Barbara Manning is a musician who needs no introduction. One of the shining stars of the 90’s indie rock underground (and one of my personal favorite musicians of all time), Barbara began performing as part of the Chico-based band 28th Day. After that band dissolved, she moved to San Francisco where she became a fixture of the local scene. In addition to her celebrated run of solo albums, Manning also performed with groups like World of Pooh, SF Seals, External Glands of Secretion, Barbara Manning and the Go-Luckys!, and more. You can (and should) check out her Bandcamp page, where you can hear and purchase many of her records.
Barbara and I spoke by phone on January 19th, 2022 to discuss her career in music, as well as her life after largely exiting the music industry.
I wanted to start by talking about San Francisco. I know that your first band, 28th Day, was formed when you were in school in Chico. When 28th Day disbanded you were given the choice of staying in the band or moving to San Francisco, and you choose to leave. What specifically drew you to the city?
I had wanted to go to San Francisco since I was seven or so. It started with a poster my mom had on the refrigerator of California. It was a poster that was all drawn cartoons. I would look at where we were living, which was San Diego, and that looked boring, but then when you looked up and you found San Francisco, it was a lot more amazing to me than LA. I just had this fixation on it; I wanted to live there.
When we ended up moving to the woods of the Northern California mountains we would go to San Francisco for a holiday getaway. It was our city to go to and it was just so splendid, it fulfilled all my fantasies. Moving there was really like the best time, I kind of feel like I lived in the best era. A weirdo musician working at a record store and riding my bike around, it was just wonderful.
I can’t even imagine. I lived in the Bay Area from 2016 to 2019, and given how tech has completely saturated everything I think it is a completely different city now.
It was. There were a lot of venues that people could play at. There were a bunch of weird bands like the ones I was in who would play at these venues, which I find almost remarkable to think about now. You could have this helter skelter band, get a gig and have other craziness on the bill, draw a crowd and be able to get paid at the end.
What was the music scene like in the city at the time. I guess this was around 1986 or 1987?
Yeah, I moved there in ‘86 and I can tell you that the music scene was everything, anything you wanted. They had dinosaur rock, fantastic great blues guitar players, veteran guitar players, the whole Dead scene; it wasn’t my thing, but it was there if you wanted it. Then there was hardcore, post-rock (I’m thinking of Jawbreaker and things like that), and just fucking bizarre rock. Stuff like Caroliner Rainbow or National Disgrace. There were just so many styles and everybody was open to that. People were just flocking to shows.
Are there any artists from that era that never really got their due?
Probably the Thinking Fellers. It seems like every time I turn around the Thinking Fellers are being talked about in the highest terms somewhat nostalgically by people, but I would say that they probably didn’t get what they needed to survive. Lots of bands that I loved at the time people are still working on. Like Virginia Dare is still trying to kick it around and keep it going.
Some of my motivation for asking about San Francisco is to talk about the role of location in your music. From living there I know San Francisco is such a unique place: the landscape of the city, the weather, all the fog. Even now when I listen to some of the newer music coming out of it I’m transported back into the city, and I really can hear how the area has influenced the sound. I associate you with the city since you were there for much of your musical career, so I’m curious how you think being in the city impacted your music.
Big yes. I totally agree that the city permeates the music and it does have a feel to it.
Not that there was a San Francisco sound (since I was just saying how diverse it was) but for me I wanted to be there so much and when I did go it felt like I belonged there. When I moved there it was so easy for me. I got a job immediately, I got interviews easily, I was able to play easily, it just felt like an easy time to do music. I really feel the San Francisco vibe, the feel, the sidewalk energy, the fogginess that makes you feel so safe. All of the San Francisco splendors: going to different parts of the city to stand on the top of a hill and look around and see where you are, exploring new weird bars and restaurants, everything. The whole experience of San Francisco implanted itself in me and in my songs. Sometimes they’re more obvious because I’ll talk about riding my bike in the park or something, but really I hear Fell Street whenever I listen to the song “Never Park”, and I can almost picture a certain sidewalk corner for another song and a bus stop that I would always go to in another. It’s definitely there; San Francisco was definitely so important to me. And I still love it, I still say it’s my favorite place.
That’s amazing. I’ve really done a deep dive into your discography over the past few weeks and especially Truth Walks In Sleepy Shadows, that record just feels like Haight Street to me. The artwork, the light psychedelia, it just feels very much of that place and what it is like to be there.
