J: it is uh incredibly refreshing well I will say this it's incredibly refreshing to know that we're we're not the only wildly unprofessional set out there. I think Eric Kripke has really defined himself well with hiring complete jack offs to somehow tell his stories
M: that must be such a relief because I know early on you were like worried that like you're gonna have to act like a professional and be responsible.
J: yeah I know that went out the window
M: that's good news I'm really happy for you, so you're still in Toronto and you're still not able to come back and forth across the border?
J: at least for the end of june or something like that we are still in lockdown, stay-at-home orders got extended into June, I'm looking out amongst the the city right now and it's quiet.
M: wow so you that means that you aren't able to see your kids right
J: nope I haven't seen them in uh eight weeks, it's the longest I've I've ever gone without
M: I'm so sorry they're actually going to be actually bigger when you see them next
J: so JJ has her birthday the 30th, next weekend and she turns eight and
literally she's been for weeks saying that all she wants for her birthday is for her dad to come home. I get to cry myself to sleep every time I facetime her when she calls me every day and tells me good night.
M: uh that's uh yeah that's really hard it's almost like being deployed like for Eric instead of saving the world
J: I don't have like a, there's there's not an opportunity for me to die – my life is not in peril every time I step out the door so that's uh that's a major difference but yeah I'm gone and I don't know when I'll see them again.
M: I'm really sorry that sucks well I'll go visit your family for you
J: yeah everybody can you please write the Ontario government and say hey maybe let go the two week quarantine regulation especially for those who are fully vaccinated.
M: I don't understand why they don't have to update that doesn't make any sense
J: Yeah it's a little blanket regulation right now and you know I'm not here to rock the boat I'm a guest in their country and I respect that but it sucks for me.
M: I don't know you've been in their country for almost 20 years now I feel like you can count yourself as a Canadian.
J: yeah a little bit, I actually work for the intelligence bureau I'm not an actor at all I'm just a spy
M: it's a very good undercover operation that you're running become a very well-known celebrity no one will would suspect
J: Now that I'm fully incognito nobody knows who I am
M: um do you find well people probably don't recognize you because you're not only bearded but you have a mask and you're hulking, you're muscular you're not the skinny little wimp that I once worked with.
J: yeah I would say the the recognition has completely gone out the window.
M: that must be devastating
J: it's a mask too it's like this, so you just have this like crawling out of the bottom
M: there's actually there's nothing creepier looking than men with large beards and the mask on
J: what's the worst is when you take the mask off and you have this dent like your beard, it's like hat head on beard
M: ah Jensen I miss you so much man it's so nice to see your face
J: you too brother yeah, funny I was just texting back and forth with Jared and he's off doing his, it's like everybody's off doing their things right now and I really can't wait until we get the opportunity and I'm assuming that'll be some convention in the near future where we can all get back together and hug each other without you know without the social distancing and the hand sanitizer and the mask you know.
M: it's got to be particularly tough for you right now just being away from your family with that stuff I mean I know you're very stoic about these sort of things but that's got to be really hard.
J: yeah it's um it's
M: all right well we're supposed to be just kicking things off here
J: okay what are we doing
M: let's launch people into what they're they're doing, a very short mini gish hunt and we have a few luminaries such as yourself here and rob benedict is doing a concert at noon pacific .. and then there's uh there's a silent disco I'm not quite sure how that works.
J: silent disco looks like this
M: um jewel uh is gonna be doing a little concert – actually isn't jewel a fellow coloradan, is your family still in the mountains.
J: No they're they're back home in Austin right now
M: so the the big fundraiser that we're trying to push for this event is to help people in India right now. Obviously canada is completely under lockdown but that is probably just to keep Jensen from causing trouble there but in India there is the highest rate of Covid death in the world… and this is the shortest gish hunt we've ever done.
