Ep. 433: "Nag Flag"
Merlin: Hello.
John: Hi, John.
John: Oh, hello, Merlin.
John: How's it going?
John: It's going pretty well.
John: It feels like I haven't talked to you in a while.
John: Hmm.
John: Hmm.
John: That's a good sign.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: We got a lot to catch up on.
John: What have you been doing lately?
Merlin: I'm all right.
Merlin: I'm all right.
Merlin: I'm all right.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: I'm great.
John: Okay.
John: Okay.
Merlin: Great.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Great.
Great.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Against technology, even the podcasters must contend in vain.
John: Speaking of technology, you know, my computer says that it's been 449 days since I had last backed up my computer.
John: Your computer says that?
John: Yeah, it throws up a little flag.
John: Is that helpful?
John: For the last 449 days, it has not been.
John: No, it's been a window that I wanted to close out and it made me feel guilty and it made me feel irresponsible.
John: And it did not make me go buy a hard drive and begin the process.
John: But the other day, I did buy a hard drive.
John: I want to hear about that.
John: I got an STGX 2000.
John: Oh, you got the STGX.
John: Is that right?
John: STGX 2000 400.
John: So you wouldn't say 2400.
John: You would say STGX 2000.
John: Well, it's a tonal language.
Merlin: STGX.
Merlin: Oh, man.
Merlin: I got a lot of Bluetooth problems.
Merlin: STGX.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Hard drive.
Merlin: That's great.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: I just also want to point out in passing, there are words that, you know me, I like a word.
Merlin: I like a distinction.
John: I don't know a guy that likes a word or a distinction more than you.
Merlin: That might be accurate, but I don't know if it's correct.
Merlin: I think that qualifies.
Merlin: I know we don't say this anymore, but I think what you're getting there, when it says it's been 449 days since you last backed up, I'm going to say that is a form of nagging.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: And I'm going to tell you, I think nagging is not useful because I think nagging is a thing where, especially if you're dealing with a procrastinator, and I've met a couple of those, you're not making it better.
Merlin: You're not really providing a path to...
Merlin: to doing a thing that nominally should be done.
Merlin: It's mainly just it becomes this din.
Merlin: And if you've ever... I've been a nagger.
Merlin: I've been a nagger.
Merlin: I don't know if we say that word anymore either.
Merlin: I know we don't say naggerly.
Merlin: But here's the problem.
Merlin: Wouldn't it...
Merlin: Okay, now here's the thing.
Merlin: With John Roderick, would this be useful or would this be passive-aggressive or would this be something else?
Merlin: I think instead of nagging you, it should give you like a suggestion or it should give you something.
Merlin: It's saying, hey, buddy, it's been a while.
Merlin: Just seeing that, I mean, something magical happened on day 450 or what magical thing happened on day 446 that made you go out and get the STGX or whatever.
John: Day 446, that's a great Rush album.
Merlin: You know, I was just reading an article of Alex Lifeson explaining why they don't improvise live.
Merlin: Oh, will you send me that?
Merlin: I would really like to read that.
Merlin: Yeah, of course, of course.
Merlin: I guess all I'm trying to say is it would be nice to give people a path to success to clarify what it is that we're trying to accomplish here because that kind of nagging is not good for anybody.
Merlin: You just see it and now you're, I feel like me, you get mad at the nag.
Merlin: And I'm not talking here, I'm not talking, this is not a gendered thing.
Merlin: This is not a, no, no, no, no.
Merlin: We're not talking about being bossy.
Merlin: Well, I'm the mayor of this town.
Merlin: Stupid.
Merlin: The, um...
Merlin: Listen, you know people at Apple, right?
John: Oh, so many.
John: Right?
John: I mean, you've known people at Apple all this time, this entire time.
John: Yeah, I'll talk about it, sure.
John: So let me ask you this.
John: What if the little thing, the little nag, the little flag, the nag flag, what if the little nag flag actually said, you need to back up your computer.
John: Here's a link to a hard drive you could buy.
John: through the Apple Store, and I know the Apple Store doesn't sell a lot of hard media, but why doesn't Apple on their page where they have, oh, it's the new Mac and it's the new this and it's the new that, they never throw up accessories there, accessories.
John: Uh-huh.
John: Why don't they link?
John: Why don't they, I mean, and everybody would be mad.
John: Everybody would be like, oh, it's a closed system and Apple, it's a factory or it's a, what is it, a company store and we can't, we all are living in
John: That's right.
John: This is a factory, not a circus, like they say in Les Mis.
John: Yeah, it's a factory, not a circus.
John: But if they had thrown that up, if they had made it easy for me, just click on this link, we'll send you the box.
Merlin: You know, I call it an actionable item.
Merlin: I know that's a term of art and law.
Merlin: Your father would probably not like me saying that.
Merlin: It's something you can act upon.
Mm-hmm.
John: And that's what I needed.
John: What I didn't want to do is get, because what that's nagging me to do is go on Amazon and buy a fucking thing and get it here.
John: I didn't want to do that.
Merlin: I mean, see, my question is, and I know you realize you don't have a screen grab of this, but was it that clear?
Merlin: Because I think part of the problem with a nag is at a certain point with a nag, the nagger and the nag, oh boy, and the nag-ee.
Merlin: I know, it's tricky.
Merlin: You're really tiptoeing around here.
Merlin: Nag-or, the nag-or and the nag-ette.
Merlin: Nag-or.
Merlin: Well, that doesn't sound that much better.
Merlin: The thing is, when the Nagor leave Mordor, that's when you have... Mordor, one does not just walk into the Apple Store.
John: Why didn't they just have the Eagles take them to the Apple Store the whole time?
John: That's what I wanted to know.
John: Why don't they make the whole plan out of Gandalf?
John: I needed somebody.
John: You're right.
Merlin: But you know what I'm saying?
Merlin: The problem with the Nagor and the Nagese, right, is that at some point in the Nag, it's just become, I know we don't say Mexican standoff either, but it's become a little bit of a...
Merlin: It's become a little bit of a good, the bad, and the ugly situation.
Merlin: I know we don't say ugly anymore either, or crazy.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: I know we don't say, there's so many things we don't say, but you follow John.
John: We don't listen to this podcast anymore.
Merlin: Now the Nagors and the Nagrixies are just having a Central American standoff about this.
Merlin: Who's going to be right?
Merlin: Who's going to wait this out longer?
Merlin: And if you're anything like me, and I hope you're not, you're the one who's eventually going to go, nag all you want, brother.
Merlin: I'm just, every day, just keep it coming.
Merlin: Keep it coming.
Merlin: Just,
John: For 449 days.
John: You know, when it was 30 days, when it said it's been 30 days since you last backed up your computer, I was like, what's 30 days?
John: And when it was 90 days, I was like, all right, I probably have put some stuff on there.
Merlin: 90 days, same as cash, bad credit, no credit.
Merlin: 90 days is a knowable number.
Merlin: 449 days is a weird-ass number.
John: 150 days since you backed up your last computer, it starts to be... You know, if they had not nagged me at all until...
John: Day 175.
John: If I had not seen a nag flag that entire time and then one popped up and it was like 175 days is the length of time we have determined to be too long to go without backing up your computer.
John: Signed, your friends at Apple.
John: And especially, here's a link to a really sleek, really like futuristic, like
John: like sexy
John: Basically like a sex drive.
John: Sex drive.
John: At a reasonable price.
Merlin: Oh, you're saying you put a little bit of pixie dust on it.
Merlin: You get people excited about it.
Merlin: I would have clicked on that shit so fast.
Merlin: You sell the sizzle, not the steak.
John: Am I right?
John: That's exactly it.
John: You know, you pump the smell of the Cinnabon into the mall.
John: Oh, of course you do.
John: Of course you do.
John: I would have bought two of them.
John: I would have come home.
John: I would have opened it like it was my birthday.
John: I would have plugged it in.
John: If it had said something like, once you back up your files, we're going to give you...
John: 10% extra.
John: I don't know what.
John: Computer cycles.
John: We're going to give you 10% extra computer cycles.
John: No, we're going to give you one more additional one of the new iPhone charger cords that aren't compatible with any of the other little wall warts you've collected for the last 15 years.
John: We're going to make it slightly easier on you to live in our ecosystem of products.
John: by recognizing that by changing that one little USB adapter, we have fucked you out of what was effectively like you squirreling away the walnuts of those wall warts.
John: Walnuts of the wall warts.
John: You know, you must have had a bin of those little wall warts, right?
