The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Phillip Lopate and The Spicy Meatball

Episode Date: July 15, 2022

Phillip Lopate is an American film critic, essayist, fiction writer, poet, and teacher. He is a professor at Columbia University’s School of the Arts, where he teaches nonfiction writing. He is also Noam's elementary school teacher. He joins us along with John Engle, Noam's first friend. 

🎵 This is Live from the Table, recorded at the world-famous Comedy Cellar, coming at you on SiriusXM 99. Raw dog. And on the Laugh Button Podcast Network, Dan Natterman here with Noam Dwarman, owner of the world-famous Comedy Cellar. We have Perrielle Ashenbrand. She's our producer in quotes. Well, Noam is not sure you're really a producer, so I put it in quotes. Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure.

And we have with us an old friend of well, an old teacher of Gnome's. Philip Lopate is his name. He's an American film critic, essayist, fiction writer, poet, and teacher. Currently a professor at Columbia University School of the Arts where he teaches non-fiction. Philip Lopate,

welcome. Glad to be here. And Philip, you were Noam's teacher in elementary school, is that correct? That's right. I'm not sure he remembers me. No, I do. I remember you. I remember your father and mother and PS75. I remember sort of the grade you were in.

But you seemed like kind of a well-behaved kid at the time. So I don't know what you went through. Are you sure it was him? Well, he wasn't one of the firebrands. He wasn't one of the troublemakers. I was not a troublemaker. Well, what do you remember? I just want to verify that he does remember you because so far we're getting vague details. Do you remember any details about his father and mother that you could recount?

I remember his father had a kind of nightclub in the village. That's right. There was a kind of Israeli nightclub. Wow. And I went to it once, you know, and I was, you know, I was, I loved that job because I got to know not just the kids, but their parents, you know, and became a part of that whole community, you know.

So, and, you know, sort of remained friends with some of the students, not with Norm. No. So tell me what's happened since then. And my mother, my stepmother, Carol. Carol Dorman. Carol Dorman, yeah. Who I was friendly with, yes. Yeah, she was a guidance counselor at the school.

Carol was your father's before-Ava girlfriend or wife? They were married. She was like my stepmother. She raised me from the ages of around six until I got into high school. Never heard of her. She was very smart, and I was really friendly with the guidance counselors because they're the ones who had the full brunt of all the psychological problems that were going on in the school, you know. And so I would sometimes go into the teacher's room or into the guidance counselor room and chat with her and with Freddie Bolzano.

Oh, yeah. I remember Freddie Bolzano was a tall black female teacher. She was friends with Carol. Yeah, and I went out with Freddie Bolzano was a tall, black female teacher. She was friends with Carol. Yeah, and I went out with Freddie Bolzano, but never went out with Carol. I just want to confirm that. Is Carol still around, Carol? Yeah, she's still alive. Is she in your life at all?

I've never heard of this woman. She's not in my life. We communicate by email from time to time. That's too bad that she's not in my life. We had a good relationship, but she was like a mother to me for a to time. That's too bad that she's not in my life. We had a good relationship but she was like a mother to me for a long time. But the bonds between step parents and children

are not the same. They can fade in a way that a biological bond never probably, mostly never does. That's just the nature of things. Well, also I assume that her and your father broke up.

You had to pick sides. I mean, if it was acrimonious, that could have been awkward. No, it wasn't acrimonious. I had to pick sides. He was my father. She was my stepmother. It was never a question. In any case, so this is amazing for me.

So, Mr. Lopate, did we actually call you Phil? Yeah, Philip. Phil. Yeah. My friends called me Philip, and deans called me Phil. So he was kind of like an amazing, almost like you would make a network TV series about this young, hip teacher who connected with the students, who taught us creative writing. I taught creative writing, but I also taught filmmaking, theater,

radio, and I had this idea that not every kid wanted to write. So how do I hook into their energy? And so PS75 was an interesting school in that it had kids whose parents were on welfare and kids whose parents were Columbia professors.

It was in the Upper West Side, and it was an experiment. And it also had classrooms that what they then called were open classrooms. Open corridor. Open corridor. And then they had traditional classrooms, all in the same school. So it was a little bit of everything for everybody, yes. What does that mean, what was an open corridor? Open corridor?

You know, there was this whole open classroom movement that had to do with sort of like giving the kids more power in what they study, having them generate some of their own curriculum, not so much seats in regular orders as the kids would sort of fan out over the room. There'd be materials in all corners of the room. And then there'd be an effort to get the kids into the community. So it was a kind of, you could say, anti-authoritarian movement in education. I remember the open classroom. What I mainly remember is, yeah, we didn't sit in rows. There were just tables.

No, so this is the thing that I remember about open classroom. What's interesting is that these debates that were going on in the education system, they reverberate until today. And we'll get into it a little bit, but my experience at PS75, which he's right, and I've spoken about this to you guys before, remember, it was a very unique school, exactly for what you said. It was like a microcosm. Yes. And everything was going on at the same time. But open corridor was basically we made our own lessons. And I mean, and we did whatever we wanted. And I was a bright kid and I had bright friends. And I can tell you just

if it's anything. So I excelled in the open car. I shot way ahead in math. But the kids who were motivated did much better, you know. And ironically, the open classroom movement was, you know, started in part in response to the needs of inner city kids, you know, who seem to be turned off to school. So the idea was that, okay, they'll write their own readers, and then they'll learn how to read by writing, you know. And, you know, there won't be this kind of traditional education forced down their throats. The irony is that later on, a lot of the parents of color said, you know, these kids need discipline, you know.

They need the times tables. Enough of this fooling around. So what was interesting is that when I then moved out of, what's the matter? No, no, no. Go ahead. When I did move out of the city and I went to a more traditional school, I found that the open corridor system had left me with no work habits whatsoever.

And I could not do my homework. And to this day, I blame the open corridor system for in certain ways that I remain ill-equipped in terms of work habits, in terms of the ability to take notes, in terms of certain skills that really do matter. On the other hand, I had great experience there.

I just want to say that I, coming in as a kind of pied piper or showman, was trying to teach the kids how to complete tasks. So if they started putting on a play, they had to go all the way to the bitter end. And we put on plays at PS75 like... West Side Story. West Side Story. And we also put on Chekhov's Uncle Vanya.

I remember that. So you may have graduated by that time. So the idea was that I knew that the kids needed better work habits. And one of the ways to do that was to take something they started and carry it forward, you know. And maybe that meant if they were writing that they would put out their own magazines. You know, if they were doing something on radio, they would produce their own radio shows. They would have to complete tasks. I think that is really important.

We're jumping around, but he directed, I believe you directed this production of West Side Story at our grammar school. I remember it to this day. It was a remarkable accomplishment. The greatest West Side Story production. It might have been.

