Ep. 37: "The CEO of Magic"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Hi, Merlin.
John: How are you?
John: I'm well.
John: How are you?
Merlin: I'm doing quite well.
John: You seem a little bit tense.
Merlin: What makes you say that?
John: Well, I don't know.
John: There's something in the way that you're pursing your lips, sir.
John: You seem tight-lipped.
John: Can I be honest with you?
John: You have a mouthful of peanut butter.
Merlin: No.
John: You just ate a peanut butter rabbit.
Merlin: I just ate.
Merlin: Uh-oh.
Merlin: Hang on.
Merlin: I've discovered it.
John: You have to read the box?
John: I just ate.
John: Hold on.
John: Hold on.
Merlin: Yeah, it's like a gustatory Mad Libs.
Merlin: I just – I have a new convenience food that I like.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: Well, I was rushing to get back because I look forward to our show.
Merlin: I just – I think it was the – oh, it was the dry cop-up.
Merlin: There's this thing you can get.
Merlin: There's this dingus, plastic dingus full of sliced meats that you can get at the Lucky.
Merlin: At the Lucky, which is a drugstore.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: It's formerly Albertsons.
Merlin: Oh, OK.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: Supermarket.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: I have to tell you, John, well, first to finish the thread, I was sucking a long white piece of fat out of my teeth because it was frustrating me, and I hadn't thought to do that before I started calling you on the internet.
Merlin: So hang on a second.
John: Which imitates the sound of a person who's a little tense.
John: The lips are stiff.
Merlin: I feel so much better now.
Merlin: Oh, I just had to make an antipasto-shaped aperture.
Merlin: So here's what you get.
Merlin: I'm going to be honest with you.
Merlin: This is not cheap.
Merlin: This is something like, I don't know, $7 or $8, but it's called antipasto.
Merlin: It's on the top shelf.
John: This is the primo meat up here.
Merlin: I don't know how much you shop for groceries, John, but when you do, you will not miss this if you go to the Lucky.
Merlin: You got the Lucky in... Of course you do.
Merlin: You got the Albertson stir-fried dinners up there, right?
John: But we don't have Lucky's here, I don't think, or at least not in my neighborhood.
John: Isn't Doug March from up there?
John: He was talking about... No, he's not from Portland.
John: Oh, it's Twin Falls, Idaho?
John: Yeah, he's talking about Idaho.
John: He lives in Boise.
John: He's from Boise.
John: People think Built to Spill is a Seattle band, but they're an Idaho band.
John: Hmm.
Merlin: You're allowed to have a beer in Idaho?
John: Oh, in some parts of Idaho, it's required.
Merlin: Is it like a checkbox somewhere?
Merlin: If you want to get the deed, they got to fill your beard?
John: No.
John: In fact, it's a checkpoint on the highway.
Merlin: There are whole sections you don't get into.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: It's by a company called Buseto.
Merlin: Buseto.
Merlin: Yeah, I might have leaned a little hard, but Buseto Foods.
Merlin: You can tell it's fancy because other than that, it says gourmet.
John: San Remo, California.
Merlin: Is that San Dimas?
Merlin: That's where Bill and Ted are from, right?
John: Right.
John: San Dimas High School rules.
Merlin: No, wait a minute.
Merlin: San Dimas High School football rules.
Merlin: That's it.
Merlin: You know, I always like to think that you exist outside of time.
Merlin: But then I realize you've seen movies.
Merlin: You occasionally quote a line from a movie, which is not normally your style.
Merlin: But you know them.
John: There are a few.
John: It's a problem I have because I often claim not to know anything about music.
Merlin: That's smart.
Merlin: That really benefits.
Merlin: Seriously.
Merlin: I'm serious.
Merlin: That benefits us.
Merlin: I act like I don't know anything about computers, especially at parties and with family.
Merlin: I cannot fix your computer.
John: I cannot fix your problem of not knowing what music to listen to.
Merlin: You think you'd ever want to be a host or a judge on one of those shows where you tell people how badly they sing?
John: I have done that for the EMP up here.
John: People have come a couple years in a row and I've sat on a panel where we listen to demo tapes of two dozen bands and narrow them down and give one a prize.
John: And then all the bands play at a big festival.
John: I love it.
John: I love that work.
John: Because what's happening in somebody else's song is very easy to see when you're sitting outside of it.
Merlin: But they're not in the room.
Merlin: You're just listening to a CD.
John: Oh, no, they're in the room and I'm looking them right in the eye and saying, you know what happened when you went to the second chorus?
John: You overthought it.
John: You got a little too smart for your own good and you screwed it up.
John: And they go, and they nod, and they say, and then they come up afterwards and say, thank you, you've changed my life.
John: Thank you for helping me.
John: Thank you for helping me.
John: Can I do anything for you?
Merlin: Had you considered that the diminished chord might have diminished your song?
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: I only ever see it with the mute on, like when I'm picking up my Thai food.
Merlin: And I think I saw Howard Stern on one of these.
Merlin: And there's so many of them.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: See, here's the thing.
Merlin: I don't see.
John: I don't watch that stuff.
Merlin: I watch a lot of TV, but I don't watch regular TV.
Merlin: I don't watch.
Merlin: We don't have cable.
Merlin: You know, I have different means.
Merlin: And so I don't have to see those things unless I'm in a hotel room or a Thai restaurant.
John: Right.
John: You technically don't have to see them if you're in a hotel room.
John: But you do have to see them.
Merlin: You don't do that?
Merlin: I always turn on the TV.
Merlin: It's really weird.
Merlin: I don't know why.
John: No, I don't.
John: I was over at some friend's house the other day and we were sitting in the living room together and we were there for several hours talking, having a delightful conversation.
John: But the TV was on in the bedroom with the volume on pretty loud.
John: And it was just over there like there were people...
John: arguing in the bedroom basically is what it sounded like and but we were sitting in we were sitting in the living room enjoying one another and nobody felt we weren't interested in going in and watching what was happening on the tv it was just in there as a kind of like a music almost playing like a it was it was fulfilling the role of background music another thing that if i may say you um i want to say you don't like i think you actually despise background music is that correct
John: Well, not for other people or not in other people's houses.
John: You don't begrudge them background music.
John: Right.
John: I don't begrudge people background music, but I never play it.
John: I never have music on in the house.
John: Because...
John: It really distracts me.
John: I cannot do anything else.
John: If there's music playing, I just end up wandering over and sitting down in a chair in front of the speaker and staring at it.
John: So I cannot wash the dishes and listen to music.
John: I can't fold laundry with music on because my brain can't take the...
John: Can't take that kind of distraction.
John: You focus.
John: And for the same reason, I never listen to talk radio.
John: People are like, oh, did you hear that thing on NPR?
John: I'm like, I have never listened to NPR in my life unless I am trapped somewhere where it's playing.
John: And then I want everyone to stop talking, please, so I can hear what the people on the radio are saying.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: People that have NPR going all the time and they're conducting their daily business and they're on the phone with people and NPR is in the background.
John: I'm like, what are you doing?
John: Are you listening to this thing or are you doing this other thing?
John: You can't do both.
Merlin: But it's like an aural fleece.
Merlin: It just keeps you cozy to have it on all the time, I think.
Merlin: I used to do it.
Merlin: I can't do it now.
John: It does not keep me cozy.
John: It puts me absolutely on edge.
John: When I get into a taxi and the guy is listening to talk radio, the first thing they say is, would you turn the radio off, please?
Merlin: Oh, they don't like that.
Merlin: Well...
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I'm with you, though.
Merlin: Sometimes they don't.
Merlin: I don't like that.
Merlin: Boy, I have a lot to circle back to.
Merlin: I've got judges and Snapbooks.
John: Then I say... Yeah, sorry.
John: Taxi driver, would you stop looking at your phone, please?
Merlin: Oh, brother.
Merlin: I think a lot of those guys are running eBay businesses.
Merlin: The ones who have a Bluetooth and speaking in a language so that I won't understand them, I'm pretty sure they're running either some kind of offshore thing and or possibly an eBay.
Merlin: It might be a sex slave thing.
Merlin: But they're talking the whole time, and it's just this...
Merlin: I don't even know what, uh, what, you know, what are they doing?
John: Their tech support.
John: They're answering people's questions about their Macintosh.
John: You're saying they're double dippers.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: They're taking calls except they're taking calls from people in India or Pakistan, fixing their computers.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: That's like, that's like, that's like a no Henry story.
Yeah.
John: But I asked them to stop all that.
John: I want to talk to them about Pakistan.
Merlin: I'm so scared to do that.
Merlin: Gil, please go ahead.
Merlin: Let's continue.
John: I had a guy from Eritrea one time say... Eritrea.
John: Sorry, I'll cut that up.
John: Say, you know, the problem is that I talk to 50 people a day, and if I tell them all about Eritrea...
John: then I have said the same thing 50 times in a day.
John: I have said the same thing about my home country 50 times.
John: That is not interesting to me.
John: What's interesting to me is you telling me
John: your story about what you are doing Mr. Person who is riding in my taxi and I said wow because from my perspective I always get in a taxi and I try and find out from the guy where he's from and what his story is and the guy's like yeah but we hate that because anyone who ever shows an interest in us wants to know the same thing where are you from how long have you been in America why do you like it here do you ever go back
John: He's like, I've told that story a billion times.
John: I want to know why you are landing at Washington Dulles Airport and how long you're going to be in Washington, D.C.
John: That's what's interesting to me.
John: I was like, wow, we should have a conversation then where we each exchange information with the other.
Merlin: This is like, it's like an O. Henry story inside of an O. Henry story, which is perfect.
Merlin: So there'd be like a double twist.
Merlin: Now, here's the thing.
Merlin: I've never broken an arm.
Merlin: And I've never had like, say, like a pepperoni size birthmark on my face.
Merlin: But it seems to me.
John: I've never broken an arm.
Merlin: I've never broken anything and never had a cavity.
Merlin: What?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: What?
John: You've never had a cavity?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You don't have a cavity right now?
Merlin: Not a single one.
Merlin: A single one.
Merlin: I have had three wisdom teeth pulled, and apart from that, I'm flawless.
Merlin: Oh, I also had a double crown.
Merlin: I had a tooth growing behind another tooth, so it might be fluoride.
Merlin: I had fluoride, you know, precious bodily fluids.
Merlin: I had fluoride in the water in Cincinnati, so I say what you will.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Also, I had an uncle that worked at P&G, so we got a lot of crest.
John: Oh, my God.
John: High five from across the internets.
Merlin: It's one of those things that really frustrates people.
Merlin: I have to be honest.
Merlin: I don't say it a lot.
Merlin: It's one of those things like, you know, like those people who would always get an A. Oh, I'm sure I failed this biology test.
Merlin: And of course they always get an A. And you're like, shut up.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: I hate those people.
Merlin: And I don't like to be the person where somebody goes, I just had my 19th filling.
Merlin: And you're like, yeah, I've never had a cavity.
John: It's incredible.
John: Yeah.
