Ep. 103: "Artisanal Pork Bakery"
Merlin: hello hi john hi merlin how's it going good it's early yeah it is early you're being a a team player today i'm being a little bit of a team player you're always a team player but today you really stepped up to the mic plate i stepped up to the mic plate
Merlin: You really got your game face on and are willing to put some points on that board.
Merlin: I'm racking up the points on the mic plate board.
Merlin: Whoever racks up more points on the mic plate board is going to be the team that wins this particular game of ball.
Merlin: That's exactly right.
Merlin: We are in the seed.
Merlin: We're in the seed zone.
John: We're totally in the bracket.
Merlin: That sounds like some kind of porno...
Merlin: I guess a sperm whale.
John: The seed zone?
Merlin: Yeah, like a sea world that had a sperm whale.
Merlin: Let's start over.
John: Something that maybe a fluffer would have to be in.
John: A fluffer.
John: Isn't that a nice term?
John: A fluffer would have to be in the seed zone.
John: You think fluffing is really a thing?
John: Times have changed.
John: I think back in the old days, fluffing was absolutely a thing.
John: But nowadays?
John: It's all about the pharmaceuticals.
John: Well, the thing is, nowadays, there's a whole group of people, probably, absolutely, a whole group of people that what they're really into is the fluffer girl or boy.
John: Yes.
John: You know, like in the old days, it was like, oh, you're not ready for primetime.
John: You're just a fluffer level.
Yeah.
Merlin: but now it's like you're saying they could get their own following like keep the cameras rolling there's no there's no distinction between star and fluffer now you know in the in the contemporary sat analogy question i think like the journalist is to the blogger as the porn star is to the fluffer i think you could probably get a hell of a following today absolutely you'd have a whole like you know you'd have your own fluffer channel network
John: And and you wouldn't.
John: But the thing is, you wouldn't even you wouldn't even say like, oh, I was a fluffer.
John: I am a fluffer.
John: It'd just be like, no, this is this is me.
John: I'm you know, like I have a little bit of a mustache and this is my channel.
Merlin: And people are like, I love it.
Merlin: I sign up for that.
Merlin: I could definitely see a reality show.
Merlin: um let's see maybe called fluff you and it would be a show about a really a university that they go to to learn how to no no no well it could be sure well let's you know keep in the blue sky for now i think it would be about like following along you know like sort of like a lifetime kind of thing not lifetime a uh you know like a project runway type thing or like rachel zoe like you'd follow around like not that she's a fluffer but you'd follow around one of the up-and-comers if you like
Merlin: Or even a preeminent fluffer.
Merlin: You could get somebody who's at the top of their game.
John: Yeah, somebody that's like the Iman of fluffers.
Merlin: Okay, wait.
Merlin: Hang on.
Merlin: I got it.
Merlin: Write it on the sky.
Merlin: It's called The Comeback.
Merlin: Oh!
Merlin: And it's about somebody...
Merlin: It's about somebody who used to be like the – one of those like Debra Winger, the Debra Winger of fluffing.
Merlin: Not that it has to be a woman, but it's somebody who was unquestionably the top fluffer in the game.
Merlin: Annie Sprinkles fluffer.
John: Do you think she needs a fluffer?
John: Well, but that's what I'm saying.
John: Like I'm sure the old porn stars all had their like understudy.
John: Oh, literally.
John: If you will.
Merlin: It was like their flupper that kind of traveled together.
Merlin: Of course, as you do.
Merlin: Yeah, but I mean, I think what would happen is that I think that the comeback would probably be the result, if you like, of probably an independent documentary featuring tons of porn stars from the 70s talking about how nobody fluffs.
Merlin: Right.
John: It would be like that movie that recently came out about all the backing singers.
Merlin: Backup singers.
Merlin: Exactly.
John: Famous bands, except they were the foreground flippers.
Merlin: This is like, okay, if you're going to do a genre documentary at this point, it's got to either be about how food is bad, weed is great, or about some kind of a person who we didn't know we should know about that now we're all crying because we've learned about them.
Merlin: Whether that's the Muscle Shoals guys, there's one about the Motown guys.
Merlin: Right, the unsung heroes of X. Except in this case, it's about keeping someone erect for an adult film.
John: The unsung heroes of porn.
John: I mean, there are so many ways, so many documentaries you could make about the unsung heroes of porn.
John: Think about all of the work that's gone into... Because, you know, they were laboring in obscurity.
John: The cops were kicking down their doors.
John: Just recently, Los Angeles made it...
John: uh made made a law that you have to wear a condom now in a in a pornographic film filmed in the los angeles area turns out i think it's causing a brain drain or i guess a wiener drain or whatever it is i think that's making people want to leave because they feel like they can't sell that to people yeah people are like i don't want to you know nobody's gonna buy it yeah nobody's gonna buy that for one because that's not the fantasy
Merlin: I had a French language and lit professor in college who, when he was at Madison, worked in a porn theater, did cleanup in booths.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: He said it was kind of an unpleasant job.
John: I had a friend named Davey, punk rock Davey.
John: And Davey, when he... As opposed to Fancy Society Lady Davey.
John: Society Davey.
John: Hello!
John: Punk Rock Davey used to work in the bars and the clubs, but little by little I think burned all his bridges so that he was no longer...
John: He never was a bartender.
John: He never rose above the level of barback.
John: And that would be another great documentary.
Merlin: The unsung barback.
John: The barback.
John: But eventually Davey ended up working at the Apple Theater, which was a porn theater here in Seattle that's now been converted into an artisanal pork bakery.
John: But at the time, it was still showing 35mm film
John: And it was like open all night.
John: I guess they closed for an hour between 7 and 8 a.m.
John: or something like that.
John: And I would sometimes go and sit with Davey in the projection booth and we would do drugs.
Merlin: In the porno twilight.
John: We would do drugs and watch, you know, and he'd be like, they were full-length pornos, so you would have to change a reel halfway through.
John: You know, it was like a serious, like going to the movies.
John: And then the theater would be full of people who were just looking for a place to sleep, like, you know, for the $7 ticket.
John: uh to to get into the movie theater you could you could spend the night in there so it's probably one of the few places in all seriousness probably one of the few places where for that amount of money you could be pretty much guaranteed nobody would touch you right i mean that's exactly right you would get the equivalent of like complete privacy for whatever an hour a big part of the uh a big part of the of the appeal i think in the waning days of of big city porn theaters was just like yeah i'm just gonna for seven dollars i mean you couldn't get a you couldn't get a bed in a
John: At the St.
John: Vincent de Paul for $7.
Merlin: Let's stab me, probably.
John: Well, and nobody's going to preach to you about Jesus for an hour.
John: You don't have to go through any rigmarole.
John: You just go in and then... Was Davey good at his job?
John: No, Davey was terrible at his job.
John: I may have told you the story that Davey... This was...
John: This sense has become a kind of conventional gag because of the movie Fight Club, but Davey actually would go and splice in...
John: So in the movie Fight Club, what was it?
John: That he was splicing in porno into regular films.
John: But Davey would splice in car crash scenes and carnage scenes right at the moment of ejaculation.
John: And I believe that the reason that this appeared in Fight Club is that this was a projectionist game.
John: That was, in some ways, maybe universal.
John: Because Davey was not the type of guy to like...
John: necessarily dream this up all by himself.
Merlin: But it wasn't like a postmodern project where people should notice it.
Merlin: It should be unconscious.
John: Completely subliminal that he was right at the moment where the porn star was busting his nut.
John: He would put just an imperceptible bit of like
John: vivisection or or car crash or like autopsy uh footage and you know and i don't know and and because that was the that was the the era of uh of like those research uh magazines where i mean davy everybody's reading what jg ballard is that the crash guy yeah yeah
John: Davey had one of those bookshelves that was like autopsy photos, serial killer photos.
John: Oh, yes.
John: People that laid down on train tracks.
Merlin: Books of medical anomalies for people with neck tattoos.
