Ep. 453: "Guardstone"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Hi, Merlin.
Merlin: How's it going?
John: Oh.
Merlin: Merlin, man.
Merlin: John, John, John.
John: Here we are.
John: Oh, my God.
John: Oh, man.
John: Are you a sight for sore eyes?
John: Oh, brother.
John: Am I?
John: This economy.
John: Wait, where's my bell?
John: What?
Merlin: What happened?
Merlin: I can't find my bell.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: Oh, shoot.
John: Was it burglars?
John: Bell burglars.
Merlin: Are you – this is what we in the business call a leading question.
Merlin: Yeah, sure.
Merlin: Are you a magical thinker?
No.
Merlin: Huh.
John: Hmm.
John: Hmm.
Merlin: I think.
Merlin: Change for a dollar.
Merlin: Change for a dollar.
John: Nope.
John: Nope.
John: Nope.
John: Hang on.
John: I'm going to have to call upstairs.
Merlin: You know, it's funny.
Merlin: I want to hear your answer, but we've been watching a lot of Mr. Show.
Merlin: Oh, you have?
Merlin: Yeah, the kid's pretty into it.
Merlin: It's delightful.
Merlin: Yeah, and it's – there are some episodes like the Jeepers Creepers episode with No Adults Allowed and Sulu, the Australian hot neck lizard.
Merlin: Sulu, bong water.
Merlin: I –
Merlin: apparently can just about recite the entire.
Merlin: From the front to back.
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: Well, there's, there's one that I got a master that is one of the, I mean, obviously it's, it's a classic for so many reasons.
Merlin: It's got, I think it's the first time that a lot of us became super aware of Jack Black, you know, doing, um, Jesus Christ Superstar.
Merlin: But, um, but of course it's got, it's got, you know, the thing I look forward to the most, which is Bob Odenkirk singing.
Merlin: Oh yeah.
Merlin: Such a great voice.
John: The lady.
John: Raise a beam of love.
John: Really, a melodious singer and also great at accent.
John: Close that refrigerator door.
John: We are not paying to cool the out of doors.
John: The best British accent, the best of all accents, really.
Merlin: Only British people can fly.
Merlin: There's one, though, where he's like, well, yeah, so the second thing, then, I love when he sings, and I love any time that Bob Burdenkirk goes, God damn it!
Merlin: It's just always so funny to me.
Merlin: But the one where he's like, these slackers, I can't do it from memory, these slackers are worse than the flappers the hippies and the Nazis put together.
Merlin: At least the flappers gave us dancing, the hippies gave us those fat watch bands, and the Nazis gave us that song eight days a week.
Merlin: And he just – while he's on the move.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: There it is.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: No, it really is a very special show and so far ahead of its time.
John: I saw it first when I was in Harvey Danger.
John: Oh, I like this better than my question.
John: On a VHS tape in the tour bus.
Yeah.
John: Brought to us by the member of the band.
John: It's got to be Sean.
John: No, the least likely member of the band.
John: Michael?
John: Jeff Lynne.
John: No, no, no.
John: Oh, sorry, sorry.
John: When I was in Harvey Danger, Jeff Lynne, the somewhat humorless guitar player.
John: said, you guys have got to see this.
John: You've got to see this.
John: Popped in this VHS tape.
John: Jeff has a pretty flat affect a lot of the time.
John: I'd never seen the... I'd never seen the...
John: HBO-like header before.
John: Oh, really?
John: The fuzz?
John: The first time I ever saw it was this, and I still, every time that pops up on any screen, that before Sopranos or whatever.
Merlin: John Roderick, I swear to Christ, on a piece of paper here right now, that was my question in the chamber.
Merlin: After Magical Thinking, after Bob Odenkirk, I was going to ask you, I don't know what the name for this is.
Merlin: There is a name for this.
Merlin: What is your...
Merlin: song that you expect to hear after and i told my kid two nights ago it's pretty close because if i'm being honest part of it as yeah a little bit sex in the city but honestly it's mr show or um or whatever the that what's that one
Merlin: Or, you know, the other one, I have to say Caribbean Enthusiasm.
John: Oh, right, right, right.
Merlin: But no, that was mine.
Merlin: Okay, so you're in a van.
John: No, not a van.
John: This is the tour bus.
John: The first time I've ever been in a bus, we're all sitting.
John: As my grandmother used to say, pardon my dust.
John: Yeah, there's like three guys on the couch, two guys in the banquette.
John: There's a guy in the kitchen.
John: There's a guy sitting over here.
John: Jeff's like, check it out.
John: He puts in the videotapes.
John: So this would have been – Not me, not me.
John: 2000, 99 maybe?
John: 2000.
John: 99.
John: No, 2000.
Merlin: This is when you're – I'm sorry.
Merlin: I was doing too many things.
Merlin: And you were the keyboard player and then Kuhn bass player?
John: Yep.
John: That's correct.
John: And we're like on some long drive and this show starts.
John: And it's like anything – the first time you see it, the first episode –
John: Well, not everything, but like the first time you saw the one with the New Zealanders.
John: and Eugene Herman.
John: Lost?
John: No.
John: Oh, oh, oh, Flight of the Conchords.
John: Flight of the Conchords.
John: The first time you see a thing like that, the first time you hear the first Jane's Addiction record, what are you going to do?
John: You're going to be like, I don't know what this is, but then it hits you.
Merlin: Actually, Flight of the Conchords is a really good example of that because we are balls deep in what we do in the shadows, and I finally...
Merlin: Got my kid to watch Flight of the Conchords.
Merlin: And that show, like The Mighty Boosh, it's one of those shows where you're like, what the fuck was this?
John: Who was this for?
John: Yeah.
John: I tried to show The Mighty Boosh to my little gang of adults over here, and it did not translate properly.
John: to the modern day had they ever seen that show uh captain cabinets no captain cabinets trapped in cabinets kind of get out will it get out no okay so you know mitchell and webb hold right like mitchell and webb you can still watch it and it's still like oh are we the baddies like it it translates i'm so thirsty but but the mighty boosh was too i don't know too many drugs
Merlin: Yeah, you get to old Greg.
Merlin: It's very confusing.
Merlin: It's confusing.
Merlin: I know what you mean.
Merlin: And also, I want to just say in passing, this is a show, Mr. Show, Mr. Show with Bob and David.
Merlin: It's Mr. Show with Bob and David.
Merlin: Mr. Show, Bob and David.
Merlin: Let's get out of here.
Merlin: I'm always spreading mustard mayonnaise and thyme.
Merlin: I can't, that is, you know, I was going to say next to Monty Python.
Merlin: I got to tell you, I think Mr. Show, which we quote,
Merlin: A lot.
Merlin: You folks might know a lot.
Merlin: And one scene from The Godfather, we do quote kind of a lot on here.
John: There's other scenes, too, but one in particular.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: That's true.
Merlin: Keep them coming.
Merlin: I was real proud of you.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But...
Merlin: It was at a time when I was – I guess we had cable and I was – well, we must have had cable because it was HBO.
Merlin: And I was pretty into Comedy Central, but Comedy Central was so repetitive.
Merlin: And you'd see these same ads for things over and over, like circa 95, I guess, 96.
Merlin: You'd see the South Park ad over and over.
Merlin: I was super into Dr. Katz, super into all of those.
Merlin: And then –
Merlin: That show, Mr. Show, came along.
Merlin: I want to say Velveteen Touch of a Dandy Fop might have been my first one, but I'm not sure.
