Ep. 141: "Al's Yacht"
Merlin: This episode of Roderick on the Line is sponsored by Squarespace.
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Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hey, John.
Merlin: Hi, Merlin.
Merlin: How's it going?
Merlin: Good.
John: Is it early?
John: It's a little early.
John: I mean, it's only... No, it's not early.
John: It's normal.
John: It's normal.
John: This is right in the thick of normal time.
John: I know.
Merlin: I've never been comfortable with this time of day.
John: Yeah, it's very super duper duper duper normal.
John: Yeah.
John: As I was driving into town, I passed a lot of trucks that are busy facilitating commerce.
John: And there's people walking around, waving at each other.
John: It feels really super real out there.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: If you had to identify, if you can, what is your power time of day?
Merlin: Like, when do you really feel like you're most on your game?
Merlin: Is there a consistent time of day when you're like, it's John time.
Merlin: Let's do this.
Yeah.
Merlin: I'm guessing like 10 o'clock, 10 p.m.
Merlin: 10 p.m.?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I'm just guessing.
Merlin: You seem like we visited.
Merlin: We should mention a little bit later.
Merlin: Maybe we had a little visit recently.
Merlin: And you're ready to go.
Merlin: You're drinking coffee at 8 o'clock.
Merlin: You're ready to go.
John: That's bad policy.
John: But, yeah, I think at between 8 and 11 p.m., I can handle whatever you throw at me.
John: I start to taper off now.
John: Nowadays, I start to taper off around 2 a.m.
John: I used to taper off around 4 a.m.
John: I can't say that 10 o'clock in the morning isn't an optimal time.
John: It's not, but I feel like I can't say it.
Merlin: No, I understand.
Merlin: We were recording a little later than usual because I had a call at 8.30.
Merlin: And I really, I don't want to say I bluffed or faked, but I'm increasingly not, I don't know.
Merlin: I've gone through stages.
Merlin: And there was absolutely a time when I could get up at 4 or 5 and be ready to go.
Merlin: But I don't know.
Merlin: Something's happening.
Merlin: I'm trying to sleep more.
Merlin: And 8.30 is not the power stroke time for me.
John: I realized this morning that, you know, I like to sleep for sure.
John: But more than anything, I like to snuggle back in the covers after I should already be awake.
John: That is the greatest feeling in the world.
John: And I will just burrow back down in there.
John: Not even really trying to go back to sleep, but just trying to avoid...
Merlin: the you know the shit wave of the day even if the day is going to be filled with great things i i'm so right there with you i just go right back just right snuggled back down into no coverage i'm wondering if i have some kind of depressive thing because i really like my bed more than ever and i think that's the kind of thing that depressed people say i really like my bed i mean it's i'm very very comfortable supine
John: Yeah, well, and I think there are all those people that feel like sleep is this maladaptation.
John: Because you lose a third of your day to it every single day of your life.
John: And if you look at your life as a limited amount of time here, I could see where it would be frustrating...
John: where it would be frustrating to feel like one-third of it was just burned on some baloney.
John: But for those of us who feel like we're, A, either going to live forever, or B, are going to be bioengineered by ufos to live forever, it feels like that third of your life that you're spending just sort of powering down.
John: is absolutely a necessity.
John: And not just a necessity, but like some of the best times.
John: Oh, some of the greatest times.
Merlin: I agree, and I don't know.
Merlin: I've been interested in watching, it seems like especially in the last, at least that I've been aware of, in the last 10 years, there's been a lot of interest in all these sleep hacking, right?
Merlin: All these different ways that you could take these little naps, try and split up into two or three sleeps a day.
Merlin: There's the people saying now that until very recently, like the 1800s.
Merlin: Second sleep?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Do you know about second sleep?
Merlin: Oh, I'm all over second sleep.
Merlin: Tell people what that means.
Merlin: I think it's an interesting idea.
John: Well, that in a time before electricity, you would go to bed when the sun went down.
Merlin: You might go to bed at like 7.30 or 8.
John: Yeah.
John: Go to sleep.
John: You sleep, and then sometime in the middle of the night, you wake up refreshed.
John: And you have this interregnum in the middle of the night between 11 and 3 or something, or maybe 12 and 2.
Merlin: I think it's like people used to be awake.
Merlin: I've read people saying that from like 12 to 2, people would just wake up.
Merlin: They would talk to people.
Merlin: Because everybody, all the adults would wake up.
Merlin: And you could have your sexual intercourse then.
Merlin: You could go out and visit with your neighbors.
Merlin: You could visit with your neighbors, exactly.
John: Yeah, it's kind of a hot time.
John: I imagine if I were truly living in a second sleep dominated culture that I would rule the second sleep era hours.
John: Oh, that's good.
John: I would really be on fire during that time.
John: That's when you start scheduling your calls.
John: that's exactly right and the thing is you know that's it's not when you're gonna you're probably not during your your your midnight hour you're probably not gonna be roaming around the town you're probably gonna be confined to your neighborhood but that's when you'd really get to know your your core people um yeah this is with gary
John: I wouldn't be visiting with Gary.
John: I would be out.
Merlin: Talking to Patrick.
John: I would be out fire hosing Gary.
John: But, you know, it's like I routinely throughout my whole life have spent precisely those hours, 12 to 2, 12 to 3.
John: Those were my roaming times.
John: That was when I was out screwing around and, like, you know, peering over fences and learning about the world.
Yeah.
Merlin: And you know what's crazy?
Merlin: I think about when I was in college and just after college, which was my peak doing stuff years.
Merlin: I was always doing something.
Merlin: I was always going somewhere.
Merlin: I would go two places in a day.
John: You were a busy guy.
John: You had a lot to do.
Merlin: I had a lot to do.
Merlin: I was the Dread Pirate Roberts.
Merlin: I had things to accomplish.
Merlin: But I remember first hearing that phrase, disco nap.
Merlin: Where somebody would say, oh, we're going out tonight.
Merlin: I got to catch a disco nap.
Merlin: And in my parlance, that meant you would lay down at six or seven o'clock, sleep for one to three hours, hopefully awake refreshed, and then go out and tear the whole house down.
John: That's the Spanish model, right?
Merlin: Does everything really shut down in the afternoon?
Merlin: Is that like a thing?
John: It used to be a thing.
John: I think Spain now feels a lot of pressure from the rest of the European community to standardize their practices.
Merlin: I bet people are still blogging during those hours.
John: Well, yeah.
John: I imagine that there's still quite a bit of blogging.
John: But when I first went to Spain in the 80s, it completely shut down in the afternoon.
John: But that was because everybody partied until 4 o'clock in the morning.
John: Right.
John: And then also got up at...
John: And open their shops in the morning.
John: So then, yeah, the afternoon, they just... But anyway, do you feel like these hacks, these sleep hacks are good?
Merlin: You know, I'll tell you, man, I've got real mixed feelings about it because I am very... I don't know.
Merlin: Here's the thing.
Merlin: Maybe we've evolved... Maybe it is, as you say, a maladaptation.
Merlin: Because, you know, but even going beyond the sleep stuff, there are so many people trying to find out the truth about how we should be living.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: So on the one hand, you've got – did you ever actually read the Paleo book?
Merlin: No.
John: Okay.
Merlin: Well, you're good.
Merlin: I'm not interested.
Merlin: I counted 10 chapters before they talked about what you should buy at the grocery store because it was so jam-packed, full – I might be misremembering this, but I remember it being like, okay, you sold me.
Merlin: I bought the book.
Merlin: Tell me what to buy.
Merlin: But no, they had to walk you through all of this –
Merlin: science about caves and fire and light and like they really felt like they've got to set this up not unlike in some ways like the atkins diet two diets in that case really two lifestyles especially paleo because paleo is a lifestyle it's it's all i mean it gets into your sleep it gets into exercise it gets into beyond what you eat but like the variety of what you eat and why because that's the way our paleolithic ancestors supposedly lived and
Merlin: Setting aside whether or not that's necessarily a good model for somebody in the 21st century.
Merlin: But I think people are very interested in that.
Merlin: And here's the thing with sleep is what I was just going to say a minute ago.
Merlin: I feel like it's like if you have never been without a certain kind of malady, you might not see it as a malady.
Merlin: You see it as a condition of life.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: So if you've if you've never had great vision, you go, OK, I got vision.
Merlin: It's good enough.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: But then you get glasses and you're like, holy shit.
Merlin: Like this is I can see things now.
Merlin: Like I see lines and things.
Merlin: This is amazing.
John: Bitten.
John: by a radioactive spider and you can see infrared.
John: That's right.
Merlin: And you can deliver pizzas by climbing up a building.
Merlin: And I guess what I'm getting at is that I often wonder, there are so many people I've met who pay lip service to sleep.
Merlin: And I'm a sleep obsessive.
Merlin: But there are so many people who pay lip service, oh, sleep, sleep, sleep, you've got to get good sleep.
