INTERVIEW WITH MIKE DAISEY: 'Amazon's start-up mode will last forever'




As promised to Oregonian readers: Here's the "Director's Cut" of my hour-long conversation with "21 Dog Years" author and actor Mike Daisey. Click the "Read More" link at the bottom of this post (after the intro) to peruse the whole 6,000-word shebang; there's a lot of cool Edison-versus-Tesla stuff tucked in there somewhere.
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In February 2000, Mike Daisey quit his vaguely defined job at Amazon.com.

His company stock -- which in those heady days looked like it might be worth $3 million by 2004 -- still hadn't vested.

"Everyone thought I was completely insane!" he says. "I was roundly condemned, especially by my relatives. I think my mother, on some level, is still disappointed.'"

But Daisey, now 31, had other plans. He returned to his first love, theater -- where he's built a cottage industry out of pecking at Amazon's carefully constructed mythology.

In 2001, he and his director wife, Jean-Michele Gregory, debuted "21 Dog Years: Doing Time @ Amazon" -- a one-man show in which Daisey chronicles his apparently clueless rise through Amazon's bureaucracy. A companion book ( $9.60 and eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25 ) soon followed.

"I went to Amazon to sort of escape from a life in the arts," he says. "I hoped that I'd just become a normal person." He says he was looking for stability (and dental insurance) after too many years spent, as he put it, "performing in unheated garages throughout the greater Seattle area."

But normalcy tends to elude men who've performed wicked acts in fringe plays. Fortunately for Daisey, Amazon left him with an extra arrow in his quiver: a crazy dot-com burnout story. Both book and show feature the author/actor lifting the curtain on Amazon's Web-page façade -- revealing colossal waste, a stalkerly fascination with founder/CEO Jeff Bezos and chaos in customer service, all of it leavened by Daisey's admission that he and the rest of the "Amazonians" were suckered by a desperate need for meaning. "We didn't know it at the time because we were too well-read," he writes, "but we had [a] common denominator: We all wanted desperately to believe in something."

"21 Dog Years" plays Jan. 4 through Feb. 5 in the Winningstad Theatre. We sat down for an hour with Daisey to talk about Amazon, future projects, Nikola Tesla and much more. Click "Read More" for the edited transcript, which somehow still managed to clock in around 6,000 words.

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AMAZON, A WORKING MARRIAGE, LIFE CHOICES and HBO


Q. I wanted to kick this off with a question that Jeff Bezos kept getting asked by his employees, as some sort of inexplicable private joke, throughout your book: "Who'd win in a fight -- a lowland silverbacked gorilla or a Canadian grizzly bear?"

A. I'll answer with what I usually answer in the show: "The bear -- if he has a gun."

[At Amazon,] they were obsessed with that question -- it was sort of an iconic question. In fact, I believe I talk in the book about a real incident where Bezos got into a gorilla suit and the new vice president got into a bear suit and they wrestled on a stage with lasers and fog and "Achtung Baby"-era U2 playing -- and [all the Amazon employees] in the audience were cheering like they were gonna die.


Q. Amazon suffered some well-publicized technical problems this holiday season. Do you have any insights or theories as to why?

A. I have no idea. Things have changed so much. If it's anything like the old days, they thrive on a really type-A environment; it was always, "Do now -- document later or never." So there would regularly be problems where someone left six months ago and no one asked how they set up systems or documented the subroutines they wrote.

Stuff like that was happening even when I was there in '98 -- and it was rampant in '96 and '97, when they were scaling up. That goes from software to the way people are handled in human resources -- everything's in startup mode. It's the same model Wal-Mart uses: "We always have to work harder to ensure that we survive and are No. 1!"

Amazon's start-up mode will last forever. They will never actually make an announcement inside the company that "it's Day Two -- we're no longer in startup mode. Everyone take it down a notch." Why would they? They'd much rather burn through employees and find new people to take their place.


Q. Let's talk about the nuts and bolts of the "21 Dog Years" stage show. How does it work? It's just you and a laptop on a stage, right?

A. That's right.


Q. What's on the laptop?

A. Just some of the letters I wrote to Jeff Bezos while I was there.


Q, You have a sort of Douglas Adams thing going on, where "21 Dog Years" was first a performance piece, and now it's a book.

A. "21 Dog Years" is the third monologue I've done like this, where I take part of my life and talk about it onstage. The process of doing one involves a lot of coffee and thinking. I make rough outlines, then tell [my stories] extemporaneously, without a script. And when I work with Jean-Michele -- my director and wife -- she's almost an editor: She listens to each performance, and then we cut and cut until things are sharper and better-defined.


