The Night of the Gun

In this episode, Jay takes on Phil's pick and together they try and figure out if this is just another junkie memoir or a genuine investigation into the fallacy of our memories.

Along the way, Jay introduces controversy in his revolutionary and heroic attempt to change the rating scale. Will Phil hold fast or will the ensuing chaos put the entire future of the podcast in jeopardy?

If you enjoy listening to the podcast and have some ideas for books that you'd like us to recommend for each other,  leave us feedback on Facebook or at dogearedandcracked.ca

We are also on Twitter now...@dogeared_pod

Transcript

The Night of the Gun - David Carr

JAY "At bottom, recovery stories go down a very familiar track. I had a beer with friends, then I shot dope into my neck. I got in trouble. I saw the error of my ways. I found Jesus. Or 12 steps. Or bhakti yoga. Now everything is new again." 

PHIL Welcome to Dog-eared and Cracked, the podcast where one of us recommends a book to the other and then we discuss. We don't talk about the books while reading them ahead of time, so I am about to find out what Jay thinks of my pick for this episode: The Night of the Gun by the late David Carr. 

JAY I'm Jay...

PHIL And I'm Phil, and last episode I told Jay I thought he was going to like this one. But now, especially after the performance of that quote at the start, I have no idea I can see him going either way. Stick around and we'll find out. 

JAY I will have to tell you Phil, right now, before we get into it, I'm having a beer while we do this podcast, which I think is so inappropriate. 

PHIL I thought about having a beer, but because it's fizzy, I opted for a little bit of bourbon instead. 

JAY So we're literally drinking as we review a book about an addict. This is awesome. 

PHIL So before we get into the discussion, just remember that you can find transcripts at dogearedandcracked.ca, where we've also got a blog. And if you want to let us know how we're doing, drop a comment on our Facebook page. If Facebook is back up by the time you hear this. It's down right now. Or rate and review us at your favourite podcast app. 

JAY Oh, and we're actually on Twitter as well, Phil.

PHIL And on Twitter at dogeared_pod. 

JAY So it's non-fiction week here at Dog-eared and Cracked headquarters, and Phil got me to read David Carr's addiction memoir, which the author keeps insisting is not really an addiction memoir. So Phil, why did you want me to read this book? 

PHIL Well, when I was in grad school, I got a ton of great non-fiction book suggestions, you know, like teachers would be lecturing, and they'd be like, "Oh, you've got to read this book." And I didn't have time to read any of these books. So there's actually piles of them, like on my desk, on the floor beside my desk and so on. Because I've got to say that one-click ordering is kind of dangerous when you're in class. They would mention a book, and I would just go to my phone and order it. So, so one of the books that really appealed to me was The Night of the Gun. You know, it sounded fascinating to me, and once I read it, I thought that you might like it. Or at the very least, it would lead to some interesting discussion. And you know, I guess I don't have a leg to stand on anymore if I complain that Knausgaard was self-absorbed because, despite himself, David Carr is very self-absorbed in this book. Yeah. So that that was the reason why and you know, I know that you like to look into, you know, the background of books we read, the writers and so on. Well, you know, can you tell us a bit about what you've learned about David Carr and maybe just an introduction to Night of the Gun before we discuss the book? 

JAY Absolutely. By the way, I keep calling it Year of the Gun. I don't know why. So in this podcast, if I refer to it as Year of the Gun just please forgive me. But it is The Night of the Gun. It's an autobiographical account of David Carr's drug addictions. I say addictions, because I believe he was addicted to multiple types of forms of, uh, started with cocaine, and then he went into smoking crack cocaine and then he went to shooting cocaine, which I didn't realize was a thing. 

PHIL Plus alcohol, of course. 

