Ep. 314: "Jews in Duckburg"
John: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
John: Hi, Marilyn.
Merlin: How's it going?
Merlin: Super good.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: Jim Dandy.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Sometimes I don't realize that I'm tired until I have to talk, and then I realize I'm kind of tired.
Merlin: Yeah, tired.
Merlin: I did the recordings for the advertisements already for this week, and I sound like I'm on death's door.
Merlin: Are you sick?
Merlin: No, my daughter's sick.
Merlin: I think I'm not, but who really knows?
Merlin: Right.
John: So you're advertising for products, and you're like, ugh.
John: By the thing.
Merlin: There's many, many bullet points about this that you should know.
Merlin: I'm saying this wrong.
Merlin: I'm saying all of this wrong.
Merlin: Anyway, no, I feel good.
Merlin: You know, it's weird coming back from some time away.
Merlin: It's always a little bit jarring to get back.
Merlin: You got a vacation as well as I did.
Merlin: When one has a child in public schools, one is given a vacation, whether one wants one or not.
Merlin: But it was good.
Merlin: We went fine.
Merlin: I don't think we had quite the cosmopolitan time that you and yours did.
Merlin: But no, it was really good.
Merlin: Saw relatives, hung out, had a jubilee, like a week of jubilee.
Merlin: Oh, a jubilee.
Merlin: That's nice.
Merlin: Jubilee is a time when there's, you know, contiguous days off.
Merlin: Sometimes, you know, you get extra ice cream or, you know, more TV than anybody would like, but it went pretty well.
John: Yeah, my little girl watched TV on an airplane, but it was for five and a half straight hours, which is more TV than she has ever consumed in one plane.
John: in one setting, and she did not tire of it.
John: And I think what happened was she got away, she came out of it, the experience, she hasn't yet brought this up to me, but I think her experience is going to be, wait a minute, there's a lot more TV out there than you let on.
John: And I was like, oh yeah, yeah, it's true.
John: It's true there.
John: She's like, she was running down a list of shows that she watched.
John: She was like, I saw this, I saw that, I saw this.
John: Yeah, it's all out there, baby.
Merlin: Yeah, we had the full television morning on Thanksgiving Day.
Merlin: We watched the really, really terrible Macy's Parade and the Very, Very Good Dog Show.
Merlin: But they do this thing in the Macy's Parade where they do these cutaways to pre-recorded bits with people from NBC programs.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: And I had personally seen two of the shows ever.
Merlin: Oh, yes.
Merlin: I've never seen This Is Us.
Merlin: I realize I'm probably missing out on a lot of good crying, but I've never seen This Is Us.
Merlin: Half of them were people from This Is Us.
Merlin: They had that lady from SVU and the guy from Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
Merlin: I recognize them.
Merlin: But my daughter and I were both like, we just, I don't know who any of these people are.
Merlin: I mean, I know Sterling K. Brown, but I don't watch the This Is Us program.
Merlin: And that was our window into, like, wow, we have really good taste.
Merlin: We watch really good TV.
Merlin: But one thing about a TV binge for a kid, at least in my kid's case, is, you know, you get on a Virgin America or you get on a JetBlue or whatever these days.
Merlin: I guess they all have TV now.
Merlin: And she'll launch into some kind of marathon, like on the Disney Channel.
Merlin: Yep, yep.
Merlin: A lot of dog with a blog.
Merlin: Oh, dog with a blog.
Merlin: Dog with a blog.
Merlin: With a blog.
Merlin: Yeah, Puppy Patrol.
Merlin: Well, that's sweet.
Merlin: That's a sweet show.
Merlin: But I'm curious, in her binging, she found herself at the beginning of a five-hour binge.
Merlin: She probably didn't know it was going to be a five-hour binge, but I'm guessing.
Merlin: But did she latch on to one particular kind of show, or was she flipping a lot?
Merlin: Was she staying on Disney or similar, or was she flipping?
John: You know, one of the interesting things is that she...
John: Only recently, and I think not even now, she does not yet fully understand what television is.
John: I think I don't understand what it is anymore.
John: But you know, she turns it on.
John: So different, so different.
John: And it's got a list of shows that play at 8 o'clock, and then at 8.30 they go to a different set of shows.
John: And she's like, well, I want to watch this one.
John: And I'm like, right, baby, but that comes on at 9, and we're at 8.
Wow.
John: And so she'd study it for a little long time.
Merlin: She's a trial famidorian, right?
Merlin: Yeah, sure.
Merlin: Like in the Slaughterhouse-Five, she's wondering, well, the earthlings feel like they're strapped to a train car looking through a tube.
Merlin: Like, oh my gosh, you have to wait until 8.30 for Dog with a Blog?
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: She's a Trisca Decafabian.
Merlin: Yes, a Trisca Decafabian.
Merlin: Yeah, a Trisca Decafabian, who is strapped to a tube.
Merlin: That's a 60s singer that's scared of the number 13.
Merlin: Oh, no.
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Well...
John: So she eventually, I mean, after hours, she would say, which one of these can I watch again?
John: You know, looking at what to us looks like a TV guide.
John: And I was like, only the ones in the far left column, sweetheart, because that's where we are now in time.
John: And she, you know, okay.
John: So I can watch...
John: dog with a blog dog with the blog so so she did bounce around she would get on there are a couple there are some weird ones you know there she was watching a donald duck like a scrooge mcduck one but it was some kind of
John: CGI, digital Donald Duck?
Merlin: Oh, was it like Mickey Mouse Club?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: The one that they might be giant song?
John: I don't know.
John: Hot dog.
John: I'm not sure, but it wasn't animated.
John: It was digitally animated.
John: Yeah, like real cheap looking.
John: Well, they looked like the guys in the we got to move these refrigerators.
John: Like they were just sort of weird.
John: Oh,
John: uncanny valley yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and i wanted to get her off that like that's not but she loves the thing is i gave her all my old scrooge mcduck comics oh okay and she loves to sit in and think about scrooge mcduck she asked me questions about him all the time about scrooge mcduck because he's very you know he's very compelling and very you know problematic individual super problematic but as a duck i would say he's very successful he's one of the top ducks he'd be in he'd be in duck forbes
Merlin: For sure he would.
Merlin: Well, and I bet his politics are... Oh, yeah.
Merlin: He's in that... We talked about Richie Rich before.
Merlin: He's in that genre of enviable, you know, rich person.
John: Or he took a silver spoon, you know.
John: Richie Rich has got a heart of gold.
John: It says right there.
John: Richie Rich is, you know, Richie Rich cares.
John: Scrooge McDuck doesn't care.
John: Doesn't he?
Merlin: Scrooge McDuck, does he have like a whole separate house for his treasure?
John: Oh, yes, he does.
Merlin: Apart from what I know about Scrooge, I want to get back to the television, but just for my own information, I feel like I'm not real up to date on Scrooge McDuck.
Merlin: Are there other characteristics of him besides the fact that he has a seemingly limitless amount of money?
Merlin: He's a miser?
