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#41. The Game Plan

2021/7/13
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THD美籍华人英语访谈秀

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Aric
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Justin
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Justin和Aric讨论了完美主义对个人发展的影响,认为追求完美是好的敌人,会阻碍个人进步。他们认为,成功的关键不在于成为像迈克尔·乔丹那样的超级巨星,而在于学习他们的思维方式,即专注、好奇心、持续改进等品质。他们认为,应该关注过程而非结果,每天进步一点点,才能最终取得成功。 他们还讨论了如何保持客观视角,避免群体思维,多方获取信息,独立思考。Aric分享了他对自身价值观、生活习惯(充足睡眠、规律锻炼等)和与世界互动的思考,认为这些是保持良好状态的关键。他强调了持续学习、拓宽知识面,并不断发展自身的重要性,同时也要警惕陷入思维定势。他们建议阅读古代文献,学习历史,以获得更客观的视角。 最后,他们讨论了如何避免成为“混蛋”,认为将人生目标设定为“少做混蛋”比追求完美更有效,能带来更积极的结果。他们认为,只有经历过负面体验,才能更好地理解和把握积极的一面。人生经验,无论好坏,都能成为提升自我和获得视角的工具。 Aric分享了一个他十多年前在上海发生的冲突事件,以及由此引发的反思。这个事件让他意识到,即使自己并非完全无辜,但一些行为也导致了冲突的升级。他反思了自己过去的一些行为,承认自己曾经过于霸道和自负,并因此与朋友闹翻。这个经历让他更加成熟,也让他更加注重自我反思和改进。他认为,通过反思负面经历,可以更好地认识自己,并避免重蹈覆辙。

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Justin and Eric discuss the mindset of high achievers like Michael Jordan, focusing on perfectionism, focus, and continuous improvement. They emphasize the importance of adopting such a mindset without aiming to be an outlier, and the value of self-reflection and core values in personal growth.

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What's up, everybody? Welcome back to The Honest Drink. I'm Justin. You can always reach us at thehonestdrink at gmail.com. And if you've been enjoying this podcast, go ahead, rate, comment, and subscribe. Now, today's episode is going to be a short one. It's a really spontaneous conversation between Eric and myself while we were waiting for some food to get here. And we had recently watched a documentary called The Last Dance. And if you don't know what that is, The Last Dance is a documentary on Michael Jordan and his last year with the Chicago Bulls.

It's a really great documentary. If you haven't seen it, I strongly advise you to watch it.

And the whole subject of Michael Jordan really got us talking on kind of outliers, high achievers, you know, perfectionism, mindset, perspective, you know, really just on what are the type of people we kind of aspire to become and what are the mindsets to help us get there. So we do a lot of self-reflection in this episode. Eric shares a pretty crazy story towards the end, so I'd stay tuned for that.

But besides this, there's really not much more I have to say on this one. So without further ado, please enjoy The Honest Drink. Here we go. Perfection is the enemy of the good.

Perfect is the enemy of the good. Yeah, perfect is the enemy of not just good. Perfect is the enemy of anything. Perfect is the enemy of perfect. Because if you're trying to be perfect all the time, you'll never be perfect. Exactly. It's all about... Oh, dude. So there's a guy. You gotta fucking watch this guy. You know what a card mechanic is?

A car mechanic? Yeah. Did you ask me if I know what a car mechanic is? Card mechanic. Oh, card mechanic. I thought you said car mechanic. So there are different levels of like magic. There are the people that spend tens of millions of dollars on these massive shows like David Copperfield or David Blaine or whatever, right? And then there's like the up close. Like the street magic stuff. Street magic. Arguably, right? Arguably from some people, the most...

the highest, most sophisticated level of magic is called card mechanics. It's when people can deal from any part of the deck. So there's a guy, the best guy in the world, Richard Turner. He's like 70-something years old, right? And I recently learned about this guy. There was a documentary made of him a couple years ago, won a bunch of awards. He was on the Tim Ferriss show. Crazy, okay. So this guy, number one, he can shuffle a deck perfectly, like on the left side, right side, perfectly.

He can shuffle it so that every other card is like... It's alternating every single card. Okay, yes. If you give him any deck of things like business cards, regular playing cards, whatever, just by touch, he can tell you how many cards there is. And he can deal any... Like if it's a 52-card thing, he can deal number 37 card from the deck as if it was from the top. He is the foremost. He has done...