Merlin: How many of those did you have?
Merlin: john john can i okay but okay while we're at it though i want to problematize this further and say okay we used to have the 30 pins nobody loved the 30 pins it's weird to go into a hotel back when we used to go to hotels and they have the classic sort of i home alarm clock with the 30 pins and they still have that today they still have it you're gonna put your little phone on it so yeah i'm not gonna put that on there it's like a fucking technology glory hole i'm not putting that in there well
John: Sure, sure.
John: They're going to tap into your mainframe.
Merlin: Get your mainframe right off the data.
Merlin: So on the face of it, you go, oh, man, this sucks.
Merlin: You used to have 30 pins.
Merlin: Then we got the lightning.
Merlin: And now there's also USB-C.
Merlin: And this is boring, so I'm not going to get super into it.
Merlin: But then you've got to talk about what's on the other end of the cord.
Merlin: Wait a minute.
John: What's on the other end of the cord?
Merlin: What's on the other end of the cord?
Merlin: What's on the other end of the cord?
Merlin: Because Tom was.
Merlin: What is on the other end?
Merlin: Well, all of the things.
Merlin: Because the time was, you'd get what's called a USB-A with that dumb little, what you described as a wall wart, on your 30-pin jack, okay?
Merlin: But now, guess what?
Merlin: There's different kinds of USB-As that can handle different amounts of power.
Merlin: So you do still have the classic USBs that got to go somewhere, right?
Merlin: And like Michael Stipe says, you know, where is where?
Merlin: But then you've also got, so, but then sometimes that could be, you could do, you could have a USB-C to lightning, right?
Merlin: You could have a USB-C to USB-C.
Merlin: I'm saying because there are two ends to every cable, at least, there are many more options now.
Merlin: Plus, what you described as the wallboard, the little dongus, those have different amounts of power.
Merlin: Good luck reading the tiny, very light letters on your little charger.
Merlin: Because you know there's letters?
Merlin: If you look under the prongs, look by the prongs, look by the prongs.
Merlin: There's letters on there.
Merlin: And it'll say somewhere.
Merlin: What do the letters tell you?
Merlin: What do they tell you?
Merlin: Eventually, if you zoom in, it'll say something like this is a five watt thing that'll do jack shit for anything but like an iPhone.
Merlin: Anyway, I agree with you.
Merlin: Five watt thing that does jack shit.
Merlin: It's a five watt thing that does jack shit.
Merlin: Also, Apple's website I think is not super easy to use even when you know what you want.
Merlin: What I want is a guarantee, no more attempts on my father's life.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: But even when you know what you want, it can be a little bit complicated.
Merlin: As I've described elsewhere, I've on two occasions in the last calendar year bought the wrong computer because I thought I was hitting the right thing and I wasn't.
Merlin: That's because I'm dumb.
Merlin: But even if I want to go buy a Dongus or even if I want to go get a different watch band, you do have to go do a search.
Merlin: You have to search.
Merlin: There's not like a section you click on.
Merlin: You do a search, and it says HomeKit accessories, or it says watch bands, and you've got to dig in, dig in, dig in, dig in.
Merlin: I am sure to tell you that even if you do go in and get a Seagate SGTX SuperSex, is it going to be compatible?
Merlin: Can you get it?
Merlin: When does it deliver?
Merlin: All of those things.
Merlin: And it's certainly not a path to completion that I would consider very salutary when you get the 449 pop-up.
Merlin: That's no good.
Yeah.
John: It's not, and I have no idea what happened.
John: I was buying extension cables because, as you know, I don't know.
John: I was about to say I don't know if you're like this, but of course you're like this.
John: Every once in a while, I'll buy some extension cables, and I want them to be a certain way.
John: Right, I don't want, I got a lot of extension cables around here that were bought by other people.
Merlin: You're talking about the kind of cables you use to charge an Apple thing.
John: No, no, no, no, I'm talking about.
John: You're talking about a power strip?
John: I'm talking about an extension cord.
John: That's what we actually call them, an extension cord.
Merlin: Okay, like an electrical 110, plug it into the pig face and make the electrons flow, like the spice.
John: Make the electrons flow.
John: And what I've got here in this house, 1952 house, is a lot of two-prong, uh,
John: Wall systems here.
Merlin: Yeah, that's our wall system.
Merlin: Ungrounded systems.
Merlin: We have rooms with one outlet.
Merlin: We have rooms with one outlet in it.
John: Which is not up to code.
John: I got a lot of outlets here because the guy that built the house was an electrical engineer.
John: He put outlets everywhere.
John: He also wired the house.
John: Here's the best part about it.
John: Not the best part, but a part.
John: He...
John: There are a couple of rooms in this house that actually just have a quarter-inch jack in the wall because he was a ham radio guy.
Merlin: A quarter-inch, the classic quarter-inch mono that worked on everything from operating switchboards to headphone jacks eventually.
John: Yeah, and it's a guitar cable.
John: A guitar cable, basically, yeah.
John: And he was, I don't know what, he had his ham radio on downstairs?
John: He could plug your guitar into your house.
John: Yeah, right.
John: Well, you know, Chris Wall actually did that.
John: He built a house where he put...
John: He put like patch bays in all the walls so that he could turn his entire house into a recording studio.
Merlin: First kitchen in Bellingham to have plate reverb.
John: A lot of people don't know that.
John: If you can imagine buying that house from him after he moved out.
John: Yes.
John: And the real estate agent walking you through going, and you'll see that there are XLR inputs and outputs in every room just in case.
John: He took the mixing board.
John: Just in case you want an SM57 in your closet.
John: He took the patch bay with him.
John: You'd have to reinvent his whole system, but there's XLRs everywhere you look.
Merlin: That's interesting because then somebody like a Matt Howey or a Marco Arment, you might put Ethernet through your house.
Merlin: Some people might want HDMI.
Merlin: For example, my wife, when she was growing up,
Merlin: In another decade.
Merlin: My life.
Merlin: She had, they had one of those, you know, remember the fan, we've talked about this, the fancy houses that would have an intercom, like a Brady Bunch kind of.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: Her dad could like make announcements to all seven kids.
John: I had one of those.
John: Did you ever have a house?
Merlin: No, that one I never, no.
John: That was a little fancy.
John: The thing is, it's not.
John: She also played FM radio.
John: Ours had a radio too.
John: You would have to have a house so big that that would be easier than just yelling.
Yeah.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Like, for example, when I walk in, we get delivery a lot of nights.
Merlin: And I'll just, I'll bring the food up the steps.
Merlin: And here's what I'll say.
Merlin: I'll go, food!
Merlin: Here he goes.
John: Or, you know, here's the classic.
John: Mom!
John: Oh, God, yes.
John: Mom!
John: Wipe me.
John: No, you could go on the intercom and go, wipe me.
John: Mom.
John: Mom.
John: Mom.
John: Mom.
John: Mom.
John: And then wait.
John: And then wait.
John: And then maybe she'll be like, yeah.
John: You know, like, where could you be?
John: It goes up a fifth and gets a little louder.
Mom!
John: So this whole neighborhood is full of these houses with intercoms.
John: Somehow this one didn't have it because, I don't know, he was running a ham radio.
Merlin: That might have seemed pretty.
John: Everybody had their own microphone.
Merlin: That might be a little snorky for an electrical engineer.
Merlin: But it's interesting when you make, whether maybe this is going to be a sex dungeon, it could be a patio.
Merlin: But the kinds of things where I bought this fucking house, I'm going to make this for me.
Merlin: I'm going to make this the same way that some restaurants, they don't always succeed.
Merlin: I make the sandwich the way I want it.
Merlin: All cheeseburgers have a fried egg.
Merlin: Because there was a place in Sarasota that I went to probably twice ever, but once by accident and once for comedy value.
Merlin: And it's a place, you know, that phenomenon of like, hey, you go to see your urologist and it used to be a Pizza Hut or a Taco Bell.
Merlin: And you're like, oh, I totally was a Taco Bell.
Merlin: This place used to be-
Merlin: Drive-thru urologist.
Merlin: Oh, I love God of My Voices.
Merlin: But you go in, and this place used to be like a chain restaurant, maybe like a Sambo's, but this guy had bought this ex-Sambos or whatever.
Merlin: And so imagine, it's like a dream, John.
Merlin: There's no such thing as an ex-Sambos.
Merlin: Once you're a Sambo.
Merlin: It's like, that's Mike Squire will always be a Sambo.
