Ep. 268: "A Principled Ohioan"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Hi, Merlin.
Merlin: How's it going?
Merlin.
Merlin: John, John.
Merlin: I'm so behind.
John: Oh.
John: About three days ago, I got a pair of pants at a thrift store.
John: And they were called Adriano or Adriano Goldschmied.
John: Hmm.
John: And I had never heard the name.
John: Adriano Goldschmied.
John: And I thought, that's a pretty cool name.
John: And the pants were like $3 or something.
John: So I was like, yeah, you know, that's cool.
John: Look at them.
John: Looks kind of upscale.
John: Well, so I did that thing where I was like, I got to figure out what Adriano Goldschmied is.
John: And normally, before I buy something like that, I look it up right there.
John: Uh-oh, that's smart.
John: And so... Because you don't want to rep the wrong thing.
John: No, you don't want to get something that looks fancy that's fake fancy and you don't want to...
John: Get something that is like, oh, I'm just going to wear these around the house.
John: Turns out it's fancy.
Merlin: When you name your company and your product, I think there's very few even customs or laws that concern that I think you can name it whatever you want.
Merlin: Yeah, you can name it.
John: You can say it's Johnny Fancy Butt.
John: Yeah, exactly right.
John: Yeah, and I don't want that.
Merlin: It's AG Adriano Goldschmied Inc.
John: Right.
John: But I...
John: So I had them in my arms at the thrift store, and I was like, Adriano Goldschmied, Adriano Goldschmied, because I wanted to look it up.
John: But I was, you know, I was like, I'll do that in a second, because I was halfway through searching for a rack or something.
John: And then I went over to the thing, and I was wandering around the store, and then I was like, what was I going to do?
John: Oh, right, Adriano Goldschmied.
John: And I looked at the pants again to remember the name.
John: Adriano Goldschmied.
John: Adriano Goldschmied.
John: And then for whatever reason, something else has.
John: So the person said something to me.
John: Anyway, I bought the pants having not looked up Adriano Goldschmeid.
John: But as I was walking out of the store, I was like, oh, right.
John: I want to look up what these are.
John: They're three bucks, you know.
John: Geez.
John: Were they dungarees?
John: Yeah, they're like black soft jeans.
John: Okay.
John: So I looked at it.
John: I looked at it again.
John: Adriano Goldschmeid, right.
John: You know, as soon as I get to my truck, I'm going to sit there and look it up before I, you know, while the truck's warming up.
John: Somehow didn't do that.
John: So when I got home and I was unloading the groceries and stuff, and I get the little thrift store package, and I'm like, oh, right, right, right, right.
John: And I look at the pants.
John: Adriano Goldschmeid, right.
John: As soon as I get in the house, I'm going to look it up.
John: Anyway, for the last three days...
John: I have looked at the genes and I have memorized the name Adriana Goldschmidt.
John: Adriana Goldschmidt.
John: And I've repeated it to myself like five, six times like a mantra.
John: And then each time it's like the name hypnotizes me.
John: or somehow it's like an incantation almost like a like a spell like a spell and and if i say it five times i will i will forget to look it up it's like a spell about itself oh it's doing like um like a mind wipe thing yeah so adriano goldschmeade adriano goldschmeade and then
Merlin: Well, there may be more to it, but it appears that at least one performance characteristic of this incantation is that as soon as you say the words, you forget the words and that you said them.
John: Yeah, right.
John: I have to then remember, oh, right, I was going to look up with those jeans.
John: What were those jeans again?
John: I don't retain Adriano.
John: I don't retain Goldschmied.
John: I retain nothing, not even the initials.
John: So on my way in here to sit down...
John: I was like, oh, right, right, right.
John: Adriano Goldschmeid.
John: I mean, I pulled them out of the washing machine to look at the name on them.
John: And then I was like, you know, they're my new jeans.
John: I'll just put them on.
John: And I put them on.
John: I'm wearing them right now.
John: Oh, wow.
John: Like debut.
John: And as I was sitting down at the computer, as you called, I was like, Adriano Goldschmeid.
John: Adriano Goldschmeid.
John: But I'm already deciding that I don't like them.
John: I'm going to give them back to the thrift.
John: Oh, what a journey.
John: Well, because they're not inexpensive.
Merlin: If you go to your local Nordstrom and you pick these up, you're going to spend some money.
John: The thing is that this very, very, very rarely happens because usually I only buy things that are pretty expensive.
John: You know, you don't want to just go buy somebody else's Where it pays to be picky and these as I sat down They didn't they don't smell bad.
John: They don't smell thrift story and
John: They just smell like somebody else.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
Merlin: I don't want to sit around and smell somebody else.
Merlin: You can't imprint on them.
John: Yeah.
John: No, I don't want to take the time.
Merlin: So anyway, what's the story with Adriano Goldschmidt?
Merlin: Did you look him up?
Merlin: I looked on the Internet Science site.
Merlin: Adriano Goldschmidt is an Italian fashion designer who focuses on denim jeans.
Merlin: He's known as the godfather of denim and is the originator of premium denim.
Merlin: He created diesel.
Merlin: Whoa.
Merlin: Replay Gap 1969 and A.G.
Merlin: Adriano Goldschmied.
Merlin: And is currently directing Gold Sign and Men's Citizens of Humanity.
Merlin: Gold Sign and Citizens.
John: He's kind of a big wheel.
Merlin: Yeah, this is a pants baller.
John: They created premium denim.
John: Yeah.
John: Ah, premium denim.
John: Yeah.
John: Were you around for the transition to premium demo?
Merlin: I mean, you know, I was extant, but it was not.
Merlin: I just remember having one of those old man moments where, you know, you hear like, oh, you can buy these jeans now and they're $400.
Merlin: And I was like, that seems like a lot of money for jeans.
Merlin: That's pretty much my extent.
Merlin: I feel like I'm aware that diesel is a brand from a time when jeans got costly and presumably fancy.
Merlin: But the funny part is, like, you think about the 80s, I mean, not to make this totally an old man thing, but, like, when they called them designer jeans got popular in the late 70s, kind of associated a little bit with the disco movement.
Merlin: You get you very tight.
Merlin: I think you look at Gloria Vanderbilt, Jordache.
John: Jordache.
John: Oh, my home is Seattle, but I live in Britannia.
Merlin: Live, live, live in Britannia.
Merlin: Also, the Jordache look.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: What were some other ones?
John: You got... The Vanderbilts were so dark.
Merlin: Oh, I got your Calvin Klein's.
Merlin: Nothing comes between... Me and my Calvins.
Merlin: Me and my Calvins, yeah.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: And so then, so in my head, you know, what's funny, $40 is such an interesting, as they say, price point.
Merlin: Like, you notice, like, today... 40 or 4?
Merlin: 4-0.
Merlin: 4-0 dollars.
Merlin: Like, if you watch, if you're watching, you're in a hotel room and you've got regular TV on, you'll notice how many things that you order off the TV, regardless of how many you end up getting because of the special offer you call Next 100 Minutes, is $39.95.
Merlin: uh and now when i was a youth uh two things were forty dollars two very important things a pair of like pretty good nikes forty dollars forty dollars a pair of what they then call designer jeans that's forty dollars huh now now in my household both of those that was that made it like a veblen good like you've got to be kidding me like you could get these perfectly serviceable jc penny shoes that are blue and orange and have the wrong number of stripes on
Merlin: it absolutely you get those for maybe eight eight or ten dollars ditto for a pair of levi's that you pick up at sears or tough skins right yeah now i wouldn't wear tough skins because you're husky yeah i was too husky yeah uh and i've never been able to wear uh any kind of wranglers or anything like that husky husky is like the boy version of women
Merlin: Oh, it's available in women's sizes.
Merlin: What a horrible code word.
Merlin: Like literally half of the population has the name of their clothes is like you're a little bigger than we'd like.
Merlin: Oh, you look like a 12.
John: Let's go over to women's.
John: To walk around with the word husky around your neck was really a scarlet letter.
John: I know.
John: But the original run of fashion jeans in the 70s and early 80s, I obviously was too young to really participate in.
John: Because, yeah, like you say, $40 for a pair of pants just wasn't my thing.
John: But the second wave of what I think here is being described as premium denim, I was standing at ground zero of premium denim because my girlfriend at the time...
John: worked in the 90s at a store that sort of pioneered this whole concept, this thought technology was pioneered in Seattle, and pioneered by like a specific couple of people.
John: which was go out to the Rocky Mountain States, drive around.
Merlin: Oh, yeah, you talked about this.
Merlin: Yeah, you mentioned, you did talk about it, just so you know, you did talk about this, your lady friend, who would go off on journeys to try and find, she decided this would become her business, she could go out and find some trousers that she could sell for way above what she bought them for.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: That was her jam.
John: And so she worked at a storefront here in Seattle, and this was later, right, after it wasn't so easy to just go find jeans lying around.
John: The whole point of the storefront was it was just like walk in the door.
John: There were four shelves maybe in the store.
John: And one of the shelves had a pair of original Air Jordans.
John: One of the shelves had a pair of original something.
John: You know, it was like there were four things for sale in the store.
John: It was not a store that you went to buy things.
John: And she was sitting behind the counter looking at a magazine.
John: And the point is, you would walk in there and try and sell her your jeans.
John: And her job was to sit there and look at your jeans.
John: Like, not the ones on you.
John: But, like, you'd walk in with an armload of jeans and go, hey, what do you think of these?
John: And then she would sneer at your jeans.
John: And then you would walk out of there feeling bad.
John: And sometimes you would argue with her and she would...
John: Just like look at her.
John: She'd go back to reading her.
John: That's like picking a fight with a frat boy.
John: Don't do that.
John: You just can't do it.
John: She does this all day.
John: Can't argue with the girl whose sole job it is to mock your genes.
John: The most important part of her job is what she doesn't buy.
John: Right.
John: And so she would...
John: Sometimes somebody would walk in and say, uh, can I sell these jeans for my grandfathers?
