Ep. 309: "Where's the One?"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Hi, Merlin.
Merlin: How's it going?
Merlin: So good.
Merlin: So good.
John: So good.
John: Halfway through October.
John: I made some mistakes last night.
John: I went to the store and I bought some good food that was just an excuse to buy some bad food.
John: Oh, give yourself some cover.
John: And then I went to...
John: I had a little bit of cake and then I decided that it wasn't so much cake that I couldn't also have a bowl of ice cream.
John: And so then I did that.
John: And then right before I went to bed, I opened a bag of Fritos and then I actually took the Fritos to bed with me and
John: A little one-night stand.
John: Yeah, ate Fritos in bed.
John: This is part of single life, you know, hashtag single life.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: Ate Fritos in bed until I literally couldn't eat any more Fritos.
John: Did you finish the bag?
John: No, no, I got about halfway through, but then I went to sleep really feeling like I got some work done.
John: That's some serious corn.
John: It's a lot of corn.
John: It was a lot of corn, yeah.
Merlin: On top of ice cream, on top of cake.
Merlin: In fairness, though, I mean, well, actually, I guess this mitigates against you a little bit.
Merlin: But, you know, in my experience, Fritos pack pretty tight into a bag.
Merlin: It's not like that charade of a bag of potato chips.
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: No, no, no.
John: You get a lot of Fritos if you eat half a bag of Fritos in the middle of the night.
John: But I'm feeling good today.
John: I'm feeling strong.
Merlin: You sound great.
John: Oh, thank you.
John: Yeah, I'm back.
John: I'm back from being sick and feeling strong.
Merlin: Yeah, I had last night, I had a quarter of an apple pie and a small bowl of ice cream with it.
Merlin: Oh, a quarter of an apple pie.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: We have a local vendor that sells half rustic apple pie.
Merlin: You get half a rustic apple pie.
Merlin: It comes in half-sized.
Merlin: So you're showing some restraint.
Merlin: You're not buying a whole pie.
Merlin: You're not a monster.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: You say a half pie.
Merlin: So Saturday night, I had a quarter of a pie.
Merlin: And then Sunday night, I had a quarter of a pie.
Merlin: Now there's no pie.
Merlin: What?
Merlin: What makes it rustic?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: Rustic?
Merlin: What does rustic mean?
Merlin: They use that a lot on TV food shows.
Merlin: It's hearty.
Merlin: It's simple ingredients.
Merlin: Ye oldie?
Merlin: Is it ye oldie?
Merlin: I think so.
Merlin: It's pretty good.
Merlin: I heated it on Saturday, but I just ate it cold out of the plastic like a monster last night.
John: Yeah.
John: You know what rustic is?
John: I bet it means that it has no xanthan gum.
John: Oh, you think there's no gum?
John: I think they cut out the xanthan gum.
John: They cut out the red dye number four.
Merlin: What do you think they use as a binding agent?
Merlin: Oh, jeez.
Merlin: I mean, maybe magnesium.
Merlin: Okay, magnesium.
Merlin: That's good.
Merlin: You can get that from a banana.
Merlin: That's good for your mental health.
John: Magnesium.
John: Maybe like laundry detergent.
Merlin: Laundry detergent could be laundry detergent.
Merlin: That's rustic.
Merlin: People have always had clothes.
Merlin: They've always needed to wash clothes.
Merlin: So you're not sensitive to corn.
Merlin: Some people are sensitive to corn.
John: I mean, I'm sensitive to corny television.
John: Okay.
John: But I'm not sensitive to the vegetable corn.
John: No, I like corn.
John: Yeah.
John: Whenever I've gone on one of those low-carb diets, I always, you know, like losing pasta is a big, that's a big punishment.
Merlin: Yeah, like standard wheat pasta.
John: Yeah, but I can look at wheat pasta and recognize like,
John: Yes, I understand this is garbage, you know, for your body.
John: Yeah.
John: And so I'll put it down.
John: I will.
John: I'll just, this is the sacrifice I have to make.
John: But corn in the form of tortillas, it's very hard for me to put tortillas down.
Merlin: Yes, and I feel similarly about rice, where a big component of my diet these days, I eat pho a couple times a week.
John: Oh, pho.
Merlin: It's so good.
Merlin: And it's rice noodles.
Merlin: So I feel like I'm being good to myself.
Merlin: I don't know if our paleo ancestors made pho around the fire.
Merlin: Probably not.
Merlin: Probably not.
Merlin: In their groups, their villages of 150 people by the firelight.
Merlin: I don't know if they had pho.
John: I agree with you that pho feels like it should be an exception to any dietary restriction because it is one of the great foods.
John: It's mostly broth.
John: Yeah.
John: Except for the giant...
John: like almost monkey brain-sized glob of rice noodles at the center of every truly great bowl of pho.
Merlin: But this is part of the beauty of pho.
Merlin: I've said this before, I'll say it again.
Merlin: Part of the beauty of pho is to me, now a lot of people go to a restaurant and you get pho, they give you a bowl of stuff and say, here's your pho.
Merlin: I get delivery pho, which means I receive components.
Merlin: Stop right there.
Merlin: Separately packaged components.
Merlin: I get a deli-tainer of broth sometimes with those half meatballs.
Merlin: I get a little bowl, and the bowl has the rice noodles and things like scallions in it, and then that might have the meat on top.
Merlin: And like I say, I pick out the tummy meats.
Merlin: I don't eat the tummy meats.
Merlin: But then you get a little baggie, and the baggie's got your bean sprouts, and it's got your cilantro, and it's got whatever those leaves are, and it's got a little tiny deletainer or some sauce that I never use, and it's got the little green pepper boys.
Merlin: And so what I love about that is, depending on how I'm feeling that day, I can deploy that pho according to my mood by mixing, matching, increasing, reducing any number of those ingredients that I want.
Merlin: And you know what I do?
Merlin: I'll add my own aftermarket lime juice from home.
Merlin: I'll do that.
Merlin: I'll add sriracha, I add soy sauce, and then I add some secret salt.
Merlin: You keep some lime juice at home.
Merlin: Love lime juice.
Merlin: Little lime juice take you a long way.
Merlin: In a little lime-shaped container?
Merlin: No, those are adorable.
Merlin: No, I get the regular 15-ounce bottle of lime juice.
John: Oh, like you'd have in a bar.
Merlin: Yeah, I use it in adult beverages.
Merlin: I use it in cooking.
Merlin: And I'll take lime juice.
Merlin: I'm going to say something controversial.
Merlin: I like lime juice more than lemon juice.
Merlin: And I feel like it gives more zazz per cubic milliliter.
Merlin: And so I'll zazz it up a little bit of lime juice.
Merlin: But the point is that I can also do this.
Merlin: So sometimes what I used to do is I'd get two fuzz and marry them.
Merlin: Marry the fuzz.
Merlin: Marry the fuzz because I wanted extra meat.
Merlin: Now you know what I do.
Merlin: I have some frozen steak in the freezer.
Merlin: I defrost it just the tiniest bit.
Merlin: I slice that.
Merlin: Slice that at home.
Merlin: I've got bonus ribeye.
Merlin: So it's not steakums.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: Although you probably could use steakums.
Merlin: I could, yeah.
Merlin: One of the kinds of meats they put on there is already a little bit like steakum.
Merlin: I think that's the well-done brisket.
Merlin: But what you do is a great trick is if you got some frozen steak, you defrost it just a tiny bit in the microwave, and that makes it perfect for slicing.
John: I have a couple of questions.
John: Yes, you there.
John: One, you said only sometimes do you get it with the half meatballs.
John: Do you not every time get it with the meatballs?
Merlin: This is a very good question.
Merlin: Depending on the day of the week, who's open, who's delivering, I choose from three different pho places.
Merlin: I have a preferred place.
Merlin: Ah.
Merlin: The Preferred Place has their top-of-the-line pho, which has the very rare, let's be honest, raw ribeye.
Merlin: It's got the brisket.
Merlin: They put in that little squid-like tripe business, and then they put in that disgusting, greasy, like, connective tissue meat, and I take all that out.
Merlin: Why do you not order it without those?
Merlin: Because that's a very good question.
Merlin: Now, the app that I use for this, it always comes down to apps.
Merlin: And the app does not allow you, if you start from scratch, you can only add one meat.
Merlin: Oh, get out of here.
Merlin: You get one, who wants one meat in soup?
Merlin: Come on.
Merlin: That's limiting my options and changing my deployment technologies.
Merlin: So you get the four meat and take out two of the meats?
Merlin: Yeah, something like the five, I guess, if you count the meatballs.
Merlin: Those little weird meatballs they always make, they're real weird, but I like them a lot.
Merlin: They're real like spongy.
John: The first time I ever had pho, the woman that was working there said, have you ever had this?
John: And I said, no.
John: And she said, scoot over.
John: And she sat down next to me and she prepared my pho for me.
John: But before that, she said, as I was ordering it, I was like, I don't know what this is.
John: And she said, well, I think you want the meatballs.
John: And I was like, of course I want the meatballs.
John: And she said, they're not...
John: Like normal meatballs.
John: They're not like the meatballs, you know.
John: And I said, what are they like?
John: And she said, they are, uh, they are spongy and crunchy.
John: And I was like,
John: Let's do it.
Merlin: It's not like the variegated Italian meatball.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: It's quite different.
John: Well, it's spongy and crunchy.
John: It's got some tooth feel to it.
John: Toothy.
John: It's toothy.
John: Okay, so...
John: So I had some other questions.
John: So you get the pho.
John: It's like it's your preferred place, but they don't let you mix and match.
John: And you're doing this through the app.
John: So it's not like you're just calling them on the phone and ordering the pho that you want.
Merlin: Correct.
Merlin: Because here's the thing about an app.
Merlin: An app, you know, it's made by the developers, the programmers.
Merlin: And so they make it a certain way.
Merlin: They like their little boxes that you tick.
Merlin: And I guess it has to be something that's communicable to a Vietnamese restaurant or any kind of restaurant.
