Ep. 241: "Some Corgi Movement"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hey, John.
Merlin: Merlin, man.
Merlin: John.
Merlin: How's it going?
Merlin: Savior of the universe.
Merlin: Queen just gets better with age.
John: Oh, really?
John: Wow.
John: That's quite a statement.
Merlin: I... Yes.
Merlin: I think their strongest stuff...
Merlin: in the mid 70s still sounds really fresh i think killer queen oh i thought you said ween oh oh oh i was gonna be like well you're off to the races don't get too close to my fantasy no queen is wonderful totally excellent i can see the confusion hey john how's it going
John: And then you were like, yeah, there's stuff in the 70s.
Merlin: I was like, I am not following this.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: They had to make their own Scotchgard back then.
Merlin: Did you use Scotchgard?
Merlin: Because we sure did.
Merlin: Well, they claim that they used to inhale Scotchgard.
John: Hmm.
Merlin: I don't think that's plausible.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: They're a hell of a band.
Merlin: But Queen, here's the thing.
Merlin: Go ahead.
John: Go ahead.
John: I want to close the loop on Queen.
Merlin: All I'm going to say about that is... Why don't we close the loop on Queen?
Merlin: I got two things on Queen.
Merlin: One is that their stuff, from especially the mid-70s, which I think is some of their strongest stuff...
Merlin: really still holds up great and i think something like like i say like killer queen or especially a song that just gets better every time i hear it is somebody to love i've heard that song probably a hundred times and i still think it is i mean the bohemian rhapsody is great i mean it really there's a reason that that was whatever the greatest selling single in uk history or whatever but i really think somebody to love has so much going for it that's part one and you can feel free to respond part two is
Merlin: is songs I did not like from Queen, or I thought were off-brand for Queen, have really grown on me over the years.
Merlin: Yeah, are you?
Merlin: Like, Don't Stop Me Now.
Merlin: Don't Stop Me Now.
Merlin: At the time, I was like, I don't know, but it's really grown on me over the years.
Merlin: I want to ride my bicycle.
Merlin: I want to ride my bike.
Merlin: Where I like.
Merlin: You say coke, I say gain.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Anyway, that's my feeling on that.
Merlin: You know, Roy Thomas Baker.
Merlin: That's all I'm going to say about that.
Merlin: Yeah, I met Roy Thomas Baker.
Merlin: We talked about him.
Merlin: He's got great hair.
John: This guy's from the old days.
Merlin: Wait, you did the mic again.
Merlin: Hit your mic.
John: Oh, something happened.
John: Hang on.
John: It's popping and locking.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah, no, no.
John: It needed to pop and lock.
John: It's a little bit of a... I've got a breakdancing mic.
John: Oh, is that right?
Merlin: Lefty Lucy, left the locket.
John: Beat Street, the king of the beat.
John: See you rocking that beat from across the street.
John: I watched... What's the one?
John: Wild Style.
Merlin: I watched Wild Style a couple weeks ago.
Merlin: uh uh apropos nothing well you know what it was i watched that uh that hip-hop documentary hip-hop evolution oh yes and uh you know it's funny you know there's a term the the millenniums use triggering so like yeah you just show me the tiniest clip
Merlin: of Grandmaster Flash beat mixing in his little kitchenette while Fab Five Freddy looks on.
Merlin: That sends you right back?
Merlin: Well, you know the scene I'm talking about?
Merlin: I didn't know it was from Wildstar because I'd never seen Wildstar, but in many of the documentaries I've seen over the years, there's a very famous scene
Merlin: And Grandmaster Flash invented three or four of the most important things that we consider turntablism today.
Merlin: And you see this on display in whatever that was by that time, 1982.
Merlin: And that sent me back.
Merlin: It's a pretty good movie.
Merlin: The story's kind of flimsy, but you get the graffiti.
Merlin: You get the breakdancing.
Merlin: You get the turntabling.
Merlin: It's a hell of a thing.
John: Over the years, this is not a thing I ever would have guessed.
Yeah.
John: Let's say 1987.
John: I never would have said if you'd come up to me and said, would you over the years subsequent to now ever find yourself in a romantic situation with a fly girl?
John: Oh, I would have said there's very little chance of me.
John: It being in a romantic scenario with a fly girl, with a girl that is even remotely fly.
Merlin: I can think of a lot of preferential and practical reasons why that just seemed like a non-starter.
John: Yeah, right?
John: You probably didn't run into a lot of fly girls to begin with.
John: Well, I wouldn't have at the time thought to myself, I'm going to be seeking fly girls.
John: I was seeking pixies.
John: If you had said, do you think you'll ever be in a romantic situation with a pixie?
John: I would have said, yes.
John: God willing.
John: If you had said, what about someone with the bangs that covered most of their eyes?
John: I would have said, yes.
John: God willing.
John: but not a fly girl.
John: I would not have thought that I would have been with anybody that had ever done any kind of fly dancing.
John: Well, it just kind of wasn't your scene, right?
John: But time is a funny task mistress.
John: And as time has gone on and my path has gone its tumblebum way,
John: stumble bum way if you will uh and they're you know and fly girls of course are out in the world going along their own paths it's turned out that my path and fly girl paths have inner intersected more than once and it's really an eye opener yeah um to be exposed to fly girl fly girl culture uh it's very it's very fly could you give me a rough idea on date range here when this fly girl incident happened
John: Incidents over the course of time.
John: Over the course of time, you know, because I think what happens is... This wasn't a one-off.
John: You're saying this wasn't a one-off, Fly Girl.
John: No, no, no, no.
John: It's a thing where I think Fly Girls...
John: uh you know they're speeding along right they they achieve a certain velocity in their own lives yeah and then somewhere out in a distant point where you think once upon a time when i was listening to van morrison in some ski lodge outside of spokane uh trying to see if i if we could if everybody at the table could scrape scrape their pipes enough to get enough resin to get us all high and somewhere somewhere else you know uh there was you know like
John: Living Color was on and people were, you know, were wearing like hammer pants and doing fly moves.
John: Maybe a Kangol.
John: Never the twain shall have met.
John: Right.
John: But then later on in life, you're standing around.
John: You're like, here we all are, you know, waiting for the waiting for the minor key to open because we all we all got.
John: Everybody's got muffler problems at a certain point.
John: Right.
John: Got to get muffled.
John: You're standing around.
John: My car is loud.
John: Mine, too.
John: Why are you here at eight in the morning?
John: Well, it's the only time I could get because of this and because of that.
John: Oh, this place is wick, wick, whack.
John: And then it's like, well, we got an hour to kill while our mufflers are getting changed.
John: Do you want to go cross the street and get a donut?
John: Sure.
John: And one thing trends into another.
John: And you're like...
John: Where are you from?
John: Oh, I'm from here.
John: Oh, me not.
Merlin: You unplug your mic again.
John: That's what I'm saying.
John: It's the hip hop microphone.
John: It's the hip hop, a hippity hop, and you don't stop rocking.
Merlin: That's what the problem is.
Merlin: This is the funniness of this task mistress.
Merlin: It started in a minor key muffler shop.
Merlin: That's the genesis.
John: Yes.
Merlin: How does one ask this question?
Merlin: What was the ethnic makeup of the fly girl?
John: Well, the thing about fly girls is it's often ambiguous.
John: You know, as time has gone on... Was she strictly white, John?
John: No.
John: Okay.
Merlin: And it's not just she.
Merlin: You need to pluralize this.
Merlin: Well, you see why I ask, though, because there's a really big difference between meeting a white fly girl in a Meineke muffler waiting room and having her be a not 100% white fly girl.
Merlin: Because that's a different kind of fly girl.
John: The thing is that fly is an appellation that can be attached to a lot of different behaviors.
John: I consider myself now extremely fly.
John: But also, yeah, hip-hop dance was a thing that was an early melting pot in the music cultures.
John: Everyone that could dance could get up and dance.
Yeah.
John: So, yeah, I mean, but also, you know, Merlin, we're all trending, I think, in the direction of being just sort of mochaccino.
John: That's our future.
Merlin: That's the great arc of history.
John: Yeah, the arc of history is toward mochaccinodom.
John: And, you know, I say God bless it.
John: Yeah, and Love See No Color.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: I have many, many miniature memories here.
Merlin: One is I remember in circa 1988, most white people were still singing rap music.
Merlin: And, you know, the rap is the music, hip-hop is the culture, however you want to break it up.
Merlin: But hip-hop was emerging as the au courant term, even in the late 80s.
Merlin: In 88, really?
Merlin: Among people that you knew?
Merlin: Or is this something that they're saying in the documentary?
Merlin: Well, no, this is near the height of my interest in this music in particular.
Merlin: You know, the breakdancing and the graffiti and the whatnot wasn't so much.
Merlin: But, like, you know...
Merlin: Really digging, what, Public Enemy and, of course, the Beastie Boys.
John: I think, looking back, I would have kept saying rap for a lot longer.
Merlin: But then rap, I feel like in the culture, rap made a big comeback as a term, as a disparaging term.
Merlin: During the iced tea and two live crew controversies, rap became kind of code.
Merlin: It's like saying urban in some ways.
Merlin: But hip-hop, hip-hop, I thought was... The only reason I mentioned this is hip-hop was on the ascent as a term.