John: It's incredible.
John: Never had a cavity.
John: You know, I've had a lot of dental problems.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: I'm going to write that on a card to go in the big pile because that gets us to an interesting place.
Merlin: And here's the thing.
Merlin: Now, I have had things like what?
Merlin: Now, listen, this is not domestic abuse, but have you ever had anything on your face?
Merlin: It could be a cold sore.
Merlin: It could be – I'm sorry.
Merlin: It could be a stress bump.
Merlin: It could be a bruise.
Merlin: But here's the thing.
Merlin: If you've got a broken arm, oh my god, you have to talk –
Merlin: so much about your broken arm before i'm just saying i've been around this i have a funny first name and when you have a funny first name you don't suffer from this you you have to constantly first of all i have to i have to live with and this is fine i have to live with you mean like the magician and i say yes like the magician who what person under 80 years old says that you mean like the magician
John: Really?
Merlin: Merlin.
Merlin: Now, you know what it is?
Merlin: That is a funny name.
Merlin: You know, my friend Marco.
Merlin: I've told you about my friend Marco with the Instagram.
Merlin: That's a funny name, too.
Merlin: Marco.
Merlin: What is that?
Merlin: Well, here's the thing.
Merlin: Is that some kind of Italian name?
Merlin: I don't think so.
Merlin: I don't think so.
Merlin: He lives in New York.
Merlin: I don't think they have Italians there.
Merlin: Here's the thing.
Merlin: Marco has a theory on this I might have shared with you.
Merlin: He calls it the snap-to-grid problem.
Merlin: Now, you don't suffer from this because you're the problem in the Snap to Grid problem.
Merlin: John.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: You're the monad, right?
Merlin: Apostle.
Merlin: Well, yeah, there's a couple of them.
Merlin: We have like different kennings to know who they are.
Merlin: Is that a word, kenning?
Merlin: I think that's a word, isn't it?
Merlin: We used to use kennings a lot in college.
Merlin: Like there was lesbian Amy and snake Amy and other lesbian Amy.
Merlin: You know, you give kennings to people at a small college.
Merlin: The other lesbian Amy.
Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: They had my daughter's school.
Merlin: There's old Bella and new Bella and other Bella.
Merlin: It sucked to be other Bella, other Bella, third Bella down.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Bella, Bella sub three.
Merlin: Now here's the thing.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: So if you've got a broken arm though, you're constantly, you know what?
Merlin: I'm just going to let you talk.
Merlin: I'm just saying that it would suck.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It only sucks a little bit to have my name because I have a pretty awesome name.
John: It's a great name, Merlin Mann.
Merlin: Merlin Dean Mann III is a pretty cool name.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: You could do worse.
John: I should have named my daughter Merlin Dean Mann III.
Merlin: You know, that would have been real sweet.
John: If I could do it over, if I could go back.
Merlin: Yeah, I bet your name was like Donna Flappy.
Merlin: Donna Flapp Jacks.
Merlin: Toppy Smelly.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: Other Donna Flapp Jacks.
Merlin: You mean Denny's Donna?
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: You mean Fast Donna or Faster Donna?
Merlin: Other Fast Donna.
Merlin: Donna's all the way down.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: So Marco says the problem is what he calls the snap to grid problem.
Merlin: Now, I know you don't use computers, but you can do things like where your icons in a window will snap to a certain pleasing grid.
Merlin: I know you're a little bit, you know, I don't like when people use OCD as an adjective, so I won't do that.
Merlin: But I know you like things to be arranged a certain way.
John: If my icons on my computer, which I don't have, if my icons are not snapped to grid,
John: I cannot sleep.
Merlin: Like if one of them is off, does that bother you?
John: I have to come in and do it all over again.
Merlin: Do you sort alphabetical?
Merlin: I do date modified.
Merlin: I do date modified.
John: Yeah, they are sorted alphabetically because date modified, they're bouncing all over the place.
John: I want them in the same place every time.
Merlin: That's so – you're so much more of a Mac user than you think.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Well, you know what?
Merlin: I'm going to write that down.
Merlin: I'm going to type it somewhere.
Merlin: Marco, here's the problem.
Merlin: So let's say somebody meets somebody named Jaunt or Jono.
Merlin: I know a guy named Jono, J-O-N-O, which is a silly name.
Merlin: That is a silly name.
Merlin: Sorry, Jono.
Merlin: But no, I mean like – and first of all, Jono, now you've got to spell that.
Merlin: His name is spelled J-O-N-O.
Merlin: It could hardly be any easier without having implied letters.
John: Yeah, but I wouldn't assume that.
Merlin: No, you would say it's J-O-H-N-Dash-O, right?
Merlin: Or J-A-H-N-O?
Merlin: Okay, and also I knew a girl in college, because I went to school with lots of people with fruity names, named Jonna.
Merlin: Jonna, I know a Jonna.
Merlin: Which sounds kind of like you would grunt that name a little bit.
John: Sometimes you're like, hey Jonna, I mean, ugh, Jonna.
Merlin: Do you think Jonna gets mistake for Donna?
John: No, I think John gets mistaken for Jana.
Merlin: Ooh.
Merlin: Okay, so you got John.
Merlin: So you are already on the grid.
Merlin: Now, Marco, most people, he says, hello, my name is Marco, and they're going to hear or remember Marcus.
John: Right.
Merlin: Or some other name that snaps easier to the grid.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Well, imagine if you were a Kirsten, Kristen, Kirsten.
John: Oh, like Kirsten.
John: This is one I have in the West all the time.
John: I don't know.
John: You know, when I'm in New York, I have never met... It's totally a Northwest thing.
Merlin: I know a Kirsten.
Merlin: I know a Kirsten.
John: A Kirsten.
John: A Kirsten.
John: I have never met any of those Kirsten people.
John: But the Kirsten, yeah.
John: Probably not many Kirstals.
John: I never met a Kirstal back East.
John: That is so weird.
John: When I was in elementary school, it was like, Kirsten, here.
John: Kirsten, here.
John: Kirsten, here.
John: curse question i mean question every single kirsten every single vowel combination you could have with a k and a wrist and people name their kids out here and i have no and i when you're in a room with like like four of them it's easy to get confused it's easy to get jumbled up
Merlin: And Kirsten's really hard, because it looks like Kirsten, but if you pronounce that wrong, they get fucking... I've met some Kirstens, and I just want to say, naming his destiny, I've never met a Kirsten who wasn't a little pissed.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: I've never met a Kirsten whose father wasn't a dentist.
Merlin: I'm going to call that Roderick's heuristic.
Merlin: Do you feel like that's backwards compatible?
Merlin: Like when you meet somebody who's a dentist that has a doctor, or a dentist who has a daughter, there's a pretty good chance.
John: Pretty good chance her name's Kirsten.
John: I'm not even going to test that.
Merlin: A priori, John.
Merlin: That fucking makes sense to me right on the face of it.
Merlin: I believe it.
Merlin: Huh.
Merlin: Anyway, that's the snap to grid.
John: I think that might be geographically determined, too.
John: I think it could just be, like, west of the Rockies.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: That's weird, though.
Merlin: There's a lot of crystals.
Merlin: No, it got me.
Merlin: On the East Coast, I think, if you're a dentist, your daughter's name is Sarah.
Merlin: Oh, Eastern Seaboard.
John: Right, Eastern Seaboard.
John: Is that Sarah with an H?
John: Sarah with an H, yeah.
Merlin: Now, how do you feel about Sarah with no H?
Merlin: Well, I think that's Sarah.
Sarah.
John: Oh, does that require a diacritical?
John: I'm not sure.
John: I knew a girl named Sarah, and that's how she spelt it.
Merlin: That's a terrible name.
John: Sarah was from the Indian subcontinent.
Merlin: Yeah, maybe.
Merlin: You know, can I say Sarah?
Merlin: To me, that sounds like military dad.
Merlin: That sounds like she was Sarah, and just to fucking piss off the colonel, she changed it to Sarah.
Merlin: Sarah.
Merlin: That was my mother's name, you bitch.
John: Don't you think?
John: In this one instance, I think that Sara might actually be one of the pantheon of 400 gods that live in Kashmir.
Merlin: Are we moving in a direction where you're going to apologize for these kinds of things?
John: I don't know.
John: I have yet to apologize for anything in my life.
Merlin: I apologize for nothing.
Merlin: You know what I hate?
Merlin: It was late 80s, early 90s.
Merlin: It's continued for a while.
Merlin: The word is Beltones.
Merlin: And it was all the Jadens and Cadens and Kaylas and Badens.
Merlin: You know, it all sounds like Jerry Lewis names.
Merlin: jade and caleb maiden you know maiden that'd be a pretty name for a girl maiden yeah yeah no no no but it's a little jewy so it'd be like m a d apostrophe n like maiden that'd be pretty yeah except when you write it you have to you have to cross out the two middle letters m apostrophe apostrophe apostrophe n oh because that would be blasphemous yeah
Merlin: Oh, man.
Merlin: It would be kind of – you know what?
Merlin: That's rough.
Merlin: The teller that I like at my bank has a Greek name that – I mean it's like continued on next nameplate.
Merlin: Her name is really – I don't want to talk out of school, but I think it's something like –
Merlin: No, it's like Papadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadopadop
Merlin: Oh, was that... No, wait.
Merlin: No, that was... Don't tell me.
Merlin: That was not Starship.
Merlin: That was Fleetwood Mac?
John: No, not Fleetwood Mac.
Merlin: I think there is a Starship one.
John: I think Starship does do Sarah.
Merlin: There's Sarah Smile by Hall & Oates.
Merlin: You got Sarah, which is, I think, a Fleetwood Mac song.
Merlin: But I'm wondering... I don't think Fleetwood Mac does Sarah, do they?
Yeah.
Merlin: Sarah Starship.
John: Sarah.
John: I'm using the internet.
Merlin: Oh, man.
Merlin: You have that nice, quiet keyboard.
John: Jefferson Starship has a song called Sarah, and it's spelled S-A-R-A.
Merlin: I think it's sung by that Went Down On You guy.
Merlin: Is it Marty Ballin?
Merlin: Went Down On You?
Merlin: That's how he wants to be.
Merlin: That's his epitaph in your world.
Merlin: He's the Went Down On You guy.
Merlin: Well, can you believe that song ever fucking made it on the radio?
Merlin: Do you remember?
Merlin: What was the name of the song?
Merlin: I got a taste of the real world when I went down on you, girl.
Merlin: Miracles.
Merlin: If only you believe like I believe, baby.
Merlin: That's a great tune.
Merlin: Wait a minute.
Merlin: Is that the same song?
Merlin: Got a taste of the real world when I went down on you, girl.
Merlin: I wasn't listening.
Merlin: Google it.
Merlin: Google it.
John: That is a wonderful song, though.
John: It's a pretty good song.
John: At first, I didn't recognize the version.
Merlin: What do you think of Paul Cantner?
Merlin: You got a feeling?
