Ep. 34: "A Shit Barge Full of Long Pigs"
Merlin: Who is it?
Merlin: Who is me?
John: Guess what I got.
John: What do you got?
John: Ah, hey, a bell!
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Oh, my God, where's my bell?
John: Oh, I moved my bell.
John: I don't have a bell.
Merlin: I'm going to keep it special.
Merlin: I'm not going to do too much.
Merlin: Jeez.
Merlin: It's really hard to explain.
Merlin: It was extremely hard to explain to my daughter.
Merlin: But I just had to say, well, you know, honey, there's just some times when I'm talking on the internet and I really want to hit a fucking bell.
Merlin: I didn't say it in those words.
Merlin: But I said it in that more kind of like really ridiculous way you talk to a child.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: John, you know, I've been cynical about your candles and bells.
Merlin: But sometimes you just need to hit a goddamn bell.
Merlin: Am I right?
Merlin: Am I right?
Merlin: You know, I had no idea.
Merlin: It's like not having a microwave.
Merlin: You sit around and you go, oh, why would you want a way to make soup faster?
Merlin: And then you go, oh my.
John: Oh, I don't even watch TV.
Merlin: Oh, sorry.
Merlin: Is there something I need to own a coffee maker to understand?
John: Yeah.
John: And then you get a bell next to your computer.
John: Yeah.
John: And a couple times a day, you punctuate some triumph.
Yeah.
John: Triumph with a lowercase t. Yeah.
John: You don't punctuate the band or the motorcycle or the car.
John: You punctuate a lowercase t triumph with a little sound.
Merlin: Actually, I don't want to derail this, but I think I'm going to start a new stack, which is going to be the things we don't talk about.
John: Oh, the things that we're going to circle back to.
Merlin: Well, gosh, no, that's a really big pile.
Merlin: You know, I have actually, I don't smoke, but I have an entire cigar box full of cards just from this show that I would be happy to go through with you at some point.
Merlin: But no, I think Triumph is something, like Kiss, is something to avoid.
Merlin: Right, Triumph the insult comic dog.
Merlin: Now, that's funny.
John: That is funny.
Merlin: You know what I think?
Merlin: There's a gateway drug.
Merlin: You know how you've experimented with man love in the past?
Merlin: I think my experiment that I never realized that I was outing myself was when I make a little giggle.
Merlin: I make an unconscious little giggle.
Merlin: I make a he-he-he sound, and I realized that that's exact – and then I found myself doing stuff like this.
Merlin: And like hitting a coffee cup with a pencil, it's a nice pencil, but that's just not the same as –
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: That means welcome.
Merlin: You have arrived.
Merlin: This just got where it needs to be.
John: Now, does that mean that you're not going to giggle anymore?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: I'm in a good mood.
Merlin: I just ate a burrito really, really fast.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: I've eaten my usual breakfast of two chocolate chip cookies and a half a cup of coffee.
John: Big cookies?
John: No, not big ones.
John: Normal cookie-sized cookies.
John: Now, what's normal for you?
John: Well, let's see.
John: Are they Bromdenagian cookies?
John: A proper cookie, I think, should be the size of a dollar pancake.
Merlin: Oh, I would say that is a 1X standard size cookie.
Merlin: You're talking about a little bigger than a Chips Ahoy?
John: Well, no, a Chips Ahoy is a paltry cookie.
Merlin: They've gotten small, John.
John: It's terrible.
John: A Chips Ahoy is like the size of John Lennon's eyeglasses lens.
John: Hmm.
Merlin: You're talking about like the era of like 66?
John: Yeah, 66 eyeglasses lens.
Merlin: And, you know, I hate to admit that I've had these, but, you know, sometimes when you're traveling and you got to eat out of machines, which is the worst, I'll find myself, as you do, you find yourself eating cookies out of a machine.
Merlin: And I'm always like, what the fuck?
John: You find yourself living in a shotgun shack.
Merlin: Yeah, you find yourself living.
Merlin: Did you just make a talking heads joke?
Merlin: I'm afraid so.
Merlin: My other program had a reference to that.
Merlin: This is getting really weird.
Merlin: I'm not going to hit the bell.
Merlin: I don't want to talk about your other program.
Merlin: You know what you need is productivity.
Merlin: Let's circle back.
Merlin: Your problem is your productivity.
Merlin: You're not doing what you love.
John: My problem is my productivity.
Merlin: slash no semicolon i'm not doing what i love that's your problem that's my problem now do you remember uh what was it called was it called cookie crunch and it was i like to think of it as at least during my awareness of the phenomenon i i like to think of that as the apex of of what i will call really cereal oh my god my my cereal was cocoa pebbles
Merlin: Oh my God.
Merlin: Those were, those were, there were so many cocoa pebbles you could fit in a bowl.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: If you were doing, even, even if you were doing a captain, a captain crunch, you know, that's, there's still, there's a lot of holes in the captain.
John: That's exactly right.
John: But, but, but, but, but, but cocoa puffs, it was like chunks of sugar.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
John: Cocoa puffs.
John: Yeah.
John: Was not my cereal.
John: And a lot of times people would get cocoa puffs.
John: Yes.
John: Like if I was staying over at a friend's house or whatever, they're like, what kind of cereal do you want?
John: I'm like cocoa pebbles.
Yeah.
Merlin: Right, that's like asking somebody for a Dr. Pepper and they give you like a Sergeant Cumin from the cash and carry.
John: Those are the worst.
John: But yeah, so then there'd be Cocoa Puffs and they're like, I got you what you wanted.
John: I'm like, that's a Cocoa Puff.
John: That's not a Cocoa Pebble.
Merlin: You know, it's like chunks of sugar, and it's like gravy train.
Merlin: Remember that for dogs?
Merlin: We pour hot water on it, it makes gravy for your dog.
Merlin: It makes the chocolate milk soup.
John: Chocolate milk, yeah.
John: You know, Cocoa Pebbles, first of all, it had on the box was Bam Bam.
Merlin: Bam Bam, yeah.
John: Flintstones.
John: Love Bam Bam.
John: But it was just basically puffed rice soaked in chocolate until it could hold no more chocolate.
John: Oh, my God.
John: Now that I'm talking about it...
John: You know, they don't make it anymore.
John: I never see it.
Merlin: Are you kidding me?
John: What?
Merlin: Is it because of the decline of the Flintstones, or is it the sugar issue?
John: Must be.
Merlin: That's a goddamn shame.
Merlin: I hate when breakfast foods go away.
Merlin: It makes me so angry.
Merlin: You want to know the weirdest thing?
Merlin: Yeah.
John: This is the third Flintstones reference in the last 24 hours.
John: In your life.
John: Yeah, and the first two Flintstones references were both...
John: references to ann margaret's character oh my god why did you say that you know what i'm saying why her head was so big oh remember how big her head and her hair were you know her hair was the biggest of all hair it was the large ann margaret in the late 70s early 80s it was there was no bigger hair
Merlin: God, I want to get lost.
Merlin: I want to lose my compass and fucking get lost in that hair.
Merlin: You know how hard it would be to get your hand out of that hair?
Merlin: Oh, I don't think.
Merlin: I mean, if you kind of lost yourself for a minute and you really got in there, you would have to chew your arm off, but you wouldn't.
Merlin: She'd chew your arm off because she probably had a gig.
Merlin: But, oh my God, and Margaret.
Merlin: And Margaret, that opening.
Merlin: I've never seen Bye Bye Birdie, but I've watched the opening credit thing a lot.
John: Well, Anne-Margaret in Tommy.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Perhaps the hottest of all things.
Merlin: Is that right?
Merlin: Okay, I'm going to check that out.
John: Have you not watched Tommy recently?
Merlin: No, I was, as you know, I think like you.
Merlin: Yes, I know like you.
Merlin: I had a...
Merlin: It's from that weird phase in 10th grade where I was really transitioning and like a lot of very, very different – well, by white middle class suburban standards, really, really different weird rock music.
Merlin: I mean I like Black Sabbath and The Who and I was starting to get into like the fix.
Merlin: I really like starting to like New Wave and Split Ends.
Merlin: Sure.
John: The fix was amazing.
Merlin: They're underrated.
Merlin: Not as underrated as Missing Persons but definitely up there.
John: Agreed.
Merlin: On both counts.
Merlin: My friend and I used to wear knee pads to school so that we could slide down the hallways on our knees like Pete Townsend.
John: You're just lobbing softballs at me.
Merlin: Is that what they are?
Merlin: I had a members-only jacket where I undone the epaulettes because I'd once seen a picture of an epaulette unattached Pete Townsend.
Merlin: Back then, that's when he was still trying to make his hair do something.
John: The thing is, Pete Townsend in the 80s was like 35.
John: He was still a totally young guy, still trying to get hip with the times.
Merlin: It was like somebody shot a very young marmot out of a cannon, and it happened to land on his head, and then he played guitar.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah, it was sort of a flock of seagulls, but punk.
Merlin: Well, you know, I think it's hard was there.
Merlin: You know, you remember when everybody had their salvos to make like make a disco record.
Merlin: And there's this is very well documented.
Merlin: There's tons of bands that then felt the need to respond to new wave, including you got your Billy Joel's.
John: You know, you got all these people say Billy Joel.
Merlin: You tell me Glass Houses was not his attempt to do a white album?
John: I can't talk about Billy Joel.
John: Should I put that on the card?
John: I despise Billy Joel with such a white-hot fury.
Merlin: I don't understand this.
Merlin: Is it on a molecular level?
John: Yes, absolutely.
John: Everything about him, every word, every syllable, his puffy face, his dumb...
John: East Coast working man horse shit.
John: None of it.
Merlin: Can I tell you the truth?
Merlin: I hope I can tell you the truth.
Merlin: Here's the one thing.
Merlin: I don't have that problem with Billy Joel like I have with Phil Collins.
Merlin: Oh my god, Phil Collins is a saint!
Merlin: He was good in Genesis.
Merlin: That was amazing.
Merlin: Guess what?
Merlin: There's a third card now.
Merlin: We've got a third card.
Merlin: You know what always got me is as I got a little bit older and I started to understand that pictures of pretty ladies in magazines, somebody had lit them to make them look good.
Merlin: Not that they didn't look good.
Merlin: And then I started to realize that every time you saw a professional photograph of something, a lot of trouble had gone into it.
Merlin: And I don't know if it's 52nd Street or one of them, but I hate the fucking loose tie.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: The loose tie in a posed photo is so douchey.
Merlin: It's an overused word.
John: The loose skinny tie.
Merlin: The skinny knit loose tie.
John: The skinny knit loose tie.
John: Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.
John: Now, if you're wearing like an adult man's tie, and you've loosened it because you're really getting down to the nitty gritty...
John: Yeah.
John: You need to loosen your tie.
