Ep. 412: "A Poke of Gold"
John: Hello?
John: Hi, John.
John: Oh, hi, Merlin.
John: How's it going?
John: Oh, I'm in the upside down completely now.
John: What?
John: What happened?
John: Tell me.
John: I just, my sleep is completely upside down.
John: Oh, John.
John: I'm up until 6 o'clock in the morning every night.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: Give me the whole story.
Merlin: Give me the whole story.
Merlin: Tell me what happened last night.
John: Well, I just was, I laid down on the couch at about 8 p.m.
John: Just the wrong time to take a nap.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: Did you know a nap was... Could you feel a nap coming?
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
John: Oh, boy.
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: See, I started to do this 7.30 nap.
Merlin: Ugh.
John: And then... I wake up at... Whatever, 9.30.
John: It's not like a 10-hour nap.
Merlin: No, but it's enough to take out the incentive to have a proper sleepy sleep.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: And then, you know, here I am, like...
John: Completely off of social media and still staring at my phone at 4 o'clock in the morning.
John: And I don't even know what I'm doing.
John: I'm on there playing brick-a-brick.
John: Oh.
John: Brick-a-brick.
Merlin: You should get into YouTube with me.
Merlin: I'm telling you, man.
Merlin: YouTube is a perfect... Man, perfect.
Merlin: One doesn't say perfect.
Merlin: It's a nice replacement for social media.
Merlin: Here's what I watched on YouTube last night.
Merlin: Okay.
John: I watched...
John: the supposedly greatest version of Eddie Van Halen's eruption ever live.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I've seen, I've seen several of those.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Yep.
John: I watched, uh, I watched Leonard Skinner at the 1976 California Oakland jam or whatever, uh, play a free bird.
John: I, uh, what else did I watch on YouTube last night?
John: Um, Oh yeah.
John: Uh, Van Halen, uh, doing a cover of, um,
John: What's that song from Fair Warning that's actually fun and not really dark?
John: I mean, they're all dark, but what's the one that's... It's not Unchained.
Merlin: Unchained, yeah.
Merlin: Unchained is my favorite Van Halen song, and it's the moment when everything changed.
John: It's a wonderful song, and there was a live version of it from like 81 or 79.
Merlin: The one in Oakland, there's a concert up in Oakland where most of those videos from that tour come from.
Merlin: And Unchained is the one, I think, that actually got some MTV airplay.
Merlin: He says to him, come on, Dave, give us a break.
Merlin: What's he say?
John: Oh, he's got one break.
John: Coming up.
John: Coming up.
John: That's when everything changed.
John: That's the one where he jumps off the drum riser and he does a full on airborne.
Merlin: Yep.
Merlin: Scissor thing.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: And I think it's the one that the iconic picture is from because he did it and you couldn't do that move twice.
John: I don't think of that as well.
John: What else did I watch on YouTube last night?
John: That's a very good song.
John: It's mostly Van Halen and Lynyrd Skynyrd.
John: Okay, okay.
John: Once in a while, a little Blue Oyster cult.
John: But I'm not watching Hank Green talk about his stuffed animal collection or anything.
John: I don't know...
John: I don't know what I'm... And this is Mr. Bobo.
John: Like, where do I... What do I do?
John: The problem is the YouTube algorithm that throws up, like, if you like this, you'll love this.
Merlin: Yes.
John: It's never right.
John: It's always terrible.
John: It shows me things I've already seen.
John: It shows me things that I would never watch.
John: Yeah.
John: Oh, I watched some interview with a bunch of people about the time that Jimi Hendrix got up on stage to, quote, jam with Eric Clapton and...
John: And it was just like 10 British guys talking about how Jimmy made Eric ashamed for himself because he was so good and so fun.
Hmm.
John: And I was it's nice to watch 10 old British guys talk about Eric Clapton.
Merlin: There's so many YouTube videos with 10 old British guys.
Merlin: And here's the thing, though, John, I'm with you.
Merlin: You are at forgive my saying.
Merlin: I know you're very vulnerable right now, but you're at a pretty one on one level with YouTube, which is totally fine.
Merlin: you when one watches like me i'll go watch i'll re-watch that version of um uh of that band uh what's that band i like the english band with the three guys uh they do that song yes they do that song made in heaven you know that with that live performance and he breaks the string in the first minute of the song and covers it up for the rest of the song what's the guy's name bill nelson bill nelson he's in that band what's the band called it did made in heaven
Merlin: But here's the thing.
Merlin: I'm going to look it up because it'll drive me crazy because I know the name of the band.
John: This is the Mike Watt thing.
John: The Mike Watt thing where he breaks a string and he changes the string in the middle of the song.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: I know he used to duct tape his pants when he got diarrhea.
Merlin: Bebop Deluxe.
Merlin: Bebop Deluxe is the name of the band.
Merlin: Highly recommended Made in Heaven, M-A-I-D.
Merlin: She's made in heaven.
John: There's a famous story of Mike Watt, and I think it happened at the Showbox in Seattle, although I don't know for sure, but he's...
John: You know, he's playing.
John: He breaks Mike Watt.
John: Mike Watt.
John: Mike Watt.
Merlin: Mike Watt.
Merlin: Mike Watt.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: Mike Watt.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: He's got a lot.
Merlin: He's very invested in his mythology.
John: He breaks a string.
John: He breaks a bass string.
John: Which, of course, never happens.
John: And this was reported to me by somebody that claimed to have seen it.
John: Now, just as you say, he's very invested in his image that this type of thing sounds apocryphal.
John: But he, posposably...
John: He reached into the back of his duct tape pants and pulled out a string because he knew he was going to break this one.
John: Okay.
John: I could see that.
John: If you're breaking bass strings, you're probably breaking the same bass string every time, right?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I mean, really, if a guitarist had any sense, he would keep a B and a G in his pocket.
John: Yeah.
John: Just right in his shirt pocket, right?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And so I don't know whether he... The implication being, John, that Mike Watt from the Minutemen and later Firehose kept playing as he changed a bass string while he was playing.
Merlin: That's right.
John: So he's playing and singing.
John: I don't know, man.
John: He reaches into his pocket, he threads the string through up to the tuning peg, and he's still somehow managing to go like...
John: and then doop, doop, doop, doop, doop, doop, doop, and then he's back in tune, and off he goes.
Merlin: I don't mean to be all fucking Sherlock Holmes here, John, but one thing I know about a stringed instrument is, especially one with as much tension as a bass, is when you break a string, it's going to put everything else a little out of tune.
John: Well, yeah, but I mean, you know, maybe he's... The musicians, and I've known a dozen of them, that can and do...
John: reach up to the headstock in the middle of a performance and make micro adjustments to the tuning of their strings and have a look, have a sour look on their face.
John: And then they touch the tuning peg with the lightest effervescence.
John: And then they have a, then their face brightens up.
John: Oh, it was just, I was three cents shy of the perfect B. And it's like, what?
John: I don't even know what the tone knob does on my guitar.
John: How the hell are you tuning your,
John: thing in the middle of a song in the middle of a chord like that's that's that's next level yeah i guess because i see him do it i want to believe it i want to believe it but if mike i mean mike what the story is supposed to convey is mike watt has spent one billion hours on tour
John: That's the whole point of the story.
Merlin: He loves that van.
Merlin: He's always in the van.
Merlin: He gets interviewed if you watch that Minutemen documentary that I've seen many times and for which I own the poster.
Merlin: It's mostly conducted in the van, unlike the time Paul McCartney is driving a boat in the Beatles documentary, which I think we've discussed.
Merlin: Why is Paul McCartney piloting a boat while talking about the Beatles?
Merlin: He needs something to do with his hands.
John: I watched some McCartney last night, too.
John: There was one where he's...
John: He's in Abbey Road.
John: For some reason, there's a film crew there and a bunch of people standing around that none of them seem to, there are a bunch of people in Abbey Road with Paul McCartney while he is standing there with the Mellotron.
