Ep. 09: "He Was Apparently a Talented Baker"
John: Hello.
John: Hi, John.
John: How are you?
John: Hi, Merlin.
John: I'm fine.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: You sound dolorous.
John: You know, this is the time of year for delure.
John: But two days ago, I raked all the leaves in my yard.
Merlin: Literally?
Merlin: Literally.
John: I literally raked all the leaves in my yard.
John: All the leaves that were there then.
John: And I put them in piles and I said to myself, as one does, I said, you had better pick these leaves up now before it rains.
John: And then I got distracted by a butterfly or something.
John: Something distracted me.
John: And now I woke up this morning and it's raining.
John: It's raining on all of my leaf piles.
John: Which means that...
Merlin: Well, what is that?
Merlin: I mean, is that like when you wash your car and it rains?
Merlin: I mean, just disperse the leaves.
Merlin: They're no fun to jump in.
Merlin: What's the?
John: Well, they're no fun to jump in for sure.
John: But no, no, I have to.
John: I can't rake them anymore.
John: I have to pick them up with a shovel.
John: They're giant piles of soggy, wet, decaying leaves.
John: It's a whole different game now.
Merlin: I would have to guess, knowing you, I feel I know you somewhat well.
Merlin: I could see you just on a philosophical level raking leaves as part of a larger process.
John: That's absolutely true.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Is that the only part?
Merlin: Is this partly as a homeowner?
Merlin: Is it a fire hazard?
Merlin: You want to keep the leaf people out of your yard picking around?
John: Well, there's a couple of reasons that I don't subcontract this leaf raking business.
John: One of them is that I make my own compost.
John: So the leaves, especially from the catalpa tree, are great for producing loamy compost in the spring.
John: And also, I use the leaves to insulate potted plants that I leave outside over the winter.
John: Yeah.
John: All of this is stuff that you can learn in Sunset Magazine.
John: I didn't invent it.
Merlin: I thought Sunset Magazine was about new ways to make iced tea.
John: Well, in a way it is.
John: You know, you remember Sunset Magazine when we were growing up.
Merlin: They've done a heavy rebrand.
Merlin: I like the redesign.
John: It's amazing.
John: I mean, I used to love it as a kid, but it was all about hot tub parties and 70s moms and
John: And how to decorate your bungalow and, again, how to make iced tea.
John: But now it's about hipster moms, and it's a very sexy magazine, I have to say.
Merlin: It is.
Merlin: It's in our bathroom now.
Merlin: I've used it.
John: Oh, right.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: No, I mean to learn about, you know.
Merlin: To learn about, yeah, things.
Merlin: Permaculture.
John: But, you know, the one thing that's missing from the new Sunset Magazine.
John: Centerfold.
Yeah.
John: Well, no, remember... See, now, wait a minute.
John: You grew up in Florida, so I'm not even sure you remember the old Sunset Magazine.
Merlin: Sunset Magazine, I thought, was a peculiarly California or maybe West Coast.
Merlin: West Coast.
John: West Coast.
John: It covers Arizona, I think, California, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska even.
John: But the old magazine had a whole section of classified ads in the back, one of the main features of which were ads for...
John: ads for juvenile detention schools and, like, fat camps.
John: And there were, like, three pages of ads in the back of Sunset for what to do with your troubled kid.
Merlin: And some of them were like... Fat, unruly, doesn't like raking leaves.
Merlin: Come down to the St.
Merlin: James Academy.
John: There'd be a picture of a chubby girl with tears streaming down her face, you know.
Merlin: Covered in leaves.
Merlin: I won't rake the leaves.
Merlin: No, you can't make me.
John: And I remember as a kid reading Sunset and I'd get to the back and it was like this taboo area because I was constantly sort of... I wasn't afraid that they were going to send me away to juvenile camp.
John: Although, you know, there was a period right before 11th grade when... You would have understood.
John: Well, no, she actually got all these.
John: She got...
John: All the application forms from all these schools and had me fill them out as some kind of tough love program.
John: Like I've actually filled out these application forms to all these schools.
John: Not the fat camps, although I probably should have gone to those too.
John: As a prophylactic.
John: Well, you know, it's never too early.
Merlin: Did you have to do it in longhand?
John: Yeah, yeah, sure, sure.
John: Was there an essay portion?
Yeah.
John: There were essay portions, and this was where I thwarted the process by writing hilarious and terrible essays.
John: I drug out the process until it was too late.
John: It wasn't maybe the best idea to have me fill out the applications, if you know what I mean.
John: It wasn't a thing I wanted to do.
Merlin: Was she monitoring your results?
Merlin: I mean, in other words, was she vetting them for form sanity?
John: Well, yeah, but I was pretty good at writing something that passed muster that also said...
John: But also on closer inspection said, fuck you.
Merlin: You're Gramsci.
Merlin: You're the Marxist in jail who's writing on little bits of paper.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: The thing is, if you peed on them, then the true type would become revealed.
John: That's an old spy trick, the disappearing ink that you can only see when you pee on the document.
Merlin: Where does Lemon come into that?
Merlin: I don't think Lenin did a lot.
Merlin: No, no, I'm sorry.
Merlin: I apologize.
Merlin: Not the Soviet dictator, the fruit, lemon.
Merlin: Oh, lemon, right.
Merlin: I thought lemon was a big component.
Merlin: Is it lemon or urine?
Merlin: I thought it was a big component in cryptography.
John: Well, you can write in lemon juice, and then I think if you pee on it, it is revealed.
Merlin: And that's called a pigeon drop?
John: It's, well... No.
John: It's called The One-Legged Pigeon.
Merlin: No, I used to get... I had a Casper the Ghost Disappearing Ink book, but I think that I probably was not scratching hard enough at it.
Merlin: I did not get any coded messages I was aware of, apart from the ones that I see everywhere.
John: Well, I think here's the thing about coded messages.
John: There have to be two people, a sender, first of all.
John: And then a receiver.
John: So if you were just squeezing lemon juice on blank pieces of paper looking for messages, I think your rate of return is going to be pretty small.
Merlin: John, that's an extremely healthy approach.
Merlin: But I would like you for a moment to just consider that there could also be a problem of having sent coded messages to yourself that even you don't understand.
Merlin: Because I called it my 30s.
Merlin: I mean, I was peeing on everything, John.
Merlin: I was squeezing fucking lemon on everything that didn't move.
Merlin: You know, I was dropping pigeons.
Merlin: But you know what?
John: You ended up married, so something must have been working.
John: We're always walking on a wire, John.
John: Have you ever put a note in a bottle and thrown it into the ocean?
Merlin: No, I don't think I have.
Merlin: Well, you know, I've done stuff like that.
Merlin: I've put things on balloons and imagined that it would do something interesting, but I've never done a note in a bottle.
Merlin: Have you done that?
Merlin: Was it a Puget Sound?
Merlin: Where would you throw that?
Merlin: Where do you throw that?
John: Yeah, out in the Pacific Ocean.
John: I'd like to circle back.
John: I'm not keeping three by five cards, but I'd like to circle back to the sentence.
Merlin: I've got six already, and I've got a lot of follow-up on all of these.
John: I'd like to circle back to the comment, I put things on balloons to see what happens.
John: Okay, fresh card.
John: Okay.
Merlin: Do you live anywhere – like you get Google Maps.
Merlin: Do you live anywhere near a drugstore?
Merlin: Do you have access to index cards?
Merlin: I'm not trying to force this down your throat, John.
Merlin: I'm just saying you have a lot of problems.
Merlin: And if you had some kind of – in human computer interface, we call it an affordance.
Merlin: If you had an affordance for capturing your thoughts in some kind of a taxonomical way that you could theoretically put into a pocket.
John: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: I'm not trying to force anything down anything.
Merlin: I'm just saying it's a thought.
John: I was at a Goodwill yesterday, and this Goodwill – every Goodwill is organized differently by whatever – to conform to the insane mind of whatever.
Merlin: I want to round back to that because I've always been obsessed by who decided.
Merlin: It's like it's wooden souvenirs no one ever needed.
John: How is that a section?
John: Yeah.
John: People get promoted up the corporate ladder at Goodwill and they become a manager.
John: I think first a manager of a certain section and then an overall manager.
Merlin: They start you on something simple like shirts, comma, short-sleeved.
Merlin: Like you can get that.
John: It's their obsessions that – it's these people's, these individual people's obsessions that dictate how within the general principle of a Goodwill –
John: How the thing is organized and this goodwill was being managed by a seemed to me he was a he was almost 60 50 60 year old Nigerian man
John: Who was very elegant.
John: Son of a prince.
John: But he had terrible body odor.
John: And he obviously was obsessed with office supplies because it was a section of office supplies, which is usually relegated to like a little corner of the area where the old carburetors and battery chargers are.
John: This guy had office supplies for two whole rows, paper and three by five cards, unopened, stacked boxes.
John: to infinity and i was walking through this area and i and i thought of you i was like oh my god it's it's it's it's the treasure of the sierra madre for merlin man look at this these are vintage three by five cards too this isn't like the no no that's when they knew how to make them i'm i have to be honest with you john i'm reluctant to talk about any of this because like if this had bat girl in it it would pretty much be my fantasy and
Merlin: You've got goodwill.
Merlin: You've got organization.
Merlin: You've got Nigeria.
