Ep. 387: "Don't Talk to Dongus"
Merlin: Hello?
Merlin: Hi, John.
John: Hi, Merlin.
Merlin: How's it going?
John: Well, there's a little bit of an issue here because although you can hear me speaking into the microphone...
John: I'm hearing you through the computer audio.
John: Oh, but I just changed it in the menu.
John: So now it's good.
Merlin: Is that a way that you prefer it?
John: To do it in a menu?
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: I mean, to be able to hear like that?
John: Oh, I like to hear you in my headphones and not just, like, across the room.
John: Because if you say the word computer... Computer.
Merlin: Oh, it sets off your lady.
John: Yeah, the lady's going to ask us, or she's going to tell us how much rainfall... Could you choose that for Star Trek reasons?
John: Amazon basin.
John: Calling her computer?
John: No, the little boy across the street, Jared...
John: is familiar with the Amazon dingus.
John: And so he used to come into the house and say, Alexa, play old town road.
John: And I would say, Jared, don't control our Alexa.
John: You're not allowed.
John: You're not authorized.
Okay.
John: And he would go, oh, OK, sorry.
John: And then he would go into, you know, because there's one of these dongases in like four different places in the house.
John: So he'd go somewhere else.
John: He'd just run from Dongus to Dongus.
John: Well, because there's, like, you know, kids running around.
John: Sure, sure, sure.
John: So they'd be in some other room, and he would say, you know, Alexa.
Merlin: Oh, boy.
John: Play Old Town Road.
John: Okay, okay.
John: Please email John.
John: And then it would come alive out of the Donguses.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: And I would come throttle the kid and say, you don't have the – never speak to – don't talk to my girlfriend.
John: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Don't speak to me or my son ever again.
John: Yeah.
John: My son Dongus.
John: I love him very much.
John: Don't talk to Dongus.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: And so – and I changed it to – the thing is you can only change it to four things.
John: So I changed it to all four of them and eventually like computer, like no one –
John: No one expects the Spanish Inquisition.
John: No one thinks you're going to call it that.
John: Oh, she just lit up.
John: She didn't know what.
John: Oh, I said Spanish Inquisition.
John: Maybe she's going to say something.
John: She didn't.
John: Anyway, so yeah, that's why it's called computer.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I wish you could come up for convenience and security reasons.
Merlin: I wish you could pick your own word.
John: Yeah.
John: Oh, my God.
John: It would all be swear words, though.
John: It's already all swear words.
Merlin: Dongus.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, there's a lot of... Dongus, stop!
Merlin: Dongus, stop!
Merlin: Dongus, go home!
Merlin: Dongus, go home!
Merlin: Dongus, stop!
Merlin: Dongus, stop!
Merlin: Dongus, stop!
Merlin: Dongus, stop!
Merlin: Dongus, stop!
John: Dongus, stop!
John: Dongus would be a great name for a dog.
John: Or a pretty little girl.
John: Dongus.
Merlin: This is my daughter Dongus.
Merlin: I love her very much.
Merlin: Little Dongus.
Merlin: Little Dongus.
Merlin: Those little curly pigtails.
John: Yeah.
John: Sweet little Dongus.
John: It's a family name.
John: We call her Dong.
Merlin: Well, when I say it's a family name, she is in my family.
John: I was looking at some family names yesterday.
John: I'm on a genealogy thing because I'm a boomer.
John: But also because as a – my parents were older.
Merlin: And so – You came sort of late in the process compared to your siblings of other times.
John: And to accuse me of being a boomer is not entirely wrong in that – You're not a boomer.
John: What are you talking about?
John: Well, in that my dad is a World War II veteran and my mom is a silent generation, right?
John: Oh, right.
John: Graduation is hanging on the wall.
John: Got it.
John: Yep.
John: Yeah.
John: So she was born in 34.
John: My dad was born in 21.
John: So I have boomer older siblings on both sides.
John: Right.
John: That's why I'm so interested in both sides and everything.
John: But so my parents and all of my relatives, by the time I arrived in 1968, they were all over it.
John: They were thick in middle age.
John: My dad was my age in 1971.
John: So –
John: So a lot of my interests, a lot of my vocabulary, a lot of my just personal – and this isn't like talking about –
John: loving classic rock or something.
John: It's just like when I was a kid, what did we sit around and talk about?
John: Fucking World War II.
Merlin: You're giving me an angle on this I had never considered before.
Merlin: I know all of these – well, first of all, I mean it's approximately 20% more useful than asking somebody what their sign is.
Merlin: But let's set that aside for now.
Merlin: I mean the notion is that after World War II, there was a big –
Merlin: As they say, boom.
Merlin: A boom.
Merlin: A lot of intercourse, made some babies, moved to the suburbs, put the graduations on the wall with hanging.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: And then the children of the – but I've heard it described as up to – so I feel like I'm right on the cusp from a technical standpoint, 66.
Hmm.
Merlin: But you're giving me a thought technology.
Merlin: I can't believe it never occurred to me before.
Merlin: It was like, what if the qualification is not when you were born, but when your parents were born?
Merlin: Sort of.
Merlin: Because that's how you're going to get raised.
Right.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: You know, it takes us something to make us something.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Coming through the rye.
Merlin: That's super interesting to me.
John: Well, you know, I dated back in the day, let's see, when?
John: In the early 2000s, I dated Shanti.
John: Do you remember Shanti?
John: Shanti.
John: Shanti was a little bit before your time.
John: But the reason that we say Shanti is because...
John: That was the very early days of having a flip phone that you could push a button and then talk to.
John: You could say someone's name and it would dial that person.
John: Do you remember that?
John: 19-2000 or whatever it was.
Merlin: I got my first cell phone in 1999.
Merlin: I felt a little bit late to the game, but...
Merlin: It was a candy bar, not a flip phone.
Merlin: But I remember when, like, just a year before, it was all about those Motorola StarTax because they were, like, the Star Trek communicator.
John: People loved those.
John: Yeah.
John: My first phone was an LG.
John: I got it when, I think it was 2001, early in 2001.
John: No, no, no, I'm sorry.
John: It would have been late 2001.
John: I was very late to that game.
John: Maybe October of 2001, Michael Schilling and I went to the phone store and bought phones.
