Ep. 29: "Eventually My Scabs Healed"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Hi, Merlin.
Merlin: How you doing, my friend?
Merlin: Merlin, man.
Merlin: Do you want to ride on my John Roderick?
Merlin: That's the consensus.
Merlin: That or you can have... Oh, God, that's terrible.
Merlin: I ask people.
Merlin: You can have that or you can have John.
John: Oh, that's awesome.
John: You like that one better?
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Flash Gordon.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: John Roderick theme.
John: That's amazing.
John: Let me try and really do it.
John!
Merlin: Savior of the universe.
Merlin: Are you kidding me?
Merlin: That's tailor-made.
Merlin: Are you okay with that?
Merlin: I did it once before.
Merlin: I think you scoffed.
John: No, it must not have come through clearly because that is exactly what I've always wanted.
Merlin: Now, if memory serves, you had one eye on Kiss, and the other eye was on Queen when you were a kid, and your eyes drifted.
Merlin: Like, one lazy eye and the other followed, you ended up on Queen.
Merlin: Is that accurate?
Merlin: That's correct.
John: When I was in, I think, fourth grade, it really could have gone either way, Queen or Kiss.
Merlin: I like that you had to choose.
John: Yeah, well, you know, you could be Kiss Army, which I was initially, but...
John: Or you could be one of the champions.
John: The Queen Navy.
John: You could be in the Queen Navy.
John: You could be a sailor in the Queen sub.
John: You could be a member of the Queen submarine.
John: Easy.
John: And I realized, I think I was still too young to realize that Queen was infinitely superior to Kiss in every way musically.
John: And in every other respect.
John: I just chose based on... I don't know.
John: I think I chose based on heavy riffage.
John: Is that right?
John: I think the riffage... It was the riffage that tipped the scales.
John: The kiss riffage, if you really strip away all the makeup and all the boots and all the cod pieces and the blood packets.
Merlin: You're telling me, you're telling me that the ridiculous, over-the-top, unnecessary...
Merlin: Theatricality of Kiss was just too much for you, and so you went with Queen.
Merlin: That's correct.
Merlin: Let me ask you the hard question, because I can tell you from that same time, one of my other big bands, I was always attracted to the theatricality.
Merlin: Yeah, for sure.
Merlin: Village People.
Merlin: You live in San Francisco.
Merlin: Village People had a song called San Francisco.
John: Yes, they did.
John: I was a fan of the Village People.
John: Weren't they fun?
John: They were fun.
John: I was a fan of the Village People because ACDC genuinely scared me.
John: The record covers of ACDC in the 70s were genuinely scary.
John: They were sweaty men and they looked vile.
John: They looked like they wanted to put a finger in you.
John: And as a child, I instinctively did not want one of their fingers in me.
John: They're from Australia, so they turn it the other way.
John: Yeah, once it's in.
Merlin: Is that Highway to Hell?
Merlin: Is that the one where Angus has the horns?
Merlin: And like a sneer?
Merlin: There's one.
John: Yeah, it's a sneery sneer.
John: It was scary.
John: I remember the day that record came out, and it was on the...
John: It was on the end cap of every aisle in Peaches or whatever record store.
John: I love Peaches.
John: And I was at the Northgate Mall with my mom.
John: All I wanted was a snow cone.
John: And...
John: And my God, the record just, and I think it was on the records, it was on the stands at the same time as the Village People record.
John: And there was no question.
John: The Village People seemed much friendlier.
John: There was an Indian.
John: I mean, they seemed like guys you could play guns with, you know?
Merlin: Well, like Kiss, I think I was attracted to them for their, what, comic book-ness, their cartoonish-ness.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
John: Right.
John: Yeah, no, the deciding factor with Queen, I think, just was... It is that thing that in Brian May's guitar tone, which is the most...
John: organic sound that even a child can understand that that is the greatest guitar tone of all time even a little infant if you played the sound of kiss which is the sound of like handicapped people having sex
John: Or the sound of Queen, which is the sound of angels singing in the night.
John: You have to go with Queen every time.
Merlin: I can tell you're feeling better.
John: I'm feeling better.
John: What kind of handicap?
John: Is there movement impairment?
John: Is it a visual thing?
John: Kiss is more handicapable.
John: They turned it around.
John: They had a disability and they made it a strength.
John: God bless them.
John: Imagine what Gene Simmons would be doing
John: Otherwise, imagine him working at a DMV.
Merlin: When you see him talk, he seems almost like somebody who would be in venture capital or debt collection.
Merlin: He seems very business-minded.
John: He is Donald Trump.
John: Put Gene Simmons and Donald Trump next to each other.
John: They're the same man.
John: Even an infant could tell.
John: Even an infant could listen to those two guys and know that they are...
John: That they are an unholy union.
John: An unholy pair of... I mean, think about Gene Simmons' hair for a second when he's not wearing his wig.
Merlin: Oh, that thing he has now?
John: It's the same.
John: It's Donald Trump's hair.
John: It's the same stuff.
John: It's made of the same sort of like rhinoceros pubic hair.
Merlin: Yeah, I was going to say, I mean, Donald Trump's hair looks like a penthouse cooch.
Merlin: And I think Gene Simmons looks more like something from Japan.
Merlin: I mean, if it's not pixelated.
Merlin: I don't know why they pixelate everything.
Merlin: It's very troubling.
John: I see what you mean.
Merlin: I wish the Germans would pixelate.
Merlin: You know what it was for me with Queen?
Merlin: It was those harmonies.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: That's very theatrical.
Merlin: Who was there?
Merlin: Now, we know, as music nerds, we know that, for example, on Bohemian Rhapsody, and you know the story on Bohemian Rhapsody.
Merlin: You ever seen the TV show on that or read about it?
Merlin: How long it took to do that?
John: Yeah.
John: In fact, I have some of the... There was a while there, the studio nerds
Merlin: Didn't you have a DVD wallet full of behind-the-music things?
John: I do have that.
John: But in addition to that, there was a while there where the studio nerds, and the studio nerds may be doing this still.
John: I haven't been in the recording studio in a while.
John: But they were trading around the multi-track tapes of various of these great albums.
John: And we got the multi-tracks of Bohemian Rhapsody.
John: where you could actually solo the individual tracks.
John: They didn't bounce?
John: Well, that's the thing.
John: I thought they bounced until the tape was going to break.
John: But that's the thing.
John: You're still, at the time, working on a 24-track tape, right?
John: So there are still 24 individual tracks, and you could solo these tracks, and each track had been bounced down.
John: There were so many harmonies stacked up on each one of these tracks, and then there were multiple tracks of them.
John: But just to listen to the individual pieces of that puzzle and you get one step closer to understanding how it was put together.
John: You're sitting in the recording studio listening to it through the good speakers and just like, oh my God, this is an amazing work.
Merlin: And we've talked about this in other venues, but... Sorry for the three to overdub themselves, balance these.
Merlin: In the end, 8th generation tapes were used.
Merlin: Various sections of tape containing them that had to be spliced may recall placing a tape in front of the light and being able to see through it as they had been recording so intensely.
Merlin: That's unbelievable.
Merlin: Can you imagine how the tape broke after all that?
John: It would be sad.
John: Although, back in the day...
John: tape, you know, cutting tape was a big part of making records.
John: So if the tape, you think about like, oh no, what if the tape broke?
John: But in fact, they would just
John: cut it back together yeah i went to a i went to a speech by roy thomas baker the man who produced the album overproduced it it's to great to great delight on on my as far as i'm concerned yeah and listen to him talk about that process and uh i don't know it's that that is i could go up the i could go up the river all the way to cambodia uh talking about bohemian rhapsody i i would enjoy that now are you an rtb fan in general do you like you like the cars that first cars record something else
John: He's incredible.
John: He's a great producer, and listening to him talk, a great dude.
John: Where's that right?
John: What country is he from?
John: He's from the Inglang, and in fact, you can still go make records with him if you want.
John: You can go to Inglang and make a record with Roy Thomas Baker.
John: He has a studio, and he will make a record with you if you pay him the money.
John: He will do it.
John: Have you thought about that at all?
John: Well, yeah.
John: I mean, he made, he made, he made a great foreigner record.
Merlin: He made, he made a, he made what I consider to be Nazareth record.
Merlin: He made what I consider to be a, an overrated underrated, excuse me, slightly underrated, not a hugely underrated, but slightly underrated cheap trick record.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: He did One on One, which I... Well, She's Tight.
Merlin: That She's Tight is a pretty great song.
John: She's nice.
John: She's tight.
Merlin: She's giving me the go.
Merlin: She's giving me the high sign.
Merlin: That's so good.
Merlin: It's so good.
Merlin: Man.
Merlin: He made those Journey records.
Merlin: Is that right?
John: No.
John: Late 70s Journey records.
Merlin: What?
John: He made Infinity.
John: He made Evolution.
John: Oh, come on.
John: Oh, he did.
John: I'm going to have to check that out.
John: And the thing is, he's still working.
John: He fucking worked on Chinese Democracy.
LAUGHTER
John: You can make a record with this man, and he's hilarious.
John: He looks awesome.
Merlin: I don't know if you're near a computer right now, but I'm a big fan, I must tell you.
Merlin: I've discussed this elsewhere.
Merlin: I'm a big fan of Wikipedia photos, because as you know, they must be public domain.
Merlin: And it looks like maybe his aunt or niece, perhaps, shot it with something that she'd gotten out of a cereal box.
Merlin: There's definitely one flash source.
Merlin: The flash is very, very bright.
Merlin: That's nice.
Merlin: He looks kind of like Ozzy Osbourne meets the guy from Rocky Horror.
Merlin: Now, you know, this is the thing, though.
Merlin: You think about working with somebody like him or famously somebody like Todd Rundgren.
Merlin: I mean, Todd Rundgren has made some people sound really, really good, but he sounds pretty tough to work with.
John: a lot of people are tough to work with.
John: I mean, I think, uh, you can make a record with, you can make a record with a lot of sort of rock stars.
John: Uh, and some of those people are, are tougher than others.
John: I, you know, I, the, the, uh,
John: The guy from, not Elliot Easton.
John: If I could make a record with Elliot Easton, I absolutely would.
John: But the guitar player of the Talking Heads.
John: Jerry Harrison.
John: Jerry Harrison.
John: You can make a record with Jerry Harrison, and my understanding is that he shows up at noon and leaves at 5.
