See all Lex Fridman transcripts on Youtube

Speaker 1

00:00

He made me think that everything was going to be reversed and okay, and anybody that money was borrowed from, they would get it back, maybe tenfold. And so it was this weird situation of having 1 foot in his reality and potentially believing the things he was saying, or even over time, wanting to believe them more and more because the alternative was so, the alternative was worse. The alternative was like, was increasingly a bigger and bigger nightmare.

Speaker 2

00:33

The following is a conversation with Sarma Melengalas, a chef and restaurateur who was the subject of the Netflix documentary, Bad Vegan, Fame, Fraud, and Fugitives, that documents the rise and fall of her vegan raw food restaurants in New York City that ended in what she called a road trip from hell, being arrested in Tennessee, her pleading guilty for stealing over 2000000 dollars, and serving 4 months at Rikers Island Jail. Salma disputes the veracity of the documentary and its conclusions, saying that she was misrepresented. So I wanted to talk to her to get the full story and to seek understanding of who she is as a human being, the good and the bad.

Speaker 2

01:20

This is the Lex Friedman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Salma Melengales. You said that you did

Speaker 3

01:32

a lot of reading when you were growing up and you mentioned Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson. So from the reading you've done in those early days, how did you see the world? Was it to you a beautiful place or a cruel place?

Speaker 1

01:48

I don't think I thought about the world.

Speaker 3

01:51

You were focused on family, just basic day-to-day life?

Speaker 1

01:54

I think I was focused on day-to-day. I had an awareness of not fitting in, but I think back then it felt like something was wrong versus some people are just that way. And speaking of books, I read a book called Party of 1 by a woman named Anneli Rufus that somebody gave me and suggested I read and that helped a lot.

Speaker 1

02:17

That was 1 book that made me feel like, it made me understand things from the past that I hadn't understood before, specifically kind of feeling out of place even among my family, which is where you're not supposed to feel out of place.

Speaker 3

02:31

Yeah, I'm not sure where I saw it, but I think you mentioned that you were a bit of a loner. And I also think I saw somewhere pictures of you with green hair in high school and a wild haircut. What was that about?

Speaker 3

02:48

Was that real? Am I just imagining?

Speaker 1

02:49

No, you're not imagining it. It's strange because I was kind of a loner. So it'd be strange to do something that calls so much attention to yourself.

Speaker 1

03:00

Because back then, I mean, I grew up in a suburb of Boston in Newton. And anybody that was there around that time, probably if you said, you know, that girl with green hair, blue hair, it was blue most of the time, they would remember like seeing me walking down the street because it stood out like crazy, especially back then. Now it wouldn't stand out so much, but back then it really stood out. So I was trying to think about why I did that when I was kind of shy and on the 1 hand wouldn't want to bring attention to myself, but I did something that did.

Speaker 1

03:38

And it wasn't, my family, to their credit, they were fine with it, so It wasn't a rebellion against them or anything like that. They were fine with it. I don't think they loved it, but.

Speaker 3

03:50

Your dad was a physicist at MIT.

Speaker 1

03:52

Yes.

Speaker 3

03:55

So, he was cool with your green hair when you're a rebellion. That's just the way of life.

Speaker 1

04:00

He was fine with the green hair, but I think in some ways maybe they had to be fine with it because I didn't cause problems otherwise and I got good grades in school. I was a very low maintenance child I think.

Speaker 3

04:16

Even with the green hair. So Hunter S. Thompson wrote a lot of good stuff.

Speaker 3

04:23

He has a lot of just brilliant quotes, a lot of brilliant lines. So 1 of the ones I love is, "'Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body But rather just skidding broadside in a cloud of smoke Thoroughly used up Totally worn out and loudly proclaiming. Wow. What a ride What do you think about that?

Speaker 3

04:49

Is that good life advice from Hunter S. Thompson?

Speaker 1

04:53

I think so. I think he followed it, right? Somewhere, I heard recently what he consumed in a day.

Speaker 1

05:03

Yeah. And it was kind of astonishing. It's funny, when I was in college, there were always really interesting people coming through, speakers and whatnot, and I tended to not go to events and whatnot. But in the 4 years I was there, I mean, really interesting people came through and gave talks, you know, I don't know, just a lot of famous people.

