Ep. 05: "Carry on, Maude"
John: Hello.
John: Hi, John.
John: How are you?
John: I'm fine, Merlin.
John: I'm on the line.
John: That's going to be my new catchphrase.
Merlin: I'm on the line.
Merlin: Have you had previous... I'm on the line.
Merlin: We should come back to that.
Merlin: I've got a lot of reasons why I like that, that I can discuss with you.
Merlin: Have you had previous catchphrases?
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: It's not you, it's me.
Merlin: You should probably go.
Merlin: I never said any of that.
Merlin: I always said, it's you.
John: It's you.
John: Got any matches?
John: I had some catchphrases, yeah.
John: What were some of my catchphrases?
John: Boy, you know, they're all in Italian.
Merlin: Hospitaliano, that's what I was going to guess.
Merlin: I never knew what I was saying.
Merlin: I think there are times in one's life when one is very susceptible to catchphrases, and in this one's life that is not now, they make me extremely angry.
Merlin: Having said that, I used to really like them a lot.
John: Yeah.
John: You had some, I bet.
Merlin: Oh, God.
Merlin: Well, I think it's a little bit like when people... Now, you probably got this, I'm guessing, with... I'm just going to guess.
Merlin: You got the Space Needle.
Merlin: You got the place where they throw fish.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You know, I don't know.
Merlin: That place is actually kind of cool.
Merlin: But, like, you know the San Francisco deal, right?
Merlin: People come here... Sure, you got Rice-A-Roni.
Merlin: You got Ghirardelli chocolate.
Merlin: The mobile version of Rice-A-Roni is the cable car, obviously, which is, you know, it's fine.
Merlin: It's fine.
Merlin: Fisherman's Wharf.
Merlin: It's super fun, that cable car.
John: You know, I rode that cable car one time, and I was hanging on the front.
John: You know, I got on the front, and I was hanging off the side, and we went by another cable car, and everybody gave each other high fives.
John: Oh, you were hanging too far off the side, guy.
John: I was like, I'm in San Francisco.
John: I can live here.
John: Ding, ding.
John: Ding, ding.
John: I felt like Marlo Thomas and that girl.
Merlin: Oh, God.
Merlin: I would kill to have Marlo Thomas and that girl.
Merlin: I would kill to have Marlo Thomas and that girl.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: That flip, man.
Merlin: Marlo Thomas.
Merlin: That girl, Emma Peel, and Marlo Thomas.
Merlin: There's not a woman in the world that could save me from what they've done to me.
Merlin: Without a special outfit.
Merlin: Let's just put it that way.
John: Marlo Thomas in the early 70s, that was still when it was sexy to be like a ball-busting feminist.
John: It hadn't come trying.
John: It hadn't become deeply, profoundly annoying.
John: It was still hot.
John: Yeah, tell me that I'm Neanderthal and I have bad thoughts.
Merlin: Like Bea Arthur.
Merlin: Remember those carry-on Maude movies that used to be on Showtime?
Merlin: I don't remember those.
Merlin: I remember Maude, and Bea Arthur never... I don't think Norman Lear's take on things has aged particularly well.
John: That's interesting, isn't it?
John: You want Archie Bunker to be eternal.
John: Because it was so far ahead at the time.
Merlin: The first season, when that first episode came on, it was not even like the Beatles.
Merlin: It was like the Sex Pistols or the Clash of TV shows.
Merlin: People had no idea what to make of it.
John: Yeah, so far ahead.
John: My mom talks about going to work.
John: She worked at the oil companies.
John: She would go to work and the other guys in her carpool would spend the whole drive into work talking about the show, not realizing that Archie Bunker wasn't the hero.
Merlin: That's part of the beauty, is I think it's like Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver.
Merlin: You could pick which side you're on.
Merlin: He could be a hero or an anti-hero, depending on how much you like political campaigns and Jodie Foster.
Merlin: Same here.
Merlin: I think a lot of people say, now finally there's a voice for me.
Merlin: I'm just saying, I think Meathead was very unlikable to a lot of people.
Merlin: I think they were all, except for maybe Edith, were all deliberately insufferable.
Merlin: Well, Edith was a meathead.
Merlin: She was a meathead.
Merlin: No, she was a dingbat.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: She was a dingbat.
Merlin: She was a dingbat.
John: Catchphrase, right?
John: Catchphrase.
John: There you go.
John: No, I didn't identify with any of the characters.
John: But anyway, I think you're right.
John: I've seen it recently, and it's kind of like trash.
John: Not even Mrs. Jefferson.
John: Mrs. Jefferson, nothing.
John: You know, I think I probably... The person I identified with was every time Meathead brought home some draft dodger or gay friend or... You know, there was always some kind of... Some dinner guest who had a beard and an army jacket.
John: And halfway through the dinner, he revealed that he'd been in Vietnam or that he was...
Merlin: uh that he had hepatitis c or whatever that guy i always felt like that guy it kind of typified on a day-to-day basis by uh lionel jefferson i could see yourself aligning with lionel you have an excellent haircut you're always always calm and collected and you give as good as you get that's right lionel didn't take it lying down
Merlin: Now, Marla Thomas, though, she was also part, as you know, in the late 60s, they had this Night of the Long Knives, because I like to get a Hitler reference in every episode.
Merlin: Anyway, the point is Ernst Röhm was gay.
Merlin: And they didn't have a place for the essay anymore.
Merlin: And so late 60s, they decided, I guess at CBS, they decided, this is it.
Merlin: You know this, right?
Merlin: You know it.
Merlin: We've had it.
Merlin: There's too much of this corn pone crap.
Merlin: You got the Beverly Hillbillies.
Merlin: You got the Petticoat Junction.
Merlin: You got all of these shows that are turning off the ostensibly urban audience that we want.
Merlin: And so they cleared them all out, right?
Merlin: One in the back of the neck.
John: That's right.
John: It was a holocaust.
Merlin: A literal... And so in their stead, they brought in all of these, I think starting with, I believe, Mary Tyler Moore.
John: Oh, interesting.
John: I would have said it was good times.
Merlin: Oh, I think that was a little later.
Merlin: I think it was a little bit later.
Merlin: But, I mean, the chronology, I think, is, you know, and also, you know, stuff like Hee Haw, right?
Merlin: I mean, Hee Haw hung around for a long time.
Merlin: I think Ray Clark had a lot of dirt on people.
John: What was the one about the pink submarine?
John: Oh, Operation Petticoat.
John: Operation Petticoat.
Merlin: Operation Colon Petticoat.
Merlin: And that was based on a film.
Merlin: where a usual disruption, right?
Merlin: Now you've got to have women on the boat, some kind of Title IX for uteruses and boats.
Merlin: It's like Das Boot meets Ms.
Merlin: Magazine, right?
John: Right, and they were painting the submarine, and the only color of primer they had was pink, and then...
John: and then oh no they had to get out of port really fast or dive bombers dive bombers and so they had to sail in the and and they're stuck in a pink submarine you gotta you gotta work really hard to up a submarine movie
John: The thing is, that movie was terrible, but the television show was hilarious.
Merlin: It was like Hogan's Heroes on a submarine with girls.
Merlin: My cards are already full.
Merlin: I'm writing down Hogan's Heroes.
Merlin: Now, I think I'm going to need to look this up.
Merlin: We have a listener, I found out.
Merlin: We have a listener?
Merlin: I found out we have a listener.
John: What would they be thinking?
Merlin: They're thinking, I don't like it when Merlin types.
Merlin: Oh, somebody complained.
Merlin: There was a complaint about the typing.
Merlin: As you know, John, I've been talking to you about this for years.
Merlin: You never look at the camera and you don't talk about the thing you're doing, right?
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: Yes, yes, yes.
Merlin: You don't clear your throat.
Merlin: It's just pure loogie.
John: Having said that... You don't eat a peanut butter sandwich while you're doing a podcast.
Merlin: That's something I learned.
Merlin: Okay, I have to disagree on that.
Okay.
Merlin: You know, I mean, but you're typing and this is bothering somebody.
Merlin: I mean, you know, if you don't want a little moisture on the mattress, maybe you shouldn't have gone to the bar.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: You know, you knew.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: That's a that one.
Merlin: That's because you understand you've internalized it.
Merlin: Finally, one went past me that I just I need an Ezra pound.
Merlin: I need somebody to get in there and just with a big fucking pencil and just cross out whole pages.
Merlin: You ever seen that?
Merlin: yeah right the big big red x no no no four chapters later there's a good page wait let me just get this straight tom you want to call it he do the police in different voices yes actually i think that would be now the second thing let's talk about the english accent you are from missouri
Merlin: April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land.
Merlin: There's an online version of that.
Merlin: You can get the print version, but in the online version, you can see just Pam went through there like five pages at a time.
John: That's that Raymond Carver story, right?
John: About drinking, you mean?
John: No, no, no.
Merlin: Oh, the guy who actually did all the work, right?
John: Yeah, right.
John: The editor that took 900 pages of drunken scribbles and turned it into like...
John: where I'm calling from.
John: And his wife is like, oh, we want to release the unexpurgated version of the book.
Merlin: And everybody's like, no!
Merlin: Yeah, it's like six cocktail napkins.
