Ep. 203: "Killing Me to Death"
Merlin: This episode of Roderick on the Line is brought to you by Cards Against Humanity.
Merlin: They were too busy watching the Apple Kino to write up any copies, so, hey, just enjoy the show.
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Hi, Merlin.
Merlin: How's it going?
Merlin: Pretty good.
Merlin: Pretty, pretty good.
Merlin: Beep, beep, beep.
Merlin: Beep, beep, beep.
Merlin: Beep, beep, beep.
John: Beep, beep, beep.
Merlin: Is that telemetry?
John: That was a little, yep.
John: I'm just figuring out when to launch my rockets.
John: Oh, man.
Merlin: Wow, they gave you rockets, too.
Merlin: I get rockets.
Merlin: I got rockets.
Merlin: But you know what?
Merlin: I don't think I've ever known you to launch a rocket.
Merlin: It seems like you're keeping your powder dry, as they used to say.
John: It's true.
John: I was going through my stuff the other day, and there was a couple of ammo boxes buried in my closet, and I was like, what is in these ammo boxes?
John: And I opened them up, and they were full of rockets.
Merlin: Oh, see?
Merlin: You're supposed to just get those to put your cassettes in.
John: Yeah, I know.
John: I know.
John: But I always put fireworks in them.
John: I used to have a big, huge ammo box, you know, one of those .50 caliber ammo boxes.
John: And it was full of fireworks, and I was out.
John: This was a long time ago.
John: I was out with a friend.
John: We were shooting off fireworks.
John: A long time ago, huh?
John: It was a long time ago, and he said...
John: I was I was standing out there lighting off fireworks and my friend who was a little bit of a he was a little bit of a stinker if you know what I mean he was a little stinker all of a sudden he wasn't little he was a big guy but he was a little stinker and all of a sudden he says hey John
John: Oh, no.
John: It looks like there's something burning.
John: He was trying to be completely sincere.
John: And I looked back and there was smoke coming from my fireworks box.
John: Oh, no.
John: I was like, what the fuck?
John: And then all of a sudden, all my fireworks started going off.
John: And we just sat there.
Merlin: dumbstruck as an entire entire ammo box full of like every kind of fireworks firecrackers bottle rockets that kind of stuff oh stuff shooting off stuff exploding in the thing just it was there must have been a moment there where you thought the two words nobody likes to think which is oh shit
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Despite yourself, you go like, oh, this is it.
Merlin: This this is it.
Merlin: This is this is it.
Merlin: This is going to be, you know, the you know, this could be the second, maybe the first paragraph of my obit.
Merlin: The last thing he saw was smoke coming out of an ammo box full of fireworks.
John: I was far enough away that I wasn't I wasn't fearing for my life because, you know, you want to you want to.
John: You want to light the fuse and then get away.
John: That's all the instructions you need.
John: Light the fuse, get away.
John: Do not hold in hand.
John: So I was far enough away.
John: I knew enough not to be lighting fireworks off next to the box, but my friend...
John: Pretty sure through, well, very sure.
John: He's a little stinker.
John: He's a little stinker.
John: Oh, man.
John: And so his name was Matt Olnes.
John: He's a Norwegian, if that gives you any indication.
John: That's kind of a stinker name.
John: Yeah, one of the last.
John: Sounds like something a Scott would do.
John: No, no, no.
John: Norwegians.
John: Can't trust him.
John: Norwegians are one of the last groups of people in the world that you can just be openly racist about.
John: Oh, yeah, who's going to stand up for them?
Merlin: Now, from Norway, what do you get?
Merlin: Do you get, like, a Lars?
Merlin: What about Mads Mikkelsen?
Merlin: Is he in Norway?
Merlin: No, I wouldn't say.
Merlin: Well, maybe.
Merlin: I mean.
John: I bet he's a Swedish.
John: They have a lot of Mats up there.
John: Sure, they got Lars's.
John: They got Eric's.
Merlin: Oh, they got Eric's.
John: They got Matthew's, probably.
John: You know what I mean?
John: Uh-huh.
John: Anyway, so I lost all the fireworks that day, and then I chased Matt around the reservoir.
John: threatening to kill him, but Matt was the number one guy on our cross-country running team.
John: Oh, man.
John: You brought a knife to a fireworks fight.
John: Yeah, so I'm chasing him, but we both know I'm never going to catch him.
John: It was a symbolic chasing.
John: What a terrible night.
John: uh yeah well you know fireworks come and go but anyway i just opened these these crates and i found all these fireworks and i was like this based on what i know about fireworks these are now unstable they've been some of these are very old you can't really go out and light fuse and get away because some of these might just
John: just go off in your face.
John: So now what do you do with them?
John: You can't throw them in a bonfire because they'll go every direction.
John: Right.
Merlin: Yeah, I mean... You can't get rid of them.
Merlin: See, and I don't want to be racist, but... I know you don't.
Merlin: You know me, right?
Merlin: I get the feeling that even at their best, mostly, the kinds of fireworks you get in a parking lot at the end of June are not...
Merlin: They're not like military-grade fireworks.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: They're probably made somewhere where some child is putting a certain amount of whatever, gunpowder or whatever, into a little tube.
Merlin: And I bet it's not real science-y.
Merlin: Even if they have robots that do it, I bet it's not super science-y.
Merlin: I bet some of them...
Merlin: I mean, you know, you think about anything, you get duds, or you get ones that blow a little too big.
Merlin: So they're kind of unstable to begin with.
Merlin: But I'm guessing, what, you got humidity, spiders, you got spiders there.
Merlin: Spiders.
Merlin: There's all kinds of things that could have infiltrated your ammo box that could cause that to be, as you say, unstable.
John: They destabilize over time, yeah.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: And you could, I mean, like, you know, the eight-year-old boy in me says, take them to the police.
Merlin: The police probably have a room where they can munition those.
John: Yeah, but you're missing the point, which is that I still want to explode them.
John: Yeah.
John: I want to explode them in a controlled fashion, but I do not want it to be too controlled because it is a firework.
John: I want there to be an element of danger.
John: I don't want my kid anywhere near it.
John: But, you know, until I was 17, I still... Oh, no, let's see.
John: It was later than that.
John: Until I was 23...
John: I still routinely had Roman candle fights with my friends.
John: We did not obey the edict to not hold in hand.
John: You lit fuse and did not get away.
John: We did not get away.
John: Our friend, my friend tried to get away, but you didn't try to get away.
John: You stood your ground.
John: Yeah, like a gentleman.
John: You stood your ground and you pointed your enormous Roman candle at your friend and you shot 12 flaming balls at them.
LAUGHTER
John: Often 12 exploding flaming bombs.
John: And this was a kind of modern-day jousting that we did around New Year's Eve at the ski resort.
John: Sure.
John: Honors on the line.
John: That's right.
John: And, I mean, you need to keep your head down.
John: You don't want to get one of these in your face.
John: But you kind of stand just like a fencer, sort of positioned sideways, so you're as small a target as you can be.
John: Right.
John: But the true warriors...
John: advanced, right?
John: You don't just stand.
John: You advance upon your opponent.
Merlin: You got a Hamilton versus Burr situation.
Merlin: You got one guy who's being a gentleman about understanding the nature of the duel.
Merlin: We got to make this look good.
Merlin: Then you got somebody else who's like, I'm taking out an I. That's right.
Merlin: I'm going for it.
John: But, you know, it's not just a question of, like, I'm going to score some points here.
John: The big points are, well, I mean, the major points are, A, I'm going to explode a flaming ball on my friend.
John: Yeah.
John: But B, I'm also going to, I'm going to use this opportunity to assert my male dominance over all comers.
Merlin: There's a lot of, I mean, it's considered to be something we age out of by college or so, but there's a lot of, we'll just call it one-upsmanship.
Merlin: We're like, you know, you're going to take a drink, I'll take another drink.
Merlin: You're going to shoot a flaming ball, I'll shoot another, I'll shoot 12 flaming balls.
Merlin: There's that sense of like escalation when men go head to head.
John: Well, and often in these scenarios, it was not head to head, but it was three, right?
John: Like three guys and around Robin, just you're shooting flaming balls at one friend and then you have to turn because another flaming friend is at a hypotenuse.
John: And then when it's a free for all, when there's like five people and flaming balls everywhere, you're just lucky to get out with your hair.
John: That already sounds like a crime scene.
John: So fun, though, so fun to be an age where you now have unlimited access to fireworks as long as you keep having money and still believe that you can go your life without being injured.
Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, that's a dangerous window.
Merlin: I still think that about iced coffee sometimes.
Merlin: I still think when I go and I get an iced coffee and I'm like, you know, man, this is amazing.
Merlin: Iced coffee is the greatest thing in the world.
Merlin: Coffee is great.
Merlin: I'm having a coffee right now and I'm enjoying it.
Merlin: Your standard hot coffee is a delicious thing.
Merlin: There's something special about iced coffee.
Merlin: So you have an iced coffee, especially on a hot day.
Merlin: You know, you're 11, 1130, 1230.
Merlin: You have a little pick me up.
Merlin: You have an iced coffee.
Merlin: And there's that thought that goes through your head.
Merlin: Which is, you know, I could totally just go get another one of these.
Merlin: There's no one that will stop me from getting four more iced coffees.
Merlin: And you know what?
Merlin: I could.
Merlin: I could totally drink these.
Merlin: And it would take me about 40 seconds to drink four iced coffees.
Merlin: Here's the thing.
Merlin: No one will stop me.
Merlin: That's the thing.
Merlin: It's like fireworks, though.
Merlin: They might give you a little bit of this look.
Merlin: You sure?
Merlin: You sure you want that fourth iced coffee?
Merlin: Yes, I want it.
Merlin: I don't drink iced coffee.
