Ep. 61: "Neighborhood Stick Fight"
John: Hello.
John: Hi, John.
John: Hi, Merlin.
Merlin: How are you?
Merlin: It's early.
Merlin: It's early.
Merlin: I know it's early.
John: I drove all night.
John: Hmm.
Merlin: Just to be here with me.
John: Yeah, I did.
John: I did.
John: I was in Portland last night at like 1.30 in the morning and I drove home and it was...
John: It was a rainstorm.
John: How long a drive is that?
John: Remind me.
John: That's a three-hour drive.
John: But it was a rainstorm, and I haven't really been to sleep.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: Well, listen.
Merlin: We'll keep this short.
Merlin: I appreciate you being here.
John: No, no, no.
John: It's great.
John: I've got Ted Nugent's Wango Tango going in my head.
John: On purpose?
John: No.
John: It just popped in there.
John: I just started going, the Maserati.
John: It's a Maserati.
John: It's a Maserati.
Merlin: He's got a flair for a hook.
John: He does.
John: He does not have a lyric writing flair.
John: That's a free-for-all.
John: Because he's a fucking idiot.
Merlin: Yeah, he's gotten by on the strength for a pretty long time.
John: You know, he's gotten by on the fact that his guitar can shoot the balls off of a rhinoceros at 150 yards.
Merlin: He seems like he's got a lot to prove mainly to himself.
John: Yeah, he's a guy that needs a punch in the nose.
John: And by punch in the nose, I mean crossbow.
John: Crossbow to the nose.
John: Crossbow bolt to the nose.
Merlin: Yeah, he's one of those guys, like, I don't know a lot about him.
Merlin: I know he had some role in that awesome Journey to the Center of Your Mind song when he was, I guess, like 12.
John: He became the legal guardian of his teenage girlfriend.
Merlin: Oh, that's sweet.
Merlin: Now, how is that?
Merlin: Where does he live?
Merlin: Do you know?
Merlin: Do you have sense of that?
John: No, like Michigan or upstate somewhere, some Midwestern upstate place.
John: But he had he had some girlfriend who was like 13.
John: And he went to her parents and he said, listen, this is going to go one of a couple of ways.
John: I think you should just make me her legal guardian.
John: what really yeah and they acquiesced yeah and then he was just he was just walking around with his little really teenage girlfriend like not like not like a little teenaged she was not a little teenage she was fully teenaged she was 100 early teens man it was the 70s you could do a lot of oh okay so she's a lot of shit are they still together to your knowledge
John: They were together for a long time.
John: It was a Mary Kay Letourneau situation where when the young person became, when she gained her majority, as we say, they stayed together.
John: Whether or not happily or whether it was a chained in the basement situation, I can't say.
John: They never invited me over.
Merlin: You know, if you go and you're going to go, I don't know, you know, talk to Tatalia or something.
Merlin: You know, I mean, if somebody walks in and smiles and puts a sidearm on the table, it changes the conversation.
Merlin: I just think being in an upstate home filled with weapons will over time change your perception of what's okay.
John: You're going to get a little bit of the Stockholm syndrome, I believe.
John: That's a terrific phrase.
John: Yeah.
John: I've had that.
John: I went into a room one time, and a guy put a gun on the table.
John: And let me tell you, Merlin, it did change the tenor of the conversation.
John: You're a man who knows what a gun can do.
John: Well, I have never been shot.
Merlin: Yeah, but I mean, it seems to me like my late father, who was a sportsman and taught gun safety classes.
Merlin: He was an Eagle Scout.
Merlin: He was a real outdoorsy guy.
Merlin: He's from the generation when you would be in the NRA because you didn't want people to die.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: The NRA was a safety organization.
Merlin: Okay, so all I'm saying is it strikes me that you're a man who's seen – you're familiar.
Merlin: Again, this is like the guy, the There Will Be Consequences guy.
Merlin: He's never gotten a really serious punch in the nose, and so he talks about consequences without really understanding what that means, right?
Merlin: And you understand.
Merlin: Somebody puts a – I'm guessing a pistol on the table?
John: It was a pistol, yeah.
John: You know, I was at a bar one time with a good friend of mine who was one of those guys that works the crab boats like you see on the television.
John: And this was in the heyday of the crabbing era in Alaska, where an 18-year-old guy could make $50,000 in three months.
Merlin: Yeah, you talked about this, where you could be just a kid and come and get paid cash.
John: Yeah, just crazy amounts of money.
John: And we went to a bar one time, and he asked my sister to dance.
John: And...
John: And they danced for a little bit up kind of close to the stage.
John: And there was a band playing kind of reggae ska or whatever.
John: And at a certain point, he realized that he couldn't dance
John: as well as he wanted to with the gun tucked in the waistband of his pants so he took the gun out and he put it on the stage so that he could dance with my sister better you know just kind of like tucked it tucked it behind the monitors on the stage so that he was taking off a heavy coat yeah he was just like oh man this thing is going to slide down in my underwear
Merlin: Now, when you're in crab country and you're dancing with a lady and you want to have a little more freedom of movement, you take out your pistol and you put it on the stage, is that just the kind of thing that happens there?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You don't see a lot of that at the Jack Pine.
John: I was in the bar at the time, and it did not escape notice.
John: I think the band was a little bit freaked out.
John: But they kept skying away.
John: My sister thought it was hilarious.
John: I mean, this is a good buddy of mine who just was suffering through a period, which in his case lasted 15 years, a period of compromised judgment.
LAUGHTER
John: It was a 15-year-long period where he had no judgment of any kind.
John: But confusingly, or maybe this says more about Alaska in the 80s than... Or it says maybe all you need to say about Alaska in the 80s.
John: But he was not expelled from the bar.
John: The song did not stop.
John: And I think they finished dancing and he put the gun back in his pants and the night went on.
Merlin: It's not like he skipped out on his tab.
John: Yeah, it wasn't like a needle across a record situation.
Merlin: This is the thing about life, John, is that you...
Merlin: I think one thing that is a problem for people is that they understand or they think they understand their world and they have observed or constructed a bunch of perhaps real or often make-believe rules about how things could go.
Merlin: And when things diverge from that is when they get super freaky.
Merlin: And that's why those people are super freaky a lot.
Merlin: It's like people who think it's safe to drive 19 miles per hour on a highway.
Merlin: That is about that.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: If everybody's driving 90, you're not being safe.
John: I've been dealing with those people for the last 16 hours because it's raining like crazy up here.
John: Seattle drivers are already terrible.
John: The rain is not a thing we're unaccustomed to, but when it really starts coming down, people get into this mode of like, the safest lane to be in is the fast lane, and the safest speed is 40 miles an hour.
John: It's like neither one of those statements is true.
John: The safest lane for you to be in is your driveway with the engine off.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: And so I'm driving, you know, I'm trying to just get around town.
John: And it is a hydroplaning situation.
John: Cars are hydroplaning.
Merlin: I know, at least in Florida, if it didn't rain for a while, when it very first rained, it would kind of, I don't know, like leach the oil out of the road and everything got extra crazy.
John: There's that, but there's also just straight up four inches of water on the roads.
John: Oh.
John: So...
John: So cars are, it's definitely a squirrely situation, but when your car hydroplanes, you do not, it's the same rules that we have discussed many times.
John: You do not touch the brakes.
John: You do not, you do not panic.
John: You do not.
Merlin: Don't panic and don't start steering all over the place.
John: Yeah.
John: You just keep, keep driving, keep, keep going.
John: It's fine.
John: You're, you're fine, you know, but, but no one seems to get that.
John: And it's just all, all day long.
John: All these people that should have just stayed home.
John: If you can't,
John: If you can't get to where you're going safely, just stay home.
John: Take a day off from work.
John: Watch TV.
John: Make some nachos.
John: But they're out imperiling people.
Merlin: It almost makes you wish there were like a second, like a junior highway.
Merlin: I mean, if Eisenhower or whomever had had a lot of forethought, you know.
John: Like frontage road, you're saying.
Merlin: Yeah, well, you know how like sometimes you have like a service road.
Merlin: Yeah, an access road.
