Ep. 33: "Starts to Slurry"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hey, John.
Merlin: Hi, Merlin.
John: How you doing?
John: Merlin.
Merlin: John.
Merlin: I don't want to make people cringe or be reluctant because they fear the queen.
John: Boy.
John: You know what?
John: Anybody who fears the queen shouldn't even be listening to this podcast.
Merlin: Do you have other things like that that would be helpful to people in deciding whether this is right for them?
John: Oh, like a litmus test or a little checklist?
Merlin: Let's look at some quick tips, maybe a top ten.
Merlin: But, you know, litmus tests would be good, too.
Merlin: They can know if they're basic.
John: Yeah, right, or acidic.
Merlin: Or acidic or somewhere in between.
John: You know, I prefer to think of it in terms of those quizzes that you get in Mademoiselle magazine where you find out if your boyfriend is cheating on you.
Merlin: I think they had to change the name to Madame.
Merlin: and it's much larger now so this is like like like just is a quick you go in there you could do this while you're while you're doing your laundry or enjoying a pedicure you go through and you find out by answering a series of questions whether your boyfriend's cheating on you yeah right exactly like uh does he act weird
John: Yes, he does.
John: Does he keep having sex with other ladies?
John: Oh, my God.
John: I think he's cheating on me.
Merlin: A, definitely.
Merlin: B, almost certainly.
John: Here's a tip.
John: Here's a tip for our female listeners.
John: Your boyfriend's cheating on you.
Merlin: To how much of a certainty?
John: You can almost guarantee it.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Currently?
Merlin: Like right now?
John: Like right as we do this?
John: I don't know.
John: It depends.
John: Does he work from home?
Merlin: Oh, I think you're getting it.
Merlin: You are moving into the field of what I would call self-help.
Merlin: So questions to ask yourself.
Merlin: Why are you getting a pedicure?
Merlin: Should you be back at home keeping an eye on that guy?
John: Why are you getting a pedicure is full stop.
Merlin: Who cares?
Merlin: You said this about nails.
Merlin: You have strong feelings about not having feelings about nails.
John: I feel like nails of all the things.
John: Nails.
John: Like grooming your nails is a thing you really can do satisfactorily by yourself with a pocket knife.
John: And beyond that, if you're spending more time on your nails than you can accomplish with a pocket knife and maybe like an emery board.
John: An emery board.
John: Okay.
Merlin: You're saying if you can make the upgrade from your front teeth to like a leather man, you have evolved sufficiently.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Move on.
Merlin: Go check out that fucker at your house who's probably getting a handy.
Merlin: Now, is it somebody he works with?
Merlin: Where do you think that source of trouble comes from?
Merlin: Do you have a sense?
Merlin: Yeah.
John: That's the thing.
John: It could be anybody.
John: It could be the UPS girl.
John: It could be the... UPS girl.
John: I'm going to use that.
John: You know what I mean?
John: It could be the milk maid.
Merlin: It could be the... The milk.
Merlin: Does she milk the cows or does she bring the milk?
John: The milk maid.
John: She brings the milk.
Merlin: She potentially does everything milk related inside of the household.
Merlin: In the neighborhood, yeah.
John: You know, the thing is, now that women are welcome in all fields, all walks of life, it could be the meter reader.
John: It could be the... Meter reader.
John: It could be the mail deliverer.
Merlin: He kind of slyly opens the window and sticks his head out and goes, nice clipboard.
Merlin: Nice reflective vest.
Merlin: I bet people see you at night.
John: Yeah, it could be the postwoman always rings twice.
Merlin: The postperson, sure.
Merlin: Especially if you ask.
Merlin: Stallone does.
Merlin: Now, what do you know about scullery maids?
Merlin: I'm very interested in scullery maids.
Merlin: I think that might be pretty in the household.
Merlin: It's like royalty.
Merlin: And Dutchies in Europe.
Merlin: Dutchies.
Merlin: And I think if you're a scullery maid, you're about as far down.
Merlin: It's kind of like being the piss boy or the dishwasher at a restaurant.
Merlin: I don't know if they have piss boys at restaurants, but with a scullery maid, my sense is... I don't know.
John: San Francisco is a different kind of town.
John: We don't have piss boys here anymore.
Merlin: Not at all.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Was that legislation or is that like Portland where you got to like have people pump your gas?
Merlin: Did you have some kind of an initiative?
John: Yeah, it's a thing.
John: It's a thing where the piss boys were, I don't know, they were selling the piss on the open market and it was determined that we just needed to recycle.
Merlin: It's like Pendulet says with recycling, right?
Merlin: It's all a scam.
John: Yeah.
John: Oh, does Pendulet say recycling is a scam?
John: Pendulet says a lot of things.
Merlin: I, you know, I think he gives me a run for my money in terms of signal to noise ratio.
John: I wonder often when I put something in the recycling, when I look into my recycling bin that has newspapers, tin cans, glass, plastic bottles, and then I put a cardboard in there, and I think, what now?
John: How is all this going into the right bin?
John: John, that's going to be a park bench for multicultural children.
Merlin: yeah yeah this this is this is super train is going to solve all of this i didn't want i didn't want to bring it up because i i don't know if it's something where i don't know the stage of development or funding that you're in but i have a feeling super train is going to take care of a lot of our recycling issues super train is super if super train gets a second or third claw it's not going to be the fucking sort no no for sure it's not
Merlin: It's going to be to speed up the conflagration.
John: Super Train is going to start with mobile home parks and it's just going to recycle them with all their contents.
John: My feeling is that we just put a space rocket in space, a private space rocket.
John: I don't know if you watched that.
Merlin: I heard something on NPR about a private space rocket.
John: There was a private space rocket.
Merlin: Fantastic Four did that in about 1963 for what it's worth.
Merlin: Please continue.
John: That's all under cover of the secret Legion of Doom.
John: But they just put a private space rocket in space.
John: I was watching it on the internets.
John: And they actually, like the people that were...
John: announcing it you know like the normally you would have some guys with crew cuts and slide rules in their front pocket going T-7 to you know initial second stage defibrillation whatever they say I don't know that's pretty close if you had a slide rule you could really nail that and these three like the guy had a handlebar mustache and a like ironic afro and they were like we did it alright
Merlin: Has it really gotten that bad at NASA?
John: It's not at NASA, though.
John: It's some San Francisco startup.
John: They launched it from Cupertino off the back of a tortoise.
John: I don't know what they're doing.
Merlin: What a fucking holocaust.
Merlin: We cannot get something off the pad in this country.
Merlin: And there's people running around in fucking flip-flops and afros just making shit go up in the air.
John: That's wrong.
John: They put like three Priuses.
John: Also, it's very quiet.
Merlin: Very quiet rocket.
John: super, super, super efficient.
Merlin: It can get the news NPR station and the classical station.
John: But they can put a rocket into space now, but they can't make a home recycling trash compactor.
Merlin: What is the deal?
Merlin: You can't put metal in the microwave.
John: You should have at home, you should have a thing where you take your cardboard and you put it in this thing and it immediately starts to mush it and mash it down into that mush.
Merlin: Would you call it a slurry?
Yeah.
John: Yeah, you make a slurry, right.
John: So you've got a little slot where you put your paper products and it starts to slurry them and you put your glass products and it breaks it down and turns it into glass dust.
John: You should be able to do the first stage of breaking all that shit down at home so that when the recycling truck comes, you just hand them a brick.
John: It's like, here's the glass brick, here's the metal brick, here's the paper brick.
Merlin: I think you're really on to something.
Merlin: It's like WALL-E.
Merlin: You make a little cube of trash.
Merlin: It's very efficient.
Merlin: It's like smashing down your cans when you're like one of the shopping cart guys.
Merlin: Isn't it funny also then – and I just – I literally cannot think of anything.
Merlin: I can think of almost nothing that I would rather talk about less than recycling.
Merlin: It's literally one of the things I least want to talk about.
John: Let's go back to Scullery Maids because – Can we do that?
Merlin: I just think it's fucking funny that you have a gas-driven giant truck that comes to your house and takes away your dainty imported beer bottles so that somebody who's getting whatever $8 an hour can sort through them on a conveyor belt to make sure they don't have too much beer in them and will screw up the works.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: I just want to close the thread.
Merlin: What I hear you saying also, if I'm hearing you correctly, is you should not need a truck at all.
Merlin: If you want to make that into glass art, that could be the way you slurry.
Merlin: If you want to slurry that into literally a park bench, let's say you wait until you've got 700 or 800 empty milk cartons, and nobody should really be drinking that much milk.
Merlin: But if you do, you get all of those, and you could literally make a park bench or a table.
Merlin: You should be able to – they say reuse is better than recycling.
Merlin: I think slurry is better than reuse.
Merlin: I mean that's super flexible, John.
John: I feel like the slurry is the first stage on the way to then having a second machine in your house, which then converts that stuff back into, like you take the slurry and then you make it back into your own printer paper or you make it back into your own glass bottles.
John: You have a little dispenser that like, and it makes a bottle for you.
Merlin: It can make an NPR tote bag.
Merlin: It could turn it into sort of like a – you know how they have like tofurkey?
Merlin: Maybe they could have na-jute.
Merlin: It's like jute, but it's not jute.
Merlin: Yeah, it's nu-jute.
Merlin: Nu-jute.
Merlin: Oh, I'm going to capture that.
Merlin: It's just that it's made with high fructose corn syrup.
Merlin: Nu-jute I like.
Merlin: I think that might be a little bit ping pong.
Merlin: My sense – it's not the orthodox jute.
John: No, no, no.
Merlin: It's nu-jute.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: What about – can it be reformed jute?
