Ep. 68: "The Opposite of Sherlock Holmes"
John: Hello.
Merlin: Hey, John.
Merlin: Hi, Merlin.
Merlin: How's it going?
Merlin: Merlin, man.
Merlin: I gotta live with that every week.
John: Which part?
Merlin: Well, just the disappointment of knowing you deserve something better.
Merlin: And I like to think of myself as a relatively productive person who should be able to make a note to come up with a good song for you.
John: Well, in my whole life, I have been pretty resistant to nicknames.
John: People have always tried to nickname me, and it just doesn't stick.
John: And I'm one of those people who is mostly known as John Roderick, both names.
John: You know what I mean?
John: People just call me John Roderick.
John: Yeah.
John: And in college, oh, they threw nicknames at me every which way, and they all bounced off.
John: So I'm wondering whether it's the same with theme music.
John: I can't be themed.
Merlin: I have to imagine that when you were in college, you did a lot of nickname-friendly material.
John: Yeah, but everybody's always trying to call me Sasquatch or, you know, I mean, Rad Dog.
John: I got called Rad Dog.
John: Oh, that's completely unacceptable.
John: For a long time.
John: And that one actually kind of worked at the time because I was a Rad Dog.
Merlin: You sound like that would be like somebody who wants to be a surfer.
John: Yeah, but it was the 80s and I was a skier and like Rad Dog.
John: That was actually short for...
John: Rip Roaring, Rad Dog, Radical Rockin' Righteously Rascalin' Reeferin' Roderick.
John: It was a group of, and the reason it actually took was that I was a junior, and that name was bestowed on me by a bunch of seniors.
John: Seniors whom we would now regard as nerds, but at the time, I guess they were also nerds then.
John: But there wasn't like nerd wasn't cool exactly, but they were a whole bunch of older guys and they started calling me this and they would say the whole thing every time.
John: Like, hey, it's Ripper and Rad Dog, Radical Rock and Righteously Rascal and Reefer and Roderick.
John: And I would, you know, I kind of had to accept it.
Merlin: Yeah, you don't want to be, you know, ungrateful.
Merlin: I mean, if people feel like you have characteristics that are worth turning into a really long, asinine name, I mean, who are you to turn it away, especially from a senior?
John: Exactly.
John: Especially from a senior.
Merlin: I got to be honest.
Merlin: I see it as very different things.
Merlin: I like a nickname.
Merlin: I mean, for others.
Merlin: I like it to be organic.
John: You don't need a nickname.
John: Your name is Merlin Mann.
John: Yeah, nobody believes that.
John: It's amazing.
John: If that was your nickname, it would be the best nickname in the world.
John: And it's your actual name.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: Maybe I'm too close to it.
Merlin: It seems like a pretty weird name.
John: It is a weird name, but it is an amazing name.
John: I mean, think about all the effort that parents our age are putting into giving their kids unique, charming, twee little fucked up names.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: And your name is Merlin Mann.
John: No one can ever top it.
John: You could name your child Bismarck von Schnitzengruble, and the child would still have to, like, step aside to let Merlin Mann walk in there.
Merlin: That's a pretty good name.
Merlin: Now I want to find somebody for that.
Merlin: Well, you know, we may have talked about this before, but when I was a kid, I really envied people like you, name-wise.
Merlin: Guys with, like, John Bobb.
Merlin: Well, I mean, I don't know if you ever went through this, but I mean, I think we all go through times in our lives where on pretty much every level we want to be invisible or we want to be at least we want to blend in.
Merlin: And the very first day of school.
Merlin: You know, they go through the roll call in alphabetical order, and it's like, you know, Anna.
Merlin: Right in the middle.
Merlin: Right in the middle.
Merlin: Anna Jones, you know.
Merlin: Mark Miller.
Merlin: Mark Miller.
Merlin: Oh, no, I guess Merlin would have come before.
Merlin: Todd Jason Craigson.
Yeah.
Merlin: Merlin Dean Man III.
Merlin: Oh, the kindergartner in me is laughing.
Merlin: And there's a pause.
Merlin: They pause.
Merlin: I might as well have like a crazy Indian name.
Merlin: And no, no, no, the other kind.
Merlin: You know, I might as well be like, you know, Chagree Dipson de Hepsi or something.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: You know, but, you know, and so, but that's the first day, you know, everybody's nervous and everybody's looking for weaknesses.
Merlin: And especially when I'd be like a new kid, I would have killed for a Todd.
John: But I mean, Merlin...
John: is literally the magician.
Merlin: Yeah, that's a lot to live up to.
John: You didn't turn to people and give them the hairy eyeball and scare them that you were going to turn them into a toad?
John: That's what I would have done.
Merlin: My sense is that there was not a lot of concern for that.
Merlin: But I mean, it would also suck, you know, it's actually a James page.
John: You know, it's actually Merlin, man.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I remember there was an article, you know, in like the wacky news section in the mid nineties about this poor bastard who was 10 years old and named Bart Simpson.
Merlin: Oh, you know, I mean, it could be worse.
Merlin: Think of all those, those, those Adolphs, you know, think about a little boys named Eichmann.
Merlin: That's the first name.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: I think there's one of those on my playground.
Merlin: Little Eichmann.
Merlin: Eichmann.
John: Oh man.
Merlin: Mary Eichmann.
Merlin: Mary Eichmann.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: So I got a lot of thoughts on this.
Merlin: First of all, I just have to say, and this is, this is why I carry around this shame and pull it out of the suitcase.
Merlin: Whenever we record our program is that I just can't believe I haven't thought of, I haven't thought about it more because you're a musical person.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You know what I like?
Merlin: I like hot rod.
John: Hot Rod, of all the nicknames that have ever been given me, Hot Rod was the one that stuck the longest.
John: And that was just my first email address.
Merlin: Oh, at that local place, there was a coffee shop in the front for the drugs, right?
John: The front for the drugs and the prostitutes.
John: And the guy that owned it was like, you need an email address.
John: And I was like, I don't know what that is.
John: And then he showed up one day with it written on a piece of paper.
John: You are Hot Rod at Capitol Hill dot net.
John: Tiny acorns, John.
John: Isn't that cool?
John: It's amazing.
John: And I was like, I guess I am this now.
John: And the rest was history.
Merlin: Now, was that his name for you or is that something in parlance?
John: He just made it up.
John: He was sitting there trying to think of an email address for me that he was – because he owned an internet cafe.
John: He wanted me to be a patron.
Mm-hmm.
John: I did not understand why I would have an email address or why I would ever go on the internet.
John: It seemed to me at the time it was all news groups of child pornographers.
John: Yeah, and Magic the Gathering.
John: I didn't even know what that was.
John: Me neither.
John: And then he showed up one day and had this thing written on a piece of paper, and I did not know what any of it meant.
John: But I...
John: The first email I ever wrote was to a guy named Derek Chamberlain, who is still a friend of mine, and he is a prolific writer and sort of a technology visionary type of person.
John: Right.
John: And so he wrote me back within the hour.
John: Are you talking about the anti-chamber dog?
Merlin: Anti-chamber dog?
Merlin: I'm just trying to come up with a nickname for him.
Merlin: Old anti-chamber dog.
Merlin: Oh, that's what we called him with a W for dog.
Merlin: It's called a dip thong.
John: He wrote me back immediately like some kind of think piece on what it meant that we were emailing one another.
John: And I was like, oh, this is fun.
John: I have a ham radio.
John: Exactly.
John: I wrote him like five pages, basically like, are you receiving me?
Merlin: That's all I did for a month.
Merlin: It was like having a walkie-talkie that went to England.
John: I don't even remember who the second email I got.
Merlin: I had a friend at Oxford who a guy I went to school with, had gone to school with, who was at Oxford.
Merlin: And I sent him an email message and then he replied.
Merlin: inside of like five minutes which i have to say in retrospect is not a great pattern for dealing with your email but having said that nice plug yeah oh you're the inbox zero guy well it took him five minutes just for his dial-up to to reach you he was yeah i think he was having a biscuit on a lorry he was having some marmite he was having some marmite on a scrumpet
Merlin: Let me find me Torch.
Merlin: Tim, you're not from England.
Merlin: Get out of the lift.
Merlin: I got a lot of opinions on this, just in brief.
Merlin: First of all, I like nicknames when they're organic.
Merlin: I nickname people when they really deserve it.
Merlin: I have friends, and some of them have really caught on.
Merlin: Yeah, Scoots.
Merlin: I came up with Scoots.
John: Whoever called Scott Simpson Scoots for the first time.
John: Did that really catch on, you think?
John: Well, it did with me.
John: You know what I mean.
Merlin: When I refer to scoots, you know what I mean.
John: Scoots is like when your dog is scooting across the carpet.
Merlin: I think of it as being like the trots.
Merlin: Yeah, the trots.
Merlin: I got the scoots.
Merlin: See, I like those and there's some like my friend John Gruber has a very popular blog about Apple stuff and I always call him Chairman Gruber.
Merlin: It's like a Chairman Mao kind of joke because communism is funny.
Merlin: I've seen other people using that.
Merlin: I think having an affectionate nickname for somebody, I think it's an honor when somebody has a nickname for you that is flattering.
John: I think my theme music for you is a kind of nickname.
John: Because Berlin Man is not, it's not a nicknamable name unless you sing it to the tune of Janet Jackson's Nasty Boys.
Merlin: Or Private Eyes by Hall and Oates.