Merlin: Seems like him and Ray Manzarek could go somewhere and never stop talking.
John: Right?
John: I mean, for a long time when I saw a picture of Paul Kantner, I thought it was Ray Manzarek and vice versa.
Merlin: It might be a Clark Kent type situation.
John: I have a very hard time really grasping the whole Jefferson airplane arc.
Merlin: I'm going to need a new stack.
Merlin: From beginning to end.
Merlin: Friend after Hitler and stuff and whatever the follow-up is.
Merlin: Hitler and Foucault and stuff.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: I saw that.
John: That's the one I want to do.
John: Hitler and Foucault and stuff.
Merlin: I just know the names.
Merlin: Now, wait.
Merlin: Now, is he the Panopticon guy?
Merlin: I mean, apart from the guy who came up with Panopticon.
Merlin: That's an English philosopher.
Merlin: It was Wittgenstein or something.
John: Was it Wittgenstein?
John: No, no.
John: You're right.
John: It was a Bentham.
Merlin: It was like a Hobbslock.
Merlin: Jeremy Bentham.
Merlin: That's the guy who's in the booth.
Merlin: You ever seen Jeremy Bentham's body?
Merlin: You ever seen that?
Merlin: Jeremy Bentham's body.
Merlin: Jeremy Bentham's body is rotten.
John: Jeremy Bentham's body.
John: That's right.
John: That's what I should have named my daughter.
John: It would be hyphenated.
Merlin: It would be hyphenated.
John: I am really having some seconds.
Merlin: It's one of those terrible names like Sinjin Winston on Pucket Pot or whatever.
Merlin: Yeah, no, Google.
Merlin: Listen, I don't want this into an internet thing.
John: Yeah, I know.
John: We don't want this to be an internet thing.
Merlin: Will you do me a favor?
Merlin: Will you please Google Jeremy Bentham Box?
Merlin: Let's try that.
John: Now, I learned this from the Book of Lists.
Merlin: Let me know, son.
John: Jeremy Bentham box.
John: And then maybe hit images.
John: I should not have named my daughter that.
John: Images, all right.
John: Do you see a picture of a guy with a hat in the box?
John: It's not a hat.
John: It's a whole man.
Merlin: No, it's a whole man.
Merlin: He's got a stick, if memory serves.
Merlin: He does.
Merlin: He has a stick, and it's sticking out in between his legs, and it looks like a wood peepee.
Merlin: Does it look a little like a ducking booth?
Merlin: Like if you just fell in, like somebody hit the clown and he fell in?
Merlin: Is that really Jeremy Bentham?
Merlin: Oh, that's Jeremy Bentham.
Merlin: I think they brought it to meetings.
Merlin: I think they had him sit at the head of the table at meetings.
Merlin: I don't know a lot about Jeremy Bentham, I'll be honest.
Merlin: Wow, look at that.
Merlin: He's got a tan.
Merlin: You know what?
John: The mummification job was botched and Bentham's head came out looking like a dried prune.
Merlin: Yeah, this is why you shouldn't buy on price.
John: Oh, a wax replacement was created.
Merlin: Fuck that.
John: And this was balanced on top of a body made from some of Bentham's clothes stuffed with dry straw.
John: So I'm not sure.
Merlin: That's got to be the 19th century, John.
Merlin: That does not make any sense at all.
John: I don't think that's really Jeremy Bentham's body.
John: I think it's a wax head on top of a body stuffed with straw.
John: Bentham's badly mummified head was initially displayed on the floor between his feet.
John: But it's since been locked away after it became subject to a few too many student pranks.
Merlin: all right boys boys who's holding bentham's head now now um yeah the school cormorant uh boy that's that's a shame that's a shame now now no was he one of those guys like lock and barkley and all that barkley's scottish i don't think he's wax is he
John: Well, no.
John: The Scottish typically are not.
Merlin: Now, Barkley's the guy with the... Remember that whole thing?
Merlin: Was it with Locke and those guys?
Merlin: It started with Descartes with the vision and the lenses and how you see.
Merlin: It got real medieval, didn't it?
Merlin: Wasn't Barkley really into that?
Merlin: No, Barkley's the monad guy.
Merlin: Isn't Barkley the monad guy?
Merlin: Am I having a stroke?
Merlin: I made a cough button.
Yeah.
Merlin: are you talking about the panopticon no no no no we should we should circle back to that because that's foucault right didn't foucault pick that up on punishing on punishment what was it called on jailing what's it called certainly yeah punish and punishment is that is that uh jane uh who is that jane jane odden i really feel i really feel like this is this is starting to the wheels are starting to come off this kind
Merlin: Can I just say, John, every nickel of my liberal arts education was well spent.
Merlin: Isn't Barkley the guy with lenses?
Merlin: He's not the guy with the head.
Merlin: Is this crime and crunchiness?
John: Punk and punctuality.
John: I just spent a very frustrating day yesterday arguing with everybody on the internet.
John: Is this all your fake quotes?
John: No, no, no, not the fake quotes.
John: Well, you were getting mad that day.
John: Oh, the fake quotes day?
John: No, the fake quotes day was a fun day.
John: Okay.
John: And I wasn't really even mad yesterday.
John: It was just one of those things where you're fielding replies from 50 people and everybody's got to be in their bond.
Merlin: That's why it falls apart, John.
John: And there was some kid who was just like...
John: Well, you've obviously never read Foucault.
John: I feel like what I should do in those situations is just block the person instantly.
Merlin: No, no, you should spend the day finding out where he is.
Merlin: You should go teach him a little bit about the fucking pendulum.
John: But I always make the mistake of writing them and saying, listen, it's rude to assume about other people what they have read.
John: It is rude to assume about grown people
John: what their education is you need to check yourself before you say things like that to people that you don't know and he you know he writes back and goes well i just it was obviously blah blah blah and i'm like no no no you're you're and and so i waste a day basically or i waste i waste 10 i waste 10 milligrams of my brain sauce
Merlin: It's education meets steam.
John: That's hard for you.
John: Trying to push back against this kid.
John: The problem now, we are no longer discussing Foucault.
John: What we are discussing now is that you need to go back and sit in your chair and think about what you've done.
John: Let me reframe this for you.
John: It's very hard for me that I can't actually physically grab the person and sit them down and say...
John: We are not talking now about Asian versus Oriental.
John: We are talking about you.
John: We are talking about you and the things you have done in life that are wrong.
John: How did he respond to that?
John: Like every undergraduate in the world.
John: He said, me, me, me.
John: No, no, no.
John: Blather, blather, blather, blather, blather, blather.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: So it takes me a day or two to recover from some of those encounters.
Merlin: That's hard.
Merlin: And as you get older, that takes longer.
Merlin: It's like when you have to bend over and then take a day.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
John: Oh, the other day, God, I was walking along and I was like, I'm winded.
John: I'm genuinely winded.
Merlin: I'm constantly winded.
John: I'm winded.
John: What happened to me?
Merlin: Yeah.
John: I used to be able to run up 80 flights of stairs carrying a person that has asphyxiated.
Merlin: It's like the opposite of rescuing somebody.
Merlin: Yeah, take them up.
Merlin: Take them up.
Merlin: Because sometimes you need to learn.
Merlin: No, there's fresh air up high.
Merlin: Oh, that's good.
Merlin: Smoke rises.
Merlin: This was before 9-11.
Merlin: This was the logic, right?
Merlin: Yeah, everything's changed.
John: But now, I'm just walking down the street.
John: I was carrying a bag of groceries, and I'm like...
John: What happened to me?
John: I'm out of oxygen.
Merlin: I'm dying.
Merlin: I'm dying.
Merlin: Just to close the thread on Bentham, I don't want to preemptively do this.
Merlin: I'm just reviewing his page on Wikipedia, which is an internet site.
Merlin: He's considered a thinker on the subject of hedonism.
Merlin: He's best known for the greatest happiness principle.
Merlin: Hmm.
Merlin: And according – which I want to learn more about, which sounds like that BS Pangloss thing.
Merlin: You ever read that with the Voltaire, the Pangloss?
Merlin: And apparently a psycho – this is a made-up word.
Merlin: I think a psychobiographical study takes into account Bentham's eccentricities, egocentricity, obsessive and narrow preoccupations.
Merlin: Are you listening?
Merlin: And apparently diminished imaginative and emotional capacity.
Merlin: Concludes he may have had Asperger's syndrome.
Merlin: Oh, interesting.
Merlin: Asperger's syndrome.
Merlin: So he'd fit right in today.
John: You know, he's a handsome guy, I think.
Merlin: Does he roll a little Franklin?
Merlin: You think he's got a little Franklin?
John: He's sort of Franklin-y, but he's got a protruding lower jaw that I find distinguished.
John: You like an underbite.
Merlin: In a philosopher, you like an underbite.
John: Speaking as someone who has a little bit of a...
John: A little bit of an overbite.
Merlin: Do you?
Merlin: Is that what I have?
Merlin: I have some kind of bite.
Merlin: I think you got a bite.
Merlin: I think Freddie Mercury had an overbite.
Merlin: I think you might have an underbite.
Merlin: Maybe I have an underbite.
Merlin: My lady had an underbite.
Merlin: Remember when she got that?
Merlin: Oh, no, I do.
Merlin: I do have an underbite.
Merlin: I think you guys talked about it.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I think if he cut two inches off that hair, he'd look a lot better.
Merlin: He'd look a lot more slender.
John: Well, but that's the thing.
John: That's the thing about style.
Merlin: How do you decide?
Merlin: How do you decide?
Merlin: And he died in 1832.
Merlin: So that was the 19th century, of course.
Merlin: The 19th century could fuck up a wet dream.
Merlin: They thought they knew so much and it really became problematic.
Merlin: Well, they knew quite a bit.
Merlin: Not as much as the 18th century.
Merlin: You think that between the 18th century and the 19th century, some knowledge was lost?
Merlin: You're telling me that can't happen.
Merlin: I'm not saying the knowledge got lost.
Merlin: I'm not saying that library in Alexandria, Virginia burned down.
Merlin: But you follow my train of thought on this.
John: Well, I do, but I feel like what happened, I feel like the 18th century was a time when people furthered considerable, made considerable progress in terms of idealized knowledge.
John: Everybody was kind of
John: Putting theories initially into practice.
Merlin: Everything was fresh.
Merlin: All fresh.
John: Yeah, it was all fresh.
John: And then the 19th century, everybody, I mean, there was a lot of dealing with the fallout and the consequences of taking your philosophy and building a government around it.
John: And it got commercialized.
John: Oh, well, then, of course, the ads, yeah.
John: The ads really.
Merlin: Well, he covered a lot of ground.
Merlin: At some point, maybe not today, I'd like to circle back to utilitarianism.
Merlin: Vis-a-vis also, what's the one where you're nice to people for no reason?
Merlin: What's that called?
Merlin: When you're, is that a Donna?
Merlin: No, when, what's the thing when, oh, have you gotten any more notes?
No.
John: I'm just, you know what I do?
