Ep. 16: "Cotton Candy Pink Poofy La-La"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: How are you?
Merlin: Hi, Merlin.
Merlin: How's every little thing?
Merlin: No, wait.
Merlin: I'm going to scratch that.
Merlin: I'm going to start over.
Merlin: How's it going?
John: It's good.
John: Why did you scratch how's every little thing?
John: Because it sounds like a lyric from a 60s musical.
John: How's every little thing?
Merlin: How's every little thing with you and me?
Merlin: Are you a show tunes man?
Merlin: I don't see you being a show tunes man.
Merlin: Oh really?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: My wife can't stand show tunes.
John: You know, I came of age in Seattle during the last great waning days of the true renaissance of gay America.
John: You came of age.
John: Gay people still had show tunes and drag and Barbra Streisand and all these things that they rallied around.
John: Set them apart.
John: That really meant something.
John: It was a separate culture.
John: And now that's all lost.
John: No one cares about those things anymore, I don't think, except for like 50-year-old former drag queens.
Merlin: Right.
John: I don't think there's an ironic... I don't see any kind of hipster show tunes thing happening.
John: Although, now that we've said it,
Merlin: It's not like listening to soft sell or something.
Merlin: It's not something where they're sitting around going, oh, YMCA.
Merlin: But there's a campiness.
Merlin: There's a certain campiness that I admire.
John: A certain campiness?
John: Are you using your penetrating vision to see the campiness?
Merlin: Well, before minute two, working the ping pong.
Merlin: Penetrating vision.
Merlin: I have an extremely penetrating vision.
Merlin: Santorum.
Merlin: Got to ease the way.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: I'm not going to talk about the tea party.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: But that was disturbing, though.
Merlin: You know, seriously.
Merlin: Iowa, really?
Merlin: Wait a minute.
Merlin: You're about to talk about it, aren't you?
Merlin: No, I'm not going to do it.
Merlin: I don't care.
Merlin: You're so close.
Merlin: I could tip you over and talk about politics.
My daughter...
Merlin: This is the problem.
Merlin: You don't want to get me started, literally.
Merlin: My daughter woke up really early today.
John: Your four-year-old daughter?
John: That's who you're going to... She was very concerned about the Santorum.
John: She was like, these Iowa results are very concerning to me, Papa.
Merlin: Seems like it skews rather heavily toward a very small group of people who are really needy about being asked what they think.
Merlin: You notice how everybody stays undecided?
Merlin: Because as soon as they become decided, nobody cares anymore.
John: You know, I've spent a lot of time in Iowa.
John: It's a fascinating state.
Merlin: because of the corn or the writer's program or something else oh you know there are a lot of like iowa city you wouldn't expect in the center of iowa iowa city to be a progressive and beautiful little college town well thank you for asking let me tell you a little story every little thing about iowa's surprising there's people everywhere in towns you've never heard of well there's corn there's corn township corn district corn city corn corn corn writing program
Merlin: sorry that's every little every little thing i'm gonna i'm gonna write that down now tell me tell me about i'm sorry uh you what your band your band plays in iowa a lot is that right cedar rapids is a very interesting that's not in iowa that sounds like it smells like cedar rapids that's a real city so you drive into cedar rapids right which isn't on the way to any rapids a kind of river yeah there are rapids there well how would you have cedar rapids unless unless you had liquid trees
John: So continue.
John: Whoa.
John: Anyway, Cedar Rapids, I really wanted to go there just because it's one of those towns that isn't on the way to anywhere.
John: It's not like the interstate doesn't go through there.
John: You have to kind of make a little detour.
John: And you drive into Cedar Rapids, and the entire town smells like Captain Crunch cereal.
John: Oh, my God.
John: Because they make it there.
John: There's a...
John: General Mills cereal.
Merlin: Close to the corn.
Merlin: Got to stay close to the corn.
John: Yeah, and the whole town smells like crunch berries.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: I love that smell so much.
John: It was nuts.
John: So do I. What's not to love?
John: And I was like, you mean people live in a town that smells like crunch berries all year round?
Merlin: That should be a big theme in our musical, Every Little Thing.
Merlin: You get to pick what kind of city you want to live in based on... It should happen in Cedar Rapids.
Merlin: I met her in a town that smelled like Cheerios.
Merlin: Those are very distinctive smells.
Merlin: Now, the whole town... Now, like when you go to Busch Gardens, I don't know if you've ever been to a Busch Gardens, but it smells intensely of hops because of the brewery there.
Merlin: And, you know, at first it's kind of interesting, but then it's really not.
Merlin: It just becomes really overbearing.
Merlin: Do you think you'd stop noticing, you know, as like living with a smoker?
Merlin: Do you like eventually stop noticing the crunch, do you think?
John: Uh...
John: no have you been sleeping have you been i haven't slept i haven't slept and i and i can't believe i can't believe that you could become so cynical you could become so inured to the smell of crunchberries that you would ever not wake up and think right it's so much a part of the culture how could you ever stop really enjoying that on a day-to-day basis right which is why you go to see so many local bands
John: That's right.
John: The local bands are, well, I used to.
Merlin: The young people, what they're doing with music, the new people, the beards, the longer beards.
John: I'm afraid that young people aren't doing anything new with music.
John: Is that heretical to say?
Merlin: Not only is that true, but yes, I don't want to interrupt you, but I have something on that.
Merlin: But yes, I totally agree.
Merlin: Hmm.
John: Yeah, I mean, I do go see young bands all the time.
Merlin: Cassie, question real quick before we lose it.
Merlin: What's the reception?
Merlin: What's the reception for a long winter show like in Cedar Rapids?
John: We've never played Cedar Rapids.
John: We do quite well.
Merlin: Oh, I'm sorry.
Merlin: That was in one of your Charles Kuralt adventures where you went on a blue highway.
John: That's right.
John: I was in a camper with my faithful dog, Charlie.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: And we were traveling around America.
John: Good old Charlie.
John: In the late 50s, early 60s.
Merlin: Stealing panties all along the way.
John: Crunch berries.
John: They haven't even invented them yet.
John: It smells so great.
John: No, Iowa City we do quite well in.
John: Because Iowa City is a place of discernment.
John: And just look at the name.
Merlin: A lot of creativity going on.
John: Iowa City.
John: That's right.
John: They get they get floods.
John: They get tornadoes.
John: It's fascinating.
John: You know, I found from we discussed Pittsburgh last week and it caused me to be thinking about Pittsburgh all week.
John: Another great city.
John: Boy, there are a lot of great cities in America.
Merlin: It's a hell of a place.
Merlin: It really is.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I've never been to Iowa Town or Iowa Burg, but I've always wanted to go to Iowa City.
Merlin: I avoid making or reading end-of-year lists partly because – Well, there's nothing bad about them.
John: They're a cancer.
Merlin: Well, they're a kind of cancer.
Merlin: There's the top 10 carcinomas, according to Rolling Stone.
Merlin: But, you know, I mean, for me, and this is a blog thing, so it'll be short, but I think a lot of them, like so many ways... God knows blogs or blog things are typically short.
John: Hmm.
Merlin: The headlines sometimes are longer than the post.
Merlin: But you know me, like, you know, you know me.
