Ep. 118: "The Articulated Hose King"
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Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Hi, Merlin.
Merlin: How's it going?
Merlin: It's going pretty good.
Merlin: How are you?
Merlin: I missed you.
I know.
Merlin: You're back.
Merlin: I'm almost back.
Merlin: Can you expand on that a little?
John: Well, I don't feel 100% back.
John: I'm leaving again.
John: In a couple of days to do some more cross-country airplane flights, which is my number one job.
John: Cross-country airplane flights.
John: So I'm here, but I feel like a dead man walking a little bit.
John: I got to get on an airplane.
John: I got to go do some more dumb shit.
John: it's like you're on parole from a plane right i'm on that's right i got a i got a three-day pass from my airplane and now i uh can just i can walk around i can breathe the normal air i can see the flowers blooming every minute feels like a lifetime oh it's almost it's almost uh it's worse than just being on the plane because that's the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was not having your flights contiguous my goodness
John: I thought, you know, the thing is, before I had a child, I would have just stayed back on the East Coast for the last week, and I would have just gone to cafes, and I would have gone to other cafes.
John: I don't know.
John: I would have eaten a lot of roast beef sandwiches.
Merlin: You would have had time to do all those things that you just don't have time to do now.
Merlin: You could start and maintain some new social media accounts.
Merlin: You could read and or write a book.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: You probably don't have the reading time that you're used to.
John: Yeah, I could go to Rockefeller Center and spin around and throw my hat in the air.
John: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Thinking that you were in Minneapolis?
John: Yeah, well, you know, everywhere you go, if you throw your hat in the air, you're in Minneapolis.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: And you can skate?
Merlin: Yeah, they probably don't have the skating yet.
Merlin: It's probably kind of hot for skating.
John: I dated a gal one time many years ago who had a picture of herself skating, you know, with kind of one leg lifted in the air and her hands up in the air in front of Rockefeller Center.
John: And it was right on her desk.
John: And it was right on her desk and it was facing out.
John: It wasn't one that she was looking at.
John: It was one she wanted you to see.
Merlin: I don't mean to get all Roland Barth here, but there's a lot of signification in that.
Merlin: So she had a picture of herself skating on one leg that she liked.
John: That's right.
John: But she wanted you to see it.
John: Right.
John: She had a Dorothy Hamill haircut, which helped the presentation of the whole photograph.
John: And she happened to be my guidance counselor.
John: When I was in college, I was...
John: Oh, is it that guidance counselor?
John: Yeah, she was, whatever, 39.
Merlin: Yeah, she was a little person, right?
Merlin: Was she like super dinklage?
John: She was a diminutive woman, but she did not have a chromosomal smallness.
Merlin: I think the term is spinner.
John: I do not think the term is spinner.
John: She was probably 4'11".
John: Nice.
John: Four foot.
Merlin: That's about half of your height.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: Well, when you consider that at the time I was teasing my hair up pretty big.
Merlin: Yeah, and you could always wear a small heel, you know?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Well, logger boots were all the rage at the time.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: Man, I think that's super interesting.
Merlin: I don't want to derail you, John.
Merlin: No, no, it's okay.
Merlin: The stuff that we put on our desk to have people ostensibly make comments about –
Merlin: You know, it's like, I feel this way about people with big dogs and funny t-shirts.
Merlin: Like, when somebody's got a big dog, or in San Francisco, as you know, two or more of the exact same large dog.
John: Afghans are very popular in San Francisco.
Merlin: Yes, they're both Belgian taverns.
Merlin: Is that okay with you?
Merlin: It's an Akita and another Akita.
John: God, he's so mean, your guy.
John: Excuse me.
John: He's so cynical and bored.
Merlin: He's got a lot of reasons to be angry, and just a couple are bubbling up to the surface like a hot soup.
Merlin: Excuse me, I'm sorry, is this your crosswalk?
Merlin: Should I have had some kind of a, applied for a lease to be here?
John: Someone just recently tweeted us asking us to DS our show.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: And I think you just gave them a lifetime of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Merlin: Excuse me!
Merlin: Oh, I'm sorry.
Merlin: You and your hate mobile will just be parked here in the crosswalk for the rest of the day, and I guess I'll just go walk into traffic if that's okay with you.
John: So your feeling is that people with two dogs, they're going to all the expense and trouble of caring for and feeding and cleaning up the poop of two giant dogs for the express purpose of inspiring you to ask them a question about them.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: I don't want to say it's the express purpose, but it's like having a Unix joke on your T-shirt, where I guess the hope is that somebody else who's a Unix person will give you a little head nod or something, right?
Merlin: But, you know, when you ask somebody to explain, like, you know, there's no place like 192.1, you know, it's like, what?
John: I crave a head nod from a Unix person.
Merlin: My whole life, I've never gotten a head nod.
Merlin: You just say, sudo head nod.
Merlin: And so, you know, but no, no.
Merlin: But here's the thing is like, you know, I got a kid and we walk around and we like dogs and we don't – she knows how to approach a dog if the owner says it's okay.
Merlin: But we'll sometimes say, hey, that's really cool.
Merlin: You have – you've got a – what's the giant Marmaduke dog?
Merlin: You've got a Great Dane.
Merlin: and you've got a shih tzu.
Merlin: That's really fun.
Merlin: That's hilarious.
Merlin: And they'll be like, here's me rolling my eyes.
John: Oh, wow, they're already bored of how hilarious it is that they did this hilarious thing.
Merlin: I just think you shouldn't be surprised that people are going to, you know, it's like the dad says in, what was it, 16 Candles, Pretty in Pink, 16 Candles, where he says, you know, if you put out those signals, people are going to pick up on that.
Merlin: If you get a big dog and a tiny dog, people are going to ask.
Merlin: You're talking about Harry Dean Stanton.
Merlin: Harry Dean Stanton was pretty in pink.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And so, I don't know.
Merlin: I'm just saying, if you've got to picture yourself ice skating on one leg and you're 4'11", don't be surprised if people want to make remarks.
John: Well, see.
John: And the thing is, sometimes I worry that my entire house, and really my entire existence, is just trolling for that kind of...
John: i'm just waiting for the question you know like why else do you put framed romanian train tickets on your mantelpiece unless you want somebody to say what are these and then the problem is i do not roll my eyes no no don't even don't lump yourself in with those you are leap up from the couch and
Merlin: Vaults across the room.
Merlin: What are those, you ask?
Merlin: Pull out the telescoping pointer that you always have in your waistcoat.
Merlin: Well, the light's all over.
Merlin: Slide.
