Ep. 239: "Coming Into My Agency"
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Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Hi, Merlin.
Merlin: How's it going?
Merlin: Is it?
Merlin: Is it?
Merlin: Is it?
Merlin: What?
Merlin: Captain Sensible came up like twice this weekend.
Merlin: No, impossible.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Paul Schaefer mentioned him on, I think, Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me.
Merlin: So then I went and watched the video for What?
John: Yes.
John: Your favorite.
John: Well, it's a great video because they do like a conga line all the way through a hospital.
Merlin: They should do a retrospective of videos featuring the singer wearing a beret.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: Is a thought I just had.
Merlin: You got him, you got Captain Sensible, always wore a red beret.
Merlin: You got the guy, I don't know his name, the guy from Survivor, beret.
Merlin: It's the eye of the tiger, it's the thrill of the fight.
Merlin: I think Joni Mitchell frequently wore a beret.
Merlin: Who am I missing?
John: What about...
Merlin: Did Tony Tennille wear a beret at any point?
Merlin: Tony Tennille, Mrs. Dragon?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Oh, I got one.
Merlin: The walrus guy from Doobie Brothers.
Merlin: Jeff Skunk Baxter.
John: Skunk Baxter, that's right.
John: Skunk Bastic.
Merlin: Yeah, he wore a beret.
John: It's true.
John: Let me think.
John: Let me think.
John: Let me think.
John: Berets.
John: Berets.
John: Famous Berets for $100.
Merlin: Famous Berets for $400, Alex.
John: No, I'm not.
John: You know, it's real early.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: I withdraw the question.
Merlin: Yeah, it's all right.
Merlin: Well, I'll think about it.
Merlin: And as it comes up...
Merlin: I'll capture those.
Merlin: Maybe we'll make a playlist.
Merlin: Groucho Marx in his later years.
Merlin: He was a musician, not known primarily for being a musician.
Merlin: And yeah, you know what?
Merlin: Technically, there's videos.
Merlin: Lydia, Lydia, have you seen Lydia?
Merlin: Lydia, the tattooed lady.
Merlin: There's a video for that.
Merlin: Yeah, he wore a beret in his later years, but not like a skunk baxter.
John: Yeah, it's early it's really really early What's the what's the TV show with the guy
John: Who invented Seinfeld?
Merlin: Oh, Curb Your Enthusiasm.
John: There it is, yeah.
John: Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Merlin: Curb Your Enthusiasm.
John: Enthusiasm.
Merlin: Is there a breadware on there?
Merlin: I don't... You know who's on there is Sean Nelson's Uncle Bob is on there.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, Super Dave Osborne.
Merlin: Super Dave Einstein is on there, yep.
Merlin: Yeah, what kind of name is that?
Merlin: Super Dave, you know, he used to write for the Smothers Brothers with Steve Martin back in the 60s.
Merlin: Yeah, no, that was a joke.
Merlin: That was a reference to...
John: Reference to a time.
John: Did I ever tell you the story?
John: Which one?
John: Did I ever tell you the story?
John: It's really early here.
John: It's very early.
John: Are you on the West Coast?
John: Yeah.
John: Okay.
John: Yeah.
John: So not technically early.
John: Wow.
John: But, you know, early.
John: No, I was, so Sean and I were in Palm Springs.
John: And we went to visit my uncle, who at the time lived in Palm Springs.
John: And we were going to have dinner there.
John: He said, you know, why don't you come have dinner at the house?
John: He didn't say it that enthusiastically because my uncle didn't.
John: He never said anything that enthusiastically.
John: And he really didn't care if we joined him for dinner.
John: That's a good note.
John: But he did.
John: But he did.
John: That's right.
John: As you're playing my uncle in the stage adaptation.
John: He does not care if we're having dinner, but he is obligated to invite us to dinner.
John: And turns out at the time, Bob Einstein, Super Dave Osborne, and his wife, Sean's aunt, are also in Palm Springs.
John: And so at the time, so my uncle hearing this or hearing this says, well, why don't they come to dinner too?
John: And he doesn't.
John: Doesn't really care if they come to dinner either.
Merlin: But he's equally nonplussed.
Merlin: He's not excited.
Merlin: He says, bring along some Einstein's.
Merlin: He's fine.
Merlin: Right.
John: He's fine.
John: He he's not.
John: He actually is a cook.
John: He likes to cook.
John: So he's going to be cooking the dinner.
John: And that's what he's excited about.
John: He's excited to get to cook for people.
John: He doesn't he's not interested in me or them.
John: OK, but they show up.
John: Super Dave Osborne, Bob Einstein, very tall guy.
John: Sean's aunt is a smaller lady.
John: We mill around.
John: We're having cocktails.
John: It's a nice, you know, it's a nice experience.
John: Everybody's enjoying each other.
John: And Bob Einstein tells a story about the fact that his, the reason his brother is Albert Brooks.
John: Albert Brooks is his brother.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: And he said that his father named him Albert Einstein.
John: Yeah.
John: That's why he had the stage name Albert Brooks, right?
John: That's a good story.
John: That's a great story.
John: Tell it at a cocktail party.
John: Sure.
John: But then my uncle is standing there holding a drink in his hand, and he goes...
John: Einstein.
John: Einstein.
John: What kind of name is that, Einstein?
Merlin: In addition to probably not knowing who any of the people are that we're talking about, there was a time when that was a very normal question to ask in America.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: Not always a happy question, but it was not at all unusual to ask questions like, you don't do this so much today, but to say to somebody like, where are you from?
Merlin: Yeah, what kind of name is that?
Merlin: Or what kind of name is that?
John: And my uncle, who had a Scandinavian last name,
John: He was exhibiting the kind of casual anti-Semitism that used to be very, very popular among the white Anglo... Impossibly casual, like a well-worn windbreaker.
John: Yeah, just that sort of golf club set, the type of people that donated money to the art museum, although the art museum was actually probably paid for largely by the...
John: You know, the benefactors who probably the top three givers were Jews.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: But it's the kind of thing where you meet somebody, you meet a multiracial child, and you ask, is she adopted?
John: Yeah, right.
John: Or, yeah, right.
John: Exactly.
Merlin: Or you see the video of the lady running on screen to get the kids off the BBC program, and everybody assumes it's the housekeeper.
Merlin: The housekeeper.
Merlin: What kind of name is that?
Merlin: What kind of name is that?
John: And...
John: Super Dave, Bob Einstein, you know, he's really dry.
Merlin: He's very dry.
John: Even for Palm Springs, he's a very dry man.
John: Yeah, he was, you know, nonplussed.
John: He's been fielding that stuff his whole life, I'm sure.
John: But boy, Sean and I made hay out of it for many, many, many hours driving across America.
Merlin: What kind of name is that?
John: Einstein.
Merlin: There's not really that many situations where that has anything better than a neutral meaning.
John: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: That's not the kind of... It's almost like, you know, it's the classic, like, seeing a black kid on a bike and going, did you steal that?
Merlin: You know?
Merlin: It's like, you know...
John: Well, and the thing is, he's in Palm Springs.
John: You know, it's not like there aren't any Jews in Palm Springs.
John: I mean, he knows what kind of name it is.
John: Yeah.
John: But, yeah, just to kind of find – one time at Christmas many years ago when I was in my 20s, I was at Christmas at a giant family gathering.
John: I was going through a little bit of a phase.
John: And I started holding court.
John: And, you know, in my family, of course –
John: Holding court isn't unusual.
John: Stand there, you start talking, a group of people gathers, pretty soon you're holding court.
John: That's why some people play cards.
John: My family traditions were stand around the piano and sing.
John: And the four people that could sing would carry the 12 people that couldn't sing.
John: But everybody loved to sing.
John: Stand around the piano and sing.
John: We had a whole songbook of family songs.
John: We'd sit around and sing all these songs from 1910.
John: That was one thing we all did always at family gatherings.
John: But then, you know, various people would hold court.
John: And, you know, I was in my mid-20s, so I was just really coming into my...
John: uh my time of holding court the court years right now it's you know it's my number one activity but then i was just i was brand new and i said you know my theory is that um you know that we're uh because i'm talking to a group of people the common bond uh with whom are the rochester family the rodericks were kind of
John: some welsh interlopers that got in there at the last minute but the rochesters were the you know that's the that's our connection to all of our at least on my father's side all of the waspy heritage and i said my my theory is really that this is an ellis island story that our family really is an ellis island story and changed our name from you know from
John: And Rothstein to Rochester at Ellis Island and then made up this enormous backstory.
John: But really, I feel much more akin to the Jews than to Christians.
John: And I really feel that that, you know, there are sort of like our family nature just suggests to me.
John: that we're probably much more likely Eastern European Jews than we are whatever, you know, Episcopalian, you know, Mayflower types that our family mythology has sort of laid out for us.