Speaker 1

05:24

But then 1 day Hunter S. Thompson came to speak and that was the only 1 I attended.

Speaker 3

05:28

Oh, wow.

Speaker 1

05:29

That was the only interesting person who came to speak on the campus that I attended was Hunter S. Thompson. And he had a glass of whatever it was, whiskey.

Speaker 1

05:40

And I don't remember a whole lot about it, but it was entertaining.

Speaker 3

05:44

And yeah, I mean, later in his life, he started making less and less sense, but he was still somehow like embodying the crazy that he represented throughout his life, the boldness, the fearlessness, the wildness, all that kind of stuff. And we'll talk about Johnny Depp a little bit too. Funny enough, there's like a echo.

Speaker 3

06:02

Obviously Johnny Depp played him or he starred in Fear and Loathing and they hung out together and it just seemed to somehow like the universe rhymes in these 2 individuals. They're both madmen and in different kind of ways. So you also told me that Leon the Professional is 1 of your favorite films. It's also the reason you named your dog Leon.

Speaker 3

06:25

So what do you find beautiful and powerful about this film?

Speaker 1

06:30

I've watched it a bunch of times, but it's been a while since I've watched it.

Speaker 3

06:33

So for people who haven't watched it, there's a guy named Leon played by Jean Reno. There's a young girl, I think, I don't know,

Speaker 1

06:43

13, 14,

Speaker 3

06:45

Matilda played by Natalie Portman. And she's abused, She has a really hard life. Her parents are spoiler alert, murdered.

Speaker 3

06:57

And then she finds protection under this fellow, Leon, who also happens to be a professional assassin. And he is also kind of a Forrest Gump type character. Like he's a really simple, simple human. He almost, he seems to be like the immature 1 or like rather the 1 who's young and she seems to have a wisdom far beyond her age because of the hard life she had to live through.

Speaker 3

07:29

And then they're here huddling together from the cruelty of the world in finding connection.

Speaker 1

07:38

Yeah, I think it's 1 of those films where there's so many interesting things about it, but I'm sure 1 of them is just the contradiction of him being a caring person and reluctant to get attached to her. You know, he tries to, I think he knows he's, he is very reluctant to get attached to her in the beginning. And so you see all of his humanity, but yet he's also an assassin that kills people.

Speaker 1

08:02

So that's interesting. And I think probably a psychoanalyst would have a field day with why I like that movie so much. And I haven't gone there myself. But There's something I think about she, even in the brief part that depicts her in the beginning, it seems clear that she's sort of out of place in her family.

Speaker 1

08:31

And then, yeah, there's all kinds of interesting things about their relationship along the way.

Speaker 3

08:35

What I like about that movie, and I had to think about it recently because I've read stuff about it that bothered me, or it bothered me the fact that I haven't really thought about it before. For people who haven't watched the movie, so here's a young underage girl who kind of comes onto him. First of all, I think she actually just doesn't know what like familial love is.

Speaker 3

09:00

So this is the only way she knows how to express love. That's 1. And 2 is, you know, a lot of bad people in this world would take advantage of that, right? And the fact that she finally met a human being who doesn't and is just there to protect her.

Speaker 3

09:22

That's a real sort of, I don't know, a powerful statement of what it means to be sort of like a father figure, I suppose, a protector. So that to me, I love the idea of being sort of the protector, that there's something like, something worthwhile in this world to protect amidst all the cruelty that's all around. So that's a beautiful kind of, you're basically saving this young human's, or you're repairing this young human's path to love, to real love in life. Because that idea of love was destroyed for her.

Speaker 3

10:11

Just family, everything is, everything is, sort of everything around her is broken and he's kind of repairing it by reestablishing what that kind of love can be. I don't know.

Speaker 1

10:24

And the plant, they save the plant also.

Speaker 3

10:29

Well, There's also just the simplicity of the film, just from a cinematic perspective, is beautiful. The music, the way it looks, the minimalism.

Speaker 1

10:38

Even the violence was beautiful.

Speaker 3

10:41

Yeah, the violence. It was over the top, and also the bad guy, the bad cop, played by Gary Oldman.

Speaker 1

10:51

Yeah, he was amazing.