Merlin: No, you've given me tours of Seattle, whether I want it or not, that were very enthusiastic.
Merlin: No, I did want them.
Merlin: You're really good.
Merlin: You're good at explaining what this body of water means.
Merlin: And you like people asking about your train tickets.
Merlin: And I think that's exactly what it's there for.
John: If I had a giant Marmaduke dog and then a small purse dog, I think I would be aware that I was doing that for a reason.
John: I was doing that to attract attention.
John: Not because I just happened to like these two specific breeds of dogs that happened to be at the ends of the dog scale.
Merlin: Right.
John: The dog continuum.
Merlin: Well, I mean it seems like you at the very least would get used to it.
Merlin: I mean it's not like you have like a horrible facial disfiguration and you have to explain it to your train accident or something.
Merlin: But the other one is, as I've said, I think this is – the Venn diagram on this is pretty perfect for people who wear utilicilts because every person I've ever met, every man I've met who wears a utilicilt is also super into talking about his utilicilt.
Yeah.
John: I met a man on a trail just yesterday.
John: No, no, no.
John: I'm sorry.
John: Day before.
John: You're not really all the way back yet.
John: I know.
John: It's hard to know where I am.
John: I went down to the Nisqually River Delta.
John: at sundown and i was walking along the trail and i noticed some beaver some actual real live beaver right off in the in the water next to the trail and i stopped to look at them i got a tail slap for the for the for the privilege of of watching them beave and uh then along the trail comes a guy in a utility kilt
John: With a large camera bag and a fairly flourishing mustache.
John: Check.
John: And he stopped and he was, you know, it's like, it's pretty isolated out there.
John: Toe shoes?
John: They have the Vibram toe shoes?
John: You know, when I looked down and I got to Utilikilt, my eyes went right back up.
John: I didn't go all the way to the shoes.
John: And he stopped and we chatted and he said, this is one of these parks where at sundown they close and the threat is that they're going to lock the gate and lock you in.
John: That's kind of a threat that they do at some of the parks out here.
John: Like sundown, gate is locked.
John: And then you have to call and maybe they'll come.
Maybe they won't.
John: So he's like, we're getting out of here because the gate is closing.
John: I was like, oh, damn it.
John: And we stopped and looked at the Beavers.
John: And there was just something, he was emanating vibe that was the equivalent of like if he had a foam trucker hat on that said, ask me about my Utila kilt.
John: And, you know, I think I wanted to communicate to him that I was a sophisticated guy.
John: I was from Seattle, Washington.
John: I didn't need to.
John: Anything there was to know about a utility guilt, I already knew.
Merlin: And we're okay with.
John: I was accepting of it in the same way as I would be if he had a facial disfiguration from a train accident.
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John: You give him the head nod.
John: I'm trying to think of what kind of train accident would produce just a facial injury.
Merlin: I imagine it stops kind of fast and it hits your fancy wine glass.
John: Oh, I see.
John: I see.
John: I had a dream last night that I was on an airplane, like a small two-propeller Beechcraft Bonanza-style airplane with some friends.
John: And then right on the final approach, it suddenly spun into a dive and crashed in a lake.
John: And then I was...
John: Suddenly, alone on the plane, all of the friends that I was there with before were gone, and I was struggling to get out of this plane underwater.
Merlin: Oh, God.
John: Yeah, I made it.
Merlin: You've been flying a lot.
John: Oh, my God.
John: I did not even make the connection.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: It's a little bit on the nose.
Merlin: It probably means something about sex or your teeth or something.
Merlin: But that's horrible.
Merlin: And so did you make it out?
Merlin: I did make it out.
Merlin: I'm here to podcast with you.
Merlin: It's you, but it's not you.
Merlin: And it's a podcast, but not a podcast.
Merlin: Paul is dead.
Merlin: 28th.
John: 28th.
Merlin: Oh, that's so funny you should say that.
Merlin: I was rereading the Playboy interview with John and his wife the other day.
Merlin: Oh, yeah?
Merlin: And what did you discover?
Merlin: He's irascible.
Merlin: He does not want to talk about his dogs.
Merlin: He does not want to talk about his kilt.
Merlin: And he definitely does not want to talk about the Beatles.
John: No, I watched an interview that was done by a Serbian television show.
John: An interview of Sean Lemon.
John: And after like the 20th question about his dad, he kind of had a fit and had to like collect himself and walk around the block or whatever.
Merlin: Really?
Yeah.
Merlin: I mean, I sound surprised, but I'm not.
Merlin: I would be so – I mean, anything even – imagine being like what?
Merlin: Like Jeff Emmerich or Neil Aspinall.
Merlin: Like at some point, yeah, you're into like telling your war stories, but at a certain point you might be, yeah, you want to talk about what I've done since the mid-60s?
John: Yeah, and this was – you know, Sean was on tour with his band playing a show in –
John: in uh you know somewhere in the balkans and this tv personality really wanted to interview him and really wanted to know about his dad and on the one hand you have i mean the one on one hand i had a ton of sympathy for him but on the other hand it's like it's like a uh
John: Sean Lennon was born with a Great Dane in one hand and a Shih Tzu in the other.
John: That's a little bit ping pong if you're talking about Yoko.
John: He's basically got a facial deformity, which is that one of his arms is John Lennon and one of them is Yoko Ono.
John: Like, how do you, first of all, how do you deal with a facial deformity that's on your arms?
John: I would not want an arm made of Yoko.
John: And second of all, like, there's just no, like, Jeff Emmerich at least can go into a bar and sit down and just be a bloke.
Merlin: That's a good point.
Merlin: That's a good point.
John: But Sean just, you know, like, and I feel like he's probably spent his whole life insulating himself.
John: I mean, I know for a fact he has on the Lower East Side, surrounded by like uber hipster musicians who just, you know, like play toy instruments and do graffiti or whatever it is that young people do.
Merlin: You must run into this all the time in the circles you move in, but there's the one kind of cool going like, hey, I know this guy who's really famous.
Merlin: But the even cooler thing is like, I know this guy who's really famous, but we never talk about it.
John: Yeah, we never talk about it.
John: I mean, I know people who have played with Sean Lennon.
John: And of course, after the initial, it's like going to a nude beach.
John: After the first 15 minutes of being on a nude beach...
John: you're no longer scandalized.
John: And after 30 minutes on a nude beach, you feel like, oh, why am I wearing clothes?
John: Why did I come to the nude beach and wear clothes?
John: Now I feel like an idiot.
John: And after 45 minutes on a nude beach, you're like, why do any of us wear clothes ever?
