Ep. 59: "Insufferabilityism"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hey, John.
Merlin: Merlin, man.
John: How's it going?
John: Remember when we used to do a podcast?
Merlin: I think I do, yeah.
John: It was back in the 80s.
John: I have to apologize.
John: You're eating a Snickers bar.
John: I'm eating a Snickers bar.
Merlin: You know... Time is of the essence.
John: When we do this podcast in the morning, sometimes I'm eating a morning cookie or a morning cake.
Merlin: No, I'm going to cede this to you.
Merlin: We're on your time now.
John: This is night.
John: We are night podcasting.
John: Here's the problem.
Merlin: Oh, God.
Merlin: The nougat.
John: I know.
John: Don't get me started.
Merlin: For our listeners, they'll have to be the judge about whether there's a difference.
Merlin: But we usually record in something closer to the morning my time.
Merlin: But it's literally the middle of the night right now.
John: It's the middle of the night.
John: And we were texting.
John: Yeah.
John: And you said...
John: yeah we're trying to make a planned podcast yeah you're like oh we could do it friday or we could do it sun thursday and then out of nowhere you said or we could do it right now yeah i'm agile you know and i was like what yeah i said i said what
Merlin: But John, you've been busy, you've been working, and you're home.
Merlin: I figured you would need some time to unwind.
John: I'm home, but here's the thing.
John: This is the thing about manic depression.
John: This is the thing about bipolarism, which is that I have been working for the last month.
John: And I am so wound up now.
John: And I'm not talking about like wound up tonight.
John: I'm talking about I am bipolarly, I am manically wound up.
John: So that if you said to me right now, get in your car and drive to San Francisco, I would seriously consider it.
John: Really?
John: If somebody called me right now and said, let's get married tonight.
Okay.
John: I would not even need them to send me a picture.
John: I would say, you know what?
John: Let's get married tonight.
John: That sounds great.
Merlin: Let's start a band.
Merlin: Just give me an address and I'll be there.
John: I got home last night from a month away.
John: I did three shows last weekend in New York City.
John: That were like all three of them crazy.
John: And then I got home last night at like 10 o'clock at night and I was on morning television this morning at 9 a.m.
John: And then I spent all day at REI making fake videos for people.
John: And then I went to a Christmas party and then I went out for drinks and I don't even drink.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: John, that's remarkable.
Merlin: How do you do that?
John: Now I'm at home and I'm looking at pictures of turtles on the internet.
John: And it's just not enough.
Merlin: i mean you know there was a time even a few months ago merlin you know that i would have that looking at pictures of turtles on the internet would have been like a week for me that would have been i would have been done but but tonight it's not enough it's not enough right i apologize you know can i just apologize for the nougat so the nougat's giving something for my ears to grab on to i'm still working through the nougat i hear it in your mouth my god this is fantastic john so so you've been away for a month
Merlin: That's remarkable.
Merlin: So were you in that coach with Jonathan and his retinue the whole time?
John: Well, you know, it started a month ago, as I said earlier.
John: I was in Europe with Keen on their tour bus, and I don't sleep well on tour buses because a tour bus is just a regular bus that has had coffins installed in it.
John: And some couches.
John: It's a sarcophagus.
John: Yeah, so they take a normal bus and they put like five sarcophabuses in it.
John: And I am not, as you know, I am not normally sized.
John: And so.
John: You're plus sized.
John: I'm plus sized.
John: So when they're building these, when they're building a sarcophagus, they say average size guy, five foot six.
Merlin: Well, especially in Europe.
Merlin: You've bought European suits.
Merlin: You know, they're very tailored.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, that's right.
Merlin: And they're from England.
Merlin: Is that right?
John: Yeah, they're from England, as we say.
John: Inglang.
John: But we never went to Inglang.
John: We were in Scotland and we were in Ireland.
John: And I got sick over there and I didn't sleep.
John: And then I flew to San Francisco and I played Neil Diamond in The Last Waltz.
John: And I didn't sleep in San Francisco either.
John: I just lay in my expensive hotel bed and I sweated.
John: I just sweated.
Merlin: Were you feverish?
John: I was feverish.
Merlin: Did you have a stress bump?
Merlin: I did not.
John: I had so much fever that a stress bump couldn't survive.
Merlin: You had an honest to God, according to Hoyle fever.
John: I was so feverish and sweaty in San Francisco that there were clubs in the Castro that wouldn't even let me come in there and pay $50 to sweat on people.
John: Which is, as you know, a big thing in the Castro.
John: Oh, it's huge.
John: Yeah.
John: I mean, you know, a big, hairy, sweaty guy in the Castro is usually a major draw.
John: But I was so hot.
John: I was so hot, I would have burned people's britches.
Merlin: Did you see things?
Merlin: When I get a fever, like a really bad one, I don't want to say I hallucinate, but I definitely get a lot of crazy thoughts.
John: I kept seeing Eggs Benedict show up in my hotel room, and then I realized I was ordering it from room service.
John: Uh-huh.
John: So then I flew from San Francisco to San Diego where I met Jonathan Colton and his traveling retinue.
John: And we drove across the American South in his tour bus.
John: And then I flew to New York City and I did a bunch of NPR shows.
John: And I, you know, went on a further rampage.
John: And by the time I got back here, I realized that I'm in no condition to be in Seattle.
John: There's not a... There is no 24-hour roast beef sandwich depot here.
John: Yeah.
John: And I'm just sitting here now looking at turtles on the internet, and I'm concerned.
John: So tomorrow, I'm doing a video shoot, and the people who are putting on the video shoot have promised me that there is not only going to be a live reindeer at this video shoot where I am playing Santa, but there is also going to be a real-life camel.
John: And that is enough.
John: That is enough for me tomorrow.
John: That alone on my calendar feels like, okay, that's enough for tomorrow.
Merlin: Are you pretty sure that's real, that part?
John: If I sing, because I'm supposed to be dressed as Santa, I'm supposed to sing a song with the ukulele, and the suggestion has been made that I'm going to sing the song to the camel.
John: Are you sure?
John: And if that happens, I'm not sure.
Merlin: Is that on the call sheet?
John: You hear the doubt in my voice.
Merlin: I do.
Merlin: I hear you pausing on the word camel and ukulele and thinking, is this eggs benedict?
John: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
John: But if it happens, then tomorrow I'm going to put a little checkmark next to you.
Merlin: This might literally be the biggest month of your life yet.
John: And then the next day, of course, is my big day where I play Santa Claus and all the dirty girls come and sit and tell me all the bad things they did, and then I give them a little swat.
Merlin: Is it a form of absolution in some ways?
Merlin: I mean, like a mutual, consensual absolution.
Hmm.
John: You know, I see you now on Twitter talking to my friend, the Dominican bra, and I feel like now this concept of flagellation and absolution, it's in the air now.
John: We need to settle back down.
John: We need to stop talking to priests on the internet.
John: Even young hip priests that watch YouTube videos.
John: We need to get back to our core values, Merlin.
John: You and me.
John: Which is talking about Macintosh products.
Merlin: You know what you need?
Merlin: I know you're not a big comics reader, but you need a... We're only eight minutes into this podcast.
Merlin: It's literally midnight, and I'm so angry.
Merlin: You're already prescribing me some X-Men.
John: You're like, you know what you need?
Merlin: Here's the thing, John.
Merlin: You need not detox, but you need some kind of a DMZ.
Merlin: You need to pass through some kind of a zone.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Because the thing is, I'm not sure going from all of the madness you've been through and the fevers and the eggs straight back to your home is the best thing.
Merlin: I mean, thank God turtles are there, right?
Merlin: But you need to pass through some area where you can burn that off, right?
Yeah.
John: Well, this is what I'm worried about, because I don't want to go, you know, when you are manic, you don't want to go back to depressed.
Merlin: No.