Merlin: But that became the show that I watched every Friday night while my lady friend was getting ready for us to go out on a Friday night.
Merlin: Oh, isn't that fun?
John: So when you showed up at the clubs, you were already pre-jazzed.
John: By some cross-Odenkirk, like, hijinks.
John: Jib-jabbery.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, they're from different generations.
John: He likes Star Wars, and he's into that Empire Strikes Back shit.
John: We've talked to you.
John: We've talked before about the fact that the first time I saw the office, the British office, was at your house in San Francisco.
John: In your underwear and my underwear.
John: And you were like, you got to see this.
John: It's the same, except you had TiVo by then.
John: So you're like, you got to see this.
John: Well, the first thing I had to see was TiVo and what it was.
John: Jeff Bridges.
John: You had to see Jeff Bridges.
John: I was like, what is this magical box?
John: And you're like, I know.
John: It'll just record whatever you want, and then you can watch it whenever you want.
Merlin: Not too much.
Merlin: I like line readings.
Merlin: How many times did we watch that three-second segment of Larry King, or no, sorry, Charlie Rose, interviewing Jeff Bridges?
John: Over and over.
John: And I don't even smoke pot.
John: That's like top-level smoking pot behavior.
Merlin: It was such a fortuitous moment where I'd been flipping channels, and I landed on Charlie Rose right as he was interviewing Jeff Bridges, and he seemed super high in it, and it was very funny.
John: He seemed high, but to love it was also high.
John: Well, no, it was – yeah, you were flipping, and then you TiVo-ed just this very brief – Yeah, and I go doop, doop, doop, and we just watch it over and over.
John: Ridiculous little thing where his face was like bleh.
John: Yeah.
John: Not too much.
John: I like line reading.
John: And then we all had a version of that line reading.
John: Eric Corson used to say it all the time.
Merlin: I uh.
Merlin: Aw.
Merlin: Oh, gosh.
Merlin: I hope we don't die.
Merlin: This really feels like it might be the end for us.
Merlin: So Mr. Show came along.
Merlin: It was a really fucking weird show.
Merlin: Who did I know?
Merlin: I didn't know anybody from that show.
Merlin: And now I know everybody from that show.
Merlin: And really, I imprinted on that show so hard.
Merlin: And I would...
Merlin: videotape it every friday night and like and then through the means that i now have at my disposal actually you know somebody a listener was kind enough to give me all of the dvds but you know the truth is i'd already gotten them off the back of a truck and they're all on my machine at home it's there's a there's so much to love even if you were there in the 90s like what are some of the like do you remember the one because god is precious and uh because god is precious and life and the bible no it's uh because god is precious
John: And what was it?
John: Is it life and the Bible?
John: No, it's there.
John: Because God is precious.
John: But they're in a lifeboat.
John: I said that the other day.
John: I said that because God is precious.
John: And no, because life is precious and God and the Bible.
Merlin: And it's on a lifeboat with five people.
Merlin: And they're doing basically like what?
Merlin: Maury Povich, Sally, Jesse, Raphael.
Merlin: one person uh is is the audience and then they're arguing about who's the baby's you know father and ahead of its time how many bits they did on like weird militias that wanted to be their own country like they did some they were so ahead of their time on that the waco type stuff although it feels like they were ahead of their time but then when you look back that was what we were talking about then that's what's scary
John: is that all this stuff seems new to us for some reason now, but when I go back and look at the things I wrote in the 90s about all these same topics, I was saying all the same stuff.
John: Is that right?
John: Yeah, the sense of- Back then you were calling it the Ukraine.
John: I was still calling it the Ukraine.
John: You didn't know better.
John: But the sense of the country being divided and there being wackos and the jackbooted thugs of the FBI
Merlin: And just like a huge media story that would take over for weeks, like Elian Gonzalez or Gary Condit.
Merlin: I think of all the things right before 9-11 especially.
Merlin: But even stuff like the bit in that episode I'm talking about here, which is called The Biggest Flop in Broadway History, the whole bit of how Bob and David are two years apart and the generational difference.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Everybody I know in their late 20s and 30s now is so much more obsessed with that than I ever was.
John: You know, Bob wore a tie and David wore a creeper.
Merlin: He had a Buffalo Tom shirt.
Merlin: He came in out of the snow.
Merlin: But it was ahead of its time.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: But it still delights me.
Merlin: The performances are so goddamn funny.
Merlin: Nambla, We're Not Killers, with Paul F. Tompkins up there giving out the awards for the Cyrus Dewey Awards.
John: I can't hear the voice of Ice King.
John: Without being immediately – Oh, I know.
John: Immediately transported to the – what?
John: The – Oh, God.
John: He did so many good ones.
John: The H.R.
John: Puffin stuff skit.
John: Yeah.
John: The Drugachusets.
John: Drugachusets, yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: I didn't mean to take you off of this.
Merlin: But it's a lot to digest.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: like when it first came out and you do kind of have to get a feel for it, but it's, there's this, I need a name.
Merlin: Oh, this is going on the list of things that need a name.
Merlin: Um, you take Bob Odenkirk, you take Chevy chase.
Merlin: I've probably said this to you before, but we've, we've, we're big on, uh, sorry, that, that program where you met the guy who made the show community.
Merlin: And we love that show.
Merlin: We like last year got really into it.
Merlin: And here's the thing though.
Merlin: Um,
Merlin: I probably said this.
Merlin: I apologize.
Merlin: 95% of what I think about as being Chevy Chase, like straight off the dome, season one of SNL, when he was the breakout star, Fletch, Caddyshack, right?
Merlin: That kind of stuff.
John: 95%.
John: When I think of Chevy Chase, I think of those two movies he made with Goldie Hawn.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Foul Play and the other one.
John: The other one.
Merlin: The one with the albino.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But for my kid – The Mikado features prominently in it.
Merlin: Then for my kid, it's inverted.
Merlin: 95 percent – understandably, right?
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: It's like how would I – I mean the way that we would know Bob Hope when we were kids – well, that's a bad example because he was everywhere –
Merlin: And he did almost kill me on two separate occasions.
Merlin: But that's a good story.
Merlin: But for me, it's inverted where I'm like, I mean, I don't think my kid could appreciate Caddyshack in some ways because it was so of its time and it's so like silly.
Merlin: But like with Bob Odenkirk, like she knows Bob Odenkirk had known Bob Odenkirk mostly as like Slippin' Jimmy, you know, from Better Call Saul.
Merlin: And because I'm a terrible parent.
Merlin: Actually, I rule.
Merlin: I kind of rule.
Merlin: I kind of rule as a parent.
Merlin: And for me, it's like all or like, you know, he's been in he was in that crazy action movie last year that nobody saw where he was like, you know, he's like John Wick, but with Bob Odenkirk, where he'd like trained for two years to do this.
Merlin: I think it's called Nobody.
Merlin: I think it's called Nobody or something like that.
Merlin: But isn't it weird, though?
Merlin: And like, but there's no you don't have the context for going.
Merlin: OK, well, the people in this lifeboat represent the kind of show that would be on like, OK, when we go to the hot dog place and they got the TV running in the afternoon, that kind of show, the like DNA test show.
Merlin: It's kind of become, you know, but I don't know.
Merlin: I just I it's so special to me.
John: Well, all that media mockery as media is.
John: I mean, I haven't watched Community, as we know.
John: It's been shrined in the lore.
John: But you like all his stuff.