John: Exactly.
John: Yeah.
John: And I would go to his house and it was one of those apartments where there was a bookshelf made out of cinder blocks and then a mattress on the floor and then like 600 beer cans.
Yeah.
John: And I would sit and I'd look at his bookshelf and I'm like, Davey, seriously, like, I don't want to look at any of this stuff.
John: And he's like, oh, no, man, you got to check it out.
John: And he'd open up some book with people with elephantitis.
John: And I'm like, well, I seriously, this is your...
John: You are engaging in a kind of... You are chasing the punk rock dragon tail.
John: And it is... It's not... I don't believe you.
Merlin: I think you were just afraid that things were getting a little too real.
Merlin: That is real, man.
Merlin: That shit is real.
John: But the first time he showed me the half a foot of film of some brutal murder that he was splicing into these classic 70s porns, I was like, okay, I approve of that.
John: You're doing serious psychic damage to people.
John: In the service of just, like, speed to collapse.
John: And I can't find fault with it.
Merlin: It's kind of like reverse Ludovico technique, you know, from Clockwork Orange.
Merlin: If you imagine if, like, all the stuff we saw on Cinemax and Showtime had something similar done to it.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I mean, you could you could really mess with somebody and it would take it would be a real sleeper cell.
John: I mean, this is maybe what I'm a little bit worried about.
John: The last group of people that need to be additionally fucked with psychologically are men who are sleeping in a porno theater.
John: They've got enough on their plates.
John: Right?
John: Like, those are not the people that you want to activate and connect their sexuality to violent crime.
John: Like, you know what I mean?
John: Like, of all the people in the world, you don't want to send out of the theater with the unhealthy association between orgasm and mass violence.
John: Don't, yeah.
John: Now that I'm thinking about it.
Merlin: I came in wanting a nap, but I'm leaving wanting to push someone on a subway platform.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: That's miserable.
Merlin: Oh, Davey.
Merlin: Oh, Davey.
Merlin: Punk rock Davey.
John: Punk rock Davey.
John: I ran into him the other day.
John: I hadn't seen him in 15 years.
Hmm.
John: I ran into him and probably, probably in the, this is, this is even a faux pas in punk rock circles.
John: But the first thing I said was, oh my God, I can't believe you're alive.
John: And he looked all offended and shocked.
John: He was like, I have a kid.
John: And I was like, wow.
John: That's great.
John: You made it.
John: You grew up.
John: You had a kid.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: And then I said, what are you doing?
John: He's like, I have nothing.
John: Some temp job.
Merlin: I find that so strange to think about.
Merlin: Because, I mean, maybe...
Merlin: Probably the way it came across and probably legitimately you're like, wow, I can't believe Punk Rock Davey didn't get killed or didn't die in his own hand.
John: Yeah, exactly.
Merlin: But like it's so strange to think about all the people you never see.
Merlin: This is how self-involved I am.
Merlin: It's like I think about the dozens or hundreds of people that I have called friends over the years that I'm not in close contact with or not in contact with at all.
Merlin: I don't know their status.
Merlin: I haven't gotten to that age where you're like I read the obits.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I flip through the alumni newsletter when it arrives and I find out which professors have recently died and that always makes me sad.
Merlin: But it's strange to think that there's all these people who – it would be nice to think that they just got stuck on a shelf somewhere and stopped aging and everything kind of stayed the same.
Merlin: Because when you're trying to imagine your friends today, you think about – did Punk Rock Davey look different than you expected?
Yeah.
Merlin: Because he should be 15 years younger in your head, right?
John: Well, except that Punk Rock Davey, A, was punk rock, so he was always a little bit more haggard looking than he should have been.
Merlin: A little shop-worn?
John: Yeah, when he was 21 years old, we used to joke like, 21 is like 45 in punk rock years.
John: But in fact, he made it through the looking glass and now he looks amazing for like a 44 year old because he's, you know, he's slim.
John: He's still he's still pretty well groomed.
John: I mean, he was he was smoking a cigarette.
John: in the walking down the street in the middle of the day.
John: And I was like, yeah, smoking a cigarette.
John: Wow.
John: I like that.
John: That's still a, that's still a thing that people can do.
John: They can still be smoking cigarettes.
John: Like, and that, I guess it was the amazing thing was like when we were 21, um,
John: It was very easy for a lot of us to adopt a kind of like, I don't care.
John: I am trying to kill myself.
John: Who cares?
John: Right.
John: I'm just going to just die.
John: Who cares if I get cancer?
John: I'm not going to live that long anyway.
Merlin: it's gonna happen fast man like when you're 45 and you have a kid and you're still like yeah whatever i'll just keep smoking until we get a brighter light in here i feel like i stepped on something that's like our house our house it looks like uh like stalling 13 i have so many bright lights because i don't want to step on a lego and fall down i hit my head i just glancingly hit the edge of the table when i die in a freak accident
John: There it is.
Merlin: That's it.
Merlin: That's punk rock now.
John: Whatever happened to Merlin?
John: Oh, yeah.
John: He slipped on a gummy bear and fell down the stairs.
Merlin: You know those little tiny brown Legos?
John: Yep.
Merlin: He had a premonition.
John: Yeah.
John: He stepped on it.
John: It got lodged under his toenail.
John: And then he died of an infection.
Merlin: I do think about... I don't want to talk about it because it'll freak me out.
Merlin: But I do sometimes think...
Merlin: Well, two things unrelated.
Merlin: First of all, I don't want to die in a freaky way.
Merlin: If it can be avoided, I would rather not die in some way that's super hard to explain.
Merlin: I don't want to die at all if I could avoid it.
Merlin: But I understand that's probably something I have to deal with eventually or something.
John: It's a little harder to – the second part is a little harder to make happen.
Merlin: But also, I mean, again, and this is just a credit to my incredible level of self-absorption that I don't periodically just stop and think.
Merlin: I wonder if my friends who were my age in high school are my age now.
John: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: In my head, they're maybe 30.
Merlin: They maybe... They added a couple belt notches.
Merlin: Well, what's scary... You see them, and they're old people.
John: It's so weird.
John: This bulking that happens to men when it's just like... It seems improbable.
Merlin: They come in, they enter like Sting, and exit like Baron Harkonnen.
Merlin: You're like, what happened?
John: I don't understand how God... You see them, and it's like, okay, you didn't get fat.
John: You're not fat.
John: No.
John: But somehow you look...
John: You look wider in every respect.
John: Your neck is wider.
John: How did your skull get wider?
John: Yes.
John: They just look stretched.
Merlin: You see a pair of eyes.
Merlin: A 19-year-old's pair of eyes somewhere in there looking out.
Merlin: Buried in a meat glove.
Merlin: A meat mask of hate shame.
John: Well, I was at the playground the other day, and there were a bunch of dads...
John: And they were playing baseball.
John: They were teaching their sons to play baseball.
John: And the sons ranged in age, I think the youngest was probably four, and the oldest was maybe six or seven.
John: And it wasn't t-ball.
John: There was a beardy dad, and he was actually pitching the ball.
John: And these kids were getting hits, running the bases.
John: They were fielding.
John: Like this was a dedicated group of dads who were like on the field with their kids.
John: Like, you know, go, let's do it.
John: You know, throw it to second, throw it to second.
John: And I mean, it wasn't like, it wasn't, nobody was like,
John: really yelling at the kids, but they were taking baseball.
Merlin: It sounds like it was very focused.
Merlin: Like, there's a game we're playing here.
Merlin: There's a structure to this.
Merlin: You must learn this.
Merlin: That's right.
John: This is how you need to learn this game if you're going to be a boy in the world.
John: And so I'm watching this game, and I'm thinking, like, A, thank God I have a daughter, so that I don't have to... So I feel no pressure to be down yelling at her to, like, round second, right?
Yeah.
John: But also watching the dads, I was like, wait a minute.
John: these guys are my age.
John: Like some of these guys are younger than me even.
John: And they all look old.