Merlin: And I'm going to say this, and this is not going to sound funny in 2017, but in about 1988, I said to my best friend in college, I said to Michael, Hey, where's...
Merlin: Name of your girlfriend.
Merlin: Oh, she's this morning.
Merlin: She's teaching hip hop dance lessons.
Merlin: And I laughed harder than I think I'd ever laughed in my entire life that there was a white college girl teaching something that there even existed something called hip hop dance lessons.
Merlin: But then it was taught by by a live yoga taking brunette girl.
John: Now it's a full-fledged exercise.
Merlin: Yeah, it's like Jumbo or Mambo or Zumba.
Merlin: Roomba is the vacuum.
Merlin: What's the one they do at the tennis court near my house?
Merlin: Is it Zumba?
Merlin: Handball?
Merlin: Handball, that's it.
Merlin: There's all kinds of ways you can incorporate hip-hop into your Zumba.
Merlin: There it is.
John: There was a time when you could name a sport handball and nobody would laugh.
John: It's got two dick jokes in it.
John: Yeah, you couldn't do it now, right?
John: Yeah, no, absolutely not.
John: You couldn't call something handball now.
John: That's why nobody plays handball.
Merlin: That's really funny, handball.
Merlin: I hadn't really thought about that.
John: I was driving yesterday.
John: I decided there's one place in Washington that I, I'm sorry, not in Washington, but in King County, in my neighborhood, basically, that I couldn't quite figure out.
John: And it's one of those things, maybe you've had this too, where you're coming in for a landing on an airplane and you're looking out the window and
John: And you look down, you go, yeah, I know where that is.
John: I know where that is.
John: But there was always this thing where I was like, what is that?
John: Like, where is that?
John: How do I get from hither to thither?
John: And I would see it at the airplane, but it wasn't between anywhere and anywhere.
John: It was a place that I was going to need to dedicate a day.
Merlin: Did you know roughly geographically where you were?
John: Oh, I knew where it was.
John: It's just that...
John: You know, because Seattle was once under a large glacier, the entire region was covered by glacier.
John: And as a consequence, there are long ridges that run north-south.
John: From, you know, Canada down to, let's say, the Columbia River.
John: And the glacier, the extent of the glacier, now I'm talking about the Pleistocene.
John: Is that how you pronounce it?
John: Pleistocene?
John: Pleistocene, is that?
John: Yeah.
Yeah.
John: We're talking about that era, like the Ice Sheet Glacier.
John: It didn't go all the way to Portland, but it did cover this region.
John: Anyway, so there are a lot of these long, thin north...
John: I did not know any of this.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You unplugged your mic again.
Merlin: Hip, pop, hip, hip, hip, pop, you don't stop rocking to the bing bang.
John: So is it popping?
John: Is it going to be popping?
John: Is Marco going to write an article about it?
John: Is Gruber going to write an article about it?
Merlin: There's a pretty good chance.
Merlin: Also, Marco says you're using the wrong headphones, just so you know.
Merlin: No matter what you're using, they're the wrong headphones.
Merlin: I just ordered a pair of headphones.
Merlin: You're not using the SM7B, right?
John: Right now, no, I'm not.
John: Good, good, because he's had it.
Merlin: He's had it with people using the SM7B.
Merlin: Marco's over that.
John: I'm using the B-caster, and Marco's going to have to get himself.
John: He's going to have to get right with time, right with history.
John: But the other day, I was looking at headphones, and I went to Wirecutter, and there were 7,500 different... You know about Wirecutter.
John: That's exciting.
John: I didn't know you knew about Wirecutter.
John: Yeah, 7,500 different options, and they were telling me the best ones if I wanted Bluetooth noise-canceling headphones that would look really good if I lived in an apartment in London that overlooked the Thames.
John: And then I saw my trusty old Sony 7506s.
John: Which I'm using right now.
John: And I've had since 1999.
John: And they're completely thrashed.
John: Oh, my God.
John: Are they all peely?
John: Oh, I peeled all the peely off.
John: It got so peely that I just peeled them off.
John: It's all foam.
John: And the jack has been jacked so many times that I have to put it exactly right to get it to be in stereo.
John: Otherwise, it just monos itself.
John: But I ordered a new pair of them, which are, I believe, arriving today.
John: Oh, exciting.
John: Because I was like, I want to hear things in stereo all the time.
John: I don't want to have to futz with it.
John: Anyway, so this very large glacier that used to cover all of Washington, which created a lot of Washington's geography was created by glaciation and its attendant effects.
Yeah.
John: The glacier would come down and a giant lake would form behind it that would encompass most of Montana.
John: And then the ice dam would break, Merlin.
John: The ice dam would break periodically.
John: And biblical floods would scour the entire region.
Merlin: And that's what causes the north-south ridges?
John: The scrapes?
John: No.
John: No, no, no.
John: The scrapes are from actual glaciers, like, scraping.
John: But the floods were so big that if you go into eastern Washington now...
John: If you go up in an airplane, you can see ripples in the ground like the ripples you would see at the bottom of a little stream.
John: Gigantic ripples across the entire landscape that formed when massive floods would roll over the ripples that when you're on the ground, it just seems like rolling hills.
John: But from up in the sky, you can see that it's actually like
John: Wait formed by waves.
John: This is out in the desert in the country.
John: Wow.
John: Pretty interesting.
John: But so I was coming down for a landing and on one of these ridges that characterize the northwest, it's a ridge.
John: It's a ridge without a home right on the one side.
John: It drops a giant cliff down to down to the Green River Valley.
John: And the valley is very flat and it used to be all farms and now it's all distribution warehouses.
John: And so on one side it's a huge cliff and there's only like maybe a half a dozen roads that go up the side of it.
John: And on the other side is I-5.
John: So there's this long, long, long strip that goes the top of this ridge that goes all the way from Seattle to Tacoma.
John: And it's very narrow and
John: the top of it, and there's no reason to be there, right?
John: If you want to go to Tacoma, you can go down this freeway that's right there, and if you want to go down the farm country, you can go down the farm side.
John: Why would I drive this ridge, you know?
John: It's not, and there's no, like, one road.
John: It's not, it was very confusing.
John: Very confusing.
John: You knock your mic out again.
John: Hip, hip, hip, hip, hip.
John: There's something very interesting about today.
John: You know what it is before I resume that story.
Merlin: Let's see.
Merlin: Let's see.
Merlin: Civil War officially ended, I think, yesterday.
Merlin: Well, let me ask you this.
Merlin: Is it an anniversary or is it a nonce, as they say in England?
Merlin: It's a nonce.
Merlin: Okay.
John: Here's the story.
John: Okay.
John: So today is the first day of spring break here in Seattle.
John: Oh.
John: And so my little girl is here with me today.
John: And we've never experimented with this, which is I'm podcasting while she's here.
John: And I said, now go, because usually she's in school at this time.
John: I said, now go play on the big carpet and daddy will be doing his podcast.
John: And she said, okay.
John: And I said, now, don't come up with any kind of little invented problem.
John: And she said, that's fine.
John: So now, as we've been talking, there's been a creeping shadow in my doorway.
John: And at one point, I thought you might have gotten a corgi.
Merlin: I sound like some corgi movement.
John: Yeah, there was a little bit of movement that sounded corgi-like.
John: Then she peeked her head around the door and I said, hmm.
John: And then she, in an attempt to be very quiet, some bunch of marbles tumbled down the stairs.
John: So she was being very quiet and I think spilled like 14 marbles.
Merlin: It's a lot to ask of somebody her age.
Merlin: It is.
Merlin: Actually, no, I'm not kidding.
Merlin: It's a lot to ask.
John: No, it is.
John: I don't know if you've ever heard 14 marbles go down a side of stairs.
John: I bet you have.
John: But it's not like strictly in the family of being quiet like Daddy asked.
John: And now she's lurking in the doorway playing with a stuffed rabbit.
John: So I have to just briefly check in.
Okay.
John: Sweetie, is everything okay?
John: Yeah.
John: You just wanted to see what daddy was doing, but you don't need anything.
John: No.
John: Okay.
John: Okay, good.
John: You're doing a very good job.
John: Yeah.
John: That is a good question.
John: She said when the UPS guy comes, because I told her that the UPS guy was coming.
John: I said, don't be worried if a UPS guy comes on the steps.
John: She just said, if he comes to the door, do I have to answer the door?
John: Good question.
John: And I'm going to say, no, you do not have to answer the door.
John: The door is locked.
John: If you want, you can look out the window and point down and say, put the box in front of the door and then amscray.
John: But you don't have to do that either.
John: You can hide in your room.
John: The UPS guy will figure it out.
John: Sound good?
John: Okay, good.
John: By way of saying yes, she just, with her tongue, went blah, blah, blah.
John: It works for me.
John: International sign of saying yes.
John: Spring break.
John: Yeah, spring break.
John: So we've got a lot of action planned.
Merlin: Oh, yeah?
Merlin: You plan anything special?
John: Oh, we're just going to go around, you know.
Merlin: We went to Harry Potter Land.
Merlin: We don't have that here.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: You could go see a glacier.
Merlin: We may.
John: We may.
Merlin: That'd be a little bit of a drive.
Merlin: What's your weather like right now?
John: I guess I could look for myself.
John: This has been the coldest, rainiest winter in a long time, and I think maybe even the rainiest winter on record.
