Ep. 431: "Mr. Mustache" - Roderick on the Line

00:00:00 John: The password is... Is it one?

00:00:09 John: What was it?

00:00:12 John: Hello?

00:00:13 John: No, please continue.

00:00:16 John: Well, no, I was about to... My mom was... I was talking to her about my...

00:00:21 John: latest password.

00:00:23 Merlin: Oh.

00:00:23 John: Oh.

00:00:23 John: Because as you know, that's a big topic, big exciting topic.

00:00:27 Merlin: As long as I've known you, you've been very concerned about cyber.

00:00:31 John: You know, I'm super concerned about cyber.

00:00:33 John: I'm really concerned about OPSEC.

00:00:36 John: Oh, God.

00:00:36 John: I'm concerned about retconning.

00:00:39 John: Thank you.

00:00:40 John: And so I was about to... So I was like, you know, I was trying to reset my password.

00:00:46 John: And I went through the whole rigmarole.

00:00:48 John: I called them on the phone because their thing never... You know, their online thing.

00:00:51 Merlin: I'm sorry, John.

00:00:52 Merlin: This is not a local password.

00:00:53 Merlin: This is in the clued.

00:00:54 John: No, this is a clued one.

00:00:56 John: And it's an important one.

00:00:57 John: And because of security and because of OPSEC...

00:01:00 John: and because of retconning, this particular institution likes to cancel your password really prompted by nothing.

00:01:10 John: The wind blows, a butterfly in China flaps its wings, and this particular institution says you need to change your password.

00:01:17 John: They don't want you to ever use a password that you ever used before, including 19 years ago.

00:01:23 John: They want it to have a special character, a capital, a lowercase, a number, a day of the week,

00:01:29 John: Um, they want, uh, they want you to pick a cat and a country in Idaho.

00:01:34 John: And so I was, I needed to reset this because I had to do some stuff.

00:01:41 John: I've already reset it 15 times this week.

00:01:45 John: And, uh, so I got in there and I was like, and they're like, okay, well, what's your new password?

00:01:50 John: I finally got through all the things.

00:01:51 John: And I started to type in my new password because I was like, oh, I've got a good password.

00:01:56 John: And as I did it, I realized, oh, this is the password that I couldn't remember.

00:02:02 Merlin: Oh, that's how it happens, John.

00:02:05 Merlin: This is the last one that I used because it is a good password.

00:02:07 Merlin: Now you want to retcon.

00:02:08 Merlin: It would be nice to retcon that.

00:02:10 John: I wish I could go back and just use it.

00:02:13 John: And so then I'm talking to my mom about it.

00:02:14 John: I'm like, oh, God, I have this password.

00:02:16 John: And I got the new password.

00:02:17 John: It turns out it was the password.

00:02:19 John: And she's like, what's the password?

00:02:21 John: because she wants me to sit and tell her the password here in Meatspace, which is what you and I call it when we talk offline.

00:02:31 Merlin: Yeah, yeah.

00:02:31 Merlin: Well, we've both been into cyber for a long time, and there was a point where we had to distinguish, you know, cyber and clode from Meatspace, or IRL, as you say.

00:02:41 John: Yeah, that's right.

00:02:41 John: We would have a conversation in Meatspace, then we would take it to the clode, and we would say, wait a minute, where are we now, you know?

00:02:49 John: You were famous in cyber.

00:02:51 John: Oh, yeah.

00:02:52 Merlin: Yeah.

00:02:53 Merlin: I mean, within the parameters of OPSEC with which I am comfortable, you know, once you tell a story, it's not really yours anymore.

00:03:03 Merlin: And that's also true for life.

00:03:04 Merlin: Boop, boop.

00:03:05 Merlin: Boop, boop.

00:03:06 Merlin: If you're in the cloud.

00:03:08 John: Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop.

00:03:10 Merlin: It's a mess, John.

00:03:11 Merlin: It really is a mess.

00:03:13 Merlin: And the thing is, without regard to any specific clue, there are consequences if you get it wrong.

00:03:19 John: Now, wait a minute.

00:03:20 John: Am I talking to Merlin, who's talking into his shoe?

00:03:23 John: Or is this, I mean, are you about to do like some, are you about to give a TED Talk?

00:03:27 John: Yeah.

00:03:27 Merlin: Oh, really?

00:03:29 Merlin: You would do that?

00:03:30 Merlin: You would let me do, I don't know.

00:03:32 Merlin: Would you do five minutes on passwords?

00:03:34 Merlin: Oh, absolutely.

00:03:35 Merlin: Do you want some hot tips and tricks?

00:03:38 Merlin: I could tell you the tips and tricks that those Wall Street fat cats don't want you to know.

00:03:42 Merlin: I'd be happy to share some of those.

00:03:44 John: Wait a minute.

00:03:45 John: You've got tips and tricks and you haven't been sharing them with me the whole time?

00:03:48 Merlin: I just take out enough to beat you.

00:03:50 Merlin: I want to make it something where I keep your interest.

00:03:54 Merlin: And I keep the interest of our listeners.

00:03:57 Merlin: And the thing is, my name's not in the show.

00:03:59 Merlin: I'm not lying.

00:04:00 Merlin: You know what they say in showbiz?

00:04:05 Merlin: It's not show friend.

00:04:06 Merlin: In show business, they say, you're first on the call sheet, John.

00:04:10 Merlin: Oh, first on the call sheet.

00:04:11 John: I read that in The New Yorker the other day, and I was like, isn't that funny?

00:04:14 John: That's a thing.

00:04:14 John: First on the call sheet.

00:04:16 Merlin: They call you first.

00:04:17 Merlin: They call you first, but that has implications.

00:04:21 Merlin: Your name's above the title.

00:04:23 Merlin: Well, okay.

00:04:24 Merlin: Now, I've got to write all this down.

00:04:25 Merlin: I would be happy to talk about that, too, because that is also really, really fascinating.

00:04:30 Merlin: When you see people who are above, after you see the credits, you see the person.

00:04:35 John: Nicholas Cage in?

00:04:37 Merlin: Yes.

00:04:38 Merlin: Nicholas Cage is Mandy or whatever.

00:04:40 Merlin: You see somebody above the – when you're top on the call sheet.

00:04:44 Merlin: I just want to distinguish for the people who are also into cyber that where you are in the credits may not be the same.

00:04:50 Merlin: Here's the thing.

00:04:50 Merlin: I showed my kids something because I'm only showing my kid things.

00:04:53 Merlin: I went to the movies in 1978.

00:04:56 Merlin: I remember.

00:04:57 Merlin: And saw a little film by the late great Richard Donner called Superman.

00:05:01 Merlin: And I, well, I, my mom probably, bought me this souvenir booklet for Superman.

00:05:09 Merlin: And I still have it here.

00:05:10 Merlin: It's here in my office.

00:05:11 Merlin: Maybe it'll be show art.

00:05:12 Merlin: And that is a booklet that talks about the movie, you know?

00:05:17 John: Is this like the booklet that came with the movie Dune that told you what all the different spice names were?

00:05:23 John: Didn't Dune come with like a card?

00:05:25 John: It did.

00:05:26 John: A glossary, yeah.

00:05:28 Merlin: Even though it has, like, seven minutes of Fremen exposition at the beginning?

00:05:34 Merlin: Not a Fremen.

00:05:34 Merlin: What do you call them?

00:05:35 Merlin: He is a quiz, et cetera.

00:05:36 Merlin: What are those guys?

00:05:38 Merlin: The Ferengis are the ones who tend bar and say female.

00:05:41 Merlin: Is that right?

00:05:42 Merlin: Okay.

00:05:42 John: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think so.

00:05:43 Merlin: Okay.

00:05:44 Merlin: See, this is the problem.

00:05:45 Merlin: This is why you need a card.

00:05:46 Merlin: And, you know, what about the Ring Lord?

00:05:49 Merlin: At the beginning of that one, they have to go, there were 14 tribes, seven meats, three cheeses, and the volcano skeletons came down and there were six keys, but there were really 12 keys and then they got thrown into the...

00:06:02 Merlin: Yes, it's London Smaug.

00:06:05 Merlin: So I don't know, but I opened the booklet.

00:06:09 Merlin: I'm saying, check this out.

00:06:10 Merlin: I still have this.

00:06:11 Merlin: It's on display here at my private office.

00:06:13 John: Along with a lot of other things, right?

00:06:15 John: You've got Wilberforce there.

00:06:16 Merlin: You've got the... You know what?

00:06:18 Merlin: I just changed my Twitter header to put a bunch of dolls on my Twitter header.

00:06:22 Merlin: I just put up some of my dolls.

00:06:24 Merlin: Sometimes they kiss.

00:06:27 John: That'll let your friends find you.

00:06:28 John: Well, keep your friends close and your superheroes closer.

00:06:31 John: Image search.

00:06:32 John: And anybody that's out there image searching Wilberforce is going to be like, this is a guy.

00:06:36 John: This is an Insta follow.

00:06:38 John: Am I right?

00:06:38 Merlin: Oh, look at this guy.

00:06:39 Merlin: He's a cool cat.

00:06:42 Merlin: And I opened it up.

00:06:44 Merlin: And so pop quiz hotshot.

00:06:46 John: And a $2 bill fell out.

00:06:48 Merlin: $1 bill, y'all.

00:06:50 Merlin: You know what I'm saying?

00:06:52 Merlin: Christopher Reeve rules everything around me.

00:06:54 Merlin: But the problem here, you open the booklet.

00:06:59 Merlin: Let me ask you this hotshot.

00:07:01 Merlin: Who's first on the call sheet?

00:07:03 Merlin: Sorry.

00:07:04 Merlin: Who's top credited talent on the movie Superman?

00:07:08 Merlin: Christopher Reed, right?

00:07:10 Merlin: Lex Luthor.

00:07:11 Merlin: Close.

00:07:11 Merlin: He's second.

00:07:13 Merlin: Above Lex Luthor?

00:07:15 Merlin: Think.

00:07:16 Merlin: Think.

00:07:17 Merlin: Can't think.

00:07:17 Merlin: Think.

00:07:18 Merlin: Lots of money.

00:07:19 Merlin: Is it Lois Lane?

00:07:20 Merlin: Small role.

00:07:22 Merlin: Won't memorize lines very well.

00:07:25 Merlin: Oh, of course.

00:07:26 John: It's Zaxxon, the father of Elrond, who lived on the planet.

00:07:32 Merlin: Zaxxon of Elrond.

00:07:34 Merlin: Yeah, Zaxxon.

00:07:35 Merlin: Zaxxon Hubbard.

00:07:35 John: The father of Elrond, who showed up in the clouds at the beginning of the movie.

00:07:39 John: He's in the clouds.

00:07:40 John: And then he was destroyed in the big explosion.

00:07:44 John: Yep.

00:07:44 John: He put his baby into a coffee bean.

00:07:47 Merlin: He put him in a coffee bean and sent him with his magic cape.

00:07:51 Merlin: And what's the name of his wife?

00:07:52 Merlin: Now, she's lower in the credits.

00:07:53 Merlin: Is it Savannah Guthrie?