John: I like all his stuff.
John: Yeah, whatever it was.
John: Caddyshack, right?
John: He worked on that?
Merlin: Yeah, he did.
Merlin: And also, Starburns from Community was the producer of Mr. Show.
John: I don't know.
John: I don't know.
Merlin: Dino Stamatopoulos?
John: I don't know what any of that means.
John: That's fine.
John: You're fine.
John: But all of that is predicated on...
John: The audience at the time having still only monolithic media in common with each other, right?
John: Like Mr. Show just makes mockery of 50 media properties that you had to understand in order to really get the jokes and community too.
John: Community is like a thing that –
John: It's a mockery of a kind of thing.
Merlin: A sort of monoculture, and that's Happy Days or Six Million Dollar Man or whatever.
Merlin: That's what we talk about at recess the next day, because of course everybody had seen Happy Days.
Merlin: That's like what you watched when you were nine.
John: I don't know if kids will ever, if any subsequent generation of kids will ever have that kind of, you know, they're going to, obviously they're going to be making referential humor about the things that are in their lives, but
John: But there won't be... But it'll be memes, right?
John: I mean, I sound like such an old man.
John: Who knows what it'll be in 10 years?
Merlin: We talked about going into a hotel room, I think, and the thing where the first time your kid... Let's say your kid is...
Merlin: I mean, one of the few things that I can say about us in terms of following the rules that you're supposed to follow is we did keep our kid away from screens until our kid was two.
Merlin: But after that, it's like, you know, just watch something good.
Merlin: That's really all I care about.
Merlin: Just don't watch garbage.
Merlin: Don't watch something that's dumb.
Merlin: But the first time you go into a room with, let's say, an eight or nine-year-old kid, you go somewhere and your kid, let's say there's no iPad, no phone, and you've got like whatever's on TV right now.
Merlin: And you feel like such a weirdo going, like, this is what it was like.
Merlin: Except with five channels, maybe.
Merlin: Usually three.
John: Yeah, four things were meant for an adult audience only.
John: And one thing was also meant for an adult audience, but you can watch it.
John: Because it's, I mean, I don't know, who is the audience for Happy Days in 1977?
John: I don't think they were making that TV show for 10-year-olds.
John: They were making it for grown-ups, right?
Merlin: Yeah, Gary Marshall was, I think, I mean, bless his heart, I think he was cashing in a little bit on the combination of, well, I'm not saying anything new here, but Happy Days, which came out in, I want to say, 74, came right on the heels of Grease had been big on Broadway, hadn't been a movie yet, obviously, but Grease on Broadway and, of course, American Graffiti.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Which Ron Howard was in.
John: I always thought it was Shauna Na at Woodstock.
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Merlin: Good night, sweetheart.
Merlin: Oh, John Bowser Bauman.
Merlin: And that was syndicated, and we would get that at 7.30 on Saturday nights.
Merlin: But that was adult entertainment, right?
Merlin: Absolutely.
John: Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, Three's Company, Love Boat.
John: It's incredible to think that that was what...
John: middle-aged people were sitting down to consume.
John: And it was because... Oh, you know, I see what you're saying.
John: Kids were there too.
John: I mean, we watched all those shows and I didn't get all the innuendo that was on Love Boat.
John: Or Three's Company.
John: Or Three's Company.
John: And I didn't get all the politics that was in every episode of MASH.
John: First, you know, political politics and then later social politics.
John: But we were there at our parents' knee...
John: And what's crazy is they were watching it.
John: Like, my mom loved Magnum P.I.
John: Did your mom watch TV?
Merlin: We had pretty strict.
Merlin: I only mention it because my mom very overtly did not.
Merlin: My mom hated TV, would not watch TV.
Merlin: And, of course, she despised the fact that it was my favorite.
Merlin: TV and Coca-Cola were my favorite things in the world.
John: My dad loved TV.
John: And my mom talks about him loving TV back in 1959.
John: And he loved The Tonight Show, and he loved watching sports on TV, and he loved the late movie.
John: My mom had strict rules.
John: On Tuesday night, we could watch TV from 7 to 8, and that was two shows, right?
John: That was Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley.
John: And then on Thursday night, we could watch it for another hour, which was –
John: Which was Love Boat and Fantasy Island.
John: I think it was Saturday.
John: Well, we never watched TV on Saturday.
Merlin: Saturday was the graveyard.
Merlin: I remember when they moved All in the Family to Saturday and it seemed like such a big deal because it was like the graveyard.
John: Wasn't that a Monday night show?
Merlin: It might have been a Tuesday originally.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: All I know is that I am much older than Carol O'Connor was when that show started.
Merlin: And that is, of all of those things, that one frets me out the most.
Merlin: Because he is the canonical 50-year-old man in my head.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: And now I'm five years older than that, plus he was like 47 when that show started.
John: Right.
John: Fuck.
Fuck.
Merlin: Oh.
John: Feels good, huh?
John: That's lovely.
John: You know, we're going to make the 70s look like the 40s.
John: Okay.
John: All right.
John: I'm ready to go.
John: Okay.
John: In terms of magical thinking.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Oh, sorry.
Merlin: Anyway, Mr. Show's really good.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Are you a magical thinker, John?
John: I am conscious of magical thinking, so it's a conversation that I have where it's an internal conversation where
John: Magic John and Science John are always ribbing each other.
John: And Magic John never says anything where Science John doesn't have something to say.
John: And it's not necessarily vice versa.
Merlin: Oh, but this goes straight to your personality, which is like I could see you arguing with yourself about almost anything, taking both sides, trying on that jacket, and then trying on this jacket, right?
Merlin: And you could, like, tuck yourself into or out of almost anything, and then you're arguing with yourself.
John: Yeah, but that argument is a pleasant one.
John: It's like two brothers who –
John: Neither one – I'm not woo.
John: Neither one believes in like copper pyramids.
John: But just – and I don't believe in manifesting things.
John: I think it's variations –
John: I'm not going to use the word quantum, but it's variations on scale.
John: Like this seems regular at a different scale.
John: Would this seem magical at a larger scale than that?
John: Would it seem regular again?
John: Like like it feels like magic is always a question of how how far out you zoom or how far in you zoom.
John: Oh, almost like they're not a fractal.
John: Yeah, but kind of.
John: But in four dimensions, like four-dimensional fractal.
John: Oh, I love that.
John: Where it's like, oh, right.
John: Well, when the tide is out and you see all the starfish on the beach, but then you speed the camera up so that all of a sudden the starfish are all crawling around, like totally socializing with each other and moving around.
John: And you're like, whoa, it's a whole community and I would never have known.
John: what they do, how social they are, what, how active they are, because it's, because you just aren't, you'll, you'll never be able to see, you can't see infrared, you know?
Merlin: Well, a lot of stuff is, I mean, on some level, I feel like I know enough about this to be dangerous.
Merlin: There's so much stuff in magical thinking.
Merlin: It's really, I'll just start it because I wanted to make a joke, but, but I, I also feel like there, there is a thing that happens where, um,
Merlin: I like your zooming in part of this where it's like there are cognitive biases that can really screw you up.
Merlin: Like, for example, I always get this one wrong.
Merlin: I think it's availability heuristic.
Merlin: Whatever the one is, the cognitive or the logical fallacy where you say, well, God, I can't believe it.
Merlin: Of course, today I got my car washed and it rained because it always rains every time I wash my car.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: Which sounds silly, but if you don't have a version of that, you're not hooked up, right?
