The Grey NATO – 253 – Breaking The Ice

Published on Thu, 14 Sep 2023 06:00:00 -0400

Synopsis

Jason and Blake discuss a variety of random topics in a casual conversational style, including answering hypothetical questions about life choices, sharing personal anecdotes and preferences, and reflecting on professional experiences. The intent is to have a fun, unstructured conversation that allows the audience to get to know them better beyond just their usualwatch and travel discussions.

Transcript

Speaker
Blake Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Great NATO, a loose discussion of travel, adventure, diving, driving gear, and most certainly watches. This is episode 253. And it's proudly brought to you by the always growing and always exciting TGN supporter crew. We thank you all so much for your continued support. And if you'd like to support the show, maybe get your hands on a NATO, maybe even get into the slack, please visit thegreatnado.com for more details. Hey, Jason, how you doing? Happy Tuesday.
Jason Happy Tuesday. Yeah. I'm, uh, I'm excited to see you in, uh, what, uh, two days.
Blake Well, actually no tomorrow evening, I think we'll be probably, uh, about, yeah, maybe 30 hours from now, something like that.
Jason Right. Yeah. Trip coming up. Yeah. Actually the next two weeks we'll be.
Blake Yeah. I'll see you twice. It's going to be great. We've got, uh, we have a trip, so we're both on a trip tomorrow in Florida, uh, with Tudor. I think that we're allowed to say that much. I don't actually know anything more. I only just found out the hotel last night. Yeah. And then the kind of about a week, a little later than a week later, I'll catch you again in Cannes, France for a Blancpain event. Yeah. So some sort of sporty watches coming up, some stuff I'm pretty excited about. It was weird timing for this episode, which we'll get into when we get to the kind of, I don't know, quote unquote, random sort of main topic. But how have you been in the last little while since we recorded last?
Jason Uh, pretty good. Yeah. I mean, just to just sort of got my head down. I've got, you know, the, the trips coming up and then another trip in October and uh, I'm trying to, um, in the final stages of the manuscript for Sweetwater, my, my novel and uh, working with our buddy Paul Andrews and Chris soul on some typesetting and proofreading. Thanks to both of those guys. They're fantastic. They're such pros. Um, and it's, yeah, it's improving right now and I'm aiming for a release in the second half of October if, if all goes well and I'm just, You know, I'm trying to kind of squeeze in that stuff with, with getting ready for these trips, uh, that involve some diving and photography and that sort of stuff. And then, uh, and I'm kind of at the last stages of, of buttoning up some of the work I did in Ecuador for Carl F. Bucherer. So it's kind of like, I've got my fingers in a lot of different things these days, but it's, uh, I was telling you the other day, it's like, you know, I can't complain. It's all fun stuff. It's just, it's all kind of come at once.
Blake Yeah. I mean, that's how it is. It's, you know, it rains, it pours, right?
Jason Right. What about you? You mentioned before the show, you might have something in your ceiling at home.
Blake Oh yeah. We woke up today with some noise. I think some sort of an animal has gotten into like the soffit or the, maybe the attic. I'm not, I'm not super sure.
Jason The colder weather's coming. They're looking for a place.
Blake Yeah, I guess so. It's pouring rain today, so maybe that has something to do with it. I'm not, I'm not really sure. It's, it's, um, I haven't really heard anything otherwise. I thought I heard a sound a couple nights ago and then I just kind of like shrugged it off as it being like a tree touching the house or something. Yeah. And but that's definitely not what today was. So dealing with that, you know, that's life. I was in NYC for a couple days last week for meetings at Hodinkee and shoot some video, came back Saturday. It was a tough, tough trip home. I have a habit now where when I fly home from LaGuardia, I just book the last flight. Yeah. So it's usually like an 830 or nine o'clock flight in your home and time to go to bed. Right. But on the day of the flight, I usually just go to the airport whenever I'm done with the city. So on Saturday, we saw some friends for brunch, I was there, I was down there with my wife, we went to PS one MoMA to kick around, because it was right near where we were in Long Island City. And then after that, we're kind of like, I don't know, what do you want to do? And I was like, I got a little bit of work to do, like, let's just go hit the lounge, right? It was probably like five or six hours before the flight. Yeah, we're waiting and you can just see like pretty much all at once somebody got on a call with Toronto and made a decision that everything was going to be delayed or cancelled. So they started cancelling flights and I was like, well, maybe we're not going home tonight. It's a Saturday. We got home on Sunday. It's not that big a deal. Nothing you can control, right? So then that all kind of like delayed, delayed. So then our 8 30 flight ended up taking off just before 1 a.m. Oh, It got home at like three thirty four o'clock. So that and then that, you know, I'm not a huge sleep in type typically. Yeah. But you know, that ate up most of Saturday, Sunday morning and then and then got home. So we got home and then we woke up and I guess I just decided I needed more chaos and pain in my life. So Sarah and I decided to go to Ikea and Costco on a Sunday afternoon. Oh, masochistic. You know, I only just renewed a Costco membership like in the last couple of weeks, but I had one when I was in Vancouver and I forgot that I had this rule where I don't go on weekends. Oh yeah. I used to always go like Tuesday or Wednesday night or during the day during a business day. Yeah. Um, if I had to pick up a few things. So we ended up at, you know, a Toronto area Costco with about 30 billion other people. Most of the population of the earth was also at this Costco. Uh, so we did that and we did a lap of Ikea and then I guess where this is going is, is, you know, people have been curious and we've been sharing information about me slowly, like setting up my desk and my office space here at the new house. Um, so I found some pretty good, um, like office, office storage. I really like Ikea when the stuff is metal. Oh yeah. I have these red cabinets that I bought off a buddy of mine years and like well over a decade ago, I moved them to Vancouver and I moved them back. So, probably like 15 or 16 years ago, I bought these two red metal cabinets and it's what I keep camera gear and other stuff in. And then in a similar line, they have this line called Tolstorp, T-U-L-L-S-T-O-R-P. That's kind of like flat gray office furniture. So there's cabinets of a few different types. So I bought a couple of those. I'm actually super happy with them. I'm still trying to find what the system of putting stuff in them And then kind of out of boredom or desperation or a mix of both, you know, a nice mix for me. I picked, I've wanted a standing desk for a long time.
Unknown Yeah.
Blake You know, it's easy to do 10 hours and that can't be good to do so in a chair. But I also just was really doubtful of like how one standing desk could be markedly different than another. I've gone to a couple of stores, seen them in person, seen what other people use. And then, you know, there's this whole Reddit thread on like, if you're going to end up with essentially the Chinese legs anyways. Yeah. just put whatever top you want on them. And I really like the top that I already have, which is a big piece of butcher block. Maybe, I don't know, four feet by two and a half feet, something like that. Yeah. And maybe a little bit longer than that. And so I just bought the legs. I picked up their beefiest legs. They're called Ideasan, Ideasan, I-D-E-A-S-E-N. And they hold like, I don't know, 75 kilos or something like that, which is a ton of weight. and I even figured out a way to put these legs on without taking anything off my old desk. It was it was like when it was like an engineering struggle, like this is what I feel like, you know, like the those guys in the military that will like replace a bridge while the other bridge is still in use. It was kind of that scenario where like I removed one leg and kind of tapped it into the table lower back and like brought the standing like system in sideways, raised it up. So it was holding some weight removed another leg shimmied and I just kept like shimmying and removing legs until it sat and seemed balanced and I ran a level several times and it ended up working out. So it was a very stupid thing to do, probably considering I had everything still on my desk. Yeah, it's not a super light desk and multiple monitors, arms, that sort of thing, but I did get it in and so far I just like I've had it for two days now, two working days. Yeah, and I just absolutely really, really like it. I bought one of those like mats that has the ridges on it Sure. So there's like a squishy middle area that's, I guess, just to help like with static standing, but then there's all these other little shapes. Kind of looks like those things at the climbing gym. Oh, sure. Jugs and handles and that sort of thing. And you can just kind of like grind the ball or the arch of your foot into them and it's great. So I've been doing, doing a lot of that. I stood all morning. So, uh, from what I've read, the, the most recent stuff is it's like three to one standing. So you should stand 45 minutes of every hour if you can.
