Ep. 159: "The Climbing"
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Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Hi, Merlin.
Merlin: How's it going?
Merlin: Good.
Merlin: You're using your public radio voice.
Merlin: John, I'm using my public radio voice.
Merlin: You can't unhear it.
Merlin: I think I first heard Ira Glass discuss the way that on public radio, you speak in this tone and occasionally emphasize a strange word.
Merlin: You know, because he's got the Ira Glass voice, but then he does the all things considered voice, where something like every third word is emphasized for reasons that are not entirely clear.
John: A strange game, Dr. Falken.
John: The only winning move is not to play.
John: I'm Robert Siegel.
Merlin: Oh, man.
Merlin: We have fun.
Merlin: We do.
Merlin: We kid, don't we?
John: Yeah.
John: I like the way you're easing into this episode.
John: It's just it feels chill.
John: You're chill.
John: I feel pretty chill.
Merlin: Maybe we should try to do the whole episode this way.
John: Do you think that we have that much chill in our chill reservoirs?
Merlin: Like a gentleman.
John: Like, as you do.
John: As you do.
Merlin: Oh, my God, I'm tired.
Merlin: I'm just parma-tired.
Merlin: Are you?
Merlin: I am.
Merlin: It's boring.
Merlin: It's boring.
Merlin: Big weekend, though.
Merlin: Happy Father's Day.
John: Yeah.
John: Thanks.
John: My father's day.
John: Uh, uh, my kid just dissed me all day.
John: So it was just like, I, I had to hearken back.
John: I'm sure to all the, all the father's days that, I mean, you know, I think I was a pretty dutiful kid about that stuff.
John: Like if it was father's day, I understood that my job was to celebrate father's day with a, with a cheery face.
Um,
John: So I fell on my sword a lot as a kid in order to grease the wheels, make the machine keep running smoothly.
John: I wasn't somebody that – my sister would stand there on your birthday and just tell you exactly what she thought about you.
John: But I wasn't that kind of guy.
John: On your birthday, I understood that the expectation was that this was your special day.
Merlin: Yeah, I think also it was partly the age we were coming up in where people didn't respect their parents like they were supposed to.
Merlin: But it was still like one of the days that you were supposed to act like it was the 50s.
John: That's right.
John: Thanksgiving, Valentine's Day even.
John: You're just supposed to shape up, spit comb your hair, be a good kid for a day.
Merlin: You bring your father slippers, and if he doesn't have slippers, he makes them out of paper.
Merlin: I had a great day, man.
Merlin: My family killed it.
Merlin: I did not deserve any of it, but it was really nice.
John: Well, you know, they adore you, and rightfully so.
Merlin: Yeah, well, it was good, though, because there were two big bangers for Father's Day.
Merlin: We went out to lunch at my favorite restaurant, which also happens to be my daughter's favorite restaurant.
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: And you ordered bangers?
Merlin: I had bangers and mash, governor.
Merlin: And I got a Father's Day present, which, like many of the presents that I get and enjoy, was kind of for the house.
Merlin: Oh, sure.
John: So it was a big roll of tape?
Merlin: A request that I find a real job.
John: Did they get you some more Post-it notes where you're running out?
Merlin: No, you know what?
Merlin: Anything that I buy, like, slakes my thirst for all of my former passions in life, now go directly to my daughter.
Merlin: If I go out, if I go to Flax, and I buy $80 worth of office supplies...
Merlin: They just disappear.
Merlin: They're just gone.
Merlin: I set them down on the table for a minute, and then they're just gone.
Merlin: And then there's one drawing of a dog in every notebook, and they're all just all over her room.
Merlin: Boy, you're talking about a thought technology.
Merlin: This is boring.
Merlin: I'm not going to become this guy, but I've really been wanting – you know what?
Merlin: Are you familiar with the term sous vide, with that way of cooking?
John: What?
Merlin: What?
What?
Merlin: I got this sous vide thing that you attach it to a pot.
Merlin: It looks like a big lightsaber.
Merlin: And then you put your food in a bag, get the air out, and it cooks it flawlessly.
Merlin: Flawlessly.
Merlin: This is something you should look at.
Merlin: You put a steak in a bag.
Merlin: You drop it in this water.
Merlin: You say make this 129 degrees.
Merlin: It makes it exactly 129 degrees.
Merlin: Perfectly cooked.
Merlin: And you don't have to do anything.
Merlin: You don't even have to do it on the stove since you're just plugging it in somewhere.
Merlin: What color is it though?
John: The food?
John: Yeah.
John: I can't imagine boiling it in a bag is some kind of like delicious, gives it a nice like crusty.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: But what you do is you do it in the sous vide.
Merlin: It takes an hour, hour and a half.
Merlin: And you take it out.
Merlin: And the thing is, if you left it in for two hours, it wouldn't cook more because it stops at the temperature you tell it.
Merlin: It's really cool.
Merlin: And then you sear it on the range or however you like to do it.
John: I see.
John: I see.
John: So there's a second step or a third step or whatever.
John: You then sear it.
John: You want to sear it.
Merlin: Otherwise, it's kind of like eating a boiled egg.
Merlin: Well, that's not true.
Merlin: It's still delicious and you can do stuff to it.
Merlin: Anyway, I was just very excited because I really wanted that.
Merlin: It's not something I would have bought for myself.
Merlin: But now I've already, I've sous vide all the things.
Merlin: Yeah, and everybody benefits.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: Yep, and we went to that Brazilian steak place I like for lunch.
Merlin: So we didn't really need more meat, but it was a good day.
John: Well, I'm glad you had a good day.
Merlin: Yeah, but your kid was dissing you.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Well, and you know, as you said at the beginning of this episode, all of five and a half minutes ago.
John: It's six minutes after the hour.
John: I'm always tired.
John: And I don't know what to do about it.
John: And I think that, you know, I think that, did you see the, did you see the Getty heir who died the other day in his, um, in his Hollywood mansion?
John: No.
John: Uh, you know, one of the Gettys, one of the, one of the grandsons of J. Paul Getty or the great grandsons.
John: And, uh, they're all rich as sin.
John: And some of them have done things like start, uh, photo sharing, uh,
John: companies and some of them just sort of sit around and do methamphetamines and this getty air i think is about our age yeah and he died mysteriously but but also not mysteriously because he was he had a toxic level of meth in his body oh man and and yet you know i don't think like he od'd as much as it just all caught up with him intestinal hemorrhage
John: Intestinal hemorrhage, right.
John: But you realize there's one version of being tired all the time that you try to counteract with go-fast pills.
John: And I know a lot of people...
John: get addicted to various kinds of speed because they just need that just a little bit of like come on just you know like I often feel like I was made by a somewhat neglectful craftsman who did not carbureate me quite correctly and there's a there's some turbo lag and
John: Because I am a turbo model, but it's sort of an early turbo.
John: It takes a while to spool up, and then all of a sudden the power's there.
John: And I keep thinking that what I need is like a little shot of carburetor, a little shot of like ether in my carbs every day just to get –
John: going at a normal level not to be a ubermensch not to go like disco dancing but just a little thing that like would just get me over the hump right to get your engine started yeah and caught you know coffee sort of doesn't quite perform this role
John: And because I am a non-drug user, I'm fortunate enough not to be able to consider all the many different options of super person drugs that all the other people in the world resort to.
John: So I just have to sit and think.
John: I keep considering this one post-it note that's now yellowed around the edges.