John: We each got a phone.
John: Cool.
John: And I was dating Shanti.
John: And Shanti was out of character for me.
John: She was what we at the time called an Egyptian.
John: Which meant that she wore Cleopatra eyeliner.
John: She was a lifestyle Egyptian.
John: She was.
John: She was one of those girls that in the 90s wore a turban and danced with the listening to trip hop and whatnot and went to Burning Man back in the 80s or whatever.
John: She was not somebody that was part of my normal social world.
John: She and I
John: Well, because she was the ex-girlfriend of Cody and Cody was in one of those swerve driver style like chill wave band.
John: Not chill wave.
John: What would you call that stuff?
John: Like a poppy shoegaze band?
John: Shoegaze.
John: But yeah, shoegaze.
John: Right.
John: Super loud and they all wore – those were the fingernail polish boys and they were all a lot prettier than me and they lived in a pretty world.
John: They were all really pretty.
John: But they had good hair, huh?
John: They had amazing hair.
John: They were all like really slim and ethereal and –
John: When I started dating Shanti, it was a real scandal in this town because it was like, well, it was like the Sochers and the Conserves.
Merlin: Yeah, I was going to say the Capulets and the Montagues.
John: Yeah, I mean, you know, because I like – I wore wool, you know?
John: It was just not a thing that – it was the two worlds should never have met.
John: She's cheer captain and you're in the bleachers.
John: That's right.
John: Well, and the problem with this was that –
John: Years before, 1994, I had dated Kira.
John: Oh, boy.
John: Kira went on to date Jeremy, and Jeremy was in a band with Cody.
John: And Kira and Jeremy went out for many, many long times.
Merlin: This is less of a rock family tree than more of a rock family shrub.
John: It's a small world.
Merlin: A naughty, naughty shrub.
John: Nobody knows about this particular thing because those shoegazer Egyptian people were like such a different universe.
John: Yeah.
John: And we – but, you know, like they were – sure, they were like fancy boys, but they were still boys.
John: They still would like – they still wanted to like get all in each other's faces about things, although not in a –
John: Not in a like, let's fight, but in a like, I don't know.
John: Boys are like that.
John: They want to get on that Dongus.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: And so anyway, so having dated Kira before, that was a situation where Jeremy dated Kira after me.
John: So it was like, you know, we were all young.
John: So it was plausible, right?
John: But for me to date Shanti later.
John: was just like, well, it destroyed everything, which was fun.
Merlin: Can I ask a question that might be problematic?
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: In the lifestyle Egyptian shoegaze community, was she regarded as like a particularly attractive and desirable member of the community?
John: Yes.
John: Well, unfortunately, Cody was – Cody looked and looks even now at age 50 like Sting in Quadrophenia.
John: Oof.
John: like platinum hair that was like, that never stopped, you know, kind of just, um, he was, he was like queen of the scene in a way, just really, um, Oh, and that's, you know, and everybody was like queer too, in addition to being, you know, mostly straight, but like, it was very woo.
John: And so Cody was like King and not, it wasn't King exactly, but like,
John: Shanti and Cody were elven.
John: Oh, like high elves.
John: Really high elves.
John: Super high elves.
John: And I think Cody really loved her.
John: And Shanti was like, can't tell me what to do.
John: I was going to say, I'll bet she's a free spirit.
John: Going to fly over everybody.
John: And so whatever.
John: The fact that we bumped into each other.
John: And when we bumped into each other, we immediately couldn't stand each other.
John: But it was raining and we had to walk together.
John: I don't know because rain brings people together.
John: It was like, oh, it's raining.
John: Hey, John, this is Shanti, Shanti John.
John: I was like, oh, hey.
John: And she's just the first words out of her mouth.
John: I was like, oh, my God, I can't stand you.
John: And then by the time we got to the top of the hill, she was like, do you want to get a drink?
John: I was like, I don't drink.
John: And she was like, great.
John: And so we went to a bar and by the end of the day, we were dating.
Merlin: We went out for whatever, a year.
Merlin: Moments snap together like magnets.
Merlin: You never know what's going to happen, do you?
John: It's really amazing.
John: She was the one that went down to— Seriously, isn't it wild?
John: Totally wild.
John: Oh, and that's what made it so scandalous because it came out of nowhere.
John: There's no way, there's no reason that Shanti and I should ever have gone to a second location together.
John: It was only that we met downtown in the rain and were introduced, and then we all walked up a hill together.
John: And by the time we got to the top of the hill, it was like, well, yeah, I guess I'll go get a drink.
Merlin: I was just listening, just finished a long episode of a podcast I like called Blank Check.
Merlin: Long story short, they were talking about When Harry Met Sally, which I love so much.
John: It's a great movie.
Merlin: Yeah, we watched it last night again.
Merlin: But they say something – they said so many smart things because Griffin and David are very smart.
Merlin: Check it out.
Merlin: But they said something – Griffin said something I thought was so interesting.
Merlin: It's like when you think about – it sounds obvious, but when you think back on the memories that you have with people –
Merlin: it's so often very locatable with a location or a song or a meal.
Merlin: And it's like, you know, you may not remember all the nights that you sat and watched Netflix for three hours, but often, I think he was in particular talking about meals and the importance of food in that movie.
Merlin: But in that case, doesn't that feel indelible to you now, that one day, that by the end of the day, it must have felt practically shocking that it was still one of those days that feels like...
John: 35 hours long and you're like it's still the same day and we're and now this is are we doing this this is crazy yeah because but because after we parted ways she gave me her number wrote it on a piece of paper because that was the style of the time back when we used to use paper and uh so i got home and you know like took off my raincoat my my my famous blue raincoat and um
John: You know, whatever, made a grilled cheese sandwich or something and then picked up the phone and called her.
John: And she answered the phone.
John: And I was like, it's John.
John: And she said, because she was fancy, she said, you're not supposed to call me.
John: And I said, what do you mean?
John: And she was like, well, no one ever calls anyone.
John: That day, they wait.
John: They wait like two days, three days.
Merlin: You're supposed to be making me miserable.
Merlin: You're supposed to gaslight me and make me uncertain of myself.
Merlin: What kind of man are you?
John: And I was like, well, anyway, here I am.
John: So anyway, what are you going to do about it?
