Ep. 69: "Campfire Spaghetti Party"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Hi, Merlin.
Merlin: How's it going?
John: Good.
Merlin: Need a little drink or something?
John: Oh, probably.
John: I probably shouldn't have quit drinking 18 years ago.
Merlin: It's been that long.
John: It's been a long time.
John: It's been the life of a person who could serve in the military since I had a drink last.
Merlin: Huh.
Merlin: You got any Hitler material?
Yeah.
John: Do I ever.
John: I've spent the whole last week just reading about Hitler and getting ready for our podcast.
Merlin: No, no, no, no, no.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: This one's going to be different.
John: It is going to be different.
John: I'm committed to it.
Merlin: Okay, I got your song.
Merlin: Ready?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: John Roderick is on the line.
Merlin: He's ringing a bell most every time.
Yeah.
John: That's amazing.
John: It almost made me cry just like the real one.
Merlin: Here today.
Merlin: It's one of my all-time favorite bridges.
John: It's insane.
John: It's insanely good.
Merlin: You know, boy, I'm not going to go there.
Merlin: It got me through my divorce.
Merlin: I don't want to mine someone else's sorrow.
John: That was my divorce record.
John: You know, it's a record about him being divorced from his mom.
Yeah.
Merlin: Oh, the XO.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: That and that either or record.
Merlin: You see, this is going to be a downer now, John.
Merlin: I want to start.
John: Okay.
John: All right.
John: Let's get away.
John: Let's get away from Elliot Smith.
John: Go right to the fact that we are both lucky guys, happy middle-aged guys who are lucky to be alive.
John: Let's not go crazy.
John: You know what I mean?
John: I look around.
John: I'm alive.
John: All I see.
John: All I see.
John: Absolute horror.
John: I cannot live.
John: I cannot die.
John: Everything's great.
John: Metallica lyrics.
John: You know, it's ever since we started trying to do this podcast at night.
John: Darkness imprisoning me.
Merlin: I think that was Fade to Black.
Merlin: I think that was the suicide song.
Merlin: And Kirk's in the back just hammering, hammering, hammering.
John: It's one.
John: Those are lyrics from one.
Merlin: I think I was playing – well, you know, every Metallica song is essentially the same.
Merlin: It starts out – well, I mean if you had to do – it's not like Nickelback crazy.
Merlin: But you could – it starts out with like a single funereal guitar and then you get two or three more funereal guitars.
Merlin: Don't you think?
Merlin: I mean especially on the early records.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Did I ever tell you the story about the time I was sitting around a campfire in the Czech Republic?
John: I must have told you the story.
Merlin: You know, on that alone, I can't say.
Merlin: There's just so many stories.
John: Is this in the Balkans, John?
John: I'm walking across the Czech Republic.
John: As you do.
John: And I run into some teens.
John: So I'm out in the fields, walking through some fields, and I run into these teens, and they're out there smoking cigarettes, I guess.
John: Or it's a boy and a girl, and they're looking for a place to neck.
John: And they went out into the fields to do some necking.
John: And I run into them because I'm walking.
John: And so they start walking with me and they kind of adopt me.
John: I'm the crazy American that they found out in the field.
John: And they take me back to their village, which is a small little village.
John: And they say, hey, why don't you hang out with us?
John: We're going to have a campfire spaghetti party.
Ha ha!
John: And then after that, maybe you can stay at Campfire Spaghetti Party?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I'm sorry, John.
Merlin: I don't want to interrupt you.
Merlin: Is that a translation error?
John: I had never heard of it.
John: I had never heard of a Campfire Spaghetti Party before.
Merlin: That sounds like three nouns they just learned.
John: So I was intrigued.
Merlin: Okay.
John: And the icing on the cake was that this kid was, you know, he said, maybe you can stay at my house after the party.
John: And I was like, oh, very good.
John: I would like very much to stay at your house rather than to sleep in a field tonight.
John: So I said, sure, I'll go to the campfire spaghetti party.
John: And so I'm hanging out with these kids and the sun is going down and, and they lead me through the village to the other side of the village.
John: And sure enough, there's a campfire, a bonfire, and a bunch of kids are there.
John: And, uh, so we're sitting around and pretty soon somebody whips out a guitar and
Merlin: And they have that guy.
John: Yeah.
John: And pretty soon somebody shows up with a pot of spaghetti that they didn't.
John: It's not like they cooked it at the campfire.
John: Somebody showed up with a pot of spaghetti.
John: Everybody gets a bowl.
John: And then to my horror, to my everlasting horror, something I had not I didn't realize about Eastern Europe until that moment.
John: which is that they hand everybody a bowl of spaghetti, and then the bottle of ketchup goes around.
Merlin: So it's noodles in a bowl.
John: It's spaghetti in a bowl, and then the sauce that they expect you to put on it is just ketchup.
John: They must have seen it in the movies.
John: And this is a popular dish.
John: We must make this pasta red.
John: That's right.
John: Put some red sauce on it.
John: And what do we have?
John: We have cats up.
John: So anyway, so we're eating this disgusting spaghetti and ketchup.
John: And the guitar is going around.
John: And these kids who found me out in the field, they tell all their friends, he's a musician.
John: Because I made the mistake of telling them I was a musician.
Merlin: This is 1999?
John: Yes, 1999.
John: 1999.
John: And so everybody's in a hurry to get this guitar to me like, oh, get it.
John: You know, play us a song, play us a song, play us a song.
John: And I'm demuring and saying, I don't know any songs.
John: All the only songs I know are songs I wrote.
John: And you don't want to hear any of those.
John: And they're like, no, no, no.
John: Play us a song.
John: American singer guy, play us a song.
John: And I know better than to do it.
John: I know it's the wrong move.
John: But I'm really on the spot.
John: And so I kind of acquiesce.
John: They hand me the guitar.
John: I'm shy.
John: And I'm like, alright, I'll play you one of my songs.
John: And they're like, yeah!
John: And everybody gathers around.
John: And there's 25 kids around this bonfire at this point.
John: And I play Mimi.
Oh!
Merlin: Oh, no.
John: Which is the only thing I can think of to play.
John: The only song I can think of at that moment is Mimi, a song of my own composition.
Merlin: A beautiful, layered, nuanced, non-campfire song.
John: That's generous of you, yes.
John: It's a beautiful song, but it's... It is truly not a campfire song to play for a bunch of Czech teenagers.
John: Maybe on Halloween.
John: And I'm playing it and I'm getting the vibe from around the campfire.
John: I'm getting the non acceptance vibe.
John: And so I'm, you know, I start closing my eyes and the sweat is beating up on my forehead.
John: Like I'm really blowing it here with these kids.
John: This is my big moment to audition my, my music for these teens and,
John: And I get to the end of Mimi and there's like nothing.
John: Just like kind of polite applause and some grimaces.
John: And the teenagers who were so proud of me a moment before, I was their big catch and their American guy.
John: Now they're just embarrassed by me.
John: And the guy sitting next to me almost grabs the guitar out of my hand and launches into...
John: Metallica.
John: What's the stupid song from the Black Album?
John: What's their big hit?
John: Oh, Enter Sandman.
Merlin: Oh, come on.
John: And it is like... And all of a sudden, the whole vibe changes, and it's like James Hetfield is there.
John: They are so excited.
John: All these kids are so thrilled.
John: that this guy can play andrew sandman and i just like i am invisible to them i have become now it's creepy that i'm there i'm 10 years older than the oldest person at the campfire and now i'm like some creep let me play one called blanket hawk
John: And I sit there just kind of stewing in my own flop sweat and shame.
John: Slurping on ketchup and pasta.
John: You know, like trying to eat as much ketchup and pasta as I can because I've only been... I've been living on leaves and snails for the two weeks prior.
John: And then at the end of the campfire night... And, you know, and also I don't drink, which is incredibly suspect in any campfire situation.
John: Like the old creep in the molester glasses...
John: Who doesn't drink.
John: He's waiting for everybody else to get drunk so he can flip them over.
John: And we gave him a guitar and he played this song and his tears were mixing with his sweat.
John: Everything about it was wrong.
John: And then at the end of the night, it starts to rain.
John: The campfire party splits up and the kid...
John: who you know the kid who was like maybe you can stay at my house he's like you know okay come with me and he's really reluctant because i'm an embarrassment to him now we go over to his house he says wait wait here he goes inside he comes out 30 seconds later and he's like oh yeah my mom says no oh no after all of that yeah now it's the middle of the night and it's pouring rain did you play the song
John: I should have stood under her window and gone, Mimi!
