Ep. 406: "December to Remember"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
John: Hi, Merlin.
John: How's it going?
John: It's a little bit early, but... Is it early?
John: I mean, it's not like super early.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: Tomorrow is December 1st.
Merlin: Is that right?
Merlin: Yeah, not loving that.
John: You know, I...
John: November was like, for some people I know, like a fasting month.
John: You know, like, I'm not going to do any cake or whatever in November.
John: I don't know what people do, but I've heard from people.
John: I never heard of that.
John: Is that a fact?
John: I think it might have just been like random.
John: You know, a couple of random people I know.
John: But I've been looking forward to November getting over.
John: Kind of on their behalf, you know, just – I mean I'm not talking to them every day about it or anything.
John: It's just they said early on in the month like, oh, this month I'm not going to eat any bad food.
John: And so it's in the back of my head like, oh, tomorrow is December 1st.
John: They get to have a cookie or whatever.
Merlin: It's very interesting to me when certain periods of time become like event times.
Merlin: November, to my knowledge – so what you're saying is no cake November.
John: Yeah, I mean, it needs a catchy little thing like that, doesn't it?
John: No cake November.
Merlin: Well, November, as far as I know, I know of three November things.
Merlin: There's NaNoWriMo, where you try to write a novel, a 50,000 word novel in 30 days.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: There's Movember, where you try to grow a beard.
Merlin: Well, there is no try.
Merlin: There's only beard.
Merlin: You grow a beard.
Merlin: Right.
John: Right.
John: Of course.
John: Of course.
John: No, it's a mustache, right?
John: Movember is moustache-vember.
Merlin: Every day is Movember for Rob Delaney.
Merlin: He can grow a mustache in an hour and a half.
Merlin: I bet while he's waiting for something to download, he could grow a mustache.
John: Yep, yep, yep.
Merlin: He's got one of those mustache faces.
Merlin: Say again?
Merlin: He's got a mustache face.
Merlin: I'm so sorry.
Merlin: My pre-PC is a mess here.
Merlin: I've got to work on this.
Merlin: What's a pre-PC?
Merlin: It's the mix in my cans of how much of me, V, how much of the other person I hear.
Merlin: And I end up changing it for every show, and it's kind of making me crazy.
Merlin: Why do you change it for every show?
Merlin: Because everybody's volume is different.
Merlin: Every sperm is sacred.
Merlin: Sure, sure.
Merlin: I think I've almost nailed it now.
Merlin: I'm just going to turn me way down and you way up.
Merlin: The third that I learned... Oh, God, I don't know.
Merlin: Oh, boy.
John: Hello.
Merlin: The third that I learned about just this year, just this coming in, No Nut November.
Merlin: Oh, No Nut November.
Merlin: No Nut November.
Merlin: And I'm given to believe, based on what I've gleaned, I'm not going to search it.
Merlin: From what I've been able to glean, you decide not to visit the self-service pump for the month of November.
John: Have you heard of this?
John: No, but I, but I understand.
John: I understand it.
John: And I think it's, um, I think that anything you do that, that tests you is, is good.
Merlin: You know, any test, any test put me to the test skull, my balls, but no, no, no.
Merlin: What you're saying to yourself, but isn't part of it also that like you're mindfully sort of deciding this is a thing that I'm doing.
Merlin: It isn't like you just suddenly realize it's like no ice cube February or whatever.
Merlin: Like you have to go into it saying, all right, on November 1st, you know, I'm not going to work from home.
Merlin: I think it's the euphemism.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Well, I'm not going to, you know, I'm not going to commit the sins of Onan.
John: Doesn't it feel like it's got to be kind of a reaction to something, right?
John: You don't do that for no reason.
John: Yeah, exactly.
Merlin: What should I give up for November?
Merlin: No reason November.
John: No reason November.
John: No, you're having a reaction somehow inside.
John: You're either feeling guilty, you're feeling scared, you've got hidden cameras everywhere, or you're getting calluses or something.
John: Okay, okay.
Merlin: Let's interrogate this.
Merlin: Something's got to change.
Merlin: Well, I think the one that you could be, and I don't want to make this blue because this is just science and science isn't blue.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: Love is blue.
Merlin: Love is patient, love is kind.
Merlin: Kind of blue.
Merlin: It's kind of blue.
Merlin: No, not.
Merlin: No, not.
Merlin: That's stupid.
Merlin: Really, really stupid.
Merlin: You know, all white people own that album.
Merlin: Not me.
Merlin: What?
Merlin: You're kidding.
John: No.
Merlin: Do you own Take 5?
Merlin: I do have some Brubeck, yeah.
Merlin: Do you own the Steely Dan album Asia?
John: It's in there somewhere, yeah.
Merlin: It's up on the wall.
Merlin: I think I got the gold pressing.
Merlin: So if we interrogate this just a little bit and science isn't blue, I mean, one could be you just say to yourself, you know what?
Merlin: I nut too much.
Merlin: I nut too much and I don't feel good about that.
Merlin: But then you break that down further and, boy, you get a real mind map going here.
Merlin: Is it because you feel like it's become a distraction?
Merlin: Do you feel like it's draining your precious bodily fluids?
Merlin: Do you feel like it's on – is it a Proud Boys thing?
Merlin: Is it like – are you trying to like –
Merlin: Boy, now as I sit here thinking of this, I want to know what you think, but now as I sit here thinking about this on Monday, November 30th at 11.08 a.m., if there are some boys out there that managed to keep their nut in the jar for the last 30 days, woof, tomorrow is going to be an extremely productive day, depending on how you look at it.
Merlin: Is that the clock?
Merlin: Okay, okay.
John: Okay.
John: Okay.
John: Just trying to get some kind of blue going.
Merlin: Uh-huh.
Merlin: Oh, kind of blue.
Merlin: I see.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: I didn't know if that was an ocarina or a recorder.
Merlin: It seemed to have a very limited number of holes, if you'll pardon my saying.
John: Yeah.
John: Was it an ocarina?
John: Speaking of Movember.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: That's the klaxon.
Merlin: The klaxon lets you know you've only got a few hours left, 12.01 a.m., December 1st, rabbit, rabbit.
Merlin: You can spill your seed upon the ground or wherever you prefer.
John: Here's a question I don't know the answer to.
John: Were you ever a pot smoker, Merlin?
John: Yes.
John: Were you a pot smoker for like a concentrated period or an extended period?
Merlin: I played at smoking pot in high school with the crappy shake weed that we would get.
Merlin: I didn't do it regularly.
Merlin: I think more than anything else, it was mainly a financial thing.
Merlin: Once in college, you could buy a quarter bag, they called it, for $45 American.
Merlin: It was okay, good, bud.
Merlin: And I would smoke that.
Merlin: You could get a quarter for $45?
Merlin: I think that's what it was.
Merlin: Oh, all right.
Merlin: What did you pay?
John: So how much did you pay?
Merlin: I think I paid $45 for, I think it's a quarter ounce.
Merlin: It's like a bag with like a finger and a half of Florida weed in it.
John: But it wasn't like...
John: crusty, orange, purple buds.
John: Jesus Christ, no.
Merlin: It might as well have been a jar that said McCormick.
John: I was going to be like, wow.
Merlin: I don't even know what it costs up, but to answer your question, I would go through periods, me and my pals,
Merlin: where we would have a large amount of marijuana.
