Ep. 60: "Writ in His Boots"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Merlin, man.
Merlin: John Roderick.
John: Yeah, you're just improvising now.
Merlin: No, I'm not.
Merlin: It's jazz tune.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: It's modal.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
John: John Roderick.
Merlin: That's not even Phrygian.
Merlin: I don't know what that is.
Merlin: It might be Aeolian.
Merlin: That's Moroccan jazz.
Merlin: Aeolies, that stuff you get on the side at a hipster restaurant, right?
John: I thought an aioli was a girl's nipple.
John: Hmm.
Merlin: I have just introduced the mini ding, the sub ding.
Merlin: Clank.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: I'm late.
Merlin: I apologize.
John: It's all right.
John: I didn't even notice that you were late until now.
Merlin: You can hear my KFC.
Merlin: Oh, KFC.
Merlin: God, even when I walk by, I hate myself even thinking about it.
John: I think about KFC chickens coming through like an HVAC tube.
Merlin: They're just like chicken.
Merlin: I don't know if there's anything in science called an electrosluice, but that's what I imagine it being passed through.
Merlin: I imagine there's a certain kind of electricity that they've refined over the years that can feed, kill, de-feather, and then just address the bird's parts.
John: Yeah, it's some kind of Wonka thing where there's a fan blade spinning in a tube, and Willy Wonka is going through a psychedelic boat ride, and then a live chicken goes in, and the fan blade debones it, defeathers it, and breads it.
Merlin: Well, you know how it works when you take any piece of literature, including a children's book, and you turn it into a movie.
Merlin: You've got to have compression editing.
Merlin: You cut things out.
Merlin: There was actually a little boy from Florida named Johnny Chicken who got a golden ticket.
Merlin: He's from North Florida, Alachua County.
John: This is in the book.
John: This is in the original book.
Merlin: I'm pretty sure.
Merlin: What's his name?
Merlin: Roland Darling?
Merlin: Roald Dahl?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: He's a rolled doll.
Merlin: Have you tried reading any of those books to your child?
John: No, my child is pre-literate.
Merlin: See, but actually, funny, you should say that turns out, do you know that term pre-literacy?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: This is interesting.
Merlin: I always felt like a dope for reading to my kid.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Well, not a dope, but I mean, I wondered how much was, you know, getting through.
Merlin: I think it helped in getting her into comics, distorting her mind.
Merlin: But, you know, it's funny.
Merlin: I saw a thing hanging at the library.
Merlin: Who knows?
Merlin: Libraries today...
Merlin: Let's be honest.
Merlin: But there's a thing on there, and there's all the steps of what you go through, and one of the stages is called pre-literacy.
Merlin: And I was very happy to find out that my reading was not for not, because just being around books and interacting with books, having books around, turns out, can actually help your child with their literacy.
Merlin: I guess it seems obvious in retrospect.
John: A library would say that.
John: If you go to a Kentucky Fried Chicken, there's a big poster about pre-literacy.
John: About how you need to introduce your child to fried chicken smell.
Merlin: Pre-poultryism.
John: Pre-poultry.
John: Pre-masticated chicken teeth land.
Merlin: Not every child is ready for these 11 herbs and spices, but let us tell you a little bit.
Merlin: A little coleslaw, not going to hurt.
John: Here's what you do.
John: You take the spicy chicken and you just rub it on your child's top upper lip.
John: Just rub it on her gums and it's like giving a dog a flat tennis ball full of peanut butter.
John: The child will be driven mad.
Merlin: I love giving a dog peanut butter.
Merlin: That makes me weak.
Merlin: My dog, sometimes he would get my chewing gum out of an ashtray at our house.
Merlin: And nothing funnier than watching... So much in that sentence.
Merlin: It was a standalone ashtray, right?
Merlin: One that was on a stand.
Merlin: I think I might have just started.
Merlin: I just got halfway into a Scott Walker song, I think.
Merlin: An ashtray of God.
Merlin: Boy, his new record's insane.
Merlin: But no, it's funny though.
Merlin: When I go by, it is like a – what do you call it?
Merlin: A court of last resort, I guess.
Merlin: There's a lot of that in your neighborhood.
John: There's a Taco Bell.
Merlin: Well, it is what my friend Scott Simpson has dubbed simply calling it hell, which is a KFC slash Taco Bell.
John: Is there a Pizza Hut component in that too?
Merlin: Thank Christ there is not.
Merlin: Pizza Hut is punishment.
Merlin: When I was a kid, they had a good jukebox and those cool red cups.
John: Sure, their pizza was second to Shakey's, but still pretty decent.
Merlin: My scout troop went there one day, and we got to take a tour of the Pizza Hut.
Merlin: This is as you do in Cincinnati.
Merlin: And even then, this is 19, what, maybe 76, 77?
Merlin: And they made no attempt to hide the fact that the dough resided in an industrial garbage can.
Merlin: With a lid.
Merlin: Right, right.
Merlin: And they would just stick their Pizza Hut hands right in there and grab a whole dingus of dough.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: The few times I have had occasion to have a Pizza Hut anything in the last 10 years.
Merlin: When you're traveling, though, you're stuck.
Merlin: That might be all it's open.
John: Yeah, you see them in airports and stuff.
Merlin: The only place you can park.
Merlin: Yeah, exactly.
Merlin: You get on a plane.
Yeah.
John: And you get the sense that they have one of those grass seed disseminators or fertilizer disseminators.
Merlin: You hold it in one hand and you spin it around with the other.
John: But what they're putting in the top is like a government marjoram.
John: I saw those guys open for the circle jerks one time.
John: They're just heating up this margarine and just... Like the whole back of a Pizza Hut has got to be just three inches thick of coagulation.
Merlin: I mean, like knowing that back in the day when you could still be a little bit artisanal about a chain restaurant...
Merlin: Knowing that back then, I mean, can you even imagine?
Merlin: My KFC, man, it's a black swan.
Merlin: I shouldn't work ping pong, but the lady who I have no idea how this woman still is the manager of this place.
Merlin: I won't say her name.
Merlin: She's a very plus-sized lady, African-American lady, and she is a goddamn fucking first-class riot because she's super loud and she's super mad all the time.
Merlin: She's yelling at the employees.
Merlin: In my neighborhood,
Merlin: English is the second language, including the Irish people.
Merlin: And people come in there, and if they are not completely ready, chapter and verse, they've got to know their pieces, they've got to know their sides, they've got to know which style.
Merlin: Do you want original?
Merlin: Do you want spicy?
Merlin: It's a lot to know.
Merlin: She reads them the riot act, and then she yells at them.
Merlin: I like her a lot, and she has to deal with that chicken guy, the guy who comes in and eats the chickens.
Merlin: But yeah, every time I go in there, though, I do hate myself inexplicably even more than usual, and I instantly feel transported back to, I don't know, like childhood.
John: Well, you know, my weakness, my childhood weakness fast food restaurant is Arby's.
Merlin: I loved Arby's.
John: Yeah, I know, but Arby's is indefensible.
Merlin: Didn't we talk about Arby's in the liquid beef?
John: Oh, there's a liquid beef problem, yeah.
Merlin: So explain that again now.
Merlin: We described it a while back.
Merlin: It sounded like when you go buy a Thanksgiving turkey and it's this kind of avoid thing in shiny plastic.
Merlin: I imagine it being like that.
John: Yeah, well, I think what happens at an Arby's is the semi-truck backs up and they unload like 250 of these brain-shaped... Cinder blocks of pseudo-beef.
John: Yeah, turkey-shaped blocks of beef that are like the brain of a super being.
John: And they're the same color, kind of like pinkish-gray beef pods.
John: And then the fashion of their manufacturer at an Arby's is that they thin slice this frozen beef and then flash fry it, right?
John: So the super thin slicing of this frozen beef brain and then flash fry it on some kind of hot griddle and that's your Arby's sandwich.
John: And I knew a kid who worked at an Arby's and he said that if you left one of those frozen beef brains out of the freezer,
John: That it became a bag of meat liquid.
John: That it was not actually... Because, of course, there is no brain-shaped part of a cow except its brain.
John: That's costly, though.
John: That's a variety meat.
John: Yeah, this thing is like a 20-pound thing.
John: A 20-pound thing that clearly was extruded from an old-fashioned cake frosting machine.
John: It comes from an Arby's pump.
John: But anyway, when I drive past an Arby's and the sign out front says, five Arby's sandwiches for $5, I turn into an 11-year-old and I have to go in and I know everything about it is wrong.
John: uh and i'm gonna be sorry but i can't stop myself it is a thing it's a thing i like i don't know like from from childhood or something you know in hawaii they have figured out a way to make spam seem like a cultural uh like a cultural imperative like they they have to eat spam because it's their culture
John: And they have to act like it's good.
John: They have to act like it's good.
John: They have to have fun with it and put pineapple slices on it.
Merlin: Yuck.
John: And I just feel like Arby's is my Hawaiian spam.
John: Arby's is your Hawaii.