John: And she was like, this is amazing.
John: This is like unprecedented.
John: She was genuinely baffled and like impressed and flabbergasted that I had called her that day.
John: So it was just, yeah, it all happened in one day.
John: But Shanti was not approved of by any of my friends.
John: Oh, interesting.
John: I have discussed how the fancy Egyptians –
Merlin: felt about me which they continue to feel about me to this day although they all came to the western state hurricane shows did they become romulans they were romulans it sounds like it's what you're describing it feels like you know in the same way you would go like oh is there a difference between like a a rocker and a teddy boy and a greaser and it's like well there there are distinctions you know what i mean but like the tight pants and the uh and the eyeliner and that that romulan haircut you know there's some dna in there
John: The thing is that the Egyptians were Romulans, but not all Romulans were Egyptians.
John: Okay.
John: But my people were like Shanti, even people that had never met her.
John: They said, you're dating someone named Shanti?
John: What is a Shanti?
Merlin: I think it's from Hinduism, but I only know it from the end of The Wasteland.
John: Yeah, it's a – Peace, right?
John: It's peace, yeah.
Merlin: Shanti, Shanti, Shanti.
John: Sanskrit.
John: Okay, right, right, right.
John: So – and she had the Sanskrit –
John: First Shanti tattooed on the back of her neck.
Merlin: That was the other thing.
Merlin: No, no, no, no, no, no.
Merlin: She didn't.
Merlin: She had a lot of tattoos.
Merlin: In the early – wait, hang on.
Merlin: Sorry.
Merlin: What year?
Merlin: 2000.
Merlin: 2000.
John: Okay.
Merlin: 2000.
Merlin: That's some pretty early necks of Sanskrit, I've got to say.
John: Well, but she had tattoos in many – She had a thumb ring.
Merlin: There's not a curiosity thumb ring.
John: No, not a thumb ring.
John: She did not have – interesting that you bring that up.
John: She did not have any piercings.
John: And I think it was because she was an adventure girl and wanted to not get caught on a chain link fence.
Merlin: I was thinking –
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Merlin: Exactly what I was thinking.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: So did she also, did she invest in good footwear for climbing?
John: Yeah.
John: You know, she was like, let's go to Thailand.
John: Let's go to, you know, let's go to... I could see her being a barefoot person.
John: She was barefoot.
John: She was a barefoot.
John: She was also like a...
John: Trapeze circus fire person?
John: Fire.
John: She made a living for a while as a fire juggler.
Merlin: I had a girlfriend that worked at Arby's.
Merlin: She was a fire juggler.
Merlin: She always smelled like Arby's, but I loved her.
John: Oh, I wish she worked at Arby's.
Merlin: She didn't like taking her shoes off.
Merlin: She didn't like her feet, but she did smell like Arby's.
John: I love the smell of Arby's in the morning.
John: I love Arby's.
John: But she was, yeah, she was like a circus, circus contraption.
John: person okay but my friends and my universe couldn't believe her because she had a she had a very she had a loud laugh she was very she was an exhibitionist she a free spirit john she's really a free spirit yeah she really really intimidating to especially a lot of dudes and let's be honest some of the ladies she would sit at a big table
John: She was one of those people that you never didn't know she was there.
John: Sure.
John: And all of that flamboyance and all of those many scarves and the many, many fires and tattoos and laser beams that shot out of her.
John: Honestly, when I think back at it, I cannot put together exactly what it was that made us
John: A couple because culturally there was so little to draw on.
John: But we were absolutely inseparable for a year.
John: Really?
John: Wow.
John: You know, and like –
John: Like I got her into books and she changed the way I dress a little bit and it was like we just loved hanging out with each other.
John: And there were times that she – I mean I'm fairly immune to embarrassment but there were times that she would push –
John: me right to the limit of how much – because the introversion problem, I don't like to walk into a giant space and – I mean I assume everybody is there to see me but I don't want to –
John: draw immediate attention to myself gotta read the room she does right she walks in and it's just like ta-da kapow she went down to the restaurant where megan worked and sat down at a table and megan came over was like you know hi can i take your order whatever megan worked at the little french place the uh the little le piche and shanti said um
John: My name is Shanti, and I am John's new girlfriend.
John: So I would like you to know that John has a new girlfriend, and so you should meet me, and here I am.
John: And Megan was applauded.
John: Which is her way of saying, I'd like a large plate of awkwardness, please.
John: No, she just went down for this reason.
John: Really?
John: And me was just like, I have no idea why you would come in here and tell me this.
John: I don't care.
John: I'm not dating John anymore.
John: Right.
John: And so, fine, I guess.
Merlin: I wonder if it was less of marking her territory and more of radical candor.
John: No, I think it was marking her territory.
John: I mean, I think it was that she had heard, I never talked to her about Megan, but she had heard the legend of Megan and she wanted to make sure that Megan got the picture and, you know, and like whatever, Megan's and my style of communication was completely not this, you know, like there was no, this was not in the style of the time and not in my culture.
John: So, so, and then of course I heard about it.
John: And I was like, oh, Shanti, don't go – don't go poke that hornet's nest with a stick.
John: Like, you know, the last thing you want to do is activate Megan.
John: Right.
John: She was like, oh, I can handle Megan.
John: I was like, yeah, that's the thing.
John: You don't – just don't even – don't even – don't do that.
John: Don't even try.
Merlin: Yeah, and we're back to, you know –
Merlin: You know, the chicken is involved, but the pig is committed.
Merlin: Like that's a lot of problems to create for you that may not be that positive of an impact in the long term.
Right.
Merlin: And you know what I'm saying?
Merlin: Just like you see a hornet's nest.
Merlin: You're going in there and you're stirring up something that's going to cause unnecessary hostility in my life.
Merlin: Because you also, Lee, you strike me, well, you said as much that you're a person who, all other things being equal, would prefer to stay friends and friendly with an ex.
Merlin: Yes.
John: Yes.
John: Well, and so, you know, and Megan and I got back together two years later.
John: So it's not like Shanti was wrong.
Merlin: Oh, did Megan have some words with Shanti after that?
Merlin: Oh, hey, how's it going?
Merlin: I don't go where you work and knock the boyfriend out of your mouth.