John: And I'm holding forth.
John: And, you know, everybody under 50...
John: who's listening to me is listening to me with this kind of like these pinched faces squinty eyes trying to grasp what i'm saying but everybody over 50 is emphatically like no not the story that is not the story at all and i had a i had an excellent like 20 minutes on stage in my uncle's living room
John: parrying these 70-year-olds.
John: I was like, well, you know, the thing about an Ellis Island story is it's really unclear.
John: You can never really know.
John: They were like, you can know.
John: You're so wise.
John: You can know.
John: And, you know, they're...
John: There are a lot of family Bibles that are there to maybe fill in the gaps.
Merlin: Were you able to illuminate the situation by describing things like history and philosophy and really ontology, like how we even know what we know, epistemology?
Merlin: Were you able to really lay out for them in a way, because they're probably not as smart as you.
Merlin: You were able to really bring some sophistication to the discussion of their lives.
Merlin: I was really, really in the middle of being in college at the time.
John: Because a lot of people when they're 24 years old are no longer in college, you know.
John: They're already in the workforce.
John: You've gone pro.
John: But I had decided that college was where I was going to live for the next 15 years.
John: And so I really had some college words.
John: And had read some college books.
John: This was, you know, this was the heyday of college.
Merlin: Oh, college was huge.
Merlin: And so, I mean, I might be a little late here.
Merlin: We're a little bit separated.
Merlin: But we're talking about, like, everything was postmodern.
Merlin: You got the structuralism.
Merlin: Like, oh, there are so many different angles to explain how people older than you don't get it.
Merlin: Third wave feminism.
Merlin: Sing it, sister.
John: That was a big deal, right?
John: Camille Paglia was out there not being.
John: She was saying she wasn't a feminist.
John: Take that, mom.
John: Kapow.
John: So it was a big time, right?
John: All sex was great.
John: So you got Andrea Dworkin.
John: Yep, that's right.
John: That's right.
Merlin: Good way to grab that reference.
Merlin: Yeah, you got Andrea Dworkin.
Merlin: You got Camille Paglia.
Merlin: Now, who was the Naomi...
John: Uh, Campbell.
John: No, Naomi.
John: Naomi.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Naomi Watts.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: She's the one who wrote that other feminist book that was popular in the early nineties.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: And I think in some ways Camille Paglia was, uh, that generation's, uh, you know, uh, uh, uh, you know, uh, Dr. What's her name?
Merlin: Dr. What's her name?
Merlin: You know, like she was just, she was everywhere.
Merlin: You know what I'm talking about.
Merlin: Dr. Joyce brothers.
Merlin: Oh, that's right.
Merlin: It's unclear to me like exactly what her profession was apart from talking about what her profession was.
Merlin: She was kind of the Charles Nelson Reilly of that era.
Merlin: And then, I think, you pivot, you get a Camille Paglia.
Merlin: And she'd show up for a car lot opening.
John: Camille Paglia, I think, for two years there... Yeah, right.
John: Didn't sleep.
John: She said she'd sleep when she's dead.
Merlin: That's right, she did.
John: Third wave, they call it.
John: Because she was...
John: Everywhere.
John: Well, here's another question.
John: What did Anita Bryant do?
John: What was her job?
Merlin: Anita Bryant was... She was like an orange juice spokesperson.
Merlin: That was later.
Merlin: She was originally a singer from that era where there were lots of lady singers.
Merlin: She was kind of like a less talented Rosemary Clooney, I think.
Merlin: Rosemary Clooney from Cincinnati, very good singer.
Merlin: She's not remembered today, but Rosemary Clooney was a very good singer.
Merlin: She's George Clooney's aunt.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: My parents were friends with Nick.
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: Nick Clooney?
Merlin: Yep.
Merlin: Yep.
Merlin: He's lesser known.
Merlin: Now, in Cincinnati, he was the baller Clooney.
Merlin: Everybody knew Nick Clooney because he had a TV show on the TV.
John: Oh.
John: I thought you were going to say he was a Pontiac dealer, but he had a TV show, Nick Clooney.
Merlin: Nick Clooney.
Merlin: Nick Clooney.
Merlin: No, my grandfather worked at a car dealership, but that was an older time in Cincinnati.
Merlin: What I want to get to, though, is that I think the important thing here is being somebody who is a professional college student and who has had access to so many new thought technologies, it would
Merlin: be doing you love your family nominally you would be doing them a disservice not to update them on what they think they understand about life can you imagine having leaving them in that in that rousseauian state like you need to get in there and straighten them out the number one thing i did was um was explain that if you clear cut the forests
John: uh where would the animals live right but we throw something away where's away well no not that because uh it was much more specifically about clear-cutting forests because of course my uncle uh the the the self-same uncle oh he was at what weyerhaeuser uh yeah he and at the time he was president of mcmillan bloedel canada's largest tim millen bloedel so you're going way beyond exotic hardwoods here you're talking about just the whole enterprise
John: Yeah, we're saying, like, not only are we taking all the trees down from Alaska to Seattle, anywhere along the Canadian coast there that you can't see from the road, we're going to steal all the trees.
John: But also Brazil, they were pioneering.
Merlin: Exotic hardwoods.
John: They would go in there.
John: Do they call it clear-cutting?
John: Yes, clear cutting is what they would call it.
John: That was a popular Christmas time conversation topic too.
John: When everybody would sit down at the table and I would go, where are the animals going to live?
John: Boy, that was a nice, that was just, you could hear the forks dropping on the plate.
John: I went yesterday to the former Weyerhaeuser headquarters, which when it was built in the late 60s, was like a pioneering building
John: Um, like it was a, it was ecologically constructed.
John: It was open plan.
John: It was built with the integrated with the environment in order to be the most pleasant possible workspace.
John: It was really a pioneering building.
John: If you look it up, Weyerhaeuser headquarters, not the new one, but the old one, you'll see that it is a, that it's a wonderful structure and it's iconic here in the Northwest because you can see it from the interstate as you're driving South.
John: It's out in the middle of nowhere.
John: You're driving along and all of a sudden there's this gap in the trees and you see this enormous building kind of out in the distance.
John: It's enormous wide more than it is tall.
John: And you go, what the hell is that?
John: And then the gap closes as you drive and you're like – and you never see it again.
John: And a lot of people have never –
John: Never figured out what it is, but it was the Weyerhaeuser building.
John: And it's surrounded by 500 acres of exotic rhododendrons.
John: There's a bonsai museum out there with bonsai trees.
John: There's a bonsai tree that started growing in 1500.
John: And I went there because Weyerhaeuser just built a brand new headquarters right in the center of downtown Seattle.
John: In fact, right in the center of downtown Seattle where they didn't tear down a single building, but they built it on top of some old shitty parking lots.
John: So in that sense, and it's like right in Pioneer Square.
John: It's totally changing what Pioneer Square does.
John: This is some inside Seattle golf.
John: But anyway, this Weyerhaeuser building is now completely empty.
John: Absolutely not a stick of furniture in it.
John: And it's designed, it was always designed to be looked through, right?
John: It's glass on both sides.
John: So you can walk around it and just look through the entire building, five or six stories completely empty.
John: And it's a real head trip.
John: Because it's a massive place.
John: the campus of it and i really really i had two thoughts one it's a for the next year or so until they lease it again somebody needs to use it as the set of a science fiction film i can't believe that hasn't been done why is it sitting there empty what's up with that well i think it says here their headquarters are a federal way washington yeah that's in federal way washington uh that's right down there by by tacoma okay
John: I think what it is is there are very few companies in the world that can – that really need a campus with that much –
John: square footage.
John: And particularly one, because the fashion right now is for urban campuses.
John: You want more of like an artisanal pop-up paper company.
John: Yeah, you want your company to be there so you can attract all those hip young engineers who want a unicycle.
Merlin: It's like in Portland, that part of town where all the paper trucks go.
Merlin: So at lunchtime you can go and get some paper from a truck.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You get pulp, you know, renewable energy.
John: You get Lebanese paper, you get Thai paper.
Mm-hmm.
John: But so I think that eventually it won't be long before some radical startup type person.
John: decides that what he or she wants to do is have their company be out in the woods of Federal Way, working in a space building.
John: Right now, that's not what's happening.
John: Right now, companies are buying old warehouses in the cool part of town.
John: That's just the time.
John: It won't last.
John: I wanted to start a startup, Merlin, just to have my company work at that building.
John: I think the building is the company, right?
John: The building's the startup.
Merlin: You know, I'm interested in this idea, very interested, because frequently when you go to a website, nowadays, it used to be every site would have About Us.
Merlin: And now frequently, you might see an About Us, but frequently you'll see a section titled Our Story.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Our story.