Merlin: Really, there's all kinds of ways in which you can be sort of limited.
Merlin: You can't do like the off the menu type stuff.
Merlin: So, yeah, I order over, order, order over what I want a little bit.
Merlin: And then I pull back.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Is what I do.
John: But you find that if you combine two fuzz, you can get the fuzz you want.
Merlin: Yes, but it gets costly.
Merlin: And that's why I like to, again, in my deployment strategy, I like to say, what do I, a stone soup, what do I have to bring to this?
Merlin: And sometimes that's some beef.
Merlin: So I get bonus beef.
Merlin: You bring your own beef.
Merlin: Because here's the thing.
Merlin: If I'm buying a second pho to mostly get six ounces of beef, why don't I just cut up my own steak at home?
Merlin: Like a grown man.
Merlin: Are you all right?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I mean, I'm not trying to shame anybody.
Merlin: You should get the pho that you want.
Merlin: But there's no need for me to be ordering two soups on the rig.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: I'm not going to use all that broth.
Merlin: I'm not a monster.
Merlin: Oh, well, yeah.
Merlin: Okay, so when you make Cheerios, you know the trick.
Merlin: You put Cheerios in a bowl, you know the trick.
Merlin: I'm not sure.
Merlin: Well, failing at other unified field theories for Cheerios, you put in enough milk so that they start to float.
Merlin: so when you see the level of the cheerios rise just a little bit that's a good amount of milk to start with so you get a you get a floater you get no it's not one floater you get they all float well they rise like the rising tide of an economy like that i think we were taught in those in those monstrous breakfast commercials as kids that you're supposed to really drown that stuff in milk and i don't like it as much i find that if i put in a floaty amount of milk
Merlin: That is a sufficient amount.
Merlin: I can always add more.
Merlin: It's like I tell my daughter.
Merlin: You can't heat up cold water.
Merlin: You can only cool off hot water.
Merlin: That's physics.
Merlin: And I think something very similar is happening with Cheerios.
Merlin: You ever try to heat up cold water?
Merlin: You ever try and do that?
Merlin: I do it all the time.
Merlin: Well, but you do a steady stream.
Merlin: If you're in a bath and you're enjoying a sandwich and a coffee and doing a crossword, you're regularly updating water that started out where you want.
John: Yeah, that's true.
Merlin: I'm saying my daughter thinks, oh, I'll put my hand under here.
Merlin: That feels too hot.
Merlin: And I say, uh-uh, you've got to account for the fact that that's a cold tub it's going into, which is going to cool off the water.
Merlin: That's physics.
Merlin: Absolutely, that's physics.
Merlin: She will not believe me.
Merlin: She'll be in college before she realizes this, and she will never credit me with this.
John: But one of the other things that I find that is physics is that you can, I think, in most places...
John: Without using the app, just order the pho that you want.
Merlin: And if you're at the restaurant, they can deploy their pho to your choosing.
John: Yeah, or you call them on the phone.
John: You get the pho.
John: You get the pho.
John: The pho you want.
Merlin: It's just the pho.
Merlin: It's just the pho.
Merlin: You know, I've heard that song for 30 years, and I still get a little confused about where it comes in.
Merlin: I love that.
Merlin: I used to play in a cover band on the reg, and I still get confused about where the drums come in.
Merlin: I love that about that song.
John: Well, and it's true for so much of the great Devo.
John: It's like, where am I now?
John: Where's the one?
John: Where's the one?
John: I mean, I asked that question, as you say, on the reg.
Merlin: I'm sorry, I said that twice.
Merlin: I'm banned from saying that for the rest of this episode.
Merlin: Yes, yes.
Merlin: A lot of your life, when you reach, especially by the time you reach middle age, you're very fully aware of this.
Merlin: You're asking yourself, where's the one?
Merlin: Where's the one?
Merlin: I know there's four of something here, but where's the one?
Merlin: Maybe.
Merlin: Maybe there's five.
Merlin: Maybe they flipped the switch.
Merlin: Maybe it's like a turn it on again, and you're not going to know for a pretty long time.
Merlin: Turn it on again.
Merlin: Try counting turn it on again.
John: It flips it around, doesn't it?
John: It flips it.
Merlin: Okay, you know what?
Merlin: God damn it.
Merlin: That's another one.
Merlin: What is that?
Merlin: What is that?
Merlin: I think it's like, isn't it like 15-4?
John: But he's playing... Yeah, but he's got the 2-4 going on the drums, and so it could be anything, right?
John: You could come in anywhere you wanted on that.
John: That's what's so beautiful about that.
John: Time signature, time signature.
Merlin: I want to say it's like 13 or 15.
Merlin: Oh, gosh.
Merlin: Oh, God.
Merlin: Can I read something from the United Science page?
Merlin: The song is characterized by a rhythmic... I think we've talked about this, but I don't care.
Merlin: The song is characterized by a rhythmic... This is a terrific song, by the way.
Merlin: If you have not gone back and re-listened to Turn It On Again in a while, treat yourself.
Merlin: It's an excellent shower song.
Merlin: The song is characterized by a rhythmic structure, uncharacteristically complex.
Merlin: All right, stop patting yourself on the back.
Merlin: The verse chorus sections alternate time signatures 6-4 to 7-4, paren 13-4.
Merlin: Beauty.
Merlin: See, 13-4, man.
Merlin: But it doesn't sound janky.
Merlin: I say this all the time.
Merlin: It doesn't sound janky in Prague.
John: Well, no, because you add, because as it says, it's divided up into 6-4, right?
John: Which is like...
John: 6'4", kind of.
Merlin: Yeah, it's like a reverse Vietnamese waltz.
Merlin: It's not actually a thing.
Merlin: But then 7'4".
Merlin: And so... Like that famous Dave Brubeck song, Take Six.
Merlin: Take Six.
John: So it just adds an extra.
John: But because he's like, because he's just pounding along and then he does a little fill and you're like, this all sounds very natural and normal and satisfying.
John: Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.
John: He doesn't leave you hanging out because it's not... Because Prague is just like...
John: Oh, check us out.
John: It's like they're just pointing at their package, right?
John: Like, check us out.
John: We're so smart.
Merlin: This is crazy.
Merlin: Nobody's ever going to get this.
Merlin: But let's be honest.
Merlin: You listen to a pop song, a pop song, and turn it on again, you could still very well, if you chose to count, you may still very much find yourself saying, where's the one?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Well, you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Another part of the world.
John: That's right.
John: Phil Collins is is I mean, it's hard to say that he's underappreciated because he's come around.
Merlin: You broke me and I've come around.
Merlin: Plus, he seems like a genuinely nice guy.
Merlin: So I take it all back.
John: Yeah.
Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Well, Billy Joel, it's all right.
John: We all have to go.
John: We all have to go through this.
John: You know, everybody's got to learn something.
John: Everybody's got to learn some time.
John: Clang.
John: You know, I did a, I did a cover of a, I did a couple of songs this past week, um, uh, by frightened rabbit to, uh, at a sort of memorial service.
John: Oh, that's nice.
John: And, uh, one of them, one of the songs has a, not an extra beat, but an extra clang.
John: Yeah.
John: Um, where they're doing the, you know, they're doing the accents like bump, bump, bump, bump, bump type of thing.
John: Yeah.
John: But the first time only leading in, uh, or, uh, what is it coming out of the first chorus leading into the first course?
John: No coming out of the first chorus.
John: They go bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump.
John: But they didn't add an extra beat.
John: They just take the accent over into the one of the following.
John: That doesn't feel like a one.
John: It feels like a four, right?
John: It feels like a five, right?
John: But they're just subtracting it from the verse that follows or from the measure that follows.
John: You can add or subtract anywhere you want.
John: It's your music.
John: And it's very smart.
John: And as I was covering it, I could never...
John: It was a thing, I'm sure, when they played it, they really had to think about it until it became natural.
John: Because it makes it sound complex when it's not, which is another really interesting choice.
John: I like to make things sound simple when they're complex, but to make them sound complex when they're simple is...
John: Also very smart.
John: Very smart.
John: It's interesting to learn someone else's songs.
John: I don't always do it.
John: I don't do it very often.
Merlin: I always admire the people who really learn the parts.
Merlin: I do the simple guitar version.
Merlin: I'll learn the basic version of something.
Merlin: My daughter and I wanted to play a song together.
Merlin: Her on ukulele and me on guitar.
Merlin: And every version of it I could find was in G-flat.
Merlin: And I didn't feel like doing a capo and transposing.
Merlin: And I just kept looking and looking like, can you just somebody post this in G?
Merlin: I don't have time for this.
Merlin: I can't do that.
Merlin: Because I'm not that guy.
Merlin: I'm not the guy who learns the part.
Merlin: But you're a little bit of the guy who learns the part.
Merlin: You get the gist.
Merlin: You learn the flavors, the texture, the taste.
John: I feel like what I'm trying to do is to just make it sound like I wrote it.
John: Oh, mm-hmm.
John: You know, play it the way I play it.
John: Because if I play it the way, if I go too far away from playing it the way I play it, then it just sounds like I'm just, I don't know, I'm trying to do something that I don't know how to do.
John: Yeah, you're wearing somebody else's pants.
John: Exactly.
John: I feel like whenever the Long Winters tried to do a cover, we always took that assignment very literally.
John: Like if you listen to our cover of In the Light, which we've described before.
John: That's a good one.
John: The Led Zeppelin.
John: We just did our version of it as close as we could to the Led Zeppelin version.
John: Because that was what seemed fun to us, right?
John: Like, let's just do a cover of this.
John: Like, see if we can do it.
John: See if we can learn it.
John: And then we listened to all the other songs on that album covered by all the other people.
John: And everybody's trying to do something smart.
John: Like, oh, we're going to get all experimental with these Led Zeppelin tunes.
John: And that's probably fun for them, although I don't think anybody wants to hear it.
John: You know, nobody wants to hear it.
Merlin: Sometimes that reverence can really...
Merlin: I mean, it can be very virtuosic, if that's a word, to be able to pull it off.
