Ep. 187: "The Nicest Oubliette"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Hi, Merlin.
Merlin: How's it going?
Merlin: How's it going?
John: Oh, well, it's a little crazy out there, actually.
John: What's up?
John: Oh, I just recommend that you not go out today.
John: I don't think you should.
John: I think you should stay in.
John: That's probably good advice everywhere.
John: Well, yeah.
John: I mean, I feel like a lot of people were making left-hand turns from the right-hand lane today, if you know what I'm saying.
John: And it just felt like...
John: Boy, don't make any unnecessary trips, as the state troopers say.
John: I never heard that advice.
John: Oh, really?
Merlin: Was that from the war?
John: No, no, no.
John: That's very common state trooper advice.
John: Don't make any unnecessary trips today.
Merlin: Yeah, but I mean, in my parlance, that's kind of letting the guy with the broom decide how many elephants can be in the parade.
Merlin: It just makes his job easy.
Merlin: Well... Sir, I'd have to advise you not to use your car as much.
Merlin: That kind of puts a bit of a burden on us in the law enforcement community.
John: I had that exact experience one time where the state trooper was standing at a roadblock, and I drove up to it, and he said, roads closed.
John: And I said, really?
John: Really?
John: And he said, well, I mean, you can go if you want.
John: What?
John: And I said, well, all right, I will.
John: And he was like, it's on you.
John: It's more of like a serving suggestion.
John: No, I think he was like roads closed and everybody turned around.
John: Meet Lou, the passive aggressive state trooper.
John: Whatever.
John: But, you know, he didn't have 100% conviction.
John: And I was like, well, fuck it.
John: I never saw a road that was so closed that...
John: that I wouldn't take a shot at it.
John: I think it was Dale Carnegie said that.
John: And so, and it was a hairy ride, I'll tell you, but it wasn't closed.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I think, you know, I don't like to drive.
Merlin: I don't drive if I can avoid it, but I've always lived in fear of that thing where the cop asks you where you're going.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: And with the implicit question of, like, why you're going where you're going.
Merlin: Uh-huh.
Merlin: And I realized it's part of this bigger existential anxiety for me, which is I don't have one particularly good reason for anything that I do.
Merlin: And I don't like being asked about that.
Merlin: Now, it's easy enough when people say, like, why didn't you buy this phone?
Merlin: It's like, well, first of all, who cares?
Merlin: And second of all, that's a weird question.
Merlin: But when a cop asks you why you're going where you're going, that's like a crisis of confidence and doubt for me.
Merlin: Because now I'm like, do I really need to be doing this?
John: Should I be doing this?
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: I thought I knew why I was doing this.
Merlin: And now I feel kind of bad that I'm even here and wasting your time.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Why am I doing this?
Merlin: Well, I'm doing this.
Merlin: Well, what?
Merlin: I'm going to go visit my family.
Merlin: Do I want to do that?
Merlin: No, not completely.
Merlin: I mean, why am I doing that?
Merlin: I'm doing it out of familial obligation.
Merlin: Like, why are you here?
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: Well, see, that's exactly my answer to that question.
John: I mean, when somebody says, where are you going?
John: Why are you going there?
John: I always say, why do any of us do anything?
John: Right.
John: It's a version of that same thing, except it's said from a position of like, why are you doing what you're doing?
John: Oh, boy, that's just the kind of thing a cop didn't want to hear.
John: Oh, no, no.
John: But, you know, but that that's a potential.
John: It's a potential moment for you guys to really bond over the fact that, oh, you know what?
John: Why do any of us do anything?
Merlin: It seems like one of those questions when they're giving you a polygraph test, before they get to the, like, did you kill Nicole Brown Simpson questions, they have to ask you, you know, what is your name?
Merlin: You know, Orenthal James Simpson.
Merlin: Like, you've got to ask the, like, baseline questions and see how you react to those before they can look for the spikes.
Merlin: By the way, he got a negative 24 on that.
Merlin: It was very upsetting to John Travolta in the movie.
Merlin: But you know what I mean?
Merlin: And so I think there's a lot of things where you ask somebody a question not to get an answer, but to see how they react to the question.
Merlin: And I think that's what a cop is doing.
Merlin: I think they're trained to do that.
Merlin: They don't actually care why you're driving, but they want to see if you're up to some monkey business.
John: Yeah, well, I remember getting pulled over by a cop one night, and I had a guy in the back of the car who was a former Army veteran, fought in the famous Panama War, if you recall.
John: Is that Noriega?
John: The Noriega War, where they parked out in front of the embassy and played the heavy metal music.
John: He fought in that war, but it was a genuine war.
John: Army people shot at other people and succeeded in their mission of shooting other people.
John: And so he was a really big guy and an army guy.
John: And that was before we had the term for this kind of libertarian, anti-authoritarian takeover, a wildlife refuge style anti-government person.
John: But he was certainly anti-authoritarian.
John: And so I got pulled over by this cop for going 50 and a 30 or something like that.
John: And he immediately gets – you can just hear him behind me just in this body English of like, all right, I'm not taking any – we're not taking any shit off of this.
John: And it wasn't that he wasn't going to take any shit.
John: It was that he was communicating to the car that we weren't going to take any shit.
John: Well, in a larger way, no shit would be taken.
John: No shit is going to be taken here.
John: This cop barely has the authority to pull us over.
John: And so the cop walks up and he's like, uh, so, and it's in the middle of the night, you know, it's like one of those, it's a little bit fraught already.
John: The cop walks up and I'm sure he sees this six foot five bald army guy staring straight ahead with his jaw clenched in the backseat.
John: I'm sure he sees him before he even sees me.
John: And he comes up to me and he's like, sir, do you know why I pulled you over?
John: And I was like, yeah, I was going 50 and a 30.
John: And the guy behind me loses his mind.
John: You can hear him like.
John: Like you gave too much away.
John: Like, what are you doing?
John: Name, rank and serial number.
John: And the cop was like, yeah, that's right.
John: And I was like, yeah, sorry.
John: It was there's nobody on the road.
John: And I was just driving.
John: I mean, it's not like I was going 50 and a 30.
John: And there were like school buses on the street.
John: It's two in the morning.
John: And the cop said, all right, sir, give me your license and registration and sit tight.
John: And goes back to his car.
John: And my buddy just gives me the ultimate dressing down.
John: What the fuck are you doing, man?
John: Jesus, you just...
John: And, you know, five minutes later, the cop comes back and he's like, all right, we'll slow it down out there.
John: Hands me my license and registration.
John: I'm like, yeah, see, the cop, you know, he's not an asshole.
John: He's not an idiot.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: There's nobody else on the highway.
John: You just you just be up front with people.
John: I get off of tickets all the time, and it's largely white privilege.
Merlin: Oh, no, that's a big part of it.
Merlin: There's a thing.
Merlin: Cops do a really hard job, and it's hard, difficult, and dangerous work, but it's just so...
Merlin: No matter how old I get, I still think it's weird that anybody wants to be a cop, and I'm still suspicious of anybody who wants to be a cop.
Merlin: And I know that's wrong.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: I'm certain that there are people who are genuine sociopathic bullies who specifically with the Napoleon complex who in particular become cops just so they can be bossy.
Merlin: I don't doubt that for a second, but there are a lot of good people.
Merlin: But the job is so weird.
Merlin: I mean, the actual job, you think about the job.
Merlin: Like, think about in your case.
Merlin: Like, if somebody, you're in a position where if somebody says to you, hey, John, like, I'll give you, like, $50 to come to Boston for an hour.
Merlin: And you are in a position to go, like, oh, you know, that's not really a good deal for me, and, like, I wouldn't want to do that.
Merlin: Whereas if somebody else says I'm going to give you $50,000 to, like, do something in your own backyard, you say, yeah, yeah, I'll do that because you can weigh, like, whether that's a good use of your time.
Merlin: This happens to me all the time.
Merlin: All the time, both directions.
Merlin: You're constantly fielding offers.
Merlin: But when you're a cop, it just seems like there's so much stuff that basically just comes down to time and paperwork.
Merlin: And in that case, why did he really pull you over?
Merlin: And if he pulled you over,
Merlin: Do you follow where I'm going with this?
Merlin: What a weird job to have to pull somebody over, check their information and not give a ticket.
Merlin: Like, OK, so was he just looking for was he working off the books for people who like were had drugs in their car or something?
Merlin: Was that part of his assignment?
Merlin: Was his assignment to get more tickets?
Merlin: Like, what was his job?
Merlin: What what part of his job was he doing when he pulled you over and did he succeed at it?
Merlin: And I can't answer that question without rolling through this whole array of motivations for why you would be a cop in the first place and what their actual role is in society.
Merlin: Because I honestly can't tell you.
Merlin: I bet you five different people, there's five different reasons why they want to pull somebody over.
Merlin: Because it is based on their intuition, right?
Right.
John: Well, yeah, speed gun.
John: I mean, you know, he's on he's on speed trap duty or whatever.
John: But I think it's also it's two o'clock in the morning.
John: He's driving around.
John: He's that's his job to be out.
John: And so he's looking around.
John: And I think the best cops understand that they are agents of the state.
John: And that we all agree on laws and that those laws need to be enforced and the state enforces them for a variety of reasons.
John: And the way they do that is through the police.
John: And so the worst cops think that they are personally charged with a with a personal authority to be out there busting bad guys.
John: Like that's just the wrong motivation.
John: Almost like a crusader.
John: Yeah, right.
John: I mean the guys that think that they have some superior ability to handle situations and to get in there and deal with people, deal with the bad guys.
John: Like those guys –
John: I don't know what they should do.
John: They should become trainers.
John: But the best cops understand that we need police because the state makes laws that benefit us all and then we have to enforce those laws because a lot of people are going to say that doesn't apply to me, myself included.
John: And so, yeah, the cops are out there and they're like, okay, I pulled the 1 a.m.
John: to 8 a.m.
John: shift and I'm out here enforcing the laws.
John: And if I see a guy driving 50 in a 30 whose car is on fire and he's on top of it wearing a toga and waving a scimitar, I'm definitely pulling him over because he appears to be a danger.
Merlin: To everyone.
Merlin: Well, you know, also just basics where there's smoke, there's fire.
Merlin: Or better still, where there's fire, there's a car on fire, and that's probably something you should get off the road.
Merlin: That's exactly right.
Merlin: That's like getting to the scimitar.
John: He's driving along, and he sees a car full of guys who look like former Army Rangers, and they're going...
John: too fast.
John: And that's really the only thing that's going on right now.
John: He's looking around.
John: He wishes that a space alien would come down and give him something exciting to do.
John: But that's the only thing that's going on.
John: And so he's like, all right, I'm going to pull these guys over.
John: And he checks your ID and he puts it into the computer.
John: He's like, all right, nobody.
John: And I think he took everybody's ID, frankly, if I remember correctly.
John: Okay.
John: You know, and everybody was fine.
John: And it was like, this is fine.
John: This is just a normal situation.