John: Wow, that's saying something, right?
John: Yeah, it is.
John: None of the flowers are blooming.
John: The rhododendrons aren't blooming.
John: The rhododendrons usually would have bloomed a month ago.
John: I have no tulips.
John: Oh, no.
John: There's nothing.
John: It's just like pure desolation.
John: The only thing growing is like scrub grass and dandelions.
Merlin: You would not believe how different things are here because we finally got rain.
Merlin: There's been a historic drought for years.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But, I mean, it's actually...
Merlin: It's one of the small bits of good news in the last however long.
Merlin: But first of all, the official, official double secret probation drought has finally been called off.
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: Well, yeah.
Merlin: I mean, it's been pretty, pretty bad.
Merlin: And so Governor Brown finally said, okay, we're going to take off the double secret probation, you know, restrictions, which is good.
Merlin: But, you know, it's good.
Merlin: We've all learned to be much more careful with water.
Merlin: But here's the amazing part.
Merlin: I think you'd enjoy this anecdote.
Merlin: When we did our little trip for spring break, we drove, which is so much better than flying.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: It was amazing to drive around California rather than fly around California.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: But, you know, what's happened is, in addition to, you know, less of the need for super strict conservation, although that's still a good idea, it's brought back.
Merlin: I mean, it used to be, you know, it's like you drive through California and everything's brown.
Merlin: I mean, not just lawns, not just parks, but, like, those beautiful, like, rolling hills you see in central California, like, those have been brown for as long as I can remember.
John: Well, and Lake Shasta, like, was just so awful.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Everything, Tahoe, everything has been affected by this.
Merlin: But the great news is, first of all, the green is back, which is nice.
Merlin: But here's the other cool thing.
Merlin: Wildflowers that have not bloomed for something like a decade are blooming for the first time in years.
Merlin: And it's gorgeous.
Merlin: People are in places where I had no idea there were even wildflowers here.
Merlin: And it's gorgeous.
Merlin: It sounds silly, but it's kind of lovely to drive around and have it not just look like Mad Max or something.
John: It doesn't sound silly.
John: I've been blown away by, you know, because the first times I went to California and drove, you know, drove throughout the state, it was during a wet period, I guess, you know, the late 80s, mid to late 80s.
John: And it was like that.
John: The hills around San Francisco were...
John: For a lot of the spring and into early summer and then starting in the fall, they were green and lush.
John: It just seemed like paradise down there.
John: Shasta was all the way full and the rivers were running high.
John: You really got the feeling of what a garden California was.
John: And then when the drought started and the lakes went down, it was kind of like, oh, boy, this is a bad couple of years.
John: But then it never stopped.
John: And the lakes went down and down and down and everything died.
John: And it was I mean, it was a tragedy for me, even as a Washingtonian who was sitting up here gloating.
John: you know i was like lol water wars lol but then when i would drive in california i was like oh no i love it here and all those cranks up in northern california who were putting billboards on the side of the road and saying like this used to be good farmland but the government killed it with their damn you know didn't they didn't agree to the
John: They're not giving us the water for political reasons.
John: And I was like, are you fucking kidding me?
John: There's no water, ding-a-lings.
Merlin: It's already such a precarious system.
John: Yeah, you can't grow strawberries up here anymore, like almonds.
Merlin: Maybe they should try coal mining, John.
Merlin: I understand it's coming back.
Merlin: Bigly.
Merlin: Coal mining's bigly.
Merlin: Yeah, it is.
Merlin: It's bigly.
John: I was just up in a coal neighborhood here in Seattle just yesterday.
Merlin: Did you see the coal mining museum in Kentucky that's switching to solar?
Merlin: It's not financially feasible to not switch to solar at this point.
John: That's so great.
John: Yeah, there's a town here called Black Diamond.
John: I think you can gather what the Black Diamond, the titular Black Diamond is.
Merlin: Yeah, it's a tribute to the Kiss song.
Merlin: but no it's about coal oh sorry black diamond in my dictionary that's the third definition you got yeah you got like you have paul stanley song right you got skiing thing then you got you make an actual time now did they actually grow diamonds there did that happen
John: No, black diamond is a way of describing coal.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
John: Oh, because black gold is oil.
John: Texas tea.
John: Well, Texas tea, right.
John: But, you know, coal is shimmery like pyrite.
John: It shines bright like a diamond?
John: Yeah, it does.
John: It does in the dark.
John: And Seattle, I mean, one of the first big...
John: The first big things that justified the creation of Seattle was we found really rich coal deposits just sort of up in the hills next to here.
John: Coal, of course, being the produce of many years of compressed vegetation.
John: And we're famous for our lush vegetation in the region.
John: So big, thick...
John: big thick seams of coal and we um we mined those and we sent it guess where san francisco no kidding we sent our coal and our lumber to san francisco and that was what made seattle an economic powerhouse in the early years um they say that all of san francisco pre-fire
John: was built with Washington lumber.
John: Oh my goodness.
John: And then you burned it all down with your dumb, you know, Mary's cow tipping over a bucket of fire or whatever the hell that was.
John: I guess it was an earthquake.
John: Yeah, Mrs. O'Leary's earthquake.
John: Mrs. O'Leary's earthquake.
John: But so there are still coal mines just right to the east of town.
John: One of our favorite hiking spots is up on Coal Creek Road.
John: And you can still there are still mine shafts there.
John: And the smell of like underground coal comes up.
John: And there's a place called Flaming Geyser State Park, which a guy was drilling a hole to see if there was any coal down there.
John: And and then a bunch of gas started escaping.
John: Oh, my.
John: Like coming up out of his hole.
John: So, of course, you know, he's a guy.
John: What's he going to do?
John: Make a fart joke.
John: He sets it on fire.
John: Oh, geez, Louise.
John: Like, let's see what happens if I light this.
John: And then it's like Old Faithful, but with fire.
John: Yeah.
John: So up out of the ground came up, not bubbling crude, but a three foot tall, like tower of flame.
John: And it's been burning ever since.
Merlin: Are you kidding me?
John: Oh, so they built a state park.
John: Look at that.
Merlin: It's got its little stone with a flame coming out of it.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: How is it so regular, though?
Merlin: It seems like it would come in dangerous pockets.
John: I think that it sort of just gradually, sometimes it's a little higher, sometimes it's a little lower, but it doesn't like, it never flames like.
John: Okay.
John: It just kind of sits out there day and night flaming.
John: It's a beautiful park right next to the Green River.
John: You can go look at this little thing.
John: It's kind of overwhelming when you get there because it's like flaming geyser.
John: That sounds incredible.
John: Like it's going to be 30 feet tall.
Merlin: It's about the size of a campground barbecue.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: It just looks like it's pretty modest.
Merlin: It looks like it's inside of maybe a memorial park.
Merlin: They got some some stones around it.
Merlin: It's very, very modest to say the least.
John: Yeah, it's not even memorial.
John: Somebody put some stones around it.
John: I think at one point maybe because in the 1950s,
John: People couldn't resist.
John: Somebody opened up 14 bags of concrete and built something.
John: They poured concrete around it.
John: How can we make this environment more brutalist?
John: Yeah.
John: They're like, I got this concrete.
John: Great.
John: Hey, I know.
John: Let's go put it around the flaming geyser.
John: But right next to it is two ponds where they're like farm, not farm, but it's like a fishery.
John: They're making trout.
Merlin: Oh, there's a beautiful little waterfall there.
Merlin: This is very pretty.
John: Waterfall, yeah.
John: But the thing is, it's really, then you go up into the gorge.
John: There's a Green River Gorge there, and it's awesome.
John: Just completely gnarly.
John: You wouldn't even think that it could be so awesome, so close to a big town.
John: But Black Diamond is there, and you can still smell the coal coming out of it.
Merlin: Just for what it's worth, there appears to be a small but loyal genre of people being photographed next to the flaming geyser and making a, this is it, face.
Ha ha ha!
Merlin: of course i should have done it myself i mean basically it's the size of the flame is kind of like if i didn't get our burner lit on the first try and it goes yeah it's about that size and it just fluffs there and nobody guards it there's nothing around it you could probably go put a coffee can over it and snuff it out pretty easily
John: But it's been burning for 100 years, and there it is, flaming geyser.
Merlin: That's cool.
Merlin: I love little things like that.
John: But it's seriously underwhelming, especially considering that the natural setting of it is pretty grand.
John: Well, it's a MacGuffin, right?
Merlin: You come for the geyser, you stay for the tubing.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: Or the gorge, if you like.
John: And the huge park that's there, it's one of those parks that, in the summer...
John: You will never get in.
John: There's no place to park.
John: It's just jammed because it's a beautiful, big, big, spacious park next to the river.
John: But it's one of those outdoor recreation areas where 10,000 people come and only 45 people go more than 100 feet from the parking lot.
John: Sure, sure, sure.
John: Right?
John: It's just blankets get laid out, barbecues get lit.
John: Is it like car camping kind of thing?
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: Ribs get eaten.
John: And seriously, 200 feet away, you're in a largely natural environment.
John: untampered with natural environment.
Merlin: It may feel like a forest primeval.
John: Yeah, if you like.
John: I'm sure it's been logged more than once, but a long time ago, and now it's back to natural crazy forest.
