Ep. 519: "Even Doves Have Pride"
Merlin: Bloop, bloop.
Bloop.
Merlin: Acknowledged bloop.
Merlin: Your bloop.
Merlin: Your bloop has been received.
Merlin: Sending bloop.
Merlin: Sending bloops.
Merlin: One moment, please.
Merlin: I'm having trouble connecting to the internet.
Merlin: This is taking too long.
Merlin: Actually, he does it in a lower voice.
Merlin: I went and rewatched the Jedi one with the Lerman.
John: The way he actually says it is, this is taking too long.
John: Oh, it's a lot scarier that way.
Merlin: But then the little guys go, Roger, Roger, just like we do.
Merlin: Roger, Roger.
Merlin: I like the Lerman.
Merlin: They're so wise and peaceful, but then they learn.
Merlin: Sometimes you got to fight.
Merlin: Isn't that what the Lerman learned?
Merlin: That's the learnings of the Lerman?
Merlin: The Lerman learnings.
Merlin: Oh, boy.
Merlin: John, I've had a progression and a regression.
Merlin: I'd like to share it with you.
Merlin: It just occurred to me as I've been trying to make my computer work.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: It's a progression and a regression.
John: Yeah, sure.
John: Are you asking me whether I want to hear the progression or the regression first?
Merlin: I haven't really thought about it enough to know if I have to tell it in a certain order, but I feel like I should start with the progression.
Merlin: Yeah, okay.
Merlin: Is that okay?
Merlin: Yeah, sure, sure.
Merlin: I think I've gotten a lot better at...
Merlin: Taking time off, which to an ordinary person sounds very eye-rolly, except that my career, such as it is for the last 20 years, has involved like this.
Merlin: I'm kind of always working a little bit.
Merlin: My job is not hard, but it's always happening.
Merlin: And I need to know what's going on in the world.
Merlin: And that voice, too.
John: Yeah, sure, sure.
John: No, I've heard it a lot.
Merlin: It's the voice, well, it's the voice in and outside my head.
Merlin: I mean, it eschews from different, various aspects of my head.
Merlin: But I think I've gotten better.
Merlin: Why don't you use it?
Merlin: Oh!
Merlin: Oh my God.
Merlin: I can't believe I liked that band for an EP and an album.
Merlin: They were so bad.
John: Wow.
John: Tough talk.
Merlin: Well, I mean, does it have to be seven and the ragged tiger?
John: No, that was where it all went off the rails.
Merlin: I didn't like flex, flex, flex, flex, flex either.
Merlin: I didn't love you to a kill.
Merlin: I thought I brought out the worst of Simon LeBond's singing.
John: I think you're all your, all your points are on point.
Merlin: But I loved the Planet Earth stuff, and I enjoyed Rio.
John: The Chauffeur, one of the great songs.
Merlin: None of the lyrics made any sense at all.
Merlin: Don't read too deeply.
Merlin: Never heard it.
Merlin: Never sang Blue Silver.
John: Did you ever sing Blue Silver, John?
John: Be honest.
John: You know, I covered Blue Silver for a whole season.
John: I played it live.
John: What?
Merlin: You're talking about colloidal silver?
Merlin: What are you talking about?
Merlin: You covered the chauffeur?
John: I did multiple times in the very, very early long winter's days.
John: Sean Nelson and I would do it.
John: You've got to be... Oh, God.
John: That must have been sublime.
John: I know.
John: Before we even started doing Only Living Boy in New York, we did blue silver.
John: No, no.
John: The chauffeur.
Merlin: The chauffeur.
Merlin: Get your train ride on time.
Merlin: That's as close as Paul Simon ever got to saying something nice about someone, I think.
John: Oh, interesting.
Merlin: I hope you're happy with Candy Berg and breaking up the group.
Merlin: That's what it's about, right?
Merlin: Isn't it about art?
Merlin: Sorry.
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Welcome to Art on the Line.
Merlin: It's a wide-ranging discussion of technology and voices in and outside one's head and the work of Art Garfunkel.
Merlin: Welcome.
John: Yeah, Art went away.
Merlin: To do the sexy movie with What's Her Head?
John: How I Won the War, yeah.
Merlin: No, right, that was Lester Bangs directed that.
John: Yeah, that's right.
Merlin: Leonid Brezhnev.
John: And Mick Jagger did it.
John: Oh, dear, dear, dear.
John: Cheesecake, I don't like it.
John: White sauce?
John: Not a problem.
John: Not a problem.
John: Serve it right on a garbage can lid.
Merlin: That's based on a meal I used to get in Tallahassee.
Merlin: They would just serve.
Merlin: It was called something like Latino breakfast.
Merlin: It was like comida de los Latinos.
Merlin: And it was just a big plate of stuff with white sauce on it.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: I loved it.
Merlin: I thought I asked for a large spoon.
Merlin: Who do I have to blow to get a decent spoon here?
Merlin: So what had happened was... So you've been progressing.
Merlin: Yeah, but he'd gone off to work on... What's the movie?
Merlin: Is it a Mike Nichols movie, I want to say?
John: Yeah, Mike Nichols.
John: It was the Catch-22.
John: No, no.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: I thought he was going off to be with Candy Bergen in the sexy movie.
Merlin: Oh, yeah, the sexy movie.
Merlin: Art Garfunkel.
Merlin: Artie.
Merlin: Artemis.
Merlin: Artemis.
Merlin: Art Garfunkel.
Merlin: I know it's not Five Easy Pieces.
Merlin: It's Art Garfunkel.
Merlin: Art Garfunkel was not in Five Easy Pieces.
Merlin: Nope.
Merlin: Nope.
Merlin: Nope.
Merlin: But I've been going through a Hal Ashby thing.
John: I want you to put it between your knees.
Merlin: Now hold it between your knees.
Merlin: He was... I'm the only living boy of the night in New York.
Merlin: Maybe not in all of the boroughs, but at least here where I reside.
Merlin: Short fuse, bad timing.
John: Carnal knowledge.
Merlin: Carnal knowledge.
Merlin: Carnal knowledge.
Merlin: Count.
Merlin: One, two, three.
Merlin: Nice guy Sandy, played by Art Garfunkel, and charming schemer Jonathan, played by Jack Nicholson, meet his college roommates in the late 40s.
Merlin: Sandy woos and eventually marries the sweetly virginal Susan, played by Candace Bergen.
John: Sure.
Merlin: Oh, spoilers.
Merlin: And it is Mike Nichols.
John: Yeah, Mike Nichols.
John: Whew.
John: Boy, I'm glad we got there.
John: You know, Only Living Boy in New York, Art Garfunkel.
Merlin: These are all... And Sean kind of looks like Art Garfunkel.
John: He does.
John: You know, this was the song that Amy Mann and I played together in Central Park for Artie and Paul.
John: That's a lot of pressure.
John: And Mare Bloomberg.
John: What Bloomberg?
John: Bloomberg.
John: Bloomberg.
John: It was a lot of pressure.
John: He's a little guy.
Merlin: He probably has to hold up a pennant like a tour guide so people know where he is.
John: It's me, the mayor.
Merlin: I'm down here.
Merlin: Hey, everybody.
John: Oh, here's the crazy thing.
John: This is the thing.
John: I don't know if you knew this.
John: Have we talked about this?
John: You know, you look at...
John: I don't know.
John: I don't think so.
John: What is it?
John: You look at Paul and Artie standing next to each other, you think Artie's six foot five.
Merlin: Oh, you told me.
Merlin: You did tell me this.
Merlin: Tell the listeners this again, because we know it is known that Paul Simon is a little hobbity.
Merlin: He's a small man.
Merlin: Hey, Google, how tall is Paul Simon?
Merlin: Paul Simon is five feet three inches tall.
Merlin: He's five foot three inches tall.
John: Right.
John: So you look at the picture of the two of them.
John: Right.
John: Where he's looking over at the top of Paul's head and you think, Art Garfunkel's got to be 6'5".
Merlin: They probably took a lot of photos for that cover and they probably picked that one for a reason.
Merlin: He's 5'9".
Merlin: That's my height, John.
Merlin: Artie is 5'9".
Merlin: That's so I mean, he looks like you know, I keep track of celebrity heights.