John: I think you can be – there's this new kind of like sort of conservative reform jute you can be.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: I really want to give up this.
Merlin: Something I thought of when I was in the shower this morning, right?
Merlin: Because today – not that it matters.
Merlin: Today is Wednesday and I have to take my shower.
John: Today is your shower day.
Merlin: Shower day, whether I need it or not.
Merlin: But –
Merlin: You talked about the, was it a Hasidic ambulance service?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Who drives on Friday nights?
John: Oh my God.
John: I hadn't even thought of that.
Merlin: Do you know, you know about like kosher elevators, right?
Merlin: Do you know about the insane, the same, and then with all due respect to a great, great religion, a great series?
John: Yeah, they really are.
John: They're a wonderful people, and let's not, we're not getting painful.
Merlin: Well, no, I just want to say I have a huge amount of respect for the Jews, but here's the thing.
Merlin: When it's Sabbath, there's all kinds of things you're not allowed to do, right?
Merlin: I told you about the wire that goes around the neighborhood.
Merlin: I told you about that.
Merlin: I told you about that.
Merlin: I told you about that.
Merlin: I told you about it's in Miami.
Merlin: I told you about that.
Merlin: The wire that goes around the neighborhood.
Merlin: It's a hack.
Merlin: It's a hack.
Merlin: And once you got the wire around your neighborhood, this is true.
Merlin: There's a bit, the place where we remember the Holocaust fist I showed you.
Merlin: It's that same area.
Merlin: It's super Jewish, super Judy.
Merlin: And you, and you put a wire around it and then it's technically all the rules are off.
John: Right.
John: Because you're inside the wire.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: I think that's brilliant.
John: And the wire is charged with God power.
Merlin: I think it's Yahweh and you're not allowed to pronounce it.
Merlin: Don't say it.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: I think there should be some kind of onomatopoetic for that.
Merlin: But did you know about Sabbath elevators?
Merlin: They're not kosher elevators because they don't have any kind of meat unless you put them there, which you could do I think on Sunday but not on Saturday because that's not their day.
Merlin: They don't care about Sundays.
Merlin: You play golf, right?
Merlin: Like a gentleman.
Merlin: Here's the thing.
Merlin: Do you know what a – I want to say not Passover.
Merlin: What a Sabbath – have you heard of the Sabbath elevator?
Merlin: Tell us about the Sabbath elevator.
Merlin: Here's the thing.
Merlin: This is where things get super hairy for the jutes is you're not allowed to cause a fire to be made.
John: Right.
Merlin: And this goes back.
Merlin: And if you read one of those books, you know, one of the old books, probably one of the prophets, it's, it's very repetitive, very poorly edited with all due respect.
Merlin: Right.
John: Don't make a fire.
John: Don't make a fire.
Merlin: No fires.
Merlin: No fires is a big, is a big part of the, no light switches, no buttons.
Merlin: You got it.
Merlin: Cause if you turn on the air conditioner, you're making a little flame.
Merlin: You can't, you can't.
Merlin: So you know what you do?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You hire a scullery maid.
Merlin: You hire somebody.
Merlin: I think it's called a Sabbath scullery.
Merlin: And somebody can come and turn on the air conditioning for you.
John: That's a Sabbath goy.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Is that a real term?
John: Yeah, Sabbath goy.
Merlin: That's so good.
Merlin: And so now the thing is you have to act like you don't know they work for you because you certainly can't pay them that day because that would involve lighting a fire.
Merlin: Here's the thing.
Merlin: Maybe there's a place where you just leave money and accidentally drop your address and then people show up and turn on your fucking air conditioning.
Merlin: Because Miami is very hot.
Merlin: The wire notwithstanding, it's a very, very hot community, John.
John: Well, the thing is, if you turn your air conditioning on before the sun goes down on the Sabbath, you can just leave it on.
John: Oh, you get it good and cold.
John: Well, no, you don't have to turn it off.
John: You just leave it on.
John: You have not started a fire.
John: A fire is in the process of going.
Merlin: What if your power goes out and you have to go to a circuit breaker?
Merlin: Do they have Sabbath electricians?
Merlin: I think that might have been on Paranoid.
John: You can definitely go... He has the wires on the lights.
Merlin: You know you are a Jew.
Merlin: Sorry, that's Sabbath Bloody Sabbath.
Merlin: Please continue.
John: That's a great song.
John: I think the question of who drives the ambulances in the Orthodox ambulance service is the question.
John: Because anything else you can just hire a goyish person to do.
John: And that would defeat the whole purpose.
John: What would?
Merlin: Oh, exactly.
John: But you can't have a fill-in driver...
John: I mean, maybe they do.
John: Maybe they have Dominican guys come drive.
John: No, no.
Merlin: That's like going to the cotton club to get a circumcision.
Merlin: I don't think that works at all.
Merlin: Here's the thing.
Merlin: I'm going somewhere with this.
Merlin: Two things.
Merlin: First of all, Google, which is very silly nowadays, they are developing a driverless car.
Merlin: Point two, a Sabbath elevator is an elevator that automatically stops at every floor so you can get on without having to make a fire with the button.
Merlin: It's called a Sabbath elevator.
Merlin: It stops at every floor.
Merlin: It's very inefficient.
Merlin: I would just take the steps unless they involve the lighting of fire.
John: What if you lived on the 47th floor?
Merlin: Well, maybe you should have thought about that because of your faith.
Merlin: Maybe you could get a jute hang glider or some kind of a jute rope.
John: In general, that is why Orthodox people all do live in communities together so that they don't have to.
Merlin: John, you've traveled a lot.
Merlin: Do most Orthodox jutes live very near the first floor?
John: Well, they tend to live within walking distance of their synagogue so that they cannot... That's the real synagogue, not the wire synagogue.
John: Yeah, well, I mean, yeah.
John: The wire is usually around an actual synagogue.
Merlin: With an actual synagogue in the center.
Merlin: In Florida, it goes around like a neighborhood, like bigger than a subdivision.
John: Yeah, there's one like that in Seattle, too.
John: But there's a synagogue in the middle of that.
Merlin: I bet they couldn't do that on Sabbath.
Merlin: I bet they had to have somebody do that.
Merlin: I bet they either had to have a goyim wire hanger or a Sabbath encircler.
John: I'm going to imagine that that wire has to be hung by a rabbi.
John: Or at least there's a rabbi there.
Merlin: Oh, to make sure that everything was kosher.
Merlin: And I would also have it pretty high up, because although a lot of, just with all due respect, a lot of those folks aren't super tall, but a lot of us are.
Merlin: Like, you're a pretty tall man.
Merlin: You could easily walk into a synagogue wire.
John: Yeah, it's got to be high enough, but you don't want birds sitting on it.
John: Or maybe you do.
John: Maybe that's fine.
Merlin: Who's not going to like that is the rabbi.
John: You know, I have not read as much of the Talmud as I should, and maybe this is all covered in there.
Merlin: How will you know when you've read enough?
John: Well, I think when no one can ask me a question about Judaism where I don't have the answer at ready hand.
Merlin: I think we have moved from Socratic to Talmudic.
Merlin: I think we're having a Talmudic discussion right now.
John: Well, I believe that these are all questions that are, you know, they're not explicitly in the Torah.
John: They are part of the Tamuldic tradition.
John: That's a good point.
John: As I speak right now, I'm looking at a book called The Joys of Yiddish by Leo Rosten.
John: That was very popular in the 70s.
John: Yeah, the Joyce of Yiddish.
John: It has all the diagrams.
John: And when you were a kid, you would go look.
Merlin: And all the ladies had armpit hair.
John: Yeah, Shalom Aleichem.
John: Do you remember that?
Merlin: Remember the first time you saw that and all the ladies had armpit hair?
John: Oh my God, the joy of sex was repulsive to me.
Merlin: It was so... And the guy with that beard, it hung off of him.
Merlin: Like his penis and his beard hung in exactly the same way.
Merlin: Droopy.
John: I have to say that the people in the joy of sex did not look like they were enjoying what they were doing.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: They looked like they were the last two people getting picked in Pickball.
Merlin: They were the last two people at the key party, and neither of them were happy.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: But they somehow felt obligated to go through all 700 positions.
John: Oh, God.
Merlin: Maybe they were Logie from Fondue and Steely Dan.
John: Otherwise, there was one interesting one where the... What was it?
Merlin: The guy... There's one where he licks her armpit or something.
John: Oh, I'm sure.
John: I don't know.
John: I'm sure I flipped past that as fast as I could.
John: But there was one where the guy was on his back, and he had his feet up in the air, and she was on the outside of his legs, but somehow on top of him in such a way that... But it was like she was...
John: She was the boy horse.
John: Right.
Merlin: I think it's called Scandalizing the Butterfly.
John: He was like feet in the air, full on.
John: But she was doing the work.
John: It's always intrigued me.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I've gone to the internet to find out what a scullery maid is.
Merlin: And first, can I just suggest, just not now because I think we would have to edit a lot of it out.
Merlin: Go look at the images for scullery maid.
Merlin: It's unexpectedly hot.
Merlin: Because scullery maid, so in great houses.
John: She's got a barrel.
Merlin: Oh, they've got a barrel and a mop.
Merlin: Because here's the thing.
Merlin: In great houses, scullery maids were the lowest ranked and often the youngest of the female servants.
Merlin: Acted as an assistant to a kitchen maid.
Merlin: I think they did a lot of mopping.
John: She assisted in cleaning vegetables, plucking fowl, and scaling fish.
Merlin: John, she can pluck fowl.
Merlin: She's got super strong fingers.
Merlin: Oh, can I just say, wringing out mops, not like new mops, not like nice mops, like old mops where they've just been moving dirt around.