John: Because I always get a little Swiss cheese on it.
John: You know, I don't want to talk about it.
Merlin: Well, a couple of things.
Merlin: First of all, like B, oh my God, so disgusting.
Merlin: And A, I would love to know.
Merlin: Actually, you know what?
Merlin: I would not love to know.
Merlin: I would love to not know how your friend discovered that.
Merlin: Because the idea of taking a frozen beef avoid and letting it get to a point where it melts into liquid does not say a lot about the QAQC of an Arby's.
Merlin: You know what it's like to work in fast food.
Merlin: My girlfriend and my best friend both worked at an Arby's in high school.
John: Oh, boy.
John: So they know secrets that they're not telling.
John: That smell does not come off.
John: I'm curious.
John: You have started to do this thing where you have a short list of things.
John: I say B, then A. And you start with B. What is going on with that?
John: I didn't go to good school.
John: Come on.
John: You know which comes first, A and B. Yes, but B... What are you doing?
John: You're trying to subvert the dominant paradigm.
Merlin: Well, I don't want to be normative.
Merlin: I think – yeah.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: It's a – the Greek probably have a name for it, like syllogism kind of thing.
Merlin: You know there's names for most things.
Merlin: I don't think it's syllogism, but yeah.
Merlin: Maybe I'm thinking of Ron Jeremy.
Merlin: There's a Greek name for almost everything that involves oratory, rhetoric, and drama.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: There's like a whole awesome Wikipedia page of like, you know, oh, like Oscar Wilde, you know, saying the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.
Merlin: Like there's a name for that.
Merlin: You know, like synecdoche, metonymy, all those kinds of there's like dozens more of those.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: For the different devices.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: The fallacies.
Yeah.
Merlin: Well, there's the fallacies, but there's also the tips and tricks of what it all means.
John: You know, this is the crazy thing about reading the Greeks, the crazy and terrible thing, which is that you realize very quickly that they already thought of everything.
John: They were already as smart as anybody was going to get 2,500 years ago, and everything we think we've invented since then... I mean, sure, science...
Merlin: Yeah, but I mean they made maximum – like they fucked every part of the buffalo.
Merlin: They took every little bit of information that they had access to and they speculated about the things that they didn't understand.
Merlin: But like they exhausted every resource for trying to figure out the world.
Merlin: I mean so long before we did.
Merlin: It's really dispiriting, John.
John: You think about if suddenly there was a collapse of civilization and electricity was gone.
John: I mean, I don't know if you ever think about this, Merlin.
John: Twice a day.
John: If you think about this situation where the lights go off and we are back to just what we have in books and we have to rebuild civilization, we would do such a much shittier job than they did, even with the books that they wrote in our hands.
John: We would do a shittier job.
John: It would take us...
John: 500 years to learn to carve stone.
John: We would have to start at the beginning.
Merlin: We would be carving stone... We'd have to start before the beginning because we'd have to unlearn all the shit we learned from Gilligan's Island.
Merlin: Right.
John: We would have to unlearn touchscreens and hashtags and get back to...
John: you know, caressing young men in a bath, which is how people are supposed to live.
John: It's called mentoring.
John: It's called mentoring.
Merlin: Thank you.
Merlin: Well, okay.
Merlin: So not to put too fine a point on it, but literally this morning, make a little birdhouse.
Merlin: Oh God, that is one of my all time favorite songs.
Merlin: You know, people don't understand how important that song is.
John: People do not understand, I don't think, how important they might be giants are to you.
John: You're just sucking up a little bit now.
Merlin: No, but seriously.
Merlin: It's only now a song, so we shouldn't say it.
Merlin: But that song, Like They'll Need a Crane, I don't think people really realize how important those songs are.
Merlin: You understand?
Merlin: It's literally a nightlight looking at a painting of a lighthouse.
Merlin: And I guess having self-esteem problems, like wondering what it's capable of.
Mm-hmm.
Merlin: After killing Jason off and countless screaming Argonauts.
John: I know, and you're about to cry.
John: Jason and the Argonauts.
John: You're about to cry, and I want to let you have a moment.
John: I'm your only friend.
John: Let me take this away from you.
John: I'm not your only friend, but I'm a little glowing friend.
John: Somebody just tweeted at me yesterday that the Long Winter's cover of Pet Name by They Might Be Giants is perhaps their favorite song ever.
John: ever really and that's quite a statement considering that when we covered pet name i felt that that we did not get i enjoyed our cover of it i think you rocked it yeah and i and i did not feel that we got the got the acclaim that was our due because of course the long winners are
John: And also Rand.
Merlin: They've been around longer, though.
Merlin: You know what you should do?
Merlin: You should do an Echo and the Bunnymen and get a drum machine.
Merlin: Sigh.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: I'm done sucking up to that guy.
Merlin: What was I going to say?
Merlin: Boy, I don't even know where to begin.
Merlin: I got a lot here.
Merlin: Arby's.
Merlin: Okay, so...
Merlin: I am ready to write this down to the comic problem, but literally this morning while I was urinating, it occurred to me that if we had one of those situations where the grid went down and we lost it.
Merlin: But let's just say one of the problems is we wouldn't have the internet.
Merlin: We would not have Wikipedia at our ready access.
John: Right, and a lot of us have gotten rid of our books.
John: Sure, we've gone E. I haven't.
John: I'm sitting in a room full of books.
John: That's serving you well.
John: Smells like moths in here.
John: Learned moths.
John: But I'm telling you, when the grid goes down...
John: This will be the repository of all important human knowledge.
John: I have the Live from New York Saturday Night Live oral history.
John: Got it.
John: You don't want to live in a future scape without that book.
Merlin: You know, here's the thing.
Merlin: You are going to encounter people like Chevy Chase after the apocalypse, and you need to be ready for that.
John: Yeah.
John: If you don't know that they exist, how can you be prepared?
Merlin: It's like a great Grecian story in many ways.
Merlin: Grecian?
Merlin: Griekel?
John: Griekel.
John: Yeah.
Yeah.
Merlin: So I was urinating.
John: I was urinating.
Merlin: And it occurred to me, like, what would happen if something like that came along?
Merlin: And, you know, as in the breakout issue of the New Avengers, what if the lights were going off but kind of slowly?
Merlin: And, like, what if we knew we had some access...
Merlin: to the resources on the internet, but only for a certain amount of time, and we didn't know how long that was.
Merlin: It wasn't even yearning for all that long, but this is what happens.
Merlin: As you do, it goes through your mind.
Merlin: And I was thinking, if we knew that there was a limited amount of time, but didn't know how long, where would we start to make sure we had what we needed, assuming we could print it out or whatever?
John: Is this kind of what you're talking about?
John: This is one of my daydreams, where I think if I was a time traveler,
John: And I had two hours to prepare to bookmark as many pages in my iPhone as I could before traveling back in time, not to a pre-electricity time, but traveling back.
John: Let's say I'm time traveling back to 1940.
John: Oh, man.
Merlin: That's a lot of responsibility.
John: And I need to bookmark as much stuff in my phone as I can that I don't already know that I'm going to want access to.
John: I have two hours.
John: What do I put in my phone?
Merlin: Is this for you to remember or do we assume in this universe that you would be credible enough for them to believe what you were showing them were true?
John: This is the problem.
John: So you end up in 1940.
John: You're there.
John: You have no money.
John: You're dressed in your dumb modern clothes.
John: You're schlubby modern clothes.
John: You look like there's something wrong with you, right?
John: People on the street are going to immediately look at you and say, what's wrong with that guy?
John: His haircut is weird.
John: You look like you're somebody from the bonus march.
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: His clothes are weird.
John: Something's not right about this guy.
John: And you have to establish credibility in 1940 in such a way, you have to primarily, you have to first establish the baseline of credibility that somebody is going to get you dinner.
John: Right?
John: Like, you're in 1940, but you still need to eat dinner.
John: You still need to have a place to stay that first night.
Merlin: You have to have contemporary civility.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I mean, that sounds silly, but that's part of it, is you don't want to seem like a nut.
John: Right.
John: And you have to be able to approach somebody and say... And this includes, like...
John: finding your forebears like my dad was alive in 1940 your dad was a lawyer wasn't he not yet he 1940 he was oh yeah he was a navy cadet or whatever he was spilling coffee on his pants but i know where my grandmother and i know where she lived in 1940 do i show up at her door knock on the door and say hello you go back to rural ohio hello you know mary louise rochester i am a relative of yours
John: And she's going to say, really?
John: Well, come in.
John: And I'm going to say yes.
John: And I'm going to tell a little bit about my family.
Merlin: That's a great way to start.
John: Yeah.
John: And she's going to go, now, who are you related to?
John: And I'm going to go, well, I am your cousin.
John: And I'm going to trickle off some relative that I vaguely remember that she would know that is ambiguous enough that she's not going to be able to...
John: You know, Uncle Cal, who dies in 2000.
John: I'm Uncle Ralph's second cousin once removed.
