Ep. 31: "Our Orange Franklin"
Hello.
Hey John.
Hi Merlin.
How's it going?
Good.
Yeah, it's early.
It is early.
I don't have enough coffee.
I just got a coffee, but I don't like it.
It's not a good coffee.
Yeah, I have that problem a lot, but I can overlook it in situations like this where it's early.
It seems like in your line of work, you, first of all, I mean, as, well, again, I wouldn't cut this out if we have to, but a man of your stature who's learned to harden himself to the world in so many unnecessary ways, it seems to me that in your line of work, you can't afford to become a coffee snob.
Right?
You're surrounded by a certain kind of coffee snobbery.
And yet, as a man, you don't know where you're going to wake up tomorrow.
You might need to go on the run.
You might need to go play a gig somewhere.
You might be at a Holiday Inn Express.
That's right.
I mean, you need your coffee.
I know, right?
You need your coffee, but you can't sit around and spend three hours like trying to find an artist in a coffee place.
I might be at a Holiday Inn Express where the breakfast consists of a crescent.
Like a little piece of the moon.
A crescent and some jam and jelly, but that is all sort of in the marmalade family.
No raspberry jam, just like orange jam.
Can I just be really honest with you, John?
I don't want to live on any fucking continent where that's a breakfast.
I'm afraid that the only place that that is a breakfast is in the American middle section.
Really, like, if you go to Europe, you've been to Europe, like, numerous times.
You go, and that is the titular continent of the breakfast.
Is that accurate?
Yes, well, the... So, the continental breakfast does have the... I'm sorry, even the word makes me angry and hungry.
It does have these elements, except it has been perverted and bastardized in America.
In Europe, the continental breakfast has fresh orange juice, a pot of delicious coffee, a hard-boiled egg, some blood sausage...
Maybe a piece of like calf brain, sliced thin.
And then there is not a crescent roll, but like a croissant or a hard brown nutty roll.
Some kind of German, you know, like doorstop roll.
Dust doorstopping.
Dust doorstopping.
And then several platters of, you know, that kind of meat that has olives and pistachios in it.
Yeah, you're talking about, I mean, it's, yes, yes.
So it's almost like a breakfast and a pasto.
Yeah, precisely.
A continental breakfast on the continent is a wonderful thing.
But here in America, a continental breakfast is some Minute Maid and a Crescent with some marmalade.
You don't get an egg.
No.
Well, that's the whole point.
I think they would a priori say that that is no longer a continental breakfast because what you just – I've written this on a card.
There's three things you just described about a breakfast on the continent.
I understand you're not going to get thinly sliced calf brains everywhere.
You may have to accept like a lamb –
or something but three things they thought ahead they tried and they spent money and i think those three things are completely absent from what they call a continental breakfast in america because it seems to me that you don't need to think ahead vis-a-vis you don't have to prepare very much you don't have to do things like get oranges to squeeze you certainly don't have to try you just have to get a retiree to come in at five which she'd probably do anyway or he but it's a she
And spend money.
You've got to spend a little dough.
If you want to have a calf brain, you're going to have to find a calf.
And a lot of people aren't going to do that at 7 in the morning.
Generally, in Germany, what you have that you don't have here in America is that you have Frauen.
You have these frown who, um, they are frows to translate frown into English.
Okay.
And, uh, they're frows and they, uh, they take a little pride in what they're doing.
They're wearing some, uh, like a costume.
Uh, they have, sometimes they have a doily in their hair and they come in, they make sure that you're comfortable.
They make sure that you have enough coffee.
Like you don't ever sit there and say, it's like a totalitarian geisha.
No, I'm sorry.
Bavarian.
Just say Bavarian Frau Helpfer.
Is that right?
Yeah, it's a Bavarian Frau Helpfer.
And we don't have those in America.
You know, we just have old ladies here.
You know, this is funny.
You're a word guy.
But, you know, as soon as you said, you know, Frauen, right?
That's the plural.
That's women.
Frauen is a girl.
Frauen.
Frauen.
Okay.
And then, you know, in America, we have all kinds of...
What?
No, quoi.
It's, it's, it's, it's, um, it's only sir, la, sir, la, madame now.
You're either a manseur or you're a madame.
Mademoiselle was seen as, I think, being, you know, not diminutive.
What's the word?
Insulting.
Insulting.
You know, it's, uh, it's like, it's like, it would be like calling somebody a girl.
Or, you know what I mean?
Or, or, uh, I'm trying to think of a good example.
Yeah.
Well, Miss in America.
I like Miss.
Yeah, but remember there was a whole movement to replace it with Ms.
Well, no.
When was the last time you consciously used the word Ms.?
Oh, I used Miss and Ms both very often and for completely opposite reasons.
Do you use Ms.
like ironically?
