SLOUGH FEG

by Adam Kohrman

Those who don’t know about Slough Feg are really missing out. They’re also in the majority. Playing a style of metal alien to the mainstream scene, they’ve unabashedly eschewed trends and forged their own unique musical path. I remember reading rave reviews of the band back in my teen years, when they were known as The Lord Weird Slough Feg. Their CDs were near impossible to find, and I never looked in the right places. Years later, early in my college career, an internet friend of mine sent along some their albums in the mail. Starting with the driving, folkish style of Down Among the Deadmen, I took some time to warm up to them. After giving myself time to digest them, they eventually became one of my favorites among active bands. After sinking my teeth into their later offerings like Atavism and the godly Hardworlder, I anticipated their new album, Ape Uprising, more than any other in years. Now that it has hit my ears, I can aver that Slough Feg is not only one of metal’s best, but most creative bands. I recently had the opportunity to speak with the man behind the band, guitarist and vocalist Mike Scalzi. He proved to be just as amiable as he is rockin'.

GASP: Okay. Thanks for calling. We had some phone issues earlier today.

Mike: You did? Well, this is the first time I called.

GASP: Great. Great.

Mike: What is this for? Is this for a magazine?

GASP: IT’s for a webzine. It’s a joint horror movie and heavy metal site.

Mike: Oh cool! Really?

GASP: Yeah.

Mike: I’ll go online now and check it out.

GASP: Yeah. I do the true metal, power metal, and old school stu…

Mike: Truuueee Metal!!!

GASP: Yeah. (laughs) Well, speaking of that, one of my first questions for you is that after Hardworlder came out, I remember someone saying “Slough Feg is waving the flag for true metal in the face of a scene saturated with mindless death metal bands.” How do you respond to such a moniker?

Mike: I don’t respond to such a moniker.

GASP: (laughs)

Mike: I think that says it all. You know what, to be perfectly honest, I really don’t give a shit about that kind of stuff. Like, you know, I don’t like death metal. I think it sounds like shit. But I mean, I don’t care. I have friends who are in death metal bands. I think they’re cool. I just think they’re bands suck. I’m really not that interested in either way. I don’t love to hate. I don’t hate it. I just think…I don’t wanna listen to it ‘cause it sounds like shit, you know what I mean? As far as true metal goes, I don’t know what the fuck that’s supposed to mean…besides Manowar talking about it all the time, which I also think is totally stupid.

GASP: Yeah.

Mike: Basically, I like playing what I like playing, and yes, I like the kind of music that is known to a lot of people as “true metal.”

GASP: Like old school, traditional…traditional metal.

Mike: Yeah, I like that.

GASP: I think that’s a much better term.

Mike: As far as “We are holding the banner,” that’s a bunch of bunch of bullshit. I mean, I never said that. I just want to make the music I make because I like making it *pause* So I guess I do respond to it.

GASP: Yeah, I guess you do. But that’s a good philosophy, just keeping going making the music you like. Well, your new album, Ape Uprising, It’s in my mind continuing in the direction where Atavism and Hardworlder were going.

Mike: Yeah, pretty much.

GASP: And there’s a lot more hard rock, Thin Lizzy influences.

Mike: Well, no. That’s not… I don’t know about all this advertisement stuff that they send out. That little sheet, if there is one. Like, whoever said that doesn’t know what the hell they’re talking about. It’s like “unlike the last record, this one sounds like Thin Lizzy.” Well, no Hardworlder sounded just as much like Thin Lizzy, if not more, than anything else we’ve done. SO, it’ like…it’s sort of like they’re saying, from the responses I’ve gotten, “Oh they’re going in a new direction, it sounds like 70s Thin Lizzy.” It’s like, “what?” The last two albums, or three, or four, or five sounded incredibly like Thin Lizzy. (laughs). They sounded like they were from the 70s. Don’t you agree with that?

