Ep. 448: "A Little Bit on Fire"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Merlin man.
John: John.
John: Here comes the Merlin man.
Merlin: Here comes the John again.
Merlin: Says he's a people fan.
Merlin: Oh, John is John.
Merlin: Here comes the Merlin Man.
Merlin: Here comes the John Roderick.
John: Is that the funeral march?
Merlin: No, no, hang on.
John: Here comes the job.
Merlin: It's, um, uh, uh, think, uh, think, oh, fuck.
Merlin: Think, um, three chords, three chords.
Merlin: I think I'm going to, so I'm going to pick down.
Merlin: Down, down, down, down, down, down, down.
Merlin: Oh, God, that's way too high.
Merlin: Here comes John again.
Merlin: Oh, that's nice.
John: That's nice.
John: If I could reach that guitar over there, I'd jam along with you.
Merlin: Let's see.
Merlin: It's right over here.
Merlin: Our problem is syncing, but if it's a true Skype jam, I don't think people would care.
Merlin: I mean, what's a true Skype jam?
John: headphones caught over there.
Merlin: All right, yeah.
Merlin: Lay it on me.
Merlin: Let's see.
Merlin: One, two, three.
Merlin: I haven't tuned, but we'll see.
Merlin: DAG.
Merlin: Oh, dear.
John: I'll get there.
John: I'll get there.
John: No, no, no.
John: That sounds like the beginning of GNR Lies.
Merlin: Let's see.
Merlin: I used to know the beginning of a sweet child of mine.
Merlin: Shit.
John: Yeah, do it, do it.
Merlin: I'm playing acoustic guitar, and I haven't played this since 1988.
Merlin: Oh, boy.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: Well, you know, we tried.
Merlin: I'm playing the seagull.
John: You're playing the seagull by Chekhov?
John: That tune, very complicated.
Merlin: Well, that's in translation.
John: Yeah, yeah, that's the problem.
John: It's which translation?
Merlin: They call it Chekhov's seagull.
Merlin: If you see it mounted over the fireplace in act one, you have to misquote this by act three.
Merlin: Was Chekhov a science officer?
Merlin: Which one was he?
Merlin: What color was his shirt?
John: It's crazy time.
John: Is that an A?
John: Well, I was playing it in A, yeah.
John: But I don't know if that's going to be a T. They probably.
Merlin: All right, now.
John: God damn it.
John: This feels like such a house party.
Merlin: There you go.
Merlin: Then if you want the ironic value, you can go like this.
Merlin: You made your seventh crazy.
Merlin: But that's how it goes.
Merlin: Yeah, that is ironic.
Merlin: There's millions of people.
Merlin: Oh!
Merlin: That's one of two great Brad Gillis adjacent songs where the shitty music video involves train tracks.
Merlin: Do you remember the terrible music video for Crazy Train?
Merlin: It's just his face slightly posterized over like a train going down tracks.
Merlin: Wasn't that the Crazy Train video?
Merlin: Not to be confused with the great Brad Gillis song.
Merlin: Well, Brad Gillis, you know, he played on the live one.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Of course, that's Randall playing.
Merlin: I call him Randall.
Merlin: Playing on the Ridge.
Merlin: But then Brad Gillis also played one of the two solos, the lesser, if you ask me, of the two solos on Don't Tell Him You Love Me.
Yeah.
John: You know, I met Brad Gillis in a bar in Mill Valley, California one time.
Merlin: Oh, you might have told me that.
John: Sure, I've told you that story.
John: I'm sure I have.
John: Nice guy.
John: Nicest guy.
John: Brad Gillis.
John: He's living in Mill Valley.
John: He's just, you know, he's just living his life.
Merlin: You know, I've had two insightful thoughts, and we're really just starting the year now.
Merlin: Number one is, if you think you one day might be a widely regarded lead guitar player from Birmingham, don't work in a sheet metal factory.
Merlin: Oh, wow.
Merlin: Oh, yeah, you're going to lose your things.
Merlin: Yeah, this could be a whole Roger Miller song.
Merlin: You're going to lose your tips when you're playmaking sheet metal.
Merlin: And the other one is, you know, a lot of people, they got a Marin vibe.
Merlin: So if you think in the future you might be a guitar player, don't work in a sheet metal factory like Tony Umami.
Merlin: But also, there's a Tony Imodium.
Merlin: I keep him in my pocket, little Tony.
Merlin: Well, boy, this lives in my mouth.
Merlin: The other thing is, you know, a lot of people get a Marin vibe.
Merlin: I think two people, well, here's one.
Merlin: Todd Rundgren.
Merlin: Todd Rundgren, be he from many places, I think he's always had a Marin vibe.
Merlin: You feel he's Marin?
Merlin: Yeah, they get a Wine Dad vibe or something.
John: Jackson Brown, Jackson Brown, Marin vibe.
Merlin: Jackson Brown sounds like a euphemism, but just barely.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Oh, man, I gotta go see Jackson Brown.
Yeah.
Merlin: It's called the loadout.
John: Oh, no.
Merlin: The loadout, John.
Merlin: Give it to me.
Merlin: The loadout.
John: Don't show me your Jackson Brown.
Merlin: Everybody wants my Magic Jackson.
John: Okay.
John: There's going to be a little background noise because I got a ravine full of hippies and they're having the time of their life down there.
John: A ravine full of hippies?
Merlin: Is that like a murder of crows?
John: Yeah, it's basically.
John: Okay.
Merlin: And they scream every once in a while.
Merlin: Why are they in your ravine, John?
Merlin: Have you borrowed or have someone lent you hippies?
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: I got lent some hippies and they're down there just tearing it up.
Merlin: It's a rainy day and they're just... It's been a few weeks since we visited with each other because, if I'm being honest, it doesn't take... It's COVID.
Merlin: We're in safety and protocol.
Merlin: And, you know, until Clay Thompson was back, I refused to get in front of a mic and that's just how I roll.
Merlin: Until Leah Thompson was back?
Merlin: Leah Thompson.
Merlin: Is Leah Thompson back?
Merlin: Did you ever see The Boys on Amazon Prime?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Because Leah Thompson always reminds me of Elizabeth Shue.
Merlin: Elizabeth Shue is very good in that show.
John: Elizabeth Shue is great.
John: Leah Thompson, I was forced just the other day.
John: But she's the mom in Back to the Future, right?
John: Yeah.
John: And Elizabeth Shue was one of the girls.
John: Elizabeth Shue was in Adventures in Babysitting.
Merlin: And Leaving Las Vegas.
Merlin: But is she the one that they just had sleep in the convertible while they did Back to the Future 2?
No.
Merlin: Oh, is that the other one?
John: Yeah, no, they replaced the original girl with Elizabeth Shue because they wanted to, I don't know what, get it over the top.
John: But then they could kind of sleep in the car.
John: Yeah, okay.
John: But I was forced to watch Some Kind of Wonderful.
Merlin: I promise we're going to come back to Brad Gillis, I swear to Christ.
John: I had never seen Some Kind of Wonderful.
Merlin: Oh, that's the other blonde.
Merlin: It was the Phillips girl.
John: 1987.
John: Wait a minute.
John: Was she in Wilson Phillips?
John: No, but she should have been.
Merlin: She had the pixie cut, right?
Merlin: Oh, God.
John: What's her name?
John: She's adorable.
John: I didn't like that pixie cut, though.
John: And I didn't find it adorable, frankly.
Merlin: I thought the whole thing.
John: Mary Stewart Masterson.
Merlin: Oh, she's one of the three-name actresses, like Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio.
Merlin: Or NPR's Carol Ann Clark Kelly, who has four first names.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: Carol Ann Clark Kelly?
Merlin: Yeah, she's just having fun with it.
John: I'm writing down Brad Gillis and Moran.
John: It was one of those movies.
John: It was a John Hughes movie from the 1980s, but I was just a little too old for it, as I'm guessing you were.
John: That's me and Breakfast Club.
Merlin: I was six months too old for Breakfast Club.
Merlin: Oh, you're kidding.
Merlin: No, see, that's the problem.
Merlin: I was already graduated or near graduated, and I thought it was ridiculous.
Merlin: I thought it took itself too seriously.
Merlin: I love, of course, that guy.
Merlin: Mess with the bull, you get the horns.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: He gets assaulted by a real gorilla.
Merlin: in uh in um grills in the mist close trading places oh sure sure he does sure he's there because he's he's trying to get the uh pork bellies he's one of those guys though he's like a william atherton or like one of those guys who's just always he's a great 80s heavy yeah yeah yeah well now how did you feel about st elmo's fire
Merlin: Never saw it.
Merlin: I knew it wasn't for me.
Merlin: I knew it wasn't for me.
Merlin: Because that was supposedly for college people.
Merlin: But, John, it had a saxophone.
John: Yeah, it did.
Merlin: It was like 1987, and you're putting a saxophone in a movie?
Merlin: I don't think it was.
John: Was that Rob Lowe, or was that... Yeah, it was Rob Lowe, and he had a...
John: What, a roach clip earring, if I recall correctly?
Merlin: A feather earring.
John: Oh, because he's kind of a la bohème.
John: But I don't think it was 87.
John: I think that came out in 85.
John: Oh, yeah, you know, because of the song.
Merlin: You're out the door.
Merlin: But you were gone.
Merlin: That's so crazy.
Merlin: But how did you feel about Pretty in Pink?
Merlin: Love Pretty in Pink, but it was awkward because I went to see it with a platonic lady friend, and
Merlin: And a currently platonic, my ex-girlfriend, who I was supposed to take to the prom and didn't.
Merlin: And I didn't know that scene was going to – they should warn you about stuff like that if you're going to be sitting there next to somebody who bought a dress.
John: Yes, sir.
John: Well, you know, Breakfast Club came out in the middle of my junior year.
John: So I was just right – it was a pitch right down the middle.
Merlin: Well, but I mean, like emotionally, I think it's very resonant in terms of like, you know, that whole everybody here is broken.
Merlin: What's the future going to be like?
Merlin: That kind of stuff.
Merlin: Sure.
John: My dad put cigarettes out on me.
Merlin: Sure.