John: that says eat better and exercise and meditate.
John: And I look at that Post-it note every day and I go, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: But isn't there a vitamin B12 shot or something?
John: And you imagine if you were a rich person, if you were a rich person who felt like that their contribution was crucial, right?
John: I mean, if you're a Getty heir, you probably imagine...
John: that your contribution to this day is highly valued.
John: It's more important than an average person's contribution.
Merlin: Even just like all the day-to-day accounts and correspondence.
Merlin: Maybe I'm thinking that this is royalty or something.
Merlin: But just like the day-to-day stuff, people are going to notice if you're not on point.
John: Yeah, it's like the guy in Foxcatcher.
Merlin: Yeah, exactly.
Merlin: That's exactly what I was just thinking of.
John: As John Hodgman called him, Fox Rassler.
Yeah.
John: That was a weird movie.
John: Yeah, the little fox wrestler guy.
John: And here's this guy who's obviously very troubled and not even 100% all marbles accounted for.
John: But he's got 15 people working for him and his daily correspondence is being cataloged somewhere.
Yeah.
John: So anyway, eat better, exercise, meditate.
John: But last night I had a root beer float, which is the opposite of eat better, exercise, and meditate.
John: Although there's a meditative quality to a root beer float.
Merlin: In homage to Lord of the Rings, I assume, I've started a new thing I'm just calling second dinner.
Yeah.
Merlin: So sometimes I'm out of sync.
Merlin: First of all, as you know, my family snacks.
Merlin: My family has never sat down to an actual meal.
Merlin: They just still eat things out of bags all day.
Merlin: Whereas I like to sit down and eat, and I'm the weirdo in that case.
Merlin: So sometimes I'll have like a light snack-like dinner with my family, and then right around the time I'm thinking, well, I don't really have time.
Merlin: I can watch the rest of this wrestling documentary, and then I really should get to bed.
Merlin: So last night I made corned beef hash.
John: You and I are two birds of a feather.
John: I was laying in bed.
John: This is at 11.15.
John: I was in bed and had already gone to sleep and woke up
John: Because in my dream, I started dreaming about the grays.
John: Oh, no.
John: And then and in dreaming about and I don't remember whether I was dreaming that that the possum that lives in my attic wasn't a possum, but was really like a little gray that had just been living in the attic for the last six months.
John: or what it was but I started to I started to dream about the greys and then of course my room was populated with them peeping at me from behind things and so I woke up out of a dead sleep
John: And I was like, oh, God.
John: It was about 1230 because now I'm a person that goes to bed before 1230.
John: I'm a person that goes to bed long enough before 1230 that I can go to sleep, have a dream about the greys, and still wake up by 1230.
John: Oh, it's the worst.
John: And so I went downstairs and I ate a hot link and like half a pound of brisket and did a crossword puzzle.
John: And then by 1.30.
John: Any doctor tells you that's the best way to get back to sleep.
John: At 1.30.
John: I was like full of hot link and brisket.
John: And halfway through the Sunday crossword puzzle, I was like, what am I doing?
John: Jesus Christ, there aren't grays living in your attic.
John: Go back to sleep.
John: And so I went back to sleep full of that food and now here I am talking to you and you talking to me and we are both still full of that food, I presume.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: This is – you're absolutely dead on.
Merlin: I mean I made – so another dingus that we have in the kitchen that we like to use is this like a slow cooker.
Merlin: So you buy the giant corned beef in a bag.
Merlin: It comes with a little brining or whatever it comes.
Merlin: It's got the little thing with the seeds in it and stuff.
Merlin: You put that in.
Merlin: All you do is you drop that in this pot.
Merlin: You cover it with water.
Merlin: You put the lid on and cook it on low for 10 hours.
Merlin: And when it comes out, you've got a giant ass corned beef brisket.
Mmm.
Merlin: And so I took about half of that, probably about at least two pounds of cooked brisket I cooked in a giant, giant pan.
Merlin: And I thought to myself, this is great.
Merlin: I'll have corned beef for days.
Merlin: For days.
Merlin: I was thinking I should have used a larger pan.
Merlin: We don't have a larger pan.
Merlin: We need a larger pan to accommodate the amount of corned beef I'm making and I'm going to enjoy for probably a week's time.
Yeah.
Merlin: After I was done with my seconds on second dinner, I had about as – I filled half of a quart Ziploc bag.
John: All gone.
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: I was thinking about this the other day, that the one thing that people of all races, creeds, religions, and nationalities, the one thing that would bring peace to the world –
John: Is if you just gathered all the warriors together and introduced the topic, how do you best cook a brisket?
John: Because cooking a brisket is a thing that I can't think of a single culture that doesn't have an opinion about cooking a brisket, right?
John: I guess except for Hindus.
John: Hindus probably aren't going to join in that conversation.
John: But, you know.
John: But they have an opinion, which is to not do it.
John: To not do it, right.
John: But, I mean, think about you put everybody together in a room and they're all mad and they're all, and then it's like, wait a minute.
John: We have a brisket here that needs cooking.
John: And there'd be quite a lot of contentious discussion about how to cook it.
John: But I think what you do in that case is you bring out a whole bunch of briskets and you say, you know what, let's everybody cook their brisket the way they, you know, we'll get all the resources here.
John: Everybody gets their different style of cooker and seasoning and you get a couple of assistants and then everybody cooks their brisket.
John: And by that point, whatever everybody was mad about,
John: It would fade.
Merlin: It's like Top Chef meets a McLaughlin group.
Merlin: You get everybody together, and every week we're going to cook some kind of a food, and you make it the way that you make it.
Merlin: You make it the way you make it.
Merlin: And then we all share it.
Merlin: I have a big meal together.
John: But the thing is, I think it has to be a brisket because the brisket is the hub of the food wheel.
Merlin: More than potatoes?
Yeah.
John: Yeah, I mean, you ever have like a potato in Chinese food?
John: That's a good point.
John: Right?
John: But you're going to find some equivalent of a brisket.
Merlin: Oh, absolutely.
Merlin: Like a clay pot or something like that.
John: Yeah.
John: So I think the brisket is the, because what is a brisket?
John: It's like a tough, unlovable piece of meat that everybody has figured out in their various cultures.
John: Much like us.
Yeah.
John: Different ways to soften and make palatable.
John: Some of it with sugary sauce.
John: Some of it with long, slow.
John: But you're saying this is maybe a path to peace.
John: I'm saying brisket is a path to peace.
Merlin: Dan Benjamin says something that I agree with.
John: Wow.
John: Amazing.
Merlin: For once.
Merlin: He says coffee for him, the first cup of coffee gives him just enough energy to make the second cup of coffee.
John: Well, right.
John: But, you know, I get to that second cup of coffee feeling good and then like tip over into the third cup of coffee and I need a nap.
Merlin: You know, and this is the problem with your post-it note is that you're right.
Merlin: All of our options have been exhausted except for the obvious and correct one.
Merlin: Which is that it's like, here's what you're facing as you walk slowly, trudge in your slippers toward 50.
Merlin: Is that, you know, you got to do all those things.
Merlin: You got to quit everything.
Merlin: You got to start eating like a normal person.
Merlin: You got to exercise, sleep.
Merlin: Basically, you have to change your entire life into a series of extremely dull consistencies in order to achieve a baseline level of normal energy.
Merlin: And then if you do any of those things wrong, you're just going to die now.
