Ep. 507: "Haunted House of a Mind"
John: Hello.
John: Hi, John.
John: Hi, Merlin.
John: How are you?
John: Oh, hi, AI Merlin.
John: No.
John: I'm a little groggy.
Merlin: Yeah, me too.
Merlin: When I woke up this morning.
Merlin: You gotta fake it till we make it, is what they say.
John: I barely woke up this morning.
John: I was so ready to sleep more that I wrote you and said...
John: That I wanted to push, but I didn't have anything to do.
John: I just wanted to roll up and go back to sleep.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, I was already committed to the office, so I utilized that time to play solitaire and lay on the couch.
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hello, best day ever.
Merlin: I don't know, man.
Merlin: I've done – Oh, the things you've done.
Merlin: Oh, the things that I have done.
Merlin: This is the kind of thing you can't explain to your family.
John: You're going to explain T-beams glittering off the Tannhouser gate?
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: C-beams.
John: Sorry, C-beams.
Merlin: Different kind of beam.
Merlin: So they didn't have those till later.
Merlin: T-beams wouldn't have worked anyway.
Merlin: Yeah, go ahead.
Merlin: They explained it all in the voiceover.
Merlin: It doesn't matter.
Merlin: But I started playing a solitaire game.
Merlin: And I used to be a solitaire man back in the day.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: Solitaire.
Merlin: Solitaire man.
Merlin: That's Neil Duck.
Merlin: He pronounces it solitaire.
Merlin: Which kind of solitaire?
Merlin: Doesn't matter.
Merlin: Do you want to know?
Merlin: Well, yeah.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Well, you know, it's one that's included with the Apple Arcade games.
Merlin: But solitaire is not a video game.
Merlin: I'm just playing it on my phone, just to be clear.
Merlin: It's not a video game.
John: I see.
John: So it's not a video game.
John: No, no, no.
John: You're just playing it.
John: It's a regular game, a card game.
Merlin: Yeah, I mean, it's a lot, really.
Merlin: It's more like chess than a video game, because you've got kings and queens.
Merlin: Yes, you do.
Merlin: And it's an epic metaphor, you know, really, about Admiralty Law.
Merlin: Good and evil?
Merlin: Sure, good and evil.
Merlin: Admiralty Law.
Yeah.
Merlin: Well, that's the gold tassels on the flag, right?
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: That's why we don't have to obey the speed limit.
Merlin: You know, too.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: Well, don't tell too many people until we're ready to really roll out the strategy.
Merlin: But basically, there is no law.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Unless you happen to be living on a boat.
John: Yeah.
John: It's really confusing.
John: In 1786.
Merlin: And you can't even adjudicate it because there's no courts.
Yeah.
John: Are there sea courts?
John: Lloyd Bridges in sea court.
John: I'll allow it.
John: I'm a sheriff.
John: You're a sheriff.
John: I love that book.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Settle down.
Merlin: All right, everybody.
Merlin: Just because there's no more law in what we call America doesn't mean we can all go crazy.
John: So you're explaining Admiralty Law to your family?
John: No, no, no, Solitaire.
John: Why Solitaire is not a video game?
Merlin: Well, okay, so the problem is I got back into Solitaire approximately almost exactly the same moment that I got really into this one Graham Parker album.
Merlin: And so I would put on the Graham Parker album.
Merlin: Bow, bow, bow, bow, bow, bow, bow, bow.
Merlin: Discovering Japan.
Merlin: Let's start playing.
Merlin: And here's me.
Merlin: Flicka, flicka, flicka, flicka.
Merlin: And that, like habits, you know, they get solidified when you do them over and over.
Merlin: It's like strengthening a muscle.
Merlin: And now...
Merlin: i i have graham parker squeezing out sparks in my head all the time because it's i i'm it took me a long time to realize it's one of the great albums wow holy god that's a good album and you know he has a song on there just for you you know what song that is yeah it goes like this waiting for the ufos uh-huh
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I like it.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It's really good.
Merlin: 1979 is very good.
Merlin: But now they're tangled in my head.
Merlin: So in addition to my usual problem of constantly having songs in my head, now I also, every time I play Solitaire, I think of Graham Parker.
Merlin: And it's made me feel just the teeniest bit crazy.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: You make an association.
Merlin: And even in my advanced years, who knows what's going on up in my brain bowl?
Merlin: I don't even know what's firing up there anymore.
Merlin: I'm surprised anything's happening.
Merlin: It would be like walking into a haunted house and the toilet was flawlessly clean and worked great.
Merlin: I don't understand what's happening in this haunted house of a mind.
John: But the Graham Parker record, I feel, is key here because it's kind of based on what I know about Graham Parker.
John: I don't know this record, but
John: But it's sort of a proto-New Wave kind of English-y songwriter-y.
John: Pretty close, yeah.
John: But it's like herky-jerky, right?
Merlin: A couple guys, including the – a couple guys from Brinsley Schwartz, pub rock bands.
Merlin: A pub rock band, including the actual guy, Brinsley Schwartz, who's a ripping guitar player.
Merlin: And so, yeah, it's pub rock, but it's in that stiff records, pub rock, Nick Lowe kind of thing.
Merlin: Very Elvis Costello-y, obviously, but yeah.
John: Yeah, sort of influenced by the flash.
John: Does it give you insight into my solitaire?
John: Well, I'm just wondering because it might have something to do with you feeling a little bit crazy because it's already a crazy time in music.
John: Yes.
John: And solitaire is...
John: The only game in town?
John: Well, it is, and it's sort of rhythmic, and it's, you know, rhythmic and repetitive.
John: Yeah.
John: And you've got some, you know, it's like all you need is just sort of a strobe light going on, and you're going to be getting into, like... Manjurian Candidate!
John: Yeah, black, white, black, white, black, white, you know... Yeah, interlinked, interlinked.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's me.
John: So, yeah, you might be doing it to yourself.
Merlin: Can I be a sleeper, a sleeper... Oh, wait, there's a joke here.
Merlin: Can I be a sleeper free cell?
No.
Merlin: A sleeper free cell.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: I withdraw it.
Merlin: That wasn't funny.
Merlin: It was there.
Merlin: It was in the pop park.
Merlin: I could hear it scratching at the door.
John: That joke wanted to get in.
John: When you said, wait, there's a joke, I immediately went to Woody Allen's sleeper, and so I pictured you with a little robot mouth.
John: Oh, robot mouth.
John: And so I was like, where's he going with this?
John: Where's he going?
Merlin: I think that's kind of his version of the Charlie Chaplin movie, Modern Times in some ways.
Merlin: He does a chaplain, doesn't he?
Merlin: Wait, now that's Sleeper, and that's different.
Merlin: Bananas is the one with the Revolution.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Boy.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I don't know if it's bad.
Merlin: I don't know if it's good.
Merlin: It is what it is, as they say, but I did play a little bit this morning.
Merlin: Have you ever played it with real cards, with live cards?
Merlin: You know, I did.
Merlin: I was a lonely child, and I learned how to play solitaire.
Merlin: It's only when I actually play it where I'm not allowed to cheat that I realize how much I unintentionally used to cheat.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: Because it's like you're so close.
Merlin: Why not just...
Merlin: But I think also, like, I didn't have According to Hoyle.
Merlin: I didn't have Friends.
Merlin: I don't know if that's in According to Hoyle.
Merlin: But, I mean, I knew the rough idea of Solitaire.
Merlin: Probably one of my grandparents had shown it to me.
Merlin: But, no, I would do stuff like you break up the, you know, you can't really, like, let's say you got alternating colors, right?
Merlin: Alternating colors.
Merlin: King, Queen, Jack, 10.
Merlin: You can't just grab 9 through 6 out of the middle and put it somewhere else.
Merlin: I don't do that now because I'm not permitted to by my phone.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: But I would like to think that it's making me very sharp.
Merlin: And I listen to that album a lot, so that's good.
Merlin: I have one track from there, a video that I would very much like for you to watch.
Merlin: All right, send that along.
John: Send that along.
John: Well, I don't do it now, but you know.
John: I have taken Solitaire off my phone.
John: Oh, was it becoming a problem?
Merlin: Well, for many years.
John: On and off.
Merlin: Just so I know, apart from social media stuff, was that your go-to open up and diddle around app?