Like he has practiced dealing in these crazy car mechanic ways over like 500. He's counted like 500 million times. Like he is the, the elite of the elite, the epitome of carbon mechanics and the motherfucker cannot see. Okay. So he relies on touch. Yes.

But that probably gives him an advantage. Yes. Yes. And so like there's some funny stories like where the mafia, like when he was younger, the mafia was like, you're going to work for us. And he's like, no, I'm not going to work for you. Because if he could work for the mafia, he could make them like fucking millions, if not billions. And it's insane what he can do. So he basically knows what all the cards are because he can always keep track from one to 52 of everything, no matter how many times he shuffles.

And he's dedicated his life to that. What's this guy's name again? Richard Turner. Richard Turner. Yeah. How'd you learn about him? Through the Tim Ferriss show. I mean, and then when you talk about like, you know, practice makes perfect and all this stuff and like life lessons, like the guy's fucking badass. Like he has not missed a workout in 49 years.

What does he work out though? Like, like he lives, he's, he's a black belt in karate or Kung Fu or some shit like that. I mean, he's, he's a, and he's blind. Yes. He's a total, and he grew up and he was like poor. He got picked on like he's the whole story. Just listen to the interview on the Tim Ferriss show. That's one guy. And then Nick Walenda, I sent you in the, the guy, the tightrope, tightrope guy. And he's going to do like volcanoes and shit.

It's like the people who have reached the epitome of a certain area of human sort of excellence, they all share common things. You know what I'm saying? Like it's everything we talk about on the show. Like we're never going to be that and we shouldn't feel bad about it. But it's a really good model of the direction we should be going. Well, what do you think those common things are? The common things are like, you know, like focus, like,

being curious, being open-minded, always wanting to get better. It's everything our show is about, right? It's just that the reality is that when you have billions of people, you're gonna have outliers, right? You're gonna have the Michael Jordan. And the goal is not to be Michael Jordan. The goal is to have Michael Jordan's mindset. And then wherever you end up, you're gonna be great in whatever you do, but you don't need to be Michael Jordan. And that's the thing we talked about earlier today is that when you want to be Michael Jordan,

that's when you get fucked up. When you try too hard. Because like the reality is that there's nature, right? There's all these things and there's like all these other factors. I can guarantee they're going to be above average. You're going to be pretty fucking good. But will you be like the number one in the world? I mean, like, are you the tallest guy in the world? Do you have the biggest dick? No, right? I mean, maybe one of them. Yeah.

I mean, in this room, you might have the biggest dick. I don't know. But you know what I'm saying? No, I get what you're saying. You're saying as long as you have that mindset, if it was meant to be, it will be.

But as long as you have that mindset, it'll take you to a better place anyway. Like for example, like as long as you adopt the mindset of Michael Jordan, if you were meant to be as good as Michael Jordan in terms of like you had all the other variables, you were physically gifted, you had all the right circumstances and upbringing and drive and physical advantages, then as long as you put that mindset in, that will take you there, right? Yeah.

But the point is not to try to be that end goal because maybe you don't have a lot of those things that are necessary for you to be that. Like you're not six foot six. You're not physically gifted. You're not like fast and twitchy. You're just not as gifted as he is. But your mindset is right. That will take you where you, as far as you can be,

So as long as you don't focus on the end goal of, oh, I want to be Michael Jordan because that's misleading. You adopt a mindset instead. I agree. Two things to add to that. Number one is you will never be Michael Jordan and you will never be close to Michael Jordan because it doesn't matter because Michael Jordan is such an extreme outlier, right? And then number two is that the Michael Jordans of their respective areas, they don't

What drove them wasn't to be Michael Jordan. What drove them was just to get better every day. No one can sustain 30, 40, 50 years of drive just solely because they want to be the best. The only thing that can sustain them is to find an area that gives them energy that day in and day out they enjoy doing.

that incremental progress. And so over time, they become really great at something, right? But like, like the goal is not to be Michael Jordan. He's too much of an outlier. Like imagine if you were a division. Well, Michael Jordan wasn't even trying to be Michael Jordan. Imagine you were a division one basketball player. Like of all the basketball players in the world, if you could even get to that point, that's quite amazing. Yeah. Yeah. So it's not about

That's also one of the problems or not problems, but that's one of the downsides to social media is that they're showing like the outlier of the outlier of the outlier of the outlier, the top, not 1%, right? Not the top 0.1%, not the top 0.01%, but the top 0.0000001. And it's like ridiculous. It's like, would you ever aspire to be nine feet tall? No, that in itself comes with the crucifix, with the cross, right?

