Ep. 145: "Scrum of Celery"
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Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Hi, Merlin.
Merlin: How's it going?
John: Good.
John: How are you going?
John: I'm going very well.
John: Do you remember the first time I ever... What was it?
John: The first time I answered a Skype call from you, I pushed video call.
John: Oh.
John: And the picture of me showed up on your screen and you started screaming, no, no, no!
Turn that off!
Merlin: Yeah, I think I do.
Merlin: I have kind of a little PTSD about it, yeah.
John: And I was like, whoa, oh, sorry, scrambling around to try and turn off the video.
Merlin: I am persuaded of a single fact, which is that lots of different people have lots of different ideas about what Skype is for and how you use it.
Merlin: And when two people who use it differently encounter each other, it can be a little bit rocky.
John: I have noticed that people, there are some people, not many, who want to socially network with me through Skype.
Merlin: Yeah, we've talked about that.
Merlin: And then Brett Terpshire's birthday popping up.
Merlin: But, you know, the big one for me is somebody says, hey, I want to have a call on Skype.
Merlin: And I'm like, not really, but okay.
Merlin: And all right, let's go to the call.
Merlin: We've exchanged our Skype handles.
Merlin: And then you get the boop, and it comes up, and it's some guy with, like, a meticulous haircut who's shaved.
Merlin: Right.
John: like wearing a polo shirt in an office i'm like what are you doing don't show me that put that away people leave their video on they like to video talk it's like the future yes they do they like it well because john do you get people who want to be on video with you no no no much more often the the uh the the thing that i get is well why don't you just go to your home studio and record like i don't it doesn't even matter just record like five minutes or just record like you know a couple of 30 second spots or whatever
Merlin: For like morning zoo spots?
John: And I'm just like, oh, go to my home studio and record you some 30-second spots.
John: Is that all I should go to?
John: And the way people toss that off, it's obviously something that people do all the time.
John: Like you're the dummy.
John: Yeah, I'm the dummy, right.
John: I'm sure that Ted Leo...
John: He tosses off some 30-second spots, 50 a day.
John: You think he tosses off some spots?
John: I bet he tosses spots off all the time.
John: And I know for a fact people around here toss spots off.
John: And I'm sitting there like, you know what it would take for me to toss you a spot?
John: I would have to.
John: It would be 11 weeks.
Merlin: Man, I am so simpatico on this.
Merlin: First of all, evolution.
Merlin: It used to be I had a camera on my monitor pointed at my face with the thing open so that it could accidentally fire off video.
Merlin: Then I went to keeping the little sphincter closed.
John: Did you put some tape over it?
Merlin: Well, and then I went to turning it sideways so it points at the coffee pot.
Merlin: And now, look right up here.
Merlin: You see?
Merlin: See?
Merlin: I disconnected the camera.
Merlin: I do not want to be seen.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But, you know, here's the other thing, though.
Merlin: It used to be for me, back when I used to type more, people would be like, hey, let's do an interview.
Merlin: Let's do an email interview.
Merlin: And in some ways, I greatly preferred the email interview because I got to punctuate everything correctly.
John: They are wonderful.
John: Email interviews are the only kind of interviews.
Merlin: Yeah, I guess.
Merlin: But I got to where it sometimes – so here's this thing.
Merlin: Here is part of the disproportionate nature of electronic media, particularly email.
Merlin: If somebody could send you a two-line email that requires six months of work.
Merlin: Uh-huh.
Merlin: And there's nothing to keep you from basically setting everything aside to take care of whatever that person asks for.
Merlin: So it makes it very easy on the interviewer, right?
Merlin: Because they just go, hey, or they'll send you seven questions.
Merlin: And if you're like you and me, we'll spend three days answering that.
John: Absolutely.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But now I'm more like, you know what?
Merlin: Let's just get your questions, plug in, we'll get on the Skype, and then you can go make a thing out of it.
Merlin: It can be very time-consuming.
John: But as you know, certainly back in the days when I was doing a lot of interviews in the alternative press, some guy gets you on the phone and immediately starts asking those like, so...
John: Why should somebody listen to your band, or worse, like, so what kind of music do you play?
John: And it's like, are you seriously, you're calling me on the phone, and you're asking me these dumbass questions?
John: And then, so you do your best to answer them in a good...
John: In a good, cheery voice, you walk the person through what their question should have been without being too pedantic.
Merlin: But you can tell they either didn't do any homework or they're such a hack that the first third of this article is going to be like the first third of every article ever written about you.
John: Yeah, well, the first third of the article is going to be about them, right?
John: But then the article comes out and...
John: They don't know the difference between your and your.
John: And they are making that mistake in transcribing my comments.
John: So the reader cannot help but feel that I have spoken the wrong your.
John: Right?
John: I mean, the reader can't help but think that I am the idiot.
John: And, you know, if the person, like, doesn't know how commas work...
John: let alone a semicolon, they can change the complete meaning of what you've said.
John: And after a while, I was just like, you know what?
John: If it can't be an email interview...
John: You know, even an in-person interview, there was a terrible event where I'd come off of a tour that was a very fun tour where we were all kind of giving each other the sauce.
Merlin: Oh, and this is when you said some certain things about a certain band.
John: Yeah.
John: I remember this.
John: Well, certain things about everybody on the tour, in the spirit of the kind of monkey business that we were throwing at each other on the tour, right?
John: I mean, when we were on the tour, we were just... I remember this.
John: This is bad.
John: And the interviewer was writing a big article about my upcoming record for a major magazine, and he was a prominent...
John: and we met at a french cafe and he was very charming and he expressed that he was a great admirer of my band and he wrote a five-page feature with six color photographs in a glossy magazine but he had an axe to grind or was in that like journalistic scoop mode or something
John: And there was a whole paragraph where, you know, the spirit of the way I was saying what I was saying was like, I love these guys, these jerks, these dummies.
Merlin: You implied that they drank a lot, I think.
John: Yeah, these ding-a-lings.
John: Oh, my God.
John: Party, party, party.
John: And here's another thing.
John: They're all dummy heads.
John: And he just put it in his article and sort of bookended it in a way that when the article came out, you know, I got four really angry phone calls from people.
Merlin: Oh, God.
John: And, you know, not just angry, but like upset.
John: Like, why would you betray us like this?
John: And it turned out that this... Like you were complicit.
John: Right.
John: Like I had been like... You were Vichy.
John: You want to know about these guys?
John: I'll tell you about these guys.
John: And what it turned out was that this particular writer...
John: like hated one of the bands one of the guys for a long time had written a bunch of smear pieces about him or you know and everybody everybody knew who this guy was and didn't like him and it was just like why would you why would you tell that guy all that stuff and i was like oh shit yeah
John: And so from that point on, I was like, send me your questions.
John: I will go over them and answer them.