Merlin: And they never do.
Merlin: And I wonder how many of those people have never actually gotten the benefits of getting a decent amount of sleep.
Merlin: And they've grown accustomed to
Merlin: to being constantly shagged out.
Merlin: So I think having the conversation about whether there are things we can do better is good.
Merlin: I tend to start scooting toward the door when too much science or pseudoscience gets introduced.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
John: Now listen, there is nobody in the world who loves constructing a theory based on two books he read and an intro to anthropology class that he took in the 80s more than me.
John: Right?
John: I love that shit.
John: I like to walk in the forest and see a rock and say, you know, that rock probably, insert bullshit theory here.
John: Igneous.
John: And so, on the one hand, all these movements, the paleo movement, the heritage chicken crowd...
Merlin: The people with chickens in the yard.
John: Yeah, but we got here.
John: Not not just chickens.
John: You don't want to just go out and get some dumb chicken from Purdue.
John: You want to have a chicken that's got like fur.
John: Right.
John: Some chicken, some some chicken that has that has only a few small pockets still exist on the Shetland Islands and you can buy one for seven hundred dollars.
John: It's like a punk rock chicken, though.
John: It's kind of fucked up looking, and you're like, that's my heritage chicken.
John: Whatever.
John: It can't walk, and its eggs are orange.
John: A little bit anglest.
John: But it's a fantastic... There are places in Portland where you'll walk into the yard, and you're like, someone has used sorcery to animate mop heads.
What?
John: And they're running around this yard, and then you realize, oh shit, those are chickens.
John: They're chickens that look like sheepdogs.
John: Anyway, heritage chickens.
John: All these movements, beard oil.
John: I feel like in a way, I support the premise, which is the idea that humans have been around only so long.
John: We spent
John: 99% of that time adapting to a certain kind of world.
John: And then in recent memory, we just completely invented a whole new way of living.
John: And now we expect ourselves to be able to live in this new way.
John: I support that.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I am actually down with certain aspects of that big time.
John: Yeah.
John: But the problem for me is when somebody starts being...
John: proscriptive and prescriptive about like actual what time to wake up in the morning and what combination of foods to eat because that does as you say that veers into pseudoscience or like we used a spectrograph to identify the contents of that Austrian mummy that they found in a glacier and
John: whose name is Spetzel or something.
John: I forget what they called him.
John: Yuri.
John: No, no.
John: Avi Spetzel.
John: Anyway, this guy, they realized that his stomach contained five different kinds of millet and some shoe leather.
John: And they're like, shit, we should be eating shoe leather.
Interesting.
Merlin: Yeah, you're just a bunch of trained monkeys run by the electric system.
John: So I don't know where the line is, Merlin, between you and me advising people to think outside their box.
Merlin: Right.
John: And, you know, and the point at which somebody offers us a book deal to put all of our ideas into like a life system.
John: Oh, nobody reads books.
John: They should give us a YouTube contract.
John: At which point we would be obligated to start talking about this stuff like we really knew and we really had a book.
Merlin: Exactly right.
Merlin: And so here's one, I guess, meta point, though.
Merlin: If you think about it, everybody's got their reasons for everything.
Merlin: And it's funny how few things – this could be partly because of our kind of argumentative culture.
Merlin: It could be about identity politics.
Merlin: But it's kind of funny how few people are content to just shrug and go, you know, it's a thing I do.
Merlin: I like it.
Merlin: i don't know if i'll always like it i'm not really worried about it like it's just the thing i'm doing i i know that if i uh get more sleep and i try to get 10 000 steps a day and i avoid eating massive amounts of bread and drinking huge beers you know i don't need a scientist to tell me that makes me feel a little better and i don't need a persuasive theory or a paper to prove it like wrong wrong you need a goddamn theory i've got the data right here uh
Merlin: Yeah, but there are some things.
Merlin: One thing that other program that you've been on we've talked about is – and this is not directed toward you because I know you like to look at eBay in bed.
Merlin: But I do think, for example, the way we expose ourselves to light can actually have a big impact personally.
Merlin: Like I like the room to be really dark.
Merlin: I try to minimize the amount, this doesn't work very well because of TV, but I try to minimize the amount of bright blue light I get before bedtime because I think that's telling my brain to be awake.
Merlin: That's what I, you know, there's probably tons of science on that.
Merlin: I just feel like anecdotally for me, you know, like so much stuff in life, I can go, if I do this rather than that, this tends to work out better.
Merlin: I don't have a paper for it, but that's just the thing I do.
John: And for the most part, most of my, I mean, if it were not for this program,
John: Where you and I have discussed some large quantity of the ins and outs of both of our lives in such a way that it can no longer be claimed that I am a secret from the world.
John: But there are still a lot of things that I just keep quiet about because to even say them out loud is to suggest that you are advancing a theory.
John: When in fact, I like to just say things out loud.
John: I like to just say ideas out loud and see what happens.
John: And for me, I honestly discovered seven years ago that I just can't have a TV.
John: I can't have one.
John: It's not a moral problem that I have with other people.
John: I mean, it kind of ends up being one because the TV versus non-TV people are at such great odds with each other.
John: And the TV people are the majority.
John: And they really are defensive, I feel.
Merlin: It's like religion or anything where just the fact that you quietly are doing something differently from somebody else for whatever reason is tacitly something to be attacked and fixed by others.
Merlin: Yeah, right, right.
Merlin: Whatever that is, that's the thing, is the beauty part.
Merlin: I think what you're saying, if I get it, is it doesn't matter what that thing is.
Merlin: It could be anything, no matter what.
Merlin: You know what you should never fucking do, John Roderick?
Merlin: Never post a screenshot of...
Merlin: of the homepage on your iPhone.
Merlin: Because you are going to hear from every single person in the world about what an idiot you are for every decision that you've made.
Merlin: Why would you put there?
Merlin: Why do you have that app?
Merlin: Why do you have two apps?
Merlin: Why would you put that in a folder?
Merlin: Why wouldn't you put that in a folder?
John: I like to keep it open at the bottom.
John: Derp, derp, derp.
John: I feel like people who follow me enough to look at a picture that I posted on my
Merlin: home screen wouldn't realize that i was completely unreceptive to that kind of talk but it wouldn't even try but it's so it's it's something like that is it's so innocent and like i i just at the risk of repeating here it feels like you know i mean i i i
Merlin: I had this realization a few years ago that when it comes to stuff like social media, that it's, you like to think it's about, you know, uh, what you have to say, but the thing that makes it social rather than just media is that it's really about what other people have to say about you.
Merlin: So anything, any utterance becomes grist for any kind of a weird ax to grind.
Merlin: And it immediately becomes this toxic game of telephone where like all of a sudden now, like you're a counter revolutionary because you have two calendar apps.
John: Yeah.
John: People who haven't read the thing that you wrote but only read the comments that other people had on it are making assessments about what you said and what you mean and who you are.
John: Yeah, I get that a lot, actually.
John: People on Twitter that don't follow me and have obviously not read the thing that other people are yelling at me about, and they just pile on yelling at me, and those people are always the amplifiers, right, the ones
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Oh, good.
Merlin: You have to correctly answer that question in order to be able to post a comment.
John: Oh, that's so good.
John: That's so good.
John: I feel like that should be a test.
John: That should be a blanket test on the internet.
John: But I...
John: I get in a lot of hot water about our contemporary culture because obviously I love it.
John: Obviously I'm participating in it.
John: But I have thresholds.
John: I'm only willing to go so far.
John: And it does feel sometimes like I am secretly practicing a Quaker religion or a sect of Quakertom.
John: And to say even the most mundane thing about how I actually live is to be judging and criticizing the way everyone else agrees is the proper way.
Merlin: Part one is, I'm saying a declarative statement here.
Merlin: So part one of that is, therefore, everyone who isn't doing this the way that I'm doing it is doing it wrong.
Merlin: And B, please feel free at this point to jump in and tell me what I'm doing wrong in life.
John: Right.
John: That article I wrote a couple of, whatever that was, about not being a fan.
John: Yes.
John: The number of replies I got to that, where the gist of the reply was,
John: You are an unfun person.
John: You don't know how to have fun.
John: And I feel sorry for you for not being able to have fun.
John: I mean, that was maybe one of the top five, like... Most favorited or something?
John: No, no.
John: I mean, no.
John: Top five...
John: Oh, it came up more than once.
John: Came up a lot of times.
John: I mean, I wrote an article one time about people think that rock musicians get laid all the time and are sex fiends.
John: But in fact, here's what an actual day looks like for a rock musician.
John: And there's not really a lot of time to do drugs and drugs.
John: And, you know, and have intercourse.
Merlin: No more than any other busy business person.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
John: Those accountants get more pussy than Sinatra.
John: Certain accountants.
John: But, you know, at 2 o'clock in the morning, you are schlepping your gear out to a cold van and thinking about where the motel is you're going to stay.