John: No, so what happened was Shanti and my relationship ended at some point.
John: She actually joined a circus and ended up in New York City where she made one critically acclaimed racy movie, which part of its critical acclaim was its raciness.
John: Okay.
Okay.
John: In an early 2000s way of like, oh, we're going to break down all the boundaries of what it qualifies as.
John: You know, it was like an independent film, but it was like a celebrated one.
John: And then she truly, I think, professionalized fire juggling.
John: And now, as happens, if you're in any of the circuses.
Merlin: It's like according to Hoyle.
Merlin: Like, before Hoyle came along, you know, people were playing all kinds of fucked up card games, didn't know what they were doing.
Merlin: Probably, let's be honest, getting into a lot of altercations.
Merlin: And then he said, no, this is how Quist works, or this is how Cribbage works, or this is how Contract Bridge works.
Merlin: You're saying Shanti did something similar to professionalize, is it fire juggling?
John: Fire juggling.
Merlin: So she's a juggler, but it's also fire.
Yeah.
John: The thing is that it's all in the family of burlesque, right?
John: So it's not – she's not there like in a burlap sack juggling.
John: She's there in a Leia slave costume.
Merlin: But she's also not dressed like Dita Von Teese.
John: No, no.
John: It's all – well, it's like part of the reason that I always describe that culture as the Egyptians is that it has that like bikini made out of copper –
John: kind of snake-taming culture.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
Merlin: Like a woke slave Leia.
John: Yeah.
John: Or, you know, like all the cultures combined to make one that seems both ancient and also science fiction-y.
Merlin: I'm trying not to be reductive here, but there was a – definitely I'm not trying to be unkind, but like there is a shorthand for a time in –
Merlin: American cultural history that some people call United Colors of Benetton, where Benetton was bending over backwards and sometimes did a pretty cool job of like trying to represent not just people of color, but people of all kinds of colors and people in all kinds of cool clothes.
Merlin: And they're creating this whole like...
Merlin: You know, what do they say?
Merlin: America's not a melting pot, it's a salad.
Merlin: They wanted to make this, like, this international movement of gorgeous people in cool clothes with different backgrounds and skin colors, right?
Merlin: And I think that's kind of cool.
Merlin: I mean, if you're going to be a corporation, you could do worse than that.
Merlin: But it was also part of this sort of, like...
Merlin: It had not been so long since whatever David Byrne's label is and the rise of what we came to call world music.
Merlin: Like there's all there is there was this like internationalism on the rise.
Merlin: And I think especially in culture, this isn't so far.
Merlin: This is around the time, for example, Corner Shop did Brimful of Asha.
Merlin: Like you started to hear like songs with the for the first time in a pretty long time, at least since probably the 70s.
Merlin: The music, the culture, the visual arts, you think about Basquiat, things were more and more multi-axis in terms of the influence and impact, right?
Merlin: I mean, kind of.
Merlin: So I don't mean to sound like I'm making fun of people or whatnot, but Shanti sounds like she was part of this, like, hey, let's have fun with, you know, international identity things.
Merlin: You are 100% correct.
Merlin: You are 150%.
Merlin: She's not wearing a Jamiroquai headdress is what I'm saying.
Right.
John: No, it's not – she's not calling herself – she was not falsely appropriating Native Americanism.
John: But – so the band that was at the heart of the Egyptian Romulan axis – because Romulans are a form of fingernail boy pop punk as much as they are anything else.
John: Whereas the Egyptians are fingernail boy pop punk –
John: The world beautiful people.
Merlin: But isn't part of it, like, you can see these, if you were doing a Venn diagram or a red yarn on a wall, there would be lots of commonalities and connections.
Merlin: But, like, what I want to say, like, what's that band I hated?
Merlin: Murder City People?
Merlin: Devils.
Merlin: Do they count as Romulans?
John: Absolutely.
Merlin: Okay, so you got the tight pants, you got the haircuts, you got the black everything.
Merlin: But like, yeah, sure, that affects people.
Merlin: That is a look that is shared somewhat with even people like The Strokes.
Merlin: But it's also got overlap with later emo and previously goth.
Merlin: But, you know, totally different head.
Merlin: We're talking about different stuff here.
Merlin: We're talking one is much more Susie and the Banshees, and the other one is much more – well, I was going to say Velvet Underground.
Merlin: But is that making any sense?
Merlin: Like they share DNA, but they're not the same thing.
John: And the thing is that in a city like Seattle at the time –
John: The scene is small.
John: Yeah.
John: You know, it's it's like it's a scene.
John: It's a scene in the it's the scene in the old days before the Internet where it was a scene in a town.
John: And there wasn't if you were if you were Susie and the Banshees in Seattle, you didn't have access to all the Susie's of the Banshee.
John: around the world.
John: You just had the ones that were here.
John: And the thing about the Romulans and the Egyptians was that they were both beautiful people and beautiful people find one another.
John: And they exceptionalized themselves away from schlubby people.
John: And so the fact that high Romulans and high Egyptians were both beautiful meant they had more in common with each other than people that were playing more similar music or living more similar style.
John: Got it.
John: The heart and soul of the Egyptians was a band called Maktoub.
John: And Maktub, and that's M-A-K-T-U-B, Maktub was a funk, soul, hip-hop, blues, world, jazz music.
John: It's an Arabic word that means it is written.
John: And Maktub was headed, was fronted by...
John: uh reggie watts the comedian yeah yeah he makes the mouth noises on uh comedy bang bang and whatnot that's right he is the comedy bang bang guy and in at the time he was a seattle um he was a he was just a real presence in the seattle music scene he was uh he's a wonderful piano player and
John: Before he got, before he did comedy for a decade in Seattle, he was like a, like a jazz bow, like a hip hop jazz.
John: Yeah.
John: He was jazz enough that he could hang with the jazz bows.
John: Although, you know, I don't think that like the, the, like the real hot jazz people considered him that jazz, but he could sit.
John: I watched him many times sit down at a Rhodes piano and sit
John: and jazz it up with, with, you know, a guitar player, a trumpet player, uh, you know, I mean, just like do little three to five person combos.
John: Like he had the chops.
John: That's cool.