Merlin: That mostly runs alongside of a highway.
Merlin: Maybe those people, that could be like kind of a putt-putt version of highway driving.
Merlin: Where they could just kind of get acquainted, you know, hit it between Lincoln's legs and try not to inconvenience John.
John: But here's the problem with that.
John: And we've seen this at TSA.
John: In airports where they say, okay, this is the green lane.
John: The green lane is for people who have never left the house before.
John: The green lane is for people who, you know, who had a frontal lobotomy or have 14 kids or who are escorting like...
John: Here's the green lane.
John: You go there.
John: Then the blue lane is for people who are just like generally competent people.
John: They have been on an airplane before, but maybe they don't know where their keys are.
John: And then there's the black diamond lane for people who have...
John: who travel with no luggage at all.
John: Everybody's mad and everybody's ready.
John: They're fucking ninjas.
John: They are CIA agents and they are rock stars and they are moving, moving, moving.
John: And then, so TSA sets this up and then they do not appoint the simple person to stand at the head of the line and say, um, miss, you are not a black diamond traveler.
John: Let us be honest.
John: Let us move over here into this area.
John: Let the Black Diamond people all have a look on their face.
John: Like, they have a look on their face.
Merlin: I'm that guy.
Merlin: You know me, John.
Merlin: I am not, by and large, a competitive person.
Merlin: But I become extremely competitive, mostly with myself in that line.
Merlin: I went three years without causing a beep.
Merlin: And I, not only, here's the thing.
Merlin: Not only do I not inconvenience others.
Merlin: Not only do I grab extra crates and have it ready for everybody.
Merlin: I know to move, keep everything moving, moving, moving.
Merlin: I keep moving forward.
Merlin: But I'm there to help out.
Merlin: I'm throwing a line.
Merlin: And, man, I got Eye of the Tiger in that line.
John: I don't even use a bin anymore.
John: I walk up.
John: I throw my keys through the x-ray machine.
John: I stand at one end and I huck them.
John: And then I'm through the fucking thing.
John: They don't wave me through.
Merlin: It's like the Death Star.
Merlin: It's an almost impossible shot.
Merlin: And somehow it goes clean through.
John: And then I'm through the metal detector.
Merlin: First they're mad.
Merlin: And they're like, oh my god, you actually did that.
John: I picked the pocket of the guy whose job it is to wave you through.
John: I've got his wallet in my hand.
John: You mean this one?
John: I've got, I've got four passports.
John: I'm like, get the fuck out of my way.
John: And then, you know, and then right in front of me, there's, there's 14 grandmothers from Singapore who've never been on an airplane before.
John: And they're all bringing holy water from Lords and they're, you know, and it's just like, give me the fuck.
John: So anyway, we would build a highway system with like junior highway over to the side, but then the tea party,
John: would have some referendum that reduces the taxes on car tabs so that we can't afford to have that guy in a booth who's like, you, sir, are not... Sir, you with the Maserati, you can drive the normal freeway.
John: You, my friend, in your Volvo sedan, not even a station wagon, a Volvo sedan, you're on the junior highway.
John: But no, there would not be that person.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: First of all, I would like to rescind that suggestion because it's stupid and costly and it's anti-supertrain in every meaningful way.
Merlin: So how about this instead?
Merlin: Here's my thinking.
Merlin: This is something that I ruminate upon a lot, which is this whole notion – you can call it a million different things.
Merlin: Past is prologue.
Merlin: yesterday's weather we can tell a lot about what you will do in the future based on what you have or have not done in the past this is something i nearly obsess over is people thinking you know like in your case for example you got somebody who goes oh like in my head you know like i'm an angry guy with no penis and like i've imagined myself being in a lot of fights so naturally i assume that i would be great in a fight but that guy's never been punched in the nose that is not a black diamond lane guy right
John: You're talking about a lot of guys in tracksuits in the United Kingdom right now.
Merlin: They have shaved heads there wearing tracksuits.
Merlin: Tracksuits, tracksuits, they're called chavs, I think.
Merlin: I don't know if it's ping pong.
Merlin: But, you know, I think tracksuits denote different things in different places, even within the state of New York.
Merlin: But here's my thinking.
Merlin: Here's my thinking.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: It is farcical to me how many things you just get to do with just a basic –
Merlin: just the most basic testing or approval.
Merlin: Like, for example, but like, let's say, I'm trying to think of a good example, mountain climbing, martial arts, you know, to some extent, I don't know, I don't know if this was skiing, but I mean, when you go into martial arts, if you're coming from another dojo and you say, hey, listen, you know, I'm a green belt in Taekwondo, they're not going to put you up against a four-year-old
Merlin: Or Chuck Norris because that's not an appropriate matchup.
Merlin: You're going to have to show, okay, well, let's show me some of your moves, and I'll tell you what belt you got.
Merlin: Here's what I'm thinking.
Merlin: Here's the problem.
Merlin: All of the money that we have poured, that we have literally poured into the TSA, there's a lot of thinking on the front end and not a lot of thinking on the back end.
Merlin: It's all hell breaks loose once you get past that area.
Merlin: Everybody's running around with their belts in their shoes, sitting down.
Merlin: They're confused.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: There should be someone there grading them, and that should go on to some kind of a permanent record.
Merlin: I don't want to be totalitarian.
Merlin: I don't want to be Paul Pott, but I'm just saying.
Merlin: So you go through there and you say, hey, give me an idea.
Merlin: What kind of belt are you at getting through here?
Merlin: You say, well, I think I'm pretty good.
Merlin: If it takes you 45 minutes and you had souvenir gunpowder, you know what?
Merlin: Next time, next time, you're going to be in a different lane.
John: No, you know what happens at the end of that?
John: They bend you over and they give you a tattoo.
John: A tattoo.
John: They give you a little tattoo, and I'm not saying like a number on the arm.
Merlin: But doesn't it remove the room for improvement in the future?
John: I'm saying it's like the way we grade beef.
John: Are you choice?
John: Are you prime?
John: Are you...
Merlin: One of those phony, phony, bologna Angus Kobe things.
John: Are you Chuck?
John: I don't know.
John: The lower grades, I'm not exactly sure what they are.
Merlin: John, it's a black art, all that stuff.
Merlin: And a lot of it's just BS.
Merlin: You know, the Kobe beef thing, it's a jam up.
Merlin: That's not a real thing, right?
Merlin: You know that?
Merlin: The Kobe beef?
Merlin: Oh, don't get me started on the Kobe beef.
John: Is it like Copper River Salmon where it's really a thing?
John: It's just not the thing that they make it out to be?
Merlin: Oh, you literally don't want to get me started on this.
Merlin: All the places you go and they say, would you like one of the Kobe beef bangers or whatever?
Merlin: Would you like a little shooter slider?
John: Yeah, a shooter slider.
Merlin: Okay, first of all, that's not Kobe beef.
Merlin: Like Kobe beef, every piece of the fucking beef has a goddamn...
Merlin: I forgot I was going to quit cursing.
John: Do you have a curse jar?
John: I'm trying to stop.
John: Why don't you put a curse jar on the thing and not throw a quarter in every time?
John: God, I need a big jar.
Merlin: I'm trying to stop.
Merlin: Anyway, point being, every piece of beef, it's a long story, but basically there's a serial number for all Kobe beef.
Merlin: And there are not enough air quotes.
Merlin: There literally can only be Kobe beef.
Merlin: This is beyond champagne.
John: Now I want some Kobe beef.
Merlin: I don't believe I've ever had it in that case.
Merlin: Increasingly, the places who are being straight up with you will say Kobe style beef.
John: Which just means they put some sugar water on it.
Merlin: Think of it this way.
Merlin: If you go through with your passport or whatever and they stamp it, there's lots more pages in there.
Merlin: You think about something like a report card.
Merlin: You think about a GPA.
Merlin: I think there should be a way you can bring your grade up.
Merlin: But if you got straight Fs at Black Diamond Lane, you're not going to come... You know what?
Merlin: You got to move to a different lane.
John: I just love the idea of tattooing people because I feel like the next step is just herding them into a Soylent Green machine.
Merlin: That is efficient.