John: And he's explaining how the Mellotron works.
John: He's like, oh, look over here.
John: He's got some tapes.
John: He got some tape de-waped.
John: Because he's Yogi Bear.
John: He kind of is.
John: And there's a bunch of people.
John: I don't know what they're doing.
John: Coiling cables.
John: Ten other people in the studio.
John: And they're not crowded around the Mellotron while Paul McCartney plays.
Boop, boop.
Merlin: I think of the Mellotron is more of a John thing, but I'll allow it.
John: Well, but he's... If Paul McCartney was in there changing an electrical outlet, I would be like, tell me more.
Merlin: Especially if the contractor knew to get that kind you can attach a bubble bath to.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: You gotta have that.
Merlin: Sorry, yeah.
Merlin: All I'm saying is you gotta get past the music.
Merlin: The music is a good start, but you gotta graduate to what YouTube is good at, in my opinion.
John: And tell me what that is, because it's the second largest search platform after Google, and I go on there, and every time I watch a couple of things, and then I'm like, wait a minute, oh, wait, I did see an incredible thing.
John: Oh, tell me, please.
John: Well, it was a music thing.
Merlin: No, no, listen, listen, you're missing what I'm saying.
Merlin: It's like, you know, you got to masturbate before your coitus, and that doesn't make masturbation bad at all.
Merlin: I mean, that's a skill for life.
Merlin: Teach a man to fish.
Merlin: I watch a lot of music on YouTube, and I watch a lot of things about music on YouTube.
Merlin: But tell me what you saw, and then I'll give you some tips.
John: Most of this type of thing are pretty good, and some of them are really good.
John: And this was one where Mark Knopfler was sitting there with a guitar.
John: And you know, I don't know if I ever told you this, but I went 20 years and didn't realize Mark Knopfler was British.
John: Diner Straits just... And he just felt like such an American dude.
John: What city?
John: What city do you think?
John: uh what would you have guessed like chicago maybe oh i mean i don't know i sort of always felt like they were a they were like a santa monica band i just kind of have that like you know the headband headband yep yep yep and he plays that he plays that chet atkins style and it just felt like you know you know the way credence is from california but but tried to sound like they're from louisiana
John: And sounded more like they were from Louisiana than anybody from Louisiana.
John: They just did that LA thing.
John: It just felt like that's what Dire Straits was.
John: They were an LA band that sounded like they were from...
John: I mean, they're just, I don't know.
Merlin: Bakersfield inflected, but not Bakersfield in origin.
Merlin: He's no Buck Owens.
John: No, no, but you're right.
John: Like, it just, it feels like, oh, his guitar teachers were a bunch of guys, you know, he learned guitar from Glen Campbell, you know, is what I thought.
John: Glen Campbell's a very good guitarist.
John: He really is.
John: Oh, oh no.
John: I'm now we're on a rabbit hole.
John: I just last night at four o'clock in the morning was watching the Johnny Carson show where, where Glenn Campbell is on there with buddy Hackett.
John: Oh God.
John: Yeah.
John: And then of course, Don Rickles comes out and Don Rickles.
John: Oh no, it was Don Rickles.
John: Came out.
John: I think Buddy Hackett was there.
Merlin: Maybe Dom DeLuise.
Merlin: Probably Dom DeLuise.
Merlin: Dom DeLuise is the best audience.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: He's so fun.
Merlin: He loves Don Rickles so much.
Merlin: You're on the right track.
Merlin: You're on the right track.
Merlin: And you look for old panels featuring Burt Reynolds and Don Rickles.
Merlin: And you're going to be a happy guy.
Merlin: There's some real good ones.
John: He's on the Dinosaur cooking show.
Merlin: Who is?
John: Don Rickles.
John: So I was watching one with Bert.
John: What?
John: Don Rickles makes a thumb gesture at him and goes, this guy over here is on the Dinah Shore cooking show.
John: And the place goes nuts.
John: Carson headbutts his desk.
John: They're all laughing so crazy.
John: And I'm like, what the fuck is so funny about the Dinah Shore cooking show?
John: Well, you know, he was dating Dinah Shore.
John: Oh, I see.
John: And then did you know there was a pilot for a variety show with Don Rickles and Don who was on Get Smart.
John: Oh, yeah, Don Adams.
John: Don Adams.
John: Don Adams and Don Rickles in tuxedos had to be 1970.
John: And they come out and they're doing like a monologue.
John: Apparently Don Adams and Don Rickles, old friends, totally tight.
John: Don Rickles said Don Adams is the funniest guy he's ever met.
John: Wow.
John: I watched a pilot for that.
Merlin: I know he was real tight with, he and his wife were real tight with Bob Newhart and his wife, and they were genuinely extremely good friends.
Merlin: Everybody says Don Rickles was actually a really nice guy.
John: One of those Palm Springs things where they're all, you know.
John: Go out and get a salad.
John: Yeah, that kind of thing.
John: You and I went through a Don Rickles thing back in the... Oh, in the early days.
John: Yeah, because why the hell would you do anything on the internet where you weren't watching Don Rickles?
Merlin: You've got to watch Don Rickles.
Merlin: The other one, John, if you're interested in the Johnny Carson tangent, and there are a bunch of good ones.
Merlin: Also a guy who I'm just very slightly acquainted with through the internet named Don Giller has posted so much Letterman stuff.
Merlin: If you go to his channel, there's so much great Letterman stuff.
Merlin: My other tip for you, and you probably already know this, forgive me,
Merlin: If not, you know, the audience.
Merlin: Jonathan Winters.
Merlin: Go look for Jonathan Winters on Johnny Carson.
John: Jonathan Winters and the one where then Robin Williams comes and it's the two of them.
Merlin: Robin Williams is very thirsty in that bit.
Merlin: He is.
Merlin: He really, really wants Jonathan Winters to look.
Merlin: But Jonathan Winters is really one of a kind.
Merlin: And his bits...
Merlin: are such a pure form of improv.
Merlin: They're funny, but they're also just so weird.
Merlin: He comes out dressed as a Confederate general or something.
Merlin: Comedians from Ohio, I'm telling you.
Merlin: You're on a good track, though.
John: These are good things.
John: But here's the thing that worries me, right?
John: Because here we are.
John: We're a couple of middle-aged Generation X guys.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Basically, you know, the writing's on the wall.
John: It's kind of all over for us, right?
John: Yeah.
John: It's just like when my dad was 52 years old, what else was going to happen, right?
John: He didn't, you know, it's all over.
Merlin: We could pedal as hard as we want, but no matter what happens, we're mostly going to coast until it ends.
John: And so now...
John: All I want to do is go back to watch the Carson show during an era when I would stay up late and sneak over to the TV that took like a minute to warm up and sit and watch Johnny Carson.
John: And, you know, even the little interstitials where he's like, we're going to go to a commercial.
John: Yep, more to come.
John: You know, and then like Doc Severnson and the band kind of do a little pedal and there's some crazy little card that somebody made.
John: With the flapper on it.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Talking to a... That was my Twitter bio for a while.
Merlin: More to come.
John: It's so great.
John: And it's like, what am I doing?
John: Like, I've transported myself back to... Well, this happened to me when I just went to Alaska.
John: Transported myself back to this place and time where...
John: What?
John: I mean, it's not like it makes me feel warm and safe, although it does.
John: But what is that?
John: I don't know.
Merlin: Oh, come on.
Merlin: Oh, you're overthinking.
Merlin: John, you're an expert overthinker, but this is nuts.
John: There's nothing wrong with this.
John: Well, I know, but is there anyone left alive?
John: Because the boomers, aren't they going back and watching Leave It to Beaver?
John: Like, is that culture...
John: The seventies talk show culture.
John: Are we actually the audience?
John: I mean, they, they were talking to one another.
John: The grownups were talking to one another.
John: And we were just peering over their shoulders.
John: But are we the only ones watching it now?