Merlin: Our story.
Merlin: And so you want to talk about how not just how you're coming.
Merlin: Let's not be let's not be mercantile about this.
Merlin: You want to talk about the life changing event or philosophical breakthrough or problematic problem that you had to deal with that caused you to need to make this company.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: You know, I'm saying it's like you had to do it.
Merlin: You had to do it.
Merlin: It's beyond a mission.
Merlin: That's a different section.
Merlin: You go mission statement, that's a different section.
Merlin: But our story is where you talk about your journey.
Merlin: So your journey begins with needing to fill a building up with people.
Merlin: See, that's our story.
Merlin: That's your story.
Merlin: What's our story?
John: I saw this building.
John: I needed to fill it up.
Merlin: Maybe that's the startup.
Merlin: Maybe the startup is that we... You know what?
Merlin: Here's the thing.
Merlin: It's got a little bit of real estate management.
Merlin: It's got a little bit of VC.
Merlin: Maybe your startup is... I wouldn't call it building fillers.
Merlin: We're going to need a better name than that.
Merlin: But basically, your entire business is based on funding businesses to fill in existing places.
Merlin: So you could, for example, turn a bunch of old Taco Bells and Pizza Huts into dentist's offices.
Merlin: Hmm.
Merlin: But see, that's the thing is you want to go.
Merlin: You want to go wide.
Merlin: You want to go deep.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: It could be a beautiful glass building, you know, or it could be a local taco over here that needs to be repurposed.
John: Actually, the people that bought this building, that is their business.
John: They buy old offices.
John: They buy big old offices and turn them into offices.
John: Wow.
John: Right.
John: Wow.
John: That's their the whole company is based on buying old offices and turning them into offices.
John: He just blew my mind.
John: And I read this.
John: I read this article as I was trying to research the place that I was.
John: And I was like, how do I get into that racket?
John: And what what they do is they take other people's money.
John: They buy big office complexes and then they turn them into offices and then they rent them or sell them for money.
John: And they pay the other people, the people whose money they use, I guess they pay them back somehow.
John: And then whatever money is left over is their money.
Merlin: That's their business.
Merlin: I don't know about the paying the money back part.
Merlin: Let's wait for that.
Merlin: I would like to say on Shark Tank, we're pre-revenue right now.
Merlin: But I'm very intrigued in the idea of a company.
Merlin: It's a real lean startup where the idea is the very first thing is we need to get us into a building.
Merlin: And then once we get into a building, I'm going to call them building affiliates.
Merlin: And now those people are going to go out and find other – they're going to start – they're going to need to get into buildings, right, to create more opportunities to help people get – it's not a pyramid scheme.
Merlin: It's more of an inverted triangle.
John: Unless we can get an actual pyramid as part of this.
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John: Right?
Merlin: I mean, think about it.
Merlin: Those buildings are empty.
Merlin: Game changed.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: It's literally, you know what?
Merlin: I'm not going to lie to you.
Merlin: It's not a scheme.
Merlin: It's a pyramid program.
John: That's right.
John: It's a pyramid.
Merlin: We help get you into it.
Merlin: We find empty or disused pyramids.
Merlin: We renovate them.
Merlin: And then you fill that up.
Merlin: And then you, now you build up your, they call it your downline.
Merlin: You're going to go now and get other people into future pyramids.
John: So, for instance, here's a person there.
John: They started.
John: Let's say they started a Snapchat and they're thinking, oh, I want to have my office headquartered in in Venice, California.
John: You say, no, no, no, no, no, no.
John: Have you considered the Yucatan?
John: Have you considered the Yucatan?
John: I can put you into a whole complex business park, basically, of pyramids.
John: And it'll be very cost competitive, very competitive with what you would pay in Venice.
John: I think that's how you start generating some cash flow.
Merlin: Or at least interest.
Merlin: You're generating some interest.
Merlin: Because first you need to tickle their buying bone, don't you think?
Merlin: You've got to pivot, right?
Merlin: You've got to get them out of their current mindset.
Merlin: And if you get a little pivot, you get them thinking about pyramids.
John: Well, sure.
John: And you think like, oh, you're trying to attract some young software engineers who just got out of college.
John: And you're saying, oh, live on Venice Beach.
John: You know, there's a Nathan's Famous hot dog stand or whatever.
John: You can ride your motorcycle back and forth to work.
John: Or move to the Yucatan Peninsula and live in a historic campus surrounded by, like, low jungle.
John: There are some cenotes where you can scuba dive all the way to the seventh level of hell.
John: Oh, that is bueno.
John: Right?
John: There are gigantic lizards.
Merlin: And you never have to see your parents again.
Merlin: John, that is so much more interesting than playing Frisbee polo in Venice Beach, with all due respect.
John: So we turn that property, right?
John: We go around the world.
John: Think of all the pyramids there are.
Merlin: Oh, look on my works, you mighty in despair.
Merlin: What it's going to take for me to get you in this pyramid today.
Merlin: And almost every pyramid, I can guarantee you, is empty right now.
Merlin: Well, you know, this is the thing.
Merlin: There's so many angles to this.
Merlin: First of all, every one of these ding-a-ling CEOs wants to eventually become, I mean, you know, we're looking today at Elon Musk.
Merlin: We're looking at a Musk.
Merlin: We're looking at the Zuckerberg.
Merlin: You look at any of these guys, they're obviously all modeling themselves on previous generations of CEOs and supervillains.
Merlin: There's no question about that.
Merlin: And so now we go, oh, look at him.
Merlin: He's going to space.
Merlin: But they all kind of want to be David Branson.
Merlin: They kind of want to be Blofeld.
Merlin: And you say to them, look, it's a pyramid.
Merlin: It's a pyramid.
Merlin: You're going to have to fill this with all kinds of stuff.
Merlin: Or you know what?
Merlin: You fill it with nothing.
Merlin: Or maybe you put more pyramids inside.
Merlin: Once you're on your own affiliate downline, you decide how to run that operation.
John: Fill it with nothing.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: Oh, my gosh.
Merlin: Free shipping on Amazon Prime.
John: Nothing.
John: I see myself now, or you and I, I'm sorry, because we just founded this business together, but here we are.
Merlin: No, I got a feeling I'm going to be the Andrew Garfield character.
Merlin: I got a feeling I'm the one who gets pushed out.
Merlin: Or maybe I'm a Winkle Winklevoss.
John: Who am I, Winklevoss?
John: Yeah, you might be a Winklevoss.
John: You know, the Winklevosses and the Garfields, they got paid pretty well.
John: Is that right?
John: Yeah, I think so.
John: I mean, you know, maybe they didn't... Who's the other guy in that movie?
Merlin: Oh, you know who it is?
Merlin: It's...
Merlin: It's the guy from that boy band.
Merlin: It's not Jonah Hill.
Merlin: It's Justin Bieberflake.
Merlin: Justin Bieberflake.
Merlin: Yeah, Justin Bieberflake.
Merlin: That's the one.
John: He's in that movie.
John: That's right.
John: And he's the guy that founded Napster.
John: He's the one who ruined your career, John.
John: Last night.
John: No, two nights ago, I was at a party.
John: And a guy, oh, I'm sorry, a lady comes over to me, sits down next.
John: So anyway, I show up to this party.
John: I haven't, I didn't, it's a party where you pay some money for the ticket and you come and you get a steak dinner.
John: And a friend of mine was going to the party and said, you got to come to the party.
John: And I was like, yeah, I didn't want to go to the party.
John: I didn't want to buy a ticket.
John: I didn't want to go is the thing.
John: And then at the last minute I said, all right, I'll go to the party.
John: Uh, and my friend said, well, you don't have a ticket.
John: And I was like, you know, let me handle that.
John: So we get to the party and I, uh, you know, and, uh, my friend has an assigned seat, right?
John: It's assigned seating at these, these round tables, table number four, table number five, et cetera, et cetera.
Merlin: This is so confusing.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: Is this a charity event?
Merlin: It's a charity event.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: When we say party, I'm thinking, yeah, okay.
John: Well, the thing is, all these auctions nowadays, they present themselves as parties, right?
John: There's going to be dancing.
John: It's fun.
John: There's a silent auction.
John: You walk around.
John: An auction in parties clothing.
John: I hate these things.
John: I hate them because 99% of the things I don't want, right?
John: I don't want a basket of wine.
John: I don't want a bastic of cheese.
John: I don't want any kind of bastic.
John: I don't want to bid $2,500 on a ride around the lake on somebody's boat.
John: I don't want any of it.
Merlin: We had the school auction this weekend.
Merlin: And you know how it is?
Merlin: It's the company store.
Merlin: It's the company store, right?
Merlin: So my wife, she led the production of my daughter's classrooms project to sell at the auction.
Merlin: So she basically.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: So here's the thing.
