Ep. 73: "Ketchup is Hard to Remove"
John: Hello.
John: Hi, John.
John: Hi, Merlin.
Merlin: Hi, how are you?
John: I'm all right.
John: Were you microblogging?
John: Were you microblogging on Twitter.com?
Merlin: I am late for our call because I was microblogging.
John: Yeah, I thought that was between dudes, but yeah, I was... There's a lot of stuff to talk about on the internet right now.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Well, you know, it's funny you should say that.
Merlin: I was making a blog, as they say, on that site you're not supposed to use anymore.
Merlin: See, this is going to kill the longevity.
John: Tumblr sold themselves to Facebook.
Merlin: Yeah, for a cool bill.
John: A billion dollars.
Merlin: 1.1.
Merlin: You know, I would be happy with the 0.1.
Merlin: I know, right?
Merlin: I could pay a lot of bills with a .1 bill.
Merlin: You know how much I could do with .1?
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: If you don't mind my asking, what is that?
Merlin: I have to look it up on Wolfram Alpha.
Merlin: What is that?
John: It's $100 million.
John: Oh, that's a lot of bill.
John: That's a lot of money, yeah.
John: That's like that people that won the lottery in Florida after taxes.
Yeah.
Merlin: You know, I shouldn't even talk about the lottery.
Merlin: I have very strong feelings.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: I just checked on Wolfram Alpha.
Merlin: It's $100 million.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: You ever use Wolfram Alpha?
Merlin: I told you about this.
John: You did.
John: I put it up on my dashboard.
Merlin: I use it all the time.
Merlin: I had to figure out megawatts to watts the other day, and it was for a joke.
Merlin: It was very helpful.
John: I don't use it.
John: I tried today, earlier today, I tried to figure out what percentage of the world's population is.
John: was represented by America.
John: There's 7 billion people in the world and 350, what, 400 million Americans now?
Merlin: I think that's right.
John: But I used a calculator.
Merlin: You know, this is one of those.
Merlin: I want to get back to microblogging.
Merlin: Actually, I don't.
Merlin: I'm really screwed up about that because of a Burger King commercial from the mid to late 70s.
Merlin: Do you remember when Burger King was first?
Merlin: I don't know if you remember these days.
Merlin: I know you're a very young man.
Merlin: But it used to be if you went to McDonald's.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: And we've talked before about the grill order.
Merlin: A grill order is – encoding, you call it like an exception.
Merlin: You go in and you say – kind of on the sly, you say, look.
John: I want a plain hamburger.
Merlin: In my case, I would go in and say – and the key to a grill at McDonald's because I used to work there and I read the trades.
Merlin: You go into McDonald's and you don't ask for extra something.
Merlin: You ask for not something.
Merlin: It has to be not something that's hard to remove.
Merlin: And I'll just tell you as an insider, ketchup is hard to remove.
John: Huh?
John: You can, you know, I have personally, I have personally found ketchup is hard to remove.
John: Hmm.
John: Hmm.
John: All right.
John: Yeah.
John: But, but yeah, no, I would, uh, when I was a kid, I would go into McDonald's and order a plain hamburger.
Merlin: And here's the key, and this is probably obvious.
Merlin: I always got a freshie.
Merlin: In this age of personalization and customization, this will probably seem obvious, but at McDonald's, you kind of screw up the McDonald's.
Merlin: If everybody came in and asked for it, as Burger King would say, to be made in their own way, you screw everything up.
Merlin: Because if you go to a McDonald's, I went to a McDonald's once at midnight in Chicago.
John: That's three mistakes in a row.
Merlin: Well, I was there and the members of Cult Jam showed up and were signing photos.
John: Wait, Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam?
Merlin: Lisa Lisa was not in full force.
Merlin: It was just Cult Jam.
Merlin: Anyway, you go to a busy McDonald's.
Merlin: You know this.
Merlin: You go to a busy McDonald's any time of day.
Merlin: And it's going to be really, really good McDonald's.
Merlin: Not as good as when we were kids, but good.
Merlin: Now, the thing is, do you know about wasting, the idea of waste?
Merlin: You go in.
John: I am an expert on wasting.
John: I am presently wasting away.
Merlin: You sound like you got a little bit of head cold.
Merlin: Well, it's allergy season.
Merlin: Oh, Jesus.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: I'm so deep in the stack right now.
Merlin: I have so much to say about allergies.
John: The allergies climb up inside me and then they make themselves comfortable.
John: And right now they are all sitting on like...
John: They have outfitted the inside of my head with those green velour couches that were in all the dorm rooms in the 80s.
John: Like the 70s ones.
Merlin: Did you know I owned a pit group?
John: Full of dander.
John: What's a pit group?
Merlin: You know one of those big kind of square couch pits comprised of, in my case, eight distinct pieces?
John: No.
Merlin: It's kind of like watching Hollywood Squares, but one part's missing.
John: When did you have – I thought that was a modern innovation.
John: When did you have one of those?
Merlin: I'm going to have to literally rewind to know what we're talking about.
Merlin: I had a brown velour pit group in college because, as you know, it was the style at the time to be ironic in the way one furnished one's home.
Merlin: I had a velvet Elvis I can send you a photo of.
Merlin: And I had an eight-piece pit group, which means it's a large brown square.
Merlin: I remember it now.
Merlin: I'm getting it.
Merlin: It was fine unless you dropped a doobie.
Merlin: But yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: A pit group.
Merlin: Anyway, you're going to McDonald's.
Merlin: Oh, allergies.
Merlin: Yeah, I had a super ball-sized loogie yesterday.
Merlin: It was the size of a ball?
Merlin: Well, it was a small bouncy ball.
Merlin: And I get the allergies so bad I don't know if I got a cold.
Merlin: You ever get that?
Merlin: You think you got a cold?
Merlin: Well, I have a cold.
John: Now, what happens is my allergies get in there and then my mucus membranes become so...
Merlin: that so enamored with the idea that something fuzzy is going to come tickle them yes that they're like welcome travelers it's like norman it's like it's like norman fell says in the graduate right you ain't one of them outside agitators you got outside agitators they come in and they get your mucus all excited they're just normally there to be like the uh the uh the worker ants to capture uh various particulate matter in the mucus but in this case they have been incited to riot
John: Yeah, and my regular residents who were peaceful, happy, little normal villagers.
John: Compliant.
John: Compliant villagers who were just going about their duties being non-infectious.
John: They are like, hey, wait a minute.
John: We demand equal time infecting your mucus membranes.
John: And now I'm like, now I'm just basically, I have the plague.
Merlin: Where's my mucus parade?
John: It's a beautiful sunny day in Seattle.
John: The only thing that is obscuring the sun is the clouds of histamine-agitating pollen floating through the sky.
John: And I'm sitting inside...
John: Like someone with the AIDS.
Merlin: And you know, a lot of people... I've never been so glad I couldn't reach my bell.
John: They've learned to live with it.
John: They're out having fun.
John: They're going on boat rides, people with AIDS.
John: I can't do that.
Merlin: Puget Sound.
John: Yeah.
John: People are living with AIDS.
John: I can't live in the world because the pollen clouds...
Merlin: Here's the thing.
John: Thanks, Obama.
Merlin: I blame Obamacare.
Merlin: The problem with the allergies, it's a real ironical, as we say, is that the nicer the weather gets, it's the changes in the weather that get you.
Merlin: It's like filling up on bread.
Merlin: The weather changes.
Merlin: It gets nice.
Merlin: You get a high-pressure system coming in.
Merlin: Yeah, that's what it is.
Merlin: And pretty soon I'm doing this all day.
Merlin: My family is so nice about it, but I make a sound as I walk around the house in the morning.
Merlin: I sound like some kind of Spanish bull.
John: Yeah.
John: I know what's coming.
John: Someone has already put two daggers and a sword into your home.
John: It's called a picador.
John: Is that a dog?
John: You're limping around with blood streaming out of your nose.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, so here's the latest thought innovation.
John: Okay.
John: Someone suggested to me the other day, you remember many years ago I described to you the moment where someone said, where a friend of mine, this friend Kristen said to me, you are the most introverted person I've ever met.
Merlin: That was a turning point, a milestone.
John: It was a thought technology that changed the way that I looked at myself.
John: Every day I had a new thought technology and the latest new thought technology that somebody hipped me to
John: the other day was they said, I think you have sleep apnea.
Merlin: I saw you toot about this.
John: Yeah, and I was like, sleep apnea?
John: Oh, no.
John: I thought that was a thing for fat people.
Merlin: And she said... She said, there's at least a couple problems with you.
John: She said, well, you are.
Merlin: Oh, no.
John: fat enough she speaks truth to obesity yeah this is just a random person too oh and i said she's not a random person but but you know she's not not somebody that should have intimate knowledge of my sleepness and uh and so i was like huh sleep apnea and i'm in and like a lot of mental technologies once i get a hold of it i turn it around in my hand like frodo looking at the at the orb and
John: And I'm looking into it.
John: And then all of a sudden, a flaming red eye vagina is looking back at me.
Merlin: Is that Sauron?
John: Yeah, Sauron the eye vagina is staring at me.
John: And all of a sudden, I feel cold.
John: And I'm thinking, do I have sleep apnea?