You were really a magic. I don't know if you were. Like, you were really a magic teacher. And I meet now still with a bunch of PS75 people. And everybody still remembers you. Everybody still talks about you. And we also met Miss Blau. Remember Sharon Blau?

Of course, Sharon. Who, you know, she died. She did? She died like 15 years ago already, something like that. Who was your classroom teacher? Miss Blau. Oh, yeah. She was great. Yeah, you know, she died. She did? She died like 15 years ago already, something like that. Who was your classroom teacher? Miss Blau. Oh, yeah. She was great.

Yeah, she was fantastic. Because it was a time when a lot of talent was attracted into teaching. There were people like Sharon Blau and Esther Rosenfeld. And then there were a lot of men because the men were all evading the draft, you know. So you had people like Mike Temple, you know, who were, you know, they didn't want to be drafted into the Vietnam War. And so it was a really extraordinary time. And the principal. Louis Mercado.

Louis Mercado, who was kind of a revolutionary, you know, looked a little bit like, you know, like Che Guevara or something. He did. And he was like a lot of lefty revolutionaries, which is he loved the people, but he didn't like people. So he didn't know how to get along with his teachers. They would leave his office in tears. But I kind of knew how to handle him, and I liked him for all his roughness. So I'm actually interested to know how you feel about this thing.

So one of the things that I remember, and I'm hoping that's John Engle so we can talk more about the writing and stuff. So yeah, my mother who worked in the school, she didn't like Mr. Mercado at all. No, I mean none of the teachers liked him for understandable reasons, because he really was a kind of a hermit and a misfit, you could say, who ended up being the principal of a school. And also, he was a wannabe artist, too. He was very sympathetic to writers and artists going into the schools, but not to the regular Shlomil teachers. Is that my friend? Oh, great. Do I know who that is?

That's Michelle Horowitz, our old friend Michelle. Who's that? This is Mark. Oh, come on, Michelle. Come in, boyfriend. Come in, Michelle. Come sit down. So, okay, so one of the things that I got out of my public school education

was that it convinced me that the problem with education was not actually in the schools. Because at a very young age, I noticed that the kids like myself were doing well, and the kids who were less fortunate socioeconomically, mostly of color, were doing very, very poorly. Yet we had exactly the same resources available to us all exactly the same uh... teachers available to us and this debate carries for till today when people when when children doing better than they need to spend more money in the schools and i

and i didn't you know since my p s seventy five days so that's not that's not what's going on and i can remember being in the fourth grade and one of what's going on with these kids why are they behaving why are they doing their homework what's going on. And I can remember being in the fourth grade and wondering, like, what's going on with these kids? Why aren't they behaving? Why aren't they doing their homework? What's going on? What's your feeling about all that? Well, there's a lot I could say about that. Certainly, there were some very talented kids of color, you know. Of course.

But, you know, they had to prove their manhood on the street afterwards, you know. And so they couldn't just be, you know, white adaptive, you could say. And then often, you know, there was a single mother who was working. And so there weren't the same conversations around the dinner table. There wasn't the same cultural background, the same vocabulary. They were more or less left to themselves a lot.

Absolutely. Anyway, I realized I was not going to solve the problems of the larger society or education as a whole. I was just going to try to do a good job and do something exciting in that school. Right, but there is the feeling out there that if only we could fix the schools somehow, that we could overcome these problems.

And my experience at PS75 convinced me that, although we can always try to improve the schools, that it's not that easy. It isn't that easy, but I do think that public schools need more money. And I do think that teachers need to be better paid. Well, this is another thing that you alluded to earlier, and this is true. We had the most talented teachers when I was in school. And I think that's because, and you would know this better than I would, that somehow the barriers to entry

were not as onerous then. That very talented people like this woman, Miss Blau, she went on to be a lawyer. They would come and they would teach for a little bit. They were very, very bright. And then they didn't need a teacher's degree or whatever it is. They could come in and teach for five or six years and then and then pursue other things in life.

And that seems not. Well, they were said they were they could have been CEOs in a different life. That's right. They had a lot of resources, you know. But one of the things I noticed about the open card, open classroom system was that it worked much better when the teachers had a lot of intellectual resources, you know, so Herbert Cole, who wrote all these books about open classroom, had written a book of philosophy before he became a teacher, you know, and so the teachers who had a lot of quivers to their bow, you know, could afford to facilitate more easily than the teachers who didn't have that much, you know. So, yeah, it works better, you know,

when the teachers, you know, have a natural authority because that was one of the problems. How do you establish authority if you are continually trying to de-emphasize your power, you know? It's a kind of paradigm. Michelle, you want to cut? We haven't seen you in so long, Michelle. Michelle was one of our early fans.

She wrote to us years ago. She had written a paper, I think, on humor. In my high school paper, that was how I pitched. I remember you. Yeah, but she hasn't changed a bit. Do you remember me, Philip? I do, but tell me how. Okay, so.

Talk into the mic, Michelle. She still doesn't talk into the mic. I remember your face, but I'm not remembering the circumstances. She's the one who let me know that you were still around. I left here about five years ago to pursue a master's degree in social work in St. Louis. Well, of course, you went out with Dan Cranes. Yes, Dan Cranes. Oh, my God.

You got out of it. You're lucky. Very lucky. Why? I'm not going to say anything else. I'm not going to embarrass Dan further than I need to. Dan's great. We're still friends. Anyway, so I did the Skidmore Summer Riders. Right, which I just finished doing. Yeah, but it's virtual this year, right? Yeah, it was virtual, but the boys had us come up anyway just to hang out in their house. That's nice. Okay, so you went down to St. Louis to get a social work degree. Yeah.

I don't remember you at all. You were taking a course with... How did you clue me into the fact? Okay. I don't know. I think I told you. I think I came back probably the last time before I left

to say hello. You said you were taking a course with... Oh, I just got back. I took this great writing class with Philip Lopate. And I'm like, is that Philip Lopate? Yeah. He said, oh yeah, I was in his class.

And then you sent me a picture of the page on being with children. So this is your book. I'm hoping you'll sign it for me. Of course, yeah. And on page 317. Yeah, there's something by you. It says, yeah, it talks about Nam playing the guitar.

Oh, yeah, okay. All right. I'll read it just for my fans. It says, they were mostly fourth and fifth graders. The seniors were at graduation practice. Nam was plucking a guitar, and I realized he could play quite well. So I put away my idea for the lesson and took them into the writing room to write songs.

