Ep. 564: Find Your Columbus
Merlin: Good morning, Captain.
Merlin: Hello?
Merlin: Hello?
Merlin: Hello?
Merlin: Good morning.
John: Good morning to you, sir.
Merlin: Good morning, Captain.
John: Good day.
Merlin: Good morning, Captain.
Merlin: Good morning.
Merlin: Good morning.
John: Good morning, Taylor.
Merlin: There's two things I say in the morning.
Merlin: Sometimes I say, good morning, Captain.
Merlin: And sometimes I say, which I'm talking about the great Captain Kangaroo.
Merlin: And sometimes I say, good morning, Starshine.
Merlin: And nobody knows what that is.
John: Do you say them to your family or to the sky or to the mirror?
John: I don't do it for others.
John: I do it for me.
John: So do you say it to the mirror or do you just wake up and look up at the ceiling and say, good morning, Captain?
Merlin: That's a really good question.
Merlin: I don't acknowledge mirrors.
Merlin: I don't think they're necessary.
Merlin: But I will say it to my family sometimes.
Merlin: But, you know, I kind of slow down on that because nobody ever says good morning, Captain, back to me.
Merlin: Or good morning star, it's our star sign, you know?
Merlin: There it says hello, it's a twinkle above us, we twinkle below.
John: Yeah, it's hard to be us, and I can't double down on it enough.
Merlin: We're so specific.
Merlin: Everything we do is so specific and unnecessary.
John: You know, I think it's because we thought that we were preparing for a different world than the one we got.
John: We're the first generation that ever had to deal with that.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
John: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Like people born in like 1880.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: They prepared for the world that they got.
Merlin: They got everything.
Merlin: Everything turned out exactly like in the books.
John: That's right.
John: You know, they thought that they would go to the moon.
John: They thought that there would be, you know, flying cars.
John: And there were.
John: But for us.
John: It's miraculous.
Merlin: Miraculous that the ding-a-lings who plotted to kill Franz Ferdinand.
Merlin: If you hear the play-by-play, the minute-by-minute, it's absolutely hilarious that they actually accomplished what they did.
Merlin: Did you read the oral history?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Oh, it's so good.
Merlin: Well, I mean.
John: They really throwed Jeanine Garofalo under the bus, though.
Merlin: Oh, was it Saturday Night Live or is that Franz Ferdinand?
Merlin: It's the Franz Ferdinand one.
Merlin: She was there too.
Merlin: Oh, all I know is what I've learned from YouTube videos, but I'm pretty sure there's the guy who was the leader of it.
Merlin: There was like at least five other people.
Merlin: It was very poorly thought out.
Merlin: The whole thing.
Merlin: But the way it's been, I've heard from at least two YouTube videos, is they're like, okay, all the other guys didn't succeed in their ease.
Merlin: Sure, they missed.
Merlin: They missed.
Merlin: And then the head guy is just standing there and he's like, oh, darn it.
Merlin: And he looks up and he's five feet away from Dr. and Mrs. Franz Ferdinand.
Merlin: Pop, pop.
John: They're doing like a three-point turn.
Merlin: Yeah, no, they did a Dealey Plaza.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: And then I think he jumped into, would that be the Danube?
Merlin: No, what river was it?
Merlin: He jumped into the river.
John: It would not be the Danube.
Merlin: He jumped into the river.
Merlin: It was in Serbia, right?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: He jumped into the river, and apparently the river was like a foot deep.
Merlin: And they're like, yeah, you just totally killed Franz Ferdinand.
Merlin: Stand up.
Merlin: That's what I've heard.
Merlin: I got to get more details on it.
Merlin: But yeah, I've been doing a slightly deeper dive on the Great War lately.
Merlin: Isn't that nice?
Merlin: Isn't that good?
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: But it's such a great, horrible, important story.
Merlin: Nobody got anything they wanted.
Merlin: And almost everybody got things they never would have imagined.
John: Well, you know, when I was in college, they were rejecting, and by they, I mean, you know, they.
John: The man.
John: Yeah.
John: They were rejecting the great man theory of history.
John: Yes.
John: Which was the theory that all these pivotal moments in history happened because one man did one thing.
John: And I'm very curious to know whether that rejection of the great man theory extends to the, uh, the Gavrilo Princip assassination of Franz Ferdinand or whether they believe that world war one would have kicked off no matter what, because of, uh, because of trends and because of the working people.
John: Well,
Merlin: As somebody who's watched numerous YouTube videos.
Merlin: Yeah, I know you have.
Merlin: I call it the Great War.
Merlin: Don't call it World War I. For the Great War.
Merlin: A war to end on.
Merlin: Well, yeah, but it's weird.
Merlin: It's like calling somebody your first wife.
Merlin: kind of an odd while you're still married while you're still maybe when you're engaged to her that's such a flex oh that's such a party it's funny you know everybody laughs yeah you're supposed to say practice marriage that's what i do but the but what i'm saying that's kidding kidding i'm sorry kim i was only kidding um but the um but the uh but the no wait does kim listen to the show i certainly hope not
Merlin: I hope no one listens to the show.
Merlin: I hope it's a lot of strangers who vaguely think I'm funny from a distance.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But no, no, but here's a couple.
Merlin: I mean, like with that one, I think, aren't there... I'm going to ask you a question and then feel free to answer, but like, let me do my two parts.
Merlin: The one part is, I mean, everybody says or people say, hey, this is how World War I started is this thing that happened.
Merlin: But the conditions...
Merlin: I mean, it's a different world.
Merlin: I mean, ask people to find Austria-Hungary on a map today.
Merlin: You know, it was a really huge deal.
Merlin: And like the whole thing, have you ever seen a picture of the Tsar and the King of England next to each other?
John: They're like identical twins.
John: And also the, yeah.
John: I mean, they're totally everybody.
John: Victoria is related to everybody.
Merlin: Related to everybody.
Merlin: But okay, so let's pause that one for just a second and then go over here to like, hey, you know when Germany declared war on America was like December 8th?
Merlin: It's like, yeah, I mean, I guess you could say very much that Pearl Harbor, you know, brought in the American part of it.
Merlin: Started World War II.
Merlin: Sorry, Europe.
Merlin: We were just out of it for a couple of years.
Merlin: We weren't paying attention.
Merlin: No, but like in that case, it's like Hitler just was being opportunistic because it was the beginning of his great ascent, those two years where he really, he, they, the...
Merlin: His particular Axis group was absolutely dominating in World War II through 40, into 41 and beyond.
Merlin: And that's when he got over his skis with Operation Barbarossa, you know.
Merlin: But anyway, all I'm saying is now you can feel free to respond about World War I because I don't know that much about it.
Merlin: But it seems like as somebody who played diplomacy, as somebody who was in diplomacy club in seventh grade.
Merlin: You were, I know that.
Merlin: Well, yeah, and for those who don't know, if Dungeons & Dragons has too many strict rules and dice for you, try playing Diplomacy, which is a game where everybody, all of the people who are playing, all of the, let's be honest, boys who are playing Diplomacy represent a country in pre-war World War I.
Merlin: How is it different from risk?
Merlin: Oh, it's different from risk.
Merlin: Avalon Hill games, take a dirt road.
Merlin: This is just a board.
Merlin: And then the only pieces on it are armies and navies.
Merlin: I think everybody gets two armies and one navy, except Russia gets one more of each.
Merlin: And you draw lots for who's going to be which country.
Merlin: And then every round is just you talking privately to the other boys about who you're going to fuck over.
Merlin: And you write orders for attack.
Merlin: The orders go into effect.
Merlin: And then you just keep doing that over and over until there's...
Merlin: Six sad boys and one winner.
John: Are you saying that you're whispering to each other?
John: You're like over in the corner?
Merlin: Well, we were over in the biology room at that point, which had a python in it.
Merlin: And we used to feed it chickens and rabbits.
Merlin: And we were in there playing diplomacy.
Merlin: And yeah, you kind of go off with your pals with your little spiral bound notebook.
Merlin: You write down your old orders in full.
Merlin: I haven't played it since 1980.
Merlin: So there might be like a version five of diplomacy that I don't know about.
John: Or maybe you guys weren't playing using all the rules.
Merlin: It's like Monopoly.
Merlin: You can have house rules.
Merlin: You can get $200 for passing Alsace-Lorraine.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: That's kind of funny, right?
Merlin: Because that was a disputed territory, right?
John: No, that was a disputed territory.
Merlin: Very disputed.
Merlin: The name, it's all in the name.
Merlin: But the thing is, the Germans are like, hey, what about Cologne?
Merlin: Don't Cologne sound French?
Merlin: There's a lot of towns in that area.
Merlin: You take the lines off that map.
Merlin: Here's the problem.
Merlin: Maps have lines.
Merlin: And lines are useful in many ways.
Merlin: Because they'll show you.
Merlin: You look at something like the 38th parallel or whatever.
Merlin: But you take off the lines.
Merlin: And actually a lot of things make a lot more sense.