John: Like that guy looks exactly like Bob Balaban.
Merlin: And he's totally younger than me.
Merlin: And he looks like Bob Balaban.
John: What must I look like?
John: And that guy, that guy over there, like, yeah, he looks like Tony millionaire.
John: Like this guy looks like Bukowski.
John: And these people are, these are my peers.
John: And they're yelling at their kid about baseball.
John: And, yeah, and then I did.
John: I suddenly, like, it was one of those things where I looked at my reflection in a puddle.
Merlin: Oh, the grotesquery.
John: It's just a slightly undulating puddle.
Merlin: I was like, wait a minute.
Merlin: The image that water stills.
Merlin: I'm not old like them.
Merlin: I better sit down.
John: I did have to sit down.
John: I had to sit down and get my inhaler out.
John: So, yeah, terrifying.
Merlin: I saw Duff McKagan on Portlandia.
John: He looks amazing.
Merlin: I like the way that guy carries himself.
John: Yeah, he's carved out of mahogany.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
John: He is a suave motherfucker.
Merlin: He looks very slender and very fit, and he just seems very focused.
Merlin: I really admire it.
John: He's extremely focused and a very bright guy.
John: Yeah, and in some ways, maybe he would be a great example of a fitness mentor.
John: It's like, okay, Duff is 50 now.
Mm-hmm.
John: And still in amazing shape and still like youthful in every regard.
John: Like, don't let yourself turn into Bukowski.
John: Instead, chase after the shooting star of Duff McKay.
John: Chase the Duff.
Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, I remember there's that old anecdote about the two guys are going through the theoretical jungle and the tiger starts tearing ass toward them.
John: The theoretical tiger?
Merlin: Yeah, it's the theoretical tiger of the anecdote.
Merlin: And one guy starts running and the other guy goes, what are you doing?
Merlin: You're not going to outrun a tiger.
Merlin: And he says, I don't have to outrun the tiger.
Merlin: I just got to outrun you.
John: That's actually in Alaska.
John: We say outrun the bear.
Merlin: Oh.
John: You don't have to outrun the bear.
John: The steps out and run to you.
John: It's a great gag.
John: Sorry that I over explained.
Merlin: No, thank you.
Merlin: Thank you for clarifying that.
Merlin: But I was just going to say I think that when you get to be like any kind of an aging guru or sports person or anything, someone that where you – like part of what you do requires that somebody look up to you.
Merlin: I think you just need to look a little better than most other people.
Merlin: Like if you're a guru, like if you're – the thing is, think about like – not Jack LaLanne.
Merlin: That's not a great example.
Merlin: But like you don't have to be – there are so many categorically handsome people in their 20s and 30s.
Merlin: And I think that number really drops off after 40.
John: Well, here's an interesting thing I experienced the other day.
John: I went to a meeting downtown.
John: uh with the mayor of seattle it was our my first official uh meeting with the mayor john goes to the mayor john goes to the mayor and i'm there with the rest of the seattle music commission so there's like 10 of us on one side of the table and then the mayor the deputy mayor the assistant deputy mayor
John: The assistant deputy to the deputy mayor.
John: They're all on the other side of the table.
John: And we're talking about Seattle.
John: We're talking about the future of Seattle.
John: Talking about the waterfront.
John: Talking about a lot of big projects.
John: Schools and so forth.
John: And in anticipation of going downtown...
John: I put on a suit because a, I collect suits, even though I have no use for them.
John: And B, because I don't work, I spend most of the day just naked walking around in a bathrobe, swinging a sword.
John: And so when I have a reason to go, so many of America's unemployed, when I have a reason to go downtown, um,
John: I can't bring a sword to the mayor's office, first of all.
John: And it's like, oh, I'm going downtown.
John: I have a meeting.
John: I'm going to put on a suit.
John: I'm going to be a guy who gets dressed up in his clothes to go down to have an important meeting with everybody.
John: So I get there, and the first thing about living in the West, San Francisco is the same as Seattle in this regard, is that really you judge the most important person in the room by how shabbily he's dressed.
John: The billionaires in Seattle all show up to the finest restaurants in town in cargo shorts and fleece jackets.
Merlin: It sounds like a really stupid cliche, but in my experience, it's very true.
Merlin: I couldn't pick Paul Allen out of a lineup, but even when you see guys who are at venture capital places, sure, you might see them just wearing fleece, but you're never going to see them wearing a three-piece suit.
Merlin: That looks like somebody trying to get a job.
John: Yeah, Paul Allen looks like the pile of clothes at the bottom of a locker.
John: Yeah.
John: Like Paul Allen, he's just a pile wherever he goes.
John: And that's true of everybody.
John: You go into a nice restaurant in Seattle and the best dressed people in there are the waiters.
John: And so I'm sitting in this meeting and I've got a tie and a shirt and a suit and some nice shoes and I comb my hair and I'm looking around and everybody else on the music panel
John: uh you know it looks like uh looks like a dump truck ran into a hot topic and the mayor and his like people who have to wear suits are wearing the i have to wear a suit suits you know there's a kind of suit that
John: There's a kind of suit that a public servant.
Merlin: It's like the kind of thing, like the costume that your professor wears to graduation that like represents their university.
Merlin: You know what I'm talking about?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Fruity looking like Oxford thing with a funny hat and a medallion.
Merlin: I would never wear this unless I absolutely had to.
John: Yeah, he's got 11 gold stripes on one side and 14 purple stripes on the other.
Merlin: A scepter.
John: So what these suits, I'm studying the suits of the mayor and his staff.
John: And what the suits are meant to communicate is, I am required to wear a suit out of respect for the office, but I'm also a man of the people.
John: And so I am not wearing a nice suit or a fancy suit or like a, certainly not a chic suit.
Wow.
John: I am wearing an affordable suit.
Merlin: But it means something – you telegraph many different messages up and down and sideways by what you choose to wear.
Merlin: You have to – really, it's – you have to be politic about what you wear, right?
Merlin: It's not simply just you want to look powerful.
Merlin: You can't look too powerful.
John: Exactly.
John: And when you see a politician or, you know, a person in public service who is wearing a really nice suit, like an expensive slick suit, you automatically distrust that person.
John: And the ill-fitting cheap suit kind of is... And I think even when politicians get to be very, very powerful, rich people who are having suits made for them, they get them made in a kind of...
John: boxy cut with an unfashionable line you know what i mean not too shiny nobody's getting a you don't want to look like a mobster right you don't want to look like a mobster but you also don't want to look like yeah you don't want to look like you're too hollywood so anyway i'm sitting in this meeting and i'm looking around and i'm like i am the fucking barbie in here
John: i i am the i'm the person that everyone in the room is going to instinctively take less seriously because i got dressed up for this meeting and in fact got dressed up in the style of a person that never gets to wear his fancy fancy clothes so i'm here in my i'm here in my suit with my and i'm wearing it like a you know i wore a collar bar and i wore a tie
John: pin and I you know I'm like I'm fucking Paul F. Tompkins in here the only thing missing is a watch fob and I realize like oh I can't keep doing this because I you know I want to walk up to the mayor after this and tell him my plan for a new police academy that I have that I've been slowly percolating in my mind and and they're just not going to they're instinctively going to dismiss me as a
John: as a uh a fop or yeah i was gonna say like a victorian boy going to a fancy funeral exactly what i am what i am telegraphing is that i am an amateur and and i look around at the rest of the the music commission and everybody's like you know there's a guy who when he was buttoning his shirt he got the buttons wrong so it's like it's a
John: One button is up above his collar and one is down, you know, and like the gals are all chic, but they're all chic, you know, kind of comfortable.
Merlin: Boy, that's so super tricky.
Merlin: What kind of person's shoes and like there's so much that people, especially other women, can read into how somebody is dressed and what they are trying to telegraph.
