Ep. 22: "My Own Dungeon Master"
John: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: How are you?
John: Hi, Merlin.
John: I'm fine, except that my Bluetooth keyboard is dead for some reason, probably out of batteries.
John: And my iPhone has decided now that it has this new text feature, this iMessage.
John: That's different from texting somehow.
John: It's blue instead of green.
John: Right.
John: But if it can't send its iMessage over whatever proprietary airwaves it uses, then it just sits there like a dumb lump.
John: It's like I have a plastic brick in my hand.
John: So I was trying to communicate with you.
John: Yeah.
John: But my keyboard was down and my phone was iMessaging constantly.
John: incompetently.
Merlin: It's supposed to be very frustrating for a verbal man.
Merlin: It's hard for a verbal man not to have anything to type on.
John: God!
John: So I got on Skype
John: And I saw down at the bottom, I was trying to figure out how I could send you a Skype message.
John: And I saw a little smiley face down at the bottom of the message area.
John: And I clicked on it and it was all those emoticons.
John: The little smiley face with a halo and smiley face with the eyeballs, the googly eyes.
John: And little smiley face with the devil horns.
John: And I was like, yeah, I'll send him some smileys and he'll know that I'm...
John: He'll know that I'm here.
John: So I clicked on all these smileys, and without being able to push return, I couldn't even send a smiley.
John: Let me see if I can do that.
John: I'm going to send you a... Send me a smiley.
John: Musical.
John: Oh, yeah, I see your problem.
John: Right?
John: Right.
John: So they were just... All these smiley emoticon things were piling up down in the bottom, but I couldn't send them.
John: It was...
John: I felt like the protagonist of Metallica's song.
John: I wasn't going to say it.
John: I wasn't going to say it.
John: Darkness imprisoning me.
John: All that I see.
Merlin: Absolute terror.
Merlin: I cannot.
John: I cannot Skype.
John: I cannot.
Merlin: Text.
Merlin: I cannot smile.
Merlin: Oh, my gosh, John.
Merlin: We're just a couple of seconds in, and I have so much to ask you.
Merlin: Well, first of all, Gift of the Magi, as I was just connecting with you, and I don't want to talk about computers, but I realized that my mouse is in the same sad state as your keyboard.
Merlin: I have a very Byzantine mouse.
Merlin: It's actually from Byzantium.
John: Oh, Byzantine mouse.
John: Oh, look how little they are.
John: It's so complicated.
John: They have such great little headdresses.
Merlin: I don't know if it's Byzantine, Rococo, Baroque, or just really fucked up looking, but yeah, and the battery thing's blinking red.
Merlin: Yeah, I see.
Merlin: So we almost were like that Richard Pryor, Gene Wilder thing, you know?
Merlin: Silver Streak?
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: No, no, the one where... Where the train goes out of control and crashes through a train station?
Merlin: No, there's one.
Merlin: I forget what it's called.
Merlin: It's called Whack-A-Doodle or Odd Job or something.
Merlin: It's not the one in jail with the fat guy.
Merlin: That's my favorite Gene Wilder movie.
Merlin: Whack-A-Doodle is one of my special words.
Merlin: I'm trying to not use it too much.
Merlin: My friend John, another John, I've known too many John, John Gruber, he likes the word cockamamie, but he keeps his powder dry.
Merlin: It's one of those words that's so special.
John: He pulls it out when he needs it.
Merlin: Another one I got from John is dingus.
Merlin: I love dingus.
Merlin: You know, I used dingus in the last episode, so now I can't use it in this one even though I already just did.
John: Yeah, ding dong is a good substitute for dingus.
John: You want to call somebody ding dong.
Merlin: When you struggle sometimes to figure out exactly how to frame someone, sometimes you'll struggle and pause for a minute and you'll end up on ding dong.
John: Ding dong, yeah.
John: Although I've heard recently from close friends that my go-to word now is horse shit.
John: Everything is horse shit.
Merlin: And you usually say it.
Merlin: It's a lot like the Mandarin language.
Merlin: I don't go ping pong here.
Merlin: But there's a certain tonality to the way you say horse shit.
Merlin: Again, sometimes you pause as you mentally scan the hard disk that is your brain for the proper response.
Merlin: And then you say horse shit.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It has a certain cello-like quality.
Merlin: Horse shit.
Yeah.
Merlin: My friend let me play her cello the other night.
Merlin: I should write this down.
Merlin: We're pretty deep in the stack already.
Merlin: I want to get back to emoticons because I know that's something you think about.
Merlin: I want to come back to Metallica.
Merlin: Yeah, I was at her house pretty late, and I'd been drinking.
Merlin: Oh, that's a great time to put a cello in somebody's hand.
Merlin: I sit here every day.
Merlin: She was so nice about it, and I sit here now every day.
John: Too bad she didn't have a clarinet.
Yeah.
Merlin: No, man, I would never ask to touch somebody's clarinet.
Merlin: That's like kissing somebody's bird.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: French kissing somebody's cockatiel.
Merlin: Ooh, disgusting.
Merlin: You know, and I'm sitting here now, and you know me.
Merlin: You know, I drink, but I'm not that guy.
Merlin: You know, I hope I'm not.
Merlin: I definitely don't black out.
Merlin: And like the...
Merlin: from the wonderful Bill Cosby and Bill Cosby himself.
Merlin: Remember him talking about cocaine and how it intensifies your personality?
Merlin: He says, well, what if you're an asshole?
Merlin: Now with me, I'm the kind of person that would love to play a cello.
Merlin: By play a cello, I mean try not to break it while I'm playing, I guess they call it pizzicato.
Merlin: And I sit here every day, and I know cellos are expensive.
Merlin: So I ask her if I could...
Merlin: You know, well, like you're not guitar guy, right?
Merlin: Even though you do, you're never a guitar guy at a party, right?
John: Oh, sometimes I'll get roped into being guitar guy.
John: You get shy.
John: I've seen you be shy at parties.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, some people come up to me and they, and they start, you know, they start leaving a little trail of breadcrumbs and I'm like, Oh yeah, I'll talk to you about that.
John: And then pretty soon they've led me down some primrose path and I'm standing in front of a house made of gingerbread and I'm talking about guitars.
Merlin: You eat gingerbread?
Merlin: At a party.
Merlin: Oh, see, I don't mind talking about guitars.
Merlin: I'm thinking, we were at a party once.
Merlin: I think it was at the end of a tour and you were very tired.
Merlin: And I think you took a nap once at a party that we went to together.
Merlin: Because you're not a big party guy.
John: Yeah, I'll take a nap at a party.
Merlin: Fuck yeah, I will.
Merlin: It's down in San Mateo where they make the love dolls.
Merlin: We were at a party and I think you excused yourself and went and took a nap in someone's room.
Merlin: Maybe on some coats.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: I'm still five years old.
Merlin: Sometimes there'll be a plaque there that says John Roderick slept on a coat here.
Merlin: But, you know, I used to be, and obviously, as we've seen from the impromptu Skype jams, I still can be guitar guy.
Merlin: I truly try not to be.
Merlin: But like nobody, nobody likes playing guitar at a party guy.
Merlin: Oh, you're talking about play guitar in a party guy.
Merlin: No, it's one thing.
Merlin: It's one thing to talk about F entries.
Merlin: It's another thing to like go, oh, in my case, like even today, I'm pretty gregarious.
Merlin: I like talking to people for a while.
Merlin: But like when they start talking about the intricacies and this is totally, you know, what's the word?
Merlin: Don't do what you say.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Hypocritical.
Merlin: Oh, hypocritical.
Merlin: I keep wanting to refer to my friend's show hypercritical.
Merlin: This is totally hypercritical of me, but I will sit there and suddenly people, you know, there's like pro drinkers and amateur drinkers.
Merlin: Do I?
Merlin: And the amateur drinkers, well, sure.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: Let's come back to that.
Merlin: And so they start, the amateur drinkers, you know, and these are people who don't get out much.
Merlin: They, you know.
John: Sure.
John: They get wasted on St.
John: Patrick's Day, New Year's Eve.
Merlin: Oh, God.
Merlin: Cinco de Mayo.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And there's the shittiest drunk drivers in the world.
Merlin: That's the problem.
Merlin: And so this did not happen at this party because it was great.
Merlin: It's a bunch of people, you know, people, you know, it's a nice group.
Merlin: We're sitting there and, you know, watching, watching videos from the who and stuff on TV.
John: And you're like, let me, let me get that cello in my hand.
John: My God, John, let me jam out some cello tunes.
Merlin: Holy shit.
Merlin: I can't believe how much I was that guy that night.
Merlin: I was also, let's watch a quick one on the stones, rock and roll circus guy that night.
John: That's a great, I've been that guy.
Merlin: I've been that guy with you, right?
John: Well, a quick one is, you know, that's the key to watching the Rock and Roll Circus, right?
John: That's how you understand why no one ever saw the Rock and Roll Circus before just a few years ago.
John: We've got to talk about that.
John: Because the Rolling Stones were so embarrassed that the Who kicked their ass all around the block that they were like, yeah, we shouldn't put that out.
Merlin: Fucking Taj Mahal kicked their ass.
Merlin: I mean, it was embarrassing.
Merlin: Well, and you know the story—God fucking damn it.
Merlin: You know the story behind that is—what's his head?
Yeah.
Merlin: Was it Sir Eaton Limsey Hogg or whatever?
Merlin: It was one of those guys.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Yeah, Sir Eaton.
Merlin: Sir Eaton Limsey Hogg, the guy who directed Let It Be.
Merlin: Anyway, I get all these guys confused.
Merlin: Peter Schaefer is the guy who wrote Equus.
Merlin: Peter Allen is the guy that was married to Liza Minnelli.
Merlin: And who's the guy who stole the Rolling Stones' money?
Merlin: Dudley Moore?
Merlin: Peter Berg, Alex Goldsmith.
Merlin: What was his name?
Merlin: Doesn't matter.
Merlin: Goldie Goldwasser.
Merlin: I have a little bit of my kid's cold, so I'm trying not to cough.
Merlin: Oh, John.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Anyway.
Merlin: Well, oh, my God.