John: You want to stay in manic, because manic is great, even though I'm literally sitting here burning the leg hair off of my leg with a lighter.
Ha, ha, ha.
John: i like this john like you don't you don't want to put this john this is fun john this is fun you put this john back in a sarcophagus and you bring up bummer john again who's like oh all these books that i'll never read oh all the lips i'll never kiss
Merlin: yeah who wants that guy around you ever thought about passing through vegas it seems like vegas like you go in there and it's it's it's an energy sink you could go to vegas it's not a fun place to be contrary to popular opinion but you could go to vegas and it could really take the mickey out of you you come home you relax you water your plants and you go to sleep like a gentleman
John: i las vegas it's the worst is the worst it's absolutely the worst and it's the worst in a way that i am incapable of enjoying i mean you know i enjoy terrible things yeah but there's nothing about las vegas that i can even i can't i cannot winch myself into a posture where i'm enjoying myself how do you feel in a casino
John: I feel like there are spiders crawling on me.
Merlin: I feel menaced.
Merlin: I really do.
Merlin: I feel like the strip club with the ladies that want to talk to you.
Merlin: I just feel like it's all everyone can do to not just attack me for money.
Merlin: We talked about this.
Merlin: You know about how all the slot machines and everything are all tuned to C. They're playing arpeggios at C.
Merlin: It's crazy making.
Merlin: But here's the thing.
Merlin: For a man like you, who is cycling in a very proactive way, that could be a good place to burn it off a little bit.
Merlin: Maybe you go to some shows.
John: But here's the problem.
John: I have too much empathy for desperate people.
John: And so I walk through the thing and I cannot take any enjoyment because everywhere I look, there is someone who is putting...
John: literally their last quarter in a machine and then watching all their hope drain away and then smoking a cool and i don't and it just it's like it's all over me it's all over me like rancid butter i i can't do you feel like you want to reach out to them do you want to like help well i i i do but i want to help them i mean
John: You know, I want to help them like Mengele wanted to help people.
John: Yes.
John: Science.
John: Like science.
John: I want to use science.
John: Right.
John: I want to use science to put them in tubs of ice water and see how cold they can get.
Merlin: Twins.
John: It's not a healthy desire to help.
Merlin: Let's see which twin thrives.
Merlin: You're saying you want to get out there and say, look, you're not in a good place right now.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: How would you like to run an obstacle course?
John: Listen, I know you have emphysema.
John: You can ride a roller coaster or go to a mall.
John: I know I have emphysema.
John: How would you like to go to the buffet with me and let's see how much you can eat?
John: I mean, literally, how much you can actually eat.
Merlin: Like a seven type situation?
Merlin: Like see how much spaghetti you can really put down?
John: Exactly.
John: How much of your body can you cut away with a knife right now?
Merlin: You're not done yet, Sally.
John: And I worry for myself.
Merlin: Have another Napoleon.
Merlin: Sit down.
John: You know, when I get in these manic phases, I start to talk to people like I really can do magic.
John: Real magic, not like heartbreaks.
Merlin: Has this happened?
John: Oh, for the last three weeks, I've been talking to people like I can do magic.
John: And every once in a while, somebody totally believes me.
John: And then I know that the two of us are going to go ride the subway together.
Merlin: How does that evidence itself?
Merlin: I mean, do you see someone who needs help?
Merlin: Do they reach out to you?
Merlin: Or do you just sense that someone needs a little bit of John?
John: You know, I'm just swinging through life on a vine.
John: And then somebody answers my monkey call.
Merlin: You know?
Merlin: This is a terrible idea.
Merlin: Why do we do this?
Merlin: Here I come.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Las Vegas is one of those things.
Merlin: It's difficult to describe.
Merlin: Las Vegas is what you end up using as an analogy for something else because it's hard to describe how perfectly awful it is in so many ways.
Merlin: It's the worst of everything about people and America.
John: The top, the best thing about Las Vegas is...
John: the worst, best thing.
John: And the lowest, most degraded place in Las Vegas is the worst of all places.
John: It's like an existential compressor limiter.
John: Yeah, right.
John: Exactly.
Merlin: I mean, kind of.
Merlin: I mean, it's very poorly calibrated, but I mean, the fact that like, you know, I forget what you talked about.
John: It's a low-pass filter.
John: Like, all of life's highs are just eliminated.
John: You do a roll-off.
John: Is that what it's called?
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: All you get is fart sounds.
Yeah.
Merlin: You know, it's just like heavy breathing and farts.
Merlin: The thing that strikes me is I've been to Las Vegas maybe like three times and Reno and gambling locations.
Merlin: But Las Vegas in particular, you arrive there and it's like, oh, it's so exciting.
Merlin: And it's – there's just so much going on.
Merlin: It's like Disney World and you go there and there's slot machines and everything is exciting.
Merlin: And like the part that always strikes me is that like that there's slot machines by the terminals in the airport.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And there's people playing the slots.
Merlin: And the same thing that I go, oh, this is – I arrive.
Merlin: I got my carry-on.
Merlin: I get off.
Merlin: And I go, oh, this is exciting.
Merlin: It's Las Vegas.
Merlin: People are playing slot machines.
Merlin: And then when I'm leaving, I'm like, fuck.
Merlin: It's Las Vegas.
Merlin: People are playing slot machines.
Merlin: It's – you know what I mean?
Merlin: That very same thing.
Merlin: It's just – it's –
Merlin: It's a tough bring down for me.
Merlin: Like two days in Las Vegas and I'm ready to go.
Merlin: That's it.
John: I'm done.
John: The only thing that interests me about Las Vegas is those unmarked 727s that fly out of the Las Vegas airport to Area 51.
John: seven... Those things I'm fascinated by.
John: You know, there's a special terminal at the Las Vegas airport where the airplanes have no exterior markings of any kind.
Merlin: I'm sorry, just as a side note, is this definitely like a thing or is this like a fever thing?
John: No, no, this is a real thing.
John: They are jumbo jets, not jumbo jets, but they are medium-sized jets, commercial airliners, but they have no markings of any kind and people get on them and they fly into the desert and
John: Because that's the only way you can get to Area 51.
John: They don't let you drive there.
John: It's not a shuttle.
John: It's not a shuttle.
John: You don't show up and show your ID card at Area 51 because Area 51 doesn't exist.
John: So the only way you can get there is from the Las Vegas airport, and there are these airplanes that don't have any markings that just shuttle people back and forth to all these secret military bases in the Nevada deserts.
John: And that fascinates me.
John: I would sit with binoculars and watch that happen all day.
Merlin: In as much as you can say, what kind of credentials do you show to get even near one of those planes?
Merlin: Is it S.H.I.E.L.D.
Merlin: agents?
Merlin: Who goes on those?
John: Well, I have to imagine that most of the people are just like government cogs.
John: If they are conducting alien autopsies at Area 51, they're not doing it like in a Good Morning America situation with a window in Times Square.
John: They're probably doing it in a basement room somewhere.
John: And most of the other people there are just pushing brooms or they're
Merlin: They're toggling knobs or they're rewriting encryptions or whatever it is that people in secret military – Well, and this is the thing about government is that when we – again, we talk about the government like it's this big wad of stuff and really it's a bunch of people with boring jobs, right?
Merlin: By and large.
Merlin: If you're not an operative, like if you're an operative, a lot of what you do is sitting there with binoculars like waiting for something to change.
John: Yeah.
John: I mean, there are people that live in Las Vegas.
John: They fly to Area 51 on a secret military jet, and they get there, and what they do all day is they twiddle their space pen in between their fingers, and they watch one gauge to make sure that it doesn't go into the red.
John: They're just dopes.
John: They're regular dopes.
Merlin: I can't believe you don't read comics.
Merlin: And so you watch one gauge, and you're saying that this could be an energy change.
Merlin: It could be psionics.
John: Hmm.