Merlin: And each one of them says, alcohol, suburb, telephone, something.
Merlin: All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Merlin: All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Merlin: Where I'm drinking from.
Merlin: Now I'm going to check this.
Merlin: So Typing Boy's probably already gone away, but I'm going to check...
Merlin: By the way, I don't know if you know, I have the loudest keyboard in the entire world.
Merlin: Did you know that?
John: Well, it sounds like it's constructed out of pulleys and wheels.
John: There's no wheels.
John: It sounds like I can hear little rubber bands and gears.
John: Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Merlin: It would appear... Oh, God, this flip.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: I just got a whole truckload of wood.
John: Are you talking about Marlo Thomas' flip or are you talking about the now discontinued flip video camera?
Merlin: Oh, that's a good camera.
Merlin: I've had two of those.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: You encouraged me to get it.
Merlin: And then they EOL'd it, right?
Merlin: They stopped making it.
John: Well, it's not just that.
John: Since the first time we met, every time we get together, you encouraged me...
John: You don't encourage me exactly, but you hold up some talismanic new electronical device and you go, oh my God, this is amazing.
John: I couldn't live without this thing.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: This is the thing with buttons you can use to call people.
John: And then I go home, I go back to Seattle, and I go, hmm, wow, I should really... Maybe one of those little electronical devices would transform my life, and I would be more... I would have more something.
Merlin: I would have more of something that I'm missing, and so I go buy... You think on some level, I'm a smart guy, I do things, I see things, I could use this.
Merlin: I could use this tool, that's right.
Merlin: I could use this.
John: So I buy this flip, and I picture myself out making 30-second...
John: videos of butterflies having sex with each other or i'm going to become a youtube phenomenon because i'm you know i i'm the guy on the spot with my little fucking cigarette pack camera and i'm going to make these fantastical little videos and i'm going to be on funny you're like you're like you're like zola uh meets like true foe like you're out there and you're fucking keeping it real that's right one frame at a time
John: I'm on the street and the street is 1880 Paris.
John: But instead, I get the thing and I'm scrolling through menus trying to set it up and I have to download some code and I have to find some... John, you had to download some code?
John: I had to download some access code and I had to...
John: I had to read the manual.
John: You had to verify your RSS, probably.
John: You know, I have six or seven RSSs I haven't verified.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: Well, you know why?
Merlin: You know why?
Merlin: You got to handshake them with the slave server.
Merlin: That's what you're doing.
John: You have to download Tor and go on the deep web.
Merlin: Was the Flip an instance of that?
John: I have a drawer that I call the Merlin drawer, which is the island of lost fucking PDAs.
John: Where you've cut off bits of my hair.
John: No, there's nothing like that.
John: It's just a bunch of blackberries and cameras, and I think there's a mini disc player in there.
John: There's like a four track that records to Scotch tape.
Merlin: Have you seen the new TIAC Nano?
Merlin: It's not even a one track.
Merlin: This is the neat part.
Merlin: You put scotch tape in.
Merlin: It's double-sided scotch tape that you literally have to get from Scotland.
John: It records everything onto the cloud.
John: Onto the clone.
Merlin: Oh, the clone.
Merlin: Oh, the clone.
Merlin: Now, the zip.
Merlin: Now, I just want to make a case for this.
Merlin: You are right.
Merlin: It looks kind of like a black or, I don't know, African-American package of more 100 cigarettes.
Merlin: It's like a pack of cigarettes.
Merlin: And I got to tell you the truth.
Merlin: I have had...
Merlin: several iphones several information phones and to this day i still say the best stuff i've gotten was from toting around that extra zip i got i got i mean not not not to go all real but like one night we shot uh uh like giving our daughter a bath in a little bucket you've done that right you get the little bucket i did i did this entire thing on the flip and it paid the eye is going to come to your house it paid for itself that was what i do with other kids you know it paid for itself you're saying why are you such an inexpensive babysitter
Merlin: And you know what?
Merlin: Seriously, it paid for itself that night.
John: And that, I must tell you right there, I have a whole... You're talking about it paid for itself in emotional currency.
Merlin: Well, I mean, the thing costs... It was not costly to buy, and it is very easy to use.
Merlin: I mean, it's got that USB.
Merlin: USB is a thing for computers.
Merlin: It's got that little thing, and you pop it in, and then you grab it, and you get your stuff.
Merlin: But anyway, I'm sorry.
Merlin: I didn't mean to interrupt you.
John: I don't want to download any USB...
Merlin: Oh, okay.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: Huh.
Merlin: Hmm.
Merlin: Did you try rebooting the DC?
Merlin: I'm doing that now.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: But it's a spinning beach ball.
John: It has been for a month and a half.
Merlin: Oh, you got the spinning flip of doom.
Merlin: All right, I'm going to continue.
Merlin: Yes, please do.
Merlin: We met... Pardon me.
Merlin: We met... Oh, God, this chili dog.
Merlin: Oh, God, these are getting worse every week.
John: Are you getting the chili dogs in the same place or are you going to different locations?
Oh.
Merlin: No, it's the same place.
Merlin: It's several doors.
Merlin: You sound like suffering.
Merlin: I'm suffering.
Merlin: It's like several doors from here, and don't be creepy, but several doors from here, and each week it's getting worse.
Merlin: They started using that kind of relish.
Merlin: It's like the color of grass in the spring.
Merlin: You know, you get like regular relish?
Merlin: You get like regular relish, right?
John: No, no, no.
John: We are way off the reservation here.
John: Relish on a chili dog?
Merlin: I can't even tell you, you should see their Chicago dog.
Merlin: You know how, like, you have to be licensed to, like, sell, you know, there's all kinds of different licenses to sell beer in England.
Merlin: You know, there's certain kinds of things where you gotta, if you're gonna call it a champagne, it has to be... You can't call it Roqueford, I understand.
Merlin: No, that's correct.
Merlin: If you want to have a bar, you cannot sell Roqueford beer.
Merlin: It's...
Merlin: very small but right yeah exactly exactly rogue for it so they're selling they're selling this to you as a chicago there's not a fucking license in sight these guys are making shit up this is the chicago dog is like if you know that thing with the carl second thing where we put the gold plate in the mars spaceship with the people and the uh naked people and the record what was the song was it chuck berry chuck berry was oh i thought it was uh i thought it was twinkle twinkle little star oh you know mozart didn't write that
Merlin: you're kidding he wrote variations on that i think that's the sound our rice cooker makes my point is if that had been if somebody had hastily drawn a very simple chili dog etched into the gold of the uh what was that called viking uh well you know it came back in star wars or star trek for the whale one yeah right it came back and it could talk to the whales and the whales told it don't destroy the earth and where did that take place
John: San Francisco.
Merlin: You can still go to that aquarium.
Merlin: Scotty works there now.
Merlin: He didn't get any writing credits.
Merlin: My point is, these guys are not licensed to do shit.
Merlin: God bless them.
Merlin: I'm glad they've started their business.
Merlin: Are they Chinese?
Merlin: What do you think?
Merlin: Everyone in your neighborhood is Chinese, but you and the cops.
Merlin: Is it racist if it's about Chinese people?
Merlin: Be honest.
Merlin: I think it is.
Merlin: Okay, now what if I get a Mexican Coke?
Merlin: Is that racist?
Merlin: No, because that's what they're called.
John: Okay.
John: For some reason, we call them Mexican Cokes.
John: What if it tastes sleepy?
Merlin: What if the Coke tastes sleepy or the hot dog tastes sleepy?
Merlin: You go into this place, you order a Chicago dog.
Merlin: Okay, first of all... This is not interesting.
Merlin: I have to take this off my card.
Merlin: Hang on.
Merlin: So Mexican Coke is racism.
Merlin: But now when I order a Mexican Coke, do you think there's a better way?
Merlin: Because I want to try a couple of things this week.
Merlin: I'm mixing it up.
Merlin: First of all, I took off my pants because I thought I want to try something different.
Merlin: And second, I went with a non, I got a Mexican Coke instead of a non-Mexican Coke.
John: Maybe I should put my pants on.
John: I've never had my pants on for this podcast.
Merlin: Well, see, this is why I think this is like, you know, Xan and Jaina, like making the iceberg and the jaguar.
Merlin: I think we're putting our rings together and doing something special here, Pantsless.
John: That's right.
Merlin: Form of Pantsless podcast.
Merlin: That guy was useless.
Merlin: It just makes me angry.
Merlin: All guys are useless.
Merlin: What's that called?
Merlin: Was that Justice League?
Merlin: Super Friends?
John: No, that was Wonder Twin Powers.
Merlin: Weren't them and the little fucking dog, was that part of Super Friends?
Merlin: I thought it was Speed Racer.
Merlin: Speed Racer.
John: Aren't they on Speed Racer?
Merlin: There's a pretty good Canadian band called Super Friends that the guy from Sloan is in.
Merlin: I should find that for you.
Merlin: I know you love Sloan.
Merlin: I do.
Merlin: Anything Sloan touches is solid gold.
Merlin: So you're a Mexican guy and you go into the shitty chili dog place.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: I'll change the name.
Merlin: We'll call it Shitty McChili Dogs.
Merlin: And even though they have all kinds of... It's like a Scottish chili dog.