JAY Yeah, yeah. So most of the book is about his drug addiction. And then spoiler alert, over a decade later, he actually has a relapse and becomes an alcoholic. But he does straighten up after that. It's probably best to tell his story backwards in terms of who David Carr is, beginning from the end. So David Carr actually collapsed at work in 2015, and he passed away from undiagnosed lung cancer, and he had developed quite the reputation despite the addictions. In a statement -- he had worked for The New York Times and the newspaper's publisher and chairman said that "David Carr was one of the most gifted journalists who has ever worked at the New York Times," and the executive editor described David Carr as "the finest media reporter of his generation, a remarkable and funny man who was one of the leaders of our newsroom." So he has a reputation, a great reputation in that industry, and I can kind of see Phil why this would appeal to you as well, because essentially he was a, he was a writer and a non-fiction writer, which is kind of what your education is and your background and your experience. 

PHIL And you know what? Yeah, I was going to say he seems like one of those writer's writer types. Like, I actually wasn't aware of his work before, but I've seen several people since, like Susan Orlean on Twitter a couple of weeks ago going, I wish David Carr was here to write about the stuff that's going on now. 

JAY Previously to his his death in 2015, he had actually battled Hodgkin's lymphoma and had kind of successfully beat that. And he joined the New York Times in 2002. Prior to that, he had written extensively for The Atlantic Monthly and New York. And before that, he was editor at the Washington City Paper and in the early 80s got his start at the Twin Cities reader in Minneapolis. And it's in Minneapolis where his story really begins. That's to say his early days, writing pieces for the paper and really dealing with his demons. 

PHIL Yeah. 

JAY Unsuccessfully, as it turns out, 

PHIL Covering the cops during the day and being arrested by them at night. 

JAY That's right. Yeah, yeah. Successfully avoiding – like, they're on different floors. At one point he's talking about, he's being arraigned on one floor, and three floors up or something is the police officer that he needs to interview. He's going to have to miss that one. 

PHIL So the book is called The Night of the Gun because of an incident that he talks about in the first chapter. And, you know, I thought we could kind of start there. So the story he tells us is that he's out for yet another night of like drinking, cocaine debauchery—I can't remember because the stories all kind of run together. But he turns up at a friend's house in the middle of the night, and he remembers really clearly this friend coming to the door with a gun and telling Carr he's called the cops and to get away. To get lost. And then, you know, several cop cars turn up, Carr runs through a yard and alleys, and he escapes from them. And he remembers that night really vividly. And 20 years later, you know, he talks to his friend, his name is Donald, about the night. And Donald goes, yeah, that's all exactly how it happened. Except, you know, it wasn't me who had the gun. It was you. And so -- there's a lot of stories like this in the book. I mean, this is probably the most dramatic one, because Carr doesn't believe he actually had a gun. He thinks he was never a person who would own a gun, but several people tell him he had a gun. And so, you know, part of the project of this book is finding out what actually went on in his life, and he said he was ambivalent about writing the whole thing, right? He kind of talks disparagingly about junkie memoirs. He says he doesn't want to add another book to the pile of junkie memoirs. So I guess to use his phrase, you know, did you think this was another, just another junkie memoir? Or do you think the book goes goes beyond that? 

JAY Well, he, I think he began the book or the idea of the book with an idea that it has merit. It's an interesting kind of experiment: that his own version of events would be meticulously tested, and he does do that. He interviews everyone along the way that he ran into, but there's not a lot of science behind it. And he never really explores why the truth, his truth was so distorted. So as a reader in reading this book, I wondered if I was supposed to guess, come up with my own ideas or beliefs, come up with my own ideas about why his truth was so distorted. And maybe, was it that it was his ego working overtime? Was it his ego that fabricated these memories of his past to make them sound like something that he would be able to live in remembering them? I will get into this later, Phil, because I think this is going to be one of the crux—one of the key pieces to this book for me. But to answer your question by definition, one can easily say it's a junkie memoir, for sure. I don't read enough of them to to know whether this is a better memoir or they're all kind of the same. 