John: Yeah.
John: So I wrote this article and I got a lot of great replies from other rock musicians saying, thank you, my God, thank you for saying what we all know but no one believes, right?
John: But then I got a ton of, this is back to your seduction community.
John: Ton of replies from people that are just like, well, you just obviously don't know how to close the deal.
John: You don't know how to make chicks?
John: I was like, I don't, apparently.
John: That's a good point.
John: Thank you for your time.
John: But also, yeah, I don't know how to have fun either because I'm not a fan of...
Merlin: But, you know, your articles, you know, it's – I can see why people disagree with you.
Merlin: I guess I can see why people get mad.
Merlin: But, like, at one point, I just – we get so frustrated with this certain kind of attitude.
Merlin: And I know it's not intentional.
Merlin: But when you say, like, something, hey, here's my 10 favorite songs of the year.
Merlin: And I'm full of joy.
Merlin: And, like, most of your comments will begin with, you forgot –
Merlin: No, I didn't forget it.
Merlin: I didn't put it on there.
Merlin: It's my list.
Merlin: These are 10 things I liked.
Merlin: Is that problematic?
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah, you forgot this thing that's the opposite of all those things that you listed.
Merlin: Yeah, and then somebody goes, like I'm fond of saying, somebody says something like, why didn't you use this particular Mac application?
Merlin: Or like, you know, why didn't you become a video blogger?
Merlin: And my standard response is, I don't know, why am I not a potted fern?
Merlin: Like, how do you say why you didn't do something?
Merlin: And then you have a conversation about that.
Merlin: Like, why didn't you put this application in this place on the phone?
Merlin: And it's like, I guess because I'm a bad person.
John: Why didn't I go to the Air Force Academy and then become a lieutenant colonel?
John: That's a good question.
John: I can tell you now.
John: I feel like one of the... Not problems, but... Opportunity stakes.
John: Opportunity stakes.
John: A big part of the enthusiasm I have for interacting with the culture comes out of deep memory of feeling...
John: outside and wrong for years and years and years just feeling out of step with my peers like there's like there's never anywhere where you go oh i've found my place for me no that's what i'm saying i like no matter even in the most hospitable environments i've still always felt like an outsider and i think that that is not typical of people i feel like most people do feel like they find their place
John: And are in their place or to a greater degree than I am because they play team sports and they go on the Internet and talk about their favorite TV shows with each other.
John: I mean, I go on when I bought my Suburban, I was like on the Chevy truck.
John: trying to figure out about what kind of differential oil I wanted to use.
John: It seems so simple.
John: And the guys that are on there, you know, posting 40 times a day, just about...
John: like uh what kind of torque wrench you want to use you realize like oh these people have found their duck they are here and and they have a tremendous knowledge about how to rebuild the undercarriage of a of a vintage truck and they're here all day like they can they got all the time in the world right to talk about this stuff and so when i when i'm interacting with the culture
John: I feel like my success, let's call it success, at navigating the handicaps that I had as a young person.
John: There were a lot of times in the course of my life where I was at a crossroads, and it was very clear to me that I could go the wrong way and be...
John: permanent drug addict, a dead person, a worse than that, like a bitter guy who had compromised
John: Just a few small compromises, but that resulted in me doing something that I didn't want to do the rest of my life.
Merlin: And then not being able to turn left and right, let alone U-turn.
Merlin: Part of it is to have realized in retrospect that you have rung a bell that can't be unrung.
John: Right.
John: That you are now bound by commitments and chains that prohibit you from – or you feel prohibit you from doing anything to change your life except make an incredibly dramatic gesture, right?
John: Like my grandfather made multiple incredibly dramatic gestures to the effect of like going out for a pack of cigarettes and not coming back.
John: Right.
John: And every time I open the newspaper and there's a story about somebody that's like, well, it was a murder-suicide.
John: They killed themselves, their four kids, and their wife.
John: And it's just like, well, they obviously didn't see that there was some other thing they could have done.
John: And that's, you know, that's tragic.
John: And obviously, in my case, I wouldn't have resorted to something like that.
John: But there were so many times along the way where I was out of step with the world.
John: And the choice...
John: Eventually was to either say, well, the world is right, and so I have to die a little and be part of the world.
John: Or to say every time, as exhausting as this is, as much as this feels like punishment, I have to get up and follow my instinct against the world.
Merlin: And I do look like it kind of had to be one over the other.
John: It had to, you know, because to because to do the thing to to make even the initial compromise of like, well, isn't there a way that I can be myself and be in the world?
John: Mm hmm.
John: is to just go with the world.
John: You know, that is to decide that the world is right and that somewhere within the world I can carve out some little cubby for myself.
John: And you can't.
John: I mean, if you're made a certain way, right?
John: You have to just say, no, in this situation, I am going to not presume that I'm right and the world is wrong, but just presume that the world is on a parallel track and I have to honor...
John: I have to honor my instincts because I did work hard to train myself.
John: I did educate myself.
John: And now it's telling me to go this way and I have to honor that.
John: So I do consider that a success because I'm here now and all of the frustration and the bitterness I have...
John: I still can reflect and imagine what it would have been like if at 32 years old I'd said, well, I have to give up playing rock music because it's not working out.
John: Or, well, you know, I should marry this girl.
John: Or, well, you know, this is, you know, really, I'm being given an opportunity to train to be a stockbroker.
John: And that's an opportunity that I would be a fool to turn down.
John: And so I'm going to go into this stockbroker training program.
Merlin: It's almost like the world is unintentionally testing you to say like, okay, well, we think you're ready for this to tacitly set aside childish things or however you want to think of it.
Merlin: But if you can let go of this part of you, then now you get to belong and you get to be part of this system.
Merlin: Are you ready for that?
John: Right.
John: And over and over, the opportunity to join the military when I was young, it's really cut and dried at that age.
John: It's like, do you have money for college?
John: Do you want to be a success in life or do you want to be some flop?
Yeah.
Merlin: Do you want insurance, a college education, and become a homeowner?
Merlin: Or do you want to just hope this gas station attendant job really picks up?
John: Yeah, and for a lot of people, that's very seductive.
John: My stockbroker training program, I was working as a clerk in a stock brokerage firm called Piper Jaffrey.
Wow.
Merlin: This is the place where they kept all the documents on the best floor?
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: And I was the clerk, and they kept giving me more and more responsibility, and pretty soon I was taking $14 million worth of bearer bonds down to the bank, and I had relationships with all these people.
John: I had relationships with the people at the financial desk at the bank, and I knew some of our clients.
John: I was starting to make my way up in this firm, and
John: And I was drinking and on drugs and very, very, very much like living in that world as a kind of, you know, in that way where you're like, I'm just working on my novel, man.
John: You know, I'm here, I'm doing this work, but I'm just watching you people who actually work here.
John: Because I'm working on my, I'm working on another level.
Merlin: Yeah, almost like they've kind of given up or something.
Yeah.
John: well or just you know i was or committed yeah i was 25 years old and i had all the i had all the arrogance of a 25 year old who felt like yeah you guys you know you work in an office i come to an office to get to gather material you work in an office and i'm a person but then they started doing the thing where they were like you would you're great at this you would make a great broker have you ever considered being a broker
John: Wow.
John: And I was like, well, I think probably yes, I had.
John: I think because I have considered doing every job and I imagine because I'm going to live forever that of course I would be a stockbroker at some point.
John: And they were like, well, we do have a broker training program and you kind of have a leg up.
John: You would be able to kind of walk right into this.
John: Wow.
John: Wow.
John: And I was like, well, this seems pretty dynamic.
John: This is an exciting turn of events.
John: And so as part of the enticement, they said, well, there's going to be a little party on Al's yacht this weekend.
John: Al being one of the older established brokers.
John: Do you want to come to the party?
John: I mean, you'll be the youngest guy there.
John: You're a young guy, but you'll get to meet everybody.
John: They'll see you in a different light.
John: And I was like, I'll come to a party on Alziot.
John: Fuck yes, I will.
John: And I went down, and I dressed for success, and I went down there to Alziot, and...
John: Walked out, you know, walked down the pier and saw the yacht and I was like, hmm, this is the yacht.
John: It's, you know, it's not really a yacht.
John: It's more of a, it's a big boat.
John: But like, I was kind of like.
John: You can eyeball that though.
John: You say, is this, is this or is this not a yacht?
John: Yeah, it's a nice boat.
John: It's a nice boat.
John: It's a big boat.
John: But, but I mean, I feel like calling it a yacht is a little bit.
Merlin: You shouldn't get to wear one of those Thirst in Hell hats, probably.
John: You don't get to say whether your boat is a yacht or not.
Merlin: Oh, it's like poetry.
Merlin: Other people have to call it that.
John: That's right.
John: If somebody else calls it a yacht, that's fine.
John: But if you're like, come on and visit my yacht, it's like, should have said boat.
