Ep. 443: "The Fifty-Cent Candy Bar"
Merlin: Hello?
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Hello?
Merlin: Hello!
Merlin: Hi there!
Merlin: Ahoy!
Merlin: Is everything okay?
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: See, I did it again.
Merlin: I asked you if everything's okay.
Merlin: I should stop doing that.
Merlin: Yeah, everything's okay.
John: Well, it's hard to glean.
John: It always makes me feel like there's something in my tone that makes you feel like there's not something okay, just right out of the gate.
John: Well, of course there is.
Oh, okay.
John: Well, in that sense, no.
John: Not everything's okay.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: Well, the listener can't know that sometimes, and who cares, it takes varying amounts of time for you to get situated after the call has been picked up.
Merlin: And I've become the sort of person who says things like, is everything okay?
John: Oh, it's a grandmother transition.
John: You're transitioning into grandmother.
Merlin: I'm transitioning to becoming a grandmother.
Merlin: I'm being fretful, and I'm trying to be a professional grandmother.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It's a lot.
Merlin: It's a lot to take on.
John: Everything is a lot.
John: Everything is a lot.
John: Everything is a lot.
John: At a certain point, I don't remember when, but it was several weeks, two months ago, I transitioned to doing the shows from my couch.
John: And so there's a little bit more, you know, like ruffle, ruffle, ruffle, ruffle as I get situated because I'm laying lengthways on the couch.
John: I've got a Pendleton blanket over my legs and
John: I've got my coffee over here on the coffee table.
John: I've got the computer in my lap, and I'm holding the microphone in my hand.
John: You've got to be shitting me.
John: And I'm looking out the window.
Merlin: You're supine right now?
John: Yes, I am.
John: The creek is high, and so it's producing what probably sounds like a little bit of just static in the mic, a little bit of a shh.
Merlin: No, no, my bloody Valentine took my hearing.
Merlin: So I just, I don't even hear rustling anymore.
Merlin: I just hear tremolo everywhere I go.
Merlin: But you're okay.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: So in the past, I've been doing this for weeks like this.
Merlin: I had no idea.
Merlin: Cause I've seen photos of you in what appears to be your bed with a microphone.
Merlin: I guess the one that's really hanging a couple of things, hanging me up.
Merlin: You got to like sit up probably to drink coffee.
Merlin: So you don't choke.
Huh?
Merlin: Unless you've got like a coffee straw, which would be weird.
Merlin: But you hold the microphone in your hand.
Merlin: Is that accurate?
John: Here's the thing.
John: Yes.
John: So I'm sitting up.
John: I've got like four pillows kind of propping me up.
John: Oh, like FDR.
John: I feel exactly like FDR.
John: And you've got the blanket, the Pendleton blanket, just like FDR.
John: I've got a nice Pendleton blanket like FDR.
John: The one trick is the SM7B, which is the microphone that...
John: I use that a lot of us use.
John: Uh, it comes, it's built in with, um, with a kind of mic.
John: adapter stand holder thing you know it's got an apparatus it's not just it's got a dingus and then if you choose to you can use that dingus to screw it into something right and uh and then there's another little thing where you put in your cable yeah it's got a little cage and in the old days the very old days when we were recording all the way back in 2012 i had a little desktop mic stand that was like a heavy weighted bottom uh
John: thing that this screwed into that was only it only was a foot high and all the years that we recorded um when i was recording at my house and at my office the mic was on the mic stand but then i would pick it up off the desk and i would rest it i would rest the mic stand on my basically on my chest it's so weird never once did i ever sit with the mic just
John: sitting on the desk on its stand and, like, lean in without using my hands, you know?
Merlin: You're like Mork from Mork.
Merlin: Hmm.
Merlin: Well, I mean, like, you know, like, he drinks milk with his finger.
Merlin: When he sits in a chair, like, he kind of sits on his head.
Merlin: It's like you got a different way of doing things.
John: I never could not hold it.
John: And then when I professionalized my rig, when I started having –
John: First Adam and then Ken actually over to the house.
John: I bought those radio station big springy boom mic things.
John: The big like boing, boing, boing.
John: Yeah, the boing, boing shock mount.
John: The shock mount things.
John: And I put the mics on those.
John: Yeah.
John: That's fine.
John: Those are fine.
John: But I'm constantly fussing with it.
Merlin: But it sounds like it gets in the way of you holding it in your hand like Bob Barker.
Merlin: I'm making a lot of references today, and for that I apologize.
Merlin: It's early.
Merlin: It's a Monday.
Merlin: Or like Gene Rayburn with that long, slender microphone he used to hold.
Merlin: Oh, such a great mic.
Merlin: If I could get a mic like that, I would do exactly what you're doing.
Merlin: Oh, it would be so beautiful.
Merlin: Dumb Donald is so dumb.
Merlin: It's like a tall tulip.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Dumb Donald is so dumb.
Merlin: He's so dumb.
Merlin: Are you ready for this?
Merlin: Dumb Dora, you know?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: That's the way that they could work in a... One doesn't say.
Merlin: Well, let's just say they were invaded by Germany.
Merlin: It's not Czechoslovakia.
Merlin: There was a certain kind of joke that was very popular in my time as a youngster about a supposedly not very smart...
Merlin: They're supposedly not very smart people of a certain country.
Merlin: And boy, they had a lot of problems.
Merlin: They had screen doors on submarines.
Merlin: They lost the recipe for ice.
Merlin: Those were very popular in the 70s.
Merlin: They were extremely popular, John.
Merlin: And I'd never met a person whose country had been invaded in that way.
Merlin: But I think that dumb Donald and dumb Dora were a way to slip in.
John: You know, a little bit of Warsaw humor.
John: You know, to use those jokes is the thing.
John: You've got all these jokes stacked up.
John: You can't use them anymore, but then, oh, you invented Dumb Donald.
Merlin: Yes.
John: There it is.
Merlin: Now you can open the strategic reserve of Warsaw humor.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: Dumb Donald is so dumb.
Merlin: I would totally get a mic.
Merlin: I bet they exist.
Merlin: I'm not going to look right now.
Merlin: I would do that.
Merlin: I also think I'd like to think about standing while recording, but for some reason I think, you know, I'll do it right now.
Merlin: I'm going to stand.
John: I bet there are people that do that.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: There are people that do that.
Merlin: I received, as a Christmas present a few years ago, a very sweet, passive-aggressive... Oh, I'm going to sit down.
Merlin: I don't like this.
Merlin: No, it's not terrible.
Merlin: It's not a passive aggressive gift, but sometimes gifts come with a message.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Don't I mean like a free message, an unstated message?
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: If somebody gives you breath mints and soap.
Merlin: I see what you're saying.
Merlin: But what I had done was, I don't know if you're aware, there's a wonderful, I consider fairly classic children's toy of recent vintage.
Merlin: And Ikea makes this play kitchen.
Merlin: Oh, the play kitchen.
Merlin: Sure, we've had a play kitchen.
Merlin: You can put a battery in it and you can make your heater look lit up.
John: And it runs around?
Merlin: So many things.
Merlin: No, we didn't have one that had a battery.
Oh.
Merlin: Well, okay.
Merlin: So, but, but the beauty part of the Ikea kitchen is that like most, I don't know, like there's a lot of criticism again, back to the seventies.
Merlin: There's a lot of criticism.
Merlin: The toys were like way too specific for like, oh, this is, this is a gun that does this thing or blah, blah, blah.
Merlin: The Ikea kitchen, like you can make lots of different things out of it.
Merlin: Like that could be a cabinet or that could be a microwave or that could be whatever you want it to be.
Merlin: I use it as a standing desk, right?
Merlin: When my daughter outgrew the interest in the IKEA kitchen, which was a great gift, third birthday, that was the year.
Merlin: It's the first day she remembers me ever saying the F word.
Merlin: I was trying to get Buzz Lightyear out of a box.
Merlin: That's what she remembers.
Merlin: Best Christmas we ever gave her, and that's what she remembers.
John: She's three years old, and she remembers Daddy's F word.
John: No, third grade.
John: Oh, third grade.
Merlin: Well, it might be – no, it might be earlier than that.
John: No, I remember.
Merlin: But it was around Toy Story, so that would be summer of 2010 into 2010.
Merlin: But the point is, at one point in one of the mini purges to try and get her room into some kind of a condition, we moved the IKEA kitchen into the master bedroom, which is where all things go for a while.
Merlin: And it was by the window.
Merlin: And then one day, out of nowhere, I says to myself, I says, huh.