Merlin: Is that right?
Merlin: He's kind of a miser?
Merlin: He's a miser, yeah.
Merlin: I don't think Scrooge McDuck...
Merlin: that we should know that makes it problematic?
John: I have never been 100% clear if there are Jews in Duckburg.
John: That's a great Ramones album.
John: Oh, my God.
Merlin: Sweet Maui onion.
John: Are you okay, buddy?
John: I just laughed like a 90-year-old.
John: I'm recovering from a cold, but that one hit me right in my solar plexus.
John: As my dad would say.
John: Jews in Duckburg.
John: Jews in Duckburg.
Merlin: They're spinning up their dreidels.
Merlin: Taking treasured duck paths.
Merlin: Now, could he be a semi?
Merlin: Is he a Semitic duck?
John: I don't think so.
John: I don't think so.
John: He seems very much like modeled on a kind of...
John: of J.P.
John: Morgan style.
Merlin: Like a Rockefeller or something, maybe?
John: Yeah, I would think he's a Rockefeller, that's right, because J.P.
John: Morgan obviously had a lot of, I mean, they all ended up quote-unquote being philanthropists.
Merlin: But then ended up being on the gong show.
John: But you know, Scrooge McDuck, one thing in the Scrooge McDuck cosmology, the thing is he doesn't suffer fools, that's the other thing.
John: Oh, he's a no-nonsense rich duck.
John: Yeah, because he's rich, he's wise.
John: That's one of the American problems, right?
John: Just because you're rich, you're expected to be wise.
John: Well, Scrooge, what I did not know, I don't think I ever understood this, is that Scrooge McDuck has a magic dime.
John: Oh.
John: Scrooge McDuck has the first dime he ever made, which he keeps under like a glass case.
John: which is the dime that generates all subsequent earnings.
John: It's not just hard work and industriousness.
John: Well, I think it's a metaphoric dime, but it's not 100% clear.
John: And I don't know whether this is early McDuck or late McDuck.
John: But it's canonical.
John: Well, I feel like this is the type of thing that they snuck into those later.
John: It's a little bit of a scrappy-do dime.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: It helps to help paper over a lot of the details about how he acquired all his treasure.
John: Yeah.
John: It's like, what did Scrooge McDuck do?
John: Well, he lumbered all the forests of the West.
John: No, you can't really put that in there.
John: You know, what did Scrooge McDuck do?
John: Well, he, you know, he's a bootlegger.
John: So it's not clear how he made his money until you realize, oh, he's got a magic dime.
Merlin: It's called the number one dime.
Merlin: It's the first coin that Scrooge McDuck ever earned.
Merlin: It first appeared in Uncle Scrooge comic story titled The Round Money Bin, 1953.
Merlin: Oh, so it's early, early, early.
Merlin: Early duck, yeah.
John: I don't remember the Magic Dime.
John: A lot of the Scrooge McDuck comics that I was reading had more complicated plots.
John: We didn't need to get back to like Erdime.
Merlin: Yeah, I mean, it's probably like the Bronze Age, you know, like everybody's getting more, you're learning more about the personal foibles of your heroes.
John: Yep.
Merlin: Oh, the Beagle Boys.
Merlin: I remember the Beagle Boys.
John: Sure.
John: All this stuff is great.
John: Although, you know, if you turn the Disney Channel loose on it and they have those shows animated in Korea, it's not going to be the same.
John: Anyway, so she watched these shows.
John: The thing is, Merlin, that we actually attended the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade this morning.
Merlin: Oh, I saw that on your Insta thing.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: I mean, we weren't down on the street in the cold with the regulars.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: But we were close to it.
John: It was 19 degrees, John.
John: It was so cold.
John: And so we were upstairs in a high-rise watching it go by.
John: I have to say, I'd never seen it.
John: I'd never even watched it on TV.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
John: And, yeah, it was a parade with some big balloons.
Merlin: It must be strange to not see it on TV because the version on TV is so edited.
Merlin: It has, like, talk shows and stuff.
Merlin: Yeah, I mean, it kind of goes.
Merlin: There's Al Roker on, like, a golf cart driving around.
Merlin: But there's, like, they've got the two lady hosts.
John: you got uh savannah guthrie and i think her name's hoda hoda yeah oh wait a minute wait wait now i've got a question about hoda i have so many questions about hoda i can't pronounce her name so earlier today i was looking at instagram and um my friend elon gale are you familiar with elon gale yes the producer with the plane that's right uh elon gale was on the america show today's america the morning in america morning in america
John: And he was like, you know, he's on there promoting his book, You're Not That Special and Nobody Else Is Either.
John: Okay.
John: Which is a thing that I want to get back to.
John: Okay.
John: Not the book, but the idea.
Okay.
John: And he was like, thanks so much to Kathy Lee and Hoda.
John: Hoda.
John: And I was like, Hoda.
Merlin: I thought that was JV.
Merlin: Jay-Z.
Merlin: Jay-Z?
Merlin: Jay-Z is Hova.
John: He's Hova.
John: Well, I feel like Hoda is something that you shout in a club.
John: You put your hands up in the air and you're like, Hoda.
John: Right, right, right.
John: And everybody gets down.
John: So I was like, what the hell is a Hoda?
John: And I went and I looked.
John: So he thanked the Instagram account, Kathy Lee and Hoda.
John: So I went to that.
John: It told me nothing.
Oh.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: You just discovered Hoda today.
John: Yeah.
John: So I went to Kathy Lee.
John: I know who Kathy Lee is.
John: Sure.
John: She was married to Frank Gifford.
John: Yeah, I think she drinks a lot of wine on TV.
John: Drinks a lot of wine on TV.
John: Kathy Lee's been, she was with Regis.
John: She used to be with Regis.
John: Regis Philbin used to be a singer.
John: Regis Philbin goes all, he's one kiss away from Frank Sinatra.
John: Yeah.
John: Kathy Lee, therefore, is two kisses away from what?
John: From Benny Goodman.
Merlin: Oh, it's like a bacon connection.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Oh, no, it's interesting.
Merlin: She's like a duchess.
Merlin: She may not be the queen.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: All right.
John: But I never met like Hoga or whatever.
John: Hoda.
John: Hoda.
John: Hoda.
John: Hogarth.
John: Oh, you will be.
John: So then I went... Judge me by my unpronounceable last name, you won't.
John: I went on to her account, and I was looking, and I was like, which one of these is Hoda?
John: Because...
Merlin: She has a German last name, Kumpf?
Merlin: It's K, capital K, O-T-B.
Merlin: Which sounds like an acronym.
Merlin: This does sound like a George Lucas character.
Merlin: Oh my god, Hoda Kotb.
Merlin: Instagram.
Merlin: i if that is her name i love it i bet she's sassy is that her married name i don't know i don't know hoda oh she oh she posts inspirational script things oh that's nice hoda remember why you started that's one she posted jesus out of pure fear here's another
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Merlin: Because when you stop and look around, life is pretty amazing.
John: No, wrong.