Merlin: She basically paid for and helped create the piece of art.
Merlin: She worked at the auction Saturday night.
Merlin: And do you want to make any guesses about who bought the art?
Merlin: Let's see.
John: Was it your wife?
Merlin: She should be working in the development team for pyramids, pyramids, pyramids or whatever you end up calling it.
John: My mom used to say – I think she gets the recursive nature of this.
John: About those bake sales and stuff.
Merlin: Well, yeah.
Merlin: In this case, you've got to go to this party and like, you know what?
Merlin: Can I just – how about instead I give you $200 not to come?
John: That was always what my mom said.
John: Because they used to pay for this stuff with bake sales.
John: There weren't auctions when we were kids, right?
John: There were bake sales.
John: Right.
John: every every uh well let's be honest every mom would make a casserole or a cake or a pie yeah and then they'd set up tables in the gym and uh and the pies and cakes would be all around and then you'd well i guess walk around and what just buy them or was there bidding i don't remember well i think if you got a there's some cases you can have like a bastic lunch and if you want to impress a lady i learned this on gilmore girls if you if you want to get somebody's particular bastic then you bid on them and that by proxy by proxy becomes your affection for them
John: Oh, it's like the bachelor auction in Groundhog Day.
John: Yeah, same thing.
John: My mom would always say, I don't want to make a cake.
John: I don't want to make a pie.
John: I don't want to go to this thing.
John: Can I just give you $200?
John: And they were like, you just don't understand.
John: This is like a, you know, it's fun.
John: It should be fun.
Merlin: Yeah, I'm doing a fun run.
Merlin: Do you want to fund me?
Merlin: I'm like, can I just give you $20 and we stop talking?
Merlin: I don't want to sign anything.
Merlin: I don't want to get emails about this.
Merlin: I don't want to be put on a list.
Merlin: That's the thing, John.
Merlin: You sign up for any of these things, you get
Merlin: put on a list.
Merlin: Well, I'm already on those lists.
Merlin: I'm on those lists.
Merlin: Well, I'll tell you what, I don't know.
Merlin: The thing is, I'm probably going to be pushed out maybe by the end of this program, but I'm here to tell you, pyramids, pyramids, pyramids will never contact you without your express permission.
Merlin: Well, I mean, you know, unless we have to pivot, we have to pivot to outreach.
John: If you want to unsubscribe, it's right down there at the bottom where instead of unsubscribe, it says adjust your preferences.
John: You can adjust your preferences and
John: And then somewhere in there, if you click on that, you're going to find somewhere an opportunity to unsubscribe where when you click on it, it's going to say, are you sure you want to unsubscribe?
John: Have you really considered this?
Merlin: Yeah, really serious.
Merlin: And here's the other thing.
Merlin: Pyramids, pyramids, pyramids, way too long.
Merlin: What if we shortened that to you ready for this pyramids cubed?
Merlin: Oh, whoa.
Merlin: How are we going to spell pyramids?
Merlin: That's the big question.
Merlin: We're going to have to spell it funny.
Merlin: I think we have to remove... Okay, well, let me type it up.
Merlin: I think we have to remove some vowels.
Merlin: Pyramids... In this case, is Y a vowel?
John: I mean, this is one of those instances.
John: Oh, A-E-I-O-U and sometimes Y. Sometimes Y, and I think this is a sometimes situation here.
Merlin: P-R-A-M... That just says prams.
Merlin: Oh, pyramids.
Merlin: P-E-E-R.
Merlin: Here comes the money truck.
Merlin: P-E-E-R-A-M-I-D-Z.
Merlin: I have to write that out to see it.
Merlin: I'll text it to you.
Merlin: Here's what I've got so far.
Merlin: We're just workshopping this.
Merlin: P-E-E-R-A-M-I-D and I'm going with Z.
John: I think that's going to be easier to copyright.
John: Go ahead.
John: I feel like the Z makes it seem like an Australian children's band.
Merlin: We'll be right back.
Merlin: Audible is offering listeners of Roderick on the Line a free audiobook with a 30-day trial membership.
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Merlin: I think it's right up the Roderick on the Line alley.
Merlin: It's a book called Blitzed.
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Merlin: Right?
Merlin: It ends with a Z. Yeah, no, no.
Merlin: I hear you.
Merlin: I hear you.
John: I think there should be a Y. I think it should be P... M-Y-D-Z?
John: No, P-E-E-R-M-Y-D-S.
John: P-E-E-R-Y?
John: No, M-Y-D-S.
Merlin: Pyramids.
Merlin: Do you have an A in there?
John: No A. Just pyramids.
Merlin: P-E-E-R-M-Y-D-Z.
Merlin: Not Z. I feel like the Z is too far.
Merlin: Z is in Australia too far.
Merlin: Pyramids.
Merlin: Can we capitalize the M?
Merlin: Can we capitalize the M?
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: All right.
John: Capitalize the M. P-E-E-R-M-Y-D-S.
John: Pyramids.
John: That seems like a website you would have to log into if you were going to see an oncologist.
Merlin: I think it's true.
Merlin: This is your Dutch cancer doctor.
Merlin: Pierre Mids.
Merlin: Pierre Mids.
Merlin: Dr. Pierre Mids.
Merlin: It works on a lot of levels.
Merlin: So, you know, we don't have to go.
John: So anyway, so I went to this dinner.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: And I leaned up again.
John: So I get there and my friends like well, I'm sitting at table four What are you gonna do?
John: And I was like, don't you know, let me let me worry about that you go sit you have your steak dinner I'm in because you know they can't it's it's an open you go to a check-in desk when you walk in but that's honor system stuff right and The thing is I see I see the thing about this is that I donated an electric guitar to this auction and
John: Not an expensive electric guitar.
John: In fact, an electric guitar that was a signature model of a certain kind of artist and actually signed by that artist.
John: An artist you may remember by the name of Matthew Sweet.
Merlin: Matthew Sweet.
Merlin: Is it one of those double cutaways?
Merlin: It's a double cutaway guitar.
Merlin: Yes, yes.
Merlin: Well, no, it's a special model.
Merlin: Is this from your relationship with the Gibson Company, John, back in the day?
John: It's from my relationship with a guitar company, not the Gibson Company.
John: We made a Matthew Sweet signature model guitar signed on the sticker on the inside by Matthew Sweet.
Merlin: The people working in the factory want nothing more than to make you your dream guitar.
Merlin: That's all they do all day long is want to make your dream guitar, but you can't make your dream guitar.
Merlin: There's no skew.
Merlin: They don't have a skew for it.
John: They don't have a skew for it.
John: God damn it.
John: I've been there.
John: I've walked around.
John: I've asked them interesting questions.
Merlin: I still think about that story, and it still breaks my heart to think about it.
John: They're in there still probably smoking those cigarettes down to their knuckles and making guitars.
Merlin: It's not like they don't want to do it.
Merlin: They want to do that.
Merlin: They're luthiers.
Merlin: It says right there.
Merlin: They're Martin luthiers.
Merlin: They want to make you a guitar.
John: They do.
John: They want to make this guitar for me, and they cannot because there's not a skew.
John: No skew.
John: That's not how it was in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s.
Merlin: Sorry, Scotty Moore.
Merlin: Can't make you a guitar.
Merlin: We don't have a skew.
John: Yeah.
John: That's how it is now.
John: Sickening.
John: In any case, I lean up against the wall in the back of the room with the waiters.
John: Right?
John: The waiters are up against the wall.
John: They're watching.
John: They're getting ready to serve the salad course.
John: I start chit-chatting.
John: with some waiters.
John: Hey, what's up?
John: How's it going?
John: Good, good.
John: Nice night, right?
John: This is how I've lived my whole life, chit-chatting with the waiters.
John: That's my friend class, right?
John: My friend class is not the donor class.
John: It's the waiter class.
John: Then the woman who is putting on the event
John: uh walks by she doesn't really walk by so much as she glides by and she sees me standing there talking the waiters and she stops and she goes john hello nice to see because of course you know this is how you get in right you gotta know somebody i say i'm good i'm good how are you good we talk we chat she says thank you for the guitar i go anytime listen i want to fund this program as much as you do
John: And then she says, by way of ending the conversation, because she's headed off on an important mission, she kind of puts one hand in the small of my back as though to guide me to my table.
John: And she says, where are you sitting?
John: Where are you sitting?
John: Let me walk you over.
John: And I think she's a maven, right?
John: She wants to walk me over because she wants to see who else is sitting at the table so she can make introductions, right?
John: It's about the connections and the networking and the people.
John: That's right.
John: And so she doesn't want to just say, why don't you get to your table?
John: I'll be right there.
John: Or, you know, I have other business to do.
John: She wants to walk me to the table and say, oh, you know, Maisie Glotz.