John: Well, you know, I mean, gosh.
John: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: I think he might have a story about Groucho Marx, but I'm not sure.
John: It's got to be us, right?
John: Aren't we the only ones that have the combination of, like, it's 4 a.m.
John: and I'm watching YouTube?
Merlin: I guess so.
Merlin: I guess so.
Merlin: I think it's – I know a lot of this stuff, a little bit of inside baseball.
Merlin: I know a lot of this stuff is tied up in weird –
Merlin: Writes things like there was a time when they used to show reruns of Letterman on A&E in the afternoon and then that went away and now I mean I I don't know I don't even know if you can buy I think the Carson group has lots of like DVDs that you can buy but I don't understand why there's not a I mean the equivalent of what I would call a channel that just shows
Merlin: these old talk shows all the time.
Merlin: And I mean, again, hearing Don talk about this other Don, the fourth Don of the show, the guy with the Letterman stuff, he's got it all.
Merlin: So he's in a position where he has so much Letterman material, so well cataloged that when something comes up in the news or if somebody passes away, he can whip together a compilation like that day of like, you know, greatest appearances, but you know, by this person and stuff like that and highlight it.
Merlin: I don't know if I imagine we are the audience for that.
Merlin: But it's also that and this is a twice told tale that bears repeating something Letterman talks about anytime Carson comes up.
Merlin: Conan O'Brien talks about anytime Carson comes up.
Merlin: He's got some great Carson stories.
Merlin: But, you know, there's nobody like Carson now because the landscape is entirely different.
Merlin: But I never get sick of hearing Letterman tell the story of the time he went out there and did his bit.
Merlin: And Carson gave him the thumbs up and invited him over.
Merlin: And that's the night that his career changed.
Merlin: So many of the people we know about today, that's comics.
Merlin: That's Steve Martin or whoever.
Merlin: You hear all these stories about those people where they got their shot.
Merlin: Louis Anderson.
Merlin: There's just countless people that got called over to panel.
Merlin: You get to hang out.
Merlin: And then pretty soon, Letterman was the go-to guest host for him.
Merlin: Because Carson used to be 90 minutes, and then it was 60 minutes, and then it was no Fridays, and then it was no Mondays.
Merlin: And they needed people like Joan Rivers, and I think I want to say like Tony Randall, and Don Rickles.
Merlin: You remember when Carson went to the set of CPO Sharky and yelled at Don Rickles about breaking a cigarette box?
John: I saw that live.
John: I saw that.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: So good.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I think we are the audience for that.
Merlin: But I would actually say that when it's allowed by the various legal burgers at YouTube, that's one of the best things on YouTube is being able to go and find...
Merlin: a bit that's been scratching your brain for years that you can't quite.
Merlin: There was a movie trailer in 1974 that scared the living shit out of me.
Merlin: And, um, I was finally able after years, I went, Oh my God, wait a minute.
Merlin: YouTube exists.
Merlin: Why don't I see if I can go and find it?
Merlin: And I did.
Merlin: And it still scared the shit out of me.
Merlin: I love that we have access to that.
Merlin: And as terrible as YouTube is in so many ways, it's like, that is such a bounty of brain scratchings.
John: I've never... This is crazy to me.
John: I've been singing, and you know it.
John: You know this.
John: I've been singing Bermuda.
John: Funny, funny kind of place.
John: Sounds like a Paul Schaefer.
John: Nutty kind of place.
John: Bermuda.
John: Is that Paul?
John: Since the day that it aired in 1982 or whatever, it's Paul.
John: Dave said, Paul, you were just down in Bermuda.
John: How'd it go?
John: And Paul, clink, clink on the piano, Bermuda.
John: And I was, you know, how old could I have been?
John: 13?
John: Yeah, yeah, sure.
John: And I couldn't breathe.
John: I was laughing so hard at this stupid Paul Schaefer thing.
John: And I've never gone on YouTube and looked for it.
Merlin: I bet it's out there.
Merlin: I mean, Don does stuff.
Merlin: There's compilations of the wonderful actor Jimmy Simpson, who went on to things like Westworld, and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, that great episode of Black Mirror, the Star Trek episode of Black Mirror.
Merlin: Jimmy Simpson's the best.
Merlin: And I don't know if it was his start, but he was an actor.
Merlin: He had a bit called Lyle the Intern.
Merlin: And he's this guy who comes out there and starts smoking a cigarette and being way too familiar with Dave on air.
Merlin: And there's just whole compilations of just Lyle the intern.
Merlin: You can find compilations of Chris Elliott as Marlon Brando.
Merlin: Bananas.
Merlin: Like, you can see all of those things.
Merlin: And to this day, to this year, I do feel like there's something that he used to do on Letterman that announced the arrival of the Christmas season.
Merlin: And it was...
Merlin: A four-syllable thing that Paul Schaeffer would do, and that was O Holy Night as performed by Cher.
Merlin: And you knew it was Christmastime when Paul would go, O Holy Night!
Merlin: And I still think of that every goddamn Christmas.
John: I love... Oh, I...
John: Now it's all coming back to me.
John: I watched Carlin on Johnny last night, and then Richard Pryor came out.
Merlin: Same show?
John: Yeah, and Richard did... I mean, Carson leans right in and goes, so, recovering from the burns?
John: Ooh.
John: And Pryor's like, yeah, well, as part of my recovery, I have to set myself on fire again every night.
John: You know, he's doing that...
John: But it's already like so it's so it's still fresh, but it's already he's made light of it enough that Carson feels fine about it.
John: And, you know, Carlin's doing peak late 70s Carlin.
John: But he actually caught me.
John: He made me laugh.
John: He did the my stuff, your stuff routine.
Merlin: Oh, a place for your stuff?
John: A place for your stuff.
John: Probably the first time it ever happened.
John: And I laughed at it.
John: I mean, that thing's in my DNA.
Merlin: It's still funny.
Merlin: Baseball versus football is still funny.
Merlin: In football, the idea is to win a war.
Merlin: In baseball, the object is to go home.
John: You know, Richard Pryor, obviously, like, very, very thrashed.
John: He's just about stir-crazy.
John: He's there promoting stir-crazy.
Merlin: Is that when the incident happened?
Merlin: Right before.
Merlin: So, like, 80, 81, 82, something like that.
Merlin: He was freebasing, and he got badly burned, right?
John: Yeah, right around that.
John: And he's actually just – he's prior.
John: He's just – he's warm.
John: He's got – even after all that, he's got the confidence to sit between Carson and Carlin and kind of be the only person in the room that anybody cares about.
John: He was so sharp.
John: I mean –
John: I will watch Letterman – young Letterman be kind of mean to people.
John: I would watch that and – it could be one of those things like in the movie Until the End of the World where I just had a headset on that just had like 32-year-old Letterman being mean to people and them kind of like –
John: Not entirely being sure whether it was fine that he was doing this on late night TV.
John: I'd watch it until I would just curl up in a ball.
Merlin: Another well-known thing that is worth repeating, because it says a lot, is that basically Carson, reportedly as much as Carson could love anyone, he liked Letterman.
Merlin: you know, they still had a mostly sort of professional relationship.
Merlin: Johnny was standoffish.
Merlin: But anyway, Letterman goes off, his morning show fails.
Merlin: He's going to get to do the 1230 slot after Carson.
Merlin: And it is so worldwide pants.
Merlin: He's a producer, but also Carson, I think was like the big, the executive producer.
Merlin: And they had a rule.
Merlin: I'm sure you know this, but they had a rule that like, basically there was a, I think an overt and an understood list of,
Merlin: Of people that a whole class of people that Letterman was not allowed to have on the show.
Merlin: In particular, anybody who was on Carson like that, we couldn't be on.
Merlin: But like there was just like all the big stars were basically banned from Letterman because Carson thought it was cannibalizing his his list.