John: And it's wonderful, and especially when it's slightly misting, when it's slightly raining, which it often is up here.
John: It's a great place to hike because nobody's there.
John: Sounds magic.
John: Yeah, it's just so magic.
John: It's magic like being in California after the drought is lifted.
John: I mean, it's a small thing, but it was nice.
John: It's not a small thing.
John: It's an enormous thing.
John: Like you guys are now all you got a little like a reprieve from your your death from thirst.
John: You were you were all there was like millions of people on the verge of thirst death.
Merlin: That still happens.
Merlin: Places like Bakersfield, it's no Flint, but things are not great there.
Merlin: You just hear California Report stories on stuff where it's actually cheaper to buy pop at a convenience store than water.
Merlin: It's so depressing.
John: I have a question for you, though.
John: Bakersfield was never that great, let's be honest.
Merlin: Well, the music's nice.
Merlin: Did I ever tell you about the campground we stayed at in Bakersfield?
Merlin: I feel like I probably did.
Merlin: I don't think so.
Merlin: You know, when you're picking a place to go, you're not always aware of the exact surroundings.
Merlin: And my lady planned out this really nice trip for us.
Merlin: This is probably, I don't know, 10, 15 years ago at this point.
Merlin: But it included a stop in Bakersfield.
Merlin: I think it was...
Merlin: Is that is that on the way?
Merlin: Is that one of the on the ways to?
Merlin: Yeah, that's one of the on the ways to Los Angeles, right?
Merlin: Sort of.
John: I mean, it's down there, but you would have to be going through Fresno.
John: Grapevine and all that stuff.
John: Yeah, I mean, you could pop over there.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But at any rate, I remember it was en route to somewhere else.
Merlin: We wanted to not do the whole drive in one day.
Merlin: So this is not particularly interesting.
Merlin: But we ended up stopping at like a KOA.
Merlin: And we got in what's called a cozy cabin with two Ks.
Merlin: And a cozy cabin, it was like, this is great.
Merlin: We're going to stop.
Merlin: They got a place there.
Merlin: They got a bathroom.
Merlin: They got a little shop.
Merlin: And then you go to your cozy cabin.
Merlin: And number one, the cozy cabin was sort of like, this is more of a warm weather climate thing.
Merlin: But in Florida, a lot of people have a shed in the backyard that's hot and full of bees.
Merlin: it's like a step above that it's like there's like cots there's like you know bunk beds in this thing but it's pretty wait let me just get back to the florida shed of bees yeah is that is it full of bees on purpose or is it full of bees because they just haven't been in there in a while well i think it started not being on purpose then eventually it just became a way of life you know you got the okay you got the mad woman in the attic you got the bees in the shed uh so crazy crazy camp also we should come back to don rickles um
Merlin: So, yeah, so that was OK.
Merlin: It was fine.
Merlin: It wasn't particularly comfortable.
Merlin: But, A, it was right next to the highway that we had just gotten off of.
Merlin: So it was particularly as rustic as the cabin was.
Merlin: The setting was not that great.
Merlin: And the other thing we discovered, it was like just past the highway was a regional airport.
Merlin: So not only did you get the 18 wheelers going by, but the occasional plane just going straight over your head literally all night long.
Merlin: you ever have those kind of harrowing nights those kind of harrowing like this is just going to go on whether that's maybe that's mosquitoes or maybe that's a light source or something just one of those this is going to be an inescapable night we just need to get through it was one of those nights yeah those are the best aren't they we had one of those nights another night camping uh our air mattress deflated and we did not realize that we were camped on top of the roots of a tree and we didn't realize until the mattress deflated oh
John: Oh, my God, that's the worst.
Merlin: And you know my family's problem with deflating mattresses.
Merlin: I know you're aware of this.
John: Oh, the deflating mattress problems of the mans.
John: I do know about them.
John: But that is the worst when you realize, like, oh, you know what?
John: It's only 10.15 p.m.
John: That dog is going to bark all night, that feeling.
John: Yeah, this is already the worst night of my life, and it can only go one direction from here.
John: Car alarm.
John: Car alarm.
John: Well, I mean, one of my signature worst nights was a night in Hungary where as soon as I turned off the light, the clacking of the gigantic roaches was loud enough that I could not get to sleep from the clacking.
John: Oh, that is eldritch horror.
John: Yeah, and then I would turn the light on and I would go to war against these giant roaches.
John: Until it was just roach.
John: It was pure carnage.
John: It was like the Armenia of roaches.
John: I'm sorry.
Merlin: It's called the Armenia.
Merlin: Here's the thing.
Merlin: You never go up against a Sicilian when death is on the line.
Merlin: And you never go to war with roaches.
Merlin: Oh, the clacking.
Merlin: The clacking is a horrible sound.
John: And then I turned off the lights and I was like, listen, you know, I just need to, you know, just need to get with my happy place.
John: I need to just get into a zone with God here.
John: The clacking like I did not make the roaches.
John: The roaches are here sharing the world with me.
John: I am, you know, kumbaya.
John: And then a roach fell off the ceiling onto me, like onto my head area.
Merlin: And I was like, OK, that's a nice Florida thing is you just wake up with roaches on you sometimes.
Merlin: Yeah, just because they're everywhere.
Merlin: People don't call them roaches.
Merlin: They call them water bugs or palmetto bugs.
John: That doesn't make them feel nicer.
John: Yeah.
John: Up here in the Northwest, we don't have them.
John: Every once in a while, I think a boat would come in from a far flung locale and it would drop off some weird little brown German roaches.
John: But, you know, like I've lived in this house for 10 years.
John: I've never seen a roach.
Merlin: German roaches are like the little critters, right?
John: Yeah, the ones that kind of live in the, I don't know where they live.
John: They live in little sinks and stuff.
Merlin: The ones in Florida are like a couple inches long and well over half an inch wide.
Merlin: And some of them fly.
John: I lived in Washington, D.C.
John: for a while and saw them pouring out of places in the night.
Merlin: So right now you get ants.
Merlin: You get ants and you get spiders.
Merlin: That's your two big critters, right?
John: Ants and spiders are big critters.
John: We get weird potato bugs and stink bugs and stuff, but they don't cause anybody problems.
John: We get moths.
John: Like bananas moths.
John: They're stinky.
John: I'm just getting a little bit of commentary.
John: A little side commentary here.
John: There are a lot of bugs in the ground that are busy churning.
John: We have a lot of churning bugs.
John: Churning the earth into that deep black...
John: earth that we formerly farmed and now build distribution centers on.
John: Black Diamond.
John: Black Diamond, Washington.
John: Oh, so I was driving on this road.
John: I finally got up onto this ridge and I was like, I'm going to conquer this ridge.
John: I have no idea what this is up here.
John: I've never heard it referenced by anybody.
John: There's only one person I know in the entire
John: I think the entire world that even has a chance of having really explored up here, and that's my friend Chad, who has been on every road in, I don't know, from Canada to Mexico.
John: But even he has never referenced it.
John: And it's just this giant bridge that goes, I mean, seriously, from Puyallup to Tukwila, if you will.
John: Really, two of the hardest to pronounce cities in the area.
John: I couldn't spell those if I tried.
John: Puyallup and Tukwila.
John: And this is like, it's a giant, basically a mountain that goes from Puyallup to Tukwila.
John: I'd never been on it.
John: So I get up on this thing and I start to drive.
John: And I realize why I've never been on it and no one has.
John: is that it's completely suburbanized, and there are no connecting north-south roads.
John: All the roads are east-west, and if you want to go north-south, what you do is you go two blocks, and then you take a left, and you go left for a block, and then you go south again for four blocks, and then you take a right and go three more blocks.
John: Seriously, there's not a single arterial.
John: There's one road called Military Road that kind of goes diagonal, but it's not very effective at going like this.
John: And so I'm driving through this neighborhood and it's this weird conglomeration of like
John: Well, there were houses up here back when it was farm country, and then there were some houses built when it was first suburbanized, and then now there are McMansions going in implausibly on streets that otherwise have 60 split-level homes, and now there's this giant McMansion.
John: I couldn't find a center to this place.
John: And I come around the corner and there's a playground.
John: And at the very back of the playground are three concrete handball courts.
John: Of the style that used to be on playgrounds everywhere.
John: Do you remember in the 70s, like handball courts?
Merlin: I do.
Merlin: The funny part about handball is I remember handball courts always being around and never being used for handball.
Merlin: It might eventually get used for kind of an outside airsats racquetball.
John: Yes.
John: I have never seen a living soul play handball on an outdoor handball court that wasn't in New York City.
Merlin: Right, I figure it was like stickball.
Merlin: I figure it's something a couple kids did a few times in the 30s, and nobody's done it since.
John: And there really was, as they were building those giant municipal playgrounds during the era of what I think of as being the late 60s, early 70s,
John: The the the the crest of the social engineering wave where it's like we're going to create outdoor space for healthy youth.
John: And, you know, we're going to beat the Soviets to the moon and we're going to.
John: Yes, we're health and sports.
John: We're going to build big, sporty sport areas.
John: And they put handball courts in.
John: And maybe on opening day, some people played handball, and then the rest of the time, it was just where you went to smoke pot.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: In my head, I'm going to say—you remember the kerfuffle in the early 80s when—I don't even know if this is exactly precisely right, but there were changes.