John: Do you know John Roderick?
John: You're sitting at the same table.
John: And then I go, oh, hello, Maisie.
John: Of course I know Maisie.
Merlin: Pits on fun or just keep taking back to that same group.
Merlin: Listen, that's right.
Merlin: Do you know Muhammad and Ahmed?
Ahmed.
John: So, you know, and then it would be an opportunity for me to say, oh, I know that I go way back with the glosses.
Merlin: Oh, the glosses.
John: I know the glosses, too.
John: So I say, I don't have a table.
John: You know, I just kind of waltzed in here, honestly.
John: I didn't expect to come.
John: I was just waltzing in.
John: And this is the thing.
John: When we talk about unchecked privilege.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: Boy, it's really a thing.
John: And then there's the kind of privilege that you're very aware of and just have no interest in checking.
John: And then there's the kind of privilege where you just donated a guitar to an auction.
John: And she says, oh, let's find you a table.
John: And so she waltzes me over.
Merlin: So she's not put off by this.
John: Not even, you know, she's the consummate hostess, right?
John: She doesn't blink an eye.
John: Oh, of course you came without having done anything.
John: Of course you decided to come here four minutes ago and just decided to come.
John: It was not inhibited at all by not having a ticket, but just came, right?
John: But she's the big wheel, right?
John: So she starts looking around the room and she goes, huh, there's a table over there with an open seat.
John: And she walks me over.
John: And, of course, she knows everybody at the table.
John: You know them.
John: You know the so-and-sos and the so-and-sos.
John: And she sits me down next to a guy, and it turns out he's the CFO of Napster.
John: What?
John: And I said, Napster?
Merlin: You mean he was the CFO of Napster?
John: No.
John: So I sit down, and this is how we're introduced.
John: And he goes, hey.
John: And I say, Napster is the thing?
John: And he goes, yeah, Napster has been purchased by Rhapsody.
John: And I think it's well, so it still exists in some form.
John: OK.
John: And and so all of a sudden I go from leaning against the wall with the waiters to talking about how Napster ruined the music business.
John: But of course, he probably didn't get that much.
John: No.
John: Well, the thing is that he is, you know, he's come into it.
Merlin: Yeah, I mean, the music industry had already been ruined two more times after that, probably, by the time he came in.
Merlin: I'm sure that's a fundamentally different content provider than Napster was.
John: Well, sure.
John: And at the time, he was in a different line of work.
John: He's not a music person.
John: He's a financial person.
John: Sure.
John: He was working for Macmillan Bloedel.
John: And now he doesn't, now there's no institutional memory of when Napster ruined the music business.
John: Now everybody's streaming.
John: We're all streaming.
John: And so, uh, so, and the streaming people feel like they're doing musicians a great service.
John: So, uh, so he was excited to talk about, he was excited to talk about all the things that
John: He wasn't going to do specifically for me, but what he was doing generally for... For your kind.
John: Yeah, for the world of music.
John: So it was very, you know, it was like, talk about pop music.
John: Yeah, New York, London, Paris, Munich.
John: New York, London, Paris, Munich...
John: those are going to be the headquarters of of pyramids yeah we're not actually going to be in pyramid we're not our offices aren't going to be pyramids i wonder how that'll work out pyramids uh which does that bring something up when you search it oh you know i'm not i'm not you know i probably should look i should look now it just says are you talking about
John: Are you talking about pyramids?
John: And it spells it correctly.
John: Oh, good.
John: That's a good sign.
John: Well, it suggests to me that someone else has ever put in that spelling of pyramids.
Merlin: Okay, I shouldn't even admit this, but I found exactly one match, which is a site called Name Ideas Generator.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: And that's if you enter in the letters M-Y-D-S.
Merlin: Yeah, but the thing is, you know, it's like mailing the song to yourself.
Merlin: I think as long as we build a pyramid or inhabit a pyramid somewhere, I think we get the first right of refusal, it's called.
Merlin: Wait a minute.
Merlin: Do you mail songs to yourself?
Merlin: I used to.
Merlin: I read that's as good as copyright.
Merlin: I'm not sure how that holds up in court.
Merlin: So you would put it in a cassette tape and mail it to yourself?
Merlin: No, we're talking about... No, no.
Merlin: So what I heard was, when you write a song... I think I've heard this too.
Merlin: Yes, you should type it up.
Merlin: This makes absolutely no sense.
Merlin: Just to think about it for even a second.
Merlin: So what do you do?
Merlin: The idea is, if you don't copyright, it's a thing.
Merlin: You've got to copyright your song, your song about how terrible Palm Beach is or whatever, like my terrible punk rock songs.
Merlin: So you mail it to yourself.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Just on a piece of paper.
Merlin: Oh, sure.
Merlin: Because now you got the date on there.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: So I guess the one problem with this is you only get one opportunity to take that out of the envelope.
Merlin: You and I are not copyright lawyers.
Merlin: No, we should probably say that.
Merlin: We are pyramidpreneurs.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: Pyramidpreneurs.
John: But you're saying you only get one chance to take it out of the envelope.
Merlin: Well, this is the same era and crowd from which I heard that if you walk around with weed in your shoe, it turns into hash.
John: Well, if you ask a cop if he's a cop, he's got to say yes.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: Show me your dick.
Merlin: Let me smell your dick.
Merlin: Take it out.
Merlin: Everybody knows that.
Merlin: You know what this is, John?
Merlin: This is stuff you learn on the streets.
John: Well, sure, if you ever saw the movie Training Day, you know, you've got to smoke a little PCP with your partner, because what if you're with some bad guy and he says, why don't you take a hit of this PCP?
John: Yeah, not what he's expecting.
John: No, you've got to know how to hit PCP if you really expect to be taken seriously by the bad guys.
John: Know when to walk away, know when to run.
John: Yeah, I totally agree.
John: So you're saying, because I heard this too, about the copywriting the song, and I never did it.
John: It's not that I didn't do it because I didn't believe that it would work.
Merlin: Hey, John, hang on a minute.
Merlin: Oh, what happened?
Merlin: Your mic just changed.
John: Did it change in a good way or a bad way?
Merlin: Bad way.
Merlin: You sound like you're talking into your computer directly.
Merlin: Oh, what about now?
Merlin: Oh, you sound fantastic.
Merlin: Oh, thank you.
Merlin: Isn't that fun when that happens?
Merlin: Did you gesture wildly?
John: You know what I did?
John: I have a couple of rabbit ear antennas here on the top of my computer.
John: Sometimes you have to hit the computer on the side real hard and then adjust the rabbit ears.
Merlin: Oh, I get it.
Merlin: Hey, sit on it.
John: Okay.
Ha, ha, ha, ha.
Merlin: So anyway, pyramids.
Merlin: So you send it to yourself.
Merlin: Now, if you're that concerned about copyright, it seems like you might want to explore it more.
Merlin: But that was the word on the street.
Merlin: You got to smell a cop's dick and you mail the song to yourself.
Merlin: Ironclad.
John: If Woody Guthrie did that, he'd be alive today.
John: If Woody Guthrie had done that, he'd be alive today.
John: You know, I say that at least once a day.
John: All the time I'm saying that.
John: So I actually have copyrighted
John: music and i actually hired a copyright lawyer i think i may have described this to you before where i copyrighted the name the long winters because when you had to deal with the wilders the wilders but it was because there was a band that was calling themselves a long winter like they put out a record or two immediately after the long winters came along there was no debate that the long winters were the long winters before a long
Merlin: winter was a long winter but somehow can you imagine being somebody who's like well there is a band called the long winters but we're a long winter i i get that in the late 60s for two reasons because the world was smaller for one thing you could get away with with calling your band you know the beatless or something like that or even the beatles like no maybe not the beatles but you could get away with a lot because the world was smaller but second like you know just google it like we just did
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: You know, I mean, like, that's just weird.
Merlin: Even in Alta Vista, you could Alta Vista a long winter.
Merlin: Yeah, you could use Wolfram Alpha.
Merlin: Wolfram Alpha.
John: Yeah.
John: Or you could call yourselves a long winter UK.
John: Oh, right.
John: You don't just put out a record called a long winter.
Merlin: No.
John: So anyway, I had to go to this copyright lawyer.
John: And then what I discovered about a copyright lawyer is talk about a pyramid scheme.
Mm-hmm.
John: Lawyers, I don't know if you knew this.
John: This is something that I've learned in dealing with this copyright lawyer.
John: If a lawyer's office wants to send you an email, they type the email.
John: Have we discussed this?
John: Go ahead.
John: They type the email.
John: Yeah, they have a way they like to bill an invoice.
John: Yeah, they type the email, and as they begin to type the email, the clock is ticking.
John: They are charging you for the expense of typing the email telling you that...
