Ep. 279: "Mr. Hot Tub"
John: Hi, Merlin.
John: How's it going?
John: Good.
John: Long time no see.
John: Hasn't been that long.
John: We just talked last week, right?
John: That's right.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: There's no veil to tear away.
Merlin: No, we've been talking consistently to each other for the last month.
Merlin: We talked about politics last week.
Oh.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: As you remember when we talked last week.
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: We talked about politics.
John: That was a real hit show.
John: It was a barn burner.
Merlin: Yeah, it was.
Merlin: Got a lot of hearts and faves for that one.
John: Yeah.
John: Collecting hearts.
John: Collecting faves.
John: Collecting them in my little Tupperware.
John: It's not a little Tupperware.
John: It's a big, big, big, one of those big Tupperware.
John: Sounds like the name of a SoundCloud rapper.
John: A little Tupperware.
John: Oh, a little Tupperware.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah, I got a big bucket of those.
John: Hearts and faves I've been collecting since 2011.
Merlin: Hearts and minds, hearts and faves.
Merlin: Well, it's nice to talk to you.
Merlin: You used to get a lot of faves.
Merlin: Do you remember that?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Got a lot of gold star faves.
Merlin: Yeah, I don't use the internet as much as I used to.
Merlin: Whew!
Merlin: You said a mouthful.
Merlin: You know, I use it.
Merlin: I use it differently.
Merlin: The pipes and the wires, you know, I rerouted them a little bit.
Merlin: Did a little bit of home improvement on my internet.
John: You know, it was my uncle's law partner that said the internet was a series of tubes.
John: I've told you.
John: Right, that's Uncle Ted.
John: Uncle Ted, yeah.
Merlin: You don't put it on the back of a truck.
Merlin: That's what he said, right?
Merlin: That's right.
John: He added some nuance to it.
John: I talked about him a lot in the last week or so because I visited my uncle.
John: who is 91 now, and he's trying to write his autobiography.
John: And he's written quite a bit of it, but he was telling a lot of stories about the good old days while we were sitting around, sitting around the couch, and heard a lot of great Ted Stevens stories.
Merlin: Any you can share?
Merlin: Because Ted Stevens is in the popular imagination.
Merlin: I think if you know the name Ted Stevens, you may know that he is the series of tubes back of a truck guy.
Merlin: You may know, wasn't he famous for the quote-unquote bridge to nowhere?
Merlin: Wasn't that his boondoggle?
John: No, that was a different Alaskan... See, I already don't know who I'm talking about.
John: Yeah, that was Wally Hickel, the former governor and Nixon's secretary of the interior.
John: But Uncle Ted was a fan of political pork, was he not?
John: Well, Ted... Oh, Merlin, you said... Let me get you started, please, permit me.
John: You said it, political pork.
John: Ted was the chairman of the Armed Forces Appropriations Committee.
Merlin: They get to decide where, what, ad hoc defense money goes?
Merlin: No, that's where all the defense money goes.
Merlin: All the defense money.
John: All the great defense money.
John: All the great defense money.
John: The Appropriations Committee is very powerful, and Ted was the...
Merlin: And you guys are right there by the Soviet Union.
Merlin: You can see it right out your window.
John: That's right.
John: And, you know, my dad and my uncle are peaceniks, or at least anti-war.
John: They're doves.
John: That's what they would have been called, doves.
John: Doves.
John: They prefer peace.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: They prefer peace.
John: And they would say, you know, Ted, what are you doing here, man, with these guns?
John: And Ted would say, you know, 48 out of 50 states
John: The military is their number one employer.
John: That should get its own logical fallacy.
John: That's a really good logical fallacy.
John: It is.
John: It's like my dad used to do when I started to try and take his car away because he was too old to drive, and he would say, I got appointments.
John: Got to get the car fixed.
John: Got to go see the car mechanic.
John: Yeah, you know, white people run everything, so we should let white people run everything.
Yeah.
John: So, Ted, Ted, yeah, Ted, you know, he was appointed to the Senate the first time.
John: He never he didn't even he was his like he didn't win election to that office initially.
John: OK, I'm looking him up.
John: Here I go.
John: And that was that's like kind of extraordinary.
John: Just in the sense that he became one of the longest senators, longest-serving senators.
Merlin: He was president pro tem for four years.
Merlin: He was on the Internet Science site.
Merlin: He was the longest-serving Republican senator in history at the time he left office.
Merlin: Now, of course, that's Orrin Hatch.
John: Yeah, Orrin Hatch now has made it over the wire.
Merlin: I mean, they're going to have to pry the Senate from his one good hand.
Merlin: a lot of layers yeah yeah memory serves when orrin hatch came in part of his whole thing was uh that like there's uh he was off of term limits orrin hatch didn't like the idea that these guys would get in there and then never leave it was real frustrating to him and that was i think in 1977
Merlin: Is that right?
Merlin: Was it 1977 when he came in?
Merlin: Orrin Hatch?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Boy, I have no idea.
Merlin: I don't follow the career of Orrin Hatch.
Merlin: You don't really read the traits.
Merlin: I assumed office January 3, 1977.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Yeah, and Ted was already there, right?
John: He was there.
John: Ted, this is what's crazy.
John: He went into the Senate right about the time I was born.
John: So...
John: I mean, there was like three months of my entire life that Ted Stevens wasn't in the U.S.
Merlin: Senate.
Merlin: Also, I want to just reflect the fact that I just totally confused Orrin Hatch and Bob Dole.
Merlin: Thank you very much.
Merlin: I'll fix it in the edit.
Merlin: Cut that part out.
Merlin: God damn it.
Merlin: That would have been so good.
Merlin: 1976, his first run for office, elected to the Senate, defeating Frank Moss, the three-term incumbent.
Merlin: Among other issues, Hatch criticized Moss's 18-year tenure in the Senate, saying, what do you call a senator who served in office for 18 years?
Merlin: You call him home.
Merlin: He ran on the promise of term, right?
Merlin: He got in there.
Merlin: He ran on the promise of term limits.
Merlin: That was one of his big ones.
Merlin: We should have do, right?
Merlin: Yeah, should have do.
Merlin: Oh, man.
Merlin: Bob Dole had been in there in a while.
Merlin: It's early.
Merlin: It's really early.
Merlin: So I took you off your game.
Merlin: So Uncle Ted comes in.
John: Oh, and it was a weird thing because he came in because our senator at the time, a guy named Bob Bartlett, who was a Democrat,
John: Bob Bartlett died, and it was not yet the rule...
John: That if a senator died in office and you were going to appoint a replacement, that you appointed a replacement from the same party.
John: So the new governor was a Republican and he just appointed a Republican.
Merlin: Oh, no kidding.
John: Instead of replacing Bob Bartlett with the Democrat.
John: Bob Bartlett born in Seattle.
John: Yeah.
John: And, you know, the one of our competing high schools in Anchorage, I went to East High School.
John: One of our competing high schools was called Bartlett High School after after Bob Bartlett.
John: All the history is connected.
John: It's all it's all connected.
John: It's all, you know, Alaska is very small, very small political politically.
John: Alaska, very small.
Hmm.
Merlin: He died the year you were born, I believe.
Merlin: December 11, 1968.
Merlin: He had some heart surgery.
John: And that's why Ted Stevens was appointed.
John: By the Republican governor.
John: By the Republican governor.
John: And immediately.
John: Immediately appointed.
John: That was a big year, 1968.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: Riots in Paris.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: White album.
John: This is the 50th anniversary of 1968.
John: I know.
John: Isn't that strange?
John: That's one of those years that must have felt like five years.
John: It still feels like... I don't know we've had a bigger year since.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: We talk about this every goddamn week, but the fractiousness of 1968 and the stuff that happened that...
Merlin: I mean, 63, obviously, with Kennedy being assassinated, that was a real shocker for the country.
Merlin: It just felt like... Well, I mean, because you think about it, who was the previous one?
Merlin: It was not Cleveland.
Merlin: McKinley?
Merlin: Like, the last presidential assassination had been like this from another era, and you just couldn't even imagine this seemingly healthy young man, you know, just being cut down.
Merlin: Emphasis on seemingly.
Merlin: Seemingly.
Merlin: He had a lot of pills stashed, a lot of pills and...
John: and various things i but you know but the 68 so much happened even if you just take the assassinations and there's so much more than the assassinations but like you say internationally the stuff was stuff going on internationally was so bananas yeah i just i feel like that was back when years would be like a year right like time magazine would do like a like the year in review and it really felt like
John: Wow, we really put one away this year.
John: We put one in the history books.
John: They're going to remember 1982.
John: You know, that was a heck of a year.
Merlin: 1997 is going to make 1982 look like 1968.
Merlin: Hot Wheels were introduced January 4th, 1968.
Merlin: Hot Wheels.
Merlin: Sesame Street.
Merlin: Sesame Street.
Merlin: Don't let me take you off your game.
Merlin: I'm just reading the internet, but keep going.
John: No, no, no.
John: This is my game.
John: I was realizing, well, I just a second ago realized that it's very early.
Merlin: It's so early.
Merlin: I've been up in Hale and Hardy since like 6.30, and by 10 a.m., I'm just so tired.
Merlin: It's like my second morning.
John: I got a good night to sleep.
