Ep. 226: "A Cocaine Aperture"
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Merlin: Hello?
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Hi, Merlin.
Merlin: How's it going?
John: Oh, I remember.
John: I was in the olive oil business with his father.
Merlin: Oh, man.
Merlin: That warms my heart.
Merlin: That's your avatar.
Merlin: Oh, you recognize Frankie Five Angels.
John: I wasn't in no mafia.
Merlin: Yeah, you know, he always liked history.
Merlin: He liked studying the Romans.
Merlin: He did.
Merlin: You know what a Roman would do.
Merlin: Oh, yeah, he's smoking a cigar.
Merlin: Tom reminds him what a Roman would do.
Merlin: Wow, you're good.
Merlin: That's what a Roman would do.
Merlin: When's the last time you watched Godfather 2?
Merlin: How recently?
John: I feel like I'm watching it in my head all the time, but it's been a long time because, as you know, I don't have a TV.
John: But I've been... You make me earn it.
John: You make me earn it every week.
John: I've been confused about... This is a question I can put to you.
John: Maybe some of your friends in the tech industry can help me.
Merlin: Oh, so the people in the app community?
John: Some people in the app community.
John: Some of the people that are, let's say, the disruptors.
John: Sure, let's reach out.
John: Okay, I want to watch movies.
Merlin: I want to watch my choice of movies.
Merlin: Okay, John wants to watch movies.
Merlin: He wants it to be his choice of movies.
Merlin: Okay, so far so good.
Merlin: I'm working on a spec right now.
Merlin: I'm doing a little outline.
John: Okay, I want to watch a movie of my choice.
John: I don't want to log on to a site and have them recommend The Walking Dead to me.
John: Right?
John: I don't want to have... Because one time I watched a Clint Eastwood movie, I don't want to have a thing recommend the same four Clint Eastwood movies to me every time I go on the internet.
Merlin: Okay, so John wants to watch movies of his choice.
Merlin: He does not want to be helped.
John: That's right.
John: I don't want any help.
John: I know the movies I want to see.
Merlin: You're going to go straight to the movie you want to watch.
John: Here's what... What I want... I have a friend.
John: I want to show this friend...
John: Some movies of my, you know, my movies, the movies of my life.
John: This is a thing I always expected one day I would do with my daughter.
John: Is this your friend the millennium?
John: She'd be, well, let's talk about my daughter for a second.
John: She'll be 14 and I'll sit her in a chair and I'll say, this is the breakfast club.
John: Oh, okay.
John: Or the breakfast club.
Merlin: Breakfast club.
John: And she won't be interested, but it'll be like, it'll be like whatever.
John: They tried to sit me down and make me watch.
John: It's a wonderful life.
John: Right, right.
John: But yes, so my millennium friend, my millennium girlfriend, has never seen Blade Runner.
John: She's never seen The Godfathers.
Merlin: She's never seen... She's been to law school, but she hasn't seen The Godfather movies?
Merlin: I can't believe that's not on the form.
John: I don't understand a lot of things.
John: She's not a wartime conciliary.
John: Here's the thing.
John: It occurred to me the other day.
John: There's an...
John: One day, the last person who ever sat in a movie theater and yelled, focus, will be gone.
John: There are barely any of us left now.
John: Can you imagine?
John: There are dozens and dozens of people, maybe hundreds of dozens, listening to this show right now who have no idea what I'm talking about.
John: Focus!
John: Yeah.
John: Did you ever get up out of a movie and walk up the aisle...
Merlin: to find the projectionist to grab him by the shirt collar and say focus yeah i have um i feel like on at least one occasion probably two occasions i have gone and sought out some technical help with what was happening in the theater
Merlin: Especially at, we had a phenomenon in the 80s and 90s was the Dollar Theater, where, I don't know if you had this where you were, but at least in Sarasota, it was called Teatro, there was a place that would show movies for a dollar.
Merlin: And it would be like late in the run of the movie or second run movies, but it was still like a pretty good movie.
Merlin: You'd go see like a regular movie for a dollar.
Merlin: I think they got pretty slack.
Merlin: about the project and this is back in the day you know we'd have to watch for the little blip in the corner to know when to change the next reel all that kind of stuff and i yeah you know what i'll be honest i've gotten out of my seat and i've sought help yeah yeah i've wandered up and down in the uh in the in the halls of a movie theater yelling focus
John: Trying to get somebody to come back in and focus the camera.
John: But none of that.
John: That's me in my head every minute of the day anyway.
John: Focus!
John: Focus, please.
John: You know, I've been showing her movies.
Merlin: Do you have a general plan for this?
Merlin: Is this a haphazard thing?
Merlin: Is this a this occurred to me thing?
Merlin: Or have you worked out a syllabus for her?
John: Well, so here's the problem.
Hmm.
John: The first thing, the first attempt I made was, oh, Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
John: You got to see Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
John: She was like, never heard of it.
John: All right.
John: So I am able to find it on the Internet.
John: And I queue it up.
John: And we're watching it.
John: And she doesn't fall asleep.
John: But you can tell she would fall asleep.
John: If someone weren't watching her, if someone weren't going, huh?
John: Huh?
Merlin: Right?
John: Right?
John: And as I'm watching it, I'm realizing, oh, this was a movie made in the 1970s.
John: The pacing.
John: Pacing is very different.
John: Yeah.
John: Very different.
John: And also, I mean, the first 20 minutes of the movie just establishes
John: What's his butt?
John: Dreyfus.
John: Dreyfus just establishes that Dreyfus has a really unhappy home life.
John: Everybody's shouting at each other.
John: The kids are out of control.
John: The wife doesn't understand him.
John: But what it effectively is is 20 minutes of yelling.
John: Yelling in the house.
John: Everybody's yelling.
John: And I remember, I think it was innovative at the time because there weren't a lot of movies that showed what
Merlin: what i guess passed for like wow this is real it feels real it's like we're really in these people's homes spielberg i think is uh was very good and maybe somewhat pioneering in the size and blockbuster-ness of his movies he was good at doing a lot of the setting like think about jaws think about how good jaws does something very similar where you're just going to get a feel for what's going on in this little vacation community before anything happens
John: But, sort of like, if you watch, you remember watching Lonesome Dove at the time?
John: I've never seen Lonesome Dove.
John: So Lonesome Dove was a major television event.
John: And it was, you know, there was a lot of, like,
John: Gory violence it was it was supposed to be really really like like Yeah cinematic but also like no one had never before seen levels of truth It's not gonna be like an after-school special or a lifetime movie.
Merlin: This is the real stuff, right?
John: But when you watch it now
John: It just seems corny, right?
John: The costumes seem very much like costumes.
John: There's a lot of slapsticky humor to try and leaven the occasional violence.
John: Like relative to even Unforgiven, it just seems like a TV Western.
John: By the way, if you like Clint Eastwood movies, I can recommend some for you.
John: Oh, thank you.
John: Thank you.
John: But so watching close encounters I realized oh the pacing is really slow There's a lot of just sort of bickering that now
John: Like, we get plenty of bickering on TV, right?
John: There's, I mean, 80% of all TV now is just people yelling at each other.
John: You assume.
John: About, I mean, I see it on, when I'm in the airports.
John: When you're reading the trades.
John: Yeah, it's up there on the screens.
Merlin: Yeah, especially the news things that they put on a screen in an airport.
Merlin: It's a lot of yelling.
Merlin: Everybody's yelling.
John: There's a lot of yelling, and I also know that people are yelling about house renovations and
John: Uh, they have to make fashion items very quickly.
John: Yes.
John: Uh, other stuff, a lot of yelling.
John: So, so yeah, she's not into close encounters and I'm seeing it through her eyes and I'm like, Oh wow.
John: Uh, right.
John: Okay.
John: Okay.
John: Okay.
John: Well, uh, close encounters is sort of an anomalous here.
John: Uh, because also the amazing special, special effects and the notion that aliens were visiting us, which were also very new, uh,
John: new to consider, now are mundane and commonplace.
John: So I go, okay, okay, okay, let's watch The Sting.
Merlin: And I pull up The Sting.
Merlin: The Sting, that's a really good film, but it kind of looks a lot like a TV movie.
John: Well, looks like a TV movie, and also, from the opening credits, I realize it's a 70s movie, right?
John: So, in a contemporary movie, the car would pull up, and
John: And then the person driving the car would bust in the door and say the line.
John: It's, you know, it's springtime for Hitler.
John: Or whatever.
John: I don't remember the dialogue.
John: But in this, in the sting, the car pulls up outside.
John: We see the guy get out of the car, run across the street, in the door, and up four flights of stairs.
John: And we watch him go crazy.
John: up four flights of stairs from like seven different camera angles.
John: Then down a hall, we see his hand hit the doorknob, he opens the door, walks through the office to the second door, opens the door and says his line.
John: And we never see that actor again.
John: It's pretty uncompressed.
John: And you go, woo!
John: Boy, that was a real adventure.
John: And it did not move the plot forward at all.
John: And the whole time you're thinking to yourself, is this guy important?
John: Is he going to get shot on these stairs?
John: Is he going to get shot in this hallway?
John: Like we're really, really following this guy.
John: So she falls asleep.
John: And I'm like, oh, my God, is this this isn't going to happen to Blade Runner, too.
John: Like, she's not going to fall asleep during Blade Runner.