And then you talk about writing. One of the things I did was I. And then I asked Dan Cranes for your email. What? I mean, I, I, I, I like the idea of, uh, you come in with a, with a lesson plan and then, uh, the kids are in a different mood. You just throw it out the window and, you know, um, go with something,

some hint. And it was very jazzy. something, some hint. It was very jazzy. It was like jazz. As you remembered Noam by name, you remembered he played guitar. How many of the kids would you remember? How many of the kids in Noam's class, there were 25, whatever kids, how many

of those do you think you would still remember to this day? If they did what Michelle did and joggled my memory, I'd remember 90% of them. I kept the same email thread open from the first time I wrote. And you were unavailable. You were having dinner guests. And, like, I wanted to throw it together. Like, one last good get before it didn't work.

But I told myself whenever I was going to come back in town, I was going to make it happen. Oh, that's great. That's great. And then Lou emailed me. I don't know how you know Lou. It going to make it happen. Oh, that's great. That's great. And then Lou emailed me. I don't know how you know Lou. It's serious. Lou Witsky. It's serious.

She knows him from when she used to come every week with us. And Perrielle and I have crossed paths already from a totally different. So, Michelle, what's your connection with comedy? Just a big, just a nerd. Groupie. Yeah. Well, I wouldn't use the word groupie big, just a nerd. Groupie. Yeah. Well, I wouldn't use the word groupie. No, super fan.

Super fan. I mean, in general, I... I wanted to sit at that table. She was an early John Mulaney... Big fan. Oh, my God. You've introduced them to me, and... You tried to fix me up with, like, Colin Jost once, I remember.

You were like, hey, Colin, she's single. Like... You tried to fix me up with Colin Jost once, I remember. You were like, hey, Colin, are you single? I mean, I love the comic and literature and film and anything. I always feel like when I'm writing, if I can still smile or laugh at something after I've read it 15 times, then I know that it's good. You thought my piece was pretty funny. Yeah, I'm that it is good. You thought my piece was pretty funny. I'm very drawn to I have this weakness as a teacher which is that if the students write something that's very solemn and grim, I'm not

interested in it. Especially if it's self-pitying. So I think sense of humor is really important. Philip, you had alluded to we need to pay teachers more. I want to ask Noam this question because Noam, you're a businessman. Do you think teachers are underpaid? Is there such a thing

as being underpaid? Or just the teachers... Well, we can bring him in here. I think that... I don't know enough about that. I think that when teachers were such as we were discussing before,

where they did teaching for a short period in life life but didn't intend to make it a career, that the money wasn't quite as important because they didn't see it as a permanent thing. If people are going to make an entire career out of teaching and we want to have the best teachers, then it has to pay competitively. Yeah, it has to. Well, in the 30s, you know, it was a good job for people who were children of immigrants, let's say, and weren't going to get any other kind of job to do. And then in the 60s, it was more like the Peace Corps. It was something that idealistic people would do for a while, you know. That's right. And they still do it in Teach for America, you know. But, you know, as you say, it's not necessarily a lifelong career. Yeah.

Now, if we had to cut out one department of the school, we're looking to save money. Somebody's got to go. Where would you start cutting? The music department? Yeah, definitely math. Well, something I feel like I picked up. In the mic, Michelle. You haven't changed.

I know. In the book, Being With Children, I feel like I picked up on a piece where there was a lot of funding for the arts, but there weren't really any indicators or outcomes. Like, you couldn't, like, measure success in the arts. Right. And they wanted accountability. They wanted some kind of. They want data. They wanted data. They wanted some kind of... They want data.

They wanted data. They wanted some kind of mathematical thing. And many a time that I bluffed and wrote grand proposals and pretended that, you know, it was all very scientific. But in fact, it really was, you know, flying by the seat of our pants. And sometimes great things came from it. Like making art. What did you say, Michelle?

Well, I was hoping my boyfriend, Mark Sauer, who works as a public school teacher in the Ferguson Florissant District in St. Louis, but he's a bit shy, and he went to the dog park instead. Tell him we can put a blur on his face and digitally change his voice. He literally went to the dog park. He was like, can put a blur on his face and digitally change his voice. And he went to the dog, literally went to the dog,

he's not. He was like, I'm going to go check out Washington Square Park. Okay. I thought went to the dog park might be a phrase, a term of art.

No, no, no. Like out to lunch. No, that's just the text that I got. Anyway. So go ahead, Dan. He talked about pay. No, I was just, yeah, I mean,

I was just, you know, like when I think of the things that I learned in school, when I think of all the crap, anyhow. And then, of course, you know, Bruce Springsteen said he learned more from a three-minute record than he ever learned in school, but probably an exaggeration. But the fact of the stuff is forgotten? Certainly most of the stuff I learned in European history in high school is completely gone. It's a piece of the puzzle or a step.

So these things are necessary even if you then forget them because they're all connected in a way, you know. So I don't think it's, I don't really believe that education has to be relevant, you know. I mean, we can't teach kids anything that's not immediately relevant to their 2022 lives. That doesn't make sense to me, you know. I mean, I shouldn't use myself as an example, but when I was, you know, like, let's say 13, 14 years old, I started reading Russian novels, you know? And I didn't know what the word troika meant.

I didn't know what a samovar was. So it wasn't relevant to my life in Brooklyn at that time. But I was being stretched into things that were not my life, you know. I was learning something different, you know. And so I don't think that the only thing that education should be giving you is something that you can use immediately. Although if I had to pick one thing that I learned that I do use, it's typing. Yes.

My father made me take typing. Typing is a very valuable skill. Typing, yeah. And obviously reading. What's that? I took a typing class, but I learned copy-paste in that class, and then we didn't. But I think what Phil is saying is that if your education excites you

about learning and gives you a curious mind, then that stays with you for the rest of your life. Yes. As I get older, I wonder if we're not born with those traits more than we realize. But nevertheless, I think that's right. Yeah. I mean, go ahead. No, I mean, to me, like, what makes an artist or a writer is the propensity to generate questions. It's not to find answers.

It's that after you finish something, then you generate another question, you know? So that kind of desire to learn more, you know? I mean, you know, I've written about 15 books, but I'm still generating questions and trying to write something different. That was some of the criticism you gave me on my piece in that class. What? I tied it up in a nice, neat bow. I never told you guys,

but I went through a really traumatic event here in New York. Not on my account, I hope. No, no, no. Do you remember the story? Not really. No, okay. I was hospitalized for a psychiatric episode.

I had a manic episode and then became diagnosed with bipolar disorder. And there's a lot of history of mental illness in my family. So it just really affected everyone. So I wanted to process that before I was leaving for St. Louis. I wanted to go back to Melora Wolf's class. I took her class, and she had the art of the personal essay. I saw that name there and then your name at the school. I was like, well, I got to do that. So I went to the Writers Institute to do that and process that.