John: You know, I realized something about being in your teens and 20s a long time ago.
John: I may have even realized it when I was still in my 20s.
John: But that is that in your teens and 20s, you are afforded several opportunities to glimpse...
John: not just glimpse, but, but for a brief period, actually experience the feeling of having achieved some level of transcendence or enlightenment.
John: You know, when you are young, for whatever reason, the, the, the, the course of life affords you these brief shining explosive moments of either like heightened consciousness or
John: tremendous revelation like physical sort of uh completeness or you know like and and the first time that you do certain kinds of drugs the first time you have certain kinds of athletic experiences the first time you have certain kinds of sexual experiences you are given a glimpse through the cloud
John: Of what it is, not just to see it, but what it is really like to live somewhere way up the ladder.
John: And so you then make the mistake of thinking that it was that set of conditions or that particular experience and you keep going back and trying to duplicate that experience to get back to the – it's not that the experience was so great, but you arrived way up the ladder and you want to get back there.
John: And the tragic lesson is that the only way to get up that ladder and stay for any length of time is to climb it.
Merlin: It's the climbing that releases that elation and discovery.
John: It's the climbing.
John: But if you weren't ever allowed that momentary, touristic...
John: half an hour up the ladder, you wouldn't know it was there.
John: You wouldn't know there was something to seek.
John: And so in that sense, it makes sense that we are given that, that little moment.
John: But the problem is that there isn't any way to get up that ladder except to climb it rung by rung and do the work and put in the time and, and, and make the progress that,
John: And yet most of us, myself included, you know, spend decades trying to figure out if there's a little pill or some kind of five minute a day exercise or some sort of combination of raw vegetables and no gluten or just to get, you know, just even to get up two rungs on this endless cloud ladder.
John: and instead you just keep coming you just you wake up every day you're at the bottom of this thing and you look at that yellowed post-it note that says eat better exercise meditate and you go fucking come on something somebody
John: Rock music, where are you?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And the other thing that's... Yes, I totally agree.
Merlin: And there's another very obvious and yet still dawning realization for me.
Merlin: It's one of those things that's been hiding in plain sight for my entire life.
Merlin: And I'm finally realizing and trying to get better at accepting this.
Merlin: And this will reveal that I am, in fact, a terrible person.
Merlin: But that's part of the process of climbing the two-step ladder.
Merlin: You know, it's... I think...
Merlin: one starts to realize the limitations of living for yourself, of living for oneself is part of the problem.
Merlin: And maybe this ties into one of those Erickson stages of development or something.
Merlin: But you start to think about all of the things that are difficult
Merlin: And it's, you know, I don't know.
Merlin: For some reason, this is going through my mind yesterday when we stopped by Safeway, the giant Safeway in the Castro.
Merlin: And I had to exercise some serious keep moving and get out of the way with my kid because there are dozens and dozens of people in their 20s and 30s running around with bottles of wine looking incredibly stressed out.
Merlin: And I was saying, honey, you've got to move out of these people's way.
Merlin: They are young and they want to get to a party and they will kill you.
Merlin: Because nothing, there's such serious social activity, self-focused social activity going on, ironically enough.
Merlin: And I was just thinking, first of all, I just find young people insufferable so much of the time now.
Merlin: It's really weird.
Merlin: I feel like I'm not just merely an old man.
Merlin: I'm an old man who finds a lot of young people insufferable because there's such a joyful level of self-involvement.
Merlin: And, you know, so anyway, you can, of course, extend that to a million ways of trying to understand the world.
Merlin: But, you know, when you look at something like the, I hate to say this, but you look at the exercise more, eat better, get sleep, meditate, all that kind of stuff, post-it notes in your life, and you say, that's really boring and not that fun.
Merlin: Especially if it's for you.
Merlin: Because for you, for me, we want the pill.
Merlin: We want the glass of something or the mug of something or the cyborg attachment that will allow me to have some kind of meaningful level of energy.
Merlin: It's when you start thinking, though, you know what?
Merlin: I have to really not take care of other people, but I have to do stuff for other people.
Merlin: Not like in a grudging way, but in like, this is really, this is who we all are.
Merlin: This is who we all have been.
Merlin: It's just that in America, especially if you're a white dude, maybe if you got a little bit of money, you can keep living in that land of, I just do stuff for me for a really long time.
Merlin: And pretty soon you're that 70 year old guy who's dating the 20 year old woman and thinking this is really still going great.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But, you know, it's something I'm having.
Merlin: It's just purely selfish.
Merlin: It's purely selfish.
Merlin: Because I've always thought of myself as, oh, sure, I'm great.
Merlin: I love other people.
Merlin: But, like, when you actually have to do that and you have to start changing the way that you do stuff in order to accommodate that change in your life or that realization, then everything takes on a whole different tone.
Merlin: Now it's like, well, I'm doing this because this is what other people need out of me.
Merlin: And it doesn't make it any better.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It certainly doesn't make it more fun.
Merlin: But I guess getting to the point where you really accept that is a big part of growing up, really, really growing up, which is a piece that I have still not completed.
Merlin: I would still just love to have a bunch of speed in the morning and then just run around.
Merlin: But that's not going to get stuff accomplished for the stuff that I need to do.
John: Yeah, boy, I made a list the other day of the things that I needed to do because not having a list meant that those things just kept – I would be sitting in a state of kind of like momentary relaxed reflection and all of a sudden the Kool-Aid man would bash down the door and go, oh, yeah, your Vespas need repairing.
John: Yeah.
John: And I would go, my Vespas?
John: I haven't thought about my Vespas in six months.
John: I'm doing another thing right now.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: I know you haven't thought of it.
John: That's why I just broke your wall.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Your water pressure's low.
John: Got to call a plumber.
John: And I'm like, water pressure?
John: Like, yes, for the last two years, I have thought to myself, I should call a plumber and get my water pressure looked at.
John: But that is not a thing that I want to interrupt me right now.
John: Oh, yeah, your barn is going to collapse.
John: And this Kool-Aid man just keeps fucking crashing into my reverie, and I don't have very much time anymore to sit and just, like,
John: Be at peace.
John: And so anxiety breeds anxiety or something.
John: This guy, it's just a Kool-Aid pitcher full of free-range anxiety that keeps kicking down my door when I don't need him.
Merlin: I don't think we've ever been more alike than we are right now.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: There's a possum in your roof still.
John: Might be a grave.
Merlin: I'm looking at pictures of him right now.
Merlin: He's a jolly pitcher of Kool-Aid carrying another pitcher of Kool-Aid.
Merlin: Ooh.
Merlin: I forgot about that.
Merlin: That's a little weird.
John: I never, I guess I never thought of that.
Merlin: It's a recursive home invasion.
John: But anyway, so I had to make a list of these things and then putting them on a piece of paper at least, you know, and it was one of these lists that had like a subset one subset lowercase a and
Merlin: must also must rid must decide if possum has had babies also no also rid the house of possum babies oh god i hate that thought um that's me that's me and mice in the garage oh my god i'm like i'm trying to explain to my daughter i'm sorry i hate putting down these glue traps i know they're awful but all we need is like a week and a half of not noticing this and we're going to be overrun with rodents
Merlin: yeah yeah oh the rodent thought oh it goes through my head what about dry rot after that uh after that uh that awful thing where the balcony broke off in berkeley i've got two i've got two major dry rot spots in my house and they're like everybody's coming out of the woodwork all the engineers you know helpfully come out and go oh yeah there's like three different problems with that like that was not properly vented that's dry rot there's too much moisture right there that's oh yeah that's that's a classic engineering problem and i like i spend so much of my time thinking i wonder which classic engineering problem is going to get me
Merlin: Something, oh, God, that would have been a $5 repair.
