Ep. 496: "Dad Church"
John: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Hi, Merlin.
Merlin: Sorry I'm late.
Merlin: Are you?
Merlin: It's very early.
Merlin: It is early.
John: I agree.
John: I didn't even have time to splash water on my face.
John: Why?
John: Do you splash water on your face?
John: No.
Merlin: You never do?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: I didn't say I never do.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: I mean, it's not like a thing I do in the morning.
Merlin: It could be.
Merlin: It could be.
Merlin: Sometimes in the afternoon, my face is hot and my neck is hot and I'll put water on it or a cloth.
Merlin: I'll have a damp cloth like a fancy duchess.
John: Is that so?
John: You know what?
John: My face and neck never get hot.
John: But when I wake up in the morning, I splash water on my face.
John: Like I'm kneeling down in a pond, and I see the reflection of a beautiful Sybil, and then I go splash, splash, splash.
Merlin: Sybil, the person with dissociative disorder, or are you talking about narcissus?
Merlin: What?
John: No, I'm not Narcissus.
John: Hell no.
John: You're Narcissus.
John: No, you're Narcissus.
John: Thank you.
John: No, no.
John: I just have to splash.
John: I have to splash.
John: I have an ablution.
Merlin: You are not going to get a fight from me on this, my friend.
Merlin: First of all, I think rituals are important.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: And, and, and you should do the things that, you know, that, uh, that gave your life a sense of order.
Merlin: Huh?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Splash.
Merlin: I'm being serious.
Merlin: Splash.
Merlin: Splash.
John: I am too.
John: And the thing is some, for some reason this morning didn't, didn't get the splash.
John: And I feel, I don't know, I feel dry.
Merlin: I have an odd question.
Merlin: Does that, hmm.
Merlin: Go on.
Merlin: Well, it's, I'm projecting.
Merlin: It's a leading question.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Because I sometimes.
Merlin: Do you feel like that is a thing in your marriage?
Merlin: Do you ever feel like you're not good at life?
Merlin: Now.
Merlin: Here's a little story.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: Now, so my question to you is, it's very early.
Merlin: Leave it.
Merlin: Leave it, Gibson.
Merlin: Go ahead.
Merlin: You there.
Merlin: Okay, I'm trying to avoid, because this sounds like I'm trying to say something profound.
Merlin: What I'm really trying to say is I do think ritual is important.
Merlin: So is that something where, like, do you sort of look forward to it as like, hey, the day has started, or is it a push or a pull?
Merlin: Is it more of a, like, I need the splash to get things going, or I have the agency to cause a splash that now tells me that things are in motion?
John: I see what you're saying.
Merlin: I don't know if I see what I'm saying.
John: No, no, no.
John: I think I need the splash.
Merlin: I like the push versus pull.
John: I think that's a useful way to look at it.
John: That is.
John: There are times in the day when I need a reboot.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: And I go get a splash.
John: Used to smoke a cigarette.
John: Used to have a cigarette.
John: Remember?
John: Used to have them multiple times a day.
John: You call a cigarette break.
John: Time to go outside, have a cigarette, think about life.
John: stand shivering in the cold with the other people that are similarly afflicted.
John: But no, I'll go into the bathroom.
John: Standing in the face of a black cell in the Erie looking over the edge.
John: I'll get a little sink.
John: I'll get the water running in the sink.
John: I'm not somebody that needs to fill the sink or anything.
John: I'm not insane.
John: But I just put both hands under the water and go splash, splash.
John: up in my face splash splash splash yeah i i i i think i totally get it i i like the splash splash and do you like the fact that it's a little bit shocking yes yes yes because your face you've already stipulated if memory serves that your face and neck are never hot they don't get hot that's not a problem in the afternoons i'm not trying to cool down but then i we live in the north here so cooling down is not a you're made of heartier stuff
John: Well, it's just less warm, I guess.
John: That's true.
John: And you get spiders, yeah.
John: You know, the coldest winter I ever spent was the summer in San Francisco.
Merlin: Let's see.
Merlin: Look at that, Escargo.
Merlin: Oh, I like that one.
John: Yeah, that's a good one.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: That was a... Oh, uh...
John: I left my harp in Sam Clams Disco.
John: Oh, that's funny.
John: That's a good one.
Merlin: Pair of pimples for hairy fish nuts?
Merlin: Just cough up some dough, Mac.
Merlin: I've rewatched Master and Commander three times in the last three days.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: And there's that wonderful scene, and I made my family watch it, which, of course, is pointless.
Merlin: But I'm like, see when Captain Jack, you've seen this film, yes?
Merlin: I wasn't sure.
Merlin: I figured you might have seen it in the theater before you were a dad.
Merlin: And now like me, it's just something you do three times a week.
Merlin: It's basically like dad church.
John: Yeah.
John: I got a text message from a friend the other day that was like, have you ever watched Lawrence of Arabia?
John: Oh, boy.
John: I'm even laughing now just at having gotten the text.
John: I like to watch that and Dr. Zhivago at the same time.
John: I do, too.
John: You know, you sync them up.
John: You sync them up.
Merlin: Yeah, and then you can hear Dave Gilmore leaving the band.
Merlin: The thing I was going to say, though, was there's, you know, first of all, Paul Bettany.
Merlin: I've been going off a little bit on the internet about this because I watch it all the time now.
Merlin: I do think in that film, Paul Bettany might have shown himself to be one of the handsomest men.
John: Wow, okay.
John: As the doctor.
John: Oh yeah, I know who he is.
Merlin: He plays cello.
Merlin: Have you seen this film?
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
John: You're feeling that he is handsome in that film.
Merlin: I'm just covering a few things.
Merlin: But what I said was that, you know, there's the bit where there's the bread on the plate and he says, which one of those weevils would you choose, right?
Merlin: I don't want to spoil it.
John: No, no, it's a great punchline.
Merlin: It's a great bit and it comes back.
Merlin: later, like so much in this wonderful film, which is really kind of three films.
Merlin: It's long enough to be four films, but I really, I like that scene a lot.
Merlin: And I like it when Paul Bettany says to Captain Lucky Jack, he says something like, he who would pun would pick a pocket.
John: Oh.
John: You know?
John: Yeah.
John: I should put that in a – I should engrave that in a sign and put it in front of Ken Jennings' station.
Merlin: Does he have a problem?
John: He's a punter.
John: See, a lot of folks can't stop.
Merlin: Yeah, well, he – It's a shame that it's the smart people who pun because they're the ones who ought to know better.
John: Yeah, well, I keep telling him that.
John: Stop doing that.
John: And he's like, I can't help it.
John: I mean, it's really – I hate to put it this bluntly.
John: You hardly ever pun.
Merlin: Well, to quote one of my favorite comedians, Stuart Lee, whenever he looks at the camera and says, see, I know how to tell a joke.
Merlin: I just choose not to.
Right.
Merlin: it's so important it's so vital that those of us who can pun not yes and you know i'm i and again i don't want to i don't want to be crude about this but i think it's a little bit like for example a that's what she said joke oh yeah now your options on that i guess there's technically three options well there's more but like there's never do it at all there's do it constantly
Merlin: Doing it constantly can be very funny.
Merlin: As any in-joke one had in high school, you know.
Merlin: Whether that's for us, it was like, no soap radio.
Merlin: There are some dumb lines that... You remember that, the anti-joke?
John: Yeah, well, I mean, no mustard was ours.
Merlin: Oh, I didn't know that one.
Merlin: Yeah, no mustard.
Merlin: We should do an all-jokes show.
Merlin: No mustard.
John: But, you know... With Ariella, I do the, there's your boyfriend...
John: And it's always real low.
John: Oh, wait a minute.
John: Okay.
John: This might be something like we do.
John: Wait, is it when some grotesque is on screen?
John: No, no, no.
John: It's when we're out in the town and somebody rides by on a unicycle.
John: I'm like, there's your boyfriend.
John: It always gets her because she's never looking at the person, right?
John: I always see the person first.
John: And I'm like, there's your boyfriend.
John: And then she turns and it's a guy on a unicycle.
John: Or somebody wearing a top hat or somebody juggling.
Merlin: A penny farthing.
Merlin: Like honking a horn.
John: And the other day we were standing out in front of a restaurant or something and she was distracted.
John: And a guy walked by.
John: Big, you know, big head full of blonde dreads, wearing like a formal, like a tuxedo jacket, but blue jeans and sandals.
John: Hang on.
John: I started typing.
John: Start that again.
John: I want to hear every inch of this.
John: We're standing out in front of LePiche.
