♪ (MELLOW MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
JOHN WILSON: Hey, New York.
If you're like me,
your pet slowly destroys every single piece of furniture
that you bring inside of your apartment.
This is Baby,
and she is a vicious little rascal
that aggressively claws and, um,
vomits on everything I own.
This makes it hard to shop for anything nice.
Because it's guaranteed that I won't be able
to preserve my furniture
for longer than a couple of months.
There's a bunch of things you could do to deter your cat
from defiling your stuff,
but a lot of them have mixed results.
You could try to coat your furniture in citrus,
which cats, uh, supposedly hate.
But if you also hate the smell of lemon, uh,
this can be a cruel punishment for the both of you.
You can try putting tape over their favorite areas.
But this may end up causing the animal to relocate
to new areas on your furniture
that, uh, aren't covered in tape.
You can try getting a scratching pole, uh,
but they might not end up using it at all.
But that's okay, because you can always turn it
into a hat rack...
(TRUMPET BLARING)
JOHN: A hat rack.
So, if none of these options work,
and you find yourself just counting down the days
until one of you passes away,
furniture covers might be your best bet.
So buckle up, buster,
because things are about to get pretty wet, pretty wild.
♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
JOHN: Now, a lot of people think
that plastic furniture covers are unsightly
and will judge you for your choice.
So, before you do anything you might regret,
uh, first you're gonna need to be confident
in your sense of taste.
♪ (QUIET MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
Everyone likes to think that they have good taste,
but this is impossible,
because you can't have good taste without bad taste.
What is beautiful to you
might be revolting to someone else.
And it's almost impossible for good and bad taste
to peacefully coexist.
This is what makes people who use plastic covers,
uh, such a rare breed.
They buy very dignified furniture,
worthy of a showroom or a museum,
but in order to extend its life, have decided to cover it
with one of the most inelegant materials
known to man-- humankind.
But at the same time, any lifestyle depraved enough
to require a permanent shield against liquids
is, uh, worthy of respect.
♪ (MUSIC ENDS) ♪
This plastic covering has been on here
for 40 straight years. Never been off, ever.
-JOHN: Forty years? -Forty years.
JOHN: It does look like it's in very good condition.
-This has plastic too. -CARMELA: This has plastic here.
JOHN: But there's nothing on top over here.
You don't feel anxious, um, sitting on the couch
without any covers?
I don't, because she put the, uh,
the slipcover on.
-CARMELA: Yeah, no. -It's just that it's...
-pretty worn in. -CARMELA: Yeah, no.
(SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
JOHN: Where'd you get this furniture?
Uh, we got it special made. It came from Italy.
JOHN: The furniture is from Italy?
-Yeah. -Yeah.
-JOHN: Oh, that sounds expensive. -(MONA LAUGHS)
There was a summer, I was eating--
I sat here eating a tub of coffee ice cream,
and I-- (CHUCKLES) I spilled it on the furniture.
What about you? What have you spilled here?
Oh I have never spilled anything.
-JOHN: Oh, really? -Yeah.
-JOHN: Oh, wow. -I'm very careful.
The single most important thing
is the protection of the furniture.
So we can have furniture that we can keep
for 40, 50 years!
(ALL LAUGHING)
I bet if we take one of these off, you know,
these would be brand new under there.
Yeah, I don't mind. They-- they have zippers,
like you can remove it.
(PLASTIC CRINKLING)
Let's see.
-Mona, be careful. -Mm-hmm.
Not even a speck of dust!
-CHUMADAT: See! -JOHN: Wow.
The last time you sat on that was 20 years ago?
-Wow, this is-- -Me? Yeah, about 20 years ago.
-JOHN: This is risky. -MONA: Sit, Lala.
-Good girl! -JOHN: Oh, wow.
Don't get used to it.
Seems like you guys got it figured out. This is nice.
I feel-- Oh, what is that?
-I see a little chip. -MONA: Oh, no!