Merlin: And it's kind of cool to hear that you're interpreting it, but within the bounds of the original.
Merlin: It's a respectful cover, but you're not just trying to ape it and take the mickey out.
John: Yeah, I feel like anything, I guess, the number of great reimaginings of songs is pretty small, but when it's great, it's great.
John: I also feel now looking back that the songs that we've done, which are like
John: note-for-note covers are also not.
John: I mean, they seem somewhat pointless.
John: Like, when I hear those on the radio, where it's like, oh, it's Brooks and Dunn doing a note-for-note cover of a tune, I'm like, well, we already had that song, so why do we need... Yeah, we don't need another version of somebody trying to exactly replicate Landslide.
John: And that was my problem, I think.
John: When I look back at the attempts that the Longwinners have made to cover other artists...
John: I mean, when we did that John Flansburg song, we kind of rocked it up.
Merlin: I was just going to say, that's one you made your own.
John: Yeah, we kind of long winters-ifieded it.
Merlin: Because his is more like, not a torch song, but much more low-key.
Merlin: Like, don't you think?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It's almost a little loungy.
John: Yeah, he's trying to be, you know, smooth.
Merlin: And you rocked it.
John: We got up on the front of it.
John: But I don't feel, you know, it's funny, and maybe I mentioned this before, but
John: In all the years of our friendship, Flansburg has never mentioned that cover to me.
John: He's never said like, good job, or like, oh, you remember when you covered that song?
John: He's a specter.
Merlin: He's a specter.
Merlin: He's a cipher.
Merlin: That guy is hard to get.
Merlin: No, in a good way.
Merlin: That guy's got a lot going on all the time.
John: He has a very active mind.
John: He's a busy, busy person.
Yeah.
Merlin: He DM'd me about a solution for my nasal problem, and I'll be eternally grateful.
Merlin: He dungeon mastered you?
Merlin: He dungeon mastered me to say, I was listening to your show, and you should try this saline spray that my doctor recommended.
Merlin: And I did it, and I want to say thank you, John Flansburg.
Merlin: Was this recently?
Merlin: Yeah, it works a treat.
Merlin: It just sprays a huge amount of salt water way far up your nose, and then it just opens up.
Merlin: It's so great.
Merlin: It's so great.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: Put yourself in my shoes.
Merlin: Is it warm?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: no no no it's just it's in a it's not one of those afferent style like squeeze bottles it's like an aerosol with a long pointy end it goes oh dear oh no it gets in there it really gets in there oh heavens to betsy isn't that going to hurt your brain i don't know i don't know how far it goes according to him more of your head is sinus than you think is the thing he said oh believe me and when he said that i immediately understood what he meant oh for sure i'm talking out of school but i just want to say thank you listener john
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John: You know, that being...
John: There was a time, I don't want to get too into it, because I know this is a family show.
John: I've got a lot more to say about music, too.
John: One time, my sinuses are problematic for me.
Merlin: I think this is a new thing.
Merlin: I think this is like the new braces or the new autism.
Merlin: Everybody's got sinus problems now.
Merlin: I don't think that's always what used to be the case.
Merlin: They're more of your head than you think.
Merlin: Landsberg's exactly right.
Merlin: That's a way homer.
Merlin: You really think about that, you've probably got more sinus than brain.
John: I have felt that for sure.
John: And there was one special moment, I'll never forget it, one special moment where I had a very bad sinus experience.
John: where my head probably had an extra 13 pounds of, uh, materiel in it.
John: And then, uh, and then I was like, I was doing that thing where you're like trying to, you don't know whether to try and suck in or blow out, you know, like something up or down, find the one shaking your head.
John: I was walking down the street with a girl.
John: Um, and I was, you know, getting, I was over the cold.
John: Now I just had this like, um,
John: this cloddle stop within my whole self and um and uh and i was like trying to get you know this is terrible like you're doing some patois of an african language yeah and the thing is uh well we've told you before don't don't eat while you're listening to the show so i'm not you know i don't i apologize for nothing yeah
John: But at one at one moment, if you can imagine if you can imagine a cavern like a cave system where perhaps some some like
John: Thai Boy Scouts are trapped in a lower level.
John: But it's blocked out by like a beholder, like a slimy beholder.
John: Yeah, that's exactly right.
John: Like Slimer from Ghostbusters, except he's expanded to fill an entire cave system.
John: Yes.
John: And then it all, and here it is, if you don't, you know, trigger alert.
John: If you want to go to the kitchen now, this is your time.
John: But it all came unglued from the sides of
John: At once.
John: It went.
John: And I could feel it.
John: I could feel my head.
John: Everything just like.
John: There was a release.
John: There was a clearing.
John: Right.
Merlin: But now it's got to go somewhere.
John: Yeah, there was air moving around the outside of it.
Merlin: Oh, I know this feeling.
John: But there was still a Cthulhu inside of this giant sinus cage.
John: cavern cavern and then it all just like found a way found a path and I had I stopped on the side of the road and I turned away because I didn't want this girl to be a part of I wanted to spare her this yeah private moment but then you know basically like something from an aquarium mm-hmm
John: came out of me and I still, I still, um, you know, and came out like, you know, but the kind of thing that's got like a personality when it comes out.
Merlin: Oh yeah.
Merlin: Well, it represented two and a half weeks of my life.
Merlin: Like a substantial, a substantial citizen, like somebody who does Toastmasters.
Merlin: There's like a thing, a sentient bit of eldritch horror that chooses to come out.
John: Yep.
John: And little, little tendrils were still kind of holding on and then they sort of peeled off and then, uh, and it came out of my mouth and I still, I rejoice about it to this day.
John: It was like,
John: I've never gotten over a cold so instantaneously from all the way bad to all the way fine in one glorious moment where I didn't understand.
John: Because all of a sudden I could feel every...
Merlin: every centimeter every cubic centimeter of my sinuses it all you feel the air rushing over parts of your internals you didn't know it ever been exposed oh so wonderful it's kind of like your alien uh transport reconstruction program right like uh yeah like like transport me break down all my cells and then rebuild me with just the good parts over here and then just leave this pile of detritus at the bottom
John: Please, aliens, please.
John: I just want a fresh start.
John: Can we not do that?
John: Just like everything, all the scar tissue gone, all of the like corpuscles or whatever that are clogging up my joints.
Merlin: Things you may not be aware of until they become a thing.
Merlin: But like every little pinched nerve, every little cot elbow, all that stuff, it all ends up on the spaceship floor.
Merlin: Wouldn't that be wonderful?
Merlin: God, I would just kill.
Merlin: Well, it's sort of like my thing where I wish I could just sleep for a month.
Merlin: I feel like if I just slept for one month, I would feel 20% better.
Merlin: And all I really need is like 30 contiguous days of sleep.
Merlin: Just a system reboot.
John: If you picked up the phone and could call the aliens and say...
John: I want one thing.
John: I'm ready.
John: One thing, though.
John: Not everything.
John: You don't go over me with a whole scanner and you fix everything.
John: All I get is one thing fixed.
John: What would the thing be?
Merlin: Physically.
Merlin: Yep.
Merlin: They're just going to scan your body.
Merlin: I have a lot of mental things I could use a tweak on.
Merlin: But for physical things, I miss the days of not realizing I have a body.
Merlin: Oh, do you know what I mean?
Merlin: Like the thing is you think about what's a good day now, what's a good day in your fifties, a good day in your fifties is like you get up and you don't feel like shit because you're not focused on this or that or that or that.
Merlin: I know that's very general.
Merlin: Um, but I, I don't know.
Merlin: I, you know, I gotta say the sinus thing would be up there.
Merlin: I'm in pretty good general health, except for all my problems.
Merlin: But like, I feel like in the sinus, if there have definitely been times when I'm like, I would totally get with Gleep Glorp if I could just breathe for a day.
Merlin: Because the thing is, I feel like if I had more oxygen, I'd think better.
Merlin: I think you would.
Merlin: I'm probably just a little bit deprived, a little bit oxygen deprived.
John: Because you never quite fill all the way up.
Merlin: I think so.
Merlin: Now, you, as Joni Mitchell said, you're covered with keloids from The Slings and Eras of Outrageous Romance.
Merlin: She stole it from Willie the Shake.
Merlin: Neither Bar nor Lender B, Romeo Romeo.
Merlin: But underrated Joni Mitchell record.
Merlin: The thing for you, would it be teeth?
Merlin: Would it be, like, knees?
Yeah.
Merlin: You get one reboot of a system.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: What are you going to take?
John: You just covered the two that first jumped to mind.
Merlin: So you notice, like right now, as you walk around today, you notice you have knees.
John: My knee, you know, I have a bad knee.
John: And now I've crossed over, and I always knew it would come.
John: I've crossed over to where I have favored my good knee for so long that now my good knee is starting to protest all the years that I've relied on it.
John: Um,
John: And it's starting to protest just as the bad knee is starting to really fail.
Merlin: This is literally the only thing I agree with those nutjob chiropractors about, which is that once you're off balance, the good side starts having to way overcompensate for the bad side, and it starts causing a new set of problems.
John: So when I went to the chiropractor about my bad back, he was like, look, your left leg is like 75% the size of your right leg.
John: That's their racket.
John: And I was like, well, yeah, all right.
John: But my left leg is very damaged by years and years of bad behavior, bad life.
John: I have to live with it.
John: I have to live with my choices, sir.
John: I'm not looking for a solution.
John: I should be punished.
Ugh.
John: But then my, my missing tooth is,
John: And the assorted other, you know, the other teeth that are damaged as a result of bad decisions in youth.
Merlin: Maxillofacial anomalies and mouth concerns.
John: Right, right.
John: From, you know, from all the blows, all the blows that were delivered upon me that also I probably deserved.
John: You should be punished.
John: I should be.
John: I deserve unenjoyment, as Mike Squires once said to me.
John: He's a friend.
Merlin: He's always there.
Merlin: Always there to help out.
John: If I could choose one, teeth or knee or knees.
