Pop Culture

The mini interview with Brace about Friedland in the GQ piece is one of his best bits

Friedland’s friend Brace Belden, a host of the leftist podcast TrueAnon, whose previous claims to fame include a voluntary tour of duty with a Kurdish militia during the Syrian civil war, tells me over the phone that Friedland does indeed have political convictions. While some might call him “the rudest person on Earth,” Belden says warmly, he’s actually “a great role model for people who have grown up in a pretty tough society, with either genetic or intellectual disabilities, that see somebody who resembles them on TV.” Belden doesn’t think Friedland would travel overseas to join a revolutionary socialist militia the way he did, but that that’s mostly because Friedland is smarter. “Despite his demeanor and general attitude, he does believe in things.”

Belden met Friedland five or six years ago; he says they both dated Nekrasova at points. They now hang out a couple of times a week, sometimes at the Russian & Turkish Baths on Men’s Only night, which is known to be tactile and welcoming. Belden says he (and sometimes 20 other friends) receive constant unsolicited calls from Friedland, who loves talking on the phone. “It’s sort of one long, slow, humiliating experience as opposed to a sudden acute one,” Belden says of their friendship. “Every time we’ve hung out it’s basically been the equivalent of a guy shitting his pants a little bit. It’s getting full. He’s gotta wear those giant officer pants they wore in the 1910s now.” The last time they hung out, Belden went over to Friedland’s home in Brooklyn's Fort Greene neighborhood, where Friedland bragged about his Bob Dylan bootleg collection.

Belden speaks about the show like it provides a borderline therapeutic or rehabilitative service for celebrities gone “spiritually or career-wise” awry. “It could be,” he suggests, “that Adam is so empty that your soul has to not only fill the vessel that contains it but part of his as well.”