Ep. 483: "The Power Girls"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Hi, Merlin.
Merlin: How's it going?
John: Oh, it's pretty early, but I'm doing okay.
Merlin: Christmas is the time to say I love you.
Merlin: I love you, John.
Merlin: Oh, Marilyn, thank you.
Merlin: That's what Billy Squire said to do.
Merlin: Billy Squire?
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Yeah, you know that song?
John: Remember that song?
John: Yeah, of course I do, but I hadn't thought of it since 1986.
Merlin: Yeah, it was, you know, I grew up listening to a lot of radio.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I think you did, too.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And there was that time of year on whatever your local version of this rock station was.
Merlin: The FM K-Whale.
Merlin: k-w-a-l k-w-h-l oh 107.7 the whale the whale fmk whale here in uh here in the city by the bay we have um 107.7 the bone except you don't you don't you don't say it like that you say 107.7 the bone boneyard classics from the boneyard
John: We have KZOK here, and then 107.
John: 107 is a popular place for hard rock, because we have 107.7.
John: Because it's the opposite of NPR.
John: What is it, The Edge?
John: I don't remember what it is.
Merlin: The Edge.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: No, it's not The Edge.
Merlin: We have Q105 in Tampa, Tampa Bay area, another city by the bay.
Merlin: We had Q105, which is poppier, and we had 98 Rock, which had the black t-shirts.
John: 98 Rock.
John: So KZOK is 99.9.
John: 98.9.
John: That's a cool one, yeah.
John: Anyway, so Billy Squire Christmas...
Merlin: Billy Squire, but like, I don't know, I'm curious if this aligns because we're, you know, we're more the same age every day.
John: Yeah, that's true.
Merlin: You know, if we were in preschool together, we'd be in very different, you know, SRAs.
Merlin: But now our ages are statistically identical.
John: Yes, that's true.
John: Yeah.
John: We are, when you get demographically divided...
John: To determine whether or not your cohort voted Republican or not.
John: Yeah, you voted for John Anderson, of course.
Merlin: I was into Star Wars and you were into that Empire Strikes Back shit.
Ha!
Merlin: Okay, but I'm going to just start reeling these off.
Merlin: And I'm not mad at these songs.
Merlin: And some of them, like, I love.
Merlin: Okay, here's one.
Merlin: Here's one.
Merlin: But the rock songs.
Merlin: You got to play rock songs on the rock station.
Merlin: Oh, sorry.
Merlin: One more quick thing.
Merlin: As long as we need a control group here.
Merlin: You know, we have that big tower called Coit Tower.
Merlin: And it's San Francisco, the city by the bay.
Merlin: Oh, I know the one.
Merlin: Yeah, you can see it.
Merlin: It's right there.
Merlin: It's right there.
Merlin: It looks like a dong.
Merlin: It's meant to look like the end of a fire hose.
Merlin: what really yeah because the lady uh i guess uh countess coit or whomever uh it was a tribute to the fire the first as we say now first responders i hate that fucking term there it is the firemen who uh worked so diligently in 1908 diggity what six oh oh well isn't that thoughtful see see see this is this is life in america it's the earthquake that starts it but it's the fire that's how they get you the fire so
John: So I drove by the Coit Tower not very long ago when we were in your beautiful city, San Francisco, the city by the bay.
John: City by the bay.
John: Because my daughter was like, I want to go down the twisty street.
John: Sure.
Merlin: I understand that.
Merlin: It's like wanting to go to Fisherman's Wharf.
Merlin: I understand.
Merlin: You saw the sign in the opening for Phyllis, like all of us.
John: And here's the thing.
John: No, I think it was, she really loves Monroe.
John: I love Monroe.
Merlin: Wait, do you guys do Too Close for Comfort?
John: Oh, yeah.
John: We're dedicated Too Close for Comfort watchers.
John: J.M.J.
John: Bullock, one of the greats.
John: But it happened, we were at Fisherman's Wharf, and you know, Twisty Street and Coit Tower, they're just right there.
John: You get in the car.
Merlin: That's the real part of San Francisco.
Merlin: That's one of the real parts.
Merlin: I don't live in the real part of San Francisco, and that's how I likes it.
Merlin: And what do you think of this?
Merlin: Twisty Street, you wait in line for a while, you take a right turn, and then you go down.
Merlin: And then you see lots of people going, why did I buy a house here?
John: Why did I buy a house here?
John: There are a lot of people on that street at any time of the day or night.
John: uh i've been down that street in the darkest darkest hours of the night and there wasn't anybody on it and that was pretty fun uh but this was just a weird doing six skateboard tricks it was oh no at the time i i don't know i was doing a rail off is that don't cost you extra mr john
Merlin: Yeah.
John: She loved me a long time.
John: Oh, dear.
John: Okay.
John: Well, that's terrific.
John: But anyway, in this instance, I sat in what was effectively bumper-to-bumper traffic down this street.
John: Slowly, ruefully, descending a hill.
John: Both sides.
John: And I was like, these houses have got to be $6 million a piece.
Merlin: It's the world's shittiest slalom.
John: Wow.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: What a nightmare.
Merlin: Yeah, it's real bad.
Merlin: But again, I just want to say I understand.
Merlin: Shitty is slalom.
Merlin: That's pretty good.
Merlin: So, okay, so the thing is, though, I'm so sorry.
Merlin: Hello, Christmas.
Merlin: So you got the Coit Tower.
Merlin: And for our listeners out there who like these sorts of things, it's spelled C-O-I-T.
Merlin: Now, there is a radio station in San Francisco.
Merlin: I bet there's a radio station a lot like this in most cities.
Merlin: And there's a radio station called KOIT.
Merlin: And KOIT has cornered the market on one of the most important contemporary roles of radio, which is we play music nobody likes, but nobody can object too much to.
Merlin: Oh, that's smart.
John: That's good.
Merlin: So in stores...
Merlin: And actually, if you go in the elevator, this was a fun hat on a hat, that guy moment.
Merlin: First time I went to Koit Tower, I was in the elevator for Koit Tower, going up the elevator in Koit Tower.
Merlin: It is playing, the literal elevator music is K-O-I-T, a little on the nose.
Merlin: Uh-huh.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I mean, it's like having an animatronic Richard Lewis at your club or something.
Merlin: It's a little... But anyhow, and so that plays.
Merlin: Now, here's what I want to say about this.
Merlin: You got your Q105, you got your 98 rock, you got to play the rock songs.
Merlin: And one of these came up, I was listening to the Guardians of the Galaxy holiday special soundtrack.
Merlin: Great TV show, great music, old 97s.
Merlin: Guardians of the Galaxy has a TV show?
Merlin: uh yes yes in the same spirit as like the star wars holiday special i guess oh oh i saw this on the on the on the the uh the menu i saw it on the menu it really knows what it is and is i i will just say on two two viewings of it it might be an instant classic because it's really sweet but it knows what it is it's got all 97s dressed as aliens which is nice
Merlin: I was listening to that.
Merlin: And you know, the Spotify, I don't know how much is Spotify.
Merlin: It's my main music thing.
Merlin: Zero amount.
Merlin: I know you make a lot of bank off of that.
Merlin: I've seen the picture of you.
Merlin: The Long Winters is just your big face.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Were you aware of that?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Oh, no, I wasn't.
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: There's nobody else in it.
Merlin: It's just you.
Merlin: Finally, finally the credit you deserve.
Merlin: But...
Merlin: This episode of Roderick on the Line is brought to you in part by Squarespace.
Merlin: You can learn more about Squarespace right now by visiting squarespace.com slash super trained friends.
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Merlin: When a playlist on Spotify ends, it does, of course, because Spotify does a really canny job of playing other stuff that you would like.
Merlin: So the very first tune that comes up is one I can very much locate to... Let's call the year... We're going to case a case on this shit.
Merlin: Let's call it 1981.
