Ep. 211: "Character of the Mountain"
Merlin:
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Merlin:
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John:
Hello.
John:
Hi, John.
Hi.
John:
Hi, Merlin.
John:
How's it going?
John:
Good.
John:
When I picked up the phone, I heard you make a sound, which I almost never do.
John:
You were in the middle of going, hmm.
Merlin:
Oh, you heard that.
Merlin:
Yeah, what was that?
Merlin:
I wonder how far back the recording begins.
John:
Well, I'm not sure.
Merlin:
That's really awkward.
Merlin:
Was it a little time jump?
Merlin:
Well, I'm trying to get better about reducing my mouth noises.
John:
Oh, is that right?
Merlin:
Well, you know, I hope it's a subtle change.
Merlin:
I've always found your mouth noises to be fairly charming.
Merlin:
Yeah, sometimes I hear them and I realize there's a lot of them.
Merlin:
I'm making more of them.
Merlin:
I think my body is developing existential fissures.
John:
Oh, dear.
Merlin:
Yeah, they'll just be like kind of random.
Merlin:
It comes out from somewhere.
John:
Yeah, I've been hearing sounds lately, too.
John:
I've been hearing sounds lately, too.
Merlin:
Also, my array of unconscious anxiety noises has been widening.
John:
Oh, give me an example of some of those.
Merlin:
Well, my classic, very similar in some ways to the Dustin Hoffman noise in The Graduate, my classic used to just be this.
John:
I remember that noise.
Merlin:
And then sometimes when I'm waking up in the morning and I'm realizing what a wreck my life is, I'll go, uh.
Merlin:
Or again, you know, I make something very similar to another classic Dustin Hoffman noise, which is, oh boy.
Merlin:
Oh boy.
John:
That second one, the one you do in the morning, I think Jonathan Colton does that one, too.
John:
How does he do it?
Merlin:
Ah!
Merlin:
Oh, no, no, I totally do that sometimes.
Merlin:
In the morning, just wake up.
Merlin:
I'm interested in the noises that we make.
Merlin:
There's a noise that my wife makes that I've picked up, which is like if you're in the middle of dropping something or, you know, goofing, goofing up something, especially when you're dropping something, she goes like this.
Merlin:
Ah!
Ah!
Merlin:
Right.
Merlin:
Yeah, and I started doing that.
Merlin:
I got a lot of them.
Merlin:
I got a lot of anxiety noises.
Merlin:
Most of them are in my head, but sometimes they pop out.
John:
When I'm dropping something, I do a thing that I guess I think of it being a Three Stooges sound, but I've never really watched the Three Stooges enough to know if it's right.
John:
You make a curly noise?
Merlin:
Yeah, I do like a... Oh, that's a good one.
Merlin:
I do more like a...
John:
No, no, I don't do that.
John:
It's like more, yeah, yeah, yeah.
John:
Oh, it's like it's bouncing to the floor.
John:
Yeah, like gig, gig, gig.
Merlin:
And then, of course, I do the, I do the, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Merlin:
Oh, yeah, we both do that.
Merlin:
I make a lot of, I make, I've been told I make a lot of hmm noises.
Merlin:
I have a variety of hmm noises, but those are, I deploy those tactically.
Merlin:
Yeah, me too.
Merlin:
The parts about my broken life, those come out in little squeaks.
John:
Yeah, but I'm not sure that I make a lot of squeaking sounds.
John:
Yeah.
John:
You don't seem like you have anxiety.
John:
Well, it's funny.
John:
Isn't it true, though, that when you read enough library books about mental health,
John:
It turns out that anxiety manifests itself as all other disorders.
Merlin:
There's a little – I'm not a clinician as you know.
John:
Well, I mean you do great nails.
Merlin:
Oh, thank you.
Merlin:
I do the best I can.
Merlin:
I'll do a little flag.
Merlin:
I'll do Charlie Daniels band.
Merlin:
Your French nails are some of the best.
Merlin:
Thank you.
Merlin:
People say they're not classy but I think they're classy.
Merlin:
A French tip is a nice tip.
Merlin:
That's a nice tip.
Merlin:
You know, I think, you know, I feel like there's a lot of things where, you know, the lay person's idea of mental health comes kind of falls down in these areas that are a little unsubtle.
Merlin:
And so you may not see, for example, that there's anxiety and depression in so many different things.
Merlin:
And in fact, there's anxiety and depression and there's depression and anxiety, which seem mutually exclusive unless you've lived it.
Merlin:
Yeah.
Merlin:
And they're both really right there.
Yeah.
Merlin:
You know, they work real nice.
Merlin:
They're kind of the salt and pepper of small mental illness.
Merlin:
I love that salt and pepper record.
Merlin:
I'm so sad and my life's a flaming wreck.
Merlin:
That's a really good song.
Merlin:
That song came out in 1993.
Merlin:
It's still really good.
Merlin:
There are so many good that salt and pepper record.
John:
That's where they took control.
John:
You know, Spinderella is no slouch.
Merlin:
But they had been, I think they had had a little bit, I don't know a lot about this, but I think they had a little bit of a situation with their, you know, every band has that person, that guy.
Merlin:
Let's talk about Left Eye Lopez.
Merlin:
Well, she's so crazy.
Merlin:
That's TLC though, right?
Merlin:
Oh, yeah, right.
Merlin:
That's right.
Merlin:
I get them confused.
Merlin:
No, no.
Merlin:
I get them confused all the time.
Merlin:
Now, TLC, Chase, they counsel not to chase a waterfall.
Merlin:
That's right.
Merlin:
But Salt-N-Pepa, you were saying that they had a... I think they had a Murray Wilson type.
Merlin:
They had a handler.
John:
Oh, I see.
Merlin:
And I think that's the transitional record where the one lady was like, look, I can write really good songs.
Merlin:
You know, and work on the production.
Merlin:
And that was kind of I think Shoop was co-authored with their Murray Wilson.
Merlin:
And then and then then they went on the road.
Merlin:
But that's a strong record.
Merlin:
And for its time, I mean, that's always such faint praise.
Merlin:
But, you know, that was that was kind of a pretty wild like, you know, these are sexually empowered ladies like doing a really legitimate, you know, hip hop song.
Merlin:
And it was like a top X song.
Merlin:
Top X. I don't know.
Merlin:
See, I'm trying not to look at Wikipedia, but I'm pretty sure it did well.
Merlin:
Oh, I'm sure it did.
Merlin:
I think it might have been number one.
Merlin:
You're talking about number one hit.
John:
Well, something like that.
John:
Shoot.
John:
You know, that was precisely the era when I was not – I'm not able to comment on popular culture between 91 and 94 with any kind of reliability because those were the top years that I was not – that I was disconnected.
Merlin:
Oh, really?
Merlin:
I'd like to explore that.
Merlin:
I would also like to say publicly to apologize that, you know me, right?
Merlin:
You know me.
Merlin:
Oh, I do.
Merlin:
I always still, because of my own personal interests and time and focus, I still think of 1989 as being kind of like the apotheosis of hip-hop.
Merlin:
I know you do.
Merlin:
You've heard me talk about this, but you know what?
Merlin:
I have.
Merlin:
I guess when I say that, on the one hand, I'm forgetting how much stuff was...
Merlin:
that I was aware of was really good circa 93, 94.
Merlin:
And now in retrospect, going back and listening to more, I can't believe how much I missed because I was one of those people who was like, you know, the gangster, the dark stuff, the gangster stuff, the East Coast, West Coast, all that stuff really put me off.
Merlin:
I was not a huge, I didn't at the time like Biggie, but like I've gone back and I've been listening to so much stuff from like 93, 94 in particular, and it's fantastic.
Merlin:
And I feel like a doofus for how much I missed.
Yeah.
John:
There's a guy I follow on Twitter who really, really will take on all comers if anybody tries to step to him by saying that there is a better rapper than Bickey.
Merlin:
I'm learning that that is a commonly held belief.
John:
Yeah, and I enjoy watching his thread unfold as various people will say, but, but, but, what about, and he just destroys them with biggie defense.
John:
He feels it's empirical.
John:
Yeah, I'm not familiar with a lot of those catalogs because it all took place – I mean I'm much more familiar with hip-hop of the last 10 years than I was of that central because I think I was still caught in like –
John:
I went down that tribe called Quest Corridor during that period.
Merlin:
Which in some ways feels like the last chapter of that story in some ways.
John:
Yeah, it does.
Merlin:
It feels like a—
Merlin:
And more and more ambitious, like introducing jazz and stuff like that.
Merlin:
It really felt like, wow, this is going to get can it get more interesting than this?
Merlin:
While at the same time, about the same time, you got MC Hammer, you got Vanilla Ice, you eventually get Crisscross, you get, you know, House of Pain and stuff like that, where like in my mind, I was kind of like shutting down and going like, oh, well, this is Jump the Shark at this point.
John:
I like Bismarck Key.
John:
I mean, there was a lot to... It splintered, let's say.
John:
And what survived it was not what I would have expected was going to survive it.
John:
Right?
John:
I mean, all the stuff that seemed like really cool and intellectual, I guess.
John:
I mean, when Atlanta...
John:
When Atlanta rose to the top was when I kind of felt like, why, of all the things, of all the directions that hip-hop could explore, why is Atlanta leading the charge?
John:
And I felt that way because I was a Pacific Northwest booster, and the hip-hop here was always smarter and maybe a little bit less hook-driven.
John:
Yeah.
Merlin:
But also like the stuff that was getting a lot of airplay was, and I'm probably conflating my dates here, but it was more like what became like the Dirty South kind of stuff, which is not for me.
Merlin:
But you go back and listen to like late 90s Outcast and it's really good.
Merlin:
Well, sure.
Merlin:
I mean like – but I was not aware of that.
Merlin:
But I've gone back and like even in the last week especially I've been listening to you.
Merlin:
Well, I have to – you're going to hate me for this.
Merlin:
But like being into Hamilton, you can go and kind of – well, no, no.
Merlin:
Here's the thing.
Merlin:
You know what?
John:
I should have a list of anxiety sounds that I make only when people start talking about Hamilton.
Merlin:
This is not a bit, but all I'm going to say is that he is very generous about saying, you know, for example, like, you know, this song, like which one, like Satisfied is very, very similar in some way.
Merlin:
Not Satisfied, sorry, Helpless is very similar to Clockwise.
Merlin:
by Beyonce, a song that I had totally passed me by.
Merlin:
I go back, I listen to clockwise.
Merlin:
I'm like, this song's fucking great.
Merlin:
This is a really great song.
Merlin:
Like a huge influence.
Merlin:
This song by mob deep called, um, uh, shook ones part two.
Merlin:
So freaking good.
Merlin:
Now I'm going back and I, I listened to like Illmatic a long time ago and,
Merlin:
I finally went back and listened to Illmatic all the way through, and it's fucking genius.
Merlin:
So, or like now, you know, there was a time when I was really into Wu-Tang Clan and the offshoot albums.