Merlin: I can't believe how deep in the stack we are.
Merlin: Here's the thing.
Merlin: You know, I have a cello.
Merlin: I have a cello that I won't give you.
Merlin: I want to come back to the cello.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Well, here's the thing.
Merlin: Do you want a cello?
John: I'll send you a cello tomorrow.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Fax it to me.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: So this is a thing that was recorded in, like, something like, what, 1968?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: it was before so quick one was like 66 67 something like that and they the the the stones had this tv show you know what no one cares all i'm saying is you can look it up well but it's worth you know watching because apparently the stones put this thing together it's extravaganza for tv i guess probably in england and do you know the story about the taping like how the taping went really poorly and it ran really really late
John: You can see that in the footage.
John: You can see everyone there is just like, oh, this isn't as fun as we thought it was going to be.
Merlin: Can I just say, like, having a, I don't know if it's ping pong, but having a dwarf and clown makeup is probably super fun for about 30 seconds.
Merlin: Well, tell that to the guys in Jackass.
Merlin: Fucking 5 a.m.
Merlin: No, those are the guys with the chainsaw.
Merlin: Or is it the Juggalos?
Merlin: The Juggalos.
John: Yeah, well, I mean, I feel like the Rolling Stones were the Juggalos of the 60s.
Merlin: Oh, you know what?
Merlin: I would love to talk to you about the Rolling Stones because this is where I differ from a lot of people.
Merlin: I'm not the hugest Rolling Stones fan.
John: That's amazing to hear.
John: Can that be true?
Merlin: So apparently, if I got this right, I think it was 5 a.m.
Merlin: when The Who went on.
John: Oh, my God.
John: And they got up there.
John: That contextualizes that performance in a whole different way.
Merlin: Well, I don't even know.
Merlin: It's like there's these few videos that I make a point of watching at least once a month.
Merlin: And, you know, I really like music.
Merlin: Even if I don't need to have my understanding of the importance of rock and roll renewed on a regular basis, watching that video.
Merlin: It's like you do, though.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: Well, it just makes it stronger.
Merlin: It's like Job.
John: But here's the thing about The Who.
John: Yeah.
John: I mean, that whole experience was before cocaine was invented.
Merlin: It's an inflection point for the band because it's the beginning.
Merlin: He's got the Tesla Vest thing.
Merlin: It's before who's next.
Merlin: It's after the mod thing.
Merlin: And it's right at the point when they became like the really, really, really good band.
Merlin: And that performance is shattering.
Merlin: It's just shattering.
John: It's after the mod thing, but I seriously doubt that it is after the amphetamine thing.
Merlin: Oh, because Pete looks pretty sweaty.
John: They are very amphetamined.
John: And that is a... You can't... Not the ox, though.
John: He's just... He's got a stupid haircut.
Merlin: See, now here's the thing.
John: He's solid.
John: Entwistle still has that stupid-ass haircut with the bangs.
John: Right.
John: Well, stupid-ass on anyone but Entwistle.
John: On Entwistle... Yeah, he was a snappy dresser.
John: He looks like an aircraft carrier.
John: He looks like an aircraft carrier in a bowl haircut.
John: Somebody could land on him, and he wouldn't miss a beat.
John: He is amazing.
John: You could land a jet aircraft on him, and he would just be like... I don't have a huge problem with bass players in general, but that guy's in a different fucking movie.
Merlin: When you watch what he's doing, you watch his finger, his right hand, I don't know what the fuck that guy's doing.
Merlin: He invented the bass playing.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Even more so than like, uh, the, uh, huh.
Merlin: You look at modern rock and roll bass playing.
Merlin: You mean?
John: Yeah.
John: Modern rock and roll bass playing.
John: Right.
Merlin: I mean, Carol K invented the bass playing, but she plays banjo on smile.
Merlin: I just learned that two days ago.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: She's all over that.
Merlin: Get that yet.
Merlin: Smile sessions.
John: I do have it.
John: The new one.
John: You know, we played Sloop John B. just the other day at the... Oh, huh.
Merlin: That's a pretty good song.
John: And I've been covering the Rolling Stones on the ukulele lately.
John: So just to bring it all back.
Merlin: Why did he take up and eat up all of his corn?
Merlin: Do you have a sense of that?
Merlin: You know the line?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Then he took and he ate up all of my corn.
John: You know, a lot of mixed lyrics do not bear close inspection.
Merlin: No, no, no, no.
Merlin: First of all, we're talking about the Beach Boys.
Merlin: And second, it's a folk song.
Merlin: Sleep John B's been around forever.
John: Oh, I see what you're talking about.
Merlin: It was like the first mate, he got drunk, something in the captain's trunk, and then he took and ate up all my corn.
Merlin: I'm pretty sure.
John: He got drunk and he did something in the captain's trunk.
John: You're starting to get what this song is about.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: And so that performance is something.
Merlin: So just to go back a little bit, you know how it starts.
Merlin: You start, you leave the restaurant, you go to a bar, you leave the bar.
Merlin: And this woman, my friend Jessie, was nice enough to have us into her home.
Merlin: Oh, are we back to this?
Merlin: And so here's the thing.
Merlin: I'm just realizing because this is a moment of revelation.
Merlin: I think, what'd you call it in group?
Merlin: You call it a moment of clarity?
Merlin: Is that an Eminem song?
John: That's not something I ever said, but yes.
Merlin: Give me a moment of clarity.
Merlin: That's what they say in est.
Merlin: Is it true they don't let you pee in est?
Merlin: They only go to convention centers that don't have a bathroom.
John: I've never done that.
John: Excuse me.
John: I have a little bit of a frog in my throat.
John: I've never done that, but I think my dad in the 70s did it back when it was really the thing.
John: You would go there.
John: It's like a hip couples retreat or something.
John: You had to do it.
John: And it's Werner Herzog or something is the guy.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: The guy was Emerald Donuts.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: And my dad went and, you know, I think that my dad and his little his little clique of commie retinue.
John: Yeah.
John: Like Jewish psychologists in Alaska that were his gang.
John: Back before fleece they had turtlenecks.
John: They had a lot of, this gang wore a lot of turtlenecks and they actually practiced, you know, some of the principles of S tried to practice them on me.
John: But as you know, I'm, I am, I'm completely bulletproof when people try and practice principles on me.
John: I have my principal shield goes.
Merlin: If I was going to have your player character, you would have a very, very complicated multi-page player character sheet, but I'm guessing somewhere under your seven charisma somewhere.
Merlin: I kid, I kid, I kid.
Merlin: I would say you have probably a 17 constitution.
Merlin: You have, you probably have like a 16 or 18 charisma.
John: Oh, that's nice of you to say.
Merlin: Your dexterity is very low, though.
Merlin: I've seen that.
Merlin: You have trouble playing the guitar.
John: It's true.
Merlin: But I'm saying somewhere on there, they'd have to have a new field.
Merlin: You have to contact Gary Gygax, who I think passed.
Merlin: But there would be a field on there called Impervious to Est.
John: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: And principles in general.
Merlin: So here's what I'm saying, John.
John: Why did you find imperviousness to ask in my bag of holding?
John: Sir Gelatinous Cube.
Merlin: We've talked about this, but there's no way to out a lot of nerdy men more than making a slightly loud D&D reference at a party and seeing who turns around.
John: Yep, yep.
John: It's quite easy to do.
John: I mean, that's where Will Wheaton... Will Wheaton walks around with that t-shirt on with a 20-sided die on it.
John: And I think people come... People, like, attack him on buses and stuff.
Merlin: That's got to be a pussy magnet.
Merlin: 20-sided die?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Tell me about it.
Merlin: Yeah, save versus inhalers.
Merlin: I didn't play D&D.
Merlin: But the thing is, John... Can that be true?
Merlin: Hmm?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Well, you know, here's the thing I think about... I played the shit out of D&D is what I did.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Here's the thing about D&D.
Okay.
John: A lot of the people that I talked to that played D&D, what got them out of playing D&D was not that they grew out of it or that they felt like it was a child's game.
John: But more, at least in my case, more that my own imagination in terms of going on adventures with elves and finding treasure...
John: My own imagination was so much more vivid than any dungeon master in my town could conjure.
Merlin: Did you become your own dungeon master on some level?
John: I became my own dungeon master.
John: And when you become your own dungeon master, you are no longer playing D&D.
John: You don't have to hide the throes behind a screen anymore.
John: Right.
John: You're just out.
John: Eventually, what it ended up was that I was out in the forest playing swords and sorcery with imaginary friends.
John: Imaginary dragons.
Merlin: Were there people there?
Merlin: There were not.
Merlin: You're going solo.
Merlin: Solo mission?
John: I made a sword out of the stick of wood that was holding up a political sign that said, like, elect Tom Fink, mayor of Anchorage or whatever.
John: And I took the sign and I made a sword out of it.
John: And then I was off.
John: I didn't need any.
John: I didn't need no sneaking books.
John: I didn't know player characters.
John: I knew what my constitution was.
Merlin: I think people are attracted to D&D.
Merlin: I did some of that too.
Merlin: And by the way, it just sounds to me like you're exactly the kind of person all those hysterical articles were about.
Merlin: The kind of people like there's teenagers in our sewers looking up at us.
John: Yeah.
John: If Anchorage had had decent sewers, I would have been down in there.
John: Is that right?
John: I would have been fighting hobgoblins.
Merlin: I spent a lot of my life trying to find ways into other things.
Merlin: I would have loved to find my way into a sewer.
Merlin: Are you kidding me?
Mm-hmm.
Merlin: Here's the thing.
Merlin: I think a lot of people get into D&D in retrospect for two reasons.
Merlin: There's a lot of reading and it's an easy, relatively easy way to be around other people at a time, you know, and people who you could see is easier to feel cooler than or cool as, right?
Merlin: And there's a lot of reading.
Merlin: I was attracted because there was a lot of reading and there were books.
John: And it was an easy way to be around other people without having to develop like all the social skills necessary.
Merlin: Well, like when you're little and you're in a church group, it's easy enough.
Merlin: I mean – or school.