John: I wouldn't know what to do in that case.
John: You'd have to make some decisions, my friend.
John: Well, and so, I mean, what I'm doing right now is like, let's lay the godfather way back.
John: We're going to put it way, way back because that's the type of thing we're probably going to have to watch at one o'clock in the afternoon.
John: And that's not going to make any sense.
John: But
John: There's no way I'm going to like lay in bed and watch the Godfather in the context of like, oh, you're going to love this and then have her fall asleep.
John: Right.
John: But the problem is before I even get to that point, I can't find the Blade Runner.
John: I can't find find how to watch it.
John: The Blade Runner is out there.
John: I know I could Tor it or something.
John: I could Onion Tor it if I wanted to watch it without any Bluetooths or somehow get on there without my location services.
John: Your concern is that Blade Runner might only be on the dark web.
John: Yeah.
John: Where else can you find it?
John: You have to stream it, which means you have to, you know, you log on and give your IP address.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: You're right.
Merlin: Yeah, the IP, you got to put it right in there, the IP.
John: I don't want to put my IP address in there.
John: You just want to watch the movie.
John: Just show me the movie.
John: That's right.
John: It's on the Internet somewhere.
John: I know it is.
John: The Internet should be like a big TV where you go in and you say, Internet, Siri.
John: I want to watch Apocalypse Now and not the Red Yeu version because that version is garbage trash.
John: But actually, there are a couple of scenes in the Red Yeu version that are kind of cool.
John: I think you should watch Red Yeu for the fifth viewing.
John: I do not think...
John: that 90% of that, the whole French Chateau... It's very interesting.
Merlin: It's like reserve reading for the movie.
Merlin: It adds things to it, but it was a good decision to cut it out of the original release.
John: Yeah.
John: The whole scene where they go to a third location with the Playboy Bunnies?
John: Yeah.
John: I didn't need to see that.
John: I could imagine it.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: But if I could say, Siri...
John: I would like to see the original Apocalypse Now with the following two additional 30-second snippets from Regia.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
John: That I would like to have because they are the ones that I liked.
Merlin: so you why can't you have the internet do that movies with mix-ins you want your ability it's like you go to an ice cream place and you're like uh you know uh give me give me a little bit of heath heath uh heath bar but i don't want any sprinkles you you go in and you get your own bespoke version of a movie that you enjoy even though you don't on tv yeah yeah exactly right if george lucas can go put uh like smoke rings
John: Around Death Stars and claim that that's his artistic vision.
John: Like in today's world, we're all artists.
John: We're all remixers.
Merlin: Oh, you know, you know, we're all makers, John.
John: We're all makers, right?
John: If I take your work and consume it and poop it out, it belongs to me.
John: So why can't I put smoke rings?
John: around Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
Merlin: Oh, that's a really good point.
John: Without putting in your IP address.
John: I don't want to put my IP in there.
John: I don't even know if I can find it.
John: Sure, sure.
John: But when Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid jump off the cliff into the river, why not have an explosion?
Merlin: Or if you're the kind of insufferable person that I am, there's times when you want somebody to really, really listen to what they said.
Merlin: So you might want a scene, a very short snippet of a scene to play three times.
Merlin: And you could program that in.
Merlin: You go, tears in rain, tears in rain.
Merlin: See, it's not tears in the rain.
Merlin: It's tears in rain.
Merlin: So that way she learns it right the first time through your mashup remix.
Merlin: What?
Merlin: People say tears in the rain?
Merlin: People say tears in the rain all the time.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: And it's all I can do.
Merlin: Tears in the rain.
Merlin: I get a lot of quotes wrong, but that's when you really you need to get that one right.
John: Tears in rain.
John: Tears in rain.
John: I was thinking the other day, it's not just Roy Batty.
John: who saw, you know, who saw the sea beams glitter in the town, Tannhauser Gate.
John: Yeah, right.
John: Shoulder of Orion.
John: Yeah, watch the attack ships burning off the shoulder of Orion.
John: It's not just those memories which are lost, like tears and rain.
John: Merlin, it's all of our memories.
John: My memories also, my memories of...
John: of eating Kentucky Fried Chicken on Thanksgiving and watching a wrestling match in Minneapolis, California, those are going to be lost like tears in rain, too.
Merlin: You had Thanksgiving in Minneapolis, California?
Merlin: From KFC?
Merlin: I think your hard drive might be a little fragmented.
Merlin: My first Thanksgiving away from home.
John: I was in Minneapolis, California.
John: I can remember it like yesterday.
John: Had the bucket?
John: Yeah.
John: I was like, what do you do on Thanksgiving?
John: I don't know where to get a turkey dinner.
John: I never had a Thanksgiving without a turkey dinner.
John: Yeah.
John: And I was like, Kentucky Fried Chicken.
John: Finger looking good.
John: A little gravy.
John: Sure.
John: And I got getting out of the rain.
Merlin: Yeah, sure.
Merlin: It can be real rainy in Minneapolis, California in November.
John: It can.
John: And I was hawking tickets.
John: That was my job at the time.
Merlin: You were a ticket hawker.
John: I had a friend that worked at the...
John: Worked at the Hudson Bay Company or whatever.
John: And he worked in the ticket office and he could always get me like four extra tickets to, you know, to Haircut 100 or the English Beat or whatever.
John: And he would give me four tickets and I could hawk them.
John: Right?
John: Scalp them.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
Merlin: It's kind of like, it's like a little like Amway or something.
John: Yeah, well, but I mean, it's on the down low, right?
John: He's taking these unsold tickets.
John: I'm standing out in front of the theater.
John: I'm standing out in front of the First Avenue Theater in Minneapolis, California, made famous by Prince.
Merlin: Oh, that's right.
Merlin: Yeah, of course.
Merlin: That's where he did his famous introduction of Purple Rain.
Merlin: Yeah, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum.
Merlin: Don't, don't.
Merlin: But I don't know.
Merlin: Um.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Without revealing too much about your technology stack, John, when you're watching televisual entertainment, given that you clearly do not own a television set or have access to a television set, do you watch it on like a laptop?
Merlin: That's what I have to do now.
Merlin: And the Millennium is used to that.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah, right.
John: You know, she's watching Mindy Kalin on there all the time.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: Mindy Kalin, they probably cut that.
Merlin: You know, they started doing that a few years ago where they're cutting stuff differently, knowing that people were going to watch it on different sized screens.
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: You get more close-up shots.
Merlin: You don't get as much.
Merlin: It varies.
Merlin: Who knows how that's changed?
Merlin: Because not everybody owns a TV anymore.
Merlin: Well, can I have a little bit about your Millennium Girlfriend?
Merlin: I'll keep this tasteful.
Merlin: Yeah, go ahead.
Merlin: Now, does she feel anything similar with regard to you?
Merlin: Does she feel like you need to see Saved by the Bell the postgraduate years?
Merlin: I don't even know what Millenniums watch.
Merlin: Does she want you to watch David Blaine videos on YouTube?
Merlin: Does she feel the need to inculcate you into her values as well?
John: Well, yes, but she is much more interested in contemporary things.
John: She wants me to watch...
John: Black Mirror, Black Onion, or whatever.
Merlin: Oh, you should watch Black Mirror.
Merlin: That's good.
John: Well, I have, and I do enjoy Black Mirror.
John: Okay.
John: But when I'm thinking, oh, I want to watch a diversion, or a diversional program, Black Mirror seems like something that I need to...
John: really focus my attention on.
Merlin: Yeah, I'm that way with a lot of stuff.
Merlin: With Westworld, I have got to just sit down and just watch.
Merlin: Westworld's a TV show, by the way.
Merlin: Oh, no, I've been watching Westworld.
Merlin: Shut up.
Merlin: I have.
Merlin: What are you up to?
Merlin: What episode are you up to?
Merlin: Let's see.
Merlin: Well, spoiler alert.
Merlin: No, we're not going to talk about the plot.
Merlin: Oh, okay.
Merlin: But the finale was last night, and wow, was that ever a thing?
Merlin: I don't count episodes.
John: Okay.
John: Oh, I see.
John: I'm up to the one where it's passed, and they're like, whoa, say what?
John: So you're like around six, probably six or seven, something like that.
John: Yeah, something like that, where it's like, whoa, okay.
Merlin: This is different than what we thought, yeah.
John: Yeah, but I also, a long time ago, stopped really closely examining the plot.
John: Because pretty close to like three episodes in, I said, okay.
John: All right.
John: There's a lot of time compression happening here that isn't being explicitly described.
John: Okay, that's enough.
Merlin: That's enough.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: But I would encourage you to stick with it.
Merlin: I'm a fan, so I can't say.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Okay, interesting.
Merlin: So she watches that.
Merlin: I have to tell you what I find a little bit perplexing about this, and that I find perplexing about Millenniums in general, is for a while you hear Millenniums say, well, of course I know I love Lucy or Gunsmoke.
Merlin: That was on in reruns on cable all the time.
Merlin: Right, Gunsmoke.
Merlin: Have you seen Gunsmoke?
Merlin: I've barely seen Gunsmoke.
Merlin: I mean, of course, I saw Gunsmoke.
Merlin: I'm not an animal.
Merlin: It was on for like 119 years.
Merlin: But that's the thing is a lot of millennials, maybe a little bit older than her, have seen lots of stuff because it would run on cable.