John: I don't know that to be sure.
Merlin: Didn't he produce a Pete Buck thing a long time ago?
Merlin: What am I confusing that with?
Merlin: No, Jerry Harrison.
Merlin: What was it, Young Gods or something Gods?
Merlin: Was that his band?
Merlin: oh uh well he was in he was in um modern lovers modern lovers but he also well you know what i'm thinking of people i'm sorry i'm totally confused pete buck produced uh that feelies record i like oh peter now peter buck that would be an interesting guy to have produced your record i bet he'd have good notes on the songs too
John: I do not know how well he would communicate to you.
Merlin: I met him once and he seemed like a really down-to-earth guy who was extremely nervous.
Merlin: Peter Buck.
Merlin: He was backstage at a thing and he was being mobbed.
John: He's an extremely nice man, a very nice man, a smart and nice person who has what I would characterize, speaking as a professional, as a mental health professional, I would characterize him as having a social anxiety disorder.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: I have friends that have that.
John: Yes, I know you do.
John: I have spent time with your friends.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Well, it's kind of, it's almost a prerequisite.
Merlin: It's on the form, which they don't want to fill out because they don't like pencils either.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: Can I just say that as usual, can I tell you how I stand?
Merlin: Corrected.
Merlin: Oh my God.
John: He did almost every-
Merlin: i have a very wide stance yeah he did he's done of course uh rtb rtb sorry rtb did a bunch of the queen records probably looks like almost all he did devo he did you are absolutely correct i stand further corrected he did infinity and evolution see man infinity we got to get back to journey at some point it's an awkward awkward thing to talk about they did he did the darkness that controversial band the darkness
Merlin: Smashing Pumpkins.
Merlin: Smashing Pumpkins.
John: That's a band I could do without.
John: He did a later Smashing Pumpkins record.
John: He's not responsible for them.
John: He did one after the fat bald kid decided that people needed to hear him sing.
John: Charlie Brown?
John: Yeah, whatever.
John: Smashing Pumpkins are a classic example of one of those bands where it was like, everybody likes you because they can't hear you do it.
Merlin: What the fuck happened with Smashing?
Merlin: How did they get to be so popular?
Merlin: Is there a formula, John Roderick?
Merlin: Because you were there.
Merlin: You worked at the Grunge Museum.
Merlin: You saw a lot of this go by.
Merlin: You were a barback.
Merlin: You were a manager.
Merlin: You counted money.
Merlin: You peeled off hundreds.
Merlin: What the fuck happened?
Merlin: How does Meshing Pumpkins get on our radar screen?
John: He was a very good guitar player, and that music was... I think what it was, he took the sound of Shoegazer, which was very popular in England, but the Shoegazer guys, except for Stone Roses, there weren't a lot of songs.
John: Shoegazer was kind of a vibe.
Merlin: They had more influence here than interest.
Yeah.
John: Yeah, right.
John: It was a vibe, but when it would come to America, we'd be like, there's no songs there.
John: It's just like... And Smashing Pumpkins kind of had that... They got that My Bloody Valentine thickness to their song.
Merlin: They had one record I liked.
Merlin: I want to say Gish.
John: But his vocals were mixed way down, so it sounded like just this wall of guitars and then this kind of echoey singer, and it sounded really compelling.
Yeah.
John: And they had songs.
John: So it was kind of like, aha, voila, that's always what you were looking for.
John: My problem with the Stone Roses was after that, aside from that one tune, the rest of the stuff just felt like, meh.
Merlin: I want to be adored?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Or She's a Waterfall?
John: The one Stone Roses tune, the...
Merlin: their biggest hit, the one where they've got the drum dance beat.
Merlin: Yeah, I was thinking of that first song.
Merlin: Here's the problem also with all these social anxiety people.
Merlin: I'm guessing here, what's his name?
Merlin: Charlie Rose?
Merlin: What's his name?
Merlin: Billy Corrigan?
Merlin: Yeah, Billy Corrigan.
Merlin: Billy Corrigan, the smartest kid in the world.
Merlin: I think his problem...
Merlin: Billy Corrigan's problem – see, and this also goes – this goes for all these people, but the possible exception of Prince and maybe Prince is these people who are clearly insane loners, who are very gifted and have learned – oh, you know what?
Merlin: How about the Weezer guy?
Merlin: Oh, fool's gold.
Merlin: That was the term of Stone Rose.
Merlin: Fool's gold.
Merlin: I had that record.
Merlin: You know, those records, all those records, those Manchester records, three quarters of them, I had no idea why people liked them.
Merlin: I still don't understand Happy Mondays.
Merlin: And then a lot of them just didn't age well.
Merlin: Even that Stone Roses record, it did not have legs, not like a lot of other bands at the time.
John: No, they didn't age well.
John: They didn't even age well in the time it took the songs to get from the speakers to your ears.
Merlin: By the time you took off the plastic.
John: But you, I'm guessing, were not standing on a beach in Goa in 1989.
John: What, 1989?
John: Yeah, super, super, super high on MDMA and with your body covered in Dayglo paint.
John: Because if you were...
John: then the music would have made perfect sense to you.
John: I actually had the sort of strange experience of being in southern Spain in 1989 when all that music was blown up and I was taking a lot of little...
John: little square pieces of paper and eating a lot of little bits of like mescaline and... I thought you were talking about train tickets for a second.
John: I was eating a lot of train tickets.
John: I was smoking a lot of very black hash that had floated over from Africa.
John: And dancing on the beach...
John: to this music.
John: Went to a whole month of beach raves in 89 in Spain.
John: And let me tell you, the music was just exactly right for that.
John: But I was so high.
John: And everyone around me was so high.
John: We were so high.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I'm guessing they could have put on Phil Oaks or Mitch Miller, and you were probably so high that you still would have danced in Dayglo Paint.
John: They could have put on, you know, Whipped Cream and Other Delights.
John: That's a good record.
John: They could have put on Henry Mancini's Baby Elephant Walk.
John: I would have thought it was the most amazing thing in the world.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: Now I have the indelible image of you dancing earnestly to Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass.
John: They could have put Flight of the Bumblebees.
John: These beach raves were incredible things.
John: They'd be like this grass hut.
John: and they would truck out these massive speakers out on the beach, and then colored lights, and they would kind of paint everything, this crazy Dayglo paint.
John: And then the drugs were, it was assumed that
John: that everybody had drugs.
John: Like there wasn't a, there was no, Hey man, have you got any drugs?
John: It was very much like, all right, here's the music.
John: And now here are some drugs.
John: And now here, here's some liquor and go.
John: And so everybody was wasted and you could go, you could walk out into the ocean and the music was still loud.
John: You could dance with the waves and, and we were young people.
John: Then there was touching.
John: There was a lot of touching and,
Merlin: This sounds a lot like the 60s, John.
John: It was a magical time, and that whole thing that happens in Ibiza...
John: for the intervening 20 years.
John: They've just been trying to recapture those experiences that we, a few bold pioneers, intrepid pioneers, had there in 89.
John: I was just an accidental tourist through there.
John: I was on my own mission and came across this thing.
John: Didn't realize it was a movement that was happening.
John: Didn't realize that it was a sound.
John: I was just like, wow, drugs and girls.
Mm-hmm.
Merlin: but it kept me there this is the this is this is frequently the way certainly that way with the quote-unquote summer of love which if you do even the slightest bit of reading you'll discover was maybe a month there was about a month that went from it's fun to smoke pot and neck to like every hate street has been ruined with heroin it was a very very short time and then all like you say the tourists arrive like when you're in the moment of something like that and it doesn't have a name yet you know that's that's exciting but you know now how did you know it was time to go
John: Oh, it was time to go because somebody that I met, somebody came along and was like, hey, you want to go to Morocco?
John: And I was like, yeah, this thing here on the beach has been great, but it must be... It was like everything when you're young.
John: You think that...
John: I've never been to the south of Spain before, so once I got there and this was going on, I was like, oh, this must be what it's like in the south of Spain.
John: A bunch of English kids listening to really loud music and tripping on ecstasy.
John: I didn't know that it was just a moment.
John: And so, yeah, then I went to Morocco.
John: I spent a month there trying to... I got to Morocco and I decided that I was going to hitchhike
John: to Mount Kilimanjaro.
John: I had just turned 21.
John: I turned 21 in Cadiz, Spain.
John: So I was 21 and two days old.
John: And I'm in Morocco, and I say, I'm in Africa, and I'm going to hitchhike to Mount Kilimanjaro.
John: And so off I go, and I stick out my thumb, and I realize I'm going to have to take a couple of those Moroccan buses that are full of... The bus has a bunch of chickens in it, and then there are goats tied to the roof.
John: So I spent two weeks heading south in Morocco.
John: The whole time, like...
John: Yeah, I'm going to Kilimanjaro.
John: And nobody's listening to me.
John: And I finally get down to the edge of the Sahara, to a town called Wurzazat.
John: And Wurzazat is pretty far down there.
John: on the other side of the mountains and kind of, you know, you are now at the north edge of the desert.
John: And there are these trucks coming through this town
John: that are headed across the desert.
John: And I hitch another ride.
John: I get down to this little town called Zagora.
John: And it's really the last... It's really pretty close to the last town before the Sahara.
John: And I'm standing in this hotel and I'm talking to people.
John: I'm like...
John: And it's really an oasis, you know what I mean?
John: Like it's desert, desert, desert, and then you come to this little town, Zagora, little palm trees and a little, and there's like a pond.
John: It's like an oasis, like a proper pond in the desert with frogs and stuff.
John: I'm talking to these guys in the hotel, these truck drivers, and I'm like, you know, hey, can I get a ride with you across the desert?
John: And everybody laughs.
John: I'm like, so I go to another group, and I'm like, I'm trying to get across the desert.
John: Can I hitch a ride with you?
John: Everybody laughs.
John: And finally, somebody, some trucker grabs me by the shirt, and he's like, do you realize how long this drive is across the desert?
John: And he draws a little map on a coaster, and he's like, here's Africa.
John: Here's the Sahara.
John: Here...
John: are we and here's how long you've traveled in the last two weeks you know and it had taken me two weeks to go the length of a his pinky fingernail and he was showing me that the route across the desert was from the tip of his finger to his elbow you know wow and uh he said we carry you know we carry three weeks worth of water for each person
John: You know, and the trucks, these desert, these trucks that cross the Sahara, they're not just like semi-trucks.