John: And hanging out with somebody like Sean Lennon, it's exactly like that.
John: After 15 minutes, you're like, oh, why am I wearing clothes?
Merlin: But also, like, you know, it's rough.
Merlin: Because, like, even in reading this interview from 1980, it was in Playboy, I think.
Merlin: Yeah, Playboy.
Merlin: And it's a pretty famous interview from around the time Double Fantasy came out.
Merlin: And, you know, the interviewer is pretty dogged about pursuing, you know, his questioning.
Merlin: And, of course, the Beatles keep coming up.
Merlin: But he also calls John on that whole thing of saying that something along the lines of he thinks of Sean as his, like, first son.
Merlin: And I think, you know, like, with so many things...
Merlin: John said – I mean he's provocative.
Merlin: He talks off the cuff.
Merlin: And when you take it out of context, he sounds like a dick because he's kind of a dick.
Merlin: But I think what he partly meant was like the whole thing with Cynthia, like that was not a great relationship.
Merlin: This is the first time I feel like I've got a kid that's mine from the beginning and all the way through.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But he said, yeah, well, that's how it does feel.
Merlin: So Sean's got to hold up the mantle of being like, whoa, trotted out by Yoko in the working class hero shirt.
Merlin: And he's got to hold up the mantle of talking about his father that everybody loves and misses.
Merlin: And that would suck.
Merlin: That would be so fun for like a week when you're 14.
Merlin: But imagine being like 30 and still having – everywhere he goes, people want to talk about John Lennon.
Merlin: It would totally suck.
John: For instance, when I was on tour in the Balkans... They're always asking you about John Lennon.
John: This guy, this reporter guy, did not come out and interview me.
John: But, you know, the audience at a, let's say, a Julian Lennon show at Pianos in New York or whatever.
John: Julian or Sean.
John: Oh, I'm sorry.
John: Sean.
John: Oh, my God.
John: Even the real son.
John: Sorry, the real son.
John: Not the imposter that looks just like him, that sounds just like him.
John: But the other one.
John: If you go to a Sean Lennon show on the Lower East Side, yeah, there's going to be a certain number of people there who are there just because it's Sean Lennon.
John: But there are also going to be a lot of people there who want to hear his particular brand of quirky, weird indie pop.
John: you know, like he's going to have legitimate fans of his band because it's New York and there are legitimate.
Merlin: There's enough people for a fan base for almost anything.
Merlin: Right.
John: If you're consistent, if you are playing in, uh, if you're playing a show in Croatia, uh,
John: Like when I played a show in Croatia and a guy came up to me and wanted to talk to me about Chris Walla, there was a part of me that was like, Oh God.
John: So you're just here because of, you're just here because this is the closest that death cab has come to Croatia recently.
John: Right.
John: But I was also grateful for him to be there, you know, like grateful for anybody that's, that gets out of the house and comes to see the show for, for somebody like Sean.
John: I'm sure there are some Croatian fans of his music, but probably about the same as there are Croatian fans of The Long Winters.
John: Everybody else there is in that weird Eastern European John Lennon cult.
Merlin: Yeah, and I mean, the thing is, for the rest of his life, unless he sets a hooker on fire, he's going to be famous for one thing by an order of magnitude.
John: And so the solution to his problem is don't leave the Lower East Side.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: Millions and millions of people never go four miles from where they were born.
John: Just stay in a place where no one ever asks you about your dad if it bothers you so much.
Merlin: And even if he pulls a Clapton and does a Delaney, Bonnie and Friends type thing, he's still going to be remembered.
Merlin: Oh, that's the one with John Landon's son in it.
Merlin: Like Phantom Planet.
Merlin: People know Phantom Planet because of the guy from Rushmore.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: He's a very nice guy.
Merlin: Is he really?
Merlin: Is that honestly true?
Merlin: I'm sorry about Starfuck, but that's so cool.
Merlin: Jason Schwartzman.
John: Yeah, he's a swell guy and his lady is swell.
John: They're very sweet people.
Merlin: I'm very happy to hear that.
John: I don't normally get all waxing sentimental or sweet about certain celebs.
John: But there are a couple I've met that just make me go into this kind of soft voice.
John: Oh.
John: Where I just feel so soft and sweet.
John: And one of them is Jason Schwartzman.
Merlin: Goddamn.
John: He's very sweet.
John: There's another one.
Merlin: Oh, yeah?
Merlin: Can you give me the initials?
John: P.R.
Merlin: Pauly Rambo.
John: Yes.
John: Close.
John: Very close.
Merlin: Oh, wait.
Merlin: Not the woman from PJ Harvey.
John: No, not PJ Harvey.
John: Paul Robeson.
John: So close.
Pauly.
John: PR.
John: Makes me feel really soft.
John: Makes you feel soft.
John: So nice.
John: Such a nice person that you just can't even believe that they're also a huge star.
John: Pam Madauber.
John: No.
John: How was Paul Robeson close to Pam Madauber?
John: That's my question for you.
John: You were really close.
Merlin: Her parents changed it.
Merlin: They changed it.
Merlin: It's got a silent R. It was Pam Ramadaburowitz Steenman.
Yeah.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: Who is it?
Merlin: Paul Rudd.
Merlin: Oh, Paul Rudd.
Merlin: Delightful.
Merlin: That's so nice to hear, because I could be real on the bubble about guessing which way that would go, and I'm very happy to hear that.
John: Oh, I just want to marry him.
John: He's such a sweet person.
John: Is he handsome in person?
John: Oh, so handsome.
John: Those eyes and the smile.
John: He's very generous with the smile.
John: He's got an easy smile.
John: Easy smile.
John: And the thing that you want Jason Schwartzman to be,
John: is generous with the like insider funny funny banter and like back and forth and he is oh he's generous with the back and forth in the same way that paul rudd is generous with the like the the sweet appreciative smile
Merlin: I think that takes – I'm going to guess.
Merlin: I'm going to speculate.
Merlin: I think that takes a lot of character.
Merlin: It takes a lot of character to move beyond like, oh, you're the guy from those movies.
Merlin: Tell me about Bill Murray's story.
Merlin: Isn't he like the nephew of Francis Ford Coppola or something like that?
John: That's right.
Merlin: I mean that must be exhausting.
Merlin: Can you imagine in the early days how exhausting that would have been?
Merlin: All the interviews for – I guess Rushmore was his first big movie.
John: Well, but you think about him.
John: He's also one of these people who should validate our theory about getting famous young.
John: I mean, he was famous as a very young person.
John: Right.
John: Some might even say born into a royal family.
John: He should be like a Corey level of fucked up.
