Ep. 588: "An American Experiment"
Merlin: The force that through the green fuse drives the flower drives my green age.
John: Hello?
John: Hi, John.
John: Hi, Merlin.
John: How's it going?
John: That was kind of an unusual hello, because normally I say hello like I'm answering the phone, but that kind of seemed like I was entering a spooky house.
Merlin: Hello?
Merlin: Hello?
Merlin: Oh, like the house was speaking to you.
Merlin: No?
Merlin: No, but sure.
Merlin: Were you greeting the house?
Merlin: I'm going to yes and this all the way.
Merlin: Yes, I was.
Merlin: I think I probably just misunderstood.
Merlin: Yeah, I mean like a Scooby-Doo type trepidatious approach.
Merlin: Exactly.
John: Hello?
John: Hello?
John: Which is not how I think of you.
John: It's not how I think of entering this show.
John: Is there any spooks in there?
Merlin: You're asking?
Merlin: No, I'm always like, hello?
Merlin: Hello?
Merlin: Yeah, I like all of them.
Merlin: Hello's a very funny word.
Merlin: Thanks.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: No, it's just, well, it's not peculiar to you, but yes, hello can be a very funny word.
Merlin: I didn't invent it.
Merlin: I'm not the one that made it funny, but yeah.
Merlin: And he was polite.
Merlin: After everything I say, thank you.
John: Now everybody says it.
John: Yeah.
John: Somebody finally over on the Omnibus page really wanted to know what the hell automobile was.
John: And some people replied.
John: And then it got into a Mr. Show.
John: It got into the Mr. Show.
John: And he was very polite.
John: There's two automobiles.
John: There's two automobiles.
John: I know.
John: This sounds like a Star Trek bit.
Merlin: There are two automobiles.
Yeah.
Merlin: You know, you and I used to say, keep them coming, Gleep Glop.
Merlin: I think we still do.
Merlin: I think we still do.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Every time I get really close to writing all these down, I think, you know, you really shouldn't write all these down.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: What's the point?
Merlin: Am I right?
Merlin: Well, see, now you and your interest in history, I could see you wanting to do it so that in the future people would be able to have, I want to say like a codex for, you know, for being able to like do like an overlay to understand what it all meant at the time.
John: Yeah, but you remember how that was our attitude about saving our tweets?
John: Which part?
John: Well, I just, I for sure never deleted any tweets.
Merlin: I was very possessive about my tweets.
John: Yeah, me too.
John: I worked hard on them.
John: I worked hard.
John: And so the idea of like, oh, I'm deleting those tweets.
John: It was like, no, this is the historic red.
John: This is Congress is going to subpoena these.
John: This is important.
John: It breaks threads and stuff like that.
John: You know?
John: Yeah.
John: But then then people have their reasons.
John: I sure wish that I had deleted all my tweets like every, every two weeks.
Merlin: Anyway, I'm taking off for South Africa.
Merlin: I'm just going to get one more out the door.
John: One more tweet.
John: One in the chamber.
John: Yep.
John: I deleted a tweet yesterday.
John: I woke up, you know, I'm walking down the hall of my house.
Merlin: I delete like a crazy person now.
John: Yeah, but what it was was I shouldn't have tweeted it in the first place.
John: Oh, I'm worse.
John: Walking down the hall and I'm like, you know what's wrong with people?
John: Yeah.
John: And right then I should have turned around and gone back to whatever room I was coming from.
Merlin: You know what's wrong with people?
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: I agree.
Merlin: Can I tell you something briefly?
Merlin: It's brief.
Merlin: Just between us.
Merlin: And then I don't necessarily want to talk about this, but I do feel like I need to share this with somebody close to me.
Okay.
Merlin: You know how they talk sometimes about like a hundred year flood, you know, those kinds of things, which I understand.
Merlin: Yeah, they're every four years now.
Merlin: Yeah, but the idea behind that phrase was that this is the kind of flood that, based on the past, we only expect to see every 100 years.
Merlin: And it's a shame that it's gotten kind of silly now, but I've always thought that was such an interesting way to think about things.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Like, this is the kind of snow that we would only expect to see every 10 years or whatever.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: I had a, so whatever that's called, I had one of those butterfly flapping things last night, which is something that only happens to me like every five years happened.
Merlin: What was it?
Merlin: I didn't really sleep.
Merlin: At all?
Merlin: Well, can I tell you how many minutes I slept last night?
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: 74.
Merlin: That's not very many minutes.
Merlin: I'm a pretty good sleeper.
Merlin: I'm thinking I must have accidentally taken the wrong pill or something.
John: Did you have some restless leg syndrome?
John: Were you bouncing around?
Merlin: No, no, no, no, no, no.
Merlin: I did have, like, this I'm less comfortable talking about, but let's just say that if I were to tell you the number, you'd know.
Merlin: I also had a lot of Haagen-Dazs ice cream bars last night.
Merlin: Oh, bars, plural.
Merlin: Yeah, like Dorothy Parker says, you lay those end-to-end, nobody would be surprised at all.
Merlin: There's a lot of K-Cals in those, and I did.
Merlin: So it could be sugar bounce back.
Merlin: sugar that beat us could be sugar bounce back i just wanted to clarify that i am not at the absolute top of my game as i would think of it but you know what that could be fun oh yeah oh sure you know but i'm i'm so here for this i just wanted to say that now what were we talking about
Merlin: Who knows?
John: We're talking about hello.
John: But I feel you, and that is a tough night, 74 minutes.
Merlin: I have developed a very wholesome attitude about sleep, and most saliently,
Merlin: Boy, I'm tired.
Merlin: Most silently, I think I have developed a very wholesome attitude about not good sleep.
Merlin: So I handle these things well.
Merlin: I have some flexibility in my schedule.
Merlin: As soon as we hang up, I'm going to go lay down on my couch here at my private office and see if I could maybe catch a little, you know, little winkage.
Merlin: Catch some Zs.
Merlin: Yeah, but I mean, you know, you can't stress about this stuff.
John: You know, stuff happens, am I right?
John: Life's a roller coaster.
John: It's a bag of chocolates.
Merlin: Life is a bag of chocolates.
Merlin: That is absolutely accurate.
Merlin: Your hand gets dirty when it's hot outside.
John: So you're going to be fine.
John: We're all going to be fine.
John: The show's going to be great.
John: It's just that I forgot we were actually talking about something I wanted to address.
John: Oh, well, I was saying that I had tweeted something that was really.
Merlin: Oh, yeah, tweeting.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: It was terrible.
John: I said I'm worse.
John: Because it was a thing where it was like, why would you even do that?
John: And then, of course, immediately there were people who were like, whoa, your privilege is showing.
John: And I was like, fuck you.
John: And I actually said, like, you're a shit face or something to a couple of people.
John: Oh, no.
John: And then I walked away.
John: Oh, jeez.
John: And I went to some.
John: Oh, I went to the swimming pool.
John: And then I came back, I was at the swimming pool and I was like, oh no, oh no.
John: What am I doing?
John: And I just went on there and I just deleted it.
John: I didn't even want to read what people were saying.
John: I didn't want to read what shit face said back to me.
John: I was just like, get me out, get me out of here.
John: And I was like, maybe I should just delete the app.
John: And then I'm thinking like, what is wrong with you?
John: What is wrong with you?
John: It's been months and months since I did that.
John: And then I'm just, all of a sudden, I'm like, you know what's wrong?
Merlin: A bunch of shit faces.
Merlin: People misunderstand each other a lot.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: There's a thought technology I think I mentioned to you that I'm just kind of soft launching very, very, very softly.
Merlin: And it's this realization I had a few weeks ago.
Merlin: And I've learned to be cautious of the skeleton keys in my life, but this clicked a little bit for me.
Merlin: And this is admittedly kind of like ham-fisted and broad, but it's a thought technology I'm working on.
Merlin: I think sometimes part of the problems that we run into can be roughly patternized into ideas versus people.
Merlin: And I think, well, I think sometimes I could make this real, real, real simple, I think, by saying, well, there's certain kinds of things that we agree are a good idea.
Merlin: You take the basic stuff that's inside a confirmation bias, right?
Merlin: You take the basic sort of like, what's the one, the classic, the fundamental attribution error, right?
Merlin: Which I think goes something like,
Merlin: Everybody else does stuff, bad stuff, because they're bad.
Merlin: I do bad stuff because of circumstances, right?
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
John: That's the bully's logic.
Merlin: Yeah, I think, oh, gosh, that is absolutely true.
Merlin: But I think that's a pretty gettable example of ideas versus people.
Merlin: The problem is that sometimes when we think we're talking about an idea, other people will think you're talking about a person.
Merlin: And this is not to say that people and ideas are unrelated, but I just think this is why this is very young and I'm still thinking about this.
