Waiting for a Ride: Christopher DeLoach, Artist & Bumper Sticker Legend on the Stories That Shape Us
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I mean, we're all hitchhikers. We're all waiting for a ride. And this story has really compounded my ability to understand exactly what I believe. While at one point in my life it gave me a lot of certainty, I've realized through lived experience that my certainty was hubris. And I don't really know what's going on on this planet or at all. And it feels apt to let it out and like share. And it's a long series of experiences.

to get up to the story, then digressing from the actual fabric of the narrative and then being like, how did the stories that we perceive that have a big influence on our identity, how does keeping them in or sharing them affect our day-to-day life?

Okay, hi, welcome back. Welcome, perhaps for the first time, this is Let It Out, my podcast. My name is Katie. This week I talked to artist Christopher DeLoach. You may know him from his incredible paintings or his famous bumper stickers. He...

has made the best bumper stickers that I've ever seen in my life, you perhaps have one on your car. Or maybe you're driving and looking ahead at the road and at someone else's bumper sticker. Maybe you're honking at a sticker that Christopher has made as we speak.

And there's many more minutes of this podcast to come, so you might see one while you're listening. This episode is a little bit different than usual because Christopher has this story that he tells that we weave through the episode and we end up having a...

conversation I really really loved about it and around it and I can't wait for you to hear it. So what you're about to hear is him setting up this story and he gives a bit of his background and how he got into art. He tells the sticker story and we went on some tangents and I asked some questions and I honestly cut a decent amount of those out but they really made me laugh so

To be honest, it was tough to kill the darlings and I put them all in a different audio file. So maybe I'll release that as a bloopers of sorts. Or not a bloopers, more of just a companion piece, if you will. If that would be interesting to you, maybe you'll get a kick out of some of the parts of the conversation that would have taken us away from the thread we were weaving through of his story. So...

Here is our conversation, Christopher and I in his garage. You'll hear cars driving by, which is fitting. It's a studio, his studio, a garage.

And fittingly, cars keep on coming. We're eating a snack, which we'll address. And we mentioned pretzel a couple times. Pretzel's a dog that is sometimes mine and I brought with me. That's it, I think. Thank you so much for listening. Let me know what you think. And get yourself a hard copy of a bumper sticker or several. Okay, take it away. Here we go.

Really nice time the last time and now we're just doing it recorded today. The posterity. Yeah. How are you feeling?

I'm pretty good. We're eating a sucker. A lollipop, I call it. A lollipop. What's the difference? I think it's the same thing. I think a sucker is just very, very Midwestern. Really? It's like pop and soda? I think so. Southern, too. Oh, is it? I don't know. We're going to have to go to the phones. Yeah, yeah. We'll have to contact our research department. Yeah. Pretzels? Oh, my God. Sorry, pretz. We're having lollipops. I haven't had breakfast, but it's okay. You know? Yeah.

It's like an amuse-bouche, I guess. Yeah, appetizer. Yeah. Have you ever picked up a hitchhiker? Yeah, I have been a hitchhiker many times over. And I feel an obligation, a sense of philosophical and spiritual duty to help people...

get where they're going. I'm relatively discerning, I think, about, you know, at a quick glance, if someone's going to be a problem. I've never picked someone up who's caused me any kind of conflict. I've never had any strife in my car. But I have been picked up by a few psychopaths. And I'm going to tell you the story. I used to tell this story a lot when it first happened. 2005.

Like many men of all American generations who either read too much Jack Kerouac or listened to too much early Bob Dylan, I fantasized about and then fetishized the American West. And I guess what you'd call tramping or hoboing. When I was 21, I was living in Brooklyn, in Fort Greene. Where did you grow up again? I grew up in Bensonhurst.

which is like South Brooklyn. It's nestled between Coney Island and Bay Ridge. Sheepshead Bay is on the other side of Coney Island, Brighton Beach, et cetera. But I grew up there. I went to high school on Long Island in a town called, or a town named Babylon, Babylon Village. And... What were you like in high school? I went from being a hyper overachieving scholastic nerd in the city to

And then my parents, my dad opened a restaurant in Manhattan, a pizzeria, and started to get his first sort of like, he went through his first cake up. What does that mean? Like making money. Oh. You know, to be caked up. Get that bread. I didn't know that. Yeah, follow me, smash the like on all my youth culture references. But my dad, my parents bought a house on Long Island. We moved to Long Island. My mom's family lived out there.

And my childhood in Brooklyn was, I was in what was called the magnet program. I got to pick my middle school. I was sort of prospected by the Feld Ballet Academy and went to ballet every Tuesday and Thursday, like fourth and fifth grade. Wow, that's cool. Yeah, it was incredible. So you were a dancer? Yeah, and I played ice hockey. Wow. Very like...

I played a lot of ice hockey. I played ice hockey like three days a week or something. Cool. Yeah. But my attention as a child was very siloed. I did really well in school. My parents were really, I don't know, kind of severe about getting good grades. And I grew up in a Victorian home that my great grandparents had bought who were Sicilian immigrants. Oh, cool.

And four generations of my family lived in that house, me and my brother being the fourth. And my grandma and grandpa were very involved in my childhood. I don't know. My attention was really siloed. But when we moved to Long Island, it was like movies that I had seen as a preteen and teen. How old were you in that? We moved there right before I turned 15. Okay. Well, it's a weird age for a big family. Yeah. I really, really didn't want to move. But, you know, we moved. I didn't get a vote. And we moved to a very...

I don't know, quintessential New York suburb. Long Island is where the suburbs began in this country and it's holding strong. I think life there goes on not super dissimilarly from the way it did in the 50s. So your dad has a pizza shop. You moved to the suburbs. Does your dad still have the pizza spot? Right now? In 2025? Yeah. No, no, he doesn't. How's the pizza?

I remember it being extremely good. Yeah, the pizza was very, very good. It was like a sit-down, formal pizzeria. Was that my first job? Yeah, that was my first job. I was a busboy at my dad's pizzeria, but it wasn't like a real job. You know, I would go in with my dad...

once or twice a week and I would like clean tables and then he'd be like all right yeah like chores but outside the house yeah and then I would go walk over to the Museum of Natural History or walk across the park to the Met or so cool yeah I used to walk down to Times Square and go to the Virgin Megastore yeah I have a lot of nostalgia for the parts of my childhood that were

unsupervised in Manhattan some of my fondest memories in my life do you remember what your first record you bought at the Virgin store was the first tape I ever bought was MC Hammer can't touch this can't touch this can't touch this and then and then you and I T Y single by Queen Latifah

And then she says it over and over again, and then she, like, wraps the verse. Oh, cool. Yeah, it's a solidarity track. So you have this cool city childhood. You end up in Long Island. Move to the suburbs. Do high school there. Yeah, and then between junior year and senior year, my whole childhood, my dad would spin this yarn about, after high school, he and my godfather and...

Their two other best friends, Dominic and Patty, these guys are all like Brooklyn Bensonhurst guidos. Like my dad maybe isn't a guido, but he's like a paisan. He's so Sicilian New York. Like if you looked, if we could cut a photo into this, there'd be like, yeah, this guy is very Italian American from New York. And him and his other buddies who he was...

you know, fucking off with as like a youth. They drove my, I'm pretty sure my dad's friend Dominic, who's passed, who was a dentist, had a VW Bug. And the four of them drove it to Wyoming, down through Colorado to Arizona and back to New York. And I think they did it over the course of like two months. And as kids, when these guys would get together, they would rehash this incredible trip that they went on

And between junior and senior year, my dad decided, I'm sure my mom, my mom grew up very much an outdoorsy person for someone from New York. My mom's dad jumped ship in Brazil during World War II and stowed away on a boat and ended up in New York, met my grandmother, got her pregnant, got caught, got deported, and then

My grandmother and my great-grandmother got him back in the country because he had fathered her child. Whoa. So he was a very wild guy, and he really fell in love with the same parts of the American dream that my dad and myself are at best romantics with or of, and at worst victims of. Okay, so you...

We go on this road trip. Okay, you go on this road trip. We drive from New York. This is when you're in high school. For a month. It was the summer between junior and senior year. Are we up to your... Oh, never mind. That was when you were 21. Okay, we're working. No, no, no. I'm trying to like... You're setting the scene. Contextualize my own indoctrination into being someone who was like... I'm with you. Like, during college, was like, this is bullshit. I gotta go west. I gotta, like, what am I... I don't even know this country. And...

But anyway, we did this road trip and I think it was like three and a half weeks, like 24 days.

and we went to Yellowstone, we drove down through the Rockies, and we went to the Grand Canyon. We saw wolves, bears, buffalo, the whole shebang. My college entrance exam essay was about this road trip. So you were, you were stoked. You were like happy to be with your parents and your brother doing this? Yeah, the first time I ever drove a car in a serious way, I drove through all of Nebraska on that road trip. Oh wow. So you, but you got along with your parents, because I just feel like they're

14-year-olds, 15-year-olds who would be like... I was 16. Oh, no. I was 15 going to turn 16. Well, even so, like even more so. Like at that age, you'd be like, I'm going away from my friends to hang out with my parents and my sibling, but that's cool that you were into it. Yeah. I mean, I don't remember any enmity whatsoever

From that time, my parents got divorced like right when I went to college. My college experience was my first week of college was 9-11. I went to Stony Brook and I woke up like landline ringing off the hook. My mom freaking out. My dad was on the West Side Highway. No cell phones. My uncle worked in the Twin Towers at the time. It was just like mayhem. Classes were canceled for days.

Campus was kind of a scene. There was some anti-Islamic violence that happened. Was your uncle okay? Yeah, my uncle was on... I wish that I had the kind of brain that could hold on to stats and numbers better, but my uncle, I believe, was on the 70th floor. And my uncle is a union tradesman. He's an electrician.

And he had been on that job for a while doing some kind of electrical work in, I think, Tower One.

And the foreman of the building just never showed up. Electricians need to be let into these panels by someone with keys. And my uncle was with his apprentice and he was up there waiting for this guy. Guy's not showing, they call him, nothing. And 15 minutes before the first plane hit, my uncle was basically like, you know what, forget this. Let's go. Let's go get a bite. I'm not going to wait up here all day for this guy. This guy's clearly either extremely late or not coming.

And this part I do remember with great clarity. He walks out of the building and he's crossing the street to go get coffee and snack, smoke a cigarette. And as they're about to open the door to the cafe, the explosion happened directly above them on the side of the building that they were on. And my uncle was right there. He didn't see it happen, but he was like watching the aftermath. And then he worked hard.