Merlin: I says, I could look out this window into –
Merlin: the park where the Confederate ghosts live.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Which is a nice, pretty nice view by, you know, Western San Francisco standards.
John: Well, and definitely the higher up you get, the nicer it is.
Merlin: That's true.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: That's true.
Merlin: And we're, we're above the first floor.
Merlin: So we get a nice view.
Merlin: Anyhow, I took my, took my computer machine and I set it atop the Ikea play kitchen.
Merlin: And that became, I mean, you could call it a, yeah, it was a standing desk and that became the thing.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: I had no idea.
Merlin: I had no idea you were doing that.
Merlin: Oh, I did it for a few years because I like to move around, you know, and if I'm at home, you know, and this is back at the time when my family would be out of the house sometimes, which they are not now.
Merlin: I mean, your school, but, you know, my lady, that's her office now.
Merlin: I sleep in my wife's office at this point.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: I feel you, dog.
Merlin: Thank you.
Merlin: And then for Christmas, a few years ago, I received a gift that I understood to be a gift that comes with a message.
Merlin: And if I'm being honest, my beloved lady friend, you know she's terrific.
Merlin: She does give me the occasional gift with a message.
Merlin: And I'd be happy to share some of these with you because some of them are pretty great.
Merlin: I did get the standing desk.
Merlin: And it has like a robot, so it can rise and go up and down.
Merlin: Sure, I've seen that.
Merlin: It's a nice standing desk.
John: What was the message?
John: Did she put it in the kitchen?
Merlin: We need to get rid of the IKEA play kitchen in our bedroom.
John: Oh, I see, yeah.
Merlin: Don't you think a little bit of a message?
John: For sure.
Merlin: People are looking up, goats and whatnot.
John: Yeah, it seems like she's just professionalizing you.
Merlin: She's probably thinking, oh, what you would prefer is one that looks –
John: Okay, right.
John: Because that's not entirely implausible, right?
John: That somebody would come on a tour and they would see Merlin's pretend kitchen.
John: You can do whatever you want with it.
Merlin: No, I mean, it's... So, I mean, I do get... I mean, when I get personal care products from her in my stocking, I don't sweat it too much.
Merlin: But, like, I have gotten, like, oh, look, here's some new sweatpants for you.
Merlin: And they're tactical and they're nice.
Merlin: But the real message there is they're also not what I call my shipwreck pants.
Merlin: I have several pairs of what I call shipwreck pants, which are pants that no adult man should wear because it looks like you were just in a shipwreck in an inexpensive TV production.
Merlin: And the main way they show that you were in a shipwreck, apart from you crawling up on the beach on the set, is that your pants are tattered.
Merlin: yeah oh oh wait you have but are they are they professionally tattered from like a studio or have you just tattered them by walking no no well i'm glad i'm really glad you asked uh you know me and my 501s yeah uh and i'll just wear those boy for a real long time until the crotch blows out till the knee blows out but i i have a couple pairs of sweatpants i know we don't like american apparel anymore
Merlin: But a long time ago, when we still liked American Apparel and the Mustache Man, I bought several pairs of their sweatpants.
Merlin: And as you know, I have a short rise.
Merlin: So I have a lot to deal with in this world with my short rise.
Merlin: I like these sweatpants.
Merlin: They're sweatpants from probably 10 to 15 years ago.
Merlin: And they look like I've been in a shipwreck.
Merlin: So when I get sweatpants, that's a nice way of saying maybe you shouldn't be shipwrecked anymore.
Wow.
Merlin: Oh, oh, you got, well, again.
Merlin: It's a message is what I'm saying, John.
Merlin: I think sometimes gifts come with a message.
John: Sometimes gifts are like a friendly intervention.
John: You're describing situations where I can only imagine.
John: That the gift giver, in this case, your lovely wife.
John: She is terrific.
John: She's really something.
John: And I think what she is thinking is that you are wishing you had some new sweatpants.
John: Not that she wishes you had new sweatpants, but that you were wishing you had them, but you didn't have the...
John: I don't know, whatever it takes.
John: The wherewithal.
John: Yeah, whatever combination of factors it takes for a man to just get his own new sweatpants, which, as you know, is more complicated than it sounds.
John: Oh, my goodness.
Merlin: I'm always experimenting.
Merlin: I bought some a few days ago, and the rise is still too long, John.
John: You know, I got to say, and I don't know what our status is with this enterprise, but I have some of those, like,
John: groovy sweatpants from Mack Weldon.
John: Oh, did you get the Ace?
John: Did you get the Ace sweatpants?
Merlin: I don't know.
John: I don't remember which one.
Merlin: Mack Weldon is not a sponsor this week, but they will be now because we've talked about them and they should pay us like gentlemen.
John: Yes.
Merlin: I, as you may know, I know you don't listen to podcasts, but I'm a big fan of Mack Weldon.
Merlin: I'm wearing a Mack Weldon shirt right now.
John: Sure.
John: Well, they've got a couple of pairs of sweatpants, and, you know, I tend to shy about
John: away from anything that describes itself as being a technical fabric because I, uh, because I feel like there's tech and then there's fabric.
John: And I want to keep those – I want to keep – on my plate, I want to keep the tech and the fabric from touching.
John: It's like potatoes for you.
John: That's right.
John: Don't even come on my plate.
John: Well, no.
John: I'll put both on my plate.
John: So it's like I don't want the noodles –
John: To touch the cranberry sauce, right?
John: I want the noodles to touch the gravy.
Merlin: I'm fine with that.
Merlin: Oh, absolutely.
Merlin: I mean, they should be in deep sexual congress.
Merlin: I get what you're saying.
Merlin: But you're not against an improvement to a fabric.
Merlin: You'll wear pants covered with wax.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: But you don't want one of these high-tech wicks.
Merlin: You're not a wicker.
John: The thing is, what I loved about Mack Weldon at first was they had that underwear that had silver threads in it.
John: I loved that because that seemed like something the Egyptians would have done.
John: Sure, the Egyptians made tiny little micro silver threads.
John: They wove them out of beehives or whatever.
John: Right.
John: Beehive from silver beehive.
John: Okay.
John: Yeah.
John: But if a fabric has too many capital Xs in the word, if it's called like X-wing...
John: sweatpants or something.
Merlin: Oh, I get it.
John: Okay.
Merlin: Oh, that's a marker for you can go right past.
Merlin: I think about going to someplace like, you know, I enjoy REI.
Merlin: I'm an affiliate member.
Merlin: There are too many technical fabrics.
Merlin: Well, there's that one brand, and I don't know where it's, it's like Arcturix or something.
John: Yeah, Arcturix.
John: It's a hairless bird with a, no, it's a wingless, a featherless, a flyless bird with hairy feathers.
John: I think that's an axolotl.
John: Oh, sure.
Merlin: Axolotl.
Merlin: Did you know axolotls are permanent juveniles?
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: I learned about this on YouTube.
Merlin: There's a lot of anomalies.
Merlin: We should save that for another episode.
Merlin: But you go, and you go to the rack, and maybe you go over here, you go to there, you look at these.
Merlin: But there are true turrets.
Merlin: That stuff is like you take a costly REI item, double it.
Merlin: That's just expensive, and I think it's extremely technical.
Yeah.
John: It's very technical, and it's very expensive, and I think that it is too expensive to justify.
Merlin: I've never justified it.
Merlin: I won't do it.
Merlin: I've been to REI a lot, and I've never bought an Arcturix.
John: It's the Aptrix.
John: The Apteryx is a wingless bird with hairy feathers.
Merlin: Are you thinking of, what's his name, Asterisk?
Merlin: Is that the name of the, like he's like a Norwegian cartoon character?
Merlin: The little Viking with the feathers on his head?
John: Is that his name?
John: No, but he's got feathers.
Merlin: He's got feathers.
Merlin: And they don't have him at REI.
John: No, Apteryx was the bird...
John: In the comic strip BC, before BC became like a crazy.
John: It got preachy, John.
John: Super religious, weird.
John: How did this get into the funny pages?
Merlin: Well, Johnny Hart, buddy.
Merlin: You know, save it for Wizard of Id.
Merlin: Right, but keep it out of Wizard of Id, too.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: It got really preachy and it got almost to like a family circus level of... There's a difference between loving your God and doing good works and just turning into a little bit of a weirdo.
Merlin: And like family circus, I think BC turned into a little bit of a weirdo comic.
John: I'm going to say it went all the way over.
John: I mean, by its very definition...