Merlin: December 1981.
John: 1981.
Merlin: This long-distance dedication goes out to...
Merlin: It goes out to a chihuahua who died recently.
Merlin: His name was Rafifi.
Merlin: And you know what came on?
Merlin: Father Christmas by the Kings.
Mm-hmm.
Merlin: Father Christmas, give me some money.
Merlin: Yep.
Merlin: Give me a machine gun.
Merlin: We'll beat you up.
Merlin: Don't make us annoyed.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It's a, it's a real, it's a droogie song.
Merlin: It's very droogie.
Merlin: And of that time when what the kinks were in probably at that point, their fourth big movement had gone from British invasion to British pastoral to like the, they did their country stuff on Muswell.
Merlin: And then they had that run in the mid seventies where they were a fucking cock cock.
Yeah.
Merlin: And they were so good.
Merlin: They had that great live record.
Merlin: And I guess around the punk-ish era, they recorded Father Christmas.
Merlin: Now, having opened that particular door, are there any other tunes?
Merlin: I'll give you a hint.
Merlin: One of them is The Christmas is the Time to Say I Love You by Billy Squire.
Merlin: Are there any other tunes that fall out of that closet when I open that door in your mind?
John: Oh, yeah.
John: And I hate them.
Merlin: What about a certain song by Paul McCartney and Wings?
John: I don't like it, but it's not the worst.
John: That's the worst.
John: Well, okay.
John: No, no, no.
John: The worst one is the one by Wham.
John: Oh, Last Christmas.
John: Oh, don't do it.
John: Don't do it.
John: Don't even get it in there.
John: I woke up this morning and I had some weird dreams last night, some fun dreams.
John: Save it for the Patreon.
John: Patreon.com slash whatever it is.
John: But one of the dreams, I was running for politics in Colorado and my opponent was running on a beans and latrines platform.
John: And his theme.
Merlin: Is that a populist American version of Bread and Circuses?
Merlin: Something like that.
John: Yeah.
John: We're going to deliver to the people.
John: We're going to deliver to the people.
John: And his theme music was Garden Party by Ricky Nelson.
John: That's a great song.
John: And I woke up and I was like, oh no, don't, please don't get that stuck in your head.
John: No, no, no, no, no, no.
Merlin: Please don't, please don't.
Merlin: And I started.
Merlin: It's like, it's like that Don McLean song.
Merlin: It's like, it's so long and so mid tempo.
Merlin: And it just does the same thing.
John: It's right in there.
John: Over and over.
John: And I was like, don't do it.
John: Don't do it.
John: And I, I want.
Merlin: He's gone to a garden party to reminisce with some old friends.
John: Oh, well, in the song, yeah, but it's actually a song about him playing a show, like he was, you know, he was a teen star.
John: Yeah.
John: And in the 70s, he played some, like, 50s revival show with Chuck Berry and all this at Madison Square Garden.
Merlin: Oh, one of those, like, package tours, like Big Star did, you come out and do two songs, or like, sorry, like the, not Big Star, but, you know, his band before that that did The Letter.
Merlin: You come out and do a song, and you could be some Motown band that nobody's ever heard of.
Merlin: You come out and do a carnival kind of thing.
John: I think, but it wasn't a tour.
John: It was just like, hey, this was before the 50s had made the 60s look like the 40s or whatever.
Merlin: I remember that.
Merlin: Early 70s, the 50s were big.
John: Yeah.
John: The 70s were going to make the 50s look like the 90s.
John: Look like the 90s.
John: Yeah.
John: He came out and got booed.
John: low ricky nelson got booed yeah because everybody there you know they were probably a bunch of guys in denim hippies you know meanies and they were like they would like some ccr i bet yeah we want some well no it was a 50s revival and they wanted rock and roll they wanted you know blues and ricky nelson came out as boo so he uh so his last hit he wrote this like pretty snarky
John: I went to a garden party type of song where it was, you know, the subtext was, I got booed at Madison Square Garden because they wanted Little Richard.
John: No shit.
John: Anyway, so I'm in the house and I'm like, I do not want to have that song in my head, especially not getting in out of some dumb dreamscape.
John: And so I started singing the, I started singing, I couldn't, you know, you can never think of a song to sing to dislodge a bad song.
John: And I don't know where my brain went, but it started singing the Sopranos theme.
John: And I was like, no, no, no.
John: Maybe.
John: And I was like, I don't want that in my head either.
John: And then I thankfully came over here to talk to you and you're going to get whams last Christmas stuck in my head.
Merlin: I won't have it.
Merlin: I won't have it.
Merlin: I normally don't look at the internet when we're recording, but I feel like I heard there's a universal-ish, get a song out of your head.
Merlin: What the Germans call an earworm.
Merlin: Oh, is that right?
Merlin: Eerenvermen.
Merlin: They call it earworm.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And I think it's got a diuresis.
Merlin: Get a song out of your head.
Merlin: Is it the Ramones?
Merlin: Oh, God, no.
Merlin: It looks like it might be WikiHow.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: Psychology Today.
Merlin: Don't go to psychology today.
Merlin: Five ways to get rid of earworms.
Merlin: Get a song out of your head.
Merlin: You know, I'll find out for the Patreon, but I hate that.
John: I think we've talked about this, but I'm going to say it again.
John: Yeah.
John: I don't remember Wham's last Christmas.
John: No.
John: In the time.
John: And it's while they were huge.
John: Wasn't it like the year after Careless Whisperer?
John: I don't know, but you know, it was that era where it was like, do they know it's Christmas time?
John: Everybody had a, everybody had a song and
John: But yeah, it was 84.
John: It was absolutely their peak moment.
John: And I never heard that song once.
Merlin: That was our prom song, John.
Merlin: The prom song in 1985.
Merlin: Was last Christmas?
Merlin: That's a weird time to have a prom.
Merlin: I would rather it than bad boys stick together.
John: Never sad boys.
John: That's a much better wham song.
John: Did I tell you what happened at our prom song meeting?
John: No, but I would love to hear it.
Merlin: It was a thing where... That was really mostly it.
Merlin: The other ones were obviously the Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time, which... I can deal with that one.
John: I can hang with that.
Merlin: He's having a lot of fun with digital delay.
Merlin: I watched a really good Queen concert from 1977 the other night, and there was three different segments where somebody got to come out and dick around with a digital delay.
Merlin: Brian May, who wonderfully... I mean, you know on those early records, he does that.
Merlin: I learned this from the Hot Licks.
Merlin: Taylor!
Merlin: He would do those crazy things with his amp, had three different delays.
Merlin: So center was live signal, left was first delay, right was next delay.
Merlin: It must have been bananas to hear.
Merlin: John, I swear to Christ, the solo must have gone on for 17 minutes.
Merlin: And then Freddie came out and did his Live Aid thing that he would... Well, not Live Aid thing, that was later.
Merlin: But you know, the...
Merlin: he did that thing and then finally uh uh who sings uh love my car is that roger or john deacon roger roger the drummer comes out and he gets to do some digital delay stuff too i think people used to get to come out and fuck around with the whatever's called the minute maid or whatever you get to you get to you know uh change the decay and shit like that uh-huh um but but anyhow that was really pretty much it was wonderful christmas time where paul dicks around with some delay and some some moog
Merlin: But, you know, so you wait, where were we?
John: Oh, well, I don't understand how the first time I heard the Wham song.
John: Yes.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Sorry.
Merlin: Sorry.
Merlin: Wham.
Merlin: Huge.
Merlin: Big.
Merlin: George Michael is he's got a bullet.
Merlin: The kids go in places.
Merlin: 1984.
Merlin: They were everywhere.
Merlin: And and then I'm with you, John.
Merlin: And I was listening to the radio and had a girlfriend.
Merlin: So I was listening to a lot of Christmas music.
Merlin: And I don't remember that song at all.
John: The first time I heard it, I think I heard a cover of it.