So, so I think we just have to kind of take that all with a grain of salt and be inspired by the mindset, the process, the methodology, and at the same time, just get a little bit better every day. Cause like I watch that stuff and sometimes I get hung up on it. I'm like, what's the point?

Like how do you gain perspective, right? Like how do you feel like you gain perspective? Because I feel like that's what's lost in a lot of this, right? Like it's just being able to take a, whether we're talking about, you know, current events or things like personal things, it's all a matter of like thinking for, thinking as an individual and not like being subjective to like groupthink and being a victim of groupthink.

And just taking a step back and be like, okay, what the fuck is actually happening here? And thinking for yourself and taking in multiple sources of information instead of just relying on one source of information. Be like, okay, I've done my research. Here it is. This is what I think. And you end up just regurgitating that source of information, which is what I think most people do. I've been guilty of that in the past.

But so how do you feel like you, because I feel like you personally, you've gone through a big shift in your person throughout the last few years. And I feel like you've adopted from what you were in the past, a very, now you've become a much more open-minded person.

where you have a lot more patience to be like, okay, wait, hold on. Instead of just like knee-jerk reaction and reacting to a situation, you pause and you take a step back. You're like, okay, what's happening here? Okay, I see what's happening here. And then you react accordingly. And oftentimes that reaction becomes much more subdued, much more manageable because you took a step back, you took a moment to pause and to think for yourself, like, okay, what's happening? Mm-hmm.

I think that you're being, you know, like you're exaggerating. I'm in the same boat as you are. Like we're literally on the same boat. I'm sitting right next to you holding hands. Right. But we've improved. There's just a few things I think that like I feel really strongly about. Okay. Like number one is you have to have like clear values. Like and you don't always live your values, right?

that's just human nature. But like, what are your core values? Right. And if the core value is I want to help others, I want to see the world be a better place. It's not about me. It's about everyone else. Even if I can remember that 10% of the time, it's going to move me forward. Right. And I think the more tactical, simple things sleep eight hours a day. Like when I don't sleep enough, I'm just a sorry piece of shit. Um,

Get rest every single day because every day you wake up, it's a new day, right? Exercise every day. Like definitely that changes. Like that's, that's the game changer. We talked about that a lot. So a lot of the things are just really simple. Just reset yourself on a daily basis to give yourself perspective because basically,

people lose perspective over time when they have behaviors that start kind of bleeding into each other like on a day-to-day-to-day basis but sleeping exercising eating right every single day resets yourself that's just like that's how humans operate right that's how we're able to operate so i think like you know just like on the thinking side knowing your core values like

being very generous, being open-minded, being humble, you know, and engaging with the world. Don't isolate yourself. Don't isolate yourself. Engage with the world. Talk to as many people and don't judge them. Do not judge, right? Listen to every word they have to say and then try to incorporate and integrate rather than to reject. And then the daily tactical things. And I think that that just keeps me above water. I'm not drowning.

I'm not drowning. I feel like I'm drowning sometimes. Last couple of weeks, I was drowning. But at least I have my life vest. And my life vest is my core values and my basic habits. Do you feel like you intentionally make a habit to try to force yourself to listen to things that are contradictory to what you believe?

You know, like we have this habit of always trying to reinforce things that we already believe in to make ourselves feel better. Right. These echo chambers. And the hard thing to do, and it is hard, is to proactively try to procure information and listen to information that is completely against what you truly believe. Right. Just to get another sense and actually listen to it with an open mind. Do you feel you try to do that?

No, I don't. I get what you're saying. I would look at it a little bit differently. Like I would say, number one, I'm just curious. So I'm curious as to anything that's new and different, but I don't frame it, right? Like you don't want to go into the situation saying that, okay, there is my beliefs and then there's other beliefs and I'm going to go learn about other beliefs, right? Like I don't frame it that way. What I say is that, hey, I have some core values that are really deep and personal to me and

And then on top of these things, I'm going to keep learning and learning and learning. And then like, I'm constantly evolving, you know, some of my thinking, but my core values are really simple. Like for instance, you know, be generous to others, be open-minded. They're, they're generic enough that they're not ideological. You know what I'm saying? So I try not to have any ideological sort of things. And, you know, there's three or four things. Like if you say, I'm,

What are your top values? Then I can write down, I could write down 10 or 20, but the ones that I really practice every day are the only ones that matter. If you don't practice your values, you might as well not exist, right? So let's say the two or three or four values that I try to practice on a regular basis, then the world is 99% open to me.