Oh, nice to meet you, Ms.
Wiltsy.
Excuse me, Ms.
But you're standing on my white loafers.
I think Ms.
is the young woman's version of doctor.
If you call anybody doctor, very few people are going to be mad if you call them doctor.
So I learned this in church, which I know you didn't go to, which I don't want to get into.
But in church, if you never know what to call somebody, anybody, especially like an old man who thinks he's important, you always call him doctor.
Because he's probably one of those dipshits, God bless him, so to speak, who's been to the seminary.
Oh, I see.
That kind of doctor.
No, no, but here's the thing.
And this is very widely accepted, at least in the Midwest, in the Church of Christ area.
You call your minister— I love that area where the river comes through town.
Right.
Yeah, and just the guilt falls right off the trees.
You call your minister doctor.
They call it the land of milk and apologies.
Uh-huh.
And they're the governing body.
And then you got the head minister, which is, you know, obviously like the president.
And so anyway, but, you know, Dr. Cotterall, if you called him Mr. Cotterall, you'd be in trouble.
They'd be calling, like calling, you know, somebody with a PhD, Mr. It's just not done.
Right?
So here's the thing.
You meet somebody, especially in these religious circles, or obviously in the circles of academia.
If you call somebody doctor, you're never going to go wrong.
Worst case scenario, they say, no, you know, Dr. Katz is my father's name.
Call me John or whatever.
Right.
Now with a lady...
If you call her Ms., if it's a young lady, a woman, young woman, not an Uber girl, you call her Ms.
Cats, she's going to be happy.
If you call her Ms.
Cats, you're opening a whole box of cats.
Sure, you sure are.
Well, you know, my dad's version of that was to call everybody counselor.
Yeah.
That's awesome.
There was a 90% chance that anybody he met on the street was a lawyer.
So you go, oh, hey, counselor, there he is.
How are you?
When I finally go around the bend and start inhabiting the hobo that I clearly want to be, and I really lose it and start throwing fucking rice at birds, I'm going to start calling everybody your honor.
When I go to the KFC and demand my free chicken and eat it angrily, I'm going to say, thank you, your honor.
Yeah.
See, like your highness.
Now, let's come back to this.
I want to come back to your highness and what's – there's two of those.
There's your highness and your majesty, and I don't know the difference between those.
I'd like to get back to that.
Sorry, I'm talking a lot because I have – I mentioned this on another program.
I have a pinched nerve, and I'm in an excruciating amount of pain right now.
You couldn't tell, could you?
Oh, so you're trying to talk away the pain.
Yeah.
I've done it for 45 years and it hasn't helped.
I'm sorry that you have a pinch note.
That's a very painful condition.
If we come back to that, I'd like to get your advice because I don't mean to do synergy between programs, but there was a suggestion I do acupuncture.
I'd like to circle back to that.
Here's the thing.
You're in a restaurant.
You got a frau.
You got a comita frau.
How do you say that in German?
A comita frau.
Like an essen frau?
So if it's like a tisch, das tisch is male.
Right?
The table's a boy.
You've already exceeded my useful German.
I can say... I can say... I can say... I can say... I learned how to say... I learned to ask where things are.
Bibliothek.
Where's the... Bibliothek.
Yeah, no, my German is just, it's confined to the absolute minimum.
Good, good.
I like to listen to people talk German.
Oh, gosh.
You know, German, you know what?
I'm not going to go ping pong.
I'm just saying there's three languages.
There's three languages.
Oh, let's hear that theory.
Where everybody sounds mad no matter what.
Oh, right.
And I want to see if you can guess them.
One of them is Germans.
What are the other two?
One of them is technically a culture with two languages.
Yeah.
And the third one is a culture whose former incarnation had 10 time zones.
Would you like to try and guess?
First one is German.
What is the second one?
Stand-up comedian.
What is the deal with the former Soviet Union?
The thing about stand-up comedians is that their delivery... The only other time that human beings speak that way is when they're furious.
What is the deal?
!
What is the deal?
Who are the rocket scientists that are coming up?
It's like they speak... They have a big smile on their face, but they're talking like you just hit their car.
Okay, number two.
This is kind of true with Cantonese, but it's really true with Mandarin.
I really enjoy...
I've asked people to try and explain this to me because there's a musicality to a certain... It sounds really stupid because I don't speak Mandarin.
It's really hard to speak Mandarin.
I've learned just enough to say shah, shah, shah.
But when two people speak Mandarin, it's beautiful.
There seems to be a familiar version of Mandarin that's very musical.
Have you ever noticed this?
It's got a really beautiful sound to it.
Well, isn't Mandarin a tonal language?
No.
Oh, super tonal.
Yeah.
Well, see, so it is.
It's the pitch.