Merlin: You should get a new bolt in there.
Merlin: Now you need a new house, dummy.
John: Remember when the guy said that your car needed new bushings and you said bushings?
Merlin: I remember my timing belt.
Merlin: My wife said, you know, really, really need to get that timing belt looked at.
Merlin: And I was like, it'll be fine.
Merlin: Jerry would tell us if it was that important.
Merlin: She's like, Jerry just told us it's extremely important.
John: And then it was $750.
John: I keep realizing that every day we're all hurtling at 70 plus miles an hour down the road in cars that we all are failing to maintain properly.
John: And it's just every time I see a car that is over two years old,
John: That's driving along in the lane next to me.
John: I'm like, how long before the tie rods fail on that car?
John: Like how long before there's just some catastrophic steering blowout?
Merlin: Do you guys have, I'm sure you must have, you got emissions tests up there, right?
Merlin: Got those, yeah.
Merlin: And you think about how many people go and they fail an emissions test.
Merlin: And you're like, oh my God, how many more things are horribly wrong with this thing?
Merlin: Especially now today, let's be honest, because it's not like the 70s.
Merlin: In the 70s, you kind of had to have your car in the garage a few times a year.
Merlin: It was just because cars weren't as good.
Merlin: And now you just don't have to think about it.
Merlin: You just drive around in this death trap.
John: I miss the roads being full of old crappy cars.
John: And the fact that all cars kind of look the same now is concealing the fact that there are a lot of old crappy cars on the road.
John: It's just that you can't tell.
John: It used to be in the 80s that if you saw a 54 Chevy,
John: that wasn't really pristine, you knew it was an old crappy car and to give it a wide berth.
Merlin: You just see swingers and comets and LTDs.
Merlin: Look, I think about even in the late 80s.
Merlin: In the late 80s, I had, in 1988, I was driving a 1970 VW camper.
Merlin: My girlfriend...
Merlin: I think it was that year.
Merlin: Yeah, my girlfriend had, like, a 75 LTD.
Merlin: Like, her dad wanted her to have a big, safe car.
Merlin: Everybody I knew, my friend Sam, was driving a 66 Swinger.
Merlin: Like, even then, you would just see 20-year-old cars on the road, and it was not weird.
John: I dated a girl that drove a 64 Studebaker, and then the next girl I dated had, like, a... What was it?
John: Like, a 62...
John: It was like the little El Dorado.
Merlin: A Cadillac?
John: No, I'm sorry, not El Dorado.
John: Oh, El Camino?
John: It was the little El Camino, but it was the Ford.
John: It was based on a comet.
John: What am I trying to say here?
John: I'm just having a total car brain fart, which never happens to me.
John: It was the little 62 wagon thing.
John: Is it more like a station wagon?
John: No, not a station wagon.
John: It was the El Camino.
John: But, you know, the little truck bed.
Merlin: It's got a little short bed in it.
Merlin: A little short bed.
John: Somebody's listening to this program and they're just disgusted with me because I'm not... As soon as you hang up, you'll think of it.
John: Yeah.
John: But anyway, yeah, right.
John: And they were just old ratty cars that they bought for $250.
John: The thing is that there are 20-year-old cars on the road right now, but they just look like contemporary cars to me because my eye just sees that they all look like pregnant porpoises.
John: And so it's just like, oh, there's a blob of metal.
John: There's a blob of metal.
John: That one's dirtier than that.
Merlin: But you notice, I feel like you notice the Delta more.
Merlin: Now that more and more people have cars.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: It's weird because we had a 1995 Volkswagen until last year.
Merlin: And it was fine, mostly.
Merlin: You know, it was not in great condition.
Merlin: But, like, it felt like such a relic.
Merlin: Maybe because I live in San Francisco and people are rich.
Merlin: But, like, it felt like a real beater.
Wow.
Merlin: You don't see a 30-year-old car on the road that much anymore unless it's real cherry.
John: Well, yeah, but the thing is a 94 Volkswagen.
John: I mean, Volkswagens all kind of look a little old, right?
John: But a 94 Lexus.
John: Oh, you're talking about the ones that look like Tylenols.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: If you saw a 94 Lexus.
Merlin: Yeah, that thing in the mid-'80s.
Merlin: In the mid-'80s, all the cars started looking like a vitamin.
Yeah.
John: Exactly.
John: That 1984 Thunderbird was kind of the watershed moment.
John: The 84 Thunderbird looked like a lozenge.
John: And from that point on, if you go right now and you look up 84 Thunderbird and then you look at a 94 Lexus, you will see...
John: you will see that one is modeled after the other.
John: And then every subsequent car kind of just looks like a newer iteration.
John: Like if you look at a 2014 Corolla.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I don't know how people can tell them apart.
Merlin: They all look the same.
John: And partly it is that it used to be that the cars, the designs changed every couple of years.
John: And now if you get a good, if you get like the Sebring,
John: The 96 Sebring, I think that they are still manufacturing it with slightly different sheet metal.
Merlin: Because of the economies of scale.
Merlin: It's like an iPhone being able to make a lot of money because they can get such good deals on the same kind of part.
Merlin: Is that it?
Merlin: You get the same chassis and use it over and over?
John: It is.
John: It used to be that car design was a thing that people took enormous pride in.
John: But I want to go back in time.
John: and say like, if we're going to make a car for 15 years, why not make the 57 Chevy for 15 years?
John: Why not make the... Yeah, like a 65 Mustang.
John: Yeah, right.
John: Why not?
John: I mean, those designs were great.
John: We should still be making them at some level instead of still be making the 95 Sebring.
John: Right.
Merlin: It's like you're saying, if you're here, you're saying it's not a question of like that these are the same thing.
Merlin: It's the same thing and it's kind of ugly.
Merlin: Same thing is kind of – And just not – now I'm thinking about like how excited people used to be when the new cars would come out.
Merlin: It's almost like the way people are now with like iPhones or computers or whatever, right?
Merlin: It's like the kind of fan following that people do of electronic devices today feels like it carries forward from how people used to be about cars.
Merlin: Like this is the car that I'm going to have for two years.
John: Well, I remember when my neighbor... There was a kid down the street from me named Chris Gills, and his dad bought a new Thunderbird when it first came out.
John: And...
John: At that point in time, mid 80s, everybody was really into German cars.
John: And, you know, the kind of one upsmanship of teens in my neighborhood was all about.
John: I mean, obviously you had a suburban because every family had a suburban unless they were like poors like me.
John: But everybody else had a suburban, at least one suburban.
John: But then the other car was going to be some kind of German car.
John: And Chris Gills' dad bought a brand new Ford Thunderbird and it was like, whoa, cool car.
John: Kind of the last cool American car.
Merlin: You're talking about in the 80s here.
Merlin: Yeah, 84.
Merlin: And that was, but I mean, it felt very, in the same way that strip malls once looked extremely modern, right?
Merlin: It looked very modern for like a year.
Merlin: Oh, it did.
John: And I think when I see a 94 Lexus, I recognize that it is an older model.
John: But I couldn't tell you whether... I mean, I think if I saw a 94 Lexus drive-by, I would say that it was a 2006, right?