Like anything could change. Like I just have like two or three principles. So I try not to view the world like black and white, this versus this red, blue, green, whatever. I'm just trying to say that, Hey, like the world, it is what it is. And on top of my very, very basic core values, what can I continue to learn about the world? And part of that, you know, if you want to think about some of the tactics, um,

Okay. Find smart people at different disciplines. So don't just study chemistry, but also look at biology, physics, look at sociology, psychology, be as broad as you possibly can. Look at as many different diverse backgrounds, right? Don't just listen to podcasts, read books, you know, watch YouTube. So don't go to any specific thing and only that one thing, keep sort of expanding yourself and then keep refining and shaping yourself. Now, is there a possibility that I get in a rut or,

or that I'm reinforcing and getting in an echo chamber. Yes, there's always that danger. There's definitely that danger. Right, because that's what's attractive to us. Whether we want to admit it or not is to hear other people reinforce things that we already believe in to be like, oh, I'm right. I was right for believing this.

And the hard thing is to believe in contradictory information from credible sources that kind of undermine your belief. And then, and most people just tune that out. They don't even want to listen to it in the first place. Right. Yeah. So one of the things I think that will help inoculate versus that is read the ancient writers, learn history because everything can, like you look at politics, you look at all this stuff, it's happened a million times. It's not like people have changed.

The names have changed. The boundaries of countries have changed. The technology has changed. But the basic need for wealth, the basic need for power and all these things have existed for a long time. So read the ancient Egyptians. Read the Romans. Read the Chinese, the Indians. Go back to stuff that has survived thousands of years because...

Here's the thing. If you read something that was written today, it has the bias of today and it has all of the incentives of people writing it today, right? Like if you read Washington Post, maybe it's Jeff Bezos. If you read this New York Times, it's the liberals, right? And that has all the tint of the political leanings of today. But read something 5,000 years ago, okay? It might have the leanings of the motherfuckers 5,000 years ago. But it's not relevant to us anymore. But they're fucking dead. Who gives a fuck?

So whatever that's, you won't be as influenced by the, the bias and you can, and you can like, um, focus on the content. That's a really good, that's a really good point. Actually. It's a really good point. Do you feel like your, your, your view of the world has changed over the past? I don't know. X number of years or, or even months given the current like outbreak. My, my views changed in the last five minutes, dude. Yeah.

Literally, it always is changing. And like, you got to just, I think you have to acknowledge that you're never, you're never going to be right. You're not going to even be 50% right. You're always fucking wrong. And you're just trying to be less fucking wrong, honestly. Right? Like, you're just trying to be less wrong. You're trying to be less of an asshole. Like, here's one rule, right? What if you lived your whole life and your only goal is like, you knew that your tendency is to be an asshole. Your only goal is to be less of an asshole. Right?

would you be successful? I think you'd be pretty badass. Oh, I think, yeah, I think you'd be really good actually. Yeah. If you adopted that mindset, I just want to be less of an asshole. Yeah. Less of an asshole. Yeah. Instead of, because the opposite can make you more of an asshole, right? If you just, if you, every day you thought like, oh, I just want to be the best. I want to be Michael Jordan. I want to be the fucking best. Then you, you're in danger of becoming more and more of an asshole because a lot of people think you have to be more of an asshole or the characteristics you need to adopt and achieve are,

make you more of an asshole to get to that point yeah but if every day you're just like okay all i want to do is become less of an asshole less of a douchebag then i think you'd be a lot more successful totally achieving that goal and i think douchebag is brings you know extra flavor to it oh dude i but see i i say that to myself all the time no i i honestly do in the last like year or so

like I've realized like, dude, I just want to be less of a douchebag because sometimes you don't understand how big of a douchebag you really are. Totally. Like, yeah. Like I looked myself in the mirror and I was like, I'm a fucking giant ass fucking douchebag. Like I really said this to myself and. Okay. Hold on. Let me, let me pause here. Right. So, um, what have you, okay. So what instance in the last six months, um,

did you do that was the most douchebag action that you did in the last six months? - I think this podcast. No, I think honestly, honestly, it was like this idea that I got into my head because I never used to be big on social media. And ever since I started doing this podcast,