John: Yes.
John: Oh, really?
John: The thing is, I'm still playing things on the phone that are not video games.
John: So I keep them in constant cycle.
Merlin: You're not shooting anybody.
Merlin: You're not eating crystals.
Merlin: No.
John: It requires no hand-eye coordination at all.
John: But I do have... I mean, there's one that requires hand-eye coordination.
John: It's really my...
John: It's really my oldest love, and that is the Minesweeper game that came bundled with IBM products, which I found somebody had ported it over to the iOS universe.
Merlin: Oh, and so it had that old kind of low-resolution card?
John: Oh, yeah.
John: It's 8-bit.
John: Oh, wow.
John: But you're trying to discover the mines in a giant minefield.
John: Right.
John: And I play that, and I play Mahjong, which as you know is an ancient tile game.
Merlin: I don't know the rules of that, but that's pretty popular in my neighborhood.
John: I feel like the Mahjong on my phone does not prepare you at all to play Mahjong on the streets in the sunset.
John: Mahjong in the sunset looks pretty vicious.
John: Yeah, Mahjong on my phone is just like a relaxing, it's just exactly a matching game, except it's a matching game where you have to
John: you have to um it's harder than just like oh the two puppies and the two flowers right it's like harder than that because if you don't because it's like solitaire if you don't do it right then you get to a place where you can't move anymore well the problem the thing with i don't want to talk about games i hate games and then i play threes that's the other one i still play threes really play it i still play so mad at that game because i couldn't do better
John: I'm mad at it every single day.
John: I go, you've got to be kidding me.
John: That's what, you know?
Merlin: If you tell somebody you play a game, I think in a wholesome way, people will be like, oh my God, I love that game.
Merlin: Like I'm level 198.
Merlin: I'm a submarine commander in that game.
Merlin: And you're like, oh, I'm like really low down.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But see, here's the problem also.
Merlin: The way in which it is admittedly a little like a video game is it's got video game components to it.
Merlin: As in, it's got a daily challenge.
Merlin: You know, there's no betting.
Merlin: There's no wagering.
Merlin: Just so you know, one nice thing about Apple Arcade games is they don't have ads and upsells.
Merlin: It's just a game you play.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Well, now where do you get these Apple Arcade games?
Merlin: Well, there's like things you get.
Merlin: It's eels all the way down.
Merlin: We subscribe to like – I have their service where I get iClouds, all the things that everybody hates about Apple.
Merlin: I get lots of iCloud space.
Merlin: I get Apple TV Plus.
Merlin: Right, right, right.
Merlin: Apple yelled at me this morning that I'm about to run out of iCloud space.
Merlin: I think that's a mistake, the way they do that.
John: I really do.
John: It's so annoying.
John: It's so – because they're like, hey, you're about to run out of this free thing.
Merlin: But the fact that you get it for a year or two years makes you think, well, I guess I'm still doing okay.
Merlin: Even as it would be really nice for all your shit to be getting backed up on the reg.
Merlin: And one gets so mad at that kind of one-sided pestering.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Where you're like, no, no, fuck you, man.
Merlin: Even if you're trying to help me.
Merlin: Like, fuck you.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Fuck you, man.
Merlin: Fuck you, man.
Merlin: But it's also got things like you can have a run of so many games.
Merlin: And then there's always, quote, unquote, an event going on.
Merlin: I know this all sounds like in games where you have to pay for stuff, this stuff sucks.
Merlin: But I don't mind it here.
Merlin: I basically play exactly the same way every time.
Merlin: You get a challenge and it'll say something like, you know, get...
Merlin: I've mentioned this example before, but you've got to get all the fours up into the foundation.
Merlin: Yeah, the fours, yeah.
Merlin: Or you've got to get this down into the tableau, and I never remember which is which.
Merlin: So I end up doing that, and like yesterday, I filled in all of my days.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: From late June through July.
Merlin: From your late 30s to the present.
Merlin: Waiting for the UFOs.
Merlin: What have I done?
Merlin: I don't have other games.
Merlin: I mean, I play other little games, but I'm not a games person.
John: I've never been a games person.
John: Have you not ever – well, let me ask you this.
John: Why do you hear me?
John: Have you – Mr. Mann, have you ever played a first-person shooter game –
Merlin: uh with enough uh reliability that you become uh technically proficient at it no not in any conventional sense with any conventional game i mean i none of those like you know castle nazi stein games or whatever all the way down into the more sophisticated no i i don't know i um because i i came up on the 2600 you know totally different head
John: So to follow up.
John: Yes, you there.
John: Do you have difficulty fully understanding people that have come up in a gamer culture?
Merlin: Oh, John.
John: Who surely make up some large components.
Merlin: Talk about something that's hard to explain.
Merlin: No, I'm sorry.
Merlin: I interrupted you.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: Go ahead.
Merlin: I feel like...
Merlin: I missed – I feel almost like I was homeschooled and, like, wasn't allowed to watch TV or something.
Merlin: I'm not sure quite – it's not quite like that.
Merlin: But everybody my age and younger –
Merlin: i'm not saying i am the bar at this but like you know but like honestly the first games i played were like you know uh pretty basic like space or or uh not not pole position but what was the really good yeah yeah yeah the um lunar lander yeah lunar lander moon buggy moon buggy that's what you're thinking moon patrol on i believe the song goes like this
Merlin: And I would sing, I'm going to be a Moon Patrol Ranger.
Merlin: I'm going to be a Moon Patrol Ranger.
Merlin: Play a little Pitfall.
Merlin: Yeah, I'd do all that.
Merlin: I mean, what I reject is the idea of like... I'm like, yeah, I like video games when it mattered.
Merlin: My friend Sam had a 2600 and we'd play it.
Merlin: We had five games and that's what we played.
John: Try and get past the dragon is what I like to say.
John: Get past the dragon.
John: And I would play arcade games.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: But no, I don't.
Merlin: Smart bomb?
Merlin: Did you ever smart bomb?
Merlin: In Defender, I smart bomb the shit out of people.
Merlin: Okay, all right.
Merlin: I knew all the tricks.
John: I wasn't good.
John: No, no, no.
John: That takes a lot of quarters.
Merlin: No, but I was okay.
Merlin: I was pretty okay good at Robotron, but not like any, like, you know.
Merlin: I liked Williams games.
Merlin: Anyhow, no, but it's... Attack the humanoid.
Merlin: Well, do you remember Gorf?
Merlin: Gorf was a cool game.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: You know, because it kind of was like five games in one.
Merlin: I do remember Gorf.
Merlin: Yeah, there were five levels.
Merlin: It was like Tron, four games in one.
Merlin: Try again, space, cadet.
John: Ha ha ha.
John: I was really good at elevator action, and nobody's ever heard of that game, and nobody's ever seen it.
John: That was an arcade game.
John: It was an arcade game.
John: Yeah.
John: It was only around for a brief period of time, and I had finally discovered the game that I, because when I said, did you use Smart Bomb?
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: And you were like, duh.
Merlin: Oh, that was just being silly, yeah.
John: In Defender, I, by the time I got to Smart Bomb.
John: I should say Stargate.
Merlin: Was it Stargate that introduced this?
Merlin: It might have been in Defender.
John: I think Defender was the first smart bomb.
Merlin: I know for sure Stargate had it.
Merlin: But there was, I think, a dedicated button to the smart bomb.
John: There was.
John: There was.
John: And every time I hit that button, I was in full-on panic mode.
John: Like, I would watch guys play Defender, and they would use the smart bomb so effortlessly and so gracefully.
John: Like, oh, and now the entire screen is covered.
John: Because you don't want to blow it.
John: You want to wait until there's a lot of mutants on screen.
John: It was so beautiful.
John: But I had so much panic in Defender that by the time I hit smart bomb, it was always like, ngah!
John: It was like a spider on your arm.
Merlin: And now you're off your rhythm.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: So I was not good at that.
John: Yeah.
John: But I was good at elevator action, and it was one of those games that even dedicated computer game people –
John: arcade game people have never heard of it.
John: And I'm like, no, there were elevators.
Merlin: It feels like an 82, 83, 84 kind of game.
John: Yeah, that's exactly what it is.
Merlin: The classic, the golden, the golden.