Merlin: Not at all.
John: No, because... I've had friends whose relationships ended because of iced coffee.
John: Yeah, I mean, why would you put ice in a coffee?
John: That's my only thought.
John: Hottest day of the year.
John: Hottest day of the year.
John: I walk in and I say, give me a coffee.
John: And they say, hot or iced.
John: And I'm like, did I say iced coffee?
John: Like, if I wanted an iced coffee, I would have said it.
John: That would have been the first thing I said, iced.
John: Don't assume, because it's hot, that I want cold coffee.
Merlin: That's racist.
Merlin: Well, it's something.
Merlin: In a Turkey or a Cuba, the hotter the day, the hotter the coffee.
Merlin: They make it as hot as you can take it.
Merlin: In a Seattle, also.
John: The only people up here that are drinking iced coffee are people from elsewhere.
John: No umbrellas, no iced coffee.
John: We ought to build a wall.
Merlin: We ought to build a wall around Seattle.
Merlin: It's going to be a gorgeous wall.
Merlin: And make the iced coffee people pay for it.
John: We'll make the Oregonians and the Californians pay for it.
John: And we'll say, there'll be a beautiful iced coffee stand right there.
John: The Oregonians are going to make the Seattleites.
John: No.
John: Look like the... God damn it.
John: See, nobody from Idaho is going to drink an iced coffee.
John: Nobody from Montana is, except people from California that live in Montana.
Merlin: You don't think an Idahoan?
John: Idahoan.
John: Idahoan?
Merlin: You don't think they'd have an iced coffee?
John: Doubtful.
Merlin: What about a Utah?
John: Doubtful.
John: Okay.
John: Utahan.
John: Idahoan, Utahan.
John: What about a Wyomingist?
John: Coloradan.
John: Okay.
John: Wyoming.
John: It's the same everywhere.
John: Dakotaur.
John: Georgian.
Merlin: Louisiana.
Merlin: That's no fun.
Merlin: New Yorkan.
Merlin: I just think that it does take a while.
Merlin: The pendulum swings, hakuna matata.
Merlin: It takes a while.
Merlin: At first, you're like, oh, my God, I can't wait until I get to be a big boy and drive a car.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And then pretty soon, you're like, nobody will stop you from buying a car that's way too fast that you can't really afford.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Well, this is still true of me.
John: I do this all the time.
John: No one will stop me from buying a vintage RV.
John: Somebody should have stopped me.
John: I think people probably tried.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah, they did.
John: The new lesson for me is if the bank won't loan you the money, just leave it at that.
John: If the bank won't loan you the money, just leave it at that.
John: If you have to go around the bank.
John: Interesting.
John: If you have to hack the system.
John: Yes.
John: Then just leave it.
John: Leave it.
John: Leave it.
John: There was a period in my high school years where I tried to make gunpowder out of saltpeter and...
John: Where did you get saltpeter?
John: Carbon or what was it?
John: Charcoal.
John: Saltpeter, charcoal, one other element.
John: That sounds like a craft cocktail.
John: Got a big round ice cube.
John: Yeah, no, it's called the Big Bang.
Yeah.
John: It was three things that you could buy.
John: You used to be able to buy these things at, well, in some places in Anchorage, it seemed like you could just buy them at the drugstore.
John: I bet there's a reason they keep Saltpeter in stock in Anchorage.
John: Oh, for sure there is.
Merlin: Does that really do what it says?
John: I mean, why would the U.S.
John: military sprinkle it in the sea rations?
Merlin: Is that true?
Merlin: Do you think that's a chemtrails thing?
John: Gee, that's a good question.
Merlin: Because, I mean, it's one of those things where you hear that and you grow up.
Merlin: And so as soon as you said the word saltpeter, I immediately thought of exactly one thing.
Merlin: Right.
John: That it keeps your boners down.
Merlin: It's stuff they put.
Merlin: I don't even know what saltpeter is.
Merlin: All I know is almost as long as I've known what a boner is.
Merlin: is that I have known that saltpeter is a thing that they put in your food so that you won't get boners.
Merlin: Vis-a-vis, this is a way to control libidinal horndog males.
Merlin: I've heard the army does this.
Merlin: I've heard schools do this.
Merlin: I've heard prisons do this.
Merlin: Sure, you go to like a preschool.
John: Well, I mean, you know, probably don't put in their own food, but... Oh, so it's sulfur is the third ingredient.
John: I'm sure there were hundreds of people yelling that at me.
John: Oh, I figured it was love.
John: But so you used to be able to... Wow.
Merlin: Sulfur is what you get at the end of a match, right?
John: Well, sulfur is just like, yeah, sulfur is what smells like rotten eggs.
John: You can find sulfur a lot of places.
John: But I think it was, I think originally we found it very easy to get saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur in cans at the drugstore, pretty sure.
Merlin: I see, I'm imagining you go somewhere and it's like Jelly Bellies and you get like a scoop.
Merlin: But I mean, these are all things that you can, Army, Navy, maybe Army, Navy.
John: No, no, no, because these are things that you would, if you had a hammer and pestle.
John: You pestle in the morning.
John: You pestle in the evening.
John: Pestle all over this world.
John: You would use these things in other combinations, in other tinctures, right?
John: You'd put a little sulfur and a little bit of mayonnaise and a little bit of Hungarian paprika, and you'd grind those together, and then you'd use that as a compress on a sprained ankle.
John: Oh, nice.
John: So it's stuff like that, right?
Merlin: This is back before the nanny culture came along.
Merlin: This is back when they said, let a gentleman handle his saltpeter.
Merlin: Sure.
John: What you're doing is making medicaments.
John: Medicaments.
John: Medicaments.
John: I don't even care if that's a real word.
John: I love it.
John: And so we would combine sulfur and saltpeter and charcoal, my friends and I. That's totally a word.
John: We would combine them in... I use words!
John: We combine these things in different measures.
Merlin: You also say breakfast.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
John: That's a word.
Merlin: I started mistyping breakfast as breakfast, which is really easy to mistype.
Merlin: It's easy for your daughter to missay.
Merlin: And now I think breakfast should totally be a word.
Merlin: I have stopped saying breakfast almost entirely.
Merlin: Breakfast is so much, unless you're going to say second breakfast, because you can't make two jokes.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: But second breakfast is fine.
Merlin: But breakfast, if that feels good, that's got a nice mouthfeel.
John: It does.
John: It really does.
John: It's like, what do you want for breakfast?
John: I love it.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Sorry, I took you off your medicament.
Merlin: Medicament, it's a plural noun, medicament.
Merlin: It's a substance used for medical treatment, a medicament.
John: Medicament.
John: We were never able to get, because what it turns out is the mixture of sulfur charcoal and saltpeter that makes gunpowder is a very precise, you know, you weigh it out.
John: Hope to shout, yeah.
Merlin: When you just start tossing stuff in there.
Merlin: Saltpeter, saltpeter.
Merlin: It's not just like one-third, one-third, one-third.
Merlin: Oh, sure, like you're making Amish cake or something.
Merlin: Yeah, it's not like Amish cake.
Yeah.
John: So we would combine these in different measurements.
John: I think we were just using a teaspoon.
John: And sometimes we would get a thing that sparked and smoked and made little, like it seemed like a witch's cauldron.
John: And then other times stuff would kind of, you know, like, I don't know, we made a lot of snap, crackle, and pop, but we never got anything to explode.
Yeah.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: I vaguely understand an explosion.
Merlin: Does it take a certain amount?
Merlin: It takes the right mixture, and then the explosion is when lots of oxygen happens very quickly, right?
John: It's got to all burn at once, or it's got to burn so fast that it's like it all burns really quickly, and then it hits the... It expands, and then it hits the oxygen, and then pow.
John: Pow.
John: But at the time, talking about 1983, 84...
John: You could go to the Fred Meyer, and if you don't live in a place where there are Fred Meyers, they're a kind of, what are they?
John: Oh, this is like your Woolworth, right?
John: Yeah, it's a Woolworth, right.
John: You could go, you could get a pair of Levi's.
John: You could get some medicaments?
John: You could get medicaments, and at the time, there was an entire shelf of black powder...
John: Sold in canisters about the size of Quaker Oats.
John: Like big canisters.
John: And you could buy black powder in dozens of formulations.
John: Smokeless powder and large grain, small grain black powder.
John: Because black powder hunting, people still did it quite a lot in Alaska.
Yeah.
John: So you make, you know, or rather, there were a lot of people, including my friend Kel's dad, who loaded their own bullets.
John: They had, you know, like bullet loader machines in their garages.
Merlin: I've seen bullet loader.
Merlin: My uncle made his own bullets.
John: Yeah, you got to make your own bullets if you don't trust the man.
John: You want to add 14 grains more.
Merlin: I used to be able to name every kind of black powder.
Merlin: Used to drive my mama crazy.
John: Black powder, smokeless powder.
John: uh academia powder so we would roll in there at 15 years old take two canisters of black powder up to the counter and they just sell it to us and we were out making pipe bombs all day any more well so then by the time we were in by the time we were seniors they had moved the black powder behind the counter
John: And then somewhere there in the middle, at least, most of the, I mean, at least the Frederick, or not the Frederick and Nelson's, the Fred Myers there on Northern Lights and Benson, they stopped selling black powder entirely, as far as I know.
John: But I stopped building pipe bombs because we all had a very scary experience with a pipe bomb, and that was the end.
John: Frank Hoover wouldn't like that.
John: No.
John: Well, Kufel by that time had moved over and was vice... Or he was actually principal of Stellar, which was a very weird thing.
John: Stellar was an alternative high school.
Merlin: This is different from the other building?
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: It was some kind of acronym.
Merlin: You're in there for a while and you got tossed out.
Merlin: You had to walk across the Starbridge and you get over into the famed school, right?
