Ep. 352: "Bellingham Notes"
Merlin: Oh, man, I got a lot going on.
Merlin: I got to close some of this stuff.
John: I mean, I think.
John: Start that Skype jam.
John: I've only been awake for... Well, it's four after, so technically I've been awake for 14 minutes, but that doesn't feel like it.
John: It doesn't feel like it.
John: It feels like less?
John: It feels like less.
John: It feels like a...
John: It feels like I'm not 100% awake.
John: First thing I did, I turned on my computer, looked at it.
John: And this is probably, I don't know whether, I honestly don't know which side of this you fall on.
John: But I think there's enough overlap here.
John: Maybe you share this.
Merlin: Let's explore the space.
John: Okay.
John: I don't like looking at things.
John: I hate looking at things.
Merlin: I don't like looking at things.
Merlin: I don't like things looking at me.
Merlin: I don't mind things looking at me.
Merlin: Don't look at me.
Merlin: No, I don't mind that.
John: Okay, I'll write that one down.
Merlin: Okay, that's the first difference.
John: You and I are different.
John: But if somebody says, hey, we got this project, I need you to look at it before it goes live.
Okay.
John: Where are you on that?
John: Well... I need you to look at this.
John: I need you to prove this.
Merlin: I need to disclose to you that I did not sleep well last night, and I have an anecdote about that.
Merlin: So I'm a little bit of a homemade mess today.
Merlin: Me too.
Merlin: No, I'm going to do great.
Merlin: That's some...
Merlin: It's not a bad question.
Merlin: It's a somewhat general question.
Merlin: Can you read it back to me one more time?
Merlin: No, I'll zoom in a little bit.
Merlin: I want to respond, John.
Merlin: I'm pumping myself up.
Merlin: I'm watching Les Savi Favre live performances to get pumped up.
John: My ex-girlfriend used to say, oh, you remind me of the guy from Les Savi Favre.
John: And I was like, the naked fucking meatloaf.
John: that gets up and with this underwear that man's powerful he's owning his body he's a giant meatloaf and she was like oh yeah i just i'm really into them and like you're so amazing you just seem really and i was like does that bother you more than bruce flinch no of course not bruce flinch is literally the worst thing to be compared to
Merlin: It's not that bad.
Merlin: The literal worst comparison you could make to somebody.
John: Bruce Valanche.
John: You're not saying you're hilarious like Bruce Valanche.
Merlin: I don't know if he's hilarious.
Merlin: He's got some funny hair, though.
Merlin: Was he on Hollywood Square?
Merlin: Is that what he was like?
Merlin: I don't remember.
John: I don't think he was funny either.
John: He's a punch-up man.
John: But that's the reason he's there.
Merlin: I would like to see him and Les Savifov and Will Oldham on the same stage.
Merlin: I think that would be a lot of fun.
John: I think that would not be fun.
John: I think that is exactly what I don't want to see.
Merlin: I was a big old bear once.
John: If someone sends you an email that says, this thing is about to go live.
John: Oh, there we go.
John: This thing's about to go live.
John: We need you to take a look at it.
Merlin: This thing's about to go live.
Merlin: We need you to take a look at it.
Merlin: Now, can I ask, is it a web deployed product?
John: Yes.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: So you're going to go look at it on something like a staging server or a login.
Merlin: You're expected to go and have a look at, okay.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: I'll tell you what I like and what I don't like.
Merlin: This is my quick sniff test on that.
Merlin: I'll tell you what I like.
Merlin: It's nice.
Merlin: Sometimes it's nice to be asked.
Merlin: What I don't like is, what I don't prefer is that general of a query.
Merlin: If somebody asks me to look at something, and now I don't know if this is a for you project.
Merlin: If it's a for you project, they're looking for sign-off.
Merlin: When people ask me to look at their thing, I tend to, at this advanced age, say, what kind of notes are you looking for?
John: Okay, then let me zoom in, because that's a very good note.
John: That's a very good note.
Merlin: Okay.
John: Okay.
John: What if it's a for you project?
John: What if they're looking for sign off?
John: What if it's not just like, Hey, listen to my demo.
Merlin: What if it's like, Hey, this thing, here's the thing you compelled me to make for you.
Merlin: Say it's okay.
Merlin: Sign off on this.
Merlin: Sign off on this.
Merlin: Give me sign off.
John: Because it's going live.
John: Oh, not just give me sign off, but like, we want your notes.
John: We want to make this what you want it to be.
Merlin: That doesn't... Okay, so it's very early, and I assume that you are representing this person's POV fairly.
Merlin: That is incompatible.
Merlin: You would not say to somebody, we're about to have this go live.
Merlin: Give me your notes.
Merlin: Oh, okay.
Merlin: That's crazy balls.
Merlin: That's like saying, I don't know, you're thinking about buying this car?
Merlin: Why don't you crash test it for us?
Merlin: Like, that's nuts.
Merlin: If they're about to go live, you've worked out all the stuff, and it's all good, and we need just what we call a final sign-off.
John: Oh, see.
Merlin: So you're supposed the thing's about to go live.
Merlin: Is it part of an existing web property, or is it a new thing?
Merlin: It's a new thing.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: See, I don't feel great about that.
Merlin: I don't feel great about that.
Merlin: How broad should your notes be?
Merlin: How specific?
Merlin: Another nice thing, this is a little off topic, but if you are going to ask somebody...
Merlin: You should clarify with a person.
Merlin: If you're going to say, look at my thing, I think it's good to be clear about whether you're actually just asking them to link to it.
Merlin: Now listen, here's the thing.
Merlin: I have been asked by people, I've had people say, hey, will you help me promote this?
Merlin: For example, a podcast network I'm involved with is currently doing very good work raising money for St.
Merlin: Jude's
Merlin: Hospital St.
Merlin: Jude Children's Hospital.
Merlin: They are the best.
Merlin: They are a four quadrant hit.
Merlin: All positive thumbs up.
Merlin: I'm very happy to give them my money and support that.
Merlin: You don't need to persuade me to do that.
Merlin: And they don't.
Merlin: They say, hey, you want to be a mensch and link to this?
Merlin: And I say, sure.
Merlin: OK, that's one kind of thing.
Merlin: Here's the other kind of thing.
John: Hey, I don't know if the people at St.
John: Jude's would use the word mensch, but yes, I get it.
John: Go ahead.
Merlin: Just because it's in Tennessee.
John: Yes.
John: Okay.
John: The fact that it's in Tennessee, double, triple makes me think that the people at St.
John: Jude's would not use the word mench.
John: But go ahead.
Merlin: Sometimes then you'll get the, hey, you know that sound, right?
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: That's kind of a little bit of Bellingham.
Merlin: You're looking for Bellingham notes.
Merlin: Bellingham notes is I'm actually asking you to link to this or separately.
Merlin: Again, this is separate.
Merlin: That's over here.
Merlin: And then over here, we've got tell me this is good.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: So it's okay.
Merlin: Like you come, come to me and like, you know, uh, Hey, it's like a Mad Max witness me.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I want you to tell me this is good.
Merlin: It's okay to say that.
Merlin: But like, if you want specific kinds of notes, I think it's helpful to say what kind of notes do you want and how, um, candid do you want me to be?
Merlin: Because sometimes the best answer is you should never have made this.