Merlin:
They had a pretty good, like, pretty good, like, two years of, like, solo stuff and Wu-Tang stuff.
Merlin:
And it is really special, and I want to eat my words and say I was dead wrong.
Merlin:
It got different, if not just better.
Merlin:
It definitely got more sophisticated.
Merlin:
But the flow became more important, you know?
Merlin:
The flow, as we call it.
Merlin:
I know how important flow is to you.
John:
It always was.
John:
Even back before you knew any of this stuff, your flow was important.
Merlin:
Heavy flow.
John:
I think that's actually how I think of you.
Merlin:
Mid-90s hip-hop is a lot like any kind of humor.
Merlin:
Wait a minute.
Merlin:
I did not mean that to go back into mid-90s.
Merlin:
No, no.
Merlin:
All I'm going to say is that you can dissect it and say why this is more successful than that, and you can talk about Nas's internal rhyme schemes, but it doesn't really get at the thing.
Merlin:
It's like trying to say why this Monty Python bit is funnier than that one.
Merlin:
But that's all I was going to say about that.
Merlin:
You just described months and months of my life.
Merlin:
Believe me, I've thought about it.
Merlin:
But 91 to 94...
Merlin:
You were still doing your thing then, huh?
John:
Yeah, well, yeah, and also completely unplugged from...
John:
People ask how it is that I can claim that I don't consume media intentionally.
John:
I've asked that.
John:
And yet also have, you know, passing knowledge or I can at least keep in the game of a conversation about anything.
John:
I can tell you a song comes on the radio.
John:
I can identify it and say who it is.
John:
And I can't explain that exactly either.
John:
You know, like –
John:
I haven't bought a record album in a long, long time.
John:
And even then it was, you know, I bought a record album once.
John:
Like I can count on a couple of hands the number of albums I've bought since I was out of high school.
John:
Really?
John:
Yeah.
John:
What have I bought?
John:
15 albums, maybe?
John:
Did I ever tell you about the day OK Computer came out?
Merlin:
The day OK Computer?
Merlin:
No, I don't know about that day.
Merlin:
I think that was in a year that didn't happen.
Merlin:
It didn't happen.
John:
It was the only thing that happened, actually, that year.
John:
It's probably a typo.
John:
I was sitting in my store, my little magazine store,
John:
And I love to read the British pop magazines, Q and Mojo and NME and stuff like that.
John:
So I was sitting at my counter at work, you know, ringing up people's newspapers and reading probably Q. And here's an article about Radiohead in the studio.
John:
And they're in there and they're working on their new record and they've been working on it for a long time and it's getting ready to come out.
John:
And I'm reading this article and I'm like, this is really interesting.
John:
Like, you know, I don't know this band, but I really like this article.
John:
And it got to the end and, you know, we always got the British pop magazines on a little bit of a delay because they had to come in the post.
John:
And it gets to the end of the article and it says, you know, the record's coming out, April whatever.
John:
And I'm like, that's today.
John:
And so I picked up the phone.
Merlin:
Oh, right.
Merlin:
I do.
Merlin:
Did somebody bring it to you?
Merlin:
Yeah.
Merlin:
Right, right.
John:
I do remember this.
John:
I called the record store down at the end of the neighborhood, and I was like, is this Radiohead?
John:
And he was like, it just came out today.
John:
It's incredible.
John:
And I was like, well, I don't get off until 11, and I know your store closes at 9.
John:
Is there any way we can work?
John:
And he was like, I'll bring it to you.
John:
And I was so, like, every once in a while something like that will happen where it sounds like I'm a massive...
John:
fan of things and like i had a guy bring me the record before the store closed but no that was just the one time that ever happened but it just so happened that it was okay computer and you know and that was obviously a record that was on it that was on uh heavy rotation only rotation maybe um
John:
But so anyway, during that period, the early 90s, right, I was consuming a ton of stuff because I was living in Seattle and surrounded by culture that was happening, a certain culture.
John:
But as far as what was on TV at that time or what the – what contemporary fashion was maybe or what any kind of music that was happening outside of my – outside of the world of happenstance.
John:
And I guess that's what it is.
John:
It's a happenstance thing.
John:
We were on tour one time and Sean was DJing.
John:
And the DJ game, you know, we're driving into the night and we're the only two that are awake.
John:
And he started...
John:
He started asking me, like, what band is this?
John:
What song is this?
John:
And I could tell him.
John:
And so the DJ game became, can Sean play a song that I can't tell him what band it is?
John:
And we drove through the night, and somehow, and I have no idea how, I was able to identify every band.
John:
And Sean's really shooting out some obscure shit.
John:
I couldn't do that now.
John:
right but in 2004 i could just be like yeah i think that's probably you know and just sort of it wasn't all very confident but i could listen to it and get the vibe of it and then pull down out of my you know terminator menu like this is you know this has got to be the headcoats and sean's just like the head i mean how would you know
John:
I'm like, I cannot tell you how I would know.
John:
So it's a it's I think it's a like it's a there's a permeability to me that I hear and register stuff.
John:
But but I don't intentionally seek it out and I don't sit around and consume it voluntarily.
Merlin:
Yeah.
John:
And during that era.
John:
I was just, yeah, I was soaking in it.
Merlin:
Well, this is not totally analogous, but it reminds me a little bit of sports, where when I was a kid, I was very into following sports, professional sports, and especially baseball and most especially the Reds.
Merlin:
You know, and just the National League in general.
Merlin:
And so for, you know, for a couple, three years, I would seek that out in addition to it being just a huge part of my environment living in Cincinnati.
Merlin:
But, I mean, I would look at the sports page.
Merlin:
I knew the Bucs scores.
Merlin:
I know who was out by two and a half games and stuff like that.
Merlin:
I knew whose batting averages were what.
Merlin:
The thing is, you know, think about...
Merlin:
Think about baseball.
Merlin:
Think about D&D.
Merlin:
Think about any of those things.
Merlin:
You have so much more retention for that stuff when you're younger.
Merlin:
So back then, yes, I did seek that out, and I collected baseball cards, et cetera, et cetera, all the things a kid does.
Merlin:
But now today I don't follow sports.
Merlin:
Yeah.
Merlin:
You can keep in the convo.
Merlin:
But it's everywhere.
Merlin:
So you kind of have to know at least a little bit about sports in order to be a man in America.
Merlin:
Like you can't just – it's considered – I think it's considered somewhat –
Merlin:
confrontational to go into a discussion and go, can we not talk about sports?
Merlin:
I don't even like sports.
Merlin:
Well, yeah.
Merlin:
And I mean, like, obviously that's a certain kind of like, you know, I don't even have a TV room.
Merlin:
I know.
Merlin:
I know.
Merlin:
I don't even know what a TV is.
Merlin:
This is something I need a TV to understand.
Merlin:
But, um, but I bet that's part of it.
Merlin:
And, you know, you're just surrounded by it and it's, it's what other people are talking about and you're just picking stuff up.
Merlin:
But, you know, music also is different because even though you may have heard the name The Headcoats, I don't even know how to pronounce that, The Headcoats many times, you may not
Merlin:
I mean, how would you have known that particular like, oh, this is Brian Jonestown massacre?
Merlin:
Like, how would you know that?
Merlin:
You know, I don't know.
Merlin:
I don't know.
John:
Let's let's go.
John:
Let's go this direction.
John:
Do you think Pete Rose should be in the Hall of Fame?
Merlin:
I feel like Pete Rose, yes, probably.
Merlin:
And I feel like he should be under some sort of conservatorship.
Merlin:
I don't know what the word is.
Merlin:
I think someone should be his power of attorney and like should get him to quit Donald Trumping all the time and being such a dumbass.
Merlin:
But no, I mean, you know, I do.
Merlin:
I think that's I think that is a I don't think about it a lot, but you're asking.
Merlin:
I think he's not a very nice person.
Merlin:
He's not a very smart person, but he was legitimately great at what he did.
Merlin:
And what he eventually did in the late 70s or early 80s shouldn't have an effect on the late 20 years that he was.
Merlin:
Pete Rose.
John:
Right.
John:
Do you think Barry Bonds should be in the Hall of Fame?
Merlin:
All-time home run hitter?
Merlin:
Right.
Merlin:
Yeah, I don't know.
Merlin:
That's complicated.
Merlin:
What about Alex Rodriguez?
Merlin:
Do you like him or do you not like him?
Merlin:
Is he the guy who's retiring now?
John:
Yeah.
Merlin:
Why do people have such strong feelings?
Merlin:
Was he in a doping scandal?
John:
Well, yes.
John:
Okay.
John:
But I think – so Alex Rodriguez was a Seattle Mariner.
John:
Oh, right.
John:
And did he go to the Yankees?
John:
Well, eventually.
John:
So he left – he was a Seattle Mariner.
John:
He was a very popular player, I mean in the sense of his game.
John:
But nobody really liked him, right?
John:
Everybody likes Ken Griffey Jr.
John:
here in Seattle.
John:
If Ken Griffey Jr.
John:
walks into a restaurant here –
John:
Everybody just falls on the floor.
John:
Was he usually a Mariner?
John:
Giggling.
John:
He was a Mariner all through the—he was the young guy that brought the Mariners to Nationals.
John:
See, I know his dad from the Reds.
John:
Right, right.
John:
And he was just this charming kid that could hit the ball out of the park.
John:
And everybody loved him.
John:
And the stadium that we built here, certain people will call it the house that Griffey built.
John:
I would never call it that.
Merlin:
I would say it was— That's not how you think about things.
John:
It was the house that got built after three different citywide votes, each vote voting against the stadium.
John:
It's hard to fit on a shirt.
John:
But so Rodriguez, he was a great player, but—
John:
That was the Ichiro era too.
John:
And I mean, there were a lot of people to like, and he was not one of them.
John:
And then he signed the richest deal in the history of baseball, $250 million or something to play for the Texas Rangers.
John:
And then he traded to the Yankees.
John:
And I think the Rangers have to keep paying him somehow.
John:
So he gets paid by the Yankees.
John:
You need to get a deal like that.
John:
You should get that kind of deal.
John:
I should have had one in the last 25 years.
John:
Shit dog.
John:
Shit dog.
John:
But anyway, so Rodriguez, like he's playing on the Yankees.
John:
He's one of the all time.
John:
I think he's the number four home run hitter in history.
John:
Barry Bonds, of course, the great Barry Bonds being number one, a deeply unlikable character.
John:
You were in San Francisco during his reign, right?
Merlin:
Yeah.
Merlin:
Yeah.
Merlin:
I mean, it's funny.
Merlin:
He just radiates unpleasantness.
Merlin:
Yeah.
Merlin:
Yeah.
Merlin:
He doesn't seem likable.
Merlin:
But you see Ken Griffey Jr.
Merlin:
and it's like, yeah, he just, you know, he seems like he would talk to a kid.
Merlin:
But Barry Bonds, also the earring.
Merlin:
I don't like the earring.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Ken Griffey Jr.
John:
I mean, Ken Griffey Jr.