John: But he also was a singer and a composer and he, and so mock tube was this band that had, that played really big shows, you know, big sold out show box shows where it was,
John: The thing about MockTube is if you listen, if you take all those words, you know, jazz, blues, soul, funk, hip-hop, and you put them all together, what you end up with, in my experience, is no hooks.
John: Because it's all vibe, it's all groove, it's all like...
John: It's very groovy.
Merlin: The arrangements are so difficult.
Merlin: When I go back and listen to Remain in Light or Fear of Music era, Talking Heads, and you watch some of their live shows, like their live show in Rome, you appreciate how much...
Merlin: it's about arrangement.
Merlin: Not only is everybody just super good at their instrument, but the arrangements still afford room.
Merlin: You get all these crazy polyrhythms and all that kind of stuff.
Merlin: But if you're not, if you're arrangements for that, and like if the sound in the room is not, you know what I mean?
Merlin: It can, it can really just kind of sound like a, like a big bowl of jazz sauce.
John: Yeah.
John: And that was what I, that was the point at which, because MockTube and the Western State Hurricanes were playing a,
John: shows contemporaneously, but also I'd known Reggie since Reggie was 20 years old.
John: He was one of your nemeses.
John: Well, it was – he showed up here from Montana.
John: The thing that makes Reggie even more fascinating is that he's from – That's crazy.
John: And he's not from Bozeman.
John: He's from Big Sky.
John: Like he's from – Damn.
John: He's from small town Montana.
John: Right.
John: And showed up in Seattle like with his –
John: you know, piano over his shoulder, like, Hey everybody, I'm, you know, my name's Reggie.
John: I'm from, I'm from whatever, Helena.
John: And it was like, Hey man.
John: And so he got into the Cornish, uh, cause Cornish is like an arts college here that really affects the jazz and dance scenes in the town, kind of more than like other music or theater or anything, but like jazz and dance really, um, Cornish has an outsized impact.
John: He got in with the Cornish thing and he started doing this.
John: And, you know, Reggie was always my nemesis a little bit because Reggie could stand at a – Reggie is a big –
John: And he's not somebody that walks in the room and is like, hey, everybody.
John: But if Reggie posts up in a corner at a party, pretty soon there's a crowd.
Merlin: I've been in a room with him a couple of times and he definitely has – whether he means to have it or not, has the energy of like – somebody like me really wants to be liked by him.
Merlin: He's very charismatic but he's also – he's extremely cool in the old sense of the word.
Merlin: Some people just put off this vibe.
Merlin: Yeah, they put off a vibe of like, yeah, boy, I would really hope that that person can not hate me.
John: They're so cool.
John: He was always really funny.
John: This was before he even considered, I think, being a comedian.
John: It was before he thought about that at all.
John: He wanted to be a musician.
John: But he would sit in the corner, you know, and he's holding court.
John: Right.
John: And what made him my nemesis is that there's so much oxygen in Seattle.
John: Well, there's that.
John: But also he's one of those people that you never have a conversation with him.
John: Right.
John: You stand there and listen to him.
John: And and it's not like he ever looks at you and says, like, tell me about that thing you're wearing.
John: Like, he's just he's you know, he's got his thing.
John: He's also a great Frisbee player, which is something that puts him in a.
John: in a high rank in my estimation.
John: If you can really throw a Frisbee like that, that matters.
John: And he really can.
John: And I think that's his Montana.
John: Nice and flat and even and far.
John: Just like, and he can do all, he can work in the spin.
John: Forehand, he can catch it this way and that way.
John: He can put it right into your hands, but he can also start John.
Merlin: I mean, I know people still do it, but I mean, they might as well be butter churning at this point.
Merlin: People just don't Frisbee like they used to.
John: I will go Frisbee with anybody at any time.
John: It takes me about three minutes to get my game back and then off we go.
John: Uh, no, what made Reggie my ultimate nemesis was that he dated Megan and he dated Megan during the period that I was dating Shanti, which was again, like a complete, it was a complete twist through.
John: And I remember, I remember saying to Megan, Reggie, really of everybody.
John: And she was like, Oh, Shanti.
Yeah.
John: And she kind of won that one, right?
John: Because it's like, well, I mean, Reggie at least is like a big Reggie.
John: He's Reggie.
John: But, you know, Megan was not Egyptian or wrong.
John: Megan was like, Megan was cat power.
John: Oh, wow.
John: Okay.
John: That's a different story.
John: Oh, yeah, for sure.
John: Anyway.
John: Shanti.
John: Shanti.
John: And her name turned into that because I used to say that to my phone and Sean Nelson would listen.
John: We'd be in the van or whatever and I would go Shanti and my phone would call her.
John: And then Sean just referred to her as Shanti.
John: And then everybody did.
John: And then eventually I did.
Merlin: Yeah, that's how it works.
Merlin: It's viral.
Merlin: You should interrogate that.
John: But Shanti and I were sitting and talking one time and she said that when she was born, her mother was 22.
John: And when her mother was born, her grandmother was 22.
John: And that going back in her own personal history, the women in her family had children around the age of 22.
John: And Shanti was saying this because at the time she was 26 and had not had a kid.
Merlin: She brought this up.
Merlin: Was it in the service, do you think, of saying that she's behind on expectations because she's not even in the committed pre-stage of that?
John: Well, yeah.
John: I mean, it's a conversation that you have over the years.
John: Like, oh, you know, interesting.
John: Like, do you want kids?
John: What's your kid's situation?
John: But, you know, she was busy, like –
John: dancing the dance of a thousand veils.
John: She wasn't, uh, thinking about kids.
John: I don't think at the time she might've been running it by me as a kind of like, Hey, so what's our, you know,
John: But what was interesting about it to me because if she was – if that conversation was are we going to get married, that went right over my head.
John: What was interesting was I said my dad was 48 when I was born and my mom was 36.
John: And my dad's mom was –
John: Like 36 when he was born.
John: And if you look at the dates of people in my family on both sides, they're super late breeders.
John: Like always late 30s and a lot of times the lady is in her late 30s and the dad is in his late 40s.
John: And as I sat there talking to her about it, she was like, oh, that's weird.
John: Like my grandmother was born – my grandmother was born later than your mom.
John: So you could be a 45-year-old grandma.
John: Right.
John: Pretty wild to think about today.
John: Right.