John: No, when you stop and look around, your head fills with weird, mean voices.
Merlin: Don't look around.
John: Jesus.
John: Look around at your peril.
Merlin: John, there's so much to learn from Hoda Kutt.
Merlin: Gratitude is peace.
Merlin: That's Annie Lamont.
Merlin: Staying vulnerable is a risk we have to take if you want to experience connection.
Merlin: That's Brene Brown.
Merlin: I don't think so.
John: Don't stay vulnerable.
John: Harden yourself off.
Merlin: I'd like to see you and Hoda Kotb go head-to-head Oxford debate style.
Merlin: I think you guys can really work a lot of things out.
John: Well, and I'm sure that she would be very appreciative of me.
John: You'd sharpen her like a knife.
John: Well, she's probably professionally appreciative.
Merlin: Oh, she's gracious for money.
Merlin: In that world, you have to be appreciative, even of the ones that you're like, hmm.
Merlin: This is why David Letterman, I think, eventually developed the niche that he had for himself was he just didn't care.
Merlin: He was getting Z-list people on there.
Merlin: And when he did get somebody who was like, you know, STUV list, he couldn't make himself seem interested in what they had to say.
John: Harvey Peekard didn't like that a bit.
John: No, he didn't, and that was some of the best television of the 80s.
Merlin: I watched some David Letterman with Ricky J's last night.
Merlin: I watched those.
Merlin: That Don Giller account is the greatest of accounts, and I can't believe they let him put those up, but I love it, love it, love it.
Merlin: Yep.
Merlin: And he gets Ricky Jay a little bit off his game.
Merlin: I watched the exact same video last night.
Merlin: I've been diving deep on Ricky Jay the last few days.
John: I have gone deep on Ricky Jay like five times in the last two years.
John: I don't know.
John: Well, you know, you've got Cardini, right?
Merlin: He keeps coming...
Merlin: Yes, yes, yes, yes.
Merlin: Well, here's the funny part.
Merlin: We've got to get back to Hoda.
Merlin: We've got to get back to Duckburg.
Merlin: We've got to get back to television.
Merlin: We've got to get back to the against American exceptionalism.
Merlin: But the funny part was on another program I do last week, we've been talking about magic.
Merlin: And I suggested, apropos of nothing, that people watch Deceptive Practice, the Ricky Jane movie, which I, as you know, watch every month or so.
Merlin: And then like three days later, we hear he passed.
Merlin: I mean, everybody dies.
Merlin: That's kind of the deal.
Merlin: Yeah, everybody dies.
Merlin: He's too young.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: But he had all those secrets.
John: He had all those secrets.
John: And I think part of him, part of his life was just preparing the entire time to die and not tell anybody how to do those tricks.
John: You know, that's like the magician's game.
Merlin: Oh, I know.
Merlin: That's part of the magic.
Merlin: There's one I'm sure you've seen.
Merlin: It's excerpted from... It's a YouTube video that you've almost certainly seen.
Merlin: It is excerpted from a really good BBC documentary on him.
Merlin: And it's the one where he silently...
Merlin: Just him with a black background and the table performs this trick where he pulls out five contiguous spades, shuffle, shuffle, shuffles.
Merlin: You've seen this trick, right?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It's astonishing.
Merlin: And if you're not paying attention, if you're looking at your iPad playing Minecraft, like some people, you wouldn't appreciate how sublime that effect and that performance is.
Merlin: The expressions that he makes.
Merlin: I said something to my co-host on Dubai Friday in our super secret text channel.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Maybe it was on Slack.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: But if you told me every single stitch of how every single effect worked, I would still be in awe of his performance and his style and his presentation.
John: It's unbelievable.
John: On the Letterman show, one of the times, he kind of bungles.
John: a trick he's i saw it's a real tight shot of the deck and he kind of yes and he yes i didn't notice that he's pulling queens or whatever it's like yeah but he he pulls it off right he just he for 99 of the time i think most people would just be like whoa if you hadn't seen 30 other performances of that effect you wouldn't know that's amazing but you know it was like oops oops
John: So it's tricky work.
Merlin: I don't know if you know this, but it's tricky work.
Merlin: I've seen him do that where he does a cut and he's off by one card and then kind of plays it off legit, but he does it so well.
John: Yeah, well, you know, not everybody can do it.
John: Yeah.
John: Practice eight hours a day shuffling.
Merlin: Yeah, just sit in a room shuffling cards all day.
John: Uh, so Hoda.
John: So Hoda.
John: So anyway, I figured out who Hoda was just like, seriously.
John: I mean, I only woke up 20 minutes ago, but in the 20 minute time, I, I figured out who Hoda was.
John: And now you're referencing Hoda at the, at the parade.
John: What are the chances?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: I mean, Hoda, she's blowing up.
Merlin: Is this your card?
Merlin: Never in the history of calming down has anyone calmed down by being told to calm down.
Merlin: That's something Hoda posted.
Merlin: That seems like something you might say.
Merlin: If it costs you your piece, it's too expensive.
Merlin: That means everything.
Merlin: This is everything.
Merlin: I'm here for this.
Merlin: Yas, queen.
Merlin: If you're not losing friends, then you're not growing up.
Merlin: That's a way, Homer.
John: I must be a thousand years old.
Merlin: I'm the fucking Methuselah of this internet.
Merlin: Fuck my old friends.
Merlin: 969.
John: I keep growing and you keep dying.
Merlin: 969, baby.
Merlin: It's like being a Time Lord.
Merlin: It's sad.
Merlin: 969?
Merlin: That's how old Methuselah was.
John: Oh, right.
John: Nice.
John: It's also a really fast Porsche.
John: Is that right?
John: Do they call it the Methuselah?
John: They ought to.
John: I don't even know if there is.
John: It seems like a Porsche.
John: Let's see if a 969 is a Porsche.
John: Well, there's the 969 movement, which is a nationalist movement opposed to Islam's expansion in Indonesia.
Merlin: You're kidding.
Merlin: Is that like the 14 words?
John: In Burma.
Merlin: Burma.
Merlin: Okay, for me, it's now Myanmar, actually.
John: Yeah, right.
John: Let's see.
John: 969 was, well, there was the year 969.
Merlin: Okay, I don't know a lot about 969.
Merlin: That would be, would you consider that the Middle Ages?
Yeah.
Merlin: Well, yeah.
John: You'd say the dark ages.
John: The Urban Dictionary says, the couch was too small to sleep on, so I shared the bed with him and his girlfriend.
John: It went great until a 969 started.
John: Oh, I see.
John: I've been staying with my mom.
John: Let's see.
John: No one's referencing Methuselah there on the first... Oh, there's a 9...
John: 59 there's a 964 wait a minute maybe there's a prototype 969 they ought to call this the methuselah oh that would that would be so cool this was posted by ghost dog i love his work oh you know what it is it's the porsche it's the turbo that never was oh it left the 969 to be on the drawing board
John: Says Carl Ludwigson.
Merlin: There's no greater wealth in this world than peace of mind.
