Ep. 70: "Bad Cop, Worse Cop, Man in Bathrobe"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hey, John.
Merlin: Hi, Merlin.
John: How's it going?
John: Pretty good.
John: Yep.
John: I got that keyboard that you suggested.
John: It arrived in the mail.
John: You didn't tell me it was solar powered.
John: See, I knew you wouldn't get it.
John: I'm so psyched though.
John: Yeah.
John: I mean, I thought like, you're absolutely right.
John: If you had said it's solar powered Bluetooth keyboard, I would have hung up the phone immediately.
Merlin: Like, okay.
Merlin: Imagine if I had said to you, Oh my God, John, you're hungry.
Merlin: You should try these chips.
Merlin: They are so freaking good.
Merlin: Hang up already.
John: I know what's coming.
Merlin: These chips, they're so good.
Merlin: And then I would say, and they're vegan.
John: Yeah.
John: They're puffed rice and steel-cut rolled oat puffed rice.
John: Hate crime.
John: Oats have family.
John: That are seasoned with olive salt.
John: I wouldn't have even been listening.
John: I would have been gone.
John: And recovered oil.
John: But this keyboard is beautiful.
John: It's just that I haven't yet synced it with any of my devices because I want to save that moment.
Merlin: You're going to like the little blue lights light up.
Merlin: It's pretty exciting.
John: I like everything about it, but I don't want to rush into anything with it.
John: So I'm still sitting at my computer with no operative keyboard.
Merlin: That was insensitive of me to send you our weekly boop because I knew – I should have known that it wasn't ready.
Merlin: But I'm very happy to know that it arrived.
Merlin: I think things will get better.
John: Yeah.
John: You booped me and I – but I knew that it was – I knew you didn't expect a reboop.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Well, I would like to think that that is a tentpole of our relationship is we don't always expect a boop.
John: Yeah, right.
John: You send out a boop.
John: Maybe you get a boop back.
John: Maybe you don't.
Merlin: Do you feel that way?
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: I mean, I think with us, I hope that's the way it is.
Merlin: But don't you sometimes worry about not getting a boop from someone?
John: Well, here's the funny thing.
John: Sometimes I go weeks and weeks and weeks.
John: I don't need a boop from anybody.
John: And then other times, all of a sudden, I send a boop out.
John: I don't get a boop back in five or six minutes.
John: And then I'm literally up a tree.
John: I have to go climb a tree.
John: And I'm up there pulling my hair out about like, where's the boop back?
John: Right.
John: And I honestly don't understand how one person can fluctuate.
John: From so autonomous and self-contained to so needy in such a short amount of time.
John: And a lot of times the boop that I want...
John: isn't really the boop i want it's just some random boop i send a thing out and i don't get a reply and i'm like oh no it's not that's not even the that's not even the big boop you know well and there there are probably days like when you're busy you're traveling you're on the road you got stuff going on and you get way too many boops and you go so many boops right well and that's the thing if you live in a world where you're not you're not johnny on the spot with the boobs
John: How can you then be upset when somebody else is probably juggling three jobs or peeling avocados or whatever it is that people do?
John: And they don't have time to just be looking at their phone all day.
Merlin: I literally spent five hours talking about this today.
John: Oh, this was your buzznatch meeting.
Merlin: My buzz witch.
Merlin: You had a meeting with some buzz witches.
Merlin: I can't help people, John.
Merlin: I keep thinking I can help people.
John: Do they want you to be on their board?
Merlin: Are you on their board?
Merlin: I think that was... I think it was certainly something that would have been under consideration if I weren't such a horrible little contradictory man.
Yeah.
Merlin: Did you ever see?
Merlin: You've seen Pulp Fiction.
Merlin: You've seen Pulp Fiction.
Merlin: Well, they call in Harvey Keitel, the wolf, to come in and clean out the car after they accidentally blow the kid's head.
Merlin: No spoilers.
Merlin: So they blow the kid's head off in the back of that cool car.
Merlin: He shows up in a... Yeah, that was a... And John Travolta is waiting for the boot.
Merlin: He shows up in an NSX.
Merlin: That's a sweet car.
Merlin: And then – so let's be honest.
Merlin: In that situation, John Travolta is looking for the boop because he is waiting for – Harvey Kite tells Wolf to be deferential to him and to treat him with respect.
Merlin: And I can't quote it from memory, but it's something along the lines of, listen, I talk fast.
Merlin: I drive fast.
Merlin: If it seems like I'm being curt with you, it's because we have a job to do and the time is limited.
Merlin: And that's basically me with everyone all the time.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And so I said that today to the founder of a company.
John: So you went in and they were like, what do you think about this?
John: And they gave you some buzzwords and you were like, let me cut to the chase.
Merlin: They were super nice people.
Merlin: But I did at one point, I was clearly really frustrating this one guy with me and how I am.
Merlin: And I said, I'm frustrating you, aren't I?
Merlin: And he really wanted everything in bullets.
Merlin: And finally I was like, let me explain something to you.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: If you expect me to come in here and just agree with all of the reasons why your product is good the way it is, you're wasting your money.
Merlin: Right.
John: You gave them the Merlin Man verbal scimitar.
Merlin: I gave them – I read them a 1,500-word riot act.
Merlin: It was all great.
Merlin: But honestly, John, it's like you help so many people.
Merlin: I see it every day.
Merlin: I see people saying how much you help them, and I'm really envious.
John: I am.
John: You are helping people in this great land of ours and in other lands, other lesser lands.
Merlin: They're all necessarily lesser lands.
John: You are helping people all around the world, Merlin.
John: I did this keynote speech with my good friend Kathleen Edwards of Canada.
Merlin: I love her.
John: A wonderful nation.
Merlin: She's so talented, especially for somebody from that country.
Merlin: God love them.
John: That's right.
John: With all the handicaps that she came into this world with.
John: Oh, it's not even a disability.
John: The red hair.
John: They got one wheel on the chair.
John: Yeah.
John: But so we, and Kathleen is very, she's a very Merlin man, like a person when it comes.
Merlin: Lady's got a mouth on her.
Merlin: I'll say that.
John: She does.
John: She's a, she, she works blue and she, so we were sitting right before we go on, on stage and the people that are putting on the event, they usher these two very nice people over and they sit down at our table where we were, you know, where we were like prepping for our presentation and,
John: And the people who are putting on this presentation say, we'd like you to meet these two people.
John: They're really excited to meet you.
John: They are from Rhapsody.
John: And the Rhapsody people said to us,
John: this is a golden opportunity.
John: We really want to work with artists like you.
John: We want to provide, we want to provide really like heightened content to our, to our listeners.
John: We want you to socially network with, with people who are fans of yours on Rhapsody.
John: And Kathleen said, she really put her hand down on the table and said, let me stop you there.
John: why would I socially network with my fans through your website?
John: Answer.
John: And they both went, good question.
John: Well, we really think that there's an opportunity for you to meet people online.
John: And she said, hang on just a second.
John: And she sat there right in front of them and tweeted, any one of my fans use Rhapsody?
Oh, God.
John: She didn't even use their platform, John.
John: Within 30 seconds, she had 25 replies.
John: All of them, nope.
John: And like two of them were like, nope, nobody does.
John: And so she was like, so anyway.
John: Anything else?
John: And they were like, they were pretty flabbergasted because they had a whole pitch.
John: And she just scimitarred them.
John: I was eating a chicken sandwich.
John: I didn't even like...
John: You weren't called upon.
John: No, I was eating the sandwich and taking a drink of milk and nobody asked me.
John: I just sat there with my eyes twinkling.
John: But yeah, you and she should go into business together.
John: I should never be in any business.
John: The opposite of corporate raiders.
John: Corporate make criers.
John: You just go around and you make corporations cry.
Merlin: Hang on a minute.
Merlin: You're telling me there might be a role for people who speak way more truth to power than they've ever heard.
Merlin: Uh-huh.
Merlin: And we not only disrupt the conversations that they're used to, the empty fucking buzzword laden conversations that they're used to having with other people who think that's acceptable.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: And we say true things to them in a way that they're not used to and then they cry.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: I think they need that, John.
Merlin: You need to be on some boards.
John: I think there's a job there.
John: You know, I have all the confidence.
John: See, here's the thing.
John: I think if I walked into a boardroom and there was 16 million dollars.
John: in $100 bills on the boardroom table, that would give me pause.
John: But I am fairly confident that you and Kathleen Edwards both could walk into a room with $16 million on the table.
John: Now, this isn't $16 million that it's been specified is intended for anything.
John: It's just there.
John: It's there as an intimidation tactic.
John: And it's not stacked.
John: They've just kind of piled it there in bundles like the World Series of Poker.
Mm-hmm.
John: And it's just there because they know you're coming in.
John: They know you're the people that are there to make corporations cry.
John: And this is, this is their way of like, they're trying to freak you out.
John: They're trying to psych you out.
John: It's a bully tactic.
John: And I think I would walk into that room with my bathrobe and my scimitar and I would see that 6 million, $16 million.
John: And I would get a little distracted, but I think you and Kathleen could, you could both sit atop that money and,
John: and still deliver the bad news and not even really notice the money was there.
Merlin: Oh, uh, we're in it for the, for the passion.