John:
bought a house in Florida and
John:
And I don't – this is a long time ago.
John:
I don't care about baseball or any of that.
John:
But when he bought a house in Florida, I felt a little bit betrayed.
John:
Like, Ken, what are you doing?
John:
Why are you buying a house in Florida, man?
John:
You're a Seattle guy.
John:
And then when he traded, oh, I was – and I think he went to his dad's team, right?
John:
There was some reason for it.
John:
But I felt like – I mean it's a little bit – it's the same way when Ichiro went.
John:
It was like you guys are Seattle.
John:
Seattle, where are you going?
John:
Where are you going, man?
Merlin:
Yeah, I want to talk about that.
Merlin:
I think the players moving other places is a super interesting phenomenon.
Merlin:
Yeah.
Merlin:
Like here, like every game you would go to, every game you'd see, so many people had –
Merlin:
uh, for the giants in the last few years, had like a Tim, uh, Linscom, um, Jersey, you know, like, you know, there's these characters who become so synonymous with the team and it's why people go to the games.
Merlin:
I had, at one point I had a Jason Jambi, um, A's, uh, uh,
Merlin:
Blouse.
Merlin:
And, but it's funny because like that is, it was more of a house coat.
Merlin:
I had a JLB house coat.
John:
Apparently I misuse the word chemise all the time.
Merlin:
Like I'll say, it sounds like a, like a, like a wine.
John:
That's a beautiful chemise and the person I'm complimenting will go, huh?
John:
This is a chemise No
Merlin:
That's like dingus.
Merlin:
It's a good word, but it's just funny because like, you know, it's, it's such a complicated knot of feelings and brand and business for, for, for everybody.
Merlin:
I mean, for the team, for the player, for the people like you understand.
Merlin:
And I'm, and just to be clear, I'm not trying to be cynical about this.
Merlin:
I've had those feelings.
Merlin:
I've bought those products.
Merlin:
Like I, I feel that bond.
Merlin:
I mean, I have, you know,
Merlin:
Marvel characters sitting around here in my in my office It's just that it's funny though when somebody does leave though and people just people are so sad They're so crestfallen and now like that that Linscom jersey.
Merlin:
I mean like what are you gonna do with that?
Merlin:
You can't wear that around.
Merlin:
Yeah, what are you gonna do with that?
John:
Yeah, wear that around can't wear that around well, I mean I People people do I I see I people at baseball games I mean the the sheer amount of Mariners merchandise
John:
Not to mention, like, Yankees merchandise.
John:
I mean, the number of Yankees baseball caps in the world has got to exceed the number of domesticated caps in the world.
Merlin:
Yeah, there's probably more Yankees hats than people.
Merlin:
But there's 1.1 Yankees hats per person.
Merlin:
It's like cell phones in South Korea.
Merlin:
There's something like 1.1 or 1.2 cell phones per person in South Korea.
Merlin:
Is that right?
Merlin:
They have beyond 100% saturation.
Merlin:
Well.
Merlin:
You ever been 100% saturated?
Merlin:
You ever had that?
John:
It happens to me all the time.
John:
You know, I often do this program in the bath.
John:
I really felt strongly about Ichiro.
John:
And it was because he just had a grace, a kind of personal grace.
John:
And the fact that he spoke English but insisted on doing all his interviews through a translator, the way he walked out on the field, his little quirks.
John:
You know, he was a tall man.
John:
He was not a small guy.
John:
Hmm.
John:
And his just reliable – and there's a lot of criticism of him for the way he sort of appeared at least to be batting for himself and his own legacy rather than for the team I guess.
John:
But I can't – that just seems like weird sports talk.
John:
That seems like sports radio talk.
John:
And I often wondered –
John:
Why he singled so much when he clearly could have knocked that ball out of the park.
John:
Also, like, you know, he could have he could have tried to be a hero like a like a Alex Rodriguez type where it's just like grand slam.
John:
But he just was this workmanlike plunk the ball into the field somewhere where nobody can catch it.
John:
We call it a small ball.
John:
Small ball.
John:
I love small ball.
John:
Move the move the the runners forward.
John:
But I really admired it, and I just liked everything about him.
John:
I just liked his physicality.
John:
It's one of those things where – I mean, are you watching the Olympics?
John:
One of the problems for me of watching the Olympics is that I cry every time someone does a thing.
Merlin:
Interesting.
Merlin:
I heard the swimming lady did really well.
Merlin:
I saw an infographic of her swimming, and it looked very amazing.
Merlin:
She's an extraordinary athlete.
John:
But, like, the way that they televised the Olympics –
John:
the commentators are so awful.
Merlin:
And really invasive, right?
John:
Yeah, I was watching them yesterday.
John:
And a commentator actually said, well, you know, do you think she can pull it off?
John:
And the other person said, well, I think she can pull it off.
John:
The question is, will she?
John:
Oh, that's a really good point.
Merlin:
So it's like she can, but will she?
John:
Yeah, and I was just like...
John:
Wow.
Merlin:
Wow.
John:
You know, I can do I could do that job.
Merlin:
Yeah.
Merlin:
But it's really this game is going to come down to whoever puts more points on the board.
Merlin:
That's right.
Merlin:
That's right.
Merlin:
I mean, who's got heart?
Merlin:
Oh, well, the other thing is, these guys came to play ball.
John:
But they really the Olympics, the way we televise them, at least.
Merlin:
There's like a bit.
Merlin:
There's a story.
Merlin:
There's like what I would call a file card.
Merlin:
You get a file card.
Merlin:
Oh, his mom drove into the pool every morning at 2 a.m.
Merlin:
That kind of thing.
John:
Or the or the lately they're doing this thing that I'd never seen in past Olympics where they're like, this person has been is a five time Olympian who's never won a medal.
Merlin:
Oh, Cinderella story.
Merlin:
Tears in his eyes, I guess.
John:
Yeah, and you're just like, what?
John:
They've been to the Olympics five times and have never won a medal?
Merlin:
They do, John.
Merlin:
They do.
John:
Well, and it just feels like, okay, you are one of the greatest athletes of our time because you've been to the Olympics.
John:
Not just once.
John:
Five times.
John:
And yet...
John:
Like championship eludes you.
John:
How must that feel?
John:
I mean to be the greatest athlete – like there's a diver, a competitive diver from China, a woman who's been to the Olympics five times and has more gold medals than anyone in the history of diving.
John:
And you just watch her dive and you're like –
John:
Wow, that's exceptional.
John:
Or watch the U.S.
John:
gymnastics team and you're just like, I don't even understand what's happening.
John:
I couldn't describe that move if I had a PowerPoint demonstration.
John:
But to be one of the greatest athletes of your country and of our time and have never won a medal?
John:
Yes, I am now emotionally engaged in this.
Merlin:
Because it's a different story now.
Merlin:
It's a story about overcoming and it's also, I don't want to say aging, but it's a story about getting older.
John:
Yeah.
Merlin:
How many more chances are they going to have?
John:
There's a gymnast from Uzbekistan.
Merlin:
Just a 40-year-old lady?
John:
Who's fucking 40 years old.
Merlin:
That's crazy.
John:
And she's out there competing with 16-year-olds.
John:
Yeah.
John:
But I don't even need...
John:
Any of that contextualizing, drama-building, American television, like let's make it – let's make everything – MTV is the real world impulse.
John:
Just watching sports people performing at their highest level –
John:
I just will start to cry about any competition where I see somebody perform beautifully because at that level of sport, the difference between somebody who is one of the greatest in the world and the greatest in the world.
John:
is so profound.
John:
Yeah.
John:
You know, like this person ran that race and they, you know, were within two tenths of a second behind the leader.
John:
But the leader ran with this indescribability that, uh, that I have this emotional response to.
John:
And I don't know why.
John:
And I don't know how, I can't control it.
John:
And I sit there and I'm just like, I'm, I don't cry.
John:
I don't cry.
John:
If, if, if, um,
John:
You know, if I saw somebody – if I saw like a – well, I think I would probably cry if I saw something bad.
John:
I'm not sure.
John:
Maybe I do cry.
John:
I don't typically cry in the course of a week or a month or a year.
John:
I don't cry about things that happen to me.
John:
But watching somebody do a race and, you know, thrill of victory, agony of defeat, it just gets so worked up.
John:
And I feel that way about truly great moments in sports of all kinds.
John:
When somebody does some baseball thing that just is – that's captivatingly good.
John:
Even in a mundane game where a fielder just pulls off a catch, I'm just like, oh.
John:
And I'm not sure if sports fans are experiencing those feelings too and that's why sports are so popular with people.
John:
I find it almost a little overwhelming.
Merlin:
Yeah.
Merlin:
Yeah.
Merlin:
It's, it's also, my, my friend John Gruber has put it this way.
Merlin:
I think this is pretty smart.
Merlin:
You know, there's some people who are into baseball for the numbers and some people who are into baseball for the story.
Merlin:
And I thought that was a really, he's probably not the first person to say that, but I think that's really smart.
Merlin:
And people who are into the story are into this much longer arc of like, not just this inning, not just this, not, not this at bat, this inning, this game, um, this, uh, you know, um,
Merlin:
Doubleheader or whatever.
Merlin:
It's not even this season.
Merlin:
It's the grand arc of the big story about the Yankees.
John:
Well, and I'm looking right now.
John:
It's funny you should mention that at an article in the New York Post.
John:
Where does Jeter rank in the top 10 greatest Yankees?
John:
Oh, nice.
John:
Well, except the writer says Jeter isn't even in the top 10 Yankees.
John:
And then he proceeds to talk about Babe.
John:
The Babe.
John:
The Babe.
John:
And Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra.
John:
And you're just like, there are a lot of big Yankees.
John:
There are a lot of top Yankees.
John:
Where is Derek Jeter going to fall?
John:
The writer?
Merlin:
Wait, so wait, is it written by Derek Jeter?
John:
No.
John:
Oh.
John:
No, it is writing as a, it is writing, it's being written in a way to like brush back the kids.
Merlin:
Brush back hip hop generation.
Merlin:
Oh, these kids today with their rock and roll, they don't know from Yankees.
John:
Yeah, they're millennia.
John:
They're millenniums.
Merlin:
You want their Derek Jeter up there.
John:
And it's like, you don't even have you ever even heard of Whitey Ford?
John:
You don't even you can't your Jeter.
Merlin:
You say you're a Whitey Ford fan.
Merlin:
Name his last three albums.
Merlin:
You're not a fan.
Merlin:
Don Mattingly, please.
John:
And so, yeah, that arc of baseball, the level where the Chicago White Sox haven't won a game in 2,000 years, the Boston Whalers haven't scored a puck in 54,000 hundreds.
Merlin:
They call it the curse of the Gambinos.
Merlin:
And, well, yeah, rightfully so.
John:
That's a really good Wu-Tang record.
John:
There are more mobsters in Rhode Island.
John:
Turns out.
Yeah.
John:
than in New York.
John:
Do you think Ted Leo is a mobster?
