Ep. 11: "Everybody Knew What Mr. Finnell Did"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi John, how are you?
Merlin: Hi Merlin.
Merlin: Are you well?
Merlin: I am well.
Merlin: You sound terrific.
Merlin: Did you make coffee or something?
John: Wow.
John: Thank you for saying that.
John: No, I had a kind of a tumultuous morning, but it all worked out.
John: I had an orthodontist appointment that I had already rescheduled two different times, one of which time I arrived at the orthodontist so late that they said they couldn't see me and they had to reschedule.
John: And then I had to reschedule it again.
John: And this morning, it's an appointment at 10 o'clock in the morning.
John: And this morning, I set my alarm at 9.
John: I woke up at 9.
John: And I lay in bed playing solitaire on my phone until 9.50.
John: And so then I looked at myself and I was like, I didn't actually look at myself, but I said to myself, what is the matter with you?
John: And I jumped out of bed at 9.50 and I ran downstairs and I got in the car.
John: And I'm speeding across town.
John: It takes 30 minutes to get to the orthodontist.
John: I'm weaving in and out of traffic, banging on the steering wheel, just yelling at myself like, what is the matter with you?
John: And I called the orthodontist.
John: I was like, can you please?
John: I'm sorry, I'm going to be late.
John: I'm going to be 30 minutes late.
John: Can you please see me?
John: And they were like, I don't know.
John: And so I'm driving across town and I'm on the verge of putting my hand through the windshield.
John: I'm so mad.
John: And I did this to myself for no reason at all.
John: just like dread of going to the orthodontist or something, I sat and played solitaire on my phone, which is like, I mean, seriously.
Merlin: It's a form of self-soothing.
Merlin: It's like a 40-year-old man's teddy bear.
John: Yeah, it's like sucking my thumb.
John: It's like laying there sucking my thumb.
Merlin: Sucking your phone.
John: It's like sucking on my phone.
John: It's like lying in bed.
John: But you're in the car at this point?
Merlin: Are you in traffic at this point?
Merlin: You're not punching the windshield, but you're in traffic.
John: I'm weaving in and out of traffic.
John: I'm unsafe at any speed.
John: While you play solitaire?
John: I'm infuriating the other people on the road, playing solitaire, talking on the phone, tweeting and driving.
John: But I make it to the orthodontist.
John: They take care of everything...
John: Like they extend my appointment and then I stop and I have a nice sort of leisurely rest of the morning and I get home, I make a pot of coffee and I'm talking to Merlin and everything is back in place right where it should be.
John: Even in spite of all this self-sabotage, here I am and everything is right with the world.
Merlin: In spite of all of that.
Merlin: It's weird, though.
Merlin: You know, it's hard to know.
Merlin: You know what they say at Peter Schaefer in that Equus?
Merlin: The moments snap together like magnets, you know?
Merlin: It's not a good movie.
Merlin: It's a pretty good play.
Merlin: How do those fucking work?
Merlin: You get north and south.
Merlin: I had to explain this to my daughter with her trains.
Merlin: She's not very bright.
Merlin: But, you know, who knows?
Merlin: Who knows why that started great?
Merlin: I don't know how you boil that down.
Merlin: I would like to just point out one thing, that allowing nine minutes to get there is something we've discussed before.
Merlin: I don't want to take us off track, but I think one thing is you might want to slightly recalibrate your odometer, barometer, whatever the broken meter in your head is that says it only takes nine minutes to get anywhere.
Merlin: Because I think the solitaire is a way of you...
Merlin: Making it nine minutes to get somewhere.
John: Yeah, we've talked about this before.
Merlin: We've talked about this.
John: I do think it takes nine minutes to get places, including from San Francisco to New York City.
John: It often takes longer than nine minutes.
John: And I swear, sometimes I get places and I'm late.
John: And the person at the other end of the thing is like, you were supposed to be here half an hour ago.
John: And I'm like mad at them for being so far away.
Merlin: There's so many reasons to be mad at them.
Merlin: They're far away.
Merlin: Why is your office so far across town from me?
Merlin: They're far away.
Merlin: They're on time and they noticed.
Merlin: So three strikes, you're out.
John: Three strikes.
John: But this is a special... I mean, this wasn't a case of me lollygagging around the kitchen, having an extra cup of coffee, trying to decide what shoes to wear for a half an hour.
John: This was a case of me watching the clock tick away as I did the dumbest thing that a human can do.
John: I mean, playing solitaire on your phone...
John: I mean, is there a dumber thing?
John: Even stacking rocks.
John: Tick tock, tick tock.
John: Stacking rocks in the garden.
Merlin: Black queen, red king.
John: You have a stack of rocks when you're done, right?
John: You can come back an hour later and be like, see that stack of rocks?
John: I made that.
John: But with the solitaire on the phone, it's like you leave no passage.
John: It's like walking across the rice paper and leaving no passage.
John: None.
John: And then you are kung fu.
John: Maybe that's it.
John: Maybe I'm kung fu.
Merlin: There's so many handles.
Merlin: I don't know where to pick up this luggage, John.
Merlin: Make a 3x5 card.
John: Oh, speaking of which, I found some 3x5 cards.
John: No kidding.
John: Yeah, some old ones that I had lying around.
John: So I put them in my stationary file.
John: That's the file that doesn't move?
John: That's my file that never moves.
John: Remember, the principal is your pal.
John: The principal was never my pal.
John: The principal called my father.
Merlin: That ruins a whole mnemonic.
Merlin: That ruins an entire mnemonic for you.
John: And said, I would like your permission to use corporal punishment on your son.
John: And my dad said, and this guy, I'm sitting in this guy's office.
John: Do the voice.
John: I'm sitting in this guy's office, and he has a cricket bat in his office.
John: I'd like permission to use corporal punishment on your son.
John: Sweat is pouring down my face.
John: I'm thinking to myself, come on, Dad.
John: Come through for me.
John: Come through for me, Dad.
John: And I can hear my dad on the other end.
John: Go ahead.
John: Beat the shit out of him.
John: Did he hit you with a cricket bat?
John: A cricket bat.
John: He bent me over his freaking desk more than once and hit me with a cricket bat.
Merlin: John, that is so, so not about trying to help you.
John: This is old school.
John: This is a public school, too.
John: I wasn't in some Catholic penitentiary.
John: I was in public school.
John: Was prayer allowed at the time?
John: I think you could probably pray at the time.
Merlin: It was a transitional period.
Merlin: Yeah, it was between beating the shit out of kids and making them not have hope.
John: Well, see, you and I are of an age where the public school curriculum was designed to beat the Russians into space.
John: We've discussed this.
John: I've said this before.
Merlin: It's totally true.
Merlin: It's totally true.
John: And they would beat you, and they would try and beat Jesus into you.
Merlin: That's what they were doing to the Russians, and they were doing it harder, and that's why Yuri Gagarin, is that the one, or was it Ham?
John: Yuri Gagarin, yeah.
Merlin: Who is it?
Merlin: Now, who was Ham?
Merlin: Ham was the second one to go up.
Merlin: Was Ham the first one or the second one to go up?
Merlin: Ham the monkey?
Merlin: I think it was a chimp.
John: Yeah, he went first.
John: Gregerin went next.
Merlin: Are you sure?
Merlin: I think the second mammal in space, there was a Russian, and then there was a chimp, and I heard it did not end well.
Merlin: Oh, the dog, Laika.
Merlin: Laika was the first.
Merlin: I thought that was a camera.
John: No, Laika the dog.
John: Laika the dog was the first animal.
Merlin: You know, they electrocuted those animals to train them.
Merlin: Did you know that?
John: Well, that's how they treated us in American schools.
Merlin: We're sitting around.
Merlin: We're walking around in America afraid to electrocute animals.
Merlin: And that's why we do not have... We never put a monkey on the moon because we were so afraid of electricity.
Merlin: It might have taken a couple more cricket backs to really straighten things out.
John: There's a lot of things that we're afraid of that are keeping us down.
John: And one of those things is saying bad words to people.
John: We're afraid to say bad words to people now.
Merlin: John, I'm going to write.
Merlin: I'm okay.
Merlin: Here's what I'm doing.
Merlin: I have one card that says BAD in all caps and another one says WORDS because it is so important that we circle back to that.
Merlin: There's no way I'm letting you go on the cricket bat thing, though.
Merlin: Because I think there's something to this.
Merlin: This guy...
Merlin: What was his name?
Merlin: Do you remember his name?
Merlin: Was it Mr. Something?
John: No, no.
John: Frank Kufel.
John: Frank Kufel, the cricket bat sadist.
John: He wasn't even the principal.
John: The principal was some ineffectual guy with like a little Trotsky beard who never came out of his office.
John: But Frank Kufel, Frank Kufel took this cricket bat and he drilled...
John: He drilled holes in it so that it could hurt more.
John: He drilled holes in a cricket bat.
John: And this is in Alaska.
John: Like, who had ever seen a cricket bat?
Merlin: Are you sure this happened?
Merlin: Are you sure this isn't one of those Oprah memories?
John: No, I swear to you.
Merlin: Because you always hear about the teachers who would drill holes to make it hurt more.
John: No, no, this was real.
John: He had a collection in his office of Coke cans from around the world that former students had sent him.
Merlin: Ew.
John: But he was a nut.
John: He was Frank Kouvel.
Merlin: Was he the vice principal or the dean of boys or something like that?
John: He was the vice principal.
John: And another thing he did, he would walk around the lunchroom.