Merlin: Like you're kind of thrust into the situation with other people and there's a tacit understanding why you're all there and you don't need to explain.
Merlin: Or college, right?
Merlin: You just all live in the same dorm.
John: Right.
John: Here we are.
Merlin: Can I borrow that pan?
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: That's like pretty easy.
Merlin: And when you get older, I think that gets hard.
Merlin: Now, here's the thing.
Merlin: I –
Merlin: It wasn't even that I thought it was so much that I thought it was dorky anymore.
Merlin: It's that I think at some point in every D&D guy's life, it becomes less about dice and bugbears and more about big-breasted ladies in corsets.
Merlin: Wenches.
Merlin: Wenches, yes.
John: Wenches.
John: When you make the transition to wenches, you're into a different kind of role-playing.
Merlin: Well, when you start planning campaigns that involve a lot more going to a tavern.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Because the cool... I mean, there may be like a hot chick in a cave, but by and large, it's going to be some saucy girl behind the counter.
John: And I think at that point... The hot chick in the cave always has tentacles for arms, is the problem.
John: At first?
John: Well, not at first.
John: No, that she lures you in.
Merlin: Wasn't there a Cthulhu game, too?
Merlin: Was Call of Cthulhu the book?
Merlin: Wasn't that also a game?
John: There are so many Cthulhu games now.
John: I just saw a game called Cthulhu Flux.
John: Is it in the future?
John: It's in the future, yeah.
Hmm.
John: But for me, my problem, I guess, is that I have spent my whole life trying to find ways to get out of being around other people.
John: So maybe that's why I... So you just let your guy die?
John: Because it was just like, I don't want to be here in this house.
John: Take a nap on somebody's members-only jacket.
John: With these dumb kids.
John: Yeah, can I go take a nap?
John: I'm going to go play in your yard.
John: Can I go act this out in your yard?
Merlin: So I'm sitting there.
Merlin: It's 2 in the morning.
Merlin: And I'm making people watch videos on the Apple TV.
Merlin: And then at some point, I said to Jesse, is it... You're the head of the party.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I can't even believe I did this.
Merlin: I asked her if I could fiddle with her cello.
John: Right.
Merlin: And she was so nice about it.
John: Did you do the thing that you do at parties where you explain to everyone in a kind of loud voice why they might be giants or one of the great American rock bands?
Merlin: Not at this party.
Merlin: If I'd stayed another hour.
Merlin: I've seen you do that.
Merlin: It would have been the move.
Merlin: If I hadn't left, it would have been around 3.30.
Merlin: I would have talked about the move because I will eventually talk about the move.
Merlin: But she was nice and she let me.
Merlin: She said no fucking way.
Merlin: Not in her words because she's very polite.
Merlin: She might have said no fucking way.
Merlin: Are you touching my bow?
Merlin: You know that's $1,800 for a bow?
Merlin: For a good bow?
John: The bow that I'm going to send you is an $1,800.
Merlin: Are you going to really send me a cello?
Merlin: Yeah, you want a cello?
Merlin: I'd be so into that.
John: It was over.
John: It was over in my cello area.
Merlin: You're struggling with deciding whether your cello was actually within arm's reach of your desk.
Merlin: Whoa, hey.
Merlin: Is that an open tuning?
John: This is my terrible intonation because I don't play fretless instruments.
Merlin: It sounds like a hill giant deciding whether it has food poisoning.
Merlin: Maybe a golem.
Merlin: So she gave it to me, and I was like, can you teach me how to play that public salsa?
Merlin: And she actually showed me how to do... And I actually played it right almost exactly once, and then I put it down because I realized I was being that guy.
Merlin: But actually, at a cute girl's house, I asked her to teach me Bach at 2 in the morning on her very special cello.
Merlin: If there's never been more of that guy, I don't know who it is.
Merlin: Did you put your ear to her F-hole?
Merlin: The entry?
Merlin: F-entry.
Merlin: Anyway, that's enough of that.
Merlin: I just...
Merlin: D&D, you know, the funny thing is with the D&D, once I was off it, I couldn't get back into it, you know?
Merlin: But I think the girl thing kind of has an effect, and I don't want to sound unkind, but I think when you talk about the Comic-Con and stuff, I think that Saucy Wench thing, like if you missed your, what's it called, you know, the Guy Erickson?
Merlin: There's an Erickson period, you know, which is the D&D period.
Merlin: And if you don't make it out of there, you know, there's a struggle at every level, according to Erickson, right?
John: But here's the...
John: Here's the thing that I never understood is the presence, and this has been hammered home to me over the last year or two as I have become more and more engaged with nerd culture and more and more sort of drawn into the nerd nexus, is the undeniable presence of nerd studs
John: and nerd-like hot girls.
John: Oh, yes, yes, yes, and yes.
John: Even in high school, I remember I was taking some kind of physics class, and the kid that shared my lab partner, that's what I'm trying to find out, my lab partner was this guy who was, the entire semester that we had this class together, he was working on forging the blade of a broadsword that he was building for himself.
John: And every day we would sit and he would, he would explain like all the different, all the times he was going to fold the steel over and how it was, you know, he was, he was going to make this broadsword, but it was going to incorporate some Japanese sword technology into it.
John: And, um, it never occurred to him.
John: And I guess it never occurred to me to say why.
John: Like, why do you need a broadsword?
John: You're 16 or whatever.
John: But he was fit.
John: This guy was... He was in shape and he was smart and he was reasonably funny.
John: But he was a nerd all the way.
John: You know what I mean?
John: Like deep inside this...
John: He was going to end up being the guy that was walking around the town where he lived with this sword that he'd built himself like strapped into a scabbard on his back.
John: And that was just going to be his identity.
John: You think that was his plan?
John: Well, I have seen that guy.
John: He's usually wearing a duster.
John: I have seen that guy.
Merlin: And a very wide hat.
John: Not that exact guy, but his mate.
John: I've seen him in several towns.
John: Either a duster or there was a guy here in Seattle who had a Conan sword and rode a pretty hopped up mountain bike.
John: And just rode around town all... I mean, for years.
John: Conan the Barbarian.
Merlin: Like a broad sword.
John: Like a really long... Like a really long sword strapped to his back and he would ride his bike around.
John: He had big muscles.
John: And that was his...
John: That was his identity.
John: That was his way of integrating himself into the urban landscape.
John: He woke up one day and he was like, I'm the broadsword bicycle guy.
John: That's me.
John: I'm him.
John: And everyone will know me.
John: My name will ring out from these skyscrapers.
John: And you go to these events and you see these girls where you're like, this is a cute girl.
John: This is not just a cute girl.
John: Within the nerd world, she's legitimately a cute girl and she is a nerd.
John: And so those experiences have cast doubt on what I had always... I would have agreed with you for years that there came a time when you had to choose between fantasy and fantasy that was a little bit sexier and the sexy fantasy leads you into rock and roll and rock and roll leads you away from...
Merlin: swords and sorcery and into actual sex part of this are this but but the nerd the nerd people were having this parallel existence where they were actually having sex with each other and some of them just stayed over there this is a this is a big topic but so but the the the cute nerd girls like are they like with the guys with the uh the nerds that are there or are they there mostly kind of on like a fact-finding mission
John: Well, interesting that you ask that because generally I think the super cute nerd girls, in my experience at least, are getting off on being fetish items.
John: I never really see them pair up.
John: with other nerds, although I'm sure they do.
Merlin: But the nice thing about that, I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
Merlin: I mean, it's fun, but it's nice because you can visit with that.
Merlin: It isn't like living in L.A.
Merlin: and having to be a fetish item as part of your existence.
Merlin: You get to go in, and it literally is a costume.
John: Oh, but I don't see very many people.
John: I don't see many.
John: I cannot imagine like a normal, or as we're calling them now, snorks.
John: I cannot imagine a snork girl.
John: A snork girl.
John: Going to Comic-Con and dressing like a nerd puppet as a tourist act, I think to even be aware of Comic-Con, you have to already be in the nerd family.
Merlin: But you think they're dressing like a Twi'lek at home?
Merlin: They're sitting around watching reality shows all blue?
Mm-hmm.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: It is a fully enveloping lifestyle.
Merlin: I'm not trying to sound cynical about this at all.
Merlin: I'm saying it's very empowering.
Merlin: You know, I think for some ladies that comes out as sexy nurse at Halloween or whatever.
Merlin: And that's an opportunity to do that in a safe environment.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: You wouldn't be sexy nurse and go to like some some bar, you know, by the college.
John: I don't think you can dress like sexy Twi'lek and go to work at Amazon.com, but I think that it becomes more, I think cosplay, sexy nurse at a Halloween party is one thing, but cosplay is definitely more of a lifestyle.
John: Lifestyle.
John: Lifestyle.
Merlin: That's become much more acceptable, I think, to be like a character, like you're, well, no, sword on a bike guy, like, I don't know.
Merlin: I got a lot of questions about that.
John: That was years ago.
John: That was 20 years ago, sword on a bike guy.
John: Maybe, hmm.
John: He wasn't.
John: I actually found his lair one time.
John: I was walking through a disused part of town, a dusty, disused block of town.
John: And there's an old building there.
John: And you know how I feel about old buildings.
John: And I was investigating it with my eyes.
John: And I see one of the ground floor storefronts that would have 100 years ago been the place where you would get gumballs and milk of magnesia was now closed.
John: And and but there were all these like news clippings taped in the window of this of this former storefront.
John: And so I walk over and I start reading the news clippings and I realized that it is sword on a bike guy's house.
John: It's his it's where he lives.
John: He lives in this old store.
John: And he used to be a gunner on like a frigate.
John: He was a Navy guy.
John: And he'd been a gunner on one of those hyper-fast Gatling guns that you see on little frigates and destroyers where it's the same kind of gun that they put in the A-10 Warthog.
Merlin: What's the role of a boat like that?
Merlin: Is it a defensive role or it's a kind of sneak in kind of without being seen role?
John: Yeah, well, they're fast moving little frigates that kind of go.
Merlin: You protect a big ship before they get there.
John: You can fire on shore.
John: You know, you get up close to shore and support mission role.
John: And they all have cruise missiles now.