Merlin: But do you know what I mean?
Merlin: I was thinking about that.
Merlin: And then I was watching that Billy Joel show.
Merlin: Which is really good.
Merlin: And I hadn't finished part two, but I started part two last night.
Merlin: Got most of the way in.
Merlin: Be honest, man.
Merlin: I gotta be honest.
Merlin: It got to the part where I'm just not that interested in Billy Joel anymore.
Merlin: You know?
John: Is this after We Didn't Start the Fire?
Merlin: it's a, it's, I think it's a little before that.
Merlin: So basically after, and this is nothing personal nor professional against Dr. Joel, because as anybody who knows- Or his fans, right?
John: You're not saying anything about Billy Joel fans and how they should all die.
Merlin: I'm a really big fan.
Merlin: And like, it's, I'm not doing this because he's got brain problems.
Merlin: I'm doing this because like, it's just something Syracuse and I end up talking about a lot because they're from a pretty similar area of Long Island.
Merlin: And we talk sometimes about how important that is, but-
Merlin: There was a guy – have you watched any of that out of curiosity?
John: No, I've heard about it.
John: Somebody actually wrote in and asked me if I had watched it, and I have not yet.
Merlin: Well, this was – sometimes, you know, once you got – you know how it is with the thought technology?
John: Yes.
Merlin: Where it's – there's something about it that's extremely powerful, if not fully formed.
Merlin: And this critic –
Merlin: named Stephen Hyden said, I think at his best, Billy Joel writes about people, not causes or concepts.
Merlin: And that was in the context of the Nylon Curtain, where he was trying to get, you know, he's wanting to get a little bit more serious.
Merlin: Nobody takes him seriously because he's Billy Joel and his songs are too simple or whatever.
Merlin: But, you know, we can look at something like Allentown or Goodnight Saigon and think it's a little bit...
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: Is the tone really up to the gravitas on Goodnight Saigon?
Merlin: Well, you know what that comes from, according to this HBO show?
Merlin: That comes from him talking to his buddies who went to Vietnam and asking them not what they think about Kissinger scotching the peace talks, but what they thought about being a...
Merlin: 19 year old kid who got sent overseas and like what that felt like.
Merlin: And so that's how that came out.
Merlin: But when he said that, I'm gonna say it again.
Merlin: I think at his best, Billy Joel writes about people, not causes or concepts.
Merlin: That clicked a little bit with that thought technology, which is that, you know, he's singing about people.
Merlin: And I would even go so far as to, again, repeat something somebody said a couple of minutes later, that...
Merlin: That actually, in retrospect, there's so many reasons to reevaluate Billy Joel.
Merlin: People thought he was a dilettante, you know, when really he's just incredibly interesting and diverse with his choices, I think.
Merlin: And, you know, the band he got together could play like practically any genre.
Merlin: And, you know, he had to be talked into putting, uh, uh, what's that really pretty one?
Merlin: I don't go changing.
Merlin: Uh, I love you just the way you are.
Merlin: He had to get like, he did not want to put that on the record, but it was Phil Ramone and the actual like band who was like, dude, this song's really good.
Merlin: You should put this on your stranger.
Merlin: You know, I always think of that as a Burt Bacharach song.
Merlin: It's got, it's very, it is Burt Bacharach.
Merlin: Do you think that's probably, that's probably a Fender Rhodes through like a, not a chorus, but through some kind of a Leslie or something, do you think?
Merlin: Or do you think it's a Wurlitzer?
Merlin: I don't know what that sound is.
John: Boy, I haven't listened to it a long time, but I bet you.
John: It'll come straight back to you.
Merlin: But like, God, the bridge on that song is so pretty.
Merlin: Anyway, sometimes when a thought technology is very, very young, it's,
Merlin: A man loves a woman.
Merlin: And you get thoughts.
Merlin: And then that just clicked for me because I was like, you know, in terms of all the ways we need to reevaluate Dr. Joel, I think one of them is that I think his stuff has aged a lot better than a lot of stuff that was coming out, like really any given album from 77 to 82 especially.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You know, I think it's all aged pretty well.
Merlin: And I think, just again, paraphrase this other critic, like, I think that's because he writes songs about people and not about, like, Iran-Contra.
Mm-hmm.
Merlin: Do you know what I mean?
Merlin: Which is kind of a failing of punk rock in some ways, too.
Merlin: Yeah, some of the punk rock, right?
John: That's another reason the Damned are so great, you know?
John: It's, you know, I don't write about, as a songwriter, I don't write about concepts, certainly not about politics, maybe concepts, not about politics, but also I really mask the people.
John: I'm never talking about the guy, you know, who did the job or the girl who left the home or anything like that.
John: You know, it's all very.
Merlin: Your Navy may not even still be in the Navy, let alone for life.
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: And all of that stuff, those narrative, like Bon Jovi's the same, right?
John: Like, and I think it's true of Journey or, you know, there's a lot of those bands that come from that same stock, Bruce.
Merlin: That's actually a super interesting, especially 80s-centric point, because I've always kind of thought the same thing.
Merlin: This is going to get me in trouble.
Merlin: Secondarily, about you two, but especially about the alarm.
Merlin: which is a band I learned about in the wake of U2.
Merlin: I read about them in NME because basically NME just smoked U2 for like how terrible they were and how awesome, you know, they always liked the opening band better.
Merlin: They thought the Waterboys were better than U2.
Merlin: They thought Alarm was, but I like the Alarm, but like, I can't tell you what their songs are about.
Merlin: Take this song of freedom and put it on and arm yourself for the fight.
Merlin: We've got to find the courage to keep marching on and on.
Merlin: I don't know what the fuck that's about.
Merlin: I mean, I know what Sunday Bloody Sunday is about.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: It's funny because I kind of feel like Bruce had that a little bit too.
Merlin: Where there was, there's a way, like he had his finger on at least his own pulse in 1974, five, six.
Merlin: And I think that's, there's something so yearning about some, you take something like Thunder Road or Born to Run, I guess, the song.
Merlin: And it's like, that's an experience we've all had.
Merlin: It's not just about the swamps of Jersey.
John: Have you been out where have you been?
John: Did they cruise when you were in high school?
John: Did they cruise the strip?
John: They as in me?
John: Well, did you cruise the strip?
John: But was there a strip?
John: And were they lined up with the Novas and the Chevelles?
John: It wasn't.
Merlin: I mean, I think we aspired.
Merlin: I've cruised on two non-contiguous occasions, annualized.
Merlin: I cruised with my friend, my best friend at the time, John Patton, but his friend, John Larsgaard.
Merlin: He's the one that had the 64 1⁄2 Mustang.
Merlin: John Losgaard with a 64 and a half Mustang.
Merlin: Yeah, 64 and a half pony interior.
Merlin: Was it a 289?
Merlin: John, the little ponies are actually running across the backseat.
Merlin: Oh, that's cute.
Merlin: Oh, it was very special.
Merlin: That's before it was even official.
Merlin: Changed the world, that car.
Merlin: Changed the world.
Merlin: Oh, my Christ.
Merlin: And it's longer than people think.
Merlin: If you ever see a Mustang from above, it's a lot longer than you'd think.
John: It's longer than you think.
John: That's what I'm always telling people.
John: If you take a snapshot of you and your pregnant wife in front of a Mustang, and you want to put that picture in a frame, you're going to have to cut off the nose and the tail.
Merlin: Is that right?
Merlin: That's just common knowledge.
Merlin: Okay, but then that's also going to make her feel a little more slender.
John: Oh, sure.
John: Right.
John: She's not as well.
John: Or maybe the long Mustang is going to make her feel.
John: Yeah.
John: Who knows?
John: I've never been a pregnant woman.
Merlin: Time was I could identify those kinds of things.
Merlin: I used to know just from the side of the doors, the hex grill on the 64 and a half.
Merlin: Anyways, that was circa 1982 because I remember Lamal's song Too Shy was out.
Merlin: We listened to 50s music.
Merlin: when we drove around like basically everything up to say run around or excuse me um uh my little runaway up to around runaway like we we sort of dropped off we used to live in a society that's why and we drive around in john large guard's car in cincinnati ohio in the summer the other time was we go to clearwater when i was in high school a few years later and you go to clearwater beach and you go up and down whatever that road is the clearwater beach frontage road
Merlin: Dale Mabry?
Merlin: I don't remember.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But those are the ones I remember.
Merlin: But it was never like, I think we aspired, especially with John Larsgaard, whose name I'm saying more today than I've said since I was 14.
Merlin: By the way, it was John Larsgaard and John Patton and me that walked into a mall and went into the cinema.
Merlin: And that's where I walked up to.
Merlin: In the cinema, I walked up to the man and I said, one adult for Blade Runner.
Merlin: Now here's the problem.