Merlin: And that's why Letterman had to do, and Letterman and his amazing team and Meryl Marko and all those people had to basically cobble together stupid pet tricks, the man on the street stuff, the guy under the seats, like all that stuff, but Larry Bud Millman, who's the very first person to appear in the very first episode, Larry Bud Millman announces the show.
Merlin: All of that.
Merlin: And he was a guy who worked at a drug rehab clinic and then became Larry Bud Millman for the show.
Merlin: And it was all because they had to get creative to get around the idea that they weren't going to be cannibalizing Carson.
Merlin: And in so doing, totally changed the paradigm.
Merlin: Well, I mean, he bit a lot of his shit from Steve Allen, which I think is pretty well known.
Merlin: But that's why they came up with that.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: him being just so annoyed with everybody, not even talking here about like a Harvey P car, but like he would just be so annoyed or, or brother Theodore.
Merlin: Do you remember him?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I'm just thinking of that.
Merlin: Charles Grodin.
Merlin: All those amazing interviews.
John: Yeah.
John: With Harvey Pekar, where Harvey just is not into it, super mad.
Merlin: He's like, why am I here?
John: Why am I here?
John: I just don't like you.
John: And Dave's just like, oh, so good.
John: And I love those Harvey Pekar comics.
John: The first time he appeared on the show, I was like, I had already read them all.
Merlin: You were familiar with what?
Merlin: American Splendor, right?
John: American Splendor because I'd been like our Crumb fanboy since early because I'd discovered him through those old National Lampoons that
John: I found it.
John: Oh, and fabulous furry freak brothers and all that, that I found in my brother David or my brother Bart's basement.
John: I found this box of seventies, like a ripoff press.
John: stuff that my brother David had left there.
Merlin: And I was... You were like the coolest uncool person in the world.
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John: I was like nine years old and my brother Bart is like, oh yeah, that was David's stuff.
John: And I'm like, can I, can I look at these?
John: And he was like, be my guest.
John: And you know, there was nobody at that time that gave it one good care about a nine year old.
John: diving into the, to the deep work of, of our crumb.
John: And I mean, it sure made, it sure made me, but the first time I saw Harvey Picar, I definitely for sure was the only like 13 year old that was like Harvey Picar.
John: I know every word.
John: And then he shows up on the show and I'm like, he is exactly the guy he represents himself to be.
John: And this is, I mean, that's, those are uncomfortable shows.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: And the stuff with Grodin was so great because the whole bit with Grodin or Super Dave.
Merlin: Grodin and Super Dave both were great because their whole bit was that they just could not tolerate Dave in any way.
Merlin: And I think he really loved it.
Merlin: The stuff with Super Dave.
Merlin: Oh, with Super Dave.
Merlin: friend of the show.
Merlin: What kind of name is that?
Merlin: It's got, it must, it must.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Listen, listen, it's, it's like show friend.
Merlin: We've got to acknowledge that, um, uh, uh, Bob was a Bob and Albert Brooks are both, uh, relatives of a friend of the show, Sean Nelson, right?
John: Yep.
Merlin: Uncle Bob.
John: And, uh, we've told this story before, of course, but, but, uh, but super Dave Osborne and, um,
John: Super Dave Osborne, whose real name is Bob Einstein.
John: Yep.
John: And Albert Brooks, whose father named him Albert Einstein.
John: Their last name is Einstein.
John: His father named him Albert, and so Albert had to take a stage name.
John: They're uncles by marriage to Sean Nelson, whose... Bob Einstein's wife was Sean's mother's sister.
John: Wow.
John: And they came to dinner...
John: Sean and I were in Palm Springs at my Uncle Cal's.
John: And Sean called up his aunt.
John: And she was like, oh, well, come over.
John: Because I guess they all lived in the smoke tree.
Merlin: If you told me this, I've forgotten it.
Merlin: And I am riveted.
Merlin: Have I never told you this story?
Merlin: Tell me again.
John: So Sean and I are sitting.
John: So my Uncle Cal and my Aunt Julie Lee, you know, they built that house in Hawaii where we used to go with my Uncle Jack.
Merlin: Was Uncle Cal the one you got the shoes for when you were having Aloha?
John: No, that was Uncle Cal.
John: I'm sorry, Uncle Jack.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Oh, sorry.
Merlin: Of course.
John: Uncle Cal married my Aunt Julia Lee.
Merlin: Who left his cane in the car that time?
John: That was also Uncle Jack.
John: Okay.
John: Uncle Cal, I never drove Uncle Cal anywhere.
John: Uncle Cal and I, if we were ever alone in the room together, it was very difficult to connect with Uncle Cal.
John: And if we were ever alone in a room together...
John: Because of who Uncle Cal was, it was generally a big enough room that we didn't have to.
John: I mean, you could talk to Uncle Cal, but he was always going to be in the kitchen sautéing mushrooms or something.
John: He had to be doing something.
John: Cal married Julia Lee.
John: Julia Lee was a very ambitious young woman.
John: Because I think I've explained enough that my family on my father's side had...
John: This sense of themselves that they had fallen from a high station Right and there was some overachieving in the past and trying to live up to sort of old Expectations about what you'd be and do Yeah, because because they were southerners and at the end of the Civil War
John: Um, I, I used to mock them for their, um, highfalutin ways.
John: You know, they had the, they had these manners that were, well, you still, you still see them in me, right?
John: There's all this just sort of hauteur.
John: And, um, and I, I used to feel like, what the hell, what the hell were we that we had any of that attitude?
John: You know, the, you know, my grandmother was a, was a, like, she made ends meet teaching piano.
John: Um,
John: why are we one of the first families of seattle you know it just doesn't it never computed but as i did more and more research i realized oh before the civil war they were you know they were prosperous in the south and what's what state uh well so they're all old virginians that then came to kentucky okay and so it was
John: They were not like Alabama South.
John: They were that Midwest South.
John: They were that first group that left Virginia and went through the Cumberland Gap.
Merlin: Because Virginia is really right on the cusp in a lot of ways with a lot of stuff related to the South and the war.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: There were a lot of planters and landowners, but some had quite progressive thoughts, but others didn't.
John: Yeah, there were progressive views.
John: That's right.
John: That's where Lewis and Clark,
John: or meriwether lewis uh and so so they so that that uh that l selves was when they arrived in seattle in 1880 um after at the end of the civil war i think they um they they suffered a tremendous change in fortune uh
John: And, you know, cause there are a couple of, I've just discovered there are a couple of houses in Kentucky that are, that have big signs out front that are like the Rochester, the so-and-so house where Hannah, Charles, Hannah Rochester, Colonel of the Calvary, you know, like just this crazy.
John: They really should have proved that before they engraved it.
John: Come on to the place.
John: And there's got the man with the thing.
Yeah.
John: in danville kentucky you know uh and so they got they left kentucky there were three brothers and they went to kansas city in the 1870s and i think got to kansas city and they're like this is not far enough away from kentucky and so they all ended up in seattle but that's not that far away from i mean my grandmother mary louise was born in 1884 and
John: So the fact that all that got transmitted to me, it was only two generations that didn't have any money or station or power.
John: It's not like something – it's not like they were casting back to old England.
John: They had all this attitude because the people that were living with my father, George Alfred Caldwell Rochester, was the son of the man that had the house that was all –
Merlin: And also, it strikes me that at that time, really up until fairly recently, a lot of one's relative power or, I don't know, esteem, prestige, was very tied to a certain community and how long you'd been there.
Merlin: And I think in America, I mean, it wasn't like being Irish or something, but if you were the new family in town...
Merlin: you had reasons to wonder about those people because why weren't they where they're from?
Merlin: Why are you here?
Merlin: You're not, you're not from here.
Merlin: Whereas back home, you got this history behind you.
Merlin: When you moved to a new place, you know, it isn't like people can look you up in a, you know, the Kelly blue book of people.
John: Right.
John: And, but the, you know, the West coast and the Northwest, I mean, there wasn't a Seattle in 1859, right?