Q. One could make the case that that's a metaphor for marriage itself.

A. You could.


Q. How is it working with the wife?

A. It's great. It's very challenging in many ways, because there are very few boundaries -- like no boundaries, basically. Work begins in the morning and ends at night, with no space between. But it's very fruitful; she has a very astute eye and she's a really sharp thinker, and I really treasure that.


Q. There's a sense in the book that she's sitting there with one eyebrow arched, watching you with a slight bemusement. And concern.

A. [laughs] Yeah. Yeah.


Q. You've certainly found a way to turn quitting into an income.

A. If I learned anything from it, it's that it's really important that people figure out what they're spending their lives on. You actually only get one -- so you should consider spending it on something worthwhile instead of waking up and saying, "Oh, fuck! I'm in middle management at some place I don't care about!"

It's a very fundamental human question, but it isn't something that's asked very often in theater -- at all. But it's the question of every adult American life right now. When we meet someone, we ask them, "What do you do? What's your job?" And if the answer to that question does not actually match what you’d like to be doing, this is a serious disconnect.

I was conflicted enough [after I left Amazon] that I would say "yes" to everybody [in subsequent job interviews] and then not actually follow through with anyone. I'd say, "Oh, yes! I can't wait to work with you! That'll be great! That'll be so fantastic! And good-bye!" And I'd hang up and lay in my bed and wonder what I was doing with my life.


Q. Another funny part of the book is when you get behind on your product reviews and end up with a bunch of never-reviewed, never-returned toys in all your closets.

A. A number of those toys are still in my in-laws' basement. We moved to New York and didn't take them with us. Now that they're five years old, I'm thinking there may be some collectors' value -- but probably not.


Q. Now, did someone see you in the show and approach you with a book deal, or?...

A. The national media attention that grew up around the show led to that happening. My agent was ostensibly excited about the show, and then he got the transcript and called me, and it was the only time I've heard him sound surprised -- he's a very unflappable person. And he said, "Mike. It's actually good." They were probably going to represent it whether it was actually any good or not. [laughs]


Q. Had you ever written a book before?

A. No.


Q. There's one sentence in there that I loved: "We didn't know it at the time because we were too well-read, but we had another common denominator: We all wanted desperately to believe in something." What did you end up believing in? Amazon? Or profit?

A. Oh, it was Amazon. I mean, I wanted to get rich, but I was almost more excited about being part of society. When I told people what my job was, they'd go, "Oh, that's a good job!" I was engaged, and I had prospects. It was nice, for a change, to have society validate my choices.

But it's like with the Nazis in World War II: Just because society validates your choices, they're not always the right choices. But when you go, "Oh, I'm an actor, but you've never seen anything I've ever done and I live in Seattle," and people respond, "Shouldn't you be in New York?," it's very enervating. It's a very hard row to hoe for anybody. I mean, I went to Amazon because I had no health insurance, ultimately.


Q. How are your teeth doing, by the way? You seemed very concerned about your dental health in the book.

A. [moans] I'm self-employed now, so I don't have dental insurance -- every time I go in, it's like, "That will be one bazillion dollars." People are interested in my work and I can get this show and other shows produced in theaters -- but fundamentally it's a choice between being in the system and being out of the system.


Q. Though HBO did come calling with an office comedy that you're developing with them, right?

A. Right. That's still going on, but it's going on really slowly. The biggest thing I'm working on now is a concert film of "21 Dog Years." That'll probably end up happening before the comedy show -- this year, probably late spring. We're looking at theaters now to find one to film in; we'll probably do it in Seattle.


Q. What's the office comedy about?

A. It's called "Drinking the Kool-Aid." It's about a tech company that's near the top of its field -- like the position Rio is in now, where "We don't make the thing everyone's hot for, but I'm sure if we found the right angle, people would come." The show's about four or five people in the Business Development group -- middle-management -- all realizing that this is their terminal career choice. They're all waking up to the fact that, "Oh, I'm 34 -- I guess this is where I landed." Over the course of the show, the company's fortunes rise and then fall, and they have to keep the company and themselves afloat.

It's going well, but the course of developing any show is extremely labyrinthine -- it stalls for six months and I'll think it's over, and then they'll call and say, "We had a dancing-cat show, but it got cancelled, and now we're very hot for you!" And then we'll get all fired up and start working on it again.

