Ep. 446: "God Made the Rat"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
John: Hi there, Merlin.
John: How's it going?
John: Well, I've had a Rice Krispie candy for breakfast.
John: How long do you microwave a Rice Krispie candy to bring it back to life?
Merlin: Do you know the wattage?
John: Hmm.
Merlin: It doesn't matter.
Merlin: Start at $15.
John: That's not a $1,200.
John: It's got to be like an $800.
John: Okay.
John: Okay.
Merlin: Like a college.
Merlin: Like a college microwave.
Merlin: Like a joke microwave.
John: Well, you know, my daughter's mother, she really loves the color like teal.
John: maybe okay maybe somewhere between teal and sky kind of classic uh you know googly architecture uh preppy sweater kind of color exactly a little bit miami vice that's right she loves that color and she loves everything about it and when she was decorating her house she uh somebody bought her a smeg
John: coffee maker that's that color and then she found a matching it's called smeg smeg don't love that it's some kind of swedish oh okay and then she found this microwave to match it oh she bought on looks and the microwave let me let me just walk you through this microwave it's not big enough for a standard microwave popcorn bag
John: If you put a microwave popcorn in there, the bag will not turn.
John: It will get wedged and... Height?
John: The height?
Merlin: No, width.
Merlin: John, what are we doing here?
Merlin: So I said... What kind of space shuttle bullshit is that?
John: And it's like a $100 microwave.
John: It's a college, not even a college mic.
John: And I said, hey, listen...
John: You bought this microwave.
John: It's cute.
John: I think we should put it on a shelf somewhere.
Merlin: Let's treat it like the art object that it deserves to be.
John: Yeah, maybe put some flowers in it.
John: But this is not a serious tool.
John: It's the middle of the pandemic.
John: We're trying to get by here.
John: We're using the microwave a lot.
John: Just popcorn alone.
John: You should get a $250 microwave.
John: Let alone all the other stuff.
Merlin: It makes such a difference, John.
John: And I was like, I showed her some.
John: Here's a black one.
John: Here's another black one.
John: This one's black.
John: They go with everything.
Merlin: You also get like a dark gray or a charcoal or a midnight.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: Don't get navy, though.
John: No, no, no.
John: That's the thing.
John: I said, listen, coffee maker.
John: And I'll tell you, the Smeg, it's very attractive.
John: But my old Mr. Coffee like runs circles around it in terms of actually making coffee.
John: The toaster's fine.
John: But she, weirdly, I'd never seen this before.
Merlin: stood her ground no i like my cute microwave and and this is this is in this case her her uh your daughter's mother's house and you know and i help out over there you know i help no no i don't want to get involved but but but i'm saying like it is her domicile oh yeah you you got your own place over here yeah i could have whatever microwave i want i'm just trying to help
John: Trying to help.
John: She grew up as a hippie.
John: They didn't have a microwave.
John: So I think there's part of that, too, that the microwave is some kind of concession that she's making to modernity.
John: And I said, this microwave is only good for heating up a cup of coffee and just barely that.
John: A small cup of coffee, John.
John: Yeah.
John: But she planted her feet.
John: And now here we are year two.
John: And she uses the microwave all the time because let's be honest, it's a great cooking tool.
John: And the microwave, I swear to you, if you cook more than three things in a row, it'll shut down.
John: Oh, man.
John: You won't be able to use it for two hours.
Merlin: It's not, as we say in my military circles, it's not ruggedized.
John: No, and I would disappear it.
John: I would desperate to C-dose it.
John: Except...
John: Except it's like her... It's not yours as part of it.
John: That's right.
John: And it's like, it's the emerald in her crown.
John: You walk into her kitchen and it's like, look at that there.
Merlin: Of course.
Merlin: Literally, it's teal.
Merlin: It's like a teal stone.
John: It's the color of a wheelbarrow.
Merlin: Of a googly wheelbarrow.
Merlin: So much.
Merlin: Depends.
Merlin: Huh.
Merlin: Huh.
Merlin: Oh, John, I hate to hear that because you and I were raised at a time when we looked askance at the microwave and there were so many cautionary tales about microwaves, probably from Big Oven.
Merlin: Don't look at them.
Merlin: Well, you know, don't put metal in it or your house will catch on fire.
Merlin: Don't, which is true.
Merlin: But also, like, you can't really do anything.
Merlin: Like, the first microwave we bought, which I think it was during the flush of a certain amount of late father insurance money, we got, I want to say, Litton, I think, used to be the brand.
Merlin: Oh, sure.
Merlin: And this was back when they wanted to sell you.
Merlin: Catch your mind back.
Merlin: Now, let me ask you this real quick.
Merlin: Did you guys have one late 70s, 80s?
Merlin: I forget.
Yeah.
John: We did.
John: We got our first one.
John: Your mom had one.
John: 1980.
John: 1980 was our first microwave.
Merlin: Okay, this might be a little, this is definitely before that.
Merlin: This would be like circa 76.
Merlin: And this is when they were real new, especially in Grosbeck, you know, in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Merlin: But this is back when they wanted to sell you something and go like, hey, check this out.
Merlin: You can boil water in only like 14 minutes, but also it's got a browning functionality.
Merlin: So basically it replaces your, remember the browning?
John: Sure, sure, I do.
Merlin: I don't think you see that.
Merlin: I'm sure it's in there somewhere, but you're much more likely to have a dedicated popcorn button at this point than you are to please make my microwave chicken brown button.
Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: My, our microwave, it was a very large appliance.
John: It was all wall.
John: Yeah.
John: It was a big, a big thing.
Merlin: And it's basically, I only learned this week.
Merlin: It's something that should have occurred to me a long time ago.
Merlin: I learned from a podcast.
Merlin: I enjoy that.
Merlin: If you think about it, a functioning micro microwave that is functioning properly is also a Faraday cage.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: If you put your phone in your microwave, not turned on, if you put your phone in your microwave and you call it and the signal goes through, you need to get a different microwave.
John: Oh, hot damn.
John: Look at you.
John: Yeah.
John: I kept that microwave.
John: So it sold.
John: My mother bought it because it was like all mod cons.
John: um although we were not advanced but she had moved to alaska and it was like she had a new house uh-huh she's gonna get a microwave she's building a new life and then we had never had nachos or heard of nachos
John: And I think there was an article in Sunset Magazine.
John: Sorry, John.
Merlin: Early 80s, you were doing nachos?
John: 1980, I'd never heard of nachos.
Merlin: I was not aware of nachos at all until Taco Bell had them at Taco Bell in Tampa that we had to drive to.
Merlin: 1983.
John: I think it was an article in Sunset that was like one of those black and white food articles where it's like, look at this delicious food.
John: Oh, okay, I saw significant day nachos.
John: And it's like...
John: Black and white.
John: But it's like, take your tortilla chips, which also were fairly new on the scene, at least for us.
John: Cover them with the... We were Frida's family.
John: And then you microwave it.
John: And we made this thing and it was like, wow.
John: That makes such a soggy chip.
John: Holy shit, though.
John: It was a revolution in our minds.
John: That's technology, yeah.
John: And then I think Red Robin got them.
John: I don't know.
John: Nachos, as you say, were a novelty at the time.
John: But I kept that microwave.
John: We moved the microwave with the house because the thing was massive.
John: You could put a whole turkey in it.
Merlin: My grandmother, my father's mother passed away in 1987.
Merlin: And we had to go to Cincinnati to kind of like clean out the house and all that kind of stuff.
Merlin: And it was tough for me.
Merlin: It was running right up against the start of the school year.
Merlin: And I was starting a new job as an RA.
Merlin: It was my second year of college.
Merlin: And I almost didn't pull it off.
Merlin: It was very stressful.
Merlin: And of course, my grandma died.
Merlin: So that sucked.
Merlin: But the whole family's together at the house.
Merlin: And they're like, anybody here want anything?
Merlin: If you want anything here, like put a sticker on it and we'll get it shipped.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And that was really, you know how that, I mean, like real talk.
Merlin: Jokes of love the room.
Merlin: That's so great.
Merlin: I got my grandfather's chair.
Merlin: I got, you know, the kind of dinette table that I'd sat at for so many years.
Merlin: And it's a weird, creepy feeling.
Merlin: But I also got her microwave.
Merlin: Now, my grandmother was not a lady who spent a lot of money on anything.
Merlin: I mean, and so in 1987, John, imagine the microwave that I put a sticker on.
Whew.
Merlin: Here's a hint.
Merlin: You ready for this?
Merlin: Do you remember when microwaves had latches?
Merlin: Oh, for sure.
John: For sure.
John: Remember when your microwave went chunk-chunk?
John: Sure.
John: I feel like that microwave probably had, like, key buttons that you might find on an IBM Selectric.
Merlin: Oh, absolutely.
Merlin: It did not have anything digital or LED.
Merlin: It was all done with dials.
Merlin: It went chunk-chunk, and the walls of it were approximately eight inches thick.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: You know what I'm talking about, though.
Merlin: That's the thing.
Merlin: That was the thing.
Merlin: It was like today, I'm a huge fan of your daughter's mother.
Merlin: Big fan.