PHIL Well, I mean, I think what sets this apart, and I haven't read a lot of them either, you know, there is a kind of, you know, that recovery sort of arc to that kind of story we hear. But I guess the thing that sets this apart is he really, you know, because he's a journalist, he decides to... It's basically an investigation of himself, right? He hires another journalist to help him out. And he goes back and finds all these people like, OK, let me talk to so-and-so and, you know, find out what happened that night. Or, you know, he keeps thinking things like, well, I never really was in serious trouble. And then he finds like, you know, he was arrested for assaulting a cab driver he doesn't even remember. And so, yeah, I mean, I guess part of me, part of me kept as I was reading it, I was like, I thought, this is really impressive that he would go to this extent because I was thinking, like, how many of us could withstand that level of scrutiny? Like, I don't know, maybe because we were going to record this, I was, you know, when I was walking the dogs this afternoon, for some reason, I started thinking about like various embarrassing things I'd said and done, like 20, 30 years ago and thinking, God, it would be nice to forget these things. Like, I don't know if I could have stood, you know, digging into my past with the kind of doggedness he does. And some of the time I was thinking, like, Is it self-indulgent? Is it like self-indulgent to the max? But mostly, I thought it was kind of impressive that he was willing to do that and stick with it. But I don't know. Like what, how did that seem to you? 

JAY Yeah, I. It wasn't... So here's here's where I came from reading this. It wasn't really clear to me why he undertook the exercise in the first place. And I know that sounds problematic, but it's it's about what was the initial idea. Like what was he, really... OK, I understand that the, the title, the self, the title of the book relates to an anecdote where he got things completely wrong. So if that's kind of why he was doing it, then that makes sense, but you know, there's a comment by his daughter that he wasn't the type to do something for cathartic reasons. Part of me also wondered if it wasn't kind of like some kind of modified 12 steps. But then again, he doesn't really apologize to anyone along the way either. You know, I was, I was fascinated like you that he took on the enterprise of researching the ugly details of his past life. But here's what happens, what he ends up recording in the book, or rather the way he writes about what happened is it's strangely unrepentant. So initially it was impressive, but Night of the Gun for me started to border on unapologetic. And it was alarmingly sparse on remorse. You know, did you, did you see how Carr sometimes writes with pride about the crazy antics he's up to? Like this kind of like feel like, I can't believe I pulled that off. 

PHIL Yeah, yeah. That was like—so for me, part of the, in some ways, like there was this guilty pleasure of reading the book. Like, oh my God, he's like hung over and he wakes up at 10:30 in the morning and shoots some cocaine. And half an hour later, he's in the governor's mansion, interviewing the governor for a story, right? 

JAY Mm hmm. 

PHIL Or, you know, whatever I can't remember now, but just all these ludicrous—well, I mean, his story about how he gets into dealing cocaine in the first place where, you know, he gets together 2,000 bucks and hands them over to these guys in this apartment and doesn't know, like if they're going to keep the money or if they're going to shoot him or, you know, like, so yeah, I did wonder at a certain point out there, is this almost like a sense of pride? Like look at not only like, oh my God, I was so fucked up, but like, look at just how fucked up I was. And...  

JAY Yeah. Here's a question for you Phil. Like, I know he set out to do this for a specific reason. And once he was into it, he would have finished it based on the same principles that he started with, which is I want to go back and interview everyone. But I kind of wonder at the end of the day when he had the finished product and quite—and, and more to the point, as he was building that finished product, this would have gone in his thought process in editing it -- a lot of is like, it's a vanity piece. Like, here is like, yes, I hit rock bottom. At the same time, I was super cool about it and clever and got away with a lot of stuff. 

PHIL You know, it's interesting what you said about being unrepentant because that didn't really strike me, OK? Surprisingly. Except in the section when he talked about Anne, who's the mother of his children. 

JAY Yeah. 

PHIL And how, and how he did not agree that he had essentially taken the kids away from her. And I thought it was interesting because in most cases when people tell him like, no, no, that's not how it was, it was like this, he tends to agree with them or to be like, OK, I don't remember, but probably their version is right. Except with Anne. And he kind of went on a little too long for my liking talking about how he wasn't as underhanded as she thought he was and, you know, he didn't like, get the kids under dubious circumstances, and I thought, OK, you know, why is she the one person who you refuse to believe? 