Blake Huh. Huh.
Blake So I'm going to do that and see hopefully if it's just like a more comfortable thing.
Jason So when you're sitting, do you then lower it and use the same desk then, right?
Blake Exactly the same, yeah. So the system has a little... I wish I could have bought like one system up from this where you could save presets. But this just has a little up or down switch and you press and hold it until it's high enough. And then when you're ready to sit, you press and hold it down until it's low enough. So it's not super fancy, but the legs were 600 bucks Canadian. And when I priced out the very well reviewed sort of middle range of standing desks where you get a top as well, a real wood top, you're looking at like 16, 1700 bucks Canadian. Oh, yeah. So as I already had a solid wood top that I liked, I figured this was at least worth trying. And these have a nice warranty. I would say the reviews are fine. These are the Chinese legs. There's a lot of customization you can do to them if you want. So I'm sure I could install a different controller. Hmm. If I'm willing to, you know, buy that, but I'm pretty happy with what it's doing now. Nice.
Jason Yeah. I've never used a standing desk, but I don't, I don't sit for long periods. I'm kind of antsy. So I'll work for, you know, 40 minutes and then go, I don't know, do something, empty the dishwasher, throw a load of laundry and whatever. I don't know if that counts. I mean, it's certainly not as good as standing while you work. And the standing pad I think would make a difference because I think when I stand for long periods, I just, you know, my feet, my feet just start to ache.
Blake Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was, the standing thing was better when I worked in Vancouver and I would walk to and from work every day just cause it was just so much more exposure. But I would, let's just be, say what it is. I've just become soft. I've got like soft feet. Oh yeah. Yeah. Standing on the cement for a whole day at, or like on the concrete floors that like wind up, I just notice it.
Unknown Yeah.
Blake Even in nice shoes. Like I can pick my most comfortable, wear my red wings. I'm okay. It's fine. Yeah. But at the end of the day, you get back to the hotel and you unlace those boots and your dogs are barking.
Unknown Yeah.
Blake Yeah. So are you standing when you record TGN? No, I'm sitting. I was worried that I would move around too much. I'm moving as I say that. So to give you guys some little ASMR there, but, uh, yeah, I was worried. I would like to, I would like to get to a point where I could stand, but yeah, I'm so far, I'm super happy with it. I really like, uh, the setup and, uh, and being able to stand and just, uh, being able to change it as I want. Sure.
Jason Well, you know, we should maybe jump into, uh, into the show shortly here and it should be a good one. I think people are going to like this, uh, this topic. We, uh, we actually kind of came up with it just a couple of hours ago, but I think it's a, I think it's a good one. Um, but before we do that, what are you wearing?
Blake You know, we're going to this tutor thing, so I'll wear the tutor for the next few days. I was wearing the tutor quite a bit recently. Um, and so I, I kind of just wanted something, fun and and, you know, that just kind of felt like like it worked for the day. And I've got something else on my desk that I literally can't talk about until Friday. So next episode for that. But I've got on that pro master dive with the loom dial. So the beast, that big square citizen. Oh, yeah. In titanium with the loom dial. I had it on at at wind up and I've got it on the stock rubber strap. And like I'm currently, you know, it's a cool sort of fall ish day here today. Yeah. With a lot of rain. So I'm in like a big, you know, knit sweater and this dive watch and it's just kind of perfect. I like it. Nice. Yeah. Cool. These watches just make me so happy. There's something about a citizen loom dial, especially like loom dials in general, but the citizen ones really are just, they capture whatever it is as a kid that I loved about stuff that glowed in dark. Yeah. It's just, they're, they're such a blast and they're just not expensive as far as watches go. And of course this one being the eco drive is like very accurate and being titanium, it's very light. It has a great bezel. I can't really complain. I just find them like weirdly comfortable for being a big square, you know, brick kind of on your wrist. And then they don't wear anything like that, especially they're just so nicely supported by the rubber strap.
Jason Yeah. And it's not the most versatile watch. So it's kind of nice that it's eco drive because like you can pick it up and wear it for a couple of days and then set it down. And then it's, it's still, still running when you pick it up a week later, a month later. Totally. Yeah.
Blake I totally agree. Yeah. At this point, I'm sure I'll have to actually, for the first time in quite a while, have to actually wind and set the, the Pelagos before I head out tomorrow morning.
Unknown Yeah.
Blake Yeah. Yeah. Uh, how about you? What have you got on today?
Jason I was wearing, I, you know, I did wear that Oris, uh, Aqua's pro 4,000 meter watch. I was wearing that for about a week straight. I'm kind of doing a long-term just sort of fun wear test of that. Uh, so we can talk about that on a future episode, my impressions, but, uh, I switched up for, for our, upcoming trip here to my Tudor Submariner. This is a 1976, uh, reference 9401. It's the no date black dial snowflake. So yeah, that's, uh, that's going to come to Florida with me. Um, seemed fitting and, uh, and I've got it on, uh, if you remember, uh, I don't know, a year or so ago I bought that, uh, I ordered a Olongapo, uh, custom, uh, steel cuff band for it. So these are the, these are these bands that were popular with, um, soldiers from Vietnam that were on shore leave in, in the Philippines. And they had these made in the town of Olongapo. Um, and, and I had mine, uh, engraved with kind of a double set of dive tanks on each side and then an engraving on the inside of it. And, and, uh, this guy Jaffe who makes these, he customizes them for your size wrist and, and it's, it's well made. I mean, it's, it takes a bit of getting used to, but I've got it like set perfectly on my wrist and it's, and it's quite comfortable. So you'll, you'll get to check it out, uh, I guess tomorrow.
Blake All right, well, I'm pretty excited to see you. I'm glad that we've got the risk check out of the way, because we've got kind of an interesting, you know, main topic for today. I'm not even sure what to call it. I was tempted to call this like the random show, which is something that Tim Ferriss and Kevin Rose do occasionally. They just like they seem to have a show that doesn't have a sort of itinerary or schedule, that sort of thing. I'm not sure that's exactly what we're doing here, but we didn't really have a topic because like with last week, we got kind of lucky where, you know, the bio ceramic Blancpain scuba 50 fathoms came out in time for us to actually have like a talk about it that made sense on the show. And like we have a pretty interesting watch coming out on Friday. We have another interesting watch coming out on Thursday. So we'll cover all of those, of course, in a future episode, likely just next week. But for this episode, we wanted to try something a little bit different in the hopes of connecting with any new folks we have in the audience and also just kind of to fill in a show that might be a little bit more fun, a little bit less about watches or travel. Like we've done a lot of this lately. We've got a lot of watch heavy stuff coming up in the future with the travel and the rest of it. So my idea was kind of to find popular questions for interviewers or podcasts, that sort of thing, and just bounce back and forth with those. A lot of these, I mean, at least for me, none of these are about say watches. It'll be more about you and more about me. And some of them are fun. Some of them are kind of silly. The idea is we'll see how many of these we can get through. So yeah, hopefully this is a way to get to know Jason and I a little bit better, even if you've been around for 250 plus episodes. Jason, do you want me to kick this off with our first genuinely random question? Yeah, do it. This is one I'm going to steal from Tim Ferriss. You should definitely listen to his podcast. Go on, find a name that you know in the listing. He's been doing it for a long time. There are these long format, in-depth conversations that typically have these questions either towards the end or sprinkled throughout. But if you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere with anything on it, metaphorically speaking, to get a message out to millions or even billions of people, what would that billboard say? That's a good question. It's kind of fun because it could be pithy.
