Ep. 524: "Dinner's at Five"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Hi, Merlin.
Merlin: Do you keep your microphone in some kind of a holster or a sheath?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: No, I put it on the... I don't know if the listener can hear this, but this is not the show.
Merlin: Of course it is.
Merlin: I just hear kind of a whooshing sound sometimes, like you're unsheathing your instrument.
John: My microphone is kept here on the arm of the sofa.
John: Okay.
John: And so it sits like this.
John: Just like Johnny Cash.
John: And then when I pick it up, I sometimes have to get it.
John: You know, it's not oriented correctly.
Merlin: Are you holding it in one of your hands while you're talking?
Merlin: Yeah.
John: For a long time, I had a mic stand, like a tabletop mic stand.
John: Yeah.
John: But then I realized I just held it in my hand.
John: Oh.
Yeah.
John: And so then I just took the mic stand off because it's a lot heavier than just holding the microphone.
John: But as you know, an SM7, it's not really a handle.
John: You should get one of those, like a Freddie Mercury stick.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Remember that?
John: Like in the mid-70s.
Merlin: Yeah, half of a mic stand.
Merlin: Well, yeah, our listeners probably won't remember this, but Freddie Mercury, the singer from Queen, probably the greatest rock singer of all time, he would do a thing, especially in the mid-70s and into the We Are the Champions era, where he would have the microphone in a stand-like thing.
Merlin: But I want to say it was almost like if you ever, like, screwed up and pulled the top out of a mic stand.
Merlin: But it had a stick that extended.
Merlin: So you could do that.
Merlin: You could still do mic stand moves.
Merlin: you could still do Mike in one hand moves.
Merlin: You could even fling the, the, the Freddie, the Freddie stick, you know, away.
Merlin: If it, if you like needed it in the moment, I'm not going to Google for it, but one of the things I heavily, there's so many things I associate with Jonestown.
Merlin: And one of the things I just might have come from the the the TV movie But you know you see those photos of Jim Jones when he's sitting in that big like a wicker chair like I've got a sign over it or something But I feel like it's at least in my head.
Merlin: I know I am on TV and something I've seen photos of Jim Jones wearing the very dark shades sitting in his wicker chair Holding a microphone and talking to people and you feel and that's what you're picturing
Merlin: I'm not picturing that.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, you know, I do sometimes think that maybe I should just wear sunglasses all the time.
John: Sunglasses indoors.
John: Really?
John: Oh, really?
John: You know, just in a kind of like those ones that Jim Jones did.
Merlin: John, that's commitment.
Merlin: If you start becoming a sunglasses inside guy, that's going to have, I think that at your age, legally, then that has to be a thing you do and that's your thing.
John: Yeah, well, you know, I used to have a pair that were tinted darker at the top and shaded lighter.
Merlin: I have a photo of you holding my baby wearing those glasses.
Merlin: They're kind of like an Elvis TCB period glasses, and you're holding a little infant with a missing tooth, if memory serves.
John: Yeah, and I feel like I was very comfortable in those glasses.
John: They were big.
John: Yes.
John: They were a little tinted at the top, air of mystery.
John: Oh, right.
John: Somebody asked me the other day, this is just one of those things that comes up on the internet where somebody said, you know who you are.
John: Has to be opposites.
John: You have to have two traits that are opposite of one another that describe you.
John: Oh, right.
John: And I was like, well.
Merlin: Classic would be like somebody who's like, where you're like, oh, that person, they're really seemingly gruff exterior, but they're actually really nice.
Merlin: Like something like that.
John: Yes, exactly.
John: And immediately I said, without even thinking, I said, total openness and total privacy.
John: Total openness and absolute, you know, like... You're not afraid to draw a line.
John: You'll draw a line.
John: Well, you got to draw a line.
John: Boundaries are so important, Sean.
John: But I thought about it later and I was like, total openness, yes, that's what I try to be.
John: But then also completely...
John: Not secretive exactly, but there's so much stuff I don't say.
Merlin: People just don't say private anymore.
Merlin: That's the word we used to use.
Merlin: He's a private person or she's a private person.
Merlin: This is really also adjacent to our ongoing discussion of introversion and extroversion, don't you think?
John: I do, and I think that sunglasses that are dark on the top and light on the bottom...
John: It's like the bottom is total openness and the top is privacy and a kind of secrecy.
John: And I could be both all the time.
Merlin: And I'm thinking now about a kind of glasses they used to advertise on TV called transitions.
John: Yes.
Merlin: And those are, I think they still make them, and you wear those glasses indoors, and they look like normal eyeglasses, and then something would happen, I guess, chemically, outside, chemical glasses, and then those would get darker when you went outside, so you didn't need two pairs of glasses.
Merlin: You're saying, if I understand, that you're doing an existential gradient, that you're going to see the world a certain way, and let's be honest, the world's going to see you a certain way.
Merlin: Did you get that photo I just sent you of you holding the baby?
John: There it is.
John: Look at that little baby.
John: And then there's me, who really, yeah.
John: I mean, I'm a lot of things in that picture.
Merlin: It looks like you're saying, I'm not gonna do the voice, but it kind of looks like you're saying, this mine now.
Merlin: Oh, this mine now.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: I like that baby very much.
John: Junkie baby.
John: And I did say this mine now or I want to go to there is probably some version of that, except I was I was ready to take that baby.
John: But you guys were pretty good about guarding.
John: You always stood between me and the door.
Merlin: Madeline did.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: She's, she's got a very narrow frame, but she's, she's got, she's very sharp.
Merlin: She's got very sharp things like her elbows.
Merlin: I mean, you know, these to say like Bruce Lee had to register his hands with the FBI or whatever.
Merlin: Madeline's elbows should have to be in the Smithsonian or something.
John: Every time I moved toward the door, she would redirect like, want another cup of coffee?
John: And I would go like, oh, oh, yes, I do want another.
John: It's so nice to have you here, John, hard or easy.
Merlin: Hard or easy, John.
Merlin: This is, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, the sunglasses inside, I'm intrigued.
Merlin: Yeah, I've been watching a thing about Truman Capote.
Merlin: On a TV and you know he had I guess what you might call kind of Andy Partridge glasses sort of like they're not quite Bono glasses and I think he actually has an eye thing so I don't make fun of him anymore but well not about that.
John: You're talking about Andy Partridge or did you ever make fun of Truman Capote?
John: That seems like a lost cause.
Merlin: I'm trying to learn to emulate his awkward laugh that the actor in this has really mastered.
Merlin: But, you know, I mean, there's a whole range of things.
Merlin: Just for me, as somebody who's from...
Merlin: very uh introverted places places where you just don't talk to people about things like a person wearing sunglasses inside i'm gonna tell you a true fact true fact known john when i was a kid you see somebody wearing sunglasses inside what do you assume about them oh uh probably a rhythm and blues legend oh i see what you're saying yeah it's ray charles it's ray charles it's whoever they are in cincinnati we don't see color
Merlin: you know, but, but he's got a woman and no, but you can, you can fully, you know, he always went to holiday in cause the rooms are configured the same.
John: Oh, is that right?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: How interesting.
Merlin: There's this one or that one.
Merlin: They're either, they're either this way or that way.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: Like, Hey Ray, it's going to be a left room or a right room.
John: And then he'd know where everything was.
Yeah.
John: I feel like in the 80s, there were a lot of pop stars, you know, like Dave from the Eurythmics.
John: I mean, a lot of people that wore sunglasses all the time, which I liked.
John: But, you know, there's one in particular.
John: If you watch the video for the Eurythmics, would I lie to you?
Merlin: which was a you know later hit for them before right before annie went solo i don't remember the i remember uh love is the back of a car but i don't remember that well so the video they're playing a live show i do remember because i just made i sang the riff one of the riffs a minute ago from sweet dreams i do remember pretty clearly he's got round uh not i wouldn't say translucent they're practically opaque
John: They're like welding I can play that in the what in the what I lied to you video In addition to there being like a hard rock show that they're playing.
John: Yeah, there's a second narrative
John: You know, a hard rock show is not a narrative, but there's a narrative in the video.
Merlin: Sorry.
John: And there's a boyfriend.
John: Annie Lennox has a boyfriend.
John: And he is obviously in the video a kind of a bad guy.
John: Like she's not into him.
John: She's kicking him out.
John: And he's got a kind of, he's kind of tall.
Merlin: Don't you lay a hand on Annie Lennox?
Merlin: She's been through a lot.
John: Oh, she has.
Merlin: And she's letting him have it.
Merlin: She got dealt dirt.
Merlin: I don't know if you're the inside story.
Merlin: But when that whole thing happened with Sweet Dreams, after the tourists broke up, they started the Eurythmics.
Merlin: They had a really hard time.
Merlin: By the way, the tourists, listeners, if you've never checked them out, extraordinary pop band.
Merlin: Pre-Eurythmics pop band.
Merlin: Pre-Eurythmics pop band.
Merlin: They did a cover of I Only Want to Be With You.