John: So they're all 400 miles away and just being chicken shit, sending cruise missiles into your front door.
John: Because you know what?
John: The New Navy is chicken shit with their cruise missiles and their long distance.
John: If you can't see the guy that you're shooting, I don't think you have a right to shoot him, but that's just my...
John: That's just my philosophy.
John: But anyway, this guy, he had put up his greatest hits up in the window of this shop, including a couple of news articles about him getting arrested or getting stopped by the police and detained because when he first arrived on the scene, because they were like, you can't just ride around with this broadsword.
John: And he said, it's my constitutional right.
John: And it made some little news article.
John: And so here I saw where he lived and...
John: Got a little bit of his backstory.
John: I have no idea whatever happened to the guy.
Merlin: He's in a storefront, and there's newspaper articles in the window about himself.
Merlin: Right, correct.
Merlin: Was the print facing inward or outward?
John: Facing outward.
John: And this is the thing.
John: It wasn't on a busy street.
John: It was a street that four people walked down a day, but this was his little, like, this is me.
Merlin: But it's almost like he wanted to be found out.
John: Well, I don't think he thought of it as his bat cave in the sense that it was hidden underneath his mansion.
Merlin: Well, I'm just saying, if I were a guy who had chosen as a bike rider to carry a sword around with me, I don't want to get too far ahead of myself, but that seems to me as somebody with a certain defensive posture.
Merlin: He's not out attacking parking meters or co-eds or something.
Merlin: He's just got a sword because you never know, right?
John: I see what you mean, right.
Merlin: It seems to me...
Merlin: I don't know a lot about military and materiel, but it seems to me that that compromises his position heavily if he's got clips about himself in the window.
John: Well, I think that the template that we have now to talk about crazy people like that...
John: is all very... There are so many conspiracies in the air now that we think every crazy person must be convinced that the government is trying to find him and that they're watching him from outer space and black helicopters and Illuminati and blah, blah, blah.
John: But I think 20 years ago, crazy people could be heavily armed.
John: They could be very militarized and yet still not...
John: have taken a total anti-government stance.
John: Still be wanting attention rather than trying to pretend that they don't want attention as a way of getting attention.
John: You know, just to be like, I'm not wearing this sword because I think that the government is out to get me.
John: I'm wearing this sword because I'm here to protect damsels from dragons.
John: You know, he was an older kind of crazy before crazy became so institutionalized.
John: Or so... More orthodox crazy.
John: So franchised, right.
Merlin: Well, and also, you know, he probably didn't have the resources that we have today to find out more about craziness and what he might fit into.
Merlin: I think a lot of the old-time orthodox crazies were really searchers.
Merlin: They were people out looking for what the answer was.
Merlin: And as the cycling got more rapid, they sometimes ended up in places where you didn't get put clippings on the window.
Merlin: We have one of these guys in Tallahassee.
Merlin: I think everybody's got colorful people, right?
Merlin: There's a guy who runs in a Superman outfit.
Merlin: There's a whole webpage about that Peter Pan guy a few years ago, the guy who dressed like Peter Pan and acted like he was a kid.
Merlin: That was kind of a popular thing.
Merlin: There's a guy in Tallahassee who went by King Love and he wore what started out as a fairly resplendent like fairytale idea of like a kind of ermine looking outfit with a big crown.
Merlin: Very large, garrulous African-American man who when you talk to him about it, he tell you about his message of love because he was King Love.
Merlin: And it turned out he was this guy who had been a professor at Florida State.
Merlin: And, you know, you could fill in some of the details in between, you know, scholarship and ermine.
Mm-hmm.
Merlin: But here's the thing, and I don't want to make this sad, but a lot of times that starts out as kind of a fun thing for us, and then it escalates.
John: Well, like that guy down by the Salton Sea that painted that giant Jesus mountain out in the desert?
John: I don't know about that.
John: He showed up out by the Salton Sea 50 years ago or something like that.
John: And he looked at this hill.
John: It's not a mountain.
John: It's a hill.
John: And he said, this hill is my calling.
John: And he started getting old buckets of paint and just painting this hill.
John: And he painted.
John: It's a pretty big hill.
John: He painted the whole thing and covered it with God is love messages visible for miles around.
John: Um, it's, it's, it's nice to look at now you drive by and you go, there's that.
John: But I can't, I can't think that it, um, I, you know, and frankly, the world, the ways of the world are mysterious.
John: Perhaps it has brought some people peace.
John: Perhaps it brought some lonely travelers closer to God.
John: But I think mostly it was a waste of time and pain.
Um,
Merlin: Look at rock and rolling.
Merlin: That didn't end well, right?
Merlin: The guy started out with the rainbow wig, and you would always see him on TV.
John: Oh, this is the John 313 guy or whatever?
John: 316, John.
John: Sorry, I'm sorry.
John: Jesus.
Merlin: 316.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Anyway, that's a well-known story, but that didn't end great.
Merlin: What happened to him?
Merlin: Well, you can read about it, but basically it started out with he was a guy in a rainbow wig.
Merlin: I think he'd had some problems, and then he started— Although those two things aren't—
John: I mean, one doesn't necessarily fall from the other.
John: You can wear a rainbow wig and not have problems.
Merlin: Well, we all have our paths.
Merlin: Some of us choose ermine, some of us choose broadswords, and some of us choose rainbow wigs.
Merlin: There are many paths to John 3.13.
John: That's right.
Merlin: But, you know, and then he really got into it and he started devoting a lot of his effort to getting into the spots like behind the field goals or whatever, like where he knew he would end up on camera and it became a thing.
John: Did it become a thing where the camera guys were intentionally trying not to show him on TV?
Merlin: No, I think it finally became a thing where it's like, you know, it would be like having Paris Hilton at your party or something, right?
Merlin: Oh, he was a star.
Merlin: But then it got into the John 316 thing.
Merlin: Anyway, I think it ended up with some kind of a standoff involving guns.
Merlin: It didn't end great.
Merlin: I'm just saying that escalation, it goes up and up and up.
Merlin: Now, how do you separate that from somebody like a Howard Finster?
Merlin: Like somebody who's like your, you know, for that matter, what?
Merlin: I mean, William Burroughs.
Merlin: Like some people are just sort of a curiosity.
John: Well, and I think this is the thing about Comic-Con or nerd culture as it has expanded and become a genuine third way or a genuine now accepted and franchised piece of the cultural pie is that so much of that outsider art is now...
John: being embraced by what was formerly outsider culture, and it is becoming all very inside.
John: Daniel Johnston.
John: Daniel Johnston, right.
John: Or, I mean, half of indie rock.
John: There's a lot of indie rock that fakes... Rocky Erickson.
John: I mean, there's a lot of these characters that, you know... For me, there's always been a big question, like, it's pretty easy to pretend that you're a kook...
John: And then there are plenty of guys like Howard Finster who were, you know, there was no pretending.
John: You know, he was legitimately a kook.
John: But you go to nerd events and you see there are all kinds of people where you almost feel like they were born a kook.
John: There's no question about it.
John: But as it becomes more and more of a thing, it becomes more and more of a culture and a viable way, you see people who...
John: maybe weren't born a kook, but are now choosing to affect a kind of kookiness that maybe isn't even their birth.
Merlin: Like, they're talking themselves into it.
John: Yeah, like, oh, this is cool.
John: I mean, this seems fun, and pretty soon... And I think even more, like, the sword guy on the bike today...
John: Instead of running down the street and having everybody go, whoa, there's that guy, he'd be waiting at a stoplight and some kid in a wizard's hat would run up to him and be like, dude, do you want to play Wizards of the Coast with me or whatever?
John: And he would get absorbed.
John: People would maybe falsely identify him as a member of their tribe.
John: He might get a record contract with Drag City.
John: Or he might end up like, I'm no longer the sword guy on the bike.
John: I am now this character that is being kind of semi-worshipped by a group of nerds who don't understand that I'm legitimately...
John: They turn him into a fetish item.
Merlin: So you – I like to keep our show timeless.
Merlin: I want these to be programs that people can listen to years from now and still get your wisdom from.
Merlin: So you can tell me if you don't want to talk about this.
Merlin: But you've mentioned you've been to Comic-Con, and I kind of want to hear about that, but I'm not sure if I want to hear about that.
Merlin: But I just point out that as recently as I believe last week, you were on a cruise ship for people who like Jonathan Colton.
John: Right.
John: Well, not just people who like Jonathan Colton, although that is the dominating theme.
Merlin: What's the elevator pitch on the cruise?
Merlin: Joko Cruz Cruz?
Merlin: What's it called?
John: Pablo Cruz?
John: Joko Cruz Crazy.
John: Joko Cruz Crazy, which is named after one of Jonathan Colton's songs, Tom Cruise Crazy, which is about a kind of crazy that only Tom Cruise... If you had Tom Cruise's troubles... You'd be Tom Cruise Crazy, too.
Merlin: You know the lyrics to his songs.
Merlin: Well, of course I do.
John: I'm a fan of Jonathan Colton.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: I'm going to write this down.
Merlin: I think you've undergone a transformation.
Merlin: I'm going to circle back to that.
Merlin: But I don't see 2003, John, knowing all these words.
Merlin: Did you like they might be giants back then?
Merlin: You like Dead Milkman.
Merlin: We know he stipulated you like Dead Milkman.
Merlin: I don't see this in your oeuvre.
John: I remember you and I having a very... I remember you giving me the They Might Be Giants lecture before I had toured with They Might Be Giants.
John: Before I met them and knew them and became friends with them early, early on in your and my friendship.
John: We had a conversation where I think I started out saying, yeah, I mean, I loved the Giants back in the 80s, but I mean, you know, it's kind of in the novelty music family.
John: Whackadoodle.
John: Whackadoodle, as Jonathan Colton would say.
John: Whackadoodle.
John: And you jumped up on a coffee table and said, no, you have no idea what you're talking about.
John: Listen to these words!
Merlin: And you broke down... I probably played you They'll Need a Crane, which sounds like a very peppy song about construction equipment.
John: You broke down a few different songs.
John: Yeah.
John: Said, do you see what's happening here?
John: Do you see what's happening here?