John: I feel like... You know, this is why Hitler and stuff is such a popular part of our podcast because I believe that you are kind of a eugenicist and I am just a totalitarian...
John: basically a genocidal maniac.
John: Well, you're not maniacal, John.
John: You have good days.
John: I'm a calm genocidal.
Merlin: The thing is to have a cardiopulmonary system, you need pulmonary and you need cardio.
Merlin: You need a heart and lungs.
Merlin: You can't have them in obscurity.
Merlin: If you're going to have a genocidal maniac, you're going to want a eugenicist right next to him.
Merlin: Maybe with very small glasses.
John: Yeah, to lean over and whisper in my ear, let's not do tattoos.
John: Let's do a kind of a passport thing.
John: And then I go, oh, right, right.
John: That sounds good.
John: Tattoos have kind of already been done.
John: Yeah, yeah, right.
John: Okay.
John: All right.
John: Passport thing.
John: Good.
John: No, no.
John: But you have to show that passport.
Merlin: All I'm trying to say is I would fail in most meritocracies, but the fact that I accept my place in the meritocracy makes me better than almost everyone.
Merlin: Hmm.
Merlin: i understand that like when i'm with my kid even though it drives me bananas and i make her be as good at line as i am nobody's good at line anymore and and you want a child that's good at line we go into the into the uh you know the stupid family lane but because you know because i'm a gentleman that's what i'm gonna do i'm gonna go there but you know the fact is there's nobody all i'm saying is there's nobody there who's verifying that anybody deserved to be there in the first place i just you know what it is also i just don't like tattoos it's a that's part of the problem
John: That's true.
John: That's true.
John: You're right.
John: I don't like him either.
John: Although, I think there are a lot of people with tattoos listening to our podcast who want their tattoo choices validated by us.
John: I find that so hard to believe.
John: I want to give a blanket validation to everyone who's listening who has a tattoo.
John: I think your tattoo's amazing.
John: You sound like somebody who just came from Portland.
John: It's everybody else's tattoos I don't like, but your tattoo is amazing.
John: Is the dream of the 90s really still alive in Portland?
John: Oh, my God.
John: The dream of the 90s, I think, is getting pushed further south.
Merlin: I'm sorry, I've been watching Portlandia.
Merlin: I apologize.
John: It's getting pushed further and further south.
John: I think it's in Salem now.
John: The dream of the 90s.
John: The dream is spreading.
Merlin: I don't know.
John: There's a reason that there is no major city between San Francisco and Portland.
John: Well, really, and Seattle.
John: Portland doesn't qualify.
John: There's not a single major city.
Merlin: You're worried about people who listen to podcasts that have tattoos, but you're not worried about a place that's not even really in Northern California all the way to Seattle.
Merlin: Everywhere in between, there are no major cities.
Merlin: Tell me, name a major city.
Merlin: Eureka.
Merlin: That's not a major city.
John: You're right.
John: I'm trying to keep us out of trouble.
John: Eureka is a place where they circled the wagons and then they nailed the wagons to the floor.
John: Yeah.
John: And they called it a town and they were like, what do we call it?
John: I don't know.
John: Let's give it a name that makes people want to come here.
John: There's nothing there.
John: I mean, in that same space between San Francisco and Seattle on the East Coast, there are 100 million people living.
Merlin: You've got megalopolises, right?
Merlin: You've got those corridors.
John: It's a constant megalopolis the entire distance.
John: From San Francisco to Seattle, there are more sheep than humans.
John: There are more – I think there are probably more turtles than there are humans.
Merlin: You've got weed.
Merlin: You've got death cults.
Merlin: You've got republicans.
Merlin: And then you move into beards.
Merlin: You've got lumberjacks, ex-lumberjacks.
Merlin: You got X. I think a lumberjack.
Merlin: That's like being a Marine.
Merlin: There are no X lumberjacks.
John: Some, some, some like lumberjacks who, who like, who saw the light.
John: They were out there one day chopping down a tree and they were like, wait a minute.
John: The trees are our friends.
Merlin: Oh, so they start something like trees unlimited where they want to make sure they keep the trees alive so they can keep cutting them down.
Merlin: That's right.
John: Then they build a tree.
Merlin: That's conservation.
Merlin: We've talked about this.
John: You know, I don't... Wavy Gravy is out there living in a bus somewhere?
Merlin: I was at a party with Wavy Gravy once.
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: He seemed very self-involved.
Merlin: Well, he is wavy gravy.
Merlin: He was wearing a tie-dye shirt.
John: Yeah, that's his look.
John: That's his brand.
John: That's his brand.
Merlin: I just, you know, I mean, I don't know if you're aware of this.
Merlin: I spent a lot of time at Walgreens because there's a variety of things I need to get at Walgreens.
Merlin: I need my prescriptions.
Merlin: I need my ice cream.
John: I know how you are.
Merlin: Yeah, we bought a cape.
Merlin: We bought a cape at our Walgreens.
Merlin: But I'll just bet you, dimes to donuts, that when you bought that handsome, handsome cape that I really hope you still have.
John: I still have it.
Yeah.
Merlin: See, here's the thing.
Merlin: When I go to Walgreens, again, Eye of the Tiger, I know what I'm going to do.
Merlin: I know what I need to do.
Merlin: Of course, at Walgreens, they make it worse and worse and worse all the time because they add – it seems like they replace the point-of-sale devices.
Merlin: Every point-of-sale device.
Merlin: It gets – they all get worse every year.
Merlin: They get more complicated.
Merlin: They get more breast cancer buttons.
Merlin: There's more things that I have – more dinguses, dingai that I have to interact with.
Merlin: I just want to give you this money and I want you to let me leave.
Merlin: Now, that's not bad enough, right?
Merlin: The people who don't understand like how to run the car, the stripe is this way.
Merlin: That's what the illustration is telling you.
Merlin: It's – there's always a lady there.
Merlin: There's always at least one 60-year-old Chinese lady arguing about an expired coupon at every Walgreens.
Merlin: I'm starting to think that she might be an employee.
Merlin: And the thing is, it's part of the culture.
Merlin: I think arguing over coupons is a tentpole of the culture.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And we're all in this line.
Merlin: We just want to get our ice cream and move on with our lives.
Merlin: I think there should be – you know what?
Merlin: Maybe even a separate kiosk.
Merlin: There should be a coupon argument kiosk that you could go to.
John: The thing is that that lady in San Francisco is a little 60-year-old Chinese lady.
John: But in Florida, she's a little 60-year-old Jewish lady.
John: Like there is a 60-year-old lady thing that transcends all cultures.
John: All across America, there are these ladies arguing about that same coupon.
John: Expired coupon.
John: Expired coupon.
John: I just want to clarify.
John: For a thing she doesn't need or want.
John: I personally think that the UFOs who live under the North Pole, who are controlling the world governments...
John: are sending out these scouts.
John: First of all, they're changing the cash register so they're impossible to figure out.
John: And yet they're removing real human beings from cash registers.
John: So little by little, we're being just herded, funneled into this built-in frustration machine.
John: It's like a retail abattoir.
John: Yeah, here you go.
John: You're going to sit here and you're going to futz with this thing.
John: It's never going to give you a satisfying response.
John: There's going to be this plant, this little old lady arguing about an expired coupon.
John: And all this is some kind of preparation.
John: It's preparing us for living a bored life.
John: these alien cattle ships that are that are going to take us away and somehow i don't understand their culture but somehow on those ships we're going to be required our compliance is going to be required and this is a way that they're this is how they're breaking our spirits okay i'm sorry to say that i think i almost completely understand that but i have a couple questions
Merlin: So if I understand what you're saying, are the – let's just say – I don't want to be ping pong.
Merlin: The aging wo-mine and their expired coupons, are they aware – so first of all, you're saying they are a kind of emissary of the sub-Arctic – There's a couple of ways this could go.
John: They could be a sort of – You don't have all the details.
Merlin: Some of this is conjecture based on fact.
John: They could be a Jeffrey Dahmer situation where the aliens have dripped acid into their frontal lobe and made them not into, like, compliant sex slaves, but into, like, coupon automaton.