Merlin: It's all about the music with us.
John: I think it's all about the music for you guys.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But you're also, you're, you're better with money.
Merlin: I mean, you really, you, you are, and let's be honest, this is all the more reason why we should probably team up, right?
Merlin: You want something, well, you know, you got to have somebody with good knees to be the catcher, you know, and somebody, a little short guy who's real quick to be the shortstop.
John: So you and Kathleen go in and you just start hammering them and they're blown away because they're used to people freaking out about the money.
John: And I'm behind.
John: I'm coming in behind and I'm scooping the money into a Trader Joe's shopping bag.
Merlin: It's like bad cop, worst cop, man in bathrobe.
John: I brought all my Trader Joe's shopping bags, go back 15 years, every logo.
John: And I'm just sweeping the money in there and they're not even noticing because they're so upset.
Merlin: Well, their blood is so thin and their bones are so thin and they're so wrecked from making techs.
John: I like this.
John: I think this is a great business model.
Merlin: I think it is.
Merlin: And you know, if I could find a way to get paid for what I'm actually good at, I think I would be very successful.
John: The problem is that historically I have been paid for stuff that I am not particularly good at and I've been lucky sometimes, but it's a, well, not to blow too much smoke, but Merlin, I think that even the things that you consider yourself not very good at, you are way better at than most people who are doing that job.
John: That's why you get paid to do those things.
Merlin: Thank you.
Merlin: But also it's the same challenge, the same gift, let's say, that you've got, which is that – and again, we talked about this.
John: We are gifted men.
Merlin: We are extremely gifted.
Merlin: We're lucky men.
Merlin: We're middle-aged men who are lucky to be alive.
John: We are lucky to be alive.
John: Everybody's lucky.
John: People our age are dying of congestive heart failure all over America.
John: See, now I'm going to think about that.
John: Okay, I'm sorry.
Merlin: But we talked about this a little bit, I think, when we did that very important first interview together in my backyard with the cat and the Chinese people playing basketball.
Merlin: I really believe that one of the things that makes you such an interesting person is your – it seems like you have a biological source of pain when you're expected to play along with BS, especially when it affects you.
Merlin: It's my duodenum.
John: Really?
John: I have a duodenum spasm.
Merlin: For me, it's my pyloric valve.
Merlin: Oh, right.
John: It seals right shut.
John: Especially when you're dealing with minxes.
Merlin: Both ears is wheel.
Merlin: It turns.
Merlin: But no, I mean, it's hard to talk about real things.
Merlin: But, you know, it's...
Merlin: It's frustrating because I used to just think it was merely because I have bad impulse control.
Merlin: And the truth is I have bad impulse control.
Merlin: But it's also that like it's just – it's like you imagine like somebody comes to your door and they're trying to sell you something.
Merlin: And then they keep talking to you and like the thing is you don't want what they're selling.
Merlin: You don't want to be talking to them and you don't want them at your door.
Merlin: But like you're the dick.
Merlin: If you say could you – the only way to make them go away is to say I have no money and I will never have money.
Merlin: That's really the only way or you shoot them.
Merlin: But now you've got to deal with the body.
Merlin: I don't know.
John: You're one of those guys, and I have known a few, but a very few, where the insult of complicity in modern life is this death by a thousand cuts.
John: Everybody's standards are just whittled away.
John: over the course of time and and the the first time you see madonna's belly button on television it's on the front it's on the cover of time magazine what an affront it is to civilization and you know and as i have said before now there is surely somewhere right now in a club some pop star who is who is stretching her labia over someone's forehead and
John: for a music video and everybody's like amazing amazing how come Madonna didn't do that how come nobody thought of that before and it's just that incrementally we have grown accustomed to vulgarity and to insult to such a degree that most people are living in this kind of state of like of constant surrender and the only fight they can muster is like that's not my brand of ice cream
John: That's not my favorite channel and I'm going to mount a protest.
John: But there are a few people like you who have never accepted any of those incremental degradations.
John: And you are still fighting a fight way back upstream.
John: where you are not accepting the basic premise that a lot of people are seasoning their food with, you know?
John: And I have a few friends like this, and the problem is you all end up feeling... Can any of them pay their bills?
John: None of them do.
John: Well, you know, one of them is working as a security guard.
John: And the problem is that at a certain point, that starts to look like paranoia, or you start to seem like a... At least you look at least like a crank.
John: A crank bordering on a conspiracy theorist or bordering on, you know, it's only two more doors down the hall before you're starting to talk about bio streaks in the sky or whatever that shit is about.
John: I saw a Billy Corgan video where he's on stage somewhere talking about that crop dusting thing.
John: Are you kidding me?
John: No, you know what I'm talking about, right?
John: No, I don't know about this.
John: What is it?
John: Blue streaks?
John: What are they?
John: So there's a whole subset of the internet crank land that looks up in the sky and sees contrails from jets.
John: And the arrangement of contrails in the sky is portentous to them.
Merlin: That is so not a thing.
John: It's a thing.
John: There's no way.
John: Evidence.
John: Bear with me.
John: Evidence that the government...
John: And I'm not talking about... No, no, no.
John: You're not about the government.
John: I'm not talking about the Obama Nazis.
John: I'm talking about the big government.
John: Oh, you're talking about the real government.
John: I'm talking about the real government.
John: They are basically, from a very high altitude, crop dusting us.
John: with like powdered sugar and lsd and birth control pills and some you know and like like like monkey glands and ted nugent's
John: g-string underwear and i don't know what is is in these what is what they're gassing us with i have not i have not been able to follow in their theory of this what what what does that dusting accomplish for the government it is is it making us more pliant yes it's another way in which we are blind to the truth which is that we are being chemically controlled and otherwise controlled
John: so that end goals like universal health care can be forced down our throats or worse, worse things like the all-seeing eye on top of the pyramid.
John: Oh, I've seen that, yeah.
John: Yeah, right.
John: Well, yeah.
John: You know, when they hold your $100 bill up to the light, they're just looking for Obama.
John: You found that crystal ball wrapped in that piece of velvet that you're not supposed to touch.
John: Remember when the wizard said, don't look into the ball?
Merlin: Does this have to do with the tabernacle?
John: I don't know what's in the tabernacle, but I do know under Gestad, Switzerland, there is a mineshaft leading to a room...
Merlin: Why does this all remind me of Dr. Strangelove?
John: Where the Jews are eating Christian babies.
John: Right, they make them into matzo bread.
John: But now they're grinding their bones and they're crop dusting us with them.
John: Is that right?
John: Yeah, well, that's what I heard.
Merlin: Well, it stands to reason.
Merlin: So anyway, if you... Can I get back to Jimmy Corrigan?
Merlin: You're telling me he's up on stage and the power to which he speaks truth is the crop dusting government?
John: That's right.
Merlin: He's letting people know those are not merely just lines of moisture in the sky.
Merlin: There's something bigger going on.
John: He is standing on stage somewhere in a room full of people who believe that melancholy and the infinite sadness of the Ars Poetica of the... What was that?
Merlin: Let's see.
Merlin: When the pawn meets the queen to the Bishop Six Fiona Apple.
John: I don't know how that goes.
John: Despite all his rage.
John: Still just...
John: Those people, which I'm assuming now is like a 250-seat club somewhere on the outskirts of St.
John: Paul.
John: And he's up on stage with a silver star on his long-sleeved T-shirt.
John: And he's talking about these crop... I wish I knew... I wish I had a keyboard.
John: I could figure out what these things are called.
John: Because they have a name.
Merlin: We're looking for Contrail Crop Conspiracy?
Merlin: Maybe?
John: Okay.
John: And what's great about it is that as evidence, as proof of this, they have photos and photos, just volumes of photos of contrails in the sky.
Merlin: It makes tea leaves look pretty sophisticated.
John: Yeah, because there's some going this way and then there's some going this way.
Merlin: Oh my God, John, this is real.
Merlin: The chemtrail conspiracy theory holds... Chemtrails, that's it!
John: Chemtrails!
Merlin: That's not moisture.
Merlin: The chemtrail conspiracy theory holds that some trails left by aircraft are chemical or biological agents deliberately sprayed at high altitudes for purposes undisclosed to the general public in clandestine programs directed by various government officials.
John: Area 51?
John: Silver iodide.
John: Yeah, so they're spraying it really high up so that it dissipates over all of us.
John: including presumably the pilot's grandmothers and the U.S.
John: senator that lives in that town.
John: I mean, it's like targeted at everybody.
Merlin: All they go to the poor neighborhoods are the people with guns.
Merlin: Now, how would they know?
Merlin: Here's one part of this.
John: 30,000 feet over the poor neighborhoods.
Merlin: It's a very, very effective way to drop underwear.
Merlin: Now, the thing is, so in the estimation of these various scientists that are studying this important work, what is...
John: what has happened as a result of that has it well look around you the aforementioned labia artist they're blaming the labia artist on contrail chemicals i think the fact that the website that the jezebel website even exists
John: It's because of chemtrails that those women have become that empowered.
Merlin: This is going to be one of those things like Scientology where I can't think about it too much because I will go down a certain kind of tone-level rabbit trail.
Merlin: And then I'll start really thinking about it.