John: the thing is exclusively other women men have no like i i am pretty fashion aware and i i have there i'm incapable of decoding at all and 99 of the men in the world who are just wearing white athletic socks you might go like oh that that looks really sharp like her clothes fit and she looks awesome but one woman would go oh that's that's not mark that's marked by mark jacobs yeah and you go like what what does that mean
John: You're really wearing Topshop to this event?
John: Wow.
John: Bold.
John: Or whatever game they're playing with each other.
John: But I mean, they all look great.
John: But none of them are... What they are projecting is we are women in powerful positions in our respective realms.
John: And so we do not have to wear...
Merlin: Yeah, you don't have to look like Sigourney Weaver in Working Girl.
John: Right.
John: The stuff has to be tailored enough, just enough, because we live in Seattle.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: And so now I have this additional... I was having a lot of fun...
John: uh, the last couple of years, like buying suits at thrift stores where I would find these old suits and I'd be like, this suit is amazing.
John: I have to have it.
John: And I would take it.
John: And then I got a tailor and I was like, you got to tailor this suit because I want it to be like this.
John: And the entire time conscious of course, that there's no occasion for me to wear a suit.
John: 98% of the time,
John: I mean, certainly around the house, I'm just dressed like a Saturday Night Live cast member in 1977.
John: Yeah.
John: Uh, and then when I go out, cocaine sink, a top knot and a cocaine sink.
John: Uh, and then when I go out, I'm, I'm generally like head to toe in wool because I'm never sure that, that an electromagnetic pulse isn't going to knock out all the computers that run our cars and I'm going to have to make it to the, I'm going to have to make it to the hill country before people start eating each other.
John: I'm not going to wear a fucking suit.
John: Life is complicated.
John: So what are my occasions to wear a suit?
John: I thought, oh, now I'm a big shot in the city government.
John: Right.
John: And now I can't wear suits to that either.
Merlin: But you might look a little eccentric or artistic, but that's the environment, right?
Merlin: Precisely.
Merlin: Did it come off costumey, do you think?
John: Well, beyond costumey, but here's the funny thing.
John: I've been going to these cocktail parties or having meetings with the people on the art commission.
John: And I realized the people on the art commission are all dressed like, like we're in a Fellini movie, like the music commission, the music commission, uh, just, they grab their clothes from the free pile as they're leaving their apartment building on the way to work.
John: Like, Oh, I need a scarf.
John: What's in the free pile.
Um,
John: But the Arts Commission, like, dudes are seriously wearing ascots.
John: People have those Italian shoes that are so pointy that they become, like, Pagliacci shoes.
John: Right.
John: I mean, so, really, the people that I need to cutsel up to are the arts people.
John: Like, you know, painters and the opera people or whatever.
John: They really dress...
John: like fruitcakes, which is what I want to do.
Merlin: Probably not much at stake at those meetings, I'm guessing.
John: Oh, no, people, you know, this has to be true in San Francisco, too.
John: I think it's true all around the world, but whatever it was 25 years ago when they started instituting that 1% for art business, where it's like, well, we're going to rebuild the freeway, and it's a $500 million project.
John: And the legislature put this 1% for art clause in all public projects, which means 1% of the total budget of, like, epic projects has to be set aside for there to be an art component, right?
John: Which is why there's so much publicly funded massive sculpture, right?
John: in big cities like you go downtown it's like wow there's a huge stainless steel donut now in front of the city hall where did that come from and why it's like oh because we because we built a tunnel under the bay and it cost a billion dollars and so one percent of that was
Merlin: Yeah, even if it's like a rounding error, that's pretty serious dough for that kind of community.
John: Millions and millions.
John: And then, of course, it's like, oh, this is for art.
John: And immediately no one in government wants to have anything to do with it because art is a lightning rod for people to be furious.
John: And so that's why you even have an art commission.
John: You put a bunch of people in ascots around a table.
John: and you dump this... Like a laundry basket full of money.
John: Yeah, like a duffel bag full of cash, and you're like, okay, this is the rounding error from the latest tunnel project.
John: Figure out how to disperse it.
John: And then these guys, you know, and they all have, they're all wearing glasses that make my most outrageous pair of glasses look like something that you got at Costco.
John: Like, you know, guys that speak with Italian accents that have glasses that are bigger than their head.
John: And so the Arts Commission has cash.
John: They have real money.
John: Interesting.
Merlin: Will your committee be interfacing with them?
John: Our committee is interfacing with them.
Merlin: Are you Ted on Ted?
John: Are you Entree New with them?
John: Well, New are trying to Entree with them.
John: In the sense that they have seniority.
John: The Arts Commission is 50 years old, whereas the Music Commission is 5 years old.
John: So there's a little bit of, they don't appear to be condescending to us, but there is a little bit of like, they have a long history of dealing with lots and lots of money.
John: And we are just like, hey, one of the things you could do with that money is give it to us.
John: And then there's a long pause.
John: Everybody looks at their fingernails.
John: We'll see.
John: We'll see.
John: I've got to establish myself as a serious member of this organization in order that some of my larger plans be put into place.
John: And I'm not going to get there by mincing in with my lavender shirt and my collar bar.
Merlin: I love that word.
John: I'm going to have to start.
John: You know what it is?
John: I think I might wear a suit, but not a tie.
John: That communicates a lot of... Does that look a little bit Mr. Furley?
John: Well, no, I'm not wearing a leisure suit.
John: It's not a one-piece suit.
John: No, I'm going to wear a sharp suit, but then my shirt open.
Merlin: And that's a kind of like... I know you just mean like one button.
Merlin: Yeah, not like open to my navel.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I think that's something they're going to have to really think about if they see that.
Merlin: They would have to think about that.
Merlin: Like if you look really good and your shoes are shined, like you say, and your hair is combed, but your shirt is open to your navel in meetings.
Merlin: You're just kind of sawing away, scratching at yourself.
Merlin: What's up?
Merlin: We should talk about the easement.
John: We should talk about my plan for the police.
Merlin: You're all under arrest.
John: I have a very good plan for the police.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: Really?
John: I do.
John: You know, we talked about the police not very long ago.
Merlin: Yeah, we got a lot of nice feedback about that.
John: But strangely, none from police fraternal organizations.
John: Right.
John: But my plan for the police for Seattle, and I think this will work all across the country.
John: I think part of the problem of the militarization of the police has been the suburbanization of the police.
John: The cops, when you talk to any individual cop, the cops and the firemen all live in the suburbs now.
John: Right.
Merlin: They want to get away from all the crime.
John: Exactly.
John: They've pursued the American dream.
John: And cop culture and fireman culture is suburbanite culture.
John: Right.
John: Which is intrinsically suspicious of people who live in the city.
John: And, you know, and it fosters a kind of racist, like, outer ring contempt and dislike for poor people and people who live in town.
John: And so my plan for the for the modernization and like reintegration of the cops is that every city should build a police academy in the heart of town.
Hmm.
Merlin: Oh, it becomes like a magnet school kind of thing, right?
John: Exactly.
John: Like, I think part of the problem with the cops, too, is that we've started to think about police as being a job that requires a four-year degree.
John: And this is a subset of a larger problem, which is the inflation, the four-year degree inflation, where now, like, if you want to manage a ZBART, you have to have a four-year degree.
Mm-hmm.
John: Like, if you want to be the person in charge of the Froyo machine at the Cold Stone Creamery, you have to have a four-year degree.
John: If you want anything that requires a key...
John: Right.
Merlin: Pretty much.
Merlin: You want to have a ring of keys.
Merlin: Just any key.
Merlin: We're going to let you have anything that isn't – like when I worked at McDonald's and there was a button you would hit.
Merlin: It means I put the meat down.
Merlin: It would tell you when it's time to flip it, when it's time to salt it, and so on and so forth.
Merlin: It was actually literally idiot-proof.
Merlin: If you want a job more than that today, you kind of need a college degree, and that's really fucked up.
John: It's really fucked up because, A, you don't need a college degree, and B, all the... It's the guarantee of anything.
John: It's not.
John: And then what that massive influx of people in colleges has done is make colleges worthless.