John: But I get on there, and I'm talking to these guys, and there's just a lot of gel in their hair, even the older ones.
John: And I realize that what being a broker is, is it's a job in sales.
John: It involves a lot of cold calling.
John: And it involves telling people that they really, really need this financial instrument.
John: Otherwise, they're not going to provide for their kids.
John: And you need to say that whether you believe it or not.
John: And I was like, this is not the place for me.
John: And I immediately went over to the bar and I drank 14 gin and tonics and then fell asleep on the deck of the boat in my suit.
Oh, no.
John: And fell asleep.
John: I was sitting in a chair, and then I just fell out of the chair.
John: Didn't fall.
John: I feel like I just was more comfortable lying on the deck.
Merlin: Oh, John.
John: But I was lying on the deck in such a... Were you copious?
Merlin: I mean, were you... Not really.
John: You're pretty out of it?
John: And I was lying on the deck in such a way that everyone who was walking around touring the boat had to step over me.
Yeah.
John: Mind the intern.
John: And I feel like I pretty much intentionally torpedoed my broker training.
John: But it was obviously not for me.
John: But in that moment, I felt a lot of pressure.
John: On my way to the boat and in the first hour I was on the boat, a lot of pressure to not make the wrong decision because this is a thing that could make your life.
John: You could be a very different guy and you could have a lot of money and you could be a member of the right clubs and all these things.
John: And you very seldom, although, God, in this life so many times it feels like you are in a situation where you're like, is this it?
John: Are these the things I want?
Merlin: Especially back then, because I feel like, I'll speak for myself, I feel like I was really brought up to wait for those moments that would constitute the last 10 minutes of the TV movie about me.
Merlin: When is that thing going to come along when I arrive?
John: Yeah, right.
John: Where suddenly you go, whoop, and then the credits roll because the decision-making portion of your life is over.
John: And now you just are doing the thing.
Right.
John: Like you met the girl, you got married, and you got the good job at her father's company, and then the credits literally roll because nobody cares about the next 50 years of your life.
Merlin: Well, it's obvious everything's going to be fine.
Merlin: It's happily ever after.
John: That's right.
John: Everything's going to be fine, and let's turn our attention to the next young person who is in a decision-making mode.
John: But that choosing and those choices...
John: I feel like I continue to have to make all the time.
John: And I'm in a place right now where I'm being asked by people, do you want to do this thing, this interesting thing where money might rain down from the sky?
John: All it involves is that you change.
John: Everything that you're doing.
John: Oh, really?
John: Redirect all your energy in this other direction.
John: But if you're ready to do that, I can promise you on the other side here that there are machines in our office that have Skittles, and you would have one of the top four or five biggest desks.
Merlin: Are you kidding?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: I don't know anything about this.
Merlin: This sounds terrifying.
No.
Merlin: I mean, you know, exciting, but like, wow.
Merlin: At your age, to have that come along is really wild.
John: It is wild, and particularly wild, given that when I look at my end-of-year statements every year, I'm like, well, just eked by again, just by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin.
John: But...
John: But when I'm out writing articles or talking on this podcast or prescribing to the world, I feel like the people I'm talking to...
John: I am not writing to dedicated television watchers telling them that they are bad for watching television.
John: I don't have any interest in doing that.
John: I'm not interested in them at all, really.
John: I feel like they are doing their thing and we are on a parallel track and we are happy friends.
John: Everything I say and everything I write, I'm trying to reach those people that were or are like me
John: And I'm trying to say to them, there is someone else out here who is doing it.
John: There is somebody who is not a fan of stuff.
John: So don't feel like not being a fan of stuff makes you an alien.
John: There is somebody who doesn't like punk rock.
John: Not even that doesn't like punk rock music, just doesn't like punk rockers.
John: And don't feel like you're a dummy for not liking them.
John: Because it's not a question of...
John: If you don't like punks, then you might as well just be a Christian Republican living in Oklahoma.
Merlin: Who's tacitly judging the people who identify with that?
John: Yeah, right.
John: Who sucks and is part of the problem.
John: Like, it is possible to be cool.
John: As I am cool.
John: And rock and roll as I am rock and roll.
John: And also call bullshit on things, on some of the received wisdom of those cultures.
John: Right?
John: Like you can be even an active, enthusiastic participant in a thing and still be like, but some of the fundamental premises of this, I just don't.
John: They don't reflect my views.
John: I don't like it.
John: Or I don't feel it, right?
John: That's the thing.
John: I don't feel it.
John: I intellectually get it, but I don't feel it.
John: So many of the things that we as American culture talk about as being the things that feel the best, they don't always feel natural to me.
John: So I'm reaching out over and over and over again to those people because they're the ones that matter to me.
John: the people that are trying to make their way in this world, feeling outside, but not so outside that they go join the Church of Satan, just enough outside that every day it feels like, do I compromise today and just go with the flow?
John: Or do I dig my heels in a little bit on this and say, no, this little thing, no.
John: And to feel like I want to support those people because I feel like those may be the ones that have something extra special that we would benefit from them being a little bolder.
John: And I never felt when I was coming up that I had very many role models.
Yeah.
John: Because the role models are always like, you know, like John Doe, right?
John: Here's a role model for you, John Doe.
John: He's a smart guy.
John: He's a handsome guy.
John: He's a good guy.
John: Everybody agrees, a good guy.
John: and or thurston moore or somebody and i'd be like oh yeah i do i think thurston moore's a good guy i think john doe are good guys and and those would be they're doing it differently they're making their own way in the world and then i would open up the magazine and read their interview with them and they'd talk about their record collections and i'd be like but that's not it for me like i don't want to look at the world through my record collection and
John: And so, you know what I mean?
John: Like, that's the responsibility I feel.
John: And the problem is when I write an article or when I make a statement in the world, I have to hear back from the 80% of the people who are listening who think I'm yelling at them.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: But I'm not.
John: I'm just, like, I'm whispering to the people that I feel like are my kin.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: And I feel like you have an element of that too, but you're much better at helping people that you don't feel are like you.
John: You're trying to help people who are like you, but also trying to be helpful to people that you see, but that don't resemble you.
Merlin: Maybe so.
Merlin: That particular statement reminds me of something my girlfriend used to say to me pretty often, which was, you know, I really want to help you, but I'm not sure you can be helped.
Merlin: And that always gave me pause and sometimes made me angry.
Merlin: Yes.
John: You can see where that would make you angry.
Merlin: Well, but, you know, she was right.
Merlin: I mean, I guess what I've realized is that, you know, I made that crack a few weeks ago about how, you know, if you haven't found anything complicated, you're not near the truth, you know.
Merlin: And that's – and the truth, I feel, as I try to evolve with that stuff, is realizing that, you know –
Merlin: I mean, on the one hand, we're all so much alike.
Merlin: We're so very, very, very much alike.
Merlin: But there's also a part of all of us that's broken in a different way and that we're ashamed of things in different ways.
Merlin: And so to your point, though, I feel like it was a real – it was kind of a – not crisis, but a real frustration.
Merlin: It took me a while to get over that I felt like I wasn't helping people.
Merlin: Where I was – and eventually that led me to not do my website anymore because I realized that I was basically paddling out to the life raft and giving people salt water.
Merlin: Drink up.
Merlin: Where I felt like the stuff that was making – I mean it's not so different from alcoholism I guess or –
Merlin: where you're giving somebody something that feels like a palliative, that's actually making it worse.
Merlin: And over time, there's a, you know, a pattern that you can see.
Merlin: So anyway, the way I arrived at it today, that's not very lucrative is that, uh, there are things I will have to say that can help somebody think about something differently.
Merlin: And I think for most smart people, that's a lot.
Merlin: Um, when we realize how much of our problems come from, uh, uh,
Merlin: destructive or not very useful forms of thinking.
Merlin: Just learning how to reframe something and looking at it from a different angle can be life-changing.
Merlin: But it's not anything that you could have a TV show about without it being stupid and being at odds with the basic idea.
Merlin: And the basic idea is that, you know, you're looking at this one part of this kind of wrong.
Merlin: What are you laughing about?
Merlin: I'm just thinking of reframe it with Merlin Mann on the Discovery Channel.
Merlin: I also – I love to be disagreeable.
Merlin: Goals are great.
Merlin: No, they're not.
Merlin: Goals suck.
Merlin: Goals are terrible.
Merlin: Well, goals can be good.
Merlin: I like taking those points of view because it's like it depends, it depends, it depends, it depends.
John: So I don't know.
Merlin: I don't –
Merlin: But – and so then where does that put me in that instance?
Merlin: It's not so different from where you are where it's like – so there was a time when I would fit most handily into what you might call self-help or productivity.
Merlin: And the thing is that's a party I do not want to go to.
Merlin: I do not want to hang out with the self-help people.
Merlin: I do not want to hang out with the productivity people because they're –
Merlin: They're in the existential porn business.