John: And she'd be like, yeah, all right, I'll buy those jeans.
John: And give you some amount of money.
John: I was never like 100% privy to how much money went back and forth.
John: That's interesting.
John: If that were a man, he would have been bragging about it.
John: She's playing it close to the vest.
John: This is the thing.
John: That was an era when thrift store pickers...
John: Think I've told you about this.
John: We would go to thrift stores way way out in the country and we'd be walking around and there'd be five other people in the store and
John: And they would all know each other and glare at each other.
John: And we'd be walking through the aisle and da-da-da-da-da.
John: And then, you know, somebody would be coming the other way with a shopping cart full of stuff.
John: And they would pass her and they'd be like, hi, Megan.
John: And she'd go, hi.
John: And it was like, wow, we are 80 miles out of Seattle.
John: Like, what are you people?
John: And she's just like, oh, my God, that person is just the worst.
John: They run a little store somewhere in there.
Merlin: Was there a grudging level of respect to it, though?
Merlin: Oh, absolutely.
Merlin: It was.
Merlin: You might be a little envious that somebody got to the trousers first.
John: Some of that, but they all were very detailed about what they bought and what they liked and what their thing was.
John: Right.
John: So Megan would walk through and just she'd pick stuff out and be like, oh, yeah, this is worth $90.
John: But gross.
John: Gross.
John: And I was like, huh.
John: And I never got into it.
John: Right.
John: I did not that whole resale of things.
John: I just didn't have any interest in if it wasn't my size.
Merlin: And if I wasn't going to wear it personally, I had no lifestyle job, though, because I think about my daughter who loves all these different brands of little crappy, tiny plastic toys.
Merlin: And each one, when you get these crappy toys, there's many, many varieties of these, but they each come with like a sheet.
Merlin: Sort of like when you get Topps baseball cards and it would show you like which, sometimes you'd get a card in there that's a meta card of what cards to collect.
Merlin: And it says, oh, this particular little lip balm cover that looks like a hat is like a pretty normal one.
Merlin: This one's like a super rare.
Merlin: And I was like, well, you seem to get a super rare every time we buy these.
Merlin: Are you sure that that's that super rare?
Merlin: But that tickles your bone.
Merlin: Like, you know, you want to get the right Pokemons and whatnot.
Merlin: And like you can find a way to turn those other people's pants into a business.
John: If you buy a Tootsie Roll or Tootsie Roll Pop with an Indian on it shooting an arrow at a star, you get a free one.
John: I've heard that.
John: Or something.
John: Like a dum-dum.
John: Is it a dum-dum?
John: No, a Tootsie Roll Pop.
John: Tootsie Roll Pop.
John: Huh.
John: All right.
John: I used to collect those wrappers because you'd find the one with the Indian with the star on them.
John: They weren't that rare, and I never traded one in for a free one.
John: They used to also tell you you could save your fingernail clippings and sell them to Estee Lauder.
John: Do you remember that?
John: I do not remember that.
Merlin: And that was the whole thing with saving the top from a pop top?
Merlin: That's like super aluminum or something?
Merlin: You get extra money for super aluminum?
Right.
Merlin: They do this at our school.
Merlin: God bless the hardworking people at our school and the people who dozens of years ago came up with these really terrible ideas for raising money and they continue to do them today.
Merlin: And one of them is you bring in your label tops from cereal and we'll make like half a penny off a hundred of those and
Merlin: So hold this garbage at your house until you bring it to our house.
Merlin: You know what you could do?
Merlin: You bring the super aluminum from the top of your pop top.
Merlin: So we trade those in.
John: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Every kid's going to have a computer.
John: Super aluminum.
John: Well, so the thing about Megan was that she, she and her.
Merlin: I feel like I met her.
Merlin: Oh, well... Who was the delightful raven-haired girl you were with for a while?
Merlin: That's not her.
Merlin: She was raven-haired.
Merlin: Didn't we go out to dinner one time?
Merlin: I feel like that's her name.
John: I shouldn't say.
John: Never met the redhead.
Merlin: Never met the redhead.
Merlin: Never met her.
Merlin: She's just a mythical character.
Merlin: She's just in the pantheon for me.
Merlin: Completely mythical.
Merlin: Dr. Kelly, I still think about it.
Merlin: Every time I go to a drinking party.
Merlin: Did I tell you?
Merlin: I told you I tried to get my daughter on that.
Merlin: And she didn't bite, huh?
Merlin: Well, because the way the story goes, and John Syracuse reminds me that I'm remembering this story wrong.
Merlin: But your story is... Who is it?
Merlin: It's your good buddy from Alaska, right?
Merlin: Well, it was...
Merlin: Tell the story again, because it's been a long time.
Merlin: I refer to it a lot, and it'll help me tell this.
Merlin: We'll come back to the pants in a minute, but tell me the story.
Merlin: Was it Mike, I want to say?
Merlin: No, no, no, Eric.
Merlin: Eric, okay.
Merlin: And John of Syracuse remembers this story you told as being like, it was an important end of high school, end of an era kind of thing, and you guys were parting ways, and he had a message for you.
Merlin: And how do you remember it?
Merlin: I just remember it as your friend who in my head, I know it's not Mike Squires, but it feels like a very Mike Squires thing to do.
Merlin: In my head, the story is you and your, you and your buddy are out.
Merlin: Your buddy goes to a drinking fountain and gets a drink of water.
Merlin: And then he says to you from now on for the rest of your life, every time you take a drink from a water fountain, I want you to think of me.
Merlin: That's the way I remember it.
John: That is how it happened.
Merlin: And the rub is, you told me that story, and now, in my broken brain, every time I drink from a water fountain, which is not that often, which makes it even more acute, is every time I take a drink of water from a water fountain, I think of you remembering your friend whom I've never met.
Merlin: So that's on me now.
John: So the story was...
John: Eric Spurlock was a guy who moved to Alaska with his parents after he was already a teenager.
John: They lived back east in upstate New York in Geneseo, New York.
John: And they moved to Alaska because Eric's dad's brother lived up there already or whatever.
John: And Eric's cousin...
John: Was a guy named John.
John: What the hell was his last name?
John: John was like the year ahead of me.
John: And John was the funny guy in school.
John: The guy that.
John: Oh, oh, fuck his name.
John: I just it just passed.
John: God, that's so frustrating.
John: John was was Adriano Goldschmied.
John: John was one year older than me and he was the funny guy in the senior class when I was a junior.
John: The funny guy in the sophomore class when I was a freshman.
John: Not just the self-proclaimed class clown and cut up.
John: He legit made people laugh.
John: He was the funny guy and he had a pockmarked face like he was never gonna be one of the handsome guys and he was just he was just viciously funny and
John: and and and awful right i mean he was he was scary he was a he was uh he was a bully sounds like a role model for you well he's fast he's fast at knowing where to go right he was super fast and the thing is that you know despite because in alaska it's kind of cut cutthroat a little bit and no oh john gerald john gerald nobody could get john gerald
John: Nobody backed John Gerald into a corner, right?
Merlin: I mean you couldn't you couldn't you couldn't like rich clothes shame him You couldn't like classic a classic maybe not not to say that he's an unattractive man But like the kid in my case felt a little bullied sometimes That's where the humor comes from it comes from this deflection and being able that becomes your strength Yes, absolutely, and that was how I felt right I was chubby and I was I was
John: Sears would call you Husky.
John: Husky.
John: I was universally considered a dork.
John: You know, I was a year younger than everybody else because my parents put me in kindergarten when I was four.
John: And so I was just a dork.
John: I couldn't grow a mustache.
John: I didn't.
John: I was just sort of like...
John: Ugh.
John: I really was.
John: And you looked like a scallop.
John: I just looked like a scallop.
John: I was so unfinished.
John: And my mom kept cutting my hair until I pushed her hand away one time, like, no more!
John: I want a haircut!
John: And she wouldn't buy cool clothes, you know, and all this stuff.
John: On principal.
John: Yeah, I went to school just in these, like, ugh.
John: Nothing's worse than a principled Ohioan.
John: She was so principled.
Ugh.
John: And so watching John Gerald just be like, just like on people, I really did.
John: uh admire him but I also was terrified of him and he never gave me any praise or acknowledgement he was always he saw me as a withholding he was and he saw me not as a even a comer but just like uh you know right get away from me scallop like the last thing I need is a bunch of fanboys I was like a bunch of fanboys I'm your only fanboy yeah he was just like and everything I you know I wanted to do he he kind of
John: did before me, like he wanted to be a DJ, a radio DJ, and that's what I wanted to be.
John: He got a job at a radio station his junior year.
John: Okay, it's coming back to me, yeah.
John: You know, as a sophomore, I was just like, Gerald's working at a radio station?
John: Like, you might as well be president.
John: And then one time, right?
John: The radio was like our president.
John: It was our president.
Mm-hmm.
John: One time, John Gerald, I remember the day.
John: I absolutely remember the moment where I was standing in the high school where it was a group of people standing around.
John: He was a senior by then.
John: I was a junior, which is when I really kind of came into my world.
John: And I said something to a group of people, and John turned, and he was like, ha, that was pretty good.
John: And I was just like, the crown has passed.
Mm-hmm.
John: Boom!
John: But anyway, Spurlock was John Gerrold's cousin, and he was my age.
John: And he kind of looked like John, but even kind of more dorky.
John: John had a pockmarked face, but he wasn't unhandsome.
John: Eric was just sort of, like me, kind of unformed.
John: A guy that was going to be an attractive man, but not a very attractive teen.
John: That's how it works.
John: Eric was also very funny.
John: But he was coming from outside.
John: He was coming from New York.
John: And he really strongly, strongly felt that Alaska was something he couldn't penetrate.
John: Like he just was never going to be Alaskan.
John: And he felt it really acutely, right?
John: You could just feel that he was the insecurity of not understanding what all the rules were and not getting the inside out.
John: you know, not comprehending it.
John: But he's super funny and he became a very close member of our group, but he never accepted entirely how close he was to us.