Merlin: Wow, you remember a lot.
Merlin: That was SWS.
Merlin: You also repeat yourself a lot, which helps.
Merlin: No!
Merlin: Frank Kufel had a cricket bat.
John: Frank Kubel did have a cricket bat.
John: He also had a tennis racket with two one-pound weights tape to it.
John: Everybody knew what Mr. Finnell did.
John: But no, Frank Kubel moved over to Stellar, which was the freestanding alternative high school.
John: I love the names for these things.
John: Across from North Star Elementary.
John: Oh, sure.
John: And Stellar was like, you could just walk out of class and wander the halls.
Merlin: At least that's what it seemed to me.
Merlin: Sure.
John: There was a girl that went to Stella that had platinum blonde hair and then dark, thick, dark eyebrows.
Merlin: Oh, God.
John: Do you remember that look?
Merlin: I know that look.
John: Platinum blonde hair.
John: And if she wore lipstick, it was probably pretty red.
John: It was pretty red lipstick.
John: And it was my first exposure to that.
Merlin: Oh, you don't forget that.
John: And she was like a year younger than me.
John: So everything about it was just killing me to death.
John: I was killed to death by this.
John: And it imprinted really hard, so it's just like still platinum blonde hair, dark, bushy eyebrows.
Merlin: It's a look that's so, you know what it takes mostly, and that's not unkind, but like if you have pretty okay good skin, if you've got like kind of just like kind of mostly unblemished kind of lightish skin, any woman can pull off that look and look great.
Merlin: That is, it's a bold look, but you can, that is a fantastic and it makes an impression.
Merlin: It does.
Merlin: It will kill a person to death.
Merlin: It'll kill him to death.
Merlin: It's like getting the sword in between the little joints in the armor of any man.
John: That's right.
John: But Frank Kufel became the principal of that, and Frank Kufel with his... This is Stellar.
John: Stellar, with his tennis racket and his cricket bat, did not fit in at Stellar at all, and everyone at Stellar knew it, and Frank Kufel knew it.
John: It was a bad turn of events.
John: And it's because Stellar was still a school in the Anchorage School District and Frank Kufel was still on track to be a principal.
John: He'd done his vice principal time.
Merlin: So it's just sort of a little bit like being in the military where, like, if you get a promotion, you're not going to ask questions about where you move to.
Merlin: You take the promotion.
Merlin: It's your job, and it's a move up, and you wouldn't want to complain about something like that.
Merlin: He'd been waiting for the principal.
John: He'd been waiting for the tap.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: And Stellar had lost a principal, lost their old principal, and I think their old principal was one of those kind of ineffectual doddering guys that was like, what?
John: Hey.
John: Oh.
John: Yeah.
John: did you oh you got an a okay well i'll write it down here in the book uh and then all of a sudden kufl was principal and he was walking around trying to get people to go to class and stuff and that was just not what happened there
John: But then eventually Don Shackelford.
Merlin: Oh, of course, Don Shackelford.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: I was conflating Don Shackelford and Frank Kufo.
Merlin: I apologize for that.
Merlin: No, Don Shackelford.
Merlin: Don Shackelford's the one who was disappointed in you.
John: He was disappointed.
Merlin: He stood there by the locker with you.
John: Is that right?
John: Yes, he did, and he was very disappointed.
John: I'm so glad that we're recapitulating that episode from a long time ago.
John: John, every day someone is born who's never seen the Flintstones.
John: I know that to be true.
John: I was describing the Flintstones the other day to someone that could not comprehend the Flintstones.
John: Was it a millennium?
John: It was a millennium, and I was like, yabba-dabba-doo.
John: Dabba-dabba-dabba-dabba-dabba-dabba.
Merlin: Yeah, but the funny part, it was a cartoon, but it was mostly the Honeymooners.
Merlin: It was the Honeymooners.
Merlin: And then they're like, what are you talking about?
Merlin: I know these are words, but what does that mean?
John: If you had no exposure to the Honeymooners, and your exposure to the Honeymooners could come after your Flintstones.
John: But you can fit the pieces together after that and go, oh, I see what they were doing there.
John: Yeah.
John: The Honeymooners was such a success.
John: Let's do it again.
John: Yeah.
John: Except with cavemen.
John: Yeah.
John: And birds.
Merlin: It's a living.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: When pterodactyls are born, I don't think they think of themselves as record players.
John: Well, and this is what's great about it, is that all the sort of Wild Wild West style old steampunk, basically.
Merlin: The Flintstones was the first steampunk.
Merlin: Oh, you know what?
Merlin: That's really true.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: It's full of unnecessary embellishments.
Merlin: Very, very, very basic understanding about, you know, how things work.
John: Yeah.
John: And you're like, oh, there's cavemen, but they have a stove.
John: And then you open the stove and, no, it's not a stove.
John: There's just a dragon in there.
Merlin: Yeah, of course my desk is made of brass and has a porthole.
Merlin: Not an animal.
Merlin: Wild Wild West.
Merlin: Oh, right.
Merlin: That was steampunky, right?
John: Wild Wild West has to be the foundational steampunk thing.
John: Because he was devising all kinds of brass apparati that did miracle things during the age of steam.
John: Oh, the age of steam.
Merlin: Oh, my goodness.
Merlin: I think about that.
Merlin: I'm always reluctant to talk about death only because you know that someday they'll have the technology to comb through these things and pick out all the parts.
John: Which things are we talking about now?
Merlin: When you're talking about things, I mean, if you don't have access to Captain Marm, there will be a way eventually to comb through our shows and pick out just certain parts.
Merlin: So you know that when we die, somebody's going to put together a reel.
Merlin: One of the times we talked about death.
Merlin: And so all the shit you say when you're alive about being dead, you're listening to this like, fuck you guys right now.
Merlin: Turn this off.
Merlin: Turn this off.
Merlin: But I do think about the ammo box full of fireworks.
Merlin: You're talking about as a death agent.
Merlin: I'm thinking about there will be times when I think, oh, shit, this is it, right?
Merlin: And so I think I told you this anecdote, but back in college, my friends used to do kind of like a werewolf thing.
Merlin: They used to like to scare each other.
Merlin: And the idea, the conceit was, they're very smart guys, but the idea was, the conceit was, I just snuck up on you and killed you.
Merlin: If I can sneak up on you anywhere, you're dead.
Merlin: And it was a little game they played all the time.
Merlin: And so my friend was in a very quiet library.
Merlin: It's like 7.30.
Merlin: It's almost closing time.
Merlin: My friend comes up and grabs him on the shoulders.
Merlin: And he starts and he says, holy shit, Richard.
Merlin: I really don't want to die translating the German word for absurd.
Merlin: And I thought that this morning because I went to bed late.
Merlin: I watched all of the Tonys last night.
Merlin: And I stayed up late and then I watched some musicals after that.
Merlin: So I went to bed really late.
John: I noticed your avatar has changed and it's now a Hamilton picture.
Merlin: Aaron Burr.
Merlin: But yeah, you were close.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Well, it's a picture from Hamilton.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
Merlin: Thanks, Foucault.
Merlin: It's Aaron Burr, sir.
Merlin: He punched the Burr, sir.
Merlin: So anyway, I went to bed late.
Merlin: I got up kind of late.
Merlin: And I was like, I got to get to the office.
Merlin: John's going to be doing the show.
Merlin: So I'm a little underdressed.
Merlin: And so...
Merlin: I'm going to run in.
Merlin: I'm making coffee.
Merlin: I'm doing the coffee thing.
Merlin: I'm running around.
Merlin: I'm watching the WWDC presentation.
Merlin: I got a lot of balls in the air.
Merlin: And I start to fall down.
Merlin: Like, you know, like old people just like fall down sometimes because that's something that you do.
Merlin: Somebody just unpins your knees.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Well, I realized, hey, you know how you think to yourself, you talk to yourself in your head a little bit, and you go, hey, right leg, you're supposed to be moving.
Merlin: I feel like I just told you like a quarter of a second ago to move, and I almost fall down because I'm wearing Crocs.
Merlin: And the little rubber crock has gotten wedged under a little table.
John: Oh, why do you own crocks?
John: I don't understand this at all.
John: We've gone off into a very weird place.
Merlin: And you know what two words I thought?
Merlin: Oh, shit.
Merlin: Oh, shit.
Merlin: This is it.
Merlin: And now the first paragraph, inbox zero.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: There in the second paragraph, his crock got stuck under a little table.
Yeah.
John: You know, you're not supposed to wear Crocs on it.
John: Well, you're not supposed to wear them anywhere.
John: No, on an escalator.
John: Can't wear them on an escalator.
John: Don't wear them on an escalator or that's the first line of your obituary.
Merlin: Yeah, but I've got professional Crocs.
Merlin: They're like nice Crocs.
John: Oh, I don't believe this.
John: Crocs.
John: Yeah.
John: Ugh.
John: Do you also wear little short pants with suspenders?
Merlin: You mean like a lederhosen or a cotton hosen?
John: No, like a lederhosen, except that might be worn by someone in Spanky in our game.
Merlin: Let me think.
Merlin: That would technically, I think, be cosplay.
Merlin: And I don't technically, I don't cosplay anything cool.
Merlin: I think if you were to see me on the street and scope out what I was cosplaying, it would be something pretty funny that's not like a Marvel comic.
Merlin: What do you cosplay?
Merlin: I think about it all the time.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: What is it?
Merlin: What's your number one cosplay?
Merlin: Well, a lot of the stuff that looks like I'm cosplaying is who I actually am.
Merlin: I like a cosplaying middle-aged dad.
Merlin: I'm so middle-aged dad looking.
Merlin: You could cosplay Merlin Mann pretty easily.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I've tried to stop.