John: I mean, I just have a very vague sense of car design in the last 30 years because it's just sort of like, oh, yeah, after the...
John: After 1990, it just sort of all went... It just all went blobular.
Merlin: But... But you did have to take it into the shop because that was just a thing you did.
Merlin: Yeah, and now they're all still on the road.
Merlin: You had to get a tune-up back then.
John: A tune-up, that's right, because there weren't chips.
John: There weren't computers telling you when the car wasn't running right.
John: A light never came on.
John: The only light that came on was the light that said, you are now on fire.
Yeah.
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John: As I was driving in today,
John: I had this strange thought.
John: I was listening to KIXI, the AM radio station that often sends me into a reverie.
John: And I realized... And they were playing the music that my father loved.
John: And it was the day after Father's Day and I was getting a little bit emotional as I'm driving in listening to the big band music.
John: And then I realized that...
John: This isn't a real profound realization, but we...
John: you and I have never lived without recorded music and, and none of our listeners have ever lived a day without recorded music or recorded media.
John: And so, so it's easy for us to not understand how new it is still.
John: Right.
John: But my dad was, um,
John: not maybe the first generation, but very early on in terms of a generation that understood that recorded media was – that their music and their – the things that made up their culture, they could listen to over and over.
John: It was recorded.
John: It was – there were original recordings, right?
John: When I think about my dad's dad, the music that he loved –
John: Uh,
John: was from 1913, and it was all sheet music.
John: It required that people play it on the piano.
John: Right, right, yeah.
John: And so with just that in mind, in my own family's life, I am only the second generation in the whole history of my family to have the benefit of recorded music.
John: And so that means that I am really the first generation
John: that has ever been able to listen to my father's music after he died.
Merlin: Oh, right.
John: Right?
Merlin: It would have to be something repertory.
Merlin: Like, you would have to go to, like, some kind of, like, oh, it's Susa Day in the park or something like that.
John: Yeah, my dad could have sat down and listened to his mother play, you know, like, El Condor Passa.
John: or you know or a fat little feller with his mammy's eyes or whatever song was really big in 1913 but he wouldn't have ever been able to hear the music as his father heard it and i can listen to the exact same records that my dad heard and
John: And experience it through that first membrane of distance and nostalgia.
John: I mean, I listened to that music sitting at his feet and he was being nostalgic for his youth and
John: But it was still alive.
John: It was still current.
John: And now I am nostalgic for his youth, and I can hear what it sounded like.
John: But we're gone into a new thing, a new sort of unprecedented iteration of memory that
John: in human experience.
John: And as I was, as I was puttering along and thinking like, you know, we, we have, when we look back in time, we have this like sort of impermeable barrier somewhere in
John: before writing was invented, right?
John: Where we can look back at and go back to Sumeria.
John: We can go back to, to like Egypt and Etruscan civilization.
John: But at a certain point you hit that wall before writing.
John: And then the vast, vast, vast majority of human history is just invisible to us.
Right.
John: We can only see it recorded in tools and in, you know, like just the marks that we left on the land.
John: And I feel like we're just now at another one of those thresholds where it's already difficult for us to look back before recording and imagine...
John: Those people hardly left a record, right?
John: Some paintings, some books, obviously, but not everybody was able to write a book.
John: The books were just a very small piece.
John: select group of people that ever wrote a book.
Merlin: No, you're right.
Merlin: All you have are the day-to-day artifacts and scars.
John: Yeah.
John: And a painting of Napoleon at Waterloo or some sheet music of how the music was once played.
John: But now we're living just on the inside of that first envelope of – or that first next –
John: thing where everyone is recording and it's all being documented and and uh and my dad was you know he he he wasn't aware of being kind of the first generation really that was going to leave that behind because in a way like there was already the radio when he was a kid it was new and
John: But it was there.
John: And so he didn't have to make the transition like his father did to this thing, to a world of recorded music.
John: And I don't know why I keep churning on that in this space of like all these recordings.
John: What...
John: there's something like so magical about them and there's something so fragile about them too.
John: And I'm listening to, to some record that was recorded in 1940 and I'm feeling it on behalf of my own youth at my dad's feet.
John: And I'm feeling it on behalf of his youth that I, that, that was kind of transmitted to me.
John: But I,
John: But that's still new.
John: Like, how is my daughter, when she's a middle-aged woman and she hears that music, then it's transferred to her through three generations, both the music and the memories, and translated and garbled and diluted, but also some aspects of it intensified.
John: And we're creating a new kind of...
John: collective memory in those in those weird because that will be such it's such a solitary memory in me it's not a thing that if i didn't talk about it it isn't a thing that would be evident or anything i could share but but it is that but there is that concreteness to it it's the actual original recording
John: And that will persist, right?
John: And 10 generations from now there will be people who are able to hear that Benny Goodman recording and will that secondary like footnote, footnoted information along the way like this music meant something to people in my past.
John: I'm not sure.
John: It will if 10 generations from now they're also listening to this podcast.
John: Or interacting with an AI.
Merlin: This is the kind of thinking about the future that actually does interest me because it's so easy to very quickly run up against a wall based on our own imagination in the past.
Merlin: And again, to think of Sousa, John Philip Sousa was a – if memory serves –
Merlin: a very strong critic of recorded music.
Merlin: One of the many people who said recorded music is going to put musicians out of business.
Merlin: We're, you know, there's, if we won't, if we can't play live for money anymore, like how would we make money?
Merlin: We're not going to make money off this, you know, and that turned out to be an evolution and things changed, but, but you're just also describing something in terms of like the,
Merlin: Back to the artifact idea.
Merlin: So like your fathers, like your people who came before your father could only appreciate music in the room.
Merlin: Like there had to be somebody playing the music in the room.
Merlin: By the time your father came around, you had the ability to experience music in a room, but also hear it recorded.
Merlin: But it wasn't on demand.
Merlin: It wasn't, you know what I mean?
Merlin: I think about, and I mean, even as I'm thinking of being a kid and obviously you would wait for a song you like to come on the radio or you would spend money on a jukebox.
Merlin: Like you would go out for pizza and you get some quarters to put in the jukebox.
Merlin: Like even then it wasn't an on demand thing.
Merlin: Or, you know, again, think about photos.
Merlin: Like, you might have one photo of your great-grandfather that you really didn't want to lose.
Merlin: And there was no such thing as scanning at that time.
Merlin: I guess you could make a copy.
Merlin: People didn't do that when I was a kid.
Merlin: You didn't make—you know what I mean?
Merlin: You had the photo, and that was the photo.
Merlin: And you did everything to protect it.
Merlin: And now, I mean, I've got thousands of photos that I can look at any time that I want.
Merlin: And this is all just rehashing stuff people already are aware of because you're alive right now.
Merlin: But then the question also becomes, like, when you talk about our kids and how they'll experience this and their kids, I mean, how will the whole medium have changed?
Merlin: Like, when I think about listening to Hank Williams with my dad, you know, that was on an eight track that broke by the time he had died.
Merlin: I could still experience that music, but I didn't have that artifact anymore.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: It wasn't like his watch.
Merlin: It wasn't like that photo.
Merlin: It was something that was easily replaceable to where today, it's a funny thing now.
Merlin: Today, every time my daughter and I play in the backyard, for some reason, I don't quite understand.
Merlin: We always listen to Hank Williams.
Merlin: I just always put Hank Williams on, maybe because it reminds me of my dad.