John:
Be honest.
John:
Ted is too moral.
John:
He's not a wartime consigliere.
John:
He's not at all.
John:
That's exactly right.
John:
You know what?
John:
Who's a better consigliere than my father?
John:
That's right.
John:
We're going to need you somewhere else, Tom.
John:
And the thing about Ted is I think that Ted can talk to mobsters.
John:
I think there are mobsters all around Ted.
Merlin:
You got me waiting in the
John:
Ted is like a – you know, he's like a district attorney.
John:
He's like a straight shooting district attorney.
Merlin:
Straight shooter.
Merlin:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin:
Whose brother is a mobster.
Merlin:
Oh, sort of like a Showtime TV show kind of thing.
Merlin:
Yeah.
Merlin:
Right.
Merlin:
So I'm with you just to finish this one bit.
Merlin:
Yeah.
Merlin:
Yeah.
Merlin:
I think that, you know, if you're somebody like me, who's a tourist, like you can come in and just enjoy a game on its own terms.
Merlin:
But, you know, like my family, my gosh, my in-laws, they are they're just they're screaming obscenities the whole game.
Merlin:
They're all they're mad about the calls and like they're very, very invested.
Merlin:
But I.
Merlin:
I get what you mean.
Merlin:
I'm going to just toss out something I didn't.
Merlin:
I used to be really into the hitters, like the big hitters.
Merlin:
But this is probably just a sign again and getting older.
Merlin:
I more and more really appreciate pitching.
Merlin:
And especially when you look at somebody like, oh, God, who's that amazing closer for the Yankees a few years ago?
Merlin:
Oh, I'm so embarrassed.
Merlin:
You know, that one guy.
Merlin:
Yeah, the guy.
Merlin:
You know who I mean.
Merlin:
Yeah, I do.
Merlin:
He's the Latino guy whose name I can't remember.
Merlin:
Yeah, oh, and that narrative.
Merlin:
And he's amazing.
Merlin:
In particular, he was pitching, I think, against the Giants a few years ago in the World Series.
Merlin:
And just the coolness, the incredible composure that it takes to come in at the end and be able to keep it all together from pitch to pitch.
Merlin:
And if you fuck up a pitch, well, you've got to not fuck up the next one.
Merlin:
And you don't get to be a hero.
Merlin:
You've got to become a hero one pitch at a time.
Merlin:
Or a goat.
Merlin:
But you're as good as that game.
Merlin:
Oh, wait.
Merlin:
I know it.
Merlin:
Rod Rodriguez?
Merlin:
Is that his name?
Merlin:
I'll look it up.
Merlin:
Yankees relief pitcher.
Merlin:
All I'm saying is I'm coming to much more appreciate pitching and the composure and athleticism and intelligence that it takes to be a pitcher.
Merlin:
To not get stuck in your own head.
Merlin:
It's just so amazing to watch.
John:
Well, but again, there's some indefinable quality like Felix Hernandez for the Mariners.
Merlin:
Mariano.
John:
Mariano Rivera.
John:
Mariano Rivera.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Something, you know, I follow the Mariners most closely because it's part of our culture here.
John:
This is something you might not know, but your local team, a lot of times will generate more fandom among the local population.
Merlin:
So you got the national sport and there's different teams that are nominally located around the country.
Merlin:
You're saying that in your hometown, that team, that franchise, that business, they tend to accrue more attention and affection.
John:
Typically among the local population.
John:
So my my dad is was from the northwest.
John:
He never lived in Boston.
John:
He didn't.
John:
He never he never lived in Pakistan.
John:
He grew up in Seattle, went to college in Seattle and then moved to Alaska.
John:
So he had a very geographical fandom.
John:
It was like – it was like Lyme disease, right?
John:
It was – it went in concentric circles out from the initial wound.
John:
And so he – his number one favorite thing was Huskies, the University of Washington Huskies.
John:
And I think that he I think in the in the 50s and 60s, he followed Huskies basketball.
John:
But as time went on, like the Huskies football became he became the big thing.
John:
But he liked college basketball and he would root for the team in any because he would watch any game, any sports game.
John:
He would root for the team or person who originated the closest to Seattle.
John:
So if there were two tennis players and one of them was from Baltimore and one of them was from Boston, he would adjudicate in his geographic understanding of the country which one was closest.
John:
And I would say it's pretty hard to, you know, pretty hard to care.
John:
That's so arbitrary.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And he was just like, you know, like he always rooted for Berkeley over UCLA.
John:
Like just that just made sense to him.
John:
But so Felix Hernandez is a big deal here in Seattle.
John:
He's a he's the you know, he's a pitcher that has his own fan group in the stadium.
John:
And he he's a great pitcher.
John:
But I just this is I'm you know, this is one of those things I can't explain.
John:
I'm just not into Felix Hernandez.
John:
He comes out and I appreciate his performance.
John:
I understand that he's a great pitcher.
John:
But like I don't feel an emotional resonance with him.
John:
Sometimes a pitcher walks out there and I'm just like, this guy.
John:
Holy cow.
John:
I'm into this guy.
John:
And I don't know what it is.
John:
It's not just flair.
John:
It's just something.
John:
I just feel like Felix Hernandez is kind of a big kid.
John:
I feel like maybe he's a little bit of a bully in the dugout.
John:
But not a bully like...
John:
He's always laughing, but he's grabbing your underwear and pulling it up.
John:
But that's the weird thing about sports.
John:
I don't know how it is that I can tune into curling at two o'clock in the morning on a hotel room television and of everything that's on TV at two o'clock in the morning, which is to say nothing.
John:
Uh, but I will prefer watching curling to almost anything else if I can find it on TV.
Um,
John:
And I'll sit in a hotel room, even if I have something to do the next day, and I'll watch curling as long as it's on until 5 o'clock in the morning.
John:
And I'll get really invested in a curling match between Prince Edward Island and Saskatchewan.
John:
And we'll just be like really rooting –
John:
In general, I think I would probably root for Prince Edward Island in that situation.
John:
But it would depend.
John:
It would depend on whether I like the captain or not.
Merlin:
Uniforms.
John:
Uniforms.
Merlin:
But, you know, if curling were just sweeping the way a kid sweeps at McDonald's, it wouldn't be as fun.
Merlin:
It's the intensity and focus of the sweeping that makes it compelling and a little amusing.
John:
Yeah, but I find the sweeping aspect of it, you know, because that's where there's a lot of yelling.
John:
There's a lot of yelling to go with that sweeping.
John:
Is that right?
John:
Yeah, they yell at each other.
John:
They're yelling at the puck or the stone.
John:
They're just yelling at the walls because they're very excited and their sweeping is having – relative to the amount of energy they're expending, it's having a very minute effect on the course of that.
Merlin:
They're trying to make a little path, right?
Merlin:
Yeah.
Merlin:
They rough up or smooth up or they're doing something to a certain area to make the stone move a certain way.
Merlin:
Yeah, curve the stone.
Merlin:
Curve the stone.
John:
No, no, no.
John:
The aspect that I like is the throwing of the stone because it's so focused and I understand it.
John:
And you start to – your whole body slides with the stone and then you just set it free.
John:
It's like –
John:
Fly, be free, stone, and let the sweepers sweep as they may.
John:
But I have set you on a course, on a path through life.
John:
Are you going around these other stones?
John:
It's a lot like parenting.
John:
That's right.
John:
Are you going to hit these other stones head on or are you going to go around these stones?
Merlin:
Somebody can come by and clean up after you.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Are you going to run down and fuck one of those cows or are you going to walk down and fuck all of those cows?
Merlin:
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Merlin:
You know, 2 a.m.
Merlin:
is a tough time to start watching TV.
Merlin:
Boy, I'll say.
Merlin:
Have you ever watched an episode of the TV show Girls?
Merlin:
I have seen the TV show Girls.
Merlin:
Yeah, yeah.
Merlin:
I thought it was good.
Merlin:
I don't have strong feelings.
Merlin:
I have friends who are very, very into it.
Merlin:
I thought it seemed good.
Merlin:
It's got Kylo Ren in it.
John:
Oh, it does have Kylo Ren.
John:
Oh, yes.
John:
Yes, it does.
Merlin:
Is that a show you watch and enjoy?
John:
Well, I stumbled upon it late at night in a hotel room.
Merlin:
That's a great time.
Merlin:
I have to say, that is actually a great time to discover TV shows.
Merlin:
You're so predisposed to something that's not a knife commercial.
Oh.
John:
Yeah, well, so I discovered Band of Brothers on a flight.
John:
You're kidding.
John:
It was one of the early flights.
John:
Talk about crying.
John:
There's two things I discovered on flights.
John:
Well, let's say three things.
John:
I discovered Delta Airlines trivia game.
Merlin:
Except they keep putting in those European sports things.
Merlin:
Oh, my God.
Merlin:
I'm so mad about that.
Merlin:
It frustrates you.
John:
Who was the captain of the 1970s winning Manchester United?
Merlin:
Are you talking about Manchester United?
Merlin:
You're not talking about Leicester?
John:
Fuck you.
John:
But no, the two TV shows I discovered, or the two, not TV shows, the two entertainments I discovered on airplanes are Band of Brothers, which I had avoided up until then because it felt like this is just some Saving Private Ryan bullshit, some Steven Spielberg produced, Tom Hanks involved, like weird fake war, like high definition war movie.
John:
And I didn't see Saving Private Ryan when it came out.
John:
And my dad was still alive, and we should have gone to see it together.
John:
But I was like, I don't want to watch some Steven Spielberg war movie.
John:
Oh, boy, you know that opening is still pretty rough.
John:
Well, and that's the thing.
John:
Like, when I finally watched it, I said, what was I so afraid of?
John:
This is just a great war movie.
John:
And I have watched them all, war movies.
John:
But I'm on some flight, and it was a long flight.
John:
It was, like, from Europe.
John:
And for whatever reason, they had Band of Brothers, and I started.
John:
Did you start at the beginning?
John:
Yeah.
John:
No, but I started soon enough.
John:
I think I started episode two.
John:
Oh, Jiminy.
John:
What a cast.
John:
What a fucking cast.
John:
Yeah, incredible.
John:
And it was streaming.
John:
It was in order.
John:
So I just spent 10 hours watching Band of Brothers.
John:
And it was like the Civil War documentary, the first Ken Burns, or I guess what I think of as the first Ken Burns, which I could watch that once a year for the rest of my life.
Merlin:
What's the name of the battle where they're stuck in the woods?
Merlin:
Not the Arden.
Merlin:
You know the one I mean.
John:
Yeah, the one in the woods.
Merlin:
Ah, fuck.
Merlin:
What is wrong with us this week?
Merlin:
Well, yeah.
Merlin:
The Bulls.
Merlin:
Well, it's the Arden, right?
Merlin:
is it but it's the one where they're stuck in the woods outside the village and they're fucked and it's freezing bombs are just coming and they're just and they're just picking them off and like that is i think you know the ability to tell that story and to keep drawing that out with so little relief uh i i think it's masterful and it's it's like over at least one probably two episodes at least and it's just it's so relentless and so well done and i just love that cast
Merlin:
That's a really good show.
