Drugs, Chess, and Rock & Roll | Brian Lawlor

30:23And so, so many times you could look at elections and see that if convicted felons were able to vote, things would have gone very clearly in other ways a bunch of times. So these are all like actual repression tactics that were legislated and very much implemented by politics to suppress voting rights of a mostly minority populace. So and so so what can you do right now? Well, right now, I mean, well, I decided, I mean, I have to take things into my own hands. And once I realized that I've lived this life of like a lot of wheeling and dealing and hustling, and I'm very, very open about this. I'm very, very open about sort of these crimes, but it precludes me from a lot of things like it precludes me like I would be offered a lot of these teaching positions in schools and universities that I have to just decline.

31:23because I go, I just don't want to deal with all of the, um, all the bullshit that's going to come with like, Hey, I'm a convicted felon. This is a thing. And so everything I do is, is very much, uh, self-generated. I don't work for, I don't work for anyone else. I'm not on anyone else's payroll. Um, and that's something I've had to, maybe that's for the best, but because who wants to be on someone's payroll, but yeah, sometimes you have to be, no, I mean, I, I would love to be sometimes I would absolutely love to be sometimes. But this came out of a sense of necessity of so many decisions I made when I was out of jail was based on what I was stripped of that would make it hard to live the life I was living.

32:05So you know, I wouldn't have my license for years, I knew I couldn't vote, I knew I couldn't get a job in any kind of normal place. And so it forced me to have to do kind of some funny things and funny living situations to be able to get into places where I could start doing music again. And I'm sorry, go on. Like what? Um, so when I came out of jail, I realized, okay, I can't live up in Sussex County, New Jersey, which you need a car to drive everywhere. Most of the jobs are manual labor jobs. I knew I needed to be closer to New York. So on Craigslist, I found a living situation with a guy that was dying of cancer that wanted someone to live in his place in Hoboken rent free in exchange just for hanging out with him.

32:50And so I saw this my like first, second week out of jail and I go and meet him and we became friends. He was super cool. He was only 35 at the time and had terminal cancer. He was into heavy metal music. He was a Santeria priest and I would hang out with him and watch MMA, talk fighting, talk Iron Maiden, play a bunch of metal with him and just hang out with him. And then I had an apartment in Hoboken. I had a room I could stay in with this guy and his mom. And all I had to do is hang out with him for like four hours every day and just talk. And that was it. We became really good friends. Sometimes I would help him with his doctor's visits.

33:30Okay, so now that I'm close to New York, it's easier to go for all these kinds of music things. I really quickly got hired by a music studio for teaching. And then everything just started blowing up from there. um then I started to run into I'm sorry here I ran into uh friends that I knew in Seattle from undergraduate I ran into on the street in New York and the word on the street was hey Brian Lawler's out of jail and apparently is still alive and then these all were like directors of plays and stuff and so I just got started getting hired to compose a lot of stuff um and then I met friends that actually Jay's friend Ryan that um was uh our like studio engineers I I just started getting a ton of work.

34:15And then funnily enough, that studio in Hoboken I started teaching in became very big very quickly. And then I had to tell the bosses because they became friends of mine too. After like six months when everything was blowing up and I was sort of like getting this reputation as a teacher for like Wunderkind, especially like really smart prodigy kids for piano, guitar, bass, composition. and then I had to tell them as things were getting bigger, I go, listen, here's the deal. And I told them everything I went through the last couple of years with drugs and stuff like that. And I said, I'm only saying this because of course some parents are gonna be looking me up and be like, what the hell?

34:54This guy was just locked up until whenever. And so I'm like, I'm just doing my due diligence as an employee and a friend to let you know this and to say that I'm absolutely fine. Like if you have to fire me right now, it's totally cool, but I don't feel comfortable now that we're friends as well, like keeping this from you. And also because it might cause problems down the road. So of course, they thought I was joking because they did not. They thought I was like, ha ha ha ha. And I go, no, this is completely serious. And then looked up everything. They go, holy shit. We never pegged you as that kind of person.

35:27We appreciate you telling us. And then we just had an agreement that was like, they'll plead blind ignorance. And if it comes down to something, I'll just sort of admit it. And then I'll go. But then I ended up working there for 15 years. And wow, yeah, 15 years. And even to this day, like I have students I've taught since they were four or five years old that are now like brilliant musicians in their mid 20s. I'll hire for projects, good friends with them and their families and maintain these great relationships as a teacher and friend to lots of students and families in there. And then it became more and more known as I would talk about my background.