Merlin: Because the lines are arbitrary.
John: If I told you about a town called Strasbourg.
John: Which side of that line would you think it was on?
John: The German side or the French side?
John: Absolutely on the German side.
Merlin: Yeah, that's the problem.
Merlin: What about Passout?
Merlin: Where's Passout, John?
Merlin: That sounds German.
John: Oh, Passout.
John: Yeah, it's somewhere else.
Merlin: Yeah, I had a 20-year-old girlfriend from there.
Merlin: I'm looking up Diplomacy the Game, and the strategic board game, 1954, released commercially.
Merlin: It's negotiation phases.
Merlin: The main distinction is from other...
Merlin: board board war games it's hard to say it's negotiation phases where players spend much of their time forming and betraying alliances with each other and the absence of dice there's no there's absolutely only chance if you can call it that is like do you get Russia or not now some people like with any game some people feel they play Monopoly better when they get the race car I'll bet nobody wants to be the shoe
John: Did you ever want to be the shoe?
John: You know what that is?
John: There's somebody out there who wants to be.
John: Uh-huh.
John: It's the great peace theory of history.
John: Do you get the shoe?
John: Tell me about that.
John: Yeah, do you not get the shoe, right?
John: Like, what are the... Is there... Wait a minute.
John: Wait a minute.
John: Is there a World War I brewing right now?
John: And there is a car doing a three-point turn in the street somewhere, and there's not a Gavrilo Princip standing there, and World War III is averted?
John: Has it already been averted?
Merlin: It starts to feel a little bit, random's the wrong word, but it starts to feel a little stochastic.
Merlin: Like, there's nothing really predictable that can happen anymore.
John: Yeah, isn't that funny?
John: Isn't that funny?
John: And we prepared for a world that was going to have predictability.
John: And here we are, Merlin, saying good morning to the starshines, and they don't say good morning back.
Merlin: Yeah, they trickle above us.
Merlin: There was a funny tweet from the X platform that a friend sent me last week.
Merlin: And I'll try and do this from memory because it really is all in the writing and the pacing.
Merlin: But this woman says, oh, sorry, I missed your text.
Merlin: I've been over here dealing with all the input with a brain suited for sitting in a cave and eating berries.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Which I think is funny and true.
Merlin: Now, what you said, and I made a little joke about it.
Merlin: I mean, what you described is a lot of at least probably European, probably world history into the 1400s is like whatever your dad did is probably what you're going to do.
Merlin: And you're probably going to die.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Right.
John: I mean, what you prepared in the 1400s.
John: I think that was true until 1960.
John: Hmm.
Merlin: You don't think that's true in pre-Great War?
John: Got trained for the wrong thing?
John: I mean, that's, oh, trained for the wrong thing.
Merlin: No, no, you're holding, because he's just from the beginning, which I find fascinating and true, is that all the things we were, you and I, like so many others, and you can't tell the young people this, there's no point in trying, is that however you feel about the world, things happened on Earth before you were born, and even before you realized that the world was a thing.
Merlin: Things happened before you were fifth.
Merlin: It's really hard to comprehend.
Merlin: Yeah, there was a world that existed before you were 15.
John: When my mom went to the university, or I'm sorry, they don't call it a university there, they call it Ohio State.
John: When my mom went to Ohio State, and that would have been in 1952, she was the first woman in her family to ever go to college, and she said that when she left Van Wert, even by getting in a car and driving to Columbus, she had exceeded the expectations of
John: That anyone ever had for her.
John: And that's 1952, right?
John: She was not expected to go to college.
John: She was not expected to do anything but marry a farmer.
John: And the hope would be that she would marry a rich farmer.
John: But it was entirely possible.
Merlin: For real, though?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Okay, yeah.
Merlin: No, I don't.
Merlin: I absolutely believe it, but that's what I would expect to hear.
Merlin: In fact, I would bet you that the getting in a car and going to Columbus, that's a couple ticks above the, like, well, we love your ambition.
Merlin: Like, I don't want to be just a nurse.
Merlin: I want to be the head nurse, right?
John: No, it was the opposite.
John: They didn't love our ambition, and I don't think most people did.
John: i mean i think this is the one thing that that that people now cannot conceive is that conformity we we think about conformity now as kind of a joke like oh i'm a non-conformist like everybody else and you know conformity just i got it i got a t-shirt that hot top at hot topic that tells you i'm a non-conformist yeah it just seems like some very archaic dumb thing that was really easy to overturn and conformity was just something for dumb people
John: But conformity was everything.
John: It was not, they didn't admire her ambition.
John: It was unseemly.
Merlin: I mean, my thought was, it's almost like she said, I'm going to go to Hollywood and become an actress.
Merlin: Or I'm going to go to Indiana and become a basketball player.
John: It's worse.
John: It's like saying, I'm going to go marry a Jew.
John: You know, like it defied every single moray.
Merlin: That post is not going to get a lot of hearts.
Merlin: But the thing is, she went to Ohio State.
John: I am going to marry a Jew.
John: And her first boyfriend was Jewish.
John: And she took her Jewish boyfriend home to her family in Van Wert.
John: And it was so inconceivable to them.
John: They had never met a Jewish person.
Merlin: Did they get to ask questions about blood libel at all?
John: Well, they didn't know he was Jewish.
John: She didn't tell him.
John: That's typical.
John: That's what you'd expect from those people.
John: I fly under the radar.
John: What ends up happening is that their racism against Catholics was so strong that I'm sure they said, are you Catholic?
John: And he was like, no.
John: And they were like, great, welcome to the family, you know, Mr. Horowitz.
John: And they had zero idea that there were even Jews in Ohio.
John: Yeah.
John: It seems like the government would take care of that.
John: When my mom looks back at her life, she says, she looks back at her life and has no regrets.
John: And I have said to her before, like, no regrets.
John: That must be ungrokkable to you.
Merlin: It's absolutely unfathomable.
Merlin: Right, I mean, like, jokes have left the room.
Merlin: Like, that's, I don't mean, I'm not trying to turn you into a one-bit character, but, like, I could just see you hearing your mother say that and go, look, I've heard you say this for so long.
John: Maybe I don't know what words mean.
John: You have no regrets.
John: And she says...
John: From the moment I left Van Wert, I have exceeded any expectations.
John: So every single thing I've done, success or failure, has been a success.
John: Because the moment I stepped, the moment I walked into Seattle, whether my marriage succeeded or not, whether I became a millionaire or not, whether I was a good mother, all of it, I exceeded what anybody would have ever expected I was capable of doing.
John: And so she's on a different grid now.
Merlin: I mean, that's what's so disconcerting to some people is like, I understand.
Merlin: And I don't know if you caught what I was trying to say, but like, you know, Dr. Dan and nurse Nancy, that book, which we actually did have a copy of, you know, it's always the boys are the doctors, the girls are the nurses.
Merlin: So it's one thing to say, like, I'm going to be a nurse.
Merlin: That's good.
Merlin: That's a solid job.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And nothing to say, I want to, I want to be so good at being a nurse that I become like the head nurse.
Merlin: That's all within like, at least for a lot of people, the paradigm of American improvement.
Merlin: But when you say you're going to like be,
Merlin: go to college in a different city right in the middle of the state that now we've lost a context for how I brag about that in a way that I'd hoped.
John: But what I'm thinking about or what I guess I'm adding to what you're saying is that the paradigm of American improvement, the paradigm that you're going to do better than your parents,
John: which now we all accept as an article of faith.
John: And that's the thing that everybody's so upset has been betrayed because apparently it was a promise made.
John: Yeah, you're supposed to be head coal miner.
John: Yeah, nobody ever wrote that down.
John: I was never given that promise.
John: But the idea that you were supposed to do better than your parents was not at all.
John: The governing idea, even into the mid-century, it was a retroactive justification for some people.
John: Like I did better than my parents.
John: My mom says it.
John: I did better than my parents.
John: And that is her retroactive justification.
John: But her parents didn't say that.
John: Her parents didn't want her to do better.
John: For her to do better was an embarrassment.
Merlin: What do you think?
Merlin: I was going to say, so embarrassment is the result, but what did that reflect?
Merlin: It's like you're not counter-revolutionary, but you're moving outside of the system that we understand.
Merlin: You're getting over your skis.
Merlin: She was being haughty.
Merlin: What was the feeling that made them bummed about that?
John: Yeah.
John: She was being haughty.
John: She was going to the city for what?
John: I mean, to be a loose woman, to be some kind of woman that wore pants, you know, like the ideas, the prejudices and the premises of what kept an orderly society were so ingrained, so deeply felt that, that, that her going to college was,
John: was like okay i mean her grandfather said i'll pay for your college and then never never sent her a dollar and she never accepted she never asked for how much earlier how much earlier had he said that he said it to her when she you know when she headed out um and she had already been an embarrassment to her family and he said he and he was the one he was the smart one he raised her
John: He said, I'll pay for college.
John: And she said, you know, she never accepted a dollar.