John: So the kid walks me across the street to like a grain warehouse that his grandfather owns apparently.
John: People die in this all the time.
John: The kid can't open the door.
John: So he says, well, you can sleep here on the covered loading dock.
John: And so I unroll my sleeping bag on this concrete loading dock under a like arc light, like under a loading dock light.
John: And I lay there in the rain on this cement loading dock.
John: And I think...
John: I am at my bottom.
John: This is it.
Merlin: You got shown up by a Czech boy playing Enter Sandman.
John: I said, I have found it.
John: I've found my bottom.
John: Here it is.
Merlin: And you're not even, the thing is, and you weren't even drinking at the time.
John: Yeah.
John: And the thing is, I wasn't even close to my bottom, Merlin.
John: I had no idea.
Merlin: Were there other campfires?
Merlin: On the trip, you just always found a new low.
John: There was a new low.
Merlin: Is this before you slept on the beach in Nordvik?
John: No, it was after that.
John: Oh, wow.
John: That was the bottom.
John: That was my prior bottom.
John: No, this was a new low.
John: But the following morning I woke up and it wasn't even that I woke up because I didn't sleep.
John: I just lay there on this concrete pad kind of like tossing and turning until the first light of day.
John: And I got up and I started walking.
John: I was just like, let me get out of this shame hole.
John: And the sun was out.
John: It was a beautiful day.
John: The rain had stopped.
John: And the roads, there were those little country roads, you know.
John: The roads had all that steam coming off of them.
John: The rain was just done and the sun was coming up.
Merlin: You get that like sulfur smell.
John: It was an absolutely beautiful morning.
John: And then I come onto this road.
John: It's like one lane blacktop road.
John: And the road is completely covered with tiny frogs.
Merlin: What?
John: Like covered like a blanket so that I cannot walk along the road without stepping on frogs.
John: And the frogs are all tiny.
John: They're like the size of a silver dollar.
Ugh.
John: And so I couldn't walk.
John: I couldn't kill these frogs.
John: I had to just stand there in the road and watch this migration.
John: This like tide of emerald green silver dollar frogs.
John: It was like an hour of my life watching this.
Merlin: You're going to be thinking that whole time, right?
Merlin: You're thinking about frogs, you're thinking about spaghetti, you're thinking about your bottom.
John: I'm running the whole, I'm running it all.
John: And while I'm sitting there, like a car drives by and kills 10,000 frogs.
John: You bastard!
John: But yeah, that's just a day in the life.
Merlin: Well, this must happen to you.
Merlin: I mean, not the frogs, but I mean, you know.
John: That happens to me a surprising amount of time.
John: The frogs.
John: Frogs.
John: Now.
John: Here in Seattle, every once in a while, I look out my window and it's up to the doorknob.
Merlin: For us, it's snails.
Merlin: We've talked about the ants, but the snails, a couple nights ago, really when there's any amount of moisture, but especially rain, it's just the whole ground is just covered with snails.
Merlin: And they're all fucked.
Merlin: They don't have a chance.
John: In San Francisco?
Merlin: Yeah, I caught a high school kid setting one on fire the other day.
What?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: My, my daughter and I are playing at the playground and him and his, uh, him and his, uh, droogies are, we're hanging out at the, at the five-year-old's playground.
Merlin: And I, and I'm pretty sure I see what they're doing.
Merlin: My daughter is now running over to the next playground and I walk over and I say, uh, what you doing there?
Merlin: And he's like, yeah, he's like, no, he's like, no, he's like, no.
Merlin: I said, is that a snail?
Merlin: He goes, this is a slug.
Merlin: So you're putting a lighter to it, huh?
Merlin: I said, yeah.
Merlin: I said, yeah.
Merlin: Might be time to look for a girlfriend.
Merlin: Which is a great go-to for when you're talking to young men.
Merlin: It really pretty much always works.
Merlin: I got a letter.
John: Did I tell you this?
John: I got a letter from a kid.
John: I got a letter from a kid who said I was following you on Twitter and you said something on Twitter about all men being terrible.
John: Or you said something that men are worse than women.
John: Apparently, I tweeted in response to somebody who was saying that men are bad.
Merlin: I think it's a pretty safe statement.
John: And I said, men are worse than women.
John: And so this kid sends me an email.
John: And he says, he didn't say how old he was, but I inferred from the letter that he was a young person in college.
John: And he said, I am a young straight guy and all my friends are lesbians.
John: And they are always telling me how bad men are.
John: And I want to stand up for men and be a good example of a good straight guy.
John: But sometimes I wonder if it's even possible.
John: Can you advise me?
John: And I said, I wrote him back.
John: I said, I advise you stop hanging out with lesbians and get a girlfriend.
Merlin: No question.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Because the best way to demonstrate.
Merlin: He's not helping anybody, John.
John: The best way to demonstrate that straight guys are good is to be a good straight guy to one person.
John: Don't try and convert.
John: Be a good straight guy to one person.
John: Just be a good straight man to one person.
John: Let it begin with me.
John: That's right.
John: Start being nice to one gal that you like.
John: Don't try and impress all the lesbians at your school about how great you are.
John: Go find one girl and be nice to her.
John: And he never wrote me back.
John: I think he's probably stewing over my advice.
Merlin: Well, I would love to reach out to that guy and really just give him a smack.
Merlin: Because I'm just guessing a lot of those ladies had to sit around and listen to him talk about why girls don't like him.
Merlin: I've been that guy.
Merlin: And I've been looking to protect everybody's rights.
Merlin: And it was not good for anybody.
John: I remember a time when all my closest friends were lesbians.
John: And I was their straight boy mascot.
Merlin: We used to have a name for that that we can't use anymore.
John: Oh.
Merlin: Didn't you have a name for that?
Merlin: Well, I guess, I guess, I guess.
Merlin: Yeah, I guess that would be.
Merlin: Maybe you'd be the Les Prez.
Merlin: Please address all correspondence to John Roderick.
John: Yes, that's what I was.
John: Guys, let's play volleyball.
John: And I don't know what the heck I was... You know, what it was was I was sitting... I was hoping that... I was hoping I was going to...
John: I don't remember what it... Maybe I was thinking that some of them were going to get over being lesbians, but I don't think that was it.
John: I think it was that I... Well, I think it's the same thing with the fag eggs.
John: You think that you get to interact with somebody who is the opposite sex where the issue of sex is not...
John: So you're off the hook.
Merlin: I think it's totally – it makes 100 percent sense if you like to dance.
Merlin: It seems to me that in either of those situations, FagHag or Les Perez, it makes a lot of sense if you just want to go out and dance.
John: I did like to dance at that time.
Merlin: I don't want to keep using that term that we were using because it's normative.
John: I think Les Prez, though, is new.
John: That's pretty good.
John: And it's solid.
John: I think we can use it because the people that will be offended by it are...
John: It's going to take some time for them to get caught up with how smart and funny it is, and then they can be offended by it, but by then we'll be... Let's just stay away from PETA.
Merlin: But you know what?
Merlin: Actually, you are on to a couple things.
Merlin: First of all, a thing we've talked about in the past is both of our...
Merlin: if I perceive this correctly for you as well as me, um, our ineffectiveness at, uh, well, first of all, starting out being kind of like envious or angry about our friends who, who, who were sexually potent.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Remember talking about, uh,
Merlin: You know, our friends who are going out and, you know, finger banging and stuff and how we felt kind of betrayed by everyone involved.
John: I'm still – yeah.
Merlin: No, I was heavy, real heavy.
Merlin: But I think that's – there's a part of it.
Merlin: But there's this other thing that is not – I think it exists without respect to any given –
Merlin: gender and uh sexual orientation mix up which is that everybody's always kind of in the back of their mind thinking they're going to be able to flip the client at some point and i think it's i think it's it's true you you see it on all conceivable sides you know it could be that you know what even could be somebody who's married like look at all the especially i guess it seems mostly women but but men too who are like oh
Merlin: they're going to divorce, divorce their spouse.
Merlin: And we'll finally be able to go, you know, yeah, we'll be together, live, live on the aisle of man together or whatever.
Merlin: And, but I mean, also I think there is the aisle of man.
John: Is that a fantasy for people?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I really pulled it out as quick as I could.
John: Yeah.
John: I would Google it except my keyboard is still broken.
Merlin: John.
John: I ordered the thing that you said.
John: How?
John: I ordered it from my phone.
John: It's your telephone.
John: You can shop from your phone now.
Merlin: Yeah, I've done that.
Merlin: I've done that a lot.