John: It was, it was a brand new place.
John: So everybody out here in 1880 was from somewhere else.
John: It's just that, yeah, you could kind of come here and reinvent yourself if unless you felt like you came from the Southern aristocracy, in which case you needed to come out here and assert yourself.
John: And that combination of like the place was filling up with people that were like, don't worry about my past.
John: I'm a new man.
John: Look at me.
John: I got a poke of gold and I'm ready to open a sawmill.
John: A poke is in a bag?
John: Yeah.
John: Get a poke of gold.
John: A poke of gold and I'm ready to, you know, go to work.
John: But then there's my family that's like, well, when the, the civil war came through, uh, our town, um, we lost the plantation and nobody cried for us.
John: Right.
John: There's, there's a, we have a letter, um, in the family from, uh, where general grant pardons, um,
John: my great-great-grandfather.
Merlin: For his perfidiousness?
Merlin: Perfidy?
John: For having taken up rebellion against these United States.
John: Oh, that old thing.
John: Okay.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: And says like, you know, you're hereby.
John: We're good.
John: You're forgiven, but you know, you also like, you don't.
John: It's sort of like the Germans in the Sudetenland.
John: Nobody was really ready.
John: Nobody was going to return there
John: former schloss to them at the end of the war.
John: That's a great word.
John: Castle, right?
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: Anyway, so Julia Lee, my dad's sister, so all three of them, my dad, Uncle Jack, and Julia Lee were raised by these people, and they didn't have any money, but they communicated to their children, like, we are people from...
John: From High Station.
Merlin: Yeah, like a very William Faulkner sort of thing.
Merlin: Like, we used to be a big deal.
John: We used to be a big deal.
John: And they could connect it to whatever.
John: I think those people really looked down on the Mayflower people.
John: Like, oh, the Mayflower.
John: Plymouth Rock.
John: Like, why would you?
John: Those merchants?
John: We were in Virginia in 1600.
John: 05 or whatever so they had a they had a completely different take on the united states and on on what that was who they were and my dad's reaction to it as a young man was you old racists need to get with the times you know dad was in his generation the
John: the leftist firebrand of the family and playing basketball with the Japanese fellas.
John: Yeah.
John: But also like very like pre-war civil rights guy who was just like, he didn't, um, he did not get Brooke, any of his mother's or their family's sort of old kudzu covered memories.
John: He was, um,
John: They called him a radical.
John: And I know I've told you, like, I'd walk into those rooms with him in his 80s, and these old men would turn and say, you know, and these are Washingtonians, too.
John: It's not like we're in Kentucky.
John: These guys would turn and go, how's the communist party, Dave?
John: It's just like, this is 2002.
John: Yeah.
John: But my, but his sister, my aunt Julia Lee, and I think Jack too, Jack was less political than dad, but, but they both like rejected all of that.
John: They didn't reject it.
John: Like, all right, turn their back on their family and go move away.
John: They rejected it by state.
Merlin: and this is my dad not my uncle jack but he stood his ground he was the he was the 19 year old at at dinner who stood there you know with his fist clenched it's so strange to think about to just point out the obvious i mean you were part of the second round of kids in the family right and it's like you know you only think of him as this old guy but he was kind of a firebrand oh he more than that you know he was a
John: He went up against – I mean, my dad went up against everyone.
John: He just had a sense of humor.
John: So he went up against everyone, and he'd sit there and shout them down.
John: But he never – it never turned him into a bitter man.
Merlin: Fair to say that it wasn't meant personally?
Yeah.
Merlin: In a sense that now, I mean, like today, just as a ridiculous comparison, but today everything has such a valence and everything has such a feeling of being ultimately personal.
Merlin: Even the political is very personal now, but it's one reason it seems so difficult for people like Grandpa, Uncle Joe or whomever to like want to return to the quote unquote norms of the 70s, 80s, 90s, which are not actually all that normal.
Merlin: But yeah, you could be civil and you could be pals with Strom Thurmond and still think he's an asshole.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But it wasn't always this trench warfare politically in quite the way it is today.
Merlin: I mean, you still got to do your work.
Merlin: If you're a defense attorney, you still have to know and get along with the prosecutors on some level.
Merlin: You can't be at war with everybody personally for your entire career, even if you are at war with different ideas than they are.
John: Is that fair to say?
John: Yeah, and I think part of why the left now is...
John: So mad, I think has to do with the fact that we've had all this information now for 70 years, right?
John: Like none of these issues are mysteries to us anymore.
John: And so from a, from the perspective of a, of a progressive thinker, there's that additional layer of just confused frustration as to why
John: after all these reforms, after the, after education is widely available, after television and the internet has brought enlightenment to the world, how can 50% of the people not get it?
John: And that, that, and the other, the other half is asking the same question.
John: Right.
John: But, but, but that feeling of frustration, you know, when my dad was tilting against these windmills in 1947, uh,
John: It was plausible that most of the people he was talking to had never considered any of these ideas and were living in a, and their reactions were like, what?
John: You know, they, they weren't coming at it with a sneer on their face where they were like, you know, you're some kind of pinky.
John: They were coming at it like, well, that's the way it's always been.
John: And I have no idea why you would want it to be any different.
John: And so dad was able to maintain a sense of humor because he was the first person any of these, any of his relatives had ever heard a progressive thought from.
John: They thought of themselves, I imagine as, well, they were all Southern Democrats.
John: They thought of themselves as probably liberal people.
Merlin: And with what they would perceive as a modern approach to life, like we've learned from the past, but still there are institutions that run a certain way for a certain reason.
John: Yeah, why would you... I mean, the idea of white supremacy was a thing... Well, it was invisible to them, right?
John: Of course.
John: I mean, their main issue with white supremacy was that they had fallen...
John: in their monetary fortunes to the point that they didn't, you know, that they had to start drumming up explanations for why they weren't the richest family in town.
John: There wasn't any sense that now that they were, now that they had, I mean, it's not like they fell on misfortune.
John: They lived in a big house, but they were, you know, they no longer ran the county, for instance.
John: Right.
John: But it never occurred to them that that wasn't the ultimate goal.
John: And my dad being the first person that said, has it occurred to you that my dad was a New Deal product of the New Deal?
John: And he's like, has it occurred to you there should be a social safety net?
John: And it was like, no?
John: What do you mean, has it occurred no?
Merlin: Yeah, try harder and make better decisions.
Merlin: That's what we do in America.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I mean, there's a thing sort of implicitly.
Merlin: That's part of what makes the, I don't know if you exactly want to call it racism or white supremacy, but the hegemony that leads to that sort of calcified thinking has a basis in, well, it's America.
Merlin: Everybody's equal.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Like, why don't you just work hard like I do instead of expecting a handout because of the color of your skin?
Merlin: Which, you know, I think we look at that today and think, wow, there's a lot going on behind that that you're not copying to.
John: Yeah, they have the mythos that goes all the way back.
John: Like, we arrived on these shores with nothing but our...
John: You know, fancy boots.
John: And a land grant of 10,000 acres in the Virginia bottom.
Merlin: Not hardly anything at all.
John: Now look at us.
Merlin: Now look at what we made out of that.
Merlin: Out of that parsity of resources.
John: Yeah, I've been reading Shakespeare since before.
John: And, you know, you just go, okay, whatever.
John: But Aunt Julia Lee received it.
John: received all that information in a very different way.
John: She was, first of all, the only daughter and she, and her mother and her aunt had, um, both, both had very different takes on it because both of them, both my grandmother and my great aunt were for their time, extremely independent women.
John: But my grandmother, um,
John: did it in the kind of Marilyn Monroe way where she, she was independent by virtue of making herself seem like she needed a lot of help.
Merlin: Oh, absolutely.
Merlin: I see.
John: But she was like, Oh, I have no idea.
Merlin: Can I get one of you big, strong men to help me?