John: Yeah, he should be terrible.
John: But instead, he's like happily married.
John: His wife is a sweet person also.
John: I mean, I don't want to overstate the degree to which I know these people.
Right.
John: But Jason Schwartzman and I have met a handful of times.
John: It's the third time you said Jason.
John: Jason Schwartzman.
Merlin: The thing is, though, you're going to notice.
Merlin: You're going to notice.
Merlin: You can't help but notice when you meet somebody like that.
Merlin: Like when I met Pete Rose.
Merlin: I met Pete Rose twice and both times made an extremely strong impression.
Merlin: I love those stories.
Merlin: He's the one with the daughter that ain't got no arm.
Merlin: Huh.
Merlin: Was the remark.
Merlin: Did I ever tell you that story?
John: I don't know if I've heard that story.
Merlin: When I was a kid, our upstairs neighbors were some of our best friends.
Merlin: And it was a kid exactly my age and his younger daughter.
Merlin: And I think it might have been a thalidomide situation.
Merlin: I see.
Merlin: She had a situation.
Merlin: Yep.
Merlin: And she was just a perfectly adorable kid with a really problematic arm.
Merlin: And at one point, I was at Pete Rose's restaurant, as you do, in Cincinnati.
Merlin: And Mr. Rose was dining there.
Merlin: And mom said, don't run over.
Merlin: Wait until he's done eating.
Merlin: Again, now this is his big dog, right?
Merlin: If he's going to sit in his own restaurant, you've got to expect nine-year-old kids to run up and want to be acknowledged.
Merlin: So my dad ran over.
Merlin: He's famously not a super...
Merlin: I don't think, I wouldn't call him an intellectual.
John: Okay.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: But I ran over and I was like, hey, he wrote Charlie Hustle and asked him to sign something.
Merlin: He signed it.
Merlin: He has an awesome autograph.
Merlin: And so, and by the way, do you know, didily didily D he's a, he's a scout for the reds.
Merlin: And he says, oh yeah, yeah, I know him.
Merlin: He's the one with the daughter that ain't got no arm.
John: Mm hmm.
John: Even as a kid, you had to kind of walk away, turn slowly and walk away, wondering.
Merlin: With giant saucer eyes, I slowly pull the napkin away and say, thank you, Mr. Hustle.
John: He's the one what ain't got no arm.
Merlin: It was simpler times, simpler players, you know, and he would dive headfirst into a lot of situations, literally.
John: I was in a restaurant one time, a steakhouse, and Michael Jordan was there.
John: And you could feel the energy in the steakhouse.
John: Even the steaks were excited.
John: But it was a steakhouse, and this was a place where everybody else in the place was used to being the big wheel, the big cheese where they are.
John: You know, like this expensive place.
John: These are guys, these are barrel-chested guys with like jewelry.
John: Guys that wear jewelry, let's just say.
Merlin: Oh, but they were all like the biggest frog in their pond.
Merlin: They were the Nathan Arizona, like largest seller of unpainted furniture.
Merlin: That's right.
John: And so it was a little bit like Sean Ono Lennon on the Lower East Side.
John: Michael Jordan was there.
John: Everybody was excited.
John: And it's okay to be excited about Michael Jordan, no matter who you are.
John: And yet...
John: If you're the, you know, if you're like the articulated hose king of Stahoma County.
John: You're not going to run over, you know, and like put your napkin down or whatever.
John: And Jordan is wearing one of those suits that has too many buttons.
John: You know what I mean?
John: Like a Nehru collar jacket with like 14 buttons.
Merlin: Which just exaggerates his enormous height.
John: Uh-huh.
John: And he's a beautiful man and he's poetry in motion.
John: And I'm in there, frankly, to have a stake.
John: Sure, I'm a fan of Michael Jordan in the general sense.
John: Yeah, as an institution.
John: Yeah, I don't want anything from him.
John: But it happens that I'm leaving the steak restaurant at the same time that Michael Jordan is.
John: And we walk out the door and we're in the alcove.
John: We're basically in the elevator together for a minute.
John: And he doesn't, you know, I'm just trying to get out the door too.
John: He's just trying to get out the door.
John: We don't have any kind of exchange.
John: But we walk out the door together onto the sidewalk.
John: It's 1130 at night.
John: And there's an eight-year-old kid standing there holding a basketball.
John: As far as I can tell, unchaperoned.
John: That's really hard to explain.
John: And I was like, I stopped and watched him, you know, graciously.
John: Although, what are you going to do in that situation?
John: My hand hurts.
John: You know, sign this kid's basketball.
John: And I just can't stop looking around like, where did this kid come from?
John: I'm in the middle of the city.
John: It's 11 o'clock at night.
John: Where did he get a basketball?
John: And know that Michael Jordan's walking out of a steakhouse.
John: Know that Michael Jordan is in this place.
Merlin: It doesn't add up.
John: And who brought him here?
John: Who's waiting around the corner?
John: And Jordan signs the ball.
John: His entourage all, you know, hearty, hearty, har.
John: They all walk off down the street.
John: And I'm just standing there looking at this kid.
John: And, you know, the kid kind of trails along behind them just trying to be in Jordan's orbit.
John: And, you know, I kind of...
John: I had places to be.
John: I went the other direction.
John: I never did determine how this kid fell from the sky holding a basketball in downtown Seattle in the middle of the night.
Merlin: That's star power.
Merlin: That's star power.
Merlin: I'm going to go with somebody who works in the kitchen called their sister who was watching him and said, haul butt over here and bring a basketball.
Merlin: And then stay in the car?
Merlin: Till 1130.
Merlin: Because John Roderick is here and he's ready to sign stuff.
John: I bet you it was his sister or his sister-in-law and she was waiting in the car because she didn't care.
John: And the kid jumps out.
John: That is an answer to that problem that wouldn't have occurred to me.
Merlin: It's nice to see.
Merlin: Did I cut you off?
Merlin: Not at all, no.
Merlin: I don't know how this happened.
Merlin: I've been playing the Beatles for my daughter forever, hoping that it'll catch on.
Merlin: I'm not a pill about that many things.
Merlin: If there's a certain comic she doesn't like, don't worry.
Merlin: We're not going to make a big deal about that.
John: I've been reading The Watchman to my daughter, hoping that
Merlin: That's terrific.
Merlin: Is she really connecting with Silk Spectre 2?
John: I feel like Rorschach is her spirit animal.
Merlin: Rorschach's great.
Merlin: He's the best.
John: Anyway, so you're playing the Beatles for your daughter.
Merlin: I've been doing that forever.