I love that. I kind of do that with other bands, like with the Boston scene. Also sometimes I listen to Belle and Sebastian, because I know that Stuart Murdoch lived in San Francisco for a year or two. I often will listen to the music and think “I can’t believe this was made in San Francisco. I can’t believe somebody was living somewhere that I could have taken a bus to his house and hung out with him” because to me it’s just so different from what I was listening to at the time.
Another part of the reason I wanted to discuss the influence of the city is because there are a few albums in your discography that are explicitly not San Francisco albums and have a different feel from some of your other music. I’m specifically talking about In New Zealand, which to me does conjure up mental images of beautiful, pastoral landscapes. How did the experience of being out of San Francisco and in an entirely different place influence that album and make it sound different than records made elsewhere?
I was still living in San Francisco at the time, but I was not aware that I was going to get evicted soon and that things were going to change. I was still in a pretty happy state of mind, feeling very content with where I was. I went to New Zealand and took Convertino and Burns with me (the guys from Calexico), and I kind of had to get out of my shell. That record really required me to not stay hidden at all, I had to be on and encouraging and show people this could happen.
I was basically trying to record everywhere I went, and I needed to let people know that there were things to play with me and I had some ideas to start with (even if I didn’t). In a way, I was really throwing myself to the farthest edge of my own envelope during that time. I needed to really be in tune with the muse, really listen to other people and encourage them to play with me, because they were either going to do a recording session or not. Each one of them was a separate night, a separate experience. I had to be really on the whole time and I was really happy with the result.
I love that answer because it really brings me to the next thing I wanted to talk about. You’ve been a prolific collaborator throughout your career, and it really does seem like a huge part of your artistic process. I do want to talk about a few collaborations you’ve done, starting with In New Zealand. On that record you collaborated with a bunch of legendary New Zealand artists: Chris Knox, David Kilgour, Robert Scott. I assume you were a big fan of them before you recorded with them?
Oh yeah, I was and still am insanely a fan. I think maybe David Kilgour has slowly risen to the top for me, because sometimes I feel like I can only listen to him for a while; when I can’t hear anything else, I have to hear him. But it was a challenge being able to work and tour with him because he is not as forthcoming as a California girl like me. I had to kind of barrel through it and get to the other side where I think I did earn his friendship and his respect, but it wasn’t always that easy. I had to not be a diva but I had to produce; I couldn’t be picky about anything yet I needed to come up with the lyrics or the melody.
Here’s an example: when I went to Chris Knox’s house, we’re hanging out. Graeme Downes from The Verlaines was going to come over in a few hours, so this was my chance to work with Chris alone. He was all for it and said we’re going to start the way I would by myself: with a beat. I said sure, let’s do it. He came up with a beat that was so fast and strong, almost assaultive. Then he left the room and said “Figure something out and I’ll be back.” I walked over to the machine and turned it down to the slowest speed it could go, which is the one that’s actually on the record in “Your Pies.” Then I just started playing guitar over it. What I wanted to say was that I almost felt like it was a challenge from Chris, like he was saying “Here American girl, you want to play with me? Alright, here you go, I’ll see you in five minutes.” Instead of saying something about it or asking to make it slower, I was able to deal with it. Every song on the album had its own scary parts for me like that. I knew I wanted a song out of each collaboration, so I was willing to do whatever I needed to make it happen. It worked out really well.
There’s a part in that song where Chris didn’t think I was screaming very well, and I’m not a good screamer at all. He was making all of these snarly faces and doing weird things with his hands, standing in front of me and just trying to get a good scream out of me. I didn’t do a good scream, I listen to it and think I could have done better, but it’s just so cool because when I think of him I just think about what he was trying to do to get that out of me.
Is there any intimidation factor when you’re recording to these people that you look up to? You did it with these New Zealand musicians, but you also did it with Stuart Moxham and John Langford.
That one was very different because I didn’t bring in any of the music. The only song that I introduced was “Optimism Is Its Own Reward”, so I had one song written in its entirety and that was it. I was given this unique opportunity where Stuart Moxham would dump pages of handwritten notes onto the ground in front of me, and just say “start going through them”. I’d go through them and pick out something and then he’d say “Oh I remember that one, it goes like this”. I mean, just amazing.
I really wanted to do a song in the style of Young Marble Giants, but I wasn’t sure if he’d be willing to do it. Just because he was there didn’t mean he was going to play that style, so I asked him if we could do one in that style and he agreed. It was kind of cool that I got to pretend to be Alison for a while, doing a song that hadn’t been recorded yet.