Merlin: Isn't that a terrible feeling when you feel the truth descending on you like a cold rain?
Merlin: oh it's the worst so i'm looking online because it all lines up you're having that bruce willis moment where everything's flying by right no spoilers but you're reeling through like the last 111 minutes and you go oh my god that red doorknob i'm it's going clack clack clack why can't i open the basement door oh shit john now john i'm trying to remember because i usually try to get as far away from you as possible when you're sleeping but are you a snorer
John: Well, so I never thought I was a snorer.
John: See, nobody thinks they're a snorer.
John: Right.
John: And all those years on tour where Eric Corson and Sean Nelson were having sawmill contests, and I had to jump up in the middle of the night and grab the end of the mattress where they were snoring away, sharing a bed.
John: I grabbed the end of the mattress one time and yanked it like I was trying to do the tablecloth trick.
Right.
John: Like an illusionist?
John: Yeah, like an illusionist.
John: Like, yank this mattress out from under them, and neither one of them woke up.
John: I can't believe Sean wouldn't like that.
John: Oh, no.
John: He loved that kind of on-tour hijinks.
John: But so anyway, so lately, I've been hearing reports.
John: Unconfirmed reports, because as you know, I am mostly a bachelor.
John: that i that i snore i can't imagine why sorry you've heard you've heard you've heard from from uh bystanders oh yeah bystanders unconfirmed sources and so so so so i go online it's like somebody came up and said maybe you have pancreatic cancer maybe you have maybe you have cancer the bile ducts like ray van zarek
John: and then you go online and you're like cancer the bile ducts and you look at it i was gonna i was gonna look that up tonight and you go oh fuck i have cancer the bile ducts because all the symptoms line up the symptoms for sleep apnea are right depression lack of focus tired all the time irritable grouchy think you know everything about the u.s supreme court like you just go down the list and everything on it is true i have all those symptoms
John: And I'm like, oh, sleep apnea.
John: And then I started thinking about it.
John: And I have like these suppressed memories or these repressed memories of waking up in the middle of the night unable to breathe, of waking up like this type of wake up.
John: Do you ever wake up like that?
John: Like struggling for breath?
John: Is that a thing that you ever have happened?
Merlin: Well, I mean, we'll do this more later, but I know a little bit about sleep apnea, and I know that it's something that scares the living shit out of bed partners because people seem to – they make a kind of noise, and then they appear to just simply stop breathing for a while.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: You might hear a lot of for a while, but then it's –
John: So for many years, Merlin, one of my personal technologies has been to... You sound so much like a Scientologist, John.
John: ...has been to eliminate bed partners.
Merlin: Oh, kill the messenger.
John: Yes.
John: Exactly.
John: Yes.
John: Like, if you want to share the attention of a lady friend...
John: There are a lot of places, first of all, a lot of places you can do that that aren't beds.
John: And second of all, just because you've been in a bed with somebody, just because you've shared a bed together, it doesn't mean you have to stay there.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: There's no lock yet.
John: No.
John: Like right about the time when everybody's getting sleepy, you just do like a soft high five.
Yeah.
Merlin: Oh, do you pull the covers up a little?
John: Pull the covers up?
Merlin: Yeah, pull the covers up.
Merlin: Give them a gentle kiss on the forehead.
Merlin: Not enough to wake them up.
John: Bring a glass of water, set it on the bedside table in case they wake up.
John: 20 on the dresser.
John: They think to themselves when they wake up in the middle of the night, aw.
John: What a thoughtful little bastard snorer.
John: You know, then you're like, then the door goes click, and then you're out on the street.
John: Yep.
John: And you can go get a burger.
John: You can do whatever you want.
John: So anyway, I do not have a tremendously large sample group of people who have spent the entire night with me.
Merlin: Wow, that is complicated.
Merlin: You're like a film noir.
John: Yeah, right.
John: So like, oh, in the middle of the night, you were struggling to breathe and it freaked me out.
John: No one has ever said that to me.
John: But that doesn't mean that's not happening.
Right.
John: and so then i all of a sudden i'm having all these memories and it's like wait a minute am i am i actually remembering waking up in the middle of the night struggling for breath multiple multiple thousands of times over the last 20 years or is this something where i'm where i am false remembering that i was bad touched at a daycare that's an oprah memory right and it didn't actually happen and i'm just it's just it's power of suggestion
John: So all day today I've been sitting around thinking, do I have sleep apnea?
John: Is that a thing?
John: Is it one of those thought technologies that all of a sudden I get to be one of those people who's like...
Merlin: I thought I had all these problems.
Merlin: Oh, John, there's so much about this that's complicated because first of all, yes, it is a blessing and a curse to find out exactly what's wrong with you.
Merlin: It's so awesome and so awful.
Merlin: And then second, you got to go to a sleep clinic.
Merlin: Oh, right.
Merlin: People are going to attach those little sticky things to you, the sticky pads, and they're going to have a video probably with that really unflattering green light.
Merlin: They're going to watch you flip around and watch it in fast motion, real creepy-like.
John: All I want to do is pull the covers up around them.
John: And then they're going to come in after like 15 minutes and shake you away by the, by the side of their little console and say, right.
John: And then go get a burger.
Merlin: They're going to come in there after maybe 50, 15 minutes to an hour.
Merlin: They're going to come in.
Merlin: They're going to shake you awake to the extent possible.
Merlin: Check to see if you're still alive.
Merlin: And then say, the good news is you don't have Ray Manzara cancer.
Merlin: The bad news is you so completely fucking have sleep apnea.
Merlin: And then, and then, and then the real party begins because you got to get a machine.
Merlin: Do you know about the machine?
John: Well, before we go there, the last time I went with my little baby girl to the baby girl doctor...
John: The doctor herself is actually a full-grown woman.
Merlin: Baby doctor would be so awesome.
John: Little baby girl doctor.
John: And they just bat at each other.
Merlin: I'm sorry we're running a little behind.
Merlin: Dr. Wong is still having nappies.
John: So I go in and the doctor looks in my baby girl's mouth.
John: with a flashlight and she says does she ever when you're like because i told her that i sometimes haunt my daughter's room in the middle of the night just sit sit in a chair and listen to her breathe that's sweet and that it's not sweet that was a question and so the doctor having already heard this yeah was like when you are creeping around your daughter's room listening to her breathe in the middle of the night does she ever stop breathing for periods of time
John: And I was like, what do you mean?
John: What do you mean stop breathing?
John: I mean, yeah, sometimes.
John: But she always starts again.
John: And she was like, right.
John: Well, because your daughter has a really large uvula.
Merlin: Uvula.
John: Uvula.
Merlin: Uvula.
Merlin: Uvula.
Merlin: Areolia.
Merlin: Yeah, it's that little punching bag that hangs down.
John: Or whatever.
John: Maybe it's not that.
John: Maybe it's tonsils.
John: There's something back there in the back of her throat.
John: One of the fleshy parts.
Merlin: Some kind of a throttle obstruction.
John: A throttle obstruction.
John: Yeah.
John: That the baby doctor says is just like genetically large in her and probably causes her to have sleep apnea.
Merlin: Poor kid.
John: And I was like, huh, really?
John: And the doctor said, it's probably not a big deal.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: From the mouths of babes, literally.
John: Yeah.
John: And she said, a lot of times what happens is as kids grow up, they grow into their architecture.
Merlin: The personal technology.
John: I said, never happened to me.
John: But so now I'm thinking, oh, maybe I am genetically predisposed to this.
John: Maybe it isn't just...
John: that I'm 40 pounds overweight, or maybe that exacerbates a natural tendency.
John: So anyway, the machines.
Merlin: Yep.
Merlin: I have a close family member with the sleep apnea, and this family member has a lot of luggage because this family member has to take a machine anywhere that he or she intends to sleep.
John: Like one of those things where you see people walking through airports with a, with a, like an oxygen tank.
Merlin: No, that's smoking.
Merlin: Now smoking might have something to do with it.
Merlin: I think weight is a thing.
Merlin: Drinking, drinking is a thing.
Merlin: And I think there's probably, yeah, I think by weight,
Merlin: And see, I don't know.
Merlin: I'm not a physician, as you know, John.
Merlin: But when – yeah, I won't get into it.
Merlin: But I think what it does is you put this real fruity-looking thing over your nose, and I guess it helps you from seeming like you're dead to your bedmate.
Merlin: But here's the other thing, John, and I don't want to diagnose you here.
Merlin: I don't know anything about all these mental things you're talking about.
Merlin: But I do know that sleep apnea –
Merlin: I believe will make you not in the same way that you don't know you snore.
Merlin: One knows, does not know one snores.
Merlin: One does not know that one has sleep apnea.
Merlin: One does also not know how poorly one sleeps, right?
Merlin: So you're waking up.
Merlin: There's the kind of waking up and I've done this because I've tracked my sleep with the dingus and to see how well I'm sleeping.
Merlin: Oh, I got a dingus for sleeping.
John: Where did you get a sleep tracking dingus?
Merlin: Oh, there's all kinds you can get.
Merlin: I'd love to talk about that.
Merlin: It'll tell you how well you're sleeping and it becomes like a video game where you try to get better and better sleep.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: So, so my, so every time I go to the doctor, I was going to say though, is that, uh, is that the, uh, is that you don't know, like, it just seems to me that you're not a great sleeper right now.