Merlin: Would you ever go into a place and order a pesto dog?
Merlin: Would you order a hot dog with pesto and cheese that they put in a little oven and heat up?
Merlin: Would you do that?
Merlin: Absolutely not.
John: That's a rhetorical question.
John: You know I wouldn't.
Merlin: Absolutely.
Merlin: I might as well ask you if you would hold it in your ass for a year.
Merlin: You're not that patient.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: And that's what they say.
Merlin: I go in there.
Merlin: You know what I do, John?
Merlin: When I go into a place, and it looks like a place I could work with, I go in there, I always say the same thing.
Merlin: You're surveying it from the moment you walk in.
Merlin: Can I work with this place?
Merlin: Yeah, I know you do this.
Merlin: You're always the last one off the train.
Merlin: Let's circle back to that, off the train.
Merlin: I go in there, and I say...
Merlin: This is such a critical question.
Merlin: Hey, you know, a lot of stuff looks good.
Merlin: Well, what do you guys recommend?
Merlin: What's your favorite thing here?
Merlin: Absolutely, absolutely.
Merlin: Always.
Merlin: Now, first of all, you know the red flag.
Merlin: What is the red flag answer to that from the cute waitress?
Merlin: What is the red flag answer?
John: Well, the first red flag answer is, I'm a vegetarian and I don't eat this food.
John: I'm a vegetarian, so I haven't really tried anything on the menu, but people say it's good.
Merlin: I work in a fucking hamburger joint, but I'm a vegetarian, and I have... That's like working in an abattoir and not liking knives.
Merlin: It doesn't even make sense.
Merlin: That's like working in a Kristallnacht and liking Jews.
Merlin: Here's the thing.
Merlin: You go in there, and you say to them, what's good?
Merlin: Or what do you like?
Merlin: I like it all.
Merlin: Well, yeah, the second worst answer, I think, is a lot of people like the gelatin and espresso doglet.
John: And you go, well, that's not really what I ask you.
John: That's a West Coast answer.
John: You would never get that answer in New York City or in Boston or in Philadelphia.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: oh you know they got one answer they got one answer like get the run the heisman on it like oh a lot of people like it's because people on the west coast can't fucking stand that no no they can't and that is the part of the problem and in this case you walk you walk in somewhere in new york and already they're mad at you like that's good which is good like they're there to make food i'm there to eat it and anything else is just pure noise right that's service right so here's what happens you go to a place in new york and you walk in and you say what's good and they go what the fuck are you talking about exactly
Merlin: Get the pizza, asshole.
Merlin: Oh, no, you know what's good?
Merlin: Cheese pizza.
Merlin: Ever heard of it?
Merlin: Try the lobster Thermidor.
Merlin: That should fit in your ass.
John: No.
John: I went into Katz's Deli one time, and I said, can I get Swiss cheese on that sandwich?
John: And the guy said, if that's what you want...
Merlin: I wouldn't do it, but if that's what you want... That's one place where the... Wait, now, you got the halal, and then what's the one for Islam?
Merlin: It's the same thing, but with different names, right?
John: Halal is Islam, kosher is Jew.
John: Okay, I gotta get that right, I think.
John: Kosher, Jewish, halal, Islam.
John: Same thing.
John: Okay.
John: It's the same book, basically.
John: Same set of voodoo rules.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: But one of them...
Merlin: But you go in, and yet, either one of those restaurants, if I can say, you go in and ask for an Abrahamic sandwich, they're not going to be happy.
Merlin: That's really funny.
Merlin: That is a very funny joke, John.
John: You know what that is?
John: Because all the people in both the halal restaurants and the Jewish restaurants are all from the Dominican Republic now.
Merlin: Ditto Chinese restaurants.
Merlin: Is that racist that I said Chinese restaurant?
John: No, it is a Chinese restaurant.
John: You wouldn't say, it's Asian food.
Merlin: It's not Asian.
Merlin: You know what chow mein is?
John: It's an oriental carpet.
John: Chow mein?
Merlin: It's Asian cuisine, and it's Chinese food.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Now, what about the ancient secret being Chinese?
Merlin: Is that racist?
Merlin: The ancient Chinese secret?
Merlin: No, that's dry cleaning.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: It's right there.
Merlin: It just seems like it.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: And if it is literally a fire drill inside of the Asian American restaurant,
Merlin: You can't have a fire drill inside of a place.
Merlin: That would not be a Chinese fire drill is what you're telling me.
John: Fire drill, by definition, you leave the place.
John: If it's a car, if you're in a car, it's a Chinese fire drill.
John: If it's in a Chinese restaurant, it's a regular fire drill in an Asian restaurant.
Merlin: Okay, what if it's a Chinese car, but all the cooks are Mexican?
Merlin: Is that still...
Merlin: Are there Chinese cars?
Merlin: Every single restaurant I have worked in.
Merlin: Now, back in high school, this was not true.
Merlin: But since then, every restaurant I've either worked in or had familiarity with has been largely populated with people from Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and I want to say Honduras.
John: That's right.
John: And I think it's part of a global plan.
Mm-hmm.
John: That one day, that last restaurant that still employs an old Italian guy, he's going to retire or die.
John: And then the Mexican government will, like, blow a whistle.
John: They got a government?
John: Well.
Okay.
Okay.
John: In the South, they do.
John: They'll blow some kind of whistle and America will starve.
John: Like we will be cut off.
John: There will be no food available.
John: Got it.
John: Sleeper cells.
Merlin: Sleeper cells.
John: It's a Manchurian candidate thing again.
John: A lot of the people working in Red Robins and stuff, they don't even know that they are a sleeper cell.
John: I got to find out more about Red Robins.
Merlin: So somebody has, is it a Mexican whistle?
Merlin: Just so I, for my card.
John: I don't... I've been to Mexico several times, and I didn't notice that they had a whistle technology that differed from ours, but... Right.
John: But I'm, you know... This is a secret thing.
Merlin: This is a secret society.
Merlin: Only place you could get a beetle for a long time, you know, when they closed down the beetles.
Merlin: And by the way, I did do some more research.
Merlin: Thank you very much.
John: I think they made those in Argentina, too.
Merlin: Isn't that where they have all the steak?
Oh, my God.
Merlin: Did we ever go to that place?
Merlin: Did we ever go to that Churrascura place?
Merlin: Did we ever go to that when you were here?
John: No, but I've been to Buenos Aires, and let me tell you, they are not kidding around when they put steak on fire.
John: Can they do it on the swords?
John: They do it on the swords.
John: They walk through the restaurant with the steak on the swords, and it's not, you know, if you go to that in San Francisco, it's like getting a freaking Chicago dog in the sunset.
John: But if you're in Buenos Aires, a guy comes in, and the waiter, you know... Pants, big pants, big pants.
John: no they're not like dressed like gauchos they're dressed in tuxedos because they're 65 year old men that still believe that being a waiter is not just a good job oh i love that but it's a kind of do you remember our waiter our waiter at the gaucho at wait a minute oh right at yes am i wrong el gaucho gaucho holy shit i think we just blew something open at el gaucho yes one of the one of the top
Merlin: maybe five, maybe one of the top three.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: That might be the best steak experience we've had.
Merlin: That guy was very tolerant, and he was old, and he had a shit ton of dignity.
John: He did, and our stupid-ass rap where everything is a joke.
John: Yeah, I want to make him like us.
John: Wanted to make him like us from the very beginning.
John: We wanted to let him know that we were on his side.
John: He just took it all.
John: He bore it with a... Total dignity.
John: With dignity and wisdom.
Merlin: This is not a girl with small ankles and small nipples.
Merlin: This was a man who was near 80 and not in great health.
John: He was not working this job in order so that he could work on his screenplay.
John: Oh, that's a really good point.
John: You know what I mean?
John: He was working this job because this was his job.
John: And when you go to a place like Argentina or Chile or even places in Spain still, it's less true in Spain all the time.
John: It used to be very true.
John: The waiters are old people, and they are proud.
Merlin: And it also helps that they're not part of the whole Hollywood system.
Merlin: You know, I think they're not making as many movies there.
Merlin: And, you know, I think there's just not that inertia that people feel to write some kind of a script.
Merlin: You know, maybe like a romantic comedy.
Merlin: I agree completely.
Merlin: There's a place in town.
Merlin: I'm going to find out.
Merlin: Now, let me ask you one question.
Merlin: There's a, I think it's a style of painting versus a kind of Brazilian steak place.
Merlin: Is that Charascura?
Merlin: Is it Charascura?
John: Well, charoscuro is the steak, and charoscuro is the use of light in a dark painting.
Merlin: Is that one of those things like chocolatey instead of chocolate?
Merlin: I think they're trying to screw us with that.
Merlin: Espedus.
Merlin: We've never been to espedus.
Merlin: You eat food off of swords.
Merlin: They have very large pants.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: Well, I'm going to put that on another card, which is next time, if you ever come here again, we're going to go to... You know, the one that always confuses me is baklava versus a balaclava.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: One of them's a gun, right?
Merlin: And the other one's got spinach?
John: Well, one is a mask.
John: One is a face mask that you wear when you are either in the special air service or on a snowmobile.
John: And the other is some kind of disgusting Greek...