Merlin: Now, my question is, I don't want to sound normative, but is she Amish or something?
Merlin: Did she just not watch a bunch of like USA when she was in high school?
John: Well, here's the problem.
John: Was she homeschooled?
John: No, she grew up in the Netherlands.
John: Oh, for the love.
John: Wow.
John: Wait, there's more, because in the Netherlands, they watched American TV.
John: Okay.
John: But it had hard-coded Dutch subs.
John: No, no, no, no.
John: That's how the, that's how the Netherlanders, the Nederlanders know how to speak English so well because they're, it's a small country and it wasn't a, it wasn't a big enough country where it made financial sense to like overdub TV shows.
John: Interesting.
John: You're going to spend all this money having a Dutch guy, you know, like a blue Vishnuva over the, uh, over the thing.
John: No, they just broadcast the shows in their original American language and
John: And so the Dutch were like, ah, it's close enough to Dutch.
John: We'll figure it out.
John: And then they all speak English better than we do.
John: Whereas in France, where France is a big enough country that they can spend the money to have it dubbed into France, none of them can speak a word of English.
John: No, they choose not to.
John: They prefer not to.
John: Yeah.
John: If you go to most countries in Europe,
John: you'll find that the people that have even a modicum of education speak English pretty well to you.
John: But in French, even professors of English in French can't speak English at all.
John: You don't want to learn too much.
John: Well, right, because it would make you start to not like Jerry Lewis.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
John: See, you don't want to know what's going on.
John: It's kind of cultural perfidy.
John: Yeah, okay.
John: Anyway, so not only did she grow up in Dutch, but went to British schools.
John: in French oh my god so yeah who knows what she's seen you know what I mean like I keep trying to figure it out like did you do you know what this is but she's like you know she's by all appearances American speaks an unaccented English knows gets a lot of references to things that are obscure have you tried Jason Bourne movies
John: Well, see, that's over the line of like really quick cutting, lots of punching.
John: Everything's happening super duper fast with no attention.
John: You don't even have to have an attention span because it's just like somebody put some you're riding a bullet.
John: You know what I mean?
John: Yeah.
John: And I want to, like, show all these movies that are, you know, I'm not trying to show Deer Hunter, which has a 45-minute long scene where we're just at a shitty wedding somewhere.
John: Aww.
John: Like...
John: Well, that's true.
John: It's important.
John: It's important, but you're at a wedding.
John: It's 45 minutes at a wedding you don't want to be at.
Merlin: In Godfather Part 1, that wedding is a huge amount of world building, like a huge amount of introducing you to this giant cast of characters, and it's got a lot of story in it, and it's got a lot of portent.
Merlin: You get the super dark office and the super overblown outside wedding.
Merlin: Now, that's a wedding scene that really carries its water.
Merlin: Well, Johnny Fontaine shows up and makes a big splash.
Merlin: Yeah, because, you know, that would save his career and make him a big shot if he got that movie.
Merlin: That's right.
John: That's right.
Merlin: Just to show you, I'm not a hard-hearted man.
Merlin: She's the best piece of ass I ever had.
John: There's no way I'm casting Johnny Fontaine in this picture.
John: I'm a big fan of your pictures.
John: The problem is, listen, nobody comes to Las Vegas and speaks that way to Mo Green.
John: You don't talk that way to Mo Green!
John: Who gave the order?
John: Did I complain when Mo Green was shot?
Merlin: Did I ask who gave the order?
Merlin: You got to make that noise, too.
Merlin: That was the first movie.
Merlin: I'm sure we've talked about this before.
Merlin: That was Lee Strasberg's first movie.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: After all those years of teaching people how to act.
Merlin: It would be funny if his note for everybody was, I like what you're doing.
Merlin: I think it's very good, and you've got a nice emotional attachment.
Merlin: But if you considered having some kind of a tick, like maybe you have a heart problem, so you go...
Merlin: He did a good job in that film.
Merlin: Yeah, you know one of my favorite scenes of him, just the shot where they go to his house.
Merlin: And he's watching the ball game.
Merlin: He's got his foot up on the chair.
Merlin: And Mike comes in.
Merlin: And they talk about what they're going to do and whether he can make a move on the brothers.
Merlin: Is that it?
Merlin: No, it's about whether he can make a move on... Is it Clemenza?
Merlin: But I forget.
Merlin: Anyway, at that point, it's just this shot.
Merlin: Just this pretty tight shot where Roth grabs a potato chip.
Merlin: He says, eat small potatoes.
Merlin: So good!
Merlin: Is that where they're pushing Klingman out?
Merlin: I guess that's where they're... That always sounds like a great euphemism for pooping to me.
John: Yeah, that's a euphemism.
John: Push Klingman out.
John: Anyway... Yeah.
John: Okay, so... What I want... What I want... Guarantee.
Merlin: is to be able to watch films right okay so we're pivoting back to the original can i kind of mention just i'm sorry i don't want to take you off your topic we haven't talked in a while and i've missed you i want to just tell you i'm going to suggest one movie i'm just going to throw this out i know this is random have you tried back to the future well no because now this is going to get me in a little bit of trouble oh boy
Merlin: oh no obviously obviously back to the future was very important to me at the time okay so you have seen it oh come on shit dog 30 times i watched it twice in a hotel room it's so fucking good hey kid why the life preserver i can't give you a tab you gotta pay for it uh mayor that's
Merlin: Marvin Barry?
Merlin: That scene is so painful when he holds up the phone.
Merlin: Oh, it hurts.
Merlin: It hurts.
Merlin: Okay, so what's your bold, brave realization about Back to the Future?
John: Well, the thing about Back to the Future is... Don't you say a word against it.
John: It's a little bit on the Peggy Sue Got Married tip.
John: I mean, you know, I know that's I know that's not Swiss clock.
John: My friend Swiss clock.
John: Well, yeah, I mean, there's no dead weight in there, but I feel like Eric Stoltz.
John: It was my guy.
Merlin: Oh, you're still you're still miffed that he wasn't Marty.
John: I'm a little bit miffed.
John: Imagine the job.
John: Imagine the super unfunny delivery of Eric Stoltz instead of the constant spit-taking of Michael J. Fox.
John: Oh, but he falls down all the time.
John: It's hilarious.
John: It would have been a way worse movie, let's be honest.
Merlin: I'm just thinking about the wonderful scene when he's in the diner, and he's kind of got his head turned with his hand on his cheek, and then you see his father sitting next to him in exactly the same posture.
John: It's perfect.
John: It's very good.
John: Well, and also, my favorite line from any film anywhere, which I still quote, not weekly.
John: I think, you know, you hear that a lot.
John: Like, I still quote that weekly.
John: I don't quote it weekly.
John: Quarterly?
John: Maybe quarterly?
John: No, no, no.
John: More often than that.
John: Oh, okay.
John: I would say every ten weeks.
John: Every, yeah, every six to ten weeks.
John: Okay.
John: I say...
John: Like, not apropos of nothing, I always slip it into conversation where it is meaningful.
John: I say, you are my density.
John: I mean, my destiny.
John: I'll say that when it applies.
John: And I have never had a single person even turn and raise an eyebrow of recognition.
John: I feel like I'm just living in a space station where my voice isn't audible.
John: Tears and rain.
John: Right.
John: Exactly.
Merlin: I can't tell how much you really want help with this.
Merlin: I mean, there's all kinds of ways you could do this that you don't even have to put in your IP.
Merlin: Tor?
Merlin: Well, you know, I mean...
Merlin: I mean, see, I was going to say the simple solution is to... I have to log in.
Merlin: So you don't want to log in to anything.
Merlin: You just want the TV that you don't have to be able to show you the movie that doesn't exist when you feel like watching it.
Merlin: Bleep, blah, bloop.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: There's a service I signed up for a while back that I can't even believe exists because it seems...
Merlin: Oh, no, no, no.
Merlin: I'm just going to tell you about it because it's quite a larf.
Merlin: You go to vidangel, vidangel.com.
Merlin: And so I don't know if you remember hearing about this maybe 15 years ago.
Merlin: You'd hear about these services that were like, hey, listen, if you're like a person of faith or you don't like cursing, you want to watch this movie but take out the sex.
Merlin: You know, that was a big problem with a lot of PG movies in the 80s is there's boobs in it when they don't really need to be boobs.
Merlin: What if you wanted to watch this movie without unnecessary boobs?
Merlin: And I think Biebs are spelled B-E-W-B-S.
Merlin: That's how they say it in Dutch.
Merlin: Here's a good example.
Merlin: What if you wanted to watch Back to the Future without the ghost blowjob?
Merlin: Or what if you wanted to watch the X-Men movies with everything but the word fuck in it?
John: Why are people offended by the ghost blowjob, by the way?
John: I mean, compared to so many other gross things.
Merlin: It really, really, really sticks out for so many reasons.
Merlin: It sticks out because it's really unnecessarily graphic, plus it's not funny, plus it does zero for the story.
Merlin: The story I heard was that basically there were several drafts of that script, and Aykroyd kept that in, even though it meant something more significant in a previous draft, and they kept it in because they thought it was a larve.
John: This is the thing about it.
John: This is why I feel like it's meaningful is that it has Ackroyd stamped all over it because Ackroyd is the drag in that film because Ackroyd was the Ackroyd went through a Chevy Chase, right?