36:01Um, and it just became something that everyone pretty much knew and it wasn't a problem. And I think it's kind of funny that, that because you were forced to, you could only basically pursue your passion because this is something where your skill and talent so rose above the average person that people were able to hire you, you know, and, and it didn't require the normal, you know, application mechanism. Yeah. And where would you say you are in the field? Like what's your latest projects? Oh, I mean, I have a bunch of things. I mean, right now I'm gearing up for, I have a new eight-hour opera going up here in Vienna.

36:41It's eight hours straight, no breaks. There's this performance group from Seattle I've composed for for about 15 years now called Saint-Gene. And we do large-scale durative theater and opera works. And we've done a couple like eight-hour operas out here in Vienna already. and this is the third installment of one so right now that's the big thing i'm doing um as far as just staying home and composing uh then i'm also doing film scores regularly i do things remotely i will still teach maybe 10 to 12 hours a week um some people in new york and hoboken and then people in person here you teach instruments yeah i teach piano guitar bass composition theory um how'd you learn all these things like when you were very little yeah yeah yeah when i was very little i we i grew up in a house with eight brothers and sisters everyone played music um we had instruments lying around uh all the time and at a young age we had a player piano one of those old like ragtime bar saloon kinds of things that you'd pump the mechanisms and i remember falling in love with that when i was like eight years old and then i started teaching myself from piano piano from that where i just watched the keys go down and then just started playing like ragtime and boogie woogie and stride piano and then took lessons um but from a teacher that by all accounts like fostered my love of like ragtime and stuff like that but didn't like teach me properly he just more saw that i was could replicate anything so he just kind of come over and play and then i would learn so i never got like proper training or technique and i got really into guitar and bass and then um 10 11 years old started playing bass and like playing in like punk bands and stuff like that and ska bands and then got like kind of really into composition around 13 or 14 but was just always playing music and doing music from a young age what kind of composition um well i had these older friends that really got me into sort of uh you know the classics like mozart bach and stuff like that um and i got really into like shostakovich and prokofiev and like the 20th century russian composers around 15 or 16 so i started writing very um you know just like basic like either Baroque-y sounding stuff or classical sounding stuff.

38:54Or when I matured a little bit and started like writing more serious pieces around 16 or 17, my teachers would always say, oh, you clearly like Shostakovich and Prokofiev would write these very kind of sarcastic, technical, goofy pieces with a lot of material crammed into just a little bit of time. Yeah, so it's just musically, I always say like I'm a mutt. I'm not I'm not your first call for anything. Uh, you, but I can easily get by and do well in a lot of things, both instrumentally, styly. This opera in Vienna, you'll, you'll make money off of this. Like there'll be a performance. No, no, no.

39:34I mean, of course there'll be a performance, but this, this kind of stuff, no, these are not money makers. These are things that, you know, I, if you look at the amount of time I put into it, it's like worse than, you know, minimum wage, but it's something to be able to do to, I enjoy doing and I'm able to do to live not like a life of luxury, but a comfortable life where I don't have to worry about much, but I also don't require or desire much. And it's nice to be able to do it by saying, yeah, I literally am here just doing music all the time. It's nice. And I don't, but I am not, I know a lot of the people that you deal with are financial wizards.

40:17I am not one of those people whatsoever. No, I don't deal with a lot of financial wizards. Just people think that. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. No, I, yeah, this is, these are not big money making things. Like honestly, the things more money making wise are like quick studio session work I'll do where someone just needs like a bass line or keyboard line or guitar line for something. And, but nothing I do is overtly hugely money making. I'm a terrible, terrible representative for the music business world because I very much don't like that. I'm very impressed, though, you're able to do your talent and work enough that you could then go to Vienna and do an opera that you're just doing for the creative joy of it.

41:07Yeah. And by the way, it's a big jump from punk composition to composing an eight-hour opera. I mean, punk, I almost think of as no composition is involved in punk music. Yeah. I mean, it depends. You're absolutely right. It depends on the style of punk or what you're, what you're listening to. But I just have, if I, the only thing that keeps, keeps this a reality for me is the fact that it can be all different stuff. If I was like just a jazz pianist or like just playing classical or just a guitarist in a rock band or something, I couldn't sustain that. Um, so I need to always be doing different things to keep both the element of excitement and to maintain that intrinsic value of music that I loved as a kid and still maintain that even though the older you get, you see more of just like the absolute bullshit of the music industry and sort of how things function.