John: Oh, boy.
John: You know, they're both major, major, like...
John: disabilities, but they're not all the way to like, like a disability where I'm, where I, I just can't, I can't perform maximally.
John: What would you, what would you think between teeth and knees?
Merlin: Well, it's super interesting because I think about things like there are, I have to say the first thing that comes to mind, honestly, is the things that I don't have or don't have often where like we have friends with chronic migraines and
Merlin: And I know that if I got migraines any more than once every couple years, I damn sure would want the migraines to go away.
John: We have a friend with chronic migraines that it's truly disabling.
Merlin: Yeah, well, there's Jesse and there's a lady that I follow on Twitter who gets them, I think, like three or four times a week.
Merlin: Like debilitating, like just life-changing, life-altering headaches.
Merlin: And they're so bad.
Merlin: I've only had half a dozen in my whole life, but they were really not fun.
Merlin: My mom had them too.
Merlin: And I don't get them that often.
Merlin: I think it is for me, as my friend Alex would say, situational.
Merlin: I think it has to do with stuff like, you know, it could just be I had too much chocolate and wine or something like that.
Merlin: The worst migraine I ever had was when we were touring wine country, and I really thought I felt like I wanted to die.
Merlin: So there's ones like that.
Merlin: And then, of course, you've got the more biblical things, like I'd like to be able to walk and stuff like that.
Merlin: But the interesting thing between the knee and the mouth, on the one hand, you think, okay, well, the mouth stuff, you should be able to all get fixed mostly without extensive surgery.
Merlin: And like they told you about your knee, right?
Merlin: Well, you know, believe me, whatever they replace it with is not going to be better than what you got.
Merlin: Get used to it.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: The thing about the mouth is the mouth is very personal.
Merlin: And it's rarely, there's rarely any mouth stuff that doesn't have knock-on effects where like, if you get one thing wrong with your mouth, it feels like everything's wrong with your mouth.
Merlin: Like when you get a canker sore, you just become one big mouth, right?
Merlin: Cold sore, anything like that.
Merlin: So I don't know.
Merlin: I mean, I have to say, I would, I'm not you, I don't have your knee, but I think the knee is a contender.
Merlin: That's, that's a contender.
Merlin: Now, as you sit here today, what do you think?
John: Well, the thing about the knee, because both of these things are not now total problems, but what the, what the knees are going to do is they're going to slow me down so that when I'm, you know, 20 years from now, I'm going to be walking with,
John: with a gate that's like my dad had, which is like, ha, ha, ha, here I come.
John: I know that gate.
John: Maybe get one of those canes with the tennis balls on it.
John: I mean, not that bad, but my dad was a jock, right?
John: He played tennis until he was 80.
John: He's rolled down a hill.
John: He definitely has rolled down a hill as an old man.
John: But because of his knees, he didn't quite have bounce.
John: You know, he had to...
John: he had shuffle like he could go he could play tennis he could go from foot to foot but there was he was tentative because of the knees right and that tentativeness slows you down it makes you old it makes you seem older but 20 years from now the my mouth like oh yeah it's tough the problem is lately and i don't i i haven't really talked to anybody about this but i've been having anxiety attacks you
John: Yeah.
John: And I never had them ever before in my life.
John: You mean like a near panic attack?
John: Yeah.
John: Oh, John, that sucks.
John: I had one in the middle of the night the other night because I was starting to get sick and my ears started to clog and my sinuses started to clog.
John: I could feel it happening and I knew it was going to happen.
Merlin: People say that's one of the physical things you feel is that like it could be that your heartbeat is very high or that you are going to be denied of breath.
Merlin: And that that becomes part of whatever it is you're anxious about, what it becomes is a physical sensation you can't unhook from.
John: Right.
John: And I knew that this was the beginning of at least a week or 10 days where I wasn't going to have
John: access to my sinuses or my ears or, you know, and I started to feel claustrophobic and I, and then I started to, and then it started to ramp up.
John: Well, this is all brand new.
John: I mean, I never, I never had a single panic attack until the first one was about a year ago.
John: Um, and then it was like, Oh, I didn't have one for six or nine months.
John: And then I had another one.
John: And now because I've had a couple, now I'm afraid of them.
John: That's the thing.
Merlin: This is a thing.
Merlin: That's a real thing.
Merlin: I told you about this book like three months ago, and I won't sell it to you again.
Merlin: But the basis of this book is it's for people with anxiety, but it's really for people with panic attacks and people with the idea of what you're describing.
Merlin: This one woman in particular who's a highlight in the book is like this whole chain of anxieties that go into her being on a plane.
Merlin: But at the end of the road, it's ultimately she feels like she will die on a plane because she can already so imagine the feeling of being on a plane in the back row and starting to think she can't breathe.
Merlin: And now she's worried she's going to freak out and be embarrassed.
Merlin: And there's this whole constellation, a kind of cascade of anxieties and meta anxieties that then just lead to more anxiety.
John: Yeah, in my case, it is that I'm going to, that I'm going to have a bag over my head in the back of a police car with my hands cut behind me.
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John: so that wasn't a one-time thing no no no oh john i'm so sorry it's a constant thing um so so uh so i really don't like that and now i've been thinking about it recently because you know i'm missing my front tooth at the moment still yeah and i need because i don't want to deal with it and one of the problems now is that if i
John: in order to deal with it i have to go to the dentist and in order to go to the dentist i have to be in a chair not strapped down but with a bunch of shit in my mouth and and people hovering over me and a feeling that you can't escape and i don't want any of that and so i've been avoiding going to the dentist because i don't want
John: Because, because of this panic that has descended upon me and I don't, I'm just like, look, nothing's going to happen.
John: You've been to the dentist a thousand times, but I'm like, I know, but what if I'm in the dentist chair and then they put a bag over my head and then throw me in a cop car.
John: So the idea that I could have the UFOs
John: Just like fix all the things so I never have to go to the dentist again.
John: I think I would take the, at least now, I would take the shuffling gate of a little old man over...
John: However many dozens of times I'll have to go to the dentist again before I finally shuffle off this mortal coil.
Merlin: I think that is, in our speculative fiction version, I think that you may have chosen well.
John: Yeah, thank you.
John: Thank you.
John: Yeah, I mean I'm trying I'm trying now because when I was I had so this panic attack I had in the middle of the night I really was panicking like I was I was pacing up and down I couldn't lay down in bed pacing up and down four o'clock in the morning I was trying to think of someone I could call on the phone and there's nobody you can call at four in the morning and say I'm having a panic attack like there's not a living soul who wants to hear that and so I went online and
John: and made the colossal mistake of Googling panic attack.
John: It seems so sensible.
John: I was just like, well, maybe Google will help me here.
John: And every single Google or every single result was like,
John: A panic attack is when you feel a constriction in your breath and your throat and then you start.
John: And I was like, you are not helping.
John: Every single thing I read was just a description of how bad a panic attack can be.
John: And so I, you know, I had to throw my phone across the room.
John: None of the web pages were trying to talk you down.
John: That's kind of what you needed.
John: Yeah, you feel like the first result of panic attacks should be, shh, everything's fine.
John: You're going to be fine.
John: It's fine.
John: You survived all of this, and here you are.
John: Yeah, look, no one's putting a bag over your head.
John: Nothing is fucked here, dude.
John: You're not going to die in a plane crash.
John: There's no dentist here.
John: You're going to be fine.
John: And that is not what you find, right?
John: You find a bunch of people on WebMD who are like, when I have a panic attack, I sometimes shit my pants.
John: No, no.
John: Leave it.
John: No, thank you.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Next result.
Merlin: but you know like see do you think that's maybe how they get you not to change the topic but don't you think it's a little maybe how they get you how they get you how they get you is like somebody comes in looking for some consolation but first they got to ramp it up before they're going to give you some nonsense non-solution well so i never made it to the bottom of any of those pages i was just like nope nope nope close close and i was like you know what you know who your friend is here solitaire
John: Solitaire doesn't judge you.
John: Solitaire does not want anything from you.
John: Solitaire is just there.
John: Just play me.
John: Just play me.
John: Just play me.
John: And if you get to the end and you didn't solve it, play another one.
John: We're not counting.
John: No, it's just a card game.
John: It's just a card game.
John: And so I did that.
John: I did it until I was so exhausted that I could, you know, just briefly like lay down and feel like, okay, all right, all right, all right, all right.
John: But, you know, this is not on brand for me.
John: Panic attack is not.
John: is not like, uh, on brand, but I started thinking I've always been claustrophobic and what got me going,
John: was at one point, I think along the way, I said, well, you know, nobody could ever throw me into an open grave.
John: Like, I'm not somebody who's going to allow my, I'm never going to go into a cave headfirst.
Merlin: First, you're going to have to get John from the primary location.
Merlin: It had to be a secondary location, and there'd have to be a lot of people.
Merlin: And once you've seen the grave, you're going to be real careful about who's pushing.
Merlin: Oh, for sure.
Merlin: There's a lot of steps, a lot of steps.
John: I'm not going to go out into a cornfield with a bunch of mobsters and stand right on the edge of a grave and look down into it and go, who's ending up in here?
John: Let's play a funny game.
John: But here's the problem.
John: Now I have a kid.
John: And so I say, well, I'm never going to go into a low cave.
John: Well, what if my kid got in there and got stuck?
John: Well, so now I would go into that cave.
John: Now you're thinking about caves.
John: So what if my kid goes in and gets stuck and then I go in and get stuck?
John: And so I started to do this.
John: What happens if a mobster has my kid and says, come over here and stand next to this open grave?
John: Of course, I'm going to do it because of my kid.
John: What if a cop says, I'm going to put a bag over your head and stick you in the back of this cop car or something bad is going to happen to your kid.
John: And so every one of those scenarios now involves me having...
John: in my imaginarium having to make a choice between protecting my daughter and being put into a claustrophobic situation and that is like so then i've given my brain license to come up with 10 000 of those scenarios and play every one of them out where i am basically constricted unable to breathe unable to get my hands up to my face even
John: And all of them are, every one of them is terrible.