Merlin: Anyway, it's probably a rat hole to get into, but it's really not so far away from Guitar Guy.
Merlin: You sit around and you have a really mixed up idea about where you should be focusing your attention and then what you should do once you've gotten that attention.
Merlin: It really is an affliction and it's – there are a lot of things that make me cringe about every aspect of my life.
Merlin: But if I'm really – if I go back and I allow myself just for the blink of an eye to think about those kinds of times, those are the ones that really, really make me cringe.
Merlin: The times when I got it really, really wrong.
Merlin: The times when I was a guitar guy or the times when I thought I was speaking the truth to power because I couldn't finger bang.
Yeah.
John: Well, I was thinking about this the other day.
John: There was a pretty long period in my life where I, when I was in the company of a girl that I liked and she liked me and it was clear that we liked one another and we were going someplace down the street, we were walking somewhere.
John: I would put my arm around her and she would put her arm around me and we would...
John: we would attempt to make our way down the sidewalk in that three legged race cadence of a tall guy with his arm around his girlfriend and her with her arm around him.
John: And there is absolutely no tempo or pace that we can walk comfortably in that configuration.
John: Like her hip, she's going up and I'm going down.
John: Her hip is bumping into me.
John: Like those people that are able to walk down the street, uh,
John: with their arms around one another.
Merlin: You're talking like the freewheeling Bob Dylan.
Merlin: Like when you and the girl are walking down the street and acting like that's something you could do for more than half a block.
John: Yeah, I've got my hand on her hip, she's got her arm around my waist, and we are crashing into each other like two battleships tied up to the same dock in a storm.
John: Yeah.
John: And you were.
John: The sidewalk is just this stormy sea, and yet we feel because we are young and in love that we should be walking this way.
John: We should be embracing as we walk down the street.
John: And I realized the other day, it's been 15 years since I made the mistake of thinking you could walk down the street side by side with your arm around somebody.
John: Like, it's not a problem anymore because it's simply something I don't do.
John: But for the first 10 years that I was romantically involved with girls, I was always in this posture of like, oh, here we are again, like two pool balls in a crown royal bag.
John: Ha!
John: That sounds like my grandpa.
John: There's no way.
John: There's no way to make this work.
Merlin: Well, have you ever seen somebody try to walk two different sized dogs?
Merlin: Like you get like what?
Merlin: Like an Akita and a Shih Tzu?
Merlin: And it's impossible to walk two dogs of different sizes.
Merlin: And it sounds like what you're describing.
Merlin: Even in the best of circumstances, you're the same size.
Merlin: You have the same gait.
Merlin: It's going to be hard.
Merlin: But you were the Akita, the Afghan, the Borzoi in that situation.
John: Yeah.
John: The thing to do in a situation like that is to put a saddle on the Akita and put the Shih Tzu in the saddle.
John: And then you are everybody's fucking hero.
Merlin: I think a lot about riding dogs.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: And dogs riding other dogs.
Merlin: My daughter and I were talking about this.
Merlin: How fun it would be if dogs could ride other dogs.
John: I think dogs can.
John: Those fucking dogs live in people's purses.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: They probably love a chance to ride another dog.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Just the immediate contact.
John: The problem is that a dog big enough for me to ride...
John: would be the size of a brown bear and then it would basically a dog the size of a brown bear is a brown bear you look like a molly hatchet album yeah i'd have a battle axe yes and a helmet with two horns on it you need a you need a big brown frisetta bear i'd be i'd be riding a bear oh my god why why can't i do that
Merlin: You should, if I may say, consider trading in one of the hoopties and making a down payment on a bear.
Merlin: What kind of mileage do you get out of bear?
Merlin: I've known a lot of bears.
John: I've seen a lot of bears.
John: I've known a lot of bears.
John: I have never seen a man ride a bear.
John: Come to the Castro.
John: If a man had ever ridden a bear, I think I'd have seen a picture of it.
John: I've seen bears playing like footsie with husky dogs.
John: Yeah.
John: I've seen a bear dance to a violin.
John: I have never seen a man ride a bear.
Merlin: Why is that funny?
Merlin: As a child, I enjoyed that show Gentle Ben.
Merlin: Gentle Ben was a big bear.
Merlin: I think he was a trained TV bear.
John: TV bear.
Merlin: But I mean the thing is you can stare down an animal with dignity and respect.
Merlin: And it seems like in the fullness of time, you could not only get it on your side, but it could get you on its side.
Merlin: There would be a relationship there where you could just literally – I think you could go probably bareback on the bear and just wheel right up to Josh's office on a bear.
Merlin: People would treat you so differently if you had a bathrobe and a scimitar and you were literally riding a bear.
John: Listen, if I could ride a bear –
John: The last place I would go is my indie rock record label.
John: Where would you start?
John: I would be so far away from indie rock.
John: I would be the guy who could ride bears.
John: I would be a fucking parade everywhere I went.
John: I would go immediately to downtown Seattle.
Merlin: Oh, the library.
John: And they'd be closing the streets.
Merlin: You don't like that library.
Merlin: You should march.
Merlin: You and your bear, and we've got to get a name for the bear, you and your bear should just march right into that library.
John: Here's the problem with that library.
John: Yeah.
John: The traffic flow is so constricted.
John: There is no place you could ride a bear into that library.
John: Bears are maneuverable.
John: You would ride this bear right into an escalator alcove.
Merlin: But bears are like ferrets.
Merlin: You ever seen the way they wiggle around?
John: I saw a picture the other day of a ferret that someone had given some kind of steroids to.
John: You don't have a keyboard.
John: Well, I'm looking at some of this stuff on my phone.
John: I have to admit that I'm surfing the internet on my phone.
John: And so the picture was fairly small.
John: Maybe I didn't get this right.
John: Was it moon-faced?
John: But this ferret looked... No, it had grown really long hair and it looked like a toy poodle.
Merlin: Oh, no.
John: It was a ferret with a big white afro.
John: And now picture that the size of a bear.
John: Yeah.
John: And now you've found... You know what I'm talking about, though?
John: My friend John... Now you're talking about the cover of Heavy Metal magazine in 1982.
Merlin: There's no question about it.
Merlin: They would restart the franchise.
Merlin: They would say, listen, I know we don't have a lot of dough right now, but apparently there is a man...
Merlin: It's Seattle who literally rides a fucking bear.
Merlin: 50,000 watts of power.
Merlin: It's your one-way ticket to bear rides.
Merlin: You know, I have to say that it seems to me that once you become, for example, once you become a horse person – let's be careful here.
Merlin: Once you become someone who's –
Merlin: Horsey.
Merlin: Horsey.
Merlin: You get a horse, and then it's kind of like comics or models or rubber girls.
Merlin: You want to get more, and soon you have a stable of horses.
Merlin: I got to tell you, you got a big barn.
Merlin: It could probably use a little bit of work, right?
Merlin: You're not using it for that many specific things right now.
Merlin: You're not hanging meat or anything.
John: No, it's Vespa storage right now, but it's full of Vespas.
Merlin: But you could scoot that aside.
John: I am a horse person of Vespas.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: But you could also, I mean, like you've got that vet in the family that takes care of alcoholic horses.
Merlin: Couldn't you conceivably with your vast rock and roll money, couldn't you have like a stable of bears that your whole family could ride around on?
John: Merlin, have you ever seen a bear?
Merlin: A bear is bigger and tougher than people think.
John: A bear is big.
John: Yeah, it's very big.
John: Even a small bear is big.
John: And they're also, I mean, I'm not going to say that they are fully clever.
Merlin: Oh, they pick up.
Merlin: They're like raccoons.
Merlin: They are like big raccoons.
Merlin: And they pick stuff up real fast.
Merlin: You know, a raccoon is kind of like a little bear.
John: A raccoon is a little Nazi bear.
John: That's right.
John: Isn't that what they're called?
John: Yes.
Merlin: They call them... We got back to Hitler.
Merlin: How long has it been?
Merlin: It's not even a half an hour and we're back to Hitler.
Merlin: 2852.
Merlin: Raccoon de Scheissen, they call them.
John: Raccoon de Scheissen.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: Bears – the thing is a bear.
Merlin: You think about a bear.
Merlin: Most people who think about bears, they don't think about bears.
Merlin: But if you do, you mentally picture a bear.
Merlin: You picture this kind of large, elegant, like fairly sleek animal with giant claws.
Merlin: But the thing is they're real blobby.
Merlin: They're real like – they're almost like a big whale and they've got a horse-like kind of like tapered neck and they're super fucking scary.
Merlin: If you ever see a bear out and around even doing nothing, they're terrifying.