John: You're pretty sure it's not hollow notes, right?
John: People are mishearing the melody.
John: You have a good ear.
Merlin: You have a very good ear.
Merlin: Well, I think you're one of the very—I don't know how you started doing this, but you're one of the very, very few people, apart from my wife and people I knew before college, who—you call me Merle a lot.
John: Oh, Merle.
Merlin: Which is my father's name.
Merlin: That's what everybody called my dad.
Merlin: And one day, first day of school, in fourth grade, they said, I'm going to read all the names and tell me if there's something else you'd like to be called.
Merlin: And as a tribute to my late father, I said I would like to be called Merle.
Merlin: And that stuck for a while.
Merlin: And then I went back to Merlin because I realized it was kind of cool.
Merlin: And I wanted to stick out a little bit more.
John: Merlin's cool, but you are – I mean, yeah, when I call you Merle, it's a – yeah, that's – No, no, I like it.
John: I'm talking to the Merle.
Merlin: Here's the other thing though.
Merlin: I'm interested in the John Roderick thing because I've had friends where you always – there's a cadence to their name where you always refer to them by their full name.
Merlin: I'm trying to think of people in your area that are like that.
John: I had a friend named Mike Mack.
Merlin: See that?
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Mike Mack.
John: And you're never, ever going to call him Mike.
John: If you called him, if you pointed at him and said, Mike, I would fail to see him.
John: I would go, who?
John: Who are you talking about?
John: Oh, you mean Mike Mack?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I had a friend in college named Patty Frew, which is a great name.
Merlin: F-R-E-W.
Merlin: Patty Frew.
Merlin: And you never called her Patty.
Merlin: You never called her Frew.
Merlin: You always called her Patty Frew because it feels great.
Merlin: It's got a nice mouthfeel to it.
Merlin: Now, me, I use nicknames a lot because I have a poor memory.
Merlin: And I call people Chief.
John: Oh, Chief.
John: Or Captain.
John: My dad always said, Counselor!
Merlin: It doesn't even matter.
John: Because everybody he knew was a lawyer.
John: Counselor!
Merlin: I learned this in church, and I think it's been shown to be true everywhere.
Merlin: If you don't know what to call somebody, call them doctor.
Merlin: Because nobody doesn't want to be called doctor.
Merlin: Especially in a church situation.
Merlin: If you don't know what somebody's... You get into the churches, and you get into the religions, and there's a lot of... It's a lot like the Third Reich, where there's so many different titles.
John: You ever sit down and look at all the titles?
John: Overhausen...
Merlin: Colonel Scheife.
Merlin: Eisen, Gruber, Stotzen, Blitzen, Donner.
Merlin: The Blitzen Donner party.
John: Yeah, I think it depends.
John: Like in my world, if I called everybody counselor or doctor, neither of those things would work.
John: What do you do in rock and roll?
John: I guess you say... What do you say?
John: Bro?
Merlin: Oh, man.
John: But you get a kick in the nards if you say bro.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I like... But here's the other thing, though.
Merlin: You should... I mean, I think you deserve it, and I'm going to work on it.
Merlin: I think...
Merlin: I like to think that I'm not a creepy person.
Merlin: Like most people, I like to think I'm not a creepy person.
Merlin: And I think that... You're a little creepy.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And I think maybe for about 10 years, I hopefully...
Merlin: When you first stayed at my house and we were driving around getting breakfast with Ken Stringfellow, I know I was super creepy.
Merlin: Because I was starstruck by all of you guys.
John: Except for Michael.
Merlin: I wasn't starstruck by Michael, but everybody else.
John: In any social situation, if Ken Stringfellow is there, he is the creepiest person there.
John: And everyone else seems perfectly normal and well-adjusted by comparison.
Merlin: That's true by continent, John.
Merlin: Boy, he's... Do you have your phone nearby?
John: Yes.
Merlin: Would you, would you, would you be good enough to call me at the number where you just called me a minute ago?
John: Did I call you a minute ago?
Merlin: Oh, you texted me.
Merlin: You can text, just text me.
Merlin: That's fine.
John: Yeah.
John: All right.
John: Hang on just a second.
John: Stand by.
John: I have to open three or four apps first before I get the right one.
John: So I usually open when I'm trying to find somebody's.
Merlin: It's really, it's a lot like the right.
Merlin: You got bicycle parts.
John: So I opened the maps and then I opened Twitter just reflexively.
John: And then you spend 40 minutes on Wikipedia.
John: And then I open the translation page and I try and figure out how many kilograms it is.
John: All right.
John: Now I'm calling you.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Hang up and do it again.
John: Jungle drums.
Merlin: Hang up.
Merlin: Well, you got here from the beginning.
Merlin: Hang up and do it again.
John: I feel it.
Merlin: Here we go.
John: I'm feeling up the Amazon.
Merlin: Go ahead.
Yeah.
Merlin: I don't know if you know this, but on the iPhone, I have my ringer turned off, but on the iPhone, you have the ability to create custom vibrations for people.
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And when I feel you in my pocket, it's playing car parts.
John: Oh, how nice.
John: Sort of a Cuban, like a Cuban car parts.
Merlin: Yeah, and now that I've said it, I want to take it back, because that really is super creepy, because you're about an inch and a half from my dingus, such as it is, and I can feel you, I can feel, literally, I can feel my favorite song from your first album literally vibrating by my penis.
John: See, now, if I was singing Merlin Mann to the tune of Private Eyes, it would go...
John: But the salient part would be Merlin Man is watching you.
John: But it's not.
John: It's not Merlin Man.
John: It's Merlin Man.
Merlin: I don't want to break down the fourth or fifth wall, but at some point I'd like to hear you do a little bit more of that.
Merlin: Nicknames.
John: And what that is taken from, as I've described before, is
John: Nasty boys.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: I'm looking really quickly.
Merlin: Not to derail this.
Merlin: I'm looking very quickly through some of the Nazi titles because they're pretty often.
John: Oh, my God.
John: There are so many good ones.
John: Sturmgruppe Führer.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And you move up and – oh, man.
Merlin: I can't pronounce any of these.
John: Obersturmgruppe Führer.
Merlin: Ranks and Insignia.
Merlin: Boy, this is a great – oh, my God.
Merlin: What a great page.
Merlin: It's got uniform pictures.
Mm.
Merlin: Wow.
John: Their uniforms are so amazing.
John: I really, oh man.
John: Sometimes I will, you know, those really, really high definition, super great quality pictures of the Third Reich and guys kind of those candid photos where they're all walking in a line headed up the stairs somewhere.
John: And Hitler's in the middle and there's like 15 guys walking abreast.
John: And every single one of them has a slightly different take on the double-breasted ankle-length leather trench coat.
John: And you're like, how many versions of an ankle-length, double-breasted leather trench coat could there possibly be?
Merlin: They didn't have enough money to effectively invade the Soviet Union, but they found a way to have 624, 30 different kinds of arm insignia.
Merlin: Seriously, crazy.
Merlin: And you get different armbands?
John: Because the original brown shirts, as we've discussed before, were found in a thrift shop.
Merlin: It's on sale.
Merlin: Just going up the ladder here.
Merlin: This is from 39 to 45.
Merlin: You've got Anvorter, Varter, Anvorter.
John: He's the Anvorter.
Merlin: Elfer, Ubenhelfer, Arbeitzleiter.
Merlin: That's going to be work makes you free.
Merlin: Arbeite is work, I think.
John: Yes, Arbeite is work.
Merlin: Oberarbeitzleiter.
John: He's the Ober-Arbeit-Sleider.
Merlin: Yes, he's over the Arbeit-Sleider.
John: He's over the work-Sleider.
Merlin: But he's got a boss.
Merlin: That would be the Haupt-Arbeit-Sleider.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: Then, of course, you've got the Beright-Schaft-Sleider.
Merlin: You've got the Uber-Beright-Schaft-Sleider.
Merlin: And I'll keep going.
Merlin: I saw Sizer.
John: I can't wait for somebody to remix this with a beat.
John: Uber, how, over, soft, slight, slider.
Merlin: Barrick, slider, Uber, slider.
Merlin: These are just a few of them.
Merlin: And then you got the, you know, yeah.
Merlin: So in watching many of these minis, and by the way, today I got a suggestion on Twitter that I watch Showa, which is apparently nine and a half hours long.
Merlin: So you know I'm going to make some time for that.
Merlin: But...
Merlin: Yeah, but nicknames can be good.
Merlin: You deserve better.
Merlin: Hot Rod.
Merlin: I occasionally call you Roderick, and that might be a little bit familiar.
Merlin: Roderick's fine.
Merlin: I call Jonathan Colton Colton sometimes.
Merlin: I call John Hodgman Hodgman.
John: Part of the reason you have to call Jonathan Colton Colton is that if you try to shorten his name from Jonathan to John, he gets all pinch-faced.
Merlin: I think that's something from orientation at Yale.
John: might have been right but he's like jonathan is a separate name it's actually it's actually dictured kevin he's not kidding he's he's upset about it you can't call him john i think there's a lot of mics and a lot of mics and michaels they'll play it off legit for a minute but they do not like being mike yeah i have i've i have learned not to call michaels mike
John: But you know what?
John: I'm talking about Mike Schiller.
John: Come on.
John: Mike Schiller?
John: Are you talking about Michael Schilling?
John: Michael Schilling.
John: Sorry.
John: Mike Schilling.
John: Mike Schilling.
John: Oh, Mike Schilling.