Merlin: Oh, it's made out of phyllo, phyllo dough.
Merlin: It's got the very thin, thin dough, right?
John: Here's my problem with the Greeks.
John: They're the cradle of civilization, but there's not a single Greek dessert or Turkish dessert.
John: Well, no, that's not true.
John: There are some Turkish desserts, but Greek desserts, name a good Greek dessert.
John: Like feta?
John: Yogurt?
John: The Greeks have no desserts and that's why their country is fucked.
Merlin: It's a weak link in the gustatory chain for the Greek.
Merlin: I totally agree.
Merlin: It's apparently very inexpensive.
Merlin: You know what you don't want to do though is mix up Greek people and Turkish people.
Merlin: They do not like that.
John: Oh, there's a difference.
Merlin: Oh, man.
Merlin: I was at a place in England, and I saw a guy.
Merlin: Now, if you see a guy with a little coffee pot, and he's making like a little espresso-style looking coffee thing with a little flame under it, what do you call that kind of coffee?
Merlin: That's Turkish coffee.
Merlin: Oh, I said, oh, it looks like you're making some Turkish coffee.
Merlin: And he said, Greek coffee.
Merlin: I was like, wow.
John: Here's a funny thing.
John: I've been to the Greek-Turkish border.
John: And there isn't a lot of... Most of the Greek-Turkish border is the Aegean Sea, right?
John: It's not really a border.
John: It's just an ocean that they agree to disagree about who owns the islands in.
John: How do you like that?
John: How do you like that as a sentence?
Merlin: I think it's great, and I think it must have had a huge effect on why you never agree to disagree.
Merlin: You're learning from the Greek.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: From the Greeks and the Turks.
Merlin: But I've been to the... From the root disagreeos.
John: The root disagreeos, meaning to contend with.
John: Anyway, this border is a fortified border.
John: Like barbed wire, jeeps running up and down both sides, machine gun nests pointed at each other.
John: And I'm walking along this fence line with my little backpack on.
John: And there are guys, it was like walking along the Berlin Wall.
John: There were guys with machine guns pointed at me, looking at me through binoculars the whole time.
John: And I said, both of these countries are in NATO.
John: They're both, you know, like they both aspire at least to be in the EU.
John: And it's like East Berlin, West Berlin here.
Merlin: And for a long time, Turkey wanted to be in that European deal, right?
Merlin: They still do.
Merlin: Not the European deal.
Merlin: Was it the European deal?
Merlin: Yeah.
John: European Union, yeah.
Merlin: The Greeks are having a lot of problems with money now, I hear.
John: Oh, they really are.
John: And it's because... Desserts.
John: Well, I think it's a large part of that.
John: They don't have a good dessert, and so they steal.
John: The Greeks, they stole a lot of money from themselves.
Merlin: All I know is that when I was a waiter... See, now that's racism.
John: Now we're going to get some angry letters.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I am a Greek, and you have made an insult.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: They're inscrutable.
Merlin: When I was a waiter, all the dough... Those are Chinese.
Merlin: Oh, sorry.
Merlin: Sorry.
Merlin: The...
Merlin: When I was a waiter, all the dough was in stuff like desserts and appies and cocktails.
John: Are you talking about money or are you talking about actual phyllo dough?
John: Are we back to phyllo dough?
Merlin: The actual cash money.
Merlin: If you wanted to have value-added money, that's what you would try and sell.
Merlin: What I'm saying is I don't know what the margins are like on something like spanakopita and gyros or if there's other foods.
Merlin: I don't know if there are.
Merlin: They probably have something with grape leaves.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You're not going to make a lot of dough if you don't have a good dessert, if you don't have like a flourless chocolate cake.
Merlin: I mean, you know, come on.
John: That's what I'm saying.
John: Exactly.
John: You sit down to a Greek dinner.
John: The first course is tomatoes and cucumbers.
Yeah.
John: In like a vinaigrette?
John: With some vinegar on it.
John: I like that.
John: It's nice, but it's not like you just sold somebody a platter of Bloomin' Onions.
Merlin: No.
John: Right?
John: I mean, Bloomin' Onions.
John: You know what the margins are like on a Bloomin' Onion?
John: You're raking it in.
Merlin: They make $42 on every one of those.
John: The thing about a Bloomin' Onion is you look at it and you don't see how cheap the onion is and you don't see how cheap the grease is.
John: What you see is labor.
John: You think, wow, a lot of work went into making that onion bloom.
John: Whereas if you just cut up some tomatoes and some whatever, cucumbers, everybody can see that that didn't take anything.
John: Nobody's willing to pay a loan.
Merlin: Yeah, if you haven't flown anybody, that came out of a thing, like a five-gallon bucket.
John: Exactly.
John: And then the second course in a Greek meal is some yogurt with some lemon on it or some falafel on a bed of lettuce.
John: I mean, none of these things, these are not impressive foods.
John: This isn't like, and then your next course is like, whoa, some... No, it's not ramping up.
Merlin: It's not ramping up the experience.
Merlin: And at the same time, apparently people are constantly breaking plates.
Merlin: They think that's good luck.
Merlin: So they're losing money all the time on that.
Merlin: I mean, that's going to bring your margins down.
Merlin: If you're breaking, you're literally breaking your own plates in the restaurant.
Merlin: I don't care how happy you are.
John: Well, and then they're shooting their blunderbusses in the air.
John: Right, right, exactly.
John: Lead pellets, it all rains down somewhere.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, no, they didn't learn from Gettysburg.
Merlin: um here's the other problem though you go out now you're greece and you need money so what do you do you start saying everybody hey look we need some money and then they say hey look we gave you some money and that didn't work out i think at this point we say let's give you some dessert not give you some dessert we'll loan you some dessert i think i think we get behind this i think we have the french we have the germans now the germans god bless them if you do not give a german a piece of cake after a meal they will they will literally put you in a camp
Merlin: Because that's not a meal if you didn't get kicked.
Merlin: There's got to be bread.
Merlin: They're crazy with the breads and the sugars.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: They make a pretty good dessert, right?
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
John: If you took all these... What the Germans can't do is make a fucking entree to save their lives.
John: Oh, my Christ.
Merlin: You know, if you guys could make an entree like you make a tank... It's a sausage and a potato is a German entree.
John: You call that done?
John: You call that a meal?
John: You're like, can you dress this up?
John: Sausage, piece of parsley, potato.
John: They don't even bother with the parsley.
John: I have spent so many months in Germany saying, do you have anything that isn't a fried pork cutlet?
John: And then the waiter goes, well, we have a fried pork cutlet with an egg on the top.
Merlin: Is that sauerbraten?
Merlin: No, what is that?
Merlin: No, that's a hoff and pfeffer.
Merlin: It's Wienerschnitzel.
Merlin: Which is the one with the riddles on the lid.
Merlin: That's Hoffenreffer, right?
Merlin: Hoffenreffer?
Merlin: Yeah, a private stock.
Merlin: And then you've got the Hassenpfeffer.
Merlin: Hassenpfeffer is rabbit.
Merlin: Okay, we'll see.
Merlin: I think step two in this implementation process, I think the Greek gustatory influx, I think step two is going to be to improve the entrees.
Merlin: I think step number one, see, I don't love flan, but some people love a flan.
Merlin: I think flan is going to be a lot better.
John: Who likes a flan?
Merlin: You know, it's where there's the custard.
John: Bea Arthur is the target audience for a flan.
John: You have to be an 85-year-old living in Florida.
Merlin: If I could say, John, I think flan is a fairly phallocentric dessert.
John: You know what I'm saying?
John: You think it's men that like flan?
Merlin: Some.
Merlin: Maybe 10%.
John: What you're saying is 10% of men would fuck a flan.
Merlin: I'd fuck the flan.
Merlin: I'd fuck the shit out of a flan.
Merlin: I don't think anybody wants to eat a flan.
Merlin: When I was 12, I would have fucked the thing they made the flan in.
Merlin: The recipe book, you know?
Merlin: You would have fucked the recipe book?
Merlin: You couldn't have opened it when I was done.
John: See, I was picturing like a little flan mold with some little bits of flan sticking to the sides, and I kind of thought, well, sure, who wouldn't fuck that?
Merlin: How tall is she?
Merlin: A flan mold.
Merlin: And my point being, now the French, there's so much we could say about the French.
Merlin: You know I have a hard-on for the French.
Merlin: I do not like the French, right?
John: Yep, yep, yep.
Merlin: I'm just saying, but they make a hell of a dessert.
John: Yeah, they do.
John: And a pretty killer entree, too.
John: And appetizer, of course, from the start to the finish, say what you will about the French, and we could go on and on about the French.
Merlin: Oh, I got a whole card right here.
Merlin: The fucking French.
Merlin: This is called the card français.
Merlin: But if you sit down, le carte français.
Merlin: Le card.
Merlin: No, you have to speak French here.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You sit down at the table.
Merlin: Shut up.
John: You sit down at a table in a French restaurant and the waiter's going to be a dick.
John: The tablecloth is not going to be clean.
John: The place is going to smell like bleach and roaches.
John: But my God, every one of the seven courses they put down in front of you.