Merlin: Everybody does that on some level.
Merlin: But then, of course, somebody can stop you and say, well, the reason is you just notice the times that it rained.
Merlin: Or, like, if you ask people, there was a time when they'd say you asked people to estimate...
Merlin: how many people you know whose parents are divorced, and that tends to correlate, or like, sorry, how many people in America get divorced tends to correlate with how many people you know or have heard of whose parents have divorced.
Merlin: And that is, I think, kind of a kind of magical thinking, which is two completely unassociated things
Merlin: are guiding your logic and cognition in a way you haven't really interrogated.
John: Is that I always see my hand in it, right?
John: When something goes wrong, I always go, well, there you go again.
John: Like every time you put your foot in the water, it turns out there's a shark there.
John: Duh.
John: And so it's not, I don't think that there's a, I don't think God is watching me and I don't think God puts obstacles in my way or takes obstacles out of my way.
John: Yeah.
John: I heard you only hit 10%.
John: No, 10% more than I can handle at all times.
John: God's a real joker.
John: But, like, so I don't... The magical... Any kind of magic that is based on the idea that there are sprites in the forest or a god looking down, I never attribute sentience to happenstance.
John: But I do definitely...
John: I do definitely go, well, you crossed the street at exactly the wrong time.
John: It's like, well, that, why are you criticizing me?
John: It was just, I crossed the street and then I got hit by a, uh, by a water balloon.
John: It's not your fault, but it is your fault.
John: It's like, well, if it's not your fault, yeah, it's not your fault.
John: Whose fault is it?
John: And you know, like that is, and, and, and the, the magic versus science thing doesn't have the element in it where it's, where it's mean.
John: Um,
John: It's just two sides of amazement.
John: Whoa, look at that.
Merlin: Say that again.
John: Supernatural.
John: Oh, no, no, no.
Merlin: That's science.
Merlin: That's where the magical thinking comes in.
Merlin: No, no, no, no, no.
Merlin: But this relates to the magical thinking because what I'm going to get to is I think I might be your sin eater.
Merlin: I think as your sleep improved, mine disimproved.
Merlin: Whoa.
Merlin: We can come back to that.
Merlin: No, no, no, no.
John: Say it again.
Merlin: Two what?
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: What?
Merlin: What did you say a second ago?
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: I slept for three hours.
John: I'm so fucking pregnant.
John: Two hearts.
John: Oh, okay.
John: Two hearts beat as one.
John: I had a 12-inch of that.
John: Hearts, hearts.
Merlin: They had like a little dance remix.
Merlin: It was like hearts, hearts, hearts, hearts.
Merlin: Two hearts beat as one.
Merlin: Beat as one.
Whew.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: The average age of a combat soldier Vietnam.
Merlin: No, no, no, no, 19.
Merlin: What's up?
John: Oh, I didn't realize you were punch drunk.
John: What the hell are you talking about?
John: That explains a lot about the first half of this show.
Merlin: What are you talking about?
Merlin: I'm into the bangles.
Merlin: You like that Bananarama shit.
No.
No.
John: Well, see, I mean, the thing is, Bananarama didn't have the... Craig took us on a hard spot.
John: Oh, you know, the other day, we were looking for something to watch.
John: We're in a TV habit now, which is not a thing that I've been in very much.
John: But I'm in it now.
Merlin: Or is it just you and your kid or lady friend?
John: Yeah, well, no.
John: The kid doesn't really – she's in it a little, but her bedtime shows up.
John: And then her mother and I – her mother is a TV watcher and loves TV and loves it in all of its forms.
Merlin: Or person swap, because I like talking about what that person was in.
Merlin: We're watching the Anna Delvey show on Netflix together as a couple.
Merlin: And like, what's that guy from?
Merlin: And she says, oh, that guy's from my so-called life.
Merlin: I said, I don't think that's the father from my so-called life.
Merlin: She said, oh, that's the guy from Grey's Anatomy.
Merlin: And it is the guy from Grey's Anatomy, because it's also a Shonda Rhimes show.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
John: Hmm.
John: No, I don't know any of those people, but you and, and my daughter's mother would love each other.
John: You'd sit and talk about it all day.
John: You watch house hunters international six episodes in a row.
John: But so she and I are in a, we're in a TV habit, which is we watch a little star Wars, one of the star television shows with our little girl.
John: We put her to bed, dark Vader.
John: And then we will, then we'll watch an, an episode or two of episodic television and
John: But then you kind of run out.
John: You get to the end and you're like, am I really ready to start another thing?
John: We're watching the Olympics, which is televised terribly.
John: NBC and YouTube are both awful, awful.
John: And watching the Olympics is so confusing.
Merlin: All the sports are all kind of the same sport.
Merlin: It's just go fast or far when it's cold.
Merlin: Well, I got into curling.
John: This is the first year I understood curling, and that helped.
John: I just find it all so confusing.
John: Oh, good.
John: I used to watch it for hours on late night television because we're close enough to Canada here that... The brushing... You can curve it.
John: It's called curling.
Merlin: It's a great word.
Merlin: That should be like a goth album.
Yeah.
Merlin: No, it should be a government contractor.
Merlin: Oh, like the extraordinary rendition or whatever it's called.
Merlin: Oh, shit, dog.
John: That should be the name.
Merlin: We work for Guardstone.
Merlin: No, wait.
Merlin: Don't say it out loud.
Merlin: That should be the name of where you put Dick Cheney.
Merlin: We've renditioned him to Guardstone.
Merlin: Guardstone.
Merlin: Renditioned to Guardstone.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: That's so beautiful.
Merlin: No, you never come back.
Merlin: You don't come back from Guardstone.
John: He's a guardstone.
John: They keep moving his medicine.
John: But so we're watching TV and she says, let's watch a movie.
John: And we don't usually do it.
John: And I was like, what about that Tony Soprano movie?
John: So we watch it.
John: We watch the Tony Soprano.
Merlin: It's like Guardstones of New Jersey County or something, right?
John: About halfway through.
John: Yeah.
John: And he's got these speakers and he's laying and he's listening to the speakers and there's a track.
John: He's listening to a track.
John: And I said...
John: That, I don't know that track, but that sounds like Mountain.
John: And Mountain is one of those bands where Mississippi Queen is just like absolutely undeniable, solid, killer track.
John: But when I was playing a lot of shows back east in some of those venues, like, you know, I played the Fillmore in San Francisco, but I never, there is no Fillmore East anymore in New York, but a lot of the
John: A lot of the big clubs that all those bands did, East Coast Circuits, Allman Brothers and The Dead and whatnot, like I've played in a lot of those venues over the years.
John: And they always have a framed picture of Leslie West.
John: And they always have this list like Mountain played here 16 times.
John: And I'm like, Mountain?
John: It's like Funk 49.
John: It's the one song you've ever heard of by the band.
John: So here comes this tune.
John: And I'm like, this is Mountain.
John: And I've never heard the tune.
John: And I had that moment where I was like, wait a minute.
John: Is this like Baker Street where...
John: You hear the one song and you think it's the only song, but then you listen to that whole record and every song on there is just as brilliant.
John: Is every Mountain song just as killer?
John: It's just none of them ever made it onto the radio?
John: And so I went on this deep dive of Mountain 12 Inches.
John: I will check them out.
John: And they're an incredible band.
John: The whole...
John: Why did I not – in the 80s, we used to party to Steppenwolf.
John: We would put Steppenwolf on.