Merlin: And I feel like it wasn't great for me.
Merlin: I enjoyed it.
Merlin: It was fun, but I would get tired and I would get a little bit, I don't want to, you know, I don't want to have a stereotype here, but I did get a little lazy and I did get stress bumps.
Merlin: Oh, you did.
Merlin: It gave you stress bumps.
Merlin: Gave me stress bumps.
Merlin: I think I have immune problems, but now today they got edibles.
Merlin: Woof.
John: Yeah, they do.
Merlin: Oh, do you do edibles?
Merlin: Do you eat them?
Merlin: I wouldn't know.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: But the nice thing about the edible, see, I was told a long time.
Merlin: Now, you know me.
Merlin: The two times I ever ate something with marijuana in it in previous ages, both times I passed out.
Merlin: You know this, right?
John: It is known?
John: Yes, it is known.
Merlin: I passed out at the Kids in the Hall show, which is a shame because I love Kids in the Hall.
Merlin: And one time my boss made brownies.
Merlin: The problem is you get brownies, you're going to have a very – I'm going to say – I'm going to guess here, speculate that you get a pretty uneven amount per brownie.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: I had like one brownie.
John: Also, they're delicious.
John: So you want –
John: You want them.
Merlin: You want to eat.
Merlin: This is why an alcohol drink shouldn't taste too good.
John: Yeah, that's right.
Merlin: Because you've got to test yourself.
Merlin: Am I right?
John: Yeah, your weed should be not easy to consume.
Merlin: It should be painful.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Anyway, to answer your question, I did go through those periods.
Merlin: Now, I was scared because I always thought, okay, quote unquote, edibles, I eat that.
Merlin: And on one occasion, I did pass out in the bathroom while I was urinating.
Merlin: I got up, somehow found my way out of the bathroom, which suddenly had begun to feel like a maze.
Merlin: It's not a maze.
Merlin: You've been in our bathroom.
Merlin: You know our bathroom.
Merlin: It's got that door that always opens.
Merlin: There's just the one door.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: As far as we know.
Merlin: But when you've had the brownies, you know what I'm saying?
Merlin: And then I woke up on the floor in the lounge in the family room with my head.
Merlin: We call it the lounge.
Merlin: With my head bleeding and my wife screaming bloody murder in my face.
Merlin: That's what I woke up to.
Merlin: And I said, you know what?
Merlin: That made an impression on me.
Merlin: I should be careful with this stuff.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And it was, I mean, it was sanctioned.
Merlin: We'd both had it earlier.
Merlin: It's just that she's, I can drink all day.
Merlin: It's like that Posey song.
Merlin: I can drink all day.
John: I can drink all day.
Merlin: Oh God, I call you Sister Carrie, but you're screaming in my face.
Merlin: So I, but no, and you know, the edibles, the thing about a modern edible, John,
Merlin: You know, they'll bring it to your house.
Merlin: Oh, sure.
John: They'll deliver it.
John: It's science, right?
Merlin: It's very scientific.
Merlin: It's science.
Merlin: I like the watermelon ones.
Merlin: But no, what about you?
Merlin: Were you just doing maintenance amounts of all the drugs?
Merlin: Or did you have a period, like when you were at Ibiza or something?
Merlin: Or maybe when you were at Ibiza, were you raving in Kirkland?
Merlin: Like, what was your exposure to marijuana?
John: There was no time.
John: You know, I was a late adopter of drugs.
John: I was not somebody that started doing drugs in high school.
John: I was very –
John: Suspicious and judgmental of drugs and people that did drugs in high school.
Merlin: 100%.
Merlin: When I found out my cousins, the summer that I stayed with my cousins and my aunt and uncle, and they introduced me to the Beatles and yes, and the James gang, I discovered that my cousin, both cousins, but especially, so I have one cousin who's five years older than me, the other 10 years older than me.
Merlin: And when I found out my cousin five years, my senior, was a daily marijuana smoker, eighth grade, broke my heart.
Merlin: Well, no wonder you like the White Album.
John: What do you do in your life, Dave?
John: For me, I think until I was 17.
John: I was very judgmental about drugs and premarital sex.
John: Yep, yep, yep, yep.
John: I didn't want anything to do with those things, and I didn't want my friends to have anything to do with them, and I was suspicious of anybody that did.
John: John, I was a prude.
Merlin: I want to put it that way.
Merlin: In that aspect of life, I was a prude.
Merlin: I wouldn't go to a strip.
Merlin: I still don't like strip clubs, as you know.
Merlin: I wouldn't go to a strip club to see my friend dance.
Merlin: My girlfriend wanted to go.
Merlin: I wouldn't go.
Merlin: I said that was debasing the women.
Merlin: And she said, well, she's getting paid.
Merlin: That's how she paid for college.
John: You and I had a wonderful experience standing in the foyer of a strip club going, I don't want to go in there.
John: Do you want to go in there?
John: And our friends were in there already with their shoes off.
Merlin: It's so dark and costly.
Merlin: And I'm staring at you.
Merlin: You want to talk about the drop ceiling?
John: They want money.
John: They want money to go in there.
Merlin: They want money.
Merlin: They charged us money to come in and get a Coke.
John: You want to go around the block or something?
John: There's got to be something else we can do.
John: Nope, we went in.
Merlin: We went in.
Merlin: We went in.
Merlin: We were real guys.
John: Yeah, we were faithful friends.
Merlin: Didn't have any drugs, though.
Merlin: I think I probably had, knowing me, I would have had, I call it a sea breeze.
Merlin: I probably had a vodka and cranberry juice, and it was probably $40 for the sea breeze.
John: I think I might have had a cranberry and soda.
John: But anyway.
John: Yep, fruity pleaser.
John: No, I was, until I was, until it was about, whoa, until the spring of my senior year.
John: So it would have been,
John: I would have been 17 and a half.
John: And I finally smoked pot for the first time.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: And this was in Alaska in the 80s.
John: I mean, everybody had been smoking pot since junior high, but I just... Oh, this is where they had the thunder fuck.
John: Yeah, I was just like, no, no, no.
John: If you start smoking pot, then what's going to happen?
John: Then pretty soon you're going to be driving a VW bus, and then after that... Well, what's going to happen?
Merlin: There's things we know are going to happen, and there's things that we imagine can happen.
Merlin: But it's certainly... You've had a health class.
Merlin: You've seen the posters.
John: Here's what's going to happen.
John: You're going to have a tapestry for a door.
John: Oh, God.
John: Beaded curtains, patchouli.
John: Your bedroom door is going to be a tapestry if you don't watch out.
John: That's always a risk.
Merlin: You don't see it coming either.
Merlin: I don't think.
Merlin: I don't think it's like you start drinking, you start like eating like whole wheat pasta, reading the whole earth catalog and shit.
John: No, no, thank you.
John: Nope.
John: But once I started, so when I, when I first smoked pot, I was like, yeah, it's fine.
John: And then, you know, I smoked it a second time and third time, you know, laughing.
Merlin: So real, real quick, did it do anything the first time?
Merlin: For me, it didn't do anything for months or probably five or six smokings.
Merlin: Nothing happened until I, I almost died.
John: But I think it was the third time that it really kicked in.
John: It took.
John: And, uh, and that was the time.
John: And I was over at, you know, I like it, that should be a magical, uh, occasion in your life, right?