Merlin: There was a lot of kerfuffles there.
Merlin: Oh, there's so many kerfuffles.
Merlin: Under the Reagan administration, it is said—
Merlin: That in school lunches, ketchup was reclassified as a vegetable in order to meet a basic requirement of some kind.
Merlin: That was a great kerfuffle.
Merlin: But it was basically the idea was that it was there.
Merlin: It was a little bit of a hack to like be able to tick a box.
Merlin: I think that's what handball is.
Merlin: You think about everything out there, including I'm going to say basketball.
Merlin: What is the maybe besides what four square and hopscotch?
Merlin: What is the least what's going to have the least need for maintenance?
Merlin: I'm going to say I'm going to say a right angle.
John: Mm hmm.
John: You know, right.
John: You don't have to budget a teacher for it.
Merlin: You don't need to replace a net.
John: That's right.
John: That's right.
John: There's no net.
John: Yeah.
John: There's an elementary school over here by my house.
John: And it's, you know, old style, late 50s elementary school.
John: And it has, like a lot of the elementary schools, like the one that I went to when I was a kid, it has such an enormous amount of land surrounding it.
John: There is a full-sized, Olympic-sized soccer field and a full-sized baseball diamond associated with this
John: What is an elementary school?
John: Right.
John: So when's the last time you saw elementary kids playing baseball?
John: Right.
John: You know, it's it's not a thing that people do anymore.
Merlin: It's not like most places you have one field with a track around and everything that can be done on a field is done there.
Merlin: And then you run around the track and that's it.
Merlin: And that's that one the one footprint of athleticism at most modern schools, I think.
John: Yeah.
John: Right.
John: A track around a field.
John: But this is that, you know, in the 50s, land was just was cheap, huge playground.
John: And I go over there all the time.
John: I used to go there when Gibson was alive and take walking around.
John: It's just on my it's on my like walk circuit.
John: My kid and I go over to the playground there sometimes.
John: And this enormous field is never used by anyone.
John: Like no one's even playing Frisbee on it.
John: Wow.
John: Somebody comes and mows it, but I have never seen, I would go throw the stick for the dog and every once in a while somebody else would be walking from one corner of it to the other corner of it.
John: Like there was a kind of shortcut through the neighborhood, but not even enough of a shortcut where a trail had been beaten down across the field.
John: Because no one actually wants to go from that side to the other side.
John: There's nothing either place.
John: And so I'd be out on this field and I'm just like, I could be launching model rockets from here.
John: I could have organized.
John: I mean, there are so many...
John: intramural soccer teams around the city who are trying to book time at one of the five like soccer fields that are on their registration or card or whatever yeah you could you could completely colonize these spaces if you wanted to start an rc modeling club or wanted to i don't know play ultimate frisbee i mean they're just fields all over town why do you think they're not getting used
John: Because I think people aren't getting outside, maybe.
John: And also, like, schools don't... I mean, I think if you tried to organize a baseball team...
John: We used to have rock and roll softball up on Capitol Hill where different bars would play each other.
John: But I don't know.
John: When was the last time you saw a group of people just playing a pickup baseball game?
Merlin: You don't see that a lot.
Merlin: There are some semi-organized adults...
Merlin: Like so many adults, some semi-organized adults that play softball in our parks.
Merlin: Sometimes our park is mainly used, it's heavily segmented into different areas and used for like two or three kids' soccer games at once.
John: When was the last time you saw a flag football game?
Merlin: Oh, God.
Merlin: Probably when I was in high school or a movie.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: But I played flag football a couple of times in college in the late 80s, and I have not seen or heard of flag football since.
John: And maybe it's that we don't live in Montana.
John: Yeah.
John: And maybe people, maybe like grown-up people are playing football.
John: But think about those pictures of the Kennedy brothers at Kennebunkport.
John: Yeah.
John: They weren't at Kennebunkport.
John: They were at Hyannisport.
John: Hyannisport, right.
John: But they're out there throwing footballs around in their front yard.
John: And they were all full-grown men.
Merlin: And I haven't even had a football in my hand.
Merlin: You should write a Medium post on this, because I think there is something to this.
Merlin: I saw a couple articles this week that are going around about teenagers and how they spend their money that was very interesting.
Merlin: That, amongst other things, supposedly, teenagers are spending a lot less money on things like clothes and more money on food and events.
Merlin: And when we were that age, man, you poured as much money as you could into clothes.
Merlin: Yeah, and who cared about events?
Merlin: And they're not buying handballs, let's be honest.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, events used to take care of themselves, am I right?
Merlin: Oh, my goodness.
Merlin: They sure did.
Merlin: Self-organizing.
John: Yeah.
John: I read an interesting thing that said millenniums, far from being a monolithic demographic,
John: um millenniums much to the uh much to the demographer's surprise are much more likely to think that the woman should stay home and take care i heard this they talked about this on double x gab fest i was very surprised to hear that do you have do you have a reckon on why that is
John: I think it may just be that generations react to the world in which they came up.
John: Obviously, I'm fond of talking about the boomers and what an execrable, awful experience the world has suffered under their leadership.
John: But when you think about the boomers and their...
John: And their identity, their cultural identity as understood by everyone when they were between the ages of 16 and 26.
John: Right.
John: We all thought that the boomers were anti-war.
John: uh music loving pot smoking free loving uh like progressive people who were tearing down the walls and building a building an advanced new society and by the time they were in their 30s they were reagan uh sort of reagan democrats who were
John: Who were investing in the stock market and going great gangbusters.
John: And now the exact same generation makes up the Trump universe.
John: And it's like the boomers are not monolithic.
John: And they react...
John: They react to their time, and I think the Millenniums are probably tired of being called Millenniums, first of all.
John: Yes.
John: And also, there's no such thing as Bernie Bros.
John: We should all know that.
Merlin: Oh, those are all bots, right?
John: Yeah.
John: I heard those are bots.
John: Hillary invented it.
John: It's racist, basically, to use the term.
Merlin: Oh, that's very offensive to the Bernie Bros when you call them Bernie Bros.
Merlin: Yeah, well, that's the thing.
Merlin: They don't exist, so don't call them that.
Merlin: Do you think it's culturally insensitive, John?
John: I think so.
John: I think it's appropriative.
John: But...
John: So right now, I think you've got a lot of millenniums that were probably raised.
John: They're probably educated in public schools where the platform, the education platform was developed by people who went to college in the early 90s.
John: And the kids are tired of being lectured at and they want a return to some kind of traditional thing that never actually existed, but they imagined it.
John: You know, that's true.
John: That's true for me, too.
Merlin: I'll parrot what I heard on that podcast, which is a very good podcast.
Merlin: Slate's Double X Gap Fest.
Merlin: But one of their reckons, they had a couple angles.
Merlin: One is that this is one thing that makes this particular study, I forget the name and source of it, but one thing that makes this particular study so valuable is that it's been around for a very long time.
John: This particular study?
Merlin: The study from which we learned how many millenniums seem to want stay-at-home wives, the men.
John: Okay.
Mm-hmm.
Merlin: This is a very long, I want to say longitudinal, I don't know if that's quite the word, but this has been going on for a long time.
Merlin: Every year they ask this, something like 20, 30, 40 years, they've been asking these same questions to the same age people.
Merlin: So in some ways it's very effective.
Merlin: But in other ways, maybe not.
Merlin: So I'm not sure exactly how it was worded, but it could also be a backlash type situation or a, not backlash, that's a loaded term.
Merlin: But yeah, maybe it's backlash, but it's also probably, yeah, you want stability.
Merlin: You know, when suddenly you went from like everybody you knew had parents that were married to everybody you knew had parents that were divorced, you know, that seemed like that, it's just normal now.
Merlin: Just, you know what I mean?
Merlin: And like, maybe there's that desire for, I don't want to say it's right, but that could be where it comes from.
John: I wonder, did you have mostly kids whose parents were still married or mostly kids whose parents were divorced when you were growing up as friends?
Merlin: Mostly married, and I think that had something to do with race, middle class status, but also that we were church people.
Merlin: There weren't that many divorced people at our church.
John: Did you read that article in the Atlantic magazine about the fact that people on both sides of the political spectrum are going to church less?
John: And that conservative people who actually still go to church tend to be more accepting of different races, tend to be more, you know, like less politically radical and more seeking, you know, like a kind of Christian values.
John: Christian values, right?
John: And they're saying that what people expected was that, you know, the tendency in the past, even until recent memory, even I think now, is to mistake radical values.
John: like reactionary conservatism and racism and all that stuff to associate that with evangelicalism um but in fact it's not true as and so that so when we would read statistics about like people becoming secularized fewer and fewer people going to church we always made the mistake of thinking that that was going to produce a more like uh like a more progressive society because
John: We we naively thought that leaving the church meant that you left it because you were what becoming more evolved.
John: But in fact, people are leaving the church and just descending into like a like a miasma of their worst impulses.
John: And the people that go to like 75 percent of Trump voters considered themselves Christian but did not go to church.
John: And that's this.
John: And I think a very, very large proportion of people that did go to church voted for Ted Cruz and and and, you know, Trump, they can they held their nose.
Merlin: This is an article called Breaking Faith.
John: And then likewise on the left, the churchgoers all voted for Hillary and the non-churchgoers, people that didn't go to church, overwhelmingly voted for Bernie.