Merlin: I have a spreadsheet I'm gonna add it to it now I'm gonna do it right now.
Merlin: I'm just I don't usually use the internet I'm gonna go in my celebrity height spreadsheet, which is really turning into quite an affair But yeah, yeah, so so he's the same height as me Which is also roughly the same height as I believe Justin Theroux the actor.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: I
Merlin: Uh-huh.
Merlin: I would have guessed him to be at least 6'1".
John: Well, so I'm standing next to the stage here at the show where we're performing for Paul and Artie and for the mayor.
John: My God.
John: And I've got a picture of Bloomberg and Garfunkel standing there talking.
John: I love that band.
John: Bloomberg and Garfunkel standing there talking.
John: Bloomberg's 5'7".
John: Artie's 5'9".
John: And they both are like... I mean, I think of Art Garfunkel as a towering figure, but not just in history, but, you know, in...
Merlin: Well, you get used to that Tom and Jerry, you know, they used to call that setup of seeing them on stage, sometimes sitting on stools.
Merlin: But I mean, it really, it's a forced perspective type situation because I mean, it's Paul's not like misshapenly small.
Merlin: No, but I'm sorry.
Merlin: I don't want to sound kind, but he comes across as, I would guess Paul Simon's five, five, five, six.
Merlin: And I would have guessed that Artie, not even including hair is at least six, one.
John: Paul's more diminutive, but the thing was, Sean and I did that Paul and Artie thing in our own act.
Merlin: I first saw that at Great American, and I loved when you guys did that.
John: I love that record.
John: Sean is 6'5 without the hair.
John: Yep.
John: He's 6'92 and 11 with the hair.
John: He's not sick, but he's not well.
John: I'm 6'3, or at least I was before all of the spinal compression that's happened in the last...
John: Couple of years just from carrying the weight of the world.
Merlin: Yes But yeah, I could tell it comes across I know I know anyway, you're you you you've recently had a progression and a regression my progression is I think I have and this is this is gonna get sound like what Alex and I call the chicken problem Like why do you even think about this stuff?
Merlin: Well, because I hear the voices of the internet in my head Geez, what's so hard about your job?
Merlin: And do you really need a weekend off?
Merlin: Well, you know, I'm kind of healing from something
Merlin: That I'm just barely slightly starting to talk about with people.
Merlin: Lifetime heartbreak.
Merlin: And really the spinal compression of the world.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You know, it's a heavy backpack.
Merlin: But my progression is I think I've gotten way better at like saying, okay, now I'm away from whatever the world is.
Merlin: Like, I'm away from the news.
Merlin: I'm away from obligations.
Merlin: I'm away from, like, I'm not afraid to punt this thing into the future a little bit.
Merlin: With mindfulness, it's something I want to do that I will do, that blah, blah, blah.
Merlin: But you know what?
Merlin: The regression is that my Mondays get kind of like a spine.
Merlin: It gets compressed.
Merlin: So I updated.
Merlin: The reason we're late today, and I thank you for accommodating me, is that, you know, I had to update my system, and then I was beach balling, which is not as fun as it sounds.
Yeah.
John: Even your system.
Merlin: No, it's not just us.
Merlin: It's not just us.
Merlin: Oh, no, no, no.
Merlin: It's not.
Merlin: It's not you people with lives.
Merlin: It's not even the rain and, you know, had such small hands.
John: Yeah, but that but you don't think John Sirkusa.
John: Sirkusa.
Merlin: ever has uh a beach ball to you isn't his system so so tightly wound that that it takes what he's working toward if he could get proper ecc ram in that thing and and make sure that and he could finally put in the gpus that he'd like to put in he liked it when ecc ram had lights that lit up that you could actually see if it was doing the full memory protection you know on the fab so uh yeah i think i think we all suffer
Merlin: We'll suffer for fashion or whatever.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: Sure.
John: But I mean, I just think about, I just think about.
Merlin: You think to yourself, he's a guy who shit and all that legit jokes are just stepping half one foot out the door.
Merlin: He wires his shit so tight and he cares so much.
Merlin: And he's very, I never want to say this disparaging, like real talk, but like he is, I'll use a medical term fussy about making sure that his stuff is the best that it can be.
Merlin: This is why he always wants to be right in part.
Merlin: Okay, sure, sure.
John: And he's often not.
John: Yeah, also, I'm not often right.
John: Or often I'm not right.
Merlin: Do you really feel like, is that a progression or a regression?
Merlin: Be honest.
Merlin: Who, with you?
Merlin: No, I think that... You coming around?
John: It's one thing to say, I set my phone on do not disturb.
John: It's another thing to say...
John: I'm going to give my full attention to this other thing I'm doing and not have half my mind always on the thing.
Merlin: You are putting that so very well, John.
Merlin: It's so elusive.
Merlin: And in my struggles to try and explain exactly what the hell I meant by inbox zero, what I finally arrived at, seemingly unrelated, what I finally arrived at was...
Merlin: Zero is the amount of your attention that's somewhere where you don't prefer it to be right now, which is not easy.
Merlin: It's not simple.
Merlin: But, like, the inbox part of inbox zero is, like, you have to develop a more wholesome relationship with something that you don't have control over.
Merlin: And that could...
Merlin: emphasis on the word could, could disrupt whatever your day, your plans, your life are.
Merlin: And that feeling of like, I've got to keep checking in to feel safe.
Merlin: Well, welcome to having ADHD.
Merlin: That's just what it feels like is constantly scanning the horizon.
Merlin: And it takes such a muscular, in my experience, takes such a muscular, mindful, applied attempt to say, I'm going to work on that.
Merlin: I'm going to work on
Merlin: really being away when I'm away.
Merlin: I'm going to define what that means, and I'm going to put up more than imagine no line.
Merlin: I'm going to put up a real defense against the world, and more saliently, I'm going to put up a defense where my mind will not find itself constantly either actively going to that thing or thinking about going to that thing.
John: Yeah, I think that's going to be the hardest thing.
Merlin: That's a long one for me, but is that part of it?
Merlin: Isn't it?
Merlin: Well, it is.
Merlin: I was talking to my sister.
Merlin: You can still go look anytime you want.
Merlin: The D&D does not make the world go away.
Merlin: You still might want to peek in and see if you got any badges.
John: Susan says that she, you know, she splits up her day because she knows her mind is going to go places.
John: And she knows sometimes her mind is going to go places that she doesn't.
John: That's not where she wants it.
John: She doesn't want to always be going back, you know, picking at a scab or whatever.
John: So she actually sets aside time in her day to go sit and churn on, she calls it her wine time.
John: And not W-I-N-E, but W-H-I-N-E.
John: The ultimate white wine.
John: W-H-I-N-E.
John: She goes and actually sits and grinds
John: on things that otherwise would be constantly intruding in her thoughts all day.
Merlin: It's in part why it's very much related to mindfulness for me, but it's also something I've come to think of as office hours with myself.
Merlin: Like if you're a professor and you have office hours, you don't get to pick who comes in and what they ask about, but you accept that.
Merlin: You say like, well, here's where office hours start and here's where office hours end.
Merlin: And it's a similar thing to what I do when I'm falling asleep.
Merlin: Where I say, okay, everybody, have your freak out time, run around.
Merlin: I'm just going to watch you run around.
Merlin: But that doesn't mean I have to chase you.
Merlin: Even doves have pride.
Merlin: Even doves have pride.
John: I was just about to say that.
Merlin: Thank you.
John: Yeah.
John: I'm working on it all the time.
John: I mean, it's all also...
John: It's not about don't read the comments anymore for me in a way.
John: It's having read so many comments.
Merlin: That's the chicken problem voice in your head.
Merlin: You can preemptively know what you expect the person you like and respect least is going to say publicly about you.
John: And I feel like we all collectively as a culture are now arriving at a place where
John: Having each of us seen 10,000 comments under, you know, under a 30-second post of a dog riding a skateboard.
John: 10,000 comments.
Merlin: It must be nice to be able to afford a dog.
John: Yeah, like, oh, do you really think that's safe?
John: Like, what kind of dog hater are you?
John: And like, oh, well, sure, you know.
Merlin: I can tell from your dog's eyes that he's not vegan.
Merlin: Yeah, like over and over and over.
John: I can see your social security number reflected in your toothbrush holder.