John: And that's why I say, yeah, I was speeding.
John: I honestly...
John: And, you know, I'm not flipping him attitude like seriously, dude.
John: It's just like, yeah, I understand why he pulled me over.
John: But also, do you understand why I'm going 50 and a 30?
John: And he does.
John: And so he sees himself and his job correctly, which is like I'm out here because people want me out here.
John: And when I encounter a situation, I can use my good judgment and say, move along.
John: It's just those bad cops.
John: And the thing is, the bad cops are always the ones that don't see themselves as bad.
John: Because they're the ones out there breaking knees and chasing guys in hoodies and making the world safe, you know?
Merlin: And that's just... That seems like a stereotype that must have its factual...
Merlin: you know, examples in life.
Merlin: I mean, as much as that's a stereotype, that must happen.
Merlin: I'm talking about like in his case, like, and this is why I struggle to understand like what it's like to be a, you know, not a beat cop, but like, you know, a lower level police officer, not a detective, not somebody who's charged with saying, look, we need you to use your intuition.
Merlin: And to use these various kinds of, you know, known data to make decisions about how to proceed with this.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: More of a knowledge work kind of job, which I'm not saying it's not again, I'm not saying it's not difficult.
Merlin: I'm not saying it's not you don't be smart to do it.
Merlin: But in that case, it's you know, it's it's almost like it almost makes more sense when you go, well, you need to make two thousand dollars in traffic in traffic.
Merlin: traffic fines tonight you know what i mean yeah or think about the job of somebody who's what we used to call a meter maid it's their job to go like make money for the government by giving people tickets yeah it's partly about the local merchants you know having a way to keep parking spaces open but that's that almost that kind of sheriff of nottingham approach almost makes more sense
Merlin: Like we're going to bust you at the border with drugs because we want your speedboat.
Merlin: Like that kind of stuff in a medieval way makes more sense.
Merlin: In that case, that guy could let you go by and it would be just less chance of danger in his life and less potential paperwork.
John: True.
John: And that's a different kind of bad cop.
John: You know, that's the cliche of the donut eating cop sitting in his car parked in front of a donut shop.
John: Right.
Merlin: The guy who sees a car speeding by and he's like, well, there's no evidence that he didn't.
Merlin: There's no evidence of his nonfeasance.
John: Exactly.
John: So he's just like, you know, people are people or it's too much trouble right now to go chase that guy.
John: And he's making a decision on his own behalf, too.
John: Uh, which is just to, you know, get paid to do nothing.
John: Um, and that's a different kind of bad cop.
John: And then the meter made, I think it's just a job to those people, you know, like that's just, they could be sitting, they could be sitting behind a desk at the DMV making the, making life hard for people or they could be out, you know, those are just jobs.
Yeah.
Merlin: It is.
Merlin: And it's I feel really I feel really bad for those people that they are just, you know, they've got they've got a civil service job they've got to go and do.
Merlin: But, you know, but then on the other hand, when you get a ticket, you didn't feel you deserved.
Merlin: You're like all of a sudden now the world's all different.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You got a ticket.
John: Well, and every once in a while you meet a meter maid who is like inhumanly gratified.
Merlin: Oh, it's and that's why the DMV example is interesting.
Merlin: It's, you know, again, we're getting very much into like certain kind of middle class stereotype.
Merlin: But there is that stereotype of somebody who's like ready for you to treat them badly.
Merlin: And who's like preemptively, you know, doing that stuff.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I got no beef.
Merlin: You know, we have a police station very near where I live.
Merlin: And so we interact with the cops a lot just because we see them, you know, walking around, going to the car.
Merlin: And it's strange, though, because there's they the place near where I live, the cops end up covering something like about a quarter or a fifth of the city.
Merlin: So they have to fan out over a very large area of western San Francisco.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And it's just it's always weird to read something in the paper about like something that happened.
Merlin: at not just our local police place but a place that's fairly near our house yeah it's a weird thing it's a weird thing to to because then you go like oh that's so strange like i never think i don't i just think about those people as people going to work sometimes we hear sirens let's we are fortunate to feel very safe where we live there's cops walking by our house all day long um but but at the same time like it's it is strange when you go like oh that's weird i don't tend to think of them as stereotypical like you know cops but that's you know
John: Well, sure, because that guy is taking taking that risk.
John: He pulls over that car full of four guys and they are white supremacists and their cars are full of guns and they're on their way to, you know, to blow up a synagogue and there's a shootout and this poor cop is in the, you know, is in the firing zone.
Merlin: Well, it's also it's also this.
Merlin: I don't know what you call this, but, you know, it's also like there there is something that there might be something that that cop could act on.
Merlin: Or let's put it this way.
Merlin: The person driving that car or riding in that car knows there's something that that cop could act on.
Merlin: Now, that could be like a small bit of weed in your pocket.
John: It could be not worth killing a cop over.
John: Let me tell you.
John: Yeah, but I just put that out there to everybody.
Merlin: I'm saying this is just how this is how you get into these Fargo type situations is where, you know, there's one that one and that may be one person in the car that's got weed.
Merlin: Maybe nobody else knows that they have weed or whatever, whatever.
Merlin: Insert J random drug.
Merlin: And it could be that somebody in the car remembers there's a warrant, an outstanding warrant on them.
Merlin: And you know what I mean?
Merlin: There's that kind of stuff where there are these landmines waiting to happen where nothing really happened that needed to be acted upon, except in as much as this is part of law enforcement is doing that due diligence to say, is there drugs in here?
Merlin: Anything going to stab me?
Merlin: Let me check you out and run.
Merlin: So in that case, if I were a cop, man, I wouldn't be, but I would be real circumspect about deciding, did you ever end up watching Fargo?
John: I love the fact that in this conversation you are going into your Scott Simpson register periodically.
John: Did I ever tell you about that?
John: I have never watched the television show Fargo, but I have consumed the movie Fargo.
Merlin: Yeah, in the second season of that, there's several very tense things involving like one cop and a lot of bad guys where you've got to just keep the surface tension from breaking.
John: Well, and this is the thing I think is the insight into the DMV question and the cop question.
John: which is that think of 90% of jobs,
John: you are dealing with a select group of people in the course of your day.
John: If you work at an insurance agency, you are dealing only with people who are seeking insurance and people who are in the insurance trade.
John: And if you are designing software, even if you're talking on the phone to customer service people, you are dealing with people who are using your selected product.
John: But cops and DMV people...
John: They're among the only people who deal with everybody.
John: And that, you know, they pull over big Mercedes Benzes and they pull over cars that shouldn't be on the road.
John: And they pull over people who are... You mean like demographically?
John: Demographically, people who are insane, people who are not insane, people who are...
John: entitled people who are not entitled you know they pull over they talk to everyone and the dmv is very close to that too like everybody in our world gets a driver's license that's like that's like the first thing you are allowed to do is hurdle down the road in a in a gas fired uh death machine
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John: Like, you are allowed to do that before you are allowed to do pretty much anything else.
John: And so this tidal wave...
John: of everybody comes at you and i think in those positions and this is the thing we you know we walk up to that counter and we're like hey i'm a normal person and i'm just having a day and hello and the person behind the counter is like name id card because they've already dealt with
John: with such a wide scrum of people.
John: And I guess my experience out in the world is that there are so many people who are difficult to deal with for a variety of reasons.
Merlin: Difficult to deal with.
Merlin: What I like about your use of the word difficult there is it's not necessarily that they're nasty.
Merlin: It's not necessarily that they're hostile or it could just be that they're difficult to deal with because they don't know how to do what they're doing right now.
Merlin: They don't know how to be at the DMV.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: They don't understand.
Merlin: Maybe there could be a language thing, right?
Merlin: It could be a financial thing.
Merlin: Like, no, sir, I can't run this on three different cards.
Merlin: There's all kinds of reasons that a lot of people wouldn't think about about why this seemingly simple transaction could be confusing.
Merlin: And you get them every day.
Merlin: It's like, you know, I've said before, my hell job.
Merlin: My hell job is to be the person in the TSA line who has to ask you to take the water out of your bag.
Merlin: Because you have to do that.
Merlin: You have to ask people.
Merlin: But no matter how many times you tell them, I think still about one out of ten people will have water in their bag.
Merlin: I've done it.
Merlin: I've spaced it.
John: It's always the person right in front of me, the person that has – and I'm sure everybody feels this way.
John: It's the person who appears to never have been in an airport before.
John: This is the first plane they've ever been on.
John: They go up to the security thing and go back to their luggage four times.
Merlin: They don't know what kinds of stuff sets off the alarm.
Merlin: They don't know how to answer the questions.
John: Even though there's a TSA guy who's been standing there saying the same thing 40 times an hour.
John: Take your bags out of your bag.
John: Put your bag in the bag.
Merlin: But he's seen it all.
Merlin: And no matter he or she, and no matter how often they tell you, the signs are there.
Merlin: Everybody knows this stuff or should know this stuff at this point.
Merlin: Anybody's traveling.
Merlin: But it's a hell job because there's still no – it's the ultimate Sisyphean job.
Merlin: And in some ways, that's a little bit what the DMV would have to be like.
Merlin: And nobody's happy to be there.
John: Except that that's the incredible thing.
John: I mean, the airport is one of those –
John: One of those experiences that we all share where it's like, oh my God, I'm in the mass of humanity here.
John: And the TSA is the choke point where, you know, the faster people cannot get through a system faster.
John: The competent people cannot get through more competently.
John: And yet that is even a select group of people that have a reason to fly on a plane.
Merlin: You know, there's a built in, you know, not quite a bias, but people who have traveled a lot are necessarily people who can afford to travel a lot.
John: Right.
John: When what is the percentage of I mean, I have met so many people in the world who have never been 15 miles from the village they were born in.
John: let alone ever, you know, I mean, they've never been in a car.
Merlin: Let alone having a firsthand impression about a certain terminal at LAX and how it's changed over 20 years.
Merlin: Think about that for a minute.
Merlin: Like, wow, things are going too bad in your life if you can be angry about a terminal in the airport.
Merlin: What the hell?
Merlin: They changed the carpet.
John: God, you know, they changed the carpet in the Portland airport.
John: It is really gross there, though.
John: Well, the LAX, come on.
John: They could do a better job.
John: But like Portland Airport changed their carpet within the last year.
John: And I heard about it more than I'm sure people heard about the moon landing when it happened.
John: You know, just people like, oh, my God, how are we supposed to deal with this carpet?
Merlin: This is really ugly carpet.
Merlin: Everybody always hated until they decided it was cool.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And then it's just like, you know, still it's, it's, it is, it's, it's, it's, yeah, that's people are funny like that.
John: We, we need things to be a melancholy about, you know, I just took a couple of airplanes just recently.
Merlin: Did they know?
John: Uh, I took them.
John: Yeah.
John: I've got them now.
John: Um, there, I'm not giving them back.
John: Throw me the head.
John: I throw you the whip.
John: No time to argue.