Speaker 3

10:52

I think he was listening to Beethoven or something like that. He'd taken some pills and drugs of some kind. There was a part of the orchestra, the violence was part of some kind of musical creation.

Speaker 1

11:08

Yeah, it's interesting because I turn away from violence or films usually that have violence or TV or anything that has that sort of element to it, except in certain cases where...

Speaker 3

11:24

Where the violence is beautiful?

Speaker 1

11:26

Yeah, yeah. Or did you see the movie, True Romance? Yes.

Speaker 1

11:33

That's my second favorite movie.

Speaker 3

11:35

Okay. That's probably my favorite movie.

Speaker 1

11:37

Oh, well, interesting. That's my second favorite movie.

Speaker 3

11:41

That's a more simple kind of love, but also with the violence that is beautiful, I suppose you could say.

Speaker 1

11:46

Yeah, and my favorite scene is the 1 with Patricia Arquette and James Gandolfini.

Speaker 3

11:52

Oh yeah, where she, there's a shotgun involved. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1

11:57

And then- It actually makes me cry every time I see it, for some reason. Ha.

Speaker 3

12:05

So for people who haven't seen the film, I think he's actually, I think he's hitting her or like there's blood and violence and so on because he's resisting being murdered.

Speaker 1

12:18

Yeah, there's a lot of violence. And then he throws her into the glass, the shower thing, and she's all cut up and beat up.

Speaker 3

12:28

Only and she laughs.

Speaker 1

12:30

Yeah, there's just so much passion in it. She knows she's gonna, or in that moment, she knows or thinks she knows that she's gonna die anyway. Cause she knows he's gonna kill her.

Speaker 1

12:42

So she kind of gives it all she has.

Speaker 3

12:46

But she also just has guts. She's not afraid.

Speaker 1

12:50

Yeah. Well, and also she's, you know, she loves Clarence.

Speaker 3

12:55

Yeah, the love comes through through that violence. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3

12:58

Just like Clarence. Her fella in that film has the same kind of thing when he visits-

Speaker 1

13:06

Well, it was Gary Oldman again.

Speaker 3

13:08

It was Gary Oldman again. That's right. The pimp.

Speaker 3

13:10

Looking very different.

Speaker 1

13:12

Drexel. Drexel, yeah.

Speaker 3

13:13

Yeah. And he's also fearless in that interaction saying, she's now mine. It's interesting. That movie is so romantic.

Speaker 3

13:21

And that happy ending, spoiler alert in a way.

Speaker 1

13:24

That's what I like about it too, because I feel like some movies should come with, I don't wanna watch a movie if it's gonna be devastating, usually unless it's worthwhile in some other way, but I'm kind of sensitive and I don't want, I don't like movies that have a terrible ending. You know, I mean, there's a book I read because it got so many good reviews, and the very last scene, the woman steps in front of a train and it was like so I'm partial to movies with happy endings.

Speaker 3

13:55

Leon ends with loss in the movie.

Speaker 1

14:00

Right but it's still inspiring.

Speaker 3

14:03

Love persists in some kind of form.

Speaker 1

14:06

Yeah.

Speaker 3

14:06

She persists.

Speaker 1

14:07

And the plant. And the plant.

Speaker 3

14:11

Okay, sure, sure. True Romance does have 1 of the, I mean, it's probably unhealthy.

Speaker 1

14:16

That ending scene is just amazing.

Speaker 3

14:18

You're so cool, where she, is that 1? No, where she just kind of looks at Clarence and her son and child or whatever. And she's saying, you're so cool, you're so cool.

Speaker 3

14:31

Yeah, that's love.

Speaker 1

14:34

I just felt that movie has so much in it. Cause it's, you know, it's funny and there's so many, so many good actors in that film.

Speaker 3

14:42

And Brad Pitt plays in that film, a pivotal role of Pothead on couch.

Speaker 1

14:47

Yeah, they're all so good and funny and Michael Rapaport and even Val Kilmer. People don't realize he's in the movie because he doesn't look like himself.

Speaker 3

14:57

Wait, what did Val Kilmer look like? Val

Speaker 1

14:59

Kilmer's in the very end. You know when there's like the Elvis sitting there talking to him in the end. That's Val Kilmer.

Speaker 1

15:10

Yeah, you don't notice it unless you somehow either are very perceptive or noticed it in the credits.