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WARREN, METRICS, THEFT and CRANKS


Q. What happened to one of my favorite characters in the book -- your friend Warren, the high-level Jedi of Customer Service?

A. I went to college with Warren, so we continued to be friends. Warren stayed at Amazon long after I left. He was still in Customer Service, but he was still way, way up at the top, in a special group. When Amazon basically fired everyone in Customer Service, shortly after my show started -- like, early 2001 -- he was still there, because he was a special operator.

But they eventually laid him off -- and didn't replace him. They got rid of the whole department. So there was no one to resolve high-level [problems]. It's crazy -- it's the opposite of the whole customer-service ethos that Amazon started with. But eventually, you do enough cost-benefit analysis and find that it's better to let people have insoluble problems and go away angry than it is to pay to actually have someone fix the problem.

But the best thing is that he left, and he took his severance, and he became a private investigator.


Q. From the way you described him, that sounds like a perfect use for his talents. Nothing fazed him.

A. That's what's so funny -- it's almost like someone wrote it. He's doing really well. I saw him over the holidays, and he's really happy.


Q. You were subjected to metrics -- stats-based productivity analysis -- at Amazon. How much of a relief is the more inexact science of theater?

A. It's wonderful for the very reason that metrics suck ass. Working in the theater is a very exact science, too -- in the sense that we have to set tech and keep schedules, and we have the inescapable deadline of the performance -- but we are in charge of our own metrics.

I think people need and like to work. The thing that makes metrics unbearable is that someone else you can't see is monitoring everything you do and telling you when you moved and how you moved, and there's never any excuse. You can't say, "But I'm tired today! I'll work harder tomorrow!" No, the only thing that's acceptable is one set rhythm and pace. So it's such a relief to be self-directed. When you get behind one day because you wanted to see a movie in the afternoon, you can say, "Well, I'll just work until 11 tomorrow night."

There's something infantilizing about corporate structures. They're always aiming at the lowest common denominator. If I go the rest of my life and never see a sign again about the use of toilet paper in an office or cleaning the dishes in the sink, it'll be too soon.


Q. That said: As detailed in your book, you no longer get to indulge your love of stealing office supplies.

A. And that was a serious problem. After I left Amazon, I was fine for the first year -- because I stole an amazing amount of office supplies when I left. I actually made a list of them, because I was going into the winter and didn't know when I'd have a job again. For that first year, people would come over and I was throwin' notebook paper around like it was candy.

But now it's all gone, and it's hard, even now, to go and buy office supplies. I feel like I'm being robbed. And whenever we go to a new theater, I ask, early on, "Where's your office-supply closet? We just need to get a few things." And I get some notebooks and pens -- whether I need them or not -- and horde them at our hotel.


Q. Consider the Winningstad warned. In print. Ever hear from any of the crank customers you parody in the book (and, presumably, the show?)

A. I've never heard from any of them. What's even weirder, I think, is that I'd say about three or four times a month someone writes to me with a customer-service problem they're having at Amazon, in the hopes that I will be able to assist them in some way.

Sometimes they're self-aware and say, "I understand that you can't do anything," and then they tell you some terrifyingly bad situation where the DVD player is lost, but Amazon says they delivered it and they won't send them another and probably think the customer's fraudulent. On the other end, [people who write in will] say, "PLEASE HELP!!!" in all caps: "TELL AMAZON TO GET OFF MY BACK!!!"


Q. That's the weird thing about appearing in print -- sometimes people think you have magical powers.

A. I usually write back and go, "Ha ha! I can't help you!" -- but I don't write back to those all-caps people any more. I'd write them back and say I can't help, and they'd go, "WHY NOT???" Something about Amazon has made them non-rational.

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THE SAVVY of the BEZOS


Q. Is there anything good that came out of those Amazon years?

A. Oh, yeah. I think Amazon made me the person I am today. Aside from making me very wary of corporate situations, I try to apply the marketing savvy I learned from Jeff Bezos. [laughs] I really pattern the marketing of this show and other shows after the way I saw Amazon talk about itself.

For instance, when people from the media started talking about the show and the book, they'd say, "Oh -- he's a disgruntled worker!" And I'd take a page from Jeff. In every interview about Amazon, someone would ask him a binary question: "Is Amazon x?" And he'd never say "yes" or "no" -- he'd always take a middle path that opens up five more questions. So someone would say, "Why are you so angry at Amazon?," and I'd say, "Oh, I'm not angry at Amazon. In fact, it's more of a love story." And it opens up conversations with the media: They'll say, "Well, now I can't write it in 20 words -- I guess I'll have to write a longer piece that's more complex, or I guess I'll actually have to be interested."