John: And when you get it back, it will read like you are a good interviewer.
John: Don't worry.
John: It's not, you know, ethics in indie rock journalism are also not really a real thing, right?
John: You're not actually trying to get, there's no, it's not like you are, uh...
John: It's not like you are interviewing a presidential candidate.
John: You're just talking about bands, and it's not important that you transcribe the quote exactly right.
John: It's just a good article.
John: Fuck you.
Merlin: Yeah, because here's the other part of that is that you're right.
Merlin: You're not interviewing Mike Huckabee or something like that.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: They are – you are a musician who is – let's be honest.
Merlin: You're talking to them because you're promoting your album or your platform or whatever.
Merlin: And they're somebody who wants to get hits on the internet, right?
Merlin: So, I mean, you both have a reason for doing this that isn't just the public interest.
John: Well, this is one of the weird things that I've always kind of –
John: I've started on Twitter following a lot of real journalists.
John: People who are embedded in the Ukraine.
John: People who are in Africa.
Merlin: You mean Ukraine?
John: I'm sorry.
John: Ukraine.
John: People who are embedded in Ukraine.
John: You're going to get email.
John: No emails, please.
John: It's a bad habit.
John: I know calling it the Ukraine is akin to the worst...
John: Crimes against humanity that a person is capable of.
John: I'm sorry.
John: I just want to save you.
John: Thank you.
John: I do not mean to create those crimes against humanity.
Merlin: Real people reporting on real issues in the real world.
John: That's right.
John: Real people out there.
John: And, you know, their job is very difficult, and they are trying...
John: They are trying hard to not misrepresent what's happening.
John: And a lot of times the things they're seeing with their own eyes are fairly incredible.
John: And if you're a journalist who's out in the middle of a battlefield and you're the only person there and you are the witness of history...
John: I feel the tremendous pressure they must feel to get it accurately, record it accurately.
John: If you are one of 60 journalists in a news conference where there are seven television cameras, it's pretty well covered.
John: We can go back and find out what happened.
John: This whole thing with Bill O'Reilly...
John: where he is talking about the Falklands War as though he were in the trenches, and then it takes us 40 years for somebody to say, hey, wait a minute, there weren't any trenches in the Falklands War, and also no one could get there.
John: No one was there.
John: And he's, you know, for years been shouting people down about how he was, like, doing a bayonet charge.
John: You know, that's an example of, like,
John: a journalist misrepresenting something for his own uh you know for his own glory but like so much of so much of that
John: That journalism vibe.
John: I mean, when I think about music journalism, and I've always felt this way, what the hell is music journalism?
John: I understand the impulse to do it, right?
John: I understand the impulse to write it.
John: And I really understand the impulse to read it, because I used to read it just like with a mad hunger.
John: I would read people writing about music.
John: But...
John: But it isn't really journalism, is it?
Merlin: In most cases, I have to say, not really.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: It's reporting of a kind, but it's their features, mostly.
John: Yeah, and people who mistake the job of writing about music that it needs to be hard-hitting...
John: Or you need to expose something.
John: I mean, I suppose you can use music and contemporary music all the time as a lens through which you are trying to expose a bigger vein of the culture.
John: But that's not usually how it plays out, right?
John: Most of the time it's about the band or about the family of bands and largely about the writer's feelings about bands.
John: And so, like, what role does veracity have?
John: Right?
Merlin: You know, like, who cares?
Merlin: Yeah, I think about, I mean, one thing, I don't know if this is that different, but this feels different.
Merlin: I think about, like, when I was still watching TV news.
Merlin: Maybe let's say in the 80s or even in the early 90s.
Merlin: I would watch like the Sunday morning shows and stuff like that.
Merlin: Think about a character like Sam Donaldson where he was like the Howard Cosell of ABC News because he was obviously a personality who wanted to become part of the story because it was Sam Donaldson who was saying it.
John: Yeah, the bombs are dropping behind him and his eyebrows are waggling and he is your guy.
Merlin: And he had what appeared to be a personality and a point of view in an industry where usually you would try to recede into the background.
Merlin: And so, I mean, it's one thing to be an mostly uncredited pool reporter for AP or Reuters where you are just – you're going to be evaluated mostly on like how quickly you got an accurate retelling of the facts into print.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Uh, and then that gets distributed across the world, but it seems like more and more today.
Merlin: And I, I, I, this is a big jump to go from, you know, talking about interviewing Ronald Reagan to talking about the Rens or whatever.
Merlin: But now today in what you might call music journalism, on the one hand, you've got the sort of like what AV club pitchfork.
Merlin: I don't even know anymore.
Merlin: I don't follow stuff anymore, but you've got, it seems like you're mostly addressing fans of a genre and band with your coverage and
Merlin: And in some cases, you are trying to, say, introduce like an up-and-comer, right?
Merlin: But I mean, what is there really to say about like what the Rolling Stones are up to that isn't a story about something bigger than music?
Merlin: Where you have to turn it into a personality story or just as often a money story or something.
Merlin: Or in all cases, you know, the difference between the Sam Donaldsons of then and today is that, you know, you don't just want to tell the facts.
Merlin: You want to find something that nobody else noticed, even if it's not really there.
Merlin: So you get into the turns out stuff, where you want to be the one person who went to that press conference and came up with something, and maybe it's a funny tie tack somebody's wearing or something.
Merlin: But you've got to find something nobody else is doing, otherwise you don't really make a name for yourself today.
John: Yeah, right.
John: And those pieces, the reviews of Vampire Weekend that are really a review of...
John: Ivy League privilege or whatever.
John: I love that stuff still because yeah, it's feature writing.
John: It's good feature writing.
John: But I don't know.
John: Just like you, I used to read 600...
John: reviews a week of new records, of live shows, of reissues.
John: I mean, I would sit and just read reviews, reviews, reviews, reviews of stuff I never intended to listen to, of stuff that I knew backwards and forwards, like writing reviews and reading reviews felt like a
John: and I do not do it anymore.
John: It's so strange.
John: I guess it's like somebody that used to buy 7 inches and then stopped buying 7 inches, except I can't even really look over at the milk crates full of record reviews that I read and even go paw through them.
John: I mean, I suppose I could go find an old copy of Snipe Hunt from 1993, and I would love it.
John: I'd probably still love it.
But...
Merlin: Yeah, and also it's – I mean the role of the review has always been kind of as much about the reviewer as the reviewed in a lot of ways.
Merlin: I mean if you think about going back to – I mean certainly in film, what they call film criticism.
Merlin: movie reviewing there you know it was it wasn't until the 80s and the introduction of Siskel and Ebert's thumbs up thumbs down before then yeah you'd have stars and stuff but by and large it was about like what this what this movie meant and they have stars Wendy when was the star system of movie reviewing introduced
Merlin: I feel like – I think it's been around – that's a really good question.