Merlin: In fact, there's certain records that would go into rotation for certain events.
Merlin: Like, you know, for what we graduated from Toy Story to always listening to that Queen, like Best of Queen album when I pick her up from school to where she could like sing, you know, Somebody to Love, which practically made me cry.
Merlin: It was so great.
Merlin: But then we got into a side one of the White Album we would listen to a lot.
Merlin: So she knows the Beatles a little bit.
Merlin: I was looking at Hard Day's Night.
Merlin: It was after bath time.
Merlin: It was not official TV time.
Merlin: I shouldn't have had the TV on.
Merlin: It was an attractive nuisance.
Merlin: And she came out and she started watching A Hard Day's Night and she thought it was a riot.
Merlin: Understand, this is a kid whose favorite movie right now is Duck Soup.
Merlin: So she loved – she thought it was hilarious.
Merlin: And so yeah, I could tell when she's really into it because when there's a line, whether she understands the line or not, she'll turn to me with a giant grin and repeat the line to me.
Merlin: He says his grandfather's very clean.
Merlin: Why does he say he's very clean?
Merlin: But she loved it.
Merlin: And so this was concomitant with me going back and re-watching the anthology videos.
Merlin: I've been watching hours and hours and hours of the 90s anthology videos, which are 100% Beatles approved and everything.
Merlin: But still, just going back and watching somewhere between the second and fourth episodes when Beatlemania really kicks in –
Merlin: last night we were watching these together and I was showing her the circa 64 February 64 arriving in America and I was like showing them at Shea Stadium when they couldn't they didn't have they didn't have monitors as George Martin points out they didn't have monitors Ringo couldn't hear nobody could hear anything their vocals would bounce back in like a second and a half can you imagine you're sitting there every night and there's people running at you you have police literally protecting people from running at you and you have no idea what they want yeah
Merlin: I mean, I, and I said to my daughter, like, what do you think of that?
Merlin: And she's like, wow, they had to put up a fence.
Merlin: That's crazy.
Merlin: Everybody's running around.
Merlin: I was like, I said, you know, to her and my wife, I was like, to me, that would be really fun for about an hour.
Merlin: And that would be about all that I would need of that to be to where like you, you can't even like go into a hotel hallway, let alone the lobby, let alone a steakhouse.
Merlin: Your life is just gone.
Merlin: It's made me really rewatching that.
Merlin: I mean, I know, I know this, but it really makes me reappreciate somebody who is a smart ass and slightly depressed person like John.
Merlin: Like appreciating what life must have turned into for those guys.
Merlin: I mean, it's an obvious 50-year-old point, but it's bananas to see how crazy it really was and how their lives were completely turned upside down by it.
John: Do you remember the first time you saw Hard Day's Night?
Merlin: I don't remember specifically.
Merlin: I feel like I might have seen it in college.
Merlin: We had a bunch of laser discs at our media center, and I think I might have watched it there.
Merlin: But I think I saw it in my 20s.
John: Early on in the go-rent-a-VHS tape at a VHS rental place, which would have been in high school.
John: Video rental stores didn't blow up until much later, but there was one in Anchorage.
John: early on in high school for me.
Merlin: Had one copy of Eating Raul and A Hard Day's Night.
John: Eating Raul, My Dinner with Andre.
John: That was frequently available.
John: Yeah, right.
John: No, no, there was a store and we definitely went to it because I remember my friend sent me to get a movie one time and I brought back...
John: What's the one about the morbid, death-obsessed kid and his 80-year-old girlfriend?
John: Harold and Maude.
John: Right.
John: I brought back Harold and Maude, and all my friends were, like, excited to curl up on the couch together and drink a couple of strohs.
John: Watch robots blow shit up.
John: Yeah, right.
John: Or that was even before robots blowing shit up.
John: But, you know, they wanted to watch a... Boobs and pillow fights.
John: Yeah, Caddyshack or Porky's.
John: And I brought back Harold and Maude and, you know...
John: And half the people fell asleep and the other half just stayed awake out of pure fury at me.
John: And I was like, this movie is amazing.
John: And I was like, I was banned forever.
John: But one of those little parties, probably ninth or 10th grade, we watched A Hard Day's Night.
John: And I was already a Beatles fan.
John: But the excitement that is captured in that movie, the charm of those guys, and the fact, as you're saying, that they were having a completely unprecedented experience.
John: unprecedented in human history except maybe but and maybe maybe napoleon uh had a similar people like like uh what like rudy valley and frank sinatra had had it but you know not on like that international level that they were right and i mean those guys would like walk out the stage door of the paramount theater on uh you know broadway and 42nd and there would be a a mob of girls let's say even a thousand girls uh
Merlin: There were women – I was showing – I was saying to Eleanor, this is when they get their MBEs, right?
Merlin: When they got those – the Queen gave them their awards.
Merlin: And there – I'm sitting there and watching teenage girls literally climbing over the 20-foot gates at Buckingham Palace.
Merlin: Can you imagine if you did that today?
Merlin: It's completely bananas.
John: The bodies are losing their hats.
John: Exactly.
John: But, you know, there may be a reason, Merlin, that we talk so much about the Beatles and Hitler on this program.
John: I'm listening.
John: Because in our formative years, they are the two modern...
John: figures, the Beatles being one of a piece, right?
John: The two modern figures that have generated that amount of mass adulation.
John: Like the Beatles, those crowd scenes and people freaking out about the Beatles and then the Nuremberg rallies and the Torchlight rallies, like they are of a family and they don't have
John: There's no third equivalent, right?
John: Stalin and Mao had cults of personality, but they didn't have rapturous followers.
Merlin: Yeah, when you see people in the early days, and again, this is before the total manufacture of these kinds of scenes, you just see those women in dirndls leaning out with flowers, looking like they were losing their mind.
Merlin: Like he was a rock star.
Merlin: Hitler was a rock star.
Merlin: Yeah, absolutely.
John: But what's so amazing about A Hard Day's Night is every subsequent movie, like concert movie, rock band movie about a young musician getting famous...
John: is taking place in a post-Hard Days Night world, right?
John: Every subsequent person to get massively famous knows that the Beatles have done this already, and everywhere they go, people are saying, you're as big as the Beatles, and everybody knows that that's a lie, right?
John: Like, to be compared to the Beatles is the highest...
John: compliment you can pay to somebody those people never replaced the beatles in terms of those comparisons yeah nobody ever said they sold more records than elvis and slim whitman combined yeah nobody no there's no new equivalent and i wonder how long in human history there will be how long it will take before there is before that resets and there's no institutional memory of the beatles right and it's and there's a new person who becomes the the person who's bigger than jesus the
John: But what's incredible about A Hard Day's Night for me is that all of that is going on, and they have a kind of smug confidence, but they also are so...