He was there all day. He was with first responders. And he worked, he was part of this team of union electricians who turned the stock exchange back on and then did whatever it was that they had to do to make sure that electricity was running. And he also got very sick and was part of that whole class action, I guess, and...

got himself a new boat, I believe, but yeah, he was there. Yeah. It's a rough start to college for you. Yeah. All this stuff precipitated this moment when I was 20, where I was teetering on the edge of, do I want to finish college? What am I doing? I was at this point, I was already painting and making paintings.

making things but really headless. A lot of close friends of mine at the time went straight to art school and then subsequently right into their MFAs and that was my social milieu and it kept me working in a way where I saw that my friends were making these things and it was very inspiring and it's funny there's like a weird analog to my claim to fame as a bumper sticker person

Bumper sticker magnet, I do believe. Magnate. The Andrew Carnegie of bumper stickers, someone just said this week. But I ran for class president four years in a row, but with absolutely zero intention of winning. I ran for class president four years in a row in high school, at this high school where sort of the fabric of my scholastic life just disintegrated into...

me being, I was class clown, if that makes sense. Congrats. Thanks so much. So the other, it's funny, the other person, you know, there's the female and male, they, the way they did it back then in those days, in the old days, the other class clown was also from Brooklyn and also moved to this town and went to this high school the same year as me. Something, something. And our yearbook photo of us, I'm like, you know, I'm in my blow up period. I'm like,

I went from being like 5'9 sophomore year to being like 6'2 by senior year and then I'm like teetering around 6'5 right now but like like real anyway my class clown photo in the I think they're called superlatives in the yearbook is like me at like

6'2 or 6'3 looking like literally they woke me up off my desk I was asleep in AP history which I did not get college credits for and it's me and Trenise Jennings we look so schlubby and like reluctant and also I guess kind of there's like a sardonic smile that we're both wearing we're splicing this picture in yeah I'm like so much taller than her but what was I saying

You ran for president? Oh, I ran for class president. But the reason that I did it was because my other close friends also ran with the intention of winning. And when you would run for president, you were allowed, or vice president or whatever, cabinet, treasurer, you were allowed to make signs and put them up all over the school. So I was already drawing a lot. Yeah. I did it because I would make these...

very juvenile, absurd posters. And like the first year that I did it, freshman year, they were pretty like mellow. I think it was like really silly stuff. Like Vikings are voting for Deloach and it would be like a really rough drawing of a Viking. But I was also using clip art and I would print them at school and put them up everywhere. But senior year, they made a rule because of me that you had to have all the posters approved and

by Mr. Steve Howe, who's my marketing teacher, because my posters had gotten so confrontational and off the wall. - We're gonna have to make a visual for this. - I wish there were photos of these things, but I made this one series of posters that said, "Piss on Slack," and my friend Matt Slack was also running for president, and I put them in the urinals.

That's your finest word yet. I thought so. But then after that, they were like, this is, I got in trouble. You know, I was really class clown. Like, I really embodied that without, it wasn't like my intention. It just was. It was well-earned. Yeah, it's just like a part of my, it just lives inside of here. As my IFS therapist would say, it's one of the many people that live inside of me. But where are we going toward here?

We're working our way towards college and the hitchhiker, but was there anything else about high school? I think I was just kind of off the rails. Oh, I asked about art and painting and when that came in. So you were drawing and making art all through high school. But there was no...

There was really no ulterior motive, minus the brief flirtation with running for class president and it being like a perfect vehicle for making work. Yeah. That essentially was the same thing I'm doing now, making propaganda or, you know, these kind of like covert tongue in cheek advertisements. God, isn't it so funny how like we're pretty much like fully baked? Yeah. I mean, I don't have kids.

But most of my friends do. And the thing that I hear a lot of them say with great frequency is there's a very unique, specific modality that they're operating within from the time that they're like born. And I guess it's kind of the job of parents to sort of like whittle that down to something that can both function in society and also contribute to make life.

things better down here, not only for the commons, but for the kid, the person, the nascent being. But yeah, anyway. Okay, so you and all of your IFS parts go on this road trip. Yeah, we went on this road trip. It really opened my eyes. And I started to, I remember coming back from that road trip and getting all these backpacking gear,

Cool. Like catalogs and like I got a subscription to Backpacker Magazine, I think. Anyway, here, keep me on track. I'm ready for the road trip. Okay, so you've got enough. I'm 20 years old. I find out that this thing called the Appalachian Trail exists. And I'm in college, but I'm like really not. The United States is going to blow up, you know, a third of a continent in

Who knows what's going to happen? Anthrax. Maybe there's another 9-11. I'm like, you know what? The cacophony around me at the time was a lot of people saying that America is this and it matters. And America this, America that. And I became really fixated on what even is America. And like how, who, what, when, where, why, whatever.

designates these people to posit all these very grandiose notions about this is a thing that's just an idea ultimately. And I decided that I was going to walk from Georgia to New York on the Appalachian Trail. Do you know anything about the Appalachian Trail? No. I think it's 2,271 miles. Maybe it's 2,178 or something, but it's a long corridor of...

public and private land with easements that runs from Springer Falls, Georgia in northern Georgia all the way up to Mount Katahdin in Maine. And then it continues as I forget what it becomes a different trail that runs all the way up into Canada. And people have been walking on it. This is 2005 that I left. I left February of 2005. You left school to do this. I took a semester off. None of the

impetuses for this decision of mine were like, they were all pretty novel and ubiquitous. You know, young men like trying to find themselves. I'm not trying to like grandiosify it. I was just a willing vehicle for the same things that other people, I don't think it's a gendered thing, were captivated by that motivated them to go, you know, want to be alone in the wilderness or semi-alone. But yeah, my dad drove me down, dropped me off.

And yeah, I don't know why, I guess I was just ready to do it. And I had done some research, you know, I didn't have a cell phone. I printed up all the maps. I got really into ultralight.

Backpacking. But the first like 15 or 20 days, it snowed like half the time. Yeah, I was going to say February. Yeah, it was cold as hell. It was like in the 20s or the teens most nights. Oh my God. I mean, I have many memories of hiking in two to three feet of snow and it was hard. But I really, it didn't matter. I like really romanticized the hell out of what I was doing. Wow.

That's cool. A big part of why I did it also was my earliest aspirations were never to be an artist. It was much more... I was much more interested in writing. I didn't really have any story to tell. And it was my great hope that I would do this and I would get a glimpse of what, you know, this idea that I had of real America was like and then be able to come back and say something that was worth hearing. And I guess that did happen.

Although, anyway. Did you write about it? Yeah, I've written about it a lot, but I've never done anything with it. Yet? Yeah, I have yet to do anything with it. So I'm getting the exclusive? Yeah, you're getting the first beat. But what ended up happening was, I mean, my day-to-day on that trip, I left the second week of February, and by Memorial Day I was back in New York. Most of it's pretty mundane. There's really not...

that much of interest, but some things did happen before this one hitchhiking story that did really irrevocably change the direction of my life. I'm from New York City, but I had some understanding of what Southerners were like, or could be like. There were a lot of... We don't have time for it, but this was a very big...

actualizing experience for me politically also. Yeah, it did what you set out for it to do, it sounds like. It did. And also, I felt, yeah, I got what I was looking for in a lot of ways and then some where it really made, it really helped me make sense of what the actual national character is and exactly what people are working with politically, intellectually, and emotionally that

informs their behavior as Americans. And up to that point, I found it very confusing. And I mean, you know, 9/11 happened to the people who lost family members on that day more than anyone. But in a big way, the way that the branding, advertising, marketing of that administration and subsequent administrations up to this day would have you believe is that it happened to all of us.

And so there was really like a full-sale campaign to get people to reinvest in this idea that no one can do this to America. And I think before 9/11, a lot of people weren't thinking in those terms. And I think it took a long time for them, or maybe not a long time, just one event, for people to really buy in, to vote in ways that were really not in their best interest.

But that experience that I had on that trip in some way, shape or form did help me understand that moment. But this is all backdrop for this very specific. Yeah. Welcome back. Welcome back. Are you dragging on the action? Yeah, but it depends on the color of my soul. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But, and... So you're walking the... I'm walking in the woods. I'm getting picked up by weird people. You see a... It's now spring. Spring has sprung. I'm in... Hear those birds? I'm in the, like, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania corridor. And my cousin at the time was going to Penn State. And I had planned on visiting him when I was closer to him.

And at this point, I had friends who were going to college in Baltimore. I hitchhiked to Baltimore, visit some friends in Baltimore for three days, and then I hitchhiked back to the Appalachian Trail. I think I took a train and then hitchhiked like a couple hours and get back on the trail in West Virginia. And

I'm planning the next week to go visit my cousin. And I come upon this stone home in the woods on the Appalachian Trail in West Virginia, just outside of the town of Harper's Ferry. But I get to this stone home. It's a hostel. It's run by this elderly man. It's very beautiful. It's rich in Civil War history. And they have a big communal dinner at this hostel every night where the host...

and it's part of what you're paying for is to eat dinner and then breakfast and then stay the night indoors. And at the dinner, there's all these other hikers there, people hiking the Appalachian Trail, and we're all sharing stories. And I tell this, and remember, at the time, I'm 21 years old. I'm saying, yeah, I just hitchhiked to Baltimore and visited friends at college, and this 19-year-old kid who is hiking the Appalachian Trail for college credit at Ole Miss, who was born and raised in Mississippi, is...

After dinner, he propositions me and he tells me that he has never hitched more than just into town on this trip. And he's afraid to hitchhike by himself. But his uncle is a congressman in D.C. and he is supposed to go visit him. And he would rather hitchhike than take the train. He tells me that he asked me.

He asked me if I would go with him and he would pay for all of our lodging and all of our meals for me to essentially like escort him. And he's like a really nice person. We play, we like after dinner, it's May. So the days are getting longer, but we play Frisbee, you know, as kids, as kids love to do college age kids.

We play Frisbee and we get to know each other and I agree. And so we come up with this plan. We're going to wake up at the butt crack of dawn and hike the four miles to the road crossing and then hitchhike to DC. And we wake up at dawn and I call my aunt and I am like, Hey, Chris, I'm in West Virginia and I'm on my way to DC, but I'm,

I wanted to get a hold of you and get William, my cousin's phone number so that I can reach out to him and plan to visit him at Penn State. And my aunt gives me the number and the entire time that I'm on this trip, I'm keeping like very detailed journals. Like I had, you know, for all my obsession with ultralight backpacking, I always had a novel with me and I have two journals.

But instead of writing the phone number in my journal, which I remember being with me, I take a $100 bill out of my pocket and I write William and then his phone number on the $100 bill. I have no idea why I did it to this day. And...

Also, the $300 that I had, I had $300 on me was pretty much the last of my discretionary money to get back to New York. I have like my first credit card with I think like a $250 limit as like the emergency thing.

But I also never set out to hike the whole trail. I was just trying to walk from Georgia to New York. I'm 21 years old. There were plenty of times where I had a very specific budget, but people were like, we're going to go into town and we're going to drink. And I was like, okay, YOLO, let's go. And spent probably $50 that I had not budgeted for this trip. Right.

So anyway, I write on the $100 bill. This kid's name... It's cinematic to be like, I'm going to use the $100, not my journal. Totally unintentional. I have no idea why I did this. But the person's name is Alan. I'm not going to give his whole name. He's since gone on to be a high-power lawyer in Washington, D.C. I reached out to him a couple years ago because of what this story that I'm going to unfold is.

did to me. So we start hiking the four miles to the road crossing and we are, you know, getting to know each other. He's sharing like intimate details. He's very religious, evangelical Christian. We're talking about life in the church and like my upbringing being raised between like the Catholic church and the Lutheran church. And we're talking about sex and virginity and

It's not like a casual, like, I don't know if this is just an effect that I have on people or if this was a particle in, or if this is a particle in people's experiences doing these kinds of trips, but it makes for like fast intimacy. Yeah, probably a little bit of both. Yeah. We have this really sort of smash and dash get to know one another thing.

At this point, like four miles is about an hour and 20 minutes. We're like cruising. He's also a tall kid. We're lean. We're like have walked over a thousand miles in three and a half months at this point. So we're like flying. We get to this road crossing. It's some blue road, some state highway. And we start hitchhiking. You know, I've got hiking poles. I'm like waving. And there's probably a car every two minutes at first. And it's around...