Merlin: In order to really understand something, you have to be a little bit sympathetic, I think.
Merlin: I mean to understand another person, even if you disagree with them, you have to put yourself in their chemtrail shoes and try and understand it.
Merlin: And I worry sometimes because I'm very susceptible.
Merlin: I'm very suggestible, I guess.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I don't want to read.
Merlin: I'm just going to read that first paragraph, I think.
John: Okay.
John: That seems good to me.
Merlin: Where'd you hear about this?
Merlin: You weren't at the Jimmy Corrigan concert, right?
John: No, but I follow the trades.
John: I spend some time on the internet looking for evidence of intelligent life.
John: You're looking in the wrong place, buddy.
John: I am an old man with a lamp searching...
John: for something.
John: And the problem is that I do not limit the corners of the internet that I visit.
Merlin: John, if you only read things you already know, you're not learning.
John: That's right.
Merlin: You're going to have to be, you or any other scholar of a lamp, you have to be challenged.
Merlin: You have to go into rooms that you've never been into before, some of which can be very dark.
John: That's right.
John: Am I wrong?
John: I have spent more time
John: Then I care to admit like trawling, not trolling, but trawling the whole like white supremacist underground.
John: I have spent many, many hours watching the step dance routines of black fraternities in the South.
Merlin: I have like the family marching band, like fancy dances, those things.
Merlin: Are you not familiar with the step dancing phenomenon?
John: Is this that Harlem Shuffle thing?
John: No.
John: No.
John: This is one of America's great cultural... It's not clogging though, right?
John: It is not unlike clogging.
John: I've seen some clogging.
John: So this is a tradition in the black fraternities of the Howard University and the big universities in the South where they duel with one another and
John: with a very orchestrated kind of clog dancing called Stepping, where they do this, like, hyper, hyper, like, coordinated dance steps as a form of competition with one another.
John: And it is awesome.
John: It is super, super badass.
John: And it has not really...
John: it has not really gone out into the world.
John: Like there, there has never been a moment like there was with voguing where it went from a kind of underground culture and, and became a mainstream culture.
John: Like, I think there was a while there, maybe at the late eighties, maybe kid in play had a little bit of sure.
John: Step dancing as part of one of their movies, or I don't know.
Merlin: There was a moment where probably have like a dance kata, like they were showing you what they could do if they decided to fight.
John: Yeah, but it was always two people dancing against each other, and this is like 25 people dancing.
John: It's like marching band duels, except without... Are both sides doing the same dance?
John: No, no, no.
Merlin: They bring their... I mean, I don't want to work ping pong, but is it kind of like a breakdance battle?
Merlin: Don't you do a – isn't there like a Michael Jackson thriller thing where you can like dance against each other, West Side Story style?
John: Yeah, yes.
John: There are elements of that, but it's also very military.
John: Like it's kind of – there are marching elements of it.
John: You really have to just – you really just have to spend –
John: the many hours i will they're watching it online because some of the some you know some of those contests are unfortunately none of them have really been filmed professionally so you're watching these contests and they're filmed from people's phone like shot on a feature phone and you're just like oh come on i wish that this had good sound and i wish it had that sounds like a documentary on netflix
Merlin: I mean, that's waiting to happen.
John: I bet if there isn't one, some Roderick on the line listener is already putting up a Kickstarter.
Merlin: Chuck Klosterman in Thurston Moore will be in it.
John: So anyway, first time I saw Stepping has taught me many things.
John: And one of my favorite things right now is chemtrails.
Merlin: Okay, I dropped a little bit of a thread there.
Merlin: So stepping, that's just an example of the dark rooms into which you will walk once your keyboard is working?
John: Oh, I wouldn't even call that a, that's not a dark room.
Merlin: That was ping pong, I apologize.
John: You know, like, I have never used Tor or any kind of Onion dark web sequence.
John: You have not used any of the Onion-based IP obfuscation services.
John: Right.
John: I have not done any of that.
John: You know what I am?
John: I am a Pete Townsend character, and I am out there looking at terrible things on the Internet as part of my research.
John: Oh, God.
John: And if I get indicted, if my search history comes up with a bunch of snuff films and terrible, like, you know, all the terrible evil that's out there, I am fairly confident, first of all, that I'm going to know the FBI agent that is assigned to the case.
John: And that he and I kind of have an understanding.
Merlin: No, I'm in the sense that it'll be someone you're familiar with.
Merlin: Somebody that I probably went to college with.
Merlin: The one who set up the meeting but didn't go.
John: Yeah, or he might be a Roderick on the line listener.
John: And if that isn't enough, then probably the district attorney's father went to law school with my dad.
John: What I'm saying is the old boy network is going to take care of this and I'm not going to get in trouble.
John: That's how I go through life.
John: That's how I make it happen.
John: Okay.
John: Yeah, I... Because somebody has to be the Pete Townsend of our modern day and be out there looking at terrible things as a way of bearing witness.
Merlin: It's something I first... I guess I became aware of late in my tenure of living in the South.
Merlin: And I don't think it's peculiar to the South, but there's a funny thing that I would encounter, which is...
Merlin: people thinking that because you know about something, you not only like approve of it, but that you do it.
Merlin: Like you sit in the office and you go, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have faxed that.
Merlin: I'm totally on crack.
Merlin: And they would all look at you and think you actually were literally thinking about doing crack.
John: Because you had said that you were on crack.
Merlin: Well, I mean, I'm being a little bit extreme, but like it's such a faux pas.
Merlin: I mean, you know, in certain – we've talked about this before, but in certain –
Merlin: uh little subsets of of the culture uh you know a lot of what is said is what is not said and there are certain things that you know there could be a real turd in the punch bowl like if i said turd in the punch bowl in the office like that would probably mean people would think i like to drink turds or something you're gross how many turds have you put in punch bowls i don't think i like that at all
Merlin: That's my mama's punch bowl.
John: You know, we, you and I, between the two of us, we have seen a lot of things.
John: We've gone down a lot of roads.
John: And it's only made us more helpful.
Yeah.
Merlin: I think so.
Merlin: And I mean in some ways I'm – excuse me.
Merlin: I'm sometimes grateful.
Merlin: Well, I'm often grateful for things like YouTube.
Merlin: Like tonight I got to go – I found a couple of things about Elliot Smith and posted it on my website and I'm glad that's out there.
Merlin: But sometimes I find myself using YouTube for what it's actually for, which is following your nose deeper and deeper and deeper into something super duper weird that you had no idea lots of people would in this case make videos about.
John: I thought it was all just guys hitting the nuts when they were trying to skateboard down a railing.
Merlin: Yeah, they call it board knobbing.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I'm sure that that's a genre.
Merlin: But I mean, that could be something as benign as people playing ukulele covers of songs.
Merlin: That could be a thing that you do for a while.
John: I happen to know that it's a thing that made Jonathan Colton a lot of money.
John: Huh.
Merlin: Oh, because they put ads on the page?
John: No, because covering Jonathan Colton's music on the ukulele, covering Jonathan Colton's music in a twee way on the ukulele has actually spawned a whole genre.
Merlin: Is there a name for it?
John: I think it's called – I think it's called – We can come back to it.
Merlin: I've seen a lot of them.
Merlin: I saw a Tom Cruise Crazy one time that was really, really good.
Merlin: But it's – I think there should be – it's funny.
Merlin: Like right now the YouTube people can do things like using algorithms.
Merlin: They can basically find any copyrighted music that's – they can try anyway to find any music that's used in a video or something like that.
Merlin: But I think it would be nice to let me know ahead of time before I click on the video that it's a ukulele cover.
Merlin: And it would be really nice if I'm going to go – like I say, if I want to find some built to spill, I would please make it clear that this is shot with somebody's shaky feature phone.
Merlin: That's the kind of thing that would make that useful because that's a lot of wasted time.
Merlin: That's time I could be spending on chemtrails.
John: Well, this is the thing.
John: I read an article in Wired not very long ago, which I subscribe to and have subscribed to Wired for many years because I believe that... You don't have to show your bona fides to me.
John: I believe that if a person reads Wired and discover a magazine, then they know all science.
John: That is all you need to know all science.
John: But this article in Wired said, they keep making these bigger and bigger TVs that have more and more features, but none of them are useful because television sucks.
John: It's pretty good.
John: And I was like, huh, that's really exactly true.
John: And this article went on to say, your TV supposedly allows me to sync 10,000 things, but really, I just want to watch Dr. Strangelove.
John: And I don't want to... And I can't find it anywhere.
John: And I don't want to have to type Dr. Strangelove into 17 different... Yeah, using like a four-way dingus.
John: Yeah, using a dingus.
John: Type it into all these different menus and nobody has it.
John: And he's like, we have the TVs.
John: That's peaked.
John: We don't need more.
John: We don't need higher definition.
John: We don't need bigger TVs.
John: We got it now.
John: It's mastered.
John: Now we need someone to figure out how to make watching TV even remotely pleasurable to someone that doesn't spend four hours a day figuring out their TV.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: It's a problem that's not so far off what I felt like I was facing a little bit today, which is that...
Merlin: I mean, whatever your business is, there's really only so much you can do.