Merlin:
You know, the problem with that show, this guy could be wrong, but two things I remember coming out around 9-11.
Merlin:
There's a Jay-Z record that came out on 9-11, and Band of Brothers came out just a little bit before 9-11, I think.
Merlin:
I didn't know that.
Merlin:
And we kind of lost it in the lights, because we, at the time, we were like, ugh.
Merlin:
You remember how sensitive you feel back then?
Merlin:
It's like, I don't know.
Merlin:
I don't think I'm going to go watch.
Merlin:
I'm not going to watch a shoot-em-up.
Merlin:
I sure do.
Merlin:
But it's so good.
Merlin:
The guy from Homeland is so great on there.
John:
Well, and this is one of those problems with actors, right?
John:
I cannot watch him in anything else.
John:
He just appeared in a new spy movie as like the sort of cue spymaster character.
John:
Right.
Merlin:
Damien Lewis, I want to say.
Merlin:
I guess I like him.
John:
I watched him in a spy movie just recently that involved some, you know, escaping from some baddies.
John:
And he was the, the, you know, the fairly, uh, like a moral spy master and, and, and using his actual British accent.
John:
And I just found the whole thing very false because I wrote, I, because he is Lieutenant Winters for me forever.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Yeah.
John:
The other thing I discovered on a Delta, or not Delta, I'm not going to advertise for Delta here.
John:
It could have been any airline that had TVs in the back of the seat, was David Blaine's Street Magic.
John:
And I cannot tell you how much that first appearance of David Blaine's Street Magic, how much I was just like,
John:
God, show me more of this street magic.
John:
You think it's real?
John:
Who cares?
John:
I know.
John:
He's out there like, you know, look in your shoe.
John:
Exactly.
John:
Like, think of a card.
John:
Okay.
John:
Six of diamonds.
John:
What?
John:
Here, call your mom.
John:
And it's like, how did you wait a minute?
John:
How did he just full on guess the card?
Merlin:
Well, it's the ones it's the ones.
Merlin:
And this has been parody to much great effect.
Merlin:
But it is really true.
Merlin:
It's like there's it's like, you know, you've seen that guy, Apollo.
Merlin:
What's his name?
Merlin:
The greatest pickpocket in the world.
Merlin:
Yeah, yeah, he's great.
Merlin:
My daughter and I just watch that video every couple weeks, and I still can – I know how he does it, and I still don't see him do it.
Merlin:
But he's doing it.
Merlin:
That I believe – I know there's some tricks in that, but that is all, I think, genuine, brilliant sleight of hand.
Merlin:
But with – but I think – don't you think there's probably a little more stagecraft with David Blaine?
Merlin:
You don't care.
Merlin:
Is David Blaine the guy who sat on a salad bar for six years?
Merlin:
Is he the guy who does the endurance things?
Merlin:
Yeah, which I don't find very interesting.
John:
Like he's encased in ice on top of the Bellagio.
John:
And it's just like, yeah, all right, you're starving yourself to death.
John:
That is amazing, I guess, from within.
John:
It's a pretty slow reveal.
John:
But there are those guys in India.
John:
There's the one guy in India who has had one arm raised for 15 years.
John:
What?
John:
The devil you say.
John:
Or 40 years or something like that.
John:
He's got one arm that he's just kept raised, and it has become completely atrophied.
John:
There's no muscle in the arm or fat.
John:
The arm that he holds up appears to just be his arm bones.
John:
That's commitment.
John:
And he does it because of that, you know, whatever that ascetic tradition is there.
John:
You're just like, I pound a nail into my nose.
Yeah.
John:
So his decision, his thing was I'm going to hold one arm up in the air, which if you've ever tried to do it for a long period of time, if you've ever been in a lecture hall and you're like, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh.
Merlin:
You ever try and cut somebody's hair?
Merlin:
You know how hard it is to keep your arms in the air for more than a couple minutes?
Merlin:
It's a lot harder than it looks.
Merlin:
This guy's had his one arm in the air for decades.
Merlin:
This is one thing, though, where the Internet's really good, because you have to guess at some point somebody goes, you know what?
Merlin:
I want to dedicate my life to God, show that this is an empty vessel without our God.
Merlin:
I'm going to put my arm up in the air.
Merlin:
And like a year into it, somebody goes, you know, another guy's been doing that for 14 years already.
Merlin:
He'd be like, fuck!
Merlin:
Yeah.
Merlin:
Sorry.
Merlin:
Oh, man.
Merlin:
Now what am I going to do?
John:
Think of something else.
John:
Left arm, left arm.
John:
But so I'm not interested in David Blaine's gigaws because what interests me most about magic is close-up magic.
John:
I don't want to see a big show.
John:
I don't want to see a lion disappear.
John:
Like all of those things that Penn and Teller do where Teller is walking around and some rubber ball is following him across the stage.
John:
Like it's just all like Vegas-y.
John:
I feel like that is just – that's just a show.
Merlin:
You like close magic.
Merlin:
It really feels magical.
John:
Because in those big Vegas shows, they just set up the lighting in such a way that you can't see the wires.
John:
It's all a show.
John:
It's tricks.
John:
But like the Ricky Jay stuff.
Merlin:
Oh, brother.
John:
You can see.
John:
Where are those guards coming from?
John:
He can't get rid of them.
John:
They keep coming out of his sleeve.
John:
So David Blaine.
John:
is doing the thing that I always wanted to do.
John:
And the best part about David Blaine is that he uses magic and he, and it's like, and he's a complete corn ball, right?
John:
Like, like they set it up in such a way.
John:
They're like, where should we go?
John:
Let's go to downtown St.
John:
Louis at one o'clock in the morning.
John:
Like the place that everyone is the most scared to go.
John:
And they want, they're walking around with a TV camera and
John:
with bright lights on in East St.
John:
Louis.
John:
And these guys are kind of coming out of the shadows.
John:
And even the neighborhood guys are like, are you crazy?
John:
Like, this is the place of all places that you don't want to be.
John:
What are you doing?
John:
And then David Blaine is like, why don't you come over here and pick a card?
John:
Did I say magic trick?
John:
Yeah, pick a card.
John:
And the guys are like,
John:
Pick a card.
John:
All right.
John:
Is this your gun?
John:
Yeah.
John:
Is this magic?
John:
I'll pick a card.
John:
Picks a card.
John:
David Blaine's like, is it the four of clubs?
John:
And they're like, whoa.
John:
And it's that idea that magic, you don't need a common language.
John:
You don't need it.
John:
It's like a protective bubble because you're amazing people.
John:
And you're doing it like you're not taking their money.
John:
It's not a game of dice.
John:
Yeah.
John:
You're just like, let me show you.
John:
Let me show you something that's going to blow your mind.
John:
And it and it and it universally blows people's minds anywhere.
John:
And that is such a great.
John:
That's what I always wanted to know.
John:
It's like I wanted to know magic and I wanted to play the harmonica because with with close up magic and with the harmonica.
Merlin:
You can go anywhere, right?
Merlin:
Oh, you're kidding me?
Merlin:
There's nowhere in the world.
Merlin:
You're going to delight children all over the world if you can play the harmonica and do a car trick.
Merlin:
There's nowhere in the world where you can't go.
John:
Trains are coming.
John:
And people aren't like, yeah, yeah.
John:
Come on.
John:
Like you're welcome everywhere.
John:
Yep.
John:
It's true.
John:
And if you can be like, where's the quarter?
John:
Oh, it was in your ear.
John:
Oh, what?
John:
Every kid in the world is on your side.
John:
And then the suspicious looking grandparents who are like, what are you doing with the quarter in the ear?
John:
Are you some kind of pervert?
John:
Yeah, right.
John:
And then you're like, you were thinking of the four of clubs.
John:
And then the grandparents say, basically, come stay with us.
Merlin:
The one I love, and I don't want to beat this into the ground, but again, why can I never remember that guy's name?
Merlin:
Apollo, not Apollo Creed.
Merlin:
Apollo Robbins.
Merlin:
The thing that he does is he can get things out of your pocket, which is amazing.
Merlin:
And he's even gone and, like, shown how he does this, the misdirections that he does.
Merlin:
He'll lightly brush this part of your body where you don't even notice that he's touched you there.
Merlin:
But now that's where you're paying attention without even realizing it.
Merlin:
He can lift your wallet out of your jacket, inside pocket.
Merlin:
hold it against you while he taps on another area.
Merlin:
The wallet drops.
Merlin:
He catches it, puts it behind his back, and you see it.
Merlin:
And even though he explains how he does it, it's still magic.
Merlin:
But then the part that kills me is when he goes, okay, now look in your wallet.
Merlin:
And you're like, what the fuck?
Merlin:
How is there a $20 bill and a pen?
Merlin:
What?
John:
It's the driver's license of your friend who was standing there laughing at you.
Merlin:
But like how could he – it's one thing to say like, OK, like I put Matt Lauer's pen in your pocket.
Merlin:
And it's another thing that like now there's something in this – when did he do that?
Yeah.
Merlin:
Anyway, I'm sure there's a trick.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Oh, I think there's a trick.
Merlin:
A lot of magic tricks are actually tricks.
Merlin:
I've learned this and it's very disappointing.
John:
My favorite Apollo Robbins one is that I'm sure you've read this if you have followed his career at all, as I have.
Merlin:
Him and Penn?
Merlin:
Yeah.
Merlin:
Yeah.
Merlin:
Right.
Merlin:
Where he takes the pen.
Merlin:
All right.
Merlin:
Smart ass.
Merlin:
You know, everybody wants to come to the big guy.
Merlin:
Yeah.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Show me something that impresses me.
John:
And you know, and Penn is so unlikable.
John:
Yeah.
John:
I can't think of a single person in the world who's a fan of Penn.
John:
You don't become an atheist because you like people.
John:
Well, I'll get myself one there.
Merlin:
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Merlin:
That's pretty good.
Merlin:
Thank you.
Merlin:
I wish I had a bell.
John:
I don't have a bell right now.
Merlin:
Did you see somebody's buying a pit bell because of you?
Merlin:
What's a pit bell?
John:
Oh, yeah, pit bell, like a hotel bell.
John:
Like a pit bell?
John:
Yeah, like an orange bell.
John:
Oh, from the game pit.
John:
From the game pit.
John:
Who is buying that?
Merlin:
I'm sorry.
Merlin:
Let me go back.
Merlin:
A listener has said that they are going out at great expense obtaining a 1970s orange bell from the game Pit in order to have what you have.
Merlin:
Fan-fucking-tastic.
Merlin:
Good for them.
John:
We've got to sell those.
John:
What the fuck is wrong with us?
John:
Why are we not selling these?
John:
We're going to do it.
John:
We're going to sell them.
John:
This is the year that we're going to monetize.
Merlin:
You know, 2016 is going to make 2011 seem like 1974.