John: They're these massive, they have big tires, massive like desert dune buggy type of things.
John: And so anyway, this trucker was like, there's no one that's ever going to pick up a hitchhiker in Zagora and travel with him two and a half weeks across the desert.
John: Like we are...
John: We are highly paid specialists, and this is a massive undertaking, and you're just way out of your league here.
Merlin: What kind of stuff are they trucking across that distance?
Merlin: So I'm guessing not live animals.
John: No, no.
John: It's, you know, like the town of Timbuktu is out there somewhere.
Merlin: There are... The Timbuktu that we refer to as out in the middle of nowhere.
John: Yeah, the actual Timbuktu is in the center of... is on that road somewhere.
John: And, you know, they used to, all the people that live in that massive expanse of land used to get all their stuff by camel, camel caravan.
John: And now these trucks, you know, provide a living to all those people in Mali and...
John: I mean, God only knows.
John: I barely grasp it even now, the way the world works.
John: So finally, this whole trip I'd been taking across Morocco, I had not looked at a map.
John: I kept heading south, and I figured when I got to Kilimanjaro, I would know because it was a mountain.
John: And when I realized that Africa is so much bigger than I could have imagined and that that trip would have been, that was a lifetime undertaking.
John: And I was trying to make it, you know, while listening to the traveling Wilbur's on my waterproof Walkman or whatever.
Yeah.
John: That was one of the five moments in my life when I realized that I was completely out of my depth and didn't just need to go back and regroup, but needed to really go back and think about how stupid I was.
John: Put some serious thought into how stupid I was.
John: And the problem was, I'm in Zagora, and now...
John: I'm at the edge of the Sahara and I need to get back.
John: I need to go back north.
John: And nobody's going north.
John: Everybody's going south.
John: Nobody's going north.
John: And I ended up having to, I ended up getting a cab back in Wurzazad.
John: A guy with a cab.
John: And we sat in the public square and negotiated, you know, for two hours with 25 little kids standing around us where he's like, all right, I'll take you.
John: I'm not going back to Marrakesh, but I'll take you across, you know, like his mom or whatever lived over in, over by the Algerian border or something like that.
John: And I was like, okay, I'll ride with you.
John: And it ended up being 40 bucks or something like that.
John: But yeah, he drove me all the way.
John: So it's just an incredible journey of stupidity.
Merlin: So you were flying by the seat of your pants a lot of the time, though.
Merlin: It sounds like your knowledge of geography is obviously very strong, but it wasn't like Indiana Jones.
Merlin: You see a plane flying through the air on a map thing.
Merlin: You didn't have an itinerary.
Merlin: You were just following your nose.
John: No, absolutely falling my nose.
John: I did that for a long time.
John: And the great thing is that you can be somewhere, you can end up somewhere that you couldn't have planned to be.
John: Like, for instance, I was in Berlin the day the wall came down.
Merlin: You're kidding.
John: No.
Merlin: You're Selig.
John: No, yeah, well, yeah, maybe a little bit.
John: I mean, I've been a lot of places where the thing happened when I was there.
John: I was in Oakland the day the Oakland fire started.
John: Wow.
John: And I was sitting at the breakfast table with this girl I knew, and she looked out of the window, and she was like, boy, the sky looks weird.
John: And I looked out and said, yeah, it's like orange.
John: The sky is orange.
John: It was 8 o'clock in the morning that morning.
John: And we walked out in the yard,
John: And the whole hill above her house was on fire.
John: And we jumped in the car.
John: So scary.
John: It was amazing.
John: We jumped in the car and of course, you know, with me behind the wheel and headed toward it.
John: and drove up into Oakland until we came to a place where waves of fire were going across the street.
John: And to continue up the road, we would have had to have driven under fire.
John: And we stopped and suddenly realized that this wasn't like, hey, let's go up and look at the fire.
John: it was that this was an absolutely uncontrolled conflagration and we were going to die.
John: And we turned the car on and people were running.
John: People were running, holding their family pets.
John: We turned around and headed back down the hill with the fire on our heels and got to a place where the fire department had blocked off the road
John: after we'd gone past so we had to get through their roadblock headed the other way you know in this massive stream of people and over the course of the day we we moved three four different times where we would get to a place and be like okay we're safe and then the tidal wave of fire trees were exploding in the air it was the craziest thing i'd ever seen and now you know what was i doing there who knows
John: But yeah, I was in Berlin in 89 the day they opened the wall.
John: And it was just because I was... I'd been in Florence a few days before and somebody said that we should go to Berlin and I went.
Merlin: That's insane.
John: Yeah.
John: But the problem with traveling that way is that sometimes you are one and a half blocks away from the world's largest ball of twine and you don't see it because you don't know that it's there because you never have opened a guidebook or looked...
John: you know, so you're just traveling by the seat of your pants and you, and you actually miss some of the stuff that it would have been easy to see because you're just like, well, you think how different that would be today?
Merlin: I mean, as soon as I arrive anywhere, I have an iPhone in my hand the whole time I'm somewhere, you know, and I'm not only am I relying on the maps, John, I'm relying on the little, let me hit the arrow twice to show me which direction to walk.
Yeah.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And even then I realized I just walked the wrong way.
Merlin: The Starbucks is the other way.
John: Some of that stuff, like when I was out in Zagora or certainly when I was walking across Europe.
Merlin: Just for reference, we're going to get an intern.
Merlin: I'm going to have them go back and Google every one of these fake cities that you talked about.
John: Are you not writing these down on 3x5 cards anymore?
John: I don't hear the 3x5 cards flapping.
Merlin: I can't keep up anymore.
Merlin: I still got something over here about Roy Thomas Baker, but at Zagora, I started glazing over.
John: Now, that's a hell of a town.
John: Great little town.
John: If you're ever in the neighborhood.
John: But what's amazing is that during all those times, there were weeks and weeks at a time when I was completely out of touch with the world.
Merlin: I didn't... You have such a strange personality...
Merlin: Full stop.
Merlin: But it's so interesting to me that you can be okay with that much lack of roots.
Merlin: I'm not even saying just compared to me where I like to make an appointment to go to the bathroom.
Merlin: It's just amazing to me that you could be on the road so long, not knowing when the next meal is, not knowing... I think that's a little crazy.
Merlin: It's amazing.
Merlin: In one case, obviously, you realize you can't ride across a desert, but...
Merlin: Man, I don't want to say reckless, but it's certainly very adventurous.
John: Well, the greatest thing that ever happened to me, or the most mind-flipping thing that ever happened, was I was sleeping in a park in Avignon, France, which is the site of the song Sur le Pont d'Avignon.
Merlin: So where the Demizels live.
John: That's where the Demoiselles lived.
John: There were popes there for a little bit.
Merlin: Yeah, they had a whole second pope deal going there.
John: A little second pope town.
John: But I was sleeping in a park in that town, and I woke up, and there was a man standing over me in the dark.
John: And I looked to my left, and I realized that my bag was gone.
John: My bag had been stolen.
Merlin: Shit.
John: And this guy was standing over me, and he was clearly trying to... He was bending over, trying to figure out how to get...
John: What he knew was probably my passport and my money, which was around my neck.
John: And I jumped, you know, I squirted out of this bag like a, like a, like jello coming out of a, you know, a squeeze.
Merlin: Jello squirter.
John: Like jello coming out of a jello squirter.
John: And this guy starts running and I start running after him in my bare feet.
John: And we run and run and run all over Avion.
John: We're running on the little freeway.
John: We're running down by the river.
John: I'm chasing this guy and I'm swearing at him.
John: And he's staying just in front of me the whole time.
John: And finally he jumps over a metal retaining, a metal barrier on a highway.
John: He leaps over this thing.
John: And I leap and I catch my toe right on the edge of it.
John: And
John: it's slammed down on the ground.
John: I'm all bloody and he gets away and I go back to my little place where I'd been sleeping and there's nothing left.
John: They came and took my sleeping bag while I was chasing Scott.
John: Oh my God.
John: Fuck Avignon.
John: Yeah, it's, well, you know, France has, there are a lot of people in France
John: That's true.
John: But in any case, I'm walking around.
John: They did leave my shoes.
John: And I can only think that they left my shoes as a gesture of human kindness.
John: You know what I mean?
John: That's right.
John: They could have taken the shoes too, but they left the shoes as like, hey, we're not animals.
John: We're not monsters.
John: It's not Germany.
Merlin: So I'm limping around.
Merlin: I'm all... Now, let me just be clear.
Merlin: He was able to nab the thing around your neck, so you're passportless and moneyless?
John: No, no, no.
John: He was not able to nab.
John: Oh, you just wanted to kick his ass.
John: I was going to kick his ass.
John: I was going to get this guy, and I was going to beat him to within an inch of his life.
John: Teach him a French lesson.
John: And probably, if I had caught him, he would have knifed me with what he surely had in his hand, which was surely a stiletto.
John: Like...
John: I was stupid to chase him.
John: And while I was chasing him, his friends came and stole my sleeping bag.
John: And probably the guys that had my backpack were standing 25 feet away in the opposite direction.
John: And I should have gone and chased them instead.
John: But I didn't see them.
John: I just saw this guy and I was like, you.
John: But in any case, I spent a few days walking around Avion, now without a sleeping bag at night, looking at all the trash cans and
John: and down all the embankments and under all the bushes for them having stripped everything out of my bag.
John: Because there were some journals.
John: I was hoping they'd thrown the journals in the garbage.
John: I wanted to get my journals at least.
John: Never found anything.
John: But I had my passport and I had the money that I had around my neck.
John: And I had some people that I was supposed to meet.
John: I was supposed to meet some people.
John: What was the story?
John: I was supposed to meet some people in Madrid in like eight days.
John: Some people I had met earlier that were like, meet us in Madrid on the 15th or something.
John: I was like, all right, I'll meet you in Madrid on the 15th.
John: So I was in Avignon and I just was like, well, I'm not going to replace all that stuff.
John: And I just started traveling with the clothes on my back.
John: Jeez.
John: And, you know, and I was, obviously I was covered with like blood for a while, but I washed the blood out of the clothes and eventually my scabs healed.
John: And for another five months, I traveled all around Europe in just the clothes on my back.
John: And I probably smelled terrible.
John: I mean, I would wash my clothes in the sink at youth hostels and stuff.
John: And hang them up to dry.