Merlin: But we listen to that old wife beater, that old drunk in the yard.
Merlin: But think about this.
Merlin: When you're a kid, my parents saw music, even with our fairly modest means, music was an investment.
Merlin: So if you would, this is back when you would buy something like a time life collection of songs about, you know, the top hits of the 60s or whatever, because that was an inexpensive way to do that.
Merlin: And then you took care of that because you had to.
Merlin: But even that is kind of a weird bastardization of the way people listen to music before that, where you would sit down and listen to an opera.
Merlin: Or you would listen to, you know, a Beethoven's Fifth or something.
Merlin: So partly what I'm wondering also is, like, how is the, in the post-streaming and beyond age, like, how is the music made going to be different?
Merlin: Like, what kind of music?
Merlin: And when they go back and listen to Benny Goodman, will it just be a remix?
Merlin: What we would today call a remix?
Merlin: Like, will they sit down and listen to whatever album?
Merlin: I don't know if it was on an album.
Merlin: 78, Sing Sing Sing is on.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: The way they consume that, I can't even imagine how different that's going to be.
John: Well, and I think that we're, I keep saying in the context of my race for the city council that I really do feel like we are on the verge of a revolutionary transformation that we've been gearing up for for the last 35 years.
John: I mean, I remember in college in the early 90s,
John: Having like a wave of comprehension go over me as I understood what the internet was going to be, as I understood what the promise of it was meant to be.
John: And thinking like, wow, I get it.
John: The internet or the information superhighway or whatever it was we were calling it then,
John: Like I got that it was that the connectedness of everything, the availability of everything was what portended this amazing change.
John: And it still felt like science fiction.
John: At the time, like, one day we will all be connected.
Merlin: But it seemed like it was going to be about education and scholarship and innovation in science and things like that.
John: And democracy, right?
Merlin: Because that's the first thing that comes to mind, right?
Merlin: It's like anybody with any new technology will initially gain – if it gains a foothold, it will be through games and porn generally.
Merlin: It's not actually – you know what I mean?
Merlin: That's just historically been true since the information age.
Merlin: But again, our vision for the future was constrained by what had happened in the past.
John: Right.
John: And I always – it never occurred to me that even in a world of completely shared information that I wouldn't sit down and listen to a record on a stereo, right?
John: I mean it never occurred to me that it would – until I guess the mid-'90s.
John: I remember the first time someone showed me a hard drive.
John: And imagining that that hard drive could – and I should have – if I was smart, I should have like – I don't know.
John: There's a million of these.
John: But, you know, I saw the iPod –
John: a long time before the iPod, right?
John: And I think probably a lot of us did.
John: Where it's just like, wait, if you can put music in the computer, then you could also just have a, and I imagined it as a thing that you put in your car, a hard drive that slid into a slot in your car dashboard and it had all the music in the world on it.
John: Wow.
John: Right, right.
John: But what I imagine that we're actually at right now, the place I imagine we are,
John: is still on the other side of the big leap, which is going to be this leap of VR and AI and distributed energy, decentralized energy, power, I mean.
John: And...
John: the way that people i think the way that people even my daughter's generation are going to receive information and interact with the world is going to be so different from ours that it will be effectively like it's going to feel like an evolutionary leap and we've been we sci-fi people have been saying this for years we've been talking about this for years but i really do now feel on the cusp of
John: of this, this big change where the, the sort of internet that we've been experiencing has, it's just been beta and we're, we're testing the platform and we're seeing, I mean, I'm astonished every day when I go on Twitter first that I'm still going there.
John: And second, that's so many millions of people are still going there.
John: Like all of the rewards, all of the serotonin rewards of Twitter from five years ago are gone.
John: Like Twitter is no longer a place of reward.
John: It's often a place of like pure punishment.
John: But I keep going there and millions of people keep going there and contributing to it.
John: and it's it's like clearly a beta version of something that we don't yet quite have the interconnectivity to accomplish or you know we don't quite have the vision to even see what it's going to look like but it's it's there like the where our toes are over the line
John: And so the idea of like Benny Goodman, this original recording, it's entirely possible that a future generation will, when that music comes up, they will be hearing it.
John: They'll also simultaneously be hearing the remixes of it and simultaneously be like gorging on all the information of music
John: Benny Goodman, all the data about him, all the cross-referencing, I mean, the access to all that information, they might listen to it and have way more access to it than we do, but in a way, like, never have the...
John: What's going to be lost?
John: The emotional connection to it or the personal?
John: Context.
Merlin: The thing is it's all so impossible.
Merlin: And I had this realization, I don't know, probably about 10 years ago now, of realizing that every generation, every decade, really every year, you can really gauge, let's say a generation.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But you start to really gauge that generation by what stopped seeming impossible in your lifetime.
Merlin: Or, you know, again, you can take that down to a week.
Merlin: Like, what stopped seeming impossible this week?
Merlin: Because – and then part two of that is it's virtually impossible to know where or when something will stop being impossible and what those things are, you know?
Merlin: Because that's the nature of innovation and that's the nature of actual development of all kinds is that, like –
Merlin: tesla is kind of about cars but it's really about batteries and once you have something that can do batteries the way they're doing batteries we don't even know what all that's going to change who knows we all started out looking at these fancy sports cars but like that's not i don't think i don't follow this stuff closely but my sense is that that's not really what this is about this is this starts out i mean the iphone starts as a way to say hey you know how you hate your phone how about you have this thing and now it's it's transformed the way i live my life honestly mostly for the positive
Merlin: I mean, I can't imagine now not being able to find out where my family is or be in touch with people day to day.
Merlin: Whatever, that's probably a different conversation.
Merlin: But you know what I mean?
Merlin: That sense of what stopped being impossible this week?
Merlin: If you think of it that way, you realize how...
Merlin: All the stuff that seemed like such an easy win, all the, whatever, post-jetpack thinking about technology, it's still not what anybody expected.
Merlin: Who expected in 1999 that music would be the way it is now?
Merlin: It was the single biggest year of sales for CDs, right?
Merlin: And that's, what, 16 years ago?
Merlin: That's a blip.
Merlin: And that's completely changed.
John: Well, and when you say post-jetpack, like...
John: like you and I both were raised in an era where the, you know, the sixties were such a, um,
John: were such a high water mark in a lot of ways, culturally.
John: I mean, and I don't mean high water like that it was all great, but just like it was such a surge.
Merlin: Like, I can't believe that happened.
Merlin: Right.
John: And also that, and also that.
Merlin: We almost, within the space of a year and a half, our country almost completely fell apart with civil unrest and we put somebody on the moon.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: I mean, there's a bunch of good books about this, but I mean, it's almost everything that happened in the 60s happened in 1968.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: yeah including that i was born boom hello the white album and john and watts but you know like the the the textbooks that we that you and i read in elementary school uh and all the way through junior high were all based more or less on that idea that we were that we needed to beat the soviets to the moon and um
John: And Columbus discovered America, sure, but also that the future was coming and it was going to be – and Pan Am was still going to be an airline, but they were going to fly to space.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: It was never more than a jump and a half away from what we already understood.
Merlin: There's a reason in the 50s everything looks like a television.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: In the 60s everything looks like a rocket.
Merlin: It's like you can't really do three steps ahead of where you are.
John: But what was so interesting to me was when computers first arrived on the scene, I surveyed them, you know, 1979, 80, I guess.
John: Talking about personal computers, Apple, the Apple.