Speaker 3

15:17

Yeah. And Quentin Tarantino wrote the film, I think. Yes. Which is interesting.

Speaker 3

15:23

Directed by Tony Scott and the music is beautiful too.

Speaker 1

15:28

And Christopher Walken and Dennis Hopper.

Speaker 3

15:33

Dennis Hopper. Dennis Hopper plays Clarence's dad and they have this very racist sounding scene, but the big important aspect of that scene is it's a father willing to die to protect the son. I mean, it's so much beautiful violence in

Speaker 1

15:53

that film. There is, there is. I love that film so much.

Speaker 3

15:57

And she's a prostitute or not really, part-time, short time.

Speaker 1

16:02

No, it was her first time.

Speaker 3

16:03

First time. Yeah. Okay, and he saved her.

Speaker 3

16:09

And,

Speaker 1

16:12

My third favorite film has no violence whatsoever.

Speaker 3

16:16

What's your third favorite film?

Speaker 1

16:17

A Room with a View. I feel like you'd like it. It's I forget the author, it's a book and I read the book much later, but it's Helena Bonham Carter and Daniel Day-Lewis is in it and Julian Sands.

Speaker 3

16:40

Daniel Day-Lewis is a fascinating character.

Speaker 1

16:43

He's amazing in this film because he plays, he's very funny. He sort of plays a, he's a comical character, which is unlike most of what he does, I think. I don't watch a ton of movies, so, but yeah, he plays, his role is funny.

Speaker 3

17:01

Well, that's a, that's a heck of a top 3 You you brought me some books some bread and books. Yeah, some Russian bread Russian inspired bread

Speaker 1

17:12

Yeah, I mean it's Latvian, but it's similar to

Speaker 3

17:15

close enough

Speaker 1

17:16

similar to what's made in Russia and it's made at a Russian bakery

Speaker 3

17:20

in Brooklyn. That's where your dad is from, right?

Speaker 1

17:21

My dad is from Latvia, yeah.

Speaker 3

17:23

So you got me some books, beautiful ruins.

Speaker 1

17:26

Yeah, and if you never read them, who cares? That's totally fine. People give you books and then you feel like you just, you sort of feel like

Speaker 3

17:34

you just- I see this as, we'll talk about this. This is part therapy session. I don't feel the need to satisfy people's happiness.

Speaker 1

17:42

That's a good thing.

Speaker 3

17:43

Okay, so, but It could also be an opportunity to experience something I never otherwise would have. So, Beautiful Ruins.

Speaker 1

17:53

It's a book that made me laugh and cry, and it's just a happy story. And for some reason, I don't know exactly why, but for some reason, when you asked me to come, it just, I thought, oh, I'm gonna bring a copy of that book.

Speaker 3

18:08

That's, you just felt, it came, a voice told you. Yeah. There's others, Darkness Visible.

Speaker 1

18:14

These are more.

Speaker 3

18:15

A Memoir of Madness, compelling, harrowing, a vivid portrait of a debilitating disorder that offers the solace of shared experience in New York Times.

Speaker 1

18:25

This is, there's a little bit about this book that reminds me of the Karl Deisseroth book, because he writes about his own condition in, I mean, he's an amazing writer, so he writes about it in this beautiful way, and oddly enough, in some ways, it's kind of delightful. So it's not at all a depressing book, at least I didn't find it depressing at all, I don't think it is. But he writes about his own experience with depression in such a beautiful way.

Speaker 1

19:00

My own copy is full of underlines. I would

Speaker 3

19:04

love that copy too. I would love to look into the underlines and the books with notes. Those little secrets that people leave.

Speaker 1

19:13

That's part of why I like paper books is because I underline, I tend to underline like crazy. The Carl Diceroth book is full of underlines too.

Speaker 3

19:22

Well, I do the same thing on Kindle, but and then you can actually more effectively go back to the things you've underlined because you highlight and so on. But in fact, when you underline on paper books, you sometimes never go back, which always makes me sad.

Speaker 1

19:39

To the book?

Speaker 3

19:39

To the things you've underlined.

Speaker 1

19:41

In the paper books?

Speaker 3

19:42

Yeah, in the paper books.