John: And then I freak out.
John: Now, I'm sure people are listening to the show.
John: And they're like, look, I had to put my sandwich down because of what you were talking about earlier.
John: And now you're making me have a panic attack.
Merlin: This is the problem of the human creative mind.
Merlin: Is that once that door opens, that door just gets bigger and bigger.
Merlin: And a lot more doors open.
Merlin: And then it just becomes this little game of like, how much worse can I make this for myself?
Merlin: At least in my experience.
Merlin: But I don't want this.
Merlin: i don't want this i want something else nobody wants it but you feel like you have to it because it's still i one theory of mine is because it is still mostly an inchoate fear you you you feel the need to make it more real by coming up with more scenarios plausible and otherwise right and you don't want to do that nobody wants to do that that's not fun uh no it's not so
John: So, you know, and I talked about this to my psychiatrist, and of course, of course, of course.
Merlin: They got an answer for everything.
John: Yeah.
John: He said, oh, well, all you need is this.
John: And he gave me some blue pill that I'm supposed to take.
John: Here, get this.
John: I'm supposed to take it when I feel a panic attack coming on.
John: I'm like, that's not what I needed.
John: I needed it a half an hour before a panic attack started coming on.
John: But also, I don't want drugs.
John: I don't want to take drugs for things.
Uh-uh.
Uh-uh.
John: So, mindfulness.
Merlin: Mindfulness.
Merlin: I guess.
Merlin: Mindfulness doesn't feel like what you need when you're going through that.
John: No.
John: No.
John: No.
John: I mean, this is all something that obviously has to get fixed because I can't keep going.
John: I can't keep going like this.
John: So something, I have to just solve this.
John: That's going to reduce the panic feeling in me for sure that I have to solve this immediately.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But when you're in the throes, not to trigger anybody, but when you're in the throes of that, that does not even feel like an option.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Because, I mean, I almost made a joke of like, well, you know, whether it's the dentist or the panic attack or the whatever, that means I have to like go find somebody's phone number and talk to them on the phone.
Merlin: Like there's so much stuff where it sounds so dumb, but it's not even, I mean, that's, that's trivial, but there's just this sense of like, I just don't want to talk to someone about this.
Merlin: I don't, I mean, like, let's take something as seemingly simple as a dental problem.
Merlin: I don't want to talk to a dentist.
Merlin: I don't,
Merlin: I don't want to get, and then of course I want a shame free dentist.
Merlin: I want a shame free medical team.
Merlin: I want somebody who just goes in, tells me what needs to happen.
Merlin: But like, so, and you people who don't have this problem will fuck off.
Merlin: But like, there's this whole thing of like this, like, well, now let's revisit all of your terrible decisions before we help you.
Merlin: And it's like, I know my terrible decisions.
Merlin: That's why I don't go to the dentist.
Merlin: or you know what i'm saying like i do there's just this this sense of like i don't know i mean i'm not sure who you call when you're in a mood like that because they're you know maybe they're going to minimize it maybe they're going to give you a check on the shoulder or maybe they say well okay yeah that sucks that you're having that let's talk about all your problems it's like oh no oh no don't i don't i don't want to do that i don't know i just want to not feel like this the healthy people hear that they go oh that's silly
Merlin: Well, yeah, I'm sure there are a lot of people.
Merlin: The example that always comes to mind for me is people who don't procrastinate versus people who do.
Merlin: And the people who don't procrastinate look at the people who do procrastinate and they're just like, well, you could just do it.
Merlin: I'm like, this seems that way, doesn't it?
Merlin: It's like, because you don't have that.
Merlin: So it's like you, you know, it's almost like, you know, a difference in the colors you're able to see in the world, your ability to perceive what this thing could be like.
Merlin: If you feel like you're the baseline and you're the norm, like all you can see is the brokenness and other people who don't have that moored sense of okayness.
John: You know, my mom said something interesting the other day because I've been, you know, I've been feeling, um,
John: I've been feeling a little bit quick to anger and I think it's because of my, because I'm anxious and I really am.
John: You know, I'm not just, it's not just anxiousness in the form of being worried about somebody putting a bag over my head and putting me in a cop car.
John: It's a, it's just, there's a, I have a lot going on right now that is making me anxious and I'm not, I'm not dealing with anxiety very well.
John: And so I have, and so what, what's happening is it's making me quick to, uh, to snap at people where I'm like, um, you know, get off my back type of type of snapping.
John: Uh, when people, when people are lecturing me or when, you know, when people are picking at me.
John: And so I, I snapped at my mom the other day and she was like, what's the matter with you?
John: You know, cause this has happened before.
John: This was the
John: Years ago, she really jumped on me when I snapped at her.
John: This is 10 years ago.
John: She was like, you better get your shit straight.
John: And when she does that, you know, it makes an impact on me because she doesn't usually like read you the riot act.
John: But she was like, what's your problem?
John: And I said, well, you know, I just I feel like I judge myself so harshly.
John: And just like my...
John: Just like my bipolar disorder was a nightmare for me for 15 years before I finally did something about it.
John: Now I feel like this self-abnegation, this like self-hatred is, you know, I'm right at the edge of not being able to deal with it anymore.
John: Like I just cannot keep living like this.
John: But what it does is it makes me, I also feel judged.
John: You know, I'm not just judging myself, but now I feel like I... Aren't you sort of preemptively judging yourself?
Merlin: Like any area where you feel, well, maybe I'm projecting here, I think any area where you feel vulnerable, you're likely to already have focused that in your world of anxiety.
Merlin: Like you've told, believe me, I'm already thinking about that.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Oh, well, for sure.
John: And...
John: And also, like, it's surprising.
John: I mean, one of the things that I decided years and years ago was that I was going to be generous with praise.
John: When a friend of mine or somebody close to me did something good, even small.
John: It didn't cost anything.
John: I would say, like, hey, that was great.
John: You know, good job.
John: I really liked what you did there.
John: I really, you know, I appreciate...
John: I appreciate that you were being nice there or, you know, I really loved your, I loved your book or your song or, or even really small stuff.
John: Just like, just like try to congratulate people and say nice things to people, uh, all the time.
John: Cause it doesn't cost anything.
John: And it really is.
John: I think it's really nice.
John: Even when, um,
John: And even when people are like, oh, no, or they don't respond at all, like it doesn't hurt me.
John: I'm not doing it to get a reaction.
John: You're not saying it for clapping.
John: Yeah, I'm not saying it because I'm a hero, right?
John: But I have found as the years have gone by that people don't do it very much.
Yeah.
John: Um, I go through phases where all I want is an attaboy and on the internet, we get it.
John: You and I get it.
John: People write in all the time and say like, you know, Hey, I love your show.
John: Like, good job.
John: And, and that stuff is, is nice.
John: But like,
John: from my family, from my friends, from my closest people.
John: Oh, God, I hate how much I know what you're talking about.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Did you notice this thing I did?
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I do that all the time.
Merlin: It's so incredibly needy.
Merlin: It's so desperately needy.
Merlin: I don't know if it's the same flavor as what you've got, but I'm like, I want somebody to acknowledge that it's such a middle-aged man affliction, and I know what a middle-aged man affliction it is, because we've reached the age...
Merlin: We kind of disappear.
Merlin: I'm not trying to be all Lindsey Graham here, but our job is to just do the stuff.
Merlin: Just go do the stuff, and the stuff gets done, but you don't get a ribbon.
Merlin: And sometimes you want a little ribbon.
John: And most of the time, everybody around is just trying to deal with problems.
John: And your job, you're there to help with those problems.
John: And you notice when problems don't get dealt with, because those are the things...
John: those are the things that people point out like, Oh, you know, we're late or, Oh, it's, you know, the house is on fire again or whatever.
John: And you don't, nobody, nobody really.
John: And, and, and me in particular, I think because I project so much, um, so much sort of internal confidence, what appears to be a lot of confidence.
John: So I don't, I'm not walking around saying like,
John: am I a good boy?
John: You know, I'm just kind of getting stuff done.
John: And, and I feel, I feel like I think to other people, I feel like I'm fine.
John: Um, so I said to my mom, like,
John: You know, you, you and, and, and most of my people, most of my friends don't, um, you know, I just don't get very many attaboys, like hardly any, in fact, almost, almost to zero.
John: And I mean, when I play a song at a show, my family, if they're there, will come up after and say like, you did great.
John: Like that was a great song.
John: And I think partly they know that that's something baked in, like you have to say, good job.
John: But also I think my family likes my music, so they're genuine when they say it.
John: But a lot of the work that I do is, well, it's just exactly like you and everybody we know.
John: It's work that seems like it's kind of not work.
John: It seems like doing the things that we do, it's sort of fun or easy.
John: And a lot of the things I'm bad at are the things that everybody else feels like are markers of competence.
John: So...
John: Every morning I wake up and I come downstairs and my house is a mess and all these projects are unfinished and I've got, you know, I built a mountain out of mashed potatoes, but I don't know what I'm trying to get at.
John: And so I feel every minute of every day, my incompetence is really visible and on display.
John: And my mom has exactly the opposite.
John: She has such tremendous competence.
John: Does she feel that way?
John: Well, so... Would she describe herself as competent?
John: She cannot escape it, right?
John: I mean, she would, absolutely.
John: She's kind of a competence machine from the outside.
John: She is.
John: Her taxes are done January 1.
John: Her, you know, like... She doesn't have any unfinished mashed potatoes.
John: She does not.
John: And no bill has ever gone to collections with her.
John: You know what I mean?
John: Like, never a single time.
John: She's never...
John: you know, like this type of thing, like competence to, to the extreme.
John: My mom can, if, if, uh, if you break a key in your lock, my mom will come over and change your locks for you.
John: Like, you know, like this kind of competence.
John: Right.
John: Yeah.
John: And I said, I, you know, I can do, I can do things.
John: If you said, go build a house, I would build you like a pretty shabby
John: Well, not shabby cause I'm a meticulous carpenter, but I'm not a great engineer, but I would build you a thing.