John: so charming and self-effacing and small still, you know what I mean?
John: Like, like they are still teasing Ringo and Ringo could still, could still honestly be kind of the lonely one or whatever, you know, like, uh,
John: I don't know.
John: There's something about it that I think about every rock documentary I've seen since then.
John: And everybody is so knowing now and so self-aware and so the smugness overtakes people.
John: all the, you know, overshadows the charm that got them there.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And it shouldn't have been anywhere near as successful as a piece of art as it is.
Merlin: I mean, because it's pretty, it's really, I think it's a very bold movie, even to this day.
Merlin: It's so fresh.
Merlin: And the grandfather is so perfect.
Merlin: It's just his expressions in that movie are so goddamn funny.
John: I hate the ending of A Hard Day's Night.
John: Does it end?
John: Exactly.
John: Nobody even knows.
John: It ends with the helicopter flying off, and they're throwing out the fake signed photographs.
John: Oh.
Merlin: Aspinall is throwing the... But the beauty part is, you think about any of the rock and roll movies before that, and they were closer to what I would think of as a review.
Merlin: The kind of things you'd see on Broadway in the 20s and 30s, a collection of songs being performed with only the loosest
Merlin: narrative involved, right?
Merlin: And in this, I mean, it's so great that they were able to capitalize on the image of the Beatles as being popular without it being stupid and without it being smug for the most part.
Merlin: And so fresh.
Merlin: It didn't hurt also that the songs were pretty great.
Merlin: Yeah, the songs are all right.
Merlin: And they're also cute.
John: But it makes me think...
John: I was having a conversation with a good friend of ours the other day, and I was kind of reducing my theory of performance, fame and performance, to a kind of binary code, as we like to do.
John: Two kinds of people in this world.
John: That ends well.
John: Winners, losers.
John: Two kinds of people in this world.
John: Here's the thing about fame.
John: Living, dying.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: Two kinds of trouble in this world, sorry.
Yeah.
John: uh and and what i kind of realized was that most of most of the performers i know can be uh their motivation can be described either as uh being primarily in order to have people love them right like we we all know a lot of performers who who want
John: It's like a validation-based motivation.
John: Well, wait, wait.
John: That's the... I would describe that as the other.
John: Okay.
John: So, to be loved is a kind of pure experience in and of itself that doesn't... It isn't...
John: It doesn't have a further motivation beyond just like the feeling of that wall of adoration.
John: So somebody knows who you are and they like what you do.
John: And they like you.
John: They like you.
John: Yeah, right.
John: They are projecting like on you and you are experiencing that like and that feeling is so positive that it becomes a kind of addiction.
John: You don't want to get off the stage.
Yeah.
John: You'll go up on any stage because it gives you an opportunity to have exposure to that like, right?
John: And I would put Paul McCartney in that category.
John: Paul has an uncomplicated relationship with stardom.
John: He likes it.
John: He wants to be liked, and he knows he's likable.
John: And then the other motivation is to be – the way I described it the other day was to be proved right or to be validated.
John: Right?
John: And if you think about it – I'm just sitting here blindly speculating on which one you are.
John: Well, I think I'm absolutely somebody who wants to be vindicated.
John: And I think John Lennon was also somebody who wanted to be vindicated.
John: He wanted to be proved right.
John: And all the adulation was in the service of a secondary goal.
John: Sure, he liked feeling the love, but more importantly, he wanted to be proved right.
John: And sadly, that was also Hitler's motivation.
John: He wanted to be proved right.
John: more than he wanted difficult childhood no strong father figure loves to paint and when you think about it's all lined up when you think about like like i think ringo probably just wanted to be loved and i think george harrison wanted to be vindicated
John: And if you go and look at every sort of famous person and the way they carry themselves and the way they handle their fame, you can see this pretty clear people shade one way or the other.
John: Do they want to be loved first?
John: Or do they have something to prove?
John: Do they want to be proved right?
Right.
John: And the sad thing is both things seem bottomless, right?
John: You can always be loved more and you can never actually fully be proved right.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And they, there's no way to ever get enough of that.
Merlin: And I think Paul, I mean, I'm sure it was trying for everybody, but Paul even says as much that he was the one who was still having a pretty good time through, through a lot of that.
Merlin: You know, Ringo was, it was frustrating to Ringo because when he's playing live, you couldn't hear what he was doing.
Merlin: He felt like he wasn't getting better as a musician.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But, you know, you're right.
Merlin: On the one hand, in your model, what do you call the first one to be loved?
Merlin: To be loved versus to be vindicated.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Well, to be loved is – I don't want to say it's not hard, but it doesn't require a lot of sophistication from the person who's loving you.
Merlin: Like having one more person who loves you versus the number that you had yesterday is a win.
Merlin: But with vindication, there's always somebody you wish had to admit that they were wrong and apologize for what happened before.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: So, you know, it's – again, there's no limit to that as well.
Merlin: But think about, like, with John, I mean, there's that period in, like, 1906.
Merlin: They had a pretty – as much as good as their records were, they had a rough patch for a couple years for a lot of reasons.
Merlin: I guess they didn't realize how big the Jesus from Mark was.
Merlin: Like, what a big deal that was and how taken out of context it was, and now it's all this.
Merlin: But that –
Merlin: But that was a rough patch for them.
Merlin: And John was unhappy.
Merlin: He called it his fat Elvis phase where he was depressed and felt like he was a fat guy and nobody loved him.
Merlin: But even at the point where now you got all the love that you could want and then you just got to keep doing what you're doing to keep being loved.
Merlin: But with the vindication, I wonder if there's a certain cutoff point where it just turns to a certain kind of bitterness because there's no amount of vindication that can make it worthwhile, especially if you're a basically cynical person like I think he was.
John: You could see that in his relationship to Dylan, right?
John: Because Dylan, like, who could the Beatles possibly envy?
John: They envied Dylan because Dylan was vindicated more than loved.
John: And there's that there.
John: So as a result of this, like some artists want to be loved, some want to be vindicated.
John: There's also two kinds of fame, right?
John: And Dylan had the best, in my estimation, and I think in a lot of our estimations, the better kind of fame, which was the vindication fame.
John: All the critics loved him.
John: He set a new bar.
John: He was the voice of a generation.
John: He was...
John: Meaningful.
Merlin: And after a certain time, you no longer had to have an argument about whether Bob Dylan was one of the most important artists of the time.