John: Coupon slaves.
John: Just coupon slaves where they hand them a coupon and they go, go try and redeem this coupon.
John: And the little lady goes...
John: And now she goes down the door and then the next one comes up and they're like, go try and redeem this coupon.
John: But they've taken away some crucial part of their brain.
John: Or they could be, I mean, for all we know, they're clones.
Merlin: Oh, I think they could very well be clones.
John: They could be clones.
Merlin: I don't see a lot of diversity in that ecosystem.
Merlin: None of them are tall.
Merlin: They're all the same size.
Merlin: All the same size.
Merlin: They got the bucket hats.
John: They could be another species.
John: They could be, for instance, they could be goats that have taken a human form.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Here's the thing.
Merlin: If you wanted to create a super army,
Merlin: of psychotic killing machines.
Merlin: The thing is, yes, you're going to want somebody pliant, but first you're going to want somebody big, strong, and psychotic.
Merlin: You can get them to be pliant through mind control, as we know, but you have to start with a form factor that's going to work for what you want, and here's the thing.
Merlin: They may not want to be killing machines per se in the way that you want, but they've got –
Merlin: They're already kind of wired for that.
Merlin: All you need to do is get everybody pointing in the same direction.
Merlin: In this case, these ladies are more than happy to spend an entire – literally an entire morning arguing over a non-existent coupon for a non-existent discount for an item that's not in stock.
Merlin: Now, I look at that as somebody who's not a part of the brood, and I think that's kind of a monkey ball's way to spend your morning.
Merlin: But there's something going on here.
Merlin: They are incentivized.
John: to spend that time.
Merlin: And they're not arguing.
Merlin: They don't look sad about it.
Merlin: They look extremely focused.
John: Here's my suggestion.
John: The store manager with whom they are arguing also a clone.
John: The entire thing is a passion play.
John: It's a tableau just for you.
John: And you're having this emotional reaction.
Merlin: And all of a sudden, I'm getting really used to that conversation going on for an hour.
John: That's right.
John: It is killing you softly with its song.
Merlin: I'm not going to file a complaint card.
Merlin: It happens so much that I would have to spend my day filling out complaint cards.
Merlin: If I were eventually going to be on the interplanetary sea barge with the Chinese ladies and the psychotics and the UFOs, they're going to want me to be in a position where this is the kind of thing that I'm used to.
Merlin: Yes, he's used to standing in line.
Merlin: Yes, he's used to waiting.
Merlin: And yes, he's used to our emissaries.
John: He's used to overhearing this conversation so that it seems normal.
John: And when we hand him an expired coupon and say, go try and redeem this, he's going to feel like that's a normal thing.
Merlin: It's the new normal.
John: Yeah.
John: I've heard this conversation.
John: I know how this goes.
John: I bet I can redeem this coupon.
Merlin: I don't feel great offering this up, but I would like you to be as honest as you're comfortable being.
Merlin: Do you think there's a chance that I might be a clone?
Merlin: I cannot imagine... I will keep doing this show as long as you want to do it, but have you ever gotten the sense that I might be a clone?
John: I cannot imagine what they would have cloned.
John: What they would have started with.
John: What they would have started with to produce you.
John: It would have had to have been... I cannot picture the life form that they... The starter in the Petri dish that would have produced you unless something went horribly awry.
John: Unless it was a thing where it was like Chuck chocolate and peanut butter accident.
John: It was like Gary Busey.
John: And then somebody like, oops, like it fell off the table and they scraped it all back into the thing.
John: And they got some like other stuff in there.
Merlin: Well, I just want to say that I can be very critical of people who don't know how to do line, but I just want to be open to improvement opportunities.
Merlin: And really, honestly, I want to be open to whatever the future holds for me.
John: Well, here's the thing.
John: What I'm concerned about, the point of this podcast for me this entire time has been to prepare you for your eventual role as a rebel leader.
John: Really?
John: For real?
John: Yeah, and I know it goes against your self-identity.
John: I'm far from rebellious.
John: That you will be a rebel leader, but I feel like this is what the Force is telling me.
John: Huh.
John: And so, all of this has just been me trying to deprogram you.
John: And I feel like now the cat's out of the bag.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: You'll probably wipe this, right?
Merlin: Yeah, maybe.
Merlin: There's a lot of mind wiping, you know.
John: I'll have to decide.
Merlin: Okay.
John: We can cut all this out.
Merlin: We'll cut all this out.
Merlin: I'm just going to keep moving and get out of the way.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: You know, it's just so frustrating.
Merlin: It's just so frustrating.
Merlin: You know, we'll be standing there, and I try—
Merlin: I have in the past been a passive-aggressive person, and it's something I struggle with, and I don't want to be that way.
Merlin: But sometimes my daughter and I will be standing in line, and one of the clone people will come up with their expired coupons, and I will see them shuffling toward the clone manager.
John: Because they don't have a frontal lobe.
John: That's why they shuffle.
John: But anyway, go ahead.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: No lope.
Merlin: No lope.
Merlin: It's right here.
Merlin: And I will say, hi!
Merlin: Hi!
Merlin: To whom?
Merlin: To whom?
Merlin: Just to the sky?
Merlin: Shuffle clone.
Merlin: I'll say, hi!
Merlin: Oh, you say hi to her.
Merlin: We're all waiting in line back here.
Merlin: Everyone here is in the same line.
Merlin: Hi!
Hi!
Merlin: And they'll go like this.
Merlin: Can you see the smile I'm making?
Merlin: And then I'll say – and she'll say – and my daughter will say, well, let's go up there.
Merlin: I'll say, no, Eleanor.
Merlin: We're Americans and we live in America and we wait in a line.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: No, not in that way.
Merlin: I just mean that this is or should be.
Merlin: Nobody likes waiting in a line.
Merlin: But when we stop waiting in lines like Americans, that is when everything starts to – unless, of course, there's something that I should be picking up from this whole clone culture.
Merlin: And I got to be honest with you.
Merlin: I feel like I should go to Walgreens right now and just start opening my eyes or close them.
John: Right.
John: I feel like we wait in lines until you see – until you discover the line that you do not want to wait in.
John: Like –
John: When that line is leading into the belly of a giant spacecraft, that's the line that maybe you need to... I'm not saying you need to skip ahead, but I'm saying judge every line individually.
Merlin: And also...
Merlin: I'm not super familiar with the Star Wars franchise, but it's my understanding that one way you make a rebel is you screw with them.
Merlin: You unintentionally make a rebel like when you kill their aunt and uncle and leave their smoking skeletons behind at the desert igloo.
Merlin: That is one way to make somebody good and mad about wanting to join up with the rebels, don't you think?
John: What are you rebelling against?
Merlin: That's the thing.
Merlin: I'm not sure what I'm rebelling against yet because maybe I haven't suffered that kind of loss.
Merlin: Maybe I am so comfortable waiting in line behind these shuffle clones because I have not been adequately harmed to know what I should or shouldn't be doing.
John: Talking to me for an hour once a week is the moral-spiritual equivalent of having the aunt and uncle who raised you charred and left smoldering outside your underground hut on a desert planet.
John: that's my hope i don't think i'm doing a good enough job no i think you're doing great same people uh travel single file to disguise their numbers last night i was in a bar with a bunch of british people and they got and the portland bartender comes over and one of them and one of the british people says do you have a pilsner
John: And the bartender says, well, we have 42 beers on tap.
John: The closest thing we have to a Pilsner is this ale that I think you'll find is really light.
John: And I was overhearing this.
John: I was sitting next to the person.
John: I was listening to this conversation.
John: I was going, don't get that.
John: Whatever he's saying right now, do not get it.
John: That's not what you want.
John: Well, because step zero, he didn't really answer the question.
John: He did not answer the question.
John: He didn't say no.
John: Yeah, and the answer was no.
John: The answer was no.
John: And so what's your second choice?
John: The answer is not find an ale that tastes like a pilsner.
John: The answer is no, we don't have that, what you want.
John: And so, anyway, the obsequious bartender convinces the British person to try... This is somebody from Keene.