John: is going to blow your mind it is going to redefine that particular course of food for you I was in a restaurant one time and I ordered I swear to you I ordered the chocolate mousse at the end of the meal and the guy came over with a champagne bucket
John: Full of chocolate mousse, which had spoon marks in it where the mousse had been spooned out.
Merlin: He had a mousse bucket.
John: He had a champagne bucket full of mousse, and he set it down on the table, and he said, help yourself.
John: I went back into the kitchen, and I was left alone.
John: I mean, I might have had a dining partner.
John: I don't even remember now.
John: Lesson learned, France.
Merlin: There was a much more noticeable dent in the moose bucket when you were done.
John: No, that's the thing.
John: I just had a six-course meal.
John: It probably was 40,000 calories.
John: And he puts this bucket of mousse on the table as a challenge.
John: It was absolutely a challenge.
John: It was like, here you go.
John: Do your worst.
John: Do your worst, American.
John: Fuck you.
John: Here, champagne bucket full of mousse.
John: And the first spoon, the first spoonful of mousse was like eating a stick of butter.
John: Eating a stick of butter that had been warmed by the sun.
John: And, I mean, I thought I was going to eat this bucket of mousse, but I could not.
John: I really, you know, three spoonfuls and I surrendered.
Merlin: S'il vous plaît, monsieur.
Merlin: Please call me over when you're ready to, as you say, surrender.
John: I was thinking to myself, you spent four years fighting trench warfare against the Germans, and you had this secret weapon?
John: You're out there shooting pellets at each other?
John: You had 50,000 men die in one day on the Somme, and you could have just sent this bucket of moose across?
John: I mean, the Germans would have had no defense.
John: They're used to somebody giving them a piece of dry bread and some flourless cake at the end of a meal.
John: they would have capitulated in an hour.
Merlin: Two words, Maginot Line.
Merlin: That didn't take a weekend.
Merlin: That was a lot of fucking work to make one of the most useless things ever.
Merlin: You spent all that time on a Maginot line when you could have made just like a moose table.
Merlin: They would have stopped right there.
John: That's right.
John: A folding table, two guys sitting on one side of it, and a bucket of moose.
John: And they would have been like, line up.
John: Take all you want, helmet.
John: That's right.
John: This is it.
John: This is all we have in France.
John: You can take as much as you want.
Merlin: Do you remember our guy?
Merlin: I wish I could remember his name.
Merlin: We should go back there.
Merlin: And then remember he unexpectedly brought us a lovely plate of fruit.
Merlin: Not like the kind of fruit you get at the soup and crackers or whatever.
Merlin: He puts down a plate of whole fruits, like something from a Hans Holbein painting.
Merlin: And he's like, here, here's a bunch of fruit I just felt like bringing you.
Merlin: And we were like, God bless you, old man.
John: Yeah, I felt like there should have been a piglet in the middle of this basket of fruit, and we actually sat with our knives and were cutting up apples, whole apples, and eating them at this table.
Merlin: That's what it should feel like.
Merlin: And now you go to Greece, and what are you doing?
Merlin: You're peeling away layers of phyllo dough, wondering what this dirt-like substance, what is this mulch inside of here?
John: If you're lucky, they'll give you some hot nuts.
John: But this is something I've never understood.
John: And this happened to me in Turkey all the time.
John: In Turkey, they were always handing you hot nuts.
John: Would you like hot nuts?
Merlin: That sounds like a test, John.
John: No, at a certain point, I had to start.
John: There are storefronts in Turkey.
John: All they sell is hot nuts.
John: Like every kind of nut, hot.
John: And there's a guy behind the counter, I swear to you, in a bow tie and a stripy shirt and a little paper cap.
John: And he's like, you know, pick the hot nuts that are your pleasure.
John: And after a while in Turkey, I was like, you know what?
John: I'd like some nuts at room temperature.
John: And at that point... What do you think we are, Greek?
John: You're insulting their culture at that point.
John: That's not how we do it.
John: And I'm like, I just, I love nuts.
John: But not hot.
John: I don't want them hot.
John: I tried them.
John: Now I just like some regular nuts.
John: And the guy said, at one point, some guy said, buy the nuts, take them home, let them cool.
Merlin: That was his solution.
John: That was his solution.
John: Because all he had were hot nuts.
John: Sir, would you like... I mean, he said the sign language.
John: I mean, I don't speak Turkish.
Merlin: How would you like to have a Hertz donut?
Merlin: And he punches you in the arm.
Merlin: That's not even funny.
Merlin: Please, for the love of God, stop eating your nuts, Mexican Coke.
Merlin: Oh, gosh.
Merlin: Oh, Marla Thomas.
Merlin: So Marla Thomas, 1966, was the premiere of That Girl.
Merlin: It's described as Anne Marie, which I thought was kind of funny.
Merlin: She's got two.
Merlin: Anne Marie is a struggling actress living in New York City in between trying to find jobs.
Merlin: She has time for her boyfriend, Donald Hollinger.
Merlin: Now, interesting here.
Merlin: Now, Donald Hollinger, first of all, A, this is where I learned the word fiancé.
Merlin: I learned the word fiancé from that girl when I was a boy.
John: Really?
John: Mm-hmm.
John: I learned the word moot from Rick Springfield.
Merlin: The point is probably moot.
Merlin: Oh, that's such a good song.
Merlin: It's a great song, and you never saw it coming.
Merlin: I can still play it.
Merlin: I can still play every note of it.
Merlin: I love it.
Merlin: I love that song.
John: The point is probably moot.
John: At the time, I remember saying to my sister kind of smugly as a 12-year-old, I think he means mute.
John: And my sister, who was a 10-year-old, said, it's moot.
John: And I was like, I don't think there's a word, moot.
Merlin: It's probably mute.
Merlin: Around that time, probably one night in 1981, someone asked me, a group of adults said, where do you want to go for dinner?
Merlin: And I said, doesn't matter to me, I'm expendable.
Merlin: because I'd heard that in a Warner Brothers cartoon.
Merlin: Now, here's the thing about that girl.
Merlin: I think this is an important thing, because I think that girl, yes, she's got the father figure, yes, she's got the fiancé, but she's trying to strike out on her own.
Merlin: I think this is the network trying to get into this whole youth culture thing in a way that people will be able to understand.
Merlin: I think she's a very important precursor to Mary Tyler Moore.
Merlin: I say all this because, did you know, that for the Mary Tyler Moore show, initially she was supposed to be,
Merlin: Divorced.
Merlin: Scandalous.
Merlin: She was supposed.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: But here's the big, big problem.
Merlin: I think eventually it was implied.
Merlin: I think it was implied eventually that there was an engagement that broke off that she was actually never married.
Merlin: The concern on all fronts was that people would think she had gotten divorced from Dick Van Dyke.
John: You can't divorce Dick Van Dyke.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: He used to be an alcoholic.
Merlin: You don't want to get Dick Van Dyke mad.
John: If I had been married to Dick Van Dyke, just his British accent in Mary Poppins was enough to divorce him.
Merlin: And it keeps changing.
Merlin: Like, not even a paragraph, not even a sentence, like from whatever, monim to monim or whatever.
Merlin: Phonim, I guess.
Merlin: Phonim.
Merlin: Phonim.
Merlin: That's like FMA.
John: I don't know.
John: Monim, I don't know what that is.
John: That's a great name for a French girl, though.
John: Have you met Dottel Monim?
John: Have you met Monim?
John: I'll write that down.
John: Monim.
John: You know whose British accent I can't stand?
John: Don Cheadle.
John: Does he have a fake British accent?
No.
John: Don Cheadle tries to do a Cockney accent in those Ocean's Eleven movies, and every time he's on the screen, my skin is crawling like it's covered with spiders.
John: And I got nothing against Don Cheadle.
John: I like that actor.
John: People say he's a great actor, and he's in a lot of movies.
John: I feel like he plays the same role in every film, but that's all right, except for this one movie where he does a Cockney accent.
John: And it makes my skin crawl.
John: And somebody suggested to me that maybe I could enjoy the Ocean's Eleven movies more if I thought that he was intentionally doing a bad fake British accent.
John: And I haven't tested that theory out.
Merlin: That's like saying, you know, enjoy it because she's acting like she's doing a crummy hand job.
Merlin: You know?
Merlin: She's really bad at it.
Merlin: I mean, it's not going to matter what you think.
John: That's kind of an interesting idea.
John: Really?
John: You know, enjoy it because she's acting like she's giving a crummy handjob.
John: I'm going to try that.
Merlin: You know, she's given up a lot just to even be there.
John: Yeah, it's like, this isn't a crummy handjob.
John: This is a performance of a crummy handjob.
Merlin: Also, I cut you off on the MASH thing.
Merlin: I think MASH is another thing, though, like the All in the Family, where it really, it was a little heavy-handed pretty quickly, but I think it really, really, really has not aged well.
John: It has not aged well.
John: Some of those, particularly the later episodes, you can't even watch it.
John: It's like being sent to the principal's office.
Merlin: And like Happy Days, yes, and like Happy Days, and like so many shows that were on for way too long, they got less and less careful about even trying to make them look like it was that era.
John: Right, right.
Merlin: People started to get really long sideburns.
Merlin: Yeah, like, Chachi, really?
Merlin: That's the way people had hair in 1961?