John: Even Steppenwolf has like five great party tunes.
John: Why did we not – why did none of us have a mountain record?
John: It just feels like –
John: Talk about magical thinking.
John: I had the same experience on... How would my life have been different, Merlin, if I had listened to Mountain instead of Step Up.
Merlin: When they bust out this song I'd never heard before.
Merlin: And because we watched those episodes multiple times, I heard it again.
Merlin: I was like, what the fuck is this?
Merlin: It's so good.
Merlin: Have you ever heard a song by Barefoot Jerry called Smokies?
Merlin: Me neither.
Merlin: No, no.
John: Is it a trucker song?
Merlin: No, it's from this compilation.
Merlin: I think it's considered a swamp rock compilation from the early 70s.
Merlin: These kind of post-Allman Brothers sort of bands.
Merlin: But I feel like I have such an incomplete education because, I don't know, I listened to whatever was on FM radio.
Merlin: I mean, I know enough to know that Mountain has a guy named Leslie West and they do the song Mississippi Queen.
Merlin: But I have a very incomplete education.
John: there's a kind of there's a kind of what we call it chugel up here because in Seattle chugel was kind of banished boogie rock from the music scene anything that anything that what's that one band like fog hat that kind of thing
Merlin: Had a shuffle.
John: Anything that went chicka-chicka.
John: Or like at any point got a little bit florid.
John: Yeah, or had any swing at all.
John: But like especially like chicka-chicka.
John: Anything that had that kind of vibe I love that shit Wow Super outlawed in Seattle All through the 90s I had to have like a fallow tone Because Oh no like the way you let a field go fallow You know like George Washington Carver and the Peanuts You can't do that all the time Otherwise you get shit soil in fucking Alabama But like there could be times Yeah
John: Yeah, it's like the gated snare.
John: When I first started making records in Seattle, if you said the word gated snare, everybody had to take 15 minutes off and go sit outside and think about their lives.
John: Like you couldn't use it, even though it's a great idea.
John: It's a great technology.
John: Peter Gabriel did.
John: It sounded like art.
Merlin: And then it became like, well, you know what?
Merlin: I know we argued about this.
Merlin: Go, go, go.
Merlin: Leslie West.
Merlin: I haven't had a lot of sleep.
John: But I came up in a time when, in the 80s, when everything we listened to went, you know, it all was like... Would you put ZZ Top in there?
John: Everything, all ZZ Top.
John: Oh, sure.
John: And Aerosmith.
John: I mean, it's – It's Funk 49.
Merlin: Don't understand me.
Merlin: Is that Funk 49?
Merlin: There's some really good live on, of course, where else?
Merlin: German TV of James Gang in the early 70s that's fucking crazy.
Merlin: Their drummer was so good.
John: Yeah, super – and, you know, it's taken from funk and it's a little funky.
John: But into the early 90s, one of the things that set me outside of the local rock culture was, you know, everybody here was very self-consciously coming from the punker side.
John: And Pearl Jam wasn't.
John: Pearl Jam's got all kinds of like chicka-chicka in their stuff.
Yeah.
John: And I was in a band with my best friend, Kevin, from high school, and he really loved... I've never heard that.
John: Chugle.
John: Well, it's like a word we... No, no, no, it works.
John: It really works.
Merlin: It might be something that we stole from someone.
Merlin: There's a lot of bands you could say they... Well, I think mainly because of who they became associated with.
Merlin: You could say, oh, they like The Who or they like Led Zeppelin.
Merlin: But I think they like bands that play chugly kind of music, I feel like.
Merlin: Yeah.
Yeah.
John: Oh, for sure.
John: And if you break Pearl Jam down, the rhythm section and what is happening at the basic level of the tune is very...
John: uh, yeah, funky and really modest mouses too.
John: It's just the modest mouse is a funk band with a guy on top of it.
Merlin: Well, that one, the one song was like kind of a hit that down down down down down down.
Merlin: You know that one that had like their sort of hit like that was very chugly.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: Sail away.
John: But even their young stuff, even the stuff where everybody was like, these guys are reinventing rock, which is how people felt about them up here when they were, when they were young.
John: Um,
John: Um, if you just took the singer and his guitar and muted them, the band was just like, you know, like they were funky.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: He was good and young and weird.
John: He was very weird, but it took me.
John: And that, I think my musical journey was some, it was through the nineties, gradually weaning, um,
John: The chicka-chicka out of what I did.
John: So by the time you get to the Long Winters, there's no chugle.
John: Interesting.
John: They bred it out of you.
Merlin: Even though it's native to me.
Merlin: Last night was a big game.
Merlin: And I thought of you when I'd forgotten about Dre.
Merlin: But then he got up there and was doing his stuff with his very memorable keyboard sound.
Merlin: Memory serves on your first album.
Merlin: You have a credit on one song for Dr. Dre keyboard, if memory serves.
John: That's right.
John: Dr. Dre also famously told the world that the cello is the most sinister instrument.
John: And I carry that with me everywhere I go.
John: I'm like, remember, the most sinister instrument is the cello.
John: Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
John: Like, you want to think that it's this.
John: You want to think that it's that.
John: But no, Dre says...
John: The cello.
John: You bring a cello in at any point and your music just got ten times darker.
John: And it's like, right, he's not wrong.
Merlin: Are you watching it on TV?
John: He's not wrong.
Merlin: He's Dre.
Merlin: With your daughter's mother?
Merlin: Oh, I thought you said, did we drop a thread on you watching TV?
John: What am I or what was I?
John: Oh, okay.
John: No, no, no, no.
John: Sin eater.
John: I mean, this show, it's impossible to drop a thread, Merlin.
John: Threads, it's we're basically living in a swimming pool full of pillows.
John: And we dive down and we swim through the pillows.
John: And every once in a while, one of us pops up, looks around.
John: Is there anybody else here?
John: No.
John: Back into the pillows.
John: Yeah.
John: Also, we're naked.
John: I think they come into this world, you know what they say.
John: You know, it's – you come in and – That's right.
John: You don't go out naked, though.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I mean, Paul McCartney was barefoot on the cover of Abbey Road because he was dead.
Merlin: Because they – Supposedly, according to a book I read, in England, they buried corpses with no shoes on.
Merlin: Herring boxes without tops.
Merlin: Oh, 28.
Merlin: I think, so it's just some magical thinking.
Merlin: I do a lot of that.
Merlin: And my thought was, because my sleep is just, and please, guys, don't email me.
Merlin: Don't pathologize me.
Merlin: I'm fine.
Merlin: But like some days I sleep 12 hours and some days I sleep three hours.
Merlin: And I'm trying to get – I'm doing – I have an omnibus project underway right now to – it's a big omnibus.
Merlin: Like it's like a triple-decker, you know.
Merlin: It's like a wizarding bus where I'm working on a lot of different things in the long term that involve trying to get energy right but also trying to – I need a unified field theory about time off.
Merlin: Not vacations because it's a different thing, but the nomenclature is part of that.
Merlin: But I'm trying to work on this bigger effort about direction of energy and known amounts of time away, time off and things like that.
Merlin: And it's nights like last night where I just realized, I mean, look, it's not optional.
Merlin: Like I need to get better at this and potentially not apologize for it.
John: That's a tough one.
Merlin: My friend Alex and I called such a problem.
Merlin: Potentially not apologize for it, especially.
Merlin: Which is the dependent clause we append that people of our – and please don't make this sad.