Merlin: That's the real answer sometimes.
Merlin: I'm glad you did a thing, but if you make a lace out of your fave out of pubic hair, put it on Etsy, I'm going to pop the stack and say, maybe that is in contravention of God's laws, and that never should have existed.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Boop.
Merlin: Boop.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, red flag is what I'm saying.
Merlin: Now, okay, so what I'm saying is I'm not against looking at things.
Merlin: But it's the same service that I offer to others in some ways.
Merlin: It's like I'll say to somebody, hey, here's this podcast I like.
Merlin: I would start with this episode or this TV show, right?
Merlin: And I try to do a brother a favor or a sister, doesn't matter, or nonconforming.
Merlin: I would say, here's, I think, a good one to start, right?
Merlin: But what I wouldn't say is, hey, check out science fiction.
Merlin: I wouldn't do it.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: I mean, and so, okay, so I don't like to be handed things.
Merlin: I don't like it when people do that.
Merlin: Now, in this case, that's a confusing goddamn way to wake up in the morning, John Roderick.
Merlin: They didn't say it.
Merlin: Did they say sign off?
Merlin: They said, tell me again, read it back a third time.
Merlin: Look at this.
Merlin: Look at this.
Merlin: We're about to go live.
John: I mean, I think we're, you know, I haven't been specific enough.
Merlin: It's okay.
Merlin: Well, you can't be.
Merlin: If you wanted to be specific, you already would have said, tell me this is good or please link to this.
Merlin: Your lack of specificity.
John: I mean, in asking you about it and posing the question, because you're...
John: Well, you're just talking about other things.
John: I'm not.
John: I'm talking about all the things.
John: I'm talking about all the things.
John: No, that's one thing that's true is you are talking about all the things.
John: It's an omnibus bill.
John: I don't like looking at things that have to do with me.
Merlin: Oh, boy.
John: Don't look at me.
Merlin: Just don't look at me.
John: Well, I don't mind you looking at me.
John: All right.
John: I don't like to listen to my own records.
Merlin: Oh, I think I might know what this is.
Merlin: I think... I don't like... Would you like me to speculate on what this is?
John: No, not yet.
John: Okay.
Okay.
John: I don't like it when... You don't mind when we look at you, but you don't want to look at you.
John: Right.
John: There it is.
John: Thank you.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: So I say don't look at me, and I'm addressing that to the world.
Merlin: You're saying don't look at me, and you're looking straight at the man in the mirror, if I could say.
Merlin: Don't look at me.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah, no, I don't want to look at me.
John: I'm fine if you look at me.
John: Whatever.
John: Who was it?
John: It's your friend Dave Eggers.
Merlin: Your internet friend Dave Eggers says, stay out of the comments.
Merlin: Those aren't for you.
John: That's right.
John: But it's not even that.
John: I don't like listening to my own voice tape recorded.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: I don't like listening back to my old outgoing voice message before I record a new outgoing voice message.
John: Yeah.
John: When you used to do the Long Winters website, you would say, oh, I'm making some changes or something, you know, and I would go, great.
John: And you would say, well, what did you think?
John: And I would say, it's fine, I'm sure.
John: And you would say, well, just go look at it and tell me.
John: And I would say, oh, no.
John: Yeah.
John: And that wasn't even anything about – that was just like what the front page of the website looked like, like the wallpaper or whatever.
John: I didn't want to look at it.
John: I didn't want to look at it.
John: I don't know why.
John: I don't know why.
John: I don't know why I don't want to look at it.
John: I don't want to hear my... I don't want to hear my music.
John: I don't want to see myself on video.
John: I don't... Nothing.
Merlin: Nothing.
Merlin: None of that.
Merlin: Question.
Merlin: Was this the first...
Merlin: request of this had you not responded earlier to this and they're following up with you or is this okay oh okay okay okay i all right i i've been on both sides of this
John: There have been a lot of communications to me that were saying like, hey, we're going live with this as previously arranged, and we need your sign-off on it.
John: You need Colonel Potter's official okie-dokie.
John: Yeah, and the last thing I wanted to do was go log on and look at this, and I don't know why.
John: It's not that it's a bad thing.
John: It's a good thing, let's say.
John: but I don't,
John: There are times, there are ways, I guess, of approaching me.
John: There are... Cosigned.
John: I know, right?
Merlin: There are absolutely ways of approaching you.
Merlin: There are ways, right?
Merlin: One must read the room before one addresses John.
Merlin: What is John's uniform of the day?
Merlin: This will be very important.
Merlin: Writ large, what is the uniform of the day?
John: What is the mood of the day?
John: Some ways to just, like, not...
John: You want to be managed.
John: You want to be managed.
John: Oh, yes.
John: But also, I don't want to be managed poorly.
John: Oh.
John: Like, I want to be managed richly.
John: Kid gloves.
John: There are a lot, well, not that.
John: There are a lot of things, a lot of people out there who are like... They're not like hot pincers or something.
Merlin: You want the right amount of the thing at the time.
John: Managing does not mean I have compiled a list of every restaurant in Seattle and here it is.
John: Yeah.
John: Managing means saying, and managing doesn't mean saying, I've decided we're going to this restaurant and you will be there.
John: Yeah.
John: Managing means saying we're all meeting at Steve's Bar and Grill at 7.
John: See you then.
John: Now, when you say we're all meeting at Steve's, it's not the same as we all agree on cheese.
John: It means that you've made a decision and it's fait accompli.
Merlin: They're making an assertion.
John: Yeah.
John: How do you argue with we're all meeting at Steve's?
John: Now, you can argue with, we were thinking about going to Steve's.
John: Right?
John: Because that's a question that suggests that you've got some...
John: input, right?
John: We were thinking about going to Steve's.
Merlin: See, that's a lot to unravel.
John: It practically invites you to say Steve's.
Merlin: You haven't even got on my hailing frequency yet.
Merlin: You're just making a lot of noise and swinging your arms around.
John: Yeah, we're thinking about going to Steve's.
John: Steve's?
John: Well, how can I help you with that?
John: We're all meeting at Steve's at 7.
John: You go, oh, how I feel about Steve's doesn't matter.
John: We're all meeting there at 7.
John: And the thing is, we're thinking about going to Steve's.
John: That's not even what do you think about us going to Steve's.
John: But it's in there, right?
John: We're thinking about going to Steve's.
John: It's looking for a sign-off.
John: So that's not, you know, let alone, um, where do you want to go for dinner or let alone like, uh, well, you know, we need to, we need to pick a place to go to dinner.
John: There's Steve's, there's Bill's, there's Jane's, there's Alonzo's.
Merlin: I had Jane's for lunch.
John: Yeah.
John: Oh, I know.
John: Jane's.
Merlin: I learned a trick a long time ago.
Merlin: And when I'm smart, which is rare, Lee, when I'm smart, I remember this trick.
Merlin: And I think I've said this before on this program, but in my former life as a project manager, what I learned was, one of the best things I learned about email was, you know, have a really good subject line that makes it easy to see what the thing is.
Merlin: And to the extent possible, write the shortest viable email
Merlin: where it would be easy for someone to say yes to what you just asked them.
John: Do you follow?
John: Now, here's the thing.
Merlin: A lot of people are going to say, make an email that's short.
Merlin: Make an email where somebody can give an answer easily.