John: No, I don't.
John: I have introduced my daughter to the concept of second breakfast, and I am so sorry I did.
John: Oh, no, second breakfast is now a thing?
John: Well, because I started reading her The Hobbit.
John: Oh, terrific.
John: Well, except she is really not into it.
John: She's like, ah, boring.
John: Yeah.
John: But then we got to very early on, you know, Bilbo starts having a second breakfast, and her ears really perked up.
John: Second breakfast.
John: Pretty soon she's going to want to smoke a pipe.
John: Second breakfast.
Merlin: so we do have i do have to hear about it now oh i was i was i was told by her that i can no longer tease her and i said i've had that i've had i've had that conversation yeah and i was like you can't you can't take something out of canon if you said something cute in a funny voice you can't you can't i can't sweep it's too boring like that's gonna be on you forever kid you shouldn't have said that when you were two if you didn't want to be cute yeah that's right i can't sweep it's too boring
John: And I said, well, what is the number one way that I tease you that you want me to stop?
John: And she said, stop saying Bastic of Panados.
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Merlin: is done entirely using squarespace they have the files there they got the show notes they got the images it's all there and john and i just love this site but you can do whatever you need to with it you can create a beautiful website for whatever your next big idea is you can make your new idea into a cool website you can showcase your work you can create a blog or publish other kinds of text content you can sell products and services of all kinds right on your very own squarespace site you can promote your physical or online business
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Merlin: Forget about it.
John: Not going to happen.
John: So I was like, all right, you know what?
John: I'll stop saying Bastic of Paneros.
John: If this is really bothering you, this teasing of what I say, because it's a game, right?
John: She says...
John: You know, what are we doing this afternoon?
John: I'm like, well, I don't know.
John: We could go to the movies or we could eat a basket of potatoes.
John: And she's just covered in shame.
John: Yeah.
John: And the thing is, if her guard is down, but she started to she got started to get the game and she would preempt me.
John: I'd go, well, we could go to the dinner or and she'd go get a basket of potatoes.
John: And then I was busted.
John: Dad.
John: Lame.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, so, so I said, I'm going to stop teasing you.
John: I'm going to, I'm going to take that out of the, out of the, the lexicon.
John: We're not, you're not ever going to hear it again.
John: And then later on that afternoon, I said, well, what should we do this afternoon?
John: And she was like, why don't we get a basket of potatoes?
John: And I was like, Hey, if I can't tease you, you can't tease me.
John: It's like, it's like, it's like her N word.
John: Well, and so now she really has to, she's really chewing on it.
John: because she didn't want to be teased but what that meant was she didn't want to be she didn't want to lose
John: She didn't want to be the one that got the Bastic and Panettos delivered upon her.
Merlin: Now she's like that alt-right guy who dresses up in diapers and hangs out in safe spaces to pwn the libs.
Merlin: I'm not familiar with him.
Merlin: Although this morning... Yeah, he's a grown man.
Merlin: He's been known to dress up in diapers with a pacifier.
Merlin: And he goes to college campuses and makes fun of safe spaces when he wears a diaper.
Merlin: Oh, that'll show that.
Merlin: Same thing, right?
Merlin: Bastic and Panettos, same situation.
Merlin: It's like she's pwning herself as a self-pwn.
John: I opened my email this morning because I made the... A couple of days ago, I was like, you know, all right, I'm going to go and unsubscribe from all these things.
John: And let's see which ones I really successfully unsubscribe from and which ones it's just like... Hitting the elevator up button.
John: It's not really attached to anything.
John: Or dropping a bit of oil onto the overhead projector at a dead show.
John: Where it just is like blowing and now all of a sudden I get 400 emails because I've identified myself as a living person But I got an email from the NRA Which I had never had one directly from them.
John: Are you are you a member?
Merlin: no most of my family was but are not well my my late father was uh he basically his his occupation his career was i mean he'd been an eagle scout he was he's from that age where like normal guys had guns and he taught gun safety classes and he was in the nra and he was in ducks unlimited he's like hey we can't kill all the ducks or we won't get to shoot ducks anymore like an early kind of like right-wing conservative movement
Merlin: Like conservation movement.
Merlin: Like he was, he was like a good, he was a good gun guy.
Merlin: He taught, like I say, he taught gun safety classes and except for Korea, never shot a guy.
John: Except for Korea, he never shot a guy.
Merlin: Yeah, he had a bad time in Korea.
Merlin: It was not a good police action.
Merlin: Oh, that's too bad.
John: Yeah, it was really bad.
John: He had the PTSD.
Merlin: He had the PTSD.
Merlin: They didn't call it that then.
Merlin: They just thought he was a guy who didn't like fireworks.
Merlin: Was he a Marine or an Army?
Merlin: He was very briefly a PFC until he got busted to basic private because he refused to paint a barracks right before he knew they were bugging out.
Merlin: oh yeah so they busted him there's just two ways and one of them's the army way and the other way is that you get less money each week yeah that's a that's a tough one uh to get uh to get but busted down he's in he was in frontline battles he had frozen feet and stuff it was a terrible situation no it was awful it was awful it was awful so he didn't want to watch mash let's see he
Merlin: I don't know if he watched.
Merlin: MASH was on for a couple years before he died.
Merlin: I don't remember that being a show we watched.
Merlin: Everybody liked MASH.
Merlin: You know, Winchester just died.
Merlin: Emerson Winchester III?
Merlin: Yeah, he passed a couple, three days ago.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: And my daughter knows him through his voice work.
Merlin: He's been the voice in many things.
Merlin: He's a voice in a Miyazaki movie, Spirited Away.
Merlin: He is a voice in the wonderful and underrated Lilo and Stitch.
Merlin: And he's in a program, a program my daughter likes called The Regular Show.
John: He also has a role on there.
John: No kidding.
John: I'm always amazed by people that recognize other people's voices in voiceover work.
John: I mean, I can pick out Morgan Freeman.
Merlin: It's a sport in our house.
Merlin: It's like who can name that person first.
Merlin: I see.
Merlin: I took you off the Panatos.
John: Oh, no.
John: I mean, there was never a time where I didn't feel like the...
John: National Rifle Association was not an organization that did not represent me.
John: Wait, there's a lot of nots in that.
Merlin: There were a lot of nots, right?
Merlin: There was never a time...
Merlin: who believe in the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.
John: I don't think they even pretend to be doing that anymore.
Merlin: They are an industry-funded lobbying group whose primary goal is to sell more guns and secondary goal is to not allow anything to happen that would prevent selling more guns.
Merlin: Not to be cynical, but I think that's pretty much what they are at this point.
John: The transformation of the NRA from a sportsman's organization to whatever it is now has been happening.
John: It's a lobbying group.
John: Well, but, you know, a sportsman's lobbying group to whatever it is now.
John: Oh, like an industry-centric, yeah.
John: Well, or no, it's not even... I don't think it's that.
John: It's a propaganda organization now.
John: It doesn't have anything to... I mean... But that transformation has been happening throughout the course of my life.
John: Like, my grandfather was, even by 1950s standards, a gun nut.
John: um, like a nut.
John: I probably described before that in the house, the house my mom grew up in, she said that there were just rifles leaning in, in all the corners of all the rooms, like in the living room, all four corners just had like rifles leaning in them.
John: And so when she was home alone at night and it's a farmhouse, it's out, uh,
John: you know a mile from the nearest neighbor and she'd be home alone studying at night and i guess they didn't have curtains because they couldn't i don't know why because back then why would you have curtains i'm not sure i don't think they were too poor for curtains although they were right i got nothing to hide why do i need curtains right on the border of being too poor for curtains like oh we could use that fabric as napkins
John: Um, but like guns in the corner.
John: And so she would move her, she would move her little study chair to the center of the room because she didn't want, she was obviously like, she's, you know, young girl.
John: She was afraid that someone was looking at her in the, in the dark.
John: Somebody was out in the dark looking in, but she also felt like there are guns in all the corners.
John: Like I'm fine.
John: Ultimately.
John: Like, I can get to a gun within seconds.
John: But a strange environment to grow up in.
John: To me, yeah.
John: It felt natural to her.
John: Well, I'm not sure it did.
John: I mean, she still...
Merlin: I think of those as deadly people weapons, and I think one cognitive disconnect in our country right now is that there are people who think of guns primarily as people killing machines, and other people who think of it no differently than they would think of a screwdriver or a hammer.
Merlin: It's something that's part of a certain rural lifestyle that includes hunting and the need for protection because there's no one to help you there.
John: Well, I mean, hunting, sure.
John: But there are a lot of people in America that look at a rifle, I think, as a tennis racket.
John: It's something that you go and you go to the range or you go somewhere and plink at cans or shoot at targets.
John: I went to a target shooting match the other day.
John: A friend of mine from Portland is a competitive shooter.
John: And his team...
John: was playing the local Seattle team, and he and his pal, a fellow shooter, came up, and I went to the range with them, and they competed against the locals.
John: And, you know, the Portland team, maybe predictably, were all in their 40s.
Merlin: Quickly reduced to pointless infighting?
John: No, but they all had kind of long hair and beards,
John: And the Seattle team were all 70.
John: Oh, how interesting.
John: And had suspenders.
John: I love that there's still regionality in anything.
John: I love that.