John: This is somebody who is a member of a British pop, a traveling pop band.
John: Who is just excited to be in America.
John: Convinces him to try this Portland-style beer that is made out of cranberries and...
John: and biodiesel fuels yeah and it's just like oh it's very hoppy but you don't taste the hops and it's very yeasty but you don't taste the yeast and it's like you know what fuck you anyway the beer comes the the british person tastes the beer and he says this is reprehensible this beer is the worst thing i've ever had and i go well let's send it back and he's like no no no i'm fine
John: Oh, dear.
John: And I said, no, seriously.
John: And he looked at me, looked me right in the eyes and he said, I'm British.
John: I will.
John: I will drink this beer.
John: I will endure this beer.
John: And I turned around and I said, barkeep, come here.
John: And the guy comes, you know, waddles back out and I'm like, this beer satisfies no one at the table.
John: least of all me and i don't drink yeah and he looks at me and he goes what do you mean and i said what do i mean what does it sound like i mean it satisfies no one no one likes this beer no one likes it and everyone else at the table is from england and they're all looking at their fingernails
John: And the guy goes, what would you like?
John: And I said, a Pilsner.
John: And he says, we have it in bottles.
John: I'm like, voila.
John: And the beer goes away and a bottle of Pilsner comes and, and it's like, it's like, uh,
John: It's like the seas parted.
Merlin: Did you seem like a magician to them?
John: And fishes turned to loaves.
John: Or whatever it is that happens in that crazy book.
John: Well, not a magician.
John: What I seemed like was an American.
John: They were all like, wow.
John: And they resisted the urge, I think, to apologize to each other.
John: Or they were apologizing to their fingernails or whatever it is that people do when they're uncomfortable and don't have any agency.
John: But what happened was this terrible beer that had been filtered through somebody's dreadlocks went into the sink.
John: And what happened was the pilsner that the guy had the whole time but was in a bottle...
John: arrived at the table and it was like i just i felt like on one hand i was dealing with portland which which is so far up its own ass now that it can't even deliver a beer when somebody orders it and then on the other hand was this table full of british people that are just they're they're suffering from from a thousand years of of of from a thousand years of drinking a bad beer and not complaining and
Merlin: They've been through a lot.
Merlin: I mean, they have grandparents and maybe aunts and uncles who made it through the Blitz.
Merlin: They made it through the Blitz, it's true.
Merlin: I mean, you know, they get a lot on the strength, as far as I'm concerned, for making it through that.
Merlin: That was a pretty tough go, as they say in England.
John: I've been reading a lot about the Norman Conquest.
John: And that was a really... That was an interesting time.
John: You know, there was a period of... When I was in...
John: The height of my, like, deep inside the university era, it coincided with a time when the people, at least at my university, were disparaging of the great man theory of history.
John: They said, you know, history has always been the story of these great men, but that's bullshit.
John: And there were no great men.
John: History is just forces acting over time.
John: And there's a certain kind of inevitability to history.
John: And these people that we think of like Stalin or whomever, they're mostly irrelevant because it's really these sort of geopolitical and economic forces that are moving history through time.
John: And I always pissed on that idea.
John: But you read about the Battle of Hastings, and it's one of these moments where it's like these guys and those guys fought, and the one guy's lost, and...
John: England was forever changed.
John: Like the guys who won, who were just a few thousand guys, they marched to London and they were like, well, we killed your king and we won that battle.
John: And so we're in charge now.
John: And this French guy's the new king.
John: And everybody went, oh, shit.
John: Okay.
Yeah.
John: And it was, you know, for 300 years, they spoke French in the royal court.
John: And it was a whole new, like, these new guys came in, and they were the new Dukes and Earls, and they took all the everything.
John: And it was like, it happened one day.
John: There was just one day, and then everything was different.
John: And that one battle turned on...
John: It's just kind of one moment, even like there was a moment they were evenly matched and they were fighting and the one guys had horses and the other guys had shields.
John: And then the guys with the shields like kind of got duped a little bit.
John: And then the whole thing was settled, you know, and it's just like the English.
John: My God, the stories they can tell.
Mm hmm.
Merlin: And so it's a very pure idea of war in some ways.
Merlin: It isn't something where we're just going to try and move the ball forward a little bit.
Merlin: It's really, it's a complete and utter victory.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Really savage, overwhelming kind of victory.
John: Yeah.
John: The Normans came and they claimed that the Pope, they went to the Pope before they crossed the English Channel and they said, hey Pope, we think we have a pretty good case here for why we're entitled to
John: To the English throne.
John: And the Pope was like, yeah, sounds good.
John: And so when they show up in England, they're carrying the flag of the Pope.
John: They got the Pope flag.
John: And King Harold... That kind of thing's hard to fake, probably, right?
John: Right, you get the Pope flag.
John: That's not a thing you're going to fake.
John: So Harold and his Danes, or whoever, the current King of England, they see the Normans land with the Pope flag, and they're like, fuck...
John: They got the Pope flag.
John: And they start to doubt themselves.
John: They're like, we don't have the Pope flag.
Merlin: Even though it's their place.
John: It's their place, but if you don't have the Pope flag, it means God is against you.
John: And they really seriously thought to themselves... This is 1066 now.
Merlin: When is this?
Merlin: 1066, yeah.
Merlin: And this is... So are they still a Catholic nation at this point?
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Yeah, everybody's Catholic at this point.
John: There is no other thing.
John: And they think to themselves...
John: Maybe they really doubt themselves.
John: Maybe the, maybe God doesn't, maybe God doesn't want us.
John: And also what happened in 1066 Haley's comet.
John: Hmm.
John: Really?
John: Yeah.
John: So they're looking up at the sky and they're like crazy star with a tail.
John: What does it portend?
John: And then the Norman show up with the Pope flag.
John: And this is like two strikes and,
Merlin: I think if you're – I don't know a lot about English people, but if you're the kind of people who already are a little bit embarrassed about what you might be doing wrong and you get a comment and a Pope flag, that's going to cut pretty deeply.
John: If you won't send a beer back that you didn't order –
John: You're going to be a little bit like unmanned by the appearance of this pope flag and the comet.
Merlin: So the pope flag ends up playing a big part in this.
Merlin: It's something where – is that – and today it's probably not as effective.
Merlin: But just in general, you need – if you have the equivalent of a pope flag going in, even today, you're going to be in better shape.
John: If I showed up at a party with a Pope flag, I don't think it would accord me very much extra mojo.
Merlin: I'm making air quotes around the Pope flag.
John: Oh, right.
John: If I showed up at a party with a 9.4 on pitchfork, yeah, I think people would... What would it cost to get Travis Morrison a Pope flag?
Merlin: I don't think there's anybody that deserves a Pope flag and a French army more than... I think he should march his narrow ass over to Chicago with a fucking Pope flag and an army.
John: I think the ship has sailed on that.
John: I'll never forgive them.
John: Never forgive them.
John: So the battle takes place, and on the one hand, the Normans, they bring horses.
John: And they've got a cavalry, right?
John: Cavalry.
John: Whatever.
John: Cavalry.
Merlin: I wouldn't correct any other person in the world on that except for you.
Merlin: They've got a crabry.
Merlin: They've got a personal Golgotha.
Merlin: A crabry.
John: Anyway, and then the king of England, Harold and his British, who are actually Danish.
John: But that's a different story.
John: They don't have the horses.
John: But they have this technology, this shield wall where they all stand real close to each other and they put their shields up.
Merlin: Oh, is this the Pikes thing where they make a big solid block?
John: Yeah.
John: And the Normans had never seen this.
John: They each had never seen the other's war technique.
Merlin: Isn't that insane?
Merlin: You could go into war and like the way people screamed and carried their shields might just completely destroy your morale.
John: Like totally throw you off.
Merlin: We are existentially and certainly technologically unprepared for dealing with this.
Merlin: It would be like somebody like the poison gas in World War I. Like this is a real curveball.
John: This is a new one on us, yeah.
John: The Normans are used to swooping down with their horses and like, oh, everybody runs.
John: And they come at this shield wall with their horses and the shield wall just stands there.