Merlin: Yeah, kind of.
Merlin: Ideally, get in the habit of making an email that somebody can say yes to.
Merlin: Because if they don't want to say yes to that, they're going to say something other than yes.
Merlin: It doesn't have to be no.
Merlin: But they'll say something other than yes.
Merlin: But you could say something like, hey, I made a reservation for seven at Steve's.
Merlin: This is who's going.
Merlin: Are you going to do it?
John: Will I see you there?
Merlin: Will I see you there?
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: And you say yes.
Merlin: You can say yes.
Merlin: Or you can say – or you can just not return the email and then they'll write you back on Monday morning.
Right.
Right.
John: Right.
John: And that's, you know, that's well.
John: That's managing.
Merlin: That's managing.
John: Right.
John: It's so difficult to do what you just said.
John: Right.
John: The shortest possible email that that has the largest chance of the person saying yes or whatever.
John: Right.
John: And and so.
John: So to be to be managed, I never want to know that there was ever a choice.
John: In where we were going to dinner.
John: I don't ever want to even know it.
John: I don't want to see behind the curtain.
John: To know that there was ever a deliberation.
John: I wanted to feel like.
John: The will of the group.
John: There's something important happening.
John: The wisdom of crowds.
John: The wisdom of crowds.
John: But also, there was never anything other than Steve's for tonight's meal.
John: That's the dream.
Merlin: Isn't that the dream?
John: Yeah.
John: Things I don't even want to know about.
John: I just want to show up at Steve's and never have been consulted.
John: Honestly.
Yeah.
John: Honestly, because there are people that want to do that.
John: That where do we go to dinner work?
John: And they're much better at it than me.
John: This is an example, though, of a thing, a project I'm intimately involved in.
John: Yeah.
John: A project I'm actually very excited about.
John: Yes.
John: But that is being run by someone else.
John: Yes.
John: That I don't want to get emails from.
John: Because they are not, because they're bad, not bad.
John: And let me just say, not that I don't want to get emails.
John: No.
No.
John: But that they are emails where there's too much – it's not the shortest possible email that's going to get me to say yes.
John: It's a longer – it's a set of emails.
John: But also it requires that I do a thing that I don't think a lot of people understand is very –
John: which is I don't want to listen to myself or see myself represented.
John: So like Matthew Cause of Not A Surf.
John: Big fan.
John: Or Sean Nelson of Harvey Danger.
John: Those guys I think will listen to their own recordings and get a lot out of it.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: Um, the idea of me right now calling up one of my songs on the internet and listening to it, let alone if it was one that had a video associated with, or was live.
John: Yeah.
John: Anyway, I've been working on this project for a long time.
John: And this is the web component of that project.
John: The web component of it.
John: And the guy's been saying to me for the last, you know, two weeks, like we got this thing, it's all ready to go.
John: Well, it's the thing.
Merlin: In order for Apollo to make it back to Earth, first it's got to get into space and go around and we lose it for a while.
Merlin: There's a lot of moving parts, right?
Merlin: Yeah, we're going to launch it.
Merlin: Yes, you don't want to lose Apollo.
Merlin: And so it's important that everything be... This is the project manager talking again, but there's all these things that seem completely or almost completely independent of one another that actually have...
Merlin: invisible dependencies and sort of like uh way stations along the way and you want to make sure because because a delay in one could lead to a delay in the other and then what are you going to do then oh that's right right because the web component of your of your project isn't ready you know you you can't do the thing sure and the thing is i sympathize i sympathize with whom with people who have to deal with me
John: Wow.
John: That's nice to know.
John: I really do.
John: You do.
John: I feel bad for them.
John: I know that it's a trial.
John: Not always.
John: It is, though.
John: Well.
John: It's a lot.
John: Well.
John: It's a lot.
John: If you had to deal with me.
John: If you had to deal with me once a week, can you imagine?
Merlin: If I had to deal with you, I would consider it an honor.
Merlin: There's a reason they give you two shoulders, John.
John: You know what I'm saying?
John: That's sweet.
John: But no, I don't.
John: It's very hard to be... Yeah, well, it's big.
John: It hurts so much.
John: I had to take two Advil just to sit here.
Merlin: Oh, you didn't want to know about my sleeping last night.
John: I don't know.
John: My eyes aren't open right now, Merlin.
Merlin: I really ate the booger.
Merlin: I woke up in a lot of pain.
Merlin: Yeah, it was bad.
John: I had to take two ibuprofen to go to sleep, and even then I didn't go to sleep.
Merlin: Lucky.
Merlin: That's all, huh?
John: So why do you need... Wait, are you ibuprofening?
John: Are you ibuprofen dosing?
Merlin: My liver is visible and audible.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: Yeah, it's like a floor tom.
John: It's bad for you, apparently.
Merlin: Well, see, who's going to tell you that?
Merlin: Doctors.
John: Yeah, that's right.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: When's the last time a doctor told you you're good?
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: Give me a fucking... Trust your mechanic.
Merlin: That's bullshit, man.
John: Bullshit.
John: I betrayed my doctor, I feel like.
John: She said back in May...
John: She said, I want you to promise me that you're going to schedule a colonoscopy before your birthday.
John: And I was like, happy birthday to me.
John: I said, I promise.
John: And she said, promise me that you're going to schedule one before your birthday.
John: Michael Jackson drugs.
John: She said, they don't even have to have done it by your birthday.
John: You just need to have scheduled it by your birthday.
John: And I was like, okay, that seems to obliterate.
Merlin: People love giving homework, don't they?
Merlin: But my birthday came and went.
Merlin: It came and went.
John: I texted you.
John: I have not.
John: I sent you confetti.
John: I sent you confetti.
John: You did.
John: You sent video confetti.
John: I have not done it.
John: And now I've lied.
John: I lied to my doctor.
John: I let her down.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: You did a medical fib.
John: Well, all right, I fibbed.
John: I fibbed a little fibbed.
John: But yeah, they talk to you about that ibuprofen all the time.
John: Don't do it.
John: Don't take more than is needed.
John: It says right on the bottle.
Merlin: Just, you know what, just once they say, they call it the exception that proves the rule.
Merlin: Just once, just once tell me I'm good.
Merlin: You're good.
Merlin: Don't worry about it.
Merlin: Or just tell me, you know what, you know, give me, tell me something counterintuitive.
Merlin: You know, tell me to start vaping.
Merlin: I mean, not that I want to vape.
Merlin: It's a tough time to be picking up the habit.
Merlin: But I just would like, I would like, you know, I have so much I want to return to here.
John: But also, you don't want to hear them say eat less and exercise.
John: Is that what you're saying?
Merlin: Oh, eat less, exercise more.
Merlin: That's that's totally crumulent.
Merlin: But the but the homework thing is real.
Merlin: And I'm picking that for a reason.
Merlin: And this, you know, there's a thousand threads that come out of this because it's all connected.
Merlin: But the thing is, be careful not to give people homework, unless you intend to give them homework.
Merlin: And if you're giving someone homework, tell them it's homework, right?
Merlin: So, like, there's the kind of ha-ha classic 80s comic examples, you know, when somebody from Greenpeace gives you the brochure, it's like them saying, hey, will you throw this away for me?
Merlin: Uh-huh.