Merlin: But you could have enough to go in and seem plausible.
John: Right.
John: And in the manner of the time, she would feel obligated to let me stay in the guest room for a night or two.
John: But then I'm on my own trying to establish a new life in 1940 with what I know is about to happen.
John: What do I do?
John: Not only what are my historical obligations, but how do I provide a living for myself in that time with what I know is about to transpire without being a war profiteer or without going to a gambling house and betting the $10 that I've put together on the fact that the Japanese are going to bomb Pearl Harbor on December 7th?
Merlin: You've become a time-traveling war profiteer.
John: Yeah, like exactly.
John: How do you ethically live in the past with the knowledge that you have of the future?
John: Cyclone B futures?
John: I have my iPhone.
Merlin: Can I ask you some questions about this just to have some parameters?
Merlin: Okay, I'm sorry.
Merlin: I don't want to interrupt you, but A, I'm totally into this.
Merlin: I thought you were going to start on B. You don't like that.
Okay.
Merlin: it's not that i don't like it i kind of really and b uh so a was i'm into it and b is this some questions um do you know so first of all do we assume that for the sake of magic your iphone will continue to work for at least a few months inexplicably because i don't know if they had one they have 110 back then
John: Yeah.
John: Right.
John: I mean, yes, they did.
John: And you could still plug your iPhone.
John: If you had an iPhone charger, you could still plug it into an outlet in 1940, but you don't, but you have no internet.
John: It's just what you've loaded into the thing.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: I think that's, I think that's plausible.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: And they don't know you have it.
Merlin: Um, are you going, do you know the specific within like a week or so?
Merlin: Do you know the specific time that you're traveling to?
John: Yeah, let's say September 1940.
John: September 1940.
John: The war in Europe is raging, but America is taking an isolationist stance.
John: The Japanese are moving into Manchuria.
John: Stalin has made a separate piece with Hitler.
John: Bob Hope's still funny.
John: Bob Hope, hilarious.
John: Very, very funny.
John: Hilarious.
John: Okay.
Merlin: Orson Welles, irrelevant director.
Merlin: Just to get it out of the way, I don't want to go too far here, but...
Merlin: are you going to be around people?
Merlin: Are you going to go to like your mom's people or your dad's people?
Merlin: Are they around people who might eventually, after a couple of drinks, warm up to the idea that you might be from the future if you make the case?
John: Well, here's the problem.
John: I imagine this time traveling happening in place.
John: So the house that I'm sitting in right now existed in 1940.
John: And so all of a sudden I am sitting in the same room I'm sitting in,
John: But the house belongs to somebody else, and it's 1940.
John: And unfortunately for me right now, I'm in a green striped shirt, my underwear, and a pair of house slippers that are made by Uggs.
Merlin: Oh, really?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Do you know when the time travel is going to happen?
John: It's going to happen.
Merlin: In your time in the current universe?
Merlin: It's going to happen.
Merlin: It could be a surprise.
Merlin: It's going to happen in two hours because I have that long to throw up my phone.
Merlin: Of course, of course.
Merlin: So you have time to change.
Merlin: I have time to put some pants on.
Merlin: You have time to bookmark a few things.
Merlin: Get a pair of glasses that look like they're from 1940.
Merlin: Because the easy one in some ways is if you meet somebody who's probably a lunatic or a comic book writer, if you met one of those people and you could say the closing price of U.S.
Merlin: steel is going to be this –
Merlin: tomorrow exactly that's one and then you might seem a little like a magician but that's one way you could prove it or you could say like here's the name of a young person a surprisingly young celebrity maybe who will die tomorrow from emphysema yeah right so i would bookmark 1940 deaths
John: But the problem with that is that all of those, if you think about somebody showing up at your house right now, knocking on the door and saying, Hello, Merlin Mann.
John: You are someone who knows about, who is well-versed in science fiction.
John: Let me tell you a story.
John: I am your descendant from the future.
John: I have come here.
John: I know the following intimate details about you.
John: And he says two or three things that...
John: Your great-grandson might plausibly know, but that are still, like, intimate details.
John: And then he says, tomorrow... Get less interested in autoerotic asphyxiation.
John: Tomorrow, Carly Rae Jepsen is going to die of emphysema.
John: And you're like, uh-huh.
John: Okay.
Merlin: Is that the call me maybe lady?
John: I don't know.
John: It's just a name that popped into my head that I read on the internet sometimes and I don't research.
John: And then you're like, okay...
John: Sure, come in.
John: Like, I'm not going to introduce you to my family quite yet, but come into the entryway.
John: Like, come into the anteroom and let's talk about this a little bit longer.
John: Tell me more about myself from the future.
John: And then, pretty soon, everything that this person says is going to sound like bullshit because they're going to say, well, in ten more years, Merlin Mann, you become a widely known internet celebrity.
John: I get it.
John: I get it.
John: How can I verify that?
John: And everything he's telling you about yourself in the past, except for... It could be just that he researched it on the internet really well.
John: So, I don't know.
John: I spend a lot of time imagining myself walking down the street in 1940 in my Uggs with my historically inappropriate glasses, thinking, how am I going to walk into a diner and tell the guy something that's going to make him want to give me a turkey dinner without becoming a war profiteer?
Merlin: Oh, initially, you're probably going to have to be like a hobo, right?
Merlin: You got to look for chalk marks, be willing to chop some wood.
Merlin: You got to work your way up.
John: Yeah.
John: And the natural place to start is with your family.
John: But is that something you should do?
John: Should you go to your great-grandmother's house?
Merlin: I think possibly, but I also think based on reading some Pulp Fiction, that if you were to meet a floozy who maybe had a laudanum problem,
Merlin: Well, that wouldn't be a floozy.
Merlin: I guess that would be like a fancy society lady, like maybe somebody from a Preston Sturgis film.
Merlin: But I don't know.
Merlin: I'm just saying if you met somebody, maybe – how about somebody who should have been an heiress?
Merlin: It's the daughter of somebody powerful who's the black sheep, the African-American sheep.
Merlin: If you were to get in good with her, you might be able to bring her around.
Merlin: Think about – what's that William Powell movie with the – oh, the famous William Powell movie where he goes and poses.
Merlin: He's a hobo and then he becomes like – doesn't matter.
Merlin: But –
Merlin: There's a lot of films of the time where that kind of thing happened.
Merlin: You've got Frank Capra making music.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I'm not sure.
John: Because the thing is, you're going to spook... Your plan is that you want to convince somebody in the past to believe that you are from the future.
Merlin: Well, yes, I think, eventually.
Merlin: But I think that the thing is, before you try to use science, you're going to have to build... Well, first of all, B, you're going to need relationships.
Merlin: But A, you're going to need credibility.
John: You've got to not seem like a kook.
John: Right.
John: 1940 is pre...
John: female orgasm when did that do you have a sense of when that started was in 1964 i think i don't think a woman had an orgasm until kinsey until the kinsey report because he knew he knew how to please a lady that's the thing is they had a lot of accidental orgasms but they thought that it was some kind of uh consumption was that usually horseback riding or dryers like you know they slid down the banister i don't know what yeah they said beaters
John: It was before mechanical dryers, too.
John: So, again, women... You have to have your crippled son turn.
John: Yeah, it was some kind of... It was like a washboard, and that's a much different orgasm.
John: So, you know, women were lying down... They call it rough riding.
John: They were lying down on fainting couches wondering what's going on with them.
John: And you could arrive in that time and be like, listen, I know a secret.
John: I have a magic secret.
John: Want to see what I can do?
John: And I think that would gain you entrance...
John: to the confidence of a rich society lady that had maybe like a laudanum addiction.
John: If you could just get, you know, through the, if you could get through the petticoats to say like, I know a thing that you don't know.
Merlin: I think you're answering your own question here.
Merlin: I think you need to come in and seem like a reliable cocksman who's willing to cut some wood.
John: Yeah, I'm just, I'd show up and I'd cut a rakish figure and I would say, listen,
John: I know that my glasses seem to be made out of a mysterious substance that looks a little bit like tortoise shell.
John: You could tell them they're goggles.
John: I could say these are science goggles.
John: And my slippers are inexplicably complicated.
Merlin: I have to tell you, John, I don't want to judge.
Merlin: I think the slippers are a fucking non-starter.
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: I think you need to go get some brogues.
Merlin: Okay, brogues.
Merlin: Now, wait a minute.
Merlin: This is like one of those Minecraft kind of things.
Merlin: You're going to have to go in and figure out how to get – because your money is useless, right?
Merlin: If you show up with some Kennedy dollars, they're going to say he's not even – we don't know who Kennedy is.
John: Right, but here's the thing.
John: You have this iPhone that will make you look like a wizard but also make you look like a witch.
John: But you can't get the internet on it.
John: You can't get the internet on it, but you can.
John: It's a little tiny black box that you push a button and all of a sudden a photograph appears.
John: All of a sudden a little video game appears.
John: Now, tell me that you go to the University of Washington and you go into...