John: I have to bring sushi to lunch.
Merlin: That's why I have to wear these fingerless gloves, you know, and Anthony Michael Hall.
Merlin: But also, I mean, I think there are movies that have done that more deftly and less on the nose.
Merlin: Maybe like a Harold and Maude.
John: Oh, that's a, yeah.
John: You know, I, uh, we had, we used to have a movie night where one of us would.
John: This is in high school.
John: One of us would go to the video store, I guess, and rent a video, rent a VHS tape.
John: Friday night was the big night.
John: And I brought Harold and Maude one time.
Merlin: Okay, remind me who all is in the house at this point.
John: So, you know, Kevin is there.
John: Kelly's there.
John: Eric, Rick, Mary.
John: I don't think Sonia, but Tammy.
Merlin: You've had a high school peer Friday night movie night, and you brought Harold and Maude.
John: I brought Harold and Maude.
John: And so, you know, halfway through the movie, like, it's just such a downer.
John: It's not what anybody wanted.
Merlin: They wanted to be up gesticulating and saying, this is going to become a huge influence on Wes Anderson.
John: It's me, your cousin, Marvin Anderson.
John: They could laugh or they could kiss each other.
John: Marvin Anderson.
Yeah.
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John: They could laugh or they could kiss each other.
John: Marvin Anderson.
John: You get it?
John: Yeah, it's in E. Follow me for the changes.
John: Right, right.
John: He broke his hand on the trunk.
John: Oh, he cut his hand.
John: He cut his hand.
John: Shit.
John: But yeah, by the end of the movie, I was forbidden for the rest of high school.
John: You lost your movie rights.
John: I lost my movie rights.
John: When it came time, when it came around to me, they were like, nope.
John: And then they would say Harold and Maude.
John: And they used to say Harold and Maude to me any time I did something.
Merlin: Oh, it's like the new Stephen John.
John: Yeah.
John: Harold and Maude.
Merlin: They just did it to provoke you.
John: Well, you know, when I would wear something that they thought was dumb or when I would just be a weirdo.
John: Harold and Maude.
John: Oh, no.
John: Yeah.
John: And, you know, and if I was going to die on a hill, I don't think I would have picked Harold and Maude to die on.
Merlin: There's so many other hills to die on.
Merlin: But like, okay, so another Hal Ashby in that instance, maybe something like a being there.
Merlin: Like there are movies like that.
Merlin: I cannot get my kid to fucking put down the phone and watch just like a normal thing.
Merlin: let alone like a moody one about a guy who's a Jesus figure, or in this case, well, he's also, you know, Bud Cort was also the father in But I'm a Cheerleader, which is a big household hit.
Merlin: So hopefully I can leverage some Bud Cort energy.
Merlin: But you know what?
Merlin: This is not as good, but pretty good.
Merlin: I feel like I would die on the hill of being there.
Merlin: If I had brought being there to the party.
Merlin: That's how I named my dog.
Merlin: I named my dog Chauncey Gardner.
Merlin: Aw.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But real quick, so I don't know what you called New Year's Eve.
Merlin: New Year's Eve, 85 into 86.
Merlin: That would have been the one, yeah.
Merlin: Okay, I do remember this being like one of the most, because all of my friends, we were all so depressed, and we were very into being depressed.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: And like, we were a little bit existential.
Merlin: But we were also Woody Allen fans.
Merlin: So I'll remember that always as the night we learned that Ricky, Ozzie and Harriet, Ricky
Merlin: Nelson had died in, I believe, a plane crash.
Merlin: And also the guy who picked the movie that night was my friend Bob, and he brought in the Woody Allen movie Broadway Danny Rose, and that's what we watched on New Year's Eve.
Merlin: Oh, wow.
Merlin: That's a New Year's Eve movie, isn't it?
Merlin: That's not.
Merlin: I mean, I think probably Harold and Maude might be more entertaining than Broadway Danny Rose.
John: Let me tell you that Some Kind of Wonderful is not.
John: That was the one for me.
Merlin: Oh, Roderick DeClaire is No Kind of Wonderful.
John: No, no, no, no.
John: It was No Kind of Wonderful.
John: And yet the person I was with is younger than me, and that movie was resonant to them because it's a gulf of two years, two years this way, two years that way.
John: Uh-huh.
John: You know, it's like a menage a trois movie type of thing.
John: I remember it's got the blonde girl in it.
John: It's got the blonde girl and it's got Lea Thompson.
Merlin: Oh, is that Eric – the guy who's going to be Marty McFly?
John: Is that Eric Banner?
Merlin: Yeah, that's right.
John: Eric Stoltz.
John: Stoltz.
John: Stoltz.
John: And it's got Lea Thompson who just the year before almost walked away with Red Dawn.
John: I'm talking about the Wolverines.
John: I'm talking about the Wolverines.
Merlin: I'd piss on a spark plug if I thought I'd do any good.
John: You know what?
John: Don't let it out.
John: Keep it inside.
John: Let it turn into something else.
John: Wolverines!
John: Let it turn into something else.
Merlin: Okay, okay.
Merlin: I'm going to get us back to Marin and Todd Rundgren and Brad Gillis, but you lost your movie choosing rights is what happened.
John: Well, so what I was saying, you know, I was just giving you a little bit of an alert, like a scream alert, because this morning as I was sitting here, the hippies kept screaming, and, you know, it's like...
John: It's like Clarice.
John: Yeah.
John: You can hear the hippies screaming.
Merlin: She wears a lair de tom, but not today.
John: And they were.
John: They were all down the hill.
John: But now I don't know what they're doing.
John: They're eating wheat then somewhere.
John: But anyway, be aware.
John: I have so many questions about it.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Be aware.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Well, so we'll get back to Marin eventually.
John: But so it's interesting because I watched – Did you come up to Marin when we played up there, when I played up there at Bob Weir's?
John: Magic House, Bob Weir's hot dog stand up there in Marin County.
John: No, I don't like crossing a bridge.
John: You didn't go up there.
John: No, that must have been rainy.
John: I saw you in Oakland with that vampire guy.
Merlin: Yeah, that was the other bridge.
Merlin: I really feel like my wife dodged a bullet that night.
Merlin: The thing I'm thinking is, the question is, you said something about the two years or the one years.
Merlin: I've always thought it's so funny.
Merlin: I'm sure this happens for your daughter.
Merlin: Oh, God, of course this happens for your daughter.
Merlin: You have kids in your life that are like a couple years.
Merlin: Kids were born a couple years before your daughter.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Kids that were born, let's say even a year or two after your daughter.
Merlin: And she has a, I mean, we're closer with the parents than she is with the child.
Merlin: But when our friends had a baby and we went and visited, and I don't think Emma was even verbal yet.
Merlin: She was like two, but it was hilarious because we had these great photos of her looking very concerned about Madeline holding the baby.
Merlin: And she wants to get inside the, you know, like the little play area where we lay on a mat and hit a mobile.
Merlin: And she couldn't fit.
Merlin: It was the same one she had as a baby.
Merlin: She couldn't fit in it.
Merlin: It was so sad.
Merlin: But at the time, their daughter seemed like almost like a different generation.
Merlin: In the same way that a kid who's like in middle school when your kid's in third or fourth grade, right?
Merlin: Feels like a different generation.
Merlin: Then that goes away a little bit.
Merlin: Like by early to mid teen years.
Merlin: Don't you think like suddenly, oh my gosh, a year apart?
Merlin: That's crazy.
Merlin: You've dated people that are a year apart from us.
Merlin: It's no big deal.
Merlin: That gap becomes less significant until it becomes significant again, which is the point you're talking about.
Merlin: The two years between this point in junior high and early, this point in high school and college or whatever, the gulf opens again and suddenly you have such different experiences.
John: I think a lot about the open-endedness of that gulf later.
John: I remember when I was 25 thinking that people that
John: that dated 22-year-olds were creeps.
John: So when you were 25, people who were roughly your age... Other 25-year-olds that were dating like 20-year-olds or 22-year-olds, I was like... Oh, yeah.
Merlin: We had a famous situation in my junior high, as I called it, as we called it, where I had a 14-year-old classmate in eighth grade who was widely known or believed to have a boyfriend who was 19.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Which, from our POV, guess what?
Merlin: Holy shit.
Merlin: She must be really cool.
Merlin: But looking at it from the point of view of even an 18, let alone a 25-year-old, dude, what are you doing?
Merlin: Like, that's so gross.
John: Well, just, but she was, I mean, the girl in my high school who was in 10th grade, I guess, had a 19 or 20-year-old boyfriend.
John: She was so proud of herself.
John: She was so much older than anybody else.
John: That's a get, huh?
John: Yeah.
Yeah.
John: But then there was a time, I guess, I mean, every girlfriend I had was older than me until I turned 30.
John: Every girlfriend you ever – is that a fact?
John: Yeah, they were always older than me.
John: Includes Kelly.
John: Kelly was older.
John: Kelly was.
John: I mean, they were all six months to a year older than me.
John: When I started dating Laurel, I was 27 and she was 29.
John: And that was just scandalous.
John: What are you doing?
John: You're dating – That's the age where you're ladies wearing like a pantsuit.
John: I mean, she was – but she was very sophisticated.
John: It looked good on me, you know.
John: That's good on you.
John: So I don't know when that flips around, but I think – you know what it was for me?
John: It was in 1999 when the Western State Hurricanes broke up.
John: I should have, by all rights, quit music and gotten a job.
John: I was 31 years old – or 30.
John: I was 30.
John: Right.
John: I was 30.
John: I'd been part of that 90s scene –
John: But I was just a little too young, two years too young to actually be grunge.
John: Right.
Right.
John: And I was there for whatever that birth of indie was.
Merlin: And then you were in a band that got maybe, I would have to guess, I can't speak for you, but that's a band that got more, at least more popular, but definitely more widely respected than you would have probably guessed, right?
Merlin: The Hurricanes were kind of a big deal for a while, attracted a little bit of interest until you put your feet on the guy's desk.
Merlin: But that must have felt like your shot.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: We were sexy, but I was already old.
John: And yes, I was 29, I guess.
John: And then all the new bands.