John: That's one thing.
John: But yeah, like getting dressed in the morning and putting your tie on.
Merlin: Oh, loose.
Merlin: Oh, man.
Merlin: That's a paddling.
Merlin: Yeah, I totally agree.
John: You know what that is?
John: That's a Billy Joel move.
John: It's a totally fucking Billy Joel move.
Merlin: And then he's like standing outside.
Merlin: Is he holding a trumpet?
Merlin: I'm trying to remember.
Merlin: I think he might be holding an instrument.
Merlin: I might have been a cello.
Merlin: He's out there.
Merlin: He just, oh, don't mind me.
Merlin: I'm just standing here on the streets of New York with my fucking tie.
John: And you know what?
John: He's probably got the sleeves of his suit jacket, you know, like pushed up his arm.
Pushed up.
Merlin: That's my second least favorite sleeve trick.
Merlin: I accidentally did this yesterday.
Merlin: I hate the folding up.
Merlin: You know who looks good in this?
Merlin: Exactly one person.
Merlin: Jon Hamm on Mad Men looks good with this.
Merlin: Everybody else, you look like the biggest cock in the world.
Merlin: You got your sweater.
Merlin: You got your long sleeve shirt.
Merlin: You unbutton the buttons of your long sleeve shirt.
Merlin: I can't see what I'm doing because I have that combo right now.
Merlin: And I'm folding up.
Merlin: The sleeve, starting with the cuffs, I'm folding.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: I already fucking hate myself.
Merlin: You're doing it over the sweater.
Merlin: Over the sweater.
Merlin: And then you make it look real tidy.
John: But you think Jon Hamm can pull that off?
Merlin: Well, you should see he's a very slender man.
John: He's a handsome guy.
John: I wouldn't say slender.
John: He's a powerfully built human.
Merlin: He's kind of like my TV Clooney.
Merlin: I really like that guy.
John: And you know what?
John: He's a nice guy, too.
Merlin: Well, I know he's very, very funny.
Merlin: Some of the things that he's done, the self-effacing things that he's done, makes me understand that if I were more handsome, I would be able to be a lot more funny and adaptive.
Yeah.
Merlin: That's an excuse.
Merlin: I'm making an excuse, aren't I?
John: Well, I mean, it's a thing, I think, where he feels... Now, I'm not going to speak here for Jon Hamm.
John: No.
John: But I imagine, based on my encounters with him... What?
John: Yeah.
John: If you go get the Playboy interview with Jon Hamm... Yeah.
John: In the opening paragraph, the writer says, I'm interviewing Jon Hamm and John Roderick and John Hodgman and Amy Mann are sitting across from us.
Merlin: And they come over and... They don't even publish Playboy anymore.
Merlin: There's a lot of bad niche.
Merlin: I swear to you.
Merlin: You're mentioned in something in fucking Playboy where somebody's in a room with Jon Hamm and you were near him.
John: That's right.
John: You know what?
John: I'm going to come right out and say it.
John: I know Jon Hamm.
Merlin: Not in the biblical sense, because you're not a religious man.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: Not in the biblical sense.
Merlin: Does he shake his hand?
John: I'm saying that I know him.
John: Does he have a relaxed sense of humor?
John: He does.
John: And here's what I'm saying.
John: I'm not speaking for him, but I imagine from interacting with him that his handsomeness is somewhat of a burden.
John: for him pursuing what he truly loves, which is comedy.
Merlin: I know that's crazy.
Merlin: He has a gift.
Merlin: He wasn't officially like a groundling or something, was he?
Merlin: But he does lots of stuff with comedy groups, and he fits right in.
John: Yeah, he likes it.
John: He's a fan of it.
Merlin: I'm sorry to talk about comedy.
John: But if he was an uglier guy, he would be a better comedian.
Merlin: Oh, you're saying like if he was named Eugene Merman or a Patton Oswalt.
John: Hey, now, those guys are handsome guys.
Merlin: Well, they're Tolkien characters is the thing.
Ha ha ha ha.
Merlin: um i you know i i would like to talk more about this but it just gets super weird let's circle back to it well okay what's the other thing we're gonna circle back to okay so i got triumph kiss phil collins and billy joel phil collins i'm gonna i'm gonna even go i'm gonna go so far as to say no jacket required is a classic album
John: Do you want me to make more cards?
John: You make as many cards as you want.
John: You make two cards, one that says Phil, the other says Collins.
Merlin: You understand?
Merlin: I'm the one that puts this on the internet.
Merlin: I've got the rudimentary editing tools.
John: I understand.
Merlin: Phil Collins is required.
Merlin: Jerk Billy Joel.
Merlin: Hi, I'm John Roderick.
Merlin: So we're talking about John.
Merlin: I want to talk about, can we circle back to John Hamm?
John: Yeah, sure.
Merlin: And that's what two M's.
Merlin: I'm going to put him in a different pile.
Merlin: You've probably struggled with this, John.
Merlin: You're very good looking.
Merlin: You're very charismatic.
Merlin: And I have to imagine at times you say, stop staring at my tits and listen to my song about the space shuttle.
Merlin: Do you encounter problems where you have trouble keeping people's focus on the way you help them?
John: uh i think that my uh inner ugliness uh suffices oh you're like you're like the emperor the more you use that dark side of the force the more wrinkled you get yes exactly exactly well or the more wrinkled the portrait of me in my attic gets that's true yeah that's true i think a lot of people misunderstand that analogy yeah i think you know i walk around uh i walk around uh unconscious
John: That was the 90s, right?
John: And so I'm not aware of people really, like, undressing me with their eyes.
Merlin: That's how you know you're truly handsome, right?
Merlin: When you're Elle McPherson and you can just go wear some sweatpants that say juicy on the back and you go to the store and you buy some snuff or whatever Elle McPherson is.
Merlin: Can you imagine how hot that would be if she did some Copenhagen?
John: There's just Elle McPherson in some juicy sweatpants and just her hair in a bun.
John: Yes.
John: Buying some Copenhagen.
Merlin: And you know the best part would be I bet you could spit really well because most girls can't spit.
Merlin: Have you ever noticed that?
John: Have I ever noticed it?
John: There was a while there in the 80s where I ran a clinic teaching girls how to spit.
John: It's useless, though.
John: No, no, no.
John: If you walk them all the way through the process, like, here's what you're trying to accomplish.
John: It's not a thing where it doesn't happen from the lips.
John: It happens from the back of the tongue.
Merlin: It starts in a deeper place.
John: Yeah, and what you're trying to do is you're trying to launch this goober.
Mm-hmm.
John: with the idea that it has a life of its own now.
John: You're not just sending air out.
John: It's not wet air.
Merlin: No, if you love your loogie, you've got to set it free.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: It's not just a spray of wet air.
John: You are trying to create a new thing
Merlin: Oh, it's almost like giving birth.
Merlin: Can I risk going a little bit ping pong for a minute?
Merlin: One problem, I'll let you continue, but I think one problem with people learning to throw, especially girls, is they don't understand when to let go of the ball.
Merlin: That is a problem with girls.
Merlin: I was not geometric in my studies, but I think that around the 45 degree angle, you want to let go.
Merlin: Because if you let go too early, it goes up in the air.
Merlin: You get too late, it goes down.
Merlin: There's a whole lot of ways.
Merlin: I think with a loogie, you need to be thick of 45.
Merlin: And on top of that, I think you're straight on to the point, which is that they don't really want to spit.
Merlin: And if you don't really want to spit, you're never going to get any good trajectory.
Merlin: You have to own that.
Merlin: Get behind that shit.
John: Well, this was the thing about my loogie clinic was that the girls that signed up for it all truly did want to spit.
John: Yeah.
John: It wasn't just to be with you.
John: It wasn't a thing where we're standing around a campfire and the girl's like, and I go, Hey, let me help you out.
John: It's a thing where they would contact me and they would say, I understand that you can teach girls to spit.
Merlin: And I would say, yeah, if you are ready.
Merlin: Was this like a, like a night class at like a community college?
John: Well, it was Alaska, so it was the midnight sun, so there's no night.
John: Oh.
John: Technically, no night.
John: Settle, people.
John: Settle, people.
John: It would be what you would call night here in America, but in Alaska, it's like the sun is in the sky.
Merlin: You sound like a Native American in a commercial.
Merlin: Midnight, which you call dark.
John: My people call it maze.
Merlin: I think the first thing, step zero, you have to teach them that the loogie is not going to be part of you anymore, as you say.
Merlin: I think you want to let them know about wanting it.
Merlin: It's like pushing on a baby.
Merlin: You need to move on with your life.
Merlin: You want to let the loogie go.
Merlin: But the very first thing, rudimentary, is how not to spit on yourself.
Merlin: It's like judo.
John: And the mistake that people make is that they think that spitting involves pursing the lips.
John: I think your baby analogy is perfect.
John: When you're giving birth to a baby, you don't purse the lips.
John: No.
John: Opposite effect.
John: No, no, no.
John: You want to open and let the baby be free.
John: And your mouth lips are the same.
John: Right.
John: You want to create a loogie-shaped hole in your mouth, a loogie-shaped aperture.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: And then let the loogie, like the fighter in the original Battlestar Galactica, let that loogie make its way down the launch.
Merlin: It's a lot like a baby, John.
Merlin: The more I think about it, the more I'm realizing.
Merlin: And, you know, it's sort of like when you get a thing where you go...
Merlin: It's kind of like a Braxton Hicks contraction.
Merlin: You know something's coming and then you got to start getting ready.
Merlin: And like singing, like I don't know how to sing.
Merlin: But I know that when you learn how to sing, you learn that it doesn't come out of your mouth.
Merlin: It doesn't come out of your throat.
Merlin: It comes from somewhere much deeper.
Merlin: And if I understand correctly, you're saying in the sense that it is like having a baby.
Merlin: It has to start much earlier and in a different place.
John: Exactly.
John: And I really feel like the, I mean, when my baby was being born, I was there in the hospital and I was saying, Good for you.
John: Battlestar Galactica launch sequence.
John: Battlestar Galactica launch sequence.
John: And it really helped everybody.
Merlin: And the doctor just turns to you and very quietly says, I work alone.
Merlin: You know what women who are having a baby love is advice?
Merlin: Oh, wow.
Merlin: Don't they?
John: Well, and the thing is, I mean, if there was ever a time when a woman needs advice from a man, it's when she's having a baby.
Merlin: Quit acting like such a faggot.
Merlin: Just have a baby.
John: That's what guys are for, right?
John: We're there to provide some hard-won advice.
John: Right.
Right.
Merlin: Well, and the thing is, as always, John, if I could say, you're giving the gift of context.
Merlin: You're helping people understand.
Merlin: I don't want to say what's wrong with them, but in some sense, you're helping them understand what's wrong with them in terms of what they're not doing correctly because you have perspective that if you were pregnant and having a baby, you might not even have as much perspective.