Merlin: I haven't gotten any more notes.
Merlin: I haven't gotten any more notes.
Merlin: I think he's given up.
John: I keep a little snot in the back of my throat now so that when you start talking about like 18th century philosophy, I get to suck a little piece of snot back.
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: Well, it's clear to me that you've never read The Wealth of Nations.
Merlin: you know it's funny it's like s a question guy right it's it's it's like i have prepared this one thing it's a little bit ignatius riley like you've got this one reference like the one the one loogie you've been holding in your throat it's the one in the chamber you know what i'm saying yep you've got it written on your big chief tablet
John: you read that book oh that's you know that's that's one of my favorite novels i told you this didn't i that when i first moved to seattle my my i had my name in the phone book as john ignatius roderick are you kidding no no i was so proud every time i looked oh i mean i was the only one that ever looked myself up in the phone book at that time but there was my name john ignatius roderick oh you know i gotta tell you i like your middle name i like your middle name right now a lot but ignatius is good ignatius is good okay i
John: I feel so bad that I didn't name my daughter that.
John: Ignatius.
John: Ignatius.
John: Ignatius J. Roderick.
Merlin: What's the word I was trying to think of?
Merlin: Where you do things just because for no reason for nice.
Merlin: What's that called?
Merlin: I'll cut all this out.
Merlin: Don't worry.
Merlin: Yeah, it's called altruism.
Merlin: Altruism.
Merlin: Now, altruism, is that different from utilitarianism?
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Utilitarianism is the thing that's going to be the most good for the most people.
Merlin: Is that a thumbnail sketch?
Merlin: Yeah, basically.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: That's kind of boring.
Okay.
Merlin: Anyway, Jeremy Bentham, if he had a little less hair on the back, he'd look a lot like Alfred Hitchcock.
Merlin: Interesting.
Merlin: How do you decide when to let your hair stop growing in the late 18th century?
John: I think you just let it keep growing.
John: The question for me is how, at what point... See, it's the beard question that keeps coming and going.
Merlin: We're obviously entering a bearded phase.
Merlin: Oh, it's going to be the gilded age of beards.
John: Yeah, and the last time we really properly had one of these was the late 19th century.
Merlin: you know like oh you mean when the really ambitious beards were happening yeah from 1860 not just I'm not gonna shave and go see Bobby Kennedy you mean seriously like let it go and yeah like a Whitman maybe roll a Whitman from 1860 to basically 1900
John: Big, big, big, big beards.
Merlin: I don't like PBS, but I really wish you had something regularly on PBS.
Merlin: I don't fucking care what it is.
Merlin: I don't even care if it has an app on the iPhone store.
Merlin: I want you to do something on PBS where you sit in a chair and explain things.
John: Well, what I could do is sit in a chair and then you could be offstage reading off a Wikipedia going, what's altruism?
John: And I'd be like, well... And then you'd move on to the next topic.
Merlin: Well, obviously you've never read Cyrano de Bergerac.
Merlin: I just called you Dan again.
Merlin: We're covering a lot of ground, Dan.
Merlin: Don't call me Dan.
Merlin: I'm just going to call you Dan.
Merlin: I got a thing here I wrote down.
Merlin: I want to talk about the different Johns.
Merlin: I'm very intrigued by the different Johns.
Merlin: Now, one thing, I went and picked up my Thai food.
Merlin: I don't want to work ping pong.
Merlin: But – and a lot of places – oh, yeah.
Merlin: And you know what we've got to come back to is the loneliness of TV and noise in the background.
Merlin: That's important, and I think you can help people with that.
Merlin: It was one of these shows – and it used to be you had the American Idol.
Merlin: And you could always tell because that cocksucker was always on it.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: And the thing was – now, here's the thing with these shows is they get sponsored, which is fine, but then they always have a Diet Coke.
Merlin: For a while, I think they had like a can or a bottle of Diet Coke, and that wasn't enough.
Merlin: So then they got this – Sitting on the desk?
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Lego out.
Merlin: Lego out.
Merlin: And it looks like they're enjoying a drink while they're judging people.
That's cool.
Merlin: Yeah, as you do.
Merlin: And then I think it became a larger and larger until you have like a Big Gulp style terrine.
Merlin: And this one that I saw, I think it was Howard Stern.
Merlin: He had shorter hair and looks a lot older, so I assume it's Howard Stern.
Merlin: He had those creepy Joey Ramone glasses.
Merlin: That's got to be Howard Stern, right?
Merlin: Probably, probably.
Merlin: He's hard to mistake for anybody other than Joey Ramone.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: I have a relative who has that Joey Ramone thing.
Merlin: Oh, yeah?
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: I don't know if it's the Rondo Hatton thing, but you know the thing where parts of your body keep growing?
Merlin: yeah it's um it's called uh you know rondo hatton had it yeah it's it's the um well you know we can just go special edition of wikipedia what is it entitalitis it's not elephantitis it's uh it's don't be fatuous you know yes abe lincoln disease you're gay and you save the country that's totally it no mike as far as i know he's not gay but no that's problematic that's totally different from what andre the giant had right
John: I think so.
John: Yeah, that's giantism.
John: That's different from Andre Pertone.
John: That's totally different.
John: That's very different from what Andre Previn had.
Merlin: Okay, and he's the guy who was with the lady that had the problem with the husband and the kids.
Merlin: And kind of looked like Joey Ramone.
Merlin: Fat.
Merlin: Fat Joey Ramone.
Merlin: Fat Joey Ramone.
Merlin: He said everything two times.
Merlin: Fat Joey, and then there's other Joey.
Merlin: And there's other Joey, and there's Joey Bella.
Merlin: Okay, God.
Merlin: Did you just call me God?
Merlin: You wish.
Merlin: Lowercase g. You're in the Pantheon, but not by much.
Merlin: I'm outside the Pantheon.
Merlin: You're standing outside the Pantheon yelling naked.
Merlin: I'm cleaning under my fingernails.
Merlin: Throwing a chair through the window and setting the place on fire.
Merlin: My daughter says that now.
Merlin: Sometimes you've just got to burn the building down.
John: Some men just want to watch the world burn.
John: What's that from?
John: That's another movie quote.
Merlin: I don't know that one.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Here's the thing.
Merlin: I don't want to overextend this.
Merlin: I think Hitler and stuff has got to happen, but I don't know.
Merlin: I just feel like there's a whole lot of brand extensions we can do.
Merlin: If we quit, if we had jobs, we should quit them.
Merlin: We should get jobs and quit them.
Merlin: And then we should.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: I quit my job.
Merlin: I hereby quit my job.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: I will too.
Merlin: I'm going to put my notice in today.
Merlin: My boss is an asshole.
Merlin: Bentham, TV for lonely people, dental.
Merlin: Oh, and so anyway, the point is on the Howard Stern show that was muted.
Merlin: Thank Christ.
Merlin: Everybody had a giant Tareen with Snapple on the front of it.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And the thing is obviously, you know, if you watch somebody drink a drink, you ever watching like a commercial when somebody eats a hamburger with two fingers, you know what I mean?
Merlin: Like over the top and they go and they do that thing.
Merlin: And it's like to display the burger.
Merlin: Nobody fucking eats like that.
Merlin: And nobody has a giant Serena Snapple with the logo out.
John: Well, it's like that.
John: It's like I was talking about that, uh, that ad that used to run for the hot tub place here in Seattle.
John: That was called tubs where you'd go and like rent a hot tub for an hour with your friends.
Oh God.
John: And the advertisement that they had for this place was a girl in a bikini standing waist deep in a hot tub.
Merlin: Right, right, right, right.
John: And in one hand, she was drinking like a martini glass style cocktail.
John: And she was using the other hand to sensuously brush back her hair.
John: And I realized a long time ago that you couldn't do both things.
Merlin: Amidst bubbling water.
Merlin: In a bubbling hot tub.
Merlin: Like with shots, jacuzzi shots.
Merlin: They're probably not jacuzzi brand shots.
John: In a bubbling hot tub that 25 other people had used that day.
John: Okay, I'm going to come back to that.
John: I'm sure we talked about this.
Merlin: Oh, we totally talked about this.
Merlin: Was she wearing a two-piece?
John: It was a two-piece.
John: You know, I'm afraid that this may be the first instance of us actually repeating ourselves.
John: That's not correct.
John: And I knew it came from me.
John: No, you've repeated yourself a lot.
John: What?
John: What are you talking about?
John: What have I said that I ever said before?
John: You don't want to know.
John: I've repeated myself.
Merlin: You don't listen to our show.
Merlin: I listen to our show.
John: I don't listen to the podcast.
John: I've told stories that I told multiple times.
John: You're going to derail me.
John: Oh, my God.
John: I'm embarrassed about this.
John: No.
John: I'm worried about it.
John: You know, my dad told the same story.
Merlin: You're embarrassed of nothing.
John: My dad told the same story every day for 40 years.
Merlin: And that's wrong how.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: You've got some really good stories.
Merlin: Here's the amazing thing, John, is like I've learned – well, not days like today, but some days I just get out of your way.
Merlin: I learn the cues that mean you're about to tell one of your great stories, and I try to get out of the way.
Merlin: I think today we're doing a lot of philosophical cleanup.
Merlin: Well, we're doing something.
Merlin: I feel like we're sweeping words around a big auditorium.
Merlin: In that case, I will quickly get this out of the way.
Merlin: This comes with Italian dry salami, dry coppa, prosciutto, and black pepper-coated Italian dry salami.
Merlin: So you get it with and without the pepper.
Merlin: Now, the problem is, from my daughter's standpoint, the pepper gets on everything.
John: Wait, one of the ingredients in the salami was dry pepper-cured salami?
Merlin: Black pepper-coated Italian dry salami.
John: Is one of the ingredients in the salami?
No.
Merlin: Oh, I'm sorry.
Merlin: I'm reading the bullets on the front.
Merlin: Let me check the back.
Merlin: I think it's got – oh, my goodness.
Merlin: There's a lot of ingredients on this.
Merlin: Yeah, I know there are.
Merlin: Oh, my goodness.
Merlin: Well, the first ingredient in all of them is pork.
Merlin: They have to make those pituitary glands soft by dipping them in from – Have I ever told you how much I hate things that are all named with a series of nouns?
Merlin: I don't like that.
Merlin: I don't trust that.
Merlin: Like the idea of something called pork shoulder butt.
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: I don't think you can have pork.
Merlin: Oh, wait, the butt of the pork shoulder.
Merlin: See, now we're overthinking that.
Merlin: Here's the problem.
Merlin: I don't travel as much as I used to, but this used to be almost exclusively a problem of travel and sports bars, but I think it's extended.
John: Because sports bars have now morphed into all those airport Irish bars.
Merlin: Yeah, O'Connor O'Connor's.
Merlin: Punchy McPunchingtons.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Being inviting about a yard of beer.
John: I went into a sports bar the other day in an airport somewhere, and it was... They were playing... It was, like, themed.