I want to say 10.30 or 10 o'clock in the morning. And 20 minutes go by, no one stopped. 30 minutes go by, no one stopped. And Alan is like, hey, what if we hike to the next road crossing? Because this seems to be taking a long time. And we look at the map and the next road crossing is another four miles. So it's like another hour and a half. And I am pretty firm that if we do that, then we're going to be...

starting to hitch again at noon or afternoon and we're going to end up

It could take even longer. We don't know what the next road is. We're here. Let's just keep trying. And so he agrees, acquiesces, and we keep hitchhiking, and then 45 minutes go by, and we still haven't picked up a ride. And now, like, there's a lot of cars. Now it's a couple cars a minute, and no one is picking us up. And that's really uncommon from your experience. Yeah. My experience before that, this was the beginning of my hitchhiking experience was this hiking trip I went on. But...

Five minutes. And also in the deeper south portion of the trip, people are largely aware that the Appalachian Trail exists. It's part of their economy. It's part of the identity and the folkloric sort of sentiment that these towns and places have.

And people are very, there's things called trail angels, people who will try to force you to go to their house and cook for you or stay at, you know, things like that. So it's uncommon to wait this long. And now Alan is vehement that we go on, this is not working, and we start to argue. Why do you think no one was coming? We were meant to get in the car with the person that picked us up. There was no other way that this was going to happen. And we're arguing, and I'm just reiterating very severely that

how illogical that is. And we're not even like waving our poles or trying to hitch. And as we're arguing, a silver Dodge pickup truck with an extended cab, like almost brand new, probably a 2002 just pulls over down the road in front of us, like kicks up dust and rocks at us. And we, it interrupts us and we're looking and it's probably 50 yards away and parked and

And we're looking at it and the driver makes no sign that it's for us. And we like realize he's pulling over for us. And we run up to the car and Alan runs up to the front window and the window opens and it reveals a man who looks like the perfect combination of Mark Twain and Colonel Sanders.

He looks like if you put those two people together, this is what you would get. He's wearing a white shirt and white work pants, has a big, burly-ish, gray handlebar mustache, full head of Mark Twain-ish hair, but he doesn't have that Widow's Peak thing going on. And we look at him, and he goes, where are you going? Thick, thick Southern accent. We're in Virginia, and...

In my experience in Virginia, which is not that much, you don't hear this kind of drawl, but he had drawl. And Alan answers, we are trying to get to Washington, D.C. today. And the man tells us that he can't take us to D.C., but he can take us extremely close and leave us in a spot where we will definitely get a ride. And so we get in the car, and as soon as we get in the car, the car smells like an ashtray. It smells horrible.

intensely of smoke. And we take off with this man and he closes the windows and he takes a pack of unfiltered camels out and he starts to smoke a camel cigarette, an unfiltered one with the windows closed in the car. And without missing a beat, he starts to, he immediately goes into that he is a retired police officer and he launches into a

a literal liturgy of murders that he's committed. And he goes into great detail about killing children and grown men. And the way that he's structuring his confession and articulating everything is so matter-of-fact and so...

I don't know. It was so mundane to him. As if it was something that everyone would understand. And we're in the car with this guy for over an hour and a half. It culminates with us being stuck on the I-5, the major corridor that connects all of the eastern seaboard down to the south.

And we're about an hour and 20 minutes outside of DC. And he's been telling us extremely detailed graphic stories of crimes that he committed while he was a police officer.

and I don't know how close we are to the city, and at one point he offers me a cigarette. And at this point in my life, I didn't really smoke. Like, I occasionally would have a cigarette. I'd never bought a pack. I'd had some rolling tobacco occasionally. And I remember he didn't even say anything. He held... I was in the back seat...

And when we got in the car, he asked us where we were from. And Alan, very suddenly, was Mississippi. And I didn't say a single word to him or ask him a question the entire ride. And when he offered the cigarette, he didn't say anything. He just held the pack out behind himself, open, and nudged the cigarette out. And I remember hearing in my head, not thinking, will you smoke the devil's cigarette?

And I took a cigarette and I smoked it in the car with the windows closed. And then about 15 minutes later, he pulls off. We're in that bumper to bumper, but pretty, we're in some serious traffic on the I-5 under an overpass next to a sign that says hitchhiking punishable by $2,500, whatever it is. And we get out of the car and he says, good luck. And we're,

Alan turns to me and he looks at me and he says, I don't think I've ever met someone that was evil until today. And I and we're both gasp like what are they gagged? Yeah, yeah. I'm gagged right now. And we're standing under the sign. And I mean, like, I could I can't tell the story in this format and like tell you the things that he said, because it's I don't want to know. Heinous. Yeah.

And we're standing under the sun and we're like kind of gagged, frozen. Like it was like we'd seen a ghost. And I remember saying now, I was like, I think that that was the devil. I don't, I don't know. I don't know if that guy was even real. And like, we're sort of like, like the ice is kind of breaking and we're like, we can't figure this out right now. We gotta, we got, we can't hitchhike here. We're, we're fucked. Like we're not getting to DC tonight. And,

50 or 60 yards ahead of us is the on-ramp to the I-5, and it's the only way off. I remember seeing an exit ramp, and we start walking up the on-ramp, and we're not hitchhiking. We're just walking up the on-ramp, but we look like hitchhikers. Like, I'm wearing, like...

hiking boots, like probably North Face cut off, like little North Face gym shorts and like a raggedy like fleece or something. And I have a backpack, hiking poles. I think I was wearing like a CCM ice hockey hat that I've had since high school. And we're walking up the on-ramp and Alan's in front of me and this car, unprovoked, just pulls over.

and opens, rolls the window down same way that the first guy did. And I'm having like heart palpitations. And he looks at us, he goes, where are you going? And this whole story that I'm sharing, everything was just automatic. I don't remember making any decisions. I don't remember really talking. It was like being a character in a film.

And we say Washington, D.C., and he goes, get in. And we get in, and I get in the back seat again. And in the back seat, there's a cooler in the space between the seats. It's an old, not old, but it's like a Lincoln or Mercury town car. Like big back seat, big cushy leather. And there's this big cooler there in between it. And then on the seat and on the floor behind the driver's seat are trees and pots and

And he immediately says, I can take you to Washington, D.C. right now, but my wife is nine months pregnant. We're having a baby any day. I have to stop at home and just get her or check on her. I can't just... And we're just... Again, I'm like, I'm not thinking really. And we get off at the next exit and we pull into like a housing community, like...

from the show Weeds or whatever, where it's like all the houses look identical. And we're pulling up to this house and the garage door opens and it hits me. I'm like, oh, this guy's going to kill us. He's probably like 5'11", little wire rim glasses, little wire rim glasses. I forgot to tell you like,

Before he goes up to the house, he goes, are you hungry? And we're like, yeah. He goes, you can take whatever you want in the cooler. I open the cooler. There's like snowballs, ho-hos, milk, a pear, and I'm eating a pear, you know? And then we pull up to his house. He's like fattening us up. We pull up to the house and the garage door opened and it hits me. I'm like, this is Jeffrey Dahmer. And the guy that picked us up first was the devil. Like my life is some sort of strange allegorical thing

continuum that's about to meet its logical conclusion and but i i can't scream i can't yell i can't get out of the car i can't do anything i'm like captive to what i feel is coming and the garage door opens and the car pulls into the garage and as i'm processing all of this or feeling all of this the door to the house opens and a nine month pregnant woman walks out and we're

She immediately is like confused. And then he's like, I picked these boys up. They're going to DC. And she says, no, no, no, no, no, no. You're staying here. We're cooking you dinner.

We're going to take you in the morning. And both Al and I are like, no, we have to go. He's like, my uncle is a congressman. And we're supposed to meet him tonight, which is a lie. And they're like, okay, you know what? Okay. But we're both going to go, I'm pregnant. And so they get, we stop. We like, I forget what happened. She offers us water. We're like, no. They can tell we're like freaked out.

And it's not because of them. Yeah. Like, we haven't had... We've had, like, maybe three minutes between when we got out of that truck and when this guy picked us up. There was maybe 200 seconds for us to, like, you know, we're still freaked out. And we get in the car, back out, and we just get into the gridlocked I-5. And, I mean, I don't... I'm not a D.C. person. My girlfriend is from D.C. But, like, I don't know a ton of D.C. people, but I'm sure...

If it's like that five days a week, then they know how the rest of the story is. Because we're in the car with these people. I think where we were was like 40 miles from D.C. And we were in that car for, we probably got picked up by that guy, the second guy at 1. We didn't get to D.C. until sunset, so like 6 o'clock.

We get in the car with them. We start driving. And they just start telling us this story. Their story. So the pregnant woman gets in. Her name is Rachel. His name is Noble. Noble and Rachel Adkins. And they start to tell us this story. They... And this is... I'm just reiterating something that happened to me. I don't know what I believe about any of this. I am...

I believe in, I refuse to believe in nothing. And so by default, I believe in something, but I don't often know what that something is. And this story has really compounded my ability to understand exactly what I believe. While at one point in my life, it gave me a lot of certainty. I've realized through lived experience that my certainty was hubris. And I don't really know what's going on on this planet or at all. They start telling us a story. They were born in

to families whose business dealings were completely intermarried. Their parents were business partners and they were betrothed to be married. They had really no say in it. They grew up in Texas. Their parents were oil, bank, and land wealthy. And when they were 18, they got married and Noble went to work for his father. And he proceeds to tell us in front of his wife that he didn't really have a job and all he did was

stay in an office and sort of do nothing. And then he would go out with the boys, family, friends, and people in his male community. And they would go to strip clubs and he would cheat on his wife and he would drink and do drugs. And that was his life for years. And then one day he opened the Bible and

And he was religious, but not religious. Like they were raised religious. They went to church. Their families were very religious, but had no, I think the term he used, they were not godly. One day he was feeling guilty and he opened the Bible and he started reading it and he was overcome by light and the Archangel Gabriel appeared to him. And Gabriel told him,

That he was living in sin and that there is only one true God and that that God is not the God that he was worshiping. And he was to go to his wife and confess what he'd been doing with his life and to ask for her forgiveness. And that that was the will of God. And so he goes to Rachel. They live in some...

Some of my recollection is vague, but the things that matter are very burned in my head. But they lived on some lavish piece of ranch land in Texas. He goes to Rachel. He tells her what happened. He confesses. And she says to him, I was visited also by the Archangel Gabriel. And he told me to accept your forgiveness. And he told me...

that we are to go to our family and renounce our worldly possessions and tell them that we're called to this ministry, to do this mission, to preach this true word of God, which is that material wealth and material abundance is a fallacy and that as long as people who are thriving are thriving off of the backs and the labor of others, that it's not godly.

etc, etc, etc. And they go to their family and they tell them that they were visited by the Archangel Gabriel and their families have them institutionalized. And they're telling the story together

Like, he's telling it, and then she picks up, and then... And I'm in the backseat with Alan, and we're, like, looking at each other, and every time I look at him... And this kid is a born-again evangelical Christian. I was gonna say, is he eating this up? No, he's, like, looking at me like, what in the... Like, what is going on? But it's fascinating. Right. And, like, that part of their story took, like, an hour. It was a long, like, lots of details that are lost to me now. But...

The next part is after like 30 days or a couple weeks in observation, they're clearly not crazy. So they're released and they go back to their family and their families disown them and tell them that like they have, as long as they like think that this is real, that they're like, can't be in the family and they need to like sober up and accuse them of doing drugs to all this stuff. And so they ended up living in a church somewhere in Texas and they,

I don't know how long that's happening, but it might have been a year where they're like kind of like living in a church like at at the grace of whomever is doing this and then they're visited again in a dream the same night and Gabriel tells them to go to to go to Israel and

And to preach the word of God in Israel to the Jews, the Christians, and the Muslims that are there. And that they're all children of the same God. And that nowhere in their religious modality is there space for violence or hatred. And that the true will of God is that all of these children get along. And so...