Merlin: It just closed the parentheses, though.
Merlin: What it makes me feel like is, and the thing is, I don't have an aggressive...
Merlin: It's sort of like me in sports.
Merlin: I don't have a problem with sports.
Merlin: I have a problem with annoying sports culture and annoying sports people.
Merlin: I don't have a problem with video games.
Merlin: If I have anything at all, what I have quietly privately on my own, it's a slight annoyance at like how I feel a lot of pressure to like care.
Merlin: And it's not something that I enjoy.
Merlin: It's considered okay to yell about religion and go, religion's stupid.
Merlin: Nobody should do that.
Merlin: But if you're not into video games, it's worse than that.
Merlin: Talk about heretical, I feel like sometimes.
Merlin: And then I feel like I'm in that position where I don't really thrive, which is asking me to explain myself.
Merlin: Why don't you like video games?
Merlin: Because I was a grown man.
Merlin: I have a lot of friends who are younger than I am.
Merlin: Yes, of course.
Merlin: And so, like, what I remember about the 90s is not what they remember about the 90s.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: I do.
Merlin: You know how that is.
Merlin: I barely remember the 90s.
Merlin: Hey, man, I'm going to make some decade look like another decade.
Merlin: I don't even remember, man.
John: Yeah, and they're like Smurfs or whatever.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: Fire Strikes Back shit.
Merlin: But no, anyway, it's not a problem in my life.
Merlin: But like, and of course, then I feel like anytime I even mention anything relating to games, I don't know.
Merlin: It's like, I don't know, like a secret furry or something.
Merlin: And people are like, ooh, talk about it.
Merlin: And I'm like, it's just, it's solitaire.
Merlin: It's half of it's Graham Parker to begin with.
John: I'm the exact same, you know.
Merlin: It's not a lifestyle.
John: It's just a thing I do.
John: And I think what it was was we did not make the transition to – what was it?
John: Not Nintendo?
John: Was it Nintendo?
John: Yeah.
John: We did make that transition.
Merlin: The transition we didn't make writ large was into costly, very good, rapidly evolving home console systems.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I didn't own a 2600 until I –
Merlin: bought one at a flea market used in the 90s.
John: I played other people's 2600.
John: It was like going to the drug dealer where you have to sit and talk to him for an hour to get some weed.
John: He smokes your weed.
John: Are you the drug dealer in that?
John: No, I was never a drug dealer.
John: My God.
Merlin: No, no, no, no, no.
Merlin: I mean, are you the person buying the lid of weed or the dealer who stays just a little too long?
John: No, I'm the – yeah, I'm the one that's buying the lid, but I never had them to my house.
John: I always went to their drug dealing lair.
John: Right.
John: And then you can't just show up and be like, here's my money.
John: Give me my weed.
John: Right.
John: Because the whole relationship is based on a false friendship.
John: So he's like, come on in, man.
John: Sit down.
John: Play a video game.
John: Watch some TV with me.
John: And I'm like, OK, bro.
John: I'd like to really utilize this weird position of power that I have.
John: Exactly.
John: So then you're like, all right, UFOs.
John: And he's like, no, that's the thing, man.
John: The thing about UFOs is that they're not UFOs.
John: And then eventually he's like, you want to smoke some weed?
John: What if we're the UFOs?
John: And you go to yourself.
John: Our relationship is entirely based around me smoking weed with you or buying weed from you.
John: I always kind of wonder, do they know it and not care?
John: I don't know.
John: I don't know.
John: They all seem so lonely.
John: But it was the same with video games 10 years before, which was just like you go over to your friend's house.
John: They're already playing the video game.
John: You sit down.
John: You watch them play the video game for an hour.
John: That's the thing we used to do is watch other people play video games.
John: Watch them play the game hoping that one of them will tap out and that the remote control will end up in your hands.
John: And then you're playing against somebody who's way better than you.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: And you're just playing what they want to play, even though they're super bored.
John: And you're just like, I can't believe I'm playing tanks.
Merlin: For better or for worse, again, back to the TV analogy.
Merlin: I mean, I know and I feel like I have retained a lot about television from over the years because I really have loved television.
John: Come and knock on our door.
Merlin: Oh, Larry.
Merlin: What a scam.
Merlin: Larry, he's a nut.
Merlin: That guy's a nut.
Merlin: A predator.
Merlin: Yes, absolutely a predator.
Merlin: You wouldn't see Larry.
Merlin: Larry would be on a different kind of show today.
Merlin: He'd be on a Netflix special.
Merlin: But the...
Merlin: I never had a thing where I just sat at, like with TV, I could get good with TV on my own, right?
Merlin: But I didn't have a Sega Genesis or a Super NES or any of those things.
Merlin: Can I also mention another reason I didn't?
Merlin: I was in fucking college.
John: Yeah, there you go.
John: Except a couple of years later, that's all people did in college.
Merlin: I guess, but I feel like NES, or the original Nintendo, game consoles first got big again, I feel like, right around the time I was starting college.
Merlin: It feels like around 85, 86.
Merlin: But like, how would I be playing video games in college?
Merlin: That's nuts.
Merlin: It's like, I'm sorry, that sounds like a really, maybe a pretentious thing to say, but how the fuck could you find time?
Merlin: I found time to drink and play pool and listen to Husker do on the jukebox, but I did not carve out time to go get good at video games.
Merlin: when I was in a school that was just beating my ass with how much it was over my head.
John: You know, when you were saying that you didn't think you were the bar, I feel that I always felt that, right?
John: I'm not the bar.
John: Well, no.
John: I've always felt that you weren't the bar.
John: Even before we met.
John: That feeling that somehow things are changing right in front of you or right behind you as you're moving through time,
John: It's you're getting there just a day late or right after you pass through the door closes.
Merlin: Because, you know, I started.
Merlin: Are there other examples of that?
Merlin: I think I feel like I agree.
Merlin: I'm trying to think of other examples.
Merlin: Well, there's so many.
Merlin: It's just like a lot of it is like I just don't understand what the fuck anybody's talking about anymore, which I expected and I've prepared for.
Merlin: And like, I don't know who the celebrities are.
Merlin: I'm not mad about it, but I also I do feel a certain degree of.
Merlin: relief that I don't need to know that.
Merlin: And if there's anything I need to know, I have people in my house who can tell me about things that are not in my wheelhouse.
Merlin: But were there things like that where you went, oh, man.
Merlin: I mean, for me, that would be like the concert culture of the late 70s.
John: Well, that's exactly.
John: So I think of my first feeling of that happening in 1980, where in 1980, I became very aware of the fact that both disco and punk
John: were being described by people already in the press as things that had already happened.
John: Right, right.
John: But I was experiencing them both in 1980 as A, contemporaneous.
John: Yes.
John: And B, somewhat equivalent, you know, because there were all these, you know, Blondie was, which was Blondie, disco or punk.
Right.
John: Or New Wave.
John: Or New Wave, right?
John: Which is Gary Neumann.
John: He's very punk.
John: He's also very disco.
John: He's also like somewhere.
John: And so being in that moment and feeling – and being told by Time Magazine that it was already over.
John: But also Foreigner 4 and Back in Black were in play.
John: Also –
John: feeling like that's almost over, right?
John: Bon Scott is dead.
John: I totally agree.
John: And Bonham is dead.
Merlin: All that stuff, and then... I think one of the first new Led Zeppelin songs, I'm sure there were others before this, but I can tell you to a near certainty.
Merlin: You're going to mention Coda right now.
Merlin: Close.
Merlin: That very sad song, All of My Love, from In Through the Outdoor.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Written by John Paul Jones, if I recall.
Merlin: I think it's Robert Plant about his son who died.
Merlin: Oh, but I mean the synths.
Merlin: Oh, shit dog.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Yeah, I used to cover that in Abandon College.
Merlin: I did find time for that.
Merlin: But okay, and that's from 1979.
Merlin: That's like from the year or the year before John Bonham died?
Merlin: But, like, think about, like, this is really nicely illustrated with my wife's family.
Merlin: This is quick.
Merlin: But she's the youngest of seven.
Merlin: And so the kids who were, like, second, third, fourth in birth order, they're very much of that, like, going to concerts in the 70s, go to Boston, and I think they went and saw the cars and stuff like that.