John: Were you even an adult?
John: You were barely an adult.
John: People who were adults.
Merlin: This kid knew.
Merlin: People who were adults usually leave that part out.
John: Oh, they don't say one adult.
John: And also I'm not overcompensating.
John: This kid was like passport control in East Germany.
John: Like step aside.
John: Your paper's in order, young man.
John: You gave it away, sir.
John: We used to cruise the Strip in Anchorage.
John: Where did you cruise?
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Friday and Saturday night, the Strip.
Merlin: Was it like American Graffiti?
Merlin: That's all I was going to say.
Merlin: I think we all aspired seeing American Graffiti two times at that age, and I...
Merlin: You know, I wanted to find my Chrissy from Three's Company.
John: But the difference is that in American Graffiti, you know, they go up to one end, there's a malt shop or whatever, and they turn around and they go back down the same street.
John: Yes, right.
John: It was, you know, a city of one way streets because it was part of the American experiment.
Merlin: Oh, no.
John: Oh, no.
John: And the two streets, Northern Lights and Benson, one headed Northern Lights headed west and Benson headed east.
John: They're each five lanes wide because Anchorage was built as an American experiment.
John: It's not an expressway.
John: It goes from stoplight to stoplight to stoplight, but it's five freaking lanes across.
Merlin: They planned for that to be not a highway, but suburban sort of?
John: No, it just goes right through the middle of town, and it is a massive- Any town USA, five lanes wide, one-way streets.
John: Yep, there's a Sears Mall, and then there's a Chuck E. Cheese, and then there's a-
John: Long's Drugs.
John: Little pink houses, yeah.
John: It's just part of the town.
John: And cruising was such a massive part of Anchorage culture that it was like the 50s and early 60s.
John: It was like the mid-60s, I guess, where if you were a teenage boy or a boy in his 20s, your car mattered so much.
John: Oh, my God, yes.
John: And there were so many muscle cars and muscle trucks that
John: and you would line up at the stoplight, and you're only going one block.
John: At every stoplight, it would be six cars deep, five lanes across, of the most incredible muscle cars you ever saw.
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: Because there wasn't much else to do?
Merlin: Yes, thank you.
Merlin: No, no, I just mean in the sense of if you had a car, that was probably a kind of unmissable occasion, especially if you had a neat car.
John: it was every friday and saturday night and you would go all and oh and this is the other thing northern lights and benson they're both five miles long and so you'd get down to you'd get all the way down to uh to spinard everybody would take a left on spinard
John: And then everybody would take another left on Benson and come all the way back down.
John: And there were no bars.
John: There were no malt shops.
John: This becomes important.
John: It was just a giant circle of people going...
John: And I don't think anybody was older than 26, and it went down as young as you could be if you could find somebody to drive.
John: Like Mackenzie Phillips.
John: Or a friend that had a car.
John: Yeah, right.
John: And then if you were just a kid with his parents who was trying to go out on a Friday or Saturday night, then you're in this, you know, just like... And guys would peel out, but they could only go as far as the next stoplight.
John: It was hugely impressionable.
John: But it's kind of cool.
Merlin: It just occurs to me right now because I've had 74 minutes of sleep.
Merlin: It occurs to me it's a little bit like Halloween for older teens.
Merlin: Because what's neat about Halloween, for most kids anyway, is everybody dresses up.
Merlin: You're both audience and performer.
Merlin: when you're doing Halloween.
Merlin: And isn't that kind of also a component of the strip driving culture?
John: Hugely.
John: Because kids would pull off into parking lots because it was an American experiment.
John: There were a lot of parking lots along the way.
John: And they would pull off and they'd point their headlights at the road and they'd line up kind of diagonal in parking lots.
John: And then they could get out and sit on the hoods of their cars and watch people go by.
John: And then if you're going by, you can look at them and their hot cars.
John: and it was just it hot car was a currency like halloween parade elementary school where you go through all the classrooms exactly i mean it was and it was i honestly have to say so great and it was for sure dudes that were scary like for me as a 14 year old it was they were this was a very real place that you could that everybody was things can go wrong
John: Yeah, you could definitely get somebody to hold you upside down and bounce you until the change falls out of your pockets.
Merlin: Quit it.
John: It seemed like.
Merlin: My ankles hurt.
Merlin: Quit it.
Merlin: Ow.
John: Ow.
Merlin: That would be Charles.
Merlin: What's that guy's name?
Merlin: Charles Strother Martin?
Merlin: No, it's that one guy.
Merlin: You know the nerdy guy who's in and the band played on?
Merlin: You know the guy with the glasses in American Defeati.
Merlin: I don't know why I'm so fixated on American crime.
John: But it is.
John: And it's another one of those things where during my teenage years, it seemed like things like that were absolutely inviolate.
John: Like they were going to be forever.
John: They had been forever, and it would go forever.
John: And this was the American experiment.
John: This is what it was.
John: You had a great car, and you drove around in circles on Friday night.
John: And that was how you met your wife.
Merlin: And really, by that point, you could feel like it's a pretty successful experiment.
Merlin: Like cars have been around in one way or another, popularly since the teens, into the, you know, there's been the whole driving around.
Merlin: We invented teenagers some point in the mid-50s.
Merlin: And then there's got the disposable income and whatnot.
Merlin: Look at me, I'm Paul Krugman.
Merlin: But it makes sense that that would happen.
Merlin: And then do you feel like...
Merlin: Do you feel like there was a, as you like to say, an interreg in them?
Merlin: No, it ran straight through, right?
Merlin: I mean, there's always somebody who drove them around in a car.
John: Yeah, for sure.
John: Except for two things.
John: And one of them was all of these were 60s and 70s cars because 80s cars sucked.
John: Oh, hey, you guys pile into my Type 2 Mustang.
John: Yeah, right.
John: Or pile into my dad's Dodge, you know, whatever those little K cars were.
John: Oh, my God, yes.
John: There was already, like, if you were cruising the Strip in 1972, you could put all your money together and go buy a 1972, you know, Chevelle or a 72 Trans Am.
Merlin: That was the thing.
Merlin: You could buy some old Mopar thing and fix it up yourself.
Merlin: And, like, the parts were widely available.
Merlin: You get a Chilton book.
John: You get $40 worth of tools and Bob's your uncle.
John: Except in 1983, all those cars had to be 10 years old because of something.
John: Smog restrictions and American Democrats.
John: Get that lead out of your gas.
John: 55 miles per hour.
Merlin: Do you have your seatbelt on?
John: There was already, I think, probably a feeling, at least among the old heads, that this was already a vintage car rally in a way.
John: We weren't making any more of these.
John: And this was, and it added maybe to the defiance of it.
Merlin: This goes back to the Mustang, the post Mustang.
Merlin: I mean, you know this way better than I ever would, but like the post Mustang boom in, you know, in muscle cars, the only good part of that terrible TV show duster is the car.
John: that's right they used to make some fucking cars you know what that duster was an econo box in most cases but there were only a few of them that had like three 40s in them that were hot rods but that that's a that's right could you drop a bigger one in oh for sure there was a the the dodge dart swinger you could put a 440 in and the engine my friend sam had a swinger it had a little daisy dotting the eye because most of them most of them had a slant six which is america's greatest motor that's and that was a lady car wasn't that a lady car
John: It was a little bit of a lady car, but they lasted forever.
John: I think the FBI drove the four-door version of them.
Merlin: The Dodge Dart went a lot further than one would normally remember.
Merlin: Especially given how long that brand ended up, the longevity of that brand.
Merlin: I think the Dart was around, I'd have to look it up, but I'm pretty sure it was around longer than people think.
John: I think if they hadn't rusted out, all those cars would still be driving because the motors were bulletproof.
Merlin: So you were saying in 1993, it already feels like it's not like you're going to bring in whatever your mom's LTD or something.
John: Right.
John: And so even now, if there was a strip to cruise and you were going to cruise it, you'd have to do it in a 1972 car because what would be the point of doing it in a Sebring?
John: You couldn't do it in a Toyota.
John: Right.
John: a citation there were a couple of kids who showed up on the strip with the only new cars that you could that you could rep which were those new corvettes that were kind of you know that were like um
John: Shaped like a wedge.
John: The new Thunderbirds looked like an ibuprofen, too.
John: I don't think they were super powerful.
John: But they were sedans.
John: And then there were those ones that had SVO engines or whatever.
John: But they didn't.
John: Well, that's not the same.
John: And then, of course, there were kids whose dad had a Porsche.
John: But it was usually a 928 or something.
John: And you could just see, like, yeah.
John: What you're repping is that you're rich, not that you're...
John: Not that you're rad.
Merlin: I wish I'd figured that out when I was a little younger.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
John: Yeah, for sure.