John: They had suspenders on their jeans.
John: And, you know, like the Seattle team was definitely like old gun people.
John: And the Portland team were like, we're the young, you know, these are very technical instruments, these pistols.
John: And, you know, that's a whole...
John: I mean, shit, they're still shooting in the Olympics.
Mm-hmm.
John: You get to biathlon.
Merlin: That's a crazy event.
Merlin: Did you watch the women's biathlon this year?
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: But I just remember when I first became aware of it as a teen, I was like, let me get this straight.
Merlin: You ski really hard, you get out of breath.
Merlin: They always said that's the hard part, is you're kind of out of breath.
Merlin: And then you need to pull out a rifle and shoot very accurately at a distance.
John: I watched the women's biathlon, and it was thrilling.
John: Oh, cool.
John: Some thrilling, thrilling Olympic drama.
John: But yeah, that tennis racket thing...
John: The idea of it just being a thing that you go, like, it's just a sport.
John: It's just a sport to go try and put a little piece of metal into the center of a piece of paper that's a long way away.
John: But my grandfather was somebody that, according to my mom, he put all of his spare money...
John: In guns.
Merlin: I mean, that's right.
John: What are you going to do?
John: Send your daughter to college?
John: So by the time he died, his gun collection was worth a small fortune because he had all these magic guns.
John: Wow.
John: Yeah.
John: Like he had bought all these beautiful weapons and and he had a score upon score of them.
John: And I guess my mother's brother took, who also was gunny.
John: He wasn't like super gun nut, but he was gunnish at least.
John: Gun adjacent.
John: But he took it all and sold it.
John: Sold it all.
John: as a major component of his quote-unquote estate, which I think was largely made of guns.
John: He was living at the time in a house made of guns.
John: The walls all fell down.
John: Eating off rifles.
John: Yeah, all that was left were the guns, but it ended up being a shelter, a form of shelter.
John: And I'm actually, even now, many, many years later, decades later, I'm a little...
John: I feel a little bit like a little tiny piece of me.
John: is missing in that I do not have a single one of my grandfather's, my crazy grandfather's old guns.
Merlin: I can totally understand that.
Merlin: Yeah, some just like some bird rifle or something, you know, there's a long running beef in my near family where basically at some point after my dad died, an acquaintance of our family was like basically taking care of my dad's collection of rifles and pistols.
Merlin: And, um, my mom had asked for it back, never got it back.
Merlin: And to this day, she's still steamed about it.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I mean, that's, that's how it was at the time.
Merlin: Like that's very associated.
Merlin: That would be like keeping his watch in his wallet or something.
Merlin: Keeping his watch in his wallet.
Merlin: Exactly.
John: My brother David got my dad's Navy flight jacket a long time before I came along.
John: Right.
John: He grabbed that out of the closet.
John: Cause that's a weird thing.
John: Uh,
John: In 1968, let's locate this story in 1968, when my brother David would have been 18.
John: My dad already is looking at his Navy flight jacket as some moth-eaten old...
John: Thing that's hanging around the back of his closet.
John: Talking about 23 years there.
John: Yeah, and when his teenage kid's like, hey, let me wear your jacket, man.
John: My dad's like, sure, whatever, you know, get it out of here.
John: Not even thinking that he would ever have another son who would 20 years later.
John: Who has kids that late in life?
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: Who would ever want that jacket later, you know?
John: Want it more.
John: Want it more, take better care of it.
John: So my brother, you know, my brother took it and I'm sure like.
John: Put out his joints on it for however long, and then it just was gone.
John: Just went into the shit pile like all the other jackets that hippies didn't appreciate.
John: But I did get my dad's watch in his wallet.
Mm-hmm.
John: I feel a little bit bad about it because I was over at his old folks home one day.
John: I was in the bathroom looking for a Q-tip and I opened up some drawer and his watch was in there.
John: Did I ever tell you this?
John: No.
John: And I said, dad, what's your watch doing in this, in the bathroom?
John: And he said, Oh, I, you know, put it in there.
John: So the cleaning lady won't find it.
John: And I said, the cleaning lady is, first of all, that's not the problem.
John: But second of all,
John: The bathroom isn't like the place.
John: He was like, well, I just don't know.
John: And I said, I'll tell you what, I'll, I'll take it and keep it for you.
John: I'll protect it for you.
John: And he said, you're stealing my watch.
John: You're no better than the cleaning lady.
John: And I said, I'm not stealing your watch.
John: Like you're not wearing it anymore.
John: What do you, what do you think is going to happen to this watch?
John: This watch, this, this is a, this is a topic of watch advertising.
John: You hand your watch down.
John: That's what happens.
John: Old men hand their watches down to their young sons.
John: He was like, bullshit.
Merlin: Because the struggle at that point is very much about maintaining agency and relevance and importance and taking away the greatest generation's watch as a way of saying, oh, you don't need to know what time it is anymore.
John: Well, right.
John: But what I was afraid of, and it's natural, that he was going to hide it by tucking it in the couch.
John: Right.
John: You know, tucking it in his rented couch.
John: And the biggest mistake I feel like I made...
John: we were cleaning out his house and he had some gateway computer that he used to peck out emails to me on, you know, where it was just like, he would, after a while, just stop using punctuation.
John: I mean, it was, you know, he was just like, Hey, what are you doing?
John: You know, email.
John: And when I, um, when I was cleaning out his place, I was just like,
John: He had mostly particle board furniture by then.
John: And I just put that gateway computer in a box and took it to the thrift store.
John: And it never occurred to me.
John: And honestly, the chances of this are about 6%.
John: But there's a 6% chance that he had been sitting at that computer pecking out some autobiography.
John: Right.
John: And the thing is, I know that it's 6% rather even than 16% because he never did anything like that.
John: in his whole life.
John: He never sat down.
John: It may not be how he would think about using the tool even.
John: I'm 100% sure.
John: Well, I'm 94% sure that he didn't think of it that way.
John: But he was a lawyer.
John: He was no stranger to filling up legal pads.
John: But he never once that I ever saw
John: And I have every legal pad he ever touched because I threw away his computer, but I didn't throw away all these legal pads.
John: But he never was like, you know, I was thinking.
John: Or, you know, he never wrote a single page of, like, reflections on the way life used to be.
John: Like, he never did.
John: So...
John: So I don't think that his computer was full of his autobiographical notes.
John: But that 6% chance that it was.
John: Yeah, it eats at you.
John: Just a little.
John: I mean, there's so many things eating at me.
John: I feel like I'm in the Amazon and I'm being pecked at from all sides.
John: Although apparently that's not how piranha work.
John: Apparently there was a team, right?
John: Well, but if you stepped into the, you could walk across the Amazon and the piranha would not skeletonize.
John: That's so good to know.
John: Yeah.
John: I think that's, I think I learned that on one of those.
John: That's one last thing to worry about.
Merlin: And I could, I could use that right now.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You don't have a real piranha problem there in the sunset, though.
Merlin: See, we're back to gorilla suits and quicksand.
Merlin: Piranha's another one of those things that we were raised to believe was something that was a genuine issue of concern.
Merlin: Oh, for sure.
Merlin: I mean, you can't tell these millenniums, but there was a time when we could all be pretty sure that somebody you knew would die in quicksand.
Merlin: It was everywhere.
John: Absolutely.
Merlin: Gorilla suits, everywhere.
Merlin: So many gorilla suits.
Merlin: And now you just don't hear about it.
Merlin: And piranhas just don't come up anymore.
Merlin: You don't hear about them the way you did.
John: It's absolutely true.
John: They were a staple.
Merlin: Well, killer bees.
Merlin: Killer bees.
Merlin: Well, Africanized bees.
Merlin: One week in 1968, March 31st.
Merlin: Lyndon Johnson announces he will not seek re-election.
Merlin: Now, you hear that today and you go, oh, no big deal.
Merlin: It was a huge deal.
Merlin: It was a huge, shocking deal when he said he would not seek it, he would not accept it.
John: You still think about another president who said, nah.
John: Nah, not for me.
Merlin: April 2nd.
Merlin: April 2nd, 2001 comes out.
Merlin: April 3rd, Planet of the Apes comes out.
Merlin: April 4th, Martin Luther King is assassinated.
Merlin: Also April 4th, Apollo 6 is launched.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: April 6th, a shootout between Black Panthers and Oakland police resulted in several arrests and deaths, including 16-year-old Panther Bobby Hutton.
John: That was one week.
Mm-hmm.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: Yes, indeed-ly-do.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: And that was all immediately before I was born.
John: Now, you were born by then.
John: Yeah, I was getting born.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: You were alive, and this is, you know, this is... You would think that there would be a generation divider between if you were born...
John: before martin luther king was killed or after but sesame street might be a bigger deal sesame street it feels like but but don't you feel like there's a generation gap that starts with people where do you think you start to feel like people are younger than you what what age when they were born
Merlin: I have a totally crazy one, but it's unavoidable.
Merlin: This is really dumb and so trivial.
Merlin: But like a lot of my friends who are just slightly younger than me or feel just slightly younger than me.
Merlin: I had a couple of things for better or for worse.
Merlin: Like I was born late in 1966 and I started school late.
Merlin: So I was one of the older kids in my class.