Merlin: Like, they're in the business of vending you something you're always going to need more of.
John: Right.
Merlin: And it takes you further away from the stuff that you actually need to fucking do, which is sit down and do your thing, whatever that is.
Merlin: And it is that general.
Merlin: But, you know, in that instance, I'm with you.
Merlin: I mean, I feel – I felt very much like, you know, people want to have that one-bit idea of what you do.
Merlin: And if it takes too much explaining, you must be a charlatan, you know?
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: So I don't know.
Merlin: But just to your point about the fan thing, though, I mean, I can't get away from this thing, which is that, well, part one, no matter what you say on the internet, or really anything you say in public, but particularly on the internet, pretty much everybody will find a way to make it about them.
Merlin: And to think that you are talking to them and kind of maybe even attacking them.
Merlin: So if you say something really nice about the world, the kind of thing your sister says on Twitter, quotes from Khalil Gibran or whatever, everybody's going to go, oh, that's nice.
Merlin: That's nice.
Merlin: But if you say something like, I really wish people would keep moving and get out of the way, they think you're attacking them in particular.
Merlin: In that case, we are.
Merlin: Yeah.
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John: But, uh...
John: Yeah, I mean, that was the first shock of that punk rock article for me was I was writing it for my Seattle, for the people that read the Seattle Weekly, people within a 10-mile radius of where I was standing.
John: And I was stunned at how angry it made people in Florida.
Merlin: People you like, respect, and admire came out publicly against you.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: People we both like are like, oh, yeah, I like that band.
Merlin: That guy's mad at John Roderick.
John: He's mad.
Yeah.
John: But, you know, so you and I just did a show, a live show, a live Roderick on the Line show.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: In California.
John: And it was very fun and we had a very good time.
John: But when I took the stage, we walked out on the stage.
John: You and I were standing backstage, and we were like, how will we know when to go on?
John: The music was playing, and then the music went down, and the man from the Sketch Fest introduced us, and we walked out on stage.
John: Here we are.
John: And the last thing you said was like, are you going to go on that side or this side?
John: And I was going to go, I'm going to go on that side.
John: And then we walk out, and there's the room full of people, and they're applauding, and we are saying hello.
John: And as a rock musician, I adjusted.
John: I got used to, a long time ago, the idea that I was going to walk out on a stage, and the most I could hope for is that half the audience is on my side.
Merlin: You might hope that people stop talking a little bit.
John: Yeah, and there are musicians, and I know a lot of them, and Jonathan Colton is one, for instance, where he walks out on stage and has for years walked out on stage and doesn't even think, it's this thing you were talking about a second ago, he doesn't even think about the possibility that there's someone in the audience that doesn't like him.
John: Because they're all on a cruise that's named after him, right?
John: Boy, talk about confidence.
John: They had to write a check with his name in it.
John: You don't know how bad your vision is because all you can see is how you see?
John: And the guys in Death Cab for Cutie are like this.
John: The guys in Keen are like this.
John: If you are used to playing sold-out shows everywhere you go, the presumption is that every person there had to make a special effort to get into your show.
John: It costs a lot of money.
John: They're all massive fans.
John: But for me...
John: Even during the heyday of my band, there was a palpable sense that our band was one of those bands that hipsters would go to see and stand in the back and be like, okay, Long Winters, I've heard of you.
John: Show me something.
John: And, you know, that was the level of indie rock we were at, where we weren't selling 1,000 tickets in every town.
John: We were selling 500 tickets or 350 tickets, and a certain percentage of that audience was their...
John: was absolutely capable of coming away from that show going, well, I don't see why people like them so much.
John: I mean, you know, that's part of that culture.
Merlin: Some percentage of the audience was there out of curiosity.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Maybe whereas with Keen, there's a pretty good chance they've heard a Keen song.
John: They've heard a Keen song and they're there because they want to hear the song.
John: And the people that are like, you know, I've heard about this band and I go to see five shows a week and I'm going to go check them out.
John: They typically don't go to see Keen or Death Cab for Cutie, but they do go to see bands like the Long Winters.
John: Well...
John: Then, after The Long Winter stopped playing, and I started doing shows where I was going out as a solo acoustic artist, opening for other people, then that dropped that percentage.
John: I guess the percentage of people who were like, who's this guy?
John: Went way up.
John: And my performance style evolved in the last seven years.
John: I don't remember you flipping the bird quite as much in the long winters.
John: Because in the long winters, I wasn't flipping everybody off because I was like, hi, friends, you know, at least a percentage of you.
John: But I evolved this performance style.
John: where I'm walking out on stage and it's like, oh, there's an opener at this show?
John: And I'm like, hi, I'm John Roderick.
John: I am a massive person.
John: And to you right now, I am...
John: Nobody.
John: I'm like a weird bearded guy with an acoustic guitar, and I haven't played a moment of music yet, but I cannot walk out here and just be like, hi, you guys, and start playing my songs.
John: I'm going to have to get this room right first.
John: It's time for some framing.
John: And that involves telling you not only who I am, but who you are.
Yeah.
Merlin: And how this is going to go?
John: Yeah, and how this is going to go.
John: How this is going to go for you if you do like it, and how it's going to go for you if you don't like it.
John: You sound like a CIA interrogator.
John: Listen, man, this is only going to get worse.
John: Hard or easy, buddy.
John: Have you seen The Box?
John: Do you want to go in The Box?
John: You don't want to go in The Box.
John: You don't want to go in The Box.
John: But when I walked out on stage with you in San Francisco, it was a very nice theater and a nice full room of people, and
John: And I had that feeling that I wasn't prepared for and I hadn't thought of it in advance.
John: But I walked out and I realized by the applause and by where we were and who we were and where we were standing, I was like, oh, everybody wants to be here right now.
John: I don't have to prepare this room.
John: And it was a very comfortable feeling.
John: And then I looked down at the foot of the stage, and there was a stack of 3x5 cards that someone, some fan, had written some inside jokes on.
John: Written some Roderick on the Line-based memes on these 3x5 cards, and then had put them on the stage.
John: And so I walked out and I'm kind of basking in this moment of like, here's our people.
John: And then I look down and I see these 3x5 cards and I realize that someone in the audience has gone to some work and then put them on the stage in expectation of something.
John: And that expectation presumably was that we would pick up the 3x5 cards and read them on the stage and go through them and have them.
John: I'm not sure what the expectation was.
John: I honestly have no idea.
John: But I looked down at the 3x5 cards and I said to myself in an instant, you know, someone has placed an expectation on the stage.
Merlin: What?
John: And that is not within the bounds of how I'm going to... Like, this is my stage, right?
John: And Merlin's stage, and I reject your expectations.
John: So I picked up the stack of 3x5 cards, and I hold...
Merlin: And then you flung them at the audience.
Merlin: I hurled them into the crowd.
John: Which was greeted by a lot of laughter.
John: Well, and the thing is that everyone in the room... And that was the last I thought about it, right?
John: Everybody in the room understood what that transaction just was, right?
John: That someone had, in their enthusiasm for the show, had made a thing.
John: They had put it on the stage and had crossed a hubris border...
John: And I pushed them back over the hubris border, and everybody agreed that that is, in fact, the introduction to the program that we're doing.
John: And that was in character of Roderick on the Line, and that was just exactly what... That is the message, in a way, of the program, right?
Yeah.
John: But at the end of the night, so I didn't think about those cards again.
John: And at the end of the night, I think some people were picking up those cards as souvenirs.
John: Yeah, I saw somebody photographed them.
John: But then I was standing talking to people and shaking hands with people.
John: And a young woman comes by and she's picking up the cards.
John: And I'm conscious of she's picking up the cards with a particular energy.
John: It's not an exaggerated one, but there is an energy to the way she's picking up the cards.
John: Yeah.
John: where I realized that she is not an employee of the venue.
John: She is not picking up the cards to clean the space for the next show.
John: She's picking up the cards because she made the cards.
John: And I stopped her and was like, oh, did you make these?
John: And she said yes.
John: And with a look on her face, that revealed to me that...
John: Maybe everybody in the room thought that that was hilarious, except for one person.
John: Oh, no.
John: And I'm not sure what she... Again, I have no idea what was intended.
John: But I had, you know, I'd run with it, and then here was this person who had actually...
John: Either facilitated this, because it seemed like a lot of them were in different handwriting.
John: Maybe she'd gone around and asked everybody in the room beforehand to write something on a 3x5 card.
John: Or maybe she'd done it herself in different handwriting.
John: I don't know.
John: Because I also had a line of people to talk to.
John: But I said, hey, no, I would actually like to read those cards if that is important.
John: I'm sorry that I threw them over the room, but that was just a theatrical moment.
John: It was a bit.
John: And she didn't say anything.
John: She just kind of nodded and smiled and gave me the cards.
John: And I did read the cards, and the cards were a kind of exhaustive collection of memes and themes that you and I have talked about over the years.