John: We're trying to get everybody in the car.
John: We've taken one of the little one's friends with us to the top of the Space Needle.
John: And, uh, and now we're, now we've stopped by Pichet.
John: We're not going to have food.
John: We're just stopping by to say hello to Susan.
John: Stopping by just briefly.
John: It's a hectic time.
John: Saturday night, a lot of people going, you know, everybody's in motion.
John: Pichet is not a big restaurant, so you can't just come in and stand around.
John: It's big.
John: It's moving, moving, moving, you know, and, and, and Saturday night it's crazy.
John: Susan's making 50 drinks and I walk in there with two little girls and
John: and uh and my daughter's mother slash partner and i'm like i'm doing what my dad did hey i'm just coming in to say hi and put these kids right in everybody's way and i'm gonna stand here right where you guys are trying to work and just give everybody a big hug
John: Oh, you're welcome.
John: I'm here.
John: That's right.
John: And then I, so we stand there for a little bit, just in everybody's way.
John: Little girls, not even wanting to be there, not knowing what's happening.
John: And then we push them all out of the, of the restaurant.
John: We're standing there on the, on the side of the street.
John: It's downtown Seattle, Saturday night, people moving around.
John: And a guy, big guy walks by blonde dreadlocks, hanging down the middle of his back.
John: Huge head of blonde dreadlocks.
John: He's wearing a tuxedo jacket, but blue jeans and sandals.
John: Oh, that's a lot of look.
John: Yeah.
John: And, uh, and Ari's trying to herd these little girls into the truck, which of course I have parked right in front of the restaurant, you know, not even, not even flashers on just like, Hey, if a, if a cop would come by, I'm like, Hey cop, how are you?
John: Right.
John: There he is.
John: Counselor.
John: Getting him in, and the guy walks by, and I give Ari a little nudge, and I go, I can't believe he would walk by and not even say hi after all these years.
John: After all the years you went.
John: And she's like, what, what?
John: And she turns, and the impact of it, the impact of the whole thing.
Merlin: it's just every time it's like just getting whacked with a with a lacrosse over time you get more yeah yeah but only as the teller of that you learn various ways to spring it on people oh yeah you gotta spring it oh like you know and then eventually like you get sweaty like me and you go oh shoot one more thing before we go um god i almost forgot there's your boyfriend oh
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Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: You got to string him along.
Merlin: We have one that started with my kid and me, but now, of course, I say this to my late friend.
Merlin: You ever say, that's you?
Merlin: Oh, there's you.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You do that, right?
Merlin: For example, there's this fella.
Merlin: I'm sending you an image of a character from a Star Wars movie, one of the prequel movies.
Merlin: And when they land on Coruscant,
Merlin: You'll know this.
Merlin: When they first land on Coruscant, you know, and they go there and there's this guy in the background.
Merlin: He's kind of a, he's a Twi'lek.
John: He's a little bit on the... He's a chonk Twi'lek.
John: He chonk.
John: You know, the Twi'leks are sexy, typically.
John: Absolutely.
John: Very sexy planet.
John: And this is a non-sexy Twi'lek.
John: Maybe to you.
John: Right.
Merlin: On Coruscant, he's getting more Twi'lek than Sinatra.
John: I don't want to head... What are those called?
John: Head flange shame?
John: They're not ears.
Merlin: So Kitano has it too, of course.
Merlin: Oh, she sure does.
Merlin: I can already tell the kid back in the day would be like bracing.
Merlin: And I go, hey, that's you.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And I always thought I regarded that as funny.
John: Yeah.
John: Oh, it's hilarious.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, so I'm doing the thing now, the other dad thing, which is...
John: We were at a bookstore.
John: Uh-huh.
John: She comes up with a couple of books.
John: I want to get these books.
John: I go, let's see the books.
John: Tell me about the books.
John: Tell me why you want to get these books.
John: They're both graphic novels.
John: Oh, interesting.
John: Okay.
John: She says, well, I've read them both, but only once.
John: They were someone else's, and now I want my own.
John: Because she reads them over and over.
John: Wow.
John: Awesome.
John: And so I looked at them.
John: And we looked at each other.
John: And we're right at the point now where I'm well aware that we live in a universe where there is a certain kind of adult that says, if your kid is reading, that alone is amazing.
John: Don't get involved in your kid's reading.
John: Congratulations.
Merlin: None of the... John, let me say our listeners the trip.
Merlin: None of the extremes are correct.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: There's no extreme to this.
Merlin: That's correct.
John: So my child and I are now engaged in a conversation around... A dialogue.
John: A dialogue.
John: Around the question, what is the reading material that we are aspiring to?
John: And what is the reading material that is the equivalent of a warm bath?
John: And what is the reading equivalent that is just the equivalent to holding your bunny and sucking your thumb?
John: Because there's a lot of reading stuff, especially if you're a multi-reader.
John: If you read a book multiple times, on the ninth read-through of Big Nate's Funny Day or the 15th read-through of – Jesus, I don't even – some of these books I've seen so long like they're –
John: I feel like I've been friends with these books for 15 years, and she's only 12.
Merlin: Could it be like Diary of a Wimpy Kid?
Merlin: Diary of a Wimpy Kid.
Merlin: That kind of thing?
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Over and over and over and over.
John: I like the one where they go on the trip.
John: Oh, they're all wonderful.
Merlin: I love the little baby.
John: But we have 4,000 books in our home.
I know.
John: And when I see her reading Diary of a Wimpy Kid, one I know she's read 1,000 times.
John: I go, now, what are you getting out of that book now?
John: I know what you've gotten out of that book, but right this second, are you reading it for what?
John: Like, tell me about it.
John: I'm not telling you you can't.
John: I'm saying, tell me about it now.
John: Tell me all your crazy dreams.
John: Hmm.
John: And I say, look, I'm.
John: Is all of your advice in the form of a Billy Joel song?
John: Typically, typically.
John: She has memorized.
Merlin: You've been living in an uptown world.
John: She has memorized all the lyrics to We Didn't Start the Fire.
John: No.
John: Because she knows I hate the song.
Ugh.
John: And she has not only memorized them, but she's gone through each one of these boomer deep references to like the first president of South Korea or whatever Billy Joel is on.
John: Yeah.
John: And she has insisted that I explain each reference.
John: Oh.
John: So I'm like, okay, well, the Korean war.
John: And she's just like, so now she can spit this song at me whenever she's mad at me.
John: Right.
John: Yeah.
John: And not just be like mouthing the words, but she has some semblance of like, and that's the first president of Santa Cruz.
John: Anyway, so I said, look, we need to review our library.
John: And the key was, I said, look.
John: A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that a teacher's job is to educate children.
John: A teacher's job is to help you educate yourself.
John: And if you're not educating yourself, if you're not challenging yourself, teachers not going to, they're not going to force you to read Tom Sawyer.
John: I'm not telling you to even read Tom Sawyer.
John: I'm just saying big Nate wimpy kid book.
John: Number 17 is,
John: At 12 years old, your mind is starting to blow up.
John: It's hungry for stuff.
John: What are you giving it?
John: What are you feeding it?
Merlin: So the notion of, I understand this is about the question, not about a given piece of advice, but would you like to see her challenging herself a little more with new material?
Merlin: Is that it?
John: What I'm saying is that there are multiple, just like television, we talk about television all the time, just like television, there are books that you read when you're sad.
John: There are books that you read for comfort.
John: There are books you read in the bathtub.
John: There are books you read on the toilet.
John: And then there are books that you, that you read that are hard for you, you know, books that require that you lean into the book.
John: And if you don't have those books in your diet, it's a, it's not a complete diet.
John: What is the book right now that you're reading that is aspirational, you know, and I, you keep saying you want to read little women and
John: I think you can.
Merlin: Is she allowed to see the Greta Gerwig movie first?
John: She has seen the movie.
John: That's a very good movie.
John: She wants to read it, right?
John: She wants to read it.
John: She's never read Are You There, God?
John: It's Me, Margaret.
John: Because she's right on the edge of wanting it.
Merlin: And books like that were around and accessible, but also felt a little edgy.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: What I'm saying is, for context, for anybody who's not almost 60, when John and I were younger, there were books that were available.
Merlin: There were books that were super available.
Merlin: And there were books that were around, but it wasn't the kind of thing your Sunday school teacher wasn't going to encourage you to read.
Merlin: It's not like Judy Blume was trying to like, you know, turn you into some kind of a mutant, but you could find stuff that was like a little bit more like, you know, even some of the S.E.
Merlin: Hinton stuff, you know, like Pig Man and stuff like, was that S.E.