John: He would hate that.
John: Original drummer of The Long Winters.
John: And he's a doctor now, right?
John: Mike Schilling.
John: I don't think he's a doctor, no.
Merlin: Is he ABD?
John: I'm not sure... You know, we've fallen out of touch.
John: That's probably better.
John: He was teaching a writing class at a local arts college.
John: And he asked me if I would come in and give a lecture to his class.
John: And I said, of course.
John: Of course I will.
John: And I don't know if that's not the answer he expected.
John: I'm not sure why his...
John: Why his response was to never contact me again.
John: Weird.
John: And I haven't heard or seen of him either.
John: But you know what?
John: This happens to people.
John: When they reach a certain age, which is to say our age...
John: They go, weird things happen.
John: They meet somebody.
John: They go into a comfortable living room setup where there is maybe a sectional couch, part of which is called a chaise.
John: And they get an extraordinary television.
John: And pretty much their needs are met.
John: There's like a new Chipotle grill that opened down the street.
John: I hate that place.
John: For all your healthy, like, four menu items.
John: That place makes me furious.
John: And boom, when am I going to see him?
John: It's not like we're going to see each other in church.
Merlin: I've got an idea, but it's not super flattering for you.
John: Oh, well, I can take it.
John: Okay.
John: Although, I have to say, lately, I have realized that I am a little bit shaky lately.
Merlin: Oh, me too.
Merlin: I've been totally shaky lately.
John: You know, I take stuff.
John: Do you take stuff personally?
John: Well, I, you know me, I've, I can take a ton of shit, a metric ton of shit.
John: I'll stand in a, I'll stand in a room of 400 people where everybody in the room hates my guts and I just, and it just bounces off of me.
John: But lately, not so much.
John: I'm, I'm like walking around like a, like a, uh, like a wounded elk.
John: Hmm.
John: Like an elk which has been hit with a stone-tipped arrow.
John: But the arrow has fallen out, but I am a little bit lame in my haunches, my rear haunch.
Merlin: I was thinking more of like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, where you've been kind of discouraged from joining the group, that feeling of being a little bit outside.
Merlin: It's a terrible feeling, especially at Christmas.
Yeah.
Merlin: That's an awful feeling.
Merlin: I've been feeling – sensitive is the wrong word.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: But I can tell that I'm – well, this is just too personal.
Merlin: But I can tell.
Merlin: I can tell when I'm getting a little bit off track.
Merlin: You feel a little wounded.
Merlin: You know what it is?
Merlin: I'm starting to realize – and oh, man, why am I saying this?
Merlin: This will all be introduced in court one day.
Merlin: I can tell when I start feeling unappreciated that something is wrong.
Merlin: I might not be getting enough sleep.
Merlin: I might be taking too much or too little medicine or something.
Merlin: But I've started to notice that as soon as I start feeling like I'm not appreciated, I know that I've gotten off track.
John: That's your flag.
Merlin: Because I actually don't fucking care normally.
John: Right.
John: Well, listen, first of all, none of this can be introduced in court because as a professional, everything you say to me is in the strictest confidence.
Merlin: Like a priest or a lawyer or what's our affiliation?
Merlin: I mean, apart from doing America's Favorite Podcast.
Merlin: I'm kind of a priest lawyer.
Merlin: You might be my wartime conciliary.
Merlin: Yeah, that's right.
Merlin: Could I really count on you for that if I had to?
Merlin: Are you kidding me?
Merlin: Of course.
Merlin: Would you go to the mattresses?
John: You know what?
John: All over town, I have rooms set up
John: That are just empty rooms full of mattresses.
Merlin: And I'll bet you say... Just ready.
Merlin: I'll bet when you say all over town, there might be some in town or there might not.
Merlin: And they might be in different places.
John: They might be in different towns.
Merlin: See, this is the thing about a safe house.
Merlin: You know, I'm really... John, your influence on me is broad and extremely deep.
Merlin: And I am starting to get way more interested in...
Merlin: Spy stuff, for sure.
Merlin: And I've been thinking a lot about safe houses.
Merlin: Safe rooms, it's a sucker's game.
John: Safe room, it's just a place for you to be immolated when they burn your house down.
John: You're helping them.
John: That's right.
John: You're just like, here, let me go in here where I cannot hurt you.
Merlin: Same thing with security.
Merlin: If you show somebody five doors and one of them has a giant-ass lock that says don't go in here, you've got a pretty good idea where to start.
Merlin: If there's a big vault in a closet, I think they're going to know there's a pretty good chance that the professor is in there.
John: That's right.
John: And that's why I have booby-trapped completely random stuff in my house.
John: Oh, that's good.
John: So it's like, oh, you wouldn't think that my family Bible would be like an old-fashioned rat trap.
Merlin: On the one hand, people who know you are going to say, why would John have a Bible, let alone a family?
Merlin: But then somebody else, some smartest, is going hide in plain sight.
Merlin: Boom.
Merlin: Pow.
Merlin: Pow.
John: there's a kid the people that live across the street from me not directly across but kind of around the corner their house is on the lot the corner lot there's a kid over there about 30 years old and sometimes people show up to talk to him but they pull up alongside the house on my side of the house
John: And then he comes out and gets in their car with them and they sit there for a while.
John: And then you see some lighters going off, some pots getting smoked.
John: And it's like, he doesn't want them parked in front of his house for some reason, but they pull up and they park basically in front of my house.
Merlin: Do you surveil them?
John: Absolutely.
John: Well, I used to, what I used to do is when I would drive up, when I would come home and I would see that somebody was parked over in this spot, because there's no reason to park there unless you're
John: Unless you're trying to do some... I mean, this is some basic level drug dealer stuff.
Merlin: It's really... Park alongside the house.
Merlin: I don't want to interrupt you, John, but that's some real fucking first grade operative stuff.
Merlin: I mean, wait a minute.
Merlin: Let me understand.
Merlin: You're going to be 110 feet from the front of your house and that's your cover?
John: Yeah, around the corner.
John: But at the same time...
John: Like, for most drug dealers, that's at the top of their imagination.
John: It's legit.
John: He could actually be thinking, like, we're around the corner.
John: Nobody's ever going to think.
Merlin: Yeah, you know what that is?
Merlin: That is an automotive safe room.
Merlin: That makes it so easy to pick up two stoners now.
John: Well, so what I used to do when I pulled up to the house was I would pull up in front of my house at night, of course.
John: I would pull up in front of my house, but I would just park my car kind of at... I would turn the wheels at the last minute so that my car was kind of pointing...
John: across the street so that my headlights were shining right in their front window right in the windshield of where they were sitting and then i would just sit in my car with the motor running and my headlights just filling their car with awful awful light and they would sit there blinking and kind of and for they would sit there for a long time waiting for me to turn my car off and i would just sit there
Merlin: Oh, that must be unnerving.
Merlin: Potheads hate to blink.
John: It's really bad.
John: It was bad for them.
John: And then eventually they would drive away.
John: And for a long time, they figured out like, oh, well, for whatever reason, either that guy across the street doesn't like because I would never.
John: It's not like I would get out and go over and talk to them.
John: I would just sit in my car with the lights on until they drove away.
Merlin: You ever thought about carrying a clipboard?
John: That's a great idea.
Merlin: I think there's all kinds of ways.
Merlin: I've fucked with a lot of people, John.
Merlin: To me, the thing is, you never want to threaten somebody.
Merlin: But the thing is, it's like the two guys and the tiger, right?
Merlin: I just need to be faster than you.
Merlin: I just need to get you thinking.
Merlin: If I get you thinking, I've kind of already won.
John: Well, clipboard is great, except that I clearly live in this place.
John: So clipboard is kind of like, I'm here to check the water meter.
Merlin: So this guy knows where you live.
Yeah.
John: Well, yeah, I live across the street from him.
John: But the other day, I was at the playground with my little girl.
John: And this guy shows up with like a whole passel of kids.
John: And he's the nicest, sweetest guy in the world.
John: And all these kids, they're not his.
John: He was their uncle.
John: Are they rentals?
John: Oh, okay.
John: He's uncle somebody.
John: And then another group of kids showed up with a couple of gals at the same park.
John: And they all were related to each other.
John: And they were all like...
John: and none of them lived with their folks they were all living with uncles but they were but he was kind of really great sweet natured 30 year old stoner uncle to these kids who were charming little kids they were all good behaved or i'm sorry well behaved and like kind of athletic but but uh but also polite little kids and
John: And I was like, oh, maybe I got this guy all wrong.
John: Maybe he's just a stoner guy who's selling a little weed.
Merlin: Maybe his lady does not like him smoking pot in the house, but she suffers it quietly.
Merlin: She looks the other way.
Merlin: It's his one time each week where he gets to hang out in a car and smoke pot and not bother anybody.
John: Exactly.
John: The friend pulls up.
John: He says, pull alongside the house so the kids don't see you.
John: And we're going to go out and smoke pot in the car.
John: And all of a sudden, I felt like all of my sweating of this guy across the street because I think he's running some operation.
John: It turns out he just wants to sit out and listen to the chronic and have some pots.
Merlin: Jeez.
John: That changes everything.
John: It does.
John: And now I like the guy.
John: And I don't know what I'm supposed to keep in half an eye on him, though.
John: Oh, absolutely.
John: I pulled up in front of my house today and he was out there talking to some guy, some guy that was kind of dressed like Minister Farrakhan.