John: We all thought he was integral and he always couldn't let that be.
John: He always felt outside.
John: And at the end of high school, we were...
John: We were all kind of at that point in time, like, yeah, sure, going off to college.
John: But Alaska was all we knew.
John: And we all assumed we would go to college and then come back to Alaska.
John: That was the whole universe.
John: I don't think it occurred to any one of us that we would ever live outside of Alaska.
John: We were going off to college.
Yeah.
Merlin: but we were coming back.
Merlin: Yeah, whatever big plans you've got for the long, long future, they end up, you know, very much not nearly as important as what that next thing is.
Merlin: Like the college thing is a big thing.
Merlin: That's a big step.
John: Going to college, but then at Christmas time, we'll be back here to compare notes.
John: And then, you know what we're going to do?
John: We're going to graduate.
John: We're going to be in college cotillion, not high school cotillion.
John: DMOC.
John: Yeah.
John: And so Jim McNeil,
John: who was from Arkansas, but Jim always felt very much part of Alaska, because Jim McNeil didn't have insecurity.
John: Jim even spoke with a southern accent, but in Alaska, that's just an advantage.
John: He had an Arkansas accent, a thick one, but he was just like, I'm from Alaska, what are you talking about?
John: And Eric and I were walking in the Sears Mall, and we stopped to go to the bathroom, and there was a drinking fountain, and we stopped to get a drink of water, and Eric had, just a few minutes before,
John: had this great reveal.
John: He dropped this bomb, which was, we're moving.
John: My folks are leaving Alaska.
John: Oh, my.
John: They'd only been there for three years.
John: This is how you tell me.
John: This is how you tell me.
John: Right.
John: And his father bought the... His father came up to Alaska to, I guess, start over?
John: I don't know why you would do this.
John: But...
John: He came up and bought a bakery.
John: And the bakery was for sale because it had formerly been owned by Robert Hansen, who was the Alaska baker who would kidnap prostitutes, put them in his airplane, take them up to wilderness locations, set them free, and then hunt them.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: Uh, there's a, there's a movie made about him, Robert Hanson.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It's a terrible movie.
Merlin: Butcher Baker.
John: Uh, right.
John: But he would like, uh, he would, yeah, he would like the greatest game or whatever, like set them loose and most dangerous game.
John: Right.
John: And so Hanson had just been caught like that year.
John: And all of a sudden his bakery was like for sale.
John: Oh, no, you're going to want to burn a lot of sage in that place.
John: And Eric Spurlock's dad came up and bought the bakery.
John: So all of a sudden we're like.
Merlin: Did they have to disclose something like that?
John: Is that something where they've got to let you know?
John: I think so.
John: I mean, I think I think there was a lot of like, huh, why is that bakery so cheap?
John: Yeah.
John: And my understanding of the story is that he did not use the bakery as part of his thing.
John: It was just for work.
John: That was where he went to work.
John: But, you know, one of those things that a lot of people didn't have in high school but I did was a friend whose dad owned a bakery.
John: So we were like – as we were driving around town, it was like, oh, let's swing into Spurlock's Bakery and go in there and get some bakery things.
John: Pretty cool.
John: So Eric says, yeah, we're moving.
John: And and my reaction was like, we can't move like you made it.
John: You made it all the way through high school.
John: You made it.
John: You're in Alaska.
John: And like, what do you mean you're moving?
John: And he was like, yeah, we're going back to New York.
John: And then he drops this.
John: We're standing.
John: I'm drinking water.
John: And he like standing behind me.
John: And he goes, every time you see that.
John: that uh the writing on the drain at the bottom of the water fountain i want you to think of me oh man i was like i hate how effective that is wow wow and you know of course there it is it lives in infamy it's so it's so good because if if you're doing it to somebody who's really suggestible like i am
Merlin: It's really good because it's also one of those things where how are you going to like prevent that?
Merlin: If it does start to drive you crazy and you can't unthink the thought, like, what are you going to do?
Merlin: Because the whole point of a thing like that is it doesn't happen often enough that you'd like get used to it and, you know, be able to kind of write it off.
Merlin: It's like, oh, it would be like from now on, every time you see a urinal cake, I want you to think of me like you wouldn't even like you wouldn't even see it coming.
Merlin: How do you reprogram yourself from something like that?
Merlin: I don't know, but I need to find out because I'm very vulnerable.
John: Well, you're absolutely right.
Merlin: It isn't like saying every time you drink water.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: That would be too much.
Merlin: It wouldn't work.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: I mean, it's like gambling paying off periodically.
Merlin: Like the way it would really get in your brain is, oh, God.
Merlin: See, now I'm going to think about urinals.
Merlin: Now I'm going to think about this episode every time I see a urinal cake.
Merlin: You don't see as many urinal cakes as you used to.
John: If you worked in an office where there was a urinal cake in the urinal, nothing like that could work because you'd use it three times a day and you'd see the urinal cake.
John: Like you're saying, it wouldn't stick.
Merlin: Yeah, you'd wear it out.
John: Somebody like you or me, where the number of times we use a public urinal is somewhat limited, and then, like you say, there aren't urinal cakes anymore.
John: For those listeners who don't know what a urinal cake is, and I'm sure there are those people.
Merlin: Well, if you know baked goods, you know about Hanson's Bakery.
Merlin: You know what a cake is.
Merlin: Yeah, so this is a thing where you get this, I don't know what it's made of, but it's almost like a bar of soap.
Merlin: Yeah, kind of wax.
Merlin: Waxy, foamy, often pink, and it sits at the bottom of the urinal, and I think its purpose is to make it smell less like urine.
Merlin: And then people urinate on it, and ironically enough, I think that releases some of the urine cake's powers.
Yeah.
John: And the smell of a urine cake is distinctive, and it's not pleasant.
Merlin: It's sweet, very sweet.
John: Yeah, it replaces the smell of urine with this other smell.
Merlin: Yeah, that's the idea, yeah.
John: But I think part of the urine cake, have you been to men's rooms in Europe?
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: Well, European... I've never been on the continent.
Merlin: No, never been on the continent.
Merlin: I've been to England.
Merlin: That's it.
Merlin: England.
John: Well, and I'm not sure they have them there, but in... I think they all sit down there.
Merlin: Oh, I think they have urinals.
Merlin: Yeah, I think the UK, that's the entire island of sitters.
John: But they don't... I don't think they use... They might.
John: But there's the universally popular urinal manufacturers in Europe...
John: have now put in their urinals a little painting.
John: Like they put a fly in there or something?
John: Of a fly or a bee or a little thing to aim at that's never centered.
John: It's always to the side.
John: It's physics because of physics.
John: In a spot that will reduce splatter.
John: And if you stand there and pee on the bee or pee on the fly,
John: Uh, it will, it's like, I have to assume a maximum efficiency of the, of the urinal.
John: And I have found it impossible to not pee on the fly.
John: You would have to be, you would have to be such an iconoclast.
Merlin: You would, you would have to be, you would have to make a point of saying, I am currently not peeing on a fly because that's the thing that I'm doing.
Merlin: You would have to roughly say, cause your mind wants to pee on that fly so hard, even though you don't get any coupons or anything out of it.
Merlin: But like, it's a sense, it's a sense of achievement.
Merlin: I hit the fly with my pee.
John: The thing is you would have to be stronger than that because I'm the type of person that would go to a urinal and say, like, I'm not going to pee on the fly.
John: I mean, that's the type of thing I would do.
John: Sure.
John: But I can't.
John: I'm powerless against that fly.
John: I know.
John: I know.
John: Because otherwise it's just a big white emptiness.
John: It's a bowl of – it's an infinite bowl.
Merlin: I would like more things like that in life.
Merlin: I would like more things where you don't need to necessarily have instructions or tutorial, you don't need to take an extension class, but I would like more, I'm going to call it hinting, more like hinting at like, okay, you know what, this is going to go, well, we put a thing in here that's not a real flaw, you don't have to feel bad.
Merlin: We're not being flyest.
Merlin: That's an image of a fly that we're just going to put this here and we find that people will hit it with their pee and you don't get a bank shot.
Merlin: It's not like going straight up against it.
Merlin: In a really brightly lit room, one may not realize, I don't want to be too graphic here, I think most people don't realize how much splatter there is with pee.
Merlin: There's more splatter than you would imagine, especially if you're wearing khaki pants.
John: And this is a thing that they solved a problem.
John: They probably saved, let's say, conservatively, 100 billion man-hours of cleaning bathrooms.
Merlin: And the shame, you know?
Merlin: But the thing is, Freakonomics should do a whole episode on this.
Merlin: Because you think about this.
Merlin: First of all, less stress.
Merlin: Let's just start with the beginning.
Merlin: You're not going to get your keggy pants all covered with splatter.
Merlin: That's good.
Merlin: Now, you're also going to waste more productivity.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Less time spent trying to dab, dab, dab to get pee pee off of your pants.
Merlin: Also, you know what?
Merlin: Less money spent on laundering.
Merlin: Now, that might have a knock-on effect for the pee laundering industry.
Merlin: That's good for everybody.
Merlin: You ready for this one?
Merlin: Less splatter on the floor.
Merlin: Less need to overtly send in janitor man to come in and clean up the splatter.
Merlin: It's good for everybody.
Merlin: You put a fly in there.
Merlin: They say art isn't useful.
Merlin: Art's very useful.
Merlin: You put a fly in a urinal.
John: I feel like, well, first of all, in Europe, I feel like the bee is more popular than the fly.
John: Because the fly conveys dirtiness, right?
John: It's a fly in your bathroom.
John: That's not what you want.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
Merlin: Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.
Merlin: A fly is gross, but a bee... This is probably evolutionary psychology on some level.
Merlin: At least a couple ways, don't you think?
John: If you were out in the world just sort of peeing in the gravel and there was an opportunity to pee on a bee, wouldn't you do it?
Merlin: If there was a trail of ants, I'd follow it along.
Merlin: You've got to do that.
John: It's in your brain.