Merlin: But, you know, in our interview we did many years ago, you talked about how the whole idea in blogging is to have this little thing that's the size of a can of tuna and then you just surround it with ads.
Merlin: I think today, like so many of the lists that we find on the global internet, I think they're largely about affiliate links.
Merlin: I think it's about linking to Amazon.
Merlin: and making 5% off what people buy.
Merlin: I think that's why they do it.
Merlin: You go and look.
Merlin: It's either going to be a list that's made into multiple pages you have to click on.
Merlin: This is boring, so it'll be quick.
Merlin: Or you see it's a whole bunch of 500 top albums of the year.
Merlin: You will almost never see one of those lists that doesn't have links to somewhere where people make money.
Merlin: It's not that that removes all credibility, but if the impetus for what you decide to write is based on getting people to buy something, then you're really writing ad copy rather than producing prose.
John: Oh, my God.
John: You have opened up a can of worms that appeared to be a can of tuna surrounded by ads.
Merlin: hmm but what should i'm sorry what should i write down for that people are can of tuna slash worms ads okay i don't know i don't know what shorthand you use on your i think we definitely have to circle back to this because i i think we may have found a hot spot and i think to be honest with you that it relates to the point i was going to make which is that i accidentally looked at a couple lists uh meta lists of like what people thought of as the best albums and i downloaded i bought a couple on the itunes store i actually did buy them and
Merlin: Well, the two of them I got that I liked okay, one of them was this band called – what is it?
Merlin: Contingency Plan Intercontinental History.
Merlin: I don't know what they're called.
John: Both of those are great band names.
John: Contingency Plan.
Merlin: Opening for Intercontinental History.
Merlin: That sounds like a Travis Morrison thing.
Merlin: But they were good, but I made a crack the other day on the Twitter about this.
Merlin: I mean, so much.
Merlin: Farewell Continental was one band, and the other was a band called Yuck.
Merlin: And I can already guess what you think about Yuck if you've ever heard them.
Merlin: But Farewell Continental, it's that thing where...
Merlin: I don't know if you ever saw this, but you know how CDs and music in general have gotten really, really, really loud?
Merlin: How there's not a lot of dynamic range anymore?
John: Oh, yeah.
John: That's one of the pet peeves of all the recording people that I work with.
John: Well, not just the audiophiles, but certainly recording engineers, the people who are...
John: Recording engineers and mastering engineers, the people who are responsible for making... Especially the mastering guys, right?
John: The mastering guys are the ones who... But they all hate to do it.
Merlin: They all hate it.
Merlin: They despise it.
Merlin: You pull up the album and it looks like a rectangle.
Merlin: If you ever looked at the waveform.
John: Like, oh, this is terrible.
John: But then they do it because it's what people want.
Merlin: Well, yeah.
Merlin: And if somebody puts it in and it's not... It's the Nuremberg defense.
Merlin: Huh.
Merlin: I was just following waveforms.
John: I don't personally hate the Jews.
John: It's just what people want.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Well, you know, you got to vote with your... One of these I bought, and it's pretty good.
Merlin: It's good pop songs.
Merlin: But I had a crack about this on Twitter yesterday, or two days ago, whatever.
Merlin: But it was... It's so... I mean, I just can't believe how much pop music you can actually hear the pitch correction on.
Merlin: Oh, no, really?
Merlin: Well, it's heavily...
Merlin: Well, you know what I'm talking about, where they'll put it right on, maybe right on the key, where it's really, there's not even, like, glissandos.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: It sounds almost like Cher's song, you know, Believe.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Super dead.
Merlin: It's that and combined with an extraordinary amount – I don't know if it's gated but a huge amount of compression and so that everybody sounds like their voice is exploding in perfect pitch all the time.
Merlin: But this whole record, it's like every instrument is too loud.
Merlin: And it's for people who want to listen to a certain kind of like really loud in your headphones running around music.
Merlin: But like, it's weird.
Merlin: It doesn't sound natural.
Merlin: It's you know what I mean?
Merlin: It's so I don't say overproduced, but so heavily produced.
Merlin: So it's a good it's a good record.
Merlin: Like, it's fun.
Merlin: I can see why people like it's very poppy.
Merlin: But you can dance to it.
Merlin: If I danced, I'd probably dance.
Merlin: I like a beat.
Merlin: But do you ever dance like no one's watching?
Merlin: Sometimes I do this Ian Curtis Joy Division dance sometimes.
John: Oh.
John: Yeah.
John: Oh, I just had a mental picture of you doing the Ian Curtis dance.
John: I'll put up a video.
John: I got a video of it.
John: The thing that worries me, or it doesn't even worry me, it just fills my mind.
John: with the ones and zeros instead of what should be filling my mind, which is sleep or good tidings.
John: But it fills my mind, this question.
John: On the pop music side, I've always been a proponent of the idea that all this stuff is just a technology.
John: It's all a way of making music.
John: And people used to, you remember the days when people would yammer on and on about gated snares and too much reverb.
Merlin: You officially called that one of the things we're not allowed to talk about on here.
John: Yeah, and it's one of those things where it's just like, you know what?
John: It's just a technology.
John: It's just a sound.
Merlin: That's so untrue, John.
John: There are no bad sounds.
John: Well, wait.
John: But I feel like pop music is becoming... I mean, the generation that we came from, which was embrace the flaw, celebrate the flaw, celebrate the humanness...
John: The kids now just are like, boring.
John: We can make it perfect and it takes nothing to do.
John: We just click our little box and all the waveforms are straight lines and instant perfection.
John: But at the same time, those same kids are...
John: the compulsively unedited bloggers, right?
John: I mean, that same generation are the ones who are blogging or writing, certainly tweeting,
John: with no sense of punctuation, no sense of complete thought, no sense that once you've droned on for 5,000 words, maybe you should go read it one time and cut out 2,500 of those words to make your thing tighter, to make your thing better.
John: So on the one hand, the culture is speeding headlong into this over-sanitized lack of...
John: lack of any sign of human hands ever being laid on the thing, just like robot music.
John: And on the other hand, like the written culture, is this world of people just like, it's just spew culture, right?
John: Where there's no...
John: they haven't done the minimum amount of editing to make it even seem human.
John: So it's inhumane in the other way, where it's so rude and so scatological, it's not even...
Merlin: Yeah, I'm trying to think of an analogy.
Merlin: I don't completely disagree.
Merlin: I'd love to see anybody write a 5,000-word post.
Merlin: I don't think that happens anymore, even if it's a bad one.
John: Oh my God, I see it all the time.
Merlin: Not on a professional blog.
Merlin: That's the problem.
John: What's a professional blog?
Merlin: It's called pro-blogging.
Merlin: Go anywhere where somebody posts, like, this is so boring, posts 50 times a day.
Merlin: We're not supposed to talk about the internet on here.
John: All right, sorry, you're right, you're right.
Merlin: But no, think of it this way.
Merlin: I kind of lament
Merlin: well what's weird itunes has kind of brought this back but i kind of lament the loss of the single as as an art form like there's so many bands i like that the move comes to mind but there are so many bands that or the beatles like a lot of the beatles best stuff never appeared on a proper english album they got glommed together for some american abortions but but the um but you know yeah what i mean like yesterday and today or whatever is really just uh like a collection of singles
John: Americans don't deserve good things.