John: Some mechanical engineering.
Merlin: Not a Univac, but you go in someplace where they got the difference engine or whatever.
John: Yeah, you find Richard Fenneman, and you say, listen, I need to talk to you for just a second.
John: And then you open up your coat, and you go...
John: And he sees it, and he goes, what the fuck is that?
John: And who the fuck are you?
John: And then you go, exactly.
John: Buy me a turkey dinner, and we can talk about this.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: This is getting boring, probably.
Merlin: But you could find out what nerds were about to make that was groundbreaking.
Oh.
Merlin: maybe it's maybe it's like behind the scenes you go hey split any atoms lately or you go you go oh you know uh that's a that's a real challenging problem you've got uh and then let me you pull up your phone you show this is the formula or this is the finished product and he's gonna go only he would be able to understand like how much that was a thing he'd be excited that he knows he gets it done
John: Feynman is a bad example because in 1940 he was still working in some... You'd have to find Fermi.
John: Where the hell was he in 1940?
John: Was he still in Europe?
John: I don't know.
John: This is complicated.
Merlin: Was he in the Manhattan Project?
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah, I'll bet he was still in Europe.
John: You'd have to go... A lot of those guys got out by then, though.
John: You'd have to go to... This is the thing.
John: We're establishing a list.
John: You go to Wikipedia and you Google all the atomic scientists and... Okay, you're right.
John: This is getting boring.
Merlin: Or simple-minded floozies of Seattle.
John: You have to make two lists.
John: Category, colon.
John: Simple-minded floozies who have never had an orgasm and atomic scientists who are on their way to America.
John: And, you know, you appeal to both sides.
Merlin: We have an Arby's near our house.
Merlin: It's near the Lucky that we go to sometimes for groceries.
Merlin: They've got a sporting goods store my daughter likes to go to.
Merlin: They've got a Ross Dress for Less that we can see from our back window.
Merlin: It's pretty close.
Merlin: That's nice.
Merlin: And I've only been there about two or three times.
Merlin: But first of all, Arby's has gotten a little overwhelming.
Merlin: They've moved beyond their – and did you know that Arby's – I don't know if it's an acronym or a backronym, but did you know that Arby's is an acronym?
Merlin: America's Roast Beef, yes, sir.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: You can tell us from a different time because it's polite.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: America's Roast Beef, yes, sir.
Merlin: This can't be yogurt.
Merlin: Today it would be ARFU.
Merlin: It would be America's Roast Beef.
Merlin: Fuck you.
John: This country's best yogurt.
John: Do you remember when this can't be yogurt came?
John: I can't fucking believe this is yogurt.
John: to this country's best yogurt.
John: I was very offended by that.
John: Oh, where they had to spell it out?
John: No, TCBY started out as, this can't be yogurt.
John: And then, like, two years in...
John: They came back around and they were like, this country's best yogurt.
John: Because some focus group felt like this can't be yogurt was negative.
John: It's like a don't think of an elephant problem.
Merlin: That's pretty good.
Merlin: Didn't it used to just be TGIFs?
Merlin: Didn't they use Retcon to go back and make a TGI Fridays?
John: I don't know the answer to that.
Merlin: I always thought it was TGIF Fridays.
Merlin: TGIF Fridays?
Merlin: There's a lot of simplification, you know what I mean?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: This TGIF Fridays?
Merlin: I went in there, and they, like everywhere, including Hell, the Taco Bell KFC, they've greatly extended their product line into areas they just shouldn't even be in.
John: Oh, right.
John: They've got mushrooms now.
Merlin: Fucking salads.
Merlin: Ugh.
Merlin: Here's the thing.
Merlin: When you go into the past, please tell people about this.
Merlin: I think they might have already known about this.
Merlin: If you go into that diner, obviously don't order – Michael J. Fox your way into a Pepsi.
Merlin: You want to go in there and know something.
Merlin: You ask for a beefsteak with French fried potatoes or something.
Merlin: You want to sound sensible.
John: I'm going to say turkey dinner.
John: I'm going to say every time turkey dinner.
John: I think if you say blue plate special, you'll be in good shape.
John: You're right.
John: Blue plate special.
John: And then the guy's going to say 15 cents.
John: And I'm going to go, oh, shit.
John: My dime has Roosevelt on it.
John: May I pay you with laser money?
John: It's here in my phone.
John: I say, good sir, would you like to see a video game?
No.
John: Is that worth your 15 cents?
John: Are you familiar with porno, Scheisse?
John: Let me tell you.
John: Let me ask you this.
John: Has your wife ever had an orgasm?
Merlin: Don't answer.
Merlin: I'm going to travel back in time and take that back.
Merlin: So anyway, we went in there, and you know what I got?
Merlin: I got the classic.
Merlin: I got the thing I always get.
Merlin: And first of all, when I go to Arby's now, because of my personality and my problems, I overorder because I think I'm not going to be back here soon.
Merlin: You get three French dip sandwiches, don't you?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: You know what I do?
Merlin: I do beef and cheddar.
Merlin: Beef and cheddar.
Merlin: I like it except it's got an onion bun.
Merlin: You don't like an onion bun?
Merlin: You like onions and you like buns.
Merlin: I like onions and I like buns, but I don't want an onion bun on my beef and cheddar.
Merlin: You don't keep buns in the house unless you're going to have a barbecue.
Merlin: I don't want to seem creepy, but I've listened to the show a lot.
John: I don't keep buns in the house, first of all.
John: You're absolutely right.
Merlin: You've got wieners, but no buns.
John: That's right.
John: I have a lot of wieners and no buns.
John: You get the buns fresh.
John: And then the second thing is if I go to a bagel place and I say, the first thing I say is give me a sesame seed bagel.
John: If they don't have sesame seed bagels, I'm already suspicious.
John: I will then go to poppy seed.
John: If they are out of poppy seed, I will, against my better judgment, get an everything bagel.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: And if they are out of those, then we are done.
John: This transaction is over.
Merlin: That's a shiksa thing to do, isn't it?
Merlin: When you go and get an everything bagel, isn't that kind of a tell?
Merlin: That is exactly right.
John: An everything bagel is the most goyesha bagel that you can possibly order.
John: Mazel tov.
John: It is the worst.
John: I want a sesame seed bagel.
John: That's what I want.
John: And I am not... Also, the pork chop and milk one is not... When somebody goes and gets a dozen bagels and they come in there, they're like, hey, I came to the party and I got a bag of bagels.
John: And you open it up and you realize that they got onion bagels.
John: It's like, why are you going to pollute this bag of bagels with these dumb onion bagels?
John: Like, onion bagels should be sequestered to another part of the store.
John: Onion bagels should come in their own bag.
John: And I don't want onion bun on my beef and cheddar.
Merlin: I think...
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: But I love onions.
Merlin: Well, onion bagels should be like a Gent magazine.
Merlin: If you're going to want to go enjoy that by yourself, that's fine.
Merlin: But don't bring it to the conference room.
Merlin: Because A, nobody likes a fucking onion bagel.
Merlin: And B, it's going to stink up the room and the bag.
Merlin: And it's going to screw up the bagel experience for everybody.
John: That's right.
John: Don't sit on an airplane.
John: Oh, God.
John: And read FHM magazine.
John: Hmm.
John: You know what I'm saying?
John: They used to have a much longer name, you know?
Yeah.
John: america's soft core yes sir for his majesty's pleasure magazine i do not want to see a guy fucking hot masturbation yeah reading one of those like magazines that is ostensibly about stereo equipment and men's fashion but is really about uh like jacking off to carmen electra that's not a thing i want to see
John: If you're on an airplane, you should be required by law to have either a copy of Vanity Fair, which is a magazine I do not subscribe to,
John: because i feel it you mean like the existentially or you don't have come to your house i feel like vanity fair vanity fair uh although this is the problem every if every issue of vanity fair has one article and i sent you one i know did you read article in it i did one article in it that is really interesting to me and i really really want to read it and then white people at parties
John: But that's the problem.
John: The rest of the magazine promulgates this middle brow concept of what high class is.
Merlin: Oh, it's like the Olive Garden of periodicals.
John: It absolutely is.
John: It perpetuates this Tommy Hilfigerization of America where the cheapest version of the Hamptons is smeared like government mayonnaise.
Yeah.
John: Like government margarine across America.
John: And people are like, that's what I aspire to.
John: I aspire to have no taste.
John: I aspire to be a person who I aspire to be a nouveau riche person who thinks that, you know, who thinks that an interest in the Kennedys constitutes being like a person of culture.
John: It's like calling yourself a Civil War buff.
John: Oh, my God.
John: Civil War buff.
Merlin: That should be somebody who shines shoes.
John: I have a pair of cream-colored calfskin gloves waiting to slap anyone across the face who calls themselves a Civil War buff.
John: Just because there's so many of them?
John: Just because Civil War buff is not a thing.
John: Okay.
John: It is not a thing that you should describe yourself as.
John: It's like military intelligence.