In theory, we should under-promise and over-deliver. But at Amazon, failure revolves around over-promising and under-delivering as a company. But Amazon's so masterful at re-defining its terms. People now think that it's a very successful company; we all forget that it got inflated to an incredible level because it was actually promising to re-invent commerce. The promise Amazon makes now -- "We're Kmart on the Web; we're like Wal-Mart, but better" -- is the opposite of what it was claiming to be in '99 or '98. Back then, people would ask Bezos, "Isn't Amazon just Wal-Mart on the Web?" and he'd go, "No! Amazon is a process!"


Q. The funny thing is, Amazon's sort of admitted what they are -- and they're doing better.

A. Sure! And "doing better" means expectations have come down to a reasonable level. It’s no longer as flagrantly deceitful. And I think, ultimately, it was flagrantly deceitful. Jeff's a smart guy -- he knew what he was doing: Get the valuation up high, so when the crash happened, you'd borrowed enough money to survive.

And given the company that it is now -- and it's a very impressive company -- I'll tell you: Give me two or three billion, I'll build you an impressive company, too. I mean, he went in the hole a lot of money, and the payoff has been: You can buy stuff, and they'll send it to you. It's amazing that he got away with it -- and he got away with it with everyone smiling! Even the people who haven't been paid back are like, "I'm sure the stock will come back eventually."


Q. Hey, I got Amazon gift certificates for Christmas -- and happily.

A. Of course!


Q. Though now you have me wondering if I'm gonna get what I ordered....

A. And if you don't get it, who you're gonna complain to: Most of Amazon's customer service comes out of India now -- pretty much entirely, actually. They do have some live people in West Virginia and North Dakota, but that's only because they can pay them such unbelievably low wages. Low wages for America, anyway: The ones in India are making a little less than a dollar an hour.

It’s an amazing reversal for a company that, when I was there, was really driven by idealism. When I was there, Amazon gave no money to any causes -- you know, they were in the hole. In the last election, they gave it overwhelmingly to the Republicans. I'm sure it has something to do with hoping that they keep Internet sales tax-free -- but it's a pretty stark reversal from the place that I was at. You couldn't find a Republican there then; they would have tarred and feathered them.

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EDISON vs. TESLA vs. GATES


Q. I hear you're working on a new pieces about Edison vs. Tesla and the Microsoft anti-trust actions.

A. Yeah. It's a show called "Monopoly!" -- with an exclamation point.


Q. [laughs] Is it a musical?

A. It should be! We don't know yet -- we're still building it. Dancing girls! But it's all about Nikola Tesla -- specifically about Tesla and Edison's current war over the alternating-current versus direct-current standard.


Q. Didn't Tesla want to broadcast electricity through the air?

A. That was his ultimate goal -- but on the way to that, he wanted alternating current, because direct current was unbelievably dangerous.
Edison originally set everything up on direct current, and it would throw sparks everywhere. They wired up New York City, and houses were burning down all the time. In fact, the trolleys that ran through Brooklyn were running on direct current, and sparks would shoot off of them right into the street -- the Brooklyn Dodgers were actually named after people who would dodge sparks coming off of the trolleys.

So Tesla was working for Edison, and he said, "We have to go with alternating current." And Edison -- in a very early echo of the way that employers own your ideas -- said, "No. You work for me in my lab, so you're going to use the system I want. I've already licensed it out to everyone; now everyone has to pay me a royalty when they install direct-current appliances and outlets. They have to buy the diagrams from me."

So Tesla leaves and goes to Westinghouse -- who hated Edison -- and says, "Build me an alternating-current generator." They build it in a dam, and now there are two sources. [Today] there are still houses in New York City wired for direct and alternating current, but the direct-current wires stay unused in the walls. No one knows what they are except when they renovate.

But there was this whole war. Edison fights Tesla with "Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt" -- classic FUD. He sends people out to fairs everywhere with big alternating-current generators, and they electrocute cats and dogs and mules and say, "These are the dangers of alternating current!" And Edison invents the electric chair, which uses alternating current, to demonstrate how dangerous alternating current is. And it's purely a propaganda ploy: Of course, direct current would have killed these fuckin' people just as effectively, but he doesn't mention that -- classic FUD.