John: So the Hurricanes were were doing their, you know, had their year.
John: But during that time, the other popular bands, all those kids were 23 years old.
John: Death Cab was 23, Modest Mouse.
John: They were all younger, way younger.
John: Sure, sure.
John: And so when the hurricanes broke up, that should have been the end of me, Merlin.
Merlin: I mean, I don't love this phrase, but a lesser person might say the universe was trying to tell you something.
Merlin: Do you feel like there was a message there you could have interpreted differently?
John: Well, every single person that was part of my music scene that was my age or older was out.
John: by the by the following year they were just out the that music scene closed down whatever whatever the bands that were you know that were big in the clubs in 95 96 97 by 2001 they were all gone all those people went away
John: And they were all replaced.
Merlin: And I... By younger, more interesting.
Merlin: It's like when I feel like in college, I was in the last class of selfish Gen X assholes.
Merlin: The class that came right after mine was noticeably more interesting, intelligent, responsible, grown-up, and forward-thinking.
Merlin: And we were just still arguing with the cops about how loud we could play the music.
Merlin: I'm not saying it's the same thing, but that probably happened, I mean, obviously for dark reasons, partly, but with disco, where it's like, there's a year where you're not sure, it seems like it's tapering off, but then once it's been a couple years, you're like, yeah, that's mostly done.
Merlin: And in 1999, that interesting anomalous, like three or four year period post-grunge in music, right, things were kind of sunsetting.
John: For me, it was that they had all been raised in DIY.
John: And I hadn't.
Merlin: You were raised in Led Zeppelin getting a limo full of cocaine.
John: Yeah.
John: And everybody in my generation, you know, we all talked DUI or whatever.
John: Yeah.
John: But what that meant was that you start sub-pop and then you become as big as the bigs or you become a little big.
John: It was not about bands.
John: We definitely did not intend to make a career out of making our own t-shirts.
John: But no, it was like a weird moment where my girlfriends had always been older than me.
John: Everybody that I admired was older than me.
John: And I went on that walk across Europe and I came back and it was like, although I hadn't really changed very much, I stepped back into a world where all of the bands that I knew were gone.
John: All of the people I knew went and got jobs seemingly over the space of a long weekend.
John: And everybody in the Seattle music scene, everybody was now 24, 25.
John: And I was 31.
John: And
John: I don't know why.
John: I had, oh, you know what it was?
John: I got into Harvey Danger.
John: That was why.
John: And those guys were all six years younger than me.
Merlin: I was about to ask, was 98 the Harvey Danger?
Merlin: When was the big one?
John: That was when they were big in 98, yeah.
Merlin: It's so funny because them and Not a Surf kind of had their – there's a phrase that I do not like to use and will not use here.
Merlin: But they are both sometimes categorized as a certain –
Merlin: Appellation of band.
Merlin: And they both had their, if you like, hit around the same time, right?
Merlin: Like Popular and Flagpole Sitter, weren't those kind of contemporaneous?
Merlin: I feel like Popular was a little bit... Earlier?
Merlin: Earlier, yeah.
Merlin: In 96, 97.
John: Yeah, it was like part of that first wave of Weezer...
John: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: People.
Merlin: Weezer people.
Merlin: God, and they would do so much.
Merlin: Then, like, after that, they'd do, like, hyperspace.
John: But, you know, those guys are older than me.
Merlin: They're not significantly older than me, but they're... I talked to your friend about Power Pop and Jason Faulkner the other night.
Merlin: I think he's still a very nice man.
Merlin: You're talking about Matthew.
Merlin: Matthew.
Merlin: I'm not talking about the Frenchman.
Merlin: Or the Spaniard, rather.
Merlin: He smells like a Goodwill jacket.
Yeah.
Merlin: Thank you.
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Merlin: The question is about you coming back and like, hey, did you change or did the world change?
Merlin: You come back, things are moving on, and then Harvey Danger, where you learn to play bass on a soundstage.
Merlin: That's 90... No, that's 2000.
John: That's 2000.
John: See, we turned a corner in 2000.
John: I should have gone left.
John: I should be working at Amazon now.
John: You should have been a Paris
Merlin: Scuttling claws.
Merlin: But it's like when you change your clocks and lose 2 a.m.
Merlin: to 3 a.m.
Merlin: A lot of people say this is how we know or this is why 1997 didn't happen.
Merlin: It was a time change.
Merlin: I mean, it kind of technically did, but like not really.
Merlin: We can say it happened.
Merlin: OK Computer is the only thing that came out, really, mostly.
John: The only thing that came out in 97.
John: The rest of it was 311 and... Oh, five doors down.
John: Five doors down and three doors in reverse.
John: Oh, sure.
Merlin: None of that stuff exists.
Merlin: It's interesting to me that you would come back from what to me feels like it must have been a very, I don't know, it's a big deal that you walked from.
Merlin: What's your phrase?
Merlin: From Milan to Minsk?
Merlin: Where'd you walk from London?
Merlin: From Milan to Minsk.
Merlin: Yeah, it's one girl's erotic journey.
Merlin: What was the path that you walked?
John: Well, as I like to say, Amsterdam to Istanbul.
John: But I really started in London.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: But like, it's so interesting to me that if I understand what you just said, that you came back and you felt like everything had changed.
Merlin: Like you felt mostly kind of, mostly for practical purposes the same, but like your culture, your scene, the city had changed in the time you were away.
John: Yeah.
John: I left at a... That must have been so odd.
John: The last minute, the last minute.
John: And it seemed like the world was going on when I left.
John: It seemed like I was leaving and everybody else was going to be...
John: But when I came back, I was the same and everybody else was different.
John: I don't understand.
John: And I realized the other day.
Merlin: It was a very Joni Mitchell-esque concept.
Merlin: I like that.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, and I was the one that did the crazy thing.
John: They just all stayed at home and just sort of like slouched into Bethlehem.
John: And I was like skateboarding around.
John: I was the silver surfer in this analogy.
John: You're doing the sick kickflips.
John: I was doing sick kickflips.
John: But I came back...
John: I think I told you this.
John: I realized the other day that when I went on that walk, it seemed like a big adventure.
John: It seemed like that must have been some manic period, but I was totally depressed the whole time.
John: I was completely depressed the whole time, but I was just forced out of bed every morning by this voice in my head that was like, move!
Merlin: Move, you lazy ass.
Merlin: East, east, east, east.
Merlin: East, east, east.
Merlin: I mean, isn't that some part of it where you're like, however I go, if I'm going east, I'm going in the right direction.
Merlin: And if I'm still going east and haven't arrived yet, I'm not done.
Merlin: I'm not done.
Merlin: I still haven't arrived.
Merlin: You don't get to clap out of Europe.
John: No, you walk, you get up in the morning.
John: Are you there?
John: No.
John: Okay.
John: East, east, east, east, east.
John: Or south or east.
John: Those are your two options.
John: You're tacking.
John: I call it European tacking.
John: Yeah, European tacking.
John: That's what I was doing.
John: I would go until I hit a river and I would tack until I found a bridge.
John: And then I would go until I hit a river and I'd tack until I found a bridge.
John: But I came back, and all the bands were gone.
John: My city was gone.
John: Oh, no.
John: Yeah.
John: From Seneca to Cahoga Falls?
John: It was all gone, yeah.
John: Shit.
John: And then there was this whole new generation of kids in too tight T-shirts, and they were wearing pegged pants again.
John: I was like, pegged pants?
John: What happened to all the bootcut jean people?
John: No, they're all gone.
John: They need all new pants.
John: Yeah, it's a whole new pants.
John: And I was like, I don't know, I guess.
John: You know, I didn't have – there wasn't another job.
John: I didn't have another job.
John: What was I going to be?
John: What would I be now, Merlin?
John: A college professor?
John: Come on.
Merlin: It's a lot to think about.
Merlin: It's interesting because, like, I don't know.
Merlin: I've never – I don't know if I've ever asked you this, and I won't ask you now.
Merlin: But I wonder if – Go ahead and ask.
Merlin: Go ahead and ask.
Merlin: And forgive me if you talked about this, but have you ever wondered or do you know or could you say the impulse that made you go, okay, right –
Merlin: Walking east through Europe.
Merlin: Is that at all chemically similar to what happened with running for city council?
Merlin: Well, this is the thing I always thought.
Merlin: Do you ever wonder if you were manic when you decided to do that?
John: I always want to think so.
John: But the reason I went, the reason I changed my mind on it, or at least I'm considering it, is when I look back at my...
John: Creative years, you know, because you have a year where it's like, whoa, I wrote 10 songs.
John: Yeah, right.
John: And you think about.
Merlin: I imagine I'll be able to do that a lot in the future.
John: This is my new life.
Merlin: A big lesson in life is learning what's normal and what's an anomaly.
Merlin: As I like to say, youth is the anomaly, which is something people can't realize until they're not a youth anymore.
Merlin: But you have those days where you have your 10x or 15x days, and you're like, oh, I can do this.
Merlin: I guess I should probably be like this all the time.
Merlin: All the time.
John: Right.
John: I thought back the other day, I should have put a band together with Laurel.
John: She was 29, I was 27, but she could play the drums.
John: When I saw the White Stripes for the first time, I was like, oh, wait a minute.
John: I already had that idea.
John: Laurel and I used to sit in the basement and jam.
John: I mean, she wasn't a great drummer, but that wouldn't have mattered.
John: Personality goes a long way.
Merlin: I've been going through a thing where I've been watching a lot of my favorites from the two early, or really, I'm sorry, from the 90s.
Merlin: Of like, you know, just the bands that blew through Tallahassee and the stuff I got obsessed with that some people know and love and other people don't.
Merlin: And I've been diving deep on a couple slightly mathy fun things like Heavy Vegetable and Babe the Blue Ox.
Merlin: And Babe the Blue Ox used to come through town all the time.
Merlin: There's this amazing three piece, so much personality, so much character.
Merlin: Don't you just love a three-piece with a girl just really ripping it on drums?
Merlin: So fucking good.
John: Have I ever told my Babe the Blue Ox story?
Merlin: No, tell me.
Merlin: I really liked them.
Merlin: I had a shirt.
