Ep. 545: "The Lowest Person"
Merlin: Luxury!
Merlin: I mean, things that aren't in the show, are they in the show?
John: No, no.
John: The things that aren't in the show are not in the show.
John: So that narrows it down.
Merlin: Okay, all right.
Merlin: Well, this is going to be tough.
Merlin: Process of elimination.
John: You sound like you have a chorus pedal on your voice.
Merlin: I'm listening to Sloan.
Merlin: I don't know what happened.
Merlin: Yesterday my voice got hoarse and I didn't even perform for people.
Merlin: I mean, no more than usual.
Merlin: You do have a cute little horse voice.
Merlin: I've lost him.
Merlin: You know what it is?
Merlin: It's like we're talking about Chris Walla in gating.
Merlin: I think I've got a gate.
Merlin: If I try to talk below a certain volume, it kind of goes away.
Merlin: Oh, it's so precious.
Merlin: What kind of character do you think this is?
Merlin: Who is this?
Merlin: You can't even say it.
Merlin: You know, if I played you this one minute and 47 seconds in 2011 and say, here's what your future looks like, how would you have felt about that?
Merlin: Would you have been on the bubble?
Merlin: I know if I did in 2003, you would have been very confused.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, sure, sure, sure.
Merlin: I was really into Sloan at that point, you know, still.
John: 2003 is 21 years ago.
Merlin: Yeah, I... I...
John: That's weird.
John: Yeah.
John: Our friendship could join the army.
John: Our friendship could rent a car.
John: Not quite rent a car, but certainly drive a rental car.
John: I think we could be driven in one.
John: Driven in a rental car.
John: Our friendship could be driven to a rental car.
Merlin: It's all in the show, John.
Merlin: How you doing?
Merlin: You good?
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Sure.
John: Good.
Merlin: Good.
Merlin: I never know how to start, you know?
Merlin: You mean anything or this show in particular?
Merlin: Well, that's a complicated question.
John: I know.
John: Yeah.
John: No, this show starts itself.
John: You know, this show is like a shifter car.
Merlin: A doppelganger?
Yeah.
Merlin: no you don't like i drive cars that shift themselves not a shifter car this car this car is like a different it's like a like a like a better car like a normal car oh okay i mean it's got the performance characteristics of an old pickup truck with a three on the tree but it does shift itself it had it shifts itself and it's done when it's out of gas it ends and then where's my bell
Merlin: Oh, gosh.
Merlin: What have I done with my belt?
Merlin: We might not be able to do the show.
Merlin: See, you're out of gas.
Merlin: That's when you're out of gas.
Merlin: There it is.
Merlin: Out of gas.
John: No, I never.
John: Do you ever have any apprehension about recording Roderick on the line?
John: Honestly, no.
John: I mean, what is there to worry about?
John: What's the worst that could happen?
Merlin: It's surely already happened.
Merlin: Yeah, the worst that can happen has happened a lot.
Merlin: A lot?
Merlin: You can't kill me.
Merlin: I'm already dead, and it's in the show.
John: Yeah, you know, I woke up today, and it's like, is it raining?
John: I don't know, you know?
John: Like, it's not.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: Sorry, it's early.
Merlin: I don't have an apprehension about it.
Merlin: I'm one of those people whose form of anxiety...
Merlin: is unusual in the sense that for a typical normal neuro person, things of recording something, being on stage, that kind of stuff can make a lot of people very uncomfortable and uneasy.
Merlin: That's the best moment of my life.
Merlin: You know this from being on tour.
Merlin: The great Jackson Brown talked about this in the song The Loadout.
Merlin: You spend all day doing all this BS, and then finally you get on stage, and you want to stay just a little bit longer.
John: Yeah, just a little bit longer.
John: Because the roadies...
Merlin: Although I, you know, you know, Richard, they got Richard Pryor on the video.
John: You know, roadies, you can't say it anymore.
Merlin: Is that, is that considered, is it racist?
John: No, no.
John: It's disrespectful of the road community.
Merlin: I did.
Merlin: I did not know that.
John: Yes.
Merlin: I thought they liked, I thought that's what, I thought it was like the Romani.
John: No, that's what they liked.
John: I thought that's what they liked being called.
John: That's what they used to like being called before it became a profession.
John: Now it's professionalized.
John: It's been professionalized.
John: And so everybody in the road crew community has an advanced degree in road crewing.
John: And they're all very technically technical.
John: And so if you say roadie that feels dismissive and what you want to say is you want to refer to them by their baronial titles...
Merlin: Oh, okay.
Merlin: It's like when you refer to a lord or a baron or something.
John: Yeah, right.
John: So you don't, you know, as a singer, you don't stand up there and say, hey, would you get the roadies to move this fucking dead calf off the stage so we can start our show?
John: Then somebody will be like, roadies?
John: Really?
Merlin: And somebody would probably whisper to you, a friend would whisper that to you and say, John, we don't really say that anymore.
John: John, these are road crew technical professionals.
John: And I would say, oh, I'm sorry.
Merlin: Now, come on.
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: I mean, I'm just telling you.
John: They didn't even go to trade school.
John: They didn't even go to college or trade school like the way computer people do.
John: No, I think they do.
John: They all go to college now.
John: It's just like the cops.
John: Is that right?
John: You can't even be a cop without a degree in cop.
John: You're talking about hard knocks.
John: You have to go get a cop degree.
John: Cop degree.
John: Now you get like a roadie degree, except they're not roadies.
Merlin: Are there other terms like this I should watch out for, too, that come straight to mind?
Merlin: When I was in what we used to call junior high, you'd refer to the kids that smoked marijuana.
Merlin: Yeah, I don't say that anymore.
Merlin: Well, yeah, now it's middle school.
Merlin: Yeah, I don't agree with middle school.
John: I'm against it.
Merlin: It's this woke culture gone awry.
Merlin: But we used to have the people who smoked marijuana and had a British Steel T-shirt.
Merlin: You'd call them loadies.
Merlin: Loadies?
Merlin: You'd call them stoners.
Merlin: What's loadie mean?
Merlin: I don't, I mean, you know, I didn't invent the language.
Merlin: Well, you could say stoners, but I feel like every reason, you know, like, is it in Canada?
Merlin: They call them Heshers.
John: Yeah.
John: We, I, the first time I heard Hesher, I was like, there's already a word for that.
John: It's stoner.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: But like, do you, I don't have time to get into this.
Merlin: So like, does that fall into the same group?
Merlin: It's like, uh, as the Melvin song, like, uh, the Melvin's record, you know, Houdini is because people call that a stoner record.
John: I mean, I feel like in 1981, stoner was no longer referred to like just your average person in a sweater getting stoned.