Merlin: I saw Hitler-splaining on there.
John: Hitler-splaining and three-by-five card crossed out.
Merlin: The top one was, I think, a Merlin-specific joke where I did once have a photo where I had written an index card on an index card.
Merlin: Uh-huh.
John: What was your great one?
Merlin: One time I wrote the words Jeff Goldblum on a page, and I found that later, and I had absolutely no idea why I'd written down Jeff Goldblum.
John: My favorite was that picture of you in front of a whiteboard where you had written some, like, ASCII joke.
John: Oh, yeah, the break tag.
John: Yeah, break tag.
John: Yeah, the Web 1.0 conference.
John: Web 1.0 conference, that's right.
John: In my garage, and I was the only attendant.
John: And that might be a little early for some of our listeners.
John: Early in the Merlin.
John: That's back when I was writing computer math for the early internet.
John: Yeah, early culture.
John: But I did feel in that moment that...
John: Even in our inner circle of people that are 100% on board and part of our culture, and I see this all the time in the replies we get to the show, there is a lot of variation in the expectation and in what people are taking away from what we do.
Merlin: And in that moment... Vis-a-vis, even on your own show that we created, you can still feel like an outsider.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
John: In a way, I felt terrible to have... Because on one level, somebody worked on this.
Merlin: I'm going to say it.
Merlin: It's a sweet gesture.
John: Yeah.
John: And on another level, it is completely in character of the show and of me that you don't put something on my stage, particularly not something where the only thing it's doing there is saying, interact with me.
John: Like, I want your show to incorporate something I made.
John: How did it end up?
John: Well, she kind of smiled and bowed a little bit and gave me the cards.
John: Mr. Roderick.
John: And then disappeared.
John: She threw down a smoke bomb and was gone.
John: She did a Batman exit.
John: And I had to go immediately to another show, so I wasn't able to chase her.
John: I had to greet the people who had stayed to say hello.
John: But it was a thing that when I threw those cards out there, I did not think about it again until I saw the maker of the cards.
John: And then was like, oh, right.
John: And I do respect and honor people making things.
John: Some of the fan art that we've generated makes me as happy as anything.
Merlin: See that drawing of you walking a large cat dressed as a pimp?
Merlin: So amazing.
Merlin: So amazing.
John: So amazing.
John: But that feeling, right?
John: And I think that is a feeling that everybody has, right?
John: That no one totally gets them.
John: And even your closest people, they're never going to totally get you.
John: And knowing how to know where the borderlands are, where you actually dig a trench and make a stand, and where you just say, oh, this isn't a battleground, it's just a village.
John: It takes a village.
Yeah.
John: I'm just a villager.
John: I feel like I'm writing lyrics to my new record right now.
John: I'm just a villager.
John: I'm just a villager.
John: It takes a village.
Merlin: No reply at all.
Merlin: Attention Generation Super Train.
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Merlin: John and I thank you in advance for having a torso and excellent taste.
Merlin: Picks a village, makes a village, shake and bake village.
Merlin: It was a fun show though.
Merlin: I had a blast.
Merlin: I enjoyed it a lot.
Merlin: I mean, it's like any of these things.
Merlin: And now, boy, we're really up our own ass now.
Merlin: But it's really different.
Merlin: I mean, it's funny because there's this rich tradition of writing and recording music that you put out and then people listen to.
Merlin: And there's a rich tradition of playing live shows.
Merlin: And they have a distinctly different energy.
Merlin: I remember when Joe Jackson put out that record in 1986 where everybody had to be really quiet while he was recording because he wanted to record it live, but he didn't want any audience participation on it at all.
Merlin: It's really weird.
John: Did we just hear something about Stephen Merritt, where after the first song at his rock concert, he said, I don't, your applause hurts my ears.
John: I'm really glad I don't room with that guy.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: Your applause hurts my ears.
Merlin: Man.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: I bet he smells like cigarettes.
John: I'm the luckiest guy.
John: But it's true what you say.
John: The energy – I mean, you and I have a very different – when we're on a stage of therapy.
Merlin: Yeah, exactly.
Merlin: You're getting it.
Merlin: You're getting what I'm saying here, which is like –
Merlin: if you record with somebody else long enough doing something like this, you know, sure.
Merlin: Obviously it's a matter of taste, whether you are into it or not, but it's, it is what it is.
Merlin: And it's what we understand what this is, but like, I've never done anything podcasty that was easy to do live and have it have the same flavor and Brio as the, um, as what we're doing right now.
Merlin: That's not necessarily an interesting thing.
Merlin: But, you know, and I have to tell you that with other things I've done like that, the best thing we ever did was to stop having it try to have this precise energy as the recorded show.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: In the same way that a live show would suck.
Merlin: I mean, barring what?
Merlin: Joe Jackson and Kraftwerk.
Merlin: Like, don't try and make it sound like the record.
Merlin: That's not what people are there for.
Merlin: And if they are there for that, then they should go listen to the record.
Right.
Merlin: Because, you know, and we talked about that, like, you know, accounting for, like, the energy in the room and, like, your ability to respond to somebody booing about the Seahawks or something like that.
Merlin: It's hard.
Merlin: I mean, it's not hard.
Merlin: It's fucking coal mining is hard.
Merlin: But it's weird and scary.
John: Well, and the thing is, like, our show, I mean, people will be able to judge for themselves because it is recorded and will be... Will have been out.
John: Yeah.
John: When this comes out.
John: The...
John: The energy, when I walk out on a stage, that's where I am the most comfortable, right?
John: I've spent my whole professional life standing in front of a roof with people.
Merlin: I haven't had anything like actual stage fright in years.
Merlin: I'm with you.
Merlin: To me, for an ADD addled mind, being stuck on stage in a position that other people would perceive as pressure, it's like, oh man, I don't have to think about anything but this right now.
Merlin: I could be in the worst state of mind and I would be totally fine on stage.
Merlin: Given what I do, I'm not Liberace, but I'm very comfortable in that.
John: Yeah, me too.
John: I can't imagine a mood that I would be in that wouldn't be improved by somebody pushing me out on stage and saying, go ahead, you're responsible for 30 minutes.
John: I'd be like, well, I was just about to... I don't have to think about cancer for a while.
John: I was just about to hang myself on my belt from a doorknob, but...
Merlin: Stage time, Mr. Roderick.
Merlin: I'm going to do 30 minutes on that, and it's going to be so fun.
Merlin: Did you notice how much the backstage area, when you're looking through the door, did you notice how much it looked like a gallows?
John: Oh.
Merlin: You walk up those steps, and there's like those windy steps.
John: They really look like a gallows.
John: When I was in Djibouti recently... I saw your trip to Africa?
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: It's a place in Africa.
John: Djibouti is a place in Africa.
John: That's fun to say.
John: We were... At a certain point, we had... We'd had a late night smoking cigars...
John: With the master chiefs and the chief master chief.
Merlin: Master chiefs are the highest level enlisted people, right?
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: In the Navy.
Merlin: They're professionals.
Merlin: They're career professionals who just aren't officers.
John: Yeah, and the chief, I'm sorry, the command master chief is the highest ranking chief.
John: And the command master chief of this base was a very capable and very clearly in-command person.
John: And he invited us to his private lair where we sat around smoking what could only be described as illegal cigars.
John: You're so lucky.
John: Yeah.
John: having a good time, just talking to the chiefs.
Merlin: They're different, the cigars.
John: Yeah, well, and these guys were different.
John: And at one point, I think I mentioned on some other podcast I recently did, that one of the master chiefs was like, when I said, I was going around like, what do you do?
John: And he's like, well, I'm in charge of the CBs.
John: I'm like, what do you do?
John: Well, I'm in charge of the... And I get to a guy and he's like, I'm a parachute packer.
John: And I said, you are like...
John: Master Chief, and you're telling me you're a parachute packer for the Navy?
John: What Navy guys ever go under a parachute?
John: And he just gave me this wink.
John: And I was like, oh, I see.
John: I see who you are.
John: So it was these guys.
John: what i missed there is he an operative he's the he was the seal he was the he was the seal master chief oh it's like when i tell people i'm a ceramicist i get it okay yeah he was saying i pack parachutes and if you're in the if you're in the military then i shoot the shit out of people yeah if you're in the military and you think like who is in the navy well a lot of people that swab the decks
John: The only guys that come out of airplanes under parachutes are like – they don't have an airplane.
Merlin: Aren't they trained for like everything?
Merlin: Like they are meant to be like even beyond Marines.
Merlin: God bless them.
Merlin: Like they're meant to be like they could go into any situation and just deal with it, right?
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah, well, I'm not going to jack off the seals right now, because I feel like the seals are getting enough credit in our culture.
John: But yeah, the seals have a nice... They have a good challenge coin?
John: They have a good challenge coin, and they have a lot of skills.
John: They have the skills to pay the bills.