42:20do you see like for instance taking elements of classical music like whether it's shostakovich or mozart or whatever and combining it with other musical styles oh yeah like do you do you see a opportunity there like i mean i do that like pop music has gotten so dead like it's the same chords it's a formula i know but i i mean that i i first of all yes i i do that myself all the time i actually even have an album it's it was for a theater show where it's all prokofiev and shostakovich songs it was something i composed for like a russian futurist lab in brooklyn maybe 14 years ago called exploded by director william burke but the whole thing is arrangements of Prokofiev and Shostakovich, all just for like punk band.

43:05So I'm playing it all on guitars and basses, and I got my drummer friend Brian Turner by track the whole record, playing all the guitars, all the basses, no keyboards, and they're all pieces from Shostakovich and Prokofiev, because when I hear that, when I hear those orchestra pieces, I can hear that so clearly as in tandem, like this is like a sludge metal song, like I know this is a ballet with a bunch of spritus, strings, but I totally hear this in just like a sludgy metal style. And so I did a record like that. And when you talk about like with pop music, the thing is, is what makes pop music, pop music are all of these progressions and chords and stuff that you're hearing.

43:46I could sit here and show you, yes, this exact progression you're hearing right now is also what you hear here in Vivaldi, is also what you hear in this section of Mozart, is also what you hear in this section of Brahms. By the way, that would be a great set of videos to do to take a song like a very like a top 10 song and break it down like oh they took this from vivaldi they took this oh no there's mozart and and there's um there's a million videos like this i'm sure um i'm sure that you could find all of these things like even looking at something like you know pachelbel's canon you know yeah i've seen those videos yeah that progression is one of the most sort of very very common ones utilized in all styles of music um and then people will sample classical music a lot and then put it in either hip hop beats, pop music.

44:29And so you hear this integration happening and it does happen. It's easy to kind of hear certain things and be like, oh, well, this is stale. This is that. Now with pop music, it's so much more with texture and sound and what's going on rather than like just chords. Like I'm always amazed with pop music is just the production element that I'm an idiot with. I'm very much an idiot with. I don't have the patience to be like a good what's a good pop song to listen to i mean i right now i am absolutely in love with red velvet which is an all-girl k-pop group that is some of the most sophisticated pop writing but with some of the coolest um instrumental music and funnily enough one of the last songs they released as soon as it came out i mean not last song they released it like a year ago, as soon as it came on, I go, holy shit, it's a box sample.

45:23It's the air on the G-string sample that they use, and then it's manipulated, and it's done really tastefully. And some purists will, you know, some people will, oh, why are they sampled this? But it's a gorgeous composition. It's like vocally and everything. So, and when I try to share that with certain friends of mine, they're like, you listen to this shit? I'm like, yeah, it's really good. I'm going to have to listen to it. I've never heard of it. Red Velvet. Yeah. And what's your favorite band of all time? Who do you think is the best band? Oh, my favorite band. Not your favorite, but what's the best band of all time?

45:55My favorite and best band of all time and most influential band for me is Rush. Absolutely. Hands down. Okay. So. I could, that isn't mine, but I could see why that would be someone's. Yes. Like they're great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So as like a little kid, they were the ones who got me into playing guitar and bass. I first saw Rush when I was 10 years old at Madison Square Garden. And to this day, I still listen to them. their biggest influence on me. And I get made fun of a lot by people by saying that because it's a very specific kind of group of nerds that like that. Like thinking about it, I just didn't like the people in my school who liked Rush.

46:32Yes. That's why I never really got into them. Yeah. But like the spirit of radio has to be like one of the best songs of all time. Yeah, I love it. Just thinking about this now, like I wouldn't. Yeah. Yeah. Like how did they even compose that? Yeah. No, I mean that's, yeah, that's a thing. for a three-piece in what they were doing at the time. And yeah, and the span of their career, I could talk about them forever. And how did you... Oh, go ahead. No, no, go on, go on. How did you get so good at chess? Like I see your rating, I'm looking at Law Dog's screen right now. Your rating on chess is good.