John: It very specifically meant someone with long hair and a British steel T-shirt who smoked Marlboro Reds and
John: and like to get high and they had a place at our school called the tree which was a tree and when people wanted to smoke they go to the tree go to the tree yeah we had a little area it was in this it was outside but it was in the school you know those mid-century schools where there's like a they're like um what are they atria in the middle of the school when i was in high school which is what i don't know if they call it that now when i was in high school we did have an area called the smoking area yeah smoking and in florida if you were over 16 you could totally go to that area and smoke
John: Yeah, that was true in Anchorage too.
Merlin: Doesn't that seem wild now?
John: It does seem wild.
John: Well, it also seems wild whenever the door to the teacher's lounge would open and you could look in and see in the teacher's lounge.
John: All the smoke and resignation pouring out.
Merlin: God was so full of smoke.
Merlin: They were in there just huffing.
Merlin: If you had you as a student, you'd be whomping on them Marlboro Reds too.
John: Think about how many of our teachers smoked cigarettes, like fully a pack and a half of cigarettes a day.
John: And wow, that's not true anymore.
Merlin: You don't say Lodi.
Merlin: Now, what about, and I am so sorry, I will cut this out if I need to.
Merlin: What about Carnie?
John: and i don't mean the actor the thing about good old art carney he was great oh he was great um i don't i think that there's some of those things like carney that might be uh they might have reappropriated it and now it's a that's our word of honor yes yeah it's a badge of honor like i'm a carney yes i have a master's degree in carnival but i prefer to be called a carn
Merlin: You need to write a thesis for that?
John: I think you would.
John: You write it in the Sharpie you keep on your belt.
John: You'd write the thesis, and then some carnival somewhere would apply your thesis as part of a modernization program.
Merlin: I see.
Merlin: I see.
Merlin: And so that you're contributing to the discourse on a broader level.
Merlin: But it's one of those things is we're like queer, like we're reclaiming that.
Merlin: So they call themselves the carny community.
John: Yeah, I'm sure within my career, there will be a time
John: where i say hey excuse me road crew professional could you get this dead calf off the stage yeah and the person will walk over and go i'm a roadie sir and i'll be like right it's reclaimed we've taken roadie back
John: And now we're now and then they might say, but you can't call me.
John: Okay.
John: And I'll say, well, you can call me Ray or you can call me Jay or you can call me Sonny.
Merlin: But she doesn't have to call me Johnson.
Merlin: Forget to pay the electric bill, but I remember that bit.
Merlin: And then so, but a lot's changed, and this might be a good opportunity for us to grow a little bit and to help our listeners grow.
Merlin: Now, see, when I was a person that played in amateur bands, there was a person who did the sound at the show, and you called them a sound man.
Merlin: Now, I'm thinking for a variety of reasons, has that changed, John?
Merlin: When you're outperforming for people, what do you call the persons who do sound at a show?
Merlin: What do you call them now?
Merlin: Well, because I'm a professional.
John: I always say, yeah, I'm a professional.
John: I always say front of house.
Merlin: I think of that in terms of restaurants.
John: Right.
John: Front of house in restaurants is the person that sits up at the podium, but front of house in, in rock and roll is the, is the sound man.
John: I know.
John: Okay.
John: But you say front of house, and then it's, you know, that's a whole other concept.
John: It's not just that it's not gendered.
John: It's a whole other concept.
John: You're front of house.
Merlin: I'm going to tell you something I learned as a young person in Cincinnati going to a Christian church.
Merlin: What I learned was, and I forget where I first heard this.
Merlin: You know, I might have read it in a book, but I found this to be very true, which is if you're not sure what to call somebody, call them doctor.
Merlin: Because if they want to be called something else, well, of course, everybody likes being called doctor now.
John: And they'll say, hey, doctor is my father's name.
Merlin: Call me Frankenstein.
Merlin: Are we going anywhere with this, or should we pivot to something else?
Merlin: Oh, no, no, no.
Merlin: I mean, what's in the show is in the show.
Merlin: I see.
Merlin: I forgot already.
John: The thing is, it used to be when you said, I heard from somebody, and then you would say, oh, maybe I read it in a book.
John: It's like now when people say, oh, my friend said, and then they're like, actually, I heard it on a podcast.
Merlin: I think that's probably true.
Merlin: I mean, I don't want to drag anybody here, but we had one of the elders in our church.
Merlin: There was a guy in our church.
John: Who, you and I?
Merlin: Or?
Merlin: Oh, I don't want to drag.
Merlin: No, I'm not going to drag you either.
Merlin: But like, this is a long time ago.
Merlin: This is 19, probably 76 in Ohio.
Merlin: One of the guys at our church, he was kind of seen as like the baller.
Merlin: He was seen as like the most theologically sophisticated guy in the church.
Merlin: And he did have a Ph.D.,
Merlin: And everybody always called him Dr. Cottrell.
Merlin: I haven't said it in years.
Merlin: But you would always call him doctor.
Merlin: And now, for example, the president's first lady is often called Dr. Jill Biden, right?
Merlin: Dr. Biden.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Now, you know, I think that's an education, but that's okay.
Merlin: Yeah, sure, sure.
Merlin: It's almost as easy to get as being a carny.
Merlin: It's almost as easy as a PhD carny.
John: I felt like for much of my younger life, I felt like if I was not going to be the retired director of the CIA, I should at least get a degree that would sort of require people to call me a special thing.
John: Because it's just, you know, it's a wonderful way of establishing your authority without having said or done anything.
John: Except for being in college, you know?
Merlin: John, I hate to say it, but I'm glad this is in the show.
Merlin: You know, I mean, like, I think if people walk around saying, my name is Dr. Rosen Rosen.
Merlin: I think you can and should be, I think you should be encouraged to say to that person, a doctor of what?
Merlin: A doctor of what?
Merlin: Well, because here's the thing, and this is what nobody wants to talk about in this goddamn godforsaken country, is there's a bunch of people walking around calling themselves doctor.
Merlin: And what is the implication that we are left to infer when they call themselves Dr. Rosenpenis or whatever?
Merlin: What's the implication, John?
Merlin: The implication is that they are a medical doctor.
John: Correct.
John: Oh, I think the implication of all doctors is that they are a nerd.
John: Nerd.
John: They might as well say, call me nerd.
John: Nerd Rose and Penis.
John: Whatever works.
John: You know what's different about now?
John: Dr. Nerd and Penis.
John: That's a terrible name.
John: It's no wonder that person got into the sciences.
John: they weren't going to cut it at the dance no that's for sure no the thing the thing that's different between our generation and my parents generation is that there is almost no one you meet anymore that people call colonel or captain
John: And it used to be, I met people all the time.
John: My dad was like, oh, this is Colonel Johnson.
John: And I was like, Colonel?
John: And I don't know why he's Colonel.
John: Is he a Kentucky colonel?
Merlin: I'm reminded of that line.
Merlin: I believe it's from Full Metal Jacket where I believe it's a gunnery.
Merlin: Sergeant Hartman says, call me Sergeant.