John: You know, if they are monitoring psionics with gauges there, I bet you the guy watching the gauge doesn't know what the gauge measures.
John: I bet they're just like, don't let it go into the red.
John: Plausible deniability.
Merlin: You bring in a gauge guy rather than a psionic guy.
John: Exactly.
John: The psionic guy isn't watching the gauge.
John: He's back in D.C.
Merlin: and nobody knows his name.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: God, that must drive you crazy.
Merlin: You're sitting there and you're watching these unmarked planes take off.
Merlin: That must drive you bananas.
John: It does.
John: It drives me crazy because I know out there in the desert, they really are working on something.
John: I don't know what it is.
John: No question.
John: But they're working on something.
John: And the fact that it's out there, and I'm not alone in it driving me crazy.
John: I mean, it doesn't keep me up at night like some kooks.
Merlin: You've got other things to keep you up in need.
John: You've got turtles.
John: I'm worried that my pillows are turning into owls.
John: I'm not worried about secret airplanes so much or chemtrails.
John: Here's the thing, John.
John: I mean, let's be honest.
Merlin: Las Vegas, it's already a little bit of a black swan.
Merlin: Why the fuck is Las Vegas there?
Merlin: I guess it was a stop-off for troops because it was near a rail line, right?
John: They built that dam right down the road.
John: There were a lot of guys coming up from building that dam and spending their money in the tent city.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
John: You know, where there are guys building a dam, there are going to be hookers.
John: Yes.
John: That's as old as Cheops.
John: That's thirsty work.
John: You know what I mean?
John: Yeah.
John: Build a dam, the hookers are going to follow.
John: Find a hooker, sure.
John: And then right after that, there's, you know, then there's gaming, then the gaming commission.
Merlin: Gaming.
Merlin: I love that term.
Merlin: But here's the thing, John.
Merlin: Nobody's going to fly into a desert for no reason.
Merlin: I mean, if you're going to like – you've told us it is costly to gas up a plane and take it somewhere.
Merlin: Not gas, but fuel a plane and take it someplace, right?
John: I would even say gas.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But you're not going to do that just for fun.
Merlin: If you're going to make that like a regular thing, there's a reason.
Merlin: There's some kind of a process in place there.
Merlin: And I'm just guessing as a man with a mind as active as your own, you must be turning that over in your head.
Merlin: You're sitting there.
Merlin: You're looking at the details magazine and thinking about the things that you're seeing.
John: Here's the problem, though.
John: I agree with you 100% until I think about my own father who routinely gassed up his plane and flew circles in the sky for no fucking reason.
Merlin: Apparently, apparently.
John: He was just giving you, you know, I would go up with him and I'd be like, what are you doing?
John: And he's like, I'm looking at the map.
John: And I'm like, yeah, I know you're looking at the map, but why are we 6,000 feet in the air?
John: Was he practicing?
John: No, he's been flying since he was 20.
John: He's 70 years old.
John: He knows how to do it.
John: No, he just likes to gas up the plane and go fly.
John: And maybe the Air Force is the same.
John: Maybe they aren't really running secret ops.
John: Maybe they're just dicking around.
John: Maybe they're playing grab ass.
John: Maybe the entire U.S.
John: Air Force is just a game of grab ass.
Merlin: Yes, but it's a really strategic grab ass.
Merlin: So maybe Las Vegas is a kind of distraction.
Merlin: I mean, obviously, on any number of levels.
Merlin: But you get everybody looking over here.
Merlin: Hey, look over here.
Merlin: It's a pyramid made out of blackjack.
Merlin: But don't look over here.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Because that's where the real action is.
John: Well, so, okay.
John: So I, so, so I was pretty fine with, I was pretty, I was pretty okay with believing that whatever UFOs were, it didn't matter.
John: I didn't care.
John: And I was driving down the road today.
John: I've been, you know, for the last four years, I have pretty much been okay with the idea that whatever UFOs are, I don't know.
John: And I don't care.
John: I really don't care.
John: I'm not going to vote one way or the other.
John: I am reasonably convinced either way that either yes, they are real or no, they're not, which is the same as how I feel about God.
Merlin: I was going to say, you did Pascal's UFO wager.
Merlin: It's like if they're there, they're unidentified for a reason.
Merlin: Precisely.
John: Am I going to sit in an airport and argue with the Hare Krishna about Hare Krishna's?
John: No.
John: I'm not.
John: I'm just getting on with it.
John: Anyway, I'm driving down the street today.
John: I'm stuck in traffic.
John: I'm headed to New Day Northwest on King 5 TV.
John: And all of a sudden I say to myself, well, wait a minute.
John: Let me back up a little bit.
John: When we were on tour, we went to Mission Control at Houston.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: I saw a cool photo of that.
John: We went to NASA and we went to Mission Control.
John: And we're walking around and it's all very awesome.
John: And it's amazing to be there, especially because they have...
John: they have maintained the Apollo era mission control as a kind of like living, not even living shrine.
John: It's just a shrine.
John: It just sits there and you walk in and you sit down at, at launch control and you're like, okay, or not launch control, but like, like you're sitting there where they all were for all, for everything.
John: And you're like, it's just like, it's just the same.
John: I'm pushing these same fucking buttons.
Yeah.
John: Anyway, they tour us around.
John: We see the space station.
John: We go out and our friend takes us out to the warehouse where they have all the capsules, the actual life-size mock-ups.
John: And my whole life, as we all have done, I've said, if I got the opportunity to be an astronaut, of course I would be an astronaut.
John: Like, that's the best job ever.
John: Right?
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Don't you think that same thing?
Merlin: Oh, absolutely.
Merlin: I mean, I was at the tail end of that.
Merlin: I think that's something that very much started, you know...
Merlin: In the 50s with the whole idea that there might be a space program.
Merlin: You and I were both at the tail end, like having grown up taking photos of the television when Neil Armstrong, you remember that?
Merlin: Everybody in their family has photos of the television screen.
Merlin: And it was absolutely the coolest thing in the world.
John: Yeah, amazing.
John: Until you're sitting in the warehouse, really, and I'm not talking about the Smithsonian Institution where you're looking at the capsule in the museum and you're like, wow, cool.
John: But you're at NASA and you're looking at the ones they use to train.
John: And I looked in this thing and I'm like...
John: Holy shit.
Merlin: It's really small.
John: To climb into that, you would have to be insane.
Merlin: There's like five things about it that would make me uncomfortable just thinking about it.
Merlin: Because you're like upside down, it's tiny, and everybody barfs, right?
John: Well, and you're strapped onto a stick of dynamite, and you are shot into space, and that trip to the moon took a week...
John: It took a week.
John: Really?
John: Yes.
John: And they're strapped into this thing that is basically the size of a bookcase.
John: Three guys strapped into a bookcase on top of a stick of dynamite.
Merlin: That sounds way worse than Colton's bus.
John: It is so bad.
John: And it's not just that they're sitting there and then there's a window.
John: It's like they're sitting there and there's a solid steel bulkhead three inches from their face.
John: And they're flying blind in this thing for a week.
John: And then they go into orbit around the moon, and then they have to figure all that shit out, and they get down to the moon, which I'm sure was amazing, but then they get back in this little tuna fish can, and they fly another week home, and I realized that I could not be an astronaut.
John: That none of us could be astronauts and that the very few people in the world who can be astronauts are a mutant race of people that have no claustrophobia.
John: They have no fear.
Merlin: They have no common sense.
Merlin: They're right.
Merlin: I mean, to get into a stick of dynamite and stare at a piece of metal for a week takes a certain kind of crazy, a certain kind of crazy.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: They got to want it because there's like, again, it's like it's like being a like a PA in Hollywood.
Merlin: There's 5000 people behind you who want the same job and you've got to be better than all of them, like by an order of magnitude.
John: You've got to be better than all of them of having no human characteristics whatsoever.
John: You can have no fight or flight mechanism.