Merlin: Well, and then what's cool is when they put out the proper UK versions on CD, then they made Past Masters 1 and 2, which were fantastic, but they're singles collections.
John: You didn't like that?
John: No, are you kidding?
John: I loved it, but we're talking about the Beatles.
Merlin: Well, here's the thing, though.
John: We should reserve that for our podcast.
Merlin: Imagine this.
John: John and Erland talk about the Beatles.
Merlin: I've had that on a card every week, Paul McCartney.
Merlin: Like yesterday, we were listening to the Cock Rock Station, and they played Over the Hills and Far Away, which I think is...
Merlin: close to the point where Led Zeppelin became less interesting, but they were still interesting.
Merlin: And it's a great song.
Merlin: It was a physical graffiti.
Merlin: I think so.
Merlin: Anyway, it's a good, it's a good song.
Merlin: But what's funny is it's got dynamic range to it.
Merlin: Like it's loud and quiet.
Merlin: And at the end, I don't know if it's an,
Merlin: It might be an ARP.
Merlin: It might be an electric piano.
Merlin: But John Paul Jones plays this like little quiet bit at the end.
Merlin: It fades out and then it fades back in.
Merlin: And in the noise of our kitchen, I was like, oh, the song went off even though I've heard it a hundred times.
Merlin: I was like, and then it comes back in.
Merlin: Like you would never hear that today.
Merlin: You would never hear something like, what's the Beatles song that's got the long fade out and the fade back in?
Merlin: Was it not I'm the Walrus or Strawberry Fields?
John: Anyway.
John: She's so heavy.
John: Oh, no, it's not.
Merlin: No, it's not.
Merlin: There's another one.
John: There's another one.
John: Anyway, I had to do that.
Merlin: Is Helter Skelter?
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah, maybe.
Merlin: You can do that today because people would flip the channel, right?
Merlin: And that's why.
Merlin: So think of it this way, though.
John: I don't know.
John: The Fleet Foxes might do it.
John: Because they're artists.
Merlin: I've never heard the Fleet Foxes.
Merlin: These names are just crazy making to me.
Merlin: Anyway, I never got back to Yuck because Yuck's important in this conversation.
Merlin: But think of it this way.
Merlin: With the whole blog racket, the thing is if you want to make any money on a blog, you have to post a lot and often and get people to click through and stuff.
Merlin: And so the whole nature of that is to produce these things that aren't even singles.
Merlin: What you're producing is the equivalent of like a first draft of a jingle.
Merlin: And it might be a jingle based on somebody else's song.
Merlin: And you might bury the fact that that's somebody else's song in a link after the jump, as they say, or whatever.
Merlin: And this is why I can't read this stuff anymore, because it really has become such a factory of unpalatable confections.
John: Tell me how you deal with this, because your life... I don't have a blog anymore is how I deal with this.
John: But you are so internet, you're so wrapped up in the internet, and yet you feel these moments, I'm certainly feeling one right now, where you don't have to step back from the internet very far at all to feel like, well, this could consume my every waking moment, or maybe it's
John: absolutely meaningless like maybe none of this matters at all and i i i can't think of a i can't think of a precedent in human life where there was something like this that could be so all-encompassing and yet potentially and and this is the thing i think the jury's still out potentially be like meh really add up to bupkis
Merlin: Yeah, but I mean the problem there is that – oh my god, this is so tedious.
Merlin: The problem there is that the internet is not the problem.
Merlin: That's kind of like not liking books or not liking music.
John: Well, I agree with that in principle.
Merlin: It's a medium.
Merlin: It's just a medium.
John: Except it isn't just a medium, that books are not a thing that you sit and use to talk to your friends and keep in touch with your grandmother and store all your photos.
Merlin: Oh, you're saying it's now taking on the role of such a broader thing.
John: People are putting their entire lives on the thing and spending their entire lives on the thing.
John: I don't know.
John: I'm going through a really weird phase right now where I'm feeling like... It's because you argue with people.
John: You've got to quit arguing with people.
John: I didn't argue with people.
Merlin: Be happy, sleep, have turkey.
Merlin: What do those things feel like?
Merlin: I'm so mad right now.
Merlin: I want to hear about this.
Merlin: I only want to finish one thought that hopefully will bring this together in some ways, which is this is what it means to be old.
Merlin: What it means to be old is that you hear some band and you go, as I've said a hundred times, oh –
Merlin: They're pretty good.
Merlin: Well, what that really reminds me of is Joy Division.
Merlin: And then I go listen to Unknown Pleasures.
Merlin: I listen to this other man.
Merlin: They go, oh, that's really cool.
Merlin: That's like a fifth-generation Buzzcocks thing.
Merlin: And that makes you want to go listen to, what, Singles Going Steady or whatever, and so on and so on.
Merlin: This makes you want to go listen.
Merlin: Inevitably, I end back with these same 35 albums, like Pixies.
Merlin: I always end up so often going, this just makes you want to go listen to Come On Pilgrim or whatever.
John: Except the kids don't have that access to the source material anymore.
Merlin: Kids change.
Merlin: People always talk about the kids.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: So what I'm saying is with the internet, as you call it, for me, that's about finding trusted sources that you like.
Merlin: And Twitter's a great example.
Merlin: You don't have to see, well, before they added all the bullshit with the promoted stuff, you don't have to see anything on Twitter you don't want to see unless you choose to see it.
John: But I'm talking about zooming out a lot further than that to a place where the question of what makes a valuable life is like, did you chop some wood today?
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah, you can curate the internet.
Merlin: You literally do not want to get me started on this.
Merlin: This is what you do for a living.
Merlin: I'm a dick about that point professionally.
Merlin: That's kind of what I do.
Merlin: That's why I come here.
Merlin: Talk about Bussman's Holiday.
Merlin: This is like fucking karaoke for me.
John: You're right.
John: You're right.
Merlin: Okay, and I'd be remiss not to close this thread with two points.
Merlin: I went ahead and I did.
Merlin: I'm pulling a lot of threads together here, John.
Merlin: Using an extraordinary amount of pitch correction and compression, I did record a version of my karaoke jam.
Merlin: So you can listen to Kenny Rogers' She Believes in Me.
John: And did you use pitch correction?
John: A little bit, yeah.
Merlin: I deliberately over-processed it to make the point.
Merlin: But it's She Believes in Me by Kenny Rogers.
Merlin: The other thing.
Merlin: Now, this band, yuck.
Merlin: uh i love it it's great but here's what's funny about that is you listen to it in the instant the first song comes on it gives me total wood because it sounds exactly like teenage fan club being covered by dinosaur like it's dinosaur sound with like a teenage like everything flows teenage fan club song and you start listening to it and then it sounds a little bit like sonic youth it sounds a little bit like the later teenage fan club now what's funny about that what's funny about that is each one of those bands sounds like other bands before them
Merlin: Teenage Fan Club already sounded a lot like Sonic Youth and Dinosaur.
Merlin: So it's weird to me that you talk about recursion.
Merlin: I don't know if I'm going to listen to this album for six months.