Merlin: But with that said, friends of mine who just feel just slightly younger than me are real into like shitty 80s robot cartoons.
Merlin: Where I was already on to like, you know, Doctor Who or whatever.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: So they have all this affection for like, and then just slightly younger than that, you're already getting into Pokemon.
Merlin: I'm like, Pokemon?
Merlin: Like I was fucking like 25 when that came out, you know?
Merlin: So where is that line?
Merlin: I mean, do you think of me as younger than you?
John: I used to, but now I do not.
John: Well, let's toss out a few.
John: Because in the indie rock days, when you and I first met, we were already both in our 30s.
Merlin: Yeah, that's true.
John: Somebody asked me the other day about my relationship with you.
John: Like, well, you know, did you and Merlin like always...
John: Did you used to text each other?
John: And I was like, what?
John: No, not really.
John: Text on what?
John: We didn't.
John: Yeah, we text each other.
John: You didn't have a computer.
John: No.
John: Don't you understand the whole concept of this podcast is that we used to talk on the phone and neither of us wanted to talk on the phone.
John: But that was the only way you could communicate with your friends.
Merlin: You're one of the few people I talked to on the phone.
Merlin: Yeah, we watched Kitchen Nightmares the other day where the guy had a flip phone, and my daughter was like, what is he doing with that phone?
Merlin: I was like, yeah, well, when this show came out, that's the phone that most people had.
John: No, yesterday, I was at a restaurant in Canada, and there was a phone, like a desk phone, but it was even older than I would have ever seen.
John: It was like a Bakelite phone.
John: Like a ding-a-ling-a-ling phone.
John: Like a ding-a-ling phone.
John: And my daughter picked it up, and it was a dial phone.
John: a rotary phone and i said do you know how those work and she said yes and she put her she put her finger in it and she said you put your finger in here and you move it to the number that you want to call so i want to call for instance i want to call the letter c and she moved it up to the letter c and then went and she was like
John: Ta-da!
John: And I said, well, yeah.
Merlin: That's not too far off.
Merlin: You're close.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: We found, mixed in with all of our many stickers books, was a copy of a zine that I used to like, which is a zine about Big Star called Back of a Car.
Merlin: And she's like, what is this comic?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: It's like it's not a comic.
Merlin: It's a zine.
Merlin: It's like a magazine, but little.
Merlin: And it had a flexi disc.
Merlin: It still had the flexi disc, like, stapled inside of it.
John: And I felt like a million years old.
John: Oh, my God.
John: But when we first met, you felt that I was a little bit younger than you because there were musical cues that you –
John: could differentiate a year and a half in age.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: The same way with your kids.
Merlin: Your daughter surely has friends, has had friends through her life that are just like, you know, those kind of like, maybe you don't see them every week, but it's your ongoing, oh, that was your really good friend when you were a baby.
Merlin: And they're like, what are you talking about?
Merlin: There's a friend, there might be a friend who's like a year older, and she almost certainly probably at this point has friends who are like a year younger.
Merlin: And that year, for obvious reasons, matters less and less, mostly as you get older.
Merlin: And in that case, it's like, again, the Mr. Show bit.
Merlin: Like, I'm into Star Wars, and you're into that Empire Strikes Back bullshit.
Merlin: It's like these incredibly small differences become less and less important.
Merlin: But when we met, oh, shit, dog.
Merlin: Joe from the label had a toot the other day.
Merlin: What is it?
Merlin: The thermals, is it?
Merlin: More parts per million?
Merlin: He's 15 years old.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: And I remember when that came out and it's like, oh yeah, like Eric knows those guys.
Merlin: And it's like, it was a big deal.
Merlin: Like, oh, this is this really cool record.
Merlin: That was 15 years ago.
Merlin: Doesn't that seem insane?
John: Well, especially since I still think of the thermals as like... Like youngsters.
John: The kids.
Merlin: The little punk rock guys in the shirts.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: But when we met, at that point, you and I were branched in slightly different directions in terms of what we knew a lot about or were real into.
Merlin: And I was certainly deep in my Sloan phase and a lot of the Canadian rock and stuff at that point.
Merlin: And you were very, very up to date.
Merlin: on what was happening on the charts and in the PNW and all that kind of stuff.
Merlin: But I don't remember talking a ton.
Merlin: When we talked about old music, it would be like you, me, and Sean talking about very old music, mostly.
Merlin: Which I mean in our lifetime, but that was a long time ago.
John: But you really took us in hand and actually literally sat us down.
John: Like, come in here, sit down, and began to show us
John: Things we hadn't seen.
John: Famously.
John: Electronic stuff.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Here's what an Internet forum is.
Merlin: That kind of thing.
John: Here's what an Internet forum, but also like you showed us the office for the first time.
John: The British office.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Which none of us had seen or heard of when that was still contemporary.
John: um you you were the first person who had a dvr that any of us had oh we had that clip of jeff bridges that we watch over and over i like uh line readings i wish i still had that we'd watch it over and over oh my god
John: And this was before there was, like, GIFs or any kind of internet.
John: So we'd just keep unwinding the TiVo over and over.
John: Yeah, this TiVo, and you were like, I saved this, like, 11-second.
Merlin: There's this one time when I turned the channel and accidentally caught Jeff Bridges being seemingly pretty high on Charlie Rose, and it was really, really funny.
Merlin: And we would watch it over and over and over.
Merlin: I like, ah, line readings.
Yeah.
John: i can never find it now i don't know i wouldn't even know where to look for it it was so it was so it felt so contemporary because it was it was a technology that none of us possessed like so wait a minute wait a minute explain this again you were you were changing channels you can just go watch any seinfeld now
John: Yeah, right.
John: And this came on and it was recording somehow and you were able to go back and you were like, yeah, it's recording everything all the time.
John: You can watch whatever you want whenever.
John: It was like recording everything all the time.
John: How does it do it?
John: Where does it keep the tapes?
Merlin: turning it over, looking around.
Merlin: Are there elves in here?
Merlin: How does this work?
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: Where are the tubes?
Merlin: And that felt so, in that case, that's funny.
Merlin: Okay, I haven't thought that much about that.
Merlin: I do have many fond recollections of your band and me sitting around in our underwear while my wife went to work and I was watching TV.
John: Well, there was a lot of that, but also, I mean, when I, when I first, when you and I first met and I, and this is obviously like a story drenched in moss, but you still had a PC running in your office, but you had begun to
Merlin: evangelize about macintosh i will just just clarify i i macs have been my computer since 1987 and i've owned one since 88 it's just that for that there was a period where i had two computers one of which is a very old like 386 pc that i just used for development and listening to streaming music that was like pretty much all but it was it was on like a big board on like a big piece of plywood in my office but it was the first time that somebody it was in that what was this that we're talking about 2003 probably
John: Yeah, or two.
John: When you and I first met, we were on tour with Ken Stringfellow.
Merlin: It was after the first record and before the second record.
Merlin: Because the second record was what, you know, that was kind of when we became really, I think, better friends and when we did the website and everything.
John: But 2002 was when we met, for sure.
John: Is that right?
John: Yeah, because we were out with Stringfellow on his Touched tour.
John: Oh, that's such a good record.
Yeah.
John: It is a good record.
John: It pains me to say.
Merlin: Oh, that song Uniforms.
Merlin: Oh my God, it's so good.
Merlin: But it was an era where... That came out in... Oh my God!
Merlin: Do you know the day that it came out?
Merlin: I'll give you a hint.
Merlin: Same day a very good Jay-Z record came out that got a little overlooked for a while.
Merlin: Holy shit.
Merlin: Oh, it came out on September 11th.
John: 9-11-2001.
John: Wow, that's right.
John: I do remember that.
John: Holy shit.
John: And that's the reason that we didn't tour it until a little bit later, because it was like, well, you can't really go on tour now, partner.
John: But you had started talking about Macintoshes in a different way where it was no longer... Because you remember the question was always... Macs were my gun, let's be honest.
John: Yeah.
John: But the question up until that point culturally had always been, well, sure, get a Macintosh if you want to not be compatible with anything.
John: It's great if you want to live inside of a small little corral where... If you want to pay three times as much to do fucking nothing.
John: Yeah, but if you want to be, you know, if you want to be part of the world, if you want to integrate and use email and stuff, you're going to have to get a real computer.
John: And I think that was right at the turning point where it was like, no, Macintoshes are real computers.
John: And because I, not agonized, because I had a Mac Classic in 1988.
John: Yeah.
John: Uh, that, you know, had Mac paint and I remember recording my voice into it and being astonished that it played my voice back out of it.
John: Like, Whoa, computers have really taken out of the box.
Merlin: Max handled, you know, if you knew how to do it, it would handle audio stuff.
Merlin: You didn't need to buy another board for it or anything like that.
John: I mean, I did not know how to do it.
John: So I actually still have a recording I made in 1990 where my girlfriend Kate at the time was sitting on my lap at my computer and we were both sitting there basically being amazed by it.
John: And we recorded this recording.
John: clip you know a pretty brief little clip of her because it would fill up your entire hard drive the whole computer but she's like giggle laughing because i'm tickling her and
John: It's just like, and when we broke up, I listened to it 100,000 times.
John: Tears streaming down my face.
John: Thinking back, oh, those short weeks ago to when life was so easy and everything made sense.