Speaker 1

19:43

Oh, I do, I go back. Yeah, I go back a lot.

Speaker 3

19:45

Do you wonder what the heck you were thinking about when you wrote something?

Speaker 1

19:49

No, well sometimes I underline things that are, well, also what I do is I have a whole file in Evernote of transcribed quotes from books, ones that I wanna save. So I might underline a lot of things in a book and then maybe like a third of them, I wanna write them down somewhere. So I write those down and I think even the time it takes to transcribe it is somehow worthwhile.

Speaker 1

20:12

It's like searing it in your brain. And

Speaker 3

20:16

you're reliving the memory of having it read it the first time.

Speaker 1

20:20

Yeah, and then sometimes I'll pick up books. I even, and sometimes I just underline sentences that are, it's not the content of the sentence, it's more that it's just a beautifully written sentence or like a particularly apt metaphor or something that's really nice. And I like paper books too because I bought Beautiful Ruins.

Speaker 1

20:39

I would have never heard of it, I don't think, except 1 of my favorite things is to go to used bookstores. Actually, Goodwill sometimes has really good big book selections, depending on the area where you go. Sometimes you find a lot of treasures there. And what ends up happening a lot is I end up buying books that I know sometimes also because I lost all my belongings at 1 point so I'll very often buy books that I've already read just to have them and but then what always ends up happening is I'll find there'll be a couple of books that I buy that I've never heard of the author.

Speaker 1

21:17

I don't really know anything about the book at all, but something drew me to it. And what I like about that is you're buying used books, so it costs a dollar or 2. So if you made a mistake, like no big deal, who cares? But every time I come back with a book haul, there's usually at least 1 gem that I end up loving and I'm so glad that I read it.

Speaker 1

21:39

And Beautiful Ruins was that book for me. And I was drawn to it because of the cover art. Like I just loved the cover and the colors. And then I picked it up and read the back and bought it.

Speaker 1

21:51

And I also feel bad sometimes buying used books when the author is still alive, because I feel like if you write a book, you should get the royalties.

Speaker 3

22:01

But you get to live with that regret.

Speaker 1

22:04

Well, also, I mean, I'll usually end up putting a picture of Leon, reading the book online, and then other people buy it and read it. And so I feel like I've made up for...

Speaker 3

22:12

You make up for it.

Speaker 1

22:13

I've made up for depriving him of the royalties.

Speaker 3

22:17

I used to live in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Speaker 1

22:21

I know it well. I used to hang out at the pit in Harvard Square with my green and blue hair when I was very, way too young to be doing that by myself.

Speaker 3

22:29

And there's a guy that I think has been there for a long time, sort of between Kendall and Central, that would just lay out used books and sell them. And I always loved that guy, whoever he was. He had a cool hat, he's an older gentleman, and you could just tell he's seen some things.

Speaker 3

22:50

I don't know who he is. I always wanted to actually like talk to him for a long time but I was too afraid. Maybe because I wouldn't be able to handle what he had to tell me. Because I almost wanted to maintain the innocence of just, okay, here's this guy.

Speaker 3

23:03

But he was so, every time you would ask him a question about a book, first of all, he's read all of them.

Speaker 1

23:09

Oh, that's interesting.

Speaker 3

23:10

Which means he's traveled quite a few places inside these worlds. And then you would tell him, I would look at a book, right? And he would catch you being curious about it, and then he would walk up to you, and then he would start talking about the book.

Speaker 3

23:26

And he would always forget that you were there. He's almost like, he's not trying to sell you the books.

Speaker 1

23:32

Part talking to himself?

Speaker 3

23:33

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like almost like an ex-girlfriend he's visiting through this book or something.

Speaker 1

23:39

Did you buy books from him?

Speaker 3

23:40

Yeah, yeah, definitely. But the experience of just being there, because he lays them out, and people actually that watch or listen to this probably would be able to tell me what his name is, because I'd love to find that guy again. I'm sure he's still there.

Speaker 1

23:52

Maybe you'll have him on the podcast.

Speaker 3

23:55

I 100% will, but it's almost terrifying. I'm not sure I can handle, Because he's been through some things. I'm not sure if he's homeless or just looks like it.

Speaker 1

24:07

Yep. That's sometimes a thing.