Jason Yeah, right, right. I just feel like over the past few years, you know, there's been such divisiveness over everything from politics and religion to climate change. And you know, we even see it in our own watch community. And I, I just, I feel like I, I want to just kind of shake people and tell them, um, you know, to, to, to be, to be nice, to be kind to, to each other. And I think, you know, that, that does sound a bit, uh, random or general or pithy, but I, I think that, um, you know, I, I feel like I've seen a couple of these on, you know, a t-shirt slogan or maybe it was a billboard or maybe it was even a television ad or something where it's step back and consider, you know, the struggles that everybody is going through and, uh, and, and just kind of consider that when you approach something or when you, when you talk to somebody and think about the fact that you're not the only one that might be struggling with something or whatever, and, and take that into consideration before you open your mouth and speak. So I think it was somebody on Instagram who had posted a t-shirt slogan that said something to the effect of, everybody has an invisible struggle that they're dealing with that you don't know about. So be kind to them. Sure. And I think that would be my message on a billboard and you know, whether or not it resonates with people, I think it at least prompts some level of thought. Um, because I, I do, I do feel like the more people that I bump up against and you get to know a little bit and you start to dig down, uh, even just below the surface, And as the comfort level increases, people will, will kind of open up and start telling you like, well, you know, I've been dealing with totally an illness or a job change or some stress or something like that. And like, you know, I just feel like we need, we need to kind of step back from our sort of knee jerk reactions to things and just sort of consider that when you, when you talk to people or when you approach people, whether it's online or in person. So maybe that was a little more serious than, than you were hoping for with that response. But that, that would be kind of my, my message that, that I'd love to convey. I like it. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. That's great. All right. I'll come back to you with, uh, with one here. This was, this was from this website called the museum hack.com and there's some good ones from some good ones. Yeah. And, and this is definitely more lighthearted than maybe yours or some of the others that we'll talk about. But if you had to delete all but three apps on your smartphone, which ones would you keep?
Blake Hmm. I saw this question. Do I get to keep the ones that still let it be a phone or do I have to say that it would be phone messaging and my email app or something like that?
Jason Yeah.
Blake Or email. Yeah. So it'd be the stuff beyond the basics on the phone? Yeah.
Jason Yeah. And I'm really glad we don't have to each answer these questions.
Blake I'd probably like Todoist, Pocket Cast and Flighty. I use Flighty a lot.
Jason So I think I know what Pocket Cast is all about, but explain the other two.
Blake Pocket Cast is my favorite podcast app, which I've been using for a very long time and really like it. Todoist is a to-do list app. I currently sync Todoist with another platform called Sansama to get stuff done. I will be talking about Sansama in the future. I'm currently about three weeks into trying it and it's made a massive difference in being able to stay productive. Yeah. And then Flighty is... Flighty is like a... I don't know, it's a paid app that allows you to organize all of your travel. Okay. And if you need to find alternatives for flights, it's there. It often updates faster than the rest of the apps. It's just this really handy travel one. I find that there's a lot of places in my life where having the premium option can make a big difference, and one of them is definitely travel. Yeah, so there's no ambiguity. There's no like bouncing between the Air Canada and the Lufthansa app. If I'm going into Germany or something, it's like I can have it all in one app. I can see other alternatives out of various airports. Like it just gives you, it's a little bit of a tool to make flying a little bit easier. At the start of any flight, I can click on a flight, click one button and it shares like a special tracking link with my wife so she can see where I am in the flight. Sometimes they'll even give you other data about the flight depending on what's being provided by the airline. It's just a very, very handy thing where it just makes it a lot easier to keep track of delays, cancellation. When you book a flight, I can look up the flight very quickly in the app and see what the likelihood is that I'll make my connection. Like it'll say 50% of this flight is 45 minutes late and you have an hour connection, you're not gonna make it. So it's all that kind of stuff, which I find just like any stress I can remove from that scenario so that I can just go through the travel process like a bit of a robot, not really reacting, just responding to the scenario and smoothing out the wrinkles makes it a lot better. So that that's definitely a favorite line. Cool to check that out. All right. I got one. I got one here for you. We'll continue on the phone. Um, what's your most used emoji?
Jason Oh boy. It's between two of them, I think. Uh, and I, I really only use emojis largely on Instagram. I hardly ever use them and I don't do a lot of messaging. Um, and I don't use the emails and things. Um, so it's probably either the, the wink, which I think says a lot, I think it's like
Unknown You know, I think, like, it's... I didn't expect it to be the wink. The wink. Oh, that's such a power move. If you're like, you don't use emojis all but ever, and then the one you use is wink. The wink. Because it could mean anything. That's so funny to me.
Jason Right. But I think in the way that I use it, it's typically in this sort of, like, it softens, you know, it's not a full on, like, smiley. It's more like, you know, you're saying something that you, you expect to be maybe viewed with, uh, taken with a grain of salt or, um, you know, it's, it's tongue in cheek. Yeah. Tongue in cheek. It's sort of, it's sort of softens the message that I'm making, but I would say definitely that's the one that I use the most. The other one is the, what is it? The palms pressed together, which I think is, I assume is like, thank you. Or like, you know, I think it's like, thank you. Grateful. Um, cause you know, you get a lot of people that, you know, nice article, nice photo kind of thing. And I use that, but that's, you know, I mean that's sort of standard fare, but I think definitely, definitely it's the wink. Yeah.
Blake Mine is a, I did, we don't have to answer each of these questions unilaterally, but I, mine is the like diver. Okay. Symbol is my number one. Oh sure. And the second one is the like fingers crossed. Oh yeah. Yeah. So I'm just, I think I'm just replacing this and this just instead of sentences like, all right, cool.
Jason That's good. Or like, yeah, I hope it works out. Well, this is a bit of an aside, but, but I do wonder if, The use of emojis and just the use of messaging apps and things, social media, etc. It kind of falls along generational lines as well, because I was communicating with a lot of people from on that Ecuador trip, kind of this group chat. And I realized that most of them were quite a bit younger than me. And I realized that a lot of them use voice memoing now rather than typing answers. Yeah, definitely.
Blake Which I don't do. It's also like a real thing I find with, and this is maybe an unfair gross simplification, but it seems more popular in Europe, where WhatsApp has a bigger hold than iMessage or than Apple Messages, because I've definitely... My first experience with that was either the few times I've interacted with celebrities, like people who typically wouldn't be doing their own social media. I'm not sure anybody would want their name, but we're talking in the range of exceedingly famous to very famous for certain age groups. Yeah. Uh, you'd be chatting with them, even just like trading DMS, then all of a sudden you just get a voice memo and it's like 45 seconds of thought about a watch or something like that. Yeah. And then like, I definitely get it with you. You're in Europe dealing with, you know, people who live in Europe and you're in Geneva and you'll be sending WhatsApps and then it'll just be a whole message, like a voice memo. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Which makes, I think it makes a lot of sense, but in my experience, it's very much lesser, not as popular. at least among people in my cohort or our core cohort, but more so in, in Europe. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. My turn, I guess. Right.
Jason Give me another, another lighthearted one, I guess here, but it might tell us a lot about you. If you had to eat one meal every day for the rest of your life, what would it be? Again, this was from museum hack. I pulled quite a few from there cause I liked them.
Blake So I had the same question and I put a little thing where it's one meal that was like no consequences and one that had consequences, but let's just go with what I would eat in a real life. It'd be oysters. Yeah.
Unknown Raw oysters. Okay. Wow. All right.
Blake It's my favorite food. Yeah. And I'm fairly certain that at least if you were otherwise in a balanced diet, you could probably eat oysters every day of your life and it would be a healthy decision. Sure. And I also like, as much as I would like to say, oh, I would eat a ribeye steak every day.
Unknown Yeah.
Blake Okay. That'd be fine. That would work out for what? Maybe 70, 80 days before I had a heart attack.
Unknown Yeah.