John: Are you describing a bear from just having read about them in books?
John: Oh, it's from a C.S.
Merlin: Lewis thing I've been working on.
Merlin: Translated from a different language?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It represents Isaiah.
John: Did I ever tell you about the time that... Let's assume you haven't.
John: I don't want to go down the rabbit hole of all the times that I have been literally tracked by a bear.
John: I got nowhere to be.
John: But... Give me a good one.
John: But one time... So I have a very good friend.
John: I've mentioned him on the podcast before.
John: Never by name.
John: He is probably... Well, he's a close friend and also he still lives in Alaska.
John: He's by far my closest friend who still lives in Alaska.
John: And he has a cabin...
John: that his father built on a small lake in the shadow of Mount McKinley or Denali, the great one, the largest mountain in the, in the, in the North America.
John: And, uh, it's a little, little teeny cabin up on this lake.
John: And they, uh, they named the lake after themselves, his father, the family, because if you have, if you have a lake, uh,
John: What are you going to call it?
John: You're going to call it small lake?
John: You're going to call it dark lake?
John: No, you're going to name the lake after yourself.
John: And that's what they did.
John: But the lake is too small and too... Well, it's not too small to land a float plane on, but it is too small to take that float plane back off.
John: Hmm.
John: Right.
Merlin: You could set the plane down like a float plane lobster trap.
John: Exactly.
John: If you landed a float plane on this lake, it would be that float plane would would live there forever.
Merlin: So this sucks because if it was a little bigger, it would be it would be pretty amazing to be able to get into this place so much easier.
John: Exactly.
Merlin: Which is to say get out easier.
John: If this lake was one acre bigger.
Merlin: Hmm.
John: and you could take the plane off, then this cabin would be, it would be the Hilton of Alaska cabins.
John: But as it is,
John: The only way to get to this cabin, there are two ways to get to it.
John: One, you can float down the Chitna River to the Chilitna River to the place where the Chilitna forks into the Talkeetna.
John: And then pull your rubber raft off and hike in five miles through the Devil's Clubs.
John: Or you can, in the wintertime, you can land your ski plane on the swamp and
John: That is two miles through the forest to the little lake.
John: So you land the ski plane on the swamp, but the problem with that is the swamp never completely freezes because it's always kind of like methane-y, you know, like earth farts.
John: Dig about it.
John: Exactly.
John: It keeps the ice from ever being solid.
John: So you can land the ski plane on the swamp, but you have to kind of keep the ski plane moving a little bit.
John: Because if you stop the motor and you turn the plane off, the ski plane will just kind of sink into the slush.
Merlin: Is a ski plane like an Indiana Jones thing?
Merlin: Like it's got pontoons?
Merlin: Is that what that is?
John: No, it has skis.
John: Oh.
John: You take the pontoons off and you put skis on it.
John: You can do that?
John: Yeah.
John: Wow.
John: And then you land it on the snow.
John: But if you landed on the deep snow or particularly if you landed on deep snow in a swamp where the ice doesn't freeze, you can get in trouble.
John: The skis can sink into the snow.
Merlin: I'm just thinking that with – I mean I know very little about aeronautics, but it seems like a ski plane would be especially hard to take off with.
Merlin: because you you're really relying just on the propeller to get you moving yeah but once you're up it's like it's like a water if you land on ice that would be one thing but if you're on anywhere where you know any kind of incline it seems to be pretty tough to take off
John: It's tough if you let the plane sink, but if you keep the plane moving, it stays up on top of the snow, and then you're just bobbing, you're just floating along on this little cushion of snow.
John: It's very easy to take off, but you have to kind of keep the plane moving.
John: So when we fly up to this cabin in the winter, also the plane only seats two people, the pilot and the passenger.
John: So to go up there with a small group of people, you have to go up in multiple trips.
John: So what happens is the plane lands on the snow, but the pilot has to kind of keep the plane moving, slowly moving along the swamp.
John: And you throw open the door and you start throwing your bags out into the snow.
John: And then you throw your snowshoes out and then you jump out of the plane.
John: And the plane just kind of keeps moving.
John: And so you jump out onto your snowshoes and you go, bye.
John: And he goes, bye.
John: And then he hits the gas and he flies away.
John: And then you're alone on the swamp.
John: And you wait there until... Every aspect of this sounds like a John Carpenter movie.
John: You wait there for 45 minutes until Kurt Russell comes.
John: And then there's a dog that has been infected with some kind of alien... Kind of guy in a William Shatner mask.
John: Super bug.
John: But anyway, so when you leave the cabin 10 days, two weeks later, you have to leave via the same method.
John: It's kind of in motion?
John: Well, first of all, one at a time.
John: And second of all, yeah, you kind of, the plane like lands and keeps the motor running.
John: Like almost like a cable car you got to just kind of jump on.
John: Yeah, it's just kind of, it's just puttering along.
John: It's not moving fast, but it's just like puttering along and you just throw your stuff in and you get up on the ski and then you climb in the plane and then off you go.
John: And so when you leave, but of course there's no, I mean, back then we didn't have cell phones.
John: And even if you did, I'm not even sure there would be cell phone service there.
Merlin: I really doubt it.
John: But at the time, we had a pre-appointed time when the plane would come get us.
John: Like noon on Sunday, he's just going to fly out there and we should be waiting.
John: And one time...
John: While we were at the cabin, we'd seen a bear kind of over on the forest edge.
John: And my friend's dad had had multiple kind of encounters with bears at the cabin.
John: And his feeling about them was that a bear couldn't tell the difference between a window and a door and a wall.
John: The bear would just kind of hammer on the outside of the cabin.
John: And you would sit inside just kind of hoping that the bear didn't
John: figure out that a window was less uh solid you know the bear would just kind of pound on the door and then you'd have the door barred
John: At one point, my friend's dad went out.
John: He had a sawed-off shotgun, and he went out and shot the gun in the air to scare the bear, and the gun exploded in his hand, and then his hand was all shredded, and he had to get the... And he had to wait two days and jump onto a moving plane?
John: No, then he had... So he got the shortwave radio out from under the cabin and fired up the gas generator to power the shortwave.
Merlin: Like the little Scatman Carruthers radio?
Yeah, yeah.
John: Exactly.
John: Come in, come in.
John: Mayday, mayday.
John: But anyway, so one time I, I, I drew the short straw.
John: I was first one out on the day that we were leaving.
John: And I went on my snowshoes with my bag and I snowshoed out across the, the little frozen lake in front of the cabin and into the two miles now.
Merlin: How far?
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: A couple of miles.
Merlin: So you go across two miles in the snow.
John: Yeah.
John: We would snowshoe a lot longer than that.
John: But it's a trudge.
Merlin: And you're carrying a bag.
John: You're carrying a bag.
Merlin: I know you're near the big Denali thing, but is the air thin there?
John: No, we're not up high.
John: But it's cold.
John: It's 30 below zero or something.
John: And so you snowshoe across the lake, and then you snowshoe through the forest.
John: And you got a mile or a mile and a half through the forest.
John: And then you come out the other side of the forest, and you're in the swamp.
John: And you walk out on the swamp, and then the plane arrives.
John: Well, so I'm walking, do-do-do-do-do, being my, you know, my, like, John on snowshoes in the forest thing.
John: Do-do-do-do-do.
John: And, uh...
John: And just as I clear the forest on the other side, I hear, like, shotgun.
John: And I'm like, whoa, what the hell, you know?
John: But it's not the craziest thing to hear in Alaska, shotgun.
John: That would be an apology.
John: But I kind of, you know, I have a pistol.
John: And so I kind of like...
John: Have my hand on my pistol in case.
Merlin: Is this all true?
Merlin: What do you mean?
Merlin: Is it all true?
Merlin: You snowshoed two miles toward a swamp where a plane on skis would take off.
Merlin: Somebody shot a shotgun, but it's okay because you had a sidearm.
John: Well, it wasn't okay, but I mean, I had a sidearm and that was where I... If the shotgun were a crazy person, not a crazy person, but if the shotgun were, let's say, for instance, a crazy trapper,
John: had somebody was shooting like erratically yeah or somebody had gone and was shooting my friend right like i wasn't out there i wasn't out there with a pack of chewing gum and a slingshot but you're you must at this point be wondering why the shooting right exactly so i i get i get a little bit of distance from the forest line so that i can look back at the forest and see what's coming and
John: And 15 minutes, half an hour later, here comes my friend, Peter.
John: And he has the shotgun.
John: And he's out of breath.
John: He's been running like crazy.