With John Langford, it was so lucky. John Henderson from Feel Good All Over was hosting us, and he took us from the recording studio to a nearby taco restaurant. The person who was in front of us in line just happened to be John Langford. That’s the reason why he’s on that record.
That’s crazy.
Yeah, it’s amazing. He contributed two or three songs to the album too, and then I got to sing on another album that John Langford was working on with Tony Maimone and Gary Lucas. Gary worked with Captain Beefhart and Tony played with Pere Ubu. I was getting to play with these guys as well just because we ran into John at a taco restaurant.
Some of those things are just so remarkable and so incredibly lucky. I just felt humbled by it, it’s really neat.
There’s one other collaboration I’m interested in talking about: Glands of External Secretion. I tend to think of you as somebody who works within a pop framework, but I’ve also read that when you were in World of Pooh with Brandan Kearney and Jay Paget that there was some discomfort for you being pidgeonholed as the “pop” person in the band. After listening to that record, I’m curious how you think that music fits into your sonic world and what kind of place experimentation has in your artistic practice
Let me talk about the pop thing vs artsy thing first. That was a big problem for me, and for sure I got upset about certain things in the music industry. One was being compared to Liz Phair every time I turned around, and the other was being thought of as the pop person in an experimental band where everybody else is doing more “highbrow” music. To the average listener it might sound terrible, but to a music lover they’ll feel invigorated by it; it’s weird and outside the norm.
Let me think about this, because I need to go back to my mindset in 1994, which is really when I started feeling frustrated. I was dating someone who was in Caroliner, and he would often make remarks about this that would put me on the defensive. I was also exploring and getting into more experimental music at the time. During the record Nowhere I had just discovered Red Crayola for the first time, and I was very much into that kind of free form freakout. I was also listening to The Fugs and The Deviants, and there were things that were very inspiring to me that I wanted to try. Definitely I didn’t get as many kudos about recording freaky music on Nowhere; the Germans didn’t like it at all, they wanted a Scissors record again. I needed to try it out, and I had a lot of friends participate in the freakout noises on the record.
At the same time my friend who performs under the name S Glass (who is the organizer of Glands of External Secretion) had been doing experimental music for years. As a very close friend of mine he participated in many of the sessions for the Nowhere record, but also he would come over and hang out and record from time to time. When we recorded our first single I didn’t know I was in a band with him, but by the second one he had a name for us. We only performed about four shows in our career and barely played live ever, but a couple years back my friend told me he’d like to do a tour with me as Glands of External Secretion. We went to Ohio to tour, and it was very good for me. For one, I don’t tour anymore so it was really fun to do, but I also got to express myself in a way I never did before. I got to yell and be weird and do whatever I felt was appropriate at the time; we kind of had a setlist, but I really had the ability to do whatever. It was just good for my soul, it felt amazing.
But…do I like listening to that kind of music? No. I don’t feel like I really deserve to talk much about it; I don’t have a lot of knowledge about that kind of music. I got to meet a lot of really interesting people from the scene in Ohio, and as soon as they learned I had no knowledge about it they were not interested in talking to me anymore [laughs]. So I was back to my sad pop and sad feelings. It was like “I don’t know about the NWW list, I don’t know about the Whitehouse book that was bootlegged”, and on and on. It’s funny to tour music you don’t really care for.
I think there’s something to be said for loving the experience of that music. I usually don’t want to pop on a record of that kind of stuff, but in a live setting it can be a really amazing experience. Pre-pandemic I’d be happy to go see a noise show because it’s so often a visceral, physical experience that doesn’t always translate over to record.
I also get scared when I hear certain tones. I literally get so scared that I don’t realize that I’m running somewhere, and I had a few experiences like that on the tour. There were just sounds that I can’t take into my body, it just makes me sick.
I’ve also been lucky enough to do more experimental music. I perform with Gate, which is Michael Morley’s band (he was in The Dead C). He was touring and I got to be his partner for about a week. I actually made up a name for that; I didn’t want to be Barbara Manning, so I decided on a different name for myself and just pretended to be someone different. It was fun, I really enjoyed that.
For some reason, Faust also keep asking me to play with them. I got to be on the last Faust album and played a couple live shows with them in LA. It’s just remarkable, I feel honored because I love them. It’s another one of those things where I’ve either been in the right place at the right time or made the right friendship or something, I don’t know.