Merlin: Hinton I want to say?
Merlin: Well, that book Pig Man, which I think is by S.E.
Merlin: Hinton, but you know, one of those kinds of books where you're like, oh, there's something, there's some stuff to this that's kind of challenging.
Merlin: Yeah, you need to, you need to.
Merlin: The words are hard, but the concepts are going to take some, you know, some thought.
John: Yeah, flowers for Algernon.
John: Like, where are you headed next?
John: I don't think you're ready to read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and that's just for fun, too.
John: Oh, she's totally ready to read it.
John: Well, but there's just, it's like, I feel like there's a six-month more, she needs to know one more president of South Korea before she's going to really get the jokes.
John: I'm not sure.
John: She loves Monty Python, but three-quarters of it over her head, just like it did me.
Merlin: I don't understand three-quarters of it.
John: Yeah, still, even still.
John: But so as part of this, so she's like, well, I want these two novels.
John: And I go, okay.
John: So I get her the graphic novels and then we get home.
John: Immediately she runs into a room, comes out with a big box of books.
John: She's like, I'm ready to give these away.
John: I'm like, really?
John: And we go through the books and I see – some of them are legitimately terrible books.
John: I don't know how they came into the house.
John: Some of them are like, oh, don't you really like this book though?
John: She's like, yeah, but I'm ready to get rid of it.
John: Probably from a book fair.
John: And a little friend came over –
John: A couple of days later, and she was like, do you want any of these books?
John: And the friend was appalled that she was getting rid of any books.
John: Obviously, this little 11-year-old girl is somebody that's going to have a library that chokes her like my library does.
John: And I was so proud of her.
John: Like, okay, get rid of these books.
John: And she was like, but I'm holding on to the Archies because I feel like they have, I feel like Archies have a lot to, I feel like we could all learn from Archie comics.
John: I'm like, it's not wrong.
John: You're not wrong.
John: But so I have this thing with the movies, too.
John: And she wants to watch the same goddamn movie.
John: She wants to watch the... And believe me, I understand children today, we didn't get to watch the same goddamn movie, did we, Merlin, now that we're 60?
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: People slightly younger than us who had VHS tapes could watch Pinocchio every day.
Merlin: I listened to the same Sesame Street audio cassette.
John: That's true.
John: I had the 45s.
John: I had the Sesame Street 45s.
John: C is for cookie.
John: Is it?
John: Not the disco one, the original one.
John: The OG, yeah.
John: So I said to her, look, okay, tonight Daddy's going to pick the movie.
John: And she's like, ah, your movies suck.
John: And I'm like, yes, yes, yes, they do.
John: But they're wonderful.
John: And she was like, I did not like this movie.
John: Would you like to watch a four-hour movie about a boat?
John: She's like, I didn't.
John: Yeah, that's right.
Merlin: Fitzcarraldo is our movie tonight.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Oh, no, you got to sit down and watch the entire Master and the Commander, the whole thing.
John: So I said, what about Master and Commander?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Wait, you let that kid watch.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: No offense.
Merlin: But like, it's just in the logic of Master and Commander before Hitchhiker's Guide.
Merlin: Because Hitchhiker's Guide has too many references.
Merlin: Is that it?
John: That's what helped me out for a while.
John: It's references.
John: If you read that book and you're not laughing, tears streaming down your face, then it was too early.
John: Right.
John: I mean, and why make them, why make, why have them lose the joy just because they can read the words.
John: Right.
John: But master and commander, she already knows about Bonaparte.
John: She already.
John: She's been around grandma.
John: She's been around grandma.
John: She knows what it, you know, she knows what it's like to slam a glass down on the table and go Bonaparte.
John: Do you understand he's taking the war to the South?
John: That's right.
John: You know, she knows where South America is.
John: And so, oh, and she's read the kid's version of Moby Dick.
John: Huh.
John: So she, but the, but the thing is, I don't, I think you can watch master and commander 40 times in your life.
John: Just like, just like gladiator movies or specifically gladiator.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: She doesn't want to watch gladiator.
John: She doesn't want to watch master and commander.
John: And her mother looks up from her newspaper.
John: Oh, you've been there the whole time over the top of her reading glasses.
John: And she goes, all boys, there are no girls in master and commander.
John: And I'm like, well.
Merlin: There's a girl with a parasol at one point, but that's pretty much it.
John: Yeah.
John: Isn't there a fever dream of a girl at some point?
John: Maybe not.
Merlin: Lucky Jack's checking out one of the native ladies who has a parasol.
Merlin: But I take the point.
John: And I'm like, well, you know, come on there, you know.
John: And I'm thinking about the 60 movies that I'm encouraging you to watch that also have no girls in it.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: And I'm like, well, you.
John: And so I say, Gattaca.
John: And a cold wind blows through the room.
John: Gattaca.
John: Because I know her mother loves Gattaca.
John: And I'm like, Gattaca.
John: And we both – we do that – we do that –
John: common sense media thing in our minds where we're like, what's in Gattaca?
Merlin: Oh, where your Terminator heads up display is running through everything that's in it.
John: Yeah.
John: And he swears, any sex, any gore.
John: No, there's none of that in Gattaca.
John: It's just pure.
Merlin: Civic dystopia.
John: Pure 100% slow moving civic dystopia.
John: Yeah.
John: involving a lot of panicky dna talk jude law it's the first time i ever saw jude law and uh and also uh so beautiful it's got the the woman i like from kill bill she's in it right yes she is yeah also one of the i guess i'd seen her already and then who's the other one i always forget is ethan hawk ethan hawk there you go oh i love him and of course we'd seen him already in uh dead poet society yep yep yep yep yep
John: So there's a general, so our child acquiesces, but really sad about it.
John: And we watch Gattaca all the way through.
John: She keeps her attention.
John: Really?
John: And we get to the end, and I'm like, so what did you think?
John: And she's like, that's one of the saddest movies I've ever seen.
John: Why would you show that to me?
John: And then she, you know, slumped shoulders, goes upstairs and goes to bed.
John: Now it's time for bed.
Merlin: There's no more TV tonight.
Merlin: Yeah, puts herself to bed.
Merlin: And I'm like.
Merlin: You filled the entire programming block with something your child did not want to watch.
John: Leaving absolutely no room, barely time to brush teeth.
John: Not only that, but like, oh, remember the bright future that you had to look forward to?
John: Well, there's also this version.
John: Right.
John: And she's like, oh, and I, I have no idea whether today she's, she's spinning on it or whether she does the kid thing of just pushing it out or pushing it off of her plate and onto the floor.
John: No idea.
John: And I'm, and, but part of me is like, yeah, what about master and commander now?
John: There, you know, that's a cheery story.
John: That's, that's fun.
Merlin: It's really, it's, it's film as corporal punishment in some ways.
John: Well, you know.
Merlin: I'll give you a reason to cry.
Yeah.
Merlin: Like if we're going to watch.
Merlin: Oh, sorry.
Merlin: Sorry.
Merlin: Sorry.
Merlin: Did you not like Gattaca?
Merlin: Well, how about we do a festival of Tartosky films?
Merlin: We'll just sit down and do a bunch of Russian, a bleak, long ass Russian movies.
John: Six straight days of Adventure Time and Star Wars cartoons.
John: Yeah.
John: Then something's got to, there's got to, you know, you got to stick the landing on something.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You don't strictly mean it as an eat your vegetables thing.
John: No, no, no, no.
John: I'm just hoping that, I mean, I think that when she comes out of these movies and she's like, that was really terrible.
John: I don't think she really means that it was terrible.
John: I think that she means it wasn't fun.
John: And I'm trying to say that there are, you know, that not everything is fun.
John: But you know, that's what I was taught.
John: So it's not all fun.
John: Not everything's fun.
John: I know.
John: And I'm fine.
John: You are fine.
John: I live in a house.
Merlin: Yes.
John: Yeah.
John: I own a handful of guitars.
John: I've got, you know, right over here.
John: The only real wealth is land.
John: I got a stack of books over here about the Great Alaska Pipeline.
John: Oh, that's nice.
John: Yeah.
John: What can you say, you know?
John: Not everything is fine.
Merlin: I mean, you know, it's I don't know.
Merlin: It's too much to get into.
Merlin: It is challenging, though, because the bit the bit in our house and this is a bigger bit on other programs.
Merlin: We've talked about it here is that, well, it's complicated because one of the things is I do I do try to stay increasingly out of the way of my kids taste because I'm fortunate to have a kid with like pretty good taste.
