Are you enjoying this? Is anyone enjoying this at all? It's one more thing. I'm strong and getty. One more thing. I took my son and two of his best friends on a little getaway Friday for my son's birthday. And because they're teenagers to fifteen year olds and a fourteen year old, I have no idea if they had a good time or not. I don't really know. What do
you mean? Huh, you can't tell teenagers. You can't tell they just see, they got to act so aloof all the time, oh yeah, okay, now, a lot of laughing to themselves and everything like that. And I heard them in their hotel room and they seem to be having good time. But like in terms of just asking them questions, see, yeah, okay, cool, right whatever. Just I don't know. It's that cool guy age, the cool guy age. Oh my god, the amount of time it takes to an effort to walk, dress, talk,
the way you got to be to be cool. Look, it looks like a lot of work.
I'm usually pretty good at sussing out why, you know, kids and teenagers act in certain ways developmentally speaking, the rest of it, but the whole I don't like anything.
I don't know.
I'm not sure what that's all about. You want to seem in control. And do they associate and this is all I'm not saying this is insidious or anything, because it's practically universal. Yeah, but do they associate enthusiasm with childishness?
I wonder that's a pretty good one right there. But I felt like the three of them together, I mean, we did some pretty cool stuff, and they saw some pretty cool stuff, and I felt like they each had to pretend to the other two that they weren't impressed for some reason, which left me thinking, why are we doing this? Is anybody enjoying this?
Feeling superior to things and people? It's really important to teens too. That's why the you know, the social ladder thing can be so brutal, because anybody you can put below you elevates you, like on the class rank of coolness, which is just savage and it's terrible.
Well, here's a perfect example to make my own point, I suppose. So we were at the Grove, which is a shopping area in Los Angeles for people who don't know, very cool, upscale, outdoor, beautiful day in LA. Tons of people there and everything like that, and I let them walk around and do stuff. They got some food the Farmer's market there, and they went around, shopped at some
stores that they like and that sort of thing. I left them alone, and I thought, all I was walking around, I thought they have got to be noticing the female contingent here. I mean, because it was I mean between the ages of like fifteen and thirty, you know, hot and cold, running la tan well dressed attractive women, and I thought they got to be noticing with teenage boys. Anyway. I brought that up on the Uber ride to the airport. Some attractive woman there in place. Yeah, I didn't think
so not. Okay, now I know you're having to put on a front, because that's ridiculous. I mean, you're in freaking loss upscale Los Angeles. Unless you're all three gay, you're really trying too hard.
Well, and then at least say, I don't know about the chicks, but the dudes were pretty fresh or fly or whatever people say these days. Fly That one goes back like twenty five thirty years, doesn't it. You know, that reminds me I've got to find that hang. I'm gonna make a note to myself even as we speak. NPR did a feature about dropping testosterone levels, and they had all the men at the NPR station test their testosterone.
I haven't had an erection in a decade and a half and they were all like, way sub average. Oh really like every.
Dude using finger quotes who worked there. It was like, uh, sorry, but in the parlance of today's youth, a real beta male, I mean, like a effeminate fella. And that does not shock It amuses me in a way, and it confirms what I've thought, Well, what you came first. I mean, is there something about working at NPR that drives down your just drivesterone levels that could happen or is that just a certain sort of person that.
I think it's a type and there's a lot Yeah, oh I would agree, Yeah, I know some.
I hope it's nothing that these guys have been taught like in school, like, oh, we don't engage in toxic masculinity.
No, it's not that. I don't think that. It was just a I got to be unimpressed. It makes me cooler to be unimpressed. I think that's what it was.
Yeah, I mean, if you are a normal, healthy young man and you see an attractive woman with whom your very biology cries out for you to couple and produce young They say, if you say she's really good looking, I'm gonna hit you with a bat. She's hot, pam ow ow ow, she's really cute, pam.
Oh god stop. You can't help yourself.
But I didn't think so. Although again, the teenage lads, I give so much latitude. Adolescence is so hard and complicated. Now, if you're twenty six and you're the guy.
Says I don't think she's good looking, Oh my god, that's pathetic.
Oh it's so pathetic.
I dated Okay, Oh, I get it.
Because you're such a stud and could have any woman on earth. The top two percent of women isn't quite hot enough for you. I get the message you're trying to send, and it's sad.
I dated a guy like that in high school and it was insufferable. He could not he could not be am used by anything, and I just remember it going like, are you are you too cool for everything? I'm not understanding this and he actually, I don't know that he's grown out of it, to be honest with you.