But alternating current is fundamentally better. And what Westinghouse and Tesla realize they need to do is make everything free -- so they open-source all the plans. They let everyone put in their own wiring. It's free to put the outlets in your house -- they'll even send people to show you how to do it. What happens? Everyone installs alternating along with direct, and they realize direct current causes sparks. Alternating current gains more and more ground. And finally, Edison's own company switches to alternating current.


Q. Was Edison dead when they made the switch?

A. He was not dead. He was very old, and he was bitter about it -- very, very angry that they switched to alternating current.

The second thread [in "Monopoly!"] is all about the Microsoft anti-trust case, and attempts to explain what happened in court in a dramatic and condensed way. It's incredibly difficult -- it's an unbelievably boring case, and weird, and filled with footnotes and spirals of thought. So what I'm attempting to do is parse through that and look at how monopolies actually work.

The show isn't designed to just be against monopolies -- more to look at how they function. Part of the message of the show is I believe Microsoft has a monopoly, but it's not going to do them much good now: The same things that allowed them to beat IBM are now causing them to get slower and slower. I've heard stories of people trying to innovate in there, but somehow the weight of the organization makes it impossible to actually make anything new happen.

Those are the two major threads of the show. The third thread concerns my hometown in Maine, which was always depressed economically. But a Wal-Mart moved in just as I left -- and I look at what's happened to the landscape of the town, and family members who now live in the shadow of Wal-Mart and have to work at the Wal-Mart.

My sister banks at the Wal-Mart -- you actually cash your check at the Wal-Mart and then take your money from that and spend it at the Wal-Mart. It's really like living in a company town.

This touches on a lot of the things I talk about in "21 Dog Years" -- about how we all live under corporate rule. I mean, I don't want to give up all technology and live in a yurt; I don't think that's a viable option for most humans. But if we're not going to do that, we need to open our eyes and figure out how we want to negotiate with these gods we've made. And the first step is to recognize that they're there, and acknowledge that we made them amoral -- all they care about is profit. So what's the next step? How do you live in a world like that and find a life you can live with?

That's the thrust of the show. Right now it's all outlines and copious notes.


Q. You're testing it here in Portland, right?

A. I'm testing it in an interesting way: We've chopped it into two pieces, on two nights -- on Jan. 24th and 31st. On the 24th, I'm doing it as a show called "Electricity -- Friend or Foe?," and that'll talk about Tesla. And then on the 31st, there's a show called "Profit and Loss and the Space Between" that will deal with Microsoft and Wal-Mart and some of the other issues. And then in February, material from both of those will be unified.

[The producers] told us, like a week ago, that they know somebody who has a working Tesla coil -- like, the largest Tesla coil on the island of Manhattan. It has its own Web page. It creates 10- to 12-foot arcs. And we think we can get it [for the New York performances], but we're getting these great e-mails from the producers that ask, "Is there a way we can do this that doesn't kill anyone in the space?" They’re taking measurements. I mean, I'm good -- but I don't know if I can compete with 10- to 12-foot arcs of fucking electricity.


Q. But what a poster.

A. That's true.


Q. Speaking of open source: I notice from your e-mail address you're a .Mac user.

A. I have my Powerbook right here. And in fact I was warned by my director that we're not going to discuss Apple in any way in "Monopoly!" She's like, "You're too entirely partisan -- no one will ever respect you if you bring up Apple." We're fighting about this right now.


Q. Does "Monopoly!" also have you with a laptop onstage? Because it would be weird to have you discussing Microsoft with a big glowing Apple facing the audience....

A. There will be no laptops in that show.

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YOUR DELUSIONAL SUPERPOWERS

Q. In the first couple of pages of your book, you describe yourself as a "dilettante. I do many things, but none particularly well." Does that include one-man stage productions?


A. [laughs] Uh, I just let other people judge that. That's a good question: Do I see myself being an expert on monologues at this point?


Q. You also write, in the next sentence: "Like so many others of my generation, I cherish the delusion that I have superpowers buried deep inside me. They're awaiting the perfect trigger." Did Amazon.com end up being that trigger, given your new career?

A. I think that's actually true. It was painful, in some ways, to write the book and to do the show on such a large scale -- because I think I, and a lot of people, cherish that delusion. But once you've done your first book, then you've written your first book -- you can no longer have the delusion that you have a first book buried in you, and when you finally find the time, you will write it and it will be so awesome and people will bow before you. Instead, I get to look forward to my second book. I'm excited, but I'm excited on a human scale. It's no longer such a fantasy.