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: And, um, but, but, but absolutely, you know,
John: Running the show and by that I mean she had limited resources and man it and was trying to and managed to maintain the appearance of wealth and the social Graces of well, but she was she was shoestring in it.
John: Yeah, my great aunt in contrast
John: was a professional, you know, like she was a woman in the 1930s and 40s who already was selling real estate and cultivating a base of clients that were, you know, that were Seattle's first families.
John: And so was, again, able to maintain the look and feel of people with money, but she was earning a living.
John: And, and ultimately a good living ultimately became one of the rich people by selling real estate to them.
John: And so that was, you know, that was an interesting kind of place to live the in-between space of like, I'm still a genteel woman, but I'm also, and, and we do have money, but it's the result of my labors.
Hmm.
John: And my Aunt Julia Lee watched these two women in her life and she said, A, I'm never going to be poor because I see my mother.
Merlin: Scott is my witness.
Merlin: I'll never be hungry again.
John: I'll never be hungry again.
John: And B, I see what my aunt is doing.
John: And that's the path.
John: But what I'm not going to do is marry a guy like my Uncle Al who...
John: Uncle Al.
John: Uncle Al is a man of leisure, and that's not how you make a bunch of money, is marry a man of leisure.
John: Uncle Cal ended up being, you know.
Merlin: I should have told my wife that.
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John: Cal ended up being on the Seattle city council here.
John: And it was only because his brother, I have the letter.
John: His brother wrote him a letter in 19, whatever, 49 and said, you think, you know, you're, you're a man of 45 years old.
John: And you think you're retired?
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
John: Oh, God.
Merlin: Why are you bringing this up on this show, John?
John: I know.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: 45.
John: Well, and his brother, the elder Junius, he married the girl that inherited the Buster Brown shoe fortune.
John: So it's not like he's got any way to talk.
John: He's sitting in some house in Connecticut.
John: You know, like writing his brother like, you need to, boy, you need to get up.
John: And do what?
John: Marry a rich lady?
John: Nobody had any respect for old Uncle Junius except he had all this money.
John: So, you know, so what did Al do?
John: He gets up and runs for the Seattle City Council.
John: Now, that's not a way to make money.
John: Except it was because, again, it bolstered their image as people of means.
John: Well, Aunt Julia Lee was not going to let any of this get in her way.
John: And she found Cal Knudsen at the University of Washington their, whatever, freshman year, and she saw in him something.
John: And she said, this guy.
John: And they got married.
John: She sounds like a pretty smart cookie.
John: They got married, and I don't know whether this was an explicit conversation, but knowing my Aunt Julia Lee, I...
John: 98% think it was an explicit conversation where she said, you get us there.
John: You get us to the top and I will take care of everything else.
John: Hmm.
John: And Cal went, all right.
John: And Cal had grown up as a, as a boy, like picking strawberries in the, in the,
John: down in Kitsap County or whatever.
John: He was a local Washington kind of Scandinavian who was...
John: You know, like, not a sharecropper exactly, but he was... Calvin Knudsen?
John: C. Calvin Knudsen.
Merlin: What's the C for?
John: Oh, I'm sorry, not Calvin.
John: Calvert.
John: C. Calvert Knudsen.
Merlin: That's a terrific name.
John: I knew him my whole life.
John: I have no idea what that first C is.
John: C. Calvert Knudsen.
John: And what he did was get into timber.
Merlin: Oh, is this the Weyerhaeuser connection?
John: He went down to...
John: Aberdeen, home of Nirvana, the Cobains.
John: And Aberdeen was a lumber town and he got into logging and then parlayed that into he had a poke of gold and bought a sawmill.
John: And over the course of his career, you know, he ended up being the CEO of Macmillan Bloedel.
John: He was on the board of Weyerhaeuser.
John: He was a lumberman.
John: But, you know, on the executive.
John: Yes.
John: And so he did.
John: He made a fortune and Aunt Julia Lee then turned that into social respectability by the same methods that her mother and her aunt used.
John: But Julia Lee had the money.
John: So Julia Lee donated to the art museum and Julia Lee hosted the benefits and then created around her side of the family this incredible...
John: temple of class and wealth and taste that sitting on my father's lap, and my dad, of course, was the prince of all of those people.
John: That whole family just loved him.
John: He was the light in the room.
John: But he rejected the premise of taste and class.
John: And so he was the light in the room, but also a thorn in the side of the myth.
John: Well, Julia Lee died unexpectedly and left Cal alone with the four kids who were grown at the time, you know, like young adults.
John: But Cal had done this.
John: He had fulfilled his half of the bargain.
John: He'd made the millions.
John: And she had elevated them to stature.
John: But Cal didn't want to.
John: host any cocktail parties that was he didn't want to he he just wanted to be my dad at one point said he wanted to be in the kitchen sauteing mushrooms sauteing mushrooms but he didn't want to talk no my dad said cal you know you've got all this money why the hell don't you stop and enjoy yourself and cal said oh you never know when you're going to need more money
John: I guess that's one way to look at it.
John: You know, and my dad turned, you know, I'm sitting there pretending to read a magazine and he turns and looks at me and he's just like, what the fuck am I supposed to do with that?
John: You know, it was so antithetical to the way my dad thought.
Merlin: Absolutely.
John: You already have too much money.
John: And Cal was like, well, you never know when you're going to need a little more.
John: So fast forward to... Palm Springs.
John: 1999 or 2000, 2001.
John: Sean and I are on tour, just the two of us, driving across America in a car.
John: I don't remember why, how or why, what we were doing.
John: But I go, you know, Cal is down here in Palm Springs.
John: Now, Julia Lee has died.
John: They built themselves a house in Palm Springs that...
John: they were supposed to retire together to, and then she died suddenly.
John: So they have this, this beautiful home and, um, in the Palm Springs style, you know, an indoor outdoor house.
John: And now Cal's just sort of, it is so hot there.
John: It's so hot.
Merlin: It's unrelentingly hot there.
John: And Cal's doing the, the Seattle snowbird thing, right?
John: In the, in the winter he's in Palm Springs and in the summer he's up in Seattle.
John: And, um,
John: Yes, and he's in this circuit, and the Weyerhaeuser family and the Boeings, they're all friends with each other, and they all migrate to Palm Springs at the same time, and they have the same cocktail parties down there that they have up here in Seattle in the summertime.
John: And Sean and I call up Cal and we go, hey, we're driving through.
John: And Cal, again, like, if he's not sautéing mushrooms, he doesn't know what to do with his hands.
John: And I never thought that...
John: I was never 100% sure that Cal recognized me from time to time.
John: Like, I'm not sure that he had... Was there a lot of family to keep track of?
John: No.
John: It just wasn't his jam.
John: I don't think he had object permanence when it came to humans.
John: Interesting.
John: But also, I mean, I talked to his youngest son.
John: That was Julia Lee's job.
John: Julia Lee's job, exactly.
John: I talked to his youngest son one time.
John: He and I were about 10 years apart, but we were close.
Yeah.
John: you know, considering that the cousins in my family aren't that close.
John: We're close ish.
John: Although one day he stopped calling me and I haven't talked to him since, but he, I said to him, we call that the Cincinnati eventuality.
John: I said to him one time, like, you know, your dad was like this incredibly successful business person.
John: He was on the boards of directors of all these things.
John: He was, he was, uh, he started a half a dozen businesses that were all prosperous.
John: Like,
John: What did you learn from him?
John: What did you guys talk about?
John: Because I'm thinking in terms of my relationship with my dad, where my dad never learned a single thing that he didn't immediately tell me about.
John: Um, I mean, my dad was constantly talking to me like, well, here's what you do in this situation.
John: And I would go, huh, that seems like bad advice.
John: And he's like, well, fuck you.
John: But, uh, but my cousin said, um, yeah, my dad never taught me anything.
John: Wow.
John: And he said, yeah, I mean, I would go in and say, Hey dad, I'm having this problem.
John: at what should I do?