John: It wasn't just that the guy was playing his mixtape, but it was a sports bar, but it was themed somehow so that they were playing live recordings of...
John: of blues classics, but not blues classics by the original blues artists, but blues classics by... Counting crowds covering Sunhouse.
John: Eric Clapton live in the 80s, followed by B.B.
John: King live in the 80s, followed by George Thorogood live in the 80s.
John: Oh, come on.
John: The music was all live takes of like...
John: that's when she said she was pretending it was like i went down to the crossroads it was so it was so awful it actually was curdling milk i i asked for cream and it curdled i asked for another one it curdled i
Merlin: we have to get out of here i'm not gonna i'm not gonna ruin three cups of coffee tell me if this tell me if this resonates though because i mean i i always felt this was something well you know let's say it started with the sports bars probably but i think men in particular are very lonely
Merlin: And I think when you go to somebody's house and you're having a nice conversation and nobody thinks to turn off the fucking television, I think it's because people are lonely and they like to have a little voice near them.
Merlin: And I think when men go to airports, this drives me crazy because no matter where you sit in an airport, there are many, many voices apart from the ones in my head, which is first of all, there's the pointless TSA warnings that drone on, right?
Merlin: And you wouldn't know if there was a bomb in the fucking place because there's all this chatter.
Merlin: And then CNN.
Merlin: CNN.
John: They're saying that the bombs themselves are whispering, I'm a bomb.
John: I'm a bomb.
Merlin: If you listen carefully.
John: But you can't hear it.
Merlin: If you can hear it over Anderson Cooper.
Merlin: Blah, blah, blah, blah.
Merlin: So what do you do?
John: Another blonde girl found on a desert island.
Merlin: You ever notice Sunday nights?
Merlin: Sunday nights are when they get a lot of the dead lady stories.
Merlin: I think Sunday is a slow news day and I've noticed on news sites that's when they pull out a lot of the dead people stories.
Merlin: Just watch for it.
Merlin: I don't need to know.
Merlin: I'm just saying I'm putting it out there.
Merlin: I don't watch the TV.
Merlin: So then I'll drop 50 bucks.
Merlin: Cause I want to get away from the din and I'll go into, I'll pay to go.
Merlin: Cause I'm not like, well, they don't have a cover charge, but if I want to go to the lounge, right.
Merlin: I think, Oh, I was right.
Merlin: Fancy guy.
Merlin: I'll find solace.
Merlin: Sometimes I got the miles these days, not as much, but I'll say, you know what?
Merlin: I'm willing.
Merlin: I've got a two hour wait.
Merlin: I would like to go somewhere and have a beverage and sit down and be left alone where there's a banana in a bowl.
John: Yeah.
John: And there's like six people sitting with laptops on their laps.
Merlin: Didn't it used to be nicer in those?
Merlin: And it's like, hey, there's a banana in the bowl.
Merlin: Anybody can eat that?
Merlin: And you know what's in there?
Merlin: There are screens and screens and screens, even in the quiet room.
Merlin: There's screens and there's people screaming into their phone.
Merlin: There's no quiet in public anymore.
Merlin: I know I talk a lot, but when I'm in public, I'm very quiet.
Merlin: It's maddening to me, and I think this is extending to everywhere.
Merlin: I think people are lonely and they need a din of noise.
John: Yeah, I agree.
John: I think that that is the whole business with sports.
John: You can sit, you can sit alone in your bachelor apartment and listen to people yelling and yell at them yourself.
John: And, um, it's like sports TV or sports radio.
John: You get to yell at the thing and they're yelling and it feels like you're in a big boisterous room full of people.
John: And you can talk about next to nothing.
John: Oh no, you don't know what you're fucking talking about.
John: That guy.
Merlin: You know, the thing about that guy is he's got athleticism.
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: The professional athlete has athleticism.
Merlin: And now really it's going to be a question of whoever puts the most points on the board.
Merlin: Well, this is the thing.
Merlin: This is the problem.
Merlin: I don't hate sports, John.
Merlin: I hate sports culture, and it makes me angry.
Merlin: I know you do.
Merlin: It's sports culture.
Merlin: Let me be clear.
Merlin: My daughter plays soccer.
Merlin: I like soccer.
Merlin: I'm angry about sports culture.
John: It's the rare person that hates actual sport.
John: It's sports culture that people hate.
John: Absolutely true.
Merlin: And I'm the weirdo.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
John: That bugs me.
John: That bugs me.
John: I don't think I should have to be the weirdo.
John: Are you kidding me?
John: You live on the internet.
John: Everybody on the internet hates sports.
Merlin: I wish.
John: Except for the sports corner of the internet.
John: But I can't go to any place in public now because even the lobbies of hotels, the lobbies of office buildings have TVs, big, big TVs that are yelling at you about the new dead girl they found on the Pacific Island or they're yelling at you about the car chase that's happening.
John: It's really Minority Report.
John: That's third movie reference.
John: It wasn't a quote, but the third movie reference of this podcast.
John: TV is yelling at me everywhere I go.
Merlin: I don't want to – I can't say this is worse or the same, but the other one that really, really gets under my skin because it's so visually and aurally cluttered is whatever – I don't know.
Merlin: I guess it's like CNBC, but somewhere where they're screaming about finance, about a story that's still emerging.
Merlin: It's not like anybody has ever done any actual research.
Merlin: They're standing somewhere where a bell goes ding, ding, ding, and people in vests are running around and acting like that's some kind of reporting.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And I don't smoke, but if you go to the kind of place where people smoke in a room, there will always be something on about the sports or there will be something on about the finance.
Merlin: And then people will talk about the finance.
Merlin: And nothing is worse than hearing people watch a financial show and talk about finance.
Merlin: I don't know.
John: Would you like to hear me talk about finance for an hour?
Merlin: I would.
Merlin: I absolutely would.
Merlin: You own a house.
John: You've been through the process.
John: Let's write that on another card.
John: That'll be another podcast.
Merlin: These guys are talking about shorting and commodities.
Merlin: They don't know what the fuck they're talking about.
Merlin: They're watching a TV show and that's how they decide to spend their money?
Merlin: How is that better than an infomercial?
John: When I was getting my house mortgaged, for a while I was talking about getting it remortgaged, right?
John: And I start talking to this broker.
John: And this guy, he's a real personable guy.
John: He's a guy that I like...
John: instinctively right away felt like, oh, this is a guy my age who can... He's finally a guy in the financial sector who just wants to talk like a guy.
John: And he wants to break it down real simple.
John: Here's how it's going to go.
John: And so we started talking and we kind of had a very good rapport and I was like, I'm going to refinance my house with this guy.
John: And then at one point I asked a question about...
John: some arcana in the way the mortgage was being calculated.
John: And he went from being this normal guy that I was enjoying very much that I felt like if I went and got beers with guys, I would go get a beer with this guy.
John: And he just turned on a dime and became this robot guy
John: talk monster of just like, well, what happens is... And he starts talking in this financial TV reporter voice and trying to... He was not trying to explain anymore what... He was not trying to explain in human language what he was doing with my mortgage.
John: He was trying to bully me into...
John: into saying, nevermind.
John: He was trying to bully me into saying like, okay, thank you very much.
John: I got it now.
John: And he was trying to do that to, to mask the fact that he didn't understand it.
John: Right.
John: And he had all, he had all this tremendous, he had this verbiage that he was just, he was going to spew at me until I went right, right, right.
John: Okay.
John: Thank you.
John: Is it like a smoke screen?
John: It wasn't a smokescreen because I did not get the sense because I went through this a couple of times because I wanted to make sure.
John: I talked to him a couple of days later and I asked him the same question and I got the same response.
John: And I did not get the sense that it was a smokescreen because he was trying to conceal something unethical or that he was trying to pull a fast one as much as he didn't understand how it worked either.
John: Yeah.
John: And he was now he had reached the threshold.
John: He had reached the point of his own ignorance.
John: And now he was just going to spew what he'd been taught in business school or what he'd been taught at the mortgage seminar where he learned his trade.
John: He just started spewing this this litany at me.
John: And he was hoping that it would fool me as it had fooled him, as it had probably fooled his boss.
John: Right.
John: Like that he was hoping it would sound reasonable and I would get tired of that.
John: And I think he did not see the logical inconsistencies in what he was saying.
John: And he was not aware that I was noticing them and saying like, well, wait a minute.
John: What?
John: No, wait a minute.
John: Actually, now that's not how you use a gerund.
Merlin: Well, maybe when he goes into that mode, he even stops noticing, like, how little sense he makes and stops reading.
Merlin: Like, he becomes a little aspy and stops reading the emotions.
Merlin: Yeah, exactly, exactly.
John: And I get that sense whenever I'm dealing with – well, whenever I'm dealing with functionaries or people at the mid-level of any kind of technical –
John: discipline.
John: They reach the point where they can no longer answer questions from a layman who is paying attention.
John: Because as a layman, the technical... The jargon, it's jargon.
John: The technical jargon or the technical explosion of language is not interesting.
John: You're following the big picture and you want to know the answer to the next big picture question.
John: And you reach the point where the person that you're talking to just doesn't have that
John: They don't have a conception of the larger structure, what they're doing, how it fits into it.
John: And so they just start blathering.
John: That is one of the main problems with dealing with staffers for me.
John: And the problem is that you go all the way up the chain, you get to the executive vice president, he doesn't know either.
John: I'm starting to realize this, dealing with people in the corporate world.
John: in the corporate world a little bit more.
John: The vice president actually doesn't know either.
John: He just backs up into the mission statement and starts repeating it.
John: He doesn't know what they're doing either or how it really fits into the big picture.
Merlin: It's a problem with jargon in general because I think jargon is like the – whatever, the Black Brooks Brothers suit.
Merlin: It becomes this way of speaking to everybody else in this patois that eventually can become entirely empty but is very comfortable to everybody.
Merlin: And there's these two phrases that I joke about a lot, and the two phrases are turns out and so.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And turns out is a journalist smokescreen because you say turns out as you introduce something that you didn't actually discover but you think sounds contrary to conventional wisdom and therefore you now sound smart.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And you'll hear this once you start listening for this.
Merlin: Turns out you use that a lot in our podcast.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: I used to say turns out because it became a tick.
Merlin: It's a tick.
Merlin: Turns out.
Merlin: Turns out.
Merlin: And then the opposite of what you think.
John: Now how does so work in that context?
Merlin: Well, ask me a fairly straightforward question about something.
John: Merlin, how do you feel the Jets are going to do this season?
Merlin: So sports can be complicated to analyze and to understand that really on any given Sunday...
Merlin: so i've met people that you can ask i think it's like technically i i write it as for my little that jokey character i write it as so period but i think it's literally so colon and i think it's a pr move that people have absorbed from hearing other people use it and it becomes a way to not answer a question it's kind of a politician thing when you when you begin the answer to a question
Merlin: Your answer to a question was so.
Merlin: You're either trying to stall for time to think of an answer or just as often – I mean I think that's what happens when you start doing it as a tick.