Merlin: Yeah, it's like when you see people interviewed on cable news and they got like four Rickenbackers hanging on the wall and you're like, I don't know.
John: But it was also, you know, not to...
John: Not to steal from what's-his-but George Washington on Saturday Night Live comedian.
John: There's no way to know.
John: America's sweetheart.
John: America's sweetheart from Indiana or whatever.
John: It's impossible to know.
John: But, you know, like he said, community college is for when you're probably going to stay in your community.
John: And cruising for sure.
John: If you were going to college, you did cruising a little bit as a cosplay and you knew that you were.
John: So cruising was for people that were going to live in Anchorage.
Merlin: Maybe if you're going to college, like you knew you were going to college and had the money lined up and everything.
Merlin: Like it wasn't like a tent pole part of your future plans.
John: That's right.
John: Your hot rod car was not going to define you because you were going to go to the University of Arizona and have a hot rod car down there.
John: big party so my first car was a was a fiat spider and I remember six it again Tony 16 years old and and 15 days I was out on the strip with top down and with
John: three girls sitting on the back of the trunk and my and a girl in the passenger seat sprung from cages on highway nine and i thought i was the hottest shit in the universe she felt spider and i was i literally like how much more of a of a hot shot could you be my car's got
John: Oh, man.
John: And they're all sitting up and having a, you know, like in a situation.
John: Do you remember what year it was?
John: Well, sure.
John: I just turned 16.
John: So it would have been.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: Sorry.
Merlin: What year the Fiat Spider was?
John: Oh, I sure do.
John: It was a 1974 Fiat Spider.
Sure.
John: Yeah.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: I bet a lot of people died in that car.
John: Oh, they're dying even still?
Merlin: If you take care of it, you can't have people die in your car forever.
Merlin: Remember to change the oil.
Merlin: Hey, guys, if you own a VW camper, really make sure to keep that oil topped off.
Merlin: That's right.
John: I mean, in this one, it was going to rust before it broke, is the first rule of those things.
John: But you know, I look at 16-year-olds now, and they're all playing Dungeons and Dragons in an abandoned store at the mall.
John: But over the top, there's a banner that says, I used to play laser tag here.
John: And we were out like going from stoplight to stoplight, basically in a death trap.
John: It's a suicide trap.
John: Yeah.
John: And it was all just a big American experiment and it didn't last.
John: It's gone.
John: It's all gone.
Merlin: It's also, I wouldn't want to harsh our mellow, but it also brings up something that's, I don't know.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I think about a lot.
Merlin: As somebody who's, I finally realized over time that a lot of things that were frustrating for me, I'll just keep it simple.
Merlin: A lot of the things that made me very frustrated in high school, in retrospect, come out of living in a place where you had to have a car to do anything.
Merlin: But car was also a status symbol.
Merlin: It's like, it's real complicated.
Merlin: I don't want to get super into it.
Merlin: But
Merlin: In the attempt, for example, I remember my probably, as we say, sophomore year, 10th grade, that was when MAD was really catching on.
Merlin: And there was, I mean, really a lot of people were, you know, dying or getting horribly injured or killing other people and drunk driving and, you know, blah, blah, blah.
Merlin: And so they did the whole thing where they parked a wrecked car in front of the school and all that kind of stuff.
Merlin: And on the one hand, I feel like, again, to get all Krugman here, this is one of those unintended consequences things where you say, well, like...
Merlin: You know, we don't want people out, you know, drinking and driving, but you also, you don't want teenagers to drink anywhere.
Merlin: You don't have any, there's no place we're allowed to go anywhere.
Merlin: And on top of it all, yeah, cars are a status symbol and one of your friends has one.
Merlin: So we would like drive across a causeway drinking and then stop drinking on the other side because there was likely to be fewer police cars.
Merlin: No, I mean, I'm not proud of this at all.
Merlin: But I am saying like, and I'm not asking for sympathy at being an underage drinker.
Merlin: But, you know, kids are going to kid.
Merlin: They're going to do stuff.
Merlin: And like when you make a car the locus of activity and status, we oughtn't be surprised when people start doing more stuff in cars.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
John: Well, and building towns to suit cars.
Merlin: It's a kind of American experiment.
John: A little bit.
John: I mean, for me, I was the guy at 16 driving down the street with all these girls in my hot rod car, but I didn't lose my virginity until I was 20.
John: So the whole thing was part of a cosplay.
Merlin: Interesting set of connections.
John: Yes.
John: Yeah.
John: None of what I was repping was... Was leading to closing the deal.
John: Well, the, and that's the thing I think in the language of the strip, what I was repping was not true in my own language.
John: This was, I was giving a ride to my friends on the strip and they were having really fun sitting on the trunk.
John: And so within our culture, it was real what I was doing.
John: Interesting.
John: This was not, and I wasn't driving pretending that all these girls were my girlfriends.
John: They were just my friends and we were on the strip.
Merlin: And everybody's playing with identity a little bit.
Merlin: Everybody's trying stuff on.
John: Yeah, all the girls that were in that car were all going away to schools, and none of them would ever live in Alaska again.
John: Oh, Jesus.
Merlin: But for those weekends... I lived with that for a year, and I hated it.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: Just that constant feeling, especially because I had... It's funny, when I was in high school, most of my friends were a year or two older.
Merlin: And then after high school, I still had some friends from...
Merlin: They're a year or two below me including these two girls who are models who for some reason would hang out sometimes and they were really nice and we had a lot of fun and like one of them was super into the Velvet Underground in 1986 which I thought was kind of cool and She created she had a she actually had a band called 13 dead cats Which is a pretty pretty obscure reference for 1986 and she was a model
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And anyways, but they'd be talking about college.
Merlin: And I'm like, oh, well, the cute girls are going to drop me off.
Merlin: I'm going to go back to my house and read Sarch and hope my cold sore heels.
Merlin: College.
Merlin: College.
Merlin: Now, wait, did you take a year off before college?
Merlin: Let's put it that way.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: I took a year off.
Merlin: I think I understand.
Merlin: Call it a gap year.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: If it was little, you could call it a bye year.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: So you stayed an extra year so you could play varsity football.
John: Yeah, absolutely.
John: I was a redshirt senior.
John: I was a walk-on and a walk-off in a lot of ways.
John: You know, I took a year off from college before I went.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: Look what it did for us.
John: Here we are.
Merlin: Yeah, it's confusing.
Merlin: It's all very confusing.
Merlin: Anyway, you know, you go to war with the culture you have, not with the culture that you might prefer.
Merlin: And I think a lot of times, I'm not going to go, I haven't slept a lot, and I'm not going to go, I'm not mad, I'm not going to go off on this thought technology, but I'm telling you.
Merlin: That's not your way.
Merlin: No, it's not.
Merlin: But people and ideas, I'm just saying.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Yeah, cars used to be a pretty big deal.
John: Yeah, they were.
John: There were so many things.
John: This has got to be true.
John: This is the problem of presentism, right?
John: Where everybody thinks that what is true right now is going to be true forever and has been true forever.
John: And I for sure suffered from it in the 80s.
John: What did you call that?
Merlin: What was the word you used?
Merlin: Sorry.
Merlin: Presentism.
Merlin: Presentism.
Okay.
John: Where you think, yeah, it's always been exactly like this, but nobody's recognized it until now.
John: And it will always be like this.
John: Now that it's today, I finally understand the context for everything.
John: Yeah, now it's totally an emergency or it will always be like this.
John: And, you know, I said to my doctor the other day, because he's like...
John: my doctor is such a dick and I don't like him at all.
John: But I think it's all getting worse.
John: I came into his office with my blood test and he was like, well, you have the American triumvirate.
John: uh you've got blood pressure high blood pressure high diet high cholesterol cholesterol and now diabetes are you pre-diabetes i was like come on man and he was like look i don't he's and he's you know chinese so he's like this is just americans this is what you get for living here it's the price you pay for having microwave ovens and you know and stop lights that work
John: And I was like, I guess.
John: That's not a very nice thing for him to say.
John: No, and he says something like that to me all the time.
John: Did he kind of go on about it for a while?
John: Oh, that's the thing.
John: And then at the end of this, I'm like, so what am I supposed to do?
John: And he was like, well, we're already over time because this was only a 15-minute appointment.
John: And I said, I didn't make a 15-minute appointment.
John: I made a doctor's appointment.
John: Then he asked you to play Russian roulette while his friends bet on you.
John: Well, it was for sure.
John: I was like, fuck you, dude.
Merlin: And he was like, make another appointment.
Merlin: I totally agree.
Merlin: And I mean, that also kind of attaches itself to the whole social media thing where it's like, did you know that you said Rutherford B. Hayes when you actually met James K. Polk?
Merlin: And my inclination is always to say, yeah, I fixed it in post.
Merlin: Just redownload it.
John: Fix it in post.