Merlin: You're always a Sambo.
Merlin: He's so sleepy.
Merlin: Even if you're a urologist.
Merlin: Tango sueno.
Merlin: But so, but do you, but the guy, so imagine you walk into like, let's say, you know, for a sake of argument, imagine going to a 1970s Arby's.
Merlin: You know, 1970s Arby's looks like you go in, it's got like lots of like a branding motif, as in like literal brands.
Merlin: Got that big hat.
Merlin: The big hat, the large, tall hat.
Merlin: You got the horsey sauce, the whole nine.
Merlin: Pretty clean lobby most of the time.
Merlin: And that counter.
Merlin: Imagine a setup like that, but it's totally not corporate.
John: America's roast beef, yes, sir.
Merlin: Yes, sir.
Merlin: And there's a guy sitting in a ratty, not even probably a lazy boy, but a ratty recliner behind the counter.
Merlin: And yeah, he's low.
Merlin: Because you're supposed to be standing behind the counter.
Merlin: He's watching his stories.
Merlin: Under the counter.
Merlin: He's watching Bollywood videos.
Merlin: TV under the counter.
Merlin: Yeah, but you go in there and like, it seemed a little, it would be like, you know, if you came into my office, I'd be like, what are you doing here?
Merlin: You know?
Merlin: Anyway, you go in there and he had just a few things.
Merlin: And one of them was this burger that was so disgusting.
Merlin: It was this huge, giant, like hangover food kind of burger.
Merlin: And he made everything at the restaurant the way that he liked it.
Merlin: So if you made him get out of his fucking chair to go make you food, he was going to make it the way that he wanted it.
Merlin: The fried egg was not optional.
Merlin: Now, I feel like that happens with houses, don't you?
Merlin: I don't care if you're comfortable here.
John: It's my house.
John: I was talking to a friend just yesterday.
John: She's a very picky eater.
John: And she was talking about this experience going to a restaurant where, you know, it was like a fancy restaurant.
John: It was called Eggs and Pickles or whatever.
John: The Pickles and Pig.
John: Pickles and Pig Provisionary.
John: Exactly.
John: Or it's in the Northwest, so it's like Pickles and Orcas.
Merlin: And it's got that little X on it with a fork and a pig and like an Afro pick or something.
John: And so, you know, she's a picky eater and she said, but, you know, grown up person.
John: And she said, look, I just want to, you know, I just want a cheeseburger.
John: And they have cheeseburgers on the menu.
Merlin: She's like, I just want cheeseburger.
John: I just want to hold you between.
John: And that happened in the Northwest, as you know, or on the way to the Northwest.
John: Yeah.
John: But she.
Merlin: On the way?
Merlin: What are you talking about the Donner Party?
Merlin: What are you talking about?
John: No, no, no.
John: No, I'm talking about Five Easy Pieces or whatever.
John: Oh, Five Easy Pieces.
John: That's where he plays piano in the truck, right?
John: Plays the piano in the truck.
John: But that's also, he's on his way to San Juan Island or whatever.
John: I've never seen the whole movie.
Merlin: Oh, just that scene.
Merlin: I mean, I'm familiar with the scene.
Merlin: I've seen a lot of best of compilations and scenes.
Merlin: You had a show like That's Entertainment when we were kids that would show you the best of 20th Century Fox musicals.
John: The thing about Five Easy Pieces is it's one of those movies made in the 1970s where filmmakers did not care whether you were entertained.
Merlin: No, it's one of those.
Merlin: It feels like it just feels like.
Merlin: Actually, in a way, another Jack Nicholson movie really rises.
Merlin: It feels like a post, very post.
Merlin: God damn it, a third Jack Nicholson movie.
Merlin: I was going to say it's like a post Easy Rider.
Merlin: Oh, post Easy Rider.
Merlin: Which he was also in.
Merlin: But you think about One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, maybe nearly the apotheosis of that kind of movie.
Merlin: But there was a certain kind of, well, somebody gave, who's the guy from Apocalypse Now Can't Land on a Fraction?
Merlin: Dennis, not Dennis Wilson.
John: Dennis Walker.
John: Dennis Wapner.
John: Hopner.
Merlin: You get Hopner, you get Dennis Hopner.
Merlin: You give him 20, Roger Corman is going to give him $25,000.
Merlin: And I don't know.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I don't know anything about drugs.
Merlin: Half a pound of cocaine or something.
Merlin: Go make a movie, get a cool hat.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: But there's that feeling of like, I hear a lot of people talking about this, going to see Easy Rider and coming out of Easy Rider and being like, I didn't know you can make a movie like that.
John: And you're like, yeah, well, you probably shouldn't.
John: Like, you know, mostly.
John: The first time I saw Easy Rider as a teenager, I came out of it thinking, I didn't know you could sit through a movie like that.
John: Nope.
John: It took me a while because, boy, it sure looked good going in.
John: Absolutely.
Merlin: He's called Captain America.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You know, another good example.
Merlin: Similarly, Billy Jack.
Hmm.
Merlin: I don't know if you've ever seen Billy Jack.
Merlin: Billy Jack, you know of Billy Jack.
Merlin: You probably know Billy Jack the way I know Five Easy Pieces.
Merlin: Billy Jack is a, I think he's part Native American, but he's a guy who's basically protecting this Island of Misfit Toys school of super brilliant, super hippie kids from all the mean locals.
Merlin: And he beats the shit out of them.
John: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: And he says stuff like he says there's a very, what I consider a famous scene, where he says to a fellow there, you know what?
Merlin: I'm going to take my foot and kick you on that side of your face.
Merlin: And you know what?
Merlin: There's not a damn thing you can do about it.
Merlin: What?
Yeah.
Merlin: Is there any other plot to the movie besides that?
Merlin: Yep, yep, yep.
Merlin: Let's see.
Merlin: I think it's his wife plays the teacher at the school.
Merlin: And there's a very sweet Native American boy named Martin who says things like, we'd like to buy some ice cream cones, please.
Merlin: And then all the mean locals put ice cream on them as a larve.
Merlin: And all the little girls, they're total hippies.
Merlin: Oh, you know what the theme song is?
Merlin: The theme song is by Coven, the song One Tin Soldier.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: Go on and hate your children.
Merlin: Go ahead and cheat a friend.
Merlin: Anyway, I think you'd get a movie like that in the early 70s.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: This is before the Hollywood bad boys and the Scorcheses and the Coppolas.
Merlin: But I'm talking about gritty American.
Merlin: I don't know why I keep thinking of Roger Corman.
Merlin: Roger Corman has a connection with so many different people because he...
Merlin: hired so many people over time.
Merlin: But, you know, I'm thinking of that like, it's not exactly an exploitation movie.
Merlin: It's kind of a message movie.
Merlin: It might be a little bit wild and weird.
Merlin: It's not exactly an exploitation movie, but that was a style.
Merlin: Anyway, you can make your house however you want.
Merlin: It's America, man.
John: It's absolutely true.
John: The problem with my house is...
John: That I can't, like, I'm sitting here at my new dining room table.
John: It's not even new anymore.
John: Are you eating?
John: Nope.
John: Oh, you've repurposed it as a podcast studio.
John: Oh, you don't have your root cellar anymore.
John: I don't have my root cellar, and I haven't fixed it up yet, and I have to podcast from the dining room table, which is, you know, the Brasilia line.
John: of dining room tables that were debuted at the World's Fair here, the Broyhill Brasilia line of tables.
John: I'm sitting here at the table, but because there is no... When I say there is, what I mean to say is there is no...
John: A three-pronged outlet in this entire wing of the house.
Merlin: Do you do the translator?
Merlin: The little gray guy?
Merlin: So I have one.
Merlin: I have one of those.
Merlin: I feel so bad and dangerous.
Merlin: I feel like I'm deliberately leaving a pilot light on when I leave the house.
Merlin: When I plug one of those in, I'm like, there's no excuse if my house just goes up.
John: There are outlets in this house that are grounded.
John: The problem is that where I have places to sit with a table and where there are grounded outlets are totally different.
John: Ergo extension cord.
John: Thank you.
Merlin: Yes.
John: But here's what I don't like in an extension cord.
John: Okay.
John: I don't like an extension cord that sticks out wrong.
John: So if it's going to be sticking into a wall, I want it to be an extension cord that has the little prong things on the sides.
John: I want it to be a little L so it's flush.
John: Because I like things to be flush.
John: I know this is crazy, and we don't say that anymore, but there are a lot of people.