John: Things change, they change so quickly.
John: Oh, they really do, especially when you're young.
John: The reason I have that is that sometime in the 2000s,
John: Early 2000s, probably about the same time that we're talking about, 2002.
John: The Stranger here, the Seattle newspaper, still was running somewhere in the office a computer that old that could use those hard floppy disks.
John: And Sean Nelson said, hey, do you have anything stuck on an old computer?
John: Because if you do, this would be the time to transfer it into a new format.
John: Because we're going to unplug this old thing.
John: And that will probably be the last time any one of these things is hooked to anything else.
John: And I said, I do have some stuff.
John: And I went and got this big box of those little disks and sat at the stranger and...
John: transferred all that stuff into, you know, made the transition into whatever the new format was at the time.
John: And the computer was like, do you want us to reformat this?
John: And I was like, yes.
John: And so I still have all that stuff from 1994 because of that small little gesture making the transition.
John: But you were the one, I think, that said to me, don't be afraid to buy Apple products.
Merlin: you're not going to be on the wrong side of history and i and i you know i i was like wow they're really expensive and i mean they're super pretty but like what if you want to like hook it to something i think i i could be you say as you say this is all drenched in moss but my my running deal for a long time was that i i cannot unless you're really ready for the journey i cannot recommend buying mac stuff but what i would offer all along
Merlin: which I did for too much, too long for too many people, was I will be your Sherpa and your rabbi to the extent possible when it's weird or when you don't understand something.
Merlin: I'll help you set it up and that kind of stuff.
Merlin: So 2002, 2003 would be right around the period when I was very first feeling more confident in saying...
Merlin: I didn't have to put as many asterisks on the first part where I was like, this is, you know, this is getting better.
Merlin: This is not as weird.
Merlin: There's stuff out there for, for given, you know, knowing the context and what somebody needed to do, I could feel more confident about saying, you're not going to feel like a, like an idiot for having bought this.
Merlin: Plus I will help you with it.
Merlin: You know, as much as I can.
John: Yeah.
John: And you did, you were very helpful, but, and I was, I was afraid the first time that
Merlin: It's a lot of money.
Merlin: It's a lot of money to invest, and you feel you're going to be a sucker.
Merlin: Like you're getting into some kind of, like now with Internet of Things stuff, right?
Merlin: Like you don't want to go all in and spend $1,000 on something that's going to be EOL'd in like a year.
Merlin: Like you just don't want to feel like a sucker.
John: Well, but also it seems like the Internet of Things you don't want to do at all.
John: Am I wrong in saying that?
John: Yeah, save it for the show.
John: There's a...
John: You want to, you know, be careful where you step.
John: I do not want my thermostat looking at my bare bottom when I go to the bathroom.
Merlin: You do not prefer it.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: You choose who looks at your bare bottom.
Merlin: That's you.
Merlin: That's John's decision.
John: I do.
John: Sign on to my Patreon and go to the top level.
John: You'll see my bare bottom.
John: Go to the top level.
John: That's right.
John: It's called a stretch goal.
John: Reach around.
John: Yes.
John: You are not going to see it just because I put a new lock on my door that I gave Amazon the key to.
John: Just fucking any snorkeling.
John: I love the idea of you as a cam girl.
John: You know, I wonder about that a lot.
John: By which I mean, there's an audience for everything.
John: And I've considered, there have been a couple of times when I was like, what if I just went
John: What if I just had a YouTube where I just read things aloud?
John: What if I just went there and just read the Bible?
John: People would love that.
John: It'd be like ASMR.
John: People would love it.
John: Yeah.
John: It's just like somebody reading to them who knows how to read and who likes to read aloud.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: Figured I could go on and read all my old Seattle weekly articles aloud Hmm really slowly like here's the thing I mean, I don't know but but I would have to create enough There'd have to be enough stuff that it would be a channel rather than just like here's 15 episodes of a thing I mean I said they had something something thematic to it Right themes themes would be a good theme
John: right like i could read i could read aloud all the um like bd snm literature that's a good idea or like the way you did with uh where she can do his harm but the um the correspondence you chose to include with that wonderful booklet right john you're such a bullshit artist yes read all read every angry letter i ever got from anybody back when people wrote angry letters so great oh
Merlin: You don't get that these millenniums.
Merlin: Now you go and listen to Spotify.
Merlin: You're not going to get to see John's angry correspondence in coming.
John: You know, I got it.
John: There was something on Facebook the other day from someone of my generation saying, do people listen to albums anymore?
John: But a lot of the people that replied who are music business people,
John: There was all this love for the EP, which, you know, labels... That sounds very, very like a retcon.
Merlin: Well, you bought EP because you were a superfan and wanted this one track or because you were cheap.
Merlin: EPs were never the preferred way to get it.
Merlin: I eventually got stuff on EP because it would have this rare version of Behind the Wall of Sleep that was live.
Merlin: But I'd rather have the original LP.
John: Well, unlike an idiot, we didn't put Commander Thinks Allowed on an LP.
John: Only put it on an EP.
John: But no, they were saying digital EPs.
John: What does that mean?
John: Anymore don't release 10 songs.
Merlin: It's a very iTunes-y thing.
Merlin: When you go into iTunes and you see... They might be giants, obviously, have done this.
Merlin: A lot of bands have done this.
Merlin: Queen have done this.
Merlin: There's all these bands where they're like, oh my god, what are all these things?
Merlin: It's just single, single, single, EP, EP, EP.
Merlin: It must have something to do with the way that things are calculated or distributed.
Merlin: EP, EP, EP, EP.
John: Well, but I like when I discovered, I discovered a new band a little bit ago and I found four of their tunes.
John: Like I listened to a tune.
John: I liked it.
John: I listened to another tune full of apprehension.
John: Please don't let me hate their second song.
John: I liked it too.
John: This is, you know, where you're like, oh shit, the hook is in.
John: And I listened to a third song really crossing my fingers.
John: Like, please don't let them only have two good songs.
John: And I liked the third song.
John: And by the time I got to the fourth song that I liked, I said, enough.
John: It was like blackjack.
John: It was like, I'm going to hold.
John: Because they cannot possibly take this winning streak all the way out to five.
John: And I got four of them, so leave me be with these.
John: Four is enough to listen to on repeat.
John: Is it a band I know?
John: Car Seed Headrest.
John: Car Seed Headrest.
John: Artwork by Elephant.
John: That's an actual band from Seattle that I like now.
John: But what it struck me as was like, oh, shit, this is an EP.
John: I just self-EP'd this band.
John: Oh, interesting.
John: Like, four tunes is kind of...
John: A good band can pull out four good tunes.
John: Right.
John: I mean, if all in excess had ever done throughout their whole career was just put out four songs every year and a half.
John: I ask you what you know is true.
Merlin: When this eventually becomes an e-book, there will be a compilation of all the things we just choose to disagree on.
Merlin: Yes, they had some good stuff.
Merlin: They had that Dream of a White Girl, Black Girl song.
Merlin: I like that song.
Merlin: Are you saying that you do not think that In Excess had any good songs?
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: I think Shibusha Ball had some really good stuff on it.
Merlin: And you're right, they're EPs.
Merlin: They had that weird period before they got super duper popular, like that period before Soup and Salad Bar.
Merlin: They had some really good singles, for sure.
John: good singles i just i just i think i kind of got a little fatigued on there oh yeah from kick on yeah i i can't listen to it but like that early 80s stuff i like i think the one thing is really good it's a really good song yeah let me look um you know they were they were up there with you too in terms of like who was good in 1981 yeah um
John: And I'll follow them all the way to the first album.
John: Like a Listen Like Thieves?
John: Listen Like Thieves.
John: I will follow them that far.
John: Well, that was Soup and Salad Bar.
John: Not any farther.
Merlin: Suicide Blonde was... How late was that?
Merlin: 1990!
Merlin: Jiminy Christmas!
John: It's late, it's late.
John: Soup and salad bar!
John: So Kick, when I was in college, Kick was popular, and I felt like that was their...
John: pour some sugar on me.
John: They had jumped the shark.
John: But up until then, Listen Like Thieves had that song that was very pop that I think most normal people did not want to hear, but I did, which was
John: What you need, give me what you need.
Merlin: That's peak bump bump for me.
Merlin: I'm fine with that.
Merlin: Oh, this time.
Merlin: It had this time.
Merlin: It had what you need.
John: This time is a very good song.
John: I like this.
John: Well, this is what I'm saying.
John: So here we go.
John: There's two really good songs on...
John: On Listen Like Thieves.
John: And I do not count Listen Like Thieves, the song, as one wants to.
John: But what you need in this time, super good two songs.
John: And then you go back to The Swing, the record before that, and you're looking at... You got Original Sin, Burn For You.
Merlin: I'm not...
Merlin: I'm not as familiar.
Merlin: I think that was my buy year.
Merlin: Yeah, only one good song on that record.
Merlin: Shabu Shabba came out in that crazy fucking summer.
Merlin: Summer of 82.
Merlin: There was so much good New Wave.
Merlin: Oh, yeah, Don't Change.
John: Don't Change is a good song.
John: It's a really good song.
John: So there it is right there.
John: Two great songs on that record.
John: You don't have to look at anything else.
John: Got a dachshund on the cover.