Merlin: And he would go, well, you'll figure it out.
Merlin: A phrase I learned in the 90s, emotionally distant, it sounds like.
John: Well, yeah, but also Scandinavian.
Merlin: Oh, the Knudsen, yeah.
John: Yeah, and he didn't want to, I don't know what, honestly.
John: I mean, and this was my experience of him, too.
John: I would go to him and say, hey, Uncle Cal, I was just having a, you know, I had some questions about
John: uh lumber your your career or you know like you were there at the dawn of all this like i how did these businesses work and he would go oh i don't remember i'd go you don't remember you're still in these businesses well you know it's hard to describe so a complete cipher
John: Well, so he, so we call him and he's like, oh, well, if you're in Palm Springs, you know, I suppose you should stop by.
John: And so Sean calls his aunt, his mother's sister, with whom I think he's close.
John: And she says, oh, well, we should meet for dinner.
Merlin: Oh, boy.
Wow.
Merlin: That's exciting.
John: And so, yeah, so we're at Cal's.
John: We're standing there, you know, milling around the swimming pool while Cal sautes some mushrooms.
John: And, oh, and the thing was Cal got into wine.
John: And that was how he dealt with the people with money.
John: Cal got into wine.
John: He got into good wine.
John: He bought a winery.
John: He, you know, he got into wine to the degree that he was the, you know, he had his own label, right?
John: Knutson Arath was his label.
John: His kids have now relaunched the Knutson brand.
John: What happened was Knutson Arath in the 70s and 80s was a viable brand.
John: And then they launched Argyle Champagne, which you may have seen, which was a very fashionable champagne on the West Coast for a while.
John: You know, whatever, champagne, sparkling wine.
Merlin: Sparkling wine, yeah.
John: And then Cal leased all of his land and his tasting room and all that to Arath.
John: And Arath continued and made a successful career for himself in wine.
John: But what it turned out, and this is something I thought that the Knudsen's had gotten out of it.
John: Well, no, what turned out is they owned all the land and all the grapes.
John: And they were just leasing it to other vineyards.
John: And the kids, Cal's kids, he had four kids.
John: They got together 10 years ago and said,
John: We're just going to take all this back.
John: Like when all these leases expire, we're taking it all back and we're going to relaunch Knutson Vineyards.
John: And, you know, and we're making these Pinot Noirs again.
John: And, you know, they're making a good go of it.
John: But the property there, and it's in central Oregon around Gresham and Dundee.
John: Uh, you know, they just own these rolling hills with these grapes.
John: And that was how Cal, that was how Cal put himself into all those rooms because he could sit there when he wasn't sauteing mushrooms.
John: He was swirling, casually swirling wine in a glass.
John: And like sniffing it and he would have something to say about its nuttiness and overtones of leather.
John: And my, you know, my aunt was swooping around, you know, um, Lady Elaine, you know, just like really, really, uh, vivacious and Cal could just be.
John: A regular dinosaur.
John: So, so Cal, Sean and I are sitting there talking to Cal and
John: And Cal says, and Sean says, well, we're going to have dinner with my aunt and uncle.
John: And Cal says, well, invite them over.
John: And there's this moment of like, invite them over.
John: Oh yeah.
John: Can I have them come over?
John: You know, something for Cal to do.
John: He's got, he wants something to do.
John: Somebody's got to eat those mushrooms.
John: So Sean's like, okay.
John: And I didn't know.
John: I don't think, you know, Sean would periodically refer to Albert Brooks as a relative and
John: You know, Sean's got also a lot of strange stories about his family and old money and the kind of weird, like, you know, their house in Nashville, readout number three, readout number four, whatever that house is, where you drive up and up and up this mountain through all these subdivisions and then you turn around.
John: into what looks like somebody's garage, but it's a little road that goes between two condos.
John: What?
Merlin: That's so cool.
John: Have I never described this to you?
John: It's just like that Peter Sellers movie.
John: What's that Peter Sellers movie where he's the... He's kind of a...
John: he's the, the, the scion of a, of a rich family, but he's, he's incompetent.
John: And yet he kind of stumbles into it's being there.
John: Is that the, Oh yeah.
Merlin: Where he's the, he's the man of the house, the butler for this rich guy.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: In DC.
John: Well, it's, um, it's a, there's a scene in that movie where you're driving down some, some, uh, you know, highway one Oh one type of thing.
John: And there's motels and, and, uh,
John: and fast food restaurants, and you're just in that kind of junky American corner, and then you turn off of that street through what looks like just a hole in a brick wall, and then all of a sudden you're on this palatial estate that was built a long time before the trashy commercial boulevard had gone.
Merlin: That's one thing that's such a good movie, and it's so jarring when Chance first has to leave the house
Merlin: And he's been in the house for years and he is how he is.
Merlin: And, oh, what a delightful movie.
Merlin: When he goes outside and he's suddenly just dropped into essentially urban D.C., which was just outside the door in some ways the whole time.
Merlin: But now he's got to navigate through that.
Merlin: But, of course, he's Chance the Gardener.
Merlin: So, you know, he just rolls.
Merlin: Well, and so... I would love that.
Merlin: First of all, I would love a readout.
Merlin: Is it R-E-D-O-U-B-T?
John: Yeah, and it was one of the... Readout.
Merlin: I want a readout.
John: I know.
John: It was one of the hilltops.
John: It's called Readout No.
John: 4 because it was one of the places... A little bit of readout in my life.
John: The Confederate Army, you know, was shelling the Union as they came through the valley from this readout.
John: It was one of the places from the Battle of Nashville.
John: And so, yeah, you're driving up this hill through these rows and rows and rows of kind of middle class townhomes.
John: And the first time I went up there, I was like, where are we going?
John: Like, I do not picture your family living in one of these like row houses.
John: And Sean was like, just keep driving and drove and drove.
John: And it's like.
John: You know, we're just so far into a very, very strange, like, beehive kind of suburbia right now.
John: I'm really not getting it.
John: And then he's like, take a right here.
John: And we go through this little, you know, basically between two dumpsters, which is that great talk show.
John: Oh, it's like Alphanakis, yeah.
John: And through some little indescribable.
Merlin: In my head, this is how simple I am.
Merlin: It reminds me of the Batcave.
Merlin: And it's that you're driving down a road, and then you go over the thing, and then a hole in the cave opens up, and now you drive the Batmobile into there.
Merlin: This sounds like something from, it sounds virtually European.
John: It's one of those, yeah, it's a blockade on the road, and it's covered with ivy, but then it falls down, and you drive over it, and then it flips back up.
John: Exactly.
John: It's very much like that.
Merlin: And then all of a sudden.
Merlin: God, I've never.
Merlin: So I still want a monk hole.
Merlin: I still want passages behind the walls.
Merlin: But now I also want to read out with a bat cave.
John: You go through this aperture, really.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
John: And all of a sudden, you are on the park-like grounds of the Nelson family manse.
John: Wow.
John: Where it is the entire hilltop.
John: Jeez.
John: And there are townhomes, you know, stretching to infinity...
John: at your ankles, but as soon as you're through the portal, you can't see them anymore because it is a four, a lush, lushly forested, um,
John: you know, many, many, many, many acres of forest surrounding the house, which sits up at the top.
Merlin: It's like, um, it's like the Miyazaki movie with Laputa, like the, you know, castle in the sky.
John: It's a, it's a, it's a very much a castle in the sky and a rambling eared, one of those houses where you're like another bedroom.
John: It's like, well, that's the bedroom that great, great aunt James, so disorient, uh, you know, had like 11 parrots or whatever.
Well,
John: But, but, um, but so here we are at, so I, but, but Sean, you know, he's very cryptic, uh, sometimes about his family.
John: He, you know, a stepfather and his, his, his other, his father was a, was not a Quaker, but a Mennonite.
John: Like a, yeah, not a Mennonite, but like somebody that's a member of one of those.
Merlin: Like a, like a friends adjacent.