John: And, you know, and other than games –
John: I could not connect those computers to rockets or to hovering cars or to the future, right, as I imagined it.
John: Because they just seemed like expensive typewriters or things that you were – now all of a sudden they were being colonized by teachers as things that you needed to learn.
John: You needed to learn to do your reports on them.
John: And, you know, they were dull, right?
John: Yeah.
John: And so, although I was, in some ways, like a lot of my peers, you included, I mean, in eighth grade, a lot of us sat down at personal computers and some people never stood up again.
John: Right, right.
John: But I sat down at them and I monkeyed around with them and I was like, this isn't the future.
John: This is the worst.
John: Literally the worst.
John: And Castle Wolfenstein is not fun enough to
Merlin: They would sit you down and try to teach you basic, which is incredibly appealing to some people, but it was not for me.
Merlin: It felt like the ultimate in eating my vegetables.
John: Yeah, right.
John: Super punishment.
John: And I remember a couple of things like, okay, follow this, and you have to do this exactly right.
John: All the spaces have to be right.
John: Every paren has to be right.
John: And you work and work and work.
John: You draw this thing.
John: You type this bunch of gibberish, and then you type run.
John: And push – click return and it is like a random tone generator that goes boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop.
Merlin: And if you've done everything flawlessly, the screen will turn yellow for a second.
John: Yeah.
John: And it happened and I was like, wow, you guys suck.
John: And this sucks.
John: Like this is not fun or interesting because I couldn't even like I turned it off.
John: And then I was like, hey, hey, Susan, come here.
John: You know, and my sister comes over and is like, what?
John: And I'm like, can you help me by, you know, I've got a computer program here and I just need you to, like, just to help me here while I'm, I'll be back here wiggling a wire and you just push return, why don't you?
John: She's like, all right.
John: Pushes return and starts.
John: And I was like, oh, no, what did you do?
John: You have alerted the master control program.
John: She's just already walking away, like, lame.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: And I'm like, it's no good.
John: It's not even good for fooling.
Merlin: And like even like in the – but the thing is like people would calmly try to explain to you.
Merlin: Okay, on the one hand, you go, well, this is going to be the next big thing.
Merlin: And you're like, mm-hmm.
Merlin: You go, okay, but look, if you learn this and you master this, you will be able to do things like maintain your checking account.
Merlin: You're like, really?
Merlin: That's the appeal?
Merlin: The appeal of this is that I can do something I hate on a machine that I hate?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But part of it is also – I'm pulling this out of my ass.
Merlin: But I think part of it is also when –
Merlin: Anyone, when one or when society or whatever is new to a technology, we tend to look at it in terms of this plus that.
Merlin: But there are some people who are able to earlier than others determine that this could mean this times that.
John: Yeah, right.
Merlin: That's that there's a way for this to be more than your checkbook plus a typewriter.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You know, that there could be something to see in this.
Merlin: I've just never, I've never had that.
Merlin: I'm very, to this day, I still get everything wrong about the future because it's, you know, it's just based so much on what you saw before.
Merlin: And I don't know.
Merlin: It's, I really liked video games back then.
Merlin: And the idea, I mean, like arcade games that I couldn't afford, you know?
Merlin: So, I mean, it would have been great if I could have fallen in love with typing in BASIC, but it just had zero appeal to me.
John: So I don't know.
John: I can only imagine what... I mean, I feel like my parenting style... We went to the... She got her tonsils out the other day and we were at the... Oh, no.
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: And we were at the hospital and the nurse was like trying to...
John: trying to do what you would normally do and, and make a child feel more comfortable.
John: And she was like, you know, would you like to watch frozen on the iPad?
John: And, you know, my kid is fascinated by frozen and,
John: but has never seen Frozen.
Merlin: You sent me a wonderful version of her singing the song, where she basically just sang this one line incorrectly over and over.
John: Let it go, let it go, let it go.
John: Can't hold it back anymore.
John: She had a great dance for it.
John: Let it go, let it go.
John: Can't hold it back anymore.
John: And she'll do it over and over and over again.
John: And then when I start to sing it, she's like, stop!
John: No.
John: And then she'll start again.
John: And I'm like, okay, I am not singing along.
John: But that is very different from some of my friends whose attitudes about technology and their kids is just like, let them have at it because the future is going to be writ in these new words.
John: And these new technologies.
John: And so, um, you know, don't, you shouldn't protect your kid from, uh, videos or, or Disney because this is just the, it's the new language and don't raise them to be a weird hermit.
John: But like my instinct, I just cannot, I cannot, uh, like loose the dogs of war, uh,
John: And so I don't know if I'm doing her a disservice by not already having a VR helmet on her and training the different hemispheres of her brain.
Merlin: I got to read on this, which is that I think, and you tell me if I'm wrong, but what I get from you is that it's not that you're like an overly cautious or conservative person, but I think you do have a good gut check in your own mind anyway for like,
Merlin: you know what's the phrase i'm looking for kind of like along the lines of first do no harm it's like is there a surpassing amount about this like say somebody says hey you know what you know your kids real real sassy and energetic we have a very we have a pill we could give her that would be very minimally invasive and there's a okay good chance that it would have good effects like if that's the case like i could think of like 50 reasons why you would go not only am i not going to do that but i'm going to punch you in the nose for suggesting that right now
Merlin: Now, because you have there's certain things where you're like, I get the feeling I can't even tell you what all those things are.
Merlin: I think drugs and alcohol are amongst them.
Merlin: But there are certain kinds of things where you go, well, you know, no, we're not going to avoid that because it's OK to be bored.
Merlin: It's OK to be a little bit behind.
Merlin: It's OK to be different.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: It seems like there's certain things where you're like, that's just as important as being able to read, as being able to be bored.
John: Well, and also, like, ultimately, I am very suspicious about
John: as I think we all are, of the fast pace at which the corporatization of everything is happening.
John: And so ultimately, when I look at Frozen,
John: And I perceive it to be tied to a global marketing campaign of music and dolls and stickers and costumes.
John: Dresses, events.
John: Right.
John: When I see that somewhere in Hollywood, there's a team of people sitting around a big table who are saying the word monetize over and over again.
John: And I recognize that the line between them and the creative team who are in a separate room sitting around a separate big table is – I recognize that that line of connection is purposely –
John: obfuscated even within that company so that those creatives sitting around that table can convince themselves that they are artists and that they are working in an artistic medium and they are building a thing that has its own merit and communicates good values to kids and is positive and all that stuff.
John: But that line of connection between that room of creatives and the rest of the company who are all like – I was in a thrift store the other day and there – behind the counter was some – in its original packaging –
John: Tron merchandise from the Tron reboot.
John: And it was like a little collection of it, five or six different pieces.
John: And it was evident from the way it was packaged and the way it was, you know, marketed by its own packaging that the, that the, the concept or the sense that the, that they had about this was that these characters were going to be so popular with kids that
John: that they were going to be able to differentiate between the flying disc that Rod had and the flying disc that Chip had.
Merlin: You mean the disc that contains your brain that you should never lose that you use as a weapon?
Merlin: That's the one.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
John: And that all of this, like... That's like putting your brain in a sock and hitting somebody with it.
John: What, you don't do that?
LAUGHTER
John: But like it was obvious that the marketing team had it in mind that these were going to be as popular and as widely understood as lightsabers and that the difference between Luke's lightsaber and Darth Vader's lightsaber –
John: I mean, that's a very clear distinction.