John: And then in the morning, there'd still be a little day up, I'd put them on and they'd be dry in an hour.
John: And it was the most liberating experience of my life.
John: I had never, I did not realize how free you could be.
John: I would fall asleep on a train or I'd fall asleep on a park bench or whatever and I'd wake up and just stand up and start walking.
John: Because I had nothing, there was no like, here, let me get my stuff or let me pack my sleeping bag back in its bag.
John: And that was great, and it worked quite well until winter came.
John: And then I was screwed.
John: But the thing that you're talking about, about just casting yourself loose in the world, the people I've admired the most were the ones that were able to take it further than I was able to do, which were that they severed their attachments, their mental attachments, to home.
John: which I was never able to do.
Merlin: You mean they didn't have a home base or it didn't matter that they didn't have a home base?
John: That somehow they either pretended very well or they truly did not ever want to go see their mom again.
John: They never dreamt of going home to see their mom and having Christmas at home with their mom.
John: And
John: No matter how far out I would get and no matter how much I was out sleeping under a tree somewhere and by all appearances, if somebody had come along and said, come with me to Abu Dhabi, I would have said, absolutely, here we go.
John: But as I'm sitting there under the tree, I'm thinking...
John: I'm like dreaming of home, you know?
John: And it was a mental connection to home that I couldn't sever.
John: And the people that I saw out there when I was living that close to the edge, I guess, if you... You know, the edge of being like outside of civilization...
John: The people that I admired that I would meet sometimes who had a look of real dastardly self-possession.
John: I didn't sense in them that they had any desire to ever go home.
Merlin: Why would you envy that?
John: Because I kept feeling like I was tethered.
John: That I wasn't brave enough
John: to sever that connection.
John: And in a way, it might be that that connection is what saved my life multiple times.
John: It's why I never did intravenous drugs.
John: Because...
John: There were a lot of things that I did that I did not... That connection to home didn't interfere with my choice to do bad things.
John: But there were certain bad things I never did.
John: I did not ever steal.
John: I didn't ever...
John: To live that life and yet to have a personal prohibition on ever stealing, like shoplifting a thing of yogurt or whatever, was beneath my dignity.
John: And that was because of this idea of home that I had and particularly of one day walking back in through the front door of my mother's house.
John: And I think it saved me multiple times.
John: But at the time, I recognized it was the thing that kept me from being truly wild.
John: All the way wild.
John: And those people that were all the way wild...
John: I really admired them, sitting around the campfires with them and seeing that look in their eye.
John: And that might have been a put-on, too.
John: People are capable of putting that look on.
Merlin: What you're describing, though, this could be the same thing.
Merlin: This might be a false dilemma.
Merlin: But on the one hand, you're talking about something very close to monasticism.
Merlin: Or this idea of being free of, I don't want to say attachment is maybe too Buddhist of a word, but being free of the yearning for things.
Merlin: Not only not missing it, but not finding yourself yearning for the things you miss.
Merlin: But on the other end, you're talking about fucking psychopaths.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: There is.
Merlin: And you're absolutely right.
Merlin: That's very natural.
Merlin: It's a very I would have.
Merlin: I mean, maybe I'm just in a middle aged American, which I am.
Merlin: But it seems like that desire to have a place in the tribe goes way beyond, you know, people who are born in the 60s.
Merlin: That's a pretty old idea.
John: Yeah, and that was precisely why I wanted to get away from it.
John: The line between being a great monk, between being a true monk and being a total psychopath is a pretty nebulous line.
John: The great mystics are all reviled in their own time.
Merlin: Well, a lot of them are fucking nuts, too.
John: Well, a lot of them are nuts, and a lot of them are burned at the stake for being nuts.
John: But the work that they do, the mystical work that they do, pushing...
John: Right.
John: Right.
John: I didn't have a 60s affectation past a certain point.
John: I wasn't trying to go further.
Merlin: I just met people of our generation.
Merlin: Oh, sure.
John: And that was the impetus initially.
John: Like, hey, man, let's go.
Merlin: Was there any kind of like a Beats sort of influence?
John: No, no, no.
John: I hated all that shit.
Merlin: Is that right?
John: For not very long.
John: I mean, I liked Paul Bowles.
John: I have no idea who that is.
John: Paul Bowles, he wrote The Sheltering Sky.
John: Oh, okay.
John: But he wrote a lot of great short stories and he translated a lot of, he translated from Arabic a lot of sort of folk tales as told to him by his Moroccan houseboy, Mohamed Morabat, who was this sort of great, ended up being this great Moroccan writer.
John: But no, the beats and all that stuff, that all seemed very like look back at itself.
John: And I just wanted to see what the limits were.
Merlin: But all those things, again, it's like the hippies or it's like any of that stuff.
Merlin: Or even for that matter, people's obsession with something like monasticism in a religious context.
Merlin: Just in the same way that you couldn't keep dancing on the beach in Spain.
Merlin: I mean, people's attachment to that kind of stuff, even though it ends up being attachment to a kind of...
Merlin: freedom i mean it's like being attached to like the thanksgiving dinner you had in 1988 it's gone like that's not it's not a thing anymore you're not gonna you're not gonna recreate that and that's where you get into somebody like me i guess in the tourism you know like like heroin tourism i mean you know what i mean it's like you're it's such a difference to be somebody who travels in order to like okay here's the classic example and i've certainly been guilty of this everywhere i've ever gone somebody comes to san francisco
Merlin: And what do they say?
Merlin: They say, well, we're going to go to Fisherman's Wharf.
Merlin: You know, we're going to... Caradelli chocolates.
Merlin: Sure, sure.
Merlin: And Alcatraz, you work that all into one five-day adventure.
Merlin: And, you know, I'm not a native San Franciscan, but in the most...
Merlin: You know, useful way I can.
Merlin: I try to say, well, you should do that stuff and get your photos and stuff.
Merlin: But really, I would not block out more than half a day for that.
Merlin: Alcatraz, super fun.
Merlin: But really, when you go to any of those piers, you're going to get the same experience with slightly different weather and slightly different clothes.
Merlin: It's the same experience you would get in a touristy part of Gatlinburg.
Merlin: or a touristy part of Fort Myers.
Merlin: You're getting the international tourist experience there.
Merlin: It's just that there's crab and it's kind of costly.
Merlin: But that's the thing.
Merlin: If you come to San Francisco, and again, I don't want to say don't go see the Golden Gate Bridge.
Merlin: It's fucking amazing.
Merlin: But there's a certain kind of approach to that stuff where that wanderlust reads as, I want to get my picture taken at the Eiffel Tower.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Versus, like, I want to, you know, go ask some guy who's making maps with his thumbnail if he can drive me to a giant mountain.
Merlin: And now today, though, here's the funny thing.
Merlin: Like, I don't know if it's too much of a contrast, but now today you're a man who collects candles.
John: Yeah, and I think about that all the time.
John: At some point along the way, I realized, and what happened was, I realized that citizenship, this was the big moment for me, that citizenship is an all-in proposition.
John: And you see this all the time with...
John: With young people, not just the street punks.
John: Street punks are on one sort of side of this bell curve.
John: Street punks all the way up to hippie, hippie-dippie, you know, I don't wear leather shoes sort of people.
John: People who are trying to...
John: They are trying to limit the number of ways in which they are fully vested in their citizenship, right?
John: They say, yes, I agree that we should have driver's licenses.
John: This is the Tea Party problem, right?
John: I agree that we should have driver's licenses, but I don't agree that I should have to have insurance.
John: They're trying to set their own line somewhere in the sand where on one side of the line are all the citizenship things that they personally agree to.
John: And then on the other side of the line are all these other citizenship things that they feel are unnecessary or too restrictive or for whatever reason they choose to think that they don't have to play.
John: And there was a moment for me, because I lived without ID for many years, and I lived in the city, and I didn't have ID.
John: So I could not go into bars.
John: I did not have a bank account.
John: When a policeman stopped me, I had to explain that I didn't have ID and get the inevitable lecture from the guy.
John: They never took me in.
Merlin: Are you allowed to not have an ID?
Merlin: Can't you be arrested for not presenting identification?
John: Yeah, you can be.
John: You're not allowed to.
John: But when a cop stops you for something and you don't have ID, it's really low on his list of priorities.
John: Like, I'm going to take this kid to jail for no ID.
John: So you get a stern talking to.
John: You need ID.
John: It's important.
John: You need to go get some identification.
John: You know, because I could verify my identity to them.
John: It would take us 45 minutes of me explaining who I was and telling him my social security number and all this stuff.
John: You know, like...
John: But in the long run, I did not have ID because I had drawn the line somewhere on how much I was willing to participate in the civilization I was living in.
John: And I had this moment where I was watching someone else, a person I knew who was very much opposed to the cops and opposed to the laws and opposed to the man.
John: And this person encountered some difficulty at one point and called the police to come help them and bitched about the police response.
John: And then when the police got there, they whined to the police.
John: And the police were like, yeah, you kind of made your bed in this situation.
John: But sure, we'll look for the guy that, you know... Stole your weed.
Merlin: That did you wrong.
Merlin: That's my favorite when you call the cops because the weed got stolen.
John: We'll look for the guy that stole your weed, exactly.
John: And then they leave, and this person commences to, like, talking shit about the cops again.
John: And I realized, if you are living outside...
John: If you want to live outside of the rules, if you don't want to follow all the rules, then you should also not have any recourse to the benefits.
John: You can't call the cops if someone steals your weed.
John: And if you sit and talk shit about the cops, then don't call them.
John: And, of course, no one is... I mean, the people that are willing, that truly do live outside the world, and when somebody beats the shit out of them and steals all their stuff, they don't call the cops because they recognize that the cops will never help them.
John: They're truly outside the world.
John: Those people live desperate lives.
John: And if you're not willing to live at the edge of desperation...
John: really your only other option is to be fully vested as a citizen.
Hmm.
John: You need to have, if you have a driver's license, you need to have insurance.
John: If you, you know, if you.
Merlin: You're saying, I mean, so you're saying it's not a buffet in the same way in the marathon four hours that we cut out of our discussion once before.
Merlin: It's not a buffet.
Merlin: You're saying you can't come in and pick that.
Merlin: This is what I decided to be adamantly evangelistic about.
Merlin: And this is the part that I've decided is too inconvenient.
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: You cannot refuse to pay your taxes and still drive on the roads and bridges.