John: Chevy Chase went through a cocaine aperture and
John: It barely came out the other side.
John: Well, that's right.
John: There was funny, handsome Chevy Chase on one side of the cocaine aperture, and there was unbearable, tedious Chevy Chase that came out the other side of the cocaine aperture.
John: And that's the Chevy Chase that we live with to this day.
Merlin: Post-Fletch.
Merlin: I don't know the exact chronology, but I think Fletch still stands up as one of the great weird 80s movies.
Merlin: Strangely, right?
John: I think he was on the other side of the aperture and he was just connecting with something inside.
Merlin: I feel like he had already gone through the aperture at that point, but there was the residual Chevy Chase that we enjoyed, the smugness that we liked in that, but it hadn't taken over in a way that it would later.
John: Yeah, the cancer was in his body, but it hadn't completely turned him into whatever, you know, sort of like mass.
John: The comedy hadn't metastised.
John: Right.
Merlin: Now, Dan Aykroyd was, this is going to be hard to say.
Merlin: He got so, he worked very hard, but he'd also gotten some incredibly, I want to say lucky breaks, but stuff turned out really well for him in rapid succession.
Merlin: And I mean, the fact that the Blues Brothers became a thing is kind of incredible.
John: It's amazing.
John: And he's amazing in the Blues Brothers because he has to do, I mean, because he's nothing.
John: He's just... Oh, he's so good in that.
John: He's amazing in that.
John: It's the peak of his career.
John: But Dan Arkwood, even on Saturday Night Live, when he came on screen, you were like, I hope this one doesn't feature Aykroyd.
John: Hmm.
John: Because you're waiting for the greats, right?
John: I mean, you've got on this cast, you've got the great Gilda Radner.
John: You're waiting around for Dan Aykroyd?
John: No.
John: I mean, even when Elliot Gould guested, you wanted him on the program.
John: So Aykroyd is working on this movie, and he realizes he's the dud here.
John: And so he gives himself...
Merlin: a ghost blowjob scene so he can mug he can mug for the camera a little bit so not it they do not pull it off it is not funny it's not anything it's just gross yeah but okay so let me just tell you about vid angel because this is pretty amazing let me find a good example here so you go in you log i still have an account here yeah um let me tell you let me tell you the second thing about this that's crazy
Merlin: The second thing about this that is crazy is that you go in and you rent an online release of a movie.
Merlin: I'm not saying you should do this.
Merlin: I just want you to know this exists because I can't believe this is legal.
Merlin: You go in and rent an online release.
Merlin: And I've only done this a couple times, but it's basically you rent – you basically –
Merlin: You buy the movie, and then when you're done watching it, you quote-unquote return it, and they keep $2.
Merlin: Okay, that's the second part that I cannot believe they are getting away with.
Merlin: The first part, let me go find a classic here.
Merlin: The first part that's bananas is that you can go in, and using their criteria, you can choose what kind of stuff you don't want to see in the movie.
Merlin: So I'm clicking on the Revenant.
Okay.
Merlin: I don't know if you've heard, but The Revenant was very, very hard to make.
John: They were in the snow a lot, and Leonardo DiCaprio had to get killed by a sword.
Merlin: So you can go in, and you can take out things that are objectionable and disturbing.
Merlin: There are seven incidents of that.
Merlin: 81 profanities, 35 blasphemies.
Merlin: So let's go and look here.
Merlin: Under profanity, you've got 22 shits, 6 bitches, 21 dams, 4 asses, 5 hells, 22 fucks, and 1 bastard.
Merlin: Well, where's the blasphemies?
Merlin: It doesn't say directly.
Merlin: Oh, the blasphemies.
Merlin: Blasphemies.
Merlin: Let me look here.
Merlin: Okay, let's hear the blasphemies.
Merlin: Blasphemies.
Merlin: You've got 28 gods and 7 Jesuses.
Merlin: Used as like exclamations.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: Let's see.
Merlin: Incidents of crudity.
Merlin: You've got piss once.
Merlin: This is all just under the language section.
John: Now let me ask you this.
John: I mean, you're a Christian.
John: Yeah, well, lapsed.
John: If you're watching a movie with your family and you don't want to hear the word God or Jesus taken in vain...
John: But you don't mind watching a bear attack or like any other number of – I didn't see the film because I don't have a TV.
John: But if I did, there would probably be other – are there other bad things?
John: Oh, yeah.
John: The one guy kills the other guy's kid.
John: I remember this all from the trailer.
John: A guy rides a horse off a cliff.
John: I read the story about the actual events, which the movie kind of doesn't bother to hue to, but he takes a boat down a river at some point.
John: But you want to watch the whole thing.
John: You just don't want anybody to say God.
Merlin: Well, I mean, I'm thinking of like stuff with my kid where I would just assume there not be a huge amount of cursing that's especially not necessary or funny.
Merlin: And I would prefer that there not be a lot of sexy stuff.
John: Right.
Merlin: Okay, so, I mean, like, for example, I'm just saying, like, if you're mostly a god person and still would like to see some Native Americans get killed, that's okay, not a problem.
Merlin: You get into the violence-slash-blood-slash-gore section.
Merlin: There are general areas for non-graphic, graphic, and disturbing images.
Merlin: Now you get granular.
Merlin: May I read you some of these?
Merlin: Oh, let's hear it.
Merlin: Spoiler alerts for The Revenant.
Merlin: There are 73 incidents of violence, blood, and gore that are considered graphic.
Merlin: And you get to pick whether you want these in the movie.
John: So you could keep just...
John: Places where Native Americans are killed gratuitously, but nowhere where somebody cuts themselves.
Merlin: Well, you've got to get real granular.
Merlin: You might want to keep a man shoots an animal.
Merlin: You might want to keep a man is shot in the chest with an arrow.
Merlin: You might want to keep a man covered in blood is visible.
Merlin: Maybe you don't want to see a man is shot in the back with an arrow and a man shoots another man in the back.
Merlin: Two people are cutting a dead animal carcass.
Merlin: So there's 73 incidents of that in there.
Merlin: And then this does this on the fly.
Merlin: It's all electronic.
Merlin: And then when you watch the movie, it just skips over all of those scenes.
John: And have you ever done this in such a way that you felt like, oh, I didn't miss those scenes?
John: Or do you always go, that was a weird cut?
Merlin: I only experimented with it a little bit because there was a time that my daughter has since cooled on this franchise and movie.
Merlin: But there was a time when my daughter was very, you know, she gets interested in the phenomenon of a franchise.
Merlin: Like she was very interested in the Hunger Games.
Merlin: And we'd read a little bit of the book.
Merlin: And I knew the movies, the movies, as listeners previous times have heard me say, it's got too much personal violence.
Merlin: I think a teenager stabbing another teenager close up is not right for a seven or eight year old kid.
Merlin: No, that's pretty bad.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: So, I mean, I'd experimented with this on my own just to see what would happen.
Merlin: Let me see if you can do it.
Merlin: I think you can do it with The Big Lebowski.
John: You know, my daughter, the thing she's really into right now, the franchise, is my early 80s Garfield books.
Merlin: Oh, I tried to get my kid into those.
Merlin: I'm so glad she's enjoying that.
John: Garfield, Bigger Than Life, his third book.
John: Classic.
John: On the front it says, I'm fat and I'm lazy and I'm proud of it.
John: Yeah.
John: She just loves this stuff.
Merlin: Oh, my daughter is very into the culture of lazy.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Well, when she's ready, send her up to her sensei.
Merlin: I forgot I did look at this before.
Merlin: I did rent this and watch it.
Merlin: Big Lebowski.
Merlin: You've got 336 profanities, 20 blasphemies, 26... So here's what's funny, though, and I should take a screenshot of this.
Merlin: You see...
Merlin: a graphical representation like the editing in like if you're in um like you know logic or whatever you use you see cuts and here's everything you'll hear and everything you'll see so for example it just if it's just an audio curse it just cuts out the audio for that part and other things it'll cut out a whole section and you get this like crazy looking sliced up graph of like what you'll actually see in the movie and what you'll hear so can you watch just a super cut of all the stuff they've taken out
Merlin: Oh, that's a really good idea.
John: Just like any man's finger getting cut off and somebody pissing on a carpet.
Merlin: Right.
John: I think it's a toe.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: No, absolutely.
Merlin: Or like if you want to watch something about like, yeah, you want to watch a Cinemax movie.
Merlin: We have to have a softball game to save the orphanage.
Merlin: You just want to see the boobies.
Merlin: Just the boobs.
Merlin: Just the boobies.
John: Or like any one of those 80s Emmanuel movies.
John: Oh, carry on.
John: Yeah.
John: There's like a half an hour of them like wandering through a forest or in like a French provincial home.
John: And then there's like...
John: 45 seconds of softcore sex.
Merlin: Yeah, there's such a relatively small amount of Sylvia Crystal's boobs, like really, pound for pound, given what you have to watch, all the filler around it.
John: Yeah, and then it literally cuts to a scene of a locomotive going into a tunnel.
John: And you go, why did I wait 45 minutes for that?
John: That's not even enough time to get my belt off.
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Merlin: John, I don't know, buddy.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I don't know what to tell you because you're going to need an IP or a login for a lot of these.
Merlin: You don't want a Blu-ray player.
Merlin: You don't even have a TV to play it on.
