One Foot in the Grave

One foot in the grave. It's one more thing. I'm so.

I understand you're going to interview me on the topic of my milestone birthday, just so I can get prepared.

Do you have a style in mind?

Are you going to be like Scott Pelly, slow talking and making me repeat everything? You gonna make me cry like Ellen DeGeneres. Do you have more of Charlie Rose approach in mind?

Katie?

Joe and I were working together. Joe and I have basically the same birthday. My birthdays in ten days, and I'm turning the same age, so we are in the same reflective age situation of turning sixty. His birthday is today. Joe and I were working together when we turned thirty, when we turned forty, when we turned fifty, and now when we turned sixty. That doesn't seem possible.

That's amazing, but it really doesn't seem possible.

No, particularly even the hatred of each other that we share.

Just from a time standpoint, the one thing that you can't you can't. This is gonna be one of the things I want to ask you about. Okay, Well, I'll just ask you instead of giving an answer first. That would be a dumb way to interview innovative got a couple of questions. Okay, what does sixty feel like compared to what you thought it would feel like when you were thirty, emotionally, physically, whatever.

Well, that that question assumes that I remember what I thought when I was thirty, well, or any any point when you're.

No, I see your point.

Yeah, I think fairly similar.

Uh.

I was never never particularly afraid of aging. I've never been particular and particularly enthusiastic about the idea either it would.

Be enthusiastic about aging past like twenty one, who would be enthusiastic about aging?

Yeah, you know what, I think.

One of the formative aspects of my life is that I've always been a golf freak. And even when I was thirty five, I played golf with guys who were seventy who were having fun and good players, and we'd have a couple of drinks afterward and a hoot, and so I saw. I don't know if you'd call them role models exactly, but I didn't fear that.

You have a thought, Katie before I jump in, Oh, no, go ahead, I'm listening.

I'm the exact opposite. I've always assumed like when I was in my twenties, I assumed there's no way anybody over the age of thirty was having fun. And I felt that way by my whole life. I thought, there's no way you're having fun in your forties. Fifty year olds aren't having fun. Certainly, nobody's gonna have fun in their sixties. And if they're like smiling and laughing, like you say, you see people they just don't remember what fun was. This is as good as it gets for them,

Now?

Okay, you know me, I quibble about every question. Does this like include? Do you tell yourself don't quibble so much. It's a waste of time. It could be so quibblesome people don't like it.

Wisdom or.

I'll just stick with wisdom for now because I will the reason I asked that question, and I can picture it so vividly. It's causing giant emotional changes in my brain right now. It was around and Gladys Dn't Bother nineteen ninety eight to two thousand, two thousand and one, when the talk show had just started, because we realized we had no future in music radio.

We were doing a talk show between the records, and it was stupid, but.

We'd started at our now home station in Sacramento, Toxix fifty kst and of the forty five rated RATEEO stations in Sacramento, it was forty fifth when we took over the morning show, and it was taking longer than we had hoped to really grow it, just because the mathematics of it. Lord knows, we had no marketing at that time.

I don't have you ever on a station or a show, Katie, with no listeners, but I have you can say to your listeners, tell your friends to tune in. But they got no friends, they aren't listening. There's nobody to tell anybody. I feel that's my soul.

Yeah, oh yeah.

And we had taken a fifty percent cut and pay to get started in talk radio. And I had three little kids, including a baby, and I was so stressed and so concerned that I was not going to be successful in the one field I had chosen.

And you know. This is not some sort of dumb, humble brag, but I was one of.

Those kids who people would say, he has so much potential, Oh, you could do this, or you could do that, And here I was going to be a dead ender who couldn't support his family.

Miserable amounts of stress. Oh. I dealt with it the best I could. So, I mean, if I could just whisper in my young ear, it's can work out okay that?

Oh my god, Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna blubb her. That would have been enormously helpful. But wisdom wise, stay out of the shun. Yeah, oh my god, yeah yeah, Hey, the sunscreen thing. Take that seriously, dip shit. Show videos of uh. I'd show videos to myself. Look at this, and young me would say, what is that device you're holding.

I'd say, it's a cell phone. Don't worry about it anyway.

Watch this video of a dermatologist cutting a chunk out of you.

Oh god, I'd say, what's what's your point? Why are you doing this? I'd say, be careful with the sun. Anyway.

