do you remember that band that I played? You that you like told me to shut the music off because you said your grandmother would be upset if you were yeah, I do.
Speaker 1:yeah, the, the satanic band, um, I went to see them in concert and they was my third time seeing them. This most recent time, before you could get into the venue, they made you put your phone in a pouch and lock it. They made a whole announcement about it where they were, like you might have noticed that we did this. That we did this, it's not because we don't want you to have a good time. We want you to be present in the concert and when you talk to your friends about this concert later, we want you to tell them the way it made you feel, the things that made you excited and engaged in what was going on. We don't want you to show them a video and then walk away from that interaction.
Speaker 1:And there was something really interesting and valuable about that. To be like it was one of the most fun concerts I'd ever been in and for a dude done up in like skull makeup and things like that, everybody was cheering for him, like he was, you know, the biggest rock star in the world and the best sex symbol you'd ever seen, and like all this kind of stuff, where you were just like everybody's here man, everybody's present. And it was interesting too, because once you were in the venue, you know you show up to the venue an hour before the concert starts, or you know two hours before the concert starts and then all of a sudden, you're just sitting next to your friend and you can't pull your phone out to look at Instagram and waste time until the concert starts. And so it's like, well, now it's even forcing me to be like so how's it going?
Speaker 1:Just like have that conversation with the person you're at the concert with. If I could fly like birds on a hive, then straight to her arms, I'd go sailing. It's far beyond the stars.
Speaker 2:It's near beyond the moon. I know beyond in college. I had two big shows back in college that I made cabarets. The first was my senior cabaret and this was the second. It was the Sammy and Liza performance I did with my good friend Maria Bartolotta, a friend of the show, of course. The second, it was the sammy and liza performance I did with my good friend maria bartolotta, friend of the show, of course. Jacob, of course, came out as bobby duran and we did beyond the sea together as sammy davis jr and bobby darren. And I mean I just wanted to kind of throw in some fun in this podcast. We're having a great conversation talking about things that we're worried about and I feel like this was just a good time. So hope you enjoyed. You can listen to all of my music on all streaming platforms. You can check me out for more information at domlamorecom where you can get anything and everything. Dom Lamore, mr Bobby Darin everybody.
Speaker 1:Like we were talking about at the beginning of the conversation around caffeine again. Well, I'm just going to keep bringing it back to that. But it conversation around caffeine again. Well, it's just, I'm just gonna keep bringing it back to that. But it's like moderation, it's. It's another thing. It's like an unforeseen consequence of a new cool technology and then, almost like the consequence becomes like the more important thing and then we have to weigh the values of all of this stuff.
Speaker 1:Like I remember the joke when I would tell people about that concert, them being like oh, the way we used to do it back in the day. And you're like, yeah, yeah, I guess, but also you're talking about the tea ceremony. There is something I think valuable of revisiting the way it used to be sometimes and being like is this maybe not more enjoyable? But is this a different flavor of this experience that I actually like better and like sits with me, maybe in this moment better, maybe it's good to like every once in a while when you go to a concert. Just be like I'm just going to be here and I'm not going to have that phone out and I'm not going to live through my phone in that way. I want to like. You know, sometimes it can be like an in-between, like I remember, um, my girlfriend and I like we went to Taylor Swift in early August and we went to Metallica in late August and obviously she wanted to go to Taylor Swift and that was her whole thing and I was happy to be there and it was an incredible show. But, like, my job during that concert because I wasn't as invested was to like record everything so she could be in the moment and she could live like have that huge concert experience where she didn't have to like negate the first half of a song because she had to hold her phone still and record it and I could sit and record and then she could just like enjoy the concert and then the flip side happened where I could headbang and rock out and have all my moments in metallica and she was sitting there with the camera.
Speaker 1:There is something I think that is valuable to connect to the tradition of a thing again. To bring like my catholicism back is like we do the mass exactly the same, like the ceremony itself really hasn't changed for like 2 000 years, yeah, and when you're growing up and they're explaining to you why it is that way they're like. We do this because it connects us to every single person and every single time where this ceremony has taken place, it connects all of us now. So now we have this greater sense of community, and like going to a concert without your phone is like I don't know, maybe a version of that but like there is something to be, like I need to detach myself and just be in myself to experience something. Or do it an older way, where I have a deeper appreciation for the work that goes in and went into making this thing.
Speaker 1:A lot of it, too, I think, happens around food and drink, where, when people used to do this thing make this food it was special, it was a treat, it wasn't a thing you got every day because it might've been hard to get a hold of or it might've been hard to prepare or all these things. And now we can just cut all the corners. And then here's a cake. Who cares? There you go, you can buy it, 10 of them at the store and they've got 40 more in the back room.