Merlin: I've got one that comes with a little casing guy.
Merlin: It's flush against the plug.
Merlin: And then it also has a little channel thing to take it down so you don't have a little guy like just waving around.
John: Exactly.
John: You got to take it down.
John: That's one of the main things.
John: But there are other applications in this house where I want it to be an extension cord that's straight on.
John: So the plug, like a Christmas light.
John: So the plug goes in and it comes out the other side.
John: I don't want it to have an L. I don't want it to be on the sides.
John: Right.
John: And I've got all these extension cords that clearly were purchased by my ancestors at a time when you wanted to run a kind of milk chocolate brown extension cord from an outlet to a lamp.
John: And they were thinner.
Merlin: narrower like when you like if you grab an extension cord of today and you like wad it up or let's say you want to do like you know like the microphone cable thing where you make the x and you want to like you know make it tidy um you can't you can't bend some of them very well whereas the ones from from my times whether that was the cord on on your the 14 foot cord on your like toaster oven remember when cords used to be long they used to come with long cords
Merlin: They were long.
Merlin: They were thinner, narrower.
Merlin: Make a cord.
Merlin: Make a cord go all over your house.
Merlin: Make it accommodating.
Merlin: Help me out here.
John: I've got a lamp here in the living room that I want.
John: Here's where I want it.
Merlin: I frisked a thousand lamp plugs.
John: I want it right by the plug.
John: Uh-huh.
John: There's a plug.
John: Here's a lamp.
John: I want the lamp by the plug.
John: But the lamp has a 20-foot extension cord.
Merlin: Oh, that's rare.
Merlin: You don't see it?
Merlin: You know, it's because of safety.
Merlin: That's why they do it now.
Merlin: Now you get these shitty-ass little short cords because of the UL, I think.
Merlin: It's big underwriters.
Merlin: And they're saying you may not have a long cord because what if this gets pulled off and lands in your bathtub where you're eating chili?
Yeah.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: What if you trip over it?
John: What if your dog trips over it?
John: What if your kid trips over the dog?
John: So what I have to do is I have to coil up this cable at the foot of this lamp.
John: There's nowhere to put it.
John: And so I've got a lamp and I've got this bowl of pasta of cable just sitting under it.
John: And I don't know.
John: Every time I walk past it, I'm like, it's almost worth rewiring the lamp, except it's the original cable.
John: It's a vintage cable.
John: I don't want to change that.
Merlin: It'll lose a lot of its resale value if you do that.
Merlin: It'll lose a lot of its resale value.
Merlin: On the secondary market, yeah.
John: That's right.
John: So anyway, I'm sitting here.
John: I've got my system plugged in through one of those gray adapters.
John: It goes to – what I put in between was a surge-protecting –
John: uh power strips so hopefully any kind of you know that's going to protect me surge protecting power strips were really a big thing i think you remember when they first came out yes and it was like oh my god it protects you from the surge and yeah and then they started adding ones where you could put your modem through there your coax through there and yeah absolutely and i think i have one of every one of those because as i say you know power strips and extension cords are
Merlin: That's an heirloom in your family.
John: Yeah, they're important to us here.
John: And I have bins and bins and bins.
John: You know, if I wanted to, I could have a bin of just mocha brown extension cords over here.
John: Over here, you got no soup.
John: No soup.
John: What I want.
Merlin: I need to look at Twitter.
Merlin: I watched that this weekend.
Merlin: The whole thing?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Sometimes I just watch The Godfather.
Merlin: And when that scene came up in the Italian restaurant, the place with the good Italian food.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Nice family place.
John: Is this place got good Italian food?
No.
Merlin: But he's also Jack Ripper in Dr. Strangelove, am I right?
John: Yes, that's correct.
Merlin: I will no longer sit back and allow communist infiltration, communist indoctrination, and the international communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.
John: If you go research that actor, he had a, you know, he was like a major movie star.
John: He was a movie star, but I think he had some problems.
John: Well, they all had problems.
John: Yeah.
John: But, you know, he could jump a horse.
John: He could do all those things.
John: Sterling Hayden?
John: Sterling Hayden.
John: And these films, these films where he's already an older guy, you know, these are like late in life.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: It's kind of like when Lloyd Bridges ended up in Airplane or whatever.
Merlin: The Leslie Nielsen vehicle.
Merlin: I feel you.
Merlin: Like when somebody starts out, you get the young guy and he's still like, you get like a Cesar Romero going like, oh, you know, I'm definitely a leading man.
Merlin: And then pretty soon you're putting white pancake makeup over your mustache.
Merlin: Get a little bit joker-fied, a little bit twisted.
John: We watched High Noon the other day.
John: Overrated.
John: It's no Shane.
John: It's no Shane, and we're working our way up to Shane.
John: It's a little bit preachy.
Merlin: It's a little bit preachy.
Merlin: It's a very middle-aged white guy film.
Merlin: It's like nobody here appreciates me.
John: The problem is that it's an allegory for blacklisting.
John: The whole movie is being made in the blacklisting era.
John: Oh, interesting.
John: And it's just like a morality play being written by people who were blacklisted.
John: I see.
John: Oh, was that a Trumbo?
John: It's not a Trumbo, but it's Carl Foreman, but it's...
John: It's of that era.
John: And you know, the, the part, the Gary Cooper part was offered to John Wayne and he was like, I'm not going to be in your communist movie.
John: All right.
John: And so Gary Cooper for clapping and Gary and Gary Cooper also was not, it's not like he was a liberal, but he needed the work.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: But anyway, uh, we're watching it because, uh, my kid has, uh, has reached a peak star Wars.
John: She's got, she, she hit a point where there was no more, uh,
John: Star Wars-based information that she could onboard.
Merlin: Really, truly, though, I remember somebody once, I'd heard that phrase, peak oil.
Merlin: I don't know if this is correct, but this is what I was told.
Merlin: You kept hearing peak oil, peak oil, peak oil, which I took to mean that, like, okay, you know, well, there's going to be less now.
Merlin: But what I was told was that when you get to peak oil, that means we're now at the point where we've gotten all of the natural resources that are easy enough to get out.
Merlin: But like that we are over 50% of what's going to be available is gone.
Merlin: And from now on, everything that we do to extract these mineral and earth resources is going to be a lot more difficult and costly.
Merlin: And so it's sort of like you're like your kid has like gnawed down the Star Wars chicken leg.
Merlin: And all that you got now is like cartilage.
Merlin: And like you've taken all the Star Wars meat off the bone.
John: Yeah.
John: And Star Wars.
John: We had a long time before started to get into the backstory of minor characters.
John: You know, the backstory of planets that only appear in the background of a long shot.
Merlin: And but at some point, listen to Chris Gethard talk about Kit Fisto for half an hour.
Merlin: It'll make you so goddamn happy.
Merlin: No one has ever loved Kit Fisto more than Chris Gethard loves Kit Fisto.
Merlin: My daughter might challenge him for the title.
Merlin: Dude, the fight scene in the arena, like one of the good scenes in that movie, the big fight, Kit Fisto's kicking some ass, man.
John: Look, I'm going to put this foot upside your head, and there ain't nothing you can do about it.
John: But so for a long time, she was like, I don't want to get into Harry Potter because I'm a Star Wars person.
John: She was just like I felt about Dune in 1981.
John: I was like, I don't want to read Dune.
John: Oh, sure.
John: I'm a Lord of the Rings person.
John: The Dune people can be over there.
John: You guys sit on that side of French class.
John: The Lord of the Rings people are on this side of French class.
John: And we're going to be over.
John: We're going to talk about Lord of the Rings and Dungeons and Dragons.
John: And you guys can talk about whatever, the spice or whatever.
John: Sit over there.
John: I didn't want to cross the streams.
John: And she felt that way.
John: The Von Sydow heads, they call them.
John: She wanted to be Star Wars only, Star Wars all the time.
John: She did not want to get into Harry Potter because it felt like, what?
John: I mean, okay, ooh, magic.
John: And I'm like, yeah, there's no magic in Star Wars.
John: She's like, no, no, no, it's like fake magic or whatever.
Merlin: No, our wizards, you know, it's because of a thing in their blood called medaglorians.
John: Right.
John: They're science wizards.
John: Our wizards shift themselves, right?
John: And so I said, well, hey, we all know because we've all read the quote a thousand times and you have said it to me a thousand times that Star Wars is just a space western.
Merlin: So let's go back and start watching.
John: Just start at the start.