Merlin: Like, if you shine shoes for a living, there's not much that you can do to improve the quality of the shoes that are manufactured.
Merlin: That man or woman shoe shine person can only do so much to improve what's out there.
Merlin: But, you know, do you think it's up to the TV makers to make a better show?
John: No, but this is the direction of the... Like, I think the TV makers could... They are...
John: What we have now is 40 interfaces.
John: And what we need is one interface.
John: Yeah.
John: And Sony is as capable as anyone of being the person that makes the one interface.
John: You know?
John: Like, Sony doesn't... Sony could be at the forefront of...
John: the technology we need, you know, the TV makers are also makers of other things.
John: And I don't know.
John: Well, what was the, can you tell us what the company was that you visited today?
Merlin: No, absolutely not.
Merlin: Thank you though.
Merlin: Um, the, uh, there, there, there may be something to what we're talking about though.
Merlin: And this is, I don't want to make it all about the money, but this also might be where you, me, Catherine, I'm thinking the Kathleen, I'm thinking maybe, maybe Jason Finn we could, we could find a role for, um, is, uh, he could polish our bowling balls.
Merlin: I thought he paid to have that done.
Merlin: He does.
Merlin: Here's one of the problems is that if you look at all this stuff in general, all aspects of entertainment and dealing with other people and all the stuff that the internet is kind of there to help us do, so much of the innovation that we see is mainly to become a barely profitable nuisance.
Merlin: And so that nuisance in some ways could be that you – well, if you want to find Dr. Strangelove, you're going to have to go through this search system that – unless you're going to go out and steal it, you're going to have to go through this really Byzantine way to find this movie.
Merlin: I've been trying to find this one documentary that I've heard a lot about.
Merlin: And basically I'm going to have to buy a plastic disc from Amazon in order to watch it.
Merlin: Like I've got money.
Merlin: I will – not a lot, but I mean I'll pay to watch it right now.
Merlin: I do it all the time.
Merlin: I bought The Matrix the other night like just for fun because I wanted to watch it because it's really easy to do on my Apple TV.
Merlin: But I mean like for example, we subscribe to this thing called Hulu, which gives you access to a whole bunch of shows and kind of –
Merlin: this is my point john it was my wife's idea i'm in it for the long haul with my lady if she wants hulu we get hulu but like i tried to watch a saturday night live episode and i fast forwarded and like the thing froze up because i was like trying i wasn't trying to avoid a commercial i was not trying to be out of compliance and it still froze up the box that was on but like think about the thing with i don't want to say anything against rhapsody i'm
Merlin: No one of the founders.
Merlin: But it's – but like in that case, you're saying like – OK.
Merlin: Here's another example.
Merlin: You were there at MC Hammer's birthday party, right?
John: Yes, I was.
Merlin: I'm at all of them.
Merlin: His 50th birthday party?
Merlin: That was a weird night.
John: That was very weird.
Merlin: I lost a good sweatshirt that night.
Merlin: But in that case – You were hilarious that night.
Merlin: Was I?
John: Yeah, because... I was making fun of your friend.
John: Yeah, you were making fun of all the tech nerdlings.
John: Me?
John: Yeah, we were sitting at a table.
Merlin: I was at his really nice house and accidentally making fun of him, and I didn't need to.
John: Oh, you made fun of him, yeah, but you may not remember this because you were celebrating with MC Hammer, so effusively, but we were sitting at a table, and a bunch of 20-something...
John: 20-something kids in skinny pants came and joined us at the table and they were all hyper-confident Stanford grads who all had a Twitter app or a new startup that they were really excited about.
John: And they started to try to talk to you about the internet.
Merlin: Do you think they were familiar?
Merlin: You don't think they were familiar with me, do you?
Merlin: Well, what I think was that... You had another guest at the table that was much better known than I. Yeah, yeah.
John: There was someone else at the table that was more famous than us all.
John: But they started talking to you and they realized...
John: they clocked me i bet they clocked me as the internet guy at first at first you you you trolled them successfully but then they got then they were wise to you but they weren't sure like where you were coming from and they were fascinated by you and then their fascination with you made you furious
John: Then you really, really wanted to see them.
Merlin: Do I really do that?
John: Yeah, you really wanted to see them in the stocks in the public square.
John: You wanted to paint a giant red A on all of them.
John: That's a terrible thing to do.
John: No, no, no.
John: It was wonderful because they were these San Francisco kids.
John: I'm sure they all had Audi A8 Quattro's valet parked with ground effects and personalized license plates.
John: And these kids deserve to be taken to task for being tasteless little douches.
John: But but you but you are also very inscrutable in moments like that.
Merlin: It's it's just so amazing that that is the kind of person that you would meet at MC Hammer's 50th birthday party.
John: Right.
John: You would think MC Hammer's 50th birthday party was going to be full of like former Oakland A's.
Merlin: Well, yeah.
Merlin: Like I would have met – like I don't know.
Merlin: Like I mean Willie Brown was there.
Merlin: That was kind of cool.
Merlin: He's the best.
Merlin: But like I didn't get to meet Wu-Tang Clan or anything.
John: Yeah, right.
John: But everybody else in there is like 24 years old and like there's the Asian one and then there's the blonde one and then there's the Winklevosses and they're all wearing Uniqlo clothes.
John: Yeah.
John: like Uniqlo pink khakis and they are so excited about talking about the internet and you just it was like we were there too and it's like what was weird about it was like in the area where we were kind of camped out there was a group that correct me if I'm wrong but there was a group that really appeared to be
Merlin: I don't know his real name.
Merlin: I forget his real name.
Merlin: But MC Hammer, I will call him.
Merlin: His – like there was like really – Oh, his family, right?
Merlin: His normal-looking Oakland African-American family in their Sunday-go-to-church clothes looking like they were beaming in.
Merlin: It was really nice.
Merlin: And he had obviously gotten a lot of people into this party and it looked like they were having fun and were like, they looked awesome.
Merlin: And then there was a lot of douchebags like us.
Merlin: There was like you outside.
Merlin: I remember I was delayed coming in because I was talking to this guy who's anyway, it doesn't matter, but he's like a super famous internet guy.
Merlin: I'm like, why are, why are we here?
Merlin: Why are you here?
Merlin: But you can't even really talk about that.
John: I was there cause I'm a rock star.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Who got us into that?
John: Was it your friend?
John: It was my friend's friend that you really... I thought your friend's wife was coming.
John: No, it was my friend's friend that was smoking an e-cigarette that you really took to task.
John: Makes you look like a wizard.
John: Really took to task for his multi-million dollar house in the top of San Francisco.
Merlin: Anyway, the problem is that the only way to the people... It seems to me that sometimes...
Merlin: It's strange to me that – and I think this goes to your TV point – is that, OK, great, guys.
Merlin: We've perfected the TVs.
Merlin: Or in this case, we can make the internet go fast and be reliable and your browser won't crash as much.
Merlin: But now sort of what do we have to look at?
Merlin: Well, to get stuff we want to look at, you have to find a way to pay for it.
Merlin: Ideally, bandwidth is surprisingly expensive for a lot of this stuff.
Merlin: But the trouble is the best way that a lot of people have figured out –
Merlin: Um, to do that is to, is to annoy people is, is, is to be a nuisance.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And like, I heard an interview with you, um, the other day where you were talking to somebody, uh, those two guys in Canada about your music and talking about the idea of, you know, quote unquote stealing music and what it means.
Merlin: And, uh, you know, it's, it's funny though, because I'm more and more drawn to this, having a very clearly delineated relationship where I pay a
John: I don't mind it at all.
Merlin: Because going to Hulu and watching commercials while Adam 12 is on does not make me happy.
John: No, but I went to Netflix and I typed in... What do you think I typed in?
John: Auschwitz.
John: You'd already seen that?
John: I've seen everything that has Auschwitz in the title.
John: No, I went to Netflix, as you do, and I typed in Dean Martin.
John: Oh, sure.
John: Because I was like, you know what I want to see right now?
John: I want to see anything with Dean Martin in it.
John: And Netflix says your keyword returns no results.
John: And I'm like, if you are a purveyor of movies and a person can't go into the search bar at the top of your product and put in Dean fucking Martin and not get back the wealth of the 20th century.
Yeah.
John: I should have been one click away from Lucille Ball.
John: I should have been one click away.
Merlin: Sammy Davis Jr., the most entertaining man who's ever lived.
John: I should have been that close to Bing Crosby.
John: I should have been seeing Jonathan Winters in two clicks.
John: And instead I get returns, no results.
Merlin: You know, here's the thing, John.
Merlin: As I sit here, I am realizing that The Matrix, which I bought for I think $10 American on the Apple TV.
Merlin: I'm realizing I am deep inside The Matrix because I thought about that for a second and I thought, oh, you'll get Ocean's Eleven.
Merlin: You might get the Colgate, you know, Jerry Lewis show or something.
Merlin: But then I stopped for a second.
Merlin: I said, holy shit.
Merlin: There's no fucking Dean Martin on Netflix.
Merlin: Like think about being a little kid.
Merlin: Think about being a kid when we were kids and the incredibly entertaining people who were doing things.
Merlin: I bet there's no Ed Wynn.
Merlin: I bet there's very little Jack Benny.