John: That should be like,
John: That should be like something that's really wonderful, like you do in a temple or you do on a beach.
John: And I did it at a pot dealer's house.
John: I'm sorry, a pot dealer's apartment.
John: And this was a guy I knew in high school who had moved out of his parents' house before he graduated.
John: So he was already living on his own as a senior.
John: And he had a one-bedroom apartment.
John: ground floor apartment in a, in one of those like two story apartment buildings.
Merlin: I was so envious of my one or two year old friends, my one or two year older friends.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: My friend Alan had a place like that.
Merlin: It was one of those, like, you know, it looks like a hotel or like a motel and it's just a drive up right in front of your door and $250 a month, but it was like total freedom.
Merlin: You could watch TV whenever you wanted total freedom.
John: And I, we got stoned and I went into the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror and laughed.
John: And then the,
John: drug dealer guy was like, ha ha ha, were you looking at yourself in the mirror?
John: Don't do that.
John: And I was like, oh my god.
John: And then we ordered pizza.
John: You don't really look at your hand.
John: It was totally bad.
John: I'm so into your hair right now.
John: The pizza came and the drug dealer dude was like, hey, watch this.
John: And he ordered like a couple of pizzas.
John: And then like five minutes before they got there, he called and canceled.
John: And he was like, you know, I got it.
John: Sorry.
John: You got to cancel the pizzas.
John: And the pizza delivery dude was already on his way.
John: So then when the pizza delivery dude showed up.
John: Oh, no.
John: He was like, oh, I canceled those pizzas, bro.
John: And the guy was like, oh, man.
John: And then he was like, well, tell you what, I'll buy them from you for half price.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: Oh, it's a bit.
John: He's doing a scam.
John: It's a scam.
John: And then the guy was like, oh, all right, fine, whatever.
John: Were you in on it?
John: Did you know or were you weird?
John: No, no, I was sitting on the couch.
John: Oh, shit, dog.
John: I had my knees up to my chest and I was like, what's happening?
John: There's something at the door.
John: Who is it?
Merlin: How does he know where you live?
Merlin: You don't really think about a telephone.
Merlin: These pizzas were so good.
John: Can you imagine how good these were?
Merlin: The one night I ate a large Domino's pizza by myself because of marijuana.
John: I used to do that a long time before I smoked marijuana because I was a husky kid.
John: You're a husky boy, yeah.
Yeah.
John: My sister was still mad about it.
John: She was talking two days ago.
John: She was like, yeah, remember when you were in high school and you would order a large pizza and mom would make you give me one slice?
John: And you acted like I was taking a piece out of her.
John: That's like breaking up the set.
John: That's like giving somebody one of your teaspoons.
John: It's like.
John: A large pizza.
John: I'm a growing boy.
John: I'm 16 years old.
John: Of course I'm going to eat them.
John: Of course.
John: I didn't get into habitual pot smoking for a while.
John: And it's like you were saying, initially because of the expense.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: But for a long time, I kept a bag of weed and a pipe in the garage and I would go out there and I would, you know, it was, those were the great days when you could take like two hits, just like, and then you're baked.
John: You didn't need any more.
John: Like you could, you could tamp out the bowl and be like, I've got more in here and I'm so stoned.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Like the stuff we had, it was maybe, it was mostly like you were guaranteed a headache and then you might get a little bit tipsy.
John: Oh no, this was, you know, Alaska weed was the kind where you took one hit and you were basically in the Rolling Stones.
Merlin: Oh man.
John: You know, you were just like, ah, I'm so fucking wasted.
John: But then later I became like a wake and bake smoker and then wake and bake, like first thing I did, like opened my eyes and like reached over and got high because it was just like, I'm going to get high all day.
John: Why don't I start right now?
John: Why wouldn't I start first thing?
John: And then smoked pot all day.
John: And then I was smoking pot all day, all the time.
John: Were you working at the newsstand then?
John: No, this was in Alaska.
Merlin: In Alaska?
John: Yeah.
John: Well, no, in Seattle too.
John: By the time I got a job, I was sober.
John: Okay.
John: But the thing was that during that whole period when I was drinking and smoking weed and then got into other drugs and then started taking all the drugs –
John: I still was always kind of trying to maintain a foothold by saying, you know what?
John: I'm not going to do any of X for the month of Y. Okay.
John: Right.
John: I'm going to, you know what?
John: I'm smoking too much weed.
John: I'm going to cut out weed for November.
John: Okay.
John: And then I would just fill the, you know, the, the weed shaped hole in my life with
John: whatever else, but I would, I was always trying to like, it wasn't just click on a formula where, where I had, I could do, I could manage my life, but it was, it was a constant sort of feeling like habit is my enemy, right?
Merlin: And I know that's so interesting, John, like you never take the same route twice, that kind of thing.
Merlin: Like you, not, not just to, you know, have the CIA or the shadow CIA not be able to see your movements.
Merlin: That just is, this is praxis for you is you order something different every time.
John: Habit, I guess isn't, it's not that it's my enemy, but habit is a dependency.
John: Habit is a weakness.
John: Wow.
John: And so, um,
John: And now that I think about it, I still live that way.
John: I'm very suspicious of habit, and when I catch myself in a habit, I...
John: And sometimes it's a struggle, right?
John: It's a habit.
John: I mean, sometimes by the time I realize it's a habit, it's very ingrained.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Somebody once described this to me as like describing like cigarettes, where like a habit is – and it's interesting the way you're using habit.
Merlin: It seems like you're using habit –
Merlin: So sometimes when people say habit, they mean rut.
Merlin: Sometimes when people say habit, they mean like a positive thing you've built up.
Merlin: But it sounds like you're talking about like you unintentionally find yourself backing into a dependency kind of.
John: Yeah.
John: And some of them I think are what people would describe as even positive habits, you know, like just things that are habitual.
John: But I always try to short circuit those things.
John: And I think it's just because I don't want to be a creature of habit.
John: And that worked for me in the drug years because, I mean, it's not like any of those attempts to solve my drug use worked as solutions.
John: But I was always bouncing back.
John: bouncing around kind of, and I think what it did was it made me always conscious of the fact that, um, none of this is stable, right?
John: I'm never going to be somebody that buys an eighth from the same dude, the same day, every week, right.
John: Smokes it from the same pipe, you know, and watches my same shows.
John: Like I always, I had one pipe that I kept forever and,
John: And I think I probably still have it in a box somewhere.
John: And it was a gift.
John: Somebody really early on in my pot smoking days was like, you know, we were smoking pot through this little pipe and it was, you know, it was total great 70s, like 80s.
John: It was brass, but it had wood.
Merlin: And it was a classic, just little, very small little pipe that was probably... Yeah, the kind that you would... Like, if you were, like, slightly more sophisticated than using an apple or a Coke can, like, you could go to the head shop and for, like, probably, like, five bucks...
Merlin: get like a little, usually like a metal and like a color.
Merlin: You could go a little more upgrade and get that kind of like the hippie one that's like made out of wood and you slide the thing, you know?
Merlin: Oh, yeah, your little, yeah.
Merlin: Yours is more like a tiny brass instrument.
John: It was a brass bowl and then it had a little wood...
John: Sort of, uh, shaped like an almond and then a little section of brass and then another little wood shaped like an almond.