John: Like, colleges aren't doing college job now.
John: And it became a thing... I think it became a thing in the last 50 years that people in politics were able to say, like...
John: College.
John: We want everyone to have an opportunity to go to college.
John: And it was an easy thing to say, a harder thing to do, but it was a thing in public life that they could direct money and resources and a lot of like...
John: a lot of glad handing attention to we're going to make colleges accessible to everyone and so what they did was not make a a grand college education accessible to everyone they just made college stupid so that everybody could get into it and so my thinking is one of the things that we don't need is cops that went to college
John: Really.
John: They don't need to go to college.
John: They need to go to a great police academy with a curriculum devised by me with the police academy located in the center of town, in the heart of town so that every day you see the young police trainees in their what I would hope would be like Easter egg colored sweats
John: And they're running up and they're doing their calisthenics.
Merlin: You want to start them out with a little bit of humility.
Merlin: Is that the idea?
John: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Bring them down to earth.
John: They're running around the town.
John: They're doing their little bunny ears with a badge on them.
John: They're doing their pull-ups or whatever in the bus stations.
John: And we all get to see the young cops in training.
John: And they are living with us.
John: And their dormitories are right there in the town.
John: And so by the time a young police person, an aspiring police person, graduates to become a badged officer, they are inculcated in the language and culture of the city they intend to police.
Merlin: They're already a resident of an urban neighborhood.
John: That's right.
John: They live in the town and they are members of the town and they have trained in the town.
John: So they're not out at some firing range boot camp out in BFE.
John: Right.
John: And they're not being indoctrinated into a culture that lives outside of the city and is inherently hostile to the city.
John: Right.
Merlin: That's so interesting because it really is.
Merlin: It's like something from a Bruce Lee movie where you go to this almost like this guarded temple and everything happens in private.
Merlin: It would be very interesting to have something, honestly, not just to embarrass people or something, but it would be kind of interesting to have it in the middle of the city and where people could observe it while it's happening.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: Talk about transparency.
John: Because the concept of policing is very, very basic.
John: Like the cops themselves do not have power.
John: Their power is the power that we grant them to police us because we need it because we are pig monkeys.
Yeah.
John: And so we say collectively, yes, we need someone to call.
John: We need to put somebody in a position where we can call them when we need help.
John: And these are the people who we're going to appoint to that.
John: We want them to be young and strong and fleet of foot, but also smart enough and empowered, just enough to be able to make
John: Judgment calls.
Merlin: We expect them to be people and we expect them to be smart people.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: The people part is important.
Merlin: And even though we acknowledge – Yeah, precisely.
Merlin: And I mean even though we acknowledge that we want to be policed, we want to abide by these rules and we want recourse if something happens.
Merlin: I think it's also – it doesn't mean that we're prepared.
Merlin: There's so much zero or one black and white kind of thinking about these things.
Merlin: It's not saying that we're willing – OK, in exchange, we will no longer have a civil society where we understand why rules are enforced the way they are.
Merlin: Like if I want to be able to call somebody when somebody steals my marijuana or somebody like parked in my space, that means I'm willing to live in a police state.
John: That's – well, yeah, right.
John: Exactly.
Merlin: That's good, John.
Merlin: That's pretty good.
John: Well, and what got me thinking was I was driving along the other day with my daughter.
John: And every time a fire truck goes by or a policeman goes by with their lights on, she's very curious what's going on.
John: And I always say, well, the fireman is going to help somebody or the policeman is going to help somebody.
John: And all of that is part of the culturization that happened to me when I was growing up, which is to be taught that the police are there to help you and the firemen are there to help you.
Merlin: Yeah, help and protect you if something happens.
Merlin: But you also want her to know that if something happens, you can go to somebody in a uniform and tell them about it.
John: Exactly.
John: Like the police and the fire department are our friends and they are there to help us.
John: So I'm driving along and I'm describing this to her and she knows this pretty well now.
John: And then I realize...
John: The tremendous gulf between the experience that I have had my whole life, even during the many years when I was like, fuck the police, man.
John: The police are a bunch of fucking cops, man, who are like trying to like...
John: come down on us and like, you know, they represent the man.
Merlin: And come down on us.
Merlin: Did you say that already?
John: Cops, man.
John: Even all those years when I was like, when I was socially hostile to the cops as part of my rock and roll underbelly,
John: I also understood very clearly that recourse to the law was a thing that was not a right, but that it involved... It was a participatory aspect of citizenship.
John: And if you were ever going to call the cops, you had better also hold up your end of the bargain by being...
John: For the most part, law-abiding and a citizen.
John: And the contempt I have for most people is this selective citizenship where it's like they call the cops and the fire department when they need help, but then they refuse to pay their taxes or they're bullies or they are greedy or they are cheaters.
Merlin: In every other aspect of... Well, they expect to be extraordinarily protected by the police while other people are basically exposed to whatever kind of... Right.
Merlin: ...shit-kicking, bunk-flipping bullshit people feel like doing on a given Saturday night.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: I mean, isn't that kind of it?
Merlin: That's the real inequality in some ways, is I get extraordinary protection because of this, and you get treated that way because, well, because of that.
Merlin: Right.
John: And I guess the...
John: What was happening to me the other day, the brain flip that I was experiencing was I was sitting here teaching my daughter this thing that I feel is fundamental, which is the police and the fire department are there to help you.
John: And then I reflected upon the fact that there are large communities of citizens in my own city who do not see the police that way.
John: And the fathers in those communities are forced to teach their daughters a healthy suspicion of the police.
John: Like, be careful around the police is kind of the gentlest way that they probably have to describe it.
John: And I'm sure there are plenty of families where the lesson from a very young age is avoid the police at all costs.
John: Like, the police are not your friends.
John: The police will hurt you if they get a chance.
Merlin: Yeah, a kind of sleeping giant.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Better to just go take care of this.
Merlin: Yeah, exactly.
Merlin: Because you're going to have consequences way beyond getting your redress.
John: If you have problems, call a family member.
John: Run to someone who looks like us, but whatever you do, do not attract the attention of the police because it never ends well.
John: And to imagine myself sharing a city and a culture and a civic life with groups of fellow Americans who do not have the same recourse to the law and do not feel that the police are there to help them.
John: And as my daughter gets older, I will for sure say, like, don't mouth off to the police.
John: The police are idiots, let's be honest.
John: Like, they are typically 24-year-olds with criminal justice degrees who are inculturated to be unreflective.
Merlin: With father issues.
Right.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: Seriously?
Merlin: I mean, don't you think that sometimes?
Merlin: I do.
Merlin: I absolutely do.
Merlin: They're working out something way beyond criminal justice right now.
John: Well, and the problem is that within the culture that is teaching them and training them, that is encouraged, you know, that their lieutenants and their captains also have not been encouraged.
John: fully culturated.
John: They've been allowed to maintain.
John: It's the problem with the CIA.
John: The CIA is somewhat an independent organization.
John: And they nominally answer to the president,
John: But in fact, presidents come and go and the CIA remains.
John: And so the CIA does not feel answerable to anybody.
John: And it maintains this inner culture that over time has become infected.
John: And now CIA is separate from the balance of power that keeps our government stable.
John: And, and they become, and then they end up as a rogue organization and to bring them to heel requires like an incredible amount of will from the Congress and, and the executive.
John: And it's a, it's, it's will that they seldom express, you know.
Merlin: And it's going to take a certain amount of what feels like futzing around where rather than just waiting for something that's a huge problem that now we have to cover up or whatever, to have an ongoing – again, that word, transparency – an ongoing sense that we need to really know what's happening and we need to tell people what's happening and we need to make sure that it's what we told people was going to happen.
John: Right.
John: And there needs to be actual effective oversight, civilian oversight of these affairs that is 100 percent – like it is not –
John: it is not sufficient that your organization investigate itself and declare that that you have i mean this happens in the seattle police department all the time and it happens in the cia all the time right but for security reasons we can't show you what the results are but we'll just tell you it turned out great yeah we did an investigation of that thing and we just we determined that everybody acted properly and except for there was one thing that we could have done better and the appropriate measures were taken
John: And it's just like, okay, no.