Merlin: And you've got something that as recently as this morning – and I don't want to take us off track here.
Merlin: But as recently as this morning, these – let's not say problems.
Merlin: Let's say gifts that I have.
Merlin: We're evidencing themselves.
Merlin: I like to be very focused sometimes.
Merlin: And when my daughter wants to play with something, I will organize the parts.
Merlin: I love organizing.
John: Oh, no.
John: Oh, no.
Merlin: I organized her magnet tiles.
Merlin: I organized her plastic animals.
John: Don't do it.
Merlin: I have different buckets now for all of her little plastic toys that are anthropomorphic and or people because I got a different bucket for that.
Merlin: So the Toy Story ones are in their own one because they should be able to play together.
Merlin: But the big tube of cat's cats go in alongside the creepy crawly.
Merlin: I don't want to go into too much detail.
Merlin: Now, magnet tiles, it's very easy because there's a limited set of colors, Legos.
Merlin: Now, the Thomas ones, they have three different boxes of Thomas stuff.
John: I'm glad that we're talking about this because when your daughter is a teenager and comes to me and says, Uncle John, I have so many problems.
Merlin: Will that be coded?
John: Will that be something she peed on to send to you?
John: I'm going to say, let me give you some insight into where some of your anxieties might be.
Merlin: You came in pretty late in the movie, but you still know a lot about the second act.
Merlin: But, I mean, but, you know, I'm just, let's put it this way.
Merlin: If there is a torn and filthy index card with teenage girls' urine on it, please handle it carefully.
Merlin: Give it due care.
John: I will.
John: I'm, you know, I cherish items like that.
Merlin: John, we got nine shows here.
Merlin: I don't even know where to start.
Merlin: The Goodwill thing, though, the organization, we have got to come back to ads to.
John: But here, let me just interject that if you and your daughter are looking for something to do as an activity, you live...
John: blocks from the pacific ocean and i suggest that you go down there periodically write a letter to whom it may concern put it in a bottle put a cork in the bottle and throw it in the ocean now i know i know in san francisco it's not green it's not green the pollution police are going to be all over you but this is big stuff this bottle in the ocean stuff is big big stuff maybe throw it off the oh you couldn't throw it off the bridge that you that they'd
Merlin: No, somebody would occupy you.
Merlin: You can get occupied.
Merlin: I have one note card that says, do not discuss, occupy Wall Street.
Merlin: It's all one card.
John: You did write it in big letters, do not discuss.
Merlin: I'm running it again on a second card.
John: But you have to periodically write a note.
Merlin: Oh, it's great on so many levels, John.
Merlin: It works on so many levels, even if the theoretical purpose never happens.
Merlin: I used to explain to her when she was a baby, I'd walk her up the street, and I'd say, that's the Pacific Ocean.
Merlin: It's the biggest body of water in the world.
Merlin: And if you'd like to know, you know what I said to my daughter every morning?
Merlin: I said, that's the biggest body of water in the world.
Merlin: I said, and you could get in a boat and go all the way across that to another country.
Merlin: And I said, if you can learn to manage projects and put up with bullshit, you can do anything in life.
Merlin: And I would tell her that every morning.
Merlin: Because my wife needed a minute.
Merlin: My wife would need a minute.
Merlin: You know, it's hard to get a shower when you have a kid.
Merlin: So we give her a few minutes.
Merlin: I'd go up and I would explain the world by pointing to the largest body of water in the world.
John: Listen, that's the largest body in the world.
John: And if you're prepared to manage projects and put up with bullshit, you can do anything.
Merlin: It also helps to ask people things as a favor.
John: You never done that?
John: Write that down on a note card because that's a pet peeve.
Merlin: Oh, you know who hates that.
Merlin: Who?
Merlin: You know who hates that.
Merlin: I think his famous line is, sometimes it does hurt to ask is his famous line.
Merlin: That is all.
Merlin: Now, I was a Goodwill sweeper.
Merlin: I used to go to Goodwill all the time, and let's clarify here.
Merlin: We're talking about when you and I were going to the Goodwills back in the day, this is a whole different world.
Merlin: An entirely different world.
Merlin: An entirely different world.
Merlin: It's before Kim Gordon ruined vintage fashion, and they started – no, not single-handedly.
Merlin: She's having a hard time right now.
John: Yeah, that's tough talk.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Now, is her bass a standard tuning bass?
No.
John: You know, I never went into the fetishizing Sonic Youth's alternate tunings thing.
Merlin: But you did go into easy dismissiveness.
Merlin: That was, what, 85, 86, you went into that?
John: I did that.
John: I went through that phase, easy dismissiveness.
John: But, you know, people were talking about, oh, Sonic Youth's alternate tunings.
John: And then you see all those pictures of, like, yeah, it's a Jazzmaster, and he's stuck two drumsticks in there, and he's hitting it with a hammer.
John: I think he has one that has four Ds on it.
John: What fucking alternate tuning matters in that situation?
John: He's hitting it with a hammer.
Merlin: This is the problem.
Merlin: I saw them, and then the next night their equipment was stolen.
Merlin: I was not involved, but it sucked because they didn't even know how some of the guitars were tuned, and they were pretty sure they couldn't replicate it.
Merlin: So I think Tom Violence, potentially Shadow of a Death.
Merlin: I think there are certain songs that just had to come off the repertoire.
John: They just can't play it anymore because that guitar was tuned once and should never be tuned again.
Merlin: Well, you're never, I mean, this gets us back to the goodwill.
Merlin: How many really, really good guitar screwdrivers are you going to find in pairs?
Merlin: Be honest because it depends on how it's organized, and this is my concern.
Merlin: I think the problem is you go into a goodwill, and as you're describing with this Nigerian prince, you could see a level of organization that reflects a certain human Weltanschauung that goes way beyond how anyone would ever think about buying something used for not much money.
Merlin: I think the connection between those two things is virtually nonexistent.
Merlin: I think at a corporate level, I don't even know if it's a corporation.
Merlin: They probably have a card table somewhere that says Goodwill on it.
Merlin: But I think the people, this man, right?
Merlin: And let me just say this, last thing on this, because I want you to cover clothes and home items.
Merlin: But I'm going to talk about two areas.
Merlin: I'm going to talk about music and electronics.
Merlin: Now, music, it's always a complete mess.
John: Oh, you're talking about the music section out of Goodwill.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: You go to find records.
Merlin: You go to find, like, a giant thing of cassettes.
Merlin: You want to pick up a Topalka single.
Merlin: Boy, it feels good to say that.
Merlin: Topalka single.
Merlin: You want to get any of that?
Merlin: Like, you're screwed.
Merlin: I mean, it's all a mess.
John: Except if you go to the hipster Goodwills.
John: There are Goodwills now.
Merlin: Triple the price on every single thing, right?
John: Sure, but they organize their music section.
John: That's what hipsters do.
John: They get the job to Goodwills so that they can put all the Dan Fogelberg records in order.
John: And they do have all of them.
John: They do.
John: Meanwhile... Mm-hmm.
John: The cups and saucers and the Tupperware sections are just giant piles of debris and detritus because these kids are only, you know, they're organizing the skinny ties and they're organizing the CDs.
John: And the rest of the Goodwills are going to hell.
John: Mr. Goodwills are some of my least favorite places to go.
Merlin: Oh, boy.
Yeah.
Merlin: First principles, here's the problem.
Merlin: It used to be that somebody in your family died, and whether or not you liked them, you did not keep their clothes.
John: Now, this is good for us, right?
John: Still, every once in a while.
John: Every once in a while.
Merlin: This is how it started.
John: I'll catch this whiff of, I'm like, do you smell mothballs?
John: And I'll run to the back, and some guy died in 25 suits from the 50s are in there.
Merlin: But, of course, they're all... Tiny for a small man, for those little girls that buy all your suits.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It's kind of – there's a slight smell of – there's definitely mothballs, mildew, and dreams deferred.
Merlin: And go fast because that's going to be some good-ass suits.
Merlin: But here's the thing.
Merlin: I think they realize – and I blame Kim Gordon showing up in Sassy Magazine wearing some kind of fucking feathered boa.
Merlin: Today now there is cherry-picking, if I could say, going on at every level there, cherry-picking.
Merlin: Now, it's always been that the people at the Goodwill or the Salvation Army, they always get it first.
Merlin: They get dibs.
Merlin: If a boa came in, bam, that shit's out the door.
Merlin: Dan Fogelberg, they got plenty of those for me.
Merlin: You're talking about backroom cherry picking.
Merlin: Oh, I'm talking about at a very high level.
Merlin: This is a Walmart-style model of distribution.
John: Yeah, well, now they put it on the internet.
Merlin: I think what happens now is you go drop that shit off at the dumpster at the Goodwill or whatever, right?
Merlin: And I think that goes to some kind of disturbing central processing probably in Reno, Nevada.
Merlin: Absolutely, it does.
Merlin: And lots of Dominican children separate that.
John: Well, but here, this is the thing.
John: There are 75 different levels of cherry picking going on at any thrift store.
John: You know, it's getting picked at central distribution.
John: It's getting picked.
John: Now they have all these boutique sections, et cetera, et cetera.
John: And then it's getting picked by the people who work there and who work at the individual places.
John: And then that first rung of professional pickers that show up at 8 o'clock on Friday.