John: And then I think maybe a wood mouth, but it had, it had been painted, but it had been used for many years.
John: So the, it was kind of worn away like a, like an old Telecaster, except it was kind of red and green.
John: But anyway, we were smoking and this guy was like, Hey man, I want you to have this pipe.
John: And I was like, wow.
John: Cool.
John: And he was like, it was my mom's.
Merlin: Thank you.
Merlin: Headspace is your daily dose of mindfulness in the form of guided meditations in an easy-to-use app.
Merlin: Headspace is one of the only meditation apps advancing the field of mindfulness and meditation through clinically validated research.
Merlin: So whatever the situation, Headspace can really help you feel better.
Merlin: If you're overwhelmed, don't worry.
Merlin: Headspace is a three-minute SOS meditation for you.
Merlin: Maybe you need some help falling asleep.
Merlin: Headspace has wind down sessions.
Merlin: Their members swear by.
Merlin: And for parents, Headspace even has morning meditations you can do with your kids.
Merlin: That's kind of cool.
Merlin: Headspace's approach to mindfulness can reduce stress, improve sleep, boost focus, and increase your overall sense of wellbeing.
Merlin: I've used Headspace in the past and found it really useful.
Merlin: for establishing the habit of meditation.
Merlin: That's the hardest part in some ways.
Merlin: No matter how new you are to this practice, they will walk you through everything you need to know.
Merlin: You just sit down and you do it.
Merlin: And let's be honest, once you have the Headspace app on your device of choice, there's really no excuse not to make the time to use it.
Merlin: Headspace is backed by 25 published studies on its benefits, 600,000 five-star reviews, and over 60 million downloads.
Merlin: Headspace makes it easy for you to build a life-changing meditation practice with mindfulness that works for you on your schedule anytime, anywhere.
Merlin: You deserve to feel happier, and Headspace is meditation made simple, so you go to headspace.com slash supertrain.
Merlin: That's headspace.com slash supertrain for a free one-month trial with access to Headspace's full library of meditations for every day.
Merlin: situation say it thrice and it's almost like praying the best deal offered right now headspace.com slash super train today thanks to headspace for supporting roderick online and all the great shows and oh tell me more i was so i mean it warmed my heart that this dude would give me his mom's pipe uh-huh
John: And I, you know, of all the things I lost, like I've had 600 pipes and bongs, but this one, it was just, it was like my Kowitian hat.
John: It was just like, I lost so much shit over the years.
John: So much great stuff has gone through me and has just been kind of, you know,
John: Picked off of me by vultures.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: But this pie.
John: The vultures of time.
John: The vultures of awareness.
John: The vultures of time and the vultures of girlfriends that are like, I like that shirt.
John: I like that shirt.
John: That still happens.
John: And I'm like, where is the girlfriend even coming from?
Merlin: How did this shirt get?
Merlin: The girlfriend's coming from inside the house.
Merlin: In my case, my daughter has appropriated pretty much all of my clothes.
Merlin: You're cool stuff, right?
Merlin: Well, I mean, you know, she's got a lifestyle and a look.
Merlin: And I guess I dress like the lifestyle that she's becoming.
Merlin: First, she wanted to just look like my friend Alex Cox, so she would steal all my plaid shirts with patterns.
Merlin: But like today, she's wearing my Ben Sherman shirt.
Merlin: Like, really cool green Glen plaid shirt with my Narragansett beer jacket and with the Wolverine pin on it.
Merlin: She just rolls in this morning and she just wears my clothes now.
Merlin: My closet is now her closet.
Merlin: But at least it's still around.
Merlin: It didn't disappear in a Filson bag.
Merlin: Your casa is Sue's casa.
John: It's Suzanne.
John: But I...
John: I definitely always felt like pushing against.
John: Yeah.
John: So for instance, like there have been, I don't know, not that many times, but times when I was like, I'm not going to do something bad.
John: for a month and see, see what it's like.
Merlin: I'm not going to be something like, like shoplifting or speeding, but something that's considered like mainly, is it a personal or a societal ill or what's the nature of it?
Merlin: Just the habit is a habit and I don't want it.
Merlin: I don't prefer it.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, I've never shoplifted.
John: At all?
John: Or if I have, it was one time.
Merlin: I've had stealing, the philosophy of stealing on my list for months now.
Merlin: We've got to come back to that at some point.
John: No, I was never a stealer.
John: You never stole beer?
John: No.
John: The two things that you could describe me as having stolen...
John: I mean, I definitely have stolen a couple of cars, but I always brought them back.
John: Okay.
John: All right.
John: I did used to go into the supermarket with friends and we would go in the back and do whippets and then put the
John: put the, um, the cans in the back.
John: Oh, you take a hit off a ready whip, take a hit off a ready whip and then put that.
John: Well, not a hit.
John: We would empty the ready whip of nitrous oxide.
Merlin: They should know.
Merlin: They should know what they're in for just by stocking that stuff.
John: Yeah.
John: And, and you know, at, at,
John: 2.30 in the morning in an all-night grocery store if two dudes with really, really red eyes come in and are like, we'll just be right in.
John: We just need some half and half.
John: And then they go back and they're like in the walk-in.
John: In fact, one time we did go into – Kel McCarl and I went into a grocery store wearing like worker dude jackets, like those blue jackets.
John: We were like, yeah, we're from the freezer company.
Yes.
John: It was like 2.30 in the morning.
John: It's like the saddest Ocean's Eleven ever.
John: And there was some 20-year-old girl working the cash register who looked up from her fingernails and was like, whatever.
John: And we went back and went into the cooler and sat and did whippets until our minds were fried.
John: So that technically is stealing.
John: All I left with was the memories.
John: But one time, and I was with Kel McCarl again.
John: one time we were at this point we were in stanwood washington we were very poor and uh we went into a supermarket and i had you know two dollars or whatever and i was going to buy i was going to do that thing where i spent four hours in the supermarket trying to maximize my two dollars like i get one bag of fritos and then i get a stick of gum oh boy i know that game
Merlin: There could be one like, and if I do this, I can go to that place where you can buy one stick of butter or that kind of thing.
Merlin: You do this resource leveling.
Merlin: Oh my God.
John: I've done like a jar of grape jelly and a, and a, you know, loaf of wonder bread will get me further than, but we're walking around the grocery store and Kel, I'd never seen that.
John: I'd never seen a thing like this.
John: Kel reaches in, gets a thing of chocolate milk.
John: And just opens it and starts walking around the supermarket drinking it.
John: And I was like, what the fuck is happening?
John: And then he finished his, you know, it was a little thing of trouble.
John: I finished it and he put it down on a shelf.
John: And he's just like stealing from the store while we're in the store.
John: I was super appalled.
John: And I think he took like a kielbasa and put it in his coat and
John: And I left the store with him without reporting him.
John: So I was an accomplice.
John: Oh, I see.
John: You were complicit.
John: But I was never a stealer.
John: Okay.
John: All right.
John: But no, the things that I would quit were, I mean, I can't quit.
John: you i can't quit my baby yeah i mean if you stole my heart that's stealing but i can quit almost anything else um for for a month you know yeah sure i'm just trying to think of i'm trying to think of anything in my life that i haven't quit for a period just to test whether or not i could
John: whether or not I could do it, you know?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And I mean, you know, this is, I don't know, it's a big theme for me over many years is the, I'm somebody who used to dabble in the self-help industry professionally.