Merlin: Or, like, don't give somebody two turtles.
Merlin: First of all, they're filthy.
Merlin: They're adorable, but they're filthy.
Merlin: But now you're basically saying, now you take care of these until they die.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Don't give people homework.
Merlin: And listen, if I ask you, do you have a strong feeling about what you would like for dinner tonight?
Merlin: I would like you to respond by saying you don't have a strong feeling, in which case I will fucking run with that.
Merlin: I will take care of that.
Merlin: And we will have a protein heavy dinner.
Merlin: But if you say to me, oh, you know what?
Merlin: Actually, you being anyone, really, if you say I had a big lunch at three and I don't have a strong opinion about it, right?
Merlin: You see, now I have options.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: It's just that it feels like you're helping when you say, I don't have an opinion about that.
Merlin: Or it feels like if you say, what do you want?
Merlin: We've been through this, haven't we?
Merlin: Haven't we been through this?
John: I think so, yeah.
Merlin: Sometimes I'm really asking for an actual opinion.
Merlin: And nay, I may actually be asking for help.
Merlin: Like, I'm tired of thinking about food.
Merlin: I want you to use one of those big shoulders and you tell me what you're thinking about food.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: How much do you need to interact with yourself to sign off on this?
Merlin: If it's what I think it is, it's not like you need to go and review a lot.
Merlin: It's mainly just language on a website, right?
Yeah.
John: uh yeah but so i could be way wrong about this no i don't think so what's the worst thing that happens if you just sign off and say i'm signed off what's the worst thing that happens well let me let me let me put it this way yeah the worst thing that could happen there are a lot of things that could happen that are bad um a thing did happen that was bad
John: Because I didn't respond.
John: I didn't deal with it.
John: And then it did go live this morning.
John: Ooh.
John: Okay.
Okay.
John: And there was at least one thing about it that was like, oh, no.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Something important that was inaccurate, misleading, problematic.
Merlin: Right.
John: That I should have, that I would have noticed the second that I looked at it, if I had followed the link and logged into the thing like I was asked to do.
John: Okay.
John: But I didn't.
John: And then the thing went live.
John: Okay.
John: Now, you and I have talked.
John: Oh, my God.
John: You and I have.
John: Yeah.
John: And one of the things we've talked about is crowdfunding.
John: And for many years, we didn't like it, you and I. I still don't like it.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, it's... No, no.
Merlin: I mean, we're not against it.
Merlin: I support some things.
Merlin: But it's... Yeah, there's a lot to it.
John: Yeah, and we've always struggled with it over here.
John: Dan Benjamin on the Roadwork podcast launched a crowdfunding campaign for that.
John: It's going great guns.
John: Kind of sneaky when he first launched it on me, kind of sneaked it on me.
John: Yeah.
John: Um, because, uh, you know, because one of the things is I don't respond to emails very easily.
John: And Dan cajoled and cajoled and cajoled.
John: And I kind of just didn't reply and ignored him.
John: And then, uh, and then he just started making executive decisions.
John: Dan and I, the other day, not very long ago, we went on our program and we like harangued a little bit.
John: One of the things I never understood is you on your Dubai Five Day podcast.
John: You guys are like real haranguers about the...
John: about the uh crowdfunding because you give you give a lot well your thing is called give me give me your fucking money or something right i mean oh yeah that's that's that's a humor thing yeah yeah it's a humor thing right so we went on our show and did what i thought was pretty humorous amount of like whatever you're giving you can afford to give more type of thing it was like you know the thing about doing like um duo comedy with dan it's a
John: to get the tone exactly shared yeah yeah okay um but but uh but you know i've gotten i've gotten a handful what are you leading me into i've gotten a handful of like emails from people that took the tone of that really seriously and wrote you know i got an email from somebody yesterday the guy was like i was only able to give a dollar and now
John: i you know now i feel terrible uh about my dollar because you told me i should give three dollars and i was like hey it's just so it's all in fun you don't have to give any dollars honestly like you you could you could write me and ask me for a dollar i don't know man i'm just i'm just trying to make it down the world ken and i launched one see the reason i'm talking about these these are the only times i've ever crowdfunded i never did it for music i never did it for anything
John: Ken and I launched one after we left, took Omnibus away from iHeartMedia.
John: That was like, oh, you know, because iHeartMedia was putting ads on our show that were like penile enhancement and like usurious banking and, you know.
John: That's a terrible name for a company.
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Merlin: Terrible, terrible name.
Merlin: I can't believe they didn't give that a second pass.
John: I know.
John: Penal enhancement and user-based banking.
John: La, la, la.
John: Hello.
John: Hello.
John: Big fly.
John: And then there was... Now I get the impression that there are a couple of people on the Omnibus fan group that are like...
John: They think that because we're doing a Patreon that we're not going to ever have any ads, which we never wanted people to think that because, no, we're also going to try and have ads, just not for usuriousbanking.biz.
Merlin: The thing is, though, member SIPC.
Merlin: Now, when you go and you look at the terms and conditions and the user covenant, it says very clearly, please understand, by clicking below, you agree to literally usuriousbanking.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: Like they say in England, what it says on the tin.
Merlin: Oh, you're surprised?
Merlin: You're surprised to find this is usurious?
Merlin: Hello?
Merlin: McFly.
Merlin: So there's a problem with expectation management, it sounds like.
Merlin: And messaging, maybe some messaging mishaps.
John: You and I, we never did something like that.
Merlin: Don't bring me into this.
John: Because we don't want to disappoint people.
Merlin: Well, I have a lot of reasons.
Merlin: I do everything I do.
Merlin: Be careful.
Merlin: Don't drag me into this.
John: Oh, my goodness.
Merlin: I just want to know when your record's coming out.
John: It's something else.
John: Let it turn into something else.
John: Let it turn into something else.
John: Yes, and.
John: I never want... Never cry again, right?
John: Never cry again.
John: Let it turn into something else.
John: What had happened was...
Merlin: I'm sorry, I just love that line.
Merlin: So what had happened was... What had happened was... Email.
Merlin: People try to reach you with email.
John: Yeah, and I don't get back to him.
John: And then you get these ones where there's somebody upset.
John: There's something over here.
John: There's a guy over here that's like no soup.
Merlin: People don't want to hear about things that hadn't even been invented yet.
Merlin: Oh, no, that's right.
John: It's served on a trash can lid.
John: Not a problem.
John: What I want.
Merlin: I didn't sleep a lot.
Merlin: I didn't sleep a lot.
John: This crowdfunding campaign for a thing that is 100% me, right?
John: It benefits me.
John: It's my project.
John: It's my art.
John: It's just being managed by someone else.
John: And it launched.
John: I was given a lot of warning.
John: Hey, sign off on this.
John: Hey, you know, like five emails, you know, an hour.
John: Hey, what's going on?
John: Haven't heard from you.
John: This type of thing.
John: Just didn't want anything to do with it.
John: I just couldn't bring myself to look at it.
John: I don't know why.
John: I don't know.
John: I don't want to hear my own voice.
John: I don't want to look down a list of things because I'm going to say I'm going to find problems with that.
John: I don't want to find problems.
Merlin: It's another thing to think about.
Merlin: It's another thing to it is homework, even if it's homework that benefits you having been done.
Merlin: But it also it's a it turns it into a whole thing.
