2024.07.04
People who mostly know Stern from the 80s and the 90s might not realize how much he's grown and matured, especially since he switched to SiriusXM. He'll still do some of the shock jock sex stuff, but he's done a lot of therapy and is a fantastically well researched and emotionally resonant interviewer.
A lot of good (and touching) quotes here, but my favorite was Billy Joel talking about how he could still play piano after getting his hands banged up in a motorcycle accident: "No, piano is a percussion instrument. People think it's a string instrument, but piano you play like a drum."
I have this theory. I don't know if this holds water, but it's just that if death is the end of the story, how the story ends, then marriage is a giant step in that direction. Actually, the fear of marriage is the fear of death.
[My slamming my own hand until it broke was] similar to cutting, when the pain on the inside is so intense, you just want a way for it to stop. Your brain literally can't handle the physical pain and the emotional pain. One of the receptors turns off. So when you feel like you're drowning by all of the emotional stuff . . . And there was horrible stuff going on at my house at night. That's something that scars you in a way, that unless you've lived through it it's hard to articulate.
Dave: See, there was a pounding nervousness when I was nineteen. There was a debilitating fear. And then I'd just start [playing "All Along the Watchtower"] and no one would pay any attention. Maybe one person might stop. But the convenience with [it] was when it was a little bit chilly I could just play the song and never stop playing it.
Howard: Yeah, it's a little monotonous, isn't it?
Dave: I would play it this way and that way. I could do it for an hour, swear to God. Until someone told me to stop and shut up. I did have one really humiliating experience. This guy came up and just put his hands on the strings and said, "Shhhhh." And then walked away with his pretty Dutch girlfriends. And they all went, "Ha ha ha." And I was just *crushed*.
When you're happy, drink and do drugs; when you're unhappy, don't.
Howard: When you break up, do you rip up pictures, or--
Gwyneth: No.
Howard: You still have them somewhere?
Gwyneth: I have a couple pictures, yeah.
Howard: But when you get married, in the future, you gotta rip up those pictures then.
Gwyneth: Why? Every piece of your life is an important piece of your life.
I love what Rodney Dangerfield says in the following pages about how he doesn't believe in God, he believes in logic. A big part of me agrees with him. I have often said, "There's no God. There's no way." Then I'll quickly think better of it. "I better not say that." I'm so paranoid. What if there is a God, and I get punished for not believing? "Well, there might be one," I blurt out. "Yes, there definitely is a God!" Like I said, I'm in a weird in-between zone--my personal purgatory. This indecisiveness is even more agonizing and confounding because it violates the single most important rule of being successful in radio, which I mentioned earlier in this book's introduction: you must have a definite opinion. I've defined my entire career by this principle. Yet when it comes to religion, I'm unable to follow it. Telling people, "There is no God," is good radio. Telling people, "There is a God"--also good radio. Telling people, "There is no God . . . but wait, maybe there is one," that's bad radio. I know it, but I still can't help myself. I'm afraid to offend the Almighty.
I so desperately want to believe. I don't want the party to end when I die. I can't grasp that the world is going to go on without me and not miss a beat. Really, at the end of the day, I'm hoping for the movie Ghost: I drop dead, wrap my arms around Demi Moore, and we make pottery for eternity.
Howard: The backstory has to be believable. It's like porn.
Amy: Yeah. Sure. Well, I know what kind of porn you like, which is your babysitter stuff.
Howard: Babysitter, massage room--
Amy: Yeah, massage room. Yup, that's nice. 'Cause it also involves a massage, which I always think is nice.
Howard: Always nice. I watched two girls give each other a shower last night. One was a reluctant lesbian, and the other one was full-blown lesbian.
Amy: I feel like the reluctant one maybe was on board from the beginning.
Howard: But do you feel like you wasted time when you were young? Are there any regrets?
Billy: Sure, I've got regrets. Anyone who's really lived has regrets. If you have no regrets, what kind of life did you have?
Howard: You don't panic when you see your hands swelling up like that, living as a piano player?
Billy: Nah. They weren't that good to begin with. This is rock and roll. You play with your elbows if you have to.
Howard: Oh, come on.
Billy: No, piano is a percussion instrument. People think it's a string instrument, but piano you play like a drum.
Howard: For sure. I think it's refreshing you're not one of these guys that appears to be marketing constantly. We were just talking this morning about how Jimmy Buffett is building a retirement home called Margaritaville.
Ed: If I was to do anything, there's a local brewery near me, and I'd love them to make me a beer. That's the one thing I would endorse. [Or] ketchup--if there was a bottle of ketchup.
Howard: How many guys do you know who do the whole living on couches and everything and then don't make it? It's crazy sad.
Ed: The only ones that I know that don't are the ones that had a plan B. So the moment you go, "Ah, I don't want to sleep on this couch anymore. I have this really good job I can go to"--that's the moment that it doesn't happen. I actually haven't met anyone who has set their mind on something and not achieved it, eventually. There are actors that make it when they're fifty, and they become the biggest actor in the world when they're fifty, and that's because they haven't had a plan B and they've just been like, "Nah, fuck it, I'm gonna do it."
You got to piss off *somebody*. It's not good weed if you don't choke a little bit.
Sadly, [our beloved cat Leon] died on the operating table. The tumor was even bigger than they thought, and he lost too much blood during the procedure. I was devastated. So was Beth. We sat in my office and cried. My life felt so empty without Leon sitting there on the couch next to me. I wrote a five-page love letter listing everything I cherished about him. I didn't want to forget a single detail of our time together. Little things, like how Leon only ate dry food and hated when I scratched his side. It was my way of paying tribute to him. I'm not sure when I'll be able to go back and read it. The pain is still too raw.