Merlin: That's one of the great covers.
Merlin: I only want to be with you.
Merlin: I only want to be with you.
Merlin: He just got pinched for weed.
Merlin: Oh, he did.
Merlin: Darius Rucker, which is not a real name.
John: He's a big country star.
Merlin: Big country star.
Merlin: Getting pinched for weed.
Merlin: I can see that.
Merlin: It's confusing.
Merlin: But she got dealt dirt.
Merlin: They did all kinds of stuff.
Merlin: The music industry was really... Supposedly, they wanted to see her papers to make sure that she was a lady.
Merlin: Oh, you're kidding.
John: Really?
Merlin: I'll send you a video about that.
John: Her papers.
John: Can I see your lady papers?
Merlin: Welcome to Warner Brothers, or as we say, Warner Brothers.
Merlin: Welcome to Warner Brothers.
Merlin: Could we see your papers?
Merlin: Are they in order?
John: Well, obviously, she's one of the most beautiful performers.
John: She was on the Grammys last night.
John: In the universe.
Merlin: Oh, no, was she really?
John: No, she sang.
Merlin: She sang nothing compares to you.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: In a very, very, very, very, very, very long in memoriam section.
Merlin: They also had, I think it might have been a CGI Tony Bennett.
John: A Tony Bennett CGI.
Merlin: Yeah, he did the late Tony Bennett.
Merlin: In the Immemorium, he did a very, very awkward, well, I mean, he and Stevie Wonder, who was live on stage, and whom a kid learned last night is alive.
John: Yeah, still alive.
John: He's amazing.
John: You know, he had a lot of good albums.
John: He did.
John: He did many, many, many, many.
John: He's very influential.
Merlin: So Annie Lennox, though, she's outgoing, and he's very reserved.
John: He's the sunglasses guy, and she's big and open.
John: Yes, but I'm talking about the guy in the video who plays her boyfriend.
John: Oh, sorry, the bad seed, of course.
John: And the thing is, she's tearing him a new one from the stage, but he still maintains a very, very...
John: He's very arrogant and he's very confident and he's going around through the crowd.
Merlin: Real ex-boyfriend material.
John: Yeah, don't fuck with me.
John: He's got a real attitude and he's wearing sunglasses that are darker on the top than at the bottom.
John: And I have not seen this video in, I swear to you, 30 years, but it was burned into my head.
John: I'm going to look at it later.
John: You know what?
John: I also aspire to be a bad boyfriend in a little bit of a way.
John: You know, a kind of boyfriend where Annie Lennox is yelling at you from the stage.
John: What higher level of bad boyfriend is there?
Merlin: And don't you think probably he knows he's not a good guy?
Merlin: Oh, sure he does.
Merlin: He's not fooling anybody, including himself.
John: You know, last night I went to a kind of memorial.
John: A friend of ours from the old days, this British fellow by the name of Michael Yukin, who used to write music journalism in Seattle back in the 90s, and he actually really championed
John: He was an early champion of the Western State Hurricanes before it had really caught on.
John: Was he living in Seattle at the time?
John: He was in Seattle at the time.
John: But he was very connected to everybody that was part of that scene.
John: And he was curmudgeonly and he was grouchy, but he was young and he was cool and he had sideburns or whatever.
John: And everybody loved him.
John: and he just recently died just suddenly died just like 50 years old and he was back in englang and he just like poof and so we had this memorial at a bar and there was only 10 of us there but a but a group of people he had he had influenced and at some point somebody said you know well i mean we've all we've all had
John: we've all had bad relationships.
John: We've always been, all of us have at some point or another been the bad guy.
John: And there was a beat and I said, not me.
John: It's all worked out fine for me.
John: And the laugh that went across the table really was a moment of self-reflection for me.
John: You actually go, hey.
Merlin: Hey, wait a minute.
Merlin: You came up, not last night, because we were watching the Grammys.
Merlin: You came up two nights ago.
Merlin: We were talking about two friends of ours, you and our good pal, Michael Ferguson.
Merlin: Two guys who always...
Merlin: Everybody says they want to, quote unquote, be friends or stay friends.
Merlin: But you and Michael are the people who most of all in my life, the two men at least, who actually did stay friends.
Merlin: That's a big thing for you, right?
Merlin: Seeking to stay and understand the relationship even as a post-mortem.
Merlin: That's part of your thing, right?
John: I want to, but it is...
John: Over the course of my life, I have kind of discovered that it is not a human trait.
Merlin: It's not something, in my experience, that a lot of women want.
Merlin: They're very satisfied with the, let's stay friends, and then we'll be civil when we see each other.
John: Yeah, it's like, we're broken up, so therefore...
John: Why do you ever want to talk to me again?
John: Because I don't want to talk to you again.
Merlin: John Mulaney has a line about how anybody who's met my parents and seen my penis, like that's too much information to be out there walking around.
John: Ha ha ha.
John: But I have never understood that.
John: And of course, I'm always having to say, hey, look, I'm not trying to hook up with you.
John: I don't want to get back together.
Merlin: I'm not going to put you in my van.
John: I just got some stuff I'm trying to process about 15 years ago, and you're the one that knew me best, and we knew each other.
John: So what do you say?
John: And they're like, no, not at all.
John: I don't want to meet you up for coffee.
John: Why would I want to do that?
John: We are broken up.
John: I have a new boyfriend now.
John: And I'm always like, I see.
John: And it's happened enough.
John: It's happened almost 90% of the time.
John: Enough that I feel like, oh, I am the anomaly here.
John: This is another example of a kind of neural atypical desire where there is a mainstream.
John: There is a normal, let's say.
John: And I'm emotionally diverse.
John: I'm falling outside of it.
John: And I didn't even like some neuro atypical moments.
John: You had no idea that this was that there was a normal until it was until you learned it over the years.
John: Yeah.
John: Right.
John: Where are you just like, huh?
John: What I think is normal in this situation isn't at all.
John: And actually, I don't I'm not modeling anybody.
John: There wasn't anybody in my life that was still in touch with all their ex-friends.
Merlin: It's one of those secret weird things that we don't realize is weird until other people are aware of it.
Merlin: And they're like, nobody else does that but you.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
John: Right, right.
John: And even if I have like an angry breakup with somebody, you know, like angry or – I mean even – Acrimonious, yeah.
John: Acrimonious.
John: Even Ben and Adam –
John: From whatchamacallit?
John: Star Wars show.
John: The old Star Wars show or the podcast I had with them that was about, I don't even remember what.
John: You did one about Star Wars and then you did one about regular wars.
John: See, that's it.
John: Exactly.
John: Those guys, I think, well, they don't want anything to do with me.
John: But I would talk, I'd go to lunch with them right this minute.
John: You made those guys.
John: You made them.
John: I mean, well, you know, they're fully grown people.
John: They ate their own sandwiches.
Yeah.
John: You can't have a golem without sand.
John: Or mud?
John: You mean the sand at the bottom of the stream where the ring hung out for many millennia?
John: Oh, I see.
John: And was it Smeagol who found it?
John: Smeagol?
John: No, it was Smeagol's friend who found it.
John: And then Smeagol killed Smeagol's friend.
John: And that's what made him Smeagol.
John: Because before that, he was a proto-Hobbit.
John: He's a proto-Hobbit.
John: Did he have a shire?
John: He was a nice Hobbit.
John: Like pre-Hobbit.
John: A pre-Hobbit Hobbit.
John: Oh, like a Neolithic hobbit.
John: Yes, but then his desire for the ring brought out the dark side.
John: Yeah, I think I saw that part in the film.
John: Yeah, and then the emperor was like, yes, get into our anger.
Merlin: No, I just meant, well, it's all very difficult, you know, these things with people.
Merlin: It is.
John: But I still want to be friends with everybody, but not that many people want to be friends with me, honestly.
Merlin: Well, you know.
John: It seems dangerous.
Merlin: It seems risky.
Merlin: You leave a mark.
Merlin: Well, no, sorry, let me put that differently.
Merlin: You know, you make an impression?
Merlin: Well, that's kind of a mark, an impression.
Merlin: Remember that purple mattress you had?
Merlin: Not the company, but remember the Paisley one?
Merlin: Of course.
John: That mattress cannot still be in the world.
John: It has to have gone to another place.
Merlin: Somebody should write a really, really bad independent film where you hook up with a young person today and you get back to their place and it's obviously your mattress.
John: It's the mattress.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I hope it's a very short film.
John: This is the thing about mattresses.
John: You see them everywhere and it doesn't seem like they do go away.
John: It seems like they just get...
John: They just get moved around.
John: It might be under a freeway overpass right now.
Merlin: It could also be thermodynamics.
Merlin: I don't think mattresses are ever created or destroyed.
Merlin: I was sad to see that mattress go, as you recall.
Merlin: Of course you were.
John: You left a lot of memories on them.
John: I did.
John: Indelible memories.
John: But it was still a perfectly good mattress.
John: I just got rid of it because of peer pressure and the social pressure to change.