Merlin: But it's unconscionable to have a microwave that size.
Merlin: But it used to be time was your microwave would take up as much space.
Merlin: as a, let's say, like a giant living room TV, but the available cooking.
Merlin: Yes, but the available cooking area, owing to the thickness of wall, made the available cooking area, well, let's be honest, it was certainly bigger than a popcorn bag.
Merlin: That's an excuse.
Merlin: But you know what I mean?
Merlin: But I was excited to have it, and I put it in the bathroom in my dorm room, because that's where I cook.
John: See, that's lovely.
John: That's lovely.
John: And I kept our family microwave all the way to 1995.
John: Oh, that's kind of nice, John.
John: Yeah, I had it up on top of my refrigerator in a rental place.
Merlin: Wait, so the microwave got to see you get sober?
Merlin: It did.
Merlin: The microwave went all the way.
Merlin: You couldn't keep that in the van with the cord, though, right?
John: No, no, no.
John: So it was the same as you're saying.
John: When my mom was leaving Alaska in 95, she was like, does anybody want anything?
John: And I was like, well, I need a microwave.
John: Can I have the microwave that's the size of a tube cathode ray television?
John: And she was like, yes.
John: That's the kind of thing you watch That's Incredible on with your family.
John: And so I maybe have even told this story before, but you remember that the apartment I was renting...
John: where my manager told me that he did not make the rat, that God made the rat.
Merlin: I don't remember that.
Merlin: Wait, no.
Merlin: Is this where you threw urine out the window?
John: No, no, no, no.
John: That was an apartment I loved.
John: No, this was an apartment where I came home one night and...
John: And the refrigerator was making this terrible sound.
John: And I was like, what's going on?
John: The refrigerator is about to explode.
John: And I went over and kind of pushed on the refrigerator.
John: And this big rat ran out from underneath it.
John: Oh, no.
John: No, I'd never lived in an apartment as far as I knew that had rats.
John: Your landlord said God made the rat?
John: Well, so he was from India.
John: Oh, that's cool.
John: And I went to him.
John: He was a very nice guy.
John: We had a good rapport.
John: Yeah.
John: But I said, there's a rat in my apartment.
John: And that means there are rats in my apartment.
John: I'm not going to do the voice.
Merlin: But then he said to you, don't ask or everybody will want one.
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John: He said...
John: In a voice that Ari Kondabolu has made it impossible for us to do, and also, you know, modern sensibilities.
John: I used to tell this story back in the 1990s, and I would do the impression.
John: It's not as funny if you just say, thank you, come again.
John: But I said, you know, and he said, John, I did not make the rat.
John: God made the rat.
John: If you have rats, if you have a problem with rats, you need to take it up with God.
Merlin: That's a thought-terminating statement.
Merlin: That's the kind of thing where you're going to be so stunned.
Merlin: It's like he hit you with a sock full of rupees and walked out.
Merlin: You're going to have to just sit with that now.
John: It was sincere.
John: You and your God.
John: And I was like, God made the rat.
John: God made the rat.
John: God made the rat.
John: I got to start using that more.
John: And so I moved out.
John: But what happened not pretty long after that...
John: I came home and I keyed into my apartment and I knew something was wrong.
John: Right away, the apartment was extremely humid.
John: All the windows were fogged up.
John: And I was like, what the hell is going on?
John: Like, is someone...
John: Did a beautiful woman come in, like a spy, key into my apartment and then take a shower?
John: I hope.
John: I'm at a stage in my life where if something weird is happening, it's almost certainly better than what was actually happening.
John: Yeah, fair.
John: Except in this case, no, because when I walked into the apartment,
John: There was a buzzing sound and I looked and the microwave was sitting on top of the refrigerator and it was on.
John: And it had been on.
John: Running with nothing in it?
John: Running with nothing in it.
Merlin: John, I learned very early on, there are many rules of microwave.
Merlin: One learned in the 1970s and one of them, you never run it with nothing in it.
John: And this had just spontaneously begun.
John: Like there was no, I reached up and tried to turn it off and it wouldn't turn off.
John: And I tried to open it and the door was locked.
John: And I was like, the microwave is just, it just went on, my 15-year-old microwave, and I can't get it to turn off, so I unplugged it.
John: Did you freak?
John: You must have been panicky.
John: Oh, well, it was very freaky.
John: You know, your microwave has gone rogue.
John: Your microwave is like on its own.
John: You got a bogey.
John: And I don't know.
Merlin: Why do they call it a broken arrow?
Merlin: You got a broken arrow.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: Somebody's found the bomb.
John: And I don't – it could have been on for eight hours.
John: I don't know if the room was full of radioactive air.
John: You're lucky he didn't get Dr. Manhattan.
John: Who knows?
John: Right.
Merlin: I could be the big blue naked guy now.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: December 5th, 1995, a musculature appears before a rat.
John: And so when I moved out, that was the place that when I moved out, because I was a little bit scalded by the God made the rat comment.
John: yeah and i was mad at my landlord because he was running a slum here and he didn't he he was like it was a god i mean like now that i've had some time to sit with i'm sorry john but now i've had time to sit with it yes god did make the rat but he does own the building yes and it's it was a cheap apartment close to town it was one of those buildings in seattle that's triangular shaped i know you have those in san francisco too
John: like a triangular-shaped apartment.
John: Wait, I'm sorry, the unit that you were in?
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: Well, the unit was not.
Merlin: Well, because sometimes this happens, like there was a, for example, there was a Holiday Inn in Tallahassee that for some reason they had decided to make as, basically imagine like a Bundt cake, except that's a hotel.
Merlin: So it's circular and tall, and basically every room is like most of a pie slice.
Merlin: Which is very unusual, because as you know, one reason Ray Charles would go to Holidays Inn is because they all have exactly the same layout, at least in the 60s.
Merlin: But if you've ever been, it's almost as bad as being in a round room, John.
Merlin: It makes you feel a little crazy.
John: There are a couple of hotels here.
John: The Western Hotel in Seattle, where Bill Clinton liked to stay.
John: Perfectly round building.
John: There are a few apartment buildings.
John: It was a very 60s.
John: That's no way to live, John.
John: Century 21.
John: My mom looked at an apartment in it, and she said the exact thing you're saying, Merlin, which is, there's no way you could furnish this apartment.
John: There's no room for the human soul.
John: My apartment was square.
John: It was just inside one of these flat iron buildings.
John: Oh, I see what you're saying.
John: Okay.
John: Okay.
John: And so, I mean, the person down at the end of the hall had a triangular-shaped apartment, but mine was square.
Merlin: They got the remainder, as we used to see in Long Division.
John: But for me, as I was moving out, I took all the light bulbs.
John: That was the take all the light bulbs apartment.
Merlin: What about the, well, I see you're clean at this point, but did you also take all the screens out of the faucets?
John: No, no, no, no, no, no.
John: They're already gone.
John: I feel like the screens were the things that were keeping the cockroaches out of the sink.
Merlin: Oh, that's a good point.
Merlin: But, you know, you could pop that into an apple or something and make yourself a little pipe, you know.
John: Yeah, as you say, I was sober then.
John: But I left the microwave.
John: And so either my assumption is that he came in and was like, oh, well, he took the light bulb, but free microwave.
John: You know, I'll charge 50 extra bucks a month.
Merlin: That microwave sounds a little bit cursed.
Merlin: I mean, nothing against your mom.
Merlin: Big fan.
Merlin: But that sounds a little cursed.
John: It could be one of those things.
John: The problem is, though, all those things were mechanical, right?
John: So if something shorted out, it's not like turn it off and turn it back on again.
John: Right.
John: And it works.
John: I never plugged the thing in again.
Merlin: John, a lot of these kids today, you know, I love the kids.
Merlin: I support them, what they're trying to do.
Merlin: But, you know, there was a time in life when not everything was solid state.
John: No.
John: Well, you know, a microwave would have been, but it wouldn't have been... It would have been solid state-like.
John: I bet it ran on tubes.
Merlin: I bet it was basically like an orange or like a JCM or something.
John: It would have been...
John: I don't know, not hand-wired.
Merlin: But also, John, I mean, was that ever meant, I mean, again, all respect, but was that ever meant to last 15 years, do you think?
John: No, Merlin, we're living in a planned obsolescence world, and we have been since the 70s.
John: You knew it even then.
John: You knew it even then.
John: You did, you did.
John: I mean, I have a radio here on the shelf that was made in the 1950s, and it's got little civil defense labeling on it so that in the event of the
John: You set your radio to... Is it illuminated with anything on a string?
John: It's illuminated.
John: And get this.
John: It's teal.
John: And it's from the 1950s.
John: And when you turn it on, it lights up and it takes a minute to get going.
John: Do you get old shows on it?
John: And it still works.
John: That's cool.
John: Well, yeah.
John: The only thing you can hear on it is old jazz, old swing music.
John: But no, your microwave.
Merlin: Wait a minute.
Merlin: Everybody, clam up.
Merlin: This is the Glenn Miller band.
Wow.
Merlin: We have... I'm disappointed in our most recent... That was really good.
Merlin: You muted.
Merlin: We replaced the microwave that I really, really loved because it was getting...