You might mean to say Frau Waitress and say you're a cocksucker.
Sure.
Just because you changed your register a tiny bit.
Yeah, that's amazing.
I will never understand how to speak a tonal language.
No, but when folks talk to each other.
I mean, I speak indie rock, but that's...
That's extremely tonal.
No.
Hmm.
Okay, the third one's Russian.
Russian people are always yelling at each other.
So, Indy rock is a tonal language.
Russian people are always yelling at each other.
We used to go to a Y. We had a YMCA before we had a child and didn't have time to do anything.
We'd go to the Y.
5.30 in the morning, we'd go to the Y, we'd do our workout, and I would go and always sit in the sauna where everyone would spit.
And that's Russian and Chinese people, by the way.
That's a commonality through all of the cultures.
And lots of spitting, right on the floor in front of you.
And two guys who were obvious, there was always very kind of heavy...
like big big russian guys russian guys are big a lot of the time and and you could tell they were pals but but but but they sounded like they're trying to split a woman i mean it was they were furious it sounded furious but that's just that's how the language it's you know what it is it's that consonant sound there's so much consonant sound in russian and german don't you think well yeah but i but it may also be that the uh that the culture is one of um of like uh argumentativeness
There's lots of languages like this.
Italian people, you know, famously in stereotypes talk like this.
Do you think there's any language where everybody sounds like they're getting along?
Is that Bellinghamese?
Where everyone sounds like they're getting along.
I mean, I have never heard... When you are in Scandinavia and people are talking, it's just like the sound of a well-oiled machine.
Does it really sound like the way they make fun on Prairie Home Companion?
Is it really like... Is it really like that?
Well, I'm not trying to do Swedish Chef.
I'm trying to have some subtlety to it.
That was very subtle.
Whenever they have a Lutheran minister from Scandinavia, he goes... And it sounds very...
like that yeah is that pretty close uh no no it's it's more german sounding than that okay it's not it's not quite so blue to blue to blue but but um but you know they don't they don't raise their voices really at each other i think there's a lot of things you can get wrong and it doesn't require tonality the other example let's say you've got you've got a comita frau and you would like a little bit more vasser and so you call to the to the waitron at your restaurant and
Now, here's the thing.
What do you say?
Like, if there's a lady in her 50s at a Waffle House, and you want her to come over to the counter and give you some more of that coffee they got, what, if you would like to get her attention, okay, there's various ways.
I say, Miss...
That's exactly what I say.
There's no other thing you need to say than Miss, because Miss is the waitress version of Ms.
Yeah, sure.
You say Miss.
Because if you say Madam, like, what the fuck does that mean?
Or Lady, or as my grandfather used to do, pfft, pfft.
No, you don't do that.
That's how my grandfather would try to get any pfft.
You say miss because it's based on the old-fashioned assumption that if you are a 50-year-old waitress, it's because you never found a husband.
Well, and this is why it's good that no one listens to our show, because here's the thing.
Old people like people to act like they're young, and young people like to act like they're important.
Right.
Well, I put that poorly because I have an extraordinary amount of pain right now.
But old people like to feel young, and young people like to feel important.
Old people like to feel like you think they're young, and young people like to feel like you think they're important.
But they're fine to play along with that.
There's no old person that goes, fuck you when you do that.
You go, oh, you...
You know, and you make the day.
It's a nice thing.
Orange looks great on your lips.
But I find that this thing that you're talking about with the young people where they want to feel important, you can put a stop to that pretty fast.
Do you have a couple tricks for how you like to do that?
Uh, you know, when they say something, when they, when, when you say miss and they go, um, um, it's a Ms.
Or whatever.
You just, you just keep looking at them for a while without saying anything back.
It's not, you're not staring at them.
It's not a hard look.
You're just there.
You're just there.
Yeah.
You're just letting that hang in the air for a while.
so that all the all the other sort of attendant thoughts like what what did you just say you know it also says it says it says i'm just here and you know what i'm not thinking about this but now you are you just let it sit there for a second and then so you know that person they might have might as well have said no please call me superman
Or Lex Luthor.
Actually, it's Lex Luthor, and you just sit there with no expression on your face, and you let them ruminate on that for a minute.
Yeah, I mean, there are plenty, plenty of things that I welcome being corrected on.
I'm going to probably need a very small card for this, I'm guessing.
And I'm guessing plenty means almost none.
But there are plenty of things that I welcome correction.
But people in the world who second-guess my word choice...
That is one that I really... I do not welcome other people's input into the words that I have chosen.
You know what I mean?
I choose my words, and then it's not like a... I don't need a copy editor...
Like, standing out on the other side with a, like a, you know, some kind of commentary.
I feel that way sometimes, because on the one hand, I'm very careless and fast-talking about a lot of things.