John: with a tennis racket that he had duct-taped two one-pound weights to either side of the tennis racket.
John: And he would just like lackadaisically swing this tennis racket back and forth, just practicing his backhand, practicing his forehand while he's walking around the lunchroom.
Merlin: In front of everybody?
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: He's on duty.
Merlin: He's clocked in.
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: If he could have been doing that, if he could have taken his shirt off, he would have done.
John: If he could have walked around that lunchroom with his shirt off, he would have done.
Merlin: Was he a fit guy?
John: He was a fit guy.
John: I mean, he's the type of guy that walked around practicing his tennis serve absentmindedly.
John: Did you say duct tape?
John: Duct tape two one-pound weights, one on either side of the tennis rack.
Merlin: I think this guy's got corpses under the floorboards.
Merlin: Holy shit, John.
Merlin: Here's the thing.
Merlin: You come into your office, you bring a picture of your kids, you bring your international Cokes, and you bring a fucking cricket bat with holes in it?
Merlin: Nobody's asking any questions about that?
Merlin: He brought the cricket bat, probably.
Merlin: Frank, tell me more about the holes in your cricket bat.
John: And then he beat a couple of kids, and he was like, this isn't working.
John: And he took it home, and he drilled some holes in it.
Merlin: Oh, he iterated it.
John: I'm sure within a year or two, this was 1980, 1981, 1982, maybe.
John: Within a year of that, there was no way he could have ever gotten away with beating a kid with a bat again.
John: 1982 was possibly the last year.
Merlin: This was his last days of Saigon.
John: You were his helicopter pontoon.
John: I was the guy on the stairs
John: Right.
John: And the helicopter took off.
Merlin: He's reaching down.
Merlin: He's a lieutenant.
Merlin: All those people still on the stairs, right?
Merlin: There was a last helicopter.
Merlin: He hands you his baby and then hits you with a fucking cricket bat.
Merlin: That was me.
Merlin: That is so weird.
Merlin: Man, if I was interviewing, you know, I think, okay, first of all, just to get it out of the way, I think if you're going to interview people who are in a position to even consider corporal punishment, they should have to bring with them the object that they intend to use to hit children.
Merlin: Because that should be, as they say, on the table.
Merlin: You should be able to talk about that.
Merlin: There should be a box on the form to talk about that.
John: This is the item.
John: I'm going to use this rubber hose.
Merlin: Right, right.
Merlin: Bring us in a big stick of crazy so we can understand a little bit about where you're going with this.
Merlin: It's like, how are you going to solve these incredibly complex problems of kids who aren't sure where they are?
Merlin: What will you hit them with?
Merlin: Now, when I was in elementary school, this was still a huge thing.
Merlin: I'm happy to say I have never had the corporal punishment happen to me.
Merlin: I was terrified of it.
Merlin: I'm really glad.
Merlin: You were a good kid.
Merlin: Well, as you know, I was a terrified kid.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: I think at one point we collaborated on an idea for a shirt for me that was going to say in...
Merlin: not too big, probably pretty small block letters because of the nature of the shirt driven by fear.
John: Wasn't that the shirt we worked on?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: And, uh, and that's, that's one of my favorite police songs too.
Merlin: Oh, driven by – that is pretty good.
Merlin: And then you go into the turndime of VCR.
Merlin: The – I got bad word.
Merlin: Words bad?
Merlin: I just remember the wrong word or bad words.
Merlin: We've got to come back to bad words.
Merlin: Okay, so second grade, Mrs. Retley.
Merlin: She had recently come down.
Merlin: She was probably about four bucks if she was anything.
Merlin: She's close to 400 pounds.
Merlin: And she had – And this was before that was fashionable.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: He'd be a fatty.
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: This is when being a 400-pounder was a serious lifestyle commitment.
John: I mean, now you can be 400 pounds.
Merlin: Yes.
John: And you have a lot of peers.
Merlin: Eddie Van Halen was at the time, he was 10 years old, and he had a sticker on his homemade guitar that says, yes, please, fatties.
Merlin: And there was no buster.
Merlin: They didn't invent the buster until 1980.
Merlin: Mrs. Rutley was very large.
Merlin: She looked like a cross between, I think, I would say Oliver Hardy and Ayn Rand.
Merlin: You toss in a little bit of Dorothy Parker, but not in a good way.
John: That's a strange combination, but I see where you're going.
John: And did she wear house dresses?
John: If I recall correctly, in 1974 or whatever, if you weighed 400 pounds, your number of clothing choices was fairly limited.
John: It was mostly like house dresses made out of curtains.
John: Or stuff you get in the camping section.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: She's big.
Merlin: Thick ankles, I assume.
Merlin: And she had a ping pong paddle.
Merlin: She had a big ping pong paddle that was kept in like a special place.
Merlin: It's the ritualism of this that freaks me out.
John: When you say big ping pong paddle, do you mean bigger than a normal ping pong paddle?
Merlin: It's slightly larger.
Merlin: It could have been my eyesight or like some kind of, I don't know.
Merlin: There's like regulations about how big your ping pong paddle can be.
Merlin: You mean in table tennis play, like professionally?
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah, I don't think anybody's going to... It takes a lot of money to tool up a ping pong paddle factory.
Merlin: You're saying you're a second grade teacher in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Merlin: You're not going to be hiring somebody in ISM career or Japan to come up with a prototype ping pong battle.
Merlin: Excuse me, table tennis, table tennis.
Merlin: I'm saying there wouldn't be enough... I think ping pong's racist.
Merlin: Ping pong's racist.
Merlin: Oh.
So...
John: Ping-pong's racist.
John: That's my favorite.
Merlin: Sounds too close to a ching-chong.
Merlin: You don't say that.
John: No, I'm saying that I don't think there were bigger ping-pong pedals.
John: I think they've always been the same size.
Merlin: You don't think it changed like baseballs?
Merlin: Now, let's go back to your friend.
Merlin: Let's go back to Mr. Frank Cuffel.
Merlin: Is that correct?
Merlin: Cuffel.
Merlin: Cuffel.
Merlin: So I'm going to put an umlaut.
Merlin: I got a diaresis over as you.
Merlin: Frank Kufel, now, did he have a large head or standard head?
Merlin: Because you remember Bjorn Borg, around that era, you started seeing the large head tennis racket.
John: I think he had a large head tennis racket.
John: I think that was... Oh, wait a minute.
John: No, no, no, no.
John: That would have been before the large... I don't think...
John: 1981, 82?
Merlin: I think if this is the kind of fella that is going to literally duct tape weights onto a tennis racket, I don't think he's going to be playing with the latest technology.
Merlin: I think he's got a standard head, standard head cricket bat, and a standard head tennis racket.
John: I'm having a sense memory now of it, and I think it was one of those transitional rackets between the small wood
John: old ones that we learned to play tennis on and the big massive headed ones that came later i think it was one of those aluminum ones from the interim period that was kind of halfway in between they got content to get comically large though they're ridiculous now but but remember when they started talking about the sweet spot and this racket had a bigger sweet spot and the sweet spot moved around and this was i think from that era when the concept of sweet spot
John: It was brand new for people.
Merlin: It's your understanding that's especially not circa 1974.
Merlin: This was not a technology that was going into corporal punishment devices like a table tennis slash ping pong paddle.
Merlin: There was not a large head ping pong paddle that Mrs. Rettley had probably.
John: I'm betting not.
John: I'm betting if there was, she didn't have access to it.
Merlin: Well, like Bill Cosby talks about the belt, you know, the four feet long had hooks on it.
Merlin: Like you imagine it being worse than it actually was.
Merlin: So I might be misremembering a large head.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, it just seemed big coming at you.
Merlin: But anyway, but she never hit you with it, you're saying.
Merlin: She didn't.
Merlin: She didn't.
Merlin: But it was always there, and it loomed large.
Merlin: Now, Mr. Fennell, circa fifth grade, African-American guy, looks a lot like a—who's the Pulp Fiction guy?
Merlin: John Travolta?
Merlin: Who's the other guy?
Merlin: Samuel L. Jackson.
Merlin: He looked a lot like Samuel L. Jackson dressed as a 70s guy.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
John: And he had... Does Samuel L. Jackson dress another way?
John: I thought that was his... I did it again, didn't I?
Merlin: Jimbo Shrimp.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: That's a good question.
Merlin: That's not... All right.
Merlin: So anyway... Yeah.
Merlin: I'd like to see him and Arlie Ernie try to have dinner together.
Merlin: They'd have to be in a soundproof room.
Merlin: Along with Robert Evans and Jerry Lewis.
John: Pass the salt!
John: Pass goddamn salt!
Merlin: I have these fantasies about insufferable people trying to eat together.
Merlin: And just imagining what it would be like to try to even order with Jerry Lewis there.
John: Is that based on some of the dinners that you and I have had together?
Merlin: I'd have to imagine.
Merlin: Now, Mr. Fennell, I think this was something he had made himself.
Merlin: I think this was a project that he had made in some kind of a wood shop.
Merlin: He had a multiply paddle that was kind of like if you imagine like a regular paddle, but kind of like with an octagonal corners cut off type situation.
Merlin: And it was really, it was scary.
Merlin: It was kind of a dark wood like him.
Merlin: It was like, it kind of had a mahogany kind of thing.
Merlin: Now, you knew Mr. Fennell meant business.
Merlin: He was the PE teacher.
Merlin: This is right around the time we went from gym to PE.
Merlin: Do you remember that?