John: But here's the thing.
John: Here's the thing that I have no way of knowing, Merlin, which is that on Netflix, I'm sure there's tons of Dean Martin.
John: But me, as a dope, I don't know how to find it.
John: Now, if I go to Google and I put Dean Martin in, I am two clicks away from watching free Dean Martin on YouTube.
John: But I was in a pay service and the thing I thought of was I want to watch a Dean Martin movie.
John: And their algorithm is not written to allow me to put the name of somebody in.
John: They want me to put like...
Merlin: They want me to use their... He would need to appear as a marquee name in the metadata.
John: Yeah, right.
John: So what they want me to do is go to Westerns and then go to... Matt Helm.
John: 50s Westerns.
John: And that's what I'm saying when I say that we have the TVs now, but nobody has figured out a way other than Google and YouTube...
John: To get me my Dean fucking Martin as fast as I possibly can.
John: You know, like, I do not want to sit and have to think of how to get it.
John: I don't want to put some like it hot in there.
John: I don't want to put, you know, I don't want to have to chase Dean.
John: Dean is being, Dean already...
John: is being chased by so many people.
Merlin: Dean should be a button.
Merlin: Dean should be a preset.
John: You know what?
John: It should be like one of these F, it should be F7 on every solar powered keyboard.
Merlin: F7.
Merlin: That's pretty good.
Merlin: I think he's, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: You know, I think of it sometimes like, well, for example, like I have this, I'm sorry, we're breaking our rule and talking about the internet a little bit.
John: There are kids listening to this podcast who have never heard of Dean Martin.
Merlin: Well, that's a goddamn shame.
Merlin: You know what that is, Chemtrails?
John: You think that's what it is?
Merlin: Chemtrails.
Merlin: Make your family, make your parents not tell you about Dean Martin.
John: They were raised by somebody who was like, um, Dean Martin's pretty sexist.
Merlin: Do you remember the gold diggers?
Merlin: Remember his dancers on the Dean Martin show?
John: Oh, do I?
Merlin: Oh my God.
Merlin: They were like solid gold before solid gold.
Merlin: They were really handsome women.
John: Well, think about Jill St.
John: John.
John: No.
John: I can't.
John: No.
John: Don't say Ann Margaret.
John: That's where I was going next.
John: I knew it.
John: Ann Margaret on the Dean Martin Show.
John: I wouldn't be able to fit through a door.
John: Now, fast forward to Keisha.
John: Is that the lady with the dollar sign in her name?
John: Pulling her labia over someone's forehead in a music video.
Merlin: And tell me, tell me.
Merlin: That's probably F7.
Merlin: If you hit F7, you're going to see key dollar signs just lobbying literally over a lobbying microphone.
Merlin: I think of it like this, John.
Merlin: I think of it like a mini bar.
Merlin: I think of it like a mini bar.
Merlin: Like that's a lot of these.
Merlin: A lot of these services are like a mini bar where you go there and you open it up and you have a pretty good idea of what kind of stuff is in there.
Merlin: And like if you want anything else, you're probably going to go have to find it or steal it from somewhere else.
John: Did I ever tell you about the time I was staying at the brand new Hilton Hotel in Austin?
John: No.
John: And John Flansburg shows up in my room.
John: And he's got the guy who made that documentary, The Cruise.
John: Have you ever seen that?
John: About the guy who gives tours of New York City.
John: And he's on a double-decker bus talking about the architecture and the history of New York.
John: But he's making it all up.
John: It's all just a lie.
John: So John Flansburg and this guy show up at my hotel room.
John: And Flansburg proceeds to open up my mini bar.
John: And then all of a sudden there's like 35 people in my room.
John: There's a guy cutting calluses off his feet.
John: And there's somebody in a top hat.
John: And there's a guy with a cockatiel.
John: It's like the Marx Brothers.
Merlin: It's like room service.
John: And I'm like, what the fuck?
John: I was about to call it a night.
John: And anyway, Flansburg opens up the mini bar.
John: And out it all goes into the room.
John: And this is one of those Hilton Hotel mini bars with like full bottles of red wine.
Merlin: Oh, dear.
John: And, you know, who knows what else?
John: Like shrimp chips.
John: I don't know what's in there.
John: Sewing kits.
John: It goes out into the room and the party rages until the wee hours.
John: And then after I finally kick everybody else and I make the guy pick up his calluses and take them out.
John: The guy with the bird and I'm kicking everybody out.
John: Flansburg's the last to go.
John: And he turns around.
John: And he slaps a 20 up the desk and he's like, good party, kid.
John: Good job.
John: See you next time.
John: Was he kidding?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: He actually thought that would cover even a fraction of that?
Merlin: You know, he's just... I think he's screwing with you.
John: There's no way.
John: The cheapest bottle of wine in there was like $85.
Merlin: Maybe he only eats out of other people's mini bars.
John: possibly you know i you know i've known him a long time but i think he may travel with that group of people i think there's 35 people waiting for his waiting for him to boop him and he just goes boop and then every any hotel room can become it's a mad mad mad world you're gonna get email um
John: Slaps a 20 down.
Merlin: Right there on the dresser.
Merlin: Good party, kid.
Merlin: Here's a sentence for you.
Merlin: The Cruise is unavailable to stream.
Merlin: Just search for it on Netflix.
Merlin: Nothing.
John: See?
John: The Cruise is unavailable to stream.
John: One of the great films of our time.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: No, it is frustrating and – yeah, but I mean – Yeah, we're talking about the internet.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: But there's this deeper thing and just to return quickly to that idea though, one of the things that I find so fascinating about you and I find so unintentionally, sickeningly inspiring about you – you're welcome – is – I don't know, is that –
Merlin: I don't even know how to describe it, but let me put it this way.
Merlin: Like when I go and let's just say in the abstract, go and visit with people, I sometimes get a feeling and I just want to stipulate.
Merlin: This is what shows that I'm way out of touch.
Merlin: I'm not showing that I'm like a cool outsider.
Merlin: I'm showing that I'm like a psychopath to the rest of the world.
Merlin: So like that conversation that you and Kathleen had with the very nice people at Rhapsody who are good people.
Merlin: And they were lovely.
John: They were lovely people.
Merlin: One of the co-founders cousin was my wife's best friend.
John: I admire their service.
Merlin: We're at their wedding.
Merlin: And so they're wonderful, wonderful people.
Merlin: But what you're describing is not unusual at all, which is first of all, that's really super fucking clueless.
Merlin: Like, you know, why did I mention MC Hammer?
Merlin: Because there was a time I remember when MC Hammer announced that he was going to be launching a new site that was going to be the YouTube of dance videos.
Merlin: And so you can already guess what the joke is.
John: There's already a YouTube of dance videos, right?
Merlin: And what's it called?
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: And, and so, you know, when somebody, when somebody says something like we want to be, I'm just tossing this out, but we want to be the social, we want to be a social pictures.
Merlin: We want to be sure.
Merlin: Like we want to be like, we have an interactive music engagement platform that we think will make us the, the Twitter of streaming music.
Merlin: Like they may really feel like that's what they know how to build, right?
Merlin: They know how to build that stuff.
Merlin: They know there needs to be a social media component to it.
Merlin: But like the frustrating part, there's like several levels of frustrating in that to me, which is like, first of all, I'm supposed to sit there or you're supposed to sit there and act like that makes any fucking sense at all.
Merlin: Well, here's what you really want me to do.
Merlin: What you really want me to do is go and produce content for you for free.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And act like that is benefiting me to be basically pouring myself and my credibility into this thing that you're not willing to see to me is not that interesting and is not really going to do that much for me.
Merlin: You want me to, as we say back in my church, you want me to basically put my candle under a bushel basket.
Merlin: You want exclusivity that does not benefit me or my fans at all.
Merlin: Fans, fuck fans.
Merlin: People who are vaguely interested in anything that you do.
Merlin: To go and put that into this little silo that nobody can see and then wrap public service ads around it isn't helping anybody.
John: My question to you is when people in your church say put your candle under a bushel basket, what are they talking about?
Merlin: Butt sex.
Merlin: They also call it taking the road to Damascus.
Merlin: They call it freeing Barabbas.
Merlin: That road to Damascus.
Merlin: So much shit goes down there.
Merlin: Thessalonians.
Merlin: Thessalonians?
Merlin: That's not a place.
John: Come on.
Merlin: And why do we need a second one?
Merlin: What is the deal with that?
Yeah.
John: But I've heard this light under a bushel basket and I've never understood like what – yeah, I need to go read the Bible.
Merlin: If you have a skill or a gift, if God has given you a gift, it's your obligation to share with the world much like you have.
John: Right.
John: I bet you don't even own a bushel basket.
John: You know, I have a collection of bushel baskets, but I don't talk about that a lot.
John: You should put them on eBay as a lot.
John: I was at Trader Joe's today.
Merlin: Trader Joe's.
John: I do have a collection of vintage Trader Joe's bags.
John: And then I ran into a friend of mine there who used to be Nirvana's front of house guy back in the old days.
John: Great sound man.
John: And he also had an amazing collection of Trader Joe's bags.
Merlin: Did you guys trade?
John: Going all the way back.
Merlin: Did you guys do any trades?