John: It's different now.
John: Fix it in post, Tony.
John: But so I went back to him after three weeks of wandering around going, what the hell all that means?
John: And he's like, I said, look, I mean, I eat as much sugar as I want, but I still don't feel like I'm at diabetes level.
John: And he said...
John: Well, the problem is that Americans have diabetes because of something that's in the groundwater or something they put in the fertilizer.
Merlin: Affluenza, they call it, John.
John: Affluenza.
Merlin: You get rich man's diseases.
Merlin: You get shit like gout and small cell carcinoma.
Merlin: Yeah, you get gout.
John: And so I said, well, what am I supposed to do?
John: And he said, you're supposed to take medicine, I guess.
John: And I was like, you mean to tell me that I'm going to be taking this medicine?
John: I really hate this guy.
John: I know.
John: I think this guy might also be treating my mom.
John: He's a shit.
John: I don't fucking know.
John: That's right.
John: And I'm like, well, fuck you.
John: And he's like, well, you know.
John: It's your shitty cancer, not mine.
John: I said, you're telling me I got to take this.
John: Oh, and then I said, well, what about Ozempic?
John: Everybody I know is taking Ozempic.
John: People love Ozempic.
John: You put it in your tummy and then you lose up to 46 pounds.
John: And he was like, man, Ozempic, blah, blah, blah.
John: And I said, well, wait a minute.
John: You're prescribing this medicine to me.
John: How is this medicine different from Ozempic?
John: And he said, oh, Ozempic is better than doing this.
John: I mean, Ozempic is better than the medicine I'm prescribing.
John: It will have a long-term better effect, although we're not 100% sure about that.
John: And also, it has all these side effects that you might enjoy, like losing weight and this, that, and the other.
John: It changes the kind of food you want to eat, is what I heard.
John: That's right.
John: And I said, well, why aren't you prescribing me Ozempic if it's better in every way?
John: This is a terrific question.
John: Yeah, thank you.
John: And he said, well, because your insurance won't cover Ozempic's $1,000 a month.
John: Stop me gently.
Merlin: But you also... Go.
John: Go.
John: He said, and this pill I'm prescribing you is $7 a month.
John: So what do you want?
John: And I was like, this is terrible.
John: And that's more of the problems with the American experiment, right?
John: Yeah.
John: And so then I said, you're telling me I'm going to take this handful of pills for the rest.
John: So far, Mr. Feelgood, you have prescribed me six pills and none of them make me feel good.
John: I mean, they don't make me feel bad, but it doesn't make me feel good.
John: I have to take them.
John: and he said well yeah you'll have to take them if medicine never improved or changed right and i was like what are you saying now and he was like well you don't think that ozempic is going to become a a generic drug and they're going to flood the market with them and it's going to be three dollars a pill and every single person in america is going to be on it and i was like oh yeah i guess i guess i thought that
John: He's like, for all you know, in 15 years, this is all going to be in a milkshake that tastes like blueberries.
John: But this all keeps coming back to this American problem, John.
Merlin: You fucked up.
Merlin: And now you want this sweet, precious man, this physician, to be able to sweep in and take all your bad American decisions and wrap them up in a tummy shot.
John: Yeah.
John: And then he said, you know what else?
John: The thing about the thing about the, he said, first of all, he was like the diabetes that you have, the type two, isn't anything like the type one.
John: And it will never do the type one thing where all of a sudden you, you have to have insulin and your life is an emergency.
John: Oh, he said diabetes type two will eventually do that.
John: If you live 900 years.
John: And I was like, this is making me even more confused.
John: And then he said, your risk of heart attack goes up if your diabetes also has high cholesterol affecting it.
John: And if it also has high blood pressure, now your chance of heart attack is you might not make it out of my office.
Merlin: It sounds like he's handicapping a horse a little bit.
John: Yeah.
John: And I'm like, this is making me feel bad.
John: And he was like, well, I don't know.
John: That's what you get for having stoplights at work.
John: And then he's like, our appointment's over.
John: And I feel like, where's the doctor that wants to talk to me for four hours about this and answer all my questions?
John: It's not my doctor.
John: It's not the internet, because the internet's just like, oh, you're already dead.
Merlin: I feel like I agree with all of this.
John: Thank you.
Merlin: Thank you.
Merlin: I'm a little tired.
Merlin: Yeah, you're a little tired.
Merlin: But the other thing is, I just feel like sometimes you talk to medical people, and it just seems like there's entire...
Merlin: Okay, I want to stipulate that I might accidentally, unintentionally, be one of those WebMD guys right now.
Merlin: We're like, I do go out and try to learn about things.
Merlin: Yes, sure.
Merlin: But with that said, I encounter medical people in my life and in other people's lives who it just seems like don't know about an entire broad swath of the medical needs...
Merlin: of people because like it just seems like i i can never get away from this feeling that first of all you have to remember when we talked about delta or was it delta or united united and trying to get help yeah sure remember that and like you said something i still think about a lot which was that you've got to find i forget how you put it but you said something like it was you and your kid i think and running around and like you have to find somebody who takes pity on you
Merlin: Or put another way, less histrionically, you need to find somebody who's willing to do the stupid fucking thing, the easy thing that they know how to do and you don't.
Merlin: In a lot of companies, if you're new to the company and you don't know where the washroom key is, you've got to find... But I feel like it's like that with doctors too, where you've got to prove to them that you're a good patient and you know how to handle authority being thrown at you and all of this stuff.
Merlin: And if you don't
Merlin: I don't know what it is.
Merlin: But then that just feeds into this bigger thing I have, which is that doctors, of all people, this is my reckoning about this.
Merlin: I think it's true of a lot of people, but more often than we think doctors, they fix the problem they feel like solving.
Merlin: Whether that's because of the amount of time until the next person comes in, whatever it is.
Merlin: And I'll just tell you, I got real world, up to the minute,
Merlin: first and secondhand experiences within the last, say, 60 calendar days of like some pretty mind-boggling stuff where it feels like they just skipped a whole bunch of what's happening in the world of patient care.
Merlin: Whether that's crossing over to a need for a psychiatric drug, whether that's understanding the series of dependencies that are involved in getting this
Merlin: blood test or finding somebody who finally realizes, oh, I guess we really should look at all the medicine that's auto refilling for you.
Merlin: Because that's no particular person's job as far as I can tell.
Merlin: So like the time that my mom was on a morphine patch for months on auto refill and didn't know it.
Merlin: My mom was on a different pill recently that I was a little bit surprised to learn that she was taking because I'm aware of something I've taken and I'm aware of the... Here's the thing I had to explain to my mom.
Merlin: This is a painful thing to explain to a 90-year-old person.
Merlin: Here's the thing.
Merlin: It is possible.
Merlin: So sometimes you take a drug and you feel like, what do you say?
Merlin: You say, oh, it's not doing anything or it's not doing enough or like it's not really doing the thing.
Merlin: You know what sucks about that situation?
Merlin: You keep taking that pill.
Merlin: You could still be addicted even if it's not helping you.
Merlin: You follow?
Merlin: Ouch.
Merlin: I mean, does that correlate with, say, for example, vodka?
Merlin: Oh, for sure.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: And I think it also stops working after a while.
Merlin: But if you're like a good example that I mean, you can chime in if you want.
Merlin: A good example is a drug called Lamictal or Lamotrigine, which is a very I think it's on label for anti epileptic.
Merlin: But it works really well as a personality and mood stabilizer, especially as an adjunct to other drugs.
Merlin: Is it fair to say you're familiar with this drug?
Merlin: Oh yes, I know it well.
Merlin: So I have half a dozen friends that in the time after I'd started taking it to emotionally subsidize the effects of Adderall to like, to like keep things sort of, you know, even, but you know, a lot of people have taken it and we've all had this conversation between us, which is like, man, was it crazy when your doctor prescribed this?
Merlin: Oh my God, it was so crazy.
Merlin: Cause my doctor, he was a serious man, but like he got really fucking serious.
Merlin: Do you remember ramping up?
John: He's like, look.
John: Your skin's going to turn to pus and fall off and you'll die.
Merlin: Mr. WebMD, you might actually want to Google what this looks like because if you fuck this up, you're going to die.
Merlin: There's not that many boxes of drugs that have a black box on them that say you'll die if you take this wrong.
Merlin: So you've got to ramp up.
John: It's like if you've got any sign of a rash anywhere on your body, stop taking it immediately and go to the hospital.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And ramp and ramp and ramp and ramp.
Merlin: And it's one of those like, hey, buckle in.
Merlin: Like this happens also with the way I've ramped up with various other kinds of actual ADHD drugs where it's like I'm taking this thing for weeks and nothing's happening.
Merlin: It's like, yeah, we're still ramping up, ramping up, ramping up.