Merlin: Can I log in with Facebook?
Merlin: That's a bad idea.
Merlin: That's a bad idea.
Merlin: I think your easiest solution is to do what I do and buy or rent these things from the iTunes store.
Merlin: Well, but they have them.
John: They have all the things.
John: They have all the things.
John: When I go to Jonathan Colton's house, and I often do.
John: They used to have a very great guest room with a nice, beautiful mattress that they would let me stay in for long periods of time.
John: And then one day the mattress was gone, the bed was gone, because they recolonized that space for one of them to have an office or something.
John: And they replaced the mattress, the good place, with some IKEA foam sectional couch.
John: They can afford nicer than that.
John: That's sickening.
John: Yes, you couldn't sleep on this thing if you'd been living on the streets for a year and a half.
John: Maybe that's the point, Sean.
John: Well, okay, so that's what I was thinking.
John: Maybe this was some kind of subtle thing.
John: You can't just live here, buddy.
John: But in any case, they have, or they used to have, big TVs all around.
John: I think they actually honed some TVs, too, or they moved them to other rooms, other parts of the house that are on the private premises.
John: But they live a technological life.
John: You know, Jonathan Colton was the one that said, my kids won't even, one day there won't even be books.
Merlin: Right, right.
Merlin: If memory serves, this was the Hodgman versus, I don't know if you've ever revealed the names here, the Hodgman versus Colton dilemma was at a time, the Hodgman family was much more like, and the Colton family was like, play with anything, anytime.
John: That's right.
Merlin: And I don't need to know what you're doing.
Merlin: If you want to go Minecraft something, go nuts.
John: When they were little kids, Jonathan was like, here's an iPad, figure it out.
John: Because that's the future and you're a future kid.
John: And the Hodgmans were like, here's a dusty old tome with a lock and key on it.
John: If you can pick the lock, you can read the book on sorcery.
John: Here's a hidden room with a dictionary in it.
John: And at the time, I was a person that had a very small child.
John: And I was seeing these two friends try and figure out their different styles of raising a kid.
John: And I was like, which one am I going to do?
John: I don't even have a TV.
John: The Coltons, right, they have all the accounts.
John: So if you want to go in and watch a movie, you just go in, you use the weird clicker that you scroll down and over to click the letter R, and then you scroll back over and click the letter E, and you go bop, bop, bop all the way down and over to get to the V. Brutal.
John: And then it comes up like revolution number nine or revolutionaries.
John: And you're like, I'm trying to watch The Revenant here.
John: But eventually they do and they don't sweat it.
John: Like however much the thing costs, whatever.
John: It's just part of the budget.
John: It's part of the house budget that you just go bloop.
John: Like I want to watch The Revenant right now.
John: It costs $7.99 or $14.99 or $44.99.
John: And you just go bloop.
John: It's just part of the budget.
John: Yeah.
John: And so they eliminate that whole business of like, oh, God, do I rent it or buy it?
John: Is it HD or HV or HVAC?
John: Yeah.
John: You don't want to get the HVAC version.
John: No, it hums and it's like always you can't get the temperature right.
John: Got to drain it.
John: My point is that they have that's a thought technology where they're just like, whatever.
John: This device is here to provide us with this style of entertainment.
John: If we want to watch the longest day at 10 o'clock in the morning, which I have done at their house,
John: That was the other thought technology at the Colton House.
John: They are not above watching a breakfast movie.
John: Oh, man.
John: Right?
John: So you send the kids off to school.
John: The adults are sitting around having a coffee.
John: Nobody works in that house.
Merlin: I think they're both in the entertainment industry, which isn't really work.
John: So we're sitting around.
John: We're having coffee.
John: What do you guys want to do?
John: Somebody says, have you ever seen...
John: Have you ever really seen The Longest Day?
John: And I'm like, yeah, I've really seen it.
John: I've really seen it 44 times.
John: And they're like, let's watch The Longest Day.
John: It's like, all right, let's watch The Longest Day.
John: And then all of a sudden it's like 10 in the morning and you're free.
John: You're free from all of the problems.
John: It's like being a day drunk.
John: It's like, wow, we can't have a drink.
John: It's 10 o'clock in the morning.
John: Who says you can't have a drink at 10 o'clock in the morning?
John: We're grownups.
John: We can.
John: We can start drinking.
John: We can start drinking as soon as we wake up.
John: This is like being on that Pinocchio Island.
Merlin: You can just smoke cigars and play billiards all day.
John: Yeah, and you don't even have to wear pants because you have a wooden bottom.
Merlin: But that's all on the budget.
Merlin: That's baked into the price.
Merlin: We buy movies and we watch them.
John: That's right.
John: And the problem around here is I'm starting to feel that the fact that I don't have a television, not only that I don't have any television, but that I don't have a television the size of a Fender Rhodes piano, that I am starting to live a life of unnecessary deprivation,
John: Because I want to, at a moment's notice, show my daughter The Lady and the Tramp.
John: Or watch, I don't know, the Olympics or something.
Merlin: Lilo and Stitch.
Merlin: Leeloo and Stitch.
Merlin: That's a fantastic movie that your daughter is old enough for.
Merlin: It's an utter delight, and it's fun for everybody.
Merlin: She's been to Hawaii.
Merlin: She knows all about it.
Merlin: Mahalo.
Merlin: Mahalo.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: I think that's a good pick.
Merlin: Now, you're going to need TV to watch that on TV.
Merlin: Okay, but so that's the thing.
Merlin: Now, the eels start.
Merlin: Oh, boy.
John: I got a TV, but now I got to get the...
John: I've got to get the hookup.
John: Oh, you've got to get an HDMI cable, make sure it's the right HDMI cable.
John: I've got to get one of those Apple TVs and figure out how come it doesn't work as well as it ought to.
John: I've got to get, I don't know what, cable or double cable or quadruple cables or like some kind of... John, you might need Dish Network.
John: I've got to get a UseBot.
John: Oh, you get a UseBot, or you get a SeedBox.
John: I've got to get a Netflix.
John: Or one of these other nets.
John: And I don't want them.
John: I don't want all those eels.
John: Because then it's not just that the bills start coming.
John: I could put that into the house budget.
John: But it's the eels upon eels upon eels.
John: And now, you know, it's like the cables just start coming up out of the floor.
John: And the cables wrap around my ankles.
John: And they're like...
John: Oh, do you have USB 3?
Merlin: Because it's a lot faster than USB 2.
Merlin: It's a frustrating Japanese body horror movie at that point.
Merlin: You just have all these different things that want to get into your ports.
John: Late at night one time in about 1974, much, much, much too early.
John: I watched you remember when they used to show horror movies on late night TV.
John: I sure do.
John: And there was so I got to stay up late with some babysitter that didn't care.
John: Some babysitter that was smoking pot and then invited her boyfriend in through the window as soon as my mom was gone.
John: As you do.
John: And they were like, let's watch a movie.
John: And it's on black and white TV.
John: And I'm watching this movie from the 1950s where some kind of creeping plant.
John: Like a house plant, a creeping plant just keeps growing and growing.
John: And like sort of pre Little Shop of Horrors, it doesn't have a big mouth and it doesn't sing.
John: But like the vines just sort of grab you and pull you into the house plant.
John: Oh, God.
John: Everybody's like, ah!
John: But it's too late because the vines are all over them.
John: I felt that way about the blob.
John: Well, it was a little bit of a blob ripoff.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But it was like... The way the blob material looked was very, very disturbing to me.
Merlin: Well, yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah, it was disturbing to me, too.
John: Do you remember the horror movie where you could see the beating heart of the monster through the translucent skin in the night, in the dark?
Yeah.
John: I saw that as a kid with some negligent babysitter, too, and these things traumatized me until today.
John: Those late-night movies in the 1950s, those people were sickos.
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: I mean, they were late-night movies in the 70s.
John: They were theatrical releases in the 50s.
John: Yeah.
John: I don't want to show my kid those.
John: I want to show her Lilo and Stitch and Lady and the Tramp.
Merlin: But you don't want any eels.
John: No eels.
John: Well, if I surrender to one eel, do I not surrender to all eels?
John: No.
No.
Merlin: Come on.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Come on.
Merlin: The easy solution for you right now, this is not funny, but John Syracuse is going to fucking yell at me if I don't actually help you a little bit.
Merlin: The easy solution for you to try for fun is to go buy...
Merlin: The Godfather movie from iTunes on the store and then watch it on your computer.
Merlin: Now, once you bought it, you can watch it on any of your other devices.
Merlin: You can watch it on an iPad.
Merlin: You can watch it on a TV.
Merlin: Once you get an Apple TV, it's not that hard to set up.
Merlin: It's actually not that bad and it's not too costly.
Merlin: Our primary device in our house is an Apple TV.
Merlin: Do I own that movie forever?
Merlin: Well, you license it forever.
John: Right.
Merlin: Asterisk.
John: But here's the thing.
John: Asterisk.
John: But here's the thing.
John: Asterisk and Stitch.
John: That was my favorite Belgian comic.
Merlin: Oh, that's terrific.
Merlin: Is that the one with the kid with the pointy hair with that dog Snowy?
Merlin: Is that what I'm thinking of?
John: No, you're thinking of the trolls.
John: Remember the little naked trolls?
Merlin: I do.
John: I always found them strangely sexual in a way that made me uncomfortable when I was in people's houses where they had trolls.