Merlin: I don't know if six months from now I'll still be listening to this because it is a lot like a highlights reel of the 90s for me, the late 80s and early 90s, which is my favorite period in music, I have to say.
Merlin: Well, I mean that in the mid-60s.
Merlin: Anyway, the point being, like, that's the weird thing.
Merlin: And this brings me around to James Joyce, which we should come back to.
Merlin: But that's all I wanted to say about that.
Merlin: Now, I want to hear about what you're angry about.
Merlin: I'm always interested in what's burning you up.
Merlin: Oh, I had another note here.
Merlin: So do you think you're more like Charles Corralt than Bruce Valanche?
Merlin: Be honest.
Merlin: Don't overthink it.
Merlin: I'll come back to that.
Merlin: What are you angry about, John?
Merlin: Let's be in your bonnet.
John: Oh, I think I'm just angry at the fact that I feel like I'm a non-starter now.
John: I'm not making the transition.
John: I'm not changing gears to get with the times.
John: I feel like I am... A stick in the mud?
John: Not a stick in the mud, exactly.
John: Not exactly an old fogey.
John: No, no, I feel like there's a... Frustrated contrarian?
John: Yeah, that's it.
John: Frustrated contrarian.
John: I feel like I have been counter... The mistake you make when you see the problem in everything is to take solace in the contrary.
John: And that is not a position where you're making anything.
John: It's not an active place.
John: Yeah, it's what teenagers do.
John: It's a passive place.
John: It's what teenagers do.
John: It's what...
John: pundits do it's what there's it's a respectable place in in modern life you know people people love the guy that sits on the side and and kvetches some people some people turn that into art well kinks look at the kinks
John: Look at the kinks.
Merlin: Think about the classic kinks arc, starting especially with something else going through Muswell Hillbillies.
Merlin: Like each one of those records is in some ways a – get ready for two SAT words.
Merlin: A pastoral – how do you say peon?
Merlin: That's not making it sound like penis.
Merlin: How do you say that?
Merlin: It's Greek.
Merlin: It's got a P-A-E in it.
Merlin: Peon.
Merlin: Tribute.
Merlin: Peon.
Merlin: Peon.
Merlin: To an old British pastoral life.
Merlin: That's what Village Green Preservation Society fucking means.
Merlin: So they... I'm just saying.
Merlin: And that guy was crazy, too, like you.
Merlin: So you could do your Emerald City Preservation Society because I know you love that.
John: But you know what he had?
John: He had a brother that he hated.
John: He hit him.
John: That he needed... You know, he had a brother that he made all that music to...
John: Really?
John: Probably.
John: Just to thwart his brother.
John: Just to provoke him.
John: Just to make his brother mad.
John: Like, oh, check it out.
John: I wrote another five great songs today.
John: Younger, suckier.
Merlin: I think Dave was the Tommy Shaw of the Kinks.
Merlin: well see and that oh tommy shaw i thought you were talking about tommy stinson i think he's the tommy stinson of the kinks oh the one who keeps it rocking absolutely absolutely yeah you know that's good but i was gonna say tommy shaw because he wanted to like tommy stinson you know what it could be john do you think everybody named tommy in a band wants to rock more than their people are rocking hmm who are some of the other tommy's that's all i got well there's tommy hmm
Merlin: Hmm.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: Hmm.
Merlin: That's a good question.
Merlin: Davey's Harmony, though, that's what makes those songs.
John: The thing is, I think for a curmudgeon, if a curmudgeon does not have a nemesis, then the world becomes the curmudgeon's nemesis.
John: Whereas if a curmudgeon has a nemesis, he can focus all that energy on a solitary point.
John: Right.
John: And then kind of the smoke clears.
John: He can look at the rest of the world with a little bit more of a, if not rosy, then at least like open-minded light.
John: kind of sense that like, Oh, I, everything I hate, I reposite in this, in my asshole little brother or in my antithesis.
Merlin: You need a smart hate sink.
Merlin: You need somewhere, you need somebody who's a worthy, a worthy opponent for you that can be your, uh, what, uh, like your, uh, what would you call it?
Merlin: You're not a whipping boy, but like, uh, you know, uh, Shirley Jackson lottery type situation.
John: Yeah, but here's the problem.
John: These days, you get into an argument with anybody.
John: You get into an argument with everybody, John.
John: Well, I do get into an argument with everybody, but you get into an argument with somebody, let's say, for instance, and a lot of it happens on texting now, which I know is a terrible way to conduct an argument.
Merlin: Wait a minute.
Merlin: You're not talking about Twitter.
Merlin: You're talking about your friends.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: I'm texting with my friends and arguing with them.
Merlin: You're not talking about Jay Random Dude who likes one song your band did, followed you, and now hates you for talking about Nazis.
John: No, no, no.
John: I'm talking about the people that occupy my daily life.
John: Your friends.
John: That I get into arguments with because they are idiots a lot of times.
John: And I'm here to straighten them out.
John: And then we get into a text argument.
John: And here's what people do these days.
John: They send three or four whiny, bitchy texts back and forth.
John: And then they go, okay, you know what?
John: That's it.
John: I'm done.
John: And you go, what are you talking about?
John: We're having an argument.
John: And they're like, nope, I'm done.
John: God, I wish I could know who these people are.
John: You're done?
John: What do you mean done?
John: You're not done.
John: This isn't a pop quiz that you're just like over.
John: We're having an argument.
John: Like, re-engage.
John: But nobody wants to engage.
John: Nobody wants to engage in a discourse that is anything other than
John: Then constantly reassuring, constantly validating.
John: Right.
John: You know, there are conversations with other people and the world.
John: Everybody's structuring their world now so that the news they get and the texts that they get from their friends are always like, you're the best.
John: Two thumbs up.
John: Oh, my God.
Merlin: This gets us back to two core points.
Merlin: which is the bad words, and I don't want to beat this to death, but the fact that you're not going to be able to help them if they're just looking for you to console them.
Merlin: What you have to offer them, the penetration of your help in a lot of ways, is to force them to stay with it and maybe to literally stay up all night texting to receive it.
John: Here's the problem.
Merlin: No, you may not go to bed.
Merlin: We're not done.
John: I am really – I'm up a creek right now because I'm realizing that their refusal to stay with it is not only –
John: They are not only missing out on the opportunity to have me straighten them out, but I'm feeling the loneliness.
John: I'm feeling the estrangement from having my primary way of engaging with other people to be traditionally being like, hey, that thing that you just did was fucked up and here's why.
John: That's my primary way of talking to people, and nobody wants to hear it anymore.
John: Everybody's like, ah, that's it.
John: You've said too much.
John: Doors are closing all around me.
John: Nobody wants to be my friend anymore.
Merlin: Oh, I find that very hard to believe, John.
John: Or at least I can't maintain a thread of conversation that goes through the five stages of argumentative conversation.
Merlin: The Kubler-Ross thing?
John: Which are, you know, like, first... Bargaining?
John: You start off with a premise that you both agree on the initial premise.
John: Then you find the thing that you disagree about.
John: Then you inflate the significance of your disagreement until you really have an all-out war about something.
John: And then you resort to ad hominem attacks...
John: And then you realize that you're fighting over something that doesn't matter to either one of you.