Merlin: That might poison your well, if I could say.
John: That's exactly right.
John: You're too close to it.
Merlin: You're too close to it.
John: The problem with a pregnant woman is that she has a baby in her.
John: Right?
John: Yeah.
John: This is the problem.
John: And when you resolve this problem, get the baby out.
Merlin: Fastest way you can.
John: Yeah.
John: And from the perspective of a pregnant woman, that might not be entirely obvious.
John: I mean, obviously she wants to get the baby out, but she doesn't see what a simple one-to-one problem.
Merlin: She says she wants to get the baby out, but she probably likes getting a seat on the bus.
Merlin: See, see, now you're getting closer.
Merlin: What do you think about those stories of ladies who don't find out they're pregnant until a baby comes out?
Merlin: Doesn't that seem a little hard to believe?
Merlin: Have you heard these stories?
Merlin: Yeah, I have.
Merlin: Lady gets a little heavy, doesn't have a period for eight months, and then she goes, what?
John: In my life, I have learned that no story involving a woman is too far-fetched.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Anyway.
Merlin: That's terrible.
John: We're shedding listeners now.
Merlin: If only we could, John.
Merlin: That's the problem.
Merlin: I don't know if it's a problem.
Merlin: It's an opportunity steak.
Merlin: Yeah, the cereal thing, I keep thinking I'm going to like it.
Merlin: I just don't like that kind of sugar as much as I used to.
Merlin: I will have a cookie sometimes.
Merlin: But first of all, I'm not – to be honest, I'm not – oh, I remember what I wanted to circle back to.
Merlin: I'm going to write this down, coffee.
Merlin: I can't eat a lot of sweet stuff in the morning.
Merlin: And to begin with, as you know from our experiences with dim sum, I'm a savory man.
Merlin: Yeah, me too.
Merlin: I'd eat a steak every morning if I could.
Merlin: It would smoke up the house, but before my family rose, I will have eaten a ribeye.
Merlin: That's my dream.
John: My thing too, I will eat spicy pork for breakfast all the time if I can get it.
John: And I hate the normal breakfasts.
John: I do not like French toast.
John: I do not like most of the kind of sugar, sweet breakfast things.
John: But...
John: I also don't like to wake up in the morning and start making dim sum right away.
John: You know what I mean?
Merlin: That's a lot of work.
Merlin: You got to get dough.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: I mean, the dough to me is just— And the cookies are lying around.
John: Yes.
John: And I just—I need a little—I need something.
John: I need something to cut the coffee, so I eat a couple cookies.
Merlin: Well, John, I got to tell you, I run into this problem constantly, and it's why—
Merlin: Just in the few minutes we had, we agreed.
Merlin: I think we have a pattern we're settling into, which is to agree on a time to do the podcast, and then we alternately add 15 minutes to it for two hours.
Merlin: And I think it's working for both of us, right?
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: We say, okay, 11 o'clock, and then you go, 11.15.
John: And then I go, let's say 11.30.
John: And I get happier every time we delay it because it's just – Sometimes it'll be 2 o'clock in the afternoon.
Merlin: We're still like 15 more minutes.
Merlin: It's like working your urethra.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And so my problem is my neighborhood is full of food.
Merlin: Well, I think one thing you're getting at also, the breakfast is your – You thought you were going to just slip that by me?
Merlin: Well, not while you're sober, but the, um, it's like a poop joke.
Merlin: I was telling my daughter, you gotta, you gotta keep the poop jokes dry.
Merlin: Cause if you're doing too much, you know, then you're just like the guy who does the poop joke.
Merlin: And I don't want to become bell guy.
John: No, no, no.
John: You don't want to do bell guy and you don't want to be the poop.
John: The thing about the bell is you have to forget the bell's there.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
Merlin: It's like meditation.
John: Yeah, you forget the bell is there and then you say something and you're like, God, I wish I had a bell.
John: Holy shit, I have a bell.
Merlin: I'm moving it four inches to the right and slightly out of my field of vision.
Merlin: I'm going to put it behind this thing of home cleanser.
John: It's like a headlamp, for instance.
John: I have a variety of headlamps around the house.
Merlin: They aren't all collected on one shelf.
John: You got them around in case the lights go out.
John: Is that the idea?
John: The lights go out.
John: And the thing is, if you hang them on doorknobs, if you hang headlamps on doorknobs around your house, you forget they're there.
John: But then the lights go out.
Merlin: You just stop seeing them, so to speak.
John: Exactly.
John: The lights go out.
John: You reach for a doorknob.
John: There's a headlamp.
Merlin: It's like light switches.
Merlin: You don't have one light switch for your house.
Merlin: You need a little help all the time.
Merlin: You never know.
Merlin: Now, what about weapons?
Merlin: Do you have weapons?
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: We shouldn't get into it.
Merlin: I bet you've got weapons.
Merlin: You've got your vault, but then you've got them in different places too, right?
John: Here's the thing.
John: If the Navy SEALs or an associated group decide to cut the power to my house in advance of coming in through the windows, no matter where I am at that moment, I'm going to have access to a headlamp.
John: A defensive weapon?
John: A source of fire?
Merlin: I got two cookies, a headlamp, and a clock.
Merlin: Now, do you do that thing where you hit the floor and roll?
Merlin: Now, I'm at your age.
Merlin: You should probably warm up.
Merlin: You should warm up before you do that.
John: You definitely hit the floor, but you also have to look around your house and see... And this is something I recommend to everybody.
John: Look around your house and see where the defensive positions are.
John: Like, where are the corners that you're going to... Where are the corners where you're going to get trapped, and where are the corners where you're going to be able to make a stand?
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: You want a place where you can fit the barrel of a rifle through it, but you don't want it to be so big that people can see your scope.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: I mean, you want to be able to defend the position, and so you want to be on high ground.
Merlin: Now, do you do that thing like they do in Beretta where you knock all the glass out of the window and make it a circle with the gun?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Is that a rookie thing?
John: Is that a rookie thing?
John: That's dumb.
John: That's like a 30s gangster thing where you're trying to hold the cops off or something, or a cowboy thing.
Merlin: With all respect, are you saying that all 30s gangster things are ineffective?
No.
John: No, I think, you know, frankly, if I were going around the world on a yacht.
Merlin: Super yacht.
John: Not a super yacht.
John: If I was going around the world on my yacht.
Merlin: A standard yacht.
John: Well, no, here's the thing about a yacht.
John: Did you know that John Wayne recommissioned a Navy, like, destroyer as his personal yacht?
John: No.
Merlin: I did not, and that is fucking awesome.
John: It was a minesweeper or something, like a Navy warship, and he had it remade as his yacht.
John: And the thing about going around the world on a yacht, if you're going to do such a thing, is that the smart move is to not have it look like a fancy yacht, camouflage it as an ocean-going tugboat.
Hmm.
John: And then you can go to these places, like the Strait of Malacca, where pirates rule, and they do not think that you are Paul Allen in the octopus.
John: They think that you are just a seafaring sea tug.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: If your wheelhouse is on the fourth floor of the boat and you're dressed up like Commodore Schmidlap, that's going to send a signal.
Merlin: If you've got a beard and there's literally stock options all over the boat, that's going to arouse the interest of a pirate.
John: If I were going around the world, say, for instance, on my ocean-going sea tug, that is actually a yacht disguised as a sea tug...
John: I would definitely have some 1930s-style Thompson .45 caliber submachine guns.
Merlin: And that's the one where you put the little disc of bullets on it.
Merlin: It looks like a film canister.
John: Exactly.
John: And here's why.
John: Because that gun...
John: internationally communicates that you are a gangster that gun says that you mean business more than an m16 more than an ak-47 if you have a thompson submachine gun let's say you're on your sea tug and you're going through the straits of malacca and some pirates start assaulting your yacht right here come the pirates and you're driving through the night you see them on the radar
John: They don't have any lights on their boats and they're coming at you.
John: They're going to jump on your boat and they're going to take it over.
John: And then you just, boom, you put on all the spotlights and you and your crew are standing on the back of your boat with Thompson submachine guns.
Merlin: And you're all wearing zoot suits and fedoras.
John: No pirate would ever make a stab at that.
Merlin: You just see the outline of a Thompson .45 caliber submachine gun.
Merlin: All you need to see is the shadow of that, and you know business is meant.
John: That's right.
John: You're like, oh, oh, we're messing with the wrong sea tug.
Merlin: You got a .45 or something, they're going to go, wow, that's going to be a big gun that goes pop.
Merlin: But you see somebody with one of those things with the film canister on it, you're going to really rethink the whole piracy situation.
Merlin: You're going to leave Malacca, is that what it's called?
Merlin: The Straits of Malacca.
Merlin: Straits of Malacca, okay.
Merlin: Are this hard to navigate in a seagoing tug?
John: No, no, no, no.
John: They're quite easy to navigate.
John: But it's one of these places in the world where all the boats have to go because it's the only way through.
Merlin: It's like a DMV.
John: It's like you leave Singapore and you have to go through this...
John: You have to go through this narrow strait on your way to the Indian Ocean, and it's like the Panama Canal, except it's a natural waterway.
Merlin: Oh, it's like the Golden Gate.
Merlin: It's like this is the only way through?
John: Exactly.
John: So all the boats have to go through this place, and the pirates that live, the Indonesian pirates, or the Malaysian pirates, I think they're probably Malaysians.
John: Okay, good.
John: I would want to impugn the wrong group.
John: Well, they might be Indonesians too.
John: In fact, I bet you there are Indonesian and Malaysian pirates working together.
John: They've outsourced a lot of that to Bangalore now.
John: But they wait there in the night and you run your boat through there and then they... And you are to use a landlubber term like a sitting duck.
John: Well, if you are not ever vigilant.
John: Okay.
John: There are some great stories of people in big boats where they're watching their radar and they see that this flotilla of pirate, you know, like this ragtag fugitive fleet of pirate boats are coming out of the night and they see them on the radar and they like gun it.
John: And the pirates chase them, and it's like, you can't see the pirate ships because it's all dark.
John: But they're running from these little dots on their radar screen, and sometimes they outrun the pirates, sometimes they don't.
Merlin: Would you want some kind of Roy Scheider style, like depth charges?
Merlin: Would you want to have some kind of boat bombs that you could leave behind as a little present for those guys?
Merlin: Is that even a good defensive tactic?
Merlin: Because you can assume they're going to make a straight line toward your boat.
John: Yeah, I think that there's too great a risk that you're putting depth charges out there.
John: You're putting mines in the water and the pirates are going to miss them.
John: And then the next person, you know, then it's like a boat full of orphans comes along and hits the mines.
John: Yeah.