John: I was like, listen, I don't want any of that kind of I don't want any like like Muslims.
Merlin: Guys with, like, horn-rimmed glasses and newspapers.
John: Yeah, and bow ties.
John: Like, I'm okay with that if that is a Pee Wee Herman affectation.
John: But, like, you know, I don't want to see guys standing out here selling newspapers on the...
Merlin: It's so – you know, it is so hard to evaluate.
Merlin: I run into things like that all the time because I'm – while I'm not strictly speaking paranoid, I definitely – I have a flair or an affliction for trying to find the story.
Merlin: And so, you know, my brain will run off in a million directions.
Merlin: You know, I'm kind of like the opposite of Sherlock Holmes.
Merlin: Like I will see something and I will start putting pieces together and pretty soon I have taken a long walk off a short piece of logic.
Merlin: And I've got – but now I'm just looking for evidence about that.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Do you ever do that?
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, yeah, I see what you're saying.
Merlin: Well, you know, and I guess I guess you could just you could go over and confront him directly, but you don't want to.
Merlin: I mean, you got to have your privacy.
Merlin: There's a reason we have fences.
Merlin: There's a reason you have an electrified fence.
Merlin: You know, electrified fences make good neighbors.
Right.
John: I was standing out in front of my Vietnamese neighbor's house the other day, and he has a tree in his front yard that I very, very, very, very much want to cut down with a chainsaw.
Merlin: Is it a view killer?
John: Well, it's not that.
John: It is a cherry tree, but it's a volunteer.
John: And I don't know if you know this about a lot of fruit bearing trees, but...
John: You know, they bear delicious fruit because they are grafted.
John: Like, delicious fruit-bearing cherry tree is grafted onto hardy crap cherry roots.
Merlin: It's a form of, like, floral eugenics?
John: Well, yeah.
John: So the trees that have the really great, powerful root system make shitty cherries.
John: I'm just saying this for instance.
John: They make shitty cherries, but they have great roots.
John: And then the trees that make great cherries have shitty roots and they're fragile and they blow down in storms.
John: So what they do is they graft the top of a great cherry tree onto the root system of a strong cherry tree and they make super tree trees.
John: But what happened in this instance is that a... So I have a great cherry tree in my front yard.
John: But it's such a big tree that the roots kind of extend under my neighbor's yard.
John: And from the root...
John: a volunteer poked up out of the ground and nobody mowed it down and it became its own tree.
John: But it came from the root.
Merlin: Oh, it was doing like a September 1939 on you.
Merlin: It was doing a little slide in sideways.
John: Zippity zap right up.
John: Look over there.
John: Like, oh, Maginot line.
John: Try this.
John: How about we just go around the side?
John: How's that for your Maginot line?
John: And so now there's this huge cherry tree in my neighbor's yard, which produces the bitterest, tiniest little shitty pie cherries.
John: Nobody eats them.
John: Nobody wants them.
John: But this tree is just over there.
John: Like, it's just sucking up my energy.
John: Just the fact that it's over there.
John: Every day I walk out there, I'm like, that fucking tree.
Merlin: Now you're going to see it.
Merlin: You're going to see it.
John: Every day I have to look at it.
John: And, you know, so for a long time in the night, I would go out and I would lop limbs off of it.
Yeah.
John: but it's this big tree.
John: I can't, you know, like just the, just the fact that it's over there really bothers me.
Merlin: So I started when he was still in Indochina, everything would have been different.
John: Well, yeah, but you don't remember my neighbors before, before the Vietnamese, my neighbors were from, from, uh, like, uh, Sudan.
John: And that I definitely wasn't.
John: So they moved.
John: They moved.
John: The Sudanese are gone.
John: Oh, so,
John: Anyway, so I was standing out in the street and I was staring at this tree.
John: I'm in front of his house staring at it.
John: I'm just giving this tree like the, just giving it the hairy eyeball, just the ugliest looks.
John: And I'm kind of hoping that eventually he's going to come out and he's going to say, hi, how you doing?
John: You know, or just like come out the door because your neighbor's standing there staring at your front yard and there's nothing else in his yard except this tree.
John: But I couldn't quite figure out how I was going to go knock on his door and say, listen, I got a beef with this tree.
John: And I know it's nothing to you.
John: But I will buy and plant and maintain a better tree for you somewhere else in your yard if you will let me saw this tree down.
Yeah.
John: That's my plan.
John: That is my proposal to this guy.
Merlin: Do you play out this scenario in your head and try different versions?
John: Well, I do because the problem is there is a language gulf.
John: He does not speak English.
John: And what I'm afraid of is that he's going to get some nephew to come out and explain it to me.
John: And the nephew will have been...
John: he will drag his nephew away from playing dance, dance revolution or whatever he's doing out into the daylight.
John: And he's going to say, you know, tell me what this, tell me what the next door neighbor is saying.
John: And I'm going to say, listen, I want to chop down your tree and I'll put, I'll plant a better tree somewhere.
John: And just the way this is, the nephew is going to be like bored and, and garble the translation.
John: And I feel like I only have one,
John: I only have one chance to get this message across to this guy because if it comes across the wrong way, right, if somebody came over to my house and they said, I want to chop down this tree in your yard,
John: and they approached me wrong, you don't get a second chance.
Merlin: So you have to frame it right.
Merlin: And also, it's like sales.
Merlin: You have to think about, as I get older, I realize that it helps very much to, you can't guess what other people think, but you can certainly put yourself in their simple shoes, and you can try to think about it from their point of view.
John: Right.
Merlin: Did his dead wife plant that?
John: Right?
John: No, I know that his dead wife didn't plan it.
John: Well, because I was living there before he was living there.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Yeah, these are exactly the kind of things.
Merlin: It's funny because you're not in the suburbs, but these are exactly the kinds of things that are making the suburbs literally kill us.
Merlin: These kinds of turf wars, like did your dog poop like two inches into my yard?
Merlin: This is huge in Florida, John.
Merlin: Like did you edge your grass as well as I did?
Merlin: Do you know what I mean?
Merlin: Like did you – like are the numbers on the address thing on your house askew?
Merlin: Because old people, especially everyone in Florida, but especially old people are obsessed with these extremely minor things because they, this probably doesn't apply to you.
Merlin: They don't have that many other things to do.
Merlin: So they start noticing things.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Now with you, I know you're very busy.
Merlin: So this is, this is probably something that just became so intolerable.
Merlin: You had to notice it.
John: The idea of a root in your, well, but, but what complicates it and this, and the thing is there were a couple of trees over there that bothered me.
John: And when the Sudanese people moved out... Now, I'm not... I think the statute of limitations has passed.
Merlin: Just so I'm clear, because I might be misremembering, but these are the folks where you didn't want to call them on the carpet because they may have been the victims.
Merlin: They might have escaped the genocide.
John: No, no.
John: I was pretty sure that the guy... There was a man, and then he had a couple of wives, and then some other...
John: There were, like, five women and one guy living there.
John: And he listened to really, really, really loud sermons from some, like, imam that was broadcasting these, like, fiery, polemical sermons in Arabic.
John: And, like, none of them would shake my hand.
John: It was a weird scene over there, and I didn't get along with them.
Yeah.
Merlin: But all those helicopters, John, I'm sorry to derail you, but all of those helicopters with no markings are starting to make a lot more sense.
John: Have you thought about that?
John: Have I?
Merlin: I mean, I know you've thought a little bit about why are there so many.
Merlin: I think you and I counted 16 while I was there.
Merlin: Why are there so many unmarked helicopters flying over your neighborhood?
John: Well, it's not the unmarked ones that worry me.
John: It's the invisible ones.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: They make a sound, but not where you would expect it.
John: Right.
John: They're ventriloquist helicopters.
Merlin: Can you have a cloaked helicopter?
Merlin: Sort of like with the Osama bin Laden helicopter.
Merlin: Can't you have like a special Black Hawk with curvy sides that you don't hear coming?
John: Sure.
John: Didn't you see the Roy Scheider movie Blue Thunder?
Merlin: No, but I'm going to write that down.
Merlin: I saw the Zero Dark Thirty.
John: You never saw the Roy Scheider vehicle Blue Thunder taking place in Los Angeles?
John: It's basically Zero Dark Thirty, except in the mid-80s and in Los Angeles.
John: hmm i saw all that jazz a couple times yeah well this is this so fueled by the box office success of all that jazz showtime folks and jaws 2 roy scheider was propelled he could write his own ticket at that point he basically could and he he made uh he made blue thunder which is um the only reason i know about blue thunder was a i was a kid in the 80s as you remember with a flight suit
John: With a flight suit.
John: And also, I was in the Alaska Repertory Theater production of Hot L Baltimore, an award-winning play about the decline of the inner city that took place in a crumbling, a once grand, now crumbling hotel.
Yeah.
John: And I was the paper boy.
John: This was a production of Hot L Baltimore, which features real live nudity on stage.
John: And I was a 10-year-old who was cast in the role of the paper boy.
John: I would seek that out.
John: And so every night...
John: for the entire run of this play, I was, you know, it was like, this was the moment where I was, I was trotting the boards, literally trotting boards with actual adult actors who had come, who had been imported to Anchorage for this, you know, this like first run off Broadway play.
John: And, and I got to see, I got to see this woman's boobs,
John: every night i don't want to hear i don't want to hear a single word against the legitimate theater i know it was great and it was that was where i that was where i learned about arlo guthrie because they played arlo guthrie in the soundtrack every night but anyway so um one of the actors in my production of hot l baltimore
John: was one of these guys, if you saw him, I'm going to find him now.