Merlin: I get a B in my bonnet about people who want the specific logistical, giving the hot tips and the life hacks thing because they're too, they're too bored or uninterested to,
Merlin: to explore the philosophical underpinning about how you got where you are, how you get where you want to go, and how you implement some kind of, you know, I don't mean to be like a, you know, a dork about it, but like just telling people like, oh, go organize your socks like this is not useful.
Merlin: It's more helpful, like in your case, okay, let's go back a minute.
Merlin: You talked about, okay, I'm not gonna smoke pot for a month,
Merlin: But I found a marijuana loophole, which is I can do these other things.
Merlin: Well, if you wanted an omnibus project of becoming a better and healthier person, for example, you wouldn't say, well, you know, I'm going to cut out potato chips and I'm only going to eat two quarts of ice cream a night.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: I just think – I realize that's probably really obvious to a lot of people, but it's not as obvious and clear as it seems.
Merlin: And like –
Merlin: you can find ways to come up with these sorts of things in a way that's actually not all that wholesome, not actually all that helpful.
Merlin: But I think I know what you mean.
Merlin: This really does go into your testing protocol, which I think is super interesting.
Merlin: You've always been like this, right?
Merlin: For a long time, you've said, I'm going to disrupt the regularity of what I'm doing
Merlin: Um, and things large and small in order to find out who I really am and what I can tolerate.
Merlin: And then like, and you end up, uh, uh, undertaking something that you know will cause you discomfort.
John: Yes.
John: Yes.
John: A hair shirting, but, but it's not because I, it's not just to punish myself.
John: It's like to train.
John: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, I remember.
Merlin: Wasn't it you?
Merlin: It has to be you.
Merlin: One of the reasons, one of the numerous reasons you were opposed to taking prescriptions of things was, well, partly, you just don't like to take drugs anymore.
Merlin: Like, you've refused my ephedrine.
Merlin: I think one time you did at Bimbo's, maybe?
Merlin: Not at Bimbo's.
Merlin: At Whatchamadick, the big place.
Merlin: You did have some cold medicine that I brought you.
Merlin: But apart from that, your thing is, if we get into a Cormac McCarthy-type situation, and I'm pushing around a grocery cart trying to avoid the zombies, no spoilers, I don't want to run out of my loratadine.
Merlin: Or I don't want to run out of my, what's the black box stuff we take?
Merlin: That's, you know, the... Lamictal.
Merlin: Yeah, Lamotrigine.
Merlin: Dancing for Lamotrigine was that David Bowie hit.
Merlin: And so, isn't that part of it?
Merlin: You don't want to be strung out with your golf cart, with your grocery cart and your kid going like, oh, geez, now I'm feeling spiders under my skin.
John: They've got me.
John: They've got me on the drugs, right?
John: They've got me on the Lamictal, but also on the blood pressure medicine.
John: And now I do feel so uncomfortable being tied to like pharmacies and
John: Like the last thing I wanted in life was to have to go to the pharmacy.
John: And the thing is, they won't just sell you a big bottle of it and you get one once a year.
John: They get you on this freaking cycle where you're just like, you know, now I'm, now I guess I have to.
John: And part of it is some, at some point Merlin, I want to go live under the ocean.
John: And you can't go live under the ocean because there aren't any pharmacies there.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: Not yet.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: See?
Merlin: Right.
John: Yeah.
John: No, no.
Merlin: And that's one of the reasons I got off a lot of that stuff, including Adderall, which is the greatest thing I've ever taken in my life, was I said to myself, I says, I don't want to be a 70-something-year-old person and still need to get a physical prescription from a doctor and...
Merlin: and every single fucking month to get 30 pills, right?
Merlin: And, like, I think there's been a little movement on that.
Merlin: The stuff I take for ADD now is not nearly as fun, but it is still in one of those schedules.
Merlin: But my doctor can phone that to a pharmacy to say, yes, he's allowed to have this.
Merlin: But the idea of, like, being under the sea and, like, trying to find a CVS, forget it.
John: Right.
John: I mean, if you were – it's surprising to me how much the movie Gattaca –
John: influenced me because it's not that I thought it was that great of a movie.
John: It was a, it was a fine movie.
Merlin: um this is the one this is the one with uh not matt damon but the guy who looks like matt damon ethan hawk and and they get your hairs ooma and they get your hairs and they can tell if you're like one of the non-genetic perfect people or something like there's a class system of like how healthy you are is that it yeah if you don't if you don't have perfect eyesight or whatever you know you end up working in a factory um
John: And it was one of those science fiction movies.
John: You know how it is with science fiction.
John: I do.
John: Sometimes you see a science fiction movie and the whole thing is throwing so much science and fiction at you and you walk out of it at the end and you're like, meh.
John: But then other times you see a Blade Runner or something else and you're like, well, that's the whole, that's all I think about now.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: I mean, I like a lot of different kinds of sci-fi and fantasy things, but like there are the ones where it's really about the world building and all the things and like the blue milk and all of that.
Merlin: But some of the ones I find the most bracing, everything spins out of a big basic difference.
Merlin: about what's possible.
Merlin: So something like, especially time travel movies, I love the movie Predestination so, so much.
Merlin: Movies like that, where there's a big concept, or like my kid's reading Fahrenheit 451 right now, and there's these kinds of things where there's a lot you can do, but if you try to put a hat on a hat with that,
Merlin: It gets too cute.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: But the big ones, they'll get through to you if they got the big concept.
John: It's what I loved about Harlan Ellison.
John: And I know that a lot of his work is like, even when I read it as a teenager, I was like, eww.
John: But there were so many of those stories.
John: It's what makes Black Mirror such a great show.
John: Because you're just like, oh, all they did was tweak one thing, but it sure tweaked it hard.
Merlin: They're amplifying something that's already a thing.
Merlin: And I mean, you know, to sometimes differing results, but like, you know, I can't unthink...
Merlin: So there's so many episodes of that that I love.
Merlin: But one that I think about constantly is the one with, I want to say Bryce Dallas Howard, but it's the one where you rate and review everything and everything rates and reviews you.
Merlin: I fucking think about that all the, I still think about that all the time.
Merlin: all the time every time they say hey your instacart guy sent you a photo of a shelf and i go to look at the photo of the shelf even though i've already picked a replacement that's fine it's a difficult job i click and i go to the instacart app and guess what happens i can't go chat with my person or see the shelf they sent because guess what i get a pop-up asking me to rate and review my last order
Merlin: Oh, rate and review.
Merlin: Rate and review.
Merlin: How many stars would you give a person bringing seltzer?
Merlin: Well, they did it.
Merlin: It's seltzer.
Merlin: How many stars do you need?
Merlin: Every single time it steals focus from what I'm trying to do because they've decided the most important thing is to rate and review.
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: Rate and review.
Merlin: Rate and review.
Merlin: And you know, the Ubers and the Lyfts, they rate and review you back.
Merlin: So it's very Bryce.
Merlin: I think it's Bryce Dallas Howard, I want to say.
Merlin: Anyway, anyway, sorry.
John: Big idea.
John: But, you know, like eugenics has been one of these from the first from the moment that concept was introduced to me.
John: it's been this bugbear in my mind from the time I was an early teen.
John: And all of the kind of vaguely eugenical programs and, you know, it's like there's always going to be people that want to trend that way.