John: Well, that's what I, that's what I mean.
John: Every time I go to the doctor, they say, do you, do you have problems sleeping?
John: How, how, how do you sleep?
John: And I always feel like saying, I'm asleep.
John: How do I know?
Merlin: Yeah.
John: But I mean, I don't like to go to sleep.
John: And then once I do go to sleep, I don't like to wake up.
Merlin: Do you feel rested when you wake up?
John: No.
Merlin: See, that's – What?
Merlin: Do people feel rested when they wake up?
Merlin: Well, back to my dingus.
Merlin: The dingus tells you basically at a very – can I describe this briefly because it might be semi-useful.
John: I really want to hear about this dingus.
Merlin: I've had two or three different dingai for doing this.
Merlin: And there's actually an iPhone app that you can use for this as well.
Merlin: How does that work?
Merlin: Well, do you really want to know?
John: I already sleep with my iPhone.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I kind of figured.
Merlin: What you do is – so I've used a thing where you wear a thing on your wrist.
Merlin: I had a really stupid-looking watch you could do this with that wasn't that useful.
Merlin: I've had a thing called a Fitbit that you can wear on your wrist.
Merlin: But this one – the best option that I've found, it takes a little bit of –
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: You were a Pikachu.
Merlin: So it's this app.
Merlin: And you plug in your iPhone overnight.
Merlin: You lay this thing on the corner of your bed, kind of near your pillow, like not where it can radiate your dingus.
John: Wait, it's a separate thing or it's an iPhone?
Merlin: It's an iPhone app that uses the accelerometer to detect motion.
Merlin: So you calibrate it by moving around.
Merlin: So you flip it in for the first time.
Merlin: You flip over from your back to your stomach and see if it goes...
Merlin: And so if you hear that, you know, it's working.
Merlin: So then you just say, okay, I'm going to bed.
Merlin: I'm turning this thing on.
Merlin: And when you wake up in the morning, it'll show you this graph of how much you moved.
Merlin: And so basically it tells you, it shows you this, this graph that's actually really instructional.
Merlin: And if you do this thing for a month, if you do it for two weeks, it tells you a lot.
Merlin: You do it for a month and it'll, it'll tell me like, for some reason I get the least and poorest sleep on Sunday nights.
Merlin: Like, I don't know why, but that's just, that's a pattern, right?
Merlin: Guilt.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: The Lord.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But, but, but what it does is it'll show you like, for example, you'll see, you'll see, you know, everybody's got their own patterns for sleep.
John: Do you have anxiety about Monday?
Merlin: I think anxiety about literally everything.
John: Yeah, I know.
John: But do you have extra Monday anxiety?
John: Would that explain it?
Merlin: A hundred percent.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Even though I don't have a job still.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It could be.
Merlin: It could be also, that's like when I watch movies maybe, but what it does is it'll show you, think of it this way.
Merlin: Think of it like, if you want to think of it simply in three basic States, there's the kind of deep sleep, there's the kind of like the waking sleep, I guess so.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I like their first four records and then you wake up a little bit and then there's a big spike for when you've moved enough that you're really awake.
Merlin: So if you go and take a leak, you're going to see a giant spike.
Merlin: But all I'm saying to you is this could be, I will send you a link to this.
Merlin: It could be very instructional and it won't cost you anything.
Merlin: You don't have to wear something on your nose.
Merlin: But it will show you how much you stir.
Merlin: And, and anyway, I think that could be really, it's interesting to me.
John: Well, I stir constantly.
John: Like one of the reasons that I don't like to sleep with somebody else in my bed.
Merlin: There's so many reasons.
John: There's not, and when I say sleep with, I am not using, it's not a euphemism for having a sexual Congress.
John: I mean, actually being asleep in a place with somebody else also asleep.
Merlin: That's so weird.
John: It's really weird.
Merlin: Why do we do that?
John: I don't know.
John: Like in the old days where you had to keep warm or you had to shelter against bears, I could see why you would all pile together in a cave.
John: But now, when you could be separate places...
Merlin: Like if you're soccer players that are getting ready to eat each other and you got to stay warm, that's one thing.
Merlin: Right, right, right.
Merlin: We don't poop next to each other.
Merlin: Like why would we sleep next to each other?
John: It's kind of weird.
John: Thank you.
John: Thank you.
John: Exactly.
John: Well, anyway, so one of the reasons I don't like to do that is first of all, other people are warm and try and touch you.
John: But another reason is that when I sleep, if I go to sleep in a bed,
John: When I wake up in the morning, it is like that bed is Oklahoma and I was a F5 tornado.
John: The blankets are not only... She's a trailer park.
John: And she is literally a trailer park.
John: There's nothing left of her except her foundation.
John: But the blanket oftentimes does five or six 360s in the night.
John: Oh, are you a flipper?
John: Oh, not just a flipper, but like a spinner.
John: And sometimes I'll wake up and my head is...
John: down at the feet and the, and the, I can't sleep.
John: I hate hotels because they all use such cheap sheets now, except for the really expensive ones.
John: And so the, the bottom sheet is ripped off.
John: The mattress pad is ripped off.
John: I'm sleeping on a bear.
John: Wow.
Merlin: It's like you're night fighting with, with, with your bed.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: I'm night fighting with the bed.
John: That's exactly what I'm doing.
John: Like I try, I trash beds.
John: And so if there's another person sleeping in the bed, I'm so self-conscious about even injuring them that I almost never go to sleep.
John: I just lay there and silently curse humanity.
John: Curse the fact that I ever liked a person enough to have ended up in this untenable scenario where we're in a bed together.
Merlin: John, that's society, you know?
John: It is society, I agree.
John: They don't have those problems in Soviet Russia.
Mm-mm.
Merlin: Boy, I hate to say it.
Merlin: I'm not a clinician, but I mean, if your iPhone's there anyway, well, I do what I can.
Merlin: We've got a much nicer inflatable mattress now, by the way.
Merlin: And can I just say, I don't want to be a dick about it, but in retrospect, this could be my Bruce Willis moment.
Merlin: Maybe the fact that our previous two inflatable mattresses are like a fucking Taco Bell taco are because you, would you call yourself a spinner?
Merlin: I'm a spinner.
Merlin: I thought that was a skinny lady.
John: I thought a spinner was some, I thought it was a variety of UFO.
Merlin: You ever heard that term spinner?
John: For a skinny lady?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Maybe it's a taco.
John: Oh, I see what you mean.
John: You ever heard of a spinner?
John: I think you're talking about a small, a diminutive gal.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Like a, what do you call it, a gleek?
Merlin: Yeah.
John: What do you call it, little guys?
John: But some skinny gals are actually really tall.
John: You wouldn't want to spin one of those.
Merlin: You've got a high center of gravity.
Merlin: I'm just saying, you might have been the one who fucked up our mattresses.
Merlin: But anyway, that's all beside the point.
John: There are a lot of things I'm probably responsible for.
John: No, John, come on.
Merlin: You don't take anything for that.
John: As snotty as I am, I should have a peanut butter sandwich here.
Merlin: Well, is that part of your tech?
Merlin: Do you avoid allergy medicine too?
John: No, well, here's the thing.
John: I will take the shit out of some allergy medicine because I'm not kidding around with the allergies.
John: I don't feel like almost all other drugs that seek to alleviate symptoms.
John: I feel like more often than not, the symptoms are something that you deserve.
John: Because you live in the Middle Ages.
John: That's right.
John: You should be in the center of those symptoms.
Merlin: You need to sit with that feeling.
Merlin: That's right.
John: Like a gentleman.
John: Are you sick?
John: It's because there's something wrong with you.
Merlin: If you sat by yourself with your sickness a little bit longer.
Merlin: Right.
John: If you have a fever, then you should be in your hotness.
John: If you have chills, you should be in your shiveringness.
John: And if you have a mental illness, you should be in the middle of it and see if maybe the Virgin Mary appears.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Yes, possibly in a taco.
Merlin: But do you buy – like we get those big Costco ones.
Merlin: I take the – it used to be that one that was really expensive and now it's really cheap.
Merlin: I'll take one of those a day and it makes a huge difference.
Merlin: You're talking about Claritin?
Merlin: Claritin.
Merlin: I get the off-brand.
Merlin: I get Claritine or whatever.
John: So somebody said something to me about Claritin because I always – It doesn't have stimulants.
Merlin: No stimulants, John.
John: See, I was always an ephedrine or ephedrine, whichever you prefer.
John: I've never heard of it.
John: I know.
John: Well, let me hit you to this, Merlin.
John: I know you're not familiar with it, but it's a kind of speedy thing that makes your sinuses turn into the Gobi Desert.
John: Like, no moisture can escape.
John: And it does terrible things to you.
Merlin: I have gotten a lot accomplished with the ephedrine.
Merlin: It does stuff to your penis, though.
John: So I didn't realize that.
John: Go ahead.
John: I hardly use my penis.
John: Can't see anymore.
John: But that's right.
John: I'm too fat.
John: But so somebody was talking about Claritin and I was like, you know, one time I ran out of ephedrine because I carry a large quantity of it with me in advance of allergy attacks.
John: And I was in Germany.
Merlin: Oh, you take it as a prophylactic.