And the feedback at the end was that I went through this horrible trauma of depression. I was expressing what it really felt like. And then I tied it up in a neat spot. And now I'm going to St. Louis. What does that mean, tied it up in a neat spot and now I'm going to St. Louis and starting I survived I'm never going to struggle again with this. No I often tell my students

like that's something good for your mom and your friends but not for the reader. The reader doesn't care if you're okay now. The reader wants attention to the very end and the reader is amoral, basically, you know, and does not really care whether you've pulled through or survived. Yeah.

Maybe that's him. So one of the things, I'm hoping that's my friend, John Engle. So John Engle's mother was Lenore Engle. She was active in the school system. Maybe, you know, you don't remember, but he and I were very, very close. Is that, who is that?

You just let them in? Michelle's boyfriend, probably. Back from the dog park. Can you just call down and see if it's John Engle? Because if it is, I want to hold this off what I'm about to say until he gets up here. I remember the name, Illinois Engle. Illinois Engle, yes. And the father was the cover editor of Newsweek magazine.

He was quite an important man at the time. That's him? Okay. So, here he is. So, the listener, this is... Yes, exactly. Come here, Johnny. So, this is my friend, John Engle.

He is my oldest friend. Hey, John. I get sentimental every time I talk about him. Yeah, well, sentimental is it. Be here, we go back. So we've been friends since we were three years old. And we have a birthday one day apart. What's this?

Oh, he's got the spicy meatballs. Oh, there's a spicy meatball. We have a birthday one day apart. My birthday is the 17th. His birthday is the 18th of July. That's the one that's rare. That's the one that... Oh, there's a spicy meatball. We have a birthday one day apart. My birthday is the 17th. His birthday is the 18th of July. That's the one that's rare. This one, some guy wanted me to... So we'll explain spicy meatball in a second.

So John has brought in copies of the creative writing magazines that Mr. Lopate edited kind of and elicited from us young kids. But anyway, as far as my friend Johnny goes, so we were very, very close friends, and at the time, we knew we were close friends. But only as I got older, I realized what a... I can't talk about it. Anyway.

Well, it's a good thing we're still close friends I can't even account for getting emotional like that we were very close friends in a way that people don't have like my kids don't have friends like that and I didn't realize it at the time we were like brothers

and we're friends to this day and you went to school together and you both had were you talking to the mic? oh sorry yeah we went to PS75 we lived in the same building we spent

an awful lot of time together I don't know maybe it's because our 60th birthday is coming up maybe that's why I'm getting emotional about it. It's a lot of years. So anyway, Mr. Lopate, he really treated us like we were not little kids. And we would say stuff, right? And we would write stuff.

And he wasn't faking it. He seemed actually to be energized by our ideas, by the things we were writing. He seemed to really enjoy them, not in a way that he was, you know, just for the sake of teaching. You agree? And this memory, I was telling him that we meet with some kids from PS75.

We're no longer kids. No longer kids. And this memory has stayed with us to this very day. Is that talking to Mike's voice? Yes. No, well, give your... Yeah, no. I mean, I think we were actually pretty fortunate

that my feeling has always been that PS75 was a particular time and place. Like, it probably could have only happened on the Upper West Side in, like, 1970, 71, 72. And right after the Oceanville-Brownsville strike and everything like that. Oh, 72. And right after the Oceanville Brownsville strike and everything like that. Oh, yeah. It was part of that whole political moment.

Was that the teacher strike when we were in first grade? Yeah. Yeah, I remember, yeah. I can tell by my brief time with Mr. Lopate that this man was born to work with young people. You can't imagine what it was like. I have to tell you, I mean, just, I don't know when the last time anyone has looked through these.

The writing is amazing. So do you have any essays you can read for us? I have very few. Maybe just an excerpt. Oh, it's Perry Ell's fault that you had the day of the 14th. But we'll talk about that later. I mean, just so much of it is, I mean, it holds up. Do you know that Karen Kornbluh was one of your students as well?

I don't know if you know who she is. No. She became a very important intellectual. And for a while, there were articles. She was very close with Barack Obama. And it was even one article, I think in The Atlantic, they called her Obama's brain. Oh, gosh. She's a super star.

So she was the biggest star to come out of PS75 at that time? And also one of the people in KISS. John Cryer. John Cryer, the actor? Yeah, John Cryer and my name is Luca. I live on... Susanna Vega.

But yes, probably the biggest star was Mr. Klein, a substitute who went on to take the stage name Gene Simmons. Oh, wow. I will be darned. No, no, that's Chaim Witts.

It's not Chaim Witts. He was a substitute. Take it to the next of me here. There was an evolution, Chaim Witts. Did you have him? No, but a friend of mine did and said he used to bring in comic books. That's how he knew. Do you remember him? Well, we had a whole comic book club at PS75

because there were kids who all they wanted to do was to make comic books. So we started a comic book club. Do you have any of the movies? It's the all-comic edition, and it says, Dedicated to Comic Lovers Everywhere. You know, one of the things is that I didn't like to talk to kids the way adults talk to kids, you know? I mean, I thought, you know, they're individuals, they're people, and, you know, I wanted to

treat them like people. You strike me as a fan of Mr. Rogers. You seem to have a very similar philosophy to him. Well, I don't have his sweaters or anything. No, and also, after I wrote Being With Children, you know, people from all over the world started visiting the classroom where I was teaching, and some of them, I remember these Swedish tourists, they were shocked because I get angry at these kids, and I tossed them out of the room, and they thought,

oh, I was like, Mr. Rogers, you know, what's he doing getting so angry? But, you know, I was just trying to be a human being, including anger. It's part of it. I think on the Upper West Side, that was how we... A better thing to do than... Yeah. Yeah, I know. So, I mean, basically...

Can I ask you something? One time I remember my fifth grade teacher, Barry Shear, he meant well. He told me, because I was a disruptive child. Were you, Dan? I certainly was. And he once told me that I was a pain in his ass. And then he used to, he didn't let me go to lunch with the other kids because every time I had to do a writing thing where I had to write,

like, I will not talk in class or I will not interrupt the teacher and I had to write it like a hundred times or 200 times or 300 times and anytime I was in in the midst of one of those I was not allowed to eat in the cafeteria with the kids I had to eat upstairs in the classroom with mr. Scheer was this good teaching well it depends I mean did you did you have a good time with mr. she noer? No, I would have preferred to be in the cafeteria with the kids,

but I couldn't be. Now, I'm not saying I wasn't disruptive. I'm not saying I didn't interrupt him. But was this the right approach? Probably not. I mean, again, he did the best as he could, but pedagogically speaking, if that's the word. That is the word.

Was this the right approach, I ask you, Mr. Lopate. No, I wouldn't. How do you handle a kid like me? Well, sit on him. Well, you know, the thing is, Dan, a lot of teachers, in my opinion, a lot of teachers, like the general population, are not that gifted. They don't have great personalities. They're not creative.