John: Did I tell you that I received silver medallion status?
John: Oh, wow.
John: How was the ceremony?
Merlin: Did you bring your family along?
John: I did get a certificate.
John: It was a virtual certificate.
Merlin: Let it be noted this day that John Morgan Roderick has achieved silver medallion status for his ability to sit on a plane for over 25,000 miles.
John: Hey, hey, hey, hey.
Merlin: Oh, yes.
John: Oh, yes.
John: So I got silver medallion status and my more well-traveled friends, one of whom is consistently has a gold status.
John: My friend Jason Finn had a nickname.
John: For many years, he was called Goldmember.
John: Because...
John: Because when he traveled, he was obsessed with his mileage plans.
John: And for many years.
John: It's like a version of sports for some people.
John: It is.
John: But he was in the famous band, Presidents of the United States of America, who routinely flew to Europe and Asia and Australia.
John: Didn't they just go in for a weekend sometimes?
John: They would.
John: They would fly to Belgium, play a big show, fly home.
John: They'd leave on Friday, be back on Sunday.
John: which was bananas to me, but they were paid very handsomely.
John: But the thing is, they would fly to Australia, and Jason would be in first class, and the rest of his band and crew would be in coach.
John: And it's not that they couldn't have all been gold members.
John: It's just that the other guys didn't bother to do
John: the the paperwork and obsess over the over that little bit of of saving up your credits right and so they'd get on the plane and his bandmates were rightfully furious but jason would be like well then manage your manage your miles
John: And the thing is, Jason appointed himself to be the travel coordinator for his band.
John: So he made sure that they always flew on the airlines that he was interested in collecting miles on.
John: He had a whole plan, a project.
John: And I think he berated his bandmates.
John: You should do this.
John: You should do this.
John: And they just felt like it was beneath their dignity.
John: But anyway, so I have several friends who are gold members, but then I also have one famous friend that you and I both know who has just achieved diamond status.
John: Is that Hodgman?
John: Yeah.
John: He was platinum for a long time, and then he went over – he actually made –
John: A specious cross-country trip for no other reason than to achieve diamond status.
John: At the very end of the year, it was just like, well, you're only 5,000 miles away from diamond status.
John: And he was like, all right.
John: Somebody in Portland was like, we'll give you $50 to show up for the opening of this bottle of wine.
John: And John was like, you know what?
John: I'll do it.
John: just to achieve.
John: So now he's diamond status.
John: And so I wrote an email, I'll admit, to a few people.
John: And I was like, I just got silver status!
John: Look at me!
John: Whee!
John: And I got back all these condescending emails.
John: Congratulations.
John: I hope you know that silver status accords you nothing.
John: You know, there was seriously like
John: It was like the Dukes and the Earls were congratulating somebody that got an MBE, like the lowest grade.
Merlin: It would be like telling a Rothschild, you just bought stock.
Merlin: Yeah, I got some stock.
Merlin: I got a stock.
John: Hey, look at me.
John: And so I got all this shade thrown at me about my silver status.
John: Like, oh, great, silver status.
John: You know they just give that to you to like –
Merlin: It's like the first big payout of the night on nickel slots.
Merlin: It's like, this will keep him here for a while.
Merlin: Because now that thing is, it's a little bit of a, how do you always refer to it as a white ribbon?
Merlin: Is that what you call it?
Merlin: Well, yeah, I would call it the white ribbon.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: You've called it the white ribbon.
John: You know, it's either the third place finish or in some cases the participation.
Merlin: The participation I think is standard coach.
Merlin: But, I mean, really maybe it's more like getting a sixth place ribbon where it's like I didn't know they made ribbons like this.
Merlin: But somebody had to take the time to figure out I'd like tied for sixth.
Merlin: Yeah, it's the brown ribbon.
Merlin: It's right.
Merlin: But, I mean, it's like even when –
Merlin: God, I hate talking about airplanes.
Merlin: You've got to stop.
Merlin: But, like, for me, like, I mean, even being in not business class or first, but, like, when you get to, like, the priority boarding and, like, you paid to get in, like, you know, for me, that's if I can afford it when I fly or somebody else is paying, for me, that's always Virgin's main cabin select.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Which is great.
Merlin: It's so great because it's already it's very close to business class or at first.
Merlin: It's so great.
Merlin: You get all the free TV.
Merlin: You get all the free food.
Merlin: You get all the free alcohol.
Merlin: You get a nice big chair to sit in.
Merlin: But there are nice big chairs on Virgin.
John: And typically you are then seated next to someone who also understands not to talk to you.
Merlin: Yeah, absolutely.
Merlin: You do a very, very quick, polite greeting at the beginning and then you maybe say something after the wheels hit the runway.
Merlin: No, I totally agree.
John: You stare at your device.
Merlin: You don't get somebody with a large pizza and 200 papers to grade.
Merlin: I'll never forget this woman.
Merlin: This woman walked on into the middle seat with a pizza that was larger than her.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: Uh, so, but then the thing is it's with all these statuses and it's hilarious.
Merlin: I'm sure there's been a million standup bits about this, but all the statuses where you start with like, you know, military people in uniform and people with disabilities, kids, and then you go through like, and it's hilarious to me.
Merlin: There must be like six different statuses.
John: Million milers, then diamond, then yeah.
Merlin: You've got – I'm trying to think on some of the – there's always something like international class platinum or something.
Merlin: There's the highest level and then you go through all the different metals.
Merlin: And it's incredible though because like even when you paid to have the earlier seeding.
Merlin: What you've really gotten is you are the people who board right before the bad people who didn't pay extra.
John: But, you know, that first 40 people on the plane that are all those statuses are also the people that know how to get on an airplane.
John: They know that they're all carrying small bags, if you notice.
Merlin: Usually.
Merlin: You know, there's very few of those people.
Merlin: I've seen a lot of leakage back into the larger bag than is really –
John: Yeah, that's happening.
John: That's chronic, right?
John: But you're not going to see somebody with platinum status that's carrying – Loose fruit.
John: That's carrying like a huge bag, another huge bag on top of it, then an accordion in its case, and then a monkey –
John: And, you know, and then a huge bag of monkey chow.
John: The airline said the monkey can sit in my lap.
John: What are you talking about?
John: It's a service monkey.
John: It's an inlet monkey.
John: Anyway, the point of the point of this story is that Anna pizza.
John: Right.
John: Or a can of tuna fish.
John: Who sells you a pizza to take on a plane?
John: Oh, my God.
John: I've done it.
John: Oh, I was in an airport one time and I was like, wait a minute.
John: You'll sell me an entire pizza.
John: And they were like, yes.
John: And I was like sold.
John: That is such a hate crime.
John: No, I took it on the plane and I was like, I got a pizza.
John: And the people next to me were like, oh, my God.
John: And I was like, are you kidding me?
Merlin: I've got a pizza.
Merlin: Everything smells so much worse on a plane.
Merlin: Oh, it does because it mingles with the farts and the air conditioning.
Merlin: The long tube is not going to let that escape.
John: Somebody brings a fucking hoagie on.
John: Listen, you know, the guy next to me probably took his shoes off, you know, and it was just like, I've got a pizza.
John: It was one of the few moments I got on a plane and I turned into like a four-year-old monkey, right?
John: Like I was just like, I have pizza.
John: Ha, ha, ha, ha.
John: Me, me, boss man.
John: But in any case.
John: Yeah, so back to silver status.
John: Of five of the six flights I've taken since I got silver status, five out of the six I was upgraded to first class.
John: What?
John: As a silver status flight.
Merlin: That's unheard of.
Merlin: For free?
John: I get to the airport.
John: I'm walking in.
John: Of course, I have pre-checked because I'm one of those guys.
John: No, no, no, no.
John: I wouldn't fly United if the world had come to an end and they were the only flight and it was a flight away from an erupting volcano.
John: We found a seat for your daughter out of the apocalypse.
John: There's one seat left.
Merlin: One seat left.
Merlin: No, fuck you.
John: I will die here in the lava flow before I get on a United.
John: She's not getting on either.
John: No, no, no.
John: We all die.
John: We all die.
Merlin: Okay, what airline?
Merlin: What airline?
John: Shit airline.
John: You know, I don't want to give free advertising to some stupid airline.
John: I think they're all garbage.
John: There's like 11 people listening to this show, John.
John: What fucking airline is it?
John: I fly Delta, obviously.
John: Well, no, they're terrible.
John: They're all terrible.
John: They're all terrible.
John: But Delta, so anyway, Jason Finn sends me, he's like, when he realizes that I'm interested in this stuff.
John: And what got me interested, frankly, a couple of years ago, I did 50 flights in a year.
John: And I was going online and just picking flights based on how cheap they were.
John: And then I flew to Africa with Jonathan Colton.
John: Oh, yeah, right.
John: Who got upgraded across the ocean and sat up there basically pouring glasses of free wine on the carpet.
John: Clean that up, slave.
John: While I was back in coach, you know, which was, you know, which was like Tatooine.
John: And then we get to Paris and Jonathan gets upgraded on an Air France flight to Nymi Niger.
Merlin: There ain't no upgrade like an Air France upgrade.
John: Where it's just like, you get the what?
John: And he's like, yeah, it's part of the fucking Star Alliance or whatever.
John: See you later, dork.
John: and went up there and was basically, I mean, he was basically like in a Pagliacci hat hitting people over the head with a loaf of French bread.
John: And I'm back in coach on a flight, on an Air France flight, and it's just like, okay.
John: Well, there are two Banthas down there.
John: That's right.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: He doesn't like you.
Merlin: I don't like you either.
Merlin: I just want to get out of France.
John: Give me a break here.
John: You just watch yourself.
John: So, yeah, it's like the guy that makes eyeballs in Blade Runner.
John: Oh, right.
John: No, not the guy that makes eyeballs.
John: The guy that tells him where to get the guy that makes eyeballs.
Merlin: Uh-huh.
Merlin: The guy in the cold room.
John: That one guy that's in everything.
John: That's right.
Merlin: What's his name?
Merlin: I should know his name.
John: He is in everything.
Merlin: He's in Seinfeld.
Merlin: He's the 10 minutes, 5, 10 minutes.
Merlin: That guy's the best.
Merlin: Anyway, I'll cut this out.
Merlin: So anyway, you're in Tatooine and Jonathan's in a Pagliacci hat.
John: Yeah, so then I get back to America and I run into Jason Finn, my close friend and advisor and consigliere.
John: And I say, Jason Finn, what the hell?
John: Jonathan Colton smugly flew all the way across the world.
John: Like, just content.
John: And with his fucking, I went to Yale card in his wallet.
John: So he feels like it's all just part of, it's all what he deserves, you know?
John: And I'm like, how do I, what am I supposed to do?
John: And Jason said, first mistake, you fly on whatever airline.
John: You need to pick an airline and stick with it.
John: Second mistake, don't make the second mistake.
John: And he sent me a long...
John: He sent me these links to websites where people talk about their mileage plans.