Merlin: She has to squeeze that so hard with her hands.
John: This is something that I have thought about for many years.
John: Part of it was I had an uncle who was a rich man
John: And he was a member of the 1%.
John: And as he got older, like a lot of those guys who made a lot of money, as he got older, what he wanted to do was just keep making more money.
John: And my dad, who was not a rich man, but who lived like a rich man, who thought like a rich man,
John: My dad used to say to my uncle, and I'm going to do it in his voice, what the hell are you doing?
John: You're 76 years old.
John: You're working 80 hours a week.
John: Why don't you get a young girl?
John: Why don't you get a young girl and go... To do the work or to distract you?
John: No, not to do the work.
John: Like, stop working.
John: Oh, God.
John: Get a girl and go sit on a beach somewhere.
John: Like, you made it.
John: You got all the money in the world.
John: You don't need more money.
John: Go get a young girl and go sit on the beach somewhere.
John: That's what, you know, that's how you spend your money.
John: And my uncle was just like, ah, get it.
John: You know, you don't know what you're talking about.
John: I've got poor people to ruin.
Yeah.
John: But my thought is like, there are so many rich people in the world.
John: And you know some of them...
John: Most of them are still getting up in the morning like, I get up in the morning every day and make more money because I'm an asshole.
John: But there've got to be some that are like, you know what I have?
John: I have scullery maids to help the kitchen maids.
John: They're doing it right in the sense that they are enacting a medieval fantasy in a castle that they built for themselves on Lake Cone.
Merlin: Oh, they're make-believe gentry.
John: Right, that they are actually...
John: Like they are, you know, defenestrating their enemies and they are impaling the heads of their bad guys on stakes around their heads.
Merlin: house and stuff you know you can tell you know you can tell does that like people who yell at the waitress you know i this is just seriously if i can you know i don't and this is your this is your show it's it's your chance to help people but if i could give one piece of advice to people if you're about to go into any kind of a relationship with anybody and whether that's going to be a partner or somebody where you give each other handies or somebody where you where money is exchanged first of all it's very important that you eat out with them several times this will tell you a lot about them if they always order the steak unless it's a really nice steak they're probably kind of boring
Merlin: If they put too much salt on their food without tasting it, good to know because they're probably a little bit reckless and not very good with their judgment.
Merlin: But here's the thing.
Merlin: They will try to be nice to you.
Merlin: You're on dates and stuff.
Merlin: They're going to try to be charming to a point but not make it super weird.
Merlin: If that person fucking does anything but is a complete gentleman or gentle lady with the staff of the restaurant, they're a fuckstain.
Merlin: Interesting theory.
Merlin: Because that is a small person who needs a disparity in class and power in order to feel like a whole person, and they will fuck you over 11 times from Sunday if you get anywhere near them.
Merlin: And you'll never find out until it's too late, and suddenly you're the waitress, you're the lady horse, and you're the one not getting a tip, if you know what I mean.
John: have you had this experience John you eat out a lot I do eat out a lot but well and I think I need to make at least one distinction which is that
John: Yes, agreed.
John: I have never been in a situation where someone was rude or aggressive with a waitress because I feel very strongly that I have enough sense to have already excluded those people.
Merlin: Like music business stuff where you've had to go have dinner with some bigwig with the cigar and the $100 bills?
Merlin: You've never seen this?
John: Most of the time, they at least are smart enough to know that how they treat the waitress is also going to be somewhat how they're judged.
John: If they're trying to close a deal.
Merlin: It's like the A&R guy.
Merlin: They want to show how they're like you.
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: But there is an epidemic, I think, among liberal people in their 30s or 40s of what I would call...
John: condescending reverse obsequiousness to waitresses.
Merlin: Which is... Condescending reverse obsequiousness to waitresses.
John: Yes.
John: Okay.
John: Which is over politeness and deference to waitresses...
John: As a way of expressing that you understand how hard their job is, and you really don't want to make any imposition on them, but can you please, you know, can I get, please just get one more, and I'm really sorry to ask, but can I please get one more piece of cheese for my mem-men-men-men-men-men-men.
John: And that, like, over-deference to waitresses is a kind of condescension that liberal people pay when, in fact, being a waitress is a proud and dignified position.
John: And what your waitress wants is for you to say what you want with an absolute economy of language and get the fuck out of her hair and let her get on with her job.
John: It's a job.
John: Yeah.
John: So if your hamburger comes and it is wrong...
John: You don't say, um, I'm sorry, but you just say, uh, miss, I ordered this without the thing and it has the thing.
John: And if you, if you say it with, with an economy of language, I have been at dinner with so many people and music business people too, where the waitress or I say, miss, I ordered this with the thing and it doesn't have the thing.
John: And she goes, okay.
John: And she comes and grabs the plate.
John: And the person across from me says, turns to the waitress and goes, I'm sorry.
John: Oh, big mistake.
John: That's a big mistake if you do that to me.
John: Oh, man.
John: The correction's worse than the crime.
John: Right.
John: And the waitress kind of looks over at the other person and goes, yes, no problem.
John: And they walk off to the kitchen.
John: And then the person who has corrected me is in for a mini lecture from me.
Merlin: You've never given a mini lecture in your life.
John: About how they should A, shut the fuck up, and B, how they can be condescendingly overpolite as much as they want in their own transactions with people, but not to impose that bullshit on my interactions.
John: and i i've been in long arguments with people where like i had a guy one time say to the to a waitress when i was saying uh can i manna you know like i'd like a this and i and not a this the guy turns to the waitress the guy doesn't know me that well but he turns to the waitress and goes he's obviously never waited tables oh oh man and this is a guy that i know for a fact had never waited tables if that was the old west that would be the equivalent of him calling you yella
John: Well, Han would have shot first in that situation.
John: If that was the Old West, I wouldn't have even stood up.
John: I would have shot him just from under the table.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: He would not have finished his indignity before he'd be splattered all over the cantina.
Merlin: John, that's ridiculous.
John: In fact, I have waited tables, and I waited tables for years.
Merlin: Dude, you managed a place full of grunge drunks.
Merlin: Grunge drunks.
Merlin: Don't tell me about customer service.
John: And this guy is trying to, like, he's trying to cutsel up to this waitress by, like, oh, obviously he's never had to do a thing before because he's a rock star.
Oh.
John: And I'm like, you know, you, you, you got a master's degree, you know, and you got a master's degree in business.
John: Like you've never waited fucking tables guy.
John: And, and, and you know, it's, it's part of this culture of like, and I think it started in the eighties when, when waiters started actually coming up to the table and sitting down in the booth with you and going, hi guys, what are you going to have today?
Merlin: What are we having tonight?
Merlin: I'm your server.
John: Yeah, I'm Skip.
John: I'm your server.
John: What are we having tonight?
John: Do you want to get some jalapeno poppers?
John: I'm your customer, and I'm trying to have a conversation.
John: And so all these people that were kind of raised in that environment, they think that that's the dynamic with waitresses.
John: Like, hi, how are you?
John: Oh, my God.
John: I'm so sorry that you have to work a job.
Merlin: John, this is one of the many important corners in your much larger Weltanschauung, if I could just use a German word for a minute.
Merlin: You don't like fake nice.
Merlin: I don't.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: There's a variety of things that this fits into.
John: Fake nice masks evil more than it promotes good.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: I think Karl Marx said that the road to hell is paved with apologizing for John Roderick in a restaurant.
John: That was Friedrich Engels.
Merlin: Das Kapital.
Merlin: I think you're, well, I was going to make a philosopher joke, but they're never funny.
Merlin: But here's the thing.
John: There's one person that's listening to this podcast that's like...
John: Oh, you should have made a philosophy.
Merlin: I was going to, but I can't.
Merlin: Here's the thing.
Merlin: You could make this very functional, if I could say, and this gets into the stuff that I care about, and I think there's a Venn diagram somewhere here, which is that clarity.
Merlin: We've got to have clarity.
Merlin: We should have clarity about our roles.
Merlin: It doesn't have to be weird.
Merlin: It makes it the opposite of weird if we are clear about our roles.
Merlin: I have come into this place to be served food by people who serve food.
Merlin: In exchange for that, I give them money.
Merlin: They have a job to do.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: And John, I don't want to make it about hand jobs, but I think this is straight in the fucking hand job wheelhouse because you go in there and you, I think you got to tell him what you want.
Merlin: And in this instance, you don't, you don't, you don't want the guy to get in the handy next to you to say, Oh, Paul, I'm sorry that he was so aggressive and talking about his balls.
Merlin: Like, fuck that.
John: Fuck that.
John: That's right.
Merlin: If you want to talk about your balls, you talk about them.
Merlin: But you know what you do?
Merlin: The thing is, I think most waitrons, which I think is the gender-neutral way to say it, it's a terrible, terrible word, will enjoy the clarity, just like some person giving you handy.
Merlin: And I don't want to say that all waitresses give handjobs, because in my experience, that's not the case.
Merlin: But if you go in there and you say to them...
Merlin: Hi, I wanted this medium rare, and this is really closer to medium well.
Merlin: Could you take it back and give me another one?
Merlin: There's nothing unclear about that.
John: And any waiter that has a problem with that, any waiter that rolls their eyes or is like, oh my god.
John: They apologize and walk away.
John: They go.
John: They do the thing.
John: They go.
John: But a waiter that has a problem with it is in the wrong line of work.
Merlin: And there are so many.
Merlin: And baristas, can I just say baristas?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: But, you know, you're right.
Merlin: I don't know where it came from.
Merlin: I don't know if it was the 80s.
Merlin: A lot of terrible things came out of the 80s.