Merlin: I work for a living.
Merlin: And I've always enjoyed that quote.
John: Uh-huh.
John: That's a nice quote.
John: Although I come from an officer class and we would always, you know, kind of look, look, look away, look around.
John: Jeez.
John: What are you going to do?
John: Throw your ribbons at him?
John: Yeah.
John: What do you, what you, you wear dungarees.
John: Yeah.
John: That's fine.
John: Doctors in dungarees.
John: That sounds like a Jackson Brown record.
John: Dungarees.
John: You wash them yourself, right?
John: Not like, not like these officer clothes that we have clean.
Merlin: Oh, you think they have them professionally laundered and roadies don't do that at all.
Merlin: Right.
John: You know, it used to be, I knew exactly what roadies did, but now I don't even know anything.
John: Now I don't, I'm not even sure, you know, surely there are some people moving dead calves on and off stages that do not have advanced degrees in technical subjects.
John: Does anybody know?
John: I mean, not that it matters.
John: Stage hands.
John: Stage hands.
Merlin: Stage hands.
Merlin: I'm writing that down.
Merlin: Stage hands.
Merlin: And then stage hands.
Merlin: Now we're pivoting a little bit to the theater scene where I know you also have stage managers.
John: There's always going to be... And is this different from Grips?
Merlin: Are Grips the ones with gloves that change the lights?
Merlin: Or is that a best boy?
Merlin: A gaffer?
John: Grips, gaffers, and best boys.
John: That's all I think of that as just movie stuff.
Merlin: That's my least favorite Guy Fieri show.
John: But you know, I have never been in the band that was headlining the stadium tour that actually had to figure out...
John: how to use your touring staff and the local crew.
John: So that's the other thing, local crew.
John: Local crew is different.
Merlin: Those are what, in military history, you call those sellsorts.
Merlin: Like local mercenaries you bring in, right?
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: That's a good, that is a wonderful biblical.
Merlin: I watched, by the way, I just wanted to clear, I'm going to eventually say this online, but I really didn't like the Napoleon movie.
Merlin: And then I saw it a second time and I didn't like it.
Merlin: And I think it didn't make any sense.
Merlin: And then I watched it a third time last night and I think I might love it.
Merlin: Oh, whoa, no way.
Merlin: That's not where I thought this was going.
Merlin: The movie's a mess.
Merlin: It's a total mess.
Merlin: It's a goddamn mess.
Merlin: And yet, you know what?
Merlin: I tend to skip the kissing parts in movies.
Merlin: It just doesn't appeal to me.
Merlin: But being somebody who's just a little obsessed with Vanessa Kirby, I came around with this one.
Merlin: And I like their weird relationship.
Merlin: And I like how it portrays Bonaparte, as your mom says.
Merlin: Uh-huh.
Merlin: But, you know, Osterlitz, it's a pretty great victory, you know, and you got to know how to use your cavalry.
Merlin: But the thing is, wherever you go, you're going to have sellswords and mercs and the kind of people you bring in to, like, flesh out your forces.
Merlin: But then you got to feed them all is another thing.
John: You got to feed them all.
Merlin: He learned that a few years later when he started marching east.
John: I got halfway into that movie, that Napoleon.
Merlin: I would love to know what you thought of that movie.
John: Well, I punched out.
John: I was even trapped on an airplane, and I was like, I would rather stare at the back of the seat than continue to watch this Napoleon movie.
John: But I feel like I haven't been forced or have not forced myself to try and watch it three times, and maybe the third time through I'd be like... Just real quick, that's a clue.
Merlin: The clue is, as much as I'll find what I wrote about this on Letterboxd, it was not very favorable...
Merlin: But you know what?
Merlin: It's like they say with publicity.
Merlin: It must be working, because I did watch it mostly a second time, and then it did come back.
Merlin: I watched it in three sittings this third time.
Merlin: And I'm like, you know, this is still really weird, but there's parts of this I've warmed up to.
John: The first time I saw the Brad Pitt movie, Troy, I was in Amsterdam.
John: I had a day to kill, and there was a movie theater.
John: I was walking around.
John: I was over there by the Paradiso, and I walked past a movie theater there, and I was like, you know what?
John: I got nothing to do.
John: I'm going to go and see a movie.
John: And so I went in and Troy was playing and I was like, this is right out of my wheelhouse.
John: This is going to be perfect.
John: I'm going to watch Troy.
John: And, uh, Brad Pitt's a handsome guy.
John: It's got the all-star cast.
John: And I went and I watched Troy and I was so, I hated it so much.
Merlin: I walked out into the- I apologize, John, for interrupting you yet again.
Merlin: I have no, I'm not going to look it up.
Merlin: I have no recollection of this.
Merlin: I'm trying to triangulate this based on times I think you were in Europe.
Merlin: Is this a, I'm trying to figure out where this fits in the whole, like, you said Brad Pitt, right?
Yeah.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: So this is when?
Merlin: I mean, so you've got the weird, the handsome man years.
Merlin: You get Meet Joe Black and Fight Club.
Merlin: When does this, is this in the 90s?
John: No, it was on Long Winters Tour.
John: It was one of these things where we were, you know, because we had a Dutch record label.
John: So we always got to the Netherlands before the tour and we always stayed there.
Merlin: It means everybody pays for their own portion of it when you go Dutch.
Yeah.
John: We all went Dutch constantly.
John: And so there were these wonderful days where I was like, well, everybody else is gone.
John: They've all screwed off.
John: And you had a bunch of work to do because you're the band leader that never bothered to hire a tour manager or a driver.
John: Yeah, that's not your fault.
John: It's not my fault.
John: I'm just, you know, I'm as God made me, sir.
John: You're talent.
John: And so I'm talent, but I also made myself road crew because there wasn't enough for me to think about.
John: Call it a field promotion.
John: Why would I pay somebody 20 euros a day when I could just have four jobs?
John: And today, I'm giving myself the day off to watch a Brad Pitt movie in Dutch.
John: But I had already done some work.
John: I had gone and rented a van, or I had picked out a bunch of amps, or whatever it was I had done.
John: And I was like, I got nothing else to do.
John: Everybody else is gone.
John: 2000, mid-2000s.
John: Sometime when we were in Europe a lot.
John: And it was this, you know, it's a heroic epic, but everybody's trying to make, at that period, right?
John: Everybody wanted to make a historical epic like Lawrence of Arabia, but none of the filmmakers couldn't remember how to do it.
Merlin: Yeah, well, people are talking about Gladiator now, because there's a Gladiator too, but one thing that was hanging over movies for a while, and I think TV, I think this eventually affected the interest in making a show like Rome, for example, was Gladiator.
Merlin: Gladiator was a really big deal.
Merlin: It was a big deal.
Merlin: Epic, big swords and sandals.
Merlin: Also, by the way, Napoleon was in that one, too.