John: Or you have to be in such... I don't even believe it is possible that they are in control of those things.
John: They are just without them.
John: And in that sense, I think they are amazing.
John: I think that they are mutants the same way that great athletes are or great...
John: They are just a kind of human being that is absolutely necessary.
John: And I'm stunned.
John: I was stunned to be at NASA and realize that we do not... Even these mutants, we are not funding...
John: There's no money for these people to even do this amazing thing, which is strap themselves onto a stick of dynamite and fly through space.
John: We don't even care how amazing that is enough to pay them money.
John: And you walk around NASA, and they're duct-taping shit together there.
John: They really are.
John: It's hilarious.
John: But anyway, so I'm driving down the road today, and I'm realizing, okay, if you take some mutants like that, some mutant human beings...
John: And you put them in a spaceship that flies for generations, where these mutants are mating with each other in space, and their bones are losing all their mass, and there is no light, and they are just mutating and becoming more and more... And natural selection is choosing...
John: the ideal creature for this environment, that creature would basically look like these dumb aliens that stoners put on the back windows of their cars.
John: The greys.
John: The greys.
John: And I started to think, did we know...
John: Did we start talking about what aliens looked like before we understood that being in space reduces your bone mass?
John: At what point did the one... Is it a chicken or egg situation?
John: Anyway, I'm driving down the street and I'm realizing, wait a minute, I do believe in aliens because they look exactly like they would have to look.
John: They look exactly like if you took Neil Armstrong and a female Neil Armstrong and you put them in space,
John: And have them have babies for 50 generations.
Merlin: That would be like cephalopods that aced physics.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And have stones, right?
John: The thing about aliens... When we talk about sending these guys to Mars, these mutant humans, we devote all this energy to treadmills and all this extra work that we go to to keep these Navy jock pilots in good shape...
John: While they fly to Mars.
John: Because if they lose their bone density and they just sit there and stare at a wall with their big green eyes, they're going to A, go crazy.
John: And they're not going to have any... I get it.
Merlin: It's almost the humanity is a hindrance.
John: Exactly.
John: So you don't choose Neil Armstrong to be an astronaut.
John: You choose Neil Gaiman to be an astronaut.
John: A guy who already has no bone density.
Merlin: No.
John: And who can sit and stare at a, you know, basically like a spot on the wall as long as it had some anime movie happening.
John: And you put him in a capsule, send Neil Gaiman out.
John: You're already four or five generations of natural selection closer to the greys than you are if you have to start with Neil Armstrong.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Choose the right Neil.
Yeah.
John: Exactly.
John: You don't pick the jock mutants.
John: You've got to pick the one that has no interest in coming back to her.
Merlin: But isn't part of the excitement of this, the sending a healthy, hearty, inhale, human, something H, into space?
Merlin: Isn't part of it that we're sending our jock guys into space, don't you think?
Merlin: Isn't that part of why they got behind it, is that...
Merlin: we're going to send this specimen out there.
Merlin: And unlike poor little ham, we're actually going to bring this guy back.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Because, you know, we didn't bring those monkeys back.
Merlin: They didn't come back intact.
Merlin: Believe me, I know.
Merlin: Laika?
Merlin: Is that right?
Merlin: Laika?
Merlin: Well, he wasn't a monkey, but he didn't come back.
John: No, he's a dog monkey, right?
John: Yeah, dog monkey.
John: Maybe I used too many monkeys.
John: The point is, I think maybe that in the 50s, we still were worshiping these crew cut jocks, but we don't worship them anymore.
John: Yeah.
John: Now we're worshiping all these nebbishy, spindly little twerps.
John: And maybe astronauts... So you sound like guys from 4chan.
John: Send them up.
John: Yeah, right.
John: Yeah, I'm saying send Moot into space and give him... Please.
John: You know, give him some kind of, like, computer puzzle.
John: Give him a four-dimensional Rubik's Cube and say, you know, say, once a day you can jack off...
John: And in six months, you'll be in Mars.
John: And they'd be like, cool.
John: Cool, brah.
John: You know, we wouldn't need to put any treadmills on there.
John: No.
John: Extra weight.
John: I mean, the weight is critical.
John: Weight is critical.
John: These guys and half those guys on 4chan are already drinking their own piss.
John: You wouldn't even have to filter it.
John: I don't know.
John: I just – you know, what I don't need in my life right now, particularly being in a manic phase, is to start believing in aliens again and then worrying whenever there's a raccoon on my roof that it's just an alien in disguise.
Merlin: It's not really as simple as believing in aliens.
Merlin: It's a question of like aren't you thinking – if I may say, it seems like we have to believe there's aliens.
Merlin: We would have to be so monumentally self-involved to –
Merlin: aliens i mean that's such a silly term i mean of course of course we believe in them there's got to be other stuff out there but are they are they coming and scratching on my roof what's what's the role and why are they getting in why are they getting into your barn yeah are they disguising themselves as owls
John: And then not understanding how owls behave enough that they come into my room and pretend to be pillows.
John: I know.
John: Exactly.
John: They are there.
John: That is classic.
Merlin: That is classic alien behavior.
Merlin: Because, I mean, you think about like you go to any planet.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: First of all, how's your Mandarin?
Merlin: Mine?
Merlin: Yeah, mine too.
Merlin: So when people are like, oh, the people in my neighborhood, they don't speak very good.
Merlin: Well, you know what?
Merlin: They speak pretty good English compared to how I speak Mandarin and Cantonese.
Merlin: I'm just saying, confusing a barn with a pillow is pretty good for somebody who's from another dimension.
John: Right, right, exactly.
John: Like they're looking down and they're like, oh, owls.
John: yes that's good we yeah okay good let's decide are wise and bring comfort i will be a pillow yes we will be owls that is a good plan and then somebody's like well how are we going to get in and watch uh watch uh this uh john roderick to make sure that he's the emissary yeah but to the humans that we that we uh that we think he is we're vetting him that's like well let's uh let's just get let's just get right in bed with them
Merlin: Well, this is well-trodden from the things like, you know, the right stuff and whatnot.
Merlin: But what's amazing about what you're describing is that any of it succeeded.
Merlin: I mean, because these were basically guys who wanted to drive fast cars, who got to drive fast, what, planes, you know, different kinds of airplanes.
Merlin: Super fast planes.
Merlin: Super fast planes.
Merlin: But I mean if you think about it, it's not really – it's amazing how quickly we went from like a thing that moves pretty fast on wheels across the ground to a thing that moves alarmingly, dangerously fast across the Terran sky to like now we're going to the fucking moon.
Merlin: It's amazing you could do that in 40 years.
Yeah.
John: Well, and if you look at those Saturn V rockets, which I did in excruciating detail when I was at this place, they are, you know, you think about like the way they make a Ford F-150.
John: They have machines that stamp out these Ford F-150 fenders.
John: Because they're making a million F-150s this year.
John: And every F-150 right front fender is the same.
John: But they did not make that many Saturn V rockets.
John: And if they did, there's no machine big enough to stamp...
John: The, you know, one quarter of the big part of a Saturn, Saturn five rocket.
John: So you look at these things and you realize they are hand hammered.
John: They are bespoke items.
John: It's an artisanal rocket.
John: It is an art of fucking sanal rocket.
John: These guys are,
Merlin: It's truly built to purpose.
John: Yeah.
John: There were guys in white, short-sleeved, button-down shirts with 15 pens and a slide rule in the front pocket who sat with a rubber mallet and banged this rocket together.
John: And you look at it and you're like, Jesus Christ, that anybody thought that you could light this thing on fire and go to the moon.
John: And come back.
Merlin: That's the crazy part.
Merlin: Don't you think?
Merlin: Isn't part of it the coming back that's crazy?
John: I think so.
Merlin: You can attach dynamite to anything and send it somewhere, but for it to come back and be able to hug its kids is still, to this day, completely mind-blowing to me.