JAY Yeah. 

PHIL You know, whereas the others you do. 

JAY Yeah, there's a little bit of like, I mean, this is what he's trying to avoid, but it's a revisionist history, right? 

PHIL Well, yeah, I mean, I guess to his mind, it's not. He's trying really hard to not make it... 

JAY Well, but that's my point. Like, I think he set out to do that, but by the time you're halfway through the book, you're starting to feel like—it's, it's not unflattering. And I don't like, I usually don't like using double negatives, but it's not unflattering and you kind of read it going like, as you would say, wow, he was hung over and he had a meeting with the governor and he took some coke and he pulled it off. And that's kind of fun vicariously to read about that. And I'm like, Well, what are we doing here? 

PHIL He does start bleeding from his nose at the meeting with the governor. 

JAY Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's a great—I guess it's a good story. It's just I'm not sure what I'm supposed to, how I'm supposed to feel. I think that was my problem, which sounds weird, but as a reader? Right? 

PHIL And obviously, like, he was quite beloved by a lot of people, right? Um, and, you know, it struck me, you know, so much, I think is.. It's like who's telling the story and who's setting the parameters and like, so for instance, you know, when he comes to the part about how he would assault his girlfriend, Doolie? I think he says, "There's no nice way to put this," you know, and then he says, "I smacked her around," which actually is like, it's not a nice way to put it, but is a less violent -sounding way than you could put it. But he admits to things like, you know, when he takes over at Washington, at the Washington paper, to kind of -- I don't think he uses the word sexually harassing, but he does sexually harass some of his his co-workers, and he gets arrested for drunk driving, and he stiffs every lawyer who gets him off. And, and for a while that didn't, that that was like, OK, I thought, Well, obviously, like, you know, he's not, he's not an addict in a vacuum. Like, this stuff all kind of comes with it. And... but I have to say, like, there was the scene when this 15-year-old girl starts showing up at these cocaine parties, and I was thinking, if he sleeps with her, I don't think I can finish the book, right? 

JAY Yeah, yeah. 

PHIL And he does say he had a relationship with her, but later, when she was older, which I wasn't sure I bought or not. But you know, was he, was he, could could you get... Was he a likeable character at all despite that stuff? Or did you feel like quitting on him like I did when the 15-year-old showed up? 

JAY No. Like, I know what you're saying, like we should. I mean, we should be reading this -- I'm assuming that that's the way the book has been designed -- we should be reading this and thinking, Oh, poor guy, he's always falling down like that. And um, but I literally, I mean, it's going to sound unfair, but I wasn't ready to give up on him because I never really grew to care about him enough either way. I think he was going for sympathy, but instead each chapter blurred into the next. And I, I just, I started to transform as just a really impassive reader. He just does, does, he does a poor job of building suspense or climax. And... But who does he remind you of, let's say, a certain author we read in the past and have critiqued on Dog-eared and Cracked, who had a house and family in the suburbs. It's Charles Bukowski!

PHIL I was just going to say, re we talking Charles Bukowski? 

JAY It is! It's the same damn thing. It's just Bukowski was a true lowlife. And and and the charm of his book I I know we disagreed on this, was that he wasn't pretending to be anything other than a lowlife. And sometimes I'm reading Carr and I'm going, Oh, he thinks he's pretty clever. And I'm like, What are we doing here, David? Like, am I supposed to be feeling sorry for you or just astounded at your, your intellect and your ability to move your career up despite your... Like, I don't know. 

PHIL Yeah, I was laughing because I was thinking, we do have a listener who said that his only issue with our podcast was the low rating for the Bukowski book. 

JAY Yeah, that's right. 

PHIL But, you know, I don't know. I mean, he's a, he's a really good writer. Right? I was—so that really kept me engaged. Also, I, you know, I knew that it was going to turn out OK for him. But OK, you know, he's kind of... 