John: BC, at least in the old nomenclature, stood for before Christ.
Merlin: Yeah, it has an awfully Christian vibe for something that precedes our Lord.
John: Yeah, we've got cavemen who are like kneeling in front of the North Star on Christmas Eve or whatever.
John: And all these shadows of crosses and stuff.
John: Christ isn't even born yet, you ding-dongs.
John: Yeah, you know what?
Merlin: Like when Santa Claus is coming to town, when Mickey Rooney gets all horny for Jesus and talks about the holiest of nights and that hot, the hot, the hot singing woman, you know, the woman by the fountain.
Merlin: I don't know if I've ever seen it.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: My love is beginning.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: She's so hot.
Merlin: She looks like a hot, tarted up Modigliani painting.
John: I thought you were breaking into wings.
John: I thought you were doing my love.
John: Oh, good.
John: Cause it sounded just the same.
John: And I was like, wow, this is, I've got to see this film.
Merlin: Oh, I can, I can hear that.
Merlin: I can hear that.
Merlin: I miss sing songs.
Merlin: I miss saying a song just this weekend, but then, um, or, or when Linus is on stage and he's reading the thing, you know, from probably, probably Matthew, probably some, like some real basic bitch gospel.
Merlin: Um,
Merlin: Might be John.
Merlin: Doubt it's John.
Merlin: I get some of that, you know, that... I like that feeling.
Merlin: A little bit of that is nice.
John: Yeah, it's nice.
Merlin: A little bit is nice, but BC... No, it went over.
John: And I'm just reading here that...
John: BC started in 1958, so perfectly right in that Peanuts Christian little envelope.
John: But that – not Gary Hart.
John: Johnny Hart?
John: I want to say Johnny Hart.
John: Johnny Hart.
Merlin: Gary Hart had intercourse on a boat, if memory serves.
Merlin: Well, or allegedly.
Merlin: Well, and then he challenged the media, and that's really where it took a turn.
Yeah.
John: Johnny Hart died at his drawing board.
John: Oh, my goodness.
John: Did he come back three days later?
John: Is that a great story?
John: He died at his drawing board.
John: Do you think that's the way to go, John?
John: I don't know.
John: I mean, there were several years where BC got so bad, because you know how I feel about the comics pages.
John: I'm very, very...
Merlin: I want to literally beg you not to get me started on the comics pages.
Merlin: They were in decline when I was still considered a young person.
Merlin: And I don't even want to get started on what's happening with comics now.
Merlin: But it used to be a treat, John.
Merlin: You would get the Cincinnati Inquirer, the Sunday edition, and you'd pull out.
Merlin: It was like maybe not a war and peace, but at least a heart of darkness sides tome of full color comics.
Merlin: So beautiful.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: Even into junior high, it was still really good.
Merlin: Then the papers got smaller, like Gloria Swanson said.
Merlin: And then the comics got weirder.
John: They made us how we are.
John: They made us how we were.
John: And how we were made us how we are.
John: But I remember many years sitting there reading B.C.
John: and wishing that Johnny Hart would die at his drawing table.
Merlin: So maybe it's me.
Merlin: Oh, okay.
Merlin: Did you feel like that when you were extremely young or as he moved more toward the Lord?
John: When I was young, I had B.C.
John: books.
John: I had the books.
John: I had the collected works of Johnny Hart.
John: No, I loved it.
John: I can still almost recall a wingless bird or flightless bird with hairy feathers.
John: That still pops into my head all the time when I look at stuff.
John: I go, hmm, that's just like a flightless bird with hairy feathers.
John: But no, at a certain point, it wasn't funny anymore.
John: He was throwing the G's.
John: All over the Daily Comics page in the middle of March.
John: It's like, get your cheese out of here.
John: That's not a holy time of year.
John: Well, I guess it could be.
John: Yeah, sure, March.
John: Okay, let's say August.
John: There's nothing happening in August.
John: Yeah.
John: Like, whatever it is.
John: My daughter asked this question not very long ago.
John: Why is there nothing in August?
John: She's like, there are no holidays in August.
John: Right.
John: There's no religious anything in August.
Merlin: August has become almost like 1997.
Merlin: We all know that's when the French people leave Paris.
Merlin: And yes, there are vacation things.
Merlin: But you're right.
Merlin: August is almost not there.
Merlin: If we had to cut... Let's say we had to do some cost cutting and we had to get rid of one month.
Merlin: It would suck if it was a kid's summer vacation month, but...
Merlin: I think August would come up.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: If you took it to Congress and we really thought about this, we fixed daylight saving time, we do all the things, we get rid of pennies, all the things that make life a living hell, I think August could very easily be removed when we go with an 11-month year.
John: It does feel like a mouths of babes thing.
John: If we're going to start eliminating months, I think we should go back to a 10-month year.
John: Every month has...
John: 30 days.
John: And then we have a 65-day Rumspringa.
John: Oh.
John: Which is, where it's just like, it's a buccanella.
Merlin: We could just have a month called, so what if we went, so are you talking about, I feel like you're talking about some kind of an old calendar.
Merlin: Like October used to be the eighth month, hence the octo, right?
Merlin: Octo.
Merlin: November is nine, like nobenta.
Merlin: Right.
John: December is ten, as in decahedron.
John: Right.
Merlin: Kirk DeCameron, that kind of thing.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I get it.
Merlin: I get it.
Merlin: But here's the thing.
Merlin: If we did go, I'm going to call it metric.
Merlin: Like if we did go metric and we said, okay, from now on there's 10 months and they're all 30 days long.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I'm not going to do the math on that.
Merlin: I think that puts us about 65 days short.
Merlin: That's the room springer.
Merlin: I was going to say we could have a month, a 65 day month called interregnum.
Merlin: Oh, into Reganum.
Merlin: I mean, like somewhere, I don't know, you could also break it up into two or three.
Merlin: There's so many options if we would get our minds right about this.
Merlin: But we could have nice normal months when we need normal months.
Merlin: And then you could have like fucked up months, you know, to like fill in in between the way, you know, you add holidays and stuff like that, right?
John: Oh, you're saying put all the holidays in that 65 days?
John: Are you somebody, would you have, would you, where would you put these?
John: Where would you put the room spring?
Merlin: I think there's, there's a couple of ways to do it.
Merlin: One is, well, okay, but August, August is, like I say, August is 1997.
Merlin: August is a Tuesday.
Merlin: It's the Tuesday of months.
Merlin: Hmm.
Merlin: It does not have a valence, right?
Merlin: Does it?
Merlin: I mean, August is hot.
Merlin: Like, what is the deal?
Merlin: Like, there's so many.
Merlin: Obviously, as your daughter has discovered, very wisely, there's no good holidays.
Merlin: Name me a holiday in August without looking.
John: There isn't any.
Merlin: It's like even the government doesn't care.
John: Right.
John: In Seattle, there's Seafair.
John: But that's sort of like weeks of hydroplane races.
Merlin: Can that go back to July or into September?
John: Yeah, it's starting.
John: Maybe the month of interregnum.
John: No, it kind of starts in June and goes.
John: But, I mean, August is always tainted by the fact that
John: School's about to start.
John: I remember August 1st as a kid, like my shoulders slumping going, oh, only one more month.
Merlin: Early August is, that's why early August is the Sunday night of part month.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
Merlin: I still get, last night I was a little bit melancholy as we record this, it's a Monday.
Merlin: I was a little bit melancholy thinking about how I got to get back to it, whatever the fuck this is.
Merlin: And you know, things, we can't just sit around and watch TV.
John: Man on a horse?
John: No, you got to get back on the horse, Merlin.
John: Here it comes.
John: You're either going to get on the horse or you're going to get run over by the horse.
Merlin: Oh, I was like riding a tiger.
Merlin: I get it.
Merlin: I get it.
Merlin: Oh, I don't know.
Merlin: But so if we were going to do that, though, I don't you can tell me as the arbiter of calendar if this fucks up the 10 month to the Kirk to Cameron.
Merlin: But like, it seems to me that we could cut that up in different ways.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: It could be that you could do it.
Merlin: You could have a 65 day in oregano.
Merlin: Or what if we cut that up into, say, 15 day slices?
Yeah.
John: Or, oh, okay, I see what you're saying.
John: Or do six 10-day party weeks.
Merlin: And then just add the extra, as we're calling arithmetic, well, back before Common Core, the remainder.
Merlin: Maybe we strap that on to the end of December for like a mini pre-January.
Merlin: Oh, for like a New Year's thing.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I never liked the last week of the year.