Merlin: But I think you're absolutely right.
Merlin: I think there is this culture.
Merlin: Now, let's be honest.
Merlin: People like my friend Scott Simpson and me, our entire life is predicated on trying to make the waitress like us.
John: Oh, yeah, and you guys apologized profusely.
Merlin: And I've told you how sorry I am about that.
Merlin: But it's really true.
Merlin: We just want to make the waitress laugh.
John: And what it really is about is it's about the denigration of the great class of servers...
Merlin: That has happened over the last – The noble tradition.
Merlin: Now, I disagree, John.
Merlin: I think – because I could still try and make the waitress like me, but then I could also be nice about it.
Merlin: Here's the problem.
Merlin: This is where I start to feel like a crazy person.
Merlin: It's like there's a place we go in our neighborhood, a place you've been to before, and we go there and we get burgers sometimes.
Merlin: And sometimes – I don't know if it's a language barrier.
Merlin: I don't know if it's the fact that almost nobody can ever understand what I'm saying no matter what.
John: Right.
Merlin: Like inclusive.
Merlin: But I went in there and I said –
Merlin: Can I get the cheeseburger medium rare with fries?
Merlin: And can I also please – this is for a kid.
Merlin: So when you start with this is for a kid, that's code.
Merlin: That means fucking listen to this.
John: Right, right.
John: This is for a kid.
Merlin: You ask a question and you go – Clean food only, please.
Merlin: Is there sauce on that?
Merlin: It's for a kid.
Merlin: And they go, I don't know.
Merlin: Or you might as well be saying, is there shrimp on there?
Merlin: Because otherwise my child will die.
Merlin: That's how seriously you must take it.
Merlin: If I have to walk home with something that has any sauce on it, I'm going to be coming back there and I'm not going to be happy.
Merlin: And then I'm going to be that guy a little bit.
Merlin: So I say, could I please have the cheeseburger special?
Merlin: But...
Merlin: I would like nothing on – I didn't say no cheese.
Merlin: I said I want nothing on the burger except burger on a bun.
Merlin: So please, no sauce, no cheese, no anything.
Merlin: Please, please.
John: No cheese, no sauce, no anything.
Merlin: And so, of course, it immediately turns into a Monty Python routine.
Merlin: And she goes, so cheeseburger.
Merlin: I said, yes, I want the burger, but with no cheese.
Merlin: And you can't see, but I'm making this horizontal gesture with my hand flat as if to say I will salt the land.
Merlin: This is scorched earth.
Merlin: It's moving out –
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: I'm making a 90-degree horizontal swing to indicate flat fucking land.
John: Yes.
Merlin: Dry.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Nothing.
Merlin: Bone.
John: Right.
John: Desert.
John: I want a cheeseburger on a desert.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: And I want you to hold it between your knees.
Merlin: And she says – and so, of course, she responds with that amount of overconfidence that this particular witch has.
Merlin: I'm always trying to remember my order and getting three things about it wrong.
Merlin: And she says, okay, so on the side.
Merlin: I said –
Merlin: Here's the thing.
Merlin: I want you to take a plastic box and put some, some of those crinkle cut fries in there.
Merlin: And I want to, I want a burger with literally nothing on it, but a piece of meat on a bun.
Merlin: So you can guess how this, what, what, what goes on here.
Merlin: It comes out and it's fully dressed.
Merlin: It's got everything on it.
Merlin: And I say, and, and I, and each time she said like your order's almost ready.
Merlin: I actually, because this place makes me crazy by getting, if they got my order wrong seven out of eight times, I'd stop going there.
Merlin: If they got my order wrong one out of 39 times, it wouldn't matter.
Merlin: Getting my order wrong one out of seven times is crazy making.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: It's just enough to make you feel fucking nuts.
Merlin: And so I said, I remember, remember that for the kid.
Merlin: So nothing on it.
Merlin: You know, I'm doing that.
Merlin: And I'm being that guy you hate, but I'm going.
Merlin: And then comes out fully dressed.
Merlin: It's got shit all over it.
Merlin: And so, you know, you can fucking guess.
John: Did you throw it at her?
Merlin: I said, you'll remember this.
John: Did you push her up against a wall?
John: I didn't say medium.
Merlin: I didn't say very rare.
Merlin: I said rare.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: They took it back.
Merlin: And you know exactly what that cocksucker in the back did.
John: No, now that's a myth.
John: They're not spitting on your food.
Merlin: No, no, no, no, no.
Merlin: I wouldn't know.
Merlin: I checked it carefully enough to see that he had scraped the cheese off, scraped the other stuff off, and he'd gotten a fresh bun.
Merlin: And that was the extent of it.
John: Oh, boy.
John: Yeah, I wouldn't.
Merlin: And then I open it up because I always check my order there now.
Merlin: God, I fucking hate myself for the last 35 minutes of what I've been saying.
Merlin: But now there's little bits of cheese on the fries.
John: Yeah.
John: You know what?
John: There's moisture.
John: There's pooling.
John: At that point, you burn the restaurant down.
John: At that point, you burn the restaurant down, you stand out in the street, take all your clothes off.
Merlin: Do you have a gut sense of when it's really time to burn the restaurant down?
Merlin: Do you have a sense?
Merlin: I mean, it's not purely emotional.
Merlin: Emotion plays a role in it.
Merlin: You're like Wolverine.
Merlin: It's brought you to where you are.
Merlin: But you must have some sense in your mind of when the line has been crossed and it is time to fix something.
John: Why did Mookie grab that trash can and throw it through the front window of Sal's pizzeria?
Merlin: He had enough.
John: You know what?
John: He just had enough.
John: It was time.
John: It was time to burn it down.
Merlin: I didn't think Sal was all that bad.
John: No, no, no.
John: I didn't either.
John: I was surprised when Mookie threw the trash can through the window.
John: I was surprised.
John: And at the time, I was like, well, what?
John: I don't get it.
John: I don't get it.
John: Sal was good to Mookie, but Mookie had had enough.
John: It was time.
John: It was just time to burn that restaurant down.
John: And in this situation, now you've got sauce on the fries.
John: It's too much to explain to get it right.
John: I think you just got to go out in the street, take your clothes off, throw a trash can through the window, and burn it down.
Merlin: Because it's harder to identify you.
Merlin: What if you wore a hoodie and were otherwise naked?
Merlin: You wouldn't wear a hoodie, probably.
John: You know, there was a time when I would have worn a hoodie, but now I think you just get naked.
Merlin: Because here's the thing.
Merlin: What's wrong with having a chance to get naked?
John: Here's the thing about burning a restaurant down.
John: If you get naked first, people are less likely to grab you.
John: People are less likely to grab a naked guy, first of all.
Merlin: Oh, you're like the Iron Sheik.
Merlin: You got no hair to grab.
John: That's good.
John: Close off and then you've automatically got a circle of, you've got it like a buffer zone of 20 feet where most white hats, most good Samaritans are not going to break that 20 foot barrier with a naked guy.
Merlin: They're definitely going to think twice and possibly six times.
John: Yeah, a guy that would otherwise flying tackle you before you burn this restaurant down is going to stop at that 20-foot line and go, I don't know.
Merlin: See, if it's a nervous-looking teenager who's got like a can of gas and looks like they masturbate a lot, I think that kid gets a fucking flying tackle and gets a big claw.
Merlin: Super train gets that kid in the claw good and fast.
John: Maybe so.
Merlin: I think if you see a man with a lot of dignity... A middle-aged man?
Merlin: A middle-aged man with a lot of dignity who does his own haircuts, a little tall, and he is out there with his chin up and his chest out, sucking in his gut a little bit, probably.
John: Naked as a jaybird, sucking in his gut in case somebody is taking pictures.
Merlin: Well, if you think there's not ladies out there who like firebugs... What do they call them?
Merlin: Firebirds?
Merlin: What do they call them?
Merlin: Firebugs.
Merlin: Firebugs.
John: Okay.
John: The thing is, there are ladies that like firebirds, too.
John: And if you have a firebird...
John: Drinking by a firebug?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Especially, you know, and what's nice is this is why Friday night is a good date night because the gene pool is a little bit limited.
Merlin: I'm not saying there's a genetic difference, but a lot of people are at home not enjoying their air conditioning and not driving their cars.
Merlin: So anyway, the point was that if you had the Hasidic ambulance, you could maybe have a self-driving ambulance.
Merlin: Now, what about this?
Merlin: What about if you've got to go paddles?
Merlin: Clear.
Merlin: What do you do?
Merlin: What if you have to resuscitate somebody with the paddles?
John: No, I think we're all the way... We can't go into details now.
John: There's got to be some... This is all in a book.
John: It's got to be in a book.
John: There's got to be some way around the Hasidic Ambulance Service.
John: But here's the problem with... What if you hit them with pickles?
John: The problem with trying to understand the Hasidic community is that they don't...
John: go online and tell you all about themselves.
John: You know what I mean?
John: Orthodox people of all stripes are generally not interested in letting you know all their, the peccadilloes.
John: Because, you know, there's a kind of, I think as religion gets more orthodox, people are less interested in converting other people and more interested in just blowing it up.
Merlin: Well, especially, and I don't mean this as an insult, but especially as your community becomes a more closed one, like amongst the friends or amongst the Hasidics.
John: I don't want to say it's a closed community, but there's a lot of— I think by definition, as you become more orthodox, your community becomes more insular.
Merlin: What about Unitarians?
John: I do not know about orthodox Unitarianism.
John: I'm not sure.
John: I think Unitarianism, by definition, does not allow for orthodoxy, does it?
Merlin: I just think it makes you a little faster.
Merlin: Because, you know, they fuck like bunnies, the Unitarians.