John: She got a job as a waitress.
John: She would go to college for a semester.
John: Then she would drop out and work as a waitress.
John: And she worked as a waitress through the semester she was in class, but she would run out of money.
John: She would work for a semester.
John: That was my third year.
Merlin: I had half a year of like, well, this is the semester.
Merlin: I will not go to school and I will be a waiter.
John: Continue to be a waiter, but like I have to I have to stack up some resources before I come back get back to paying for this whole thing myself Yeah, I think I think that going to college and being a waiter I mean, it's just like being an actor and being a waiter that they go they go marvelously together But I and I don't think she had any feeling she went to work at one one summer I think this oh, you know what it was she graduated from high school She went to Fort Wayne
John: and got a job as a as a type like a like in a in a giant room in an un air conditioned unventilated warehouse building that still exists not warehouse it was the office she was in a giant room
John: where it was all young women sitting at typewriters.
John: And they would come and they would put papers in an inbox and she would put them in a typewriter and she would add her bit and pull it out and put it in another basket.
John: And this is like a trope.
John: This is something we see in movies.
Merlin: Yeah, like that shot in the apartment of like all those rows and rows and rows of just typewriters, people at typewriters in a row.
John: And then a runner would come, take the stack out of her Bastic, move it over one desk to the girl's Bastic next to her.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: She wouldn't put it in that girl's basket.
John: It's like making a model T out of words.
John: Yeah.
John: And it was, what was it?
John: It was not in international business machines.
John: It was General Electric.
John: She was working for General Electric in Fort Wayne.
John: And she said that summer, it was so hot in that building.
John: And all these women in their, you know, in their business outfits.
John: Their wool skirts.
John: Yeah, and the wool skirts and the little, and she said it was so miserable in that office.
John: And she looked into her future and she said, this is it.
John: You know, like, I'm going to do this until I move up to the woman that's there at the desk at the head who's typing some, who's putting the finishing typing on these pages.
John: And then, you know, maybe I'll marry a rich farmer.
John: And she said, I'm going to go to college.
John: And I don't think she thought I'm going to improve upon my parents' life.
John: I think she thought I'm going to get the hell out of here.
John: Not as part of any kind of dream of self-improvement.
Merlin: It wasn't step two of 11.
Merlin: It was just the next big step that would get her out of town.
Merlin: Kind of, right?
John: Get her out of town.
John: Get her away from the shame of being an iconoclast in a small town.
John: She didn't move to San Francisco to become gay.
John: She drove across the country just to get away from people that knew her.
Merlin: It's almost like the girl version of a phrase from my youth joining the French Foreign Legion or the Merchant Marine.
Merlin: One of those things where you're like, I just need to bounce.
Merlin: I just need somewhere that will take me someplace else and give me a place to sleep that's not where I am.
John: And I think my example or my version of doing better than my parents was that when I left town and got in a rusty car or whatever and left the town never to return, it was less to escape the shame of my name and more to go...
John: you know, follow my dreams or, um, be a creative or whatever it was, or see America.
John: And that little difference, her escaping the shame of her small town and me leaving the, the, my shitty small town in order to follow my dreams.
John: That's the American dream.
John: It had nothing to do with
John: with some kind of promise that I was gonna get a better job than she did.
John: It had to do with somewhere in that transition she had provided for me by her sacrifice that I had that luxury of thinking of myself as someone who was gonna see America as the first building block in what?
John: One day being a writer, one day being a reporter.
Merlin: But it wasn't part of a plan where you know what dots will connect after this, right?
John: I never once thought I would get a pension from something.
John: I always knew.
John: These millennials, they think they invented having no future.
John: But you know, like I thought I was going to either die in a strafing attack, right?
John: Or a nuclear war.
John: But no, I was going to be a guy with the signed press in his helmet who was up there saying like, you know, subcommandant Marcos, tell us what's the next, you know, and then the bombs come.
John: Or whatever, I would die like Bukowski in a bar.
John: But the idea that you and I are doing this now, the reason that we're doing it is because when we left the new college of Florida, we had something other than just running from shame
Merlin: Or or running into the the one job that was open to us Yeah, and that's the sacrifice our parents people were constantly trying to get me join the Marines join the Air Force It was my guidance counselor in high school said I should join the Air Force the Marines because my ASVAB scores were like Like well, yes, they'd make you a lieutenant the day one
Merlin: Oh, you would have been such a good man.
Merlin: I would have been a good second Louie.
Merlin: But there's like this, what I just for my own purpose will call this like a Thunder Road scenario where like how do I, my first thing before I can ever even think about could I get a good job in another city, how do I achieve escape velocity for where I am?
Merlin: And I think we all have felt that.
Merlin: I think we've all have, no matter how good your life has been or how good you've been told your life has been, like there are times where you're like, no, I'm perma-fucked.
Merlin: Like, no matter what I do, you can even see this in stuff about rich people.
Merlin: It's not unique to people without money.
Merlin: It's true everywhere.
Merlin: And sometimes the more wonderful your family is, the more that they will, like, put their arms around you to make sure you don't go to Columbus.
Merlin: Absolutely.
Merlin: I don't know if that's the right phrase for it, but the escape velocity part can be really difficult.
Merlin: But understanding how hard it will be...
Merlin: To just make this jump across the snake river like I'm not even thinking about what I'm having for lunch tomorrow I'm thinking about can I can I get out of here alive?
John: I you know, it's a big part of of the the joke of my story or the the color of it or the the bow I put on it that that when I left Anchorage No one thought that I was gonna be anything but a failure
John: And it was a. Regardless of what you were a failure at, whatever you were at, you would be a failure.
John: Because everything I had done up until that point had failed.
John: And for years.
Merlin: Christians believe past this prologue.
Merlin: It's true.
John: For years after I left high school, everything I touched turned to shit.
John: I did not ever even keep a job.
John: I didn't ever keep an apartment.
John: I didn't keep a girlfriend.
John: I didn't keep, I never made anything when I was 26 and I quit drinking.
John: I was, I had, I had not ever done a single thing that I could be proud of.
John: And I,
John: and it was at that time 26 was you had already your die was cast there wasn't it should be on your should be on your third kid at that point yeah there you could not reinvent at 20 let alone 26. you you were as god made you
John: And the idea that I would come back from, not come back, because I had never, there had never been, I wasn't going back to a place.
John: Every opportunity I'd been given, I'd squandered from the time I was.
John: You're like Henry V.
Merlin: People have said that.
Merlin: I think, no, it's true.
Merlin: You're a lot.
Merlin: I think you're, I don't know.
Merlin: You're not, maybe not the Kenneth Branagh, Henry V. You might even be the Tom Hiddleston, Henry V. But you, but like the, like the messenger from the defense says, the defense says you savor too much of your youth.
Merlin: And it gives, I know you're saving this for, is it prison you're saving Shakespeare for?
Merlin: Or is that Harry Potter?
John: You know, both.
Merlin: Are you saving Shakespeare for Harry Potter?
Merlin: Wait, which one did you read in the hull of a boat?
Merlin: You were in a brig and you read a book.
Merlin: What was that?
Merlin: Was that Harry Potter or Shakespeare?
John: That was Harry Potter.
John: That was Harry Potter.
John: Harry Potter?
John: Harry Potter?
John: It was early on.
John: I think the later books hadn't come out yet.
John: You might have been Azkaban-ing.
John: You know, I was an early adopter.
John: Azkaban across America.
John: it was before you know before the controversy back when you could you know you could you could still read harry potter yeah yeah before before she announced that uh until the 1920s people just shot on the ground and used a spell to make it disappear is something she said oh yeah yeah that's right she's got a lot of big ideas astroturf we call it when i when i look at my kid when you look at your kid what is the way you think they're going to do better than we did
Merlin: I used to think it's because my kid lived in a more enlightened world where there was... It's hard to... I know this is dumb, but you asked.
Merlin: I used to think it's because... I've never thought it was because of me, honestly.
Merlin: I think I've helped my kid have pretty good taste in some things, but I mean, everything my kid has done has been on his own.
Merlin: And that's what makes it so impressive, the initiative my kid has.
Merlin: So I used to think it was like, oh, well, you live in a world where you and your pals, like...
Merlin: You know, Billy and a friend of his went to the mall the other day, and I was like, Billy and this particular friend going to the mall together in the 1980s would have led to at least one police report.
Merlin: And I know it's still like that in America, but anyway, I had to get that out of the way.
Merlin: The first one was, well, you're not living in the... You wouldn't even believe the way we used to talk about things and the way we used to be about things, things we didn't know anything about.
Merlin: And now I don't, I honestly, I'm not sure.
Merlin: And the reason I'm avoiding this, John, is that every city, every high school, maybe every class in every high school is so different.
Merlin: And it's, I don't know the answer.
Merlin: What do you think it is?
Merlin: When you look at your kid, what do you see?
John: When I look at the Gen Z now, and I guess Gen Alpha, and I'm putting a lot, I'm leaning pretty heavily on Gen Alpha now.