Merlin: Like a leap year.
Merlin: Do we agree that it needs to match...
Merlin: Which one is us?
Merlin: We go around the sun, right?
Merlin: Yep, yep, yep, yep.
Merlin: It has to stay heliocentric, right?
John: We definitely do go around the sun, and I do believe that it should match that because it's nice.
John: You don't want to be cute about it.
John: No, and the thing is kids like regularity.
John: I think grownups do too.
John: They want the...
John: They want the longest day of the year to be June 21st, no matter what.
John: So you got to kind of keep that.
John: You got to, you know, there's a few tent poles that have got to be there.
Merlin: Oh, like in Doctor Who, a fixed point in time.
Merlin: There's some things you're not going to fuck with.
Merlin: Do we keep the birth of our Lord on December 25th?
John: Yeah, that seems to be fairly well established, but only in a very small part of the world.
John: Or maybe not a small part, but only a third of the world.
John: But yeah, I do feel like...
John: I'm always bothered by the fact that the months aren't 30 days long.
John: And I know that there's a way to do a 12-month calendar where the months are all 30 days long.
John: And then you just have to, you know, toss some, keep some balls in the air.
Merlin: But we already do that.
Merlin: We just changed our clocks because someone told us to.
Merlin: They just said, guess what?
Merlin: Time changed.
Merlin: Time.
Merlin: Time doesn't change.
Merlin: Your clock changes.
John: Time takes a cigarette and puts it in your mouth is what time does.
John: How much does that cost?
John: For time to take a cigarette and put it in your mouth?
John: I mean, isn't that... These days, cigarettes are like 50 cents.
Merlin: They're really costly.
Merlin: I see... I think I see what you're saying.
Merlin: But you also... The way this dovetails with this program is... And I've seen various depictions of this.
Merlin: You... Do you still believe that years have a shape?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Would you want to just real quickly review that?
Merlin: Because it's a concept... Because I think weeks have a shape.
Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Weeks go from right to left, which is unusual in my pantheon of things.
Merlin: Now, wait a minute, Merlin.
Merlin: Go ahead.
Merlin: Sundays are yellow.
Merlin: And then you go one to the left, and that's Monday.
John: To the left from Sunday is Monday.
Merlin: And then the other days are in order after that, and then it wraps back around.
John: But it keeps going to the left.
John: To the left.
John: You picture, I mean, all of a sudden I'm seeing a Merlin week and it's like in Korean.
John: I didn't realize this.
Merlin: Or Hebrew.
Merlin: You get Thursday.
Merlin: First of all, I've believed since the 90s at least that Thursday should be considered part of the weekend.
Merlin: Or as they say in England, the weekend.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But what about Friday?
Merlin: Friday's definitely part of the weekend.
Merlin: That's the problem.
Merlin: But Thursday's like pre-weekend.
Merlin: Like, for example, when I lived in Tallahassee in a town for college students, in the papers, like Thursday was practically the weekend because of the students, I think.
Merlin: But I don't have a problem with it.
Merlin: I think the weekend should start on Thursday night is what I think.
John: You know, I was having a conversation.
John: But it goes right to left is what I was saying.
John: That's crazy, right to left.
John: I was talking to a friend via email.
John: And this has come up many times in my life.
John: When I was in high school, most of the people I knew in school, and I'm not talking about my close friends, but most of the people I knew, they just wanted to get high and get laid.
John: And throughout my life, as I've gone through life, I realized that almost, I'm not gonna say everybody, but an awful lot of people just wanna get high and get laid.
John: And what they get high on changes, what getting laid looks like.
John: Like Netflix maybe or something?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Definitely red wine, but they want to be numb and they want to be coital or at least ejaculatory.
John: Yeah.
John: And what laid means changes, I think over time, but, but all of it, you know, from the time I was young, it really always looked to me like life was pretty simple and it was easy and you just needed to figure out a couple of components, just a couple of things.
John: If you could figure out how to get high, stay high, or at least order your life so that you could get high and it wouldn't screw you up.
John: I guess that's what it is.
John: Most of the people I knew in college were
John: They knew they had to get married.
John: They knew they had to get a job.
John: They just wanted to order their – they wanted to do what they had to do in college, study enough, pick the right spouse so that they could continue to get high and hopefully get laid with a minimum of –
John: Okay.
John: Right?
John: Because you don't want to get a job where you can't get high.
Merlin: The tricky part is you're threading a needle.
Merlin: If I understand what you're saying, you're threading a needle because to be high, you have to be high.
Merlin: Like you can't be not high and be high.
Merlin: So you have to be high, but you don't want to be too high.
Merlin: in a way that upsets the familial apple cart.
John: Well, no, there's a thing, right?
John: It's a sliding scale.
John: Like if your spouse also likes getting high, you guys can get super duper high and it's not a problem within your relationship.
John: But if you have a job that requires that you get up at five o'clock in the morning and have your periodic table memorized, you can't get that high.
John: So you want to not get that kind of job.
John: So you end up getting a job that's like,
John: you know, that's like a manager of a dealership or like a, you know, like somebody in a business, you get a, you get a business degree and then you go into business, but you're not trying to start a app or do a startup and, and be a billionaire.
John: You just want to do business and business is the kind of thing that a lot of people do business high or they want to do business high and
John: Or, you know, like you go out in the afternoon and you get drunk with the client and the client is like, I'm high.
John: Are you high?
John: Yes, I'm high.
John: And it's like, this is business.
John: We're doing business.
Merlin: I'm doing this for my work.
John: Yeah.
John: And so work.
John: And so what you want to do when you're in college is find that perfect spot where you can.
John: You get a job that is nice.
John: You get a nice job, a good job.
John: And what that means is you make enough money.
John: That you can be comfortable and also get laid and also.
John: Okay.
John: Stay high.
John: We're talking about a balancing act.
John: Well, you know, and that's why.
John: And I went to I went to a Catholic school and those people really have it dialed in, you know, like like kids at a at a expensive Catholic school.
John: they're trying to hit that nail right directly on the head, right?
John: Because you can guarantee, irrespective of gender, everybody at Catholic school is trying to get high.
John: And if we're being honest, a lot of them are trying to get laid.
John: They are definitely trying to get laid.
John: I mean, there are other colleges, like at a research university, there are people who are trying to do science, right?
John: But that's not happening at a Catholic school.
John: Nobody's trying to do science.
Merlin: Nobody's trying to write.
Merlin: People are moving things around, making time to do that stuff.
Merlin: But you also, if I understand, you're saying they're looking forward.
Merlin: They're forward-looking and thinking about a career.
Merlin: Maybe they could be like a Don Draper who gets to take people out for drinks.
John: There it is.
John: There it is.
John: That's exactly what they're trying to do.
John: And, oh, and crucially, they're trying to get high and get laid in the now also.
John: Right.
John: It's not a thing that they're like one day.
John: That's like picking up the tweezers with the same tweezers.
John: They're trying to do it and they're trying to do it right.
John: Well, so my problem was I was never I was super good at getting high, but I was never really focused on getting laid.
John: And also it never felt like enough.
John: I didn't want to just I was embarrassed that I was good at getting high.
John: I wanted to do more.
John: I wanted to.
John: I wanted to accomplish something, and I didn't know what.
John: And this has plagued me, and I still have the problem right now.
John: Here I am, 53.
John: I don't get high.
John: What even is getting laid?
John: What am I doing?
John: Why do we do it?
John: If I had gotten a job at a Pontiac dealership, if I had been – well, that would have been bad.
John: career course but if i had been at a certain time no that's true i could maybe maybe pontiac would have given me a good retirement could have been out there uh you know pushing catalinas i could have switched over to oldsmobile but but uh you can move around inside the the jam family i believe so but you know but i don't know like priests like you've got some trouble and they move you to a different diocese or something
John: okay i was uh yeah you know lee ray was a pontiac dealer and he sold the dealership and ended up buying the off-ramp and and turned it into a sex dungeon so i mean you know pontiac dealership can lead other things that was uh that was lee ray was the name of that person that made a dungeon out of an off-ramp yeah l-e-e-r-a-e uh if you if you want to look into lee ray by all means i might want to um
Merlin: But you don't want to die at your drawing table like Johnny Hart.
Merlin: No, and the thing is... You want to die having a drinking man with your dingus in somebody.
John: There was a time when I wanted Thursday to be part of the weekend.
John: I understood it to be part of the weekend, right?
John: And I understood the work week to be Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and then the weekend would be
John: Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
John: Sunday being slightly tainted by the fact that tomorrow was Monday.