And there's not much they could do with you. Mr. Lopate wasn't particularly gifted man. And so he had the tools to excite us and to motivate us. I think he should have medicated me. In general, there's just too much emphasis on discipline in education schools. And if you can move past it quickly, it's much better than trying to... Is there such a thing in your opinion... Parenting, too, by the way. I think that's good advice for parents.

Is there such a thing in your opinion as just a bad kid? Or every kid should be... A bad seed. A bad seed. Or is every kid savable? Village of the damned. That kind of thing. Is there any kid that you would say, this kid's a piece of

shit, I'm done with him? Well, I do think that we don't love all kids equally, you know? That's just the truth of it. Probably parents don't love all their kids. So I'm looking at my writing in the fourth grade and Karen Kornbluth's writing in the fourth grade and hers is quite superior. Oddly enough, even in the fourth grade, no one was talking about Chinese

kids at Harvard. Mine starts, it's called Needix and Rain. Anybody know what Needix is? Needix is like a fast food joint on Broadway. What street? Orange Drinks and Hot Dogs. Orange Drinks and Hot Dogs. It says across 110th Street.

So this is interesting. We played this song with my band. Across 110th Street. Across 110th Street. It says across 110th Street. It is still playing at the Riverside. Riverside was a movie theater. This was, you were in fourth grade when you were writing this?

I guess fourth grade. Elise is saying, look what just passed. I see liquor in the liquor store. Now we're in Needix. I guess it was a stream of consciousness lesson. No, what happened was I took the kids out for walks

to get them to be observant, you know, to write. And so I did do some stream of consciousness. I also did some walking around stuff, you know. And these are kind of like basic, you know, how to get them to just keep writing and writing instead of being so tense about what they wrote. I just want them to, you know, loosen up and do a lot of writing. You know, I do think that the professors and the teachers that I remember most clearly are the ones who inspired me to be creative. And I don't think it's so much about what you're teaching necessarily. certain professors, I mean, for me specifically, English professors and art teachers that really

I remember so clearly because that's what they did, right? Just to give Mr. Lopate or Phil just a little bit of background, Peril's a writer as well. And she's written some books about her sexual awakening. No, that's not what my books are about at all.

I mean, it's not even remotely about that. You know, I did a lesson with kids in Mr. Temple's class where I asked them to pretend that they were losing their minds and going crazy. And

I just wanted to see what would happen. And they just staggered around the room and then they sat down and wrote, you know, what it felt like to lose your mind, you know? I wrote. What? My teeth. Exactly, see?

But you were asking your students to pretend, whereas Michelle was talking about a real issue. She had her leg up on it, yeah. I'm zoning out. This might not be that interesting to people listening, but I'm reading things that I wrote in the fourth grade, and I just can't believe to see this stuff. How smart you were, you mean?

No, it's not good. I mean, Karen Cornbluth's writing is just excellent. The grown-up was writing a map when I peeked into his window. A cat was trying to play, what she says here, in kid's land, and she puts the apostrophe at the end of the S in kids, you know, for the plural apostrophe. I wouldn't have known that in the the S in kids, you know, for the plural apostrophe. I wouldn't have known that in the first place. Well, you know, one of the things I thought was that.

Sounds very literary. Yeah, in kids' land. But on the other hand, her guitar playing is rather shoddy. She says, in kids' land, we love animals and try to treat animals like people. But in adult land, people always manage to stop us. And then she has an asterisk, and at the bottom it says, have you ever had a frog and a rattlesnake to dinner? It's not too much fun. I mean, it's gross. It's bright.

This is fourth grade. Well, I had the idea that all the kids should be encouraged to write poetry or to write stories, but not every kid is going to be a poet, you know? It's a mistake to think that every child is a natural poet. You know, would that that were so? No, they're probably the same proportion of poets among kids as there are among adults.

You'll be happy to know, by the way, Noam is still plucking away at that guitar, and he's just about got it. Ah. You're singing? I sing a little bit, but I actually was a superior Hebrew school student to Karen Kornbluh, according to my Hebrew school teachers. She didn't have the motivation for that.

Also, this is a little aside, but I'm a terrible speller and a terrible speller to this day. Do you think that correlates to intelligence in some way? To early dementia, maybe. I could not. He's a good speller. You're pretty good, Johnny. Jonathan, what are you up to these days?

In the mic, in the mic. Doing a few things for work, but actually trying to, believe it or not, write kids' music. And I played in a band a number of years ago. He has excellent kids' songs. We were supposed to record them and I got sidetracked, but he's quite gifted. But Noam, I thought, do you believe in kids' music? Melodically speaking, can kids not appreciate music that adults appreciate? Or do you mean that the lyrics are for kids? the lyrics are for kids?

The lyrics are for kids. The lyrics are for kids, but musically, like songs like Banana Phone and these... How does that one go down? Banana Phone! It's a little patronizing. I'm saying, like, can kids...

Can kids, in your opinion, when you're writing music for kids, should you be writing at the same level melodically as you do for adults? You know, I got to tell you that one of the assignments that, it's sort of a classic assignment for writing is that you bring in some records and ask the kids to write to the music, you know, and sort of the assumption is that program music will get them going and have them imagining forests and all that kind of stuff.

And it just so happened that kids, you know, they pick up on things so quickly. So I put on a Tchaikovsky record. It just so happens I don't like Tchaikovsky. And I do like Bach. And they were turned off to the Tchaikovsky and they were turned on to the Bach because they sensed something about the way I put the LP on the phonograph.

They read your vibe. They read the vibe. Exactly. Well, maybe they just like Bach. Maybe they like Bach. Maybe, you know. Well, I'll tell you one thing about my kids. They love the Beatles, right?

They love the Beatles. When they hear I Want to Hold Your Hand, it just fills them with joy. And if I put on a Paul McCartney solo record, even if I tell them it's the Beatles, they're not interested in it. They can tell the difference, especially with these early exuberant Beatles songs. Kids respond very much to that, the exuberance of it all. And they're pretty sophisticated listeners, I believe. I mean, maybe not, you know, bebop jazz.

It's an interesting thing as a parent when you try to shove all this culture down their throat, you know, and some of it they take and some of it they don't want any part of. It really is so interesting, this concept of treating kids like adults. I mean, I feel like you do that a lot. You really talk to your kids like they're

not like... And I treat you like a child sometimes. But I want to tell you something. There's a very famous YouTube clip of Gore Vidal having a conversation with Maurice Sendak. Has anybody seen it? No, but I did see the video of Gore Vidal talking with Sacha Baron Cohen when he asked him... What did he ask him?