Merlin: Long in the tooth and gross.
Merlin: I mean, at this point, it's funny what makes us need to get something different.
Merlin: And certainly one of the things that happens, I learned this with VCRs in the fucking 90s.
Merlin: Every VCR eventually cost $200.
Merlin: The feature set went up.
Merlin: They remained around $200.
Merlin: So, you know, it used to be time was you got you a Betamax in the 70s and that's going to cost some coin.
Merlin: It cost $1,500.
Merlin: Oh, they were super costly.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I remember when I was in military school and we used to pool our resources to be able to buy Betamax tapes, 1979, bought a copy of MASH that was $100 American dollars on Betamax.
Merlin: Sound of Music, $100.
Merlin: And then the unit.
Merlin: But like I learned, you know, you learn that phrase, bench fee.
Merlin: You say like, hey, look, there's something wrong.
Merlin: I replaced the fuses on, and yes, you did have to replace fuses on a VCR even in the 90s.
Merlin: But I've done all this.
Merlin: Can you fix this for me?
Merlin: The guy goes, well, there's a bench fee.
Merlin: I said, what's that?
Merlin: He says, well, for you to walk in here with your JVC, you know, $200 VCR.
Merlin: Wood paneled.
Merlin: It wasn't quite that bad.
Merlin: It did have a wireless remote, so I was really living on Vita Loca.
Merlin: But it means you bring your piece of shit VCR in here, and you've got to cross my palm.
Merlin: For me to even literally put it on the bench will cost you $50.
Merlin: And I said to him, he says, well, a new one's $200.
Merlin: He says, exactly.
Merlin: And so I think we learned around that time, or I learned around that time about...
Merlin: Now, today, the truth is you clean the shit out of the inside of your disgusting microwave.
Merlin: And at a point, the patina has become so mature that you just need to get a different microwave if you want to keep your wife.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: But the problem is the one we got, which is the new version of the exact same model.
Merlin: It's a piece of shit.
Merlin: Sing it.
Merlin: I got the same Panasonic I always get.
Merlin: My main beef is that it has a digital readout, and every time it's done cooking, it has a readout on it, John, from left to right.
Merlin: It says, enjoy your meal!
Merlin: Oh, my God.
John: I hate it.
Merlin: I hate it already.
Merlin: I hate it so fucking much.
Merlin: But I'm just here to tell you, man...
Merlin: You need to know your wattage, and you need to have wattage that reflects the needs of your household.
Merlin: I kind of got that in the wrong order.
Merlin: You need a microwave that reflects what needs to be done.
Merlin: And that gets you to where, and I'm not going to go into this because this is going to be a whole chapter in my wisdom document probably, how to do microwave.
Merlin: You know, like as a boy coming up, you might have learned there's only two settings on the oven, which is 350 and broil.
Merlin: And then you get older and you go, oh, there's other things.
Merlin: I can do other things.
Merlin: Now, me, I work the percentages.
Merlin: I'm a big worker of percentages.
Merlin: And I'm also a big worker of something called sensor reheat.
Merlin: And sensor reheat is, as we used to say, the tits.
Merlin: Because it's measuring, I want to say, moisture and heat or something.
Merlin: But you pop something in there and almost anything, John, you wouldn't know how to reheat almost anything.
Merlin: Sensor reheat plus 30 seconds on high.
John: You put sensor reheat and it does its thing.
John: You don't know how long it's going to be.
Merlin: Enjoy your meal.
John: You don't know how long it's going to be.
John: You put it in there and then you walk away.
John: Yep.
John: And then right at the end, after it's done, you give it 30 more seconds.
Merlin: Top it off.
Merlin: Top it off with another 30 seconds.
Merlin: Because you know me, I like piping hot food.
Merlin: If I'm reheating some meaty rice or I'm reheating some macaroni and cheese or similar.
Merlin: Now, pizza, you got to do on the range top in a pan, as the entire internet knows.
Merlin: Never do that in a microwave.
Merlin: You're a monster.
Merlin: But, but, but...
Merlin: John, every dollar is made of dimes, and that goes for time as well.
Merlin: Every hour is made of seconds.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: Over time, that accretes.
John: Right.
Merlin: And right now, please don't tell her I said this because I'm a huge fan of hers.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You're living a lie, my friend.
Merlin: You need to disappear.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: Maybe if your kid did it, maybe if your daughter disappeared the teal,
John: But she doesn't know the difference.
John: She never microwaves anything because she's still in the – she's right in the last – the waning days of her life where –
John: Except for opening cans, the rest of everything is taken care of for her, right?
John: Everything else in her life is handed to her on a silver cutter.
John: God, it's been almost a year.
John: It's been almost a year.
John: I know.
John: If she wants a thing, like she's just recently started to make her own macaroni and cheese.
John: And I have to say, by the time I was 10 and a half...
John: i was being i was when i came home from school there was no one home i had a key around my neck on a piece of of uh of red yarn they got me into the house and then i was making cakes you know i was here i was cooking pork chops at 10 years old because there was nobody around and my dad when he came home it could have been at five it could have been at 15.
Merlin: You know, like dad was when he made eggs and it wasn't the way you liked it.
Merlin: And you said so.
Merlin: And it made him frustrated.
John: He always had it for for dinner.
John: He was going to have a pork chop, you know, but but but at 10 years old, I was taking his 1911 model World War Two pistol down from above the refrigerator and walking around the house shooting at imaginary Japanese soldiers.
Merlin: You're interrogating the apartment.
John: I also was taking my dad's girlfriend's aquanet and lighting it on fire and burning it into the fireplace.
Merlin: Where's all my aquanets?
John: I was a right guard, man.
Merlin: All the way up.
Merlin: I would take my mom's cricket lighter and I would take some right guard.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And you can make a pretty good suburban flamethrower out of that.
John: It was amazing.
John: And those were the days my dad would come home and go, why does it smell like aquanet?
John: Like,
John: I don't know, man.
John: Maybe, you know, I don't know.
John: At one point after my sister moved in, you know, in 1980, he hired a woman named Myrtle.
John: to come and be here at home when we got home from school.
John: And Myrtle was so – bless her heart.
John: Was she African-American or old?
John: No, she was Alaskan native.
Merlin: You mean as in like – do we say Inuit or do we say?
Merlin: She was – What's the right word?
John: Well, there's Inupiat.
John: First Nations?
John: We can say Indian.
John: First Nations is a Canada thing.
John: And she was –
John: Aleut, I think.
John: But she'd been living in Anchorage for a long time, and she was a housekeeper slash she was supposed to make us food, but she really didn't know.
Merlin: Do you remember how he found her?
John: No.
John: We would drop her off, and her apartment was over by the railroad, so maybe something to do with her husband at the railroad.
John: No, I guess her husband was dead.
John: But Myrtle was just – I'd been coming home from school by myself for two years.
Merlin: And so Myrtle – Oh, did this hurt your feelings a little bit?
John: Well, I was just like, oh, man.
John: And she'd be like, hi, welcome home.
John: And she spoke – Man, it's like John Mulaney says.
Merlin: It's like when you hire – like that's like hiring a horse to watch a dog.
Merlin: Like I can do this.
Merlin: Like I know how to make a pork chop and make a flamethrower.
Merlin: I do not need –
John: well yeah i'm just somebody that wants to read and be left alone and myrtle thought at first that her mandate was to be like a like somebody welcoming us home with some fresh baked cookies or something except she didn't know how to make cookies and uh and she spoke with a thick you know a thick accent like a village accent and
John: i was like you're here to look after my sister that's why you're here look the elephant in the room john i mean is like the it sucks to be a latchkey kid in so many ways but the benefit of being a latchkey kid is you get left the fuck alone yeah yeah right you get the place as we used to say you get the place to yourself all i wanted was just to be left alone and i was 12 by this point i mean there were kids in my school there
Merlin: were smoking you were probably doing elaborate experiments see i would be flushing stuff down the toilet i would be doing uh elaborate uh proto-masturbation uh experiments like all kinds of things not real stuff but you know like kind of just getting my legs under me as we say but you get the place to yourself you know when your parents are going to be home you got time to tidy up cover up all the evidence you know uh you know or you could you could just look at catalogs and think about what you can't afford
John: How was I going to sit and play the same note on the piano for 45 minutes if there's somebody in the room?
John: You know, you can't do it.
John: Hey, look at that weirdo.
John: It was a little weird.
John: Myrtle.
John: Myrtle, yeah.
John: And, you know, and Myrtle famously, she called Parmesan cheese Parmesan cheese.
John: And we still in my family call it Parmesan cheese.
John: I don't hate that.
John: No, no, no.
John: It was good.
John: But at the time, you know, you're you're like 12 years old.
John: And yes, because you're because you're a precocious person who's in the correcting phase of life.
John: Yeah, you're in the correcting phase, right?
John: You're in the like, actually, I think you mean, she and I or whatever, you know, just like fucking dick.
John: Shut up, idiots.
John: But I didn't want to – I didn't want to correct Parmesan cheese because I had – at 12, I had just enough social grace to realize like you don't correct adults.