Speaker 3

24:11

And some of my favorite people either are homeless or look like it, so. Okay, what's the third 1? A Confession of a Sociopath by M.E.

Speaker 3

24:22

Thomas, A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight.

Speaker 1

24:24

It's a book I recommend a lot because I've read a lot about sociopathy and I've read all the books by psychologists and this one's written by a woman who understands herself that she is a sociopath. And so it's beautifully written, but I learned more from that book than from any other book. And I think I thought about it a long time ago.

Speaker 1

24:49

I think a lot of conversations, you've talked a lot about good and evil and, you know, whether everybody's really good or some people are not good. And I think sociopathy is something that I think the world needs to understand much better. And so that book helped me understand a lot. And it's beautifully written, and she tackles all the really interesting moral questions, like what if we were able to definitively diagnose people in some way, like there was a, you could immediately identify who's a full-blown sociopath, and then what as a society would you do with them?

Speaker 1

25:32

Because in most cases, they're just gonna cause destruction and pain and harm and or potentially rise to power and become president or something. So I just found that book fascinating.

Speaker 3

25:51

And we'll return to this idea, because it's fascinating. We'll return to human psychology and human nature. But Let's go through the timeline of your life.

Speaker 3

26:05

Let's take a stroll. So you wrote that the documentary about you called Bad Vegan Fame Fraud Fugitives is not a documentary. You got some things right, some things wrong, and some were, quote, disturbingly misleading. So let's go through and get things right today.

Speaker 3

26:26

First, can I give you a whirlwind summary, the way I understand it? And also for context of people. So 2004, you, Matthew Kenney, and Jeffrey Chodorow opened Pure Foods and Wine in New York City. Did I say their names correctly?

Speaker 1

26:44

Pure Food and Wine.

Speaker 3

26:45

No, their names.

Speaker 1

26:46

Oh, theirs. Well, yeah, Matthew Kenney and Jeffrey Chodoro, yeah.

Speaker 3

26:50

Yeah, so it's, and I'll ask about what it takes to launch and run a restaurant in New York City. That's a fascinating story in itself. So it's an upscale raw food restaurant.

Speaker 3

27:03

All right, that's

Speaker 1

27:04

2004. 2007,

Speaker 3

27:06

you open 1 Lucky Duck, Juice and Takeaway. And second and third locations in 2009 and

Speaker 1

27:12

14.

Speaker 3

27:14

All of those things close in

Speaker 1

27:17

2016, 15

Speaker 3

27:20

and 16, okay.

Speaker 2

27:22

All right,

Speaker 1

27:22

2009,

Speaker 3

27:24

Jeffrey lends you $2.1 million to buy the business outright and Matthew is out.

Speaker 1

27:31

Matthew was out earlier than that and then time passed, time passed, and I had, what was complicated is I had started the 1 Lucky Duck brand on my own.

Speaker 3

27:42

At first it was a dot-com that was doing like delivery?

Speaker 1

27:47

It was a dot-com where people could order ingredients and things and all of the products that we made and packaged. So we made a bunch of cookies and snacks and things that were, I think, different, and if I may say so myself, better than other-

Speaker 3

28:02

Strong words.

Speaker 1

28:03

Products out

Speaker 3

28:03

there. Talking trash already.

Speaker 1

28:05

Yeah, but then... About the cookies. But I feel like I can brag about our food and products because I wasn't, you know, a few recipes early on I came up with, but it was the people that worked with me that created really good recipes and products.

Speaker 1

28:23

And I was just kind of there curating it all or helping to get it out there.

Speaker 3

28:32

So- What was your favorite thing that you've created? Maybe yourself eat. That not you created, but this whole, all of these efforts have created in terms of meal.

Speaker 3

28:42

Like you said, cookies. What are we talking about here?

Speaker 1

28:45

Oh, That's a hard question.

Speaker 3

28:45

I mean- Just okay, not the favorite, but like something that pops into memory that brought you joy.

Speaker 1

28:51

The Malo Mar. Everybody loved the Malo Mar. So very often we made like raw vegan versions of things that people are familiar with.

Speaker 1

29:01

So it was, I think it was pecans. It was like a salty cookie made with nuts and then covered in chocolate. And then there's a big blob of coconut cream.