John: It's pre-Monday.
John: It's just to the left.
John: And also the week's going from right to left.
John: But for me, the question has always been more about the why than the how.
John: Why?
John: Why do I want a longer weekend?
John: For most people, it would be because it'd be more time to get high and get laid.
Right.
John: You do that over here on the weekend, and then Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, you're over here at work.
John: You're not getting high or getting late.
John: Unless you're doing this – unless you really worked it out at Gonzaga, and Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, you're getting high on the golf course or at your desk selling Pontiacs.
John: And maybe – Well, like, you know, work-study.
John: Work – yeah, whatever it is.
John: Right.
John: But now –
John: As you say, there's no Monday.
John: There's no Sunday.
John: Everybody works all the time.
John: Am I right that your lady is working on Sunday now?
John: Is she working on Sunday?
John: No, no, no.
John: Accidental work, sometimes looking at the computer?
Merlin: No, you know, though, she has certain times a year, and now it's kind of one of those times a year, where she does...
Merlin: she's where she's managing things like she well she manages she's a manager she administrates but there are times where she has to like check in on things and sometimes i'll go in there and i'll say what are you doing and she'll say i'm just checking in on some email i'll say okay i'll allow it but you know but no like she cleaned the the bedroom yesterday which is nice right but that's not work that's just oh no no no no she loves that she loves that cleaning is about control and i i totally support it sometimes you just need to control a small space
John: Sometimes you do need to control a small space.
Merlin: I did it this weekend.
Merlin: I came in, and I count this as work back at my job where it was billable hours versus admin.
Merlin: Now, I had a lot of admin time because I was also the Mac guy.
Merlin: This is circa 1992.
Merlin: I remember this.
Merlin: But you don't want too much admin time.
Merlin: But the thing is, though, every job has admin time.
Merlin: And I one of the ways I have grown as a person, I would like to think is I have learned to accept and enjoy and embrace the idea that a lot of the stuff that I do that seems like total bullshit is actually it contributes to both my my work and my home life.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I mean, like, okay.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Big victory.
Merlin: Huge victory for me is I fixed our smart home stuff.
Merlin: Oh, no kidding.
Merlin: Well, it's too boring.
John: Alexa, turn on the colored lights.
John: We say African-American.
John: Colored lights, they hypnotize.
John: Spark in someone else's eyes.
Merlin: Yeah, I know that song.
Merlin: But for example, and my friend Jason Snell does this a lot in a way that I admire.
Merlin: He writes about technology.
Merlin: He has podcasts about technology.
Merlin: But he's not afraid to go and do some writing or a podcast about...
Merlin: like how he did his job in that case and i get to do that too so for me and this is why i get mad at my late oh she's terrific i love her but like when she rents a car and it doesn't have apple carplay in it i'm bummed because i said look that means for three days i could i could have been creating content on my technology shows because i can talk about carplay now with this the smart home stuff i'm talking about i fixed my smart home
Merlin: And just for you out there, people listening, for the last almost two months, my Philips Hue Hub has not been able to work with HomeKit.
John: Oh, dear.
John: Can you even imagine that?
Merlin: Oh, the Philips Hue Hub can't even work with HomeKit.
Merlin: The Hue Hub hasn't worked with HomeKit, and boy, does that ever cause a lot.
Merlin: But, you know, the only thing worse is something not working.
John: A rap feud?
Merlin: Is the Philips Hue Hub, like, dissing the HomeKit?
Merlin: I think Philips is in Dutch, so I guess that would be very East.
John: Sure.
John: Blue Vishnuva.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: And so, but I fixed... Okay, so here's the thing, though.
Merlin: Like, I did fix it, and I, you know, I did.
Merlin: I blew the whole thing up.
Merlin: I fucking... Oh, no.
Merlin: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Merlin: No, I terraformed.
Merlin: I terraformed.
Merlin: You blew the roof off of it.
Merlin: Well, I did, you know, what the colonists are doing in Aliens, or what they do on the Star Trek, is, like, I terraformed, I Gaia-bombed, and I started over, and I fixed it, and now it's fucking great.
John: Oh.
Merlin: Our tap switches were...
Merlin: Well, I mean, you know, again, to quote Jason Snell, here's everything you need to know about Star Trek III.
Merlin: Search for Spock.
Merlin: They found Spock.
Merlin: Okay, let's go on to four.
Merlin: That's pretty good.
Merlin: Hi, Jason.
Merlin: I don't think he listens.
Merlin: Ah, la-mow.
Merlin: So I fixed it, and now that's content on the Roderick on the Line program, too.
John: Oh, see, that's wonderful.
John: That's wonderful.
John: And I'm trying to decide whether to get back into my version of that.
John: So you're a fan of the Band of Horses?
Merlin: Yeah, I haven't listened in a while, but I love that record.
John: So, you know, we were – Band of Horses formed here in Seattle.
John: We were all – Were they on Sub Pop?
John: I feel like they were on Sub Pop.
John: They were on Sub Pop, yeah.
John: We were all part of a music community.
John: Ben was in Carissa's Weird for a while.
John: Right.
Merlin: Oh, and they tried to get them for Barsouk, but it didn't work out.
Merlin: Was that right?
Merlin: Yeah, that's right.
John: Yeah, that's what I remember.
John: I tried to convince him to be on Barsouk.
John: Yeah.
John: I played a show with Ben the first time he ever called himself horses.
John: And, you know, we're like, we were all part of the same mill.
John: Yeah.
John: And then after Band of Horses really, really hit.
John: They got big fast.
John: They just, they exploded.
John: It was big.
John: And he moved back to his native South Carolina and kind of,
John: his decade in Seattle and in the music scene here, he kind of just papered over it and was like, no, no, no, I'm a Southern guy.
John: And I always was in band of horses, a Southern band.
John: And it kind of changed the, you know, it kind of just, you know, you, you can rewrite your story, but, but, uh, he still has a lot of connections up here and band of horses is coming and they're playing tonight.
John: And I have not been to a rock show since, uh,
John: February of 2000, and I don't even remember what year.
Merlin: Oh, you're saying since the pandemic happened.
Merlin: You have not, you, are you being honest?
John: It's okay if you're not.
John: No, I have not seen a rock show, and...
John: So my hack recently, once the things started opening up and bands started coming back through and they would write me and say like, hey man, we're in town, you come to the show.
John: I would say, hey, why don't I come to your sound check?
Merlin: Right, because you got invited to like, was not Death Cab, but something big.
Merlin: You were worried you were going to be invited and have to not go.
Merlin: I remember that.
John: Yeah, this has come up several times and I realized, oh, I can just go to the sound check.
John: So I go at three o'clock in the afternoon and
John: hang out with my friend watch the band they they they usually play for an hour and it's interesting stuff they play half a song and then the lead singer stops everybody and there's like and he says something you know inscrutable and then they do a little another thing and then you know the downside is you hear the snare drum hit or as nobile used to say
John: I hit my toms more in soundcheck than I will in the entire set or in the entire week.
John: Boom, boom, boom.
John: It's already more times than I hit it in the set.
John: But it's fun.
John: I get to be in the club.
John: I get to see my friend.
John: I get to hear the music.
John: But I don't have to deal with the stuff.
John: But Band of Horses is coming tonight.
John: And it's one of those things where my daughter's mother started to put the elbow on me a week or so ago.
John: And she, as you know, lovely, lovely person.
Merlin: And you never did send me those pictures of her as Bellatrix Lestrange.
John: Oh, no, no.
John: I'll see if I have those here.
Merlin: Just a lot would be fine.
John: But she's like, you know, she wants to go to the show.
John: And the thing is that part of the perk...
John: Even having me as her daughter's father is that I can get her into shows and, and she likes to be, she, she likes to be backstage.
John: She likes to be on the side of the stage.
John: She wants to have the access.
John: And, and so that's, you know, that's one of the reasons you would put up with me.
John: If you were my daughter's mother.
John: I see.
Merlin: One of the benefits.
John: A fringe benefit, as we used to say.
John: It's a fringe benefit.
John: But I don't want to go.
John: But the problem is, at a certain point, it's not enough to just give somebody a ticket with a special ticket.
John: Because she doesn't want to go stand there with a special ticket.
John: She wants me to go.
John: And then she drafts off of me.
John: And so I'm like, ah.
John: So this morning I woke up and I did what I have not done in two years, which is the whole process.
John: Send the email to my friend who is running the concert and say, hey, I haven't talked to you in a while.