Merlin: Oh, you're talking about the eBay flea market types.
John: Well, yeah, just people that make a living on reselling shit they find at thrift stores.
John: I used to date a girl who was a picker, and she and I would go out to these thrift stores out in the middle of nowhere, and we'd be walking through the aisles, and people would be coming down the aisle the other way.
John: And as they, let's just call this girl, let's say her name is Maurice, for lack of a better name.
John: So we'd be walking through the aisle, and this person would come walking toward us, and as they'd pass us,
John: They'd say, hello, Maurice.
John: And she'd go, oh, hello, Stan.
John: And there'd be all this, like, derision dripping off of both of them.
John: And, you know, and then the other person would wheel their cart full of Nike Air Jordans and torn T-shirts and horsehair jackets and whatever else passed us.
Merlin: Just a little bit of a cool picker friction.
John: Yeah, and I'd say, how do you know that person?
John: We're in the middle.
John: We're like out in Monroe or whatever.
John: And she's like, oh, I know all these people.
John: And they're like full of hate for each other because –
John: Because that's what they do.
John: Well, they're like comics.
Merlin: They're like comics people.
Merlin: They're like any of these people who are digging.
Merlin: And you've certainly met record people like this, right?
John: And musical instrument people.
John: Well, that's different because that becomes a question.
Merlin: I think this is happening.
Merlin: I don't want to sound conspiratorial, but I think this is happening at a much deeper level now.
Merlin: I think the Goodwill of 1985, right by all my Paul Westerberg-looking clothes, I think that stuff was going from the dumpster to the mothball room and straight onto the show floor.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Probably within a matter of minutes.
Merlin: What I'm telling you is happening today.
Merlin: I think all that stuff is going on trucks to a central center.
Merlin: They got photos of Kim Gordon up, possibly Zooey Deschanel.
Merlin: Or, you know, who's the lady with the... It's not Zooey?
John: No, it's Zooey.
Merlin: Does she ever get mad that she looks like Katy Perry?
Merlin: Is that just me?
John: It happens sometimes.
John: That must drive her nuts.
John: I think the best story I ever heard was she was at a baseball game here in Seattle, and some drunk guy, and she made it sound like this happens to her all the time.
John: Some drunk guy was like, I know you.
John: I know you.
John: I'm a super big fan.
John: And she could just tell that they thought she was Katy Perry.
John: This was before everybody knew her.
John: This is like Elf era?
John: Well, no, after that, but when she was still an indie darling before she was a genuine bonafide celebrity.
Merlin: Her show's doing quite well, I heard.
John: It is, yeah.
John: It's made her quite famous.
John: But in any case, this guy's like, no, dude, I totally know you.
John: I love your stuff.
John: And she's like, yeah, you think I'm Katy Perry, but I'm not.
John: And he's like, no, no, what?
John: Yes, maybe.
John: And I think it used to happen to her a lot, but now...
John: I mean, her picture's on every dorm room wall in America.
Merlin: I still get it wrong.
Merlin: I still pick up Lucky Magazine and I'm wrong.
John: But let me just put the final capper on this Goodwill question and problem.
Merlin: You put the penultimate capper because I got a big capper.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: Well, here's my capper.
Merlin: It's your show.
John: It's your show.
John: Go ahead.
John: You have to approach thrifting so philosophically, and one of those things is if you get obsessed with all the things that you are missing out on, if you get obsessed with all of the great things that have been picked out
John: by a thousand levels of picker above you, it will get inside your brain and slowly drive you crazy.
John: You will not be able...
John: To do anything else but think about going to the thrift stores because thrift stores are like – they're like a tide pool.
John: Stuff comes in with the tide.
John: It goes out with the tide.
John: And you have to just get out of the thinking that there's anything good there.
John: You have to walk into every thrift store with the conviction.
Merlin: Absolutely.
Merlin: You have to have the zest.
Merlin: No, you have to have the zest.
Merlin: It's like an uncurated museum of overly normal.
Merlin: That most people, hipsters want to go and say, oh, I'm going to go to the place in Philadelphia with the eyeballs or whatever.
Merlin: And in this case, you could walk in there and you're going to learn if you're watching, if you're just sitting around going like, oh, am I going to find a four freshman record?
Merlin: You know, that's going to limit your vision and you're just going to get mad at the guy who got it before you.
John: Sure.
John: Speaking of Philadelphia, I went into a thrift store there one time, and I found one of these scenarios.
Merlin: You should have a blog, John Roddick.
Merlin: You should have a blog about places you've been in.
Merlin: Start with thrift stores.
Merlin: I should have a blog.
Merlin: Stop.
John: I went into this place.
John: You know what you need?
Merlin: You need a Boswell.
Merlin: I'm not going to be your Boswell.
Merlin: You're one of the biggest Johnsons I've ever met, and I think you need a Boswell.
John: I am a big Johnson, but would you find me a Boswell?
Merlin: I could find you a Boswell.
Merlin: You know where I would go?
Merlin: One word, Sunset Magazine.
Merlin: That's two words.
Merlin: Maybe not Sunset.
Merlin: Maybe I would go to...
Merlin: We've got to come back to ads.
Merlin: I will literally not stop talking until we come back to ads.
Merlin: But you need somebody to be capturing all this.
Merlin: I'm doing what I can for now.
Merlin: I'm John the Baptist, not Jesus.
Merlin: I'm here for a while to help out.
Merlin: You need somebody on a more fundamental level opening a blog and literally capturing all of this.
Merlin: Facebook is not where this needs to go, John.
Merlin: This needs to be in front of people, like people who read.
John: Here's the thing.
John: I appear to people on the road to Damascus every fucking day, and you know what they do?
John: They drive around me.
John: I'm standing there.
John: I'm like, hello, hello, waving my arms.
John: Which one?
John: Are you Paul?
Paul?
John: No.
John: Which one's Damascus?
John: Well, I'm appearing on the road to Damascus.
John: I thought that was Paul.
John: But who appeared?
John: Who appeared?
Merlin: Oh, JC Prime?
Merlin: Yeah, the big JC.
Merlin: Why did Paul have scales on his eyes?
Merlin: What does that mean?
Merlin: Remember that?
Merlin: They say the scales fell from his eyes.
Merlin: That was on Damascus, right?
John: Maybe he was a Komodo driver.
John: I'm derailing this.
John: Go ahead.
John: Please continue.
John: You're recapping?
Merlin: Is that what you're decapping?
Merlin: What are you doing?
John: I was talking about this thrift store I went into in Philadelphia where I found a man's entire wardrobe.
John: An entire, you know, like 15 suits, custom-made shirts.
John: Beautiful, beautiful stuff.
John: And it fit me perfectly.
John: Except...
John: that this man had incredibly short arms.
Merlin: So you look like a snappy-looking Boris Karloff?
John: Well, except that the pants weren't correspondingly short.
John: Like, if the pants had been short and the sleeves were short, I would have bought all this stuff.
John: I would have dropped 500 bucks in this place.
Merlin: Too short for you to do anything with.
Merlin: This is not a question of you pull a couple stitches and get an extra inch.
Merlin: You're talking like thalidomide level of fucked up sleeves.
John: These sleeves went halfway down my arms.
Merlin: Like a rock and roll concert jersey?
John: Yeah, and this guy had had his...
John: It had all this stuff tailored like it was it was handmade stuff.
John: And the pants fit.
John: They were the right length.
John: He was the right height.
John: He was a giant of a man.
John: And his arms were were half as long as mine.
John: Either that or he was like he had his suits.
John: Custom tailored so he could do the dishes without rolling up his sleeves or something.
John: I don't know.
John: But he had pretty wrists.
Yeah.
John: It was devastating to me because it was the Holy Grail, right?
John: I just found an entire wardrobe that used to belong to a man with class and taste and distinction tailored for him at a time when people made things by hand.
Merlin: Again, the steak waiter.
Merlin: They knew that they were making clothes for people, and it mattered.
Merlin: Those seams had to hold.
John: Well, but it turned out that this guy had, like, flippers instead of arms.
Merlin: Okay, but if I understand correctly, you're telling me that for obvious reasons, because of his porpoise, you know, T-Rex, thalidomide problems, for whatever reason that was unclear, there's probably not a note in the pocket explaining that.
Merlin: That would have been a hell of an estate sale.
John: Oh, I wish I had searched the pockets.
John: Maybe there was.
John: Maybe there was a note.
John: Maybe he had a note sewed in to his...
Merlin: Something he could show to TSA.
Merlin: I'm just thinking that his whole house, he might have had one of those special houses.
Merlin: Maybe he had a helper monkey.
Merlin: There could have been something extremely interesting going on there.
Merlin: But here's the thing.
Merlin: I think this is like meeting the woman who you think is perfect, and then you find out that she only listens to fish.
Merlin: In that case, you found something that was so disturbingly close to perfect for you, and it was yet so fundamentally wrong.
John: Oh, this happened to me, this exact story.
Merlin: Maurice?
Merlin: Is it Maurice or Morris?
Merlin: Because, you know, Morris, it's pronounced Morris.
Merlin: Morris Gibb is how you pronounce that.
John: It was a different, wait a minute, Maurice Gibb pronounced his name Morris?
Merlin: Oh, I feel bad for years I've been mispronouncing that.
Merlin: It's Morris.
Merlin: What?
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: It's pronounced Morris.