Merlin: And that was not true for you for the first 10 years.
Merlin: No, I always felt like I had to regulate it a little bit.
Merlin: And I was a little bit of a Martinette about, you know, I didn't state I don't think I stated it this way.
Merlin: But at least in my own head, my thing was, OK, you know, all kids like garbage TV.
Merlin: I love garbage TV.
John: Sure.
Merlin: And or movies or, you know.
Merlin: I think one way to look at it, though, and I don't mean this as a contravention, but you never know what it is where your young person is trying things out and being vulnerable in ways that you can't see.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: So it's like, you know, maybe the comfort reading comes at a time that there's another aspect of the person's life where there's challenges happening.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: And is it like we're more than what we read?
Merlin: But I do take your point.
Merlin: And I'm happy when my kid reads something good.
Merlin: I don't know if I told you the anecdote recently of taking out the trash cans and hearing, hey!
Merlin: And I think I told Alex this.
Merlin: I look up and I see my kid on the exercise bike and holds up a copy of White Noise.
Merlin: Because my kids, who has chosen to do for PE credits, is doing exercise biking, reading White Noise.
Merlin: And I was like...
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: I think I got one of the good ones, you know?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Mom and Junior went to, amongst other things, they went to the Cherry Blossom Festival in Japantown yesterday and then went to a Goodwill.
Merlin: And my kid came home with three things I'm aware of from the Goodwill.
Merlin: The first was a copy, a paperback copy of And the Band Played On by Randy Schultz.
Merlin: about the terrible way America handled AIDS from a very San Francisco point of view.
Merlin: Also brought home, I wasn't sure, it looked like a vanity printed tract about black rights, which I thought was interesting.
Merlin: And then an entire photo album of somebody meticulously documenting a 1998 high school production of Guys and Dolls.
Merlin: with photos, with programs.
Merlin: And so the kid comes home, he's got some stuff to read, but also now has a project to try and find all of these people 25 years later.
Merlin: Whoa, what?
Merlin: A research project.
Merlin: Well, because you understand, like, this is this beautiful, like, it had the program inside the equivalent of, like, a, you know,
Merlin: uh like a comic book bag like everything had been kind of beautifully preserved and i was like i wonder if that person meant to throw this away this seems like it was probably very precious to somebody right and he goes oh no i'm way ahead of you i've already i found two people on instagram with this name in new york and blah blah blah and i'm like oh god you're such a creep i'm so proud of you yeah with the eventual goal because you know but you just you never know but it does it i don't know it hurts your heart sometimes the way you see a kid
Merlin: I don't know where you're like, oh, I wish somebody pushed that kid a little more at a certain point.
Merlin: But also then you got the parents who are just doing nothing but pushing the kid.
Merlin: And I don't know.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I don't fucking know.
John: Yeah.
John: Every once in a while when we talk about this, I get some letter from some panicked 30-year-old who's like, never intervene in your child, you know, blah.
John: And I know a lot of kids her age that just play video games all day.
John: And she doesn't have...
John: She has unlimited exposure to her.
John: You know, she does not have unlimited exposure to media.
John: She doesn't come in and turn on the TV.
John: She doesn't have an iPad.
John: She's not allowed to sit in front of her computer for hours at a time.
John: And all of that is our policies instituted by her mother in order to protect her from social media.
John: the internet.
John: I mean, her mother's in internet security and is maybe a little over freaked out.
Merlin: A lot of people who make the technology are the most conservative about what they want their kids to be exposed to.
John: Yeah, that's 100%.
Merlin: My kid's best friend from childhood whose parents made technology that sent their kid to Waldorf school.
Merlin: Yeah, exactly.
Merlin: Honestly.
John: Just to play with wooden toys.
Merlin: Until they ran out of Waldorf.
John: She's the last person in our family to
John: to actually consume the majority of her media in paper books.
John: Like the last time I read a long, like an actual paper book was a month ago.
John: And I think my mom still does, but our daughter is perfectly content
John: with paper books, but she is starting to agitate for a phone cause she does want to text her friends.
John: Right.
John: And her mother is like, yeah, I know you want to text your friends and that way lies ruin.
John: And I'm like, Oh, I'm not going to intervene there.
John: Right.
John: I'm not going to get in between those two about it.
John: But for me, like if we're going to watch one hour of television at night for it to be, you know, for it always to be geared to a 10 year old,
John: is not, I mean, at that point I'm suffering, but also like, that's not how we watch TV.
John: We didn't, I wasn't allowed to sit in front of the TV all day.
John: We had, we had so much TV.
Merlin: If you chose to consume, like there's only so much again, back to the original, like three to five channels.
John: Well, and also at 8 p.m., stuff started to break toward adults.
John: If you were still watching TV at 8.
Merlin: Yeah, 9 especially.
Merlin: It was 8 o'clock.
Merlin: 7 to 9 was the family hour or whatever.
Merlin: Remember?
Merlin: And then at 9 is where you might, especially in the later 70s, you might start seeing more like, oh, God.
Merlin: The time I accidentally watched the Helter Skelter was very upsetting to me as an 11-year-old.
Merlin: No, it's difficult.
Merlin: It's multivariate.
Merlin: And you're always trying to hit a moving target.
Merlin: I mean, not kill a child.
Merlin: But our role in all this is constantly changing.
John: But think about what we watched in 1980.
John: I mean, I tried to show her eight is enough.
John: Like, oh, here's a television show that I liked when I was about your age.
John: Let's watch Eight is Enough.
John: It's garbage.
John: But, you know, the first episode of Eight is Enough or the pilot program, which incidentally stars Mark Hamill in a supporting role pre-Star Wars.
Oh.
John: The first episode, like, one of the kids is on drugs, one of the kids is having premarital sex, one of the kids is threatening suicide.
John: And she's like, what are you showing me?
John: And I'm like, this was what we watched as kids.
John: I couldn't believe it, right?
John: I couldn't believe how much... And at the time, it was like, oh, this is, you know, edgy television, cutting edge, that we're going to talk about the real stuff.
John: Relevant.
John: Relevant.
John: Yeah.
John: Those social issues.
John: Social issues.
John: As a 10-year-old, I was...
John: This was like considered family TV.
John: And I watched all these terrible movies, terrible by conventional standards.
John: Like how many of the jokes did you get when you watched Airplane?
John: You were how old, 12?
Merlin: I mean, more than I should have because my family liked the movie Airplane.
Merlin: And so I got those jokes.
Merlin: But no, I mean, a lot of it went straight over my head in terms of the like, I got that that was a joke about this guy being gay.
Merlin: But you know, some of the subtlety of that stuff, the Gladiator movies and whatnot did go a little over my head.
John: But like, I want to show her...
Merlin: airplane and the jerk and her mom is like i don't know and i'm like i get it but but when i was 12 i was gobbling i would go for breaking away breaking away good choice the problem is john i'll speak for myself a lot of these movies were like i like for example i mean i was not the biggest caddyshack fan in the world but i know me either i was around no just because i hadn't seen it i couldn't see r-rated movies oh i see but that was part of it but anyhow
Merlin: But like, you know, it's when we go back and you go check, look at the stuff where that's eight is enough or, you know, there's all kinds of movies where in my head, I'm like, gosh, I wonder if this could be fun to watch with my kid.
Merlin: If like this, like something like the grossness of Animal House probably kind of outweighs the comedic value.
Merlin: But honestly, like a movie like Breaking Away is kind of a four quadrant smart family film.
John: Right.
John: It's a good one.
John: It's a good one.
Merlin: It is really funny.
Merlin: It's really well done.
Merlin: It's so weird.
Merlin: I mean, it's not technically an independent.
Merlin: I think it was made by one of the major studios.
Merlin: But remember, that was one of the first movies I remember that and like Return of the Secaucus 7.
Merlin: Because, of course, I watched Siskel and Ebert on PBS when I was a kid and I knew about these movies.
Merlin: I mean, I feel like Breaking Away was one of the first movies, at least in my own mind, I understood to be kind of like, oh, it's kind of independent.
Merlin: It's kind of European.
John: Yeah, right, right.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: But I bet it doesn't pass the Bechdel test, right?
Merlin: No, but no, no, it doesn't.
Merlin: There are probably good movies like that.
Merlin: But I'm just saying in terms of trying to level up to something that's smart and potentially very enjoyable, there's no way for me to predict, let alone guarantee this, but I was very happy, whatever it was, four or five years ago, when we first watched that together with the kid and the kid liked it.