John: Mm-hmm.
John: And...
John: And, you know, because I'm a difficult person, I think I maybe made you work a little bit harder.
John: And I think I maybe said, no, I'm not sure.
John: I do see what you've done.
John: So many ways you've helped me.
John: But I did see immediately what you meant.
John: And then, of course, going on tour with them, I realized that their songs, couched in the language, couched in humorous or sort of novel language, they might be giant songs, are about the human condition.
Merlin: Like Jonathan Colton.
John: And that is precisely true of Jonathan Colton, that his songs about monkeys and zombies and robots are really about love and sadness and loss and all the things that make us human.
John: And the fact that they are...
John: You know, the fact that the topics are giggly is what draws the nerds, I think.
John: But what keeps the nerds and what makes him a cultural force and what makes the Giants a cultural force is that you can listen to this stuff, dig in a little bit deeper and realize, oh my God, the pathos that's in this music is...
John: The fact that the music is fun to listen to doesn't make it any less meaningful.
John: So you actually gave me that speech about They Might Be Giants before I had ever met them, and it truly helped me.
John: Because going on tour with them, I was kind of primed to listen to them in a different way.
John: And then, of course, I became friends with them.
John: And, you know, I think they're some of the most deeply human people I know.
Merlin: Well, it helps that they put on a hell of a rock show, too.
John: And it helps that Jonathan Colton is a...
John: is a songwriter of the highest order.
John: He understands music and how songs are put together.
John: So anyway, I have been drawn into this nerd culture through becoming an appreciator of some of the highest practitioners of the art, if you know what I mean.
John: I have not...
John: I am not such a member of the nerd culture that anybody that stands up with a banjo and wrote a song about a robot is somebody that I'm going to be like, I love songs about robots!
John: Because actually, I do not love songs about robots.
Merlin: Well, there's a thread.
Merlin: I don't know if this is true for them.
Merlin: It might be giants.
Merlin: But I think one thing through all of Jonathan's songs is...
Merlin: uh, a sense of being an outsider and not being precisely sure what to do about it and, and feeling a little bit misunderstood.
Merlin: That's what I like about the, like the med science zombie stuff is, is the, uh, the, the, the person writing the song has the awareness that that person is an outsider and knows why.
Merlin: But I think back to the D and D, you may feel like an outsider a lot of times in your life and think all of the tricks that I have for fixing this are not working and it's making it worse.
John: And this has been a recurring theme for me in trying to integrate or interact with these people because for many, many, many years, for most of my life, I considered myself a nerd.
John: And it was because as a young person, you're talking about six, seven, eight years old, I was precocious and articulate and I liked to talk to adults and I didn't like comic books and I didn't like sports.
John: Yeah.
John: And so my peers in school absolutely called me a nerd, treated me like a nerd, taunted me as a nerd because of the simple fact that all kids like comic books and all kids like sports.
John: And I didn't like either thing and preferred to sit around, you know, if it was a party and there were some adults and the kids were off playing, I'd go sit with the adults and try and listen to their conversation.
John: So as the years went by,
John: In high school, I mean, I considered myself a nerd.
John: I'm sure there are people who went to high school with me that thought I was one of the cool kids, but I didn't.
John: And you start to get that self-identification as a nerd when maybe you're not even realizing that you're kind of not one anymore.
John: Yeah, same for me.
John: Absolutely the same.
John: I still thought I was one and identified as one.
John: And that self-identification carried on into adulthood.
John: Well, now I'm in a posture where I'm meeting all these nerds who like comic books and sports.
John: And that is their, like, we're nerds, we like comic books.
John: And I still have a very gut, a deep reaction to that.
John: Because as a kid, it was precisely not like, it was, liking comic books was what mainstream kids did.
John: It was precisely not liking comic books that made me feel like an outsider.
John: All these people who are 40 years old and still like comic books, I understand why they feel like they're nerds.
John: But... That's become so much more acceptable in the last few years.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: It's super mainstream to be a 40-year-old guy who is obsessed with sports or obsessed with superheroes.
Merlin: Look at that Adam Savage guy.
Merlin: I mean, you know, he's made a whole thing out of that, I think.
Merlin: I mean, I...
Merlin: Well, he also likes science, and that is nerdy.
Merlin: That is nerdy.
Merlin: I was fortunate enough to visit his little area that he has a couple times.
Merlin: You visited his area?
John: Yes.
Merlin: I'm not trying to sound like that guy, but I tagged along with some people.
John: I thought you were talking about that you put your finger on his... Oh, his man area, his horse area?
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: I've never touched Adam Savage's horse area.
Merlin: But, I mean, you know, he's got...
Merlin: See, the thing is I consider myself – I always think of myself as being like a Star Wars nerd until I meet real Star Wars nerds.
John: Oh, right.
Merlin: Can't compete.
Merlin: Oh, my gosh.
Merlin: It's so different.
Merlin: It's so different.
Merlin: I mean he's got – I thought all lightsabers were the same, and boy was I wrong.
Merlin: Now I know that.
Merlin: And now I know Count Dooku has a really different lightsaber just because of doing stuff with my daughter and reading things and watching movies.
Merlin: But I think he's got like – mostly made, like machined all the different lightsabers.
Merlin: He's got lightsabers.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: And he's got a TV show and stuff.
John: I was just on this nerd cruise, and during one of the performances, somebody made a total recall reference, and in the space of 30 seconds, three or four more total recall references followed it, like boom, boom, boom.
John: While I was standing there on the stage struggling to remember, oh, total recall, right, that's that.
John: Arnold Schwarzenegger movie where he was... It's like he forgot who... And by the time I'm even putting the plot of it together...
John: Total Recall, there has been a Total Recall meme visited, explored, and we are on to something else.
John: And I'm like, that is a kind of absorption and a kind of love of popular culture that I just, I simply do not have.
John: Like, I did not go back and watch Total Recall again and again as one of 500 movies that I've watched multiple times.
John: So I can't really, I mean...
John: I can't play at that level.
Merlin: I think nerds have a lot of retention.
Merlin: Maybe everybody's got retention about the things they care about.
Merlin: But I mean, I used to know a lot about hit points.
Merlin: I didn't have to look that up.
Merlin: There's a lot of things I didn't have to look up.
Merlin: I thought you were going to say Hitler, and I... We've been pretty good about avoiding the Hitler for a while.
John: You know what I watched last night?
Merlin: There's Hitler nerds.
Merlin: It's like in that Don DeLillo book.
Merlin: There's Hitler nerds.
John: That's right that I might be one.
John: You know what I watched last night?
John: I got back from Florida.
John: I'm lying in my bed.
John: You were in Florida?
John: Yeah.
John: Well, yeah, that's where the cruise went from.
John: Where did it embark from?
John: Fort Lauderdale.
John: Oh, my God.
John: Yeah.
John: If God was going to give America an enema, he would put it in at Fort Lauderdale.
John: It would never come out.
John: And it's like American?
John: No, got Frontier on the way back and American on the way there.
John: Both of them, complete slave barges, hell storms.
John: They're just flinging shit at you.
Merlin: Call it a hell ship.
John: You know what the airlines are doing now?
John: They're inventing new rules every 30 seconds.
John: Oh, it's just so capricious.
John: I sat in a chair and they were like, oh, you can't sit in that chair because you have a baby on your lap.
John: And I was like, how is this chair different from any other chair on the airplane?
John: And they said, well, that chair is behind an exit row.
John: And I said, I understand what you're saying now.
John: And I understand why a baby can't be in an exit row.
John: But there's no reason that I can't be behind an exit row.
John: And then the next stewardess that comes by says, so I hand the baby off to my baby mama.
John: And the next stewardess down the line comes along and says, there are too many people in that row.
John: There are not enough air.
John: There are not enough oxygen masks in that row for two lap babies.
John: And I'm just like, you're just making shit up now.
Merlin: Oh, absolutely.
John: The stewardesses are so disempowered that they don't.
John: that they're just like, the only thing I can do is walk down the aisle and pick on me.
Merlin: Oh, I know you love your bureaucracy, and you are a huge defender.
Merlin: I think the thing is, when you get to a point where you don't have real power anymore, you know, they say that in life, real power is not the ability to say no, it's the ability to say yes.
Merlin: And I think when you become a bureaucrat, you mainly derive a lot of your power from saying no.
John: Real power in improv is the ability to say yes, but... Yes, and.
John: Yes, and.
John: Right.
John: Sorry.
Merlin: Yes, but...
Merlin: There's a famous story where Joan Rivers was doing a scene with Mike Nichols.
Merlin: And, you know, everybody learns the yes and from Del Close from the beginning.
Merlin: And supposedly Mike Nichols starts down and goes like, I can't believe this is why are we getting divorced?
Merlin: And Joan Rivers goes, what are you talking about?
Merlin: We're not even married.
Merlin: So she was considered not good at that.
Merlin: Now here's, there's two things.
Merlin: First of all.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: That is ridiculous.
Merlin: There are some baby things.
Merlin: There's a lot of fairly sensible baby things on one of those, but I mean, as far as those, those air like when they said, don't drown your baby in a bucket.
John: I was like, Oh, helpful advice.
John: Thank you.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Well, air harpies.
Merlin: They're very unhappy people.
Merlin: But here's the other thing that drives me crazy is the redundancy.
Merlin: Every statement they make, almost every statement made on a plane has a built-in redundancy that makes me flip.
John: What's this I hear about your TPS reports?
Merlin: You've got to wait until we come to a full and complete stop.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Oh, that is redundant.
Merlin: Oh, you never noticed this?
Merlin: And our plane is 100% full.
John: Oh.
Merlin: You never noticed this?
Merlin: It's maddening.
John: See, my ears weren't attuned to it, but now you are causing a new thing for me to be pissed off about.
John: Well, I don't want to go into a stand-up routine.
Merlin: Air travel is just so unpleasant.
Merlin: It's really so unpleasant.
John: Going back to last night, I got home, and I was like, oh, I'm so... How long is that flight?
Merlin: That's like an eight-hour flight.
John: We stopped in Denver.
John: Don't get me started.
John: It's a long time.
John: I was on the plane all day.