JAY He's just, he's OK. He's an OK writer. And let's let's let's just have it out right now. So, yes, he can write passages with a lot of, um, beautiful descriptive prose. He can really capture the essence of a scene or an event. But what is what—what is with this name-dropping? Like, he does it so many times and it's like, really? Like he talks about Tom Arnold, and...  

PHIL So I have a... 

JAY Yeah.

PHIL I have a question about that. 

JAY Yeah. 

PHIL So early on in the book, he—I guess he sets himself up that he's only going to use first names, which makes sense because like if you go to a 12-step meeting everything's first name. 

JAY OK. 

PHIL And then he sticks with first names only. But even when it's obvious who the people are. Like Tom Arnold.

JAY There's a photograph of him! In the book! With Roseanne! 

PHIL Or Jayson Blair. I think it was... 

JAY Oh, that. Don't get me started on that. I had to look that up. So, and I went back to check this. He never refers to him by his last name. And he talks, he keeps referring to someone as Jayson. And and then he alludes to something occurring regarding plagiarism. And I had to look the entire thing up and find out the story behind this Jayson Blair's departure from the New York Times. And it's like, Don't make me do research, man,. Like, this is your book. I don't want to have to do my own research on it. 

PHIL It's quite a story, though, isn't it? 

JAY Well...

PHIL The Jayson Blair story. 

JAY My point is this Phil. It's like, yes, he's great at capturing the smaller parts of it, but is it story? The book is like, I would describe it, like a random walk down memory lane. It's kind of like, as a reader, I kind of felt a little bit like, you know, stuck with someone at a cocktail party who keeps telling random stories about people I don't know. And yes, some of them are interesting stories, but I don't know these people. And and I'm trying to kind of pry myself away and and head over to the to the bar or something, and this person just keeps blathering away about people. 

PHIL I really like a good rant.

JAY And this is going to surprise you, but Susan Orlean did a hell of a lot of better job than he did. He didn't, he rarely got into the science of crack cocaine or addiction. He just kind of glossed over it like, hey, here's another story where me and my buddies did something crazy and we got away with it. 

PHIL So one of his, I guess, his first wife, she wants nothing to do with his project. 

JAY Yeah, yeah. 

PHIL Right? 

JAY That would make sense. 

PHIL Here, I've got, I've got the line. He says—her name is Kim. And he says she told him, "I'm very happy to no longer be part of any of that and I don't want to go back there." And what he writes is, "When I drove out to see her about an hour outside of Minneapolis, it was extremely awkward. The equivalent of a burglar stopping by to ask you what it felt like to have part of your life stolen. She had no intention of taking a walk down memory lane. She's a bright person capable of cold-eyed assessment about all matters, including our time together. So it is a significant loss in the effort to find out the truth of what I did and why." And then he says he secretly admired how she was unwilling to engage his needs in narcissism. 

JAY Yeah, that's it. Bingo. Like, that's what I would have said. I'd forgotten that passage, but he he is a bit of a narcissist and we'll get into that, one hundred percent. He—and I could see her position right? It's kind of like why -- she's got nothing to benefit from it. He screwed her over. Well, he he just basically, I guess he cheated on her with and just married someone else, right? 

PHIL Well, he said he would get out of, you know, get out of bed and go across town to...

JAY Yeah, yeah. So I mean, OK, so good for her. She's going to have nothing to do with him anymore. And then why would she like hop on the David Carr train again, which I feel like a lot of the people were actually doing because they they knew he was famous. And they're like, Well, this couldn't be terrible. 

PHIL Yeah, that's a good point, because partly I felt like, oh, I really want to hear her story. And then I also thought, well respect to her for not, you know, sharing it. And then I was thinking, why did everyone else? But of course, when he's writing this, he's not like David Carr, the guy who's, you know, leaving his kids in their snow suits in their car seats while he's going into the crack house to shoot up cocaine. He's David Carr, the New York Times reporter. You know, you said, you said we'll get to it later about him being a narcissist. Do you want to just get to it now? 

