♪ I wanted to be part of something ♪
♪ I got nothing but time ♪
♪ So the future is mine ♪
- Hey, could I get a
whatever...
Is it okay if I sit here?
- Yeah, for sure!
How's, uh, how's your evening?
- (sighs) Alright I guess.
They say you should force yourself to get out of the house
when you least feel like being outside,
so here I am at a bar for whatever reason.
- Yeah, for sure, it's good to, um, to get out there.
- Hey, Ward Beer.
I thought I was the only one who liked that stuff.
- Oh, yeah.
It used to be better.
I literally wanna time travel back 10 years
and buy like 20 cases.
- Right?
Once they got bought out by whoever that was,
that financial consortium thing,
the actual beer got a hundred times worse overnight.
- I've always thought that, like,
there should be a rule where if you buy a company
you have to change its name to that of the parent company,
so you're not fooling anyone.
- Oh my god, exactly.
Like, oh, go ahead and buy out the independent beer company,
but now you have to sell
Morton Fiscal Policy Association Pale Lager.
- I know, like, here's some International Tobacco Resellers
Mayonnaise for your sandwich.
- (chuckles) That would be amazing.
- [Mau] I'm sure they'd find some way around it though.
- Oh I know, every company just renaming itself
after its most popular brand,
like here comes Mama Italiano's
Old Fashioned Cruise Missile Guidance Systems,
just like grandma used to make,
but at least my pasta sauce was unaffected.
- Yup.
For sure.
- Oh my god that's hilarious.
Sorry that was such a weird example,
I quote-unquote dated this quote-unquote guy
for a couple weeks and he was obsessed with, like,
intense military things, it was pretty dark actually.
- So it didn't work out, I guess?
- (sighs) I mean it worked out as well
as these things usually do, ironically.
Sex with someone you're completely incompatible with
is kind of disappointingly fun, but whatever.
I dunno, do you believe in relationships, even?
Everyone needs to have fun,
but I feel like nobody believes more than that
is even possible lately.
It just becomes this thing where all the people around you
either have super low expectations
or they're the reason other people do.
And then you date them and then you give up too.
Oh my god, half the dates I go on
are like boss fights from a video game.
(video game music)
- [Date] I'm not really looking for anything serious,
just someone who can ceaselessly validate my existence.
I hate my job
This IPA is too hoppy.
I'm socially liberal but I'm a fiscal conservative.
I think I want a guitar
What's the deal with gay pride parades?
How come there's no straight pride parades?
- Plus I have yet to acquire power, wisdom, and courage.
- Yeah, for sure it's tough.
I guess I don't have that much experience, to be honest.
But I can totally see what you mean though.
I'm sure that what everyone wants is that, like
depth of connection with another person,
but it's hard, obviously.
- Yeah.
It's just so hard not to get discouraged.
You have to put everything out there
to even have a chance at a connection
and then when that doesn't work a few times.
Maybe you only have so many chances
before you can't even function in society.
There's a factor.
- So many factors.
I love that; it's such a great word.
- I know!
I say it all the time.
Why are you seven hours late for work?
Factors.
- I know I put off going to the dentist
until I had Entire Mouth Cancer,
but there were many Factors at play.
- Oh my god, that's what my dating profile should be, just
What Am I Doing With My Life?
Factors.
- (chuckles) Yup.
So, what does it actually say?
- Me?
Oh, I don't know
I only have one because I'm paranoid
of just missing someone.
Deleting it and then the exact perfect match logs on
three seconds later,
I'm always anxiety-ing about that kind of stupid thing.
- Oh for sure.
All those people you just miss
and you don't even know about it, right?
- Yeah, I mean there's a huge Factor.
I think we all have a huge scrapbook
of all the missed connections
that we couldn't even have known about.
You know, here's Steve,
he and I would have been sexually compatible
in a way that neither of us knew existed
except we had no reason to know that
so we never messaged each other.
And here's Susan.
(sighs) Susan.
She would have been the kind of best friend
who runs toward you when you're ill
while everyone else is running away,
except I missed the bus she was on by two minutes
and we never met.
And here's Wendy, she and I would have felt like
we'd known each other our whole lives after 10 minutes
and would have paid for each other's weddings
except she lives 20,000 miles away.
And here's a picture of Barry
We were made for each other,
except he was made 100 years too early in another country.
He was super into terribly flawed chicks
with my specific sense of humor;
I mean it would have been perfect
except for how impossible it is.
And I think we all have a huge list of those people
that we can never know about.
- Yeah, for sure.
- I dunno, it's weird to think about obviously,
but I'm weird.
I love sci-fi and I'm like maybe they'll invent
a way to figure out
exactly who you should be spending your time with.
Like figure out some way to quantify all the Factors
that determine compatibility and you enter the stats
of everyone in the world into a giant computer database
and it compares everyone and tells you
down to the decimal place who you're a match with.
This person would be your best friend,
and this person would be your ideal partner.
Just a huge list of where you can find your people,
and everyone is looking at the past thinking
how in the hell did we ever find anyone without it?
- That should seriously be a thing.
That's an awesome idea, basically.
- And then I think, like, after decades of having that data,
what if you go to use it and the person you match with
actually did live 100 years ago?
Maybe it would just be frustrating.
Well, unless of course--
- They also invent time travel!
Factors.
- Factors! Yes.
Would people do that though?