John: I can change the locks on your house.
John: Like I know how to do those things.
John: I just would never get around to it because it's like, you know, I'm working on this mashed potato thing.
John: I'll get to the locks soon.
John: And when I do something, when I, when I get something done, like that's in that family of like, Oh, I got to go out and run that extension cord out to that charger and put the charger on the thing.
John: And when I do it,
John: I'm like, yay me.
John: Look at that.
John: I did that thing.
Merlin: 100%.
Merlin: In my case, did you all see all the steps that I took and knew how to do in order?
Merlin: Do you understand?
Merlin: I changed our sink aerator.
Merlin: I put new bolts on the rocking chair.
Merlin: You guys didn't even notice.
Merlin: I went to the store and I bought bolts.
Merlin: I went and I specked them out.
Merlin: I got the bolts.
Merlin: They're real tight.
Merlin: I did a real good job and nobody even noticed.
John: My office chair that I bought – because I bought matching office chairs for my podcast studio here for Ken and now Adam to sit – they sit in a nice chair over there and I sit in a chair over here.
John: And our chairs are the exact same ones that they use on America's Got Talent or something.
John: Wow, nice.
John: Yeah.
John: But the problem is when I was buying them, I looked at it and it said –
John: These chairs are rated up to 250 pounds.
John: And I was like, hmm.
John: That's right on the line for me.
John: Right?
John: Like, Ken is probably 170.
John: Adam's probably 175.
John: Most of the people I know are in that 180 range.
John: 250, you say.
John: That's rated all the way to 250.
John: They rated it that, yeah.
John: Well, I'd better not have a lot of receipts in my wallet.
John: Because that may tip me over.
Merlin: You've got to put on a lightweight chemise.
Merlin: Take off all that heavy lumberjack clothing you wear.
Merlin: Just have a little blouse.
Merlin: Just wear a little long blouse.
John: Yeah, I better take the Pendleton off and put on a little blouse.
John: Take off these glasses.
John: Every ounce counts.
John: And also, like, I'm a lean back in the chair person.
John: Like, I'm hard on chairs.
John: You explore the space, for sure.
John: Well, I do, because, you know, when you're carrying around 250 pounds, you want to, like, you know, you want to take a load off every once in a while.
John: Sure.
John: Well, sure enough, the chair starts to have a problem.
John: And I look at the chair from the side, and I look at the other chair, the one that Ken and Adam sit in, that's just meticulous, right?
John: Yeah.
John: And I'm like, my chair no longer looks like their chairs.
John: It has deformed.
Merlin: What's it been, like a year, year and a half?
John: No, no.
John: How long?
John: Well, I think it's been six months.
John: When did you hear that my chair stopped squeaking?
John: Because I had that squeaky chair for a while that everybody really liked.
Merlin: I have to be very still in mine.
Merlin: Or does this.
Merlin: Well, I like it.
Merlin: I like a squeaky chair.
Merlin: That ain't no America's Got Talent chair, that's for sure.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: I bought it before that was on the air for Shizzle.
John: I'm rocking in my chair right now.
John: It's making not a sound.
John: So what I did is I took the middle of the night, I took the chair apart.
John: And I saw where my 250 pounds plus a wallet and a pencil.
John: It's clear on the edge.
John: You're close to that.
John: You're probably not over that.
John: No, but I think I'm 240, but when I lean back, I'm adding additional stress.
John: Okay, you had a stone.
John: And what happened was the metal...
John: The actual metal bar bent.
John: You fatigued your chair.
John: I did.
John: And once it bent, it had metal fatigue.
John: And so I sat there and I thought about it.
John: I thought about it.
John: I thought about it.
John: I do not have the metalworking ability to put like a steel bar in there as support.
John: But I went out to the barn and I got two really big, like,
John: you know, three inch diameter metal washers.
John: And I brought them back in and I wrenched it all back together.
John: And it was one of those projects where there was going to be so much like tension on the whole system that I had to lay on the floor, put my, put both feet against one part of the chair, pull it all the way with the, with my arms and then hold it while I stuck the bolt in and ratcheted it
John: solid, right?
John: And I had to do that a couple of times, like use my entire body to bend this thing into submission.
John: And when I got done, it worked.
John: It was solved.
John: You fortified the chair.
John: I fortified it.
John: And now I'm sitting in it.
John: I'm trying to like squeak out another six months before the whole thing, you know, like explodes underneath me and like an ejection seat sends me up through the roof of my DB5 and
John: Um, but it was four o'clock in the morning and I looked around, you know, and I walked over to the hat rack and I grabbed the hat rack, you know, from behind cause I have a jacket and some hats on it and, you know, kind of, it can, it can scare somebody that's not thinking because it kind of looks like a person.
John: I grabbed it from behind, and I shook it, and I went, attaboy, good job.
John: And I was like, thanks.
John: Thanks, buddy.
John: Thanks, Dad.
John: You know, and it's those little things.
Merlin: Does it have a name?
Merlin: The hat rack?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I mean, when you're interacting with it as a father figure, does it have a name?
John: Oh, Sweetums.
Merlin: Mr. Jenkins or something?
John: Yeah, Sweetums.
John: Mr. Sweetums.
Merlin: Thanks, Sweetums.
John: Thanks, Sweetums.
John: But I said to my mom, I was like, look, you know, you're so good at everything.
John: You take care of everything.
John: And I am fucking useless.
John: I can't take care of anything.
John: And so every day when you walk through here and, you know, and I mean, forget about ever saying attaboy, you walk through here and you just, you have this look on your face of like, like, and it's not that my house is gross.
John: I don't like leave bananas lying around.
John: It's just that there's all these unfinished projects.
John: And honestly, the mashed potatoes are a problem, but there are all these little projects on devil's tower.
John: So it's called devil's tower.
John: Yeah.
John: But she doesn't understand that a bin full of XLR cables sometimes needs to be in the center of the room because I'm trying to get those XLR cables from one mental space to another.
John: It's not that I'm taking them from one shelf to another.
John: I'm taking them from one organizational state to another.
Merlin: It's kind of an organizational DMZ.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: It has to pass through.
Merlin: It's like it's going through some kind of, like through an airlock.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: And it'll tell you.
Merlin: It'll tell you, I need to be over there.
Merlin: I need to just go now.
John: Right.
John: I'm going to sit here for a little bit.
John: I'm going to collect myself.
John: We're going to look at this again in a minute.
John: The thing is that you could replace every cable in that box for less than $100.
John: Right.
John: But in the meantime, like these cable, because a lot of them are historic, you know, a lot of them have done, they've done a yeoman's job.
John: Anyway, she doesn't, that's not how she thinks.
John: So she walks through and she looks at it and I can just see on her face that she's, I mean, and I am projecting, but I'm projecting like,
John: I see on her face like disdain for my father.
John: I see on her face like all these things.
John: And what it does is it contributes to my feeling that I'm a failure.
John: And so I said all this to her kind of in a, you know, like, I'm not, you know, I don't need any attaboys.
John: I just don't need every minute of every day to feel like I'm, you know, that I have like some kind of failure to launch.
John: And she said, you know, really uncharacteristically sensitively, because she's not usually maybe the one that is the most gentle.
Merlin: I would say she's, to put it in a somewhat value-neutral way, I would say she's direct.
John: She's direct, right.
John: But she said, look...
John: You know, don't judge yourself against me like I am hyper, hyper capable and you'll never be capable like I am.
John: But the thing is that capability that I have has always my whole life come at the expense of being able to do the things that you do.
John: which is make people feel good and make, you know, entertain people, make them happy, give them things to think about.
John: Like she said, I don't please people.
John: And so what I do do is make sure that all of the
John: windows are square or, you know, I make sure that the, the oil in the car gets changed on a regular basis.
John: That's an extraordinary amount of self knowledge.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, and it was, it was very, it was very gentle of her, um, in, in her way.
John: And it made me kind of walk away from it.
John: Um, going like, uh, right, right, right.
John: We say this to ourselves and to each other all the time.
John: Like,
John: We're not, you know, like the normals are never going to understand, um, what we do.
John: And we say, we say it to each other to reinforce that, like what we do is a job.
John: What we do is, um, is important.
John: And it's, you know, it's typically, it's typically like you and me, um,
John: Because by the time you're, by the time you're Hodgman or whatever, like he knows what he's doing is he knows what it is because he's being fairly compensated for it in one sense.
John: Um, but also like he's driven to, he's driven to make things a certain way.
John: But like those of us that have a lot of self doubt that, uh, when somebody says, Oh, well, you know, like come do this for free because your job is fun.
John: I did a thing for NBC Universal last week where they were filming a television show that's going to be broadcast on European television.
John: And they wanted to come to Seattle and they wanted to talk to a local Seattle guy.
John: And I spent a day with them.
John: taking them all over town, you know, and giving them, like, the full Seattle treatment.
John: You've had it.
Merlin: You know the full Seattle treatment.
Merlin: Oh, 100%.
Merlin: You know it all, and you leave out the boring stuff, and you're very good at it.
Merlin: You can explain docks in a way that might be surprisingly interesting to people.
John: Yeah, I like to talk about the docks.
John: And they had a full camera crew, you know, like 10 people.
John: We're walking through the center of Pike Place Market,
John: in the middle of the day, and they've got people that are parting the crowds, they've got lighting people, and we're walking, we're strolling at a strolling pace where I'm like, over here, you'll see that the guys that are throwing the fish, they're not just throwing the fish, they're throwing the heart of Seattle.
John: You know, just like horseshit.
John: But the type of thing that when Germans watch a television program about Seattle, they're gonna go, Ach du Lieber.
John: They're gonna go, Scheisse.
John: Yeah, Das ist, Das ist Seattle.
John: Das ist Seattle.
John: So we get about halfway through the day, we're down at the, we're down at the aquarium.
John: We're having a good old time.
John: And the host of the program, and it's kind of misty and raining and camera crew all around.