JAY Yeah. I mean, you'd asked about narcissism, and so, is the opposite of that self-awareness? Because whether he's a narcissist or not, I believe he is because he's absolutely not self-aware. Like, I understand this was his... and we talk about memory as well, right? And I mean, let's let's face it, part of the reason why his memory is so bad is because he's just living in a haze of drugs, right? I mean, he's just not going to have that same—But it's, but I guess the interesting part is that he's managed to interpret it and the reality of things like, there's a --  remember the story where he talks about his perception of his stay at a rehab centre, and he believes that he was admired by those around him, including the counsellors, for his superiority? 

PHIL Yes, that was actually really good. Really...

JAY Yeah. And his ego was crushed when he reads the reports by those who work there at the time. That he hadn't been fooling anyone. They knew exactly who he was. 

PHIL Yes,. 

JAY But he kind of seemed surprised by it. 

PHIL Not to not to belabour, you know that two years I did back at Kings, but the whole—because a lot of people were writing memoirs, the whole issue of memory came up a lot, you know, and what do you remember and how do you remember it and how do you write about it and how do you, how do you tell people that, you know, this is your memory and it may not be accurate? And I kind of had this moment at one point where I had this thing I remembered that involved, like sitting on the front deck talking to someone, and it was a fall day and all this, and it turned out it could not have happened the way I remembered it because the person I was remembering actually wasn't here at all in the fall. They only got here in December. And I realized, like all this stuff, that I was sort of remembering and describing—it was basically fiction. For me, that was one of the most interesting parts. Was just all this stuff about memory and how over and over again he would tell you a story, and I mean, maybe -- I think I am more gullible than you -- but I would kind of go along with the story and then he'd pull the rug out from under you and be like, Well, no, actually. 

JAY Yeah, OK. You know, I could see that kind of being the appeal. All right, so, Phil, I know that we normally do a scale of one to five, and I was giving that some thought when I was thinking about how I would review this book, and I and I began to wonder, and I'm not trying to change the format here, but sometimes the scale of one to five is a bit of a cop-out. There's --  it's lenient. It's almost like giving out patronizing participation ribbons to some of the books we come across. So, kind of like, thanks for coming out. So none of those books get their feelings hurt. What if instead, we review the book by assigning one of three marks? Let me take you through this. A rating of Exceptional is one of those books where you genuinely want to see what happens. You reach for the book at the of the end of the day instead of the remote control. Station 11, Masters of Doom are great examples of books that I genuinely enjoyed reading and just wanted to go back to. They pulled me in and I was happy enough to go along for the ride. Conversely, a rating of Disastrous is a book that you feel angry at having been forced to read, where you find yourself arguing with the author or insulted by their callous disregard for the reader's intelligence. So Bullshit Jobs, Transmigration of Timothy Archer, those would fall into that camp. Now a rating of Middling is a book, spoiler alert, like Night of the Gun, where I'm not outraged having to read it, nor am I overly excited, and sometimes have to give myself a nudge to finish it. Not because I don't want to finish it, but because it's become largely forgettable. And I'm resigned to the idea that finishing it will not redeem or improve the book. Harsh, perhaps, but I'm reading at a middling...

PHIL How is this better? 

JAY Because it's one of three. It's like, so yeah, I don't know, I made that up. I just thought it was a cool way of doing it because it's kind of like, it's like almost like pass/fail. But then there's a maybe.

PHIL But I'm, I'm going to have to cheat it! Like I would, it's not, what was the, what was the good one, Exceptional? 

JAY Yeah. 

PHIL See, what happens is I talk to you like, I want to give it an Exceptional, but now after talking to you, I'm not going to, but I, but it's better than middling. So it's like, is it exceptionally middling? 

JAY It's like steak, not medium rare. You don't do that. 

PHIL It's like, it's a 4! it's... 