Merlin: Are you kidding me?
Merlin: Chachi.
Merlin: You know?
Merlin: I mean, everybody looked like John Casals in Dog Day Afternoon.
Merlin: It's like, what are you guys doing with those haircuts?
Merlin: You're in the Army.
John: You know?
John: Every time Chachi came on the set...
John: For me, it was like when Scrappy-Doo walked out into the scene.
John: Chachi was the Scrappy-Doo of Happy Days.
Merlin: They all have them.
Merlin: I mean, you know, there's that whole Jump the Shark site.
Merlin: I think, yes, absolutely.
Merlin: You know, like Oliver on the Brady Bunch.
Merlin: Oliver, oh my god.
Merlin: And then they had that lame attempt to try to make one episode where they were trying to make a spin-off with multi-racial kids.
John: I didn't see that.
John: Oliver was like a three-foot-tall John Denver.
Merlin: And then he was on Big John Little John with Herb Edelman.
John: Whoa, you just took it to a higher level.
John: You do that all the time.
John: He brought major science.
Merlin: I think Robbie Rist is in bands now, I think.
Merlin: He's like a producer or something.
Merlin: Ooh, there's a really douchebaggy picture of him.
Merlin: Oh, my goodness.
John: The ultimate example of that, of course, is the little Cooley child in the second Indiana Jones movie.
John: Is it Cooley?
John: I don't know.
John: I'm just trying to keep up with your casual racism.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: Well, I'd like to move on to black tie racism at some point.
Merlin: Just so we can raise the tone a little bit.
John: You want to go to black tie racism?
John: I'm sorry, African-American tie.
John: No one will know what the hell we're talking about.
John: We will be drowning in euphemism because there's nobody more racist than black tie people.
John: African-American tie people, I mean.
Merlin: Don't.
Merlin: Okay, so we got your screen.
Merlin: I had a couple other things.
Merlin: The Moose Buffet.
Merlin: Espitus.
Merlin: Got to go to Espitus.
Merlin: Norman Lear.
Merlin: Oh, Hogan's Heroes.
Merlin: We got to do a whole thing on Hogan's Heroes.
John: Can we talk about Anne Margaret for a second?
Merlin: Oh, you bet we can.
John: God.
John: Oh, man.
John: Anne Margaret in that Who movie.
Merlin: Oh, as the... She wasn't the Essa Queen.
Merlin: She was the mom.
Merlin: Was she the mom?
John: She was the mom.
Merlin: Oh, man.
Merlin: Or like in that Bye Bye Birdie.
Merlin: That opening sequence from Bye Bye Birdie.
John: And Margaret.
John: Have you seen her appearances on the Dean Martin television program?
John: No, I haven't.
John: She's every bit as foxy as the foxiest thing that ever walked the earth.
Merlin: she's uh i'm gonna try and send you this on the robot no she's absolutely absolutely i mean like she's very close to uh well she's a different she's a different strain of of hot girl for me she's not in my like canonical uh phalanx of hot girls but she's awful canonical phalanx yeah right that's from the greek yeah yeah they were on factory records band didn't didn't uh didn't do very well
Merlin: Disagreos.
Merlin: Oh, that's a Greek word.
Merlin: Gosh, I got so many of these.
Merlin: Send in the canonical phalanx.
Merlin: Watch that video while I'm looking at my cards.
Merlin: We're doing a podcast and I'm watching a video.
Merlin: Nobody can hear it.
Merlin: Just watch a little bit.
Merlin: And I'll just talk to myself here.
Merlin: I got eyeglasses.
Merlin: My bank.
John: You know, it's a... She's so red-headed...
Merlin: Oh, she's extremely redheaded.
John: And she's very... Oh, she's so petulant.
John: And... She's biting her lower lip.
Merlin: She could cause a lot of trouble for a lot of people.
John: She's flouncing her hair around.
John: That's a thing that girls don't do now.
John: They don't flounce their hair like this.
John: Although I think Zooey Deschanel probably does.
Merlin: You know, I think it's something where I totally agree, and I think it's something that a slutty girl would do when she wants you to pick up the tab, but I think all girls usually just flip their hair as a thing.
Merlin: That's like guys wearing hats.
Merlin: That was just what you did.
John: She flips her hair like an Olympic fencer.
John: Like every single little flick of her hair is intentional.
John: It is.
John: It is.
John: And there's somebody, you can see there's somebody with a fan right behind the camera pointing the fan at her and giving her a little bit of, you know, a little bit of wind.
John: He works for Neil Young now.
John: The fan guy.
Merlin: You ever notice Neil Young's always in a fan?
John: Well, yeah, you know, I saw Neil Young, I saw the Neil Young production from the side of the stage at one point.
John: And he hires, everybody that works for Neil Young has worked for Neil Young for 45 years.
John: So the fan guy probably started with Neil in 67.
John: You know, he did this Anmar, he did Bye Bye Birdie, and then he went over to Neil.
John: And they all have huge handlebar mustaches.
John: They all look like Muppets.
John: It's amazing.
John: It's like being in a biker bar, except everybody's super friendly.
Merlin: That's so cool.
Merlin: He seems extremely down to earth.
Merlin: Shy, reserved, and down to earth is what strikes me.
John: He's a little shy.
John: Some of that is that he's stoned.
John: For real.
John: I shook his hand.
John: I just said, I stuck his hone, but I didn't stuke his hone.
John: I did shake his hand.
John: That's a German phrase.
John: I stuke his hone.
John: I stuke his hone.
John: But I shook his hand, and his hand was so soft, and so gentle, and we stood and we talked about model trains.
Merlin: And his kid likes model trains, I'm guessing?
Merlin: Yeah.
John: This kid likes model trains, but he's a big model train guy.
John: And I knew that.
John: And I like model trains.
John: So I was, you know, I was like, what am I going to say to Neil Young?
John: Because, you know, Neil Young was a, he was a figure for me when I stopped doing drugs.
John: I remember this was the thing that popped into my head because when you stop doing drugs, a lot of things pop into your head.
John: A lot of stupid shit pops into your head for months and years afterwards.
John: But one of the things that popped into my head right at the start was, well, okay, smart guy, you stopped doing drugs, but what are you going to do if one day Neil Young offers you a hit off of his joint?
John: His doobie.
John: Are you going to say no to Neil Young offering you a hit off of his doobie?
John: And so for 15 years of walking around not doing drugs, this is in the back of my mind.
John: I didn't have a definitive answer for this.
John: But this was the challenge.
John: This was the test.
John: What are you going to do, smart guy?
John: when Neil Young offers you a hit off of his doobie.
John: It's one thing to not be searching the carpet for that little piece of crack that somebody thought they dropped.
John: But it's another thing.
John: It's one thing to not want to do that anymore.
Merlin: It's not like Dennis Wilson asking you to look through the mats in his car for Coke.
Merlin: Right.
John: It's not Brian Wilson sitting in a cat box saying, Could you light this poop for me?
John: Is this hash or is this cat shit?
John: No, this was the thing.
John: What are you going to do?
John: And I had a short test of it.
John: One night I was out to dinner with Mike Mills of REM, a guy you know I admire.
John: And he ordered like probably 11 teen bottles of wine while we were at dinner.
John: And I was thinking to myself, do I have a glass of wine with Mike Mills?
John: This is like a big moment for me having dinner with Mike Mills.
John: And I didn't have a glass of wine, and why not?
John: Because I said, well, it's not Neil Young offering you a hit off of his 2B.
John: He kept it special.
John: Yeah, that's the thing, right?
John: So then anyway, here I am backstage at a Neil Young thing.
John: And Nick Harmer from Death Cab for Cutie, he comes, he grabs me, and he says, you got to come with me.
John: You know, we're backstage.
John: Everybody's, it's like backstage, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
John: Nick comes, he kind of, you know, gets me away from the herd, and he says, come with me, come with me.
John: And we walk out into the hall, and I say, what's going on?
John: He's like, just stand here with me and just talk to me for a second.
John: I was like, all right.
John: We stand there and talk.
John: just making chit chat and i'm like so what are we doing here and he's like just if we just stand here for a few more minutes neil young is going to walk out of that door and i and i want i want you to meet him and i said oh all right and it at the very moment the door opens and out walks neil young with his wife and his band and everybody is smiling and
John: And they walk right over, and Neil goes, hey, Nick, how's it going?
John: And Nick goes, great, Neil.
John: I want you to meet a good friend of mine, John Roderick.
John: And Neil goes, hey, John, how's it going?
John: And puts out his hand.
John: And we stand there and spend 10 minutes talking.
John: Now, this is a gift that Nick Harmer gave me.
John: I think it says volumes about Nick Harmer, first of all.
John: But I'm standing here, I'm talking to Neil Young, and I'm thinking to myself...
Merlin: What am I going to do if he offers me a hit off of his doobie?
Merlin: You couldn't even concentrate on enjoying the moment because he just kept waiting for the moment where he pulls out like a Cheech and Chong-sized joint.
John: The thing is, the smell of pot is wafting over us as we're talking.
John: Hmm.
John: And you can hear, we're in the basement of this stadium, right?
John: You can hear the crowd going, Neil, Neil, Neil, Neil, like chanting.