John: And the host of the program goes, well, you know, it's like, it's hard to believe that we're, we're able to live like so well and have such a great life and get paid.
John: And everybody goes, yeah, high fives.
John: And I was like, wait, the only person here that's not getting paid is me because they said it's not in the budget to pay the local guy.
John: Interesting.
John: You're being paid in European exposure.
John: I'm getting paid in exposure.
Merlin: I'm getting European exposure.
Merlin: It's a whole different monetary unit.
John: Oh, well, what I was getting paid in was opportunity.
John: Opportunity.
John: That maybe NBCUniversal was going to say, like, this guy, let's use him for something.
John: Let's use this guy with a missing front tooth.
Merlin: I hadn't thought of that.
Merlin: You're going to say this somehow bubbles up to the attention of an entirely different business unit that makes acquisition decisions about talent?
Merlin: Hey, who's that fellow?
John: Hey, that guy knows a lot about docs.
John: It's a Eurotunity.
John: And so, and I was just like, oh, they did it again.
John: Oh, they did it again.
John: I thought I had figured this out.
John: I thought I was completely immune to this now because you and I have been through this a million times.
John: We're not doing it for free anymore.
John: You're Charlie Brown and they're Lucy with the football.
John: And I'm going, and I was like, oh, well, this is fun.
John: Cause it came to me through a friend who was like, look, I know.
John: And it's a friend in the show business who said, look, man, I know that this is one of those things where, you know, you should be getting paid, but I'm telling you what, like do this for me.
John: And, and, uh, and it'll be great.
John: It'll end up being great.
John: And, and, uh, and I got to the end of the day and I was like, oh fuck, I just got ripped off.
John: Like I, I spent a, not just a full day of my life, but
John: Like, I gave them a better show than they could have gotten for any amount of money.
Merlin: If they had hired someone, you know, from some kind of a casting place, they would not have been able to do... You know, anybody that... Yeah, they couldn't have done it.
John: You could not get a better show than... You could not get a better tour of Seattle than the one I give...
John: And that's exactly what they wanted and needed.
John: And the entire production probably ran into the tens of thousands of more than that.
Merlin: At least, yeah.
John: To get all these people there and everybody, you know, there were like three producers.
John: There was a guy...
John: There was a guy who was like some executive producer from NBC.
John: I bet there was a line producer.
John: You probably had a grip or a boy.
John: Or a couple.
John: You got lighting people with gloves, probably.
John: They're all staying in a nice hotel.
John: They're all flying from place to place.
Merlin: And so in that whole thing, there was not... I bet they're getting paid with Eurodeutsches.
Merlin: Everybody is, right?
Merlin: And there's nobody there who's doing it for Seattle exposure.
Yeah.
John: right?
John: No.
John: And you could have given me, you could have given me five grand and it would have been just like, it would, it was like what they spent on craft services.
John: And I, yeah, I walked away like once again, like, Oh, right.
John: This is what I do is considered, um, what I'm good at is not considered as valuable as somebody that, um,
John: is just, you know, is just key coding.
Merlin: Or... Or for that matter, like somebody that used to be on, say, a Full House.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: Oh, for sure.
Merlin: You're not a recognizable face in that sense.
Merlin: Like the kind of person you'd see... Last night I was watching some old Disney specials from... God, the Walt Disney show that we used to watch as kids.
Merlin: It's just purely...
Merlin: promotion for other Disney properties it's farcical but like the kind of people you'd bring in to like open California Adventure you bring in like a Jim Neighbors or like a Lyle Wagner a lot Jim Neighbors yeah yeah but I mean like you're riding on some sort of facial recognition from you know a decade or two previously
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I mean, you are not, in fairness, that.
Merlin: But you do have expertise about docks in Seattle and fish.
John: I would not be in the Hollywood squares.
John: I never even got to be... Well, I never was even on At Midnight, which seems like they didn't... You know, the standard of who got to be on At Midnight.
Merlin: How hard is that?
John: You pick up a phone.
John: It wasn't that much higher than me, right?
John: I mean, it was a little bit higher.
John: Yeah.
John: Anyway, I just feel like...
John: How to get to a place where you never take one of those again unless you really want to.
John: Like I didn't do that because I believed in everything.
John: in NBC Universal's story.
Merlin: What was their framing of why this particular person was taking us on this tour?
Merlin: Obviously, it'll be in the edit.
Merlin: You probably don't know.
Merlin: But did you have a sense of how they're going to frame that?
Merlin: Is it like local crank John Roderick, or is it like singer-songwriter or what?
John: The person that is the host of the entire program is an Irish guy, a really nice Irish guy,
John: who is a rock musician or a folk musician of some kind.
Merlin: Did you recognize him?
John: I didn't know him, but that's never an indication.
John: But if you look at his CV, it's one sort of equivalent to mine.
John: I mean, I think he went out on tour with Elton John, so that's maybe a bigger...
John: Uh, like a, that's a bigger grab, um, than I ever, I ever had.
John: I never went out with Elton John, but he's a, you know, he's a working, he's a jobbing musician, but he's, but he's great looking.
John: He's got a beard.
John: He's got, he wears one of those floppy Irish guy hats.
John: Oh, I love a floppy Irish guy.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: He's smart and he's funny.
John: And so NBC universal somewhere along the line, they got this guy, uh,
John: as the host of the program.
John: And so he is going around America and,
John: And he's talking to people that are, you know, this is the conceit that they all have.
John: Like, they're going to show you the real thing.
John: They're going to take you where you wouldn't go otherwise.
Merlin: Somewhere gritty like the fish market.
John: Yeah, the Pike Place Market where no one ever goes when they visit Seattle.
John: Or the aquarium.
John: Just some gritty stuff.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Those little hard-to-find corners of Seattle.
John: Yeah, right.
John: Like the Space Needle or the airport.
Yeah.
John: And so that's where, you know, that's where I came in.
John: And and he didn't I don't think he knew I wasn't getting paid.
John: I think he thought I absolutely was because he was.
John: Um, it was just somewhere along the line, somebody in some, um, producer said, well, you know, we, we don't have a budget.
John: We don't have a budget for, for paying like local talent.
John: They just are going to do this because we'll have a budget for paying the people who work.
John: Yeah, we'll exactly.
John: We only have the budget for like me cause I'm standing there watching this happen.
John: Uh, and probably, you know, making $600,000 a year.
John: Um, um,
John: so i just when's it air you know who knows who knows i mean i got the i got at the end because they wanted me for one day and at the end of the first day they said oh well you got to be here for day two because like now the whole show uh hinges on you because you're like the you're the friend you're the friend we have here oh i see they're paying you in exposure but uh tipping you in compliments
John: Yeah, now you're the guy.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: You're the guy, John.
John: You're a dust guy.
John: We thought you were just going to be a regular guy, but now you're the guy.
John: You grew into this role.
John: You're not paid for.
John: And then as I was laying in bed at night.
Merlin: You're so critical to this.
Merlin: If only we could pay you.
Merlin: You're key.
Merlin: It's so bizarre.
Merlin: It's so bizarre.
John: Don't leave now.
Merlin: Your words don't make sense with actions.
John: They don't make sense.
John: They don't line up.
John: But that was the night that I had my panic attack.
Merlin: In between the two gig days.
John: Yeah, because I was getting sick.
John: And so at three o'clock in the morning, I wrote him and I said, you guys, like,
John: We spent all day out in the rain.
John: I don't think that's why I got sick, but I am sick now and I cannot spend another day wandering around in the rain.
Merlin: So they can shoot another day at B-roll.
John: Yeah.
John: And the unspoken thing was like, if you were paying me five grand, I might put on a hat.
John: You're not paying me hat money.
John: As it is, I'm not going to come out in the rain and make myself double, triple sick.
John: And I wouldn't have thought that if you hadn't been like, hey, you know, this was so amazing.
John: Like, let's double down on this.
Merlin: And you give us two free days of... It's almost like, I mean, it's almost like they stayed over at your house and then wanted to stay over another night.
Merlin: And you're like, well, what's going on here?
John: Like, that's... Yeah, they stayed over at my house.
John: They ate all my chili and then they complained there wasn't more chili.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: We just need another day of chili.
John: Oh, John.
John: But so...
John: Somehow, I was so grateful to my mom for saying a thing that we say to each other in order to try and bolster our decisions.
John: The first time you said to me, I'm not doing events at...
John: software companies anymore because I just, even the amount of money that they pay me isn't worth it for me.
Merlin: It's not worth, I mean, this sounds so, I mean, unfortunately, this is just a fact, is that if you account for, so if you only count for, if you only count the times that you got what you wanted in the time frame you wanted, like you, and you start assuming that that's the norm, you know what I'm saying?
Merlin: Like you say, oh yeah, I got the exact, I got the amount I wanted and even more, the amount of work and preparation for
Merlin: was uh was minimal it was not disruptive but that's not how life works the way life works is that people want to give you virtually no money to do huge amounts of work including the hidden work of like an extra day here and there and they want you to prepare for it and they want you to make a workbook and some dvds and all that kind of shit and then the thing is how many of those can you afford to even turn down
Merlin: I know that sounds bananas, but if people look at it like, okay, oh, this is the amount this person gets.
Merlin: They must get that every day.
Merlin: No, no, no, no, no.
Merlin: You get that twice or three times a year.
Merlin: And then you get 60 of those.
Merlin: You turn down.
Merlin: And guess how much time you spend on the ones that you turn down?
Merlin: Hopefully as little time as possible.
Merlin: But you've got to get good at saying no to that stuff or you're going to lose your mind.
Merlin: If you start thinking like everybody else, oh, yeah, well, this is going to be all kinds of money.
Merlin: But that's not how it works.
Merlin: And you can sniff it out.
Merlin: You can sniff it out so early.
Merlin: You do that orders of magnitude test with somebody, and you find out—I explained this to my daughter just the other day.
Merlin: She doesn't care, but I was trying to teach her the orders of magnitude trick.