Merlin: Was it like baseball cards?
Merlin: You get a Roberto Clemente for a Steve Garvey or something?
John: You know, and I had a couple of them in their original packaging.
John: It had never been used.
John: I just take them in and out of the store.
Merlin: Mint in bag and bag.
John: So that was a moment.
Merlin: But is it a small... I'm sorry, go ahead.
John: No, no, no.
John: I was just going to say that like so many things...
John: I have only read the Bible once, and it was a long time ago, and I don't remember it.
Merlin: That's okay.
Merlin: There's a lot of anecdotes that come up from the Bible that are kind of good to know.
Merlin: But it's – yeah, it's hard with my wife because she's a heathen.
John: Oh, right.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: She doesn't have – I don't want to go too deep on this.
Merlin: But she – well, first of all, let me just say the problem – people talk about reading the Bible.
Merlin: I learned as a child that my grandfather had actually read the Bible.
Merlin: He spent a few weeks and he read it all the way through.
Merlin: And this is back when Christians were normal.
Merlin: It was like when Christians and Republicans made sense.
Merlin: And so he was a pretty normal guy.
Merlin: He was a CPA and a gentleman.
Merlin: He gardened.
Merlin: But he had read the Bible.
Merlin: But the thing is like if you're from –
Merlin: The kind of group that I'm from, which is a lot of people in Christianity, you're reading little bits of the Bible a lot as part of like a Marvel story arc.
Merlin: Like you're reading thematically, especially as a kid.
Merlin: You're memorizing some verses.
Merlin: You're reading some chapters.
Merlin: You're studying things, right?
Merlin: You might learn about the nature of faith or something.
Merlin: Like I don't know that many people.
Merlin: Who have actually – who haven't been in the racket for a long time that have read it all the way through.
Merlin: And if you do read it all the way through, there's just so much stuff in there that's skippable.
Merlin: There's just so much of the Old Testament you can just gloss over.
John: I don't want to read the letters to the Corinthians.
John: I don't want to read the letters to the Thessalonians because reading other people's mail is wrong.
Yeah.
Merlin: Oh, my God, John.
John: It's a federal crime.
John: And people all these years have been reading all these letters that were all these different.
Merlin: I'm literally I'm going to say I'm literally going to cut that out.
Merlin: Letter to the Romans, mail fraud.
Merlin: Oh, brother.
Merlin: Wait a minute.
Merlin: Are you cutting it out because it's cheesy?
Merlin: No, it was nuanced.
Merlin: It was nuanced.
Merlin: Anyway, there might be a revenue opportunity here.
Merlin: But here's the problem.
Merlin: Most of the people who bring people in, God, I don't want to say this.
Merlin: But this is – what you're describing and what I have encountered in the past is what they really want is to talk you into being on their side about something that's kind of silly.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: They want you to toot about it.
Merlin: They want you to link to them and they want you to basically stand up there on the dais wearing a carnation with your arm around them and saying, I pass my wuffy – my benediction onto this project and like, but I'm only passing my benediction onto your project.
Right.
John: Well, here's my question to you, and this is a question that we all need answers to for, is I know there are people out there who are making a thing and they want me to do something for them.
John: And they have X number of dollars.
John: And the first thing they do is ask me to do it for free.
John: And most of the time I say yes.
John: My question to you is, how do I retroactively go back and kill those people?
Merlin: Oh, that's a really – Take their money.
Merlin: Well, I'd be happy to address that.
Merlin: There's a lot of angles to that.
Merlin: Well, first of all, it depends on which of the two major kinds of time travel timelines you believe in.
Merlin: And we don't have time to go into that in a lot of detail right now.
John: Right.
John: But one thing I would do is – We have kind of a tacit agreement to not talk about time travel anymore.
Merlin: I'm very tempted to sometimes.
Merlin: But I mean setting that funny movie aside, like that good movie, like I honestly don't want to talk about time travel because it does – and I have to tell you, John, in a lot of the literature that I'm reviewing these days, by which I mean all the comic books I read, there is a lot of time travel.
Merlin: And it's sometimes a little hard to follow.
Merlin: What if?
John: What if?
John: Mm-hmm.
John: What if the universe was designed to avoid over-paradox?
John: And the only way... Time travel is real, but the only way that you can time travel is that you go back... It's always in reverse, and you always go back to one month before you were born, and you always die on the day that you are born.
John: Would you go...
Merlin: do you think you can go see this is exactly what i was trying to avoid no i i start lining up the ambience okay
Merlin: Where's my orange juice?
Merlin: There's an Adventure Time comic that I'm going to buy and send to you.
Merlin: You should be watching Adventure Time anyway that addresses this.
Merlin: It's a time machine that always takes you back to this exact same moment and it's used to comedic effect.
Merlin: But no, I'm going to cut to the chase because I know you're time constrained.
Merlin: So one of those places, I would start with one of the ones that was particularly egregious about agreeing to letting you work for free.
Merlin: They didn't even make a big – they didn't pat for their wallet.
Merlin: And I would go there.
Merlin: I would literally – you should take off your clothes, pick up a garbage can, throw it through the window, and set the place on fire.
John: And say – and then the next day, go to Sal and say, where's my pay?
John: Hmm.
Merlin: that movie that movie had three endings it was very frustrating to me i am really i am really on the i feel like i'm on the threshold now yeah i'm on the cusp career-wise i i got that from that interview i i didn't know about your keynoting yeah i'm doing all these should look that up on urban dictionary by the way keynote is another kind of thing is it like thessaloniki yeah it's like it's different from keystoning don't look that is it like the road to damascus
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It's like, it's like Felching in Pennsylvania.
Merlin: They call it Keystone.
John: Keynotes.
John: The keynote.
John: Oh, Keystone.
John: Yeah.
John: Okay.
John: Keystone.
Merlin: But like, seriously, are you, you're getting more offers from people to come and speak somewhere or to, to present.
John: It's curious because I always thought the, the, the, the challenge 10 years ago was, um, in Seattle, there are lots and lots of local bands.
John: And then there are Seattle bands that become national bands and,
John: And there's this there's this booking hierarchy or like local pedigree where if you're if they do if they do a piece on you on the local morning news, the morning news is always going to say local band.
John: X, you know, local band, band of horses played a big show last night.
John: You know, like those guys don't they don't understand.
Yeah.
John: Has that guy worked there for a really long time?
John: That particular guy?
John: Local band band of horses.
John: Well, local band of fleet foxes is still really doing amazing things.
John: These killers aren't real killers, although they do kill at rock music.
John: The only rock music I'm into is my rocking chair.
John: Don't call the fire department.
John: It's just an arcade fire.
John: So anyway, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, the last thing the Long Winters wanted to be was a local band.
John: Because that guy, the guy on the morning news, he's never going to get it.
John: But the bookers and the people that do the, you know, like Sasquatch Festival is a national festival, but it also features a lot of local bands.
John: And you want your band to be from Seattle, but to be a national band.
Merlin: and not be because the local bands get 500 bucks the national bands you know oh that's super interesting like you're you would be i'm sorry i'm gonna interrupt you but like you'd be on like you might be on like a second stage like a lalapalooza like you're over in the back kind of thing you want to be so you want you're like the hometown team though where you want to be big enough that well of course we're going to have seattle's long winners play because they have a national presence it would be idiotic you want to be at that plan at that level right
John: Right, right, exactly.
John: And the thing about it is that if you are a festival headliner, of course, there's no question about it.
John: But a band like The Long Winters, which is in the middle of the pack somewhere, where you feel like, okay, we are getting invited to play festivals...
John: other places so we are you know we are at the level of certainly national and international band but there are all those people around seattle who have known us since we were coming up who still want to every once in a while like throw a little bit of local band shade your direction as either like a like a like a kick in the knee or also as a like cost
John: saving method like oh yeah you know you guys are pretty big local band it's like whoa whoa whoa slow down it's like the musical equivalent of filling up on bread
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: It's like... Yeah, no, I mean, like, the steak's going to come, but first of all, I want you to whoop down a bunch of this sourdough.
John: Yeah, slow your roll there with this local band talk, is what I used to say.
John: And over time, you know, I established myself as a... and continued to aspire to establish myself as a national figure, a national media figure.
John: Well, so recently, the city of Seattle has started throwing all this Seattle action at me.
John: The mayor's office asked me to be on the steering committee for the mayor and the, and the, uh, you know, the weekly is like, wants me to be a kind of editor at large and the local radio stations asking me, you know, kind of give, sending me feelers.
John: And I'm getting all these feelers from all these, from all these Northwest institutions, um,
John: That on the one hand, it feels very appropriate.
John: A man my age, with as much gray in his beard as I have, should start to think about, you know, and it's appropriate, like, in terms my father would understand.
John: Like, I could become a kind of Seattle personage.
Merlin: You're like a rock star emeritus.
John: Yeah, in a way that I already am, in a way that I've been kind of trying to be.
John: But now I'm starting to see every one of those positions, every one of those commissions, if you will, is a commission in a kind of local militia.
John: And it's all... It feels like at the expense of...