John: I used to be one of these people.
John: There are websites where people do nothing but rate airline mileage plans.
John: Yeah.
John: And the consensus is that Delta has the best one, even though it's not as good as it used to be, even though they changed the carpet in the Portland airport.
Merlin: It's like being dropped into the nicest dubliette.
Merlin: This is much less moist than the other one.
John: I only have to wipe off my glasses every 20 minutes.
John: There's only even shit in two corners.
John: Five stars.
John: So I signed up for it.
John: Anyway, so now I'm...
John: You know, and Hodgman and Colton are also on Delta.
John: And so Hodgman all the time, he loves to take me into the Delta Sky Lounge in various airports.
John: And we go into the Delta Sky Lounge, which is not a place I would go under any circumstances.
John: If I was living in an airport and I had – if I was one of those people who was in an immigration status where I had to live in JFK for a year –
John: I would rather sleep in front of a Sparrows than ever go into a Delta Sky Lounge.
John: It's just like the most hateful place.
John: You're surrounded by just that creepy class of people.
Merlin: And they're swaddled in privilege, and they're just so happy to eat fucking cookies out of those little cupcake things.
Merlin: Or like eating a free bagel and a banana, and they're just going to refill their fucking coffee.
Merlin: It's so gross.
John: There's like a coffee machine and some bananas and some copies of Business Week.
Merlin: I'm glad it exists, but the people are the worst.
Merlin: It's so bad.
John: And Hodgman knows they are.
John: So he takes me in there and we sit in the comfortable chairs and we look around
John: And it's just one of those situations where like, look at that asshole.
John: Oh my God, look at this asshole coming in here.
John: Just like, oh my God, this is awful.
John: But he loves to be in there and he loves to bring me in there.
John: And so anyway, so I'm silver status and I'm just thinking like, wacka, wacka, wacka, right?
John: And then I get upgraded to first class five out of six times and I feel like.
Merlin: That's unheard of, John.
John: So I roll over on my belly and I'm like, Delta, stroke my tummy, you know?
John: Like I completely surrender all my dignity.
John: And now I'm sitting in the departure lounge and I'm looking up at the little screen and it's just like, my name is on the list.
John: My name is, you know, my three letter representation of my name is up there.
John: And then I come up to the gate and I'm like, come on, come on, come on.
Merlin: You go up and you say, I am J-Rod.
Merlin: Hello.
John: Hello.
John: Come on, come on, come on.
John: And they're like, ding.
Ding.
John: And now all of a sudden I'm sitting up front.
John: I got a golden ticket.
John: Yeah, people are nice to me.
John: But the problem is on the last flight, the woman next to me discovered that I was from Wales.
John: I don't know what happened.
What?
John: I let it slip.
John: My people were from Wales, right?
John: Oh, okay.
John: Because she was speaking with an accent, and I can't resist that.
John: When someone's speaking with an accent.
Merlin: Oh, and now you open the door and now you're going to talk about Wales.
John: Yeah, I can't resist being like, so are you from blankety blank?
John: Like, it's just, I can't stop myself, right?
John: So are you from Sumatra?
John: And it's just this thing where I look at them and I'm just guessing.
John: I just want to guess where they're from.
John: First of all, I want to guess where they're from.
John: Second of all, I want to be right.
John: Because when you're right and the person is like, how did you know I was from Sumatra?
John: Most people don't even know that that exists.
John: And then you're just like, well, I am the most interesting man in the world.
Merlin: From the wear patterns on your elbow, I can tell.
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: So I guess she's from Bristol, and I'm wrong.
John: And then it turns out she's from Cardiff, and I'm like, oh.
John: And for a brief second, I sustain the possibility that this is going to be an interesting conversation.
Merlin: Even as it's dawning on you, this is a terrible idea.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: And pretty soon, she's talking to me about her graduate thesis.
John: that she obviously did 35 years ago, and it was on the universality of religions,
John: which normally would be an interesting topic to me, but in this particular circumstance, it was not enjoyable.
John: And I ended up being the rude person that I never am, which is that I was like, I've got to go to the bathroom.
John: When I didn't, got up and went to the bathroom, made myself go, and then came back and immediately started doing the crossword in the in-flight magazine.
John: And I could feel...
John: I could feel for a moment a little bit of pregnancy between us where she was like, are we not going to resume the conversation about my master's thesis or my graduate thesis?
John: Right, right.
John: And I was like, four-letter word for Tatooine.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Oh, that's so awkward because there are some people that I'm always amazed because I get very introverted on a flight.
Merlin: I mean, I'm happy to talk and be gracious and say thank you and things like that.
Merlin: But I do not want to give any signal that I would like to have a conversation that has no clear end to it.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: And there are some people.
Merlin: There are some people.
Merlin: I don't know why, but I mean, like, you know, it's I don't know.
Merlin: I'm already so on edge, but like some people really, really want to talk on a plane, maybe because they're nervous, you think, or maybe because it's just it's an exciting thing for them.
Merlin: Maybe they're excited to be on the plane.
John: I think that they want to talk all the time.
John: I mean, I think that there are lots and lots of people that just that want to.
John: You know, I've been thinking a lot about this lately that there, you know, we talk about emotional intelligence and intellectual intelligence.
John: And and only only recently, I think, have people even gotten comfortable talking about emotional intelligence.
John: There was intelligence.
John: And it was presumed that emotions were the opposite of intelligence, right?
John: I mean, when I was a kid or even until recently, emotional reactions, emotional behavior was like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
John: You know, why are you having an emotional reaction?
John: You should be reasonable and rational here.
John: I think there are tons and tons of people that still believe that.
John: That emotion is unpredictable, unreliable, and the opposite of being smart.
John: But there are a lot of us that now are able to talk about an emotional intelligence which is different and compatible with intellectual intelligence.
Merlin: I mean I think part of emotional intelligence is not just being intelligent about your emotions but other people's.
Merlin: That's 100%.
Merlin: That's the real intelligence.
John: 100%.
John: But the ability to transact and converse in the world of emotion –
John: without feeling like it's strange or, you know, that's invalid or dangerous.
John: Invalid, right.
John: When my good friend Mike Squires once said to me, emotions are real, and we stared at each other in that moment and I was like, it was lightning bolt, like, oh my God, emotions are real.
John: And he was like, emotions are real.
John: He said it three or four times.
John: It was like Robin Williams talking to Matt Damon.
John: emotions are real, emotions are real, until I started crying.
John: And I was like, wow, emotions are real?
John: Emotions are real.
John: Emotions are real.
John: Wow.
John: But I've just recently started to think about a kind of physical intelligence, this physicality that we see in people that is not just a gift in terms of, I can jump high, I can run fast, I can dance well.
John: but it's actually a way of expressing oneself that they need to do.
John: In some cases, it's their primary language.
John: And when they're unable to express themselves physically, they're hampered.
John: And this is a thing that I was also contemptuous of.
John: They're just a jock, right?
John: Just somebody that fucking wants to dance.
John: When are they going to sit down so that we can get real?
John: And it was my lack of understanding that that was as real as it got for them.
John: this, you know, the physical expression.
John: And it's not, you know, and I think part of the, part of my prejudice is that the physical temporal material world seems less, lesser than the psycho spiritual world.
John: But, you know, the material world is all we've got.
John: Our bodies are all we have.
John: So I'm just trying to learn, I'm trying to study that and learn it and it's part of having empathy for even more people and realizing that some of the behaviors that I think, some of the behaviors that
John: that annoy me are actually someone else's language and I should stop being annoyed and start listening to them?
John: That's good.
John: It's weird.
John: It's a good one.
John: Because you look at them and, you know, and it's just like, oh, stop spazzing or, you know, like, stop being so good at dancing.
John: And in fact, it's how they're trying to communicate.
John: And this is still experimental for me, but it seems right.
John: And sometimes you get seated next to somebody like that on an airplane.
John: And they're using spoken language and it's already a second language to them.
John: Because what they really want to be doing is dancing or throwing a football or expressing themselves their way.
Merlin: Physicality as a primary language.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: What kind of places do you see that?
Merlin: I mean, to me, an obvious one would be a dancer.
John: A dancer, somebody that, you know, somebody that is hyper in shape.
Merlin: And I'm thinking more here of the gross movements of the body rather than the fine ones.
Merlin: Like, I'm not sure that being good at life drawing, you know, I think that's a different kind of thing we're talking about.
Merlin: We're talking about people who do big movements.
Merlin: Gymnasts.
Merlin: But, you know, dancers are interesting because it's so athletic but also so very expressive.
John: Right, right, right, right, right.
John: I mean it is – but I guess that's the thing.
John: Like dance we can see.
John: Right.
John: It is a language.
John: It's a language of dance.
Merlin: Well, I mean it's – and it could be – you can get into stuff like mime I guess and stuff like that.
Merlin: But I'm just – I'm talking about like –
Merlin: There's all the stuff that we think about as like the avocations of intelligent people, all the stuff, like all the knowledge work jobs and creative jobs, right?
Merlin: So writing, it's writing as an example, whether that's writing music, writing prose, you know, nonfiction, fiction.
Merlin: But in the case of dancing, that's very interesting because the only way to really get dancing is to dance.
Merlin: I mean, yes, obviously you can also write about dancing.
Merlin: You could do movies about dancing.
John: You can dance about architecture.
Merlin: You can dance if you want to.
John: And something John Syracuse has talked about a lot with video games is like... Merlin, I was just recently pedantically instructed on how to pronounce Syracuse.
Merlin: Yeah, I'm not going to get into it.
Merlin: Syracuse.
Merlin: I'm not going to get into it.
Merlin: And so these worlds cannot collide.
Merlin: But with him...
Merlin: I still can't get it right.
Merlin: But take out the coos.
Merlin: No seer, no coos.
Merlin: No coos.
John: My whole life I've been trying to take out the coos.
Merlin: So take out the coos.
Merlin: Take out the coos, bro.
Merlin: What was I saying?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: So in his case, like I'm interested in video games and I'm playing very gently with some video games.
Merlin: But, you know, I'm like, oh, like there's some of these where I'm really interested in the story of it where I want to just watch people play it like a movie.
Merlin: And he's like, that's the thing.
Merlin: The video game is not a movie.
Merlin: Like it looks like a movie.
Merlin: But when you're playing it, the experience of playing one of these very immersive video games is very, very different.
Merlin: I can't understand that because I haven't played them.
Merlin: And I don't know how to play them.
Merlin: just as I can understand that dance is its own language of expression, even though I can't dance.
John: So a video game is not a movie.
John: It's more like a masturbation hole in a wall.
John: No.
John: Oh.
Merlin: That's funny, but no, it's not.
John: I don't even think it's funny.
John: I'm just trying to get angry letters because I had such a good time last week with the angry letters.
John: But what I'm... I think that... Seek first to understand, John.
John: You...
John: You made a distinction just now about gross motor skills versus fine.
