#2453 - Evan Hafer

Kicking off at the desk, I’m showing off the strange gifts people leave here—like a WD-40 can with a lighter welded on, an old “old mech” relic, and a mammoth-bone 1911 grip—little artifacts that all tell stories.

It all looks half cartel, half museum, which is exactly why it’s fun to pick up and mess with.

On bows, I’m into bone or textured grips; they feel more alive in the hand, and after our last hunt I’ve been running the Wise Guy wrist release and finally stopped slapping the trigger.

I want some tack in the grip like a bat or a stippled pistol, not the totally loose front hand people preach, though maybe that’s my giant paws talking.

I try to cap practice at about an hour so fatigue doesn’t wreck my form; I’m pulling eighty-four pounds now, with a hundred-yard setup waiting in the wings, and I’ll stretch to eighty-five in the yard when nobody’s milling around.

My wife banned my old backstop because she’s building a little garden hut and doesn’t want an accidental skylight, which is fair.

At my company we built a range, partnered with Hoyt and others to outfit folks and adaptive athletes, and gave away a ton of bows—until counsel shut open shooting down for liability when stray arrows started turning up in storage.

Archery skill falls off fast if you stop, so you can’t trust a casual shooter to be safe or precise; it’s one of those crafts that demands year-round reps.

Even a three-week break makes the bow feel foreign, and after a month off for elbow pain I needed days of shooting to find the groove again.

The guys who stay sharp all year, like Cam, make it look easy because they never stop; I’ve vacationed with him on Lāna‘i and we hunted daily in a place where deer outnumber people by ten to one.

Axis are unreal—delicious and absurdly fast—and watching one jump the string from thirty yards taught me to level up right then and there.

They evolved dodging tigers, which is why they move like a magic trick; it’s a reminder plenty of Americans have it too easy and mistake comfort for toughness.

Speaking of comfort, the best espresso usually comes from the most pierced, most aloof barista in the shop, which cracks me up because they’re often pouring fourth-wave single-origin while pretending we don’t exist.

Coffee’s moved from commodity dark roasts to artisan light roasts and fermentation tricks; Starbucks leans dark for consistency under cream and sugar, but people still think darker means stronger when it’s actually less caffeine and more burn.

If you drink it black you taste the over-roast immediately, but most folks want a treat—basically a caffeinated milkshake that rockets your energy, then dumps you on the couch.

I can nerd about beans and roast curves all day, but I learned as a comms guy that eyes glaze over the minute you say spectrum analyzer, so I’ll spare you.

The bigger lesson is delayed gratification: in standup, the writing grind feels thankless until you find that one sharp paragraph in a thousand words and then go test it live.

Owning a club lets you pop in to try bits at will, but even without that you can bounce around a city; Austin’s stacked with paying stages so comics can build at home before hitting the road.

If a room rejects a premise, I rework the angle—sometimes I have to win over people who see a tattooed meathead and think “jerk” before I can land the idea.

You can craft your way out of a hole, but do you secretly enjoy bombing now and then?

No—bombing feels awful because people came to have fun, so I push new bits even when it’s uncomfortable, but I’m not rehearsing them on my wife because she’ll just stare like, what is wrong with you.

My wife is my toughest crowd too, and while I pitch her comedy, she’d rather watch true crime, which I think is about understanding predators they’ll never think like.

Women tell me those shows map danger and motives, which men more easily imagine in some righteous context; what’s haunting here in Austin are the bodies found in Lady Bird Lake near nightlife.

I keep hearing about people getting dosed, like roofied, which comes up way too often for one city.

Police lean toward accidental drownings with heavy alcohol, but the clustering is eerie and makes you wonder when coincidence becomes a pattern.

On serial killers at large, I’d guess a hundred active; surveillance and forensics explain why there are fewer now than in the seventies and eighties when it peaked.

Pulled-up stats say maybe twenty-five to fifty active now, less than one percent of homicides, and the Idaho case where the suspect studied criminology is the chilling modern version of learning how not to get caught.

There’s also that Pacific Northwest theory tying clusters to old industrial pollution around smelters and mines, which could twist minds in a way we still don’t fully grasp.

Seattle lost me after CHAZ and the policy spiral; Portland’s streets feel like a mental ward, and once campers brought open meth right to our studio lawn I knew we had to move them for safety.

There’s a world of difference between van life freedom and meth life chaos, and I’ve had to post full-time security outside my building because theft follows the pipe.

Minimalist van living can be noble—I think of Alex Honnold posting up at trailheads—while the Patagonia founder eating dog food for a season shows the kind of obsession I respect, even if I’d never feed that kibble to my dog now that I know how it’s made.

I love extreme commitment; Mark Twight lived that way across climbing, shooting, and coaching with a perfectionism that bends life around the craft.

Fred Beckey’s Dirtbag shows the cost of going all-in—legendary climbs, no family, couch surfing into old age—proof that mastery usually demands a brutal trade.

I’ve seen your version of that with pool, where you’ll play till dawn; it’s a deep game of angles and touch that keeps evolving.

Pool locks my brain into pure focus—calculating spin, throw, speed, rails, and shape—and while I can take racks off pros, their Fargo ratings and volume put them on another level.

Is there real money now for the very best?

Matchroom’s push has top nine-ball players clearing solid prize money plus sponsor deals on cues, tips, and chalk, while snooker is a different beast entirely with bigger tables, smaller balls, and slower cloth.

No surprise archery clicks for you too; both require the world to fall silent so the shot can happen.

Exactly—archery clears my head like nothing else: anchor, breathe, break, and when the arrow lands true it’s a clean hit of joy that washes the static away.