John: You should say so many things before you get to Civil War buff that you just never get to Civil War buff.
Merlin: Would you say enthusiast or scholar?
John: Is it the Civil War part?
John: It's just too easy.
John: Any more, I would say, cosplayer.
John: I am becoming more and more enamored with this cosplay.
John: Me too.
John: This cosplay thing that's happening across America.
John: Talk about the comics problem.
John: I'm realizing that cosplay is this umbrella definition that basically is like 30% of Americans are just cosplaying at any given moment.
Merlin: Oh, you're taking it broader than some manga character I've never heard of.
Merlin: You're saying that it's a costume drama at a national scale.
John: When I walk into a downtown office building now, I stand in the lobby, and I watch the people come and go, and I'm like, fully half these people are cosplaying.
John: They're cosplaying gray flannel business people.
John: And it's like, I'm spending a lot more time downtown lately now that cosplay is an idea in my head.
Merlin: I think you could definitely travel back to 1978 and rolling joints on a Van Halen album, and that remark would really blow people out of the room.
Merlin: It's like there's a costume made of a suit that these guys in a building are wearing.
John: Listen, man, a suit is just a modern suit of armor.
John: Except it's not protecting you against swords.
Merlin: It's like Brooks Brothers Chainmail.
John: It's protecting you against scion.
Merlin: How do I know that you see the same green that I see?
John: If I time traveled back to 1978, I would have no trouble establishing my credibility.
John: You'd go right to Mike Anthony.
John: I would go right to Mike Anthony and say, ready?
Merlin: And you would say, I'm the ghost of Jack Daniels Bay's future.
Merlin: Don't do that douchebag thing where you play an open A and pump your fist.
John: I would do that.
John: You know what I would do?
John: I'd walk into the first head shop and I would say, ready dudes?
John: Ready?
John: Ice in your bong.
John: Oh, dude.
John: Or cinnamon.
John: Cinnamon, dude.
John: Mind blown.
John: And everybody would be like, what?
John: Did he just say ice in the bong?
John: And there'd be a guy already running out the door to the nearest 7-Eleven to get a bag of ice.
John: That's right.
John: Nobody thought of that before.
John: That was not invented until the early 80s.
Merlin: There weren't that many.
Merlin: There's never historically, I don't know if this is on Wikipedia, but there's never historically been a group as open to improvement opportunities as people in the 70s who did too many drugs.
John: That's exactly right.
John: Don't you think?
John: Well, now in 1978, did they have 64-ounce bottles of pop?
Merlin: No, you had to go out and buy, what would that be, four 16-ounce bottles?
Yeah.
Merlin: Right, but they didn't have plastic bottles of pop yet.
Merlin: No, I think there may have been, especially from Kentucky Fried Chicken, you might have been able to get a two-liter bottle.
Merlin: In my case, we had returnable glass bottles like a fucking gentleman, and you would go out and get an eight-pack of 16-ounce Coke bottles.
Merlin: Now, to answer your question, no, I don't think they did.
John: Well, so that means that the two-liter bottle with the bottom cut off...
John: used as a hash bong where you fill the bottle up with... So are you familiar with this technology?
Merlin: I've done the thing where you light it under a glass and then suck out the smoke from under the glass.
John: You take a two-liter pop bottle, you cut the bottom off of it.
Merlin: Oh, is this when you put it in a bathtub?
John: Yeah, you submerge it in water.
John: Yeah.
John: Then you put a bowl on top of it, like a bowl made out of tinfoil that you've poked little holes in.
John: You put a big block of hash on the top.
John: You light it, and then you pull the bottle up out of the water, creating suction.
John: Science.
John: Fills the bottle full of super intense dope smoke.
John: And then you put your mouth over.
John: You take the bowl off.
John: You put your mouth over the top of the bottle, and you push it down into the water.
John: And it hyper impels all this dope smoke into your lungs.
John: And then you are baked.
John: Do you put ice in the water?
John: You could.
John: I never thought of that until just now.
John: No one had invented that in 1978.
John: You could be a god among men.
Merlin: You get so much free weed because you would be like the Johnny Appleseed of weed technology.
John: Yeah.
John: The problem, of course, is that I don't smoke pot anymore.
John: Bet you would have then.
John: I would have, but I'm me now going back then.
John: I'm not going to go back.
Merlin: I have so much to teach you about multiverses.
John: I guess.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: See, my other idea – I want to get back to potato cakes in a minute.
Merlin: But my other idea that I'm already thinking is defeating the purpose would be if once – see, it doesn't matter.
Merlin: Once you've talked them into the fact that you're a time traveler, you get a photo of you and that person standing there genially holding next week's newspaper.
Merlin: That's going to be hard to do on day one.
Merlin: I think you should focus on the blue plate special to start out and get some decent shoes.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: But anyway, you know what?
Merlin: It is boring, but that's the kind of thing I think about.
John: Yeah.
John: Unfortunately, it is me too.
John: And I hope that our listeners also like to think about that stuff because we just talked about it for an hour.
John: Yeah.
John: I went to the Filson store yesterday.
John: Oh, that's the Waxy Pant place.
John: Waxy Pants.
John: And I had the most amazing experience ever.
John: I'm still trying to parse because it is a little bit of a time traveler experience.
John: I went into the Filson store where I know a guy.
John: I have a friend who works there and I walk in and he says, your name came up yesterday.
John: There's a guy who works here at the store who is like the institutional memory of Filson.
John: He's been working here for 15 years.
John: He knows everything about Filson.
John: You can show this guy a Filson garment that was made any time in the last 100 years, and he can tell you when it was made.
John: He can ID any Filson thing, but he also knows all the history, all the legends.
John: And I said, tell me more.
John: This guy seems very interesting to me.
John: And my friend said, well, he claims to know you.
John: And I'm like, tell me more.
John: And he says, he claims to have worked at a pizza parlor with you 20 years ago.
John: And I did work at a pizza parlor 20 years ago.
John: It was a pizza parlor where, like your story about Pizza Hut, we used to make the sauce in a 50-gallon garbage can with a boat paddle.
John: Like literally a canoe paddle.
Right.
John: This is Pagliacci pizza for those of you in the Northwest.
John: If you want to know how we make the sauce at Pagliacci, it is in a garbage can.
Merlin: Isn't that the crying clown?
Merlin: We make the red sauce with canoe paddle.
John: Yeah, it's the crying clown with the pointy hat stirring sauce in a garbage can.
Merlin: Sleep tight.
John: Oh no.
John: So anyway, I'm standing here in the store and my friend runs into the back and he brings this guy out.
John: And this guy is, he's bald and he has a gray beard.
John: And if I passed him on the street, I wouldn't have recognized him.
John: But when I look in his eyes, I realized this is a guy I know.
John: I knew him 20 years ago.
John: I recognize him.
John: He was like a young mod and,
John: At the time, he is actually the guy who introduced me to my bloody Valentine, this kid.
John: Whoa.
John: When he was 20 and I was 22 or something like that.
John: And now he's standing in front of me dressed head to toe in like filson wool and wax canvas.
John: And he's gray and bald, but he is this kid now.
John: I see it in his eyes.
John: Is he our age?
John: He's our age, yeah.
John: And so he comes out and we look at each other and it's like, oh, my God.
John: Hello.
John: Like, I haven't seen you in 20 years.
John: And all the staff of Filson's like it's kind of late in the day.
John: There are not very many customers.
John: All the staff of Filson starts gathering around us.
John: And this kid.
John: This guy.
John: who is the institutional memory of filson he turns to his employees or all these people around him and he says the first filson garment i ever saw or was ever aware of john roderick showed me in 1992
John: He was wearing a jacket and he and I were hanging out and I said, what kind of jacket is that?
John: Is that a Pendleton?
John: And John looked at me like I was stupid and said, you don't know about Filson?
John: What are you, some fucking kind of idiot?
John: That sounds like you.
John: And then he proceeded to explain to me what Filson was.
John: And one year later, I got a job here and I've been working here ever since.
John: You changed his life.
John: I mean, you literally changed his life.
John: And then he said, and then I became an Alaskan adventure guide, and now I spend four months a year in Alaska guiding people in the backcountry, and the rest of the year here at Filson, like...
Merlin: So he's out there now in the shit, testing that stuff out.
John: He's in the shit.
John: And has been ever since.
John: And so I'm standing there in this weird time warp vortex where this guy is telling me that a lot of the information that he has, which he is the only repository of...
John: The legend of Filson and all this knowledge of Filson gear that because Filson was sold sometime in the in 2005 sold to a group of investors headed by some douchebag from Ralph Lauren who tried to turn it into like a national brand and they fired all the old people.
John: Oh, they're trying to like REI, North Faceify it?
John: Exactly.
John: They tried to North Faceify it.
John: They tried to offshore the construction of stuff to China, all this stuff that was terrible.
John: And then someone came in, bought Filson back from them, reestablished that they were making all that equipment in Seattle again.
John: They have a manufacturing plant in the back of the store where they make all that shit right there.