Merlin: People have noticed and remarked in public if I wear clothes with holes in them.
Merlin: This is something John Syracuse has seen from many, many feet away.
Merlin: He's like, oh, yeah, your pants had holes in them.
Merlin: I was like...
Merlin: just a tiny little hole.
Merlin: It's from the edge of my iPhone.
Merlin: No way did you see that from the audience.
Merlin: He's like, oh yeah, we're all talking about it.
Merlin: So I've tried to stop wearing clothes with obvious holes in them.
John: Right, well, but the thing is that, you know, the front pocket hole, I think there's, in a pair of jeans, there's a big difference between a crotch hole and a knee hole.
John: But there's a big, big leap from knee hole to front pocket hole.
John: Front pocket hole should be worn with
Merlin: enormous pride i think the pockets the pockets front and back but in these days for me increasingly the front pockets uh absolutely tell a story about who i am and this has been true for several years i mean like i've the things that i have kept in the watch pocket right watch pocket of my levi's have changed a lot over the years so what were they and what are they
Merlin: It's been entirely constant for me.
Merlin: It's always guitar picks.
Merlin: Always guitar picks, yeah.
Merlin: It was, let's see.
Merlin: So in the early 80s, early 80s really, it was quarters for video games.
Merlin: So you have quarters in your pocket pocket, but then you want like four quarters in there for easy access.
Merlin: It was brilliant.
Merlin: It was just perfect for that.
Merlin: Right, quarter holster.
Merlin: Jim Dunlop, one millimeter black.
Merlin: Keep a couple of those in there.
Merlin: Jim Dunlop.
Merlin: Oh, sure.
Merlin: Your little picks.
Merlin: No, they're the standard Jim Dunlop nylon pick.
Merlin: Oh, not a Jazz 3.
Merlin: Oh, not a little guy.
Merlin: Not a little guy.
Merlin: Not a nubbin.
Merlin: I get it.
Merlin: I get it.
Merlin: No, this is a gentleman's pick.
Merlin: For a while, I used those pussy gray ones, but fuck that.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: You want a black one.
Merlin: You want a black one.
Merlin: And then what else over time?
Merlin: Various kinds of drugs.
Merlin: At one time, caffeine pills.
Merlin: At another time, you know, ephedrine.
Merlin: At another time, Adderall.
Merlin: And now today, I'll often put my Imodia in there.
Merlin: So that's a pill pocket for you.
Merlin: It sure can be.
Merlin: Yeah, absolutely.
Merlin: Let's say I'm going out and I'm going to do an engagement performance.
Merlin: I want to have my sleeping pill early enough.
Merlin: I know when to take my sleeping pill, so I'll take that at the show.
Merlin: I'll do it on stage.
Merlin: Take it out of my watch pocket.
John: You're not afraid of taking your sleeping pill and then some other thing interrupts and all of a sudden you've got to get it back on the horse and you're like, no, I'm getting
Merlin: Of course I worry.
Merlin: I worry about everything.
Merlin: You've always kept picks in yours.
Merlin: You never had quarters of tokens in there?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: If you went to a Chuck E. Cheese, you wouldn't have a token in there?
John: 85% of the time that I was at a video game parlor, I was there to watch other people play video games.
John: Sure.
John: It's too costly.
John: Way too.
Merlin: I mean, like, the thing is, you know, I don't remember having an allowance at that time, but I rarely had more than $5 to $9.
Merlin: access at a given time.
Merlin: And I often had none.
Merlin: I mean, this is back at a time when like, you know, you could go to like, go to like a Subway-ish thing and you could get something for like under $5.
Merlin: I guess that's still a thing.
John: Oh God, you could get something for under $2.
Merlin: I feel like I remember there being a dollar product at Subway and at a refillable cup that I think was 25 or 50 cents to refill.
Merlin: And boy, did I ever use it.
John: You could get a little mini Reese's peanut butter cup for five cents.
Ha ha ha ha!
Merlin: We've reached Pete Dan.
Merlin: And I could sit.
Merlin: I remember.
Merlin: Five cents.
Merlin: Just a moment.
Merlin: Just a moment.
Merlin: The Coca-Cola was five cents for almost 100 years.
John: I could not play video games well enough to get my money's worth.
John: Never in my whole life did I play $5 worth of video games.
John: If I played $2 worth of video games, I felt like I had – that was incredibly decadent.
Merlin: It was and I have to tell you.
Merlin: I mean it's one of the things where like I was a horrible – there was a few years where I was a very bad –
Merlin: I was mean to my mom.
Merlin: I wasn't very nice.
Merlin: Not compared to some kids.
Merlin: I wasn't awful.
Merlin: I wasn't dangerous.
Merlin: But I wasn't very nice.
Merlin: But she would just... I could tell that it broke her heart.
Merlin: Like, legitimately made her feel bad that we didn't have a lot of money.
Merlin: And it really made her legitimately sad when I spent the money I did have on video games.
Merlin: Because she worked... Well, not even... See, at least candy, you can go, oh, that's a bad habit.
Merlin: But video games, you're literally... Like, to somebody born in the 30s, the idea of taking the tiny bit of money you have and going and putting it into a machine...
Merlin: for 90 seconds of pleasure, it feels... Again, you don't need to be Amish to look at that and go, gross.
Merlin: You don't get that money back.
Merlin: Somebody had to work to earn that and you just put it into a machine so you could get killed by an alien.
Merlin: But the thing is, if you were good at Defender and you could play Defender for an hour... That's one of the games, Stargate in particular, which is like Defender 2.
Merlin: I would watch... I would just stay there.
Merlin: On a Saturday, I would just watch people who are good at Stargate play Stargate because it was magic to watch.
Merlin: People who are good at Tempest, man, that is an art form.
Merlin: I was pretty good at Tempest.
Merlin: Tempest is a different kind of thing.
Merlin: You've got to be really fast and strategic to do Tempest.
John: To know when you're going to employ the... Not a smart bomb?
John: The smart bomb.
John: Yeah.
John: That destroys everything on the screen.
John: You got to wait.
John: You got to wait for it.
John: Yeah.
John: But then those perfect moments when you're like shooting aliens all around and then the screen becomes so clogged with enemies.
John: That's the mutants that there's no way you're going to survive.
John: And then boom, smart bomb and everybody is destroyed.
Merlin: It's just like, oh.
Merlin: And there were those tricks with the Stargate where you would know when to strategically use a Stargate.
Merlin: And there was, of course, like not an Easter egg, but there was a trick with the Stargate where if you carried a certain number of the people into the Stargate, you got like an extra dude or something.
Merlin: Yeah, that's strategery right there.
Merlin: Oh, man.
John: But anyway, so... So, no, I never carried quarters or tokens in my coin pocket.
John: I always carry... Or my watch pocket, rather.
Merlin: We couldn't put a case of beer in there, so later on that maybe didn't matter so much.
John: But one of the great things about your jeans, if I may, was when you started routinely carrying a space pen and watching the space pen create a space pen, exact shape of a space pen faded into your jean pocket.
John: Unambiguously, the outline of a space pen.
John: Yeah, you could even see the tapering ends of the space pen.
John: Yeah.
John: It was just like, wow, that is a statement.
Merlin: It's what makes the whole jean wear pattern so interesting because – and this is – it's also weird with shoes.
Merlin: Like you ever look at your shoes and like for most people who I guess aren't going to like a chiropractor –
Merlin: I do look at my shoes.
Merlin: You look at your shoes, you flip them over.
Merlin: You grab five pairs of your shoes of different ages and flip them over, and you're going to notice very similar wear patterns, but it's the same wear patterns on each right or left foot across all the shoes, pretty much.
Merlin: Shoes very rarely wear evenly because you walk weird or you're shaped weird, and that's where the pocket thing becomes so crazy.
Merlin: If you put a space pen in your pocket...
Merlin: And you do it again, you do it again.
Merlin: Like, it won't be long before that pen always settles into exactly, especially if you're seated a lot, it's going to be settled into exactly this one spot.
Merlin: It's like making the Grand Canyon.
John: Do you ever, I may be outing myself here, but do you ever take your shoes and just put them up on the table and just look at them?
John: Sure.
Merlin: I'm a shoe tree man.
Merlin: When I take my shoes off, I put shoe trees in them.
Merlin: I have cedar shoe trees.
Merlin: I don't even have nice shoes, but I like to rotate them.
Merlin: That's one of my weird splurges is I own enough shoe trees for my primary shoes and I try to rotate them.
John: I have about 14 vintage pairs of shoe trees.
Merlin: But I don't use them at all.
Merlin: The new ones are nicer.
Merlin: You can sand your old ones to bring out the cedar smell.
John: Never occurred to me.
Merlin: It's a life hack.
Merlin: Yeah, you can do that.
Merlin: But I occasionally will go on the Amazon.
Merlin: And it costs a little more than I would like.
Merlin: But I'll buy two or three new pairs of shoot trees throughout the old ones.
Merlin: You know?
John: Throw out the old ones?
Merlin: Yeah, here we go.
Merlin: I've got some from the 40s.
Merlin: Of course you do.
Merlin: You can't even imagine not keeping those.
Merlin: No.
John: I barely can consider sanding them.
Merlin: Oh, John.
John: That's like polishing your silver candlesticks from the 18th century.
John: You don't want to do that.
John: You want to keep that patina.
John: Keep the patina.
Merlin: If you die before I do, God forbid, I will not be involved in dealing with your house.
Merlin: No, I worry about that all the time.
Merlin: Have you picked somebody?
Merlin: Do you have somebody chosen?
Merlin: I mean, there's a good chance.
Merlin: You never know.
Merlin: There's a good chance your mom's going to outlive you and she's going to be stuck with that whole affair.
John: No, my mom would just throw it all in a dumpster except for, like, I don't even know what she would keep.