Merlin: You know, he passed.
Merlin: And if you watch the Bee Gees, I don't even know if it's behind the music.
Merlin: Fantastic.
Merlin: First of all, you don't realize how great the Bee Gees were.
Merlin: All we know is that there was that period where they wore a lot of open shirts.
John: Don't tell me how much I realized how great the Bee Gees were.
Merlin: You got a problem with the Bee Gees?
John: I am a super Bee Gees fan.
Merlin: What about Massachusetts?
Merlin: Do you like Massachusetts?
John: It's all good.
Merlin: It's all good.
Merlin: Okay, so here's my question for you.
Merlin: Obviously, because of some unknown disability or bad decision, he needed special clothes, A. And B, you're telling me— Oh, I'm sorry, not Morris.
Merlin: Morris passed.
Merlin: I think all his clothes went to an Australian Goodwill.
Merlin: No, no, he lived in L.A.
Merlin: Hang on, I've got to look this up.
Merlin: He needed special clothes because he was bald?
Merlin: Oh, no, that's the other one.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: That's the one that's not Robin.
Merlin: That would be Robin.
Merlin: Morris.
Merlin: Morris passed.
Merlin: You're thinking of Robin and is it Jojo?
Merlin: What's the other one?
Merlin: Robin.
Merlin: Barry.
Merlin: There's Barry.
Merlin: Oh, I'm sorry.
Merlin: Barry.
Merlin: Barry's the one.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: Strike all of that.
Merlin: But here's the thing.
Merlin: You're telling me it was well-made clothing?
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: It was so good.
John: So he had the means.
John: It was bulletproof.
John: This guy, he lived in a big house, this guy.
John: See, I would be thinking about that forever.
John: He lived in a big house.
John: I bet he had a diamond-tipped cane, and I bet the cane was really long.
Merlin: Like William Zanzinger?
John: Because the arms didn't reach down to the floor.
Merlin: It might have been William Zanzinger.
John: I want to tell this story, though, about this girl.
John: I met this girl in a Narcotics Anonymous meeting, and she was so beautiful.
John: I'm saving all these for Boswell.
Merlin: Keep talking.
John: She was so smart, and she was like all the things that at the time I thought were what I needed in life.
John: and the, you know, and, and meeting her, uh, where I did it, that all seemed to fit.
John: And I was like, this girl and I, we, we have this, we have a lot of the same problems.
John: We have a lot of the same gifts.
John: And this is, and this is a relationship that's, this is, this is the, this may be the one.
John: And I went back to her house and on my way to the bathroom, I noticed in a corner, a shrine.
John: I'm not kidding.
John: Now a shrine to the counting crows.
John: Um,
Merlin: Like she had a poster?
John: No, no, no, no, no.
John: She had several framed photographs arranged in a shrine-like sort of triptych with candles.
John: Oh, come on.
John: Crow candles?
John: And I couldn't let it go unmentioned.
Merlin: Is Counting Crows the fake Rolling Stones band or the fake Van Morrison band?
John: They're the fake Van Morrison band.
John: The fake Rolling Stones band is the... The Crows.
Merlin: The Crows.
Merlin: The Crowsmen.
John: The Black Crows.
John: Right.
Merlin: They did that Faces cover.
John: Yeah, pretty good.
John: They were a good cover band, those guys.
John: Actually, they had a couple of good teams.
Merlin: This is like Mrs. Jones and Me, that band.
John: Yeah, right, that one.
John: And this was back at a time... I mean, those guys have somehow, just through longevity, like they're still out on the road, the Counting Crows have converted somewhat by having indie bands open for them.
John: I mean, I'm not going to say that the Counting Crows have...
John: have cred of any kind but they're a little close to like a gin blossoms thing where you could go you know what i mean like there's some gin blossom songs in there but that yes the dreadlock fat face guy yeah by dating jennifer aniston and by being like a hollywood creep he's been in her bathtub
John: He has washed his patchouli-soaked dirt in Jennifer Aniston's bathtub.
Merlin: You know how much time she would have to spend at Home Depot just to figure out a solution for keeping all his beard and hair shit out of her bathtub?
John: Although, you know, she gives one the impression.
Merlin: She seems very tidy.
John: She does, and she gives one the impression of somebody who says, no, you can't shower at my house.
John: She seems nice.
John: She doesn't seem nice.
Merlin: No.
John: What are you talking about?
John: My mom said.
John: I think she seems very pleasant.
Merlin: Jennifer Aniston from the TV show with the hair?
John: My mom said one time, apropos of nothing, she was like, you know that Meg Ryan?
John: even though she always plays roles where she's like an anxious, tidy, ball-breaking little bitch, she seems like a nice person.
John: I don't get that at all.
John: But Jennifer Aniston, who always plays roles where she's your best friend and kind of also like a little bit, she's a little bit tidy, but she's like, you know, always playing roles of like... You don't think she seems a little down to earth?
John: Jennifer Aniston?
John: Jennifer Aniston, the actress.
John: Well, you know, one time I was in a dentist's office, and I picked up a copy of... Boswell's got a busy week ahead of him.
John: I picked up a copy of Architectural Digest, as one does, and I was flipping through the pages.
John: What kind of restaurant?
John: And there was a spread, a photo spread, on Jennifer Aniston's new Hollywood Hills home, which had been professionally decorated by professional decorators.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: And I tried to picture myself standing in that living room in a bathrobe saying, yelling into the kitchen, Jen, Jen, is there, I know there was a book on Miles Vandero in here somewhere and I seem to have misplaced it.
John: Do you know where it is?
Merlin: I'm sorry, honey.
Merlin: I didn't hear you.
Merlin: I was stirring the risotto.
John: Yeah.
John: And I pictured myself in this room, in this bathrobe, and I just could not – I just didn't feel it.
Merlin: But as a man who loves – as a man who loves baths, let's take it as rich.
Merlin: He's probably got a little extra dough.
Merlin: Let's say you came in.
Merlin: You're the new Jen Bo.
Merlin: And first of all, obviously, you're going to ask that she have the bathtub professionally cleaned to remove all the durrits.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Now, all aspects of Duritz, you're going to bring in some kind of fucking CSI team to just make sure there's not a lick of dreadlock in there, right?
Merlin: You love a bath, though, John.
John: You love a bath.
John: I do, and it wouldn't have occurred to me that he had befouled it.
John: I guess I would have to insist that she move.
John: Oh, okay.
John: And throw away the mattress and stuff.
John: I mean, I know that was a long time ago.
John: Would you stay there after she moved?
John: At her place?
John: Yeah.
John: At her old place?
John: I don't know what kind of dough she's got.
John: She's got to move.
John: But I'll tell you what.
Merlin: So, Architectural Digest.
Merlin: Sorry, Boswell.
Merlin: Architectural Digest.
Merlin: God damn it, John.
Merlin: We're going to have to have four new shows.
Merlin: Can you hear this?
Merlin: Can you literally hear it?
Merlin: Okay, Architectural Digest on her spread.
Merlin: Now here's something I do, and I should not do this.
Merlin: I should not do this, but my wife, who you know, is one of the greatest people in the world, and she's the best.
Merlin: And so there's a dumb thing that I do for her.
Merlin: That's a dumb thing we both enjoy, which is I pick up silly magazines for her that ladies like that are silly magazines.
Merlin: I've seen you do this.
Merlin: You leaf through.
Merlin: I go and I get something.
Merlin: I pick up some half and half.
John: I've seen you do this.
John: You come back with an armful of us magazines.
Merlin: We move past those.
Merlin: I do mostly I know which month we're up to.
Merlin: And so I'll get a Vogue.
Merlin: I will get a Bazaar.
Merlin: I'll go through the top-level ones first, right?
Merlin: I'll do a Vogue.
Merlin: I'll do a Bazaar.
Merlin: Failing at that, I will fall back on a Lucky because everybody loves a Lucky.
Merlin: It's a magazine about shopping and style.
Merlin: And it's got stickers.
John: Let me hit you with a mind bomb.
John: But do you ever go get Italian Vogue for her?
Merlin: That is a very complicated question.
Merlin: Do you want to know the answer?
Merlin: I do.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Well, this is a tenuous thing that we do.
Merlin: These things cost money and stuff, and we probably shouldn't be spending money on a silly magazine, but she enjoys it.
Merlin: So I'm only kind of allowed to do that so often.
Merlin: But yes, what I will do is, well, first of all, September Vogue, no duh.
Merlin: The day it comes out on there, I get it.
Merlin: I bring it home.
John: Right.
Merlin: Did you ever see that movie, The September Issue?
John: Is that?
John: No, I didn't.
Merlin: It's about Anna Wintour.
Merlin: I think the big gay guy you look like is in it.
Merlin: Andre Talley.
John: Careful.
John: The big gay guy I look like.
John: Careful.
John: It's not that one.
Merlin: It could be a couple.
John: It's got it right here in my holster.
John: There are a lot of them, actually, that I look like.
Merlin: You should write jokes for the Oscars.
Merlin: I'll take John Roderick to block.
Merlin: Grrr.
Merlin: But I buy these for her, and then the funny part is – and it's this – I've never discussed this publicly, but it's something I'm happy to do.
Merlin: She takes care of our daughter and our home, and she's the best person I've ever known.
Merlin: And so I get her these silly magazines.