Merlin: And, like, but by the time I saw the Go-Go's and a Flock of Seagulls in 1982, three?
Merlin: I've already felt like, is that possible?
Merlin: I think it was, whenever Vacation came out, I'd already felt like this is, the scene is dead, this is over.
Merlin: And of course, there was also a lot of mishigas about like, oh, is this punk?
Merlin: Like somebody made fun of my local rock and roll station shirt at that concert when I was 15.
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: Boo, boo, you kid who doesn't like the right radio station.
John: I thought everybody liked 98 Rock.
John: I mean, the one thing we were, the one thing we were right on the tip of the spear was video games.
John: Because we were the first that had them, that ever had them.
John: Starting in the 70s.
John: And I remember when, and again, Time Magazine was how I got all my news.
John: Yes.
John: That famous cover story of video games in Time Magazine.
John: And I had that because, I mean, listen, I'm not a nerd and I never was a nerd.
John: I was always a cool, but I did sometimes carry a
John: Time Magazine around in my back pocket of my granimals on my way to the video game arcade.
Merlin: Didn't you used to read the Wall Street Journal in a similar way?
John: Oh, that was in high school, yeah.
John: Okay, that's later.
John: I was trying to evolve.
Merlin: And pulling out a two-week-old copy of the Wall Street Journal.
Merlin: Ship just flipping through it angrily.
Merlin: Commodities, damn it.
John: But I definitely was at the video game parlor that was connected to the Fireweed Theater movie triplex.
John: This is probably early 80s.
John: Oh, very early 80s.
John: And I had that copy of Time Magazine at the video game parlor, and I was walking around showing it to kids.
John: Whoa.
John: Look, video games in Time Magazine.
John: Also, I'm a reader.
John: Look, look.
John: No, no, no.
John: It's not just pictures.
John: I'll read it aloud to you.
John: But we were right on that.
John: And I felt like that should be a thing.
John: That should be a thing.
John: Like if you were a kid, if you were 12 years old when the Pittsburgh Steelers won the game.
John: Yeah, that you would then forever be like, oh, Mr. Old Video Game.
John: Oh, you only served in World War I. That wasn't that great of a war.
John: My first real understanding that some crazy thing had happened was the first rock tour I ever did.
John: We went out with Death Cab for Cutie after South by Southwest.
John: We went from Austin back to Seattle and we played, I don't know, 10 shows probably.
John: And it was really Death Cab's first tour.
John: It was our first tour, but they had an album.
John: They had put out something about airplanes.
Merlin: This is with the hurricanes.
John: And I was in the hurricanes, right?
Merlin: Yeah, just so we're clear, it's not long winters.
Merlin: We're talking like 99, 2000 here.
John: Yeah, exactly, 99.
John: Yeah, like winter of 99.
John: And so they were part of, they were known, right?
John: They weren't famous, but people that collected music.
John: I had it with a die cut.
John: There you go, right?
John: With a little boat?
John: Who are like, hey, what's the new album?
John: Death Cab was the new album.
Merlin: I had seen them.
Merlin: I told you this before.
Merlin: I saw them at Noise Pop in, I think that was 99.
Merlin: And I was just blown away.
John: Well, yeah.
John: And I remember them going to Noise Pop and being like, what's Noise Pop?
John: And they're like, it's a thing in San Francisco, like a festival.
John: And I was like, a festival?
Yeah.
John: Like in San Francisco?
John: A festival of music?
John: Like at a football stadium?
Merlin: And they're like, no, it's like all... Was there like Morris dancing and Maypoles?
Merlin: What the fuck kind of festival?
Merlin: What are you talking about?
Merlin: A festival of music?
Merlin: California?
Merlin: Is there sword fighting?
Merlin: New York City?
John: Get a rope.
John: They said, no, no, it's all the little clubs and all the little spaces.
John: They have little shows in them and it's all together.
John: It's a festival.
John: And I'm like, do you get in a car and drive from?
John: I don't get it.
John: So I was excited for them.
John: But we're on this tour with them, and we played Space Land to 100 people, which was 80 more people than I would have thought.
John: L.A.?
John: In L.A., yeah.
John: And we play – where do we play in San Francisco?
John: It was not a big – Probably bottom of the hill.
John: I don't even know.
John: I thought the first time that we played bottom of the hill.
John: I saw Death Cab.
John: Oh, no, no.
John: You know what it was?
John: We played bottom of the hill on the way down because we also did shows to South by Southwest.
John: And I was in This Busy Monster at that point.
John: You were?
John: I was playing guitar in This Busy Monster.
John: I didn't know that.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: With Christopher and Josh?
John: Josh.
John: And this was the last tour.
John: If I knew that, I forgot it.
John: Well, and in fact... They were weird, man.
John: They were.
John: In San Francisco, I made a couple of lifelong fans, fans that you know that are part of the San Francisco indie community.
John: Part of the festival.
John: Part of the festival, because during the This Busy Monster set, it was one of those things where people were coming to see Death Cab.
John: Right.
John: And This Busy Monster... There was buzz, yeah.
John: ...was a band that nobody was coming to see.
John: And in fact...
Merlin: Wait, was Joe in This Busy Monster?
Merlin: Joe.
Merlin: Joe, I never know how to pronounce his last name.
Merlin: Joe Joe.
John: But Joe did Elsinore Records, but which band was he in?
John: He was in a band that had a name like This Busy Monster, but it was not This Busy Monster.
John: It was some other indie.
John: And that's the thing.
John: What you're describing is...
John: is that this busy monster was still playing by Northwest rules, which were your band does not have to be good or tuneful or enjoyable.
Merlin: And even people who are in the Death Cab circle, it seemed like they didn't really have anything close to a primary band.
Merlin: Everything was a side project.
Merlin: It felt like from a distance where all-time quarterback was probably Ben Gibbard's main thing for a long time, right?
Yeah.
John: Oh, well, it was a transition because he was playing drums in some other band before he even got in this.
John: But this was one of those moments where Bottom of the Hill was sold out.
John: Everybody wanted Death Cab.
John: And this busy monster was up there.
John: And this busy monster did not give any indication that they had ever seen a microphone before.
Yeah.
John: And they'd been a band for a half a dozen years, right?
Merlin: Two of them would go on to start a pretty popular record label.
John: Yeah.
John: They knew what microphones were, but looking like you knew what a microphone was was not cool in Bellingham in 1997.
John: And so those five guys on stage—
John: They were all, they were all facing a different direction.
John: Like Christopher was looking at the kitchen.
John: Josh was standing facing back, but not looking at the drummer, just facing, looking in the corner.
John: So I, and I'm sure I've told the story, but there was, they, the, the band completed one of their like hard to parse long 15 part songs.
John: And got to the end.
Merlin: They were that kind of music.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: It's hard to associate because I don't know what genre they were.
Merlin: Maybe a little bit.
Merlin: They didn't sound like this, but a little bit like, what is it?
Merlin: Gorky Zygotic Monkey or like maybe Thinking Fellers.
Merlin: They were in that sort of like deliberately weird and hard to parse, but not prog because it wasn't fun.
John: No, no, no.
John: There's nothing fun about it.
John: Right.
John: It was intentionally punishing you for not being smart enough.
John: They were just up there being meatballs, right?
John: Oh, you know what?
John: I'm telling a story from a wrong era because this is later.
John: This is later.
John: This story I'm telling.
John: The tour that we did that I started this anecdote to describe.
John: That's okay.
Merlin: I do this all the time, John.
John: Yeah, we did not play Bottom of the Hill on this tour.
John: This was one where we were playing.
John: We played in Sacramento, and the guy that opened for us was playing a singing saw.
Yeah.
John: This was not a big tour.
John: We were not selling out anywhere.
John: And one of the show, we got to Eugene and it figures that this would have happened in Eugene.
John: We got there and the show was canceled.
John: The venue,
Merlin: uh decided it wasn't a venue and the and we we didn't there were no cell phones right so we pulled into the parking lot and there was like a piece of paper taped to the door there was a lot more in that time and you know why explain who cares but there was a lot more of just there were things to just figure out sometimes without a great deal of guidance and the phone part is so huge you would just have it was like a it was like an escape room in life like you just show up at places and be like huh wonder why no one's here
Merlin: Like there was no explanation, no one to call.