John: Right.
John: And this kid is one... This guy, this friend of mine, is like one of the only survivors who was there through the whole thing.
John: He is the source of the knowledge that makes Filson what it is today.
John: And he...
John: Only knows about Filson because 20 years ago, I made him feel like a dumbass for not knowing what the brand of the jacket I was wearing, which was already a 20-year-old jacket that I was wearing as a kind of like...
John: Well, whatever I, whatever my trip is.
John: But so, so I was in this like weird, like, what if I never existed?
John: What if I didn't, you know, like now I'm buying Filson gear.
John: Now I'm worshiping this, this, the last brand that is being made right.
John: And yet, like I, now I feel like I'm, I somehow I played a, I played a shaping role in the fact that it even exists like it does now.
John: And then I went home and I played with myself.
Merlin: John, before I knew you, I had a copy of your first record album.
Merlin: And it's clear from the many letters that people have sent you.
Merlin: What was it, John?
Merlin: Was it your first-class bullshitter?
Merlin: That you've ruined a lot of people's lives?
Merlin: Let me ask you this.
Merlin: And clearly you've made your peace with that.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: But here's the thing.
Merlin: Does it occur to you the influence that you may have on people in a given day?
Merlin: Because that's freaky to me.
Merlin: If I started thinking about that a lot, playing with myself or otherwise, that freaks me out a little bit to think about, again, Peter Schaefer, moments snap together like magnets.
Merlin: You don't know –
Merlin: you don't know who you're going to influence in it.
Merlin: He certainly didn't wake up in whatever 1991 thinking I'm going to make somebody feel bad about my jacket.
Merlin: And now he's in Alaska.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Isn't that kind of, it feels like a lot of responsibility.
John: Well, it's that crazy butterfly effect.
John: Then it's true of every single person in the world.
John: You cannot know how that little encounter on the bus,
John: May transform the world.
John: And that person is like, that guy who looked at my shoes, like, I probably told you this story.
John: The guy on the subway where I was so enamored with his cordovan boots.
John: And he's like a middle-aged black guy who's like dressed in, he's a working class guy, but he's wearing these boots, these work boots.
John: And they're the most gorgeous things I've ever seen in my life.
John: And I'm sitting across from him and I'm staring at his boots and he's just kind of, you know, he's like a 60 year old guy.
John: He's just, he's just riding the subway back and forth to work.
John: But I can see in these boots that he has cared.
John: He cares about these boots and I'm looking at them and I'm going, okay, I don't think I've ever seen a thing as fucking foxy as these goddamn boots and
John: And I can't stop looking at him.
John: And then I look up and he sees that I'm looking at his boots.
John: And I give him a little like... Like... I can't... I can't keep his gaze.
John: I'm so...
John: I'm so in awe of what these boots are saying about this guy.
John: The meticulous care that he has put into these boots, which he has clearly had for 28 years, and...
John: And he looks at me and he's so kind in his eyes.
John: And I look away like a young girl.
John: And then I look back at him and he's looking at me still.
John: And I look down at his boots and I give him this respectful nod like, I see your boots.
John: I see them.
Merlin: And you can tell, though, that he takes pride in these and he wouldn't just think you're a creepy guy on the bus.
John: Oh, no, no, no.
John: He knows what's happening.
John: And he gives me a nod like a fucking Buddha.
John: And he goes, that's right.
John: Yes.
John: And I look away and I swear to you, I'm blushing.
John: And I'm like, this man knows things.
John: He knows more about things than I do.
John: And you can see it in these goddamn boots.
John: And then we got to the next stop and I had to get off the subway.
John: I couldn't be on the car with him.
Merlin: It was too heavy.
Merlin: You were afraid you would lose your composure?
John: And I got off the subway and I turned around and he was looking at me and I gave him a little bow and was just like, I cede to you this subway car.
John: I cede to you this train.
John: I am not worthy to be on this train.
John: And the door closes, and off he goes into the tunnel.
John: And the thing is, I don't know what this guy does.
John: He is a mechanic or some kind of... He works with his hands.
John: But someone saw him in the world, and he knew it.
John: He knew that he had been seen...
John: And I do not know if he was used to being seen that way.
John: He works with some guys.
John: They know who he is.
John: He just travels the subway.
John: And to most people, he's just a guy.
John: He's just one more New York guy on the subway.
John: But I saw him.
John: And, you know, who knows whether he took that knowledge that now he had been recognized and he took that into that subway tunnel and on to the rest of his day and on to the rest of his life.
John: And I don't know what happens.
John: I don't know whether that is...
John: Whether recognizing him in that way, like, activated his powers in a different light.
John: Do you imagine that he gets that a lot?
John: No.
John: No, no, no.
Merlin: Especially not in New York.
Merlin: That's a shoe city.
Merlin: So there's a lot of people who are pretty pleased with their shoes.
Merlin: You probably don't get the head nod.
John: And I'm sure he gets people that are like, oh, nice boots.
John: But to recognize that those boots were communicating something about him...
John: Well, I don't know.
John: I'm not sure.
John: I have never seen a story of a man writ in his boots like that one encounter where it was just like, that is not a boot you can buy.
John: That is a boot you have to make.
John: So, that butterfly effect where it can be so small.
John: I mean, with this kid, I had no idea that he was so – that that Filson story and my sort of Alaskan bravado combined – because I was only 22 –
John: that it combined at that time to be something that would make him like change the course of his life from being like a little mod rocker kid to becoming an Alaskan hunting guide you have a moment like that on the subway where you're like I see you I know that you are bigger than you let on and then he gets he gets goes down the road and he's like wait a minute that kid's right I'm bigger than I let on I'm bigger I'm bigger
Merlin: i am recognizable the thing that the thing about me that is big is recognizable to people and the problem is that most people don't see it not that i'm not actually that big but he might he might have known that the that they were cool and that they were maybe even unique but he maybe hadn't internalized that he was the one who had the foot in those like that there was something bigger going on than nice footwear
John: But, I mean, he nodded at me like the fucking Buddha, I swear to you.
John: He knows.
John: It's just I'm not sure if he knows that other people can see him.
John: And I'm not even sure whether that is a good thing that I did by seeing him.
John: You know, like maybe the awareness that he is visible to the world in that way.
John: And maybe that is maybe that like was a ripple in the in the force somehow.
John: But anyway, I choose not to think about it.
John: And I trust that that man has the trust that he has the capacity that he is capable of going and using that power for good because he seemed like one of he seemed like a good wizard.
Hmm.
Merlin: I bet you've had this effect on – certainly on more people than just the waterproof My Bloody Valentine guy.
Merlin: I bet you've changed a lot of lives.
Merlin: You should give yourself credit is what I'm saying.
John: My knowledge of the female orgasm has definitely changed people's lives.
Merlin: Yeah, you can't prove a negative.
Merlin: It's good to know because, I mean, you're going to save a lot of time and frustration and chafing.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: You shouldn't go fracking where there's no gas.
John: Yeah, listen, you don't have to reinvent the wheel.
John: We know how this is done.
Merlin: Wheels don't have orgasms.
John: Let's just settle down.
John: Let's just settle down.
John: Everybody breathe.
John: Easy.
John: That's right.
John: Easy there.
John: Easy there.
John: You're feeling your oats.
John: Now let's just... Let's just all think about what we've done.
John: Let's lower the lights.
John: I do feel like one of the things, one of the powers that we can exercise with one another is that power of recognition.
John: When you see someone in the world and you see that they are taking great care about a certain aspect of themselves or you see that they are...
John: That they are interacting with the world in a way that is more profound than other people are aware of in the small spaces that we share with one another.
John: When you see those things, I have always felt an obligation to acknowledge them to the other person.
John: I cannot pass somebody who has...
John: Who has taken the time and energy to tailor themselves or somebody who does a small kindness on the street that no one else notices.
John: Or someone who just has a certain way of walking off the curb into the street that is more elegant than the moment necessitated.
John: I pay attention to those things overtly.
John: I spend more time on the street bowing to people and congratulating them
John: And it actually impedes my progress through the city.
John: Like, it takes me an extra half an hour to get anywhere.
John: Because when I see somebody who does something or even is just walking around and looking up at the second story of buildings and noticing the cornices, if I see someone doing that, I pay them the compliment of noticing it.
John: And that is a thing we can all do more of.
John: And just say like not only like nice shoes but like, aha, I see your shoes.
Merlin: I wish I feel – I think I never thought of it quite the way you're saying but I definitely feel the same way.
Merlin: I mean there's just sometimes when you see somebody and you're like, wow, you know what?
Merlin: You win today.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Like that.
Merlin: You win today.
Merlin: You win today.
Merlin: Like you, you are, I wish I could say to like this African American lady who smells really cool and has a giant hat with feathers and has clearly has an extraordinary level of dignity and self worth and carriage.
Merlin: We just want to go, you know what?
Merlin: You are so fucking cool.
Merlin: And there's no way, I don't know.