John: No, no, no.
John: And to fire everybody is to just – to fire everybody at the top is to just then promote the lieutenants who are raised in the same culture.
Merlin: What a terrible self-indictment that is, though, if you think about it.
Merlin: This problem is so out of control that I can't manage it anymore, so I have to fire everyone and start over.
Merlin: Where else would anything like that be acceptable?
Yeah.
John: Right.
John: And the only reason that we're in that situation is that these organizations continue to recruit and indoctrinate generation after generation into what is essentially like an unbeholden culture.
John: Anyway, so my plan long-term for urban police departments is to reintegrate them into urban life.
John: And ultimately, if you want a promotion in the Seattle City Police Department, live in Seattle.
John: If you want to get your sergeant stripes, live in Seattle.
John: Don't live in Issaquah.
John: If you live in Issaquah, why don't you join the fucking Issaquah Police Department?
John: If you want to work in the Seattle Police Department and you don't want to live in Seattle, then you're not sergeant material.
John: You're not lieutenant material.
John: And that seems like, in some ways, fundamental.
John: I have a good friend who works in the Seattle Fire Department.
John: He's a close friend.
John: And he describes the culture in the fire stations as,
John: Because a lot of these guys, they're mustache guys.
John: You know what I mean?
John: They're living on an acre and a half that they're buying with their inflated union salaries.
Right.
John: And they're out there.
Merlin: I'm sorry, let me just take a quick minute, John.
Merlin: You're listening to the Pacifica Radio Network.
Merlin: This is We Are Pig Monkeys with John Merlin.
Merlin: We'll be back after this word from Fleece.
John: But he characterizes the Seattle Police Department inner culture as being like basically redneck.
John: Redneck libertarian.
John: They're mustache guys, and they're like, you know, they go, and it's a hard job, right?
John: People are dialing 911, and a lot of people are dialing 911 just because they're lonely.
John: And rather than make friends, they pretend they're having a heart attack so that some fireman will come and pet their hair.
Merlin: I got to remember that one.
John: You should try it.
Merlin: That's a good one.
John: You know, Merlin, I call 911 all the time.
Merlin: Just to see how things are going.
John: I call him just to report like, hey, I saw a pigeon that was limping.
Merlin: Hey, it's Merlin.
Merlin: Hey, what's up?
Merlin: I don't have a problem yet.
Merlin: But I just wanted to give you an update on a couple fronts.
Merlin: The fence is still an issue.
Merlin: It's leaning a little bit.
John: I've had a lot of coffee today.
Merlin: I've had so much coffee today.
Merlin: I just self-harm.
John: So anyway, that's my project.
John: That's my reform project.
John: But I'm not going to get that happening if I'm wearing a tie bar out of these meetings.
Merlin: In the Music Commission.
Merlin: Mr. Roderick, these are fascinating topics you bring to the fore.
Merlin: But they're somewhat beyond the ken of this particular committee.
John: However, sir, we thank you very much for standing up at this meeting.
Merlin: Mr. Roderick, I've asked Eustace to write all of these down.
Merlin: Capture them on a piece of paper.
Merlin: We're going to pass that along to the real event committee.
Merlin: Right now, however, we are discussing... Dedicated parking zones outside the show box.
Merlin: It looks like that was a win, though, right?
Merlin: You guys got parking zones.
Merlin: That's pretty cool.
John: Dedicated parking zones.
Merlin: Clearly marked.
John: You know, in a city, you know, a city lives and dies by its parking.
John: So in a city, if you can get a handle on the parking, if you can get your hands around the parking... The rest will follow.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: You end up in charge.
Merlin: George Clinton said that, I believe.
Merlin: That's good.
Merlin: No, it's really true.
Merlin: That's the thing, though, and that's why I didn't mean to sound glib about the artistic people with Fellini glasses.
Merlin: But in your case, like, I mean, how...
Merlin: People must take what you guys have to say kind of seriously because you're influential people, but also there's some commerce involved.
Merlin: It isn't just spending money on a giant bow and arrow.
Merlin: Look at you, San Francisco.
Merlin: No, public art is important.
Merlin: But in this case, it is also commerce and things that Seattle is well-known for, like music.
Merlin: Well, yeah.
Merlin: You don't want to exaggerate that too much though, right?
John: The problem is, and this is the thing, I think I probably mentioned this before, like when the Rolling Stones played at the Kingdome, there were 50,000 people there and everybody was like, that's incredible.
John: 50,000 people came to see the Rolling Stones.
Yeah.
John: But then the following Wednesday, 50,000 people were there to see the Seahawks lose to the Bears.
John: And you realize, oh, right.
John: 50,000 people there to see the Rolling Stones happens once.
John: But 50,000 people come to watch that stupid football team.
John: Wow.
John: Like every week.
John: Every week.
John: And then there's 60,000 people watching the baseball team.
John: and a million more in the region watching it on TV, and you get a sense that music is... This is very complicated from the standpoint of a musician, but music is...
John: important to us in name only, really.
John: Every single person at that football game has heard the Rolling Stones, but
Merlin: They probably don't own three different $60 Rolling Stones jerseys.
Merlin: Absolutely not.
Merlin: They're not paying for an iPhone app that lets them watch the Rolling Stones every single time that they perform.
John: At all.
Merlin: That's a really interesting way to look at it.
John: And I get into this with people all the time where they're like, blah, blah, blah, albums, blah, blah, blah, music should be free, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
John: And I say, you know, an album, a record album that took a year to make costs $10 on iTunes.
John: And it's a record that you may listen to 500 times in your life.
Merlin: Listen, as many times as you want on any device that you've got forever for $10.
John: $10.
John: Or you can go to see a movie for $14.
John: $14.
John: And the movie you will watch once and it lasts an hour.
John: And yet people go see movies without reflecting.
John: And yet, buying an album seems like a big... Like, I don't know if I want to go buy that album.
John: Jeez.
John: You know, like, buying an album is some kind of big investment.
John: And so...
John: So music is like, for those of us who live in a music world and think about music, it kind of has this preeminent importance.
John: But really, the way we value it culturally is like, it is window dressing, ultimately.
Yeah.
John: And so when we try and make an economic argument for music, it is legit.
John: Music is an economic driver.
John: But the mayor is leaving the meeting with us and he's going to meet with the representatives of the construction union.
John: And it's just like, yeah, okay, well...
John: we are we're a drop in the bucket even if you extend the the reasoning and i think it's powerful reasoning that like why do people come to seattle to work at microsoft if they could if they can go live in palo alto uh or san jose
John: Why would they choose to come work at an Amazon or a Seattle tech company?
John: And the reason that most of them say is, well, I want to, like Seattle culture, I want to be a part of Seattle culture.
John: I want to go to shows.
John: I want to be a part of the vibrant kind of musical, cultural milieu that doesn't exist in San Jose.
John: And has been, in a lot of ways, priced out of San Francisco.
John: You can't start a band in San Francisco now.
John: It's $5,000 a month for a woman.
Merlin: That's how much you're willing to live closer to San Jose.
Merlin: Now you'd be in Oakland.
Merlin: Yeah, you'd be in Oakland, right.
John: which is a real city oakland is a fairly fairly real city it's a super real city yeah oakland's getting uh priced out too it's hard there so so you and i think we make that economic impact uh argument to the mayor all the time like listen when people fill out surveys why did i move to seattle music is always right at the top of the list but again it's intangible right
Merlin: You know, I have so many blind spots and cataracts in my life, but I feel like two giant cultural holes in my life, probably to my detriment, are video games and sports.
Merlin: And video games – there's a couple of video games I play on my phone, but compared to anybody –
Merlin: My age or younger, completely off my radar screen.
Merlin: I just – it's really – and it's not even like a hostile thing.