John: And I thought, well, this is the worst song I've ever heard.
John: And then I started hearing it.
John: And I heard it enough that I was like, what is this terrible song?
John: And how do I have to tune...
John: life so that I never hear it again.
John: And then I realized it was wham.
John: And then I realized it was from 1984.
John: And I thought, oh, this is the example of the ultimate gaslighting, the ultimate gaslighting.
John: This is more than Berenstain Bears.
Merlin: Oh, this is that Mandela effect thing where, yeah.
John: Well, it wasn't, but it didn't exist.
John: It did not exist prior to 2000.
John: And when did, when did this happen?
John: 2004.
Merlin: 13 probably that i heard it for the first time like like the mariah carey song it had this there's a wonderful episode of hip parade um that the podcast i like about the pop charts about mariah carey and her insane uh achievement with with that one song but uh that song didn't that come out in the 90s but like the wham song it's like somebody found it in the
Merlin: in a back closet, and suddenly Last Christmas was everywhere.
Merlin: And isn't it long?
Merlin: I feel like it's long.
John: Oh, God.
John: It feels like eternal.
John: And I'm really hoping that that does happen to the Christmas record I made with Jonathan Colton, because it's possible that that will still one day make me a million dollars.
John: So far, it has not made me a single dollar.
Merlin: Look, there's that one pavement song.
Merlin: I read an article.
Merlin: I don't remember why this happened, but there's this one pavement song
Merlin: It's not Carrot Rope, but it's something from Twilight, Terror Twilight, that there's this bizarre anomaly where this one pavement song has gotten into some kind of lists that they play in stores or something.
Merlin: And the top pavement song, it ain't Summer Babe or Cut Your Hair or Trip to Date with Ikea.
Merlin: It's this one obscure B-side.
Merlin: That's what you need.
Merlin: You need the Wikipedia Hanukkah song.
Merlin: To start playing at Hot Topic or whatever.
Merlin: You'll be GTG.
John: You know what I'm saying?
John: Somebody told me that a famous movie director who is famous for having made some, you know, famous movies.
John: Uh-huh.
John: You know who it is, but you're not saying.
John: Oh, no.
Merlin: I mean, I can.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: I'm not asking you to, but like somebody where like you go, ooh, that guy.
John: No, it's Cameron Crowe.
John: Oh, I know him.
John: And he is famous, but he was also for a long time married to... Nancy Wilson.
John: Nancy Wilson.
John: No, Beth Wilson.
John: No, one of the Wilson sisters.
John: Wait, Ann.
John: No, it's not Ann.
John: It was Nancy.
John: It's a blonde, the blonde guitar girl.
John: He was married to Nancy and lived in Seattle.
John: And you know, Seattle's a small community.
John: Sure.
John: Everybody knows each other.
John: And somebody said, somebody in the music publishing business said, oh, Cameron Crowe's a fan of The Long Winters.
John: And ever since then...
Merlin: i've been thinking oh i really hope that cameron crowe makes a space movie someday i really hope that cameron crowe makes a space movie someday and you get played at the end you're you're you're that song like that fucking like there's that uh who's who's that band where they play they play each other's heads not like helmets like drums they have that song at the end of um of uh hunger games and it's incredibly effective what's the name of that fucking band
John: The mentors.
Merlin: I guess so.
Merlin: You need that, man.
Merlin: He does his space, and that plays over the credits, and people are just sitting there fucking bawling.
Merlin: It'd be huge.
John: That's the thing.
John: Remember, we've said it a thousand times, but the VW ad...
John: uh, that, uh, that reintroduced or, or introduced the world to, um, Fire Island.
John: Uh, no, the, the, the, the, the Volkswagen, Pink Moon, Pink Moon, Pink, Pink, Pink, Pink, Pink, Pink, Pink.
John: Uh, and, and I was, that was a good ad.
John: That was a good, really good ad.
John: And I remember, I remember going into a record store and, uh, and, and Pink Moon had a sticker on it that said, as heard in the Volkswagen ad.
John: Yes.
John: And, uh,
John: And at the time, that was maybe one of the early times when I really felt the full brunt of the people in my culture all saying, oh, I've been listening to that record the whole time.
John: And knowing that that wasn't true.
John: Scott McCoy from the Young Fresh Fellows has definitely been listening to Pink Moon the whole time.
John: So has Wesley Stace.
Merlin: Scott McCoy has been listening to shit that reminds you of Nuggets but would never be as popular as Nuggets.
Merlin: He's like a Pollard.
Merlin: I bet that guy's got some deep catalog.
John: Kurt Block listened to Pink Moon one million times before I was born, and he's not that much older than me.
John: But the number of people...
John: who were my age, who were from my world that actually were conscious of Nick Drake was not as many as claimed to be.
John: And that was a, that was a profound eye opener for me of just walking around like, Oh, right.
John: This happened.
John: I remember this in the early nineties when all of a sudden everybody I met had been the one punk kid at their high school.
John: Do you remember that phase where you're like, hey, you know, you're sitting around a party, you know, where are you from?
Merlin: David Sedaris talks about this in one of his books, being the weird kid at your school, the like slightly goth kid, and then going to college and there's like hundreds of people that are like you, but do it better.
John: It used to be the obscure one, yeah.
John: If everybody I met in Seattle in 1992 had been the weird kid in their high school, there wouldn't be any normal kids in America.
Right.
John: You ran the numbers.
John: Because, I mean, I remember the weird kid in my high school, New Wave Dave.
John: And New Wave Dave.
John: New Wave Dave.
John: I want to know everything about New Wave Dave.
John: New Wave Dave showed up at East Anchorage High School in 1982 or, yeah, 1982 with a mohawk, a full-on mohawk.
John: And no one in the world was braver than New Wave Dave.
John: Because... He just had it all out there.
John: He just showed up and he was fully leaning into his love.
John: There was no punk rock at East Anchorage High School.
John: There was no...
John: undercurrent there was no like cool kid with eyeliner there was no buddy with robert smith hair none of that existed yet all there was was rocker dudes and football dudes and i mean there were four kinds of people right there were like 80 probably you had the breakfast club compliment well except except before even that there wasn't even a girl with dandruff and eyeliner it was just guys in painters caps that played football and hockey
John: There were dudes in denim who smoked weed in the smoking area.
John: Did you call them Heschers?
John: Well, no, we didn't call them Heschers.
John: We called them stoners.
John: We called them Lotties.
John: And then there was like 85%.
John: Oh, and then there were like the kids that were going to college.
John: And then there was 85% of the school.
John: Were those preps?
John: Well, that became prep, yeah.
John: Yeah, socias.
John: 85% of the people that no one ever knew about or heard about.
John: And, you know, and, of course, there were, yeah, there weren't other types.
John: And then he walked into the school with this mohawk, and he got beat up so much.
John: Oh, no.
John: He wasn't like a little mohawk.
John: like a kid that would get pushed around, he was like a guy that could defend himself, but he just got ganged, like really tortured, and he never wavered.
John: And I can't claim to have been a friend of New Wave Dave.
John: I remember sitting in the lunchroom and watching him walk into it and thinking to myself, why would you do that to yourself?
John: My God, like... Yeah.
John: Why would you...
John: Why wouldn't you try to just put a hat on and keep your head down?
John: Because he walked into the lunchroom and it was just like, I mean, every day.
John: I know.
John: Cat calls.
John: So.
Merlin: And it's, I mean, like people, I mean, people including or especially me like to shine this turd and go like, oh, I was an outsider.
Merlin: I was blah, blah, blah.
Merlin: But I wanted to be accepted by anybody and everybody.
Merlin: And if I could be accepted by somebody of like when I somehow ended up, I'm not proud of this, but like when I somehow fell in with the cool soccer kids, it was such a step up for me for a while.
Merlin: I would love to sit here and go, oh, I'm going to go stand up for New Wave Dave.