John: If you saw him, you would say, oh, I know that guy.
John: Yeah, his name was Jack Murdoch.
John: And Jack Murdock was a character actor in a lot of television in the 70s, 60s, 70s and 80s.
John: Like he was on episode of Hawaii Five-0 or he was on, you know, he was.
John: Oh, that guy.
John: The husband of a gal that was on the love boat or whatever.
Merlin: He's a serious that guy.
John: Yeah.
John: Jack Murdock.
John: Right.
John: You see him and you're like, oh, that guy.
John: And so Jack Murdoch played like the old guy in the lobby of the hot old Baltimore and hot old Baltimore.
John: The name of the play is a reference to the E being burned out, E being burned out at the hotel Baltimore.
John: Right.
John: And, um,
John: And it was one of those, like, it was one of those verite plays that were popular in the early 70s, where it was, you know, it was just street vernacular, and the message was, good morning, America, how are you?
John: Don't you know me?
John: I'm your native son.
Merlin: Would you say it was really real?
John: It was so real.
John: I mean, I was the paper boy, and you don't get realer than that.
John: But so anyway, Jack, so every night...
John: I'm 10 years old or 12 years old and we're like the cast is back in the dressing room with the, with the big round light bulbs and the mirrors and everybody's getting dressed in their costumes and putting makeup on and they're all telling theater stories and they're all from New York and the girls were all dancers and Jack Murdoch's got all these stories about Hawaii five Oh, and you know, and Jack Murdoch taught me how to play chess and
John: Are you kidding me?
John: No, I was their mascot.
John: I was this little kid and they would sit, you know, and he would like sat me down and taught me to play chess and we would play chess every night.
John: And he was telling me that he was working his next job after he left Alaska was to go make this movie, Blue Thunder with Roy Scheider.
Wow.
John: And he just plays some cop in a room somewhere and the camera's panning across the room.
Merlin: He looks to be a classic character actor.
John: Classic character actor.
John: He turns around at one point in the movie and he goes, hey, that's not the right button.
John: I don't know what his line is, but it's a speaking part.
John: And so when blue thunder came out, like I knew this guy, Jack Murdoch, he was my, he was my buddy.
John: And, uh, so I went to see it and, you know, and of course it also had Roy Scheider and a, and a secret helicopter that could run silent, run deep.
John: And, uh, so it was, I was thrilled.
John: It's my brush with first, first brush with greatness.
Merlin: That must have been – you know what?
Merlin: That must have been so exciting on so many levels.
Merlin: I mean being in a theater in general is so exciting.
Merlin: I've been in a handful of plays and I wasn't good in any of them.
Merlin: But it was – I could see why people get so – I mean setting aside fame.
Merlin: I can see why – the show.
Merlin: I could see why people get so excited about it.
Merlin: It's really – it's –
Merlin: it's uh it's really opera gosh he was on operation petticoat look at that see oh he was in the blue knight with uh with that guy george uh what's george kennedy well and i knew barney miller he was on a two episode wow you didn't get a lot of two-part barney miller's he was in and and i i watched all those shows with my dad barney miller and operation petticoat i mean i knew all that stuff so i recognized him he was the one guy on the cast that i recognized
John: And, you know, and he became like a pal.
John: Not exactly a mentor because we didn't spend that much time.
Merlin: Well, you know, who has time for that?
Merlin: There's a lot of you got to put on the makeup.
Merlin: You got to do your exercises.
Merlin: You got to play chess with this kid.
Merlin: But isn't that kind of cool that somebody would be nice to you in that situation?
John: They were all super nice.
John: And, you know, and it was.
John: So what year was that?
John: 80?
John: 1980, I guess.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: So you were like, what, like 10?
John: No, 12.
John: 12.
John: 1980 and...
John: I mean, it was like the character, the people, the actors, these people who had come up to Alaska to play in this to be in this play were absolutely like Richard Dreyfuss in Goodbye Girl.
John: I mean, they were the same.
John: It was basically four years later and the same exact culture of people.
John: It was like being at a it was like being on the set of Taxi or something.
John: I mean, the women were actually wearing leotards because that was just what you wore.
John: I mean, they weren't wearing it on stage.
John: They were just wearing it around because leotards were, that was the thing then.
John: Leotards and headbands.
John: Good time.
John: So I learned a lot.
John: But then immediately afterwards, I tried out.
John: I was flush with success at having been in this massive production.
John: And I auditioned for the oldest kid in Enemy of the People.
John: And I did not get the role.
John: That name rings a bell.
John: What happens in that?
John: Ibsen.
Merlin: You were going to be in an Ibsen play?
John: Sorry.
John: And I was, and it was like, wow, this was going to be my, this was going to be my big.
John: Now I was going to go from here to, to the big, the big time.
John: Well, that's how it works.
Merlin: You've learned this from music.
Merlin: I mean, you get a little bit of success.
Merlin: You build on that.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Now, do you have a sense of who got your part?
John: Some other blonde kid, some other blonde kid that maybe wasn't so high on himself because he had just been in hotel Baltimore.
John: They offered me the understudy role.
John: But, you know, I have never been particularly resilient to... I am not one of those, like, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and go back at it, you know?
John: I was like, I didn't get the role in Enemy of the People, and everybody consoled me, and I rejected their consolation.
Merlin: And I was told... Because you were unworthy, or because it just value-wise didn't...
John: Well, it's just like, I mean, who knows whether they just cast the next kid.
John: You know, they don't care.
John: I think it's pretty capricious, John, the way these things happen.
John: Yeah, they're casting 12-year-olds.
John: They're not trying to pick a stone.
Merlin: It's a lot of who you know.
John: Chess will rarely come into it.
John: Yeah.
John: And so, but, but anyway, I was like, I, it was not so much that I was devastated as I was, I took tremendous umbrage at having been, I took umbrage at the idea that there was another 12 year old blonde kid in Anchorage who was as cute as I was or potentially even cuter.
John: I was like, I was appalled by this.
John: And unfortunately for me, 12 years old was the last, I think probably four days later I stopped being cute and I was never cute again.
John: So that was it.
John: I mean, they made the right choice.
John: Had they picked me, I would have become uncute on stage in front of the audience.
John: From night after night, they would have been like, this kid is becoming hideous.
Merlin: A little bit more of an awkward homunculus every night.
John: Yeah, just like every night I would have grown a half an inch and my chin would have grown longer.
John: Yeah, weird.
John: Just like pimples, blackheads.
John: So anyway, they probably picked an 11-year-old and they were safe for a year.
Merlin: Well, you're certainly right now in the kind of business where you do have to kind of really want it and you've got to put up with a lot.
Merlin: But I bet theater – I mean you've seen A Chorus Line, I'm sure.
Merlin: I mean you've got to really want it and you've got to be like –
Merlin: you know, if you've ever had to go out and like, I don't know if you've ever had a job, but like when you get a job, you're trying to get a job, you got the resume and you just, you've got to get into this state.
Merlin: I will not say Zen, but you've got to get into a certain, certain state where you go like, it's my job to just show up a bunch and understand that it's probably not going to work out.
Merlin: And then if I, if I just keep doing it long enough,
Merlin: It'll happen, maybe.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: Is there anything worse than a job?
John: No.
John: Well, I mean, getting a job.
John: Getting a job is worse than even having a job.
Merlin: Well, you know, one addendum.
Merlin: I mean, I think that the only thing worse than having a job is losing a job.
Merlin: But I think the secret that we should share with people is that you'll never lose a job if you don't get a job.
Merlin: I mean, you'll lose things.
Merlin: But in America anyway, it could be all of North America except for Mexico, you are what you do.
Merlin: When people meet you, they don't ask you what your favorite episode of Adventure Time is.
Merlin: They ask you what you do, and they tacitly want to know basically how much you make.
Merlin: They want to know whether they should suck up to you, right?
John: I'm ringing a bell right now.
John: Oh.
John: But I'm leaning back in my chair.
John: I can't reach the bell.
Merlin: So I was just hitting the table.
Merlin: You sound like crew chef.
John: No, I was just hitting a roll of toilet paper because it's the closest thing I could reach.
John: I was ringing a roll of toilet paper like it was a bell because I agree with you.
John: Okay.
Merlin: That's a new – but I couldn't do that.
Merlin: I couldn't do that.
Merlin: I've hated that time.
Merlin: When I counsel my kids about this, we always talk about this and how tough it is when you lose a job, especially if you're – well, first of all, if you're 20.
Merlin: If you're in your 20s and you lose a job, it feels like the end of the world.
Merlin: whether it's for cause or not, because you think like you, you don't even realize how tenuous your grip on reality is when you're in your early to mid twenties.
Merlin: I really, really, really believe that.
Merlin: And then you get a little older and you go, well, you know, I didn't die.
Merlin: Like I can suck it up for a while.
Merlin: And even if I don't have any money, like I can definitely find something, you know, I can always wait on tables as, as people I've certainly thought a lot of times, but like you get a
Merlin: And like you – maybe not you, but I want to know, have you met people like this?
Merlin: You have accumulated so much of your sense of who you are by how quickly you can kind of shortcut your introduction to someone.
Merlin: So in the case of this Murdoch fellow, he could say –
Merlin: Yeah, you may know me from a 1984 episode of Remington Steel.
Merlin: Or he was on St.
Merlin: Elsewhere.
