"I looked in his eyes. I can't picture his face... I didn't see the skin. When I think about him... all I see is these deep oceans of blue in these deep concerning eyes."

"And this like white light behind them. That's what I picture when I think about what did Bob Dylan look like to me. All I can see is these the deepest bluest eyes with the most concerning emotion in them and then this like aura of like white light. That's what Bob looks like to me in my memory. I can't remember his face...."

Said Billy Strings.

Theo Von: "It's almost something that's like almost like maybe from another realm or something. I think God, like God's concern, like shows up in our eyes, I think. So maybe he just has a lot of like concern from the other side, you know?"

Billy Strings: “Yeah. And it's it's not a paranoid concern. It's more of like a compassion and and a like like a love like from an elder, you know?”

Theo: “Yeah. Maybe like a kind of semi-aggressive intrigue kind of.”

Billy: “Like a some kind of musical grandpa, you know?”

Theo: “Yeah, dude. Bob Dylan, bro. Wow.”

"I can tell you're a Louisiana boy," says Senator Kennedy to Theo Von.

KENNEDY: You can have an AI assistant, and give them almost unfettered authority to book you a plane ticket or rent you a car or remind you to have your oil changed or, you know, buy some Fig Newtons at the grocery store.

THEO: Yeah. They're pretty, they're not bad.

KENNEDY: I love Fig Newtons.

"Well, today, Artemis, they're supposedly flying around the moon. So these are the first people that have gone into deep space since 1972, since the Apollo missions...."

"That's today, that's happening, right? Nobody knows it. That's what's nuts.... And they're going around the moon and coming back to earth. No one's done that since 1972. And it's happening today. No one cares. That's kind of weird, right?... It's very weird that we've become dull to like fascinating things...."

Said Joe Rogan, at 02:05:34, of his new podcast (with Theo Von).

Rogan wants us to marvel at the works of man. Meanwhile, Von is looking for a mystical relationship to nature itself:

"Sometimes if you lay there and look at the stars and stuff, it feels like, bro, and this is real shit I'm saying right now to me... it feels like they're looking back at you a little bit....

"What I said this when when we came in and I said I don't care what happens I'm going to a meeting every day... I said I'm not scared of a germ."

"You know, I used to snort cocaine off of toilet seats and.. this disease will kill me, right?... Um it's uh it's just bad for my life. So for me it was it was survival. And then you know that the opportunity to help another alcoholic that's the secret sauce of the meetings and that's what keeps us all sober and keeps us um you know from from uh self-will...."

"[Theo] Von introduced C.K. to Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, where he began working to address his addiction..."

"... to masturbation. He practiced abstinence—it was, he said, a 'crazy idea to me. . . . Don’t have sexual release for several months in a row'—but, eventually, he 'got out of the cycle.' His emotions started coming back. 'I saw everything really differently,' he said. 'I saw that everything that had happened with me was because of me. And, by the way, that’s great news, because that means you could do something about it.'... [And] this is what enabled him to write his book. He recently finished a second one. 'I’m writing novels because I don’t jerk off every fifteen minutes,' he said. 'It’s really all it is.'"

Writes Tyler Foggatt in "Louis C.K.’s Next Chapter/In a new standup special, and a début novel, the comedian navigates murky, post-#MeToo terrain: not quite exiled, not quite welcomed back" (The New Yorker).

That reminded me of the old after-sex punchline. Attributed to Balzac: « Là… encore un roman de perdu ! » (“There… another novel lost!”). There's a line in "Annie Hall": “I read a thing about Balzac. He used to, uh, after he’d have sex he’d go, ‘Oh, there goes another novel.’”

"I just think it's a huge mistake for the world's wealthiest man... to be at, at, at this war with the world's most powerful man who I think is doing more to save the country than anybody — I mean, I'm 40 years old — anybody in my lifetime."

"You think about it, it's a guy who not even a year ago, nearly took a bullet in the process of campaigning, went back on the horse the next day. And if you look — obviously I'm biased — but you look at what we've done on the border, you look at what we've done with trade — fighting back against a generation of theft of the American dream, which is what the president's trade policies are starting to do. I just think you've got to have some respect for him and say, look, yeah, we don't have to agree on every issue I'm talking about. If you're Elon Musk, you don't have to agree with this on every issue. But is this war actually in the interest of the country? I don't think so."

Said JD Vance, talking to Theo Von. Audio and transcript here, at Podscribe. YouTube here.

Vance continues:

"For an appearance at the 2024 TwitchCon convention, Mr. Piker wore a tank top that showed off his arms"/"Some of Mr. Piker’s followers say that, by wearing jewelry..."

"... and painting his nails, he has helped to promote different forms of gender presentation"/"Fashion is something Mr. Piker, who is 6 foot 4 inches tall, has loved since he was a 'too-big' teen growing up in Turkey, he said"/"Mr. Piker, who fasts daily as part of his fitness routine, usually has his first meal around 2 p.m."/"His studio is littered with boxes of Nicorette gum and cartons of Zyn nicotine patches."

Just some of the photo captions from the NYT article: "A Progressive Mind in a MAGA Body/Hasan Piker pumps iron, likes weapons and wears pearls. His brand of masculinity has won him many fans online — and has been a useful vehicle for his politics" (free-access link).

The author is Jack Crosbie. Sample sentence: "This fluency between culture and ideology has led many to brand Mr. Piker a Joe Rogan of the left — if Mr. Rogan had a mop top and painted his nails."

I'll just say: The search for The Joe Rogan of the Left goes on... with low-level desperation.

Stray sociology:

"By dint of his down-home edginess and comfort with slick filth, Von somewhat overlaps with the rest of the manosphere."

"What sets him apart is that he is not particularly cowed by fame or wisdom or authority or aggression. He blends curiosity with humility, and treats his guests as conveyors of mystical information.... His naïveté is both honest and strategic, a carefully laid roadblock protecting Von and forcing everyone else to move at his unlikely rhythm.... In almost every episode, there comes a moment when Von’s guest stumps him. It’s never a gotcha, and the topic is rarely something terribly obscure.... Some recent examples: Mitchell-Lama housing, the Kurds, who wrote the song 'This Land Is Your Land,' misandry.... He can sometimes free-fall into inventive left-field phrasing that achieves a sort of bliss. He said he once saw the boxer Evander Holyfield eating, putting French fries in his 'Panamouth Canal.' Kissing someone with lip filler is 'like trying to eat two shrimps that won’t give up.' Nudity is 'the Lord’s matte finish.'"

From "Theo Von Dismantles the Interview Show/The comedian and podcaster is one of the defining conversationalists of media’s new MAGA-friendly mainstream. But he can be harder to pin down, politically and culturally, than his bro-cast peers" (NYT).

Something I learned: Theo Von's full name is Theodor Capitani von Kurnatowski III.

Jen Psaki locates Joe Rogan and Theo Von in the "right-wing ecosystem," but Jon Stewart isn't having it.

Jen Psaki says @joerogan and @TheoVon are in a “right-wing ecosystem” which is “supportive of the Trump enterprise” pic.twitter.com/X4HFhByX6m

— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) February 14, 2025

Theo Von delivers an hour of casual conversation with Donald Trump.

This is what I'd hoped we were going to get from the Elon Musk conversation with Trump. Theo Von is much more adept at creating a conversational back and forth. Perhaps more importantly, the 2 men are in the same room. The cut begins with Trump buttering up Von: "But your thing is going really great. My son's a big fan of yours, Barron":