Merlin: That's an interesting game, too.
Merlin: Like, what would she keep?
Merlin: She'd go out and get whatever, Button Doll or whatever, or Hal Ashby, or whatever your kid's doll's name is.
Merlin: You grab the doll, you get out of there, and then you just like to join up.
John: Well, see, I'm still navigating my father's estate, and by estate, I mean... It's boxes and boxes of papers.
John: Yeah, 40 legal boxes full of old adjudications.
John: And I was just doing it the other day, going through this stuff, reading all these papers from the mid-70s, and...
John: You know, and really digesting how...
John: Sort of constantly on the edge of insolvency he was.
John: Even when he was making a lot of money, he was always getting into some kind of bad deal, some sort of arrangement where it was like, oh, here's another notarized letter.
John: And then I go through these boxes and, you know, I don't throw it away.
John: Like phone bills and stuff because of the story it tells.
John: Well, it only tells that story to me.
John: There's not another living person that cares.
John: And I have read the story.
John: Like I read the book.
John: So I could just throw them away.
John: I could recycle them.
John: I could make a bonfire.
John: Why am I saving this story?
John: I don't know.
John: Yep.
John: But here it is.
John: And so my own materiel, I have bequeathed the music.
John: And by music, I mean the recorded music and also all the recorded music that has never been released.
Merlin: Oh.
John: It's called the unreleased material.
Merlin: Oh, this is the archives.
John: The archives.
John: I've bequeathed it to my daughter via her mother.
John: And her mother has always been a fan of my music.
John: And so I assume that she would care for it in a way.
John: I don't know what you would do.
John: I don't know if you would take an unreleased song and hand it to Ben Gibbard and say, finish this.
John: Give some to the Lumineers.
John: Yeah, whether these guys would be like, oh, what an honor.
John: What an honor to be given one of these tracks to finish so that I can play it, whatever, at his funeral or something.
John: Or what a burden it is to be given this garbage.
Merlin: Well, this is one where if you document it, that would be really awesome.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: You're always talking about your clothes with your eBay store.
Merlin: I don't know whatever happened with that, but you were going to put your clothes on eBay.
Merlin: I've always said, include a little card.
Merlin: You type it up on a nice typewriter and tell a little story with that.
John: Tell the story.
John: Well, the thing that inhibited me from doing the eBay store is there was one of those Christian pastors that uses rock and roll to convince people of Jesus.
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: Did you read about this guy who put his clothes up for sale?
John: But they were just like normcore...
John: Dad clothes?
John: For super fans to buy?
John: For some of his lordly followers, I guess.
John: I mean, he was trying to capitalize on it.
John: They want to touch the hem of the garment.
John: Maybe.
John: But he got a lot of flack for the idea that he was selling his clothes to his parishioners.
John: And all of a sudden, I was like, ugh.
Ugh.
John: it's not that I don't want to sell them, and it's not that people don't want to buy them, but I just don't want that to go up on Pitchfork.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: I do.
Merlin: I do.
Merlin: 0.0.
Merlin: Yeah, like all of a sudden there's an article.
Merlin: They give John Roderick 0.0 as a human.
John: 0.0 for those Oxford Claw shirts.
John: I don't want it to end up on like A.V.
John: Club.
John: And they wouldn't even write an article in the AV Club, but it would be in the comments section.
John: So I don't know.
John: It's hard to – maybe Etsy is the place.
John: I think it's the typed-up card that will save me because the typed-up card is going to be like, no, no, I wasn't selling my clothes.
Merlin: The clothes are a MacGuffin.
Merlin: What people want is the – see, ultimately, this could be a multimedia experience.
Merlin: It could be something where you do like a museum tour, and there's definitely like a souvenir book you can get that's got the entire catalog in it.
Merlin: Isn't that a thing?
Merlin: Like, if you go to Lloyd's of London or wherever they do the auctions, you buy the catalog, and that's part of the whole thing.
Merlin: I got a letter today...
John: From the government.
John: It said they were suckers.
John: I got a letter.
Merlin: That is still in the history of Chuck D and Public Enemy.
Merlin: I still turn that line over in my head.
Merlin: It is so ponderous.
Merlin: I got a letter from the government the other day.
Merlin: Opened it and read it.
Merlin: It said they were suckers.
John: They wanted me for their army or whatever.
John: Picture me giving a damn.
John: I said never.
John: And then Tricky took that little stanza and made a whole song out of it.
John: Do you remember that?
Merlin: Yeah, several years later.
Merlin: Tricky did that.
Merlin: What was that record?
Merlin: I like that Tricky record.
Merlin: Yeah, but that was a whole tune.
Merlin: It sounds like kind of a drum and bass or trip hop, kind of a trip hop record.
Merlin: Trippin' Dumbin' Bass.
Merlin: Trippin' Tricky Musician.
Merlin: Trip-hop.
Merlin: Trip-hop.
John: Trip-hop.
John: I like the trip-hop.
John: I went to a party one time where there was a drummer and a bass player and they were playing drum and bass, which is music that is normally made on computers.
John: Yeah.
John: And they were so good at it that it really was like...
John: uh this is something this is something other to play that music live i'd enjoy that i think i'd really enjoy that it was very enjoyable i i did not participate in any other aspect of the party once i saw this happening i just stood next to them with my uh oh it's so nice to find that at a party it's so nice to find that yeah something you can really latch on to that's not the people there yeah i'm not avoiding the party i am really captivated by this musical performance yeah
John: Letter.
John: You got a letter.
John: You got a letter today.
John: Oh, I got a letter today.
John: Oh, right.
John: But it was an email.
John: And I don't know what it was.
John: Maybe I was having a dream.
John: And at the very end of the dream, Ken Stringfellow figured into the dream somehow.
John: And I was like, Ken Stringfellow, why is he appearing...
John: like a like a uh chimera out of the dark and then i woke up i checked my phone there's an email from ken stringfellow and i was like oh this is one of those things this is one of those ken stringfellow appears in your dream and then you wake up and you get an email from him you haven't gotten an email from this guy in three years this is like so one of these spooky moments yeah
John: And then I open it, and because you could see in the preview of the email, it said, John, I've been meaning to write you.
John: I was like, what has Ken got to say?
John: You know, maybe Ken is producing an album in Austria, and he wants me to fly in and offer my signature tambourine playing.
Mm-hmm.
John: I open it and it's a spam from Ken saying a woman is making a film called Ken in which I play the title character, the titular character, Ken, which is based on a fictionalized version of my actual life.
John: Huh.
Merlin: would you donate what an odd way to phrase whatever is happening yeah because it sounds like somebody that i probably knew on live journal contacted him and said ken you know me the woman who thinks that uh we're married uh i want to make a movie about you but it's not about you and you'd be in it but it's not you but it's you
Merlin: And I'm not married to you.
Merlin: I'm married to dead you.
Merlin: Can you contact all of your rock star friends and let them know that I'm doing that?
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: And it's exactly that.
Merlin: It would help the project so much if you could just tell everybody that we're really doing this together.
John: Ken is one of those rock stars who, although his overall penetration of the culture remains low, within a small group of people, he is a very big deal.
Merlin: Well, you know, I'm telling you this story.
Merlin: You know this story.
Merlin: I met you.
John: Yeah, that's right.
Merlin: I was at a show for that amazing solo record.
Merlin: Do you remember how good that record was?
Merlin: His first solo record.
Merlin: I have to remember it because I was the band.
Merlin: You were the band for the live stuff, right?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: That's a really, was it Uniforms?
Merlin: No, what was the name of the record?
Merlin: Nope.
Merlin: Uniforms was a song on there.
John: Ken's first solo record.
John: What the hell was it called?
Merlin: It was a really good album.
Merlin: Oh, they did that one day.
John: When you say they, you mean either Ken playing all the instruments on the record, which is what happened, or it was Touched.
John: Touched, that's it.
Merlin: Is that a song called One Day or something like that?
Merlin: No, the song, that really, really pretty song on there.
Merlin: No, I'm not sure.
Merlin: I can't really say.
Merlin: And then you, I met you, and you were his, first of all, you opened for him.
Merlin: Yep, and then we were, I was his lead guitar player.
Merlin: And then the Long Winters acted as his band.
John: That's correct.
Merlin: And then I met Scott Miller that night, and it was the best night ever.
Merlin: It was a very fun night.
Merlin: I met Scott Miller.
Merlin: I met Scott Miller.
Merlin: So he was just standing there.
Merlin: I was like, is that Scott Miller?
Merlin: And I just met Ken Stringfeller from the Posies, which is fucking crazy.
Merlin: Right.
John: And then you met John Roderick.
Merlin: And this is the guy with the motorcycle home and the big hair.
Merlin: Is that Scott Miller?
Merlin: That's Scott Miller.
Merlin: That's the guy from Game Theory.
Merlin: That's the guy from Game Theory.
Merlin: He's here because he likes the music.
Merlin: And now, after his, you know, bum in my head death a few years ago, I think Ken is leading a big...
Merlin: Game Theory reunion?
Merlin: Well, I think the extant members of Game Theory are back together.
Merlin: I totally took you off your topic.
Merlin: But they're basically finishing the last Game Theory album with a whole bunch of superstars, which is very exciting for people like me.
John: Oh, see?
John: So that's what I'm saying.
John: When I die, are my superstar friends going to finish my unfinished 14 albums?
Merlin: We should have that girl from LiveJournal contact Ken.
Merlin: Maybe he can spearhead the effort.
Merlin: Let's close the parentheses on John.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: Here's the letter.
Merlin: A girl is making a movie.
Merlin: Oh, I thought you said it was a girl.
John: Oh, but it is a girl.
John: Here we go.
John: At this early stage of the campaign for Ken, the movie, getting the word out is the most important thing.