John: Underneath the colors, let's hope that this continues my theory.
John: no it doesn't it just has that one song stay young which i don't remember what's their ep i'm thinking of and then their first record definitely had oh wait where was uh white boy black girl that's the one that was an ep i think that's the dream on white boy black girl song i think that's i think that's an ep let me look uh countdown awards grammy awards
Merlin: Okay.
John: It might be a thing that has a name that we just glanced over that we don't remember, though.
Merlin: I'm going to get it.
Merlin: I'm going to get it.
Merlin: I'm going to get it.
Merlin: Box sets, extended plays.
Merlin: I could be wrong.
Merlin: Decadence.
Merlin: Derp, derp, derp.
Merlin: Decadence.
Merlin: Is it Original Sin?
Merlin: Is that the song?
Merlin: No, that's not it, is it?
Merlin: Maybe.
Merlin: Original Sin.
Merlin: All right, go on YouTube.
Merlin: I'll cut all this out.
John: Yeah.
John: No, I won't.
John: Original Sin.
John: Oh, but also I will go as far as saying that never tear us apart is a good song.
John: That's the one song on kick that I, that I'll allow.
John: You just overdid it with the backbone.
John: Okay.
John: Original song.
John: I mean, it's, you know, it's like orc pop, but I'm,
John: I'm 100% down with orc pop.
John: I should have been an orc popper.
John: What'd that mean?
Merlin: Orchestral pop.
Merlin: Oh, oh, oh.
Merlin: Now what about a Tears for Fears?
Merlin: Where do you stand with Tears for Fears today?
Merlin: well you know tears for fears they've got a lot of directions back and forth in the public eye i feel like you and i have talked about them before probably at the time i was very opposed to tears for fears because of the over emotive faces they were like echoing the bunny man 2.0 for me where like i incorrectly lumped them in so in my head echoing the bunny man was like almost like a goth band which couldn't be well not further from the truth but like they were a really good guitar pop band
Merlin: Who wrote fantastic songs, and that was bad on me for lumping them in with what I thought was Silly Rock.
Merlin: And I think, yeah, I think Tears for Fears has mostly aged pretty well, and they're still really, really good singers.
John: Their songs are really good.
John: It was our good friend Mike Squires, friend of the program, Mike Squires, who's a metalhead, who...
John: Turned me back around on Tears for Fears.
John: And he was like, hey, man, you got to get on the right side of Tears for Fears because they're great.
John: Got to get your mind right.
John: I said, I don't have to get on the right side of anything.
John: And he was like, no, no, no.
John: Seriously, this is a really great record.
John: And he again, one of these situations, somebody sat me down like you sat me down in front of the office.
John: He sat me down in front of that.
John: The tears for the tears is for fears.
John: And.
John: And it was absolutely true.
Merlin: It's like George Michael says, listen without prejudice.
Merlin: You go back and listen to these outside of that context, maybe not watching the music videos.
Merlin: That's it.
John: I do not want to see that music video.
Merlin: But Sowing the Seeds of Love, it's kind of a silly song, but I still think that's a really generally good psych pop song.
John: But you remember the power...
John: You know the power that a music video had at the time to make or break how you felt about a thing.
John: Do you think the Cars would have gotten as big as they got without the videos on Heartbeat City?
John: I mean, the Cars, those songs are so great.
John: But Rico Kasich and his face and those crazy videos and Paulina Partsikova.
John: Yes.
John: Supermodel.
John: That was all very, very, like, it was so graphic.
Merlin: even then bands were putting out videos where it was just like a camcorder um and some like after after effects well that's why those records especially remember when the video for magic came out and he was like walking on water in the pool and it was like oh my god this is gonna win all of the mtv like special achievement awards and yeah i mean it wasn't their finest work but like it's they're good pop songs they have a little bit of the synchronicity problem synchronicity another one that goes on the list i believe isn't that another one we agree to disagree
Merlin: I'm pro-synchronicity.
Merlin: Okay.
John: Yeah.
John: I know that you have feelings about it.
John: Ghost in the machine, baby.
John: I mean, post-synchronicity, you know, what is there?
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
John: Even Russians love their children, too.
John: What rhymes with rhyming dictionary?
John: Famously, Billy Squire came out with that music video where he was dancing in a room.
John: Rock me tonight.
John: Yeah.
John: In a pink tank top.
Merlin: That was the room of its time.
Merlin: That is a very difficult video to watch today.
John: Yeah, well, and his record sales went away.
John: Yeah.
John: Apparently because of the video.
John: But a lot of that stuff, like the first time that you saw Sting in Dream of the Blue Turtles do that weird dance with his Stratocaster, I never wanted to.
John: I didn't want to ever see Sting again.
John: I didn't want to see him.
John: Right.
John: Because it was such a weird dance.
John: And I think Tears for Fears had a lot of that, like just the way they composed their faces while they sang.
John: It just was so emo that I was like, I don't want to watch you guys.
John: You're like grossing me out with your emo.
Merlin: It's unseemly.
Merlin: It's unseemly.
Merlin: But that was a kind of like a strat dance that I think like Ben from Death Cab kind of refined into making his own thing.
Merlin: He has a special guitar dance that I think is very effective.
Merlin: He does.
Merlin: He does a hip, a rhythmic, not in a sexy way, but a rhythmic hip thrusting thing.
Merlin: He's definitely shaking.
Merlin: And when I saw them in 1999, I thought it was just terrific.
John: There was a famous moment indelibly burned into my head.
John: of us on tour with Death Cab in 98.
John: Is it with the hurricane?
John: Western state hurricane.
John: And we're in Arizona.
John: We're at a show in, you know, like at some strip mall in Phoenix.
John: And
John: Death Cab's on stage, and it's not a stage, right?
John: It's like a cement floor.
Merlin: More of a dais.
John: Yeah, where they took the PA and they turned it, or they took the, they took like your practice PA, but they turned it around to the audience.
John: And we're there watching them play, and their merch guy, a guy named Little Rob, everybody just called him Little Rob, L-I-L.
John: He starts to do the Ben Gibbard guitar dance.
John: And, you know, we're we're in view of the stage and he's just perfectly.
John: He's not even looking at the stage.
John: He's got his back to them.
John: But he's just perfectly doing that thing that you're describing, that like shuffle swing thing that Ben does.
Merlin: I think if it is like he's bent slightly back and his shoulders are moving in complement with the way that his hips are moving with a very wide open posture.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: And the guitar is a component of it, and it's, yeah, it's like Elvis if you left all the hangers in his suits.
John: Yeah, that works for me.
John: And it's just like, from that point on, we all tried to perfect, after seeing Lil Rob do such a great job of it, we all tried to perfect our Ben Gibbard dance.
John: And I think I'll hop into it once or twice during a set.
John: It just is a little homage to the tip of the hat to the little kind of like one, two, one, two.
John: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
John: I think that the music video for Flock of Seagulls, the first two videos, they caused such a sensation because of that guy's hair.
Merlin: He's remembered for having the swoopy hair from the second video, but in the first one, oh God, there's a phrase I can't use anymore, more art school hair, one would say.
Merlin: And he had that meet me at McDonald's kind of haircut.
Merlin: He's got like the he's got the swirly kind of up on top.
Merlin: And then you got the camera with the garbage bag.
Merlin: A lot of garbage bags in that video.
John: Well, that was a that was an easy special effect to use.
John: Girls in garbage bags.
John: Girls in garbage bags.
John: And then you take a couple of box fans.
Merlin: but the thing is like that music and he did the thing remember the famous thing also was the way he was you can't see me doing this he's holding down like a like a like a probably an a with one finger and then he's the other thing goes way up in the air and comes down to the g the next key
John: But they're a band that had three great tunes.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Space Age Love Song is a legitimately good song.
John: But they're not thought of in that serious rank of 80s.
John: Those songs are as good as any Gary Neumann tune.
Merlin: oh i see i yeah yeah i get what you're saying yeah yeah yeah where like there was this this rat king of like especially english like new wave bands and new romantic bands and like some of them are much it's much cooler to still like this band than that band i mean it's hard i mean you know soft sell was serious um but culture club was not and it's a and it has a lot to do with hairstyle and
John: That I think now, maybe even now with the proliferation, ultimate proliferation of images that we have, I think you would...
John: be less influenced by how a band looked than we were in 1983 watching those music videos.
Merlin: We also can't discount something that is a third rail but should be discussed.
Merlin: At least living in Florida, I am not proud of this by a long shot, but there was also a lot of consideration about...
Merlin: I don't know how to use this word, whether they seemed gay.
Merlin: And I don't mean that they liked people of the same gender sexually.
Merlin: I just meant the people who were listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd would see that you were into Mark Almond and that seemed kind of gay.
Merlin: And I think that had a huge effect in a lot of ways.
Merlin: Even with Duran Duran, you'd go like, oh, these guys are so fruity.
Merlin: And you'd feel like a little, at least I felt like a little twinge of like, oh, I don't know if it's okay to be into this band because they're not tough and cool.
John: Which is weird considering that Bon Jovi, you know, like there's an awful lot of signaling in Bon Jovi that is directed at, you know, it's like the transition that bands made to, because I mean, even Van Halen.
John: Oh, absolutely.
John: In the mid 70s, you know, there's that famous story where Van Halen played like Big Day Out in Texas.