Merlin: He was on, boy, he's been on Cheers.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Yeah, he was the guy.
John: I remember seeing him on Cheers.
John: This is many years later.
Merlin: And I was like, hey, it's Jack Murdoch.
Merlin: But like, you know, if you're walking around and you're like, you know, you're I don't know if you're Hindenburg or something, you can you can let people know that like you can.
Merlin: Good example.
Merlin: If you're Hindenburg.
Merlin: He was a war hero, John.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Would you pick someone younger?
John: If I was looking for an example or if I was looking for a chancellor?
John: Is it president?
John: Chancellor.
John: Chancellor.
John: Chancellor.
Merlin: Wouldn't you look for someone a little younger?
John: Well, yeah, but you can't put a price on War Hero.
Merlin: That's true.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: John, he was in Any Which Way You Can.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: He's got quite a CV, this guy.
Merlin: Do you remember that film?
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: Do you remember the sequel to Every Which Way But Loose?
Merlin: Yeah, In Any Which Way You Can.
Merlin: That was a talented orangutan.
Merlin: Remember he put his hands up in the air?
Merlin: He did that a lot.
Merlin: I feel this all the time.
Merlin: I'm very interested in the idea of status.
Merlin: Part of what allows me to be interested in status is I'm not personally obsessed with it.
Merlin: You and I have been in places where we're around famous people
Merlin: And if I may say, I tend to, unless it's somebody I really like, like, you know, if it's Scott Miller, I want to run up and meet Scott Miller.
Merlin: But apart from that, I kind of go into the background because I don't, you know, I don't want to get into that.
John: This is a long-running theme in our podcast, which is this sense that we have in meeting and dealing with young people that we do so much of, you and I.
Merlin: I would have to say, John, I think that's who we're really trying to reach with a lot of this material.
John: Yeah, and a lot of the young people I know, they are not averse to work.
John: They want to work.
John: They want to have jobs where they do fulfilling work in the world.
John: They want to make a contribution.
John: They feel underused is the problem.
John: And they do not see any... Because nobody joins IBM anymore as an 18-year-old or a 22-year-old straight out of college and expects to work for IBM for 40 years...
John: And everybody's career path is this like game of Frogger where they're hopping from log to lily pad to log and they don't see a clear path and they feel underused from the beginning.
John: And then they get to be 27, 28 years old and there's still no path developing.
John: There's still no sense.
John: That anything they've done adds up to anything or that the next thing they're going to do is on the road to anywhere.
John: And so they have this crushing futility.
John: And it isn't that they don't want to work.
John: It's that they want to do valuable work.
John: They have no idea how to get there.
John: They've got a college degree in something that they don't care about.
John: All around them, they perceive incorrectly, but they perceive people doing fun things.
John: You know, they see Paul F. Tompkins being a comedian and they're like, why can't I be Paul F. Tompkins?
John: And they don't realize that there are 300 million Americans and only one of them is Paul F. Tompkins.
Merlin: And they're so serious.
John: Oh, everybody's so serious.
Merlin: Don't you think they're so serious?
John: So I'm always in this position of talking to people where they're just like, but, but, but...
John: I am 28 and I have a degree in, in, uh, in marketing, marketing and communications, communications.
John: I have a, I have a goddamn college degree in communications and I am working as a barista or as a receptionist or as a, you know, and I, and I can't, I can't do it anymore.
John: I don't want to, I don't want to quit without knowing what I'm going to do next, but there is no next.
John: And,
John: And, yeah, I feel for them.
John: Not everybody can go be a banjo player.
John: We're already saturated.
Merlin: Especially after Super Train.
John: Well, I got an email from a guy after our last episode who said, and this is the amazing thing about this podcast, because every time we do anything, I get 10 emails from people, and I'm always astonished.
John: At who is listening.
John: This guy says, my job is that I am a researcher at the International Court in The Hague.
John: And for the last... The Hague?
John: For the last however many years, my job has been to sit in a room and go over evidence of the Bosnian genocide.
John: Oh.
John: And what they do is they give me a name and they say, find this guy's name in this archive of one billion documents.
John: Oh my God.
John: And so he wrote me this thing and he's like, whenever I think I can't take it anymore, I look to my left and I look to my right and the people that I'm working with are reading the autopsy reports of their relatives.
John: And, you know, so he and I had a little exchange on the email, basically around the topic of the fact that the more, although we become obsessed with searching for meaning in these situations,
John: We feel like if we just watch one more Holocaust documentary or we just read one more book about Bosnia or Rwanda, we're going to unlock it somehow.
John: We're going to find that missing puzzle piece that explains how your friends and neighbors, how normal human beings who were working in an office two weeks ago are now...
John: like chewing on the shin bones of the children who live next door.
John: What is the key?
John: And he was saying, after all these years of working in this situation and reading these documents, I come to the same conclusion you do, which is that there is no...
John: Learning more about it, you can learn all there is to know, and there is no sense you can ever make of it.
John: You never find a key.
John: It's just... You just keep watching Holocaust documentaries.
John: You don't ever find it.
John: And I said, how in the fuck did you get that job?
John: You know?
John: Like, where...
John: How did that... And he told me his story, which is just like he was just a guy.
John: He needed a job.
John: He needed a job.
John: He was sitting in a bar and he was kind of talking shit out loud in a bar about the world.
John: And some guy sidles over to him and is like, well, you know, if you...
John: If you really feel that way, you should do something about it.
John: You should work for this or work for that.
John: And he got a job initially, I think, sharpening pencils or pushing a cart up and down a hallway.
John: And eventually he finds his way into this room where he's listening.
John: He's got headphones on and he's listening to people testify about massacres.
Merlin: That seems like one of the – no, I'm not going to say one of the worst jobs in the world.
Merlin: But it sounds like a very challenging job because, you know, I mean what could be worse than having to deal with that subject matter but also have to deal with so much boring paperwork?
Merlin: Because you know what I mean?
Merlin: Like he's got to go find – and it's a legal proceeding.
Merlin: He can't get it kind of half right.
Merlin: I'm pretty sure it's in here somewhere.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: It's going to be a lot of like – Staple it to the other thing.
Merlin: No, I mean, they're going to ask questions.
Merlin: These guys got good lawyers.
John: But, you know, Merlin, I mean, you are somebody who takes a tremendous amount of pleasure in writing things down on cards and shuffling them around.
John: You know how much satisfaction you can get.
John: Now, I don't know if you are a compulsive checkbook balancer, but, you know, there are all these different permutations of this desire to have order and meaning in the world.
Merlin: What do you think, John?
John: And some of it...
Merlin: Wait a minute.
Merlin: I thought there was three times as much money in here.
John: Some of it is you turn over the card and it's a picture of a pair of red high-heeled shoes.
John: I wonder what that was for.
John: You turn over another card and it's some brown sandals.
John: You turn over another card.
John: It's red high-heeled shoes.
John: You match the two cards.
Merlin: What is that game called?
Merlin: Shoe Match.
John: It's called Shoe Match.
John: So you're playing a game of shoe match, and that is a career that whatever the meaning it is that's being attached to matching the pieces of paper, you can at a certain point turn off the other data and just be like, I need to find the name
John: that's on this document and find it on these other documents.
John: And the fact that these other documents are all about firing squads and mass graves, I'm going to leave aside for a little while.
John: I'm just going to find, I'm going to find the matching name.
Merlin: But for somebody in that field, this is,
Merlin: so not meant to be as glib as it sounds, but it's not that different for being a reference librarian where like, you know, finding out the total number of people killed at Treblinka is not that different from the quadratic equation.
Merlin: No, you're an information gatherer and your job is to find the best version of truth that we know of and have access to in the time you have for me to find this.
John: Well, and that, that is why, that is why the horror is,
John: of history is so muted i mean right now world war ii is still and and bosnia they're still so horrible because they're the they are still reverberating and living people but i cannot find and believe me i have tried a single person that is that is really horrified by the events of the 30 years war although
John: Although the 30 Years War was a terrible, terrible, terrible Holocaust for all of Europe.
Merlin: This is my problem with becoming an Agincourt buff.
John: Right.
Merlin: There's no reenactments.
Merlin: Everybody wants to do the speech, and then that's about it.
John: But who – I mean, imagine at Agincourt –
John: Climbing like there were people that died at Agincourt because they were just buried under dead bodies and they couldn't move because they were because they were in number 10 to 1 didn't hurt.
John: Like imagine imagine dying because you are crushed under dead bodies and you drown in the mud like there are terrible terrible things that have happened.
John: But over the course of time, they just become history, and we write them down on 3x5 cards, we file them away, and we no longer have an emotional attachment to them.
John: I mean, and one of the interesting things about slavery in America is it's 150 years ago, but it is still very present because the cultural memory continues to be passed down and reinforced.
John: But there are a lot of other terrible things that happened
Merlin: in 1860 uh that you know that are that have just passed into the into the ether nobody's still mad about it well this is this is um very much the part we're gonna need to cut out but um i mean i think you have to you have to take i found it i found it i scooted forward um boy there's a screenshot of him in any which way you can that's really really funny
John: You're talking about Jack?
Merlin: Jack Murdock, yeah.
Merlin: He passed, by the way.
Merlin: He passed in 2001.
John: I know.
John: I remember when he died, and I don't know why.
John: I think it is that I have... Honestly, I have checked in with Jack Murdock over the years just to see how he's doing.
Merlin: I check in.