Speaker 2:Like my great-grandmother's rolls. We have the recipe, so we're able to experience something that was made the same way years ago by someone that we truly loved, and it's not just her making them anymore. I have the recipe, my cousin has a recipe, my mother has a recipe. Everyone has the same recipe. So when you go over to their house and the rolls are out, you look at it. You say are these grandma's rolls? You don't say, carla, are these your rose? That you do. No, we know what they look like. Those are grandma's rose. Oh my God. Like you said, it's very needed and true and, like I said, it is very interesting to sit down and say is this something that I want more of? Is this the way it should be done? Is this something that I want more of? Is this the way it should be done? Because when we get to a certain age, you start losing people and things, and if you can't go back to what it was like back, then you almost lose that too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when you think of people, when they talk about even especially something like baking or making like a family recipe, maybe there is like a new piece of technology that has made mixing this thing easier or cooking this thing easier, but you almost always will hear the phrase like well, we got to do it the way she did it. Yep, I think one of the things, too, you're talking about like technology and terminator stuff and and everything but like I had like a huge, just like existential crisis over this year when the strikes were happening. I love film. Like I love film. It's one of my like. It is just like maybe the artistic expression I enjoy the most. It's like film, novels, stage. I just find something so incredibly engaging about it. I was having like such a like. Are we just like throwing that out the window? Are we just gonna let fucking computers write our scripts and write our novels now and just regurgitate all of our art back at us and like that means that nothing's gonna really innovate. It's just gonna be this thing like churning out shit that we've already fed into it and giving it back to us and like that's not's not what art is. Art is supposed to be like this exploration of the human experience and expression of of what it is to feel and be human and share our experiences, and like try to find commonality with other people, or like, evoke a sense of something, and it's just like. And so we're just going to hand that over to computers now and that's going to be what this is. What does that mean for us? What are we going to do now?
Speaker 1:I had like another conversation with somebody. They were talking about different streaming services. It was like a marketing paper that they were writing and they were asking about different streaming services and one of the questions they asked was you know, how much would you be willing to pay if the price increases? And if the price increases? And I gave a number and they were like, wow, it's way higher than everybody else. And I was like, well, yeah, cause I work in this industry and I know it takes money to make those things that you take for granted and sit and watch. We had the thing in COVID where everybody was like, well, all these actors are out of work and all this kind of stuff. Well, that was so frivolous, of course, they're not doing anything right now and it's like they're not doing anything right now and it's like, but the first thing you did when you found out you couldn't leave your house was turn on netflix.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like art is important to us and it's again I think it's because it's that easy thing, because it's now, it's just at your fingertips and you don't follow the work that went into making it that it becomes this like whatever sort of thing that can be tossed off just as easily as getting a cheap cup of matcha at a you know a coffee house or something like that. In making things easier, we take some of the value away from it, so sometimes it feels like it's nice to reconnect with. Being like this should be difficult. There should be a process to this.
Speaker 1:And like I don't want to read a book that all a publisher had to do was take six Stephen King novels, put them into an AI and had the AI spit it out. Who knows, maybe that book that the AI wrote is awesome and would scratch all of my itches and be all of the nonsense that I want in a book. But I also want to read Stephen King, cause I like Stephen King as an author and I like when he like stubs his toe on an idea that doesn't quite work and he's got to rework it and figure it out and maybe all of the seams don't come together perfectly, but it's interesting and it's engaging and it's imperfect and it's almost like the imperfection of it is what is fascinating.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's the same with Sam Raimi. Oh, yes, yeah, when you see one of his movies and you see the guitar during Multiverse of Madness, there's the scene when Wanda is reading the Dark Hold and there's this 80s guitar. It's fading in between multiple people and characters and I remember watching that and the dude next to me was like, oh my God, this is so Sam Raimi. And I remember watching that and the dude next to me was like, oh my God, this is so Sam Raimi. And I'm like he was loving it because of that. It wasn't that it was maybe great or it was perfect, it was just we know what he does in his personality, in his direction, and that's what we want. We want to see him be him and just explode on the screen.
Speaker 1:And a perfect thing of that is, like one of my favorite directors is wes anderson. And what happened when everybody got super into ai? Well, wes anderson has a very, very particular aesthetic. It's just very obvious like you can watch two seconds of a wes anderson film and be like that's Wes Anderson, and so it's easy to co-opt his style. But when you would watch these AI things of like Lord of the Rings in the style of Wes Anderson or Star Wars in the style of Wes Anderson, you'd watch this thing and you'd be like it looks so lifeless and dead.