John: They have an opportunity for you to pay them some money.
John: Yeah, like they're billing you and they're charging you for billing you And it feels to me like that is the most genius business model That's the most genius business model of all one for you 19 for me to build somebody For the for the expense of the time it takes to build them date.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: This should be part of pyramids.
Merlin: I think so, too.
Merlin: I think recursion should be a huge part of our recursion.
Merlin: I think so, too.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: Everything that's in the show is in the show.
Merlin: And everything in pyramids is part of pyramids.
John: We're a business that takes businesses and turns them into businesses.
John: We business your business harder.
John: As soon as we start turning a business into a business, that's our business.
John: That's our business.
John: The business of America is business, and the business of pyramids is business.
John: Is business, and we're going to charge you for charging you.
John: As part of our business of businesses, we're charging you for charging you.
John: Every time we charge them, we're going to charge them for the expense of charging them.
Merlin: Well, but then, of course, there's the recharge surcharge.
Merlin: Oh, there should be a surcharge to recharge.
Merlin: There's a surcharge to recharge.
Merlin: Also, if you have any inquiries about your bill, there may be a very, very, very small, large fee associated with the request surcharge recharge.
Merlin: If there are any inquiries, we're going to have to make some inquiries.
Merlin: Should 5% appear too small?
Merlin: Be thankful I don't take it all.
Merlin: Oh, Mr. Wilson.
Merlin: Oh, Mr. Heath.
John: Sitting in an English garden.
John: Quiet desperation is the English way.
Merlin: Okay, so... Now, let's see.
Merlin: Who do we owe money to for that?
Merlin: So, the thing is, it won't be... Not Northern Song.
Merlin: We would owe it to Hera Songs.
Merlin: We'd owe it to Hera Songs and his lawyers.
Merlin: And to... What was that?
Merlin: Was that Dave Gilmore?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I think Roger Waters is playing Dave Gilmore's songs in the newly refreshed Pink Floyd.
John: I noticed that, too.
John: Did you see that in movie trailers?
John: It never stopped Gilmore from playing Waters' songs.
John: I mean, although I don't think that Gilmore ever played pros and cons of hitchhiking.
Merlin: These are the pros and cons of hitchhiking.
Merlin: Remember that butt on the cover, though?
John: Why that was the single?
John: That record had good songs on it.
Merlin: I just remember the butt on the cover.
Merlin: There's a really prominent lady's butt on the cover.
Merlin: It was a prominent butt.
Merlin: That was a big butt era.
Merlin: Not large as in butts, I can't deny.
Merlin: But more like in that era, you just saw some big shiny butts all the time.
Merlin: What's his name from Loverboy?
Merlin: Mike Love?
Merlin: Is that his name?
Merlin: Mike Reno?
Merlin: You got his butt on the cover of the album.
Merlin: There were a lot of butts.
Merlin: Butts and berets.
Merlin: Oh, well, think about Bruce Springsteen's butt.
Merlin: It sold 10 million copies of that record.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: Born down in a dead man's town.
Merlin: Now see, now I'm going to owe Bruce Springsteen money.
Merlin: Maybe we could pull him in.
Merlin: Maybe we could get him an equity share in pyramids.
Merlin: We should bring in some of these artists so we don't have to pay for quoting their songs.
John: You know, the pros and cons of Hitchhiking Record cover, now that I'm looking at it, at the time that this came out, right, which would have been, what, 1982?
John: Yeah, about 82.
John: So 1982, right?
John: This is a key time for me in the development of my sense of what it is, what life is going to be, right?
John: 1982.
John: So I am 13.
John: And I'm just evolving.
John: A lot of people's sexuality starts to evolve.
John: Your sexuality starts to evolve forever.
John: Within a pretty wide range of time, right?
John: I think your sexuality starts to evolve, obviously, when you're a little child.
John: But as you get to be, like, in your teens, puberty comes into play, and all of a sudden you have these strange feelings, but you're looking around, can't decide who's more important, your peers or the other side where your romantic interest lies.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
John: And you're thinking, you know, who do I owe my allegiance to?
John: What's the best way to go about this?
John: How do I navigate this territory?
John: And I really struggled in this time.
John: I know everybody does, but I really didn't know what to do at all.
John: And part of it was that I didn't have a very good idea of what my desire was.
John: I wasn't sure what exactly I desired on the other side of the divide, right?
John: I wasn't sure if I was straight or gay for a long time.
John: I struggled with the idea, you know, I wasn't I couldn't exactly nail down what I was looking for in somebody else.
John: Not not physically, not emotionally, not anything, you know.
John: And so I was I was in this fog of like, is that attractive to me?
John: Is this attractive to me?
John: Is this person attractive?
John: Is that person attractive?
John: Couldn't say for the life of me.
John: And it's not that I it's not that I wasn't attracted to.
John: uh to any of those people or things i was attracted to them kind of all and but i but you know what was my taste i guess i didn't know well and you know i mean i feel you because there's this thing of if you think about it like gosh you know like my
Merlin: My daughter's nine, and she's doing some stuff more.
Merlin: She's thinking about her hair a little more and picking out outfits and stuff, and I can just feel like it's probably the tip of the spear of this coming into her own.
Merlin: You're describing how this stuff starts from such a young age, but it's so impossibly abstract.
Merlin: You're describing here, am I straight, am I gay?
Merlin: What does that even mean?
Merlin: I can be attracted to this butt, but not that butt?
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: So let me show you this.
Merlin: It's like one of those things in National Geographic World where you zoom way in on something and go, oh, here's this image.
Merlin: Are you attracted to that?
Merlin: Oh, well, you're a fact.
Merlin: The wrong butt.
Merlin: That's so weird.
Merlin: That's so strange.
Merlin: And you're expected to derive your entire adult identity based on guessing how to answer that question right?
Merlin: It's so odd.
Merlin: It really was.
Merlin: No, actually, it's not a butt.
Merlin: It's an elbow.
Merlin: You're a pervert.
Merlin: It's so weird.
John: Well, and at...
John: At that particular time, right, there was a like if you think back to and this is again will sound crazy to to younger people, but like there were body types that were not just preferred, but it was like the body type of the era.
John: If you think back to the Victorian times and you have this tiny little waist and this giant, like a hoop skirt in order to imitate the biggest possible butt you could have.
John: Like a bustle, yeah.
John: Yeah, the tiniest little waist.
Merlin: Most women I know today would not want a bow on the back of a dress, and yet back then you'd get a bustle.
John: You'd get a bustle, right.
John: 1950s, you got your Marilyn Monroe style body.
John: And then in the 60s, this model called Twiggy came along, who was rail thin.
John: And she was sort of imitating the style of the 1920s, the kind of flapper body, which was like, you know, small bust, small hips, just sort of.
John: narrow, lean, androgynous form.
John: And then in the 80s, in the 70s, well, in the 70s, yeah, right, I guess Playboy magazine.
Merlin: This is right in the middle of the Jane Fonda, let's get physical era.
John: Let's get physical era, right, where there was a lot of, like, everybody was in really good
John: The ideal, let's say, was really good physical shape, but it still was like big breasts.
John: I guess this was the era of big breasts, small butt, maybe.
John: A tight butt.
John: But this was still at a time when there was kind of a single idea, culture-wide, of what beauty was.
John: And now it's such a diversity of beauty that you could never recall a time before.
John: Probably where unless you're a certain age where there was just like, well, that's beautiful and everything else is weird.
John: And at the at the time when I was coming into my into my agency, the sexual, the beauty form.
John: Right.
John: Which was typically blonde with like blown out hair.
John: Farrah Fawcett didn't have a big bust, but she was, you know, Loney Anderson.
John: Right.
John: This was the ideal.
John: And it held no attraction to me.
John: Like I was I did not.
John: That was just it did nothing for me.
John: Didn't ring any bells.
John: I was always like much more intrigued by small people with short, dark hair, regardless of like what their gender was.
John: And so the pros and cons of hitchhiking record cover was like very titillating, right?
John: It's a naked person from behind.
John: And I hadn't thought of it in years, so I hadn't gone to look at it.
Merlin: I think it's a lady.
Merlin: I remember it's like a lady with a shiny butt and high heels.
Merlin: Am I remembering it right?
Merlin: Wearing a backpack, sticking out her thumb because she's hitchhiking.
Merlin: Okay.
John: So would that be considered the pros or the cons we're seeing here?
John: Well, this depends, right?
John: I mean, I think for a lot of people, this is one of the pros of hitchhiking.
Merlin: Oh, ass grass or blown glass.
John: Nobody rides for free.
John: If this was a person that you picked up while hitchhiking, I think you would consider it a pro if you were most people.
John: Yeah, but you want to put something on the seat, probably.
John: Oh, sure, a towel.