Merlin: It's the dependent clause we now feel the need to append to every sentence to talk about how we know we're really fortunate.
Merlin: It's like nobody's allowed to have problems anymore.
Merlin: Nobody's allowed to have three hours of sleep.
Merlin: Don't you know some people had one hour of sleep, if that?
Merlin: Well, I'll try working for a job podcast.
Merlin: You're not allowed to be.
Merlin: What are you sad about?
Merlin: Who is that guy?
John: I don't like him.
John: No, no.
John: He's 27 and he makes $250,000 a year designing background characters for Angry Birds.
John: He says it's really just selling your data.
Merlin: Well, you know, with my new route.
Yeah.
John: He lives in a $2.5 million condo, and he has one poster of a white Lamborghini.
Merlin: He's got a beanbag chair and a cube of tungsten.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: A cube of tungsten.
John: Why don't I have one of those?
Merlin: Is tungsten really heavy?
Merlin: Is that what makes a cube of it cool?
Merlin: Tungsten.
Merlin: It's fun to say.
Merlin: It feels good.
Merlin: A cube of tungsten.
Yeah.
John: Oh, wow.
John: That's the thing.
John: That's what Dick Cheney is dealing with right now.
John: He's ensconced at Guardstone.
John: He's at Guardstone, and he's getting cute.
Merlin: I came across this, not literally, on the internet yesterday.
Merlin: I try to avoid those.
Merlin: Look, I'm going to say the name.
Merlin: I avoid Rex Chapman type shit.
Merlin: I don't like the whole, like, oh, here's the thing I found.
Merlin: Oh, it's like this precious.
Merlin: I don't know what that is.
John: What's Rex Chapman?
Merlin: Tiger meeting an amputee child is everything right now.
Merlin: Like really cute stuff.
Merlin: But I also don't like the whole like shovel blog shit of like, well, here's a bunch of facts you didn't know.
Merlin: But this one got me.
Merlin: Well, but I came across this yesterday.
Merlin: Oh, you got it?
Merlin: It's a pretty good name for a thing I think needs a name.
Merlin: Relative privation, which is a term I'd never heard before.
Merlin: And this is basically making you aware of some of these are really good.
Merlin: Here's a good one.
Merlin: Number 19, problem selling.
Merlin: Problem solvers take an issue and break it down into small solvable chunks.
Merlin: Problem sellers, i.e., or sorry, e.g., politicians in the press do the opposite, bundling many small issues into one big problem that looks insurmountable and terrifying.
Merlin: Looking at you, MSNBC.
Merlin: I love this one.
Merlin: Number four, relative privation.
Merlin: An all-too-common fallacy where people dismiss a concern because something else is worse.
Merlin: How can you talk about X when Y is happening?
Merlin: And by this logic, he goes on to point out, how can anyone ever talk about anything other than literally the single worst thing in the universe?
Merlin: And it's like, sing it, sister.
Merlin: Can I just be tired today?
John: Yeah, it's the...
John: It's the old – they used to one-up each other in the vegan community.
John: Are you wearing leather shoes?
John: That was the ultimate like shut this argument down.
John: Like, well, if you're wearing leather shoes, then you can't – But as far as this thing you're talking about, relative privation.
John: Relative privation.
John: I don't know if that's a thing, but that's what this person calls it.
John: Well, I don't know how this got into my kid.
Right.
John: But at some point in the last year, if you – she'll be sitting somewhere doing the thing that all kids do, which is like, eh, I'm bored.
John: This is dumb.
John: Like, oh, this is – there's not enough macaroni and cheese or whatever.
John: This ham has been sitting on the counter for six weeks.
John: Blah, blah, blah.
John: Complain, complain.
John: Yeah.
John: And inevitably as a parent, at some point you say, look –
John: you know you have 17 barbies now admittedly 15 of them are hand-me-down barbies but still 17 is a lot of barbies to complain about any aspect of having 17 barbies is unseemly but somehow it got into her from somewhere else because
John: Recently, a year ago or something, I said something to this effect.
John: And her face just collapsed.
John: And I was like, now what's going on?
John: What happened?
Merlin: Oh, shame.
John: And she's like, shame.
Merlin: I did the same thing maybe three times ever, ever, ever.
Merlin: And each one of them was so deeply wounding.
Merlin: I still feel bad about it.
John: Yeah.
John: And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
John: No, no, no, no.
John: No, you're okay.
John: You're okay.
John: Yeah, you're okay.
John: What's going on?
John: And I, you know, so I quizzed her about it.
John: And she was like, I just feel awful that there are people in the world that don't have any Barbies and I'm so entitled.
John: Yeah.
John: And I was like, no, no, no, that's not – you don't have to go there.
John: You don't – everybody in the world is different and everybody in the world has different things about their lives that are great and different things about their lives that are hard and you're not responsible for that.
John: And you don't have to carry the weight of that on your shoulders.
John: It's just important to think differently.
John: about your context.
John: It's just important at some point every day to kind of check in with the fact that you have a very nice life.
John: You don't have to compare it to other people.
Merlin: You're not responsible.
Merlin: Sometimes it doesn't come out this way.
Merlin: I mean, honestly, I really try not to do this because shame is a thing I would prefer not to.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I didn't love being constantly ashamed as a kid.
Merlin: So maybe I overcorrect in that way.
Merlin: But it's just more a way of saying, well, here's the secret, John, I think.
Merlin: is that you're probably starting to get this, and I bet you'll get it more.
Merlin: But I have a pet theory, and it goes to my pet theories.
Merlin: I'm going to say it's about one thing when it's really about everything.
Merlin: Kids, little kids, teenagers, emotions need to come out.
Merlin: And sometimes you're sad, all the Sesame Street emotions.
Merlin: There's something that's not the way you want it to be right now.
Merlin: And you can't maybe articulate that.
Merlin: Um, on a deep level, like what it is that you're feeling right now, but you need something to bitch about.
Merlin: You need something to, if you like blame for it.
Merlin: And my theory, my pet theory on things like the, I'm bored is like, well, you know, transitions are hard.
Merlin: Life is hard.
Merlin: Like sometimes life is boring.
Merlin: And it's like, it's more of my way of trying to say, well, it was more like serving suggestion.
Merlin: Hey, you got Barbies you could play with or do this, whatever.
Merlin: Um,
Merlin: But the thing is, it's like a kid who says, I'm not hungry.
Merlin: And then you offer foods and they keep saying, I'm not hungry.
Merlin: And you're like, well, okay, cool.
Merlin: And they're like, well, you didn't feed me.
Merlin: And it's like, well, no, because you're rehearsing life with me right now, which is totally fine.
Merlin: But I also, I have two somewhat...
Merlin: Somewhat complimentary and yet conflicting jobs with a kid, I feel, amongst the many.
Merlin: One of those is like, it's my job to hear what's going on with you and talk to you about it and do whatever, but it's not my job to react with the same amount of credulous enthusiasm to every single thing you say.
Merlin: Because that makes it more real than it is.
Merlin: That's where you make your child and you into a fucking nut is where you yes and any whim.
Merlin: And it's like, sometimes I have to remind my lady friend of this.
Merlin: Hey, our kid's 14.
Merlin: Like I was so fucked up at 14.
Merlin: And our kid is so emotionally like, let our kid have a bad day.
Merlin: It's okay.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: If our kid doesn't feel like taking a shower right now, that's fine.
Merlin: You know, it's not going to work.
Merlin: Oh, go take a shower.