John: And so we just started calling – I started calling it Parmesan and then my sister followed my lead and
John: And I don't think my dad ever understood what was going on, but I taught my daughter Parmesan cheese.
John: And, you know, it's Myrtle's legacy.
John: I mean, Myrtle's probably been dead for 40 years.
John: Yeah.
John: So it goes.
John: Myrtle's legacy.
John: Okay.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But –
Merlin: How long did that go for, John?
Merlin: Well, I'm sorry.
Merlin: So let me get back to this.
Merlin: You shouldn't bring this stuff up if you don't want questions.
Merlin: What do you suppose it was?
Merlin: Was your father worried about your welfare?
Merlin: Was he worried about you fucking the place up?
Merlin: How did Myrtle enter into the scene and how long was she around?
Merlin: Did she achieve the purpose your father intended, if you can identify what it was?
John: I think that my dad...
John: Wanted to do things properly.
John: You know, when I talked to my mom about the 1960s, my dad did not want my mom to work.
John: And it was because he was a successful lawyer, and it didn't look good.
John: And my mom... It looked like he wasn't providing enough, probably.
John: That's right.
Merlin: At least in his eyes, yeah.
John: Not only wanted to work, but needed to work.
John: And could not do the Junior Glee Club style of pillbox hat and white gloves work.
John: I cannot imagine that.
John: Where you were doing housewife work in the 1960s.
Merlin: Also, as we previously stipulated, one thing our parents, or at least my mom and your mom, had in common was the whole, like, shit, no, I didn't listen to the Beatles.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I was listening to Nat King Cole when I was 19.
Merlin: I wanted to be grown up.
Merlin: I wanted to smoke.
Merlin: I wanted to be taken seriously.
Merlin: And a woman as intelligent and sort of flinty as your mom is, one problem is 60s housewife who stays at home also becomes the blame sink.
Merlin: Like everything that goes wrong is your fault.
Merlin: Whereas if you get to go leave the house like a person and go have adult conversations where you don't have barf on your shirt from your stupid fucking baby, like you get to go have a life and you're not the blame sink, I think.
John: Yeah.
John: I, my dad and my mom, what made it such a dumb thing was that they were peers, like intellectually, they were, you know, they drove, yeah, right.
John: They drove, you know, they would go for long drives and they would talk about the issues of the day.
John: Like my dad was not somebody who kept her in the kitchen, you know, like they were, they were together.
John: Great friends.
John: It was just that he, uh,
John: It wasn't that he was keeping up appearances exactly, but he was a man of a certain station.
John: He was a member of the tennis club, for the love of God.
John: And he was 41 by the time they married.
John: So he had already held public office.
Merlin: He was previously married, right?
John: Right.
John: And so, yeah, she was 26, but he was in his 40s.
John: And so a veteran, he was established in his way.
John: And so there was no – my father never condescended to her.
John: My god.
John: Can you imagine?
John: Scorched earth.
John: I think he would try that once probably.
John: But she taught herself Fortran or whatever machine language out of a book.
Merlin: And, and then went, and it's important to think about like, so she but no, like, this is crazy, but I think it's worth mentioning.
Merlin: I mean, even into the 70s, at least, and maybe the 80s, if you were doing punch card, this is before punch card, she didn't have access to a computer, did she?
Merlin: She was just reading a book.
John: Well, so I just – I've been recording some episodes of a secret podcast with her.
John: So I don't want to give too much away because she tells all these stories.
John: But she says that in the 60s and 70s, programmers sat and stared out the window.
John: Yeah.
John: Sometimes for four days.
Yeah.
John: Because by the time they wrote the code, they already knew it.
John: They already had figured it all the way out.
Merlin: And so writing— And then the actual, like, then it's just implementation details at that point?
John: And so computer departments of big companies, like the management all understood, you know, the lower-level management—
John: all understood that you'd walk through there and you wouldn't hear anything.
John: There'd just be people kind of sitting and staring.
Merlin: But isn't this also still that time when it's almost exclusively women doing this?
John: A lot of women doing it.
John: They worked in teams of five where each person would kind of be good at a different thing.
John: But my mom has said for this whole time that
John: The idea that a computer programmer was an engineer was something that only happened many years later.
John: That's a trait.
John: And it was just because when universities started teaching computers, they were like, well, what department do we put this in?
John: And the engineering department stepped forward and said, it's probably us.
John: She said, before that, it was thought of as an art.
John: as a liberal art because you were, you were, it was, it was a logic problem.
John: It had nothing to do with engineering.
John: It was a logic problem.
John: And so it was thought of as a logic discipline.
John: But so, you know, she's, she goes and does this.
John: And my dad is like, what am I supposed to tell the people at the club that you are working, not only working, but working in some kind of weird place?
John: computers what even you know like but you know at that same time my dad who was a who was a liberal democrat was like well of course we support the war in vietnam it's the united states and you don't you don't turn your back on the army what are you some kind of you know communist and it was it didn't it took him until 1970 before he understood the
John: Like how bad it was.
John: This is a bad war.
John: It was the first bad war any of them had ever heard of.
Merlin: Like Bill Murray says in Stripes, we are 10 and 1.
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John: Sorry, I need a ding.
John: By the time he hired Myrtle...
John: He was still trying to figure out like, okay, you know, when it was my son getting out of school, he doesn't need to be minded.
John: I would walk home from school and go to the pawn shop and say, how much is that pistol?
John: How much is that?
John: That was back when pawn shops had sheriff's badges for sale.
Merlin: An Alaskan pawn shop.
Merlin: That's probably pretty different from a lot of other pawn shops.
John: there was a pawn shop and a, and an army Navy surplus store on the way home from school.
John: And I went to both of them every day and you know, and I knew all the pawn dudes and all the, all the like Vietnam that were sitting with their cigars, you know, clenched in their teeth.
John: And I'd be like, well, what is this gas mask?
John: What is this from?
John: What is this from?
John: And the guy would be like, well, that's from the nine, you know, that's a jet pilot outfit from the fifties.
John: And the pawn shop guy would be like, don't touch that kid.
John: You know, like, oh, that's, that's ivory.
John: That's no longer legal.
John: But when my sister was there and my sister, because my dad was never from the time he was five years old, nobody knew where he was.
John: Right.
John: I mean, you know, you get out of school and you just roam, you roam until the sun goes down.
John: My sister was there.
John: It wasn't that Susan needed any more minding than I did.
John: But he wanted to do it correctly.
Merlin: With this daughter.
John: Yeah.
John: And he was a man of a certain station.
John: So he was like, oh, a housekeeper.
John: Yeah.
John: That's what I need.
Merlin: I need a housekeeper because that... I keep thinking of... What was your name on Courtship of Eddie's father?
Merlin: Mrs. Livingston.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Somebody... Did you ever watch that show when you were a kid?
Merlin: I remember the theme music.
Merlin: Yeah, so Bill Bixby and Brandon Cruz.
Merlin: He has a son.
Merlin: His wife has passed away.
Merlin: And there's this extremely Japanese woman called Mrs. Livingston who is like... She's the housekeeper.
Merlin: She's the maid.
Merlin: She's everything.
Merlin: If memory serves, she does wear...
Merlin: some fairly non-Occidental clothing and is a little bit, you know, talking in a certain way.
Merlin: But she was everything.
Merlin: Maybe not so different from Mr. French on Family Affair.
Merlin: When I was a little- John, I'm realizing now that this was a thing.
Merlin: Alice on Brady Bunch.
Merlin: There's a person who's like, you're not just a servant, but at least on the TV show, a servant who's almost a member of the family.
Merlin: I could see a Dave Roderick of the 1960s, 70s, 80s going, I wouldn't mind a Mrs. Livingston.
John: This is what was happening.
John: When I was a little kid, we had a Japanese couple who lived in the house with us.
John: And the woman did all of the house stuff, and her husband— Please don't say he was the gardener, please.
John: No, no, no, we didn't have a gardener, but he was like the handyman.
John: Took care of the koi pond.
John: You know, he kind of managed it, and they were there—this was early—this was 1969—
John: right having like it would have been a time when whoa that's still fairly recent for your dad but you know yeah the yeah right i mean after the war but but it would have been a time when there would have been a lot of japanese people who had been living in america for right and i stipulated your dad before before the war was it right that played basketball oh yeah all his friends were japanese so he was he was very but my mom had a
Merlin: Shut down that zero with his 45 just because that was part of the act of war.
John: My dad grew up in a town that was very That was very Seattle very multicultural and all his friends were Asian.
John: That's so cool or Jewish But my mom grew up in the Midwest and she had been indoctrinated during the war as a child
John: To be very suspicious of people from Asia.
John: And so, you know, like that she'd been getting all of the Midwest version of like, if you see an Asian person, they're probably planting a bomb.
Merlin: Nobody in my family, except for my uncle, my uncle was the one person in our family who would and did buy both German and Japanese cars, even in the 70s.
Merlin: But, you know, VW bugs.
Merlin: And later on, like he was like, well, Toyota is going to change the way he was such a forward thinking guy.
Merlin: But like nobody in my family, we all drove GM cars for the reasons you would expect.
John: My mom was a Chrysler person and only drove her first Japanese car in the 2020s.