By hook or by crook, I don't know how, they end up, they go to Israel. And they told us that they lived in Israel for, I think, almost 10 years. Like, when they picked us up, they were in their early 30s. And they're living there non-denominationally trying to convince Jews, Muslims, and Christians of this notion, this very humanist notion, that...

you know, we're all children of God and that there's no, there's no space in any gospel of any religious figure, which I don't, as far as I know, is not really part of the old Testament or new Testament or Islamic traditions. There's a lot of violence in all of these things. Um, and then they tell us that they were visited a third time and, um,

When they were visited the third time, it was like a year before they met us. And the Archangel Gabriel came to them and told them that Rachel was going to give birth to a child and that they were to move to Washington, D.C. and continue their ministry there and that Noble would find work. He's an arborist. He you I've like I've.

I have corresponded with him subsequently. He's still an arborist. So they moved back to America and we met them when she was nine months pregnant. And then this is where it gets crazy. If it wasn't already crazy. They tell us that because we were possessed by some notion to go and be alone in the wilderness like Christ, that we have made ourselves willing recipients of the real gospel.

And that we will live. And now is when they start to be like, they're like, we know how crazy this sounds. We know we sound crazy. And they're like laughing and they're smiling. And they're like, you guys think we're so crazy. Do they seem like cool? They seem they're the nicest people. Like those two people are the nicest people I have ever met in my life.

I've never, by the time that they start telling us the craziest part of the story, I'm like in love with them. Yeah. I'm like, I think these people are batshit crazy, but I like love them. And the feeling in the car was like incredible. And they tell us that like, because we went and chose to be alone in the wilderness, that when revelation happens,

That because we are with them, that they are giving us the true word of God, the true gospel, and that we are now prophets of the true gospel. And that we will live to see a time when humans and machines integrate to form a new being. And that that is the final... I forget how they said it. That that's the final...

uh, blow against God. Like that's the, that's the Rubicon, the crossing the Rubicon, if you will, for our, for like God's children. And that if, and when, but they didn't say if they're like, when that happens under no circumstances become a machine, uh,

And then they go on to say that all of the religions started as holy things that were like the seeds that God planted, but slowly through both technology and just the failed nature of man, that the devil has infiltrated all religion, all political machinery, and that everything...

is more evil now than it has ever been, and that we will live to see Armageddon. And they're like, we know it. They're like, we know it sounds crazy. They're like, we know how crazy it is for two people to pick you up and drive you and tell you that the Archangel Gabriel told them this, but it happened.

And like we lost everything. We have no money. Like they clearly have some money. They're living in this, you know, like prefab house. But like we lost our family. We live destitute. But like this is real. So we wouldn't do this if it wasn't real. And we're just like I don't remember saying anything to them. Or I don't remember asking a question. I don't think Alan asked a question. It was just them doing a ministry. Like they were just preaching. But like sort of like interacting as well.

And I'm trying to remember if it was anything else. They were charismatic. They were effortlessly charismatic. I mean, it's a pregnant guy and his wife. Right. A nine-month pregnant woman and her husband. Like, congenial, clean, telling us the story. They didn't really... Yeah, they were charismatic, but it was sort of like...

I mean, like, I don't go to church. I've been to church, like, four times in the past, like, decade. And it's always been on vacation twice to an Orthodox church in Greece, once in Florence, once in Rome at the Vatican. But they felt holy. They felt like godly people. Yeah. And that's charismatic, I assume. You know? And I feel like it helps that they were...

self-aware enough or in on the joke enough to be like, this is crazy, but that's what we got. Yeah, they were completely self-aware. They did draw a line in the sand, so to speak, where they were like, Jesus is the savior. They were like, you have to accept Jesus as your savior. It's the beginning and the end. They were like, but all this stuff is satanic. This is also before I'd ever heard this idea of transhumanism, of...

You know, it was just something in a sci-fi. It was just Terminator was the only thing that I could relate it to. You know what I mean? Right, right. Like, now Elon Musk has a startup where they're putting woven digital fabric in your head so you can, you know, control a computer without, you know, with your brain. It's happening. Anyway, we get to D.C. They pull up. They take us to the Capitol. They park at the Capitol and they put the child safety locks on. They lock the doors and they make us take all the cash that they have.

They're both turned around facing in the backseat. And they go, this is what it means to be godly. They go, if you have enough to give, you give it all because God will refresh you. And then they're like, let us take you to an ATM and give you more money. And we're like, no, no, no, no. And they're like, we're in the car for like five minutes. And he's like, finally, like, we're so not willing to receive his grace, if you will. And he finally like...

he gives us like $170 or something in cash. And then before they let us out of the car, they're like, we know how crazy this is, but you will live to see the end of this world. And you'll, you'll remember this moment. And we love, and we love you.

They get out of the car. Noble looks at me like he's my father, holds me by the shoulders, and he goes, if you ever need anyone, if you ever need anything, you can call me. Gives me his business card, gives me like a really long hug, like he's my dad. And then Rachel comes over, does the same thing, squeezes me, belly rubbing into me, gives me a kiss, and they're like, enjoy Washington, D.C.,

And Alan and I walk away, we play Frisbee on the Capitol lawn, and we're like, what the just happened to us? And I'm like, do you realize that we got picked up by a guy who, for all intents and purposes, if you were gonna fictionalize the devil, you

You'd make him a police officer who's talking about going to find sex workers and like how to get away with and then tells you how he killed a bunch of people. And then we got picked up by these people who are literally like the Archangel Gabriel came to us three times. We lived in Israel. We're on a mission. You're going to live to see the end times. We're like laughing. We're like, what? But we're also like, this is nuts. You can't make this up. And then we're like, you know what? Let's take the money he gave us and go out to dinner.

So we go out to dinner. We go to some tapas bar that's right off the mall. And I remember the Lakers were playing the Celtics.

It's like May 17th or whatever, 2005. We could look it up. And we're watching the game. And I'm just like hoping that Boston loses because, you know. And we get like bacon-wrapped scallops and like flatbreads at this tapas place. And we drink like a bottle of wine. And we pay. And we have money left over. And we're like decompressing on everything. I'm like, you know what? I'm actually done. Like after this trip, when we get back to the trail, I'm going to hike for like –

Actually, no, I'm just going to go home. After this weekend, I'm going to go home. I don't even know why I was doing this, but this feels like the last. I'm good. I was burnt out. I only had maybe $500 to my name. And so I take out the $100 bill with my cousin's phone number on it. And I'm like, I'm going to order some more food tomorrow. And he's like, OK, let's go. So.

So I order some more food and wine. I pay for it with this $100 bill. And then we spend the next three days, we go to the Smithsonian. We go to the National Art Gallery. We go, his uncle cancels on us twice. We like hang out outside the White House. We do all this DC stuff, Lincoln Memorial, Kennedy Memorial, everything. And I call one of my friends from high school and I'm like, hey, can you drive down here tomorrow and pick me up? And he's like, for sure.

My friend picks me up, I go home. - So you have your before sunrise with Alan all around D.C. - Yeah. I get home, summer's in full swing, and that story just becomes, people are like, "How was your experience?" And I'm like, "Oh, it was crazy." And they're like, "What was hitchhiking like?" And I'm like, "How much time do you have?" And I told my family the story. I told some close friends, but it was sort of like a party favor, like this is the craziest hitchhiking story ever.

And then. Party trick. Yeah. January of the next year, I get a phone call. I'm living in Brooklyn and I get a phone call from my friend Kyle Murray. Shout out. What's up, Kyle? Who I went to high school with, who Kyle calls me. He moved to San Diego right out of high school. Love him to death. Like Kyle is someone I really like. It was my first crush, if you will. Guy crush.

Kyle calls me. He moved to San Diego right out of high school so he could surf and go to college at the same time year-round. He's like, dude, you're not going to believe what just happened. He holds up the phone. He's with a bunch of other people I know from high school at a party in San Diego. And I'm like, what happened? He goes, dude, so I'm at this party. He was straight-edged until he was 28. He's like, and all these girls, college girls, are asking me why I don't drink. And I'm like, because it's a waste of money and a waste of time. And I take all this money I got out of my wallet. I'm dying.

I got all this money for Hanukkah and Christmas and I have it in cash. And he goes, and I hold up like 2G and cash and one of these girls and she's like, how is shouting my name? She's a call that number. There's a number on that bill. And so everyone but him is drunk at this party and they call William and my cousin picks up and my cousin, he's like, hello. It's like one in the morning in Pennsylvania. He's like, and Kyle's like, William,

And he's like, yeah. And he's like, I've got your $100 bill. And William's like, I don't know what you're talking about, man. It's like late. And Kyle's like, where are you? Oh, my God. He's like, oh, I'm in Pennsylvania. And Kyle's like, oh, that's sick. I'm from New York. And William's like, okay, great, man. Like...

Great. Like my cousins are from New York because like, I guess William's also like, how do you have my number? Right. My cousin's like very normal. Married his college sweetheart, has two kids, owns a home, like super normal lives in lives in Harrisburg. So my cousin is like, okay, my cousins are from New York. And Kyle's like, where? And he's like, well, they're from Brooklyn, but they went to high school in Long Island. And Kyle's like, where'd they go to high school?

And William's like, they went to Babylon High School. And Kyle's like, wait, what's their name? And my cousin William's like, Christopher and John DeLoach. And Kyle's like, shut the... Like, your cousin's my best friend. I have a matching tattoo with him. And then they were like, that's crazy. He must have given you the bill. And then he calls me and I'm like, wait, it all hits me. I'm like, I remember that bill. I remember spending it. And then...

It really recontextualized that experience that I had. Did you ever go back and tell Rachel? I emailed Noble like seven years ago because this happened 20 years ago, like 19 years ago. I emailed Noble Adkins 10 years ago, maybe 2011, maybe 14 years ago. And I didn't tell him. How did you find him? I had his business card. Oh, I see. You could look him up. He's online. He's on LinkedIn.

where he was, he, the care of trees was his company. But I, like, emailed him and was like, hey, like, I started drawing a tree during that. Yeah. I was like, hey, like, I just want to know that, like, I want to let you know that, like, that ride that you gave me was really an incredible experience in my life and I really appreciate you and I think about you somewhat often. And I just wanted to say hi. And he's like, I would never forget you. Like, I hope you're well. Like, email me back. And then I emailed Alan, like, not that long ago. Like,

like seven years ago and I was told him about the bill and he immediately the first email he replied to me it was like man that was a crazy day and then I responded with seven paragraphs about the about the hundred dollar bill and like I looked up

I looked up at one point how many hundred dollar bills were in circulation that year. And I don't remember anymore, but it's, there were more than a hundred million dollar bills. That is the craziest. So the odds, the odds of Kyle getting the bill is,

Calling the number and my cousin picking up. Calling the number and my cousin picking up. My cousin staying on the line long enough to figure it out. And there's like, there were a hundred million plus hundred dollar bills in circulation. It's all really. What did Noble say about that? I didn't tell him about the bill. I mean, you know what he would say. Right. This is a guy who's telling you that like the book of Revelation is about to come true. I was just saved. And like man and machine merging together. Right, right. But yeah, that's the story I wanted to tell you.

I'm speechless. Yeah, I don't know what to think about it still. It happened 20 years ago, and I still can't make any sense of it. That is the... Wow, there were so many twists and turns. Are there? Yeah, when you said that, I thought that maybe they were going to... You know where my... You told it so well. Thanks. That was incredible. I thought that when the child locked the door and they gave you the money, I thought maybe this is kind of a...

It's a war shock test, whatever people think of this story. But my brain went to, for some reason, that you were going to get to the restaurant and try to pay, and they were counterfeit bills. Oh, my God, no. And they took your $100. No, no, no. Because I knew the $100, something was going to happen with the $100, the way you told it. No. I just thought it had to happen quick because I didn't know there was a part two. Yeah. So that was a twist for me.