Merlin: Yeah, that's right.
John: Well, Master and Commander was another great movie that they should have made five of.
Merlin: You ever seen that movie, Master and Commander?
John: Have you ever seen that?
John: Listen, we're not going to be a Gen X dad podcast, Merlin.
John: We are current and contemporary people who are talking about modern language and things that are happening.
John: 13 years late for that.
John: but i walked out of troy and i understand the oceans have become battlefields i spit on the ground i was like terrible terrible movie how quick how quick how quick before you were not before you were out on troy well you know i'm not going to spit where somebody's going to walk i walked over to the side to the gutter and was like i spit into a canal let's say but then later i don't know why i don't know why 15 years later i was like
John: in a situation where somebody was like you're gonna watch troy and i said oh i don't want to and i don't oh you know what it was it might have been friendly fire and i watched it sure and i was like oh it's not as i guess it's not as bad as i thought like it's fine there's not why why did i hate this so much it's it's just fine
John: and so i'm wondering whether the napoleon movie isn't one of those where later i watch and i'm like oh yeah it's just i mean i like joaquin phoenix i think i do too i think he's fine have you seen beau is afraid
John: Bo is afraid.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: The movie he was in, like, last year?
Merlin: Mm-mm.
Merlin: I don't, well, you know, maybe.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: Just watch the first act.
Merlin: The first act.
Merlin: It's a pretty goddamn crazy movie.
Merlin: No, I think it's great, too.
Merlin: It's hard to know.
Merlin: You know, also, something I've realized over the years, I guess I've always kind of known, but I've operationalized, is that sometimes it's just not the right, just the easiest way to put it, this is not the night for this movie.
Yeah.
Merlin: It's easy enough.
Merlin: Like I'm a huge fan of the Criterion channel.
Merlin: And so when I say I'm a huge fan of that, what I mean is like I do.
Merlin: I watch a fuck ton of movies on Criterion channel.
Merlin: But the main thing I have Criterion channel for is to watch the trailers and the features and the stuff like that.
Merlin: But, you know, I keep thinking I got to watch more Ozu movies.
Merlin: And every time I pull up an Ozu movie, I'm like, oh, not tonight.
Merlin: It's just not the night for that.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: I do.
Merlin: It's not always Ingmar Bergman's persona night in my house.
Merlin: It's just not always the right night.
John: You know what I'm saying?
John: I do.
John: And the thing about going to see movies by yourself when you're on tour...
John: is that it's a little private thing that I do when I get a little moment and everybody, I don't know what other people are doing.
John: They might be drinking alcohol.
John: I'm not sure what everybody else is doing in those moments, but I'll go, I'll take myself to the movies.
John: And I saw that Scarlett Johansson movie, Under the Skin,
John: by myself on, on tour.
John: It's a very interesting movie.
John: And I came out just like absolutely radicalized.
John: Like that was the best thing I ever saw.
John: That guy's not going to spoon feed you in his movies.
Merlin: You're going to have to really just figure shit out in his movies.
Merlin: And I really liked that about him.
John: And then we were on tour, and I said to the band one time, we were in Canada, and I was like, let's go to the movies.
John: We're going to the movies.
John: And they said, me, you want to look at our computers?
John: And I was like, we're going to the movies.
John: And we got to the movies, and the choice was $300.
John: $300.
John: Or the Batman movie, the one with the Joker.
John: The Dark Knight.
John: The Dark Knight.
John: And we stood in the lobby and we were like, 300 or The Dark Knight.
Merlin: And again, once again, I'm imagining you with your hands out, palms up, and doing kind of that weighing up and down thing where you're like, you know.
John: Swords and sorcery, sandals and jock straps.
Merlin: Did the other fellas have any kind of...
Merlin: A feeling about that?
Merlin: You made them go to the movies, put down the computers, go to the movies.
Merlin: We debated it.
John: We stood there as a group and we're like, oh boy, well, there's the one, there's the other.
John: And this one seems weird.
John: And that one seems, you know, sort of like, and then we chose Batman.
John: You chose well.
John: And Batman, as you recall, was pretty phenomenal.
John: It's really good.
John: It's like three good movies.
John: And we just from that opening scene, we were just like, oh, gosh, we were all looking at each other.
Merlin: That curtain glass, curtain glass skyscraper.
Merlin: That's it.
Merlin: I mean, they had me from the very beginning.
John: Yep.
John: All of us.
John: We were just like willikers.
John: And then later I saw 300 in a different context.
John: And I was like, you know, if you're going to make a swords and sorcery movie, make it like that.
Merlin: And, you know, it's people are hard on Zack Snyder.
Merlin: I think consensus will eventually come around on this.
Merlin: I think Watchmen is a very good movie.
Merlin: Oh, you do.
Merlin: I do because I'm a grown man and I can separate it from the comic.
Merlin: It's okay.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: I like this.
Merlin: But 300, first of all, I just want to say I watched the first 20 minutes of 300 over the weekend.
Merlin: Oh, you did!
Merlin: Because I was trying to... Like, I've done this thing for years where I'm like, oh, kid, you've got to see this movie.
Merlin: You've got to see that movie.
Merlin: And because we're both deep in a Watchmen rewatch, like rewatching the HBO series, rewatching... I own three different versions of the Watchmen movie, including a four-hour version with the entire pirate comic in it.
Merlin: And anyway...
Merlin: And so I was thinking, do I really want to push 300 on this kid?
Merlin: I remember it's got Cersei Lannister in it.
Merlin: It's got McNulty in it.
Merlin: And then I was like, you know what, though?
Merlin: I still, I admire this because this is a movie that knows what it is.
Merlin: Like it or not, it knows what it is.
Merlin: And I admire that in a movie.
Merlin: It does know what it is.
Merlin: But then I also thought, I bet every single person who owns a Cybertruck loves this movie.
John: And I turned it off.
Merlin: I don't know if it's required or just a tremendous coincidence.
Merlin: But every time you see a Cybertruck, you know that's a guy probably wearing a hat.
Merlin: Who loves 300.
John: Uses it in conversation to try and describe American politics.
John: This is Sparta, he says.
John: Well, you know, that's the thing about the Napoleon movie that really struck me is clearly, from the very beginning, clearly that movie knows what it is internally.
John: I did not find the movie was confusing or garbled within itself.
John: Really?
John: I said, this movie.
Merlin: I think it was a little abrupt, some of the transitions and tonal changes.
John: Well, but that's the thing.
John: It knows that it is.
John: It's trying to.
John: The movie is saying, I am not going to make a straight Napoleon movie, or rather, I am not a straight Napoleon movie.
John: I am a queer Napoleon movie.
John: A roadie.
John: And I sat in there and I was like, okay, I'm with you.
John: I'm strapped into a fart tube full of long pigs flying across the world.
John: You tell me what kind of Napoleon movie we're watching.