Merlin: You get them in a lock-in, and there's going to be some serious trouble.
Merlin: You're going to want a fucking damn cloth and some dim lights.
John: Here's the thing about Unitarianism.
John: That song, Kumbaya.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: I mean, just saying those words, I'm getting a little bit of a chug.
Merlin: It kind of sounds like cum on my face a little bit.
John: Kumbaya.
Merlin: What do you think that means?
John: Kumbaya, my lord.
John: Kumbaya, my lord.
Merlin: Huh.
Merlin: Kumbaya.
Merlin: Kumbaya.
Merlin: Kumbaya.
John: Oh, lord, kumbaya.
Merlin: I think it means come by here.
Merlin: I think is what it means.
John: When I was a little kid, my mom took us to church because she wanted me to know all the things about people, about the world.
John: And we went to Methodist church.
Ugh.
Merlin: Oh, you got a problem with Methodism?
Merlin: I got a problem with Methodists.
Merlin: I got a problem with Lutherans.
Merlin: I got a huge problem with Baptists.
Merlin: I got a lot of problems.
Merlin: So you think, and can I just literally beg you to not get started on religion, except in as much as you need to tell this story.
Merlin: But, you know, in our long conversations, I never get the chance to tell you how many religions I don't like, but please continue.
John: Well, in any case, it was during, this was in the 70s, and so there was a famine in Ethiopia, I think, at the time.
John: I think the hip famine in the 70s was China.
John: Oh, no, there were some great African famines.
John: It was after Biafra, I think, but Ethiopia was the big famine.
John: That was the big UNICEF famine.
John: The early 80s, yeah.
John: But we had a thing one time where we made a... We made like a...
John: It was basically a haunted house where you got down on your hands and knees and had to crawl through a succession of tunnels.
John: And the tunnels got smaller and smaller and smaller until you had to kind of push your way through the last stage of this tunnel.
John: And the idea was that that gave you a sense of what it was like to be starving.
Yeah.
Merlin: It sounds like something that is uniquely designable by someone who has never missed a meal.
John: You know what I mean?
Merlin: My sense of it is that at the point when your body starts to break down and literally eat itself, that's a lot like being in a tube at church.
John: It's a lot like being in a tube in the basement of the church.
John: Could you make any sense of that at all?
John: As a kid, I could make no sense of it.
John: And I remember going through the tunnel and getting to the part that was tight.
John: It wasn't like tight around my waist even.
John: It was just like tight around my shoulders as I pushed through this tube.
John: And I was like, hmm...
John: This does not feel like being hungry.
John: And I came out the other side and was like, wow.
John: And there were a bunch of adults there like, yeah, heavy stuff, right?
John: Right?
Merlin: Really makes you think, doesn't it?
John: So that's why we are raising money.
John: That's why we are collecting pennies and old newspapers.
Merlin: I could think of a, I think, now I'm not a Methodist by any means, but I could think of a much more effective way to do that.
Merlin: Because what?
Merlin: You always got snacks.
Merlin: You got snacks and you got lunch.
Merlin: What if for the sake of argument, even after the bell rang or the cross fell or whatever happens to let you know the class is over, what if you just had them stay in there longer?
Merlin: Maybe four to six hours.
Merlin: And you sat there and ate in front of them.
Merlin: Maybe you get in the tube and make a yummy noise while you're having some food.
Merlin: It's going to amplify it.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: It'll have a plate reverb effect.
John: And they'll be sitting there going, when do I get to eat?
John: I'm pretty sure that the solution or rather that the ultimate goal should not be... The ultimate goal in getting a group of seven-year-olds to empathize with people in Ethiopia should not be to try and...
John: get them to feel starving.
Merlin: That is so fucking white.
Merlin: I think, I mean, it is so white to think that you cannot have, have empathy for other people without doing some kind of a fire walking or a ropes course.
Merlin: That's so stupid.
John: Yeah, well, yeah.
John: Sorry, did I hijack your point?
John: No, no, I mean, I don't know.
John: I see this, it still happens all the time.
John: All these people who make documentary films about Africa and everybody talks about it on their Facebook page.
Merlin: Yeah, I mean, I think it's...
John: It's all just like crawling through a tube and trying to imagine that that's what being starving feels like.
Merlin: John, I got to tell you, I'm going to get a tube.
Merlin: I'm going to think about it for a while.
Merlin: I'm going to get in the tube.
Merlin: And you know what?
Merlin: I'm going to order a tube when I assume there must be some kind of an online Methodist store where I could get this.
Merlin: And I'm sure a portion of the proceeds go to charity, whatever the fuck that means.
Merlin: But I will order a tube.
Merlin: And can I just say I'm not going to tell them what size or how tight I want it.
Merlin: I'm just going to have it arrive.
Merlin: I'm going to think about it.
Merlin: I'm going to maybe, of course, be eating copiously because that's something I'm able to do.
John: It might be a little too, but you could put your finger in it and your finger will feel like a star.
Merlin: Oh, like a Chinese finger trap.
Merlin: Is that ping pong?
Merlin: Finger box.
Merlin: My kid has a Chinese finger trap.
Merlin: It's not that hard to get out of if you really want to.
John: I don't know.
John: I'm not sure that a Chinese finger box isn't part of some kind of, I think that's like a sex toy.
Yeah.
Merlin: Oh, I should take that away from her.
John: Yeah, you should.
John: You shouldn't let her have that anymore.
Merlin: We should at least sniff it.
Merlin: But I think if that tube arrives and I don't even know what to expect.
Merlin: It might be like an Iron Maiden inside.
John: Here's how you simulate famine.
John: You buy a tube or some rope and you put the tube around yourself and you wrap the rope very tight around your middle.
John: As tight as you can.
John: And then you go outside and you sit in the sun and you don't eat for a month.
Merlin: And then you'll, uh... So you're saying if you're gonna have this fake empathy, it should be by way of something that's truly empathic, which is putting yourself in that position.
John: Well, no, I don't even believe that, because to go, to choose to starve to death is not... Again, it's like my friend says, you can't choose to join the proletariat.
Merlin: Like, if you've got the safety net of knowing that you're in your backyard and can go inside and have a nosh... I'm sorry, I shouldn't say that.
Merlin: You can go in and have a snack anytime you feel like it.
Merlin: Um...
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: It is not the same.
Merlin: It's like all this extreme sports stuff, right?
Merlin: It's like bungee jumping.
Merlin: It's like all this fake peril.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: It's this way of simulating this kind of... I think now we are getting further into your personal wheelhouse.
Merlin: I don't even know what a wheelhouse is, but I know you can be inside of it.
Merlin: Do you know what a wheelhouse is?
John: A wheelhouse is the little house that sits up on top of a tugboat.
John: Where the tugboat driver is.
John: And it's just a little... There's not a large cabin.
John: It's just a little box with a window where the guy that's steering the tugboat sits.
John: And I guess that then extends to any place on a boat where the steering wheel is for the boat.
John: And so I think the metaphor of in my wheelhouse means like...
John: Yeah.
John: I mean, there's a lot of stuff that's on my boat, but when you're in the wheelhouse, you're really steering the boat at that point.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: First of all, I just want to say that I really want to stop using that phrase because it's super, super dumb.
Merlin: Yeah, I hear it all the time.
Merlin: Yeah, it's awful.
Merlin: But so you're saying it's kind of like if you imagine concentric circles, this is very near the center of your expertise.
Merlin: You've got a boat.
Merlin: Right.
John: You can be on the boat and not know anything.
John: You're just riding the boat.
John: But there's not room in the wheelhouse for somebody... You could be a part owner of the boat, but you're still not the captain.
John: You're still not in the wheelhouse.
Merlin: You've got to be in the wheelhouse.
Merlin: Is there anywhere tighter than the wheelhouse you can get into?
John: Well, you could be in the bilge, but I don't think that's where you want to be on a boat.
Merlin: Okay, is that where the slurry goes?
John: That's where the slurry goes.
John: That's where the oily water goes.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: There's something about maids, and I'm not talking about French maids.
Merlin: The French maid thing, that is... You're talking about dirty maids.
John: You're talking about maids that are on their hands and knees scrubbing.
Merlin: On their hands and knees scrubbing and squeezing the shit out of some mops.
John: Scrubbing a stone floor.
John: This is the thing.
John: If I was a very, very, very wealthy person, like Arnold Schwarzenegger had a baby with his maid, right?
John: Yeah, that's a crime of opportunity though, right?
John: Well, except if you're a super rich guy, why would you not present yourself with that opportunity at every opportunity?
John: Why would you not staff your house with a bunch of 21-year-old Ecuadorian maids?
Merlin: Where your wife lives, though?
John: Well, I mean, I forgot about the wife thing.
Merlin: Well, this takes us back to the pedicure problem.
Merlin: If you discover that there are many, many Hondurans in your home and they often seem exhausted and their knees hurt and they aren't scrubbing anything, that's something you need to look into.
Merlin: I don't want to make this super weird.
Merlin: It seems to me that there are a lot of people that live inside the wire that need their air conditioning turned on.
Merlin: And then there are a lot of rich guys that would like to diddle a maid.
Merlin: So I'm thinking maybe you hire your Hasidic maid and you trade that for Arnold Schwarzenegger to come and turn your air conditioning on.
John: So you know what I mean?
John: Acidic maid?
John: I think that is not a good strategy.
Merlin: Not acidic maid, but like a maid who would work for these folks, you know what I'm saying?
Merlin: Could you have a goyim maid?
Merlin: Is that allowed?
John: Oh, absolutely.
John: I think that's... That's preferred.
John: Yeah, preferred.