Wow. I mean, that was kind of a party trick, but how do you think it impacted you? So then you leave, you're now done with college, and then do you start... I dropped out of college. Because of that trip? Kind of, yeah. I mean, I went on a very haphazard series of more involved, elaborate trips just like that. I walked from Mexico to Washington. I did a lot of... I had a hit list of every...

endurance trial that I wanted to engage in kind of like seeking another a more clear kind of psycho poetic spiritual experience that eluded me to this day you know what I mean I think so I was sort of chasing that yeah I was chasing what that story made me feel was possible what did it make you feel was possible that God could potentially like reach down and like

tell you that he's real or it's that it's real yeah because the odds it's just it's just very weird like I I've since become very agnostic about the story like I I have only told the story three or four times in the past 10 years and I told it twice this year to two people that are very important to me in an effort to come to an understanding about how I've lived my life

Because that experience really influenced the deprioritization of anything amounting to material success until I was at the cusp of turning 30 and I needed medical help. And I had some medical stuff going on and I was like, oh, no one is... I don't come from money. Like, there's no safety net. And then I was just like... It wasn't so much the story. It was that...

I was never concerned with money in the bank or artistic success. I lived in Brooklyn, I made art, I would save up a ton of money, go on a long trip, raft the Colorado River for 30 days through the Grand Canyon, or I went on a series of really intense backpacking trips. And in the back of my mind was this notion that when the time was right, I'd be nudged.

And I would know what to do. And it never happened. And then I was like turning 30 and I needed $8,000 of dental work done. And I had to have oral surgery. And I was like, oh man, I got to grow up. And so I shared the story in an effort to be like, okay, well, while you were finishing grad school and doing this, this is what I was doing. And it didn't really help that people understand me because it is both so ridiculous. Why not? I don't know. I mean, you have to ask them that.

But what interests me more than the story itself or what it means is, what interests me more are the stories that people carry and how it informs their sense of self, their identity, the way they move through the world.

I've heard stories that are almost as crazy as this or for the person sharing them, they're just as crazy. And it becomes part of the mythopoetics of their identity and their individuality. And I think that that can do a lot of great and it can also cause a lot of harm. There's people who have such a profound sense of hubris because they feel like God spoke to them and they're capable of doing crazy things. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah.

What did you want when you told the story? What were you hoping people take away from that? I shared it with one peer who I'm not going to name just to protect their... A peer, a friend of mine who is really... I love a good conspiracy, but it's like not... I'm not living and dying for the tea on conspiracies, but I do have a friend and colleague sometimes we've done some work together who that's their wheelhouse. And...

They were sending me some stuff came across their desk about transhumanism and Neuralink and machine learning. And like the, I don't, this isn't even fringy. Like there's a lot of, there's billions of dollars being pumped into what will be the fusion of man and machine cybernetics. And I, we were really getting into it. And I was like, I got to tell you this story. Yeah. And I told him the story and he was like,

He redid the math on the $100 bill on how many were in circulation. It was like, that's crazy. And I was like, yeah, it's crazy. He's like, what do you think? And I was like, I don't know anymore. I was like, all I think is that it's crazy. And it happened to me. And I mean, we're living in a time where it's highly likely that in the next decade, with the exponential growth of artificial intelligence and implantables, that we'll see people who have...

machines that work with their biome to help them be better versions of themselves, whether they're people who lost a limb or have a cognitive impairment or veterans. It's almost impossible that we won't see this, I'm doing people can't see this, but this air science prophecy. But also, that's not either here or there. The story itself is what's more powerful. Yeah. But

This person who I shared it with was like, you do make a lot more sense to me now. Yeah, yeah, same. But someone else was like, yeah, there have been people who were like, people who were like atheists, and I don't mean religious, but like, there's nothing after you die. There's no veil that you can look behind. It's all the mind. Dead over. Yeah. I'm like pretty, I'm not...

I'm really not like looking for my ego stroke from sharing the story. But when I've, and when I've shared it with people like that, they're like, it's just crazy. It doesn't, it doesn't mean anything. Right. And I think that's a really weird way to go through life too. But also, you know, it makes sense. It's a protective kind of facet of someone's waking life. Yeah. I mean, I think that the thing that's most interesting to me right now is like,

And I get in many ways why you wanted to tell it presently, at least to the person you were talking about, because of how relevant it is, the machine stuff. But I mean, I think that we all want to be... The worst thing, one of the worst feelings is being misunderstood. Yes. And... That's the biggest motivation for me. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that...

You know, we all want to be seen and loved, hopefully, for who we really are, right? Yeah. But it feels so terrible to be seen for who we really are and then rejected. Yeah. And so then, therefore, we put on all of these masks or we... Outfits. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Of course. And then we...

Might still get love. Or get attention. Or get validation for those things. But it's fleeting. And it doesn't really hit. But the. Rejection doesn't really feel as bad either. But then when somebody. And it happens just naturally. When somebody like actually sees us. It feels so good. If they don't.

If they stay, you know, and it feels so terrible when they see the real part and they... So the stakes are very high, you know, and I think... For revelation. The stakes of revelation. To be seen, you mean? Yeah, to be sincere. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think we were talking about this the last time I was here with you about earnestness. Yeah. I guess it's just...

We all have... I mean, it's kind of like why astrology is so popular, I think. And I think it's why... Because it's so vague? No. I think why Myers-Briggs or astrology or human design, any of those. Which one's the Myers-Briggs? Like ENF? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. But I think all of that. Any of it. It's just information about ourselves and it's shared language to be understood. Like, if I tell you I'm a...

Taurus or I'm an ENFP or whatever, you may be able to be like, oh, I know this other person. That means you're like this. And then I'm able to tell you more about myself. And then you know me more because I think it just, I don't know. I'm kind of just a bit balling here, but I feel like you want to tell the story because you want to connect with someone and you want someone to see you. Yeah. I want to be clear. They're in no way, shape or form

do I share the story because I feel like it's part of some kind of ministry the way these people it's more the extreme nature of the coincidence affected my psyche right and then subsequently my behavior and it feels apt to let it out and like share and it's a long series of

stories to get up to the story yeah you gotta take it from the top yeah but then the real interesting stuff is them digressing from the actual fabric of the narrative and then being like how do the story yeah how do like the stories that we perceive that have the big influence on our identity how does keeping them in or sharing them like affect our day-to-day life yeah

Yeah, I mean, I wonder if, like, does everyone have a story like that? It might not. It obviously isn't the same and it isn't maybe as interesting or as cinematic as that. I don't know that everyone has a story, but I think that's kind of where these other people

these other institutions sort of step in and they give you a story. Like, you're an American, you're a Catholic, you're a writer, you're a Lana Del Rey fan. And then that becomes your story. And it's easier because it has parameters. It has an inherited specificity to it. You can just put a sticker on your car to tell your story rather than have to tell it.

Yeah, all kidding aside. And then your identity... Yeah, no, that was completely earnest. Yeah, and that's also fascinating. Yeah. I wish you could somehow make a sticker of... Can we make a sticker of the story? A dollar bill with your cousin's phone number. Dude, I wish that Kyle kept the bill. He didn't even spend it on anything fun. He was straight edge. Wow, I mean, thank you for telling me that. I feel like I... Thanks for letting me talk at you for so long. No, I'm really...

I have so many questions. Ask a few of them. What do you got? Well, I want to know how it impacted your art. You know, I mean, I think it had the effect of making me a little removed for a long time from feeling like there was a worth wildness to...

saying or doing anything, I felt sort of in a state of philosophical arrested development. I don't know. It had a pretty negative effect for a long time. It really, it was what precipitated my very sincere desire to be alone, to want to be alone.

on land surrounded by trees and animals and far away from civilization and I'm someone who comes from like a big city and a big family and I'm very social and a lot of my half of my 20s was spent doing things where I was either with only one person or I was alone and often not in a city and it was ultimately made me kind of antisocial so the story like

had adverse consequences from chewing on it and trying to digest it. And ultimately, it's just something crazy that happened. Yeah. You know? So you don't think that, like... So to you, you feel like it stunted you? You feel like it held you back? Yeah, a little bit. I mean, nothing that I'm saying or doing now in my creative practice...

is all that different from what I was saying and doing then. I was painting through that whole time kind of better than I am now. I really didn't care. I care a lot more now about how things that I make are received. And back then I didn't because I was kind of antisocial about it. Yeah. And I really had my nose up to people and communities that were in the cloisters of the art world. Because, yeah, because, I don't know, because I'm a brat. But...

What I'm making now isn't that much different. I'm still essentially class clowning, trying to jab at the soft spots in our society. And then I also make things that are tongue-in-cheek and just sweet because I'm also sweet. It's funny because I feel...

I relate, but I didn't have that story. But I feel like I had a similar impact of like I... And maybe every... Perhaps everyone feels behind in their life in some way or maybe that's what getting... Maybe the thing we share is like getting older and then being... I had this feeling of... And you kind of described it of wishing I spent my 20s differently than I did. And maybe the through line is just...

we both, regardless of hitchhiking or not or whatever I did or didn't do, we know more now because we've had more experiences. So of course we can be like, oh yeah, I shouldn't, I should have spent that time in a different way than I did. And I also look back at that time, similar to what you said about the, about your paintings. And I, I look at that person and I'm like, how did I do all of that? Like, how did I, I had some sort of delusion of like my, that I, that I,

that I didn't have now. So I both like... The delusion of youth. Yeah, I both admire that and I also wish that... I feel like I similarly spent a lot of time alone. I didn't really have friends. I didn't really... You know, I was very disciplined and meticulous and I didn't know... Yeah, and I wanted to have a life like I do now, which I'm having in my 30s, but it sort of feels like I should be having a different life now because...

Anyway, it's just interesting of like maybe we all feel that way about when we look back, you know? Some people don't. Some people loved high school, loved college, loved their... Like some people look back and they're like, I made all the right decisions and I'm still killing it. Really? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, definitely. I know those people. Yeah. I wonder what that's like.

I think it's nice. Yeah, it must be nice. I love that there's all these cars driving by. Yeah, I like it too. For everyone that's never been to my studio, it's a two-car garage on a small street. I'm kind of unaware of it. Oh, you've got the buds in. Yeah. Yeah. So do you...

Yeah. I don't know. I feel like I've been in a fever dream in this world with you. Yeah, welcome to my life. But we're all hitchhikers. We're all waiting for a ride. Yeah, I guess that's my other question. But go on. No, no, no. That's it. What's your other question? Well, why did you want to tell it to me now? I think it's because I've told the story twice in the past four months.

and it felt good to share. And when you asked me if I wanted to come on the podcast, I was at a loss for to come up with anything. And then, yeah, I don't know. I'm glad you did. Yeah, I thought, why not? Yeah, no, I'm glad you did. Yeah. I was writing about I was in Greece for most of October and I wrote I've written it down a couple of times. But as I get older, some things I do get better at and writing has been one of the things that I'm

I'm actually constantly improving it at, I think. And I wrote most of it down when I was in Greece just to sort of like have it. And so it's just been on my mind. I'm glad we got it recorded. Yeah, me too. It feels like a let it out thing. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Have you seen the movie Serendipity? Is John Cusack in it? I have a long, like when it came out.

So I wonder if that would have been before or after the dollar bill thing. I don't know. You know the dollar bill thing? No. So Cusack, Cape Eccentel, 2000... Weirdly, right on the verge of around the same time. Yeah. But they meet, they both grab a glove, is this ringing a bell? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then they're like, oh, sorry, I was getting this, I was getting this, and they...