Merlin: Wow, this is much more poorly produced than I remember.
Merlin: Yeah, it's a really bad, the art is really bad.
Merlin: It looks like a, what's the word I'm looking for?
Merlin: Like a Winston Smith thing for Dead Kennedys.
Merlin: Like, it's really weird.
John: Yeah, or somebody initially had the idea, like, let's do one of those Warhols, like the cover of Billy Squire.
Merlin: Or like we want a Ralph Steadman kind of look, but we can't afford Ralph Steadman.
John: Yeah, right, so we'll throw some paint at a picture of a girl.
John: But if you look at her picture now, she's extremely thin.
John: She's very tall and lean.
John: But I remember it being described at the time of like, oh, this is like a big butt.
Merlin: I remember her butt seeming bigger at the time.
John: Not a pejorative, but yeah.
No.
John: But, like, it really stood out.
John: And what I'm saying is I think that record, like, put in – it was the type of cultural thing that went wide where it changed how we looked at butts.
John: It really did.
John: It changed how I look at butts.
John: Yeah.
John: And I'd like to – I'd like to go back in time and not have that have affected my – Oh, interesting.
Merlin: You want to go back and kind of rewrite those blocks.
Yeah.
John: Yeah, yeah, I think so.
John: I mean, I think it did me a disservice, it did us all a disservice to have that particular butt, which is a fine butt.
John: Let me not disparage that butt.
John: But that is not the size of butt.
John: That I think is like what would be considered like normal sized or even like that's not that's not my taste in butts, let's say.
John: And I think that it affected my ability to have a taste in a different kind of butt for a little brief period where I was like, geez, if that's a big butt, let me tell you, I'm living in the wrong country, mister.
Merlin: Yeah, it's almost like you got, I want to say miscalibrated.
Merlin: If you were a piece of lab equipment, you would be functioning within normal parameters without ever knowing that even though you're accurate to how you were calibrated, that calibration was not a good calibration.
John: So here's an interesting factoid.
John: The model of that butt is a woman named Lindsay Drew.
John: Lindsay spelled with an I, a Z-I, L-I-N-Z-I.
John: Lindsay.
John: Lindsay Drew.
John: We should hire her.
John: She's only 10 years older than I am.
Merlin: Do you want to get her in on the ground floor of pyramids?
John: Well, I feel like she would be a perfect spokesperson for pyramids.
Merlin: Would she have to show her butt?
John: No, no, no, no, no, no.
John: But she could speak from a place of wisdom.
John: That's exactly right.
John: She could speak from a place of she could speak from a time when her when she understood that her butt was like a tastemaking butt.
John: But also she's had a lot of experience.
John: She she did quite a bit of nude modeling.
John: At the time.
John: And then became sort of a, you know, she, well, she retired from that.
John: Oh, I see.
Merlin: Adult films.
John: Yeah.
John: And she has also then she was an actress.
John: She appeared in American Werewolf in London.
John: I love that movie.
Merlin: Oh, she's in Lair of the White Worm.
John: Yeah, I don't know what that is.
Merlin: Oh, that's what is a Ken Russell.
Merlin: It's got Amanda Donahue, a very young Peter Capaldi.
Merlin: You ever seen it?
Merlin: Oh, it's weird.
Merlin: Oh, it's got Hugh Grant in it.
Merlin: Very young Hugh Grant.
Merlin: It is such a wackadoo movie.
Merlin: Oh, Salome's Last Dance.
Merlin: No way.
Merlin: British horror film.
Merlin: Mistress Monique.
John: She has a child named Tiger Drew Honey.
John: This is the type of thing that, without the internet, we could never possibly know, that the woman from the cover of Roger Waters' great album, Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking, his first solo album, if you do not consider the final cut, a Roger Waters solo album, which some incorrect critics do.
John: Let's save that for another show.
John: But that she, that model, who made such a great impact on us at the time, actually was in a movie with Hugh Grant.
John: We could never have known that if it wasn't for the existence of the internet.
Merlin: Do you think we're better off?
John: You know, I was thinking about this the other day, and I don't know if we've covered this in as great a detail as I think we should.
John: And by saying that, I suspect that we have not, because I want to cover it some more.
John: But I do really feel like right now, this will be remembered as the era when things got inputted.
John: This will be remembered as the input era.
John: And because there is now a sort of mixed generation of people who remember looking things up in books, who remember a time when information was scarce, who remember a time when Lindsay Drew did not...
John: It was not necessarily going to be easy to figure out who Lindsay Drew was.
John: There are a lot of us who remember that time but also are internet savvy, or at least internet literate.
John: Behind us is a generation that has no idea how to use the Internet, and they still are trying to look things up in books.
John: And ahead of us are a generation that never learned how to look up things in books, and if it isn't on the Internet, it doesn't exist.
John: And so for those of us in this middle period, there is a tremendous obligation, I think, to make sure that as much stuff gets onto the Internet as possible.
John: And I really think it's the Wikipedia generation is how we'll be understood.
John: Because if it doesn't make it onto the Internet now, it's going to be a lot more difficult.
Merlin: Oh, I see what you're saying.
Merlin: It's along the lines of, hey, go interview your elderly relatives.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: So even if you don't do anything with that tape today, tape, listen to me, you can do something in the future.
Merlin: You're saying get it on the Internet now or it's never going to be anywhere.
John: That's right.
John: So I was thinking about this in terms of I was looking out the window of my bathroom at my catalpa tree.
John: And when I first moved into this house, I looked out the window at that catalpa tree and I said, you know what I should do?
John: I should keep an almanac.
John: I should keep a little book here by the window.
John: And every...
John: Every year I should write down when the leaves first come out on the catalpa.
John: I should write down when the leaves finally drop off of the catalpa in the fall.
John: I should write down the changing seasons in this little almanac that I keep by this window because I'm in this room every day.
John: And I should just notate things as they occur.
John: When it snows.
John: What days have rain.
John: You know, just like old-fashioned kind of almanac.
John: I was looking out the window yesterday, and I realized that is a thing over the course of history that a lot of people have done.
John: They've kept little almanacs at their farm, and it's been a source of great pleasure for them.
John: And I think there are probably lots and lots of people who have kept almanacs for 40 years, and they have a 40-year record of all the first leafing out and
John: And how many birds they saw this year, how many fewer birds they saw the following year.
John: And those almanacs were always considered kind of records of the property.
John: Maybe you would hand it down to whoever bought the farm.
John: It's a little like a captain's log.
John: A captain's log.
Merlin: But it might seem day to day, well, what it is is it's ephemeral data from day to day.
Merlin: Like writing down what the temperature was in the field in this one spot is very ephemeral.
Merlin: But over time, that's very meaningful.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
John: And I think the great almanacs, like, you know, if Louis Bromfield kept an almanac, that almanac eventually ended up in the public library in Ohio somewhere in, you know, in whatever, Lucas, Ohio.
John: And
John: Those, you know, and truly great almanacs became things that were recognized as like, oh, this is actually part of the historical record.
Merlin: I had to look him up.
Merlin: Louis Bromfield is a science farmer from Ohio.
John: Science farmer.
John: I wish there were more science farmers.
John: Wait a minute.
John: Wasn't science farmer also the description of Matthew McConaughey in that dumb movie where he's behind the bookshelf?
John: That's what I'm saying!
John: But science farmer!
Merlin: But so...
Merlin: Sorry, Louis Bromfield of Mansfield, Ohio.
John: Okay, Mansfield.
John: Anyway, so right now around the country, right, there are people whose grandparents have a little farm and they now have moved to the big city.
John: They're living in Cincinnati and they're working for pyramids.com.
John: And they go back home and maybe it comes up in conversation or they look on the bookshelf and they see, what is this?
John: Grandma, what is this?
John: Oh, that's the almanac.
John: And we put in every year how many crows came and ate our seed.
John: And there's an opportunity right there in that moment.
John: to recognize a person our age or slightly younger, to recognize in that moment, oh my goodness, this is a wealth of information.
John: And it right now is not searchable.
John: It's not disseminatable.
John: It cannot be connected to anything else.
John: And if I don't input this somehow, if I don't make it a special project to go and input this data,
John: then it will not exist in the future, and it's a missed opportunity.
John: Because if everybody put in all their family almanacs, we would be able then to cross-reference those almanacs and say, on April 1st, anywhere in the United States, was it, you know, what was the weather?
John: What was the, when did the leaves come out?
John: You know, this is like...
John: It's not just true of almanacs.
John: It's true of everything.
John: If your grandparents don't get biographied now, they never will.
John: It wasn't a thing that we ever cared about before because who cared?
John: You would have written a biography of your great-grandmother and then that would have gone on the shelf in your family house.
John: It's only now that that stuff is
John: And it's useful in the aggregate, right?