Merlin: You see what I'm saying there?
Merlin: You do a little switcheroo.
Merlin: You say, I scratched my back, you get a handy from a lady who knows how to squeeze a mop.
Merlin: But you come over here, right?
Merlin: You flip on the air for me.
Merlin: Maybe you get a phone just for the purpose.
Merlin: But that way, you're both good.
Merlin: You can go over and don't some Honduran lady that works for the Jutes, and they get to have their air conditioning come on because you're not the governor anymore, and your wife is super mad at you and looks a little bit like a box.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I'm just saying, this is the kind of thing that we could be using the internet for instead of just sitting around hitting stars and shit.
John: It is the rare tirade from you where I do not understand any of the logical leaps that you're making, but that was one.
John: Were you reading something?
John: That was one where... No, I was... At a certain point, I stopped reading, and I leaned back in my chair to concentrate on what you were saying.
John: Okay, John.
Merlin: I'm going to break this down for you.
Merlin: I'm going to break this down for you.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: I think I get the gist.
Merlin: Oh, I don't think you get anything like a gist.
Merlin: I think you're far outside your wheelhouse and may have fallen off your fucking boat.
Merlin: Stone soup.
Merlin: Here's the thing.
Merlin: You bring carrots.
Merlin: You bring carrots, right?
Merlin: They bring celery, which doesn't really help all that much.
Merlin: Somebody else brings, I assume, meat.
John: Why don't I bring the stone?
John: I always bring the stone to stone soup.
Merlin: Well, it's like stone soup, but with a scullery maid and air conditioning.
Merlin: You know?
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: You know what it is?
Merlin: It's a lot like film noir.
Merlin: You know, in film noir, there's a lot of like, oh, I'll kill this.
Merlin: Oh, is it Strangers on a Train?
Merlin: Strangers on a Train, right?
Merlin: Is that the one?
Merlin: i don't know i have no idea where you are now okay so i'm sorry instead of strangers on train you're on a space rocket somewhere how about throw mama from the train i will kill the person that annoys you you kill the person that annoys me we're both better off from a train and we got plausible deniability this is a hitchcock thing okay i see what you're saying okay i'm with you oh
John: It's a Hitchcock thing.
John: I thought you were doing so much better.
Merlin: Have you been sleeping?
Merlin: Not really.
Merlin: I think it's not difficult to understand.
Merlin: If you're a Jewish person who lives in Miami inside of a wire and you want your air conditioning to turn on, all you have to do is find a very rich man who wants to fuck a maid.
Merlin: And then you swap.
Merlin: That with plausible deniability.
Merlin: That's in the Talmud.
John: You know, I need my medication adjusted.
Merlin: Which one?
Merlin: All the ones you haven't started taking yet?
Merlin: Your make-believe medications?
John: I need the medications I'm not taking adjusted.
Merlin: Oh, gosh.
Merlin: It's a rich tradition, though.
Merlin: I have a lot of respect for Judaism, like for realsies.
Merlin: There's a lot about it that I think is really, really interesting.
John: I'm sure that they're thrilled to get your endorsement.
Merlin: For realsies.
Merlin: Did you hear?
Merlin: Marilyn Mann thinks it's all right.
Merlin: For realsies.
Merlin: They could put that's a pull quote.
Merlin: They could put that on their homepage.
Merlin: They don't have homepage.
Merlin: Now, listen.
John: I don't know why whenever I'm imitating an old Jewish man, I speak like Tevye from Hitler on the Roof, but it's because that's really a close approximation.
John: Yeah, sure.
John: That's in Eastern Europe, right?
John: I was listening to a podcast, and there was Merlin Mann, and he said, he thinks that it's okay.
John: A lot of things.
Merlin: You sound like a lonely 11-year-old boy impersonating Jackie Mason.
Yeah.
John: That's so true.
Merlin: That is how I know.
John: Every morning I wake up and I'm like, okay, 11 year old boy who lives inside me.
John: Are you ready?
John: Are you ready to pretend that we're Jackie Mason?
Merlin: Especially given how little respect and more importantly, enjoyment you have of literally everything that I do.
Merlin: I will someday tell you the story of the church talent show.
John: Were you ever dated Jackie Mason when you were 11?
John: It was much, much worse.
John: Much, much, much, much worse.
Merlin: My mom basically wrote the libretto.
Merlin: She wrote the script for it.
Merlin: And it was a lot like, you know, you ever seen one of those like meta, meta, meta 80s comic things where the guy's like, I was at a rather interesting party the other night.
Merlin: And he turns and he puts his hands over his face and comes back and goes, ah!
Merlin: I gotta tell you.
Merlin: And he comes back and he's doing impersonations and they're not funny.
Merlin: I did that.
Merlin: I did a tour de force.
Merlin: I, we don't have time for this today, but I did a tour de force series of impersonations that was excruciating.
Merlin: And it was all based on ideas.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: Rich, rich, rich tiny.
Merlin: Like it was, it was all based on ideas from my mom.
Merlin: So I'm, I'm 11.
Merlin: Oh,
Merlin: About 11.
Merlin: And the one I brought to the table was the idea of the very old man that Tim Conway does on Carol Burnett with shuffles.
John: Right, right.
John: The proto-dwarf.
Merlin: Yes, fair enough.
Merlin: Yes, yes.
Merlin: But I also did... I did a lot of the folks that people in the late 70s would be familiar with and enjoy.
Merlin: I did Groucho Marx.
John: Foster Brooks.
Merlin: No, I did Jimmy Durante.
Merlin: Oh, yeah, that's good stuff.
Merlin: I did a Jimmy Durante impersonation.
Merlin: I did a...
Merlin: Jack Benny impersonation.
John: Now, here's the problem with our generation.
John: I'm speaking specifically about the window of generation that includes you and me, right?
Merlin: Is this the window that you yell at the meter maid out of?
Merlin: Is it the window out of which you defenestrate your enemies?
Merlin: Or is the metaphorical window out of which the millennials are literally throwing themselves?
John: This is the window of people who were born between... I'm sorry, it could also be the homosexual sill that you like to sit on.
John: If you know what I mean.
Merlin: It's all the same window.
Merlin: It's the window where Eric Clapton's son fell out into the street.
Merlin: I say that to my daughter.
Merlin: If she gets too close to a window, I say, no Clapton's, no Clapton's.
Merlin: Just like I'm saying, no whammies.
Merlin: We'll cut that out.
John: She doesn't know what it means.
John: No Claptons.
John: There are so many times in a day when I feel like no Claptons is the thing to say.
John: Like when I go to a show, I'm like, no Claptons, no Claptons.
Merlin: On the one hand, it's great that I will forget to cut this out.
Merlin: On the other hand, that is in such incredibly poor taste.
Merlin: And on the third misshapen hand, it's really a shame that that can't be the title of this episode.
Merlin: No Claptons.
Merlin: No Claptons, no Claptons, no Claptons.
John: Oh, no.
John: Here's the thing about the window of our generation, yours and mine, which is... I'm going to start a special pile just for windows.
John: The people that were born between 1965 and 1968.
John: When we were nine years old, we were imitating Jackie Mason...
John: Definitely Jack Benny.
John: Everybody had to do Jack Benny.
John: All these TV stars of the 50s, right?
John: I mean, those people were already 25 years in the past.
John: Groucho Marx.
Merlin: I was 11 when he died.
John: Our comedy heroes.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: It would be like kids today, 11-year-old kids today, imitating Sam Kinison.
John: Imitating...
John: The stand-up comics of the early 80s.
Merlin: I guess so, but it was also a smaller world.
Merlin: We talked last week on a previous episode.
Merlin: There's not really a time.
Merlin: This is timeless, so you can listen to any of them anytime.
Merlin: We talked about changing channels on 2 to 13.
Merlin: I didn't follow up after your discussion of that, but we had ABC, NBC, CBS.
Merlin: We had one – well, so on the UHF, we had five, which is NBC, nine, which is CBS, and 12, which was ABC.
Merlin: That was it.
Merlin: That was it.
Merlin: And if you could get Dayton on two – that's pretty good, Dayton on two – you could maybe watch things at a slightly different time.
Merlin: But UHF, we had WXIX.
Merlin: Can you guess what channel number WXIX was?
Merlin: Because it's rather clever.
Yeah.
Merlin: No, no, try again.
Merlin: XIX.
Merlin: Oh, 19.
Merlin: Channel 19.
Merlin: How great is that?
Merlin: Isn't that brilliant?
Merlin: That's independent, too, right?
Merlin: Creature Feature and shit.
Merlin: And then you had fucking like 48 or something was PBS.
John: But that was it.
John: We didn't have those things.
Merlin: You didn't have no PBS.
Merlin: Not in Anchorage?
John: Oh, no, we did, but PBS was in normal, like, PBS in Anchorage.
Merlin: You had it on a normal channel?
John: It was Channel 7.
Merlin: Holy shit.
Merlin: Some serious money crossed hands for that to happen, John.
John: Well.
Merlin: 48 is where PBS belongs, let's be honest.
Merlin: If you want it, you should really have to get there.
John: Channel 7.
John: I still feel like Channel 7 is PBS.
Merlin: I still feel like Channel 2 is Dayton.
John: Yeah.
John: Or the TV Guide.
John: Channel 2 is NBC in Anchorage.
Merlin: um dayton i gotta go back in the stack a minute uh dayton the problem with windows uh windows oh so here's the thing the world was smaller right i hope you remember as i'd like to remind you you should quit we should quit dicking around with all this music bullshit and become as you know you are fated to be the charles nelson riley of our generation you should be out there having had a career that was somewhat distinguished for a time and then you appear on talk shows whatever the version of that today is you should be but you're right i
John: My problem with being the Charles Nelson Riley of our generation is that he was not a tall man.