John: Up until then, she'd never.
John: I mean, she just bought her first Japanese car.
John: There was a moment in the 1980s where she had one of those Chevy-branded cars that was actually made in Japan.
John: Oh, yeah, right.
John: But it was a Chevy.
John: Yeah.
John: But this Japanese couple lived with us, and until I was four, five, maybe, I spoke Japanese.
John: Shut your mouth.
John: No, they spoke Japanese to me.
John: Wait, are you sure?
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: And then they were deported.
John: Shut up.
John: At a time.
John: No way.
John: At a time when you would deport people that were Japanese.
Merlin: You're talking about like the mid 70s?
John: Early 70s.
John: Yeah.
John: 1972.
John: Why?
John: Why were they deported?
John: They didn't have their visas right.
John: They were there kind of, you know, they were working under the table for us.
John: That's horrible.
John: I hate that.
John: And so, and I think at that time, the idea was that they were going to keep living with us and that I was going to grow up speaking Japanese.
John: And I, you know, and I look back and I go, you know, that would have been pretty great.
John: But so dad, yeah, this was a last gasp of like, well, why don't we try?
John: To have a housekeeper because that will let me go to my mistress's house after work and not have to race home to parent.
John: Yes.
John: But it was not – I was already fully independent and Myrtle was not someone who had – she didn't know enough to –
John: Um, to be authoritative as she was old.
Merlin: So as in like, she wasn't, she didn't feel sort of empowered to boss you around.
John: Yeah, she was not, you know, Myrtle had had no education and Myrtle was not informed about the, about the matters of the day.
John: And so what, you know, and Myrtle barely knew how the oven worked.
John: So it was not, so I didn't come home and think, yeah, right.
John: Like I was 12 years old and Myrtle was going to tell me to pick up my shoes.
John: Like, sort of.
John: Okay.
John: I'll do it to be polite, but I'm not doing it because you have any.
John: any gravity here and Susan you and Hodgman I will allow you dominion over me which is a very different thing exactly and Susan never listened to anybody right so she only lasted about a year and a half and and you know and I and I think the whole time I mean I I can't imagine it was very fun for her either because she was trying to she's trying you know she'd make little cakes and stuff and we'd be like thanks
John: And so there was always an element of kind of a little bit of guilt around Myrtle because I wished I'd been a better child under her auspices.
John: And if Dad had – when I'd moved up there in 78 or if she'd been there in the mid-70s when I would go spend summers, you know, maybe I would have – Myrtle would have been a beloved –
John: matronly figure in my life but it was too late too late by then i was already fighting commando uh battles in central america i was already i was already in rhodesia in my in my imagination so yeah it wasn't it wasn't and all you know and also i could field strip his gun by then so you know i was what what was gonna happen
John: What was Merlin going to do?
John: I mean, I know what Merlin would have done.
Merlin: No, you don't.
Merlin: You don't know me.
Merlin: At that time, I was spending a lot of time making up games that one child could play with himself.
John: Well, I know.
John: And think about if you and I had known each other when we were 11 and 12.
John: I would watch that prequel.
John: You know, that would be.
Merlin: Would we have gotten – you know, I think the way we would have gotten along is a state of mind I can summon, which was like eighth grade.
Merlin: I'm thinking of eighth grade.
Merlin: Just to give you a state of mind.
Merlin: But like when I had come out of military school, we moved to Florida.
Merlin: I was going to go to – finally I begged to not have to go back to military school.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Uh, which I was in in seventh grade.
Merlin: But eighth grade, I was going to go to public schools in Pasco fucking County, Florida.
Merlin: And it was, it was a trash fire.
Merlin: Like it was real bad, but I rarely felt as lonely in life as I did in eighth grade.
Merlin: But I also found myself finding some comedy with other weirdos.
Merlin: Hmm.
Merlin: Kids that would turn out to be gay.
Merlin: Kids that would turn out to be engineers.
Merlin: Like, you know, like, kind of the weirdos?
Merlin: And, like, I could see you and me being stuck somewhere and going, oh, check this out.
Merlin: And then maybe we'd draw a dungeon.
John: Say again?
John: You were class of 80...
John: A graduation?
John: 85.
John: 85, right.
John: So you would have been 8th grade, I would have been 7th grade.
Merlin: I was a late... So I think, if memory serves, I am old... I was always old for my grade, and you were always young for your grade?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: So we're actually closer than it seems, kind of.
Merlin: Or further.
Merlin: Wait, because—well, so wait, what year did you graduate in 87?
Merlin: I graduated in 86, and I was 17 when I graduated.
Merlin: Oh, yeah, I'm sorry.
Merlin: I mean, like, class-wise, we're closer than—age-wise, we're two years apart, mostly, but yeah.
Merlin: Class-wise, we've been one year apart.
Yeah.
Merlin: I could see us finding some common cause, maybe playing dodgeball or being in business administration typing and 10-keying.
Merlin: I could see us forming an interesting alliance.
John: For sure.
John: It would have been around Dungeons & Dragons and games.
John: fascination with, uh, yeah, weird stuff.
John: I mean, I was still wearing velour shirts a long time after your orange pants, orange pants or flight suit period.
John: It was orange pants and flight suit.
John: I mean, I had rust colored pants after everybody else was wearing white.
Merlin: It's also the name of memory serves of your X-Men, a super villain.
Merlin: Remember?
John: Yeah.
John: Oh, that's right.
John: I was the rust.
John: That's right.
Merlin: You corrode.
John: It was not until junior year that I figured out, Oh, wait a minute.
John: You can't keep not washing your hair if you're going to be a success with other kids.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It gives people a certain idea.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I mean, it was... Like, Paul pulls it off pretty well in Get Back.
Merlin: I'm frequently... First of all, like everybody, I agree Paul should just probably always have the beard.
Merlin: He's got amazing hair, too.
Merlin: But he does have a slightly kind of greasy hair sort of carriage to him.
Merlin: So now you've broached it.
John: Oh, shit, I'm sorry.
John: No, no, no, it's okay.
John: I'm going to be on a podcast for like three hours tomorrow talking about it.
John: Well, so I thought that I would break the fourth wall at the beginning of this episode and say, I mean, we need to address it.
John: And I know you're going to go talk about it with somebody else before me.
John: But this could be our first Patreon episode.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: Maybe make Heath powder dry.
Merlin: I'm just saying.
Oh.
Merlin: I'm not committed to doing a Patreon.
Merlin: If we do do a Patreon, which we probably will, that would be a good episode.
John: Well, it could be the first seven episodes.
Merlin: Boy, what a thing.
Merlin: It's such a different... I'm sorry, I'm already spoiling it.
Merlin: How am I going to make money if I keep talking about stuff for free?
Merlin: But it's so fucking different from what ended up on screen in Let It Be.
Merlin: It's... Because the thing is... John's so fun.
Merlin: I mean, he's annoyingly fun.
John: Get to work.
John: Leave it.
John: The problem is...
John: The problem is there are a lot of people that haven't seen it yet or that are only on the first episode.
Merlin: Yeah, I'm only on the second.
Merlin: I got to watch the third one tonight so I can be ready to do this.
Merlin: It's a lot.
Merlin: It's a lot to take in.
Merlin: On the one hand, it could have been – my first thought in some ways was, holy shit, is this still the first episode?
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: So my very first thought – and I'm not going to talk about it.
John: Well, the second episode is five hours long.
John: If you haven't seen the second episode yet, buckle up because it really –
Merlin: Yeah, but when they leave Twickenham, you know, and they go to the real place, and Mal Evans, oh my god, oh my god, I love them all so much.
Merlin: Okay, leave it, leave it.
Merlin: But I remember thinking, like, partway through, whoa, this is still the first episode of three?
Merlin: Goddamn.
Merlin: I was like, this could easily...
Merlin: If this were Netflix, they would break it into half-hour things.
Merlin: If it were almost any other streamer, they could cut each of these episodes in half, call it six.
Merlin: But there is a certain little part of me, and you go up against this on social media, if you're on social media, which is people are like, oh, God, it's so boring and long.
Merlin: And it's like...
Merlin: No, it's not boring and it's not long.
Merlin: And if you'd ever had to sit through the fucking Let It Be movie, you would see how bracing the access to these boys at this time is and how much more you love every single one of these guys in this element.
Merlin: And you can feel the pain of a thing that's about to break, but they're still finding a way to have fun and drink tea.
Merlin: Do you like Mal Evans?
Merlin: What about Neil Espinel?
John: The problem is I watched this show with a couple of people that were on varying degrees of the scale of lifelong Beatles scholarship.
John: And what someone like you or someone like me.
Merlin: That's like declaring yourself a thought leader.
Merlin: Like anybody can do it.
Merlin: It doesn't make you great at it.
John: Well, and also a lot of people, even people our age, do not really, they have not spent any time in their life thinking about the Beatles.
John: I know that's hard for you to understand.
Yeah.
Merlin: No, I mean, you're right, though.
Merlin: I mean, it's like just sometimes the world has changed.