John: And then all the people are like, seriously, you know, is this all you have to do all day is comment shitty things on the Internet, says I, with nothing else to do today.
John: And the collective mass of it.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: I think now none of us.
Merlin: Fair to say, even if it was weeks, months, years ago, the sort of like pseudo mini trauma of that being visited on your life as something that you now carry around with you.
John: But I really do feel like the – you can never see it in actual time.
John: But I really do feel like the scale has tipped.
John: And we're now just living in the sort of dregs of that era.
John: And when we look back, we're going to say, oh, yeah, by 2024, it had started to – that wasn't the world anymore.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: At our current moment, it still feels like the world.
John: You've seen leading indicators of that direction.
John: I just feel like if – I don't think that you can have an internet pile on the way you could three years ago.
John: I don't think you can have an outrage storm the way you could three years ago.
John: I think that there's just too much else.
John: Everybody's had the experience now.
John: Of seeing somebody they like or of going to something they know is cool and seeing 10,000 comments taking a shit on it for some reason Instagram thinks that I want to watch baseball highlights and
John: And I continue to affirm that to Instagram by clicking on baseball highlights because it turns out I did want to watch, you know, like little 15 seconds of baseball.
Merlin: I like those like summaries of the game where just stuff happens.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I like that more than like a three hour commercial filled evening.
John: The little ones that are like, check out this pitch.
John: And then a guy throws a pitch and I was like, I'm glad I saw that.
John: That was great.
John: That was a good pitch.
John: Moving on.
John: But, you know, then underneath, it's just like, it's just, uh,
John: There's so much to say about apparently about a 15 second baseball clip and people getting into big fights about it.
John: And you just go, not very long ago, I saw some guy on Instagram who was doing these really hyper cut up videos.
John: I guess it's a TikTok style or something.
John: He's just like 10 edits a second.
John: And what he was doing was like, hey, don't throw away your old coffee grinds.
John: Put them in the blender with some honey and some hummus and then stick it up your nose and take a bath.
John: And at the end, you'll be able to lay it.
Merlin: Of course it didn't work.
Merlin: You forgot to hold your breath.
John: But he's got this style, right?
John: He's just got, he's, and you could see.
John: It's kind of like health stuff, life hack stuff.
John: Life hack stuff.
Merlin: Surprising stuff in your life you're overlooking.
John: Here's how to take care of your houseplants with the banana peels that you saved when you thought you were going to make banana bread.
John: Yeah.
John: And I, in a very short amount of time, watched this guy go from a guy who really thought that this was fun and he was having fun doing it to somebody who was
John: Who was gaining a ton of followers and he was really excited about his new career.
John: Right.
John: To a guy who was reading the comments.
Right.
John: And was really upset.
John: And you could see it in his presentation.
John: He started doing videos where he was like, I'm just a guy trying to do good in the world.
John: So he went straight there.
Merlin: There's some that I watch to find a funny way to do it, where they'll be like, yes, and I know a lot of you are going to say, what about the change to this and blah, blah, blah.
Merlin: And they'll kind of do it in passing.
Merlin: But once you start doing sort of bespoke, dedicated videos about how you're misunderstood...
Merlin: It's hard not to feel like you're losing.
John: It happened so fast.
John: And, you know, I didn't – I don't dislike this guy.
John: That cycle's getting shorter now.
John: I don't care.
John: Either way, he seemed nice.
John: He's got a nice house.
John: And I do believe that if you put honey and mucus into a bull and feed it to your Venus flytrap, that it's good for the world, I guess.
John: It's like –
John: But watching him get so sad, and you could see, I never really read his comments.
Merlin: He wouldn't have done that if his head wasn't bursting with that stuff.
John: And that's the thing.
John: And I never saw the comments themselves, but I knew exactly what they were because of the videos he was posting where he was like, I mean, you know, I have to talk that fast because it's what drives engagement.
John: And I was just like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
John: And I feel like he's maybe the last one.
John: that that is going to fall into that trap because the rest of now i read them you could say the worst thing about me now and and i'm i'm cauterized because i just know that yeah and you're overseeing that same thing on baseball videos a lot of people say a lot of things is a phrase i use a lot of things but that i think was a part of my attention
John: That was 10%.
John: Even when you weren't looking at it for a decade.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Well, Max Temkin also used to say, I wake up every morning finding out who's mad at me to which my rejoinder was, well, mine is similar, which is I wake up every morning in desperate fear of who I never realized I was disappointing.
Merlin: And there's always somebody there to tell you, hi, you don't know who I am, but I used to like you and now I'm disappointed by you, which is more of a, it is more of a bummer than it might seem.
Merlin: I personally would never do that with somebody personally, but maybe that's because of the color of my crystal, but it's such a bummer when the first time you're aware of someone's existence is when they're saying something that's kind of not really true and is kind of deliberately misunderstanding what your deal is.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah, or it doesn't even occur to them to understand what your deal is.
John: They couldn't be less interested in
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You said that thing that Dave, Dave Eggers said to you purportedly, which is don't look at the comments.
Merlin: They're not for you.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And I do, I think about that a lot and just in the broadest, broadest possible way.
Merlin: I just, there's a question I ask myself, which is admittedly probably somewhat privileged or maybe even arrogant thing, which is anytime I look at a new source of information and
Merlin: or consider looking at something new, or more saliently, again, integrating a new source of information into my life, I'm pretty basic, and I ask myself a question that has parts, which is, based on this information that I'm getting, what will I see?
Merlin: think or do differently and how will this positively affect the way I look at that stack because that's the way at least in my dumb mental model you see the world however you see the world you think about the world however you think about the world and then you decide to do things differently as a result of that and that maybe that makes me an old man which I am but like there's a lot of times where I'm like it's just difficult for me to understand how this becomes a wholesome source of decision making in my life
Merlin: And I think that's when I'm given things about the Kardashians or about who Taylor Swift's boyfriend is and what kind of birthday party she's playing.
Merlin: And I have nothing against any of those people in any way.
Merlin: But that is not nutritional information for me.
Merlin: And it really crowds out what could be more useful information for me and how I can make my life better.
John: So it seems to me that you've explained your...
Merlin: progression but what's your regression or was that your regression and what's your progression was if i got good if i got tightly wound about my productivity world again i would be able to do stuff like i mean obviously the clue is right in front of us here is like oh yeah well when it occurs to me that i need i know i knew last week that i had an update to run on here and i didn't run i didn't come to the office all weekend except to
Merlin: take stuff off the 3d printing bed.
Merlin: So I could print a new thing.
Merlin: I didn't do any work this weekend for reasons you understand, um, in part, but, uh, it's, if I were more tightly wound, I'm putting that negatively, but if I were better from a productivity, strictly speaking, productivity standpoint, I would need to capture that in my trusted system and say, Hey, starting after this date, do this kind of thing.
Merlin: I could have done that on Sunday.
Merlin: I need to learn that when I wake up on Monday and I'm cock of the walk, uh,
Merlin: I got to be careful where my dopamine takes me because I can get real wound up.
Merlin: And even though I got up at like 7.15 today, I wake up early now.
Merlin: It's a thing.
Merlin: And I was doing stuff.
Merlin: Like still, I pull it up to the last minute and I've got 45 minutes before we start recording or an hour before we start recording.
Merlin: I'm like, oh, it's okay.
Merlin: I'll run this, you know, latest system update, which, you know.
Merlin: I'm not doing the usual joke about that unless I am, but no, like, usually that's fine, except when it's not, and then that's inconveniencing other people, and I should have planned better with that.
Merlin: But I'll take, at this point in my life, add all the asterisks and apologies you want, it's much more valuable to me to build better boundaries about the various aspects of my life just for my own health and sanity.
Yeah.
Merlin: Living well is the best revenge.
Merlin: Living well is the best revenge, even if you don't specifically take, oh my God, I watched such a good video about revenge.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: David Fincher does this series on Netflix called Voir, V-O-I-R.
Merlin: You never notice that it's David Fincher unless you went into it, but there's this guy I like a lot, Tony Zhao, this guy who used to do this wonderful YouTube channel, one of my all-time favorite YouTube channels called Every Frame a Painting, where he talks about movie stuff in detail, short videos like how to do comedy, like why Edgar Wright is better at comedy.