John: So thank you all for subscribing to these emails, which I did not subscribe to.
John: I just want to say before I make fun of Ken, I love Ken Strickford.
John: Oh, yeah, I do too.
John: He's a vampiric man.
John: He's a wonderful guy if you want all of the life force sucked out of you.
John: No, he's a monster, but he's a very, very talented monster.
John: As many of you will remember, oh, someone was calling me on the phone.
John: Do not do that.
John: Decline, decline.
Merlin: Is it a number you recognize?
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: That's no good.
Merlin: That's no good.
John: Or I would have said their name, but no, it was just a totally random 206 number.
Merlin: Oh, see, that's how they get you now.
John: Not into it.
Merlin: You know, that's the new thing now.
Merlin: You start your phone numbers now.
Merlin: Time was.
Merlin: Time was.
Merlin: Time was.
Merlin: That's my Morgan Freeman voice.
Merlin: You would get it from out of area or blocked.
Merlin: Now, A, you get a 206.
Merlin: B, it might even be from your exchange.
Merlin: Because they can spoof a number that looks close enough to your number.
Merlin: You're like, oh, my God, my kid's in a well.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: This is a thing now.
Merlin: And for people like me who hate getting phone calls.
Merlin: So someone's making a movie.
Merlin: It's called Ken.
Merlin: The movie's called Ken.
John: As many of you will remember, Ken the movie is what it's called.
Merlin: Is there a colon in there?
John: Oh, it's a dash.
Merlin: I like the idea of Ken the movie.
Merlin: But all caps.
John: Ken dash the movie.
John: All caps.
Merlin: Okay.
John: All right.
John: As many of you will remember, I wrote a few months ago, I do not remember, to explain the movie.
John: For those that don't, that's me.
John: Here's a quick recap.
John: The director is an old friend of mine.
John: Oh, here it is.
John: Claudia.
John: And her last name and her first name indicate that she is from overseas.
John: I'm guessing... I'll go France.
Merlin: France or Belgium?
John: I think it's Austria based on the last name.
John: Did you know that she has a unique working method interweaving fiction and reality seamlessly?
John: Let me expand upon that.
John: She makes beautiful films that blend elements from real life with fictional ones.
John: Ken, the dash of the movie, will follow this format.
John: Parts of the real me... When I'm fucked up, it's the real me.
John: Taken from both my music and family life, without my family's consent...
Merlin: will be the basis for a fictional character named Ken.
Merlin: That's a good name for the character of Ken Stringfellow.
Merlin: Fictionalized or not maybe.
John: Now let's think about this.
John: Ken, K-E-N, seems almost like a science fiction name if you pull it away from Kenneth and turn it just into like Ken, Ren,
Merlin: Ken, Ren, Ben, Ken.
Merlin: Ken sounds like an AI, like a how.
Merlin: Ken does seem like a how.
Merlin: It could be like a Ken 9000.
John: Exactly.
John: I never thought about that until I see this name Ken over and over in all caps.
Merlin: Are you flashing back?
Merlin: Are you having a Shyamalan moment where suddenly everything makes sense?
Merlin: Oh, no!
Merlin: Ken!
Merlin: Okay, here we go.
John: Ken was dead all along.
John: Ken was undead all along.
John: He has been.
John: Named Ken, and I will play that character.
John: The story is an intimate journey of self-discovery.
John: Oh my God.
John: And it's going to be set mostly in L.A., where Ken has never lived, with shooting due to begin later this year.
John: Okay.
John: With your support, the enthusiastic Ken the movie team are going to make it work.
Merlin: All right, I won't keep going.
Merlin: And now you've done it.
Merlin: John, you did it.
Merlin: You fulfilled your role as friend of Ken the movie, Ken the man.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: For Ken dash the man, you have done that from Ken the email.
Merlin: Yep.
Merlin: You put it on your phony award-winning podcast, and now people can know to go out and support Ken the Movie.
Merlin: Support Ken the Movie.
John: And then the other four emails I got this morning, John Freeman has some new promo materials available.
Merlin: Was it John Freeman?
John: I'm going to delete that.
Merlin: Nice.
John: Filson is sending me the Father's Day gift guide.
John: I'm going to delete that.
John: Let me see what I got this morning.
John: Mascot says, escape the city with David Hart.
John: I don't want to do that.
John: Delete.
John: And then the New Yorker has a special delivery for me.
John: I'm going to delete that.
John: Oh, and then there's Uber wants to know how my ride from the airport was.
Merlin: Oh, that's nice.
John: Yes.
John: I'm going to delete that.
Merlin: I got an email here from a woman who loves the Back to Work podcast and would be honored to be a guest.
Merlin: And she says that she would be a great fit.
Merlin: She's a big fan of the show.
Merlin: Oh, she wants to be.
Merlin: She's asking to be a guest.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: She's asking to be a guest on the show that has never had a guest.
Merlin: There's been a substitute host, but there's never been a guest in the 7,000 episodes.
Merlin: These five years, five and a half years of doing that show, we have never had a guest.
Merlin: I would love to be a guest and talk about my new project.
Merlin: My name is Maridu Parikh.
Merlin: I'm an avid listener of your podcast and would be honored to be interviewed as a guest on your show.
Merlin: Wow!
Merlin: How nice of her!
Merlin: Here's why I believe we would be a great fit.
Merlin: I help people enjoy successful and productive businesses, careers, and home life.
Merlin: Well, it sounds like a no-brainer.
Merlin: Oh, sure.
Merlin: That's right in your wheelhouse.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: And she sends a link for her bio, photo, and a link to her schedule.
Merlin: Well, you know what Fred Rogers says.
Merlin: Look for the helpers.
Merlin: Look for the helpers.
Merlin: Whenever you're feeling scared, look for the helpers.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: Look for the helpers.
John: Did you know that if you... The 33rd degree of Masons... Yeah.
John: In the description of the 33rd degree of Masonry, Masonic-ness, it says specifically, if you ask to be elevated to the 33rd level, you must be refused.
Merlin: I think that makes 100% sense.
Merlin: I think there should even be an understanding that if you ask, they might just throw your ass out.
John: Well, this is the amazing question.
John: To spend as much time as it would take to become a 32nd degree mason.
Merlin: We're talking about, that's 10, 20 years.
Merlin: Oh, it's a long time.
Merlin: I think a long time.
John: My grandpa was super high up and he'd been in it for a long time.
John: Yeah, I think there are very few people that make it to the 33rd degree.
John: To get all the way to 32 and then make the make the fucking classic error of asking for it.
John: Like I've been a 33rd degree Mason for six years now.
John: When am I going to get to 33?
John: And then they're like, it's right here, buddy.
Merlin: That's like a lieutenant colonel asking somebody if it's OK to dismiss the troops.
Merlin: You just you just undermine your entire career by doing that.
Merlin: You're never going to get it back at that point.
Merlin: When she's not bringing calm to chaos or streamlining time and tasks, you can find her scheming video punchlines with her two sweet boys.
Merlin: You can connect with her and download my free resource she's going to give me called Five Simple Branding Hacks for Your Small Business.
John: Oh, my God.
Merlin: You should break the moratorium on interviews and have her on the podcast.
Merlin: We talked about it, but just to close this parenthesis, she's a productivity plus organization consultant.
Merlin: She's a chapter president of the National Association of Professional Organizers.
John: Professional organizers.
John: And here's the first question.
John: Does it bring you joy?
Merlin: Oh, sure.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: That's the Marie Condominium lady.
Merlin: Sound of gong.
Merlin: Yeah, gong.
Merlin: Sound of gong.
Merlin: Dan and I get many, this happened in the last really year or so, where we get at least five, sometimes ten a week of these people who are, first of all, always ardent, ardent fans of the show.
Merlin: Huge fans.
John: Big fan.
Merlin: Big fan.
Merlin: Yeah, and the hilarious part is I have actually gotten email from the assistant, the personal assistant of people that I know who should know better.
Merlin: Like people, I've been on their podcast, and they're sending out this shit all the time.
Merlin: So Dan and I were thinking we had two ideas.
Merlin: Idea number one was tell people they can be on, but they have to PayPal us $10,000.
Merlin: Oh, yes.
Merlin: Idea number two is invite everybody who's ever offered to do this onto the same episode.
John: Oh, yes.
Merlin: Oh, yes.
Merlin: And don't let them hear each other.
John: Oh, my God.
Merlin: Oh, all of them having paid $10,000.
Merlin: It's Babel.
Merlin: It would just be the Tower of Babel, basically.
John: That's a really good question, Dan.
John: And every once in a while, one of you says, like, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.
John: Interesting.
John: Well, no, can you elaborate?
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: Now, is that something that you could growth hack?
John: Oh, I really like that.
John: I really like that.
Merlin: I love the idea that the problem is we'd have to have some hacked version of Skype where they couldn't see that there were literally 35 other people on the call.
John: Yeah, yeah, that'd be nice.
John: I was on a podcast one time that was just people talking shit about United Airlines.
Merlin: Oh, Moises Chuyon.
Merlin: Moises Chuyon had you on his show about customer service where you talked about your United experience.
John: I really liked that whole idea.
John: It was just like, yeah, the whole show is just going to be about people, knowledgeable people, some of whom used to work for United Airlines, some of whom are in the travel industry, all just like, you know what's bad about United Airlines?
John: Let me tell you a story about the last time United Airlines screwed the pooch.
Merlin: I usually don't... See, to me, that's almost like a fetish porn.
Merlin: Like, where normally I would go, hmm, that's too clever by half.
Merlin: There's no way that you could do more than five episodes of that before it became a shit show.
Merlin: I gotta tell you, buddy, I think it's bad enough you could have a podcast...
Merlin: about how much United sucks, and you could get a year out of that.