Merlin: And I was trying to explain, like, you know, in the future, when you're going to negotiate with somebody about anything, try asking them to estimate between two orders of magnitude, and you will not believe how often the conversation stops right there, which is so telling.
Yeah.
John: Well, you pioneered what I thought was the genius thing, which is you would go to a company and give a speech, and then they would say, oh, well, it won't, you know, like... It's a 20-minute talk.
John: It's a 20-minute talk, but then they would walk you around the office and expect you to sit with the managers and spend your entire day kind of
Merlin: That can be fine, but the part that I've always found really galling, just because it is either so naive, so stupid, or so dark, is when somebody would say, we need you for a 20-minute talk.
Merlin: We need you to come to Boston and talk for 20 minutes.
Merlin: as though you're being paid a gajillion dollars an hour for that 20-minute talk.
Merlin: And it's like, well, no, if that takes three days of my life, I have to account for that.
Merlin: Plus, what if it changes?
Merlin: Plus, what about this?
Merlin: Plus, how long is it going to take you to reimburse me for the flight?
Merlin: You would not believe how many of these things you're expected to basically lay out money before they ever do.
Merlin: I can't afford to do that.
Merlin: I literally can't afford to do that.
Merlin: So I only want to work with people who are really aggressive about wanting to work with me and like...
Merlin: I mean, you want to say to somebody there, like, well, when's the last time you waited six months to get paid, if at all?
Merlin: It's like, this is like work.
Merlin: This is, I mean, it's work.
Merlin: And like, if you think it's work, you should pay it like it's work.
Merlin: And if you can't, you should ask real nice.
Merlin: And like, if it's the thing that I want to do, I would do.
Merlin: But like, it's such a sham.
Merlin: I'm sorry, I'm going off on a rant and changing the topic.
Merlin: But it's such a sham.
Merlin: And it's like, you eventually get that Jesus in your life or you don't.
Merlin: And you will deal with so many bad people who seem bad.
Merlin: on the surface to be nice people, but they're not, they're scoundrels.
John: They are scoundrels.
John: The thing I was complimenting you on was that at some point along the way before you abandoned that whole style of speaking and stuff, yeah, making a living, was that you would say to them right up front, look, I will come.
John: I will spend an entire day with you.
John: I will talk to your executive team.
John: I will walk around.
Merlin: I'll sweep the mall and pull soft serve if that's what you want.
John: But what you're paying me for is the entire day.
John: Let's not pretend that you're paying me for a 20 minute speech.
John: You're paying me for a day.
John: And here is my day rate.
John: which is different from what you think a 20-minute speech rate is.
John: And that worked for you for a while.
John: And I thought that that was a really smart way of looking at it because of what you were saying.
John: Like, I'm burning a day to get there.
John: I'm spending a whole day there.
Merlin: Let alone the prep time.
Merlin: A professional person who prepares speeches allocates, and this is not me, but a professional who prepares speeches and talks for a living allocates 10 hours of prep time for every hour that they speak.
John: And so there you go.
John: You're paying for that too.
John: You know, like this, this rate that I'm charging is not
John: You are missing it entirely if you think that this is 20 minutes.
Merlin: It's not like a Bill Clinton thing.
Merlin: It's not like a Learjet is going to fly me in and out and I walk away with $300,000.
Merlin: Like, I don't get those kinds of arrangements.
Merlin: I mean, it's the same way where, like, you know, if you really like repairing shoes for a living, that's good.
Merlin: But, like, that can be a tough racket.
Merlin: I mean, how often, though, are you going to have people come into your shoe repair place and go, hey, you should resell my shoes because I walk a lot and it's good exposure?
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: It's like that's not how the world works or should work.
John: Yeah.
John: When people compliment me on the soles of my shoes, I'll be sure to almost always remember to mention your name.
John: I'll carry this entire brick of your cards around with me.
John: And for me, it's like the idea that I am...
John: that I am doing all these things in order to promote my band is the additional hilarious thing.
John: Like, oh, I hope that the people in Europe buy some Long Winter or listen to Long Winters on Spotify.
John: Yeah.
John: Like, that's not going to help me.
John: I can make you almost nine cents this quarter.
John: I mean, this quarter, right?
John: I mean, nine whole cents.
John: But that becomes a default thing, too.
John: Like, oh, well, you know, he's in a band, so...
John: Um, you know, we'll, we'll, uh, they won't even use my music in the show.
John: You know, they'll just, they'll mention the band at some point.
John: Right.
John: And that's the, um,
John: And that is the thing that should make me feel like, wow, I'm on my way.
John: I'm finally like, I'm going to be Taylor Swift one day.
John: Gee, thanks, mister.
John: Thanks, Mean Joe Green.
Merlin: Hey, how's your chair doing?
John: My chair?
John: Yeah.
John: I feel like my chair is like my knee.
John: I'm sitting on it.
John: It does not feel 100% stable.
John: I don't want to lean all the way back and test it.
John: So I sit in it kind of straight up and down now.
John: Real dignified.
John: But I've only had it for six months, so I'm not prepared.
John: You know, when I walked across Europe, I went into REI, and I said to the guy at REI, I'm going to walk a long way, and I need a good pair of shoes.
John: This is a different establishment.
John: Yeah, this is Recreational Equipment Incorporated.
John: They got a real nice store there.
John: They got a nice store, and the kid that was working there was wearing a pair of boots.
John: Uh, that, that were very, that looked very good.
John: And he was like, I recommend these boots that I'm wearing.
John: They're, you know, they're super cool.
John: They're super bulletproof.
John: And I was like, oh, well, what are they?
John: And he was like, they're mountaineering boots, but they'd be perfect for this long walk.
John: And I was like, great.
John: So I put these boots on and they were not, they were not inexpensive.
John: They were thick leather boots of the style that you would see.
John: They were very Yodel-A-He-Hoo.
John: And that's exactly what I thought when I thought of myself going on this walk across Europe.
John: I was like... You would really peg yourself as a snork.
John: I really... Yodel-A-He-Hoo.
John: And so I was like, I'll get them, you know?
John: Oh.
John: And I set off on my walk across Europe.
John: And I realized pretty shortly after I started.
John: Well, so the boots really beat up my feet.
John: And my feet were just shredded.
John: But I said, this is what happens when you decide you're going to walk all this long way in your brand new boots.
John: You're going to have a period where you're breaking in your boots.
John: You're breaking in your feet.
John: And so I kept going.
John: And the boots continued to shred my feet.
John: four weeks and I, and I kept doubling down on them and I would wrap my feet and I would try different ways of lacing the boots and I kept going.
John: Um, well, so the first probably three weeks of my walk across Europe, I was in constant pain, like super pain, the pain of rubbing the
John: raw feet in hard leather boots.
John: And it never really got better.
Merlin: The kind of thing you would never tolerate at home.
Merlin: Like if you were at home and had to walk, you know, half a mile in those, you'd go, fuck this and change to something else, right?
John: If you had options, you wouldn't be wearing those.
John: You wouldn't be wearing them.
John: And this was part of my whole hair shirt problem where I was like, well, this is what I, you know, this is what I signed up for.
John: There's one thing you know is that you should be punished.
John: That's right.
John: And it was about a month in when I realized, oh, these are mountaineering boots.
John: Whatever they were made for, I don't know.
John: But it isn't this.
John: These are either the wrong size.
John: Whatever they are, they're the wrong boot.
John: Because a month in, I should not still be suffering.
John: And what I should have done at that point, because by then I was in Germany, I should have taken the boots and I should have just put them on the side of the road and figured that,
John: I spent, you know, $175 on these boots, but it is not worth the agony.
John: And I should have just bought some hikers, you know, some like... Well, a question.
Merlin: Were there ever points where you thought to yourself, you're doing it wrong?
Merlin: Were there points where you blamed yourself and not the boots?
Merlin: Oh, for sure.
Merlin: Like either, like, let's be honest, like you think on the one hand, oh, I'm just being a pussy, or on the other hand, like, I'm not living up to the potential of this footwear that I bought for myself.
John: Well, that or, um, you know, like I made the, the self punishment is, is way more insidious.
John: It's like you made the decision to buy these boots and now even though they're the wrong boots, you're going to have to live with that decision because you blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
John: And it's just back to like, you deserve it.
John: You deserve this.
John: Um, so I continued to walk in those boots and
John: For seven months.
John: And they never, ever, ever felt good.
John: And at any point along the way, I could have abandoned that idea and gone and gotten just some K-Tech hikers for $100.
John: And if I'd worn them out, I could have gotten a second pair.
John: But instead, I stayed in these...
John: And I stayed in the wrong boots.
John: I walked the whole way in the wrong boots.
John: And I'll never, you know, I can never go back and do that walk in a way where my feet weren't in pain the whole time.
John: And it's a real, I mean, it's a real exclamation point on kind of, on everything I do.
John: Good job, you know.
John: You really snagged defeat from the jaws of victory there.
John: Could have gotten German boots.
John: They would be better.
John: They would be better.
John: The German boots would have been better.
John: And then I would have these boots that I was like, I got them in Germany when I was there on the walk.
Merlin: Did you take them back to REI?
Merlin: No, I didn't.
Merlin: All your energy went into the zipper on that North Face bag.
John: Yeah, because that was truly, I mean, I felt like the boots were a... Yeah, that on me.
John: The boots were a Roderick failure.
John: The North Face bag was a North Face failure.
John: And they were going to hear about it.
John: Yeah.
John: So...
John: I still have the boots because I can't get rid of them now.
John: You are fucking kidding me.
John: Because they symbolize the bad decision that I made on my long walk.
John: So I take them out every once in a while and I look at them and then I try them on and I walk around like maybe they fit now.
Merlin: Doing that strange, tentative, bouncy walk that one does to see if shoes are correct.
John: Are these cool now?
John: Did something change?
John: Did my feet get different?
John: What are the boots telling you?
John: Maybe I should start wearing these as fashion boots.
John: Those boots aren't done with you yet.
John: I wear them around the house, and then they start making my feet hurt in about 10 minutes.
John: You should go sit in your chair.