Merlin: than other people why jackie chan is better at action scenes than other people and how you know hitchcock blocks a scene and stuff like that it was all about um vengeance for what's called lit vengeance for lady it's one of those uh that one guy that south korean director i like he had that like revenge trilogy and how revenge movies and i think he did old old boy as well it's like enables you to
Merlin: a good movie.
Merlin: I don't know why I'm telling you this, except it is apropos of Revenge.
Merlin: And Revenge is a dish best served South Korean.
John: Yes.
John: I've heard that many times.
John: It's called Mabimbap Revenge.
Merlin: I used to love that show.
John: I know.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Sigh.
Merlin: Turn, turn, turn.
Merlin: And so that's where I am today.
Merlin: I've got that.
Merlin: I've got, let's see.
Merlin: Oh, did you get my screen grab?
John: So it's very confusing to me that Linda Hunt
Merlin: Can I describe what you're looking at?
Merlin: Just because these listeners on this program may not know.
Merlin: May I describe?
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Go ahead.
Merlin: John, I sent John a five or six column, seven column spreadsheet that I maintain, which basically has an actor or, you know, a public person, usually an actor in a role.
Merlin: You can see this got hot during like succession and leftovers.
Merlin: Um,
Merlin: And then, according to Google anyway, how tall they are, sorted by height.
Merlin: And just to keep us honest, the highest height, the tallest tall, is, of course, the great Robert Pershing Wadlow.
John: Right.
John: Tallest man in the world.
Merlin: Tallest man in the world, 8'11".
Merlin: And then you remember that photo, that freaky photo, with all respect, of Lucia Zarate, who was 1'8".
John: Yes.
Merlin: They called her, you know, the living doll or whatever.
John: Yes.
Merlin: And yeah, Linda Hunt's just just a tick above there, huh?
John: Well, but so she's four nine.
John: Correct.
John: Kristen Bell is five one.
John: They're only they're only separated by by three inches.
John: Or whatever.
John: What is that?
John: Yeah.
John: And I think of them as being very different in height.
John: I think of Linda Hunt as being very small.
John: A different order of height.
John: Yeah.
John: And Kristen Bell being, you know, like, I guess it's a three quarter size cello.
Merlin: I think of her as kind of a three quarter size person where she's proportional to a typical person, but she's just on the little side.
John: Holly Hunter and Paul Simon, only an inch apart.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
John: The great Holly Hunter.
Merlin: Man walks down the street, wants to be enraged in Arizona.
Merlin: Oh, oh.
John: Kieran Culkin, because you were in your succession era.
John: He is the same height as Justine Lupo.
John: That's right.
John: Who's Willa on succession?
John: Who is that?
John: Who is that?
Merlin: Willa is, do you remember the super cute girlfriend that he didn't deserve with the big hair?
Merlin: She's in the family photos with them.
Merlin: Justine.
Merlin: Oh, wait, I'm sorry.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: I'm so sorry.
Merlin: I'm so sorry.
Merlin: I apologize.
Merlin: That was Caitlin Fitzgerald plays Tabitha.
Merlin: Willa is Alan Ruck's wife.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Okay, good.
Merlin: Good, good, good.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Never comes up on the show.
Merlin: Now, Fisher Stevens, who plays Hugo, he's just under 5'7".
Merlin: Same as Amy Schumer.
John: It's amazing.
John: It's amazing these little artifacts of your life where it's like, oh yeah, succession.
Merlin: Remember?
Merlin: I add them whenever I add them.
Merlin: You see I've added Artie and Polly here, but I'll tell you a crazy one.
Merlin: Look at 14, 15, 16.
Merlin: Hugh Laurie, Dev Patel, and Julia Child are the same height.
Merlin: Exactly.
John: Isn't that?
Merlin: Dev Patel is so much taller than I thought.
Merlin: Hugh Laurie is a little taller than I thought.
Merlin: But again, now Stephen Fry, for comparison, Fry and Laurie, he's 6'5", which is a lot bigger.
Merlin: But then Julia Child, she's a big lady.
Merlin: She was?
John: Big personality.
John: A big personality.
John: Yeah, I wouldn't have thought Dev Patel was that tall because I don't know if I know who Dev Patel is, but I do.
John: He's terrific.
Merlin: He's in like The Green Knight.
Merlin: He's in those Wes Anderson movies on Netflix.
Merlin: Oh, I have seen those.
Merlin: Those are cute.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: Did you see The Rat Catcher?
Merlin: I did.
John: Holy shit, I love that.
John: So great.
John: In fact, all of that, all of those little guys are how I convinced my daughter to watch Moonrise Kingdom.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: And please consider Grand Budapest Hotel, which I think might be his best movie.
John: Well, so I, you know, I, I showed her, um, Rushmore.
John: I showed her Rushmore and she was like, no.
John: Yeah.
John: And, and she, of course she liked the one about the, the rabbit and the wolf and the, and the.
Merlin: One of my all time favorite movies, Fantastic Mr. Fox.
John: That's the one.
Merlin: Boom, boom, boom, boom, born on a mountain top.
John: I've seen my movies so many times.
John: She only watched it when she was much littler.
Merlin: I can probably show it to her again.
John: But she watched Moonrise Kingdom, and it's maybe the first time that there was a movie about kids her age that she was watching in real time, although it was made by adults.
John: There was a lot of food for thought.
Merlin: Oh, but it's got that feeling of those kind of, like for me, a movie like A Little Romance when I was a kid, that give me kind of like slightly wobbly feelings, not in a sex way, but in a like, oh, there's this big world out there, and darn it, kids my age are...
Merlin: Getting exposure to it.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Dancing in your underwear with the record player playing.
Merlin: How cute is that?
Merlin: Yeah, it's pretty cute, but it's also... Yeah, I know.
Merlin: It is a lot, but that's a good one.
Merlin: You know, I wonder if she'd like... No, Life Aquatic might be a bit too much.
Merlin: You think Grand Budapest Hotel has... Grand Budapest Hotel is my favorite Wes Anderson movie, and I like them all.
Merlin: Isle of Dogs is good.
Merlin: Isle of Dogs is fantastic, but it might be... When I first saw it, I first went and saw it on my own, because at that age, I was like, I don't know.
Merlin: It's kind of a lot.
Merlin: It's got some scary dogs have rabies stuff, but Isle of Dogs is really good.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: Do you have a favorite?
Merlin: Do you have one you like?
Merlin: For me, obviously, Rushmore was the one that kicked it off for me, but do you have... Oh, yeah.
John: Obviously, it's the one.
John: Sean and I went to see it together on tour, and we walked out, and he was like, that's basically the story of your dad.
John: And I was like, yeah, but we didn't have any money.
John: Royal Tenenbaums.
Merlin: That's a hell of a movie.
Merlin: That movie's a lot.
Merlin: The needle in the hay scene can be a bit much.
Merlin: It's a lot.
John: It's a lot.
John: But it's a great... I mean, it's a movie that got inside me.
John: I just said Friscalating Dusklight to somebody the other day.
Merlin: When you never guess, like, if you see the trailer and you see the posters and you see, like, you know, Ari and Uzi and they all have matching tracksuits, you never...
Merlin: I find that movie... Let me just say, I want to stipulate.
Merlin: As with David Fincher, I fucking had it with people who were like, oh, this style is cold.
Merlin: There's no emotion in this.
Merlin: I'm like, are you watching the same movie I am?
Merlin: When you watch a Wes Anderson movie, you can watch Grand Budapest Hotel and think that it's too mannered just because he does these 90-degree whip pans.
Merlin: I feel a lot of feelings when I watch those movies.
Merlin: And Royal Tenenbaums...
Merlin: It's really, it slips in a lot of emotional impact with some pretty wackadoo characters.
John: I wonder how much that is that you and I grew up in a time when wackadoo was the way we got to emotion.
Merlin: Especially in somebody, my thing, probably you could argue maybe some days it's Monty Python, most days David Letterman, my biggest influence in terms of like what I loved and what I ended up stealing.
Merlin: And so just completely steeped in irony before the 90s.
Merlin: Like my thesis sponsor actually gave me stick about it was like, well, you got all these problems with TV commercials and the Cosby show But have you considered applying that same, you know, cultural studies critical eye to Letterman?