John: And the Napoleon movie was like, you're going to see this Napoleon movie.
John: Not the one you want.
John: You go to war with the Napoleon movie you have.
John: That's what Donald Rumsfeld said.
John: and i said all right then all right then i you know what you know what i have i have some familial feelings about bone apart and also i've i've read not a small stack of books about this topic i'm ready i'm ready you tell me is it going to be about just kissing josephine then i'm all over it and then it was whatever it was and i i for sure was like hmm
John: Well, maybe I'll watch the first 20 minutes of 300 minutes.
Merlin: That's so interesting.
Merlin: So one thing, again, the time that I bounced last night, I'm sorry, night before last, was when it goes from like, you know, because I'm new to a lot of this stuff.
Merlin: I watch a lot of videos about this stuff now.
Merlin: And, you know, about his career and about, I'm interested in people who think that they can invade, you know.
Merlin: Russia in the winter.
Merlin: I'm fascinated by that.
Merlin: But it goes straight from eating your horse to hard smash cut to now we're sending you to Elba.
Merlin: And I was like, huh?
John: Yeah, right.
John: Say who?
Merlin: Yeah, that was a little fast.
John: Here's what I said.
Merlin: I said the pacing and tonal shifts in this movie are really baffling to me One minute it wants to be David Lean and then it's Yorgos Lanthimos for a couple minutes and of course we Viennese waltz randomly in and out of Amadeus and then oh boy We're already on to some weird choppy Kurosawa shit and also sometimes people just fall down Do you notice people fall down a lot in the movie people fall down?
John: I did notice that and I you know when I punched out it was after he started marching on Paris
John: and i i said okay we're here this is not where i thought we were going to be at this point in the film yeah and there's a lot more going there's a lot more to say but i don't feel like we've adequately covered what's come already
John: And I don't know if I have it in me to do what's next together.
John: You know, like you, the people in the movie, and me, the people in this airline seat, I don't think together we haven't established enough credibility here that I'm not just going to go watch The Simpsons.
John: But, you know, I felt that way about the Jude Law Russian sniper movie, Enemy at the Gates.
John: About Stalingrad.
Merlin: One of my all-time favorite World War II things.
Merlin: Well, the first time I was sorry.
Merlin: Sorry.
Merlin: No, no, sorry.
Merlin: The Battle of Stalingrad.
Merlin: I mean to say the Battle of Stalingrad.
John: Yeah, no, no, the actually the event the events that went on give the Battle of Stalingrad Stalingrad grad five stars just as a as a historical like to refer to his grotties
John: The Grottis.
John: All those ladies and their long rifles.
John: Have they brought that back?
John: I don't know.
John: Grotti was out of fashion for a while.
John: They've suffered a lot.
John: But so you do like Enemy at the Gates or you just like the Battle of Stalin?
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: What I'm putting poorly is I go into it.
Merlin: I like Jude Law a lot.
Merlin: But also I go into a movie like that.
Merlin: Like just the story.
Merlin: Just I mean, like, you know, it's easy enough to get frustrated with the Soviet Union or Russia these days.
Merlin: But like, you know, they've been through some stuff.
Merlin: Oh, sure.
Merlin: Their people have been through a lot.
Merlin: Stalin was not always the greatest guy, even or especially during World War II.
Merlin: I mean, just listen to that Waterboy song, Red Army Blues.
Merlin: Stalin was killing off people coming back from the West just because he thought they'd become too westernized.
Merlin: Oh, sure.
Merlin: Sure, they cut off their sleeves.
Merlin: You mentioned this, yes.
Merlin: But anyway, so you go into this, and this is the story.
Merlin: The Battle of Stalingrad is an amazing story of the really wildly underprepared Germans going east, and it's going to be especially a big deal because they're going to take down the city.
Merlin: That has been renamed after the leader of the Soviet Union.
Merlin: It's going to be a huge deal.
Merlin: It'll be a cakewalk, right?
Yeah.
Merlin: one does not simply walk into stalingrad but right and the the defense that those people put up is amazing and terrifying like all the stuff you've heard about the vietcong get ready because like oh my god don't you think like what this what the soviet people did in stalingrad is bananas well bananas yeah i mean i think that it's um
John: Without discussing too much the battle of Stalingrad.
John: You're trying to avoid spoiling it?
John: I don't want to... Spoiler alerts.
John: The Nazis do not win.
John: We'll be discussing... Tonight we'll be discussing the first three episodes of Stalingrad.
John: But I for sure felt the first time I watched it that this movie was like a weird cartoon.
John: I didn't bond with the film.
John: And then I saw it again.
John: and i really liked it and that was maybe the maybe an example of like the first time i was very confused at seeing a movie a second time and going how is this i i remember everything how how am i receiving this movie the second time like completely differently than when i saw it the first time and then i watched it for friendly fire and came out the other side like this is a i should watch this movie once a year
John: You know, just feeling like, wow.
Merlin: Is that where you remain today?
John: Well, I haven't watched it in three years.
Merlin: No, no, no, but as of the last time you saw it, you still thought it was pretty good.
John: I still thought it was really good.
John: Really good.
Merlin: And I don't know what it was that first time.
Merlin: Sniper stuff is scary.
Merlin: Scary.
Merlin: You know, snipers are scary.
Merlin: Did I ever tell you a story about when my dad was in Korea?
Merlin: Even if I have, I'm just going to tell you again real quick.
Merlin: So my dad was a foot soldier, infantry soldier in the Korean War.
Merlin: And this is a story in my family.
Merlin: It appears to be true.
Merlin: Um, but at some point my father had written to my grandmother, his mother, and he'd made some kind of a reference because, you know, their mail's getting read.
Merlin: And he'd said something like, it sure would be nice if I had, whatever, Bessie here with me or whatever.
Merlin: Um,
Merlin: And it was the name of his pistol that was still back in Cincinnati.
Merlin: Long story short, my grandmother sent him the parts of his pistol packed in popcorn so he would have any chance against snipers in Korea.
Merlin: Whoa.
Merlin: Popcorn.
John: You're not talking about foam.
John: You're talking about actual popcorn.
John: The food.
Merlin: You can send food to your boy in Korea.
Merlin: Yeah, and she or somebody disassembled the pistol, sent it to him in a not noticeable number of parts.
Merlin: I mean, I doubt it was like one piece at a time.
Merlin: But however, that's the story.
Merlin: And so he had his pistol when he was in.
Merlin: Now, there's a lot about this story.
Merlin: I've thought about this enough to go like, okay, where did you get the ammunition for that?
Merlin: There's a lot about it that's a little bit dicey.
Merlin: The point being, it's really fucking scary to not know where snipers are.
John: I know you like graphic novels.
John: Did you ever read the Joe Sacco novel, or a comic, The Fixer?
John: Mm-mm.
John: It's a wonderful graphic novel, and it's... Based on the Bernard Tellman novel?