Thirty six, Now I've.
Got to be vague about this to protect the innocent, But there was somebody I know very very well who was dating a young man who was very attractive, very smart, great future ahead of him. But not to overstate it, but he definitely had a mister spockish personality where he
wasn't like super delighted by much. Sure, he was just emotionally very flat, very cool, very reserved, I mean, like very and this is you know, this is beyond your teenagers, and I just I think that's probably just the way he was made.
Yeah, I gotta believe in that case, since he was attractive and you said had a bright future. Most of the people have known past being a teenager, like you know, high school or high schoolers different. As you've said, it's just part of the thing for whatever reason. But like, yeah, you're you're thirty years old and you're not impressed by anything or anyone. I've known a plenty of like real losers. I mean, your dating prospects are not good, your financial
prospects are not good. So obviously that's a protection mechanism if you pretend you're not interested in anybody in this bar because you know, you feel like none of them are interested in you. That is a help to protect you. Yeah, and it's.
Been said of bigotry, and I think it's right that a lot of it springs from people who are desperate to feel superior to someone. Yeah yeah, I mean they don't have any rational basis on which to feel superior. They go with you know, skin color or whatever.
Yeah, because I'm picturing a particular person I know, and I've known several people like that, not impressed with anybody's car or house or anything like that because they are never going to have anything worth a crap. So it just makes it easier. I guess all the way pretty sad and transparent, so it doesn't bother me. I mean, I feel bad for somebody who has to do that to get through the day, but yeah.
Yeah, it's psychological self protection. I ran into somebody like that recently too, and it hurt my heart because you know, they're not a bad person, but it was definitely a rationalizing thing. It's similar to, you know, the only way you can be successful is because you're a cheating, you know, white person or whatever. And it's rare that you see somebody who's reached their full potential pitching that sort of nonsense.
Uh oh, and one more thing on this, and I'm just gonna have to accept this at a certain level. I fight it in my own home. I've talked about this a lot, like the stirring at your phone. I don't want you doing it in the car with me. I don't understood the dinner table, but this was my son and his friends. This was kind of their weekend for his birthday. So I'm not going to tell them how to interact with each other. But it's amazing how much time they spent looking at their phones when the
three of them are together. That's just I mean, it's just it's the way the world's going to be. And I, you know, and I can't change it. But I just thought, wow, it's.
Like the main form of entertainment, even when you're in good company.
Right and like, and we're riding around in these ubers through Los Angeles, and there's all kinds of freaking cool things everywhere you go, or unique things you've never seen before. And I thought, you know, I pointed out a couple of a couple of people and they glance up for their phone for a second, go back to their phone. I finally gave up on that and just not interested in observing anything in the world other than and they're playing games on their front then looking at the game
on their phone. All right, I guess. Yeah, I've never seen the Hollywood sign before. Oh that's another thing. That's another thing I picked up at, and that makes perfectly good sense. The younger set has no interest in Hollywood. That thing is dead as soon as like forty five year olds grow old enough to be dead. I don't know what the cutoff is, but the younger generation, there's no such thing as that. I grew up with, like Hollywood movie stars being a thing, it's not with the
younger generation. They don't even know what we're talking about.
Staying at a hotel right next to or right down the street from Warner Brothers studios, I'm thinking, oh, man, that's where, right, No, none of that.
Yeah, that doesn't mean anything to the younger crowd, which man, I don't know if Hollywood's aware of that. They probably are, but I wonder what that is.
Gonna be.
All the streaming services maybe lost in the I think it's just so diffuse, I.
Guess in video gaming, and yeah, that's that's part of it. Plus there's more transparency in the world these days, so you just you don't think of movie actors as these distant, superior race of humans, beings that you will never know, you'll never touch, you'll never hear from. They just exist on the silver screen or it carefully orchestrated publicity events. Now, if some famous actor and his old lady are bitching at each other in the streets, you see the video
on TMZ. Alrighty go out without makeup, or scene going into a public bathroom in a park or whatever.
You think Larry.
Goes is Ben Affleck pooping. I'll be dad. You didn't get that with Bogey and Picall.
No, you did not get their humbry bogar pooping. Yes, Michael, Now I just say.
Younger people, they can film themselves, so it's nothing special to be on TV. It's like, well, geez, I do that all the time.
That's not a bad point. Actually, oh, excellent point. I say, well, you win. That is the podcast observation of the day. Congratulations, Michael. Well, I guess that's it.