Merlin: Oh, and DTC, direct-to-consumer mattress box services.
John: Yeah, that, yes.
John: And they were nice.
John: They were good podcast supporters.
John: Remember that, John?
Merlin: That was the best ad read we ever did.
Merlin: It's also very importantly, the moment that many years into this program, it proved a thing I always knew, which is I don't want you involved in the ad reads.
John: House Trotter.
John: Every once in a while, I will eat food that makes it feel like I'm sucking on a battery.
John: And I think back to that meal.
John: House Trotter.
John: No, I don't want the House Trotter.
Merlin: It sounds like a horse, John.
Merlin: I think it's a Finn Fishy friend, but a Trotter sounds like a horsey.
John: It is.
John: It's a pig foot.
John: A Trotter is the foot of a pig.
John: Well, that's pretty ironic.
Merlin: I mean, don't you... How's it ironic?
Merlin: Well, after you take off his paw, he's not going to trot much.
Merlin: He's not even going to make a little noise.
John: Oh, I see.
John: Maybe he trotted in on him and didn't trot out.
John: Maybe when you eat it, it's the hooves' last trot.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
Merlin: And, like, you know, that thing where it's... I know this is... Some of this has been disproven, but there are people who eat other people, and, you know, it's part of a ritual thing.
Merlin: It could be a... It's not just Donner Pass.
Merlin: Don't just say Donner Pass.
Merlin: It's lots of things.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: It's not always like a witch doctor cauldron, but sometimes you eat somebody to get their power.
Merlin: And maybe that's what people are afraid of when you come in with the glasses.
Merlin: And that one keyboard sample when you walk in the room.
John: There is a calculation that there is a certain percentage of missing people that get eaten.
John: It's got to be a very small, a vanishingly small percentage of missing people.
Merlin: I've watched enough prestige television to know that it is not easy to get rid of a body.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I mean, this is featured in like the second or third episode of Breaking Bad, a very memorable thing that happens with trying to get rid of a body.
Merlin: Wonderful scene.
Merlin: Sets the tone for the show in so many ways.
Merlin: But if I understand what you're saying, and this comes up in a lot of prestige TV.
Merlin: And I watch, John, I watch a lot of prestige TV.
John: I know.
John: Have you seen this Mr. and Mrs. Smith?
Merlin: I'm up through, I'm up through, John, I'm up through episode four.
Merlin: My bar going into this was set so low.
Merlin: And then I was like, this is the most watchable TV program I've seen in five years.
Merlin: It doesn't feel like eating your vegetables or going to the dentist.
Merlin: It's so well done.
Merlin: It's so effing fun.
Merlin: And it's still really smart.
John: What's crazy about it?
John: It's the first time I was having this conversation about Smiley's people the other day.
John: The old one?
John: Well, and then this one.
John: Yeah.
John: The Tinker Tailor soldiers.
John: Yeah.
John: And Gary Oldman did the movie.
John: Yeah.
John: And they were saying, how did you feel about the movie?
John: And I said, well, I prefer the miniseries.
Merlin: It's like a series of unfortunate events.
Merlin: You do the best you can, but that's a big story that needs a lot of quiet to be told the way it wants to be told.
John: That's exactly right.
John: The fact that the miniseries- You've got to really watch it.
John: You're going to have to remember who's who from the first frame.
John: And it's very boring, and it should be boring.
Merlin: It's so good.
Merlin: It's so PBS.
Merlin: It's desperately PBS.
John: I love it so much.
John: And the movie had to cut out so much boringness that some of the – well, that a lot of the vibe – and it's still a very boring movie, a long and boring movie.
John: But some of the vibe that comes from the deep boringness was lost.
John: And that conversation led into a conversation about the fact that now all the boring shows that need to be boring, and I'm looking at you, slow horses.
Merlin: Yeah, and I'm looking at you, the curse.
Merlin: That's a critical part of the curse.
Merlin: You won't realize it until the show's over and you watch YouTube videos and read out essays.
Merlin: But there are shows we're so used to this.
Merlin: You know, I'm gonna I'm gonna date both of us by saying this post MTV because I really feel like MTV did have not single-handedly huge impact on the amount of stimulation We're expected to have yeah every three minutes Well, unlike all the just all the like the constant cuts and it's one of the things is ruining fight scenes It's one of the things is not ruining but like it makes narrative less fun If you're constantly using edits and cuts to tell people what to pay attention to in the story Yeah
John: Well, and Slow Horses is this fantastic, boring story, but every episode there has to be a gunfight.
John: All the characters are so good, though.
John: They're great, but the gunfight is superfluous.
John: It's just modern audience needs a gunfight or needs somebody to do a karate kick.
John: It's like boobs in the 80s.
John: And I would just watch the sections of that show where people are sitting snarking wise at each other.
Merlin: This is where I skip over a lot of the kissing on Game of Thrones when I rewatch.
Merlin: Oh, you don't like the kissing?
Merlin: Oh, I know it's important.
Merlin: They got to have their boobies on HBO.
Merlin: Well, you know, there's that scene where Littlefinger is instructing the new worker.
John: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: With the older worker.
Merlin: I think that's a pretty famous scene.
Merlin: It is sex.
John: Pretty sexy.
Merlin: And it's got that one lady who rides on the cart later.
John: She's amazing.
Merlin: The red-haired lady.
John: Yeah.
John: She's a pistol is what she is.
John: I didn't realize what a reoccurring character she was.
John: Exactly.
John: Cause I didn't put together that she was the one from that and the one from that.
John: And then on rewatch, I was like, Oh my God, she's kind of a, she's got a huge role in the show.
John: Absolutely.
John: But, but the thing about Mr. And Mrs. Smith is it's a show where half of it is two people basically having a marriage encounter or watching their marriage evolve.
John: And the other half is like a spy show.
John: Right.
John: And I massively prefer, uh,
John: The two of them laying in bed just casually talking about their relationship.
Merlin: Which do you get more of as the episodes go on.
Merlin: You get a time.
Merlin: But also, can I just point out, and I confirmed this with my wife last night, or this morning rather, which is like, it's not just me, right?
Merlin: Like, I'm only up to four.
Merlin: But it's, just to remind you, it's one that involves skiing.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Yeah, so that's where I'm up through that one.
Merlin: But I was like, hey, just so I'm clear, doesn't it seem like more time has passed than we would assume?
Merlin: They seem like a lot has developed in their relationship in the chronological order of those episodes.
John: A lot must have happened between three and four, right?
John: What you find is that there's like six months between episodes.
John: There has to be, because otherwise, how the hell do they know?
Merlin: Again, it's like Dunkirk, where you're like, blink and you miss it.
Merlin: Like, I still believe to this day, and of course, I'll never get anybody to admit this with me.
Merlin: The first time I watched Dunkirk, of course, I read the intertitle cards.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: But I didn't internalize it.
Merlin: And I didn't understand one day, like, what is it?
Merlin: One week, one day, one hour.
Merlin: I didn't get that until the second viewing.
Merlin: And I enjoyed it so much more when I appreciate the ending is so much more exciting when you realize it's the crescendo of the three timelines.
Yeah.
Merlin: But you blink and you miss it, you know?
John: I mean, one of the things about Dunkirk is I wish I could blink long enough to have missed the whole thing.
John: But that's just my attitude as somebody that did a podcast about Star Wars or whatever it was.
John: No, it's The Other Wars.
Merlin: I did The Other Wars.
Merlin: You sure it's Dunkirk?
Merlin: Is this going to be like one of those things where my wife thinks she hates Drive?
Merlin: She thinks she hates Drive and she thinks she hates the Prestige.
Merlin: And I still think in both cases she's confusing it with another movie.
Merlin: Are you sure you don't like Dunkirk?
John: I thought that the first half of Oppenheimer was maybe the best movie I had ever seen.
John: Somewhere I'm still watching the first half of Oppenheimer.
John: And it was so good until they exploded the bomb.
John: And if they had ended the movie with the explosion of the bomb.
John: I think it's cute.
John: It would have been incredible.
John: But then the bomb explodes and then there's magical realism all of a sudden.
John: And then there's time starts to warp.
John: And I'm like, this didn't have to be a three and a half hour movie.
John: It could have been a two hour movie that was one of the greatest films ever made.
Merlin: This movie could have been an email.
John: And then if you want to make a magic movie about Magic Mike and the Congress or whatever, you go ahead and do that.
John: Make that the second movie, the 1950s.
John: Nobody wants to watch that movie.
Merlin: We're stipulating here that especially John and to a great extent Merlin both enjoy spy thrillers and stuff like that.
Merlin: I love just anything spycraft.
Merlin: Like I love like watching somebody drill a hole in the wall to do a camera and like I love all unlike the way you scan the key card under the table I love anything like crap.
John: Let me just ask you right and I know people are listening I know exact top executives at Netflix are listening to this show because they write me all the time Yeah, why is there not a category on all the streaming services that just says spy shows?
John: Boring spy shows.