00:07:55 Merlin: No, what's her name?

00:07:56 Merlin: It's Sarah Connor.

00:07:59 Merlin: Anyway, there's an English woman that plays Momar.

00:08:04 Merlin: Muammar Rel.

00:08:05 Merlin: Muammar Gaddafi.

00:08:07 Merlin: But no top Marlon Brando.

00:08:09 Merlin: He's numero uno.

00:08:10 John: Yeah, he is in everything.

00:08:11 John: In New York.

00:08:12 John: Because he was the greatest actor of his generation.

00:08:15 Merlin: That's right.

00:08:15 Merlin: And sometimes Francis Ford Coppola would have to just lay on the floor, you know, and say, tell me about the humanity.

00:08:21 John: So Hackman was second.

00:08:23 Merlin: Yeah, that's right.

00:08:24 John: And then Ned Beatty.

00:08:28 Merlin: Ned Beatty's further down.

00:08:30 Merlin: Jackie Cooper.

00:08:32 Merlin: Glenn Ford.

00:08:35 Merlin: It was his 50th movie, I believe, for Glenn Ford.

00:08:37 John: Trevor Howard.

00:08:37 John: Wow, everybody was in this movie.

00:08:39 Merlin: Terrence Stamp, bitch.

00:08:41 Merlin: I forgot.

00:08:42 John: Margot Kidder way down.

00:08:43 Merlin: Oh, Margot Kidder.

00:08:45 Merlin: I'd eat her off a cracker.

00:08:46 Merlin: You know what I'm saying?

00:08:46 Merlin: Yeah, yeah.

00:08:47 Merlin: She's probably out in the bushes right now.

00:08:49 John: So until I started looking at this, I had no idea that basically the original movie Superman was a who's who of Hollywood in the 50s.

00:09:01 Merlin: Yes, you caught yourself.

00:09:03 Merlin: Yes.

00:09:03 Merlin: But there they are.

00:09:04 Merlin: Superman is going to make 1978 look like 1956.

00:09:09 Merlin: Wow.

00:09:10 Merlin: yeah no it's um it was a different time this is a great this is one of your best it's it's really closer like you know you got ted and then you got ted x i probably like ted triple x this is one tokyo drift ted triple x yeah did you shave your head for this did i shave my head for this talk i shaved my head for this um

00:09:33 Merlin: No.

00:09:35 Merlin: Not in this economy.

00:09:36 Merlin: In this economy, in these shoes?

00:09:38 Merlin: No.

00:09:38 Merlin: I think it's fascinating.

00:09:41 Merlin: Call sheets, status.

00:09:44 Merlin: But all of that credit stuff, I think, is very negotiated.

00:09:48 Merlin: You know what I'm saying?

00:09:49 Merlin: Big time.

00:09:50 John: So the other day, I decided, along with my little brain trust here, that we were going to watch the great –

00:10:02 John: Netflix show or Apple TV show Ted Leo again, because the new one is coming out.

00:10:09 Merlin: Oh, that's right.

00:10:09 Merlin: That's soon, isn't it?

00:10:11 Merlin: It's really soon, and we loved it.

00:10:12 Merlin: You can go back and re-watch Ted Leo.

00:10:16 Merlin: You can re-watch those episodes over and over.

00:10:18 Merlin: I was on a podcast talking about one of my favorite episodes, Make Rebecca Great Again, the one where they go to Liverpool.

00:10:25 John: Yeah, I believe that that is one that was nominated for an Elmo.

00:10:32 Merlin: Oh, wow.

00:10:33 Merlin: So now at this point, he's only like four away from becoming Eagle-y.

00:10:38 John: Mm-hmm.

00:10:38 John: For an Eagle-y.

00:10:40 Merlin: Huh.

00:10:40 Merlin: With Mel Brooks.

00:10:41 John: Yeah, he's only got four left.

00:10:42 John: That's right.

00:10:43 John: Mm-hmm.

00:10:44 John: But so I'm watching it, and I'm like, okay –

00:10:47 John: I know Jason Sudeikis is one of these accomplished people like Tina Fey, somebody that at a very young age, you know, it's not like they were born into privilege.

00:10:57 John: They just went to, they're from some podunk town somewhere and they just, I don't know what happened.

00:11:03 John: They were good at something.

00:11:04 John: You know, I did theater sports in college.

00:11:06 John: You're kidding.

00:11:07 John: Wait, did I know this?

00:11:09 John: Maybe not.

00:11:10 John: That's so weird.

00:11:11 Merlin: I watched a bunch of improv just last night.

00:11:13 Merlin: That's so funny you say that.

00:11:15 John: When I was at Gonzaga in 87, a guy showed up.

00:11:20 John: He had a mustache.

00:11:21 John: And this was at a time when young people didn't wear mustaches.

00:11:25 John: This guy had a mustache.

00:11:27 John: And he had kind of like a – he kind of looked a little bit like – what am I trying to think of?

00:11:36 John: If you took Lindsey Buckingham in 1974 and you gave him a mustache.

00:11:44 Merlin: Take my Lindsey, please.

00:11:45 John: And you made him, you know, like not Lindsey Buckingham.

00:11:50 Merlin: He's likable, you mean.

00:11:52 John: Yeah, this guy came down from Canada, I guess.

00:11:55 John: He showed up at Gonzaga.

00:11:56 John: Okay.

00:11:56 John: And he said, I'm starting a new improvisational theater comedy group, and it's called Theater Sports.

00:12:07 John: And this was a thing – 1987 –

00:12:10 John: Improv comedy.

00:12:12 John: Nobody had ever heard of this, right?

00:12:14 John: Theater, sports, this whole gag that we constantly do, like, give me an animal.

00:12:19 John: None of it existed or nobody had ever heard of it.

00:12:21 Merlin: I mean, there was stuff, not to be real, but absolutely there was stuff like Del Close, Second City, Compass Theater.

00:12:30 Merlin: There were lots of people like...

00:12:32 Merlin: The folks that would end up on SNL.

00:12:34 Merlin: But that was sketch comedy.

00:12:37 Merlin: Well, yes.

00:12:37 Merlin: But what I'm saying is they had a background in that stuff.

00:12:40 Merlin: But this is before Whose Line Is It Anyway?

00:12:42 Merlin: This is before the stuff that I think acquainted a lot of Americans with the idea of I need a pizza topping and something cops abuse people with.

00:12:52 Merlin: And then you do a routine on that.

00:12:54 John: So this guy who was probably 24.

00:12:57 Merlin: What kind of mustache?

00:12:57 Merlin: Was it like a porn mustache or like a John Waters?

00:13:00 John: No, it wasn't John Waters.

00:13:02 John: Like a Ted Leo?

00:13:03 John: Do you have a Ted Leo mustache?

00:13:04 John: It was a guy that was 24 years old that could grow a mustache and did.

00:13:08 Merlin: Good for him.

00:13:09 John: When I was 24, I couldn't grow a mustache.

00:13:11 John: So every attempt I made, you wouldn't have looked at me even when I had a mustache and said, there's a guy with a mustache.

00:13:16 John: John, with respect, you couldn't even grow eyebrows.

00:13:18 John: You look like a scallop.

00:13:19 John: I still can't, but these guys or this guy could, he had dark hair and light skin.

00:13:23 John: He could grow a mustache.

00:13:24 John: He did.

00:13:25 John: And he was probably 24, but we were 18, 19.

00:13:28 John: We thought that 24 was old.

00:13:31 John: And he was Pied Pipering his way through the small colleges of the West.

00:13:38 John: starting theater, starting theater sports groups, improv.

00:13:44 John: He's like the Johnny Appleseed of Yes And.

00:13:46 John: Of Yes And.

00:13:47 John: And we spent, and I, you know, of course, like somebody in my dorm was like, hey, I'm going to go do this.

00:13:52 John: And I said, that sounds like something I would do.

00:13:55 John: And the first group of us, which is probably nine equal, you know, equally boys and girls, um,

00:14:04 John: we were all just drawn to it.

00:14:07 John: Like the, like the, the message went out across the campus and only nine people showed up.

00:14:12 John: There was, there weren't tryouts.

00:14:15 John: Nine people showed up based on attraction rather than promotion.

00:14:20 John: And all nine of them were great.

00:14:23 John: And it, and it's a, it's sort of the classic example of like

00:14:27 John: How do you start theater sports somewhere?

00:14:29 John: Just do that.

00:14:31 John: How do you catch a serial killer?

00:14:34 John: Practice, practice, practice.

00:14:35 Merlin: No, you have a slasher.

00:14:36 Merlin: Oh, you marry Patton Oswalt.

00:14:38 Merlin: What was it that appealed to you?

00:14:41 Merlin: I mean, obviously, there's the comity and conviviality of your friends doing a thing.

00:14:45 Merlin: But do you remember what it was that grabbed you about how it was described?

00:14:51 Merlin: Because you probably didn't have a big background.

00:14:53 John: in improv at that point right what nobody did and there and it wasn't my friends that's the thing i heard about it okay and i said attraction rather than promotion yeah i was like huh so what you're saying is it's like a theater group but you just make stuff up as you go you already do that john well that's it and the nine people that were there were the nine people who heard that and went

00:15:17 John: That's for me.

00:15:19 John: And it was before anybody had ever seen it.

00:15:21 John: So you know what I mean?

00:15:22 John: It was just like... Yes.

00:15:23 John: It's like going through the world and saying... You didn't even know how to be a hack on day one.

00:15:27 John: Like, who is going to be good at this?

00:15:29 John: The nine people that think they'll be good at it.

00:15:31 John: Wow.

00:15:32 Merlin: That's a good origin story.

00:15:34 John: Well, right.

00:15:35 John: And we... We didn't... We generally didn't have anything in common with each other, this group.

00:15:41 John: But we...

00:15:43 John: Went into it.

00:15:45 John: We went into the work like he sat up there and said and he was a very like He was kind of a bright shining type of 24 year old and he was like here's how this works and we were like, okay got it and it and it was As soon as we started doing it, it was obvious that this is all we cared about You know, like we didn't care about school.

00:16:06 John: We just cared about this and with all of our free time with all of our

00:16:12 John: every bit of energy we had we were meeting in the theater at night to just do this stuff like i'm a cat and you are a bird and we would you know do scenes and he was there on the sidelines like really encouraging and it didn't take explanation all we were doing immediately what we were doing was just practicing and refining and we would do a scene and then everybody would go you know it wasn't like

00:16:38 John: Everybody comments where there are three people that you're just like I just have to listen to this I just have to make it through this person's comments because they always have something to say and Nobody likes them.

00:16:48 John: It was like everybody's comments were on point and were given Explicitly to make it better and we all immediately took on different qualities like you knew this person always had the funny pun you knew that person could really act and

00:17:06 John: this person was going to play the, you know, the passive person in every scene.

00:17:12 John: It just, it all fell together.

00:17:15 John: Well, it's sort of exercises, kind of.

00:17:17 John: Well, but, but, but it was.

00:17:19 Merlin: But you trust each other.

00:17:21 Merlin: That's so important in improv is that you believe in the thing, yeah.

00:17:26 John: And we didn't, and the thing is, there wasn't this whole culture around improv, right?