Merlin: We used to be gym and then it was PE.
John: I think that right about the time it went to PE, that was when I started doing everything in my power to not have to go to PE.
Merlin: Call it dressing out.
John: I didn't want to dress.
John: I wanted to go to the dark room or get some exemption.
Merlin: I think that's racist.
Merlin: I also hated the transition from library to media center.
Merlin: That still sticks in my craw.
John: We didn't have that.
John: We were in Alaska.
John: I mean, just having books on tape was... Mr. Fennell, though, here's where he took it and he turned it.
Merlin: He had this big-ass paddle that he had made.
Merlin: So let's just be clear here.
Merlin: You're not making a lot of dough as an African-American PE teacher in 1977, but he took the time.
Merlin: Unless you got something on the side.
Merlin: That's a good point.
Merlin: He might have been cricket batting.
John: That's what they call it, cricket batting.
John: This is Florida, after all.
Merlin: Are you implying that he's a coxman?
Merlin: Or that maybe he did exotic dancing?
Merlin: No, I'm thinking... Babysitting?
John: Wasn't that the era in Florida when every single person was importing cocaine from South America?
Merlin: Oh, no, this is back in Ohio.
Merlin: So he might have been busting unions.
Merlin: Oh, Ohio, right.
Merlin: He might have been a goon.
Merlin: He could have been a goon.
Merlin: He might have been a paddle-wielding goon.
Merlin: You know, that's the kind you could slip in.
Merlin: It's like blackjacks the cops used to carry around.
John: Well, see, now those guys might have larger-scaled ping-pong paddles.
John: If you're talking about union-busting...
John: Ohio goons.
Merlin: So you're saying Frank Kufel?
Merlin: Kufel, is that right?
Merlin: Kufel.
Merlin: He might have been a union buster.
Merlin: You never know.
John: Well, in Alaska, boy, the Teamsters ran a tight ship.
John: You wouldn't get away.
John: You wouldn't go far.
John: They bust you.
Merlin: It's a Yackel Smirnoff situation.
Merlin: Teamsters bust you.
Merlin: Teamsters bust you.
Merlin: But, okay, this is getting dull, but Mr. Fennell, who was very tall and African-American, what he would do was he had his paddle, and if that paddle came out, it was like, you get one warning.
Merlin: And then, I remember one day going into class, because everyone knew what Mr. Fennell did when he hit you with the paddle.
John: And that is... Did he groan?
Merlin: He came prodigiously in his dolphin shorts.
Yeah.
John: Everybody knew what Mr. Fennell did.
John: What did he do?
Merlin: What a horrific, horrific vision I have scalded on my brain.
John: Did he crouch down and put his hands over his eyes?
Merlin: I think if you came while you hit somebody more than a couple times, there's got to be somewhere deep in the Cincinnati public school system.
Merlin: There must be a form somewhere.
Merlin: A very, very, very, very general form that's going to have to be filled out in triplicate.
Merlin: He's going to get the golden rod.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: I hope, I pray, John, that there is not so specific...
Merlin: of a form as a 57 stroke 15 came in dolphin shorts while hitting child okay he's gonna get the golden rod he's gonna get the golden rod this is going in your i'll tell you jim three more times and we're really gonna have to talk
John: Going in the permanent record.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: They don't pay for his laundry, probably, right?
John: Well, the thing about, remember those, you know, PE coach shorts at the time were impervious to liquid, right?
Merlin: Talking about the football short ones?
John: Yeah, those were made out of a... This is before that.
Merlin: This is still in the Dolphin, like, waving from a parade float kind of shorts.
John: it's ymca type shorts okay so you remember mimeographs you remember you get the test and you smell it not you i i one of my first the first things i ever did my the first uh thing in school that i did to try and distinguish myself from the other kids that i knew were just in my way between me and greatness i started in second grade i started publishing my own newspaper
John: And I was the only reporter and the artist.
John: And it was like a broad sheet.
Merlin: Were you also the ombudsman?
John: I was the editor-in-chief, chief reporter.
John: We didn't have an ombudsman.
John: But I would go out on the playground and I would investigate goings-on.
John: But in any case, at one point, the teacher got tired of mimeographing my newspaper for me.
John: Although the teachers loved it.
John: And they taught me how to use the mimeograph machine.
John: And so I had special access to the teacher's, you know, broom closet.
John: And I would go in there and I would run off copies of my little second grade newspaper that had poems I'd written and, you know, and events of the day.
John: And I would just sit in there and just soak in that mimeograph smell.
John: So nice.
John: Yeah.
John: It was like back in the old days when they had leaded gasoline and you would sit out when your parents were putting gas in the car and you just huff as much gas as you possibly could while you're standing out there like, oh, that smell.
John: But the mimeograph, there was nothing better than the mimeograph.
Merlin: Well, you know that death by a thousand cuts where the Chinese people would take a few hours to cut you into little pieces?
Merlin: You know about that, right?
Merlin: They would ping-bong you.
Merlin: You know about that?
Merlin: It's horrible.
John: Death by a thousand cuts.
Merlin: We hear death by a thousand cuts.
Merlin: It actually was a thing.
Merlin: It was heavily exaggerated in Western reporting, but this was a thing.
John: Which would you prefer?
John: Death by a thousand cuts or drawn and quartered?
Merlin: Oh, drawn and quartered in a heartbeat.
Merlin: You'd take drawn and quartered.
Merlin: Do you understand that they cut off one of your limbs and then wait a while?
Merlin: They cut off your nose and then wait a while.
Merlin: A thousand cuts is unusual.
Merlin: The point being, it's excruciating.
Merlin: Do not read the Wikipedia entry, no matter what.
Merlin: But what they would do, now the thing is, what they didn't say all the time, is they'd give you... I think you could bribe them, and your family could bribe them, and they could come and give you a shit ton of morphine.
Merlin: And a lot of times, apparently, they would give you morphine before this, because it's just pretty awful.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: The whole thing.
John: They would give you morphine and then give you death by a thousand cuts?
John: That's counterintuitive.
Merlin: You don't know the first thing about justice, John.
John: You're trying to hurt the person.
Merlin: Why would you give them morphine?
Merlin: Yes, you are.
Merlin: But it's mainly that other people see them being hurt.
Merlin: This is the kind of thing they were doing, right?
Merlin: They weren't going to teach you some kind of an object lesson.
Merlin: What, are we going to stop at the femur?
Merlin: Now you get it.
Merlin: They let you go.
Merlin: No, it's for other people.
Merlin: That's why you hang them from the, whatchamacallit, at the corner, at the thing, you know?
John: This is what happens when you subcontract sadism out to non-sadists.
John: Like, the person that thought this up...
John: was clearly a sadistic person.
John: And then it became popular.
John: And they're like, we need more death by a thousand cuts people.
John: We're going to have to contract this out.
John: And then there were all these people who got the job.
Merlin: A backlog.
John: Yeah, they had all these people that had been sentenced to death by a thousand cuts.
John: And there were not enough sadists.
John: And so then they got these guys that are like, oh, I don't really want to do that.
John: That seems mean.
John: Time consuming.
John: And they're like, sorry, that's the sentence.
John: And so they're like, oh, maybe if I slip him a little bit of morphine, it'll
Merlin: It's just... You're saying that works across purposes.
Merlin: That's like somebody going and filling in Mr. Kuvel's cricket holes.
John: Yeah, right.
John: Or somebody like, oh, I've got Kuvel's cricket bat, but I'm going to put a book... I'm going to have you hold a book between the bat and your butt.
John: Because I don't want to hurt you, but I want other kids to know that I'm like... I want them to hear the sound...
Merlin: That's like strangling somebody with a comfortable electric cord.
Merlin: Yeah, exactly.
John: It's pointless.
Merlin: It is.
Merlin: It is.
Merlin: I mean, it works at cross purposes.
John: If you're going to sadistically torture somebody... Put your heart in it.
John: That's right.
Merlin: You should be reveling in how much pain you're causing.
Merlin: This is why I want to come back to John Wayne Gacy.
Merlin: Here's the point.
Merlin: I'm saying that like the morphine, I think when they give you the math quiz, you get a little bit of... If it's nice and fresh, you get a little hit.
Merlin: You get a little hit off the mimeograph.
Merlin: I think it takes the edge off of the long division.
Merlin: So Mr. Fennell took the time with what I imagine is a lathe or a tabletop saw or maybe somebody he was keeping in his basement.
Merlin: He made a homemade paddle that without any need for authorization, he brought to school and just would use to hit kids.
Merlin: Now, here's what he did.
Merlin: In addition to taking that time, he then took the time to mimeograph.
Merlin: like a little, you know, like a star, a little five point, like a little, imagine little squares, like two inch by two inch squares with mimeographed purple stars on them.
Merlin: He would tape it to the paddle and hit you until the star broke.
Merlin: What?
Merlin: He took the time.
Merlin: So he thought this out.
Merlin: He probably got out a protractor and a ruler and a pen.
Merlin: Took out the mimeograph paper.
Merlin: He went and he made, he mimeographed little stars that he taped onto the paddle.
Merlin: And then he hit you with the paddle until the star broke.
Merlin: What a nut.
Merlin: And then he would stand by the doorway after the classes changed with his arms folded, holding the paddle with the busted-ass star on it.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: And a horribly weeping child.
Merlin: You would see which one of the children was horribly sobbing.
Merlin: Oh, wow.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I mean, there's so many levels to that.
John: Are you sure this guy's not running for the Republican nomination right now?