Merlin: It's like, oh boy, that really does kind of screw up my deal because he's funny Yeah, I know you think he's funny but like it's all ironic and he runs commercials like everyone else So how does that work out?
Merlin: But like, yeah, you know, is that fair to say though?
Merlin: In an era, a time just so suffused with irony, irony in the usual like classical sense, but also in the sense of like distance.
John: Well, that's the thing.
John: I look at the gong show sometimes and Letterman and, and yeah, absolutely.
John: Like that, all that British comedy in terms of the fact that
John: You know, when people started talking about the new sincerity right about when I was when I've heard say that is Jesse.
John: Yeah.
John: The new sincerity.
John: Exactly.
John: But I did.
John: You know, I was aware that, yeah, we were never once outwardly sincere.
John: uh because we were ironic in everything and david letterman you knew from the very beginning david letterman was really hurting inside he was really hurting inside he still is to this day really hurting you're never gonna know about it you know you're never gonna hear him talk about it uh letterman is hurting and the way he's dealing with it is putting on a velcro suit and throwing himself off of a three-story building
John: And that's how I want to deal with my emotions, too, as a as a 11 year old or a 14 year old.
Merlin: All of this is like as a teenager in retrospect, I wouldn't put it this way at the time.
Merlin: But like when I got into Letterman in like ninth, tenth grade, when I could when I could catch it on weekends or Fridays, like it would be like the way I would put it was like, well, I'm already.
Merlin: Snotty teenager and I think one way to define teenagers at least in my time was you're in keenly aware of what you don't like what you hate and who you aren't but you are very Disconnected from what it is that you actually do care about which is normal But like that makes it so such fodder for a slightly above-average 14 year old to watch something again, you know like Letterman and and that becomes part of your armor in some ways
John: Oh, in every way, right?
John: I mean, the whole transformation that happened in me between ninth and eleventh grade, where I went from being
John: a very, very soggy pile of dish towels to being someone who was, you know, like feared and in some ways despised by my fellow teens.
John: And Frank Koufel.
John: And by Frank Koufel and by, you know, by, well, everyone I came in contact with was that Letterman had given me
John: a shield and a sword.
John: And at first it was, at first the shield was more important.
John: And then I dropped the shield after I realized how good I was with the sword.
Merlin: You'll remember that one of my first observations about you as we became friends was that for better or for worse, you have an absolutely uncanny ability to zero straight in on something that somebody is vulnerable about, maybe even something they don't know they're vulnerable about.
Merlin: And you would go straight in.
Merlin: You were really good at that.
Merlin: And I was too.
John: Yeah.
John: And it is people that don't, you know, when you say that and I nod, it's only because we both have been there a million times.
John: I'm not proud of it, but it doesn't mean it didn't happen.
John: But the fact that it is a kind of seeing thing.
John: to meet somebody and within, within a, you know, just a blink of an eye, just understand what this person is most vulnerable about their hair, their income, their background.
Merlin: There's some, there's, there's something about like where they're there.
Merlin: You can tell they're extra sweaty about this one thing.
Merlin: And you're like, that's your deal.
John: And, and if you and I were immoral, we could have used, well, or we could have used that stuff to exploit people to, to make money, to,
John: We could have used that stuff to exploit people.
John: Just, as you say, start a cult.
Merlin: And instead, we were... To get people, to persuade people that it was their idea to do something that is at odds with their own well-being.
John: I think in my young years, I was such a wet pile of dishrags that it never would have occurred to me to use that ability to do anything other than to get those people...
John: To neutralize them so they couldn't hurt me.
Merlin: Right.
John: Right.
John: I wasn't trying to take their money.
John: I wasn't trying to get them in bed.
John: I wasn't trying to manipulate.
John: Kind of social and emotional, but Screek, like get their firstest with the mostest.
John: Yeah.
John: Or at least just have it in my front pocket.
John: Like, hey, if you're going to turn on me, if you're going to fuck with me at all, I already know.
Merlin: To paraphrase the quote about Milton Berle, I will take out just enough to beat you.
Merlin: I don't want to beat you senseless with this, but if you go there, I'm going to give you a glimpse of what you're in for if you decide to go to war with me.
John: And I think for me between the ages of 17 and 23, that was a period where I was learning to get, it was like I had those laser beam eyes and I put on sunglasses, but I had, I had to learn how to calibrate that doing just what you're saying.
John: Like I can't use it all every time.
John: I cannot expend all remaining ordinance on my coordinates every fucking time that somebody makes me scared.
John: Yeah.
Uh,
John: And now I don't do it at all, right?
John: Like, I don't do that hardly ever.
Merlin: I feel like I really try to, if I could say, try to encourage people to talk about that thing that they're vulnerable about, but not in like, I'm not going to face you straight on and look you in the eyes way, but to let you know that this is, I'm not going to make the joke you've heard a million times.
Merlin: That's so big.
Merlin: First of all, just not making the joke.
Merlin: Oh, you're procrastinating?
Merlin: Yeah, I keep meaning to get better.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Oh, Merlin, like the wizard.
Merlin: Don't say the thing that that person's heard a million times about how they're fucked up.
Merlin: Just fucking listen to what they're saying and don't be a dick.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, and I think for me, on stage with a bunch of comedy people all those years, it was always really easy for me, as the banter's going around...
John: to throw something like that into the mix.
John: Like, well, you know, only one of us on stage is wearing lifts in his shoes.
John: So let's, you know, and then the one guy that's got lifts in his shoes gets beat red.
John: But I wasn't... I can't control it, like probably, yeah.
John: But I wasn't trying to injure anybody.
John: It's just like we're in the game.
John: And even now, I think even the funny stuff, I just am too...
John: It's like the comment section.
John: I've just seen it hurt people accidentally, even when you're not trying.
John: But that irony, I feel like the irony of the Wes Anderson movies, the reason it resonates with us so much is that we were...
John: We we never showed our you weren't supposed to show your real feelings or what you really cared about.
John: That was the literally the opposite of what you were trying to do.
Merlin: Especially as an adult.
John: I mean, until the new sincerity came along and made it okay to cry, Merlin.
Merlin: When was that?
John: Do you have a date on that?
John: I feel like, whew, boy, I don't know.
John: I was there.
John: I was drunk.
John: I don't remember the first time it was okay.
John: I appreciate your vulnerability.
John: Yeah, thanks.
John: Yeah, I still don't.
John: My kid has a special relationship with me where I will be emotional around her.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: But I, I'm not, it's not like I'm going to do that.
John: You know, when we pull up somewhere and I'm sitting there in the car and I'm like, and I'm really emotional and she's kind of, you know, got her hand on my arm and she's, she's appointed herself to the role of like, it's okay, daddy.
John: And then we both sort of look at each other and I zip it back up in the suit and go, okay, here we go.
John: And out the door into the world.
John: I find it so hard to do.
John: It's very hard.
John: It's very hard to do, but I would never, you know, I don't.
John: It's a lot.
Merlin: It's a lot to put on somebody else.
Merlin: Well, for me, like, you know, I was actually thinking in particular this morning about one of the bitterest and cruelest ironies of having a child that you deeply love, as in like, I like this person.
Merlin: And I was thinking about how the time that I spent with that kid for the first five years of that kid's life feel like 20 years.
Merlin: in a good way, mostly, right?
Merlin: Like, so much happened.
Merlin: I was so actively focused on so many things.
Merlin: And, you know, just the kids need you less, like once they go to school, at least, but like the bitterest irony and like all the stuff, and he'll claim to remember stuff.
Merlin: But the flat fact of the matter is that kids are honestly rarely neurologically capable of actually, in a way we would think of as being a memory, remembering anything that happened before the age of five.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And like that is that's my 20 years with that kid.
Merlin: That's when we develop so many things in our relationship where I'll watch like even just like I posted a video the other night of this.
Merlin: Just moments where there's moments that you have with that kid.
Merlin: That kid doesn't remember fuck all.
Merlin: They'll say they remember because in the same way that I don't remember my finger being slammed in a door at wiki watchy.
Merlin: theme park in the early 70s.
Merlin: There's no way I could remember that.
Merlin: I was three.
Merlin: I think I remember it, but I mainly remember it for being a story I've heard a bunch of times, I think.