John: anyone in New York or Hollywood or London giving a shit about me, you know, like at a certain point when you are the, when you are the editor of the Seattle, uh, you know, the Seattle, uh, Capitol Hill times and dispatch, uh,
John: you're no longer relevant to the Village Voice editor.
John: Even though it's a prominent position, even though it's a step up from being just a freelance jackass.
John: So this creeping kind of regional status...
John: I actually feel kind of, well, certainly ambivalent about, but also a little threatened by.
John: Because it's appealing.
John: It's like, oh yeah, the mayor wants me to do something.
John: Aren't I somebody?
John: Aren't I special?
John: It's like, well, yeah, but also...
John: Are you going to become a local real estate agent?
John: Are you going to get a Pontiac dealership here somewhere and just be like Seattle's
John: The guy that hosts the morning news program, basically.
John: Local celeb.
Merlin: So is it a matter of that there's a risk of associating yourself too heavily with a regional thing?
Merlin: Or is that what you're talking about?
John: I'm not sure.
John: I feel like the two... Maybe it is the two paths of fame...
John: And one path of fame is a regional fame.
John: Tom Baudet is going to leave the light on for you.
John: Tom Baudet was a writer.
John: I mean, I'm sorry.
John: Tom Baudet is a writer, a humor writer from Alaska.
John: And he wrote a series of kind of Dave Barry style books about kind of homespun humor about like the biggest salmon you ever saw.
John: And what happens when you run out of lamp fuel?
John: Sounds like Garrison Keillor's reject pile.
John: But that's the thing.
John: In Alaska, that shit is hilarious.
John: Well, then there was the year they had the outhouse races.
John: It's funny because it's true.
John: And in Alaska, he was a big wheel.
John: Hmm.
John: And then he parlayed that into the national campaign for Super 8?
John: Was that Motel 7?
Merlin: Motel 6?
John: 16 Candles?
Merlin: Yeah, I think it's Motel 6.
John: Speaking of 16 Candles, Molly Ringwald is playing tonight in Seattle with her jazz combo.
Merlin: What does she play?
Merlin: Is she a horn player?
Merlin: No, I mean... Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, she's a...
Merlin: sorry that was my forehead that's my percussion instrument i'm like the max roach of what the fuck okay is she a horn if you leave so does she no i mean is she horny does she do like i could see her i could see her doing an alto sax no i bet she plays piano i don't think she does any of that i think she stands she lived in france
John: She's come back.
John: She's stormed the beaches.
John: She came back to America.
Merlin: She's led many lives.
John: Yeah, and I think she stands in front of a jazz combo wearing a chanteuse dress, maybe with a Chinese collar, maybe a slit up the side.
John: Hmm.
John: And she sings Eartha Kitt music with no balls.
Merlin: Well, that's my guess.
Merlin: That sounds execrable.
John: You know, I follow her on Twitter, and the only reason I follow her is I keep... Well, when she first showed up... Would she ever mention me?
John: when she first showed up on twitter and she had like 1500 followers i was so excited i'm like i am one of molly you got in the uh the ground floor of ringwald it's like i am right there molly and i sent her a couple of replies like where she would say oh my god you guys this is so amazing and i'd be like yay welcome molly ringwald yeah welcome to twitter it's super fun here lol
John: And she never replied.
John: That hurts.
John: Doesn't that hurt?
John: Now you know what it feels like.
Merlin: Now you know.
Merlin: I follow all these comic guys and they won't have anything to do with me.
Merlin: I got 10 times more followers than they do, but they will not have anything to do with me.
Merlin: And it breaks my heart.
Merlin: I want to be in their circles.
John: It did me, too.
John: I followed Jane Wheatland for a while.
John: Oh, man, I followed her.
John: And I kept doing it.
John: I kept playing like, totally.
John: Oh, my God.
John: You're so right, lol.
Merlin: The kind of thing that you personally scroll past a thousand times a day.
John: Raffle, raffle, raffle, smiley face emoticon.
John: and never got anything back from her and then i realized like we've got the meat yeah no but anyway so with molly so i'm so i kept following her and i and i had to i had to i had to go through that whole period where you're like don't reply just don't reply to her there should be a name for that there's a period where you've i'm sorry to interrupt you but like you jumped in right you got in the ground floor you maybe you laid back just a little bit you waited for your pitch you jumped in nothing
Merlin: Okay, so you hang back a little bit.
Merlin: You try again, right?
Merlin: Now, you're not made of fucking stone.
Merlin: Maybe after a week or so, you get one more really good one in there.
Merlin: Nothing.
Merlin: And then there should be a name for that period where you're going, am I just a putz?
Merlin: What am I doing?
Merlin: Sucks to be me.
Merlin: Sucks to be me.
Merlin: I am basically a receptacle for PR for immediate release.
Merlin: Nobody fucking cares, John.
Yeah.
John: well so anyway i stick around because molly ringwald is constantly tweeting photographs of herself uh but she's always like it's a photograph that her her assistant took on her phone from uh of her standing in front of a venue or something or a picture you know a picture of like look at this she says exclamation point and then she handed the phone to her assistant said take a picture of me in front of this venue
John: I think so.
John: I think that's what happens.
John: But also she does her own pics and she's like, look at this.
John: And you click on it like, what is it going to be?
John: And it's a picture of a bunch of rutabagas.
John: And so she's one of those people.
John: But I keep every time I click on one of these pictures, I think tonight's the night.
John: That she's had three glasses of wine.
John: Side boob.
John: And she's taking a picture of herself in the bathroom mirror of the hotel.
John: It's going to be side boob.
John: She's in a towel.
John: And she's like, look at this.
Merlin: And it's like... This is going to be the selfie I've been waiting for.
John: And so I keep clicking on these pictures of rutabagas and pictures of little dogs and pictures of her shoes on the train and all this stuff.
John: Because I'm just dying for that one night.
John: And she'll delete it immediately.
John: Like, I have to be vigilant.
John: Oh, no, totally.
John: One night, she's going to hit this.
John: She's going to just be standing in front of the mirror, and she's going to be like, you know what?
John: She's three glasses of wine.
Merlin: She's had the inadvisable third goblet of Chardonnay, and just for fun, she takes a shot.
Merlin: It was framed a little poorly, something, the light catches it wrong, and suddenly John is in Thessalonians big time.
John: That's right.
John: Boom.
John: Oh, man.
John: Look at these rutabagas.
Merlin: God, I wish I was completely alien to that idea.
Merlin: I've done the same thing.
John: It's terrible.
John: And I mean, really, Molly Ringwald...
John: i can think of like three people that i that i am that i would even three people two of whom aren't on twitter molly ringwell is the only one that i'm currently like just clicking on every really hoping against hope knowing it's never going to happen knowing she's a mother of two yeah god bless her hoping against hope that one day she's just gonna be drunk in a hotel bathroom
John: and say i'm gonna send the picture to the world of my booty send i'm gonna be there like snoopy perched in a tree as a as a
John: World War I flying ace.
John: When Snoopy would be a vulture and perch in the tree as a vulture.
John: You're ready.
John: I am Snoopy.
Merlin: You're ready to right click.
Merlin: Boom.
John: Boom.
John: Saved.
John: Saved.
Merlin: I think you are onto something.
Merlin: I think you've got a problem that a lot of us have.
Merlin: And I have to say, I think you're facing something that you had much more certainty about five years ago, which is where somebody is coming up to you and they're not offering to have a grown-up business transaction with you.
Merlin: Like a grown-up business transaction is when you go to someone and say, I would like a Big Mac and I have $4.
Merlin: Will that work out?
Merlin: Instead of going in and asking if you have three hours for a meeting to talk about this initiative that we have about food-related properties.
John: This is the problem that we have.
John: A Big Mac is clearly worth two people, $4, I guess.
John: I haven't bought a Big Mac in years.
John: But it is unclear to people what I am worth.
John: And the scale of what I am potentially worth goes from $50,000 to $0,000.
Merlin: Oh, I can't even begin to tell you how much I understand exactly what you're saying.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Don't you partly guess based on what their budget is and what they think it's worth?
John: So this guy writes me a letter today.
John: I have been offered the job co-producing the debut album of a girl who contributed to a hit single that went...
John: that went big.
John: So this girl is... I might need a diagram for that.
John: So you would co-produce... There was a hit single that sold a million copies.
John: This girl contributed a portion of the hook.
John: Now she is making her own album and she wants me to produce it, but...
John: She also wants this other guy who actually owns a studio and understands engineering to also produce it because I think he's going to let her use the studio for free.
John: Let us use the studio for free.
John: And so her manager writes me and says, we're not going to pay you guys anything.
John: How many percentage points do you want on the final recording?
John: And I go, now I've been managing myself in my own career for my entire career.
John: And this is the type of question that comes up a lot.
John: But here we have a situation where they're not giving me anything.
John: it is possible that this single and this record will do what most things do and just go away.
John: But because of this connection to this big hit single, there is also the possibility that this will generate some amount of money and that my percentage of it is not insignificant.
John: But there's this other guy who is supposedly co-producing it with me.
John: So I wrote the manager back and I was like, well, what are you giving the other guy?
John: And he writes back and says, well, we're trying to figure that out right now.
John: And I said, well, when you figure it out, let me know.
John: Right.
John: And I haven't heard back.
John: Welcome to Club Dick.