Go live in the past or future because of another person?
Can you imagine?
- I feel like if you did have time travel then history,
yeah, so I love sci-fi too by the way,
history would maybe just start to feel like one time period
since you could go to any part of it?
Different eras would just be like these weird countries
where they don't have microwaves or flying cars
or they haven't got the 50th Ja... James Bond movie yet.
Okay, I almost just said 'James Bong'.
There's a movie franchise.
- (laughing) Oh my god like,
"How can something be shaken and also stirred...?
That's, like, impossible, man...." (laughing)
I don't know, I guess I don't think you could actually
determine a perfect match though.
That's kind of the downfall of that little idea.
There's just so much timing and stuff.
Is that person even ready for something?
Do they have that kind of self-esteem or are they like me
where if it's a bad month and someone compliments me
I literally get mad
because I assume they're messing with me.
I think we're all from different times
and I think if you think of maturity and confidence
as kind of being the future,
and anyone who has that shit is from the future,
they and I really don't want to waste each other's time.
- Yeah.
Sometimes it feels like the people who need friends the most
can be the hardest to befriend.
- I was just gonna say that.
The worse you feel about yourself the more you need people,
and the more you don't want to bother them.
It's an impossible situation.
Timing is such a factor,
and maybe that time is years or your entire 20s.
You can't always be friends with someone
even if you're super compatible.
No computer can account for how someone feels
when they're told that this person wants to be your friend.
- Yeah.
Like usual, we invent something that should work perfectly,
so we keep trying it hoping it will
but it never actually does because not even data is perfect.
- Yeah, exactly, there's probably no data that can
perfectly encompass the continuum of a single person.
Oh my god I've given up on the future in advance.
- You'd never give up though,
if you magically knew in advance that a person
was theoretically a perfect fit for you.
- You don't think so?
- Like, I have this one cousin,
she went to this stupid culinary school that turned out
to not be what she really wanted to to with her life,
all that tuition for nothing, basically,
but then she met one of her best friends at that school
so she actually thought it was completely worth the money.
If you could pay a few thousand
to probably get a friend for life, you automatically would.
If you had to relocate to another country
but you knew you'd have a specific chance to find
that depth of connection with another person
that makes life worth living, wouldn't you?
There's so much that keeps people apart,
five seconds or 500 years, so what's friendship worth?
- I feel like it's worth a lot.
- Yeah.
If you knew for sure that someone could be your best friend,
you'd try anything, even if it seemed impossible,
even if you had reams of data on compatibility
and when to approach them and it still wasn't working.
Even if there were Factors.
I think you'd try forever, basically.
That's probably what friendship is worth.
And I think people who need help making friends
are worth the effort.
- Yeah.
This is some solid Bar Talk by the way.
Sorry, I have like one hour of social batteries some days.
I should head out
before people start thinking I hate them.
Fatigue Bitchface should seriously be
an entire year at med school.
- No, no, I totally get it.
I'm super shy usually,
most conversations for me are like boss fights.
The social boss fights when you're trying to pick
the exact right dialogue option to try and, like.
Okay, sorry
Yeah, just rambling when you're trying to leave.
I really enjoyed meeting you though, do you--
- Yeah, you too.
Take care, eh.
- Wait, um.
I know it's just Bar Talk,
but this was kind of really fun.
Did you maybe
wanna hang out sometime?
I dunno, I just, yeah,
could always use more friends.
And you seem awesome, basically.
I don't know how you ask someone to be your friend
when you're adults.
D'you wanna ride bikes sometime?
- Aw, thanks.
Sorry, this already isn't the answer you were hoping for.
As much as I'd like to,
I honestly don't think I'm in a place
where I can be a good enough friend right now.
It's like, sometimes I don't want to re-watch
my favorite shows because I know how much
emotional involvement there's gonna be and my brain knows
it needs to save that energy for other stuff.
And I guess I feel that way about a lot of things right now.
I have no idea how people have like 20 friends,
maybe if you're not crazy
it frees up a bunch of your mental energy.
So yeah, it just feels horrible turning down friendship,
but trust me, you're probably better off.
- Are you sure?
I don't care if you're not perfect,
you've already been better company than most people I know.
- Sorry, I should go, this is a hard thing to talk about.
Thanks, you seem like a seriously great person,
it's just timing I guess.
- Okay.
Please, just think about it!
I can't just give up,
I'd love so much to be friends with you!
Yeah, I'm sorry.
That was just completely overboard.
- It's alright, I get it.
Hey, my name's Safra, it was good to meet you.
- All this time and I never even told you my name.
It's Mau.
Kind of an unusual name, probably, but.
- Hey, I obviously love weird names.
Take care, eh.
- You too.
♪ Advice to heed ♪
♪ You always said that love was not enough ♪
♪ Always on the move ♪
♪ Advice to heed ♪
♪ And even though we long to shut it up ♪
♪ We could never choose ♪
♪ Advice to heed ♪
♪ Now we know there's nothing awaiting us ♪
♪ Better than the truth ♪
♪ Advice to heed ♪
♪ I wanted to be part of something ♪
♪ I got nothing but time ♪
♪ So the future is mine ♪
- Hey, could I get a
whatever.
Is it okay if I sit here?
- Yeah, for sure!
Hi, um,
my name's Mau.
♪ I got nothing but time ♪
♪ So the future is mine ♪