Merlin: You actually would use it as a medicine.
John: If I'm smart.
Merlin: Yeah.
Yeah.
John: I was in Germany and I ran out and I went to a pharmacist and I was like, hey, hi, hi, guten tag.
Merlin: I need some of this.
John: I need some of this.
John: It's a very simple, small matter.
John: Just give me some of this, and I will be on my way.
John: And the German pharmacist said,
John: Oh.
John: Nine.
John: Nine.
John: This is a controlled substance in Germany.
John: You cannot have this.
John: It is a schedule five drug.
John: They love banning things.
John: And you cannot have it.
John: This is terrible medicine.
John: We will give you a much better German allergy medicine.
John: Which was made out of like, he went back and got his mortar and pestle.
Merlin: Did he make you some kind of a nasal poultice?
John: Yeah.
John: He took a couple of lavender leaves and like a half a shot of Jägermeister and like some shit that he pulled out of his ears.
John: And he was like, this is, you know, this is much better.
John: This is naturopathic remedy.
Right.
John: And I threw it in his face.
John: I was like, fuck you, scheisse.
John: I want my shit.
John: And I actually had somebody in the United States airmail me some ephedrine against the law.
Merlin: Just out of curiosity, I'm sorry to interrupt you.
Merlin: What era are we talking about here?
Merlin: 90s?
Merlin: 90s?
John: This would have been the 90s, yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: Anyway, so I always use it as a prophylactic drug.
John: When the allergy season starts, I take a little bit of it, and it usually keeps the allergies at bay.
John: But this year, I was feeling strong.
John: I was high on the hog, and I flew too close to the sun.
John: I said, I don't need this.
John: I don't need it.
John: I'm strong now.
John: See how strong I am.
John: I'm strong.
John: And I was away from the house.
John: And then the allergies descended upon me, and by the time I got to my pills, it was too late.
John: Anyway, long story short, too late.
John: I took one of those Claritins the other day and a couple of ephedrons, and I was in a marshmallow candy land all day.
John: It really screwed me up.
Merlin: I don't think that's Claritin, dude.
John: I might have been mixing the drugs.
Merlin: I can't believe you take ephedrine.
Merlin: Well, no, no.
Merlin: I mean, like I got, I used to hork it down like a crazy person, but I mean, it seems like that would be outside your perimeter.
John: I don't abuse it.
John: I mean I don't pick it for like recreational purposes.
Merlin: You're talking about like a 25 milligram ephedrine plus guifenesin.
John: One of those little red ones.
John: Oh.
John: The little red ones.
Merlin: Well, years ago they started adulterating it with guifenesin.
Merlin: What's guifenesin?
Merlin: It's an expectorant.
Merlin: But basically they tried to fuck it up.
Merlin: As I think I've said on numerous occasions, when I was in college, you could get 50 for like $2.95.
Merlin: And then I started – I think I told you this.
Merlin: I have an Excel spreadsheet tracking the cost over the years.
Merlin: Finally, right around the time, not long before I started getting actual real medication, it was something like $50, $30, $50 for like a bottle of – I mean it was ridiculous.
Merlin: $50, $30, $50?
Merlin: That's why we got a wolf from Alpha.
Merlin: It became very, very costly and I had to get it from other countries.
Yeah.
John: Wait, they have it for sale in other countries?
Merlin: Well, I mean, I had to do a little bit of gray market trading to get it.
John: Did you use Bitcoins?
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Well, I couldn't say if I did.
Merlin: It's like being in the CIA, but money.
John: How many Bitcoins do you think – I don't understand Bitcoins.
Merlin: I Googled it once because it sounded interesting.
Merlin: I mean like I was just – in my Pete Townsend research, it sounded very interesting, but –
Merlin: It's conceptually interesting.
Merlin: Well, I went in and tried to figure out like, okay, it's one of those things like what?
Merlin: Like any fad.
Merlin: You go like, okay, I'll try macrame.
Merlin: I'll get a starter kit.
Merlin: And I thought, oh, I'll go buy $10 for the Bitcoins.
Merlin: I'll go to a website because I don't fucking understand what it means.
Merlin: But you do know websites.
Merlin: That I know.
Merlin: I know from websites.
Merlin: But all I could suss out was that you go and meet somebody sketchy at a Starbucks and then something happens.
John: Well, you have to meet people in the real world to get Bitcoins?
Merlin: See, this is what I don't understand.
Merlin: I think there's some kind of Google ATM for them now.
John: I thought you could mine them.
John: I thought you of all people would be mining Bitcoins somewhere.
Merlin: Is that where you play a video game and build a fake tower?
John: No, I think you have to set up some kind of, maybe you set up a website that interprets captchas.
Merlin: Oh, and you get a farm.
John: You get a farm, right, and you click a cow and then you have a Bitcoin.
Merlin: People come and fave your heart.
John: How many Bitcoins do you think Marco got when they sold favored to... You know Marco's name.
John: That's kind of cool.
John: To whatchamacallit, to the Yahoo's.
Merlin: He micro-blogged.
Merlin: Actually, he macro-blogged about that today in a very, very nice post.
Merlin: I think he got a pretty good handful of Bitcoins for that.
Merlin: 0.1?
Merlin: 100 million?
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: That's not interesting.
Merlin: Well, I might talk about it if you want, but I'm very interested in your nose and your ephedrine.
Merlin: I didn't realize – I told you this when I read that Bob Mould autobiography.
Merlin: I knew that there was a lot of – there were a lot of stimulants involved in Husker Du for a while.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: I just always assumed that it was like, I don't know, like some kind of speed.
Merlin: I didn't know that they were just chugging down Ephedra.
Merlin: And I was like, wow, there was a reason I liked you guys.
John: Did I ever tell you about the time I was hitchhiking in Wyoming?
John: And I'm standing on the side of the road in my hitchhiking outfit, which was blue jeans and a blue jean jacket.
Merlin: You sound like John Voight in Midnight Cowboy.
Merlin: Yeah, that was my motto.
John: Not me if I told you this story.
John: No, no, no.
Merlin: That's cowboy country.
John: And this semi-truck pulls over.
John: And in all the years of hitchhiking, it was very, very, very rare for me to ever get a ride in a semi-truck.
John: Now, if I was a 20-year-old girl, I think I would have been riding in semi-trucks all across America.
Merlin: I bet there's a 20-year-old girl-shaped seat in that car.
John: Yeah.
John: And if you talk to hitchhikers, which I don't recommend...
John: A lot of them will tell you stories about semi-trucks, and they're great hitchhiking stories.
John: All their great hitchhiking stories are semi-truck stories.
Merlin: You mean all the colorful ones?
John: Well, yeah, because either they're... I mean, I don't think there are any 20-year-old girls that hitchhike anymore, but used to be.
John: But also, people who hitchhike by haunting truck stops and walking up to drivers and saying, Hey, man...
John: uh can i hitch a ride with you i don't even know if that happens anymore well it's like they've never it's like i mean seriously john it's like they've never seen an episode of quincy like why would you do that well because you get a free trip across the world get to play with the cb if you know what i mean exactly so but but for me as a guy who looks like me in my denim tuxedo standing on the side of the road with my thumb out semi-truck drivers went by me
John: 500 an hour, and every one of them had his middle finger in the air.
John: No truck driver was ever going to stop for me.
John: That's not nice.
John: It's just the way it is.
John: It is just the economy of the hitchhiking road.
John: For this guy who's making his living in the truck to share his space and time with somebody, he has to presume that that person has something for them.
John: Or have something for him.
John: You know what I mean?
John: Like, hey, come on into my cab.
John: Quid pro quo.
John: Quid pro quo.
John: If this van's rocking, keep walking.
Merlin: Quid pro quo.
John: Ass, gas, or cash.
John: Cash.
John: Ass, gas, or cash.
Merlin: God doesn't get credit.
Merlin: No checks.
John: Anyway, so this semi-truck comes up, you know...
John: And I'm like, fuck, I'm out here in the middle of Wyoming, and I'm getting a ride in a semi.
John: This is my lucky day.
John: And the guy pops open the door, and he looks down at me, and I'm standing there with my dusty bag.
John: I'm like, hey, man.
John: And he looks down, and he goes, oh, fuck.
John: I thought you were my brother.
Merlin: No.
John: Yeah.
John: And I was like, Oh, sorry.
Merlin: I mean, I thought you were my brother, like a long lost brother or somebody from the area.
John: Well, so, so I'm like, you know, so I'm kind of shrugging, shrugging my shoulders.
John: I'm like, so I'm not, but, uh, here we are.
John: And he's like, ah, all right, get up, you know, come on, get in.
John: And so I get in the truck and we start, start off down the road and he's like,
John: Yeah, you look just like my brother.
John: And I went by you 20 minutes ago and I was sure you were my brother.
John: And so I got off at the next exit and
John: And I drove back by you going the other direction.
John: And I was really sure you were my brother.
John: So I got off at that exit and turned around and came back and, and I, and it's not, and you're not him.
John: And I was like, wow.
John: I mean, was, was your brother like, would your brother be out here hitchhiking?
John: here in the middle of wyoming and he was like he just escaped from prison oh no and he and we're driving and he points over he points over his left shoulder at the prison
John: That we're driving by that his brother supposedly just broke out of.