John: Yeah.
John: And it's still possible.
John: You could do it anytime you want.
John: Oh, it happens all the time.
John: I can't be a 45-year-old grandmother.
John: It's too late for me.
John: Oh my gosh, in a couple ways, right?
John: Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
John: But I realized that just going back to the American Revolution, Shanti was like nine generations or ten generations from the American Revolution.
John: And I was only six, meaning that her family was – that Shanti was potentially –
John: Hundreds or thousands of generations more – She might be more evolved.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: She's had more generations for the natural selection to kick in.
John: Exactly.
Merlin: She might be a higher being as a lifestyle Egyptian.
John: She's so many iterations –
John: From the ur-human.
John: You're twisting my melon this week, John.
Merlin: You're giving me a lot to think about.
John: Right.
John: So all of a sudden, like all the Neanderthal-ness of me, all of the kind of like, it wasn't just the fact that I sit around and half of the things that come out of my mouth are Victorianisms because my grandmother was born in 1885.
John: Right.
John: And I'm, you know, and I'm like, oh, you know, like, oh, 23's could do or whatever.
John: But, but.
John: Also, you know, I'm so – I mean my like weird stubby forefinger and my second toe is longer than my first and I don't have earlobes.
John: Like all these weird things that Shanti is like already walking on water.
John: You're still trying to figure out how to swim.
John: I really – I can't swim.
John: I just – I walk into the water and I just keep going and I just keep walking along the bottom of the ocean.
Merlin: Until you see a turtle or die.
John: Yeah.
John: And I've never, I've never 100% worked out how much that affects, you know, we're constantly now talking about boomers and Gen X and millenniums and zoomers.
John: Yeah.
John: And no one even mentions the greatest generation anymore because they're all gone.
John: And I don't know if anybody remembers the silent generation.
John: They didn't even remember them in the 70s.
John: But to think about generations just in terms of just 10, just go back 10.
John: And it's not – not everybody's genealogy is knowable back 10 generations.
John: No kidding.
John: But if you think about it, if you think about just in the sense that everybody has four bears 10 generations ago and what iteration you are just of that –
John: The fact that my ancestor 10 generations ago was born in, I don't know what, 1540, and Shanti's 10 generations ago was born in 1740, it has to have a profound effect.
John: Yes.
John: And one that would be completely invisible to us and unknowable, really.
John: You'd never be able to—
John: You'd never be able to place it as a factor.
John: You know, people are like, oh, what's your Enneagram?
John: And I'm like, well, yeah, but like when was your great-great-grandmother born?
John: That's got to have at least as much, maybe not as important as where was your great-great-grandmother born, but certainly like it has to reverberate.
Merlin: I sent you – I texted you something at 11.06 that was germane to the conversation.
Merlin: And now at 11.49, it is even more germane to the conversation.
Merlin: Here it is.
Merlin: So I just – I don't want to say the names here, but – There's three names.
Merlin: Oh, no, and then there's a bunch.
John: You don't want to say any of these wonderful names?
Merlin: Well, let's talk – we can talk about the three names at the top.
Merlin: So what John is looking at right now – well, first of all, let me just stipulate.
Merlin: I have a lot of time on my hands.
Mm-hmm.
Merlin: Which in some ways is the greatest.
Merlin: But it does allow me the opportunity to find 45 minutes or an hour to make something like what I have made here.
Merlin: So my kid – and I'll throw it back to you after this.
Merlin: But I thought you might find this interesting.
Merlin: I will send you the code for this if you want to do this for your family.
Merlin: My kid was –
Merlin: Talking about something, and I found myself wondering this thing that, you know, it's one of those things that kind of floats around in your head.
Merlin: You have surely wondered this at some time or another where you go like, huh, well, my kid is this old today.
Merlin: I wonder what date I was my kid's age right now.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And conversely, I wonder what date my kid will be the age I am now or whatever.
Merlin: Like, you know.
Merlin: I see.
Merlin: So it's always – it's interesting to me to think about stuff like – I have these – just because I'm a stupid white guy from Ohio, I have a lot of things that are sort of pegged to events like Christmas a certain year or when Star Wars came out.
Merlin: So like I know that the Beverly Hills Supper Club fire that my aunt and uncle were almost in outside Cincinnati, I know that happened about a week before I saw Star Wars.
Yeah.
Merlin: There's a lot of stuff.
Merlin: Like I know there's a Neil Young album that came out in 1977, and I think about Star Wars.
Merlin: So I want to do something similar here.
Merlin: And so I did some quick back of the envelope, and I was like, wow, this is so wild.
Merlin: This is when I did this last week or whatever.
Merlin: The age that my kid is, right this second in number of days, is the age that I was right before we realized that we'd be moving to Florida.
Merlin: We were currently moving my grandmother out of her house in Florida to move to Cincinnati with us.
Merlin: But long story short, you know what I mean?
Merlin: You can just look and say, like, when did certain dates happen?
John: You were her age in 1979.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: So right now, my kid, the age that my kid is today, I was that age on July 16th, 1979.
Merlin: I find this looking through some of these older ones.
Merlin: So for example, right now, I am the age that my grandmother was two months before I was born.
Merlin: That's the lower left one.
Merlin: And there's just a whole bunch of these.
Merlin: Right now, if my dad had lived, this is the age that he would have been in 1983.
Merlin: It's mind-boggling to me.
Merlin: So this is not – what I'm saying is there's no point in me sharing with you guys.
Merlin: But, like, it is – to me, this is that kind of thing where, like, the number of years – you know, I forget what – what did I call it?
Merlin: I came up with a name for it.
Merlin: Chronanalogies, which Syracuse says is a terrible name.
Merlin: That's great.
Merlin: Chronanalogies are where you would go something like the amount of time from synchronicity till now is the same amount of time from, whatever, 37 years before 1983.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You know, when you put those next to each other and you're like, whoa, this is like Artie Shaw was popular in that amount of time.
Merlin: How could I possibly be that old?
Merlin: You know what I mean?
John: We do this all the time.
John: The music.
Merlin: I do this constantly.
John: Yes.
John: Or cars, music.
John: Like in 1986, when I graduated from high school, if I had a 20 year old car, it would have been a 1966 Pontiac, which would have been, which seemed like.