John: So you leave the church and you head to the outside is what happens.
John: You get more extreme, not less.
Merlin: It just also depends on how you want to slice the cake.
Merlin: It is a kind of political gerrymandering.
Merlin: I guess that sounds really obvious.
Merlin: But it depends on how you choose to cut up these sections and what pieces, how far, until it basically becomes some kind of crazy fractal.
Merlin: Because, well, sure, a lot of people who go to church voted for Hillary Clinton because a lot of black people voted for Hillary Clinton.
Merlin: And a lot of, I think, still...
Merlin: You know, amongst Democrats who go to church, I bet there's a pretty good chance a lot of them were going to vote for Hillary Clinton.
Merlin: A lot of them, maybe you're in unions.
Merlin: Am I being too broad here?
Merlin: I mean, that kind of support seems pretty straightforward.
Merlin: The Republican candidate support is a much more complicated thing.
Merlin: And the idea that these are people who consider themselves Christians but don't go to church, that does not surprise me a bit.
John: Yeah, well, it's the old traditional values thing of what tradition exactly.
John: What tradition values, yeah.
John: Yeah, right.
John: But no, I do feel like the idea that the church was the source of intolerance was a very popular...
Merlin: Such a sampling error.
Merlin: Total sampling error.
Merlin: I mean, it's the loudest loudmouths are those people, and it's a constant annoyance of mine.
Merlin: It's not popular in my particular community to have any tolerance at all for religious or spiritual thinking.
Merlin: mostly right but like i it's very frustrating to me that everybody who's spiritual or religious or deist in any way is is now i might be doing my own straw man here but i feel like there is very much like a bozo bit thing where people just write that whole group off as a bunch of nuts and it's like ah that is so unfortunate because so many of the best people i know and have known my whole life
Merlin: are very faithful service oriented humans it's it's a really it's it's a pity that they get tarred with that same brush well and i i just wonder what i wonder if they're like the idea that
John: That secularism was the goal, that we were aspiring to a world dominated by reason, and that reason would produce – the reason inevitably produced –
John: altruistic action you know that whole question that you that you hear a lot in in debates on 4chan which is if there's no God then why be good you know and I think that I think that secular people always assumed that you know that the that
John: A world of reason produces people who behave, if not—I guess this is the problem, right?
John: If you believe in a vengeful God or in an ultimate afterlife, your justification for being good is self-evident.
John: If you believe in sort of a rational, scientific-based life, also your desire to be good or your rationale for being good is self-evident, but much more difficult to describe in a sentence, right?
John: I mean, and it isn't just like...
John: uh selecting for the best possible outcome it it kind of goes hand in hand with being educated and understanding collectivism and sort of etc etc um but how what a surprise that we would be in at a juncture now um
John: So soon after that, so soon, so soon after, I mean, I was educated to believe that.
John: And then within my own generation to be in a position where I'm like longing for the days that most Americans went to church and had and had a weekly reminder to be good to each other, a weekly reminder that because what they were saying is that.
Merlin: people in church are less likely to be racist because they understand that we're all brothers in christ oh yeah right they're much more likely to to see that logic weekly reminder to be kind a weekly reminder to to be grateful a weekly reminder to sing weekly reminder to put on a suit i mean there's a lot of a lot of good secondary effects
John: You just broke down some serious science on me right there.
John: A weekly reminder to put on a suit.
John: A weekly reminder to sing.
John: Yeah.
John: A weekly reminder to gather together in a fucking hut somewhere.
John: Yeah.
John: A big house.
John: Into the big house.
John: And when that's missing, sure, why don't we all just become as gross and grubby as we can?
John: There's no...
John: We don't all have to stand on the steps, shake the minister's hand, and say, loved your sermon this week.
John: Or have him say, haven't seen you in a couple of weeks.
John: Like, wow.
Merlin: How is that replaceable, Merlin?
Merlin: Well, it's definitely an interesting thing in San Francisco where, I don't know if you're aware, there are a lot of people of different...
Merlin: sexualities gender assignments you name it and like there's like not too far from where i live there's this big giant purple lesbian church like it's just a big old church where everybody's welcome but you're especially welcome if you're a lady who likes ladies and uh they're they're very vocal and they're very religious but they're also very lesbian and like that's
Merlin: We are fortunate to have a lot of places, even still.
Merlin: I don't want to get into San Francisco.
Merlin: But the people are still good.
John: Do they worship a Jesus-based religion, or is it more of a Yoni-based?
Merlin: Well, I don't think so.
Merlin: I mostly just see it on the way to the grocery store sometimes.
Merlin: But there's a fair amount of that.
Merlin: In our neighborhood, there are a lot, as you can probably guess.
Merlin: For some reason, there seems to be a lot of attraction amongst...
Merlin: Let's put it this way.
Merlin: There's enough Chinese people who are Baptists to have several churches.
Merlin: There's a fair amount of Protestant just down the street, really two blocks from here.
Merlin: There's a mostly Chinese-attended Christian church.
Merlin: There's a fair amount of them around.
Merlin: They're not huge.
Merlin: Well, sure.
John: My next-door neighbors are Vietnamese Catholics, and they have very strange ceremonies in the yard sometimes.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: No, that's not the people who sing, is it?
John: Is that the karaoke people?
John: No, those are the people across the way who are a very—I'm not sure what their religion is, and it gives me pause, periodically.
Merlin: Well, you know, this is—I don't want to secularize this too much, but, you know, first of all, yeah, you know, there's lots of ways that you could—
Merlin: end up having the equivalent of church once a week.
Merlin: For some people, maybe that's going to AA, or for other people, maybe the small number of people who still bowl or whatever it is.
Merlin: But the community aspect of that, I sorely miss the community aspect of going to church.
Merlin: It was really, really just the best to be a little kid where there were just endless events and just super nice people and eating together.
Merlin: And that was just—it was—
Merlin: It was almost... I don't know.
Merlin: I mean, like, you wanted to go.
Merlin: It was... Of course, you know, you didn't want to get dressed on a Sunday morning.
Merlin: It was kind of a pain, but, like, it was just part of what we did.
Merlin: But with that said, I mean, this is another nice thing about San Francisco.
Merlin: Maybe this goes on a Capitol Hill, but, like...
Merlin: When a lot of gay people started coming here or were out gay people starting really in the 60s and 70s when everybody moved over the hill to get away from the heroin to what was then called Eureka Valley, that became almost like people started forming their own families, right?
Merlin: There's that idea of like you can generate your own community.
Merlin: You are not stuck.
Merlin: You don't have to always be stuck with a community.
Merlin: Somewhere you will find people that you can call family and somewhere you will find a building that might as well be a church is all I'm saying.
John: The thing is, I feel like we're going to get a lot of letters from people that are like, try Unitarianism.
John: Have you ever been to the Theosophist Society or whatever?
John: And I think what's interesting about the other role of the church is that it wasn't optional.
John: I think there are a lot of opportunities for people that are...
John: They'll feel like they want that in their lives to find a thing that suits them, right?
John: Whether it's a big purple church or whether it's Zoroastrianism or whether it's AA or whatever.
John: But what was so important about the old church was that there was all that social pressure—
John: which we now consider to be, you know, we are now liberated from, right?
Merlin: There's no longer a cultural expectation that you can answer the question, what religion are you?
John: Yeah, or that you be expected to do anything.
John: I mean, I still read articles all the time, and I read a lot of ads for, like, the Untucked Shirt Company or whatever, that still make it seem like
John: Oh, the day that we could wear our fleece pajamas to work was a day of liberation for us all.
John: Like the great, the great, I've read some article or some interview with Richard Branson where he was like, I never wear a tie.
Merlin: That's a power move.
Merlin: That's a total power move.
John: Yeah, it is.
John: And it's also, it's still this like, that is a privilege.
Merlin: That is a totally, forgive my saying, that is a totally privileged power move to say that and then act like everybody else is allowed to do that.
John: Well, but that's his brand, right?
John: But the idea, and I still hear it all the time.
John: I hear it from people whenever I say, please don't wear flip-flops on an airplane.
John: I get 25 emails from people that are like, why are you trying to intrude on my comfort or something?
John: And the idea that all of these things that we've eliminated, all these social strictures, mores, what we once called polite society,
John: that that was all, you know, that now we can dismiss, like, with a broad brush as, again, you know, pick your intersectional word and apply it here.
John: But in fact, like, everybody in a town was expected to go to church, not by any higher authority, but just by their neighbors, by the general sense of
John: of the way that those towns were collectively organized.
John: And so you didn't go, you didn't pick your church due to affinity.
John: You didn't say like, I'm going to go to this church because they, because it seems fun or because I feel like I need companionship or I need a little bit of structure in my week.
John: You know, you went to church because you were expected to go to church on Sunday and you dressed in a suit because you were expected to show up correct.
Merlin: It's like waiting for the right DMV.
Merlin: It's like, well, no, we just got to go.
John: Don't overthink it.
John: There's a new DMV that really caters to people that are just like me.
John: I really feel comfortable there.
John: I sit in that DMV and they're just playing music.
John: I really relate to.
John: And somehow the idea that to be released from any and all expectation that you, um,
John: that's externally imposed so that we can all be completely self-determining.