Merlin: Oh, absolutely.
Merlin: No, I'm not exaggerating.
Merlin: I honestly think you could have a podcast called United Sucks, and you would be able to get some pretty big shooters on that show.
Merlin: United sucks.
Merlin: Who loves United?
Merlin: Everybody I know, United, it's like people who support Trump.
Merlin: We're like, yeah, he's a monster, but I've got to support the dude.
Merlin: And it's people who are like, yeah, I've got points on there.
Merlin: I've got to use them.
John: There's a worst.
John: Or something where that's the one that their company uses.
Merlin: Yeah, or it only flies if you live in Chicago.
Merlin: There's certain cases where there's these horrible airlines where you are stuck with them.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Because of where you live or where you travel to.
Merlin: And you don't get an option.
Merlin: You don't get to, like, you know, Virgin America your way into Banger, Maine.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: No, you do not, my friend.
John: You're not going to get into Banger on Virgin.
John: There's no hearty snack pack for you, buddy.
John: Oh, the other day, I was, you know, because now I, because of Jonathan Colton and John Hogman, I have, I've joined the Delta family of airline people.
John: Oh, is this your upgrade to first class?
John: Yeah, I got an upgrade to first class.
John: And the flight attendant comes by and she says, do you want the chicken, what was it, barbecue chicken sandwich?
John: And then she leans forward and she goes, it's very small.
John: Or do you want the pasta salad with shrimp or something that just sounded like, but when she said it's very small, she's telling you, she's giving you the inside story, buddy.
John: Yeah.
John: I was like, I don't want to, I don't want to very small.
John: So I was like, give me the pasta salad.
John: And the guy next to me said, give me the little sandwich.
John: Well, it shows up.
John: It's not very small.
John: It's a, it's a, it's a few sliders.
John: And she was trying to say that the sandwiches were small.
John: She was like,
John: It's a chicken sandwich.
John: It's very small, meaning the sandwich was small, but there were several sandwiches.
Merlin: Oh, see, I would have read that as she's trying to talk you out of something that she knows is not good.
Merlin: Yeah, me too.
Merlin: But then it's several sandwiches.
Merlin: The meal was not small.
John: Do you understand?
John: No, no, I absolutely understand what you're saying.
John: But then why would she say that?
John: The sandwich was small.
John: The meal was not small.
John: And she was saying it because she doesn't understand what words do.
Merlin: Ha ha ha!
Merlin: And it's not important that the sandwich is small.
Merlin: Nobody cares.
Merlin: To whisper it to you with some level of confidence is a little bit like, somebody put their dick in the mashed potatoes.
John: Exactly.
John: Like, don't order the clam chowder.
John: That ain't no chowder, buddy.
John: Clean food only, please.
John: That's just the big tub of Captain Bob.
John: But yeah, this was the crazy thing where it's like, who has ever gotten several sliders, which are in some ways the perfect food, and said, excuse me, flight attendant, these sandwiches are very small.
John: Like, no one.
John: No one has ever done that.
John: But this is the thing that she thought to mention.
John: So I said, before she had delivered mine, I was like, excuse me.
John: I think I would like to change my order to the sliders.
John: And she was like, no problem.
John: She brought me the sliders.
John: I ate them happily.
John: They were quite delicious.
John: I ate them.
John: Part of what made them delicious was the knowledge that back in coach, nobody was getting these.
Merlin: Back in coach, they were all just... They get to suck on the napkins that people used in first class.
John: Yeah, they get some pretzel mix and that's it, the end.
John: So I was just like, these sliders are so good.
John: And then I got to the end of the meal and I was like,
John: I want more of those.
Merlin: Time was.
Merlin: In first class, that was not a problem.
Merlin: It used to be more like a cruise in first class where you could say, actually, I'd like everything.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Hit me.
Merlin: Hit me two times.
Merlin: You taught me this at the, what's it called?
Merlin: The Steamboat?
Merlin: What was the name of the big buffet?
Merlin: Yeah, Steamboat.
Merlin: You know what I mean.
Merlin: Steamboat Springs.
Merlin: No, the big windjammer.
John: At the Windjammer.
Merlin: The Windjammer.
Merlin: You go in there and you get it all.
Merlin: You get everything.
Merlin: And then you put gravy over the top.
Merlin: Oh, God, the gravy, John.
Merlin: I miss the gravy.
Merlin: I don't know why they won't invite me back, but I would go just for the gravy.
Merlin: The thing is, I go for the gravy, right?
Merlin: Go for the gravy.
John: If you go for a thing and there are 17 kinds of meat and then a barrel of gravy, shit, dog.
John: But in any case, I said, can I get more of these?
John: I was like, excuse me, can I get another order of these sliders?
John: And she was like, we're out.
John: You're out.
John: Delta is out of sliders.
John: Out?
John: What is this?
John: Out.
John: I got upgraded to first class.
John: Where's my second order of sliders?
John: So then about 20 minutes goes by, and then an attendant walks past, leans over the guy next to me,
John: and drops a box of carrots and celery and some pesto hummus.
John: Crudite.
John: Crudite.
John: Crudite?
John: Well, that was thoughtful of her.
John: Yeah.
John: But then when I flew back on Delta, I didn't get upgraded to first class, and I realized they were giving that crudite to everybody.
Yeah.
John: So one of them was like, oh, he wants more sliders.
John: And another one was like, I got an extra box of this coach food.
John: And plopped it on my table.
John: Wow.
John: And then they spilled an infinitesimal amount of ginger ale on the elbow of the guy sitting next to me as they were walking by.
John: And this self-same flight attendant comes by and says, I'm so sorry, sir.
John: I'm going to give you 5,000 bonus miles.
John: whoa for the two dots of ginger ale and you're like you're like what am i a box of crudités over here yeah and he leans over to me and he's like pretty good deal right and so i go excuse me i was actually also traumatized by that that's gonna be a trigger for you now because it was let me let me let me just i'm gonna go i'm gonna talk real slow that was my ginger ale that spilled on his elbow you should get you should get 10 000 miles
John: See?
John: But they just went back into the galley and came out with a new ginger ale for me and plopped it down next to my crudite as though it weren't no thing.
John: And then they give him 5,000 bonus miles because they got a drop of it on his elbow.
John: You're adding an injury to insult to injury.
John: Yeah, and he's just sitting next to me just gloating, just basking.
Merlin: 5,000 fucking miles.
John: That's ridiculous.
John: It's just like I flew to Europe.
John: Oh, my fucking God.
John: 5,000 bonus miles.
John: Shit, that would put me a lot closer to my silver medallion style.
John: This is what podcasts are really for.
John: You know, it's a burgeoning new medium.
John: A lot of people are doing podcasts now.
John: I think it's really going to catch on.
John: I learned yesterday that the McElroy brothers have between them something like 64 podcasts.
Merlin: I've never heard any of their shows.
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: I should, but people love them and people who like things I do like them, which is a good indicator that I would like them.
Merlin: I've heard about them and I've heard that they're very funny and very nice, but I've never heard any of their shows.
Merlin: I don't feel any particular way about that.
Merlin: I'm not saying that as a brag.
Merlin: I'm not saying that to be mean.
Merlin: I'm just stating a fact in the world.
Merlin: Same problem people have with our show.
Merlin: I think I don't even know where to begin.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: They got the Brothers show.
Merlin: They've got the Dungeons and Dragons show.
Merlin: Yeah, they got the medicine show.
Merlin: They got the Old Crow medicine show.
Merlin: Old Crow medicine show.
Merlin: You got Cindy Cash Dollar.
Merlin: You got Russ Ringsack.
John: Yeah, you got the one about the frisbees and the hacky sack.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: And you got this guy over here.
Merlin: We got no soup.
Merlin: You got the Jew over here.
Merlin: Not me, not me.
Merlin: Russ Ringsack.
Merlin: What a great name.
John: What Gon Hogman said over the weekend was...
John: His experience of the McElroy brothers is that people like them.
John: Part of their success is that they're nice on their programs.
Merlin: That's nice to hear.
Merlin: My problem is that by the time you get into something that's popular enough to have different shows and these McElroy are on different programs, now I really feel screwed.
Merlin: I really don't know where to start.
John: But what the mind hack was, what the thought technology was,
John: is this whole concept of being nice as a way of attracting fans.
John: Oh, that's a thing a person could do.
John: Well, that's a thing I've never employed.
John: Yeah.
John: And neither has Gon Hogman.
John: And so we're both like, ah, nice?
John: Nice as a way of attracting support?
Merlin: The fact that it works for somebody does not make it a bad thing, but it also doesn't mean that it's right for everyone.
Merlin: Nothing is worse than someone pretending to be nice.
Merlin: Oh, you're absolutely right.
Merlin: That's the worst.
Merlin: The thing is, I don't care whether you're nice or not, but don't pretend to be nice.
Merlin: Fuck you.
Merlin: I really despise people...
Merlin: It's incredibly passive aggressive.
Merlin: I'm not saying it's about them.
Merlin: I'm saying about this.
Merlin: This is kind of the dick holes who who email us to be on the show.
Merlin: It's like I really am galled by how disingenuous these people are to act like we're friends.
Merlin: And now I'm the dick to go.
Merlin: Now here I am.
Merlin: I'm in full on holding call field mode.
Merlin: But like, God damn it.
Merlin: Like, don't do that.
Merlin: Don't pretend like an intimacy that is not there.
Merlin: And then I'm the dick to call you on it.
Merlin: Yeah, that's the worst.
Merlin: Those are garbage people.
John: Yeah.
John: Don't send me an email.
Merlin: Hey, buddy.
John: Yeah, especially if you're my friend, my actual friend in the world.
John: What about your movie?
John: You're fucking supporting your movie called You the Movie.