Merlin: I would see them a lot.
Merlin: Remember the guy would have the glasses on the end of his nose?
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Rob, not Rob.
Merlin: Rob, not Rob.
Merlin: Yeah, Rob, not Rob.
Merlin: Yeah, that was... Rob, not Rob.
John: Yeah.
John: They came through town right when the hurricanes were starting to be a thing.
John: And we were all at the Crocodile...
Merlin: we were all at the crocodile to see babe the blue ox and the place wasn't packed but babe the blue ox was a national act or a touring band which they were it's hard to describe they're one of those bands that i know you're not a huge fan but like things like archers of loaf like a bunch of the north carolina bands that were like just huge stars in towns that had reported the cmj let's put it that way
Merlin: I don't know how else to put it.
Merlin: But, like, if you had a good local indie rock or college station and, like, was, like, an AP or CMJ, like, you've heard and saw, you know, of course, and if you were near a highway.
Merlin: Like, in our case, the Black Flag Minutemen, you know, line still existed in the 90s.
Merlin: And you'd get these bands that you'd...
Merlin: Remember that one song of theirs?
Merlin: They were so fucking good, and you'd see them live, and they were so electric.
Merlin: There were so many bands like that that would just blow through town.
Merlin: It might be, you know, it might be Sebado.
Merlin: It might be Babe the Blux.
Merlin: It might be Ursus Bluff.
Merlin: It might be, you know, another band from North Carolina.
John: But they ended up only selling 10,000 copies of their record or whatever.
John: You know, it wasn't like a full-time job.
Merlin: Every single one of them started a Brian Eno cover band, though.
John: But they were...
John: I just really loved them.
Merlin: I loved their show.
Merlin: I thought they had so much personality.
Merlin: Their energy.
Merlin: They did a lot of improv to get to what became their songs.
Merlin: And not proggy, but almost more like a Gang of Four edgy, sort of late 70s vibe meets heavy non-grunge heaviness, which you didn't get a lot of at the time.
John: Well, what we did was we pulled a Merlin Mann.
John: And I went up to him after the show and was like, I enjoy your work.
John: I was like, hey, you guys got a place to crash tonight?
John: And they were like, no.
John: And they kind of looked at each other with that like, you know.
John: we got a live one here.
John: Like we knew this was going to happen or this, we, we, we work on this every night or so.
John: I don't know.
John: They, they did, they gave each other a knowing look and I was like, I've got a huge warehouse loft on Capitol Hill.
John: You should come.
John: And so they did, they packed up their stuff.
John: Oh, that's so cool.
John: And they came and spent the night with me in my loft and we had like a little party and it was the only time that I ever took a band home.
John: No shit.
John: And, like, hood them up.
John: And I think, like, one of the girls in the band, maybe the bass player, made out with my bass player.
Merlin: And the whole, like... She's cool.
Merlin: She's, like, kind of short-ish, like, kind of big, curly hair, probably.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: She's a pistol.
John: And they were all pistols.
John: And it was just like, oh, wow, we're a rock band.
John: And we know another rock band, Babe the Blue Ox.
John: And for at least...
John: Well, for the rest of that year, we were for sure name-checking Babe the Blue Ox whenever the opportunity arose.
Merlin: That's so random, John.
Merlin: I literally made this.
Merlin: I'll put this in show notes.
Merlin: I made a playlist the other night.
Merlin: I'm obsessed with the song Makeout Club by Unrest.
Merlin: So the name of the list is Come On Down to 94.
Merlin: Come on down to 94.
Merlin: It's got 5'8", Heavy Vegetable, Smaug.
Merlin: Babe the Blue Ox.
Merlin: That's on Ego Pimps.
Merlin: That's the one.
Merlin: Some Palace.
Merlin: Sorry.
Merlin: Ego Pimps.
Merlin: Small Factory Wedding President.
John: These were the formative years for you.
John: And Chris Walla, too.
John: You knew all those bands and they really changed who you were.
Merlin: Formative very much in terms of, I'll say something dickish, which is I've always thought I had pretty good taste and sensibility in music because that's how we think.
Merlin: But it was the first time as an adult-ish young person where I felt like I was being wonderfully outpaced by the ambition and execution of a lot of music around me.
Merlin: But it's one thing to go like, to be in like, there was a cover band in Tampa, I think, called JetEye.
Merlin: J-E-T-E-Y-E, JetEye.
Merlin: And they were like a local band, maybe.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: But there
Merlin: All the local bands and the bands that were around were shit in the 80s.
Merlin: That's not entirely true.
Merlin: There were good punk bands in Tampa.
Merlin: Blah, blah, blah.
Merlin: I'm not trying to be mean.
Merlin: But suddenly, you turn on the radio and you hear something like Polvo.
Merlin: And you're like, what the fuck is this?
Merlin: This is so strange.
Merlin: And then, of course, I continue to hold 95 to 97.
Merlin: I know we don't 100% agree on this.
Merlin: But that was such a...
Merlin: memorable time for me because that's guided by voices that's a little past my peak of super chunk but still super chunk but it's also singer songwriters it's freedy johnston it's um denzel it's like all these people denzel rather people who were just and they'd all come through town and it was fucking great and like i really felt like i'm really um you know the first show i ever saw when i moved i don't think i ever told you this the very first show i ever saw the
Merlin: Club Down Under on campus, 1991.
Merlin: Pretty sure the first show I ever went to was Young Fresh Fellows.
Merlin: Ah, Young Fresh Fellows.
Merlin: It might have been around.
Merlin: It might have been this one's for the ladies.
John: I never knew I was a Young Fresh Fellow before.
John: The Young Fresh Fellows were one of the first alternative bands I ever saw.
John: I took them out and got them stoned after the show.
Merlin: Really, them?
John: And I felt like such a cool— Well, I took, you know, yeah, a couple of them.
Merlin: Oh, but it was really good.
Merlin: And, like, I'd heard the sounds of Pacific Northwest or whatever had been popular in Tampa in the mid-'80s a little bit.
Merlin: But I think this must have been this one for the ladies.
Merlin: Or no, this one was Still There's Hope, right?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But anyway, just saying, do you remember how exciting that feels?
Merlin: I'm not saying it has to be that same time for you.
Merlin: But for me, I really miss college for the easy conviviality or the easy access to people, friends.
Merlin: Neutral people, I didn't have a lot of enemies, I hope.
Merlin: But you just see your friends.
Merlin: You just see your friends all the time.
Merlin: You see your friends all the time.
Merlin: You just see your friends all the time.
Merlin: There's no need to ever make a plan unless you need to buy tickets for something.
Merlin: But you just see your friends all the time.
Merlin: You bump into people and say, oh, do you want to practice at three?
Merlin: Or whatever.
Merlin: You just bump in.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: I miss that from a social standpoint.
Merlin: I miss the mid-90s from a music standpoint.
Merlin: I know it's different for everybody.
Merlin: But it was just this machine gun of music that was so my shit.
Merlin: for three, four, five years.
Merlin: And that's kind of what this, this list reflects a little bit, I think.
John: Um, okay.
John: So I wonder, I wonder sometimes, uh, I think it's the thing that I miss that I, you know, you, you have, um, you have those feelings sometimes where you're like, am I living the right life?
John: Is this the one, um, is there another one that I, that I should have been living?
John: Like I,
John: it's easy sometimes to think like, well, everybody's pretty much living the same life.
John: And, uh, and that's, that's kind of valuable in the sense of, of not feeling like everybody else has got it better than you or that you're being persecuted.
John: You know, you kind of say, no, everybody's got their struggles.
John: Everybody's kind of doing their own, their own version of the same kind of thing.
John: But then I was talking to my mom the other day about her childhood and
John: And I, and I, oh, I said, what was your favorite movie when you were a kid?
John: And she said, are you kidding?
John: Roy Rogers.
John: She's born in 20, 29?
John: No, 34.
John: 34.
John: Okay.
John: Oh, that's right.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: So yeah, that's the same age as my, as my mom.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: And she was like, you know, Roy Rogers, every, every time a new Roy Rogers picture came out, I would go see the Roy Rogers.
John: I loved Roy Rogers.
John: And when he married Dale Evans, I was really disappointed.
John: And then she said, oh, that's so cute.
John: And then also, you know, Johnny Weissmuller as Tarzan.
John: And I said, well, when you were out with, you know, the kids in the neighborhood playing, did you guys play Roy Rogers?
John: Did you play Cowboys and Indians?
John: Did you play Tarzan?
John: And she said, I didn't play with other kids.
John: Hmm.
John: And I'd never heard her put in Ohio.
John: This is in, in Northwest Ohio.
John: Yeah.
John: And I'd been to her, I've been to her town.
John: We were just there in, in August and she showed me all of her neighborhood.
John: You could picture, Oh, here's the route you would walk to the elementary school.
John: Here's the, here's the route to town, you know?
John: Um, but she just said it so matter of fact, they like, well, I didn't play with other kids.
John: And I,
John: My daughter, we moved out to the suburbs partly because we wanted her to have the suburban experience that I had when I was a kid, which was kids all over.
John: And you just go out the door in the summer and you play.
Merlin: It's hard to describe, but my wife grew up on a cul-de-sac where everybody knew every other family and mostly really liked the other families.
Merlin: But it's difficult if you didn't grow up in that environment or haven't grown up in an environment like that.
Merlin: It's difficult to describe.
Merlin: If you live in the suburbs anywhere in America or anywhere where there's concern, like, you know, the kind of concern you would have in an area like that, like, you have to take your kids somewhere to play.
Merlin: Or your kid has to get somewhere to play.
Merlin: In the case of my wife and her family, and maybe yours, you walk out the door and you're already there.
Merlin: Everything is already there.
Merlin: You can ride bikes.
Merlin: You can go to the convenience store.
Merlin: You have a certain amount of autonomy you would never have in an urban area.
Merlin: Or in a suburban area that required you to leave Colonial Hills 3 and 4 in order to get to the Eckert Drugstore.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: You're already there.
Merlin: Which is also kind of true of the music and the college in this case.
Merlin: The friends, they're already there.
Merlin: The music, it's already there.
Merlin: It's really special.
