Joe Rogan Has a Cold
And he cured it with monkey spackle + jungle joint compound!
You have to be careful when you start a fight. Especially these days. And for reasons well beyond these days. Like Mary Shelley, the writer of Frankenstein, said, “No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.”
That is, if you’re going to fuck someone up you must at least maintain the veneer of making right some evil wrong. Otherwise you’re just a bully and/or an ass. While being an ass could always be chalked up to wrong-time-wrong-place politics, being a bully is unforgivable, and evidence of aggressive character flaws.
But there are ways to play off of those aggressive character flaws that to the eye unexamined might appear to be some version of bullying.
“Oooo…you’re so sexy!”
Another man had sorely tried my patience and we stood, nose to cheek. The homoerotic underpinnings of what we were doing weren’t lost on me so it had become a baited field of play.
“Maybe when we finish this I could offer you a…mayonnaise massage? Or something?”
In our disgustingly reduced Western convo the meaning was unavoidable. He was being goaded in a way that in my mind was comical. But also in my mind: there are men who would try to kill you for talking to them like this. Because? Well: character flaws.
[H]e holds forth on a panoply of things that amuse him, the well-heeled, and amuse him even more when he watches the monkeys spin over the newest and neatest farty noise pronouncement he’s made.
Anyways, long story much shorter, he lashed out, a scuffle ensued wherein anyone who had been watching, but not listening to my whispering, would have testified that he had struck first. And if he strikes first, it’s self-defense. A “self-defense” that eventually had him hemmed up on the floor while I sat on his chest. Smiling. Yeah: character flaws.
But after it was all over there was one enduring thought: words are funny.
We can create thought structures that change another persons entire biology. Globally. Because with not even a working understanding of just about any foreign language we can spit out stuff that will change our worlds and the worlds of the person whose direction we’re spitting them. For good or ill. Just because.
Which means they are weapons to be feared.
Bubby had come from what was Soviet Georgia. He had taken judo since he was five years old, and he got out of Georgia when Soviet Jews had started to bail in the ‘70s. His stomping grounds? First Coney Island and then New York’s Lower East Side. The Lower East Side when guys without jobs could afford to still live there.
“People can say whatever they want to me,” he once said right after telling me about how people in their village had proclaimed his mother one of “the good Jews”.
“But if they put their hands on me…” he used hand gestures now, “…it’s fuck over.”
He left New York when a fight with a Hells Angel who had put his hands on him and who had subsequently met “fuck over” and was knocked out by him, had put a contract out on Bubby. He left because he noted that leaving the house every day with an Uzi, two knives, and an attack-trained Doberman was no way to live. Life, at least.
But words had failed and moved to fists and there he was.
These days most of us are left with words, unless like Col. Willard said we “we’re willing to go all the way.”
However, while words can kill, they can also make you rich. Like Croesus. Or Joe Rogan.
There’s no metric that can fully encompass how rich Joe is that would make any sense to those of us not so rich. With multiple streams of income, Joe neither tills a field nor manufactures much of anything. He talks. About? Whatever he wants.
I’ve seen him in action and socially we have more than a few friends in common and by all accounts Joe’s a solid guy. No one who knows him believes the current kerfuffle where he’s talking about what constitutes Black or when he recommends off book medical treatments, is any kind of serious. But also this: if he is, so what? After all, he’s “just” talking.
And in the spirit of unbridled intellectual inquiry and some First Amendment action what’s wrong with him bloviating as he has?
Right about now is where it might be expected that the next thing to be written would be: “I’ll tell you what’s wrong with him bloviating!”
But the reality of it is, his use of words and the power they carry can only have their way with an audience of the willing. The words and the thought structures they represent, while having very real world consequences (see above under: “hemmed up”), if you’re not character flawed? Are maybe just...”comedy”? That is: laughing at, and not with.
I suggest you do what I do…look up “laughing all the way to the bank” and tell me how many pictures of Joe you find there.
Which is why his tax return, his big, giant, multi-page tax return probably lists his occupation as Comedian.
But this is not really comedy, without the quotes, nor is it uncomfortable with hiding behind the fact that it is, or might be. No. This is #richguystuff.
In other words if he liked golf more he’d probably be out doing that. But he doesn’t, so he doesn’t.
Instead he holds forth on a panoply of things that amuse him, the well-heeled, and amuse him even more when he watches the monkeys spin over the newest and neatest farty noise pronouncement he’s made.
Race? Sure. Drugs? Sure. “Cancel culture”? Double sure.
So you ever wonder how a comedian gets his kicks? Just like this it seems. And it’s all fun and games. Right up until someone hasn’t figured out what’s “funny” and what’s not. Like January 6, 2021.
For his part and not being partial to making hip hop records like other bored multimillionaires like Floyd Mayweather, or going to outer space like billionaire Elon Musk, or publicly disguising himself as Pitbull like billionaire Jeff Bezos, he just does this: rolls a doobie, cashes checks, and shoots the shit while patting himself on the back for having done so.
And it’s what constitutes, a living.
Even with Joni Mitchell, Neil Young and the Foo Fighters giving it some grit while demanding that the criminal overlords at Spotify who OXBOW has never seen a check from, dump him. Spotify just does now what Joe does every day: they choose cash.
This despite grand pronouncements about “caring” about this or that.
So if you’re exercised about all of this I suggest you do what I do…look up “laughing all the way to the bank” and tell me how many pictures of Joe you find there.
Hilarious, right?
Now if you’ll excuse me I need to go back to deciding which billionaires I’m going to make richer today. Thanks for reading.