Merlin: Hoda quotes that one.
Merlin: I don't know about that either.
John: I think you need to get in touch with Hoda.
John: Strongly disagree.
John: I mean, peace of mind.
John: So my cousin was in town yesterday.
John: And, you know, my sister likes to live by aphorism.
John: And so does my cousin.
John: And the two of them together, they really get into a storm of aphoristic...
John: Oh, is it like a wizard battle with aphorisms?
John: Well, but they're not battling.
John: They're just reinforcing one another.
John: Because my cousin, she just turned 60.
John: So she's got a decade or more on us in terms of aphoristic accumulation.
John: But also, she's done a lot of work on herself.
John: She is another person in my family that's a little bit of a reality check.
John: In the sense that it's easy within my family to feel like you must be freaking bananas.
John: Because some of this stuff just can't be real.
Merlin: It's like a form of meditation.
Merlin: When there's a lot of that going on, it's difficult to stay focused on what people are saying.
Merlin: They start coming fast and furious, and often they kind of like...
Merlin: You know, there's a certain kind of poetry to the way these things are phrased.
Merlin: They sound true.
Merlin: But, like, you start hearing a lot of them, and it starts to make you feel a little crazy.
John: Well, there's that, which is the experience of being with my two lady relatives.
John: And my cousin's name is Libby, and she is a folk singer and also, like, an academic now.
John: She has many records under the name Libby Roderick.
Oh.
John: She never had to fight with the Ingalls Wilder family.
John: No, she didn't have to copyright her name, Libby Roderick.
John: It's right on the label, label, label.
John: It is.
John: Did you watch Charlotte's Web any time recently?
John: No.
John: That's very sad.
John: It's right on the label, label, label.
Merlin: That's one of those ones up there for me with, what's the one, Velveteen Rabbit?
Merlin: No, Watership Down.
John: Watership Down.
John: No, you don't want to watch those.
John: Too sad.
John: Uh, and I, you know, so we just watched, we just watched Charlotte's web and I definitely got a tear a couple of times.
John: Some of them just tears of recognition for the fact that I hadn't seen this movie in 45 years or something, you know, just like, Oh wow.
John: Look who it is.
John: No, but so what Libby was saying was, listen, everybody in our family is super broken because it's a super broken family.
John: But for reasons that you can, some of them are reasons that you can put down on paper.
John: You can say like, oh, there's some, you know, because, you know, Libby and my sister, you know, they're very into trauma, having lasting effects.
John: They're very into, you know, talking about
John: The effects of alcoholism and abuse and all this stuff as a component of someone becoming like an adult with problems.
John: But my sister is really exploring right now the angle of, well, but is this something encoded in us?
John: Does this go back to a time?
John: And, you know, and Libby is much more like, well, but you can, you know, you can tie this to World War One and the experiences there to Wales or to this, you know, like real things that that hurt somebody in recent memory.
John: And Susan's, you know, Susan is influenced by my mom.
John: And my mom has this feeling of like, well, you know,
John: 600 years ago your father's family lived in a manor and my people were down working the earth and that's why we were attracted to one another and that's why our dynamic was like it is oh wow and you know and i spend a lot of time just in the middle just um being kind of a hoda just like um
John: like happily agreeing with everybody and hoping just that at some point there will be a pause and I can go get some more pumpkin pie.
John: Yeah.
John: But there's a lot going on here.
John: And at one point, Libby said, it's important for us to just say to ourselves and to each other that we're just normal people.
John: And there was a pause.
John: And she said, we're just regular people.
John: who are just normal okay there was a longer pause then my sister said well i refuse to accept that oh and then they looked at me well that seems like something they would be able to agree on oh well on the face of it it seems like there aren't that many i mean what was susan's objection
John: Well, one of my family's primary problems is that they do not think that they're normal people.
John: And Libby doesn't think it either.
Merlin: You mentioned alcohol and abuse, but you kind of glided right past ambition.
John: Well, ambition and... He's not a bad man.
John: He's just ambitious.
John: Ambitious, but also a feeling of...
John: manifest destiny and a feeling of responsibility.
Merlin: Okay.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: And so, you know, so Lib is like, say it, say it with me.
John: We're just regular people.
John: And Susan looked at me and was like, can you get on board with this?
John: And I was like, absolutely not.
John: That's preposterous.
John: And so we're driving along and I'm, you know, and I'm, and I'm thinking about Elon Gale's book, um,
John: You're not that special and neither is anyone else.
John: And I was like, you know, right.
John: How hard would it be for me to say that every morning?
John: And would that be helpful?
John: Because Libby was saying like, you just say it as a mantra and gradually what it does is it relieves you of all the pressure that you feel to do something exceptional or the responsibility you feel.
John: It's not just pressure, but like that feeling that you're failing every day to do something important.
John: You're just regular.
John: You're just a regular person.
John: You're doing fine.
John: You're doing fine.
John: And, uh, so we dropped Libby off at the airport and then Susan and I were driving home and I was like, well, I mean, no, I, uh, no, I cannot say that every day.
John: And she was like, what if you did?
John: What if you just said it every day?
John: And I said, could you say it every day?
John: And she said, absolutely not.
John: So that's where we are right now.
John: I feel like, I feel like Libby has, uh,
John: has given us some kind of thing to chew on where we would have... Because the thing is, what it does is it goes against everything we were taught.
John: Absolutely.
John: Everything that was said to us between the time... The day we were born until my dad died, basically, when I was 40.
John: And so any part of me that knows...
John: That what she's saying is true has to deal with my entire.
John: I mean, my entire education and the and my emotional education.
Merlin: It seems like there's two contradictory threads, and I don't mean this in a judgy way, in what I will call self-help that are kind of manifesting here.
Merlin: One is that we should be truthful with ourselves, and that the only way to freedom is through truth, and that we have to take away all of the distractions and illusions that
Merlin: about ourselves, to just see ourselves as we are, which is probably better than we think we are.
Merlin: Did Keisha say that?
Merlin: Is that a Keisha quote?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: When you think you become, what you feel you attract and what you imagine you create.
Merlin: That's from Hoda.
Merlin: Oh, from Hoda.
John: Hoda said it?
John: Hoda quotes.
Merlin: She's got a lot of quotes from inspirational sites.
Merlin: But then on the other hand, there's one thread, which is
Merlin: And there might be a tripartite here, but there's one thread, which is you have to be honest with yourself.
Merlin: There's another one that says that if you aspire to be different from how you are or to feel different from how you feel, you need to do a certain amount of self-talk.
Merlin: In AA, I think they call it fake it till you make it.
Merlin: In other kinds of things, you might do something like, what do you call it, affirmations.
Merlin: You know, I am a smart, capable person.
Merlin: Like, you say things to yourself...
Merlin: But then, like, the difficult part of that is, like, do you want to say things to yourself that you do not believe are true?
Merlin: So if you say to yourself, I am not different, I am just like everybody else, but in your heart, deep in your heart, you feel that you are genuinely different from other people.