John: It was a classic car even then.
John: But I drive a 20-year-old Jetta right now, and it just seems like a freaking Jetta.
John: It just looks like a Jetta, and it is a Jetta.
Merlin: A 20-year-old Jetta?
Merlin: A 20-year-old Jetta.
Merlin: Until we got our newer Jetta, we had a Jetta that was about 20 years old, too.
Merlin: Matt and I bought it used in 2000, March of 2000.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: This is a 2000 Jetta also.
Merlin: Anyway, I'll send this to you if you want because I think this seems like the kind of thing you and your mom and your kid and everybody would have a lot of fun with.
Merlin: All I have to do is punch in the dates for all the people up at the top.
Merlin: But I don't know.
Merlin: This kind of thing, I feel like – I don't know if this generates more light or heat or just warmth.
Merlin: But I do think it's so interesting to try and compare things next to each other like that.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I would not have thought about Shanti.
Merlin: I don't want to say she's more evolved, but it is fascinating to think about the difference between – we use that word generation and it has a couple of meanings.
Merlin: I think today most of the time when people say a generation, they mean 25 to 30 American years.
John: What would you say?
John: I don't think it's 30.
John: I think it's— More like 25.
John: Between 20 and 25.
Merlin: And in some cases, you know, like 15.
Merlin: But that's the other meaning.
Merlin: The true meaning of generation is the amount of time between being born and bearing a child or siring a child, however you want to think of it, right?
Merlin: That's the other meaning of generation.
Merlin: I'd never thought of this before.
Merlin: If you have more kids starting earlier—
Merlin: There's all kinds of ways that that creates a different world than people having fewer kids later.
Merlin: And I'm not going to say – we don't need to make an idiocracy joke.
Merlin: But like certainly, yeah, you get more people to work on the farm.
Merlin: You get more chances some of them survive.
Merlin: I mean the titular grandma there, she had a brother who died in the flu epidemic.
Merlin: But I don't know.
Merlin: It's such an interesting angle to me.
Merlin: And I feel like there is something useful to gain out of looking, doing sort of a transparency overlay with two or more generations and looking at what it means.
Merlin: It's fascinating.
John: It's really fascinating.
John: When I look back at all of the different strains of my family, we did not typically have 15 kids.
John: We were late breeders and had...
John: Generally three kids.
John: Um, and, and it's not that a lot of us weren't farmers.
John: Um, it's just that the, the whole 15 kid thing didn't, didn't happen.
John: And, and partly it was, I think my mom's people were Quakers.
Um,
John: So, so that, you know, changes the nature of the size and shape of the family.
John: We talk about this a lot in my house because my daughter is fascinated with like, what was it like when you were a kid?
John: And most recently I realized that, you know, she just got out of third grade.
John: I started third grade the year of, uh, in the fall of the bicentennial year.
John: So my second grade year was completely consumed by the bicentennial.
John: We were talking about the revolution.
John: The tall ships.
John: The tall ships and the colonial era and the constitution and all of the stuff around because the whole nation was consumed with it.
Merlin: And starting in 75, we were watching Rocky the other night, which is a movie that came out in 1975.
Merlin: And it's remember the whole the the peg for that is that Apollo Creed wants to do something super American for the upcoming bicentennial.
Merlin: And that's in 75.
John: Yeah, it was my whole that whole year.
John: All of the art projects we did were all if you look on on on the wall of my at my if you go to the real estate listings of my house, because now I have no house.
John: But at the time,
John: There's an American flag right on the wall of the living room.
John: And that's an American flag I made with fabric shards and Elmer's glue.
John: What?
John: In like May of 1976 to commemorate the – Bicentennial.
John: Bicentennial.
John: And I found it in the bottom of a box about 10 years ago, pulled it out, remembered it.
John: I was like, whoa.
John: And then I looked at it and I was like, this is like a great little flag.
John: And I put it in a frame and put it on the wall and now it's one of my prized possessions.
John: I wish I'd save some of the ashtrays I made at church camp.
Merlin: Pencil holders?
Merlin: Mostly ashtrays.
Merlin: My dad was always sweet enough to use the ashtrays for his nonstop chain smoking at work.
Merlin: Some kind of lumpy thing of clay.
Merlin: It didn't even look like a rock.
Merlin: You couldn't really put your Winston in there.
Merlin: I'm sure it was very disappointing.
John: My kid made this.
John: My kid made this.
Merlin: I'm very proud of him.
Merlin: I love him.
Merlin: He made me an ashtray.
John: He's a special little guy.
John: Here's another one.
John: I've got another one over here.
John: We're Christian soldiers, huh?
John: But so we talk about that.
John: She and I, my kid, is always like, well, what was it like when you were a kid?
John: And I'm like, well, people put their cigarettes out on you and no one cared what you did.
John: They didn't start caring about kids until the early 80s.
John: I was talking about this last night because I went into her mother's room and I was like, listen, you know, it's summertime now.
John: What are we going to do with her?
John: And her mom said, well, what did they do with you?
John: the summer between your third and fourth grade year.
John: And I was like, I don't know if they knew where I was.
John: She was like, yeah, exactly.
John: She'll be fine.
Merlin: Nobody cared about kids in America till Adam Walsh.
John: I swear to you, they didn't care at all.
John: They didn't know where I was.
John: And I was like, oh, you're right.
John: Okay, so she'll be fine.
John: He's probably in his kennel.
John: Yeah.
John: Reading some Archie's comics in his kennel.
John: I was reading a book and I was smoking Winston.
John: Yeah.
John: But, you know, and that stands in, it's one of the things also that
John: you know, when people evaluate the United States now, which is a, which is a popular thing, right?
John: People talking about what the U S is and what the history of America is, you know, we were in, uh, in very impressionable years in a period where America was in crisis in the 1970s, Nixon and Ford and Carter.
John: I mean, energy, Iran, those weren't happy times.
John: Um,
John: Uh, but, but also like that whole, that whole bicentennial thing was a very, oh, and also the 76 Olympics.
John: Remember the Olympics that was the Bruce Jenner year.
John: And the Nadia Comaneci.
John: Oh, my God.
John: Yeah, right.
John: So it was a big – there were a lot of conflicting streams.