John: For me personally, since I thrill to the battle, I think the Thompson submachine guns and then maybe a box of grenades.
Yeah.
Merlin: Oh, that gives you flexibility, and you're a man who, if I could say, you're a man who prefers personal warfare.
Merlin: You don't like this pussy shit of hitting people with a screen.
Merlin: You like the idea of seeing the grenade literally blow them apart.
John: Right, so as the boat comes, because the thing about a pirate is his boat has to touch your boat at some point.
John: Right.
John: Right?
John: The pirate, getting 10 feet from your boat is no good for a pirate.
John: He has to get his boat touching your boat so he can make the leap, right?
Merlin: Yes.
John: And at that point, if you're hiding over the gunwale...
John: with your thompson submachine gun and you lob a grenade into his boat you can you can throw a grenade 10 feet and he's 10 feet away and he's like only 10 more feet and you're like ha ha grenade boom right and then ha that now tell me that that isn't preferable to like oh i'm throwing a mine in the water and oh boom
Merlin: Well, worst of all, you may not know if you even hit your target, let alone the orphans.
John: It could have been orphans.
John: This is why I don't like modern fighter pilot technology.
John: Yes, absolutely.
John: These guys are shooting missiles at planes over the horizon.
Merlin: I think you might have said it was a pussy move.
Merlin: You may have said another word, but it's something along those lines.
John: It's a little bit of a pussy move, and I feel that way about drones.
John: If you are going to kill somebody, I really feel like you have to be at least proximate to that person.
Merlin: It's just what a gentleman would do.
Merlin: That's exactly right.
Merlin: Okay, I have several questions here.
Merlin: I was going to ask you.
Merlin: I have a silly question I'm not going to ask you.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: Why would you not ask me the silly question?
Merlin: What if all the pirates were clowns and they used the pirate cannons to shoot clowns at your boat?
Merlin: Because you can shoot a clown out of a cannon, right?
Merlin: Pirates have cannons.
John: That's a really silly question.
Merlin: Okay.
John: All you'd have to do then is rig up netting around your boat, catch the clowns, throw them.
John: You just need defensive clowns.
John: You need circus netting and defensive clowns.
John: Would you have a big top on your tug?
John: What you do is you buy one mini tug.
Merlin: You disguise your tug.
Merlin: You disguise your John Wayne super yacht as a circus because everybody loves circuses.
Merlin: Who's going to attack a circus?
Merlin: They got no money.
Merlin: Who goes to the circus?
Merlin: Now, here's my other question.
Merlin: I got several questions.
Merlin: Did you say you're drinking coffee again?
Merlin: Yeah, I went back on coffee.
Merlin: Good.
Merlin: I mean, I assume good.
Merlin: How's it working?
John: Well, you know, it's funny.
John: All of my friends who have learned not to be enablers about drugs to me who aren't like, why don't you smoke dope?
John: Why don't you do bath salts with me?
John: You could have a little beer.
John: Yeah.
John: Everybody's real good about that.
John: But God, when I stopped drinking coffee, it struck at the heart of every friend I have.
John: People were genuinely saying things to me like, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
Merlin: It's like Scientology.
Merlin: They're saying, or the mob.
Merlin: I guess really more Scientology.
Merlin: But you don't leave this.
Merlin: What are you doing?
Merlin: Sit down.
Merlin: That's right.
John: That's right.
John: You don't leave this.
John: Exactly.
John: So I got back on coffee, and it's great.
John: I mean, it's a wonderful drug, and I love it.
John: I enjoy it.
John: I'm trying to moderate it a little bit and not drink like 30 cups a day.
Merlin: Well, I'm the wrong person to make this kind of observation about you, but it seems like it had become something that you were doing a lot of.
Mm-hmm.
Merlin: It seemed like there was always a pot of coffee being made.
Yeah.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: I mean, this is not my job.
Merlin: I'm here to audit you, basically.
Merlin: I want to find out what some of your weaknesses are and find out how much money I can get out to put you on this electronic machine that doesn't actually do anything.
Merlin: But you know they got this.
Merlin: You go down to Muni.
Merlin: You go down to Powell Street Station.
Merlin: I don't know how they're allowed to do this unless there's a conspiracy, which there probably is.
Merlin: But you know there's people down there and it says – Tunnel people?
Merlin: The tunnel people.
Merlin: It says free stress test.
Merlin: You ever seen this?
Merlin: Oh my god.
Merlin: It's a Scientology thing, right?
Merlin: It's totally a Scientology.
Merlin: You see them all.
Merlin: You see like four in a row.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You know they got those dead dark doll eyes and they're sitting there and they got a really friendly looking sign that says free stress test.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: You know, which is, you know, it's like an existential free estimate.
Merlin: Like, no matter what, you're going to need some shit change.
Merlin: You're like, you know what?
Merlin: You're going to need a new timing belt.
Merlin: That's just going to happen.
John: Do you remember when there were Hare Krishnas in the airports?
John: Very much.
John: What happened to them?
Merlin: I can't speak for other airports.
Merlin: I can tell you where they are at our airport.
Merlin: Oh, they're still at your airport?
Merlin: Well, that's San Francisco.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: What do you hear?
Merlin: Well, San Francisco – see, it would be – if San Francisco was just fucked up in one way, we would be fine.
Merlin: Again, it's like these people – it's like the bike guys running a stop sign.
Merlin: It's when four people do it that you get a crash.
Merlin: San Francisco is fucked up in so many paradoxical, contradictory ways.
Merlin: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Merlin: And so I've only lived here for 13 years.
Merlin: I can't begin to understand the stupid.
Merlin: But what I will tell you is this, and I'm kind of surprised you haven't seen this.
Merlin: You'll see this definitely in Terminal 3, in the United Terminal.
Merlin: You're walking around.
John: I don't fly United.
John: That's why.
Merlin: Oh, good man.
Merlin: Oh, you know what?
Merlin: I'm going to circle back to that.
Merlin: I've got a lot to say about airlines.
Merlin: Can I just beg you not to get me started on U.S.
Merlin: Air?
John: Okay.
John: Oh, my God.
John: Really?
John: I'm flying U.S.
John: Air tomorrow.
John: Oh, my gosh.
John: Don't tell me.
John: I don't want to know about it.
Merlin: I upgraded to first class once and it was like being in a portal with gum on the seats.
Merlin: Not in a good way.
John: I'm flying to New York.
John: I'm flying from Seattle to New York.
John: I bought the ticket yesterday.
Merlin: Oh, I saw this on your internet.
Merlin: It was like $190.
Merlin: You know what, John?
Merlin: You've been to college and stuff.
Merlin: You didn't finish, but you should make sure that's a real ticket.
Merlin: You might have bought that from a magician or something.
Merlin: That sounds very inexpensive, John.
John: My feeling about it, though, is that having flown every airline, and I truly have, except I have not flown whatever the Sri Lankan airline is.
Merlin: What about the Israeli one?
Merlin: You've been on the Israeli one?
John: Oh.
John: Oh, God, I've always wanted to fly El Al.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: But no, I never have.
John: You know what?
John: That's one of those vacations I want to take where I just go to Israel and I walk around.
John: I just want to see if you can get away with... I walk around in a robe and see who will follow me.
Merlin: I'm not going to do it.
John: I'm not going to hit it.
John: But I figure all the domestic airlines, it's all shit now, right?
John: I mean, JetBlue or Virgin, they're nice.
John: They're nice.
Merlin: I think pound for pound, Virgin is as close as you're going to get to what it was like to fly in the good days.
Merlin: But it's still crap.
Merlin: It's still crap.
Merlin: Just the airport experience alone.
John: Yeah.
John: And you're flying Virgin Airlines and they're pumping that Chris Cornell song with Dr. Dog or whatever the fuck song that is.
John: You know, they're pumping that like...
John: Oh, right.
John: And the purple lighting.
John: I bet you hate the purple lighting.
John: Stop doing that with the purple lights.
John: Yeah.
John: So anyway, it's a nightmare to get on an airplane now.
John: And I'm just realizing, you know, that those little I was fooling myself for a long time.
John: Like, you know what?
John: It's worth the $50 upgrade to have two more inches of leg room.
John: And now I'm realizing it's not.
John: It's just it's just a shit barge.
John: It's a shit barge full of long pigs, and I just need to recognize it.
John: It's like, I'm going to spend eight hours with long pigs on a shit barge.
John: I want the cheapest ticket I can.
Merlin: What's a long pig?
Merlin: I remember the long pig mask.
Merlin: Is it a character?
Merlin: It's a human being.
Merlin: Well, that's good.
Merlin: I want to circle back to that.
Merlin: Airlines, which I just misspelled here.
Merlin: Here's the other thing, John, is somebody has a little experiment during all the TSA theater nonsense of the last few years.
Merlin: Somebody made a fake ticket and was able to get on a plane with it just to show up.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: You can make a fake boarding pass and it's not that hard.
Merlin: What I'm saying is a man like you, I think knowing what you know, having been through what you've been through, having walked across Europe, spent a week stewing, and then gone to the – was it North Face to get satisfaction?
Merlin: My thought is if you got there when it was real busy, you could walk up there with basically a dum-dum sucker and try to convince them that that was a $190 ticket.
Merlin: I think you could demand satisfaction to a level where they would walk you through security and apologize like a gentleman.
John: My dad was great at that back in the day, but it's just not worth interacting with the subnormals in that way.
John: When I walk into an airport, I put on a protective shield of do not touch me, and I carry this protective do not touch me shield all the way to my final destination.
Merlin: I wish I had a two sizes smaller version of that suit for pretty much all the time.
Merlin: I want to get some kind of a suit that's like – I don't know.
Merlin: It sounds kind of kinky, but I would like a full-body plastic suit that slowly releases Purell over my entire body.
Merlin: I want to be bathed in – I want to be glistening with – I want to be like a dog's nose.
Merlin: I want to walk places I never want to touch anything including myself because I'm a carrier.
Merlin: I'm a carrier now.
Merlin: I've been on – do you have any – you know what?
Merlin: This is boring.
Merlin: You're drinking coffee again.
Merlin: It's working out okay.
John: Yeah.
John: If I had a superpower – Yeah.
Merlin: This is a big one, John.
Merlin: You're getting into a heavy Hodgman-esque topic here.
Merlin: This is a big one.
John: My superpower.
John: I've put a lot of thought into this.
John: Really?
John: Yes.
John: Because I've spent a lot of time with Hodgman, and this is the type of question that he asks.
Merlin: Whether you want to have a conversation or not.
Merlin: It might go on until 5 in the morning, in my experience.
Merlin: You must understand, John.
John: My superpower, I think, would be the power to rust.
Merlin: God damn it!
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Your superpower would be the power to rust.
John: If you could just point your finger at something metal and make it rust.
John: Oh, make other things rust.