Merlin: That's just how life was for a long time.
John: And I think there was a phone number or something on the piece of paper, the piece of notebook paper.
John: And I think Nick went to a phone booth and called and the guy said, I think on the piece of paper it said, the venue is closed, but we're still going to have the show call this number.
Hmm.
John: And we called the number and a guy was like, hey, man, man, man, I'm really sorry about the venue.
John: You know, it turned out they don't have their Coca-Cola license or whatever, but we're going to have the show at my place.
John: Here's the address.
John: Okay.
John: And so we drive over and it's an apartment, but it's like a student apartment.
John: And so it's, I don't know, three bedrooms, something like that.
John: It's a pretty spacious place.
John: And they're like, we cleaned everything out of the living room.
John: You guys just set up in the corner and we'll have a show.
John: And, you know, this was right at the moment where we all felt like, well, we're bands that are about to blow up, bro.
John: And this is a little weird.
John: You know, we maybe we had a singing saw open for us yesterday, but that doesn't mean that Columbia Records isn't going to sign us both tomorrow.
John: Absolutely.
John: And this kid was really he was really nice about it.
John: And we were like, yeah.
John: And Death Cab was at that point was like, we'll play any show like we have no egos.
John: And so it was not, I couldn't have an ego about it.
John: Right.
John: I'm like not, I'm not the one that can have a temper tantrum.
John: You're in the inscrutable opening band.
John: That's right.
John: So we set up in this apartment and it was a thing where they, they left all the lights on and the, and the room, the place absolutely packed out with, with university of Oregon students.
John: There were no room to turn around.
John: It was a great show.
John: And I,
John: And these were kids that were in college in 98.
John: Right.
John: So just 10, 12 years younger than we were.
John: Right.
John: Yeah.
John: 12.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And.
Merlin: But like importantly, like just a little older than our live journal friends.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: who were in college when they were into the Long Winners, which is how I learned about the Long Winners.
John: Yeah, and these, so these are, yeah, people that are in college but living off campus in 1998 and really into indie rock music, proto-indie rock.
John: They're the first people that are buying vinyl again or whatever.
John: And there was a dedicated space in that apartment for PlayStation.
John: Okay.
John: And I remember after we'd set up and sound checked, but before anybody was in there, I remember going into this space and it was cool.
John: They had like, they had poofs.
John: There was like a loft or something.
John: It was like a cool hangout space.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: And they were playing this video game.
John: And I had that feeling that you were describing of like, well, you guys are in college now.
John: Right.
John: What are you doing?
John: Why are you like, is this some kind of ironic playing of video games?
John: And they were like, no man, nothing ironic about it.
John: This is video games.
John: Do you not know about video games?
John: Right.
John: And I was like, do I not know about video games?
John: Have you ever heard of elevator action?
John: Anybody?
John: Have you ever heard of elevator action?
John: You don't know from video games?
John: Yeah, right.
John: And that was when I realized that there was a generation gap.
John: And that's the day I realized I was going to be an astronaut.
John: No kidding.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You know, moments snap together like magnets.
Merlin: You never know what's going to happen.
Merlin: What's fun for, okay, so like I say, I mean, like there was the video games that were available when I was really young.
Merlin: There was a game, I think it was called Space, and it was this crazy looking machine.
Merlin: It didn't look like a class, like what we now consider a classic arcade game.
Merlin: I remember it being kind of like Fred Flintstone architecture looking.
Merlin: But anyhow, and then, of course, you know, kind of Pong came along.
Merlin: And Pong was a game that you could pay a quarter to play.
Merlin: Like, you know, but then there was this big break.
Merlin: I feel like, see, this is going to sound really strange.
Merlin: I can locate this so clearly.
Merlin: With when I was in military school, which would make this 1979, 1980.
Merlin: And every one of the kids in my company pretty much had bought a season pass to Busch Gardens, the Dark Continent in Tampa.
Merlin: $20 for a one year.
Merlin: You could go to Busch Gardens as much as you wanted.
Merlin: You're kidding me.
Merlin: $20.
Merlin: And yeah, and the advice we were given very early on is, hey, you're going to want to do this because this is something we do almost every Saturday is we get in the van and we all go to Busch Gardens in Tampa, which is, you know, pretty near St.
Merlin: Pete in a half hour.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, it was pretty well.
Merlin: And the conventional wisdom was, hey, you're going to get it, get it the first week because it's $9 to get into Busch Gardens.
Merlin: So it pays for itself in three visits.
John: You've been reading that story about the guy that at some point United Airlines offered a ticket, like fly United forever.
John: And the ticket was something like $50,000, $30,000.
John: Really?
John: And he did it like in the 70s or something?
John: This was in the 80s, I guess.
John: That's wild.
John: And he was like, I'm a businessman.
John: And United offered this thing like nobody's ever going to, you know, sure, fly forever for free for $50,000 or something.
Merlin: Oh, absolutely.
Merlin: One of those outlier things where you're like, you know, it would never scale up if people did it.
Merlin: But here's the thing, though.
John: So he bought it.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: And he's still flying.
Merlin: That's like being grandfathered in on endless cellular with AT&T.
Merlin: Exactly, which I was.
Merlin: Alex will never change their plan ever, ever, ever, because they insist on keeping the grandfathered unlimited forever.
Merlin: And, of course, they just keep – it becomes like a sketch.
Merlin: They chip away at you.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: There's always an angle.
Merlin: They hate that people are still using the 50,000 –
John: well except except he's become a hero at united because of course what they didn't realize i don't think was that frequent flyer would become such a thing and he collects all his miles oh so he still gets whoa yeah he flies double triple uh ultra upgrade guy and i guess united sends a car for him triple double upgrade guy yeah he's triple double upgrade guy huh
John: And he's like a Kanye West lyric.
John: They all know him.
John: Of course they do.
Merlin: They're like, it's him.
Merlin: He's here.
Merlin: Oh, man.
Merlin: Imagine the day that the word comes down.
Merlin: Look, this guy's getting pretty long in the tooth and he's starting to really cost us some money.
Merlin: Let's start lowering the class of service a little bit.
Merlin: Maybe spill some more drinks on him.
John: Yeah, I wonder.
John: I wonder.
John: Or whether he'll just get on a plane and never get off.
John: You know, just like he'll just fly up to the sun.
John: Isn't that the dream?
John: The sky is open.
John: Am I right?
John: The sky is open.
Merlin: Oh, I'm going to talk to you about that.
Merlin: Is it called Open Sky?
Merlin: What's the thing called?
Merlin: Why Planes Don't Hit Each Other?
Merlin: What's it called?
John: Oh, the Open Skies Initiative?
Merlin: Is that what it's called?
Merlin: Why Planes Don't Hit Each Other?
Merlin: Wasn't it also that they fly... I heard on an airplane video that you fly different...
Merlin: odd and even elevations when you're going like east, west or north, south.
Merlin: Isn't that part of it?
John: That's right.
John: It's just like all the interstates are numbered so you know where they are.
John: But yeah, it used to be.
John: That's what air traffic control was all about until Ronald Reagan deregulated it.
John: Oh boy.
John: Harumph, harumph, harumph, scarp, scarp, scarp, scarp, scarp.
Merlin: So I had a season pass to Busch Gardens, the Dark Continent.
Merlin: And I got to tell you, one of the ways I would spend my time, like many of my fellow cadets, would spend our time was going to the place that had video games.
Merlin: The little video game arcade at Busch Gardens.
John: This is the one in Tampa.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: There's one in Virginia...
Merlin: There's a bunch of them.
Merlin: And I do still think back, and I remember this being their big pitch.
Merlin: Because Busch Gardens, this is not interesting, except to me, but Busch Gardens is an Anheuser-Busch.
Merlin: And what Busch Gardens was until at least the mid-'70s was a brewery tour and literal gardens.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: Well, weren't there giraffes?
Merlin: Well, they did get animals.
Merlin: But if you've ever seen, I'll send it to you, that photo of me in my salt and pepper with the epaulettes outfit, acting like I'm kissing like a little stone girl.
Merlin: If you've ever seen that photo, that's at Busch Gardens.
Merlin: And you would go to Busch Gardens, the whole place.