John: We've pursued this idea for the second half of the 20th century.
John: It didn't even exist in the first half or at any time prior.
John: But the idea now that we should each of us or the highest good for each of us is that we all find exactly what we personally want.
John: We all tailor our
John: our RSS feed to be the news that, that appeals to us most.
John: And we each have our own playlist.
John: Um, and that that is some kind of, that that's the freedom we've all been looking for.
John: Uh, and it's just producing a, like more, more fury at one another and more, less understanding, less love basically.
John: Um, and not more is, uh,
John: I mean, it's a shock, I think, to us all and a shock even to me.
John: It's a shock to the whole notion of like that if you have universal education and you have and you have.
John: freedom uh to make art like what what that will produce is this enlightened society and what it has produced is is the opposite i mean and what point do we stop and take stock and say we i mean you know none of us want want
Merlin: Well, to me, it's part of what makes the idea of a personal DMV so funny.
Merlin: It's like, that's not what the DMV is for.
Merlin: It's particularly not that.
Merlin: It's an economies of scale issue, and it's an imperfect analogy.
Merlin: But one note I've gotten at least a couple times when this topic has come up here or elsewhere is a nice, friendly note from an often church-going life-long.
Merlin: Lifelong church-going person saying, you know, this isn't really that complicated.
Merlin: Instead of sitting here and making continual lists of what your perfect church needs to be, why don't you just try going to a different church?
Merlin: Even if you're not a church-going person, just try going to a church in your neighborhood.
Merlin: Like find a church near your house that you can walk to even if possible.
Merlin: But whatever, just go and check it out.
Merlin: And when I hear that from people, I always think that's such an interesting idea.
Merlin: But it also reminds me a little bit of a running bit on Back to Work where Dan and I talk about, you know, in my case, like how I've thought and read way more about meditation than I've ever actually meditated.
Merlin: And I think that's a very similar phenomenon.
Merlin: When like the last thing you want to do as somebody who's interested in meditation, the last thing you want to do is read about it.
Merlin: You sit down and you do it.
Merlin: And in this case, you know, I'm not advocating for this, but I think it's an interesting idea to say, well, if you've got a temple near your house, I bet they'd let you come right in there.
Merlin: You might have to learn a little bit.
Merlin: You'd have to put some shoes on.
Merlin: But, like, maybe you go to the Chinese Baptist Church.
Merlin: Like, whatever.
Merlin: Like, there's no church that is going to say you're not allowed here.
Merlin: That would be very...
Merlin: Maybe not no church.
John: That would be very, very anti-church.
Merlin: It's not a very churchy thing.
John: Unless it was like one of those white homeland churches.
Merlin: I would go there.
Merlin: I would try that.
John: I bet they got good mac and cheese.
John: One of the things that I think that happens, and some of our listeners may have experienced this, when you first go into Alcoholics Anonymous or some kind of recovery program that's based on that notion,
John: And I'm not saying that our listeners necessarily have done this themselves, but maybe you've experienced this when someone you knew went into that kind of world.
John: Is that after you're there for a little while and it really starts to take and you feel this euphoria of enlightenment, for lack of a better term.
John: There's a period where you really, you know, you become very evangelical.
John: And you wish, I remember doing this myself, you wish that everyone in the world would have had such an awful problem as being an addict so that they were forced to come to this place, this place of understanding.
John: Because, you know, what you're describing, what the religious people are saying, like, go to a church in your neighborhood, it requires, again, some affinity, some seeking for that experience, right?
John: I mean, if you're looking for a church, it's not hard to find one.
John: If you're looking for something to do on Sunday morning, it's not hard to figure out what to do.
John: You just go, you know, go in your neighborhood.
John: But
John: What's fascinating about AA is that that's not what you're looking for, right?
John: The reason you end up in those places is not that you were looking for a gathering of like-minded souls.
John: You were trying to get high, and you did it until your life came apart.
Merlin: whoa i never thought about it that way it's you know buddhism there's this idea of eventually having less of a sense of self and in some ways you don't you don't necessarily end up going to aa because you want to make it all about you it ends up being useful because you realize you're part of something bigger right yeah and and you're not there by choice no one goes to aa by choice you are forced there and if you go there
John: If you I mean, generally, if you go there by choice in the sense of like, you know what, I'm going to be an A.A.
John: It's not going to work.
John: Or I mean, or you're not alcoholic or something, you know, like and people that are forced to go there by the courts.
John: It doesn't work there.
John: It doesn't work that way.
John: Right, right, right, right.
John: You are forced to go there by making somebody go to the gym.
John: Yeah, it doesn't work.
John: Right.
John: But if you are so I mean, what works is like you just had a heart attack and.
John: And your doctor said, if you don't get in shape, you're going to die in a year.
John: Right.
John: Sure.
John: Sure.
John: And so when you go to when you when it works, it's not that you got there and you met a lot of people and they're your new best friends.
John: Like, I mean, when I went to AA and I think this is kind of universal, you look around and you're like, oh, my God, these are the worst people in the world.
John: Literally, the last thing I ever wanted to do was be stuck in a room with alcoholics.
John: But you're there because you have to be.
John: And that's when the religion aspect of it or, you know, that's when the meaning what's meaningful about it becomes super duper profound.
John: And you and there's a moment and there was for me certainly when I was about six months sober that I said, God, I wish everybody could could have fallen as far as I fell.
John: Because the only way you could feel the way I do now and have this sort of insight is to have gotten to that place.
John: To have bottomed.
John: And now to sort of see that we're all perfect children of God.
John: And we just need to do the work.
John: And that is what's, you know, that was what was so profound about frontier religion or religion, I guess, that you would call primary religion.
John: Which is that it's not happy fuzzy.
John: It's not there because it wants you to have a nice... It's not there to make you feel better.
John: No, it's not about you at all.
John: It's not there to say like, hey, what are you doing this Sunday?
John: Come have some food.
John: It's like, did like seven of your 11 children die?
John: Well...
John: On Sunday, you know, like you can sit quietly in this pew while somebody talks and feel briefly relieved.
Merlin: But at that time, I mean, in that time, at that time in that community, those kinds of communities were being very general here.
Merlin: But like there was, I would have to guess, much more...
Merlin: of a cultural imperative to be a church-going person for a variety of reasons, not least of which is people probably aren't going to come to your shop if they think you're not a Lutheran.
John: Right?
John: There's that.
Merlin: But then there's also, like, you know what?
Merlin: You really need to know the gossip.
Merlin: You need to know who's in and out.
Merlin: But you also need to know, with the frontier stuff, you need to know, like, the news and the rules.
Merlin: Like, if you're not going to church, you could be seen as, what, kind of revolutionary.
Merlin: Like, you need to be here and, like, knowing what's what.
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: And think of all the cannibals out there who never actually ate anybody because when they were inspired to, they remembered...
John: Whatever passage it is in the Bible that says, thou shalt not eat anybody.
John: Okay.
John: Right?
John: Didn't see that coming.
John: Yeah, sure.
John: Sure.
John: And nobody knows those passages anymore, and cannibalism is rampant in today's society.
Merlin: My daughter's reading a comic book about the Donner Party right now.
John: Very funny.
John: It's a very funny story.
Merlin: Sorry, I need to take off your very serious topic.
Merlin: No, no, it's good.
Merlin: But you know, guys, seriously, whether or not you consider yourself a religious or secular, you guys, don't eat people.
Merlin: Come on, seriously.
Merlin: Guys, listen.
Merlin: Real talk.
Merlin: I can't quote exactly in the Bible where it says don't eat people.
Merlin: You know it's going to be the Old Testament.
Merlin: You know it's going to be like a Leviticus or a Numbers or a Deuteronomy.
Merlin: That's a long-standing problem.
Merlin: You know, there's a lot of duplication in those books.
Merlin: It's very confusing.
Merlin: It's like the Cimmerillion, or maybe the Cimmerillion is like it.
Yeah.
Merlin: To part on a happy note, please go look in your Skype robot dingus or I could text it to you.
Merlin: Did you see what I sent to you?
John: It was a thing.
John: Was it an Amazon gift card?
John: No.
Merlin: I wanted to say.
John: Then I'm not interested.
John: Well, okay.
John: Here's the thing.
Merlin: If you have a field anywhere and you're wondering how to use it, I just texted it to you as well.
Merlin: I'm going to tell you how to use a field according to me and my daughter.
John: If you have an empty field.
Merlin: You have an empty field.
Merlin: So, you know, maybe you're not going to play handball.
Merlin: You know, maybe there's not going to be organized sports.
Merlin: You're bowling alone.
Merlin: What's the matter with Kansas?
Merlin: Turns out all of these kinds of modern things.
Merlin: Here's what I'm here to tell you.
Merlin: If you were to round out, if you took every toy, my child has had a lot of toys.
Merlin: If you took all of her toys and I had to just say out of all of them, which one have I personally enjoyed the most to the point where now it's really more my toy than her toy?
Merlin: I want to introduce you to the Zing Skyrippers.
Merlin: Zing Skyrippers.
Merlin: It's a little plastic handle with a rubber, very sturdy rubber tubey rubber band on the end.
Merlin: You grasp it in your hand.
Merlin: And then using this very aerodynamic, super light rocket with a whistle in it, you hook it onto that rubber band and you shoot it.