you know, people are telling me like, oh, you need to like try to market this podcast, you know, let people know it's out there and, you know, use social media, you know, push yourself out there, be a little more extroverted, you know, like, you know, market yourself a little bit. You got to do that. Everyone's doing that. And I was like, okay, yeah, you're right. And then, so I started kind of not being myself lately and like,

doing like being more active on social media all of a sudden like i never used to use my instagram account like my instagram account was like dead for like eight years right and all of a sudden like i revived it like a year ago yeah and it was like i started posting started being more mindful of like my instagram presence and i was like and then and then i had to take a step back and i'm still on instagram and everything i still post but not not nearly as right as often but

I had to take a step back and be like, what the fuck am I doing? Like, I felt like I was being a douchebag. And I'm not saying you're a douchebag for using Instagram. I love Instagram. But it just wasn't me. And I felt like I was being a fraud. And even with WeChat and just all social media in general, like it's very unnatural for me to use it. But I still do. I still post pictures of food. I still post. And every time I do it,

And afterwards, I'm a little bit regretful. I'm a little bit regretful. Like you indulge yourself. Exactly. I had that guilty pleasure. Yeah. And whether or not that's a healthy thing, I don't know. But yeah, but that's when I felt like, okay, I'm kind of being a douchebag right now. And even with this podcast, with the audacity to think that people are interested to hear what I want to say. Yeah. You kind of have to be a bit of a douchebag.

to have that mindset, right? Like we, we kind of have to be a little bit of a douche bag to think like, Oh, we're going to record ourselves talking and people are going to want to listen. Right. Yeah. So I don't know that just kind of highlighted. These boundaries are not like, you know, they're not completely clear. I, I think you just always have to draw the line and know that you might overstep the line, but,

know where the line is. Okay. So whatever you do, like, let's say like getting into douchebag territory is one side of the line serving your, you know, your listeners and really thinking about them and having them in your heart is on one side. You're going to step like, you can't like, you know, beat yourself up about stepping across the line.

What you have to do is just not live in the douchebag. Don't like put a pitch a tent in the douchebag territory because you will know it. Once you have your fucking tent, you build a fucking house in the douchebag. Home base. Once you make it home base. Yeah. Once you fucking like, you know, put all your shit there. Yeah. You know, it's okay to kind of step into it. Just don't be. Just be a tourist. As kind of to allude to Rick James, don't be a habitual, you know, like line crosser or line stepper. Right.

Right? But if you cross it occasionally, it's good. Why? Once you cross the line, always be drawing the line, then you know you crossed it. It's like mindfulness. It's like you know you crossed into another territory. You know where you are. You know where you are. You have a reference. Right. And then you can go back and then not be a douchebag. So it's important...

Whether it's good or evil, being a douchebag, not being a douchebag, you always have to kind of be evil or douchebag to know what good is. Right? It's kind of like what you were saying earlier today. You were like, well, if you just grew up all by yourself and there's no other people in society, nothing existed, would you know anything? You wouldn't know anything. You can't know anything.

because you weren't exposed to anything. So only when you're exposed to evil, being a douchebag, being an asshole, being a drunk, being an alcoholic, being a loser, can you actually truly be a winner. So probably the definition is like you cannot be a winner unless you've lost before. I like that.

I like that a lot, actually. Because it brings into light all your life experience, right? And you end up using it as a tool. Whether those life experiences you see as negative or positive, you use it as a tool either way, right? And you use it as markers. You use it as things that bring you more perspective on things and learnings. Like going through life, like things that I've done that I'm not proud of.

necessarily but nonetheless i wouldn't be who i am today without those things right you know like so you're you and how are you know very skilled guitarists right so how do you know how to play the right notes right how do you actually know how to play all the right notes in the right way it's because you know what the wrong notes are if you didn't know what the wrong notes were you wouldn't be able to play the right notes and how do you i don't know if that's a good analogy i

I'm just looking at the guitars here. I know you're looking at guitars, but... I actually just did that to prove my point. It's like I made a incorrect point after a lot of good points to show you that I know the difference between a good point and a bad point. There you go. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Where's our food? I think it's coming. I'm the skinniest fucking guy in our whole group.