Merlin: We're not going to talk about the Tea Party.
Merlin: I love this guy.
Merlin: This is a baklava of problematic behavior, John.
John: I don't see anything problematic about it.
John: This guy deserves a Congressional Medal of Honor.
Merlin: You're saying he found his senator.
John: I really feel like he was a nut in an era when being a nut was right up the middle.
Merlin: It was encouraged.
Merlin: It was bred.
John: He found the place, the Ohio Public Schools, where he could be... I mean, you know, this poor Sandusky guy now with his diddling boys in the shower.
John: Okay, so what you're saying is... 40 years ago, that was like... You didn't even need a license.
John: You didn't even need to start a charity.
John: You could just be a public school teacher.
John: And so your concern is... I'm upsetting you now.
Merlin: I'm fine with it.
Merlin: You're saying Mr. Fennell, in some ways, not only was channeling his energies into the right place, but maybe avoided going to jail because he found a place where it might not have been okay to hit people with a mimeograph star until it broke on his homemade paddle.
John: Is that kind of what you're saying?
John: Kind of?
John: What I'm saying is right now, if you wanted to do that, you would have to drive around in a white van and grab little boys off the playground and do it, and then you'd have to kill them and stuff with their body in a culvert.
John: There's no pension.
John: I mean, you're not going to get away with that somewhere.
John: Even if you went to Thailand, they'd find you.
John: It happened to the rock and roll guy.
John: That's what happened to him.
John: That's exactly right.
Merlin: He ran into a lot of trouble with that.
John: 40 years ago, you could retire and have your... He probably has that paddle, or he's probably dead now, but he probably had that paddle mounted in his den.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Oh, the memories.
Merlin: What about the dolphin shorts?
Merlin: Yeah.
John: No, people don't... I bet he got rid of those.
Merlin: Those guys know what parts to keep and what parts to get rid of.
John: The thing is, only recently have we started fetishizing things like the clothes that stuff happened in.
John: You know what I mean?
John: Like, oh, those are the shorts that I wore.
Merlin: You mean like Jackie Onassis' gowns or something?
John: Yeah, I don't think... Because otherwise... Like, where's Napoleon's hat?
Merlin: I think they've got Napoleon's hat.
Merlin: Do you think they have Napoleon's hat?
Merlin: Don't you think somebody's got Napoleon's hat?
Merlin: I thought, according to the book of lists, that it's one of the most costly things ever auctioned.
Merlin: Napoleon's hat?
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: There's nowhere I could go to look this up.
John: The thing is, I think if Napoleon's hat was still around, that I'd have seen a picture of it, because that's the type of thing that I search the internet for.
John: That keeps you up at night.
John: I would have followed some chain of links to a picture of Napoleon's hat, and I would have stared at it for an hour.
John: But even leaving Napoleon's hat aside, like right now, I happened to read in the New York Observer the other day that they're having some auctions of Elizabeth Taylor's estate.
John: Did she pass?
John: I'm afraid she's gone.
Merlin: Now, what's her perfume called Blue Diamond's?
John: No, it was called... It wasn't White Shoulders.
Merlin: White Diamonds.
John: Green... Clovers.
Merlin: Green Manalichis.
Merlin: Green Manalichis.
Merlin: Yellow Stars.
Merlin: I don't remember.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: Continue.
Merlin: They're auctioning off Elizabeth Taylor.
John: They're having an auction of Elizabeth Taylor's materiel that lasts... It's five full days of auction.
Merlin: Maybe they got an incompetent auctioneer and he's talking really slowly.
John: Oh, no, no, no.
John: This is being done by Christie's.
John: This is the auction event of the season.
John: They're having one day for her, just for her legendary jewelry, and then a second day for her run-of-the-mill jewelry, and then a day for her undergarments, and there's a day for the cocktail napkins that she doodled on.
Merlin: Is there seriously a whole panty day?
Merlin: Is that subsumed inside of just the day of the auction you're kind of embarrassed to be at?
John: Yeah, it's the auction where you're really going to buy Elizabeth Taylor's old pantaloons.
John: Like, it just doesn't... I don't understand.
John: I mean, granted, I am not a 50-year-old gay male, so I don't know why you would go to an Elizabeth Taylor or Liza Minnelli auction, for instance.
John: Did Liza Minnelli pass?
John: I think Liza Minnelli is still alive, but when she dies, there will be five days of auctions of her undergarments.
Merlin: She was married to Peter Allen, which is kind of a funny thing.
John: Liza Minnelli?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I don't know how you didn't see that one coming.
John: Yeah, no, no.
Merlin: When my baby smiles at me, I'll go to Rio.
John: Really?
John: Didn't she have a later husband who seemed like he had been crafted out of...
Merlin: body parts david something not david furnish no no he looked like uh he looked like something that had been discarded from a nogahide factory yeah right like like like someone had had gone through a through a morgue and just taken like random like that guy that guy that guy was that guy was super disturbing have you ever been someplace where you have to look at like famous clothes
Merlin: People's famous clothes?
Merlin: Well, like, okay, so you got the big Paul Allen Museum there, but I don't know how this happened.
John: I saw Jimi Hendrix's clothes.
Merlin: Okay, I want to hear about that.
Merlin: One time, I don't know how this happened.
Merlin: This might be one of those Oprah memories, but I'm pretty sure that one time I saw, maybe it was when we were in Washington at the Smithsonian, I'm pretty sure I saw a really, really, really, really long, big display of First Lady's gowns.
John: Oh, that does sound Smithsonian.
Merlin: That's like going to the sewing store.
Merlin: It's one of those trips.
Merlin: You remember, I don't know if your mom was crafty like that, but having to go to some kind of a store when you're a kid where there is just, or it's like having to go to like the make-up.
Merlin: Fabric store.
Merlin: Fabric store is the canonical, the Ben Franklin or whatever.
Merlin: There's not a single item in the entire place.
Merlin: A Snoopy applique that you can't take out of the thing is the most amusing thing.
Merlin: You got the styrofoam stuff, foam you put the plants in, you got plastic flowers, and then there's ladies in smock, so it's not even hot.
John: You remember going to the carpet store, right?
Merlin: Oh, my God.
John: Warehouse full of rolls and rolls of different carpet.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: That's what Mr. Fennell should have done.
Merlin: I don't want to tell Mr. Fennell what to do because that's probably racist.
Merlin: I think Mr. Fennell...
Merlin: you think he passed i think if what he should have done is you know what should have done one of those mr hand type situations pulled up in his probably really cool purple car and taking a carpet store taking you a carpet store for eight hours and just folded his arms and stared at you while he threw mimeographed stars at you
Merlin: Do you want to see some more swatches?
Merlin: Get in the carpet.
Merlin: You want to see some more carpet?
John: What was nice about the Smithsonian was that the Smithsonian had it divided up in completely separate buildings, right?
John: Air and space.
John: There was the building that had the first lady's gowns
John: That you just—you didn't even have to go in.
John: I mean, or you could march through.
Merlin: I think it was probably part of American history.
Merlin: Now, the American musician—okay, here's the thing.
Merlin: I've only been to Washington a couple times.
Merlin: The American stuff, pretty good.
Merlin: I would say focus on natural history and air and space.
Merlin: And as you know, John, I'm not good at time— I'm not good—yeah, well, theoretically.
Merlin: I'm not good at time management, but I knew that every minute I spent—
Merlin: looking at Lady Bird's gown, I was not checking out like an Apollo.
Merlin: Right.
John: You were looking at the X1.
Merlin: I was not seeing like the Wright Brothers, you know, thing hanging from the ceiling.
John: Or whatever that, remember the, whatever that, you go to see the film where your first person kind of flying movie where it goes off a cliff and everybody in the room gasps.
Merlin: Oh, like an IMAX type situation.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: But that was before IMAX existed.
Merlin: You know what my first IMAX movie was?
John: Mount St.
John: Helens.
John: No.
John: James Cameron's Titanic.
Merlin: I think Mount St.
Merlin: Helens sounds a little bit regional.
John: Yeah, yeah, that's true.
Merlin: We have that up here.
Merlin: It was about Gunther Gable Williams.
John: Who's Gunther Gable Williams?
Merlin: Do you remember the lion tamer guy with the giant blonde hair who was the star of Ringling Brothers for a really long time?
John: Maybe I saw him from a distance.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You probably didn't pay a lot of attention to who the marquee character in Ringling Brothers.
Merlin: That was my first IMAX.
Merlin: It was him and his children just doing things with animals.
John: That doesn't seem like something that would need to be IMAX.
John: Yeah.
John: Seems like that could be like a magazine.
Merlin: Really, it seems like it could have been Super 8.
Merlin: Like, you would have gotten a lot of the action.
Merlin: Like, riding a roller coaster, that kind of thing, IMAX.
John: Did you want to go to clown school?
Merlin: I think, no, I don't.
Merlin: Okay, all right.
Merlin: Did you want to go to clown school?
Merlin: Is that why you're bringing it up?
John: No.
John: I mean, if I'd gotten a scholarship to clown school, I wouldn't have turned it down.
Merlin: If I could say, I think you're concatenating two things that are very similar, which is that the tiny, silly school that I went to in Florida was on the grounds of two of the Ringling Brothers' homes and adjacent to the Clown College.
Merlin: Oh, the Clown College.
Merlin: It was also where the clowns went in the winter.
John: Right, because in summer, they're up in Wisconsin.
Merlin: They're also trying a lot of the cases.