John: It's astonishing.
John: Because we're pretty fragile.
Merlin: I mean, as organic life forms go, we're pretty fragile.
Merlin: It doesn't take that much to really fuck us up.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And, you know, I have two regrets in life.
Merlin: I wish I learned to draw.
Merlin: And I wish I had learned enough about physics to be able to – and math to take engineering classes.
Merlin: Because that's the thing.
Merlin: It's like somebody goes, oh, we sent somebody to the moon.
Merlin: And you imagine – not you, but laypersons.
Merlin: Imagine a virtual slingshot where you shoot this piece of metal at a big stone in the sky.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It's so much more complicated than that because it's moving.
Merlin: Everything's moving.
John: Everything's moving.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: And then you get there.
John: The sun is moving around the center of our fucking universe.
Merlin: What are you, Ptolemy?
Merlin: What are you doing there?
Merlin: There's no...
Merlin: Everything's moving and everything's degrading.
Merlin: Like this is where entropy starts to be a dick because you're going to have to account for all of these things.
Merlin: Like what goes wrong if we lose these tiles?
Merlin: We get there.
Merlin: This happens.
Merlin: These redundancies.
Merlin: And every single thing –
Merlin: Yeah, precisely.
Merlin: And everything that you add in terms of what?
Merlin: Weight, drag, anything.
Merlin: Anything you add, you have to account for.
Merlin: It's like I've never taken calculus, but this must be like the most tricked-out calculus in the world to figure out how to account for getting a 180-pound man to a celestial body and bringing him back in one piece.
John: Well, and I think you bring up – you raise the most –
John: fascinating idea which is how much easier would it have been in 1957 in 1961 to say listen on behalf of humanity we need to send a man to the moon there is no way he's ever going to make it back
John: But we need to do this.
John: The man is going to go to the moon and he's going to talk to us on the radio.
John: I've already got it.
John: And he's not coming back.
John: Send a criminal.
John: Or maybe send the greatest American hero.
John: But we will all stand there in front of our televisions saluting the TV as our astronauts.
John: dies on the moon.
John: Yeah.
John: Like, when you think about 20 years before, during World War II, we were, we as a human race, Stalin and Hitler, were murdering millions of people
John: and burying them in shallow graves, that 20 years later, we would consider that bringing this one guy back from space and landing him on the ground safely was of paramount importance.
John: At what point did they... Because you know the Soviets sent a lot of guys into space that we never heard about that never came back.
John: Or if they didn't, I'm fucking surprised.
John: They sent that dog up there and nobody... I mean, that was just like hearty har.
John: But if it had not been for America, I wonder whether the Russians would have... And by the Russians, I mean the Soviets, whether they would have...
John: Whether they would have pursued a moon program or even the Nazis pursued a moon program where the first 10 missions were suicide missions.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: They cut the file drawer effect.
Merlin: You ever heard that term?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: It's a fascinating idea.
Merlin: A little bit of a rat hole, but there's this part of the whole turns out culture of the increasing need to publish something interesting, especially in social psychology.
Merlin: It's leading to more and more of what they call the file drawer effect, which is you go out and you do some research, and every time you don't get the result you want, you kind of quietly move it aside until you get the result that you wanted.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And so the Russians, I mean, you know, and again, it's like some kind of an advanced card trick where or like a cold reading where like you can get something right as long as you kind of forget about all the stuff you didn't get right.
Merlin: You know, like is fine.
Merlin: Don't worry about that.
John: Well, you think about... I mean, the Soviet army systematically decimated the entire Polish officer corps.
John: Killed them all.
John: Like, the greatest minds of Poland, the most elegant aristocratic men of Poland, all gone in like a poof.
John: Well, think about all the potential astronauts...
John: Right, right.
John: That all these men that only 15 years later, you know, they're spending hundreds of millions of dollars, hundreds of trillions of rubles to get these guys back on Earth, you know.
John: And life, human life was worth so much less than...
John: 15 years before right it's a it was a it was a some kind and i wonder whether that moral leap was in response to world war one and world war two like like somehow we have to re-establish the value of human life somehow
Merlin: Yes, alongside the superiority of the American know-how, right?
Merlin: I mean, but think about – what would that be?
Merlin: Probably 15, 20 years before the – for the third time, the eldest Kennedy brother?
Merlin: Like what – why the fuck would you send him up in that tarted up plane and have him blow up?
Right.
Merlin: I mean the idea of losing part of the American moneystocracy in this crazy plane accident.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
John: Yeah, I do.
Merlin: Like how wasteful is that?
Merlin: But part of it is also – I mean I guess part of the Cold War.
Merlin: Yeah, you're right.
Merlin: I mean showing that we are able to do that.
Merlin: I just – it just blows me away.
Merlin: So you saw no signs at all that it didn't happen.
Merlin: You're pretty sure it happened.
Merlin: The moon landing?
Merlin: Yeah.
John: I'm pretty sure it happened.
Merlin: Okay.
John: All right.
John: I'm pretty sure it happened.
John: Is that what they told you to say?
John: I really am.
John: There's, you know, I know how hard it is.
John: Listen, if you, I know how hard it is just to keep it a secret that you're sleeping with your friend's wife.
John: Yes.
John: And that doesn't involve any technology at all.
Merlin: It's complicated.
John: You get a bunch of people, you get a bunch of guys who are watching gauges, you get a bunch of guys with mustaches, short white t-shirts, or short-sleeved white button-down shirts.
John: They're all mixing.
John: Everybody's smoking.
John: Everybody's smoking.
John: They got slide rules out.
John: They're scribbling on pads.
John: And you're going to fake a moon landing and nobody's ever going to say?
John: It's before Facebook.
John: I don't know.
Merlin: Did you see the link I sent you?
John: Did you send me a link?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You've probably seen this.
John: Is it some transsexual porn?
John: Maybe.
Merlin: It's Ham the monkey porn.
Merlin: In event of moon disaster.
Merlin: Go ahead and read it.
Merlin: Read the first paragraph there.
John: On July 18th of 1969, as the world waited anxiously for Apollo 11 to land safely on the surface of the moon, speechwriter William Sapphire imagined the worst case scenario.
John: Oh, I have read this.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: So it's basically what Sapphire wrote for Nixon to read.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I mean, like, let's be honest.
Merlin: These guys aren't coming back.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: That's monkey balls.
Merlin: It's crazy to think that these guys, we know how insane it is for all of these people.
John: Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.
John: It's pretty good.
John: It's great, and it's touching.
John: And you know they expected that these guys would perish up there.
Merlin: There's a note at the bottom.
Merlin: Prior to the president's statement, the president should telephone each of the widows-to-be.
Merlin: After the president's statement, at the point when NASA ends communications with the men, a clergyman should adopt the same procedure as a burial at sea, commending their souls to, quote, the deepest of the deep, unquote, concluding with the Lord's Prayer.
John: And so with widows-to-be, what he's saying is they are alive, they are on the moon, and we are basically just waiting for their...
John: air to run out yeah you got a real serious david bowie type situation it's just it's so when that suck it's so like what i mean what are you gonna do you're gonna hit another golf ball guy let's take some more snapshots you know what i'm gonna move the flag i'll turn it upside down just to be a dick let's uh let's run this moon rover uh see what she can see what this baby can do really really really open her up but then i
Merlin: I don't want to start a whole thing.
Merlin: But then isn't it kind of equally amazing that within like 10 years of that – I guess we had the space shuttle at that point.
Merlin: But I mean it didn't take that long for us to lose our zest for this amazing accomplishment that we had come up with.
Merlin: Arguably one of the greatest things that humanity had ever done.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Don't you think?
Merlin: I mean we've done some pretty amazing stuff.
Merlin: I mean setting aside Benjamin Franklin, there are some amazing things that people have managed to do.