Merlin: I don't know the answer, but I'm thinking of stuff – think about like a People magazine used to have jeers and cheers.
Merlin: But like even in TV Guide, remember when you're a little kid and you're reading TV Guide, they would have stars for the movies?
Merlin: And again, I think that's like a syndicated service by and large.
Merlin: But I mean to be somebody who considers themselves – think about the difference between being a movie reviewer.
Merlin: I was on a podcast recently talking about this really funny website called Kids in Mind, which is a site that is very specifically for parents to get reviews of like what happened in a movie.
Merlin: It's so funny.
Merlin: It ends up reading almost like porn.
Merlin: They have a star system, which is how much profanity, sex, and violence from zero to ten.
Merlin: But then there's this entire exhaustive page of all the actual specific things that led them to give those ratings.
Merlin: And like I say, it does read a little like porn.
Merlin: It's so specific.
Merlin: Like Spongebob pulls down the bathing suit on a starfish, and you see his butt crack.
Merlin: Come on.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: I want a supercut of all those moments.
Merlin: But I mean, is that journalism?
Merlin: No, it's practical.
Merlin: The thing is, it's very practical.
Merlin: So I find myself frequently, despite myself, going to Rotten Tomatoes is my favorite for movie reviews, just to get a feel.
Merlin: It doesn't mean I'm not going to like it because it got 50%.
Merlin: But if it did get 90%, I am kind of more in the aggregate.
Merlin: They're aggregating all these different reviews.
Merlin: I don't actually – this is such a Philistine.
Merlin: But I'm not that super interested in what any one critic in the United States had to say about the movie.
Merlin: But that aggregate picture is very interesting to me.
Merlin: But that ain't journalism.
Merlin: I mean the part that I'm there for is very practical.
Yeah.
John: Well, and that was always one of the interesting things about the promise of the internet, right?
John: That through aggregating a million voices, we were going to get closer to the truth because we wouldn't have gatekeepers anymore, right?
John: It would just be like...
Merlin: It wasn't – yeah, because I mean it used to be – and let's talk about what you're really saying, which is it used to be that if you picked up the New York Times, you could count on that being nominally the best and brightest in reporting.
Merlin: But it was a very specific point of view that was virtually hegemonic.
John: Right.
John: Right, and the internet was like going to democratize everything, and there would be this, you would have the, well, essentially the voice of the Borg.
John: Everything would be seeable, everything would be knowable, and you would just, you'd listen, you would eliminate the five-star review and the one-star review, and then...
John: concentrate on aggregating 5,000 three-star reviews into some kind of sensible idea about it.
John: But I was out in a town last night called Silverdale in Washington, which is a place that used to just be... It used to be like Navy support personnel...
John: And then people who ran out of gas and just started living in their car.
John: And now Silverdale in the last 25 years has turned into just a giant suburban, it's in a way kind of a suburban metropolis.
John: It's just suburbs as far as the eye can see.
John: And I'm over there and it's like, oh, we're hungry.
John: What do we do?
John: We go on the internet.
John: The first thing that comes up is Yelp.
John: I've never written a Yelp review.
John: And in a way, I feel like I have read enough of them that I almost owe it to the community of humans to add Yelp reviews just because I take and take and take and I never give back.
John: But I hate Yelp and I hate Yelp reviews.
Merlin: I hate it so much and yet I use it.
Merlin: I don't know why I use it because if I see the star and I see it's two and a half stars, that's going to have an impression.
Merlin: And then I go and I read the reviews and I'm like, are you kidding me?
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: All these terrible people.
Merlin: They're illiterate.
John: And yet, here I am in Silverdale, and I'm looking for a Mediterranean restaurant because I feel like having some stuffed grape leaves.
John: And here, this program pops up out of nowhere.
John: It tells me where one is that's nearby.
John: And then it gives me this Sisyphean choice, right?
John: Because the reviews are inconclusive.
John: There are some reviews that are like, this is the most amazing place!
John: And then there are all these reviews that are like, it was terrible.
John: The, the waitress was rude and the, and the grape leaves didn't even taste like grapes.
John: And it's just like, what is that?
John: What?
John: And then you go.
John: So, so then you, then you're like rolling the, rolling the dice.
John: And in a way, rolling the dice, imagining that you're full of information, right?
John: But in fact, rolling the dice in exactly the same way as if you had looked it up in the phone book and pulled up out front of it and said, hmm, do you want to go in there?
John: Does it look okay?
John: And so you go in full of information but with actually no information because what it boils down to is you're going to walk into a place, sit down, and try it out.
John: And your experiences, you know, like none of those reviews are, none of them helped.
John: And what ended up happening was we were the only people in the restaurant.
John: The waitress was great.
John: The food was amazing.
John: And it was like, but how would my Yelp review add to the conversation, right?
John: The next time, the next person that comes along and reads that, it might be 5 o'clock at night.
John: There's 200 people in the restaurant.
John: It's a completely different conversation.
Merlin: I totally agree.
Merlin: Because most of those reviews, okay, on the one hand, this is just my impression as somebody who mostly tries to avoid reading the actual reviews.
Merlin: But I think people treat it like a blog a lot of the time.
Merlin: And there is a certain amount of status to being somebody who reviews a lot and gets their reviews like meta-reviewed.
Merlin: Like, hey, this person's a good reviewer.
Merlin: It's a top reviewer.
Merlin: Like, there's...
Merlin: That's how the internet works now, right?
Merlin: You get points.
Merlin: You get wuffy for going out and doing that stuff.
Merlin: But anybody who's a normal person that was going to leave a review, I mean, I think over 75% of the time, you would only leave a review if something very unusual and unexpected happened.
John: Oh, that's right.
John: That's right.
John: You're the outlier, right?
John: Somebody like me that had a great experience.
Merlin: Or a surprising, like, hmm, that was kind of weird.
Merlin: Like, everything was great except this one dish.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: Or you could say, but think about how you begin a review like that.
Merlin: I was visiting town.
Merlin: I knew nothing about this neighborhood, and I had a surprising experience here because I didn't know this place would be this good.
Merlin: It still comes down to you.
Merlin: It's still about, like, your personality.
Merlin: There's not... It's just...
John: Well, speaking of which, I had a really weird experience this morning.
John: Well, give me a review.
John: Well, so you know my frozen bacon process.
John: Yeah.
John: So I made a bunch of bacon.
John: And you know what?
John: I've been going to the German butcher and getting the handmade bacon that had been lovingly hand-padded.
Mm-hmm.
John: And I was just at like a chain grocery store and there was some like mega, like three pound bag of bacon for $5.
John: And I was like, you know what?
John: I don't even give a shit right now.
John: I was, I was hungry.
John: I was confused.
John: I bought a three pound bag of like Hormel bacon.
John: And I took it home and I did the bacon method.
John: I froze it in its individual bags.