John: Okay, fair enough.
John: But anyway, so I'm talking to the Command Master Chief.
John: And I said, why is this base closed to... I mean, why is it on lockdown?
John: And he rolled his eyes and said, well, nine months ago, somebody blew themselves up in a club downtown in Djibouti.
John: And so now nobody here has allowed liberty to go into the town.
John: And I said, I really feel like that is antithetical to the whole idea of having a military base in a foreign country.
John: Like, the young guys that are in the Navy need to go into the town...
John: And the people in the town need to have the young guys in the Navy come in.
John: That is the symbiosis of being deployed overseas.
John: And to have a base here where the sailors can't leave the base is just the wrong mentality.
John: And he said, I agree 100%, but my hands are tied because the order came down from...
John: you know, US AFRICOM or something.
John: And I was like, well, that's a bummer because I really want to go see Djibouti.
John: And he chewed on his cigar for 15 minutes while we talked about other things.
John: And then he said, you know what, I'm going to make it so that you can go into Djibouti.
John: And the next day, he, you know, some captain or not captain, some lieutenant, Navy lieutenant shows up in a SUV.
John: And we all went out
John: David Reese and Jonathan Colton and I and somebody, some other person that I don't know who they were, we all went out through the seven layers of hardened security gates and drove, spent an afternoon driving around Djibouti town.
John: But the...
John: most telling moment was as we were leaving the base, it's kind of, you know, gravelly, scorched earth sort of around the base.
John: As we're leaving the base, he points over to the side and very matter-of-factly says, there are the old gallows from when the French ran this place.
John: Wow.
John: And it was like, it was like Calvary Mount.
John: You know, there was literally a hill.
John: Was that for their own guys?
John: No.
No.
John: Literally a hill and then a giant gallows where they hung whoever it was that they felt needed hanging.
John: And it was built in such a way that you could not escape seeing it from sort of miles around.
John: And it was a real, like...
John: I mean, it was real colonial... It was like an emblem of colonial authority and injustice.
Merlin: Unapologetic colonialism.
John: Absolutely.
John: Just like...
Merlin: This is not a hearts and minds type situation we're running here.
John: Yeah, this is the end of the road, right.
John: This is the Dien Bien Phu of Djibouti.
John: And boy, I mean, walking around or going around Djibouti town was interesting, and it was a fun experience, but I've been chewing on that gallows.
John: Ever since.
John: And just like, that's some heavy shit that we don't, it's been a long time since there's been a visible gallows in the United States.
John: And I don't think, I think you'd be hard pressed to find one still in a public square.
John: Maybe in a theater.
John: And the thing is, they're not yet maybe in a theater in San Francisco in an Italian social club.
Merlin: No, that's so scary.
John: It was scary.
Merlin: I mean, even if it's, you know, not being used, it's, I wonder why they haven't taken it down.
John: That's the thing that I've been chewing on.
John: Just in terms of messaging.
John: It's so easy to blow it up.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Or, you know, turn it into a gift shop or something.
Merlin: But, like, to have that thing there seems, I don't know, that seems a little creepy.
John: It does.
John: It does.
John: It does.
John: And it does to me still.
John: But, you know, there are a lot of countries where, you know, capital punishment is still practiced in public.
Merlin: They did, didn't they do, the French did public executions until into the 20th century, right?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I mean, I've seen photos of a very modern-looking guillotine.
John: Well, you know, the guillotine is very efficient and very sanitary.
John: So in that sense, I mean, if you're thinking about sanitary, that's what you want.
John: L and Z. Because everything goes in the basket, right?
John: Although a basket is a terrible thing to collect blood in.
Merlin: Oh, God.
Merlin: Isn't that weird with all of that?
Merlin: Send that a happy note.
Merlin: Isn't it strange with all the technology we have, we're moving backwards in terms of cleanly killing people?
Merlin: Doesn't it seem desperately... Well, first of all, I don't know about you.
Merlin: I'm not a giant fan of the death penalty.
Merlin: But man, if you're going to do it, Jesus Christ, these guys could fuck up a steel trap.
Merlin: I mean, did you hear about the one dude and how long it took him in the condition?
Merlin: It's like...
John: This is the thing.
John: They keep trying to make it humane, and then you realize that it isn't humane to kill people, no matter how you think of to do it.
Merlin: But as you have stated, the most monstrous-seeming methods from centuries ago are a lot cleaner than having a guy dressed up like a doctor go in and poke you, I guess a doctor probably, go in and poke you with poison.
Merlin: That's actually not as reliable.
Yeah.
John: No, it's terrible because everybody is different, and you can't really gas somebody either reliably.
Merlin: Go meet anybody who's an anesthesiologist.
Merlin: I mean, that's the toughest gig in that room.
Merlin: I'm fascinated by anesthesiology.
Merlin: It is so difficult to get right, and you still hear with seasoned people, you still hear these stories of people who were knocked out enough to not be able to say anything.
Merlin: Right, but could still feel.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Or the people that just die on the operating table because they're having a mole removed.
Right.
Merlin: And this is why you're the emissary.
Merlin: We're going to come and fix those moles.
John: I feel like we just need to get a sort of soylent green maker.
John: If we're going to have capital punishment, it needs to be handled in a central location.
Merlin: Let's make it work for us.
John: Presumably somewhere in, I would say, Kansas.
John: Let's say Kansas.
John: Because Kansas is the center of the country.
John: And they also, they have decided how they're going to be there.
John: So let's just call it Kansas.
John: Maybe, I mean, Texas obviously has.
Merlin: No, I like Kansas.
John: So they'll put it in Kansas.
John: It'll be a Soylent Green Factory.
John: We'll take all the people that we have decided that we're going to legally kill.
John: And we'll just put them in a hopper.
John: And then down through the grinder, there's no amount of... I mean, it's going to be quick, but there's no amount of like, oh, we didn't get it right the first time.
John: We have to go back.
John: Yeah.
John: Right?
John: They're just going to be... And then we can use that as fish food or fertilizer or squeezies for kids.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: whatever you want to use it for but it took us i mean it used just using a matrix philosophy right it took us a long time to grow that yes that that bad person yeah we've invested we've invested a lot of time and energy in public schools and so forth it should at least be a snack bar for kids we should at least get something out of it right oh yeah some kind of like uh slurry
John: That can be used for a variety of purposes.
John: Preach too far, John.
John: You can use it to paint your barn or whatever.
John: I don't know.
Merlin: It was a good show.
Merlin: It was fun.
Merlin: Nice people.
Merlin: It was good.
Merlin: We never really used the bell.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Just a little bit.
Merlin: It was a little bit, you know, we're trying to work it in.
Merlin: But how was your overall experience of Sketchfest?
Merlin: You had the nerd show with the nerd guys.
Merlin: You had Roderick on the line.
Merlin: And then you did something.
Merlin: Did you get to meet John Benjamin?
Merlin: Is that right?
John: John Benjamin and I, he hosted the show that I was the musical guest.
John: Wow.
John: And he and I had a very, very nice time together.
John: It was revealed by H. John Benjamin that he is a longtime Long Winters fan.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: I also heard he listens to a friend of mine's podcast.
Merlin: That's pretty cool.
John: yeah so he's a media consumer that guy media consumer and also just from the moment you meet him just in his face and in his eyes you realize that he is one of the good ones uh just a good dude and his his comedy his sense of humor really comports with my own like he walks out on stage and he's just like i mean here i am and here are the things i'm going to say
Merlin: You make any cracks about Bob's Burgers to him?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Don't think I didn't hear that.
Merlin: I learned my lesson.
Merlin: Your throwaway line for people watching junk TV, sitting around watching Bob's Burgers.
John: Yeah, I did.
John: I took a shot at Bob's Burgers, but then the following day I was on a show...
John: But two of the guys from Bob's Burgers are three of them.
John: I don't know how many of them.
John: Eugene was there.
Merlin: Oh, right.
Merlin: Eugene Merman.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: But all of the shows at Sketch Fest this year were great.
John: I had a wonderful time.
John: I met a lot of amazing people.
John: And, you know, my problem in the past with Sketchfest was always that I was left standing on the corner at some point by a driver who had never been to San Francisco before.
John: And this time it never happened.
John: It was completely well organized.
John: It was perfect the entire time.
John: There were a couple of little problems.
John: They didn't put me in the hotel I wanted, which made me mad.
John: And I voiced my anger to everybody.
John: And they all tut-tutted and told me that they were really sorry.
John: And I was not mollified.
John: But I did just go with the flow because I'm learning to go with the flow.
John: Is that right?
John: Not really.
John: And then at the very end, I was standing in front of my hotel waiting for my ride to the airport.
John: And the guy is texting me on my way.
John: I'll be there in five.
John: And I was like, okay, we're getting down to the wire.
John: I got to get to the airport and, you know, it's going to take a little while to get there, as you know.