Merlin: He was pretty tall.
Merlin: Charles Nelson Riley?
Merlin: I think he was pretty tall.
Merlin: Was tall?
Merlin: I think he was pretty tall.
Merlin: You know, he had a one-man show.
Merlin: It was pretty funny.
Merlin: It's on the Netflix.
Merlin: You can watch it.
Merlin: It's called Life of Riley, and it's his one-man show.
Merlin: He's a very interesting guy.
Merlin: He was a homosexual.
Merlin: Did you know he was a homosexual?
John: Well, in that sense, we're the same.
Mm-hmm.
John: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: He was great on Match Game.
Merlin: You know, well, Paul Lynn's a very sad story.
Merlin: Very sad story about Paul Lynn.
John: I loved Paul Lynn.
Merlin: I loved Paul Lynn.
Merlin: He was also homosexual.
Merlin: And his partner... He was fairly exaggeratedly homosexual.
Merlin: He was, but his partner... This is not even funny.
Merlin: His partner fell out of a window at a hotel in Knob Hill.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: Isn't that awful?
Merlin: And he had to live with that.
Merlin: I hate the stories of couples where one person dies.
Merlin: Like Buck Owens.
Merlin: Those are sad stories.
John: Did you know that Buck Owens bought the second ever Moog synthesizer?
Merlin: Not only did I not know that, I'm just having so much trouble processing that.
Merlin: You're talking that would be 60 what?
Merlin: 5, 6, 7?
John: The second ever one sold.
Merlin: I would figure that it would be a rich eccentric and maybe someone German.
John: No, no, no, no.
John: The first one was... Oh, Les Paul.
Merlin: Les Paul.
Merlin: You know, if you said Les Paul, I'd believe it.
John: Right, but it was Buck Owens.
John: I think the first one went to that person who switched on Bach.
Merlin: Wendy Walter Carlos Williams?
John: Yeah, Wendy Carlos Williams.
John: And the third one went to... Patterson is a man on his back.
John: Or something like that, but the second one went to Buck Owens.
Merlin: Who was the second one?
Merlin: oh I'm sorry you said Wendy Walter Carlos Williams Wendy Carlos Williams got the first one and the third one went to Mickey Dolenz but the second one went to Bucko that's so take that can you imagine how much it sucked to be Mickey Dolenz like the higher up he went the more he still couldn't really play drums and it drove you know it drove him nuts it drove him crazy that he couldn't really play drums yeah he hated it have you had moments like that in your life in your wheelhouse
John: Are you talking about where I was driven crazy by being unable to play drums?
Merlin: I'm just saying, oh, maybe you play a little bit too loud?
John: No, no, no.
John: I mean, I have known some drummers who have become very successful in rock music in spite of the fact that they don't know how to play drums.
Merlin: Any of the Fastbacks drummers, you think?
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: Fastbacks always had good drummers.
Merlin: Yeah, they did.
Merlin: Did your friend Jason play in the Fastbacks?
Merlin: He played in the Fastbacks.
Merlin: How many people do you know that have played personally, if you can say, how many people do you personally know that you can think of who've played drums in the Fastbacks?
Merlin: You know, the Jason Finn guy, there's the guy that played in the Long Winters.
Merlin: What's his head?
Merlin: Mike Musburger.
Merlin: Mike Musburger.
John: Was he in Super Chunk at one time?
John: He was not in Super Chunk, I don't think.
John: Although, Mike Musburger's played.
John: Between Mike Musburger and Jason Finn, they've played in every single band.
John: Where's he from?
John: Is he from the South?
Who?
John: Mike Musburger.
Merlin: Is he always from Seattle?
John: I think he's Seattle.
John: Duff McKagan played drums in the Fastbacks.
Merlin: I find that very hard to believe.
John: Early incarnation of the Fastbacks.
Merlin: Who's the guy with the white hair that was in there for a long time?
Merlin: Bucky?
Merlin: Rusty?
Merlin: What was his name?
I don't know.
Merlin: I saw an infographic once.
Merlin: I don't care for infographics.
Merlin: I'm done with them.
Merlin: But I saw a great infographic once about how many drummers were in the Fastbacks and when.
Merlin: And it was laugh out loud funny.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Kerplock, did he know to Kerplock?
Merlin: He always played guitar?
Merlin: He can play drums, right?
Merlin: Did he ever have to sub on drums?
John: Kurt Block is the lead guitarist, and I don't think he ever played the drums.
Merlin: You know, I met him.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Do you remember that?
Merlin: I do remember that.
Merlin: It's one of the greatest nights of my life you introduced me to Kurt Block.
John: I'm so glad.
John: I'm so glad.
John: He's a lovely man.
John: I went to see Cheap Trick with him a couple of nights ago.
John: Are you kidding me?
John: I don't care about Cheap Trick, and I don't care about Kurt Block.
Merlin: Are you the one that told me about the Cheap Trick John Lennon thing?
Merlin: Was that you?
John: What's the cheap trick John Lennon thing?
Merlin: So A, it wasn't you.
Merlin: 1980.
Merlin: They're doing that pretty good last album he did.
Merlin: Well, half of it's good.
Merlin: Let's put it that way.
Merlin: And I'm Losing You, you know that song?
Merlin: He...
Merlin: I'm not sure exactly how this worked, but this is a true story.
Merlin: You will hear the song.
Merlin: I'll send you this video momentarily.
Merlin: He called in Cheap Trick.
Merlin: What?
Merlin: Bun E. Carlos and Rick Nielsen came in.
Merlin: In the studio already there were Tony Levin and not George Martin, but George somebody playing keyboards.
Merlin: And John said, here's the song.
Merlin: They learned it.
Merlin: Rick wrote the riff.
Merlin: He said, Bun says, how do you want me to play?
Merlin: He says, play it however you want.
Merlin: And what they ripped into I'm losing you that, you know, that awesome bridge it's, it's sounds like a fucking cheap, it's a cheap, it sounds like basically a cheap trick song, you know, and cheap trick already sounds like the Beatles in the move.
Merlin: So that's cool.
Merlin: It sounds like a cheap trick song with John Lennon singing and it's fucking great.
John: Incredible.
John: I never heard that.
Merlin: Would you like, would you like me to pause the podcast so that you could listen to it?
Merlin: No, no, no.
John: I think I will listen to it at the end of the podcast.
Merlin: But Tony Levin, Tony Levin, you know... Was he playing a Chapman stick?
Merlin: He was not.
Merlin: He's playing a fretless bass, which is the Chapman stick of bass.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: You ever play a Chapman stick?
John: I have not, although John Vanderslice, in the very early days of my association with him... Like an analog one?
John: He had an analog Chapman stick, yeah.
John: He had a Chapman stick player in his band.
John: Oh, God.
John: This was during a time when Vanderslice... He did two things.
John: He always sat in a chair, and he always sat over to the side of the stage.
John: Are you kidding?
John: No, this was early days.
Merlin: Is this MKUltra?
John: No, no, no.
John: It's after MKUltra, so...
John: not early days vanderslice but early days in me me knowing him wow chapman stick player and he sat over to the side of the stage in a chair while the chapman stick player sat in the center of the stage and played the chapman stick and made i have to say some of the greatest bass faces i've ever seen in the history of rock they won't let you have one first of all there's a checklist hi welcome welcome please come in is your head shaved yes
Merlin: Come into the Chapman stick store.
Merlin: Do you have the Chapman stick?
Merlin: Yeah, exactly.
Merlin: They call it the stick shoppy.
Merlin: You go in there.
Merlin: First of all, is your head shaved?
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Do you have a goatee?
John: Yes.
Merlin: You have what?
John: A goatee.
Merlin: Goatee or funny mustache.
Merlin: You have to have weird, weird, weird hair.
Merlin: If you wear a kilt, especially if you do a kilt, extra points.
Merlin: Extra points.
Merlin: Teva sandals, come on in.
John: Right?
John: If you wear leggings and leg warmers over the top of those, over like a pole climber boots,
Merlin: What about jewelry?
Merlin: You're in.
Merlin: You want to keep your fingers free, but what about turquoise Indian jewelry?
Merlin: Lots of jewelry.
John: As much jewelry as you can wear.
John: And earplugs.
Merlin: So he sat on a chair like he did a frip, basically.
Merlin: He did a base face frip.
Merlin: You know, Fripp always sits on a chair in the dark.
Merlin: You can't even see him when he's playing.
John: Yeah, this was during that era of indie rock, early, early 2000s, where the big question was, you know, is standing in the middle of the stage too...
Merlin: rock oh it's and we're not even talking about like like irony at this point like your pals and presidents of the usa were like that was the like we even weird out that's like ironica people people were at this point they're talking more about authenticity yeah yeah there was no irony about it it was like if you are the singer and you stand in the middle then you are being too singer
Merlin: and you need to like go sit up you need to stand over on the side it would be a couple years before you got like the for the strokes caught on the murder city devils whatever the fuck all those different like i guess i guess not red cross but what was the other three guys with the douchey glasses urge overkill i guess
Merlin: That was a 90s thing.
John: Well, that was early, early days.
Merlin: But, you know, it's almost like it was like the way punk was kind of a reaction to all those bands we like.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Do you think that was an authenticity thing?
Merlin: Backlash, Nirvana's over, this is the end, the dot coms.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: I got nothing.
John: Yeah, indie rock in its early stages was almost entirely reactionary.
John: It was like a kind of proto-fascism.
Merlin: That was not a terrific time for indie rock.