Speaker 1:And it's just because it's a computer that doesn't understand the art and the reason why he's framing this thing a certain way, or trying to say this thing in this awkward humor that he likes to inject into his movies. And so when it doesn't know that that's what he's doing, it's just going to regurgitate the bullet point of like, well, everything is symmetrical and shot and we've liked to frame things and put like little captions under them and label them and it's like, yeah, that's wes anderson, but that's not what he's doing, that's not why that's important. And, like sam raimi specifically, you've like, you've hit on like one of my things. We're like oh, you brought up a director. I'm going to talk for 10 minutes, sorry yeah, no, but that.
Speaker 2:But that's the thing I brought him up, because he has a very specific style. Yeah, that, when that, when you watch those first Spider-Man movies, when you watch.
Speaker 1:The Evil Dead, evil Dead, yeah yeah, his first movie is the Evil Dead and one of the interesting things you can talk about with Sam Raimi in the Evil Dead movie is this Evil Dead 2 is sort of a sequel, but is it really? And it's kind of a remake of the first one, but he's got a little bit more of a budget now. But he's got a little bit more of a budget now, but it's like what it was was. He was given the money to try and go back and kind of re-work an idea that he had. Then that second one became one of the biggest cult classics of all time, arguably like way more famous than the first one.
Speaker 1:And it's like what if he wasn't allowed to like reconfigure that idea or like try and do something different with it and have a little bit more money to explore that?
Speaker 1:And it's like, in the same way, like to bring back stephen king. It's like I can't tell you how many times he's written like, uh, this car is alive and is coming to kill you, kind of story, where it's just like sometimes he'll write three novels about the same thing and like none of them are bad and they almost kind of like work together in a piece where, like you have to read all three them and when you can look at it from 10 feet up down at it, you can be like oh, I see the bigger picture he was going for and that's really fascinating. Interesting If it just becomes like a computer, being like well, I've checked off all the boxes of what you look for in this author's book and here's a new one and you're like well, it's very well constructed and it meets all these things very well, but it's a cookie cutter book and I'm not interested in it.
Speaker 2:I believe the AI thing is good. Like I said earlier, in moderation, I found ways to do newsletters or to help me with ideas by using the Google AI, where I'll be like give me an outline for this and then I'll get the outline. Give me like an outline for this and then I'll get the outline. I'll be like okay, okay, I see what I was missing in my outline that I drafted, so I can adapt from that, because that is something that you know, I can't think of that on my own. That's something else, another perspective that is great.
Speaker 2:Like you said, it's the part where they take multiple paintings by famous artists and they just take elements from each one and put it into another painting and say this is my art. Now it's like no, you should credit the people that you're stealing from, or you should credit the people that you use as inspiration, because even though it was AI, it still was inspired by people. No matter what, it's always going to be inspired by people. We have not made it to vision level AI yet. So until we have a gentleman with the mind stone in his forehead flying around downtown New York, we cannot create anything from AI that is original. It's just not going to happen and I feel like that just totally destroys one the early stages of creativity.
Speaker 2:If you're a kid who's working with his imagination and putting all this stuff on paper and really creating these pictures, and then one day you get this app on your phone that you can literally say what you're thinking and it'll pop up instead of you having to think about it, you'll miss a lot of those nuances. Think about it, you'll miss a lot of those nuances. You'll miss a lot of those little extra details. That makes the story more unique and also adds more of a human element to it. People relate to things that other humans go to.
Speaker 2:A computer can't tell you that unless they know from some other human what that means, and it's a huge, shitty situation, especially with the strikes. The idea that the studios allowed the fact that they wanted to use people's likeness with AI in perpetuity the fact that that even got out blows my mind. The idea that they allowed that part of information to come out because it makes them look like they don't give a fuck about people. Hey, we want to pay you alum sum, we'll give you 500, and then three, seven years after you've died, you'll be in a movie randomly in the background, because we paid you 500 one time randomly yeah, we won't have to pay you now and it's like it's.
Speaker 1:It's not even a thing that they leaked out, it's a thing they were doing. They were actively doing it. You can, that's great. People have found clips on like disney plus shows where they're like look at the background these people are, ai, they're not real. I mean, you know I'm a huge dc comic book fan. Yeah, and that is its own path and struggle. I haven't seen the flash movie and I don't really have a desire to see it, not just because I've heard it's like maybe middle into okay, but because, like I saw some of the clips and being like y'all just took Christopher Reeves and put him in your movie oh, dude, the Nicolas Cage, like it was.
Speaker 2:It looked horrible and I didn't see it either. But, once again, I'm not as big as a DC fan, as you right.
