Speaker 1: I loved living in Brooklyn, But when Oggi was born,
Speaker 1: Emily kept going on about Minnesota. She's from there originally,
Speaker 1: and wanted Oggi to have family around a back yard
Speaker 1: a sandbox uninhabited by rats. That summer, during a visit
Speaker 1: back home, Emily showed me all that Minnesota had to
Speaker 1: offer by taking me to the state Fair. At one point,
Speaker 1: Emily pointed out a large, wobbly Hasidic man who appeared
Speaker 1: to be wearing a tractor tire threaded through his belt. Loops.
Speaker 1: You see, she said, sweetly, there are Jews in Minnesota.
Speaker 1: The Minnesota offensive continued along. Emily looked at photos of
Speaker 1: houses online with hedges to trim and fences to mend.
Speaker 1: Having never owned a house, none of it made sense.
Speaker 1: In Brooklyn, we lived across the street from a Chinese takeout.
Speaker 1: A man named Albert brought our garbage to the curb
Speaker 1: and once a month vacuumed the building hallway. What could
Speaker 1: be better than that? But then Emily fell in love
Speaker 1: with a house in Minnesota, a small enough place painted green.
Speaker 1: In the photo, I could see a garden hose out front.
Speaker 1: I am not going to water the lawn, I said.
Speaker 1: I hate those guys, guys who water their lawns. She asked,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, I said, wearing shorts, waving
Speaker 1: to passers by like they're in a David Lynch film.
Speaker 1: And then we put in an offer. It was like
Speaker 1: a bad dream. Surely I couldn't be leaving New York.
Speaker 1: Surely something would happen, something would keep us from going
Speaker 1: through with it. When I told my boss Alex about
Speaker 1: my wife's plan, I prayed he'd put an end to it.
Speaker 1: Forbidding it outright. All this plan was missing was a
Speaker 1: good forbidding. You can work remote, he said. We moved
Speaker 1: at the end of January during a polar vortex. That
Speaker 1: first night in my new home, the rooms were bare
Speaker 1: and cold. I can't feel my feet, I said, from
Speaker 1: under the blankets. Spring will be here soon. Emily said
Speaker 1: she'd been saying it all day. It was always about
Speaker 1: spring being here, and oh how great that'll be. You've
Speaker 1: never smelt paeonies so fresh, never tasted hot dish and
Speaker 1: tater tots until you've had them warm to perfection under
Speaker 1: the Minnesota sun. That first night was so quiet, the
Speaker 1: noise in my head so loud. Without Brooklyn to drown
Speaker 1: it out at our bedroom window. I looked out onto
Speaker 1: the street, desolate under the street lamps, everything covered in ice,
Speaker 1: glistening like knives. Quietly I wept, Spring will be here soon,
Speaker 1: Emily said, and sure enough she was true to her word.
Speaker 1: Spring is here, or what passes for spring in Minnesota.
Speaker 1: The april snow has almost melted, and I can just
Speaker 1: about see the sidewalks. It's time to put away my
Speaker 1: long John's and roof shovel and whether I can smell
Speaker 1: them from behind a facial mask or not, get ready
Speaker 1: for the paeonies to bloom.
Speaker 2: It's like the best time of the year. I love
Speaker 2: the spring. All the buds are staring to come out,
Speaker 2: report me.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 4: Now that the weather is getting nicer, my dad and
Speaker 4: I have been taking walks together. I left Brooklyn about
Speaker 4: a month ago. I moved back home where I grew up,
Speaker 4: twenty minutes north of Manhattan. And so my dad and I,
Speaker 4: when we're off on these walks, we invented this game
Speaker 4: sewer Stones. We pick up rocks and the object of
Speaker 4: the game is to bowl them into the sewer drains.
Speaker 1: Mago maya.
Speaker 2: Boom? Is that too? To one?
Speaker 1: To one? Hold on hold on. Is this a game
Speaker 1: that you guys played when you were a kid, So.
Speaker 4: It's a lot like a lot of the games we
Speaker 4: used to do when I was little.
Speaker 1: All right, yeah, yeah, let's see it.
Speaker 2: Let's see it. Very nice. Do you find that you're
Speaker 2: doing like a lot of the stuff that you used
Speaker 2: to do.
Speaker 4: I feel like I'm just like a kid again. The
Speaker 4: other day I found a pair of my dirty socks
Speaker 4: on the floor in the dining room. I looked at
Speaker 4: them and I was like, are those my sock? Like
Speaker 4: I feel like I'm.
Speaker 1: Regressing, Yeah, exactly. Are your parents happy to have you back?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah. My mom offered to cut my hair. She
Speaker 4: used to cut our hair when we were kids. Like,
Speaker 4: I have these really distinct memories of her kind of
Speaker 4: like laying this towel out on the floor, this like
Speaker 4: ratty green towel that we never used otherwise, and like
Speaker 4: bringing a chair into the bathroom and she still has
Speaker 4: that ratty green Towelochie, you're.