John: Any movie where someone drills a hole in a wall and puts a little microphone through it, I will watch it.
Merlin: Or like a movie like Sneakers, where it's so good still, and it's kind of difficult to describe.
Merlin: And there are these movies, again, a movie like, well, sorry, I'm not changing the topic, but a movie like The Thing.
Merlin: You can't call The Thing one genre of movie.
Merlin: Because it is one of the greatest movies ever made.
Merlin: And the more you watch it, the more you realize it's like six genres of movie.
Merlin: Is it a thriller?
Merlin: Is it horror?
Merlin: Is it a Western?
Merlin: Like, there's all these different things.
Merlin: And like, what we're talking about here, though, you want stuff where like, and actually, I wrote down something to recommend to you here.
Merlin: I'm going to go ahead and say it now.
Merlin: Another John Le Corre series called The Night Manager.
John: Oh, The Night Manager.
John: I did...
John: Try to watch the Night Manager.
John: Too slow.
John: No, it wasn't the slowness.
Merlin: It didn't have as much, like, straight spy craft.
Merlin: But you're talking about, like, you know what you're talking about?
Merlin: Like, you know, they've got, like, regular hi-fi.
Merlin: Hi-fi.
Merlin: You know, there's science fiction that's more like fantasy or space opera.
Merlin: And then there's something I still don't quite understand, but what people call hard sci-fi.
Merlin: I think 2001 is often used as an example of this.
John: Hard sci-fi.
Merlin: You're talking about hard spy shows.
John: Yeah, well, the thing is, I will watch Hugh Laurie tie his shoelaces.
John: Oh, man.
John: But there was something about the writing.
John: Come on, Dickie Roper?
John: Yeah, this is the problem.
John: If I can see the writer...
John: Making choices.
John: Sitting at their little writing desk and like... That's two for you.
John: Dunkirk and Night Manager.
John: I'm writing both of those down.
John: You know, tapping their pencil and going like, you know what I need to do?
John: Or if I can see the person looking over the writer's shoulder going, eh, why don't you add in a love scene here?
Merlin: Well, make sure you catch up with this season of True Detective Night Country.
Merlin: Yeah, I can't do it.
Merlin: Which would slot in real nicely on CBS Saturdays at 10.
Merlin: Like, I tried to watch... I tried to watch the new...
John: The new Jodie Foster.
John: That's what I'm talking about.
John: It sucks.
John: It sucks so much.
John: Couldn't get through the first episode.
Merlin: I keep trying to watch another episode.
Merlin: After two episodes, I was like, I'm never turning this on again.
Merlin: And now we're on, I think, four.
Merlin: Tried it again last night.
Merlin: And I'm just like, you've got to be kidding me.
Merlin: What is happening?
Merlin: What have you done with Saul from Deadwood?
Merlin: Can you just pick a lane for any of these characters?
Merlin: Can you pick one lane?
Merlin: Don't even get me started on the photography in this.
John: What the hell is the, what are the writers doing?
John: What, what was that?
Merlin: The thing is a really good movie and this will make Merlin want to watch it three times in a week.
John: No, can't do it.
John: And that was, that's what happened to me with Night Ranger.
John: I don't, I don't know what happened.
John: I was down there in Egypt.
John: Everything was going fine.
John: And then I was like, I don't, I don't like this.
John: I don't like them.
John: I don't like it.
Merlin: I could come back around, but like, you know, it just, if be careful with Night Ranger, because I don't think it's going to give you the same vibes as time is a flat circle.
Merlin: Oh, well.
Merlin: Well, I mean, that's the same show, John.
Merlin: Yeah, no, no, I know.
John: That first season was special.
John: It was dynamite.
John: It was challenging.
John: Until the last, oh, this is the other thing.
John: These shows that are dynamite all the way through, all the way through.
John: Oh, my God.
John: Like the one of the little gal.
Merlin: Fargo season five.
John: Well, that, but the one with the little teenage gal in Romania that got turned into a spy.
John: Was kicking ass all over Oh Europe nope nope nope.
John: This is The one with the girl Saoirse Ronan the girl that was like karate chopping and stuff And they're in a shack the one with the dad in the shack Hannah Hannah that movie fucking rules.
John: Well, except there's a TV show I know but it's got a little Saoirse Ronan in it.
Merlin: She's so little.
Merlin: Have you seen that?
Merlin: Have you seen the movie?
Merlin: Oh
Merlin: I haven't seen the movie.
John: Oh, shit dog.
John: The TV show was so good.
John: And then you get to the last episode.
John: And I see this over and over.
John: I know.
John: The last episode of all these shows, it's like written by somebody else.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: And all of a sudden, it's got ideology.
John: All of a sudden, they're trying to make the whole thing make a point.
Merlin: But Night Country, sorry, Night Ranger, was doing that like from the jump.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: Where you're like, wait a minute, what...
Merlin: So, like, you're very, I'm going to say, John, I hope this doesn't harm our relationship.
Merlin: The thing you were saying a minute ago about Night Manager.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: There's Night Manager and there's Night Ranger, which is a true detective spinoff.
Merlin: And that...
Merlin: you can just feel so much writing going on it's the writing and they're trying to jam in so much and they're doing that thing where they're like hey we're if we say this often enough you'll think these people have a relationship there it is and none of these people have a relationship i don't see don't tell me show me don't tell me i sit in the jodie foster but pick one jodie foster please i say calgon take me away take
Merlin: Take me away.
John: Ancient Chinese secret, huh?
John: I don't want to sit here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America.
John: I'm not going to sit here.
Merlin: Wait, what's that from?
Merlin: Wait, no, I know this.
Merlin: That's Animal House.
John: Gentlemen!
Merlin: Oh, my God.
It's Animal House.
Merlin: And then what is it?
Merlin: They start humming God Bless America or something like that?
John: Well, no, it's, yeah.
Merlin: What do you want us to do, you moron?
Merlin: Night Ranger mattresses, emotionally diverse.
Merlin: Wait, we were back on Spies.
John: Well, I mean, the thing is, I think I realized this not even late in life.
John: I think I realized this in high school.
John: My dad compulsively read spy novels and it was and they're pulp novels, right?
John: He would go to the drugstore and he would flip through that rack.
John: Oh, of course.
Merlin: It was romance novels for women.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: And then like women, then there would be like, oh my God, I used to love those covers.
Merlin: I have a collection of old like pulp detective novel covers that I maintain because it'll be like a silhouette of a woman in high heels in a doorway and a guy cleaning a gun will be like the cover of the book.
John: But this was all like 80s stuff where there'd be this rack and he would go and we'd be at the drugstore and I'd be over in the toys and he would be there with this rack of books with his reading glasses down on the end of his nose and he'd be looking at them and all of them are like,
John: hidden nazi gold or uh you know it was a secret uh nazi program to build intercontinental ballistic missiles and there are some still buried on the coast in france and a madman has decided to reactivate them and only you know madmen love nazi gold oh they do
John: They love only gold.
John: So all of that stuff.
John: And he would read these.
John: He had shelves in our house that were wall to wall of these.
John: And when I got to be 13, I started reading them.
John: Because I'm like, hmm, Nazi gold.
John: All right.
John: And I think it had a profound influence on me, even more than watching war movies with him.
Merlin: And this is, I'm guessing this is a style of writing that is now like people look down their nose at it.
Merlin: But like, I don't know.
Merlin: None of those books have survived, right?
Merlin: None of them.
Merlin: But I mean, like, I bet they're pretty readable.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Like page turners, right?
John: That's where I met Spencer for Hire.
John: My dad was a big fan of Spencer for Hire.
Oh, wow.
John: And I'm like reading Spencer Fryer.
John: And then at some point I got old enough that I was like, wait a minute, my dad is a smart guy.
John: What is he reading?
John: Because you could read one of those books in two days.
John: What is he reading this garbage?
John: And I said to my mom at some point, why does dad read this?
John: This trash.
John: And she said, there's a thing you need to know about your father.
John: He wanted to be a spy.
John: Your dad wanted to be a spy.
Merlin: And I said, he wanted to be a spy.
Merlin: He probably had a window after the war.
Merlin: I think after a war is when a lot of people...
Merlin: I mean, look at Tom Hiddleston.
Merlin: Tom Hiddleston, no spoilers, but you know what I'm saying?
Merlin: There's people who can go from being like some kind of like, you know, overseas operative and then you become the night manager.
John: Uncle Jack did.
John: You know, Uncle Jack, as we've discussed on the show, got tapped for Skull and Bones.
John: He knew George Herbert Walker Bush in college.
John: Yeah.
John: Poppy, they called him.
John: And he has implied, broadly implied, that had he taken that skull and bones, that was a shoo-in to CIA.
Merlin: But the fact that he's telling you that is really poor spycraft, even if it didn't happen, because you're not supposed to cop the things that didn't happen.
John: He never did it.
John: So he's a free agent.
John: He can do whatever he can say and do whatever he wants.
John: And that's why he claims that he rebuffed their advances, because he was like, I'm not going to be one of you corporate guys.