00:17:29 John: There wasn't.

00:17:29 John: No, no, no.

00:17:30 John: There wasn't a school of thought.

00:17:32 John: There wasn't a 10 million people that had done it.

00:17:35 John: We felt like we were

00:17:37 John: Like inventing a thing.

00:17:39 John: And that's what this Pied Piper guy was trying to do.

00:17:41 John: He was going around like seeding this idea.

00:17:43 John: Well, we, so we did a show and, and the theater was full and we did a show and it was like terrifying, of course.

00:17:54 Merlin: Oh my God.

00:17:54 John: But it was a huge success.

00:17:57 John: And then we did a second show and it was sold out.

00:18:00 John: And this is in the theater, you know, the theater that they're doing all the major productions.

00:18:04 Merlin: Yeah.

00:18:05 John: Yeah.

00:18:05 John: And it was the one that if you, you know, that the college repertory company did its shows in.

00:18:10 John: And here we were out there like –

00:18:13 John: ding dong hello mr jones why hello there you know doing this like just theater crap and it was it was just it got into the you know it was in the spokane trip uh you know the spokane review wow uh newspaper people were like it was a hot ticket and for the rest of that year

00:18:35 John: Theater sports was the one, I mean, I was doing, I was in, I was in college.

00:18:39 John: So I was doing college.

00:18:40 Merlin: You were there for a year, right?

00:18:42 John: I was there for, yeah, two years.

00:18:46 John: But this was the year that I had, you know, I'd been rescued from, from my D minus high school average, you know, my D minus high school years.

00:18:57 John: I'd been given a second chance in college and I loved playing.

00:19:01 Merlin: College, I loved the coursework.

00:19:04 Merlin: Why can't you have the atmosphere of college when you're in high school?

00:19:07 Merlin: It would be so much better.

00:19:08 John: Right.

00:19:09 John: And why can't you have the, well, yeah, shit.

00:19:11 John: I mean, if you could condense it into a year or two of this, and I was so lucky to go to a school.

00:19:17 Merlin: So much high school feels like you're getting a master's degree in junior high.

00:19:22 John: I should have spent all of high school building trail in the national forests.

00:19:26 Merlin: It's still true.

00:19:27 Merlin: It's still true.

00:19:28 John: Today I would be Yogi Bear, and I would be preventing forest fires.

00:19:33 Merlin: Oh, I see what you're saying.

00:19:34 Merlin: Only you can prevent picnic baskets.

00:19:36 Merlin: It didn't occur to me until just now that my kid is exactly the age...

00:19:40 Merlin: where she should be out cutting trail.

00:19:42 Merlin: Yeah, yeah.

00:19:43 Merlin: Damn.

00:19:43 Merlin: My daughter's on her way.

00:19:44 John: You know, the thing is, the West right now is plagued.

00:19:47 John: It's plagued with forest fires.

00:19:48 John: And if I were Yogi Bear, I think I could make a difference.

00:19:51 John: Now or never, John.

00:19:52 Merlin: Do you know about these fires?

00:19:53 Merlin: You know about the Oregon fire and the other fires?

00:19:55 Merlin: The fires are crazy.

00:19:56 Merlin: 144,000 acres.

00:19:58 Merlin: If you could have some kids in cool, smoky bear hats up there, you know what I mean?

00:20:02 Merlin: Don't put it on the prisoners.

00:20:03 Merlin: Put it on our children.

00:20:04 John: Think about how Marky Mark could have stopped 9-11 if only he'd been on that airplane.

00:20:09 John: And it's exactly the same way with me and Forest Fires, except I wasn't given that chance.

00:20:14 John: But for the rest of that year, this theater sports group was... I mean, it was like a thing you couldn't have duplicated.

00:20:23 John: And all of us were in love with each other.

00:20:26 John: And it wasn't because we liked each other.

00:20:31 John: It was because we...

00:20:32 Merlin: You're making magic.

00:20:34 John: We learned to trust each other and then we were out on stage and it worked.

00:20:38 John: You know, this group of nine, there was never a dead moment.

00:20:42 John: We learned yes and, and then it was, we just tried as hard as we could to make it native to us.

00:20:49 John: And there was nobody in that group of nine that would stop a scene on stage because they didn't know where they were.

00:20:55 Merlin: That's ahead of its time for people who are starting out in improv.

00:20:59 John: We were leaping.

00:21:01 John: And so the beginning of the next year, my second year at Gonzaga, we're talking about it like we're writing letters to each other all summer.

00:21:10 John: And then our coach, Mr. Mustache, said, you guys have got it from here.

00:21:18 John: And I'm going on to the next college.

00:21:21 John: He's a Lone Ranger.

00:21:22 John: His work is done.

00:21:23 John: My work here is done.

00:21:24 John: I'm going on to the next college.

00:21:26 John: And I'm going to start.

00:21:27 John: And we were like, no, no, no.

00:21:28 John: Because he was a wonderful director and a wonderful just like facilitator.

00:21:33 John: And we were like, no, no, no.

00:21:34 John: We're not.

00:21:35 John: you can't leave.

00:21:36 John: Like we're onto something like this is the future.

00:21:39 John: Like this is what we want to do in life.

00:21:41 John: And you are the magic.

00:21:42 John: Like you're the thing.

00:21:43 John: And he's like, Nope, you understand it.

00:21:46 John: Now take it and fly.

00:21:48 John: Wow.

00:21:48 John: And I knew when he said that I felt a cold chill because he was, he was wrong.

00:21:56 John: We didn't know everything that we needed to know.

00:22:02 John: And he was the magic.

00:22:04 John: But he was like, you've got this.

00:22:06 John: And he had the confidence of a 24-year-old evangelical.

00:22:11 John: He'd brought the word of the Lord to the islanders, and now he was off.

00:22:17 John: And you come back 25 years later, and it's a cargo cult, and they're worshiping Prince Philip.

00:22:25 John: And so what happened was we said, okay, well, we're –

00:22:29 John: You know, it's season two.

00:22:31 John: Right, right, right.

00:22:33 Merlin: Now what?

00:22:34 Merlin: Everybody's wearing coconut headphones and making sand sculpture of Ryan Stiles.

00:22:38 Merlin: But you need a glass to put that water in.

00:22:41 Merlin: That structure is really important.

00:22:42 John: What the guy said was, you know, now take the message to the people.

00:22:46 John: And so he was like, have auditions.

00:22:49 John: Right.

00:22:50 John: So we had auditions.

00:22:51 Right.

00:22:52 John: And because theater sports had been very popular the year before, because our group of nine had like coalesced and done these shows that were really like a big deal, 50 people showed up.

00:23:04 John: Damn.

00:23:05 John: And the 50 people that showed up were across the spectrum of all the attention seekers, all of the people that would call themselves a thespian, all of the people that

00:23:22 John: just wanted to be seen and heard and known.

00:23:26 John: And the people that have the work, you know, crazy hats, like all of the people that if you put a little thing in the newspaper that said improv group starting, they wouldn't have seen it, but they saw this.

00:23:41 John: And so there's 50 people and they all want the spotlight on them and they all want to show how brilliant they are and what, you know, how creative they are.

00:23:52 John: And all of a sudden – oh, and the other philosophy was, you know, it's not an audition.

00:23:58 John: Anyone who wants to play can play.

00:24:02 John: And so now you've got these rehearsals where there's 50 people, there's no yes and anymore, and you can't teach it to people because –

00:24:12 John: Because all they see is like, now's my chance.

00:24:17 Merlin: That's a very small amount of time to go from I've never heard of this to I'm implicitly teaching this.

00:24:22 John: Yeah, right.

00:24:24 Merlin: Without the cult-like structure of an Upright Citizens Brigade or something.

00:24:28 John: Because it was also premised on the idea that Generation X kind of grew up in.

00:24:35 John: I don't think it was Generation X's idea, but we grew up in it.

00:24:40 John: That everyone was creative, and all you had to do was tap into their creativity.

00:24:44 Merlin: All you had to do was be free, Merlin, of all of the... We haven't talked about that in a while, but yes, that was definitely... That was a theme.

00:24:52 John: So all these people, and they were all self-identified as creative.

00:24:56 John: Like, I'm very creative, right?

00:24:58 John: They're all in there.

00:25:00 John: And the shows, the rehearsals were a disaster.

00:25:03 John: Everybody, you know, if it was like, let's hear some comments.

00:25:06 John: Every single person needed five minutes to give their comments.

00:25:11 John: It was just a drag.

00:25:12 John: It was a full on drag.

00:25:14 John: God, that sucks.

00:25:15 John: And the shows were just boring and disoriented.

00:25:19 John: And I, when the season started, of the group of nine, everybody got together and said,

00:25:28 John: John, you're the natural one to be the leader, right?

00:25:33 John: and it was and we all understood that what that meant was just there needs to be somebody that calls the beats you know like and now seen you know that type of person not the leader like the teacher or even the coach but just somebody that was you know that you're like yeah almost like a traffic cop yeah and and that was and it was natural i was good at it and and i did have like

00:25:58 John: everybody like I was kind of the all-around player like I could do this I could do that you want me here you want me there but of course in that situation as you know I did appoint myself the traffic cop when I saw that there were too many cooks when I saw that people were talking when they should be listening you know like I became more and more

00:26:27 John: for lack of a better term bossy and i started you know because i want everybody to learn their lesson and i was a very bad i would have been great as the one of the nine that had the stopwatch and called the beats because we all trusted each other and we all knew that everybody was in charge

00:26:49 John: But in a group of 50 where I had the whistle.

00:26:53 Merlin: It's a different kind of job, a different kind of environment at that point.

00:26:57 John: And I was terrible at being the cat wrangler because even then I had the feeling of like, well, you know what?

00:27:09 John: Just because you –

00:27:12 John: just because you like Rocky Horror Picture Show doesn't mean you're going to be good at this.

00:27:17 John: And you're walking in here with the presumption and the attitude that you're already good at it.

00:27:24 John: Yes.

00:27:25 John: And you're not listening, and you don't understand the rules of the game.

00:27:29 Merlin: Well, just because you like eating food does not mean that you will make a great chef, let alone somebody who runs a chain of Michelin star restaurants.

00:27:36 Merlin: Those are very different things.

00:27:38 John: And what's weird, when you look at the nine, the group of nine...

00:27:42 John: Nobody in that group thought of themselves as a theater person.

00:27:48 John: The nine people that showed up to that were not actors.

00:27:52 John: They weren't in the theater program.

00:27:54 John: One of them was a novice Jesuit.

00:27:57 John: One of them was like this crazy cool girl that kind of never brushed her hair.

00:28:03 John: Wow.

00:28:03 John: And who lived like under a dam.

00:28:05 John: There was, I mean, everybody, there was a business student that like, that put tons of gel in his hair and was like getting an MBA and

00:28:14 John: Nobody was in theater.

00:28:16 John: And the following year, everybody.

00:28:20 John: They were the people that auditioned for the theater program and couldn't get in.

00:28:24 Merlin: Because now it's a known thing, I could see that attracting somebody who wanted to be more of a theater person or a different kind of theater person.