John: And he says, you know, you got to come with me.
John: And we walk back through the forest.
John: And we get back to...
John: About halfway through the forest.
John: And he shows me.
John: He describes.
John: That as he was walking across the lake.
John: About halfway.
John: So he had timed his.
John: He had timed leaving the cabin.
John: For a half an hour after I had left the cabin.
John: And as he was walking across the lake, he sees big, huge brown bear tracks that were walking perpendicular to my snowshoe tracks.
John: And they stopped at my snowshoe tracks and then turned and followed my snowshoe tracks into the forest.
John: And so Peter, when he arrived at this point where the bear, the bear connected with where, you know, my fresh tracks and then turned and started tracking me.
John: When Peter hit that point, he started shooting his gun in the air and running toward me.
John: Just like firing the gun, firing the gun and halfway through the forest about the point about about the point in time where Peter would have started shooting.
John: the bear left his tracking of me and, like, went off into the bushes.
John: And all this was in the course of a half an hour.
John: Oh, my God.
John: So...
John: Anyway.
Merlin: And so, I mean.
John: I never saw the bear.
Merlin: If Peter hadn't been there.
John: But he was, well, the bear was, you know, 500 yards behind me.
Merlin: Bears can tear ass when they need to, right?
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
John: He was, you know.
Merlin: But, I mean, they could outrun, at least in a straight line, they could outrun a person.
John: Oh, for sure.
John: And the thing is, I was just... Just like... I would not have heard the bear or been aware of the bear.
John: The bear would have been behind me and I... Who knows?
John: To speculate what the bear would have done when he realized that he wasn't just tracking some chump when he saw me and he realized that I was a bear of a man.
John: I think he still would have been unimpressed.
Merlin: They have like a, an uncanny sense of smell, right?
John: Yes, they are.
John: They are, they hunt by smell.
Merlin: Well, I mean, the reason I, first of all, that's a fucking insane story, John.
John: But I don't wear, I don't wear fragrance.
John: No.
Merlin: And you don't, you don't use a shaving cream.
John: Right.
John: Like the Viet Cong.
John: Right.
John: But so, but the bear, unlike the Viet Cong, the bear probably knew a lot about me.
John: Just from smelling me in the air.
John: Oh, they're like rangers.
Merlin: They can track.
John: Yeah.
John: He probably had my number pretty good.
Merlin: Well, you know, we've done a little just in terms of my own adventure stories.
Merlin: We've done something called car camping where you pull up your car and you take 10 steps and then you put a tent down.
Yeah.
Merlin: You have a Coleman cooler.
Merlin: It's a Coleman.
Merlin: It's a pretty nice one.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: That is nice.
Merlin: Got a gun.
Merlin: But they are – it's, yeah, wavy gravy, California, camping site.
Merlin: But they're real, real super clear about making sure like, no, seriously, you really, really need to use the bear box.
Merlin: This is not like a funny like, ha-ha, amuse the tourists.
Merlin: There might be bears.
Merlin: No, there literally are bears here and they will come to your campsite.
Merlin: And like they will smell your food and they will smell everything.
Merlin: They will smell your pee and poo.
Merlin: They will smell your babies.
Merlin: Like keep the food in the bear box.
Merlin: And it sounds like the bears – I mean they're – I don't say domesticated.
Merlin: That's the wrong word.
Merlin: But they definitely ain't scared of humans.
John: The California car camping bears are not scared of humans.
Merlin: Yeah, they're 10-2 this season.
Merlin: They're doing great.
Merlin: But it was true.
Merlin: And I mean you would just see them just moseying around.
Merlin: Those are black bears.
Merlin: I'm not sure if that's – it might be ping pong.
Merlin: I'm not sure if that's correct.
John: It is correct because the last brown bear in California I think was eradicated.
John: There is a brown bear on the California flag.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: The state flag of California has a grizzly bear on it, but there are no... Is that right?
John: Grizzly bears in California anymore.
John: Huh.
John: They were all killed by grizzly animals.
John: Now we got black bears, but no brown bears.
John: Black bears, but no brown bears.
John: And black bears are much smaller and much more... I mean, I wouldn't run up to a wild black bear and hug it, but they are a much more sort of berry-eating...
John: They like a bowl of muesli and yogurt.
John: A little bit of fresh air.
John: They like to talk about their feelings.
John: Jewish summer camp.
John: They like to rummage in the footlocker looking for the bug spray.
John: They are a gentler, smaller kind of bear.
John: The brown bear is...
John: It's a monster.
Merlin: Our zoo is really bad in a lot of ways.
Merlin: It's interesting in its way.
Merlin: We should visit there together.
Merlin: My daughter loves to go there.
Merlin: It's a lot of fun.
Merlin: It's very poorly made.
Merlin: It's kind of like a mall.
Merlin: And no matter where you stand at our zoo, you feel like you're standing in back.
Merlin: of whatever you're supposed to be looking at.
Merlin: You ever been in a place like that where you're like, I always feel like I'm in the wrong place.
Merlin: It's kind of like being at bottom of the hill.
Merlin: Like there's nowhere to go where you don't feel like you're in the wrong place.
Merlin: And, but for some reason, um, I mean, one of those, gosh, it's one of those names that you associate with lots of philanthropy.
Merlin: Somebody threw a metric shit ton of money at this grizzly bear display.
Merlin: Was it Hewlett?
Merlin: It could have been the Packards.
Merlin: It could have been the Goldbergs.
Merlin: It could have been the, uh, the Robert Wood Johnson's.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: But,
Merlin: But there's a very, very spacious – there's this one polar bear.
Merlin: There's one little sad polar bear in what looks like a kiosk from the mall and it's just sitting out there.
Merlin: But the fucking grizzly bears, man, they have got this entire giant area that includes like one of those sea world sort of things where you can walk down and look under the water and see them.
Merlin: And you can go to this different area to see them from this different vantage point.
Yeah.
Merlin: And I mean – and what's cool is when you go to the little underground, like the water area, they put bear-sized footprints in the concrete so you can see.
Merlin: And Eleanor likes to walk on this.
Merlin: And they're like – maybe not a foot across, but they've got to be like at least like eight inches across.
Merlin: And then you see these things just ambling around and they look like a fat man, like a fat man who used to do kung fu who's had like three martinis.
Merlin: Like they're very –
Merlin: They're ambling.
Merlin: Do you know what I mean?
Merlin: But there's something about them where just like a glancing blow knocks a fucking tree down.
Merlin: They're just, it's, it's, I mean, it's, it's weird.
Merlin: I mean, like it's, they're prehistoric.
Merlin: They have that vibe.
Merlin: They have that like, not like a brachiosaurus, but they've got that kind of weird tapered dinosaur neck.
John: Yeah.
John: Their heads are, are the size of an armchair.
John: They're really – and polar bears are also enormous.
John: There was a polar bear.
Merlin: Ours is not.
Merlin: Ours looks like a recently divorced man.
John: He's a sad guy.
Merlin: There's a little train you can ride around the zoo, and you're right by the polar bear, and he just looks like nobody returns his calls.
John: He sits up on his haunch and just kind of waves one lonely hand at the train.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: There was a polar bear.
Merlin: That one guy in your neighborhood on the lawn chair.
Merlin: It was like, I'm a veteran.
John: There was a polar bear at the Anchorage Zoo for many years whose name was Binky.
John: Binky the polar bear.
John: And every once in a while some drunk kid would...
John: scale the fence.
John: Is this John Hodgman?
John: No.
John: Some drunk Anchorage kid.
John: It was a thing that happened periodically.
John: Some kid would scale the fence to either taunt the bear or on a dare or because the bear seemed to be sleeping or because the bear was sleeping all the way across the enclosure and
John: Or some other reason that some kid thought it was a good idea to climb the fence into the bear enclosure.
John: And routinely Binky would...
John: go from fully asleep, like balanced on a truck tire or whatever it is that bears do in those zoos, like fully asleep, 200 yards away.
John: Binky would go from like unconscious to on this kid in the blink of an eye.
John: And one time, one time he got a kid.
John: And the newspapers reported it as delicately as they could.
John: But the gist of it was that Binky had bit this kid's dick off.
John: The kid, the teenager, made it to the fence.
John: He made an example of it.
John: He got in there.
John: He got into the thing, and Binky was asleep all the way over there, and then all of a sudden, Binky was not asleep anymore, and Binky is the size of a locomotive, and Binky is coming at you very fast, and this kid ran to the fence, and he got halfway up the wall, and Binky just got him right in the package.
Aww.