Merlin: So the thing is you got to ramp up.
Merlin: But guess what?
Merlin: There's only one thing in this goddamn world more important than ramping up on Lamictal.
Merlin: And what's that?
Merlin: Oh, you got to ramp it down.
Merlin: You better ramp down.
Merlin: it's like getting off prednisone or something, but with this especially, like there's all kinds of, like with prednisone, your body, you know what, all you doctor types, fine.
Merlin: It's my understanding that when you're on prednisone, your body is less likely to create its own steroids.
Merlin: And so you've got to be careful with that.
Merlin: In this case,
Merlin: There's just all kinds of stuff that can go super wrong.
Merlin: And here's the thing.
Merlin: Here's what I found with Lamictal, going on and off it a little bit a couple times before I finally did the long taper title, was that...
Merlin: I wasn't noticing it helping that much.
Merlin: But when I stopped taking it, I did notice a little bit of a difference.
Merlin: But let's say it was doing nothing for me.
Merlin: Does that change the fact that I still got to ramp down?
John: You got to ramp it down.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: Do you follow me, though, that those are completely unrelated?
Merlin: And, like, doctors, they're like the wise men and the camel or whatever, or grabbing which part of the elephant.
Merlin: You never know what kind of person's obsessions you'll be dealing with.
Merlin: Some people really hate... Some doctors hate generic drugs.
Merlin: Some doctors hate brand name drugs.
Merlin: Some doctors don't like LabCorp.
Merlin: Like, there's just all these weird things.
Merlin: I mean, they're like rock guitarists.
Merlin: They're all so fucking weird about all of this stuff.
Merlin: And there's nobody who gives you a...
Merlin: In my experience, I don't even get the feeling of even three-quarters insight into what my options are, where we are, what's happening, and a sense that there's somebody who knows more about this than I do keeping an eye on how we're doing with this.
John: Based on the people that I see in my doctor's waiting room, my doctor caters to a less affluent and I think in a lot of cases, an audience of people that are not going to advocate for their own medical care.
John: They're at the doctor because they actually have a problem and he's going to either fix it or not, but they're not going to have conversations about it.
John: And he that's where this 15 minute appointment bananas ritual.
Merlin: He's very familiar with the low cost options and he's making it up with volume.
John: So I said to him as he's trying to shoot, he's like, we've already gone 15 minutes over because you asked too many questions.
John: So anyway, and I'm like, yeah, I've got I've got questions.
John: You're my doctor.
John: I've got questions.
John: Who do you ask medical questions to, sir?
John: And I said, before you shoo me out of here, I have another question, and that is that my left foot is still numb from that helicopter skiing trip that I took in January.
John: And he said, yeah, and?
John: And I said, what do you mean?
John: You're my doctor.
John: Like, is it diabetes?
John: And he said, no, there's no way that in six months you have in your diabetes type two, you know, cusp.
John: Is it causing numbness in your foot?
John: You should ask him if there's something called sudden onset diabetes.
John: Sudden onset diabetes.
John: He said, no, you don't have any of it.
John: And I said, 74 minutes of sleep.
John: So what's going on with my left foot?
John: And he said, here are the three options.
John: One, you stunned it.
John: Same doctor, right?
John: Same doctor?
John: Same doctor.
John: He said, one, you stunned it and then it comes back.
John: Well, that's not it because it's been six months.
John: So we can eliminate that.
John: And I was like, okay.
John: And he said, two, you killed some of the nerves and it takes a while for them to grow back.
John: So you killed them up to your knee or something.
John: And then they gradually grow back and then you get feeling back.
John: We can eliminate that possibility because it's been six months and you haven't done it.
John: So the third possibility is that the nerves died all the way back to your spine and it takes them up to a year and a half to grow back down to your foot again, which they will do.
John: This sounds so made up.
John: And I was like, okay.
John: And he said, the nerves are extremely resilient.
John: They will probably keep growing back and your feeling will return.
John: But he said, here's your other option.
John: Nothing.
Nothing.
John: you're gonna what are you gonna do you're gonna pay eight thousand dollars to go to an osteopath or to a you know move to a better country when you're eight instead of this instead look at you look at you look at how you are that's all because america but what he said was there's nothing you can do so you can continue to pursue some diagnosis of it but then what does that do for you and i was like this guy sounds a little depressed
John: Well, he's the one when I fucked up my knee two summers ago, he was like, well, he said, your knee looks like it's still together.
John: So leave it.
John: And I said, I think it's, I think I should go to, uh, to other doctors.
John: And he was like, well, you can do that if you want to throw money down the toilet, but they're all, it's going to result in them telling you to leave it.
John: And I was like, I think you're a crank.
John: And I went through the whole process.
John: I got an MRI.
John: I went to a total asshole doctor who was one of these guys.
John: It's like, I work for the Seahawks.
John: I barely care whether you live or die.
John: And I spent months and months and thousands of dollars.
John: And in the end, it was like, leave it.
John: And my goddamn, like, go screw yourself, Chinese doctor, who's like, your 15 minutes are up.
John: In the end, when you're 56, which I am, so much of medicine is like, meh.
Merlin: I mean, it's... I believe that to be very true.
Merlin: But, like, this guy sounds like he's very...
John: uh conservative with what your options are he's a bully but you know it's just one of these like yeah you know uh our listener ben king our friend ben king uh his shoulder was all fucked up oh i'm sorry because he's a motorcyclist and he uses his body hard
John: And the doctors were like, you don't want to get a shoulder replacement because you want to wait because they only you can only really do it once and they only last 25 or so years.
John: So you want to wait so that the shoulder replacement lasts until you die.
John: And Ben King said, I'm 50 now.
John: Yeah.
John: I don't want a shoulder.
John: I don't care about a shoulder when I'm 80.
John: I care about a shoulder now.
Merlin: If it gets worse, is it better to be in the condition I'll be then than now?
John: yeah i'm 50 years old i got shit to do i got teenage kids and you've got my shoulder taped to my body in order that what i wait until i'm 60 and then you know i spend the the best 10 years of my life with my shoulder fucked up and so he basically yelled he insisted
John: Do my shoulder now, you fucks, and we'll worry about it later.
John: And in most cases, I would say, well, you know, kick the can down the road.
John: And in this case, I was just like utterly convinced by his logic.
John: He got his shoulder fixed, and now he's kicking ass and taking names again.
John: Really?
John: No regret.
John: No regerts.
John: No regerts.
John: And this was him advocating for his own care.
John: Yes.
John: And making that decision.
John: It wasn't a flip of the coin.
John: He was like, I did the math on this.
John: And if my shoulder is taped together with bailing wire in 25 years, it's A...
John: it's going to be crazy to everybody that I lived that, I lived 25 years from now.
John: Do you know I drive a motorcycle?
John: And B, you know, 25 years from now, it might all be fixed with a blueberry milkshake.
John: Yeah.
John: Or, you know, 25 years from now, the magnetic pole might have switched and all of our hair is standing up from static electricity.
John: Who knows?
John: See, that's going to change a lot of stuff.
John: Yeah.
John: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: When the poles flip.
Merlin: Yeah, there's a lot of these stories.
Merlin: I have a friend of mine who wanted to get something looked at.
Merlin: It's the same story.
Merlin: I can anonymize this very quickly.
Merlin: You go to one doctor.
Merlin: The doctor was kind of a dick and said, look, if you want this done, there's this one.
Merlin: There seems to be a running theme here.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I am fully – I'm not apologizing for this.
Merlin: I'm fully aware that I have a lot of problems with authority.
Merlin: It's only in the last couple of years that I realize really where that comes from, which is way too much to get into for now.
Merlin: But I – no, I have –
Merlin: You remember in, like, whatever that is, fifth grade, when you learned the basics of rhetorics.
Merlin: And, like, that's when you first learned.
Merlin: This might be the first time.
Merlin: Whatever you think about your first exposure to things like confirmation bias and faulty logic and reasoning.
Merlin: And, like, we all kind of breeze by appeal to authority really quickly.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: And then go, okay, here's the chapter where we talk about Milgram and blah-da-da-blah.
John: Everybody wants to use the ad hominem so they can yell it at each other on the Internet.
Merlin: Yeah, or impersonate Jackie Gleason.
Merlin: Homina, hominem, hominem.
Merlin: Anyways.
Merlin: Wait, what was I talking about?
Merlin: Errors.
Merlin: Oh, appeals to authority.
Merlin: Okay, so like...
Merlin: You know, there's a thing, there's a famous New York financier who got into trouble a few years ago.
Merlin: And I was rewatching a documentary about what that fellow was up to.
Merlin: And it's funny how you notice certain threads kind of keep coming up.
Merlin: A thing that, whilst I was watching that with my wife, because the theme that I bring up a lot, because I'm a crank, there's no other word for it.