John: I've been enjoying this bacon quite a bit.
John: It is just normal bacon, right?
John: But this morning on my way rushing out to go to the office, I grabbed a bag of frozen bacon.
John: I took a cup of two-day-old coffee and microwaved it as I normally do.
John: And then I poured some half and half into it to take the edge off.
John: But it was a new thing of half and half, and I put a little bit extra, a little bit too much half and half.
John: I don't like it to be creamy.
John: I want it to just be a little coffee with a little splash, you know, just a little, like, little fireworks in there.
John: But so I put too much half and half in, and I'm walking out the door, and I've got my microwaved coffee in one hand, in a beer mug, beer stein, my frozen bacon in the other, and
John: And as I'm warming up the truck, I take a bite of delicious frozen bacon.
John: Oh, here's the other wrinkle.
John: When I was making the bacon, I ran out of paper towels.
John: And so I did not have a system by which I could pat the grease off the bacon.
Merlin: Oh, right, right, right.
John: And so I just said, you know what?
John: People have been eating bacon for thousands of years before paper towels were even invented.
John: Am I a man or a mouse?
John: And so I just put the greasy bacon in the bag and put it in the freezer.
John: So the bacon had a pretty...
John: good coating of frozen grease on it.
John: So I eat a couple of pieces of frozen greasy bacon, and then I take a sip of over-microwaved two-day-old coffee with too much cream in it.
John: And the combination of those two substances, hot and cold, greasy and greasy...
John: with the coffee as a bonding agent, created a new polymer in my mouth and on my tongue where it was like the inside of my mouth had been, had itself been processed somehow so that my tongue no longer felt like a friend that I'd known for a long time.
John: It felt like someone wearing a helmet
John: was in my mouth and was trying to um was trying to like strip wallpaper off of an out of an abandoned house that's a good review and i was like this is really not what i was expecting but it wasn't entirely unpleasant and so it persisted
John: And I put the car in gear and I'm driving down the road and I'm exploring my new mouth with this new helmeted friend.
John: It's unclear whether he's a friend yet, but he's certainly an ally.
John: And it lasted probably for half an hour, this experience.
John: There was a tingling.
John: Because I think the salt was also playing a role.
John: I don't know.
John: I'm still reeling from it.
Merlin: It sounds like you're not negative, you're ambivalent about your helmet friend.
John: I'm glad that that's not still going on in my mouth.
John: I'm glad that that... I'm not sure if I will repeat it immediately.
John: But I do feel like that particular polymer might be of use in science.
John: And if there are people out there listening to this program who are in the science or science.
John: STEM careers, they call it.
John: Maybe experiment with those ingredients as a kind of maybe new anesthetic.
John: You never know what that stuff is going to do.
John: It could be a cure for polio, although we don't need one of those.
John: For now.
John: Right.
John: But, you know, that kind of experimentation, I don't think we need to go all the way up the Amazon to find new grasses that contain curare or whatever.
John: I think I may have manufactured curare in my own mouth.
Yeah.
John: By combining these beakers of like material that shouldn't ever be put or maybe should be put together.
Merlin: John, this is like the hundred monkeys typing on the typewriters.
Merlin: How many millennia might it have been before somebody came up with this particular mixture?
John: Well, that's the thing.
John: I don't think that frozen bacon is very common.
John: I think microwave coffee is pretty common.
John: I think over-creamed coffee.
Merlin: No, there's like three or four things here.
Merlin: Also, Big Stein.
Merlin: There's several parts to this that are unique.
John: Big Stein.
John: I'm sitting in a cold truck.
John: I mean, there's a... And it's kind of, you know, it's a big motor, so it's kind of vibrating me.
John: There's a little bit of a... It's not quite a centrifuge, but there is a mixer.
Yeah.
John: I mean, this is not a thing.
John: People have been eating bacon and drinking coffee for millennia.
John: But I don't know if this particular set of circumstances had ever occurred before.
Merlin: Man, it's a black swan.
John: So, I don't know.
John: Everything on this podcast so far has been Creative Commons, right?
John: Yeah, I suppose.
John: Everybody just gets to take it and make a shirt of it.
John: As long as you credit it to us, you can go ahead and remix it and make your own albums, make your own podcast just out of remixes.
John: Sure, sure, sure.
John: Create a whole platform out of it.
John: If you took this podcast and you sped my voice up so that it was at the pitch of your voice and you slowed your voice down so it was at the pitch of mine, it wouldn't be that much of a monkey if...
John: Right?
John: But you'd have to monkey with our voices a little bit.
John: How would that change the dynamic of the conversation for the listener?
Merlin: I'm going to say a lot.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: We have our special cadences.
Right.
John: If I was a little bit faster and a little bit, you know, like just pitched up a quarter tone.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: And you were a little bit more laconic.
Merlin: Well, you know, let's not go crazy with the formula.
Merlin: Right, I mean, sure.
Merlin: You don't want Costello to just start punching Abbott for no reason.
Merlin: No, you don't.
Merlin: Don't fuck with the formula.
John: No, you don't.
John: Don't fuck with the formula.
John: I'm just wondering if a scientist, if an intrepid thought scientist was out there and was like, you know what, I'm going to slow one guy up and speed the other guy down, and then apply that algorithm to all the past podcasts.
John: you're talking about a kind of multiverse that could be created that's right create a multiverse where no one expected it and then play those episodes to someone who had never heard the show before and say what do you think of these guys would still be helpful
John: Right.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: Would people just be like, this is just very unsettling.
Merlin: Well, as you know, John, I encourage science.
Merlin: I think it's a good idea.
Merlin: I think experimentation is interesting.
Merlin: I'm a little worried, though.
Merlin: Somebody's probably going to try it now.
Merlin: It's going to sound really weird.
Merlin: Because there are a lot of amateur scientists, a lot of laypersons who might just want to go and do that.
Merlin: And I kind of am a little scared with what that would sound like.
John: You know, I feel like this podcast is basically a bear talking to a raccoon.
Merlin: And if you... Am I the raccoon?
Merlin: My little black paws.
Merlin: Turns his head a little bit.
John: Chewing on a piece of garbage.
John: If you took a conversation between a bear and a raccoon and you made the raccoon sound like a bear and the bear sound like a raccoon, that's going to upset the animal kingdom, right?
John: People aren't going to
Merlin: You sure that coffee was okay, John?
John: I honestly have no idea.
John: And frankly... I think he might have gone into a bit of a fugue state.
John: Frankly, I don't know how long that cream was in the refrigerator.
John: I don't remember buying it.
John: And I was out of town for weeks.
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Merlin: Oh, dear, dear, dear.
Merlin: You know, I hate to bring up gravy again.
John: Did you notice the number of people that pushed back on the gravy?
John: I expected people would respond to that episode by saying, I love gravy.