John: And the horses get up to this wall of guys holding up their shields and the horses don't know what to do.
John: The horses turn around or the horses like, stop.
John: And then the British hit them with the spears, the long pikes.
John: And it's like, oh shit, this is heavy.
John: And then the horses run back, but...
John: The Normans had archers and the British forgot their archers.
John: They literally left their archers behind because the archers couldn't move as fast or something.
John: And so rain of arrows comes down, shield wall goes up, horses, shields.
John: I mean, basically the British, all they had was the shield wall, but it was very effective.
John: And they fight back and forth all day long.
John: And this is a thing, this is an era when people fought battles that lasted for a half an hour.
John: Like, they went in, they kicked your ass, and you had a leather hat, and they hit you with a sword, and the leather hat didn't do anything.
Merlin: And back in those days, I mean, you would have these sort of limited resources.
Merlin: And if you just made a couple good holes, it might be all over, right?
John: That's right.
John: A couple good holes.
Merlin: A couple good holes and a flank.
Merlin: And that's game over.
John: Game over.
John: But they fought all day, these two armies.
John: It's so brutal.
John: Nobody was really winning.
John: They were just brutalizing each other.
John: And then sort of the end of the day, people are getting tired.
John: Yeah.
John: And the turning point of the battle was the Normans did another one of these, like, attacks at the shield wall.
John: And then they pretended, get this, they pretended to run away.
John: The Normans pretended to run away.
Wow.
John: And the British broke their shield wall to pursue them down the hill.
John: Like, ha-ha, they're on the run!
John: And they break the shield wall, they chase the Normans down the hill, and then the horses swoop around and cut them off.
John: And then, oh, fuck.
John: The shield wall was the only defense they had.
John: It was the only technology they had.
John: And they broke it to pursue the Normans down the hill.
John: And then they realized their mistake.
Merlin: So the shield wall was really effective both in terms of the surprise but primarily as a really strong defensive deterrent.
Merlin: It wasn't an offensive weapon until you were attacked.
John: It was impenetrable, but in a situation like this, the burden of proof was on the Normans.
John: They were the invaders.
John: If they can't get past the shield wall, you're just going to push them into the ocean.
John: But that's the thing.
John: It's one battle.
John: It's like 5,000 guys here, 5,000 guys there.
John: The whole history of the nation, the whole history of the West is like turns on this day.
John: It lasted one day.
John: That's bananas.
John: And then the Normans were like, we win.
John: And they marched their Pope flag all the way across the country.
John: And they were like, here we are.
John: You guys clear your furniture out.
John: We're taking everything.
John: L and Z. That's right.
John: L and Z. And they did.
John: They took everything.
John: And then it's like, oh, okay, now... And that's it.
John: That's it.
John: Now it's this.
Merlin: Jeez Louise.
John: And the Pope flag, everybody, you know, you carry a thing like that around.
John: I mean...
John: That odd King Harold, let alone just some country bumpkin somewhere, some hobbits living in central England.
Merlin: I bet it made the Pope proud once the news got back to him that his flag had been so effective that must have buoyed him.
Merlin: I bet he felt more strongly than ever about the flag bearers at that point.
John: Everybody heard that story and they were like, Pope flag.
Merlin: respect there's this part of me that really wishes public tv were still good because you could have a james burke style run on there i mean there's no telling the cable it could be a cable thing i mean i guess you could have some kind of an independent production but let's let's reinvent it you know all all of our friends now have these npr shows yeah it's like npr for years was this unassailable tower
John: It was this ivory tower full of people.
Merlin: Yeah, they're giving away public radio shows like, you know, McDonald's gift certificates at this point.
John: Yeah, now you just waltz in there and you say, I'm a guy.
John: I've got a mustache.
John: Give me a public radio show.
John: And they do.
John: I have an inoffensive sardonic wit.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Well, we could do that.
Merlin: We could, we could, uh, we could do that.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: This is also the problem with the ad ads, you know, I mean, in retrospect, you know, the big walkers.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: You know, I mean, it's, it seems so obvious now, you know, it's, it's, uh, you, when you're making these, uh, especially like what would like early tanks and stuff like that.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Early tanks.
Merlin: Now the early, early tanks didn't have treads, right.
Merlin: They were, they were basically just like, uh, difficult to, to maneuver trucks.
John: Yeah.
John: No, the early tanks got treads pretty fast.
John: You learned that lesson pretty quick.
John: Yeah, they made their introduction in World War I, and a tank with wheels was going to get mired.
John: The treads were one of the big innovations.
John: There was no battle of the Monitor versus the Merrimack of tanks.
John: No, armored Conestogas.
John: Where they were just like boats that they kind of half sank.
John: No, the tanks were pretty fully realized pretty fast.
John: What they didn't have initially was big guns.
John: They just had machine guns.
Merlin: They didn't have long-range artillery.
John: Yeah, it was just a house with machine guns that you could move into the other guy's front yard.
John: And it was only later that they were like, you know, we could put a big cannon on this too.
Merlin: Oh, I see what you're saying.
Merlin: It wasn't just a way to have this hulking thing that could move across the field without getting blown up.
Merlin: In that case, it would be almost more like a transport or a defensive weapon.
Merlin: You're saying that was a big development, putting the gun on there.
Merlin: It seems like they would have thought of that up front.
John: It was a thing where they were fighting in trenches and they were like, how do we get...
John: How do we break this stalemate?
John: They've got a trench.
John: We've got a trench.
John: Anytime we send somebody out in the middle there, they just get turned to hamburger.
Merlin: The barrier to entry in a trench war is low, and the cost is high.
John: That's right.
John: So they were like, let's make a bulldozer that has a house on it, a metal house.
John: We'll put a metal house on a bulldozer.
John: What about that?
John: They're like, yeah.
John: We can do that.
John: What if we put machine guns in it?
John: A metal house with machine guns.
John: Then we drive it over their barbed wire.
John: And then we just park there and shoot them.
John: Yeah.
John: Good idea.
Merlin: Who was that?
Merlin: Is that the Americans?
John: That was Joe Tankerstein.
Merlin: That's where it got its name.
Merlin: William Tecumseh Sherman Tank.
John: William Tanker.
John: Tankerstein.
John: No, I don't know what...
John: Well, I don't know.
John: Was it Pershing?
John: No.
John: We're just naming generals now.
John: No.
John: Was it Grant?
John: Clemenceau?
Merlin: Did you see that Lincoln movie?
John: I haven't seen it yet because, well, for a lot of reasons.
John: But my thing with Daniel Day-Lewis is I like to wait for the smoke to clear before I go see a Daniel Day-Lewis movie.
John: Tell me more.
John: Well, Daniel Day-Lewis... You think he gets a pass?
John: There's a lot of reasons why somebody like me would be suspicious of Daniel Day-Lewis, but I am not.
John: I will go see Daniel Day-Lewis.
Merlin: Well, just as a hypothetical, excluding yourself, why would somebody like you be a little suspicious of Daniel Day-Lewis?
John: Well, his method...
John: Do you think my method is unsound?
John: I don't see any method.
John: Yeah, he's basically the Colonel Kurtz of Hollywood.
Merlin: Oh, okay.
Merlin: So he's like one of those De Niro, inhabit the role kind of guys.
John: He goes way past that, yeah.
Merlin: He actually cut off his left foot, you know.
John: He did.
John: I think, yeah, for the Lincoln role... He had his foot gain 50 pounds for the role.
John: He actually, he went and lived in a log cabin in Illinois for 25 years preparing for this role.
John: But no, I will go see it.
John: You know, the only thing, the only redeeming feature of Gangs of New York...
John: was Daniel Day-Lewis.
John: That was a weird movie.
John: It was a terrible movie, but Daniel Day-Lewis was, I thought, transcendent.
John: I would have just, if they had cut everything else out and just showed Daniel Day-Lewis for a half an hour, I would have thought that.
Merlin: What about There Will Be Blood?
John: The problem with There Will Be Blood is the way that movie starts with that... There's like this violin sound, this crazy-making violin sound at the very start of the movie, and it just turned me against the film for the whole rest of the film.
John: I was like, why do they have that sound?