John: I can't keep running my business that way for the rest of my life.
Merlin: John, for a really – dude, for a long time, I just want to stipulate.
Merlin: I'm very grateful that people have any interest in anything that I do.
Merlin: Having said that, I've gotten a lot of speaking offers that basically come down to like we'll fly you out here because we only need a 20-minute talk.
Merlin: So we're going to – we need a 20-minute talk.
Merlin: You come on out here and speak at the FredX out here in Poughkeepsie.
Merlin: And as you know, the Fred Conference is very popular.
Merlin: So the FredX thing is a growing franchise.
Merlin: That's a lot of exposure.
Merlin: A lot of – well, yep.
Merlin: You get the Ask Polyp community benefit.
Merlin: But I mean – and they'll say like – and I'll say, well, OK.
Merlin: I finally got to a point where I would – I got a little more OK with saying, well –
Merlin: New projects that involve out of town, out of Bay Area travel started this amount.
Merlin: Is that in your budget?
Merlin: In your ballpark?
Merlin: Let's talk.
Merlin: And if they had more monocles, they would fall out of their eye.
Merlin: The Ponsonets, they're all shattering.
Merlin: Have you not heard of FredX?
Merlin: Have you not heard of Rent?
Merlin: The thing is, you want a 20-minute talk, but for me to go there and do that is three days of my time.
Merlin: I'm not exaggerating because I have to fly there.
Merlin: I have to be there for a day.
Merlin: It doesn't matter if you want 20 minutes, 40 minutes, or nine hours.
Merlin: That's still a day.
Merlin: And then I got to come home.
Merlin: and stuff like that.
Merlin: And I finally stopped driving myself crazy with that.
John: If my grandfather has any indication, you don't have to go home.
Merlin: What?
Merlin: You take a business trip and then you just don't come back?
John: Just keep going.
Merlin: Is that right?
John: You go out for cigarettes and just keep going.
Merlin: I'm going to write that down.
Merlin: But at certain points when I had a little extra minute or two and felt like provoking the person, which I almost always do, I would say, well, give me a quick estimate on...
Merlin: Would you be able to fly out here for 20 minutes?
Merlin: Go ahead and buy the airline ticket and we'll see based on ticket sales for your 20-minute talk like how it turns out because it's great exposure.
Merlin: And I think that's basically what these people are saying to you.
Merlin: If work is valuable –
Merlin: I've had this happen also when stuff that I've done has appeared in different places.
Merlin: I'm going to call it stealing, but when stuff that I've done has appeared in different places, whether it's on a t-shirt or in a book or whatever, or on somebody's RSS feed.
Merlin: And my feeling is like, uh, you know, if you just want to steal it, like steal it, but don't expect me to be like on your side about it.
Merlin: And don't expect me to promote the thing that you took.
Merlin: Like, I'll be fine.
Merlin: I got plenty of more ideas.
Merlin: I'm not worried about that.
Merlin: The part that galls me is the part where like, they want me to now promote the thing that they are not really paying me for.
Merlin: So I've
John: Is this why you never retweet my Tumblr?
Merlin: I should – you know what I should do?
Merlin: I should Facebook your MySpace a lot more often.
Merlin: All I'm trying to say is if something is worth money or something is valuable, it's worth – even if it's not worth paying for, it's definitely worth negotiating.
Merlin: And it shows a ridiculous – I'm sorry to have gone through all that to get to this one very simple point.
Merlin: But it shows extremely bad faith to be an adult who talks to another adult as though they don't work for a living.
Merlin: It's really disrespectful and anyone who does that –
Merlin: should be punched in the nose because it's a really crummy thing to do.
Merlin: And then to frame it in a way where now like you're the asshole because you don't want to help this up and coming star, you know, well, how about this?
Merlin: How about you pay me like what people get paid to co-produce a record?
Merlin: You keep your points and,
Merlin: And how about you pay me?
Merlin: And if there's another one of those, you like my work, I like how it turned out.
Merlin: How about we talk about points after that?
Merlin: How about you first pay me like a gentleman for my work and maybe not even worry about the name of that person?
Merlin: Because the thing is now you're basically buying stock.
Merlin: Your time is basically the purchase of stock.
Merlin: You have bought stock in this person who contributed a hook to a song.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And I think you're worth more than that.
Merlin: It is good exposure.
John: It is really good exposure.
John: And the thing is that the entire music business and in fact the entire entertainment business is predicated on the fact that 85% of the people have no self-esteem at all.
John: And the 15% of the people who have what appears to be a self-esteem have no self-esteem either.
John: They're just bullies trying to
John: trying to manufacture our self-esteem by pushing people around.
John: So all of us, you know, we're all just like twisting in the wind here going, gee, somebody called, somebody returned my boop.
Merlin: Well, yeah, there's certainly days where it feels like that and you're sitting around, maybe some days you get five bloops and you start raising your prices and then maybe it's been a while since you got a bloop and you go, well, sure, I'll clean up after the mayor.
Merlin: Like, do I get a sash?
John: Oh, five boops.
Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, all the things that I have agreed to do this year, all the keynote speeches, all the appearances, public appearances that I have done so far this year.
John: And we are talking about what is it now?
John: It's tax day.
John: It's April 15th.
John: Let's see.
John: I have been paid.
John: Oh, don't say.
John: I've been paid for two things.
John: I've been paid twice this year so far.
John: And I have done 1,000 things.
John: Right.
John: So... Well... But then everybody, you know, all the young people, they see me and they're like, oh, that guy eats gold nuggets.
John: That guy just sits around and he just poops money.
Merlin: Well, you know, I...
Merlin: I have a lot to say about this that would not be interesting to our audience.
Merlin: But I will say this.
Merlin: You should have your mom – no, not in that way.
Merlin: But you should have your mom speak on your behalf.
Merlin: I hate having to try to explain to people why what I do is valuable because I think it's not decorous.
Merlin: I think it is – I think it's ugly to sit around and argue with people about whether what you do is valuable.
Merlin: But if you have somebody like Marcia getting in front of that, I think you could get a lot accomplished.
Merlin: I think you tell your mom, here's what I want for a day's work.
Merlin: Here's what I want for a keynote.
John: So my mom says to me the other day, she says, I'm 78 and I'm caring for your daughter half the day.
John: I don't want to be your business manager anymore.
John: Oh, no.
John: And I said, what?
John: Can you drop the kid part?
John: Yeah.
John: What if we put the kid in a refrigerator box and give her a ball?
Yeah.
John: How did she respond?
John: She was like, no, I'm done.
John: Oh, no.
John: Find your own business manager.
Merlin: John, our audience may not know, but is it, I don't want to be too disclosing, but isn't it fair to say your mom's had a pretty important role in a lot?
Merlin: Anything that turned out well, your mom had a role in?
Merlin: Well, let me put it this way.
John: She's deeply competent, John.
John: For the last 15 years, when an email shows up in my inbox, I either forwarded it to my mom or I forwarded it to Barsouk Records.
Yeah.
Merlin: I bet that trend lines changed a lot in the last couple of years.
John: 75% of those emails that I sent in either direction always came back to me with a question mark asking, what do you want me to do with this?
John: You didn't say anything.
John: You just forwarded it to me with no comment.
Merlin: Do you really do that?
John: Yeah.
John: And then I have to go back and say, well, isn't it fucking obvious what I want you to do?
John: I want you to deal with it.
John: And then bar suit guys are like, we're not your, we're not your email dealers.
John: And my mom goes, and the things that she can, the things that she can figure out, she figures out.
Merlin: For some reason, it sounds like you got sent home, like, like everybody, remember they pin a note to your shirt?
Merlin: I'm thinking it's like, it's like in third grade, like you came home on the bus and like, you're basically taking the note off your shirt and handing it to your mom.
John: yeah yeah yeah basically i've been doing that since the third grade sign this i got expelled today why i don't know read the note mom it says right here john doesn't work well with others john didn't participate in class john was disruptive john set things on fire how how oh my god uh so anyway what do you do well now i have to hire a business manager fuck that
John: I have to hire a business manager who is going to handle my business.
John: And I got more business now than ever.
Merlin: But it seems like you've got more – like we don't actually talk about this very much.
Merlin: But it seems like you've definitely – you're – I don't know.
Merlin: Without talking about specific money, it seems like you've got stuff coming from different places more than others.
Merlin: Like it could be like there's the car commercial thing.
Merlin: There could be like – who knows?
Merlin: You might get on a compilation here or there's this distribution thing here or a travel thing and a touring thing here, right?
Merlin: I mean way different from 10 years ago, right?
John: So Josh, my record label boss –
John: says to me the other day.
John: He's like, so am I right that you want your career to be now that you are this person who does everything and is like on TV and writing books and giving speeches and you're all...
John: you you you you're every kind of entertainment is that and music is like some portion of that is that am i right in that that is what you want your career to be and i said no what i wanted was to be a rock star so that i could do all that other shit for fun and
John: But my fucking record label didn't make it happen.
John: So now I'm out dragging ass door to door selling jokes.
John: I'm guessing that was not the answer he was looking for.
John: Now I'm out sharpening people's knives and polishing their pots and selling jokes and giving keynote speeches.
John: So...