47:04Like you must have worked at it at some point. Well, I mean, so when I was younger, we had to learn chess in like this advanced math class. And I remember in fourth grade, teacher's name was Mr. Karnas. and we had to learn chess. And I really liked it. I thought it was super cool, but we didn't, you know, learn anything properly. And I remember like playing in some tournaments in school, I became like the school champion in seventh or eighth grade. But at this time, mind you, this is no studying. This is not like understanding anything about strategy or really the game at all. It's just very casual playing.

47:39Nobody in my family played. And then it wasn't until later, probably around like 16 or 17, where I started reading books and actually studying it and becoming really, really fascinated with it. I believe it was, was it Silman's Reassess Your Chess? Yeah, maybe that was one of the first books I read that and then another one by Yasser Serwan that I can't remember that I would always just even like chess for dummies that I would just read these beginner books and realize, oh my god, I'm missing so many basic basic skills. And then I just got into sort of self studying and starting to play tournaments.

48:16And I just really liked it. And it's one of those things that I've never really like, actively studied properly or went through, hey, this is I'm devoting a few hours each day to studying and playing. It's just something I really like that I have seen slow incremental progress over a long period of time rather than usually what happens with me is I'll get good at something really quickly in the beginning and then just fizzle out or plateau. Were you the best in prison? In jail. When I was in jail, I was the best during my time there. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, you must have been unless there was like just a real good tournament player.

48:58But I think, yeah, I think if I was in prison though, usually they have a lot of really good players in prison And that's why they have like correspondence chess was a big thing where, you know, you mail your move back in the day. Yeah. And every day you get a move and you send out your move via letter. It's pretty cool. And then, yeah. So then I started like playing tournaments around 17, 18 casually. And then I started to incorporate it a lot into my music. I started using chess games both as a way to generate compositions and for like actual performative compositions where I play chess and I rig up the chess boards with microphones and contact mics to get the clicking and the hitting of the clock to use those clicks to trigger other sounds and create these like small semi theatrical musical performance videos based off just chess games.

49:48Wow, that's amazing. And there's a history of that. Marcel Duchamp and John Cage like would do this in the 50s. famous artist, famous composer that would also do this. And so I had some references of people that have kind of integrated this in music before. But I always have a thing where outside interests definitely determine a lot of stuff I do musically. I like to incorporate it. So I use ping pong in music. I'll use chess in music. I've been learning Morse code. I use that a lot in my music. Well, A, it's fascinating you're learning Morse code. but all of these things like chess, ping pong, Morse code also have some relationship to EMDR.

50:27Like I've seen videos, people using like the moving of chess pieces and the hitting of the clocks is like an EMDR thing, which is, I don't know how to describe EMDR. Wait, EMDR? I don't... No, no, not EMDR. What's the thing where it's... ASMR? ASMR, like the sound of it? Like if... Yeah, yeah. And it's like the clicking and it makes you like, puts you in this sort of hypnotic state. Yeah, the ASMR, that's the word I believe. is that what it's called ASMR is like very soft like what Brian said but I didn't even he's like a very soft yeah talking like this yeah but I think also I've seen it in the context of like the clicking of chess clocks and stuff like that oh okay yeah like uh like if you google ASMR chess there's all these videos ASMR okay yeah yeah for for sleep for for relaxation yeah yeah something about the sound and the clicking that makes you relax yep I I definitely love that chest the sound of a chess clock right kind of click on the chess clock and the pieces hitting the board so i'll run contact mics and then take those sounds then process those sounds and make little extra sounds out of it um i think i sent you something a while ago is this piece is vision zu gets for live speed chess tournament and synthesizers and vocoder um i think there's like a uh there's a kind of a rough video online from a tedx conference in jersey city like seven or eight years ago.

51:50But yeah, I love it. And so it's one of those things I go in and out of both as a distraction and something to kind of ground me again. So I can tell I could use chess a lot of times to to kind of test my mental state if I feel like I'm a little too overactive, or I might be getting depressed. It's do I feel like playing bullet chess? Or do I have the patience now for long game um so it's also a really neat way to kind of um check in with myself mentally and see sort of how i'm feeling is based on sort of what kind of chess matches i feel like or what kind of chess games i feel like playing right now yeah like if i if i'm ever like like i'm very i don't want to say introverted because people almost don't believe that when i tell them that but if i get too overwhelmed like let's say i'm out at a party when i get home i almost have to play like chess just to like zone out.