John: Regular Holden Caulfield.
John: Some sort of Western man.
Merlin: But my dad, according to my mom.
Merlin: And he kept his interest by picking up these drugstore books.
Merlin: And then you started reading them too.
John: Well, so I'm reading them to try and not to understand my dad at that point.
John: What I was doing was just at that point, you know, I had read the encyclopedia.
John: Just took a break from your thoughts.
John: Because there wasn't teen literature then.
Merlin: Right?
John: There were kids.
Merlin: That's funny.
Merlin: That's really true.
Merlin: I'm just for the sake of this program, we'll say we're very close to the same age.
Merlin: But honestly, there's stuff that especially girls read up to a certain point.
Merlin: And there were some books that boys read up to a point.
Merlin: But there was a real cutoff around age 13 where it was like, you can either keep reading Henry Huggins or you can pick up James Joyce, I guess.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: Or Kurt Vonnegut, I guess, would be a good transitional one.
Merlin: But no, not like today.
Merlin: There's like whole sections that are just all vampire sex.
John: Well, and there are a lot of adults that read that stuff.
John: Oh, they like it.
John: They're like Disney adults.
John: With teenage girls, it was Nancy Drew.
John: And then at a certain point, there's a line where it's like, well, now you like boys.
John: I don't care who you are.
John: So now you like boys.
John: So now all the books are going to be about you wanting to make out with a boy and him wanting to make out with you.
John: They're all going to be.
John: Boys don't like girls who read books.
John: And then with boys, you're reading Hardy Boys up to a certain point.
John: And then it's like, well, you're either into literature now or you're not, or you're into sports.
John: And if you don't, if you can't manage to read the foundation.
Merlin: Well, and in previous generations, it was adventure books.
Merlin: There were like adventure books that lot, there were all those whole series.
Merlin: You'll hear these names.
Merlin: you know, of whatever, like things like Tom Nick, Tom Mix, Hop Along, Cassie, these things that became like radio things.
Merlin: Zane Grey.
Merlin: Yeah, or like, or a pirate and like adventure stories.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: That's so interesting.
Merlin: You're right.
Merlin: And now it's, it seems like that's a big market for everybody.
John: It's massive.
John: And people, people love those teen books about vampires and they read them into their forties, you know, but, and this is what these books were, which is like, there's always a sex scene, but it wasn't ever graphic.
John: Most of the time, the hero was like, I ain't got time for just the exercise of power or or they were fighting Nazis.
John: And and the only woman they ever encountered was like some, you know, some spy that came in and was in a in like a wetsuit or whatever.
John: My mom said my mom said when James Bond came out, the first James Bond movie.
John: She went to the theater with my dad and watched it, and he came out a changed man.
John: That's so funny.
John: He was just in his fantasy life.
Merlin: There's still— He was a spy.
Merlin: There's still so good.
Merlin: Well, let me tell you something funny.
Merlin: I wasn't going to mention this, but now I'm going to mention it.
Merlin: My kid reads, like, a lot a lot.
Merlin: Usually has, like, three books at a time going.
Merlin: And announced last night, well—
Merlin: I finished From Russia With Love.
Merlin: And I said, oh, really?
John: How was it?
Merlin: Yeah, that was supposedly John Kennedy's favorite novel.
Merlin: And he goes, yeah, I heard that.
Merlin: And if that's true, he's not as smart as people say.
John: Well, okay, but this is the thing, right?
Merlin: He didn't think it was great.
Merlin: We love the movies, but he read that book.
Merlin: He read From Russia With Love hearing that that's a good one to start with and was like, you know, it's okay.
Merlin: None of the books are good.
John: The books aren't that good.
Merlin: Yeah, right, right, right.
John: But the but the but what we don't account for I don't think is Fantasy life and it's it's embarrassing to your world.
John: Yeah, it's embarrassing I think for adults and I think I think it's embarrassing for all adults to say actually a certain part of my day a certain part of my relaxation a certain part of what I really enjoy about my inner life is
John: is that I have maintained fantasy narratives that I go into.
John: And play out and spend time in this kind of movie world that I've created in my imagination.
Merlin: A certain kind of thing that evolves.
Merlin: And just to say something just because people are going to want to make a joke about it.
Merlin: Because the word fantasy has become so heavily associated with like masturbation or something.
Merlin: Right, or elves.
Merlin: Well, yeah, exactly.
Merlin: Sure, sure, sure.
Merlin: Like rings in lakes or whatever.
Merlin: But no, but like that fantasy more in the sense of like this is an evolving thing.
Merlin: This will evolve over time.
Merlin: Like when you're a little kid, you want to go, you know, hamburger bang, bang.
Merlin: Or like we used to play, as I said, we used to ride our big wheels down on a hill yelling, Torah, Torah, Torah.
Merlin: And we called that playing war.
Merlin: Yeah, playing war.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Yeah, but you still wouldn't mind being David Niven with a briefcase, la, la, la.
Merlin: Wouldn't you love to be David Niven with a briefcase?
Merlin: The guy with the bomb?
John: There is a part of me that at the end of the day, when I'm laying down head on pillow and I close my eyes and I'm not yet asleep, that I'm thinking, again, all this stuff like, okay, I've got a small bag packed.
John: And then, you know, what is the – how do I get –
John: to yakima from here little puzzles like that like how do i what if i were part of the rebellion if if there was an american revolution where a where an occupying power took control of seattle
John: And at my age, 55, Wolverines, who can no longer get over a fence as having been demonstrated or at least a 15 foot wall.
John: That's right.
John: Can no longer do what I used to do, which is, you know, imagine myself running through the forest.
John: Now I have to take on a new role.
John: What is that?
John: I'm the commander.
John: So why would I be the commander?
John: So you get what I mean when I say the fantasy evolves.
John: Yes.
John: And yet it's still there.
John: Sure.
Merlin: It's still not practical.
John: And I think my dad and John F. Kennedy probably at some point got this going in their mind.
John: And as they got older, I think those books also sometimes...
John: That featured World War II vets who were now in their 50s and 60s and had to go back.
Merlin: That was the reference.
Merlin: This happened so—there's so much stuff.
Merlin: And let's just say, I watch a lot of stuff about World War II and about—more and more about the Soviet Union and World War II and after—
Merlin: And like, it's just chock-a-block everywhere of what you're describing, which is, again, like the Tom Hiddleston character in this case from, I guess, Iraq or Afghanistan, but like, whatever.
Merlin: But like, but people who were in the service, and then that's a good transition.
Merlin: So in some ways, you've said for a long time, you wanted to be, I believe you said, and correct me if I'm wrong, you said it was your desire in life to become the retired director of the CIA.
Merlin: Is that correct?
Merlin: But again, now I think it's important as long as we're on this to call out, not call out to, unpack that that also presumes some things happened.
Merlin: In between.
Merlin: Well, and existentially, just realistically didn't happen.
Merlin: But the obvious one is you probably wouldn't become the retired director of the CIA unless you'd become before that the director of the CIA.
Merlin: Well, then how did John become the director of the CIA?
Merlin: Well, you know, after his service.
Merlin: He disappeared for a while, but then he was coming up the ranks.
Merlin: You know, right?
Merlin: Isn't that kind of how it would work?
Merlin: What war would it be that you were in?
Merlin: Were you in the Falklands?
John: Well, that's the thing.
John: All of these fantasies involve you having a kind of knowledge that doesn't exist anymore.
John: It's like when Y2K came, and all those people were calling my mom saying, we find your- The pipeline's gonna stop.
John: Yeah, your initials are all over the code.
John: And you're the only one that can tell us what to do now that a two-date code is no longer going to work and all the buildings are going to fall.
John: And my mom was like, tough shit.
John: Like, I want the world to, you know, I want your civilization to collapse.
Merlin: I'm listening.
Merlin: So she says, they come to her and they say, they say, Colonel, it's vital that we get you involved in this because the Y2K is coming.
Merlin: And your mom, well, I'm not going to do the voice, but I think she would say something like, I'm out of that game.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: I'm not going to get back into this game.
John: Right.
John: She's 62 at that point in time.
Merlin: But I mean, in terms of the narrative, she's like, it's a lot like I need the old Blade Runner.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Like, I got to call you back in because we got some skin jobs you need to air out.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: Just when you thought you were out, they call you back.
Merlin: And Decker says, I just want to eat my dumplings.
John: And they were throwing money at her.
John: You know, they were like, well, you're the only one that knows all this or one of a small group of people that could still conceivably read all this freaking Fortran.
Merlin: She would have to retype the code, but there would probably be a lot of calls and meetings of her just like saying, well, here's places like you have so much code to sort through.
Merlin: You're not just going to grab your way out of this.
Merlin: Like, here's the kinds of things and relationships and
Merlin: And maybe, yeah, I don't know if they had comments in code back then.
Merlin: But right, that wouldn't be the kind of thing where she wouldn't be rewriting it or fixing it.