John: There's always going to be political, like, formulations that if you scratch the surface of it, you really, it's not hard to see that the people behind it
John: it's just creeping eugenicism right and because there's it's not all it's not all nazi there are a lot of people that are like this is the way right um and and so it's like real small incremental stuff and that was that was that was behind i mean until i mean until i think fairly recently for a long time and this god i'm so obsessed with all these different shows about british royalty right now but like there's no spoilers but you know there is history there we learn at one point
Merlin: that several members of Queen Elizabeth's fairly close family are in an asylum.
Merlin: And it's for, like, for what do they call, like, defective persons or something like that.
Merlin: But, like, they were... One of my best friends, his aunt was... She came to the house twice a year because the rest of the year she was in a facility.
Merlin: She did not fit into the plan for that family.
Merlin: And, I mean, it wasn't... It isn't just, like you say, it isn't just Nazis.
Merlin: Like, things like, I mean...
Merlin: you know, what's the word?
Merlin: That horrible word I'm looking for, neutering?
Merlin: Or like, you know, people who... Sterilizing.
Merlin: Sterilizing people with developmental problems?
Merlin: I mean, that was happening in the 60s, I think, right?
John: Well, it depends on where you go.
John: It's happening now.
John: Not hopefully in the United States.
Merlin: So were the Nazis your first exposure to that, the whole measuring skulls and noses?
Merlin: I remember a book about Nazis in elementary school and showing how they would measure people's noses and stuff like that.
Merlin: Was that your first exposure to this idea?
John: No, it was science fiction.
John: I was reading some 60s anthology of all the science fiction writers that were like,
John: Let's explore the incest taboo or whatever, you know?
John: And, um, and yeah, just the concept of like, oh, you could just, you could just approach human breeding like you do animal breeding.
John: Yeah.
John: And, uh, and all of a sudden you're in, you're into a whole different way of, of thinking about government.
John: Yeah.
John: And just thinking about just whatever our whole society.
Merlin: Yeah, I mean, how are we going to apportion limited resources here?
Merlin: One seemingly sensible capitalist idea is like, well, we don't want to waste all of this education money on people that, well, let's be honest, they're not going to be...
Merlin: great contributors to society.
Merlin: You could have what seems like a fairly practical approach to that, but that's not that different from like, well, there's just not a lot of money for this school because the tax base in this area is not very high.
Merlin: But the whole, I mean, we're right on the cusp, right?
John: Of we, we're, um, I mean, for the last 20 years or, or more, we have been hard charging at the human genome and the, um,
John: you know, the justification for it, the logic, the scientific motivation is to eliminate disease, to cure problems.
John: But it's like so many things in life, just because we're focusing on the nice application doesn't mean that the sinister application isn't
John: shadowing it the whole time.
Merlin: We see that all the time now with the surveillance stuff, where it's like they trot out— I shouldn't say this, but there's this phrase that came up at one point where people started calling these sorts of things the starving African child, where you come up with this extreme example of something—
Merlin: in order to make a case for something, and it becomes a cause celeb.
Merlin: And for a lot of people right now, that's the bugaboos.
Merlin: It used to be drugs, right?
Merlin: It used to be, I feel like today it's like pedophilia, where it's like, well, if anything involves terrorism or pedophilia, it's got to be okay.
Merlin: And then, but the truth is, then guess what?
Merlin: Almost all of those laws that you put in place or practices you put in place for a seemingly good reason will come back to bite you in the ass and mostly impact poor people of color.
Merlin: Speeding laws.
Merlin: Speeding, yeah, great, don't speed in the school zone.
Merlin: Well, you know who gets pulled over for speeding?
Merlin: Like, lots of black people, because that's a way that we can search them.
John: And that's...
John: I think we're on the cusp of when genetic manipulation, when gene manipulation tools become more widely disseminated, which they will, you can't keep that stuff in a box.
Merlin: Right.
John: Somehow it's amazing to me that the 20th century managed to keep –
John: nuclear bombs in a box enough that we can still count the nation states that can manufacture them.
Merlin: There's more movies about, like, broken arrow type things.
Merlin: There's more movies about that stuff going wrong, Dr. Strangelove stuff, than there are incidents of that ever happening in the way you and I would have anticipated in, say, 1984.
John: Yeah, and most of those broken arrow things are stolen bombs, right?
John: It's astonishing to me that
John: that it's still so difficult to make a bomb, but it won't be that difficult to, um, to manipulate genes going forward because, you know, yeah.
John: And it's just going to disseminate and they're going to be right now, all the scientists doing the research, just like you were saying about surveillance, just like you think about drones.
John: I mean, you think about the fucking web, we have the best intentions and,
John: But no one really considers what the most sinister application or even just a slightly sinister application.
Merlin: Totally.
John: But that ends up being the thing that changes our lives.
John: Yep.
John: And so, you know, eugenics and entirely that way of thinking, I mean, it feels to me at least like a pretty thin line between we're eradicating disease and
John: And we're eradicating alcoholism and, you know, like genetic basis for alcoholism.
John: And then we're eradicating or we're we are genetically manipulating so people don't have depression.
John: And then we're genetically manipulating so people don't have bad thoughts.
Merlin: And then you're not so far off.
Merlin: I believe it was George Washington Carver who said weed is a flower that grows in the wrong place.
Merlin: It depends on who gets to define what's a flower and what's a weed, right?
Merlin: Because like we can all agree like hopefully that something like –
Merlin: MRSA or something like SARS or any of those kinds of things, not desirable, but you're right, it's a spectrum.
Merlin: Pretty soon, we're deciding there's a lot of stuff that weeds and who gets to decide that?
John: What's interesting, watching Seattle mature and then mature and then become overripe, and particularly from
John: from inside the music community.
John: And then that period of eight to 10 years, I was standing out in front of my, in front of my house the other day with a rake in my hand and this neighbor walked by and I was like, Hey neighbor.
John: And he was like, well, my dad's your neighbor.
John: And we sat and talked and we were talking for a while.
John: And this young woman comes walking along and, and both this guy and I kind of stepped out of her way.
John: We were all wearing masks.
John: stepped out of her way so she could walk past.
John: And when I stepped back from the sidewalk, she also altered course toward me.
John: And so I stepped back a third time.
John: She was carrying a package and she beelined for me.
John: And I was like, what are you doing lady?
John: And she said, Hey John, it's me.
John: And pulled her mask down and I recognized her.
John: She was from the music commission.
John: And she had found me.
John: She had my address on file and she found me.
John: And just that day with without calling or whatever, decided that that was the day that she was going to go drive by my house and bring me this package that had been sitting on her desk for a year and a half.
John: And she was like, here, this package, you know, I wanted to bring this to you.
John: And I just happened to be standing out on the street.
John: And she parked way up the road and had walked down with this box.
John: And the guy that I was talking to was like, what is happening?
John: She handed me this box and I opened it.
John: And it was this beautiful framed, like, thank you for being on the music commission for this.
John: eight years and it was like a gold record, had my name on it and all this nice stuff.
John: And then I had to explain to this guy like, oh yeah, you know, I'm like, I had this weird job and then he was, he wanted to know what the hell that meant.
John: And in the course of trying to describe to him why there was a music commission and what it did,
John: And the whole time he was like, well, I think of Seattle as being like a real arts center.