Merlin: It's a cultural problem because I don't think we realize you go somewhere like an Iceland or a Finland and a troll means something.
John: Yeah, right.
John: It means like somebody that comes in your house at night and have sex with you.
Merlin: Those sexy things.
Merlin: Yeah, that's no good.
Merlin: You don't want that in your house.
John: Yeah, it's interacting with the whoopers and the tweeters making the toilet seat cold.
John: You found a troll in your dad's house.
John: That's right.
John: I did find a troll.
John: And I and I, you know, when nobody was around, I rubbed its little bottom with my thumb.
John: And I was like, I don't know.
John: You're not.
John: I mean, I don't you're not pretty, but you do have a naked bottom.
John: How do you not rub a troll's bottom?
Merlin: I think I mean, I've said to my daughter in a non graphical way that I was very attracted to things like not attracted.
Merlin: Well, attracted to things like big head characters or like anything shiny and plastic.
Merlin: I thought that was a very attractive thing.
Merlin: And a troll?
Merlin: You're going to explore the troll.
Merlin: I mean, come on, you're a kid.
John: Well, yeah, and the thing was, like, even Tintin Comics had, they seemed adult enough that they could be sexy, except there were never any women in Tintin Comics.
Merlin: Yeah, but this is how you figure stuff out.
Merlin: You get your sexual cosmology ruined in interesting ways in America.
Merlin: It could be a Gilligan's Island.
Merlin: It could be a Batman.
Merlin: But there's going to be ways that you become messed up in ways that will not become totally clear for 20 years.
Merlin: And that could be a troll butt, as far as I'm concerned.
Merlin: A troll butt.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: I mean, there were certainly things... I mean, I can't say...
John: I can't say for sure that if I were given the chance, I wouldn't still prefer reading Trotz and Bonnie cartoons to actually seeing real live porno.
John: Trotz and Bonnie had enough of an effect on, you know, like they were just sort of sexy enough to,
John: That that was just enough for me.
John: It was enough for me and it would probably still be enough for me because I don't like to see too much.
John: You know what I mean?
John: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: And the industry has really evolved over the years.
John: If you're wearing a little thing, that's fine.
John: That's fine with me.
John: That's as far as I need to go.
John: The little thing might be your favorite part.
John: If you're just wearing a little thing, you don't need to go any further than that.
John: You let your imagination wander.
Merlin: Let's not turn this into a doctor visit.
Merlin: Let's make it about the little thing.
John: Exactly.
John: A fucking doctor visit.
John: That's not where I'm at, right?
Merlin: This isn't the beginning of the land of the lost.
Merlin: Of all the criticisms of porn, and there are many very fair criticisms of porn, the one that resonates with me the most is the...
Merlin: The feeling of, I'll be honest with you, disgust over gynecological porn.
Merlin: Because to me, that is evidence of you have watched too much porn when you want gynecological level of porn.
Merlin: Because to me, that's mostly a taste issue.
Merlin: It's like you have developed really bad taste because you have become a nerd to the vajayjay.
Merlin: And now you need super intense pom-pom in order to really make that thing happen.
Merlin: And I think that's a shame on a taste standpoint.
Merlin: It's like CNN.
Merlin: They're just putting out stuff that people want.
John: I feel like super medical level porn is for people that have never had sex.
Merlin: It's sort of like a preference for you.
Merlin: Are you going to go for sort of the aesthetic direction of a Playboy?
Merlin: Are you going to go to the slightly more graphical penthouse?
Merlin: Or are you going to go all the way down the lane to something you found in the woods?
John: You can get a screw or a hustler.
John: Yeah, but even further than that, because in this contemporary world of non-narrative video-based porn... Especially with HVAC cameras, the way you can really get in there?
John: Yeah, you've got no plot at all, except maybe the basest level of plot, which is like... I get to fix Donna Cobble.
John: Yeah, or like, oh, my stepsister has a problem with her computer.
John: And then all of a sudden, you're in a love tunnel.
John: I feel like that is not how, if you've ever had sex even a single time, you don't see any of that.
John: Because you don't have the perspective.
John: You can't be over to the side and down on your knees.
Merlin: Oh, that's a really good point.
John: Right?
John: You cannot get that view...
John: And so why would you prefer that?
John: Why would that be where you want to be?
Merlin: Unlike a sitcom, live sex is not a three-camera setup.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: If anything, it's a handheld kind of setup.
John: Yeah, but even those POV porns.
John: Oh, and this is the other thing.
John: Tumblr is where people watch porn now.
John: I thought they clamped down on that.
John: Well, I don't know.
John: It's still out there.
John: Tumblr is where – and all the porn there is 30 seconds long.
John: It's just like – and then loop.
John: But when I would get my hands on Playboys back in the early 70s, when you'd find them under a board in the forest or whatever –
John: The little Annie Fanny cartoons were just as erotic to me as the girls in bobby socks, like laying on a bearskin rug.
John: Sure.
John: Because the little Annie Fanny stories had some narrative.
John: Little Annie Fanny, she was not a very sophisticated lady.
John: And she was entering into a lot of sophisticated narratives where people in casinos and people that were living a higher life than she was were trying to entice her into various conjugalities.
John: Yeah, third locations.
John: That's right.
John: And she was just like, whoops-a-daisy.
John: But she also had a little bit of... She was a little bit wise...
John: Because she always managed to get out of there more or less unscathed.
John: But anyway, all back to saying, it's the little shift.
John: It's the chemise.
John: That's what you're looking for.
John: You're looking for chemise porn.
John: But you don't want to listen to a lot of blasphemy and bear killings.
John: You don't want blasphemy.
John: You don't want bear killings.
John: You don't want to see a man shot in the back with an arrow while another man eviscerates an animal carcass.
John: Your memory is amazing.
John: You do.
John: You do want to.
John: You just fast forward into the chemises.
John: You just want to get to the chemise, but then stay within the chemise portion a lot longer.
John: Right.
John: And then maybe right at the end, the chemise comes off.
Merlin: This is one of the first great uses of the internet, was you could go out and find other people who were perverted in the same way that you are.
Merlin: And if you wanted to find chemises, you would eventually find a forum that was about chemise chat.
Merlin: And people would identify time stamps in movies and stuff like that.
John: The problem with that is that I have gone online many, many, many, many times and Googled Zaftig Israeli girls who are in IDF uniforms, who are taking off IDF uniforms.
IDF.
John: And you cannot, I mean, there's a little bit, but not nearly as much as you would think.
John: All right.
John: I'm going to try Israeli IDF erotica.
John: Yeah.
John: Okay.
John: Israeli IDF erotica.
John: But, you know, you don't want them to be too skinny.
Merlin: You finding anything?
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Oh, yeah?
Merlin: Huh.
Merlin: It looks like they're in a barracks, and one girl's got her head on the other girl's lap, and she's looking at her phone.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: They're not very soft-dig, though.
Merlin: I think that's the problem, is if you've got a pivot and another pivot, that's where you go to the dark web.
Merlin: Oh, the dark web?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I've never been on the dark web.
Merlin: I don't know much about it.
John: Uh-huh.
John: I used to be on the dark web, but then I saw too many videos of people...
John: In fatal car accidents.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: And, okay, so... Also, you know, I hate to say this.
Merlin: I'm not turning up a whole lot for troll doll fetish.
Merlin: I figured that would be richer territory than reality is bearing out.
Merlin: Because I could see somebody having that be their special thing as rubbing a troll butt.
Merlin: Hmm.
John: Female Israeli soldiers stripping and punished.
John: Oh, dear.
John: That's probably too many pivots for you.
John: That seems like something that would be big in the Palestinian territories.
John: Let's see.
John: Where am I?
John: Oh, I'm on Etsy.
Merlin: Okay.
John: Are you buying something?
John: No, no, no.
John: I don't buy things.
John: Buying some vintage thing?
John: Speaking of buying things, have you ever owned a pair of Fluvogs?
John: Yes.
John: Yes.
John: So I was at a party the other day, small party.
Merlin: Those were real, real, real hot around the time I moved to San Francisco.
Merlin: They stayed hot for two or three years, and they seemed to virtually go away except within, I'm going to say, the vegan shoe community.
Merlin: Well, because I think they're pretty dedicated to don't they don't they make a lot of vegan shoes?
John: I think they make vegan shoes.
John: Yeah.
John: But I was their Seattle shoe company.
John: And during the 90s.
John: Right.
John: Everybody had them, especially girls that were wearing sort of baby doll dresses with like like seven barrettes in their hair.
John: We're also I know we're also wearing flu vlogs all the time.
John: And.
John: And then I kind of felt like, and I didn't have any because they were expensive, and also I was a little bit of an iconoclast.
John: Sure.
John: I was wearing Boris Karloff shoes all the time.
John: Because I was a serious young man.
John: I didn't have time for all this frippery.
John: You want to touch my bolts?
John: And so anyway, but then I felt like, okay, the pressure's off now.
John: I don't have to own Fluvogs.
John: I don't have to own Doc Martens.
John: Those were a uniform of a special time.
John: And now I can just wear shoes.
John: I can pick shoes of my own accord and it's not necessary.
John: But I was at this art party and there were some other middle-aged arty people there.
John: And a guy walks by and I was talking to somebody else, but I noticed the guy go by and I point to his shoes and I go, are those, did you, did you color those shoes yourself?