52:45Yep. And usually it's bullet chess. Yes. I'm like completely get that dopamine zone out in another world. I know. But that's what's so funny is I say the same thing. I and people are like, wait, you sitting here playing one minute bullet chess is calming to you or like kind of relaxing? I go, yeah, there's just because they just see me huddled in the corner with the iPad. Fuck. Oh, shit. I can't believe you do it with an iPad. Yeah, I do it with an iPad and it's just, um, which I know is not, like I said, I'm only going to hit a certain level this way. I can't, I think my highest was like 2138 or something on lead chess at bullet playing on the iPad, but that's better.

53:23That's better than me on, on, on bullet like bullet. I just can't, I can't do. Yeah. I, there's something I very much love about it, but I know that it's not good for my game at all. It's destroyed my long-term calculations. but one thing I'm trying to do now is actively, I force myself every day over lunch to either watch a chess video or to play like a 15-minute rapid game, which is, you know, feels like a snail's pace for me. And who do you watch? Well, I actually love Agadmator. Oh, yeah, he's good. He's very instructional. I was going to say, there's something about the sound of his voice and his demeanor that I really like.

54:01I know he's not the best player. His analysis are usually just sort of engine lines, but there's a comfort to watching him that I really like. Hikaru, I love sometimes, but I mean, his playing, I love when he goes on his bullet runs and his explaining. His disrespect runs. It's amazing. Absolutely amazing. But there's something, and I know this sounds ridiculous, there's something about the cadence of his voice and the sound of his voice sometimes that I can't listen to. Because everything he says kind of ends like this. everything kind of goes out and downwards at the very end. And when I hear that, it kind of bothers me because it reminds me of people that complain.

54:40And I know that's like a very interesting specific, weird thing. And then Ben Feingold, another guy who's very great to watch, but I can't watch him. He disgusts me for some reason. It's the slurping. Ben's great. He's great. No, no, he's like, I love watching his lectures. I love watching his lectures. but again, this is a sound thing with me and it's embarrassing to admit this sometimes but with him, when he's doing in his apartment or his home and when he's drinking and eating, I can't listen to it. I just can't listen to it. No matter what he's saying. That's funny that you're so sensitive to the sound.

55:17Yes, I'm very sensitive to the way people deliver things, the cadence of their voices and what they're doing externally when they're going through And while I do not think Agamator is by any means like the best analyzer or necessarily runs through the best lines besides engine lines, I do think there's a comfort to his voice and just his very low-key, no-ego presentation that I absolutely love. Do you listen to Naroditsky at all? uh naroditsky i okay so naroditsky i do like watching when he's playing and um when he's playing his bullet or blitz runs and going through i cannot stand him as an announcer i cannot stand him because it feels like he went to broadcasting school and now i've got to oh and we really got him on the ropes now it sounds like he went to something in the last two years he went to like a sports broadcasting school and he lost any of his neat inauthenticity and then now he's just like trying to be a broadcaster and again i know these criticisms seem weird but these are just very much how i process these things and with naroditsky i can't listen to him um analyze games i think svidler and lenko are the best combination when they're peter peter lenko and or yeah peter svidler and lecco and when those two are analyzing tournaments together that's my favorite combination because interesting i think they're both really on point with not trying to make things exciting that aren't exciting um and just see what about eric rosen who has a very uh mellifluous uh voice um eric rosen i haven't watched enough of i haven't watched enough of his own it comes up on youtube but i haven't um i watched enough to gauge i have seen him a couple times um for tournaments where i would see him speak but it i don't have enough experience with him to evaluate sorry fascinating yeah well uh would you want to play a couple of games yes i would love to i would no you didn't tell tell jane sorry where like the drug dealer just walking to the your chess tournament oh my god the liberty bell open okay oh my god liberty bell open let's hear it okay jesus i forgot about this and i mean i still didn't even tell several chess stories but the liberty bell open so this would have been do you are you familiar with that tournament liberty bell open in philadelphia you okay so it's usually always like in february right um this i'm curious if we're at the same one this i believe i'd have to look it up i think this was 2004 or oh no i definitely wasn't i was i i stopped playing from 90 1997 to um 2021 21.