It would probably be you know, it would probably be parenting advice. You know, you never get You'll never regret being patient. If you got to bring the hammer down, you can bring it down in an hour. Take a while, calm down and think about what's the smart thing to do. Probably because I was a very young parent by modern standards.

If you're an older parent like me, your tea is so low you can't really get worked up about anything.

Right, don't let me take off my supplier hose and hit you with him son.

And you know, make me. I don't know if they decided to run off, I couldn't catch them. So yeah, you come back here if you'd like. Eh.

The whole perspective on time thing, the way it changes when you get older, it's just impossible. There's no point in trying to explain it to somebody who's younger. Nobody could have. I'm sure somebody tried to explain it to me. I was like, whatever, old man, Well.

And you can believe it, but you can't relate to it. The idea that no five years goes by in the blink of an eye. You have to live that. Yeah, yeah, right, I know my kids in this.

They've got a particular reason to feel like this because I was an older parent. So when I was a kid was a really long time. You know, if you have kids in your twenties, like you, you're only talking about a twenty year gap in now and when you were a kid. For me, it's you know, nearly a forty year gap or whatever it is. Yes, so they can they really have good ammunition for what you know about what high schools like is completely irrelevant to me,

It's the same.

Thing, really, just you know, clothes are actually exactly the same. They're wearing the same clothes, same hairstyles as when I.

Was in high school. But so much of it is the same.

But you can't convince young people that you have like really any understanding of their what they're going through.

And between most of my child raising in yours was the giant you know. It's like the ADBC dividing line of smartphones. Yeah, and how that's changed everything.

But the you know, but the wanting to have a girlfriend and being nervous about asking them, just all that sort of stuff is just yeah, it doesn't seem any different. I get the but I just I remember hearing years ago we did a big show and we turned forty, which.

Is freaking twenty years ago. I can't believe that.

But anyway, we did a big show when we turned forty, and I remember hearing somebody say something about I think it was ancient wisdom, but just.

People.

You can tell people you know how this is going to turn out or what your experience is shown, They're still going to do it their way and find out for themselves. It's just it just seems and that seems to be way more true than not true. There's some exceptions, but it's way more true than not true.

Yeah, there's it was very little of the.

Wisdom and conventional wisdom about conventional thinking about aging and what you're going to go through that has not been true. But you do have to confront it on your own and deal with it on your own, and and it's it's it's fine, you know.

It's just to backtrack for one second. By standards, did you have older, younger parents.

At the time, Very typical. My mom was twenty four, so twenty three or twenty four when she had my sister than me a year later, and then in her early thirties when she had her last kid, my little brother.

Now it was practically everybody back in the day so.

Young, ifh because I was thinking about your outlook on life and not really being worried about aging, and I was thinking my parents are older her standards about same with Jack and his kids, almost forty years, and I think that kind of made it so I do. I'm not really worried about aging because I'm seeing them in their older years and they're having a blast and everything's good. You know, maybe I was wondering if I contributed, but you had young parents, would have.

To would be like similar to your story about being around golfers. But if you're around your parents and you see them in their sixties or seventies and doing stuff right, I have.

To think I would think, yeah, and oh go.

I was just going to say in a weird way when I was having those excruciating back problems, and I'd say this with great sympathy to people have ongoing back problems. Mine are much much better through a combination of never ending physical therapy and workouts and stretching that sort of thing. I was so miserable the last six months of being like fifty eight, in the first six months of being fifty nine, and I feel so much better now. I feel like I've deaged five years. So the idea that

But you're doing that thing where they drain the blood out of young homeless people and they put it in your right.

Not all homeless.

Some of them have volunteers, but most of them are homeless because they need the money.

Training the blood of the young and injecting it into my greedy veins.

Yeah, I'm glad that's working for you. If I could get that going, man, I would you have a question, Michael.

No, it wasn't about this though.

I was just thinking about the training the blood of the homelessness, nothing about this.

I was just thinking about what Joe said. You know, you guys started in two thousand and that's when I started. And I was gonna tell Katie that the show show you how low they thought of the radio station.

Uh.

They used to tell me that, wouldn't you like to come work on some other show or whatever? And I refused to do it because I believed in this show. I really did, and it drove them nuts.

They hated me for that.

Yeah about us them, Yeah, the bosses were like, you know, you're pretty good talented, which Michael is obviously.