John: I didn't get that.
John: I got three or four people that were like, gravy?
John: No.
John: You've got to be kidding me.
John: No, what you really want is like leek soup or lentil butter or, you know, like they had something else besides gravy.
John: You forgot.
John: That was better or, you know, change the calculation somehow.
Merlin: Oh, right, right.
Merlin: Well, this is the, goddammit, this is the beauty of this ecosystem of this gravy multiverse is that there are so many options and so many combinations.
Merlin: I think if anything, we're saying we just want to be more sauce positive.
John: Yeah, that's absolutely right.
Merlin: I don't have a dog in this fight, John.
Merlin: I don't have a raccoon in this bear.
Merlin: Whatever it is that people want to do, I just want them to feel free.
Merlin: I want to encourage them to try saucing more things.
Merlin: And maybe sometimes have a couple sauces.
Merlin: That's all I'm saying.
John: I went through a real sauce phase recently that was sort of in addition to my normal sauce phase.
Merlin: And you're a saucer.
Merlin: You're a saucier.
John: I am.
John: And it was a sauce level above the normal level.
John: And I started any time I cooked something and there was anything left in the pan, I would start making a sauce.
John: I would take the thing and I would put it over on a plate and I would let it go cold while I sat and like focused on this sauce.
Merlin: Like a Dr. Frankenstein, mad scientist kind of thing.
John: I was just like, the sauce.
John: But the problem was...
John: I love Marsala wine in a sauce.
John: It gives it a little... But I couldn't get away from the Marsala.
John: I would make the sauce.
John: I'd be like, hmm, this is pretty good.
John: What does it need?
John: A little bit of... And then I would always throw the wine in.
John: And so every sauce ended up tasting the same.
John: Oh.
John: And that included like cheese sauces.
John: And I was just... I couldn't stop.
John: This is one of the problems with my cooking is like I know what... I know basically what 10 ingredients do.
John: There are 800 ingredients I don't know what they do.
John: The 10 ingredients I do know what they do, I end up putting them in everything.
Merlin: Yeah, I'm the same way.
Merlin: Oh, God, I'm the same way.
Merlin: I cook.
Merlin: I do so few things like a man, but I really cook like a man.
Merlin: Not in a good way.
Merlin: I mean, it's going to be kosher salt, garlic powder, Mrs. Dash.
Merlin: A little bit of Lowry's to put a little Lowry's on there.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: I don't – I'm uncomfortable saying this because my wife kind of knows I do this and doesn't like it.
Merlin: I'll put some accent.
Merlin: I'll put some accent in.
John: Seriously?
Merlin: Oh, are you kidding me?
Merlin: You're talking about a little messenger?
Merlin: You put a little messenger in?
Merlin: No disrespect to the people who think that they're allergic to MSG.
Mm-hmm.
Merlin: Comma.
Merlin: But yeah, sometimes I'll put that in.
John: It's an activator.
Merlin: Amazing.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Hate crime.
Merlin: Hate crime.
John: That's insane.
Merlin: So here's what happened.
Merlin: And this is one of those things, one of those adult slogs where I pretty much knew how this was going to go, but I threw myself into it anyway.
Merlin: Here's what happened.
Yeah.
Merlin: Our last episode, for those of you, welcome.
Merlin: Welcome if you've never heard the show.
Merlin: We ended up talking a lot at the end of the program about the various sauces and gravies that we enjoyed and how when we had been on a cruise three weeks ago, we were able to have access to sauces and gravies of many kinds.
Merlin: All you care to eat anyway.
Merlin: And it made us into gravy scientists.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Then, a few days later, I went out and had our quarterly comic meetup.
Merlin: And I swear to Christ, John, I don't know what happened to me.
Merlin: I did go into a fugue state.
Merlin: And for like an hour and a half, ask anybody who was there, all I did was talk about gravy for like an hour and a half.
John: Maybe that's why I'm getting so much mail.
John: Maybe I'm getting mail from people who were there.
Merlin: I was repitching.
Merlin: Apparently, I have talked about this in many podcasts and other places before.
Merlin: My idea of having basically a mall restaurant that's all about sauces.
Merlin: Apparently, this is something I've gone through before.
Merlin: Long story short, I want some fucking gravy in my life.
Merlin: And here's the dumb guy part is I wanted it to be easy.
Merlin: So here's what I did.
Merlin: I knew this wasn't going to work.
Merlin: I went to the store.
Merlin: I went to the Safeway.
Merlin: I went to the aisle with the gravies.
John: Oh, no.
Merlin: And I bought a bunch of different gravies.
Merlin: Oh, canned gravies.
Merlin: And gravy mixes.
Merlin: And can I just tell you so far, and understand now, I'm like a little child going into this.
Merlin: I'm so excited.
Merlin: I'm ready for some fucking gravy.
Merlin: And you know what?
Merlin: They've been a literal abortion.
John: Yeah, no, it's terrible.
John: Somehow they put in, it's not the xanthan gum.
John: It is some other sort of emulsifier or stabilizer that they put in there that makes every canned gravy taste like you are licking... Like you're licking a pan in a restaurant that really should be cleaned rather than licked.
John: Yeah, you're licking a dirty pan.
Merlin: That's what it tastes like.
Merlin: And here's the thing.
Merlin: Here's the other part.
Merlin: And this is I really had to fight myself because I'm an ingredient reader.
Merlin: I'm not always the healthiest eater, but I do like to know what's unhealthy about what I'm eating.
Merlin: And you know me.
Merlin: I'm a pretty unhealthy eater.
Merlin: I don't have high standards.
Merlin: But basically, there's a flavor that I wanted.
Merlin: Somewhere in the first 10 ingredients, there's a flavor that I wanted, and then six to eight things that I generally try to avoid in everything that I buy.
John: Yeah, right, like the taste of plastic, the taste of burned plastic.
Merlin: Somewhere in there is chicken broth, but then you've got cornstarch.
Merlin: Fuck that.
Merlin: I mean, I know you've got to have that in gravy, but the first ingredients are all grains that I try to avoid and gums.
Merlin: and stuff like that grains and gums grains and gums i i mean i i try given the given the choice i will avoid a grain or a gum because it in a non-gravy environment those are not things that you want adulterating your food no i tried i tried to pack oh god i got some um like you know those little envelopes like taco mix oh yeah yeah yeah i don't know what i'm thinking john why am i saying this i got i got like six or eight of those and then a couple jars
John: Yeah, the packs are just somebody like crushed up two bouillon cubes and then mixed in some... It's a board meeting in a bag, basically.
Merlin: People go like, what's a bunch of shit we've got that we can put a photo on and charge $1.89 for?
Merlin: Okay, fine.
Merlin: So I got the nicest one I could find.
Merlin: The nicest envelope of sausage gravy I could find.
Merlin: Because you add milk instead of water, right?