-JOHN: Did that just happen? -INDRANIE: Oh, no.
JOHN: It seems like most people cover their furniture
to make sure it stays in mint condition.
So, if your stuff is already trashed,
uh, you'll need to start by buying something
that's worth preserving.
Thankfully, New York has millions of seats
to choose from.
This city is a brothel of exotic chairs,
and once you're finally back in the market,
uh, you'll notice that each one is desperately trying
to seduce you.
♪ (SEDUCTIVE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
Ooh.
Mm-hmm.
A-ha.
Hm-hmm.
Uh-huh.
Oh.
Uh-huh.
Oh.
Ooh.
♪ (MUSIC STOPS) ♪
JOHN: So once you find a piece of furniture
that's, uh, worthy of preserving,
uh, just do a very, uh, quick bedbug check, uh, just in case,
and go to the cashier and ring it up.
(CLEARS THROAT)
And then you're gonna roll it
straight to the plastic cover store.
♪ (UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
And hand it off to the guy who's gonna make it for you.
PLASTIC COVER MAKER: This is a 16-gauge plastic.
-JOHN: Sixteen gauge, so how thick is that? -PLASTIC COVER MAKER: Yeah.
That's-- That's the thickness of...
of the plastic.
JOHN: How do you think this is gonna look with it?
This is gonna look dope.
JOHN: Cool.
Do you cover your own furniture at home?
No.
♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
JOHN: Every cover they make is one of a kind,
and the plastic should fit your chair like a glove.
Like a glove, bro!
JOHN: So, after you roll it home,
uh, get a couple of thin but kind friends
to-- to help you, uh, move it up the stairs.
♪ (MUSIC ENDS) ♪
But when you finally get it into your apartment,
it may look a little weird next to all your other stuff.
♪ (MYSTERIOUS MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
And despite the fantasy you've always had,
the thrill of pouring salsa on it,
uh, wears off after a few weeks.
And even if your landlord thinks the covers are nice...
LANDLADY: Oh...
JOHN: This one's covered in plastic.
Nice.
JOHN: Your friends still may call you names
for having plastic covers when they come over to hang out.
It also gets extremely hot when it's warm out,
and I wouldn't recommend sitting on it
while you're in the buff.
And although your cat won't want to go anywhere
near this material,
uh, neither will you.
♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
When we try to domesticate animals,
we expect them to play by our rules,
but it's not always in their nature to play along.
And people even try to control animals
outside of their house too.
Almost everywhere you look in New York,
you can see stuff designed to prevent animals
from making their mark.
♪ (QUIET MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
These things are here to stop birds.
These things are here to stop dogs.
These things are here to--
that-- that's for stopping rats, I think.
But they still let the pigs go wherever they want.
♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
When I walk to work every morning,
there's a tiny little staircase that gives me
a half-second shortcut on my way to the office.
I see a lot of other people naturally do it too,
but for some reason, the building management decided
that this was a huge nuisance,
and put up a fancy red rope
to stop people from walking down a single step
in front of their lobby.
Now, everyone needs to make a full right-angle turn
when, uh, they walk past the building,
potentially taking away years of your precious life.
I assume it's because of some kind of liability,
but to me it seemed more about the raw power
that comes with controlling ten feet of a private corner
in a high-end neighborhood.
♪ (TENSE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
And the more I looked around,
the more I noticed all the other ways
that the city treats everyone like animals.
They put sharp stuff on the tops of these
so that nobody sits on them.
They put these little metal things on ledges,
uh, so that skateboarders can't grind.
And they recently started making the dividers
on the subway benches even taller,
so that it's even harder to lay down on them.
Some people even designed very crude,
uh, homemade, uh, solutions to the human problem.
This all seems to be a way to discourage undesirables
from using our beloved public space.
And when you look at all of it together,
it's almost like the city is trying to tell you something.
But like any species,
we always just find new areas to conquer,
climbing to dangerous elevations
in search of refuge.
♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
Humans will go through a lot of trouble
just to make themselves feel like
they're in control of their environment.
When I was a teenager, my secret treasure
was the full set of action figures from, uh,
the hit motion picture The Matrix,
mint in the box.
It gave me the emotional armor I needed,
even though nobody, uh, really cared that I had them.
At the time, I was too old to play with them,
but too young to cash out.
And now they're somehow worth less
than what I originally, uh, paid for them.
I can't remember why this ever made me happy,
but I knew that I wasn't the only one
who engaged in behavior like this.
Anyway, so I heard that you had a pair of shoes
that you take really good care of.
-So, these are my red bottoms. -JOHN: Oh, wow.
JULISSA: Signed by Christian Louboutin.
JOHN: Wait, do you-- so you keep them right here,
-all the time? -JULISSA: Mm-hmm.
JOHN: Wow. Do you ever take them out?
-They-- These I won't wear ever. -(LAVANNA FUSSING)
JOHN: You won't wear these ever? You've never worn these?
-JULISSA: No. No. -JULISSA'S HUSBAND: No.
JOHN: Why do you think people want to keep things
in perfect condition?
Who wants something beat up and-- and-- and destroyed?
Um, then it's-- it's meaningless.
You know, the opportunity or-- or the ability to kinda
keep it intact and--
and in its original shape
to then pass it on over to generation or...
Yeah, or to have it as a showcase,
something to talk about when we have people over.
-(LAVANNA FUSSING) -And people could see it...
(LAVANNA SHOUTS)
...and love it, appreciate it.
♪ (ROMANTIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
JOHN: Sometimes material things are so precious to people
that they go so far as to make duplications
of their possessions.
I heard that there are even art collectors
who do this with their paintings
to avoid having to hang the original on their walls.
Many clients will do what's called
a commissioned reproduction.
Basically making a-- a copy of it,
and then they may put the copy up on their walls,
and put the actual work in a storage facility
where it can remain safe.
JOHN: Oh, wow.
If you have a, you know,
a 30-million-dollar Van Gogh painting,
then the stress of having that painting on the wall
may really not be worth it.
And if you can lock it away until it's time to sell it,
and you can still have that... piece in your house
and look at it and enjoy it
and have your friends look at it,
then, you know, you're-- you're benefiting from it.
JOHN: Do you have any animals?
-No. -JOHN: Why not?
Um, because I don't like having to go home
in time for dinner to feed them.
I did like horses when I was little.
I rode them until I got allergic.
JOHN: Maybe being too precious about an object
can actually just make you enjoy it less
and create a low, simmering anxiety
that you can never escape.
♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
I was out driving with a friend the other day,
and he was trying to find a-- a touch-free car wash.
He's real-- He r-- He cares a lot about the condition of his car,
and he absolutely refused to go to a normal car wash
uh, with brushes.
After finding a place on Atlantic Avenue
that looked like it had a touch-free cleaning,
uh, he, uh, got in line and waited his turn.
Only when he reached the end of the line
did he realize that it was actually
a touch-full car wash.
And they-- And a lot of stuff touches your car in it.
And when he demanded to be let out,
they told him that the only way to exit was through the brushes.
I thought-- It says touch-free on the end though.
JOHN: He completely lost it.
COLE: Fucking ruining my fucking car.
JOHN: Immediately after, he bought gallons
of bottled water to wash off the car himself.
He was inconsolable,
and we drove the rest of the way home
in complete silence.
♪ (MELANCHOLIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
JOHN: I was really starting to question
if protecting my chair was healthy behavior.
But I knew that Baby would just start destroying my chair
the moment I took it off.
The last resort for most people
is to completely declaw your cat.
This is a deeply traumatizing procedure
that permanently disfigures your animal
and radically transforms their personality.
They actually recently made it illegal
to declaw your cat in New York...
uh, I think.
I could never do that to my cat, because not only is it inhumane,
but she's extremely good at catching the mice
that hide behind my collection of tapes in my apartment.