Merlin: If you ever smell what a brewery smells like, it's not even just a hops smell.
Merlin: There's that super intense...
Merlin: Until it almost becomes like ammonia.
Merlin: The whole place smelled like that.
Merlin: And they had gardens.
Merlin: Anyway, then by the late 70s, they were adding rots.
John: Wait, they were actually brewing beer at Busch Gardens?
Merlin: John is a brewery tour.
Merlin: And they had gardens.
Merlin: And here's the thing.
Merlin: They had a beer garden where if you were a paid entrant of drinking age...
Merlin: you could go and drink all of the little cups of beer that you wanted.
Merlin: And dads liked that.
Merlin: They had, I got a Budweiser bucket cap there, bucket hat.
Merlin: I had a Budweiser bank.
Merlin: I got there.
Merlin: This is the kind of thing we did.
Merlin: The whole point of this dumb fucking story is that then by the late seventies, of course, then they added the Python.
Merlin: They added later the Scorpion.
Merlin: They had the, they actually did have a place called the, it was called the, was the Festhouse was like this place where there was like German music and celebrating and, you know, and,
Merlin: But what I played was, I don't remember if, no, actually the one I remember was, Ein Prosit!
Merlin: Ein Prosit!
Merlin: And I never really learned the words, but I couldn't drink, I was little.
Merlin: There was, I don't know if it was Pole Position, but there was one game, and remember there was like arcade stand-up games, and then like Toc-Toc-Toc games?
Merlin: Well, this was, no, it was a racing game, and up to like, I want to say, one, two, three, four, probably six or eight people could play at once.
Merlin: Oh, I remember this.
Merlin: And you had a steering wheel.
Merlin: And I think you had an accelerator and maybe a gear shift.
Merlin: But anyway.
John: This seemed like new evolutions in video games.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: It was so exciting.
Merlin: And I wasn't very good at it.
Merlin: But it was so thrilling to play.
Merlin: And again, take it with context for the time.
Merlin: Even at that point, we keep throwing out these names of Atari games.
Merlin: But I associate Lunar Lander and Red Baron with...
Merlin: with like the early 80s.
Merlin: They were probably around in the late 70s.
Merlin: Those beautiful Atari games like Asteroids, right?
Merlin: Those beautiful vector games.
Merlin: No, but that was my time.
Merlin: And then in high school, junior high and high school, junior high, shit dog, you go to the D&D place where people were playing tabletop games and they sold modules and Ralph Hartha figures.
Merlin: And they also had a couple games there that you would play.
Merlin: But they each cost a quarter, and I broke my mother's heart every time I spent a quarter on a video game.
John: Is that right?
John: Oh, she felt like you had not learned.
Merlin: Well, first of all, a belief that was very strongly held in Cincinnati in the Protestant community at the time was it might as well be gambling.
John: Oh, yeah, that's right.
John: That's right.
John: This came right after the we're going to break pinball games with baseball bats era.
John: Right.
John: Carry nation types.
John: Might as well be gambling.
Merlin: Might as well be gambling.
Merlin: My friend John, who I went to church with, he had an Intellivision.
Merlin: He had the George Plumpton one, and they had a really good baseball game.
Merlin: So like summer of 80, 81, whenever Intellivision was out, there was that.
Merlin: Then around the same time, my friend said, but after that, it just wasn't around.
Merlin: And like, I don't know.
Merlin: It's just, it kind of went by me.
Merlin: And like, I, how do I put this?
Merlin: Anyway, I just wanted to share that.
Merlin: That's where, for me, it all got exciting in the late 70s.
Merlin: And then you started getting like really like arcades.
Merlin: And there was a place called Red Baron at our mall in Cincinnati that had all those games.
John: Neither you nor I had enough money or enough, I'm guessing, dexterity to get good.
John: Yeah, transportation.
John: But you had to be either really good at sports or spend a lot of time at it.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Merlin: So anyway, I don't feel like left out of anything, but it does become clear to me sometimes, you know, I don't know.
Merlin: One part of getting old is to realize what things are weird and what things just seem a little weird.
Merlin: And sometimes you have to do a little quick diagnosis on like, is this something I don't know because I'm stupid?
Merlin: Is this something I don't know because I am legitimately old?
Merlin: Or is this something I don't know about because I'm careless and I should know about it?
Merlin: You have to like... And the thing is, you don't... If you're being honest, listener, you don't know the answer to that until you've interrogated it.
Merlin: And so what I've arrived at was video games were a big fucking deal.
Merlin: Like, absolutely no question.
Merlin: Like, can I argue?
Merlin: As strongly as you guys felt about video games in 1995, I felt about music in 1995.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: Like, whether it's especially listening, but also, you know, writing and playing music, being in a band, putting out records.
Merlin: Like, that was...
Merlin: That was like who I was, you know?
John: Well, here's an interesting question for you.
John: Yes.
John: Is there any here's one thing that never happened to us, which is that no adult ever said Listening to music is bad for you Certainly not in the same way as TV is right unquestionably bad for you, right?
John: So to sit and watch an hour-long program on TV where you're consuming someone else's imagination and
John: The ideas that someone else came up with, but then they involved a huge team of people bringing those ideas to life.
John: And you're going to sit and watch it and absorb it.
John: And, you know, we would argue not passively, but actively engaged in watching.
Merlin: It sure looks like somebody just filling a receptacle with marketing materials.
Merlin: And just like if my mom – my mom hated TV so much.
Merlin: If any adult walked in the room while I was watching Saturday morning TV in 1977, let's say, it would be like, wait a minute.
Merlin: You've seen all of these 90 minutes of Bugs Bunny cartoons.
Merlin: You've seen all of these dozens of times.
Merlin: I'm like, yeah, exactly.
Merlin: And like this Justice League is not particularly nutritious from a narrative standpoint.
Merlin: Yeah, I know.
Merlin: And also like what's the deal with that Shazam or like the kids from Caper, which I loved.
Merlin: short-lived NBC Hiller or Big John Little John.
Merlin: Like, I love those shows so much, but they're really stupid.
Merlin: And it just seems like I'm sitting there eating cereal for three hours while garbage gets poured in my eyes.
John: So my question is, no one ever, I mean, you definitely have a feeling with younger people where you're like, are you really listening to Offspring?
John: Like, stop that.
John: Here's some good music, kid.
John: Right.
John: And then later on, you're like, well, their guitar tones, I guess, were redeemable in The Offspring, although nothing else was.
John: I mean, I definitely still get into arguments with kids younger than me about Blink-182, where I'm like, it's worse than no music.
John: And they're like, you have no idea, man.
John: You don't even know.
John: You didn't live my life.
Merlin: Well, it's like people, like, you say, like, oh, yeah, I took some modern philosophy in college.
Merlin: Like, oh, I love that.
Merlin: I'm really into Jordan B. Peterson.
John: And you're like, dude, really?
John: But my question for you is, there was never... Like, television for our parents, and to a certain extent, video games, where you say the whole...
John: The whole media is unredeemable.
John: There's no good television in 1984.
John: What can I say?
John: Like gambling.
John: A lot of people would say there's no good gambling.
John: There's no good gambling.
John: But they never say that about music in general.
John: If you're a kid and you're sitting with headphones on or books, even though there are –
John: Spoiler alert.
John: There are some degenerate books.
John: No shit.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: This is what they said in Greece for you Try just one hour a day your one hour day of book But that life that we led where you where you collect records and you listen to them Your parents could be could definitely be like turn off that noise
John: But they're in their own space.
John: I know what you're laughing at.
John: You know what I'm laughing at.
John: I know what you're laughing at.
John: That sounds like the voice of Dave Roderick coming through a wall.
John: But they're in their other room.
John: You know, they're downstairs with their own record player.
John: Having a fucking key party and doing yoga and shit.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: So music somehow has never.
John: It's always like.
John: That's interesting.
John: It's justifiable.
John: Nobody's ever going to say, but you could make the argument.
John: You're just floating away on somebody else's gossamer wings.
John: That's got nothing to do with you.
John: It's like an opiate.
Merlin: It could be too loud.
Merlin: It could be satanic.
Merlin: It was not an unalloyed good.
Merlin: And at every opportunity that arose, what's another example?
Merlin: And this was fantastic.