He's like, but maybe you should just give me your number just in case. And she's like, no, not going to do that. Whatever. And then she comes back. Do they end up in Italy? No, no, no. Okay. They come back maybe in the sequel. They come back. She forgets her scarf. He forgets something else. Serendipitous. And then...

She's like, well, this has to mean something. And then they go to... She writes her name in a dollar bill and then sells it to a used... Or she writes her name inside of a book, sells it to a used bookstore. He writes his name on a dollar bill and she buys a pack of gum. And then...

They go to the Waldorf Astoria and they press different numbers on the, and they try, they do press the same number, but then there's a kid dressed as a devil who comes in and like presses all the numbers so they don't meet each other. And then, you know, drama ensues five years past. I don't remember this movie. And then it's a great Christmas movie. I mean, it's not, I love it. Yeah. I watch it every year. It's like very important to me. I just watched The Family Man. Have you seen that?

With Nick Cage? It's like similar misto. Oh, funny. He like wakes up and he married his high school sweetheart and he's not a high power traitor. But I have seen Serendipity when it came out. Yeah, me too. I mean, every year since. Yeah.

Yeah, it's got serendipity. It's serendipity pilled. Well, I feel like... I mean, I often say that all of my neuroses, I could blame on the rom-coms that I grew up in from the early 2000s, but that one is up there. I would watch it so often. I tend to make meaning of things. I think it's a more fun way to live. No, it's human nature. Yeah. Okay, it's not serendipity. You know, because otherwise you're a chaotic accident in a meaningless universe. Yeah.

Part of our drive is to derive some kind of meaning from the feelings and experiences that we're all having. Yeah, and you have to have doubt to have faith, you know? Yeah, absolutely. Where do we go from here? So what do you think happens when we die? Well, I don't know. I mean, the house that I grew up in is haunted. Before my great-grandparents bought the house, it was owned by...

A pharmacist, and the story that my family told growing up was that this pharmacist's daughter fell in love with the ice cream man around the turn of the century, and he was not fit to marry her, and they forbid them to see each other, and she killed herself in the attic. And my childhood dog would stand at the foot of the attic and bark incessantly as if there was a murderer in the attic. And I have these really hard-to-

explain memories of being a child and going up into the attic and feeling like the hairs on the back of my neck stand up or feeling someone touch me on my back. And my grandma used to tell this story before she passed about like things moving and so long and short something, but I don't know. I mean, I'd like to think that there's not a hell and that it's all just pizza parties and cupcakes and

when you leave the body, but I don't know. You don't think we come back? I mean, there's a lot of peer-reviewed and very serious research on multiple fronts about reincarnation that seems scientifically credible. Like, children who have...

very graphic and detailed memories of being murdered and can take you to the last, the undiscovered last resting place of the corpse. And there's blunt head force trauma to these. Are you familiar with any of this? Yeah. There's like a lot of research that suggests that... Definitely the most interesting option. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, it's definitely, it's also a little fluffier than like the Catholic notion that I was raised with that. Me too. Yeah, that you're either going to go to hell or purgatory because it doesn't seem like anybody's getting in out of St. Peter. You know, I mean, I think something happens. You know, I listen to Otherworlds. I know I'm not totally agnostic on afterlife stuff. There's another like,

A cousin of mine died very young and a family friend with no real intimate knowledge of my family's relationship to that death went and saw a famous psychic and came back to my cousin with a message from beyond. And so between the growing up in the haunted house and that and some other stuff in my family, like I was raised with a lot of room for that, for afterlife things.

mysticism to be real my mom is very who like who we like we had tarot cards and my mom had both of my brother and i's charts done by like a computer when we were kids when we were born and yeah like most of the people in my family are believers in something yeah you're a gemini i'm a libra

Libra. Yeah, I'm a Libra. That's what I meant. Wouldn't it be cool if I got it? It would, but it's nice to have to lay it down, lay down the laws Libras like to do. No, I'm a Libra. Yeah.

What other questions you got? All right. Yeah, do the questions. How intuitive is your painting process? How much do you plan and how much is led by intuition, I guess, for painting or life? I... The best... The things that I've made that I'm happy with, which is probably 1% of everything I've ever made, are completely haphazard. It's like I'm in the shower. Yeah. And I...

have a thought and then it's a really good bumper sticker, which also was an accident. The culture, the success of the culture thing, a complete accident. Someone, a company I worked for was like, you should make a bumper sticker. And then that was what came to me. I was listening to Alice Coltrane and it was totally haphazard. And I, you know, I stand on it. Like,

But with painting, it's like, there's only like a couple of paintings I've ever made where when I see them again, I'm like, damn, I really hit a home run there. And none of those paintings were sketched out beforehand. None of them were like planned. There was no methodical approach to it. And so the things that I've,

pleased myself with making have been spontaneous and chaotic but most of the work that I love that other people make is hyper like you know so methodical and planned like my favorite painters are masters who are some of your favorite Caravaggio

Goya, the people who really, really methodically understood the science of painting, which I do not understand at all. I did not go to art school. I didn't finish school. Painting for me is like a game of raw material chaos that I like engage in because it brings me joy. But you know,

So what's interesting to me, like with I talk about this with with my friend Maddie, who, you know, she always is telling me, you got to paste what you copy. I always have all these ideas. No problem.

90% of them are garbage, but every once in a while there's something, but I sit on it for so long that you have to quickly, like in 24 hours, get it out or at least start. With the bumper sticker, for instance, or with these paintings that you're proud of, how quick is your idea in the shower to making it happen? I mean, with the Coltrane sticker, it was five minutes. Like, you know...

So... You did it right away. You got the idea and you didn't like sit on it for a week. You just... No, it was immediate. I wrote the copy. I was listening. I mean, it's the story I've told so many silly times, but I was working at a startup. They made vans. They were like, we make all these vans. I ran their retail operation and among other things. And they were like, why don't you design a cycle for the vans? You can do whatever you want. I was listening to Alice Coltrane, this track, Going Home.

And I had just seen the "Keep Honking, I'm Listening to Jazz" bumper sticker at my friend's store. Shout out, Ariel and Mr. Green. And I was like, oh man, "Keep Honking," it just, that was it. It was one, it was one take, you know? And we made it in five minutes. - How many ideas do you think

I don't know if this happens to you, but do you feel like you get ideas and then if you sit on it too long, it evaporates or it just... No, I mean, there are some ideas I've had for like, I've had one idea for something for 20 years now. I just don't have the means, the material means to make it.

And I think that when I finally do make it, it will be complete and total gas. And it will be just as good as if you had done it. It'll be better. Like, it's just not the time for it. That's interesting. Some things... Some ideas come to you and you don't have the material means or... Especially with art stuff or the, you know, the physical space in your existence to, like, bring it to life. Okay, but if it's something that you do, do you ever...

It sounds like you don't have the same problem as I do. Like, it sounds like you kind of get the idea and knock it out if you can, if you have the means, and if it's within your wheelhouse, you don't sit on things too long. No, I mean, no. I mean, it's... That's good. The answer is yes and no. I mean, you know, it's... I'm very lucky that the Bumbersickers have, like, taken off to the degree that they have because copy is, like, coming through my head, like, all the time, and I have a notes thing on my iPhone machine that is, like... I mean...

For the 140 bumper stickers I made, there's like 1,500 that I've written. Maybe not literally, but... And when it's good, then I just... You know, my laptop's always with me. But painting is very different. Yeah. Painting is like a completely different beast. And like also, you know, it's not the same market. It's not the same... You know, just to like stretch a canvas, prime it...

Like, you're talking about, like, hours if not days of prep for every painting. And it's like... But there are plenty of, like, things that are incubating in here right now that I'm just waiting for the right gallery or the right moment to be like, yeah, I'm going to, like, produce these things. But right now is not the time. Well, it's really nice that you have, you know, the, like...

commercial editorial of it all. Like, you have the stickers and you have this other thing so you can depend while you're waiting for that you have another thing that's creative. Well, what was going through your head when that happened with the first, with the Alice Coltrane sticker? Like, how did you feel? I don't... When it started to take off. It's very similar to like, you know when you tell a joke and people laugh?

Feels good. Yeah. You're like, oh, man, I am funny. Dopamine. Yeah. You're like, yeah, I'm funny. Like that was pretty much it. And then it was like, oh, man, like I need to build a store because I can't like answer all these DMs and be like go, you know, reading the receipts in Venmo. So it was like a combination of like, oh, yeah, I'm very funny. And I'm like, oh, man, this is out of control. Like this has gotten like, you know, this has gotten away from me.

But yeah, it felt good. It still feels good. I went through like a rough patch last year where I couldn't be at another group function in New York or LA and have someone introduce me as the bumper sticker guy. And it was really, really grating on me. And then a friend who's a celebrity introduced me to a celebrity celebrity. I was like, he's the bumper sticker guy. And it was the coup de grace where I was just like...

Jesus, man. Like, how about just my name? Hey, this is my friend Christopher. Like, do I have to be, like... It felt like I was being hauled out, like... I was wondering about that. Yeah, I felt like... But I'm also, like, thank God that I have any attention on me. Like, I'm just, like, another obnoxious white guy trying to sell his goofy wares. Thank God I'm the bumper sticker guy because it's, you know...

It's paying for my ability to make art. Yeah. It's like the person in the TV show and they're like, this is what my gravestone is going to say even though I've done all of these movies since or I've done whatever, but they're still going to be known for Friends or How I Met Your Mother. Who's the poster child for that?

Well, I interviewed Josh Radner, and he was in How I Met Your Mother. I didn't watch it, but I love his movies that he made, and I love his writing. What movies did he make? He made two movies that he wrote. One's called Happy Thinking More Please, and one's called Liberal Arts. Okay. It came out a long time ago, but he's worked a bunch since, but he talked about this exact thing when he did the podcast a long time ago, but he was like...

I just had to kind of accept. And I think actually I just saw that he's doing a, like a rewatch podcast of it. And he was, he has a good perspective about it where it was, it was like exactly like you said, or he was like, God damn it. Like, am I always going to be the, and he just got so sick of people calling him by the name and the show. And like, you know, and he got, he was really like, I mean, I'm telling the story. It's probably more nuanced than this, but.

It was, like, the same thing where he was just kind of like, this gave me my, that's fine. I'm grateful that people are, like, it is what it is. Yeah, me too. I, like, had, I had, like, a coming to, you know, God moment where I was like, this is all your ego. Like, your ego wants to be thought of as something bigger than the bumper sticker guy, but it's like, who cares? Yeah.

It's kind of funny, like, as I was preparing for this, I went onto your website and I looked at your... I read everything and made my copious notes, and I must have had some intuition of that because...

I was like, I don't want to really focus on the paintings and the themes. You'd be the only one. And I was like, I don't want to be that guy. No, it's okay. And so I have like two bumper sticker questions at the bottom. What do you got? Maybe. No, no, no, let's do it. Give me what I need. Yeah, take me down. Buy some stickers. The GQ interview.

You talked about how the bumper stickers help people embody cool. I think people think that. I don't remember what I said, but I think what's become more and more fascinating and what keeps me making them is a combination of what is it that people want to say about themselves that I can say better than they can say that ultimately is what the product is culminating in, this

the statement and coupled with why do people feel the need to propagandize themselves on their car, their luggage, or, you know, essentially like bumper stickers. I didn't come up with this. It's like someone else, like Twitter is essentially bumper stickers on the internet. Why do we feel the need to do this? And I've like thought a lot about it the past five years. And ultimately I think it's a consequence of,

advertising and propaganda and being constantly bombarded with all of, with it being done to you. And I think it's like unconscious, an unconscious reaction to that. I also, you know, we all contain multitudes and I hold a lot of space for variables on that. I think it's fun. People like doing it. I think there's definitely some truth to this notion that it makes the highway a more fun place.