John: I get home, and I'm sitting there.
John: I got my iPad.
John: I'm like, I'm going to watch a movie, and I go on to Netflix.
John: I'm promoting product after product here.
John: iPad, Netflix.
John: Hitler.
John: Hitler.
John: I go on Netflix, and based on the movies I've watched in the past, Netflix suggests that maybe I would like to relax by watching Triumph of the Will.
John: LAUGHTER
John: And so I think that's so funny that I watch it.
John: Isn't it pretty long?
John: Lying in bed watching Triumph of the Will, it is very long.
John: Lots of slow motion.
John: And lots of martial music.
John: Most of the film is not speeches.
John: Most of the film is people marching around while the music goes... And slow fades between big flapping swastika flags and all these blonde crew cut guys looking with total adulation at this schlumpy little Austrian...
John: you know, butt polyp of Hitler.
John: And halfway through the night, I'm like, what are you doing?
John: This is a two-hour long movie.
John: A two hour long propaganda film about Hitler.
John: What are you doing?
John: Couldn't you have watched Happy Gilmore or something like just go turn your brain off?
John: Instead, I'm like, I'm looking at every single I'm really fascinated by their tailoring and all the kind of minions.
John: I don't know.
John: It's a it's amazing film, but not Netflix.
John: I don't think Netflix really understands me as well as it thinks it does.
Merlin: They suggest we watch lots of Thomas the Train things.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: But Netflix's recommendations can be very odd.
Merlin: But in that case, John, I mean, I think you're fighting an uphill battle there.
John: Triumph of the will.
Merlin: Past his prologue, right?
Merlin: I would worry if you started getting lots of, like, you know, Ayn Rand vehicles or something.
John: Yeah, that's next, right?
John: Or Clint Eastwood movies.
Merlin: I haven't seen a lot of Hitler movies.
Merlin: There's that one everybody uses in the memes, you know, with Bruno Gans freaking out.
Merlin: Good actor.
Merlin: But I don't think I've seen many Hitler movies.
Merlin: I used to watch Tora, Tora, Tora when I was a kid.
Merlin: That was my canonical long movie when I was a kid.
John: Midway is a great movie, too.
John: Is that a good one?
Merlin: All right.
John: Midway is great, except there's a scene...
John: I remember I watched Midway in the theaters with my dad because he was a World War II veteran.
John: We always went to see World War II movies.
John: And Midway came out in 78 or 79, something like that.
John: And we go to see the movie and, you know, it's about the Battle of Midway, which is the turning point of the war.
John: And there's a scene when the Americans have... The Americans have... The clouds have parted and they're up in their airplanes and they see the Japanese fleet.
John: And this is the big moment, right?
John: Like, they are surprise attacking...
John: these three Japanese aircraft carriers, and this is really the turning point of the war.
John: Japanese don't know they're there.
John: And the Americans, you know, they nose their planes over and they go into this steep dive and they're headed down.
John: Cut to a shot of the deck of the Japanese carrier where all these Japanese American actors are milling around on the deck,
John: pretending to be a bunch of sailors just going about their business, unaware that the Americans are about to attack them.
John: And I imagine as an actor that that's a hard thing for a director to tell you.
John: All right, you're on the deck of the aircraft carrier and you're just doing your work.
John: You're doing your aircraft carrier work.
John: You have no idea that the Americans are about to attack.
John: So just act natural.
John: So there are all these guys milling around the deck of the aircraft carrier.
John: And then all of a sudden, one of them, the guy right in the center of the screen, apropos of nothing, spins around, points to the sky and goes, die mama, die mama!
Merlin: As though, I mean, really.
Merlin: Displaying that famous casual oriental coolness about plane attacks.
John: Yeah.
John: Two seconds before he was walking.
John: Was it really that ping pong?
John: It was.
John: And it wasn't just the whole.
John: I mean, this is from the era when the portrayal of Japanese in war movies was powerful.
John: pretty touch and go.
Merlin: But even Tora Tora Tora, they had subtitles.
Merlin: Like, the Japanese people spoke Japanese.
John: Yeah.
John: And, no, this was... In this film, there were American actors playing the Japanese characters, if I recall correctly.
John: But definitely, this one actor, this one guy, who two seconds before was just on his way across the aircraft carrier deck, probably...
John: he was an orderly or he was headed somewhere to change the toilet paper or something.
John: And then he spins around, points to the sky and goes, Die Mama!
John: Die Mama!
John: At eight years old, I was like, well, that just took me out of the movie.
John: I was really engrossed a second ago.
John: But that one scene, that guy's terrible acting, really.
John: And so now I can't watch the movie without waiting for that guy.
John: Like, I love him now.
Merlin: This is June of 1942.
Merlin: Is it really that early it was considered a turning point?
Merlin: Weren't we still kind of getting our ass kicked up through like 43?
John: Well, we were, except... Well, it was a turning point because we sank three Japanese characters in one battle, and that was the...
Merlin: Four carriers, one cruiser, 248 aircraft.
Merlin: Oh, four carriers.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: We lost one.
Merlin: They lost four.
Merlin: I'm sorry, we and they.
Merlin: Forgive me.
Merlin: 3,057 Japanese killed.
John: Wikipedia is always right.
John: But the four carriers, the war in the Pacific was a carrier war.
John: That's a long drive.
John: It's a really long drive.
John: And establishing air superiority through all those archipelagos all through Southeast Asia, the carriers were going to be the deciding factor.
John: And the Japanese did not have the ability that we had, again, us and them,
John: We kicked our war machine into gear, and we were churning out aircraft carriers like Lay's potato chips.
John: And that was much more of a capital investment on their part, and it was much harder for them to replace those carriers.
John: So, yeah, I don't think at the time they thought turning point in the war.
Merlin: In retrospect.
Merlin: Also, this is here at code breaking.
Merlin: Code breaking was a big part of the war, wasn't it, with the Enigma and stuff?
Merlin: That's partly how we won, right?
John: Well, in Europe, Enigma helped us a lot.
Merlin: The thing is, they didn't know we cracked it for a long time.
Merlin: That was a big part of it, right?
Merlin: That's the thing.
Merlin: Again, this is why you don't put your newspapers in the window.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: It's much more valuable if they don't know that we cracked it.
Merlin: I was reading about the Bataan Death March, as I do.
Merlin: I don't know why I always end up reading about awful things.
Merlin: I ended up, you heard me earlier, I referenced Hell Ships.
Merlin: I'd been reading that Frederick Douglass autobiography, which is a heck of a read, and reading about slave ships, and apparently they were pretty unpleasant to be on, from what I can gather.
John: You were talking about Bataan Death March, and then you were talking about Frederick Douglass, and I was like... How's he going to pull this all together?
Merlin: My brain was just like... I was going to mention that Denzel Washington movie.
He's
John: It was turning the key, and the starter was just not engaging.
John: I was like, how is he going to do it?
John: How is he going to connect those two?
Merlin: I'm not the scholar that you are.
Merlin: But anyway, then I ended up reading about slavery.
Merlin: You know how this is.
Merlin: This is the Wikipedia problem, is you end up reading these things.
Merlin: That's why I know more about serial killers than I would ever care about.
Merlin: Oh, my God, me too.
Merlin: I've done serial killers on Wikipedia big time.
Merlin: You know, there's a page where you can find who's killed the most.
Merlin: I think it's Gary Ridgway, isn't it?
Merlin: I haven't looked in a while.
Merlin: Gary Ridgway, is that the Green River guy?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: So he still holds the record?
John: Well, the problem is that you never know how many.
Merlin: Oh, that's a good point.
Merlin: I think 100 plus.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: And I ended up reading about the Bataan Death March, which is also apparently pretty unpleasant.
John: Yeah, that was bad.
Merlin: And so is it correct that that was – boy, this is really going to be a funny episode.
Merlin: And so they made it sound like the really, really horrific things that happened on the Bataan Death March, we very effectively –
Merlin: Yes, it was we, the Allies, the United States, used it very effectively to, like, redouble everybody's effort on how important this was.
Merlin: I mean, at the time, there was whispers about the camps, right?
Merlin: But we knew that they were just bayonetting people for no reason.
Merlin: And that was – is it true?
Merlin: That was a very effective way to redouble people's efforts at a time when we weren't – it wasn't going that great.
John: Well, and also the soldiers that were Bataan death marched were precisely the soldiers that MacArthur abandoned –
John: when he snuck out of the Philippines in the dead of the night, uh, escaping the Japanese advance.
John: So MacArthur's whole, like, I shall return business was, you know, kind of, uh, shadowed or shaded by the fact that a lot of the people that a lot of his army that he left behind got, you know, got batoned.
John: Um, so when he, when he landed in the Philippines again, uh,
John: It had the air of retribution.
John: It wasn't just that we're here to save our Philippine brothers.
John: It was we're here to avenge the death and mistreatment of all these men.
Merlin: And to salvage my reputation.
John: That's right.
John: All these men that I unfortunately had to leave behind when I split together.
John: early on in the war.
Merlin: Well, in the article, they made it sound like, you know, first of all, these weren't particularly nice people that were running the death march, but also that it was a resource thing, that they couldn't afford ships to transport.
John: I mean, they're scrounging food and water from the land as they went by.
John: You know, there were a lot of people on that march.
Merlin: And they didn't know how low the morale and health was on the people that were being attacked.
Merlin: So anyway, World War II.
John: Dysentery.
John: You know, dysentery kills a lot of people since we're on such a cheerful...
Merlin: I know two things about death.
Merlin: I know that I have heard that the reason anybody ever dies is because basically the lack of oxygen.
Merlin: That's ultimately what it comes down to.
Merlin: Whether it's a gunshot wound or, you know, obviously auto asphyxiation.
Merlin: But the other one is that diarrhea is the main cause of death in the world.
Merlin: I don't know if that's true.
John: Yeah, I think that is true.
John: People become dehydrated and...
John: Through a process of not having enough hydration.
Merlin: Let me see here.
Merlin: Nerds.
John: Which is what happens.
Merlin: Hitler pooping.
Merlin: D&D emoticons.
Merlin: Oh, emoticons.