Merlin: But I think the trick to so is that you're answering the question you want to answer instead of plainly answering the very simple fucking question that someone just asked you.
Merlin: And it's a consultee kind of thing to do because the consultant people –
Merlin: You know, you ever hear this quote, I don't love bromides, but I think this is Kurt Vonnegut that said this, that anybody who can't explain what they do for a living to a 10-year-old is a charlatan.
Merlin: Which I think is, I think that's, once you think about that.
John: Oh my God, but that is true of 80% of our economy now.
John: I mean, I have this problem all the time asking people, what do you do?
John: They start to go, well... I'm in communications.
John: Yeah.
John: And I go, no, no, no, no.
John: Tell me what you do.
John: And ultimately, they don't know.
John: They do not know.
John: It's not that they are the charlatan, but that they are a cog in a charlatanic system.
John: They're a cog in a charlatanic world.
Yeah.
John: where nobody knows what's happening.
John: I swear to you, if your company performs some service for other companies that you can't tell me what it is.
John: Well, you're a service provider.
John: Yeah, you're a service provider.
John: Or maybe you're a solution provider.
John: And there's 300 people working at that company and you still can't tell me what exactly it does.
John: Oh my God, get out.
John: Get out.
Merlin: No, it is true.
Merlin: But, you know, it's also on the one hand, I get that because I understand, you know, I'm a huge fan of, you know, whether or not you love the music.
Merlin: I really like Bob Dylan and I really like Bruce Springsteen from a culture.
Merlin: No, let me tell you why.
John: Whether or not you love his music.
Merlin: I really I got to say, well, I didn't want to get into a thing with you because I know you're not a fan of anything.
John: Of what?
Merlin: I'm a fan of Bob Dylan.
Merlin: I'll tell you what I'm a fan of.
Merlin: So basically you work for businesses and you do a certain kind of public messaging through things like press releases that tries to make them look good mostly for free.
Merlin: Well, no, actually I'm a communications professional on social media.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: This happened to me when they – Why do you use that voice that sounds like the interior decorator in Beetlejuice?
Merlin: Actually, I think it's Tim Gunn from that – what's it called?
Merlin: Project Runway.
John: I have concerns.
John: Oh, I have watched that show.
John: You're talking about the regal blonde person who walks back and helps them with their... In the tailored clothes, yes.
Merlin: Oh, very interesting.
Merlin: I like that guy a lot.
Merlin: Or it could be Humpty Hump also.
John: I get stupid.
John: I'll shoot an arrow like Cupid.
Merlin: Make it work.
John: Yeah, I called you fat.
John: Look at me, I'm skinny.
John: I just got busy in a Burger King bathroom.
John: Make it work.
John: MC Blowfish.
Merlin: I can't believe you know so many things.
Merlin: I mean, I know you know stuff from dusty books that no one cares about, but me, you know fucking Humpty Hump.
Merlin: You know Shock G?
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: Do you know the secret?
Merlin: Do you know the secret?
John: I don't just know Humpty Hump.
Merlin: I know every track on that record backwards.
Merlin: I love that record.
Merlin: Oh, my gosh.
Merlin: We should talk about music on our other show, Hitler and music.
John: Oh, Hitler and stuff.
Merlin: Hitler and music.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Hitler and Foucault.
John: Anyway, this is boring now.
John: I'm sorry.
John: You know what?
John: You know, one of the things I've caught myself saying now, I've got a tick, a vocal tick or a verbal tick.
Merlin: You get several.
Merlin: You got like five.
John: No.
John: What are my verbal ticks?
John: Please continue.
John: Come on.
John: Tell me.
John: You can't just say something like that and then walk away.
John: In any case.
John: Do I say in any case?
Merlin: That's what – no, no.
Merlin: I can tell you exactly what in any case means.
Merlin: In any case means Merlin has finally kind of stopped talking, and I would like to continue with my point.
Merlin: The other thing is that, you know, there's a sudden you can get flowers in boxes, and then you bring them home, and you put them in the window, and that's a nice way to – and you know the thing is that if you cut sausage into smaller pieces, you can cook it faster.
Merlin: Well, in any case –
John: in any case one of the things that i have caught myself saying recently is no kidding and i say that as somebody's talking to me about stuff and every time they you know every time they're like and then i went to the store and i'm like no kidding
John: and again at the store there were things for sale i see you reading a paper mentally i see you reading a paper when you say that no kidding and i caught myself the other day i was talking to somebody uh out in the street and i realized i had said no kidding 45 times yeah in in the space of a 20 minute conversation i was like oh my god i gotta stop doing that no kidding i have dozens i have dozens of those oh no kidding yeah because you can say it a
Merlin: Oh, and mine are like, you know what?
Merlin: It's just too embarrassing.
Merlin: I can't get into it.
John: What's your worst one right now?
Merlin: My worst one right now, I somehow, I actually got this from you accidentally.
Merlin: You use it sparingly.
Merlin: But you took it to a higher level?
Merlin: Oh, I use it super often.
Merlin: What is it?
Merlin: Prepending an adjective with super.
Merlin: Oh, that's super annoying.
Merlin: I can tell you where most of my tics have come from, and that's from an interview you and I did where you were talking about people not wanting to pay you for shows.
Merlin: And I've actually used almost this – I've scribbed almost this exact sentence from you, which is I'm super grateful that you're da-da-da-da-da-da-da.
Merlin: Yeah, and I think that's where I got it from.
Yeah.
Merlin: I absorb.
Merlin: You know, John, I'm a liberal artist.
Merlin: I absorb.
John: It's true.
John: Well, and you're very good at pulling the fruit off of things.
John: Not just the low-hanging fruit, but you find the delicious berry that's embedded in the scrum of leaves.
John: Yeah.
John: And you pull the berry out and you're like, see what was there?
John: See what was there?
John: You didn't see it.
John: You saw the scrum of leaves.
John: Here's the delicious berry.
Merlin: You're saying I'm willing to go in and finger the scrum of leaves to find that nascent berry.
John: That's what I'm saying.
Merlin: I'm saying you go face first.
John: Is there a chance I just became Gary Snyder?
John: You're not even fingering the scrum of leaves.
John: You're face first in a scrum of leaves.
Merlin: thank you tasting the delicious berry faced first in the scrum of leaves wow we got we got a lot of open threads here this is good stuff so are you you're not so you're not you're not a comic-con are you no i'm going to comic-con tomorrow although that has now located this uh podcast in time and space which i don't know what year don't know what year you know could be east coast west coast it could be comic-con euro that's true this could be comic-con 2002
John: Everything's changed.
John: I'm going tomorrow.
John: I went to one last year, so the bloom is off the rose in the sense of, like, last year I had the pleasant surprise of walking around a giant convention center full of slave Leas and thinking, like, this is dumb, and then walking into a room that had...
John: 100 million comic books all presided over by like 55-year-old guys with like George Lucas beards.
John: A lot of dander.
John: And I was suddenly in heaven, and I was walking around saying to all these guys like, you don't have by any chance National Lampoon number two, do you?
John: And then they would go, oh, well...
John: Turns out.
John: I have a repressing, but... I think, you know what, in that case, that's going to begin with the exhale.
Merlin: Not to go a comic book guy, but that one's going to be... What condition?
John: It's slabbed up near me.
John: I was so excited to be in this room and realizing that Comic-Con was really at the core of it.
John: If you went all the way into the center of the Death Star, there was actually a room full of comic books.
John: And it wasn't just... Oh, that there were the titular comic books.
John: There were comic books here at this festival of people that are lined up to talk about Twilight or walking around dressed like video characters.
John: Solid sevens in metal bikinis.
John: Solid sevens in metal bikinis.
Merlin: That's one of my favorite pavement songs.
Merlin: it's in seven too, which is great.
Merlin: Yep.
Merlin: It's got, it's got a, it's got a slightly kind of chromatic guitar opening.
Merlin: It's a little slow.
John: And then some out of tune singing from a guy that it turns out can actually sing.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: But anyway, so I had a great time.
John: Now this year I'm going back with the knowledge that in the center of this like rat king of nerds is a room full of comic books.
John: And I want to get there and,
John: And I'm worried that it's going to change my experience because I'm... Oh, because you're going to go straight past the Slave Leia's right into the comic den.
John: Yeah, last year I wandered... I spent three hours wandering around this... I mean, this convention center is like three aircraft carriers end-to-end.
John: And you're walking from room to room and you're just like, what room is this?
Merlin: Isn't it kind of like the new South by... I mean, is it South by... It's kind of like the new thing, right?
Merlin: Comic-Con's like kind of the thing now, right?
John: Well, except that South by Southwest...
John: At the core of South by Southwest, when you get into the heart of that Rat King, it's rock and roll.
John: There's some band of 24-year-olds that are dressed like the Romantics and are trying to sound like the Strokes, right?
John: It's rock and roll.
John: And at the heart of Comic-Con, there is that same group of 24-year-olds.
John: They also look like they're in the Romantics, right?
John: But they are trying to look like a comic book about a rock and roll band that lives on a surfboard in outer space.
John: And they have a podcast.
John: And I cannot – whatever that is, whatever that leap is from – at the core of South by Southwest, there are people playing guitars.
Yeah.
John: And at the core of Comic-Con, I feel like, at least right now, there are people pretending to play space guitars.
John: And I don't know where the heart of Comic-Con is, other than this room full of comic books.
John: The room at Comic-Con where people are actually drawing things and making things.
John: I know it's there.
John: But I don't...
John: i'm not in yet or i don't when i open a door and i see a room full of people all looking at their computers i don't perceive that as a room full of people who are making things right and and in fact it it it probably is they're probably they're making web comics well it's a funny thing today is that i i really believe this is that there are very few people today well let's look at it this way i don't know how long the thing's been around but 20 years ago something called comic-con if it existed would have been regarded as a fan event a place where you go because you're a fan of comics i bet and
Merlin: And now today, I think for better or for worse, for reality, pretty much everybody thinks of themselves as a – turn my low, the content creator.
Merlin: Everybody thinks of themselves as somebody who makes stuff, even if making that is your blog about – blogs about comics.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, but I have – and this is going to blow your mind.
John: Okay.
John: But I have recently become friends with some people who are cosplayers.
Yeah.
Merlin: When you say friends, is this through a mud?
Merlin: These people you've met at a user group and a mug?
John: There are people that I know that I initially probably met through the internet, but now I know them.
John: And when you ask them what they do, they say cosplay.
John: That is what they do.
Merlin: Cosplay is like a Japanese girl version of LARPing.
Merlin: Yeah, LARPing and cosplay overlap.
Merlin: Yeah, but I mean, there's like a 60-pound difference, right?
John: Well, I think you can be a girl and LARP.
John: This is a new thing I just discovered.
John: There's girl LARPing.
John: You can be a girl and LARP.
John: But the idea that making a costume and going out in public in the costume and being a part of these gatherings and sort of showing off your creation is a form of...
John: It's not just a form of creativity, but it's actually now a... This is the thing that I'm still struggling to understand, but it is a kind of...