John: You cannot say that if you don't have kids, you shouldn't pay taxes for the schools and then walk down the street and complain about the youth of America or whatever.
John: The decisions about...
John: about what constitutes full membership in society, those decisions are not being made by one person up above who's like, here are the rules you have to follow.
John: Those are decisions that we have made collectively as a group of people over many, many, many hundreds of years.
John: And it's like, this is just what, it's a lot of responsibility to be a fully vested human being.
John: And it requires all this stuff.
John: And it isn't a buffet.
John: If you live in the culture, you have to do all the stuff.
John: And you're not a rebel by refusing to do
John: by refusing to do one thing from column a and refusing to do one thing from column B, you know, it isn't, you're not a rebel.
John: You're just being a brat, you know?
John: And, and you, you can, if you don't like paying taxes, you can absolutely make your case in the public square, but you cannot refuse to pay them.
John: It isn't an option.
John: And you are a brat.
John: If you think that it is an option, you're just being a baby.
John: So, and, and I came to that understanding of,
John: um, by living with thieves for, for a long time, living, living, uh,
John: not all the way out, still attached to home, you know, not all the way out where if the cops, if some, if somebody beat me up, I wouldn't call the cops and not only that, but the cops would beat me up.
John: You know, I wasn't living all the way out.
John: I was living on the fringe with, with, with people that were also living on the fringe, but, but they still sucked off of civilization and I, and I found it, I found it disgusting ultimately.
Merlin: I think you might be lawful neutral.
Merlin: I always thought lawful neutral was one of the most interesting alignments because there's always – you get a lot of lawful good.
Merlin: Like if you're going to be a paladin, you got to be lawful good.
Merlin: Got to be lawful good.
Merlin: If you're going to – a lot of thieves end up being chaotic, good, right?
Merlin: Or what is it?
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Like there's all these different alignments.
Merlin: But I always thought lawful neutral was really interesting because it wasn't really a matter of obviously of good or evil.
Merlin: It was a matter of like –
Merlin: you know what i'm saying i always thought that was very interesting that like it sounds like what you're describing is in a weird way even though you are an outsider in many of your ways you're saying that if you take part of the system you take the whole system and that is in some sense the law i don't know if you call it ethics maybe ethics would be a better word for it but you're saying you you got to buy into the whole system yeah but that i think that is a lawful neutral revelation that i had within the context of being ultimately chaotic good
Merlin: That's what I always like to think I was.
Merlin: Chaotic good... A lot of dickheads are chaotic good.
John: Well, I may be... I may be vulnerable to that.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: I'm talking about myself.
Merlin: I'm talking about myself.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: Chaotic good is what is the most passive-aggressive alignment you could choose to give yourself.
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: Don't you think?
John: No.
John: I think using the word good... I think this is something... This is a very key distinction.
John: I...
John: People have mistaken the word good for being synonymous with the word nice.
Merlin: Oh, I was just talking mostly in D&D terms.
Merlin: But no, but as in life, I think a chaotic good guy walks around going, hey, you know, I'm a handful, but I'm a nice guy.
John: No, I think good is perhaps one of the most powerful words in the English language.
John: Like, good is not something that you seek...
John: Good is not nice.
John: Like, good is the pursuit of... Oh, like a capital G good.
John: Yeah, what you understand to be truth.
John: And if you are pursuing good and seeking it by any means necessary, that is how you get chaotic.
Yeah.
John: But you are chasing after the good.
John: And that is often very counter to nice.
John: Because in a situation where you aspire to being good, you can be in a social situation, which we often are,
John: Where the social currency is one of really compromised ethics.
John: You know, everybody in the group is getting along great.
John: They're all really nice people.
John: But you know what?
John: They're all kind of liars.
John: And there is a tremendous premium put on just going along with the lie.
John: Going along with the lie that they're telling themselves.
John: Going along with the lie that is happening at this party.
John: Going along with the overall lie that is governing themselves.
John: Our modern culture, you know, and to be to truly be good, you have to stand in that group of people and say, no, I will not.
John: I do not agree with your lie.
John: I do not.
John: I will not participate in your lie passively just in order to make this a happy party or to make everybody feel fine.
John: And I feel like a lot of times I am accused of being an asshole or being a caustic presence because in every situation I try and stay the course of what I think is my own ethical responsibility.
John: And that is the pursuit of what is good, not the pursuit of what is nice.
Merlin: But doesn't that – but it sounds like – and I don't want to get into one of those things I have to cut out.
Merlin: But I'm curious though because you're very – you're tough on people who are inside of a system and don't adopt the whole system.
Merlin: What systems are you 100% bought into that you would – that you accept 100% of?
John: Oh, and that's the thing, the system of law that governs us is deeply flawed.
Merlin: Well, it's also, and it's also, as a man from Alaska, you must certainly realize it is also very contradictory.
Merlin: It's very paradoxical.
Merlin: There's two very different threads in our great American history and culture that along the way keep running into each other, right?
Merlin: The sense of the Wild West and exploration and the sense of fair play, right?
Merlin: And a sense of profit motive, of course.
Merlin: So there's a lot of things you can account for by picking which one of those directions you think is the good.
Yeah.
John: Well, sure.
John: And recognizing that the good doesn't really lie in any one of those directions, but those are all necessities or they are all... You can pursue the good while living within these systems.
John: But you can't... And there are absolutely laws that I do not deign to follow.
John: You know what I mean?
John: I make those choices all the time.
John: Individual laws that I say, in this instance, I'm going to break this law because I know better.
John: And that is kind of the... That's where that idea breaks down.
John: But within the concept of government and...
John: The way that our society runs, the appeal to authority, the bureaucracy that keeps the lights on, that when you flush the toilet, it goes away and doesn't just empty out into the garden.
John: All that stuff, I take as a whole system.
John: And I don't...
John: I don't brook a lot of like, well, I don't pay my share of that because I disagree with the woman that got appointed to that job or whatever.
John: Zooming back...
John: Yeah, I want to always aspire to make the good choice rather than the expedient choice.
John: And that often is in conflict with the law.
John: That is a paradox.
John: And at 2 o'clock in the morning, if I'm sitting at a red light and I look both directions and there's no car coming, I go through the light.
John: It is a choice that I routinely make that there are traffic laws that at a certain hour of the day in certain situations, traffic laws go from being laws to being suggestions.
Merlin: Well, I'll take that one to the next level.
Merlin: And here's the one that I think this is not necessarily a person that I admire, but it's someone I kind of admire.
Merlin: And that's somebody who would say in that instance, like arrest me all you want.
Merlin: This is just a thing I'm going to do.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Which I think is kind of, it's the, maybe not the opposite, but it's very, it's very different from somebody saying, uh, you know, I hate the police except for when somebody breaks in and steals my figurines or something like that.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Uh,
Merlin: There's something interesting and dangerous about the true conscientious objector who says, you know, I'm breaking this law.
Merlin: I know I'm breaking this law.
Merlin: And I don't even have to give you a reason why.
Merlin: And the system can feel free to just chew me up in its gears because that's the decision that I've made.
Merlin: I think that's a very interesting and potentially dangerous to society kind of person.
Merlin: I'm not judging that, but I'm just saying that's the kind of person everybody's relying on people to at least hope they don't get caught.
Merlin: But if you truly are that kind of somebody with nothing to lose, sort of as you were describing it, I mean, that's somebody that society just has no idea how to deal with.
John: Yeah, they fill a kind of monastic role.
John: They're the people that...
John: sit Indian style in the public square and pour gasoline on themselves and, and immolate themselves to protest the bombing of Laos.
John: Um, in America, of course, nobody, nobody immolates themselves really that much.
John: Um, but, but the conscientious objector, like that is again, like, I, like you're saying, I admire them,
John: I admire them above all else, and not always because I admire what they're after, but that's nonviolent resistance.
John: That's Gandhi.
John: That's Martin Luther King.
John: It's why I don't admire the Tea Party so much, because there's a lot of talk of violent resistance in that group of people.
John: And violent overthrow...
John: is a thing that, you know, when it's time for violent overthrow, everybody knows it.
John: It's not a thing that you sit out in your little hut.
Merlin: Well, and the other thing is, I've always said this about social media, that social media is not what you have to say, it's what other people have to say about you.
Merlin: And people who are really interested in violence, I wonder how interested they are in the violence if they were to think about it as 10 times more violence on them and their family.
Merlin: than they had thought of it isn't a matter of you going out with a gun and acting like a big shot like imagine your family getting their throat slit in the night that's violence right violence is not your fantasy from watching cable tv and buying a gun violence is you're completely out of control and there's no one there to help you that's that's violence
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And that gets lost on a lot of people.
Merlin: But if you're going to have a tea party, then I'm going to talk about fast food activism.
Merlin: Yeah, let's go.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: That's probably a different thing.
Merlin: But that's what gets me is just the piousness that people have about the supposed desire for change that mainly comes down to what they put on Twitter.
Merlin: I cannot hide the fact that that drives me completely insane.
Merlin: I don't know how that fits into your worldview about the –
Merlin: the the um cohesiveness of buying into the system but man when you talk about change and you talk about trying to make something better it's just that feels so at odds there are certainly lots of cases where that has made a difference but i think by and large it is so cheapened the idea that if you care a lot about something you can see change affected by direct action yeah coney 2012
Merlin: What's that?
Merlin: You know, for just half a second I got kind of hungry because I thought you were talking about having a chili dog.
John: Yeah, Coney Dog.
John: Coney Island.
John: I think it's a failure of imagination.
John: I protest for Coney Dogs.
John: Yeah, I would too.
John: Give me a Coney Dog right now.
John: It's a failure of people's imaginations to imagine the worst case scenario personally, which is something that you have done.
John: It's something that I have done my whole life.
John: What if my big plan actually worked out?
John: How would that go?
John: Right, exactly.
John: How would that really... Two months later, what is that going to look like?
John: And
John: It's a very popular thing in the youth culture now to think about zombies.
John: It's a war of you against the zombies.
Merlin: The problem with zombies is once you start thinking about them, it's hard to stop thinking about them.
Merlin: It is.
Merlin: I like to think I'm a pretty rational person, but just even a little bit of exposure to zombies gets me thinking about zombies.
Merlin: You start thinking about zombies.