Merlin: You sound like a spec script for a 70s science fiction show.
Merlin: I know, right?
John: This episode is Space 1999.
Merlin: I know it's a late season.
Merlin: We don't have the budget, but it's going to be really good.
Merlin: We've got Martin Landau and John Roderick.
John: I, because listening to my daughter and her friends talk, which I do all the time, you know, I get them in the car and I say, I'll drive, I'll drive anybody anywhere now because I like sitting quietly in the front seat and listening to them talk and listening to them talk their shit out.
John: And I have incredible faith in them.
John: I think they're smart.
John: I think they're cynical.
John: I think they're wise.
John: They take all the stuff that they're being fed and they process it themselves.
Merlin: They don't accept or reject anything as much anyway compared to me.
Merlin: I think younger people do not or the young people that I know and care about are way more circumspect about either accepting or rejecting anything that is told to them as this is the thing you should believe.
John: Yeah.
John: They remind me, they really do remind me of us where there is that attitude because we had that attitude.
John: Like everything's fucked.
John: It's all preordained.
John: It's all been written and we're just living in the aftermath.
John: Yeah.
John: Maybe, you know, maybe, maybe one day I will meet somebody that kisses me and holds me.
John: Probably not.
John: And so in the meantime, you know, what, what does my day look like?
John: Well, I know somebody will give me a free cup of coffee.
John: So I'll head over there and maybe somebody will come in and talk and they'll be interesting.
John: And that, and I see some of that in, in, in the young teens.
John: The only thing I've given my kid is,
John: And the only thing I am capable of giving her is that I don't fill her with shame every day.
Merlin: Oh, John.
Merlin: We should do a podcast.
Merlin: You cannot tell these people.
Merlin: You cannot tell these people, these parent types, how horrible it is that they shame their children constantly.
Merlin: And really the pity inside the pity is you have no idea how much you are.
Merlin: You don't even understand how much you're shaming your kid.
Merlin: So you can't feel bad about it.
Merlin: You're so fucking dumb about passing on the shame in your own special version.
Merlin: That was shame and anxiety that was given to you.
Merlin: I swear to God, John, I think it's the hugest thing and the hugest problem.
Merlin: I honestly really do.
John: I mean, I do say another milkshake.
John: It's three milkshakes today.
John: We cannot live in a world with three milkshakes a day.
John: We just can't.
John: You can't pour it right on your thighs.
John: We can't.
John: We cannot.
John: It's not about even being fat.
John: We're not that rich.
John: Who are the people that can have three milkshakes a day?
John: I don't know.
John: I don't know.
John: They live on a spaceship.
John: Not us.
John: But other than that, you know, I try to say, all right, you are as you are.
John: And there are problems.
John: in the world, you're gonna confront problems in the world and you gotta deal with them.
John: I'm sorry.
John: There's no, I give you no escape card.
John: There's no, and I'm afraid there's no Columbus you can drive to anymore.
John: You can't go to Columbus to get away from the shame of your name because whatever you've put on the internet will follow you everywhere.
John: And so, whatever your Columbus is.
John: That's a unique and new perspective.
Merlin: I mean, compared to another time, that's new.
John: Yeah.
John: Whatever your Columbus is, you got to find, because I can't envision it.
John: You know, I don't know.
John: So, if I understand correctly, you're saying find your Columbus.
Merlin: Find your Columbus.
Merlin: Doesn't mean you're going to succeed, but that doesn't mean you should stop looking for Columbus.
Merlin: Isn't that ironical?
Merlin: Ain't that ironical that we're the ones discovering Columbus?
Oh.
Merlin: That has certain colonialist implications for which I apologize.
John: Oh, you're so good.
John: You're so smart.
John: Thank you.
John: There's just not enough of you in the world.
John: Oh, my God.
John: Well, who's your Isabel, then?
John: That gets complicated.
John: They're all related, too.
Merlin: It does get complicated.
Merlin: All those fuckers.
John: But no, I don't think, I don't think, certainly nobody promised you or I that we would do better than our parents.
John: That was never an expectation.
Merlin: my parents i think that okay let me add something here that makes almost no sense but i just want to throw it in all i can think about is being in high school i'm trying to i'm remembering and i'm trying not to overly like sort of dramatize it but being in high school from whatever that was 82 to 85 in you know pasco county florida there's all kinds of messaging like in in the same way that you would put up a poster about increasing grain yields by 20 in this part of you know szechuan or whatever
Merlin: Like, you can say whatever you want about making steel in a backyard barbecue, but that ain't going to be no great leap forward for those people.
Merlin: I watched too much YouTube.
Merlin: But here's what I'm going to say.
Merlin: First of all, A, that ideology or that messaging was everywhere.
Merlin: Like, you can do anything.
Merlin: Your thumb body.
Merlin: Oh, there's that, for sure.
Merlin: Yeah, but here's the thing.
Merlin: I...
Merlin: didn't for a second doubt that for example my friend i was uh what was i i was most talented senior and then my friend steve was um i think he was most likely to succeed and he did too he did incredibly well at everything he put his hand to and he was i never for a second doubted that there were people like steve that would probably do really well but i did also know that that was not going to be me and now i wonder if today i mean you
Merlin: Are there people who still believe that people I know are bound to succeed in this world?
Merlin: I don't think that sense, there's that sense of like, it just seems very chaotic to know who's going to be able to survive this world.
Merlin: And I don't know.
John: I think there's a lot more inheritance now than there was.
John: i think there's a lot more in the sense that families there are families that do have money oh literal inheritance yeah like in my in my in my town in my culture in my friends no one was inheriting anything
John: right every one of our every one of my friends had professional parents white collar parents that worked in professional jobs look at me i'm good with money you know doctors lawyers engineers yeah and they lived in split level homes in a in a neighborhood they were still married and they were married but there was never once no one ever i mean and i'm sure there were people that had investments
John: But there was no money in the sense that not a single person I knew had disposable income.
John: Nobody had a cool car.
Merlin: Nobody had... It always struck me that there were kids who could just go to the mall and buy $40 jeans.
Merlin: All I knew was I was not one of those, right?
Merlin: Right.
John: And nobody I knew was one of them.
John: The people who had kids that could buy $40 jeans...
John: i always associated that with blue collar new money oh really people that got people that got rich selling tractors people that made money uh as like a like a contractor oil oil yeah i was gonna say about oil had a big role in that yeah
Merlin: In a similar way to like working in a factory could be for black people in the 30s and 40s, especially during the war.
Merlin: But you know what I mean?
Merlin: 40s, 50s, you could be a black person in Detroit who that's, it's really, it's funny, the exception ends up being the exception that proves the rule.
Merlin: Like black people can do great in America.
Merlin: Well, yeah, the best opportunity black people have for doing great in America was fleeing the South, coming to Detroit and making cars for 20 years and then having money.
Merlin: Like, but that did not happen generationally in any sense.
Right.
John: No.
John: Well, and, and there, it's always been part of the American story that for somebody, the best thing they could do was move.
John: Right.
John: Either move out of Mississippi or move to San Francisco or, or whatever.
John: Right.
John: Move is part of the American story.
John: But, but when I was a kid, white collar people, educated college, educated people.
John: We're not the ones that we're going to get rich because there was no job that paid more than being a doctor and being a doctor paid $75,000 a year.
John: There wasn't a way for a doctor to get rich.
John: Even a surgeon.
John: Like lawyers didn't get rich.
John: They went to work every day and they did law and it was respectable.
Merlin: And the reason that you did it- Those were upper middle class jobs.
Merlin: And the thing you used to say that I thought, I don't know how you ever came up with this, but I love this.
Merlin: You would say in talking about your career in music that you're, I don't know if it's your goal, but what you would like.
Merlin: You're like, I would like to get to where I can do my music and work hard at my music and have the income of like a dentist.
John: Right.
John: It was never my goal.
John: It was the thing that shocked me the most.
John: The day that I looked at my finances and said, my college buddies who succeeded, you know, who, who, who did better than their parents because their parent was an engineer, but they became a doctor.
John: my college buddy that has a, that has a doctor's office where they have a receptionist, they have three nurses, they have two other doctors working for them.
John: They have one of those places where you go in and somebody walks you down a hall and says, you're going to be in room three.
John: And then they close the door and you put on a sheet that I had achieved a level of professional success that put me in
John: Not quite there, but in a, in a place that would be respectable, you know, like an insurance company or, you know, somebody that had, that had done a white collar thing.
John: And I was so amazed.
John: I was so impressed.
John: And I got a lot of angry pushback from my friends.
John: That was on the level of like, how dare you?
John: Really?
John: How dare you have done that?
John: Why?
John: Because I had not done any of the things.
Merlin: I had not done any.
Merlin: Not completely dissimilar from the pushback your mom got.
Merlin: Like, this is not a thing we do.
Merlin: I had gone to Columbus.