Merlin: and um you know i just got to shut my mouth about like oh look that's the guy that's you know now i'm like oh that's jackie earl haley like he's he's the guy on you know um oh the patrick warburton show with griffin newman the the tick like he's the bad guy on the tick and that guy is the voice from the wonder years which is a show that you haven't seen and right that's a quade that's a quade one of the quades that's the good quade
Merlin: yeah it's a and she and she likes she likes uh i always get them wrong randy and uh dennis dennis's son is on a show my kid likes called the boys oh and so it's a quaid he's very handsome are any of the baldwin sons and daughters in show business on religious networks now oh i i have i have no idea boy the baldwins what a story that is
Merlin: But I guess what I'm trying to say is like, I do feel like there's some little bits of like needle threading one can do.
Merlin: And as far as the like, I mean, I guess one reason I'm being a little bit resistant to something like Bechdel test or there's no women is like, well, yeah, a lot of movies where women are in, it's horrible.
Merlin: Like, it's more like, you know, are there story?
Merlin: What are the stories telling us about the world rather than what's the body count on, you know, boys versus girls?
John: Oh, well, that's the thing about the Bechdel test.
John: There's a reason it is.
John: And it's because up until very recently- If women were in a movie, they were talking about a dude.
John: Yeah, no movie passed the Bechdel test.
John: And I'm not somebody that's going to retroactively apply the Bechdel test to every film.
Merlin: But I'm trying to respond to what I perceive to be Ari's understandable sensibilities about saying, well, representation matters and getting people out in front.
John: Oh, no, I don't think that's what she's saying.
John: I think she's saying, we're going to be bored.
Merlin: I thought she was saying it was a sausage party.
John: Well, she is, but what she's saying is, we're going to be bored.
John: Because she says this type of thing all the time.
John: That's a boy movie.
John: And I'm like, it's not a boy movie.
John: It's a history movie.
John: And she's like, it's a history movie for boys.
John: And I'm like, there's... And she's like, no.
John: And she's speaking now just from her own aesthetic when she went to see...
John: master and commander she was like this is like playing with gi joes this is like and back then you couldn't even tap on the button to see how much longer it is and go like oh my god we're only a third of the way it feels like this has got to be almost over sweetheart sweetheart they haven't even rounded the horn they haven't even gone to galapagos yet but she does definitely throw that on me sometimes where she's like that's a movie for boys and i'm like whoa whoa whoa no and she's like yes
John: And I'm like, well, but how can you say that Gladiator isn't a movie for boys?
Merlin: Yeah, 300, those kinds of things.
Merlin: I mean, 300 for sure.
John: I'm not in any hurry to show that movie to anybody.
Merlin: I have a funny angle on this that's coming in from a pretty wild angle, which is something I've started thinking about.
Merlin: that, I don't know, I guess I realized this really, really slowly and setting aside for a moment that everybody has different tastes, everybody has different sensibilities and everybody has different moods.
Merlin: Whenever we try to say fuck all about the world, I mean, haven't we learned by now that everybody's different and you really can't say stuff about...
Merlin: youth and all that kind of stuff but setting that aside for for for just a minute i i i think i realized something that's worth being aware of which is there's never any guarantees oh you liked him in this movie so you'll like him in that movie or oh you like this book that i perceive as being similar none of that stuff is reliable but but one of the things that i think is interesting is
Merlin: Um, okay.
Merlin: So for example, if you, I'm trying to think of a really good example of this, but you've read books where there's books where that are hard to follow, but you do get the feeling like, oh, there's something here I'm supposed to follow and I'm not following.
Merlin: Obviously there's movies like that.
Merlin: If anybody can explain the plot of the big sleep to me, well, good luck.
Merlin: I still love the big sleep.
Merlin: It's one of the great movies.
Merlin: It's just a delight to watch, but it doesn't make a ton of sense.
Merlin: Like a lot of like, you know,
Merlin: Mysteries from the Dashiell Hammett era.
Merlin: But anyway, don't email me.
Merlin: But what I'm trying to get at is this.
Merlin: I'm confused right now as I read this, or I'm confused right now as I watch this.
Merlin: Is it because, if you're my kid, what I came to realize, the breakthrough was, my kid's assumption is...
Merlin: That if he's watching something and doesn't understand what's happening right now, it's because he missed something and now it's too late or whatever.
Merlin: Do you know what I mean?
Merlin: Like when you're reading something, what I'm trying to get at is one nice thing about being exposed to a lot of texts is, well, just in general, you do get a better sense of patience about, well, you know, maybe I'm not supposed to know what's going on yet.
Merlin: Maybe part of the story is that little bits of this are revealed at a time.
Merlin: And like, it's not linear and not a classic linear story that hues to one of the 37 situations or whatever.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: I think that's one thing that's difficult, though, is like if the kid, there have been times now, and I'm not saying this helps, but on more than one occasion, this is a line I learned from my ex-wife.
Merlin: You're watching the same movie I am.
Merlin: You sit down and somebody's confused two minutes in.
Merlin: They go, I don't understand what's happening in this movie.
Merlin: And you go, you know what, honey?
Merlin: You're watching the same movie that I am.
Merlin: This movie just started.
Merlin: There's nothing to be confused about except what you see on the screen.
Merlin: You know, a good example.
Merlin: Here's a good example.
Merlin: I think a slightly underrated movie, Cabin in the Woods.
Merlin: Not appropriate for your kid.
Merlin: I love Cabin in the Woods.
Merlin: But like, it's very given how that movie starts inside of some kind of like a government facility with the guy from six feet under and the guy from the West Wing.
Merlin: And you're like, wait, what's going on?
Merlin: What does this have to do with Chris Hemsworth going to a cabin in the woods?
Merlin: But you know what I mean?
Merlin: And then over time, it sort of reveals itself.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: And so I feel like if I wanted to turn this into some kind of pro-grit opinion piece for The Atlantic, I would say, and I don't, I would say something like, it's nice to develop a tolerance for ambiguity.
Merlin: Is it ambiguity in my understanding of this narrative?
Merlin: Is it ambiguity in my understanding of these relationships?
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: And that's the thing.
Merlin: And I think when you pick up a book, when like I've just, I will occasionally just go and reread a couple chapters of a book that I really like.
Merlin: Like I recently reread the beginning of Confederacy of Dunces again, which unsurprisingly is one of my favorite novels.
Merlin: And that's just, it's just delightful to me.
Merlin: Just.
Merlin: So comforting that I'm loving this TV show, Dave, who I've been describing to.
Merlin: I've been describing the show, Dave, to people as having a cast that's almost like something out of Confederacy of Dunces, which is exactly as delightful.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: So I guess at length, what I'm trying to just say is like, on the one hand, yeah, I get it.
Merlin: You want to have comfort food.
Merlin: You want the thing where you aren't ambiguous about what's happening.
Merlin: You understand that Draco Malfoy is the bad guy.
Merlin: Part of the genius of those goddamn books.
Merlin: is just the way that it's a twist on a school year every year.
Merlin: And like, but you've got the pattern.
Merlin: So when that starts breaking in the last books, it's a big deal.
Merlin: Like, it's a really big deal that they're not going to go back to Hogwarts after all of that.
Merlin: Because you've gone through all of these, what are five or six books of all, you know what I'm saying?
Merlin: And so like, is it a question of like, I don't like feeling dumb and like, I don't understand what's going on.
Merlin: Like, because that is a muscle that does, and I'm not counseling anything except for a fact.
Merlin: The fact that I'm counseling is that as you develop more comfort or tolerance for ambiguity, that's going to make something like, eventually, Tristram Shandy, Ulysses, maybe even 100 Years of Solitude, if you're basic.
Merlin: There's a lot of books that are going to reveal themselves with much more delight
Merlin: you're going to develop more ardor if you're okay with the fact that this is an unusual book.
Merlin: It's not weird.
Merlin: They're not trying to fuck with you.
Merlin: But there is a world where you're going to have to get with how this world is, and it won't all be obvious to you by the end of the first chapter.
John: A hundred years of solitude is just like reading the Talmud.
John: I think loving the time of cholera is the direction to
Merlin: I've never read Caller.
Merlin: I've read, but to me, I think I read, I talk about it a lot because it made an impact on me, but I think I've definitely read it once and probably maybe twice, a hundred years of solitude.
Merlin: It's the Cimmerillion of magical realism.
Merlin: Years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia would remember the distant day his grandfather took him to discover ice.
John: I'll never forget that line.
John: Marlow came in the other day with a graphic novel, and it was a Star Wars-based one.
John: And she said Marvel Marvel ones.
John: Exactly.
John: It was.