00:28:33 Merlin: But now, ironically enough, in the world of improv, you're coming in with these preconceived notions about what the thing is.

00:28:40 John: right and instead of being there for like the i don't say the purity but like not being there for the thing that we're going to make together now you come in with your own little miniature agenda probably because what it sounds like is oh i get to do theater except i don't have to memorize scripts or do anything hard or disciplined i can just come in and just be theatrical yeah is what is what it sounded like

00:29:03 Merlin: Which makes it really easy to crush the bunny.

00:29:06 Merlin: If you've got 50 people where even a third of the people are like that, that's not going to be fun.

00:29:12 John: Well, so I became a complete asshole, a total dictator.

00:29:16 John: I was there with my whistle on a lanyard and I was like, you over here, this over there.

00:29:20 John: No, that's not how that works.

00:29:21 John: Do you understand?

00:29:22 John: What about yes and don't you understand?

00:29:26 John: Yeah.

00:29:26 John: And of course – and basically this is like what happened on Twitter, you know, as a whole.

00:29:34 John: Gradually the 50 people outnumbered the nine and they –

00:29:41 John: They just started a whole new set of rules.

00:29:44 Merlin: Half of them are just going to explain your joke to you.

00:29:47 John: Yeah.

00:29:48 John: The rules now were, well, wait a minute.

00:29:49 John: Everyone was invited and every idea is good.

00:29:52 Merlin: Now it's all no but.

00:29:55 John: Yeah.

00:29:55 John: What yes and means is that you have to approve of everything we say and do and nobody's wrong and everybody gets applause.

00:30:04 John: And so we had a first show.

00:30:07 John: And it was just a freaking catastrophe, you know?

00:30:10 Merlin: Very few things.

00:30:12 Merlin: The first time I think, one of the first times I ever saw Improv Live was in the late 80s.

00:30:17 Merlin: And I went to see a show with my friend Tony, who actually was doing his thesis project at New College, very heavily involved Keith Johnstone.

00:30:28 Merlin: The guy who wrote improv and did theater sports, which is like, you know, all the different gurus of improv have different approaches, but like he's very into stuff like masks.

00:30:38 Merlin: I think status.

00:30:39 Merlin: He's kind of the guy that kicked off the big move to status and, you know, sort of status exchange and like, you know, that kind of stuff.

00:30:47 Merlin: But anyway, Tony was really smart about this stuff.

00:30:49 Merlin: He did these amazing shows that were a combination of like almost like a –

00:30:53 Merlin: stop making sense kind of thing.

00:30:54 Merlin: Like where there was, it involved music, it involved improv, it involved costumes, of course it involved masks, involved all of that.

00:31:00 Merlin: And he and I went to see this and John, if you can imagine the like every cliche that makes people wince at improv, it was the whole like, okay, everybody.

00:31:11 Merlin: That's fantastic.

00:31:12 Merlin: Listen, we're going to entertain you tonight with some improv.

00:31:14 Merlin: We're going to need the color of an automobile.

00:31:17 John: That kind of does that half run out on stage.

00:31:20 Merlin: Hey, yeah, which is fine.

00:31:21 Merlin: But then, you know me.

00:31:24 Merlin: You know I love Dixon Poop as a medium.

00:31:28 Merlin: Like a painter uses oils.

00:31:30 Merlin: You're great at that stuff.

00:31:32 Merlin: I love that stuff, but...

00:31:34 Merlin: So much of the stuff became either this really overworked and tired, like, here's a bit I want to work in.

00:31:42 Merlin: That's a big buzzer.

00:31:44 John: The stuff that you walk in where you already know what you're going to do and you're just waiting for the... Yeah.

00:31:48 Merlin: And again, trying to sort of be the bossy bottom who's going to make everybody do the bit you want.

00:31:54 Merlin: Or just everything becomes a really awkward toilet joke.

00:32:01 Oh.

00:32:01 John: Well, or the SNL problem where it's like, this got a laugh the last time.

00:32:05 Merlin: Oh, right.

00:32:05 John: Now we got to do it.

00:32:07 John: Even though the prompts are completely different, it's really easy to just bend it around.

00:32:11 Merlin: But Tony and I came in with the biggest hearts and the openest minds that you could have to go see live improv, which I have to say done well is the most exhilarating thing in the world.

00:32:21 Merlin: We show up though and we're sitting there and we're both, you can't see my face, but look at my face.

00:32:26 Merlin: Where you're like, oh, this is, this is, I feel bad for these guys, but I really feel bad for me.

00:32:35 Merlin: Yeah.

00:32:36 Merlin: Having to sit here with this and watch this, this excruciating stuff is it's, it's so painful.

00:32:44 Merlin: And when it's the thing is the high, I have so much to say about this and I'll try to, but like, oh my God, I have so much to say, but like the high wire act of, of when things go wrong is when things can go most right.

00:32:55 Merlin: Right.

00:32:55 Merlin: You know, and again, depending on your sensei, somebody like Del Close would say, you know, it's not, it's about, or like, what did Keith Impro, Keith Impro.

00:33:04 Merlin: It's called, what is it called?

00:33:06 Merlin: Truth in Comedy is the book about Del Close.

00:33:09 Merlin: But like, you know, Del Close is saying like, don't go out there and try to get a laugh.

00:33:12 Merlin: Like, stay authentic in the thing and follow what your people are doing and be in that moment.

00:33:17 Merlin: And when that's not happening...

00:33:19 Merlin: I'm not saying anything people don't know, but there's no way I could describe this that adequately gets to how uncomfortable it is when it's not going well and they don't know how to make it go well.

00:33:31 Merlin: Or they don't know how to make it.

00:33:33 John: It's like when my kid used to put food in my hair and I would say, no, please.

00:33:37 John: No, please.

00:33:38 John: Oh, yeah.

00:33:40 John: No please is such its own thing.

00:33:42 Merlin: What was the audience, if you remember, so the audience, presumably, including people who'd come to see the group of nine, what was the audience's reaction to this rat king of no butt?

00:33:53 John: Well, here's the other thing, which is that, and if you go to any alternative comedy show in Seattle or San Francisco or Portland nowadays, what you'll find is

00:34:08 John: It's a very self-supporting ecosystem.

00:34:12 Merlin: Yeah.

00:34:13 Merlin: It's like the poetry racket.

00:34:15 Merlin: It's really, you're making stuff for people who do what you do mostly.

00:34:18 John: Yeah.

00:34:18 John: You've got a person on stage and then you've got 25 people in the audience who all are aspiring comedians and they all are laughing hysterically at every awful, awful joke by people that are not comedians and are not funny, but this is what they've chosen for.

00:34:37 John: This is how they're, you know, this is their like hobby.

00:34:41 John: And so comedy shows, what partly what makes them so like, no, please for me is that they're not organic.

00:34:49 John: There's no, there's nothing authentic about them at that level.

00:34:52 John: You go to see your friend who's like, I'm a comedian, come see my show.

00:34:56 John: And you've just got all these people in the front row who are like, Oh my God.

00:35:02 John: And, and there was no joke there, you know?

00:35:04 John: He put the pizza in the toilet.

00:35:07 John: So of the 50 people that were in the theater group, you know, they all had four friends.

00:35:12 John: And so the front three rows of the theater were people that were way over emoting, over laughing.

00:35:22 John: What ended up happening was that after two months –

00:35:27 John: There was a big meeting of everybody, and they said, John is – we can't have him as the leader anymore.

00:35:33 John: He's too imperious.

00:35:35 John: He doesn't understand yes and because he says no when we – He keeps blowing that whistle.

00:35:45 John: When I'm doing whatever I'm doing.

00:35:47 John: And instead of fighting for myself, because I was also – I was not –

00:35:55 John: drinking at this or on drugs at this point because i was because the university was forcing me to take random urinalysis tests in order to be allowed is that the catholicism john no it was that they expelled me at the end of my freshman year and i fought the whole summer to get back in partly because i wanted to do theater sport so you had to agree to terms

00:36:15 John: I had to agree to these terms.

00:36:16 John: And one of them was I had to meet with a priest every week and also they could summon me from class to give a urinalysis test at any point without any notice.

00:36:27 John: So I wasn't drinking or doing any drugs, but I was, you know, a very messed up youth and

00:36:34 John: And when my theater sports group turned on me, I was secretly relieved because it had become awful.

00:36:42 John: But also I was devastated because this was the first time that I had been chosen by the nine, by the Nazgul.

00:36:51 John: To lead them.

00:36:53 John: I was the fucking – I was the head Nazgul and I had been chosen by acclamation by this group of people that I thought were incredibly talented, beautiful people.

00:37:05 John: And now I was being thrown out on the street by –

00:37:08 John: this, you know, this rabble that I was like, how did you even get in here?

00:37:12 John: You know, what we should have done is like have the original theater group and then the ones for you, the fucking JV.

00:37:18 Merlin: I was just going to say, it's exactly, it's junior varsity improv.

00:37:22 John: Yeah, and then the nine of you, 50, who are good can be the varsity next year.

00:37:29 Merlin: That would have been difficult, but like, I know you know this, but like,

00:37:32 Merlin: It could have been fine if it was just the nine, and that should be your slogan.

00:37:37 Merlin: But without Mr. Mustache, it's already different.

00:37:40 Merlin: You had a couple strikes going in.

00:37:42 John: If he had come back for one more year, it would have changed my life.

00:37:48 John: And the reason I'm saying this is that when you look at Jason Sudeikis online... Oh, on Ted Leo, yeah.

00:37:54 John: On Ted Leo.

00:37:56 John: And you're like, where did this guy... He's 45 years old.

00:37:58 John: How is he so...

00:38:00 John: He, Tina Fey, they were doing 30 Rock when they were in their 30s.

00:38:06 John: They were doing SNL when they were in their 20s.

00:38:08 John: Those were the things I wanted to do.

00:38:10 John: How did they get there?

00:38:14 John: And you want to open up the website and say they went to Hollywood High School and then Juilliard and blah, blah, blah.

00:38:20 John: But Jason Sudeikis went to...

00:38:22 John: some community college in kansas yeah yeah he's from he is from the midwest really but he's from the midwest but he's from nowhere he's not even from lawrence you know he's from like somewhere some little town and tina faye just sort of like you know just a just like a regular person but they got into improv and got into improv a couple of years later than me right these people are just slightly younger so improv was it had gone through the

00:38:51 John: the four years of growing pains where there was the nine, then there was the 59.

00:38:56 John: And then there started to have to be some system where the 50 got condensed into nine.

00:39:05 John: And that, and however that was that it was supportive and organic and everybody felt good and creative.

00:39:10 John: They still had to find nine and not just have like, it wasn't just like the wild west, but somehow the mustache guy was,

00:39:20 John: stuck around long enough for Jason Sudeikis and Tina Fey and this next generation of comedians to

00:39:30 John: Learn it enough that they... Because I felt at that moment in theater sports, like there was nothing else I wanted to do in life.

00:39:38 John: All I wanted to do was walk out on stage.

00:39:40 Merlin: This is something a lot of people say.

00:39:42 Merlin: And I'm going to have an anecdote for something I watched on TV last night.