John:
You can't land on a fraction.
John:
We're going into the Hall of Fame of merchandising podcasts this year, 2000 whichever year.
Merlin:
It's team effort.
Merlin:
I'm just honored to be here.
Merlin:
And really, I want to just thank the Lord.
John:
You're just playing for the team.
John:
It's an honor to be here.
John:
Penn Jillette a couple of years ago decided that he was going to take on, and I think that Teller and he probably don't like each other very much.
Merlin:
They are very, they've talked about this a lot.
Merlin:
They have a very professional relationship.
Merlin:
They have apparently, turns out, like zero contact that is not about the act.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Well, and that was true also of Mythbusters, right?
John:
Those two guys didn't.
Merlin:
Is that right?
Merlin:
They didn't see eye to eye.
Merlin:
They seem very, very different.
Merlin:
The guy who looks like a doobie brother, he seems like he doesn't want to be there a lot of the time.
Merlin:
You're talking about the guy who looks like Jeff Skunk Baxter?
Merlin:
He does look like Jeff Skunk Baxter.
Merlin:
He does.
Merlin:
You're absolutely right.
Merlin:
He seems like a real smart guy, but it seems like every time he is reluctant to have to be on a TV show.
John:
Yeah, I think that as far as I know, and I'm not trying to reveal any trade secrets here.
John:
As far as I know, he, although was on a long-running television show that made him both famous and rich, he was contemptuous of all entertainment.
John:
That's a bad decision.
John:
Yeah, like a libertarian who says, we made this.
John:
or whatever, like just let capitalism run its course, whose business depends entirely on public roads, which are paid for by taxes.
John:
Who is John Galt?
John:
I believe that Jeff Skunk Baxter in the Mythbusters program would every single episode say, well, why do we have to dramatize this?
John:
We'll just show the science and people.
John:
That's what people tune in for.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And it's like, well, it's an hour long TV episode or a half hour or whatever.
Merlin:
You got to keep cutting away to the B team.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Cut away to the B team or like when something blows up, act surprised.
Merlin:
Yeah.
John:
Or it's not, you know, you're not faking anything.
John:
It's such.
John:
It is.
John:
The thing is, it is.
Merlin:
Explain it.
Merlin:
I've only ever seen... I like Adam a lot as a person.
Merlin:
He's one of the good people.
Merlin:
I've seen maybe five episodes of that show ever just because I can't... It's not this show.
Merlin:
It's not even the people.
Merlin:
I can't tolerate the cable TV-ness of it, of the teasers.
Merlin:
There's so much...
Merlin:
a televisual metadata and like reminders and lower thirds and cutaways and B story.
Merlin:
And it's like, Jesus Christ, there's like, there's like four minutes of stuff here.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Well, but that's the problem.
John:
There is four minutes of stuff.
Merlin:
If you made a television show that long, it's basically like a professional, super professional YouTube video that you've got to find a way to turn into like a whole TV show.
John:
Yeah, but if you were making a half an hour long TV show or an hour, I don't know how long those things are.
John:
But if you were making that and it was all just science, you would have to solve 15 mysteries per episode.
John:
Because it's like, does a bullet, can a bullet go through an army helmet?
John:
Yes or no?
John:
Here's an army helmet.
John:
Here's a gun.
John:
pow answer yes the answer to everything is it depends yeah that's not that's not a good tv and then that tv show called it depends that's not not going to be interesting it depends uh that's right like if the atmospheric conditions are right and your helmet is possible for it to actually rain inside well it depends well it depends what you call rain and what you call inside that's right next there was a you know during the uh black hawk down episode
John:
A lot of—it was revealed, and I think you can see this in the film, that a lot of certain special forces people, I think Delta Force, decided that helmets—and this is probably true of a lot of special forces people.
John:
They want to move fast.
John:
They want to get in and get out.
John:
And they don't want to wear one of those tin pot helmets that, like, typical infantry are wearing.
John:
And so – but they did recognize that you need something to keep from bonking your head.
John:
And so they were – the Special Forces guys decided they were going to wear like skateboard helmets.
John:
And if you watch in Black Hawk Down the film, which is a dramatization of the actual event and some things are not as reported.
John:
But the Delta Force guys –
Merlin:
are wearing skateboard helmets i can't believe they would be allowed to do that well you know that that those these are the same guys that that grow they grew really long beards when they first went into afghanistan before some general was like i'm not a military historian but i mean like a we've learned a lot about what we can do to prevent things like traumatic head stuff and second like dude you belong to the fucking military we tell you what to wear because we can't afford for you you know what i mean like it's it's a highly trained operative
Merlin:
Well, and like, but, you know, GI, right?
Merlin:
Government issue.
Merlin:
Like, you belong to the government.
Merlin:
You are our resource.
Merlin:
And you don't get to make decisions about stuff that might affect your safety or that of your unit.
Merlin:
Because you die.
Merlin:
Now other people are going to die.
Merlin:
Now we've got a fucking problem because you decided you want to go be a skateboard guy.
John:
But I think within their own culture, their attitude was, well, if you make us wear a tin pot helmet, we're going to take it off and throw it away the second we get out onto a mission.
Merlin:
It's not a fashion thing.
Merlin:
It's also hurting their ability to be agile.
John:
You can't hear in them.
John:
You can't see out of them.
John:
And also the helmet goes like clankety clankety clank.
Merlin:
There was an episode on 99% Invisible recently.
Merlin:
They talked about the problem of basically like, you know, should you wear hushers?
Merlin:
Like, you know, you can take 32 decibels off a sound by putting these things in your ear, but you lose the subtlety of hearing like somebody rustling around or somebody whispering.
Merlin:
And so they risk long-term hearing damage because it enables them to be able to hear smaller noises.
Merlin:
Similar kind of thing, right?
John:
So I think that actually Black Hawk Down...
John:
This is the interesting part of the story, that it inspired a redesign of the helmet for all of the armed forces.
John:
Turns out.
John:
To make it closer to a skateboard helmet, closer fitting, you know, with the ears more revealed so that you can hear better.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Less clankety-clank, less made of steel.
John:
Yeah.
John:
But there's – as far as I understand this to be true, there is one recorded example of a special forces person dying of a traumatic head injury, one, in the whole history of them wearing skateboard helmets.
John:
Wow.
John:
So it seems like on the one hand, that's too bad and that guy should have had a helmet on because maybe he'd be alive today.
John:
But –
John:
also they seem to know what they're doing and they're, they are saying to themselves, one way to keep from getting shot in the head is to keep your head down.
John:
Like don't be a guy who's in a trench, who's peeking up over the top in your skateboard helmet.
John:
If you're going to do that, go find another, go find a different helmet.
John:
But if you're just running through some, uh, some situation in the middle of the night, uh,
John:
nobody's going to shoot you in the head.
John:
The chances of them scoring a headshot are pretty low.
John:
And so we're going to wear these other helmets.
John:
And I admired that.
John:
There was a guy when I was growing up at Mount Alieska who skied
John:
in a tank commander's helmet.
John:
Like a Russian, you know the ones I'm talking about?
Merlin:
Probably.
John:
They are like, it's not a helmet, it's like, it's like pads that go from your forehead to the back of your head, like five of them across the top of your head that looks like, it doesn't look like any other kind of helmet.
John:
Maybe it looks like a bike helmet.
Merlin:
Like an old-fashioned bike helmet that's just made of pads.
Merlin:
That's made out of leather.
Merlin:
Yeah, I know.
Merlin:
My uncle had one of those, yeah.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And so there was a guy at Mount Elias.
Merlin:
It's like a little leather head cage.
John:
A little leather head cage.
John:
That's right.
John:
Which I always assumed was something that you wore inside a tank.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Leather head cage in Jackson.
John:
And he wore this as his ski hat.
John:
Right.
John:
And it was like it stood out.
John:
But this is another question I have for you.
John:
Yes.
John:
When I was a young preteen and teenager, the way people wore their ski hats at Mount Aliesco really mattered to me and stuck with me.
John:
Like everybody's wearing a hat because you're all on a mountain.
John:
And there are a lot of ways to express your style on a ski mountain.
John:
You know, like, do you have the latest sweater?
John:
You're all watching for that stuff because it's very social.
John:
Skiing is very social.
John:
Sure.
John:
So you're like, oh, those are this year's skis or are those last year's skis?
John:
Or are those three years ago's skis?
John:
But also, you know, ski fashion changes very fast.
John:
When I first started out, everything was still wool.
John:
Everything was wool and red, white, and blue.
John:
And then as time went on, like by the 90s, ski fashion just looked like stuff from In Living Color.
John:
But I remember as a kid being very impressed with and interested in anyone who wore their ski hat in a jaunty way.
John:
And I still can think of four or five people.
John:
Some of them I knew.
John:
Some of them were just characters of the mountain who wore their hat.
John:
In a jaunty way.
John:
And I'm just, I've thought about this quite a bit.
John:
Is that an actual, was that because I was a teen and things like that were making a very strong impression on me?
John:
And I felt like the fact that this guy is wearing his ski hat slightly askew is a bold move on his part.
John:
And is impressive.
John:
I'm impressed by this.
John:
And this is something I'm taking away.
John:
So is that because I was a teen?
John:
Is that because I had some latent interest in fashion that was different from other people's?
John:
Or is it because it was genuinely impressive?
John:
You know what I mean?
John:
Like the guy in the tank commander's hat.
John:
Was that really like – if I saw that today, would I think cool?
Merlin:
I mean I think it's kind of both.
Merlin:
But I think part of it is that when somebody wears something unusual or even weird –
Merlin:
I think part of it is the fact – the part that most of us dinguses miss is like, oh, I'm going to go put on a tank commander hat and look like that guy.
Merlin:
It's the confidence with which they pull it off that really tells.
Merlin:
I think this is the thing about fashion is – and this is why there's so many missteps in trying to ape what other people do is you try to like emulate the kind of –
Merlin:
Dumb physical characteristics instead of trying to emulate the confidence and exuding of personality behind that jaunty hat.
Merlin:
That's what sticks with you.
Merlin:
You're like, man, look at that guy.
Merlin:
How did he do that?
John:
Do you remember Merlin Mann from the late 2000s?
John:
Who, me?
John:
The Merlin man whose hair was a bigger-than-life character.
Merlin:
Oh, yeah.
Merlin:
I mean, kind of.
Merlin:
Yeah, sure, I remember him.
John:
Do you remember this Merlin man?
Merlin:
Mm-hmm.
Merlin:
I'm aware of his work, yeah.
John:
I like to think of him as the Merlin man of that photo site.
John:
What was that photo site that you liked so much?
John:
Flickr?
Merlin:
Flickr.
Merlin:
Yeah, I had lots of hair problems.
John:
You really ran Flickr.
John:
I did.
Merlin:
I did.
Merlin:
I had a big hand in that.
John:
You ran the table over there.
John:
Sure did.
John:
And boy, your different hairs were very exciting to me.
John:
Every time I tuned in, it was like, yeah, a lot of people try and do this.