John: We'll just start watching Westerns, real American Westerns.
John: Because she's already seen in watching throughout the Star Wars media universe, she's seen more violence in her 10 years than
John: than I have seen in my 52, because she's watched more of it than I have.
John: You know, I have not, like, I still flinch at movie violence.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: And she's just watched it all.
John: She's seen it all.
Merlin: My kid watches Grey's Anatomy, like giving open-heart surgery to a baby, and I'm like, and my wife and I are both like, ah!
Merlin: And she's like, why, why?
Merlin: Like, it's like, it's weird.
Merlin: They have a better, I think, understanding of like that this isn't not real, maybe.
Merlin: But when we were kids, I don't know, man, when we were kids.
Merlin: Well, I don't know.
Merlin: I don't know the answer.
Merlin: But we were, I was much more, first of all, I was much more lusty about it.
Merlin: Maybe it's a little bit like porn or something where like you really want to see like slasher movies.
Merlin: That's a little probably before your time.
Merlin: But like, wasn't there part of you that's like you wanted to go to the terrifying movie and to be grossed out and it was like a rite of passage?
John: I didn't.
John: You know, like the original slasher movies, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Merlin: Sure.
John: Right, right, right.
John: I wanted to stay away from those.
John: All the West is Craven.
John: I knew that I didn't want it.
John: I knew I didn't want to see gore.
John: I am definitely not about being jump scared.
John: Because although, as you know, I believe in science.
John: I don't believe in ghosts.
John: I do not want to be around ghosts.
John: I don't want them in my house.
Merlin: Ghosts don't need you to believe in them.
Merlin: They believe in you.
John: Yeah, and that's no offense, right?
John: Especially veterans.
John: I mean, if there are ghosts listening, and I know there aren't, there are no ghosts in this house.
John: No, no.
John: But there might be ghosts down in the ravine.
John: What I don't want is...
John: Attempts on my father's life, but what I do Is no ghosts right and that goes and that is not it does not it's it's no problem that I also don't believe in ghosts I also don't believe in UFOs, but I don't want to be out on a on a long road at night and
John: somewhere in the middle West where there's a, there's like a little bit of a rise and, and, and trees on either side.
John: I don't want to be there.
John: I don't want, I don't want to be out on the open.
Merlin: You don't want to be spooked.
Merlin: I think it sounds like you don't want to be spooked.
Merlin: I don't want to jump scare or Confederate soldier.
Merlin: You don't want to be spooked.
Merlin: And it doesn't matter whether you believe it or not, what you know in your heart, what you want, it's not to be spooked.
John: And I don't want to see guts.
John: I don't want to see anything come out of their own I don't want and the thing about Our kids or at least my kid.
John: She's never seen any gore.
John: There's no gore in Star Wars, right?
Merlin: It's all just like pew somebody gets pew and then they fall down So I don't call impersonal violence that I would distinguish from like the reason we I've said before the reason we don't we when she was coming up as a little kid we wouldn't watch things with personal violence and
Merlin: So like somebody menacing somebody at knife point with a potential sexual assault is not going to happen.
Merlin: But like a stormtrooper bumping his head and falling over, that's fine.
John: Islands.
John: I see what you're saying.
John: Yes.
John: But ask me, answer me this.
John: Yes, you there.
John: What would be a gorier weapon than a lightsaber?
John: Oh, God, you're so, it's so true.
Merlin: It would be the most gruesome way to fight.
Merlin: And we get to that because, you know, he's got such a hard-on for amputations.
Merlin: And, like, what happens with Memory Serves, isn't Mace Windu's one pretty gross?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I didn't watch those.
Merlin: Oh, really?
Merlin: So you don't know?
Merlin: You want to say Kefisto.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: I'm seeing some photos.
Merlin: I have no idea what that is.
Merlin: I know that there's an Order 66 because I heard about it later.
Merlin: Yeah, because you know about Aayla Secura and the Padawan.
Merlin: What's her name?
Merlin: What's her name?
Merlin: Ahsoka.
Merlin: Ahsoka Tana.
John: Yeah, because I watched the cartoons.
Merlin: Of course.
Merlin: I love the Fremen.
Merlin: They spin around.
John: I love them.
John: You know, the thing is that Order 66, that's part of our canon in the house.
Merlin: Absolutely.
John: It's on the refrigerator with a little magnet.
John: Order 66, kill all Jedi.
John: Jump on that cool dragon and ride around and fight the asthma robot.
John: But so much in Star Wars, somebody turns on a lightsaber and it just goes right through somebody's tunic.
John: And I guess it self-cauterizes so there's no blood.
John: It's the only thing I can think of why there's not – You become an expedited force ghost.
Merlin: No, no, but you're right.
Merlin: It's going to be, it's going to look like, oh God, I don't know why John, I just recently, you really don't want to watch this.
Merlin: I recently started watching the Ryan Murphy TV series, American Horror Story.
Merlin: No, I don't want to watch that.
Merlin: Well, and it includes stuff like, you know, I don't know if you know, you remember the story of the Black Dahlia murder in LA in the fifties and like they really show it like, okay, here's a person whose body has been like cut in half.
Merlin: And it's just a bunch of meat.
Merlin: And that's what a lightsaber would do.
Merlin: Now I feel bad.
Merlin: I'm sitting there looking at a picture of Kif Vista smiling with this cool green lightsaber.
Merlin: I'm thinking about how that basically just looked like you just cut into some hamburger.
John: Yeah, that's what it would be.
John: Yeah, there'd be.
John: I mean, just human hamburger stuff all over the floor.
John: Yeah.
John: You know, people just don't turn into force ghosts.
John: They would be just piles of viscera.
John: It'd be like an abattoir.
John: It would.
Merlin: Anyway, so we're watching a mouse droid.
Merlin: Who's going to do that?
John: Yeah, it's that little droid that's like, and everybody laughs, and it's like, oh, this movie isn't for kids.
Merlin: So I took the... That had a person in it, you know.
Merlin: Kenny Baker was too big for the mouse to ride.
Merlin: They had to find a truly, truly very troubling person to fit in.
John: Beep, beep, beep.
John: That's actually how he talks.
John: It was actually life-size, and then through the power of miniaturization, they shrank it down.
John: Oh, now we're back to the forced perspective.
John: So that thing is actually the size of a semi-truck.
John: It's bigger than Chewy.
John: Muppet, Muppet, Muppet.
John: I said, listen, we're going to watch all the black and white Western movies.
John: You're going to see what Han Solo really looks like.
John: Yeah.
John: Because this is where he comes from.
John: Black vest, the cowboy gun halfway down the leg.
John: Sure.
John: Like you're going to get all the Sassafras.
John: Cool boots.
John: Sidekick.
John: Outlaw, real outlaw.
John: What you don't realize is that Gary Cooper, at least, is a real drag.
John: There were four or five times in the movie.
John: He's like a deacon from your church.
John: He's so boring.
John: We all looked at each other and we're like, why doesn't he get out of town again?
John: What is the reason?
John: How is honor driving him to stay here and fight these ding-dongs?
John: It doesn't make a ton of sense.
John: But what you see is Lloyd Bridges, young Lloyd Bridges, before he became a comedy superstar in our teen years.
Merlin: Back when we did the scuba diving show.
Merlin: I used to watch it once a kid.
Merlin: Scuba diving show, yes.
Merlin: It's called Seahawk, Seahunt?
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Seaman?
Merlin: I think it was Seaman.
Merlin: Seaman.
Merlin: I used to love that show.
Merlin: The Seaman.
Merlin: Seahunt?
Merlin: The Seaman.
Merlin: Was Seahunt the submarine video game?
John: Sea Hunt was a submarine video game.
John: What was the one with the cartoon with the little blonde boy and the kid in a turban?
Merlin: Oh, that was Johnny Quest.
Merlin: Johnny Quest.
Merlin: Right, right, right, right.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Okay, so the idea is, though, and it's not just to show the literary substrat of the George Lucas verse, you know, right?
Merlin: Because you could go to, like, old Buck Rogers and stuff like that.
Merlin: It's more to say, like, hey, you like these kinds of stories.
Merlin: Let's watch these black and white cowboy movies.
John: Yeah, and also, if we're going to watch morality plays...
John: Like, let's take the morality plays out of... See, one of my pet peeves, and I think you know this, is that if you... And this is one of my complaints about the Marvel Cinematic Universe, is that if the bad guys are just a faceless army of A, droids, or B, faceless army...
John: or undefeatable alien presence fighting against undefeatable local presence.