Merlin: There's not a great way to say that without sounding creepy, but I totally agree with you.
Merlin: I said about carriage.
Merlin: There's some, sometimes you just see the way somebody handles themselves and
Merlin: Where, you know, they're just in that Miles Davis sense, not, you know, that he's black, but I mean, they're cool in like the old sense of the word, like they're self-possessed.
John: Well, this is what I have learned in my life, which is that no one doesn't appreciate being told that they look beautiful today.
John: And it is the easiest compliment to pay and you can say it as you pass someone on the street.
John: Like, you look great today.
John: And then you just keep going.
John: There's nothing creepy about it.
John: No one doesn't like that.
John: Like, if you walk past a 70-year-old man who is wearing a suit and walking with a cane and you say, you look great today, sir.
Mm-hmm.
John: There is no downside to that.
John: And the same is true about a 24-year-old woman who looks great.
John: You can pay her that compliment, and it is not... This world that we're living in where paying a woman a compliment on the street is some kind of objectifying colonialization of her is a crazy...
Merlin: That's the kind of shit I believed when I was 21, and it's absolutely not accurate.
Merlin: You look great today.
Merlin: What nobody likes is somebody who is breaching their perimeter and acting creepy and leering.
Merlin: Nobody likes that.
Merlin: My only addendum to what you're saying, I totally agree with what you're saying.
Merlin: My only addendum is to, well, first of all, stay in motion while you're doing it, but also bring some specificity to it.
Merlin: Maybe if you say to that guy, sir, that suit is impeccable.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Is one thing.
Merlin: Or you could just say, like, if you see, like, you pass that lady, that 24-year lady, you know what?
Merlin: Your hair is awesome.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: There's nobody who has cool hair and is 24 that doesn't want you to go.
Merlin: And you know what I'll do sometimes?
Merlin: I will leave off the dependent clause, or I guess, yeah, independent clause, of I almost always hate tattoos, but, and I will say that is a really cool fucking tattoo.
Merlin: Uh-huh.
Merlin: What's that person want to hear?
Merlin: Do you think they want to hear, like, oh, that's another tattoo.
Merlin: Good for you.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: I mean, if somebody has taken the time to do something, they appreciate it being appreciated.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: And it's a rare moment in a day where you can make it not about you for a second.
John: Like, they don't care what you're feeling about tattoos.
John: You can just say, I love that tattoo.
John: Your hair looks great.
John: You know, like...
Merlin: Well, maybe that's – maybe part of the core of it is there's certainly some small part of it that is about you, the compliment giver.
Merlin: Part of the problem with the leering and the creepy and that stuff and getting into the specificity of you look like you have hard nipples, like that's a little too specific.
Merlin: But like if that compliment is really all about you, the giver.
Merlin: you know um like there's this one guy in my neighborhood who i hope dies with fire and he just walks around and he's just i want to hate this guy so much he just walks around going hey could i buy you dinner tonight oh yeah and it's like oh i understand you you want me to suck your cock that's hilarious it's the david cross thing you know if you ask 100 women maybe one of them's gonna want to fuck on a pile of trash
Merlin: It's called the lottery.
Merlin: But the thing is, there's this definition of love that's a little fruity.
Merlin: But one definition of love I think is nice is that you care more about the happiness and welfare of someone else than you do about your own.
Merlin: I think that applies to compliments too.
Merlin: And the thing is, if that compliment is tendered with dignity and honesty and enthusiasm and then you fucking move on –
Merlin: I don't think there's a world in which somebody doesn't appreciate it.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: And if that person, let's be honest, as cool as they might be, if they don't appreciate that, fuck them.
John: Well, that's their problem.
John: And you don't even have to carry it with you because you're already down the street.
John: I mean, I will say that every once in a while I stop and say, Madame, your décolletage is raising a volcanic...
John: feeling in the mountain of a man that I am.
Merlin: Madam, may I speak with some candor?
Merlin: Your first through third petticoats left me nonplussed.
Merlin: The fifth through ninth have left me rigid and curious.
John: Are you familiar with the female orgasm?
Merlin: is it a thing that you have experienced firsthand is that dress felt it is now dignity man fucking dignity is in short supply because the problem is this this this has to do with with everything we're talking about here everything that's important it's these misunderstandings about things that are they seem
Merlin: like shades of gray, but they really aren't.
Merlin: Dignity is not the same thing as being stuck up.
Merlin: Dignity is not the same thing as conceit.
Merlin: No, or pretension.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I mean, absolutely.
Merlin: I have seen all kinds of people of different classes.
Merlin: You know, the thing is, a lot of people who are rich...
Merlin: have historical dignity, and they've never had their ass well and truly kicked, right?
Merlin: Some, some.
Merlin: It's easy to have dignity if you've never, you know, done a face plant.
Merlin: But there are a lot of people who, by virtue of the fact of having been through so many face plants, have a kind of quiet dignity.
Merlin: And you could feel it in a room.
Merlin: When somebody like that walks in, you could be at the fucking DMV, and you see somebody who might be like a tubercular Mexican man, but you're like, you know what?
Merlin: Look at the way that guy carries himself.
Merlin: There's no way on my best healthy day that I could carry myself that well, and you feel it in the room.
Merlin: I honestly believe that, and I think dignity, as undignified as I may seem sometimes, I really honor it in other people.
Merlin: I would like to seek it out in myself, and I think it's something that we've lost because it feels fancy.
John: There is so much we've lost because it feels fancy.
John: And I was thinking about this the other day.
John: We live in a culture now where we have spent so much time saying to ourselves over and over that narcissism is like this loving of oneself that is unbecoming.
Yeah.
John: And so all of our narcissism as a culture is directed at hating ourselves.
John: And we think that makes you more authentic.
John: Yeah, that because we hate ourselves, somehow the fact that we are still spending all day long thinking only about ourselves, somehow it's not narcissistic because it is directed into this blackness.
Merlin: Oh, I mean, let's go back to the Greeks.
Merlin: Let's go back to narcissists.
Merlin: It doesn't matter what the emotion is.
Merlin: If it's an inward-turning emotion that you are turning over in your mind for its own sake, whether you love or hate yourself, if you're obsessed about that, you're a narcissist.
John: Right.
John: And so, frankly, of the two, having lived in a culture here in the Northwest where, for ten years, hating oneself was basically the only creative reaction you could have to the world—
John: or the only acceptable creative reaction you could have to the world, was hating yourself.
John: And realizing like, you know what, of the two, I would much rather people walk around, if they're going to be thinking about themselves all the time, why not love themselves?
John: You know, I mean, and frankly, I think the route to thinking about other people comes through loving yourself rather than hating yourself.
John: And I've watched so many people, artists and otherwise, who go down this death spiral of self-hate
John: Where they become the most narcissistic, the least lovable, the least likable, the least useful people.
John: Because they are consumed with their own failings.
John: And I'm guilty of this myself.
John: And I think it changes with generations.
John: And this new generation...
John: One of the reasons that people our age are so mad at 21-year-olds is that they seem to be having fun, a lot of them.
John: And it's a generation that maybe is going to turn the tide and be frivolous and be onanistic.
John: But I feel like that's as valid a...
Merlin: a valid a form of of like uh self-obsession as as any of the grunge era boo-hoo-hooing i really do well i mean well what could also what could be and maybe we're both guilty of this right now but what could be more narcissistic than criticizing someone for not hating themselves in the same way that you do or that one does you know what i mean and that's why i think punk rock is bullshit hmm
John: I'm not going to write that down.
John: You're not going to write... You have an opportunity to write Punk Rock is Bullshit on a 3x5 card.
John: And then give that over the internet to some fan and you're going to deprive them of that?
Merlin: L-S-H-I-T.
Merlin: Got it.
Merlin: L-S-H-I-T.
Merlin: Oh, that was me pretending like I was finishing writing that down.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
John: I thought that was like a new kind of shit.
Merlin: Here's a B. Here's my slight addendum to that.
Merlin: I agree with you, but here's my slight addendum to that.
Merlin: Is that loving yourself and accepting yourself are far from being the same thing.
Merlin: Because there are a lot of people who really fucking love themselves to the point of wanting to cry how much they love themselves, but they haven't ever really accepted themselves.
Merlin: And as Morrissey has told us...
Merlin: Why can't you accept yourself?
John: Why can't Morris accept himself?
Merlin: It's time the tale, we're told, of how you took a child and you made him old, you made him old, you made him old.
John: God.
Merlin: John, I dreamt about you last night, and I fell out of bed twice.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: You're the bee's knees.
Merlin: Everyone's your friend.
Merlin: Everyone's your friend in New York City.
John: I was at Filson yesterday, and one of the things that this guy, this friend of mine, who is the institutional memory of Filson said, is he said, not very long ago, Johnny Marr came in.
John: Shut up.
John: Johnny Marr came in, and he bought $2,000 worth of Filson clothes.
Merlin: Notwithstanding your feelings on the Smiths.
Merlin: Johnny Marr?