00:39:46 Merlin: There's a fellow that I like a lot, and he says, like, I have to do this.

00:39:50 Merlin: I think, I mean, if I didn't do this, it's not like I would die, but I definitely would not be myself.

00:39:56 Merlin: Because the version, and this was so...

00:39:58 Merlin: so inspiring cool where he says like when you you know you go out on stage and there's no you know there's no cell phones like it's he's like i'm a better version of myself when i'm out there doing what i do and when i'm doing it to the best of my ability with a partner that i trust like and i get that i really do get that it's it's not simply like a an oasis from the rest of the weird world but like

00:40:23 Merlin: In some ways, I really do feel like whatever art you make is an opportunity to either be a better version of yourself or to make something that's better than what you thought you could make.

00:40:34 Merlin: And it's impossibly buoyant.

00:40:37 Merlin: And then to do that with a group?

00:40:38 Merlin: Come on.

00:40:39 John: That's magic.

00:40:40 John: That was just it.

00:40:41 John: Like somebody would walk out on stage and they would say something and I would reply and they would go with it and then I would see where they were going and go with it.

00:40:50 John: Just like any great improv.

00:40:51 John: But by the end, you're like, I couldn't have made that alone.

00:40:54 John: That was hilarious.

00:40:56 John: What's great about improv?

00:40:58 John: We had no idea that we would end up where we ended up and we were there together.

00:41:03 John: And what that turned into for me was by the end of, by the time that I got booted out,

00:41:09 John: halfway through that year too, it had turned into another defeat for me.

00:41:15 John: A defeat where

00:41:17 John: I had ruined it.

00:41:19 John: Oh, you crushed the bunny.

00:41:21 John: Yeah, my own worst impulses came to the fore.

00:41:25 John: And then theater sports continued on without me.

00:41:28 John: I remember walking across campus, and they would be doing a show for a sold-out theater.

00:41:35 John: And there would be all this raucous laughter coming out the windows of the theater.

00:41:40 John: And I would be walking across the quad in the nighttime.

00:41:42 John: You know kicking a fucking soup can across the quad and feeling like the Charlie Brown music playing Yeah, that's super confusion of like there I do not want to be in there because it's so awful and I know those laughs are Not the laughs that they could they could be people who laugh people fucking laugh at anything people laugh when a person slips and falls on the ice They're laughing at this show, but it's but but something is lost, you know and and honestly

00:42:12 John: I don't think any of the great – if you look at Saturday Night Live for the last 30 years, no one came from Spokane.

00:42:18 John: They came from Kansas.

00:42:21 John: But also, it was still a defeat.

00:42:23 John: I wasn't walking across the quad in triumph.

00:42:27 John: Like, I was the one that wasn't in the group.

00:42:30 Merlin: It wasn't, you know, if all of my nine compatriots had marched— You specifically are not in the group.

00:42:38 Merlin: I'm not in the group.

00:42:39 Merlin: It's not like there was some kind of a, you know, a Stalinist purge and a third of your people just got disappeared.

00:42:47 Merlin: It's like you in particular, you were the problem.

00:42:49 John: Well, and the other nine somehow, or at least six of them, somehow managed to stay in the group under those conditions and—

00:42:58 John: And that just increased the kind of sense of like, well, maybe it is me.

00:43:03 John: And it was just, you know, I was already coming out of 10 years of thinking that it was my fault.

00:43:08 John: And it was just another thing where that was a wonderful thing.

00:43:11 John: And for a year, it seemed like I had found my place in the world.

00:43:16 John: It even had the word sports in it.

00:43:19 John: a thing that I had never found my sports place.

00:43:23 John: And here it was, both theater and sports.

00:43:27 Merlin: Theater and sports.

00:43:28 John: And then I was out.

00:43:29 John: And, you know, I mean, I don't want to make a direct correlation between that and starting to drink beer out of a milk carton.

00:43:37 John: Because right about that time... Sorry, why a milk carton?

00:43:45 Merlin: Was that your personal growler?

00:43:47 Yeah.

00:43:47 John: Yeah, basically.

00:43:49 John: The college had gotten to the point where they'd been piss testing me for six months.

00:43:55 John: I'd passed every test.

00:43:57 John: I would go in and talk to the priest whose name was Father Sitter.

00:44:02 John: And Father Sitter was like a cool priest.

00:44:04 John: I would go sit in his office and I'd go, you know what, Father Sitter?

00:44:07 John: It's like this.

00:44:09 John: And he would go, yeah, man, yeah.

00:44:11 Yeah.

00:44:12 John: Well, have you ever thought about this?

00:44:13 John: And I'd go, oh, wow.

00:44:15 John: Wow.

00:44:15 John: Thank you, Father Sitter.

00:44:16 John: You gave me something to think about.

00:44:18 John: And after six months of that, you could just feel they were loosening the reins.

00:44:26 John: They were like, this kid's got it.

00:44:27 John: You know what?

00:44:27 John: We got to him.

00:44:29 John: And we've helped this kid a lot.

00:44:31 John: And now it's his turn to fly.

00:44:33 Merlin: Well, the stuff that found its way into your life previously, I don't know.

00:44:37 Merlin: I mean, I don't want to make too much of this, but you're already saying this.

00:44:39 Merlin: It's like the stuff... You know, people always have this... My very quick TEDx talk on this is like, you can't just stop doing something.

00:44:48 Merlin: You have to...

00:44:49 Merlin: It would be a little facile to say you have to replace a bad habit with a good habit.

00:44:54 Merlin: But you do need something affirmative in your life to stop doing the bad thing.

00:44:57 Merlin: And like, what is an addiction?

00:44:58 Merlin: Addiction is a thing that you keep doing, even though you know it has negative consequences.

00:45:02 Merlin: Well, how do you do that?

00:45:03 Merlin: Well, you need something else in your life that offsets that.

00:45:05 Merlin: Now, for some people, that's AA.

00:45:06 Merlin: For some people, that's Jesus.

00:45:07 Merlin: But like, for whatever comes along, there could be something that unintentionally, it finds a way to fill a hole in

00:45:14 Merlin: that you had previously been putting milk carton beer in.

00:45:18 Merlin: And maybe that part of the reason that you got bought a little reprieve is because this had a role in your life that made you feel more like the person whom you'd like to be.

00:45:28 John: Yeah, and who knows if theater sports had kept me sober,

00:45:33 John: Um, until I got somewhere where I had a little bit of success and freedom.

00:45:39 John: And then all of a sudden I started doing speed balls at the Chateau Marmont.

00:45:42 John: Maybe that would have been bad or worse.

00:45:45 John: But what I started to feel was that they weren't piss testing me anymore.

00:45:51 John: And father sitter believed that I was on the straight and narrow and I'd been kicked out of theater sports and I started going to parties and I would walk around with a carton of milk.

00:46:01 John: And when people would say, hey, what are you doing at the party?

00:46:05 John: I thought you couldn't party.

00:46:06 John: I was like, well, I'm just drinking milk.

00:46:08 John: I'm just here to hang and I'm just drinking milk.

00:46:10 John: And I started filling the milk jug full of beer or the milk carton.

00:46:14 John: It was a quart of milk.

00:46:16 Merlin: Yeah, yeah.

00:46:16 John: And I'd fill it with beer.

00:46:17 John: And then I would sit and drink beer out of the milk carton so that when the word got back –

00:46:21 John: Because there were spies everywhere.

00:46:23 John: It was like the fucking Stassi in those Jesuit colleges.

00:46:27 John: Because there's so many do-gooders, so many fucking onion eaters in college.

00:46:33 Merlin: If you're with the Jesuits, they're like... You get a college full of Catholics in there, and you're going to have a lot of people who are going to be reporting back to Himmler or whoever.

00:46:44 Merlin: But what they were... Did you say to Himmler?

00:46:47 Merlin: Well, wait.

00:46:48 Merlin: Himmler's the one.

00:46:49 Merlin: Isn't Himmler the one?

00:46:50 Merlin: Didn't he run the SS?

00:46:51 Merlin: Yeah, yeah.

00:46:53 Merlin: I'm trying to think who ran Stasi.

00:46:56 John: Oh, it was Honecker.

00:46:58 John: I mean, Honecker didn't run Stasi, but... Oh, okay.

00:47:02 Merlin: But, so... I've been watching a lot of Hitler documentaries lately.

00:47:05 Merlin: Like, a lot, a lot.

00:47:07 John: That was basically what the show was about in the early days.

00:47:09 Merlin: Well, the funny thing is, last night, I watched a lot of TV yesterday.

00:47:12 Merlin: I had kind of a lazy day off yesterday.

00:47:15 Merlin: And I was doing different things.

00:47:17 Merlin: You know, some smart device things, some chores things.

00:47:21 Merlin: And my lady walked in, she was fixing to go to bed, and she said, what are you watching?

00:47:24 Merlin: I said, Hitler.

00:47:25 Merlin: She said, like, what Hitler?

00:47:26 Merlin: So it's just Hitler.

00:47:27 Merlin: Like a bunch of Hitler.

00:47:28 Merlin: What Hitler?

00:47:29 Merlin: I'm watching a lot of Hitler.

00:47:30 Merlin: And she said, does John Roderick still like Hitler?

00:47:32 Merlin: I said, yeah, I think he does still like.

00:47:34 Merlin: Well, no, in the sense of, like, I still think he thinks about Hitler.

00:47:37 Merlin: Then I moved on to improv and magic later, which I'd like to talk to that issue in a minute.

00:47:42 Merlin: But I've been watching a lot of Hitler and learning a lot about World War II.

00:47:46 Merlin: There's a channel, what do they call it?

00:47:49 Merlin: Yeah, channel on YouTube that I found.

00:47:51 Merlin: Hitler channel.

00:47:52 Merlin: Hitler channel.

00:47:52 Merlin: All day, all night.

00:47:58 Merlin: I did watch the MTV documentary too.

00:47:59 Merlin: But the, yeah, just learning about, yeah, basically just how it all kind of came together in the 30s.

00:48:08 Merlin: John, I don't have anywhere else to say this.

00:48:09 Merlin: I'm just going to say this.

00:48:10 Merlin: I just want to say one thing.

00:48:13 Merlin: And this is completely apropos of nothing.

00:48:15 Merlin: And it's so petty and so annoying.

00:48:17 Merlin: And because it's about Hitler, people would say things.

00:48:20 Merlin: Okay.

00:48:20 Merlin: You can say it here.

00:48:21 Merlin: It's a safe space.

00:48:22 Merlin: Okay, so last week, one of those danglings.

00:48:26 John: Did Hitler come to you in a dream again?

00:48:28 Merlin: Well, yeah.

00:48:30 Merlin: That sounds Catholic.

00:48:32 Merlin: Madden!

00:48:34 John: How many times do I have to tell you?

00:48:36 Merlin: I'm a regular Jojo Rabbit.

00:48:38 Merlin: But no, okay, so last week, one of those danglings.

00:48:41 Merlin: I'm a regular canine cruncher.