Merlin: Then you apologize and have rough sex.
John: Yeah, essentially.
John: You apologize and take the other one out for coffee or whatever.
John: Choke them or whatever.
John: Or have some rough sex.
John: But now you start, you get up to the ad hominem attacks place, which is a place I don't like to go.
John: I'm not an ad hominem attacker.
John: I only mention that plateau because that's where most people... You just worry that so many of these cocksuckers are out there working on ad hominem attacks.
John: Yeah, they start with some ad hominem attacks at me, and all I can do is reply in kind.
John: And then they're like, I'm done, I'm done.
Merlin: I don't want to give you a note.
Merlin: I don't like to give you notes, but can I just make one?
Merlin: I do not want to become part of the problem.
John: I'm begging for notes right now.
Merlin: Is there a chance that text messages are an imperfect medium for the level of discourse that you're looking for?
John: But the thing about text messaging is... That wasn't really an answer.
John: Here's the problem.
John: And I'm great at it.
John: I am great at carrying on an argument via text messaging.
John: And it's just that other people can't keep up.
John: It's so infuriating.
John: Well, you know, John, I I'll drop some serious science on somebody in a text message.
John: Yeah.
John: And all they read is that I said something about their mom.
John: And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no.
John: I said something about your mom in the context.
Merlin: Resort to the ad momenum attack.
Merlin: John, you know what you need?
Merlin: I don't want to give you a note here, but you need – I fucking hate when people talk about this movie.
Merlin: You need your own version of Fight Club.
Merlin: You need to meet with other assholes who – Who?
Merlin: Who, though?
Merlin: Who can I –
Merlin: Well, I don't know.
Merlin: I mean, apparently the guy was fake the whole time.
Merlin: Spoiler alert.
Merlin: But here's the thing.
Merlin: You are essentially saying that people are arguing wrong, right?
Merlin: And so you need to find somebody who agrees that your incredibly broken way of communicating with people is not only acceptable, but it's really the kind of thing that could be very relaxing.
Merlin: So eventually a somnambulant, when you're done, when you're both – literally both of your batteries have run out –
Merlin: Your phones have died.
Merlin: You can finally go to sleep for a couple hours before the Alec Guinness movies start.
Merlin: This is what I'm saying to you, John, is you need to seek out somebody in an underground culture.
Merlin: I'm not saying go see Fleet Foxes or something.
Merlin: Are they even underground?
Merlin: Still not really.
John: You're saying that it's some kind of dominatrix culture?
Merlin: Not at all.
Merlin: Not at all.
Merlin: It's closer to that stupid fight club thing.
Merlin: You need to meet with a lot of broken people who buy things from Ikea and then like to hit each other in a basement.
Merlin: You need to find somebody who likes the same thing that you do.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: And in time, in the fullness of time, John, I think you need – I'm not giving you a note here.
Merlin: I'm not giving you anything.
Merlin: I appreciate that.
Merlin: You need to narrow your focus onto one nemesis, not somebody you hate, somebody you grudgingly respect who you can text with all night so that you can have friends again.
John: Well, there are so many of those.
John: There are a lot of people that I grudgingly respect.
John: But the problem with that is that there's always this –
John: Well, no, hierarchies are so tenuous now.
John: Like back in the old days, if we lived in... Let's say we lived...
John: In Cedar Falls, Cedar Rapids.
John: Let's say we lived in Cedar Rapids in 1900, right?
John: There's a limited number of people in the town.
John: Nobody's moving anywhere.
John: You pick your nemesis.
John: You pick your friends.
John: You figure out what the hierarchy of the group is.
John: Everybody's got their...
John: everybody's on their maslow trip or whatever and then you then you hash it out on a daily basis but now these hierarchies are all spread across the internet so that if if you engage with somebody and they don't like your tone or they don't like your they don't like the cut of your jib or whatever they just they don't have to turn their back on you they just turn their focus three degrees away from you and there are 10 000 other people who are vying for their attention
John: You know what I mean?
John: This is the problem with, particularly when you become more of a public person yourself, then you're in a realm where you're talking to other public people and you all have...
John: You'll all have only to turn your attention one or two degrees in any direction, and a whole new world opens up.
John: So nobody has the skin in the game enough to sit and really engage with somebody who is counter them.
John: You know what I mean?
John: I do.
John: I do.
John: Nobody wants to do that.
John: They just turn their attention three degrees.
John: There are 10,000 other people on Twitter who are there telling them that they're great and that they love their stuff and that they can't wait for their new blog post or their new book or whatever.
John: And something is lost.
John: I'm feeling the loss.
John: Nobody's talking to me that way anymore.
John: I mean, even a few years ago, you would read reviews of your band that were...
John: some of them still pretty scathing.
John: I mean, obviously, I haven't put out a record in years, but you hardly even see intelligent criticism, intelligent negative criticism anymore on the internet.
John: It's just fan stuff or it's
John: or it's like real base-level takedown stuff.
John: But I'm not talking about the internet now.
John: I'm talking about my relationships with people in my own town.
Merlin: Did this used to work for you?
Merlin: I mean, I just can't get away from the problem with the texting.
Merlin: I'll set that aside if you want.
Merlin: I just cannot think of a worse way, short of like sending chess moves through the mail, I cannot think of a worse way to try and have an intelligent conversation with someone.
John: One of the problems might be,
John: That I have a mental illness.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: Let's really set that aside because I really like this show.
Merlin: I mean, you know, Edgar Bergen goes, you know what, asshole?
Merlin: You're actually made of wood.
John: I'm trying.
John: He needs him for the act.
John: I'm trying to say to myself, don't carry on arguments with people via text messaging.
John: But then I do it anyway.
John: Because there's a part of me that likes to take relationships up to the edge.
Merlin: To see what they're made of.
Merlin: I think that's starting to become clear.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: And that isn't paying off for me right now.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I... Hmm.
Merlin: Hmm.
Merlin: Are these people that I know or am familiar with that you're having these text arguments with?
Merlin: Some of them?
John: Yeah, some of them you know.
John: In fact, most of them you probably know.
Merlin: I'm familiar with in some way.
John: You're familiar with them, yeah.
John: Hmm.
John: Hmm.
John: I texted someone in California the other day.
John: Not the other day.
John: Last night, I texted a friend in California and I considered...
John: provoking an argument with them just to see what happened and then at the last minute i realized i was too tired and so i kept it at the level of i kept our text exchange at the level of fun banter exhaustion is really all that keeps you civil
Merlin: That or an argument with yourself that you refuse to listen to about what you could be doing wrong with this process.
Merlin: You've got a lot of... John, this is a multi-layered cake, if I may say, my friend.
Merlin: It really is.
Merlin: You like cake.
John: Here's what I'm terrified of.
John: I am terrified of niceness.
John: I do not want to become nice.
John: I do not want to get indoctrinated into a world where niceness is the currency.
John: And yet...
John: I have never wanted to be intentionally rude or mean.
John: Not at all.
John: And right now I'm stuck in this polarized, the pull from the dark side to just start to get bitter and mean and angry for its own sake.
John: Obviously, I don't want to go that direction, but everything is so nice now.