58:06Oh, man. Holy. Okay. So I didn't know you had that much of a break. That's amazing. So Liberty Bell opened. This is at a period of time after I was in the Netherlands and China. And this is after like I dropped out of graduate school at the Royal Conservatory in the Netherlands. I already lived in China teaching at Dashing Petrochemical University, a junkie in both these places. I ended up getting escaping China, which is a story I think I talked about on your podcast. and that's so this is this weird purgatory of me being clean post rehab family knows everything everyone's very much like trying to help me out everyone's kind of breathing down your neck and I'm what 24 23 or something and I started playing with a local chess club to just re kind of just rediscover that interest I had in chess that oh I do like doing this it wasn't just because of drugs.

59:03It's like, no, I love doing this. And so I started studying again and playing again. And I went to play in the Liberty Bell Open, which I believe was a three day tournament to like what like two and a half hour time format each player or something like that. And I was really excited. You know, I got like the hotel package and went down there. And my family and friends were kind of nervous because I wasn't on my own. And I'm going to Philly and everyone knew that every city I'd go to, the first thing I'd do is find the shittiest area and find drugs. And so I can remember there was like some trepidation on the part of friends and family about me going down there.

59:38So day one, I get down there and I lose my first two games on day one, like absolutely crushing. And I, and, and mind you, I believe at this time, like I'm playing in like class D, like under 1500 easily. Um, and did you cry? Uh, no, but what I did was I was super bummed and I went out and I decided I was going to get drugs. Um, and I relapsed, I relapsed after losing two chess. I mean, exactly. You could say because of Jess, but we're always looking for dumb excuses to do drugs again. It's not because of Jess. It's because of my own stupidity. But the thing is, is Philadelphia, I never actually bought drugs there, but would buy things in Camden on the Jersey side.

1:00:24So what I do is I just drive to South Philly. And I'm in this truck and driving around until I see just like what looks like bombed out war zones, like total ghetto area. And I get there and I start looking around. And usually if you're like a white person in these places, like they'll know and you'll get what I call the yo. And that's kind of drug dealers like seeing if you're looking for something. But I couldn't find any like proactive drug dealers. So I see this obvious junkie on the street and I go talk to him. And normally when I only wanted a little bit of drugs for like that night, and maybe a spillover for the next day, I would always tell them, hey, I'm in town for this long, I need a good connection, can I just get a little bit?

1:01:10And if this is good, then we can meet tomorrow. And I'd like to buy at quantity. And so I said to this guy, he's like, sure. And he asks to look at my arms. And at this point, I hadn't done anything for a year. So I didn't have like any marks, but I had some like leftover holes basically. And he was really nice. He's like, wait, you're clean now. I don't know if I feel comfortable getting high with you. And I'm like, that's really sweet, but I'm in control of this. So we get in my car, end up, I can buy like a clean needle off of him. And I end up injecting in my truck with him and then immediately sort of kicking him out and then going home and of course you feel good but you're like fucked up man like it's funny too because I can remember it's like a combination of I fucked up because I'm doing drugs again but it's like I fucked up those two games today why couldn't I focus so go back home go to my or go back to the hotel I go to sleep and I wake up day two and the first match, I'm paired with, I want to say, and I think you can probably look at USCF and probably find these in the database, but I want to say that the kid was probably six years old.

1:02:26Six-year-old Chinese kid. And both of his parents were standing behind him like this. And this kid... Now they don't let parents in like that anymore. And this kid was fiddling with a mandarin just sitting there playing with a mandarin and would move immediately no matter how long i took he would move immediately and so there was this one time middle game the kid is just sitting there fumbling with it and i took probably like 15 minutes where i'm going through this and again i'm also on heroin now and so i'm just like taking a long time to think would make a move then the kid would just put his head up and go back to his fumbling with his mandarin just playing with it with his parents just looking stone-faced and it's very intimidating i very intimidating to get you're you're getting uh the floor mopped with you with by like a little kid that's not even putting any effort into it and so we're in the big tournament hall where there's a couple hundred people um and as i'm getting destroyed i look down the hall and to my horror I see the junkie guy from the night before walking down the hall, looking around.

1:03:39And I'm like, what the fuck? I clearly, like I told you when I would tell people like, hey, I'm just getting a little bit of drugs by equine. I clearly told him I was playing in what hotel I was staying in and was playing in a chess tournament. And so I'm there getting smoked by the little kid as he comes down and then we make eye contact and he just yells, I kind of like lumbers towards me straight up, very homeless junkie looking and sits down next to me while everyone's just kind of looking at him. He's like, Hey, uh, you know, that, that thing we talked about, uh, yeah, I can get that. I just, I just need the money right now.