John: But when I think about the really best surgeons, you know, there is we think of them as as knowledge workers.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: They're good at science and happen to have access to a scalpel.
John: Yeah, they're highly, highly educated, and so we admire them.
John: But really what sets brilliant surgeons apart is their physicality, their ability to do micro, micro stuff with their hands.
Merlin: Yeah, and think about the duration of having to stand there and do open-heart surgery for four or six hours or something like that.
John: Right, so it's really their natural gift in their body when combined with their education.
John: that makes them so gifted.
John: And that's the, you know, it may be that they're, they are actually people who express themselves in physicality or super good, you know, draftsman, you know, it, it is a, it is a physical talent that has been honed into a skill by practice and education, just as, uh,
John: just as leaping high or putting on a gold crown and leaping high if she wants, right?
Merlin: The thing I think I'm making is that
Merlin: You know, if you think about like a Venn diagram, like a very, very complex Venn diagram, there's all these different kinds of skills that are involved that we can arbitrarily put into these different areas, even though there's lots of overflow.
Merlin: You know, there are some kinds of things, and this could even get into the Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi idea of flow.
Merlin: Oh, hello.
Merlin: What did you just say?
Merlin: It's something that talks about.
Merlin: Did you just have a stroke?
Merlin: Nope, nope, nope.
Merlin: Talked about it in a lot of different places.
Merlin: But he's this guy who writes a lot about creativity and what he calls flow.
Merlin: And he's created this very interesting matrix of you could think of the y-axis as the level of challenge and the x-axis as the level of skill.
Merlin: So something that you find not very challenging and that you aren't very good at, that causes apathy.
Merlin: Whereas, for example, something where you have a very high level of challenge and very low level of skill, that produces anxiety.
Merlin: So think about you and tagging your MP3s.
Merlin: That's a task that has a very low level of challenge but a very high level of skill.
Merlin: So that's relaxing.
Merlin: That's a crossword puzzle.
John: What is untagging your MP3s?
Merlin: Tagging?
Merlin: You know the way you like to do your MP3 metadata back in the day?
Merlin: Or like a crossword puzzle?
Merlin: No, I never did that.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: Nice try, buddy.
Yeah.
Merlin: I remember when you got your first laptop, you spent a long time making sure the metadata was right.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: OK.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: Metadata.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: OK.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: You caught me.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: But it's also it could be anything.
Merlin: It could be like, you know, sometimes when you have a job and you're sick of the kind of slow thinking work that you have to do, like you want something really monkey brain.
Merlin: It's nice to go read file.
Merlin: Now what I do is I go into my contacts.
John: Oh, God.
John: I go through my contacts with a comb so often when I'm sitting in someplace boring where I don't have service.
Merlin: You'll never run out of that relaxing exercise.
John: Know what I'm going to do right now?
John: I'm going to go through my contacts and I'm going to figure out all the things that aren't current and all the things that are duplicated.
Merlin: Is that a reverend or a brother or a...
Merlin: And so anyway, but anyway, I'm just saying like in that case, and so in his example, Csikszentmihalyi's example, something where you're highly challenged but highly skilled produces a flow state.
Merlin: And that's where you don't even have to think about what you're doing, right?
Merlin: I mean, where you may be thinking about it, but you lose track of time.
Merlin: Like think about when you really get your groove on with like doing something with a song and you kind of like you disappear into it.
Merlin: And yeah, so anyway, there's those kinds of things.
John: I feel like the only thing, Merlin, that I'm really highly skilled at is going through my contacts with a comb.
Yeah.
John: I mean, I honestly, I cannot think of another thing.
John: Okay.
John: I mean, you know, I sit at home sometimes and separate TYTAX into little boxes.
Merlin: Okay, now what level of challenge is that?
Merlin: Is that low, medium, or high?
John: I mean, it's...
John: It is.
John: I feel like, boy, that's a good question.
Merlin: Because if it's a high level of skill with a medium level of challenge, that produces the feeling of control.
John: That's right.
John: You know what?
John: There's no challenge to it.
John: It's just pleasurable.
Merlin: That's relaxing.
John: I have a high level of skill and I'm totally relaxed.
John: You're right.
John: Now, what do I do that is super challenging that I have a high level of skill at?
Merlin: Let's go through these.
Merlin: So for a high level of challenge, if it's a very high level of challenge and you have a medium amount of skill, that's arousal.
Merlin: That's like, ooh, I can do this.
Merlin: Whereas, again, if you have a low level of skill, that's anxiety.
Merlin: Now, here's one.
Merlin: If you have a medium level of skill and you have a low level of challenge, that's boredom.
Merlin: So you go from apathy to boredom to relaxation, depending on how high your skill is.
John: You know what it is?
John: Is this kind of an interesting concept?
John: It is.
John: I have a high level of skill and a high level of challenge diagnosing other people's problems.
Merlin: That gives you flow.
Merlin: You got the flow on.
John: I really have some flow.
John: And when that gets going, when somebody's like, oh, what's wrong with my life?
John: And I'm like, tell me more about your life.
John: And then they tell you and you're like, hmm, okay.
Merlin: It's like dangling a pork chop in front of a wolf.
John: Okay, let's get started here.
John: So let me ask you a few questions.
John: Okay.
John: I love that shit, and it's just like, oh, I get into this thing where I feel like I'm ice skating in the Olympics.
Merlin: So there's those kinds of things to qualify.
Merlin: What kind of job is this?
Merlin: What's your skill at this?
Merlin: So the biggest distinction I was making in my head, and I can't think of many that fit this, is in order to produce the thing that you produce primarily with your job, does it require any large muscle group apart from the gluteus?
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: So you might have to move some office supplies around, but mostly even if you're an architect, you're mostly like, you know, you're using finer, finer skills.
Merlin: You're not using your shoulders that much.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: And that's, I'm trying to think of stuff besides dance and construction work.
Merlin: Like what are some other kinds of jobs where the primary thing that you do, I mean, how many jobs are there where the primary thing you do requires the coordination of large muscle groups that isn't like a blue collar job?
John: How many yoga instructors are there in the world?
Merlin: Oh,
Merlin: That's true.
John: There are 2,000 yoga instructors for every 3,000 people.
John: That's mandated by the yoga council.
John: Certainly in the world that I live in, whenever somebody is going through a life change, they become a yoga instructor.
Merlin: And you get accredited by the yoga council, yoga council, yoga council.
Merlin: Did you notice I'm carrying a mat?
John: Did I, did I ever tell you about the time I was in a Vancouver hotel room and I was laying in bed and I turned on the television and the channel that the cable was on, I think it might've even been the, maybe I, maybe I clicked the button once to get off of the hotel.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: The, the, all about the way too loud, all about the hotel station.
John: Welcome to the blank hotel.
John: Um, so I click dining is available till 11 PM.
John: Try our spa.
John: Would you like to wear a, watch an adult movie?
John: Hot stone massage.
John: So I clicked on that.
John: I clicked on the button once and it immediately went to the yoga channel, which I'd never seen.
John: And I believe may be exclusive to Canada.
John: Uh, and so I was like yoga channel.
John: Let's see what this is about.
John: And I laid back on my, uh, pillow and,
John: While this woman did yoga, and then it was clearly her, she was narrating her yoga practice, but, you know, like an overdub.
John: So as she did the yoga, she was also describing what she was doing, but you couldn't see her mouth move because she was consumed by the yoga.
John: And she had a physicality that was unbelievable, like her flexibility and the ability to do these yogas.
John: And I watched for a half an hour.
John: Completely drawn in.
John: In a sense, what is she going to do next?
John: Is she going to thread herself through the eye of a needle?
John: Is this the path to heaven?
John: Is she doing permanent damage to herself?
John: She looks very blissed out.
John: And the thing was that her narration was constant.
John: And by the tone of her voice and by her narration, I knew that she was not...
John: going through the eye of a needle into heaven because I found her annoying and I'm sure God would too.
John: But wow, a fantastic expression of physical communication.
Merlin: I hadn't thought of that one.
Merlin: There's probably lots of other ones too.
Merlin: I guess in some ways being a trainer or a coach would be another one.
Merlin: There's not that many performing or visual arts that require big muscles.
John: But I mean a footballer, a baseballer, a basketballer, a hockeyer.
Merlin: A hockey-er, as they say in Canada.
John: A hockey-er, right?
John: I mean all of the supporters.
Mm-hmm.
John: And then even a race car driver.
Merlin: Oh, sure.
Merlin: That counts.
Merlin: That's supposedly pretty grueling.
Merlin: You're not just sitting there.
Merlin: You're not riding the car.
Merlin: You're driving it.
John: That's right.
John: And so tell me, what do you think about skyscraper window washer?
Merlin: Oh, boy.
Merlin: That's an interesting job to me.
John: Right?
John: Because you have to have a native...
John: I think, a native ability to get up there on that scaffold and not be wearing adult diapers every day.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: I also think about things like there's also these jobs that are such a corner case or an edge case.
Merlin: Think about being a piano tuner.
Merlin: What a weird job that is.
Merlin: You ever been in a room when a piano is being tuned?
Merlin: It's really maddening.
John: Are you kidding me?
John: That's another thing like the Yoga Channel.
John: I can't leave a room where a piano is being tuned.
Merlin: You can't.
Merlin: Oh, my goodness.
Merlin: I remember the day in second grade when they tuned the upright piano in our class, and I thought by lunch I was going to lose my mind.
John: When I learned about tempering a piano, oh, my God, I sat around thinking.
John: I still think about it.
Merlin: Is that really a thing?
Merlin: I thought Bach made that up.
John: How do you temper a clavier?
John: Well, they do it, you know, where everything is just, where things are slightly out of tune as they progress away from middle C. And if they're not out of tune, if they're all perfectly in tune, then the piano sounds bonkers and unfriendly.
John: So you have to, you know, things have to be, and I hear this about guitar all the time.
John: I remember Eddie Van Halen speaking to me directly through the television back when there was still an MTV.
John: And he described that the B string on a guitar needs to be just slightly flat, just a few cents flat in order for the guitar chords to sound nice.
John: And if your B string is tuned perfectly...
John: you're always going to feel a little bit out of tune, which is why if you go with an electric tuner and you're just really nailing the tuning, it's always a little bit... And so having heard that in 1984... That's interesting.
Merlin: What is the special nature of the B in that case?
John: Well, the B kind of doesn't belong almost.
John: That's the magic.
John: The B is sort of the magic note where... It's the one where it's off.
Merlin: Yeah, it's kind of... It's one that's off by one.
John: It's necessary to be there like that in order to make chords easy to play or in order to make those three strings in the middle.
Merlin: Can you imagine how... I'm sorry.
Merlin: I'm going to be dumb for a minute because I don't have a guitar right in front of me.
Merlin: But that's the one that's not like...
Merlin: a fifth at the second.
John: That's right.
John: Not like the others.
Merlin: So can you imagine, like, if you were the person who was coming up with the guitar, like, your OCD tendency would certainly be to make them all that way.