Blake Right. Right. Something like that. Uh, so yeah, I think, I think in terms of my, my actual answer, the no consequences answer would be like E2D juice berries. If you know what those are, throw them out there, but they're like my favorite juice, like, like candy. Yeah. You get them at Whole Foods in Vancouver. I used to buy them just by the literal pound. And then, but my actual one that wouldn't kill me would be, yeah, oysters. I'm interested, where would you land on that? Because you like just about all food.
Jason Yeah. I mean, I think my answer would have been different three years ago when I was kind of eating anything and everything versus now. But, you know, let's set that aside. I think I have two kind of responses to that. One is a bit flippant, and that would be a bowl of life cereal. I have eaten life cereal since I was a teenager, like every day of my life.
Blake Well, I can remove what's your favorite breakfast food from my list, but I already knew the answer to that. Yeah.
Jason You know, the other thing I'm, I'm hooked on that I eat as much as I can. And that is a smoked salmon.
Blake Okay. I think you could probably eat that most days, right? Otherwise keep your sodium in balance. You're probably good.
Jason Yeah, exactly. Um, I usually haven't like for breakfast, I kind of stopped eating a lot of eggs. So I do like smoked salmon on avocado toast and, uh, And that's kind of my go-to almost every day. So I could probably reliably say that. And if it was more of like a dinner type of meal, I'd probably go with lentils, like lentils and rice, like dal bhat, which is what kind of the peasant meal as it's known in a great part of the world over in Asia. We eat a lot of lentils and I never tire of it. I love it. It's a good food, good healthy food, but yeah, got to go with life cereal I think for that one.
Blake Okay. That's good. I like that answer for sure.
Unknown Yeah.
Blake For my next one, I've got kind of an interesting one, but I guess we have to qualify it first. Do you have any scars? And if so, do any of them have a good story?
Jason I have very few scars, but I do have, I've got some from arthroscopic knee surgery that I had when I was a teenager on my knee, my left knee, but they're kind of boring. I do have one scar that is uncomfortably close to my groin, but it's a little bit kind of low on my torso. And I know my parents are going to cringe when they, when they hear this. Um, but when I was a young child, probably six, seven years old, I was, uh, my parents, I think we're having some friends over, uh, at our house and I had already gone to bed. I was a little kid and I, okay. I came down the, I came down the stairs, creeped down the stairs, like in my pajamas. I don't know why I needed something or had to pee or whatever it was. And I came down the stairs and, um, stumbled at the bottom of the stairs and tripped over my, my dad had brought home this wrought iron lantern or something that they were going to hang outside the front of our house. And it had, it was kind of this curled wrought iron. It was, and it was quite sharp. And I kind of gouged myself like in the torso, like fell over it. And, uh, and so impaled yourself, impaled myself on a wrought iron lantern. Um, goodness. So I have this, uh, it's, it's quite faded now, but I've got this bit of a scar in a, in a, fairly sensitive location. Um, so yeah, that's my, that's my scar with the interesting, interesting story that I don't show a lot of people.
Blake That's, uh, that's funny. Can I, can I, uh, can I share mine? Yeah, of course. So I'm always surprised I don't get asked about it more. Cause I see it all the time. Every, I mean, every time I see an image of myself, it's one of those things I can't not see, but on my forehead I have a fairly prominent scar over my left eye. Uh, it's like a Y shaped scar that kind of just fits in with my wrinkles as I've gotten older. Yeah. But when I was... I'd have to ask my mom the exact year. I was probably like 11 or 12. And in the summer, we would go up to the cottage and we had cousins around my age and we'd just run around in a pack, enjoying the woods. I'm not sure kids do this anymore. We did it all the time. We would leave in the morning with a sandwich and a Ziploc bag, go to the woods and come back when the mosquitoes got bad and it was getting close to dinner time. Sure. You just get... You do I don't want to be needlessly gender, but like young boy stuff, you break stuff, you'd throw stuff at other stuff, you dig, dig holes to bury stuff, rocks, you make traps in the woods, all that kind of stuff. And remember one afternoon we were especially bored and we decided it would be cool to like take some toys that we weren't using anymore and like hit them with golf clubs. Oh yeah. Obviously like, like if you're, if you're, if you're of a certain brain chemistry, you immediately understand why I would want to do this. And otherwise you're probably like, What's wrong with this guy? Yeah. So maybe you're seeing where this is going. I of course was standing behind my cousin when he wound up on a GI Joe and I took a three wood in the forehead. Luckily he was also 11 or 12, right? Like couldn't, couldn't put any more, you know, kind of power behind the swing, but it opened up my forehead pretty good. You could see the skull and you know, ended up being 20 some odd stitches and a few different layers and, you know, eight hours at the tiny hospital near mine. Oh man. And then we have some hilarious photos of the fallout after that where the swelling, you know, my forehead was huge and then it swelled one of my eyes fully shut as like the fluid slowly moved away from the wound.
Unknown Yeah.
Blake And then the next day I had like a giant lip. So yeah, it was that kind of thing, but that's probably my best story. But if you catch the scar above my left eye, that's from a non-golf golfing incident.
Jason All right, that's a good one. Yeah, all right, my turn. This one's a fun one. This is from Chuck Klosterman, who had a list of good questions for guests.
Blake Yeah, so Klosterman, to give a bit of a background, he famously has 23 questions. I can put them in the show notes, of course, but they're these really kind of convoluted questions that are basically asking loosely a philosophical outlook typically. So I'm curious to see if you picked the same one as me, because I also picked one from his 23.
Jason A lot of them were quite long and would have required long answers. This one I felt like would say enough about you and be fairly succinct. So you have won a prize. The prize has two options and you can choose either, but not both. The first option is a year in Europe. with a monthly stipend of $2,000. The second option is 10 minutes on the moon. Which option do you select? I'd go to Europe. No, no question. Right. That was a quick answer. Yeah.
Blake Yeah. I mean like the moon would be interesting and, but for 10 minutes on the moon, yeah. You know, an unbelievable amount of risk, probably years in training. Yeah. You know, the, the actual, you know, experience, like I think that's a one, obviously it's a once in a lifetime experience, but I think in terms of like, where I am at this point in my life. If you'd asked me 10 years ago, might've had a different answer. I completely concur. Yeah. I don't want to sound flippant, but I feel like I have a better understanding of what's on the moon than what would be just generally around Europe.
Unknown Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Blake But yeah, I think that's where I would land on that.
Jason Do you think the same? I do. Totally. Yeah. Entirely. For all the same reasons.
Blake All right. I'll follow up with my classroom in which is Someone builds an optical portal that allows you to see a vision of your own life in the future. It is essentially a crystal ball that shows you a randomly selective image of what your life will be like in 20 years. You can only see into this portal for 30 seconds. When you peer into the crystal, you see yourself in a living room two decades older than you are today. You are watching a Canadian football game and you are extremely happy. You are wearing a CFL jersey, your chair is surrounded by CFL books and magazines that promote the Canadian Football League, and there are CFL pennants covering your wall. You are alone in the room, but you are gleefully muttering about historical moments in Canadian football history. It becomes clear that for some unknown reason, you have become obsessed with Canadian football, and this future is static and absolute. No matter what you do, this future will happen. The optical portal is never wrong. The destiny cannot be changed. The next day, you are flipping through television channels and randomly come across a preseason CFL game between the Toronto Argonauts and the Saskatchewan Rough Riders, knowing your inevitable future, do you watch that game? This is the specificity that you can only get from Klosterman. To go after the CFL is so funny to me. I'm such a huge fan of his writing.
Jason I didn't even know the CFL was still around. Oh my gosh.
Blake Oh, sure. Oh, but there's your question. So basically, obviously, it's it's determinism at a certain level. But knowing your future, knowing that you're going to do this one way or another, do you start tomorrow or do you try and fight the tide as it were?