1:04:17And so I have to request a bathroom break to bring this guy out of the hall to then like placate him by giving him like 30 bucks, knowing full well, I'm not going to get anything but just to get him out of there um so i had to deal with the relapse the hangover of heroin getting beat by the kid after losing the two games and then at the while this is happening i have to deal with a drug dealer from the night before coming into the tournament hall sitting next to me and i have to get people looking at you when you came back into the room of course everyone's just looking like what the what the fuck was that um and then i lost to the kid i believe I even I don't even think I played my next match.

1:04:59I think I just left like I just kind of realized I completely fucked up felt really terrible. I think even not even I think it did happen. My sister Aileen visited and she knew I was high. It was just like everything just absolutely kind of crumbled at the Liberty Bell open where I was going there and the attempts to like do something good have some autonomy again have some confidence playing chess and not doing drugs and all of that came crashing down yeah yeah and you know you can make money potentially if you're 100 for you know whatever it was yeah yeah yeah yeah you could if that happened um the only time i think i ever made money at a chest room was actually the north american open in 99 um but it was like tight because do you remember that they would have it in las vegas it was always Yeah, they still have it in Las Vegas.

1:05:51They do, okay. Yeah, I went there, I think, in 99 when I was 17, and I think I tied for fifth, but I still wound up like it paid for the whole trip and everything. It was really, really nice. That's great. And, you know, I see you played in the 2005 U.S. team. Oh, yes, actually. Yeah, that was at the Parsippany Hotel, right? I don't know. Yeah, so that used to be the hotel in Parsippany. Yes, Parsippany, yeah. And this was, that was 2005? yeah okay so then that was so then the okay that was 2005 in february uh yeah that was i wanted to play in that team tournament because i knew there was a lot of heavy hitters there and there was like this group of old men that needed like an under 1500 player to round out because i believe it's like a group average of everyone so usually you'll have like a grandmaster an im and i was like the low-level player to even out the average of the team.

1:06:49And I remember actually not... I don't know what I did there, but I remember I had a fun time. It was really, really great. But that was the one where I saw Hikaru lose. I see Hikaru scored six in a row there. But no, Hikaru lost one of those games there. Can you see his record? I believe he lost to someone that was only like 2200 in that tournament, and he wouldn't sign the card. I have this really... It looks like he won all those games, so maybe it's a different tournament. Maybe it was a different one? Okay, because I have a weird memory at that time of Hikaru being at a tournament and not signing the card and losing to someone, like, way lower than him.

1:07:29And he was probably a teenager then. Yeah, no, yeah, exactly, yeah. Yeah, Hikaru was there, definitely. I don't know. A lot of people I know were there. Is this the USCF database you see right now? Yeah. So does it have a tournament in Portland? in like 2000 maybe. They should have the North American Open. There's Westfield Swiss in New Jersey. Oh, yeah, the Westfield Swiss. I would go down there and play. Oh, yeah, there's something February game in 60 in Oregon. Yeah, it was in Portland. I can remember doing that. Yeah, Portland. Is the Liberty Bell open on there? Yeah, Liberty Bell opens on there.

1:08:07Yeah, and in Portland, it looks like you lost the first two and then you won the next two. Yeah, that was one of those ones I remember that was just an open tournament um that i drove down when i was in seattle i drove down there to visit friends and play i remember the first two games playing really or i thought were really good players and then yeah but i just do tournaments kind of intermittently i always tell myself i'd like to start doing it again because it's there's a real excitement and buzz i get in those places when i go into like yeah just a uh chess tournament hall there is just a palpable energy you feel and it's i love it i absolutely love it i i like it too like those types of big tournaments are very strong like all like people prepare and they're like excited and they go and it is exciting and you kind of just lose yourself in that world for a few days yeah and and i like that but you know i also i also get disappointed in myself if i lose yeah a bunch of games and uh uh you know it's it's like my wife always says, you know, have, have fun no matter what.

1:09:12And it's just like not fun when you lose. Nope. Absolutely. It's very, you could say that it's a, it's a really good way to sort of process defeat. Um, yes, it's a really good way to kind of deal with those emotions that come from losing. Uh, and that's what I like. And also it's a really good tell of other people and seeing how they deal with loss and defeat so yeah that's true well should we should we play a game or two