And I think about food more than anyone. What do you mean by the whole group? Like us three? No. You remember how back in the day, back in the Muse days, there was like the word on the street, and this was the vain side of us, that there was three big groups in Shanghai and we were like...

the capos of one of the three big groups. You remember that? It's like the different cartels. Yeah, the cartels. We were one of the cartels. But we were like positive and friendly cartels, right? But remember that? I would say that in that cartel, do you know anyone that was skinnier than me? Not really. No, you've always been a skinny motherfucker. But I think about it. You've almost been the skinniest motherfucker, but at the same time, you've almost been the most aggressive motherfucker too. Yeah.

Yeah, that's true. That's overcompensating. It's overcompensating for it. I guess so, huh? You were always the scrawniest guy, but then you would always be the most aggressive. Yeah, because when you're surrounded by white and black guys in America, you're just meek. And then you come to China, like, oh, well, fuck, they're all Asian DNA. I can dominate. I can fucks with this shit. I can fucks with this shit.

It's like Jeremy Lin coming into the CBA. He's like, okay, I can fuck with it. But the funny thing is, it's always be like, you want some of this? And then I would like, look at you. Like, I would like, it would always be like, it's hilarious. I remember when I got in a fight, like, I mean, this is like 10, more than 10 years ago. And I yelled more at my friends than anyone else because like, why did you step up? Yeah.

Like Rich. I can't remember if we talked about this, but Rich and another friend, Adam, they got the shit beat out of them by like 20 ninjas in black ninja outfits. And then I was like, why didn't you fucking step up for me? And they're like in the hospital. Yeah. Was I there? No. This is before I met you. This is at Gwandi back in the day. Actual ninjas. Like they were professional fighting force. Oh, they were like a professional like crew. Yeah. Professional. Because we had...

De Zui, somehow. De Zui. Some guy with some connections. Some Shanghainese guy with some connections. Yeah, I actually, yeah. I'll protect this guy's identity. I don't really know the guy. I've heard the name a few times and I know people who know him. But he called out ninjas. And then we had, like my guys had a, I was at home. I was kicked out already. So wait, so you guys were at Gwandi and then you guys were getting into a little bit of a beef thing.

Yeah. And then he picks up his phone and calls a group of hired ninjas. Something. Okay. So to be a little bit more precise. So some beef happens. On this particular occasion, it wasn't.

I would say that, I mean, it had everything to do with me. Like if I wasn't there, it wouldn't have happened. Of course. I know that. But of all of the times we've gone out, like there's probably 10 other times where I deserved it, but this was not really one of those. Right. But it's karma. So shit happens. The guy, like he literally runs, I think like they were, they were doing a lot of Coke and stuff like that. And my friends, I mean, we're just drinking, right? This beginning of the evening, he rushes up and attacks me.

he was a bigger guy. He was like a model or something like that. It's strong. He bowls me over. My friends kind of step up and then it gets diffused. And then of course there's a lot of yelling on my part. Like you want some of this? And then I'm like, I'm telling my friends, what the fuck man? You should have fucking, you know, like, you know, gouge his eyes out. Like I was giving him shit. We knew all the people at Gwandi. And so this is back in the day. Right. Like what year was this? I was like,

quite a while more than 10 years ago this is before your time and um so you know the owners and some people that are affiliated with the owners they're like hey you know you probably should go home you know these guys you know we don't know what's going to happen you probably should go home like we're not kicking you out but just go just go home take it take the night off it's cool you can be here tomorrow you're here like six days a week yeah they were being cool yeah that's cool we knew the guys

So, okay, I go home, right? It's fairly early. And we get in this shit all the time, right? Like every day, every week. So I just send a message to my friend saying,

and not like well Rich and I were friends with another guy and you know now he's like he runs like he's in the music industry he's pretty high level there but back in the day I just sent a message I'm like hey man be careful alright you know we don't know how rough these guys are I literally remember I probably have this text on some phone it's like don't worry we got a lot of pipe hitting beep we got this

This is like some, you know, like Jewish music entertainment executive, right? Like these days. And so I wake up, I go to sleep and I'm like, okay, these guys are cool. I wake up and on my Nokia, it was like, hey, Rich and I in hospital, badly beaten.