John: Like why would you even need a government music commission?
John: And in describing it to him, it was a conversation that we'd had.
John: And the young woman stayed there and she and I were kind of working together to try and explain.
John: But thinking about the Seattle ecosystem as a –
John: in its most basic form, like as a village and the period before the big music explosion there where the community kind of, you know, uh, art and music didn't really intrude.
John: It didn't cause any problems.
John: It wasn't Seattle was kind of a dingy city and kids went around and put their show posters up on phone poles and play it in rec centers.
John: But it didn't, it's not like it, it, uh,
John: Interfered with traffic or anything.
John: Nobody cared right and then there was a period of concentrated art making that happened there and the city all of a sudden got real paternalistic about it and Started to say like well, you can't just have all these kids in this unlicensed space like what about the fire code and then
John: you know, more and more sort of draconian policies.
John: Like you can't put flyers up on phone poles anymore because it's a safety issue for the linemen that need to climb the poles.
John: This is a seriously, the city passed an ordinance.
John: You can't flyer for your show.
John: All those rusty staples.
John: You could get tetanus.
John: Yeah, it's a safety issue.
John: And, you know, and made it really hard to have all ages shows really crack down on the music scene.
John: And we had to organize to fight back.
John: But now we're in this late stage.
John: where the city's just, and you lived through this in San Francisco, the city just prices out art.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, there used to be this giant, giant, giant building down on, I want to say 3rd, kind of in the southeast part of town.
Merlin: It was like basically a, I've probably mentioned this before, but it was like a multi-story warehouse that was all just art places, mostly practice spaces for bands.
Merlin: And they just wiped it out.
Merlin: Like, you're all gone.
Merlin: Sorry, it's going to be a place that, you know, now is disrupting the market for home delivery, frozen peas or whatever.
Sure.
John: Right.
John: And 50 bands that made up the, you know, the core of a, of a whole scene, just like all gone at once.
John: Exactly.
John: And so that's happening in Seattle too.
John: And, and it's, and you know, it might even be past the point of no return, but being inside of it, you, you see that no one is exactly responsible for it, right?
John: Nobody takes responsibility for it.
John: It's not intentional, right?
John: It's just that in any one given situation, the cost benefit analysis never lands on the musician or the artist because you never understand.
Merlin: are fully crediting the benefit side of them versus the cost side especially when it's the benefits are so soft it's soft benefit right you know what i mean like it's not it's one thing to say like well you know we got to keep god damn it we got to keep all these bars open so we're going to say you can have this many people till 10 o'clock or whatever it's like god please let my kid go back to school but like the that's a hard benefit because obviously they get all this you know uh
Merlin: consideration that other people don't get.
Merlin: But there's a big difference between letting somebody do something sort of in a benign way versus like making it so that, okay, we're on the same team now and we're going to make this happen.
Merlin: There's a big difference to that.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: The soft benefits, though, I mean, soft benefits are soft because they're very difficult to exactly define.
Merlin: I'm pivoting from a phrase, soft skills.
Merlin: There's hard skills of what you do for your technology or whatever, but the soft skills of being good at communication and having good hygiene and all these kinds of things.
Merlin: It's difficult to measure or make rules about those things, but the benefits are huge and may take a long time.
Merlin: To a Crete, where like the downside of not having those soft benefits, it's going to be too late.
Merlin: By the time you realize it, it's too late.
Merlin: Because guess what?
Merlin: Now Oakland, well, Oakland's expensive now too.
Merlin: San Francisco people, like they moved to Oakland.
Merlin: They moved to Daly City.
Merlin: They moved to somewhere that's sensible.
Merlin: For a long time, LA was a much more artsy town than San Francisco for that very reason.
Merlin: It mattered to them to have, it's my understanding, way more than San Francisco.
Merlin: It mattered to them to make it a place that's affordable and affordable.
Merlin: for people who create the soft benefits that you, it's difficult to just put your finger on.
Merlin: It's maddening.
John: I told you, I talked to somebody, a guy in San Francisco, I was doing a show and, and he was the, he was the band leader.
John: And I was like, we were playing in one of those, one of the 50 incredible small to medium sized theaters and clubs that are in San Francisco.
John: And he's an LA guy.
John: And he said in the course of this conversation, uh,
John: You know, there's no place to play in L.A., but there are a thousand bands.
John: And in San Francisco, there are a thousand great places to play and no bands.
John: So we just come up to San Francisco.
John: We book shows up here all the time just because there's great places to play.
John: Um, but we have, but we have to live in LA.
John: We can't afford to live here.
Merlin: Of course.
John: But we, we were always making the case in Seattle that we were trying to make the economic benefit case, right?
John: That Seattle was the city it was because of music and art.
John: And we could show.
John: that it was an industry and that it, that it brought a billion dollars of revenue into the city.
John: And we were always trying to posit it.
John: Like it's just like tugboats or it's just like, you know, it's just like software.
John: It's an industry.
John: And so we need, uh,
John: Right.
Merlin: But but of course, it may not be this particular band quasi that brings a benefit, but there are people all down the line that benefit from that, whether that's the people who own the bars, the people who work at the bars.
Merlin: Like, you know what I mean?
Merlin: Like, it's like you think about the impact of Broadway closing down.
Merlin: Well, it's way more than you don't get to see Hamilton for a year.
Merlin: There's so many people that are affected by that.
Merlin: And usually you only invoke that in a really lame way to say, oh, don't steal movies because you're hurting the grips or the gaffers or the best boys or whatever.
Merlin: But do people still have that same understanding of the impact of an industry beyond how you feel about this particular band and their art?
Merlin: Quasi's from Portland.
Merlin: Shit.
Merlin: God damn it.
Merlin: I should know that.
Merlin: It's the lady from... Oh, damn it.
Merlin: The point... You always hurt the one you love.
John: The connection is that... Fuck that up.
John: I think about the way that we're going to be using medical science to eliminate non-optimal...
John: personality traits oh god yeah in the same way that this it's going to have the same effect of a city just gradually like um eliminating where eliminating abandoned warehouses and replacing them with nice apartments and not being conscious of the fact that those abandoned warehouses are the places where people
John: uh start to you know when they're young they have a dirty cold space that they get to use to to start painting to start making rock music and from the standpoint of a city uh their benefit is is invisible to to to city planners it's like there's this this abandoned warehouse has no tax
Merlin: benefit to the city right if we if we tear it down and replace it with a with a condo it increases our tax base we can use that money to fund the schools you know there's always an altruistic motive that's another version of tent trash in some ways where it's like we don't get a clear benefit from this but it's not difficult for me to imagine the downside of this this feels like nothing but risk just the insurance on this place could cause us problems it's an attractive nuisance there could be fires that kind of thing
John: Right.
John: But it's really, those are the incubators of all the things that 25 years from now, people will look back and say, wow, those were the days, right?
John: That was, those were the halcyon days of that.
John: Like if we didn't have the music of, of the doors, then what would the sixties have been?
John: And the only reason the doors could have made that music is that they had a cheap practice space somewhere and
John: And you take away the cheap practice space and the entire 60s goes away.
John: But all – and just to – yes, totally.
John: But also – Who's going to dare to dance the shaman's dance, Barlow?
Merlin: Really overrated.
Merlin: But also the Whiskey A Go-Go.