Merlin: But the truth is, I would just keep my head down and hope that like I didn't, you know what I mean?
Merlin: Like in retrospect, you can admire it.
Merlin: But at the time, you're like, don't you have any sense of self-interest?
John: yeah, just like, just new Dave, I'm desperate for you to not get treated this way because it makes me feel terrible.
John: But I wasn't like, I didn't even feel that much sympathy for him in the sense that I just felt like you're bringing it all on yourself.
John: And then later on,
John: Later on, when I actually met New Wave Dave, and then there was that moment where all of a sudden, it's not like, you know, I graduated in 86.
John: There was never a moment at East Anchorage High where there was suddenly a punk group.
John: There was then James Swainson had a tattoo and there were like, yeah, he got a tattoo of a skull in a top hat, smoking a joint.
John: And it was 1985, 86 though.
John: That's still, that's pretty radical.
John: Well, and it was, it was radical.
John: He wasn't 18.
John: And also it was, that is not a very punk tattoo, but he was punk.
John: And I think it was already ironic that,
John: He was already being ironic about a skull with a top hat smoking a joint.
John: What are you talking about?
Merlin: My friend Tom showed up for college in 1987, a year after me.
Merlin: He had a beautiful, like, I don't want to say photorealistic, but you know how, like, sometimes you get it, like, whether it's the thrush.
John: You look out.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Or, like, it's like... He had the most gorgeous...
Merlin: Sherman from Peabody and Sherman on his upper arm and it looked like it had been drawn by I guess Jay Ward it was perfect no but like because it used to be you had shitty tattoos if you were a sailor and that was pretty much it those were the only tattoos you got you didn't see young people with you get your left ear pierced the straight ear but nobody had a tattoo nobody had a tattoo
John: One, what, what happened, what happened in 1992 was sitting around all these house parties, you know, everybody fucked up on drugs and one after another, after another person trying to tell me that they were the new wave Dave of their school.
John: And I knew for a fact that these jokers were not the new wave Dave's of their school.
John: They were.
John: they were posers and it wasn't that they were posers then you know at the time they're just as drunk as shitty party as i was yeah but they're trying to they're trying to retcon the fact that they didn't hop on the punk rock train with the minute men which is when they probably did they were not on the punk rock train with
John: I don't remember what it even would have been.
John: Crass?
John: I mean, who knows what New Wave Dave was listening to?
Merlin: Well, the, like, yeah, exactly.
Merlin: I mean, it could have been that he was listening to, I mean, like, there was, like, I'm not going to say there's a word we can't use anymore, an art F, but there was a certain term for, like, a not-quite-goth kid who listened to stuff like Icicle Works,
Merlin: Or, you know, whisper to a scream or listen to the felt or listen to, you know, even split ends were kind of like arty back then.
Merlin: But, you know, it was not cool to listen to stuff that wasn't thunderous.
Merlin: Like when I was a senior, there were some denim kids who were into Metallica, but not a lot.
Merlin: like 85, like not a lot.
Merlin: They were listening to Ride the Lightning and stuff like that, but there was not a big contingent.
Merlin: There was a larger, John, there was a larger contingent of breakdancing kids than punk rock kids in my school.
Merlin: Oh, mine too.
John: Absolutely.
John: 100%.
Merlin: Which is a different kind of being an outsider and getting beat up for sure.
John: It's not a high school.
John: It became, it became immediately the mainstream culture that you did not, you did not tread upon that part of the student center because, I mean, I, I've told you the story about the time there was a break dancing circle, uh, in my high school, not in the lunchroom, but in the, in the student center in the middle of the school at lunchtime and, uh, people break in and, uh, you know, like tapping in, tapping out.
John: They had a boom box.
John: there was a boom box and there was and it was a big circle it was not you know people were doing real tricks and i jumped into the center of it and did my uh fake ass like not know how to break dance break dance we body rocking john i was doing a lot and i a lot of different things popping locking sure and uh and then i got down on the floor walking rest for a minute
John: I got down on the floor and spun around.
John: And as I was spinning, somebody kicked me.
John: Oh, come on.
John: And I, and I stopped and I looked up and it was a, it was a, a very unappreciative crowd.
John: They did not think that I was funny.
John: And I was like, what?
John: Yeah.
John: Bounced up and bounced out of there.
John: And I was being, I was trying to be funny as I was when I did everything.
John: Sure.
John: But I also deeply appreciated break dancing and rap music.
John: And I was, and I really wanted to be, I wanted to be funny, but I, you know, I thought I was a member of,
John: of a thing that I wasn't a member of.
Merlin: You weren't part of the, I think they were called a crew back then.
John: No, I didn't.
John: Well, I had a crew, my white fresh crew, where we sat around and did rap.
John: But that crew was not recognized within the larger community of my high school as being an authentic crew.
John: That sarcasm is not a lifestyle.
John: I mean, it's not the first time that being funny came home to roost.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: First hip hop, hip hop ish song.
Merlin: I mean, I, because I was a white kid in central Florida listening to the radio.
Merlin: I mean, I have flashbulb moments of like, you know, I remember one night, the first time I ever heard numbers, some, for some reason, some crazy DJ at like 10 something.
Merlin: And then I played numbers by, um, Kraftwerk.
Merlin: which became really big in hip-hop.
Merlin: You know?
Merlin: The eins, zwei, drei, vier.
Merlin: One, two.
Merlin: That song?
Merlin: That's the earliest thing.
Merlin: And then there were, like, there was jokey songs.
Merlin: Later on, you'd have Pass the Dutchie.
Merlin: The first, like, hip-hop, we didn't call it that.
Merlin: The first rap song I ever fell deeply, deeply in love with was Jam On It.
Merlin: Jam on it.
Merlin: I loved Jam on it so much.
Merlin: That was probably 84, 85.
Merlin: And I was obsessed.
Merlin: I loved that song so much.
Merlin: And it was so far afield from everything else that I liked.
Merlin: But maybe there was the wiki, wiki, wiki, wiki, shut up.
Merlin: I don't know what it was, but I loved the song.
Merlin: And if you haven't seen the video in a while, John, I don't like to send you too many videos.
Merlin: I do it a lot.
Merlin: But you really ought to go treat yourself to the Nucleus.
Merlin: That's spelled N-E-W-C-L-E-U-S.
Merlin: The nucleus video for Jam On It.
Merlin: It's pretty special.
Merlin: Jam On It.
Merlin: Jam On It.
John: Well, I mean, by 1984...
John: Right.
John: Houdini.
John: We were already rocking Friends.
John: He's the guy with the hat, right?
John: Did he have a hat?
John: Yeah, he had a hat.
John: And Freaks come out at night.
John: Freaks come out.
John: Oh, and no parking on the dance floor.
John: LL Cool J's first record was out by then.
John: The Fab Boys were out.
John: This is all 84.
John: This is all, you know.
John: Really?
John: You heard that?
John: I didn't hear LL Cool J till college.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: No, no, no.
John: This was like our high school.
John: Well, that's the thing.
Merlin: I heard radio.
Merlin: I think that was the only thing I heard was that the man, Mr. James, could not live without his radio.
Merlin: I remember that, but... Curtis Blow.
John: But that Houdini record was huge.
John: The thing was... And that's Freaks Come Out at Night, right?
John: Yeah.
John: Okay.
John: The...
John: You know, by 84, in 81, 82, there were four kinds of kids.
John: By 1984, there were seven kinds of kids.
John: Oh, boy.
Merlin: That's a lot of skews to keep track of.
John: It was.
John: It was the beginning of the great schism, right?
John: I mean, all metal kids were still just metal because there hadn't been the enormous schism in metal that produced the 40 kinds of metal that there are now.
John: There was, but so there were metal kids, but all of a sudden there, there was, because there had always been a black culture at East Anchorage high school.
John: It's just that it wasn't, it was a, it was a segregated one, right?