Merlin: And she said Darth Vader series.
Merlin: Dark Vader series is really good.
John: She said, I don't like this.
John: And I said, tell me why.
John: And she said, well, I don't like the illustrations.
John: I don't think that they look like the characters, but also cartoony.
John: I don't understand what's going on here.
John: Why is this comic book made?
John: And I said, what's the publication date?
John: And so she goes to the title page.
Merlin: Oh, boy.
John: She says 1992.
John: And I said, okay.
John: So this comic book came at a moment.
John: Marvel was huge.
John: But up until a certain point, Batman had become corny.
John: And she was like, Batman?
John: And I was like, yeah, Batman had become jokey.
John: And part of the effect- Campy.
John: It had become as campy as the TV show in some ways, right?
John: And I said, part of the reason that campy Batman worked is that Batman was dark.
John: And so to make Batman campy and goofy was effective at a certain point.
John: And everybody laughed.
Merlin: Because initially you're playing against type.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: But it's not like this is going to define the tone of this character for 50 years.
John: Right.
John: Batman was not supposed to be funny in the beginning.
John: And then making him funny in the 60s was its own version of kind of edgy.
Merlin: But then Batman... Very hip.
Merlin: I mean, that was considered... That was the year I was born, and that was considered a pretty goddamn hip show to watch on, I believe, ABC Friday nights or whatever it was.
John: And only hip because of... But that's Frank Gorshin.
Merlin: That's the guy who does all the impressions.
John: He's the Riddler.
John: Oh, my God.
John: But by the late 80s, Batman's corniness had kind of been accepted by everybody.
John: And then a comic book came out called The Dark Knight.
John: And Batman was returned to a darkness and an edginess.
John: And all those for wear.
John: That was scary, right?
John: It was scary to everybody.
John: And part of that was that all the Batman comic book readers that had been reading Batman when they were 10, they were all 22 now.
John: And this, and she's just like, uh-huh, uh-huh.
John: And I'm like, so they wanted their comic books to follow them into adulthood.
John: And that began a new whole universe.
John: And this is before the first Star Wars movies, or the prequel Star Wars movies came out.
John: And she knows that whole story.
John: And she's like, uh-huh, uh-huh.
John: And I said, all of these things were a transition of comic books from being for kids to being for grown-ups.
John: And this Star Wars comic was an attempt to do that to Star Wars before the prequels came around and reinvented Star Wars comics.
John: Hopefully for grownups, but also for new kids.
John: And that was a failure.
John: And she's like, right.
John: And I'm like, so this was an attempt of 25 to, to appeal to 25 year olds who had loved star Wars when they were 12 by making it edgy.
John: And she looked at me and she was like, are they going to do that to Harry Potter?
John: And I said, what do you mean?
John: And she said, when I'm 22, I'm going to be a dark Harry Potter.
Merlin: She's seen the last two movies.
John: It gets a little dark.
John: And I said, you mean darker than... And she said, oh, no, no, no.
John: It got dark, but I'm talking about Harry as a grown wizard living in some...
John: you know, she didn't say dystopian, but like living in some dark wizard.
John: Oh, like a, like a back to the future two world.
John: Well, like, no, like he is suddenly he's 25 and he's fighting against the dark side.
John: Right.
John: Right.
John: And is he, is Harry going to, because those last movies, he actually traipsed across a couple of lines.
John: She's like, is this going to happen in my future too?
John: Where dark people,
John: where dark heart hogwarts or like like it's a it's no longer it's no longer kids movie it's now like some kind of edgy adult full of sex and violence but starring those characters right and i was like sweetheart i have zero idea whether but that sure seems like something that they'll try and do doesn't it and she was like
John: Yes.
John: With the implication being that that's for people who are now 30 or 35.
John: Yeah, that what happens is you bond with the commodity or you bond with the characters.
John: With the Han Solos.
John: I want more Han Solo, but I want Han Solo I would enjoy when I'm 35.
John: Right.
John: I want dark solo.
John: I want to be told, I want to be given that documentary.
John: I want to be given the, the, uh, the hard take, but I want it to be in the form of these characters that I know and love.
John: And you know, that defined the comic book industry for the next 30 plus years.
John: And we're kind of still there, right?
John: A lot of those Marvel movies you can watch when you're 10 and I guess they're made to be watched when you're 10, but you can also watch them when you're 40 and
John: And, you know, there's enough there for you.
John: And a lot of it is nostalgia or a lot of it is like reading Big Nate over and over.
John: but they keep coming out right so it's like it's like if if they were writing uh diary of a wimpy kid except starring um chris pratt or christopher walken or christopher walken diary of a wimpy kid starring christopher walken as the wimpy kid age 80 my brother has been bullying me in the back of the car
Merlin: What's the little one's name?
Merlin: Is it Ike or Nate?
Merlin: Who's the little one?
Merlin: Who's the baby?
Merlin: Horace.
Merlin: He's really cute.
Merlin: Hernando.
Merlin: I feel bad for the dad on that trip.
Merlin: They have a lot of problems on their automobile trip.
Merlin: I think it's called something like the wimpy kid takes a trip or something.
John: Yeah, I look at it over her shoulder and go, good luck.
John: You know, I haven't sat down and read it because I looked at the back and I was like, is this dumb or not dumb?
John: And it was not dumb enough that it was like.
Merlin: Can I throw one more bomb, please?
John: Yeah, throw the bombs.
Merlin: I have not given a ton of thought to eight is enough in a long time.
Merlin: I think like you, I had a pretty big crush on Christy McNichol.
Merlin: Absolutely.
Merlin: Absolutely.
Merlin: I always figured her and Abby were playing for the other team in retrospect.
Merlin: Even then, even then.
Merlin: But one of the downsides of that stuff, and I'm going to try not to make this too big of a point so that it loses its meaning, but when we talk about stuff like TV from our youth, we talk about mainstream comics, and the conventional wisdom for so many years amongst really smart people was, before we even had a term like four-quadrant movie,
Merlin: It was the idea that like, okay, this movie is rated PG, like every movie was in the 70s anyway, right?
Merlin: Almost everything was rated PG.
Merlin: And God, we went to see Mario at the theater.
Merlin: I can't believe that movie was rated PG.
Merlin: Oh my goodness.
Merlin: Was it for grownups?
Merlin: I mean, there was a fair amount of peril that I would consider a little bit PG-13.
Merlin: But in any case, PG was all we had, right?
Merlin: It was G, it was PG, it was R. And PG meant like, you know,
Merlin: And I'm trying to think of Star Wars perhaps as, I guess, a pretty good example.
Merlin: But it wasn't just Star Wars.
Merlin: I mean, Jaws was too scary for me.
Merlin: But there were movies where there was a little romance and there's a little bit of action.
Merlin: And all the classic sort of old Hollywood idea of there's some singing and dancing and it's got everything.
Merlin: And occasionally you would get a movie that was fairly successful for everybody but the most...
Merlin: Somebody who was there for like a very specific cultural fetish would enjoy this film to some extent, right?
Merlin: Grandma and the baby can enjoy it, you know, just the same.
Merlin: But increasingly over the years, as genre fiction became a bigger thing and people got more into certain kinds of genre fiction or it became less embarrassing to like Lord of the Rings.
Merlin: You know, or you know what I mean?
Merlin: You know what I'm saying though?
Merlin: Like where it became more okay to like, I'm not saying geek stuff.
Merlin: I'm not saying, I'm saying genre fiction in particular became less of like an embarrassing thing.
Merlin: Well, then the dumb thing was you think of the comic movies again, like the eighties, the post Superman, but pre Iron Man movies for a long time.
Merlin: The biggest problem probably was that they were impoverished for ideas and didn't have a good budget.
Merlin: But also you end up disappointing everybody because you're trying to do too much with too little.
Merlin: And because it was in some cases the 70s and 80s, there had to be boobs and everything.
Merlin: There had to be some violence, some kind of depraved violence in almost every movie.
Merlin: And you end up making everybody sad or bummed or disappointed.
Merlin: But with genre stuff,
Merlin: you could get fairly specific in like, oh, this is for the genre people.
Merlin: Like this particular, so like you were talking about The Dark Knight, same year you got Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons doing Watchmen, you know?
Merlin: And then, you know, Alan Moore would come back later to do, you know, a kind of famous and controversial Killing Joke comic about Batman in particular that was beyond gritty.
Merlin: Like it was too much.
Merlin: And like today we look back on the Killing Joke
Merlin: As like, oh, my God, OK, that's where it kind of went a little bit too far.