John: Purple guy who likes jewelry.
John: Yep.
John: Then there are no stakes in your movie, and all it is is just a masturbation festival of, you know, it's just like cartoon violence for an hour,
John: Like branded fan service.
John: Yeah.
John: Like, why do I care?
John: That's the thing about those first three Star Wars movies.
John: Yeah.
John: It's just the bad guys are just armies of faceless droids.
John: And who cares?
John: You know, like Roger, Roger.
John: I don't care.
John: It's taking too long.
John: You could destroy them all day.
John: There are no consequences.
John: They're pussies.
John: Yeah.
John: Nobody cares.
John: Nobody cares.
John: I just watched...
John: I just watched, which was the Avengers one?
John: Because we went to see Black Spider.
John: No, the one that's out now, the Black Spider.
John: Yeah, Black Spider.
John: Because I'm a Scarlett Johansson fan, as you know.
John: My daughter said there were a lot of butt shots in that movie.
John: Oh, there's so many.
John: And you know, she's an executive producer of the film, so she's got to be standing there like, hey.
Merlin: It's also got the girl from Midsommar in it.
John: I love her.
John: And she's so smart in this movie.
John: Such a good... Her sister plays her sister, is that right?
John: Younger sister, yeah.
John: And she's got great comedy timing.
John: She's a great addition to the Marvel Comics universe.
John: And also this Black Spider movie, there's a lot of exposition.
John: There's a lot of just relationship talk.
John: Yeah, I heard a lot of family stuff, a lot of feelings stuff.
John: A lot of feelings.
John: And as far as a Marvel movie goes, I was 100% on board for Black Spider.
John: Yeah.
John: I think it's a really good movie and I like, and I like, oh, and it's also major strong female lead universe.
John: Like the, the men appear in it only tangentially and it is not.
John: It does not feel, I mean, it passes the Bechdel test in the first 11 seconds.
John: Oh, and it's also got Rachel Weisz.
John: I watched two Rachel Weisz movies last night.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: She's the lady from The Lobster.
John: She's in that movie.
John: She's from The Lobster.
John: Anyway, it's a really good movie.
John: We liked it.
John: And then, you know, my daughter's mother partner was like, I didn't understand any of that Marvel stuff that they were talking about.
John: Why is she mad at the other people?
John: And who is that person?
John: And what are they talking about?
John: And I was like, well, okay.
John: Yeah.
John: I didn't want to have to do this, but I guess we have to watch it.
Merlin: You know what you should just always say, John?
Merlin: Just always say one word, and you've got to say it like this.
Merlin: You've got to say this.
John: Just say Budapest.
John: Budapest.
John: Budapest.
John: You know, for a long time, Merlin, I'm guilty of saying Budapest.
John: Just don't say the Budapest.
John: No, I said it.
John: I mean, I learned to say it in just the— It's just like when you speak Castilian, and you don't really know how to speak Castilian.
John: Oh, I get a Castilian with a little bit of this.
John: And people are like, that's actually—
John: It's actually not.
John: The circumstances that you're saying Barcelona is not how anyone would ever say that, but that's fine.
John: I know you've been there so good.
Merlin: Learning how to speak from like KFC commercials.
John: You got my passport here, y'all.
John: New York City.
John: New York City.
John: But so I said Budapest for a while before I realized, you know, no, don't stop doing that.
John: You don't say Paris.
John: Like, just move on.
John: Get on with it.
John: It's like people call the film festival Cannes.
Merlin: Cannes.
Merlin: Well, wait a minute.
Merlin: Cannes is the guy from Star Wars.
Merlin: But no, I think it's pronounced Cannes.
Merlin: Cannes.
Merlin: Cannes.
Merlin: People say Cannes because it sounds fancy.
John: You know, there's a town just south where I live here called Des Moines.
Cannes.
Merlin: Oh, no.
John: Like, is that a Houston type situation?
John: It is.
John: It's spelled like Des Moines, Iowa.
John: You could pronounce it Des Moines.
John: I pronounce it Des Moines.
John: Oh, que bueno.
John: Thank you.
John: Des Moines.
John: Oh, that sounds lovely.
John: That sounds like a fancy country club for the snobs.
John: I know.
John: It's very nice.
John: And so it's become a little thing around here where if you say Des Moines, everybody that's in the know knows what you're talking about, but the snorks can't tell what you're talking about.
John: But the town itself, the residents of the town say Des Moines.
John: So D-E-S, they...
John: They give it, you know, it's not like they put a French inflection on it, but they recognize that you don't say dace, but moines.
Merlin: Oh, they get it, I don't say right, partially right.
Merlin: They get, they lean into one part of the pronunciation, but not another.
Merlin: They did one from column A and one from column A.
John: Okay, fair.
John: And it is so hard to, even growing up around here, even knowing this is like a shibboleth of locality.
John: And if you are even from a different part of the county.
Merlin: Instantly identify yourself as the out group.
John: Yeah, maybe you're not going to know this.
John: But if you're around here, you don't make this error, right?
John: You don't say Pooey Allop and you don't say Sequim.
Merlin: Yeah, I mean, like a more mundane one is like nobody here has ever called the city we live in Frisco.
Merlin: No, that's right.
Merlin: You're opposed to Frisco, aren't you?
Merlin: I don't care one way or another.
Merlin: I'm not from here.
Merlin: I'm from Florida.
Merlin: I don't have any sense.
Merlin: But no, San Fran and Frisco are not things that people say here.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It kind of outsies a little bit of a ding-a-ling.
John: I know.
John: And I make sure to say Frisco every time.
John: That's fine.
John: That's fine.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: Because I'm not from there either, right?
John: I'm from up here just north of Des Moines.
John: From Puliap.
John: You're from Minnesota Thunderfuck or whatever.
Yeah.
John: So I say to my daughter's mother partner, I say, we've got to go watch some bit of the Avengers movie.
John: cinematic universe in order for you to understand fully what we're talking about here.
John: And I don't want to do it.
John: Believe me, it's the last thing I want to, this is also just to be clear.
Merlin: This is mostly so that your, your mother's daughter partner, huh?
Merlin: The, the, the woman there, uh, so that she can like, she's going to, so she doesn't feel like, like lost.
Merlin: Like you would do, you do a civil war.
Merlin: You do like, uh, like what, what do you do to bone up?
Merlin: Like, obviously you can skip all the age of Voltron stuff and all that.
Merlin: Well, so that's the mistake I made.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Oh, that's that's absolutely the worst one.
John: I said, well, I guess we got to watch Age of Ultron because I had seen the first Avengers movie.
John: And then I was and then I punched out of it.
John: I was just like, OK, well, I've seen that.
John: And so all of these ones about Thor and all the things that come later, it's fine.
John: I'll catch up with you.
John: Tell you what, I'll catch up with you in the next town.
John: I'm going to get on a later train.
Merlin: You just need to figure out, like, how strong and angry is the given character?
Merlin: How strong are they?
Merlin: How angry are they?
Merlin: How did they become angry?
Merlin: And, like, that's pretty much it.
Merlin: Like, Thor, he's strong and he's angry.
Merlin: Hulk, he's strong.
Merlin: He's angry.
Merlin: Everybody's strong and angry, and we just need to figure out how strong and how angry.
Merlin: Although Captain America, he's not angry.
John: He just wants, you know.
John: He missed out on a lot, though, when he didn't get to be with Peggy.
John: That's true.
John: He's sad.
John: There is a sadness to him.
John: But this was a movie where Iron Man was a very brittle character, unlikable in every way.
Merlin: Oh, this is, yes, sorry.
Merlin: This is after, what do they call it?
Merlin: The event or the, whatever they call it.
Merlin: It's after what happened where he went up into the space hole.
Merlin: And this is where he's all, she's all shattered and like emotionally.
Merlin: Yeah, okay.
John: And there's nobody very likable and all the effects are bad.
John: And also the banter is really bad, forced banter.
John: But what's terrible about it is it's a movie where the bad guy, the bad guy's a robot, which is okay.
John: That's fine.
John: He's like an AI that became.
Merlin: He's Blaine from Pretty in Pink.
John: He's Blaine from Pretty in Pink.
John: That's right.
John: And we definitely spent 20 minutes going, whose voice is that?
Merlin: You're not going to know whether to shit or go silent.
John: No, it's somebody.
John: Who is that?
John: My god is I was just like is this what is it?