00:48:42 Merlin: Probably Marjorie Taylor Greene, but some, no, it was one of those dinglings, maybe Gohmert, but one of those guys was like, oh, Joe Biden wants to send people door to door to make you get a vaccine and they're going to take away your Bible and your gun and all this stuff.

00:48:57 Merlin: And they said, it's just like the brown shirts.

00:48:58 Merlin: Oh, the brown shirts.

00:48:59 Merlin: But then, like, okay, John, on cable news, everybody is – because of these liberal cable channels I watch sometimes – they say the brown shirts.

00:49:08 Merlin: You know, the brown – don't say brown shirts.

00:49:10 Merlin: The brown shirts went door to door collecting Jews for the Holocaust.

00:49:14 Merlin: And the first time I heard that, I thought, okay, they didn't have time to, like, have somebody actually Google that.

00:49:20 Merlin: Is that how it works?

00:49:21 Merlin: Well, even though I instantly like rolled my eyes for reasons that you understand, but they kept saying it.

00:49:29 Merlin: Fucking Anderson Cooper is like looking straight in this very like, oh, clutching Pearl's way going, oh, the brown shirts went door to door.

00:49:35 Merlin: Don't they know?

00:49:36 Merlin: Even my man, Wolf Blitzer, who knows this stuff and should know better is like the brown shirts, they're going door to door and they're, you know, taking them off to, you know.

00:49:44 Merlin: Poland.

00:49:46 Merlin: But no!

00:49:46 Merlin: The Brown Shirts ended in, I believe, the Night of the Long Knives.

00:49:50 Merlin: The Brown Shirts were the Ernst Röhm's group that basically bullied people on the streets.

00:49:55 Merlin: But by the... That's like six years before the Von See Conference even happened.

00:50:02 Merlin: It's, don't, no, that's not what, don't say that.

00:50:05 Merlin: I mean, I can only say this here, John.

00:50:07 Merlin: Do you feel me on this?

00:50:08 Merlin: Don't say that wrong.

00:50:10 Merlin: Like, get your facts straight.

00:50:11 Merlin: If you're going to make fun of somebody, and now probably it's going to come straight back on me, then I got some fact wrong, which would be totally fair.

00:50:17 Merlin: But my understanding is that the brown shirts were the group led by room, room, room, room, that were mostly the bullies that helped them

00:50:26 Merlin: like basically caused terror on the streets, but they were by no means in power yet.

00:50:30 Merlin: And by two years after he was in power, he killed them all.

00:50:35 Merlin: Well, I mean, he killed Rome and that kind of effectively ended the movement.

00:50:38 Merlin: Am I wrong, John?

00:50:39 John: No, it's the difference between the SA and the SS.

00:50:43 John: And a lot of people get this confused.

00:50:45 John: And I think what they- Totally different head.

00:50:47 John: The problem is that people continued, Germans continued to wear brown colored shirts-

00:50:55 John: Even after 1934.

00:50:58 John: But as you say, Merlin, you're absolutely right.

00:51:01 John: The brown shirts, although it continued...

00:51:04 John: As an idea, the twinkle in the brown shirt's eye was gone.

00:51:11 Merlin: He was in power and he needed to court the industrialists.

00:51:17 Merlin: But also, he just thought room was getting a little too big for his boots in some ways.

00:51:22 Merlin: And he knew he needed to sever ties with his closest dude.

00:51:26 John: Yeah, SS is the result of that purge that you're describing.

00:51:32 John: Night of the Long Knives, it's in all the books.

00:51:33 Merlin: Gestapo is the secret police, but the SS are, that's the broader, they're the ones who are doing the initial gas trucks and stuff, right?

00:51:40 John: Yeah, they're the bad ones.

00:51:42 Merlin: They are the bad ones, that's a good point.

00:51:43 John: Are we the baddies?

00:51:44 John: That's what they all should have said.

00:51:46 Merlin: Sorry.

00:51:46 Merlin: That just bugged me.

00:51:47 Merlin: Anyway, that was Hitler.

00:51:49 Merlin: John, hear us talking about that.

00:51:52 Merlin: That must have been another brick in the wall for you.

00:51:56 Merlin: That must have been... You said... It's a bummer.

00:51:59 John: How could I have any meat if I didn't eat my pudding?

00:52:02 Merlin: That's right.

00:52:02 Merlin: You can't have any pudding if you don't eat your meat.

00:52:04 John: Yeah.

00:52:06 John: I look at these guys...

00:52:08 John: These these people who who make things like Ted Leo and and I go that seems Like it's still to me Seems superhuman and then I look at them and I go.

00:52:26 John: Oh, it's not superhuman.

00:52:28 John: It's very human and It's just that It's just that a little turn here or there this guy Bill Lawrence who produces the show is

00:52:39 John: Who, if you look at him, he looks like Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

00:52:43 John: He looks exactly like... And he's the same age.

00:52:46 John: He's the same age as me.

00:52:47 John: He's exactly the same age as I am.

00:52:50 John: And he... I know.

00:52:51 John: And he graduated from College of William and Mary, which, you know, is a fine college.

00:52:57 John: Yep.

00:52:58 John: But it's not... Juilliard.

00:52:59 John: It's not... And he started to write for TV, I'm sure, as some kid that got kicked around the writer's room.

00:53:07 John: And then...

00:53:09 John: He created Scrubs in 2001.

00:53:13 John: And he's the writer, director, producer of Scrubs.

00:53:17 John: So in 2001, I was, what, 32 years old?

00:53:24 John: 32, 33, yeah.

00:53:25 John: And I was just starting to work or just finishing up on the first Long Winters record.

00:53:34 John: And Bill Lawrence was...

00:53:37 John: the showrunner and writer and director of Scrubs.

00:53:42 John: And what is the difference in scale?

00:53:45 John: Well, you know, we play this game all the time.

00:53:47 John: I spent all of my 20s sitting in cafes, smoking cigarettes, staring out the window and talking about how we're going to put on a show.

00:53:55 John: One of these days we're going to put on a show.

00:53:56 John: It's going to be the best show ever.

00:53:58 John: And somewhere in America, there were people exactly our age who were putting on shows.

00:54:05 John: Who were actually putting on shows.

00:54:07 John: And where was the moment?

00:54:10 John: I think that moment happened way earlier because, of course, there were also kids that were going to medical school or were in the astronaut program.

00:54:17 John: So in the end, it becomes just a fucking hamster wheel that I'm on.

00:54:23 John: comparing myself to other Generation X people who are making things.

00:54:27 Merlin: I find it very difficult not to.

00:54:28 Merlin: I always have.

00:54:30 John: You know, I was really on to something, and then I just fear myself, and it's just like, oh, I'm doing it again.

00:54:35 Merlin: When I was a kid, I was obsessed with the Guinness Book of World Records, and I would acquire a new copy every year.

00:54:41 Merlin: And at some point, there was a new entry with a photograph of a kid from Japan, I want to say, who was my age within a year or so, who I think was at least in Guinness as having the highest IQ in the world.

00:54:57 Merlin: And I was so goddamn mad.

00:54:58 Merlin: What a kick in the pants.

00:54:59 Merlin: I was just, I mean, that says so much that helps you understand me, is I was envious of a Japanese boy because he was smart.

00:55:09 John: Yeah, yeah.

00:55:10 John: Well, think about it.

00:55:11 John: I mean, what did I do?

00:55:14 John: I cutseled up to Hodgman and now Ken, the two like smartest white boys in the universe.

00:55:23 John: And what have I done?

00:55:25 John: And to you, I cutseled myself up to you.

00:55:28 John: Smartest boy in the universe of 2000.

00:55:29 John: And what year were you the smartest boy in the universe?

00:55:33 John: 2003?

00:55:33 John: Oh, yeah.

00:55:34 Merlin: Right about then.

00:55:35 Merlin: It wasn't even for the whole year, though.

00:55:37 Merlin: It was more like an employee of the month type situation.

00:55:39 John: And what am I doing?

00:55:40 John: I'm standing around.

00:55:41 John: I'm holding all your guys' water, right?

00:55:43 John: I'm like, oh, here I am.

00:55:44 John: Not the smartest boy in the universe, but he's right over there.

00:55:46 John: If you want to talk to him, you don't even really have to talk to me.

00:55:51 John: But he's over there if you want to talk to him.

00:55:53 John: I don't consider that a cutsel at all.

00:55:56 John: Yeah, well.

00:55:57 Merlin: No, I was cussling to you, buddy.

00:55:58 Merlin: I'm bad at cussling.

00:56:00 Merlin: You were the superstar to whom one was being cussled.

00:56:03 John: I know.

00:56:03 John: Well, and Hodgman and Ken would say the same thing, but in the end, I'm standing there holding their coat.

00:56:10 Merlin: Well, I don't know about that.

00:56:15 Merlin: Okay, okay.

00:56:16 Merlin: I don't want to be sad.

00:56:18 Merlin: No, no, no, it's not sad.

00:56:19 Merlin: It's a little sad.

00:56:20 John: The other day...

00:56:22 John: I'm wrestling a lot, and one of the things I've noticed is I play this little game.

00:56:27 John: It's not threes.

00:56:28 John: It's a different game.

00:56:29 John: It's Minesweeper, the game that I was addicted to 25 years ago because it came bundled with any IBM product, and I still had a PC, and Minesweeper was one of the three games, along with Pong and Breakout, and I got addicted to it.

00:56:45 John: Well, I found it again.

00:56:46 John: I put it on my phone, and I sit and play Minesweeper, but I noticed the other day

00:56:52 John: that while I was playing Minesweeper, I had started to churn on Bean Dad.

00:57:00 John: I was thinking about it.

00:57:02 Merlin: Oh, because your hands were busy, and in that idle moment, it crept in.

00:57:06 John: And this is the thing, right?

00:57:07 John: This is why I play Minesweeper, because I can talk on the phone and play it.

00:57:10 John: It doesn't take my whole brain.

00:57:13 John: But somehow, because I've been so...

00:57:17 John: vigilant for the last six months about that tendency I have to churn.

00:57:23 John: And I knew even in January this, you know, right now, like I have come to terms with being dad.

00:57:33 John: I, I, I, I feel like I understand where it is, what it, what it's, where it sits in my life.

00:57:40 John: When I look back on it, I feel like I have a handle on what happened.

00:57:45 John: This isn't going to be a thing where I,

00:57:47 John: because I am dealing with it and coping with it in real time.

00:57:56 John: But I caught myself playing Minesweeper and churning.

00:58:02 John: You know, thinking about this person, thinking about that person.

00:58:05 John: What would I say to them?

00:58:07 John: What would I do if somebody asked me?

00:58:09 John: What about this?

00:58:09 John: What am I going to do if they ever call?

00:58:12 John: I sent a text to that person and they didn't reply.

00:58:14 Merlin: Yeah.

00:58:15 John: And I caught myself.

00:58:15 Merlin: Just filling in your mind.

00:58:16 Merlin: Your mind just kind of reels and swims and you're filling in details for non-existent events.

00:58:22 Merlin: Right.

00:58:22 John: And I'm sitting, I'm playing this game for an hour.

00:58:26 John: And I...

00:58:26 John: I like suddenly kind of like shocked myself awake and realized, wait a minute, I just spent an hour just thinking bad thoughts about being dead.