Merlin: What about John the Movie?
Merlin: But where's my movie?
Merlin: Where's your movie?
Merlin: You're already doing this, John.
Merlin: The thing is, the only inhibition right now is that people aren't filming it.
Merlin: You're already largely fictional, but not really.
Merlin: Is it John or is it not John?
Merlin: We don't know.
John: Adam Pranica was making a movie about the long winters.
Merlin: Yes.
John: And he made it for a long time.
John: And then at a certain point, he stopped making it because it was like, there's just no plot to you or the long winters.
Merlin: It's a shame he wasn't there for the record before that.
John: Yeah, that would have been fun.
Merlin: That would have been a good one.
Merlin: But no, I still enjoy what he's done.
Merlin: I think he did a nice job with what he had.
Merlin: Well, he did a nice trailer.
Merlin: The trailer's great.
Merlin: If you can make a good trailer, it's just scale it up.
Merlin: There's video footage of me hanging out with your band shooting guns.
John: That's right.
John: Shooting increasingly bigger and bigger guns until we arrived at the gun where people started to drop out.
Merlin: Oh, I never got near that.
Merlin: But improbably, Jonathan Rothman, right?
Merlin: Yep, that's right.
Merlin: He turned out to be like, he never picked up a gun in his life, and he was a great shot.
John: Sorry, Kistol.
John: Jonathan Rothman is another one of these guys, and I've met several of them in my life.
John: He's like a Chris Christopherson song.
John: You can't figure that guy out.
John: Right, where you just are like, hey, somebody needs to climb this tree.
John: And he's like, cool, cool.
John: I'll try it.
John: Cool, cool.
John: And then he's at the top of the tree.
John: And you're like, how'd you do that?
John: And then it's like, God, we need somebody to do these trigonometry calculations.
John: He's like, hmm, I'll give it a try.
John: Cool, cool.
John: And then he does them.
John: Cool, cool.
John: And then you're like, oh, let's go shoot these guns.
John: And he's like, never shot a gun before.
John: Boom, boom, boom.
John: And it's just like, OK, you're really good at that, too.
John: Like, how do you do it?
Merlin: Watching him perform at your shows is always so crazy.
Merlin: I mean, you got used to it, but it almost seemed like a stunt.
Merlin: Like you could make a stunt act out of Jonathan because he's like somebody on the street, like playing the cymbals with his knees while he's building a birdhouse over here.
Merlin: And the stuff that he would do with having a guitar and the keyboard and I think some pedals.
Merlin: But he would play like two or three different instruments within the same song.
John: Yeah, he was invaluable in that case.
John: The only disadvantage was that to be able to sing is not, I am increasingly inclined to feel, not a thing that you can learn past a certain point.
John: You can learn it up to a point but not beyond that point.
John: And what I never should have done was put a microphone in front of him.
John: And I mean that with all the love in the world.
John: Oh, you mean like a banter mic?
John: No, no, no.
John: The banter mic he never went close to.
John: But like harmony vocals are a hard thing to do.
John: Let's just say that.
John: Harmony vocals are a hard thing to do.
John: But once you give somebody a mic, it's very hard to take a mic away.
John: Oh, I see your point.
John: You know what I mean?
John: Like you can give a man a fish.
John: And then you eat for a day.
John: Oh, sure.
John: One fish a day.
John: Yeah, you can give a man a microphone, and then the rest of the time that you're on tour... He'll eat a microphone for the rest of his life.
John: There's always going to be one harmony that's like, oops.
John: Yep, yep, yep, yep.
John: Did he ever tell you about his cables?
John: Yeah, they're directional.
John: I actually went and stayed at his house in Hotlanta one time.
John: It was a very nice house, a nice mom.
John: I think a stepdad component.
John: Oh, stepdad component, sure.
John: And now he's teaching math in Brooklyn to junior high.
John: He's teaching the maths.
John: He's teaching maths.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: I like that guy.
Merlin: I think he was a man of his time.
John: Every single member of the Long Winters that quit or was fired...
John: Or quit fired.
John: Yes.
John: Rage quit.
Merlin: Rage fired.
John: Rage quit.
John: There were a lot of rage quits.
John: There were a lot of force quits.
John: They all landed on their feet.
John: You know what I mean?
John: Oh, yeah, sure.
John: I like to feel like the Long Winters was a stepping stone for a lot of people to end up doing what they really wanted to do.
John: To reclaim their humanity.
John: Yeah, which is something else.
John: They really wanted to do another thing.
John: And the Long Winters were the jumping off point for them.
John: Hakuna Matata.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: Namaste.
John: I was just, I'm sitting here watching my slideshow.
John: Yeah.
John: Because my computer flips over to slideshow.
Merlin: Oh, dear.
Merlin: Really?
John: After I don't touch it for a while.
John: Huh.
John: Why are you, is this a Syracuse moment where you're like, oh, that uses too much bandwidth or something?
Merlin: It's fine.
John: Why are you gasping?
John: Go ahead.
John: It's fine.
John: It's fine.
John: No, no, no.
John: Tell me.
Merlin: No, you don't care.
Merlin: No, I do care.
Merlin: If you ever decide that you want to really do this show for a while, like all the time, we should have the talk.
Merlin: We should have the talk about the things that you can do to improve things.
Merlin: When your computer goes to sleep, you don't want your computer to go to sleep while you're recording a podcast.
Merlin: Is that called going to sleep?
Merlin: It's like you discovering you've put on your jammies while you're recording the show.
John: But how does it affect the show?
Merlin: Well, it may not at all.
Merlin: But for one thing, I mean, you know, it could start doing some background things because it says I don't really need to be doing much right now.
Merlin: But I don't know.
Merlin: Mostly I'm happy you get a slideshow.
John: Well, I mean, for the last several years, I have often sat here talking to you watching a slideshow.
Merlin: I'll tell you, one of my favorite things on the Apple TV is I'll just sit and watch the screensaver.
Merlin: Gorgeous, gorgeous screensavers.
John: But as we were talking, there were a series of photographs that all, and you know, sometimes the screensaver will go into a weird loop.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: Oh, yeah, and you're like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Like, where you're like, no way was that random.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I get that, and it drives me fucking bananas.
Merlin: Yeah, couldn't be random.
Merlin: It's obviously somebody fucking with me and trying to send me a message.
John: I have 10,000 photographs in there.
John: There's no way that you would just show me three that were all taken within a week of each other.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: But so a couple of screens went by where I was looking at signs that said breastfeeding station.
John: Oh, nice.
John: And it's because, you know, at the time that breastfeeding was a major component of my life, I was always looking for breastfeeding stations, not for myself.
John: No.
John: But, you know, it was like, go find a breastfeeding station type of scene.
Merlin: That's a great Harper Lee novel.
John: Hakuna Matata, whatever that means.
Merlin: Hakuna Matata.
John: What does Hakuna Matata mean?
John: You say that all the time.
Merlin: Hakuna Matata.
Merlin: Hakuna Matata.
Merlin: Hakuna Matata.
Merlin: Hakuna Matata.
Merlin: Hakuna Matata.
John: Hakuna Matata.
John: Hakuna Matata.
John: You say Matato, I say Matato.
Matato.
John: What is Hakuna Matata?
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: I'm not going to tell you.
Merlin: I think it's more fun for you to not know.
John: More fun to not know or more fun to just try and figure out a way to spell it so I can Google it?
Merlin: Do I dare ask you this thing that I stopped asking you four years ago?
Merlin: Do you plug your Ethernet cable in or are you doing this over Wi-Fi?
Merlin: I don't want to know.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: I don't want to know.
Merlin: I don't want to know.
Merlin: I don't want to know.
Merlin: Know what?
Merlin: I don't want to know.
Merlin: Oh, Hakuna Matata.
Merlin: Hakuna Matata.
Merlin: Oh, it's something from The Lion King.
John: Oh, it is a Swahili phrase.
John: It's not a Swahili phase.
Merlin: Hakuna Matata.
John: Yeah.
John: It roughly means no worries.
Merlin: Yeah, fuck that.
Merlin: You know that's what it means.
Merlin: I also use it to be synonymous with circle of life.
John: Circle of life.
John: You know, the Arabs say, inshallah, after every time somebody says something
John: that prognosticates about a potential future.
John: Oh, is that from your mouth to God's ear?
John: No, it's God willing.
Merlin: Oh, if the accident will.
Merlin: I included that in a text to you, and I wasn't sure if you knew what it meant and thought that I was spoofing you or something.
Merlin: I said, I hope when I see you in Portland, maybe it would be nice to have dinner if the accident will.
Merlin: Oh, that just seemed like Merlin Manese.
Merlin: That's a, like many of my lines, it is lifted from a Kurt Vonnegut novel.
John: Well played.
John: If the accident will.
John: If the accident will.
John: Hakuna Matata.
John: Little did they know they were making champagne.
John: Never mind.
John: That's a Kurt Vonnegut.
John: Oh, so it goes.
John: So it goes.
John: So, yeah, inshallah.
Merlin: Inshallah.
John: If you say, Merlin, I'll talk to you tomorrow.
John: Yeah.
John: Oh, inshallah.
John: If God wills.
John: Yes.
John: Don't get in the way of God with your whole idea about what the future is going to be.
Merlin: Oh, good.
Merlin: It's a reminder.
Merlin: It's like the guy wanders around next to the king saying, you're immortal.
Merlin: You're immortal.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Wouldn't you love that job?
Merlin: You'd be great at that job.
Merlin: You're a mortal, you're a mortal?
Merlin: You are mortal.
Merlin: Oh, you are mortal.
Merlin: Now, the king might mishear it, especially if he's a little bit older, and it might be a very confusing thing to tell him all day long.
John: Are they saying Boo Ernst?
John: Boo Ernst.