John: But it gives you that sense of accomplishment.
John: I just peed on that bee for a long time.
John: But I do feel...
John: I hear what you're saying, and I agree, and I'm thinking, what are the analogs to this?
John: If you paint lines on a highway, that's also just turning it into a game.
Merlin: I'll give you some examples of this.
Merlin: One example that comes up for me several times a year is that I will see an occurrence of a three-digit number
Merlin: That was my laundry number when I was in military school, which meant that every single item that I owned with a Sharpie or with a white laundry marker, every single item that I owned had this three digit number on it.
Merlin: And it basically equaled me.
Merlin: Like for practical purposes, it was almost like a serial number.
Merlin: It was a laundry number, but also meant that if I ever lost anything, it would have that three digit number on it and it would return to me because you would even know what everybody else's number was.
Merlin: So now, whenever I see that three-digit number in the wild, of course, the very first thing I think of is that, hey, that's weird.
Merlin: That's my laundry number.
Merlin: Well, what was your laundry number?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I mean, should I say for OPSEC reasons?
Merlin: It was 207.
Merlin: I don't want people trolling me about it.
Merlin: But like that, or like my P.O.
Merlin: box in college was 289.
Merlin: And so, you know, this is just a random example, but those are the kinds of things where that's just digits.
Merlin: That doesn't mean anything.
Merlin: We imbue these digits.
Merlin: You know, you get a 420 or a 69.
Merlin: Nice.
Merlin: Or you get, you know, you got a lucky number, like a 37, right?
Merlin: And so then you start noticing that.
Merlin: But I think it has to be that kind of thing.
Merlin: It can't be, oh, I saw a number.
Merlin: That wouldn't work.
Merlin: It's got to be something that appears somewhat randomly, like unto a water fountain.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Payphone.
Merlin: The rapidly disappearing payphone.
Merlin: Yeah, the payphones are gone now.
Merlin: I saw one the other day.
Merlin: Nobody's having a good day when they're using a payphone.
John: And that's actually been true for a while.
John: That's true.
John: Even when they were still kind of thick on the ground.
John: Can you imagine how dirty those things are?
Merlin: You put that on your face?
Merlin: Well, I mean, we all did it for decades and decades.
Merlin: Think about that mouthpiece.
Merlin: Think about how many mouths have been right there.
John: Well, just, you know, think about, I mean, at what age did you stop sucking on quarters?
Merlin: What age did I stop sucking on quarters?
Merlin: I would say sometime between three and 11.
Merlin: Yeah, but still like sucking on a quarter.
Merlin: Yo, I know.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: And my daughter loves, like me, I think you've talked about this too.
Merlin: I used to love collecting change and rolling it up and just playing with it and acting like I was a Monopoly man, like running my hands through it.
Merlin: Smell your hands.
Merlin: Smell your hands after you've played with money.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: It's not a nice smell.
John: Oh, it's a something smell.
John: Yeah, it smells like blood.
Merlin: Yeah, no, no, you're right.
Merlin: You're right.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Absolutely right.
John: Bloody smell.
John: Well, you know, they say every hundred dollar bill in America has got cocaine residue on it.
John: That's what they say.
John: Boss gags.
John: But they also say that if you collect a Tootsie Roll pop with an Indian and shooting a star.
John: It's the show art for this week already.
Merlin: Uh-huh.
Merlin: I've got it right here.
Merlin: Apparently, it turns out you don't get free Tootsie Pops from it.
Merlin: There's many, many Indians shooting stars.
Merlin: And people have gotten tattoos of it, is a thing I just learned.
John: Right.
John: And it's some kind of, I wonder, you know, there's got to be a website that deals with that kind of urban legend.
Merlin: Oh, no, I just found five.
Merlin: Yeah, I checked my sources.
Merlin: This is why people here are clicking, because I'm working on the program while we're doing that.
Merlin: uh yeah other things like that but i think it needs to be some combination of something very concrete it can't be as general as like i say just the existence of a number or the color blue or something like that it has to be something that you don't have time to think about processing that once you see it on some kind of like um sub rosa level you're you're processing that you oh that's that thing and i'm thinking of eric now eric spurlock
John: I feel like I feel like this is one of the things that is going to make it's going to popularize AR and it's going to it's going to facilitate the transition to AR because what I think one of the main main main
John: first uses and maybe primary uses of AR is going to be to gamify regular life.
John: Gamify regular life.
John: Yeah.
John: So like, you know, so everything is going to turn into there's going to be little coins floating above
John: Your tasks are coins floating above things in the world.
Merlin: You got a Mario over to there and then you jump left, left, right, contra code.
Merlin: You grab a coin and that goes into your virtual purse.
John: Yes, exactly.
John: And that gamification will be used by companies.
John: And, you know, if they're smart by governments, but certainly by by companies and maybe you go to get your coffee somewhere and like you get half off 20 percent off if you agree to watch a 15 second ad that or as you're walking through the mall.
John: Companies will pay to have gold coins floating over the front of their store.
John: And you never would have gone over to the Gucci store.
John: But you go over there and collect and collect your coin.
John: And then you're standing in front of the store, you know, or you have to go inside the store to the store rack to collect clings.
Merlin: They do a version of that in that neighborhood near my house over in West Portal, where once a year, many of the merchants participate in a Where's Waldo tournament.
Merlin: So there's this cutout Waldo.
Merlin: You put the cutout Waldo somewhere in the store, and then you're supposed to go to all the stores and find Waldo.
Merlin: And then you can turn that in for, I don't know, significant prizes and coins.
John: Yeah, significant prizes.
John: But if you think about the things that we want people to do, right?
Merlin: The attention economy.
Merlin: Obviously, we already want you to buy stuff.
Merlin: That's why there are ads.
Merlin: Thank you to HelloFresh.
Merlin: Thank you, HelloFresh.
Merlin: This episode of Roderick on the Line is brought to you by HelloFresh.
Merlin: You can learn more about HelloFresh right now by visiting HelloFresh.com.
Merlin: HelloFresh is a meal kit delivery service that shops, plans, and delivers your favorite step-by-step recipes and pre-measured ingredients.
Merlin: So you can just cook, eat, and enjoy.
Merlin: HelloFresh wants to make things very convenient for you, for your schedule and your preferences.
Merlin: You can choose your delivery day for whatever works best for your schedule.
Merlin: You can even pause your account for weeks at a time when you're out of town.
Merlin: So handy.
Merlin: And when your stuff does arrive, oh man, those meal ingredients, they arrive pre-measured in handy labeled meal kits.
Merlin: So you know which ingredients go with which recipe.
Merlin: It's all delivered right to your door in recyclable, insulated packaging.
Merlin: HelloFresh offers a wide variety of chef-curated recipes that change weekly.
Merlin: They have three plans to choose from.
Merlin: They've got the classic plan, the veggie plan, and the family plan.
Merlin: The classic, you get a variety of meat, fish, and seasonal produce.
Merlin: Veggie plan, you're going to get vegetarian recipes with plant-based proteins, grains, and seasonal produce.
Merlin: And then you get the family plan.
Merlin: That's where you get quick and easy meals with all the yum-worthy flavor that the whole family will love.
Merlin: It's just so simple.
Merlin: You're not going to spend all night in the kitchen because many of these recipes, they take around 30 minutes.
Merlin: And there's lots of one-pot recipes for seriously speedy cooking and minimal cleanup.
Merlin: And each week, there's even a 20-minute meal from the classic menu for when you really don't have any more time than that.
Merlin: Now, personally, my family loves the food and the recipes.
Merlin: My lady friend tells me she especially loves how the ingredients are packaged and labeled.
Merlin: It's so idiot-proof.
Merlin: It's like color-coded.
Merlin: It's like your animals for your food.
Merlin: They're just going to have to run with that.
Merlin: So right now, for $30 off your first week of HelloFresh, visit HelloFresh.com and enter the promo code ROTL30.
Merlin: That's R-O-T-L-3-0.
Merlin: And that's going to get you $30 off your first week.
Merlin: Thank you so much, HelloFresh.
Merlin: Our thanks to HelloFresh for supporting Roderick on the Line and all the great shows.
Merlin: Perfect.
Merlin: Thank you.
Merlin: Thank you.
Merlin: Back to the show.
Merlin: I killed it on that one.
Merlin: We already have something called advertising, which is a kind of a gold coin.
Merlin: Just in this case, the gold coin goes to President Zuckerberg.
John: Yeah, you laid it down.
John: Mazel tov.
John: Mazel tov.
John: Winklevoss.
John: But I'm thinking about the other things that we want people to do, right?
John: Like during rush hour traffic.
John: Now, we're talking about a time when there's not even going to be driving.
Merlin: Zipper merge.
Merlin: We want you to zipper merge.
Merlin: Stop doing that thing where you're going too early or too late.
Merlin: Zipper merge is what it's all about.
Merlin: That's it.
John: Now, we're not going to be driving at that point.
John: It's all going to be driverless cars, but there are going to be other things.
Merlin: You might be a futurist, because you did it.
Merlin: You took it, you turned it, you jumped, you leapt.
Merlin: You took two assumptions, and two plus two times equals like seven.
Merlin: You just went to a whole other place.
John: Somebody told me the other day that there's actually a master's degree in futurism available at the University of Hawaii.
John: And they said, why are you not in the master's program at the University of Hawaii?
John: Why are you even not there?
John: And I was like...
John: There's a lot of reasons that I'm not, but you know what?
John: I am a master's degree.
John: I don't like the food there.
John: At the University of Hawaii?
Merlin: Well, just Hawaii in general.
Merlin: It's nothing against the good people of Hawaii.
Merlin: They really do not want me to be there.
Merlin: I felt very unwelcome, and I felt like I should feel very unwelcome there.
Merlin: It's not a good scene.
Merlin: But the food, I can't get with the food there.
Merlin: I couldn't do a master's program.
Merlin: What's that going to be?
Merlin: Two years, and you've got to write a thesis?
Merlin: You've got to write a futuristic thesis?