John:
Will Wheaton is very big about his morning hair.
John:
Now it's one of his tropes.
John:
I don't know if you follow Will Wheaton.
Merlin:
I'm aware of his work, yeah.
John:
He's a television personality.
Merlin:
He was on Star Wars.
John:
He was on Star Trek.
John:
Star... Star Bangers.
Merlin:
Yeah, I always get those confused.
Merlin:
It's the newer generation.
John:
Yeah, normal generation.
Merlin:
No, I met him.
Merlin:
He's a nice guy.
Merlin:
He likes cats.
John:
He does.
Merlin:
I think also his entire family is very handsome.
John:
They're a handsome family.
Merlin:
I mean, like, improbably handsome.
Merlin:
No offense.
John:
No, it's all right.
John:
I mean, I don't have any dog in his race.
John:
But but but your hair, you're pioneering hair explorations.
John:
Very, very interesting.
John:
And you're not somebody who says, like, I'm going to wear a flamboyant shirt.
John:
Right.
John:
Merlin Man doesn't wear a flamboyant shirt.
John:
Merlin Man wears a pretty dependable shirt.
Merlin:
Solid.
John:
Pretty dependable.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Solid.
John:
Pendleton or something, you know, that just says, like, I'm here.
John:
I'm here.
John:
I'm queer.
John:
Get used to it.
John:
But the hair, you were bold, bold, bold choices.
Merlin:
I guess it kind of had a mind of its own.
Merlin:
I never really – I would have a hard time finding a haircut that I would like.
Merlin:
But I don't have a particularly distinguished record of deliberately doing something interesting.
Merlin:
I sometimes stumble ass backwards into something interesting and don't realize it for a while.
Merlin:
But I –
Merlin:
I just have such a fraught history of trying to do something cool.
Merlin:
And because I missed, I mean, not to keep quoting myself here, but because I was trying to emulate the physical characteristic, or as the way I would put it, it's like I was tracing a shadow on a sidewalk.
Merlin:
Like I was trying to be somebody else.
John:
Like Hiroshima?
Merlin:
Boy, that's an ugly, ugly, ugly reference.
Merlin:
Wow.
Merlin:
Band of Brothers, we happy few.
Merlin:
And so that thing is you can't do that.
Merlin:
You got to quit doing that unless you can pull it off.
Merlin:
If you can pull it off, that's great.
Merlin:
But like, you know, I really think that the thing I don't know.
Merlin:
Now I'm just repeating myself.
Merlin:
But that's but no, I wasn't trying to do a thing.
Merlin:
I just had dumb hair.
John:
I saw a picture of a guy a few years ago who was standing out in front of a fashion show.
John:
I don't know.
John:
You know, I'm revealing a lot about myself that I am that I'm being exposed to photographs of guys standing outside of fashion shows.
John:
That's OK, because it's a you know, you have to pursue that.
John:
That's not a thing you're just going to see.
John:
Right.
John:
You're not going to open up a magazine.
Merlin:
John, John, this country's changed a lot.
Merlin:
We're open to all kinds of points of view and fluidity.
Merlin:
It's OK if you've seen fashion photos.
Merlin:
Thank you.
John:
Thank you.
Merlin:
Thank you.
Merlin:
By the way, it's a September issue of Vogue is coming up, just so you know.
John:
I don't read those.
John:
I don't read the big... You don't even have a TV.
John:
Because I can't stand magazines that have perfume in them.
John:
If I get a magazine, every once in a while somebody will, or not somebody, every once in a while Vanity Fair will send some Vanity Fair at me into the mail.
Merlin:
They'll send some Vanity Fair at you.
John:
Yeah, and I'm like, don't do this.
John:
I don't want this.
John:
You know, like, yes, okay, maybe there's a very interesting profile on John F. Kennedy Jr.
John:
in a Vanity Fair that I might actually want to read, but do not send these to my mailbox unbidden because I open my mailbox and four conflicting male perfumes start pouring out and then I have an allergy attack.
Merlin:
That's no way to live.
John:
I don't even carry an inhaler.
John:
Oh, but I should have one just for an encounter with a random vanity fair.
John:
What a terrible condition.
John:
Look, but so I see this photograph of this guy.
John:
standing out in front of a fashion show, and he's wearing very old, ripped, you know, like knee-ripped Levi's.
John:
They're not just blown out at the knee.
John:
They're like ripped all the way down, like a carefully ripped set of old Levi's.
John:
Sure.
John:
Where you go, mm-hmm.
John:
Mm-hmm.
John:
Fancy rips.
John:
But they're not fancy ripped on some pre-ripped jeans.
John:
They're vintage Levi's that have been fancy ripped.
Yeah.
John:
And the way you fancy rip a pair of Levi's, a lot of people don't know this, is you delicately run a razor.
Merlin:
Just very delicate.
Merlin:
And then let entropy do the work.
Merlin:
That's right.
Merlin:
All you're doing is getting it started.
John:
You're just getting it started with a little bit of a razor cut across the pants all the way down.
John:
And then they fray very well.
John:
So he's wearing these.
John:
And then a double-breasted blue blazer with brass buttons.
John:
And, you know, an open collared shirt, and then his hair is really, really slicked with a side part in a kind of, let's just call it what it is, brown shirt haircut.
John:
Oh, like a post-McElmore.
John:
Yeah, pre-Mackelmore.
John:
Oh, pre-Mackelmore.
John:
Pre-Mackelmore.
John:
Post-Weimar.
John:
Post-Weimar, pre-Mackelmore.
John:
Okay.
John:
And I look at this and I'm like, the element here, the unexpected element is the double-breasted blazer, which is like, huh, there's some flair happening with that double-breasted blazer.
John:
That is not a thing that anybody expected.
John:
And so I, the next opportunity, got a double-breasted blazer with brass buttons.
John:
That's hard to say.
John:
A blue double-breasted blazer with brass buttons.
John:
Nice.
John:
And I would put that blazer on in my house, and I'd say, here I go, out the door in my blue double-breasted brass... LAUGHTER
John:
You can only say it a couple of times.
John:
I'll Pro Tools it in.
John:
You'll be fine.
John:
And I would get to the front door, and I would be like, huh.
Merlin:
Yeah.
Merlin:
Hmm.
Merlin:
But you'd pause a moment.
Merlin:
You'd think something wasn't quite right about it?
John:
Yeah, I would stop and I would say... It seems like on the face of it, you're tall.
Merlin:
It seemed like that would be a good look on you.
John:
I think so, too.
Merlin:
Did you look like a serial mascot or something?
John:
No, I looked amazing.
Merlin:
Yeah.
John:
But I paused at the front door because it was not my...
John:
Invention.
John:
Oh, okay.
John:
I saw a picture of a guy, and every once in a while you see a picture of somebody and you're like, that belongs to me.
John:
That's not even yours.
John:
You're wearing that, but you don't even know what it is.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And you know, you feel it in your gut.
Merlin:
You don't have to think about it.
Merlin:
Like, you know, like, oh, that's my thing.
John:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John:
The first time, one time many, many years ago, Sean Nelson and I were driving in a car.
John:
And we were driving along, I was driving, and the light turned yellow.
John:
And the light turned yellow at, and we were at a remove from that light sufficient that I could have applied the brakes and stopped.
John:
Should have probably, if you want to be a stickler about the law.
John:
But surveying the scene, looking to the left and to the right, I realized that there was no impediment to me continuing forward.
John:
And I neither applied the brakes nor the accelerator, but simply let the car move as it was moving.
John:
You kept on keeping on.
John:
I kept on keeping on.
John:
And so went through the intersection as the light was changing to the stop.
John:
Let's say I was in the intersection as it was still yellow, but we continued moving through the red.
John:
And Sean, in a gesture where he was, you know, indicating a kind of, like...
John:
contempt even for my insouciance for my sort of like devil may care he raised his hands in the air and went like two shooting two pistols like a bandito into the air but it was not in admiration he was doing it as a commentary like you know I guess the laws don't apply here I'm a bandito
John:
And I saw the gesture and I said, that belongs to me now.
John:
You made that gesture in reference to me.
John:
And it is not a gesture that you are using for yourself because it doesn't belong to you.
John:
It belongs to me.
John:
And I started to, when I was about to do something reckless, go in the air with my finger.
John:
It sounds like a you bit.
John:
That's right.
John:
Well, it became a you bit.
John:
It became a me bit.
John:
And now everyone, I mean, I do it all the time.
John:
Everyone I know associates it with me.
John:
It's just a way of saying like, okay, well, fuck it.
John:
And Sean has a long time ago, I think saw me do it and commented like, Hey, you got that from me.
Merlin:
You took that from me.
Merlin:
And so Sean probably said to you, uh, it's a, it's called, uh, it's not your friend.
Merlin:
It's your business.
John:
Well, and a little bit.
John:
Like, what were you going to do?
John:
You stole that one from him, too.
John:
Yeah.
John:
What were you going to do with that, Sean?
John:
You were never going to use it again.
John:
And you were using it, like, let's say, against me.
John:
And I repurposed it.
John:
Right?
John:
It's my nigga.
John:
Right?
John:
Like, I took it back.
John:
Oh, dear.
John:
I took those guns back.
John:
Oh, I get it.
John:
You're taking back the night.
John:
Taken back the night.
John:
I took those guns back and I made it a positive.
John:
I spun it.
Merlin:
And so there's a little bit of like... I hope this is not a show that someone's listening to to learn English.
Merlin:
We're so deep in analogies and metaphors at this point.
Merlin:
I'm so disoriented.
Merlin:
But your point is that sometimes it belongs better on somebody.
Merlin:
It's just that when it came to the blue, blue, black, black, button, button blazer, you felt like, no, no, no.
Merlin:
That's that guy's.
Merlin:
That's Hitler hair.
John:
Well, I still can't.
John:
So I have done this now several times.
John:
I didn't get rid of the double-breasted blue blazer with brass buttons.
John:
And I put it on sometimes and I get as far as the threshold of my house and I stop and I say, this looks amazing on me.
John:
There's no one else in Seattle that's doing this.
John:
Commodore Schmidlap.
John:
Yeah, this is my homage to Caddyshack, right?
John:
Or whatever it is.
John:
Like, this guy was in New York City.
John:
Nobody's going to come at me and say, wait a minute.
John:
I mean, now that I've revealed, I've showed my hand on this program, if anybody ever sees me in a double-breasted blue blazer with brass buttons, they're going to say, I know that.
John:
I know what you're doing.
John:
But...
John:
But I never was able to get outside in this thing.
John:
And partly it's because I don't know when you sit down in a double-breasted blazer, apparently you're supposed to leave it buttoned.
John:
And I can't do that.
John:
I find it very uncomfortable to leave the jacket buttoned when I sit down because I've trained myself to unbutton a jacket before I sit down.
Merlin:
Do you do that thing that gentlemen do where you, when you rise, do you button a button?
John:
Yeah.
Merlin:
But you leave it unbuttoned when you're seated.