John: No, it's about the war in Bosnia.
John: Okay.
John: And there's a whole section in it talking about snipers in Bosnia that...
John: you know how you read a thing and it just sticks with you forever i do yeah it's like oh boy well now i have that i mean i even went i even went there to uh croatia and was like you know on tour we were playing a show but i remember sitting in a cafe and looking croatia we played in croatia that's cool it was very cool
John: We were playing with them, and you will know us by the Trail of Dead.
John: Oh, wow.
John: And they're amazing and super nice people.
Merlin: Oh, that's nice to hear.
Merlin: They did, I always thought, at first I always thought they sounded kind of like an American pop music version of Godspeech the Black Emperor, but I warmed up to them a lot over time.
Merlin: That record, that record, their big record is actually a very good record.
John: a good record and and yeah they did the uh friday night lights theme if memory serves i was i i i expected that they would be um like like interpol yeah unfriendly but it turned out that they were extremely friendly and like really cool that's cool
John: it's ballsy to put an ellipsis in your name it really is right or or like or a period that for instance maybe doesn't belong in them or an exclamation point in the middle of your quebecois band name you know but so i uh i i i was there i was in zagreb and i'm sitting in a cafe and all around me are people my own age
John: And yet they have all, and I wouldn't have thought of this if I hadn't read this Joe Sacco comic.
John: I'm looking around and I'm like, why does everybody look so fucking hard?
John: They're all so hard, much harder than me.
John: And then I was like, oh wait, they all survived a war, a civil war.
Merlin: That one in the 90s we kept hearing about.
John: Yeah, while I was sitting around in cafes arguing with people about a play that we never actually wrote.
John: Like they were, I guess.
John: Well, the Candlebox is definitely grunge or not.
John: Yeah.
John: Is Candlebox grunge?
John: No, not if you're from here.
John: They were all like hiding in churches or whatever, or in probably a lot of cases, like sitting up behind a rock with a sniper rifle.
John: I have a friend whose family came here because of that.
John: because of that yeah yeah and now here we all are uh in the same cafe and i'm in the band and they are all drinking you guys like rock music they're drinking with a straw and they're like you know give us what you got and i'm like stupid yeah it was a song called cinnamon it's about spies
John: It's about spies.
John: It's about spies, you guys.
John: All these songs are about liking a girl and not being sure if she likes you back.
John: Here we go.
John: One, two, three, four.
John: And they're like...
John: So for sure, like, and I'm thinking, I'm sitting there thinking about this graphic novel in the moment, like, oh, man, this is really heavy stuff.
John: And I know about you.
John: I know about you from the Napoleon movie and from reading a comic book.
John: I know your experience, fellow babies.
Merlin: It's your version of Hamburger Bang Bang.
Merlin: Put some pressure on you, huh?
Merlin: Well, you know what?
Merlin: Whatever's in the show is in the show.
Merlin: I mean, you can't change who you are.
John: You can't compare.
John: In a way, you really can't compare experiences because who knows?
John: Who knows?
John: Who knows?
John: I think I've always felt, or not always, but I arrived at the conclusion, I'm sure I've talked about it with you before, that there's a...
John: There's just a floor on how bad we can feel.
John: And there's a ceiling on how good we can feel.
John: And when you hit that floor or you hit that ceiling, all extremities beyond that floor or ceiling are just kind of muted.
John: It's like a compressor.
John: It's like a limiter.
John: Because there are people that hit that floor and writhe in pain about things that...
John: that other people take in stride, and there are people that hit that floor and then experience, like, unfathomably more depraved circumstances.
Merlin: No matter how hard your head hits that floor, just to state something blindingly obvious, you'll still...
Merlin: You'll still never, you can necessarily never appreciate you weren't there.
Merlin: You can never really appreciate both the profundity of how terrible something was, but also the complexity of something.
Merlin: It's not a one bit thing.
Merlin: You know, there's a reason when we tell stories, there's a reason we tell stories about, you know, Anne Frank instead of everybody, because there has to be a person to connect that to.
Merlin: And that's the floor we usually land at as go, oh boy, that was a real bummer.
Merlin: But like you cannot appreciate the complexity.
Merlin: What was life like in the camps?
Merlin: What did you have to do to stay alive that you never thought you would do?
Merlin: It's just we don't even want to scratch that surface because you know what I mean?
Merlin: Like the stuff that we all have to do to get by and sometimes not succeed is not there anymore.
Merlin: It doesn't exist to give privileged Americans insight into the world.
Merlin: It happened, and that's how it happened.
Merlin: And that's why us going, you know, hamburger bang, bang, is not an adequate explanation of everything that happened in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Merlin: Or the terrible other 90s one with people getting their arms cut off and everything in Rwanda.
Merlin: Yeah, in Rwanda, the Rwanda genocide.
Merlin: I mean, guys, it was really bad.
Merlin: Nobody comes out of that looking great.
Merlin: and no matter how many times you read that wikipedia article your head will never hit the floor hard enough to understand what it was really like and that's how life is it doesn't mean don't learn it but it also doesn't mean like you get to wear a special hat that says you feel more than other people like you just have to learn what you can and like just try not to be a dumbass but the weird flip side of it is that by the same token
John: Trying, trying to, trying to become sensitive to all the things that kind of, when we were kids, we were taught not to be sensitive toward, right?
John: Like I saw something on Instagram the other day that was, uh, it was a, uh, a public service message from our childhood that was, and I'm sure you remember it.
John: Like, have you hugged your kid today?
John: And it was presented on Instagram as like, there was a time when people had to be reminded to hug their children with a whole public service campaign.
John: Because it was not part of the, not only was it uncommon, like not common, but it was uncommon.
John: And I remember, have you hugged your kids today?
Merlin: Especially dads.
Merlin: Especially dads.
Merlin: well yeah but i mean and in the ad it's like moms and dads both just like have you hugged your kid today and they're like i'm busy i've just known i've just known so many women that in a quiet moment would admit like something i now know which is very few daughters and sons but ever got hugged enough by their father look at the trump family i didn't get hugged i didn't get hugged by i didn't get hugged very much
John: And when I was, it was in the 90s when I was part of alternative culture.
John: And I started to get touched by other people.
John: Like, you know, I'd be at a party and somebody would touch me, lean on me.
John: Or like, I remember I was at a party.
Merlin: Makes you really realize Alaska's not the West Coast.
Merlin: Like people are different with their feelings on the West Coast.
John: But like, I was talking to a girl and she grabbed my hand and started massaging my hand.
John: Like just giving me a hand massage.
John: A thing I didn't know existed, a hand massage.
John: But she was just talking to me and it wasn't seductive.
John: She wasn't trying to, she was gay.
John: But she was like, we were talking about something and she just started massaging my hand.
John: And I was, first of all, it's amazing to have your hand massaged.