Merlin: It turns it into a whole thing.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I try so hard not to turn something into a whole thing.
John: I don't want it to be a whole thing.
John: I just want it to be.
Merlin: You got to look at what's the desirable outcome that we're looking for here.
Merlin: Is there a way to do that?
Merlin: How do we pose this where it doesn't turn into a whole thing?
Merlin: I don't need another whole thing in my life.
John: I don't either.
John: Thank you.
John: Well, what's been so nice about the omnibus, uh, uh, Patreon is that we have no levels or, I mean, there are tears.
John: It's just the tears don't, don't point it.
Merlin: Tears in rain.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: They're just tears in rain.
John: You can use that if you want.
John: Yeah, that's nice.
John: Um, no, you know what?
John: I'll use that on a, on the Roderick on the line, Patreon, which, Oh boy.
John: Anyway.
Merlin: Um, so people email you and you don't want to turn it into a, say, say again,
John: Nothing, nothing.
Merlin: So you don't want to turn into a whole thing.
Merlin: I feel, I think this might be something where we have overlap.
John: Is this right?
John: Is this a thing that you... I know you don't want a thing to turn into a whole thing, but I don't think you would let a thing go live.
John: Oh, right.
Merlin: Well, I mean, it's difficult to know without knowing more specifics, and we're being a little sketchy by design, which is a good name for my web design group.
Merlin: But no, but it's... You know what it is also?
Merlin: It's just a good old-fashioned resistance.
Merlin: You know, one can unintentionally, unconsciously become resistant to something, right?
Merlin: And so, like, I run into this with my people and my people run into this with me.
Merlin: Sometimes you run up against resistance where somebody, the more you try to cajole and done somebody to do a given thing and they're returning null, right?
Merlin: they may be resistant to doing it.
Merlin: And I know I get that way sometimes.
Merlin: They're seemingly very trivial, but non-zero time expenditures that I have to deal with sometimes.
Merlin: And I'll just keep putting it down the road because I have become resistant to it.
Merlin: And sometimes if you're fortunate or unfortunate, you'll hear a little voice.
Merlin: There'll be a little voice that's telling you, if you choose to listen, a little voice will tell you why you're resistant.
Merlin: Now, you've stipulated that that's because you don't want to hear or see yourself.
Merlin: And that could be true.
Merlin: But it also might be valuable, and this is not advice, but it might be valuable to listen for the little voice about why you're resistant.
John: Well, yes.
Merlin: Because it does benefit you to get this thing happening.
John: Yes, and I don't know why I'm resistant.
John: I don't know.
John: I think there are a lot of reasons.
John: I really do.
Merlin: I think a lot of it comes down to, for my case, you're not the boss of me.
John: Well, and I felt like maybe if I didn't respond because I wasn't ready, there needed to be more time.
John: And there was a thing about it where rather than say, I'm not ready, there needs to be more time.
John: Because like you were saying earlier, this has to happen before that, before that, before that, before that.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: Um, I didn't, if I said I need more time, there would have been like, well, what, like an hour, like six hours.
John: Now it's a whole thing.
John: Right.
John: So I just thought if I didn't reply, maybe it wouldn't happen or maybe it would happen and it would be fine.
John: I just didn't want it to, I didn't want
John: I wasn't ready.
John: I wasn't ready.
John: And I don't know how you can get to be 51 years old, which I am now, and still be dealing with things in a way where it's like, I don't know what I don't.
John: I'm just not ready.
John: And I don't know what else to do other than just ignore this.
John: Like, that seems like a very childlike.
Merlin: Well, it's not the problem.
Merlin: Here's the thing is, it's not rational.
Merlin: But I think it's all too familiar for many of us.
Merlin: It's not rational.
Merlin: That's the problem.
Merlin: You go up against some of these rational types, and they've got it all figured out.
Merlin: They're like, why don't you just go do the thing?
Merlin: And you're like, I know, right?
Merlin: I know.
John: That's right.
John: Why don't you just go do the thing?
Merlin: Why don't you just go get your colonectomy and get your Michael Jackson drug?
John: It was so easy.
John: Just put it on your calendar.
John: Just do it by your birthday.
John: Anyway, I'm going to stop being coy, right?
John: And probably our listeners are some of them aware of this, but this Western State Hurricanes record is being put out by someone and by a label called Latent Print Records.
John: And the person that's running the label wanted me to –
John: uh, to sign off on the Patreon that he's putting out to raise the, uh, to sell the record.
John: And that, you know, and the way things work these days, like he'll sell the record on the Patreon.
John: It's not like that's going to be available in stores or whatever.
John: So this is it.
John: This is the launch of the record that I worked so hard on that I care so much about.
John: Would you like people to buy it?
Merlin: I would.
Merlin: You should say that.
Merlin: You want people to go, what would you like people to do if they want to support you and your project?
Merlin: Give them a specific thing to do.
John: So when Jonathan Colton and I made our Christmas album, whatever, six years ago, eight years ago, 15 years ago.
Merlin: You're not going to just give them a link.
Merlin: I want you to do this.
Merlin: I'll do it.
John: I'll support it.
John: When we did it, we thought that we were going to... Jonathan had just come off of a kind of a record-breaking career where he just kind of came out of nowhere and he sold like a million records and he was used to everything he touched turning to gold.
John: And we made this Christmas album.
John: We had a lot of fun doing it.
John: We thought it was really fun.
John: We still put your ornament on the tree.
John: Yeah, and we came up with this box of all this great stuff, the ornament, the sweatshirt, the stickers and vinyl and all these things.
John: And Jonathan was like, oh, well, you know, we'll probably sell this many of these box sets out.
John: and this many CDs, and we put it out, and just nobody wanted it.
John: And it broke our hearts.
John: Some of us wanted it.
John: That's an important distinction.
Merlin: Not everybody will want your thing, but the people who do want your thing don't want to hear that they don't want it.
Merlin: Good people, talented people, smart and gentle people.
Merlin: This could be...
Merlin: Part of the challenge with another thing is that the people, because then people are going to go, hey, they're going to say, hey, I do like your thing.
Merlin: I'm doing your thing.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: I want this.
Merlin: It looks like it's up on Twitter.
Merlin: It looks like there's a link here.
Merlin: I'm used to feeling like a failure.
Merlin: Oh, I'm sorry.
Merlin: I took you off your Jonathan Colton story.
John: I'm used to... Don't say that.
John: Don't say that.
John: No, no, it's true.
John: It's absolutely true.
John: My whole life I have felt like I've underperformed.
John: And part of the problem with my house search is that I'm realizing now that the whole business of the farm being just one series of unfinished projects after another, the whole thing just being this...
John: this this bunch of things that never got done it was just my inner life exploded out onto a canvas like all of the things that that i did that personally i didn't ever get done in my own life um i also now had a house that was that yeah and i and i never put the two and two together i thought that the house was just
John: I thought that the house was an extension of that.
John: But actually, I bought a place that was already 100 different things I was never going to finish.
John: I must have done that for a reason.
John: I must have done it because that's what I expect out of life, you know, that I look at something and go, wow, there are so many things I could do here.
John: And then it was immediately like a Santa's bag of broken toys that I lugged around for 12 years.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: You just want a basement where you can sort your cufflinks without anybody hearing you.
Merlin: It's not a lot to ask.