Jason I'm going to wait. You know, I wasted so many hours of my life watching football, you know, that I just stopped. And I know this Sunday I was I was out doing something and I thought, oh, this is the opening weekend of the NFL season. And I was like, I just don't care. So this is that's a horrible thought that I'll Sort of end up at age, uh, 73 sitting in an armchair, watching, watching obsessively. Yeah, man. No, I'm going to put it off rules. Yeah. All right. Fair enough. I respect that. What have you got for me? Okay. This is one, I think I came up with this on my own. I did. Yeah. Because I didn't put a note after it. If you could live anywhere in the world, but wouldn't be able to travel after you settled there, where would it be?
Blake What would count as you couldn't travel? You couldn't take a flight or drive more than X number of hours, something like that?
Jason Yeah. Let's say out of the country, let's put it that way. I mean, I realize America is a big continent.
Blake Yeah. I mean, I would just go back to Vancouver. Yeah. Oh, okay. Wow. I just loved it there. It kind of scratched every itch for me. Bigger mountains would be nice, but I can't imagine needing more than I could get within a drive, like between there and up into the Whistler area and that kind of stuff. I think that would be my my quick answer. I mean, we could, we could form much longer answers, I suppose, but I think that that's my gut. That's where my brain went immediately. Yeah. Yeah. Back to the west coast. Yeah. Okay. All right. What have I got here? I've got something. Oh, this is, this is a tough one, but I'm glad I don't have to answer it cause I didn't actually come up with an answer, but it's a really funny question. And this is one that came to me and it's kind of what brought me to wanting to do this episode. If you found out today that you had to be in the Olympics winter or summer, what sport would you feel best about competing in?
Jason Wow. Oh my gosh. I'd be that guy.
Blake Yeah. I'll give you like in my mind, it was like, like, do you pick something that you're, you're naturally kind of good at, but you know, you'll be nowhere near an Olympian.
Unknown Yeah. Yeah.
Blake Yeah. Or do you pick something that requires very little gear so you don't have to carry that much and you can just like fail in the first round and enjoy, I don't know, wherever the Olympics are that year, right? Like, Distance running, I just eat my shoes, right? Right, right. Like if I flunk out of the 4,000 meter, what's the big deal? I still get to hang out and wherever, wherever. You can tell me, you can also pick where it is if it's summer or winter and where the games are.
Jason Right, right. Um, my, my mind immediately goes to winter Olympics for some reason. I was going to say cross country skiing cause I've done it since I was like eight years old. But, um, you know, assuming I could, uh, now, Now you need to qualify this. Does this mean like the upcoming Olympics?
Blake So I have very little time to train or is this you would have, you would find out like, let's say whichever you pick. So it's winter. Let's say like you found out like in a week, your country needs you. Oh, just what's the one where, what's the one where, well, yeah, biathlons, I'd kill somebody. It's like about as hard as anything can be. Yeah. Yeah. But you know, like what's the one where you felt you would bring the least amount of shame to your home country?
Jason Hmm. That's a good criteria. Right. Um, yeah, I'm not going to say skiing cause I'll be that guy that like everyone feels pity for when they watch the YouTube video of me coming in like an hour after everybody use downhill and just come out in an ambulance. Yeah. Right. No, I'm going to say I'm going to do something like bobsled.
Unknown Oh, okay.
Jason We got a team around you. You run, you push, there's a team around and then you jump on board and I'm not going to be the one piloting it. Um, I'll just be the muscle, you know, just with the spike shoes and And, uh, and a jumpsuit or, you know, a skin suit and just, uh, push as hard as I can and then jump on. Uh, I don't know what, what the different disciplines are. I suppose there's like a, is there like a four man? I think it's four person bobsled where. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I'm going to be kind of the, one of the middle guys.
Blake Like a cool running sort of scenario.
Jason Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Blake Yeah. Nice. I like it. Yeah.
Jason Yeah. All right. What do you got for me? All right. This is, this, this is a fun one. This is from museum hack as well. The zombie apocalypse is coming. Who are three people you want on your team?
Blake So is this like three people I know, three people from popular culture?
Jason I guess if we do three people, you know, yeah, probably three people, you know, because yeah, yeah. Otherwise you'd pick, you know, MMA fighter or something like that.
Blake But yeah, probably pick like Jocko Wilnick or something like that. Right, right. Give me someone with a plan. Yeah, yeah. Plus, like, would that, like, would my family be the three?
Jason If I've got two kids or it could be like three people that I think could help Sarah and her kids or something, you know, but yeah, no, like they're safe. They're, they're already, they're already up the, the off, you know, the, the bunker or whatever.
Blake I think you need like, you need someone kind of resourceful that just rolls with the rolls with like, I'd go with you. Give me you for one. Someone to talk to. Yeah. Someone to talk. Well, you got to keep the pod going. Yeah, exactly. Now it's become like a rescue thing. Like we'll record our message and, and Yeah, we'll just do one episode and it can air everywhere on the radio forever. Sounds great. Yeah, yeah, maybe like a like a Cole Pennington, I think. Yeah, it's just it doesn't feel like the guy's ever entirely out of his depth, just whatever's going on. Sure. When I feel like the other, the thing that's going to be difficult would be like food is available. She can make. Yeah, sure. Let's go with one of my brothers, right? I can't take them all in this scenario. Right, right. But like my brother Tim is a wonderful cook and would be a perfectly fine person to weather out an apocalypse with. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think something like that for sure. Those are always kind of tough questions.
Jason Not Tom Place, our stuntman listener.
Blake I mean, Tom's probably a good pick. We've got some people who are pretty handy with a firearm, could be probably useful. I didn't know how dark we wanted to go. In my mind, if it was the apocalypse, I would just be like, Yeah. I'm out of here. You just want to go where nobody else is, right? Right. Right. Yeah. All right. Let's see what we've got here. What time period, this is from Hubilo, H-U-B-I-L-O. What time period would you have loved to experienced firsthand?
Jason I've always had a certain draw to kind of the 1960s. I feel like there was, there's so many elements to it. You've got space race, cold war, you know, the rise of kind of hippie culture, good music, great films. Um, certainly had a chair of troubles and, and, uh, sort of injustices and that sort of thing. But I think it would have been a very, in many ways, I feel like we're kind of revisiting some of the spirit of that era through, through culture and society these days. But I, I, you know, maybe it's the popularity of a lot of shows that have come about, you know, about that time period, but yeah. Um, you know, the style, the cars, the, the culture, is there like a specific scene you'd like
Blake 60s Southern California, 60s Northeast, 60s, um, you know, Yosemite Valley, like what, what's your, what's your zone? What's the kind of scene you might've wanted? I mean, think about that. Yeah. The birth of dirt bag culture.
Jason Right. Right. Diving and climbing in Yosemite and the surf endless summer surf culture and NASA cold war, you know, Houston or Cocoa beach or wow. All good options. Yeah. Hmm. London swinging sixties. No, I can't narrow it down. I don't know. Just sixties. Just plunk me down in the sixties. I'll, I'll find a way to get around and experience as much as I can. Yeah. I love it. Good one. Yeah. Yeah. All right. This is a one that it's, it's not the most original question, but it's one that, uh, I think about a lot. Um, your house is on fire. What do you grab on your way out? Let's say you can, whatever you can carry besides family, you know, the rabbit, kids, you know, like they're, they're out safely.
Blake Yeah. I mean, it's between like nothing and my phone and my passport, like phone wallet, passport would be incredible. Yeah. Yeah. I don't need anything else in my life really. Like if my family's out, I don't keep a sum of money here that would make any difference. It's probably like a hundred dollars in the house. Right. Right. But like to be able to leave and not immediately have like a logistical problem of like, well, I need a phone. I don't know my number or my Google password, so I can't log into anything anyways. Like just to skip some of that stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I think would be, would be the absolute best, right? Like the ability to wake up, go, Oh crap, this stuff's really bad. Everybody's going outside and on your way out, you remember phone, passport, wallet. You're way ahead of the game at that point. Everything else can go. It's fine.