Merlin: I mean, it's a weird enough – I'm sorry.
Merlin: It's a weird enough thing for him to say, but then it must be triple weird when it kind of makes sense.
Merlin: It totally made sense.
Merlin: I'm wearing all denim.
John: No, that's classic just broke out of prison wear.
John: Just broke out of prison.
John: They call it the workhouse.
John: I'm standing out on this interstate with my thumb out, which is not a place –
John: if you if you're standing outside a prison in a denim outfit thumbing a ride with a dusty bag yeah and on an interstate which is not a place where people normally it wasn't like near an exit it wasn't near an exit and the and the reason that i the reason i was standing there was that i had just jumped off of a freight train and climbed over a fence and then i was at this interstate and i was like well might as well
John: So I was like five miles between exits, just standing out here across the street from a prison that I hadn't noticed.
John: And so we're driving along, and it's just like the disappointment in the cab is palpable because he's bummed that I'm not his brother, and I'm kind of bummed that I'm failing to meet his expectations.
John: Because as a hitchhiker, you kind of want to be...
Merlin: Isn't that kind of part of your job?
John: Yeah, you want to be a surprise.
Merlin: You have to read the room a little bit.
Merlin: You got to know when to just shut up, or you got to know when to agree.
Merlin: You got to know when to get into the sleeper.
John: Right.
John: You got to know when this was a big mistake.
John: You got to know when, wait a minute, why are the locks on the doors filed down?
John: Breaker, breaker.
John: You have to keep your eyes peeled.
John: Anyway, so then he says, got any drugs?
John: And I said, as a matter of fact, I do have some drugs.
John: I bet you had some trucker speed.
John: Well, I did not.
John: I had some marijuana and some ecstasy and some mushrooms.
John: Did he have a load at the time?
John: And he had a trailer, yeah.
John: And he didn't say what was in it.
John: And then he said, oh, all right, well, this is probably going to work out fine because I have this trucker speed.
John: and he had these crosstops which i had never done at that time oh and so we did a little like i'll give you some of my hippie drugs for your trucker drugs yeah and now we're like now we're in an american scene yeah throw me throw me the idol i throw you the whip i don't even have to be your brother now we're all brothers
John: And, you know, we drove all the way to Cody, Wyoming together.
Merlin: God, that's like a great epic Harry Chapin song, like, you know, performed by O. Henry.
Merlin: My God, John, that's incredible.
Merlin: And so that was your introduction to the ephedrine.
John: That was my introduction to speed because up until that point, my drugs were all hippie drugs.
Merlin: You said in the past that you, if I may, in the past, if I understand correctly, you have preferred the down-facing drugs.
John: Down-facing drugs, right.
John: Or like mind-blowing drugs.
John: But I was never white powder like performance enhancing drugs.
Merlin: That wasn't your tech.
John: It just wasn't where I was coming from.
John: I felt like those were greaser drugs.
John: Those were drugs that were.
John: That's for the socias.
John: That's for the socias.
John: Exactly.
John: That's for people who pop their collars.
Merlin: Get all hopped up.
John: It's for Robert Downey Jr.
John: and less than zero.
Merlin: That's what I was blogging about.
John: And I didn't want to end up that.
John: I didn't want to end up getting pegged in a hotel room in Vegas.
Hmm.
John: And that's a lot less likely to happen to you if you're like a mushroom taker.
Merlin: You don't get pegged on mushrooms?
John: You're not going to get so strung out on taking mushrooms that you ended up getting pegged in a hotel room before them.
John: Right?
John: Sometimes you sound a little like Chris Christopherson.
John: Basically, the guy that's got the mushrooms, he doesn't want to peg you either.
John: No, he just wants to talk to that cartoon cat.
John: Right.
John: You both want to go look at the Zamboni at the ice rink and talk about how it looks like a giant dinosaur insect.
Huh.
John: That's what you want to do on mushrooms.
John: You don't want to get pegged or be a pegger.
Merlin: So just to trace back for a minute, you're in the cab with that guy.
Merlin: I mean obviously now you have something to talk about.
Merlin: You've broken the ice a little bit.
Merlin: Did you arrive?
Merlin: Was there some kind of an equilibrium with what you shared with each other?
Merlin: Obviously he probably had the marijuana before, but boy, did you take it right there?
Merlin: Did you have the cross stop right there?
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: I mean, it gave me, gave me some and, and I had one.
Merlin: Oh, you had more than, you had more than one.
John: I had a couple.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: That, that, that's a therapeutic dose.
John: Yeah, it was enough that I was suddenly like – It's like martinis.
Merlin: Holy cats.
Merlin: It's like Dorothy Parker says.
Merlin: I mean I don't remember the exact quote because I take Adderall.
Merlin: But yeah, one is not enough and whatever, two is too many.
Merlin: And if you have – I knew people who would take four or five.
John: Well, I think you probably build up a tolerance.
Merlin: Well, apparently – the thing is my abuse of ephedrine was very – it was long-lived and in retrospect, really quite responsible compared to a lot of people.
Merlin: I discovered that the fucktards who were ruining it for everybody were the people who didn't know what they were doing.
Merlin: They would go out and they would take five or six like they were St.
Merlin: Joseph's baby aspirin and I think two is a responsible amount to make a lot of courtroom exhibits in my experience.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I got a lot done, John.
John: One of the things about speed, at least for me, is the high-pitched whistling in your head.
John: I would think that would get a lot louder when you took five.
John: I wouldn't want to be down at all.
Merlin: I don't like feeling my heart beat at all.
Merlin: I don't like really feeling it.
Merlin: When you take enough ephedrine for a while, in my experience, you get this thing where you feel your heart beat, one, and
Merlin: Number three, you feel a lurching in your heartbeat.
Merlin: But number two, this is the weirdest part, you know that you're about to feel a lurch in your heartbeat.
Merlin: See, now with you and your down-facing Melvin drugs, you probably never got that.
John: No, you were lucky to feel your heart continue to beat.
John: Amen.
John: But that began me on a course where the next – because up until that point in time, people used to offer me cocaine all the time.
John: And I would always say no because I was – Pegging.
John: Well, yeah.
John: That's pegging.
John: There was no good way that that was going to end for me.
John: But then after this trucker speed experience, I was like, hmm, I'll try your cocaine.
Merlin: Oh, it was a gateway pill.
John: It absolutely was.
John: Oh, man.
John: Then it was like, okay, speedy drugs.
John: Let's see where this leads.
John: And in my case, it led into no good place.
John: I never ended up getting pegged or doing any pegging in any kind of Las Vegas scenario.
Merlin: As far as you know.
John: But, well, no, that's the thing.
Merlin: John, you got sleep apnea.
John: Yeah.
John: But you don't fail to remember things that happened to you when you were on amphetamines.
Merlin: How do you know?
John: That's true.
Merlin: You see a lot of people writing novels about their fugue state.
John: Good point.
Merlin: I don't even know if it's a point.
John: I one time decided that I was going to make a stencil, like an art stencil.
John: You know what I'm talking about?
Merlin: Yeah, you mean like sort of like the thing somebody would like spray paint graffiti kind of thing?
John: There you go.
John: One of those kind of Frenchy graffiti art stencils.
Merlin: Oh, like a French curve.
Merlin: You're not going to like draw something with a stencil.
Merlin: You want to make one from whole cloth.
John: I wanted to make a stencil from whole cloth.
John: And so I spent, because I was on upper drugs, I spent like five hours drawing this thing, drawing this picture in like the minutest detail.
Merlin: Like in the middle of a party?
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: Sitting on a couch in the middle of a party, drawing and just like so focused.
John: And you would need a precision laser to have cut this thing out.
Yeah.
John: Because you made a Rococo stencil.
John: It was like, I was, I was drawing, I was drawing things.
John: I was drawing things that, that a single bed of pencil was not, was, was too thick to make the lines that I had in mind.
John: And then when I looked at it later, I was like, what the fuck drugs?
John: I still have it.
John: I kept it.
Merlin: I would love to see that.
Merlin: And can I just say you would have fit right in, in our pick group because, cause there was a lot of ephedrine and then there was a lot of, uh, a lot of the marijuana.
Yeah.
John: But you guys didn't go in the direction of smoking.
Merlin: No, I'm from the suburbs.
Merlin: No, no, no, not at all.
Merlin: I think I told you one time I've done cocaine exactly once.
John: Really?
Merlin: It did absolutely nothing for me.
John: Sure.
Merlin: And it just, it's, you know what it is maybe?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: It would be like dating somebody who's exactly like you.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Like, like, I don't need more of this.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And, and, uh, you know, and there's also the element of the, you know, as Bill Cosby says in himself, you know, you know, uh, you know, I just take this and it makes me more like myself.
Merlin: Well, what if you're an asshole?
Merlin: Like, that's what worries me.
Merlin: Like if I, if I had access to cocaine, a guy, that would be a Merlin I can't live with.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: We shouldn't, we shouldn't get into the crack thing, but I would like to talk about that at some point.
John: There's no, there's nobody that is made better by cocaine.
John: Everybody thinks they are better.
Merlin: You have the profundity of a heavy Rick James.
John: There's nobody made better by it.
John: And as you move either... Nobody ever?
John: Not made... No, they're not made better.
John: They think that they are sparkling when really they are.