Merlin: But then I get angry when I look at the silly magazines.
Merlin: I'll be defecating or occasionally urinating, and then the covers of the magazines make me angry.
Merlin: I sometimes look through them to see if there's cute pictures of girls, which there are.
John: But you're going to get in trouble if you look at those.
Merlin: No, she's fine with that.
Merlin: She's fine with that.
John: No, no, no.
John: I'm not talking about the naked girls.
John: I'm talking about don't look inside women's magazines.
John: They contain multitudes of angry-making things that you're not supposed to look there.
John: Don't go there.
John: You will turn to stone.
John: You will turn to a pillar of salt.
Merlin: Well, and in my racket, the hard thing in my racket is like you don't know about the stuff I do for my whatever I do.
Merlin: But like I'm very into this idea of like there's not really easy solutions to a lot of stuff.
Merlin: And so sometimes I will be confronted with something like a self magazine.
Merlin: Now, self is a third tier magazine.
Merlin: If we've gone through the Vogue's, if we've gone through the Harper's Bazaars, if we've made it through the Luckies, she does not like an allure.
Merlin: Allure is a magazine about lipstick and sad.
Merlin: Yeah, it's for teenagers.
Merlin: Allure is no good.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: I might as well get her like a 17.
Merlin: But I'll look at a self and a self.
Merlin: And I occasionally will take a photo of a self because the cover is so rife with nothing but bullshit shortcuts to stuff that you shouldn't be worrying about anyway.
John: Well, see, this is why I can't look at psychology today.
John: Yeah.
John: I will not read a Psychology Today.
Merlin: Oh, you're talking about... I can't even... I can't look at the cover.
Merlin: Because now... Oh, you notice now they put cute girls on the cover of Psychology Today now?
John: Oh, it is.
John: It's a giant photo shoot of, like, cute kind of young moms.
John: Right.
John: Like, overcoming their problems.
John: And that isn't a thing that I don't... You know, first of all, young moms...
John: Yeah.
John: I just started thinking about young moms and I can't even, I'm just so mad now.
Merlin: Let's, okay.
Merlin: My only thought was this.
Merlin: And so sometimes, just to your point now about the Jennifer Aniston problem, I'd like to kind of circle back to that because I think you're wrong.
Merlin: I also want to suggest the one count.
John: That's unusual.
Merlin: I have one counting – exactly one Counting Crows song that I really like a lot, and I think you wouldn't hate it, so I'll send you a link to that later.
Merlin: But per your Jennifer Aniston anecdote, you know I got a lot of problems.
Merlin: You may not know this.
Merlin: I have a lot of problems with Christina Aguilera.
John: I didn't know that.
Merlin: Oh, we talked about how she's ruined singing at sports.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: She's terrible, but... She's shiny.
Merlin: She's very, very shiny.
John: But a thing about Christina Aguilera that I have heard from through the Grapevine, the music business Grapevine, is that...
John: And you would not expect this, I don't think, looking at her or interacting with her public image.
John: But apparently, she is a tremendous professional who arrives at the studio on time and works her ass off all day without ever throwing a coffee at an intern or without ever having a diva tantrum.
John: She busts her little... She's a good singer.
John: She busts her balls.
John: if you will, in the studio and has earned the respect of all of the pot-bellied, bald recording engineers that she's worked with.
John: And that is no small thing.
John: So, I mean, I heard that.
Merlin: They've got to deal with it.
Merlin: Well, you know what?
Merlin: I've got to tell you, John.
Merlin: That does not actually surprise me.
Merlin: I think to have longevity in this business, I'm guessing, you have to have some measure of that.
Merlin: But also, obviously, you have to suffer a lot of things like photo shoots.
Merlin: But there's just one in particular that kills me.
Merlin: I wish I could find the photo.
Merlin: But it was a spread on her newly remodeled house.
Merlin: Which of course looks like a museum designed by a gay man with a little too much money.
Merlin: But there's this one shot I love of her and it's her in her like dressing room.
Merlin: It's not even – it's kind of a closet but it's like just an extra room.
Merlin: Like they ran out of new rooms to have in her bedroom that involved clothes and they made a great room.
Merlin: There's like a great room and it's got a ladder in it because she's got like 900 pairs of shoes and it's this photo of her.
Merlin: And, of course, she's very, very shiny.
Merlin: Up the ladder.
Merlin: She's standing on the ladder in six-inch heels, totally dressed up like she's – and with the giant red lipstick and smiling.
Merlin: And her child is in that sweet barefoot child way sitting on the floor like playing with some carefully arranged blocks.
Merlin: And it made me so fucking angry.
Merlin: I almost – I don't even know what I almost did.
Merlin: I was so angry because there was –
Merlin: Oh, you know, the whole like, oh, I'm just don't mind me walking around in my six inch heels here on a ladder while my child sits.
John: You know, I would be just I would share your anger if a girl up a ladder wasn't like one of my special things.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: And with the shoes, too.
Merlin: No, that's a thing.
Merlin: That's a thing.
Merlin: No, the big shoes I don't care about.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: We'll split it.
Merlin: We'll split the difference or whatever.
Merlin: But they probably had to wrangle that baby.
Merlin: They probably had they had block wranglers.
Merlin: You know what?
John: Christina Aguilera sees her baby once a week.
John: I swear to you.
John: The baby is being raised by very competent employees.
John: She's a pro.
John: She's a pro, and she's undoubtedly going to turn out just fine, better than Mia Farrow's kids.
Merlin: Well, you know, she had some complications.
John: I'm not hot for Christina Aguilera, but imagining her up a ladder looking at a wall of shoes, that's very— I'll find it for you.
Merlin: I'll find it for you.
Merlin: I want to find something.
Merlin: Here, talk to our audience for 30 seconds about something.
Merlin: I'll be right back.
Merlin: I'm not going to cut this out.
Merlin: Talk to them.
John: Let's see.
John: Well, dear audience, I know that it is hard sometimes for you to make it through life.
John: And so there are things that you could remember to make it easier.
John: And one of those things is to keep moving and get out of the way.
John: Mm hmm.
John: Because these are important lessons for to learn.
Merlin: We should have PSAs.
Merlin: I mean, obviously, the whole show, the arc, if you like the, I don't know, our oeuvre in a lot of ways, it's a series of interlocking PSAs.
Merlin: It's almost like existential Legos.
Merlin: I took a photo this morning.
Merlin: Now, this is the funny thing about O Magazine.
John: You know what I've done this morning?
Merlin: What?
Merlin: Nothing.
Merlin: He looked at your leaves.
John: I stared out the window at my wet piles of leaves and became demoralized.
Merlin: Did you use the word dolery?
John: Did I use it?
Merlin: Well, I used the word.
Merlin: I said dolerous as an adjective, and then I'll have to go back and listen, but I think you might have coined the word dolery.
John: No, I think I said dolery.
John: Oh, how do you spell that?
John: D-O-L-O-U-R?
Merlin: Like color?
Merlin: Take Dolorous and take the us off.
Merlin: Take the O-U-S off.
Merlin: Is there a Canadian U in that?
John: Yeah, there's a U. Okay.
Merlin: Huh.
Merlin: Dolory, a pretty name for a girl.
Merlin: Now, O Magazine's a funny thing.
Merlin: Dolory.
Merlin: Dolory.
Merlin: Dolory.
Merlin: See, I could see yelling that.
Merlin: That's the test.
Merlin: The test should be, could you yell it off a porch?
No.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Dolly.
Merlin: Anastasia Uterine.
Merlin: Now, O Magazine is a funny thing because I always get mad at the cover of O. I want to talk more about Oprah.
Merlin: We don't have time for it today.
John: I get mad at the story of O.
Merlin: Oh, hmm.
Merlin: That's that French novel.
Merlin: Did you just make your O face?
Merlin: I made my seating O face.
Merlin: This was on the cover.
Merlin: I took a photo of this, and I will probably post this.
Merlin: This is in the lower left-hand corner of the latest issue of O Magazine, and it says,
Merlin: Bonus colon.
Merlin: God, I could use one of those.
Merlin: Pipes and colons.
Merlin: I've got to stop pronouncing them.
Merlin: Bonus.
Merlin: Wait, wait.
Merlin: There's no exclamation point.
Merlin: Sorry.
Merlin: Bonus.
John: Well, the thing is you can pronounce your punctuation marks, but you have to change your voice.
John: You can't just say bonus colon.
John: You have to say bonus colon.
Merlin: Isn't there an implied comma then?
John: No, no, no, no.
John: If you're pronouncing your punctuation marks, I think the implication... Oh, pause and change the register.
John: Yeah, the implication is that there are parentheses around the spoken word colon.
John: Okay, sorry.
John: Bonus.
John: Bonus.
Merlin: Parentheses.
Merlin: Comma.
Merlin: Parentheses.
John: Well, you can say paren.
Merlin: O's Self-Awareness Workbook, all caps.
Merlin: That's the head.
Merlin: And then, so O's Self-Awareness Workbook.
Merlin: And then under that, where they illuminate what that means, it says, you bring the pencil, we bring the enlightenment, encouragement, and snacks.
Merlin: I'll read that again.
Merlin: O's self-awareness workbook.
Merlin: You bring the pencil, comma.
Merlin: We bring the enlightenment, comma, encouragement, comma, and snacks, no period.
John: Well, you know what?