Merlin: Yeah, exactly.
John: Exactly.
Uh,
John: Anyway, we're sitting there with Uncle Cal.
John: Not sure.
John: None of us are sure what to do with our hands.
John: And the doorbell rings.
John: You guys want some mushrooms.
John: We're just like, well, none of us drink anymore, so.
John: Yeah.
John: Can't do the thing with the wine.
John: The doorbell rings.
John: In comes Sean's aunt.
John: And she's a very, you know, beautiful, rings-on-every-finger kind of blonde woman of means from the Los Angeles area.
John: And, you know, as a result, like, fit and tan and dressed in white and used to being the center of attention.
John: And then behind her, here comes Super Dave Osborne.
John: Oh, my God.
John: And I'm like, I would lose it.
John: I said, Sean, is that Super Dave?
John: And he's like, oh, I didn't tell you.
John: She's married to Bob Einstein.
John: And he had said that old thing.
John: And I was like, he had said Bob Einstein.
John: And I was like, yeah, sure.
John: Bob Einstein.
John: It's fucking Super Dave.
Merlin: It doesn't say Super Dave on the mailbox.
John: And he comes in with his like, oh, you know, he's enormously tall.
Merlin: That husky horse voice of his.
John: Husky horse and just like his kind of, you know, that way Super Dave had of just being like, he just seems like he's in a different time bubble than you're in.
John: He's so dry.
John: Yeah.
John: And really, you know, he's, I mean, Sean and I are both.
Merlin: He's Officer Judy.
Merlin: I mean, like, he's...
Merlin: I mean back this mother's brothers like he's oh my god.
John: He's comedy royalty to me He is and and also enormous right like Sean and I are big Sean's bigger than me super Dave is bigger than us both and uh
John: But he doesn't do the thing.
John: He doesn't take up the oxygen in the room, right?
John: His wife is the one that's doing the talking and is making the action happen.
John: Cal takes up no oxygen in the room.
John: And, you know, Sean and I are used to...
John: you know, fighting over it like two grizzly bears with one salmon.
John: If the attention is the salmon, Sean and I are two grizzly bears and we fight over it by neither of, you know, by just batting at it, you know, just slightly batting at the fish.
John: It's out of the water, but neither of us are really going to take a big bite of it.
John: And so Super Dave, you know, sits down and we start having polite cocktail conversation.
John: Well, Cal wouldn't know.
John: Cal's never heard of the Smothers Brothers.
John: Like Cal wouldn't know who Super Dave Osborne is.
John: And they start talking and he's like, where are you?
John: Uh, you know, what's your story?
John: And he says, well, you know, my name's Bob Einstein and I'm so forth and so on.
John: And my uncle cow.
John: Goes, Einstein?
John: What kind of name is that?
John: What did Super Dave say?
John: You know, it's the kind of question that that generation.
Merlin: Uh-huh.
Merlin: That could go a lot of different ways.
Merlin: Let's just put it this way.
Merlin: He's not supposed to be eating Palestinian chicken, that's for sure.
John: Yeah, that generation, like, that's an anti-Semitic remark.
John: Oh, it's super coded, yeah.
John: Right?
John: Like one of these, like, Einstein, is that German?
Merlin: When you say to somebody, a thing you used to say to people all the time, and the thing is, I'm going to say a sentence here, and think about how this applies based on who's saying it and the person to whom they're saying it.
Merlin: Where are you from?
Merlin: Uh-huh.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: I mean, where are you from?
Merlin: Well, yeah, which usually means you're waiting for them to say India or Pakistan or what, Kenya.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: It has this very weighted – and, of course, the punchline becomes, well, Chicago mostly, outside Chicago.
Merlin: No, no, no, no.
Merlin: But, like, where's your family from?
John: What are you?
John: those kinds of those kinds of conversations i want to know whether or not i can make a polack joke around you and so there's this you know there's a sean and i both go oh god roll our eyes yeah and bob einstein has been living in hollywood his whole life and living in and coming to palm springs he's not phased by this at all that's not his first day not his first day either and you know and cal has that has that unreflected upon uh
Merlin: anti-semitism that just comes from not having ever thought about it or been exposed to any jewish people and you know it's just like though that's just that generation and how they thought about the world and yeah that basically a basic sense of otherness there's us and then there's everybody else i don't think it has that same valence it's not white supremacy but it is that's very much that was in the water everywhere was you needed you needed a way to decode
John: what to do with this person because you do not deal with a person like this often enough and you need to know what slot to put them in and then i mean am i overstating it no that's that's right i mean my dad quit my dad quit the seattle tennis club in 1950 i don't know what five because they didn't allow jews and
John: my dad's best friend in law school was black.
John: We've talked about judge Tanner quite a bit.
John: Oh, he was, he was, he was huge.
John: Tanner was a big deal, but in the fifties, you know, the fact that he had graduated from the university of Washington law school was still fairly notable.
John: Right.
John: And there was a generation of black judges in Seattle that all came from university of Washington and Gonzaga during that era, the law school at Gonzaga.
John: And they were like a new generation of, of, uh,
John: like young lawyers and dad was, dad felt like we're the young lawyers and how dare you keep us at, but he grew up at the tennis club, right?
John: So he felt like it was his, he was there for the sports, not for the status.
John: Yeah.
John: He was there for the sports.
John: His, his mother was there for the status and his aunt, but when he realized that he couldn't bring his friends there,
John: He, you know, it was like he returned his MBE.
John: And the Seattle Tennis Club is a place that even now, you know, the waiting list is like 10 years long to get into it.
John: And he was like, I renounce my citizenship in this horseshit organization.
John: But again, Cal and Julia Lee didn't, you know, and they watched him go and they were like, well, that's David.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: But so Bob Einstein handles it with flair and tells this anecdote about how his father named him Robert Einstein.
John: Robert and Albert.
John: But named his brother Albert Einstein.
John: That's wild.
John: And that Albert Brooks spent the first 20 years of his life
John: as Albert Einstein.
John: Every single person he met, every day in school, he was Albert Einstein.
John: How do you do that to somebody?
John: Until he got old enough that he could change his name.
John: And his dad, you know, according to Super Dave, his dad thought it was hilarious.
John: The naming him after the physicist?
John: Yeah, naming his son Albert Einstein.
John: He thought that was hilarious.
John: And, you know, and Albert Brooks didn't
John: How do you complain?
John: And so... So did he change it when he went into, I'm guessing, probably writing?
Merlin: I don't know Albert Brooks' full story.
Merlin: I pick up with Albert Brooks when he was doing stuff for SNL in the 70s.
John: I think he changed it as soon as he could.
John: But when you look at, when you think of his humor, and then you realize, like, because all that kind of, the shy awkwardness he brings to his
Merlin: performances and that kind of you know that that undercurrent the the burbling about his character even in i mean you got of course the brilliance of something like defending your life but think about his character in broadcast news it's pretty he's pretty coded as like a what we used to think of as a neurotic jewish guy
John: But, you know, imagine him now in the, imagine that character in the context of like every day at school, like, hey, Albert Einstein.
John: Ugh, God.
John: Really, really.
John: But then, so Sean and I are there, and Sean has never actually spent this much time with Super Dave.
John: He's, it's always like.
John: He's always at some big gathering, and he's over there in the corner.
John: But here we are.
John: This is the dinner.
John: It's me, Sean, Cal.
Merlin: And Mr. and Mrs. Super Dave.
John: And we're trying to find a conversation.
Merlin: Oh, geez.
Merlin: It's going to be in the quadrants for everybody.
Merlin: What are we going to talk about?
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: Big band music.
Merlin: Big band music.
John: I think everybody just... Artie Shaw.
Merlin: Artie Shaw.
Merlin: Wait, Artie Shaw?
Merlin: What kind of name is that?
Merlin: Artie Shaw?
Merlin: At Ellis Island, they arrived as the Clarinetowitz family.
Yeah.