John: And I worry about that for my kid because it turned out this suburban neighborhood does not have that.
John: Most of the retired architects, right?
John: Yeah.
John: And she's like my mom.
John: She's an avid reader.
John: And she's just gradually, although a very social person, has gradually kind of settled into a life where her books and her
John: are her main companions.
John: And that was kind of me, except I had kids all around all the time.
John: So I could opt in or opt out.
John: Just yell at them to keep it down.
John: Yeah, I mean, I could say, I mean, there are many instances where a kid would come to the door and say, hey, can John come out and play?
John: And my mom would look in my room and I would like wave her off like, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Merlin: I imagine you wearing a pointy hat with crescents and stars on it while you wave a magic wand.
John: I was making spells.
John: That's right.
John: I was reanimating a dead frog.
John: And so I think about it in that context sometimes.
John: And I'm like, well, wait a minute.
John: There are a million other lives.
John: And there are lives where – I remember the first time I visited Greece –
John: I was sitting in this little ramshackle hotel looking out the window at the water.
John: And there were these bronzed, young teen Greek kids doing the thing.
John: It's like right out of a cliche, although this was a rattle trap hotel on Corfu.
John: But these kids were just diving in the ocean.
John: And they were wearing...
John: Almost nothing.
John: If it had been even 100 years ago, they wouldn't have been wearing anything.
John: And I remember looking out the window and like, oh, this is – well, first of all, this is how JFK Jr.
John: grew up.
John: But also this is a life and what a different life from mine.
John: Yeah.
John: Like an utterly different way.
Merlin: Well, like what's, you know, it's interesting.
Merlin: I think in an instance like that, it's kind of interesting to ask like what's normal, but also what's available.
Merlin: Like what's normal and what's available is a lot of like that describes whether that's your culture at your office or like especially when you're a kid.
Merlin: But like it's normal to just sit around buck-ass naked and like sitting in the sun, you know.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But what's available is like, hey, you have access to the Mediterranean and a fair amount of –
Merlin: You know, Europe.
John: Yeah.
John: And nothing, nothing, you know, and that's a situation where your relative poverty is completely mitigated by the fact that you have the ocean of the ancients, right?
John: I mean, who cares if you don't have any money?
John: You have the world's greatest ocean.
John: And it's so different than growing up in the Bronx or whatever, where you don't have any money and also you don't have the world's greatest ocean.
John: But I think now this is this midlife crisis thing where it's like, oh, wait, I could choose a life rather than continue to live in this one.
John: And I've been talking to a lot of friends about this.
John: Say that again.
John: This sounds important.
Merlin: You know, you could... You could choose a life versus like realizing... Well, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but my thought on that is something like, well, you have to ask yourself like, oh, did I accidentally...
Merlin: find myself in some kind of default settings and not realize it.
Merlin: Like I could have a more affirmative decision about what I'd like to be doing and to have done.
John: Well, there's nothing you can do about what you've done.
John: But yeah.
Merlin: You can apologize.
Merlin: You can apologize for what you've done.
Merlin: Yeah, you have to every day.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: But I mean, like, you know, like in your case, whatever accolades you get in life, I don't think that's going to be enough because A, you don't like accolades, and B, you're very driven in sometimes positive or negative ways, but you're very driven to like exceed what you've done, I feel like.
John: Yeah, and what does that look like?
John: But also, is there, when I think of a simple life,
John: when I think of a simple life, which I, which I don't currently have, although I don't have an overcomplicated life.
Merlin: I have, they're very different things.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I feel like I have a simple life relative to having a not difficult life is not the, I mean, I, one of my many distinctions that I'm sure annoy people is there's a big difference between love and hate.
Merlin: Yep.
Merlin: Yep.
Merlin: Yep.
Merlin: There's actually a thin line.
Merlin: There's a thin line.
Merlin: Um, um, was that the pretenders?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: What is that?
Merlin: Who is that?
Merlin: Pretenders?
Merlin: Between Love and Hate?
John: No, no, no.
John: It's George Jones.
John: No, it's George Stray.
John: No.
John: George Stray.
John: Huh.
John: Live Like You're Dying.
John: It's Dolly Parton.
John: Dolly Parton.
John: She wrote all those songs.
Merlin: There's a phrase, a couple of distinctions.
Merlin: It's Huey Lewis.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
Merlin: I see.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: Did you say pretenders?
Merlin: No, it's the persuaders.
Merlin: Persuaders.
Merlin: Oh, 500 miles.
Merlin: Huh.
Merlin: You're just all too darn loud, he says through the bullhorn.
Merlin: There's a difference between just because something is simple doesn't mean it's easy.
Merlin: Sometimes when something is simple...
Merlin: Well, you almost understand, John Hodgman.
Merlin: No, you must listen, John.
Merlin: That simple means like, oh God, there's some kinds of simple in life that are brutal.
Merlin: Like once you accept a truth that is very simple, yet immutable, yet non-intuitive, that does not make it easy.
Merlin: Simple is not easy.
Merlin: Simple can sometimes be very difficult.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And I think in life, that's how stuff kind of lands on you, is you go, oh, there actually is – I was – I had my ladder against the wrong wall for trying to figure this thing out.
Merlin: There are things that you can get, or grok, as you say, in life.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And I –
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: Sorry, I interrupted you.
Merlin: You're thinking about things.
Merlin: Well, you know, I'm always thinking about things.
John: I guess you are, yeah.
John: One of our good friends of all the great shows, Jokin, who lives in Sweden now but is a German.
John: He posted somewhere, maybe he wrote me a letter, where he said, in that very German style, you know the Germans.
John: I do.
John: They love chapter markers and candor.
John: They do.
John: They don't like mincing words.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: There's no mincing.
Merlin: There's not even a word for that.
Merlin: They got eight different words for snow, but none for mincing.
John: Well, the word for mincing just means to chop meat up very finely.
Merlin: Oh, as if unto a land yeager.
John: Yeah, but they don't then use it as a metaphor for parsing what you say.
John: There aren't no metaphors in German.
John: It's in their minds, right?
John: It's not like they think to themselves, oh, this would be rude to say, and then say, well, but I'm German, I'm going to do it anyway.
John: They don't even have a filter for rude.
Merlin: Yes, the hard part to get used to is that they don't mean it to be rude and it's not rude.
Merlin: They're just not doing all the layers of padding and packing that Americans do to say something true.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Have you considered that you've become very fat?
Merlin: What?
John: He said something to me in a letter or something online where he was like, well, I think of Roderick on the line as like, you know, the first five or six years you were talking about, you were telling interesting stories about when you were interesting and
John: And then recently you've just been thinking about your life a lot in a kind of way that's a lot more boring.
John: But, you know, it's like you ran out of interesting stories is what he said.
John: Yeah.
John: Something to that effect.
John: And I was like, oh, well, you know.
Merlin: Interesting stories ran out of me.
Merlin: I'm still –
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John: Doing interesting things.
John: I mean, they're just right.
Merlin: They're different.
John: What are you talking about?
John: I'm not fighting any buffalo.
John: I could if I wanted to.
Merlin: I could, but I know how.
John: There's half and half I got to get.
John: You know, it's not exactly as interesting.
Merlin: You got a pot you didn't clean, like, right after you finished cooking, and now you got to get that all cleaned off?
John: Leasement flooded the other day.
John: Oh, shit.
John: We had one of these atmospheric rivers again.
John: And I, like a dumb, listen, this is, talk about not being interesting anymore.
John: Jokin, this story is for you.
John: i shout out to yokum i have a sump pump sump pump house they put it in a sump pump to keep the keep the water off the floor uh-huh it was one of these things like you know those smoke detectors where you put a nine volt battery in it even though the smoke detector is hardwired into your house yeah battery runs out every six months rain or shine and
John: And the smoke detector is like – it's way, way up on a ceiling.
John: And you get up there and you replace the battery and you're like, what is this battery for?
John: The only reason it's here is in case there's a power outage.
John: It has battery backup.
John: But somehow this device is sucking battery power.
Merlin: faster than a battery powered one i heard i heard a thing on a podcast uh last week about related to this where it had been recommended to perhaps consider getting those really long lived like new kind of fancy batteries not like our old school alkalines but the new ones like probably lithium ion but anyway that they last forever like oh that's great that you won't have to check
Merlin: Your battery is off.
Merlin: And when it does the beep, beep, beep thing, like it won't be driving you nuts with that.
Merlin: But apparently the problem is that that I'm not an engineer, but those batteries themselves explode and set your house.
Merlin: No, it's well, it's not as bad as that, but almost which is that if you've got a regular old alkaline battery, it drains.
Merlin: on sort of a curve that's sensible, and it gets to a point where I guess the device detects the battery is low, and that's what causes that beep, beep, beep to let you know to change it.
Merlin: The problem, if you like, with the lithium ion is that when they die, there's very little curve.
Merlin: It just dies.
Merlin: So you don't even realize, because you're assuming, A, this battery's going to last forever, right?
Merlin: And B, it would tell me, but it won't tell you.
Merlin: You didn't know.
Merlin: You didn't check.
Merlin: It's not that interesting.
Merlin: But I'm just saying, be careful what you put in your smoke alarm.
Merlin: I always say that.
John: Be careful what you put in your smoke alarm.
Merlin: Be careful what you put in your smoke alarm.
Merlin: Not a lot of people, especially the more interesting people who you meet on podcasts, are not going to tell you that.
Merlin: They're so busy talking about what they do.
John: I lived in a stoner house, and we had a...
John: A smoke detector that beeped for a solid year.
John: Oh, no.
John: None of us could hear it anymore.
John: Oh, God.
John: Every 30 seconds, beep.
John: There's so many problems with that.
John: And nobody, everybody was a drug addict in the house.
John: So nobody wanted to deal with it.
John: It wasn't even, it's not like we had vaulted ceilings.
John: It was just right there.
John: You could stand on an apple crate.
John: Nobody wanted to deal with it.
John: Nobody wanted to pay for a nine volt battery.
John: and so it just stood up there and beeped and any visitor to the house would sit there like just just on the edge of the couch like dudes
John: Change your batteries.