John: You found your Columbus and I was supposed to fail and part of their success was predicated on the fact that I fail Yeah, right because the only way bitter people can be made happy is with other people's failures But that was true of so many that was true of that that is what conformity is Right if you're if they're constantly they're constantly raising the height of the tightrope and constantly like removing The usefulness of the net just because you should never should have been on that rope
John: I mean, it's one thing to go to a bad college.
John: It's one thing to become successful because you ended up selling pipe to the pipeline and white collar culture can look at that and go, well, you know, that's, you know, he, he had hustle or whatever, but,
John: But to not even get good grades in seventh grade, to just the worst.
John: You're already so down in the count.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
John: To throw it back in.
John: You've never had like nine strikes.
John: I had no plan.
John: Put your bat down.
John: I wasn't throwing it in anybody's face.
John: I was desperately trying to have anybody tell me I was a good boy.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: And to then arrive at a place where I was like, oh, hey, hey, Sal.
John: And he's like, how did you get into the tennis club?
John: And I'm like, I'm just here.
John: You know, I'm the Rodney Dangerfield.
John: I just got here because I played the banjo.
John: and and uh and they're like the fuck you did we're all gonna get laid and they're fine you know they love me right they're my friends they're still my friends but we were very judgmental of each other at the time and very judgmental even now because some of my friends some of those doctors are starting to like talk about their retirement yeah
John: Oh, well.
John: Can we not?
John: When I get to 65.
John: Can we please not?
John: And I'm like, it's so exciting for you.
John: I'm so excited about your retirement.
John: Guess who's never going to retire?
John: Me and Merlin.
John: Tell me more about your backsplash.
John: Hello, Merlin.
John: It's me.
Merlin: I'm your old retired friend calling from a nicer phone than you have.
Merlin: It's me, Mario.
Merlin: Are we doing our podcast?
John: It's me, Diplomacy Club.
John: And you're like, oh, shit, I don't want to do this anymore.
John: Oh, sorry, buddy.
John: Gotta talk every week.
John: How are your grandkids doing?
John: I can't afford anything.
John: You know, they send me a little money every once in a while, a gift card with $20.
John: 20 new dollars.
John: 20 new space dollars.
John: Nothing about the world is what I expected.
Merlin: Not even within the normal parameters of what you could have like, but moving out to concentric circles could have guessed, you know, utterly.
Merlin: But to get back to your point, I just I'm trying not to turn this into something where it sounds like at least that I'm complaining, because it's just it's probably true for everybody.
Merlin: But it is frustrating sometimes to realize that, like, I spent so I'm really only in the last couple of years.
Merlin: okay with looking at what this was and being honest about it, I feel, is that I, on the one hand, yeah, like you, I was pretty shady and like I didn't care about stuff and I turned things in late, but I really tried to follow the rules.
Merlin: I tried to please people.
Merlin: I was never given an option like so many children.
Merlin: I was never given an option in much of any way to make my own actual decisions about things.
Merlin: I was mainly given an outcome and
Merlin: And then expected to seem enthusiastic about it and apologize for when I got it wrong.
Merlin: Am I the only kid in America that had that?
Merlin: I really think not.
Merlin: I had great parents.
Merlin: I had a great family.
Merlin: Most of them were very racist.
Merlin: But they weren't nice people and they cared about me.
Merlin: But this is the problem.
Merlin: More is the pity.
Merlin: Is that they, in the same way that there are parents out there right now treating their kids so...
Merlin: unkindly and thinking that it's helping because that's how we were all raised and it doesn't mean you turn into some fucking pussy and let your kid do whatever I'm not saying that at all but like there's not one way to do this and I just that whole time no matter what else you said to me you could you could put up all the posters and motivational things in the world but what it all continually came back to was like we've set the horizon here and
Merlin: And like, if you can figure out some cheat code to see a different horizon, well, then I guess you've broken our system and we can't even like harm you anymore.
John: You found your Columbus.
Merlin: But I was constantly being reminded of where the horizon was.
Merlin: And the grace note, the stage whisper to that was, yeah, but you're never even going to, we've set the horizon to be like 60 feet away and you're never going to get there.
Merlin: No matter what you do, you will never,
Merlin: And I mean, I've said this before, but I really I'm going to say this because it matters a lot to me.
Merlin: The message I see a lot of people sending to their kids over and over that bothers me because I felt it when I was a kid is like you're never good enough.
Merlin: You're always doing something wrong and you're always betraying.
Merlin: all the good things that we've, the world and America, you're betraying all the good things that we've done for you by never being perfect and by, you know what I mean?
Merlin: God, who are these people?
Merlin: You didn't have this, though?
Merlin: Like, did you ever take, like, did you ever, like, okay, here's examples.
Merlin: I've been in lots of bands, like marching band, you know, stage band.
Merlin: I was in a drum and bugle corps for a while.
Merlin: Oh, no, wait, you're talking about parents of our generation, not contemporary.
Merlin: Well, that's what I'm... Okay, so cut to the chase.
Merlin: I think that's a thousand percent true of not just parents, but just authority figures of our generation.
Merlin: Like, you're never doing your yoga position right.
Merlin: You're never holding your trombone right.
Merlin: You're never doing the dishes right.
Merlin: Like, no matter what, especially dads, we're basically trained to say, like, you're not going to get hit, but you didn't do great.
Merlin: It's kind of like just the...
John: And what you're saying, and I do agree with this entirely, was that this was not an accident.
John: This was not because the dad was an alcoholic.
John: This was the style of parenting.
John: I think so.
John: This was how you trained a person to make it was to hit them with the rolled up newspaper until they did it right.
Merlin: Can I give you a really good, I think, anodyne example?
Merlin: And this is going to hurt a lot of people's feelings, for which I apologize in advance.
Merlin: Your kid's about to leave.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Your kid's about to leave the house and go somewhere.
Merlin: And what do you say?
Merlin: What do you always say to your kid when they leave the house?
Merlin: You say, be careful.
Merlin: Don't fuck up.
Merlin: That's what I say.
Merlin: I'll be watching you and find mine.
Merlin: You got one chance.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But this sounds dumb, and it's okay if y'all disagree with me, but I tend to not say, be careful.
Merlin: Uh, because it's dumb.
Merlin: It's a dumb thing that a parent says.
Merlin: And I think in some part of a parent's mind, every time you tell your kid to be careful, that's for you.
Merlin: That is not for them.
Merlin: But it also kind of drains the idea of you having useful input in the future of being able to kind of like you, you're blowing your shot to say, Hey, actually, you know, look, uh,
Merlin: Hey, when you do that thing, I would try and take this bus line instead of that bus line because it's more reliable and blah, blah, blah.
Merlin: Or if I'm like, bring a coat, do this, do all this stuff.
Merlin: It's like that is such a din that just gets all classified for a kid under like horseshit I don't need to listen to.
Merlin: But...
Merlin: Like, you're also kind of damning them a little bit when you say be careful.
Merlin: You're kind of saying that's a big, scary world, and you don't have me there to protect you, which I'm so good at.
Merlin: So instead, I'm just going to hang this on you to, like, go out there and be, if it worked, what have you done?
Merlin: You've basically told your child, your young person, to go out into the world and be anxious about things they can't control.
Merlin: I don't think that's a great thing to repeatedly teach.
Merlin: And you do it because your parents did it.
Merlin: And while you maybe don't beat the kid out of it,
Merlin: You don't beat the kid out of your shit anymore.
Merlin: Yeah, beat the kid out of your shit.
Merlin: No, I'm committing.
Merlin: I'm committing.
Merlin: I don't care.
Merlin: Well, maybe we don't do that as much.
Merlin: We still are, if we're not careful, the best intentions.
Merlin: The first time you ever hear your parents' voice coming out of your mouth, and you know what I mean?
Merlin: So you're going to put your eye out or whatever.
Merlin: The first time that happens, that's a warning to you.
Merlin: To make sure that you are thinking about this human being who just happens to be young.
Merlin: This is a young human being.
Merlin: Is what you're offering to them right now going to help them be a better human being?
Merlin: Or is it just a bunch of bullshit you say because people said that to you and you would feel like you weren't a good parent if you weren't being a dick?
John: Yeah.
John: I think.
John: Well, you know, I'm pretty famous for saying if you can't get that can open, you're going to starve to death because I'm not going to feed you anymore.
John: Well, I mean, how else is the kid going to learn?
John: That's right.
John: How else are they going to learn?
Merlin: Yeah, you're posing a series of basic cable reality shows that just happen to star your kid.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: Here's a knife.
John: Take off your clothes.
John: You're going to the woods.
John: It's been survivor for her ever since she was three years old.
John: It's like, all right.
John: Want to know what you're playing for?
John: If you can't get up on the stool.
John: Once again, immunity's up for grabs.
John: The gruel is up here on the table.
John: And here's the stool.
John: Can you make it?
Merlin: No, I feel... I just want people to be nicer.
Merlin: Part of it is I do want people to be nicer.
Merlin: You can still be strong.