Merlin: But this is – for Kennedy to get up there in whatever that was, 1961, to get up there and say, even though I have no real basis for saying this, I should have made some calls.
Merlin: We're going to have a man on the moon by the end of the decade.
Merlin: And you know there were so many guys in white button-down short-sleeved shirts shitting themselves when he said that.
John: Dropping their pencils and going, say what?
Merlin: But luckily they had 14 more.
John: A lot of pencils and slide rules.
John: We have... I mean, I would argue that putting people on the moon and bringing them home safely beats...
John: All the art made after 1902.
Merlin: Can we change that to 1907?
Merlin: Maybe 1908?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: All right.
John: 1908.
Merlin: Let's call it 1910.
Merlin: Let's say all the art and architecture.
Merlin: There's a lot of nice Picasso in there.
John: I don't want to miss.
John: You know what?
John: The moon.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: I'll trade you a Rothko.
Merlin: I will trade you a fucking Rothko for a grown man on the moon who comes home any day.
John: I will put a grown man on the moon against all Rothko's.
John: Okay.
Merlin: What about a Duchamp?
Merlin: You tick that up against a Duchamp?
John: All of it.
John: Hmm.
John: And this is what I'm saying.
John: These guys now are working down there in Houston, which is, you know, already kind of...
John: That's a toilet.
John: No one should live in Houston.
John: Come on.
John: Come on.
John: Really?
John: That's the best we can do?
Merlin: Houston's biggest consolation is Dallas.
Merlin: That's really the only thing that's worse, right?
Merlin: I've heard Houston's pretty bad.
John: Well, I mean, Dallas has its charm.
Merlin: I have friends who live in Houston and are just actively like, I don't know why I'm in Houston.
John: There's a lot to not know about why you're in Houston.
John: But there are some... You can have some... Like, for instance, right now, in the middle of winter, in Houston, people are sitting outside, having dinner, and there's a warm breeze.
John: It's not too humid.
John: Houston in December is, like, a pretty nice place.
Merlin: Enjoying Velcro and Tang, space pens.
John: Houston in August...
John: is really like being inside a dog's ass.
John: It's like being in a mouth.
John: It's like, where do you live?
John: I live in a mouth.
John: I live in a closed mouth.
John: That doesn't sound good.
Merlin: Most of Texas is because of the Alamo and oil, right?
Yeah.
Merlin: There's a lot of oil-related geography in Texas, right?
John: Well, yeah, but there are some very beautiful landscapes in Texas.
John: You know, here's the weird thing.
John: If you're driving across Spain, if you drive from Barcelona to Madrid...
John: you realize why the Spanish thought Texas was a paradise.
John: Texas looks like, you know, looks like the, it basically, it looks like La Mancha, except kind of nicer.
John: It rivals.
John: What's wrong with Spain?
John: Nothing's wrong with it.
John: It's just dry, red earth with a bunch of mesas and you kind of scratch out an existence.
John: It's like a rough draft for Texas.
John: Growing olives and wine.
John: There's no...
John: monkeys living in Spain except for those ones down in Gibraltar and who knows how they got there it's not like it's not like Spain is lush 50 acorns tied in a sack it looks like Texas and the Spanish landed in Texas and they were like oh fuck yes we get it
John: To Southern California, too.
John: You know, there's a reason that the Spanish did not land in Seattle and say, let's build some missions.
John: Hey, you can't get a decent drink at a strip club there.
Merlin: Have you been eating?
Merlin: What's your eating been like lately?
Merlin: Have you been trying to eat regularly?
John: No, I've lost 20 pounds because when I'm manic, I forget to eat.
John: 20 pounds of what?
John: Of John?
John: Yeah, 20 pounds of all that extra John that wasn't doing anything.
John: It was just sitting around.
Merlin: Is it a good loss or a troubling loss?
John: Who knows?
Merlin: You can't poop on the bus at all.
John: No mud pickles.
John: So you have to wait.
John: You have to wait to poop.
Merlin: But you like that.
Merlin: You like having to hold off.
Merlin: I don't mind waiting to poop.
Merlin: No.
John: I think those people that have to poop now, they're not going to make it.
Merlin: They're not going to survive.
Merlin: Now, what about Super Train?
Merlin: Can you have a mud pickle on Super Train?
No.
John: Oh, absolutely.
Merlin: I mean, at least in your personal quarters.
John: You poop on Super Train, that poop goes immediately into the mechanism.
John: The slurry.
John: And all of the essential minerals and the useful cooking oil are taken out of the poop.
John: And all that's left is a little pile of carbon and some trace bits of silver, mercury, gold, and iodine.
Merlin: We're not going to throw that corn away.
John: Absolutely not.
John: We can use that.
John: The corn goes to feed the pigs that are on the back car of Super Train that are making delicious bacon for us.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: It was not until this moment, like literally in the middle of the night, that it occurred to me that Super Train is more than a totalitarian solution.
Merlin: It's an ecosystem.
Merlin: Absolutely.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: I mean it's – what is it?
Merlin: Walt Whitman says the soul is self-satisfying.
Merlin: Like you've got a train that's going to fucking take care of itself and you better believe, brother, it is going to take care of you.
John: That's right.
John: Super Train is an ecosystem.
John: It is a Gaia bomb.
John: It is also an elaborate revenge fantasy for people that don't believe in God.
Merlin: Is there any place for the brother, do you think?
John: Oh, you're talking about the priest?
Merlin: Or are you talking about the black man?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: You know about Memento Mori, right?
Merlin: You know about the idea that there's the guy, I forget where this happened, but there's the idea of the guy who stands next to the king.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: He stands next to the king and all he does all day long and says, what?
Merlin: Like, you are mortal.
Merlin: You are mortal.
Merlin: You are mortal.
Merlin: Memento mori.
Merlin: Remember that you are going to die.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: So you need, like, a court jester.
Merlin: Like, would it be useful?
Merlin: I'm just saying, for the sake of argument, it's your train.
Merlin: But, like, if you were to take this guy from the East Bay, who apparently I'm going to have beer with now, if you were to take him and make him somehow...
Merlin: part of the super train system, what is the role of the brother for you?
Merlin: Because it seems to me that he might be useful to you.
John: As a kind of moral check or as a kind of... I got as many consigliere as I can handle.
John: Do you have a wartime consigliere?
John: Every single... You know, I just got off of a tour and every single town I went into, there were 40 guys lining up offering their services as like night errands for Supertrain.
Merlin: For real?
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: John, has this gone viral?
Merlin: Is this something where people are aware of how important this is going to be?
Merlin: Are people approaching you?
Merlin: I mean, are they, are they, are they, are they, they're speaking when you, when you go places and make personal appearances and play professional music, they're approaching you and saying, look, it's, I'm, I'm, I'm familiar with super trained.
Merlin: Like I need this.
Merlin: I need to make sure I have a birth.
John: It isn't even that people are approaching me and they are, they basically have a small bag already under their arm, not already packed in the car under their arm anticipating that maybe we're leaving now.
John: And I'm like, you know what I'm doing right now?
John: I'm selling t-shirts.
John: After my rock concert, we are not leaving tonight.
John: And they're like, they're not disappointed.
John: They feel like, okay.
John: I knew that when Super Train leaves is not a thing that you can know.
Merlin: See, this isn't... He'll come like a thief in the night.
Merlin: Sorry, that's from the Bible.
Merlin: But that's the other side of Super Train.
Merlin: It's like, you can prepare all you want, but you'll never really be ready.
John: Well, that's exactly right.
John: You're not ready.
John: You just...
John: It comes and you go.
Merlin: Yeah, I'd hate to see that guy go, though.
Merlin: He seems pretty cool.
John: The thing about the Dominican brother... Is he Dominican?
Merlin: I saw some letters after his name that I didn't recognize.
Merlin: Have you verified with the authorities that he's an actual monk?