Merlin: It's like the house in Synecdoche, New York that's always just a little bit on fire.
Merlin: We were like, guys, this is not right.
Merlin: How are you living like this?
John: We were a little bit on fire.
John: But this situation, the sump pump had a little outboard gizmo that was there in case there was a power outage.
John: The sump pump would keep running.
John: But in the space of two years, it ran through three 9-volt batteries.
John: And when it goes, when it runs through it, then it just sits down there and beeps and
John: I unplugged it.
John: I unplugged the sump pump, Merlin.
John: To get rid of the beeps.
John: To get rid of the beeps because I was like, I can't keep putting nine volts in this.
John: And then we had an atmospheric river and I went down there in the morning to do the laundry and it was two inches of water on the basement.
John: Oh, no.
John: Yeah.
John: So talk about interesting story.
John: I mean, on the one hand, you know, there's like dead rubber girl in the closet.
John: On the other hand, there's two inches of water on my basement floor.
John: Yeah.
John: There's your Roderick on the line.
Merlin: There's your lessons about life embedded in that, John.
Merlin: If you can't find embedded life lessons interesting, I don't know.
John: No, Merlin, you and I aren't 40 anymore.
John: You know what I mean?
Merlin: No, I'm not even 45 anymore.
John: Not 45.
Merlin: No, no, no.
John: Life catches up to you.
Merlin: Life has a funny way of doing that.
Merlin: It comes at you fast.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Uh-huh.
Merlin: It does.
Merlin: Why are you still here?
Merlin: If you have an opportunity to drive one of those, it's so choice.
Merlin: It's so choice.
Merlin: If you have the means, I highly recommend it.
Merlin: Yeah, that's right.
Merlin: Uh-huh.
Merlin: Huh.
Merlin: But, you know, the thing is, if you just roll around into your late 30s going, oh, oh, oh, like I must go seek out the interesting information and lessons, nah, what I'm telling you is the embedded ones.
Merlin: The embedded ones.
Merlin: There's embedded lessons everywhere.
Merlin: And you should be – well, I'm not going to say – don't strip mine it.
Merlin: Don't steal the wisdom.
Merlin: But be there.
Merlin: Be with the wisdom.
Merlin: And let the embedding, you know, buoy you.
Merlin: You learned a lot of lessons there, John.
Merlin: Let the embedding buoy you.
Merlin: Sump pump.
John: sump pump and the sump pump i'm going to guess here that's a thing that detects water and then turns on it's a thing that detects water and turns on and it's in cool it's in combination with a french drain these are a lot of new terms that i'm introducing all at once but the french drain yes okay the french drain is a is a drain that's out that runs along the front of your house that collects the water and then it puts it in the sump pump and then the sump pump pumps it out okay and
John: and the French train was working great.
John: It basically brought the water into the house, and then I had turned off the sump pump, and the sump pump did not take the water out of the house.
Merlin: I see.
Merlin: It was that missing piece.
Merlin: It was that change.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: The thing created the missing piece that meant that the whole operation was slightly compromised.
John: It was compromised, and as soon as I saw two inches of water, I went and I turned on the sump pump, and then it immediately sucked all the water out.
John: But what I had been doing, Merlin, was I had been sorting through all of my rock posters, and they were all stacked on the floor.
John: Oh, no.
John: All these rock posters stacked on the floor.
John: You've been at the rock posters for a while.
John: A long time.
John: Oh, shit, John.
John: They were just sitting on the actual floor?
John: They were stacked on the floor.
John: Oh.
John: And all of the rock posters were completely submerged.
John: Oh.
John: And so the, so I'm not somebody, as you know, who believes that I don't believe that in signs, I don't believe that this is, was meant to be, but I do believe that when something happens,
John: That is what happened.
John: That is the new truth.
Merlin: It's embedded.
Merlin: And just because it's embedded doesn't mean it's not real.
Merlin: It's real.
Merlin: What can be learned from this, you ask yourself?
Merlin: What can I learn from this?
Merlin: It's a performative, as I say, rhetorical question.
Merlin: A rhetorical question.
Merlin: But that's the point of the embedding.
Merlin: It's not going to hold your dick for you.
Merlin: You've got to figure it out.
Merlin: Figure it out.
John: It's not going to hold your dick.
John: None of these are.
John: And, you know, all the way back to when I had that office down in the immigration building down in the... The one with the birds outside.
John: With the birds.
John: I had these posters, these rock posters stacked up.
John: And I was like, what am I going to do with these posters?
John: All the way back.
John: All the way back before I ran for city council.
John: The one constant in my life has been, what do I do with these posters?
John: For a while, I was going to buy a flat file from a guy.
John: We're talking about 2013.
John: Yeah.
John: What am I going to do with these posters?
John: Well, now the decision in part was made for me.
John: By the flood, by the lack of a nine-volt battery.
John: Oh, for one of a battery.
John: For one of a battery.
John: Now, a lot of these posters, which I might have strapped to my back like the stick farmer on Led Zeppelin IV.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: I might have been, or was that Led Zeppelin IV?
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: That's the one with the sticks, the four sticks or whatever it's called.
Merlin: Yeah, with the sticks.
Merlin: He's got the sticks.
John: He's the stick man.
John: And all the naked kids climbing up the side of the mountain.
John: I would have been both the man with the sticks, the bundle of sticks, the bundle of hiss, and I also would have been the naked kids climbing up the mountain.
John: You could be the man and the mountain.
John: With these posters, these stupid Decembrist posters that I really just wanted to burn in effigy.
John: Yes.
John: And now the wave.
John: The wave came in through the French drain past the non-operating sump pump.
John: Sump pump.
John: And it just removed all of these posters from contention.
John: I don't have to think about that.
John: Mischief managed, if I could say.
John: Yeah.
John: They all went soggy wet into the bin.
John: And now I wonder, should I be living in Greece?
John: Should I be jumping off the side of a rock?
John: Oh, I see.
John: I don't have these anymore.
John: These were one of the anchors.
John: These were a sea anchor, like I learned in that Robert Redford movie.
John: You throw the sea anchor out.
John: Oh, right.
John: It pulls you off the shipping container.
Merlin: Sea anchor is different than a regular anchor you taught me.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: It's a sea anchor.
Merlin: It's also a concept, and I don't pretend to fully understand this, but I'm happy to misunderstand it.
Merlin: A concept in, I believe, I want to say Chinese philosophy, wu-wei.
John: Go on, wu-wei.
Merlin: And that is the idea, a kind of, I think, broadly misunderstood, at least by me, idea of things that can only be done by doing nothing.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And it's really easy.
Merlin: And boy, if you write in your Poets for Physics class, you write about the Tao of physics, boy, that's going to make him mad.
Merlin: But because he really – it was a very navel-gazy paper that I wrote.
Merlin: But Wu Wei is a very Taoist idea of – I watched a YouTube video about this also.
Merlin: Like a farmer might be frustrated – and I'm just cribbing this from a video at this point –
Merlin: Farmer's frustrated because he really wants to get good at farming.
Merlin: And so he goes out and first of all, he starts pulling his crops.
Merlin: Imagine a carrot, treating it like a handle.
Merlin: You start pulling it out of ground because like that's it seems like that'll make it grow faster.
Merlin: And that doesn't help.
Merlin: That just kills the carrot.
Merlin: Like and if you say, oh, what if I what if I give all of my crops double the water?
Merlin: Well, that doesn't make them grow faster.
Merlin: Hmm.
Merlin: And as we say in software development, it takes nine months to make a baby no matter how many women you put on the job.
Merlin: And that is an analogy.
Merlin: But I think that's a terrific analogy.
Merlin: And that's a problem with lots of broken projects is thinking you can add more women to get the pregnancy done faster.
Merlin: It always takes nine months no matter what.
Merlin: And that's a very Wu Wei kind of concept.
Merlin: It doesn't mean, I think as my physics teacher gently tried to tell me, it doesn't mean sit on your ass.
Merlin: It's been translated as doing nothing, but it's also that there's a kind of action by inaction.
Merlin: And in the farmer's case, that means fucking pump the brakes about trying to invent super farming.
Merlin: Now, is there anything that feels a little bit woo-way about this?
Merlin: It doesn't necessarily mean the universe is telling you something, but you did have a wave of mutilation come up through your French press.
Merlin: True.
Merlin: True.
Merlin: And then that dusted off all your Decembrists.
Merlin: You come in, you know, after the deluge.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And now you've got a situation.
John: I think you got a little bit woo-wed.
John: I feel like I did.
John: And one of the key elements is it could have been worse.
Right.
John: It could be raining.
John: Well, and there were a lot of things down there that didn't get away.
Merlin: Oh, it's almost like a warning shot.
John: Yeah, that's exactly right.
Merlin: Oh shit, number one, get your mind right about the sump pump and the French press.
Merlin: Fucking get it right.
Merlin: Figure it out.
Merlin: But then also, you know, I could have killed you.
John: Well, yeah, like all the guitars were sitting.
John: Oh, your glasses down there?
John: Well, glasses all got lost.
John: But the guitars were all five inches above the waterline.
John: The Rickenbackers down there.
John: They're down there, but they were all up high.
John: And I got all the water out of there, and it lickety-split.
John: Like, I came down at 8 o'clock in the morning.
John: Oh, here's the other crazy thing.
John: You want another crazy thing?
John: Please.
John: So, how long have I been talking about sleep problems?
John: Oh, yeah, a few years.
Merlin: It's been awful, right?
Merlin: And then you, somehow you, I guess you attract a better clientele, but I've been dropping fucking hankies like Mario Cuomo.
Merlin: Hey, somebody write me a script, please.
Merlin: for a c-pap machine but last time we checked in i think you had a sealed plastic bag with the contents of c-pap and so i got you've been dealing with sleep for years john you've been it's been your bet noir it's been terrible and and and i was starting to feel like on these shows i couldn't think straight anymore oh that's right you know you kept you kept forgetting what you were talking about yeah i was walking around in a daze my my whole everything hurt yeah
John: And I got this CPAP machine and I tried to use it.
John: And the problem for me was that the issue, the primary issue, turns out.
John: Turns out.
John: I know you like it turns out.