John: No, I don't personally want to rust.
John: Are you impervious to it?
John: Well, there's no part of me that can rust.
John: The metallic parts of me are made of stainless steel.
John: Okay.
Merlin: It's like the Midas touch, except you've been driving in Massachusetts all winter.
John: Right.
John: Exactly.
John: It's like salt on the roads.
John: But say somebody points a gun at you.
John: You point your finger at it, and it rusts.
John: That's pretty good.
John: I mean, if you have the power to rust on command at a distance, too...
Merlin: You could rule the world.
Merlin: Well, and forgive me, because I've been spending literally every free moment for the last month reading X-Men comics.
Merlin: But it seems to me that if you got that tuned highly enough, if you went to meet with Professor X and had some time in the Danger Room, you might be able to get to a point where you could work it like Cyclops.
Merlin: You don't want it just shooting out randomly, but you could get it so good.
Merlin: Now, you got metal in your body.
Merlin: People got metal.
Merlin: You can't make carbon rust.
Merlin: I mean, Neil Young showed that.
Merlin: But you could... It seems to me that you could... If you could just...
Merlin: excite the base metals in somebody's body, you could fucking rust their insides just enough to get you where you could run away.
Merlin: Think about it.
Merlin: Think about it.
Merlin: Mercury eat fish, you get mercury in you.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: I take it back.
Merlin: It makes no sense.
Merlin: Only cripples.
Merlin: If an old lady's bugging you, you could fuck her hip up good.
John: But here's the thing.
John: I'm not super worried about some person with their hands causing me damage.
John: I'm worried about them using a tool.
John: Right?
John: Of some kind.
Merlin: You feel like in hand-to-hand combat, you can hold your own.
John: Yeah.
John: But if they have a tool, then it gives them an advantage if I do not have a comparable tool.
John: But if they, for instance, had a knife, I would rust the knife.
Merlin: What about a plastic knife?
Merlin: See, that's the thing.
Merlin: And this is what they're doing now.
Merlin: This is what the terrorists do.
John: Yeah.
John: Plastic knives, wood knives.
John: But I feel like if up against somebody with a wood knife...
John: I feel like I could also improvise a little.
Merlin: I have a feeling that something would, they would probably trip or something.
Merlin: I think anybody who goes into a fight with John Roddick with a wooden knife deserves whatever the fuck they get.
John: Yeah.
John: But if they're chasing me in a car, rust, the car stops.
Merlin: Well, like, you know, Iron Man, it wears down his power to use that.
Merlin: You know, same thing as like the emperor, right?
Merlin: It wears you down a little bit.
Merlin: You need to rest.
Merlin: In this case, I would not even waste any of your rust powers on somebody with a wooden knife.
Merlin: I would just beat the shit out of him.
Merlin: You could beat the shit out of him, right?
Yeah.
John: Because they're looking at me, they're thinking, how are you going to use your rust powers here, Mr. Guy?
John: And I'd be like, pow, right in the nose.
Merlin: Or you could just make him feel bad about himself.
Merlin: Yeah, that's true.
Merlin: Hey, what's up, wood knife?
Merlin: Nice wood knife, wood knife.
John: So I think rusting, because my eventual goal as a superhero is not to be part of a team of do-gooders.
John: My actual goal as a superhero is to bring peace to the world.
Merlin: I think a lot of people start out that way, John.
John: I'm a messianic superhero.
Merlin: A messianic one.
Merlin: So you put on a robe and people follow you.
Merlin: Are you Rustman?
Merlin: What's the name?
John: No, I'd have to come up with something.
Merlin: I'd have to come up with – I don't like any of these, but so far I've got Rustman.
Merlin: I've got Rusty.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: No, that's not good.
Merlin: I've got one.
Merlin: This sounds like a kid's soccer team.
Merlin: The rust.
Merlin: You mean just the rust?
Merlin: The rust.
Merlin: What about just rust?
Merlin: What is rust?
Merlin: It's like oxidated metal?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Could you be the oxidator?
John: I could be the oxidator.
John: The oxidator.
Merlin: That's pretty good.
Merlin: I haven't thought about that a lot.
Merlin: Iron Man would just be like, poof, right?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: He has the repulsor hands.
Merlin: He can shoot repulsor beams at you.
Merlin: Iron Man's a pretty cool superhero.
Merlin: He's a pretty high-tech Batman in a lot of ways.
Merlin: You've got to admire the guy.
Merlin: but but but against the against the rustinator rusty rusty you would not want it to get around that you were rusty because i think you're gonna be facing a lot of fucking wooden knives that would be bad yeah could we add another thing though you you would have maybe part of your so if i could say and again forgive me because it's been all marvel for me all the time but what if you've got the rust power like you've been developing that maybe it was for a long time it was a trouble for you it was like the midas
Merlin: touch, right?
John: Yeah, sure.
John: I'd be like, hey, that's great.
John: Let me play with your... Oh, sorry.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: You kiss a girl with braces and then she can't open her mouth.
Merlin: And you go, ah, you're like rogue.
Merlin: And you're like, ah, why am I killing all these people?
Merlin: Why am I rusting everything?
Merlin: But the other thing is, maybe part of your rustability is you also have an innate sense of... Maybe it's not just that you can't be surprised, but when you're aware of something threatening that could be rusted getting near you.
Merlin: Oh, right.
Merlin: I sense the metal.
Merlin: You sense the metal.
Merlin: To me, that's where this starts to really come together.
John: And I've honed it.
John: I've honed the power so that, like, for instance, I don't have to rust the whole gun.
Merlin: No.
John: I can just rust...
John: I can rust the little spring on the inside of the gun that would cause it to... Or you could rust the muzzle just enough to blow up in his fucking face.
John: Yeah, see, selective rustology.
Merlin: Can I also say, just to bring it all together, the BNN line, the TSA line, could be a lot of fun when you're rusty.
Merlin: Sorry, we've got to get you a better name.
Merlin: Yeah, Rusty's terrible.
Merlin: I don't like Rustman.
Merlin: I think that sounds too old.
Merlin: Oxidator sounds like a bad guy.
John: That's not good.
John: It's got to be.
John: And the thing about it is I think I would wear, I think I would dress like Tom Wolfe.
John: I'd wear a white three-piece suit.
John: And then at the end of every battle, I would have to flick little bits of rust off of my coat.
John: That would be my killer skill.
John: I'd be constantly trying to keep my jacket light.
Merlin: Okay, so because there has to be something.
Merlin: If I could just say, again, this is your gig, I would avoid DC.
Merlin: I would go Marvel because that's where the flawed people go with all respect.
Merlin: But also, it helps if you have some kind of a, I don't want to say a gimmick, but you got, for example, Captain America has a shield.
Merlin: Thor has a hammer.
Merlin: Wolverine's got those cool claws.
Merlin: Like, I don't know if this would be part of your rust.
Merlin: Daredevil, the blind guy's got that cane.
Merlin: Like, it'd be kind of cool if you had something that was part, maybe, I don't know, I don't know if it's even interesting to you, but something that you could use in the service of your rusting abilities.
Merlin: Hmm.
Merlin: Or they would just be handsome.
Merlin: Like a walking stick could be nice.
Merlin: Or maybe a crop.
Merlin: A monocle.
Merlin: You could have a monocle.
John: I've always been partial to sword canes.
John: But the problem with the sword cane, of course, is that I'm the Rustinator.
John: Or whatever.
John: The Rust... Rust... Rustafarian.
Merlin: Oh!
Merlin: No!
Merlin: Why did you say it?
Merlin: That changes everything.
Merlin: The Rustafarian.
Merlin: He has dreadlocks, mon.
Merlin: Rustafarian.
John: No.
Merlin: God, no.
Merlin: That's going away.
Merlin: So the coffee's okay, though.
Merlin: You just have enough.
Merlin: I mean, I don't want to judge.
Merlin: I'm not trying to judge.
Merlin: You know I never judge you.
Merlin: That would be very bad.
John: 6 p.m., I can't be making another pot.
John: It's so important.
Merlin: John, as I get older, you talk about – first of all, I can also say the second that you mentioned, was it spicy pork?
Merlin: You put the word spicy in front of any food, and I'm back in Vancouver after I had some spicy tuna and went to a Sloan show.
Merlin: I did not get to see a lot of the Sloan show.
John: Oh, because the spicy tuna caused you to have a – you had to do a dad boner in the men's room?
Merlin: A dead boner?
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: In Canada, they call it explosive diarrhea.
Merlin: And the thing is, in Canada, they love their bathrooms.
Merlin: They wear a lot of jean jackets.
Merlin: You ever know how many people wear jean jackets?
John: Well, the thing about Canada is that Canada, in some ways, it's still 1987 in Canada.
Merlin: You just blew my mind.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: I didn't have a way to put my finger on it, but everybody's still wang-chunging tonight.
John: That's right.
John: I think I've told you this before, but I feel like Canada is like the original 21 Jump Street.
John: Like everybody, everybody's kind of hip, kind of groovy, but in a way, in a kind of 1987 way.
Merlin: So Canada is like a polite, uh, like pilot for the nineties.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Right.
John: Exactly.
John: Like the gangs in Canada don't wear red and blue handkerchiefs.
John: They wear green and yellow handkerchiefs.
Merlin: They know, they know what the thank you code is.
John: They want to be gangs, but they don't want to be like, oh, they don't want to get the Crips upset.
John: So they came up with their own colors.
Merlin: I think if you have a checkered hanky in your back right pocket, it means you like to apologize.
Merlin: And if you have it in your left pocket, it means you like to be apologized too.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
Merlin: It's a Toronto hanky code.
Merlin: I saw those guys open for Arcade Fire.
Merlin: They're pretty great.
John: It's very complicated when you're trying to negotiate whether you're a top or a bottom because not everybody is a top.
Merlin: I think Canada's a bottom.
John: Well, you would think that, but there are some pretty tough characters in Canada.
John: They're just very polite.
Merlin: Tough bottoms, yeah.
John: There are some pretty tough bottoms.
John: Some pretty resilient bottoms.
Merlin: You know, we kid, but I mean, boy, do I ever really like Canada.
Merlin: Canada and New Zealand, you know, I've only been to four countries, but the two of them I like a lot are Canada and New Zealand.
John: I hear New Zealand.
John: They say New Zealand is like England in the 50s.
John: Oh, you mean declining?
Merlin: A simpler time.
Merlin: You notice England and U.S.
Merlin: were not on my list.
Merlin: England was fine.
Merlin: That's the third country of the four I've been to.
Merlin: You've been to New Zealand, England, Canada, and America.
Merlin: Let me think.
Merlin: Let's see, what is today?
Merlin: Yeah, four.
Merlin: I've been to four countries.
John: Well, that's some variation on the theme.
Merlin: Well, I had reached a point in my life where I had some things to think about, so I took a very long walk.