00:58:38 John: And I protected myself against this very thing.

00:58:41 John: The real damage of that whole event would be if I churned on it for the rest of my life.

00:58:50 John: That's the, that is where the,

00:58:54 John: The pain and punishment lies.

00:58:57 John: And only I can choose whether or not I turn it into that.

00:59:04 John: And I wasn't even aware.

00:59:07 John: How did it creep in?

00:59:08 John: And so, you know, I play that Minesweeper game 50 times a day.

00:59:13 John: Because if I'm sitting, I check my email.

00:59:15 John: There's nothing there.

00:59:16 John: It's like anything on your phone.

00:59:18 John: Your brain just...

00:59:20 John: You don't even know how you got to Minesweeper.

00:59:23 John: You're just like, oh, shit, how did I open that?

00:59:25 John: And then you close it, and then you pick up your phone 30 seconds later, and you open Minesweeper.

00:59:29 John: And it's like, whoa.

00:59:31 John: But every time I played Minesweeper, I went immediately to churning.

00:59:37 John: And so I started to have this fight with myself.

00:59:40 John: I'm in there.

00:59:41 John: I'm playing Minesweeper, a thing I do not want to have to stop playing because life –

00:59:47 John: eternal you never die and so of course you want to spend six hours a day playing a mindless game because otherwise you know how do vampires like us pass the time and I'm fighting myself like no don't think about that do not have this conversation with this person in your imagination it's not helpful it's not good and I

01:00:15 John: So I'm, you know, I'm tangling with this.

01:00:18 John: And I'd worked so hard to keep, to spend the last six months, like, trying to not have bitterness be a ghost that haunts my house, that's in my car with me, that sits and talks to me while I'm driving.

01:00:36 Merlin: Oh, God, that's so good.

01:00:38 John: And I felt like I was doing really good.

01:00:41 John: And I am.

01:00:43 John: It's just that...

01:00:45 John: Boy, that you leave the door open a crack, you know, and the house is full of mosquitoes.

01:00:50 John: And you're like, how did you find your way?

01:00:52 John: How many mosquitoes are there in the world that you all got in here through like a hole in the screen?

01:01:00 Mm-hmm.

01:01:03 Merlin: No, I, yeah.

01:01:06 Merlin: Yeah.

01:01:07 Merlin: No, I mean, yeah.

01:01:09 Merlin: No, I mean, yeah.

01:01:10 Merlin: Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, also along the lines of like, what I would call maybe night thoughts.

01:01:19 Merlin: I've had, I think of a friend of mine who had, I didn't really understand what insomnia was until I had a very close friend with actual insomnia.

01:01:28 Merlin: And I also remember reading an article about this many years ago, but like, it's one thing to not be able to sleep.

01:01:35 Merlin: Like, eh, sometimes we all have trouble sleeping.

01:01:37 Merlin: And it's another thing to have what a lot of insomniacs have, which is this progression of thoughts that

01:01:44 Merlin: that go way beyond, I wish I could just go to sleep, where in particular in this article, and this was kind of backed up by my friend, at some point you're up or maybe you never went to sleep and the thoughts come in about like all of these, all of these, your mind is just kind of like, you know, you're having a regular Leningrad.

01:02:02 Merlin: like all these things kind of coming at you at some point that turns into all the ways that one has been wronged and then that keeps you going for a couple hours but usually not long before the cock crows you're getting the oh shit all the ways that you've wronged others and it's different for everybody but that really was important to me in understanding insomnia because like a lot of things just slapping a noun on something doesn't really help you understand it

01:02:30 Merlin: If your first definition of insomnia is like, oh, for some reason I can't sleep tonight.

01:02:36 Merlin: Instead you go like, oh no, this is really about something much deeper and the not sleeping is a symptom rather than a cause in some ways.

01:02:44 Merlin: And I feel like that's kind of what you're describing here, which is how do those mosquitoes get in?

01:02:49 Merlin: Well, houses need doors and windows.

01:02:52 Merlin: And as hard as we try to like blot those things out,

01:02:56 Merlin: You know, one can make a practice, which I continue to do.

01:03:00 Merlin: One can make a practice of saying, I'll never control the triggers in life, but maybe I can slightly put my hand to the lever that keeps my response to that.

01:03:09 Merlin: But that doesn't mean the trigger things aren't going to come.

01:03:11 Merlin: And if you're having a vulnerable time, you're going to find some mosquitoes.

01:03:15 Merlin: And that sucks.

01:03:19 John: So I've been waiting for a long time to put...

01:03:22 John: A security system in my house ever since ever since that possum was in my walls.

01:03:28 Merlin: Sure.

01:03:29 John: And that possum stole my hundred ounce bricks of silver.

01:03:33 Merlin: Yeah.

01:03:34 John: I have wanted a comprehensive security system.

01:03:38 John: And I have gotten so many emails from Matt Howey about how I need to run cat six line through my ducks.

01:03:45 Merlin: Oh, yeah, you need to get cat six A probably.

01:03:48 John: Cat six A, yeah.

01:03:51 Merlin: Twisted pairs, you know.

01:03:54 Merlin: You need something that you can trust that will keep the mosquitoes out.

01:03:59 John: And I don't want to do bad op sex here.

01:04:02 Merlin: Mm-mm, mm-mm.

01:04:03 John: But I was, you know, I was it wasn't just that I was on the line because that's where I am now.

01:04:09 Merlin: Yes.

01:04:09 John: Hello.

01:04:10 John: Hi.

01:04:11 John: But a friend of mine bought some electrical plugs that you put into the wall and then you can control the plug from your phone.

01:04:21 Merlin: Right.

01:04:22 John: Because she had these lamps that she wanted to turn on and off.

01:04:26 John: And she wanted to turn them on and off from across the room.

01:04:30 John: And, you know, I remember at Jonathan Colton's house, one time we were sitting in the living room and he said, you want to see something?

01:04:36 John: And I was like, always.

01:04:37 John: And he said, lights turn red.

01:04:39 John: And there was like 10 seconds.

01:04:43 John: And then the lights turned red.

01:04:44 John: And he was like, how about that?

01:04:45 John: Am I right?

01:04:46 Merlin: Powerful.

01:04:46 John: It's pretty powerful.

01:04:47 John: And I was like, wow.

01:04:49 John: Wow.

01:04:49 John: I can't think of a reason why I would want that, but that's cool.

01:04:52 John: You can do it.

01:04:52 John: And he's like, yeah, I know me either.

01:04:53 John: I never do it.

01:04:54 John: But, you know, except when somebody's sitting here.

01:04:57 John: But this friend wanted the lights to go on and off and she put it in her phone.

01:05:01 John: And then, and then she was like, watch this.

01:05:02 John: And she did something on her phone and the lights, like two seconds later, the lights went click and they were off.

01:05:08 John: And I was like, that's cool.

01:05:10 John: And she said, I have two extra of these plugs.

01:05:13 John: Do you want them?

01:05:16 John: And.

01:05:18 John: I couldn't say no to that.

01:05:20 John: Right?

01:05:21 John: Some plugs.

01:05:22 John: Yeah.

01:05:22 Merlin: Well, I mean, free stuff is nice.

01:05:24 John: Yeah, you turn it on and off from your phone.

01:05:25 John: So I got these plugs, and I was trying to figure it out, and they were like, download the app.

01:05:29 John: Don't worry.

01:05:29 John: We won't try to pressure you into buying an upgrade in your Surface every time you log on.

01:05:34 John: Don't worry about it.

01:05:36 John: So I got these things because I got these Christmas lights outside.

01:05:39 John: I want to be able to turn them on and off, but it's like they're hooked together with an extension cord.

01:05:43 John: You know the drill.

01:05:44 Merlin: I do.

01:05:46 John: Well, so this line of products, as I'm downloading the app, I realize...

01:05:53 John: Oh, they have all these other things.

01:05:55 John: Now, I don't want to say the name of this company.

01:05:57 Merlin: That's bad OPSEC.

01:05:58 Merlin: Don't do it.

01:05:59 Merlin: It's bad OPSEC.

01:06:00 Merlin: You shouldn't even admit you have a house or electric.

01:06:02 Merlin: Let's be honest.

01:06:03 John: Well, I know.

01:06:03 John: And you and I both know that we both live in an undisclosed location somewhere.

01:06:07 Merlin: I'm in a heavily fortified compound.

01:06:10 John: I will say this.

01:06:11 John: It is daytime right now.

01:06:13 Merlin: But that's all I'll say about my location.

01:06:15 Merlin: Well, it's always daytime somewhere.

01:06:16 Merlin: Am I right?

01:06:17 Merlin: That's right.

01:06:18 John: Anyway, I log on to this thing trying to get these plugs to work.

01:06:23 John: And I see that this is one of those companies that's like, you remember that thing where it was like, we're crowdfunding a new kind of shoe.

01:06:31 John: And it's a sustainable shoe that's made by the Hmong people in the mountains of North Vietnam.

01:06:37 John: Is that a Kickstarter, John?

01:06:38 John: It's a Kickstarter, right?

01:06:39 John: And then once we get to $100,000, everybody's going to get these shoes.

01:06:43 John: Wow, we made $500,000.

01:06:45 John: And then it's like, wow, amazing.

01:06:48 John: This was one of those except the modern version of it, which is like, we're these people from Amazon, but we started a new company that's making these cool things.

01:06:56 John: Anyway, they're beautiful little things, but what they are is cameras.

01:07:01 John: Now, I don't want to mention the name because I'm hoping that they'll advertise on our show.

01:07:05 John: But maybe if I mention the name they'll advertise, which do you think is the better?

01:07:09 Merlin: No, let them wonder.

01:07:10 Merlin: Because, John, here's my thought.

01:07:11 Merlin: I'll cut this out.

01:07:12 Merlin: My thought is that if you just mentioned the idea that anybody who sells cameras could buy an ad, do you follow?

01:07:18 Merlin: Oh, good, good, good.

01:07:19 Merlin: The thing is you really restrict our prospects if you overly pre-qualify the funnel.

01:07:24 John: That's so smart.

01:07:25 Merlin: You're right.

01:07:25 John: Anybody that's selling a camera right now or crowdfunding a shoe might hear it and say, that's us.

01:07:32 John: But these cameras are super cheap.

01:07:34 Merlin: These are different from the plugs.

01:07:35 Merlin: You got two plugs, but you go to the website because you got to go download the app from the cloud, and then you're noticing they also have cameras.

01:07:41 John: There it is.

01:07:42 John: You got it.

01:07:43 John: 100%.

01:07:44 John: So I'm like, how can you afford not to buy these things?

01:07:47 John: So I buy like seven cameras.

01:07:50 Merlin: Whoa.

01:07:50 John: You're creating a personal Panopticon.

01:07:54 John: I have a bag of GORP, good old raisins and peanuts, sitting here on the table that I paid more for than I paid for one of these cameras.

01:08:03 John: Damn.

01:08:04 John: And it's in the cloud.

01:08:06 John: It doesn't.

01:08:07 John: Yeah, it is.