Merlin: Oh, how infuriating that would be?
Merlin: Whoever had to make that decision, like, how crazy that would make you feel.
John: Yeah, just like, wait a minute, one of them has to be one step off?
Merlin: Yeah, it's actually going to work way better.
Merlin: No, no, no, there's no way that that's going to make it work better.
John: Because that DGB in the middle, like so many guitar chords have DGB either...
John: either ringing open or barred as a as a single bar right that's the little chord dgb but that b kind of it just wants to be and so so my whole career i have i've tempered my b by a couple of cents when i'm tuning with an electric tuner i never heard this i never get it all the way to perfect i just leave it a little tiny bit flat
John: And that's something that Eddie Van Halen told me.
John: And when Eddie Van Halen says something about guitars, you kind of just have to sit up a little bit and go, all right, all right, Eddie Van Halen.
John: Tell me what I'm supposed to know.
Merlin: You say how high when he says jump.
John: That's right.
John: Now, if Eric Clapton had told me that, I would have been like, sure, blues man.
John: It's like a bag of dicks, Clapton.
John: Eddie Van Halen invented a new thing.
Merlin: He's the reason for the season.
John: He invented brown sound.
John: He invented the brown sound.
Merlin: That's not the self-same brown sound that makes people poop, theoretically.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: That's the US Army brown sound.
Merlin: That's the brown tone.
John: You know, a lot of people use brown sound.
John: In fact, there was a clothing company in the mid-2000s called Brown Sound, and I think they copped that from Eddie Van Halen.
John: And they used to send me free clothes, but they were one of those clothing companies where an extra large in Brown sound clothes fit like a medium in Carhartt clothes.
John: And I was still making the transition to, uh, to dressing like a sausage.
Oh,
John: Do you remember that?
John: Do you remember when there was a moment, and I think it was emo.
John: It was emo pioneered this.
John: Maybe pre-emo.
John: You remember when there was a pre-emo, but it was already emo?
John: It's just we hadn't invented that term yet.
Merlin: I think so.
Merlin: I mean, you're talking about the early 90s, mid 90s?
Merlin: Yeah, mid.
Merlin: Probably earlier, earlier.
Merlin: But after Minor Threat, but before Fugazi.
John: Well, I'm not talking about the sound of the music.
John: I'm talking about the style of the people where all of a sudden, you know, like tight black, not tight black Levi's, but tight black.
Merlin: Everybody dressed like Ted Leo.
John: Well, except that there was a moment that I recall when I first started seeing chubby kids, by which I mean people that had my build, wearing super tight clothes, super tight t-shirts, super tight pants.
John: And I remember the first time I saw it, I was like, oh my God, like that guy has my build, which is to say dad bod, or even a little bit more dad bod, more than dad bod.
John: But he's wearing really tight clothes like he's proud of his body like that's – like that is an acceptable rock and roll style.
Merlin: And it was a moment – He's wearing clothes that do not reflect the shame he's supposed to feel.
John: That's right.
John: Like you – excuse me, sir.
John: You should be dressed like a sleeping bag.
Merlin: Are you aware – like I've called it the dignity police, right?
Merlin: Sir, are you aware that you should not feel this good about yourself?
Merlin: Yes.
John: Yeah, for all of recorded history, chubby people have worn moo-moos, and you are fucking it up by wearing tight clothes.
John: And yet, and yet, sitting over here, if I were sitting over here in a group of people...
John: I would be duty bound to say, oh my God, look at that.
John: Look at that dummy.
John: But sitting over here by myself looking at you, I must confess that you look a little sexy.
John: Like you are a little bit of a husky person and yet it is sexy to me.
John: But I did not personally dare to go out of the house wearing tight clothes.
John: Heaven no.
John: I mean, that was when I made, that was when I first made the transition to Western shirts.
John: Oh, maybe Western shirts.
John: will do the job of making me look like Jay Farrar, but also concealing that I was husky.
John: It's the classic mistake that husky people make.
Merlin: Western shirts are kind of like a form of razzle-dazzle camouflage.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: Am I wrong?
Merlin: I'm not just saying that to be clever.
Merlin: I think that might actually be true.
Merlin: That's exactly right.
Merlin: It's hard to tell where you are exactly.
Merlin: Way better than camouflage.
Merlin: Camouflage disguises your clothes.
John: Western shirts disguise your gut.
John: And yeah, they disguise your gut and they make it seem like, you know what?
John: Maybe I'm one of those guys in Willie Nelson's band.
Merlin: And also, but you know what it does is the thing is like, yeah, you can wear a black t-shirt.
Merlin: You can wear a black dress shirt, but a Western shirt, it seems like it has some added stiffness where alongside the razzle dazzle decoration, it kind of throws off the ability to guess what your chest to gut ratio is.
John: Yes.
Merlin: It's got a boxiness to it that makes you look a little bit like Western royalty.
Yeah.
John: See, I don't know if Donald Duck Dunn ever actually wore a Western shirt, but Donald Duck Dunn was one of those influences where it was like, nobody's ever going to call out Donald Duck Dunn or Bun E. Carlos and say, you guys aren't rock and roll.
John: Donald Duck Dunn and Bun E. Carlos are rock as fuck, but also little husky.
Merlin: Is he still around?
Merlin: Is that right?
John: Oh, no, no.
Merlin: He died in 2012.
John: Who did?
John: Donald Duck Dunn?
John: Yeah.
John: Oh, well, yeah.
John: I think he died of rock and roll.
John: I think he died of having played the bass on Green Onions.
Merlin: He's so cute when he was young.
Merlin: Look at him.
John: He's very cute with the pipe.
John: And the thing is, when you listen to him being interviewed, he's a real southern cracker.
John: He, you, it's like, holy cow.
John: But boy, like what, what a, what a, what a profound influence.
John: Yep.
John: But that, that whole sausage casing style of dressing, I gradually came around to it when I went, oh, it was just very recently when I bought my first pair of skinny jeans.
John: And regardless of how they looked to people up close,
John: When I saw pictures of myself on stage in skinny jeans, I realized if you're in show business, people want to see your legs.
Merlin: If you're in show business, people want to see your legs.
John: That's right.
John: They want to see the contours of your legs if you're in show business.
Merlin: Oh, right.
Merlin: So, you know what?
Merlin: Especially with regard to live performance.
Merlin: I never would have thought of it that way.
Merlin: They don't normally see your legs.
John: They want to see your legs.
Merlin: They want to see your legs.
John: This is why baseball uniforms and football uniforms and fencing uniforms and all of the clothes that were worn in the 16th, 17th, and 18th century, they all were like, you know, ruffles and frills and whatever you want and shoulder pads and gee gaws all on the top half.
John: Doesn't matter.
John: But the legs are like in tights, basically.
Yeah.
Merlin: I miss the days of all the baseball uniforms having the socks.
John: Oh, the socks.
John: Well, Ichiro always wore the socks.
Merlin: And now today they wear yoga pants.
John: A lot of them.
John: You still have the option of wearing the socks.
John: It's like in the U.S.
John: military.
John: When I was in the Civil Air Patrol, we all got books on military grooming that were clearly all printed up in 1965.
John: Yeah.
John: But there was a protocol for wearing a mustache and tasteful sideburns in these.
John: So this is 1980, let's say.
John: You could be in the Air Force and wear a mustache and tasteful sideburns.
John: I mean, obviously not in boot camp, but it was part of appropriate military dress.
John: Now, I don't know if that's true anymore.
John: When was the last time you saw an Army man who had a mustache who wasn't in the Special Forces?
Merlin: In a gay bar.
John: Well, that's right.
John: No, no, I mean there's a certain kind of – A different kind of Army man.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: No, you don't see that so much.
Merlin: That seems to be going through a bye time for them.
Merlin: But then I don't see that many people in active military service unless they're boarding the plane in front of me.
John: Well, but you see them on television when you watch all the shows about the military doing special ops, don't you?
Merlin: That's true.
Merlin: Oh, yeah, all the great shows.
John: All the great special ops shows.
John: But in any case, yeah, they want to see your legs.
John: I don't know why, but I want to see your legs too.
John: If you get up there, well, and this is the other thing about like cowboy era, Deadwood era.
John: When people started wearing pants rather than hose.
John: Trousers.
John: Trousers.
Merlin: I like to make that distinction for our English listeners.
John: Oh, I'm sorry.
John: That's right.
John: Trousers.
Merlin: They have a laugh when we say pants.
John: Do they have a good laugh?
Merlin: They also have a laugh when I say nonce.
John: Because pants in British language means... You might as well be saying panties.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And nonce, which I used to mean a one-of-a-kind black swan type thing, that's pedo in England.
Merlin: Ooh.
Merlin: So you got to learn.
Merlin: It's like when they put out the Chevy car that in Spanish means it doesn't go.
Merlin: Would you like to buy a new Noba?
John: But I love those pants, those cowboy pants.
John: And I went into a tailor one time and I was like, why can you never find cowboy pants?
John: And they were like, oh, you mean stovepipe?
Merlin: Oh, right.
John: And I was like, stovepipe?
John: And they were like, yes, the leg is perfectly straight in a stovepipe pant.
John: It is not tapered.
Merlin: So you're thinking it's like Seth Bullock pants.
Merlin: Yeah, like Seth from Deadwood.
Merlin: When he's walking around with his arms down real straight at his sides and he's got, yeah, that's a good look.
John: Yeah, so the pants are, they have to be kind of tight and difficult to get on, right?
John: Because your foot is going through a pipe.
John: That is the same width at the ankle that it is at the, at the hip or whatever.
John: So you're just like, ah, you got to like really point your toe and get those things on.
John: And then like a good cowboy, never take them off.
John: Right.
John: Once you've got your pants on, why are you going to take them off?
Merlin: I've been wearing the same pants for about a month now.
John: Sure.
John: So you can let your pants down.
Merlin: Because they're new.
Merlin: You know the procedure.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: You got to wear them.
John: You got to wear them until you break them.
Merlin: You got to break their will.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: The pants are on you.
Merlin: I don't wear them when I sleep anymore.
Merlin: I used to sleep in them, and now I don't do that anymore.
Merlin: I used to take baths in them.
Merlin: I don't do that anymore.
Merlin: Now I just wear them every day.
John: Did you ever wear them into the ocean?
John: I remember when the first like selvage premium denims came out.
John: I hate to talk about all the free shit I've gotten, but one time I was in Austin and we played an in-store at a like uppity men's clothing boutique when these things were brand new.
John: And in thanks...
John: They gave me two pairs of what I'm sure were $250 jeans.
John: And the salesperson said, listen, you're not meant to wash these.
John: And I was like, huh?
John: And he said, to get them to fit properly, you really should wade into the ocean.
Hmm.
John: with them on.
John: And I was like, this is a, you guys are in Austin.
John: How do you, and he's like, we make special trip to the ocean.