John: Oh, haha, I'm seeing in this email chain something funny that we said to each other two years ago.
John: Um, isn't that funny?
John: Lol.
John: Um, uh, and so anyway, uh, band of horses is playing tonight and are you going to go?
John: I'm going to go.
John: So I don't know what that's going to take, but like throw, you know, let me know.
John: Uh, great to talk to you.
John: See you at the show, maybe.
John: Peace out.
Merlin: I imagine that's just as confusing for the person in the band.
Merlin: Are you dropping a hanky and saying it'd be nice if you put me on the list?
John: No, it's not that, because at a certain point in music, everybody realizes that going to shows...
John: is part of the package, right?
John: It's part of the compensation package that we all have when you're young and you're, and you're starting out in bands and you're like, Hey, can I get on the guest list?
John: There's a, you know, there's all that, there's all that, uh, tension about it.
John: There's the, you're, you're afraid of being told no, you're afraid.
John: The worst thing is like, Oh, sorry, the guest list is full.
John: Um,
John: And that's when you're going to the band and you're asking the band, hey, can I get on your guest list?
John: And the band's got 10 slots and they've got their family and so forth.
John: But past a certain point in the music business when you have contributed enough into the energy of the machine –
John: You never have to ask the band.
John: I see.
John: This is more like you're going to talk to Chad.
John: You're going to talk to Chad.
John: And you're going to talk to the boss of whoever's boss is the boss of the thing.
John: And at that level – so at the very top level, at the level of like the Rolling Stones or Coldplay –
John: They have the ability, the insane ability to say we don't have – there are no comps.
John: If you want to go to this show, it's $180 to sit in the nosebleeds.
John: We give no comps.
John: We give no comps to anybody.
John: And of course that's a lie because the guy – the vice president of Sony –
John: has 25 seats in the front row for his daughter and her friends.
John: But for the people in the music business that are accustomed to going to things for free, that some of those things, you know, five years ago or however long ago it was that I saw Adele, there were a bunch of, Chad had a bunch of seats for Adele and he was like, hey, you want to go?
John: And I could see Adele on this tour that Adele is doing.
John: I don't know if that's true.
John: You know, Beyonce might want those tickets.
John: But for the most part, you don't get any flack and you don't have to beg, borrow, and plead because everybody in the business knows –
John: That going to shows is just part of how we get paid.
John: Because the energy you put into the machine.
John: Because you put energy into the machine.
John: Because to the people that are putting on the shows, those tickets don't mean anything.
John: No, that's not true.
John: Those tickets are the... They mean everything, in a way.
John: But...
John: On one hand, those tickets are incredibly scarce and that's what gives them value.
John: But on the other side of the desk, those tickets are free and everybody knows they're free.
John: Because they're meaningless.
John: And so the email isn't about like, hey, oops, you know, hi, can I get in?
John: There's a certain amount of performance you have to do.
Merlin: Well, I mean, maybe one way to put it, if I'm wrong, tell me, but there's a lot of parts of that that could change based on the fact that...
Merlin: The less that it costs someone to put you on the list or let you in, the more likely it is to not be a big deal.
Merlin: That's it.
Merlin: If there's no comps and it's sold out and Beyonce has 25 seats or whatever, like that's going to make it really complicated for that person.
Merlin: But I think – is that kind of what you're saying?
Merlin: Like if it doesn't cost you much to put someone on there, you're going to be more likely to be okay with it.
Merlin: That's 100% true.
John: And it's – and what –
John: uh, what shows are the ones that are, um, that are impossible or rather, which are the ones where the value of the ticket has gone up so high past the threshold where it's easy to give them to John, according to artists or by, no, no, no, just according to the math, as you're saying, like at, at one, at one level of the concert business, um,
John: Like your tour manager goes out into the room and counts the chairs by hand because he feels like the booking agent is trying to sell 20 extra tickets.
John: But at another level, that booking agent probably already gave 50 tickets away to their friends.
John: But there is a threshold that I am priced out of a seat, but Chad could still get in.
John: At the point at which Chad is priced out of a seat?
John: I see.
John: Then you're talking about... He might not be able to see Adele.
John: He can probably see Adele.
John: It's a question of can Chad – I guess Chad's always going to be able to do it.
John: He's just going to have to kiss some ass.
John: I tried to get my sister into a Coldplay concert a few years ago, and I went to my booking agent, Matt Hickey.
John: And Matt was like, oh, man, you're asking me the impossible because they do this intentionally.
John: They intentionally make this hard on us.
John: And he went to work.
Merlin: Oh, especially if you're dealing with like a Live Nation type thing.
Merlin: Yeah, exactly.
Merlin: I see.
Merlin: It's one thing for Chad to say, here's the game changers.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I think I can let you in.
Merlin: There's going to be several men in brown tuxedos and no problem.
Merlin: But if you're just the vessel, God, that must be such a strange move to not really be in control of your venue anymore.
John: Right.
John: And Live Nation...
John: doesn't want to do any favors for chad although they do also at one level they also want to lord it over him right and that and they become a kind of faceless nation anyway so i wrote my friend and he wrote back immediately and was like oh absolutely man you're you know you're you and uh your posse are on the list and see it i won't see you tonight because i because i'm in the music business and i don't want to see any music but you have fun
John: And so now I'm sitting here and I'm like, going to see the band of horses is something that I at one level want to do, but that's about 4%.
John: 96% of me doesn't want to do it.
John: But I recognize that it's kind of like getting Apple play in my rental car or, um, you know, or setting up my home kit and
John: Uh, it is part of, it's part of my job, right?
John: God made me.
John: It's part of what I do.
John: I have to do it because of the energy you put into the machine.
John: Because I put the energy in the machine.
John: I have to take some energy back out of it.
John: Who knows what's going to happen next?
John: You know, I could run into, to Ben, uh, on the way to the bathroom and he'd be like, Hey man, how's it going?
John: And I'm like, wow, your Southern accent's super thick now.
John: And he's like, Oh man, I'm from the South.
John: And he could say, hey, man, I'm putting a band together called the Florida Crackers, and I want you to be the bass player.
John: And I'd be like, wow, you don't have a South Carolina accent at all.
John: It's like an Oklahoma accent.
John: Yeah, it's weird.
John: It's really weird.
John: You know, get off my case.
John: But I don't know.
John: I don't know what's going to happen.
Merlin: You know, the other day.
Merlin: Is it tonight, John?
Merlin: It's tonight, John.
Merlin: Is your lady friend excited?
Merlin: Oh, she's very excited.
Merlin: I'm not excited.
Merlin: But your kid's not coming, right?
John: No, she can't.
John: She can't.
John: It's too—oh, wait a minute.
John: That didn't even occur to me.
John: Let me think about that.
John: The other day we had an election here in Seattle.
John: Did you follow the elections that were happening nationwide?
Merlin: Oh, gosh, I feel like I know this.
Merlin: I know there was Pennsylvania.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Obviously, Virginia was a big one.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Seattle—
Merlin: Yeah, what was the one in Seattle?
John: What am I missing?
John: I know there was one.
John: You know, we've got this thing with the – everybody went hog wild, but our city council has gotten very, very, very, very, very progressive.
John: And what that has led to is this kind of feeling among certain people in the city that the council has gone too far and that they're not taking care of the city anymore and –
John: And, you know, there's a lot of politics happening now.
Merlin: I mean, like they're getting cute, like in a San Francisco way, like you're being helpful but dumb kind of thing.
Merlin: Or like, you know, like in San Francisco, we get a little silly.
Merlin: We're no Berkeley, but we do get pretty silly here with a good heart.
Merlin: Is it that kind of thing?
Merlin: Like this progressive city council has taken their eye off the ball of what people really care about?
John: I don't think it's cute anymore.
John: I think that it's serious.
John: When I ran for the council, that was...
John: kind of the beginning of this period where one of the things that shocked me about running for that job was i thought i was going to run against the old conservative dude and then there was a guy in the race who was positioning himself to my left making me the what the cent now you're the centrist yeah like i i've never i would at that point in time i'd never been a centrist in my life and he was coming at it from this like
John: Capitalism is bad.
John: Full stop like a universal basic income or something.
John: Well, no, it wasn't that it was that he believed that that property developers were the ones who were they were the greatest evil people that were building buildings because the people that were building buildings were trying to profit.
John: And so they were built.
John: They were in his story.
John: The reason there was no housing for middle income people or low income people was the big developers were tearing down all the low income housing and building new housing.