John: By requiring that the people – and I'm going to go out on a limb here and say by requiring the women who read this magazine to bring a pencil –
John: This path to enlightenment already has more work involved than 98% of the self-help books out there who don't even require that they bring a pencil.
Merlin: That's a good point.
Merlin: You just got to bring a problem and a little self-delusion.
Merlin: But you're saying, okay, so you don't think there's a value proposition there, as we say, in business development.
Merlin: Now, I haven't looked at the workbook yet.
Merlin: I couldn't bring myself to.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Somebody suggested that I do the artist's way the other day.
John: We should talk about that.
Merlin: I have thoughts on that.
John: This is going to be a smaller version of The Artist's Way, the workbook.
Merlin: Well, here's what will surprise you.
Merlin: Sometimes there was one that was the angriest O cover ever for me.
Merlin: And it was something like it was one of those blah, blah, something, something does like unleash the artist within kind of things.
Merlin: Unleash the artist within.
Merlin: And I went, oh, God, please.
Merlin: And I opened up and it was like not completely.
Merlin: Spray painting gold macaroni and covering it with tinsel.
Merlin: And then putting it on a purple sweatshirt.
Merlin: Merry Christmas.
John: Don't yell at me.
John: You remember that, right?
John: I was walking down some street somewhere, and this cute little old lady was walking toward me with a sweatshirt she had clearly made herself with applique and tinsel, and it was embroidery.
John: It was a real craft project.
John: And as I got closer, I saw that it said, don't yell at me.
John: That's a Death Cab for Cutie shirt, isn't it?
John: Don't yell at me.
John: No, I ended up using it on one of the early Long Winter shirts, the White Castle design.
Merlin: So I thought you coined that as a way to describe everything, all the other people on your label.
John: Well, that was what it morphed into at the time.
John: Oh, this is the genesis of that.
John: At the time, it broke my heart because I was smiling.
Merlin: And it's so joyful.
John: And I was like, oh, how nice.
John: And then I was like, don't yell at me.
John: Oh, no.
John: Picturing her home life.
John: And this was her response to it.
John: You know what I'm going to do?
John: I'm going to make a sweatshirt.
John: That doesn't take five minutes to make.
John: No, she worked on it.
John: She worked on it for weeks.
Merlin: You got to keep thinking that.
Merlin: And can I say, John Roderick, if you're going to make a shirt like that, you don't make one of those.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: She probably had a whole series.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: It's like potato chips are intercourse with animals.
Merlin: You don't do that once and then walk away.
Merlin: I'm thinking she's got a win.
John: She has one that says, don't rape me at the kitchen sink or whatever.
Merlin: Sorry.
Merlin: Sorry.
Merlin: I'm imagining.
Merlin: Do you think she deliberated about which part of the house?
Merlin: Which one to wear that day?
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: I mean, she made me think bathroom, kitchen, utility room.
John: I think it probably happens at the kitchen sink more often.
Merlin: Which potential menace of sink do I want to focus on?
Merlin: I'm thinking there could be some wish I'd done a couple things differently.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
John: you know but after I fully absorbed this woman and her life into my mind and I processed through the tragedy it was not very long after that I started interacting with young indie rockers who felt who probably all should have been wearing like homemade don't yell at me t-shirts and I felt like oh boy I need to do something for these people and so I made a long winner's t-shirt that said don't yell at me
Merlin: And that was in the pretend to fall typeface?
John: Yeah, early times.
John: Well, it was a picture of the White Castle logo.
John: Right.
John: But then up in the white castle, instead of saying, buy a bag of burgers.
John: It says, don't yell at me.
John: Don't yell at me.
John: There aren't many of them out there.
John: We sold out pretty fast.
John: I would kill for that.
Merlin: I would kill for that.
John: It's another example of an in-joke inside of an in-joke inside of an in-joke that is, for some reason, now I don't understand why my band isn't more successful.
Merlin: Actually, I've got a card on that.
Merlin: Let's talk about it offline.
Merlin: I have a note for you on that.
John: The reason is that the Shins and the Decembrists did not encode that many...
John: different levels of not that funny weird sad in joke into their t-shirt art they just gave people a simple like they put a bird on it and they and they put it out there and they were so much more reluctant to explain why you were listening to it wrong and how you were listening to it wrong of all the conversations i've had at the merch table where people are like i love that song you're my you're my treadmill you're listening to it wrong
John: Listen, you're not enjoying my music the right way.
Merlin: Counting crows, the picker, the ladies.
Merlin: Oh, so the ads.
Merlin: Here's the thing about the ads.
Merlin: Now, the thing is that lady, she had found, and I want to agree with you about the classified ads, starting with probably Boys Life, maybe highlights.
Merlin: I don't know if they had singles ads and highlights, but definitely with Boys Life.
Merlin: Now, you open a Boys Life, and in the back, there's all kinds of things for military academies, for example, one of which I went to, heavily advertised in Boys Life magazine.
Merlin: And then what you're describing, Sunset.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Sunset's got lots of, like, you know, your kid's fat and unruly.
John: Drug camps.
Merlin: Okay.
John: Send your kid off to private school in Arizona, and we will get them off the pot.
John: And I have a friend who went to one of these.
John: He is a local—well, he's a fairly famous rock drummer, and he went to one of these get-your-kids-off-pot schools.
Merlin: Has he ever been to Fastbacks?
Merlin: Yeah.
John: He has been in the Fastbacks.
John: Okay, continue.
John: And, you know, he came back to Seattle a changed man in the sense that he learned all kinds of new tricks.
Merlin: For hiding weed?
John: Yeah, from other druggie kids.
John: You know, you bring druggie kids from all over the region and put them all in one school for a year, and they teach each other how to hotwire gold-winning motorcycles and how to, you know, where to stash your dope.
Merlin: You know, there's so many things that I'm going to be wrong about, just like historically.
Merlin: There's so many things I'm going to be wrong about with my kid.
Merlin: And I want to share one that I'll probably be wrong about.
John: Organizing her toys for her.
Merlin: It's useful for everyone.
Merlin: If she wants a red isosceles triangle magnet tile, she knows where that is.
Merlin: She's not going to have to sort through a bunch of blue blocks.
Merlin: Those should be somewhere else.
John: She's going to join a motorcycle gang.
Merlin: It strikes me that if you've got a kid where you're having – and I'm ready to be wrong about this and it will come up and bite me.
Merlin: But it strikes me that right at the time when you feel most like you should really crack down on your dumbass kid and you do stuff to remove the freedom and the options and you – there's this compulsion to either give up and send them to a camp or find some way to otherwise infantilize them.
Merlin: And it is my theory that that's exactly the wrong thing to do.
Merlin: I think what you do, I think you send your kid to a third world country with $100 or maybe New York with $120.
Merlin: You send them somewhere.
Merlin: You throw them into a fucking shark tank and let them find out a smarty pants video game guy.
Merlin: You tell me now what happens next.
John: Yeah, smarty pants video game guy.
Merlin: You know, maybe it goes a little bit Midnight Cowboy, you know, but he made Tootsie later, so things can change.
John: I'm not entirely prepared to throw my 13-year-old kid to New York City with $120, but here's my version of that, and this is my plan, and I hope that I live to see this day, which is that if my child starts to have problems, starts to get willful, which happens to some of them, the bad eggs.
Yeah.
John: You're saying there's some kids who just don't get willful.
John: Yeah, some kids just are nice and respect their fathers all the way through.
John: But the ones that don't, here's what I'm going to do.
John: I've been wanting to do this for years and even before the idea of having a kid occurred to me.
John: But now I have a reason.
John: And that is I'm going to buy an old Jeep.
John: I'm going to set a price limit, right?
John: I'm going to say $1,200.
John: That's the most I'm going to pay for a Jeep.
John: I buy a $1,200 Jeep.
John: Take the kid out of school.
John: Put the kid in the Jeep.
John: And the two of us drive to Tierra del Fuego.
John: And, you know, a $1,200 Jeep is not going to make it all the way to Tierra del Fuego.
John: Is this something you read about in The New Yorker?
John: No.
John: No, The New Yorker doesn't have the balls to think this way.
John: Not a Jeep.
John: And we're going to drive as far as this Jeep will take us.
John: And then...
John: Then you'll fight.
John: When the Jeep breaks down or gets stolen, then we're on our, you know, then we have to use our wits either to keep the Jeep running with bailing wire and chewing gum wrappers or by some other means, perhaps on the back of a burrow.
John: We will continue our trek and we will goddamn well make it to the end, to the Tierra del Fuego.
John: And through this process, the child will learn
John: The value of a peso.
John: The child will learn how to speak Spanish.
John: Disposition of burros.
John: The child will learn exactly how to handle a burro on a mountain trail.
John: The child will learn to respect his or her father.
John: In this instance, me.
John: Because of my commanding.
Merlin: I think you're way more likely to find a lady on a ladder than for that fantasy to work.
Merlin: Whoa.
Merlin: And can I ask how the experience of the Delphico incident, how is that going to change you, John Roderick?
Merlin: Will you become less willful?
Merlin: Will you learn a lesson about love?
John: This is one of these things where I learn a lesson about love.
John: That's exactly what happens.
John: I get down there, you know, and then I realize, well, probably that I fall in love with a beautiful Argentinian woman who's like a dancer and who appears to be sort of one of the noble poor.