Merlin: I said, look, see, see, see.
Merlin: I'm saying this to you now too, John.
Merlin: Yeah, see.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I can't say this is unique in any way.
Merlin: I want to just lay this down.
Merlin: It was me growing up in Cincinnati, Ohio, mostly in the 1970s.
Merlin: Really, there's the fullness of the 1970s.
Merlin: But, you know, cool family, fantastic church, good schools, like everything.
Merlin: You know, we didn't have a lot of money.
Merlin: But, you know, whatever.
Merlin: But, like, you...
Merlin: You learn pretty early on, especially the way even I was kindly brought up, is sometimes there's going to be stuff you have to do.
Merlin: Adults will make you do it.
Merlin: You just have to do it because an adult said it.
Merlin: Eventually, you learn that when any adult says you do something, you have to do it and that you will get in trouble in major ways.
Merlin: Whether that's, let's just start with your parents, your grandparents, your teacher, your principal, your Sunday school teacher.
Merlin: But that really goes for any adult.
Merlin: So when we look back, when we're watching Mindhunter, and like the way that somebody, remember...
Merlin: You said a long time ago, every room you walk into, act like you own the place and nobody will bother you.
Merlin: That's the authority of every adult in my childhood.
Merlin: And I was raised to believe you never say no to any adult about anything.
Merlin: Just...
Merlin: It's a total appeal to authority, because that's their job.
Merlin: All adults, and John Mulaney's had funny bits about this.
Merlin: You know, my parents would believe any accusation.
Merlin: They believed the guy with the clown in the white van looking for his puppy before they'd ever believe me.
Merlin: You always believe every kid is stupid.
Merlin: I don't know if this makes sense where I'm going with this, but I decided I'm really fucking sick of that.
Merlin: I'm at length now fully sick of being...
Merlin: led to believe that I'm stupid, incompetent, in your case, unhealthy, that I've made bad choices, whatever it is, and therefore, anybody who decides they're in a position of authority can tell me what to do, and I have to do it and thank them.
Merlin: And I don't want to be a dick about it, but I feel like more of that...
Merlin: for all of us without having to be a dick about it is pretty wholesome think about what would happen if you went to that doctor this is a fantasy i've had for years if i had unlimited resources i would do this all the time imagine you said to that doctor you go back and you say hey really interesting i took the results and your notes and everything um you know do you know um professor wilkinson
Merlin: you know, Dr. Dynamitron, whatever.
Merlin: Like all the people who were his mentors and teachers.
Merlin: I just want to let you know, I got three more opinions and it's from three people who taught you.
Merlin: And then I asked them, I paid a little more and I asked them to take a crack at how well you've handled this so far.
Merlin: If you knew that somebody was going to check your work,
Merlin: That you were being observed, not because of the panopticon of the super state, but that you were being observed by people to make sure that you're doing your job well on a day-to-day basis.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I don't want to make trouble for people who have a tough job.
Merlin: But I really feel like somebody like that, and I've seen it in that other example I gave a minute ago, first doctor's an asshole and says, all that is available for you is this extreme procedure.
Merlin: Next person, super nice person says, yeah, you could do the extreme procedure, but there's all kinds of flexibility to how we do that.
Merlin: Did another guy mention there's this other procedure that might get you the thing you're looking for if you don't need everything in the big procedure?
Merlin: That's two doctors.
John: Yeah, but the problem is with all of this is that people like that don't go to medical school.
Merlin: No, people who are good at bio in 10th grade, it's like people don't get into computer programming for the meetings.
John: Yeah, right.
John: No, it's all about people like that.
John: I don't know what they go into.
John: Cops.
John: They become cops or doctors.
John: I guess so.
John: The other day, yesterday, no, two days ago, I was in the parade, the Seafair parade.
John: And it's a huge traffic jam.
John: Oh, just the one where you were the Neptune one time?
John: I was the Neptune.
John: And I'm with my daughter and she's just at the age because lately I've been trying to do the opposite of what you're saying, which is to say to her, listen, you're 14.
John: You're a good kid.
John: Because she said at one point she was like, I just I was like, why are you upset right now?
John: And she was like, I just don't want to disappoint you.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: And I was like, look, you can't disappoint me in the way that you're saying you are a great kid.
John: And if I say like, hey, pick up your dirty clothes, or if I say like, did you try your hardest on that?
John: It's not because I'm disappointed.
John: I'm here as an advocate for you.
John: But so what I've started to say to her is nobody's in charge of you.
John: You know, you're not people are going to tell you you're in trouble, but you're not because you're a good kid.
John: You're nobody needs to bully you into submission like and at least of all me.
John: But she's a law-arbeiter and so forth.
Merlin: I had a similar thing with mine.
Merlin: Just wants to know what the rules are and is happy to abide and make sure that they're working for everybody.
John: But Dad is a little bit further out on that spectrum than she's ever going to be.
John: And we're driving through this massive traffic jam.
John: There's thousands of people and traffic's just inching along.
John: And I look up ahead and there's a roadblock covered with cops.
John: And they're directing everybody down to one lane.
John: And I looked at this situation and on the other side of the roadblock, it's the parade grounds, right?
John: They've blocked off the road.
John: It's the whole road with people sitting on the sides of the road, bunting.
John: And it's like, this is the parade.
John: The parade hasn't started and I'm gonna be in the parade.
John: But the parade starts at the opposite end of town.
John: So this is the open street that goes from where I'm standing right now to the other side of town, which is where I need to get to to be in the parade.
John: And I said, sweetheart, I know you're going to hate this, but keep your face placid because she's got a tiara on.
John: I'm wearing my pants.
John: king neptune suit is this going to become an example of walking in like you own the place sort of i said keep your face placid and i pulled out of of bad traffic i drove right up to the cop the cop's doing the thing where he's there's a roadblock there but he's still waving his hands like stop stop
John: And I drove up to him and didn't even roll my window down.
John: I just pointed at my sash.
John: I sat up straight and I was like, you know, kind of ran my hand down the sash like voila.
John: And he looked at it and it was a freaking sash that had King Neptune embroidered on it.
John: He didn't even check the date.
John: He looked at it because the date was in Roman numerals.
John: Ha ha ha ha!
John: Ha ha ha!
John: We looked at it.
John: The date was in Roman numerals.
John: Didn't teach you that in community college.
John: Here's this one cop who's been charged with this place.
John: And he looks at me and he shrugs, a theatrical shrug, and he walks over and moves the barricade.
John: Interesting.
John: I drive through.
John: How did she handle that?
John: Did she keep a straight face?
John: She kept a straight face, but you could hear her under her breath like, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.
John: And then we're in the middle of the street.
John: in the parade ground no other cars and there are cops everywhere and people in uniform people who are there to do this and i was like sweetheart this is an example of i'm saying this as we're driving slowly down the middle of the road i'm
John: This is an example of a thing you should never do but I think the thing is I know you'll never do it This is what makes your dad a very problematic person in the world if this was on the internet right now I would be getting just so flamed but it's not and if it is Fuck the world and she was like, oh my god.
John: Oh my god.
John: Oh my god And we drove the entire length of the parade right in the middle of the street
John: what hundreds of cops looking at me as i'm going by going you didn't have like an official sign or a pass or anything they just waved you through they're all going like what the what and i just drive past them and that's some jason born shit anybody that was close enough to the truck to try and make eye contact with me like what are you doing i just did the thing with my sash i just did voila the sash and
John: Every single one of them backed down.
John: They were all like, oh, okay.
John: He flashed a sash.
John: And it's like they say, if you put a hard hat on, you can go anywhere.
John: Yeah.
John: I drove all the way down until there are thousands of people.
Merlin: That's what BTK did in Mindhunter.
Merlin: You know, he worked for ADT.
Merlin: So he was out there all the time, rummaging around in people's houses, casing the joint from the inside.
Merlin: You know, it's a natural disguise.
John: Yeah.
John: You just have a reflective vest on.
John: Yeah, yeah, high viz.
John: And then we're driving, and there are grandstands on either side with thousands of people.
John: And we're driving through, not waving, just like everybody that's looking at me, like all the grand marshals and whatever, I'm just like, voila, on the sash.
John: And nobody has a chance to really examine it.
John: Talk about cruising, John.
John: We get all the way down to the other side, and there's a marathon on
John: happening where they're about the marathons being run at this moment you're in the blues brothers the finish line basically in blues brothers yeah yeah the finish line is there and there and here is a guy with a walkie talkie and he is not kidding and he stands he stops he stands in front of my truck
John: and I'm like oh no do you think he got a heads up from somebody else no I don't I think he's just like what the fuck and there's a big a big banner that says finish line and there's all this shit and he comes over and I'm like voila the sash and he says how did you get here and I said well the cops let me through and he said that's the worst idea I ever heard
John: And I said, ah, and he looks around and there's all these thousands of people, every road is blocked and he realizes he has no choice.