John: It was happening over here and it didn't have a, it didn't have like a
John: a universal kind of sense of belonging in the school culture as a whole.
Merlin: Part of it is, I don't know how to describe this, but sometimes there's a thing where it's like there's something that comes along and you go like, what's that thing?
Merlin: There seems to be more than one person doing that.
Merlin: Anytime I would go and visit Chicago or New York, I would always see things there that were not happening where I was from.
Merlin: Isn't part of it a cultural awareness of the bin that this fits in?
Merlin: I'm not trying to be unkind, but you know what I mean?
Merlin: Isn't there a sense of like, oh, that kid's a punk?
Merlin: Like the kid who brought the screwdriver to the show on, on, on that episode of Quincy, uh, with the woman from the office, um, that, uh, the, uh, you know, that, that kind of thing, like, oh, that's punk rock.
Merlin: That's that dangerous thing.
Merlin: That's like very much a decline of Western civilization era, punk rock, you know, stuff like circle jerks and things like that.
Merlin: And then the violence at those shows, but isn't it part, isn't part of it?
Merlin: Like I, I, you look weird or you're doing something odd and I'm not really sure how you fit into the five or seven types of high school students.
John: I think that there was a catch-all hopper
John: which was called losers.
John: And anybody that wore their hat wrong was just a loser.
John: You know, if you didn't have, and you could have four friends, anybody could have four friends.
John: Um, but you and your four friends didn't factor right.
John: This was, this was American culture up until not very long ago.
John: Like you could be, you could be doing your own thing over there.
John: Like the kids that were in
John: the kids that were really good in shop and were, were the, the ones that could, could, uh, replace a carburetor, you know, in a, like vocational track.
John: Yeah, they were, they were, I'm sure they were incredibly successful and had, uh,
John: had and probably right now are rich and and have a house on a lake with a boat but at the time it was just like oh yeah you guys are over in the shop area like it doesn't and from their perspective i'm sure that it's right over by the smoking area it was right over by the smoking area a different thing but they weren't they weren't somehow playing the game of high school with the idea that there was a
John: you know, that, that you would be, and then this might've been somewhat particular to, to my classic kid in high school, but, but there was, but that, that recognition that all those groups had, uh,
John: a place and agency and a name and, and I guess what you would call like parliamentary power was, was a thing that happened in the early eighties, I think.
John: And I mean, all you have to do is, is, is,
John: but like paste it over to MTV and realize that until Michael Jackson's thriller, MTV didn't play music by black people because they thought they played way more heavy metal than they did.
John: No, because they thought they had programming, right?
John: They were, they were basing themselves on a 1970s radio model of like, well, there's black radio and then there's pop radio.
John: And they were like, they had this radio.
Merlin: I mean, no more in some ways.
Merlin: I mean, it sounds dumb to say, but it's in the same way that they didn't play country music.
Merlin: Didn't play it at all.
John: They played a lot of what came to be called new wave.
John: And, and it was, and the recognizing that MTV was a national and global phenomenon that belonged to everybody kind of, kind of, it was like what happened with Twitter when we realized, Oh, Twitter isn't just for, uh, tech nerds in their thirties who are also funny puns.
Yeah.
John: Tech nerds that can actually make jokes, and there's only about 40,000 of us, and then realizing, oh, wait, Twitter belongs to everyone, and it actually is kind of a public utility.
John: That was a lot of growing pains, right?
John: Yeah.
John: But –
John: I remember realizing that kids were, it wasn't that they were siloing.
John: They had always been there.
John: It was now suddenly their silos belonged.
John: They had a name and you could say, oh, wait, you are a Dungeons and Dragons person.
John: Right.
Merlin: It's almost like there's some kind of a newly necessary UN designation for what you represent.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Like you got officialized a little bit.
John: Yeah.
John: And that's what, that's why breakfast club resonated with us all.
John: They weren't in that movie didn't invent anything.
John: It was finally repping a thing that had been happening, which was there is a jock and a, and a pretty girl and a weird girl and a nerd and a, and a stoner.
John: Um, because you know, you, you think about really hurt sales of sell some blue though.
Okay.
John: I kept buying it.
John: I kept buying Celso and Blue with that weird blue paste.
Merlin: I just thought that was funnier to say we were a head and shoulders family.
Merlin: Were you really?
Merlin: I didn't have dandruff.
John: We bought whatever was on sale.
John: Do you remember the first time you bought dandruff shampoo that was made with oil sands or tar or something?
Merlin: Yeah, because I have psoriasis.
Merlin: And so that's how I discovered cold tar shampoo.
Merlin: Cold tar, that's it.
Merlin: Yeah, you smell like a roof.
John: Yeah, well, your hair smells terrific.
John: You can put beer shampoo on top of it.
John: Gee, your hair smells terrific.
Yeah.
John: But when it came time to pick our junior prom song.
John: Oh, God, I love that you do this.
John: There was.
John: You still got it, kid.
John: There were factions that had never come into play before.
John: The junior prom song had always been and forever would have been picked by that group of five popular girls who run.
Merlin: Cheerleader, football, and yearbook adjacent power people.
John: Power people who were putting on the prom.
John: They were making all the decisions, what the theme was, what the colors were, what the balloons, where it was going to be, and what the theme was going to be.
John: And all of a sudden, there were new factions that had a feeling about what the junior prom theme should be.
Merlin: That's like the 60s in America a little bit.
Merlin: A little bit.
Merlin: Do you see what I'm saying?
Merlin: Yes, absolutely.
Merlin: Oh, you there.
Merlin: You have an opinion about how we do this?
Merlin: Interesting.
John: And the Power Girls did not...
John: like it at all that there were there were new voices to be and what and and honestly what they they they absolutely had that that feeling that we see in american politics all the time which was hey wait wait wait this is how it's done this is how it's always been done this is how it's going to be done from now on and you please everyone please sit down and
John: We've got this covered.
Merlin: Especially at least because, well, you know, there's a sense of, like I say, privilege, but entitlement, right?
Merlin: That everybody has, especially if you're like somebody who has walked ass backwards into power because your dad's a dentist or whatever.
Merlin: Like there's, you know, there's that kind of thing that comes along.
Merlin: And I think the other really salient factor is you're only in high school for so long.
Merlin: Well, you're not afraid to burn certain kinds of bridges.
Merlin: You may be up there saying, oh, you know, you're like fucking, I don't know, Mitch McConnell or whatever.
Merlin: And you're like an institutionalist about the way that we deal with these things here at Gulf Comprehensive High School.
Merlin: But the truth is, like, that's your one shot to exercise that power as a fucking senior.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: And you're not going to be saying, well, my last year in high school is a great time for me to get really...
Merlin: progressive about making sure everybody gets a vote.
John: No, none of those five girls was thinking, oh, you know, when I look back at my high school senior year, I'm going to be so glad that I opened up the junior prom theme to a local vote of all of the different nerds.
John: No, you're I mean, and I had that conversation with them many times because, of course, I was part of I was part of a faction.
John: And I heard it over and over again.
John: Like, these are these are the memories.
John: And I was like, what are the memories?
John: And they're like, these are the memories.
John: Like, say you say me.
John: It's on the top of the charts.
John: It's like that should be our theme.
John: It's it's this is our time.
John: And Lionel Richie and Dionne Warwick, these are the songs.
John: And so the theme of the junior prom needs to be the theme of the year.
John: The year is now.
John: These are the songs.
John: Because I was a member of a faction that was saying that the theme for our junior prom should be Love Me Do.
John: And I was doing it just, I think, just to be a dick.
Merlin: Just imagining the dance.
Merlin: Well, you know what?
Merlin: I had an extremely unsuccessful campaign for it to be I Will Follow by U2.
Merlin: Oh, that's a nice one.
Merlin: It was really, it was not taken very seriously, John.
John: No, because you can only do the new wave dance to it.