I want to go back to something that you said earlier about the recording of Nowhere. I actually do hear some of the sound collage sensibility in that record, and hearing that S Glass was involved in that makes a lot of sense. Do you feel like different collaborations influence each other, or that ideas from one record may feed into another later project?
I’m certain that I pick up things; I wouldn’t say I’m highly original in the sense that I wasn’t doing anything no one else had done before. When it comes to noise music I don’t know what I’m doing, so I don’t know what is good or bad. That was something that was kind of nerve wracking because I would think “am I doing stuff that a million people have already done, or is this new? Am I authentic or not?” [laughs]. I would even be screaming about my dad because it was his birthday and he had just died, and it was this weird energy that I had. Some of it was very authentic, but I had no idea how much I was stealing or influenced by.
When I think about my strumming or rhythm, I’ll hear a rhythm from a lot of New Zealand bands where I think “that sounds totally natural, just the way it’s supposed to be.” I feel like that’s where I learned it. But I feel like I’ve lost the sense of your actual question.
I don’t think so. You’ve worked with so many people in different capacities, and I imagine there is a free exchange of ideas when that happens. Does one collaboration influence later projects by expanding your musical vocabulary or giving you new ideas about what you could be doing?
Yes, absolutely. Melanie DiGiovanni, the drummer for SF Seals: I can give you an example of her influence. I had brought the song “Ladies of the Sea” to her and the band. I had written it in Boston, and it’s about not letting someone who is suffering and depressed bring you down also so you drown. When she heard it she heard square wheels. I’m thinking ocean and waves and the salt at the bottom of the water, about how things slowly drift and fall in water, but she’s thinking something totally different: square wheels. How they kind of lurch forward. The anticipation of each side going forward and falling. She told me “I’m going to try to make it sound like square wheels with my drumming,” Now you’re going to have to go back and listen for that. I try to do that all the time with my music now. I try to imagine something and make it sound like that. That was her contribution.
Later I played the song with somebody else. We tried to record it and it was so wretched, I think maybe it was in Chico. But it wasn’t San Francisco, it wasn’t Oakland, it wasn’t that era, it wasn’t with Melanie and her vision of the square wheels, so the song just doesn’t sound the same. I think it comes back to something that you brought up earlier, which was how does San Francsico really infiltrate the music, and is that necessary? And yes, it is. I don’t think I could rerecord it.
I’ve thought about it. I don’t have access to Truth Walks because it is a Matador album, and Matador of course lost the masters; there was a fire or something. They never would do a reissue anyways because it never sold, but the fact is that record will never be reprinted. So why not rerecord all those beautiful songs again? I can’t, it doesn’t work. It’s not just me playing or the song, it’s the other people playing it, the time when we were all together doing it, where we were working, what we had for breakfast, it all has to be that to make it sound like that. At least I think so.
Unless you’re Taylor Swift and choose to re-record everything.
Yeah, I think it’s great that you mentioned her because that’s exactly what I thought when I heard she’s doing her own version. More power to her. It wasn’t that long ago for her; for me it’s been thirty years.
Can you rerecord something and have it be just as good or better? Yeah sure, but is it going to sound like SF Seals from San Francisco? No. I just don’t know how you can capture that.
A lot of it was the sound from Greg Freeman’s studio, which was a place that many San Francisco bands recorded (including Thinking Fellers and my Scissors record). There’s probably tons of records that were recorded there, but now it’s the at the base of Pacific Bell Park (now Oracle Park). Where the baseball stadium is by the bridges and Embarcadero, it used to be a bunch of warehouses and that’s where Greg’s studio was. He has figured it out to the tee, he has GPS’ed it and his studio was basically between second base and the field.
Looking through your discography, you do occasionally record the same song with different projects. “Isn’t Lonely Lovely” is one example, there’s also multiple versions of “Scissors”. How does your relationship to a song change over time, and what makes you want to go back and revisit something you wrote?
You’re making me think about things I’ve never thought about.
First off, a song is not just one recording, for sure. I think everyone knows that. Me singing “Stardust” on my porch is just as amazing, in my opinion, as picking out an old record and putting it on because it’s still the song. The song doesn’t exist in one form.
It’s nice to try it out to see how it changes, but what usually happens is that I don’t really like any rerecording and then I feel like I shouldn’t have done it in the first place. It’s a curiosity though. Can I do it? How is this going to sound with this band?