Merlin: Right.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: But I guess what I'm trying to say is like the downside of this whole like when you mentioned it is enough and all the pro not pro social, but, you know, like every at the end of every G.I.
Merlin: Joe, they have to tell you to like drink your milk and stay off drugs because that became like a mandate in the 70s to like have pro social values into.
John: Yeah, it's like the end of any Don Rickles routine where he's like, actually, I love everybody.
Merlin: Actually, you know, I love everybody except this one over here with the blanket on the fricking.
Merlin: But I guess what I'm trying to say is you take something like it is enough and we might have hazy, misty water-collared memories of these shows that we enjoyed every single fucking Christmas Eve.
Merlin: I always remember the same episode of Happy Days where Richie looks through the garage window and sees Fonzie heating up a can of beans in his garage.
John: Yeah, poor Fonz.
Merlin: Because it made me so sad when I was a kid.
John: Poor Fonz.
Merlin: So you trot out in eight is enough, and I don't mean to be beating up on the Van Patten media properties, but what's the resolution for all those big issues?
Merlin: Everything mostly turns out fine.
Merlin: The hooker or the gay person dies.
Merlin: Sorry, the sex worker or the gay person dies because they always have to die and those kinds of things.
Merlin: But all the normal people end up becoming a little bit more normal.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: Well, except I was thinking about this.
Merlin: You don't end up with having to interrogate your own ideas about that difficult social issue.
John: But at the time, I mean, I think it's important to remember, and this was probably true of you, maybe less, maybe more.
Merlin: I really wanted happy endings and everything.
John: But I, at that time, when I went to the hotel by the ski resort and went up the back stairs, there were always five employees of the ski resort back there smoking weed.
John: And when I walked down to the, to the, uh, to the park near my house, there were always at least two teenagers like dry humping in the bushes.
John: And I was exposed to, and you know, and my babysitter, as soon as my mom left, her boyfriend came over and they sat on the couch the whole time they were babysitting me, uh, stoned and making out.
John: And presumably after they put me to bed, fucking on the couch and everywhere.
John: I mean, my dad, my dad took me to the tavern and dropped me off and gave the bartender five bucks and said, give him as much whipped cream as he wants.
John: I'll be back in between an hour and two hours.
John: And so the, you know, watching that stuff on TV, first of all, did not seem that far out because all around me, you know, if I opened up time magazine and
John: I remember very distinctly, there was an article about, uh, evil Knievel trying to jump the snake river Canyon.
John: And in the, in time magazine, there was a photo of a, of a girl, uh, sitting on a guy's shoulder, taking her top, you know, like raising her top off, like flashing the camera.
John: And at that point in that moment, time magazine was like, this is, this is life.
John: This is where we are.
John: And so the happy endings that came at the end of those felt more like, please God, let there be a happy ending.
John: Because everywhere I look there, I'm at eight years old, was exposed to drugs and sex.
John: Everywhere I looked, in every park, in every playground, and not in a way like today where kids are looking at like hardcore porn,
John: But I had to turn to a friend and go, what are they doing?
John: And the friend was like, they're kissing and humping.
John: And I'm like, and so they're not fighting.
John: Right?
John: Like there was a, there was a, I learned all that stuff at a really much younger age just by being confronted with it.
John: And that was because I was out in the park by myself and nobody was minding me.
John: Right?
John: And I was in the back stairs at the ski resort.
John: kind of crowding my way through the kids who were smoking pot and they made no attempt to hide it because this was the, this was regular in 1979 and probably not in 1972 and probably, and definitely not in 1985, but whatever that, that Gen X portal that we went through from 77 to 82, where it just seemed like the wheels had come off.
John: Nope.
John: Parents weren't watching their kids anymore.
John: And I,
John: And that seemed normal.
John: And television and movies, like I watched Animal House at a time when I shouldn't have.
John: I watched all those movies and they were kids movies.
Merlin: I was 12 when I saw it.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: 13.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: I mean, my sister saw Jaws when she was seven and wouldn't go in a swimming pool for six years.
Merlin: So I do see what you're saying about it being not... It's just that happy endings don't have... They don't allow for any... I hate to sound like my stupid fucking thesis here, but there's very little divergence from a pretty mainstream ideology about what is acceptable, what is in the...
John: Oh, everybody comes back and they end up being straight and getting married.
Merlin: Yeah, and the thing is, you're going to get cautionary tales about the other people.
Merlin: All those other people who aren't as good as the... God, what are their names?
Merlin: Whatever.
Merlin: All I'm saying is it's not that I'm against happy endings or anything like that.
Merlin: I'm worried that it's out of alignment.
Merlin: It's just that you end up telling this...
Merlin: incredibly unsatisfying story that gets, you know, this Michael Landon kind of ending on it, that it's not, and again, I'm just being clear, I'm not saying that, oh, you have to make people sad with media, but it's that there's not a lot of room for your mind to turn over what just happened because the ideology took care of everything for you.
John: The problem now is I've watched three movies in the last two months that were set in the 1940s
John: Where they would be in a bar full of servicemen dancing with girls and there were, and it was an integrated bar.
John: There were black people throughout.
John: There were black people throughout the story.
John: And they would not have been not only in a movie, but would not have been in that environment.
John: And there's a kind of current version of this, which is like reverse engineering a world where there wasn't discrimination in order to make a movie now that has representation.
Yeah.
John: Now it's wonderful to make movies now that have representation, but if you misrepresent what the forties were like, you're raising a generation of kids that hear those stories and they don't make any sense.
John: Cause all the world war two movies they've ever seen, uh, it's an integrated cast, including a gay guy and a, and a trans person.
John: And it's, well, I haven't seen that yet, but, but you know, representation is,
John: Deciding that all media has to have representation to the degree that you're making a World War I movie where the American troops are integrated is a version of that same happy ending story.
John: Where it's like, well, we don't want kids to have to confront...
John: that, and we can't tell the story without representation in modern media.
John: And so we're just going to tell the story as though we're just going to, we're going to appeal to both camps.
Merlin: I can see that's tricky.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: And I don't know.
John: I mean, I was watching a really good show set in the early sixties and there was a main character who was black.
John: It was plausible.
John: He was black, but he kept introducing himself as a black man.
John: Because it was impossible for them to use the word Negro in the show, which is the word that would have been used.
John: And they spent millions of dollars making sure everybody's making sure every car in the background was from 1961.
John: Every watch on everybody's arm was from 1961.
John: I mean, the set design was impeccable on this show.
John: And it cost them a fortune to make this show look exactly right.
John: But they could not use the word Negro.
John: Right, right.
John: Because no one could hear it, you know, because a contemporary audience couldn't hear it.
John: It would, it would, it would, I don't know what it would do.
John: It would murder them.
John: And so, but that little detail for somebody who's looking for details, for me, it was just like, boing, weird.
John: It's weird.
John: Because it's a historical drama, right?
Merlin: I mean, it's one thing like, well, actually, I don't want to say this.
Merlin: What I was going to say was that like, I remember when I very first would see episodes of Doctor Who from New Who, like post 2005 Doctor Who, where the BBC had done this really amazing job of doing diverse casting.
Merlin: And like, it works.
Merlin: It's about people in London and aliens.
Merlin: And we can afford to have some people in here who are not white dudes, and it all works out fine.
Merlin: I think you're saying something different, which is like,
Merlin: the impact of this historically must not leave out the enmity and the
Merlin: wickedness of that time and and and and to do the modern thing of saying like well yes we do want to have people represented but at the same time if you do that and you leave out that word you're you're giving a pass to a time that doesn't deserve a pass well right and i think the problem is that they want to tell the story of of some it's just some world war ii story and they and they and they want representation
John: But they don't want to spend the 20 minutes that they feel obligated to to explain racism in the 40s to the audience.
John: And they don't have the respect for the audience to feel like, okay, the audience understands there was racism in the 40s and understands what that means about the story we're trying to tell.
John: And so it's a form of dumbing it down.
John: But what happens is if you watch it when you're 12 –
John: And then you go into school and they say in the 40s there was segregation in the army.
John: And then you watch the movie and there isn't.
John: There's a massive, maybe an unintended, well certainly an unintended, maybe a subconscious cognitive disconnect.
John: Which I think gets in the way of actually reckoning with the racism in the forties.
John: Yeah.
John: Because you're watching it and you're just like, oh, well, everything must've been fine then.
John: Um, it's, you know, it's, it's, uh, I don't know the solution to it.
John: And I know I'm going to get letters on both sides, right.
John: Where people are like, well, whatever the cost, uh, the representation is worth it, whatever the cost.