John: Neil's on his way to the stage, right?
John: He's not like, they're not stopping to chat on their way to the bus.
John: They're stopping to chat in their show clothes, headed to the stage.
John: And he stops and is like, I'm going to take 10 minutes and talk to this guy.
Merlin: 10 minutes?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: We stand there and talk about... And that seems also... I'm sorry to interrupt, but that's like not your MO.
Merlin: You're like, get out of the way, guy.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You must have been so nervous.
Merlin: I was like, so... So, yeah.
John: Um...
John: So the bridge benefit is a cool thing.
John: You're going to Chris Farley mode.
John: So you're Paul McCartney.
John: And the whole time I'm thinking, don't offer me a hit off your doobie.
John: Don't.
John: Please don't do it.
John: I don't want it.
John: I don't want it.
John: I want it, but I don't want it.
John: This is the thing.
John: And he didn't.
John: Thank God.
John: Bless him.
Merlin: He could probably sense it.
Merlin: Even in his terrible, terrible, uncontrollable marijuana haze, he could probably tell that you felt awkward about doobies.
John: I'm sure a lot of guys saddle up to Neil Young and they're like, doobie, doobie, doobie, doobie, doobie, doobie, doobie, doobie, doobie.
John: And I wasn't given the doobie vibe.
John: And I've been given the doobie vibe.
John: I mean, I know what that is.
John: You live in San Francisco.
John: You must get it every time you walk out the door.
John: It's the primary vibe.
John: Because there are people in San Francisco that have lost the ability to tell when they're giving the doobie vibe to somebody who has an anxiety disorder and wants them to die.
Merlin: There's just too much doobie, too much vibe.
Merlin: Like downstairs, I think our neighbors, both of them, must have some very bad glaucoma.
Yeah.
Merlin: It's medicine.
Merlin: It's medicine.
Merlin: Yeah, it is.
Merlin: It's a kind of medicine.
Merlin: I would just be hoping he would go like, so did you have any incredibly detailed questions about my After the Gold Rush album?
John: What I wanted to do was sit and talk about his guitars the whole time.
John: So man, that guitar.
John: That one guitar.
John: So can I like touch it?
John: But anyway, so then eventually they're like, okay, man, well, we'll see you guys later.
John: You know, they didn't say, like, we got to go.
John: We got to go.
John: Right.
John: Because there are 20,000 people chanting my name.
John: He was just like, all right, man.
Merlin: Hey, Neil, one last thing.
Merlin: What the fuck was up with that Wandering song?
Merlin: I love that song.
Merlin: Of course you do.
John: That whole era of Neil Young in the pink.
Merlin: You like his craft work?
John: You like his craft work songs, too?
John: Wandering.
John: Yeah.
John: That's great.
Merlin: And I like trans, too.
Merlin: That's what I was saying, then, when he was doing Kraftwerk.
Merlin: Well, that's sweet.
Merlin: You know about that record, right?
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Okay, well, that's sweet.
John: Yeah, he's trying to communicate with his kid.
Merlin: But he shouldn't have done, what was it, Broken Arrow or Mr. Soul?
Merlin: I mean, yeah, Mr. Soul.
Merlin: You know, come on.
John: I'm a fan of all that stuff.
John: Somebody posted something on the internet the other day talking shit about the song T-Bone from the Reactor album.
Merlin: Oh, Reactor, wow, you go deep catalog.
John: Like it was some kind of bad thing.
Merlin: Reactor and Gene Simmons' solo record were in Camelot Cutout for probably to this day.
John: Don't bring Gene Simmons into it.
John: But yeah, Reactor was one of those records, right?
John: Like the Frank Zappa orchestral record.
John: Do you remember that?
John: Zappa made an orchestral record.
John: No vocals, no rock.
Merlin: these were both available these were the records that were available for 99 cents ship arriving too late to save a drowning which was kept gene simmons pretty good company all the way through high school for me and i owned them all although some of them stayed with me and some of them went zing out into the snow well some some i mean you know i think one of the best things you could do for a kid today is uh is give him a that uh what's it called decade
Merlin: Used to be a triple album.
Merlin: Absolutely.
Merlin: I mean, there's not a bad song on there.
Merlin: Each one is better than the last.
Merlin: They're all fantastic.
John: I dated a girl for a long time back in the old days who was a big fan of this.
John: When girls would be near you?
John: This was when girls would be near me.
John: And she was a fan of the yodlers.
John: She was a hipster girl.
John: And she liked the cat power.
John: And she liked the... She meant Jimmy Rogers.
John: No, no, not the actual yodelers.
John: I'm talking about... She loves Slim Whitman.
John: She loves Roger Whitaker.
John: I'm talking about the autistic indie rock yodelers, Neutral Milk Hotel, Bonnie Prince Billy, the singers who maybe can really sing, but what they do instead is yodel.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: And I would listen to these.
Merlin: I am a cinematographer.
John: Always playing in her house.
John: And she was, you know, she was a hipster.
John: She was very smug about music.
Mm-hmm.
John: And at a certain point, we'd been dating for years.
John: At a certain point, I was sitting in her... And this was the type of thing that I would tolerate for my cute girl.
Merlin: Was this that lovely dark-haired girl I met?
John: That's a dark-haired girl, yeah.
Merlin: Oh, she was lovely.
John: She was a very lovely girl.
John: And I would tolerate this type of thing, this smugness about music.
Merlin: She was far too pleasant for you.
John: No, you never saw the unpleasantness.
John: But anyway, let's leave that to another podcast.
John: Yodeling.
John: But at one point, I said, have you ever listened to Neil Young...
John: Like, just, have you ever gone to the source of this and listened to the real thing of this?
John: And she went, Neil Young, classic rock, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
John: And I said, oh, oh my God, you've never listened to Neil Young.
John: And she said, well, some kind of hipster, you know, gibberish that I didn't bother to decode.
John: And I got Decade, and I gave it to her, and I got it on vinyl, right?
John: That's how I had it.
Merlin: I got it on vinyl.
John: With those awesome liner notes?
John: There was nothing she could say about it, right?
John: She couldn't turn her nose up at this.
John: Here's the thing.
John: Here's the thing.
John: Listen to this thing.
John: And by the gifting of that single album, I transformed this person's idea of this thing that she loved.
John: She already loved this thing.
John: which was... And then she had this record, which Moss would not grow on.
John: This is an eternal thing, this decade album.
Merlin: She made it through the whole thing.
John: Well, it became the only thing she listened to.
Merlin: The first side is, you know, I think you enjoy the first side more after you've listened to the other sides.
John: But we're talking about dealing with a hipster person now, where the more impenetrable a thing is at first, the assumption is that it is better.
Merlin: Yeah, like Broken Arrow and Mr. Soul are both a bit of a slog if you're not ready for it.
John: Yeah, but if you've been listening to, like, Cat Power b-sides.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Cat Power is one of those ones, like, forgive me, Slater Kenny, where I'm just like, I just accept that a lot of people like this and it's good, but I just do not get it.
John: I'm surprised to hear that you don't like Slater Kenny.
John: Although, at a certain level, I'm not surprised.
Merlin: Well, it's nothing compared to Heavenly.
Merlin: Oh, my Christ.
Merlin: Was that it?
Merlin: No, not Heavenly.
Merlin: Not Heavenly.
Merlin: Heaven's to Betsy.
Merlin: Oh, Heavens to Betsy.
Merlin: No, Heavenly was sweet.
Merlin: Heavenly was a great, like, girl singing band.
Merlin: Oh, boy, Heavens to Betsy.
Merlin: Don't get me started.
John: If we're going to sit here and talk shit about Riot Grrrl, I'm going to need another two and a half hours.
Merlin: Well, some of that's fine.
Merlin: But, boy, that was just a whole lot of bad.
Merlin: man that was a lot of bad I suffered through that era I was not meant for those times I opened for Lois and Tiger Trap one time back in the day and it was delightful that Lois oh good that Lois was delightful she did that song that's the era where you would have been I mean depending on who you were working with you would have been sequestered from the backstage area because it was like right well mine only yeah they were throwing their tampons at each other she was actually really sweet she signed my record
Merlin: Is that a euphemism?
Merlin: If you know what I mean.
Merlin: That's not funny.
John: That isn't funny.
Merlin: Okay, we've got to go.
Merlin: Listen, I've been narrowing down on the REM issue.
Merlin: I want to come back to REM.
Merlin: I want to talk about specific albums.
Merlin: I think possibly as part of a series.
Merlin: I want to talk a lot more about Hogan's Heroes.
Merlin: I think Hogan's Heroes is very near the center of what we're getting at with this program.
John: I think Hogan's Heroes encapsulates...
John: Hogan's Heroes may be the bottleneck between the past and the now.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: When you see that little doghouse with the dog in it, rise up.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And then who is it?
Merlin: Is it LeBeau?
Merlin: Is it underneath there or Kinch?
Merlin: I can't remember.
Merlin: It might be Larry Hovis.
Merlin: Did you ever watch Liar's Club?
Merlin: No, I don't even know what that is.
Merlin: That's good.
Merlin: I want to talk about my bank.
Merlin: You haven't been sending me very many links.
Merlin: Oh, I know it troubles you.