John: And there's a famous photo, if you want to Google it, of Binky carrying this kid's shoe around in his mouth.
John: They couldn't get the shoe away from him.
John: And for I don't know how long, Binky just was like, it's my shoe now.
John: If he could, if he would have mounted it on his wall.
John: And he had this Nike, this kid's Nike that he just like, it was his toy.
John: He just carried it around.
John: And the zoo was mortified.
John: It's not a thing that you want.
John: You don't want people coming to the zoo and seeing your polar bear like proudly carrying this kid's shoe around in his mouth.
Merlin: But it's a fucking bear.
John: You get it away from the guy.
John: That's the thing.
Merlin: It's like, what do you expect?
John: I mean, I think they could have gone in with like a chicken and tried to trade.
John: We'll give you a chicken.
John: You give us the shoe.
John: Throw me the whip.
John: There's a great picture of him with that shoe.
John: I think you will.
Merlin: Well, you know, our zoo, and it really is a mess.
Merlin: God bless them.
Merlin: You know, we're members there.
Merlin: We're part of the San Francisco Zoological Society.
John: Of course you are.
Merlin: Yeah, which means we pay $100 a year to go as much as we want.
John: But, you know, we bring soup out back there.
Merlin: Oh, sure.
Merlin: We do.
Merlin: We bring along a vegan lunch.
Merlin: We eat all of it.
Merlin: We give some away to a poor man.
John: You pour some almond milk out for your dead homie?
Merlin: Ha!
Merlin: that's funny uh we've had problems at our zoo i don't know if you remember i think it was on i want to say like christmas day a couple three years ago like somebody some same deal somebody broke into the zoo and got into the tiger area the tigers i think if memory serves yeah yeah and it did not turn out great uh our zoo lost its lost its elephant credentials
Merlin: You know, the elephants, I think if you ask anybody who's a zoo person, they'll tell you that one of the big draws in the zoo world is having elephants.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Everybody wants to see an elephant.
John: It's not a zoo without an elephant.
Merlin: They withdrew our elephant rights.
John: They took your elephant away.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I think an elephant, at least one elephant died at the zoo.
Yeah.
John: Yeah, you can't – I think they just kind of spaced it.
Merlin: I think they kind of spaced it.
Merlin: There's a lot of stuff that happens there where you're kind of like, oh, I meant to take care of that thing.
Merlin: There's a lot of – you can wander around.
Merlin: There's just empty displays.
Merlin: There's very thin-looking jungle cats.
Merlin: It's a really weird zoo.
Merlin: But those grizzlies are doing great just for what it's worth.
John: I told you about the elephant sanctuary, right?
Merlin: No, I don't think you have.
John: At some point, I don't know how I arrived at this.
Merlin: I worry.
Merlin: I secretly worry and wonder, how long will we really be able to do the show?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: And then I realized that you literally have thousands of stories that I –
Merlin: Assume we're true.
John: This isn't a story that involves me directly.
John: But somehow, as I was... Oh, you know what it was?
John: I realized a certain point five or six years ago.
John: I was trying to make my... I was trying to be a bachelor.
John: You remember this.
John: I bought a house.
John: I was trying to be a hip bachelor guy.
John: I was going to get some leather couches.
John: I was going to get a big screen TV.
John: And I was going to sit in my house.
John: I was going to wear a velvet smoking jacket.
John: And I was going to fill my house with art.
John: Sort of like a mini Hugh Hefner.
John: This was my vision.
John: Or Patrick Bateman.
John: Patrick Bateman, exactly.
John: And then I realized that I didn't want... You're a man of means.
John: I was at the time.
John: Yeah.
John: And then I realized very quickly that I didn't want a leather couch and that I had no use for a big TV.
John: And then I was kind of at sea.
Merlin: Nothing good's ever happened on a leather couch.
John: Nothing at all.
John: You're absolutely right.
John: I did not need one more place to sit and uncomfortably sweat.
John: But I wanted to have my house filled with art.
John: You're and my good friend Jason Finn, drummer of the Presidents of the United States of America.
John: He has... You would not believe this.
John: You would not believe looking at him because he's a terrible person.
John: But he has this very, very great art collection that he has...
John: That he has developed and curated.
John: A lot of people with crazy eyes have nice art.
John: You know, you know, like 25 years he's been collecting art and he does these, he does these things where he goes to like student art shows and he has developed an eye enough that he buys this.
John: He's got a crazy eye for art.
John: He's got a crazy eye for art.
John: And he, you know, he spends a hundred bucks on a painting from a guy.
John: And five years later, everybody's talking about the painter.
John: And he's like, yeah, I got that for a hundred bucks at an art show, student art show.
John: And you're just like, what an asshole.
John: Like, how dare you be successful at this?
John: But anyway, so Jason Finn being a model for me, being someone that I, that, you know, he's sort of a mentor because he's older than I am.
John: Um, I decided I was going to get into this, this, uh, I was going to get some art for my house art.
John: That wasn't just like old posters of topless girls that had been lacquered to plywood.
Merlin: You're going to go beyond like having like a, uh, like, like, uh, a poster of Klim's, the kiss on a foam core, like really, really spread out.
Merlin: right right right no more dallas cowboy cheerleader montage we're talking about like like ironist outsider art kind of art or like actual legitimate cool stuff this was the thing like i have an i have an aesthetic is jason the one that has the room full of art you described that time is it jason
Merlin: I didn't mean to interrupt you, but you were describing a friend of yours who has sought out amazing thrift store paintings that are actually... No, no.
John: Jason actually eschews thrift stores.
John: He is a fancy boy.
John: He buys arty art.
John: He buys arty art.
John: Yeah, this isn't found art.
John: This is art by artists.
John: I've got a house full of thrift store art, but I wanted to get some art art.
John: And I'm looking around and I don't know anything about it.
John: And I'm looking at this and it's like, that's, that thing is 1500 bucks.
John: It's just a, it's just a, like I've seen refrigerator magnets that I liked more than this thing.
John: And I'm, I'm going to art galleries and I, and I just don't, I don't, I don't feel it.
John: I don't feel part of that culture.
John: And then I learned that elephants make art, that they give elephants paintbrushes,
John: And then they sell those elephant paintings to pay for elephant chow.
John: It's some kind of thing where the elephants are actually working for their bowl of food.
John: Have you seen this actually happen?
John: Yes.
John: Yes.
John: They give elephants paintbrushes and paint, and the elephants love it.
John: They're super excited.
Yeah.
John: And they express themselves in paint.
John: And they do these kind of amazing paintings.
John: And I said, I do not care about student artists, really, enough to pay $1,600, let alone $20,000.
John: They're students.
John: Yeah.
John: It's not like it's professional.
John: Once they're not students, then they want real money for their paintings.
John: But elephants, I will totally buy a painting from an elephant.
John: So I go on and I'm looking at all the elephant paintings and they're talking about, you know, and the copy for these elephant paintings is being written by some elephant trainer, not like an art curator.
John: The elephant trainers are like, Maisie was so happy this day and she painted this painting and you can see how happy she is because she used so much yellow.
John: I'm like, that is a terrible description of that painting.
John: That painting is saying a lot more to me than that Maisie's happy.
John: I'm feeling what Maisie's laying down.
John: I'm picking up what she's laying down in this painting.
John: But here's the problem.
John: Just like when I got into Afghani war rugs...
John: all the ones that i really liked all the afghani war rugs that had like had you know mig 27s in them they were all sold already and all the elephant paintings i really liked were sold and the ones that were still for sale were like all these ones you know all these brown ones
John: Anyway, so I followed the elephant thread and I discovered the elephant sanctuary, which is in Tennessee.
John: These people bought like 50,000 acres of rolling Tennessee hills.
John: And they take all these elephants that have spent their whole lives...
John: Like working in the circus and living in a tiny little cement room and get all these elephants that were like chained to a six foot length of chain and they have permanent scars on their little elephant wrists from 20 years being chained to a floor.
John: Yeah.
John: All these elephants with post-traumatic stress disorder, all these elephants who'd had their babies taken away and who'd been... It's like child soldiers meets Dumbo?
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
John: Elephants who had been traumatized and they are brought to this elephant sanctuary and they are turned loose.
John: to live out their lives just just paint whatever they want just frolicking in tennessee which is tennessee as you know is the africa of america or at least at least the india of america and you know they roll in the mud
Merlin: You're lucky they can't write.
John: They party with other elephants.
John: They get to know each other.
John: They play slap and tickle or they do whatever elephants do.
John: They're very social animals.
John: They're very social.
John: Of course, a lot of them are girl elephants.