John: See, I don't.
John: I don't want them to be nice.
Merlin: I want you to be strong, but can't we... I don't know.
Merlin: Okay, go ahead.
John: Continue.
John: You don't want people to be... Well, I feel like if you wanted to be an artist in 1950...
John: Your chances of anybody ever telling you... I'm not talking about your chances of being a success.
John: I'm saying your chances of anyone ever telling you that your art was good.
John: That what you're doing is worthwhile.
John: Or that it's even good.
John: That it's even... They were a fraction of a percent.
John: Most artists became sign painters...
John: or became frustrated artists, became sign painters or illustrators for, if they were lucky, illustrators for magazine articles.
Merlin: I told you this before.
Merlin: I have an Amy Vanderbilt.
Merlin: I think it's Amy Vanderbilt, but I have one of my mom's books from the early 60s, and the entire book is illustrated by Andy Warhol when he was unknown.
John: There it is.
Merlin: It's all spot.
Merlin: Beautiful, gorgeous line art spot illustrations throughout the entire book.
Merlin: And I know that name a little bit.
Merlin: I noticed this when I was about 12.
Merlin: And I was like, Andy Warhol, is that like the guy who made soup cans?
Merlin: Yeah, that's what he did.
Merlin: That was his grind.
John: I think the big difference for us, Gen X, is that we were probably the first generation of
John: where people singled us out in elementary school and said, what a good drawing.
John: What a good drawing.
John: Wow.
John: You're very creative.
John: You're very artistic.
John: I don't even think the boomers got that in the way that we did, you know, it might've been invented when the boomers were kids, but we were the ones that got it like, wow, what a good drawing.
John: And I was a very good drawer, not in the sense that I drew things that looked realistic or anything like that.
John: But if you put, if you put something, if you put a prompt in front of me,
John: What I would come up with was not what anybody else did.
Merlin: So if you look back at Boy's Life and it told you to please try and draw Skippy, like you would not try and draw, or like, or that little turtle.
Merlin: Is that the turtle's name Skippy?
Merlin: I thought Skippy was the mouse or, yeah, maybe it was the turtle.
John: Maybe Yertle.
John: Skippy the turtle.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Yeah, but you couldn't have done a you were more Abstract expressionist kind of like well, they did they used to do this right where they would where they'd get 30 kids in your class and they'd say everybody draw here's a triangle like everybody turn it into something and let's see what happens and
John: And 30 kids would take the triangle and make it into a hat or make it into a mountain or make it into the roof of a house.
John: And so you could walk through the class and you could see like, oh, roof of the house.
John: Good job, Johnny.
John: Oh, look at that.
John: It's a hat on somebody.
John: Isn't that nice, Sally?
John: And then there'd be one or two kids that took the triangle and did something fucking else.
John: And at that time, 19, turn it into an arrow pointing up.
John: Yeah.
John: Or, or something, or, or you would incorporate the triangle into a drawing where the it's triangle nest was not its defining feature.
Merlin: You know, the triangle became part of those lines might become incidental in a different drawing that you would not clock as 60 degrees times three.
John: Yeah.
John: And it's not a Rorschach thing.
John: It's not like, oh, he sees something else.
John: It's just like somebody gave me a triangle and I wasn't trying, I didn't even understand that it was a test.
John: I was just like, oh, cool triangle.
Merlin: And stuff would start to happen.
Merlin: I think that's how you get into the CIA is you end up making the kind of drawings your teacher didn't like and people find out about it.
John: It's definitely how I made it.
John: It's definitely how expectations of me went up because they pulled me out.
John: They pulled me out of the class and said, wow, your triangle was really something.
John: And I was like, wasn't it?
John: because i thought because i loved praise what part of this don't you like is it is it the praising that you feel didn't deserve praise or is it the rejection of kids who are different or what was the part about that you think is bad the the well the i think the first part was that everybody got praised but the second part was my thing with the triangle i wasn't that was not an expression of ambition
John: But it immediately suggested that there were expectations.
John: Because I had done that with the triangle.
John: And I felt that the next time they gave me a triangle, okay, do it again with this triangle.
John: And I was like, do what?
John: Oh, shit.
John: Now I have to do something with this triangle.
Merlin: It's less talent and more like you got lucky, at least in their eyes?
John: No, no, no.
John: It was a feeling that talent was now...
John: well now there was a course i was on that was going to end up being retired director of the cia but the but all the fun went out of it immediately right there was the the second triangle there was there were already people standing around going you know like now show us what you can do in code you know and you could hear him whispering you know in conjunction with his test scores this suggests that he's going to be you know be the first man on mars he brought in the men in black program
John: And I was like, I just did the thing with it.
John: Maybe I should have just made it into a hat, you know?
John: Maybe life would have been a lot easier.
John: But it wasn't a choice.
John: I wasn't Bob Dylan in the village trying to get my songs heard.
John: I was just a kid with a triangle.
John: But the niceness, the kindness, I don't think it reflects...
John: anything about the world.
John: I don't think that any other animals are kind.
John: I don't think that anything about the world is kind.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: Well, I mean, that's true, but maybe this is its own kind of great hominid theory, but that is part of what makes us special.
Merlin: It's not just thumbs and tools and things like that, but also that we have self-awareness and things like that, right?
Merlin: There's a lot of ways we're not like animals.
John: That specialness is often connected to a kind of...
John: It feels like at its heart, a kind of Christian exceptionalism, right?
John: We're special because, I mean, what does that specialness result in?
John: Greater kindness to one another until we kind ourselves into...
John: Into what exactly?
John: Like orgiastic, like, oministic self-appreciation of one another?
John: Or we live in it?
John: That's a little extreme, isn't it?
John: I mean, maybe.
John: I feel like the 20th century and the 19th century before it and the 18th century before that has constantly been arguing that the future utopia was gonna be a result of all of us being educated and creative and sensitive and kind.
John: And at each level, as we increased that stuff,
John: we were going to see a nicer, cleaner, healthier, a greater society, a greater society, a more productive world, but one where we had to work less and had more time to sit and come and say, that is, there's a huge post fifties.
Merlin: I mean, obviously it's, it's wonderful if we could have done it.
Merlin: It's kind of, but no, that, that's a huge post fifties idea.
John: Yeah.
John: I think it's a post enlightenment idea.
John: You know, I think that that's, that's what, that's what Jefferson was.
John: That was the assumption he was operating.
John: but you could eventually become head slave at every level i mean what all that stuff has done is increase lifespan we are healthier we do live in a more peaceful society there is less war there is greater education there are more rights there is more equity all of those things are true but
John: Are any of us, do any of us feel, I'm talking about vibes now.
John: Do any of us feel we're living in that society?
Merlin: Do any of us feel that all of that has- I think we're coming at this from different angles and I have a real chip on my shoulder of being who I was and seeing what happened to people who were like me that made me terminally sad for a lot of my life.
Merlin: And I wasn't able to track it because of course, this is how trauma works is that we blame ourselves for what has happened to us.
Merlin: And it's considered this badge of pride if you would never acknowledge how much systematically other people have tried to fuck you up and you weren't allowed to say anything about it.
Merlin: But in that case, I'm not saying – I mean, I don't have a strong opinion about this.
Merlin: The reason I say we're coming from different angles to me is, well, there must be somebody out there who deserves to be told that their triangle is nice.
Merlin: And I think for a little kid especially, that's what I'm trying to avoid is –
Merlin: From my point of view, my lens on this is, like, what I heard from all these kinds of things was, you know, that your goal here is to make a triangle that I, as the teacher, like.
Merlin: When you color this in, you know my expectations for coloring this in.
Merlin: And you know that that one girl who knows to make a very dark line around every outline and then lightly...
Merlin: That's what I want to see, and I'm constantly telling you that.
Merlin: What I'm trying to avoid is a world in which it becomes normal and okay to constantly say, you should never bother putting a pen to paper again.
Merlin: And when I think of things like encouragement, that goes beyond, like, I like your triangle.
Merlin: It's a way of saying, I think I see what you're working on here, and that's really cool.
Merlin: And then being the kind of person who can identify, well, the different kinds of intelligence and the different kinds of creativity and be able to help steer somebody into
Merlin: in a direction that gives them feedback that helps them make a better triangle or that helps them realize that triangles are not their thing.
Merlin: But there's this, look at the way, the detail of how you drew this.
Merlin: You might be a draftsman someday.
Merlin: You could be, you know what I mean?
Merlin: Like just ways of like trying, it's not about just going like, oh, you know, it's my job.
Merlin: I get $22,000 a year to praise children who don't deserve it.
Merlin: Rather than what I'm trying to get at is like, how do you find what each one of those kids need and give it to them, even if it's just drawing a triangle?
John: See, and I think that's the 20th century idea.
John: The idea that somehow the schools were going to cater to kids, they were going to find their special abilities.
John: That's just what I would want in a teacher of my own kid, personally.
John: I know.
John: And me too, except that I don't think that it scales.