Merlin: very fair to say is like my obsession with music got different and weirder when MTV came along or, you know, prolific music videos, especially on MTV, because now you can be mad about TV, not just music.
John: Yes.
John: Yes.
John: Well, and right.
John: The degenerate people from England that are wearing...
Merlin: Their socks over their pants or whatever it is that's new fashion.
John: What?
Merlin: Captain Sensible, you know, his band was on Stiff Records.
John: What?
Merlin: Yeah, The Damned.
Merlin: That was considered by many to be the first English, I think, considered to be one of the first English seven inches, punk seven inches, was on Stiff.
John: The damned were and are still inscrutable to me.
John: Boy, they're fascinating.
John: Watching them on The Young Ones.
John: Jesus Christ.
John: Also inscrutable.
John: Oh, how did The Young Ones come up the other day?
John: Oh, somebody was talking about something and followed something.
John: No, maybe that was a dream.
John: Did I have The Young Ones in my dream?
Merlin: It'd be cool if you did the one with Ace of Spades.
Merlin: That's really good.
Merlin: That's a really good one, yeah.
John: That was my first introduction to Motorhead.
John: Sure, me too.
John: Absolutely.
John: I think Dexy's Midnight Runners was on there before Come On Eileen.
John: You know, maybe what prompted it was that I read an interview with Lemmy where he said in his entire career in Motorhead, he never made...
John: Like he made one fraction of the money that he made writing four songs for Ozzy's No More Tears record of 1995 or whatever.
John: I thought you were going to say he made more money in Hawkwind.
John: No, he had four songs on an Ozzy record.
John: Right.
Merlin: He had that Nick Lowe thing where like you got on the right record.
Merlin: Like a Zach Wilde thing.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: Zach Wilde era.
John: And he said he made more money from that than all the Motorhead.
John: And I just was chewing on that like, wow, wow.
John: What a weird business.
John: Four songs on an Aussie record.
John: How do I get four songs on an Aussie record?
Merlin: Nick Lowe has one song on the Bodyguard soundtrack.
Merlin: It's his song.
Merlin: It's played by somebody else, but he wrote it.
Merlin: And somebody covered Peace, Love, and Understanding on the Whitney Houston Bodyguard record.
Merlin: And he was, as of, I think, 93, 94, 95, set for life.
Merlin: Set for life.
Merlin: You need that.
Merlin: You need that.
Merlin: You've got to quit playing those video games.
Merlin: You need to get out there and get on some soundtracks.
Merlin: Did I tell you?
John: Ben King texted me the other day, and he was like, my wife and I went out to a fancy restaurant in Portland on Mississippi.
John: We went out to Mississippi.
John: to a fancy restaurant and um they played the entirety of when i pretend to fall during our during our dinner wow and i was like is it happening is this it am i back oh this is it this is that this is yeah this is good that'll be in the in the docudrama um for sure mississippi's a street mississippi's a street but it's also in portland a neighborhood it's like castro
John: Yeah, it's a street, and very like Castro, it's a street that ran through a neighborhood that nobody wanted to live in for a long time, and then only the cool kids wanted to live there, or only the really cool poor kids, and then the cool kids that came after, and then the cool rich kids wanted to live there, and now it's just rich people all the way down.
John: There are nice restaurants there now where in a place that if you got dropped off in front of it
John: 15 years ago, you'd be terrified.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: Now it's like, oh, these are $45 entrees?
John: Wow.
John: And it's scallops?
John: How many scallops do I get for $45?
Merlin: Not enough.
Merlin: More than four?
Merlin: I don't like to be a scallop counter, but man.
Merlin: You gotta count the scallops.
Merlin: I got some extra chicken in my tikka masala the other day from a place that I love.
Merlin: I don't think I really got the extra chicken.
Merlin: Oh, you ordered extra chicken and you didn't see evidence of extra chicken?
Merlin: I wanted it to be lousy with chicken.
Merlin: But I do love the sauce, you know.
John: I feel that way.
John: I have to, you know, my daughter and I are talking about food all the time because we're both bored eaters.
John: She's so hungry.
John: We're both hungry all the time.
Merlin: She just wants the beans.
John: And I said to her the other day, I was like, listen, what if we started really chewing gum?
John: I don't mean just chewing gum casually, but I mean every time we wanted to snack on something, what if we got gum instead?
John: Yeah.
John: And she was like, gum.
John: I was like, look, I'll get you every kind of sugarless gum.
John: I'll get you grape gum.
John: I can name all the gums.
John: I can get you watermelon gum, bubble flavored gum.
Merlin: You can get the kind that makes a spooge in your mouth, the breath freshener or whatever it's called, the fresh marker.
John: Spooge, yeah.
John: Every time somebody puts a plate down in front of me, before the plate even touches the table, I'm already judging how much is on it.
Merlin: Oh, now that is interesting to reveal.
Merlin: That's a very old person thing to do.
Merlin: If there are two people at the table that have ordered the same one.
Merlin: Oh, I know.
Merlin: I'm always eyeballing other people's steaks.
Merlin: I always feel like, why did I not get the big steak?
John: Yeah, these are supposed to be eight ounce steaks, but that one's a nine ounce and this is a seven ounce.
John: Like, I cannot help myself but say, the tikka masala has a little bit less chicken than I would have hoped.
Merlin: When we go to House of Prime Rib, I always complain because I always get, and I am the dinner bell.
Merlin: Ask my friends.
Merlin: I am the dinner bell.
Merlin: When we go to fucking House of Prime Rib, I'll eat everybody's food and do a dessert slice.
Merlin: I've watched men cry because of how much I eat at House of Prime Rib.
Merlin: And we sit down.
Merlin: I'm like, I got the fucking, the cuck.
John: cut the king emery the eighth oh it's got a fruit it's got a bone in it i'm like my my wife got a bigger steak than me this is not just well and i feel like i feel like a seinfeld episode everywhere i go absolutely you had to get the big stuff hey what the heck yes yes yes and so with my with my kid especially i'm always trying to model good behavior sure and not be but sometimes you just whip out a pack of gum during dinner
John: In the past, I have absolutely done a thing where as the plates were coming down, I did a like, hey, look over there, and then switched the plates.
John: I've absolutely done that.
Merlin: I'm not proud.
Merlin: Well, you know, you snooze, you lose.
Merlin: If you're paying attention and they're not, whose fault is that?
John: Well, that's the thing.
John: And I feel like, look, this doesn't matter to you.
John: You're one of these people that's going to leave three bites on your plate, but that's not me.
John: And you're going to leave the extra three bites that matter to me.
Merlin: You're going to leave them for Elijah or whatever.
John: Elijah doesn't eat steak.
John: Well, no, no, no.
John: He's dead, man.
John: He's fucking dead.
John: He's dead until he comes back, until he arrives.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I mean, you know, that seems like a whole jam out from the furniture industry.
Merlin: You always got to have an extra chair.
Merlin: Oh, interesting.
Merlin: No, I'm not making that point.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Wait a minute.
Merlin: Go on.
Merlin: No, no, no, no, no.
Merlin: We don't make those jokes in Bellingham.
Merlin: That's so interesting.
Merlin: When I was a waiter and busboy in the state of Florida, it was just kind of assumed amongst many of my clientele that every meal, you pack up half of it, and then that's another meal later.
Merlin: If they did not get an amount of food that they consider adequate for the price that they were expected to pay, plus the 5% tip,
Merlin: They wanted to get two meals out of that.
Merlin: They wanted you to box up dinner for them.
Merlin: They came for lunch and they're leaving with dinner.
John: Yes, yes, yes.
John: Well, that's why the only reason you order pasta in a restaurant, a thing you can easily make at home, is that in restaurants they put twice as much sauce on the pasta as is needed if it's a good restaurant.
John: Really slather it on.
John: Yeah, every single Alfredo has an entire stick of butter in it and a cup of whole cream.
John: Then you can just nibble at a corner of it, take it home, tomorrow boil more noodles.
John: It could be the basis for your leftovers.
Merlin: It could be, right?
Merlin: I don't know what you call this dish of yours, but I do know that often it's served on top pasta with whatever kind of sauce.
Merlin: Yeah, that's it.
Merlin: It's your leftover Roderick goulash.
Merlin: I don't know what a funny name for it.