But sometimes I've chosen a word very carefully, because it means, not only does it mean this thing as closely as possible to what I'm trying to say, but...
Perhaps more importantly, it doesn't mean these 10 different things.
And that's why I didn't choose any of those 10 different words.
Yeah.
Yeah, I was in a conversation with a young lady the other day.
Is that a Fraulein or a Mademoiselle?
It was a miss.
Okay.
And I said something to the effect of, I was talking about a third person.
I was like, you know, he's a really nice guy, but his arrogance gets in his way sometimes.
And she said, don't you mean his excitability?
What?
That doesn't make a lick of sense.
No, it doesn't, but she was trying to... I mean, she could have said self-importance.
She could have said pride.
She was trying to find... She's changing the topic is what the fuck she was doing.
She was trying to steer me in the direction of being nice.
Oh, don't you mean enthusiasm?
Yeah, and in the process of trying to do that, she was also like, you know, butchering the meaning of what I was saying or whatever.
But that kind of corrective, that way that you would talk to a kindergartner or whatever, you know, is surprisingly common now.
And I did that thing where I just sat there, expressionless, and the room got quiet.
And I said...
I know the difference between those two words.
Yeah, that can't stand with you.
That's not going to stand.
And she looked down into her lap and said, anyway, moving right along.
I think you meant to say, I'm sorry.
As Joss Whedon would say, let's get in a time machine and go back 30 seconds before you said that.
what's that from i just read that in wired magazine the other day some some guy it was you know some guy in his production staff said right here i think we should put a line with it where he says like oh i'm getting too old for this shit and joss whedon said let's get in a time machine and go back 30 seconds before you told me where a line should go and before you said that the line should be i'm getting too old for this shit
That's a wonderful way for a person in power to say something.
That's really good.
Yeah.
Because it's so much nicer than you're an idiot.
Right.
Than like throwing your coffee in his face.
Monsieur.
You're fired.
Who is this guy?
I think a lot of people secretly want time machines.
It makes me crazy.
Makes me nuts.
It makes you nuts to not have a time machine or it makes you nuts that people want time machines?
I don't want to get into it because we'll end up talking about politics.
But, you know, just people, man.
Fucking people.
People.
Who said it?
You know, it's – You said a mouthful.
Okay.
So you don't think ahead.
You got frowns.
Now, your highness and your majesty.
I can probably just look this up.
But have you ever dealt directly with royalty in your corridors of power?
No.
You know, royalty, monarchy, you use different words for this as well.
A few episodes ago, you referred to a baron as not somebody who can't have children, but somebody who is part of the European, I think you said aristocracy.
Right.
Aristocracy.
These are different terms.
What is an aristocrat?
The aristocrats.
So what is an aristocrat?
That's somebody born into power with blood.
Yeah, an aristocracy is part of the oligarchy, the ruling tribes.
A monarch is a king or a ruler.
A single pontiff.
Right, the high guy.
Or gal.
Or gal, you're right, you're absolutely right.
Or gal.
Aristocracy.
But there are a lot of words to describe all this.
All the permutations of, like, born class.
And they can get very confusing.
You can kind of say the wrong thing pretty fast in that world.
The only time, you know, like most Americans, I was...
I've always been fascinated by European nobility, and I am overawed by it in one way, in the sense of like, wow, really?
You're a viscount?
Oh, man.
How cool.
I think you meant to say viscount.
But on the other hand, I'm an American, right?
So the second that somebody stepped in front of me in line at the post office because they were...
you know because they were uh an aristocrat i would be like what no way i stepped to the side fool but i was in a little town in germany uh at one point and was you know i was kind of sitting in my hotel room and it was afternoon and
I heard the dulcet tones of some tubas off in the distance.
And, you know, nothing attracts me.
Nothing gets me down out of my hotel room like the sound of tubas in a small German town.
Because when the Germans get out the tubas... Something's gonna happen.
You know what I mean?
That's how they get going.
That's how... It always starts with tubas.
That's how the shit starts in Germany.
And if you hear that off in the distance, you're like, okay.
They're getting their lederhosen on and they're loading their guns.
Pretty soon they're going to be retooling the factories.
So I come down out of my hotel room and I'm walking around this town.
I'm following the sound of the tubas.
And they're all coming from behind this tall wall.
I'm going, I'm circling around this wall trying to find a way in and pretty soon I kind of find this town hall building and go through a gate and over a hedge or whatever.
And I find, I get into this, this, uh, this big yard and the yard is full of guys all dressed in these pretty elaborate costumes and the tubes are going and the beers flowing and
And I walk over and, you know, kind of trying to make myself inconspicuous over on the side and just kind of watching what everybody's doing.
They're wearing, you know, hats with big feathers in them and very military uniforms.