John: You can't do the, it's not.
Merlin: You can do the way back dance.
Merlin: Like a year, it must have been like a year or two before I arrived.
Merlin: I'm going to be real with you.
Merlin: And I understand there are people out there who are going to hear this and go and roll their eyes.
Merlin: But I think the prom song for my school and for most schools, 1982, 83, Best of Times by Styx.
Merlin: Oh, really?
Merlin: That's a fucking great problem.
Merlin: That's a great theme.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It's a great, but listen, for the time and sticks.
Merlin: Like, you know, this is before we fully knew what was going on with Dennis DeYoung and what he was doing to poor Tommy.
John: I think that this is an example of an age gap just between you and me.
John: Oh, April Wine would have been great.
John: Because by 1986.
John: Just between you and me.
John: Between when you graduated and when I graduated, MTV started- I graduated in May of 1985.
John: Well, see, there it is.
Merlin: You graduated just after MTV started playing black music, and I graduated- When I was in journalism class, I remember I was the features editor for the paper, and I very specifically, we got Time Magazine, and I remember the Time Magazine cover, like a year or two kind of late, was like, oh my God, the MTV revolution.
Merlin: And it had a picture, it had a picture from Once in a Lifetime, you know, in it and stuff like that.
Merlin: So 80, I mean, like, the thing was, everybody goes, oh, you know, MTV, 1981.
Merlin: It's like, oh, yeah, but, like, MTV wasn't, like, a thing in a lot of places till, like, 82, 83, at least.
John: And that was, I think, a big part of why Patti LaBelle was suddenly...
John: the, the music that the, that the white girls wanted at their prom.
John: No kidding.
John: They would not have known about it three years prior.
John: They would have been working from a palette of sticks and foreigner and, uh, and triumph, maybe not triumph, but you know, like they would have been fight would have been a very good problem.
John: You know, they would have been working from that, uh, from that playlist that came, uh,
John: from, yeah, white radio, but now they had access to soul music in a way that was so mainstream that these white girls were like, are you kidding me?
John: The prom theme has got to be Lionel Richie.
John: What are you even talking about?
John: That's the most romantic song of the year.
John: And in a way, I was, I was part of a faction that was like, what?
John: No, we have, it has to be a British invasion song because that's what we care about.
John: And like, and also like, you don't want to be tarred with that.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It's like, it's like, you know, as much as, as like, I didn't care or let's put, let's be honest about this.
Merlin: Like everybody at that age.
Merlin: It should have been West End Girls by the Pet Shop Boys.
Merlin: That's what it should have been.
John: Everybody can agree on that song.
Merlin: That would have been incredible.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: That should be the every prom theme.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: There's a guy in your box pointing at your head.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Oh, boy.
Merlin: Kicking down chairs and knocking down tables.
Merlin: In a restaurant.
John: In a restaurant.
Merlin: In West End Town.
Merlin: Flight of the Conchords.
Merlin: Do an amazing parody of that that I am going to send you.
Merlin: No, I love that.
John: Yeah, but you can still send it to me.
Merlin: But like, it's so funny because each one of them does a funnier version than the other.
Merlin: Of the of the Neil Tennant and they do the video where one of the guys is like a ghost walking around.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: So good.
Merlin: But you know what it is?
Merlin: Like, OK, look, I confront about this, but like that's what adolescence is.
Merlin: It's a complicated time.
Merlin: As I realized after adolescence that adolescence is largely about, especially if you are not a person of means, it's about repping what you're not.
Merlin: That's a big part of being a teenager is repping what you are not.
Merlin: Interesting.
Merlin: You don't have that many things that you're actually really into non-ironically.
Merlin: Right.
John: What are you?
Merlin: Well, I knew I hated Palm Beach.
Merlin: I knew I hated rich people.
Merlin: I knew, I mean, I had...
Merlin: Like, you know, all that kind of stuff, but like, I knew what I, what I, what I didn't want to be.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But I, at the same time, of course, I wanted to be friends with the cool soccer guys.
Merlin: Like I wanted to be thought of, like, I liked that I was a senior superlative that made me happy.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Like, but like, it's gross, but like, yes, but why is that gross?
John: You were the, you were most funny.
John: Is that what you were?
Merlin: I technically won two, but you only get the one that you had the most votes at, so I was most talented.
Merlin: Oh, most talented.
Merlin: I was also class clown, but because Matt Granger got it, because the wonderful Matt Granger.
Merlin: Never forget Matt Granger.
Merlin: Love Matt Granger.
Merlin: Matt Granger would wear a blazer he got from Goodwill with the sleeves pushed up.
John: Oh, that's funny.
Merlin: I'm not talking about Miami Vice.
John: I'm talking about like you wear that in a hat.
John: Stand up comedian.
Merlin: Absolutely.
Merlin: But here's the here's the problem.
Merlin: And here's the thing that nobody's proud to say is like, yeah, but I still didn't want to go to a high school that had a fucking shitty prom song.
Merlin: I'm going to go to the prom.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And I'm going to be there.
Merlin: And it's not going to be, what is it?
Merlin: What's the Back to the Future one?
Merlin: Paradise Under the Sea?
Merlin: I would have taken that over faithfully.
Merlin: Faithfully, it's a song about trying not to cheat on your wife while you're in a shitty band.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Well, listen, if you're going to call Journey a shitty band, then we're going to have to set the Wayback Machine to Wayback.
John: Oh, do you want to throw down on 1978?
Merlin: Because I will be there to talk to you about Journey in 1978.
Merlin: Journey in 1978 was a very special thing.
Merlin: They were feeling that way.
Merlin: When Steve first joined the band, and who's the guy that was in Santana?
Merlin: I'm standing here with my arms a mile wide.
Merlin: Was his name Rocco?
Merlin: No, what was his name?
John: Weren't they all in Santana?
John: They all came from Santana.
Merlin: Well, Neil Schoen was 15 in Santana.
Merlin: Who's the guy?
Merlin: Oh, Greg Raleigh.
Merlin: Greg Raleigh was the singer.
Merlin: And then they brought in Steve.
Merlin: But then you get a song like Feelin' That Way, where they both sing on it.
Merlin: It's so fucking good.
John: Yeah, it's nice.
Merlin: Escape is not a great record.
John: No, it's not.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Worlds Apart.
Merlin: No, Worlds Apart?
Merlin: Is that Saga?
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: Saga.
Merlin: I would have killed the... Wind him up would be a great prom theme.
Merlin: I feel like... If I could go back to high school, I'd be so cool now.
Merlin: I'd be so fucking cool.
John: Yeah, you're like, you don't know this, but your kids are going to love it.
John: I've thought of that, as I'm sure everybody has.
John: Marvin Hinoe?
John: If I went back to high school, what would the, if you went back to high school and could change one thing, you know, like, or change two things.
John: One thing I would do is when I grew out of my Levi's and had to start wearing them without buttoning the top two buttons, I would have gone to my mom and said, can I get a new pair of jeans?
John: Because definitely my junior year, I couldn't button the top button of my pants.
John: And it wasn't because I was chubby.
John: It was because I had grown out of them, but I didn't.
John: Tight clothing has an impact on your life.
John: I didn't know how to, and this is weird to me.
John: Like when I think back at it, I'm like, what, really?
John: I didn't know how to ask for new clothing.
John: clothes because you got new clothes when your mom thought you needed them well no you got them you got them before back to school you go to sears you go to husky you get a husky section you get some get some tough skins and that was the year that i grew from being five eight to six two whoa no really you know in the space of like six months and all of a sudden i i was just i couldn't button the top is that close to true john because that's fucking crazy
Merlin: Did you really go more than a couple inches in an academic year?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: That's so insane.
John: That was the thing.
John: That was the moment where I had been kind of a picked on and I was this snarky, dandruffy kid that sat in the back of the class, but not in the very back where everybody was chewing tobacco, kind of like in the back corner where nobody
John: No cool people would go, kind of by the globe.