John: I basically have a sourdough starter in my refrigerator, except it's an Alfredo starter.
John: And probably the original Alfredo is from the 70s.
John: I've just been putting more cream and more noodles in it.
John: Yes.
John: Stir it up, and then there's a little bit more, and then a little bit more.
John: It never goes bad.
John: No, it can't go bad.
John: Oh, it can't go bad.
John: That's why they call it a starter.
John: It's got too much sugar and too much salt in it to go bad.
No.
Merlin: We should stop, but I'm having fun.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: I'm having fun.
Merlin: So, you know, it's difficult.
Merlin: It's difficult.
Merlin: You know, like I say, sometimes it feels in life, it feels like you're picking up the tweezers with the tweezers.
Merlin: It's hard to know whether me being out of it about something is just the way things are or like whether it's a thing that I really need to work on.
Merlin: But once I have worked on it and I go, you know, I'm happy for people who enjoy their video games.
Merlin: But this is not a thing that I'm going to struggle to get into.
John: No, it's not.
John: But do you find yourself – the reason you're asking yourself this is that you're using, I think, in your mind, as I do, video games as some sort of like, oh, this is a problem in society that began when people –
John: started playing video games in the same way that you could say, this is a part, this is a problem of, in society that didn't exist before new wave music.
John: And now it does exist post new wave music.
John: I'm not saying it's coincidentally.
John: Yeah.
John: It might be coincidentally like, you know, this is,
John: Roger Waters was in Pink Floyd before this.
John: After he left Pink Floyd, we started Wars of Adventure in the Middle East.
John: Are they related?
John: Interesting.
John: I don't know.
John: I don't know.
Merlin: Well, that's one of the pros and cons of hitchhiking.
Merlin: There it is.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Now, here's the thing.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: So, wait a minute.
Merlin: So, we're talking about video games.
Merlin: um here's here's i i this literally is just occurring to me and it's going to be so like i'm not not not a well-formed thought but there's a there's a funny thing that happens in our at least i feel like in our perception of the world we're like let's take something like video games um if you're not into video games your feeling about video games will almost necessarily be very general um
Merlin: Or there might have some specificity to it, but you're feeling about the goods, the bads, the anythings.
Merlin: Like I'm talking all this bullshit about video games.
Merlin: I don't know anything about video games.
Merlin: But like when you talk about something that you don't know a lot about or weren't emotional about, it's very general.
Merlin: But when you think about it in practice, it's very personal.
Merlin: Like, today I learned of the death of Paul Rubens and Pee Wee Herman from TV.
Merlin: And how many lines do I continue to quote from him?
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: You know, is there something you'd like to share with the rest of us?
Merlin: Amazing Larry is one of the funniest things I've ever heard in my life.
Merlin: Simone, all my friends have big butts.
Merlin: You know, ice cream soup.
Merlin: Like, you know, the thing is, if you never watched Pee Wee Herman and you see everybody freaking out about the death of this man...
Merlin: you'd go like, oh yeah, oh, it's Palmer.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, I remember that guy.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And the thing is, I don't get, I hate the fucking ghouls on the internet who like, suddenly they just develop so much passion about, you know, a blind shlomo bluesman from 1906.
Merlin: I was like,
Merlin: Oh, my grandfather played this once.
Merlin: I'm crushed.
Merlin: Shattered.
Merlin: Oh!
Merlin: No, you're not.
Merlin: You saw a thing.
Merlin: And then you did a Google search and found the first photo of Shlomo, and you put it up and you acted like it's a thing.
Merlin: So I'm not busting a gut about the death of Pee Wee Herman.
Merlin: I think people... It's a bummer.
Merlin: But, like, so it goes, right?
Merlin: So it goes.
Merlin: But, you know...
Merlin: I would totally understand people going, what's the big deal about Pee-wee Herman?
Merlin: And I would say, well, you know, I do understand.
Merlin: But for me, seeing, for example, I think the first thing that really made an impact on me was Pee-wee's Big Adventure in 1985.
Merlin: I was aware of him being kind of an odd L.A.
Merlin: comedy character.
Merlin: And by the time I started at New College, it was known that he'd gone to school in Sarasota for clown-related activities.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: And also Sarasota is where another well-known event had happened.
Merlin: But does that general idea make sense?
Merlin: When you look at something you don't know a lot about or not into, your feelings about it are very general.
Merlin: When it's something you know a lot about or care a lot about, it's very specific.
Merlin: And that causes cultural rifts.
Merlin: I'm going to widen this so broad it's going to become meaningless.
Merlin: When I make fun of something on Twitter in general, I'm not making fun of you in particular.
Merlin: I'm not making fun of your emotional feelings about it in general.
Merlin: But if I were to go out there to say, oh boy, you guys like Pee Wee Herman?
Merlin: Name his last three albums.
Merlin: Just to be kind of a...
Merlin: a dick.
Merlin: Like, that would be a dumb thing to do.
Merlin: Wouldn't prove anything.
Merlin: And it would not make it clear to people that I, too, actually really enjoy the work of Paul Rubens.
Merlin: You look down your nose at stuff in general ways, and you take umbrage or get upset about something in very specific ways.
Merlin: Does that make sense?
Merlin: It does.
John: I remember during the Gamergate time being very confused by the phrase gaming journalism.
John: And it took me, it took me several iterations of that conversation.
John: to realize that a there is a thing where people journal are journalists about it's not doing it's not even video game writing it's video game journalism journalism yeah and that like a real woodward and bernstein type situation like i didn't realize that there were so many things i didn't realize about the world that i had to reverse engineer knowledge of from reading about
John: Gamergate and not understanding any of the terms.
John: What are we talking about?
John: Video game, so what now?
John: And there's a difference between boys and girls?
Merlin: You've got to learn all of that before you can even get to the question of is it really about ethics in video game journalism?
Merlin: You're like, wait a minute.
Merlin: There's video game journalism and then there's a crisis about ethics?
John: There's a separate set of ethics because we lost ethics in regular journalism a long time ago.
John: It's true.
John: But I but understanding that and then, you know, I think a lot of it is because I used to be on the Internet and every once in a while I go back, I have watched or I've looked at a lot of pictures where people go, hey, show your command center.
John: And then they take a picture of their very expensive chair.
Merlin: Yeah, I was going to save it.
Merlin: But for you, it's video game journalism.
Merlin: The phrase that broke my brain, honestly, was video game chair.
Merlin: Video game chair.
Merlin: When I learned of the existence of not just one, but a class of products.
Merlin: And they're called video game chairs.
Merlin: And you buy a chair for playing video games.
John: And these photos of people's comp stations, you know, command centers where they have a very expensive chair and then they have a multitude of screens, right?
John: There's, it's not one, it's sometimes not even three.
John: It's often, you know, five.
John: big screens arranged around them in a kind of, you know, like trying to create somewhat of a 3D.
Merlin: It's a very advanced elevator action, right?
John: Yeah.
John: And they are showing these pictures.
John: And then the next one is like, oh, I love your setup.
John: Here's my setup.
John: And you realize how personal those places are, how much they've invested in them and how much time they spend there.
John: And then you read online like, oh yeah, that terrible thing happened.
John: It all started in a game chat room.
John: And you realize, oh, there's a whole universe.
John: There's literally actual worlds that I'll never, ever visit.
John: And it's not the science fiction that I thought.
John: I thought that there would be other worlds.
John: And I would want to go visit them and I would get there and I'd walk around and I'd go, wow, this is zero gravity, right?
John: Or this is Mars.
John: But these are, these are worlds that are happening.
John: Technology is facilitating your imagination in such a way that you believe you are somewhere and that's where your friends are.
John: And it's all around the game where you're... It's not visible.
Merlin: Like the dark web, it's not visible to people.
Merlin: Even if you were looking for it, you might not find it, right?
John: But you couldn't just sit in somebody's living room and look over their shoulder and watch them play it.
John: Because a lot of it's going on in their mind.
John: You know, they're like talking to their friends and imagining that they're assaulting a mothership of some kind.
John: I mean, there are YouTube channels where people sit and watch people play these games, but I wouldn't be able to.
John: I wouldn't know the first thing about what was happening.
Yeah.
John: And I do feel like it's degenerate.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Maybe we should have stopped a little earlier.