And so I'm standing there for a while and I can tell that they're watching me.
Like people are looking at me out of the corner of their eyes.
And eventually, and I'm just kind of walking around like do-do-do-do.
And I noticed the bartenders, you know, they have a kind of trailer that's serving beer.
And the bartenders are teenagers, these two teenage boys, like 15 years old, serving beer.
And eventually a guy comes over and he's like, you know, what are you doing here?
You're not from here.
He speaks a little bit like... Yeah, yeah, track 29.
He speaks a little bit like Schultz from Hogan's Heroes except higher pitched.
Nothing.
What are you doing?
And I said, oh, you know, just coming through town.
He said, this is a private event.
And I was like, oh, I'm sorry.
You know, I'll leave.
And he was like, well, it's okay.
You know, you can come have maybe one beer.
And then you go because this is private.
And so he takes me over to the bar, and I get a Coke, which everybody thinks is hilarious.
And now all these guys are talking to me, and it's Schutzenfest.
Schutzenfest, which is the shooting festival.
Where everybody dresses up like a sort of, like, Napoleon.
And it's like a, it's a sort of a summer festival that they have.
Is it a funky mummers, kind of like we're having a taking the mickey out kind of fun thing?
Or is it solemn?
No, no, it's very fun.
It is a big beer drinking occasion, which most holidays in Germany are, but it's kind of... You know, it's one of those festivals in Germany where it's rooted in the idea that they're all hunters and...
So anyway, so I'm there at the Schutzenfest.
And then all of a sudden, everybody gets really excited.
And we all turn and we're looking back at this city hall thing.
And on the balcony of the city hall...
This very well-dressed man steps out with an attractive young lady and a couple of little girls, and they step out on the balcony, and everybody goes, and they all kind of run around, and they form up in ranks.
And the guy that has sort of appointed himself as my tour guide, he's like, oh, it's the Duke.
I'm like, the Duke?
A real Duke?
And he's like, yes, it's the Duke.
And I was like, is that the city hall?
And he's like, no, that's the Duke's house.
And this is the big moment, you know.
And the Duke comes out, and I learn very shortly that the two teenage boys who are serving beer are the Duke's sons.
Wow.
Oh, is that a mini duke?
Like some kind of, yeah, it's like a petite duke.
I'm not sure.
Probably those two guys right now are down in Curaçao somewhere killing American girls on the beach somewhere.
Let's do.
But so the duke is there, and then all these guys, which they're all the townspeople, you know, from around this area, they all form up in ranks and start marching around the yard.
Yeah.
And so they're marching now, and they're all drunk.
And as they walk past the Duke's portion of the house, like they're marching in a square, basically.
Marching up and down the square?
And as they walk past the Duke, they break into goose-stepping.
Oh, come on.
Are the tubas still playing at this point?
I swear to God, yes.
The tubas are playing.
And there's some other horns.
And they're goose-stepping.
It's the only time in my entire life when I've seen...
This is in the last 30 years this happened?
No, no, this happened 10 years ago.
Oh, God.
And, you know, there's nobody at this party except the people and me.
I'm the only outside observer.
And I was really, like, flabbergasted.
I was primarily flabbergasted that I was meeting these German aristocrats.
And then the goose stepping really put it over the top.
And did that nobody nobody like kind of did anyone rustle around kind of uncomfortably?
No, no, no, no, no, no.
But as the evening progressed after the goose stepping and then then it just turned into like some serious drinking at that point.
I had many long conversations with those guys about how about how they missed Hitler.
He wasn't that bad.
For real?
Too bad about the Jews.
Is it... Okay.
Is it a little bit like states' rights kind of thing?
Is it a little... Because the thing is, in reading this book and, you know, that I've been reading and stuff, you start to... Like it or not, you start to realize that part of the whole thing with the South is they just didn't like being pushed around.
They sure didn't like their primary... But isn't it awful that we can't talk about this without some kind of, like, implicit apology?
It's fucking history.
People did not like having their livelihood threatened by...
first of all by anybody nobody likes nobody likes that right but then the whole idea of of somebody in in the north like telling them that they're wrong unchristian and doing something that must be stopped and then having a law about it sat pretty poorly with a lot of people in the south setting aside the fact that they own human beings which is not super cool to do and is that kind of the case here
Did they miss the certainty?
I mean did they miss the snappy outfits?
What did they miss?
It's not like strictly they didn't miss genocide.
That doesn't come up.
That's the third rail.
The dry rail.
Nobody in Freckenhorst or whatever town I was in was conscious of genocide.
You're talking about people that have lived in the same 600-person town their whole lives.
They just remember when they were on top.
And every person in the world thinks that 30 years ago was better than now, or 40 years ago was better than now.
That's a really modern and perhaps contemporary conceit.