John: And if you want one, you probably don't want the other.
John: And these Tron discs that were connected to the names of these characters, Jeff Goldblum and Barney Fife or whatever.
John: And I'm looking at these things and I was like, I was the target audience for the first Tron.
John: I know this...
John: I know Tron World pretty well and I don't give a shit about these toys and no one ever did.
John: And that's why they're in a thrift store in their original packaging.
John: And that world, that mechanism that's behind everything that is being distributed now as good for kids or most things.
John: My suspicion of that trumps any message that they claim Frozen is real.
John: Any positivity or togetherness.
John: And I get very confused when I come up against Frozen.
John: like first the My Little Pony universe where there's so much secondary writing about the message that it's, and all that secondary writing is stacked up against all this merchandise that,
John: And you go, which instinct do I follow?
John: The one that sees this pile of merchandise and goes, yuck.
John: Or all this secondary writing about friendship is magic that maybe tells a different story that maybe I should be more curious about.
John: And then all the way to adventure time.
John: where everybody I know, all of my grown-up friends, all say Adventure Time is amazing.
John: And it's into this other world of smart and also caring and good for you, literally good for you, and made by real people who are legitimately good and weird people that we know, like we actually know the people that make it.
John: and trying to decide how much of this to let through and then I turned to episodes of Mr. Rogers that were made in 1972 and I go you know what I know what I'm getting here Mr. Rogers never tried to sell me anything so I don't know I honestly don't know how I'm going to continue to be a good marshal
Merlin: I am because of a show I did with John Syracuse recently where we talked about sports.
Merlin: You can basically take everything I feel like everything you just had to say about those entertainment properties and just change that to sports.
Merlin: And that's where I am.
Merlin: That's and it's hard to find a friend sometimes.
Merlin: Because I like a lot of the stuff you're talking about, as you know, and I'm not about to argue with you about it, but that's me in sports.
Merlin: And it's so hard.
Merlin: It feels so lonely.
Merlin: And I won't go over this because I've already been yelled at enough on the internet this week about this.
Merlin: But it's so strange to me to feel...
Merlin: Like, say, like, here's what I say, and I'm not very good at arguing, but so I'll say, well, you know, I think it's really strange how obsessed adults are with sports and sports culture.
Merlin: I think it's really odd.
Merlin: And I think it's it's it's kind of strangely privileged how much people are able to piss from the high ground just because sports and like say, well, you know, you're the weirdo for not feeling this way.
Merlin: And then I say that and then people say, well, you didn't defend that very well.
Merlin: And I go, I know.
Merlin: Like, it's weird that I have to defend that.
Merlin: That's the entire fucking point of what I'm saying.
Merlin: It's like you are soaking in the hegemony here.
Merlin: If you can't see how weird it is that you can say from that position that you can say something like, well, you didn't make a very good case against sports.
Merlin: It's like, why should I have to make a good case against sports?
Merlin: Why should you have to make a case against saying, like, I don't want my kid to be in the princess business?
Merlin: But then you end up being the weirdo because there's something about that that doesn't feel good.
John: Well, so I was, so at this very same thrift store, as I'm walking out the door, I'm sort of standing there, uh, standing there sort of in the entrance and is standing there with me.
John: And she points over my shoulder and she says, what is that?
John: And I turn around and it's a four foot tall pink coffin.
Um,
Merlin: What?
John: And we're looking at it from behind and I go, what is that?
John: And she says, is that a kid's coffin?
Merlin: Wait a minute.
Merlin: In a, oh my God, in a thrift store?
John: In a Goodwill.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: For sale.
John: Pink coffin.
John: Never used.
John: I have to go look at this now.
John: And she's like, I don't think that you should.
John: And I'm like, no, no, no.
John: I need to see what this is.
John: So I go back in the store and I go and I look at it.
John: And it is a toy object that is connected somehow to vampirism.
John: Okay.
John: Okay.
John: But it isn't clear.
John: It's not branded Twilight.
Merlin: It's probably that like, I don't know what it's called, but there's like a kid's show and a kid's franchise.
Merlin: It's all about these like vampires in high school.
John: Oh, right.
John: I've seen this.
Merlin: Yeah, they've got like big eyes.
John: They're like brats.
Merlin: They're like undead brats.
John: Undead brats.
John: I actually walked in on some kids watching that show one time and sat down in a chair and watched it for three or four minutes and was like, this is the most polluted...
John: uh entertainment i have ever seen it is how they respond well you know they were all six years old i was and i'm sitting there in the back of the room going this is pollution this is absolute soul pollution it's not mind pollution you haven't you haven't gotten into the the disney network yet it is soul pollution you children need to go outside immediately you need to go splash your faces in a bird bath
John: You need to bury yourselves in the dirt.
Merlin: You need to poke yourselves with things and get infections.
John: You need to fight with sticks with other children in the neighborhood.
John: You need to cleanse your souls of this garbage.
John: I'd love to hear what you think of dog with a blog.
John: Yeah, well, one day I'm sure I'll consume all these media.
John: But so I'm staring at this coffin, this four-foot-tall pink coffin, which has like a heart cut in the door.
John: And I'm reflecting on vampirism as a children's – Diversion.
John: A children's diversion or like a fetish culture for kids.
John: And like your pink undead coffin, which then I opened it up and it was like – it was meant to be used as a dresser or it had shelves in it.
John: The child was not meant to climb into the coffin.
John: This was a decorative element.
John: Yeah.
John: For your six-year-old goth princess.
John: Six-year-old goth vampire princess.
John: And I'm just thinking all the different boardrooms where people pitched story ideas that eventually resulted in a thing where this coffin was made real in the world.
John: And it all – every one of those stories – But they stood in a room.
Merlin: They thought about how to name it.
Merlin: They thought about what the packaging would look like.
Merlin: And they managed to make it through that entire process and still say we should sell a children's coffin.
John: Let's build this, man.
John: It's life size.
John: The kids will feel – and so – and this thing – I mean I don't know how old it is.
John: It's old enough that it's in a thrift store, but –
John: But I don't think that old because I can't imagine that these were things that certainly wasn't vintage, right?
John: I mean, this is a brand new confluence of ideas that a child would even know what a vampire was, would want to be one, but would still want to maintain a princess status, right?
John: Or that it would be connected to princessism.
John: and princessism princessism which is the which is now like the the the biggest ideology in the world as far as the bull moose party and so you have vampirism princessism and and you know and it's full of little decorative sort of like there's victoriana in it because it's also a little steampunk
John: god what an abortion and i'm just i'm looking at this thing and i'm just marveling but i'm also i'm also listening to all those people in j crew suits who were approving these ideas and saying like listen vampires are big right now but so are princesses how do we get how do we capitalize on this light bulb wait wait a minute vampire princesses am i who's with me
John: And by the time that you're at the receiving end of that garbage hose, you've been hit with a meat tenderizer, a cultural meat tenderizer so many times that you feel like, oh, sure, this all makes sense, right?
John: Of course, my kid loves being a princess and vampires seems like she's old enough for vampires.
John: She's six years old.
John: And and then you are you're like you're just in this you're in this place where you are literally living in a garbage hose.
John: And you don't even know it.
John: You think you're doing good.
John: You think you're doing, you think you're being a good parent.
John: And you can't, and it's so hard to even take that tiny little step back and go, wait a minute, did I just buy my daughter a coffin?