In some ways, I had to give up being a dilettante to work on things. I actually had to make shit happen. And Amazon was the trigger for that in a lot of ways -- because I was forced to. And thank God I was forced to, or I probably would have gone on the rest of my life saying, "Oh, one day...."

I think I entertain my dilettantish ways by creating shows that tie together Tesla and the Microsoft case -- that tie together parts of my life that I'm interested in and humanize them onstage. I try to do it more onstage or at work rather than alone with an Xbox [laughs] -- as opposed to doing it in the back of my head, alone, while eating a burger.


Q, Yeah, that part of the book where you talk about those delusions of future grandeur hits pretty hard.

A. Well, I think it hits a lot of people really hard. It's such a passive thing to do: "Someday it'll happen for me. I hope."


Q. It seems to be something that's sort of endemic to our generation. We don't take success; we wait for it to come to us.

A. I think it's very specific to this generation. I don't know if it has something to do with where our parents came from.... I haven't thought about it enough to come up with a real coherent reason.


Q. My pet theory is that we're so inculcated with media -- movies where all the hard work is done during a musical montage.

A. That's not bad. People like to design mythologies around stories. Whenever I'm talking about "21 Dog Years" -- after the show or even when I'm dealing with media people -- the story they invent is: "Here's a guy who never acted in his life, and then he did this show and discovered he had a voice, and now he tells his story."


Q. But you were doing plays before you worked at Amazon.

A. And it's funny because they're disappointed. You'd think, in a rational world, that you'd be excited -- "Oh! How nice! Someone knew what he was doing!" But actually, people are like, "Oh, it would have been better if he didn't know anything." Because that's the Hollywood-montage school of thought: "One day, I could flower."


Q. In the book, you make fun of the Amazon corporate climate as being "half socialist book camp and half college party dorm." But doesn't that also kind of describe the actor's life? What's so bad about that?

A. [laughs] Well, there's nothing wrong with it in that it's a very fun environment. I also think, though, that's it's not entirely stable -- nor is it mature.


Q. Well, that and it's a lawsuit waiting to happen. Reading your book, I was struck by the parallels between the Amazon "strike price" [the price your stock was at when you were hired] and multi-level marketing. [Daisey laughs] The guys who get in early make all the money.

A. Oh, I think there's a strong Amway vibe inherent in Amazon -- and inherent in any company that revolves around strike price. It doesn't promote working hard; at Amazon, it was like, "You got in early -- don't get fired. Just sit tight."


Q. "Employee #5" from your book is the textbook example of that -- a burnout worth $200 million sitting in his office playing the vintage video game Rogue all day.

A. Yeah, I feel bad for him. He came on really early and he was incredibly vital -- he built the underpinnings of the whole thing. He invented this idea that you could buy something on the Web and get a referral. He invented it from a programmer's perspective, and he got cursed -- "You invented it, and therefore you will be in charge of its marketing." And he just wanted to go back to coding!

And suddenly he's in charge of dozens of people, and they hire an MBA to be in charge of the group, and you can't actually make a policy decision about how the thing should be built. As things get big, layers accrete on top, and you can't actually do anything fun! It's a place with a brilliant idea, and two years later you can't have any brilliant ideas at all.


Q. Is he still there? In the book, he was going to vest in 11 months from when you were there, around 2000....

A. Yeah, he's gone now. He vested, and altogether he got like $300 million or something. He has a castle in southern France where he spends most of the year --


Q. Playing Rogue, presumably.

A. I'm sure he's got T1 running, somehow, into the castle. And he has an amazing wine collection. He would order big cases of wine, and it would be delivered to the office -- he would just stack it up in the corner, and then every once in a while he'd get some people to help him carry it all down to his car. I'm sure it's all in France now in giant air-controlled vaults.


Q. You got a self-designed degree in "aesthetics." You write early in your book that you dreamed of becoming a "freelance intellectual." Thanks to this thing where you tour the country talking about your experiences, you sort of got your wish.

A. Yeah! I designed my degree because it seemed very interesting and very compelling to me -- even though it had no practical application. And now I feel I've designed a career from the ground up, and it suits me just like the degree did.

When you make your own path, if you succeed -- to extend the metaphor, if you don't get killed by a falling rock or rattlesnake, if you survive -- it's very rewarding.


Q. You're like the theatrical version of Caine in "Kung Fu."

A. [laughs] I wander the Old West, have adventures, tell people my philosophies and talk about Nikola Tesla.

Posted: Fri - January 7, 2005 at 12:17 AM        

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