Merlin: I was coming up— No, but I'm talking about 50-year-old people who are like, huh, okay, I know which one is George, but why— But if I hadn't had my cousins pushing the Beatles on me, and this is really important, if it had not been for the—
Merlin: department store chain where my late father had worked, if it had not been for the reissue of 45s in the 70s, which I could afford, because they were, I think, less than a buck, if it had not been for me having a copy of Got to Get You Into My Life,
Merlin: on 45, I mean, I didn't have albums.
Merlin: I thought that song, I think, perhaps understandably, was from the mid-70s.
Merlin: Can you believe that song is from, I want to say, what, 66, Ralph Oliver?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: That's insane.
Merlin: It's insane that that song, that arrangement with those...
Merlin: Leave it.
Merlin: John, John, can we maybe this week start a Patreon so we can do this show, please?
Merlin: I don't know who's involved with that, and I don't really care.
Merlin: I don't want to be involved.
Merlin: But if you go start a Patreon for us, let's record six of these.
Merlin: I don't want to make work for you, but you've made enough work for me, and I think it's time for you to pick up the slack a little bit.
Merlin: Mock Schnell.
John: Sorry, Mock Schnell.
John: Mock Schnell.
John: No, Big Show.
John: Big Show.
John: Get out there.
John: Go play for eight hours.
John: Isn't this what the original Roderick on the Line was all about?
John: Didn't we just talk about the Beatles and Hitler?
John: Or were we just joking when we said that?
John: I don't remember.
John: It was so long ago.
Merlin: I don't know, man.
Merlin: I mean, I think...
Merlin: So certainly like you, you, you are the man behind super train.
Merlin: I think I'm the person behind keep moving and get out of the way.
Merlin: Those were fairly early super train.
Merlin: Why are we talking?
Merlin: Oh my God.
Merlin: Are we dying?
Merlin: John, am I dying?
Merlin: Is this our, is this our obituary?
John: Merlin man.
John: What can you say about Merlin man?
John: Oh, boy.
John: Nothing.
John: Please, please just forget me.
John: He was a gentleman.
Merlin: Have you ever seen his website fives?
Merlin: If you could forgive me while I'm still alive, I'd be so grateful.
Merlin: But anyway, yes, we will talk about that.
Merlin: We were leaving off with something else.
Merlin: And we were talking about Myrtle.
Merlin: Myrtle's legacy.
Merlin: The Beatles.
Merlin: Oh, shit.
Merlin: How did I fuck this up?
Merlin: We were talking about how did the Beatles get into it?
Merlin: I brought it up.
Merlin: Oh, great.
Merlin: John.
John.
Merlin: John, you've got to wash your hair.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: Lately— Young John in his rust pants, he needs to wash that hair.
Merlin: Wash your hair, girl.
John: I feel like—I don't know where you were on the hair washing.
John: I have seen pictures of you in college, but I've never seen pictures of you as a teen.
Merlin: Eighth grade, I was using Vidal Sassoon.
John: I think I've posted some pictures of myself as a later teen in my 16-year-old self.
John: But I don't think I've posted any pictures of me at 12 or 13.
John: And there's a reason.
John: And it's because I was still very... You were scallop.
John: You were like a scallop.
John: Well, it was pre-scallop.
John: I was just very nascent.
John: I wasn't even a person.
John: I was very nascent.
John: What, you were like emergent?
John: I was like, what's going to happen here, right?
John: There were kids in sixth grade...
John: That you all, I mean, Diminidor Gobel, as I've mentioned him before, you already knew what was going to happen to Diminidor, right?
John: You already knew what was going to happen to Lori Basler.
John: But if you looked at me, you wouldn't have known anything about what was going to happen to this person because he was a mushroom who had just poked up above the ground bark.
John: And I was certainly capable of, you know, destruction and also...
John: I don't know.
John: At varying times, I guess I was a little bit cute, but I wasn't ready.
John: I was not ready.
Merlin: But you weren't adorable in a typical sense.
Merlin: I don't think I was ready.
Merlin: I'm guessing you probably did not attract adoration.
Merlin: I mean, I know I just sent you a photograph of me.
Merlin: Wait, did I send it to you or my wife?
Merlin: I think I just sent you a photo.
Merlin: Oh, damn.
Merlin: Did I?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I just sent you a photo of me at exactly my daughter's age.
Merlin: And I was not adorable.
Merlin: And also, kids in junior high are the worst.
Merlin: Like, I love my kid to death.
Merlin: Really, like, super love my kid.
Merlin: Like, it's gross how much I love my kid.
Merlin: But, like, as a people...
Merlin: Well, John, there's a reason.
Merlin: It's our greatest hits.
Merlin: There's a reason we've talked about they need to go cut trail.
Merlin: We need to get them out of the public eye for the period where they must necessarily be excruciating as human beings.
Merlin: If we can grind them down a little bit and improve our national parks, win, win, win, win, win, win.
John: No, no, no.
John: You and I would have been, I think...
John: good friends i might have been what do you think that hair you like that haircut well i had the same hair and the same shirt i mean honestly and i was also standing at the same podium probably giving the same speech we weren't we didn't call it gifted anymore no no it's called deo or differentiated educational opportunities there's a picture of me in seventh grade at a canned food drive
John: Eating all the food.
John: No, and I'm in that same shirt.
John: And it was in the, you know, it was a picture in the newspaper, right?
John: Like, Wendler Jr.
John: High canned food drive.
John: Makes, you know, gets 400 cans of food for the... Local boy has can-do attitude.
John: And I'm there with a, you know, I'm there with a can of beans in each hand.
Merlin: Uh-oh.
Merlin: Oh, no!
Merlin: That's where it started.
John: Check out these canned beans.
Merlin: Yeah!
John: And I had the same exact blonde bowl cut that had been slightly modified to acknowledge that it was the 80s now and not the 70s.
John: So it wasn't like a... That's a JCPenney shirt, if memory serves.
John: I'm sure it was.
Merlin: It's also where my orange and blue sneakers came from.
John: When we shopped at Sears, we were a little bit higher.
John: Yeah, Sears called you husky if memory serves.
John: That's right.
Merlin: But yeah, whatever it was.
Merlin: If it ever happens that your daughter does want to know about you and I doubt that she ever will, she can hit me up.
Merlin: I would say don't have to listen to all these episodes, but if she ever has any questions or wants to know who might have been your spouse in a slightly different timeline, have her hit me up.
John: Yeah, there's a picture on the bookcase.
John: We got a picture of Merlin Mann right there.
John: So she sees you every day.
John: Oh.
John: But yeah, I think I... Hair.
Merlin: Your hair was dirty.
John: In a different timeline, right?
John: Like...
John: I dated a girl in the 90s who was – she was very beautiful.
John: She was very vivacious.
John: And she used to say, we would have been friends in junior high.
John: And I would say, I assure you we would not have been.
John: And she said, no, no, no.
John: I know who you were in junior high and I absolutely would have been your friend.
Merlin: No, we were both worse and it never would have happened.
Merlin: Like so many times you're like, you would have been worse and insufferable.
Merlin: I would have been worse.
Merlin: Like to this girl, right?
Merlin: Or like you would have been probably kind of a little bit mean to me because you needed to be.
John: Well, and she was, I mean, she, and then she'd show me a picture of herself in eighth grade and she had, you know, uh, she had jet black hair down to her waist and was like, uh, and, and freckles.
John: And, and I was like, I would have been followed her for a semester.
John: Well, and I would have been so mean to you.
John: I would have been awful.
John: And I also, you would have thought that I was a child that I, you know, like I would have been so beneath your dignity.
John: And she was, she insisted, no, no, no, no, no.
John: No, no, no.
John: We would have been close friends.
John: And I just could not because I was not close friends with anybody except Kevin Horning.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: But like I I was it wasn't until I was 16.
John: I think that I that I realized.
Merlin: But you've got to pass through that, John.
Merlin: I mean, people love to do this retcon Monday morning quarterback bullshit.
Merlin: But it's like, no, I can tell you.
Merlin: No, I was I was terrible because I needed to be.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: A thing I've grown fond of saying lately is whether we like it or not, every day everyone's doing the best they can.
Merlin: If you could have done better yesterday, you would have.
Merlin: If I could have been a better person.
Merlin: Yesterday.
Merlin: Say again?
John: Yesterday was not a good day for me.
John: But you did your best.
John: I didn't.
John: You did.
John: If you could have done better, you would have.
John: My best was sitting right there and I looked at it and I was like, nope.
John: I cleaned my office and now my leg hurts.
John: I actually got up off the couch at 8 p.m.
John: to go tuck my daughter into bed at her mother's house.
John: And then I drove home.
John: And that was the extent of my accomplishment.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: I'm not going to get involved in a land war in Asia with you.
Merlin: But no, no, but we all were terrible.
Merlin: And you can't retcon this to make yourself look better in retrospect.
Merlin: You must lean into the fact that we have all been terrible.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And it's only by having been terrible that we learn to be less terrible maybe for a while sometimes.
Merlin: Everybody always wants to turn this into, oh, we would have been such good friends, pinky swear.
Merlin: It's like, no, I would have undermined you constantly because I needed the tiniest scrap of status that I felt I would never have unless I attacked other people.