Merlin: Like, is that damaging?
Merlin: Is that helpful?
Merlin: It's certainly going to be, there's going to be a lot of friction to how you process that, correct?
Merlin: Yes, friction.
Merlin: I don't know if it's good friction, bad friction, but if you genuinely feel different, if you genuinely feel like you are not like other people and you tell yourself that you are, you know, what is this in service of?
Merlin: What is it in service of?
Merlin: What is it in service of?
Merlin: I mean, what is it in service of?
Merlin: People can be so quiet about their pain that you forget that they are hurting.
Merlin: That is why it is so important to be kind, Hoda.
Merlin: Well, now I agree with that.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: Well, you guys can... All right.
John: Hoda just said something that I can get on board with that.
John: People can be so quiet about their pain.
Merlin: Hoda quoted that.
Merlin: Hoda quoted.
Merlin: From who?
Merlin: Oh, geez.
Merlin: I'm going to make me click.
Merlin: Chris Brown?
Merlin: A lot of times...
Merlin: It's amazing how many of these quotes would change drastically if they came from somebody else.
Merlin: If they came from, yeah, right.
Merlin: Sometimes you just have to talk to a two-year-old to understand life again.
Merlin: Larry Nassar.
Merlin: No, that's from a site called Word Porn.
John: No, thank you.
John: What was that last one?
John: I didn't hear it.
John: I was so busy mocking it.
Merlin: Sometimes you just have to talk to a two-year-old to understand life again.
John: Wrong.
John: Two-year-olds are idiots.
Merlin: Never assume that loud is strong and quiet is weak.
John: I'm as strong and quiet as weak.
Merlin: Trevor is composed of nows.
Merlin: Whoa.
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Merlin: There's a lot to this.
John: It's like standing in a dressing room in an old department store and closing the three-way mirror on yourself into the infinity of now.
John: But the mirrors are advice.
Merlin: I'm going deep, deep.
Merlin: It's hard to beat a person who never gives up.
Merlin: Babe Ruth.
Merlin: I say it's a quote from Babe Ruth.
Merlin: It's hard to beat a person who never gives up.
Merlin: It's hard to beat a person that never gives up.
John: You can beat them all day.
Merlin: If that was Chris Brown, that'd be pretty good.
John: That would be terrible.
Merlin: Never say that won't happen to me.
Merlin: Life has a funny way of proving us wrong.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Do you agree that that way is funny?
John: I don't think it's very funny.
John: I don't say that will never happen to me because I think I have a presumption that everything will happen to me at one point or another.
Merlin: Oh, right.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: You stick around long enough.
Merlin: Stick around long enough.
John: And also, you know, you just keep putting your nose in things.
John: Yeah.
John: And eventually you're going to be like, oh, well, I guess, you know, I had never witnessed a murder, but now I have.
Merlin: Don't underestimate the healing power of these three things.
Merlin: Music, the ocean, and the stars.
Merlin: Strong agree.
Merlin: When you look at a field of dandelions, you can either see a hundred weeds or a thousand wishes.
Merlin: What do you see?
John: Strongly disagree.
Merlin: Those are the two options, John.
Merlin: Choose!
Merlin: When you look at a field of dandelions, you can either see 100 weeds or 1,000 wishes.
Merlin: Do you see weeds or wishes?
John: I see 1,000 potential weeds.
Merlin: Oh!
Merlin: Silence creates either distance or comfort.
Merlin: The heart chooses which.
Merlin: comfort comfort every time got it correct by the way i'm wearing the smile you gave me oh there are some people i wish would say that to me yeah wouldn't that be nice what's so hard wearing the smile you gave me and nothing else oh shit dog one day i'm on my way over one day or day one you decide
John: One day or day one.
John: So last night, I was feeling super bad.
John: Is it one day or day one?
John: One day or day one.
John: One day or day one.
Merlin: You decide.
John: I live according to one day.
John: One day.
John: Okay.
John: Every day, I try to make it day one.
John: And by late afternoon, it has morphed into one day.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: Oh, okay.
John: It's very Hegelian.
John: It's Hegelian.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: Every morning, I say one... No, no, no.
John: I say...
John: Day one!
John: And then it's like, ugh.
Merlin: One day.
Merlin: You'll turn out ordinary if you're not careful.
Merlin: Now see, now that sounds exceptional.
Merlin: That's from Anne Brochares.
Merlin: You'll turn out ordinary if you're not careful.
John: Be careful.
John: that you're not ordinary.
John: Do you feel like you're careful?
John: Well, this is the thing about it.
John: So ordinary by that definition is a bummer.
John: Ordinary is a bummer.
John: Yeah.
John: Because you were not careful.
John: You weren't careful.
Merlin: You ended up ordinary.
Merlin: I used to, I used to, uh, apply my trade a little bit in semi inspirational things.
Merlin: And here's an affliction for me is talking to your shoe.
Merlin: I was back when I was Merlin man.
Merlin: Uh, when I read these, uh,
Merlin: I don't know how this first happened, but now whenever I read an inspirational quote, I imagine the person is ugly crying when they're saying it.
Merlin: Just be sure you do not find the happy life you make it.
Merlin: Give me the sun and the sea and a little spot to just be.
John: I think of someone chained to a desk writing these for a day-to-day calendar.
Merlin: You know, one of those calendars.
Merlin: Yes, exactly.
Merlin: I'm thinking of a place that decided to save a little dough by not having an editor.
Merlin: Whatever, you know, and see now that could be a quote.
Merlin: There are two choices in life.
Merlin: Have an editor or be chained to a desk.
Merlin: Or be chained to a desk.
Merlin: Nelson Mandela.
Merlin: he's so wise he's so wise he's so wise oh i cannot live according to aphorisms okay that's not that's a good start keep going yeah keisha only the true is i'm gonna start let's just start we'll just start well you know what we could make our own calendar these uh in order if he's copyrighted if it is true i know it to be and if it just be i know it is true hoda
Merlin: No, that's me.
John: To be or not to be Shakespeare.
John: I think therefore I am Descartes.
Merlin: Everything I know in life I learned from a coffee mug.
Merlin: Was that Garfield?
Merlin: Oh, I don't know.
John: It could be Garfield.
John: Here's the recursiveness of it.
John: Was it Garfield who said it or was it a Garfield mug?
John: Or was it a mug that said it with Garfield on it?
Merlin: I feel like it's something like to do is to be Aristotle.
Merlin: To be is to do Socrates.
Merlin: I don't know, something like that.
Merlin: And then doobie doobie doo Frank Sinatra.
Merlin: But I don't think he wrote that.
Merlin: Doobie doobie doo?
Merlin: Who wrote Strangers in the Night?
Merlin: It's that one guy.
Merlin: Is it Julie Stein?
Merlin: Who wrote Strangers in the Night?
John: But I don't think the doobie doo is in the lyrics.
John: I think that was Sinatra for getting the last verse.
Merlin: I see what you're saying.
Merlin: It's okay.
Merlin: Adlib Bidem.
