"Hey Mike, what do I say about Feet Banks for the intro to his interview?""I don't know. Ask him, 'if we killed him, would we be defeating him? Or his family? Or... the World??'"
"Uhhh... alright."
Steige: “Feet Banks” are what I call my shoes. If you were a pair of shoes, what kind of shoes would you be, and why?
Feet: When I was a kid we didn’t have much money and my mom used to buy me runners from the Saan in squeamish. Real pieces of shit that were made totally from plastic and had no ankle support. All the other kids made fun of my “Saan Specials” and I blew my ankle almost every gym class. My first pair of socially acceptable shoes were black Nike hightops and 16years later I still have ‘em so I would have to say I’d be those suckers because they go well with 80’s hair metal and, if you walk the walk, will still get you laid in Kamloops, BC.
S: Hearing the word 'Saan' makes me cringe. I find people are usually either in love with, or disgusted by feet. Are you a foot fan or foe?
F: I’ve done some weird shit with feet in hot tubs but I really only love my own feet. I love them so much that when I go hiking with a heavy backpack I use those telescopic ski poles to take some of the weight of my feet. Makes me look like a euro but I don’t give a shit, it takes like a tonne off your feet over the course of a day.
S: If you had the opportunity, and you knew there were to be no repercussions, whom would you throw a shoe at, and why?
F: Candace Bergen, that actress who was in that shitty show Murphy Brown. I’ve never met her or anything but every time I see her I’d like to heave a big steel-toed workboot in her face. Also I wouldn’t mine drive-by shoe-ing everyone in Whistler that is letting greed take over their sense of community, but that would be most of the town, and they don’t have that many shoes at the Re-use-it center. Now that I think about it I’d like slap a couple of the Re-use it staff around with a pair of tap-dance shoes too, those fuckers piss me off more often than not.
S: What's the deal with sandles and socks? Why is there such a stigma surrounding the combination of the two? What do you secretly, or not so secretly, tell people you catch walking around with the sock/sandle combo?
F: Generally I am all for nonconformity but combining Sandals and socks is like walking around with a sign on your back that says “I haven’t been laid since my mom used to dress me.”
The purpose of sandals is to let your feet breath. Socks don’t allow that. Socks are prisons for your feet and your soul. Your soul and over all well being is totally linked to your feet. Foot Reflexology is not all hippy-dippy shit. I heard there are some foot masseuses that can even kill a person just by rubbing and pressing the right sequence of spots on a foot.
When I see someone with socks and sandals I mostly just laugh because their socks are gonna get extra dirty and then they’ll be the ones having to do more laundry. Doing laundry is one of the worst things ever, the stupid mundane repetitiveness of it.
S: I'm doing laundry right now! Err... How many feet tall are you?
F: 6 feet 4 inches if you use my own actual feet to measure me. My feet are only 11 inches long. Test your high school math skills out.
S: What's the gnarliest thing you've got going on with your own feet?
F: I can pull my little toenail off pretty much anytime I want and it doesn’t hurt. Also, since it is summer my feet are always dirty, I live on a farm and they just get real dirty and unless I sit down in the shower and chip away at ‘em with some sort of lava rock there is not much I can do about it.
S: What color socks do you prefer?
F: I like white socks and I like a brand new pair each time. My buddy Calder taught me that. Big bags of white socks are cheap so you just keep a bag in the drawer and grab a fresh pair whenever you want. Before the hippies start giving me shit I’d like to point out that I donate my used-once socks to charity. I also have some fancy socks for when you have to wear a suit or if you have black shoes or whatever. The fancy ones are never white.
S: Anything else you want to say? Foot or non-foot related?
F: “A severed foot is the ultimate stocking stuffer.” Mitch Hedburg said that.
“Fuck with me, I’ll put a foot in your ass.” Ice Cube said that.
“In the winter, never trust a woman with warm feet in bed, she’s probably a dude.” I said that.
S: My feet are always freezing. I think I've got bad flow.
F: Oh.
S: Yeah.
If you enjoyed this make sure to check out our Interview with an Empty Bucket! Or if you want to read a really really long interview, check out our Short Story Interview with Sponge Bob artist Kent Osborne!