John: Yeah.
John: You're like, oh, Jack Murdock.
John: I wonder how he's doing.
John: I mean, I still have my script.
John: Are you kidding?
Merlin: Was it a Samuel French book?
Merlin: One of those little like licensed, like little, you know, trade, like it's saddle bound or like, you know, stapled like.
John: Yeah, that's it.
John: And I still have the program from the show that has everybody's picture in it.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Your house, man.
Merlin: I hope you've got a, God forbid, God forbid, John, that you ever actually die.
Merlin: I hope there is someone who can work through the chain of custody for what's going to happen with what's in that house.
John: I think it's nobody cares.
John: They really don't.
John: That's so manifestly untrue.
John: Somebody would come in here and they'd be like, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.
Merlin: Ah, John, John, John.
John: Two copies of the Preppy Handbook?
John: Why did he need two copies of the Preppy Handbook?
John: They don't know.
Merlin: Lisa Birnbaum, 1982.
John: They didn't know that one of them was a reference copy and one of them was to be preserved.
John: They don't care.
Merlin: He fixed Mr. McAdoo's old BMW by adjusting the anti-sway bar.
Merlin: um remember that song uh i i remember that line but i don't remember from what it was a rap kind of a proto rap song about preppies but but but here's the thing you know what this is great because we can get away from the holocaust although i wish we could talk about the holocaust no um we need to save it for our for hitler and stuff
Merlin: Do you honestly think that should be a separate property?
John: Hitler and stuff?
John: People keep saying Hitler and stuff, Hitler and stuff, but I – I don't think people would – here's the thing.
Merlin: It would be such a bummer.
Merlin: It's always a bummer, but it's in the context of talking about panties and neighbors.
Merlin: If you take it away from that and make it its own thing, it's going to be like every other Holocaust podcast on iTunes.
Merlin: I don't think it's going to drop people.
Merlin: I don't think we're going to –
Merlin: I don't make it.
John: Are there other Holocaust podcasts?
Merlin: Well, I have to imagine.
Merlin: I don't want to make it about the numbers, John.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Especially.
Merlin: Oh, God.
Merlin: Listen.
Merlin: The Russians, they don't even count the Russians.
John: I don't want to profit off the Holocaust any more than you do.
John: Well, 20 million.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: I mean, I can talk about European war.
John: But then that's not interesting.
Merlin: I think the thing is that the Holocaust is special.
Merlin: It's special for a lot of reasons.
Merlin: I think it's special because it's recent and this is going to be real fast.
Merlin: I think it's special because it's really relatively recent.
Merlin: There are still, as you say, what do you say?
Merlin: I got to check this fact because it's so bananas.
Merlin: What do you say that half of the World War II veterans die every day?
Merlin: Is that right?
Yeah.
John: Oh, I would say at least.
Merlin: But I mean, that's a heuristic, but people are dying fast.
Merlin: But nevertheless, you will encounter people who grew up
Merlin: You know, in the Lott's ghetto who were like little kids that are still around.
Merlin: But it holds a special place because I think it – this is not funny.
Merlin: It represents like next to something like watching Saw.
Merlin: It represents our idea of like just how awful it can really get.
Merlin: It's still –
Merlin: It's still current.
Merlin: It's still weirdly fresh.
Merlin: And the more – I think the part that makes it so compelling as I sit there and now prepare to watch a nine and a half hour movie about the Holocaust is that no matter how far you dig, you're going to find two things.
Merlin: First of all, on the one hand, going to find something that's increasingly more horrific and disturbing and challenging to your basic idea about what makes us human, like the good part of us that makes us human.
Merlin: Like you're going to find more and more of that and it becomes weirdly compelling.
Merlin: It's like looking at autopsy photos or something, not just strictly from like a –
Merlin: Yeah, prurient or sensationalist standpoint.
Merlin: But I think the nuance that gets lost among some of the fans of Hitler and stuff is that you – for every one of those you find, you're going to find five people who were mostly kind of OK with it.
Merlin: And that's the part – and I don't want to get into the monster, but I'm just going to say that's the part that always –
Merlin: the images.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Those images stick with me, but the part that really grabs me is that it's okay.
Merlin: So it's one thing for us to go.
Merlin: Like I watched, um, I watched Joan of Arc, the, uh, 1928 Joan of Arc the other night, which is pretty, pretty good.
Merlin: It's weird, but it's, it's really good.
Merlin: And, but you know, it's, it's very, very well done, but you know, you kind of know how it turns out.
Merlin: And there's like this, this one beautiful woman who keeps looking like she's just done some rush.
Merlin: And then there's a lot of guys in hats, but it's so beautifully cast all
John: Everybody dies in the end.
John: Have you seen the film?
Merlin: You know what I'm talking about?
Merlin: Yeah, I do.
Merlin: Yeah, it's on the Hulu and stuff.
Merlin: But anyhow, it is really moving.
Merlin: It's a testament to this 19-year-old woman who isn't going to back down.
Merlin: And then she backs down for a second.
Merlin: And she says, you know what?
Merlin: I'm not going to back down.
Merlin: But it's so beautifully balanced in the sense of like she really doesn't want to fucking die at the stake.
Merlin: But she also really does – well, like anybody in faith, she believes in this, but she's also like, oh, God, I really don't want to be on fire in front of people.
John: Oh, God, nobody wants to die at the stake.
Merlin: And I love that.
Merlin: I love that she didn't just like, you know, bravely go, oh, you know, all on Z. You know, it was hard for her.
Merlin: And then when they tell her, she says, bring him in here.
Merlin: I'm going to tell you guys I lied.
Merlin: I lied when I signed that.
Merlin: I really do believe I was sent by God essentially to do this thing.
Merlin: I'm like, okay, fine.
Merlin: Then we got to go do this thing.
Merlin: And the guy walks in and says, I'm here to give you the sacraments and help prepare you.
Merlin: And one of my favorite scenes is just a shot of her and she's just kind of –
Merlin: weeping just a little bit and is like, you know, so soon, like it's, it's right now, you know, it's, it's not like it's going to be like six months of, uh, you know, uh, appeals like, no, like you said that.
Merlin: And now we have to kill you.
Merlin: And like, on the one hand, it's like, there's an amazing scene at the end of her being burned at the stake.
Merlin: That's pretty well done for 1928.
Merlin: Very hard to watch, but, but like what ultimately makes that interesting is that like, it's interesting because yes, this young woman died.
Merlin: It's interesting because she did that, uh,
Merlin: in spite of her fears but because of her her faith and you know maybe she was nuts who knows but also what makes that movie it would not be interesting without the 30 different old guys staring at her and kind of and kind of laughing and that's and i think that's oh god i gotta get away from this that's what draws me into this stuff is the guys walking out of the room full of bodies who who are who are just wanting to get back to their strudel
John: They brush their hands off and they go back to their homes.
Merlin: And this is why, God damn your eyes, that the monster inside has now become something that I think about and I'd really like to talk about something else.
Merlin: But please respond.
Merlin: Does that comport at all with your own – because I'm trying to come back to your dude, your –
Merlin: your email person because like i'm not just doing this because i get off from watching these things i'm looking for something in this i'm searching for something and i'm not and i don't and you know what like the democratic process of of uh previous discussion i don't think there's an answer i don't think there's an end but i'm looking for more in this that's going to tell me something about human beings
John: The thing about Joan of Arc or the thing about any prior time in history was that there was opportunity for these individual acts of heroism and these people that stood on their principles.
John: And you wonder if Galileo had allowed himself to be burned at the stake, what we would think about him now.
Yeah.
John: But I think one of the reasons that the Holocaust is still on our minds all the time is that we are still navigating not the horror, not the inhumanity, but the fact that at that moment in time, I think around the world, let's say 1938...
John: There was a sense that democracy was an archaic form.
John: And that bureaucracy...
John: technological bureaucracy was going to free us from the messiness of the mob and that we finally had the machines.
John: We finally had the paperwork to live, to live a tech, a technical in a, with a, in a technical fashion.
John: And we are still navigating those ideas.
John: Now there are still very present ideas that,
John: that if you can just get your, if you can just get the apps in the right order on your phone, that your life problems are going to go away.
John: Ouch.
John: You know, we're all, we're all looking for like, oh, if I just had Google Glass, I would be able, now I would not have to X, you know?
John: And so we are still, although I feel like World War II was a giant refutation of the idea that paperwork was,
John: That paperwork was going to progress us beyond the messiness of just humans flinging shit at each other.
John: Like, if World War II did not demonstrate it, I don't know what it takes.
John: Because, hey, don't do that.
John: I'm writing this down.
John: Yeah, and also the idea that all of our messiness and all of our crimes against humanity were just a product of our ungovernableness.
John: And the fact that we now had in place systems where everybody could be monitored, everything could be cataloged, that we...
John: could be ultimately governed.
John: And the mistake that the Germans, the fundamental mistake of Nazism, well, God, I take that back.
John: Easy text.
John: But, you know, like, the idea that if we just got rid of
John: these people then everybody else was going to live peacefully and comfortably with one another if we just all we have to do is start with a clean slate we just have to raise these villages and build new villages in their place and to a certain extent we were engaged in that same process here in the united states we were raising the lower east side we were raising central detroit we were building highways and byways and all of these things we needed to get all we needed to do was get rid of the ghettos
John: And put up big apartment buildings and through technology, ultimately, and bureaucracy, we were going to eliminate all this messy human suffering.