John: Obviously.
Merlin: Quality.
Merlin: So...
Merlin: You add two cups of milk to this pocket of powder.
Merlin: It was so disgusting.
Merlin: It didn't taste like it really.
Merlin: It's what I imagine maybe Soylent tastes like.
John: Listen, I wish you had called me.
John: I mean, in general, I want you to call me.
John: Yes.
John: In situations like this.
Merlin: You mean when I'm having one of these inflection points where it could go one way or another?
John: Yeah.
John: I'm on the bubble.
John: Listen, I have tried every packaged sauce.
Yeah.
John: And so many of them, you need to run from so many of those, the Swansons.
Merlin: I've never bought those.
Merlin: I don't buy McCormick packs.
Merlin: I don't buy those taco packs.
Merlin: I know that's real ghetto kind of food.
Merlin: Not ghetto, you know what I mean.
Merlin: It's a real downscale.
John: Except, here's the problem.
John: You want a stroganoff.
John: Now, how does a man make a stroganoff?
Merlin: Without having to throw away a lot of food.
Merlin: Like, I could get a Stouffer's.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Your talk about the Salisbury steaks really took me back.
Merlin: I'm thinking I'm going to explore some Salisbury steaks and some stroganoffs.
Merlin: I love a stroganoff.
John: Oh, it's one of the all-time great foods.
John: Stroganoff with noodles?
John: Oh, boy.
John: But you know what's happened to stroganoffs is...
John: That stroganoffs have become one of these secret artisanal food weapons.
John: Oh, no.
John: People have artisanally weaponized stroganoffs.
John: So you walk into a restaurant and you're like, what is all this?
John: I don't want any of this.
Merlin: I think I know exactly what you're talking about.
Merlin: You take a food, you take a peasant food.
Merlin: A peasant food.
Merlin: It's perfect the way it is.
Merlin: And then you try to make it small batch.
John: Yeah, and then all of a sudden... So I'm like, oh, they've got stroganoff on the menu.
John: Shit, you know what?
John: That's what I want.
John: I want a stroganoff.
John: I don't need any beef tongue carpaccio.
Merlin: It's a Mediterranean stroganoff with a bang of southwestern spice.
John: Fuck you.
John: The worst part about it is it comes and they have obviously put a New York steak in it.
John: And...
John: It's like, why is this full of New York steak?
Merlin: That's something you order on death row, John.
Merlin: That's not like a food for a person who's in a free society.
John: Oh, my God.
John: Seriously, I have a three-ring binder of my death row foods.
Merlin: Have you thought about some pairings?
John: Well, as you know, I haven't read Shakespeare because I'm saving it for prison.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
John: And then there are some things that I'm kind of saving for death row, if that's how this all plays out.
John: And one of those is like that last menu.
John: I've seen some amazing menus, two fried chickens.
Merlin: I read one the other day, that woman who's on death row.
Merlin: She had a pretty amazing last meal stocked up.
John: I'll see where I find it.
John: Dry white toast, two fried chickens, and a Coke.
John: Like, you know, hell yes, I'm going to have, it's going to be, that'll be the one time that I eat tapas without wrinkling my nose at the affair, right?
John: Because I'm going to be like, I want a little bit of the following 60 foods.
Merlin: Here's a lady on death row in Georgia.
Merlin: She wants two cheeseburgers, two large orders of fries, lemonade, cherry vanilla ice cream, popcorn, cornbread, and a salad made of boiled eggs, tomatoes, bell peppers, onions, carrots, cheese, and buttermilk dressing.
John: Wow.
John: I can point her to some restaurants in Nebraska where she could get that right on the menu.
Merlin: It's actually a platter.
Merlin: They just bring it to you on a single plate.
John: That's right.
John: That's order number two.
John: Yeah, I think that I'd have some comfort foods.
John: You know what a food that I really have always liked?
John: Chicken cordon bleu.
Merlin: chicken cordon bleu chicken cordon bleu yes it got a little bit ruined for me when i worked in restaurants where that was there's certain kinds of things that that can be really good veal oscar certain kinds of things that you just knew had been like made a few days ago and we're sitting in a big tray yeah but when it's done well that can be that can be quite good so one of the first times that i really felt like an adult
John: I was in college.
John: I was probably, what, a sophomore.
John: And the party didn't happen at my house, and I think it's because my house, even when I was feeling like an adult, my house was generally uninhabitable.
John: Going to things like the large bottles of pee you were saving.
John: Well, or at that point in time, like the pony keg that had sort of let go sour.
John: And the party a few days before where at a certain point in the night, people just started putting their cigarettes out on the floor.
John: So I was at a friend's house, but it was my party.
John: You know that kind of scene where it's like, we're having a party.
John: It's at your house, but it's my party.
John: And we invited all the girls we knew, and they all came.
John: And it was a big enough group, probably 20 people, that it felt like a party and not just a gathering.
John: And my idea was we were going to assembly line some chicken cordon bleu.
John: And so we had all the ingredients, all the bowls of milk and egg and breadcrumbs.
Merlin: People were on board with this.
John: People were like, yes, let's do it.
John: And I think it was, you know, I mean, it was during a time when just the nature of how we threw parties, we were always a little hungry, if you know what I mean.
Mm-hmm.
John: And so we got this assembly line going and everybody, we were pounding these chicken breasts flat and we were rolling them up and we'd gotten all sort of good ingredients.
John: And we had the best time.
John: It was basically the whole party was just making chicken core on blues.
John: We were cycling them through the oven.
John: And they'd come out and you'd let them cool down and then everybody would try one and then another one would be ready.
John: It was a really good time.
Merlin: That's delightful.
John: Yeah.
John: And the problem is I'm pretty sure that was maybe 1989.
John: I'm pretty sure I have never made a chicken cordon bleu since that time because it really was, it's a lot of work.
John: You don't just like toss one of those off.
John: Right.
John: But you can buy them in a box.
Right.
Merlin: Yeah, some of those kinds of things are better than others, for sure.
Merlin: I'm just reading here on this page that says, in 2011, Texas stopped the last meal tradition after Lawrence Russell Brewer asked for a large final meal, including two chicken fried steaks, triple bacon cheeseburger, and meat lover's pizza, and refused to eat it.
John: Oh, he dogged him right at the end.
John: He ruined it for everyone.
John: He was like, you know what?
John: Now I'm not even going to eat it because I just realized that you're about to kill me.
Merlin: Isn't that kind of weird?
Merlin: I mean, really think about that, though.
Merlin: I mean, so now anybody who's one of the many, many people sentenced to death in Texas can't get a final meal just because this guy was being kind of ornery.
John: Well, and it seems weird.
John: Like, what did that cost him?
John: 30 bucks?
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: They're mad about the 30 bucks that the guy that was about to die didn't eat?
John: They're probably just making him feel bad.