Merlin: I'm not a neurologist, but that's the bitter irony, is the part where I imprinted on you
Merlin: I mean, I'm kind of inverting the Lawrence thing here, but where I imprinted on you as a person that I genuinely like and enjoy seeing change and grow was a period that you just don't have access to in your mind.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: And there's just something about that that's so difficult where you're like, I don't know, when you talk about driving up someplace with your kid and you're getting emotional, like, I don't know if it's something that's going on in your head or something about where you are, but sometimes I am just overwhelmed with the...
Merlin: honestly sometimes ironies just sometimes the changes just being in a moment where i am experiencing a moment in like three or four different ways i'm experiencing it yeah as a father i'm experiencing as a father of a 16 year old but i'm also kind of experiencing it as the father of a four-year-old like the first time we ever took your photo at this place we always take your photo like that and i'm experiencing it increasingly as a child
Merlin: as somebody whose parents had that same experience and how I don't talk to my mom as much as I should.
Merlin: And like that sometimes might be when you're watching Toy Story 2 or it might just be when you roll up to McDonald's and you get really overwhelmed by that.
Merlin: To me, personally, that feeling of those multiple roles, those multiple viewpoints, they're all very real and they are utterly unsuited to somebody who's expected to just go through life like you're looking through a cardboard tube and experiencing what's happening at that moment.
Merlin: I find it very overwhelming, sometimes in a deeply human way.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: I, uh, I, uh, I'm in that in the same transition right now.
John: You know, my dad and mom,
John: Think worked really hard not to be like their parents and it was easy for them not to be like their parents because their parents were Sadists or maniacs, right?
John: Like they're probably thinking they're doing the best they can be doing they could but the thing about my parents is they tried to do They tried not to be like their parents, but they didn't try not to be like their parents every day It's not like that they thought in their head.
John: What would my dad have done?
John: I'm not gonna do that.
John: You know like they generally
John: wanted to make a better life for their kids.
John: But based on what they thought didn't go as well when they were kids?
John: Well, no, just based on new technology and new awareness and how to be a good parent.
John: It was easy for my mom not to go out for a pack of cigarettes and not come back.
John: That wasn't a challenge for her to be better than her dad.
John: But I...
John: When my daughter comes home with problems that I recognize from my own life, I have that additional layer of, I remember what they told me when I came home with this exact same problem.
Merlin: As an explanation or a consolation?
John: No, I was always punished, right?
John: I mean, I came home and it was always a problem.
John: So there was always a demerit.
John: And that demerit was part of a tough love mentality.
John: Preparing you for the real world.
John: That's right.
John: And they really believed in me at some level.
John: And the way that they showed that was by just saddling me with demerits in order to, I guess, well, no, obviously, to scare me into shaping up and conforming to the expectations.
John: And now she's just for the first time starting to come home
John: With reports.
Merlin: Yeah, I didn't get this things like things like I'm gonna jump straight to like feeling left out of something.
John: Oh, well that social stuff is is over here but No, the first time that she ever brought home a piece of paper that said she had an assignment due that she had missed the deadline.
John: Oh shit.
John: Yeah and then
John: you know, another, another one in that kind of family where, and she started, she's been starting to complain like, God, it's so hard to keep everything straight.
John: Like, how do you remember all this stuff?
John: And I was like, Oh boy.
John: Oh boy.
John: Oh boy.
John: And, and so I'm, but, but her whole life I've been, uh, very conscious of my childhood in a way that I think my mom and dad both spent most of their life trying to blot their childhood out.
John: And not revisited on an hourly basis, but we're the generation that first was introduced to our childhood as its own generation.
John: As a product that was being repackaged and and sold to us I guess we saw it happen to the boomers first, right?
John: But but we're the ones that were the boomers have their childhoods repackaged and sold to them We were the ones that that were doing that in real time.
John: Like I am a child I am having this experience now like I know this will one day be in a highlight reel and
John: And so, yeah, I've spent her whole life going, what would my parents have done?
John: What would the schools have done?
John: What would I have heard about?
John: And how did that make me who I am?
John: And what can I do to make her path easier?
Merlin: But even just starting with continually being aware of it.
Merlin: It's a lot.
Merlin: I mean, honestly, I think that's its own challenge.
Merlin: And just for what it's worth, I won't go on because I've talked a lot.
Merlin: But you're getting into something that has become a really big thing for me as I've started to address issues related to trauma, as I've started to sort of...
Merlin: rethink elements of how things went and what the story was from various points in my youth.
Merlin: And one thing I walk away with, and I'll look forward to a day when this is not the obvious takeaway, but the obvious takeaway of a huge amount of my childhood, where I had a very loving, generous childhood by almost any standard.
Merlin: I was just like everybody.
Merlin: I want to hear your side of this.
Merlin: I was just constantly being, no matter what happened, I was constantly being told what I had just done wrong or what I'm doing wrong.
Merlin: And like there are even things that were meant to be encouraging, maybe as well as learning an instrument.
Merlin: Or maybe it was struggling with something in school that probably had something to do with my ADHD.
Merlin: But whatever it was, sort of to your point, it was always something I needed to work on because I screwed up.
Merlin: If somebody else in the world got sad, it was because of how I treated them.
Merlin: Like, no matter what happened, I had stepped beyond my bounds, and I felt like, I realized in retrospect at a point, like, there was never an end to that.
Merlin: There was never a point where they go, I mean, you think about a movie like A Christmas Story, and like that sweet moment where his mother is like, we won't tell your dad about your glasses being broken.
Merlin: That's such an anomaly.
Merlin: Because that's usually the moment where you're like, how many times did I tell you never to do this?
Merlin: And like, you got your glasses broken, I told you you'd shoot your eye out, all that kind of stuff.
Merlin: But I don't know if you feel that like I did, but like in retrospect, that has become something with which I leaven a lot of my apparent insight about the world is just remembering that.
Merlin: In retrospect, for me, if I were going to redo it or rethink it, I would say, you know what?
Merlin: Sometimes I just don't need your input on this authority figure.
Merlin: There's nothing you have to offer on how this went that's going to make this better or something I can learn from.
Merlin: It's mainly a way for you to just keep, forgive my saying, just keep reiterating the power structure under which I suffer.
Merlin: And I feel it to this fucking day.
John: You know, my whole... I mean, did you ever... My persona is based on laughing at a lot of that stuff, right?
John: Like...
John: I I graduated last in my high school and I've and that has become a A slogan for me.
Merlin: Yeah And a shorthand way of explaining myself to people and and I and when I say it I know that Because you know how what happens and how it turns out It's one thing for me to say I failed two classes when I was a senior after I went to a pretty good college at the time It's stung pretty fucking hard
John: Well, yeah.
John: And, and, and I know that, I know that the, that the, that the, the impact of that statement lands because it's so unlikely, like the last in your class, how unlikely.
John: And, and yet it's actually true.
John: And I was talking to
John: to my kid the other day and i started to do my usual routine like you know oh well you know i graduated last in my class so let me tell you i know a thing or two about this and that and as i was telling the story i just had the oh because she had brought a note home and she said did you ever have to bring a note home from school oh geez and i and i and i just suddenly realized like that for
John: Six years of my life.
John: I had to bring a note home from school pretty much every day And mainly about behavior it was about everything I mean, I I was thinking about this in this context.
John: I failed typing three times That's three F's on my report cards in typing and the way the world was built at that time
John: You could fail.
John: And I know how to type.
Merlin: I taught myself how to type in typing.
Merlin: Yeah, but you didn't learn.
Merlin: I was like me in 10-key.
Merlin: I refused.
Merlin: When I had business administration, I didn't learn to touch type.
Merlin: I totally cheated every chance I got.
Merlin: I never learned how to properly do 10-key, all that kind of stuff.
Merlin: But that's presented to you as being about as important as failing three years of English or history.
John: Well, and what's crazy is that not only could a guy like me who...
John: Who wanted to type for a living I wanted to be in the in the newsroom with a cigarette and a green visor Yeah, that's what I wanted to do and I was in there typing like a maniac I was just doing it wrong and not only was the world built in such a way that you could give a kid an F in typing who wanted nothing more than to be a good typist and
John: But that somehow they let me keep signing up for typing.