GASP: I do agree with that, that Hardworlder certainly sounded like that. I loved a lot of the…I’m not too familiar with old blues music, but I loved the influence I heard there in Hardworlder.

Mike: Yeah…Blues, really? Well, traditional rock, more so. I think a lot of people who like elements of what it sounds like don’t know what to say, so they just make some bullshit up like “This one sounds more like Thin Lizzy.” Well, no it doesn’t. It sounds like Thin Lizzy…and so did the last one. (laughs) You know what I mean?

GASP: Yeah.

Mike: It makes you wonder, were they actually listening to this stuff, or were they just saying something in order to say it.

GASP: Well, “Hunchback of Notre Doom” doesn’t sound like a Thin Lizzy song.

Mike: No, no that doesn’t.

GASP: Well, I want to ask you about that song. That’s something new. About the whole pacing of the album in general, you start out with what is probably the slowest song you’ve ever done.

Mike: Yeah, probably.

GASP: And then your third song is this eleven minute track. Were you ever worried or have any reservations about pacing an album in such a strange way? I think it worked out well.

Mike: No, I wasn’t worried about anything really. Because when it comes down to it, why would you worry about an album that’s going to sell several thousand copies, and you’re basically doing it because you want to. It’s not like “Oh no, it’s not gonna get on the Billboard charts now.” There’s not that much to worry about. If someone gets pissed off about it, then I don’t really care. I mean, underground metal…you pretty much do what you want because that’s all that really matters.

GASP: Yeah.

Mike: Well, I worry about it the fact that like if I didn’t think it was as good as the last one, then yeah I worry about it. I didn’t do it like randomly. People ask that question a lot, like “You put a doom song at the beginning!” I did that because it’s different than anything else we’ve done to put a doom song first, so when I listened to the record with that song first, I thought it sounded fine. Well there’s the other possibility that there is no possible commercial factor taken into account. Sure, I’d worry about it just as much as the next person if there was a possibility I’d make a bunch of money off of it. But that’s just not a possibility at all.

GASP: Well as you said, Slough Feg has never been, and will never be, unless there’s some massive shift in what music gets popular, will never be a commercial band. I assume you work another job. What is it, and do you find that it’s a hindrance to your creativity?

Mike: No, much the opposite.

GASP: Oh really? How so?

Mike: Well, I’m a teacher. I’m a philosophy teacher, and most of my songs are about the stuff I teach. So, it doesn’t hinder at all.

GASP: Wow. That’s really cool, actually. I’m actually the Vice President of the Philosophy Club at my university.

Mike: Oh, where?

GASP: Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Mike: Oh wow, are you a philosophy major?

GASP: No, I’m not.

Mike: Well that’s probably good, because being a philosophy major is not the best idea sometimes. (laughs).

GASP: Yeah, (laughs).

Mike: Well the fact that you’re the philosophy club leader, but not a major is good because it makes you objective.

GASP: What philosophy do you enjoy and how does it influence your music?

Mike: I enjoy all of the stuff that I study and teach. In fact, all of it, because even the stuff that I think is… well if you’re gonna teach philosophy, probably 80% of the stuff you’re teaching you’re gonna think is total bullshit. You’re gonna think it’s bullshit as so far if you think what they’re saying pertains to reality. Right now, I’m teaching Plato and Descartes, and I think they’re full of shit and that everything they say is complete bullshit. But then I’ll teach Hume and Nietzsche later and I’ll think what they’re saying is pretty real. But it doesn’t really matter, because there are dramatic ideas that can come out of all of it. As far as our records being about, the lyrical content of our records seems to be geared towards a poetic account of interpreting people’s actions in the current world through evolutionary theories, which are on many Slough Feg albums.

GASP: Certainly on the new album, yeah.

Mike: Everything from Nietzsche to Shopenhauer to Kant, and back to Plato.           

GASP: That’s really neat, I think. I’ve got a grin on my face just talking to Mike Scalzi about philosophy right now.

Mike: Oh good. Well what do you like?