John: You wade into the ocean, the, the, and, and I, and I really do think he was like, he wasn't saying that he, he was saying that the salt water did something, but what he was really saying was that you need to break the jeans spirit or, or rather tame the spirit of the jeans.
Merlin: Like, like a, like a Mustang.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: Like Tama Mustang.
John: Like the white horse on the Turkish train in Lawrence of Arabia.
Merlin: Or Perseus with the flying horse.
John: Flying horse.
Merlin: Like Harry Hamlin.
John: So you buy Levi's 501 unwashed jeans and then you put them on and they're like Perseus.
Merlin: Yeah, it's a lot like Perseus.
Merlin: And I have a... I don't want to take care of your story.
Merlin: I mean, I have a certain procedure.
Merlin: One of the things I do is I adjust the cuff every time I wear them so they don't wear into a single cuff pattern.
Merlin: I have three different rough areas that I try to never duplicate the same fold so they don't get one fold in them.
Merlin: That's the rookie mistake because now you're going to have... And then the wear at that point too.
John: So later on down the road when the jeans have shrunk by various means, by various effects...
John: Then you unroll the cuffs, and there's not a dramatic line.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: No, I like them to be big.
Merlin: That's why I get these pants.
Merlin: I like them big overall.
Merlin: Well, you need big pants.
Merlin: But they will accommodate your body.
Merlin: Sorry?
Merlin: Go ahead.
Merlin: You need big pants.
Merlin: I do.
Merlin: I need big pants.
Merlin: Big boy, big pants.
Merlin: Yeah, so what other things do I do?
Merlin: That's mostly it.
Merlin: You just wear them every day.
Merlin: You wear them when you sit.
Merlin: You wear them when you stand.
Merlin: You wear them when you lay down.
Merlin: You wear them all day until you go to bed.
Merlin: You can sleep in them.
Merlin: I have slept in them in the past.
Merlin: And you don't wash them.
Merlin: And then now they're yours for life.
Merlin: And then only wash them in cold water.
John: Let me ask you this.
John: I know that you aren't typically this way.
John: But do you ever take your – once you've been wearing a pair of jeans for a while and once they have shown their hige –
John: I don't know that term.
John: Oh, Hige?
John: No, what is that?
John: Hige is a Japanese term for the little mustache of wear lines that form around your crotch.
John: Specifically your crotch?
John: Well, sure.
John: And the little mustaches that form are like cat whiskers.
John: emanating from the cat nose of your penis head.
Merlin: I've never, never heard that term or that concept.
John: And that is Hige, and that is from the Japanese vintage jean market.
John: If you're 1960s red tab, red selvage jeans, which you paid $20,000 for, a lot of what you're buying there is really nice Hige.
Yeah.
John: So when you are wearing in a new pair of jeans and you have developed that first Hige, do you ever sometimes take your jeans off and lay them on the floor and appreciate them from afar?
Merlin: Not till this afternoon.
John: Well, that's what I'm saying.
Merlin: I should do that.
Merlin: I feel like I should do that.
John: I know this isn't a thing that is typical of you, but once you've got some good hige going, take your jeans off, put them on the floor, lay them out, and then just stand back and see them.
Merlin: Look at it.
Merlin: Look at it for what it is.
John: That's right.
John: See them for what they are, which is an extension of your motion.
John: They represent your passage.
Merlin: Does it have to just be the crotch, John?
John: No, no, no.
John: I think the wear around the rest of the jeans, the hige that happens on your knee or whatever, doesn't look like cat whiskers.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
John: So it probably has a different name.
Merlin: I do like to admire them.
Merlin: When I've been wearing them for a while and I put them down and they still look like me without me in them, I feel like I'm doing my work.
John: Oh, for sure.
John: Look at that.
John: Like, there it is.
Merlin: A record of me written in Hige.
Merlin: I don't even have to be there.
Merlin: They understand me so much that I don't even have to be there to be my pants.
John: You can stand them in the corner and they will do small administrative tasks for you.
John: Right?
John: People come into your office and they have a stupid question for you.
John: You're the Hige can answer.
John: Pantsly, let's pick up some more tape.
John: Hey, Merlin's Pants, what do I do about – do I have to move the car when the parking change is out front?
Merlin: Merlin's Pants could answer that.
Merlin: That's every other Monday, but you don't have to do it this week.
Merlin: Thanks, Pantsly.
John: Thanks, Pants.
John: That is something – I mean, in fact, Merlin's Pants once went and got dim sum for us, I remember.
Merlin: I'm back.
I'm back.
John: How'd it go?
John: Oh, shit.
John: Oh, shit, Merlin's Pants.
John: Let me get that.
John: Oh, that must have been heavy.
John: That's cool.
John: I'm glad Merlin's Pants speak in Mr. Bill's voice.
Merlin: Oh, no, Mr. Hand.
John: Boy, I really needed a cough button for this episode.
John: Did you?
John: Well, I don't know.
John: Did it seem like I was coughing and clearing my throat more or a normal amount?
Merlin: Sounded hale and hearty to me.
John: You may have like Stockholm Syndrome.
Merlin: Oh, really?
Merlin: I've been in the closet so long I'm starting to like it?
John: Do you really know other podcasters that use cough buttons?
John: Is that a normal thing?
John: People write me all the time and send me links to cough buttons as though I take advice from people.
Merlin: I will tell you something that may shock and surprise you.
Merlin: It is typical for someone who is doing any kind of broadcasting to have something called a cough button, which comes from the – they still have this on radio.
Merlin: And you can still catch it.
Merlin: It comes from the French café.
Merlin: Caffier Bouton.
Merlin: Yep.
Merlin: From like Alain Bouton.
Merlin: And so in radio, you hit that button when you have to cough and you don't have to say excuse me or something.
Merlin: You don't cough on the air.
Merlin: Most podcasters will try not to make a noise with their mouth on the air.
Merlin: And then, you know, and so you use a cough button.
Merlin: John doesn't use a cough button.
Merlin: I mute occasionally.
Merlin: But are you ready to hear this?
Merlin: Shock and surprise.
Merlin: A lot of people out there keep the mute button on during the entire time of their recording and just unmute long enough to say the thing they wanted to say, kind of like a walkie talkie.
John: Did I just blow your mind?
John: Yeah.
John: How do their fans hear them breathing and wheezing and, well, in particular, chuckling and laughing and snorting?
Merlin: Given the current technology, I'm going to say they don't.
Merlin: It doesn't appeal to me at all.
Merlin: But I know this, because I've recorded with people where you'll hear them just coming in because they didn't hit the button fast enough.
Merlin: Can you imagine living like that?
John: No, no, no.
John: It seems to me like some kind of tyranny.
John: Like, in trying not to let... Maybe they're mouth breathers, but you know what?
John: I'm a mouth breather.
Merlin: Yeah, well, I mean, that's a... You are who you are.
Merlin: You're just as God made you.
John: I'm just as God made me, sir.
Merlin: I feel like... This twisted old fruit.
John: I feel like... That...
John: That's one of the reasons that people listen.
John: But then all the time, you know what it is, Merlin?
John: All the time I look at these podcast award ceremonies.
John: Oh, Jesus.
John: Where everybody shows up in their blue tuxedos and they walk down the magic carpet and they get the podcasty, like the award of podcasty, whatever that is, a set of gold-plated headphones.
Yeah.
John: And or, you know, when people go on Facebook and they're like, tell me what your favorite podcast is.
John: And I'm like, here we go.
John: And I read down 40 responses and it's all like Mark Maron cereal.
John: Yeah.
John: And I'm like, I know Roderick on the line.
John: Oh, come on.
John: And it may be.
John: Do you really think that?
John: Yeah.
John: Because, you know, because I feel like our podcast, our award winning podcast, which has never won any awards.
John: Don't give us any awards, please.
John: No, no, I won awards.
Merlin: You won awards, okay.
John: Can we win awards just for your part of the podcast?
John: Yeah, I won.
Merlin: Nothing makes me sadder than the idea of a podcast award.
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: It's just so depressing.
Merlin: Oh my God, who are you going to brag to about winning a podcast award?
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: I talked about myself for an hour and I got a ribbon.
John: The thing is...
John: Yeah, I want a white ribbon for this.
John: I all the time describe our podcast as the award-winning Roderick on the Line, and without fail, every single time I do it, somebody's like, what award did you win?
John: And then I'm left saying, well, I mean, I'm... I've got to get back to this crossword.
John: I'm kidding.
John: I'm kidding when I say award-winning, but there's a little part of me that dies.
John: And what I want to be invited to is the Australian Podcast Awards.
John: You know, like I don't want to win a headphony.
John: I want to win a trousery or whatever they say down there.
Merlin: Is headphony a thing?
Merlin: Is that really an award?
Merlin: That's really funny if you just made that up.
John: Well, it's just like a little set of gold headphones.
John: Oh, that'd be awesome.
John: Only one of them is touching the bass, right?
John: It's like they're a little bit off center.
John: So the other headphone is kind of sticking up in the air and it's just like they're a little bit, but it's like a gold bass and they're kind of balanced.
John: Headphony, the headphonies.
Merlin: That's pretty good.
Merlin: So you want to go to Australia and get one of those?
John: I want to go to Australia and have it be one of those things like when Nirvana or Jimi Hendrix went to England.
Merlin: Oh, sure.
John: Where it's like nobody in our own country understands us, but in Australia, we won a headphone-y three years in a row.
John: And so then when I tell people on my award-winning podcast, Roderick on the Line, and they say, what award did you ever win?
John: I can say, I got three headphone-ys.
Hmm.
John: And it would validate me in a certain way.
John: Good feeling.
John: You know, I never went to Harvard.
John: I never won an Emmy.
Merlin: You're barely silver status.
John: I'm fucking silver medallion.
John: I got white ribbons in a box because I'm too proud of them to throw them away but too ashamed of them to show anybody.
John: That's perfect.
John: Perfect.
John: Oh, these?
John: Yeah.
John: Let's move on to something else.
John: Oh, you found my box of white ribbons.
John: Well, yeah, I'm just waiting to get enough of those to do a collage.
Merlin: It's like collecting very kindly worded breakup letters.
Merlin: I have those.
Merlin: This one's very polite.
John: Have you ever seen the cover art for the first Long Winters record?
Merlin: I sure have.
John: John, you are a world-class bullshitter.
John: That's just the selection of not very polite breakup letters.
John: Oh, those are pretty good.
Yeah.
John: So, yeah.
Merlin: Is it too much to ask?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It's absolutely too much to ask.
John: It's too much to ask, isn't it?
John: Because we don't appeal to the people that go to the DMV.
Merlin: Yeah, or other people.
John: We appeal just to the people that have diamond, platinum, military with kids status.
Merlin: I just feel like it's so unseemly to ask people for things.
Merlin: I don't like asking for things.
Merlin: And even if I got what I asked for in that case, would I be any happier or better at what I do?
Merlin: And no, I wouldn't.
Merlin: I would feel like a dingus.
Merlin: Let me tell you.
Merlin: Go ahead.