I do know there was one different one, with Flavio and Fabrizio Steinbach. I said I didn’t feel like I got the version of “Isn’t Lonely Lovely” I wanted. It was recorded in Tuscon for the 1212 record, but I’m not even playing on it; the only thing I got to do was the vocals and it didn’t end up feeling the way I wanted. I told the twins we should do it and I would play guitar on it, because I have a very specific way of playing it. I really did like that version, which is more like the way it sounds when I actually play it.
But overall when I try to imitate something I did, it’s probably better to just be working on something new. I feel like I should leave the old Barbara Manning alone and not mess with it. At the time everything was so heightened and music was so present in my life, but I don’t really get to do that any more.
Kind of along similar lines: I love your songwriting, but I also think of you as a masterful interpreter of other people’s songs. You have an uncanny ability to take someone else’s song and make it your own, to the point where it sounds like something coming straight from you. I’m curious: what makes you want to cover a song, and what is the process once you’ve decided to cover something to making it your own.
Thank you for the compliment! I was just grinning ear to ear on that one, because I really do think it is an art to try to take a piece and not ruin it [laughs]. I have nothing specific, but there are a few of the things I’ve learned along the way.
Don’t try to imitate it exactly. I did that with “Baby Blue”; I wanted it to sound just like the original. We did it as close as we could. Greg Freeman was really good about putting on the old song, and we’d listen to the tone of it and try to get the same tone. Once it was done I thought “why did I do that?” because I’d still want to hear the original. There’s nothing about my version that makes me want to hear it. That was a big learning listen: always try to make it a little different.
I think that I get consumed by a song. I want to hear only that song for a while, and then I have to play it. When I play it I put all my feelings into it, and then that’s how it comes to sound like mine. At that point it gets a little changed because there’s all this extra heavy weight of the emotions that I’m putting into it.
I can tell you I got a really good compliment from my husband, because he had never heard the original version of The Handsome Family’s “So Much Wine”, which is one of my favorite songs. I did a cover of it last year and he was floored by it. It did come out sounding really good, but the other day he heard the original and he just went “Oh no, your version really heightened it.” It made me feel so good.
There are just some wild covers you’ve done where the song takes on new life. “End of the Rainbow”, just coming after The Arsonist’s Story on 1212, just feels like a coda to everything that came before it. It’s such a perfect placement of a song that really ties 1212 together. “Rickety Tickety Tin” is another one; when you watch the Tom Lehrer version it’s so tonally different and just transforms the entire song into something new.
Thanks David.
I want to talk a little bit about your life post 90’s. That’s definitely an era for you that’s much less documented. I’m interested to hear about what was going on then and what your life was like. In the late 90’s you moved to Germany. What precipitated you deciding to move to Europe?
I started living in the middle of Germany, in Darmstadt. I didn’t know it at the time, but it’s a huge city for Stockhausen and experimental music. Later I moved to the south, which was more rural. It’s more the Black Forest style. That’s when I was playing with the twins in the Go-Luckys, and was actually living with their parents. I almost felt like a teenager again.
You’re wanting to know about a time that was weird, because at that point I realized I wasn’t a success and I wasn’t going to be. It was kind of a transition for me to realize that I needed to find a way to make sure I could take care of myself, and music wasn’t going to be it. It was sort of that period too, where I was thinking “I don’t know what I’m doing, I’m an old woman already.” The songs were definitely about feeling a lack of connection, not knowing what’s ahead and not knowing how to plan. Not really feeling like I was going to live much longer, really; there’s a lot of suicide talk in the songs.
That said, some of the best songs that I ever wrote were during that period. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard “Dreaming” and “Don’t Neglect Yourself” and “I Mean Nothing”, but those are pretty amazing songs that I wrote when I was really living on the edge back in America, hardly being able to keep it together. When I left Germany I went back to Chico and went back to school. I was living out of my van the first six months, just living as cheaply as I could.
I was doing radio, I got to be the voice of the North State at KCHO radio, an NPR affiliate. I got to be the voice in-between broadcasts for Morning Edition or All Things Considered. I loved it, but at eight dollars an hour how can you survive?
But basically there was a transition, where I realized if I didn’t do music for love then I shouldn’t do it because it certainly wasn’t profitable, and I felt like I was taking from people more than I was giving them. As a musician I didn’t feel that I could make enough to pay back everyone I wanted to pay back. So I went back to school and got a real job. Can you believe I’m a teacher?