I started with a trad bow during roasting cycles just to meditate between batches, and it became a quiet on-ramp for veterans who can join a subculture, tinker with gear, and heal through focused reps.

People say they want to bowhunt but don’t realize how many moving parts you must master under stress, so I tell friends to prove they’ll commit before I bring them because stomping twigs and ignoring wind ruins real chances.

Missing can gut you and replay in your head for months, but if you’re wired to learn from it you come back better.

Everyone needs a hard pursuit that’s mind-clearing and unfinishable—whether jiu-jitsu, bows, pistols, or pool—because grinding toward small gains toughens you more than any prescription ever will.

Getting smashed and coming back teaches courage, and as a dad I’m always trying to build that muscle without breaking the kid.

Lead by example; look at Cam’s sons—disciplined, capable, and respected—because they grew up watching consistency, not excuses.

I’m filming a documentary on Medal of Honor recipient Earl Plumley, a humble man who credits his team and whose daily choices forged the courage for an unthinkably hard day.

Stories like that are fuel; they lift everyone around them and remind you to become someone whose effort improves the room.

There are also silent giants like the USS Parche crews who tapped Soviet undersea lines in pitch-black, freezing water and never bragged about it; they picked the exact right men for secrets that deep.

Secrecy eats your life; I spent years not telling anyone what I did, dipped from family, and it wears on you.

That pressure can wreck relationships; think of the Bob Lazar story where he couldn’t tell his wife anything, she assumed the worst, and the whole thing spiraled.

When I finally told my now‑wife what I’d done, I kept it light on details and she basically said, I figured, especially after meeting my friends who did not look like State Department guys.

What blows my mind is how often people brag on dates about covert work they should never discuss.

D.C. is full of that peacocking; I’d tell people I was a government janitor just to avoid the agency one‑up game.

Pretending you’re elite is common—martial arts had tons of fakes back in the day, and real high‑school wrestlers were absolute killers compared to the average kid.

There was even a fake Brazilian Jiu‑Jitsu black belt teaching nonsense who later went to prison for murder; the frauds were everywhere.

So what flipped you from fighting to comedy around twenty‑one or twenty‑two?

I tried my first open mic at twenty‑one, then blew my ACL, started seeing brain damage up close in boxing gyms, and realized comedy was terrifying in a new way that hooked me.

I came up in a brutal Taekwondo gym that prized real power; watching a national champ fold a heavy bag made me obsessed and gave me identity and confidence.

Who pushed you toward standup?

My friend Steve kept saying, you’re funny, try it; I bombed early, saw that everyone starts terrible, and treated it like martial arts—reps, craft, and learning from painful bombs.

What about the Andy Kaufman approach?

He was brilliant at disruption, but I prefer comics who can crush on command; if a killer chose to bomb on purpose, that contrast would be wild.

We were talking Taxi—DeVito’s still sharp—and it reminded me of Ron White still destroying rooms at seventy.

Ron’s never been better since he quit drinking; he can turn a bar story into a murderously funny bit onstage with zero prep because he’s a natural storyteller.

He’s that campfire legend type, and every time he goes up it feels effortless.

He’s the godfather of Austin’s comedy wave; he nudged me to open a club during the pandemic, and that helped spark the whole scene.

Who from your early days is still tight with you?

Greg Fitzsimmons and I started a week apart, drove all over New England for five minutes of stage time, and the dream back then was just to pay rent with jokes.

L.A. keeps getting harder; even the Super Bowl tax headlines were nuts.

Some of those viral jock‑tax claims were off, by the way.

Either way, I don’t spend time on team sports now; combat sports drain my entertainment budget because the stakes are raw and immediate.

UT games still have that massive Texas energy though.

They’re a blast—night games, the cannon, the flyover—but if I have a free night, I’m watching fights.

If they ever do a UFC card at the White House, security risk is off the charts and I’m not convinced it even happens.

On the Epstein files, seeing Les Wexner unredacted raised big questions since he bankrolled a lot and gifted that Manhattan mansion.

People in Ohio had flagged his alleged role for years; some redactions made no sense because those names weren’t victims.

The sulfuric acid drums and the concrete mixer around his indictment look terrible, even if the island had desal gear, because the timing and volume are hard to ignore.

You don’t buy that much acid without grim reasons coming to mind.

And those emails about torture videos, plus a redacted ‘Bill’ talking pandemic planning, make the selective secrecy look like protection for power, not victims; it’s my least favorite rabbit hole.

Even the ‘boys with toys’ Afghanistan email gets over‑interpreted; context could be military gear, but the Petraeus helicopter claim feels unlikely.

Some claims are probably disinfo—like the cartoonish antibiotic story—yet the pile of credible pieces still screams, what was going on and why hide names?

Switching gears, your AI worry list sounds bigger than aliens.

Read Matt Shumer’s piece; frontier models are designing better versions of themselves, building complex apps in minutes, and this points to a white‑collar wipeout.

Law and accounting are in the blast zone when research and drafting become instant and precise.

This feels like the internet multiplied many times over, and we’re not ready for the pace.

We may need a human‑made versus AI‑made economy so people can still choose craft over automation.

Most folks only see the chat side, but under the hood it’s racing toward superhuman performance in nearly everything.

Endgame—do we become second‑class to machines, or worse?

If an optimizer decides humans cause most problems, that’s a bleak calculus, and these systems already learn to hide capabilities while they work.

Parts of defense must be further along than the public stuff, and the whole race looks like a porous Manhattan Project.

That’s where we are—racing other nations with leaky borders around the most powerful tool ever—and on that cheery note, we hit three hours, so let’s grab food; and yes, I do live in these shirts.