John: That was a weird movie.
John: That was a terrible sound to start this movie off with, and I object.
Merlin: You're sensitive to sound.
Merlin: Not sensitive, but sure, you know, you're manly about it.
Merlin: But, you know, a sound can put you off.
John: A sound can put me off a film.
John: There are a lot of things that can put me off a film.
Merlin: Oh, brother.
Merlin: The reason I mention it is it starts out, I guess, like, you know, like Private Ryan.
Merlin: It starts out with a really gruesome.
John: Slow motion Civil War battle?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Oh!
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It's one of those, you know, it's, it's again, it's, uh, at some point I'd like to return to your feelings about things like drones.
Merlin: If you're comfortable with it, because it seems like it's kind of becoming a thing.
Merlin: And I'd like to, I know you're not into what, uh, I believe you've called chicken shit fighting with things like, like far away shooting and drones, but boy, you really get a sense of what hand to hand combat really means that you're really, you're just sitting there and hitting somebody on the head and stabbing them with a knife until they die.
Yeah.
John: And that is what war should be and should always be.
John: This is my problem with it.
John: As we become technologically able to get away from war...
John: then it becomes ridiculously easy to go blow people apart.
John: The people on the receiving end of a Sidewinder missile fired from a drone by a U.S.
John: Air Force captain who's sitting in an air-conditioned trailer outside of Las Vegas, Nevada, the person on the receiving end of that Sidewinder missile is just as blown apart.
John: It's just the guy that fires the missile that suffers no consequences.
John: But my feeling, Merlin, is that rather than upscale, upsize war, supersize war, we need to return to an era of neighborhood stick fights.
John: Neighborhood stick fights.
Merlin: Neighborhood against neighborhood?
John: We need to institutionalize this in America.
John: We need to stop playing football, for one.
Merlin: That's a big distraction, John.
John: Football is a tremendous distraction, and all that energy could be better channeled into neighborhood stick fights.
Merlin: And it seems to me that it would have to be sticks that you can find in your neighborhood.
Merlin: You should not be able to Amazon Prime a better stick because that defeats the purpose of the neighborhood stick fight.
John: Absolutely.
John: And the thing about a neighborhood stick fight is that joining the neighborhood stick fight team is 100% voluntary.
John: Now, stick with me through this.
John: If I put up posters in my neighborhood that said, neighborhood stick fights, we are going to go down the hill and all of us up here in Rainier View are going to get a little gang together and we're going to go down the hill and we're going to have a stick fight on the football field with all of those assholes in Columbia City and Hillman City.
John: Now, who would be attracted?
John: Who would show up to that meeting?
John: The answer?
John: Every asshole in my neighborhood.
John: Like, it would be a self-selecting process.
John: The people who would be interested in being on the stick fighting team are the violent...
John: idiots that are precisely the people in my neighborhood that I would A, want fighting on my behalf, and B, the people in my neighborhood that I would want killed or injured.
John: It is a natural selection process
John: We would pit neighborhoods against one another in self-selecting voluntary stick fighting teams.
John: It is fighting literally with sticks until the other team... Organic, organic, locally sourced sticks.
John: Whatever stick you can find, the best stick you can find, until the other team is...
John: Too injured or dead to continue.
John: Okay.
Merlin: I got two questions.
Merlin: B, if you win the neighborhood stick fight and you like their sticks better, can you keep them?
John: Absolutely.
Merlin: Kind of like when Beta Ray Bill gets Thor's hammer.
Merlin: Absolutely.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: You take the other sticks.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: And then A, here's the poignant part.
Merlin: First of all, if I could say A1, I think it would be useful to have that poster, not in a faggy way, but make it have multiple languages on it because you're in an extremely diverse neighborhood.
Merlin: That's exactly right.
Merlin: If you want the Samoans to show up, you're going to have to put Samoes on there.
John: Samoes, yeah.
John: You would have it in Vietnamese.
John: You would have it in Spanish.
John: I don't think you would get a lot.
John: You would have it in black language, yeah.
John: I don't think you would get a lot of Hispanic stick fighters, but there would be a few.
John: Okay.
John: I think there would be a lot of Vietnamese guys showing up.
Merlin: You could tell them there would be cool cars there.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: The thing is these are fighting men and women and you don't want to lie to them.
Merlin: My only thought is this, and this is the poignant part, is yes, most of the people are going to be there for the stick and the fight.
Merlin: But I want to know more in the movie about this.
Merlin: I want to know more about the people who are there for the neighborhood part because that's when you're going to have the surprising old and lame ladies show up and say, yes, I don't want to have to fight with a stick, but I feel very strongly about our neighborhood.
John: That's right.
John: I've always hated Hillman City.
Merlin: Hillman City, they're assholes.
John: The thing is, so you have these situations where every once in a while a little old lady tries to get in there.
John: But you know, it's a neighborhood situation.
John: So once Hillman City, once you've kind of like pulverized them, then the little old ladies come out and they kick them in the groin or whatever it is the little ladies do.
John: They come argue with them about an expired coupon.
Merlin: What if...
John: And then the winner of that fight goes on to the regionals.
John: And the winner of that fight fights Cherry Hill or whatever.
John: Although there's just a bunch of Seattle U students up there.
John: Nobody worth fighting.
Merlin: That sounds like an easy stick fight.
Merlin: West Seattle.
Merlin: That would be a hell of a stick fight.
Merlin: And would aldermen come and wear robes?
John: Oh, absolutely.
John: And you would do this periodically.
John: It would clean out all the bad blood.
John: You've got to have a war every few years.
John: You've got to have a war.
John: And then the victorious Seattle stick fighting team would take on Portland's.
John: top stick fighting team.
John: And you would just go all the way to the Super Bowl of stick fights, where presumably every year would be Pittsburgh versus Oakland.
John: But now we're back to the football problem.
John: But the thing is, it's not football, it's stick fighting.
Merlin: You're literally beating each other to death.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: If you can say, do you think that maybe in your neighborhood, is there a feisty but beloved old lady?
Merlin: Do you think you could find a feisty – maybe just beloved.
Merlin: Beloved would be fine.
Merlin: She doesn't have to be feisty.
Merlin: She could be acquiescent.
Merlin: But if you find a feisty lady and she gets killed in a neighborhood stick fight, you've got a pope flag on your hands.
Merlin: Now you've got a mandate.
Merlin: You've got a martyr.
Merlin: You've got a Golgotha that you can put on the flagpole.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: You follow?
Merlin: Yeah, absolutely.
John: Rainier View would be unstoppable.
Merlin: You've got your horse, what's the song?
Merlin: What's the song?
Merlin: Horse Vegan League?
Merlin: You know the song?
Merlin: There was this guy.
Merlin: Horse Vessel?
Merlin: Horse Vessel League!
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Am I saying that right?
Merlin: Am I having a stroke?
Merlin: They tarted up this story about Horse Vessel supposedly being killed by Jews, right?
Merlin: Of course.
Merlin: The most violent of all people, the Jews.
Merlin: They did We Will Rock You, We Are the Champions thing, where it was Deutschland, Uber Alice, and Horse Vessel lead.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Which is, I think the lyrics are pretty bad.
Merlin: Didn't they take an old song and make, oh, somebody killed Horse Vessel?
John: Yeah, it was basically John Denver's career.
Merlin: But you...
Merlin: Horse vessel lead.
Merlin: If you go and you watch that Riefenstahl movie, I don't even know.
Merlin: I'm speaking all this phonetically.
Merlin: They sing it.
Merlin: They sing it.
Merlin: People know the words to the horse vessel lead.
Merlin: Hell yes, they do.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: You need a horse vessel lead for a beloved old lady in your neighborhood that people can sing at neighborhood stick fights.
Merlin: She doesn't really have to die.
Merlin: You could fake it.
John: No, you wouldn't want to fake it.
John: You'd want her to really die.
John: You'd want people to really have a little bit of a... You'd want to dip that flag in her blood.
John: The thing is, if you have shit like that going on,
John: There would be a lot fewer invasions of Iraq, I'm guessing.
Merlin: And so many fewer morbidly obese men buying era official football jerseys.