Merlin: Like having a venue that like could be a home to both the Doors and X –
Merlin: Or whomever.
Merlin: You're going forward a little bit to the trail that you've been on.
Merlin: The trail blazed in some ways by SST bands in the 80s and Minor Threat.
Merlin: Into the early 90s, I was still getting to see bands in Tallahassee.
Merlin: Unbelievable indie bands.
Merlin: Because that was on that path.
Merlin: You go through Tallahassee, you go to Gainesville, you go to Orlando, you go to Miami.
Merlin: I don't want to overstate it, but you're standing on the shoulders of giants in some ways.
Merlin: And that industry may feel fairly underground, but everybody starts out in a shitty space like that.
Merlin: You don't get to nirvana being on TV without having a lot of dirty, roach-infested warehouses that are affordable.
John: And that is what I worry about what I, what I, what I see coming.
John: There's no way.
John: And we, we struggle with this a lot.
John: There's no way to say kind of, it's very hard, at least in the, in the conversation, the, the, whatever the conversation is, whatever the public square is to say there are benefits to depression.
John: There are benefits to anxiety.
John: There are benefits to bipolar and,
John: And, you know, art is not made by happy, well-adjusted people in general.
John: And it's not a thing that you want to keep someone in pain and suffering.
John: You don't want to encourage drug abuse.
John: You don't want to let, you know, depression and bipolar and schizophrenia go on.
Merlin: without help that they want or need.
Merlin: But I totally agree with you.
Merlin: I see what you're saying.
Merlin: You're pivoting from that to the health stuff.
Merlin: But it's also like, well, not to be all Gramsci or something, but also it's hard to hold down a menial job or six years
Merlin: If you've got those kinds of problems, you want healthy people in your workforce.
Merlin: You want people who are like dependable.
Merlin: And I don't want to be too gross about the capitalism bit.
Merlin: But like, I think that's really true.
Merlin: I think, you know, the reason they're, you know, electrocuting Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is like he's not he's not a contributing citizen.
Merlin: setting aside how we treat the least of us, there's also just that thing of like, we need people, we need warm bodies.
Merlin: The classes I was given in seventh grade, like in vocational wheel, it's just classes to keep you out of jail.
Merlin: It's just basically learning how to like do the most menial tasks because it's a fallback since you're probably not going to go to college and be useful.
Merlin: At least you could fix a rich person's car.
John: And it does feel like a black mirror kind of, kind of future scape where particularly if
John: Particularly if people – if it's possible to genetically tweak your kids so that they're not sad, then they're probably not also going to need –
John: music made by sad dopes oh god yes oh my god no it's true they'll also be able to really appreciate music that's made by algorithms right like like hey i would like to hear some sunny pop and the computer is just like sunshine is happening today and you're like grooving yeah and and it and so it will it will end up being that sadness is a class determiner whoa
Merlin: It's also just it makes people more manageable.
Merlin: Again, obsessed with all this British stuff.
Merlin: There's an episode of The Crown after, spoiler, Princess Diana dies, and they're up at Balmoral Castle in Scotland, and the Queen says, take out all the radios, take out all the televisions and newspapers.
Merlin: I don't want the two boys, her sons, to be sad.
Merlin: And we were just watching this and talking about it, and I said to my kid, you know,
Merlin: I hate to admit this, it's a shameful thing for a father to admit, but one must be honest with oneself that there are times that you do something for your kid under sort of the guise of helping them and under the guise of making them better or making them not be worse or having them not be sad or all those things or having them not suffer privations, right?
Merlin: There's all these things that you do, but you have to ask yourself, if you're being honest, what are the things that I do...
Merlin: That cause problems for me, but help the kid versus things that seem to help the kid and reduce problems for me.
Merlin: And I said, I think the queen in that case, you know, like putting your kid on more drugs than they require or whatever.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Whatever it is, making people manageable, whether that's an employee or whether that's a young person, a family.
Merlin: pre-adult I think sometimes we do need to like push back on the idea that like well we don't want people taking their own life and so therefore everybody must be you know medicated and therefore you know pretty soon you get to like well yeah but like it's also just easier to manage you at the Home Depot if we can keep you in a certain mood it sounds very they live but like I really I do believe that it's super hard to you know I've always been somebody that pushes back when when musicians come to me and say
John: if I quit doing drugs, I'm not going to be a good artist anymore.
John: Like the drugs or what, you know, and I've, I've always been, I've always been somebody that called bullshit on that.
John: That's why I said Barrett's career went so well.
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: Right.
John: There's, you know, like I had a, I had a kid tell me a few years ago, like that his heroes were, and he just named all these rock stars that had died young.
John: And I was like, why are you coming to me for help?
John: Like, if you want to die young,
John: my god there's a lot of ways you can die young it's easier than a lot of people realize i don't want to hold your hand through that go die young if that's your thing but if you're 26 you only got another year do it yeah fucking live it up i hope you make a great record between now and then mr mojo rising but but at the same time right like like i don't want i also don't
John: I mean, maybe that's maybe it's our ultimate evolution.
John: Maybe sadness and depression really are just like the tuberculosis of the mind.
John: And what we really should be is just a happy little hive of of eco bugs that, you know, that that eat their own poo and live in the sun.
John: I don't know.
John: I don't know what, you know, it may it may actually be that we are we're going to be the last generation that's nostalgic from a time for a time when like youth were sad.
Merlin: But, you know, there are people who will be listening to this, I imagine, including possibly me.
Merlin: But there are people who listen to this and I think will misapprehend.
Merlin: what I think we're both trying to say, which is if you find the idea of what we're saying here disturbing or upsetting, that actually should give you hope because that means it hasn't totally happened yet.
Merlin: The problem is there's so many, back to the Gramsci, there's so many kinds of things that we just accept as being normal now, that we just accept as being necessary, a necessary cost of keeping all the different machines running.
Merlin: We accept so many things like that
Merlin: At one time, a lot of people said, boy, that's going to really be terrible if they do that.
Merlin: And then they did it.
Merlin: And now we all just take it as like a normal thing.
Merlin: And so it's not to say that people should be denied help or people should be, you know, kind of left to their own devices to like, you know, play an accordion in a roach room.
Merlin: But it does also mean like let's think about –
Merlin: how many of these sorts of things are presented to us as a great societal benefit or even a societal necessity, but then end up being, like, incredibly fucking dark and, like, starting a world war.
Merlin: It's like there's a lot, well, not that per se.
Merlin: I mean, you've got the sedate in the land.
Merlin: But you know what I mean?
Merlin: There's a lot of stuff that gets presented as, like, hey, great, here's the new miracle cure.
Merlin: You know, kiss the pan.
Merlin: And it's like, no, that's not a miracle cure, and I want to push back on the idea that you can sugarcoat
Merlin: all of these invasive ideas for what you claim is my benefit and society's benefit.
Merlin: It's like, I think that's very much worth pushing back on.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: I, I think that maybe this November Merlin, you and I should,
John: Not jack off.
Merlin: Oh, well, we missed our window.
Merlin: What should we do in December?
Merlin: Oh, maybe we should jack off more.
John: Oh, wait a minute.
John: Have due in December?
John: It's like, you know, Honda days or the December to remember.
John: December to remember.
John: December to remember.
Merlin: December to remember.
Merlin: What happened on my good towels?
Merlin: Mom, I'm studying.