John: I got another F. I signed up for it again and got another F. And nobody put that together.
Merlin: That's the system's fault, John.
John: And then I went back again a third time.
John: I have to keep taking typing.
John: When will you learn how to type, John?
John: And I got a third F. You took the class wrong.
John: And the thing was, there were two typing teachers, and I took a class from both of them.
John: It's not like it was just me.
John: And I liked them.
John: I loved being in the class.
Yeah.
John: And as I was telling my kid this, I suddenly got really emotional.
John: Oh, geez.
John: Because for the first time in my whole life, I realized that that wasn't funny.
John: And it wasn't funny because she wouldn't... I wasn't telling her as a humorous anecdote.
John: And I wasn't telling it to her as a warning.
John: I was just...
John: describe she was like did you ever have to bring a note home from school because she had a note and she was ashamed and I was like yeah I did and pretty soon this is just on our drive home I'm like I failed typing three times and I so you started chewing on that in a new way I felt it for the first time yeah yeah yeah you felt for what it was rather than just repeating a story yeah and it wasn't and the thing is that repeating a story began at the time I'm sure in high school mm-hmm
John: people were like, you know, Hey, are you going to the party this weekend?
John: And I had to say, no, I can't.
John: I'm grounded because I got an F in typing.
John: Like it was already funny.
John: It was already national lampoon level.
John: Funny to me at the time, even though,
John: I was, getting an F is traumatic.
John: Absolutely.
John: And getting a report card that's all Fs and being told you can't go do things, you're on permanent restriction, you're going to have to take a note home.
Merlin: Well, until you figure out how to straighten it out, John, what the hell's wrong with you?
Merlin: Other people don't have this problem.
Merlin: Other people's children don't have this problem.
Merlin: The problem is clearly with you.
John: Nobody fails typing.
John: I was the first person to fail typing in 11 years.
John: You're not living up to your potential.
John: And so, yeah, but I felt it for the first time because it was already a joke when it was happening because that's the only way I could have dealt with it, right?
John: I couldn't have – what was my other option?
John: To be sad at the time?
John: To be 15 and like crying about my effing typing?
John: I would have had zero sympathy.
John: They would have been like, well, why don't you do the assignment like you were told?
John: Yeah.
John: Nobody was cruel at that point.
Merlin: It makes you seem obdurate It makes it sound like it makes it sound like you John we know you're capable of doing this.
Merlin: What's your fucking damage?
John: And that I think that was what was so emotional because I because I'm talking to her and I'm realizing I spent my entire Childhood at war with everyone at war with all adults and
John: also all other kids.
John: I was at war with adults over typing.
John: The kids in my life didn't care about that.
Merlin: The kids in your life reflected a lot of the adults in your life.
Merlin: They're all on the same page in some way, in a way that you're not.
John: Well, yeah, they're all feeling each other's boobies.
John: Absolutely.
John: And I wasn't feeling anybody's boobies either.
John: So it's like I'd had all of the, I was at war with all the grownups and I was at war with all the kids and
John: And I was at war with everybody until I don't know when Merlin, maybe when did I stop being at war with everybody?
John: I don't know.
John: Yeah.
John: I don't, I don't know.
John: I mean, I went to war with myself, I guess is what happened after that.
John: Um, and, and that's still, those are the voices I hear in the morning, right?
John: Are the ones that became people that lived inside me.
John: But, yeah, so I'm sitting there in the car, and I pull over, and I stop, and I'm just kind of staring at the steering wheel because I'm really legitimately moved to be for the first time kind of sitting with the fact that getting three Fs in typing, and that's just the smallest little example of typing.
Merlin: Because I got Fs in everything.
Merlin: And a less sympathetic or interested person might say, well, yeah, but you turned out okay.
Merlin: You're typing fine now.
Merlin: Just let it go.
John: Yeah, right.
John: Let it go.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: or whatever.
John: What's the... Verklempt.
John: I was Verklempt.
John: And now she, who's afraid of her note home, now she has her hand on my arm
John: comforting me and i'm in even in that moment thinking don't put this on her don't make this a a thing that she now has to help you she has to manage she has to manage your emotions and then i'm like wait a minute no this is fine i agree it's beyond fine it's like this is completely wholesome
Merlin: I mean, like, for me, for, like, to be an adult and have something pass through all the various, you know, portcullises and swamps of your mind to get through and make a point to today version of you, talk about a fucking Buddhist gift.
Merlin: Like, just don't reject that.
Merlin: Like, just play with that for a minute because, boy, can it ever be useful in figuring out what your story is now.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: I give you permission if it helps.
Merlin: Well, thank you.
John: Yeah.
John: Thank you.
John: I mean, I don't, I, it's like anybody who's, uh, who has a bunch of stuff that they haven't.
John: I mean, I would, you would never think, or I would never describe myself as somebody that hadn't dealt with.
Merlin: what he'd been through but you've made a process in some ways through things like aa right you've made a process of interrogating these things straight on very actively and that's become an aspect of who you are yeah but like you were saying like stuff sneaks up you're watching a a a tv commercial
John: for Chevrolet where somebody takes their senile grandmother out for a drive and all of a sudden it's in, you know, all of a sudden you're back at something that you haven't thought of since you were 13.
John: And, and, uh, so the stuff tiptoes in on little, little cat feet.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Yes.
John: And then I'm like, Oh, what the, wait a minute, wait a minute.
John: I was doing fine.
John: Or, I mean, I'm getting along.
John: Um, I do not want to come unraveled because I suddenly have a new,
Merlin: a new perspective on my whole life like i'm not looking for one of those yeah yeah one of those things where you're like you're so we've all had those at least i've had those points where i'm like i'm so frazzled i'm so vulnerable everything hurts that's happening and i'm not trying to make myself look like some kind of like a a giant problem but gosh if you haven't had that you sure you sure you haven't had that you sure you haven't had just more than you can
Merlin: handle right now and things that cause you to not have access to the tools that help you get through the day usually, that is a crisis in some ways.
Merlin: But I mean, I'm not trying to chuck you on the shoulder, but I do feel like as I get older, I've stopped trying to reject those feelings, which I think is something we were very much trained to do.
Merlin: I could go on about this for five hours, but I think part of that is remaining
Merlin: keeping some emotional plasticity where there's room for that growth to come in and to not just be rejected by some shitty version of you that's 19 years old.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: A couple of people have died recently that were, that played a formative role in my life.
John: And, and, you know, thinking about just those,
John: those relationships where it's like, Oh wait, this person isn't a Greek God.
John: they only existed for a short amount of time.
John: And when I knew them, that was a very short amount of time.
John: Like I have things in my refrigerator that are older than relationships that I had with people when I was a teenager.
Merlin: It can be so disproportionate.
Merlin: There's just somebody that you ran in, like people I ran into when I was 14 and saw like friends of family who like had this huge impact on me.
Merlin: They were in their 20s.
Merlin: They had a huge impact on me and then they were gone and I never heard from them again.
Merlin: But like, you know what I mean?
Merlin: But their influence is indelible.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: In like my forming my sense of self.
Merlin: Like, oh my God, if I hadn't met them, this would be a sliding door situation.
Merlin: I don't know if I'd be better or worse and different, but like, I certainly don't see things with the same, I wouldn't have seen things with the same context and subtlety and breadth of human experience.
Merlin: The shit that I did not have access to at 14.
Merlin: And those people could come in and say shit like, hey,
Merlin: This is my boyfriend who's gay.
Merlin: And I'm straight.
Merlin: And I'm kind of wild.
Merlin: And I drink a lot.
Merlin: And the stuff that is obsessing you right now, dude, it's really going to matter less or it's going to matter differently than you could have expected.
Merlin: And don't take a chunk out of yourself because your teacher's a piece of shit.
Merlin: Just you know what I mean?
Merlin: Like I don't know how else to describe it but like there are very much people like that and then they were gone Not people I knew for 20 years and they might become shit heels because everybody a lot of people do become shit heels I don't know but like at that time boy talk about a life a life raft Yeah, I wish that anybody had ever said anything like what
John: What you just described.
John: No one ever, ever, ever said, hey, this isn't as big a deal as it sounds.
Merlin: Well, and most of us don't have the ears to hear it when it does happen.