Merlin: no well and it was it was not a terrific time to be in indie rock either but like also like it was right around that napster time i guess probably unrelated but like i think about all my favorite bands from like one from well seriously from five one to five years earlier like bands i liked a year earlier like elliot smith's record was like not that great super chunk was not moving me like they were you know what i'm saying got my voices that's kind of when i stopped was around then
Merlin: But you know what I mean?
Merlin: Like all these, all these bands that for like at least five to 10 years, there was a consistent stream of bands that just put out album after a pavement, pavement broke up.
John: I mean, all these bands that I, I don't know if you like these bands, but like, it was after the second Creeper Lagoon record, all of everything went into hibernation.
John: Huh?
Merlin: And that was, they were good.
Merlin: They were awful good.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Well, now your buddy's friends with them, right?
Merlin: Your buddy from the noise pop.
John: Oh yeah, everybody's friends with those guys.
Merlin: But that was when I... Oh, so you got a guy with a stick.
John: That's when I made my appearance.
John: That was when I came out.
John: That's right.
John: It was just like coming of age sexually in the early 90s at the height of third generation feminism.
John: It was the wrong time to come out.
John: It was the wrong time to be a young man.
Merlin: I'm going to act like my microphone cut out because there's just not a chance in the fucking world I'm going to respond, let alone ask any questions about that.
Merlin: There's no way.
Merlin: When we had our baby, our family was kind enough to throw us a baby shower.
John: I thought you were going to say your family was kind enough to throw you a baby.
John: I was like, you didn't have that baby yourselves?
Merlin: Long story.
Merlin: Long story.
Merlin: It's part of your tradition.
Merlin: The baby's made of jute and had to be thrown from a building because the elevator would have started a fire.
Merlin: Now we show up.
Merlin: My brother-in-law, whom I love, he's so awesome.
Merlin: He's sitting out there.
Merlin: He's already three sheets to the wind.
Merlin: And he's standing out there.
Merlin: And he's like, enjoy it while you can.
Merlin: Because when she turns about 11.
Merlin: Oh, boy.
Merlin: Not going to be fun.
Merlin: And he would tell me stories about like when the sexting – like you get the sexting.
Merlin: The sexting started, right?
Merlin: And he taught me a phrase that has stood me well.
Merlin: Well before I had a daughter.
Merlin: This is a phrase that has stood well.
Merlin: There is no good that can come of it.
Merlin: There are things in the world from which good is likely to come.
Merlin: There are things in the world that may create something that's neutral, but there are things in the world where no good can come of it.
Merlin: No good can come of it.
Merlin: No, I know you're not a man who deals in absolutes.
John: No, I like that phrase, though.
John: Well, this has just occurred to me recently as the father of a daughter.
Merlin: It's fun but hard, right?
John: Bikinis.
John: Oh, man.
John: Bikinis.
John: At what point... Now, as an adult male, and certainly as somebody who used to not have a daughter, I was very pro-bikinis.
John: Sure.
Merlin: It's the second best thing to be in there, right?
John: Right.
John: Bikinis.
John: If you had asked me three years ago, how do you feel about bikinis, I would say 100% pro-bikinis.
John: You wouldn't have to pause at all.
John: Wouldn't even have to think about it.
John: But now, I have a daughter...
John: Now my feelings about bikinis are fairly complicated.
John: If you said, how do you feel about bikinis?
John: I would go, well, wait a minute.
John: Who are we talking about here?
John: Oh, I do that now too.
John: It's horrifying.
John: Personally, I feel like bikinis, like there's a lot to be said for not bikinis.
John: There's a lot to be said for robes.
Merlin: John, I've never been in my life – I'm mostly like a ridiculous wonder, but really I've never been so grateful to have no libido as now.
Merlin: I mean except for where Jean Grey is involved and I can't get into that.
Merlin: But it is really – here's the thing.
Merlin: Here's my thought on this.
Merlin: I totally agree with you.
Merlin: I think about it all the time now.
Merlin: And I think what happens is I think for years, for probably arguably – you're the historian here.
Merlin: I'm going to say arguably for millennia, men have been scared that their daughters have vaginas and buttholes.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I think that is from the beginning that – listen, that's a concern, right?
Merlin: Now, here's the thing.
Merlin: The 60s come along.
Merlin: We're blowing stuff up with bombs.
Merlin: We discover the Bikini Islands and the atoll writ large, and then you've got the bikini.
Merlin: So now she's got a butt and a woo-woo, and she's wearing almost nothing.
Merlin: Okay?
Merlin: You ready for this now?
Merlin: Ready for this?
Merlin: You ready for stage three?
John: I don't know.
Merlin: Lower back tattoos.
Merlin: So now you've got a vagina and a butt.
Merlin: You're wearing almost nothing.
Merlin: And now you're wearing the bikini arguably so that people can see you have the terrible, terrible judgment to get a tramp stamp.
Merlin: And they still, they still have a butt.
John: Now, you feel like that's the thumbnail sketch of history?
John: I'm not saying that's what I think.
John: For millennia.
John: And then there was the bikini and then tramp stamp.
Merlin: Well, I mean, I don't follow football, but I know what an onside kick is.
Merlin: You understand?
Merlin: I don't...
Merlin: See, now here's the thing, John.
Merlin: Now I want to lose you.
Merlin: Now you've challenged me to potentially lose you, and most of the gates that keep the salmon from walking up the steps are about to fall down in all the water.
John: I'm still trying to work out that Arnold Schwarzenegger... Do you want me to try one more time?
John: No, no, no.
John: I don't want to.
John: I don't want to.
Merlin: Step zero.
Merlin: You're Arnold Schwarzenegger, and you want to donk somebody from Central America.
Merlin: Your wife does not like this.
John: Go back to onside kick.
John: I'm terrified now about... Bikinis?
John: I don't want to be the dad that's like, no bikinis!
John: But I also don't ever want her to wear a bikini.
Merlin: I don't think those are incompatible.
Merlin: I think that's what every right-thinking man believes in his wheelhouse.
John: Yeah, but I don't know how to affect that.
John: I don't know how to be the dad that's like, hey.
Merlin: You have to act like you don't care.
Merlin: It's like offering wine at dinner.
Merlin: My daughter will never, ever, ever find out how much I hate tattoos because you know why?
Merlin: She'll use it against me.
Oh.
Merlin: She's like you.
Merlin: I, you know, I describe you to people sometimes cause they don't understand you.
Merlin: And I have to describe, I have to describe you historically.
Merlin: Do you really want to know?
Merlin: Yeah, let's hear it.
Merlin: Well, setting aside all the nice things I say about you, which is, you know, 90% of what I say.
Merlin: Why would you repeat that?
Merlin: Well, cause you're one of my best friends and one of the people I admire most in the world, despite the fact you're kind of a dick.
Merlin: Um, easily one of my best friends and favorite people.
Merlin: But I say, well, it's hard.
Merlin: It's kind of hard to understand John until you've been in a room with him.
Merlin: And I was like, cause it's John, you know, the phrase.
Mm-hmm.
Merlin: Well, I mean, assuming he hasn't had a chance to bathe, which is a good assumption.
John: It's Wednesday.
Merlin: I said, you know that phrase where they say, like, you know, sharks smelling blood and water?
Merlin: John has that on a much higher level than a shark.
Merlin: I said, because here's the thing.
Merlin: There are a lot of people who will figure out how to needle you, but John's playing on another level.
Merlin: It's like fighting Dr. X in the astral plane, right?
Merlin: John is going to notice something that you didn't even realize you're self-conscious about yet, and without specifically calling it out, you will cry by the time the party's not even over, and then you'll do it more.
John: oh but that's you know it's wrong am i wrong in that it's all in service of of helping of freeing them from the from their insecurity see now now you sound like a sex guru loose women tightened here if you can if you know like a lot of people have a lot of people have gifts so some people can throw a football some people can do the math do an on-site kick
John: Some people can do onside kicks.
John: Some people are very, very good at the balance beam.
Merlin: Scullery.
Merlin: Some people do scullery.
Merlin: Wiring.
Merlin: They do Jew wiring.
John: And if God gave me anything, it was the ability to look at someone and in a very short amount of time figure out what their greatest fear about themselves is.
John: So what am I supposed to do with that?
Merlin: Am I supposed to just be like, oh, well.
Merlin: You're like a doctor that could smell cancer.
Merlin: Like, what the fuck are you going to say?
Merlin: Could I have another Heineken?
Merlin: No, you're going to say, get me a scalpel, lay down, and let me really smell that shit.
John: Do you know what your greatest fear is?
John: That's what I'm saying.
Merlin: See, I think you don't.
Merlin: You're like Milton Berle.
Merlin: You take out just enough to beat him.
Merlin: And that's what I love about it, though.
Merlin: And the other thing is you don't – you're –
Merlin: Most other people are perturbable.
Merlin: You're perturbable in your way, but mostly if you're just not having a good night.
Merlin: But generally, you're imperturbable, and it's very scary to people.
Merlin: You told an anecdote a few weeks ago about the person who was correcting what you meant to say about somebody, and I could literally see you standing there, kind of smiling, but stone still, not responding in any way, but literally just standing and looking at the person, and it is amazing.
Merlin: chilling it's absolutely chilling right now you sound like this this this holly jolly jovial burl ives character who's enjoying some time with the computer oh no my friend no no no when john shows up at the party there's going to be a lot of people crying well i try not to i try not to take it all the way so that they're openly crying i'd like them to be crying quietly so i think if you're really if it's a true shame you're going to do it in the bathroom oh
John: I've had some shameful bathroom times.
Okay.
Merlin: That'll do.
Merlin: That'll do, pig.
Merlin: Blinda Butcher.
Merlin: Is that how you say her name?