Merlin: I mean, anybody can say BR in front of their name.
John: Yeah, that's true.
Merlin: You can be Brother John.
John: I believe that he is what we call a Blackfriar.
John: But it may be that he is... Is that like an anti-paladin?
John: No.
John: He may be a Benedictine.
John: I don't think so, though.
John: He doesn't talk like one.
John: I'm going to find out what the fuck's up with this guy.
John: But anyway, the thing is, for instance, one of my good friends from high school...
John: He ended up becoming a lawyer.
John: He clerked for Rehnquist, this guy.
John: And now he teaches law at Notre Dame.
John: And he is what we call a Catholic legal scholar.
John: He talks about the law.
John: He talks about American law.
John: But through the lens of Catholicism.
John: So he is interested in the moral implications of American law from a Catholic perspective.
John: And he is a constant check on me because he sends me emails and
John: And he is a pompous ass.
John: And he delights in arguing with me because he has been an arguer his entire life.
John: He was an arguer when he was 15.
John: He was an arguer when he was a Duke.
John: He was an arguer when he was a fucking Rhodes Scholar.
John: And then he went to Yale law and argued there.
John: And then he went, went to the Supreme court as a clerk.
John: And I just, everything about him makes me mad.
John: Super frustrating.
John: The fact that he walks the land still makes me mad.
John: And the fact that he writes me, that he writes me contemptuously and describes all the ways in which I am wrong.
Uh-huh.
John: when in fact he is wrong.
John: is a constant thorn in my shoe.
John: That he exists at all.
John: And that, not only that he exists, but that he will one day probably get appointed to something by somebody.
John: He will probably end up on the bench somewhere.
John: Now, as you know, I want to be a retired senator and a retired general of the army and a retired head of the CIA.
John: But there's one thing
John: That really beats all of that, and that is being on the bench.
Merlin: On the bench.
Merlin: You're the last word.
John: On the bench.
John: There you are, on the bench.
John: And you are there forever.
John: And one day this is going to happen to this friend of mine, who is a constant thorn in my shoe.
John: Insufferable.
John: He is going to get appointed to the federal judiciary.
John: And then I'm going to, wherever I am, I'm going to feel it, first of all.
John: It's going to be a ripple.
John: I'm probably going to be sitting in a bathtub somewhere in Hungary.
John: And there's going to be a ripple across the surface of the water.
John: And I'm going to go, what was that?
John: And it's that this friend of mine got appointed to the federal bench.
John: And when it happens, I just have no context for how I'm going to react.
John: Because then he will be enshrined.
John: He will be ensconced.
John: He will be in all of the things.
Merlin: People are going to paint him?
Merlin: He will probably be engraved.
Merlin: His name will be engraved in things.
Merlin: Stadiums will be named after him.
Merlin: Probably fellowships.
John: Maybe a fellowship.
John: Let's hold off on stadiums.
Merlin: You're telling me that if you're in the Supreme Court, you don't get a stadium named after you?
John: Maybe a Little League stadium.
John: Maybe like a horse ring.
Hmm.
John: But anyway, this is a thing that torments me.
John: John, I'm sorry.
John: That must dog you.
John: It does.
John: I know a lot of accomplished people.
Merlin: You perceived him as a peer at one point.
Merlin: You thought this is a fair horse race, right?
John: What do you mean at one point?
John: Sorry.
John: Hmm.
John: He was a... We were peers.
John: And part of being peers involved us each thinking that the other one was less intelligent and less useful to the world.
John: Critical.
John: But now he has done all the things.
John: He has done all of the things that you do in our culture to indicate that you are...
John: He has accomplished all the accomplishments.
John: And then one day he will get the final accomplishment, which is that he will get this appointment.
John: An appointment, mind you.
John: He does not run.
John: He does not beg for your vote, your pathetic electorate.
Merlin: It's really as close as we get to Europe.
Merlin: Somebody comes in and there's a lot of hand-waving and there's some incest gets spread around.
Merlin: That's what they call it, right?
Merlin: Yeah, they do some incest.
Merlin: The censures, is that what they're called?
Merlin: And then you get a robe.
Merlin: You get a robe.
Merlin: You show up and then you've got a fucking job.
Merlin: You're like, you're the Pope of justice.
John: You make law.
John: It's not that you make law because that's what the Congress does.
Merlin: Oh, no, no.
Merlin: Bigger than that, buddy.
John: That's right.
Merlin: You're the arbiter.
Merlin: You judge.
John: You fucking judge.
John: You judge.
John: You sit there and you judge.
John: You judge based on your conscience and on the laws you understand it.
John: Yeah, you hope.
Merlin: I mean, talk about a fucking miscarriage of justice, John.
John: And this guy, this friend of mine, this accursed friend of mine, this Achilles heel of mine, will sit there and judge based on his understanding of the law and his own conscience as filtered through a lifetime of Catholicism.
Merlin: And Yale.
John: And Yale-ism.
John: And Rhodes Scholarism.
John: And insufferability-ism.
John: And I have to sit here and take it.
John: I have to sit here and look at my... Legally, legally.
John: I have to sit here and look at my collection of hats...
John: And I have to say, nice collection of hats, guy.
Merlin: Is it partly that you feel your influence day by day waning?
Merlin: That maybe by the time he's on the bench, that maybe the effect that you can have by jabbing at him...
John: it's not going to be quite as uh pointed as it would have been 20 years ago well because as you know at when you reach our age the mind begins to atrophy yeah like we are losing our acuity with you know leaps and bounds we are my mental plasticity is like the greatest generation which is to say that
John: That every day, half of it dies.
John: Yeah.
John: Every passing day, half of my elasticity goes away.
John: Just as World War II veterans are dying 50% every day.
John: It's depressing.
John: It's terrible.
John: And so... And this is also happening to my friend...
John: Yeah, but he gets a fucking robe.
John: Yeah, he gets a robe and gets to sit up there with his, like, calcified... Have you ever listened to fucking Nina Totenberg read what those people are saying?
Merlin: They're not super duper bright.
Merlin: No, they're not.
Merlin: And they've definitely got a fucking agenda.
Merlin: They definitely do.
Merlin: It's so frustrating to me that, like, they're up there, you know, like the big boss of the level, and, like, they're actually...
John: i mean like road scholar good for you i'm glad you got to travel that's right slap on the ass but i mean you know no offense i don't work ping pong but i mean come on clarence thomas i mean really well wait a minute now clarence thomas is yeah he's genuine he's genuinely yeah he knows the people care on a coke when he sees it he's genuinely a fucking tool but
John: You know, and the funny thing is, my dad's best friend was a federal judge who also happened to be an African-American person by the name of Jack Tanner.
John: Judge Jack Tanner, my father's best friend.
John: My father's best friend since the first day of law school in 1940, fuck all, whatever it was, 1949.
John: Jack Tanner and my dad were inseparable and
John: For, I can't even count how many years.
John: You know, 60 plus years.
John: They were best friends.
John: And at a certain point in the mid-70s, Jack Tanner...
John: Jack Tanner, who went to the rumble in the jungle with Satyakum, the exiled Indian chief of the Puyallup Indian tribe.
John: Satyakum and Jack Tanner flew to the rumble in the jungle.
Merlin: Are you talking about the Muhammad Ali fight?
John: Yes.
John: No shit.
John: two brown paper sacks full of money that they somehow got through.
John: Tanner was his lawyer and Satyakum was on the run from some kind of
John: like, federal showdown with the federal cops.
John: He was running gambling and cigarette... He was running a cigarette racket or something like that.
John: And they threw as much money as they could put in two grocery bags and flew to Africa to see this boxing match.
John: They were gone for a year.
John: And somehow...
John: And they got into the emerald trade at some point in Thailand.
John: None of these stories ever made sense.
John: I heard them my whole life.
Merlin: None of that makes any sense.
John: None of it made any sense at all.