Merlin: Yeah, probably.
Merlin: You've got to write a little book.
Merlin: You've got to live in Hawaii for two years.
John: If you're getting a master's
John: I don't see why you can't do that from your home.
John: You should be able to do that.
John: That should be a cyber university thing.
John: You know what I mean?
John: You should be able to do it from your phone.
John: You should be able to do it on your watch.
John: But think about how we how people will be controlled by this Spurlockian like sync concept.
John: But by their own, you know, by their own volition, they'll be out there being asked to to put put that little bit of like.
John: dystopian game onto all the things that they're doing these little like oh well if you're over here i want you to you know but it's all going to be they're all going to be it's going to be collecting in their in their virtual reality account yes right their life account their credit card it's going to be somewhere between like the minority report movie and facebook
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: So, again, Minority Report, which I think is a very good movie.
John: I keep thinking about Minority Report, and I haven't seen it in a long time.
Merlin: It's a movie I think about fairly often.
Merlin: And there's one particular scene where Mission Impossible guy is walking around.
Merlin: Memory serves.
Merlin: He's walking through a public area.
Merlin: Oh, and the ads are talking.
Merlin: The ads are talking to him, specifically addressing him.
Merlin: See, I think you combine something like that, obviously, with a Facebook-type thing.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: So they know lots of stuff about you.
Merlin: Now, I realize I'm not being a true Spurlockian futurist, because I haven't made the leaps that you're making.
Merlin: But I bet in the near term that's going to be the case.
Merlin: It's kind of the case right now.
Merlin: Like, where if you, there's all these ding-a-ling apps where if you're not paying any attention, and you should be paying attention, do you want to do location?
Merlin: Do you want to do notifications?
Merlin: Do you want to do beep, beep, beep, beep, beep?
Merlin: And, like, a lot of times when you do that, even though it breaks the terms of service, it does lots of stuff to push you things based on where you are or what you haven't done for a while.
Merlin: It is doing that.
Merlin: Open your treasure chest from this screaming white-faced guy game that I was forced to play.
Merlin: Allows in-app programs.
Merlin: Purchases double click to continue and then you've agreed to the terms and service and now that you're that's that's your gold coin for now, but you're saying this could be a Mario type situation what Minority Report.
John: This is the great thing about the about science fiction, right?
John: They get it.
John: They get 80% of it, but they don't they it's never really possible to see so clearly like
John: When we were kids, we never would have imagined there wouldn't be a NASA now.
Merlin: Think about how many of the wonderful science fiction movies.
Merlin: I mean, setting aside the ha-ha, I never got a jetpack stuff.
Merlin: But you think about how many science fiction movies will so fancifully cover the idea of even hyperspace travel.
Merlin: This is a really obvious one, but I think the one that everybody missed was communications.
Merlin: Yeah, nobody thought of it.
Merlin: An amazing thing that happened is communications.
Merlin: There's so many movies from the 70s, 80s, 90s that fall apart if you have a wireless phone.
Merlin: It's not a plot anymore.
John: And now you can look up a word on your phone while you're at the cabin.
John: The thing that Minority Report didn't get was that VR was going to be personal individual.
John: So the plot point of that moment is he's walking through this mall and all the video ads are like, hello, protagonist, whose name is ringing out as bad guy.
John: And he's like, oh, no, people can hear my name.
John: But that will all just be in your little heads-up display.
John: All that personalization.
John: Fuck you, asshole.
John: Collect the coin.
John: But what's going to be fucked up about that, I think, is that every person's – this will be playing to the intrinsic narcissism of modern people.
John: Every person will be experiencing the world completely personalized, and it won't be very long – it won't take very long for us to –
Merlin: believe that the world actually does belong to us oh my god you're blowing my mind how different is it from going into one of those massively multiplayer massive games and you get to pick what kind of cloak and sword and are you this kind of elf or that kind of elf are you a high elf or a wood elf like are you you know what i mean and so like now maybe you see everybody else the world becomes your own little deviant art where you start thinking oh you know everybody should look like a monkey or something
John: Well, every single store, every single ad, every single thing.
John: It would be crazy for everybody to experience.
Merlin: You would never want everybody to experience the same Walmart.
Merlin: That doesn't even make any sense.
Merlin: You should have the bespoke AR Walmart.
John: But most people's minds are vulnerable enough or lazy enough, I guess, that they will not be...
John: They will not be thinking to themselves, this is true for everyone.
John: They're just going to be just bathing in the fact that they're hearing their names spoken over and over and over by everything.
John: And it's going to create, if we didn't think we already had a nation of monsters.
John: That is going to be a technology that divides us rather than unites us.
John: You've given me much to think about.
John: I think you should be teaching in Hawaii.
John: What about that?
John: You know what?
John: I'm teaching in virtual Hawaii.
Merlin: Put on your goggles.
Merlin: Here comes Professor John.
Merlin: I can understand.
Merlin: Turn up your brass valves to PSI Roderick.
Merlin: You think you have like a steampunk virtual class?
Merlin: We were trying to.
Merlin: You'd be like at a Jules Verne desk.
John: It's like made out of recovered wood.
John: We were doing a photo shoot the other day, Ken Jennings and I, and we were trying to communicate futurism.
John: without using steampunk iconography.
John: That's a fine line to watch.
Merlin: Yeah, because everybody wants to put on goggles.
John: Yeah, we determined that it's not possible.
John: No goggles.
John: You cannot communicate anymore the future without Jules burning it.
John: and so we're there and it's just like no goggles and then ken just slowly starts putting these goggles on and i'm like no goggles and the goggles just go on you can't have a lab coat we were in a lab coat so well yeah absolutely lab coats like what what can you do you can't fight it i mean holding bloody baby dolls like the beatles you could do like a yesterday and today or or again the the uh the dance the dancing scenes from buck roger's
John: The television show.
John: That's a warm fuzzy.
John: I keep wanting to.
John: I should go on YouTube.
John: It's like Adriano Goldschmied.
Mm-hmm.
John: For years, I've been saying... Isn't that funny?
Merlin: I'm going to jump ahead, but isn't that funny?
Merlin: I have an entire text file called Mystery Memories, and it's all things I remember that are very weird.
Merlin: Some of it's stuff as quotidian as ancient Chinese secret, stuff like that.
Merlin: I remember a hallucination I had one time.
Merlin: What was the hallucination?
Merlin: Oh, it's kind of obscure.
Merlin: One time I was driving around, went down Colerain Avenue with my grandmother, and I thought a water tower looked like a baseball mitt, and I still think about it today.
Merlin: Sliced tomatoes so thin, your mother-in-law will never come back.
Merlin: Big race today at the Putt-Pot Speedway.
John: He never has a second cup of my coffee.
John: Uh-huh.
John: Ancient Chinese secret, huh?
John: I had a little text file on my phone.
Merlin: Can I do one more?
John: Can I do one more?
John: Yeah, go ahead.
Merlin: When they put out the bionic woman doll.
Merlin: They put out Steve Austin.
Merlin: They put out Oscar Goldschmeed.
Merlin: And there was like a little thumb button in the back, right?
Merlin: I think so.
Merlin: But all I know is that the song starts, Jamie Summers.
Merlin: And I still hear it in my head today.
Merlin: I remember the first ATM in Cincinnati.
Merlin: All day, all night, Marianne.
Merlin: I still have that in my head.
John: That was a commercial for the first ATM?
John: Or the ATM actually made that sound?
Merlin: For one of the first branded ATMs.
Merlin: But my point to all of these is, of all of these, there are so many of these.
Merlin: I'm setting aside my hallucinations from when I was eight.
Merlin: There are so many things in here.
Merlin: I could go on YouTube, and I could probably find it, and it never occurs to me to go find the Gravy Train or Chuck Wagon ad.
Merlin: I should go find that.
Merlin: Remember when the little covered wagon, the Conestoga wagon goes under the rug and the dog's confused?
John: That was the world that I wanted to live in.
John: I wanted to live in that little mini chuck wagon world where underneath the sink there was like a whole cowboy universe.
John: Why don't I get that?
John: Why do only people in commercials get that?
John: Well, and the thing is, the only person that ever saw that was the dog.
John: I know.
John: Isn't that tragic?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Sorry, I took you off that.
Merlin: But like, so you could go, here's Cash Ambergy, Cash's Big Bargain Barn, South Lebanon, Ohio.
Merlin: Follow the cars, follow the signs to Cash's Big Bargain Barn in South Lebanon, Ohio.
Merlin: Anyway.
Merlin: You there?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Jesus Christ, I'm sorry.
Merlin: I thought I finally ended the podcast.
John: I definitely have a text file of weird memories that aren't related to commercials, but those memories where you think...
John: uh, I've got to write this down because this is such a powerful emotional memory.
Merlin: Every time you re-experience it, it gets more faded or more edited.
Merlin: Like you've got to like capture the pure memory when it comes to you.
John: When I read them now, even the ones that I wrote fairly recently, like in the last couple of years, like, oh shit, I've got to put this down.
John: I read it now and it just doesn't, I didn't
John: write it well enough or something and the memory is kind of lost by trying to capture it.
John: The sense impression.
Merlin: It's like trying to remember a dream.
Merlin: It's like sand through your fingers.
Merlin: The harder you try, the faster it goes away.
John: Yeah.
John: Don't you think?
John: Well, because there's all those feelings like, oh, I remember the feeling of
Merlin: sitting in a booth and my mom said maybe and i thought that meant that yes and you're just like what i but then you might start making it too specific and you go okay do i really remember those being those red plastic cups that they had a pizza hut did pizza hut even have booths and you find yourself going wait a minute you start fact-checking yourself and pretty soon you're crushing the bunny yeah you don't want to crush the bunny
John: Yeah, I have a couple of those memories, right?
John: The time that I lost my horse wallet in the water.
John: Oh, God, yes.
John: There was a very specific memory I have in Hawaii.
John: When I was a kid, I was with my dad.