But I think there's actually, like, not dark, but sort of like a shadow there, too. You know what I mean? Yeah, I mean, you... We talked about this the last time I was over here, about how... And it goes back to the story a bit of, like, identity and community and how, I think, this is the part I said last time, of, like, we used to put up posters in our bedroom and, like, look at them, but now we're...

taking a photo of them to show other people this is who I am. And I think that's this. And what you said in this was people see it on their vehicles and they think these people are kind of cool. And they're like, this person's really cool and I want to embody that. So my question was, is there a time in your life that you remember that you...

both, like that you were trying to embody. I mean, we all do it. I certainly do. But you did something, not a bumper sticker per se, but to show that. And have you noticed someone doing it to you, like predating bumper stickers? You're asking if I saw someone wearing a certain kind of pants or something.

Yeah, more less than being influenced, but more to be like, I want to show I want to show my identity as part of this group in some way. Oh, man. I mean, yeah, I I'm sure this is like an embarrassing question. I mean, it's so embarrassing. You don't have to. We can. I mean, I won't wear a leash when I'm surfing.

This is a really, this is like the most honest and accurate way that I can embody. Yeah, this is a very vulnerable question I'm realizing because I would want to answer. You know, leashes didn't exist in surfing until I think like the late 70s, early 80s. Jack O'Neill invented the first leash. He famously lost his eye testing a prototype. The first leashes are something that holds, attach you to your surfboard. Yeah. And the first prototype had a spring in it and the spring broke and hit him in the eye and he wore an eye patch until he died.

And the people that I respect who surf, and we're not talking about people who are surfing pipe in Hawaii or these specific places where you just have to wear a leash for safety, but wearing a leash is considered kooky. And if you can't control your board...

That's your problem. It's not the leash. And I came to surfing much later in life than most people who surf as much as I do. I served in high school with friends who grew up on Long Island and became obsessed with it before I could even like really do it. And then by the time I moved to California when I was like 26, I was way behind the curve of everyone. Like,

But I wouldn't wear a leash. He caught up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And he's wearing an eye patch. Yeah. But like, yeah. So it's actually like not wearing something. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. No, it's a good one. It's a good example. Yeah, like I won't wear a leash. Because you don't want to give a too embarrassing one because we're recording. Yeah. I think this is kind of an embarrassing one because it's like... Yeah, it's a fun question. It's admitting the foil. Yeah. You're like, yeah, like I'm like... I don't want to...

Say it. What yours is? Yeah, I mean, I could think, I mean, I can try to think of one to make you feel better. There's definitely, like, in high school, like, I went from being in a very different cultural milieu in the city, in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Like, when I moved to Long Island, all of my close friends were kids who went to punk shows and then hardcore shows, and I went to punk and hardcore shows too.

Until I was like in my well into my 20s. And I definitely wore, you know, look at like, I'm glad that that part of my life was not online. Because there's definitely like some really embarrassing photos of me and like a skin type blood brother shirt. I mean, it's all embarrassing. You know what I mean? Like, I definitely did that. I think it's a coming of age thing.

Or just like anything I, looking back at anything I did five years ago is painful. Anything I did five minutes, last week, like earlier today, it's, you know. I'm not in that camp. I'm not in that camp. There's something. It's not everything, but there are certain things where I'm like, what was I thinking? I've definitely had some bad haircuts. Yeah. Yeah. It gives you character. Does it? Yeah, I think so. Again, I'm like so glad like I was not on Facebook. There's nothing, like my digital footprint doesn't start till like

Not that long ago. I didn't have an iPhone until COVID. What? Yeah. I got my first iPhone during COVID. Before that. That's wild. I had one Android phone from like 2018. Oh. But it didn't. I'm picturing you had like a flip phone. I did until like 2016 or something. I had like a brick phone. That's the coolest thing you said about you. Yeah. Well, I was like, I mean, it goes back to the $100 bill story. I was like, I'm not. I'm good. I'm good.

I was like, I'm good. That's really cool. Yeah, I don't want to be a part of that. I don't want a stamp of approval. And then I was like, oh, man, I'm like, this is crazy. Yeah. I got to get in the digital flock. I was younger, but I remember I had my flip phone way longer than all of my friends, and I remember being like...

I put an eyeball, like, you know, the stickers that, like, moved. Yeah, yeah. And I was like, this is my iPhone. I don't want one. Oh, I get it. I get it. Eye. Ball. Dare I say a sticker. Yeah, your early adopter. Intern sticker magnate. But, yeah, I didn't want to get one. Like, thought they were embarrassing. And then...

I remember I was going on... I was... It must have been... Yeah, I guess I was studying abroad and I'd never left the country. Like, none of my family traveled. I'd never... And my one cousin had. And she was like... She, like, called me up and she was like, I know that you're, like, whimsical and, like, you know, jump around. You're a one-ite. Whatever. I get it. It's cool. I'm like that too. But, like, you got... It's going to make you be able to, like, be more whimsical and, like, do things. If you have your...

I forgot how she said it. Like, have your... Yeah, and I was kind of like, all right, she's got a point, you know? I got put on a family plan and got a free phone, and I was just tired of fighting about it. That'll do it, too. Yeah. Talk to me about this quote from Moonstruck. Why did you, like, enough to put on the next... Was that the second sticker you made? The second sticker that I made says, why is Jadakiss as hard as it gets?

And then in the subtext at the bottom, in very fine print, it says, why did Bush knock down the towers? And I made that because I think that Jadakiss is pound for pound probably the best rapper alive. But the third sticker I made was the Loretta one. And it wasn't even my idea. It was a friend of mine's idea. And he was like, you should make the sticker. It's totally insane. And no one's going to be able to read it, but let's do it. And then we just printed it.

But I had printed the Jadica sticker before that, but really just for me and my friends as an inside joke. So the Moonstruck quote. Do you know the quote? Yeah, I love it. Do you want to read it? Yeah. You want to memorize? No, I have it right here on vinyl. Oh, I want. Yeah, I give you like 50 of them. I've only sold like five. I printed a thousand of these and I think I've sold like 10. Oh, good. I mean, like, that's the reality. So, you know the scene, right? Yeah.

Oh, McGregor. Yeah, yeah. Okay, take it from the top. Loretta, I love you. Not like they told you love is. And I didn't know this either. But love don't make things nice. It ruins everything. It breaks your heart. It makes things a mess.

We aren't here to make things perfect. The snowflakes are perfect. The stars are perfect. Not us. Not us. We're here to ruin ourselves and to break our hearts and love the wrong people and die. The storybooks are bullshit. Now I want you to come upstairs with me and get in my bed. How often do you watch Moonshrek?

Not often enough. They just played it at Vidiot's. Oh, really? Did someone cool intro it? I don't know. I wasn't there. I missed it. That was Michael's idea. Wow. Yeah, shout out to Michael. Yeah. Wow, my questions are so earnest. That's good. I feel like we kind of covered them. You got any bangers? You want me to read them off to you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lightning round. Hit me. We don't have to do these. Some of these might be...

It's just like laughing at my... See, it's true. I laugh at my past. This was from like Thursday. Is there a particular project or something you've worked on that changed your approach or your art process? Yeah, the stickers. I mean, it really is like I...

I have been writing like perennially, but very nonchalantly and without any intention of crafting something too elaborate. And then the success of the stickers sort of, for better or worse, has made me feel more comfortable using text and being literal. Even if the literal element of it is sardonic or sarcastic.

Yeah. I don't know if that's an answer enough, but that's definitely it. So, okay, this one you sort of already answered. You write things in your phone. I have copious notes, too. I mean, like, I... So you're organized about that kind of thing? No. No. I mean, I have, like, three totes that at any one time have between four, five, six journals in them, and, like...

It's pretty messed. Have you ever lost an idea? You know that David Lynch quote? There's nothing worse than losing an idea. He goes off. He's like, you want to kill yourself. You just want to die. If a person forgets an idea that they love, it's a horror. And it could lead to

a real yearning to commit suicide. I don't like lose many ideas, but like I've definitely lost some ideas. As I've gotten older, I'm still very young, I'm only 29 years old, but as I've gotten older, I've gotten much better about making sure that things are written down. And so I lose less and less, but yeah, I'm not losing that many ideas. But when there's a computer in your brain...

All those ideas are going to... I would never. I'm like, everything I've said, keeping in mind everything I've shared, I am a deeply superstitious person. Deeply. I pray before I go to bed in earnest. I mean, I've had some weird stuff besides the $100 bill. I've had some very strange metaphysical experiences that I cannot... We don't have enough time here. I've been visited by weird people.

Yeah, I don't know. I'm very superstitious. I know that I can't explain it or understand it, but I also know that it's real for me. And so I'm really superstitious. Do you feel like it comes... Like that, whatever that is, God, whatever we're praying to, whatever our superstition comes from, do you think that is also what... Is that the same place that your creative ideas come from? I mean...

you know, all beings are innately capable of creation from like, you know, like even the molecules that exist are the creative fabric of the universe. So it's like, I don't know if that comes from God or if it's just the nature of existence, but everything is creative. Yeah. Like there's, you know... What do you do when you get uninspired or stuck? That's a good question. I mean...

There have been times where I've felt that and I've had a deadline and I just have to power through. And sometimes...

you have to submit something and it's not perfect. I've had plenty of people, you know, I don't, we can't say who it is, but like these people came to me and were like, hey, we want to, we want to hire you. He's pointing to something that I got to privately see. You'd know what it is. They're like, we want to hire you. And they were like, why don't you pitch us? And I did. And I thought it was, I thought it was great. And the people who I trust, who are like,

the gallerist who I last showed with and some friends who were like in that like sticker muggle is looking seems to appears to be looking through stickers who are in that world we're like this is really good you hit a home run and the drawer appears to be stuck for the the sticker magnet but like I mean I was stuck on that for a while where the hell is it

When I was working on it, it was pretty clear that I was having a hard time because it felt like a big deal for me. And I made like 50 different things for them and then narrowed it down to seven. And I guess the answer to the question is just like forcing yourself to work. Like you don't have, I don't, if someone comes to you and they have a due date and

You don't always have the luxury of luxuriating in your creative process. Like, you know, I'm not like that. Oh, do you know what that originally said? Here, here, come look at here. No, no, here, close your... It said... Oh, it's so good. I love it. But it's really also edgy. Oh, right. You know, and I was like, you used to not care about being edgy. Right, right. This feels like it was really on brand for you 10 years ago. And, like, now they're like, don't cancel us. But, I mean...

There have been times in my life where, like, I... It doesn't feel that edgy to me. Like, I get that. There, so whatever. I'm sorry. I wish... I hope that they come back around, but... I'm sorry. It's okay. But, like, there have been times in my life where I haven't made or done anything for years. You know, from 20... I think, like, 23 to 26, I didn't do anything. I lived on a farm, or I hiked the PCT and went on a bunch of really crazy trips

wilderness trips and I didn't make anything. I just journaling. And I was really blocked up, but I wasn't trying to, I didn't force myself to do anything. I just was like, this is it. And then it turned back on at some point. Yeah. I think when you, yeah, it's like not forcing it helps, but also sometimes for forcing it helps when you need to, it's like knowing what you need. I know that people who I'm close with whose work I like the most are

They just work. Yeah. And you know that expression, like, the muse can only visit you if you're sitting at the typewriter? That's real. Yeah. I mean, if you're not, like, sitting there working, then nothing's going to happen. Completely. And I try to operate that way. I think for the most part I do. What about the reception of your work? What's been the most surprising reaction to it? And what's your relationship with external validation and...

how that impacts what you make. I mean, it's a tricky one. Just last year, I started lying to people. People are like, you must be making so much money. And I'm like, now I just lie. I'm like, yeah, I'm making so much money. I'm making like a million dollars a year on bumper stickers. Why'd you start lying? I don't know. Fake it till you make it logic. No one wants to hear the truth, which is like, yeah, like I've sold one of these. I should try this.