John: And I don't want people to come in and see me doing it.
John: No.
Yeah.
John: And it's not that I don't want people looking at me.
John: I know.
Merlin: This is how we differ.
Merlin: You want to have a place that doesn't look like, I forget your phrase, a big mess.
Merlin: That's what the basement's for.
John: That's right.
John: I don't want you to come into my house and go, oh, is this a cufflink sorting factory?
John: Snork.
Merlin: I wouldn't invite that person back.
John: No, no, I wouldn't.
John: You're not welcome here, sir.
John: I don't even want them on my internet.
John: You're going to get a gift bag.
John: Go.
John: So this thing comes out, and now it's real, and I don't like anything about it.
John: You know, it's a Patreon.
John: Talk about the record.
Merlin: The holiday record.
John: Oh, no, no, the holiday record, I loved.
John: It just came out and it didn't sell.
John: It didn't sell.
John: And the thing is that at that point in Jonathan Colton's career, everything he'd ever done had been a screaming success.
John: So the first thing that he did that wasn't a success was a collaboration with me.
Merlin: Oh, geez, when you put it that way, that sounds horrible.
John: And and, you know, subsequently, like he's realized that making a making a living as an artist is hard for everybody.
John: But, you know, but he but in his early success, he got up to a tier of success that allows him to continue to muddle along at a level higher than me muddling along.
Merlin: But he's also open to he seems very open to like just trying a thing out, knowing that and not banking, not needing to bank on it being a huge success out of the gate.
Merlin: But he seems like he learned stuff from trying to.
John: Well, he does.
John: Well, hopefully we all do.
John: But, you know, he banked on our Christmas record because he's got a he's got a basement full of unsold things.
John: Mm hmm.
John: And, you know, a lot of that and also what I thought I was bringing to the table of that project was I've got a publisher.
John: I've got a music.
John: I've got the music business behind me.
John: We'll get these songs put on television shows or whatever.
John: And none of that happened.
John: My music publisher was like, yeah, if you guys had just made a record of like covering Christmas standards, we probably could have gotten you a bunch of.
John: placements, but nobody wants new Christmas music.
John: Nobody's going to put that on TV or in movies.
John: Or nobody that's not bankable in that way.
Merlin: I would avoid the language of nobody wants that.
Merlin: I really like that record.
Merlin: It's just it's not going to be the kind of thing where it's not going to get snapped up to be on the Hallmark Channel.
John: None of the Christmas movie placement people liked it or wanted it.
John: If you were making a TV show and you put it in there, then we'd be talking about a different thing.
Merlin: It starts with one fan.
John: I'm here for you.
John: Merlin's Christmas TV Spectacular.
John: here comes santa with his bag of broken toys uh anyway the thing the first thing i see when i wake up this morning yeah i came downstairs and then turned on the computer my eyes weren't even open i was like i'm gonna talk to merlin i flip open the thing and there's a and there's a uh you know the computer comes alive
John: And there's a there's a comment thread where someone says, wow, this thing just went live.
John: And one of the tears is that John is going to handwrite lyrics.
John: For $50?
John: Like, buy the vinyl, get a CD, and also a handwritten lyric sheet from John.
John: And one of the people is like, boy, he's going to regret doing that.
John: And then the other person said, well, it's capped at only $25.
John: And I was like, someone went out into the world and promised on my behalf that I was going to handwrite $25.
John: song lyric sheets for, and, and they did this as a way of selling a vinyl, which should already be whatever, $25 and a CD and all this other stuff.
John: And so the, the value add as far as this, uh, tier, the value add of me, right.
John: Handwriting lyrics was 10, $10 or something.
John: Yeah.
Um,
John: And I saw that and I just knew I am.
John: There's no way I'm ever going to do it.
John: It's not like it's not like I would sit and begrudgingly handwrite 25 lyric sheets like I just would never do.
John: I wouldn't do it.
John: And it would be so hard.
John: It would be impossible.
John: If he had put one of the tiers, like, John will give you a lock of his hair tied in a ribbon, I would be like, sure.
John: I mean, there's hair all around.
John: Every six weeks, I cut a shoebox full of hair off of me.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: but 25 handwritten lyric sheets.
Merlin: And the thing is... See, I want to explore this a little bit because that sounds to me like one of those things that I would call an oh boy.
Merlin: Oh boy.
Merlin: Where it doesn't even take more than... I mean, sometimes somebody like me will overreact to something or have an unusually strong feeling of anxiety about some things.
Merlin: But there are some kinds of things where you get an oh boy.
Merlin: And you can, one can instantly, I don't want to speak for you here, but for myself, you will sometimes be able to see that thing just barely walking over the horizon and go, that ain't going to scale.
Merlin: That's, I can already see myself not doing that forever.
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: Not doing it forever.
Merlin: No, no, not doing it forever.
Merlin: And I'm not saying you won't do it ever, but I will say that it's one of those orders of magnitude problems where you're like, oh, no, I know how I am.
Merlin: I would never do one of those.
Merlin: Are you kidding me?
Merlin: I haven't even got my colonectomies scheduled.
Merlin: I'm certainly not going to handwrite the lyrics to Car Parts 25 times.
Merlin: Or whatever.
John: Not in a million, billion, trillion years.
Merlin: But you know what I mean?
Merlin: The oh boy, you could say it maybe a little bit like Rain Man.
Merlin: Like, oh boy, like, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, oh boy, wow.
Merlin: That was not a commitment that should have been made, perhaps?
Merlin: Did you know these tears would be the tears?
John: No, because I didn't look at it.
John: Okay, okay.
John: A lot of tears.
John: there are a lot of tiers, and they're all very confusing.
John: You can buy the audio and an autograph?
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: You can also get one with a test pressing.
Merlin: I'm not against any of this.
Merlin: I'm going to give you all the money and not ask for anything.
Merlin: But there is a lot to choose from here, and a lot of it makes some work for somebody, I think.
Merlin: This is not the positive launch of this that I was hoping to participate in.
Merlin: I want this to be a big, to paraphrase Robert Duvall in The Great Film Network, I want this to be a big, fat, big-titted hit.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: So you get the download.
Merlin: Yeah, there's a lot of options.
John: Yeah, there are.
John: And I should have looked at this.
John: Oh, man.
Merlin: But the shirts, you don't have to do fulfillment on the shirts, right?
John: I don't have to do fulfillment on anything.
John: I didn't think I had to do fulfillment on anything.
John: But now apparently I got to autograph things and there's all this other stuff.
John: And, you know, it was just like on his part, I don't know what he...
John: I don't know what's going on.
John: I didn't want to have to deal with it.
John: I wasn't ready.
John: And now it's launched.
John: And the music is a thing I'm really excited about.
John: I think it'd be great to sell t-shirts.
John: I think it'd be great to sell...
John: Tickets to our shows.
John: I don't even mind autographing a thing.
John: But somebody has decided that I'm going to sit at a table and autograph records for $25 when a record should just be $25.
John: Yeah, it's complicated.
Merlin: So you can get a digital... So, hmm.
Merlin: This is an interesting in-band communication we're having you and I right now.
Merlin: Are you going to change for a dollar?
Merlin: Are you going to... What are you going to do?
Merlin: Do we want to tell people to go do the thing?
Merlin: It sounds like you might have some amendments.