Speaker 1:But it's like, even other than just being like it looked bad, it was like it was gross. Yeah, you took him and you took like adam west and george reeves, who famously hated playing superman, and you just like stuck them in your movie and thought that was gonna be something people wanted. Yeah, you have like stock footage of them somewhere that you can use and it's just like I was like you're just like taking the ghosts of these people and like defiling them and it was gross to me. I just like didn't want any part of it. I don't like I don't want to watch harrison ford be in indiana jones movies 30 years after he's dead. There's something interesting about like no, he's gone, we don't get any more of these anymore, and that might be a tragedy sometimes that we don't get. We didn't get more of heath ledger as the joker. But also sometimes enough is enough. Get a performance for how good it is in the art that this person brought to it and then not try to rob their corpse of that creativity.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I get that and I believe more than anything. We're in a world now that goes full circle. In what we're discussing, like I said, we're finding the easy ways out. We're trying to find ways that you can generate more money with spending less money. We're trying to find ways to create stuff that's technically new but is recycled and not really new at all, but people still will come see it because it's the thing that we're pushing.
Speaker 2:And you see this in every industry in some way. You see it in food industry, where you go to the store and you get a bag of chips and there's less chips in the bag but the bag is bigger. Now you see it in sodas, where sodas are shaped different sizes so that there's less liquid in there, but it's the same height, so it looks the same and it's the same price, but there's less liquid and you're making more money because they found the way to create an illusion. And with anything in our world, it seems like. Like I said, it just feels like to me.
Speaker 2:Unless something crazy happens, we're going to continue to advance these technologies. They're going to be able to continue to outsmart us or find ways to really be as lazy as possible to generate more revenue to create these illusions, that we keep falling for the banana in the tailpipe. And it breaks my heart because, musically now, honestly, right now, how many songs out do you truly think may have started as an ai project and maybe was tweaked a little bit but weren't truly written? We don't know, but it's very possible. That's already been happening too. We see it in movies already. And't know, but it's very possible that's already been happening too.
Speaker 1:We see it in movies already and if nothing else, it's like beat generators or like you know whatever. That's almost a part of it. It's like I feel like growing up, at least my view of like the development of technology was like it felt like it was meant to make our lives easier so that we could like have more time to do creative things, like we would essentially make the same amount of money we just don't have to work as hard and then now we get to use more of that money for different things and we get to have more free time to explore ourselves and our creativity and things like that. And then it's like really what it is. It's meant to help companies exploit loopholes and people in order to get more money, and that's a rough truth. To get more money and it's like that's a rough truth to kind of like come around to Can we have like some kind of positive? I think.
Speaker 2:All right, all right, so, before we end, all right. So we made it to the end of the episode. But before we end, I wanted to acknowledge last season your episode was the most watched episode all year. People really connected with your words. People really connected with your stories.
Speaker 2:I had multiple people contact me. One of them in particular was like it took me three listens, or three days, to sit down and listen to that episode because I related. It was hard, but I was really enjoying it because it was a conversation I wanted to hear. So I wanted to make sure I got you on the pod, for sure, and I'm going to continue to try, because even like today today's just a great example I had questions, but the second we started talking I stopped looking at the questions. I always appreciate you. I love your energy. I hope that you're doing well out there in LA. I know that you've been working. You met somebody and you're doing your thing. You know I love you to death. I'm so proud of you, so happy. I just hope you're doing well, man. With that being said, we made it to the end of the episode. All I want to know now is how do you feel?
Speaker 1:You know I feel good. I love having these conversations. I'm somebody that has become or at least I'd like to think I've become very thoughtful. I want to live in a space of creativity, as I know you do as well, and I love to talk religion and philosophy and politics and like what is this all about? And isn't this interesting, or isn't it not? And it's good to have a space to do this and it's nice too. You know, like to hear and feel like you get the the thing of like it, the reward of knowing that somebody has found some value in it, like, um, that's incredibly meaningful. What you just told me about, uh, last season's episode, I'm grateful that I didn't sound like a rambling lunatic. I think that was like more of my thing was I was like worried I
Speaker 1:was gonna be like oh my gosh, these people are gonna like listen to this episode and just think it's a. It's a garbled mess of thoughts, which is I always joke that in a conversation I'll have five trains of thought all going at the same time, but don't worry, I'll bring them all into the station. Yeah, it's fun to live in that space, but then also it gets gets frustrating at times. But I'm glad people got something out of it. I really am, and it warms my heart a little bit, as corny as that is to say.
Speaker 2:Nothing corny about it, man. Cheers to you, cheers Love you. I love you too, man, thank you.