One. I've sold two of these. Maybe 20. Two. Five. He's pointing it. Like, you know, 99% of these, they're sitting here. They're like... And I learned the hard way that not to think that just because something's... I think that something's going to work, don't print 100 or 1,000 of them. So, like, I've really kind of dialed in...

I guess I'm sharing all this because the external validation, like, I don't know anymore. Like it's kind of, it's almost sad to admit, but if there, if there are not like zeros behind it and it's in a bank account, it really doesn't make me feel much. And I think ultimately that's a tale as old as time. It's very hard to make it doing creative work. And you get to a point where like,

There's only so much padding on the back or like camaraderie or like good feeling that can keep gas in your tank. And I mean that both like metaphorically and literally. Literally, my truck is on empty right now. You know, like I'm not driving a 1986 Nissan pickup because it looks cool.

Well, I am a millionaire, so I'll buy all your bumper stickers. I'm going to test out yours. I knew this was going to work. Yeah, I mean, it's felt less and less feeling, you know? Yeah, I wonder if it's, I don't know. I think it's kind of the walls closing in. I mean, we live in a very high net worth. Spleek. I don't, I mean, there are people living all over the world much more affordably.

And they have a different quality of life and they have a different way of approaching the economic needs. And, you know, it's a luxury to make art. And it's also a choice. And you make it every day. And, you know, a lot of people do ultimately decide that they can't keep doing it because it's hard. Like not, I don't know, I don't know a ton of people who are like,

to use that expression, get caked up from making art. It's very few. It's a very small minority. Well, that was another thing on my list of the age-old question of balancing art and commerce, and you seem to do it well. I think we kind of covered it. I mean, I was going to ask how you balance the feeling. Yeah, I mean, I guess, is there anything you want to add about that? I was going to say, how do you...

How have you navigated the line between making art for expression and then producing work that resonates commercially? But I feel like we kind of covered that. I mean, they're both fun to do. Yeah. You know? You're good at both of them. That's good. They both make me feel good to produce. I don't like... Yeah. I mean, I could wax poetic all day about stuff, things that I would like to create that are totally nuts and have zero potentiality of making me a dollar. Yeah.

but it would be fun to do. And I would have just as much fun making something that like slaps and people want to literally slap on their vehicle or whatever. Yeah. What about, I think we kind of covered this too, but how do you balance the fleeting nature of digital culture with making something that's tacked at? I feel like we talked about that cause it's kind of, it's not anymore. It's both. Yeah. I mean,

I'm not on my phone as much as I used to be and I'm not on my phone as much as I think you would, like not you, but like people would think. I find that the less time I'm looking at the digital world, the less I care about the paradox of like I'm making things on my computer and I'm not actually like painting them. And then it like affords me this kind of spatial luxury to just be like, yeah, that's reality now. Does that make sense? Yeah, completely. Yeah.

All right. I mean, I feel like we kind of covered my earnest questions. Do you want to do a few rapid fire ones? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. What's the best thing you've eaten in the last week? Wow. Honestly, I'll give you one that I made and one that we went to. Okay. I made chicken soup.

I cooked a whole, an entire chicken. How'd that go? It was so, so dope. We made it with corn, avocado, chicken, celery, etc., etc. And I used this hot sauce that my friend made and gave as a gift. And that was like the final stroke. I wanted to go out for that night. I really wanted Thai food. But then I did that and I was like, damn, this is so good. I've been eating a lot of chicken soup. But then I went to Donna's last night, first time.

It like has been open for a while now and I've sort of dodged it because as an Italian American, I have that. I'm not going to go pay $30 for Italian food, but my girlfriend really wanted to go and we went and it was actually quite good. What's your favorite food? Like all time? Like death row? Like they finally caught up with me and they're going to do it? Yeah. What you thought was going to happen in the car? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh man. I don't know. It's like, geez, maybe...

Are you talking about like a restaurant or like a meal? You gotta choose. Yeah, but am I going out to this restaurant for the experience or am I just having the plate of food? Give me both. Quick. Okay. Quick. I'm running out of card space. I'm so sorry. Damn. You're dying. You're dying. You're dying. That's really hard. Maybe... Ah, dude, this is hard. Um...

I don't know. Maybe like if it's a going out experience, like psychotic omakase. If it's like a restaurant experience, like a psychotic chef's table, like omakase meal. No strings attached. Eat everything. $1,500 a person. And if it's just a meal, it's probably like my grandmother's eggplant parmigiana. Yeah, that's like the perfect answer. Yeah, I'm sorry it took me so long. No, that's great. I just didn't want to give the wrong answer. I don't want people to think I'm a loser. Who has bad taste. Do you have a time you laughed really hard?

Yeah, yeah, I do. You mean like time in my life? Yeah, just like something that would make us laugh right now. I mean, like I just rewatched the first few seasons of Arrested Development and I was like, I was LOLing a lot. Time I laugh a lot. I mean, my girlfriend really does make me laugh. She's she made the best sticker. You yeah, she Francie wrote caution. I'm holding space, which is a banger. Best one. Yeah, we've sold a couple million dollars worth of that one.

Yeah, it's crazy that I'm even doing this right now because I'm so rich off... I really appreciate it. But I have millions too, so it makes sense. And I really appreciate you signing the check. $650,000 for this appearance. You're welcome. Yeah, Francie made that one. It's a corny answer, but she does really make me laugh. Aw, no, it's the best answer. What is the greatest lesson you've learned on relationships? I'll give you the third greatest. Okay, great. Oh, man, I've got to really...

Or like a piece of advice that's helped you. We've been dating for two years in May. I think like honest, like you got to find this like sweet spot between being graceful with your honesty and being a complete and total savage. In other relationships, I compartmentalized and edited myself so much to where I was really not a version of myself that I want to be. And as I've gotten older and failed in love a lot,

I just, yeah, like some, there's some sweet spot between being really, really, really sweet with honesty and being like, I want to kill you. Like you were driving me completely insane. Yeah, that's a really good one. I mean, I feel like that's the most, it's like, it takes resiliency to be able to be vulnerable, to be able to,

potentially get feedback, you know? Yeah. And give it. Has there been a piece of advice that's helped you just generally with anything? In general? Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah, someone said something to me recently that blew the doors off my barn, and I'm trying to remember what it was. I wrote it down, but I don't want to, like, go clog it. You've got to go through all your 17 notebooks again. Yeah, I don't know if I'm going to find it, because I don't think I wrote it. Piece of advice. You know, my friend Dirk...

I went to his solo show in Greece, and I went to it, and we were talking about the paradox of making art and gallerists and the audience caring and, quote-unquote, the rules. And he said something very casually that I really, really hit for me in that moment. And maybe it won't make sense to anybody else, but he said, we make the rules. And I was just like, that might not be true as creative people, but I think it's a better...

thesis or not thesis, but it's a better way to make work. And I've been trying to like, I kind of already operate like that, but I mean, granted I'm making millions of dollars on bumper stickers. Yeah. We make the rules. I like that. I mean, I have, I have a bunch more, but I feel like I feel good. I feel like we got it. Is there anything else? Do you feel like I squeezed you for all your juice? Is there anything? No, I could, I could talk forever.

We'll do another one. There's like three How Long Gone episodes in what's recorded. Oh, that show's really short. Right? So that's three hours? How long have we recorded? The recorded part. Oh, it's crazy. It's almost five. You've got to edit it down. I'm starving. I'm starving. All right. You feel good we did it? I feel incredible. Anything else you want to say? I've got to stop short of saying something embarrassing. All right. Well, let's do the deep breath. Okay. And now, let it out.

Thanks for doing it. Thanks, Katie. Okay. Thanks for listening. That was my conversation with artist bumper sticker magnate. Incredible storyteller, like I said at the top. Class clown. Official class clown. Christopher DeLoach.

Thank you so much for listening all the way to the end. I'm really grateful. You know, the beauty of not having ads is that the timing of these coming out is loose. They can be as long as I want them to be. I get to talk to my friends and record it, and I'm so grateful that you're listening. So let us know if you listened and what you thought, and maybe I'll release some of these

some of these tangents that I cut out of this part of the conversation. Maybe I'll release those after this. But if you want more where this came from, get yourself a sticker or a couple or a thousand. And perhaps you want to buy a piece of art from Christopher. Follow him along. Get yourself a hard copy of a sticker.

Follow him along. Yeah, follow him along. Follow him along at That's Cool Thank You on Instagram.com. I'll leave the link in the show notes. And you can follow me too. It's just my name and let it out with three Ts, also me. I share a photo of Pretzel from time to time. I'll share a photo of Christopher's studio, which was really cool to get to go there. You can see the stickers. You can buy some stickers online.

I think that's all I got. But thanks again. So grateful that you're here, that you're listening. And I will talk to you really soon. Bye-bye. I can't believe I'm doing this. Please, please let fate take its proper course. Oh, that was an accident. Write that down again, please. I can't. That was a sign. Fate's telling us to back off. If fate didn't want us to be together, then why did we meet tonight, huh? Gotcha.

Well, I don't know, but it's not an exact science. It's a feeling. What if you're wrong? What if it's all in our hands and we just walk away? No names, no phone numbers, nothing. What do you think's going to happen? Do you think good old fate is just going to deliver my information right to your doorstep? Do you know that's the best idea you've had all night? What's the best idea? Here you go. Write your name and number down. Want a $5 bill? Just do it. You are a strange and interesting woman. Wait there. What the hell was that?

But if that $5 bill makes its way back into my hands, I'll be able to call you. Hey! What about me? What do you mean? Well, we have to send something out in the universe with your name on it, don't we? Come on, isn't that the only fair thing? That is the only fair thing. What have I got? Oh! No, I have a really good idea. What? OK, see this book? I'm going to write my name and my number inside this book. And then first thing tomorrow morning, I'll sell it to a used bookstore. Which one? You're not going to tell me. You're not going to tell me. Why not? Well, now, every time you go past an old bookstore, you're going to have to go inside and see if it's there.

You don't just have the most incredible night of your life with the perfect stranger and then leave it all to chance, do you? Do you? A person can see where they've messed up in their life and they can change the way they do things and they can even change their luck. So maybe my nature does draw me to you. That don't mean I have to go with it. I can take hold of myself and I can say yes to some things and no to other things that are going to ruin everything. I can do that. Otherwise, you know what?

What good is this stupid life that God gave us? I mean, for what? Are you listening to me? Yeah. Everything seems like nothing to me now. I guess I don't want you in my bed. I don't care if I burn in hell. I don't care if you burn in hell. The past and the future is a joke to me now. I see that they're nothing. I see they ain't here. The only thing that's here is you.

And me. I want to go home. No. I'm gonna go home. No. I'm freezing to death. Come upstairs. I don't care why you come. No, that's not what I mean. Loretta, I love you. Not like they told you love is. And I didn't know this either. But love don't make things nice. It ruins everything. It breaks your heart. It makes things a mess. We aren't here to make things perfect. Snowflakes are perfect. Stars are perfect.

Not us. Not us. We are here to ruin ourselves and... and to break our hearts and love the wrong people and... and die. I mean that the storybooks are bullshit! Now I want you to come upstairs with me and... and get in my bed.