John: I do.
John: But weren't you worried that you were going to drown?
John: Well, no.
John: Here's the thing.
John: I have a hard time going to sleep.
Merlin: Like I stay up until 6 in the morning.
Merlin: You have a hard time.
Merlin: Here comes word guy.
Merlin: You have a hard time going to sleep.
Merlin: You also have a hard time getting to sleep.
Merlin: You have trouble.
Merlin: It seems to me you have trouble causing yourself to move from the room where the sleeping isn't to the bed where the sleeping nominally should be.
John: Correct.
John: And so my thinking along the lines of CPAP was, oh, maybe I don't want to go to sleep because I'm dying the whole time.
John: And if I had a CPAP machine, sleep would be restful.
Right.
John: And when they did the tests on me, they were like, well, you only had six events.
John: And so technically— That would be like an apnea wake-up kind of event?
John: Six apneas.
John: That's just borderline where we would have you do a CPAP.
John: And I was like, well—
John: how many is like apnea?
John: And they were like, well, there are people that have 100, 200 events in a night.
Merlin: I've heard about this.
Merlin: But again, whether it's one or 50, you're not really aware of it.
Merlin: Unless your wife shakes you awake and says you've got to get this treated.
Merlin: Can you imagine like choking 100 times a night and you're not even aware of it?
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: I slept on the couch last night because I was just being too goddamn loud.
Merlin: Well, so I used this CPAP machine for three weeks.
John: Holy shit, over the holidays.
John: Well, yeah, and before.
John: Maybe longer.
John: And I lay in bed every night and was still unable to go to sleep, but now also wearing a Baron Harkonnen mask.
John: Does this make you look a little like a space elephant?
John: Like really, really, really unable to go to sleep.
Merlin: Distracting, uncomfortable?
Merlin: What was the feeling?
Merlin: Well, it was just, it wasn't even that.
John: I got used to it.
Merlin: I got used to the breathing.
Merlin: But it's also that you're going to sleep.
Merlin: Like, you don't like going to sleep.
Merlin: Whether or not you had an elephant face on, you don't like going to sleep.
Merlin: Plus, you've got to lay in a position.
Merlin: There's a lot about this that I think could explain why this didn't go great.
John: This was just one more thing, or in this case, four more things.
John: Like, it was a sound.
John: It was a feeling.
John: It was a restriction.
John: And you've got to lay on your back, right?
Merlin: You can't lay on your stomach.
John: Or you lay on your side, but then you're kind of pulling on the thing.
John: And so I just didn't go to sleep.
John: I just was it was like, oh, now it's eight o'clock.
Merlin: Now it's basically like a nighttime MRI.
Merlin: We're just going to sit very still and not sleep.
John: So then I so then I developed a cough and I was like, OK, I'm going to stop using this for a little bit and get this cough to go away because I was using the humidifier function.
John: I think it was filling me up.
John: And then I went up, lead up to the holidays.
John: I was in this thing, Merlin, where I was going to sleep at eight o'clock in the morning.
John: I was sleeping until two in the afternoon.
Merlin: Unconstrained by walking around.
John: Cause school's out, right?
John: School's out.
John: Yeah.
John: And I'm falling down and I'm sleeping on the couch in the afternoon and I'm watching 30 rock episodes through, you know, I watched like nine 30 rock episodes in a row.
John: Just hoping that Tina Fey will lay me down and explain to me.
Merlin: God, I hope it's a Dennis Tuffy episode.
John: Please be a Dennis Tuffy.
John: She's just like, hey, dummy, lay down.
Merlin: It does sound a little, I recognize that, what you're describing, and it does sound a little, pathological is probably the wrong word, but you've gone through a certain point to a different point, and doesn't that start to feel like your life is a little unmanageable at that point?
John: I was out of control.
John: Absolutely out of control.
John: Oh, shit, John.
John: So in this cycle where it was like, okay, well now apparently – because there were a few of them where I was like, well, I'm staying up all night and then I'll rock on through and that's how you do it when you get jet lag or whatever.
John: Well, I'd stay up until 4 o'clock in the afternoon and then hit –
John: like a Mondo wall and just fall, just collapse.
John: So now I'm going to sleep at four in the afternoon and sleeping until what?
John: 11 o'clock at night.
John: Like I was just, I, I was off the rails and also not, that's not, it sounds like, it sounds like the, the sleep patterns of like a serial killer.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: And that's what it felt like.
John: And it felt like I was, and then right around Christmas, I,
John: Like I was sitting there, we were, we were opening presents and I'm sitting on the couch and I had not been to sleep for whatever, at that point, 35 hours or something.
John: And I'm just sitting, you know, I'm, you know, people are like, here, I got you this.
John: And I'm like, and right after that, I don't know, in some, one of these combinations, right.
John: It,
John: It suddenly, it was like jackpot on a slot machine.
John: I went to bed at midnight, and I woke up at 6.30 in the morning.
Merlin: What?
Merlin: I find both of those very difficult to believe.
John: Well, and I did too.
John: Holy shit.
John: It was just something that came around.
Merlin: Spontaneously.
Merlin: It wasn't attached to anything you could figure out.
Merlin: Just suddenly you fell into a seemingly normal grown man sleep pattern.
John: I went to sleep at midnight because I was so exhausted I couldn't stand, I couldn't eat.
John: You wrapped around.
John: I couldn't keep my eyes open.
John: I wrapped around.
John: And I woke up at 6.30.
John: And then I was like, huh.
John: And then so I stayed up that day.
John: Because up until that point there had been nothing consistent, right?
John: I stayed up that day and it got to be about 10 o'clock at night.
John: And I was like falling asleep on my feet.
John: And I went to bed.
John: And I woke up at 6 o'clock in the morning.
John: And for the last two weeks, Merlin, I have been going to bed between 10 and midnight and waking up at between 6 and 7 in the morning.
John: Are you kidding me?
John: And I started to get up and come into the living room and sit down at the computer and write.
John: And I started to write.
John: and i've been writing 1500 words a day that's really good and staying awake all day not taking a nap in the afternoon oh my god and i'm having this this like no john i have to say you did not mention this to me no no no i know i know i had not i had not heard this holy shit i'm floating along and it's like i have this experience now where
John: I've already done a bunch of stuff, and I look at the clock, and it's 9 in the morning.
John: And it's like, whoa.
John: Shouldn't I be getting to sleep?
John: Whoa.
John: I've already written a thousand words, and I cleaned the basement, and I did the dishes, and it's 9.30.
Merlin: You do more before breakfast than the Army does all day.
Merlin: Yeah, it's going to make the 60s look like the 20s.
Merlin: You're not getting dung out that easy.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: So I don't know.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Holy shit.
John: I don't know what's happening.
John: No.
John: But right now, right at this moment, because I woke up this morning without an alarm.
John: Oh, my God.
John: Eight o'clock in the morning.
Whew.
Merlin: And I'm sitting here pushing it like we do.
Merlin: I'm pushing and delaying because I'm always thinking, oh, you know, I could have a little more coffee before I record.
Merlin: Plus, John's probably not even awake yet.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Listen to me.
John: I already went out and was rollerblading around the neighborhood, leaving little boxes of sugar cookies on my neighbor's doorsteps.
John: And what's crazy?
John: What's crazy?
John: You're a manic pixie dream, John.
John: I don't want to jinx this because I'm knocking on wood.
John: But it feels regular.
Merlin: Well, tell me, God, I'm ravenous.
Merlin: I'm like a horny boy.
Merlin: How do you feel?
Merlin: Fuck.
Merlin: Are you feeling better physically, mentally, emotionally?
Merlin: Do you feel different?
John: So there's a combination of things.
John: It turns out when I write 1,500 words in a day—
John: I feel like I accomplished something.
Merlin: Oh, that's a funny thing.
Merlin: When you actually produce the thing that is mainly your job, it's amazing how good it feels to have finished a thing that's actually the kind of thing you'd be proud to have done.
Merlin: I get a little attaboy.
John: Sure.
John: And I didn't have to steal that time from anywhere.
John: It's not in the middle of the day.
John: It was just like I did it in the morning.
John: And so it's out of the way.
John: So...
John: I haven't felt a feeling of daily accomplishment in years, I don't think, where it was like, oh, I did a thing every day for the last week.
John: I did a thing.
Merlin: Even controlling for all other things, this must have had some impact on you.
Merlin: Well, it has.
Merlin: It has.
John: And what happens now is when I start to feel tired, it's at 1030 at night.
John: Where normally I would be sitting like just leaning into the first of what was going to be nine 30 rocks.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: And now I'm sitting on the couch with my daughter's mother, partner, who has decided along with my sister that we're watching The Man in the High Castle for some reason.
John: Oh, that's a good show.
John: And they're like, no, no, no, this is your type of show.
John: You like this.
John: And I was like, well, you know what?
John: It's 1030.
John: I'm kind of tired.
John: Am I going to turn in soon?
John: And so I sit there and I know the feeling.
John: Even Nazis can't keep me awake.
John: I'm like, oh, Nazis.
John: I can't tell what's going on in this.
Merlin: I need my beauty rest.
Merlin: But –
Merlin: You put down your Mrs. Howell eye shade with the lashes on it.
John: Just like.
John: No, but you know, and I'm somebody that does not fall asleep on the couch watching TV.
John: I refuse to do it.
John: But I am, you know, that falling asleep on your feet, that nodding off thing, which I'm used to happening at 6 o'clock in the morning.
John: It's happening at 11 o'clock at night.
John: And I'm like, well, off to bed.
John: And here's the other thing.
John: It doesn't feel like I'm missing anything.
Merlin: Like, I'm not missing.
Merlin: Something's flipped neurologically, John, because you were never missing anything.
Merlin: I was never missing anything.
Merlin: I'm sorry, I sound like I'm being unkind, but like, no, what's changed is your ability to realize you're not missing shit.
Merlin: You need to sleep.
John: What I was missing was writing 1,500 words at 8 o'clock in the morning.
John: Yeah, but that doesn't occur to a person.
John: But I don't know.
John: Right now, it feels very sustainable.
John: It feels sustainable because I got up at 8.