John: Is that a Chinese baby kind of thing?
John: people only want to adopt the male I think so I think having a boy elephant is I mean they're a lot bigger and they're a lot I don't know meaner maybe but you know they're like they're social so somebody's gonna be ostracized and one of the elephants is you know gonna be like but that's how they do you gotta let them be how they are you know you gotta let them be how they do
John: So anyway, I'm a big supporter of the elephant sanctuary in Tennessee, and I go to their website all the time.
John: And every time I see an elephant that's in a zoo or that's doing some work in the world, I'm like, mm-hmm.
John: Elephant sanctuary.
John: I whisper it in their ear.
John: I'm like, psst.
John: Elephant sanctuary.
Merlin: Hmm.
Merlin: You know, I've always... Our next-door neighbor, when I was in junior high, collected elephants.
Merlin: And I realized on the first... Hmm?
Merlin: No, well, you know, elephant-related things.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: Didn't collect the animals.
Merlin: I was going to say, elephant collection.
Merlin: Track housing.
Merlin: But...
Merlin: But I realized what a gift it is to everyone in your life.
Merlin: We've talked about this.
Merlin: If you have a collection, like in your case, think about all the things, if somebody figured out how to reach you, that they could give you as a gift because they know you like a braille playboy.
Merlin: You like a cowboy hat.
Merlin: You like a nice – a nice –
Merlin: brass candelabra, none of that cheap stuff.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: It's a gift you give to your friends.
John: Ray-Bans.
John: I collect Ray-Bans.
John: Any kind of birthday party or any kind of housewarming gift you want to bring me Ray-Bans on.
John: I'm in.
John: You're in.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: But in her case, you could bring her an elephant.
Merlin: Because now – I mean the thing is it's – you always know.
Merlin: So if you go somewhere, if you go to Gatlinburg, which is in the Africa of America, you know that you can get an elephant thing and you give it to her and it's a wonderful gift, right?
Merlin: Now in your case, it sounds to me like you are like my aged neighbor.
Merlin: in Pasco County, Florida, you're giving a gift to people.
Merlin: You're saying if you wanted to give me something, it can't be cheap and cheesy, but give me some nice elephant created art.
Merlin: And that's something that you could do for me.
Merlin: Cause it's, you know what?
Merlin: It's specific.
Merlin: It's nice to be specific.
Merlin: I mean, how many times when you were a kid, did you get like the off brand big gym or something, you know?
John: Right.
John: Exactly.
John: When my mom brought me stadias instead of, you remember, you remember the iconic white Nikes with the blue stripe.
Merlin: Yeah.
Yeah.
John: And then you remember the Stadia tennis shoes?
Merlin: I remember there was a number of ones where the swoosh was legally squared off.
John: This swoosh.
Merlin: Or just a little too round and fruity.
John: Yeah, it wasn't just that it was round.
John: The swoosh was actually a whale.
Merlin: Oh, I do remember that.
Merlin: I blocked it out.
Merlin: I had JCPenney's fake Adidas with four stripes.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: You can see those kids a mile away.
John: And I was the kid with the Stadias.
John: My mom was like, those Nikes are 80 bucks.
Merlin: Mine were a bluish purple with orange stripes, four orange stripes.
John: Those actually sound kind of cool.
Merlin: Now they do.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: They call them kicks.
John: I wish I had those stadiums.
Merlin: I wish I had all of mine.
Merlin: Oh my God.
Merlin: I think I am very reluctant to talk about this because I think I got scammed recently by an animal artist.
Merlin: Yeah, I'm not real comfortable talking about it, but I've got a bad feeling about this.
Merlin: Like a lot of white people, I heard a thing on NPR about Cheetah and Cheetah.
Merlin: The monkey.
Merlin: It's a chimp, John.
Merlin: Sorry.
Merlin: Cheetah was the chimp from the Tarzan movies.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Do you know about this?
Merlin: Well, I know about Cheetah the chimp from the Tarzan movies.
Merlin: Well, long story short, Cheetah – chimps get old.
Merlin: People don't realize this.
Merlin: Chimps are real cute when they're running around in diapers when they're a few months old.
Merlin: But then they turn into like basically imagine an insane, senile, shit-throwing five-year-old.
Merlin: Have fun for 80 years, right?
Merlin: So you get a chimp.
Merlin: Elvis learned this, right?
Merlin: Elvis learned this with his – he used to masturbate in front of his guests.
Merlin: He thought that was funny.
John: That is kind of funny.
Merlin: He's from Tennessee.
John: Can you imagine being at Elvis' house and a chimp is masturbating?
Merlin: Check it out, man.
John: Check it out, man.
Merlin: He's getting right in there.
Merlin: But no, chimps will eat your face.
Merlin: Oh, no, no, no.
Merlin: They'll tear all kinds of stuff off.
Merlin: They're ornery.
Merlin: Anyway.
Merlin: I heard this thing that – and this part I'm pretty sure is true, which is that Cheetah was being – and I'm not going to Google this.
Merlin: But Cheetah was now being cared for at this sanctuary.
Merlin: And like how cool is that?
Merlin: Cheetah – like I grew up like watching those terrible, terrible Tarzan movies.
Merlin: How cool is it that of all those people, like Cheetah of all those people is still alive.
Merlin: Johnny Weissmuller is dead but Cheetah lives.
Merlin: Like so many Olympians, dead.
Merlin: And the way that they were subsidizing Cheetah's keep was that Cheetah did paintings.
John: Right.
John: For his Cheetah chow.
Merlin: That's how he earned his Cheetah chow.
Merlin: So like a lot of people, I think I heard about this on NPR, by which I mean I'm positive I heard about this on NPR.
Merlin: I mean, it's got the stink of all things considered.
Merlin: It sure does.
Merlin: It sure does.
Merlin: I can hear the theme music.
Merlin: I'm Robert Siegel.
Merlin: Bing, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
Merlin: Cheetah paintings, cheetah paintings.
Merlin: And so I went to the site and if memory serves, I went to a form where I selected what colors I would like cheetah to use.
Merlin: And I forget how much we paid for it, but we bought a cheetah painting.
John: Now, wait, are you saying that you not only bought a cheetah painting, but that you commissioned a cheetah painting?
John: Oh, shit.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: It's in my house.
John: How have I never seen the cheetah painting?
John: I've been in your house many times.
John: I have mixed feelings about the cheetah painting.
John: You're afraid it's not an authentic cheetah?
Merlin: Well, there's a couple levels to it.
Merlin: This is not super interesting, but I think there's a couple levels to it.
Merlin: First, I believe there is some controversy about whether that is, in fact, the canonical cheetah.
Merlin: I think there is some concern that that might be like the cheetah at Avignon.
John: Second cheetah.
John: Third cheetah.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: Third location.
Merlin: Let's set that aside for a moment.
Merlin: We got this painting and, you know, it's on like a canvas you would buy at flax or whatever.
Merlin: It's like, you know, on one of those, it's not like a stretched canvas.
Merlin: It's on one of those, like, it's like a big board and it's like, it's purple and yellow and it looks like a fucking chip made it.
Merlin: Pretty much if you want to guess what a chimp smearing paint on like, you know, with not a whole lot of sense of negative space, let's be honest.
Merlin: And, you know, Matt and I, this is years ago, Matt and I were like, oh, this is so cool.
Merlin: We supported Cheetah.
Merlin: And then there's like, you know, it's along the lines of like when you have your dog sign the Christmas card and you make it put its paw on there.
Merlin: But you aren't afraid to put three thumbprints on there to fake it, right?
John: So you're thinking that there was somebody with a cattle prod?
Merlin: I think it's fucking bullshit.
Merlin: I think this dude got a little liquored up and made a cheetah painting and that guy is making fucking bank off a fake cheetah making fake paintings.
Merlin: That is my problem.
John: Wow.
Merlin: See, this is what I live with, John.
Merlin: I can't prove it.
Merlin: I can't disprove it.
Merlin: I want to say nothing.
Merlin: Nothing against cheetah.
Merlin: Right.
John: Real or imagined.
John: But there's something in the painting.
Merlin: It doesn't smell right.
Merlin: There's something that's got a chimp stink on it.
Merlin: There's something about it that's not right.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: I have not tracked it down when we were done here.
Merlin: I will do more research.
Merlin: If our listeners know, I would love to hear.
Merlin: But I have a feeling I got cheetah scammed.
Merlin: That's all I'm saying.
Merlin: I'm very interested in the idea of the people who would collect animal-created art.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: You know?
John: Yeah.