John: I don't think that... For the culture, the class?
John: Well, the whole world, we have way more graphic designers than we need right now.
John: And we have way, way more computer engineers than we need right now.
John: And we have a lot fewer and we have way more college administrators than we need.
John: And we're missing whole swaths of people that are doing work.
John: That's gratifying to them.
John: That doesn't have any sort of, uh,
John: of this like let's find out what what what's in johnny's heart and we can find a place for him where he'll be where he'll live um a fulfilled life like that feels also like a weird overlay
John: that that came out of this utopia but it isn't actually what anybody really wants in terms of like most people don't want to be asked what their dream is i don't i when somebody asks me what my dream is what my ambition is i shrink i shrivel
John: Because I don't think that way.
Merlin: But can't that tell you something about what that person, let's assume that they're not in their 50s.
Merlin: Can't that tell you something about what that person's values and about their interests and about the kinds of directions that could get them enthusiastic about things like creativity and education?
John: i mean you contrast it with the japanese mob right where you're four years old and they're like well you're going to work with tools the end and by the time they're in seventh grade like they're the die is cast their fate is sealed and at one level in our american 1980s creativity cult
John: We looked at that and we were like, that's disgusting.
John: Like those people are so repressed.
Merlin: I always heard that about the Soviet Union.
Merlin: I always heard that in the Soviet Union through junior high and high school into a class that I had as a senior called Americanism versus communism.
Merlin: Yes, that was the name of the class.
Merlin: My 12th grade.
Merlin: Oh my fucking god, really?
Merlin: Yeah, taught by Robert Sherman.
Merlin: He was the guy who wrote my recommendation for college.
Merlin: He's a retired colonel.
Merlin: What my friend DJ's dad called a double dipper, because he also then worked as a, he had a big pension as a colonel, and then he taught at my high school.
Merlin: And he was pretty, he was one of those kind of famous teachers.
Merlin: Yeah, it was called AVC.
Merlin: Everybody knew what AVC was.
Merlin: And I think in the end, Americanism won, even though I'm still not sure exactly what, quote, Americanism is.
Merlin: It's so great that we boulderized a word in order to make it comparable with communism.
Merlin: Americanism.
Merlin: Yeah, everybody knows about Americanism.
Merlin: Yeah, it's democratic capital.
Merlin: But I forget what my point was.
Merlin: Go ahead.
John: I hear it a lot, and I just feel like if we're going to say that there was a peak where we're in now the decline, nothing has ever been worse than it is today.
John: We all wish it was more like X kind of feeling.
John: That implies that there was a peak in recent history.
John: If everything's going to be worse tomorrow than it was today, there has to have been a time when everything was getting better each day.
John: But that was also a time of tremendous conformity, tremendous, we had none of the, well, we did, we had a lot of the same rights and privileges we have now, but we can cast back and say it was a terrible time.
John: Like we're living in a time now where every single person is asked what their dreams are.
John: And there are other models, right?
John: That is not the end of history.
John: And if we're not satisfied, if we think everything is getting worse every single day,
John: Maybe some of this utopian theory about how every kid that draws a triangle, it should be a graphic artist.
John: Maybe some of that was in error, right?
John: Maybe we can't separate this vibes feeling that things are getting worse from the fact that everybody is, has also been asked to activate their creativity and, and, and tell us what their dreams are.
John: And I don't know.
John: I don't think there is one system.
John: you look at nobody in china is being asked what their dreams are and we can look at china from how happy they are well but that's the thing we can look at them and say good chinese food everybody says yeah but also there are you know are they are they our model i mean are they our enemy are they our peers
John: Like we're living in the same world.
John: It's the same tomorrow.
John: We're gonna meet in the Singapore airport.
John: Like what, why are we so confident about some of the things we do in our future?
Merlin: Why do we remain so confident about those things?
John: Remain so confident and so angrily certain that we're doing some things right in terms of like, well, of trying to build a kinder world
John: but at the same time so angry at ourselves and so dismissive of some of the things that we've designed and built including a whole system that believes that we should be kinder to each other every day like how do you how are we so confidently able to separate the fact that we feel smooshed and dismissed and and thwarted and nobody's asking us what our dreams are
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: I think I'm agreeing with you, which is like all my whole life I've been asked what my dreams were.
Merlin: And sometimes I would say what that was, but I'm not that happy right now.
Merlin: And also nobody's asking me what my dreams are anymore.
Merlin: And there's no plan for me getting anywhere near those.
John: Well, right.
John: And I keep coming back to like, well, with my own kid, I'm like, look, your dreams are your business.
John: And if you come to me, I think one of the greatest things my mother did was
John: was at one point she said to me, I have not worked my whole life for me.
John: I've worked my whole life for us.
John: We are a family.
John: And so I'm not, I didn't do all this so that one day you could inherit what I leave.
John: I did all this because I want you to, I mean, we're in this together.
John: And she didn't say that when I was sitting at a bar going like, hey, beer tender.
John: But at a certain point when I showed her that I could fend for myself and do my thing and that I was proud of it and she was proud of it,
John: You know, she never was miserly.
John: She never was.
John: And I'm not, she never gave me a dollar, but, but.
John: but she believed that we were together and not that we were in opposition.
John: She wasn't coming.
John: I wasn't coming for her money.
John: I wasn't, um, I, you know, she wasn't like guarding her success against me.
John: Yeah.
John: It was all part of, it was all part of like what, and, and she taught that to me.
John: And, uh,
John: When I look at my kid, I'm like, Hey, what's mine is yours.
John: Um, that doesn't mean that I'm going to let you start five businesses and bankrupt us, but it, but you know, like follow your dreams and that's the, but, but I don't care what they are and I'm not going to edit them.
John: And also you're not following your dreams on my checkbook, but we're in this together.
Mm-hmm.
John: And I think that's very different than what are your dreams and let's find out how to accomplish them.
John: Cause it's not practical partly, right?
John: Well, yeah.
John: And like what your dreams are at 20, I don't care.
John: Your dreams at 20 are, your dreams at 20 are irrelevant unless you're really pushing.
John: And in that case, you don't care.
John: You don't care what anybody thinks about your dreams.
John: I saw this Dylan movie yesterday.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: I'm looking forward to seeing that.
Merlin: I cried through the first two-thirds of the movie.
Merlin: Does it start in Minnesota?
John: No.
John: It starts with him getting out of the car in New York City.
John: Oh, he found his Columbus.
John: He found his Columbus.
John: He went to New York.
John: But Dylan never had... It's the village in 1961.
John: Where's my place?
John: Hey, John Baez.
John: I cried through it, not because...
John: First of all, it's wonderful to watch a biopic where you have Dylan's music, too.
John: If you want to have a montage.
John: He, like, okayed it, right?
John: I don't know.
John: His name's not anywhere on the picture.
John: But his music's in it.
John: You know, it's Dylan.
John: His actual, like, stuff.
John: Yeah, he's not pretending to be Dylan.
John: I mean, the actor is pretending.
John: Timothy Shamanale is pretending to be.
Merlin: I feel like you are overlooking the fact that America is gripped by Shalamania.
John: yeah i believe i hope i made that up because i say it at the house and no one ever laughs i am on board that train because i think he did a great job but he's a lazy bird the emotion that i felt in watching this guy with a guitar who you know had no idea what was coming and he was just enormously talented uh but at you know
John: His talent shone through.
John: Every time he picked up the guitar and said, hey, let me play you a song I wrote, everybody in the room was like, holy shit.
John: Oh, fuck yeah.
Merlin: Williams and Singer.
Merlin: Yeah, like I just hear like a few notes and I'm like, oh man, this guy really killed it.
John: He's sleeping on a dirty bed on the Lower East Side.
John: He's crashing at his girlfriend's house.
John: And it just, they do a wonderful job of, a lot of the movie is people looking at Dylan.
John: we see a long shot of people just looking at him.
John: And the actors in this film, the woman who plays his girlfriend, the woman who plays John Baez, you know, there are going to be critics that say, you know, it doesn't pass the Bechdel test in the sense that they spend a lot of... You'd be amazed how much of life, at least for, especially for the first few thousand years, did not pass the Bechdel test.
John: Yeah.
John: And a lot of the great acting in the movie is...
John: watching those two actresses in particular, watching them watch Dylan.
John: Hmm.
John: And you would say if it was a superhero movie, you would go, yeah, there's an awful lot of like, uh, a hero worship happening.
John: And this isn't, but in this instance, they're watching Dylan and he is raking their hearts.
John: And it's, there's so much, there's so much that just,
John: Uh, you know, I, uh, part of the reason that I was crying is just, you look at your own life.
John: I mean, I was looking at my own life through this movie and through the way people have looked at me and through the way that I look at Dylan and just feeling like there was, there was there, nothing is, is for ordained and my life could gone.
John: I've gone a thousand ways.
John: And he was just fucking faking it.
John: You know, he just tumbled into it, except for his enormous, enormous talent.