John: I mean, did you make those shoes into those shoes?
John: Were those a different kind of shoe?
John: And then you made them into this shoe or did that shoe come that way?
John: And he was not, he's my age, my town, my whole, he's in, he's at my art party.
John: And I suspect the reason he reacted this way is that he knew who I was, and he was going to give me a little bit of the, he was going to give me a little bit of the, I don't know who you are.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Because he knew who I was.
John: But he was like, I didn't make him.
John: John Fluvog made him.
John: Or like Jay Fluvog, or maybe he said they were made by a guy named John Fluvog, and then he kept walking.
John: And I was like, wow, what a, you know, what a, what a punky attitude.
John: Um, got a good story out of that one.
John: Well, so yeah, that's right.
John: And so I turned to the guy that I'm talking to and I was like, wow, flu bugs.
John: That's interesting.
John: And the guy who I, who as a person I admire said, uh, I'm wearing flu bugs right now.
John: And I looked down and he had a good pair of shoes on and I was like, those are flu bugs too.
John: And all of a sudden I felt like I was in some kind of weird situation.
John: alternate reality where everybody was wearing Fluvogs this whole time.
Merlin: The men's shoes are whimsical, but they're not as wonderfully, delightfully cartoony as the girls' shoes.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: The girls' shoes are delightful.
John: They're hilarious.
Merlin: These are so fun.
John: Yeah, they are fun.
John: They're fun.
John: They're wackadoodle.
John: They're a little bit witchy-poo.
John: You know what I mean?
John: A little bit like, ooh, if you're wearing a... These shoes should come with bangs.
John: I think a lot of them do.
John: I think they have bangs or barrettes that come.
John: The barrettes are just with the shoe.
John: Bangs and barrettes.
John: But then all of a sudden I'm feeling like, what am I outside of something that I need to be inside?
John: Fluvog is a Seattle-owned, presumably locally sourced, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, shoe that I should be American.
John: American, I guess, unless they're all made in Mexico.
John: But American-ish.
John: And I felt like I should get on the Fluvog train, but then it's a little bit like getting a tattoo in your 40s.
John: Yeah.
John: I never had a tattoo before.
John: What am I going to do?
John: Go get a tattoo?
John: Yeah, what are you going to do?
John: Get a tattoo at Lilo and Stitch?
Yeah.
John: Dismembering an animal carcass?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Mahana means family.
Merlin: Mahalo.
Merlin: Mahalo.
Merlin: Yeah, no, I'm with you.
Merlin: I'm with you.
Merlin: I dipped a toe into interesting shoes.
Merlin: I had a pair of Fluvogs that were probably the most boring and normal Fluvogs a person could buy.
Merlin: I had a pair of campers.
Merlin: Normvogs.
Merlin: But then I kind of moved back into the pseudo-hiking boot look.
Merlin: Oh, yeah, pseudo-hikings.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: I had a pair of campers that I found at a thrift store, and I was very pleased with them because when everybody was wearing campers, I couldn't afford them or I didn't think I could afford them because they were like $100.
John: They were expensive.
John: But I bought a pair of campers that were hardly worn at a thrift store, and I was pretty happy with them.
John: I was wearing them around all the time.
John: They were brown, not black.
John: Feeling pretty good about it.
John: And then not very long ago, I had Nick Harmer in the house here.
John: And I had a bunch of shoes lined up by the fireplace.
John: And I said, Nick, just by way of, we were on our way to a third location.
John: But I said, Nick, before we go, take a look at the shoes here.
John: And if you had to get rid of three pairs of these shoes, which three would you get rid of?
John: Oh, nice.
John: Because I got all these shoes lined up by the fireplace and I got too many shoes.
John: Which three would you get rid of?
John: And he said, well, get rid of those corny old campers.
John: It's not like, you know, it's not like you're still wearing campers.
Merlin: I was like, what, are you going to wear those to the Len show?
Merlin: If you steal my sunshine.
John: And I felt like a dummy.
John: I felt like a cuck.
Ha, ha, ha, ha.
Merlin: That word makes me laugh.
Merlin: He felt like a cuck.
John: He got cucked by shoes.
John: Because here I am wearing campers.
John: You know, it's like, what, am I going to see Lamb Chop?
John: No.
John: Take him off.
John: Take him off.
John: But I felt bad because I was proud of those shoes five minutes before.
John: Oh, I hate that feeling.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: That's such a middle school feeling.
Merlin: Like, I love this thing that I made.
Merlin: Well, it's stupid.
Merlin: Now I hate it.
Merlin: Well, but I asked.
Merlin: You did.
Merlin: Is he a drummer, John?
John: No, he's a bass player.
John: Bass player, right.
John: Bass player.
John: Okay.
Merlin: But still, it's almost as bad.
John: He traffics in a world where people are wearing contemporary clothes.
John: There was a little bit of a time there in the mid 2000s where the really fashionable shoes were super long pointy like just terrible looking shoes.
John: Oh yeah right.
John: And because I was in a world of rock people who spent money on clothes who were like bleeding edge I was all of a sudden around all these people that were wearing really dumb long pointy shoes and I said this is a
John: This is a bridge too far.
John: These shoes will never... When you find these at a thrift store five years from now, even though they cost $600 when they were new, these have no value.
John: These shoes will have no resale value.
John: It's like a trade-in where the trade-in is for zilch.
John: Whereas, I thought a camper...
John: would continue to be a classic shoe because it looks like a bowling shoe but i guess nobody's wearing bowling shoes anymore either do you remember when you would go to a bowling alley and leave your shoes oh sure take the bowling shoes instead because they were better than your shoes yeah but i mean that's that's yeah i mean that that's cute but they're not very comfortable no that's the problem with campers if memory serves campers did not have much of an arch
Merlin: Now, I've never understood what an arch does or is.
John: An arch helps your arch.
John: Right.
John: But what's the matter?
John: I mean, I know some people have fallen arches.
Merlin: Well, I just I was raised to believe that you would never buy a pair of shoes unless it had what was referred to as a good arch.
Merlin: Yeah, but you wore Converse.
Merlin: Converse had very, very like no arch.
John: None.
John: Flat as a flat as a like a Frisbee.
John: Yeah.
John: I could have said pancake there, but I spent the extra two seconds to come up with Frisbee because you want to pepper your language with interesting analogies, interesting similes.
John: And so don't sit around pancake.
John: No.
John: We've heard that.
John: That's the Roderick difference.
John: That's the thing.
John: Flat as a Frisbee.
John: It's just as flat as a pancake, except it's got a little bit of a curved edge.
John: Frisbees aren't really flat, but no, I take your point.
John: Yeah, right.
John: I guess you're right.
John: It's a bad way of describing it.
Merlin: A turkey serving dish, like a charger?
Merlin: Flat as a charger?
Merlin: Yeah, flat as a charger.
John: I feel like the charger also has a rounded edge to keep the gravy in.
John: That's true.
Merlin: I'd say flat as a manhole cover.
Merlin: Yeah, it's flat, but it still has thickness to it.
Merlin: How about flat as a, what do you call it, a trivet?
Merlin: Not a trivet.
Merlin: What's the thing where you put hot food on a table?
John: I thought a trivet was like a little furry animal that ran on a wheel.
Merlin: Oh, the original classic series, yeah.
Merlin: Overrated episode.
John: That was very corny.
John: I preferred the ones where it was serious plot.
John: I like the one where they go to the depression.
John: That's what I've seen.
John: You know, the classic suits.
John: They had classic suits.
John: I liked any one where Uhura was featured.
John: She just had that little shift.
John: You know, just a little chemise.
John: It's really about the little thing.
John: Well, for some of us.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Right?
John: Other people like to be able to poke a motive going into the tunnel.
Merlin: A lot of people don't admit there's a little thing in their life.
John: It's tough.
John: You know, it's very difficult to talk about, even though we are all like surrounded by porn all the time now.
John: You're soaking in it.
John: But no, it's still nobody wants to talk about it unless you're a sex positive person.
Merlin: Oh, that's no good.
Merlin: I don't want to be around that.
Merlin: You know, I'm suddenly remembering that when you were here in my office, I think you might have fondled my phoenix a little bit.
Merlin: Oh, that's right.
Merlin: Your Phoenix doll.
Merlin: I think you gave her a little troll rub on her behind.
John: I gave her a little troll rub.
John: She has very exaggerated secondary sex characteristics.
John: Well, I mean, that's just how she's made.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: That's, you know, I'm just as God made me, sir.
Merlin: I got bad news for you.
Merlin: The restaurant, the made in China restaurant has changed.
Merlin: It's a different restaurant now.
Merlin: You can never come back and have the house trotter now.
John: They were only there for like a week and a half.
Merlin: They weren't there for that long.
Merlin: But I mean, you know, it kind of lends credence to our idea.
Merlin: What was our original idea?
Merlin: That it's like an UFO training ground, right?
John: Yeah, right.
John: Where they were just bringing people in that were like starting to infiltrate normal America.
John: And they said, here's a low impact way that they can interact with people.
John: Only three or four people are going to come in to the restaurant per day.
John: And all you have to do is remember what T is.
John: T?
John: And then bring them T. Yeah.
John: And then they'll point to something on the menu that has a number by it.
Merlin: But this is the thing about training, John.