JAY All right, that's fine. I mean, I'm going to give it a 3 then. So much for my rating system. 

PHIL Are you glad you read it anyway? 

JAY Uh, no. No. And I don't, I don't mean that—look, look, it's like so he's writing a junkie memoir, ostensibly that's what we agreed, but he's doing, I just found he wasn't doing a great job at it. Like, like, there should have been more describing the dark side of being an addict, and I felt like I, I didn't know these people he's describing, I didn't connect with them, and I didn't feel that I was reading the book that he wanted me to read it. And I think that's his fault. 

PHIL Oh, that's interesting. 

JAY I just found it kind of tiresome at points hearing about the like the great highs and parties and escapades he had. Like, it sounded like he was like, living this rock n'roll star life! And how did you think he wanted the reader to respond? 

PHIL I mean, I tore through the first half and then I definitely slowed down as he went through his his career and his different jobs. Like I was. I was less interested in that, I know. and I was kind of interested in his his stuff about recovery, because at one point, he says, a lot of people get cynical about the 12 steps and all that. But but, you know, show me an alternative. I think, what was he going for? It's not a precautionary tale. It's not like kids don't do what I did. 

JAY I think he was just one lucky dude who basically got dealt a really good hand kept kind of screw it up. Anyway, so you rate it a four? 

PHIL I would give it a four. Better than middling. 

JAY So what did you give The Library Book? I'm putting on the spot because I know you won't be able to remember. 

PHIL I think it was, oh God, are we going for internal consistency? 

JAY No, I'm just...

PHIL I probably, I probably gave The Library Book a four, but it's a better book. 

JAY This is the problem, right? With the one, one to five. I mean, we're into like decimals now. The Library Book is, yeah, 100 percent it's a better book. Um. Yeah, I don't know, maybe you know what, honestly, maybe I just don't like junkie memoirs. Or maybe they just... 

PHIL Can I give it a 3.75? 

JAY Oh, because Library Book gets a 4. Gotcha. 

PHIL I should have given The Library Book a four and a half. That was a mistake on my part. 

JAY So speaking of speaking of reviews, did you know we got one on Apple Podcasts? Of course you do. 

PHIL I did see. And what was the person's name? Was it... 

JAY Yes. 

PHIL Old Battleaxe? 

JAY Old underscore Battleaxe. I guess New underscore Battleaxe was taken. No, I'm just kidding, Old Battleaxe. They gave us five stars on Apple Podcasts. Thank you very much. They titled their review "Great Conversation" and go on to say that,"So happy to have found this podcast." So thank you, Old Battleaxe, we appreciate that. 

PHIL All right, so our next episode, for our next episode, Jay, you are working your way through Dune and I don't know. All I know is that you texted me to say it is very long. 

JAY Dude, it's 900 pages. 

PHIL You're not, I'm going to say you're not cheating and reading the comic book version. 

JAY Oh, also, when are we doing... By the time I finish Dune, it's going to be Christmas, so I just...

PHIL No, we have to do, the movie comes out October 22nd. 

JAY I have 18 days to read, finish Dune? Mother of God. Let me do some math here. 

PHIL Well, you don't have to hit, we don't have to hit the release date. 

JAY 44 pages a day. 

PHIL It's not 900... 

JAY It is in my edition. I have I have the special sand edition, the sandworm edition, comes with a free sandworm. Comes with an ounce of melange spice. 

PHIL All right, so I guess that's about it. We are next weekend heading off on our first annual Dog-eared and cracked retreat. Jay is going to be hanging a whiteboard from the trees at the campsite where we're staying. 

JAY We're going to map out the future Phil of Dog-eared and cracked and our listeners will be interested. We could just do a podcast on that, on the strategic planning we do. Like what path are we going? Are we're going to do spinoff podcasts on music or are we going to... I don't know what the possibilities are. Endless. 

PHIL We will see you next time. Join us as we talk about Dune, if Jay is finished the book. See you next time. 

JAY See you next time.