John: And this was back when most of Maui didn't have paved roads.
John: It was all dirt roads.
John: And we were at some little store somewhere.
John: And they had a rack of comic books, which I'd been, you know, there hadn't been comic books anywhere I'd gone in Hawaii.
John: It was like, oh, my God, I found comic books.
John: And I said, Dad, can I have can I have a comic?
John: And he said, you can have a couple comics.
John: And I brought three up to the cash register.
John: Have I told you this?
John: No, keep going.
John: I brought three.
John: And my dad said, I said, you could have a couple.
John: And I said, three is a couple.
John: And Dad said, three is a few.
Merlin: I had that up until junior high.
Merlin: I thought a couple meant like a handful.
John: Yeah, a couple.
Merlin: I think a handful is five.
Merlin: A couple is two.
Merlin: A few is two to four.
Merlin: Yeah, a few is two to four.
Merlin: But I didn't realize a couple always meant two.
Merlin: I didn't realize that until like junior high.
Merlin: Well, I still don't believe it.
Merlin: No.
John: But at that point, my dad said, you can't, you know, you can have zero.
John: Because I said you could have a couple and you brought up a few, so now you get zero.
Merlin: Oh, shit, dog.
Merlin: That is harsh.
John: Well, that's why I remember this.
John: Was it a DC comic?
John: It was probably Superman?
John: No, no, no.
John: I never read DC comics.
John: It was a Harvey comic.
John: But I remember the store.
John: I remember the light of the day.
John: I remember the dirt of the road and the little town that we were in and the whole experience of being on this long car ride with him in Hawaii.
John: Because it was just solidified in this moment of like, I had three comic books in my hand.
John: I was at the cash register and those comic books went away.
John: because I did not parse the difference between a couple and a few.
Merlin: I remember I didn't buy a lot of comic books.
Merlin: We didn't have a lot of dough for that kind of thing.
Merlin: But I feel like this might have been when my dad was alive.
Merlin: It was definitely when we were still at the house where he had lived.
Merlin: So I might have been eight, maybe nine.
Merlin: And I had some kind of a DC comic I had picked up, you know, 25 cents, 35 cents.
Merlin: And it had hippies in it.
Merlin: And I think I've tried to find this over the years.
Merlin: I feel like it might have been a Superman or probably a Batman or maybe like a Justice, not Justice League, whatever it was called, whatever the Super Friends were.
Merlin: The Super Friends, I guess.
Merlin: But my mom, I remember feeling very ashamed that my mom took it away from me because she thought it was objectionable.
Merlin: I think she thought it had like drug things.
Merlin: And I remember she put it on top of the dresser.
Merlin: And at one time I snuck into her room and got one last look at the Forbidden comic and then I never saw it again.
Merlin: the forbidden comic where hippies appeared hippies and and were the hippies like bad because there were a lot of comic books where the hippies were like now we're getting into a pizza hut tumblr type situation because i feel like i remember it having like i was probably titillated i'm gonna guess by like girls in lavender mini dresses
Merlin: Because I was a big fan of Mod Squad, and I had a huge crush on Julie.
Merlin: She was one of my first crushes.
Merlin: And then you get Peggy Lipton, right?
Merlin: And her daughter was on the Parks and Rec.
Merlin: It's crazy stuff.
Merlin: I don't know who Peggy Lipton is.
Merlin: Peggy Lipton was on the Mod Squad.
Merlin: We didn't get the Mod Squad.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Was that a good show?
Merlin: Was it like Untouchables or something?
Merlin: It was one of those like TV is trying to get cool in the late 60s shows.
John: So Mod Squad were police officers.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: And it was the main guy, the black guy and the pretty girl.
Merlin: And the three of them were the Mod Squad and they would solve crimes by doing undercover things.
Merlin: So it was like 21 Jump Street.
Merlin: yeah i guess so i reckon it was i reckon yeah but i think it also i feel like in my head and this again this could be a pizza hut tumblr situation because i very clearly remember those red tumblers of pizza hut and also i think it had like guys with uh roger mcguinn glasses and like indian headbands oh sure of course of course you know saying you know you know the look like 21 jump street was exactly like that they they wanted to do stories about gangs but they couldn't
John: They couldn't use actual red or blue colors.
John: And so, like, their gang colors were all yellow and orange.
John: The drips and the cruds.
John: Yeah, right.
John: The lemon drops.
John: And you're just like, no.
Merlin: They're doing their lemon drop walk.
John: Sorry, buddies.
John: Tell it to the judge.
John: I'm Jump Street.
John: And even in 21 Jump Street, I think they were wearing Roger McGinn glasses.
John: Like, what's up?
John: You want some squeak, man?
John: You want to buy some squeak?
Merlin: Squeak's not a thing, dude.
Merlin: Yeah, I used to try this new drug.
Merlin: It's called Pistol Whip.
Merlin: The kids are doing it.
Merlin: And, yeah, so anyway, I got you away from your pants.
Merlin: Adriano Goldschmidt.
Merlin: You know what I'm telling you?
Merlin: I'm here to tell you, like Peter Schaefer says in the play Equus, moments snap together like magnets.
Merlin: There's no way to have any...
Merlin: You don't get much control over what decides to stick around, how you remember it, whether you remember it.
Merlin: And having just watched Coco yesterday, which is a very, very good movie.
Merlin: Now, of course, I'm thinking a lot about memory.
John: Is Coco the movie about an ape?
Merlin: I loved this movie so much.
Merlin: I don't want to say too much.
Merlin: I will just say it's a very good Pixar movie.
Merlin: It is based around the Day of the Dead.
Merlin: and a mexican family oh on day of the day and it's it's really really good and i cried and cried and cried oh yeah i love that gorilla yeah yeah coco coco learned like a hundred different sign languages different yeah we're talking about different coco different coco yeah
Merlin: Coco, remember Coco got the kitten and then the kitten died?
John: Sure, Coco's kitten.
John: Coco's kitten.
John: It was terrible watching Coco.
John: I mean, it was wonderful.
John: It was beautiful to watch Coco signing to the kitten.
Merlin: Meet Coco's new kittens.
Merlin: I've got to stop the show.
Merlin: Is Coco alive still?
Merlin: I think Coco...
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: Is it going to be a Roseanne situation?
Merlin: Did they replace the Cocoa?
Merlin: It looks to me, according to the Internet Science site, it looks like Cocoa's still alive.
John: You know, Cocoa, I mean, gorillas go a long time.
John: Cocoa's 46 years old, dude.
John: And she's still out there talking to kittens, and we don't have, like, a live feed of this.
John: Why are we not seeing this?
Merlin: I mean, God bless the hippo at the Cincinnati Zoo.
Merlin: It's a really cute hippo.
Merlin: God bless all my cute animal sites.
Merlin: Why are we just not getting 24-7 Cocoa?
Merlin: Well, yeah.
Merlin: Why doesn't Cocoa have a show?
John: Why don't we have a Cocoa in every community that people could just go interact with?
John: I think it's got to be pretty labor-intensive to teach a gorilla how to sign.
John: But I also think, why are we not doing that?
John: I mean, we're spending tons and tons of money building the F-35.
John: Sing it, sister.
John: It's a lot less useful than being able to sign with apes.
Merlin: Did I tell you I got scammed by Cheetah's owner?
Merlin: Say what?
Merlin: Okay, so you remember Tarzan movies.
Mm-hmm.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Okay, I'm pretty sure I got scammed.
Merlin: Because here's the thing.
Merlin: There's this guy, I gotta look this up.
Merlin: See, this is another thing I haven't even bothered to look up.
Merlin: But Cheetah, the original Cheetah from the Tarzan movies, was like basically in this, you know, not a hospice, but like a retirement, like a monkey retirement home.
Merlin: Chimps aren't monkeys.
Merlin: Anyway, you know what I'm saying here.
Merlin: Yeah, don't write us.
John: I know.
John: Don't at us.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: But basically, this guy took care of Cheetah, and the idea was, we're going to cover Cheetah's expenses.
Merlin: Oh, by the way, I didn't mention, Cheetah reportedly loves to paint.
Merlin: Cheetah the chimp.
Merlin: And Cheetah would make these paintings, and this fella, you could buy an original Cheetah canvas, and then that money was used to support Cheetah.
Merlin: I still have in my house one of these that I bought.
Merlin: And I remember from the moment I got it, I thought, huh...
Merlin: I'm not an artist or an art critic, but looking at this, this does not look like... Knowing a little bit that I know about people, and children in particular, and some animals, if you give an animal paint, what they make will not look anything like what you would expect.
Merlin: I'd imagine it's going to be, like, there's going to be big splotches in this area and nothing over here.
Merlin: This is a very uniform, like, strokes of purple and kind of complementary colors, and I was like, this...
Merlin: I don't know about this.
Merlin: I'm pretty sure it's a jam up.
John: I'm pretty sure the dude painted it.
John: I feel like if you went online and said cheetah painting.
John: See, now I got to look.
John: I bet you there's a video of cheetah actually painting paintings, and you can go and verify this.
John: Cheetah, no H, I believe.
John: Because I actually, there's a place where elephants are given paintbrushes and canvases.
John: Okay.
John: And and it's the similar type of thing.
John: They sell the paintings in order to raise money for the elephants.
John: Yeah.
John: And I went on work.
John: Well, yeah.
John: Right.
John: But also, you know, the idea being that an elephant has all this depth and sensitivity.
John: And if you get if you teach them to paint, they can.
John: I mean, it really helps them emotionally.
Merlin: Oh, that's OK.
Merlin: All right.
John: That's super interesting to me.
John: I have watched hours and hours of maybe not hours, but let's say I've watched a lot of video.
John: More than one.
John: of uh elephants painting okay and they seem to really really do it enthusiastically and and you do really feel like they get the idea they understand that they're making art and i i was on the very very edge of buying a giant elephant artwork several times and the thing was they they put them up
John: at each individual piece and I went through them many times like which one of these you know I would narrow it down to a couple and then I I never pulled the trigger because I honestly I felt like the elephant had yet to do its best work oh okay it's still a young artist I was waiting for them to mature I was waiting for their paintings to mature and so that I mean because they the painting spoke to me but there was just there was this feeling of like
John: nascent talent that was like, it just needed a little bit more time with paint, a little bit more time.