John: Now that's like the most simplistic way to describe what was the whole symbiosis of a city becoming too expensive for poor people to live in it.
John: It's not really the developers that are doing it.
Merlin: The developers are responding to the... Yeah, I mean, you've had some beefs before, if memory serves, with the way that things are zoned.
Merlin: You can understand, just as you taught us all, you learn a lot about a city and its history.
Merlin: Is it on a river, et cetera?
Merlin: But in this case, I feel like you've had some kind of bee in your barn for a while about the way zoning works, right?
John: Well, and so the city council trended, and they did some wonderful things.
John: The $15 minimum wage thing started here.
John: They did this, but the whole engine of progressivism right now, like at one point during the chop last year,
John: I definitely was super offended by the way the Seattle Police Department worked.
John: And I was very, very interested in rethinking police.
John: Oh, sure.
Merlin: And in defunding them from having their tanks and... Well, along the lines of the, you know, common sense idea that maybe not everything needs, not every problem needs somebody with an angry person with a gun there.
John: But that developed into an energy of...
John: You know, of where there were now candidates in the race who were advocating for the elimination of the police.
John: Okay.
John: The gradual elimination of the police and replacing them with a kind of like a mysterious potpourri of community.
John: AAA for mental health in some ways.
Merlin: And roadside assistance for what you're dealing with.
Merlin: But, you know, we're not talking about, like, needing to bring in snipers to take out a hostage situation.
Merlin: And we don't need the police to do police things on as many things as they're currently expected to police.
John: But it filters down to a level where it's like, okay, we definitely see statistically that a lot of people that are shoplifting candy bars end up in the police area.
John: system and they end up in jail for shoplifting a 50 cent candy bar and they can't pay their bail or they don't show up for their bench warrant.
John: And now suddenly they've got a felony warrant for failure to appear.
John: And then they go to jail for two years because they
John: Not because they shoplifted a candy bar, but because they were indigent and didn't have resources.
John: And this is the criminal justice system.
John: It just feeds – disproportionately feeds poor people into the system, right?
John: Right.
Merlin: I mean, it's almost like a dragon protecting its horde.
Merlin: Once you really start interrogating this system, it is remarkable how tuned many of these systems have become over decades to specifically seek out poor people.
Merlin: It's amazing how well-tuned the system has been to put them back on their heels for life in a way.
Merlin: It's difficult sometimes to find the fingerprints on it, but boy, once you start looking into it, it is fucked up.
John: But a lot of the evidence is in how you interpret statistics, right?
John: I mean, it would be weird for a system to target poor people because poor people don't bring any money in except in the form of allowing police budgets to increase.
John: But, you know, it's like a daisy chain –
John: But it really depends on how you interpret the statistics.
John: And so you look at that situation, the 50 cent candy bar.
John: Well, so what do you do about this?
John: How do you reform the system?
John: Well, there was a candidate running for city attorney in Seattle.
John: And her platform was to basically decriminalize petty crime.
John: Because the evidence, the statistics showed that there were, you know, all these candy bar shoplifters clogging up the justice system and also then, you know, becoming career –
John: patrons of the of the criminal justice system if you will clients of them oh my god you know we're like a few weeks away from that becoming the official term it's you know it's what they it's what they do in the in the hospitals now they talk about the patient yeah yeah they're they're they're they're the clients of the hospital it's like oh my god no please don't do that to us but so decriminalizing petty crime
John: You can see how the residents of a city would ask the follow-up question, which is, well, then what keeps people from just stealing?
John: Right.
John: If there's no penalty for stealing candy bars, you know, like a shop owner is going to say, well, then what do I do when someone comes in and takes candy bars?
Merlin: Yeah, we've been facing a very similar thing with the DA.
Merlin: I think it's the DA here who has.
Merlin: Yeah, I mean, they're doing a recall to bring this fellow back because they say he's not taking because they made some kind of a change was made.
Merlin: I'm going to put this passively, but a change was made at some point where.
Merlin: I think it was that property crimes involving less than $1,000, not that they were decriminalized, but it was almost like Hamsterdam in The Wire.
Merlin: It was like, we're not going to pursue this.
Merlin: And, of course, that's concomitant with...
Merlin: You know, there's all these shoplifting things that are supposedly going on here.
Merlin: This is way more complicated than it looks at first.
Merlin: But, like many things in San Francisco.
Merlin: But yeah, yeah.
Merlin: And so that person is getting blamed for like, oh my God, my car window got broken again.
Merlin: It's this guy Boudin's fault.
John: Well, and, you know, at some level, I'm sure the law and order people love this kind of, like, the optics of...
John: people in downtown San Francisco just running into stores and taking what they want and the cops are just standing there because the law and order people are like, this isn't going to last long.
John: There's going to be a real slap back.
John: Almost like a false flag.
Merlin: Like, this is it.
Merlin: This has got to be it.
John: But the police reform candidate, when asked what keeps people from shoplifting, unfortunately, they have to resort to just sort of hand-waving about like, well, if there was enough mental health
John: counseling, the person wouldn't need a candy bar.
John: And that's not an answer to what do you do when they steal a candy bar?
John: It's the kind of magical thinking of like, well, if we take away the police, then eventually we will take away the need for the police.
John: And the first thing to do is take away the police and then we'll take away the need or hand in hand.
John: It's going to happen over the course of several years.
John: Don't worry about it.
Merlin: But as a store owner, I have a bodega and kind of maybe a rough part of town.
Merlin: And I already have enough to deal with right now.
Merlin: But on top of that, you're going to make stealing candy bars legal.
John: Yeah.
John: And a lot of those stores end up like, well, I would rather close my doors than just be in this environment.
John: And this is the situation in Seattle right now.
John: You've got downtown...
John: It just feels scary down there.
John: And so there's a pushback.
John: Well, the other candidate in this race, the city attorney candidate, is a woman who changed her party affiliation to Republican last year or the year before.
John: She'd been a Democrat before.
John: Now, Seattle has not elected a Republican to public office before.
John: in decades washington state does but the but the last republican um all the like tough on crime people uh that have that have been in the city attorney's office over the last 40 years they're all democrats they're just like tough on crime democrats okay she's a republican and she was running basically on this platform of like don't
John: defund the police.
John: People that steal a candy bar should still face consequences.
John: And she won.
Merlin: Oh, wow.
Merlin: A republic.
Merlin: And this was on Tuesday?
Merlin: Yeah.
John: She won the election.
John: Damn.
Merlin: What was the expectation?
Merlin: What was the public reckon on how she would do?
John: Was the other candidate kind of weak?
John: No, the other candidate was very strong, but the other candidate had all these, you know, they found all these tweets, not even hard to find.
John: Her tweets from last year were like, she tweeted the chief of police and said something like, I hope you suck on a COVID dick and die asshole type of thing, which is like the city attorney maybe shouldn't talk to the chief of police.
John: And she was like, well, I didn't know I was going to run for office at the time.
John: That's a good point.
John: So, you know, yeah, sure.
John: Okay.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Oh, but for whatever proportion of people don't want the candy bar stolen, that's going to make not a very difficult decision, even if you're a Democrat.
John: Yeah.
John: So the Republican woman is probably not super qualified.
John: If you look at her, at her CV, like she is an attorney, but she doesn't have any really trial time or very little trial time.
John: She was, you know, she was working in a,
John: in the law, but she's not like – she hasn't done her time in the trenches.
Merlin: Not that her – Oh, like sometimes you'll see like a public defender or a DA.
Merlin: I see what you're saying.
John: Somebody that's really been in the system.
John: But she got all the establishment endorsements, and I think also just in the recent election, there was a – like the new mayor is also the more conservative of the two candidates, although –
John: liberal, but the more conservative.
Merlin: The other thing, I don't know, there's a word I've been hearing a lot in the last few years that I think sometimes it's code, but it's still a very interesting word.
Merlin: We tend to think about a one-line axis of liberal versus conservative or progressive versus however you put that, but there's also this idea, this is a lot like D&D alignment.
Merlin: You know, like in D&D, you've got are you good or evil, chaotic or lawful.
Merlin: And you know what I'm saying?
Merlin: And I think like in this instance, we're talking about are you an institutionalist?
John: Right.
Merlin: Like you could be extremely radical, but an institutionalist versus somebody who I guess that would tend to be somebody who's, if you're not institutionalist, you're a little bit of more of an, not an anarchist, but you know what I mean?
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Does that factor into it?
John: Yeah, I think in Seattle we're always interested in burning down the institution.
John: It's just we want to hear somebody that's got a plan for what to replace it with.