Merlin: You used to be mad about emoticons.
Merlin: I still am mad about them.
Merlin: You don't like them at all?
Merlin: I'm still weaning myself off them because it's been so automatic since 1990-whatever-3 that when I got on the internet.
Merlin: When you'd just be typing, I'm still weaning myself off.
Merlin: I need something beside an emoticon.
John: Emoticons I'm opposed to primarily because I am a student of language and I don't think that they do any better job.
John: Oh, please.
John: Give me a fucking break.
John: But also, you know, my mom's story.
John: You're a student of a lot of things.
John: That doesn't make you an authority on any of them.
John: My mom's story was that she was a computer programmer in the 60s and 70s and wrote, early 60s, and wrote a lot of the code.
John: that still drives our American industries of insurance, banking, et cetera, et cetera.
Merlin: And during the Y2K... Wasn't she like a manager of programmers too?
John: I mean, she was hardcore.
John: Yeah, yeah, she was.
Merlin: She was like the Carol Kay of punch cards.
John: Right.
John: Well, during the Y2K era, she was getting all these phone calls from people saying like, we think that in the year 2000, everything's going to shut down.
John: And nobody knows how to write this code anymore.
John: Nobody understands how it's built.
John: Will you come back and help us save our skins?
John: And she was like, not for any money in the world.
Merlin: Well, that's what Sean Connery said at first with Alcatraz.
Merlin: Wasn't it Sean Connery they brought in?
Merlin: They need an expert on Alcatraz, right?
Merlin: Sean Connery is an expert on Alcatraz?
Merlin: What's the one where the people took over the island?
Merlin: Not the Native Americans, but it was a Nicolas Cage movie where they had to bring in somebody who'd been a prisoner there to really understand how the place operated.
John: Sean Connery was a prisoner in Alcatraz?
Merlin: Well, I think probably.
Merlin: I mean, no.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: You know what I'm talking about, though.
Merlin: You've got to bring on...
Merlin: No and.
Merlin: No but.
John: Not for any money in the world, Sean Connery said.
Merlin: And what did she say?
Merlin: She said, no way am I touching that crap.
Merlin: It's spaghetti code.
Merlin: No way.
Merlin: Or she just had to walk the dog.
Merlin: Your mom has a very, very well-defined schedule, I understand.
Merlin: She's very organized.
John: She said, screw you.
John: Damn the torpedoes.
John: Some days like to just watch the world burn.
John: Your mom did that.
John: Well, she certainly wasn't going to go back and help them.
John: straighten out their problem.
John: And it turned out not to be that big of a problem.
John: But during that time, she talked about it a lot.
John: And she was like, you know, every...
John: Every character, every space was so valuable to us at the time that two more characters in a line of code was... We were trying to pare it down to make it as efficient as possible.
John: You weren't just throwing an extra two numbers in there to...
John: to stipulate the date.
Merlin: Whereas I have five Twitter applications on my pocket computer.
John: Yeah.
John: And so, you know, she was like, that's just how it was.
John: Nobody was looking to the year 2001 because none of us thought that this stuff would still be running then.
John: There was not a single one of us in 1967 that thought that the stuff we were writing would still be running the insurance companies in 40 years.
John: And so I feel that way about emoticons.
John: I think that every emoticon that gets used in the future, that will be an emotion that has to get parsed by somebody down the line.
Merlin: Oh, I see what you're saying.
Merlin: You're saying you're worried that it won't have longevity.
Merlin: Some archivist is going to be like, fuck, another smiley face.
Merlin: You don't think they'll have a way to parse that with regular expressions or something?
Merlin: It'll just gum up the machines?
John: That's exactly the logic they used about writing code in the 60s.
John: Don't you think there'll be some magic floating car that solves this problem?
John: I don't think so.
John: What happens is there's some schmuck at the Library of Congress that's like, God, Merlin Mann's tweets all have these smiley faces.
Merlin: That's not fair.
Merlin: If they can find a way to parse out the poop jokes, I think they'll last just fine.
Merlin: Now, I've thought about getting a catchphrase.
Merlin: I'm trying to think what I really say when I make a smiley face.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: They always make it sound so simple.
Merlin: When you buy one of those internet books in the mid-'90s, it would say, you know, like smiley face means just kidding or whatever, right?
John: Right, right.
Merlin: I should just say in your face.
John: Smiley face is so often used as a take back.
John: You think it's passive aggressive.
John: That's what it is.
John: I think you're a fuck face, smiley face.
John: So you don't think I'm a fuck face?
Merlin: Oh, see?
Merlin: Now it's coming together.
Merlin: The texts.
Merlin: Do some of the texts that get under your skin have smiley faces on them?
Merlin: Is that part of it?
John: Anybody who has my phone number enough to text me knows not to send a smiley face in a text.
John: Not at all.
John: No.
John: But I have started writing in emails.
Merlin: I just sent you a little message there.
John: I've started writing in emails like, you're a fuckface, and then in parentheses I write, smiley face emoticon.
John: Just as a way...
John: Just as a way of saying, I can play along.
John: Oh, my God, you sent me a smiley face with a music note.
John: It's just some eighth notes, maybe?
John: Yeah, it's animated, too.
Merlin: Is it animated on yours?
John: It's animated.
John: Yeah, the notes are, it's like four or five notes on the smiley face.
Merlin: I think you just found a much bigger problem.
Merlin: I'm so sorry, John.
Merlin: I had no idea I was sending you animated music.
Merlin: I'm really sorry about that.
Merlin: It's not animated on mine.
Merlin: You got that new Skype, probably.
Merlin: It's all screwed up.
John: No, I have the same Skype that you do because you told me that my Skype was the best Skype and not to get a new Skype.
Merlin: Wow, I got to find out.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: I apologize for that.
Merlin: You know, this is part of the problem with being that guy.
Merlin: I think I'm wielding power that I don't even understand.
John: So this thing now is just going to sit here and it's some kind of gif and it's just going to animate itself for a thousand years.
Merlin: I love when you exercise your technical expertise on things.
Merlin: Is that what it is?
Merlin: Some kind of animated gif.
Merlin: That's some kind of gif.
Merlin: Problem is there.
John: We'll both be dead and this thing will still be smiling and dancing around here.
Merlin: Yeah, it's running the air traffic control system.
Merlin: Smiley.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I need a catchphrase.
Merlin: I can really use a catchphrase.
John: Well, maybe we should put it to the voters.
Merlin: Yeah, but you know what?
Merlin: I don't think you can – no, no, never let people vote on a catchphrase.
Merlin: It's like going with a second location.
Merlin: No, you can't make that stuff up.
Merlin: It's like people who give themselves nicknames or, you know, this is really not so different from wearing the duster.
Merlin: Like I'm not really sure what the impression is that you're supposed to be giving with the duster.
Merlin: A lot of times that's your taller, heavier nerves will wear the duster.
John: Yeah, well, the Duster is to communicate that they are high-planes drifters or that they are road warriors.
John: Or that they have five Subway sandwiches under their coat.
John: Five Subway sandwiches and a custom-made leather Subway sandwich holster.
John: They call that roll in the Cinco.
John: I think the Duster is a way to stand...
John: at the entrance to a parking garage and look like you mean some serious business.
John: You know what I mean?
John: Like the duster is the universal symbol of what have I got on under this coat?
John: Right.
Merlin: Sort of like you in the Cape.
Merlin: I mean, you see, you see a man in the Cape and a Cape and especially like, to be honest, a Walgreens Cape.
John: If you see a man in a Walgreens Cape, I highly recommend you run for your lives.
John: Yeah.
John: Because he's going to need a nap soon.
John: That's not a thing.
John: I mean, I'm probably the one fully grown man in a Walgreens cape that isn't on Halloween that you should walk toward.
John: If you see me in a Walgreens cape, by all means, come over and introduce yourself.
John: But anyone else?
John: Hell no.
John: Yuck.
Merlin: Shouldn't have asked to play the cello.
John: I'm going to send you this cello.
Merlin: How would you send something like that?
Merlin: Do you just ship it?
Merlin: You wouldn't want to overnight that.
Merlin: Is this a real cello or is this like a joke cello?
John: It's somewhere between a real and joke cello.
Merlin: Is it like a starter cello?
Merlin: It's a starter cello.
Merlin: Okay.
John: Does it have a bow?
John: It's a German starter cello and it has a bow.
John: Okay.
John: I have used it.
Merlin: The intonation is all in the fingers, though.
Merlin: The bridge isn't fucked up.
Merlin: I could get this thing.
John: Oh, no, it's a perfectly useful instrument.
Merlin: Do I need to get it set up or refretted or anything?
John: Oh, no, no.
John: You don't need to get refretted.
John: No, it's a perfectly good instrument, and I've used it on Long Winters Records, but it's just a... Would you pound on the back like a bluegrass band?
Merlin: How did you play it?
John: Yeah, I used it on Long Winters Records.
John: I'd set it up in the corner, and I'd use it as inspiration.
John: I'd sing to it.
John: No, I'm starting to look at my life, and I realize that I am a hoarder.
John: And that I have not become a hoarder who lives in a shipping container because there's still the premise that things are stacked and ordered in a way.
John: But I don't need a cello.
John: If I need a cello part on a Long Winnie's record, I can have a cello player.
John: I can hire a cello player.
John: I don't need to own a cello.
Merlin: Has it come through your mind at some point, though, where you think I might need this?
John: Oh, everything.
John: I'm looking at everything.
John: I'm like, I'm definitely going to need that.
John: And your candles.
John: He needs your candles.
John: I need those candles.
John: What if there's a power outage or what if I become a phantom?
John: But...
Merlin: I got a lot of bells here.
Merlin: More than I strictly need.
Merlin: I'm very, very interested in hoarding, especially because I've had to clean my office this week.
Merlin: I don't know if we want to get into that.
Merlin: But I think if you collect things – here's the thing.
Merlin: A lot of people who say they're collectors are hoarders, and there's usually ways to tell.
Merlin: If you've collected things and you've put them in some kind of an order where you can see them, and if you've selected which ones to keep and which ones to get away –
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: If you collect what?