You got a degree in biology, right?
Yes.
I read an interview where you said you were planning to get a job as a lab technician but couldn’t find employment. How did you find your way to teaching?
It was surprising, but I shouldn’t have been surprised. I thought I would get this bachelors of science degree, take that and get a science job. What I found was that other people were looking for jobs too, and the only thing I really had experience in was DJ-ing, playing music, working in record stores; nothing to do with science. So it was very difficult for me to get work.
I did get work actually. I became a quality assurance supervisor for Smucker’s Juices in Chico. But I wasn’t there for very long [laughs]. Really all of those things were a blessing; if I had been successful at being a Smucker’s quality assurance supervisor then I wouldn’t have been able to do some of the things I’ve done since then by not being there [laughs].
I’d imagine that some of the skills you have as a musician translate to teaching. You’re standing in front of a bunch of kids, having to keep their attention and get them to learn. In many ways it seems similar to performing on a stage.
It is. You are putting on a show every day as a teacher, and if you’re not you’re probably boring. Sometimes I feel like I am boring because I’m tired, or I see they’re tired and I don’t want to be too exciting.
I was working as a science teacher for the past seven years, but I wasn’t that successful at keeping a good job. I was working pretty spotty jobs and thought I would get a physics credential. Biology is kind of like a guitar player, but physics is the drummer or keyboard player. Something like that. I got the physics credential, but I also have a drama and theater credential that I earned when I first started to go to college. I was going to be a drama major, so I had all these classes under my belt. A few months ago a job opened up and they needed a drama teacher, I got hired, and now I’m teaching drama to students in high school.
That’s amazing
It’s such a turn of events.
How has it been with COVID? I imagine there are some challenges to teaching drama right now.
Yes. The kids are traumatized from the past few years. I sure do get to know it when I talk to them and get to hear about their hopes and dreams. The students who are taking drama because they want it really didn’t have anything for a good year and a half. Then there’s kids that have been shoved into the class and are forced to take it, but I think they’re getting something out of it. They’re going to appreciate theater more, even if they don’t want to be actors.
What I see is that the students are traumatized because they aren’t as used to being social. And now being social always has to do with technology and phones. I don’t really see kids just being together without that.
But what I’m super thrilled about (and if anyone here is from anywhere that isn’t California they’re probably going to think this is so California) is that our school is embracing what we call SEL: social emotional learning. We are flexible, we don’t demean the students, we try to figure out how to work with them and give them time. What I really love is greeting my students as they come in late. Saying “Good morning, you came just at the right time!” rather than making them go and get a note.
My mom is a middle school art teacher. It’s been very much the same: a struggle. With art it’s particularly challenging because whenever the school shuts down and goes remote none of the kids have art supplies at home.
Oh my gosh.
It’s been a wild couple years
Yeah.
Here’s the last question I have: any musical plans for the near future? You alluded to the “Porch Series” covers on Bandcamp earlier in our conversation, any plans to continue that series?
I want to play so much. My newest song is called “Merry Christmas, Fuck You”. I want to make sure to record it in July or something; I think all Christmas songs are recorded in the summer so they are ready for the holiday season. I’ll have something for the Porch Series by next Christmas, and it’s going to be that song. I’ll probably just keep adding lyrics to it though [laughs].
My husband Dan Vargas is a recording engineer and producer. He did LA bands like Legal Weapon, which is one of my favorite bands. What an amazing singer! But anyways, he has a little studio in our house. It’s our room, but I think of it as his. All I have to do is say “hey, can you set me up a mic? Got any beats for me?” And off I go.
I don’t have any other specific questions, but is there anything else you want to talk about?
I have a tortoise, which is really cool.
Is it old? Tortoises live forever, right?
He’s five years old, and he’s about fifty pounds now. He’s getting bigger and bigger; by the time he is ten he’ll be full grown, which they say is going to be around three feet in diameter. He will live for a hundred years, so I’m definitely considering him. I probably only have another twenty, so I’m figuring out who is going to have the tortoise later.
He’s really fun to have. He’s an interesting character; he’s very grumpy. I love looking at him because I feel like I’m looking at two hundred million years ago [laughs]. Something like that. I feel like I’m time traveling looking at him. I’m trying to have a relationship with him, even though he really doesn’t feel that much empathy towards me [laughs].
Awesome
Thanks so much for letting me talk so much about my tortoise, and thank you for the opportunity to reminisce.