John: And she was touching my hand in ways that
John: no one had ever touched me in any way i'd never had any kind of contact like that that was just sort of affectionate and and affectionate but not not you know she was just romantic or sexual yeah well that's just human just human at that point i don't even know if i'd had any romantic touch but like i she was just like
John: she was recognizing that i was corporeal that i had a physical shape and that that i could be touched and i and i it was like i'm having a hard time describing it even now because
John: whatever we were talking about, like I obviously continued to talk about it, but my body was exploding with sensation, not just the actual hand massage, which I had never occurred.
John: It had never occurred to me was possible, but just that someone was touching.
John: And that began probably a 10 year process where I got comfortable with people hugging me or touching me or putting their hands on me in any way.
John: because up until the time i was 25 that was not part of my experience and if you look at my daughter's life in comparison it's like we live on it's like we grew up on two completely different planets a planet where where uh like the amount that she's been hugged just before she was four years old is more hugs than i'll ever have in my whole life
Merlin: It kind of used to be implied that hugs had a reason.
Merlin: Oh, you got a hug.
Merlin: You get a hug.
Merlin: I'm just trying to give a little bit of a sharp angle here, which is that, yeah, you give somebody a hug, but also you shouldn't have to give somebody a hug.
Merlin: Like, buck up.
Merlin: Oh, yeah, right.
Merlin: It isn't hugs.
Merlin: In other words, hugs or whatever hand massages or whatever your version of that, that physical, that human acknowledgement of your physicality without regard to more complicated emotional issues.
Merlin: That woman didn't need a reason to massage your hand.
Merlin: That's just a thing that she did.
Merlin: And I hope I don't sound bitter about this because I did get hugged a lot.
Merlin: I was fortunate.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But I think, I don't want to beat this to death, but you and I go on about this sometimes, that when we were raised at a time when it was really thought that you were harming your kid by doing too much of several things.
Merlin: showing them too much affection showing them too much approval showing them too much physical contact like that that was it wasn't just that you're making them into a pussy it was also just that like you're you're that is harmful for you to just be doing willy-nilly i mean i think i think the average dumb guy would say well yeah you're turning your kid into a pussy but i mean there's other parts to that but here's the problem you say oh well you do need a hug what's like
Merlin: Everybody.
Merlin: Oh, that was a huge insult.
Merlin: I forgot.
Merlin: It became, oh, do you need a hug?
Merlin: Do you need a hug?
Merlin: It's like, yeah, I need a hug, don't you?
Merlin: It's your life that much better than mine that you don't?
John: No one said that to me in decades.
John: Do you need a hug?
John: God, because we do need hugs.
John: We all need hugs.
Merlin: But that's all I was going to say.
Merlin: And I'm not trying to impugn an entire generation of boomers and whatever.
Merlin: But they were doing the best they could.
Merlin: Everybody's doing the best they can every day.
John: Oh, I don't know.
John: I think the boomers could have done a lot better.
Merlin: They probably could have done better.
Merlin: They could have left something.
John: I think they know it.
Merlin: But isn't that part of it?
Merlin: So part of it was an adjustment for you of the physical part, which must have seemed a little shocking.
Merlin: But then isn't it also the like, how should I feel about this?
John: Wasn't that part of it?
John: Well, there was that, but you know, the sensitivity thing was, you know, that just happened in the last 10 or 15 years, realizing that this relativity of pain
John: is a real relativity and that you can have survived the Rwandan Civil War or the Holocaust, but you also, there are also people who get their feelings hurt and it actually kills them.
John: And they die, you know?
John: That in terms of pain relativity,
John: They felt so embarrassed by being teased or whatever that it resulted in their death.
John: Whereas this person, another living human, somebody standing right next to them had their arm chopped off by with the same machete that killed their parents in front of them.
John: And yet they soldier on.
John: And how is that possible and how can you relate those two pains?
Merlin: It's a phrase I find myself, I've tried to do this in a somewhat guarded and reserved way, but a phrase I find myself using from this time to time, it's almost like everybody's different.
Merlin: Well, that's right.
John: But our culture currently is really based on stacking up pain against it.
John: You know, everybody presents their pain, whose pain gives them moral superiority.
Merlin: And who's more entitled to that pain.
John: Right.
John: And so what we're doing constantly now is ranking pain.
John: and using pain ranking as a way of establishing moral authority which is a thing that my father's generation never did all what they did was they tried to they tried to um really downplay pain like no one would ever you would never uh claim to be or demonstrate in any way that you had been affected by pain
John: And in just two short or three short generations, we're now all about pain.
John: That's all we talk about.
John: But trying to talk about pain and also recognize the enormous relativity of pain.
John: That this person can be absolutely, their life can come to a complete and screeching halt, and they will live in that pain the rest of their life as long as they're alive.
John: And then this person can experience unfathomable tragedy and yet kind of appear to and in every respect live a life that appears unfathomable.
John: So you can't say, well, this person's overreacting to pain and this person's underreacting to pain.
John: There are just too many examples of both things.
Merlin: and how to approach other people's pain and think of it on this relative scale of like it doesn't matter what happened it matters how you experience it oh boy you know and so that's that's that is a that is a tentpole i'm not going to do the bit because i know people that's a bit but like that book about trauma that had such an impact on me like that that is kind of that is one of the major theses of
Merlin: the book, is that there's a reason that we respond so differently to these things, and it is partly physiological.
Merlin: It's not just, quote, in your head, except in so far as your brain is in your head, and there's pathways that have been re-dug, and it's a fool's errand to try and, without sophistication, weigh up who has the bigger pile of pain and therefore, as you say, the more moral authority.
Merlin: It's a big deal.
Merlin: It's a really big deal, and nobody wants to talk about it.
John: It's a super big deal, but we also have to contrast it against, for instance, our experience as a stoic generation, where it's like, well, nobody asked us about our pain, and we didn't ever really talk about it either.
Right.
John: And so it isn't explicitly true that pain itself is real either.
Merlin: But part of it is, this may be a long-time thing, this may be a recent thing, but at least in my opinion, I don't want to be too pointed about this, and I don't want to set us off in a crazy direction, but I think one of the challenges right now is that
Merlin: I feel like there's elements of the culture in which if I can imagine anything worse than what I think is happening to you right now, you're a poser and you need to buck up.
Merlin: And it isn't necessarily that it's what happened to me.
Merlin: It's not that I was in Treblinka, but like, and this is how we get into all the white knighting, and we get into all these things where it's like, God, who died and made you the Judge Advocate General of pain?
Merlin: Like on who's allowed to have had an impact on their life was something that you didn't have.
Merlin: This is why I say in that document, if you really want to understand somebody that you can't understand, one of the things is ask yourself what was much more difficult for them in childhood than it was for you.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Because that's where we fall apart on a lot of things.
Merlin: And it's not just childhood.
Merlin: Sure, there's always something.