Merlin: I took a very long walk from my office to the burrito place.
Merlin: And then when I got back, I tore the shit out of that goddamn North Face place.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: I said, are you kidding me?
Merlin: This fanny pack broke while I was waiting for my burrito.
Merlin: My burrito, my Bronco burrito was there.
Merlin: There used to be a time when you could depend on this.
Merlin: This is equipment that could save your life.
John: That's right.
John: That's right.
John: I was depending on this equipment.
John: Oh, God, I love that story so much.
Merlin: That's what you say.
Merlin: People remember that.
Merlin: People remember that story.
Merlin: John, I think you have taught a lot.
Merlin: If I could say, it's your show.
Merlin: I think you have taught a lot of people not simply how to demand satisfaction, but how important it is that you do demand satisfaction.
John: You must demand satisfaction.
Mm-hmm.
John: People will walk all over you otherwise.
John: I got a ticket the other day.
John: I parked in a parking garage on a Sunday because I get tickets periodically.
Merlin: Is a Sunday of a holiday weekend?
John: This was a couple weeks ago.
John: I was driving downtown and I was like, I'm going to be in this rehearsal all afternoon.
John: And I don't want to get a ticket.
John: And I always park on the street and then I get a ticket.
John: So I'm going to outsmart them this time.
John: I'm going to park in a parking garage.
John: And it was only later that I realized it was Sunday and there was no parking.
John: There was no charge for parking.
John: So I was trying to outsmart them and I outsmarted myself.
John: I paid $10 to park in a garage where I could have just parked right in front of where I was going.
John: But then I come out later on that night.
John: There's a ticket on my windshield from the parking garage people.
John: And I had paid the amount.
John: And I looked at the ticket, and I looked at the receipt that I had kept from the machine.
John: And I was like, this is insane.
John: Like, I did the thing.
John: They obviously don't know what they're doing.
John: So I took these things, as you do, to my mom.
John: And I said, can you make sense of this?
John: And she said, I'm going to write them a strongly worded letter.
John: And she did.
John: So she goes down to the Marcia cave.
John: She went down to her bat cave where her butler said, welcome.
John: How may I assist you?
John: Her computer butler.
John: And she sent a strongly worded letter to these people.
John: And they wrote back a three-word response.
John: They were like, ticket is canceled.
John: And it was like... What?
John: Well, yes, first of all.
John: But second of all, how many people...
John: First of all, have a mom who has a bad cave.
John: How many people actually write the strongly worded letter?
John: A small percentage.
John: And these people are just like, they're blanket ticketing everybody.
John: And then you get into this collections process where you don't pay the thing and then you owe them double and then finally you pay it just to get them off your back.
John: What a fucking racket, John.
John: You need to demand satisfaction, and I'm trying to think of a way to demand satisfaction from these ticket people.
Merlin: John, what you got was an answer, but it's not a solution, and it is far from satisfaction.
John: That's right.
Merlin: You didn't get an explanation.
Merlin: I think there should have been an explanation.
Merlin: There definitely should have been an apology.
Merlin: There probably should have been some kind of a gift for you and your mom.
Merlin: Maybe something she could put in the cave.
John: I would have accepted a gift.
Merlin: Like a small gift?
Merlin: Like a personal gift or a token gift?
Merlin: Like a pen?
John: No.
John: If they had sent like a selection of Kiehl's... Some nice creams.
John: Some creams.
John: I would have accepted that.
Merlin: Maybe free parking would be nice.
Merlin: A card that gives me free parking.
Merlin: That would be nice.
Merlin: There are a lot of gifts you could give.
Merlin: You should get to punch the guy who gave you the ticket.
Merlin: Not hard.
Merlin: But like you should have the opportunity to confront your accuser.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: And you should get to hear them.
Merlin: Maybe you get to hold them not hard but like lightly by the collar because I assume they have a uniform.
Merlin: They might even have a collar.
Merlin: These guys might be on a budget.
Merlin: You pick him up.
Merlin: You hold him up in the air like you're fucking Batman and you get to have him give you in full sentences an apology that satisfies you.
John: Yeah, I thought about that.
John: I thought about wanting to stomp on this guy's toes, but then I realized that probably if I were confronted by the guy that gave me the ticket.
John: I would see right away that he was from Somalia.
John: And I would look into his eyes and I would realize that he had seen war-torn lands that he had been... He had lived a thousand lives.
Merlin: You're such a sucker.
Merlin: You know who lives in Somalia?
Merlin: If they're not dead, they're fucking warlords and pirates.
Merlin: Please do not apologize for this guy, John.
Merlin: They're just having a good time there?
Merlin: It's like that guy in Cleveland.
Merlin: It's like the Nazi in Cleveland.
Merlin: Just because you get old doesn't mean you weren't a Nazi.
Merlin: Dominionic?
Merlin: Dominionic?
Merlin: That's not Citizen X, right?
Merlin: That's Chikatilo.
Merlin: Chikatilo, I think, was his name.
Merlin: The guy who killed all the people in Russia.
Merlin: They think he might be the greatest serial killer of all time.
Merlin: We don't even know.
Merlin: Chikatilo.
Merlin: There's an HBO show about him.
John: The guy in the 80s.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: The Nazi in Cleveland.
Merlin: And then I think he died.
Merlin: They all die eventually.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I don't know, John.
Merlin: I got to say, I don't like to talk too much about Hitler on here, but I'm going to say Nuremberg.
Merlin: I think when you go in there and you do not pick up the Somalian by his collar or not his collar and demand satisfaction, I think you are basically letting the brown shirts win.
John: I see.
John: So you're saying that I should not let someone's refugee status from a war-torn, anarchic African nation obviate my need for satisfaction about being ticketed improperly.
Merlin: Can I be honest with you?
John: Yes.
Merlin: I don't want to talk about politics, but I do know this.
Merlin: I do know that at the time that you start overthinking this shit, you, John Roderick, as soon as you start overthinking this and start wondering if somebody's from fucking Somalia, you're going to not only stop helping other people, my concern is you're going to stop helping yourself.
Merlin: I mean, seriously, with the John Roderick of five years ago, the John Roderick who is finally discovering his rust abilities, would that John Roderick think twice about that and go, oh, that might be his mom's knife?
John: No, it's true.
John: It's true.
John: I'm not saying you should be a dick.
John: I'm just saying that you are a refugee from a war-torn country does not give you the right.
John: I mean, you're here in America now.
Merlin: right i mean that's that's lucky listen you need to take a paper you describe a 50 year old man with one term like one right you got one bullet once index card on this guy and that's that he's he's from somalia how do you know that he isn't a huge cock that's true he could be a warlord because i'm thinking i might start telling people that i'm a somalian refugee and suddenly i get if you like a get out of jail free card i get free parking for the rest of my fucking life looking at you i think most people would have a hard time believing that you were from somalia
Merlin: And that is exactly the kind of prejudice that I face at the garage every single day.
Merlin: People come in there.
John: Oh, my God.
John: I hate to interrupt you, but John Demjaniuk died March 17, 2012.
John: St.
John: Patrick's Day.
John: Just two months ago.
Merlin: Is that right?
Merlin: He lived until two months ago.
Merlin: He probably didn't even get to go to the parade.
Merlin: They love parades.
Merlin: They have a St.
Merlin: Patrick's Day, I'm guessing, in Cleveland.
Merlin: There's a lot of Poles, ironically enough.
Merlin: Is he a Polish man?
Merlin: Was he at one of the big camps?
John: He was Ukrainian.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Ukraine.
Merlin: He was a Nazi in the Ukraine.
Merlin: They didn't have an outpost there, did they?
Merlin: The Nazis?
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Yeah, sure.
John: They invaded.
John: That's pretty far west, right?
John: East.
Merlin: I thought the whole problem was they did the Napoleon thing again.
Merlin: How did they get all the way to Ukraine?
Yeah.
John: Well, the Ukraine is in between Germany and Russia, so they took over the Ukraine on their way to... On their way.
John: On their way to Moscow.
John: But at the time, of course, the Ukraine was part of the USSR, so it just seemed like... We always say Russia, meaning... That's like calling the United States Iowa.
John: So he was in the Ukraine, so he was a Russian...
John: And he was drafted into the Russian army, and then he was a prisoner of war.
John: He was like a Soviet Vichy.
John: Right, exactly.
John: He was a Vichy guy.
John: He went over to the other side.
Merlin: Okay, and so... Boo, boo, boo Damjomnyuk.
Merlin: Boo, boo, boo him.
Merlin: Boo Damjomnyuk.
Merlin: Bad, bad.
Merlin: A couple questions about World War II.
Merlin: Now, Hitler did a lot of bad stuff.
Merlin: He did.
Merlin: But isn't it kind of – you tell me.
Merlin: It seems to me that one of the stupidest things he did was trying to go to Russia.
Merlin: Didn't Napoleon have kind of the same problem?
Merlin: He loves comparing himself to all these other guys.
Merlin: He's going to be the Caesar, Third Reich, going to live a thousand years.
Merlin: But isn't it kind of stupid to try and march into the Soviet Union?
Merlin: Wasn't that kind of a dumb move?
John: You know, this is a different podcast.
John: We need to have a podcast where you and I refight World War II.
Merlin: A different episode, or should we start a new property?
John: Yeah, a new property.
John: How about Hitler and stuff?
John: See, that'd be one where we could have guests, because there are so many I've learned from the internet.
Merlin: People do want to hold to account for something.
John: I've learned from the internet there are a lot of guys who want to talk about World War II.
John: And we could have them on the program and they could tell us.
Merlin: You know, one of the guys from Silkworm, a lot of Silkworm songs are about, not a lot, but a few are about World War II.
Merlin: I think one of the guys, I think, might have been the guitar player.
Merlin: What's his name?
Merlin: Not Tim, but the other guy.
Merlin: I think he's, did you ever meet Silkworm?
John: Yeah, well, I mean, I saw him.
John: I can't say I met him.
John: I mean, I stood around backstage when they were backstage, and I don't know.
John: They might have looked at me at one time.
John: Tim seems nice.
Merlin: I think you're right, John.
Merlin: I think a lot of people in indie rock enjoy World War II.
Merlin: A guy sent me a tweet yesterday saying, here's the tweet, ready?
John: Discuss World War II.
Merlin: Oh, come on.
Merlin: Was that Mr. Detlefson?
Merlin: I have no idea who it was.
Merlin: You might be getting followed by Mr. Detlefson.
Merlin: Is that a thing?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: He's the guy that had the class where you'd have your final.
John: Oh, right.
John: Mr. Detlefson.
John: Mr. Detlefson.
John: I doubt he's on Twitter.
Merlin: You said he sounded like a real hard ass.
Merlin: A man like him...