He asked him about hair care products. Yeah, he said, so what is it like being a famous author and then also having all of these hair salons? Like he was referring to Vidal, that shit. So Gore Vidal and Maurice Sendak were apparently very good friends. And he said to Maurice Sendak, what possessed you to write all of these children's books and where the wild things are as a children's book?

And Maurice Sendak said, well, it was never meant to be a children's book. It was just that my agent said that this would be the best way that we could sell this. Now, your agent never said, on my knees would be good for children. No, he didn't. Although my agent does represent some pretty well-known children's book authors. So you never know. I do speak to my kids. I don't talk down to my kids. I speak to them like

I presume they can understand. No, you speak down to me, not to your kids. I think that's because I always felt like when I was a kid, I was able to understand adult stuff. Well, you said that about your dad, too. You said he always took you everywhere and treated you like an adult, right? Yeah, he always took me everywhere.

I mean, obviously, there's limits to that. They are children at the end of the day. No, I don't. I mean, we've had... I'm sorry? You can't take him to the brothel, you know. No, I can't take him to the brothel. I'll tell you, this Phil Lopate is alright by me. But I think he's a very special

guy. I just think that you were born for this. I said it earlier, but there's only so many Philip Lopates in the world. So we we got to staff these schools. We're going to have to. No, no. We can't get all Phil Lopates in the school. I did a lot of teacher training also.

And you can pull a lot out of teachers. You know, I mean, the thing about writers, for instance, is a lot of writers hate to teach. Not every good writer is a good teacher. So it's actually kind of rare for somebody... I mean, I really like teaching. I like the psychological aspects of it. You get a group of students in a room and you never know if they're going to gel or not.

Yeah, but you push Michelle over the edge. They can go too far. They can go too far sometimes, yeah. I like teaching. I had a fellowship to wait and finish this off oh no sorry no no i thought you were done please i am okay i know i i got a teaching fellowship to go to graduate school and for creative writing that seems like a good idea to not get into you know so much debt but i really enjoyed teaching, but I think that as a writer, I felt like you have to make a decision. And that's a difficult because you pour so much into teaching to be a good teacher.

Like you really put your soul into it and reading other people's work. But until you can make a living from your writing, which may be never, you need another day job. Right. Yep. Did you read The World According to Garp? Yeah, of course. I'm not a huge reader of literature, but boy, I love that book. Are you a fan of John Irving's?

I like that book, too. I can't get enough of that book. I could read it over and over. Non-sequiturs, yeah. Just be talking about... I wonder if you have grandkids. You know what made me think of it? Because in Garp, he was a teacher

and his wife was a teacher. She had an affair with a student and they were teaching Milton and they were thinking about pouring all the energy into teaching. It wasn't a total non-sequitur, actually. It connected the dots. I saw the movie. It was in and out in two hours. I have a daughter who's 27 years old. Okay.

So no grandchildren yet. So you, like Noam, had kids a little bit later. I had them, like, one late, yes. He was working his way through all the teachers at PS75. He went out with Miss Bolzano. Did you? Yes.

A lovely woman who is no longer with us anymore. Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. Yeah. I'm sorry to hear that. Honestly, I feel like everyone at 75 was a great person. They were. And it was funny because there were the progressive teachers and then there were the old battle axes,

and I liked the battle axes too, you know? They were strong, you know? One of the key moments in my education was when it was determined that the progressive classroom was just a little too unstructured for me. Yes. And I was banished to Mr. Brendel's. Oh, I know it well. In sixth grade.

He was like the army sergeant. Yeah. Well, you needed that. Yeah. Well, he ended up killing himself, though, so I don't know how much you had to do with that. I'll tell you, Mr. Lopate, he's got a bit of a dark edge.

You wouldn't think so. So just as an aside, what a different time it was. So John's father, I said before you came, was a cover writer of Newsweek magazine. And he was responsible

for many iconic Newsweek covers especially during the Watergate era. And I remember we'd go over to Johnny's apartment and his father

would be working on them or they would take photographs of clay sometimes. Sometimes they were sculptures. or they would take photographs of clay sometimes. Sometimes they were sculpture. And he would do sketches of like, there was one famous one of Nixon on a stormy sea on the presidential seal and things like this.

And that was all. How long can he stay afloat? How long can he stay afloat? Can he stay afloat? Oh, it'll happen now. And his father was a gifted artist. But in those days, things were printed and things moved much more slowly. And when my father was marrying Carol, who we just spoke about before, his father's wedding present to my father was right before the 1972 election.

And in those days, because they didn't know who was going to win and they needed time to prepare to put out a magazine, they had to prepare a cover for either scenario. And there were a few test printings of the Newsweek, McGovern wins, the great upset. Yeah, okay. He said he presented my father with the Newsweek cover of McGovern winning the presidency. And that was his father's gift. How long was your father at Newsweek? Until what year?

Until about 85. It was because of that Eagleton experience that I taught that class where I had the kids pretend to be losing their minds because I was so disturbed by the idea that this country couldn't deal with somebody who had gone into therapy. My God, you know. That this country had such weird notions about mental health. So it's a lot easier to get thrown off the ticket in those days. Eagleton was McGovern's first choice for a running mate.

Is that what it was? Yeah, he was on the ticket. Turns out he got into therapy. I was 10. You should ask Mr. Lopate. What? I said I was 10, you should ask Mr. Lopate. What? I said, I was 10, you should ask Mr. Lopate. Yeah, no, I mean, he was on the ticket.

And then it came out that he had had some kind of nervous breakdown when he was much younger. And then he went into therapy. And this was seized upon by the Republicans as though, you know, he can't possibly become vice president. So then McGovern, who was essentially a decent man, nevertheless, acceded to pressure and kicked him off. And Muskie cried, and he was considered to be done. I can't think of a better job for somebody with anxiety than the vice president. It's easy, you know. It's built in, yeah.

You're not doing a whole lot, right? I mean, unless, God forbid, the president dies, then you have to do that. Yeah. I mean, how stressful is it to be vice president is what I'm getting at. I don't know. I don't know. That's Pence. He's probably still.

I mean, I would say that waitressing at the Olive Tree would be a lot more difficult for somebody with anxiety. Listen, mental issues are much more common than we ever realized. Yitzhak Rabin, you know, the Israeli president. Well, he was under tremendous pressure. He had a nervous breakdown. Yeah, but he was also under absurd levels of pressure. Churchill didn't have a nervous breakdown.