Merlin: For example, that's just one.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Let alone that I look like a human penis with this hair and whatnot.
John: By the age of 16, when I say that I had become, that I finally was no longer like a toadstool, it was only... It was only because I went to Sears and bought a new pair of Levi's so I didn't have to wear the pair that I couldn't button the top button anymore because I had outgrown them.
John: Yeah.
John: And like I looked like a kid – I looked like a teen instead of like a kid.
John: But that is not to say that I was not super cruel to other people.
Merlin: No, that's the part about myself that I really missed is in my telling of the story, when I cast my mind back – and this has been true since junior high and high school up until not that many years ago where the story that I told was like – I wouldn't say bullied exactly –
Merlin: I was I was voted class clown.
Merlin: I was voted most talented senior.
Merlin: It would be a little bit insincere for me to portray myself as a total outsider because I at least knew enough people at your book that they could throw the contest for me.
Merlin: Thank you very much, Irene.
Merlin: my other most talented senior, the female companion to my talent.
Merlin: Who also was yearbook editor?
Merlin: Oh, absolutely.
Merlin: Oh, she was, yeah, she was the photo editor for the whole yearbook.
Merlin: So I got a lot of unnecessary good shots.
Merlin: But the point being that like, no, in my telling of the story, like I was set upon on all sides by like all this difficulty in my life.
Merlin: And it was, my life sucked.
Merlin: I had a lot of problems, but I also had a really, a great mom.
Merlin: And like,
Merlin: who tried really, really hard in seemingly impossible circumstances.
Merlin: But in my telling of that story, it's much more fun in punk rock for me to portray myself as some kind of misunderstood genius who would eventually come into his own in college, the end.
Merlin: And it's like, no, I would take a chunk out of fucking, I was so sarcastic, John.
Merlin: I would take a chunk out of fucking anybody if I thought it would make me look better.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And the inklings of this did not fully come together.
Merlin: I should take a photo of this.
Merlin: Until a woman I still think about so often, my drama teacher in 12th grade, who was just the best.
Merlin: I didn't realize she was teaching us how to do yoga at the time.
Merlin: She cast me as the lead in the school play.
Merlin: She was...
Merlin: And she was so kind and so patient and so gentle.
Merlin: And she's one of those like top five teachers you get in life that you can't really appreciate for years and years and years and years.
Merlin: But I can't do it from memory, but the thing she wrote in my senior yearbook really, even at the time, kind of gutted me.
Merlin: And she said something like, you know, it's been so nice to have you in class and to get to spend time with you.
Merlin: She said something like, Merlin, you're very clever.
Merlin: You have a very quick wit.
Merlin: But make sure that you're always using that for good things.
Merlin: And, you know, she basically said, hey, you know, you're really smart, but don't be such an asshole.
Merlin: And I look back at that now and I'm like, oh, God, she really nailed it.
Merlin: I thought I was the underdog.
Merlin: Me, Jerry.
Merlin: I thought I was the maligned kid.
Merlin: But no.
Merlin: I mean, you know, I knew how to wash my hair.
Merlin: My mom had a car.
Merlin: It's like I've managed to figure out how to play D&D.
Merlin: I was just another, like, piece of shit.
Merlin: I certainly was not the underdog of that story, which is what I would like to think.
Merlin: In retrospect, how do you think about those years?
Yeah.
John: You know, I wish somebody – I wish there was an adult that had that kind of nature.
John: I had a couple of male teachers who misunderstood me and thought that I was –
John: Doing it right.
John: You know, a couple of male teachers in their 30s who thought that I was cool.
Merlin: Maybe you represented, perhaps at least in some way, represented some kind of like a, not fantasy, but like an idea of like what they hoped they were like, maybe?
Merlin: Exactly that.
Merlin: Like a smartass who like, yeah, now I have this teaching job, you know, and God bless, maybe that's the calling.
Merlin: But like, I have this job, but I meet this kid and it's like you have this sort of Rushmore moment.
Merlin: That's a pretty sharp little guy kind of feeling.
John: Yeah.
John: I had a teacher who was probably only 32 or 33 say to me my senior year, like we were sitting in the video editing suite at the career center, and he said –
John: You probably get laid all the time, don't you?
John: Oh, dear.
John: It's a different time.
John: You get laid a lot.
John: And I was a virgin.
John: And I was like... Were you also like an virgin at that point?
John: Yeah.
John: Oh, no, no, no.
John: I was just like, no, sex is weird.
John: Weird and wrong.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: And you and I were both in the business of correcting women and telling them not to be sluts, right?
Yeah.
John: Uh, no, I just, I just said that in my head.
John: Okay.
John: You know, but I was, I said that to my, I said that to my, my male friends too.
John: Like you're not going to second base with those girls.
John: Are you, that's not right.
John: Like you, they should be saving themselves and so should you because sex is like, we're too young.
Merlin: Which is to say, I feel really, as a slightly advanced graduate degree version of a child, I feel very abandoned by the way that you've moved on from childhood.
John: Yeah, probably.
Merlin: At least I speak for myself, yeah, for sure.
John: But this guy said that, and I was like, ha ha ha ha.
John: Dude, dude.
John: I didn't say total.
John: I have a lot of vagina sex.
John: I just said, boy, you know, pow, pow.
John: Am I right?
John: Finger guns.
John: And then I had another teacher who was really a good friend.
John: But he was like, when he said, Roderick, you're such an asshole.
John: He totally meant it as a compliment.
John: You know, he was like, you're, you are, yeah, you're right.
John: You're doing what I wish I had done in high school, which is be a big, be a big cheese because you're so.
John: BMOC, like it was written on your desk blotter.
John: You're so sarcastic, right?
John: You're such an asshole.
John: And it wasn't until my sophomore year of college.
John: Oh no, it was my freshman year of college.
John: I was running for sophomore class president and
John: Because they'd already expelled me two times.
John: And I felt like, if I'm sophomore class president, you can't expel me.
John: I'm king of Gonzaga.
John: They were going to expel me no matter what.
John: But it was like, I'm going to be sophomore class president.
John: And then what are you going to do?
John: Like, I'm going to be integral to the operation here.
John: You like me now.
John: I've become too big to fail.
John: That's right.
John: That's what I was hoping.
John: Yeah, sure.
John: And they announced the results while we were in the lunchroom.
John: So it was, you know, it was quadruple humiliating because everybody in the place was looking at me, but there was a kid that I'd gone to high school with and, you know, I'd missed a year.
John: So he had been a, he'd been a junior when I was a senior and now we were the same grade.
John: We were both freshmen in college and I was sitting up on the dais and he was facing away from me.
John: So he maybe wasn't aware I was there.
John: Um,
John: And because they were announcing the results from the other end of the room.
John: And he was a kid in high school that I didn't know.
John: I didn't know him.
John: And he was, as far as I was concerned, kind of an irrelevant person.
John: Like, oh, yeah, I recognize him.
John: I mean, I wouldn't be able to tell you if I saw him today, I don't think I'd recognize him.
John: But I knew he was at the school.
John: And when it was announced that I lost, he made— I'm sorry, was it announced that way?
John: Well, it was just like— And the loser is!
John: No, I think it was, you know, the winner is.
John: And the winner was just some wonk, you know, somebody that was like— A coalition builder.
John: A transcript mongerer.
John: and he made the gesture the like the arm pump of like yes and i knew that he did it because i lost not because the other person won because i didn't totally get it yeah and my enemy is my friend as i had gone around the dorms knocking on dorm rooms and saying like hey i'm running for you know class president
John: I'd knocked on his room and he'd opened the door and there was another kid in there.
John: And I'd said, Hey man, you know, what's up?
John: East high.
John: Am I right?
John: Hey, I'm running for class president.
John: And he'd, he was friendly to me and he'd given me the like, yeah, yeah, totally, totally.
John: But when I looked back at that moment, after I'd seen him do the arm pump, I realized that he'd kind of been like, there was a little bit of how dare you in his face.
John: And it was only then that I realized that being an asshole was not universally admired.
John: Right.
Merlin: And that whatever— It's kind of the punk rock problem in some ways, and I don't want to get myself—
Merlin: um but but you know what i mean like there's that sense of like i i have i've said i found myself i've had occasion to say this to various people at one point or another which is like for for a fair amount of your life including especially junior high and you know what i'll even allow it high school maybe a little bit of college it's all about what you don't like it's all about what you hate it's all about what you're reacting to and so much of your identity becomes about what you're rebelling against or what you know what i mean but like it's
Merlin: Forgive my sounding like a Pollyanna here, but at some point you have to establish something more affirmative in life, which is not that you have to be a positive person, but you have to learn to find ways to define yourself by yourself, through yourself, rather than just by the things that you say meh about.
John: Well, and that's the thing that took me another decade, but I've thought about that moment when he did that with the arm, because at the time I reflected back
John: I hadn't seen this guy in – I mean I'd been a senior two years ago.
John: Like I hadn't seen him in a couple of years.
John: I hadn't – I definitely hadn't done anything to him in college.
John: So some point in high school, he was standing there with a group of people or walking down the hall or something.