John: being a rock star.
John: It isn't just performance.
John: It isn't just... But it's not just fan art.
Merlin: There are people who are really doing genuinely creative stuff.
John: It's not that you're dressed up like Pokemon, but you've taken elements from Pokemon and you've taken elements from Speed Racer and you've made a new thing.
John: And it is a costume which you are inhabiting.
John: And you are the costume kind of.
John: It's a brave new world for me.
John: I'm still trying to learn what it all means.
John: But I'm actually having first-hand experience of it now rather than just not understanding it at a distance.
Merlin: And dismissing it, which would be common for somebody like myself at my age.
John: Yeah, I'm realizing now that I cannot dismiss anything.
Merlin: You got to stop.
Merlin: That's how you get old.
Merlin: That's how you get calcified.
John: That is how you get old.
John: And we're such early days of the internet.
John: And in fact, we're kind of the unlucky ones because we were there for the 20 years of developing computers that now has become irrelevant, right?
John: All those years that we spent...
John: Or some of us spent sitting in front of Apple IIe's writing basic programs onto floppy disks.
John: Unless you are working at a vintage computer museum, all that information is useless now.
John: It's all become a different thing.
John: And so the people that are, the people that, where the internet is going to go in 20 years, I don't know.
John: And I can't afford, I really can't afford to say, eh.
John: I mean, I had this experience just recently working with a company that I work closely with.
Yeah.
Merlin: You sure did.
Merlin: I wish you could talk about this.
John: I had the chief technology officer of this company tell me that he thought that Twitter was for douchebags and that he didn't understand why.
John: That the company had made a decision a long time ago
John: that they didn't want to send out too many newsletters on Twitter.
John: But he didn't tell you that through a form letter, did he?
John: No, he sent it to me on an email in reply to an email that I had sent him, which he claimed had gotten lost in his...
John: in his trash folder or his spam folder for a week.
John: And I wrote him back and I was like, first of all, you're the chief technology officer of this company that I work with and my emails are going into your spam folder.
John: Maybe you need to revisit how tightly your spam folder is configured.
John: But second of all, you decided a long time ago what your social media policy was?
John: That doesn't make any sense because a long time ago there wasn't social media and now there is.
John: And anyway, I realized that I'm 43 years old
John: And to maintain the attitude that anything that I see in the world now is like, oh, that's fucking stupid.
John: When it's just a question or it's just a case of not understanding what it is.
John: I just can't afford to do it.
John: I have to go out there and touch every LARPer and say, excuse me, good sir.
John: Excuse me, kind knave.
John: Would you explain...
John: Doth explain to me thou's LARPing.
John: Thy buttons aren't out of period.
John: Because who knows?
John: Honestly, who knows?
John: And particularly the way that the internet manifests itself in real life.
John: Who knows?
John: Maybe bronies are the future.
John: Okay, I'll bite.
John: What is a brony?
John: What is a brony?
John: A brony is a grown person, a grown male who watches the My Little Pony television show unironically.
John: And who then dresses themselves in My Little Pony type costumes and meets up with other grown adult men and the women who love them to celebrate the positivity of the message at the core of My Little Pony.
Merlin: All unironically.
John: As far as I can tell, unironically.
John: Genuine celebration of the message of positivity at the heart of My Little Pony.
John: And they are called bronies.
John: And there is a little bit of like a furry element.
Merlin: I was going to guess.
Merlin: But it's not a lady horse thing.
Merlin: It's totally a furry-ish thing.
John: It's a sex with cartoon horse thing.
John: But it's not all about sex with cartoon horse.
John: No.
Merlin: It's a philosophical component.
John: Yeah.
John: Which is My Little Ponies are... I have never seen a My Little Pony show.
John: But my understanding is that the message is...
John: very positive it's very very uh pony positive that the that's pony positive that if you are a pink stuffed pony that that has the gift of life
John: and you can fly, and you have magic powers which take the form of stars, you can send gold stars out into the sky, that that is better than living in the world as a human.
Merlin: Amen.
John: You know what I mean?
Merlin: I would rather be there than here.
Merlin: You cannot afford to look down your nose at that, because you never know.
John: You never know.
John: And the fact that most bronies also look like Robert Smith circa 1985...
John: So they're ungroomed bronies.
John: Well, or groomed.
John: A lot of eyeliner tend to be.
John: Clove cigarettes are making a comeback.
John: I smelled cloves the other day.
John: So anyway, I don't know what the future will hold.
John: I can't afford to sit here in my lighthouse windmill that I have built here on this promontory at the edge of the earth and cast aspersions.
Merlin: This is really admirable, John.
Merlin: I think this is – I've arrived at something similar and I just want to say I admire this.
Merlin: This is very – now, how do you keep in touch with a brony or a cosplayer?
Merlin: Do you guys have chat rooms or do you use Facebook?
Merlin: How do you keep in touch?
Merlin: Do they have like a pony Facebook, pony book?
Merlin: Well, I think they do.
John: I think they do.
Merlin: I'm not actually – Sounds like a LiveJournal thing, John.
Merlin: I think you're on LiveJournal.
John: I'm not trying to keep in touch with bronies per se, but I'm aware that they are there and I'm not opposed to them.
Merlin: Would you like to take this opportunity and this platform to reach out to the bronies and have them contact you?
John: If there are any bronies who are listening to our podcast, I would be surprised.
John: Tap twice.
John: I feel like most of the people who are listening to our podcast are on the other side of the cynicism fence.
John: Tall fence.
John: Being able to listen to or watch brony TV.
John: But I do... This business of the Google chat where 15 people all meet online and talk to each other and see their little faces there in the corner.
John: That is a thing I'm seeing more and more people do that...
John: Again, I feel like I don't understand that.
John: I don't understand the impulse to get in a computer room with 20 people and talk for five hours.
John: But people are doing it.
John: And again, I cannot cast aspersions.
John: I think what I have to do is dip my toe in.
John: I have to go join someone's chat.
Merlin: You could just very gently dip one little hoof into that trough and see what it's like and check it out.
Merlin: But I admire this.
Merlin: I totally admire this.
Merlin: You could join a chat.
John: Do you ever join a chat?
Merlin: I have, did Scoots send you that invite for that thing?
John: Oh, that's exactly what I'm saying.
Merlin: Okay, now that's a great example of a way to have, and people have no idea what we're talking about, but there are ways to do this.
Merlin: I don't have any desire personally.
John: Can I mention what this is?
John: I don't want to, I mean, I don't want to give them.
Merlin: You mean the nature of the technology or what it's about?
John: I don't want to give them a free promotion unless they're going to sponsor our podcast for $5,000 a month.
Merlin: No, I already asked them to sponsor my other podcast.
Merlin: They're not into it.
John: All the good things go to your other podcast.
John: Well, they said no, John.
John: Should I ask them if they want to sponsor this one?
John: Yeah, you should.
John: We're never going to have a sponsor.
John: Go back to them and say, why don't you sponsor this good one?
John: Did you look at it yet?
Merlin: Did you look at it?
John: Scott sends me this thing, and it says he's invited you to... It's Fight Club, John.
John: Fight Club.
John: Last board.
John: Okay, yes.
John: And so I click on the thing.
John: It says, join the board.
John: So I click on the thing and I go there.
John: And of course they want all my information and I'm not going to give them to him.
John: So I, I, I get out of there, but I'm wondering what's on the other side of this wall.
John: Scott Simpson and a bunch of people are talking about stuff.
Merlin: Well, before you blew it, it was going to be the three of us making fun of people at Comic-Con.
Merlin: You mean Scott Simpson?
Merlin: Literally.
John: Oh, why did I not do that?
Merlin: Because you're afraid to take your fucking hoof and put it in the trough because you've got that personal information that you hold so dear to your promontory.
John: But, I mean, if I sign up for it, this thing, Glassboard's now going to link to my Facebook page.
John: It's not going to do you.
Merlin: What the fuck are you doing on Facebook?
Merlin: My God, John.
John: I go there once a week and all my high school friends are there.
Merlin: We should talk about the MySpace days.
Merlin: You remember the MySpace days?
Merlin: Barely.
Merlin: I was helping you figure out how to automate accepting people as friends.
Merlin: You remember that?
John: I had a Firefox script for that.
John: Because when I first was on, I do remember.
Merlin: Every morning.
John: You spent every morning going click, click, click, click.
John: Yes, accept, accept, accept.
John: And then all those people would write on my MySpace page.
John: Thanks for the ad.
John: Thanks for the ad.
John: Thanks for the ad.
John: Thanks for the ad.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Gosh, why wouldn't I want to dip a toe into that?
Merlin: Well, here's the thing.
Merlin: So long ago.
Merlin: I have really come around to this and I'm going to be the old man here and make the obvious reference, which is there were – do you remember like when – do you remember when radio came out?
Merlin: Like when radio came out, there's a – I think it's an article or a letter.
Merlin: Are you asking me if I remember when radio came out?
Merlin: No, I withdrew that by making the funny old-timey radio voice.
Merlin: You know I'm withdrawing when I use the funny all-time radio voice.
Merlin: You're right.
Merlin: You're right.
Merlin: John Philip Sousa was in a huff because he said – I don't want to overstate this, but he's a very dramatic man.
Merlin: He wrote marches.
Merlin: He did.
Merlin: Good marches.
Merlin: Some.
Merlin: You know what those marches are good for?
Merlin: Housecleaning.
Merlin: Invading Poland.
Merlin: Let me tell you.
Merlin: I think you're thinking of Wagner.
Merlin: Did Wagner write marches?
Merlin: No.
No.
Merlin: His stuff is a little majestic for a march.
Merlin: Can a tuba play?
Merlin: Wagner's good for strafing.
Merlin: Wagner is good for strafing.
Merlin: They call it a strafe track.
John: But marching music, it's a different thing.
John: You need tubas.
Merlin: We've talked about this.
Merlin: John Philip Sousa, if memory serves, and I'll try to find this, but he was in a huff because he said recorded music is going to kill live music.
Merlin: That once people can go, there will never be live music again.
Merlin: I'm exaggerating, but this happens all the time.
Merlin: This happened in the very, very, very, very, very famous suit where Walt Disney Corporation sued Sony over the Betamax, saying that nobody's ever going to, your children will be deprived of Winnie the Pooh because they're never going to go to a movie theater again.
Merlin: Long story short.
Merlin: I'm not saying that internet chatting is going to kill chatting.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: But here's what I'm saying.
Merlin: This is my problem, is that it's easy for me to look at something new and go, that's unfamiliar, or that's silly, or that's dangerous, in the same way that John Philip Sousa might have thought that radios, or in that case, I guess, just recorded music, were such a terrible thing.
Merlin: For a long time, they told women that they shouldn't ride on trains.
John: Sure.
John: The first time that you saw a guy dressed as Bob's big boy, except with an erection, you were like, I don't want this.
John: This is wrong.
Merlin: But then later on... Now is LARPing a subset?
Merlin: What about Civil War reenactors?