Merlin: A lot of clown cases are being tried in the summer, and they can't be adjudicated out of Sarasota.
Merlin: I see.
Merlin: I think that was in the Magna Carta, or the clown.
Uh-huh.
Merlin: There are a lot of clowns.
Merlin: Pee Wee Herman used to live in Sarasota, a heavy clown influence there.
John: Isn't that where he got arrested for masturbating in a movie theater?
Merlin: Yes, and it's what led to our mug shots happening in the exact same room, just a couple years apart.
John: Oh, right.
John: Your famous mugshot.
John: God, I love that mugshot.
Merlin: I'd love to know more about what really happened in that theater.
Merlin: I still think there was some kind of a jam up.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I know what happened.
John: He was yanking it in a porno.
Merlin: Should he have been playing Chinese checkers?
Merlin: Pardon my saying.
Merlin: Should he have been playing checkers?
Merlin: What should he have been doing while he was in a porno theater?
Merlin: Is it an exercise in restraint?
Merlin: Should he have been hitting himself with a paddle with a star on it?
Merlin: Isn't that what people do in theaters?
Merlin: They masturbate.
John: This is the thing about the cops.
John: Now, you don't have as much experience with the cops as... Not as much direct, literally physical... I mean, you live next door to the police, but they have never... I live near the police.
John: They have never grabbed you and pushed you up against a wall, I'm guessing.
John: But here's the thing about the cops.
John: They sit around...
John: And they have seasons.
John: There's these seasons of the cops, right, where it's like winter time.
Merlin: Isn't that a Donovan song?
Merlin: Yeah, the seasons of the cops.
Merlin: No, Terry Jacks, I'm thinking of.
Merlin: Please continue.
John: You know, I see Donovan all the time now on my Facebook because I'm Facebook friends with Ione Skye, who is Donovan's daughter.
Merlin: The one who tied you up in the video?
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: You know my band had a song called Dianne Court.
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: Yeah, it's actually one of our pretty good songs.
John: Well, I only married Ben Lee, the Australian... I thought she was married to a Beastie Boy.
John: She dated a Beastie Boy, but she married Ben Lee, who's a friend of mine from the music business.
Merlin: You know Ben Lee, the guy who did the Pixies thing, that guy?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Oh, he was adorable.
John: What is he now?
John: He's like 16 now?
John: He's a great songwriter and a very nice fellow.
Merlin: I love his songs.
Merlin: So they're married, huh?
John: They're married and they got married in India in a traditional Indian ceremony because ever since Donovan went over with George Harrison and the Beatles to the Maharishi,
John: He has continued to practice Maharishi-ism, I guess.
Merlin: He stuck with it after Pete Townsend?
Merlin: No, Pete Townsend was with the other guy.
Merlin: Beach Boys.
Merlin: It was Mike Love and the Beatles.
Merlin: Right, right.
John: And Donovan.
John: And he stuck with it.
John: Can we come back to Mike Love at some point?
John: Oh, my God.
Merlin: Oh, God.
Merlin: That's five shows.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: Please continue.
John: But anyway, so Ione and Ben now, I mean, they have the dot on the forehead in the whole business.
Merlin: They're doing the whole nine.
John: Yeah, I think so.
John: I don't know for sure.
John: But that's how they were married.
John: But anyway, so I see Donovan all the time.
John: But what were we talking about?
Merlin: Gosh, there's a lot of threads here.
Merlin: I'm going to need some kind of Ben Franklin visit.
Merlin: So first of all, I think a lot of people don't understand that despite your varying degrees of modesty and success, you know lots of famous people.
Merlin: You're kind of famous in your circles.
Merlin: You know a lot of famous people.
Merlin: When you talk about Zooey Deschanel, that's because you're kind of friends with her.
Merlin: I know you have to be vetted, right?
Merlin: But I just want to be clear that you're not just reading... You're not like Bruce Valanche.
Merlin: You're not just reading magazines to come up with this stuff.
Merlin: The Zooeyfication.
Merlin: The Zooeynistas.
Merlin: By the way, it's pronounced Zoe, just so you know.
John: I would say that Zoe's not sending me any special messages.
Merlin: If you called her from jail and said you need to be bailed out, she would not bail you out, but she would at least know whose call she was refusing, correct?
John: What about Ben Gibbard?
Merlin: What we were talking about was the seasons of the cops.
Merlin: I'm getting to that.
Merlin: So you're telling me.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: You remember that dude that put out all those rock and roll family trees?
Merlin: I forget.
Merlin: There's that one guy that made all those awesome rock family trees.
Merlin: There's a really good one for Big Star.
John: Somebody tried to do that with the Seattle music scene, but the problem with those is it's always the friends of the people who are making the
John: There is a Seattle Rock Family Tree.
Merlin: No, but this is real.
John: You remember these, though.
John: These were real.
John: The old ones were great, but the Seattle Rock Family Tree, the center of the thing, it's this thing at EMP.
John: It's a huge thing.
John: But there are all these bands that...
John: No one's ever heard of it.
John: It's just that the people that made the diagram... Isn't Green River the one to drop?
Merlin: That's the name to drop, Green River?
John: Green River produced members of Mudhoney and also... Pearl Jam?
John: Pearl Jam, yeah.
Merlin: Okay, and he's not hungry.
John: He's not hungry, is that right?
John: He's going hungry.
Merlin: I'm not hungry.
John: I'm going hungry.
John: Oh, he's going hungry.
Merlin: I'm hungry.
Merlin: I gotta get that.
Merlin: I'm hungry.
Merlin: Lemon yellow, lemon yellow sun.
Merlin: Hit me with a surprise lift.
John: She ever did, I'll catch a mermaid there.
John: All right, that's not even funny.
John: That's like a 10-year-old joke.
John: To make fun of Pearl Jam in Seattle because they're wonderful guys.
Merlin: I get that.
Merlin: You told me this.
Merlin: Are you pals with Hat Boy?
John: Who are you pals with?
John: I'm not pals with any of them, but I see them around, and they're super supportive and nice guys.
Merlin: I'll bet Eddie Vedder's a nice guy.
Merlin: When he dials it down, if you were to take him to 13 Coins, Denny's, wherever, that he's going to dial it down.
John: I don't even think he has to dial it down.
John: He's always pretty mellow.
Merlin: Oh, really?
Merlin: He seems intense.
Merlin: He seems like Bono meets Teenage Fan Club hair.
John: Well, maybe when he was 21, but he's in his mid-40s now, and he's a mellow dude.
John: He likes to surf.
Merlin: That's nice.
Merlin: I'm glad for that.
Merlin: The threads are... I got a Mike Love card here.
John: I made a mistake a couple of years ago.
John: I made fun of the Hold Steady.
John: Thank you.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
John: You're kidding.
John: Why would you do something like that?
John: I made fun of the Hold Steady in CMJ magazine or something.
John: I said that they sounded like a bunch of guys on Coffee Break at a software company.
John: Fake singing the employee manual in the style of Bruce Springsteen.
John: Oh, my God.
John: No, and in fact, I think I said... Yeah, that guy's really nice.
John: I think I said, in the style of...
John: John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band covering Bruce Springsteen.
Merlin: Punch the clock, baby.
Merlin: Clock the punch.
Merlin: You're going to have to find me after my clocked out lunch.
John: That's not bad.
John: That was pretty good, huh?
John: That was nice.
John: That was nice.
John: She used to start a band.
John: You should call it Bacon Ray.
John: But ever since I did that, what I did that day in making fun of the whole study was that I kind of eliminated the possibility that I could ever be offended by anybody leaving an anonymous comment about how my band was lame on an internet message board.
John: Like...
John: I should never have done that.
Merlin: Now you're part of the problem.
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: So many musicians, when you ask them about other musicians, they say, good luck to all bands.
John: I support everyone.
John: Hooray, good times.
John: And I thought that for years and years, I thought that was incredibly disingenuous because all those musicians say terrible things about each other behind their backs.
John: Nothing like comics, though.
John: Well, almost as bad.
John: I mean, comics are way more insecure than musicians.
John: No way.
Merlin: Did you get a response?
Merlin: I've heard that, guys.
Merlin: He and Darnielle are big pals.
John: I'm sure they're all famous friends and everybody's friendly.
Merlin: Oh, no, no.
Merlin: Don't get off a lance on me.
Merlin: You know I'm not that guy.
John: But I'm sure that if the Longwinners come up in conversation, those guys are like, oh, yeah.
John: Mr. Fucking Smartass Guy.
Merlin: Can I get to a deeper question?
Merlin: I got a lot to get back.
Merlin: I got to get to Love Minus Zero and Donovan.
Merlin: Are you telling me that you don't like Hold Steady, Almost Kill Me?
Merlin: You don't like that record?
Merlin: It's not your wheelhouse.
John: Not that I don't like it, but I mean, frankly, and I know I'm going to get a lot of angry letters, I'm going to get angry postcards, but I don't like Bruce Springsteen.
Merlin: Oh, boy.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: You're telling me you don't like Candy's Room.
John: He's a very nice man.
John: I support his band.
John: There's a lot of good drumming and stuff that happens.
Merlin: One of my favorite Bob Dylan songs.
Merlin: Sorry, let's take a step back.
Merlin: John, is Bob Dylan okay?
Merlin: Do you like him?
John: No, I do like Bob Dylan.
Merlin: Are you sure you don't want to just go with, oh, I like some Bob Dylan?
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: It grew on me.
John: It took me a long time.
John: You sure you don't want to go, I just like the early Bob Dylan?