John: where all the other bands were Molly Hatchet and ZZ Top.
Merlin: They probably seemed, everybody but Mike, probably seemed very androgynous for the time.
John: Well, it freaked them out.
John: The folks in Texas who were just like, we're at a rock and roll concert!
John: And it was just like, everybody else was in denim and cowboy boots.
John: And out comes Van Halen, just like, woohoo!
John: Yeah.
John: But like with big, big teased out hair.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: And it's, you know, it's very, very like unapologetically California at the very least.
John: But I do think there was also, I mean, music was so, um, it was so siloed.
John: The difference between a band that was for girls and for boys was really big for me.
John: Like,
John: Uh, I had a really hard.
John: This is one of the things, uh, one of the reasons that I never got into the Smiths was I just felt like the Smiths was my sister's band and that style of singing and that style of looking and that style of being was pandering to girls and it wasn't serious.
John: It wasn't like serious minded.
John: Because it was so transparent to me that it was meant to make teenage girls cry.
John: And I could, I was just not in, and it might've been a hundred percent different if I had known one person who said, this is really serious music.
John: But as it was, it was just like, it just felt, it felt, uh,
John: Like, the Smiths were pandering, were an extension of Duran Duran.
John: Right.
Merlin: Or, like, you think about, like, Paul Young would be one.
Merlin: You already named Culture Club.
Merlin: Paul Young.
Merlin: But, yeah, no, Paul Young had some really, some pretty, like, what was the song?
Merlin: I don't want you to come back.
Merlin: Like, he had some really good pop songs, and he did that weird Joy Division cover, but...
Merlin: you're right there were ones that felt like there were bands for boys and bands for girls right you know like Steely Dan being an extreme example maybe but yeah I totally agree but like now when you look back like there do seem to be these bands that like in retrospect I think a huge one that nobody talks about much is like Scritti Politti but there are these bands that age surprisingly well that like at the time you might have thought oh this is pretty light pop but you know it does stand up we talked about this once before
Merlin: was it here on another show where i made this playlist of like i'll put it in well we don't have show notes for the show i'll put it in anyway but a list of like new wave that still stands up in my opinion like where the songs have good bones or where they were doing something that was new and substantial like i think there's there's still so much stuff from that but you're right that the gender stuff and the sexual politics stuff was was giant i mean but like you're not gonna be you could not be a straight guy in florida who was really into tom robinson band publicly like that was not gonna happen
John: Haircut 100 is an example of a band that was really very, very, very put together.
John: They had a lot going on, like good stuff going on, totally.
John: But there were a million reasons why you would look at that and say, that's a band for girls.
John: Absolutely.
John: But in fact, even then, I was really into the song.
John: So there was always...
John: It was always like a, you could go either way.
John: And I think I always, even when flock of seagulls was the most reviled, I could not get away from the power of their hooks.
Merlin: I always, they were doing, I mean, they were doing what they intended to do.
Merlin: very well you know here's another one i this is going to sound that i don't know i'm not sure what the critical reputation at this point is this is as much owing to trevor horn as anybody but go back and listen to the title song from the look of love by abc that's the look that's the look the look of love that is a such a very finely crafted and executed pop song it's it's got parts it's got hooks and hooks and more hooks it's it's just it's it's such a beautiful i don't say a masterpiece but it's such a piece of work as a pop song
John: I know it's probably true, but ABC was in my list of no thank yous.
John: Right.
John: Right over there with men without hats.
Merlin: Oh, wow.
John: I didn't want either thing.
John: Really?
John: And it didn't matter how much you said, like, ABC, they're amazing.
John: Because I knew they were even then.
John: You could tell that they were like...
Merlin: dynamite yeah but I could tell me tell me how to be a millionaire oh thank you Frankie Goes to Hollywood another Trevor Horn joint loved Frankie Goes to Hollywood now come on I am not getting this because that was just a little bit later that was like what 84 85
John: Well, no, because Frankie had so much attitude.
John: They said relax.
John: And it felt like, watching them at least, felt like a gang, like Adam and the Ants.
John: Right.
John: Where Frankie and his gang... They seemed dangerous.
John: Yeah, they were like prowling the neighborhood, but they were also like super unapologetically gay and openly gay in a way that was... Aggressively gay.
John: Yeah.
John: that took, that was like headline grabbing.
John: And it just felt like, yeah, fuck you, that's right, goddamn right.
John: And I just felt like their tunes were,
Merlin: were i mean it's hard to say they were i mean the truth is like again trevor horn like the stuff that that guy has done for for bands is you know in that case i mean nothing against the frankie goes to hollywood band they're very interesting they had a great look but like their songs were not particularly substantial but like they had to say they had a great sound they had a great sound and they and that's exactly that that's right the sound was great like the way that um
John: The way that their big hit kind of trails off at the end where the last thing you hear is like sounds of files and a sound of miles.
Merlin: Like two tribes.
Merlin: I'm not sure two tribes necessarily hangs together as a great political statement, but like it was so big.
Merlin: It was so big.
John: Right.
John: If you sat down and tried to play it on the acoustic guitar, I don't know.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Wait, I had another one.
Merlin: I had another one.
Merlin: Okay, so we did Tears for Fears.
John: You know, I actually bought the 7-inch of Animotion's... Obsession?
John: Obsession.
John: I bought the 7-inch, and everything about it...
John: Like at that point in my life, there is no way I should have bought the seven inch of that record because I, I hated that music video.
John: They're freaky there.
John: I mean, they're like, there's something wrong.
John: It was campy, pretty campy.
John: But, but even the way they're looking at you at the camera, it's just like, no, no, no, no, no.
John: Don't invite those people into your house.
John: But the, but the tune,
John: I just really liked it.
John: And I couldn't explain it.
John: I wouldn't defend it.
John: It's very catchy.
John: Yeah.
John: I never would have told a friend that I had it.
Merlin: I would have happened to Berlin.
Merlin: Pre-Top Gun.
Merlin: Pleasure Victim era Berlin.
Merlin: One of the great bands.
Merlin: They had that EP.
Merlin: I think it was an EP with the Sex I'm a song on it.
Merlin: And then they had Pleasure Victim.
Merlin: I think Masquerade is a very good song.
Merlin: I think that is, for its time, that was some very strong music.
John: It's super strong.
John: And the thing about it is that whole record, I'm talking about
John: And this is way, way not... We're not talking about the Top Gun version of Berlin.
Merlin: Yeah, that still seems like... It feels like years after I stopped listening to Berlin, but I guess it was like a year after I was really into Berlin.
John: But their record, Love Life, which came out in 84, but which I didn't really get into until 87, even...
Merlin: um that record and it's the one that has no more word oh that's a good song uh but the whole record is good it's just um oh dancing in berlin that's a good song yeah it's good it's just like a major four years wait so it's two years after pleasure pleasure it was 1982 dude i know so good oh the metro oh my god
Merlin: I remember hating you for loving me.
John: That was as influential on me as Cars by Gary Neumann.
Merlin: Oh, yeah, for me, Adam and the Ants.
Merlin: These just unabashedly melodramatic songs.
Merlin: I ate them with a spoon.
Merlin: They sounded like the future.
John: Absolutely.
John: Because what was happening in metal at that time was...
John: Was that everybody had gone to pentatonic or everybody had gone to this idea this like this?
Merlin: Dead-end idea that that what metal was going to be was classical music the classical music of our new the new wave stuff was definitely on point But it was it was consolidating into something very very tight and not particularly weird
Merlin: But it was it was getting I mean, like, I mean, what do you say about Iron Maiden from that time?
Merlin: Like this stuff was amazing.
Merlin: It was amazing, but it didn't feel like the future.
John: Right.
John: It felt like like a height of what had happened before.
John: But also like it was it was still connected to Dungeons and Dragons.
John: It felt like like like our music.
Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, probably same for Judas Priest, maybe?
John: Yeah, I think so.
John: It's just like leather and studs and like, you know, this is music about dragons and the hellion.
John: Whereas, and a lot of new wave just felt like, oh, this is just pop music with keyboards.
John: But some tunes, and I feel like Flock of Seagulls in Berlin fall into this category, captured...
John: The feeling of the future where it felt cold there.
John: That's where Gary Neumann kind of takes the cake.
John: Yeah.
John: It just feels like, oh, shit.
John: You know, like the future is scary.
John: It's scary because it doesn't feel...
John: Um, like there, it doesn't feel like there are any blankets there.
John: And, and I, um, and it's not just the music videos, like it's in the music.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: The dissonant, like squeaky, uh, they were very dissonant squeaky keyboards at that time could sometimes be very, very upsetting, but like they had a, they had a very strong effect on me.
Merlin: And the, yeah.
John: And there, and the idea, I think that got into my head forever, that there should be a note droning somewhere.
John: Which is actually something thrown back to the blues.
John: It's Appalachian to have... I'm trying to think of bands.
Merlin: Take a song like, I want to say Masquerade.
Merlin: But the riffs would be very dissonant and yet incredibly catchy a lot of the time.
Merlin: Or something like, again, like with Gary Newman, you take something like Cars, or even earlier, you take Down in the Park, you take a Two-Boy Army song.
Merlin: And, like, the Two-Boy Army was menacing.