GASP: Honestly, I’m pretty new in philosophy. I’ve always really enjoyed the ethical stuff. John Stuart Mill, even though I don’t always agree with what he has to say.

Mike: He has some stuff that’s pretty interesting. If you read the section of the section of the Utilitarianism book that is something like “What principle is the principle of utility susceptible to?,” where he traces the values that we have now, personal values, or virtues back to some primitive desire.

GASP: Oh cool!

Mike: It goes through these different stages. First, it’s a primitive desire, then it becomes socialized, then it’s virtue because it becomes passive. It’s really interesting to teach, anyway.

GASP: I just finished reading Kant this semester.

Mike: Oh…God.

GASP: Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals.

Mike: That’s quite a mouthful, isn’t it?

GASP: (laughs) Yeah it is. I don’t really remember reading it, to be honest.

Mike: Yeah, Kant works that way. You never remember what he actually said, just the general, like the categorical imperative.

GASP: Yeah, exactly, this was for a class called the Ideal of the Educated Person.

Mike: Oh that crap, yeah.

GASP: (laughs)

Mike: Well if you’re interested in Kant and Mill, you should read about this…ah what’s it called…I’m gonna look it up right now. This is turning into a philosophy interview. Rule Utilitarianism, it’s a morphing of Kant. It’s a bit ridiculous. It’s the principle of utility, basically using Kant’s theory, and then when there’s a conflict of duties which there is, you throw away the principle of utility, and it’s sort of like the Depends Undergarment of Kant (laughs). When you have a conflict and Kant’s theory, or the categorical imperative, or “don’t lie under any circumstances” doesn’t work. Like if you’re in Nazi Germany and there are Nazis at your door asking you if you have Jews.

GASP: Which is the classic argument for Utilitarianism.

Mike: Well the argument against Kant, conflicting duties is that the ontological idea, it doesn’t work through…

GASP: Well, the Nazi Germany argument is the one my professor always used for Utilitarianism. Actually, the philosophies that have interested me the most are very selfish philosophies like Solipsism. I don’t necessarily agree with them, but I find them fascinating.

Mike: You should read Ayn Rand.

GASP: Well, I’m a literature major and haven’t read Ayn Rand.

Mike: Well, that’s cool.

GASP: Back to heavy metal. Your band started in Pennsylvania, right?

Mike: Well, yeah. Technically it did. The name, yes.

GASP: When did you move to the Bay Area?

Mike: 1990. The thing is it started in Pennsylvania in 1990, so we were there for about six or seven months.

GASP: How does the songwriting process go for you? Is it painstaking and long?

Mike: Yes. It’s not streamlined at all.

GASP: So when you have an idea, like "Ape Uprising". It’s very evolutionary, as you mentioned earlier.

Mike: It’s evolutionary in the songwriting process as well.

GASP: How does it begin? What spawns the idea that you have?

Mike: It evolves from a very primitive idea. Like the first riff in the song, and then just different ideas that I have. It’s really the same as it was when I was seventeen or something. You know, you have your guitar in your room or whatever and you record some parts that you came up with on your boombox or tape recorder. And then once you have all that together and you play them enough, they start to sound good together. I think it’s about the same as anyone else ever did metal. Tony Iommi or whoever. I think it’s obvious that the blueprint for metal, since always has been Black Sabbath.

GASP: Yeah.

Mike: The songwriting in most cases has come from that. You know, Tony Iommi, all he said he ever did was come up with different riffs that sounded good and then he put them on tape, and then the ones that sound good coming one after the other, and you just keep working like that. And then eventually, for me I do it that way: the same way I thought it would always naturally work. You realize that if you learn a bunch of Sabbath songs, or Maiden songs, or Priest songs when you’re a kid or whatever, you start to realize that it’s obvious. Then you can say, “well this one sounds better than that one” when looking at riffs. For me, you’ll have this riff, and then a vocal melody will sort of come out of it, and then I’ll find variations of it, and I never end up writing the lyrics until after that. Okay, it starts out with a guitar riff, almost always, and then a vocal melody comes out of the guitar riff as a variation on it, and then the lyrics come out of the vocal melodies. Like the vocal melodies sound like it should be saying “blah blah blah.” IT should have this many syllables. Like, it should be saying these words. Then you can mold the syllables that you need into whatever it is you wanna say. That’s pretty much it. It’s not that simple.