Jason Yeah. I think, I think this question is, it says a lot about people. I think your answer is exceedingly pragmatic and I think I would have exactly the same response, but I'm surprised that you get people that are, on much, on a much more sentimental side. And they're, they want to run around and grab as many, you know, Oh, the photo album or, you know, dad's class ring or, or my favorite watch or whatever. And it's like, Nope, I'm just like, let it all go up. But, uh, yeah, just, just give me the bare minimum that I can put in my pockets. Yeah.
Blake Yeah. Yeah. My thing immediately goes to like, okay, so this will immediately be the biggest headache in your life ever. Your house is gone.
Unknown Yeah.
Blake Yeah. Everything's upside down. Right. What removes a few of the next couple of weeks of headaches, having credit cards, having a phone where people know the number and you know, your passwords and having the ability to be like, Oh, I'll go live with Jason for a week. Right. Right. And there's my passport and now we're done. Now it's just a question of, you know, what, what, what allows me to weather this storm best. Right. Yeah. But yeah, it's definitely not a thing. And if it is, I would say that if it is a thing, you need to one question, what it is, Yeah. Like, like whether it, and if it is your grandpa's class ring or whatever, keep it on your nightstand. Yeah. Yeah. So that you don't have to think about it. Yeah.
Jason Yeah. I remember there was, um, uh, this question I first kind of became aware of it. I think it was a Tumblr site, um, by this guy, Foster Huntington. I maybe heard of him. He's featured in outside magazine. He's kind of, he's kind of morphed into various roles. Um, he, he, I think now he's living in like a tree house in Oregon somewhere, but he was, he was really kind of one of the early proponents or, or kind of best known people around like van hashtag van life. Oh sure. Okay. Um, just an interesting guy. I think, uh, I think there's been some overlap with other people that we know, but he had one of his first ventures was this Tumblr site. I found it, it's called the burning house.com. Um, and it doesn't look like he's kept up with it for a while, but he would propose this question to, uh, just anybody and everybody and then have them take a photo of of these items that they would collect and then he would post them on tumblr and then it would just be this bullet list of the stuff that they would take and it was it was really kind of informative about what you know those people were were kind of all about so yeah we'll throw that in the show notes the burninghouse.com um but yeah nice all right this one might be tough but i give you two easy ones and one hard one in one question so we can we can figure it out and i can chit chat about this while you decide okay
Blake This is one of my questions. Oh, I didn't get this. You come to power in your country for 24 hours and you basically have enough time to change three things. It can be one big thing and two small things. What laws or changes do you make?
Jason So I'm like a dictator, so it doesn't have to go through congressional votes and approval and these are like executive orders.
Blake No, you can just change three. You could say, if you want, your state is part of Canada now. Oh. You know, like for me, one of my small things, I would ban leaf blowers. They're illegal. Too bad, guys. All of them. I mean, all of them. Yeah. No leaf blowers. Yeah. Yeah. I would... The other one, you're not... I heard the other day on the radio, and I think I already talked about this on the show, but it stuck with me. I heard the other day on the CBC, so apparently a vetted source, that Canadians use 30% of their fresh water for their lawn. Oh. Oh, yeah. That's really dumb. Yeah. Yeah. I'd probably ban lawns.
Jason Yeah. Yeah. And imagine the time it would save, the impact on air quality, noise pollution and wildlife.
Blake Bees and butterflies and birds and all the good stuff.
Unknown Yeah.
Blake So how about you? One big thing, two small things. Well, you can steal one of mine, but leaf blowers needs to be, I need my name on that act. Yep. Nope. I want people to know I took their leaf blower away.
Jason The James Stacy leaf blower act. We'll just hate leaf blowers. Right. Yeah. Yeah, I do too. And think about it. If people raked instead of use leaf blowers, like health. Leave them on the ground. It's good for the bees. Yeah. Right, right, right. It mulches down. Yeah. So the big one and you know, without dipping too much into controversial politics, et cetera, the big one for me that always troubles me because I encountered almost every day living in the city is is this, this epidemic of homelessness. And I just always think to myself, like, you know, saw a woman on the street corner yesterday with a suitcase that she was pulling around and, you know, she was just kind of walking around. You could just tell she was living out of her suitcase on the street somewhere. And I was like, you know, how is it that, that in this country, like there are so many people that, that are still living on the streets and, and having to kind of look for handouts. And I realized there are layers upon layers of things that, that feed into that. But, um, So I think, you know, what could be done from like just sort of a, you know, dictator waving his hand or an executive order of some sort. It's almost like if you could take, take a month off from military spending and take that money and just, you know, put it towards, you know, you know, stopping homelessness. Yeah. Like, like just build, build a series of, of communities and, and, and the, the people that would be required, you know, mental health experts and nutritionists and, you know, I suppose to a certain degree, you'd have to have some sort of law enforcement presence and healthcare and that sort of thing. Um, that would be the big one. And you know, that would require more thought than I can put in and in two minutes here. Sure. Sure. Um, on the small level, Oh, this is a pet peeve of mine. I love it. In winter, you know, they spend so much time putting so much salt on the roads here because it gets slippery and icy, et cetera. And I always just think to myself, but then you see people driving around in old, Vehicles that have, you know, bald all season tires on them. And I know that there are countries, cities, et cetera, around the world that mandate that you have to have winter tires on your car from certain, you know, November through March. If you're going to be able to drive, it's illegal to drive your car. If you don't have winter tires on, like make that the law in X number of States, you know, Minnesota being one of them. Um, I just feel like you could use less salt. There'd be less accidents. Safer drivers. Um, it's, yeah, that's a big one for me that, that annoys me to no end. I like it. And the last one, no Bluetooth speakers in backpacks when you're hiking or on a bicycle or public transit. I mean, I remember you and I, when we, when I came out to Vancouver and we did that hike up to the peak and there were like, it's a thing. I mean, that was quite a few years ago. I think it was 2016, 2017. And I think that was kind of the first, you know, earlier days of seeing that sort of thing. It's rampant now you go out on a hike and like someone will like cruise by or walk the other direction and you hear music like you're outside in the woods. Like do you really need like put some headphones on, you know, go to jail. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Right. So, all right. Anyway, two rants and a more serious one, but yeah. Yeah.
Unknown All right.
Jason Let's see here. If you weren't doing what you do right now, what would you be doing? What would you prefer to be doing? It's kind of a dream job question, but, you know, ideally, what would your career be right now if you weren't this star podcaster?
Blake Yeah. As a kid, I always kind of hoped I would be like a photographer of some sort, an oceanographer was kind of the peak. Oh yeah. So my guess is whatever it would be, would be somewhere in that zone. I can't imagine doing much else. I mean, the longer I don't have a normal job or anywhere close to it, the more I realized I just wasn't ever cut out for it.
Unknown Yeah.
Blake But yeah, I think it would be something, something in the photography sort of space. Um, I also think, you know, there was probably a time in my life where if I had, if I had gone hard in a different direction, I would have started making, you know, independent films. Oh yeah. Wow. Um, not sure that they would have been narrative maybe more in the documentary space or something like that. But I, I still very much appreciate the content from that part of the world. Yeah. Uh, so I, I think that it would, that, that would also maybe have been in, in, in my zone as well without making, you know, the answer too much longer than it needs to be.
Jason Yeah. Good one. Yeah. Your, your, your interest in films and filmmaking, um, goes well beyond kind of my enthusiast level. So I could, I could totally see you getting into filmmaking.
Blake Yeah. I think I would have made like a, a decent, you know, I could have at least, I could have started or had a career at some level in something like cinematography or maybe editing.
Unknown Yeah.
Blake I like the way these things come together. Yeah. Obviously that's much easier said than done, but I have a weirder job now than that.
Unknown So who knows? Right.
Blake Right. All right. I have, I have one that's kind of a followup on, on that with a work, work life sort of question. Sure. In your mind, how has a failure or an apparent failure set you up for a later success? Like, do you have a favorite failure from your past? Um, like I've talked about mine in the past where I worked for that bank and realized like I was not cut out for a conventional job for the most part.