John: Everyone on the other side is so cotton candy, pink, poofy, la-la, and I just can't relate to that way of talking to each other, not anybody that I care about.
John: so I don't know what to do.
John: I don't want to become nice.
Merlin: You ever thought of volunteering somewhere?
Merlin: Because I think if you were to go to a local home for the aged, for example, maybe a hospice.
Merlin: Oh, old people smell bad.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: It gives you all the more ammunition.
Merlin: And here's the thing, they can't leave.
Merlin: These are people who think they're, let me just give you, okay.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: Hey, you might be on to something.
Merlin: Well, here's the thing.
Merlin: You think you know, old man?
Merlin: You think you know?
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: Keep going.
Merlin: Here's the thing.
John: Korea, Korea.
John: That's your feather in your cap.
Merlin: You call that a police action?
Merlin: That was no police action.
Merlin: Well, there's two things I like about this, John, and you're not going to like either of them.
Merlin: But here's the first one is they don't text.
Merlin: I think this is good.
Merlin: This takes you out of your comfort zone or discomfort zone increasingly.
Merlin: You're going to get in there with people who literally smell like pee and are very close to death.
Merlin: They're not going to be – this is going to force you into a new medium.
Merlin: Now, what you may or may not like, I don't know if this is going to make them a worthy adversary.
Merlin: I'm just saying you might find a nemesis in a really deeply crippled man with dementia partly because he can't leave.
Merlin: He can't not text you back.
Merlin: He literally is in a bed and immobile.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: And you know what?
Merlin: He might be spunky.
Merlin: You could go from room to room.
John: He rejected all the fine ideas back in the 60s.
John: He hasn't learned a new thing since the Johnson administration.
Merlin: He probably hated you before you were born.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: He probably hated your dad, Pinko.
John: I like the sound of this.
Merlin: Well, it's a start.
Merlin: I think if you were to go somewhere.
John: Yeah, I do feel like there is room in my life for selflessness.
John: Yeah.
John: There's room in all of our lives for selflessness.
Merlin: I don't have a further enough place to set that aside, but I'm going to write selflessness.
Merlin: Selflessness.
Merlin: It would help.
Merlin: I think getting out of your home to argue with people in a different environment is not a bad start.
Merlin: If you were to go somewhere, I think part of it's your phone, John.
Merlin: Maybe you should get rid of your phone.
Merlin: Have you thought about that?
John: I have thought about it.
John: Maybe I should get rid of my phone.
Merlin: You could change your texting plan.
John: You just made me so mad at AT&T.
Merlin: Oh, brother.
Merlin: So mad at them.
Merlin: Brother, that is a can of, what was it, worms?
Merlin: But no, you know what I have?
John: I have unlimited texting grandfathered in from back when they offered that.
John: I fucked up and lost mine.
John: And they're always trying to get me to do some new things so I lose my unlimited texting.
Merlin: I bought a service from them.
Merlin: I added something to my bill, and so I lost my grandfathering.
Merlin: How's that for high-quality service?
John: Yeah.
John: See, and that's that's the thing.
John: They want to do that.
John: They want to sucker you every time this.
John: I learned this from Verizon when I was on them back in the old days where, you know, they're like, hey, take advantage of this great opportunity we're offering you.
John: I was like, that's amazing.
John: OK, then they said, ah, but you no longer have free weekends, nights and friends.
John: Because you changed your plan.
John: And so now you're paying for all these things that you used to.
John: This is some old plan, you know.
Merlin: Would you be averse to hearing another suggestion?
John: Yeah.
John: No, no, no.
John: I wouldn't be adverse.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: I think you'll like it because it involves your phone.
Merlin: What if you call companies that made products you don't use and had a beef with them in customer service just to get the ball rolling?
John: You know, this is a thing that my sister does to great effect.
Merlin: I love your sister.
Merlin: I would have followed her for eight months in college.
Merlin: She loves this.
Merlin: She's so cute.
John: I swear to you, if you have a problem with customer service...
John: You can call my sister and ask her to deal with it, and she will happily embrace your customer service problem.
Merlin: My friend Pete's like that.
Merlin: We used to call an action line.
Merlin: It was like calling a local news station if you ever need anything done.
Merlin: And that's the role your sister fills here is she is more than happy to wait that thing out and wear them down.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: And she'll get a customer service person online on the phone.
John: And...
John: you're only hearing one side of the conversation and you are thinking, oh my God, this person's going to hang up on her.
John: My sister is absolutely scorched earth, right?
John: I mean, she's just reading this person, the riot act with the biggest smile on her face, just having the time of her life.
John: And a half an hour later, I swear to you,
John: The customer service person is giving my sister her home number.
John: They're making plans to go snowboarding.
John: She has given my sister everything plus that she asked for.
John: I mean, she wins every time.
John: I saw her do this one time.
John: We were on a train in the former Czechoslovakia, but in the Slovakian portion.
John: Yeah.
John: We were in Slovakia, and these border guards get on the train.
John: And we're just passing through Slovakia.
John: It was a night train.
John: These border guards get on the train, and this is early days.
John: They were still very Warsaw-packed.
John: Stripes.
John: And they're coming through the car, and they're checking everybody's visa.
John: And they get to our cabin, and they're like, passports.
John: And we hand them our passports.
John: We're fast asleep, you know.
John: And they're like, your visas are invalid.
John: You're going to have to get off the train at the next stop.
John: And it's three o'clock in the morning.
John: And we pull into this station and the station's closed.
John: It's like some little teeny village.
John: And my sister says, we're not getting off this train.
John: You know, I'm packing my bag.
John: Like, oh, fuck, what are we going to do?
John: And she's like, we're not getting off this train.
John: And these guys with machine guns are like, no, you get off.
John: You have to get off the train.
John: You know, they don't speak any English.
John: And she gets right up in their faces in the hallway of a sleeping car.
John: And she's like, we're not fucking getting off this train.
John: Fuck you.
John: And they're like, you know, incredibly fierce, stone-faced, like Red Army soldier types.
John: And you watch these guys...
John: absolutely start to quiver in fear as this blonde girl stands on their boot, their boot toes gets right up in their face.
John: And then she's like, we're Americans.
John: We're going to call in a fucking airstrike on you.
John: If you, if you, if you bat an eyelash at me right now, we are going on to Prague.
John: We are going to take this up with the, with your boss at the embassy.
John: We're going to, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah.
John: Standing there with my bag and her bag.
John: Like, no, no, no, it's okay.
John: It's all right.
John: I'll,
John: I'm fine to get off here.
John: And she's like, you're not moving and you're not moving.
John: And the train car is full of people, you know, gypsies piling in to watch this girl go off on these army guys.
John: And then an officer comes and he speaks a little English and she's in his face.
John: And pretty soon, I swear to you, she makes this whole thing.
John: Like the guards are laughing.
John: She's like poking them.
John: She's got nicknames for them.
John: And pretty soon everybody on the train car is singing a song together.
John: And I'm just standing there like, I don't know how she does it.
John: I do not understand it.
John: I watch it happen right in front of me.
John: And I don't know how she makes the turn that suddenly...
Merlin: Not only like how she does it, because anybody can do it, but like, how does she make it work?
John: Oh, it makes it work.