GASP: Alright, cool.

Mike: And that’s not the hardest part. The hardest part is when you’re like, “Alright. We’re gonna have these five riffs that need vocal melodies and then putting it all together and making like verses and choruses and bridges and breaks in songs to make sure they aren’t dragging or awkward, putting it all together. It’s really hard. It takes forever.

GASP: Well, when you wrote the title track to Ape Uprising, which might be one of the longest songs you’ve ever written, if not the longest, did you have that worry?

Mike: The thing is though, “Ape Uprising,” although it is this challenging long song with a billion riffs in it, it’s not a new sounding song that we’ve never done before. If you go back to like “The Great Ice Wars” or one of the long songs several albums ago, I just used the same method. I just listen to it over and over again, and when you do that you start to notice that “this doesn’t sound right, or this is going on for too long, or this riff doesn’t follow from that one. It just sounds randomly placed there.” With “Ape Uprising,” the only difference about “Ape Uprising” is that you really have to think about, as far as songwriting goes, some of the semantics of the songwriting. First you see a song like “Ape Uprising,” you realize it’s ten minutes long. Now we have plenty of pieces of music that are cut up into two or three tracks that have the same continuity degree as “Ape Uprising.” Like on several of our albums, we have one piece of music that is cut up into two or three tracks; it never stops the whole way through. So, the only difference is that we called it one name, instead of different tracks. With “Ape Uprising,” you clearly have two songs. “Ape Uprising” becomes an instrumental. It even stops, and suddenly it’s a different song. None of the riffs are repeated from the first half. It’s basically two songs. So basically, “Ape Uprising” is the first half of it, you know what I mean. Do you recognize what I’m saying form hearing the song?

GASP: Yeah. I do. Definitely, the two different songs part. The second half is like…five solo sections implanted upon each other.

Mike: Yeah. All based upon this one churning, Irish sounding riff, which is the first half of the song. It just happened that we didn’t name it anything different and not separate the tracks.

GASP: When I think the first half of the song is classic sounding. I actually played the song for someone who had never heard your music before, and the verses, which have the classic sort of chugging sound with your voice over it. I described it as “the classic Slough Feg sound”. I didn’t really know how to explain it to her when it went into the next half (laughs).

Mike: Well it is one of those songs where, if someone asked you “Play me their archetypal song, or the one that describes them the best, “Ape Uprising” would sort be a candidate for that.

GASP: Okay. Okay. Yeah. I was talking to a friend of mine whose been a fan of yours for longer than I have, and basically got me into you. He said that he misses the sci-fi influences and themes.

Mike: Really? I don’t understand that because we’ve been doing sci-fi songs on every record for a long time.

GASP: That’s why I wanted to get your reaction. They may have been a bit more pronounced before, but…

Mike: Well, this is from when.

GASP: Oh, from Traveller and Down Among the Deadmen.

Mike: That’s weird. Down Among the Deadmen had one song, maybe two sci-fi songs on it. Traveller is a sci-fi concept album. Hardworlder, well, Atavism first of all has one song about science fiction lyrics. Well, shit, Down Among the Deadmen is full of like Celtic battle lyrics. There’s only a couple things that aren’t. Fucking Hardworlder, half the songs on that album are from science fiction books.

GASP: I’ll let him know you said that. He is another prominent metal writer. I’ll let him remain nameless.