Merlin: But, you know, I mean, honestly, it's not just childhood, but it's like, well, that wasn't hard for you.
Merlin: Like, you know what?
Merlin: If you grew up middle class and never worried about missing a meal, is there a chance that there's a reason this other person is more sensitive to issues of money in class and privation and the idea of privation?
Merlin: And it's like, that's just one problem.
Merlin: But, like, it's pretty endless how little empathy we're willing to have for people who've suffered more or less than we feel like we've suffered.
John: I was talking to a friend the other day about another friend we have in common.
John: And my friend said about the other friend, like I don't, in all the years I've known her, I don't really know her.
John: Like I've known her for 30 years.
John: I just don't really know her because she just, and I think part of that is that when I was a kid, I definitely would have looked at her as another kid and thought she's rich.
John: She's a rich girl.
John: And the friend that was talking had grown up very poor.
John: But in a very poor town, in a poor region.
Merlin: And so when he said... I think the phrase you're looking for is they grew up unrelentingly poor.
Merlin: Unrelentingly poor.
Merlin: And probably knew it.
John: American poor.
John: And the idea... And I could picture him.
John: I could picture him as a nine-year-old.
John: and i could picture her as a nine-year-old because she's not rich she's just middle class but i could picture him as a nine-year-old looking at her as a nine-year-old and thinking she's rich because they live on the part of town where the train doesn't actually rattle their dishes yeah yeah when it goes by in the night and i was like wow that's like that's really heavy
John: Because that lingers.
John: He's in his 50s.
John: She's in her 50s.
John: And yet, and this just kind of snuck out.
John: They grew up watching the same happy days.
John: Absolutely.
John: And this was in an America where the difference between the richest person in town and the poorest person in town was like, well, the rich person's mom made $60,000 a year.
John: And the poor person's mom made $15,000 a year.
Merlin: still you know like nowhere close to the luxury enormous this reminds me of the four yorkshiremen and like the the need to constantly like relitigate your childhood and like i mean obviously there's a reason that's such a classic bit it's been around since dog teeth luxury we were we lived in a rolled up newspaper corridor we dreamed of living in a corridor
John: But yeah, pretty, pretty intense.
John: And I don't, I think that I think ultimately comparing pain is super boring.
John: That's what's going to, that's what's going to change the culture.
John: It's not anything.
John: We're not going to resolve anything.
John: None of all of this conversation of the last 15 years is going, it's feels like an enormous cul-de-sac because we're going to come out the other side and go, well, yeah, we knew going in,
John: That pain was relative and we spent an entire, you know, two decades rehashing that and now we're out the other side of it and pain is relative again.
John: And it's really just not, I mean, talking about it and wearing it on your sleeve and putting it in your stationary and whatever else it is.
John: Isn't didn't make any of us any better and it didn't really explain anything to anybody or change the world in any even small bit So here we are again like talking about pain as a as a rank
John: isn't how we talk about pain.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: It's like a racquetball ladder and you're looking at who's on top.
Merlin: Who's allowed to, what is the ceiling and what is the floor and who's, oh man, look at you.
Merlin: Your floor is their ceiling.
John: You lived above them the entire time.
John: And then someone else comes in and says, we wish we had a floor.
John: Luxury.
John: Have to clean the streets with our tongues.
John: And a handful of cold gravel.
John: Somewhere in the world right now, there is the lowest person.
John: And what they're experiencing.
Merlin: That's not funny.
Merlin: But now I'm thinking of like a Mr. Show.
Merlin: You remember Bhopal?
Merlin: Remember the little slave boy that they have writing comedy?
Merlin: Bhopal.
John: They're using slaves.
John: I don't even know if I got that joke until now.
Merlin: Right, right, right.
Merlin: Bhopal, that's where the... Chemical spill.
Merlin: In India, the batter is ever ready or somebody.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, sorry, go ahead.
John: No, no, but that's the thing, because I have this conversation with my kid all the time, because she's very, very attuned to this whole eat your vegetables because there's someone starving in Asia universe, because that's what they said to us, but now that's been exploded to be 40 volumes of why your pain isn't...
Merlin: isn't relevant in the conversation and this is happening at her school right i mean in the culture at large like eat your vegetables so wait this but a straight up sort of like you need to have gratitude about this too it's another different maybe different form of like acknowledging privilege this becomes a fraught word here but like not realizing how good you've got it might be another way to put it like be grateful that you don't even have to worry about whether you're
Merlin: You're gonna eat tonight that kind of thing.
John: What's what's funny is that acknowledging privilege when it when it was When it was first introduced to people our age was really profound.
John: It was like, oh, what what we're not What we're not acknowledging I was born on third and I think I hit a triple Yeah, all this privilege that had never occurred to us was was actually in play and it is it's the W.E.B.
John: Dubois like, you know, just being born white is actually wealth Mm-hmm
John: And that was profound to us, right?
Merlin: If it was a children's board game, you would be starting your piece 15 to 35 places ahead of everybody else.
Merlin: That's the analogy, right?
John: But when that gets, and inevitably this is what always happens, then it gets translated into a curriculum that's directed at kindergartners.
John: Who are just, you know, who are still, like, Cheerios in their hair.
John: And then some adult leans down and goes, respect, you know, like, acknowledge your privilege.
John: And they're like, huh, what, what?
Merlin: And so you get a generation of kids that are being raised... We haven't taught you to feel really bad about something that's not your fault yet, but...
John: And so all that terminology that was really useful to me, for instance, you know, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, when I was like, wow, that's like, that is food for thought.
John: Like that's, I'm chewing on that now and it's changing my behavior.
John: It just instantaneously goes and becomes a form of eat your vegetables to kids like our kids who are just being taught like, oh, well, you're racist before they even know, before they even see
John: Other other color, right?
John: My daughter didn't.
John: I've told you this before, right?
John: There was curly haired Emma and straight haired Emma.
John: They were different races, but they were identified by my daughter by how curly their hair was.
John: Oh, she's the one with curly hair.
John: But what ends up happening is that now my daughter has just been told that for her whole life that she can't complain because to complain is she gets the same, basically of different language saying the same thing that we were told, which is eat your peas because they're children starving in China.
John: And she is tired.
John: She's tired of hearing it just as we were tired of hearing it.
John: because it isn't relevant right it's not there somewhere in the world right now there is the lowest person and that lowest person does not mean that no one else gets to have pain there's someone whose pain in the world right now is unfathomable to all of us but it doesn't negate your pain or mine and that's the
John: That's where this is all going to end.
John: We're going to come, and I think it's happening now.
John: We're going to come out the other side of it and go, right, we've found the lowest person.
John: Their name is Bopal, and they're a comedy writer.
John: He's chained up in that back room having to write comedy.
John: Just writing comedy.
John: I've met the Bopals, Merlin.
John: I know how sad they are.
John: I know how much pain they're in.
John: That was a terrible movie, Meet the Bopals.