The point is that, what I'm saying is this great hardened leader had a nervous breakdown. Wow. Yeah. And it was kept a secret, but it came out afterwards. And then he became prime minister again after that. But Michelle has something she'd like to express. So because of my experience with mental illness and the intergenerational passing of mental illness,

I've gone on to try to intervene as early as possible. So I pursued a social work degree, but I work at Washington University Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and I actually treat preschool-onset depression. And I do parent-child therapies all the time, and I know a lot about child development. So anything you want to ask me about. Well, I mean, how does depression manifest itself? And I study parenting. How does depression manifest

itself? I remember as a preschooler, well, I don't know how old I was precisely, but I remember hearing about death, you know, whatever age I happened to be, and utterly horrified by the idea, and I remember just at night lying in bed thinking, oh my god,

I'm going to just be dead. No, I have a five-year-old client. Forever. Now, but is this normal or was this child onset depression? How normal? Would that have been normal behavior for somebody five, six years old to be thinking about death? I mean, different kids will, like, kind of obsess over death. Right. But kids with depression will think about ways to die.

I mean, like, can I step out into traffic? Can I hold my breath for a really long time? Into a bathroom window, yeah. Even at a preschool age? Yes. Now, with suicide is... And they'll meet adult criteria. There are people that will meet adult criteria for preschool onset depression.

But we don't necessarily see suicide in that age group. Yes, you do. And even as young as five or six? Yes. Indeed, yes. It's very, I mean, that area is not actually my super expertise.

That is a colleague at Washington University, Joan Luby. She basically discovered preschool onset depression and then created a treatment belt on another treatment so I'm trained in that treatment so so so for parents what are the telltale signs or the dangerous signs that your child might be prone to depression and needs early intervention so in children and in men depression is more likely to be exhibited as like irritability and anger, quick to anger.

And they and some they still have anhedonia, which is, you know, lack of pleasure. Yeah. Can't experience pleasure. They don't play. They don't really have as fun, much fun. They're not interested in other kids. I mean, it's... I would imagine that if you're depressed at five, six years old, it's probably biological. You're probably your parents. I mean, I did... I listened to the one...

Who was the economist you had on the other day? It was about parenting. Ryan Kaplan, yeah. Yeah, I disagreed with a lot of what he said because so much of it is in psychiatry. I mean, it's genes. It's nurture and nature. It's never one or the other.

Your genes are triggered like, I guess I could tell you my personal story. No one else really knows too much about this. But my psychiatrist personally believes that my episode of mania was triggered by a predisposition to mental health issues and at the time i was smoking a lot of pot and pot triggered a chemical reaction now there is a diagnosis of um what's it called marijuana induced psychosis but I passed the length of time when the marijuana was out of my system and I was still manic.

I was hospitalized for like a full month and then on FMLA for the following month. Your insurance pay for that? I was working at a corporation that had really good benefits. Actually, it was perfect timing. If you're ever going to have an episode like that, I really lucked out. Sucks it was in the city. This explains a lot, actually.

I wonder what happened to you while you disappeared, while we never heard from you. Well, she was only in there for a month. No, but I mean she— No, that was when I was 20. That was 2012. I was 20, 25 or 2012. I was 20... 25 or something. But that was before...

Not COVID. Yeah, I didn't reach out to you guys until I was still working at... I was working at this photo studio and I would listen to podcasts constantly. I mean, I went through... And audiobooks. I went through Jane Austen's entire canon.

I didn't read a single Jane Austen book in college. Went through her entire canon in the way she wrote it. So I was like starving. That's mental illness all by itself. I was, no way. I'm Canada. Don't you like, come on.

I do like Jane Austen, absolutely. How can you not like Jane Austen? Yeah. She's very funny. So are you living now in St. Louis? Yeah, I live in St. Louis. And I, you know, I actually, my role is kind of like, it's in, I work for the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. But I work as a, also as a clinical care coordinator for, it's kind of like a small nonprofit funded by the St. Louis County Children's Service Fund.

And we're called the Synchrony Project, and we work with the St. Louis County Family Court System to make developmentally informed recommendations for how to prevent maltreatment recidivism. So they've already entered, the parents have already entered the child welfare system, and we don't want the kids to have to go through this again. So we make recommendations from the child's point of view because children who have special needs or who have any kind of issues that they need to be treated, they're more likely to be abused or neglected. Then you've got the parents and their issues that they may have.

We try to meet any unmet mental health needs of parents or children, so we try to remove that as a barrier to reunification. And then I often find myself working a lot with the foster families and trying to stabilize the placement because I don't want the kids to be circled around, passed around over and over. I mean, it's tragic when that happens. Wow. All right. I can really bring down a room. I mean, it's tragic when that happens. Wow.

All right. I can really bring down a room. I really can. I'm interested in this stuff. I mean, you know, we had a very good, I had a very good friend of mine who was also a very important figure in the place here who had mental illness. And he killed himself recently. Oh, I'm so sorry. He jumped off a bridge. It was a horrific thing.

And then another thing just three weeks ago, in my wife's family, a very close friend, a policeman shot himself in the head and killed himself. So these mental issues are all around us. We've all experienced it on some level. Yeah, exactly. Suicides have always... I was president of the Suicide Prevention Club

in my high school. Like, that particular phenomenon has always really felt so preventable. And I don't think it's always that a suicide may be caused by mental illness. I think it's a feeling of being trapped and you're out of options. There's nothing else in the world.

If you're having a mental health issue, it might be like, there's no way I'm ever going to feel better. Yeah, it's a kind of entrapment by pattern. And there's an amount of impulsivity that's a part of it, too. You kind of have to act on that impulse. Because it can probably evolve. A long day, yeah. They sometimes say, yeah, that was a of it, too. You kind of have to act on that impulse. Because it can probably evolve. A long day, yeah. They sometimes say, yeah, that was a long day, yeah.

Suicide's an issue that you've thought a lot about, Dan. It is? Yes, it is. You've spoken about it. Well, no, what I've said was is that I said at some point I wouldn't rule out the possibility of my life ending that way uh because i don't feel like suffering some of the slings and arrows that might accompany um the end of life you know i mean like the sickness and things the sickness and and and the the so you never feel suicidal from depression no i i don't but i feel feel like when I see people going through horrible things, illnesses, and, you know... That's almost a rational kind of suicide.

Yes, it would be. Rational. But the people they... Pardon? The quality of life. The quality of life is no longer there. Yeah. I just read this book by Amy Bloom called In Love, where she writes about her husband had dementia and he decided to end his life.

And she had to go to Zurich to do a true assisted suicide because it's not that easy to do in this country. Yeah. Did Dr. Kevorkian go to jail? I think he did. Yeah, I think he did go to jail. What he did was he videotaped himself assisting a man with ALS. He invented this machine where the man, I think, was able to just flick a switch, but he would set it up for the guy, and he would inject something. And all the guy had to do was turn it. And he did a whole video. He was like, okay, just letting you know that once you do this, you will die. Is that okay? Just sign here. And he recorded all this.