Merlin: You know, John, goddammit, you're hard on a lot of 70s and 80s albums because, as I think you have shown conclusively...
Merlin: What is your quote?
Merlin: That they're all literally made of cocaine.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: And especially the Eagles, right?
John: Hotel California made of cocaine.
John: Fleetwood Mac Rumors made of cocaine.
Merlin: So much cocaine.
Merlin: You know, her nose literally fell off after that album.
John: You know, here's the terrible...
John: side of this story, which is that Fleetwood Mac is playing tonight in Tacoma.
John: And I'm not there.
John: And the reason I'm not there is that, yeah, my friends in the cave singers tweeted earlier tonight that they, they were pretty sure that Stevie Nicks was at the Tacoma Hilton watching catch cash cab before the show, which seemed, seemed like exactly right.
John: But I refuse to see Fleetwood Mac without Christine McPhee.
John: And a lot of people are down on me for saying that Christine McVie is the George Harrison of Fleetwood Mac.
Merlin: I don't disagree with that.
John: But I think she's key.
John: I think she's crucial.
Merlin: Oh, oh, oh, yes.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Just in terms of being a...
Merlin: A way to offset those other big personalities.
Merlin: I really like You Make Love and Fun, and I like maybe three or four of her songs, but she's kind of a skipper for me.
Merlin: I really like three Fleetwood Mac records a lot.
Merlin: I like...
John: You fast forward through the Christine McVie songs.
Merlin: Well, okay.
Merlin: Rumors, and I'm sorry, MP3 generation, Rumors is just about perfect.
Merlin: I know that it could hardly be more cliche.
Merlin: It's like saying I like the Beatles.
Merlin: But Rumors is a really, really good record.
Merlin: And to your point, John, the thing that you are arguably best at sequencing, it's a very well sequenced record.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Don't you think that would have been a different record.
Merlin: If you listen to Fleetwood Mac's rumors on shuffle, it's a different, different album altogether.
John: You put that record on and you start driving.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: And then, uh, you, you're, you're going North out of Spokane.
John: And then, and then you get to side two, you flip the tape right around Chihuahua.
John: And then you flip it again at the Canadian form.
Merlin: You're like an insomniac Richard Hugo poem.
Merlin: The Trout Down McChulub Tavern.
John: But I don't want to go see... I went to see Van Halen.
Merlin: Is she opposed?
Merlin: Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Merlin: Fuck, this is like three episodes.
Merlin: So she's not involved anymore.
John: She doesn't want to be a part of it, and I think it's because Lindsey Buckingham is such a fucking nut.
John: I do not think he is off the cocaine.
John: I think he's still on the cocaine.
Merlin: He is a very, very frustrating character to me.
John: Yeah, and I think that he's very frustrating to Christine McVie.
Merlin: I think he's frustrating to everybody.
Merlin: He seems... He's one of those guys that... If you're a listener, Lindsey, I hate to say this, because first of all, he is one of my top...
John: 18 favorite guitar players ever you're an amazing guitar player lindsey i'm going to assume that you're like such a flaming like empirically flaming asshole he just seems like the worst guy in the world and every note that he's ever played on a fleetwood mac record i have no i can't find a thing about it even when he plays live on an acoustic guitar i don't think he's ever hit a sour note
John: He's kicking ass right and left.
John: He is amazing.
Merlin: I have a solo record from like four years ago, and it's impeccable.
John: He's so coked up, and yet he's like just laying in these impeccable little bits, and yet...
John: I cannot find a single nice thing to say about him as a person.
John: It's not that he's ever done anything bad.
John: It's just that every interview I've ever watched with him, I'm like, oh, what an asshole.
John: Oh, my God.
Merlin: Isn't it funny we could even have this conversation at all, knowing what we know about Fleetwood Mac, having watched the Classic Albums episode, as I know we both have numerous times.
Merlin: Isn't it funny I would even hesitate for a minute to think that anybody in that band would have –
Merlin: I don't know how you would even ever talk to somebody again in that band.
John: And the thing is, I know that he's listening and I feel bad about it because we've criticized some of our listeners before and a lot of them have stuck around.
John: Okay.
John: Okay.
Merlin: Well, let me just give you my bona fides.
Merlin: I don't know if you followed the link.
Merlin: I sent you a link.
Merlin: Recently?
Merlin: Well, it doesn't matter.
Merlin: I just want to say this to Lindsay personally.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: I'm glad you're here for this.
Merlin: But I sent you a link to a mashup.
Merlin: And as you know, I'm not a mashup fan, but I sent you a link to a track from a mashup album called Feed the Animals by Girl Talk.
Merlin: And there's one section of this one song where they take Salt-N-Pepa, one of those black girls with blonde hair bands, and layer it over the solo from Gypsy.
John: Oh, I think I might have heard that.
Merlin: And that solo, it tells a little story.
John: It does.
John: He walks you through it.
Merlin: Think about like – what's the song called?
Merlin: You know, the rumor song.
Merlin: But think about his fingerpicking.
Merlin: Only an asshole could fingerpick that well.
John: Well, this is the problem, I think, with music is that you can be terrible as a person and be connected to the column of light.
Merlin: Are you conflicted at all about that?
Merlin: It seems like you're not.
John: Well, I mean, I am.
Merlin: Because, I mean, you've got access to the corridors of power.
Merlin: You've met some flaming assholes.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You've met a lot of flaming assholes, but you've also met a lot of gifted people.
Merlin: Certainly, it is so great to meet somebody like a Charles Bissell and go, oh, my God, you're so much nicer than me and so much more talented than me.
Merlin: But you certainly must have met your share of people backstage where you're like, this is the most execrable human being I've ever met, but they can still play that guitar like ringing a bell.
John: First of all, Charles Bissell is much more talented than I'm at the guitar, but I would not argue that he was nicer than me.
John: But I see where you're coming from.
Merlin: Really?
John: He is nicer than you.
Merlin: Well, we both dress like slightly retarded lesbians.
John: This gets back to the Oscar Wilde, the terrible paraphrase of Oscar Wilde.
Merlin: The only thing worse than quoting Oscar Wilde is not quoting Oscar Wilde.
John: Which is that, you know, great art.
Merlin: Losing one Lindsey Buckingham is understandable.
Merlin: Losing two seems like carelessness.
Merlin: I had this idea in my head of a New Yorker.
Merlin: Desert Island cartoon where I'm stuck on a fucking island with Oscar Wilde under a coconut tree and I would strangle him after 12 hours.
John: No, not Oscar Wilde.
John: A cartoon version of Oscar Wilde.
John: Literally a cartoon.
John: An animated Oscar Wilde.
John: Woohoo!
Merlin: That sounds like the mushrooms talking, John.
John: It's kind of like making sounds like Chef Boyardee.
Merlin: John, as you know, on this show, we have a policy of not naming names.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And so my question to you is, have you met people that – well, this is what's in the business called a leading question.
Merlin: I suspect that you've met people that – I know you're not a fan, but there must be people you've met who you admire, you look forward to seeing –
Merlin: And then when you meet them, they are either – well, let's just stipulate that maybe they're as talented as you'd hoped.
Merlin: But have you met people on the spectrum of like nice to butthole?
Merlin: I mean there must be people where you go, oh my god, you're so cool and you're as good as I thought or my gosh, you are so talented and you should really be literally living in hell.
John: I mean, the famous... I had this kind of profound... Roger Daltrey, nice guy, right?
John: Yeah, except he kind of... Did he blow your mom off?
John: My mom was really excited to meet him, and he kind of looked her up and down, and he was like, you know, you're 70.
Merlin: You look a bit like a computer programmer.
John: And then looked away, and I was like, yeah, she's 70.
John: You know, you're 65, asshole.
Yeah.
John: No, Roger was nice.
John: But I had a kind of one-two punch with Ryan Adams one time.
John: We were in Amsterdam and we were playing a show at a club called the Paradiso.
Yeah.
John: and the paradiso is this old church in the center of amsterdam and it has a big room which is this enormous kind of like cathedral space with a big rose window and it's kind of the it's the it's the main big club in amsterdam and then there's an upstairs room which is more of like the club atmosphere you can put you know 300 people in there and so we're playing a show there we've played there many times
John: normally, or rather exclusively, in the club area.
John: The Longwinters have always played the club upstairs.
John: And we were playing there one night, and Ryan Adams was playing the theater below.
John: And so I went down, and I'm sitting in the third...
John: balcony uh watching him soundcheck so it's it's just just him and his band and the only and i'm the only person in the room and i'm on the i'm like in the back of the third balcony all the way at the top of the theater and i'm just watching him soundcheck and i had never been a fan or anything i didn't care about him
John: But I was just watching him.
John: He was running through his rock band songs, and I was like, eh, whatevs.
John: And then he sent his band away, and he did one song with an acoustic guitar and a harmonica.
John: And it was that song where he goes, you stole all my records and you fucked all my friends.
John: You know what I'm talking about?
John: I'm not sure, but... Well, he's got a song where he says he's...
John: Stole all my records and you fucked all my friends.
John: And then he plays the harmonica.
John: Stole all my records.
John: Fucked all my friends.
John: Harmonica.
John: And I'm sitting up in the theater and I'm like, this is a fucking great song.
John: You can really like hold a room.