Jason Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember, so a couple of careers ago, I was a project manager for a small translation agency here in Minneapolis. And I remember I was in way over my head. The project was off the rails. You know, we were translating some series of documents for a rather large company. This was kind of a big, big project for, for the small firm that I worked for and, and it involved translating some documents into, you know, 12 languages or something like that. And I had to shepherd all of these linguists into kind of getting the work done and get it through edit and you know, all the, the recreation of these documents in different languages. And I remember there were so many revisions and everything sort of just spun out of control to the point where I remember sitting at my desk in the dark at this office that we had downtown Minneapolis. Um, I think it was on a weekend night. And I remember at that point that the feeling of dread that, you know, I had no idea how to fix this at this point. It had spun so far out of control that I didn't even know how to, how to fix it. And I was utterly terrified to talk to the client about, you know, what was going on and what we needed to do because I didn't know what we needed to do. And I guess it sort of drove home the point to me that that type of work, that sort of organizing or managing people or managing, you know, projects for, for others, um, was definitely not my thing as well as, and this may seem counterintuitive at this point, given, you know, some of the work I've done, but communicating or, or dealing with conflict with other people, it was something I definitely needed to work on, you know, approaching difficult situations and telling people the hard truth, um, is never comfortable for anybody. But, but for me, especially back then, it was just not something that I relished and I actually dreaded it. And I think I was my, my kind of preferred mode of dealing with that in those days was kind of bury my head in the sand and just sort of ignore what was going on. And I think I, you know, the fact that that, that story still sort of resonates with me, um, kind of shows that, that it really made an impact. And so, Since then, I've, my career has taken a number of turns, obviously. And now I'm largely a, you know, kind of just work for myself. I mean, aside from working on TGN with you, it's, it's largely sort of just been a solo endeavor, kind of freelance work.
Blake And I've kind of preferred that way for better, for worse. Yeah. TGN has a complicated corporate structure, but I do appreciate that you make room for it. Yeah. Right. That's an interesting, that's an interesting story. I like that. I'm glad we got that from that question.
Jason Yeah. Yeah. All right. We seem to be, uh, moving into kind of more serious questions here. And I've got one, um, for you, uh, you know, I know you and I are at, you know, different stages. Retirement is, is a little closer for me. If, if you can even call, uh, what's going to happen in the future for me, retirement, I'm not even sure I'm going to retire, but, but for you, like looking ahead, let's say like 20, 30 years, like what, what does retirement look like for you? Will you retire? And, and what would it be like?
Blake My, my goal would be to get to a point where the work that I'm doing suits this sort of lifestyle I want in a quote unquote retirement. Yeah. And, and I mean, that's kind of the goal I have now is that I, I really, I do genuinely love being busy and having an outlet. Um, as long as I also have the other side of that coin, like some sort of a balance and I would love to get to a point where maybe I'm a little bit older, maybe my work is, is a little bit less active and a little bit more in the space of like guidance.
Blake Mm.
Blake or something similar to that, assuming I manage a career for the next three decades. But yeah, I think retirement for me would just be to take what I was already doing and then refine it or distill it is probably more. I do more of the stuff I like and less of the stuff I don't like, and then just reap the free time of doing less of what I don't like, if that makes sense. Again, it's one of those questions that I could go for 15 minutes if need be, but it's not... necessarily for this one, but yeah, I, I've never, I don't think strongly about retirement from a work standpoint. I think about it from a financial standpoint, but I know today, like if you gave me, you know, I had one of these questions, like if you were found yourself to be independently wealthy, how, what would you actually change about your life? Like some people would quit their day job, right?
Unknown Yeah. Right.
Blake Right. But I mean, if you gave me, I don't know, whatever amount of money I would need to not need money anymore. I don't think I would stop TGN. Yeah. Yeah. You know what I mean? Right. Like I just, I'm doing stuff that I like to do and it keeps, it fills a void and it fills a void that's different than the void that needs to be filled for work so that I can pay for the house and the rest of it. Sure. So that's probably how I see it. It's just kind of slowly refined myself into essentially the perfect sort of workload and work-life balance. And then we'll call that retirement. Yeah.
Jason Not sitting in an armchair watching Canadian football league.
Blake I don't think so. No, I mean, I'll probably get into golf, right? Yeah, sure. Yeah. Yeah. ultra running. It's one of those things you hit like in your, one of the other fifties, you kind of decide how it is. Maybe we'll just end up, if I'm lucky enough, I'll have like a collection of mostly broken cars and just kind of fiddle around with those. Yeah. We'll see. Yeah. Sounds good. Let's see if I've got some, uh, some that maybe we can do kind of quickly. Let's see. You're going to sail around the world. What is the name of your boat?
Jason Oh, the Argo. A-R-G-O. I mean the Argo. Jason and the Argonauts. I like it. Got it. Like, yeah.
Blake Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mine would be hopes and prayers. Or thoughts and prayers.
Unknown Take your pick.
Blake Yeah, right. Thoughts and prayers. What was the worst haircut you ever had?
Unknown Oh, man.
Jason Okay, my mom's... I've had some bad ones. My mom's stepfather was a barber. So my grandfather. Granddad. And I remember making the mistake once, I think he must have been visiting us, and it was like, oh, Jason needs a haircut. he was kind of old school, you know, I mean he probably was a barber back in the forties and fifties and like he sat me down and cut my hair and I don't even think I was looking in a mirror when he was doing it. And I got the worst, like, you know, like white walls, you know, like, like over the top of the ears, like extreme white walls. And I was absolutely mortified. And, and, you know, looking back, I wish I had just, you know, after he left, just thanked him and then like just gotten a clippers and just buzzed my hair off because that would have solved it. But no, back then, back then I lived with it. You've had some bad ones.
Blake Oh, I've had some bad ones. I had the Caesar. You remember the Caesar was big for a while. No, I don't. Oh, and it's kind of combed forward. No, like where it's really short. It's a high and tight essentially, but the front's a little bit longer and you just gel it straight up.
Unknown Oh, okay.
Blake Yeah. Yeah. It's like a thing. If you're, if you're in your mid to late thirties now, you probably had a Caesar. I mean, when I was a kid, I had a lightning bolt. in the side of my, like in my fade. Oh wow.
Unknown Okay.
Blake Like a little, little like that. I couldn't have pulled that off now. Definitely couldn't have pulled it off. It's probably closer to pulling it off when I was six. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And then, I mean, I went through high school and I went through the whole thing. Like the pop punk was the whole thing. I had like the big spiky hair. I was going through, you know, crazy amounts of dipity do and the rest of it, like hair gel and that sort of thing. So yeah, I've, I've, I've been down that road for sure.
Jason You just have to watch my, uh, my talking watches that I did during the pandemic to see my. It was a whole different Jason. Worst haircut. Yeah. Right. Right. All right. I've got two more. Uh, this is one from, um, Tim Ferriss who asked in the last five years, what have you become better at saying no to whether that's distractions, invitations, et cetera. And, uh, what new realizations have kind of helped with that? You better at saying no.