John: But then it turns out later that she's actually...
John: an heiress to a giant uh to a giant uh plantation on the pompous there and she's just spending like a she's spending some time living as a poor woman a noble poor woman before she takes over the management of this hundred thousand acre ranch and we fall in love that's probably what's going to happen
Merlin: And like so many incredibly rich Argentinian women pretending to be poor, she'll just get, God, just fucking wetter than a hothouse windowed by you having a really fucked up kid in a burrow.
Merlin: She's going to be all over that.
Merlin: You can come on in.
Merlin: We've got a whole burrow room.
Merlin: Come to this place.
Merlin: Come to my large.
Merlin: What do they have on the Pampas?
Merlin: What do you have?
Merlin: You got a ranch?
Merlin: What do you have?
Merlin: Oh, you got a big ranch.
Merlin: They have big ranch houses.
Merlin: They have llamas?
Merlin: Is that a llama place?
John: They might be breeding heritage llamas.
Merlin: Okay, it's going to be one of those Reagan-style ranches where you mostly have symbolic wood.
Merlin: No, there's beef cattle.
John: They have beef cattle.
John: And Argentina's the steak place.
John: It is.
John: And she's going to say, you know, at that point in time in the story, I'm going to be 50 years old.
John: I'm going to have a gray beard.
John: I'm going to be a big gray-bearded American 50-year-old.
John: 20 pounds lighter.
John: 20 pounds lighter.
John: Couple records out.
John: who might or might not be a former CIA agent, whose knuckles are kind of bruised from having been working on the distributor of this $1,200 Jeep, and whose daughter, by that point, is a well-behaved, Spanish-speaking, friendly cohort.
John: Also, we will have been solving mysteries the whole way.
John: So, you know, our reputation will precede us.
John: That's how we'll be introduced in the first place, because she'll come to me needing a mystery solved.
Merlin: Your daughter or the rich lady?
John: The rich lady will come to my daughter and I and say, help me solve the mystery of who killed my father.
John: Oh, that's how that's how we'll realize she's not a noble poor woman.
John: She's actually an heiress.
Merlin: But here's the thing.
Merlin: Other died under mysterious circumstances.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: But here's the thing.
Merlin: And this is where it gets a little bit thin, man.
Merlin: I mean, obviously, that part doesn't apply.
Merlin: But you you go out and you and your daughter with with your crime solving borough can go out and track down these details, things that an Argentinian fake fake poor woman would never realize.
Merlin: You might discover that, in fact,
Merlin: Her father faked his death, and he is simply – he is now a Nigerian prince working in a goodwill, at which point she could collect the many millions of dollars that he had all around.
Merlin: So now she's like double rich.
John: Well, what concerns me is that he may be one of the –
John: Her father may be one of the German emigres, if you will, who flooded into Argentina.
Merlin: How old is this lady?
Merlin: That would make her pretty old.
John: No, sure.
John: My father was a World War II veteran.
Merlin: Your father also had fantasies of being a former CIA agent.
John: Let's just say grandfather.
John: It's her grandfather who came perhaps from a European country that was recently devastated in a war and...
Merlin: Right, and now he has a bakery.
Merlin: Yeah, reestablish himself.
Merlin: Because he loves ovens.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: I think that's... Where are you going to cook a steak, John Roderick?
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
John: It's not an oven.
John: You cook it on an open flame.
John: Would she have swords?
John: You put it on a sword, kick it on an open flame.
John: That's how they do it in Argentina.
Merlin: It works on so many levels.
Merlin: I was skeptical at first.
John: Yeah, but you see the logic of it?
Merlin: Yeah, I guess I do.
John: It's a rehabilitation program for the kid.
John: It's a way of finding love for me or realizing that love is real.
John: And we get to solve the mystery of who killed her Nazi grandfather.
John: And we end up living in a giant ranch in Argentina for half the year.
Merlin: That's pretty good.
Merlin: Now, would you send the kid back at this point?
Merlin: Would she live there in harmony now because she's so well-adjusted?
John: It depends.
John: If I see her looking at any of those little Argentine gauchos, I'm sending her right back to her mother.
John: Because girls, when girls get into that time of their life, I don't relish it.
John: Yeah, you're going to need a whole new burrow for that.
John: You know, when you said bakery, before you made your obligatory Holocaust joke.
John: I don't know what you mean.
John: But when you said bakery earlier, it reminded me that there was a serial killer in Anchorage who owned a bakery right up the street from my dad's house.
John: And when he got caught, the reason I'm mentioning this is that they're making a movie about it now starring John Cusack.
John: Or Cusack.
John: And I keep getting emails from my friends in Anchorage with these John Cusack sightings in Anchorage.
John: And I'm like, what is John Cusack doing in Anchorage?
John: Oh, he's making a movie.
John: He's making a movie about the serial killer that owned the bakery.
John: And what's amazing is that one of my good friends in high school, his father bought this bakery immediately after the serial killer got caught.
Wow.
John: And we used to hang out in this bakery all the time and thought of it as the serial killer bakery.
Merlin: Were any of the deeds done on site?
Merlin: Was it – did he kill people at the bakery or is that just a space of operations?
John: Well, no, that was – he was apparently a talented baker.
John: His name was Robert Hanson.
John: But he did this – He only had two names?
John: No, no, Robert Christian Hanson.
John: See?
John: Yeah, they all have three names.
John: But he did, the reason they're making a movie about this guy is that he was also a bush pilot, and he would kidnap these girls, take them out into the bush, set them free, and then hunt them with a rifle.
Wow.
John: Yeah, fucked up.
Merlin: Would he do it on weekends?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Well, who made the bread?
Yeah.
John: Well, he was gone.
John: That's the thing about being a bush pilot that people from the lower 48 don't realize, which is that he can fly out into the middle of nowhere, hunt a girl with a rifle, and make it back in time.
John: to watch your shows.
John: I mean, it's not like you don't have to go out for like five days.
John: Right.
John: You kidnap the, let's say, let's say hypothetically, you kidnap the girl in the afternoon.
Merlin: Oh, you're saying after all, because the thing is, I'm thinking in mornings are going to be very busy.
Merlin: You get up early.
Merlin: You got to do a lot of baking.
Merlin: I don't know what people eat for baked goods in Anchorage.
Merlin: I'm guessing.
John: Lots of baked goods.
John: Really?
John: You need that stuff.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: There's lots of baked goods.
Merlin: People are going to be picky about the quality.
Merlin: So it seems like he's got a lot of pressure on him.
John: He's going to have to.
John: This is the thing about Alaska.
John: No one's picky about quality.
John: Okay.
John: They want quantity.
Merlin: They're happy to get it and they're paying extra.
Merlin: They pay a little bit extra, yeah, for shipping.
Merlin: Isn't that right in Alaska and Hawaii?
Merlin: Everything's more expensive?
John: It is.
John: It used to be a lot more expensive when they had to ship stuff up on the back of a burrow.
John: Now it's pretty systematized.
John: They've got it going on.
John: They can get you some fresh eggs.
John: You don't have to pay $5 an egg.
John: When I was a kid, $5 an egg, you were lucky.
John: I bet you really took your time and enjoyed that egg.
John: Oh, God, some of those $5 eggs.
John: They were, you know, they'd already been sitting on a truck for a month.
Merlin: But you guys are tough.
Merlin: You like that kind of stuff.
John: Well, it puts hair on your chest.
John: Sure.
John: Yeah.
John: But anyway, so I think that he was able, by having some employees, perhaps, and also by quick turnaround...
John: He could go hunt these girls out.
John: He set the girls free in the forest, hunt them down, and then make it back in time to make the donuts.
Merlin: So you're saying, let's not castigate all the bakers, but we should seriously look at the bush pilots.
John: I feel like if you are a baker and a bush pilot, that's two strikes against you.
John: If you have three names and if people call you by all three names.
Merlin: That's a huge warning sign.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: And guns are just okay up there.
Merlin: If you're a baker and a bush pilot and you're just carrying around a gun, you go out with two people, come back with one.
Merlin: Nobody at the airport is asking questions about that.
Merlin: Nobody says, hey, shouldn't you be making bear claws?
John: No, no, no, no.
John: If you get in an airplane and it isn't also full of rifles, that would raise suspicion.
Merlin: That's smart.
John: You need to be carrying rifles at all times.
John: And two people go up in an airplane, one comes back, that's not going to raise any suspicions.
John: That's the whole business of Alaska.
John: Two people go up in a bush plane, one comes back.
John: That's how business is done.
Merlin: So it's tourism, oil, and disappearing.
Merlin: It's a big state for disappearing people.
John: There are all these people in Alaska, and I've been thinking about this a lot lately because on one hand I understand it, and on the other hand as I get older it sounds crazier and crazier to me, but there are all these people that go up in the fall to their little cabin, and they go up in the fall with the intention of not coming back out until the spring.
John: And this is, you know, this is a lot of people up there whose vision of either their vision of paradise or just the twists and turns of life has resulted in them being in a situation where they go up in the fall and they come out in the spring.
John: And they spend that whole winter either alone, well, mostly alone.
Merlin: They're like bears?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Is it a kind of hibernation?
Merlin: No, no, no.
John: They're working.
John: They're trapping.
John: Baking.
John: Hunting.
John: They may be baking a little bit, but that's not their main occupation.