Speaker 2: Really going at this pretty quick. I'm winging a little bit. Whoops. Sorry.
Speaker 4: I think my mom is happy to be taking care
Speaker 4: of us in this way that she hasn't had to
Speaker 4: in a long time.
Speaker 3: You want me to put my head down more.
Speaker 2: Do you enjoy it?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I love this. This is looking really good.
Speaker 2: In the back.
Speaker 4: We've come so far from Oops.
Speaker 2: Do you want me to go even shorter? Back here?
Speaker 1: Maybe a little?
Speaker 4: It was already pretty short, but I kind of just
Speaker 4: wanted her to keep cutting. I just wanted to let
Speaker 4: her do that.
Speaker 2: Jonathan, what have you been up to? Well?
Speaker 1: Thank you for asking. Sure, A good portion of my
Speaker 1: day is given over to trying to keep my three
Speaker 1: year old entertained. And I am just shameless. I'll do anything,
Speaker 1: And I invent all these different characters like robo Papa
Speaker 1: Papa yes, and like when I start talking to him normally,
Speaker 1: he'll be like, no, no, no, I don't want to
Speaker 1: talk to regular Papa. I want to talk to robo Papa.
Speaker 1: Are we gonna am I going to purchase robo Papa.
Speaker 1: If he doesn't get his fuel, he gets brain damage.
Speaker 1: Emily hates it so much TV is. You know, we
Speaker 1: try to keep it limited. So we're trying to teach
Speaker 1: him that, you know, there's other ways to keep entertained,
Speaker 1: you know, like old timey ways. So the other day
Speaker 1: we built this puppet stage.
Speaker 2: Welcome boys and goals and goals and ladies and man
Speaker 2: gentlemen to the puppet job.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Emily pulled out this puppet Johnny that I
Speaker 1: made when I was eleven years old. I was so
Speaker 1: bereft of friends that I made this puppet name Johnny,
Speaker 1: and I totally forgot about him, like it had been
Speaker 1: you know, it was like forty years Oh no, no, no, yeah,
Speaker 1: no no. I thought that it brought back memories of
Speaker 1: like just loneliness and.
Speaker 4: Wait, wait, you made a puppet and you named it
Speaker 4: your name.
Speaker 2: Does it look like you?
Speaker 1: Emily would argue that it does look like me, and
Speaker 1: she kind of brought Oggie on board. OGGI, do you
Speaker 1: think this looks like Papa? Nou? How does it looked
Speaker 1: like me? Looks like unique?
Speaker 4: Like Papa likes Hey?
Speaker 1: Yah, Yes, Papa doesn't have any hair, but if he
Speaker 1: had hair, he.
Speaker 2: Would look just like this.
Speaker 1: So the play was basically Johnny and Swipey. Swipey is
Speaker 1: this other but that we have a raccoon? Okay, we're
Speaker 1: gonna see a play between Johnny and Swipey. It was
Speaker 1: really hard to get off the ground because Aggie is
Speaker 1: like he was just really over directing me and everything
Speaker 1: I was doing was wrong.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's one of those typically hard to work with directors. No, no, no, no.
Speaker 1: It just ended up devolving into this like big dance
Speaker 1: party and Aggie made us all dance dancing planks. I
Speaker 1: don't know. It was just fun and it just seemed
Speaker 1: like licensed, just too crazy things and like we still
Speaker 1: haven't taken down the puppet, the puppet stage in the
Speaker 1: living room. And it's nice that we actually have a
Speaker 1: living room, you know, but we we didn't really in
Speaker 1: New York. Things were just things were a lot smaller
Speaker 1: and and so that's yeah, that's nice. You know. The
Speaker 1: last time I visited New York was right before everything changed,
Speaker 1: and the three of us got together for drinks. I
Speaker 1: think was the night that the Gimblet offices shut down.
Speaker 2: And it was the last I didn't know it at
Speaker 2: the time, but it ended up being the last day
Speaker 2: that I went to a bar me too.
Speaker 1: And there was something else noteworthy about that evening that
Speaker 1: we've that we've since talked about. It was the last
Speaker 1: time that any of us shook hands with somebody else. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: someone that we ran into that evening at the bar.
Speaker 2: You ever heard of award winning producer of The Jinks.
Speaker 1: Can you say? Award winning producer of The Jinks Again, Award.
Speaker 2: Winning producer of documentary The Jinks.
Speaker 1: We happened to run into a former co worker of ours,
Speaker 1: someone who used to work at Gimblet, Mark Smirling.
Speaker 2: You ever heard of crime Town?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 1: Recently a doctor Anthony Fauci made that statement about how
Speaker 1: we may never return back to shaking hands. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it's weird. It's weird to think that Mark Smirling
Speaker 1: might be the last person that any of us end
Speaker 1: up shaking hands with. Yeah, do you think that? I mean,
Speaker 1: were we the last people that he shook hands with?
Speaker 2: Do you think, Well, there's only one way to find out.
Speaker 3: I'm looking across the room and there's Stevie or you
Speaker 3: can't forget.