Merlin: Are they a subset of LARPing?
Merlin: And now does LARPing have to be like D&D?
Merlin: See, I don't even know.
Merlin: You know what, John?
Merlin: Forget it.
Merlin: I've got to look all this up.
Merlin: I'm at a loss.
John: I kind of know.
John: Every time I hear the term LARPing... I just think John Hodgman for some reason.
John: John Hodgman does not LARP.
John: I swear to God.
John: He talks about it, doesn't he?
John: I think he does.
Okay.
John: Just as we are talking about it.
John: But LARPing, it's always swords and sorcery as far as I can tell.
John: The Civil War reenactors are absolutely LARPers.
Merlin: So it's a little bit D&D meets Lord of the Rings kind of stuff?
John: Yeah, right, right.
John: Everybody's drinking flagons of mead.
John: And they are actually having sword fights with each other in a public park.
Merlin: Yeah, but like how would you be a cleric in that context?
Merlin: I mean clerics are already pretty useless, but if you're a cleric, an illusionist, or a magic user – and I know these are terms of copyright TSR, which I think is out of business.
Merlin: But like I could see being a paladin, a ranger, a thief, or I don't know what those terms mean.
Merlin: But I could see being one of those, but like how would you be a cleric, an illusionist, or a magic user without people just laughing at you?
Merlin: Is that part of the play?
Merlin: Is that part of the cause?
John: I think so.
John: You're talking about a group of people who are wearing chain mail on a soccer field.
John: I don't think clerics can wear chain mail.
John: Nobody's going to laugh at you if you suddenly are like, I cast a spell of unhappiness!
Merlin: But I mean, it's kind of like asking the genie for three more wishes.
John: Don't you think?
John: In my experience, speaking personally as...
John: A sorcerer?
John: Well, actually, I think I would rather... Is this about you running around in the sewers?
John: I think I'm more of a wizard.
John: Because sorcerers... Like Merlin?
John: I think I'm a wizard.
John: Sort of like your namesake, Merlin.
John: But, you know, being a wizard generally involves standing at one remove from the action and looking at everyone with a quizzical and knowing look.
Oh.
John: Right?
John: So you're not actually in there casting spells.
John: You're just standing at one remove in a longer cloak and going, you're just the wise one.
Merlin: You're like the CEO of magic.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: You don't have to be involved in every implementation decision.
Merlin: You're hanging back and making sure that the boat's moving in the right direction.
John: Exactly.
John: And then you assume that at one point a combatant will come over and consult with you, and then you can give them some – you give them private management.
John: So in that instance, it could be an illusionist who's a mentee.
John: An illusionist, I bet anyone there who is an illusionist, I'm pretty sure that they're a juggler.
John: Which is not the same thing as a juggalo.
Merlin: No, it's absolutely not the same thing as a juggalo.
Merlin: An illusionist.
Merlin: That sounds like a seduction community kind of thing.
John: I'm very interested in Civil War reenactments as a component of LARPing, though.
Merlin: Do you know how serious those people are?
Merlin: Are you aware of how serious they are?
John: I am, but you know, I live in the West, so there is very little... We cannot reenact actual Civil War battles out here because none occurs.
Merlin: You're already hardcore.
Merlin: What could be more hardcore than somebody who's honest about whether it was appropriate for them to reenact something?
Merlin: Oh my God.
Merlin: You really are the CEO of magic.
John: I'm telling you what, if you are a civil war reenactor in Washington state, you need to check yourself.
John: If this is a thing you want to do, you should go to Tennessee.
John: So you could be like a grunge reenactor.
John: Or a Boeing reenactor.
John: We had... Did you ever hear about the pig war?
Merlin: And the pig war... Yes, please.
Merlin: Are you talking about the local wars?
John: No, no, no.
John: Not when the guy punches the other guy out.
Merlin: We got a broken leg over whether the pig was local.
John: No, no, no.
John: The pig war was an incident here between the United States and the English, what later became the Canadians.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: It was right before the Civil War.
John: There was a battle on Vancouver Island between, you know, because they hadn't decided where Oregon Territory left off and where British Columbia, they hadn't decided where the border was.
John: And this is where the slogan 5440 or fight comes from.
John: This is this like we're out here.
John: Nobody cares really what's going on in Oregon territory because they're about to have a civil war back east.
John: But we're out here and the British are kind of encroaching.
John: And the British actually wanted the border of Canada to be the Columbia River.
John: Which would have encompassed all of Washington state.
John: And so there were a few brave Americans keeping the British back.
John: And one of those Americans.
John: Anyway, so there was a pig.
John: There was a pig.
John: Oh, it started with a pig.
John: It started with a pig.
John: And there was an American, I think, there was a pig and there was an American farmer and the pig was in his yard.
Yeah.
John: And then he killed the pig, and then the pig was owned by a British person, and then it started a fight.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: That's like their main, their Lusitania, their something like that?
John: Yeah, it was their Franz Ferdinand.
John: It was their main.
John: Remember the pig!
John: Remember the pig!
John: But very interestingly, the commander of the American forces out here at that time...
John: was one Ulysses S. Grant.
Merlin: Turns out.
John: Turns out.
John: Ulysses S. Grant.
Merlin: Is that where he made his bones?
John: This is where he got his initial bones.
John: And then he went back and made a name for himself as President of the United States.
John: But anyway, so up there in the north, now we're talking about the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the Orcas Islands.
John: Is that real?
John: Up there by Bellingham.
John: All that area, there's still a lot of hard feelings about that pig.
John: You know, the British and the Americans.
John: There's a bunch of islands, and the Americans own some of the islands, and the British own other islands.
John: And it's not very clear.
John: They're like, it's not a straight line.
John: It's kind of like, oh.
Merlin: You just don't bring up the pig.
John: You don't bring up the pig.
Okay.
Merlin: It's like a Dominican Republic in Haiti.
Merlin: You know, like New Zealand and Australia.
Merlin: There's just some things we don't talk about.
John: If you're talking to someone from the Dominican Republic, you don't mention Haiti.
John: Never mention Haiti.
John: If you're talking to somebody from Haiti, you can talk about the Dominican Republic all day.
John: Is that right?
Merlin: I think they look down pretty hard on Haiti.
Merlin: When I went to the Dominican Republic, I was informed that you must not ever discuss Haiti.
Merlin: Which is a shame because I had a lot of really good Haiti material.
John: Haiti material plays really strong everywhere except the Dominican Republic.
Merlin: yeah yeah a lot of stand-up comics killed with that in the 80s you got your initial bones um listen stand-up comedy is not funny i think we've determined that here's the thing um yeah yeah yeah you know what's funny is like the problem is though oh yeah shoot you know what can i can i can i trace back in the stack a little bit yeah go back what what uh what comics do you like
Merlin: Comic books?
Yeah.
Merlin: When you're going to go to the den of comics and you're going to get into the dander zone, what will you be looking for?
Merlin: You mentioned National Lampoon.
Merlin: Are you looking for any funny books while you're there?
John: Most of the comics that I like are... I don't even know if this is still the term of art, but that they are alternative comics.
John: And I say alternative comics all the way back to Arkrum and...
John: Okay.
John: Raw magazine.
Merlin: I'm going to reveal how little I know about this.
Merlin: Would Chris Ware be one of those kinds of things?
Merlin: Absolutely.
Merlin: A more modern one.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: I'm familiar with his work.
John: He's not one of the classic of the first generation.
John: He's a classic of the third generation.
Merlin: It's pronounced Richard Rich.
John: Although, Richie Rich, I have to say, I have a very soft spot for Richie Rich comics.
John: It better be soft.
John: Not so much that I would go buy vintage Richie Rich comics, but I think if I went to Comic-Con and I found that there was actually an underground...
John: Richie Rich comic book collector market where people were talking about Richie Rich comics as serious collector's items where it's like this one's in.
John: You know there is.
John: And it's worth $15.
John: If I discover that, if I go find that, I might be susceptible to getting sucked into that.
Merlin: Can I make a suggestion?
Merlin: You mentioned the big boy with the erection.
Merlin: I know you're a very careful sartorial man, but I'm just saying...
Merlin: It would not be that hard for you to dress up like Richie Rich.
Merlin: Like a big Richie Rich.
Merlin: I'm just saying, what did he have?
Merlin: I'm not going to Google this, but I think he had a fancy outfit and blonde hair.
John: He had shorts with suspenders, I think.
Merlin: You would look great in that.
Merlin: And you already got that blonde peroxide hair.
Merlin: You'd look great.
Merlin: And you're rich.
Merlin: It would work great.
John: I am rich.
Merlin: You got a whole extra house just for your money.
Merlin: I have a butler named Bascom.
Merlin: You could build robots whenever the fuck it suits you.
Merlin: My dad is hardly ever around except when he is, he's just there to throw money at me.
Merlin: Here's my concern with the Civil War.
Merlin: The Civil War thing has been, the reenactment in Civil War buffness has been overdone for like a generation.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I don't think – It's done.
Merlin: Well, no, but I mean the whole like I'm into the Civil War thing.
Merlin: I think that tipped with that PBS program, right?
Merlin: It turns out.
Merlin: And here's the thing.
Merlin: I think – you know what?
Merlin: I don't even want to Google this for any variety of reasons, but I'm just suggesting it would not take that much preparation.
Merlin: You already have a lot of clothes.
Merlin: I bet you – with your needle skills, I bet you could cobble together –
Merlin: A pretty good Richie Rich outfit that puts you deep in the Harvey comics space.
Merlin: You could become, if you ever decided to move vertically from being the CEO of Magic, you could be the CEO of Richie Rich.
Merlin: Your thoughts?
John: Hmm.
Merlin: I'm saying there's not going to be sure there's going to be slave layers.
Merlin: I hope to... You know, I'm a mutual friend.
Merlin: I said to him, if you see any good Batgirls or you see any good Dark Phoenix, please snap some photos for me.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: I don't want to be creepy.
Merlin: But in your case, I wonder how many Richie Riches are there.
John: Doubtful that there are many Richie Riches.
John: Although, I was thinking about going as Dennis Ikorn, which I'm sure there will not be any Dennis P. Ikorn cosplayers there.
Merlin: Hit the keyboard for that one.
Merlin: Is that I-K-E?
Merlin: E-I.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
John: ch it's pronounced jayden dennis icorn dennis p icorn if i cause that is that is the silliest name i've ever heard in my life dennis p icorn i don't think anybody else there will be dennis p icorn and i won't have to work very hard because he basically looks like me and i would just go wearing my own clothes he's from montana
Merlin: originally.
Merlin: He made his bones in Idaho.
Merlin: Made his bones.
Merlin: I'm just saying, the thing is, you mentioned earlier with these cosplay people that they're bringing together different things.
Merlin: Maybe you're going to bring together, you know what I mean?
John: You're doing a mashup, a cultural mashup.
John: How about Richie Rich with a boner?
Merlin: Suddenly, for reasons I can't explain, I can't imagine him not having a boner.