Merlin: Like, you talk about the Future Without Blankets title.
Merlin: That stuff just feels like, oh, my God, there's this post-craft work future we're going to live in where everything's just going to be metal walls.
Merlin: It's just had such a feeling to it of, like, this is not something we've experienced before.
John: Yeah, I'm going to be alone and no one's ever going to smile.
John: And if you say the wrong words, everyone's head is going to turn.
John: Yeah.
John: I sure like music.
John: And you're going to have a lot of mascara on.
John: I was going to say, what do we do if we run out of mascara?
Merlin: i don't think you can ever run out of mascara it was not cool at all to like adam well see i always still i still call him adam and the ants to like adam the ants when i liked adam the ants was extremely not cool in central florida well even up into then in some ways it was even more embarrassing when friend or foe got popular because i was into kings of the wild frontier and prince charming were like stand deliver was my favorite song for probably five years it's a great tune it's
Merlin: such a good song and they had two drummers and they dressed like pirates and like what are they doing with all that makeup and then friend or foe i mean it really was kind of like tiger beat material in some ways was still a very good song with a great band but like then it was even more embarrassing because it's like oh yeah i knew you like this obscure english band but now i really understand what this band is and ew
Merlin: This is not very Molly Hatchett.
John: I feel like it's another example of Adam Ant had so much attitude toward the camera.
John: He was very beautiful, but also just right in your face with it.
John: And I could never hate that.
John: Even in the darkest time of like, if it's not metal, it's not music.
John: His like pure swagger.
John: And that was what I that was why I didn't like Simply Red, why I didn't like Tears for Fears was that there wasn't swagger.
John: It looked like they were, you know, they were trying to seem deep.
John: and i didn't respond to that as much as i did like here i am like take it here i come and and why why i could never ever ever hate on george michael even at the even when you didn't hit on him just a little bit even when wham was ludicrous the raps the wham rap song you think that was a little silly at the time i mean it's not like i was listening to those records but i didn't
John: i didn't look at george michael and have contempt for him you weren't offended i wasn't no well no i i felt like yeah there it is like he's he's owning he's owning that space and that was and that was a i think there was a lot i mean i don't like frank zappa at all but i love frank zappa oh yeah you know the um
John: The idea of Frank Zappa is very strong.
John: The idea of Frank Zappa, the smell of Frank Zappa.
John: The scent of Zappa.
John: Is something I don't want to consider.
John: Because my sense is that Frank had a lot of sex.
John: And potentially even largely monogamous.
John: But he was not somebody who was going to go shower before.
John: Oh, I see what you're saying.
John: I think about that sometimes.
John: I think about smells.
John: Yeah.
John: I'm sensitive to smells.
John: You know, I've got a rash.
John: No.
John: Because I spent some time in hot tubs recently.
Merlin: Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Merlin: That's human soup.
Merlin: And I don't belong in hot tubs.
Merlin: It's a perfect breeding ground for that kind of thing.
John: I like a hot bath.
John: I like even a swimming pool.
John: But a hot tub, I always come out of there with hives.
John: Is it on your bottom parts?
John: It's just in the parts that would touch the water of a hot tub.
John: Oh, okay.
John: And it's just uncomfortable, and it makes me feel like it's one of the things that separates me from the 1970s.
John: I feel like waterbeds I was into, I would be into them again if it seemed reasonable to have one.
Mm-hmm.
John: But a hot tub, I don't know whether it's the other people or the chemicals they put in them to keep the other people from creating...
Merlin: Um, like poly wogs, but John, I think even in the best of conditions, it's a lot of work keeping one of those things clean.
Merlin: I mean, even if you're, even if you're really riding that hard, even if you like maybe have some, you've hired some help for it.
Merlin: I think that's going to be a lot of work.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: But I, so I was in a hot tub in one place and then I went to another place and they had hot tubs there too.
John: I was like, all right, I'm Mr. Hot tub, I guess.
John: And after the first hot tub experience, I was like, I feel a little itchy.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Boy, a rash is really, it's like just a droning existential home.
Merlin: You really cannot forget the physicality of your body when you've got a rash.
Merlin: There's other kinds of things where you can kind of put it off for a minute, but a rash just reminds you that you're alive and not in a good way.
John: People, I think, are often surprised at how vulnerable I am to things.
John: You're sensitive.
John: You're sensitive in parts.
John: Bad soap and bad smells and bad hot tubs.
John: But I'm very sensitive to things.
John: And I think right now I'm reading a book about sleep.
John: And the book about sleep is telling me that if you're not getting good sleep, you might as well die of cancer right now.
Yeah.
John: And so I'm, so last night I actually read the book about sleep until it put me to sleep.
John: And then I lay there and I woke up a little bit later and, and my body was like, you're not ready for sleep.
John: And I, I really thought about this book.
John: Like, yes, I am ready for sleep body.
John: Or would you like instead to just die at 56 of sleep?
John: a thousand maladies and my body said, Hmm, all right, I'll, I'll take this under advisement.
John: And I did go back to sleep and I did sleep soundly.
John: And so I'm thinking about this book and I'm thinking about like, Hmm, I, I have a rash.
John: I also have been sick a lot lately and,
John: maybe it's time to read a book about sleep.
John: Wow.
John: And so that's where I am.
John: I'm at, I am at the point in my life where I would voluntarily read a book about sleep and I, and I'm reading the intro and, and the, the writer is like, well, I started as a psychiatry professor at Harvard and then I moved to Berkeley where I'm a, you know, a psychokinetic researcher and the chairman of the department and
John: And I'm picturing this sleep researcher.
John: And I turn to the back of the book jacket.
John: And this person looks like...
John: The male lead of Dirty Dancing, Patrick Swayze.
John: Patrick Swayze, yeah.
John: And I'm like, oh, no.
John: And I flip back to the intro again, and it said, for over 20 years, I've been working.
John: And I was like, 20 years ago was 1998.
John: Oh, so he still doesn't have a dict.
John: I mean, this person is 39.
John: Yeah.
John: Or something, you know, you know, like he's saying he's leathery.
John: No, I'm saying if you got into if your career started in 1998, you are.
John: I mean, he's like got bleached hair.
John: And so it was then it was really hard not to put the book down because I did not want to be lectured about sleep by someone who looked like Patrick Swayze.
John: But I was like, stay in the game.
John: Stay in the game.
John: Maybe he has some insights.
John: Maybe you can learn something from a young person.
John: And, well, so I made it through the first couple of chapters.
Merlin: There's a Supreme Court justice who's younger than me.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: It's very upsetting.
Merlin: The new one?
Merlin: Gorsuch, yeah.
Merlin: Not Gorsuch, is that his name?
Merlin: Whoever the guy is that they jammed in there.
Wow.
Merlin: It's very upsetting.
Merlin: I got a tip for you.
Merlin: I can't promise this is going to help, but this is somewhat out of the cognitive behavioral tradition, but...
Merlin: Something I've been doing that has been helping with the sleep.
Merlin: And you've heard me, I don't know if you've ever heard me mention this before, one of my catchphrases in life, one of my guiding principles is to remind myself that I've decided not to let it bother me.
Merlin: When something starts to bother me, I say to myself, you know what, I've decided not to let it bother me.
Merlin: And every part of that is important.
Merlin: So I've started trying to adopt that with sleep.
Merlin: When I wake up and I suddenly, I start feeling all the anxiety, I say, hmm.
Merlin: Maybe I'm not a bad person because I'm awake.
Merlin: Maybe I will actually get up for a few minutes.
Merlin: What if I gave myself one hour to be awake and said after an hour I'll go back to sleep, but I'm not going to feel bad about it.
Merlin: I have decided not to let it bother me.
Merlin: I have decided not to let it bother me.
Hmm.
Merlin: I have decided not to let it bother me.
Merlin: And then, all of a sudden, you're not a bad person anymore.
Merlin: Now you're just somebody who's awake for a little while.
Merlin: And you're somebody who can go back to sleep.
Merlin: Because you know what kills you?
Merlin: It's the feeling bad about it.
Merlin: It's the being bothered that will keep you awake.
John: Sleep later, you will.
John: Okay.
John: But, I mean, I know that I'm a bad person.
John: I'm not convinced of that.
John: Or disabused of it, either.
John: But what, yeah, I just, this guy, you know, he made me feel okay because he was like, he gave me some of what I was looking for, which is if you stay up late at night, that's because that's what you're supposed to do.
John: And your body's on a cycle and you can't do anything about it.
John: You're just a normal, healthy American boy.
John: I'm an owl.
John: I'm an owl, not an early bird.
John: I'm an owl.
Ooh, ooh, ooh.
John: And and so I was like, yeah, damn right.
John: And he said, but if you don't get eight hours of sleep a night, you're going to die.
John: The good news is you're all right.
John: The bad news is it's killing you.
John: That's right.
John: And he said the world is an open face compliment sandwich.
John: The world's fucked up.
John: Nobody you know, the world is not made for people that want to sleep until 10 a.m., let alone noon.
John: So it's too bad for you.
John: If you don't get eight hours of sleep a night, your brain is going to turn into spaghetti noodles.
John: Can you be too tired to realize it?
John: I'm going to be too tired to go to war.
John: Too tired.
John: Too tired to go to war.
Merlin: What is all this?