John: fucking suey fucking generous the way that man plays and now i know he's walking around somewhere wherever that is he's waterproof he is completely waterproof does he live in manchester uh i think they call it madchester he probably he probably lives in new york or la probably i think he was living in portland for a while because he was in modest mouse well he used to play with billy brag too
Merlin: He's done a lot of work.
Merlin: Hey, John, you ever pull out that Rick?
Merlin: What do you got, a 330?
Merlin: What is that?
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: You ever pull out the 330 and try to play his parts?
Merlin: Johnny Marr?
Merlin: I mean, you're a really good guitar player.
Merlin: I mean, I still don't understand how you play shapes, especially live, but you ever try and play a Johnny Marr part?
Merlin: It's a lot more complicated than it seems.
Merlin: It's very complicated.
Merlin: He's like the, not the anti-Pete Townsend, but he's playing, he's covering a lot of ground with...
Merlin: with some crazy picking and open strings and like, just play the beginning of this charming man and try to make it sound right.
John: It will not sound peppy.
John: It's the Peter Buck method of like, I'm not doing anything, but I'm actually doing everything.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: What was I watching?
Merlin: I was watching – oh, you're not a big Bruce Springsteen fan, right?
Merlin: Not really.
Merlin: You're getting me in trouble with our listening public.
Merlin: But I was – did you know that he burns?
Merlin: What does that mean?
John: That he shreds.
John: A Bruce?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Bruce is one of those guys, my understanding of him is that he... I mean, he's not like a technical, you know, but he's cleaner than Jimmy Page and he can do, maybe not Prince style, but he can do some serious pull-offs and bends and shit when he wants to.
John: He approached becoming a rock musician with a single-minded sense of purpose.
Merlin: He was like the Ben Franklin of working man rock.
Merlin: He knew where he was going.
John: Don't you think?
John: So the Holocaust of working man rock that we live in now is a product of Bruce Springsteen.
John: I do agree with that.
Merlin: Oh, and the Holocaust of people who write and perform their own songs is the Holocaust of Bob Dylan.
Merlin: Bob Dylan is responsible.
Merlin: Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, The Beatles, and Neil Young are...
Merlin: B, amazing, and A, responsible for so much shitty music that they did not create.
John: The four writers of the apocalypse.
Merlin: Between Buffy St.
Merlin: Marie, maybe Joan Baez, but definitely Joni Mitchell, do you realize how many shitty, trilling folk songs have come out?
John: Do I realize?
John: Do you realize?
John: I live in constant fear that I'm going to walk out the door and some woman with blonde hair is going to go, whoo!
Merlin: Speaking of which, do you realize, can you imagine how many shitty bands have started because of My Bloody Valentine?
John: can you imagine i have i have stood at the foot of the stage and watched dozens of bad of shitty bands that that started well i let's play a game called i turn off your pedals and see what you sound like i told you the story about the time that guy came in to audition for the western state hurricane no no no he came in he was like you know i i think you guys are amazing i think you need another guitar player circa 97 98
John: Yeah, somewhere around there.
John: He came in and he had this really cool Les Paul.
John: He was a very cool looking dude.
John: Super cool kid.
John: And he set up his amp and his gear.
John: He had an AC-30.
John: It was so cool.
John: And then he starts setting up his pedals.
John: And he sets up these pedals in this semi-circle around himself.
John: And I'm standing there and I have one pedal.
John: I have a rat pedal.
John: Your arms are folded, you're seated, and you're just waiting.
John: I'm just waiting.
John: I'm standing, but I'm standing there with my Rickenbacker and my rat pedal, and I'm watching as this kid sets up.
John: Cha-chunk, cha-chunk, as he plugs in patch cables.
John: And every one of them has a 9-volt battery, and he sets up this semicircle of pedals around himself that is three-quarters of a circle around him.
John: It is something like 24.
John: Wait a minute.
Merlin: They're not on a board.
John: They're not on a board.
John: He's setting each one of them individually up in a semicircle.
John: Perfect.
John: And he keeps kind of adjusting the radius as he goes so that the circle is perfect.
John: And they're all even.
John: I'm watching him and I'm like, and I say, you know, so that's a lot of pedals.
John: And he goes, well, you know, every one of them does a different thing, and I just use them.
John: I use a season to taste.
John: I use them as color, and I'm thinking, wow.
John: You know, this was at a time when I never touched the volume or tone knob on my guitar for any other purpose than compulsively to make sure they were turned all the way up.
John: Or like not feeding back.
John: No, no, no.
John: I never adjusted those knobs in any way other than to make sure they were turned all the way up.
John: And at a certain point, I realized that I was so compulsive about touching these knobs to make sure they were all the way up that I just put duct tape across all of the knobs on my guitar so that I couldn't touch them.
John: And they were just all the way up.
John: I never made any adjustments of any kind to any of my gear.
John: I just set all of it on 11 and then flew.
John: And so I'm thinking to myself, maybe this guy is one of these guys that knows how pedals work, that knows how knobs work.
John: And the reason he has four delay pedals is that every one of them is set to a different thing.
John: Maybe this guy is the edge.
Merlin: I was just thinking, maybe it's the edge and he's going to pull out something I've never heard before.
John: Yeah, and so we start playing, and the first song we play is Unsalted Butter.
John: Western State Hurricanes version, not Long Winter's version.
John: Western State version was more rock and roll.
John: But still, like... It's like a tune with a bouncing little melody.
John: And this guy starts to play the rhythm part, and within 45 seconds...
John: He has found a reason to turn every pedal on.
Merlin: He's got the flanger.
John: And he's going...
John: And so we get to the end of the song, and he's just ripping my face off.
John: We get to the end of the song, and I was like, well, that looks interesting.
John: Why don't we move on, and we'll try something that's a little bit softer, a little bit more melodic.
John: This has got a sort of more of a cleaner tone.
John: And he's like, okay, great, great, cool.
John: And we start playing...
John: Through With Love or whatever, some song that's got a pretty bouncy beat and it's very chordal.
John: And within 45 seconds, he's just... And the entire rehearsal was like this.
John: He seasoned to taste, and by seasoned to taste, he meant all 21 pedals on at all times.
John: But at the end of every song, he turned every one of them off.
John: Like, somehow, the launch pad of, like, starting the tune and then hitting each pedal.
John: Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
John: Like, that was his tone.
John: And I was like, I really don't think that this is going to work.
Merlin: The obvious reason you already know why I'm asking this that he didn't have on a board was, well, first of all, it sounds like he's in his mom's basement where he has a lot of control over what he does.
Merlin: If he had done that a lot and had played a lot of live shows with that shit, he would have a board.
Merlin: But also in my head, I'm thinking this is 11 points of failure.
Merlin: Because, I mean, I guess, you know, when I've played with pedals in the past, maybe I'm old and this technology has improved, but there were some things where, like, if that battery died, you lost the signal.
Merlin: It wasn't just that your phase shifter wasn't as good.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: You could not take this rig on the road.
Merlin: It would be impossible.
Merlin: Well, I mean, if you're – okay, so if you're Charles Bissell, who – by the way, who's They Might Be Giants cover of the Land of Crane is pretty great.
Merlin: But if you're Pedal Boy – literally, that's his nickname, Pedal Boy, Charles from the Rens.
Merlin: Like, you know, he does magic with that stuff.
Merlin: What he does is very, very unusual.
Merlin: Don't you think?
Merlin: I mean, I know it's not to everybody's taste.
Merlin: They're personally one of my favorite bands.
John: But I mean – But here's the thing about Charles, and you know this from firsthand experience.
John: If Charles has a Stratocaster plugged directly into a Fender Twin –
Merlin: he makes it sound incredible he's he's he's a guitar teacher and he plays like one his his playing is impeccable and he he does shit that i would never tell anybody in their first five years of guitar playing to play because if i told you to do that thing where you go across above the neck yeah like you know who's allowed to do that charles and eddie van halen nobody else is allowed to do that ever
John: Well, I do it sometimes when I'm really – When you're full of beans, your glasses fall off, you're doing Nora.
John: Yeah, I'm really thrusting.
John: Nora time.
John: Thrusting my pants zipper at the people in the front row.
Merlin: I watched that video of the hurricanes on that TV show when you're doing Nora.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And man, was it like that when you guys would always play live?
Merlin: Nora was the show closer, right?
John: Yeah, and my glasses would fly across the stage at some point.
John: And toward the end of the Reston State Hurricanes run, we'd get halfway through Nora and everybody else in the band would go to the outside edge of the stage and kind of cower behind their amps because they knew that I was about to become a cyclist.
John: Because John's devil dogs were in the pots?
John: Yeah.
John: That was at a time when I had stopped drinking and doing drugs, but I still had a tremendous kinetic energy inside me that only came out in rock and roll.
John: And it came out as a kind of violent explosion of clothes.
John: Like everything came up.
John: I was like the guy from Wasabi Farm.
Merlin: Oh, is he the naked guy?
Yeah.