Mike: Yeah, I mean shit. The cover of Hardworlder has a science fiction guy on it too. Ape Uprising, I mean the whole  concept of Ape Uprising is science fiction. I mean, it’s not like Star Wars or “Star Trek.” I mean, now that I think of it, Ape Uprising is sort of science fiction and it’s sort of not. I guess there’s no explicit science fiction songs on Ape Uprising.

GASP: Well you could argue that the theme of Ape Uprising, the evolutionary theme, is science fiction in itself.

Mike: Yeah, Planet of the Apes.

GASP: What are some of your favorite sci-fi novels? I mean, I assume you’re a big sci-fi fan.

Mike: Not really, okay. I mean it might sound like it from what I just said. Well, okay. People always accuse me of making these fantasy records and stuff. But those are only a few Slough Feg songs. There’s actually not one Slough Feg song about fantasy. Now I know that sounds like “what the hell are you talking about? They’re all about sorcerers and stuff.” Well, not really. They’re about mythology. We have huge amounts of songs about Irish mythology. We have one song, I think, about Norse mythology. We have several songs about science fiction. We also have several songs about history. “Hiberno-Latin Invasion,” that’s not fantasy. We don’t have one song about fantasy, like sorcery. Yeah, there’s some Irish stuff with wizards in it, but that sort of draws a fine line. But I definitely don’t like fantasy books, you know fantasy movies. I have no interest.

GASP: Neither do I.

Mike: I used to play Dungeons and Dragons and all that shit. I like medieval history and pre-history and Irish mythology and all that. But, you know I’m not writing songs about J.R.R. Tolkien.

GASP: Yeah. Thank God you’re not.

Mike: But I actually have a really narrow, just like I do with metal, I have a very narrow taste in science fiction. It is almost completely confined to 50s Science Fiction. 

GASP: Oh okay.

Mike: Because when I try to read, when I try to read a science fiction book from the 70s or beyond, I never read one that I like. It just has some sort of weird quality that doesn’t…50s sci-fi is more about real issues. One thing that’s interesting about 50s science fiction is that a certain percentage of the writers, who were popular in the 50s, and the 40s and the 30s too, I like that stuff too, were writing science fiction, not necessarily because they wanted to write science fiction, but because that was the only established publishable genre, where they could write their ideas and get away with it because during that time all the Red Scare and blacklisting stuff. This isn’t a very well known fact.

GASP: That doesn’t surprise me, because in the 50s literary censorship was higher than…

Mike: Well that’s what I mean. The thing that people don’t realize was that literary censorship was at its height, not just communist censorship, but all sorts of stuff. So everyone was being blacklisted, and people didn’t want you to write about this or that. But they didn’t pay attention to science fiction that way because they associated it with comic books and teenagers and all that stuff. They didn’t watch it as closely. The people working for the FBI and CIA were reading novels and adult literature and stuff. They tried to censor that, but they didn’t really look into science fiction that much. So you had these writers who were able say these interesting, philosophical, radical ideas. Most of the science fiction back then was socio-political statements that would never have been publishable at that time if it were just a straight novel. But they were able to say what they wanted to say, and it was some of the best literature at that time. SO that’s one big thing that changed by the time the 70s came around. Those people who could’ve been writing science fiction with the more interesting ideas weren’t, and it was reduced to the sort of comic booky whatever, I mean not completely, but it was to some extent. But in the 1950s, there were more scientific, real life issues being expressed. But they’re really not there anymore.

GASP: Well one of the literature professors I work with is one of the leading sci-fi analysts in the country now. I’m sure she knows everything about this.

Mike: Yeah, you should bring that up. I don’t think it’s a very acknowledged fact, but I’m sure it is a fact though, just from the stuff I’ve read. So I am a science fiction fan, yes, but mostly the old science fiction novels and movies. I always try to find stuff that’s from the 70s or 80s or whatever. I’ve found a couple things that are cool, but I’m mostly not that into it. It’s the writing style; it just seems more like kid stuff.

GASP: As a literature student, I’ve always felt that way about the genre, and this whole modern graphic novels. They’ve never really interested me, and have felt sort of kiddy.