Merlin: But like, I think for one way, oh boy, I really don't deserve this comparison.
Merlin: But one way my life feels like what you're describing in Bob Dylan's life is there's this vast part of the pie graph that's like, this guy's terrible.
Merlin: And then this tiny part of the pie graph that goes, yeah, this guy sounds like Woody Guthrie.
Merlin: I bet that's a lot of what he ran into.
Merlin: The people who knew, understandably, would go, dude, you're just doing Woody Guthrie.
Merlin: You're not doing anything new.
Merlin: You're doing cosplay Woody Guthrie title.
Merlin: And then everybody else would go, no, he's just bad.
Merlin: He just can't sing.
Merlin: Why is he here?
John: Well, and I think a lot of the main plot of this movie, I think, is that because he sounded a lot like Woody Guthrie,
John: The people that were in that scene expected him to stay true to that.
John: They needed a new Woody Guthrie because Woody was sick.
John: He visited him once before he died, right?
John: Well, the movie makes it seem like it.
Merlin: I think it was a pretty quick visit and he was pretty sick.
John: If you and I went to see a Beatles movie and they took the same license that they took with the Dylan movie...
John: I would be like, hmm.
John: What was the time you and I visited Ringo on his deathbed?
John: Well, it would just be like, you know what?
John: Lennon never wore those boots.
John: I've seen every pair of boots that Lennon ever wore.
John: And those are the wrong boots, my friend.
John: But because Dylan is unknowable,
John: and none of us expect to ever know him you know he'll die and we will and it will always be a thousand contradictory stories maybe he did work at the fucking carnival i don't i don't know and i don't care because this movie is kind of like chronicles volume one address the neck breaking accident thing do they address the the mystery of that nope the movie ends before that do you think he did it just to get a break
Merlin: Absolutely.
Merlin: I kind of do too.
John: I mean, he recorded a hundred songs with the band during that period.
Merlin: Because I was raised to believe that he had this certain career up to a point and like, you know, my favorite was always in, I mean, this is probably kind of revolutionary, but I really like Blonde on Blonde.
Merlin: You know, that's really basic to like that one.
Merlin: Nice movie.
Merlin: But you'll notice the first song I chose to sing out loud is the first five notes of The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll, which is my favorite Bob Dylan song, probably.
Merlin: But then I heard, oh yeah, you know what happened after, it was after the country one, right?
Merlin: It was after Nashville Skyline.
Merlin: He was in this terrible motorcycle accident.
Merlin: Bob Dylan was in a terrible motorcycle accident and broke his neck.
Merlin: And he almost died.
Merlin: And that's why we didn't hear from him for a while, is what I'd always heard.
Merlin: And then the story I heard after that was, no, actually, yeah, he was pretty badly injured, but he also saw it as the opportunity to have some time away from the spotlight.
John: Do you think that's true?
John: I feel like he's been trying.
John: There's a scene in the movie.
John: I hate to give all this away.
John: Spoiler alert.
John: Spoiler alert for the 60s.
John: There's a moment in this movie where he writes a letter to Johnny Cash.
John: And it's in response to a letter.
John: Johnny sent him.
John: I love that they played that together.
John: That makes me so happy.
John: Johnny's in the movie.
John: Who plays him?
John: Do you remember?
John: Oh, some handsome guy.
Okay.
John: But, um, but Dylan writes him and, and we don't see Dylan talking.
John: This is a voiceover, but he says, yeah, you know, I got famous.
John: And, uh, since I talked to you last and, uh, it's really fucking me up and just, just this, the, the idea of that letter and, uh,
John: I saw an interview with Jesse Eisenberg a couple of days ago where he's talking, you know, he's got that very cocaine-y kind of anxious thing on camera.
John: And he's saying, you know.
John: Oh, yeah, he was on Conan last week.
John: Yeah, he said something.
John: And this didn't appear to be Conan, but he said.
John: You know, actors are the last people who should be famous.
John: We started playing other people because we did not want to be ourselves.
Merlin: And you don't want to become a Jesse Eisenberg type.
Merlin: That might be good for your career, but it's not great for your art.
John: Well, and he's saying, like, after I reach a certain point of fame, everybody wants to know what I think.
John: And I don't want to be asked what I think.
John: I don't want to tell you what I think.
John: I don't want you to know me.
John: I don't want to be seen.
John: And like Springsteen later, he never asked to be the voice of a generation.
John: And this is the thing about Dylan.
John: You look at him and you're like, oh, was there ever a person less able to be famous?
John: I don't believe you.
John: And yet, and his entire career, time after time after time.
Merlin: That's one reason he's sorry.
Merlin: I mean, that's to me one reason he is so inspirational in me.
Merlin: I've said this a million times in interviews or whatever.
Merlin: It's like one of the things I admire so much about Bob Dylan.
Merlin: It's not that he was deliberately trying to be obdurate.
Merlin: I don't sometimes I think he was.
Merlin: But, well, maybe in the 70s especially.
Merlin: Maybe when he had that Whiteface tour, did that weird album, The Self-Portrait.
Merlin: Which is also great at the same time.
Merlin: It's a great album, but it does get a little weird.
Merlin: But then as we talked about, you know, with the great Sean Nelson, you got Blood on the Tracks as one of the great albums.
Merlin: But I look at him, and one reason I admire him so much in one way is that he was very reluctant to let anybody tell him who he is.
Merlin: I'm greatly simplifying this, but if I had to abstract it is like, that's a good thing in life is to be something I said in the document is like, be careful about who's allowed to change your mood.
Merlin: And every time somebody tries to make you be someone else, ask yourself how they benefit from you no longer being yourself.
Merlin: And I think the same is true here, which is like, be very suspicious of people who demand to tell you who you are, especially repeatedly, because those are probably pretty bad people.
John: Well, when I look at my own life, I was extremely susceptible to people telling me who I was.
John: When people said, oh, well, you're this.
Merlin: Because then they're allowed to tell you who you're supposed to be after that.
Merlin: Like once you've locked in and you've agreed to the praise of being this person, well, then they're allowed to say, you know, I think the whole electric thing is a little bit overblown based on what I can understand.
Merlin: But it's definitely true all along the way.
Merlin: We're like every album.
Merlin: Everybody's like, well, this is not what we expect out of Bob Dylan.
Merlin: he's he's betrayed us again and again and again and yet we still are so obsessed with this guy and you know it's almost like they just weren't even listening to the new records and what they were doing it's frustrating what i was what i was about to say was that i did not have what dylan had which was that i don't know whether it's innate i don't know whether it was
John: uh obdurancy uh obduracy no you're close enough i i don't really know how to say it either when people told me who i was i tried to um make them happy
John: By being that or or by at least by at least except the first 19 years of my life.
John: Maybe they knew.
John: Maybe they knew better.
John: And part of the reason you like me.
John: And so therefore now I will do that.
John: Part of the reason I cried through that movie was realizing at every step of the way that I was on that same dirty pallet.
John: with that same shitty guitar and that same girl who was looking at me with those same eyes.
John: But when she told me that I was this, or in particular that I was doing it wrong because I was doing it this way instead of that way, I said, oh shit, okay, so what should I do?
John: Well, that doesn't feel right, but I guess that makes me bad.
John: You know, I guess that means I am doing it wrong.
John: And why would I do it wrong?
John: Why would I intentionally do it wrong?
John: I don't understand myself.
John: Right.
John: And watching Dylan go, hey, what am I supposed to do?
John: You know, hey, sorry.
John: No, I'm going to cry too.
John: I'm already planning it.
John: Yeah.
John: And I don't know, even now, at 56 years old, when somebody tells me who I am, and I go, um...
John: no no no no i don't think so yeah uh that feels like a tremendous victory a lifelong a victory in the in after years of going oh gee oh boy well i'll sure try i'll i'll sure try uh i'm working on it you know i'm really working on myself 20 years of being told that you're funny like jim carrey you know you are funny
Merlin: You have that ADD that's kind of not like my ADD.
Merlin: I wish you would stop diagnosing what you believe my kind of ADD is.
Merlin: You think I'm a clown?
Merlin: Is that what you're saying?
Merlin: I'm amusing to you.
John: Can I hit the bell?
John: Spider, spider, just get him his drink.
Merlin: Hey!
Merlin: That was really good!
Merlin: And then he comes back and he's got the bandage.
Merlin: Oh my god.
Merlin: Hey, fuck you, Paulie.
Merlin: Hey, get your shine box.
Merlin: Not Paulie, not Paulie.
Merlin: Paulie didn't have to move for anybody.
Merlin: Get your fucking shine box.
Merlin: Oh, we're gonna get so many notes about this.
Merlin: Let's keep misquoting it.
Merlin: Ever since I was a kid, I always knew I wanted to be in the mafia.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: You know what?
John: It's between the Italians.
John: It's between the Italians.
John: It's fucking Guinea shit and there's nothing you can do about it.
John: The other couches you couldn't even sit on.
Merlin: I am Zanzinger.