Merlin: With video games, it really isn't just an – I'm not interested.
Merlin: Like it's – I don't want to say I don't care.
Merlin: I don't care about sports.
Merlin: I'm actively against sports in some ways.
Merlin: But those two things, failing to really grok what those two industries, Uber industries, really means to stuff, when it does occur to me, I realize how dumb I am because I had never put sports –
Merlin: Even in the same – I never – I just don't think about sports.
Merlin: It just doesn't – I just – mainly I think about sports when somebody mentions sports and I go, why are you talking about sports?
Merlin: That's really dorky.
Merlin: But in this case, it's so interesting to think about how much money passes through that town whenever there's a sports game going on.
Merlin: It's really amazing to think about because you think about something like Convention and Visitors Bureau, right, where you get all this big hit of like 5,000 people are going to come and stay at all these hotels and stuff like that.
Merlin: But I'm guessing – I mean your sports teams do pretty well, right?
Mm-hmm.
John: Let me see.
John: Our sports teams.
Merlin: Did you guys just win a big thing in the last year?
John: Yeah, there was a big Super Bowl that we won.
Merlin: Sorry, sorry.
Merlin: I'm sorry I was... See, this is the problem.
John: One of the teams that we massacred, that we really just destroyed, humiliated in fact, so that the city that that team hails from has to spend the next year just reflecting on their inferiority.
Merlin: yeah that's i'm really sad now that's really rough um my civic pride is at an all-time low now that i've learned we lost the super bowl there are a couple of people i think that listen to this show even they play that game to see how long you can go without learning who won the super bowl no no no there are a couple of people who listen to the show who are right now so mad at me that i have reminded them oh that's the power of podcasting
Merlin: So anyway – but the thing is, it is fascinating to think about because in my head, you go, oh, like Seattle.
Merlin: Let's take our – when you think about why you bring a convention to a town, I bet there's – it's probably like an iceberg where we only see the top 10 percent or whatever.
Merlin: There's probably so many different dealings and things that go into why somebody ends up in Las Vegas versus New York versus Philadelphia or wherever.
Merlin: But if you had to like socialize it with your group and go, hey –
Merlin: You know, we could do this in Seattle.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And their sports ball team won the Uber Bowl.
Merlin: Like, we should go there.
Merlin: And they'd be like, yeah, we could totally catch an Uber Bowl game.
Merlin: We'll go there.
John: We'll see some Uber Bowl.
John: We'll watch the guy throw the fish.
Merlin: I'm being dead serious in my own not serious way.
Merlin: Well, yeah.
Merlin: Or you might go, oh, yeah, Seattle.
Merlin: That's where the music came from and the Black Hole Suns and whatnot.
Merlin: But, like, that'd be a great name for a band, by the way.
Merlin: The Black Hole Suns?
Merlin: The Black Hole Suns, S-O-N-S.
Merlin: hello can you capture that somebody write this down i heard did you just recently mention uh that song that um all right all right didn't you mention that song recently what's it called what's the first hit closing time no
Merlin: You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Chris Cornell, the band Soundgarden.
Merlin: What's the Soundgarden?
Merlin: What's their first big hit?
John: First Soundgarden big hit?
John: Well, you're talking to somebody from Seattle.
John: I'm going to say a very different thing than you guys.
Merlin: God fucking damn you, John Roderick!
Merlin: Somebody asked you in an interview what you think of when you think of Seattle music and you pulled this song straight out.
Merlin: What's the one song?
Merlin: No, you know the one I mean.
Merlin: It's the first big hit from the... Ah, fuck you.
Merlin: I'm so frustrated.
Merlin: Was it... Not Outshine.
Merlin: Outshine?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Could have been an Outshine?
Merlin: No, what's the first one?
Merlin: What's the first one?
Merlin: The first big hit single.
John: Rockstar?
Merlin: Hey.
Merlin: Allstar.
Merlin: Look in the mirror.
John: Was it Macarena?
Merlin: Sister hands in the garden watering her mother's dahlias.
Merlin: You know that guy.
Merlin: You know that guy, right?
John: You know that guy.
Merlin: Yeah, people think about Soundgarden.
Merlin: The lines across your face are drawn with hate.
Merlin: It's got the big riff.
Merlin: Oh, you know, I'm cutting all this out.
John: That was not their first big hit.
John: That was later.
Merlin: But it's from their Bad Motor Finger album, right?
Merlin: I've really derailed myself.
Merlin: We got away from cops.
Merlin: We got away from Uber balls.
Merlin: Anyway, like if you said...
Merlin: The thing is, though, you get 15 of these people in a room and go, hey, should we do it in Seattle?
Merlin: Like, one of them's going to go, hell yeah, and everybody else is going to be like, no Uber ball.
Merlin: Like, they've got to be, you know what I mean?
John: Well, when you think about that, 50,000 people all, like, 50,000 people divided by four because they come in cars.
Merlin: And when you're doing well, you're like, capacity every week, probably?
John: $25, $35 per car to park.
Fuck.
Fuck.
John: And then everybody gets a wiener dog.
John: Kettle corn.
John: Everybody gets a kettle corn.
John: There's people drinking beers.
John: There's all the jerseys they're selling.
John: It's massive, massive money wave every time one of these ball teams plays.
Merlin: I just confused Pretty Noose without Shined.
Merlin: Yeah, Pretty Noose.
Merlin: Didn't I?
Merlin: I just did that, didn't I?
Merlin: I'm so sorry.
John: I just did that.
John: Pretty Noose is a Pretty Noose.
Merlin: All right.
John: Yeah.
John: Fuck.
John: That was, you know, the Ben Shepard bass era.
John: I have to say, when they really turned him loose on his bass guitar, there are some very powerful bass riffs.
Merlin: The song I was thinking of was Outshined.
Merlin: So you got $35 worth of kettle corn, five people in a pot.
Merlin: They're all arriving for a sports and Uber ball.
John: That's right.
John: A lot of them are staying in hotels.
John: Probably the 5,000 people that came for the Magic the Gathering.
John: It's crazy.
John: It's crazy.
John: And then all the kickbacks, all the pay, pay, pay, pay, pay.
John: I saw this detail the other day in association with the fact that Mick Jagger's longtime girlfriend just recently committed suicide.
Merlin: That's so sad.
John: It was really tragic.
Merlin: She's taller than you.
John: She's a tall lady.
John: And that alone made me have a new respect for Mick Jagger.
John: You notice that when guys get to be a certain amount of rich and famous, like these small people, small guys,
John: they no longer are self-conscious about their height and they are dating women who are like a foot and a half taller than they are.
John: Like, I kind of admire that.
John: It's like, wow.
John: Okay.
John: Well, sure.
John: Why wouldn't you like this girl is amazing and also super tall.
John: And that's its own.
John: I mean, the pictures of them standing next to each other where she is like kind of leaning down.
Merlin: It's like fetish porn.
Merlin: It's like giantess porn.
Merlin: Crazy.
Merlin: She's soup.
Merlin: She's six, four in bare feet.
John: Crazy.
John: But one of the side details in all of that tragic reporting, and I really was astonished that he was, it seemed that their relationship was real and he was very devastated by this.
Yeah.
John: But one of the very side, minute side details was that Mick Jagger was worth $200 million.
John: I saw this notated because in our culture now, you have to append to every mention of somebody famous their age and also how much they're worth.
John: 100%, yes.
John: Mick Jagger, age 64.
Merlin: Estimated worth of $200 million, yeah.
Merlin: I can see it in my head, yeah.
John: That little detail, the only reason it stuck out was I had just an hour before read an article that said that an Andy Warhol lithograph of some kind had recently sold at Sotheby's for $125 million.
John: Something like that.
Merlin: That's so weird when you put them next to each other like that.
John: Yeah, and so that's exactly right.
Merlin: And they were both probably made within probably five years of each other.
Merlin: I mean, the career of the Rolling Stones.
Merlin: And Andy Warhol.