John: They had this money in these grocery bags.
Merlin: But your father had to suffer that.
John: Satyakum was like a 6'4 Indian chief from Puyallup.
John: And Jack Tanner was a 5'4 black guy who was like his attorney.
John: It's like it makes Hunter S. Thompson...
Merlin: I was going to say, it sounds like a blaxploitation version of Hunter Eston.
John: It doesn't make any sense at all.
John: And Tanner would say like, oh yeah, we were in Thailand and it was right during the end of the Vietnam War and there were all these guys selling emeralds.
John: And so we traded one of the bags of money for a bag of emeralds, but then somebody rooked us out of it in some kind of...
John: like a Singapore whorehouse or whatever.
John: And you're just listening to these stories like, what are you fucking talking about?
John: But then he came back to America and Jimmy Carter appointed him to the federal bench.
John: Jimmy Carter appointed him to the federal bench because he was wrecked because Tanner was recommended by the U S Senator from Washington state.
John: And the rest of my dad's life, he had to suffer the fact that this guy, his best friend, who was an absolute living maniac, a pathological liar, and also like somebody who legitimately did get into the emerald trade in Thailand as far as I can tell.
John: That he was now a federal judge.
John: He was a federal judge.
John: And they would meet four times a week for Chinese food.
John: Anytime they would get into an argument, Tanner would just, he would just give my dad all the line in the world.
John: And my dad would just, he'd work himself out into this thing.
John: And then eventually Tanner would be like, well, David, I mean, I'm a federal judge.
Merlin: Oh, come on.
So
John: So, you know, you don't know what the fuck you're talking about.
Merlin: Get a fucking clue, counselor.
Merlin: What the fuck?
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: They played that game for 35 more years, 40 more years.
Merlin: Now, how did your dad handle that?
Merlin: Not well.
John: He did not handle it well.
John: My dad was in a constant state of furious agitation.
John: And you saw that.
John: You had to live with that.
John: I had to sit at the table and listen to these two guys go at it.
John: And, you know, Tanner, and they're telling stories about World War II.
John: Neither one of them ever did a goddamn thing.
John: Tanner, his job in World War II, he was some, like, five-stripe sergeant.
John: His job was to drive those landing craft, like he was driving amphibious landing craft into Iwo Jima while my dad was flying overhead, you know, spilling coffee on his pants.
John: Yeah!
John: And they would argue about World War II until the cows came home, and I would sit there at the table and I'd be like, neither one of you knows a fucking thing about World War II.
John: Like, you both spent the whole war in the mess hall.
John: I'm the expert in World War II here.
John: And then Tanner would be like, well, one of us is a federal judge.
John: So...
John: And game over.
John: It is the thing that... That's a shitty fucking Trump card, but I guess it works.
John: It's an ultimate Trump card.
John: And the problem is, I have a friend, and one day he is going to... One day he's going to wake up, and he's going to open up the newspaper, or the phone is going to ring, and it's going to be a congratulatory call that somebody has appointed him to the federal bench.
John: And wherever I am, my lettuce is going to go limp.
LAUGHTER
Merlin: Do you have anyone to undermine him?
John: I'm never going to get over.
John: Well, how do you undermine him?
John: Because he's a Catholic theologian at a Catholic university.
John: He does not, I am sure he never touches himself in a sinful way.
Merlin: No.
John: You know what I mean?
John: He has no skeletons in his closet.
John: He believes.
John: He's a true believer.
John: And this is the problem.
John: I think his skeletons are all down on the rectory.
John: This is our problem with our East Bay Dominican.
John: Our bra.
John: Which is that he is a true believer.
John: And so, in a sense, you know, he is morally unassailable as long as, you know, as long as...
John: He is morally unassailable because he lives in a castle.
John: And it is a castle of belief.
John: It is a castle of belief.
Merlin: John, it is so frustrating.
Merlin: Those guys are so far away from the runway level.
John: We are trucking across America on a train that is not riding on a track of belief.
John: It is riding on a track made out of crushed human skulls.
John: And belief...
John: You know, belief is nice because we are going to need some poetry in the dining car to drown out the sounds of all those bones cracking under our train.
Merlin: John, if you decide, and this is your train, like I say, but if you decide to keep any of the judiciary in place, what will be your system for vetting?
Merlin: You know, like for example, when they downsize, like you come in here and you got to apply for your own job again.
Merlin: Like, what are you going to do to, if you choose to keep any of the infrastructure in place, how will you make sure that the right people are in there?
Merlin: Do you have a sense of that?
John: Yeah.
John: Well, first of all, no banjo players.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Let me write that down.
John: Banjo players.
John: No banjos.
John: Right out.
John: Can't be trusted.
Merlin: Is it just something about banjos in particular?
John: Banjos are fine.
John: If you are a guitar player or just like an innocent who picks up a banjo and planks along on it.
Merlin: Oh, right.
John: Like a victim.
John: Banjo is not the problem.
John: It's just like a bagpipe isn't a problem.
John: It's the banjo players and the bagpipe players.
Merlin: I see, like an assault rifle.
John: Yeah, you do not choose the bagpipe.
John: Well, yeah, right.
Merlin: No banjos.
Merlin: What about road scholars?
Merlin: Do you have a particular opinion?
Merlin: You can't just reject all that out of hand because certainly amongst all of the fucktards who have become road scholars, mostly because of connections, let's be honest, some of them might be useful.
John: Well, I mean, I don't want to be all Pol Pot here, but if I could trace all the problems in America...
John: If I could independently trace every single problem in America, that thread would end up back at Yale.
John: Yale is the center of everything that's wrong with America.
John: I have no doubt that I could trace, even the fact that sitting here in my room, I don't have any 9-volt batteries for my rat pedal.
John: There's some way I can locate the source of that problem at Yale.
Merlin: I got two reasons, skull and bones.
John: So, I mean, I don't want to be Pol Pot.
John: I do not believe for a second that anti-intellectualism is a valid, like, go-forward strategy for Supertrain.
John: Not at all.
John: It is not an anti-intellectual program.
Merlin: Yeah, but I mean, I don't think the Rhodes Scholarship is an intellectual program.
Merlin: You've been through this, John.
Merlin: The kind of people who get fucking scholarships and grants and who get the fake...
Merlin: rails greased for them.
Merlin: They're not doing anything special.
Merlin: They're the tanners.
Merlin: And they've got the bags full of money.
John: We're going to put all the George Plimptons behind the train and they're going to have to run and run.
John: And at a certain point, they're going to run some of that smugness off.
John: And when they run the smugness off, then they're welcome on board.
John: You know, that's what it is.
John: And that's the thing about the people that come up to me when I'm on tour.
John: The people that come up and say, you know, that kind of, you know, that offer the hand and they're thinking to them.
John: So they put the hand out.
John: And they're thinking, is there a secret super train handshake that I don't know?
John: They put the hand out there and they're worried that there is a secret super train handshake and they don't know it.
John: But it doesn't inhibit them from putting their hand out like a gentleman.
John: And I shake their hand and they realize there is no secret super train handshake.
John: But there is no smugness in their approach.
John: They are approaching, and a lot of them are very smart people.
Merlin: They come at you with respect and dignity.
John: And with, you know, with the humility that any human being should approach another human with.
John: Yes.
John: And if you do not approach people with that humility, an intrinsic humility, and this is the problem with people who are flush with belief, they lack that 10% of the needed humility because their belief...
John: like, trumps their native...
John: humility, right?
John: They cannot allow for the possibility that what they think they know is wrong.
Merlin: They've excused, in the giant pie graph of knowability, they've excused a lot of things because of their certainty, and that's made them less respectful.
John: There is an arrogance at the core of every doctrine.
John: And
John: Super Train is a doctrine-free juggernaut.
John: It just eats and shits.
Merlin: What a terrible idea.
Merlin: Why do we do this?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: No banjo players.