John: I sat back there and was like, every once in a while would go.
John: He sat by the globe.
John: That's what Calvin Coolidge would say.
John: And then everybody in the class would just get quiet and be like, oh my God.
John: I was that kid.
John: And then all of a sudden I was like...
John: This, it just all happened at once.
John: It's like slow motion hulking out.
John: I was a kid that I, I was all of a sudden nobody would pick on me and I didn't understand why I wasn't getting picked on anymore.
John: And I think I started to ramp it up.
John: Like.
John: Because you were ultimately, were you kind of testing boundaries in some ways?
John: Well, all I was used to was getting, it was getting thumped.
John: And when I wasn't getting thumped, I was like, that's what Calvin Coolidge said to your mom.
John: And then I still didn't get thumped.
John: And I was like,
John: Yeah, Calvin Coolidge, you know, is your mom.
John: I mean, I was just, and I got, and I fucked him.
John: And eventually I got a little, well, I got a little, a lot mean because I think I wasn't used to, I wasn't used to.
John: You weren't getting a response.
John: And well, I was getting a response, which was people wanting to thump me, but not.
John: Oh boy.
John: I didn't know what that, you know, you could see it in their face.
John: You could see them tense up.
John: You could see them clench their fists.
John: square off with me and then back down.
John: And I didn't, and I had no sense of my physical size or I still thought I was a little runty kid.
John: And so I would stand there like, oh shit, I'm about to get it.
John: And then nothing would happen.
John: And they would, you know, stomp off and they'd glare at me.
John: And, and, and I was like, what is going on?
John: Yeah.
John: And it was because I was four inches taller.
John: I mean, I was, I, I was towered over them and I couldn't tell from inside my body.
John: Cause inside your body, you think,
John: you are somebody.
Merlin: That's, I mean, I, I, I, it's so funny you say that.
Merlin: I remember something, something so wise that my mom said, um, when I was probably 11 or 12 and, you know, 11 or 12 for me, I mean, a lot's changed.
Merlin: There's a lot of hormones in the meat kids.
Merlin: Um,
Merlin: you know uh get their periods early and get strong early and stuff like that right but like my friend greg my acquaintance greg who nobody liked but we had to pal around with him because his parents were divorced and he was in our church group no he was okay but he was really really awkward and he was kind of you but even dorkier like what you're describing here he was really dorky and so awkward and he got suddenly got really clumsy and
Merlin: And was like, you know, it was like something out of a health film strip.
Merlin: And I was like, Greg is the worst.
Merlin: And, you know, and my mom was like, well, you know, Greg, Greg's life is not easy right now.
Merlin: And also, you know, a lot of times, you know, you hate having the purity talk with your mom.
Merlin: My mom was like, well, the thing you got to understand about Greg is his body is changing faster than his mind.
Merlin: And he's in all kinds of ways.
Merlin: It's not keeping up with his brain as in like he doesn't know how long his arms are.
Merlin: He doesn't realize where his shoulder is.
Merlin: Of course, he's knocking things over.
Merlin: His body has not adjusted to the fact that he's a bigger person now.
Merlin: And he's still an 11 year old kid inside with the body of like a 14 year old.
Merlin: And that's making him weird.
Merlin: And I was like, that's very interesting.
Merlin: I still don't like Greg.
John: This was the thing when, when, uh, this was how, when I gained tremendous insight into my friendship with Sean Nelson, it was realizing that although Sean was six foot five.
John: He's so tall.
John: He's so much taller than you think.
John: And, you know, and broad in his mind, he is still five foot six and, and is still, and he never had the experience.
John: I don't think.
John: Or rather, he had it, but he didn't register it like I did because there was a day when I realized, oh, wait, I'm I'm I'm big.
Merlin: Not only am I big, but classic classic Simon and Garfunkel or like, you know, where the little guy where the little guy acts like a big little dog acts like a big dog and the big dog acts like a little dog.
John: The thing about Simon and Garfunkel, though, is when you meet them, you realize that Artie is only 5'9".
John: Shut up.
John: This is the crazy thing.
John: Art Garfunkel is not that tall.
Merlin: I would have said Art Garfunkel is at least 6'2".
John: It's that Paul Simon is so small.
John: Is he comically small, John?
John: He is comically small.
John: Art Garfunkel, you know, normally I don't Google while we're on the show, but Art Garfunkel...
John: Darth Garfunkel.
John: Darth Garfunkel.
John: Darth Garfunkel is five foot nine.
John: He is.
John: Five foot nine.
John: It's just that Paul Simon is five foot three.
John: I am a slightly taller than Art Garfunkel.
John: Yes.
John: And that blows my mind.
John: It blew my mind, too, until I met him.
John: I stood there and I was like, that's your Art Garfunkel?
John: Are you sure?
John: Are you sure you're Art Garfunkel?
John: You know, I was like, I was towering over him.
John: He's the size of Mayor Bloomberg.
John: And I was like.
John: Come on, that's uncut.
John: And then I went and I looked it up because I always imagined that Art Garfunkel was six foot nine.
John: Oh, absolutely.
John: He can look right over Paul Simon's head.
John: I thought he was the tallest man in rock.
John: He's not at all.
John: It's all about context, John.
John: It's all about context.
John: Yeah.
John: And, and the thing about Sean was realizing that he had never had that moment where he was like, where, you know, cause I had the moment where I was like, Oh, nobody's going to fuck with me anymore.
John: Oh my God.
John: What a great relief.
John: And he's still in, when he looks out from his eye holes, he sees a world of, of,
John: grownups who are, are abusing him.
John: And I said to him in this conversation, I was like, Sean, do you realize that you are terrifyingly big that I am intimidated by you?
John: And he's like, he couldn't, he scoffed.
John: He was like, are you kidding?
John: You're ridiculous.
John: And I was like, I swear to you that you could throw a punch at me and knock me clean out.
John: You wouldn't even have to try if you ever actually threw a punch.
John: You would be a dominating force.
John: And he's never done.
John: He's like some kind of musical Hodor.
John: He's a Hodor, except the smartest Hodor you ever met.
Merlin: He's a Hodor.
Merlin: That guy can sing, too.
John: He's a Hodor, but he's also a maester.
John: Oh, he's absolutely a maester.
Merlin: He might be a secret Targaryen.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: I can't tell them apart anymore.
Merlin: You know, and of course I said Simon Garfunkel and I'm reminded of you two singing only living, living boy in New York together.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: And that great American.
Merlin: Oh shit.
John: That was so fucking good.
John: Well, that's when I met, uh, Artie was, I was singing it with Amy Mann at the, uh, at St.
John: Central Park.
John: And Artie was there and Mayor Bloomberg was there and Paul Simon was there.
John: Mayor Bloomberg, he's a little guy.
John: He's smaller than Art Garfunkel, but not, you know, let's see.
John: He's a character on like Lidsville or something.
John: I don't usually Google things, but Bloomberg height.
John: I bet he's 5'5".
John: It's probably going to tell me the height of the Bloomberg.
John: He's 5'7", so he's 2 inches shorter than Artie, but he's still 4 inches taller than Paul Simon.
Merlin: And Amy Mann is 7 feet tall?
Merlin: Talk about Targaryen.
Merlin: She is an exquisite seabird.
Merlin: Of indeterminate height.
Merlin: I don't think we have a way to fully meter her height, but boy, is she something.
Merlin: Yeah, and I got to still remind my kid, you know, you met Ted Leo and Amy Mann in a hallway once, and that's not going to matter to you today, but someday that's going to matter a lot to you.
John: Someday it might, although that's an example of- You met Ted Leo.
John: But that's an example of you being the dad that's like- I'm doing the thing.
John: You're going to be the coolest kid because no one in your college has ever heard of Ted Leo or ever will.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: Yeah.