Speaker 3

29:12

I love coconut.

Speaker 1

29:13

Which it didn't taste coconutty. Our ice cream was made with a coconut also. It's like the meat from coconuts, pureed, and then there's some soaked cashews in there.

Speaker 1

29:24

But anyway, it was a blob of vanilla flavored cream, kind of like a healthy, natural version of fluff. I don't know if you're familiar with fluff.

Speaker 3

29:34

Basically every single word you say I'm not familiar with, you should see my diet. I don't. It's like steak and vegetables.

Speaker 1

29:40

Fluff is like a thing that I remember it from my childhood, like peanut butter and fluff is a ridiculously delicious combination.

Speaker 3

29:47

Is it fluffy or is it not?

Speaker 1

29:48

It's like a marshmallow. It's basically like if you softened marshmallows and made it into a luxurious, amazing goo. Oh,

Speaker 3

29:56

so it's like a fancy marshmallow.

Speaker 1

29:57

And then put it in a jar. Okay. And then made it spreadable.

Speaker 1

30:01

It's spreadable marshmallows kind of.

Speaker 3

30:03

Oh, I see. I think that's, yeah. Spreadable marshmallows, got it.

Speaker 1

30:07

Yeah, so there's a big blob of that.

Speaker 3

30:09

I didn't know that existed. That's a thing? Fluff.

Speaker 3

30:11

Fluff. I know. Does everyone, do people know about this?

Speaker 1

30:16

Oh yeah, everybody knows. People, I mean, I think so. People know about fluff.

Speaker 3

30:21

See, I think I went, I took the road less traveled by, you know, I went the the peanut butter and Nutella road in terms of spreadable things.

Speaker 1

30:30

Nutella is like the chocolate version, And then fluff is like the vanilla equivalent, sort of. But I think commercial fluff that you buy in the store is just like sugar and whatever else they put in there.

Speaker 3

30:45

Anyway. It's not actually fluffy.

Speaker 1

30:48

It's kind of fluffy, but it's wet.

Speaker 3

30:51

Because Nutella is

Speaker 1

30:52

not fluffy. So it's like Nutella if you whipped it and then kind of got a little bit aerated. So it's a bit more fluffy.

Speaker 3

31:04

So fluff was a part of the formula here.

Speaker 1

31:08

So the coconut cream that we made was like a healthy version of fluff, Kind of. Except it would, you know, you could make a quenelle, like a little scoop of it, and it would stay in that form. Malamars were refrigerated.

Speaker 1

31:26

And then there's like chocolate drizzled over that. So it had that like salty, sweet thing going on. That was probably my favorite.

Speaker 3

31:35

And that's a dessert.

Speaker 1

31:37

Yeah, it was like a dessert snack. It wasn't as, you wouldn't order it on the restaurant menu, but in the takeaway you could get them. Or Sometimes some people would get them shipped on dry ice and pay a lot of money, like a lot of money to have them shipped on dry ice.

Speaker 3

31:54

People are funny.

Speaker 1

31:55

I know, I kind of want to like name drop because it was Tom Brady used to order them.

Speaker 3

32:00

Oh, that's awesome.

Speaker 1

32:01

Yeah, they would order those shipped on ice to Boston.

Speaker 3

32:08

Yeah, continuing on, in 2011, you meet Anthony Stranges on Twitter and then in real life, also around this time, I think before you got your rescue dog, a pit bull named Leon. Yeah. 2011, 2010.

Speaker 3

32:24

Do you remember?

Speaker 1

32:25

It was September 2010, so, cause I think he was born roughly around March. I gave him a designated birthday of March 10th, 2010.

Speaker 3

32:34

Why is that? Why March 10th?

Speaker 1

32:37

I wrote about the story of adopting him on my website a long time ago and then I reposted it here on my current website and what happened, I got weirdly obsessed with Leon before he was Leon. He was a dog in a shelter named Quinn and I couldn't stop thinking about him and

Speaker 3

32:55

him specifically him specifically So I'm and there's something very special about him. I was

Speaker 1

33:00

trying to convince somebody else to adopt a dog So and I

Speaker 3

33:04

Alec Balton,

Speaker 1

33:05

yeah, and it didn't occur to me that I like how you

Speaker 3

33:08

didn't name-drop him But you need Tom Brady Like it

Speaker 1

33:15

So I was trying to convince him to get a dog because I thought, you know, he should have a dog. I saw Leon's picture and just got weirdly obsessed with it in a way that I couldn't really explain. And I was laying in bed 1 night and thinking, I just couldn't stop thinking about him, the dog.