John: I understand Bob Dylan now, and I like Bob Dylan very much.
John: Nobody understands Bob Dylan.
Merlin: Don't be a dick.
John: Nobody understands Bob Dylan.
Merlin: i don't know i understand bob dylan in one of the movies i think not the pennebaker one i think in i want to say in the martin scorsese one but i forget i'll look this up on the youtube for our extensive show notes do you enjoy our show notes yeah the show notes for this show are better than the show thank you good you should just do show notes
John: And we don't even need to broadcast this podcast.
John: You should talk to me for an hour and then just write your impressions.
Merlin: I'm trying to evolve as a person.
Merlin: And so for the first time, you're harming me on many, many levels and I'm owning that.
Merlin: I don't even know what that means.
Merlin: But there's this one scene and I haven't told this is not what it looks like.
Merlin: But do you know the song Love Minus Zero, No Limit?
Merlin: I know the song Love Plus One by Haircut 100.
Merlin: I don't have it for me.
John: It's like... Wait a minute.
John: You just played the chords to Sweet Jane.
Merlin: Oh, that would be... Let's see.
Merlin: Yeah, keep going.
Merlin: I could also do Candy Says.
Merlin: You like that one?
Merlin: Let's hear it.
Merlin: I'm going to solo.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: No, no, no, no.
Merlin: Stop it.
Merlin: Stop it.
Merlin: Stop it.
Merlin: This will kill the show.
Merlin: This will kill the show.
Merlin: Stop, stop, stop right now.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: So, God, this is where we're going to lose people.
Merlin: There's one scene.
Merlin: People love music.
Merlin: I see.
Merlin: My problem is I'm very, very, very close.
Merlin: I've never been plays the guitar guy, but I'm getting close.
John: We were about to do a Skype jam.
Merlin: I did a little bit of a Skype jam.
Merlin: I played along with Crazy Train over Skype yesterday, and I'm still feeling bad about it.
John: There are people right now listening to this.
John: They're like, why did Merlin stop the Skype jam?
John: This was epic.
John: Because people like fish.
John: I mean, people will listen to anything.
Merlin: Let's see if I can find this.
Merlin: But do you know the song I'm talking about?
Merlin: It's a Dylan song.
John: It sounds like every other Dylan song.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: It's a scene, though, where he's sitting there.
Merlin: And I'll put this up.
John: Right now, Dylan is listening to this, and he's like, I was going to ask that guy.
Merlin: Dylan's out spinning R&B records.
Merlin: Now, what about Little Steven?
Merlin: Do you like Little Steven?
John: Did you enjoy him in the Sopranos?
John: Those guys don't spin their own records.
John: That's all computer programmed.
Merlin: I think you're thinking of Casey Kasem.
John: No, no, no.
John: Little Steven and Bob Dylan, those radio shows... You're saying they do the little spots in between in that set?
John: Yeah, they sit in front of a mic, they talk for half an hour, and then somebody else cuts it off.
Merlin: I don't see Little Steven doing that.
John: Oh, because you think he's authentic because you're a Bruce Springsteen fan and you think those guys live in a warehouse somewhere.
Merlin: I just want to be clear because I'm about to open a new pack of cards.
Merlin: Are you trying to get me to tackle the authenticity?
Merlin: You fucking John fucking Roderick.
John: You think the boss right now is working on a motorcycle somewhere and some girl comes in and offers him a cold drink?
John: Oh my God in heaven.
Merlin: Authenticity.
John: Is this how we're going to roll?
John: The boss has his underwear tailored for him.
John: I don't have a single problem in the world with that.
John: He's some French guy that's tailoring his underwear.
Merlin: Here's the barrel.
Merlin: Here's the fish.
Merlin: Fucking shut up.
Merlin: I didn't mean that.
Merlin: Here's what I wanted.
Merlin: God damn it.
Merlin: I had a point to make, and now I got Liza Minnelli, and we still got bad words.
Merlin: Is it words bad or bad words?
Merlin: I got it on two cards.
Merlin: Bad words.
John: Okay, let's come back to that.
John: We should say more bad words to people.
John: Okay, we still got plenty.
Merlin: For the love of Christ.
Merlin: God damn it.
Merlin: Everyone I talk to on these programs is making me angry.
Merlin: Mike Love.
Merlin: Oh, we got to get back to Mike Love.
Merlin: You're doing a podcast with Mike Love?
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: I would.
Merlin: The thing is, I don't have a lot of money, John.
Merlin: I have almost no money, but I would take whatever I've got and hire someone to never stop kicking him in the balls for eternity.
Merlin: I just I think that he should just there's his fucking face.
Merlin: I want to just.
John: But for eternity, you're talking about not that's not a that's not a hire that you can do with money.
Merlin: Is that the more you bounce?
Merlin: Transcendental Meditation?
Merlin: Yeah, the one David Lynch does.
Merlin: Oh, that's where you fly, yeah.
Merlin: Don't you bounce?
Merlin: You're a flyer.
Merlin: That's fun to watch.
Merlin: Have you watched it on YouTube?
Merlin: Have you ever seen The Flying?
John: I've seen The Flying.
Merlin: So, there was a period in, I'm going to say 1965, where, you know, feel free to dispute this, but, like, there was pretty much nobody cooler than Bob Dylan in the true sense.
Merlin: Maybe, like, there was a point probably where, like, Miles Davis was cooler at some other age.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: But, like, there was this period... There was nobody cooler than Bob Dylan because the Beatles...
Merlin: The Beatles weren't really even cool.
Merlin: I mean cool in the old school sense.
John: If the Beatles thought you were cool, you were pretty cool.
Merlin: I'm going to throw out a weird one here, but like Scott Walker.
Merlin: Scott Walker is cool in the sense of like, wow, that guy is on his own planet.
Merlin: I do not get him.
Merlin: He's gorgeous.
Merlin: Like John Cage.
Merlin: Have you seen the Scott Walker documentary?
Merlin: do not miss.
Merlin: It is on Netflix and it's, you think you're going to get it and then you watch it and there's a turn and another turn and it's completely mind blowing.
Merlin: 65.
Merlin: I'm saying nobody was cooler than Dylan.
Merlin: There was this period around the time of the, um, don't not, don't look back.
Merlin: Is that what it's called?
Merlin: What's the one where he does subterranean homesick blues?
Merlin: yeah yeah that one and there's a scene there's a scene in a room there's a scene in a room there's people floating around and don't make me reveal how little i really know about no it's okay i'll always cover for you all right i'll always cover for you you know thank you uh it's like i've always said though you know in those days we said sweat it out on the streets runaway american dream yeah
Merlin: and he's just in a room.
Merlin: He's got the sunglasses on, but he doesn't look like a douche because he's fucking Bob Dylan, and he's got the cool hair, and he's sitting around, and he's not trying to be cool.
Merlin: He's just fucking Bob Dylan.
Merlin: He can't help it, and he sits down.
Merlin: Oh, he's trying.
Merlin: Are you kidding me?
Merlin: I don't think he is.
Merlin: I think he used to.
Merlin: I think he's at a point now where he's good and mad.
Merlin: He's mad by 65.
Merlin: He's already mad.
Merlin: He was pretty mad by then.
Merlin: But the thing is, he breaks so many rules of cool today.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: All the things where you and I would go, oh, God, get that guy.
Merlin: Fucking get that guy out of here.
Merlin: He comes in the room.
Merlin: He's aloof.
Merlin: He's got the sunglasses.
Merlin: His pal Donovan is there.
Merlin: Maybe Joan Baez.
Merlin: Maybe Joan Baez is there.
Merlin: I don't remember.
Merlin: But the point is, at some point, he sits down with an acoustic guitar and just starts strumming Love Minus Zero.
Merlin: And you'll know the song, The Instinct Hero.
Merlin: And you can see everybody in the room is just wrapped.
Merlin: And seriously, when you watch this scene, you're just like, oh, my God, this song is fucking perfect.
Merlin: It's so good.
Merlin: And there's this shot.
Merlin: They cut away to this shot of Donovan.
Merlin: And I've been told this is not what it looked like.
Merlin: But Donovan's sitting there.
Merlin: And if you can imagine leaning forward, smoking a cigarette with the giantest fake smile you've ever seen.
Merlin: You know, the kind of really tense, almost like bobbing back and forth, fake smile, smoking a cigarette.
Merlin: Because Donovan, you know, he's got Mellow Yellow in the song about bananas and shit.
Merlin: But Dylan's just sitting there and effortlessly playing a fucking three chord.
Merlin: He's basically playing Louie Louie, except it's about the human soul.
Merlin: I just watched that and I'm like, oh God, this is so brutal to watch.
Merlin: But anyway, you know his daughter.
Merlin: She tied you up in a Harvey Danger video.
John: It's like me sitting on the side of the stage at a December show.
John: going, ah.
Merlin: What?
Merlin: Oh, John, I spoke poorly.
Merlin: I, what?
John: Yeah, yeah, the Decembrists are the Dylan.
Merlin: Their music?
Merlin: What?
John: The Decembrists are the Dylan to my Donovan.
Merlin: Oh, fucking give me a break.
John: Are you being serious?
Merlin: Do you enjoy their music?
John: Don't say a bad thing about the Decembrists.
Merlin: Do you enjoy their music?
John: I've been hearing Mumford and Sons everywhere I go recently.
Merlin: Is that that shirt Eddie Murphy wears in that movie?
John: No, no, no.