John: Well, and all of these... They'd be buying neighborhood stick fight shirts.
John: All of your NRA guys, all of your Ted Nugents.
John: Like, Ted Nugent, the problem of Ted Nugent would have been solved 25 years ago because he would have felt compelled...
John: by his constant macho rhetoric.
John: He would have felt compelled to prove himself on the stick-fighting field, and he would have gone out there and gotten his ass handed to him by some guy who had had his frontal lobe dissected and was potentially a clone.
John: Nugent would have been impaled on a stick...
John: 25 years ago.
Merlin: The clone wanted it more.
Merlin: The clone wanted it more, sure.
Merlin: He's sitting around doing pull-offs and bar cords, and here comes a man who literally has no frontal lobe.
Merlin: He's being controlled by aliens or possibly ladies with coupons to live under Antarctica.
Merlin: The point is that you can bring all the crossbow you want, but you get a man, a motivated man with a pole flag and a stick, and he's going to make a journey near the center of your goddamn mind.
John: It's like Moose from Archie, right?
John: Nugent against Moose.
John: Oh, Flash Thompson, yeah.
John: Tell me when was the last even halfway decent Ted Nugent album?
John: Yeah.
John: It coincided about the time that Nugent should have died on the stick fighting field.
John: And somewhere in Detroit, there would be a pope flag with Nugent's face on it that had been dipped in his blood.
John: And they'd be fighting for Nugent to this day.
Merlin: And all of the impoverished neighborhoods of Detroit.
Merlin: You know, the thing is, I know you have a soft spot for Detroit and a scared spot to some extent.
Merlin: But imagine how that city could be revitalized if they would pick up some sticks.
Merlin: I mean, just the civic pride that they could bring back.
Merlin: It would certainly get rid of a lot of the malingerers.
Merlin: I don't know if they have good sticks in Detroit.
Merlin: I think it's all automatics now.
John: Here's the translation of the Horace Wessel song.
John: Flag high, ranks closed.
John: Already sounds like a neighborhood stick fight.
John: The S.A.
John: marches with silent, solid steps.
John: Comrades shot by the red front and reaction.
John: Comrades are shot both by the red front and the red reaction.
John: Comrades march in spirit with us in our ranks, so their dead comrades are marching with them.
Merlin: Okay, so it's the socialists.
John: Dead comrades.
Merlin: It's the communists, not the Jews that do this.
John: Well, but Jews and communists, there's no distinction there.
Merlin: Yeah, peas and carrots.
John: The street free for the brown battalions.
John: Well, they're not talking about brown skin.
John: They're talking about brown shirts.
John: The street free for the stormtroopers.
John: Not talking about Star Wars.
John: Talking about Nazi stormtroopers.
John: Millions full of hope.
John: God, I wish PBS were good.
John: Millions full of hope.
John: Look up at the swastika.
John: The day breaks for freedom and for bread.
John: A little bit of bread in there, a little bread in circuses for the masses.
John: So the guy that's listening to this, they're marching by, the guy listening to it, he's like, yeah, but what is this, what good is this for me?
John: And then they say bread at the end of that verse.
John: And he's like, oh, right, bread.
John: I'm into bread.
Merlin: There's a lot of, a lot of... That's verse two.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: You'll keep going?
John: For the last time, the call will now be blown.
John: Hmm.
John: Blow the call.
John: Blow the call.
John: Okay.
John: They're not talking about NFL refs.
John: They're talking about blowing it.
Merlin: You are your own Norton Anthology with footnotes.
John: They're talking about a horn blowing the call in a ram's horn.
John: We're not talking about the new wave band, the call.
John: But not a ram's horn like they use in the Jews.
Merlin: We're not talking about a horn on a car.
John: Not a Jew horn.
John: Not a Jew horn.
John: Not a show far, show good.
John: For the struggle, now we all stand ready.
John: Soon we'll fly Hitler flags over every street.
John: Like a Pope flag.
John: This is a Hitler flag.
John: Soon we'll fly Hitler flags over every street.
John: Slavery will last only a short time longer.
John: Oh, man.
John: Right?
John: They're implying, of course, slavery to the Jewish communist overlords.
John: But they're also leaving a little wiggle room in there.
Merlin: slavery will last only a short time longer but they don't they don't specify how much longer that's like the universe being created in seven days you know what i mean like slavery we might have to have a little bit of slavery too but just a little imagine being a weimar era genius and having to hear those lyrics could you could you imagine being like kurt vile and having to sit around and listen to that shit
Merlin: Sitting in your ornately decorated – Like sitting there with just the ease with which so many of the artistic geniuses of that decade created so much amazing stuff that should have lasted.
Merlin: They're the ones that should have lasted a fucking thousand years.
John: Yeah.
John: You're in your Finda Secal apartment.
John: You have your beautiful, like, climped paintings on the walls.
John: You're taking a little bit of snuff off of your extra long pinky fingernail.
John: You got a radio.
John: These ding-dongs are out in the street outside marching, singing this asshole song.
Merlin: You know, I will give them...
Merlin: I will give them that might not be a generous translation.
Merlin: As with stuff like, let's say, Beethoven's Ode to Joy.
Merlin: When you hear it, when you hear the words in English, it's certainly not nearly as cool.
Merlin: So I'll give them that.
Merlin: Maybe that sounds great with a Marshall beat.
Merlin: But that's terrible, terrible lyrics.
Merlin: And for the amount of specificity that went into that, it was not really that historically useful.
Merlin: And it was not really that rousing.
Merlin: A fucking Hitler flag?
Merlin: Over every street.
Merlin: Over every street.
Merlin: That part came true.
Merlin: I guess so.
Merlin: You know why they got the brown shirts, right?
Merlin: Yeah, they got them all, they got them bulk.
Merlin: They got them at a thrift store.
Merlin: No, I think, exactly.
Merlin: I think a bunch of people said, like, we don't need, let's drop these off at Das Goodwill.
John: Yeah, they were the summer, they were the unused summer uniforms left over from World War I. Ernst Röhm and his longtime companion were walking through thrift stores.
Merlin: They were doing what was called Das Thrifting.
Merlin: Das Thrifting.
Merlin: And they said, Ach du Lieber.
John: Das Thrifting Scheisse.
Merlin: Look at all of these shirts off brawn Scheisse.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Shirts off brawn.
John: They were like, we can get these for pennies on the dollar.
John: But you know what the, you know what the innovation was?
John: It's a Conan Ziemmerwagen von Braun shirt stores in Scheisse.
John: The innovation was not the brown shirt.
John: The innovation was the black tie.
Merlin: Oh, it's a, it's a smart, super duper gay look.
Merlin: you know what i mean like brown shirt sure you look like a you look like a lion tamer at the zoo but you put a black tie on that you look like a docent yeah yeah yeah and those fruity hats it's i hate the hat a lot of thought went into that there's a there's actually a whole book i never i never finished it but there's a whole book about the like homoerotic like of course they would never say it was deliberate but but like the ss uniforms man
John: You know who was one of the main tailors of the SS uniforms?
John: Hugo Boss.
John: What?
John: Hugo Boss made... There's a real Hugo Boss?
John: Hugo Boss did not... He didn't design the Nazi uniforms, but the Hugo Boss company and Hugo Boss were one of the main manufacturers of Nazi uniforms.
John: Who made those ties?
John: Leather trench coats and stuff.
John: Fair.
Fair.
John: Bear.
John: Bear.
John: Oh, you're talking about the aspirin makers.
Merlin: Bear.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Krups made the hats.
Merlin: They made those little milkshake makers.
Merlin: Braun made the shirts.
Merlin: And the razors.
Merlin: And the razors.
Merlin: Volkswagen made the shoes.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: And nobody made the trains run on time.
Merlin: My God.
Merlin: I need a fucking boat flag.
Merlin: I gotta quit cursing.
John: You know, I need a Pope flag too.
John: I thought for a while that it was going to be this Boba Fett, life-size Boba Fett helmet on a popsicle stick.
Merlin: Like a head on a pike?
John: Yeah, nobody rallied to me.
John: I'd wave it around and people would just...