John: Because I think by the time he got, you know, during the Reagan administration, when he was getting to be an older guy, he was wearing a rug and he was dancing with Nancy Reagan.
John: I think there's a famous concert that Sean Nelson and I used to reference all the time.
John: where Sinatra had just basically forgotten the lyrics.
John: And he was like, strangers in the pow.
John: Yeah.
John: Exchanging shababadoo.
John: Crazy cuckoo ships on the thing with the doing.
John: No, that was Liza Minnelli.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: The Strangers in the Night, Burt Kempfert, and English lyrics by Charles Singleton and Eddie Snyder.
John: Back when you could write for a living.
John: Sure.
John: Oh, back in the day.
John: Back when you had to write for a living.
John: Not like now.
John: Not like now when you can just talk to your friend.
Merlin: We were listening to the Beatles this morning, and my daughter went on a deep dive.
Merlin: First, she learned all about Liverpool, how they have two mares.
Merlin: She learned about shipping, and then she was looking at who the wealthiest musicians are.
Merlin: And, you know, McCartney's up there, but you know who else is up there is Sir Andrew.
Merlin: Oh, sure.
Merlin: And I had told her, I said, here's the paradoxical thing.
Merlin: The one who makes the money is the writer.
Merlin: That historically is the case.
Merlin: This is why I think Andy Partridge is in a slightly different boat than his other XTCers.
Merlin: Oh, yes.
Merlin: Well, him and Colin.
Merlin: But he has the publishing on a lot of that.
Merlin: He has the publishing.
Merlin: Do you think that still matters today?
Merlin: I do.
Merlin: Like when something goes live onto Spotify, like a dingus, I bought, I don't even want to say what I spent on the White Album, 50th anniversary, to have a hard copy of it.
Merlin: And of course, basically, the day it arrived at my house, it's beautiful.
Merlin: It comes with the poster.
Merlin: It comes with the photos.
Merlin: It's cool.
Merlin: I don't like those photos, but yeah.
Merlin: You don't like those photos?
Merlin: No, I don't.
John: I feel like that's the classic John photo.
John: No, I hate that John.
John: That was my least favorite John.
John: That's your least favorite John.
John: My least favorite John.
John: My most favorite John is right after Sergeant Pepper.
John: He's got the mustache and kind of the bushy mustache.
John: Mustache John is the best John.
John: Followed immediately by the Magical Mystery Tour era.
John: Yes.
John: The totally whacked out John before he became the gacked out John.
John: By the time he got to white out me, he's the gacked out John, and I'm not into it.
John: And I don't like that Paul either.
John: I think George looks amazing.
John: Yeah.
John: My favorite George is denim George.
John: You like denim George?
John: I like denim George.
Merlin: Like sitting on a lawn chair, George.
John: Yeah, denim.
Merlin: You know, George started wearing big hats.
Merlin: He did wear big hats, and he would rock a jean jean.
Merlin: Like a Ken Stringfellow.
Merlin: He'd do a jean jean.
Merlin: He'd do a triple jean.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: He'd do all the jeans, all the great denim.
John: Ken Jennings.
John: I just said Ken Jennings.
John: Ken Stringfellow is the only person left in the world that's still wearing a chain wallet.
Yeah.
Merlin: To prove a point?
John: I don't know.
Merlin: Maybe he keeps fresh dirt in there in case he needs to sleep in a strange coffin.
Merlin: That's right.
John: I'm going to retire for the money.
John: Good night.
John: Tomorrow I am in the big star.
Merlin: Awaken me at 4.57 p.m.
Merlin: Bleh.
Merlin: Bleh.
Merlin: I love to count.
John: What?
John: What?
Merlin: R-E-M.
John: Count Chocula.
John: Frankenberry.
Merlin: Let's check in on Hoda.
Merlin: Keep going.
John: I'm just going to check in on Hoda.
John: When Ken and I were closer, one time I said to him, what was it like during the grunge years
John: Uh, when, because when, when the grunge thing was starting, when Seattle was blowing up, the posies were as big a band as anybody.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Right.
Merlin: I mean, they seem like a band's band.
John: I mean, they were vocals and whatnot, you know, when I, when I moved to Seattle, it was like, Oh, you get your sound gardens.
John: You got your Alice in Chains.
John: You got your posies.
John: Like that was kind of what made the scene very diverse.
John: And I said to him, so it's 92, 93, and all these other bands from the scene are selling platinum records.
John: And the Posies were kind of burbling along down there at the 300,000 level.
John: Did that?
Merlin: They were at DMG at that point?
Merlin: They were at DMG, yeah.
Merlin: Or DGM.
Merlin: DGM?
Merlin: Yeah, but they were at the DreamWorks one.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Who were they on before that?
John: Oh, uh... What's Deer 23 on?
John: It's on, um... It's like a local one?
John: No, was it on... Sorry, I took you off your story.
Merlin: No, it's okay.
Merlin: Anyway, so he said... And the thing is, at this point, they got a little harder.
Merlin: When they got into that, there's a daily mutilation period, but that's, they were not, I mean, the hardest stuff at that point was like Flavor of the Month.
Merlin: It was still totally a pop song.
John: The picture on the first record, they both look like Robert Smith from The Cure.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: And they would each try to sing higher than the other.
Merlin: I have a live recording of them in France covering Surrender by Cheap Trick.
Merlin: And you can tell they're goofing to see who can keep re-upping the other one higher and can start singing in a really implausibly high range.
John: Yes, he has.
John: Well, they both have great.
John: Well, they're both great singers.
John: But Ken got very defensive and he said, well, what do you mean?
John: We were as big a band as any band in the world.
John: And I said, no, I don't think that that's borne out by the time or even now, or I don't think, you know, and he was like, well,
John: We were in the bubble of being on tour, playing massive sold-out shows, and everywhere we went, you know, it was like crazy, crazy.
John: And I was like, ah, yeah, but I mean Pearl Jam, by contrast, was, you know, was playing for 20,000 people in the Czech Republic.
John: Like, I don't think it's quite the same.
John: Anyway, he refused to accept that the Posies weren't one of the biggest grunge bands ever.
John: And I feel like the chain wallet is a component of that, that they are still, that Ken still, he's been living in a bubble the entire time.
John: I don't think there's ever, I tried to intrude into it at one point and say, carry your own goddamn suitcase.
John: And he did it, but I think he did it because he thought it was humorous.
John: Oh, he treated you like the help.
John: He tried.
John: Okay.
John: You don't treat me like the help.
John: I am not a regular person.
John: John Roderick.
That's right.
John: What else does Hoda have to say?
Merlin: We can't help everyone, but everyone can help someone, Ronald Reagan.
Merlin: There's a picture of a dog on a horse.
Merlin: Anything he says is false.
Merlin: Be someone Sunday, not Saturday night.
John: Be someone Sunday, not Saturday night?
John: That's right.
John: I only aspire to be people Saturday night.
John: If you're somebody's Saturday night, let somebody else be the Sunday.