Merlin: Yeah, because the the the fundamental again, to go back to my fucking stupid thesis to the cultural hegemony.
Merlin: The, what is hegemony?
Merlin: Hegemony is, there's culture you don't have to describe.
Merlin: You know who's allowed to park where and be late.
Merlin: That's not written down anywhere.
Merlin: You just know that.
Merlin: And you know what your role is as a kid, and you know or can imagine what the consequences are if you step outside the bounds of what you are constantly, maybe, yeah, what you're instructed, but what you're constantly doing.
Merlin: shown it's like the scene in mean girls where katie gets up and is like goes to the bathroom and the teacher's like where are you going she's like well i have to go to the bathroom and i'm like no no you don't just get up and go to the bathroom you know what i mean just those those kinds of things where you're like oh well this is a weird new thing that i'm not used to is having a rule about when i can urinate and then you're like wow so like there's a whole like structure in place here to be shitty to other people on purpose
Merlin: I just see it everywhere.
John: I see it everywhere now.
John: I think the one thing that I keep coming back to with this stuff is I realize all of the things that I'm seeing her about to go through that I'm right now making a pact with her where I'm basically saying, look, there's a bunch of stuff about to happen and I'm not going to be the one that punishes you.
John: I'm not going to be the one that tells you that you have to.
Merlin: Which is very nearly a reverse of what we grew up with in the sense of, here's a vague constellation of things that I can't really describe to you, but oh boy, do you want to make sure you never piss me off about any of these things.
Merlin: And it's not saying that you get a free pass to be an asshole, but it is a way of saying like, hey...
Merlin: I hope there's a way that I could let you know that I have no plans right now to try and make you feel bad about this entire area of your life.
Merlin: I'm not going to tell you how to eat food.
Merlin: I'm not going to tell you who your real friends are.
Merlin: I'm not going to offer you the useless constellations that people used to think were useful or practical, but actually ended up just being a deep critique on who the person is.
Merlin: Not helping like I'm just gonna be here to be something you can bounce off of and I can I'll step in anytime I can step in but mostly You know what I mean?
Merlin: Like how do you say that without sounding like a weirdo?
John: Well, I think I think because she's starting to for the first time have people
John: You know, she's at a cool alternative school.
John: They're not threatening her like they did me.
John: Right.
John: But, you know.
Merlin: It's like Elaine says in Seinfeld, well, what did you do to make, she's like, oh, yeah, we just make fun of them until they got an eating disorder.
Merlin: That's a much more progressive, like affluent way to ruin someone's life.
John: But, you know, they are sending letters home, and there is a threat implicit to it, which is just like, well— She stepped outside the parameters of what they're comfortable managing, and now you need to step in and fix it.
John: Yeah, you get three or four of these, and then it's going to be a different colored letter home.
Merlin: My kid's elementary, my friend of mine, whose kid is a good deal older than my kid, basically they said, look, hey, this is the second time we've had to deal with this kid.
Merlin: You need to literally put him on Ritalin or similar, or he needs to find another school.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: As in like, oh, he wrestles in class.
Merlin: And they're like, they just jump straight into, we got 43 people in here.
Merlin: He gets one 43rd of the attention.
Merlin: And if he takes, you know, one 41st of the attention, that's too much.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: So go fix it, dad.
John: Well, and so what I'm saying to her is, look, I'm never going to be the one, even though there's a lot of pressure on me to do.
John: To tell you that you... Yeah.
John: I'm not going to do that.
John: I'm not going to take their side on this.
John: I am.
John: I'm not going to carry water for this authoritarian fucking empire that we live in.
John: But I am going to tell you who your real friends are.
Merlin: Well, the thing is, though, they say if they're your real friends, they wouldn't encourage you to smoke reefer or something.
Merlin: How do you help your kid identify who their real friends are and whether it's somebody they should be sad about?
John: Do you have a codex for that?
John: That's just the fun.
John: For me, that's the fun part.
John: None of them are your real friends.
John: Have a good day.
John: None of these people will mean anything to you in five years.
John: It's all about asking questions because she comes to it, right?
John: I say, well, so what did they say?
John: And she says, and then I say, well, so how did that make you feel?
John: And she says, and I'm like, well, so what did they say to the other person?
John: And pretty soon, she's worked it all out, right?
Merlin: It's not a... Because you're saying it, and I have experimented with this in the past.
Merlin: My kid's been pretty fortunate about those kinds of things, considering, considering, considering, especially.
Merlin: But there's times where I'm like...
Merlin: I feel like we're talking about Seamus from Harry Potter.
Merlin: We're like, oh, this kid's this and that.
Merlin: It's like, you know, that kid's fucking Seamus.
Merlin: That kid's an idiot.
Merlin: He probably has a very uneven home life.
Merlin: He's probably experiencing abuse or neglect at home.
Merlin: And he's obviously, in addition to that, also a piece of shit.
Merlin: So don't listen to him.
Merlin: I don't say that anymore because I don't think that's that helpful either.
John: But I do hate Seamus.
John: Because I'm not trying to process... And you're not trying to fix it, right?
John: When other kids are mean to her...
John: I don't have any interest in telling her that they're mean to her because they suck.
John: I don't have, I'm not there to.
John: They're jealous of you.
John: Yeah.
John: Because when they're mean to her, I, I don't take it personally.
John: And that's, I think what happens.
Merlin: You wouldn't worry about being yelled at on the internet by somebody who doesn't even attempt to understand who you actually are.
John: Yeah.
John: But like the mean girls don't accept my daughter.
John: That doesn't mean that I was a bad parent or it doesn't, it doesn't trigger when the mean girls didn't accept me.
John: I look at it and go, look, I know what happens to the mean girls.
John: And often, sweetheart, they're very successful in life.
John: You're going to come back from college and they're going to be pushing babies around the mall.
John: Well, who knows?
John: You know, they might be the CEO of a... You're not going to recognize her husband.
Merlin: You're not going to recognize him.
Merlin: He's grown a mustache.
John: A big company.
John: They might be rich and happy their whole lives.
John: That's not...
John: There isn't any instant karma in the world, and that's not where we put our energy.
John: That's fair.
John: All right, fine, whatever.
John: People do good, and they suck, and people who deserve great things often get cancer and die.
John: But the point for you, little one.
John: Yeah, John Lennon was murdered.
John: You know, John Lennon, he was a misogynist.
John: Yeah.
John: The important thing for you, sweetie, is like there is a path for you in life.
John: It is a path that you're going to enjoy.
John: And all we're trying to do is find it.
John: And it's right there.
John: It's obvious.
John: It's not hidden under the brush.
John: No one's trying to steal it from you.
John: There's no one trying to block you from it.
John: It's just there.
John: You just have to walk down the path you want to walk down.
John: And it usually won't kill you.
John: It won't kill you, right.
John: And seeing her emotions come online and realize, oh, right, teenage emotions, they're not actually connected to things.
Merlin: But even then, if the kid seems to have gotten over a little bit, let's say, take your example of the fourth time John has passed typing, I also think, contra a lot of our impulses, in the same way that it's rarely the time to say, I told you so, I think that also goes for when someone is temporarily successful.
Merlin: Because you don't want to present it as there's this skeleton key you found and now just use that.
Merlin: Sometimes I'll just say something like, wow, that must feel really good.
Merlin: To be prepared and done early and all of that stuff.
Merlin: Or whatever.
Merlin: But it's when they say, wow, you need to get them to talk about how that feels because it really does matter.
Merlin: Say what doesn't work is coming in with your final judgment on what that means about how they acted in the past.
Merlin: That's a different kind of slightly more positive shittiness.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Interesting.
Merlin: God damn it, John.
Merlin: We're doing the wrong kind of work.
Merlin: Do you realize how many people we could help with our vague suggestions?
Merlin: I'm just trying to help the one.
John: Which one?
John: No, the little one right here who comes in here and goes, oh, God, everything sucks.
John: And I'm like, well, let me ask you about that.
John: What all sucks?
John: And she's like, I just wanted to, the candy bars are all melted.
John: And I'm like, yeah, I know.
John: That does suck.
Merlin: You know, sweetie, some days it's chickens and some days it's just feathers.
Merlin: What?
Merlin: I should go.
Merlin: Oh, man, I like that.
Merlin: We went there.