John: Well, and that's – I mean I have to say –
John: If I didn't, if I didn't, if I was actually going to get an elephant painting, I would like, I would like to see.
Merlin: I got my painting.
John: I'll never know.
Merlin: I would like to see.
John: Kevin has an anecdote about that.
John: He does.
John: He does.
John: Groucho Marx was there.
Merlin: What time Groucho was telling him?
John: If I would like to see at least a vine, at least a six second video of the elephant actually painting my painting.
John: I don't want to just get a painting in the mail from an elephant sanctuary because the elephant sanctuary where the paintings are being done is in Thailand.
Merlin: Oh, give me a fucking break.
John: Right?
John: So it's like, well, come on now.
John: I don't want a repeat of this.
Merlin: I don't want to make this about Hitler, but I'm very interested in the idea of provenance.
Merlin: When I first heard that, I guess in college and I guess painting class, I first heard about provenance and where this was, how we know where this came from.
Merlin: I think most people know this from Antiques Roadshow.
Merlin: But the whole idea of like – it's the chain of custody for this particular piece of art, right?
Merlin: Wouldn't you say?
Yeah.
John: I would absolutely say.
Merlin: I mean it's kind of what it means, right?
Merlin: We know that somebody made this.
Merlin: Like Vincent Van Gogh gave this to his landlord and the landlord rolled a joint in it and like whatever.
Merlin: Like we know like how this got to where it was.
Merlin: And I guess I don't want to be that like Pixar it didn't happen guy.
Merlin: But, you know, like for example, a comic artist that I like a lot.
Merlin: who does a comic that I like a lot, drew me – my friend – actually, my friend Moises had him draw me a custom cover and sent it to me.
Merlin: It was kind of weird.
Merlin: First of all, it was fucking awesome.
Merlin: It was Jean Grey.
Merlin: But it was also – it came with this weird little authenticity.
Merlin: And like I knew it was real because I know Dave and I know Moises and I know all new X-Men and I know that it looked right.
Merlin: But like I'm very interested in that whole idea.
Merlin: Like how do you prove that anybody did anything?
Merlin: And I guess what I'm getting at is you have to have a fucking video of the elephant making your art.
Merlin: It should just – before you worry about shipping, you know what you should do?
Merlin: You should send me a password-protected Vimeo video of the fucking elephant making the fucking painting.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: And I want to hold up a newspaper.
Merlin: I want to know what date it is.
John: I want to make sure it's mine.
Merlin: I want you to mention my name in it.
Merlin: I want the elephant to look me in the eye.
Merlin: Tell me what the number one Billboard Top Hot 100 song is this week.
Merlin: Because you know how this is.
Merlin: The Viet Cong would do this all the time.
Merlin: You can fake anything.
John: Sure, sure, sure.
John: They're faking Van Gogh's right now, the Viet Cong are.
John: That's how they keep that war going.
Merlin: Is that right?
Merlin: Mostly underground?
John: It's in the tunnels still.
John: So I was thinking about this the other day.
John: I never throw anything away, as you know.
Merlin: And for many years – That's not entirely true.
John: Well, it's not entirely true.
Merlin: But there are things – You don't throw away anything that doesn't smell unless you created the smell generally.
John: Yeah.
John: And that is a perfect intro to what I'm about to describe, which is that for many years I only wore Levi's.
John: I made the classic mistake that a lot of young guys make, which is that I found one piece of clothing that worked.
John: It didn't look the best on me.
John: I wasn't like a Levi's model or anything like that.
John: But Levi's, you could get them cheap at Sears.
John: And so I got the unwashed kind.
Merlin: Get the raw 501s.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Which I should mention you got me back into and all I wear now is five pairs of 501s.
Merlin: Thank you for making me feel bad.
John: No, no, no.
John: Well, I mean, no.
John: Levi's, right?
John: I mean, you know, until recently, the Levi's company was taken over by skinny pant hipsters who have no sense of history.
John: Oh, my God, John.
Merlin: Go try and buy a pair of Levi's online.
Merlin: I don't even want to.
John: It's completely baffling.
John: They're making 600 pairs of pants and they can't make their goddamn iconic jeans.
John: They don't make the pants that I want anymore.
John: Every pair of Levi's I own came from a different country.
John: I have Chilean Levi's.
John: I have Mexican Levi's.
John: Dominican Republic Levi's.
Merlin: Mexican Levi's are always taking a nap.
Merlin: Equatorial.
Merlin: Chinese Levi's are like, not me, not me.
Merlin: The problem is you want to buy another pair an hour later.
John: Anyway, so I got all these Levi's, and what would happen is I would wear the Levi's until they were completely white.
John: No washing.
John: The knees were blown out, and the cuffs were blown out, and the crotch was blown out, and then I would put patches all over them, and I would wear them until you could almost see through these pants.
John: Yeah.
John: It's like you're in the cast of Hair.
John: I looked like I was in the cast of Hair.
John: And so for 30 years, I've been wearing these jeans.
John: And when the Levi's finally get to the point where they're just like, okay, now I do look like a hippie.
John: I look like I'm in a band called Hippie Big Buckle.
John: And I need to go to the store and get new jeans.
Okay.
John: Instead of throwing these super patchy hippie pants away, I would just carefully fold them.
John: I would wash them one more time, carefully fold them, and put them in a drawer.
John: Oh, God.
John: And so now, here at my house, I have a drawer.
John: It's no longer a drawer.
John: It's now basically a hope chest.
John: With...
John: With 30 years of these jeans.
John: I have 25 pairs of completely patched, but all made in America, all worn from tin denim level all the way down to this tissue paper.
John: And they're all size 36 waist and they're all 36 length.
John: And they sit in this footlocker and every once in a while I look at, I open it and I look at it and I'm like, it's my whole life.
John: represented in worn-out jeans.
John: It's your life expressed in pants.
John: There it is, my life in pants.
John: And everything I ever did, I did in these pants.
John: Every song I ever wrote, every tour I ever went on, it's all in these pants.
Merlin: That's unexpectedly poignant.
John: Yes, I totally agree.
John: So, but here's the thing.
John: I don't want to go through the rest of my life with a...
John: with this like submarine full of jeans that I'm carrying with me everywhere.
John: You know, it's like a, it's like a three, like a three man seal submarine.
Merlin: At some point you're going to be out and your, your lady is going to be poking around.
Merlin: She's going to, she's going to open the big cedar box.
John: 35 years of pants one of the things I'm worried about is that these pants are exactly the type of pants that girls like to steal from boys and wear like cinched around their waist with a cute little belt
John: It's so cute, and I don't want it to happen to my teen archives.
John: And like a big shirt?
John: No, I don't want cute girls running around in my jeans.
Merlin: What the fuck are you talking about?
Merlin: You could have a totally Jules and Jim situation in your goddamn bedroom.
Merlin: What's wrong with you?
Merlin: She could draw on a mustache, John.
Merlin: Your sense of history is clouding your vision.
Merlin: That's all I'm going to say about that.
Merlin: You're absolutely right.
Merlin: It may be.
John: Jules and Jim.
John: Maybe I should have been giving away these genes to girls for the last 25 years.
John: Maybe I missed a big opportunity.
John: But instead I have been protecting these genes.
John: I don't know why.
John: Now I have a time capsule of genes and then it pops into my head.
John: Now wait a minute.
John: I could put these jeans on eBay as a lot.
John: 25 pairs of jeans from the last 30 years, all made in America, all worn to paper thinness.
John: And then I think...
Merlin: Who's going to buy them?
Merlin: Who's going to buy that?
Merlin: And what are they going to do with them?
John: Yeah, right.
John: Like, if I sold that, like, to a costume designer who was rebooting hair, okay, that could be cool.
John: You couldn't make these jeans.
John: You could not weather these jeans with modern technology.
Merlin: I think you're looking more like Levi Sniffer 56.
Yeah.
Merlin: Like you're looking at a guy with an efficiency apartment.
John: But he's not going to want to sniff my Levi's.
John: He's going to want to sniff girls' Levi's.
Merlin: I've had offers on shoes.
John: But so then I say...
John: Now, what if I put them on eBay with the provenance?
Merlin: Oh, no question.
Merlin: You write up a little thing on what was happening at the time.
Merlin: These are my Czech genes.
John: These are the genes that I wrote the song Cinnamon in.
Merlin: I played Mimi around a campfire and literally ate pasta with ketchup in these genes.
John: In these genes.
Merlin: Now, what am I doing?
Merlin: And a bunch of extremely creepy single men are holding up ping pong panels.
Merlin: Sold to the man with his hand in his pants.