John: Well, I got to, I, I, so I wrote him immediately and was like, take that fucking down.
John: Not the, don't take down the thing, but take down the lyrics thing.
John: Yeah.
John: Like he's already sold three of them and I'll honor those three requests.
John: Um, but, but, uh, but, and he, so he wrote me back and he was like, well, that's a great tier.
John: How much should we charge?
John: And I was like, for handwritten lyrics, um,
John: You should have put three of them for sale for $500.
John: I don't know.
John: That's the problem.
John: This is what I don't want to have to think about.
John: Yeah, it's a whole thing.
John: This is what I don't want to do.
John: It's a whole thing, yeah.
John: I don't want to deal with this.
John: I don't want to, like, handwritten lyrics.
John: That's the thing I would do.
John: I would handwrite the lyrics and send it to Liesbeth in Holland or Monica in Vienna.
Yeah.
John: I would do that as a Christmas present on our 30-year anniversary or whatever of their involvement in the Long Winters website.
John: And, you know, Lisbeth has the Long Winters library and Monica did so much work for us.
John: But to handwrite the lyrics to car parts?
John: No.
John: You tell me, Merlin, how much is that worth?
John: How much would you pay?
John: Well, it's a different question.
Merlin: How much is it worth?
Merlin: It's worth everything.
Merlin: It's my favorite Long Winter song.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Yeah, no, I don't know.
Merlin: The what's it worth and what will people pay is a very interesting question nowadays.
Merlin: well sure and the thing is we are living we are living in the age of uh was it habermas we're talking about the age of mass reproduction so when i bought my um totally maxed out beatles white album reissue which which purchase was largely unnecessary given that i subscribed to spotify but i did get it because i thought it was cool you know and i you know
Merlin: Support the band.
Merlin: But, you know, it's got stuff in there like the reproduction of those photos, which I think you're not a fan of.
Merlin: It's got a reproduction of the poster, you know, with the skeletal arms reaching out to Paul in the one image.
Merlin: Or the Sgt.
Merlin: Pepper one comes with all kinds of shit.
Merlin: But it's all just stuff that was printed.
Merlin: Ringo Starr did not have to turn a crank on a press.
Merlin: to output images from 1967 or 68.
Merlin: That's a little distinction to make right here, I think.
John: The people that have books, right?
John: I mean, I watched Adam Savage sit and sign...
John: 2,500 books or something, maybe more.
John: He'd make a machine to do that.
John: Hodgman does it all the time.
John: They sign books and they do it.
John: They do like 2,500 without complaint.
John: They feel like, or maybe they complain a little bit, but it's part of the business.
John: Part of the business.
Merlin: right yeah because they'll sell those like at our store like our little bookshop west portal our little local um yeah you'll go in there and you'll see like the signed copies of these and some of those were signed when an author visited there but um i mean they got all they got a whole bunch of those and they charge a little bit more but they're not running it off on a xerox machine in their hours off michael chabon is not sitting in his basement you know what i mean
John: Yeah, right.
John: Putting those in envelopes.
John: I don't think so.
Merlin: I mean, this is part of the... He's writing the new Captain Picard show.
Merlin: No shit?
Merlin: That looks pretty good.
Merlin: I've been kind of avoiding it because I want to actually see it and go in fresh.
Merlin: But yeah, I mean, there's all kinds of issues around... I'm being evasive here.
Merlin: There's all kinds of issues around what it costs to make something, what something can earn in the marketplace.
Yeah.
Merlin: And what I'm trying to avoid saying is this is exactly the kind of turning into a thing that I just really want to avoid in life.
Merlin: Where you get like minimum, like it's just not lose, lose, lose, because this thing's going to be a big, fat, big-titted hit.
Merlin: But there are those kinds of things where like all that does in some ways is then open the door for people to be like, where's my fucking lyrics?
Merlin: And like, you know, did you do the thing that you said you were going to do?
Merlin: Because like once you, we've talked about this before, I mean, our, many of our discussions we've had about stuff in the past, go back to the days of shareware and look at, gosh, we've talked about this so many times, but you would just, you could just go and see there'd be a certain kind of utility app for the Mac, a class of utility app.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: So it could be something like a file viewer.
Merlin: It could be like a super get info, something like that.
Merlin: But the, um, but the five of those that were free or donation where we'll get four or five stars.
Merlin: And then what are the cost of nickel?
Merlin: One star, two stars.
Merlin: Because all it takes is that nickel, and now they own a little piece of you.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Now coin has been exchanged, and now you're the baddie, because why wouldn't I just go get this free one?
Merlin: Well, I'm just trying to earn a living over here.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
John: Yeah.
John: Habermas.
John: Well, so anyway, there's a lot of tiers here.
John: The thing is, it's on something called Indiegogo.
John: Do you know what that is?
Merlin: I'm looking at the page right now.
John: Indiegogo.com.
Merlin: Oh, sorry, to answer your question.
Merlin: Yes, I do know what Indiegogo is.
Merlin: Indiegogo, probably best known these days for financing people's medical care, but it's also a place similar to, I want to say, Kickstarter, where you can go in and historically, it would be a place where somebody would say, I want to go produce a thing, whether that is a new kind of pen or I want to produce an album, and I need the funding for that before I'm able to produce it, right?
John: Oh, I see.
Merlin: But then you come along and get things like the Pebble Watch comes along.
Merlin: And the Pebble Watch is essentially using sites like this to just be like their storefront, right?
Merlin: But in any case, you can go in and you can have different kinds of tiers.
Merlin: And for somebody like you or like a Jonathan Colton, you would benefit from people who want to give you money.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: I'm like that with a lot of folks.
Merlin: Like, I'm more than happy to go in and give my money to this person.
Merlin: I can't tell you how many copies of certain things I've bought.
Merlin: I buy a shirt, not because I need another Cotton Bureau shirt, but I buy a shirt because I want to support the band.
Merlin: Like, there's, you know, podcasts and YouTube channels that produce one or two things a month, and I give them five bucks a month because, like, I want them to succeed.
Merlin: And so you can go in and be somebody who says, like, oh, you know, shoot the wad.
Merlin: Actually, you know, charge me this much a month instead because...
Merlin: I want to give you more value than I extract in strict dollar amounts.
Merlin: And that's the benefit of a thing like this is if you can write, you know what I mean?
Merlin: To get the super fans to come in, that can be really beneficial if it all works out.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: That's my sense of Indiegogo.
Merlin: It's similar to Kickstarter.
Merlin: It is different from Patreon in that way.
Merlin: Patreon is usually a subscription thing where people tie the certain amount each month out of support and usually with some kind of reward.
Merlin: I think of Indiegogo,
Merlin: exclusive of the medical stuff, I think of Indiegogo being where people have things like your album.
John: Why would you use Indiegogo rather than Kickstarter?
Merlin: No, that's way above my pay grade.
Merlin: No idea.
John: Okay, so I just wrote him and I said, send me the tiers.
John: Here they are.
John: Samaritan equals a donation.
Merlin: Do you have the link?
Merlin: Shall I send it to you?
John: Oh, no, no, no.
John: I figured it out.
John: It's indiegogo.com slash project slash western dash state dash hurricanes dash debut.
John: I don't know if there's, are there more?
John: Oh, there's more dashes.