Mike: They’re really for just cheap entertainment, rather than being for substantial literature or substantial stuff that keeps you interested.

GASP: You mentioned you had a narrow taste in metal too.

Mike: Yeah.

GASP: Well, what are some of your favorites?

Mike: The obvious stuff. I’m sure you could guess it all. I’m not saying I won’t tell you.

GASP: Well one band I’ve wanted to ask you about is, I’ve always thought there was some similarity in the little I’ve heard of the band Brocas Helm.

Mike: Oh yeah, yeah. That’s interesting because that’s one of those bands that we didn’t know about.

GASP: Really? (laughs). Well that doesn’t surprise me. Their music is almost impossible to find. I din’t know who they were until I was a fan of yours and then read online somewhere, that “Brocas Helm. They sound just like them.”

Mike: Yeah we do kinda sound like them, yeah. And it’s funny, cause you know everybody figures that we’re in the same city and that they’re sorta the predecessors. Actually, we sounded a lot like them before we ever heard them. It’s kinda cool. By the time we met them, though, maybe that had influenced us a little bit. But Brocas Helm and Slough Feg sorta come from the same sources.

GASP: Yeah.

Mike: You know, Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Deep Purple, Judas Priest, and yeah, Thin Lizzy.

GASP: The legends.

Mike: People are often surprised at the music I grew up listening to besides metal. Like music that I played as a teenager was more like Black Flag, Dr. No, early sorta metal/crossover type stuff, which did become very influential on metal, obviously, by thrash metal time. I never went the thrash metal route. I liked Black Flag and Minor Threat.

GASP: Another name I’d throw in there is Agnostic Front.

Mike: Oh yeah, yeah. I’ve played shows with Agnostic Front.

GASP: Oh, really?

Mike: They and Dr. No and some of those other bands I mentioned, we were doing stuff that sounded like that in the 80s, and that’s just what was around for me. There wasn’t a metal scene where I lived in Pennsylvania. There was just a hardcore scene. But the hardcore kids were into early speed metal or hardcore/metal crossover stuff. By the time I started playing shows around 1986, that’s what the band sounded like. I played that kind of shit until I was able to branch off and do my own band. When I did that, my stuff sounded more like Sabbath, Maiden, and all that.

GASP: So, for the Ape Uprising album, is there any chance you’ll be touring? I know that’s a buzz word.

Mike: Well, it’s a buzz word. The technical answer to that is “yes,” but not in the way we have been for the last few years. We’re not gonna do the traditional get in the van and drive from here to Los Angeles to Arizona to New Mexico, all over Texas, up through the southeast, and to New York City and Boston.

GASP: Boston? You’ve played Boston?!?

Mike: Once. It was a long time ago. Five years ago, or something. This is the reason we’re not going to do it that way. There are probably going to be people who didn’t know who probably would have wanted to come see it, but because of the network we did it through, it wasn’t advertised in a way that people who would be interested would be able to find out.

GASP: Yeah. I don’t remember. Do you guys remember where you guys played in Boston?

Mike: No. Near some University district, but also near the town. It’s the kinda thing you’re not gonna hear about. Sure, there’s a couple blogs about it and stuff. But your average metalhead, who collects metal and all that shit, doesn’t usually live in the middle of the city, necessarily, and doesn’t usually associate with the bar/club scene. So you’re not always gonna hear it. You might get the Myspace message with all the tour dates or go on the Slough Feg website and see that it’s on there. So it is available for everyone. But usually metalheads seem to be less live music city underground oriented They seem to be more aware of different sources of information. So they don’t always know. Another problem with doing things the way we do. When we toured the US in the last four or five years, the only way we could tour the US, which is through touring agents and networks and scenes, that developed out of the 90s, and the 90s scene was not about metal at all. So that sort of, milieu of music, which is the way we can tour, with the people who book the shows and all that. The fan base they’re looking at is more geared toward noise, punk, death metal, whatever. So, that’s the problem with doing things that way is that the advertising isn’t as good as it could be. Instead of going all over the country and seeing a lot of bad shows and a few good ones, we’re just gonna go to where the good ones. We’re gonna concentrate on five shows at a time. In August, we’re flying to Chicago. We’re gonna do Chicago; Madison, Wisconsin, Detroit, or somewhere near Detroit, Lansing. So the booking agent can focus on making these five shows really good, and not have to worry about the whole country. Then we’re gonna come back here. We’re gonna do one show here, then five shows there, in August. Then in October, we’re gonna fly to some metal festival in Calgary.