John: Is it Robin Williams doing somebody and she she finally came to the she was like no, it's Blaine from pretty big But but what he does is he creates this it creates an army of robots that have no feelings and have no as There's no he's got daddy issues.
John: And so it's a whole movie of fighting a bunch of things that don't matter What what had happened was
John: We started watching Westerns, and lo and behold, completely unexpectedly, my kid is rapt.
John: No.
John: Yeah, because it's like, what is happening?
Merlin: You didn't start with High Noon, right?
John: No, no, no.
John: We'd seen some other Westerns, and Shane is next.
John: It's in the queue.
John: But we're watching him, and she's...
John: You know, she spent most of her childhood in a childhood world.
John: And I think by the time I was— You're in no guns house, right?
John: No, there's guns all over the place.
John: Oh, I mean like kid guns, though.
John: There's no kid guns.
John: She's just like I was when I was 10.
John: She turns anything into a weapon.
Merlin: Does she have a lifesaver that she gets to wield around?
John: She has a lifesaver.
John: But she also – like my mom tried to keep guns out of our house in the 1970s, early 70s.
John: She was like, no guns.
John: You know, my mom's very anti-violence.
Merlin: Yes.
John: And she said she surrendered to guns when she realized that everywhere we went, I picked up any stick, any rock, any box, any piece of garbage and turned it into a gun.
John: And was just like – And she's like, that is not – you know, I would pick up a girl's doll and turn it into – And cock it.
John: Cock the baby.
John: Yeah.
John: Cock the baby.
John: Just like when I bought, when my, when my daughter was little, I would buy her like cars and trucks and like, Hey, you know, sure there's frozen, but also like, what about trucks?
John: And she would put the truck in a bed and put a blanket on it and, and sing to it.
John: That's so sweet.
John: And I was like, I can't, I can't fight it.
John: Like I'm just going to have to just, just go, you set the tone, baby.
John: Mm-hmm, but but no so the our house is full of weapons now because she's become she's gone through every stage of being a Padawan and She's you know the blasters their cowboy guns and it's and they're not you know We'll be at a thrift store and she'll come over and she's like look at these and it's a set of like Tom mix six shooters from the 50s that she I'm like those are the coolest so of course I get him her mom's super mad about it But you know, I got my own house.
John: I can keep guns around over here.
John: That's right.
I
John: But so she really, I think by the time we were 10, we had seen a lot of adult movies, a lot of adult television.
Merlin: There were a lot more adult movies then.
Merlin: That sounds like a very dumb thing.
Merlin: But now it's considered a big deal when somebody says, check out this movie.
Merlin: It's a movie for adults.
Merlin: Not adult as in Jack and your Mean Bone.
Merlin: But as in like there's a story that's, you know, it's not going to be cartoony.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: There just used to be so many what we used to call drama movies.
Merlin: Yeah, or just...
John: freaking movie where just movies it's a movie it's got it all singing dancing drama all that jazz divorce divorce yeah exactly and she has because she's been raised in this era there's so much children's entertainment and when you look for a movie to watch with her you're you naturally go to common sense media and you go what's a good movie and they're like here's a good movie that's got strong values and and not a ton of of bad stuff and you're like that sounds perfect for us she
Merlin: Some of the ones they suggest are so, it's like, hey, it's like three girls that start a softball team to save the church.
Merlin: And it's like, Jesus Christ, who watches this?
John: By the time I was 10 years old, I'd seen Deer Hunter, you know?
John: Like, I'd watched so many freaking movies that were like...
John: that were not just they were not just inappropriate for a child but inappropriate for any audience you know like movies that were just that were I was exposed to Ned Beatty in ways I never should have been exposed to right and then you've also got all the television where David Niven would like never oh yeah he's the guy with the bomb in the suitcase and then there's a briefcase even the cartoony stuff I was gonna say I feel like you should maybe go to Dirty Dozen type movies next
Merlin: When she's ready.
John: When she's ready.
John: The problem with 30,000 movies is there's always a scene that's very rapey, and you don't remember.
John: Oh, yes.
John: Don't leave Telly Savalas alone with anyone.
John: Yeah, but then you watch the movie, and you're like, oh, that was on television?
John: And it kind of wasn't.
John: I mean, I think they always cut out two seconds of it so that it was just.
John: I know exactly what you mean, though.
Merlin: Yes, exactly.
Merlin: Gross.
John: But so you know that Gary Cooper's not going to rape anybody.
John: Right.
John: And, and, and, and high noon's got very, uh, very strong female leads.
John: And I'm watching her soak it up.
John: Who's the woman?
John: Not Grace Kelly.
John: Who's the woman?
John: It was Grace Kelly.
John: Oh, shit.
John: I love her.
John: And the thing is, Grace Kelly is really underused in this movie.
Merlin: She's so charismatic.
Merlin: You think about her in the rear window.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
John: Completely underused.
John: Even doing almost nothing in the film, you cannot take your eyes off of her.
John: She's so, like, just, wow.
John: Incandescent, yeah.
John: There's a lot that is interesting.
John: It's a slow-moving film.
John: But there's a lot interesting in it.
John: And I watched my kid...
John: You know, what I would like her to do is to end up being the sheriff of a small town that that that feels honor bound to to protect the residents.
John: She can move up the twip.
John: I feel like I feel like being a Jedi is kind of a dead end.
John: That's going to look that's going to look good on your resume, but there's not a lot of opportunity to move up.
John: Whereas being like a small town sheriff, there are so many small towns still in America that need the law.
John: And what we need is women with strong values to go into those small towns and turn them around, get everybody vaccinated.
John: Tough as nails, right?
John: Tough as nails, but also a heart of gold.
John: So I've been working this project like, all right, if morality plays is what you're into –
John: And we're not afraid of gunfire.
John: Then let's, I've got a list of movies as long as my arm of movies that have, uh, that have gun gunplay is the, is the thing that scares people gunplay and heavy drinking.
John: Um, but, uh, but at their core, there's, there's this, you know, sort of, uh, whatever American messaging that is stuff we can parse.
John: At least we can talk about it afterwards and say like, now, what did that mean?
John: What do you think that meant?
John: And so I was really excited about it.
John: We get we're watching Western she's into it and then she shows up One day with Harry Potter under her arm And I'm like, what's uh, what's what's what you got there?
Merlin: She was like how that how that that's like the time somebody slipped a Barbie into my kid's life.
Merlin: How did that arrive?
John: I think that at some point, you know many years ago
John: I went and bought all the Harry Potter books because she's an avid reader.
Merlin: Did you read those?
Merlin: I always forget.
Merlin: You're saving Shakespeare for prison, but you read Harry Potter in like a brig on a boat.
John: I was living at 118th and Lexington in what we called then Spanish Harlem.
John: It was a hot summer.
Merlin: That's seven blocks from where Lou Reed used to get heroin.
John: Well, that's right.
John: That's right.
John: He would go up to Lexington 125, and I would go up to Lexington 125.
John: Yeah, if they're any more dead than alive.
John: No shit.
Merlin: That's where you were reading the Philosopher's Stone, as they say.
John: Yeah, and there were some guys across the street every day that on an overturned cardboard box were doing a shell game.
John: And they always had a crowd.
John: and they were you know it was like you know which one of these is the sometimes it was cards you know which one of these is the jack sometimes find the lady right something like that sometimes it was a red ball under a cup whatever they were always out there and they there were always 25 people standing around and i think 18 of them were uh were on or playing for the other yeah yeah yeah like uh confederates so to speak but who knows how much money they were making and so i would watch them for a couple hours out of the window
John: And then I would sit and they had – it was Chris Keneally's house.
John: He and his girlfriend – or I guess maybe wife now.
John: Yeah.
John: He and Alyssa had all of the Harry Potter books.
John: This is 2001.
John: And, um, it was a hot summer and there was one, they lived in a railroad apartment where the middle room had no windows.
John: It was like, there's the one room and you got to walk through the middle room and then there's the other room.
Merlin: Oh yeah, we get those here.
John: Middle room had no windows.
Merlin: So they'll have like a light shaft, but like you don't see really anything.
Merlin: It's like a dungeon basically.
Merlin: I've got a light shaft.
Merlin: I'll tell you what.
John: Oh, boy.
John: But so those two had to go to work, right?
John: So they would go to work, and I would sit there.
John: I would just be here staying in your house for free reading our books.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: That's exactly right.
John: I'll tell you what.
John: I'll just take care of everything in the fridge.
Merlin: Is this when you were writing the first record?
John: I was writing the Long Winter's record.