Merlin: You'll be stinky and no one will like you.
Merlin: Oh, great.
Merlin: Let's fix this problem with shame.
Merlin: I'm not saying that's, but that sometimes when you get frustrated, it's been a long day.
Merlin: You go, just go play with your fucking 15 Barbies and stop bitching because, you know, there, there are kids in China that don't have a Barbie.
Merlin: Hmm.
Merlin: And it's like, it doesn't know, okay, you're mad and you get emotional and all of that.
Merlin: But like, it's hard sometimes to find that right balance of like, look, are we going to talk about what's really going on here?
Merlin: Or do you just expect me to like, help you rehearse life?
Merlin: by pushing back and then we get into an argument and it's just it doesn't go anywhere and and like i said the secret is that's true of everyone it's not just kids it's not just teens it's everybody sometimes you're just in a bad mood so i'm just gonna say to your partner as i do sometimes hey you know what i'm for no particular reason i'm just kind of a terrible mood right now it's got nothing to do with you or anybody else and if it seems like my outgassing is because i'm trying to send a message i swear i'm not
Merlin: Because that ends up creating a game of emotional telephone that is unwinnable.
John: That is such a great phrase.
John: That is like t-shirt worthy.
John: What did I say?
John: Well, I am not trying to send a message right now.
John: Oh, right.
John: Right?
John: Like, I'm just having a bad day.
John: There's nothing behind it.
Merlin: I'm not trying... Stop looking for... Not you or my wife, but the world.
Merlin: I talked about this with Alex again last week.
Merlin: I'm like, stop asking people why they don't do something.
Merlin: Stop asking people why they stopped doing something.
Merlin: Take half a beat and realize that's the dumbest question in the world.
Merlin: Why did you stop watching Ozark?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I guess I just really...
Merlin: life like there's not even a reason people are like well you could say you just fell off or bounced off I'm like no no no I'm so tired of people asking me why I'm not doing something because it implies a decision that was not a decision and me saying anything else like can't we just have an emotion that's not moored to something that just happened in the past or is trying to telegraph something about what you want to be different in the future because that's how you make the people around you completely fucking crazy
John: Yes.
John: Yes.
John: You okay?
John: No, no, I am.
John: You know, sometimes I get thinking.
John: I love that about you.
Merlin: I always have.
John: Sometimes you say things and it gets you thinking.
Merlin: On my wisdom document.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: A lot of this.
Merlin: Another one was, you know, little kids are not tiny versions of you.
Merlin: They're tiny versions of themselves.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: Which I think everybody needs to learn that.
Merlin: It's like when they become something or are temporarily something that's not what you expected and not you, we get so fucking flummoxed about it.
Merlin: And we're like, can you, then I personally, not you, but I go into this mode where I'm like, hey, could you please pretend you're happy?
Merlin: Everything I'm saying is basically saying to the people in my life, hey, could you please pretend you're happy right now?
Merlin: It's like, well, no, sometimes you just need to be sad.
Merlin: Sometimes, you know, crying gets the sad out of you.
John: It's so interesting, my relationship with my kid, because she's so different from me that we had to deal with it a long time ago.
John: We had to both understand.
John: You and your child.
John: Yeah.
John: So we have a language for it now.
John: Which is – and what it did is it freed me from the thing that plagued my parents was that they both could only think of me as little proxies of themselves.
John: And when I wasn't like – Totally normal, that's how it used to be.
John: Yeah, they couldn't understand.
Merlin: Well, what do you mean?
Merlin: You're being disloyal and perfidious if you even attempt to consider wearing a different jacket than the one that I've given you in life.
John: Being other than me, right.
John: And my kid and I are not –
John: And so all along and now that we have – now that she's older and we have actual like shared language of ideas, we have this – Oh, yeah.
Merlin: You can talk about feelings in the abstract, which you can't do when they're a baby.
John: We have this new notion, which is, look, I do not – I cannot get inside your motivations and I cannot tell you how to love or how to – who to love or how to feel.
John: All I can do is tell you what I would tell myself and here's that.
John: And so let me hear what you think and whether or not that met your needs.
John: And lately – Fill out this comment card.
John: Lately we've been having these conversations and a big one is –
John: We're entering that phase where she's, you know, she's trying out being manipulative.
John: She's trying out like when somebody says, hey, you know, you can't do that.
John: Her shoulders slump and she's sad.
John: And I go, are you sad or are you performing sad?
John: So that the person that just criticized you will get off your back.
John: And she kind of looks up and goes, hmm, maybe performing sad.
John: I'm like, interesting.
John: Wow, that's wise.
John: Okay, good.
John: Damn.
John: Well, now you know.
John: Now you know that it's visible.
John: And I said to her the other day, I'm like, most people will play along with that.
John: Most people will not challenge you.
John: But they will feel resentment.
John: In their heart, they know that you're – Yeah, because now you're doing free emotional labor.
John: Yeah, you're manipulating them and they know it.
John: Now, they won't challenge you and you'll think you're getting away with it.
John: But they're going to store a little kernel of a feeling about you.
John: And you won't see it.
John: Because what they'll do is go, oh, I'm sorry.
John: No, don't feel bad.
John: No.
John: And maybe briefly you're going to feel gratified that you put one over.
Merlin: I can't be happy until I know you're not unhappy.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I will suffer whatever the situation is.
Merlin: Take the hits, the knocks in order to make sure.
Merlin: Somebody said to me a long time ago, I thought this was the meanest thing I'd ever heard before I had a kid.
Merlin: They said, sometimes you have to say to your kid, it's not my job to make you happy.
Merlin: And I thought, oh my gosh, that seems like a really, and I personally, that's not, as you could guess, that's not my style.
Merlin: But that does hang in the back of my head is like, it's not sustainable for me.
Merlin: for me to become your source of, your sole source of comfort when you rub up against something that's difficult, complicated, or maybe unsolvable.
Merlin: You need to be okay with occasional unsolvable things in life, and me buying you ice cream is not going to make that easier.
Merlin: It's not my job to make you happy.
John: Yeah, my whole thing with her has always been, my job is to help you learn how to make yourself happy.
John: And I can help.
John: Learn why you deserve to be unhappy.
John: Right.
John: You don't want to learn that from me.
John: You don't want to learn that.
John: But like I can help, but I can't do it, you know, because partly I can't do it.
John: I can't do it because I don't know.
John: Your emotional life.
Merlin: So you play Whack the Pinata, and you just start throwing shit around and making, you know, it's like, oh, when's the food going to be here, the delivery food?
Merlin: I'm like, I don't know.
Merlin: I got out of the assurance business a long time ago.
Merlin: Like, I am not here to make sure nothing ever goes wrong in your life.
John: Good.
John: Good, Merlin.
Merlin: Thank you, John.
Merlin: I needed to hear that.
Merlin: No, that's good.
Merlin: That's good.
Merlin: But you have almost like a safe word.
Merlin: I'm thinking – this might be from the books.
Merlin: I've never read the books.
Merlin: Well, I've read a little bit of Sherlock Holmes.
Merlin: But in the wonderful TV show with Holmes and Watson, they have a phrase that comes up a few times where when they yell out this – it's basically like a safe word.
Merlin: But it's a way that Holmes and Watson can yell out this two-word phrase, which means shit's about to go down.
Merlin: And the phrase they yell out is Vatican cameos.
Merlin: And I feel like everybody needs something like that.
Merlin: You need something where you can yell out, hey, you know what?