John: I kind of girded my loins this time.
John: I was like, he's going to be sending me links.
John: So I need to be prepared to have a schizophrenic conversation where I'm... It's like all those conversations I used to have when I was playing Minesweeper.
John: I'd be on the phone and I'd be playing Minesweeper back when I had IBM computers.
Merlin: People love that Minesweeper.
John: Minesweeper is an amazing game, and what's great about it is that I could talk about the music business with somebody on the phone for an hour and be playing Minesweeper the entire time, and it was a perfect place to divide my attention because the music business conversation was not enough to have all my attention.
John: But the Minesweeper game took the unused portion of my attention and gave it something to do.
Merlin: Like pieces of a puzzle fitting together.
John: Yeah, because otherwise that unused part of my attention would have been trying to sabotage the music business conversation by asking impertinent questions.
Merlin: That has not always worked out for you.
John: No, no, no, no.
John: It's bad.
John: It's bad.
John: So I gave it something to do.
John: And so I was prepared in this conversation.
John: Oh, Merlin's going to be sending me weird links to things that in real time apply to our conversation.
John: And I'm going to be prepared to click on these links.
John: And the only thing you sent me was a video of Anne Margaret.
Merlin: I'm still looking at it right now.
Merlin: I'm looking at it right now.
Merlin: Which is great.
Merlin: And I'm thinking to myself that if you just...
Merlin: If God would just let me see her hips, just in a hip lineup, I could tell you she's a redhead.
Merlin: And I'm talking about, like, from the side, even.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: Yeah, she's, man.
Merlin: That's quite a claim.
Merlin: You don't get, you don't get, oh, boy, you don't get a lot better than this, huh?
Merlin: Bye-bye, Birdie.
Merlin: I've never even seen Bye-bye, Birdie.
Merlin: But, boy, have I.
John: Wow, look at that.
John: There's like a clip of her with Elvis here.
Merlin: She's doing a lot just with her face.
John: Inexplicably, you got that girl Christina Hendricks from Mad Men.
Merlin: Well, Mad Men did a, you know, they do that thing where it's like what happened but not what happened.
Merlin: And so they did a Bye Bye Birdie-ish thing in a commercial is what that is.
John: Oh, I see.
Merlin: Yeah, I'm trying to reduce the number of shows I'm committing to.
Merlin: I'm already behind my wife on Breaking Bad, so I've had to just break off.
Merlin: It looks really good, but I can't keep up.
John: There was so much talk about Breaking Bad on the internet, and it was so laudatory.
Mm-hmm.
John: that I didn't know what to do with that information.
Merlin: I can tell you what you did with it.
Merlin: I know exactly what you did with it.
Merlin: You didn't watch it.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: I've never seen an episode of it.
Merlin: You should check out, John.
Merlin: You should check out Arcade Fire.
Merlin: You should check out... Hey, you know what's great?
Merlin: Have you heard Handlebar Sue?
Merlin: You should check them out.
Merlin: They're from Olympia.
Merlin: Not that Olympia.
Merlin: It's an Olympia near Saskatchewan.
Merlin: Literally no one but me has heard of them.
Merlin: Eskimo Iceberg.
Merlin: They put out all the records on Scotch Tape.
Merlin: Double-sided.
John: You know what you should check out?
John: Who?
John: You should check out Eskimo Iceberg.
Merlin: Oh, Eskimo Iceberg.
Merlin: The Scotch Tape tapes.
Merlin: Oh, okay.
John: They're incredible.
John: You can't get them anymore, though.
Merlin: So wait, now that's the vibraphonist from Spunkflower?
Merlin: He was originally in it, but he's not in it anymore.
Merlin: He's one of those Drag City guys, right?
Merlin: He played the other side of the vibraphone very quietly, right?
John: What's amazing is that when he left the band, their biggest fan had learned all the upside-down vibraphone parts.
John: And they were like, what are we going to do?
John: And then this kid just stepped into the job, right?
Merlin: Oh, they brought him up on stage, like when Keith Moon passed out.
John: Exactly.
John: They were like, does anybody know these upside-down vibraphone parts?
John: And they hear a very quiet... Had his own vibraphone.
Merlin: get him up on stage and now he's like he's been in the band he's sharing songwriting credit so that's that's uh that that that's kind of a thing right i mean that you know that uh that who thing it happened at the cow palace here in san francisco that you know that really happened you know yeah that that guy wasn't very good no so they didn't replace keith moon with him no i think passed out keith moon probably would have played better but yeah but deer the deer hunter
Merlin: Or is it Deerhoof?
John: Deerhoof.
John: Oh, Jesus Christ.
John: Deerhoof.
John: One of the lead guitarists at Deerhoof quit the band, and they got their biggest fan out of the crowd.
John: Isn't that what Judas Priest did?
John: No.
John: Yeah, they had the fake singer for a while.
John: Oh, they had the fake singer.
John: Journey got the fake singer from the Philippines.
Merlin: What about that Weezer guy who's all muscle-bound?
John: There's a guy in Weezer that's muscle-bound?
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: I think he... Oh, no, no, no.
Merlin: I think he might be like a session guy.
Merlin: I think he might be a session guy who works out.
John: The drummer from Weezer and the drummer from Radiohead discuss.
Merlin: I am very, very, very, very, very barely slightly acquainted with the drummer from Weezer, just from doing a podcast with him, and he was extremely nice.
Merlin: But you have a voluminous Weezer knowledge.
Merlin: I have a fair amount of Weezer knowledge where the amount of knowledge goes way down after their second record.
John: Oh, I see.
John: You're one of those Pinkerton people.
Merlin: I am.
Merlin: I'm one of those Pinkerton people.
Merlin: And, like, actually, one of my most moving Pinkerton moments, we all remember them, was walking around Seattle last time I was there.
Merlin: It was that time I walked all the way to the REI, and it was raining.
Merlin: And I had a very moving Pinkerton thing happen.
John: You were carrying a flaming torch, as I recall.
Yeah.
Merlin: Well, it was a thing we were doing for the fan club.
Merlin: It was for breast cancer.
Merlin: We sponsor my torch.
John: And then you ran into all those people that were coming the other way with torches and pitchforks.
Merlin: And you were like, no, no, I'm not one of you.
Merlin: I'm not a racist.
Merlin: Can I just give you money?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Support the torch, asshole.
Merlin: You have to sign up for every mile I carry this torch.
Merlin: You never got into the Weezer, I'm guessing.
John: You know, Weezer is one of those things.
John: It's like Blink-182.
John: Oh, come on!
John: It's like Dora the Explorer to me.
John: I just feel like I was too old.
Merlin: I've been such a gentleman about this entire turgid Neil Young anecdote by not bringing around Dinosaur Jr., whom I am pretty convinced you've never actually listened to.
John: No, that's not true.
John: I listened to them before they even had a junior on their name.
Merlin: Oh, God.
Merlin: Now, that's not a good record.
Merlin: But You're Living All Over Me is a record that you should listen to.
Merlin: It's really quite good.
Merlin: And Bug.
Merlin: Those two records are really good.
Merlin: And the other ones are Dinosaur Junior records.
John: It sounded like he was singing with a bran muffin in his mouth.
Merlin: That was part of the effect.
Merlin: That's called the Boston Bakery.
Merlin: They teach you that in Amherst.
Merlin: They got over Berkeley.
Merlin: Go to Berkeley.
Merlin: Stick a brand muffin in your mouth.
Merlin: Go.
John: Turn your amps up.
John: Louder.
John: Oh, no, no, no.
John: I just, I felt like I was too old for all that stuff.
John: Somebody asked me the other day, I made a reference and they were like, oh, you mean like silver spoons?
Merlin: Silver Spoons.
Merlin: Now, that's not Silver Sun Pickups.
John: I never watched Silver Spoons.
Merlin: Oh, Silver Spoons with the rich kid.
John: The rich kid, yeah.
Merlin: It's like a richy-rich... I can't believe that's even allowed to be a reference.
John: Somebody made our Silver Spoons reference, and I was like, I was too old for Silver Spoons.
John: I'm sorry.
John: It's an age thing, right?
John: If you were two years younger than me, you'd be watching Silver Spoons, and you'd be thinking that it was as good as...
John: A good show.
Merlin: It was a Different Strokes rip-off, and Different Strokes was not even a show that deserved to be ripped off.
Merlin: Now, which came first, Facts of Life or Different Strokes?
John: Facts of Life was a different stroke spin-off.
Merlin: It was a different stroke with Mrs. Garrett.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: But she was not... I watched Facts of Life because there were some Foxy girls.
John: There was that one Foxy girl, the Tom Girl.
Merlin: Yeah, Joe.
Merlin: Man, Joe.
Merlin: She's tough.
Merlin: Man, Joe.
Merlin: She had like a Suzy Quattro thing.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: Also... Pinky Tuscadero.
Merlin: Pinky Tuscadero.
Merlin: And can I just say, like, she fits your profile.
Merlin: If she had cut her hair and a little bit of my mustache, I'm just saying...
John: She was dykey?
John: She looked like she could have been in... She looked like she could have been in... Tiger Trap, I think you're struggling.
John: Tiger Trap.
John: No, what's the band where the girl has a mustache?
Merlin: Queen?