Merlin: But she would be able to offer a lot as somebody who led a team.
Merlin: And just to remind our listeners, you tell me she managed a team of coders for the Alaskan Pipeline software, right?
John: Before that, she ran that whole department for King County here in Seattle.
John: And before that, it was Safeco Insurance.
John: So a lot of that, you know, Safeco insurance stuff.
Merlin: She was a programmer, but importantly to the story, right, is that she managed programmers, which means she also managed resources and things like when they say, hey, you know, we could cut, we have like one bite of memory for this thing.
Merlin: If we cut the date field in half, we might be able to actually do this.
John: Well, and she was a programmer from the era where programming was not associated with math or engineering.
John: So it was associated with women.
John: It was associated with women who had degrees in poetry and logic.
John: And so the way that they programmed was they put their feet up on their desk and they stared out the window for four days.
John: And then they sat down and they wrote the code.
John: And then they sent it to the woman who was sitting two desks away, and that woman checked the code.
John: She held the cards up to the light.
John: She had a completely different degree in poetry and logic.
John: And by the end, as my mom is fond of saying, there was no beta.
John: There was no beta.
John: This wasn't as hot as it sounds, right?
Merlin: It was pretty hot.
Merlin: It sounds really hot.
Merlin: I'm guessing a couple of them are troublemakers.
Merlin: Like Lizbeth in Dragon Tattoo, like kind of a troublemaker and kind of like, oh, she's angry, but she's got a reason.
John: They were wearing suits.
John: They were wearing flannel suits, like pencil skirts down below the knee.
John: Oh, John, come on.
John: And Mary Janes.
John: Would they cross their legs when they worked?
John: They had to.
Merlin: It was the only way you could sit in a chair across your legs.
Merlin: Pencil leg, that is a silhouette that does not allow a lot of leg flange.
Merlin: Well, and to be called back in your pencil, that's the thing.
John: She would have had to have gone into the closet.
John: She had to get all her flannels out of storage.
John: Find the flannels, put them back on.
John: She'd have to find pantyhose.
John: There's not even any of that around.
John: Yeah, she'd have to get vintage legs.
John: Yeah.
John: That's right.
John: The legs.
John: So, yeah, for me, the problem is that my series of, you know, my CIA was standing on stage going, all right, you losers.
John: Next up, it's me.
John: Who wants a piece of the person you just paid to see?
John: And what's interesting is I am getting called back.
John: I've been all of a sudden I'm playing these shows where people are like, you know what we need?
John: What we need is this.
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: Let's get the old gang back together.
John: Because we're the only ones.
John: If my knowledge of 80s movies is correct.
Merlin: Is the Cunnilingus safe?
John: What did you say?
John: Is cunnilingus safe?
John: Not really.
Merlin: I don't know if it involved a vault.
Merlin: Well, it depends.
John: No, the thing is you've got to get under the vault.
John: You have to use the old expertise.
John: Nobody knows how to use dynamite anymore.
John: They're all using digital watches.
John: Oh, God, John.
Merlin: See?
Merlin: That's just, that's frankly ridiculous.
Merlin: But here's the thing.
Merlin: Okay, so my knowledge of 80s movies, and I'm thinking, I think in particular, there's a lot of movies, but like you think about Beverly Hills Cop, which I think is a great example of this, is like somebody got killed.
Merlin: You mean like Bobby that I used to work with is dead?
Merlin: And you're like, something happened, something mysterious.
Merlin: This happens in The Thin Man.
Merlin: This happens in everything.
Merlin: And sometimes that's how you end up getting pulled back in.
Merlin: So like maybe one of those characters with the pencil skirt, you know, something a little hinky went on and now your mom has to come in.
Merlin: You could help her investigate that.
John: Well, and what's insane is my mom's the one that got called.
John: They never called my dad back in, even though he knew where all the bodies were buried.
John: Oh, the terrible story.
John: The terrible story.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: Is this going to break his heart?
John: No, it breaks my heart.
John: When my dad was on the Kennedy campaign...
John: He would call my mom every night.
John: Tell her about today Bobby kicked in a door and you know and Kennedy was working on this is Kennedy 60 This Kennedy 1960 and he's in Washington No, my dad was his my dad was his advanced man through that campaign So he would go to Chicago and he would say listen Here's what here's what we're gonna need.
John: We're gonna need the top six floors or floors of this hotel We're gonna need
John: Oh, like a cheap staff, like operations guy.
John: Operations, right.
John: Advanced, would you call him the advanced man?
John: Advanced man.
John: That's what he called him.
John: And then the Kennedys would arrive and he'd be there for the, you know, for the beginning of the, whatever, the two days that he was in the town.
John: And then he would bounce.
John: I bet he was a fixer too.
John: And go to the next town.
John: He was a little bit of a fixer.
John: Yeah.
John: But he spent a lot of time with them.
John: And there was all this just daily drama.
John: And so he would call my mom.
Merlin: I mean, like, the more you learn about, I'm just sorry, real quick.
Merlin: The more you learn about Joseph Kennedy, the more a lot of stuff makes sense.
Merlin: It's like when you learn about Murray Wilson, a lot of stuff in the Beach Boys makes a lot more sense.
Merlin: When you learn about Joe Kennedy, he was not a great guy.
John: No, he wasn't.
John: I mean, you know, Bobby, according to my dad, Bobby, those kids were fucked up.
John: He was a real moralizer.
John: He was a real prig.
John: He was really against his brother's affairs.
John: He was absolutely like a straight shooter, but he was also, you know, like an angry Catholic kid.
John: Talk about Bobby.
John: Bobby.
John: And according to my dad, Bobby would not tolerate a locked door.
John: Anytime he came to a door and it was locked, he would pound on it and scream until somebody opened it.
John: And, you know, and Kennedy's surrounded by people who are enabling him.
John: Anyway, so my dad calls my mom, writes, I'm sorry, and just sits and, you know, yammers on.
John: My mom wrote it all down.
John: What?
Merlin: During, because she took shorthand.
Merlin: I'm just in passing, John.
Merlin: If you ever told me about the Kennedy thing, him being involved that heavily in knowing them, if you ever told me that, I definitely forgot it.
Merlin: Because this feels new to me.
John: Well, you know that now knowing that Merlin, sometimes the sunglasses are dark at the top.
John: Sometimes they're clear at the bottom, but they always fit on somebody's face.
John: So she says through the whole campaign, she sat on the phone and she did it partly as a nervous tick just to like, she wasn't doing it for any reason.
John: She's just like, huh?
John: And she's just taking shorthand about, and she, and she did it in a book.
John: She, she kept a journal, uh,
John: Of my dad's probably there on the telephone table.
John: It was right on the telephone table.
John: And he called her at the same time every night and just say, oh, my God, you're not going to believe it.
John: And at some point in her many moves, she looked at it.
John: It's not like it got lost.
John: She looked at it and said, well, nobody's going to care.
John: about this john and john morgan roderick are you fucking kidding me tossed it oh my fucking god you must be crushed now that book if that book belongs in the historical record right that book should be in the library anything that's more your shit is like discovering
Merlin: I'm probably guessing in Greg's shorthand, that there's a book with shorthand in it where your mom transposed or transcribed.
Merlin: On the day it happened, the drama that your father was going through with the Camelot boys.
John: Holy God.
John: If you just think about putting it up on Sotheby's, like, oh, let's auction this off.
John: I mean, it's not just that, but it's like, and the thing is, my mom could still probably read her shorthand.
John: And so what I have is I sit around and every once in a while she will say, oh, yeah, it's really funny.
John: McGeorge Bundy.
John: I got a story about that.
John: Or, oh, you know, what you don't know about the Washington Post.
John: And, you know, I've watched all the movies about that.
John: Dean Luss could drink.
John: And she knows it all.
John: But, you know, if you sit and interview her, she goes, well, hmm, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
John: But the anecdotes will come out.
John: And it's not like she has Alzheimer's, you know, she's still absolutely... She probably just doesn't want to talk about it.
Merlin: Well... I mean, there's other stuff that, like, would be fun to reminisce about, but, like, a lot of the times the information that somebody like me or you wants from, let's say, an older relative is...
Merlin: Well, OK, first of all, maybe not in this case, but in a lot of cases, maybe there's a reason you never heard about this before.
Merlin: Like, you know what I mean?
Merlin: You discover that, like, it doesn't have to be like a dark family secret.
Merlin: There's all kinds of shit about my grandmother's childhood.
Merlin: I didn't learn until she had Alzheimer's.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And that's when she like, again, and she would have these moments of lucidity where she would remember things with incredible detail.
Merlin: But I also think she would, if you like, forget that she didn't like talking about it.
Merlin: And so there's things from the past where you don't want to, like, you don't want to, I mean, like, does she want to sit down and, like, tell stories about your dad for days?
John: I mean, after he died, all of a sudden, my mom loves my dad.
John: You know, all of a sudden.
John: He's probably easier to love that way.
John: One day after his funeral, she's like, you know, your dad and I were really happy for 15 years.