John: Oh my God.
John: And so he and his team, and now this is the part that would get me canceled on the internet if anybody knew about it, but thank God it's just you and me talking.
John: okay yeah he calls all these guys to take a woman's job or something yeah that's right uh this is just this is the privilege of a of a banner you know that's a it's a badge i got at the at the pawn shop of a sash but he had a half a dozen really big guys i don't know where they all were but he he called them all together and they moved the entire finish line
John: Off to the side.
John: Because it was all electronic to measure the times.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: You got that in your shoe or whatever.
John: If I had driven across it, because it had a whole element that was stretched across the ground.
John: If I had driven across it, I guess it would have ruined it.
John: He moves this whole thing, and he's like...
John: And he's yelling at me.
John: He's like, don't move your car until you're giving clear instructions.
John: This is an actual cop.
John: No.
John: This is a... It's just a paradesman.
John: It's a referee for the marathon.
John: I see.
John: Who is the first person who's decided...
John: This is like the prank where the guy is spraying chemicals, and I was the one that was like, hey, enough, you're done.
John: Right, right, right, right, right.
Merlin: But it's different from what those other roles were, because this is my circus, and this is my monkeys, and you're not driving that fucking car over here.
John: You're not driving it over my finish line.
John: No.
John: But he moves the whole thing, and he's just clowering at me, because there's a part of him in his heart that knows, you fucker, you fucker.
John: And I'm like, look, man, I got a sash and I made it this far.
John: I made it six miles down this road past tens of thousands of people.
John: You ain't the one.
John: And he's like, oh, I bet I got photographed a lot more than you did.
John: And I mean, imagining it from the grandstand as as one Ford Explorer.
Merlin: Now you're in a different John Landis movie.
Merlin: Now you're an animal house.
Merlin: When Stork, when Stork grabs the baton.
Merlin: He grabs the baton and now he's in charge of the band.
John: And so we get past the finish line and I just keep driving where there's still another mile of this parade ground.
John: And I get up to the very end of it and there's nowhere to go.
John: And I, it's the first time before, since the finish line, but at any point that I had to come to a stop.
John: And as I came to a stop, then there were cops everywhere.
John: oh no they were like what the hell are you doing and i did i did the sash and they were like but you know they the sash no longer played they were like but how where did you even come from because they're thinking every street is blocked off all the way to yesler like the streets are blocked off the entire way we know this to be true sir
John: We have a signed affidavit here saying that Michael Corleone is the boss of the five families.
John: You cannot have gotten here.
John: Michael Corleone did this.
John: Michael Corleone did that.
John: Let's just enjoy the holiday, everybody.
John: We're in the olive oil business.
John: They're like, you could not be here.
John: There is no possible way that your vehicle is here.
John: And I said, shrug and the thing.
John: You know, I did the thing over the sash.
John: Yeah.
John: But these were cops that had no stake in the game.
Merlin: And I said, look.
Merlin: And you could bet on it.
Merlin: This is a pause here.
Merlin: This is important.
Merlin: And you could suss out that they didn't want to do paperwork on this.
John: They didn't want to do paperwork.
John: And ultimately...
John: This is not their problem.
John: That's right.
John: And so the road that I'm kind of in front of, it's across railroad tracks, and then the whole road is blocked by cop cars parked sideways across the road.
John: I noticed we haven't gotten an update on how your daughter's doing in a while.
John: And then there's a barricade, right?
John: Then there's another barricade.
John: She must have been dying, John.
John: And she's just sitting there like, I'm like, keep your face placid.
John: You are not panicking right now.
John: You are fine.
John: You're with your dad, and your dad is a little bit outside of what the rules are now.
John: Did you gesture to your side?
John: I did.
John: Dad's just flying a little bit.
John: He's flying a little bit low.
John: He's flying under the ski lift.
John: This is not part of protocol.
Yeah.
Merlin: But we're not judged by how we do well when things are going great.
Merlin: Well, sometimes we are.
Merlin: We're especially judged by how we're doing when we fucked up.
John: Yeah, and this is the moment.
Merlin: That's what Billy Joel says.
John: Billy Joel says it's all about the recovery.
John: It's all about the recovery.
John: And this is the moment where it all comes home to root.
John: And the cops come over, and at this moment, you know, here's the internet really goes crazy.
John: Oh, dear.
John: Because I'm a 56-year-old white guy talking to 40-year-old white guys.
John: and i'm like hey fellas uh i gotta get to the thing i got the sash on i gotta get to the place so you guys gotta get me to the place and they're like get me to the sea on time and i point over to the cop to the cars that are blocking the road and i'm like all you gotta do is just move one of those cards and the barricade he's gonna roll them prowlers
John: And the cops look at each other and they look at me and they're basically like, yes, sir.
John: And the one, you know, rolls over, gets in the car, moves it, moves the barricade.
John: And then I pull up to him and I'm like, so where am I going to park?
John: Oh, no, you didn't.
John: And he says, well, we're not giving out tickets.
John: So why don't you just park right here, right here in front of the cop car?
John: Oh, John, this episode should never come out.
Merlin: And I said, but like, can I just say congratulations?
Merlin: Because that's what you, you closed the deal with that.
John: This is the whole game.
John: This, this doesn't even follow into, uh, this doesn't even follow into any kind of white privilege problem.
John: This is like something weird.
Merlin: We've covered play.
John: This is way above the pay grade of any normal cultural criticism, right?
John: This is just completely out of the thing.
John: And my daughter could, inside, her stomach looked like a map of the universe.
John: Like, you know, planets and comets and stuff.
John: But she's been in this situation before.
John: Dad has walked us into almost every, you know, and it's always like, this is not teaching her anything.
John: You've trained the people around you.
Merlin: I'm waiting for that phone to ring.
Merlin: Somebody asked me, was John with you last night?
Merlin: And I either say, I can't recall, or more likely, I'm pretty sure he was.
John: I've been saying this to my friends for years.
John: If somebody calls you and says, was John with you last night, say yes.
Merlin: Now, is that a mutual pact?
John: No one else is going to need it.
John: Talk about privilege, John.
John: If I got a phone call that was like, was Merlin with you last night?
John: I would say, yeah.
John: Merlin was here the whole night.
John: He was listening to Badfinger and crying.
John: Yeah, but I wouldn't say anything specific.
John: I'd be like, no, no, no, no, no.
John: Because who knows what story you told them.
John: I'm not going to say, oh, yeah, he had dinner.
John: Because they're going to say, well, he told us that he had dinner.
Merlin: They say that, well, I know for a fact, I've said this to you before.
Merlin: You know, when you give an excuse, only ever give one excuse.
Merlin: And also with lying, they say that one way, and I might have learned this from Mindhunter, which apparently I'm watching a lot of.
Merlin: But you don't want to overcomplicate your lies.
Merlin: You don't want to add unnecessary levels of detail.
John: And if they say, well, then what did you guys do?
John: I'm going to say, you know what?
John: I'm not comfortable talking about this.
John: So why don't we table this?
John: But so I say to the cop, where am I going to park?
John: And he's like, what about right here?
John: We're not giving out any tickets.
John: And I let him guide me into a park.
John: That's like not even a parking spot.
John: You're living the white dad dream we get out.
John: I give him a hearty salute as a guy with a sash on We walk into the we basically just walk over and walk into the reception where We want and that the reception is just starting.
John: I grabbed two roast beef sandwiches off of a platter We watch the thing as though we'd been here the whole time and then we got on the double-decker bus and
John: And I walk my little girl up to the front of the bus, and then we encountered the ultimate authority, which was Miss Seafair 1960.
John: Oh, is she the final boss set?
John: And she said, you guys aren't in the front of this bus.
John: I'm in the front of this bus.
Merlin: No, wait, was 1960 the year she won?
John: Yeah.
John: She's 75.
John: Yeah, I was gonna say, okay.
John: And she was like, you have reached the point where she's as old as the Battle of Midway.
John: There's no going past this because I'm Missy for 1960.
John: And so we had to sit, you know, three seats back.
John: And sat down and, you know, my daughter.
John: I bet she's punched some guys in the throat.
John: Oh, my God.
John: They all have.
John: Can you imagine what she's had to put up with?
John: Oh, my goodness.
John: Because they all have stories.
John: They're like, yeah, Sammy Davis Jr.
John: put his hand on my ass.
John: And it's like, I know.
John: My mother-in-law got felt up by Dylan Thomas.
John: See?
Merlin: It's a true story.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: He did a talk at Smith and put his hand up her skirt.
Merlin: The force that threw the green fuse.
Merlin: Terrible.
Merlin: He's a terrible guy.
Merlin: I got to go to bed.