John: You know, I'm guessing that that kind of mentality in Texas comes right from the top down.
John: I think that's probably Rick Perry.
John: That came across his desk, and he was like, you know what?
John: We're not going to give anybody a dinner.
John: Box it up and bring it to me.
John: And people were like, he's the governor.
John: Yep.
John: He must know.
John: What a country.
Merlin: So now I'm on the horns of a dilemma because I do have these packets.
Merlin: It was not a large financial investment.
Merlin: I'll try maybe one more.
Merlin: But now I'm trying to figure out what my options are.
John: I'm sorry.
John: I didn't mean to interrupt.
Merlin: No, not at all.
Merlin: I figured I might move up the line a little bit.
Merlin: Maybe I'll see if Whole Foods has a line of gravies.
Merlin: I can look on Amazon.
Merlin: I haven't seen much on Costco.
Merlin: But my goal was to get it where it's kind of like your frozen bacon program.
Merlin: I want to get it to where I can have a ready supply of small amounts of gravies and sauces that can be deployed tactically as needed.
John: So I'm going to, again, just speak from my experience.
John: But are you familiar with the concept?
John: I'm sure you are.
John: But there are blogs devoted to this, I'm almost sure.
John: I think I read about them in Sunset Magazine.
John: where you basically use prepackaged foods as a component in making what ultimately looks like a home-cooked meal.
John: You know what I mean?
John: Like you decant some... That sounds like something I do.
John: Yeah, you decant some fairly good quality packaged stuff, and then you add your own... You contribute your own fresh ingredients to it.
John: And pretty soon, it's not clear where the processed foods stops.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: It's like an artisanal version of the 50s Campbell's soup recipes.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You start out with this as a component, as a building block, but it's not the center of the meal like they want you to have.
John: No, then you put some French fried onions on top of it, and it's grandma's creamed...
John: creamed spinach sauce.
John: But so what I end up doing with that stuff is, first of all, as you know, my first policy is, if you buy something, make it all.
John: Don't reserve half of the package for later.
John: Make it all.
John: And so I would use those.
John: Like a bucket or a terrine.
John: That's right.
John: Get your biggest pot out.
John: Start with this garbage gravy that you've, that cost 59 cents, but that you feel pot committed to enough that you don't want to just throw it away.
Yeah.
John: And then build on that with actual gravy-making techniques until you have made a pot of gravy, until you've made a pot de gravy.
Merlin: Oh, it's good.
Merlin: It's like stone soup.
Merlin: You start out with this little simple thing and you build and build and build.
John: That's right.
John: You build and build.
John: You keep adding.
John: Those gravies that don't say add milk, they're wrong.
John: Add milk.
John: You're a gravy hacker, John.
John: You know what?
John: You throw a little bit of gluten-free flour in there.
John: A little bit of like, what did I see?
John: I was at Trader Joe's the other day, and there's cashew flour.
John: I bought it.
John: I don't even know what it does.
Merlin: I wouldn't use that.
John: I look at it, and I'm like, cashew flour.
John: What is it?
John: It looks like flour.
John: It looks like corn flour, but it's just ground-up nuts.
John: It's fascinating.
John: I feel like one of these days, it's going to be a situation where a burglar comes into the house, and the only weapon I have is... I'm standing in the pantry for some reason, and the only weapon I have is this thing of cashew nut flour, and I just throw... Yeah, you don't want to waste a stroganoff on him.
Merlin: No, I just throw it in his eyes.
Merlin: Poof!
Merlin: Like a ninja.
Merlin: Yeah, pow!
John: And then he's just like, ow, wow, it burns and smells like nuts!
John: My nut allergy.
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: He falls to the floor and gets hives.
John: Anaphylactic shock.
Yeah.
John: But yeah, I would use those just as starters and then build a much bigger pot of stuff.
John: The danger of that, of course, being that if the thing turns out to be terrible, then you have a huge thing of terrible instead of a small thing of terrible.
Merlin: You just made me realize that when I think about the Windjammer, the all-you-can-eat restaurant on the cruise, the source, the fount of gravy for our cruise, you know what I think it is?
Merlin: I think I'm really realizing it.
Merlin: You're right.
Merlin: I need to man up because I like to think that it's about sauces and gravies, but you know what?
Merlin: It's also about the ease of the sauces and gravies.
Merlin: All I had to do was say goodbye to my family, walk away for 35 minutes, and I could have gravy on anything.
Merlin: So I need to let go.
Merlin: I need to let go and let God and understand that if I'm going to make a gravy, I'm going to have to make a gravy.
John: Yes.
John: Yes.
John: Oh, boy.
John: And you're going to put everything in there.
John: You know, one of the things that I always do is if it's a thing that has, like I made some cabbage soup the other day.
John: This is going to blow your mind.
John: Did I tell you about this?
John: No.
John: I got the biggest pot I own.
John: which is a pretty big pot, and I just started throwing cabbages in it.
John: And I'm thinking to myself, a cabbage is not a thing that I, in the top of my mind, that I think I'm going to like.
John: But it turns out every time somebody puts some kind of cooked cabbage in front of me, I always enjoy it.
Merlin: Think about what goes with it.
Merlin: I mean, don't you think that's part of it?
Merlin: You have corned beef with it?
Merlin: That's pretty good.
John: Yeah, but like cabbage shows up in things now, and it doesn't look appealing.
John: It always kind of looks like the skin of a cadaver that washed up on the shore, right?
John: The skin of a cadaver that the police boat is pulling over with a hook.
John: But it's actually really good.
John: So I'm like, you know what?
John: People cook cabbages.
John: It's not that hard.
John: Even the Irish cook cabbages.
John: Even the simple Irish.
John: I'm going to make cabbage soup.
John: So I get this pot.
John: I put some chicken stock in there.
John: I throw some onions in.
John: I start cooking them.
John: I throw some leeks in there.
John: I don't even know what a leek is, but I throw it in there, and I start cooking it, and I put some...
Merlin: I can't believe your system can take this.
John: Right.
John: I put a bunch of... Onions, leeks, and cabbage?
John: Garlic and some... You really live alone, don't you?
John: I threw a bunch of kale in there just because.
John: And then I start throwing cabbages in.
John: And I throw a couple of cabbages in and then a red cabbage.
John: and it's cooking.
John: What about carrots?
Merlin: You put carrots in?
John: Well, on this one, I did not.
John: I stayed away from the carrots.
John: But then I was like, you know what?
John: This needs a pound of hamburger.
John: So I made some hamburger, and I threw a pound of hamburger in there.
John: You're fearless, John.
John: I was like, you know what else I got in the freezer?
John: A pound of ground turkey.
John: I don't even know why I bought that.
John: Cook up the ground turkey, throw it in.
John: And then I'm looking at the 10 spices that I know what they do.