And he made the video public because he wanted to press the issue. And they threw him in jail for it. I don't know how much time he did. I'm looking right now. He said that he assisted 130 patients. He died. Yeah, he's not alive anymore. So, Mr. Lopate,

we called you Phil. I remember calling you Phil in the spicy meatball. My essay refers to Phil. Everybody's trying to buy Phil food. But now that you're, we're all old, I feel like calling you Mr. Lopate, but I'll call you Phil.

But now you realize, as a kid, you probably didn't realize the gravity of the man. Yeah. And so you called him Phil. One of the things I loved about working with kids is they had no idea who you were. Like, Norman Mailer could have walked in, and they wouldn't treat him with any more respect than anybody else. You would have to grab their attention and you'd have to...

Well, unless it was like the Fonz walked in. Yeah. Oh, that's before the Fonz. But in general, they didn't know from one writer to the next, you know? Yeah. I mean, I think that... At 73, I don't know who would have been the cool person back then. Neil Armstrong, right?

Might have been a Walt Frazier or someone like that. Yeah, or like, yeah, Walt Frazier or what about Tommy Agee or something. One of the old Cleon Chalmers. Who was big on TV at that time?

I think that we just thought you were another cool teacher. Cool teacher. The coolest. Gave us the opportunity to not do what all the other teachers were. Yeah, it was a kind of holiday in a way. Yeah. Yeah.

But then I wanted you to work. Nevertheless. Did you guys go over West Side Story? A little bit. What's your recollection of that? That was the biggest night in PS75's history. That was big, yeah. I mean, that was a real...

The kids had come to me. They wanted to do West Side Story, and I didn't particularly want to do it. But then they talked me into it, and then I got all into it. What kind of kids at that age wanted to do West Side Story? Because it was... First of all, it was the West Side, Upper West Side.

And it was their myth, essentially. Because, like, Brit, it was the West Side, Upper West Side. And it was their myth, essentially. Because like Brit, it was their myth, you know. Brit. Yeah. Brit, Roberto, you know. So we rehearsed for months, you know. And they were really, a lot of them were talented singers and dancers, you know. So, you know, but they were, we put it on three or four times. And the first night was, you know, tremendous dancers you know um so you know but they were we put it on three or four

times and the first night was you know tremendous you know but a third time uh the kids were punching each other behind the curtains and it wasn't that easy you know now i remember opening night because that was the gala opening and this is what i heard i don't really recall the details but that the whole idea was that when they had the knife fight right that you had expressly said you can have like of course they wanted switchblades and you said you cannot have the knives out and then when it came time for that scene the 10 and 11 year oldsolds took the blades out and started fighting each other. Well, no, there was... At least that's the story in sixth grade.

As legend has it. There's a part of it that's true, and you were mentioning the most, you know, fraught and embarrassing moment of my teaching career. No, no, no. Yeah, because they could have stabbed each other, but it was much more controlled. They knew what they were doing.

They had experience. But they were also playing with me, you know? Yes, exactly. At least the story the next day was that you were in the wings yelling, close the blades. Close the blades, yes. Close the fucking blades. Close the blades, yes. Close the fucking blades. That was the Upper West Side in the 70s.

It was a rough neighborhood, the Upper West Side back then. I mean, everybody we know was mugged, right? People can't, like, when older people worry about crime in the city. Everybody was mugged. I know whenever I meet these people from out of town, I say, well, the 70s was much cooler because it was rough.

The city was rough. I think, get out of here. I was mugged in the 70s. I don't want that to come back. If they're going to mug Mr. Lopez, don't mug anybody. I mean, they have no, they figure Mr. Lopez should at least be off limits. No, I mean, these people have no decency. It's way off the subject, but it is a dynamic which is transferable to many, many situations

where once the new generation comes along and they really don't have a recollection of a particular era, they don't understand what's possible. They don't understand that we could go back to a time where just everybody's getting mugged, right? Exactly. To them, and I've said this before, in so many ways,

the past is like a black and white movie. These things can't happen. That's what's happening in Russia and Ukraine now. People just can't believe that people still do stuff like this, right?

Yeah, I know. But it's just reversion to the mean, really. I mean, human nature is the same, and these things will always continue to happen because memories fade. Anyway. Okay. So we ready to wrap it up? Yes. I just want to say,

I'll let Johnny say something also, but honestly, it is no small matter to be a teacher and leave an impression on 10 year old children that stays with them for the rest of their lives. I don't know. I don't know if you fully appreciate that gift that you gave us and the gift that you have. And I'm speaking for me and for him and, as I said, for the other people that we've spoken to. This is a remarkable impact that you had on little kids. So really you should take pride in that as a personal matter.

It's amazing. I don't know what you want to add. I will say that one of these I picked up walking up Broadway about 20 years ago and some guy had a bunch of stuff out on the sidewalk and I saw the spicy

meatball and I said, wow, where did you get this? And the guy goes, oh, that's some kind of out there writing. Outlaw writing. of out there writing. Outlaw writing. Truly outlaw writing. Okay, guys. So Mr. Phil Lopate

was the author of the book Being With Children and numerous other books. Professor of creative writing, not creative writing, but nonfiction writing at Columbia University. Editor of the Spicy Meatball,

which is no longer in production, but perhaps you can find a copy on a table somewhere on the Upper West Side if you're lucky. The best in elementary school creative fiction. Thank you, Mr. Lopate.

Please sign my book for me. And Michelle Horowitz, our old and dear friend. Michelle Horowitz, so good to see you again. Good to see you too. It's so great to see your faces. And glad you're flourishing in St. Louis. I'm doing very well.

And stay off the weed. I never will smoke again. Just because it's legal doesn't mean you should be doing it. No, I do not touch the stuff. And there's a good amount of evidence that there's a lot of, like now it's becoming so legal, there's a lot more Yeah, I mean, you know, people have to be careful with it. I'm a way better guitar player

now than I was then. Way better. Perry Lashon brand, you could buy her books on my knees, and the only wish I trust is my own on Amazon. My book, Iris Spiro Before COVID, a novel, also available on Amazon. I'm going to send it to Phil. Perry, if you get Phil's Amazon. I'm going to send it to Phil.

If you get Phil's address, I'm going to send him a copy of Dan's book. You're not going to send him a copy of my books? Okay, you know what? I'm just going to put my address underneath my signature. Okay, that's great. Well, that's between you guys. I think he would enjoy Dan's book.

The Comedy Cellar. ComedyCellar.com comedy seven nights a week we got four rooms this is like a multiplex theater we got going here

Noam he is the the king of the stand-up comedy business in New York City and we thank you all and we'll see you next time

on Live from the Table Bye bye everybody