Merlin: But it wasn't like wackadoo enough to feel like naive art.
Merlin: Like your friend, your friend, the art collecting drummer.
Merlin: Now, does he have anything that's been painted by animals?
Merlin: No, he does not.
John: He likes folky, naive art?
John: Isn't that his thing?
John: No, not quite all the way to that.
John: But his art is mostly figurative.
John: It's not just like splattered paint on a canvas.
John: It's usually like a painting of a thing.
John: No, my friend, Ramey Egan, who lives with you in San Francisco, California.
John: He does?
John: He does.
John: He lives down behind your furnace.
John: Oh, hey, buddy.
John: No, he lives over by the park.
Merlin: That's not the guy I insulted when I was drunk that time.
John: No, no, no.
John: Totally.
John: I feel bad about that.
John: No, no, no.
John: No, you don't feel bad about that.
John: That was wonderful.
John: That was a total John Gerald moment.
John: Everyone around was like, oh.
John: Wow.
John: Wow.
Merlin: This is a really expensive bathroom.
John: One day I will be as absolutely unfiltered as Merlin Mann in this moment.
John: So you must really take advantage of your clients to be able to afford this house.
Merlin: I feel like, unless I'm forgetting for alcohol reasons, I don't think you've seen me not being quite myself.
Merlin: Maybe I was too much myself that night.
Merlin: There was a while there.
Merlin: I think there was also some herbs involved that night, and that might have been part of it.
Merlin: You were tying it on sometimes.
John: I was.
Merlin: We were there with your rock and roll buddy.
Merlin: This was after MC Hammer's birthday party, wasn't it?
Merlin: Yeah, same night.
Merlin: After you spit on the streetcar and we went to this guy's massive, massive house where he lived alone.
Merlin: And the streetcar... And the streetcar talked to you on Twitter.
John: Yeah, the streetcar Twitter account said, hey, don't spit on me.
Merlin: And I was like, oh, I'm so embarrassed.
Merlin: That night still has an impact.
Merlin: We watched Elf last night, and I officially, as of last night, I'm giving up on trying to help my daughter remember this.
Merlin: I was like, hey, hey, remember that time that guy came over in the windbreaker that morning?
Merlin: Remember that tall guy with the dark hair?
Merlin: He used to be married to that elf girl.
Merlin: And she's like, I don't understand any of the words that you just said.
Merlin: it's like no she's she's not usually blonde but they used to be married and she was a singer with em ward and she's like why are you still talking let's just watch the movie what who do you who are you impressing with this i don't care it's like me showing her the email the time i email bill hater like i'm supposed to really impress her or something yeah yep yep the kids don't care they don't know they don't care although he was nice he was a gentleman he came over the house i was like hey what's this guy doing in my house look at this guy
John: Yeah, he's a gentleman.
John: He's a gentleman.
John: I'm friends with Casper Babypants.
John: Yes.
John: And being friends with Casper Babypants within the kid universe.
John: Yeah.
John: He draws a lot of water in that seaside town.
John: He does.
John: And it is, I mean, all of the other things that I can talk about.
John: He used to listen to our program.
John: He used to listen to our show.
John: He still does.
John: He's a nice man.
John: He's a nice man.
John: I mean, he's got a lot going on.
John: Kids are tough, man.
Merlin: Kids are a handful.
John: They say never work with children or animals is what they say.
John: You know, he, Casper Babypants, he raised his son to our program and daughter.
Merlin: He wrote us a really, really, really nice email that kind of made my month.
Merlin: He's nice.
Merlin: I think about him all the time because... What about the guy I insulted?
Merlin: The guy where I told him his bathroom was too expensive for living alone.
Merlin: He didn't listen to our show, does he?
John: No.
John: Okay.
John: No, no, no, no, no.
John: He doesn't.
John: No.
John: But he's, you know, he's just sitting on a big, big, big pile of money.
John: He's like Absalom the Caterpillar.
Merlin: He's flying around the room over Sting.
Yeah.
John: No, he's not strictly hard committed.
John: But there are people periodically that will come through town or that I'll talk to who are like, I remember that night in San Francisco that we spent with Merlin Mann?
John: And I'll be like, sure.
John: And then they'll tell a story about how you got rowdy and took a subway sandwich and stuck it into the bellhops here or whatever.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: i ate two subway sandwiches over a sewer with paul and storm and i think that's you know that's been pretty well documented yeah i have a photo i have a photo of jonathan colton standing in a subway at like two in the morning looking with his eyes closed his eyes are always closed in photos have you ever noticed that
John: I think his eyes are always closed.
John: Do you think he's a Dracula?
John: He puts like a little hologram of an eyeball in front of his eyelid by using psionics.
Merlin: If there's anybody who could benefit from the AR economy that is coming down the road, it is your friend Jonathan Colton.
John: It's true, although I had an interesting conversation the other day.
John: This may be a thought technology that you do not want, or our listeners do not want.
John: But I had a conversation with a good friend who is a friend of yours and a friend of the program and a friend of our universe who said, I feel like the up-and-coming, the next-gen, the kids who are walking into the world right now, they do not have any...
John: loyalty to nerd and so this thing this thing that we have been living in the last 10 years is like so many other things in our lives a thing where as we're in it we're thinking this is the future forever um
John: Oh, sort of like the Obama years.
John: Like it felt like that was going to take.
John: Yeah.
John: Or like we've talked about before, all through the 90s, I was thinking that the that the information that I was that I was really honing the skills that I was honing.
John: To be able to tell a 1954 Fender Telecaster from a 1955 Telecaster became useless to me.
John: I mean, useless, less than useless.
Merlin: It went from being fairly useful as an obscure thing not many people knew to being like tears in rain.
John: Yeah, well, it was not just obscure.
John: I mean, it was a way you could make a living.
John: You could be a person who sat behind a desk and somebody came in.
Merlin: You'd be able to go like, oh, this is not an original trust rod or something.
John: Sure.
John: They'd say, here, I want to sell my 54 Telecaster.
John: And you're like, sorry, buddy, those aren't the real tuning pigs.
John: Now, who cares?
John: And so all of this investment that a lot of us have put into and all of the rewards we've reaped, but the investment into this idea of like nerd culture.
John: Yeah.
Yeah.
John: The supposition is that's all going away.
John: And when it goes away, it's not one of these things that's going to go away gently over eight years.
John: It's a thing that's going to go away pretty fast because it's going to become, and I think it maybe already is true, that it's already transitioning to nostalgia culture.
John: So well put.
John: I've been thinking about that so much.
John: Remember in 2007 or 2008 when nerd was new?
Merlin: Or remember 2011 when we first like when the first Iron Man movie came out and people were like, oh, my God, he's not he's fairly obscure as these kinds of things go.
Merlin: And it's Robert Downey Jr.
Merlin: And it's good.
Merlin: And like for the first time, like a superhero movie made since Superman could be good.
Merlin: Like what is happening?
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: And I think I think the idea now is that that young people coming up are like what they're I mean, nerd has become a meaningless phrase, right?
John: It's everybody is one.
Merlin: Yeah, you just walk by Hot Topic and it's just like, wow, that's stuff I could never have imagined.
Merlin: Just special edition Doctor Who Funko dolls and stuff like what is happening?
John: And it's so completely universal that the idea of, for instance, going on a nerd cruise or being a nerd artist or something, it just is not meaningful to somebody that's under the age of 25.
Merlin: So taken to it, it's extreme.
Merlin: That's somebody like a Jonathan Colton, probably.
Merlin: Maybe they might be giants.
Merlin: MC Frontlot, right?
Merlin: MC Frontlot in particular.
Merlin: Or maybe Weird Al.
Merlin: These people who were like...
Merlin: Part of their bona fides were like they are very talented at doing something that feels like a little bit of an outsider thing for weirdos.
John: But I feel like the talent will always win out, right?
John: They might be giants have never... I mean, they might be giants have definitely not...
John: They haven't like suffered during the nerd years, but also they are great, right?
John: So they figured out how to diversify their income stream, which I think is pretty amazing.
John: Yeah, they sell literally a ton of t-shirts, but like literally one ton of t-shirts.
John: But like that music will always appeal to people not necessarily through them reflecting on their own identity as a nerd Right and that's true of Jonathan Colton too But there are an awful awful awful lot of people out there whose whole business and their whole thing is just like You know the t-shirt actually says like nerd exclamation point
John: And that is going to be, that's all nostalgia now, even already.
Merlin: Yeah, you think about, look at how many movies slated for, and this is the result of many, many market conditions that are too complicated to get into here, but you look at the number of movies coming out in 2018 that are either sequels, part of a franchise, or repurposed from something like a, I mean, they've made movies from books for a very long time, but for so many things to be part of a franchise, it's
Merlin: And then to say that these 35 superhero movies, all the nerds have won.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And now we get $300,000 movies that are way too dark getting made.
Merlin: Yay!
Merlin: I can barely see anything.
Merlin: Nerds!
John: I'm a nerd!
John: The thing about the nerds winning is what we...
John: What we don't remember is all the times in the past where X has won, and then that's just mainstream culture now, and we never think about it again, right?
John: That's how the hegemony works.
John: It is.
John: And so as nerd passes, like, what's next?
John: I don't know.
John: When I was on this submarine the other day...
John: I was talking to the captain and he was saying, I can't use sports metaphors.
John: None of the crew, like I have 300 people on this boat and not a single one of them understands what I mean when I say, let's take this, let's gain some yards on this.
John: Let's take this project and go in for a touchdown.
John: I just get blank looks.
John: And he says, you know, and this guy has to say, let's collect the infinity gems.
John: He's yeah, he's 41 or whatever.
John: And he's a he's a commander of a submarine.