John: Mumford & Sons is this band that everybody's been talking about for a year.
John: And I made a record last winter in the UK, and one of the guys on the record was one of the guys from Mumford & Sons.
John: At the time, I hadn't heard it.
John: I'm going to look it up.
John: I think it's another name you're making up.
John: So we made this record called Mount Desolation with some English guys and some other American guys.
John: And then Mumford & Sons became the biggest band in the universe.
Merlin: Name checks out.
Merlin: Mumford & Sons.
John: Yeah, and they sound like the Decembrists if you took most of the character of the Decembrists away and just distilled it down to its basic elements.
John: But these guys are massive.
John: They're like headlining massive festivals.
Merlin: Wow, they've won lots of awards.
Merlin: They are English.
John: Very big band.
John: I believe that they are friends with the G's, too, also.
John: They're buddies with the G's.
John: The G's.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: I'm going to... Is that a short name?
Merlin: The G's.
Merlin: Is that a rapper?
Merlin: The G's?
John: No, not Jeezy.
John: Not little Jeezy.
Merlin: Okay, it has nothing to do with Lil Wayne and the pussy popping?
John: No, it's the G's.
Merlin: Spell it.
Merlin: Is it the and the laws?
Merlin: Like G apostrophe S?
John: No, there's no G in it.
John: J-E-E-Z.
John: G's.
John: That's not a band.
Merlin: That sounds like something that Don Kirshner would come up with for a cartoon.
John: No, no.
John: He's our lord and savior.
John: The G's.
John: All right.
John: They used to teach about him in public school before they secularized Christmas and turned it into a winter holiday.
Merlin: This is really confusing.
Merlin: Okay, I'm lost.
Merlin: I don't know what you're talking about.
Merlin: I'm completely confused.
Merlin: I'm going to look up the G's.
Merlin: I've got Frank Kufel.
Merlin: Do you know how to pronounce it?
Merlin: Can I tell you how to pronounce an umlaut?
Merlin: Do you want to know?
Merlin: This is a life hack.
Merlin: You want to know this?
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Check it out.
Merlin: Okay, so here's the deal.
Merlin: You've got the diuresis.
Merlin: Am I pronouncing that right?
Merlin: Umlaut?
Merlin: Umlaut.
Merlin: Okay, so you've got that over a letter.
Merlin: Okay?
Merlin: So that could be over almost any kind of letter.
Merlin: Could be over a U, could be over an I. I've never understood the Anaïs Nin thing.
Merlin: I think it's made up.
John: I think it has to be over a vowel, right?
John: I mean, you can't just put an umlaut.
Merlin: Unless you're doing a jokey metal thing.
Merlin: Yes, correct.
Merlin: Okay, so here's the crew.
Merlin: Okay, good example.
Merlin: Which I think obviously is a made up one.
Merlin: But, now, say the letter that's umlauted.
Merlin: Like, say it.
Merlin: you you okay but now say it while shaping your mouth the way you would say an e don't overthink it just do it boom that's how you do it you make an e with your mouth but you say the letter you make an e with your mouth and you say the letter so you say e but now instead of e say you e that's how you do it that's a life hack i should write a fucking book you should you should go on the internet do you like bob dylan
John: I do like Bob Dylan, but here's the problem.
Merlin: Jesus, there's always another.
Merlin: Here's the problem.
Merlin: Do you use semicolons at all?
Merlin: Not really.
Merlin: I do.
Merlin: I love semicolons.
Merlin: Everybody says Richard Hugo, Hemingway, they all say don't use semicolons.
Merlin: I love semicolons.
Merlin: Semicolons are the only thing that gives my life any sense of order.
John: Although you have to remember with a semicolon, you can't just throw some sentence fragment on the other side of a sentence colon and call it good.
Merlin: I think that's what I do.
Merlin: I think I literally do that.
Merlin: I literally throw any kind of a sentence fragrance on there.
Merlin: That's the problem.
Merlin: What about an M dash?
Merlin: I really overuse M dashes.
Merlin: Do you use M dashes?
John: I like M dashes.
John: You know, one of the things I've started doing is using asterisks.
John: Asterisks.
John: Is that that French comic strip?
Merlin: Yeah, asterisks.
John: No, asterisks is an American comic strip.
John: Asterisks is the Belgian.
John: And this has nothing to do with Rantantan?
John: No, but I use asterisks because apparently it's some kind of HTML code for... Bold.
John: Is it bold?
Merlin: Or italic.
Merlin: You know what you're doing?
Merlin: You're writing in markdown.
Merlin: Look at that, John.
John: That's awesome.
John: I use it for a while because there's no way to use italics.
John: And you didn't want to type in caps.
John: And then after a while, I just like it.
John: I'm just like, oh, asterisks.
John: Does it feel good?
John: It does.
John: It does.
John: But anyway, here's the problem with my thing about Bob Dylan.
John: It's my problem with the thing about everything.
John: You've got a problem.
John: Here's the thing about your problems.
John: There's so many.
John: It's not actually a problem.
John: It's a problem that I have not with Bob Dylan, but with other people, which is that there are so many fans of Bob Dylan.
John: The benchmark of being a fan of Bob Dylan is set so high.
John: People that know every wart on Bob Dylan's ass...
John: And I don't care about anything that much.
John: I don't give a fuck about anything as much as somebody who's not even in the top 40th percentile of Bob Dylan fans.
John: You know what I'm saying?
John: So I'm in this constant problem when people say, oh, are you a fan of Werner Herzog?
John: And I go, yeah, sure.
John: And they're like, oh, do you remember that scene at the beginning of the movie that no one's ever seen?
Merlin: You're a refusenik.
Merlin: I get it.
Merlin: You're a contrarian and you're a refusenik.
John: It's that I am.
John: Here it is.
John: Here it is.
John: I'm going to say it in as simple words as possible.
John: I am not a fan.
John: Period.
John: It's not that I'm not a fan of Bob Dylan.
John: It's not that I'm not a fan of totalitarianism in the 1930s.
John: I'm just not a fan.
John: I'm not a fan of anything.
John: I am an observer of things.
John: I am an appreciator of things.
John: But my appreciation of things never rises to the level of fandom about anything except maybe...
John: the causes of World War I. I am a fan of talking about the causes, the potential causes of World War I. So, is that the Scottish band?
Merlin: I am a fan.
Merlin: Ferdinand, right?
John: Franz Ferdinand?
Merlin: I heard that was a MacGuffin.
John: That's so far down the line of causes of World War I. Exactly.
Merlin: Okay, now what about the Maine?
Merlin: MacGuffin?
Merlin: Truth or MacGuffin?
Merlin: The Maine?
Merlin: When did they think the Maine?
John: That was all faked.
Merlin: Exactly.
John: Wasn't that the point?
John: It's like walking on the moon.
John: It didn't happen.
Merlin: What is so fucking hard about you being a fan of Bob Dylan?
John: I'm just not a fan.
John: I'm not a fan of anything.
John: Except for talking about the cause of World War I. Yelling about semantics?
Merlin: You seem pretty tightly around with that.
Merlin: You could lead the fucking fan club for the yelling at semantics.
John: I'm a super fan of yelling about semantics.
John: I'll do that all day and night.
Merlin: What about semiotics?
Merlin: Do you do semiotics at all?
Merlin: Are you a Barth fan?
John: Half and half on semiotics.
John: Can you tell the difference?
John: I'll sit in a room and talk about... I used to sit in a room and talk about guitars and amplifiers with guys that I thought were otherwise boring, but they could talk about guitars and amplifiers, but I don't do that anymore.
John: What else am I a fan of?
Merlin: You know one thing I like about you?
Merlin: There's not a lot, but I mean, one thing, and I think, I don't know if I learned this from you or picked this up or just at the point in my life when I wanted to stop being a dipshit, but I think it's so interesting that when I meet people who are genuinely interesting...
Merlin: And by interesting, I mean they express a curiosity about other people and other ideas than themselves.
Merlin: It's so interesting.
Merlin: Like whenever you meet anybody, you know, like you talked about Neil Young and how for obvious reasons, you're kind of going, what do I say?
Merlin: And like he wants to talk about model trains.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And this is my thing.
Merlin: It took me years to learn this, and I don't know if this would be useful for you.
Merlin: But when I meet people, this is actually true.
Merlin: I meet people.
Merlin: The last thing in the world I want to talk about is me.
Merlin: I talk about myself all the time.
Merlin: I'm really good at it.
Merlin: I'm probably better at it than you are.
Merlin: I would like to talk about you.
John: This is the taxi driver thing.
John: This is the taxi driver problem.
John: You get into a car with a taxi driver.
Merlin: You mean like one day a real rain is going to come and wash all the scum off the streets?
John: No, no, no, no, no.
John: Let's not get into fandom.
John: Let's talk about real life taxi drivers.
John: Your world has gotten very small, John.
John: I'm going to write that down.
John: You get into a taxi.
Merlin: John's a small world after all.
John: The guy behind the steering wheel, he's from Eritrea or Ethiopia.
John: And you don't want to mix those two up.
John: You don't want to say, oh, are you Ethiopian?
John: He's like, no, I'm from Eritrea.
John: Vermont and New Hampshire, Greece and Turkey.
John: Exactly.
John: You don't want to screw around.
John: So you start, and the guy's like, oh.
John: You say, where are you from?
John: And he goes, Eritrea.
Merlin: Eritrea, John.
John: In any case... I'm a fan.
John: You start asking him about, oh, well, were you there during the war?