John: And then he texts me and he's like, all right, I'm pulling up out front.
John: And I'm standing there with my guitar case in front of the hotel, looking up and down the completely abandoned street.
John: Oh, no.
John: Did he go to the hotel you wanted?
John: He went to the hotel that I wanted to be at, the hotel I should have been at.
John: And he's like, I'm in front of the hotel.
John: I don't know where you're at, man.
John: I'm right here at the hotel.
John: Idiot.
John: And I was just like, oh, you bastard.
John: And then I was just like, all of you are bastards.
John: And so I grabbed the first cab I saw.
John: which in the culture of San Francisco was the wrong move because it infuriated all the other cabs that were parked on the side of what I had seen only a moment before to be an empty street.
John: It wasn't an empty street.
John: There were like five cabs.
John: Oh, you had a line jumper, huh?
John: And some guy zips up, and I was like, you know, taxi, and he had jumped the cab line.
John: Yeah.
John: And then all these cabs started honking their horns, and one screeched up and tried to block us, and they were yelling at each other, and I was like, listen.
John: You want mad?
John: You want to see mad?
John: I'm mad.
John: You guys might be cabbie mad, but I'm a higher level of mad than cabbie mad.
Merlin: Those guys are getting their clock cleaned right now.
John: The cabs.
Merlin: Oh, because of Uber.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: It's bad.
Merlin: The Uber drivers make, I think, on average, $10 an hour more.
Merlin: And just the number of people who've moved from being cab drivers to Uber is just...
Merlin: It's dramatic.
Merlin: I mean, and I've got that, it's called Curb.
Merlin: I've got that app for getting a cab, you know, that's supposed to be their answer to Uber.
Merlin: I've tried it three times and each time I've waited 10 minutes and they've never gotten a cab.
Merlin: Whereas with Uber, I hate them, but they're here in three minutes.
John: Yeah, they're there in seconds, right?
John: Yes.
John: And most of the time I was in San Francisco and needed a ride, people were calling Ubers and they were there in three minutes.
John: And this cab that I did take to the airport,
John: At some point, maybe as a weight-saving measure, maybe for some other reason that I can't explain, it seems that they took out the entire rear suspension and replaced it with a railroad tie.
John: So the whole way to the airport, I was like, this car is not safe to drive.
John: And the guy was like, what?
John: It's fine.
Merlin: I've noticed that there's basically two kinds of people driving things in San Francisco, generally.
Merlin: There's people who drive for Uber and Lyft, and there's cab drivers who fucking hate Uber and Lyft and talk about it the entire time.
Merlin: yeah they're advocating for it now i got i got a ride home a couple weeks ago and uh and uh the entire ride home this guy went off he's like an activist an anti-uber activist and just went off and you know and i'm doing the thing where i'm kind of like making a motion with the earphones i'm like just let me know if you need anything you know like because i'm not a talk to the cab driver guy and uh but like there's an accident in the road he's like oh but that was the whole time he's got his arm on the seat and he keeps turning back to look at me to make sure i'm getting all of this he goes oh
John: accident but that's an uber we like to take we like to take photos of them and post them like wow man you're really driven so mad so mad yeah no i uh i had a great time in san francisco again i did not make the mistake of buying anything while i was there because did you ever go back and demand satisfaction from the suit people
John: No, and I actually thought about it as I was walking in that neighborhood, and I thought about how true it is.
John: because I'm not alone in this, how true it is that not only did that guy make, it wasn't that big of a ripoff, but he made a couple hundred bucks.
Merlin: He's counting on the fact that you're from out of town.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: When we worked at McDonald's, if we had to choose where the good food or the crappy food went, the good food always went to the counter, the crappy food always went to the drive-thru because they're not going to come back.
John: Interesting.
John: Just saying, it works for suits too.
John: I did not know that the McDonald's employees had a good food, crappy food dialectic happening.
John: But I haven't eaten at a McDonald's in a decade.
John: But this was a situation where this guy made a couple hundred bucks off of me.
John: And my instinct would have been having, if I'd had a successful experience at that place, that the way that I...
John: The way that I practice loyalty is that I would have bought something in his store every time I went to San Francisco for the next 25 years.
Merlin: The way you phrased it, it sounded like that's kind of what you were looking for.
Merlin: You wanted like what people used to have, which was a suit maker, a tailor, who could give you bespoke clothes.
Merlin: You need to go, oh, hello, Jim Sr.
Merlin: Hello, Jim Jr.
John: Suit me up.
John: You're back in town.
John: We missed you.
John: All the things that my dad had from that store that were made for him by this guy's dad, it had created a fantasy in my head that I was going to have a San Francisco haberdasher.
John: And for a couple hundred bucks, this guy lost...
John: What will end up being tens of thousands of dollars in patronage, and that feels like punishment enough.
John: Also, the other thing is I have a podcast where I refer to him periodically, and my presumption is that if you live in San Francisco, that you will not patronize cable car clothiers out of loyalty to Roderick on the lawn.
John: You're not bitter.
John: Not at all, no.
John: This is how people are constantly telling me how capitalism works.
John: You're always packing your parachute.
John: It was so funny.
John: Based on the Dan Benjamin program that I've only recently become aware of.
Merlin: Is that completed?
Merlin: Where is the status with that?
John: Which one?
Merlin: Is it still recording?
John: Or are you guys done yet?
John: We're Skyping now.
John: I lay in bed with my iPad as I'm going to sleep and Dan's on the other side and we're just looking at each other.
John: You hang up first.
John: You hang up first.
John: But as a result of that program where I said, you know, every time, like I laugh a bitter laugh every time the New York Times like paywalls me.
John: Because as a musician, I always find it really charming when people tell me that their content is worth money because I've spent the last 10 years being told that my content isn't worth money or it's worth a fraction of a fraction of a cent.
John: And I said something like that on Dan's program.
John: And I got a tweet from the managing editor of the New York Times.
Merlin: What?
John: That person listens to Back to Work?
John: Listens to Back to Work.
John: And then he says in his tweet, I am a big Long Winters fan and have been since before the podcast era.
John: And I bought all your records.
Ooh.
John: Sick burn.
John: We're in an economy with one another, and this is what it takes.
John: You pay us, we pay you.
John: And I said, well, I replied back and said, yes, but you bought my records because you chose to.
John: You had the option of buying them and you chose to do that for whatever reason.
John: But there is also... And the predominant way of acquiring my records now is to choose to just do the easiest thing, which is actually not to buy them.
John: The easiest and the way that the culture is...
John: The way that this economy you're describing works now is that my content in particular, above all other contents, is supposed free.
John: And the equivalent would be that Spotify come along and say, we're going to publish all...
John: The newspaper content in the world.
John: And then we're going to pay the various newspaper writers.
John: We're going to pay the various writers based on how many people read their articles.
John: Based on math that we devise for ourselves.
John: So every time somebody reads... No negotiations.
John: No negotiation possible.
John: Anytime a writer reads that New York Times article for free on Spotify, we're going to give you .00001 cent.
John: And he, to this guy's credit, this New York Times guy, wrote me back and said, looking in my iTunes at what I have actually bought, I'm embarrassed.
John: I'm ashamed.
Merlin: Oh, versus what he downloaded for free?
John: Yeah, or what he thought he owned but in fact was listening to on Spotify or whatever.
John: However it was that he kind of reflected on the fact.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
Merlin: Yeah, very much to his credit.
John: Yeah, very much to his credit.
John: And then even more to his credit, then he said, here's a hack.
John: All the New York Times content that we promote via social media is paywall-free.
Merlin: You can also go in via Google News.
Merlin: He'll usually let you in.
John: Oh, Google News.
John: Thank you, Merlin.
Merlin: It's about technology.
John: Look at all these.
John: Now I feel like I'm – what was that?
John: Privileged.
Privileged.
John: No, no, I already felt that.
John: No, what was that dumb program that the guy from Facebook that liked to have disco parties with underage girls invented to listen to music for free?
Merlin: Oh, like the Napster.
John: Not Friendster, Napster, that's right.
John: Now I feel like I have the Napster for the media, for the news.
Merlin: Talking about privilege, I got a nice email this morning from somebody, actually I shouldn't say, a public radio station that I listen to.
Uh-huh.
Merlin: That you listen to on the internet or on the airwaves?
Merlin: I listen to on the airwaves, and he sent me the pledge-friendly no-pledge link.
Merlin: He sent me the feed where you don't have to listen to pledge stuff.
Merlin: Oh, what?
Merlin: There is one?
Merlin: I feel like I've arrived.
Merlin: Yeah, once you pledge, they give you the keys.
Merlin: I haven't pledged yet, but he fronted me by...
Merlin: On strength, as they say.
Merlin: Talk about privilege.
Merlin: Yeah, what could be whiter and more privileged than getting a link to listen to NPR without the plan?
Merlin: I'm officially the whitest person on the planet.
Merlin: And this is All Things Considered.