How do you mean?
Well, it seems to me that there was a time when people understood for a variety of reasons.
Maybe it's because they didn't read a lot of books about history.
Maybe it's because somebody, their family had always farmed.
They've always had a couple kids die every generation.
There was probably for a lot of people for a hundred years, things kind of stayed mostly the same.
It isn't like they sat around and went, you know, I wish Norman Lear was still making TV shows.
There was a lot of, you know, sameness.
He sang the same hymns.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, but there was always... I can't imagine that throughout history there wasn't always a guy who came into the town and said, it's the latest, greatest saddle.
This is the newest way to make a horseshoe.
And I'm going to revolutionize the way you make horseshoes.
And as soon as that was adopted, the new horseshoe was adopted, there was some guy sitting on a hay bale that was like, man, in my day, horseshoe making was an art.
You can't do and improve this because it's already as good as it can get.
I think sentimentality is basic, is a basic human.
You know, you read books going back all the way, and people are like, boy, it ain't like it used to be.
It's just the most common response, I think, to... I mean, in America, too, the South, by the time of the Civil War,
You know, this conflict between the North and the South had been going on from the very beginning.
It was already 150 years old.
So the South wasn't just like, don't push us around.
The South was... Well, slavery, I mean, it started in like, what, like 1640, something like that.
It was, you know, it had been around for a while, but then I'm pretty sure, and it was in the North.
in some places for a while.
It was just that most, if I, again, I'm not a historian, but if I remember correctly, it's just that all the northern states had stopped doing it and gone, you know what, this is kind of fucked up.
They had done that a pretty long time before the Civil War.
Oh, yeah, a very long time.
But the conflict between the North and the South was much, it was rooted in the fact that the South was settled by, dare I say it, aristocracy.
You know, the people that settled in Virginia were generally the second and third sons of royalty in the UK who were not in line to inherit the mansion.
That's like, what, Scotland and stuff?
Like, there's a lot of Scottish people in the South, right?
Yeah.
Well, the Scottish people came to the South much later.
The original Virginians were all from Southern England.
And they were rich.
They were the Cavaliers.
They had class.
They had money.
They rode horses.
And they farmed
And they were, you know, they were people, they were sword fighters and they had gallantry.
Those were the people that settled in there.
Put your cape down for a lady, right?
Exactly.
The people that settled in the north were Puritans and were very, like, had an extremely different culture that was very dismissive of that cavalier kind of...
They were much more, you know, they had a work ethic, they were industrious.
So that conflict in America between the sort of prudish, finger-wagging North and the swashbuckling South was written in the cards from the very beginning.
Yeah.
This is really reductive, and you should correct me on this if I'm wrong, but one reductive way in my mind, but what you're saying is that a lot of people in what we would call the North arrived here looking for religious freedom or freedom from religious persecution.
I wonder if on some level people in the South came here looking for entrepreneurial freedom.
Absolutely.
And the people from the South had, for a long time, no interest in breaking ties with the United States, or with the United Kingdom, or I guess England at the time.
You know, they were just... The choice was either stay in England and be the third son of the Duke, or come to America and be the new...
You know, the new prince of your 50,000 acre farm in Virginia.
So two totally different cultures and cultures that did not see eye to eye were contemptuous of each other from the very start.
And I think you see that in the Continental Congress when they're trying to write the Constitution.
The attitudes of delegates from the Carolinas versus Massachusetts, they're just coming from a completely different place.
Yeah, it's amazing that it could happen at all.
Can I return to the sentimentality and thing for a second?
Because there's something you talked about.
May I?
Yes, please.
You said something after we stopped recording a few shows ago, and I wish we could have talked more about it because you should just tell the story.
But there's that wonderful phrase we've all heard attributed to people who lived under Stalin and people who lived under Mussolini.
I don't remember.
You can tell me which one it is, but there's a phrase you hear, right?
What's that phrase?
Oh.
Oh, yeah, right.
I learned this.
First, tell us the straight version.
What's the straight version that everybody knows?
Oh, the straight version is, you know, yeah, sure, Mussolini was a bastard, but at least the trains ran on time, right?
At least the trains ran on time.
That's the thing that everyone always says about fascism.
It's the...
The apology for fascism that despite all the concentration camps and despite all of the marching through the streets with torches, at least the trains ran on time.
And it's usually, in my mind anyway, it's spoken in the voice of the oppressed people who shrug their shoulders in their simple peasant garb and go, well, it's bad news, but at least he made the trains run on time, right?
Yeah.
Right, and also, I think in some ways it's primarily spoken by intellectuals who are trying to say, like...
that the good side of fascism, that there is a good side to fascism.
It's the classic sort of New York response, like, well, at least the trains ran on time.
You can't dismiss fascism out of hand.