Okay.
John: And I read all the Harry Potter books and it's a breezy read and so forth and so on.
John: And I know that J.K.
John: Rowling is a problematic person.
John: I know, but they're fun to read.
John: They're really fun to read.
John: And so she shows up with a Harry Potter under her arm.
John: And I was like, where'd you find that?
John: And she's like, oh, they're all downstairs.
John: And I was like, what?
John: Just out of curiosity, after all this time of you feeling like Harry Potter was your Dune...
John: some baloney about the spice that you didn't want to get into what's going on now.
John: And she was like, it's not bad.
John: Yeah.
John: And she reads it.
John: And then she reads the second one.
John: Then she reads the third one.
John: Pretty soon.
John: Anytime you see her, she's got Harry Potter under her arm and she's going down, you know, she's just ticking them off one by one.
John: And I, I don't want to think that the reason she's doing it is that she is trying to get out of watching old black and white movies.
John: Westerns with her dad where there's you know I think she knows that would not be effective an hour and 20 minutes of people looking at a clock and waiting for a train to arrive and then three minutes of gunfire but now we've started watching the movies we watched the first then we watched the second one oh the third one's good and the third one is in the queue so we haven't oh my god the third one is the best the best the best is that right is that right
Merlin: Yeah, it's, what's his name?
Merlin: It's the Children of Men guy, Coron.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: It's really well done.
Merlin: Well, you get a new Dumbledore.
Merlin: It's really almost like three different movies.
Merlin: Because by the time, I always forget that like, oh, there's also the whole bit with the time turner.
Merlin: And it's all like, it's so fun and so well done.
John: I got to say, and I didn't want to say this, but
John: But it's true.
John: I'm ready for a new Dumbledore.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Oh, is that right?
Merlin: You mean like beyond the first guy and the other guy?
Merlin: Oh, you're saying after Richard Harris, you're ready for a Gambon to come in.
Merlin: I just feel like Richard Harris is not... Gambon?
Merlin: Is that his name?
Merlin: Yeah, it's the guy from The Singing Detective.
Merlin: It's the guy... What's his name?
Merlin: Is that something I'm thinking of?
Merlin: Michael Gambon?
John: See, I don't know.
John: I've never seen the third one.
Merlin: There's oh you're telling me there are three Dumbledore no no I thought we were getting a Harris whose son by the way is Is is the guy from Chernobyl?
Merlin: Did you know that the guy the guy who played Lane in Mad Men Jared Harris the guy from Chernobyl did you know Richard Harris Richard Harris his son?
John: I didn't know that but you know just just that we just watched Chernobyl last week It was first time.
John: Oh my fucking god.
John: I just rewatched it a couple weeks ago hadn't seen it and just watched it and
John: Boy talk about a television show that makes you sit around thinking about it when you're not watching I know I know I made it up to this the one where they go out for you know the dog detail I just like oh man I gotta really be in the right state of mind for this we We talked about it then after every episode it was like what did you what did you dream about last night Chernobyl what did you think about all day today Chernobyl interesting absolutely
John: Such an interesting – I read a review in The New Yorker where this person who had grown up in Russia was giving Chernobyl a terrible, terrible, terrible review, just excoriating it.
John: And I got to the end of the – and I was reading the article and the whole time I was like, what is your problem with this exactly?
John: And what it ended up being was that – and I was surprised the New Yorker published it because it was a bad review of Chernobyl by someone who was just mad that Chernobyl was made –
John: by people that didn't grow up in Russia.
John: And they complimented the set design and all that, but they were just like, it was kind of like me reviewing a movie.
John: They never would have said that.
Merlin: That character never would have said that.
Merlin: John Syracuse calls us the plumber problem.
Merlin: And it's like why there's so many things that I consider really, really good TV shows that involve something having to do with technology in general or programming especially.
Merlin: And he has a really hard time sometimes.
Merlin: Again, now we're back to Letterman when he would have his movie reviews.
Merlin: The welder who reviewed Flashdance and stuff like that.
Merlin: The plumber problem, though, is if you're a plumber and you watch a scene that has bad plumbing practices in it, it makes it kind of difficult.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: I was talking about this.
John: Somebody emailed me today and asked, actually, a friend of the show.
John: She emailed me and she was like, have you seen For All Mankind?
Yeah.
John: And I said, I love the premise of it, but I watched a couple of episodes and it just felt like it was a show where some millennial showrunners were going to retcon history and
John: in order to make it better?
John: Or I don't know what.
John: Like they were going to settle all past.
John: Settle the family business.
John: They were going to settle the family business.
John: Except in the past.
John: They were going to, you know, like Von Von was going to sleep with the fishes.
John: And I was like, you know, I want to entrust
John: an alternate history to some showrunners that care about what kind of can openers they had in 1969 but i also want them to really care about 1975 and i don't want to just have some showrunners take me to a 1975 that didn't exist when they don't really know what the 1975 that did exist was like don't don't give me oh i see what i go through this when i hear people talk about johnny carson
Merlin: And if you hear anybody under 32 or so talk about Johnny Carson, and I'm not here to defend fucking Johnny Carson, but, like, at least understand who the guy was and, like him or not, what his utterly unreplicable importance for a generation or two of people was.
Merlin: And they're like, oh, yeah, Johnny Carson was this guy.
Merlin: I think he was, like, a comedian on TV at night.
Merlin: And you're like, oh.
Merlin: You know, it's just, you know, I agree with you.
Merlin: He was president of the United States is who Johnny Carson was.
Merlin: He had to give up his peanut farm.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I just sent you a link.
Merlin: I don't normally like to be earnest on Maine, but the Chernobyl podcast is extremely good.
Merlin: It's hosted by Peter Sagal, and it's Peter Sagal interviewing basically Craig Mason, the guy who mostly made the show.
Merlin: And you go in, it's so good.
Merlin: It's really, really good.
Merlin: And they go into a lot of tales.
Merlin: Like, how did you decide that everybody, like the words, everything would be in Cyrillic, in Russian, but people would speak in Russian?
Merlin: Mostly with an English accent, like Skarsgård notwithstanding.
Merlin: But just all the stuff that went into thinking about that.
Merlin: What about this is true?
Merlin: And were the three piles really like that?
Merlin: And did this happen in that order and stuff like that?
Merlin: I think you would enjoy it.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: If you enjoyed Chernobyl and you want to know the details.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Big fan of Peter Sagal, you know, as just a man in the world.
John: But so in ordering these extension cords, for some reason...
John: I cannot tell you why.
John: I put a hard drive in the cart.
John: Oh.
John: Maybe it was the force.
John: Well, that's the thing.
John: For 449 days, my computer's been giving me the nag flag.
John: Nag flag.
John: And what was it?
John: Two days ago?
John: Three days ago?
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: I was like, I'm running cords all over.
John: I had a cord going to the kitchen.
John: I got these cords that are dangling.
John: You know, there's one that's coming down from a
John: from a light fixture, like I'm in the conversation.
John: He's in there playing your sax, staring up your apartment.
John: What I want is just...
John: three better extension cords, and all of a sudden I'm putting an STGX2000400 in the cart.
Merlin: You're putting your bastic right there.
John: I have no idea what is happening.
John: I don't know why.
John: What was the thing?
John: Something accepted you.
John: Was it 448 days of getting nagged?
John: Was it just there was something like a really slow burning?
John: John, maybe the nag worked.
John: But the thing is, if the nag works and it takes 449 days, is that distinguishable from no nag?
Merlin: Is it distinguishable from like – If a nag falls on your computer, can your hard drive hear it?
John: Thank you.
John: Like how is it different from just tripping – how is it different from you two just putting their album on everybody's iTunes?
John: Maybe Amazon should just put a hard drive in everybody's Bastic once a year.
John: I see.
Merlin: It just is auto in the bathtub.
Merlin: Ben Franklin says buy a hard drive every year.
Merlin: If they don't know what it's for, you will.
Merlin: That's smart.
John: So nag to, okay.
John: Who doesn't need to back up their computer?
Merlin: Who doesn't?
John: Everybody should do it.
John: I'm going to stand out.
John: I'm going to open the window and I'm going to go, I'm mad as hell.
John: Who doesn't need to back up their computer?
John: And then we'll see who honks.
John: Who doesn't need to back up their computer?
John: It's going to be a big, fat, big-titted hit.
John: I'm going to take this foot and I'm going to put it.
Merlin: I can't do it, Sally.
John: Up your ass.
Up your ass.