GASP: Oh I heard about that one. Is that with Bible of the Devil?

Mike: No, the other shows are with Bible of the Devil. Then Bible of the Devil is gonna come here, in October, after we go to Calgary, and we’re gonna do the West Coast. We’re gonna hit the Midwest, hit the West Coast at different times. We already went to Texas for South by Southwest a couple months ago. We’re sort of flying around to different places doing four or five shows at a time, instead of driving across the whole fucking country. If you drive across the whole country, you gotta go through these huge expanses where there’s nothing. You’ve gotta play a couple shows for a couple hundred bucks. It’s kind of a waste of time.

GASP: Going from like, doing a show in Omaha, and then driving all the way to Chicago, or something like that?

Mike: Yeah, that kind of stuff. Yeah that’s the stretch. From Chicago back to San Francisco, if you don’t go by way of the Northwest, you hit Omaha, after you hit Madison, and eventually Salt Lake City, and it’s just nothing. So, we’re concentrating on just good shows instead of a whole tour. But we’re getting quite a few of these little things, like the four or five show at a time thing. Like, the metal festival in Calgary. We’re doing another one in Norway in January. We’re going down to England after that.

GASP: Well, hopefully, I’ll be able to make it out to one of those shows.

Mike: Well, cool. All the way from Boston. That’s kind of far from Lansing, Michigan.

GASP: It’ll be worth it. If you’re doing it with Bible of the Devil in Michigan, I’ll do it.

Mike:  Well, we’ll be in Lansing with Bible of the Devil. I guess you could get there in four hours.

GASP: Oh no. From Boston, no.

Mike: Five, six, seven?

GASP: No, the quickest route would be through Canada, and that would be 10 or 11 hours.

Mike: Holy shit!

GASP: Hopefully, I can get a friend to tag along.

Mike: That might be fun, yeah.

GASP: I think I’m running out of time here.

Mike: Okay.

GASP: Thank you very much for this interview.

Mike: Yeah sure, thanks.

GASP: It was great talking about philosophy and sci-fi with you, dude.

Mike: Yeah well, let me know if anything cool comes up in the philosophy club or the sci-fi world.

GASP: Well, maybe we could get the university to book you to do a show at the club!

Mike: Yeah, a lecture tour. Right now, I’m writing my first sort of philosophical treatise. It isn’t a master’s thesis or anything. Since I got my degree three or four years ago, I haven’t attended to really sit down and write philosophy like I did on my thesis. It’s about distinctions. The only way for me to do it is to go forward with the anti-, unacademic way to write. Start making controversial, sweeping generalizations. I don’t have to worry about academia looking over my shoulder anymore, because I’m not trying to get it published.

GASP: And you’re not teaching at a university, are you?

Mike: No, I’m teaching at a college.

GASP: Where are you teaching?

Mike: A two year school, it’s about a twenty minute drive from Oakland. Interestingly, it’s in a pretty well off area, which is weird for me, ‘cause I don’t live in that kind of area. There’s a lot of good students there. Many of them just take their first two years there, and then go on to Berkeley, because they’re rich and good students. It’s interesting because I’m teaching Intro to Philosophy and Ethics and Religion and all that kind of stuff, and then some of them go on to major is philosophy at Berkeley. Anyway, cool. This was more interesting than most interviews.

GASP: I think so too. Thanks a lot.