John: Um, and I don't know the answer, but certainly it feels, it feels like when Carl Weathers Jr.
John: shows up in force 10 from Navarone, uh, um, that that was the seventies way of, of doing it, introducing a black character, but he's not supposed to be there.
John: He's a, he, he punched his way into the gang and they're all really suspicious of him and he fights his way into their respect.
Um,
John: that would be also not the way that we would play it now.
John: Right.
John: So...
John: you know, beats the hell out of me.
John: Showing it to her, showing it to my little one, I did not feel that I needed to lean over and go, he wouldn't have said Black.
Merlin: I know it's not perfect, but I kind of feel like Mad Men did a good job with this on a lot of things.
Merlin: In the sense of, like, a part of the show is that there are, especially in the first season, is that there are these lines that don't get crossed.
Merlin: Sometimes it's for comic effect in, like, the first or second episode when Sally walks in with a dry cleaning bag on her head.
Merlin: I would not even attempt to explain to my kid why that's so funny.
Merlin: It's just that we grew up, you and I grew up after a lot of kids had reportedly died from cribs being lined with dry cleaner bags.
Merlin: And our whole life, like it was one of those things, like don't, you got to wait half an hour to go swimming after you eat and never, never, never touch a dry cleaning bag.
Merlin: But the stuff, like, think about the way in Mad Men, I think it's in the first season, where they have to deal with the woman whose family owns basically the Jewish department store.
Merlin: And, like, the subtlety of, like, yeah, we want your business, and yeah, you can come in here through the front entrance and everything, but, like, you're still the Jewish department store to a lot of the people who work here.
Merlin: But, like, that to me is, because that is more fraught, that is more ambiguous, that is more sort of...
Merlin: It produces anxiety for me to watch people have to like, you know, deal with each other in that way that is not very particularly well lubricated.
Merlin: And like, I think sometimes that gives you that vibe in a way that's valuable.
Merlin: Whereas just going like, oh, you know, I don't want to take a cheap shot, but I think I know what you're saying.
John: Yeah.
John: And I mean, and, and Mad Men was designed for a fully grownup audience.
Merlin: Oh yeah.
John: Um, what I'm noticing now is that the sixties are going to make the fifties look like the thirties.
John: A hundred percent.
John: But, but also the sixties and the cold war now are being repackaged for all of us as a fashionable, fun, uh, Carnaby street, good time because the clothes look amazing.
John: And we're going to do some spy show about spies.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: And it's kind of the way World War II movies ended up just like, oh, you could just invent any story you wanted.
John: Three guys go to find Nazi gold in the top of the Colossus of Rhodes.
Merlin: Where it's more of a setting.
John: It's a setting, right?
John: It's a set.
John: It's a style.
Merlin: It's not about that time.
Merlin: It's just that's where it's set.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: It's clothes, it's music.
Merlin: There's a lot of dragons and shit in it.
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: It can be whatever you want within this style that we all understand.
John: And definitely the 60s, I don't understand why they don't do it with the 70s, which is an even funnier and more fun time.
John: But what I'm noticing watching the shows is that they are absolutely minimizing and comicalizing the Cold War.
John: in a way that none of the movies from the time did we all understood watching those movies that the fate of the world hung in the balance of whether that guy's umbrella yeah please don't play that for laughs it really fucked me up right you know like all those spy movies where it's like oh well this guy is sitting in a restaurant and he's going to touch the tip of his glasses and you're going to say the word sugarcane and that is going to keep us all safe
John: And now doing it as like a, like a, um, the Kingsman style, like lol.
John: Uh, it's all just like a, it's all just a fashion show.
Merlin: We should all go back and, and my watch keeps ringing.
Merlin: I'm so sorry.
Merlin: We should all go back and rewatch Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
John: I know.
John: Well, no.
John: And watch the Alec Guinness.
Merlin: That's what I'm saying.
Merlin: Rack up the Guinness version.
John: Put it up.
John: The Guinness version.
John: I don't even know if you can stream it.
Merlin: Oh, I stole it.
Merlin: No, I stole it.
Merlin: Yeah, I see.
John: It's like nine straight hours of Alec Guinness sitting and staring at his own reflection.
Merlin: Just a lot of guys talking about being secret agents.
Merlin: It's really, really long.
Merlin: If you're ready to put your legs up, let's say you've watched Master Commander four times in the last week.
Merlin: You're ready for a little treat.
Merlin: Time to eat your vegetables.
Merlin: Sit down and watch Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
John: Yeah, watch the miniseries, the British miniseries.
John: The movie looks good too.
Merlin: I finally got the movie because I was enjoying the miniseries.
John: The movie's good except there's no suspense because you know who the bad guy is.
Merlin: It's all jokes and laughs.
Merlin: Oh, Cold War.
Merlin: Ha, ha, ha.
John: But in the miniseries, you know, each one of those boring guys gets his boring six hours.
Merlin: Because you don't know who's the mole.
Merlin: It's like the call's coming from inside the, you know, the bureau.
Merlin: Did you watch the other one that guy's in, that Sirius Black is in?
Merlin: Have you watched the one on Apple TV Plus?
John: Yes.
John: The Slow Horses.
John: The Slow Horses.
John: I like it a lot.
John: I do too.
John: I like that a lot.
Merlin: I want to leave and edit this and put it up.
Merlin: Let me ask you this.
Merlin: Do you think you might consider showing your kid breaking away the movie?
John: I think Breaking Away, the movie is now gone to very close to the top of the list of movies to watch.
John: I mean, right after Godfather and Godfather 2.
John: I'm going to, yeah, breaking away.
Merlin: Not like people say.
John: He got stepped over.
John: Not like, yeah, I thought you meant, not like you say.
John: No, not like you say.
John: Uh-huh.
John: You don't talk like a man like Logan like that.
Merlin: He was banging cocktail waitresses two at a time.
John: Do you renounce Satan?
John: I do renounce him.
Merlin: I like him to when he undoes the light bulb.
Merlin: I love that whole sequence with the parade.
John: Wait a minute.
John: You just made two references that are both in No Country for Old Men.
John: No, not like you say.
John: And the light bulb.
Merlin: Wait, not like you say.
Merlin: Is that the most you've ever bet on?
John: No, no, no.
John: At the very end, when he shows up at her house and says, I'm going to flip a coin.
John: And she says, no, I'm not going to play your game.
John: And he says, and he says, your husband made a choice.
John: That's why I'm here.
John: And now you're going to die because I offered him that you live and he chose no.
John: And she says, no, not like you say.
Merlin: Not like you say.
Merlin: Huh.
Merlin: Um, yeah.
John: She's too young to watch that too.
Merlin: I think probably, you know, you could maybe get some kind of like Christian DVD version.
Merlin: That's like 40 minutes long, but without all the headshots.
Merlin: Yeah.
Yeah.
Merlin: Other kind of headshot.
Merlin: Breaking away.
Merlin: Is there another movie?
Merlin: Are there any other movies like that we're thinking about?
Merlin: Certainly not Meatballs.
Merlin: Oh, that's got Chris McPeace in it, if memory serves.
John: Yeah, but there's a lot of, I think there's a lot of.
Merlin: Oh, there's a lot of, yeah, a lot of camp hijinks, as we used to call it.
Merlin: What about Up the Academy?
Merlin: What about Mad Magazine's Up the Academy?
Merlin: Have you thought about that?
Merlin: I don't think so.
Merlin: Remember the very end when you see Alfred E. Newman and it's really upsetting?
John: Oh, wait, what about Police Academy?
John: It's all full of bad jokes, right?
Merlin: There's so many police academies.
Merlin: You could totally do that.
Merlin: They go to Russia if memory serves at one point.
John: Spies Like Us.
John: Oh, her mom insisted she watched Three Amigos, and she and I both sat there with our eyes rolling and our heads like, why are we watching this?
John: And her mom's laughing.
John: Oh, this was one of the great movies.
Merlin: See, I can't even tell you how often I've... I mean, Caddyshack is still very funny at parts, but that's that kind of movie, with all respect to Ari, where you go, oh, this is still... Yeah, it's kind of... Anything with Chevy Chase past Fletch is...
John: I don't think it... And I'm not even sure if Fletch holds up.
John: You shut your fucking whore mouth.
Merlin: You are going to go... This afternoon, you're going to hang up your goddamn computer and go watch Fletch all the way through.
Merlin: Doctor?
Merlin: Doctor?
Merlin: Dr. Rosen Rosen?
Merlin: Maybe the head of Alfredo Garcia.
John: All right.