I really think that's what they're saying.
Well, it's shorthand for trying to understand, like, how did these systems...
like seemingly work how was there a soviet i think i think of it as an excuse for not excuse i think of it as a reasoning for culpability where you go like oh my gosh how could people sit around while these awful things happen you know the rape of nanking or you know exactly well you know the p the reason the people didn't rebel was that they didn't have the you know they didn't have the weapons and the trains ran on time right
Yeah, it's exactly right.
Excuse for culpability.
Well, in any case, my friend Wesley Stace, the author and performer under the name John Wesley Harding, his father was a professor, and his father lives in Italy.
And his father had this tremendous insight recently, speaking to Italians, that Wesley communicated to me, which was that initially that...
statement was spoken ironically that the italians were saying not only did fascism do all these you know commit all these brutalities but the trains didn't run on time the trains have never run on time they didn't run on time under mussolini they didn't run they're not running on time now it was it was spoken ironically at least the train at least the trains run on time yeah
Which completely changes the meaning.
It flips it absolutely upside down.
And when Wes explained this to me, I burst into tears.
It was so profound, the understanding that the trains never ran on time.
And that somehow that...
had been garbled in translation and my entire life people have been saying it to me as you know as this apology for fascism or this excuse for culpability as you say and and to understand that no that was that was meant ironically and it always was you would never an italian would never say that unconscious of the fact that that that they were being sarcastic i just i cried and cried i was so happy
I was so happy and so just devastated.
Like, oh, my God, for want of, like, just the tinge of pronunciation, you know, for the want of that, I've been walking around under this misapprehension my whole life.
That's amazing.
Trains never ran on time.
Yeah.
You think that, you know what, we should avoid the Hitler talk.
Sure.
I don't know.
It's been a long time since we talked about Hitler.
I was thinking about that.
I was realizing that both the ping pong and the Hitler had largely fallen to the side.
And I was trying to decide, you know what?
Not that it's good or bad.
I was observing it.
I was merely observing it.
I'll talk about Hitler all day.
Oh, don't get me started.
Yeah, I know.
I know how you feel about Hitler.
I've been listening carefully to everything you said, but I just sent you a link.
I've been reading about the different titles for royalty, and can I just make one?
First of all, you are the person – I've gotten this quote wrong a couple times, but you're the one who I frequently quote you having said, even Bono has a boss.
In the context of saying, well, you know, everybody's got somebody that they've got to please.
Well, you know what?
In fucking royalty, there's always somebody who's over you, I'm realizing.
And so this page I sent you was what?
Royal, noble, and chivalric ranks.
And it's farcical how many different – I mean, what a bureaucracy there is to this stuff.
And you think to yourself, okay, well, obviously at the top –
You got a king, let's say.
But you know what?
You can have a high king.
A high king is a king who rules over lesser kings.
And you're saying to yourself, well, obviously, if you're the high king in charge of other kings, no, no, no, no.
Then you got the emperor.
You're the Caesar in this case, the czar.
You've got somebody who's in charge.
I mean, come on.
That seems to me like noble inflation.
Well, and not only that, but... Do you have an uber emperor?
Certainly in Europe, you have all those situations where Queen Victoria and Tsar Nicholas and Frederick Wilhelm, they were all cousins.
They were like first cousins.
They all had the same grandmother.
I mean, how... And you're fighting World War I and it's like you're...
It's like a family dispute.
Everybody's a little German, right?
Is that what it is?
Isn't there a lot?
Like my friend Grant, who I think you've met, is from South Africa, but he's somehow weirdly related to like German royalty.
It's like almost everybody on the planet is somehow almost German royalty, I think.
Yeah.
The Germans had a lot of, well, that's the amazing thing about it.
They had a lot of little principalities and little, little, uh, uh, the, the nobles there kind of held onto their autonomy a lot longer.
Like the, in the UK, there was a, the King of England, right?
And he, and so you could have been, you could be the Duke of Umbria or whatever, but the King was in charge in, in, in, uh,
And in Germany, I think they maintained their little borders a lot longer.
So if you had a third daughter and you were trying to marry her or somebody and somebody said, I am the prince of Yugoslavia.
And someone else said, yeah, I'm the, you know, I'm the viscount of some German hole in the wall, some bend in the river here in Thuringia.
I think you picked the German over the Yugoslav.
In general, for your third film.
I think you're looking to get some German royalty who wants some French or English land.
Based on everything I've seen on television, I'm pretty sure, and in films, I think you're always, you start with a German, and then you end with a farm somewhere in England or France.
I don't know if that's accurate.
You have the Catherine of Aquitaine.
You know, you got, I can't really think of many other ones.
But listen, I want to save you some trouble here, because I don't know if you would make the same error.