Merlin: right that idea though right there you know and this is again like all of the great uh i don't know sci-fi specular fiction whatever you want to call it like all the best stuff you know it's a it's a way of telling a story about something you otherwise could not have told a story about not always not always sometimes it's about spaceships you know what i mean but that that's what makes this kind of thing so great in that instance you talk about violence well here's some violence here's somebody that you can't you can't explain things to and
Merlin: And we don't like people that we can't reason with, or we can at least try to bring to our point of view, but also somebody who's just not even receptive to any plea that you have about why they should not eat your brain.
Merlin: That's a very troubling idea, and that they really are just such a simple machine.
Merlin: And that sounds silly in sci-fi, and I guess it is, but isn't that ultimately what we fear, with something like a police state, or something, you know what I mean?
Merlin: Sure, all against all.
Merlin: Yeah, well, we fear loosely organized violence from people that can't be dissuaded, that it's a bad idea.
John: Well, it's the fantasy that suburban whites have about inner city blacks, that you can't reason with them.
Merlin: This is why everybody should watch The Wire.
Merlin: That's all I'm saying.
Merlin: I know that's a cheap white guy thing to say, but the stuff that you're talking about, I was in my 40s before that really hit me over the head, that everybody's corrupted by a system.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: It's from the first opening scene of The Wire, if you've watched the DVD with the commentary, what really struck me about it is the guy saying that The Wire is ultimately about the American city.
Merlin: They asked, what was his name, David Simon or whatever?
Merlin: In a recent interview, they asked him, well, people ask him who's his favorite character on The Wire, and he says, absolutely, the city of Baltimore.
Merlin: Because it is this living thing, and everybody in it is getting fucked up by some system.
Merlin: And if you think being a cop is making you any less fucked up by a system than somebody who's selling drugs on the corner, you have no idea how complex this stuff is.
Merlin: Everybody's fucked up by somebody.
John: It's why I spend so much time down watching the container freight being unloaded off the ship and put on trucks.
Merlin: I find that very relaxing.
John: It's incredible, and for many years, I have gone and parked down and watched the containers come off the ships, get put on trucks, and drive away, or get put on trains and drive away.
John: And in following, we've talked about this before, but in the process of watching this happen, I've then said, where are those trucks going?
John: And I've followed them.
John: And I've said, where are those trains going?
John: And I've followed them, and I see the route they take out of the city, and I see the places that they stop on the way.
John: And in the process of that whole experience, I've got just the tiniest little thread of how complicated that system of moving goods is around the country and around the world.
John: And how everything in my room here at some point has gone into that stream and come out of it.
John: And sometimes gone into that stream and come out of it multiple times.
John: And understanding that that is in some ways, you know, like whatever you say about capitalism, in some ways that is a neutral system.
John: You know, it is just an organic system.
John: It is like a river.
John: I can't look at anything without thinking about it.
John: And the wire has a similar kind of, at a certain point, the morality of
John: The morality that you brought into watching that show is not the morality that you take out of having watched that show.
John: Where what is right and what is wrong, what is ultimately good and what is not good, are forever kind of flipped by your experience of like, oh, wow, I thought that guy was the hero and it turns out he's the villain.
John: Oh, wow, I thought that guy was the...
Merlin: That's really helped by coming into it thinking it's going to be a police procedural or a cops and robbers story of some kind.
John: That's true of every aspect of a city.
John: You know what I mean?
John: As an environmentalist, you look at trucks and you think, trucks are polluting.
John: Truck drivers are cowboys.
John: You talk to people all the time that are like, I hate truckers.
John: Or, why can't we...
John: Why can't we make everything run on propane?
John: It's a simple matter to just switch over to solar power.
John: There are so many people making value judgments about things, but they have no idea how complicated the system is, how difficult it is to change, how entrenched it is, first of all.
John: But secondly, how massive it is, how many people there are,
John: oaster blenders there are right now being trucked from somewhere to somewhere else for people to make smoothies and and what what all goes into that i mean it it uh it boggles the mind you can't read the newspaper without without ultimately every article takes you back to that at a certain point every article in the newspaper takes you back to that dock
John: every article in the newspaper, if you let your imagination go, takes you back to the guy who's working at the plant where your poo goes and sits in various pools until the bacteria eat the poo and then they dump it, kind of still a little bit poo water, like you wouldn't drink it, but it's not poo water so bad that they can't just dump it into the ocean.
John: It's non-potable.
John: It's non-potable, but once it goes in the ocean, the little ocean bacteria eat the remaining poo, and then it's nature, right?
John: Nature is just basically poo of different colors.
John: And that waste treatment plant that no one wants to think about, the waste treatment plant, nobody wants to think about, no one wants to put themselves in a little ship and follow their poo.
John: And yet, if that system broke down for one hour, we would all be up to our necks in poo.
John: And protesting.
John: And we'd be so mad.
John: And we'd be refusing to pay our taxes.
John: And we would be like, this is a... And it's just like, yeah, exactly.
John: It's amazing that...
John: That all of our systems, all of our little capillaries, that the blood keeps flowing in them.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And think about you wanting to hitch a ride to Mount Kilimanjaro.
Merlin: And in retrospect, that seems, based on what you're describing, you realize that that sounds a little silly.
Merlin: I was a free radical.
Merlin: Because you didn't have all the information that you needed.
Merlin: Well, you know, I think it's like a lot of people who are middle-aged.
Merlin: I know just enough to know what's stupid and not enough to know what's smart.
Merlin: But one thing I know is I think probably a little bit, if not stupid, at least a little bit short-sighted, is the failure to understand that everything in life is an engineering problem.
Merlin: And I honestly, I don't know how much we see eye to eye politically, but I'll just say that I think the biggest common problem in, you know, I prefer to say civics rather than politics.
Merlin: To me, politics is theater.
Merlin: To me, it's civics.
Merlin: The idea that there are things we want to improve.
Merlin: And you can think about that as government.
Merlin: You can think about that as getting potholes fixed.
Merlin: You can think about that as trying to get people to stop letting their dog shit in the park.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: However you want to think about that.
Merlin: But it all comes down to one basic problem.
Merlin: And until you address this problem, it's very difficult to get anything done with anything except raw power, which most of us don't have.
Merlin: And that is the problem that you can't change one factor about anything.
Merlin: And to me, when I look at almost all – and this is – I blame this completely on my stupid fucking liberal arts education that taught me to realize how things can be wrong –
Merlin: Not always figure out how they can be right.
Merlin: What I do know is you can't change one thing about anything.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I'm not an engineer.
Merlin: But all I know is that there are several factors that go into a plane staying in the air.
Merlin: You can't change one of those factors.
Merlin: And if you want to change one factor about anything in your life, and you focus very heavily on that, and that could be that you're against abortion.
Merlin: It could be that you're against dog poop.
Merlin: It could be you're against trucks.
Merlin: It could be that you're pro-vegetarian shoes.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: It's not good.
Merlin: It's not bad.
Merlin: It's just life.
Merlin: That if you change, if you fetishize one thing that should change without taking into account what else happens, you're going to have unexpected consequences.
Merlin: There are numerous, numerous examples in civics and in nature of all of these things happening all the time.
Merlin: And that's what I think.
Merlin: That's what drives me crazy.
Merlin: I mean, how could you ever categorically say everybody should carry a gun?
Merlin: How could you categorically say nobody should ever have an abortion?
Merlin: How could you categorically say no one should ever let their dog shit in the park?
Merlin: Well, I hate dog shit in the park.
Merlin: But if somebody's got to run home to go take care of somebody who's sick and their dog takes a shit while they're running, that might be an edge case.
Merlin: All I'm saying is that when the political stuff heats up and the civics melts down, it's frequently because we can't agree on the one thing that we want to change.
Merlin: And if we do try to change that one thing, we don't account for all the knock-on effects of everything else that gets fucked up because of it.
Merlin: Right.
John: And I think that's absolutely true even in your interpersonal or intrapersonal experience.
Merlin: Oh, 10 times.
Merlin: Yes.
John: When you start to think about like, I need to change this about myself.
John: I need to really look at this thing about myself, you know?
John: You can never do that in isolation.
John: You can never separate out the part of you that you want to change, make the change, and then put it back in.
Merlin: Well, if you spend eight hours a day drinking and say, I'm going to quit drinking, you're not accounting for the fact that you have eight open hours in the day now.
Merlin: And let's put a fine point on it.
Merlin: If you say to someone in your family, I don't want to say wife because I wouldn't want to sound like it's this, but let's say you say... Don't say anything to your wife.
Merlin: Never talk to your wife.
Merlin: That's the biggest engineering problem.
Merlin: In the doghouse.
Merlin: No, but think about this.
Merlin: Think about you finally get the stones to say to somebody, like, could you please stop chewing with your mouth full?
Merlin: Something that simple.
Merlin: It's been driving you crazy for years.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: Even if they did that, you might have solved it.
Merlin: The problem you meant to solve, which was to get them to stop making a noise that bugged you, would have been easier for you to not mind it.
Merlin: But now you've created a much larger problem, which is you sound like a dick.
Merlin: And you might make them self-conscious.
Merlin: I'm not saying that's good, bad, or indifferent.
Merlin: I'm just saying that's a really fucking simple example.
Merlin: If you say truck drivers are bad and we don't get trucks anymore, how are you going to get your vegetarian shoes delivered?
John: That's right.
John: Vegetarian chews come on trucks just like every catch.
Merlin: Unless you've got some way to have a green camel that doesn't poop in the park and votes pro-choice, how is that stuff going to happen?
Merlin: The system is not as simple as...
Merlin: And you know what?
Merlin: You know why I'm hot about this, John?
Merlin: Because this is exactly the fucktard that I was for like 30 years.
Merlin: I really did think it was this simple.
Merlin: I thought it was as simple as going and buying a t-shirt with a slogan on it that had probably been produced with tiny little Vietnamese fingers, and I bought it in some kind of, you know, I ordered it online and had it delivered to my house.
John: Well, everybody our generation does.
John: They read Manufacturing Consent, or they read Howard Zinn, and they come out of that experience.
Merlin: Go ahead.
Merlin: Say it, Kunstler.
Merlin: Go ahead.
Merlin: You can say it.
Merlin: They come out of that experience.
Merlin: Go ahead.
Merlin: Go after Kunstler.
Merlin: That's fine.
Merlin: I don't provoke you.
John: And they stand in the square of their university and they look at the person standing next to them who is insufficiently enlightened and they go, oh my God, are you really wearing those leather shoes?