John: And I'm like, what?
John: This is the first I've heard of it.
John: But I was talking to my older sister the other day.
John: who was with them through all of that as a teen or as a, you know, preteen and teen.
John: And she said, we would go on these long car drives and dad would be talking about some case, you know, some, some case in front of the legislature or some case, some trial.
John: And he would say, well, this guy, you know, he was
John: He was drunk, and he did this thing, and he wanted to kill his wife, so he wired the soap dish to the house current.
John: But she was in the bath, and rather than put the soap in the soap dish, she tossed it, and a blue flame leapt up and hit the soap as it was flying through the air.
John: So, you know now he's in jail and I'm his defense attorney and here's why here are the mitigating circumstances Why I'm pleading not guilty because he blah blah blah and this and then my mom would sit and listen They're driving, you know up in Banff or whatever my mom said your older sister was was witness to this older sister in the backseat and then my mom would say well sounds like the law says this and therefore this and
John: So that's the end of that.
John: And my dad would think for a minute and he'd go, well, but the, you know, this is the blah, blah, blah.
John: And he'd lay out seven different statutes and real reasons and justifications.
John: Then she would sit and listen and then she'd say, well, just sounds like he's got his just desserts because it's really clear and pretty, you know, pretty open and shut case.
John: And according to my sister, she was like, your mom was educating him on what reality is.
Merlin: I'm thinking specifically of how, I don't know if it's a jury trial, but how this would play to a jury, for example.
Merlin: The kinds of things where you're like, you can cite chapter and verse of law all you want, but if it's a jury that has to decide, just as one example.
Merlin: But can I also just point out, you're basically describing a pair of glasses here.
Merlin: You've got a dark part and a light part.
Merlin: oh right yeah sort of right like these these two like that together they make a pair of glasses it's just that it's not two lenses it's it's too it's light and dark it's light and dark it's i don't know i never remember which is which it's latitude or longitude but i mean my my dad was light and my mom was dark but but according to laura was dark um you know my mom was his legal secretary and as a as a component of that she basically learned the law of
John: Of course.
John: And my dad is up in the clouds of the law, just like, la-da-da-da-da, and this and that and this, and what about this?
John: And my mom, matter-of-factly, learned the law.
Merlin: This is so much like my relationship with my wife, with the same gender.
Merlin: My wife is like your mom, and I am like your dad.
Merlin: Absolutely.
Merlin: And sometimes I really need somebody to go, you are, on the one hand, you are oversimplifying this, but on another hand, you are desperately overcomplicating this.
Merlin: So let's go back to the part you're oversimplifying and like focus on this thing that, you know what I mean?
Merlin: Like you sometimes, it's so jarring to have someone in your life do that, but it's so, so essential.
Merlin: It's a set.
John: And according to Laura, they loved each other and they would do this for hours and hours, drive through the country.
John: I love hearing this so much.
John: that would be like well and then you know the invention of the radio and my mom would say she would just hit him with these like and then reality check and she knew her shit right so he would then have to he'd have to regroup he couldn't just dismiss it as like oh oh you know you're not a lawyer what are you talking about because he knew that she knew and he knew that she was smart well and yeah and according to laura like the he respected her more than he respected anybody else in his life
John: Because she just had this kind of intelligence that was like, well, I mean, I've read the law.
Merlin: I love her, but she's scary.
Merlin: I love her.
Merlin: I love your mother so much.
Merlin: I text with her.
Merlin: Like, she's great.
Merlin: But she is, scary is the wrong word.
Merlin: intimidating she's a very she's a very when i say a serious person i don't mean humorless but i mean like she's an adult she's a full-time adult and i bet she has been since she left the farm like she's very you don't you don't shuck and jive with your mom unless this is shuck and jive time that's right oh she's very focused on like
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: But it's unusual.
Merlin: Again, we talk about boundaries or stuff, but that's the way that people did used to act publicly and privately sometimes.
Merlin: You know, dads would wear ties at home and moms didn't always laugh at your jokes.
Merlin: That's how it was.
John: My daughter says, I like spending time with Nana because dinner is at five.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: My kid likes early dinner, too.
John: I said, why do you like dinner at 5?
John: And she said, it's not even that dinner is, I don't even care that it's at 5 instead of 7.
John: She said, what I like is that dinner is at 5.
John: And there's not this thing.
John: No, I know.
Merlin: And I know you know, 5 means 5.
Merlin: Yeah, it's not between 4 and 10 p.m.
Merlin: It's not between now and whatever.
Merlin: Absolutely.
John: Five.
John: Five.
John: And I'm like, at five?
John: At five.
John: Okay.
John: All right.
John: Yes, that's right, of course.
Merlin: Because your kid could say to you, well, you know, like, I'm just saying, because I'm the same way.
Merlin: Five, six, seven, eight, nine, like, whatever.
Merlin: Like, those are numbers.
Merlin: I recognize those.
Merlin: But, like, yeah, but, like, what if I'm really into, like, reconfiguring the DNS on my network, or I'm just listening to this Jason Faulkner song over and over, and
Merlin: And maybe dinner will be later.
Merlin: But no, dinner's at five.
Merlin: Not because that's when the roast comes out, because that's when dinner is.
Merlin: Dinner's at five.
John: Dinner's at five.
John: And she's over here, and sometimes she's like, hey, dad.
John: Careful, careful.
John: It's 8.30.
John: Leave it, John.
John: And you say you don't let her eat is what you're saying?
John: Well, no, and she's like, when is dinner?
John: And I'm like, oh, oh, dinner.
John: Dinner.
John: Right.
John: Right.
John: I would have completely forgotten to eat dinner.
John: oh absolutely and she's like you can't forget to eat dinner because i'm a child yeah and children need dinner and i'm like right children you are you are being very courageous and mom is like yeah for anything else are there any like stable pantry goods you think that she might be able to have like as a treat you know the funny thing is come at me fools yes the internet is dying oh it's absolutely dying the internet's dying so no you can't even no you don't even see people being mad anymore
Merlin: Yeah, who's out there?
Merlin: I don't even think anybody's out there.
Merlin: Knock, knock, who's there?
Merlin: Nobody.
Merlin: Come on, come on.
Merlin: What do you got?
Merlin: This emerges after your father passes away, and I mean, just to put a fine point on it, and decades after your parents stopped being married.
Merlin: I'm obviously still having a relationship for a variety of reasons.
Merlin: It was your father's second marriage?
John: It was dad's second marriage.
John: That's right.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: And so that was – it's funny because I was actually telling Billy about your mom a couple nights ago.
Merlin: I forget how it came up, but we were – one thing we were talking about wasn't Y2K, but it was talking about like how basically programmers used to be women.
Merlin: Like if you've seen that movie Hidden Figures, they called them calculators.
Merlin: It was the women – that was not like as in like –
Merlin: you know, your Texas instruments, but as in like that was the name for women who did computing because men didn't do that.
Merlin: Women did that.
John: No, because that was typewriters.
Merlin: If there's a typewriter, a man doesn't do it.
Merlin: But I was talking about your mom and then I was trying to like kind of piece it together.
Merlin: I wish I could remember how this came up, but he was pretty interested to hear it.
Merlin: And I was like, you know, John's mom like was kind of in her way, kind of a big deal.
Merlin: I mean, she's a big deal to me.
Merlin: Like she's in the mom hall of fame to me, like right next to my mother-in-law.
Merlin: But like, I was like, you know, she managed programmers at a time before, like, then a few years later, like you wouldn't see as many women programmers after like the seventies.
Merlin: But like, I was like, she was like, like a pretty big deal.
Merlin: And then I was struggling to remember, maybe you can remind me.
Merlin: Can you remind me, like, what was the – if there was a period of acrimony or disagreement leading up to their separating, like, when did that bad time start and then when did they separate, if you could remind me?
Merlin: Just for the story, just because it helps me think about years.
John: What happened in computer programming was precisely when engineering –
John: decided that computer programming belonged as an engineering discipline because there was a moment something you learn at trade school you thinking well no but um instead of thinking of it as a logic job right it was a it was logic was a liberal art right logic was a was a greek discipline it was a it was uh it was part of the philosophy department
John: And there was a moment in universities where I was like, okay, computers, we actually need to do something here.
John: Who wants it?
John: And engineering and math said, we want it because it's numbers.
John: And mom said, it has nothing to do with numbers.
John: It has to do with logic.
John: And logic has nothing to do with numbers.
John: It's a philosophy.
John: It's a language.
John: But math and engineering said, no, it's numbers and it belongs here.
John: And that's when women started to be disincluded from computer programming.
John: Because math and engineering were...
Merlin: Yeah, it feels almost like one of those things, like another example from 20 years earlier might be World War II, where women very competently filled, quote unquote, filled in for men while they were gone.
Merlin: But then as soon as the men came back, like it was not an easy transition for anybody, but women were not encouraged to stay in the workforce, even part time, right?
Merlin: I mean, it's like the war's over, get back in the kitchen.