John: I mean, how did you feel about Haile Selassie, et cetera, et cetera.
John: And you realize all of a sudden that this guy...
John: All day long, all he's doing is driving people around.
John: He's told the story of how he feels about Heidi Selassie one billion times.
John: He doesn't want to talk about himself.
John: He wants to talk about you.
John: He wants to talk about the sports teams or something.
John: And you have the taxi driver problem.
John: You don't want to talk about yourself anymore.
John: I think you get to be 40, 45 years old and you've talked about yourself enough.
John: You've told every story 100 million times.
John: You're just not interested in yourself anymore.
Merlin: Yeah, I think you can be.
Merlin: I know you're not a fan of Mick Jagger or a fan of Pete Townsend, but the two classic examples, Hope I Die Before I Get Old, and then somebody's calculated how many times Mick Jagger has sung Satisfaction, which is a really good song.
Merlin: It's a really terribly, terribly overrated song, even for a Stones song.
Merlin: It's a good song.
Merlin: It's not nearly as good as Rocks Off.
Merlin: There are a lot of songs that I prefer.
Merlin: You know, I know how to play exactly one Stones riff.
Merlin: Did I ever tell you that?
Merlin: Can you play Smoke on the Water?
Merlin: Which one?
Merlin: Which version?
Merlin: The live version?
Merlin: Want to hear my exactly one Stones riff I know?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: That's the exactly one riff I know.
Merlin: But if you know that, you're pretty much set.
Yeah.
Merlin: That's it.
Merlin: Yeah, there it is.
Merlin: I'd also know how to rip off Johnny B. Good.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Now, do you think Pete Townsend... Sorry, go.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: I was going to pick up a guitar.
Merlin: I'm kind of fucked up today.
Merlin: I changed a few things around.
Merlin: I had some leftover chow mein and some mineral water.
John: I'll take some things around.
John: And some noodle water?
John: No, I'm sorry.
John: You've been living in a Chinese neighborhood for too long if you're drinking noodle water.
John: Well, I think that's just ping pong talk.
Merlin: I had some leftover chow mein.
Merlin: And there's no point to this.
Merlin: I'm angry about so many things right now, so I want to turn that into Mike Love.
Merlin: Now, Mike Love.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Do you really want to talk about Michael?
Merlin: Oh, God, he's such an... No, John, I don't even know if... I mean, the thing is... He's such an anus in the butt of life.
Merlin: Okay, but here's the thing.
Merlin: There's a certain kind of, like, inert second guy.
Merlin: We've talked about this, right?
Merlin: There's the inert other guy.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: Like, you know, John Oates made his contributions.
Merlin: Absolutely.
Merlin: Andrew Ridgely... I'm sure Andrew Ridgely had notes that helped.
John: You know, Andrew Ridgely is married to the foxy one from Bananarama?
Yeah.
John: What?
John: And they live on a farm in southern England and they just milk the chickens or whatever people do on a farm.
John: And it's Andrew Ridgely and the foxy one from Banana Ram.
Merlin: Did she know she got the wrong one?
John: Well, I mean, if you're going to marry one guy from Wham, if you're a girl and you want to marry one guy from Wham, I think she picked the right one.
John: That's the engine that'll turn over.
John: And he's also, I mean, I don't know what his publishing arrangement was with Wham, but I think he got some songwriting credits on some of that stuff.
Merlin: You mean on the WAM records?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: I bet those still sell, too.
Merlin: I bet they do.
Merlin: I bet they got a lot of compilations.
John: I bet some of those Bananarama records sell all right.
John: Some of those were good.
John: I think they milk the chickens, and then they drive real fast on those rural English roads.
Merlin: I don't want to get off track, but have you ever thought how things might change if you got hooked up with Stock Aitken and Waterman?
Merlin: Have you thought about that at all?
Merlin: Have you thought about other producers?
Merlin: I'm not talking about, I understand, Roy Thomas Baker.
Merlin: Do you know who I'm talking about?
John: I heard from somebody not very long ago that Cameron Crowe was a fan of The Long Winters.
Merlin: Wow.
John: And this is one of those impossible to verify things.
Merlin: He's the one who did say anything with Ioni Sky that my band read the song about.
John: That's right.
John: That's correct.
Merlin: Thank you.
John: I can't call Cameron Crowe.
John: I'm not even going to tweet Cameron Crowe and say, hey, how's it going?
Merlin: That mixtape movie will probably come up and that's going to be awkward.
John: Hey, remember me?
Merlin: Was that him or Lars von Trier?
John: Who made that terrible movie?
John: I don't think he made the mixtape movie.
John: Cameron Crowe.
John: But, but, but, but it's one of those things where, and I, and he just made a movie that I haven't seen yet, but, or maybe won't see, but, but Cameron.
Merlin: Who'd you hear from?
John: Who'd you hear from?
John: It's one of those things.
John: You hear it through the grapevine in the entertainment.
Merlin: There's word on the street.
John: I was talking to Cameron Crowe, and he's a big fan of your music.
John: You know her song?
John: No, no.
John: Music.
John: Not just song, but he knows the records.
John: Damn.
John: Because he was married to... Ione Skye.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Oh, wait.
Merlin: I know this.
Merlin: Hart.
Merlin: Ann Wilson from Hart.
Merlin: Nancy Wilson.
Ah.
John: wait a minute oh wait nancy nancy is the one like the banana rama girl or the skinny one from wilson phillips right she's the good one she's the good one well although i think that ann wilson she's talented very talented is very talented and also frankly if uh if if you took me back to 1976 and asked me which one i would pick it would it would finally found something interesting to talk about save it for the you feel that way about wilson phillips too
John: I don't like the skinny girls.
Merlin: John, this is going to be perfect.
Merlin: This is going to work out great.
Merlin: But speaking of Wilson Phillips.
Merlin: That's why I don't like Sheryl Crow.
Merlin: There's nothing about Sheryl Crow.
Merlin: Was she ever married to Cameron Crowe at all?
John: No.
John: That would be weird.
John: She'd just take an E off.
John: In some cultures, you put an E on the end of your name, you're married.
Merlin: Right, like counting crows.
John: Like counting crows.
John: I heard them in the dentist's office.
Merlin: So here's the thing I know about you, John Roderick, is that you, like your relationship with John Worcester, you're not going to acknowledge the other person.
Merlin: You keep a distance.
Merlin: You have a sly out of the corner, not unlike the way you look at an alien that may or may not be there, a sly glance.
Merlin: You're not going to go running.
Merlin: You're not going to email Cameron Crowe.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: So what do you do?
Merlin: You wait?
Merlin: Isn't that something you want to explore?
John: It's got to be up to him.
John: Do you know what kind of dough you make off those deals?
John: I do know.
John: I would love it if Cameron Crowe would put a long... But there's a lot of people out there in the world.
Merlin: Who was that?
Merlin: Somebody interesting had a song on... Oh, you know who it was?
Merlin: Nick Lowe.
Merlin: Nick Lowe had a song on the Bodyguard soundtrack.
John: Nick Lowe?
John: Oh, God, that made him a billion dollars.
Merlin: No, that's the thing.
Merlin: And if you go read, he's such an interesting guy.
Merlin: And I'm reading about him today.
Merlin: He has chosen to do, like, three reinventions of himself, or at least, you know, just a couple big ones.
Merlin: And he hasn't made a big deal about it because he's pretty comfortable just from the fucking bodyguard soundtrack.
Merlin: Oh, dude, the Posies had a song on the... Oh, the English Teeth movie.
Merlin: No, what's his name?
Merlin: Ashton Powers, right?
Merlin: Ashton Powers?
John: No, I don't think they had a song on that, but they had a song on Reality Bites.
Merlin: Oh, that did pretty well.
John: They still get crazy checks from them.
Merlin: Do you remember what song?
Merlin: Golden Slumbers.
John: I don't know.
John: What's that?
Merlin: Golden Slumbers?
Merlin: What do you think of that first record?
Merlin: Do you like Dear 23?
John: I do like it.
John: My relationship with the Posies is that both guys are great singers and both are great songwriters, but they sang...
Merlin: they sang constantly on each other's songs so that it was a condition of like uh they were uh co-lead singers all the time it sounded like sometimes and i i actually like this in some songs i like this on some of the frosting on the beater uh tracks but sometimes it sounds like they have a really bad they're not getting anything in the wedges on stage and they don't realize how much louder they're singing than the other person
John: I think what it is is that they're each taking really interesting harmonies off of the other guy, and that basically the two vocal parts are summing each other, and it just sounds like...
John: They cancel each other out like a home?
John: They cancel each other out because when one guy goes up, the other guy goes down.
Merlin: This is why Ken Stringfellow is great at finding the conventional harmonies, but then there's that one live record in France.
Merlin: I don't know if you've ever heard it.
Merlin: I think they do Surrender.
John: Oh, that one live Posies record from France?
Merlin: You're not a fan.
John: Chewing it up.
John: No, it's not that I'm not a fan.
John: It's that I'm not a fan.
John: It's not that I'm not a fan.
John: Was that an asterisk?
John: Not a fan.
John: I'm not a fan in asterisk.
John: Here it is.
Merlin: I'm going to break it down for you.
John: Are you ready for this?
Merlin: I'm not going to get to my glove or bat words, are we?
John: Well, we can just put those in the 3x5 card file.
John: Here's the thing.
John: When we were kids...
John: Is this about the Cold War?
John: There was a cold war.
John: Do you understand me?
John: No, no, no, no.