Merlin: I have enough presence of mind to go that as an adult, I'm being a little bit irrational right now for no particular reason.
Merlin: In my case, it might be because it's four o'clock and that's when my ADD brain melts down every single day.
Merlin: And I should know enough to know that, but not be like the notional teenager who tries to find an engine to which I can attach this particular carriage.
Merlin: Like, can't I just be mad or sad or blue or like tired as a thing without then turning it into, as I would say, a whole thing?
Merlin: Because now you're doing the thing, right?
Merlin: Now you're doing the thing where you're like, oh, oh, you know what?
Merlin: You should assume that I'm really frustrated with you.
Merlin: And this is the perfect opportunity.
Merlin: for me to bring up some beef with you that you never knew I had with you for months.
Merlin: Don't do that.
John: That's shitty.
John: No, that's bad.
John: That's bad when what you really need is some alone time.
John: Some alone time.
John: There was a tough one last night because I know she is old enough now for me to understand that she does not have any of the things that I have in terms of like difficulties, mental difficulties.
John: What she has is anxiety.
John: And I have never thought – I've never felt that I had anxiety.
John: For decades, I didn't.
John: And when I did confront it, you know, it had morphed into a thousand other things.
John: And hers is very pure.
Merlin: And last night – Just for those in the studio audience, and, you know, this is a conversation I have with my wonderful lady friend.
Merlin: You know my lady friend.
Merlin: I do.
Merlin: Well, I'll have this discussion with her probably once a month where I've gotten more okay with, and she's, I hope, more okay with hearing, fuck, I am really anxious right now.
Merlin: And another time, she or someone else would say, well, what are you anxious about?
Merlin: And I'd always say the same thing, which is everything and nothing.
Merlin: That's what anxiety is.
Merlin: Anxiety is being anxious about everything and nothing.
Merlin: It's like if I could come up with something for you, but it's like a box of Kleenex where once I tear the top one off, another one pops right back up.
Merlin: So how do I manage anxiety as this, you know, in situ thing rather than thinking I need to go fucking move everything around to make me less sad this afternoon?
Merlin: That's hard to do.
Merlin: Vatican cameos.
Merlin: That's what I'm saying.
John: In her case, you know, it builds.
John: Do you see it coming?
John: She had a bad day yesterday.
John: She broke a thing that belonged to her mom, and her mom was mad.
John: And, you know, there was supposed to be a get-together with friends that got canceled.
John: And, you know, she was kind of burying it all.
John: And then at some point, she knocked over a can of seltzer.
John: And she immediately picked it up.
John: You're not going to get yourself in trouble here, are you?
John: You're not going to become seltzer dad, right?
John: But she, you know, like a little tiny bit of seltzer spilled on the carpet.
John: And the thing is, the seltzer that was on the carpet probably only improved the carpet.
John: But she lost it.
John: And she
John: she didn't know what to do.
John: And I saw a very familiar thing to me, which was the kind of brain freeze of like, I don't know what to do.
John: And also this is the worst thing that's ever happened.
John: And she just completely melted down.
John: Oh, poor thing.
John: And, and I said, you know, the, the, the seltzer and what happened with the seltzer isn't what, what happened.
John: You know, you had a, you had a, a full day, but also like,
John: I know that brain freeze.
John: And it was a weird conversation because I said, you know, learning how to know what's happening when your brain is actually actively trying to
John: Trying to confuse you about what's happening or your brain itself is confused about what's happening.
John: But knowing that that is a thing that's happening is very hard and it requires a long time of thinking about it and practicing and reflecting back on times like this.
John: But, you know, I just want us to both sit and look at what happened, which is a can of seltzer spilled two ounces of seltzer.
John: That all by itself on any other day might not be a big deal, right?
John: It's not a big deal.
John: It's literally not a big deal.
John: I could right now pour an entire can of seltzer on the carpet and all it would do is mitigate the fact that the cat probably wiped her butt on the carpet right there and the seltzer lifted the cat butt.
John: into the room that was real it was real in that instance like the seltzer and spilling the seltzer and and then what happened to you in your emotions and and and and in your mind they're not related this was just a trigger and that's not something you need to understand it's just something you need to note
Merlin: just in the past.
Merlin: And I eventually stopped saying it because I realized it wasn't helpful, which is like, you just, what you're describing though, is that with this array of like, this went wrong and that went wrong and that went wrong.
Merlin: I didn't get to have my play date.
Merlin: Then the Psalter spilled.
Merlin: And like, you could see that on the precipice of like a, what we used to call a meltdown.
Merlin: And I would say, you know what?
Merlin: You can still save this.
Merlin: I would say, like, you can still save this.
Merlin: It's almost like when a little kid falls down when they're like a toddler.
Merlin: And, you know, when I was a little kid, you go, oh, oh, oh, you're okay, okay.
Merlin: Instead, you know, you say you're funny or whatever.
Merlin: But the idea is, though, you know that moment.
Merlin: When you describe what you described just now, I could see my kid when she would fall down when she was little.
Merlin: And that frozen deer in headlights feeling of, like, I'm going to see how these two react to what just happened.
Merlin: I'm pretty sure I just hurt myself.
Merlin: But based on how they react...
Merlin: I'm going to know how is it.
Merlin: Could that be kind of a part of it is like, OK, I've just reached this boiling over point.
Merlin: Like now what happens?
John: Yeah.
John: And she's very much exploring.
John: I mean, she's very much an individual person, one that is already encountering difficulty with the way people respond to her.
John: At school and out in the world because she's intense.
John: And she feels.
John: And I can't manage her feelings and I can't even interpret them.
John: All I can do is say, these are feelings.
Yeah.
John: And feelings are real.
John: Feelings are real.
John: And, uh, it's true.
Merlin: It's true.
Merlin: No matter how many times I say it, nobody's going to believe me until they believe feelings are real.
John: And you know, she's almost 11 and I'm like, this is just the, these are just the preliminary feelings.
John: Um, but knowing that they're real and knowing that they are and knowing that, um,
John: That we have feelings, but then we also have feelings about feelings.
John: And she has – that's one thing about her.
John: She has real feelings about her feelings.
Merlin: Oh, not just a glib one word explanation like sad, but like a more developed idea about stepping away from it and being able to look at it?
Merlin: Thankfully, she's willing to talk about her feelings with me.
Merlin: God, you're so fucking lucky.
John: Yeah, we have a language... That just feels like punishment to my kid when I want to do that.
John: It does to her, too.
John: I mean, she's like, ugh, okay.
John: But I've done it with her since she was little.
John: So we have a language...
John: Where and, you know, she doesn't want to do it around other people.
John: She doesn't want to do it with other people.
John: But she will say like and what I hope is that she keeps this level of questioning she has about it where she's like he's a skeleton key, man.
Merlin: I hope.
Merlin: This is a big thing, and all kinds of things that I care about is go from fear to curiosity.
Merlin: Whether you're talking about Doctor Who or Buddhism, it's true.
Merlin: If you can learn to be curious about what's happening rather than trying to quickly put a label on what that feeling is...
Merlin: I mean, sometimes you can't help.
Merlin: You go, fuck, I'm mad.
Merlin: I'm angry.
Merlin: I'm disappointed.
Merlin: I'm whatever.
Merlin: But like the curiosity and just even the tiniest little like sliver of light between you and the thing is like, God, let's talk about a skill for life.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: You want to swap?
Merlin: Yeah, that'd be fun.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: What do you got?
Yeah.