Merlin: You're going to get stuff wrong.
Merlin: You have to do it in an environment of trust.
Merlin: And so they're going to get stuff wrong.
Merlin: They're going to forget what T is.
Merlin: Sometimes some of the ufos are going to forget that you're not supposed to literally stare at people at the next table for two minutes.
Yeah.
John: Yeah, right.
John: No, that's not how you make American friends.
John: I do feel like they probably pulled up stakes because, you know, and relocated somewhere else sort of in the vicinity.
John: Do you think they got clocked?
John: They're going to be aware of the fact that
John: People start walking by the store, looking in the window, slowing down, and then speeding back up again.
John: Maybe somebody, I wouldn't put this past somebody, maybe somebody put a Super Train sticker on a light pole out front.
John: Some smartass.
John: I bet they probably moved to like Daily City or something.
John: Yeah, right, where they're still Americans down there.
Merlin: They're going to be interacting with people.
Merlin: I don't think we have any listeners in Daily City, probably.
John: sure about that it's really really hard to know this is a call to all uh best resignation or whatever the fuck i don't think i know the word oh no no uh fingernails are pretty fingernails are good seems that all i ever wanted was a martyr or something that's like that's like jeremiah was a bullfrog lyrics that sounds like like like placeholder lyrics he was never famous for his lyrics
Merlin: Yeah, but you know, he did that Everlong song.
Merlin: Yeah, which was David Letterman's favorite song.
Merlin: Oh my God, one of the great songs.
Merlin: Did you know that?
Merlin: Did you know that?
John: It was David Letterman's favorite song.
John: Did you know the story?
Merlin: Was it playing when his father died?
Merlin: Close.
Merlin: Letterman had his heart attack.
Merlin: I remember I was in a hotel room in Florida, I believe, when this happened.
Merlin: He had his heart attack, and then he was away for a while.
Merlin: They had guests.
Merlin: He came back.
Merlin: And the story goes, the story goes that his one request was, when he comes back, and this is a story, but the story was that he would love it if Foo Fighters came on the show and played his favorite song ever long.
Merlin: And they were, I think they were in Brazil, and they did it.
Merlin: It's good.
Merlin: It's good.
Merlin: That drummer, man...
Merlin: yeah yeah he's good he's good that's a really good song taylor hawkins taylor hawkins that guy like ringing a bell now was he in was he in sunny day real estate that's the other guys right no that was the other guy and i heard a very interesting story about him save it just recently yeah you want to save it if you get a tv do you have a place to put it
Merlin: You mean like an empty wall?
Merlin: Well, it doesn't have to be a wall.
Merlin: But humor me for a minute.
Merlin: And just as a thought experiment, if you've got a TV of some size, is there a place that you could put it that it wouldn't be in the way?
Merlin: Would you have to move campers and stuff around in order to fit a TV into some area in your house?
John: Let me think about it here.
John: Let me think about where I put a TV.
John: Let's see.
John: It's okay to say no.
John: I'm just trying to think of, like, is there, first of all, a comfortable place in my house that isn't currently full of...
John: Something weird.
John: You know what I did last night?
John: I went on the internet.
John: Don't anybody else do this.
John: Okay.
John: Because this is my private world right now.
John: Okay.
John: But I went on the internet and I bought a lot of old vintage bank deposit bags.
Merlin: Oh, the thick ones with the lock?
John: Mm-hmm.
John: Those are sharp.
John: Because some of them...
John: Apparently this was a thing.
John: They were embroidered with the names of the banks like a sports jacket embroidery, like a letterman's jacket.
John: That just says, you know, the Bank of Allentown, Pennsylvania, Boston Mass 03124.
John: And I said, those are gorgeous.
John: And then I looked at more of them.
John: And there are some of them you can find that still have the keys to the locks.
John: And I was like, I got to have all these.
John: So I got them all.
John: And now where the hell am I going to put them?
John: You can put your euros in there.
John: That's right.
John: And I got to stack them up now somewhere.
John: And I'm stacking them up kind of where the TV would go.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
Merlin: Yeah, so it sounds better to hold off.
Merlin: Well, okay, a parting shot here, just for what it's worth.
Merlin: Are you aware of the Coppola restoration of the Godfather?
John: A parting shot is actually one of my favorite Tumblr porn blogs.
Oh, my God.
Merlin: very expressive bell ring my friend very expressive it was discovered uh and this is included on the documentary that you get at least with the blu-ray of this it was discovered that there was essentially not a single good usable single negative of the godfather in existence anymore wait a minute yeah
Merlin: So basically, Paramount had treated it like a $2 whore, had just beaten the shit out of this thing, cut out the long dissolves between scenes for TV, and there was not a single good copy of it.
Merlin: Anyway, you can see all this in the documentary.
John: They had to go in... Wait a minute.
Merlin: What documentary?
Merlin: It's a really good documentary that comes with the Blu-ray of this.
Merlin: It's one of five Blu-rays that I own.
Merlin: It's a documentary about... About the Godfather Restoration, which is amazing.
Merlin: They talk with... What's his name?
Merlin: The lighting guy, Gordon Willis.
Merlin: It's really, really good.
Merlin: I'll see if I can find it for you on YouTube.
Merlin: But anyway, long story short, they had to go in and cobble together the best possible copies of The Godfather that they could find.
Merlin: You're not going to believe the before and afters.
Merlin: They had to go in and scan every single frame at 4K and hand fix every frame of The Godfather without removing the noise, the beautiful film noise in that film.
Merlin: And they did it.
Merlin: And they put this thing out a few years ago called the Coppola Restoration.
Merlin: And it's really, really good.
Merlin: It's not one of those wackadoodle versions where everything's in chronological order or anything.
Merlin: I'm just telling you, as you sit here right now, you can go onto the iTunes, you buy yourself a copy of The Godfather Colon, The Coppola Restoration, $14.99 American, out the door.
Merlin: Now, you got that, and you can watch that on your computer box.
John: And you're talking about that is now, that's The Godfather 1.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, if you buy the Blu-ray, you get all three, and I've seen two of those.
John: Wait a minute.
John: If you buy the Blu-ray...
John: But that's a disc.
John: That's like a Frisbee disc.
Merlin: It's like a Frisbee or a trivet.
Merlin: You'd have to watch that on your PlayStation or something.
Merlin: Now, people do still have Blu-ray discs?
Merlin: I have Blu-ray discs.
Merlin: I have the Godfather 3 movies.
Merlin: I have Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.
Merlin: I have the Fantastic Mr. Fox.
Merlin: I have the X-Men motion comic series.
Merlin: I have... You know what?
Merlin: Let's be honest.
Merlin: It gets confused with the Wii and the PlayStation things, but I've got fewer than 10 Blu-ray properties that I own because Blu-ray is a blight on society to use.
Merlin: Why that?
Merlin: Blu-ray... So...
Merlin: So boring.
Merlin: Blu-ray produces an image that is really, really stellar.
Merlin: So you know when they say 1080p, the P means progressive, which means that that is a 1080 pixel high image that pixel for pixel, every single image, every frame of that is its own painted image.
Merlin: It's not interlacing to save space.
Merlin: And on a big TV, it looks really, really, really good.
Merlin: Using Blu-ray, remember how you hate using a DVD player?
Merlin: It's like three times worse with Blu-ray.
John: It's a total shit show.
John: My DVD player, the thing I hated most about it was that you had to use a screwdriver to get the door to open.
John: Was that a feature?
John: It seems like it's like the first time it was a mistake and the third time it was a riff.
John: That's what they call it.
John: That's how you make movie jazz.
Merlin: That's another really good Tumblr if you haven't seen it yet.
John: Well, you know, Pixel and Pixel was my favorite 80s detective show.
John: Oh, Pixel and Pixel, huh.
Merlin: What about Reboot?
John: Did you ever watch Reboot?
John: uh that's a thing i do all the time when i because my new flash player doesn't tiny tiny things little things little little things i just had to redo my flash because it wouldn't play any of the advertisements on bring a trailer i'm sorry oh did you get the pop-up i got the pop-up so right for a long time i was like sorry i can't play that because you don't have the newest flash and i was like fuck you yeah i don't want the newest flash fuck you i don't want to see your thing
John: John, even a free eel is still an eel.
John: It's still an eel.
John: Why don't they just... Why don't they make it right and just leave it?
John: Steve Jobs didn't want to use Flash.
John: No, he had a letter about it.
John: Yeah, Steve Jobs had a whole thing.
John: He soiled a turtleneck over it.
John: And I agree.
John: Thank you very much for the free program.
John: I appreciate it.
John: It's wonderful.
John: Why don't we just integrate it now?
John: It's just video.
John: Just streams.
John: Like, let it go.
John: Let it go.
John: Let it go.
John: Let it go.
Merlin: Let it go.
John: Let it go.
John: Let it go.
John: I can't hold it back anymore.
Merlin: Let it go.
Merlin: Let it go.
Merlin: Something, something, something.
Merlin: Melody.
Merlin: Ticker 2, Moana.
Merlin: That's a good movie.
Merlin: Moana's good.
Merlin: Moana means maze.
Merlin: It means family and the only family behind.
Merlin: Oh, the maze.
John: No, no, no.
John: I don't want to hear about the maze.
John: Spoiler alert.
John: My people call it maze.
John: Let's get that one right.
Merlin: I think that's good.