John: I can't see that.
Merlin: I'm just going to find a shorter role for it.
John: Indiegogo.
Merlin: You can also go to igg.
Merlin: Oh, boy, this is not that much better.
Merlin: But yeah, so I would search for Indiegogo.
Merlin: With your permission, I will put a link into show notes so people can go and support this excellent project.
John: So I said, send me a list of all the tiers because I'm very confused.
John: Samaritan is a donation.
John: They just want to give money and don't want anything in return.
John: Unsalted butter level is digital files of the album.
John: Then personal autograph level is I will write you a personal message of your choice on the record.
John: So what that means is you buy the record at a certain price and then the personal autograph is an add-on.
John: Then there's the Mimi level, which is a copy of the record on colored vinyl and digital that goes with that.
John: The executive producer level is your name in the liner notes.
John: Hmm.
John: Wow.
John: That's cool.
John: I guess.
John: Medicine cabinet pirate level is a copy of the record with vinyl, digital files, plus a limited edition show poster.
John: Through with love level.
John: It's got the vinyl, the digitals, one ticket to the record release show.
John: Yes.
John: In Seattle.
John: The digital, yeah.
John: Digital.
John: Car parts is the record, digital, and a shirt.
John: Yes.
John: Car parts also, that's gendered, men's shirt, women's shirt.
John: You get lady car parts.
John: Lady car parts.
John: The Copernicus level is... You're killing me.
John: A copy of the... You're killing me.
Merlin: Vinyl, digital... Please promote this properly.
Merlin: Plus a poster.
Merlin: You're in, you've got to promote this.
Merlin: Either you better promote this or we're not going to release this episode.
Merlin: I can't stand either one.
Merlin: Nora is one of those plus test pressing.
Merlin: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: That's Nora level.
John: Oh, test pressing, which is autographed by the band.
John: There will only be 10 of those.
John: Do they know that, John?
John: Is that $1,000?
John: I don't know.
John: I have no idea.
Merlin: Nora is $150, and that comes with you get the record, the test pressing, plus the digital.
Merlin: I'm clicking through.
Merlin: I'm clicking.
Merlin: You get digital files, personalized autograph, vinyl LP, plus the test pressing.
John: So how many of these tears should I write him back and say, eliminate these tears?
Merlin: I, you know, if there's anything that I learned from the music man— You should have done this before.
Merlin: Well, you know, we have resistance.
Merlin: If there's anything I learned from the music man, it's this.
Merlin: You've got to know the territory.
Merlin: And I don't feel like I know this territory.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Right, right.
Merlin: So my guts are going to be only passingly useful.
Merlin: My gut for everything is don't have more than three levels unless people demand it.
Merlin: Three levels.
Merlin: Because then that's just more skews to maintain.
Merlin: That's more things.
John: Well, let's assume that I don't have to ever think about a skew.
Merlin: Yeah, but if that skew includes you affixing pen to paper, it may not be your fault, but it is your problem.
John: Heard that.
John: Heard that, dog.
John: I don't know.
Merlin: It could be five levels.
Merlin: It could be five levels.
Merlin: I would have a blowed-out level that's a little more blowed-out.
Merlin: I mean, I think obviously the digital... Why am I talking about this?
Merlin: I know this is turning into a thing.
Merlin: The digital downloads is a no-brainer.
Merlin: I don't understand the whole vinyl thing, but people seem to like it.
Merlin: The vinyl plus, that's cool.
Merlin: So what's interesting...
Merlin: Why am I pointing this out to you, John?
Merlin: Okay.
John: No, no, no.
John: I get it.
John: I get it.
John: You just said everything that needs to be said.
John: No, no, no, no, no.
John: You did.
John: You said blowed-out level, and that's exactly what I'm looking at and going, where's the blowed-out level?
Merlin: I'm going to make one note about this, where this episode has got to come out, but here's my one note about this.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: You have personalized autograph level.
Merlin: Okay, that's where you get a copy of the LP.
Merlin: Let me click here.
Merlin: This perk is an add-on.
Merlin: You still need to choose a reward that includes the record.
Merlin: Okay, so you can buy the LP for $25.
Merlin: They should also indicate graphically that the digital files are included with these, and it doesn't do that graphically.
John: Aren't the digital files the little, there's a little note?
John: Yeah, but click on Mimi.
John: Where's the Mimi level?
John: Okay.
John: A copy of the vinyl.
John: Oh, it doesn't have the digital files on that one until you click on it and you see it.
Merlin: So personalized autograph, I think this might just be a little error, but the personalized autograph, which is an add-on to having bought the record,
Merlin: Seems to imply you get the audio files, but it doesn't mention that it included items.
John: No, it doesn't.
Merlin: It's a little confusing.
John: It doesn't.
John: That's confusing, too.
Merlin: It doesn't.
Merlin: Here's the thing.
Merlin: Here's my only note about this.
Merlin: It doesn't cost anything to give people the audio files.
John: That should come with everything.
John: Here's the problem.
John: Here's the problem.
John: Yes.
John: Okay.
John: The problem is I should have looked at this yesterday or three days ago.
John: Yes.
John: But if I had done it, I wouldn't have known what the problems were.
John: Hmm.
John: If I had looked at it a week ago, I wouldn't have known what the problems were.
John: Because I wouldn't have... Well, because I didn't look at it.
John: Because I didn't want to look at it.
John: And the thing is, if you sent me this and said, hey, look at my thing, I would have a hard time looking at it even then.
John: If it was you.
Merlin: I can be trying as a person.
Merlin: No, no, no, no.
John: No.
John: Banish the thumb.
John: But what...
John: Now that I see it and I know what the problems are, now I have to go and say, okay, this is all going to be different.
John: And that's the wrong thing to do after it's already launched on the day of the launch.
Merlin: I mean, these things are complicated.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: So here's the challenge.
John: Here's the challenge.
John: Ready?
John: This episode is going to come out.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: I'm going to say everyone needs to go to Indiegogo Western State Hurricanes debut LP and get on board buying this album and supporting and a T-shirt and here's the game.
John: Yeah.
John: If you listen to this episode early, there may be different tiers available than if you listen to this episode tomorrow.
John: Get all of them.
John: Get all the tiers.
John: Because I'm going to go and... There's nothing to stop you from getting all the tiers.
John: There's nothing to stop you from getting all the tiers.
Merlin: C-beams off the shoulder of Orion.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: Just get all the tears.
Merlin: They should have, you know what?
Merlin: All the great tears.
Merlin: There's your new level.
Merlin: Get the Western State Hurricanes vinyl album.
John: It's $7,500.
John: Shoulder of, off the single large aching shoulder of Orion.
Merlin: John, the single aching shoulder.
Merlin: Oh, that's good.
Merlin: John will come to your house and personally paw through your cufflinks in real time while you listen to it.
John: I will tattoo the lyrics of Fire Parts as a complete back piece for $25.
Merlin: That's such a good deal.
Merlin: $25.
Merlin: Wait, wait.
Merlin: For $5 more, you can choose somebody who gets to tattoo whether they want it or not.
John: Wouldn't that be a fun goof?
John: Wouldn't that be a fun goof?
John: I will force tattoo this on someone who does not even know about the band and doesn't want it.
Merlin: He just got hurricaned.
Merlin: Hachimachi!