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I think he's moved up to Bifrost and is deep in Asgard at this point.
Merlin: Hitler and stuff.
John: I'm going to capture that.
Merlin: Hitler and stuff.
John: This is boring.
John: You really don't want to invade Russia.
John: I'm saying this now to all of our listeners.
Merlin: You've got the supply chain.
Merlin: You've got to get all the way down.
Merlin: There's all kinds of sources where it can break.
John: There's a lot of reasons.
John: And it's cold.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: It's very cold.
John: To all of our listeners, if you're ever in a situation where you've taken over Europe and you have most of it in your iron grip, leave Russia alone.
John: Just leave it alone.
Merlin: So you're saying don't have ambition.
Merlin: You're not saying stop at the low-hanging fruit, as we used to say.
Merlin: You're saying it's okay, go up the tree a little bit and grab some fruit.
Merlin: But it doesn't mean you try to take down the whole orchard in the middle of winter.
John: I'm saying that... That's really not what you're saying at all.
John: I'm saying steer your ambitions.
John: Yeah.
John: Like Turkey, by all means, invade Turkey.
John: Wait, one to ten.
John: How hard is Turkey?
Merlin: Pretty hard.
Merlin: The Turks... They're hard-ass, right?
Merlin: They're fighters.
Merlin: They're fighters.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: So you give them a seven?
John: But there's a lot of reason to invade Turkey, because you would gain control of the Dardanelles.
John: You would gain control of access to the Black Sea.
Merlin: That's the Mountain Goats guy?
John: Then what's Russia going to do?
John: Yeah, John Dardanelle.
Ha ha ha!
John: Was that a laugh for the consumption?
John: Somebody said to me at one point, you guys need cough mutes or something.
John: You tell him you need to shut up.
Merlin: I was like, cough mute?
Merlin: Cough mutes, that's part of the show.
Merlin: What do you think we are?
Merlin: Cough mute.
Merlin: You know what that costs?
Merlin: Now, in Hogan's Heroes, when they would threaten to send – I just had a couple more World War II questions.
Merlin: When they would threaten, I usually – I think it was General Burkhalter or sometimes – Who was the guy?
Merlin: They sent you to the eastern front.
Merlin: To the eastern front.
Merlin: Now, is the east – who are they fighting on – that's not the Japanese.
Merlin: Who's on the eastern front?
Merlin: They're fighting the Russians.
Merlin: They're sent to the Russian front.
Merlin: Oh, I'm sorry.
Merlin: It's the Germans.
Merlin: So they're the ones moving east.
Merlin: You got the Soviets holding the line.
Merlin: And then the whole reason we got the satellite nations from the post-war on is they say no more.
Merlin: Never again will a drop of Soviet blood.
Merlin: be spilled on Soviet soil.
Merlin: If you're going to shoot it, you got to do it in Czechoslovakia.
Merlin: Was that the idea?
Merlin: Wow.
John: My sense is that... I should save this for Hitler and stuff.
John: Yeah.
John: I think that the idea of Soviet communism was that it was inevitable from their perspective.
Merlin: I thought we were going to talk about war.
John: I didn't know we were going to talk about politics.
John: The entire world was one day going to be communist.
John: And it was going to have to... If revolutions weren't going to sweep the land, then the communism had to be gifted to people in the form of...
John: Imposing it on them.
Merlin: And new transitive verbs.
Merlin: Did you ever dally in communism?
John: Like all young men my age, I spent... That is a very contradictory term.
Merlin: I spent a few... Like all men who 30 years ago were younger.
John: I spent a few months in ninth grade very enamored with communism and...
John: And I did, like you hear a lot of college freshmen, I did the whole, like, you know, Soviet communism is not communism.
John: Communism itself is, you know, Marxism itself.
John: I mean, I spent a lot of years in college arguing Marxists.
John: Universities are full of Marxists.
John: But no, I was never like a... What held you back?
Merlin: You never got a hat, you never got a Che Guevara poster, you never pretended to read Das Kapital.
Merlin: I read all that stuff.
Merlin: Have you always owned your own means of production?
John: It always very quickly gets to the heart of the Hobbesian question, is man basically good or is man basically evil?
John: Communism and Marxism
John: Ultimately depends on people making sacrifices for the greater good.
John: And personal experience has shown that people are very much willing to make sacrifices for the greater good within limited contexts.
Merlin: But the problem is it's not necessarily for the good.
Merlin: When Mao wants you to make steel in your backyard with a grill and then you don't get food and stuff.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: That's the part that drives me crazy.
Merlin: I was very interested in Marxism.
Merlin: Well, really, I was very interested in Marxist criticism.
Merlin: The premise of it is very idealistic.
Merlin: It's more idealistic than Christianity.
Merlin: I don't want to talk about religion, but it's very idealistic.
Merlin: Oh my God, you're talking about politics.
Merlin: Listen to you go.
Merlin: Oh my God, I think I just did politics.
Merlin: Oh my God.
Merlin: All I need now is a Mitt Romney joke.
John: We need to make a card and put it on the wall the day that Merlin started talking about politics.
John: Is that that Jerry Lewis movie?
Merlin: The day the cloud.
Merlin: The day the internet cried.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: John, we've got – Hitler and stuff needs to happen.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: It's probably – you know what?
Merlin: You know what we should do?
Merlin: We should record it and never release it.
Merlin: What?
Merlin: Our Hitler and stuff podcast?
Merlin: Well, yeah.
Merlin: I mean because I think it's something – let me put it this way.
Merlin: I don't want to be selfish.
Merlin: It's something that would help me a lot.
Merlin: And it's not – I don't know if other people – people are already getting so much help from you on a regular basis that – you know what?
Merlin: It might be selfish for me to keep it to myself.
Merlin: But I could feel like I could learn a lot about Hitler from you.
John: Well, I get this from people a lot because I think people want to know about the wars because they sense that learning about World War II or learning about World War I is going to contextualize the world for them.
Merlin: Yeah, or even just Captain America.
John: Or just make them understand what the story behind Captain America is.
John: And I think that that's true.
John: But, you know, I grew up literally soaking in World War II.
John: I was literally soaking in it.
John: Where did you get war to soak in?
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: Please continue.
Merlin: You're in Alaska.
Merlin: You got five channels and you're literally soaking in war.
John: I'm literally soaking in war.
John: My dad was a World War II veteran, but I was from the beginning.
John: When I was a young man, it was during the Vietnam War and it was on television.
John: I was not a man yet.
John: Obviously, I was a child, but interested in war.
John: So I grew up knowing about World War II from my earliest times as a boy.
John: And everything that I learned about World War II as I got older, I was able to add to this body of knowledge about it.
John: So that I can't remember a time when I didn't have an understanding of – I remember when I didn't have an understanding of World War I. I had to go back and learn about World War I. But World War II I've always known about.
John: And so I can't picture how you would be a modern person and not have an understanding of –
Merlin: of that conflict you know like to go back and i it's not that i wouldn't know where to start but no well this is this is actually super interesting given how self-aware you are because you sound a little bit like a miner or possibly a terrier not the dog the the diggers you say you sound like somebody where you say like i you know i was raised on a farm i can't imagine not understanding cattle like you you've been given that you have soaked in a war right and there are other people running around going like i understand which end of milk
Merlin: But you know the facts.
Merlin: Now, your father, do you serve in France?
Merlin: Where was he?
John: No, no, no.
John: He was a Navy pilot in the Pacific.
John: Oh, man, that must have been scary.
Merlin: Well, you know, you're in an airplane.
Merlin: But I mean, even before, there were the whispers about the camps, but people knew what the Japanese were doing to people, right?
Merlin: They knew what happened if your plane went down.
Merlin: Anyway, it was not going to be pretty.
John: That's why I have my father's pistol.
John: He was issued a 45, you know, a 1911 model 45 pistol as a Navy pilot early in the war that he wore in a shoulder holster.
John: Oh, that's so cool.
John: And then, you know, later on in the war, the rumors started getting out that...
John: What a lot of pilots were doing was they were taking these .45 caliber bullets and they were using their knife to etch across in the top of the bullet, in the actual bullet, the lead.
John: So that when the bullet hit, it would explode.
John: It was like a fake dum-dum bullet.
John: The bullet itself would explode and do more damage.
John: And the Japanese said that that's unfair or that's bad war making.
John: And they issued some kind of directive where they said, if we capture an American pilot and he has one of these guns, these .45s, we're just going to kill him right away because the gun itself is unfair.
Right.
Merlin: And so they took... That's a pretty high level thinking.
John: Yeah.
John: So they recalled, the U.S.
John: Navy recalled all the .45s and they issued 38, you know, revolvers to all the pilots.
John: And my dad, being a Roderick, he said that he had lost his.
Merlin: And being erotic, they said, well, of course he did.
John: And they said, oh, all right, here's the 38.
John: So for the rest of the war, he carried the 45 in the shoulder holster and the 38 in some other holster.
Merlin: What a fucking badass.
John: And then at the end of the war, he had to turn in his 38, but he kept the 45.
Merlin: And you still got that around.
John: And I have it.
John: And I actually took it to a gunsmith one time and they all gathered around it.
John: And they were like, oh my God, this is amazing.
John: Because according to them, according to these guys, this 1911 model was actually the first model.
John: It was issued in World War I.
John: When you say 1911, you don't mean designed.
John: You mean manufactured?
John: No, that's when it was designed.
John: Okay.
John: That's what it's called.
John: But this gun was... It was in the first batch of them made during World War I, and he... And I guess the gun was made, and then it sat in an arms depot for all the interwar years, just sat there on a shelf, and was issued to my dad in World War II.
John: So this gun... And they're all like, this gun would be worth...
John: A ton of money, thousands and thousands of dollars, except sometime in the 70s, my dad had it re-blued, refinished, because it was like tattered or whatever.
John: He was like, he took it in and had it re-blued, and they said, yeah, that ruined it.
John: Oh, no.
John: Not as a gun.
John: They said it's a great gun, but as a collector's item.
Merlin: If he had taken it on Antiques Roadshow, that would have broken his heart.
John: Yeah.
John: It's still worth more money.
John: It's still worth money, but it's exactly the Antiques Roadshow thing.
John: If he had left the original finish.
John: Is it a Colt?
John: It's a Colt.
Merlin: United States pistol caliber 45 M 1911.
John: That's right.
Merlin: That is such a fucking cool looking gun.
John: And that's a heavy, heavy gun, big gun.
Merlin: Well, when we, the one time I don't want to talk out of school, but the one time I don't come back to your dad, cause that's such an amazing story.
Merlin: But the one time we went and shot guns together.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: You shot one of those, didn't you, a .45?
Merlin: I had to stop at the .45.
Merlin: The .45 was just too much.
Merlin: Even with all the earplugs, it was just the recoil?
Merlin: What do you call it?