Merlin: most i i generally get pretty close to 80 90 yards you're kidding me it's the best whistle and i'm pointing here to the triple pack you don't you could get the single pack we have two triple packs so we can do multiple flights without having to go collect them this thing is so freaking fun if you get the wind behind you and you rip your skyripper you're gonna be a happy guy you're gonna be glad that feels empty because it's gonna really go brother
John: So what happens when you do this?
John: It's actually described.
John: It's called ripping.
John: You don't you don't fly it.
John: You rip you rip a sky ripper.
John: Well, I'm not in a club or anything.
John: I don't have a vest.
Merlin: But like for us, it's just a fun thing.
Merlin: We got on.
Merlin: I might have been a stocking stuffer we got for her.
Merlin: And it was so much fun that we have over the years.
Merlin: Of course, you eventually lose them or they break.
Merlin: But I'm just saying I know you're a person who has enjoyed rockets and shooting things and fields.
Merlin: This could be this could be right in your wheelhouse.
John: Skyripper.
John: I'm going to go rip a Skyripper.
John: I'm going to start ripping Skyrippers right now.
John: Do you think that, I mean, how many times do I have to do it before we do get vests?
Merlin: Oh, now this is a church I can get behind.
John: Right?
John: Yes, yes.
Merlin: The Skyrippers?
Merlin: You've got potluck meals, there's community service, maybe we have songs, but mainly we just go out, you wear a suit into a field and you shoot rockets on your mornings.
John: This picture of this kid that's shooting the Skyripper, he's got his mesh baseball cap on backwards.
John: It's pretty dope.
John: And I love that look.
John: Like vests, mesh caps on backwards, obviously ties and suit pants.
Merlin: Sure, like a gentleman.
Merlin: But you develop your own personal style, just like you'll develop your own personal style for how to shoot your ripper.
Merlin: I like to shoot mine, of course, at a 45-degree angle, and I give it just a little bit of whip to the wrist as I let it go.
Merlin: And it is deeply, deeply satisfying.
Merlin: We've gone to the field at the school near our house, and I can typically pretty easily get 70 yards, which is not too shabby.
John: No, no, no, that's not shabby at all.
Merlin: It's a very, very satisfying thing to shoot a rocket down a football field.
John: Okay, well, I have a very big field available right over here, and I'm going to get a sky ripper, and I'm going to rip some sky.
John: Rip some sky?
John: Don Rickles.
John: Oh, my God.
John: I miss him.
John: I I spent you know, we used to listen to Rickles in the in the van when we were on tour.
Merlin: The live 68 live album.
John: Yeah.
John: I mean, every every every live Rickles we could get.
John: In fact, there was a there was a time when I had a I had a little gaggle of gal pals.
John: And they were a bunch of, they were shit talkers, these gal pals.
John: Different from the fly girls.
John: These were very different.
John: Although, one of the gal pals was a former fly girl.
John: Interesting.
John: Very interesting.
John: Came all the way back around.
John: But this group of gal pals, I used to call the Rickleses.
John: Because they were such potty mouths and they played the dozens so hard that I was like, you guys are a bunch of Rickleses.
John: And then they adopted the Rickleses as their little gang tag for a while.
John: But, you know, obviously he's a character from a time before.
John: But the other night I sat and watched Don Rickles on Johnny Carson.
Merlin: That's all I've been doing for three days.
Merlin: I had no idea there was so much Johnny Carson Tonight Show on YouTube.
Merlin: It's incredible, isn't it?
Merlin: I've been texting with friends like over the whole weekend.
Merlin: We've all just been sitting there watching like Burt Reynolds, Dom DeLuise, Don Rickles, just watching these panels.
Merlin: But the Don Rickles stuff is gold.
Merlin: And the repeating themes.
Merlin: Johnny's a millionaire who hates people.
Merlin: Don never has a successful TV show.
John: It's so freaking funny.
John: Oh, he's going to, you know, he makes a line and then he stands up and he's like, well, I'm done here and starts to walk off the stage.
John: He does that every time.
Merlin: I was talking to our friend Sean about this, because as you know, Sean is a fan.
Merlin: And we were trading some of our favorite non-sequiturs.
Merlin: What was his when he says to Paul Schaefer, why don't you put a skate on your face and go skate?
Merlin: Yeah, Sean says that all the time.
Merlin: Put a skate on your face and skate.
Merlin: Here's a couple of my favorite ones.
Merlin: You're looking at me like I'm a chemistry set.
Merlin: that's good uh what am i a mal mal fighter pilot i hope you wind up in a wheat field with fungus on your elbow what does that mean it means nothing but he gets remembered for like oh boo politically incorrect don rickles the best part is the speed with which he could deliver so many non-repeating non-sequiturs in such a short period of time he would come up with so much bananas stuff that made absolutely no sense
John: Yeah, put a skate on your face and skate.
John: Have you seen the one where Letterman
John: Rickles is filming CPO Sharky.
Merlin: Oh, when he broke Johnny's cigarette box?
John: Oh, that's what it was, right.
Merlin: He had been hosting the night before and... No, I'm sorry.
Merlin: Bob Newhart was the host.
Merlin: Rickles was the guest and he starts banging on Johnny's desk and broke the cigarette box that he'd had on his desk since the show moved to LA.
Merlin: And then the next night, Johnny's talking to Doc.
John: Yeah, and he goes, interrupt CPO Sharky.
Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Pretty great times.
Merlin: If you got the Netflix, there is a... John Landis did a movie about Don Rickles.
Merlin: I think it's called Mr. Warmth.
Merlin: That's really good.
John: Oh, really?
John: Oh, that's John Landis.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: You can buy it on iTunes, but I watched it last night for the third time on Netflix.
John: You know, Rickles is an example.
John: As we entered into this weird era that we're in now, and I don't mean to use the word weird.
John: No, no, no.
Merlin: You're going to hear from the Wiccans.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: But that difficulty that you and I and a lot of our friends, a lot of our era, you know, Dan Savage had this problem, this making this transition to a world in which words...
John: Had all this extra power to to shape people's lives.
John: Words could damage as well as fists.
John: And then as time went on, sort of words became more damaging than fists.
John: And we all had to monitor very carefully what we were saying in order to not do damage to people.
John: And Rickles is like not just an example, but like the prime example of an era when the idea was just very different.
John: And Don obviously was not – Don was –
John: like not a racist and don was not a um he didn't he wasn't trying to hurt people and he used awful awful language in ways that that scald people's ears now but in fairness i think you could not i think i can completely understand a hundred percent why somebody would be offended by that i don't think he believed that in his heart i think that was it was a bit
John: He didn't believe it in his heart.
John: And all of his listeners understood, you know, like there was – and, you know, this has been written about a thousand times.
John: I'm not making a case.
John: But it's an example, I think, of –
John: Not being able to judge history on contemporary terms.
John: You know, you can't go back and say the founding fathers are I impeach the founding fathers on the, you know, because they were slave owners or because they didn't.
John: You know, I impeach Christopher Columbus because he was a mass murderer.
John: And even then that was considered bad, John.
John: Mass murder.
John: Christopher Columbus didn't set out to sail the ocean blue with the idea of mass murder in his heart.
John: You know what I mean?
John: Like Christopher Columbus was trying to find a back way to India.
John: We've heard the stories.
Yeah.
John: But you know what I mean?
John: If you try and look at Don Rickles and judge his work on contemporary terms, you just can't.
John: It's otherworldly.
Merlin: Try that for Richard Pryor.
Merlin: I mean, would you want to throw out the work of Richard Pryor because of those standards?
Merlin: Like, I hope not.
John: Well, they've been trying to throw out Mark Twain my whole life.
John: And when I say they, I mean, you know, the liberal coastal elites, the liberal coastal elites have been trying to or the or the Christian demagogues of Oklahoma.
John: You know, everybody's trying to throw up Mark.
Merlin: That's a club.
Merlin: I'm not going to get that vest.
John: I don't want to be in that club.
John: Our vest is Skyripper Club.
John: And that's that's the only vest I'll wear from here on out.
John: That's where I'm that's where I'm going to be Sunday morning.
Merlin: We need a song.
John: Rip the sky.
John: Sky Rippers.
John: Sky Rippers.
John: Get a big organ.
John: Ripping that sky.
John: Will you try this?
John: Will you try this product?
John: What?
John: Will I try it?
John: Yes.
John: I think you're really going to like it.
John: I'll order it right now.
John: You know, I've been meaning to get Amazon Prime, and this is the reason.
John: All right.
John: Do it.
John: This is finally my reason to get Amazon Prime.
Merlin: You can probably get it as a religious write-off, given that you're creating a church now.
John: Oh, absolutely right.
John: You're right.
John: Well, I'm trying to resume my policy of writing off everything that entertains me even slightly for a moment.
John: Because I'm in show business, and so entertainment is all a write-off for me.
John: Hey, if you're not happy, the audience ain't going to be happy.
John: Right?
John: Right?
John: My happiness is preeminent.
John: That's why I'm wearing this fleece onesie with a hood on the airplane I'm taking tomorrow.
John: Oh.
John: Yeah, you're going to wear your flip-flops?
John: Flip-flops and a onesie.
John: Flip-flop and a onesie, and the onesie has animal ears.
Merlin: It's like a, you know, let's be honest, it's a sex onesie.