Merlin: Vindication is when you can say, well, I don't like the Beatles, but I'm not going to dispute their sales numbers and their critical acclaim.
Merlin: That's vindication, right, at a certain point, is that nobody can really dispute what you've managed to accomplish.
John: Yeah, and so Lennon perceived himself to be sort of in second place to Dylan as the voice of the truth, right?
John: The hard-edged voice of the truth.
John: He didn't see himself as, I think probably within the Beatles, he was more and more resentful of Paul's...
John: effortless songwriting, but, but the way that that resentment took shape was that he thought Paul was a, was an intellectual lightweight and he was comparing Paul, not to himself, but to Dylan in terms of like, who, what, what, you know, like, remember what they, when they saw, when they saw him, when they saw Dylan at Royal Albert Hall and you could hear a pin drop and they were like,
John: Thinking of their own careers where they couldn't even hear themselves play, and the idea that an audience would go and sit reverently like that was such a contrast.
John: And to somebody who wants vindication, who wants to be proved right, that must have been the hardest thing for Lennon to watch.
John: And Dylan won the vindication lottery.
John: And what did it do to that man?
John: You know, it turns him into really a troll that lives under a bridge.
Merlin: Yeah, it's like people, I guess, kind of like Lou Reed or like sometimes John Lennon.
Merlin: It became this contest of like, oh, you think you can love that impossible thing?
Merlin: Well, let me make this next impossible thing.
Merlin: It will be impossible for you to love.
Merlin: Self-portrait.
Merlin: You're welcome.
John: Ha, ha, ha.
John: Yeah.
John: I feel like I wish there was a third way.
John: I'm tired of wanting to be vindicated.
John: Are you really?
John: Well, somebody asked me the other day, like, who are the people that you want...
John: to who are the people you want to be proved right to.
John: And I, you know, I was thinking about where, what the generation of it was, the genesis.
John: And it was all, it's all back in school.
John: Yeah, of course.
John: You know, the teachers and the guidance counselors.
John: Somebody who made fun of the white out on your jean jacket.
John: Yeah, nobody got me and they punished me.
Yeah.
John: And I'm like, you know, a lot of those people are dead now.
John: Who am I?
John: I'm just, I am just trying to prove, I'm trying to be proved right to some proxy of them.
John: Some big picture.
Merlin: Some avatar of a bully.
John: Yeah, the teachers, the schools, the government.
John: And the people, ultimately, you know, the conventional wisdom.
John: And what, I can, it's an unreachable goal.
John: I'll never be, I will, if that is my standard of achievement, that I cannot rest or feel like I've done a good job in life unless I have rewritten history and they model the schools on me.
John: uh the chances and and then when if that does happen when you get it you might say the portrait's unflattering yeah i'll just be like no well i suppose but there's so much more i could have done you know like i i don't feel like that is a winning strategy for uh short-term or long-term happiness
John: to want to show them.
Merlin: The vindication hole is a big thing to fill.
Merlin: And so is the love hole.
Merlin: But, you know, I got a theory on this.
Merlin: I'm not a successful person.
Merlin: But, like, if I were, I think what I would want in life is, and this is not what it sounds like.
Merlin: I'm not saying do what you love.
Merlin: I'm not saying quit your job.
Merlin: I'm not saying any of that shit.
Merlin: What I'm saying is, like, to me, a certain measure of success has to involve two things.
Merlin: That your life becomes, for me, your life becomes less rather than more complex and
Merlin: And you like the way you spend your day.
Merlin: So to me, that doesn't mean you don't do things you don't like.
Merlin: It means if you're a filmmaker and you think you have to love your job, well, get ready.
Merlin: You're going to have to deal with this key grip over here.
Merlin: And then this is what we got for daylight left.
Merlin: And this is what the budget is for mustaches or whatever it is.
Merlin: But I would say, you know, the...
Merlin: Not just when people talk about, oh, do you like what you do?
Merlin: Well, I think one marker is, do you like how you spend your day?
Merlin: And if you like spending your day making this kind of music and then promoting it and getting on Twitter or whatever, or going out and then performing that music or dealing with revisions to the liner notes and all that kind of stuff, to me, that's a certain kind of success that's much more inward turning than how other people reacted to it.
Merlin: And if you can get the vindication and the love out of doing something like Jerry Lewis, the vindication love of what it is that you're making, that's a good thing.
Merlin: But like there are a lot of people out there who are getting constantly more hugely revindicated all the time.
Merlin: But I think they still kind of hate the way they spend their day and they become bitter people.
John: I would like if there was just a tube inserted into my stomach that allowed me to sit and eat a continuous stream of single peanut M&Ms, and yet they would just then go out.
John: I could eat them.
Merlin: and crunch them yeah and taste them and feel them go down right but then they would just keep going out you need like a selective um like ostomy back you need something that can look for bioavailable uh single bite m&m pieces and know what to sort out leave the water you know and i guess the question that i have is what use in a in a kind of super trained context
John: If I was producing a very small stream of masticated nut chocolate candy paste, like pre-digested but post-salivated, post-chewed,
John: What is that paste worth?
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Depending on what use you find for it.
Merlin: It's obviously probably not going to be a great lubricant.
Merlin: Maybe it would be a good spackle.
Merlin: In cold weather climates, sure.
Merlin: I don't know if that would be brittle.
Merlin: I don't know what the performance qualities are.
Merlin: But you could also turn it into something that you give to children who don't know where it's been.
Merlin: Kids are pretty cool about a lot of different kinds of foods as long as they don't know much about it.
John: Let's say it becomes a kind of almond paste or like peanut butter almost.
John: It's almost Nutella.
John: Wait a minute.
John: Is that what Nutella is?
John: Oh, boy.
John: It sure looks like it.
Merlin: Has anybody ever seen Nutella being made?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: You can put any kind of nut on a jar legally.
Merlin: It doesn't have to have anything to do with what's actually in it.
Merlin: I think if you smashed a hazelnut, it would not look like Nutella.
Merlin: If you took...
Merlin: Hazelnut?
John: You ate peanut M&Ms and hazelnuts and chewed them and swallowed them and then sucked them out through a tube.
John: How different from Nutella would that be?
Merlin: I think mostly indistinguishable.
Merlin: You would be a bespoke confectionary treat extruding unit.
Merlin: A treat extruding unit.
Merlin: You just chop them into little bits like Tootsie Rolls.
Merlin: What's in a fucking Tootsie Roll?
Merlin: Is that chocolate?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Is it caramel?
Merlin: No, not really.
Merlin: What the fuck is that?