Merlin: Let's not jinx it.
John: I've already done some stuff, and I'm going to stay up until at 11 when I start to get tired.
John: And then even if I want to sit and play shitty games on my phone.
Merlin: If you want to watch 30 Rock, you might choose two of your favorite episodes instead of just sitting there like a goddamn glutton, imagining that that'll keep the demon dogs at bay.
John: Here's the insane thing.
John: I watched during the pandemic, because I didn't watch 30 Rock in the 2000s.
John: I didn't even have a TV.
John: And I started to watch it when it was on Amazon.
John: They took it away, but then they put it over somewhere else, Netflix or something, that I also was able to see it.
John: But I started to watch them.
John: And I didn't watch Tina Fey on Saturday Night Live, because I didn't even have a TV.
John: No.
John: So I didn't know anything about anything.
Merlin: Oh, she's delightful on that show.
Merlin: And I started watching the show, and I was like— Sandwich Day, The Cookie.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: She's so lovable on that show.
John: And what's crazy is that the show—you know, there's something about the 2010s, 2020s,
John: Where you, somebody our age, you know, for the last six years, we've been kind of
John: trying to figure out, are we being gaslit?
John: Like, it used to be... I know we don't say it used to be, like, Twitter used to be good or whatever, but it also, like, things used to be a way.
Merlin: There's usually some offset, personally and globally and culturally, of like, well, you know, the 80s sucked, but it was good for punk music.
Merlin: Like, da-ba-ba, but-ba-da-ba, and whether or not that's true, like, it just feels like we are really...
Merlin: down in the count for the last five or six years of like there's like 45 empirically permanently bad things and then the occasional like oh you feel a little better for an afternoon and yeah only barely but but but watching the the show from 2006 7 8 9 10 yeah it's very like george w george w bush years
John: Yeah, but the sense of humor is so Generation X. It's so, like, there's a lot of irony.
John: There's a lot of stuff that wouldn't fly now, but it actually is funny, you know?
Merlin: Jenna in Blackface, taking that out was a goddamn shame, because like so much of the great Blackface, it was really instructive.
Merlin: Have you gotten to the one where Alec Baldwin starts working for Ferris Bueller?
John: Well, so...
John: What I did, what had happened was, I watched the entire series.
Merlin: You watched the entire series.
Merlin: That's like six, seven seasons, something like that.
John: It's a lot of seasons.
John: The only time I've ever done that before.
Merlin: Tracy gets little and big and little.
John: And gets little and big.
Merlin: That's right.
John: When you see him at first, he's got a mustache and he's like all slim.
John: I am a stabbing robot.
John: I'd only ever done that with The Sopranos and The Wire.
Merlin: I never watched anything all the way through before that was like this that was just like this is just this is just like Rome you're watching at the time week by week you haven't done like a After death there after after end of the show binge I've never done like this very often I've never done this and so and I oh I was also doing it alone
John: This was my private, like, go sit in the bathtub and watch 30 Rock and go, like, this is my little weird special time caps that makes me not feel gaslit, that makes me remember when I enjoyed things.
Yeah.
John: And I didn't even enjoy this then.
John: Does anybody remember laughter?
John: But this reminds me of remembering laughter.
John: Yeah.
John: And I'm here.
John: And Tina Fey.
John: Oh, she's so wonderful.
John: They're all so wonderful.
Merlin: How much do you love Kenneth?
John: Everything about it.
John: And so I got to the end just a few weeks ago.
John: And I watched the last episode.
John: And I walked around for a couple days like, well, I miss my friends.
John: I miss my 30 Rock friends.
John: And I tried to watch Seinfeld and I didn't like, I don't want those friends.
John: I didn't, I don't want to hang out with those guys.
John: That's a different, different kind of thing.
John: And I, and I, and so I walked around and I said, can I, so I went to my daughter's mother partner.
John: Okay.
John: And I said, I miss my 30 rock friends.
John: can I just start watching it again?
John: And you're just realizing this is a thing you can do.
John: And she said, my sweet summer child.
John: Oh my God.
John: She said, how many of your fans have listened to every Roderick on the line more than once?
John: And I was like, I was like a lot.
John: And she said, you can.
Merlin: You are wow.
Merlin: We do this with What We Do in the Shadows.
Merlin: We'll just – or write gemstones.
Merlin: We'll just – we've watched it all all the way through so many times.
Merlin: And then we'll just go hop back in.
Merlin: And then sometimes we'll say, oh, let's go watch the What We Do in the Shadows movie, which makes you go back and then enjoy the TV show even more.
Merlin: We've done this with Sonny.
Merlin: We've done this with Parks and Rec.
Merlin: We've done this with all of the shows.
Merlin: We're so broken.
Merlin: We're so broken.
Merlin: I didn't realize that it was a thing.
Merlin: I love you so much, John.
Merlin: You're so much more wholesome and normal than you realize.
Merlin: That's so healthy to not realize that, but welcome.
John: I made some toast, and I went into the bathroom, and I drew a bath, and I sat there, and I put my computer on the toilet, and I turned it on, and I was, I don't even remember, the first, because I didn't binge it at first.
John: I watched the first episode, you know, like a
John: Two years ago in the beginning of the pandemic.
John: Yeah.
John: So I was like, I don't even know if I remember.
John: And I turned it on.
Merlin: It gets to be itself pretty.
Merlin: Tracy does Conan, I think, is like one of like the third or fourth of something like that episode.
Merlin: It gets into it so fast.
Merlin: I have $11,000 in my checking account.
John: How did they know everything right away?
Merlin: Say what you will about Alec Baldwin.
Merlin: I happen to really enjoy his work.
Merlin: You couldn't tell these kids today.
Merlin: You could not tell them how wonderful it was to see Alec Baldwin play this part.
Merlin: And then when Job comes on, when – what's his name?
Merlin: Will Arnett.
Merlin: And they start doing the thing with the low voice thing back and forth, the voiceover guy thing.
Merlin: Holy shit.
Merlin: Rip Torn.
Merlin: He just wants to call him Jackie Boy.
Merlin: The whole thing.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
John: Kathy Geis with the Matchbox car.
Yeah.
John: I still feel a little fragile about it.
John: It's not your jam.
Merlin: It's not like the thing you would want in the first paragraph of your obituary.
John: You'll notice that I've been doing this for a couple of years.
John: I never mentioned that I was watching 30 Rock because it felt a little dirty anyway.
John: I'm watching a sitcom, like a sitcom.
Merlin: Oh, because you're watching a streaming sitcom.
Merlin: It's not even like you went out and got every Dick Cavett episode on TVT.
John: No, and I've watched all those too.
John: But no, you know, like all the ones with Richard Burton where he's like, my father used to fall off a bridge.
John: But right at the end, I started to say to people, like friends, I was like, hey, you know what?
John: I've been watching 30 Rocks.
John: And then I would watch their reaction.
John: It was kind of like, you know, it's like, have you ever heard of... You might as well have just said something like, I've started doing hot yoga.
Merlin: People would be like, what the fuck are you talking about, John?
John: That's exactly right.
John: And I actually was then, because I wanted that reaction, because then I would make my case.
John: No, no, no.
John: 30 Rock is really good.
John: It's actually really good.
John: You guys, you should check out this show.
John: Yeah.
John: And they were like, yeah.
John: You ever heard of The Wire?
John: It's really good.
John: Back in 2008.
John: And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Merlin: That was me in Rome when I told you I was watching Rome.
Merlin: And you're like, yeah, I watched it when it was on.
Merlin: I was like, are you kidding me?
John: No.
John: No, I watched that at the Not A Surf House when I lived there for a week.
John: Oh, really?
John: And Ira was like, or two weeks, Ira was like, oh, we got to watch this.
John: And they had it on DVD or something.
John: And we watched Rome all together.
Merlin: I couldn't stand that guy on Grey's Anatomy, which my family hate watches.
Merlin: And they love it, but they hate it.
Merlin: But Karev, whatever the guy's name is, Trainspotting, I call him.
Merlin: But I liked him so much in Rome that I started liking him on Grey's Anatomy.
John: There it is.
John: See, there it is.
John: And I don't think there's anything, there's any 30 Rock spinoff that I wouldn't
John: I somewhat approve of.
John: Anyway, I've been making a case.
John: I actually went to Christopher Frizzell, the guy that runs my book club, and I was like, look, what you need, my friend, is not to read Moby Dick.
John: You need to watch 30 Rock.
John: And he was like, 30 Rock?
John: And I was like, no, no, no.
John: So anyway, I've started it over.
John: I'm not even halfway through season one yet, and I'm just like –
John: And I'm kind of doling them out to myself like little bonbons.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: So good.
Merlin: It's really fun.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: John, I love all of this.
Merlin: My head is swimming.
Merlin: I was unprepared for this.
Merlin: I did not know what I was walking into.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: And I'm really happy.
Merlin: I think that at least this is a respite.
Merlin: You get some words.
Merlin: You get some sleep.
Merlin: It's a respite, John.
Merlin: It may not happen forever, but you've done it.
John: I wake up in the morning, and the sun is just...
John: Peeking through the trees.
John: Just the first.
John: I'm up at first light.
John: And I'm like.
John: Time to get up.
John: Time to sit.
John: I'll get some coffee.
John: And I'll sit at the computer.
Merlin: It'll be fun.
Merlin: Maybe do some calisthenics.
John: Well, that's the next thing.
Merlin: Just kind of like phone it in Walter Matthau style calisthenics.
John: We just hold like tiny, tiny sweats.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Merlin: Like a real butter maker style calisthenics.
Merlin: Just tiny, tiny, tiny little weights.
Merlin: And you do like one, two, three, like a Pee Wee Herman workout.
John: I do need that.
John: That's all I can handle right now.
John: You jog in place a little bit with a towel around your neck?
John: You could do that.
John: My daughter said, you know, she was trying to show me some yoga moves.
John: And I was like, you want to see a yoga move?
John: I was like, throw that little, those little balled up socks there in front of me.
John: Like, just put them six inches in front of me.
John: And she did.
John: And I was like, now watch me try and pick them up.
Merlin: Downward groaning John.
Merlin: Ho!