Speaker 1

33:34

And the paper, or the description in the shelter bio said that he was roughly 5 months old or however whatever it gave us his age I went back and it would have been March 20 would have been March of that year that he was born, and I had a cat that I was particularly attached to. I had 2 cats, brother and sister, but the boy cat, we had sort of like a, something that felt like a, you know, like we'd look at each other and there was something there. I don't know what it was. And in fact, when he got sick, I knew it before he even had any symptoms.

Speaker 1

34:10

It was something in the way that he looked at me. I knew something was wrong. And then-

Speaker 3

34:15

Was it friendship? Was it, like, was there a power dynamic? Cats seem to not really.

Speaker 1

34:23

Give a fuck?

Speaker 3

34:24

Yeah, they seem to dismiss you. Usually, yeah. Your entire worth as a human being.

Speaker 1

34:31

Right.

Speaker 3

34:31

In a single look. Was that there or?

Speaker 1

34:34

He was more dog-like. He would occasionally fetch, like this little Styrofoam thing I had, he would fetch it and bring it back. And he was friendly and if somebody came over, he would jump in their lap.

Speaker 1

34:48

He was less standoffish than most cats. But there was just something about the way he would look at me, I don't know. And I, maybe, probably, in his mind, he's just a cat. I give him food.

Speaker 1

35:02

Whereas in my mind, it's some kind of great soul connection. Great, great

Speaker 3

35:08

long-running romance.

Speaker 1

35:10

Not in his kitty mind, but either way, so he died in March and I thought, so I sort of concocted this. I just thought that, well, if he died on March 10th, and so I thought, well, maybe Leon was born that same day, and that's why I'm so drawn to him. I don't know.

Speaker 3

35:32

No, That makes, okay, that makes sense.

Speaker 1

35:35

But then you just found like,

Speaker 3

35:37

when you saw him you just like, there's something.

Speaker 1

35:39

It was his picture, yeah.

Speaker 3

35:41

Oh, the picture, and you were drawn something about the personality in the eyes.

Speaker 1

35:47

It was something about his picture, I don't know what it was. And everybody at the time was like, what are you thinking, why would you get a dog, you can't even take care of yourself, you're overworked and busy, and why would you get a five-month-old pit bull mix? You know, why not get an older dog that's easier to take care of?" And for me it was like, I don't want any dog.

Speaker 1

36:12

I don't want... My intention isn't to get a dog, but there's something about this dog that I have to get and so I went to see him and then I had already filled out an application it was just I went to see him and then I it was the afternoon and I sort of decided in my head like, all right, I'm coming back to get him, I have to. And so the next morning I got on the subway, I went back to get him, and I was crying on the subway. And I remember thinking that people, I don't like crying in public.

Speaker 1

36:45

I cry a lot, but I don't like crying in front of other people. And- I love it. Yeah. I thought people on the train looking at me probably think that, you know, I just, somebody died or-

Speaker 3

36:57

Sorry, you're crying on the way there or on the way back?

Speaker 1

36:59

On the way there to get him. I don't, And I don't know why I was crying. It was just something about it was overwhelming.

Speaker 3

37:05

So tears of happiness or tears of something.

Speaker 1

37:08

Something, yeah. I think tears are overwhelming. I know I'm like jumping off, but there was some, I don't, now I'm trying, was it in your conversation or the book, Carl Dyseroff talks about tears of joy and trying to explain them.

Speaker 1

37:25

And he said something about how it was like about, you know, cause tears of sadness could be understood in a having like a evolutionary purpose, but why tears of joy? And I think he said it was something about like hope that could be like lost. So if you cried at a wedding, it might be like, you're crying because their love is beautiful and you're crying because, you know, they could get hit by a bus tomorrow or something, you know, like it had something to do with that. And I thought, but I thought to me it feels like overwhelmed because then how would that explain music?

Speaker 1

38:05

Cause music will make me cry a lot.