Merlin: I didn't think about that either.
John: I'm guessing that somewhere down the food chain, like up at the top, there's me who likes to eat peanut M&M's.
John: Somewhere down the food chain for me is someone who likes to eat a kind of spreadable, soft, M&M-flavored material.
John: And then they could have a similar tube.
John: And somewhere down the line from them, there's somebody who wants a real smooth, creamy...
John: You know, condensed.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Maybe something for the older folks who can't chew very well, but still like a little bit of a fake nut taste in their sluiced dessert.
Merlin: So Nutella is an Italian food.
Merlin: Is it?
Merlin: It's Italian?
Merlin: It's Italian.
Merlin: I've never understood the Nutella cult.
Merlin: I've never – I know it's a thing and people are going to go, Nutella?
Merlin: Have you really tried it?
Merlin: Have you ever tried it on rye bread or whatever?
Merlin: No, I haven't.
Merlin: Have you had it on – have you had it on communion?
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: I just – I'm not at all interested in Nutella and here's why.
Merlin: I'm not interested in Nutella for very much the same reason.
Merlin: You talk about fucking validation.
Merlin: You ever go into your mom's refrigerator back in the day and you see something that says something, something chocolate, but it's baker's chocolate?
Merlin: Uh-huh.
Merlin: And you go, oh, my fucking God, how have I lived in this house for seven years and never noticed there's fucking chocolate in the refrigerator?
Merlin: And you wolf it down and it's literally the most disgusting and bitter thing you've ever had in your life.
Merlin: And it's a total abortion and you can't believe they were legally allowed to put chocolate even on the label.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: That's kind of how I feel about Nutella.
Merlin: Nutella.
Merlin: It's got the performance qualities of peanut butter, but it's made out of something that's not chocolate.
John: Nutella debuted.
John: In 1964, it is a modern abomination.
John: It's a Beatles age.
John: Yeah.
John: Spreadable treat.
John: Yeah.
John: April 64.
John: When did Love Me Do hit?
Merlin: Right about that same time.
Merlin: Two or three months earlier is when the Beatles came to the U.S.
Merlin: The Beatles and Nutella.
Merlin: It's no coincidence.
John: I don't think it is a coincidence.
Merlin: Also, Italy, Hitler worked with the Italians in the Axis.
John: See what I'm saying?
John: Italy, post-war Italy has had like 750 governments.
Merlin: I had a girlfriend in college back in the days when you couldn't get Nutella so easy.
Merlin: Back in the 80s, I guess it wasn't as widespread.
Merlin: And she would squee when her parents sent her a care package that had Nutella in it.
Merlin: It was like the happiest day of her life.
John: I got a care package today.
John: from a Polish girl living in Germany that has like 14 different kinds of lint chocolate balls.
John: I thought you were going to stop at lint.
John: 14 different kinds of lint.
John: Lint.
John: That sounds delicious, John.
John: Yeah, and there was also a lunchbox in it full of cookies.
John: And the lunchbox, like a tin, pressed tin lunchbox, that commemorates D-Day.
John: Wow.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah, my Polish doctor friend living in Berlin sent me a... That's the actual German word, too.
John: Sent me a D-Day lunchbox full of cookies.
John: Polish Dr. Freude.
Okay.
John: polska polska i was right doctor doctor is freunda girlfriend a friend friend is just friend maybe freunda is girlfriend i don't know that's so nice uh yeah she's a doctor professor uh and um and today i have this beautiful box of that's work john that's a lot of separate pieces to put together to make one care package that's a very sweet gesture
John: It did.
John: And you know, the problem that I often have is that I wish that I utilized the mails more to send beautiful things to people.
John: I have things lying around that I could send to people who would appreciate them.
Merlin: You've got to have scale for an operation like that.
John: That's the thing, and I don't want to use the males, partly because, for instance, I still have not solved my tooth problem.
Yeah.
John: which is now seven years in the offing.
Merlin: Are you still technically temporary?
John: I still have a temporary tooth that's just glued in there with safety pins.
Merlin: It's like you never got your plastic library card.
Merlin: You're still using that little flimsy guy.
Merlin: Does that just break sometimes?
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Any day it could break.
John: It could break right now.
John: A pigeon could fly in the window, hit me in the face, break my tooth.
John: And...
John: And so there are all these things I want to do in life.
John: I want to change the schools.
John: I want to ride on a tank into Paris.
John: I want to get my tooth fixed.
John: And I want to use the mails to send nice things to people.
Merlin: I hope you have a whiteboard you're reading off of.
John: And I cannot manage even the smallest detail.
John: And now I have gone, I had an assistant, then she passed the baton to a second assistant.
John: Now the second assistant is very clearly needing to pass the baton to a further assistant, a third assistant.
John: It has only been...
John: six months since I even began this assistant business.
John: And I've already had three of them.
John: And I don't think it's my fault.
John: I don't.
John: I don't.
John: I have a pretty good sense of when it's my fault.
John: Have you made them agree with that?
John: You know, everybody has their own narrative.
John: I can't impose my narrative on other people.
John: It seems like a cherry job.
John: I've been watching...
John: I've been watching very closely.
John: and I've been checking my privilege on an hourly basis, and I am pretty confident that I have not been the reason.
John: But then again, who knows?
John: They might not say, except on a message board somewhere.
John: The second assistant, the reason that I need now a third assistant is that I got the second assistant, or didn't get, but made a nice recommendation to someone who gave the second assistant a proper job,
John: Which now is occupying like 80 hours a week of her time.
Merlin: And they keep propagating new assistants?
Merlin: Sounds like fruit flies.
John: That's the thing.
John: I think it's a thing where you have to go through three or four people who are like, I want to be your assistant.
John: Before you find the person who says, I am your assistant.
John: You know what I mean?
John: You feel me?
Merlin: I do.
Merlin: I told you this a long time ago.
Merlin: I knew a guy – I'm not saying this is a great strategy, but I knew a guy who hired several people agreeing that he would basically pay them for a certain amount, like a month or whatever, and then he just winnowed them down like Bataan style.
Merlin: Until he got down to the last one and said to everybody else, one at a time, he'd say, okay, you're out of this elimination.
Merlin: I got three left.
Merlin: You got two left.
Merlin: Fight with the pool cue.
Merlin: One of you wins.
Merlin: Right.
John: I was thinking I would just break a pool cue and throw it on the floor and say, I can only hire one of you.
Merlin: Why is this serious?
John: I don't have my bell.
John: I don't have my bell.
Merlin: I got you covered.
Merlin: Welcome back.
Merlin: Woo.