John: So, yeah, when I read the Sotheby's story, and it was talking about, like, oh, wow, we got more than $100 million for this Andy Warhol thing.
John: It sort of passed by unremarkably in my imagination.
John: Like, oh, sure, I guess.
John: I mean, maybe I'm surprised it's not more or whatever.
John: Or, oh, $100 million.
John: I wish I had bought an Andy Warhol when they were only $1 million.
John: But it kind of just was like, oh, art is priced X. And so I guess there are lots and lots and lots of people who have...
John: so much money that a hundred million dollars for a painting
John: Feels like... I mean, clearly, paintings like that are being bought for investment purposes.
Merlin: Yeah, like by institutions and stuff like that.
John: But, I mean, no.
John: I think the real buyers of that stuff are these billionaire software people and financiers and Russian oligarchs who are buying that material as a form of one-upsmanship for one another.
John: Like, I can't imagine...
John: an institution buying that Andy Warhol painting and justifying it to anybody for $100 million.
John: Penny's Police Benevolent Association.
John: Exactly.
John: We'll talk a little bit about a new wall.
John: Secret Policeman's other art collection.
John: It takes other balls.
John: But then I read this completely...
John: sort of specious reference to Mick Jagger's wealth and then realized like, Oh, $200 million is less than the current lotto.
John: Only you.
John: The mega ball.
John: You're almost, it's just right there.
John: The mega ball is $400 million.
John: And Mick Jagger stands atop a mountain in my mind of,
John: With few others, as a person who made his mark on the culture, he's very important to me.
John: And he also feels unassailably, unreachably rich and successful.
Merlin: Even accounting for what happened in the early 70s.
John: Even accounting.
Merlin: Basically, their career started over in 1973.
John: Their money was gone.
Merlin: They had no rights, no money, no anything.
John: And even accounting for Mick Jagger's abysmal performance in that documentary about...
John: Oh, yeah.
John: About the rock concert there in San Francisco, the Speedway, the Montagnard.
John: The Altamont.
John: Altamont.
John: Sympathy for the devil.
John: Montagnards are the people of Vietnam.
John: Alta Vista.
John: Yeah, right.
John: He was terrible in that movie, and it made me... Let's do another take.
Merlin: Let's do another take of me first seeing this and becoming shattered, she do be.
John: can't we all get along hey hey man chill out stab stab stab think about the number of 20 think about how many 24 year olds in the bay area right now have 200 million dollars no i i don't want to either i don't want to get involved i want to get i want to rent a convention center and get all those 24 year olds in a room
John: And lecture them for a year.
John: I want to have that power.
John: I want to sit them down.
John: I want to show them PowerPoint demonstration after PowerPoint demonstration.
Merlin: What does this have to do with the tall lady who died?
John: What does this have to do with the tall lady?
Merlin: This is how you got to the $200 million part.
John: There are so many people now with $200 million who don't deserve it.
John: Who haven't earned it.
John: $200 million has become, and honestly, I can say that without fear of contradiction, have not earned it.
John: The fact that they wrote Flappy Bird app or, you know, were the fourth... No, keep riffing.
Merlin: I want to hear more things you know about the people of Maine.
John: They were the fourth employee of the fucking toilet brush app.
John: Or whatever.
John: And now they're worth $200 million.
John: Fuck them.
John: And fuck this capitalism that makes this real.
John: Yes, fuck it.
John: Fuck it, fuck it, fuck it.
John: There's something seriously immoral about it.
John: I don't believe it.
John: I don't believe in it.
John: Somebody should be arrested.
John: Yes.
John: It should be somebody.
Merlin: I think after a week at your police academy, the one over by the library or wherever it's going to be, I think they should maybe kind of let you know this is coming, but you definitely not get an announcement about it.
Merlin: But I think as the weeks go by in your training, it's easy enough to get in.
Merlin: You get into the building.
Merlin: You're fine to the police day to day, five days a week, six days a week, whatever it is.
Merlin: The doors are open to leave the building.
Merlin: You have to solve a crime or maybe help someone like you're not allowed to go home until you've helped somebody like two random days a week.
Merlin: You got to go change a tire or you might have to solve like a deadly murder suicide.
Merlin: OJT, am I right?
John: It's a little bit of a scouting thing.
John: You have to tie some knots or you have to help them across the street or you have to get your chip and tote.
Merlin: Criminal justice meets snipe hunting.
John: Yes.
John: I feel you trying to direct my attention away from... Have you ever met a woman who's six foot four?
Merlin: Just about to solve the capitalism problem.
Merlin: You were just about to put hundreds of strangers in a room and do something terrible to them because they've made a lot of money.
John: Yes.
John: Terrible.
John: Terrible.
John: No.
John: Listening to me lecture isn't terrible.
Merlin: I figured that was just the opening act.
John: I see an abattoir or maybe fighting shirtless with garbage can lids.
John: You would be the keynote speaker.
John: I would be.
John: I would just be softening them up.
John: And then you would come in and sweep up.
Merlin: Talk to them about time and attention and then encourage them to hit each other with bats with nails in them.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: We've taken the top five video games and made them real.
Merlin: Flappy Bird versus toilet brush.
John: ZZ Top, they're playing live.
John: Oh my god, ZZ Top played here in Seattle last night and I didn't go.
Merlin: Oh my gosh, I'm kind of surprised.
John: I'm a little bit surprised too, but it's one of those things.
Merlin: Have you seen them live before?
Merlin: I mean, I know they're one of your favorites.
John: I have seen them live and I was...
John: The first time I saw them live, I got kicked out of the concert halfway through because some security ape saw me drinking a bottle of peach schnapps.
John: And they booted me out.
John: And I was really upset.
John: I was like, take the schnapps.
John: There are people around me smoking pot.
John: Like, I just brought some schnapps.
Merlin: It's peach schnapps.
Merlin: There's levels to escalate.
Merlin: You don't just throw me out.
Merlin: You take the schnapps.
John: it's like a warning shot that's right they grabbed me and they threw me out into the rain so that made me mad particularly since it wasn't even like it's not like i was drinking southern comfort i was drinking peach schnapps i don't even know what the fuck i was thinking you might have just been off brand
John: It was the era.
John: And then the second time I saw him, it was like at a county fair.
John: And Billy Gibbons had that thing.
John: I've seen Tom Petty have this problem too, which is that they get to be a certain age and they're very skinny men.
John: Like Tom Petty is very skinny.
John: Billy Gibbons also not...
John: Not fat.
Merlin: Would you say scrawny?
John: There's a kind of scrawniness, but what I saw in both of these cases, and this is maybe one of the problems with standing backstage, is that their show costume is not made out of regular clothes.
John: By which I mean to say that when they take this... Like a refrigerator box.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: It's a costume.
John: Yeah, they're wearing like their show pants.
John: And their show pants are made to look good from 50 feet away.
John: But really they have elastic waistbands.
John: Like they are sweatpants.
Merlin: They're like a long day of RV driving ahead of them.
John: Yeah, they're sweatpants that have been tailored to look like... These are like Mike Mills pants.
Merlin: These are like spangly, I'm a rock star pants, but with like a comfy elastic waist.
John: Yeah, I mean, they're like black pants that are made to look like they are stovepipe cowboy pants, like gunslinger pants.
John: With a little bit of stage presence.
John: Yeah, they got a little stage stiffness.
John: But when you see them up close and from behind, you realize, oh, these are comfort waistbands.
John: And because everybody now is wearing in-ear remote radio monitors or whatever, everybody's got a little box, a little radio receiver on their belt loop, and that tends to pull down the elastic.
John: Oh, no.
John: So you get a little glimpse of the small of Tom Petty's back or the small of Billy Gibbons' back.
John: And the small of their scrawny little back is covered with a little tangle of white ass hair.
Merlin: What a horrible sight.
Merlin: And it just feels like... Nobody warns you you're going to see Billy Gibbons' ass hair.
John: I never wanted to see it.