John: And if you ask my daughter who Thomas Jefferson is, she's like, I'm not sure.
John: She has like a pantheon of American presidents that she does know.
John: But like Jefferson, she's never heard of John Adams because it just doesn't come up now.
Merlin: There's not that same – She should become something like a Zachary Taylor buff.
John: Yeah, right.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: It's sort of like buying on one of the cheap properties in Monopoly.
Merlin: It's probably pretty easy to get in on the ground floor of a Zachary Taylor.
John: Because Ken Jennings comes over every week and he is – he's the absolute prime –
John: Source for that kind of material like that.
John: Hey, it can give us 15 minutes on Zachary Taylor.
John: And he's just he's just got it.
John: You know, he knows all of that stuff.
John: So, yeah, I'll tell I'll tell Marla to find her president.
John: Find one.
Merlin: Looks like everybody's.
Merlin: got their own doctor like i got the fourth doctor emma loves the 11th doctor obviously like i think it's also nice to have a president and no you can't pick lincoln because everybody it's like uh you know uh you do a draft of snl you know cast and everybody gets phil hartman just because everybody's gonna want phil hartman you got to give everybody lincoln you get it that's like free parking lincoln is free parking and lincoln is one of the presidents she knows a lot about cool that's you know he's he's a banger he's really he's one of the top presidents
Merlin: My kid one time, and this is just when she was very, very young, and I sometimes remember, I wonder if I'm remembering this funnier than it was, but she actually did say something along the lines of, oh, they had color when you were a kid?
Merlin: And I was like, yes, they did.
Merlin: They did have color.
Merlin: No, but I mean, like, I remember hating black and white things when I was a kid, like black and white movies and stuff like that.
Merlin: I was like, this is so bleh.
Merlin: Even on a black and white TV, I was a color queen.
Merlin: So she asked about what were things like, what is her interest, technology, culture, how you spent your time?
Merlin: What's the focus for her?
John: I think that it's because she's an only child and you also have an only child and I am an only child and you are an only child she She has a lot of She just she was just born having an interest in families She wants to know family dynamics.
John: She wants to know how people talked.
John: She wants to socially she wants to understand how families worked Her mother is also an only child, but I had a sister But my parents were married
John: They were divorced through my whole childhood.
John: And we moved – we lived in Seattle, then we lived in Alaska, then we lived in Seattle, then we lived in Alaska.
John: And so she just has sociological questions like what – did you open pop cans like this but also –
John: Were you allowed to drink pop?
John: Because she's not allowed to drink pop.
Merlin: These are actually great questions.
Merlin: Soda pop technology changed right before I came into my soda pop era, and then it changed again kind of right after, sort of.
Merlin: I never had to open it with a bottle opener like I was in Animal House.
Merlin: But then you had the pull tabs and then the pull tabs – Well, but then the pull tabs became built in.
Merlin: We still – when we take walks through the Confederate ghost park, we still find old pop tops on the ground.
John: Do you?
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: Not a lot.
Merlin: Not a lot.
Merlin: I think we've exhausted most of the supply.
Merlin: But no, it's a place where a lot of young kids have gone to drink over the years.
Merlin: And so there's some pull tabs from – The earth keeps spitting at them up.
John: Yeah, the earth is healing.
John: Do you remember the – briefly, the pop cans that had –
John: Two little bubbles, little metal bubbles, and you would push them both in.
John: One of them was small.
John: It was the vent bubble.
John: And one of them was large, and it was the drinking bubble.
John: And they were like, you pushed them in.
John: What era are we talking about?
John: 70s?
John: It was right between pull.
John: They were like, we can't do pull tabs anymore.
John: They keep cutting kids' feet.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Well, because people would cut one of those.
Merlin: Yeah, cut your feet.
Merlin: Or a lot of people, like we used to do, a cool thing to do was to pop it off and then stick it into the can and then drink it, which now seems insane to me.
Merlin: We did that, too.
Merlin: Everybody did that.
Merlin: Now it's nuts.
Merlin: What were we doing?
Merlin: Drop them in the can.
John: I mean, I'm sure the truckers weren't pissing on those.
Merlin: Oh, the pop cans.
Merlin: Now, wait, just so I'm clear, because I want to be able to look this up.
Merlin: Is it similar?
Merlin: Okay, so like, you know how like you when you go to Arby's, God, I love Arby's.
Merlin: You go to Arby's and you get a diet root beer and they do a little pop on the lid of the cup.
Merlin: Is it like a semicircle push down thing there?
Merlin: What am I searching for to find this technology?
John: It is that except in the aluminum of the can, right?
John: So it was those kind of little blisters, and you pushed one down to vent, and then you pushed the other one down, and it opened up to drink.
John: Whoa, okay.
John: All right, I'm looking it up.
John: It was – I remember it being a thing for a very brief period in 1980.
John: Okay, okay.
John: I don't –
Merlin: know how to describe it hang on hang on i hang on zip top 1970s pull push button and stab tab try searching for push button aluminum can oh okay there you go push button push but this is great radio push button uh yep soda can pepsi
John: Push button.
John: That's it.
John: There it is.
John: Look at that.
John: I don't remember this at all.
John: So that was a thing very briefly.
Merlin: There's a Coors that does it.
Merlin: That's so interesting.
Merlin: Olympia.
Merlin: There you go, buddy.
John: We have these in Alaska.
John: And in Seattle, and it didn't last.
John: And in searching for it, do you see any dates?
Merlin: Pinterest.
Merlin: I wish I could ban Pinterest from ever being anywhere.
John: Me too.
John: I hate it so much.
John: It's useless.
John: It's really a terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible app.
Merlin: And you can't – it used to be when I was using Chrome, it used to be you could say I never want to see returns for this given domain.
Merlin: But now I'm 100% Safari.
Merlin: Nobody cares.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I'll find out.
Merlin: Vintage cans, Pepsi cans.
Merlin: Yeah, thanks.
Merlin: I get it.
Merlin: I know how SEO works.
Merlin: Thank you.
Merlin: It doesn't – there's no information.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Look at that curse.
Yeah.
Merlin: What was I going to say about this with regard to cans?
Wow, look at that.
John: I know.
John: He hates these cans.
Merlin: The new phone books are here.
Merlin: Don't trust Whitey.