John: I mean, I was the only one in the room.
John: But I was rooted in the spot.
John: Like, this is incredible.
John: If I could do this, if I could stand there with an acoustic guitar and a harmonica and make that much music, like, why does he even have this band on tour with him?
John: He doesn't need a bass player or a drummer.
John: He doesn't need all these amplifiers.
John: Like, this is a guy that's got it.
John: He's really got it.
John: And I walked out of that sound check and was just like, God, whatever anybody says about Ryan Adams, I'm never going to have a bad word to say about him again because that was...
John: That was an astonishing soundcheck.
John: I'm lucky that I have seen a lot of soundchecks.
John: I get to see bands do that thing where they're just warming up and they make that magical song.
John: I've had it too.
John: myself where you're doing a sound check and you're running through a song and the room is coming together the sound is coming together and you're just like god i wish that i wish the room had been full to see that because that was a great that's kind of it's an intimate moment it's a moment where you feel relaxed because it's loose and you know it's loose and you're just like here i go and you do this sound check and it's just incredible i've seen some amazing sound checks but this was one of them well so
John: Later on that afternoon, I'm out in Amsterdam at the Leidsplain, which is a square that's very close to the Paradiso.
John: And it's one of those big squares in Amsterdam where all the restaurants have outside tables and everybody's drinking beer and...
John: They're jugglers.
John: And there are people doing street art.
John: And there are a lot of very beautiful girls on bicycles with their little fucking bells.
John: Their little condescending bells as they're trying to ride through this crowd of tourists.
John: Ding, ding.
John: Ding, ding.
John: And there are stone tourists everywhere.
John: And these beautiful girls are just trying to get home to their tall houses.
John: They're narrow, narrow, narrow homes.
John: They're narrow homes and they're tall staircases.
John: And you're just sitting there in the lights playing and it's like, this is Amsterdam.
John: I'm having a time.
John: And there's a guy, a street performer, and he's got some marionettes.
John: And the marionettes, one of them is playing the guitar and the other marionette is playing the piano.
John: And they're tall.
John: They're like three foot tall marionettes.
John: And he's out there performing and I'm watching.
Merlin: He's one guy's working marionettes.
John: He's working these two marionettes.
John: One of them playing the guitar.
John: One of them's playing the piano and he's got a boom box and they're like jamming to some tunes.
John: And I'm sitting there with my Fanta, and I'm watching this guy, and I'm thinking, how does a guy like this, who obviously makes his own marionettes, he comes out here into the lights plane.
John: He's jamming along to some Elton John with his two marionettes.
John: Like, what does this guy's life look like?
John: He probably lives in a squat.
John: He's got a roommate that collects salt from around the world.
LAUGHTER
John: You know, this guy is... There's some girl that, like... He collects salt.
John: He's got a whole rack of salt from all over.
Merlin: It takes a lot of space in a narrow house.
John: You know, and they probably have a theater group, and they probably do... One of them isn't... John, if you make your own Marianettes, you're going to need a workspace.
John: You know, he's got a workspace that's exactly right, that he shares with the guys.
John: Like Geppetto tools?
John: Geppetto tools, they probably have a lot of terrariums in their squat.
John: There's probably plenty of macrame, actually.
Merlin: Oh, man.
John: And I'm thinking about this guy's life, and I'm thinking about him.
John: And the marionettes are really rocking out at this point.
John: And into the square comes Ryan Adams.
John: with an entourage of about six dudes that are all, and they're all looking super duper duper hip.
John: You know, it was before like the real skinny jeans era, but they're looking like some New York skinny legged, uh,
John: tousled hair looking rock and rollers.
John: They look super cool.
John: And they walk into the square and I'm sitting, I'm in a crowd of there's 5,000 people in the square.
John: So I'm just invisible.
John: And they're walking through the square and they're like,
John: They're walking like they're in the opening of Hard Day's Night.
John: You know, they're kind of like clicking their heels up and they're pointing their fingers at people and they're walking in a sort of a phalanx, you know, like migrating geese.
John: with ryan at the front and they come up to this guy who's doing his marionettes and i mean on one side of the marionette guy there's a juggler and on the other side of the marionette guy there's you know somebody that's that's making balloon animals doing marionettes in a square takes enthusiasm and focus oh he's this guy's super focused and he's really he's really like into it yeah and this is the kind of alternative this is the kind of european alternative entertainment
John: that has held Europe in thrall for the last 2,000 years.
John: Like, this marionette act, minus the Elton John, would have easily captivated Charlemagne.
John: You know, it is at that level of sort of like...
John: Clap, clap, bring him the marionettist.
John: And he's, you know, he's been doing this his whole life.
John: Anyway, so Ryan Adams.
John: This is his craft.
John: This is his craft.
John: Ryan Adams and his entourage, some of whom are in his band, they come up on this marionette guy, and you can see in their faces like, hey, all right.
John: And the marionette guy, I'm realizing that the way he makes his money is both that he's got a hat out there and people throw money in as they go by.
John: But also every street performer in Amsterdam, a big part of the way they make their money is that people want to pose with them for photographs.
John: Right.
John: That is like part of the deal.
John: And so Ryan like turns to his friends and he's like, dudes, dudes, dudes.
John: get your cameras, check it out, check it out.
John: And he goes over and the marionette guy's like, oh, Ryan, I got a live one here.
John: And Ryan actually sits down at the little piano, the little fake piano.
Merlin: He sits down at a marionette piano?
John: Sits down at a marionette piano and he starts to pretend to play the piano.
John: And the marionette guy is like, now he's working his marionettes overtime.
John: the dude playing the guitar and the other marionette is kind of like sitting at the piano stool with Ryan and they are, and his friends are taking pictures.
Merlin: But the marionette guy is riffing.
Merlin: Like he's, he's into it.
Merlin: He's, he's fully involved in the scene and saying, okay, if you want to play a fucking marionette piano, I can do this.
John: That's right.
John: He is, he is, he is committed to this.
John: And Ryan is like, and he's singing a bow and he's playing the piano, singing a song.
John: And I'm watching from over on the side.
John: And then,
John: Ryan gets up from the piano and it becomes apparent that to him and to his friends, they had just given that marionette guy the thrill of his life.
John: And the marionette guy who doesn't know who these kids are,
Merlin: He's looking for some guilders.
John: He's looking for a couple of guilder, or at this point, Euros, because the transition had been made.
Merlin: But he's not feeling like he just got, I'm sorry, but he doesn't feel like he just got graced by the ironic fake marionette piano playing of fucking Ryan Adams.
Merlin: No, he doesn't know who the... He's a fully committed marionettist who's wondering why the guy with the floppy hair and the reservoir dog guys aren't crossing his palm.
John: Yeah, and they all kind of stand there fully ignoring the marionette dude now as they look at the pictures on their phones.
John: They've already moved on.
John: And the marionette guy is reduced to grabbing his hat...
John: putting his marionettes down, grabbing the hat, and kind of walking over to them like, hey...
John: That was fun, right?
John: Like, put a little, like, put a, throw a one in here or whatever.
John: And they, like, just completely give him the, hey, kid, we gave you, we gave you our autographs now.
John: Like, move along type of thing.
John: And the marionette guy's like 40 years old.
Ugh.
John: And they kind of march off on their hard day's night adventure.
John: And I'm sitting there having watched the whole thing and having seen him earlier in the day do this song that was still like ringing in my head.
John: And then watch him in real life kind of come along and be so...
John: and be walking through Amsterdam, one of my favorite cities in the world, and just be blind to it and blind to what is happening and blind to everyone else in the world and blind to just like, how do you, I mean, and I'm, and I'm watching a thousand people walk through the lights plane and not see anything and just be on their own stoner trip or whatever.
John: But the contrast for me in just in the space of an hour or two,
John: It really, like, in a way, it was kind of devastating to realize that somebody can make something really beautiful, a song like that, that I felt like, it wasn't just the performance, but the song itself had something in it that showed... Like humanity.
John: Humanity, precisely.
John: Somebody perceiving something true, and then see that same person incapable of perceiving something so simple.
John: as like their actual place in the world rather than the one that was being sort of reinforced by the, by the entourage and by the idea.
John: And, uh, yeah, I mean, I, I've, I've had that feeling walking out of a club after a sound check, walking around a town and feeling like everybody in this town is talking about me.
Yeah.
Merlin: Right.
John: And then realizing that everybody in that town is talking about the baseball game.
John: And there's really only a few hundred people that are talking about you.
Merlin: But it's also, I mean, I guess this is embedded in the story, but it's all, it's kind of funny that like you were the only person there in the, you know, up in the balcony.
Merlin: Hmm.
Merlin: Are you going to be okay?
Merlin: I'm great.
Merlin: So much for the humanity.
Merlin: I feel amazing.
Merlin: Yeah, I was the only person there for this very humane performance.
Merlin: Like, you had this, like, weirdly singular experience of, apart from the, you know, Dutch sound guys, you were the only person there, you know, more or less, to see this great performance.
Merlin: But then in the midst of this busy...
Merlin: leading, squaring, or whatever.
Merlin: At the same time, you watched a completely different, probably unintentional performance.
Merlin: Not of a song, but of that person's interior bullshit.
Yeah.
Merlin: Isn't it weird?