John: Let somebody else, like, wipe the spit off.
John: Let someone else be the Sunday, John Roderick.
Merlin: Yeah, let somebody else be the Sunday.
Merlin: You be the Saturday night.
Merlin: Better an oops than a what if.
Merlin: It's not a tribute.
Merlin: I'll go with that.
Merlin: Better an oops than a what if.
Merlin: There's only one thing more precious than our time, and that's who we spend it on.
Merlin: Leo Christopher.
Merlin: He has two first names.
John: There's only one thing more precious than our time, and that's who we spend it on.
John: Yes or no?
John: I do not spend my time on people.
John: John Roderick.
John Roderick.
Merlin: Somebody should do an Instagram of your disinspirational, not quotes, but just revelations.
Merlin: Yeah, sure.
Merlin: You're bringing a big fucking truckload of hard truth on people.
John: Why the fuck do you spend your time on people?
Merlin: Oh, if she doesn't text you when she's drunk, you ain't the one.
Merlin: Wow.
John: Wow.
John: Wow.
John: Wow.
John: Wow.
John: She doesn't text you when she's drunk.
John: You ain't the one.
John: You ain't the one.
Merlin: Like you get a video in the dark or something.
John: Maybe.
John: i feel like so right now i'm going through a phase nobody's texting me when they're drunk okay and oh it's funny it's like it's like uh telemarketing calls they seem to come in waves well i'm not anybody saturday night right now oh oh no yeah i'm a couple of people sunday morning
John: Oh, God.
John: Last night I was feeling super lonely.
John: I was feeling super bad because I got out of this.
John: I took my cousin to the airport and then I took my sister to her car and I'm driving home with this like
John: We're just regular people thing resonating in my head, all of which is trying to compensate for the fact that, you know, I mean, Mike, so Libby's one of the few people that actually saw me growing up and she was like, I had so much sympathy for you because, because people would, everybody around you was like,
John: You're the most, you know, you're the boy wonder.
John: You're the most amazing kid that ever lived.
John: And then they would punch you in the gut over and over.
John: There was never a time.
John: All they did was pay you huge compliments and then whack you.
John: Wow, that's a conflicting, at least in my family, that would be a very conflicting message.
John: Well, it was an extremely conflicting message.
John: And the thing is, it's nice to be witnessed.
John: You know what I mean?
John: Like, I just, I don't, I didn't know that.
John: I mean, it's true, but I would never have said that to myself or even figured that out.
John: She was like, oh, it was awful because they just gathered around you.
John: And they would lift you up on their shoulders and be like, look at our beautiful boy.
John: And then they would pinch you because you had failed to smile big enough or you'd failed to solve the math problem.
Merlin: Yeah, didn't wear green on St.
Merlin: Patrick's Day.
John: And I was like, oh, well, thanks for that.
John: I mean, I'm very appreciative, actually, because it's nice to have... There weren't that many witnesses, you know what I mean?
John: Right, right, right, right.
John: That were outside of the family.
John: And so there's not a sense...
Merlin: of like where a lot of it came from i think this is why so many of us are so broken in some ways it's not the whole story but like to be noticed for anything uh is something that you imprint on don't you think well yeah but it but it but in my family there was not a feeling of like hey we're all in this together and i'm here for you no matter what
John: It was not without a punch.
John: It was much more like get out there and do it and bring back wealth and accolades to us or you will be you will be punished and in a way that you will not be able to interpret for decades.
John: So it was nice.
John: But so then I come back and I'm sitting on my couch and you know, I live alone and my sister actually texts me and she's like, are you okay?
John: Because that was all like
John: Because it wasn't just like we're regular people and then this one.
John: It was like a whole, it was like a data dump.
John: Because, you know, my cousin was, she was there.
John: And also she was fucking in the, she was in the shit.
John: You know, she was in Alaska in the 70s where it was just like, people were putting cigarettes out on each other.
John: And so Susan's like, are you all right?
John: And I was like, well, yeah.
John: I mean, all I did was I sent her back like XOXO, which is kind of like a way of saying like, fine, fine, whatever, lol, fuck off.
John: But I'm sitting on my couch and I'm like, oh, I don't know what to do.
John: I tried to say you're just regular people.
John: And then I was like, shut the fuck up.
John: And I came in and I actually started working on a song because it had been a long time since I'd been motivated to work on a song just to like.
John: Just to shut everybody up.
John: Yeah.
John: And I did it.
Merlin: I wrote a little song.
Merlin: Some of the things that I am best known for are things I wrote about because there was an overflowing of some kind of emotion, often anger.
Merlin: Anger or something.
Merlin: But that's where it happens if you don't have anything to write about.
Merlin: You can address what you're feeling right now and suddenly opens up the gates.
Merlin: Now here you are.
John: Yeah, I feel like anger is a thing that comes out of me that's scary to other people and it seems like a big motivator for me.
John: But I'm not really...
John: angry as much as i am just like super sad like super sad and disappointed and just like i don't know injured and uh and so i wrote this song you know just kind of in a like trying to just like as a salve of some kind like oh well you know maybe you just be sad over here just put put something put something over here but it was it was you know because in a lot of those situations i don't have anybody to call
John: And it's not, I'm not complaining.
John: I mean, in a way, I've just designed my life around not having anybody to call.
John: And most of my closest friends are like, doing good?
John: Great.
John: Call me in the morning.
John: Call me when you're feeling better.
John: And, you know, I'm fine with that.
John: But there are those moments.
John: And a lot of times, being somebody's Saturday night call, being somebody's drunk dial, is enough for me.
John: Because it's like,
John: yay!
John: You're thinking about me and thinking about me the right way.
John: But I don't have any... I don't... There's nobody in those moments I can call.
John: And so I pick up the guitar.
John: It's always been the thing.
John: But I guess I haven't done that in a long time because I didn't feel... I wasn't that connected to... It was the thing about Kurt Cobain that I admired so much was there was just this
John: There was this element in his music that was just him at six years old, unfiltered.
John: If a six-year-old could write music, some of his songs felt like that.
John: And I admired it.
John: I admired that.
John: I tried to write songs like that for a while, like just sort of six-year-old yowling, but I couldn't do it.
Merlin: Kind of like a John Lennon kind of thing.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: He harnessed that in a way that was sometimes disturbing, but he was very in touch with that raw, broken childhood feeling.
John: But Lennon was super mad.
John: I felt like Cobain just felt just...
John: like, like a little bit betrayed, but also that he didn't deserve any better.
John: And, uh, yeah, for me, it was just like, Oh, that's why I, that's why I became such a, maybe not why I became, but like, it's a component of being a loner was just like everybody else.
John: Every, every time somebody came in the room, it was like, you know what, kid, I love you.
Merlin: and you're fucking up it's like maybe if nobody comes in the room it'll be better you know oh yeah well i think that's one thing that happens with the anger is uh anger is the outgassing or the effluvium of other feelings i mean i people i think at least for me i rarely sit around going oh i'm angry it's when there's disruption to the fake world of comfort i've created in my own mind that i get angry
John: Right.