John: They're trapping.
John: They're living off the land, the winter land.
John: And this is their thing.
John: This is their life.
John: They live in isolation far, far away.
Merlin: Does that appeal to you?
John: Sometimes.
John: Sometimes it does, but I've spent enough time like living alone in a cabin in the Alaskan wilderness to know that.
Merlin: Metaphorically?
John: It's a certain kind of madness that's in.
John: No, I've spent a little time out there.
Merlin: I think I'm starting to understand why one of the numerous reasons why your life is so complex.
Merlin: And it's not just about wet leaves.
Merlin: It's not just about applique T-shirts.
Merlin: It's about you have at least two warring influences in your life.
Merlin: There's the one hand that says that you should be a crazy guy in a shack.
Merlin: out in the middle of the winter and no one knows where you are, possibly dropping ladies out of a plane.
Merlin: And there's another warring part of you that says you should be a crazy guy on a burrow dragging your daughter all the fuck over South America.
Merlin: And I have to think that in your mind, one reason, if I may say, even if it dried out today, one reason you may not be out there on your knees literally fucking picking up wet leaves is that these are warring things.
Merlin: And I think that puts you in a bathtub.
Merlin: I think that's what puts you in the bathtub is how do I have the shack and the burrow?
John: You're not wrong.
John: You're not wrong.
John: It's complicated.
John: I saw a picture on Facebook the other day, a friend of mine taking a picture of his kids, an Alaskan guy, and prominently featured in the background of this picture of his daughters is like a giant Husqvarna chainsaw that he just sat down on the back of the couch.
John: You know, like he's like, hey, girls, get on the couch.
John: I want to take a picture of you and put on this new Facebook thing that I discovered.
John: Oh, where am I going to put this chainsaw?
John: Oh, I'll just set it here on the back of the couch.
John: So the little girl sitting on the couch and there's a there's a chainsaw that's bigger than either one of them on the back of the couch.
John: And I looked at this picture with a certain amount of of envy, like, God damn it.
John: If I had a chainsaw in the house, people would call me crazy.
Merlin: Yeah, and I mean, especially if you're using it in like a little mise-en-scene.
Merlin: I mean, do you think he had that in mind?
Merlin: Did he say, oh, wait a minute?
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: No, he's just okay with how he just—so a chainsaw is a gas-operated series of spinning blades, and you would just have that in your living room on the couch.
John: Well, it's that he came in, and the house isn't that big.
Merlin: He doesn't have a hall?
No.
John: Here at my palatial compound, I have a whole chainsaw building.
John: I have a building where my chainsaws are.
John: He's living in a cabin.
John: There's no hall.
John: You walk in and the chainsaw goes, it probably hangs on a nail.
Merlin: An old, suspicious-looking rusty hook.
John: And he didn't put it up on the nail.
John: He didn't get to that because he was, like, trying to corral the girls or whatever.
John: So he set it on the back of the couch.
John: And it just seems like that's, you know, if there was a way to combine that...
John: With the borough life, the life, the Jeep unto borough unto promise.
John: I don't think they're incompatible from a philosophical standpoint.
John: But here's the problem.
John: I don't think they are either.
John: But in the middle of that is me living in a house in Seattle and playing the guitar.
John: Like that has to be in there too.
John: And it's just too much to think about.
John: And I need to take a bath.
Merlin: You can get one of those little ones like from Diver Down.
Merlin: Can you get her maybe like a uke or something?
Merlin: You can get something portable.
Merlin: They make portable guitars.
John: Oh, you're talking about a little guitar?
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Oh, my God.
John: See, now you're into this whole thing of like people that carry around little guitars.
Merlin: Oh, I hate little guitar guy.
John: Well, and just guy with guitar.
John: Like I know so many musicians who are like, I'm the guy with the guitar.
John: Hey.
John: I'm like, that's not, I'm not the guy with the guitar.
John: When I put a guitar on, it is like putting on jousting armor.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Oh, it's like the sheriff taking out his sidearm.
Merlin: You don't take that out to wave it around.
Merlin: You take it around to give somebody one between the eyes, and that's what you do.
John: You're not like, I'm the guy with the gun.
John: Here I am.
John: Pow, pow, pow.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Give him the locavore eyes.
John: You leave the gun in the holster until it's absolutely needed, and that's how I am with the guitar.
John: Yeah.
John: So no, I'm not – when I picture myself solving crimes in South America with my daughter and my new Argentine heiress, one thing I do not picture myself doing is pulling out my guitar around the campfire and serenading the gauchos with like a version of blue diamonds.
John: Like that's not – that doesn't occur to me at all.
John: Yeah, they should be working anyway.
John: Exactly.
John: I'm not there to entertain them.
John: They're the fucking gauchos.
John: Get out and herd some cattle.
John: I got other things to do.
John: I'm solving crimes.
Merlin: I don't know if there's an answer or a non-answer to any of this, John.
Merlin: I mean, you're going to take the directions you take.
Merlin: I assume you'll take a bath.
Merlin: But I'm super interested in what the ladies' version, when they come to your home, wherever you end up living, whether that's in a chainsaw bush area or with an heiress in Burroughs, I'll be very interested to see what the interiors of your newly professionally remodeled home look like.
John: Well, I'll tell you what, you know, when I'm looking for that book on Miles Vandero, I think it's Mies.
Merlin: His name is Mies?
Merlin: I think so.
Merlin: You think it's Miles?
Merlin: You say Mies Davis?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: Mies?
Merlin: What kind of a name is Mies?
Merlin: I think he's Hollandaise.
Merlin: Oh, am I getting the Van der Rohe part right?
Merlin: The thing is, it doesn't matter, John.
Merlin: It doesn't matter.
Merlin: All you've got to have is a bunch of those books.
Merlin: Nobody's even... Those books could be made out of styrofoam.
Merlin: Nobody cares.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: Should we check into that?
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Would you look that up?
John: Me's?
John: Yeah, well, no, I mean, there's no book in my house that, I mean, there are books in my house that haven't been read, but there are no books that are just here for display purposes.
John: They're all on the list of books to be read.
John: Some of these books, this is the depressing thing.
John: Some books in my house I will never read.
Merlin: Do you really believe that?
Merlin: It seems to me like you have such a breadth of aspirations, obviously starting with helping people.
Merlin: But, I mean, if you're going to make a cut into any of these projects, maybe starting with the leaves, I mean, aren't you going to have to at some point say it's just going to be okay for me to not have this short man's suit, short-armed man's suit, or maybe not read this particular, you know, multi-part series on the fall of the Roman Empire?
Merlin: I mean, don't you have to let some things go?
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Some things have to go.
John: A girl in Belgium one time gave me like five different books by Alain de Bottin.
Merlin: Oh, brother.
Merlin: I would have gotten right back on the fucking plane for every part of that.
John: And she was like, oh, you love this guy.
John: He is so brilliant and he is smart and I think he is beautiful.
John: You will take all these books.
John: Alain de Bottin.
John: And I took the books.
John: And I took the books.
John: I think I even may have promised to give them back to her when I was done.
John: And I read a couple of them.
Merlin: Are they on your shelf right now?
John: I'm looking at them on my shelf, and I'm like, there are at least two books.
John: or three of these books that I'm just never going to read.
John: I'm not going to... There's never going to come a time when I'm going to say, I haven't read enough Alain de Botton books.
Merlin: Well, it's not like you're going to get through three and go, oh boy, I can't wait to keep going.
John: Yeah, I think I got the gist.
John: I got the gist, and it was not a negative experience, but I got the gist.
Merlin: Not a bad gist.
Merlin: Well, I mean, you know...
Merlin: You could open up and just kind of crack the cover a little bit.
John: I think that would buy you a little bit of – Well, the thing is now a couple of people that I follow on Twitter who are friends from the old days, they apparently follow his Twitter account and periodically retweet some little like aphorism of healthy mental thinking or something.
John: I don't know what – some pop philosophy.
Merlin: They retweet it and I go – Obviously, you've digested a lot of this material.
Merlin: And then not returned it.
Merlin: They call it a Belgian promise.
John: I feel like a Belgian promise is like a Belgian mullet.
Merlin: A Belgian promise is when you take books that you never wanted to read in the first place, take them back to their home, and then neither read them nor return them.
John: Take them back to your home country, flip through them, read a couple of them on the plane.
John: And then make fun of the person.
John: You know, she's fine or whatever.
John: She started working for the international court.
John: And now I think she lives in Nigeria as a Belgian diplomat.
John: And they have a problematic relationship with Belgians with Africa.
Merlin: I'm starting to really wonder how much of this is just completely fucking made up.
Merlin: How much of what?
Merlin: John, you have brought in more Belgians and Nigerians and Argentinians and Alaskans than any 500 people I've ever met.
Merlin: There's no way you know anything about two Nigerians.
Merlin: That's not a bad thing.
Merlin: You don't think.
Merlin: Check the weather.
Merlin: Is it going to dry up today?
Merlin: You might be able to get out there and hit your leaves.
John: No, it's raining.
John: The rest of this day is going to be spent in the bathtub if I have anything to say about it.
John: This is all too traumatic just thinking about all this stuff.
John: Yeah.
John: But I do know a couple of people that work for the International Corps in the Hague.
John: I know a couple of people who do.
John: One guy from Hungary.