Merlin: You were the audience for something really amazing, and then you were the audience for something really off-putting.
Merlin: He would never think of that guy as another artist.
Merlin: He's just some dickhead in Amsterdam, and he treats him like a fucking hobo.
John: What an asshole.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: That's really lame.
John: It felt like that time when I was sitting in the bathtub, eating a sandwich, having just smoked a pot.
John: This was a long time ago.
John: even then i'm sorry even then you were enjoying sandwiches in a tub oh i always especially yeah you get a meatball sub in there the thing about smoking pot in the bathtub it is the thing i miss the most of all the drugs man really is to sit in the bathtub and smoke pot and eat a sandwich
Merlin: That's right in the pocket for you.
John: It's just, it was so amazing.
Merlin: It really brings everything together, doesn't it?
John: And I had to take the pot out of the equation.
John: Oh, no.
John: Because pot is a bad, it's really, in the full scheme of things, pot is a net bad.
Merlin: Oh, it's so, it's a net bad.
John: It's a net bad.
Merlin: It seems like such a good idea and it's really not.
Merlin: There are people in their 50s and 60s that still think it's a good idea.
John: People smoke pot every damn day.
Merlin: So much pot, John.
John: And as I've said many times, I never woke up in jail and thought it was pot.
John: I was on pot last night and now I'm in jail.
John: Like pot doesn't do that.
John: Pot is not bad in that way.
John: But boy, pot is bad.
John: But it's sure great to smoke pot and be at that though.
John: But one time I was sitting in my bathtub and I had put a load of laundry in downstairs.
John: And the washing machine was on the spin cycle.
John: And it was going... Doing this spin cycle noise from the basement.
John: But it was echoing through the house.
John: It was vibrating the house.
John: And I'm lying there in the bathtub.
John: I'm kind of enjoying this vibration of the washing machine kind of freaking out downstairs.
John: And there's a jet flying over like a jumbo jet on its way to somewhere far away, somewhere elsewhere in the world, full of people that were going to enjoy Seoul, Korea.
John: And it's high up in the sky.
John: And for a period of about 20 seconds...
John: The sound of the faraway jet and the rumbling of the washing machine created a harmony that was perceptible only to me in my bathtub, in my stoner bathtub.
John: And it was a perfect cord.
Merlin: It was like it was for you.
Merlin: It was absolutely for me because it was... Nobody else, even in a slightly different bathtub, they would have not heard the same thing.
John: If you were in the kitchen, you wouldn't have heard it.
John: But sitting here in this space, it was a perfect mix.
John: And it was... The sound of a jet overhead is a chord of itself.
John: It's not just a single note.
John: It's a whole panoply of notes.
John: And the washing machine was making both rhythm...
John: and and a chord and it all connected and just filled this filled this space with this pink cloud of this perfect harmonic and i was like boom there it is that was it i don't know what that what else there is i was there it's all been downhill since it was 20 years ago
John: Yeah.
John: A lot of boogers.
Yeah.
Merlin: I used to shake my daughter a lot to make sure she was alive.
John: When she was sleeping?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: I think everybody does it.
John: I never shook anybody.
Merlin: Not shook.
Merlin: But didn't you ever like in the numerous times that in a sweet but kind of creepy way you stood and like watched your kid sleep?
Merlin: Like especially when your kid's an infant.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I mean I don't know about you but I feel like I've been very inculcated with this whole fear of an infant dying.
Yeah.
Merlin: You know, SIDS, you know, and so on.
Merlin: And you're like, oh, you got to make sure you roll it over onto its back.
Merlin: And, you know, since my daughter was, you know, that age, I've seen lots of like funny parodies of this and stuff.
Merlin: But, you know, I don't know if you ever felt this, but I would often feel like the baby finally got to sleep.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And that is really so the goal.
Merlin: So much of the time in the first like six months.
Merlin: It's like, oh my God, for everybody involved, like people I don't even know, it's huge that this baby get to sleep.
Merlin: And the last thing in the world I want to do, like really, seriously, like apart from stabbing it, the last thing I want to do is wake this baby up.
John: Yeah, don't wake the baby.
Merlin: You never had that feeling though?
Merlin: I would have that feeling where I was like –
Merlin: Maybe I'm just sleep deprived, but she's not moving.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, that whole business, that whole business of like, your baby's going to die.
John: Your baby's going to die.
John: They tell you is so crazy making that,
John: And not that helpful.
John: It's not helpful.
John: All the old ladies, or my mom and everybody was like, we never worried about that, and you were fine.
John: You slept on your back or your front or whatever it is they tell you not to do.
John: And you were fine.
John: We used to drive around in a Dodge Car.
Merlin: Shit, man, for three years you had a fucking Fisher Price kid in your throat.
John: We used to stick you in the glove box and go do jumps.
John: We put you in the boot of the beetle.
John: And you were fine.
John: But I don't know what it is, but that talk of like, oh, they're going to die.
John: And then you read the accounts of people whose babies do die.
John: And you think there is nothing worse.
John: There's nothing worse.
John: And if my baby dies and...
John: I was sitting upstairs or I was in a different room going, don't go check on the baby.
John: She's fine.
Merlin: Well, if you were listening for the resonance of the universe in a bathtub, like not high, but with a sub and you thought like, God, 30 seconds could have made the difference.
John: Yeah, right.
Merlin: Because here's the thing.
Merlin: Here's the thing.
Merlin: Like, you know, can I just say don't Google dry drowning.
John: Dry drowning.
Merlin: Don't Google it.
John: That sounds terrible.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: There is shit that happens to your kids that's so stupid and so like you can't even detect it.
Merlin: It's like body fiends.
Merlin: Like there's no way you can even know that this thing is going to go wrong.
Merlin: Body fiends?
Merlin: It's part of your tech.
Merlin: We'll talk about it later.
John: I was at Powell's bookstore not very long ago.
Merlin: Your tone level is very low, John.
John: My tone?
John: Your tone level, yeah.
John: I was at Powell's bookstore not very long ago.
John: On the top floor of Powell's, there's a rare book room, which is kind of where I... Powell's overwhelms me, but I can go into the rare book room.
Merlin: Don't they have an app with GPS?
Merlin: It's a totally overwhelming... I mean, it's wonderful to get lost in, but it is completely overwhelming.
John: I go into the section, I'm like, where's the landscaping section?
John: And they're like, it is this city block, sir.
John: And I'm like, oh, fuck you.
John: But the Rare Book Room is a contained, walled-off place where you can go and it's very quiet and everything in there is something interesting and cool.
John: And I went in there not very long ago and there was a complete, complete library of high-ranking Scientology books that
John: It was not a box set because there were too many books, but it came with its own cabinet that was painted white and looked like one of those egg chairs.
John: It had a pedestal and magic doors, and the pages were all in gold.
John: Are you sure that's not a false flag?
Merlin: I can't believe that's allowed to stand.
John: That's the thing.
John: It was incredible.
Merlin: I looked at this thing.
Merlin: John, if you know the first or second thing about – I'm not going to say the name.
John: I don't know anything about it.
Merlin: But if you know the first or second thing about that group, that is unbelievable that that egg chair would exist.
John: Well, and so I'm looking at it and I'm like, this seems like a thing I should have.
Merlin: Oh, John, no, no, no, no.
John: I don't ever want to, I don't want to ever read one of these, but it seems like the Ark of the Covenant, if you have it.
Merlin: That makes the Necronomicon look like a fucking candy cane.
Merlin: Don't even get near it.
John: You know, it's like the protocols of the elders of Zion.
Merlin: Oh, that's nothing, man.
Merlin: That's fucking chewing gum next to that shit.
John: So I looked at it, I looked at it, I looked at it, I'm looking at it, thinking, you know, $1,200 seems reasonable for this, because who else is going to have one?
John: Monkey's paw, John.
John: If I could buy it and just give it to John Flansburg, and I would have done my, that would have been my job for the world, that would have justified my existence.
John: And then I was like, oh, I can't do it.
John: So I walked out of there and I felt like I had been inside the inner sanctum of the Mormon tabernacle choir or whatever.
John: I had seen that they had opened the kimono.
John: I had seen the thing.
John: I had seen the books.
Merlin: Are you pretty sure if they were real?
John: Oh, it was fully real.
Merlin: This was like a... Do you think they would really have that... This was a... John, we're cutting all this out.
Merlin: This was a deluxe... The thing is, people... Would they have it bound?
Merlin: Would they have it... No, no, no.
Merlin: But you see, like, you get above, like... You get to a certain OT level.
John: Yeah.
Yeah.
Merlin: You get above I think OT3 or OT5, that is some serious fucking shit because you get to the level of like – I think OT3 or OT5 is where LRH first talks about like how if you look at this –
Merlin: and you're not ready, it will literally kill you.
John: Whoa.
John: You don't know about this?
John: It is the Ark of the Covenant.
Merlin: It melts your face.
Merlin: The Ark of the Covenant is fucking putt-putt golf, man.
Merlin: This is like 40 Tiger Woods with a very high tone level.
John: Well, so I did not know enough not to look at it.
John: I looked at it a lot.
John: But every time I opened it and read the words, it just seemed like I was reading the owner's manual for like a Betamax.
Merlin: Stop right there.
Merlin: We're cutting all this out.