(THUDS)
We're an unstoppable team,
and I could never alter her evolutionary gifts
for my convenience.
♪ (MUSIC ENDS) ♪
I wanted to see if there was anything in the pet store
that I hadn't thought of.
But as I walked to the Petco in Union Square,
I saw a mobile billboard
that seemed to be spreading an anti-circumcision message.
And they even had a disturbing replica of a baby as a prop.
This clamp, what it does is it entraps the foreskin
in between two pieces of metal,
and when the doctor applies the screw and the thumbwheel,
it exerts over two tons of force on the foreskin,
because the purpose of that is to crush it,
and they want the blood to coagulate under the skin.
When this happens to a baby,
they're screaming the whole time.
They're screaming for their life.
JOHN: I had never met a more passionate advocate
for keeping covers on.
He was so sure that we needed this kind of protection.
What I like to talk about
is what are the benefits of foreskin.
And that is, you know,
foreskin offers what we call the four powers.
Pleasure, protection, lubrication and connection.
You know, there's an old motto,
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
And nature put foreskin on our bodies for a reason.
And women have foreskin too.
JOHN: Uh...
♪ (QUIET MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
Maybe some coverings are nature's gift,
and it's a mistake to remove them.
But there's a lot of stuff we do to our children
before they have the ability to consent.
And it's hard to say whether or not
they'll resent you for it, uh, when they grow up.
We teach them to worship certain things.
We pierce their ears so they look glamorous.
We give them names that they have to live with
for the rest of their lives.
And for the first time,
it struck me that my life might have been different
if I hadn't been circumcised.
Was I missing out on a world of pleasure
I didn't even know about?
Maybe if my genitals were intact,
I would have had to shower more often growing up,
and that would have, uh, got me invited to more parties.
And with all that extra confidence,
uh, I could have been a-- a doctor by now.
Or an Olympic athlete.
Or a judge.
♪ (MUSIC ENDS) ♪
But maybe there was still hope.
The anti-circumcision guy had told me about his friend,
uh, that made a product designed to restore your foreskin.
So I decided to pay the guy a visit
and see what it was all about.
So, this is our home.
My family, uh, lives here, I raised my daughters here.
And in the basement of this home
is the TLC Tugger production facility.
JOHN: What a space.
Not only did he make every foreskin restoration device by hand,
but he was also a musician
and wrote an entire album about circumcision.
♪ (ELECTRIC GUITAR RIFFS) ♪
(SINGING) ♪ You talked Bill Gates out of a few ♪
♪ Hard-earned simoleons ♪
♪ To do a so-called study Where you cut some Africans ♪
♪ But it's still clear That condoms ♪
♪ Are the best form Of prevention ♪
♪ Now that you've failed Who will heal those angry men? ♪
♪ I'm gonna tug and grow My foreskin back again ♪
So, I'm presently wearing a retaining cone.
JOHN: Oh, okay.
RON LOWE: But that's not an active source of tension.
That's not gonna grow you enough skin
so that you look like an intact guy.
JOHN: So what's the tension-- How-- how do you create the tension?
So, to create tension, you need to tug,
and for that you need a tugging device like this one.
-JOHN: Okay. -RON: This is the TLC Tugger.
I place it against the head of my penis,
force my skin up onto the conical surface.
-JOHN: Uh-huh. -RON: So this will clip to my device,
and then the weight will dangle in my pants.
JOHN: Okay.
RON: So there, I've clipped that same string to my device.
I'm gonna put my pants on,
and the weight is hanging down
where gravity can still act upon it
instead of resting in the thigh area of my pants.
-JOHN: Oh, okay. -So this weight is gonna
keep working on me,
uh, all day because it's hanging freely
because of that string.
Anybody else in the house need a grapefruit-flavored seltzer?
(ICE DISPENSER WHIRRING)
(GLASSES CLINKING)
RON: Coming right up.
(ICE DISPENSER WHIRRING)
-RON: Cheers. -JOHN: Oh, thank you.