You know you should come work over here at a real radio station. Michael could call on not it was a great call. Yeah.

Just before we started nineteen ninety eight, they had a serious meeting about just shutting it down and taking it off the air to save the electricity and so they wouldn't have to bother employee employing nice people who are trying hard, but we weren't getting anywhere. It's like, this is not worth the trouble. Why don't we just shut that

That is awesome. Wouldn't want to do it again, sweetheart.

And Katie, you know the thing that management would tell me, huh, don't hit sounds, don't hit these clips. I don't think we set up the call and they set up a topic that was the really bag.

They really tried to make us do old school talk radio and you weren't having it.

Wow.

They called us in and said look, you're gonna keep doing it like that, well you sink or swim, all right, Yeah, you gotta do it on your own.

You have a better sect or where you got that. We're like good, that's what we've been wanting.

One more thing on the birthday thing, to wrap this up so you can get on with your birthday and start boozing or eating cake or whatever it is you do on your birthdays. Reading booze cake. You have never been a milestone guy like birthday, New Year's that sort of thing.

Like to a fault. Yeah, I keep thinking I should be more. I am the way the other end of it.

Yeah, but I do remember from building up to turning thirty, turning forty, turning fifty for me, the build up and then the moment I turned the age, it just disappears. It's just like, what was that all about?

That's well, speaking of trading wisdom back and forth, you have convinced me completely that New Year's resolutions, which absolutely have value, but if you're serious about doing something or quitting something, don't wait for a particular date, do it

But I'm already doing those things.

So yeah, that's a good idea. And you know, because you got one foot in the grave and you don't have that much time.

Less, it's talk TikTok.

But to the like milestone, you know thing, do you remember what you were doing on your fortieth birthday? Do you remember what you did on your fortieth birthday?

Yeah?

We had a hellacious party. You remember that in my backyard.

I do remember that. Yeah. It was Oh it was.

Great barbecue and rock and roll, and my dog got drunk off the keg next morning. You're not supposed to let your dog do that.

But look up, some bitch. Do you remember your fiftieth birthday? No? Not offhand?

Okay, So there's an example of because like, I can remember where I was was with when I turned thirty, forty, fifty, even twenty five, which was my first Oh my god, I'm getting older.

What did I do on my fiftieth.

You know, it's probably one of those It fell on a funky day of the week, and so it was daylight today. I just worked and then we had some big wingeding on the weekend or something like that.

But no, I don't really recall.

I'm going to tell about my fortieth birthday in one of the podcasts next week because it's quite a story tied into sobriety, because that was the last major birthday where I was still drinking. My fiftieth birthday, I was in the middle of chemotherapy, and I was flat on my back and sick as a dog and turning fifty and alone in the bedroom, and I was quite miserable in thinking, this is really a low point for turning fifty.

This is not going well. Right, Well, you're right, yeah.

I was like, cool, So what are you gonna do today, specifically today on your sixty birthday?

I got to work out with the guy my trainer essentially keeps the you know, the physical thing going on. Then spaghetti and meat Paul's for dinner, which is my childhood birthday dinner, and I still and then I spent time with my daughter and my son.

That's cool. Your kids are yeah, yeah, kid number three, I don't remember their names. She was the third one, she have no name. She girl is actively she's.

Busy at law school and will join us on the weekend, So that'll be a true wing ding, and then that'll be the big fast.

There you go. Well, happy birthday? Any chance? Happy birthday?

Any chance we're recording a podcast like this when we both turned seventy, Surely this is the last one.

You're gonna have to find me, call me and say, hey, remember me? We worked together for forty years.

Hey Joe, what did you do for your sixtieth birthday? What'd you say? I don't know, I am.

I am not superstitious at all, but I've got this thing about making any pronouncement about what's going to happen years from now.

Interesting.

It's one of those if God is willing things, I don't. I just feel weird saying it, which is irrational, but.

I get it.

Shock me that we're still doing something like this. Then if God will.

It, we're still sucking wind. Oh you'll still be alive when you're seventy. Come on, I don't know. Ask the city bus that didn't see me in time? You don't know? How about you look both ways? Yeah, that's all you gotta do. Joe.

There's some great deals on walking tubs. The new models are coming in. Well, I guess that's it.

That's an old wives tale. That's funny.