John: And he either saw me do something or probably more likely I'd turned to him and his group of friends and gone, what's up losers or something to the effect of like, Hey, what did you, you know, did your 20 sided die roll into a heater register?
John: Like, why are you standing around here?
John: What are you looking at?
John: You know, something like,
John: Some kind of just big swinging dick attitude at him.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
John: And I didn't even distinguish him as a person from his group.
John: But it stuck with him, and it stuck with him forever.
John: And I started to be nicer after that because I realized, oh, wait, you know, no grown-up ever said, hey, why don't you tone it down?
John: I was like, oh, wait, am I mean enough?
John: I never wanted to be mean.
John: Like, same as you.
John: I thought I was – I mean, like, you had your reasons, right?
John: I thought everybody was out to get me.
John: I'm just protecting myself.
John: The girls all teased me.
John: The bigger boys all pushed me down.
John: Yeah.
John: And it was the only sense – it was only the sense of humor that allowed me to feel like I could stand up straight.
Yeah.
John: And about a year later, another guy I knew in high school, he and I were out going to parties or something in Anchorage.
John: And at some point he said, you know, you used to be a lot funnier.
John: I don't know what happened to you.
John: And I was, you know, at this point I was like 20 or 21, like hardly.
John: And he was like, you used to be so funny.
John: And now you're just like not funny yet, not as funny.
John: And I was like, I actually said to him,
John: I used to be mean.
John: And he was like, yeah.
John: And that was funny.
Hmm.
Merlin: How did you feel at the time when he said that?
Merlin: I mean, were you bummed that you didn't think you were funny or did it come to you right away?
Merlin: Well, yeah, well, that's because I was being a jerk because I was so broken inside.
John: No, I was bummed.
John: Yeah.
John: And I think back, you know, there are people who, I mean, I think Paul F. Tompkins, by the time he was 18, already knew all he wanted to be was a stand-up comic.
John: And he's been a stand-up comic his whole adult life from the time he was in high school.
John: Like he was already doing stand-up.
John: And when I was 18, like that was on the short list of things that maybe I thought I would do for a living.
John: Like be a journalist or a DJ or a stand-up comic were the three kind of things.
John: Because I knew I wasn't going to be a lawyer.
John: And I realized, I think then, like, oh, wait, is stand-up comic falling off this list because I'm no longer... Because what made me funny was that I was mean.
John: Oh, like you've lost your edge.
John: I lost it.
John: Yeah.
John: Right?
John: Thank God.
John: And what I turned into was, I mean, still an asshole my whole life, but...
John: What he was saying was, you know, now you're all like broody and your jokes are all, you know, all take a minute to understand.
John: And that's not funny.
John: I mean, I think he was saying this in terms of we're party hopping and you used to walk in the door and say, what's up, nerds?
John: And, and believe me, I still say that, but, but he's like, he's like, yeah, right.
John: But he was, he, we were out partying and he wanted me to be the,
John: the icebreaker who walked into any party and was just like, I'm taking over.
Merlin: The guy who's willing to change the tone of the costume with your friend there.
Merlin: Yeah, or just walk in.
Merlin: I'm going to go in there and abandon my friend's group costume.
John: But this was at the point where I would walk into a party of a different high school, walk right over to the stereo and change the music and be like, this party sucks.
John: What you need is some rock and roll.
Merlin: God, you sound like such an 80s character.
Merlin: I was.
Merlin: It's like if you were like Bill Blazajowski from Night Shift, but not as charming.
Merlin: You know, but I was... Just a dervish of disruption.
John: I was extremely charming.
John: It's just that I was also a dervish, right?
John: I was going to leave this party and it was going to be...
John: Either just skid marks either 20 times better a party or I was going to leave it by getting.
John: But because four hockey players will be taking statements.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: Right.
John: Like like and and all of a sudden, you know, I kind of turned into somebody who was like, you know, what is what is a party?
John: And people were like, what?
John: What the hell happened to you?
Merlin: That's funny.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Call someone an asshole again.
John: But I do feel like the problem of me in my 40s was that I was still walking into rooms and going, hey, what's up, nerds?
John: But feeling like we were all in on the joke.
John: And I know there were a lot of people...
John: Because at that point, I was playing an 80s character as a gag.
John: But there were a lot of people that weren't in on the joke that didn't think it was funny.
Merlin: Well, I mean, but also, I don't mean to sound like I'm being judgy about you.
Merlin: I'm ultimately, of course, being judgy about me, which is that it doesn't always need to be all about you.
Merlin: And it doesn't need to be – it really oughtn't be always about the way you choose –
Merlin: And along the lines of going in and like, you know, the tone arm skidding across the record while you go, shut up, nerds.
Merlin: It's like, well, it's not your party, man.
Merlin: And like, you're not actually it's you're not going to meet and be beloved by anybody really cool if that's your idea of the impression that you want to make in life.
Merlin: And like I that was hard for me to learn was that like, well, what I my well earned calluses and like I'm like this because life's been hard for me.
Merlin: So that's why I go in and ruin every party to like make it all about me like it's sometimes you just have to accept becoming a little bit less interesting in order to become more interesting.
John: Yeah, who knows?
Merlin: I mean, I do.
Merlin: That's true for me.
Merlin: I'm not saying that's for you, but it's hard to grow up.
John: I guess my problem in my 40s was that I was a wingman for most of that time.
John: At the end of my 30s, I had accomplished enough that I could stand...
John: uh, that I could stand my ground and say, yeah, I'm the, I'm the singer of the long winters.
John: And that, that very, very, very briefly from 2007 to 2009 was enough.
John: It meant enough.
John: And then in a way I'm lucky that I, that I transitioned to being, you know, like from 2009 to 2014, like you were
John: the internet's Merlin man.
John: And John Hodgman was Apple's John Hodgman.
John: And Jonathan Colton was this guy that had, that had, uh, covered baby got back and downloaded a million times.
John: And, and so there was, there was then a period where I was there as long winter's guy, but I was in a whole new room full of people.
John: You know, I was in a room with Ted Danson and I was in a room with
John: with, um, Elon Musk.
John: And I was, and I felt again, like I was in high school, like everybody was way older than me and better.
John: And, and, and when I was introduced to people like, Hey, it's John Roderick, the singer of the long winters, you know, Ted Danson was like, Oh, huh.
John: Who, you know?
John: And so I'm married to, I'm married to Mary Steenberg.
Merlin: And so I'm not exactly sweating.
John: Yeah.
John: And so my thing of like, Hey nerds,
John: was back to... Because if I had just walked in and been like, hello, nice to meet you, then I'm very quickly, or would have felt like, I'm Hodgman's valet at that point.
John: I see.
Merlin: When you say wingman, now I understand what you're saying.
Merlin: And you too.
Merlin: But one can sometimes feel like the plus one for everybody.
John: The plus one, right.
John: And the quiet girlfriend.
John: And...
John: So I was, through all those years, through the last decade of my life, just trying to establish that I belonged there, right?
John: Or that I was there not just because I was somebody's friend.
John: And that was really hard because I have too much dignity.
Merlin: John, you were so charming.
Merlin: I mean, like, you've always been so charming.
Merlin: I mean, like, in a way, I'm not saying this like jokes have left the room.
Merlin: Honestly, being in a room with you is a lot of fun.
Merlin: Like, you're really...
Merlin: I was going to say gregarious, but not gregarious.
Merlin: You're very charming.
Merlin: You're very focused.
Merlin: Like, you listen to what people are saying.
Merlin: You can see it in photos I've taken of you at rock clubs.
Merlin: You're actually listening.
Merlin: And let's not act like this is not something that's surpassingly rare, which is like, you know, rock musician or otherwise.
Merlin: Like, you listen to what people are saying, and you respond, and you play with them in the space.
Merlin: And like...
Merlin: That's, I don't know.
Merlin: I'm not sure what I'm trying to talk you out of.
Merlin: But, like, that's why I like you.
Merlin: I mean, I initially liked you because of songs like Car Parts.
Merlin: But I became pals with you because you're actually, like, a lot of fun in a room.
Merlin: I mean, you don't need to say, you know, I'm changing the music, assholes.
Merlin: Like, you're fun.
Merlin: I'm in a dark place right now.
John: Right now?
John: Well, these days.
John: Oh, shit.
John: You know, I'm kind of going over everything.
John: I'm in my 50s.
John: I've been forced to take a new tact.
John: And I haven't picked the direction.
John: And I am, Merlin.
John: I'm doing this thing where I'm like, oh, man, I suck.
Merlin: It's a thing you do.
Merlin: You ruminate.
John: You steam.
John: Steam and John.
John: I'm sucking.
John: I've been sucking for all this time.
John: And I know it's not right, but I can't.
Merlin: Yeah, I know.
John: Something's got to happen, you know?
John: We should talk about the Beatles.
Merlin: It'll make you feel better if we talk about the Beatles.
John: That's what it is.
John: I need to talk about the Beatles.
John: Because that, in talking about the Beatles, I'm very confident.
John: I have no doubt that the things that I'm going to say about the Beatles are true and correct.
John: And they're going to help everyone understand the Beatles better.
Merlin: It's going to help you get back to where you once belonged, I think.
John: It is absolutely.
John: I need to get back.