Blake But yeah, I've gotten a lot better at saying no to things that, um, don't have a benefit to my, like that things that have the guise of being professionally relevant, but don't actually have a benefit. They're just like a party. Yeah. Like I don't really network. I'm not a super sociable person. If you know me well enough, that's probably even that is a overstatement. Yeah. So yeah, I've gotten a lot better at just saying like, no, I don't need to go to that. I don't need to do that to get the story that I need or whatever. Like there's, you know, you and I have been having this running conversation about the relevance of things like press trips and the fact that most of the time they're meaningless. Like you could just, you could arguably get a better story faster by staying home and just getting a press release. Yeah. It always depends on what it is. Yeah. But yeah, I think, I think if I've gotten better at something, it's kind of saying like, no, I genuinely don't want to do that. And also I don't think it has the upside that you think it is. Right. So it's more, and maybe it's not so much that I've gotten better at saying no to things. It's just that my, as I've gotten a bit older, my priorities have become clear where I might say no to what seems like a really fun, fanciful thing to do with a weekend because that's a weekend I want with my family at the cottage. Yeah. Yeah. And it won't be as luxurious or cool or have the benefits or the perks or whatever, but it is, it's what would make me happy. So I think I've gotten a little bit better over Certainly through my late 20s and into my 30s at saying like at finding the line between saying yes to make somebody else happy and saying no to make myself happy. And that's obviously a moving line and the person asking really makes the outcome. Yeah. But if it's a lot of the stuff that's just kind of like loosely in the quote unquote professional space, I just avoid. Yeah. Yeah. It's not worth the time. Yeah. All right. Who is your childhood crush, actress, actor, whatever. Hmm.
Jason You know, strangely I've, you know, we talked about, uh, going back to the sixties. Uh, I, I remember watching, and we talked about this during film club, uh, to catch a thief and being utterly smitten by Grace Kelly. I know it's strange to have a crush on someone who's not only deceased, but also was alive before I was. But, uh, yeah, I think, um, I think I really had a crush on Grace Kelly. I mean, to the point where I think I had a picture of her on my wall, which is kind of strange. Yeah. But I, you know, aside from kind of that sort of romantic type crush, I was really, I, you know, I've talked about kind of my musical tastes and how I was really into like sting and the police. I think, you know, I learned a lot from sting. I was really into that. But also, um, I watched a lot of Clint Eastwood movies, like to the point where I could recite every single line from the movies. Not that he spoke a lot in the movies, but yeah, I wouldn't call it a crush necessarily, but kind of slightly obsessed with, uh, with Eastwood, all the Dirty Harry movies and the man with no name Westerns.
Blake So yeah. Yeah. I don't think a crush necessarily. I mean, obviously it has some romantic entanglements to it, but I don't think that's, that's exactly what I was. Yeah. I think you found exactly what I meant by the question. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah, that's fun. Sarah Michelle Gellar for me and for probably most fellows my age in the audience. Uh, you know, uh, Grace Kelly of a different time, I suppose. Yeah. You got one more and then I've got one and we can jump into final notes. Yeah, sure.
Jason If you were left on a deserted island with either your worst enemy or no one, which would you choose and why? I don't know if you have a worst enemy. I'm not sure I have any enemies, but this was from museum. I don't have any enemies that I'm aware of. Yeah. All right. So how about somebody you dislike, you strongly dislike and you don't have to name. Yeah. I'd just rather be alone. You wouldn't miss the company. You wouldn't feel like you need, you could make up with that person.
Blake And I wouldn't miss the company of somebody that I didn't enjoy being with. No, I would miss the company of, you know, of my loved ones for sure. Yeah. Um, but outside of that, I've, I mean, since I was a kid, I was very happy if, you know, if there wasn't a scenario where I could find one of the 10 people I really liked in my life, I could just kick around alone. I'm sorry. Yeah. I'm sure I'd go insane, but it'd be slow and comfortable, I think slipping into a warm bath. Yeah. All right. I got, I got one final question for you and it's one I actually don't think I've ever asked you, nor do I know the answer just from, you know, having a billion conversations with you. Do you have a, like a motto, life statement sort of thing?
Jason I don't. And, but, but there is some, a bit of advice. And this was another one of these questions that I saw in a lot of these, these kind of icebreaker questions lists. Um, and it was something a boss told me once before, and I think I mentioned it on a past episode a long time ago, but it was this notion of there are no separate lives. You don't lead separate lives. There isn't a professional life and a personal life. It's all one life. And I remember it was around that time that I was struggling with that work issue I was telling you about earlier. And I was just feeling particularly stressed. My personal life wasn't great at the time. And I remember an old boss of mine had these words of wisdom and she just said, you know, Jason, it's all one life. You know, there's no separation. You don't have to worry about sharing your personal and your professional life and vice versa. Um, it, it all feeds off the same energy and it's all part of your life. So just, uh, just don't try to separate the two. And I thought that was, that was good. I, I've kind of, I guess it goes along the lines of work life balance. Um, and I've, I think I've managed to kind of come to terms with that. So, I like it.
Blake That's a good one to have for sure. And I think a nice way to close out whatever we're going to end up calling this episode. I don't really know. Um, not quite a Q and a necessarily, but I guess in some, in some methodology it is, I had a good time. I feel like I learned a few things about you. I didn't know. Um, and, and hopefully that's how the, how the audience feels. And we got a couple of laughs in there too. Uh, look, we've got, uh, like five minutes. You want to jump into a quick final notes?
Jason Yeah, I've got a real quick one. This one was a gift actually that was given, um, I believe to both of us, but you We haven't found a way to get it across the border yet for you. Yeah. You have my can. Yeah. This was from a Jim Worth, our, our buddy at giant mouse. Um, we met him at wind up and shout out Jim. He's very gentle and very generous. And he gave us each this, uh, the small spray bottle of a brick shield, which is like a Lego adhesive. So, you know, I thought, wow, I've never heard of this sort of thing, but it's a, it's a little aerosol can that you spray once you've assembled your Lego model, whatever it might be. you spray this all over it and let it dry. And it sort of lightly holds everything together so that you don't have to necessarily worry about bricks falling out when you move something or bump a table or something. And I've used it on my, I've got the giant Saturn five rocket that always makes me paranoid that it's just going to fall apart. Um, so I, I gingerly carried it outside, sprayed down the whole thing, let it dry. Um, and, and I'm pretty confident it's holding together pretty well. And then apparently, you know, if you want to take apart that Lego model, I don't know why you would, but if you did, You can just rinse it off lightly with water and it'll rinse away and you can take it apart. So kind of a neat product, very niche product and really fun to try out. So it's at getbrickshield.com. So thanks to Jim for that.
Blake Yeah, cool. Thank you. Thank you very much, Jim, for that. Very neat stuff. I'm glad to hear that you actually gave it a chance, especially on the Saturn V, an important sort of Lego set for you. I like it. Yeah, that's great. All right. What do you have? Look, mine this week is actually a video from a friend of mine that I met at a Leica event last year. His name is Gajan Balan. He lives in Toronto. We actually got to work together. If you watch the video for the Seiko GMT, the SPB 381 that I did recently, Gajan came to my home and shot that. He's a videographer and a very talented photographer, just a general visual creative. And he has this really nice YouTube channel, and he put out a video recently that I thought would apply really nicely to TGN and the types of photos that a lot of our crew, especially in the Slack, are sharing, which are kind of street or travel photography. And so this is his beginner's guide to street photography settings for your camera. And it's just him kind of chit-chatting through the basics. I think it's really well presented. This is a topic that I've tried to talk about on the show before, and I think he does a better job than that. He's got kind of two different systems for thinking about setting up your camera for the outcome that you want, and then learning to work within those settings. He also has a fantastic sort of platform for all sorts of photography, which is called Church and Street. It's churchxstreet.com. I'm a huge Gajan fan. He listens to at least some shows. So hello, Gajan, if you catch this one. Yeah, check this guy out. He's awesome. He's onto a lot of good stuff. He travels a ton. and take some really beautiful videos and photos of his travels. So, uh, worth highlighting that, but I thought this was at least a practical note with a bit of a guide to street photography.
Jason Yeah, cool. That's a good one. All right. Well, we are closing in here on a little over an hour and 20 and you and I have another meeting in about three minutes. So, uh, as always, thanks so much for listening. If you want to subscribe to the show notes, get into the comments for each episode, or consider supporting TGN directly, and maybe even grab a new TGN signed NATO, please visit thegraynado.com. Music throughout is Siesta by Jazzar via the Free Music Archive.
Blake And we leave you with this quote from Oscar Wilde, who said, Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.