John: Let me ask you.
John: Yeah.
John: If you actually got a headphone-y now.
John: I still don't know if that's a thing.
John: If somebody went to the trouble to make a head phony and not just make a head phony, but actually to establish an award ceremony in order to award head phonies.
Merlin: It's named because it looks like somebody's uncle head phony.
Merlin: That's why they call it that.
John: Yeah.
John: And then you got one.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Wouldn't you be a little proud?
John: Wouldn't you display that on the mantle, even though you never go into your living room?
John: No.
John: You would not?
John: I would not.
Merlin: I would not.
John: Would you put it in a box?
Merlin: I'd have to move a marble figure.
John: Would you polish it with a fox?
Merlin: I would eat it with some locks.
Merlin: Uh-huh.
Merlin: Well, wait a minute.
John: You have an ox.
John: So it would be up there with naked blue girl.
John: Naked blue girl has to be there.
Merlin: I would refuse it.
Merlin: I would Marlon Brando that shit.
Merlin: Whoa.
Merlin: Yeah, I would.
Merlin: I would.
John: You would say because of the plight of the Native American, you're not going to accept this head phony?
Merlin: I wouldn't even show up.
Merlin: I'd just send her to not pick up the head phony.
Merlin: I wonder if she's still alive.
Merlin: That'd be pretty cool.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: Can I just say if that lady is alive or someone who looks like her, you should be able to hire a Native American to refuse awards for you.
Merlin: And there would be different ones where it'd be like porn actors.
Merlin: They'd become fairly well-known inside of a small... You'd go, ooh, I think that's the one Matt Damon used.
Merlin: Oh, man, she's awesome.
John: I would like to have Andy Sprinkle because I will not refuse an award because every day I look up at my mantle, which is covered with little dolls of all the presidents of the United States and various models of the airplanes that my father flew and a pair of old snowshoes.
John: And some Varneys, artfully displayed.
John: And what's missing is some kind of Emmy, Tony.
John: An industry acknowledgement of your important work.
John: Something.
Merlin: From your peers.
John: And what I do have is tweet of the year for 2010.
John: Wow.
John: Amazing.
John: As issued by Seattle Weekly, a newspaper where I had a column at the time.
Wow.
Merlin: Are you fucking kidding me?
Merlin: No, no, no.
John: This is something you allow in your home?
John: Tweet of the year.
John: Well, no, because it's a hideous thing.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
John: I would never display it, but I can't throw it away because it's like a white ribbon.
John: It's like a hilarious white ribbon.
John: It's a great white ribbon.
John: Tweet of the year for 2010.
John: Third runner-up for Grandpa of the Year.
John: When the Seattle Weekly was still trying to grok what tweeting was.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: And they were like, you know what?
John: John Roderick tweets.
John: He was a very prominent Seattle tweeter.
John: He has 6,000 Twitter followers.
John: Nice.
John: So I have a little space cleared on my mantle for a headphone award, and it never arrives because it doesn't exist.
Merlin: That's a shame, John.
Merlin: Well, I think it's very healthy that you've let people know that that's something you'd like to have is a made-up award from your peers for a podcast you do an hour a week.
Merlin: That would be, I mean, for the lifetime of service, really, that you've been doing.
Merlin: As they say in the community, your lived experience as John Roddick and bringing that to people at such a small scale.
John: It's the equivalent for me of having a, it's the equivalent of being a good brain surgeon or a good footballer.
Merlin: Using those big muscles.
John: Well, it's the axis of challenge and skill.
John: It's a challenge every week to talk to you.
John: Can't spell cough without off.
John: But I have a lot of skill at it.
John: And I've got a dog way, way out there.
John: Do you?
John: Don't you think?
Merlin: Oh, no, you're fantastic.
Merlin: Don't you think how many people can do what I do?
Merlin: Gosh, now as I sit here, you've been overlooked.
Merlin: You're like Scorsese.
Merlin: You're like the Scorsese of talking about raccoons.
John: Well, and think about Scorsese.
John: What has he done lately?
John: Lots of stuff.
John: He's still really good.
Merlin: Are you sure?
Merlin: You didn't like Wolf of Wall Street?
Merlin: I'm saying you get to his age and still be putting shit out that doesn't suck.
Merlin: I'm just saying.
John: The scene where he took all the drugs and he drove his Lamborghini home and then it turned out that he didn't actually... Shut up!
Merlin: Spoiler!
Merlin: Spoiler!
Merlin: Who listening to our program hasn't seen The Wolf of Wall Street?
Merlin: It turns out that John Nash was Tyler Durden all along.
John: I don't want somebody to just make me a fucking headphony and send it to me as some kind of gag.
John: You just made it up, right?
John: Yeah, I want there to actually be an award ceremony in Australia and New Zealand, ANZAC.
Merlin: If it's going to be like the American Association for, what is it, Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, you need some kind of a phony baloney acronym for this, right?
Merlin: Paul Allen invented an award.
Merlin: The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, that kind of thing.
Merlin: You need a name.
John: Paul Allen invented an award, and every year he gives it to some aging rock star, and they always come.
John: And he gives it to them, and it's just a nothing.
John: It's just a thing that he's rich enough to make.
John: The why, why is there not, you know, Australian, for one.
Merlin: Kind of hung up on the Australia part.
Merlin: Do you like spiders or something?
Merlin: Like, why do you want to go to Australia?
John: Well, I'm just looking for a free ticket to Australia.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Well, you know, with your status, Australian oral.
Merlin: Aural.
Merlin: Aural Awards Association.
Merlin: Sorry, I'm going to have to workshop this.
John: No, no, no.
John: I feel like the problem is I don't have a reason to go to Australia.
John: I want desperately to go to Australia, but I don't have a reason.
John: Nobody's invited me.
John: I don't want to just go down there and walk around like some dingo trying to eat a baby.
Merlin: You've got to plan the trip, yeah.
John: Well, it's not, I don't want a plan.
John: I don't want to go there with a plan.
Merlin: Why does not simply walk into Australia, John?
John: That's the thing.
John: I'm not a tourist.
John: No.
John: I'm not on a walkabout.
John: No.
John: I want to go there as a professional person to accept an award that I invented.
John: Yes.
John: And that is, is that too much to ask?
John: No.
John: No.
John: No, I feel like that is some normal ass shit.
John: It's not too much to ask.
Merlin: to ask that an organization be created to make an award that someone can give to you in Australia.
Merlin: That is not too much for anyone to ask.
John: I don't know.
John: We are pioneering podcasting.
John: Just on the cusp.
John: We're still in early days here and nobody knows what it is.
John: So why not just make it what we want?
John: That's right.
John: And all you need is other people to care.
John: All you need is people to understand that as a podcast pioneer, you can establish certain parameters.
John: Oh, so you're a pioneer now.
Merlin: Podcast pioneer.
Merlin: Oh, you should get the special, what's it called?
Merlin: The phony?
Merlin: You should get the special phony.
Merlin: The first year, it's like the Irving Thalberg of podcasts.
Merlin: You get the podcast pioneer award.
John: You've had one for like, what, like four or five years now?
John: You don't think that we're podcast pioneers because we weren't in that first...
Merlin: four hours of podcasting you don't know what i think this is the only thing i do that you listen to i've talked about this a lot i think we're in extremely early days i think we're in ridiculously early days yeah we're the people that were going across the oregon trail in 1850 it still takes the new york times about two months to forget podcasts exist before announcing that they've arrived so you heard about this thing it's called a podcast it's got to be quite the thing this audio is available on demand and the piano goes like this
John: The head phony awards, right?
John: Griffin McElroy is going to get one because as soon as he gets wise to this.
John: Griffin McElroy.
John: As soon as he gets hip to it, he's going to say that he deserves one.
Merlin: So he's like a podcast inventor.
Merlin: Griffin McElroy.
John: Griffin McElroy.
John: That's an awesome name.
John: Not an inventor, but he's a pioneer, right?
John: Jesse Thorne should have like a whole role.
Merlin: I've met Jesse Thorne.
Merlin: Yeah, he should have a wall.
Merlin: Okay, Griffin McElroy is on a podcast called My Brother, My Brother and Me.
Merlin: He's one of the brothers.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Or maybe he's the me.
Merlin: They're also, I'm going to guess, McElroy's.
John: The other two are also McElroy's because they're brothers.
Merlin: Story checks out.
John: Typically when brothers get married, they don't change their name, although they might add a hyphenated other name.
Merlin: Right, and they have to decide, well, the Judaism come through the mother.
Merlin: Precisely.
Merlin: So much of Judaism comes out of the Father.
Merlin: It's true.
Merlin: Come on!
Merlin: Throw me a bone!
Merlin: That was pretty good.
John: Oh, shit.
John: My bell was deactivated.
Merlin: Okay, perfect.
John: Listen.
Merlin: want to make i don't want to make you uncomfortable you're not making me uncomfortable i'm more than happy to be there at least like uh maybe a holograph of me could be there when you accept your very brave award so i walk on stage i walk on stage thunderous applause from australians who we've all we all know clap hard oh i don't know i've been in new zealand and i could not get any reaction from the audience new zealand's are the new zealand's are the canadians of australia
John: Boy, I bet they'd love that.
John: Right?
Merlin: No, absolutely.
John: Hey, there's nothing wrong with being the Canadians.
John: What are you going to do, throw a sheep at me?
John: What's your problem?
John: Yeah.
John: That was a little bit of anti-Canadian slur.
Merlin: Oh, you know what?
Merlin: That was North American normative.
John: That's right.
John: So New Zealand is the Canada of Australia.
John: Canada's kind of like America's toupee.
John: But Australia...
John: Think about it.
John: You know what?
John: I'm not going to get letters this time.
John: It's going to be you.
Merlin: I love Canada so much more than you, and everybody knows it.
John: What?
John: Have you ever been to Edmonton?
Merlin: Have you ever been to Poose Jaw?
Merlin: Oh, God.
Merlin: Here we go.
Merlin: Let's play the John Knows Names of Places game.
Merlin: Yes, I've been to all of them, John.
Merlin: I can tell you where to go to get a white ribbon in all of them.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: I've been to Vancouver, and I've been to Toronto.
John: Yeah, right.
John: Well, and so a lot of people... So I'm not qualified to say that I like Canadians.
Merlin: A lot of people like you think that that's all that there is to Canada.
Merlin: I assume that's all there is.
Merlin: It doesn't seem like a very big country.
John: It's the toupee of America.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: I just meant geographically.
Merlin: You don't want to know what Mexico is.
Merlin: Am I right?
Merlin: Up here.
John: You could say that Canada was the whipped cream on the top of America.
Merlin: That seems a little bit... So you're walking up on the stage.
Merlin: There's a hologram of me.
John: There's kind of herky-jerky.
John: I'm in a blue... I'm in a midnight blue tuxedo.
John: And then something... Good job.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: I'll send my pants.
Merlin: My pants will be...
Merlin: I love you.
Merlin: Oh, dear.