Merlin: If you collect busts of Hitler, if you've got five of those and you've arranged them, just for the sake of argument, and I don't want to give you any ideas, but if you have a Hitler bust, and you have five of them, and they're all different.
Merlin: I had a friend who collected ETs.
Merlin: They had to be non-licensed ETs, but at flea markets, my friend Dennis would always pick up any ETs, cookie jars, but they had to be, he would not buy ones that had been licensed, and he had them over his fireplace, and it was outstanding.
Merlin: That's a lot like having a cape, to be honest.
Merlin: You walk into that place, you see five or six poorly painted ETs.
Merlin: You start thinking about your life.
Merlin: In your case, all your candles being together on your piano, yes, super creepy, but I think that constitutes a collection.
Merlin: Are there things that you have in boxes that you don't put out?
John: Oh, no, except picture frames.
Merlin: That's challenging.
Merlin: How are you going to display picture frames?
Merlin: You need pictures.
Merlin: That's what I'm saying.
Merlin: Here's the thing, and I don't mean to go all derrida here, but you don't want people thinking about what's inside.
Merlin: You want them thinking about the frame itself, right?
John: Well, it's still... It's more complicated than that?
Merlin: Yeah, the jury's still out.
Merlin: You're not sure.
Merlin: You knew that you needed the frames.
Merlin: You might need them someday, and you'll figure it out later, right?
John: Exactly.
John: That's not bad.
John: My friend Scott Pluff, who plays drums in a band you may have heard of called Built to Spill, he has a collection of...
John: not unlike your friend who collects unlicensed ETs, he has a collection of portraits hanging in a room of his house, which is a collection of portraits like you've seen a lot of places.
John: There's a couple of different bars in Seattle where they've gone to thrift stores and they've bought a bunch of oil paintings of old guys or people.
John: It's a fairly common decorating meme now, right?
John: The mismatched set of thrift store portraits.
John: But Scott Plough's collection of portraits is remarkable because they're all like found objects.
John: But because he has this incredible aesthetic, each one of them is an amazing portrait.
John: You know, he did not do the thing where he went to thrift stores and was like, oh, there's a portrait of a weird guy.
John: I'll buy it.
John: It's only a dollar.
John: And then suddenly he had a house full of these things.
John: Like what he's done is over the course of years, he has only chosen the most amazing thing.
John: portraits, he must have passed on a hundred to have this collection of 12.
John: He must have passed on a thousand.
John: Oh, he's discerning.
John: He's discerning.
John: And so what appears to be, you go in there and you're like,
John: Oh, that's cool.
John: He's got a quirky set of these things.
John: But if you look at any one of them, you're like, well, now that is incredible, that thing.
John: And he's not a hoarder.
John: He does not fall for the trap of like, I collect candlesticks, so I have 600 of them.
John: He's like, I collect candlesticks, so I have six of them.
John: But each one of them is the best candlestick you ever saw.
John: And that's what I aspire to.
John: Right.
John: But it's very hard for me to walk past
John: if I'm collecting candlesticks, it's very hard for me to walk past one.
John: And then once I have it,
John: Here's what makes me a hoarder.
John: It's very difficult for me to go, you know what, this candlestick doesn't meet my standards.
John: So I'm not going to throw it in the garbage.
Merlin: Kind of a luminary Sophie's Choice.
Merlin: A lot of people like one in, one out.
Merlin: It's not a bad idea unless you have the storage space and you rotate it out like a museum.
Merlin: Yeah, one in, one out.
Merlin: And that's absolutely how it should be or one in, two out.
Merlin: I need to decide on picking up a picture frame.
Merlin: It seems like you must encounter a lot of picture frames.
John: I do.
John: And picture frames, you know, they come in standard sizes, so it's always nice to find them when they're weird sizes.
John: And I just like, you know, I like them where it's old and some old, it's obvious that it sat on some grandmother's piano for 60 years with a portrait of her dead son in it.
John: And that stuff, that stuff really speaks to me.
John: But I have too many of them right now.
John: I'm not going to lie.
Merlin: I don't want to get into too much detail.
Merlin: But for external reasons that are – basically I had – there was going to have to be somebody who comes into my office, which is something that doesn't happen.
Merlin: Like this is my secret, my secret Merlin Dungeon.
Merlin: Like this is never meant – it's not a studio.
Merlin: You don't come in.
Merlin: There's no open houses.
Merlin: There's no canapes.
Merlin: Like I sneak in and lock the door.
John: Right.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And, uh, and as it happens, somebody would have to be in here in the next couple of weeks.
Merlin: And I had to really scramble to, to get it cleaned up, which is good because it was time, but it makes me realize how much stuff I tacitly keep for absolutely no reason.
Merlin: And I don't even want to call it a collection, but it makes me feel a little hordy and I don't feel good about it, but I'll find stuff like, and this is, I made a crack about this on Twitter the other day.
Merlin: Like, don't throw that away.
Merlin: That's a really nice box.
Merlin: Like I don't know if those words have ever come out of your mouth.
Merlin: But that's a good sign that the crazy is in there somewhere.
Merlin: Like when you keep something because it's a good box, really, like a cardboard box.
John: And in my case, I'm sitting there.
John: I have a collection of cardboard.
Merlin: Oh, I love it.
Merlin: You know, one of those real rigid ones that can really stand up.
Merlin: Or it's a good size.
Merlin: Sometimes you want a box.
Merlin: Now, you know this.
Merlin: You've moved.
Merlin: When you move, a lot of people think, oh, we've got to go get some big boxes.
Merlin: You do not want big boxes, especially for books, right?
Merlin: You want something you can carry.
Merlin: Small boxes.
Merlin: A small box is not something to be treated lightly.
Merlin: But then you've got to store them.
Merlin: You've got to get boxes for your boxes.
Merlin: And in my case, I'm sitting there and I already have so many office supplies.
Merlin: I have so many folders.
Merlin: Sometimes when I need to relax, I buy a notebook or index cards if I need to unwind.
John: I know how much you like an index card.
Merlin: And so I've got a lot of those, and what I seem to have a lot of that I was never aware of, and you don't see this until you have to put it all in one place, right?
Merlin: You seem like you've got a pretty tidy house, so you probably don't run into this.
Merlin: In my case, I can't believe how many almost full pads of Post-it notes I have.
Merlin: I don't use Post-it notes for anything.
Merlin: I don't even know why I have them.
John: I have a huge box of almost full of Post-it notes.
Merlin: Me?
John: No, I do.
Merlin: Really?
John: Not because I have ever bought a Post-it note in my life, but because my dad...
John: And my mom were both Post-it note maniacs.
John: Your mom?
John: She doesn't strike me as a Post-it note person.
John: Well, no, she's not now.
John: She's moved on.
John: You know what she uses?
John: Well, for a long time, she was using index cards.
John: Chalkboard.
John: But no, now she just uses her phone.
John: She's become a complete computer.
John: It's all on the computer now.
Merlin: I have no context for understanding that.
Merlin: Really?
John: Yeah.
Yeah.
Merlin: We know post-it note people, you know, you know, I'm just telling you some of the things like cats and scrapbooking.
Merlin: I'm telling you, I'm telling you.
John: Eventually the post-it notes will eat your face.
Merlin: You're going to have to eat your toes, your diabetic toes.
Merlin: You have to put a sign on your toe.
Merlin: Mr. Muffelkins, please do not eat.
Merlin: No, it's I think it's a hoarding thing.
Merlin: I think I think posted to people, you know, I think they're worried.
Merlin: They're worried.
Merlin: I think I think hoarding is about the fear of loss.
Merlin: Well, you know, hoarding actually is not not to go all DSM, but like it is it is a form of OCD.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: It's just that instead of being obsessive compulsive about things, you know, being in a row or any of those famous ha ha things, it's a compulsion about like losing something.
Merlin: Like I can't throw out this box full of diapers because there might be one in there that's an important memory or have diamonds in it or something.
Merlin: You've got these, but you encounter this with people and this is why I worry about scrapbooking.
Merlin: You are a kind of scrapbooker, John, and I think that's something to be aware of.
Merlin: Just even having a box full of post-it notes that you don't use is something that I would just, if I may say, something you might want to think about.
John: Well, let me ask you this.
John: How many shoeboxes of power adapters do you have?
John: Here?
John: In your life.
John: Near me.
John: Yeah, near you.
Merlin: Let me put it this way.
Merlin: Anything that's got a USB dingus on it, I have a lot of trouble throwing out, even if I've got like 500 of them.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Because there will always be a time where I feel like I need that, I can't get rid of that.
Merlin: And this is partly the problem, is that when you become this way about stuff, is you lose track of how much of it you actually have, and that's when it becomes dangerous.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Because not only are you going to keep way more than you need, but if you don't know... And in the past, I've been good about this.
Merlin: And I go, okay, everything that's a USB dingus has to go in this box.
Merlin: And then by the time I'm done with that, I look and I go, holy fucking shit.
Merlin: I cannot believe how many USB to standard USB to mini USB mail cords I've got.
Merlin: It's completely ridiculous.
Merlin: I have no need for that.
Merlin: Now, for me, it's notebooks.
Merlin: I have a serious...
Merlin: I'll own this.
Merlin: I have a serious notebook problem.
Merlin: And sometimes I'll use them.
Merlin: Sometimes I'll just pick them up because they're cool.
Merlin: And, you know, it's funny because I make fun of the notebook people a lot because, you know, the ha-ha, you don't actually write in your notebooks.
Merlin: I have notebooks I write in, but I also will just collect interesting ones that I find.
John: Yeah, they're beautiful little items, aren't they?
Merlin: Yeah.
John: See, every notebook you collect is you imagining...
John: A trip you're going to take where you're going to write every day?
John: Or are you imagining sitting on a park bench and sketching?
John: Maybe.
John: It used to be for me.
John: I would buy a notebook and I would just look at it and say like, yeah, this is the notebook I'm going to be carrying when I cross the Hindu Kush.
Yeah.
Merlin: Is that a sex thing?
Merlin: Is that a tantric thing?
Merlin: Crossing the Hindu Kush?
John: Hindu Kush is the name of my cosplay character.
Merlin: Oh, man.