So, with the pulley, uh, I can move any old way
while I'm sleeping, doing things involuntarily,
and the tension stays the same,
whereas with a shoulder strap, if you curl up,
this-- the tension-- the slack-- the strap goes completely slack.
JOHN: Does this ever bother your wife,
this-- this cord in bed?
Every once in a while, uh, I will do something
with my pulley and lose the grip on it...
(METAL CLANGING)
...and make a loud noise when she's asleep.
And she doesn't like that.
JOHN: Uh, see anything good lately?
Uh, lately I just saw that, uh...
Oh my gosh, I'm so old. Words escape me.
It's called... Parasite!
-JOHN: Oh, yeah, I liked Parasite. -Oh, Parasite rocked.
JOHN: Yeah that was a really-- a really great, uh--
It was the perfect movie because it was a morality tale,
it had virtue, it had vice,
it had, uh-- oh, just don't get me started.
♪ (MELLOW MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
JOHN: I was reading recently that they're planning
on putting up a wall around Manhattan
to combat the rising sea levels.
I guess it's tempting to just put a cover on something
when you don't know what else to do.
But maybe we just do it to avoid having to face the real problem.
And it only gives us the illusion of control
as the rest of our world slowly falls apart.
♪ (MUSIC ENDS) ♪
My friends hired an interior designer recently,
uh, to help them with their furniture problems,
and they let me, uh, hang out.
You-- We do, like, very small chair,
or you could even do, like, a cool, like, stool,
-or... you know. -Stool, yeah.
JOHN: And when I told her about my plastic cover dilemma,
she saw the problem a little differently.
I-- Again, I keep on--
It's almost a visual thing, like--
But I think it's energy.
Like, even when I'm looking at you right now,
I'm seeing a camera, and I'm seeing you.
It's really interesting. There's almost like a film
even between the two.
You're always used to having
some kind of protective mechanism,
um, and I think in some ways, the camera, it's done both.
It's the paradox. I think it's connected you
more than ever with people, but yet there's always, like,
a bit of a separation
and a bit of you that's, like, apart from it.
It sounds maybe kooky, but I would love for you
sometimes in your life to, like, in your head, be like,
"I should put the camera down right now in this situation.
I should just be John."
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
JOHN: I finally felt confident heading into the future,
with or without a cover.
Nature gives things character,
and anything that happens to our stuff along the way
is evidence of a well-lived life.
And for the first time, I wasn't worried at all
about my furniture getting destroyed.
Because I hired a fabricator
to make a commissioned, uh, reproduction of my chair
that is an identical copy of the original piece.
So now, while my cat slowly annihilates the replica chair
that sits in my apartment,
I can finally rest easy,
knowing that the original chair that I love is safe and secure
in a temperature-controlled storage facility in Canarsie.
And even though I may never sit in it ever again,
at least I know that I could.
This is John Wilson. Thanks for watching.
♪ (MUSIC FADES) ♪
♪ (ELECTRIC GUITAR RIFFING) ♪
RON: (SINGING) ♪ I wish my parents Had defied conformity ♪
♪ Preserved my pleasure part So I could feel it glide ♪
♪ That amputation Won't prevent an STD ♪
♪ And infants aren't at risk ♪
♪ Why steal His right to decide? ♪
♪ I don't want much ♪
♪ Just want My foreskin back again ♪
♪ No, it's not TMI ♪
♪ I shared it 'Cause we're friends ♪
♪ My parents chose this road But I'll choose where it ends ♪
♪ Don't I deserve it all? ♪
♪ Gonna grow it back again ♪
♪ Grow it back again ♪
♪ I'm gonna fix me ♪
♪ It's gonna take some time But I can grow an inch a year ♪
♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
♪ (FLITTERING MUSIC PLAYS) ♪
JOHN WILSON: When you work up the courage to look at the bill,
you find yourself wondering how it's costing you 30 bucks
for a pierogi and a seltzer.
♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