1- I have a set of those headphones, and they are great for setting mic positions...good isolation for tracking too.
2- I disagree with the use of a tied loom of individual long cables to the board. I functioned fine like that for many years. But when I went to hard wire my studio, I went with a 16x8 snake for the drum area and never looked back. So much easier to manage, for me. A single 1.25 inch cable that I run along the main beam, and down a column...so neat, and easy to manage...use the cable lengths needed to get the job done from the box positioned convieniently. Another 12x4 drop snake pulls duty, if needed, for a full live set up of drums, guitars, bass, and scratch vocals.
3- Holy crap! That’s a lot of kick mic’s! But too much IS never enough...sometimes. Record everything...use what you like. Data storage is fairly cheap these days...some performances are priceless.
4- If you have the room for it, take advantage of it. His points about the irregular room dimensions are good ones. Parallel surfaces kinda suck. Room mic’s on drums, in a good room are fantastic though. A great opportunity for a little mid/side, or blumlein array can be a beautiful thing when tastefully mixed with close mic sets.
5- He says he doesn’t mind a little “bleed”, but he does what I begged my drummer to do many years ago(and he did)...his toms are not mounted to the kick, and the tom mounts are externally attached to the drums. This cuts those annoying little hardware rattles, squeaks, and drum body resonant crosstalk down to a surprisingly tolerable level.