Uh, call immediately. Like it was like, it was the minimum number of words to show that there were an extreme distress. I go to the hospital. I literally tears came down my eye. So one of them, right. The other guy, Adam, like he was fucked up and his eye was like, literally I thought his eye was gone. Cause it was like completely red. He was fucked up there in the hospital. Rich, his entire head, like Charlie Brown. It was like purple, like,

They did not touch the rest of his body. They pummeled his head like a hundred times. Like his entire head was fucked up. He had a skull fracture, like everything. Apparently what happened that night, they were cocky. They got like 10, 20 guys, you know, black guys, Filipino guys. They had some serious guys, but the other side, there were like Hong Kong, Canadian, whatever. They called out 20 professional bodyguards, like ninjas in black suits and

There was a gate at Gwande. They shut it. They had pipes. And one of the guys on our side got beaten. Another guy, I didn't really know him that well, got beaten so bad he almost died because he got a pipe on his head. My two buddies just surgically got and got their asses kicked. Rich had to go back to the U.S. He had to get like he had to see a surgeon and they were like, maybe you need to get surgery. Otherwise, your whole face will be collapsed. But he eventually healed.

Yeah. Anyways, I ramble, but so that was one of those infamous nights. That was the infamous. There was another, there's two, that one. And then another one where someone got stabbed, like another friend. Yeah. I heard about the stabbing one. There were two, there were two like main nights. So wow. So that was the first one. Yeah.

And it was like a misunderstanding, like, you know, that kind of shit. Like, I won't go into the details. It really was nothing. There are other times where I could have... You've been with me. We've been on other nights where we could have had the same thing happen. But that was a unique circumstance where it was like, who's going to call out a professional fighting force? Just the wrong guy at the wrong place. Yeah, yeah. And he was like, it's just... You just can't. I mean, this is... It's like... Do you think they're still out there? Do you think you can still call these professional like...

Like these professional bodyguards. The thing is, the reason we knew that they were kind of professional is that every single one that showed up, they were like in black. They're all in uniform. Like with fucking uniforms. Yeah.

I'm sure you can. Well, do you think that was the mafia? Do you think that was the Heisei? I don't know. Look, you got to imagine that there's still a lot of this shit going on, you know, even today. And they all had pipes. No, no, no. They picked up pipes from the... They didn't bring the pipes. So there were pipes there just laying there? No, I think they ripped a pipe off from somewhere. I don't know. Like, I don't know where they got the metal stuff. There was one guy that got beaten pretty... I bet... I wonder if Li... I'm trying to think. No, Li... When did Li come to China? I don't know.

2002. Lee would know about this one. I'm sure he would. Maybe Lee even knows people. Like we should ask him about it sometime. Huh. Yeah. So the guy on the other side who called out these ninjas, he was local? No. You said he was a Canadian or something, right? He was like Hong Kong. Canadian? Canadian ABC, you know, that kind of shit. But he still had that kind of connection?

He was a model. He was connected. He knew people because I think he was in, you know, like I was like fucking IT guy. Like who the fuck am I going to know? You know what I'm saying? Like Rich, like he's drawing pictures. He's like, you know, this is like Rich before he's in the Hollywood animation. Rich is like fucking doodling. Who's he going to call? Hey, doodlers, come here. I'm in a fight. Doodlers assemble. Yeah.

I just remember so distinctly, I was like, be careful. And then my friend Adam was like, don't worry. We got a bunch of pipe hitting mofos. And then if you looked at my, my phone, it was like, Rich and I in hospital beaten, like, like very bad, like come immediately. And I go there. I was just like, literally tears. Like, I was just like,

I didn't. And that was the one where Rich and I, we had a falling out and we didn't talk for like a year or two. He was, cause he was so, because I was, you know, I was, I was a douche. I was an asshole back then. So after that, he was still okay with me, but then we'd go out and I would be like kind of dominating and arrogant and you know, just do stupid shit. You know, like not this again. I wasn't as mature. Right. And then he would just be like, you're such a fucking ass. You're always like this. And then he didn't talk to me for like two years. Yeah.

What? Because he saw, he saw how it can go really bad. He just saw the behaviors that led up to it. And those behaviors were common. Like you keep talking about how things have changed for me in the last five, 10 years. Right. But imagine being that really like me, that aggressive overbearing. Oh wait, hold on. I think a food is here. Okay. All right. Well, let's send this one here. Um,

Yeah. All right. That was a good story. I have more questions, but I'll ask you later. But anyway, peace guys. How long was that one? I don't know. It's like 20, 25 minutes. Oh, okay. We could do a mini episode. Okay, cool. All right. All right. Peace out guys. Bye. Yeah. Drink number four or five.