John: And so the Holocaust still rings in my head because every day I walk out the door and I see the world still grappling with...
John: With the fact that really, like, the messiness of democracy is the only chance we have.
John: Like, it's the only check and balance is other people's voices.
John: Other, you know, that mixing and that disagreement and goodwill.
John: You know, the goodwill of trying to arrive at a consensus rather than the goodwill of saying, I am going to impose this for your own good.
John: So, yeah, I mean, every day I look at my computer and I just see.
Merlin: So are you looking for if I want to understand when you're I mean, maybe not actively, but are you you're looking for little little signs?
Merlin: It isn't like, oh, that guy's going to annex the Sudetenland.
Merlin: But like there's something out there where you're looking for some little tickle of there's a little bit where the monster could creep in.
Merlin: Is that fair to say?
John: Well, yeah, and I'm more and more convinced that the chaos is the key.
John: That the code is the mess, not the order.
John: And that anything that looks for answers in order is ultimately going to uncover a new brand of horror.
John: ones that we can't even picture yet.
John: I mean, if you look at all science fiction that prognosticates future horror, it all comes as a result of some attempt at creating a new order.
John: And what none of us can handle is that the mess is the plan, you know, or the mess is what protects us and the process is the whole thing.
John: It is the end.
John: The process is the end.
Merlin: I mean not so much unlike – I don't know.
Merlin: I think there should be more props for Brazil because Brazil on the one hand, the film, on the one hand – Oh, I thought you were saying the – I was talking about the country and I was going to say bold.
Merlin: When my baby smiles at me, I'll go to Rio.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: I mean like part of what I love about Brazil is that it could be seen as – I mean I was watching the – because apparently all I do is watch movies now.
Merlin: See?
Merlin: You can't do this if you have a job.
Merlin: You can't do it.
John: Merlin, watching movies is your job, part of your job.
John: I don't know what I'm looking for.
John: I just keep looking.
Merlin: There's no end to it.
Merlin: I just keep looking.
Merlin: But part of what obviously is so great about Brazil, and this is so obvious, unless you haven't seen it two, three, five, seven times, is how wonderfully it marries the – well, off the top of my head, two things.
Merlin: It obviously is very heavily influenced by 1984 movies.
Merlin: In 1984 and just this idea that there is this – God, George Orwell, such a great writer on the idea of how language affects political discourse and how inexact language is one of the most basic tools –
Merlin: There's that wonderful essay that everybody should read about the use of language.
Merlin: Anyway, but – no, you know what I mean.
Merlin: I do.
Merlin: You're making fun of me.
Merlin: I'm not.
Merlin: No, I'm agreeing with you 100 percent.
Merlin: I could Google it, but I'm trying not to do that.
Merlin: It's –
Merlin: I'll look it up later.
Merlin: But the, but the point is, yes.
Merlin: So, so huge influence from 1984, but the other part of it is, is the introduction of, um, uh, sorry to go there, but Kafka, like the castle, like there's something to Brazil, which is like, like, you know, in, um, in, in 1984, there's more of the sense of stasis and like, this is not going to change.
Merlin: Like you're always going to be scared.
Merlin: We're always going to be at war with, uh, Eurasia, East Asia.
Merlin: We're always gonna be at war with East Asia.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And there's just this sense of like this is never really going to change until the next reboot of the culture.
John: Until somebody comes down and throws a tennis shoe at the big screen?
John: What did the person throw?
John: A tennis racket?
Merlin: I think she had a hammer.
Merlin: Oh, a hammer.
Merlin: And that's why we have iPhones.
Merlin: But combine that with Kafka and something – But also with like Marx Brothers.
John: I mean that's what's crazy about Brazil.
John: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: It's all this like – The scene when they're in the restaurant and there's just this – and by the way, if you can – I can find you a Samistat copy of this if you would like with his wonderful director's commentary.
Merlin: There's a great scene –
John: No, no, no.
John: I've seen Brazil.
John: I've never seen it with the director.
John: Sorry.
John: I know.
John: You just about had a stroke.
Merlin: I've seen it many times.
Merlin: Literally in the entire program right now.
Merlin: Listen, Merlin, I've seen Brazil, all right?
Merlin: A bunch.
Merlin: It's okay, man.
John: Love it.
Merlin: I'm fine, man.
Merlin: I'm fine.
John: It's amazing.
Merlin: Did you read my poems?
Merlin: But the scene when they're in the restaurant and there's the bombing, so they bring up screens, like, you know, like, you know, folding screens to cover up the area where people are horribly injured so the diners don't have to see it.
Merlin: Very Marx Brothers.
Merlin: But – I'm not sure where I'm going with this.
Merlin: But –
Merlin: Here's a – I'm going to name five songs and then we should please talk about something else.
Merlin: Can You Feel the Love Tonight by Elton John from The Lion King.
Merlin: All I Want to Do, the first major hit for Sheryl Crow.
John: Yeah, I remember that one.
Merlin: Loser by Beck.
John: You know, all I want to do is basically like a note-for-note production remake of what's that song by Steeler's Wheel?
Merlin: Stuck in the Middle with You?
John: Yeah.
John: If you listen to Stuck in the Middle with You and all I want to do is have some fun.
Merlin: I bought that Jerry Rafferty record just because of you.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, that Jerry Rafferty.
John: It's diverse.
Merlin: It's full of cocaine.
John: But I'm telling you, listen to Stuck in the Middle with you, and then all I want to do is have some fun side by side, and you will see that it's not that she stole the melody, but everything about the sound of the groove.
Merlin: That's got a slide guitar kind of groove.
Merlin: As long as you're derailing me, did you ever take Stephen Malcolmus' Jennifer and the S-Dog and put it up against Say Yes by Elliot Smith?
Merlin: can't say that i have jennifer dates a man in the 60s yeah no no it's real and joanna bulme from the studio where that was recorded played in the chicks i knew that i'm just saying she's a girl boy she got thin arms so anyway beck's loser
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I think he, I think he quit Scientology and he's trying to play it off legit.
Merlin: Um, do you, uh, the first, the first, I believe number one ended before your Macklemore, Macklemore, uh, stay.
Merlin: I miss you by, uh, Lisa Loeb.
Merlin: Oh, right.
Merlin: There it is by Chris, or not by Chris Cross by the, uh, the guys who did whoop.
Merlin: There it is.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Those are all the songs.
Merlin: The songs seem old, but not super old.
Merlin: And they're all from the same year that there was a 100 day genocide in Rwanda.
Merlin: So we're not talking about horse vessel lead here.
Merlin: We're talking about stuff that you could hear at a wedding that you would remember from when you were in junior high.
Merlin: Those songs came out during the Rwandan genocide.
John: Which was 750,000 dead, right?
Merlin: 500,000 to a million.
Merlin: 100 days.
Merlin: And they were not out there with – what is it?
Merlin: Not the S1.
Merlin: What's their big rocket?
Merlin: But anyway, they were not out there with rapidly increasing technologies.
Merlin: There was a lot of legwork, if you like, involved in doing what they were doing.
Merlin: All I'm trying to say is – and that's why to me today, I'm old enough now that when I'm watching – for the love of God, I want to end this.
Merlin: When I watch something where people – even like you watch a movie like The Pianist.
Merlin: or whatever.
Merlin: These are, these are people that had lives and like they had fancy clothes and the Weimar Republic was really fun.
Merlin: And like humans and you see like, or you see like color footage of world war two, which I think just started kind of coming out around the time I was in college.
Merlin: And it looks completely, it looks like Vietnam and it's as fresh.
Merlin: It's as fresh as that.
Merlin: It completely brings it up to date.
Merlin: And so yeah,
John: Merlin, how are we going to stop talking about genocide?
John: We don't seem to be able to shake ourselves from this spell.
John: Do you think we should put a stake in the ground?
John: What do we do?
John: I mean, do we have to start playing the tambourine halfway through every one of our podcasts?
Merlin: Are you asking me literally for the recording of this show what my opinion is?
Merlin: I think we're burning it off.
Merlin: I think we were away for a while.
Merlin: We had things we needed to do.
Merlin: We had some scheduling problems.
Merlin: And I think a fucking lot of Hitler got backed up.
Merlin: We're burning it off.
Merlin: And I think it's going to get back to total fun very soon.
John: Oh, that's exciting to me.
John: Because, you know, the crows in my yard are doing a lot of crazy stuff.
Merlin: Well...
John: I looked out the window this morning because there were some kids like bouncing a basketball and I, you know, I don't like anybody bouncing a basketball on my street unless I'm looking at them.
Merlin: No.
John: And I, so I opened my window.
Merlin: Do you remember how our interview, our very, very famous interview together was completely disrupted by one bald hippie and some Chinese people playing basketball.
Merlin: Do you remember that?
John: We timed.
Oh, wow.
Merlin: Well, it's so I go to my window this morning.
John: I open the curtains.
John: Yeah.
John: And two crows up on the on the telephone wire.
John: I'm looking at the kids at the basketball and the crow starts to starts to have something to say to me about being in the window.
John: Like I'm in the window and he's like, I'm sorry, with his mind bullets.
John: No, he's like, and he's looking at the other crow looking at me.
John: I'm like, again, I'm in my own house.
John: You don't need an alert sounded on me.
John: I am the vigilant one.
John: And they are being vigilant over me.
John: It was at least four layers of vigilance because I'm counting the drone.
Merlin: At least four levels of vigilance.
Merlin: Well, you know, it's really...