John: And I'm like, little Hungarian paprika can't hurt.
John: And then all the things that you described, right?
John: Some garlic salt, some... Oh, I... All the man spice.
John: I bought one of those things.
John: You know when you go and you're like, I think I'm going to cook something.
John: I want some celery.
John: And the only serving size that a grocery store has of celery is like...
John: An acre of celery, right?
Merlin: I think that's how they get you.
John: A forest stand of celery.
Merlin: You need a stalk, and you have to buy a forest.
John: Yeah, you buy like 50 stalks.
John: This thing is as big as a rugby ball.
John: And so I was like, you know what?
John: I got a big pot, and so I take this whole celery thing, this whole scrum of celery, and I chop it into...
John: whatever however pieces that you know are the size of what they're the size of a pocket watch and i throw this whole thing in there and so pretty soon this this stuff and then i'm just like okay fuck you and the hamburger and the turkey is in the pot at this point in the pot oh yeah and i cook some mushrooms i threw them in and then i'm like fuck you pot you figure it out
John: And so this stuff cooks on the stove for, I don't know, for forever.
John: And every once in a while I walk by and I look at it.
John: And I, you know, and I curse at it.
John: But in a friendly way.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: You're just being encouraging.
John: I'm just like, fuck you.
Merlin: Listen, I know you guys don't know each other.
Merlin: I know you haven't worked together before.
Merlin: But I believe in you.
Merlin: Uh-huh.
Merlin: I believe in you, celery, cabbage, turkey, paprika, soup.
John: Yeah, get it going.
John: So this thing cooks, and it turns into this incredible... It's an incredible consistency that I feel like you could build an adobe house out of.
John: And eating it is kind of like... If you close your eyes, it's kind of like eating spaghetti.
John: It's so...
John: It's so mouthful.
Merlin: Substantial?
John: Yeah, it's just so al dente and kind of crunchy and it's got too much flavor.
John: It's great flavor.
John: And so I've got this pot in there that could feed Napoleon's army marching into Russia.
John: And I'm like...
John: This stuff will probably... Oh, oh, and the other thing was I had a pound of sauerkraut, threw that in there.
John: Oh, no!
John: Oh, my God, you're mad.
John: And it's this fantastic stuff that I don't think would ever go bad, right?
John: It would just start tasting more and more like itself until it became kimchi, right?
Merlin: It's like a retired woman.
Merlin: It just becomes more and more like itself every day.
John: You know what?
John: Wild women don't get the blues, and neither does my cabbage soup.
Merlin: God damn it.
Merlin: Jesus Christ.
Merlin: So anyway, that – So your first tasting, though, your first impression is this is adobe-quality spaghetti soup.
Merlin: It's substantial.
Merlin: It's heavy.
Merlin: It's got too much flavor in a good way.
John: Yeah.
John: I was tripping because I had committed so much material –
John: And in that I mean materiel.
John: Yeah.
John: Right?
John: Resources.
John: Resources.
John: I was Yossarian, and I was Bob Newhart in Catch-22.
John: I was committing materiel to this pot.
John: And if it went bad, like Seattle sewers couldn't handle it.
John: I would have to take it out of town.
Yeah.
John: I would have to put it in the trunk and drive it out of town and put it in the forest somewhere.
John: And then a year from now, somebody would be flying overhead and they'd be like, what's going on down there?
John: Send in the troops.
Merlin: You don't understand, Captain.
Merlin: It seems to have just gotten more delicious.
John: But as it was, it was this fantastic concoction that...
John: When I look at it, it's really like eight pounds of vegetables and a couple of pounds of... And a small farm of animals.
John: Yeah, like some grass-fed turkeys or whatever.
John: And so anyway, I feel like that's my latest triumph.
Merlin: That's amazing, John.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And so what do you do when you got the leftovers?
Merlin: What do you do with them?
Merlin: Do you put them in freezer bags?
Yeah.
John: Well, so here's the thing.
John: Every person who's been in my house in the last week, I have basically forced to eat a cup of this soup.
John: Because I'm like, listen, the more soup I take out of this pot, the fuller the pot is.
John: I've unlocked some... It's like a miraculous Grimm Brothers deal.
John: Yeah, I've unlocked some metaphysical door, and I have created the ultimate endless soup.
John: And so I'm just like, try this soup.
John: And everybody's like, oh, Roderick made cabbage soup?
John: I don't know.
John: I don't know.
John: But I won't take no for an answer.
John: And I sit him down and I put this soup in front of him.
John: And I'm like, look at it.
John: And they're like, oh, it's like, it really is just...
John: there's not a lot of color to it you know what i mean like i didn't put there's nothing in it that isn't yeah it sounds like something you would use to like fill a hole in your driveway the way it looks uh but then everybody tries it and everyone agrees that it was that it's a that it's a revolution in their mind
Merlin: I'm ashamed.
Merlin: I'm ashamed because I am cleaving to the convenience, even as I'm filled with desire and craving gravies.
Merlin: I can feel myself being pulled in that direction of just wanting the ease.
Merlin: And your story of adventure, really, in cooking is inspiring to me and humiliating.
John: Well, but I mean, it is a little bit of a difference between being a bachelor and being like a house husband.
Yeah.
John: In the sense that if I made a catastrophe, I could slink out into the night and leave it by an abandoned couch somewhere.
John: Stick it up by Skeeter?
John: Uh-huh.
John: Put it over by Skeeter, right?
John: He'd probably, you know, Gary would probably try and use it for gas to keep his family.
Merlin: He'd just keep calling it in the middle of the night.
God damn it!
John: But, you know, there are no consequences, right?
John: Nobody's going to come open the refrigerator and say, where did all the food go?
Merlin: You're dancing like no one's watching, John.
John: That's exactly right.
John: So, and the thing is, sometimes the race goes to the bold, you know?
John: And in a way, every time I do this, I feel like I am the Napoleon.
John: I am invading the Russia of the unknown.
John: Right?
John: Yeah, I do.
John: I'm invading the Russia of the unknown, and every time I could lose 700,000 troops to frostbite.
Merlin: Yes.
John: And sometimes I do.
Merlin: East, east, east.
Merlin: Just keep thinking.
Merlin: Just keep moving, moving, moving.
John: Ost, ost, ost.
John: And then sometimes I am the Napoleon that conquers Russia.
John: Right?
John: And I come back wondering why I ever thought to do that, because it was a bad idea.
John: Even if you conquer Russia, it's a bad idea.
John: And I got to run it.
John: Then you got to run it.
John: That's exactly right.
John: Then you got to run Russia.
John: And that's what I'm doing right now.
John: I'm running.
John: I conquered Russia.
John: I have it in a pot in my refrigerator.
John: And everybody that comes by gets a little, you know, gets a little taste of the Ukraine.
Merlin: I would be shitting nonstop if I were you.