John: And the train keeps moving.
John: And we end up with like somebody comes and stamps our passports.
John: And it's just like, I don't know how this I didn't even know there was somebody on the train that could do that.
Merlin: When your North Face experience, it was North Face, right, with the bag problem?
Merlin: When that ended, was there any singing of songs?
John: Oh, no, everybody was furious.
John: Humiliated and furious.
Merlin: It really was to get you out of there, get the Yeti out of the store.
John: Oh, yeah, they wanted me out.
John: Because I was on the phone with corporate headquarters.
John: People were telling me up and down.
John: Calling your editor at the New York Times.
John: It couldn't happen, you know.
John: When I left there, there was no like patting on the back and handshakes.
John: I grabbed my booty and I mean, I definitely strutted out the front door triumphal.
Merlin: And your sister never has to resort to just yelling, Google me.
John: No, no, no.
Merlin: That is really... I would love to have somebody like that in my life every day.
Merlin: What do you learn from that, John?
John: She's incredibly gifted.
John: I don't know what it is.
John: And you see people like it in the world.
John: And the thing is, the 10 minutes where she is right up in their face is so excruciating, even to witness.
John: that you have to be prepared to go all the way, I think, to come out the other side and have everybody be friends.
John: The release of tension when she smiles and goes, Right, buddy?
John: Eh?
John: Like the release of tension is so great at that moment that everybody's just like, oh my God, marry me.
Merlin: So envious of that.
John: And with me, I always try and use reason long past the point that my sister has abandoned reason entirely and is just living in a completely emotional world.
John: I'm still trying to reason with the person.
John: And the other person's mind...
John: The steel door is shut at a certain point, and all they're trying to do is manage you, get you out of their store, or get you away from them.
John: So they're not listening to reason anymore.
John: They're not trying to understand where you're coming from.
John: They're just like, I have to deal with this person.
John: I have to get them away from me.
John: I have to get them out of here.
John: And by that point, it's too late to go to full nuclear emotion...
John: like mushroom cloud because their doors are already shut.
John: But my sister goes there right away.
John: Like she gets right inside these people's world and they can't shut the door behind her.
John: She's already like, she's already chewing on their cerebral cortex.
John: So,
Merlin: Is there a chance, though, I mean, setting aside that you're not as, let's be honest, not as gifted as your sister is.
Merlin: It's true.
Merlin: Is it partly that with things like typing on a costly phone, you're not really standing on anybody's boots?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Whether it's logic or emotion or any of the contradictory things you imply to try and get people to... I will not climb up on the front of someone's boots for two reasons.
John: One, I don't have, like, a lot of people have a belief system.
John: And they will climb up on the front of somebody's boots because their belief system is driving them.
John: And I don't have a system of belief.
John: I have generalized beliefs.
John: I have beliefs that are discreet from one another, but I don't have a system of beliefs that will put me up on somebody's boots.
John: And the other thing is that in that situation, fully half of my brain is thinking, wow, getting kicked off this train at this tiny little village in Slovakia is going to be a real adventure.
John: And so I'm like gathering my bags with one eye out of the train already.
John: Like, let's get kicked off this train.
John: Let's find out what happens next.
John: And what happens next is often that you sleep outside of a train station until the morning and deal with some functionary and get on a new train.
John: But that always seems to me...
John: More or potentially more interesting or at least as interesting as standing your ground and fighting to stay on this train.
John: I don't care about this train.
John: I don't want to stay on this train necessarily.
John: But my sister is one of those people who if you say you have to get off this train, her first instinct is no, I don't.
John: And that isn't my first instinct.
John: My first instinct is to say, why?
John: Oh, I do?
John: Oh, well, let's make the best of it.
John: And that's, you know, and those people whose first instinct is to say, no, I don't.
John: Well, you have to get off this train, miss.
John: No, I don't.
John: Like those people are incredibly frustrating in a lot of ways dealing with them in the world.
Merlin: She's really closer to somebody in the CIA or interrogating somebody, where first you've got to break them down, and then you've got to show them a way out.
Merlin: I think that's the basis.
John: She and a lot of people that I come up against in the world who have tremendous power, you find that that's how they operate, that they're just like...
John: They are not trying to, in those moments, they're just like, here's what's going to happen.
John: I'm going to beat you, and then I'm going to make you feel good about it.
John: But first I have to beat you.
John: First I have to own you and beat you.
John: And then I'm going to give you a pass.
John: I'm going to make you fall in love with me at the end.
Merlin: Yeah, Stockholm Syndrome.
John: Yeah, and for me, beating other people is never interesting to me.
John: What's interesting to me is being right.
John: And if the other person is truly right, which is so infrequently the case, but if they are truly right, nothing gives me greater happiness than to admit it.
Merlin: It's just that you encounter it so infrequently.
John: It's very rare.
Merlin: Maybe this show can be a platform for you, John.
Merlin: Maybe our program could be a way for you to meet some people who don't know they want to be beaten into emotional, logical outcomes yet.
Merlin: This could be a chance.
Merlin: Maybe you could visit with people.
Merlin: Maybe some people could text you and you could just do a try-on.
John: I like to meet people who are right.
John: It's so rare.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It's more of a challenge for you, right?
Merlin: You don't want to be up against somebody who's punching above their weight, right?
Merlin: You want somebody who you can really, really frustrate late into the night.
Merlin: Well, I want somebody who... You want them to know why they're being frustrated.
John: Here's the thing.
John: I like people who are right, and then I like to show them the other...
John: The other ways in which maybe they haven't considered.
Merlin: Maybe he should be in the CIA.
Merlin: You might have to lose a little weight.
John: I've thought about that for so long.
John: I really wanted to be in the CIA, and it was only later when I realized that 99% of the people in the CIA could just as easily be working at Verizon for how interesting their work is.
John: You know, like it's, it's dull work.
John: The fact that the, you know, the fact that the Intel that they're processing is supposedly secret doesn't make it any less just that they're sorting things.
John: They're sorting through boxes of paper.
Merlin: I've been intrigued by that for whatever, 10, 11 years now.
Merlin: Because I remember after 9-11, they talked – you heard that phrase human intelligence.
Merlin: And they're essentially saying it's not any – we don't really have a problem of not having data.
Merlin: It's just that we've got so much data that it's difficult to find a pattern or an outlier that would be useful.
Merlin: That you can then sort of track down.
Merlin: Well, I mean, if you have more data than you have resources to filter and act upon it, that's a whole different kind of problem.
Merlin: Because your old problems don't go away once you've got all that data.
Merlin: You've still got to file the paperwork and you've still got to torture the guy in the trailer or whatever.
Merlin: But now you've also got to go through all of these thousands of pages of people speaking in Arabic or whatever.
John: Well, and just hoping to find that one...
John: that one communication where somebody says, let's go blow up that thing.
John: And no, that never happens.
John: You know, I think, I think the premise of the CIA is, is like the, like the same premise that so many conspiracy theorists have, which is that there's somebody on top that has a master plan.
John: The CIA was built to combat the Soviets and,
John: It's going to be about the Cold War, isn't it?
John: There was somebody on top.
John: There was a master plan.
John: But there's no master plan anymore.
John: It's like groups of four and five guys who mostly are incompetent.