John: Well, and what happened in my mom and dad's marriage was,
John: was throughout the 60s, right, there became, you know, feminism became like an awareness, right?
John: It was a thought technology.
John: Yep.
John: And my mom was way ahead of the curve on it because she was reading and she was in the— Betty Friedan, like, upset a lot of apple carts.
John: She was in the mix, right?
John: Yeah.
John: And she and my dad had an absolute peer relationship in their personal life.
John: But what my dad wouldn't do was let her do the budget.
John: Because the money... That's so funny.
Merlin: It's funny for at least two reasons.
Merlin: Your mom should be doing the budget.
Merlin: And based on what you've told me, your father should not be anywhere near a budget.
Merlin: Nowhere near a budget.
Merlin: And when you going through all of his old boxes and finding his receipts and canceled checks and the chaos, the dump of what you had to go through, doesn't it seem kind of especially funny that he would be adamant about being the one who does it?
Merlin: He's so ill-suited.
John: It's the most hilarious thing.
John: I mean, when I really finally learned...
John: that the problem was that my dad wouldn't just give his paychecks to her because if he had, we would own 11 million everything.
John: Instead of that time show you had to get him out of.
John: But he thought, listen, I'm the man and I make the money.
John: And there's no way that I'm going to let her tell me what I can and cannot.
Merlin: Especially if however peer like your relationship was at a certain point in the 70s, owing in part to the long overdue need for women to be, you know, acknowledged as human beings.
Merlin: I think that led to a lot of what you're talking about, which is like, I need to go.
Merlin: I see publicly this stuff happening and I need to reassert or assert a new kind of.
Merlin: not dominance, but like that I'm the decider in this relationship.
John: Well, and this was 1967.
John: So there had never been, there had never been a question about who was the decider.
John: It's just that my mom started to be rebellious.
John: And my dad was like, he would come home and he'd be like, look, I bought a Jaguar.
John: And my mom is like, what are you talking about?
John: We don't, A, we don't need a Jaguar.
John: I hope you picked up eggs.
John: You know, B, you bought a Jaguar, you know, two years ago, and that's why we can't afford this Jaguar now.
John: And then three, and my dad's like, harumph, harumph, harumph.
John: And then three days later, he'd come home and he'd say, I bought a real Jaguar, a cat in a cage.
John: And my mom was like, what the fuck are you doing?
John: And he's like, well, I'm the guy.
John: I said her name's Sandy.
John: And the thing is, she is a depression era, very frugal.
John: My dad was right that she would have been managing the shit out of the money.
John: But what that would have meant was that he wasn't buying Jaguars, right?
John: That he wasn't coming home and like, oh, I invested in 74 acres of strawberry farms because a guy told me that, you know, or one of my clients said that he couldn't pay me, but he could give me all this.
Merlin: I bet your dad got a lot of what they used to call tips.
Merlin: I bet he got a tip.
Merlin: Oh, boy, I got a tip on a new Jag.
Merlin: He started four banks.
John: His life your father started for banks or banks, huh?
John: He started for banks where why why that seems like a lot of work Why did I not go to Yale?
Merlin: Seems like you'd have to like make a lot of calls if he had started those banks and then let my mom man Oh Fuck me gently.
Merlin: That would be that's a no see now that is he in retrospect, you know at Monday morning quarterback That's right.
Merlin: I feel that way doesn't it seem like boy that yeah things things could have been different well, so by 1971
John: my mom who's also a brooder like he she's the dark part of the sunglasses she was like fuck this i've had enough i don't like being uh i don't like not being seen i see i see i see and i'm not gonna live the rest of my life always in debt because david can't
John: balance his checkbook because he's never even seen the checkbook ledger he doesn't write anything down he just comes home and he's like I bought an airplane
Merlin: Which puts her in the position of that people in general don't like, and in my experience, women in particular do not like, which is finding yourself in a role where the only thing you can really do to exercise agency in your life is to react.
Merlin: You don't get any agency to like, in the same way, it's like she got to design aspects of how the coding was done, I'm sure, or manage how that was done.
Merlin: And in her own life,
Merlin: At any moment she could I'm guessing she could feel like the rug was pulled out from under her and That there was never any agency as long as your dad, you know He's like he's like the the sort of the stereotypical woman who's like I can't be out of money I still have checks Well and she started coding because she was like this is my money I'm making this money so that I don't feel constantly like you're gonna sink the ship Yeah, and my dad was like, what do you mean your money?
John: No, you know, because socially that was embarrassing to him.
John: But without addressing the fact that it was always their money shared, right?
John: Well, but she's not supposed to work because no other prominent lawyer in Seattle has a wife that works.
John: And she just wanted to work so she could have her own money.
John: But in order to get a bank account, she needed his approval.
John: He gave it to her.
John: In the 60s?
John: In the 70s.
John: But he had given her his approval to get her own checking account.
John: That feels so like little women.
John: Well, but that's why she was able to divorce him.
John: She came down to Seattle and she already had her own money, her own bank account, her own credit.
Merlin: And so... Oh, okay.
Merlin: That is like, you're going by that like parenthetically, but that is... No, in terms of like, not real politic, but in terms of reality, that's a very interesting angle on that was like she finally had...
Merlin: The resources and the wherewithal to like the infrastructure if you like To say well, no specifically one reason I'm bouncing out of this is I need to have this kind of control because you don't well that and also and I have no I have no
John: Is she going to hear this?
John: Is she going to hear this?
John: No, she can't listen to podcasts because it's sound.
John: If we transcribed this, she would read it avidly, and then she'd come over here and say, you didn't know.
John: You have no idea what you're talking about.
John: I bet she would run out of red flare pen.
John: What I can't know about her is how much she knew what she was doing
John: When she established her own credit, she knew what she was doing.
Merlin: As in, like, how much she knew as in, like, well, ha-ha, in retrospect, this will be step one of 11?
John: No, because she was doing it because she needed to do it for her own self.
John: But one of the reasons that divorce was so hard in 1971 was basically the woman needed permission from the man to even...
Merlin: To even get divorced and again for the younger folks.
Merlin: This is years before what became known as no-fault divorce Well, it was right right in right in the beginning California I think had early but like it used to be like you if you wanted a divorce Yeah, your husband had to agree to it and it had to be for cause it usually had to be for like infidelity or something It had to be for cause but you couldn't get your own credit card unless he signed off on it and
John: And so she comes down here and you know, he's also a lawyer and knows every lawyer in Seattle.
John: She comes down here.
John: Well, she's already got her own checking account and it's full of money.
John: So what, who's going to do what?
John: And that.
John: really blew everybody's mind right including my dad's because he was like say what now and She just you know, and I mean we were poor.
Merlin: We were poor as fuck Yeah, but she answered anybody at least there is an analogy that means a lot to me when talking about things I talk about I think about ceilings and floors and like the thing is though if you're poor you can be poor
Merlin: in a way that's not a bottomless floor way.
Merlin: Like, if you're poor in a way you can manage, you have hope.
Merlin: It's the being poor in a way that you can't manage, which is what most poor people have.
Merlin: And we're saying poor.
Merlin: We're putting that probably a little strongly.
Merlin: My mom was the same way.
Merlin: Like, you don't have security.
Merlin: You don't have confidence.
Merlin: You don't have all of those things.
Merlin: And, like, in my case, I never will just because of how I'm wired.
Merlin: But you were poor on your own terms eventually.
John: On her terms.
John: But what what it meant for her as a depression baby was that she was she never felt secure.
John: So she worked
Merlin: 70 80 hour weeks yeah because there was never enough cushion no and then one day my grandparents were the same way they were fighting that war i was telling my kid yesterday that i was actually mad i was watching something um about hitler and they were talking about the depression i was like my father was born the day before wall street crashed
Merlin: And I realized that, like, I mean, I was about to say, I said to her, like, wow, I know it wasn't all immediate, but, like, it actually kind of was immediate.
Merlin: Like, I think within a couple days, that by Monday, like, people knew, oh, this is really bad, right?
Merlin: And then they became what my mom and I used to laugh at, and then we called everybody string savers.
Merlin: Like, they're always saving everything.
Merlin: You can't throw that out.
Merlin: And it's like, well, if you've watched...
Merlin: three kids on your block die of typhus and or starve or be evicted like that is traumatic like I'm gonna say the word it is traumatic to watch that and it is super traumatic for that to happen to you and you you have this Scarlett O'Hara right before the intermission you know as God is my witness I'll never be hungry again you have those moments you imprint on that idea of like there will never be enough plenty to make me feel safe ever again
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: And that made for a, that made for a tough childhood, but then everybody our age did have a tough, tough childhood.
John: Um, and, and by tough, I just mean there was nobody there and she was working a lot and, and, uh, and so we were just like, I mean, I was out in the forest.
John: And God, who knows what my sister was doing?
John: Some kind of, I don't know, crazy shit.
John: Because here she is, right?
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: She must have survived.
John: I know what I was doing.
John: Yes.
John: Which was digging under logs.