Merlin: But there's at least a couple angles.
Merlin: There's the one angle that's always been true, which is that this is very delicate information that gets harder to collect and compile every month, really, let alone every year.
Merlin: If you want to do a lot of information on World War I veterans, well, that window is kind of closed, and now you're going to have to really go sift through papers.
Merlin: The other thing is, there's so much other new information crowding out all the other information.
Merlin: I mean, I understand information is just information, but finding a needle in a haystack is going to get harder as those haystacks become multiplied.
John: Well, and that's why I feel like this is such an important moment, because the almanacs from farms...
John: That from farms older than the generation of great grandparents that are still alive right now, right?
John: The very few World War II veterans that are still alive.
John: Those almanacs are still sitting on the shelves.
John: It's a very, very small number of their grandparents' almanacs that have survived thus far.
John: Because what happens is somebody dies, and it's just like my mom handing me that envelope that said, pictures of people you never knew.
John: And she hands me this giant manila envelope, and I go, what the hell is this?
John: And she said, well, I was going to throw this away, but I know that this is the type of thing that you yell at me when I throw away.
John: So I thought I would just bring it to you, and you can decide what to do with it.
John: Pictures of people you never knew.
John: Wow.
John: And I opened it up and I poured it out on the table and it is, you know, it's probably 500 black and white photographs.
John: A lot of them scalloped edged portraits that were given out on high school graduation, right?
John: Your high school graduation photo that you traded with all your friends.
Right.
John: But a ton of pictures of just like people in T-shirts and khakis throwing a football.
John: There's a 1939 Ford in the background.
John: There was a trip that her class took to Cuba in the early 50s.
John: Just like photos that...
John: are no longer connected to anybody.
John: They don't have anyone's name written on them.
John: And my mom could sit with me and write down the name of each person that she could remember on the back of these photos.
John: But what's happening there is that those photos are going in the garbage.
John: And the only reason they're not is that I'm holding them right now and I don't know what to do with them.
John: But every year when people die, all that record just goes into the, it just falls off the cliff, right?
John: And it always has.
John: Now, from this point forward, none of that information is going off the cliff because we're all retaining everything.
John: And when the catalpa tree leaves out in Seattle is recorded somehow by some sort of photograph that's going to be preserved online forever.
John: And I'm assuming this sort of conceit that what goes online is preserved forever.
John: Now, that may not end up being true.
John: But it's a conceit from which I'm proceeding.
John: Anyway, so we're in this weird space where there actually is a tremendous record still existing of a generation that's just now dying, right?
John: We are the people who are going in and cleaning out our grandparents' house and making decisions about this stuff.
John: Like, these are pictures of people I don't know.
John: Hopper, right?
John: This is some almanac about some farm that we don't own anymore.
John: Hopper.
John: And we have an opportunity to reach back just 50 or 60 years and gather that information, pre-internet information, and bring it forward into the future.
John: And failing to do it, then it really will be this line of, like, in 2005, from 2005 forward, we know...
John: We know a whole like an exponentially greater amount about everything than from 2005 past, you know, and and 2005 everything before 2005 will seem like the Middle Ages in terms of the amount of information we have about it, right?
John: Because it won't be accessible, right?
John: If you go online and look up my dad
John: There's the only thing that's online about my dad in his entire life is the obituary that I wrote.
John: That's the only record.
John: So strange.
John: And, you know, when you or I die, you'll be able to, you know, well, basically you'll be able to interact with us because we will be one of the first VR members.
John: Hello.
John: I am Merlin Mann.
John: Please do not contact me.
John: Stop.
John: Stop.
John: Stop.
John: Thank you for contacting me.
John: You have reached pyramids.com.
Merlin: Would you like to grow your downline with pyramids?
Merlin: Our business is business.
Merlin: If you believe you are a Dutch with cancer, touch one.
John: I mean, I think about my responsibility to my own mom.
John: Because she does not want any record of herself.
John: Good for her.
John: Right?
John: She's the last of a dying era where she says, I do not want a funeral.
John: And I said, what do you care?
John: You'll be dead.
John: The funeral is for the living.
John: And she says, do not have a funeral for me.
John: Do not write an obituary.
John: Do not do any of that shit that you did for your father.
John: And I'm like, but, but, but.
John: And she's like, argh.
John: And she's adamant, right?
John: She wants me to take her ashes out.
John: She hasn't even stipulated.
John: If I say, where do you want me to spread your ashes?
John: I don't know whether she'll say binom.
John: Like, completely unsympathetic.
John: But when it comes to, like, is my daughter, when she wants to
John: Think about her Nana when she wants to interact with her Nana, when she wants to research her, know about her.
John: Is she going to have a method that makes any sense to her outside of going on her computer or going up in her computer glasses or whatever?
John: If I say, oh, well, the only thing, you know, like the way we're going to remember Nana is with this envelope called pictures of people you never knew because it's the only thing she left me.
John: These, I guess, are people she went to high school with, sweetie?
John: Let's sit and look at them.
John: Like, I don't know how to record her, not just, not for her, not even for history, but to just make her alive in the future.
John: Yeah, you're not going to have so many scallop-edged photos.
John: Yeah, right.
John: And I won't, I just, I think about, like, the way that we are,
John: being recorded literally right now not we're being recorded you are actually recording us but it's more i mean even this program alone gives more insight into you and me in perpetuity than any single record i have of my father there's no one thing i could point to and say here's one hour of my father being himself that will give you a sense of him
John: And so this generation that has these cassette tapes, I mean, I do have cassette tapes of my dad doing like depositions, which are very interesting to listen to because you hear a bunch of people droning and then you hear my father's voice droning.
John: And there's always humor in my dad's voice.
John: And when my dad speaks to the court, you can always hear the court reporter chuckling.
John: And that gives you an amazing sense of my dad.
John: But what's my obligation there?
John: Do I go find a cassette to digital...
John: recorder and put all those tapes in and then do a super cut of my dad going your honor i'd like to i'd like it entered into the record you know just like like a bunch of three second cuts of him talking i don't know man this is depressing
John: Well, I mean, I don't even mean it to be depressing, but like, but I feel like, oh my God, in every way it's depressing.
John: Tears and rain, John.
John: Because when I go on Wikipedia, I'm so fascinated by what's there and what's not.
John: Oh, you and me both, buddy.
John: Right.
John: And so Lindsay drew, I never, I mean, that's one of those things like who's the model on the cover of pros and cons and hitchhiking.
John: You never think you're going to find the answer, but then somebody cared to do it.
John: I don't know who.
John: I don't know who was responding.
John: It's not a long entry.
John: It's just a few paragraphs.
John: But somebody said, oh, well,
John: And it almost certainly was derived from that record cover because someone said, who is that model?
John: And then did that research and then figured like, oh, that's kind of interesting.
Merlin: I'm like, I always feel like this is really productive, but I always feel like a fair amount of the people out there contributing to these somewhat obscure pop culture topics are the kind of people who watch DVD extras.
Merlin: where, like, they know they know it, and they know where to find it.
Merlin: So, like, there may not be, and again, this is somebody from another country, I'm not that familiar with her work, but there may be people who sought out her adult film stuff because of that cover, you never know.
Merlin: But it could also be the DVD extra people who just happen to be able to pull that together.
Merlin: And all of those, you know, rendezvous with Rochambeau, consolidate their gifts.
Merlin: Like, you get all these people working in concert, and pretty soon you get Stone Soup.
Merlin: Which will be served at Pyramids, by the way.
John: At our employee cafeteria, stone soup every day.
John: Other soups will rotate, but there will be stone soup every day.
John: Every day, stone soup every day.
John: Did you know that Lindsay Drew actually was the editor of the British edition of Penthouse Magazine?
John: Like, she's not just a model.
Merlin: Oh my goodness.
Merlin: She's a, she's a, she's not, well, maybe not an EGOT, but she's a slash at least.
Merlin: Well, and this is what confuses me.
John: She appeared nude each month in club international magazine.
John: Now I'm not sure how you could, I mean, I'm not sure how you could appear each month.
John: She's like the house band.
John: She's like the house band of Club International.
John: I'm going to have to spend a little bit more time with Lindsay Drew.
John: I don't blame you.
Merlin: It's part of your research.
John: I didn't have a subscription to Club International, but I certainly saw the magazine.
John: I mean, I saw it on the websites.
Merlin: Number of adult films, 24.
Merlin: I wonder how they decide what category... What counts as an adult film?
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I guess I should look it up on Wikipedia.
Merlin: Former editor of Forum Magazine.
Merlin: Is that the Penthouse Forum Magazine?
Merlin: I think so, but British edition.
Merlin: She's a British person.
Merlin: Oh, I never thought this would happen to me.
Merlin: She was only 15 years old.