John: Like, do you know that cows produce more methane than a thousand gasp?
John: Generators?
Merlin: But not as much as you, sir.
John: And you go, oh, boy.
John: Here we go.
John: You know, that kind of, you know, that kind of, like, lame brain activism.
Merlin: All I know is I cannot find a fucking 200-watt light bulb to save my life.
Merlin: John, my vision is dim.
Merlin: My vision is dim, and I like a bright fucking room.
Merlin: And now I'm walking around with these little few silly light bulbs that
Merlin: To put off just enough light to make everybody... I shouldn't get started on light bulbs.
Merlin: All I know is everybody I know looks like they have jaundice.
Merlin: Don't tell me the color temperature is getting better.
Merlin: It's not.
Merlin: They're still heinous.
Merlin: And you know what the difference... Can I tell you what the difference between a 100-watt incandescent light bulb is and a 200-watt?
Merlin: It's not twice.
Merlin: It's all the difference in the world.
Merlin: It's fucking lightning and the lightning bug.
Merlin: 200 watts, I can see everything that's happening.
Merlin: Can I just say if RTB had his photo taken with the proper lighting, he would look a lot better?
Merlin: He'd look a lot less like Ozzy.
Merlin: He's got one big black shadow.
Merlin: I'm sorry, African-American shadow behind him.
John: The picture of me that's on Wikipedia.
John: Are you got a Wikipedia thing?
John: The picture of me on there, it's like...
John: I'm in Texas.
John: I've been sweating for four days.
John: I haven't taken a shower.
John: Of all the pictures that could be of me on Wikipedia... Oh, that's a handsome picture, John.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: I don't do a lot with Wikipedia, and I don't want to get these guys' ire up, but I would be more than happy to public domain a photo of you that I have taken if you would like a different one up.
Merlin: I could try.
John: I think that'd be much better.
Merlin: I think you've got to work through a lot of channels on Wikipedia.
Merlin: Oh, is that right?
Merlin: Oh, my goodness.
Merlin: You know, I think I finally figured it out.
Merlin: I figured it out.
Merlin: A lot of people have talked about this.
Merlin: You must have, I think we might have even, well, you're 43.
Merlin: Check that out.
Merlin: Yeah, I know.
Merlin: You didn't know that?
Merlin: Yeah, well, I thought I was old.
Merlin: Yeah, I know.
Merlin: Wait a minute.
Merlin: I am older than you.
Merlin: Holy shit.
Merlin: A lot of people are.
Merlin: There was a story that was going around a few weeks ago about a guy who had written a book about the Haymarket riots.
Merlin: Did you hear this story?
Merlin: I'll recount it in briefs, and I could get some aspects of this wrong.
Merlin: Are you in briefs right now?
Merlin: I thought you were a boxer.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: I'm actually wearing pants, and I'm wearing a shirt with a collar.
Merlin: That's more than I can say.
Merlin: I felt like wearing a shirt with a collar today, and I can't tell you why.
John: I'm in a bathrobe.
Merlin: Long story short, the Haymarket Riots.
Merlin: Is that the one where somebody threw a bomb and the guys got railroaded?
Merlin: Isn't that Haymarket Riots?
John: They were all throwing Haymarket punches.
Merlin: Oh, the Haymakers.
Merlin: Anyway, this guy is one of the biggest authorities on certain aspects of a topic.
Merlin: Let's just make this a black box.
Merlin: He is more of an authority on aspects of this topic than pretty much anybody out there.
Merlin: But his edits were all rejected, and they basically told him to go away because he wasn't doing it the Wikipedia way.
Merlin: So even after he went away and wrote a book about it, it still wasn't enough.
Merlin: And so here's my take on Wikipedia.
Merlin: Wikipedia is not an author.
Merlin: It's a librarian.
Merlin: And that's what people don't understand.
Merlin: A librarian does not tell you what the book should say.
Merlin: It says that this is what the book says.
Oh.
Merlin: So I'm just saying.
Merlin: Now, why is there, why is there, there seems to be like maybe an aqua, like, did somebody throw panties at you?
Merlin: Or is that a bathrobe?
Merlin: Oh, it's a streamer of some kind.
John: I am, I am very, you know, I can't complain about my Wikipedia page because it's, because it's a, because it's de classe or it's a, it's bad form to complain about it.
John: But you know, other people's, other people of my peers, songwriters, their Wikipedia pages have a table of contents and talks about all this stuff.
John: And mine just feels like a kind of paragraph that someone wrote.
John: Makes me sad sometimes.
Merlin: Check out mine.
Merlin: I got it.
Merlin: My friend Graham took a really good picture from mine.
Merlin: you know i'm not hitting the computer that's good you know good for you what freaks me out is when i find like somebody who's like one of my favorite people in the world and like their wikipedia article is shorter than mine that completely freaks me out yeah that happens yeah grant hart's real name is grantsberg vernon hart what a great name grantsberg i i that sounds made up grantsberg what a great name how did you get you just on the internet and all of a sudden you're like huh grant hart i've got to go look at the minute men
Merlin: Let's check out the Minutemen.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: You know, that's just kind of how my brain works.
Merlin: I take Wikipedia off of everything.
Merlin: It's making me fake smart and actual dumb, and I just look at it all day long.
Merlin: All day long.
Merlin: That's what I do.
Merlin: I just look at it all day long.
Merlin: Something really Max Henry just happened in our recording.
Merlin: Oh, I can see.
Merlin: Hang on.
Merlin: I'm really into it.
Merlin: I hope that you keep it.
John: Oh, wow.
John: What happened?
John: What was it?
John: I think I could fix it.
John: Well, you just came back.
John: You were down a wall.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I think I slipped into another dimension there.
Merlin: It's probably because we were talking about the Minutemen.
Merlin: I feel really strongly about the Minutemen.
John: You actually went me-da-be-da-be-da-be-da for a second.
John: Really?
John: Like Tweaky?
John: Yeah, like Tweaky from Buck Rogers in the 21st century.
Merlin: Man, that Erin Gray, when she would wear that little shiny suit...
John: Oh, don't talk about Aaron Gray.
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: You got a problem with Aaron Gray?
John: Oh, I love Aaron Gray.
Merlin: God, I love Aaron Gray.
John: And it derailed my whole train of thought.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Aaron Gray.
Merlin: What about Gil Gerard?
Merlin: Whatever happened to him?
Merlin: Let's see if he's on Wikipedia.
John: I bet he is.
John: He's like Tom Selleck.
John: He's out there trying to get work.
John: Tom Selleck's very conservative, isn't he?
John: He's a conservative guy, but I find... Oh, shit.
John: Kill Gerard.
John: Oh, my God.
John: I did a little bit of research on Tom Selleck the other day, and I believe... Oh, this is when I had to walk away from you for a while.
Merlin: You had a little thing going about Matthew McConaughey for a while, too, didn't you?
John: McConaughey.
John: Can't abide it.
John: Can't abide McConaughey.
John: You sounded like Nell for a minute.
John: i feel like he uh although i disagree with his politics uh i believe that he is just one of those guys he's like if you were dating his daughter he would be your daughter's dad or he would be your wife's dad that you were like yeah we don't agree on politics but i really love what's his politics he's just a republican
Merlin: What?
Merlin: Matthew McConaughey?
Merlin: I thought he played bongos in his underwear while he was high.
John: I was talking about Tom Selleck.
John: Matthew McConaughey's politics.
John: You can tell what they are.
John: They're just fucking stoner politics.
John: Because Matthew McConaughey is a stoner.
Merlin: Stoner politics.
Merlin: Give me a plank in the platform of stoner politics.
John: Oh, dude, legalize it.
Merlin: Don't criticize it.
John: Stoner politics are basically like, dude, why are you wearing leather shoes?
John: Don't you know that cows produce methane?
Merlin: Oh, are you being a little reductive?
Merlin: Have you ever owned a pair of non-leather shoes?
John: If there's one thing that I think you can safely be reductive on, it's that stoners are fucking idiots.
John: Speaking as someone who was a stoner for many years.
Merlin: I don't mind stoners.
Merlin: I just fucking hate hippies.
Merlin: Now, you know what?
Merlin: I'm trying not to say the word hate.
Merlin: I really hate hippies.
Merlin: I know you hate hippies.
Merlin: I really hate hippies.
Merlin: Hippies get under my skin the way that almost everything gets under your skin.
Merlin: Hippies are everything that's wrong with everything.
John: Yeah.
John: Hippies are bad.
John: Stoners as a subset of hippies.
Merlin: Stoners are harmless.
Merlin: They're like zombies.
Merlin: You can swipe them away with one good hit to the head.
John: I don't think that they are harmless.
John: There are stoners all around you.
Merlin: You don't realize there's... John, John Roderick.
Merlin: You know, I don't have a strong position on some of these things as you do in my perception, but there's just too many people smoking pot these days.
Merlin: It's got to stop.
Merlin: It's got to stop.
Merlin: You've got to get into something else.
Merlin: There's just... You're all smoking too many.
Merlin: If you're listening to this show and you're still smoking pot, shame on you.
Merlin: Enough.
Merlin: Yeah, stop smoking pot for God's sakes.
Merlin: Well, my God, take a walk or make some macaroni.
Merlin: There's got to be something else you can do.
Merlin: Every day, really?
Merlin: You've got to do that every day?
Merlin: The first 400 times you smoke pot, you're like, wow.
Merlin: That takes me to my sophomore year of college.
John: Dude, did you see that cat?
John: Did you see that cat?
John: That cat looked like Jerry Lewis, man.
John: Like the first 400 times you smoke pot, it's amazing.
John: Because did you see that cat?
John: Yes.
John: Did you see that orange?
John: Oh my God, did you see that orange?
John: That was totally an orange.
John: For 400 times, you can get away with, did you see that orange?
John: Oh my God, did you see that guy?
Merlin: But the 401st time— I know that I see green and you see green, but how do I know that we're seeing the same green?
Merlin: Exactly.
John: The 401st time, it's over.
John: And every subsequent time after that, it's over.
Merlin: I think they call it diminishing returns.
John: It is exactly what it is.
Merlin: You're not going to—I don't know.
Merlin: Now, there are some people, I've got to tell you, I think there are some people where the pot is the only thing that's keeping them from getting really fucking weird.
Merlin: But I think a lot of people, they stay fucking weird because of the pot, and they kind of like it.