John: The CIA is an anachronism.
John: I find very little about that organization to respect anymore.
John: I used to have tremendous respect for them.
Merlin: You mean like when we were in Central America?
John: Well, all that tremendous work they did in Chile and Angola.
Merlin: Angola.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Where's the soccer stadium?
Merlin: Is that Argentina?
John: They were at the top of their game.
Right.
Merlin: You should find out some text, some mobile phone numbers of people in the CIA.
Merlin: They might be really into it.
Merlin: This is what I find so concerning about the whole TSA airport deal.
Merlin: This is a cliche to talk about this, but I mean there's something emblematic of what's wrong with so many things when you go through there and –
Merlin: It is completely, as people say, security theater.
Merlin: It's like going to a play.
Merlin: It's just that the actors are all barely high school graduates.
John: Right.
John: And the script is... It's like going to an improv play where the script is... Where it's really like, let's get two words from the audience.
John: Okay, first word, you're in charge.
John: Second word...
John: You're in charge.
John: There's no script.
John: There's just these high school dropouts.
Merlin: It's like tissue paper on top of tissue paper.
Merlin: The entire thing is farcical, down to the fact that somebody noted the other day, a friend of mine mentioned, that they shouldn't even have uniforms.
Merlin: They're bureaucrats, the people who are searching you, the people who went through whatever – a couple weeks of training to have that job.
Merlin: God bless them.
Merlin: I'm glad they got a job.
Merlin: But they're not even – they're not police officers.
Merlin: They're bureaucrats.
Merlin: They don't – whatever ability they have to do stuff to you is by making a call.
Merlin: They're basically like security guards.
John: They have uniforms.
John: Security guards do.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: They do.
Merlin: I mean, you could buy a security guard uniform, which I imagine you probably already have a couple.
Merlin: Well, I don't want to get into it.
Merlin: Again, the armory problem.
John: Let's see.
John: The uniforms I have, I could masquerade as an Air Force colonel.
Merlin: Okay, here's the thing.
Merlin: I want to hear this, but one thought.
Merlin: You distill all of this down.
Merlin: Take away everything.
Merlin: Take away the silliness of trying to chase around a shoe bomber, so now we've got to take our shoes off.
Merlin: Setting all of that stuff aside.
Merlin: Setting aside the lady who has to take off her colostomy bag.
Merlin: Setting aside yelling at the old Indian lady who's got the water for her pills.
Merlin: Setting all of that aside.
Merlin: All you have to do is see one thing happen to understand the problem, which is the special line for people who work at the airport.
Merlin: And so a janitor walks by with a giant, giant garbage can, waves and walks through.
Merlin: That's all you need to know.
Merlin: That is all you need to know about the entire thing is like there's Gus who's making $9.40 an hour walking by with basically what?
Merlin: Probably like a 10 – no, it would be more than 10.
Merlin: Probably like a 100-gallon, like a giant – you know what I mean?
Merlin: Those huge things for trash.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You're looking – wait a minute.
Merlin: Let me understand.
Merlin: You're taking off my shoes because you think I have one ounce of explosives in my shoe and there's a guy going through that that could have Blue Boy in there?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You've got to be kidding me.
Merlin: Like that's all you need to know.
Merlin: My mom brought a box cutter – accidentally brought a box cutter on a plane and discovered it only when she opened up her laptop casing.
Merlin: I don't know why my mom carries a box cutter.
Merlin: She might be asleep or so.
Merlin: But she didn't realize it until she opened it and she completely flipped.
Merlin: This is post 9-11.
Merlin: Oh, absolutely.
Merlin: This is like very soon after 9-11 when there was all just the complete craziness.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I mean, come on.
Merlin: Like I had an unbroken stretch of like three years where I never set off the beep.
Merlin: And then one time I forgot to take a pen out of my pocket and they touched my nads.
Merlin: I got the NAD grab.
Merlin: No one ever touches my NADs.
Merlin: Well, I'm sorry.
Merlin: I'm sorry to hear that.
Merlin: It's sad.
Merlin: But it goes on and on, and then they keep talking to you.
Merlin: It's real creepy.
Merlin: It's like one of those apologetic rapists.
John: As they always say, generals are always fighting the last war.
Merlin: Oh, brother.
John: It's the problem with World War I. It's the Maginot Line problem.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Is that as bad as I thought?
John: The Maginot Line?
Merlin: It's pretty bad, right?
Merlin: It was pretty bad.
John: They spent a lot of money on it.
Merlin: It was very, very costly.
John: Yes.
Merlin: But it was like putting up a really, really nice chain link fence with a lot of gates, right?
John: Well, it was like putting up a really, really nice, really concrete wall between you and your next door neighbor, but then not continuing the wall around your property.
Right.
Merlin: It's like putting it just the side of your house that faces the street.
John: Yeah, it just ended at the lot line.
John: And so your neighbor just walked around the end of it.
Merlin: No way will they ever seem to walk around the right side.
John: And then came up from behind and were like, all the guns were pointed in one direction.
John: The thing is, if the terrorists want to hurt Americans, they're not going to do it on an airplane again.
John: There's so many other ways you could do it.
Merlin: This is the problem, and this is the problem.
Merlin: I mean, you can go in.
Merlin: You know what I got to tell you, John?
Merlin: I'll tell you a couple things I was wrong about, and I thought I was a real futurist.
Merlin: I thought I had this right.
Merlin: Sorry?
John: I was going to say Sloan.
Merlin: I'm going to take a minute here.
Merlin: I thought buffets and salad bars would go away.
Merlin: I cannot believe we still have buffets and salad bars.
Merlin: I thought buffets and salad bars were a pretty bad idea.
John: Sure, because you could just go by with an aerosol and spray anthrax on them.
Merlin: Setting aside that you're going to frequently find grubs and screws in the salad.
Merlin: That's just happening.
Merlin: That's the thing you're just going to happen because that's careless, whatever.
John: Find grubs in the salad.
John: That just happens.
John: That's nature.
Merlin: Grubs and screws.
Merlin: You ever find machine parts in your food?
John: No, but I used to work at a pizza parlor, and we found little caterpillars in the armature.
Merlin: Oh, tons of caterpillars.
Merlin: All the time.
Merlin: All the time.
Merlin: So here's the thing.
Merlin: You go up there, and you go somewhere like in Tallahassee, God bless it, Chinese Buffet, right?
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: No, this is not ping pong.
Merlin: Chinese Buffet in Tallahassee.
Merlin: Stop presses.
Merlin: Oh, boy.
Merlin: You want to talk about the difficulty of economics and culture.
Merlin: All the good Chinese food restaurants eventually had to become buffets.
Merlin: It was the only way they could beat.
Merlin: Six dollars.
Merlin: You come in.
Merlin: Boom.
Merlin: All you want.
John: House knuckles you can eat.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Hmm.
John: But you're saying that that had to go away, but it didn't.
Merlin: I mean, do you remember the anthrax?
Merlin: Remember that people were afraid to open their mail?
Merlin: And yet, Johnny Diabetes can walk in there and stick his hands into the tater tots anytime he wants.
Merlin: And give everybody diabetes.
John: What was the other thing you were wrong about?