M: I was done with my seriousness you obviously have had implants Jensen, clearly beard implants
J: I feel like I just stapled a ferret to my face in certain days like I have more products now for this than my hair in the shower it looks like a beard store – you gotta have beard wash right which is different than shampoo or you know regular body wash, you have beard conditioner then when you get out you got to have beard balm, beard butter. This is when you know your beard has gotten long is when you graduate from the beard brush which is a tight kind of bristle brush to just a simple hair brush
M: what happens if you don't apply the beard oil
J: then it looks like charlie's head for me it's just it all goes out this way and you look like a cartoon
M: did you know going into this the character did was it scripted as as bearded or did you
J: no it was uh it was something I'd spoken just kind of casually with Kripke and he was like yeah when we find you your character is going to have been essentially locked away for for years, so I was like well would it make sense to have like long beard, long hair like kind of castaway-esque and he was like yeah let's do that can you grow a beard. I'm like I don't know and so it got to a point where I sent him a picture and he was like oh I love it keep going as much as you can but I do get at a certain point in the story you're gonna shave I get groomed up and and that's coming up here in a couple of weeks so unfortunate fortunate I don't know I've gotten used to it now so I'm probably gonna miss it. Yeah I'm gonna put it in like a ziplock and just keep it in the fridge.
M: you have enough beard hair that you could actually have it made into a sweater of some sort
J: I've kind of kept the the neck the bottom here just trimmed up because this this gets really annoying and gross so I'm just about an inch up the neck there and also a mustache like because otherwise I would just be eating I'd look like Richard Speight, I would just be eating my mustache all day long and this stuff right here this gets like you eat them you eat an apple and like the hair goes over here.
M: you've got a little gray in there too
J: I've earned those, those are my like war stripes
M: mine is it's almost all … see
J: this is what happens when I don't see you for the better part of
M: I got incredibly stressed out by not seeing you and I went gray. Are you are you playing music?
J: Yeah (this tshirt) is a new album cover that came out a couple weeks ago, we have zoom writing sessions now because that's
M: and your album was released two weeks ago
J: yeah on the May 7th I think it came out
M: is it just the like vinyl out or is it all released now ?
J: No actually the vinyl is not out yet but it's all out digitally, because apparently every recording artist had nothing to do but write during 2020. So a million albums are going to be released basically this year and all of them went to press and there's only a few vinyl press companies in the states and so they're basically back ordered. So our vinyl presses should happen like the end of the summer.
M: Who would have thunk that in 2021 the vinyl industry would be at total capacity
J: anybody out there thinking about opening a vinyl press they should do it now
M: well Jensen so nice to see you
J: you too my friend where are you I don't even know where you are anymore
M: I'm in Ojai California
J: I've camped up there, I've spent weekends up there it's a special place. Funny I was talking to somebody yesterday, I had dinner with Phil Sgriccia last night and we were talking about Marfa and Ojai is like the Californian Marfa.
M: how far is that from Austin?
J: It's a haul about six hours, I don't know if I told you I drove through there last fall by myself, I took a road trip, I had to go to LA for something and then I drove back in an effort not to fly and covid was really bad and I was like I'll just rent a car and drive. So I did a road trip by myself and actually made a point to go through Marfa, and I went there and just spent some time, I took some amazing photos there because it's it just lends itself to being photographed so it's that kind of a place. I should like print those up but it is really really cool and it reminds me of that feeling you get when you go to Ojai, it's just a special place.
M: Marfa for those of you who don't know is like the art capital of the western US but it's a small town.
J: It's a map dot in South West Texas, desert and mountains it's really really beautiful
M: well I'm gonna come visit you guys in Austin sometime.
J: please do, it's so fun to hear like you know my wife and friends and stuff they're all going out and like having dinner it's like yeah that's nice I can't even go get a coffee here but hopefully Ontario will get the numbers down and open back up because I know people here are really feeling it especially like the weather is now nice here. Fingers crossed, the virus is sill very much alive.
M: Everybody get vaccinated um all right Jensen, thanks for being here
J: I'm gonna uh I'm gonna go sit on my couch for the rest of the day okay bye
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