Speaker 2: The unforgettable, the unforgettable Stevie Lane.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I got up, went over and shook your hands.
Speaker 1: Your hand might be the last hand we ever shake.
Speaker 3: Lucky you. I could have gotten you all sick, right there?
Speaker 1: Is it the same for you? Were we the last
Speaker 1: people that you ever shook hands with?
Speaker 3: Hmm?
Speaker 1: It probably is.
Speaker 3: It seems like right after that things started to close in. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and you know my contact with the outer world, sort
Speaker 3: of vannists.
Speaker 1: Where are you right now, Brooklyn?
Speaker 3: I'm in Clinton Hill?
Speaker 2: Me too, I'm in Clinton Hill.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, I might have seen you around though,
Speaker 3: I'm thinking about it.
Speaker 4: You guys should just open your windows and you can
Speaker 4: yell to each other.
Speaker 1: Were you born in New York? Are you from New York?
Speaker 3: Originally I'm a Jersey boy from South Orange, but but
Speaker 3: I've been in New York since I was eight.
Speaker 1: Is there still an upsign to being in New York? Like,
Speaker 1: do you have moments where you're like, you know what,
Speaker 1: it's still good to be here somehow.
Speaker 3: Well, food delivery is a big plus, you know, although
Speaker 3: we have to like use all kinds of toxic chemicals
Speaker 3: to clean off the bag and wrappings. You know, living
Speaker 3: in New York is it just.
Speaker 1: Is not the place to be during the pandemic.
Speaker 3: Oh, there is one magical thing. I can get a
Speaker 3: parking spot really easily.
Speaker 1: That's a plus.
Speaker 2: A thing I've really been missing about New York is
Speaker 2: like being in a hurry and being like I don't
Speaker 2: have time for a real dinner, and so you're like
Speaker 2: getting a slice of pizza and eating it really quickly.
Speaker 2: On the street because you have some place you're trying
Speaker 2: to get to. Yeah, Like I just really I miss
Speaker 2: some places so much. Yeah, I don't know. I was
Speaker 2: thinking about. The thing that I think I really love
Speaker 2: about New York is like the feeling of being alone
Speaker 2: around other people. Like I would be out by myself, ye,
Speaker 2: like on the train alone, or like walking home on
Speaker 2: a Friday night and just passing bars and hearing like
Speaker 2: the hum of people's voices and bars, like it just
Speaker 2: made you feel like you were like a part of
Speaker 2: something even if I wasn't with people. Yeah, And now
Speaker 2: it's like instead of being alone with other people, I'm
Speaker 2: just like alone alone.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like everyone's gone, I can't do anything. And I
Speaker 2: mentioned it to someone who is still in Brooklyn. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and she was like, but don't you kind of feel
Speaker 2: like proud that you're still here? And I was like, yeah, actually,
Speaker 2: like I do, Like I feel like that's the thing
Speaker 2: that feels like unchanged. It's that like there's like a
Speaker 2: feeling of like when you're living in New York that
Speaker 2: like everyone's miserable and like stressed out and in a
Speaker 2: small part, but there's this pride in the fact that
Speaker 2: you're doing that. Do you know what I mean? Like,
Speaker 2: like everyone's really unhappy, but you're like, I actually like
Speaker 2: sitting at my computer till eight pm and then eating
Speaker 2: a piece of pizza on a dirty street.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's like irrational and unquantifiable, but you just sort of
Speaker 1: feel love for the place.
Speaker 2: Yeah. You know there's that cheer every night at seven
Speaker 2: pm for healthcare workers.
Speaker 4: Yeah have you participated?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: I haven't, And it makes me feel bad because I'm like,
Speaker 2: I know it's a nice thing.
Speaker 1: But then I mean, but you're probably like someone who
Speaker 1: like when when you go to like a sporting event
Speaker 1: of some kind and everybody starts like clapping their seats
Speaker 1: and singing we will rock you like you're just like
Speaker 1: I'm going to sit this one out.
Speaker 2: That's true. And when I go to a show and
Speaker 2: they say how's everyone doing, I just say fine. I
Speaker 2: just like feel like I'm not going to be.
Speaker 1: Like, whoo it's I don't think I've ever heard you
Speaker 1: make that wu sound.
Speaker 2: But last night when it happened, my downstairs neighbors started
Speaker 2: blast sing that you know that New York New York song,
Speaker 2: Oh that SNATA song.
Speaker 1: Yeah, start spreading the news.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that one and he was really like blasting it.
Speaker 2: It was really loud and he was like singing along
Speaker 2: and everyone on the street was like doing their cheer
Speaker 2: and like people were getting excited about him playing the
Speaker 2: song and we're like cheering, and it made me like
Speaker 2: so emotional. Yeah, I don't know. It did give me
Speaker 2: like a little bit of that feeling i'd been missing
Speaker 2: of like here we all are in the city and
Speaker 2: like I'm alone, but I'm I'm also with other people.
Speaker 4: Do I know know when you're drinking