John:
That's right.
John:
I love that move.
John:
It's a great move.
Merlin:
There's this one section of 2001 that I'll just watch a lot.
Merlin:
It's that whole, like, you know, in the middle of the...
Merlin:
I don't know which act you'd call it, but it's when— 14th act.
Merlin:
It's when—what's his name?
Merlin:
Haygood Marshall.
Merlin:
Floyd Haywood.
Merlin:
When he goes to the space station, and it's just courtliness on a spaceship.
Merlin:
It's just sitting and having a drink.
Merlin:
It's doing the little phone call.
Merlin:
And then he goes and he has the meeting with the people.
Merlin:
And he does that move.
Merlin:
He does that move very well.
Merlin:
Is it Haywood Floyd?
Merlin:
Is that his name?
Merlin:
Floyd Wood Hay.
Merlin:
I want to say... Floyd Haywood?
Merlin:
I'm having a tough morning.
John:
Flurb, florb, florb.
John:
Haywood Floyd.
John:
Haywood Floyd.
John:
You were very close, or even on it.
Merlin:
Haywood Floyd.
Merlin:
It's very... It makes me... It's one of those things when I watch that.
Merlin:
It's like watching a James Coburn movie or something where you're like, man, I wouldn't mind being in the 60s.
Merlin:
Men would unbutton their...
Merlin:
Their jacket to sit down, and they button it up again when they stand up.
John:
Yeah, you can still do it.
John:
You can still do it.
Merlin:
You can still do that.
Merlin:
Oh, yeah, I do it all the time.
Merlin:
But you can't do it double-breasted.
John:
Well, I just don't know.
John:
I don't know the rules.
Merlin:
I mean, as much as I thought Letterman was a riot, and when he started wearing the wrestling shoes with khaki pants, and that was a funny thing, but he used to drive me nuts that he wouldn't button up his double-breasted blazer.
Merlin:
Yeah, he would leave it flapping around.
John:
It looked so stupid.
John:
It looked terrible.
John:
He looked like a manta ray.
Right.
John:
It's fucking flappy wings.
John:
It's like not tying your gi.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Why not?
John:
You got to tie your gi.
John:
Tie your fucking gi.
John:
Well, so, and the thing about 2001, if you think about it.
John:
That's so weird.
John:
If you think about 2001, A Space Odyssey, we think of it as expressing the 60s.
John:
But really, there was a very brief moment
John:
Where so much of what constituted the 60s, and I'm not talking about the hippie 60s, but I'm talking about like the tight, the buttoned up 60s, the Buzz Aldrin 60s.
John:
Like Dick Van Dyke 60s.
John:
The Dick Van Dyke 60s.
John:
So much of that was still reverberating or even only reverberating.
Merlin:
Especially in the straight world.
Merlin:
You might grow your hair a little bit longer, but you still had a tailored suit.
John:
Absolutely.
John:
And that carried into the 70s, into our era.
John:
When we were kids...
John:
We were still, we don't think, you know, 2001 doesn't seem like a thing of our era.
John:
But in fact, it was because something that happened five years ago now.
Merlin:
I know, I know, I know.
Merlin:
Isn't that funny?
John:
Something that happened in 2011.
Merlin:
I was listening to Super Chunk all morning and each time I was listening so much Super Chunk.
Merlin:
I was like, every time a song came on, I went, this is 21 years old.
Merlin:
This is 21 years old.
Merlin:
This is 21 years old.
Merlin:
And like to me, like I would see distinctions within like a given year about stuff.
Merlin:
You know, when you're a little kid and you would go like, oh, my gosh, it's 1985.
Merlin:
And you're like, oh, my God, this rerun from 1982 is so dated.
John:
Yeah, right.
John:
Or this fashion from earlier in 1985.
Merlin:
Oh, absolutely.
Merlin:
I mean, you were so, again, and this goes back to the beginning, I guess, this kind of just environmental awareness where you're so, you can't help but be super aware of certain things.
Merlin:
I agree with you, though.
Merlin:
I still watch that.
Merlin:
Timeless isn't too strong of a word, but I still think a bunch of the sequences in that stand up so well today.
John:
Well, and so when we were seven years old, that movie was what, seven, eight years old?
John:
It came out in 69.
John:
It still looks exquisite.
John:
It was only six years old when I was seven years old.
John:
At a point when I was getting into space and imagining what life in space was going to be like, it was essentially the most recent idea.
John:
And what space was going to be was very chic.
Merlin:
And it would be analogous to taking a business class flight.
John:
Yeah, exactly.
John:
Exactly.
John:
Right.
John:
You know, everybody was was dressed very well.
Merlin:
There were ladies in Velcro shoes are going to bring you a juice box.
John:
Pan Pan American Airlines was that was the purveyor.
John:
And it was it really influenced us.
John:
And it was only when Star Wars happened.
John:
And the aesthetic of Star Wars was like, actually, a lot of the a lot of the the spaceships you're going to be riding in are kind of a little bit greasy.
Merlin:
Yeah.
Merlin:
The kit bash look.
Merlin:
Yeah.
John:
Yeah.
John:
But that was – so anyway, it feels like that was a very brief moment in time when we were imagining colonizing space and it was going to be elegant.
John:
And then it became unelegant.
John:
All through the space – all through the shuttle years, it always felt to me kind of like, yeah, astronauts were the people that were – that did pretty well in biology.
John:
Right.
John:
They weren't this swashbuckling Navy pilots that they had been in the 60s, although they I'm sure all the astronauts were Navy pilots until recent times.
John:
But it was much more like, oh, yeah, we're going to send a teacher into space.
John:
It's going to be, you know, it's it's much it's it's it's not elegant.
John:
It's very much like we're working here.
John:
This is we're doing work now.
John:
It's not, we're not just like bold explorers.
John:
We are up here doing tasks.
Merlin:
Yeah, there's work to be done here.
Merlin:
This is not some flight of fancy.
John:
No, like, hey, hand me that wrench.
John:
And the person like the astronaut throws the wrench in it.
John:
It flies across, and the other person grabs the wrench, and we're like, whee!
John:
We're in space!
John:
But really, we're just doing some work.
John:
We're working on cars up there.
John:
Like, we're throwing wrenches back and forth instead of martinis.
John:
Like, if somebody was like, send me a martini, and you flew a martini over, how different is that than a wrench, right?
John:
And now we're introducing these four-pay, like, Elon Musk jets, and you think...
John:
Yeah, there's going to be some fake elegance there.
John:
It's going to be like flying Virgin Airlines where there's some purple lighting.
John:
But I still, that's not, I mean, maybe we've just, maybe we've lost the elegance of the 60s and that's what I'm complaining about.
John:
Even the elegance of the 60s as prognosticated into space flight, into SSTs.
John:
Don't you wish that you'd ridden an SST?
Merlin:
I wish – I don't know what I wish.
Merlin:
Wish upon a star?
Merlin:
Well, part of it is the technological idea of like, boy, it really would be neat to be living in a time when we were looking beyond – it's not like we're even like that carefully looking at the problems of our planet.
Merlin:
But we were looking much broader than that because to me, like if you start thinking about your place in the rest of the universe, you can't help but think more about where you live.
Merlin:
Yeah.
Merlin:
And I think that's something that gets lost sometimes is when people talk about moving sidewalks and jetpacks is like when we lost the ambition to think about what was in the rest of the universe and put a budget on it.
Merlin:
Yes, sure.
Merlin:
There's still stuff here and there.
Merlin:
But, you know, in our kids, like, is somebody going to go to the moon again?
Merlin:
Like, I don't know.
Merlin:
It seems like they'd have to at some point.
Merlin:
But why are we working on that?
Merlin:
Because when we look beyond our planet, we have to naturally think more about our planet.
Merlin:
Anybody who comes back from space and has seen that view comes back with this singular feeling about their home, this planet Earth, this spaceship that we're already on.
Merlin:
And I don't know.
Merlin:
It's not difficult for me to wax rhapsodic about this.
Merlin:
But I think that's one problem.
Merlin:
Sure, there's the part of me that wishes I could be Haywood Floyd and go fly around in a suit and, you know.
Merlin:
And eat a sandwich with the crew, you know, going to see the obelisk and all that.
Merlin:
But no, the other part of it is, and this is just the old, you know, our old point, which is like, is there just something, it makes me a little bit sad inside that we've lost our zest for exploration and not just macho exploration, but just exploration for its own sake that helps us to understand just more about the world outside of our world.
Merlin:
And I think that makes our life on this planet somewhat diminished as long as we're not doing that.
Merlin:
I don't think about it a lot, but I do think about it.
John:
I'm always astonished that that like strong advocacy for space exploration is a controversial topic because you and I share a feeling of like, yes, we should be exploring space.
John:
What?
John:
Why are we even talking about this?
John:
I'm embarrassed that we are doing such a poor job of it and have been for so long.
John:
Not just that we should, but like, what the fuck are we doing?
Merlin:
It feels like it's something we were made to do.
Merlin:
Once we got that ability, it seems like the kind of thing where to go and explore even near space responsibly, it feels like our destiny.
John:
Yeah, and I wonder whether, like, when the Vikings came to Newlandia, or whatever they called it, New Forestia, up there in Canada,
John:
then nobody from Europe came back to the Americas for another 500 years.
John:
The Vikings made it over here.
John:
They dug some pits.
John:
They forged some iron, as a Viking will do.
John:
And then either those Vikings died or they got back on their boat and went home and then never made it back here.
John:
But like Vikings made it to North America and then did not come back.
John:
And for 500 more years, there was the there be dragons until until the Spanish and the Italians and the Portuguese, the Portuguese, uh, headed back out and said, like, let's just go see if we can, uh, get rich by raping people.
John:
But then they made it here and then once Magellan sailed around the world, it's not like there was another hundred years where people in Europe were like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
John:
Let's take it easy.
John:
This isn't in our budget.
John:
And what it was was somebody found gold.
John:
And no one has found gold in outer space yet.
John:
Right.
John:
And so, you know, we went up there.
Merlin:
We we put whatever like there's there's unobtainium.
Merlin:
There's something up there that we need for this purpose.
Merlin:
And the space race starts all over again.
Merlin:
That kind of motivation.
John:
We put a dozen people on the moon.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And it was like, OK, good.
John:
We can do it.
John:
And I bet the Russians are scared.
John:
But there was no, you got to the moon and it was like dust mines.
John:
Let's bring back some more dust.
John:
This dust is worth a lot of money only because only 12 people have been here.
John:
How many people?
John:
But yeah, something's going to happen up there where somebody realizes, oh, I can collect fairy dust up here.
John:
And use that fairy dust to something, you know, to build a cubic zirconium or, you know, like it's a, it's a, it's a thing.
John:
It's a thing.
John:
Maybe there's some new, you know, some new drug up there.
John:
One that does what it should.
John:
One that doesn't make you feel too bad.
John:
One that doesn't make you feel too good.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Merlin:
I think I went into a fugue state for a minute there.
Merlin:
All right.