John: Or it seems like anger, but it's really sad.
Merlin: Well, it is anger in the sense that it's not anything I choose to produce, but if I'm living in some rickety, seven-sided lighthouse made of dreams, some kind of little world of my own design where I've beaten back all the demon dogs from the lighthouse, and then that gets disrupted, that comes out as anger, I think.
Merlin: It's a form of lonerism.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: Stay away.
John: Stay away.
Merlin: You should follow the advice of R.M.
Merlin: Drake, which I learned about from Hoda, which is don't think.
Merlin: It complicates things.
Merlin: Just feel.
Merlin: And if it feels like home, then follow its path.
Merlin: R.M.
Merlin: Drake.
Merlin: Who is R.M.
Merlin: Drake?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: It sounds like a made-up name.
Merlin: Yeah, RM Drake, are they related to Ramtha?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: Well, they got Pima Chodron.
Merlin: Pima Chodron's in here.
Merlin: Pima Chodron says, she has two umlauts in her name.
Merlin: She says, nothing ever goes away until it teaches us what we need to know.
Merlin: Now, conversely, if something has gone away, that means you have nothing more to learn from it?
Merlin: See, some of this seems like it's... Maybe think a little bit.
Merlin: Maybe think a little bit.
Merlin: Not to go up against R.M.
Merlin: Drake.
John: So that's another thing that my lady relatives are telling me.
John: Don't think.
John: You think too much.
John: Don't think your way out of this.
John: And I'm like, it's all I can do.
Merlin: Was that a clap emoji clap in between?
John: It's clap.
John: All clap I can do.
John: Clap.
John: Don't take this away from me.
John: Poop emoji.
Merlin: I cannot.
Merlin: It's all I have.
John: Poop emoji.
John: I can't fucking emotion my way out of these things.
John: Like, what the hell are you talking about?
John: Well, that's how you know you're home.
Merlin: That's the path.
Merlin: Upon waking, let your first thought be, thank you.
Merlin: To whom?
Merlin: Tell me who's owed thanks.
Merlin: Who am I thanking?
Merlin: God?
John: Like hell.
John: No.
John: Life is a slow drag.
John: John Roderick.
John: full of, you know, full of Saturday night phone calls if you're, if you, you know, if you're not careful or if you are careful.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Hmm.
Merlin: Which one are you supposed to be?
Merlin: I can't even tell anymore.
Merlin: I'm so confused.
Merlin: There's a style, like, you know, when you go, there's a, there's a whole page on the internet science site about the, the, I think most, mostly the Greeks have named all these rhetorical devices that we use and don't even know the name for, you know, like basically every kind of way that we phrase things that's memorable is like a millennia old thing.
John: idea about how to do those millennia i feel like it was so fun to be a greek at that time because you could just sit around and and come up with that stuff that had never been come up come up with
John: And then you, now, you're like, I've got one you never heard of.
John: Uh-huh.
John: And then you're like, oh, they fucking heard of it.
Merlin: We'll just make up a new Greek word.
Merlin: We're going to call it paracesis.
Merlin: Paracesis.
Merlin: We're going to call it doxin.
Merlin: Paracesophobia.
Merlin: Paracesophobia.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: It all comes down to the last person you think of at night.
Merlin: That's where your heart is.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: What a curse.
Merlin: That's where your brain goes, maybe.
Merlin: Maybe your limbic system.
Merlin: That's where your limbic system is.
John: The last person I think of every night is always Dick Cheney.
John: For me, it's Catwoman.
John: That's who?
Merlin: Catwoman.
Merlin: Hey, hey, everybody.
Merlin: That seemed like the end of the show.
Merlin: Well, it wasn't because we got something to tell you about.
Merlin: We're advertising.
John: Deals.
John: Get a t-shirt for you.
John: Now, we are not a podcast that comes to you all the time with money-making schemes.
John: We don't ask you much.
John: And this is an opportunity, even if you don't like the t-shirt, to just buy it and give a large percentage of the money to the people that are making the t-shirt.
John: Yes.
John: What?
John: It's small.
Merlin: proportion of it to us you don't you don't need a reason to help people that's what hoda said just go buy a shirt you go to bit.ly slash rotl shirts one word or you'll find a link in show notes for this episode you have i think about you have less than a week like six days to do this this is only for people that are up to date on the show if you're listening to this show a month behind yeah you should have called in during our episode about the elderly
Merlin: yeah um so go get a shirt it's it's a bit.ly slash rotl shirts and we have a new uh keep moving and get out of the way shirt that i'm really excited about plus the classics the super train shirt is back the bell is back uh all the great shows is back so you go and get a shirt now merlin when you meet somebody coming through the rye yep yep you seem better somebody out in the world and they're wearing a rodrick on the line shirt how do you like it
John: Oh, I love it.
Merlin: A trick I learned from my friend John Gruber, I just look at the person and I say one word.
Merlin: I say handsome.
Merlin: Oh, you say handsome.
Merlin: And they hear my voice, and they go, oh, you're the guy on the show that sounds like a broken saxophone.
Merlin: And I say, why don't you get out of here?
John: Yeah, I say something like, I think that I wink at them, and then they say either...
John: All the great shows.
John: Yeah.
John: Or they say, I have a small backpack.
John: Yes.
John: You know that's an OG.
John: Yeah, that's nice.
John: That's somebody from way back.
John: Or they do the universal greeting from our world, which is Mr. Roderick.
John: With the handout.
John: But I'll tell you what, what I love most is when people wear Roderick on the Line shirts to shows by my friends.
John: Oh, that's so important.
John: Yeah, they go to other rock shows or they go to other events.
John: You're not being that guy, you're being this guy.
John: You're being this guy, which is, hello, Mr. Hodgman, and wearing a Roderick on the Line shirt.
John: Because then I hear about it.
John: Yes.
John: But I hear about it in both an appreciative way and also a slightly begrudging.
Merlin: Angry, angry, yeah.
Merlin: A shirt that you've had for years has got pilling.
Merlin: Wear it.
Merlin: Wear it to the John Hodgman show.
John: That's right.
John: And then be like, Mr. Hodgman.
John: But he sees it, and he knows it, and then he calls me and is mad.
John: Yeah.
John: Slightly mad.
John: He can't acknowledge it.
Merlin: No, he can't acknowledge it now.
John: Oh, there were some people at my show in Roderick on the Line shirts.
John: It was great.
Yeah.
Merlin: So anyway, that's why Joseph Campbell says the privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.
Merlin: And you can best express that by buying a shirt from us.
Merlin: You go, you go to a bit.ly slash ROTL shirts, or you go to show notes for this episode.
Merlin: You have a very few days until these go away.
Merlin: So treat yourself.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: Christmas present for you.
John: Christmas presents for you.
John: Get them a size small.
John: So they're tight.
John: Yeah.
John: Like if you're doing waist training?
John: Yeah, just get them a little tight and then text me on Saturday night.
John: That'll do it.