John: Yeah, I mean, admittedly, there are people that are using pot as a medicinal substance, and I'm not talking about people with fake glaucoma, but I'm talking about people that take a little hit of pot every day as an anxiety reliever or whatever, and okay, fine, I'm not going to get all up in your bokeh about it.
John: But stoners?
John: No.
John: Bad.
John: Bad.
John: Stop being stoners.
Merlin: They're like swingers or something.
Merlin: It's like it's always there.
Merlin: It's always there.
Merlin: Even if they're not swinging, the swinging thing is always kind of there.
Merlin: Maybe that's my hang-up, which is fine, but it's a hang-up I wish everybody had.
Merlin: And with the stoners, it's just a matter of fucking time before somebody takes out the one-hitter, and then, you know what I mean?
Merlin: There's the inertia.
Merlin: Then everybody's got to get high, and they sit very still.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Party over.
Merlin: And even if you're not silly.
Merlin: And here's the other thing.
Merlin: 1999, and here's the problem now.
Merlin: You get into your 50s, and you're doing that shit every day in fleece.
Merlin: You know, it's not making you interesting.
Merlin: I shouldn't say this, John.
Merlin: I don't like to judge, but really so many people need to be judged.
John: Well, this is the thing.
John: All you have to do is go to Holland.
John: Can I just literally beg you to not get me started on the Dutch?
John: You walk around in Holland and you talk to people and you realize nobody, no normal people in Holland smoke pot.
John: No, really.
John: Is that true?
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: Their attitude about it is like, oh, right.
Merlin: I thought that was like being a dick in France.
Merlin: I thought it was just what you did.
John: Oh, no, no, no.
John: Not at all.
John: Tourists.
John: Tourists and... I mean, the Dutch are very... They're very quick to say, like, losers.
John: Right?
John: I mean, pot's legal, so the mystery is gone.
John: And so...
John: All they have to do is just see what happens when you smoke marijuana, which is that it makes you a dope.
John: And so 99% of the normal, like your average Dutch person,
John: has no, there's no mystery about smoking pot and they don't do it.
John: They're just like, yeah, that's just for the, that's for the tourist district and that's for like assholes.
Merlin: It's like I think everybody here eats sourdough bread and rice aroni.
Merlin: Oh, in San Francisco.
Merlin: Now throwing fish, how often do you go and watch them throw fish?
John: You know, you're going through and you've got somewhere to go and they're throwing fish.
John: And it's actually, it helps because the fish throwing collects the detritus people around the fish throwing and you can get sort of down the stairs and through the market.
Merlin: Oh, it's an attractive nuisance, but a good kind.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: I support the fish throwing because, you know, it localizes.
John: If you're going to throw a hand grenade somewhere, that's where you would do it.
Merlin: Is there a hand grenade throwing demonstration or are you talking about as a rogue?
John: I've been thinking about actually having a little booth down there at the market and demonstrating hand grenade throwing.
John: You know, my grandfather was a hand grenade thrower.
Merlin: I'm going to write this down.
Merlin: I do not want to lose track.
Merlin: I don't know if we have time today.
Merlin: I would love to discuss some concepts for you having a booth by the fish throwing place.
John: A booth at the market, yeah.
John: My grandfather was a hand grenade throwing instructor in World War I. No way!
Merlin: No way!
John: Potato mashers?
Merlin: The Germans had the potato mashers.
Merlin: What did we have?
John: Pineapples?
John: Pineapple hand grenades.
John: Is that right?
John: He was a hand grenade instructor.
John: Are you kidding me?
John: And then he went and fought in the war.
Merlin: Where did he go to France?
John: He went to France.
Merlin: That's where the war was being fought.
Merlin: Did he have all his parts after the training?
John: He had all of his parts except for his mind parts.
John: Yes.
Merlin: Oh, I'm so sorry.
Merlin: No, I don't mean to laugh.
Merlin: Was it PTSD or because he was fucking crazy from hand grenades?
John: Yeah, it was, you know, at the time, they called it shell shock.
Merlin: Oh, you're talking about after he came back from France.
John: When he came back from France.
Merlin: Oh, I'm sorry.
Merlin: I shouldn't have laughed.
John: No, no, no.
John: It's all right.
John: I never met him because he died in the 50s.
John: I bet you could fuck with him, though.
John: But he had a hard time.
John: He did not reintegrate into the world very well.
John: But that was not at a time when anybody had a lot of sympathy for that.
Merlin: Here's your therapy.
Merlin: Get behind the plow.
Merlin: Start pushing your plow.
John: So what he did was he went to Los Angeles and he lived in one of those Bukowski hotels in downtown LA.
Merlin: What's the noise?
John: I'm getting well so I can't make the sound.
John: But yeah, he drank himself to death in a flop house hotel in LA.
Merlin: This is the problem with innovation and evolution technology, John.
Merlin: There's a time when you need a hand grenade throwing expert and there's a time when you don't need it as much.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: You come back to America and you're like, I can do this.
John: And they go, we don't need those now.
Merlin: My dad's best friend back in Ohio, one of his hunting buddies, was big in the police department.
Merlin: And this is not funny.
Merlin: He was a fat cop, you mean?
Merlin: No, he was an awesome cop.
Merlin: He was a super cool guy.
Merlin: He was a stand-up guy.
Merlin: He was high up in the police department.
Merlin: Well, high-ish up.
Merlin: I mean, I think he's probably at the, you know, at the Captain, Lieutenant, Colonel.
Merlin: You know what I mean.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: Whatever the level.
Merlin: He's probably up.
Merlin: But anyway, his job was to teach people how to be safe.
Merlin: One of his jobs was to do instruction on how to be safe with stuff that was super deadly.
Merlin: And a dynamite cap blew up in his fucking hand.
Merlin: Oh, ow.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And it blew off his fingers?
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Oh, that sucks.
Merlin: He ended up with one of those Shaka Bra hang loose deals.
Merlin: You know, when I was... He had a thumb and a pinky, and then they made a Shaka bra.
John: That's pretty cool.
John: Devil horns.
John: No, no, not even that.
Merlin: Not even that.
Merlin: No, no, he had more like Hawaii hang loose.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: That's cool.
John: If he had the devil horns, that'd be fucking awesome.
John: When I was a kid in Alaska, there were... Blasting caps were kind of a problem.
John: because there were blasting caps lying around apparently um from parades or like how did that happen people were i mean there was a lot of there was a lot of dynamite in alaska like clear forests and stuff yeah people were mining gold and they were building track for the railroad and i mean i the the friend of my dad's had a big had one of those big metal lockers in his backyard that was just full of dynamite and i was are you shitting me just sitting around sitting i mean it had a padlock on it but
John: I was a total pyromaniac as a kid.
John: I could so see that.
John: The railroad had, because my dad worked at the railroad, the railroad had all these different kind of explosive warehouses where they were blasting rock and stuff.
John: And they were blasting rock on the highway the whole time I was growing up.
John: Anyway, so there were posters all over of all color posters.
John: I wish I had one now.
John: of all the different kinds of blasting caps.
John: They're beautiful.
John: I'm on the Wikipedia page right now.
John: And they were like, these posters that said like, don't play with these.
John: These are not, don't, if you see one of these, don't play with it.
Merlin: Oh, right.
Merlin: Like that'll help.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: That's like having a poster with boobs on it and saying, don't think about this.
Merlin: Don't think about it.
Merlin: No, seriously.
Merlin: Here's some more.
John: I had this blasting cat poster on my wall, and it's all I thought about.
John: I would walk down the street with my hands clasped behind my back, eyes down on the ground, just looking for blasting cats.
John: All I wanted to find, blasting cats.
John: And I did find these things.
John: The railroad had things called torpedoes.
John: which were little sacks of gunpowder and gravel that you would clamp to the railroad track.
John: And when the train ran over it, it would explode, not loud enough to hurt the train or the track, but just loud enough to signal the engineer that there was something up ahead on the track.
Merlin: How did it get there?
John: Well, if you worked at the railroad... Oh, so it was the equivalent of a signal.
John: It was a signal, right.
John: You drove on one of those trucks that could get up on the tracks, and you would say, oh, there's a bridge out, or oh, there's something bad up ahead, so let's go two miles up the road here.
John: It was before radios, I guess.
John: I don't know why they didn't just call them on the radio, but go two miles up the track, you put one of these torpedoes on the track, and then the train runs over it, and bam!
John: And then the engineer knows to stop the train.
Merlin: I don't think I'd like that at all.
Merlin: Just even knowing that could happen.
Merlin: I wouldn't like that at all.
John: Well, so I did manage to scrounge a couple of these torpedoes.
John: No shit.
John: Because I was in some warehouse shed with my dad and a bunch of men in hard hats.
John: And they all turned around to look at a valve or something.
John: And I was like, aha, torpedoes.
John: And I grabbed stuff to the pockets of my jacket with them.
John: But the problem with them is that they require the weight of a locomotive to set them off.
John: Like, you can't hit them with the hammer and get them to explode.
Merlin: I mean, I'm sorry, what are we talking about?
Merlin: Are we talking about a firecracker, an M80?
Merlin: Like, how much pop?
Merlin: Oh, it's bigger than an M80.
John: You're kidding, and you're trying to make that pop?
John: Oh, no, I wasn't hitting them with a hammer.
John: You could, like, drop a safe on it or something?
John: I wasn't an idiot, but I definitely would, like, throw them into a campfire and run.
Merlin: You're kidding.
Merlin: That's insane.
John: Yeah.
John: Oh, my God, the things I used to do.
Yeah.
John: One of my favorite things, my parents, I think, figured out that I did this and it was a source of much fear.
John: But, you know, when I was home alone in the house, I would open up the flue in the fireplace and I would sit with cans of spray paint and WD-40 and I would light a lighter and I'd spray the WD-40 into the fireplace and
John: You know, making this incredible flamethrower.
John: WD-40 is an amazing flamethrower.
John: And I would watch the flame come up the stream of WD-40.
John: And right as it got to the nozzle, I would stop.
John: You know, I would let go.
John: And the flame would...
John: Oh, are you kidding me?
John: And I would sit for hours at a time and just, just flamethrower into the, into the fireplace and watching the flame come up right to the nozzle.
John: And then I'd stop.
John: It was this game I would play.
John: Just, I just loved it.
John: The fire.
John: Oh, the fire.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: I think that's good.