Merlin: It was like, I can't have this in my hand.
Merlin: It was too much.
Merlin: It was so loud.
John: So you never did the .44 Magnum?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Eric was doing great.
Merlin: Eric was hitting everything, if I remember.
John: Jonathan Rothman, he was a dead-eye dick.
Merlin: Yeah, cool.
Cool.
Just kidding.
Merlin: Just kidding.
Merlin: This is a really – that is so cool that you've got that.
Merlin: But I don't know.
Merlin: I mean I've spent my evenings – and again, I'm a whacker at this.
Merlin: But I mean I spent my evenings reading a lot on Wikipedia about something as like a – all the history I wish I would have known in high school I'm picking up now.
Merlin: And just the stuff toward the end, obviously the Baton Death March being kind of – I don't know if it's the apotheosis, but a great well-known example.
Merlin: But it was just pretty miserable what they were doing to American –
Merlin: prisoners i'm just thinking that like you know it would suck to be captured by the germans and go into an uncomfortable camp but it probably was not any andersonville whereas what the japanese were doing was just just i mean inhuman is the only way to put it the way that they would treat american prisoners well it was bad but you have to also i think
John: take into context that the japanese living out there and you know uh you know strung across all these archipelagos they had no supplies either well that's why the march that's why they had the march well that was the that was the the flimsy cover for it anyway was that we we couldn't waste ships on this we already can't feed our own people
John: Right.
John: No one was living high on the hog out there.
John: The thing that made the German camps, in addition to the mass murder with gas... Not on the Americans, though.
John: No, but okay, let's say a prisoner of war camp in Germany.
John: I mean, the German prison guards were drinking champagne.
Right.
John: French Champagne.
John: French Champagne.
John: From the Champagne region.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: And they were probably the camp commander was practicing his oil painting.
John: In the afternoons.
John: Listening to Wagner.
John: Listening to Wagner.
John: Doing that really gay thing where you act like you're conducting.
John: The Japanese prisoner of war camps, the camp guards themselves were eating roaches.
John: They were eating roach sandwiches.
John: And so there wasn't much left over for the Americans.
Merlin: But I guess what I'm getting at is, did you ever get to talk to your dad about that?
Merlin: Was he aware of what he was facing if he went down over the Pacific?
Yeah.
John: Oh, absolutely.
John: But those guys were all 22 years old.
John: I mean, was I aware when I was 22 years old what I was facing?
John: If I, whatever.
Merlin: Please continue.
Merlin: I want to hear the part of your great lost years that was like the baton death march.
Merlin: One time I'd had a lot to drink and then they randomly shot three of us for no reason.
Merlin: My buddy was infected and had dysentery, so we went and got another round.
John: I could have lost a leg just as easily as one of those guys.
Merlin: You know what's great, though, is when you're 22, you really do think it's like that.
Merlin: You really, really do think that you are a survivor at that point.
John: And if you're 22 years old and fighting in a war, you really do think that it's, like, ain't no thing.
John: I mean, my dad, he did not fly fighter planes.
John: He flew DC-3s or C-47s, the transport planes.
Okay.
John: But he tells all these stories about like, oh, there was an anti-aircraft gun on the bridge and so we flew under the bridge.
John: And they couldn't get the gun down fast enough, you know, we flew under.
John: Or he tells a story.
John: How do you verify this?
John: There's no way to do it.
Merlin: You don't.
Merlin: You see, that's fucking awesome.
John: He tells the story of, he comes through the clouds in his airplane.
Merlin: He got thrown out of college.
John: He fought in Japan.
John: He sees a plane coming at him, and it's coming straight at him.
John: And he's looking at it in the distance, and he's like, what kind of plane is that?
John: It's pointed directly at him, so it's much harder to tell what kind of plane it is.
John: And he's looking at the plane, and it's coming straight at him, and he's thinking, what is that?
John: I don't...
John: know what it is and then he realizes it's a zero.
John: It's a Japanese zero.
John: It's flying straight at him.
John: And he's flying straight at it.
Merlin: And those guys are super maneuverable, right?
John: They're super maneuverable and my dad's plane is not.
John: And so he's looking and that plane's not veering off a course and his plane isn't veering off course.
John: And in his version of the story, failing to know what else to do,
John: He opens the side window in the cockpit, pulls this .45 that I still own out, sticks it out the window, and fires like eight rounds at the zero, and then grabs the stick and pulls straight up and goes up into a cloud.
John: Did he have a lot of stories like that?
John: Never saw the plane again, so he assumed that he shot it down.
John: Zero didn't come after him, so he assumed that he shot it down.
John: He scared him off.
John: With his pistol.
John: That was mine.
John: They really were the greatest generation.
John: They really were.
John: They were the greatest, greatest generation.
Merlin: Possibly most full of shit generation, but that's amazing.
Merlin: You ever read that Tom Brokaw book, The Most Full of Shit Generation?
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah, no, I couldn't get through the first chapter.
John: My favorite story of my dad is he said he was landing supplies, landing ammunition, and so what he would do is he'd land...
John: The Americans would be taking over an island, and the goal was always to get to the airstrip, right?
John: The Japanese would have an airstrip on an island.
John: The Americans would invade.
John: They'd be trying to get to the airstrip.
John: And when they'd get to the airstrip, they would park a Jeep with an American flag on it at the end of the airstrip, and that was the sign that they had seized the strip, right?
John: And then my dad, in a transport with guns and ammunition and medical supplies, would land on the newly captured strip.
John: They'd throw the bullets out, load the plane up with wounded, spin it around, and get back out of there.
John: And the fighting is going on all around the strip.
Oh, my God.
Merlin: And this thing, this is a lumbering giant.
Merlin: You're not, this, this is a lot of.
John: No, surprisingly, you know, maneuverable planes, but, but, but certainly a transport plane like unarmed.
John: So he's coming in on final approach to this, to this strip where he has seen the Jeep parked at the end of the runway.
John: And he's, he's coming in, coming in hot, full of, full of, full of bullets and,
John: And as he touches the wheels down on the airstrip, he sees a guy run out of the jungle, jump in the Jeep, and peel out, spin around, and get the hell out of there.
John: And bullets start coming out of everywhere.
John: And he's hauling ass down the runway, but he's committed now.
John: He's too far along to pull up and take back off.
John: So he runs the plane down to the end of the runway, and the Japanese are coming out of the jungle.
John: He spins the plane around, heads back down...
John: the runway the other direction, with the load master in the back of the plane, just throwing crates of bullets out the door.
John: Just hucking them out, trying to get the plane light enough that it can get back up off the ground.
John: And as they're running down the runway, I mean, they get back up, but they're just hucking stuff out.
John: And they got off the ground and made it out of there.
John: Plane full of bullets, but...
Merlin: It's completely insane.
Merlin: My anxiety would forbid me being very useful in that situation.
John: I just regret that I had no life to give for my country.
John: I regret that I didn't have a...
John: I sometimes regret that I did not join the army.
John: I know that that's crazy.
John: I know at the time, when I was 19, there was nothing I was going to do less than join the army.
John: Right.
John: But now that I'm old, I look back and go, well, I mean...
John: What the hell was I doing?
John: I wasn't doing anything.
Merlin: Yeah, that's a good way to feel pretty useless.
Merlin: But I mean, same thing with Captain America.
Merlin: He kept trying to join four different times, 4F every time, 4F, 4F, 4F.
Merlin: He's a little guy.
Merlin: He's a real little guy.
Merlin: But then they gave him that formula.
Merlin: And I'm just saying, I don't want to trivialize this story.
Merlin: That's not what I do.
Merlin: But I'm just saying, if you had those Russ powers, it could have really made a difference.
John: If I'd had the rust powers, but the problem with having powers is you don't, you know, they don't want you in the army.
John: They want you in the secret.
John: They want you in some special secret.
Merlin: Like in S.H.I.E.L.D.
Merlin: But you want to be out there with the grunts.
Merlin: You want to be out there on the front line rusting things.
Right.
John: And that's always been my problem with the CIA.
John: Like, I know at a certain point, there was a certain point pretty early on where the CIA was never going to recruit me as just an agent.
John: You know what I mean?
Right.
John: When did that awareness really, really settle on you?
John: I was pretty sure even by the age of 20 that I had already jeopardized my chances of being in the CIA.
John: Fundamentally jeopardized them.
John: But the thing is now, I still feel like the CIA could recruit me.
John: but I would be an asset, if you know what I mean.
Merlin: Oh, you could still be the English guy with the bombs, but you might not be the one right there putting it out, right?
Merlin: You probably have a beard.
John: Yeah, what I would have is I would be the one with the beard.
John: And I would have a handler.
John: I would have a CIA agent that was handling me.
John: I personally would not have a license to kill.
John: My license would be under the umbrella of someone else's license.
John: You'd get a sub-license to kill.
John: I'd get a sub-license to kill.
John: And that's just...
John: don't get me wrong, I'll take it.
John: But it's just not as satisfying as being a spy myself.
Merlin: But you'd still be serving.
Merlin: You'd still be doing what you're good at.
Merlin: You can't always be looking backward on those things.
John: I could be in Damascus walking down the street in a white 3P suit with a sword cane and a big beard.
John: And when agents came through, I would potentially be running a safe house or I'd be there like I'd be able to say...
John: Oh, sounds like it's the jackal again.
John: My old nemeses.
Merlin: Oh, see, I got to tell you, buddy, I think that would be so much cooler than being in the standard CIA.
Merlin: If you were in the secondary secret CIA and you were fighting the jackal in Damascus...
Merlin: You know, I'd love to work in one of those three days of the Condor offices.
Merlin: I mean, I wouldn't want to be killed during lunch, but I love that movie so much.
Merlin: I just thought it was so cool.
Merlin: They're in a townhouse, like, doing spy stuff.
Merlin: I just thought that would be the best thing in the world.
John: You got to wonder, somewhere in San Francisco, there's a townhouse where people are doing spy stuff.
John: I think it's in our neighborhood.
Merlin: And you probably drive by it all the time.
Merlin: Here's the thing.
Merlin: I think it's in our neighborhood.
Merlin: Well, you know how many of the places, not just handjobs.
Merlin: I found out another one.
Merlin: There's several handjob places around my place.
Merlin: We all know that.
Merlin: Let's take it as red.
Merlin: I just found out that there's a yogurt place that's actually Mahjong for money.
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: If you can pull something like that off two blocks away from a police station, there's a pretty good chance that somebody's here in a bathrobe fighting the jackal.
John: Wait, it's a yogurt place, but you play Mahjong for money in the back somewhere?
Merlin: It's even more complicated than that.
Merlin: It's a storage place for a yogurt place.
Merlin: because you know what if it was a yogurt place that's what they'd be looking for oh my god right they're so inscrutable you put that you put