John: He's like, they're all gamers.
John: And I have no idea what what they are, what motivates them, because sports metaphors just go right over their head.
John: And that is a thing.
John: That's a language gulf that will that exists now.
John: And it's like not just a language gulf, but like a.
John: like a comprehension gulf.
John: I have never played a game like that.
John: There are lots and lots of people now who are making a pretty good living just being professional gamers where they just play games and other people watch them.
John: And I'll never be in that.
John: I'll never, I mean, you know, I've made it this far.
John: I can, I made it all the way to
John: doing stuff on apps and knowing enough to disable in-app purchases.
Merlin: But you're also at a point in life where you get to begin your sentences with dependent clauses like, the other day when I was on a submarine.
John: Well, that's true.
John: I'm not going to let that one just go by.
John: But as far as me being ground zero in popular culture, I totally missed the window.
John: Check out my new song.
John: It's about leveling up.
John: Nerd!
John: I was at a store yesterday and some music came on the internet overhead, internet overhead, which I guess used to be called music.
John: Oh, the internet.
Merlin: Yes, yes, yes.
John: Overhead internet.
Merlin: They call it speaker content now.
John: Speaker content.
John: And I was like, I've heard this song before.
John: I've heard it enough now.
John: And it feels like, is this a song that was really popular nine months ago and I missed it?
John: Or two years ago and I missed it?
John: Because this is a really good song.
John: How did I miss this going by?
John: So I Shazammed it.
John: Shazam's gotten very fast.
John: Shazam TM.
John: It's gotten really fast.
Merlin: And Sound Hound, they are just crazy fast now.
Merlin: I don't know what they've done to tweak that.
Merlin: But if it's a song that you're pretty sure it should know, it'll know it in seconds now.
John: And it's gotten really good at doing it in a noisy restaurant or in a room where there was a lot of ambient noise.
John: That's magic to me, John.
John: I don't want to let that go.
Merlin: That's magic to me that that works at all.
John: It is to me, too.
John: And that's an app where it's like, you know, I have all those apps where you point your phone up at the stars and it tells you about the constellations.
Merlin: I used it last night to find the supermoon.
John: And those are wonderful.
John: But in terms of being able to be in a store and go, what's this song?
John: And hold your phone up and it tells you.
John: I still am amazed by that.
John: It's almost always pink.
John: Do you remember that time when you and I were in your living room and you had me sing my own song into the phone?
John: Oh, I have a video of that.
John: There's a video of that.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: I thought you were from Romania, maybe?
John: Yeah.
John: It was just like, is that Tom Jones?
John: That's still up on the Flickr, I think.
John: Yeah.
John: But so I hold my phone up, and it tells me that this song is effectively brand new this fall.
John: It's number one on the charts, and it's by Portugal the Man, who are A, friends of mine, and B, from Alaska.
John: Portugal the Man.
John: And it's this song where it basically sounds like a CeeLo Green song.
John: It's such a hooky hook, and it doesn't feel like indie rock necessarily.
John: It feels like this other thing.
John: This kind of thing that could be like Andre 3000 song off of an outcast record.
John: The song is two minutes and 40 seconds long.
John: I mean, genius length where it comes to the end and you're like, wait, wait, is that all?
John: Play it again, play it again.
John: And so I texted a friend of mine like, oh, man.
John: Portugal the Man has got a legit hit.
John: Portugal the Man.
John: And the friend of mine was like, I'm playing in that band now.
John: I've been in Portugal the Man since 2015, and you didn't even know it.
John: And I was like, what?
John: And then he sent me a picture of himself on an airplane.
John: wearing a hat that said Alaska.
John: And he's like, we're on tour right now.
John: We're flying out to somewhere, Stan.
John: And those guys are from Alaska, right?
John: They're from Matanuska Valley.
Merlin: I just found out my niece is going out with a guy whose podcast is more popular than mine.
John: Oh, so infuriating.
Merlin: I mean, I wasn't familiar with it, but I realize now this guy whose name I keep seeing turning up in various places.
Merlin: Can you imagine how that feels to me?
Merlin: Is it Travis McElroy?
Merlin: I couldn't say.
John: But anyway, Portugal the Man, this tune that they're doing, they're younger than me.
John: Portugal the Man.
John: Portugal the Man is the name of the band?
John: That's the name of the band.
John: And they did that thing with the...
John: Where they did, like, bad punctuation.
John: It's Portugal, period, the, period, man.
John: What?
John: Portugal, the, period, man.
John: They put, like, extra punctuation in there that just makes you want to die.
John: You know, Godspeed, you black emperor gets a pass on that, but everybody else needs to quit doing that.
John: Just stop.
John: Well, it's too late.
John: They've been doing it for, like, nine years.
John: So, Portugal.
John: Anyway, they are Portugal the man.
John: They're not, like, young.
John: They've been a band for 10 years, but they're still in their, I think, early 30s.
John: And this tune and the whole vibe of it.
John: Portugal the man.
John: Like, he's wearing a mustache, and it's, like, post-ironic mustache into, like, normcore mustache.
John: And the whole thing just feels, like, musically, I'm super into it.
John: But culturally...
John: It's just a little bit out of my reach.
John: Like, I can't quite... Even though they're only... They're 35.
John: They're not even young people.
Merlin: Facial hair music has changed a lot in your 40s.
Merlin: I mean, you used to be the only people who looked like you were what?
Merlin: Who's that band I like?
Merlin: Granddaddy.
Merlin: Like, you meet a granddaddy.
Merlin: A granddaddy would look like you.
Merlin: You get an iron and wine that looks like you.
Merlin: Maybe a Dave Bazon.
Merlin: But, like, you did not see that many bearded people.
Merlin: And now it's just all beards like...
John: Oh, hey, speaking of which, did you know that Pedro the Lion's getting back together?
John: I did.
John: I heard that.
John: I follow him on Twitter.
John: He's a good man.
John: Yeah, he's good.
John: And it's going to be the next few years all about Pedro the Lion.
John: All the way to Grandma's house.
John: Because, you know, they're young enough that they could get into this portion of the man.
John: I wouldn't call Dave young.
John: Well, he's younger than me.
John: Is he?
John: He's an old soul.
John: That's true.
John: That's true.
John: A lot of people get old young.
Merlin: Portugal, the man.
Merlin: Portugal, period.
Merlin: The man, no period.
Merlin: Portugal, period.
Merlin: The man, no period.
Merlin: No period, right.
Merlin: And then Godspeed you, Black Emperor.
Merlin: I believe it is Godspeed you, exclamation point, Black Emperor.
Merlin: I believe that's right.
Merlin: I'll have to look it up.
John: Well, there's ellipses and you'll know us by the trail of dead.
Merlin: That's true.
Merlin: We will.
John: That's right.
Merlin: There's that Friday Night Lights band that's like the MTV version of Godspeed You Black Emperor.
Merlin: What are they called?
Merlin: What's that band called?
Merlin: Friday Night Lights.
Merlin: Friday Night Lights.
Merlin: Oh, come on.
Merlin: It's that one band.
Merlin: That's a show about a football, right?
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: True Eyes, Big Hearts.
Merlin: We're not going to lose.
Merlin: True Eyes, Big Hearts.
John: You know, there was a Long Witcher song used on Friday Night Lights.
Merlin: Explosions in the Sky.
John: Oh, Explosions in the Sky.
John: Do they have weird punctuation?
Merlin: No, I like their music fine, but they remind me of like a little bit of like, they are the cold play to Godspeed you, Black Emperor's Radiohead.
John: Oh, interesting.
John: Interesting.
John: I have not spent enough time in the canon of all of that.
John: Oh, boy.
John: Isn't that all like mogwai derived?
John: No.
John: Oh, okay.
John: All right.
John: Sorry.
John: Sorry.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: See, I feel like... Didn't mean to step on your shoelaces.
John: No.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: It just concerns me because there was a point probably in the year that it didn't exist.
Merlin: There's this point... 1997.
Merlin: 1997.
Merlin: Some point in the mid to late 90s, it suddenly became clear that I was supposed to really like...
Merlin: a band called tortoise i was supposed to really like they all had names that sound like like mexican cactus cactuses or something like there's all these bands and i would just be like i don't get i i'm this feels it feels like a jam up i get it it's slow and there's a vibraphone what is happening now godspeech black emperor you could call them a post-rock band you could but like they're doing a whole different thing and what is that thing
John: I mean, I have their songs on my phone, but I've never understood what post-rock is.
Merlin: I don't either.
Merlin: I don't either.
Merlin: It all involves that one guy.
Merlin: What's his name?
Merlin: John McEnroe?
Merlin: There's that one guy that's in all those bands.
Merlin: I think his name's John McEnroe.
Merlin: John McEnroe was one of the greatest.
Merlin: One of the greatest vibraphonists of the year that didn't exist.
Merlin: Wasn't he married to Brooke Shields?
Merlin: He was.
Merlin: No, he's married to... You're thinking of Paper Chase?
Merlin: What's the movie with Ryan O'Neal?
John: John Housman?
John: Look to your left.
John: Look to your right.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: All I got is this $20 bill.
Merlin: Paper Moon.
Merlin: He was married to... Paper Moon.
John: He was married to... Is Paper Moon one of those long pillows with an anime character on it that you hug?
Merlin: That Neil Young album that's only available streaming on that orange box.
Merlin: Down on Paper Moon.
Merlin: No, Tatum O'Neill.
Merlin: Tatum O'Neill was married to the guy from Tortoise, I'm pretty sure.
John: Right, right, right.
John: What are those pillows that are waifus?
John: Uh-huh.
Merlin: Oh, is this where you get like a spiky blue-haired girl you sleep with pillow?
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: Like a pillow.
John: Easy text.
John: Hey, good night, everybody.
Merlin: Happy holidays.
Merlin: Oh, shit.
Merlin: Oh, shit.
Merlin: Should I bleep it?
Merlin: What happened?
Merlin: Oh, yeah, you probably should.
Merlin: Oh, God.