John: That's a good idea.
John: Yeah, and lately there have been a lot of candidates and a lot of people in the politics here who want to burn it down and they feel like that's the means to the end.
John: They don't have a plan for what to replace it with except for hand-waving.
Merlin: So really almost like a revolutionary.
Merlin: We're not sure how we're going to govern our banana republic, but we definitely want to take it over.
John: Yeah, we're going to burn it down first.
John: And then we're going to realize that now there are no cops.
John: That means there's no crime because it was the cops that were creating the crime.
Merlin: Which is not so different from Trump saying there'll be less COVID if we don't test.
John: If we don't test, right.
John: I'm not living in Seattle, so I can't vote in some of these elections, right?
John: I can't vote for the mayor or the city council anymore because I have moved to the suburbs and I'm in a different jurisdiction.
John: So I was following the election process.
John: Just out of a, you know, old school love.
John: I know some of the characters.
John: I know the new mayor a little bit.
John: I know his opponent.
John: And the mayor's opponent was by no means like a radical.
John: She would have been a great mayor.
John: But she was just running to the left of him.
John: And so I know the players and I was like, I was following it along.
John: And this Republican woman who's running for city attorney, her name was Ann Davison.
John: And, you know, I'd read a few articles about the race and I was, you know, I was sort of like, oh, that's interesting.
John: The one person wants to defund the police.
John: The other one decided she's a Republican.
John: What kind of election is this?
John: You know, I was just kind of like not holding my nose, but just like, whoa, what's going on in Seattle right now?
John: Well, so Ann Davison wins and I go decide I'm going to do a deep dive and see who the new city attorney is.
John: And I start reading the first book.
John: long article on her and there's a picture of her and I am, I scroll past it and then I'm like, wait a minute.
John: And I scroll back and it's just like a, it's just like a brick wall fell on me because Ann Davison was a super long winter span.
John: What?
John: And went to a lot of shows back in the day and
John: Was, like, right up on the barricades, hanging out at the T-shirt stand after the show.
John: Like, I knew.
John: Were you acquainted with her?
John: I knew her, yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: And she was, like, at the time, she was a newly minted lawyer.
John: She's a tall, redheaded lady and a brand new lawyer and was really excited about her.
John: the law and about having just kind of gotten gotten her shingle and um and we used to talk about the law and uh like she came to see us play in other cities she came to see us play in detroit and then you know like if she was on business somewhere like and and i always just assumed you know i'd lost touch with her but
John: she sent me a picture that this is, um, this is a year ago.
John: She sent me a picture via email of her at the Western state hurricane show.
John: And I, and it had gotten lost in my inbox in during COVID because I was like, I go, then I put her name into my email and like these emails popped up from her from the old days and including this picture from the Western state hurricane show.
John: Oh my gosh.
John: And so,
John: I'm trying to – here's this person who is kind of the – she's above the fold in all the news stories about the recent election because hers is the campaign that was the most like Republican.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: And I have this picture of her, like, you know, standing at the merch table going, well, I already own all the CDs and T-shirts, but can I have a sticker?
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: And it's... You worry that you caused this?
Merlin: I mean, you know what I mean.
Merlin: Interpret that however you want, but do you think you had an influence and didn't realize it?
John: Did you radicalize her?
John: Almost certainly.
John: Almost certainly.
John: And what I'm afraid of is that we're getting to the age, Merlin, where all Long Winters fans are going to start tipping over and becoming centrists.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: This is like they joke about reaping and sowing.
Merlin: Now it's time to sow.
Merlin: Reap?
Merlin: Which one are we doing?
John: But the one where we find all your redheads belong to us kind of thing.
John: I worry that as I get older and find myself being cast more and more as the conservative...
John: By comparison.
John: Yeah, in all these online dialogues where I'm like, well, you know, there do need to be some police.
John: And then there's a bunch of people that are like, okay, boomer.
Merlin: It's like, God, when did having police—
Merlin: I think in a similar way because, you know, ever since the vaccine came out and anyway, QED stuff has happened.
Merlin: But, you know, then the mandates came along and then like it was all these like union groups and, you know, not the teachers, but like, you know, police and fire and all these places are super mad about the vaccine mandate.
Merlin: And a daily news show I like a lot today had a bit about –
Merlin: going and talking to the people who were like in New York and protesting against the mandate.
Merlin: And I'm not saying I've changed my mind, but it was interesting because they talk to a lot of people, especially in the fire department where they don't like being told what to do.
Merlin: And yes, we can all have fun with the joke.
Merlin: Like, you know, why don't you do what the police are always telling people to do and just do the law, like just uphold it.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I agree.
Merlin: Like, you know,
Merlin: Trevor Noah had a very sad and funny super cut of all the times during the George Floyd protests that cops were on TV saying, just comply.
Merlin: Just follow the law and please comply.
Merlin: Do what people tell you and all that shit.
Merlin: No, but they were talking to people.
Merlin: I don't know, but it was interesting to me as somebody who's trying to keep an open mind about everything that a lot of people they talk to are vaccinated.
Merlin: It's not that they're against vaccines.
Merlin: It really is that they're against an erosion of union power in some ways.
Merlin: And I was like, that's an interesting angle on that.
Merlin: And certainly there is just all the classic resistance.
Merlin: I mean, a fire person, fireman from New York,
Merlin: I'm guessing just in general that's somebody who does not like to be told what to do.
Merlin: But that's human nature.
Merlin: But I just thought that was interesting because I'm always interested when you dig a little bit deeper on something, or in this case, listen to a podcast, and you discover something where, like, there's two things that you kind of believe in, two or more things you believe in that then are kind of at odds, which is, like, we got to get rid of this goddamn...
Merlin: you know, COVID, but also it's interesting to say, it's almost like the ACLU thing of like, well, yeah, we defend the Klan because nobody should be persecuted for something that is just speech.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And you go like for years.
Merlin: And then I guess the extreme example of that is like PETA.
Merlin: PETA has now said, they don't want you to use the word bullpen in baseball anymore.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: You're supposed to just say, like, arm farm or something.
Merlin: Oh, arm farm.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying, though?
Merlin: You could look at that and say, oh, that's the thought police.
Merlin: But I think in some cases, I'm not sure this is always true or that I always agree, but I think it's interesting to say, well, maybe in thinking about how to approach getting rid of the COVID thing—
Merlin: one thing we should think about is like that maybe they're not doing this because they're obdurate about getting vaccinated.
Merlin: It's because they can already feel the erosion of their union unions.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And like, that's something I, I believe in that.
Merlin: Like,
Merlin: Wirecutter is asking people not to go to the Wirecutter site for a while.
Merlin: And I'm like, good for them.
Merlin: You know, like they're trying to get organized and get the kind of rights that any normal worker would expect to have.
Merlin: So anyway, I didn't mean to jump on here, but I think part of the re-situation of people that would consider themselves to be a liberal as the people who are conservative is in part because maybe –
Merlin: Well, if everything else but you changes in a direction, that's going to change where you are because that's how a situation works.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: But I think it could also be that, well, I'm very attracted to ideas that are complicated and seem paradoxical.
Merlin: Or you know what I mean?
Merlin: So in your case now, but what does it come down to for you?
Merlin: Do you think there's anyone else you're influencing with your past rock music?
Merlin: Do you have any way of knowing?
Right.
John: No, you can never know.
John: You can never know, but you'll find out maybe.
John: Well, but I mean, think about all the people that you have.
Merlin: Tower Sniper, you know, and they're listening to, you know, New Girl.
Merlin: It's not... No, you are!
John: No, you are!
John: Of all of those Tower Sniper songs that I have, Nuke Girl, it never occurred to me, Merlin.
John: You're right.
John: It's a Sniper song.
Merlin: Oh, I could... Yeah, it might be more like... Not Cinnamon.
Merlin: It might be more like... Scent of Lime could be really... You could turn Scent of Lime into a real creepy... Oh, no.
Merlin: It's Everything is Talking.
John: Oh, interesting.
John: Everything is Talking.
John: It's a little lesser-known track.
John: Probably people who are only...
John: only just familiar with the band, probably don't know everything is talking, but I do, I am fairly certain that Ann Davison, new city attorney of the city of Seattle, has everything is talking memorized.
John: Interesting.
Merlin: That might be an interesting way to be able to trace the influence.
Merlin: So maybe you come through the side door, you come in through the side door and you say, you know, Charles Whitman, what's your favorite long winter song?
John: It's a shibboleth.
John: Tradition!