01:08:08 John: It doesn't cost money, quote unquote, doesn't cost money until you log on to the thing.

01:08:12 John: And they're like, hey, if you really want any features at all, you've got to get this new program that's like $5,000 or whatever.

01:08:18 John: Still cheaper than if you put Cat 6A through your house.

01:08:21 Merlin: Yeah, that's a serious capital expense.

01:08:24 Merlin: Okay.

01:08:25 John: So I go around my yard with these little cameras because they're battery powered.

01:08:29 Merlin: They're battery powered.

01:08:29 Merlin: They're wireless.

01:08:30 Merlin: They're wire free.

01:08:30 Merlin: They're wireless.

01:08:31 John: Okay.

01:08:32 John: And so I start nailing them up to the trees.

01:08:34 John: Wow.

01:08:34 John: I'm like, you know what?

01:08:35 John: I'm going to put a camera in this tree.

01:08:36 John: I'm going to put a camera over in this tree.

01:08:37 John: Nobody thinks there's going to be a camera in the trees.

01:08:39 John: No.

01:08:40 John: Am I right?

01:08:40 Merlin: Absolutely not.

01:08:41 Merlin: They know to look for a key in the rock, but a camera in a tree, we're not there yet, maybe in five years.

01:08:46 Merlin: But right now, woof, you're way ahead of the curve on that.

01:08:48 Merlin: That's right.

01:08:49 Merlin: You're going to see them from the front.

01:08:50 Merlin: You're going to see them back from the side.

01:08:51 Merlin: You're going to see if they have an unusual gate.

01:08:53 Merlin: You'll be able to say enhance.

01:08:54 Merlin: Now print me a hard copy, something like that.

01:08:57 John: People are looking for a toad in the hole, but they're not looking for a camera in the tree.

01:09:00 Merlin: That's a good point.

01:09:01 John: So I got cameras in the trees.

01:09:04 John: So now I'm the guy who's looking at his phone all the time, looking at his house from what the house looks like from the trees.

01:09:09 John: And the other night I'm sitting in here and I hear voices in the yard.

01:09:17 John: which i've never heard before i have never even though i have a large property just be clear sorry just be clear but you're hearing it through like say a window i'm in the living room and you're not currently viewing your panopticon on your mobile device no okay i'm looking i'm looking out the window it's the dark i can hear whispered voices in my yard never heard that before

01:09:40 John: And I don't like that.

01:09:44 John: I don't like it at all.

01:09:45 John: So I go on my phone and I call up the app and I get spinning beach balls.

01:09:53 John: This isn't going to sell this product to people, but I get spinning beach balls because I hadn't updated the firmware or something.

01:10:03 John: So I run outside and I go, get the fuck out of my yard.

01:10:09 John: And I hear all this like whispering and tittering and running.

01:10:12 John: And I see, you know, a couple of male shadows run out of my driveway into the street.

01:10:21 John: I'm like, what the hell is going on?

01:10:23 John: And I go back and I look at my.

01:10:26 John: phone and still been submitting beach balls.

01:10:28 John: So I go back out on the porch and I hear them kind of over across the street.

01:10:32 John: So I run out there into the street and there's a car and there are three teenage boys old enough to drive a car 17 probably.

01:10:47 John: They're all blonde.

01:10:48 John: They all have swimmers bodies and floppy hair.

01:10:54 John: And I run over to them and I'm like, what the hell are you guys doing?

01:10:58 John: And they're like, what?

01:10:59 John: And I was like, what were you doing in my yard?

01:11:02 John: And they go, we weren't in your yard, sir.

01:11:07 John: And I said, well, there was some teenage boy in my yard 35 seconds ago.

01:11:13 John: And now I come out here in front of my house on the street and there are three teenage boys in a car.

01:11:17 John: I'm assuming one of you was in my yard.

01:11:20 John: And they do the thing where they go.

01:11:24 John: Sir, we weren't in your yard.

01:11:27 John: Oh, sir, never.

01:11:32 John: And I'm like a stormtrooper on Tatooine where I'm like, well, how can you be so bold faced?

01:11:44 John: You were in my yard.

01:11:46 John: We both know you were in my yard.

01:11:47 Merlin: Yeah.

01:11:48 Merlin: You can't guess that a stormtrooper.

01:11:49 John: Sir, no.

01:11:51 John: And all three of them, you know, they all take up this, like... God, I hate these kids.

01:11:54 Merlin: I hate them already.

01:11:55 John: Big smiles, you know.

01:11:56 John: Sure.

01:11:56 John: No, sir.

01:11:57 John: Not smiles.

01:11:58 John: Concerned.

01:11:59 Merlin: These are swimmers of privilege.

01:12:00 Merlin: You can tell these kids come from a moneyed family.

01:12:02 Merlin: You can already tell.

01:12:03 John: Sir, how can we help you, sir, find these boys that have been in your yard?

01:12:09 Yeah.

01:12:10 John: And I become more and more like I'm losing my mind.

01:12:14 John: Agitated.

01:12:16 John: Here comes a teenage boy walking down the street.

01:12:18 John: This is the middle of the night.

01:12:19 John: And so I run over to this teenage boy walking down the street and I cost him, what are you doing?

01:12:24 John: And he's like, what?

01:12:25 John: I'm just walking.

01:12:26 John: And I'm like, well, what about these three guys?

01:12:29 John: And the kids in the car, like, sir, it's not like we know every teenager in the neighborhood.

01:12:36 John: And then the kid who's walking along the street is like, well, I feel, I feel intimidated.

01:12:41 John: And I was like, you feel intimidated.

01:12:44 John: And I'm standing in the middle of the road with these kids and

01:12:48 John: And all of a sudden I become get off my lawn guy.

01:12:55 John: I'm like, what the hell are you kids doing out here?

01:13:00 John: And, and so they just have got, they're just twisting me, you know, sir, maybe we should call, maybe we should call, uh, like an ambulance to see if they can help you find the mysterious kids that you think are in your yard.

01:13:17 John: And eventually I just realized like, I'm, I'm all the way wound up in this web, you know?

01:13:26 John: And I just say, everybody just go home.

01:13:30 John: Good night.

01:13:32 John: Like kiss your parents, you know, life is short.

01:13:37 John: And I go back in and I'm like, how did, I don't care if they're in my yard, frankly, like,

01:13:43 John: They did exactly the exact stupid, ugly, creepy teenage boy thing that I did when I was that age.

01:13:50 John: Oh, I did stuff like that constantly.

01:13:51 John: What do you mean, officer?

01:13:52 Merlin: No, we were never... So it's partly the yard, it's partly the whispering, but it's ultimately the apparent denial.

01:14:01 Merlin: That's what really kind of sets you off here, correct?

01:14:04 Merlin: Well... Because first, you got keyed up.

01:14:06 Merlin: You got keyed up because you heard stuff, but it was the going outside and that not turning out the way you expected.

01:14:11 John: Right, right.

01:14:12 John: Because I was not, I had never, oh, at one point, the kid that was like, I feel intimidated.

01:14:18 Merlin: Yeah.

01:14:19 John: I was like, you feel intimidated.

01:14:20 John: And one of the kids in the car said, well, sir, I mean, you are like 40 years old and running around the street yelling at people.

01:14:29 John: And I was like, what world am I in?

01:14:32 Merlin: This is after midnight.

01:14:34 Merlin: This is after midnight.

01:14:35 Merlin: There's a group of teenage-ish boys in a car after midnight near your house.

01:14:41 Merlin: Yes.

01:14:42 John: Okay.

01:14:44 John: So I am looking at my phone after all is said and done and the video finally pops up.

01:14:53 John: I have a camera in a tree and it watches as one of these teenage boys runs into my yard and hides behind my car, crouches down and hides behind the car because he's freaking playing hide and seek.

01:15:07 John: with the other teenage boys.

01:15:09 John: They're doing some, there's no booze involved.

01:15:13 John: He's not even pissing on the tire.

01:15:15 John: Just basic teen ninja training mission.

01:15:19 John: Yeah, he's 16, 17 years old.

01:15:21 John: They're running down the street.

01:15:22 John: He's like teehee and he hides behind the truck.

01:15:25 John: And I went out into the street and I turned it into a whole production where I'm this fucking dupe,

01:15:34 John: This middle-aged guy who's like rattling, who's got a rake in one hand, and he's like, you rabbits keep eating my lettuce.

01:15:43 Merlin: Kicking slippers.

01:15:46 John: And they get the gratification of like, what do you mean, sir?

01:15:50 John: When I always pictured myself, I always imagined myself as the guy that was like, kids, let me tell you.

01:15:56 John: Here's how, you know, like, I don't care if you're in my yard.

01:15:58 John: Why don't you come in the house and have a beer?

01:16:00 John: Let me tell you about how it is to be a kid.

01:16:02 John: And instead, I'm like, this guy, my Minesweeper game was interrupted, and I'm out there yelling, and I was the GOAT.

01:16:19 Merlin: I think you're being a little bit hard on yourself.

01:16:21 Merlin: I don't know if I would have chased teens, because I'm very scared of teens, but I don't hear any part—not that this is going to make your day any better—

01:16:30 Merlin: For shizzle.

01:16:32 Merlin: But I think I would have had a very similar reaction to every part of this.

01:16:37 Merlin: If I had been you in each part of this little play, I would have felt the same.

01:16:41 Merlin: I would have felt freaked out with the voices.

01:16:44 Merlin: I would have felt moved to probably go out and see what's going on.

01:16:48 Merlin: And I probably would not have confronted them, but if I did, I would have been crazy frustrated about how that went.

01:16:54 Merlin: I mean, there was a moment.

01:16:55 John: What's most bugging you about it?

01:16:57 John: There was a moment when I looked around and I was like, wait a minute, you're out here in the dark and there are four six foot two swimmers and you're telling them that you're going to.

01:17:07 John: Get to the bottom of this.

01:17:09 John: Like, they could just put you in a garbage can if they wanted to, but they're all way too, you know, like, sir, no.

01:17:19 Merlin: Think about it, John.

01:17:20 Merlin: If you think about it, really, they're committed to the improv.

01:17:24 Merlin: Oh, for sure they were.

01:17:26 Merlin: In a way, you broke character a little bit, I guess.

01:17:28 Merlin: Or maybe, were you yes anding?

01:17:30 Merlin: Like, do you feel like it was a successful scene, a successful exercise?

01:17:34 John: No, I was out in the street and they were like, sir, we are three tigers.

01:17:38 John: And I was like, I'm a banker in the middle of Manhattan.

01:17:42 John: And they were like, sir, we're tigers, tigers.

01:17:48 John: And I was like, how many monies do you have?

01:17:51 Merlin: There's a famous story of Joan Rivers doing improv with Del Close in, I believe, the 50s.

01:17:55 Merlin: And she apparently was pretty notorious for not being very...

01:17:58 Merlin: good at it in a way that's very important for a Del Close environment.

01:18:03 Merlin: And so Del Close is, they're going into this, this scene and he's saying something about like basically how he's so torn up about the divorce.

01:18:09 Merlin: And Jonah Rivers goes, what are you talking about?

01:18:11 Merlin: We're not even married.

01:18:17 So good.