John: But one day.
John: Marvin?
John: Marvin Leo?
John: No, it's like the time at Disneyland when my dad, you know, like I'm at Disneyland.
John: It's 1977.
John: Everything is happening all around me.
John: Over here, there's a guy shooting a hippopotamus.
John: Over here, there's like the 60s space cars that they still haven't taken out and replaced with Space Mountain.
John: And I'm sitting there in a folding chair in a 75% empty old town.
John: What's old town called?
John: Oh, the thing that used to be, so it's like where the Haunted Mansion is?
John: No, the thing with, yeah, where they got straw boaters.
Merlin: Oh, New Orleans Square maybe?
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Main Street USA?
John: There it is.
John: Main Street USA.
John: I'm sitting in an outdoor amphitheater that's got like 40 people scattered around it.
John: Watching Dixieland?
John: Watching Count Basie and his orchestra.
John: Oh, my God.
John: And my dad takes me down.
Merlin: The actual literal Count Basie with the hat and everything?
John: He's still alive and playing at Disneyland.
John: And my dad walks me down there as a nine-year-old and says, you know, Count...
John: I want you to meet my son.
Merlin: Are you fucking kidding me?
John: And my dad knows... He was in Blazing Saddles, dude.
John: My dad knows every horn player in the band.
John: Oh, my God.
John: He's like, that's, you know, that's this guy, that's this guy, that's that guy, that's this guy.
Merlin: April in Paris, man.
John: And I'm sitting there like, oh, my God.
John: Dad, like...
John: There's anything.
John: It's just so boring.
John: We're at freaking Disneyland, and why are we watching this orchestra play, you know, like Johnny Carson music?
Merlin: You'd probably rather go on one of the shitty A-rides.
Merlin: Like, give me swan boats.
Merlin: Give me carousel.
Merlin: Give me the jitney.
Merlin: Give me anything.
Merlin: Small world after all.
Merlin: It's a small world.
Merlin: That might've been a D or an E, but like the, but you, but give me anything except sitting here listening to, to gentle brass music.
John: Yeah.
John: I want, I want to, well, there's nothing gentle about Count Basie, but yeah, I wanted to go over and meet Abe Lincoln or what, you know, Robo.
John: You know what I mean?
John: You know what I mean?
John: No, I do.
Merlin: And then every song ends with the bump.
Merlin: That guy, that's so smart to make your bit in addition to being fucking Count Basie.
Merlin: Great arrangements.
Merlin: The ending of the song is his trademark.
Merlin: I think he invented that riff.
John: Oh, it's a great riff.
John: And now, of course, at my age, I'm the only person of our whole cadre that ever met Count Basie, and it's a source of personal pride.
John: You met Ted Leo.
John: Huh?
John: You met Ted Leo.
Merlin: I've watched him do a crossword.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Those were the days.
Merlin: I wouldn't mind meeting the drummer too.
Merlin: Was his name Chris?
Merlin: The guy with the beard?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You remember all that gravy?
Merlin: That gravy was outstanding.
John: There was a lot of gravy.
Merlin: I recently reread a supposedly fun thing I'll never do again.
Merlin: And it reminds me that that is absolutely a thing I'll never do again.
John: Go on a cruise ship.
John: Woof.
Merlin: Now, I watch a lot of videos about high-end RVs, and there's a lot of RVs that have the performance characteristics of a yacht.
Merlin: Now, that I would do.
Merlin: I watched one the other day, John.
Merlin: It's a $1 million RV, and it comes with a smart car that rolls into a little garage in it.
John: Why are you not sending me these links?
John: Oh, John.
Merlin: Well, I used to be into small house videos, and then I got really into RV videos.
Merlin: Oh, John.
Merlin: What's the name of the company?
Merlin: It's like Dremel or Dremel or Dreffel.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: Right, right, right.
John: Drupal.
Merlin: Red and black.
John: Drupal.
John: Yeah, sure.
John: It's got Mercedes guts.
John: I have a really hard time with a lot of that stuff, tiny house and tiny RV stuff, not feeling bad about my life choices when I watch those things.
John: Does that true for you?
Merlin: That's what I said to Madeline.
Merlin: I said, if we had any money.
Merlin: Listen, here's the thing.
Merlin: fully tricked out and i will send you this video it's boner city okay it's one fully fitted it's it's about the same year obviously euros and dollars it's 1.1 million dollars for the nicest rv you ever did see and it comes with a fucking smart car that you pull into the back of it it's got a little toe system that pulls into the back it's got heated windows everywhere it's got everything's oh my god john
Merlin: If you could find $1.1 million, you're done.
John: So what you're saying is that if you were rich enough, you could live in your car.
Merlin: I aspire to be rich enough to live in a car.
Merlin: Now, asterisk, it's a pretty nice car.
Merlin: It's a nice car.
Merlin: Yeah, and the car is also inside of an RV that's a million dollars.
Merlin: But yeah, technically, I live in my car.
John: Yeah, this is the hashtag van life in order to actually...
John: Be a nomad who smells like they haven't showered in years.
John: You have to have $200,000 to afford to drive a panel van that's got a bed in it.
Merlin: And my second thought that I also share with my wife is that I bet.
Merlin: I bet.
Merlin: Well, yes.
Merlin: And I bet it's also very costly to keep up.
Merlin: I bet it's almost like having a boat.
John: Oh, it's insane.
John: It's insane to keep up.
Merlin: Oh, you know this, John.
Merlin: You know wherever you speak.
Merlin: You had the stripes, not the family truckster, the urban, what do they call it?
John: Urban assault vehicle.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah, you had that.
John: If you have a yacht, what do they say?
John: It's a hole into which you throw money.
John: That's right.
John: But those super mega yachts, like they cost $10,000 a day just to keep the water going.
John: Just to keep the water in the bathroom taps flowing because they have a cruise.
Merlin: Maybe one reason you're stinky is that you haven't fixed that shower.
Merlin: That shower was real nice when you drove it off the lot.
Merlin: But now, again, it's like having anything fancy.
Merlin: It's a lot to keep up.
John: It was not that long ago that what you did was you bought a Ford van that had 80,000 miles on it.
John: You went to Fred Meyer.
John: You bought two big pieces of camper foam for $23 each.
John: You built a, you had Chris Cornelia build you a bed out of plywood in the back using his patented carpentry skill.
John: You put some foam on the top of it and then you lived in that van for six years.
John: Yes.
John: Now nobody lives like that anymore.
John: They all have, well, I'm sure, wait a minute.
John: Let me, let me wind that back.
John: A lot of people are living like that.
Merlin: Yeah, but they've got plants on the wall and everything's white inside and everything folds.
John: Well, no, you know what I mean.
John: Like if you drive down into the, into the Castro, I'm sure the streets are lined up.
Merlin: Oh, like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: We were driving down to Vision yesterday and woof.
John: Yeah.
John: Right.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: I mean, there's a lot of, there's a lot of tent life going on down here.
Merlin: Well, you know, it's crazy.
Merlin: And this is hashtag tent life is that SF state, you know, down the road that you go look at a Google maps of SF state.
Merlin: It's like, it's crazy how many RVs and I, cause I'm like this, right.
Merlin: I'm the guy who's always like, huh?
Merlin: Like, how are they allowed to park?
Merlin: I'm so that guy.
Merlin: And yeah.
Merlin: Mike, you know what my wife recently said to me?
Merlin: I was complaining.
Merlin: I'm not complaining.
Merlin: I was remarking on a restaurant we were in and saying that the place seemed very strange to me.
Merlin: And I kept noting it over and over, much to the annoyance of my family.
Merlin: This place seems strange to me.
Merlin: Yeah, because I like that.
Merlin: You know how I am.
Merlin: And one point my wife says, you never leave the house.
Merlin: Everything seems weird to you.
Merlin: And I laughed for probably eight minutes.
Merlin: And because it was...