Do you know the distinction between your highness and your majesty?
Are you aware of this?
I had to look it up.
No, tell me.
See, here's the thing, and then you get your royal highness, right?
Your royal majesty and all this stuff.
Here's the, according to Wikipedia, which is always right, this is the distinction.
Your majesty is the second person form of address for somebody who is greater than a prince or princess.
Your highness is the second person
which I think is also a mountain chain for someone who is, is the king or queen.
I think that's, I think that's what it is.
Your highness.
Yeah.
Which sounds like maybe you would say to somebody about weed from, thank you, your highness.
But what is, so who's higher than a prince or princess except for a king?
Yeah.
Well, if you like, I can go through this.
We've got, uh, you got, okay, so you got, I'm going strictly English here.
I'm going to avoid all this, uh, this, this Arabic stuff and whatnot.
The Khans and the Maharajahs.
I'm avoiding the Tsars and the Caesars and the what's not.
So you got your, you got your Kings and your Queens.
They're, they're pretty high up.
And if you, I'm leaving out the high King thing, cause frankly, that sounds fucking made up.
I mean, that's kind of like, isn't that kind of like a special Olympics of royalty?
You're just trying to, it's almost like the Kim Jong Il thing.
Like you're just giving yourself titles.
If you're a high King, I think you are in a, um, George R.R.
Martin book.
Besides the science fiction?
I don't know.
I've never read them.
I just was hoping that... 420, dude.
420.
I was hoping that that would connect with our audience.
Oh, okay.
I was hoping they would go, yes!
A reference to a thing that I know.
Well, you get...
You get the kings and queens, and then you got the princes and princesses, and then everything fucking falls apart.
You got archdukes, grand princes, dukes, princes, dauphins, the infantes, the Spanish ones with the blood disease.
You got electors, marquises, margraves, and marquises, landgraves, counts, vicants, fryhairs.
That's a high-level baron, and then you got barons.
From there, you go to baronet, domines, knights, patricians,
no Biles, Esquire, and then if you're just a regular old fucktard, I guess you're a gentleman.
And I'm just fucking scanning this.
This is a very extensive article, but there's always, you know, I don't even, where would Bono fit in this?
Do you think Bono's a prince?
No, I don't.
Well, in rock and roll?
Yeah.
Yeah, Bono's a duke for sure.
Oh, okay.
So he's got a, a duke has a duchy.
Right.
A duke is... I always think of the duke as being the highest nobility under the royal family.
Under the prince... You know, the king and the prince are part of the leading family, but a duke is the next highest.
He has the...
And I mean, I guess an Archduke.
An Archduke functions as a king.
This is fucking ridiculous.
John, you know, I used to have a dot-com job.
I moved to California to work at a dot-com.
And, of course, it was a debacle.
But, you know, you know how, like, on The Daily Show – I mean, I hope people get this bit.
But it's a great bit because every correspondent is a senior correspondent.
Right?
You know, we've got our senior, you know, electoral – election food correspondent or whatever.
Yeah.
And at one point, this is one of the great indignities I brought upon myself in my quote-unquote career.
So I'd been at the dot-com, and I'd been there for the grand sum of approximately nine months.
And I was making pretty good bank.
Did you guys have a ping-pong table?
Don't say that.
It's called table tennis.
Actually, that's a funny story.
It was when our boss, who might as well have had a snidely whiplash mustache and giant bags with dollar signs running out of the place, he finally had – he was so used to being like a guy who made the trains run on time that when he had to – my boss had to grudgingly say to him – he didn't grudgingly say this, but he was grudgingly accepted.
He said, look, you know.
I got these people here and they're working a lot and you know, it's California.
You should, you should get some silly stuff for the office.
And Bob was like, actually his last name was Prince.
But Bob said, you know, um, you're kidding me.
Like, like a fruit loops dispenser.
Precisely.
Yeah.
Yeah, almost that silly.
But you have to understand, this is a man who owned all his businesses in Florida, right?
And Florida was, as you know, a state's rights.
And he pretty much treated people like state's rights, you know, servants.
And so with the idea of, yes, we had a ping pong table.
We had an electronic dartboard that made noises.
Mm-hmm.
and these were brought in and put in in the middle of the room in the same way you know it was it was what i mean it was like it was like some kind of a fad from the 60s kind of thing like you get it you bring it in and nobody touches it and it just takes up space because if you're sitting there playing fucking ping pong or bob could hear the dartboard going score like you might as well have been sitting there doing bong hits in the office
You know, but but so I was at this job and, you know, I was already making pretty, pretty OK dough for it.
But like I was greedy and I wanted more because we hadn't had our dot com, you know, IPO cash out yet.
Right.
And what I was able to negotiate, even though I did not have any reports, any direct reports, no one worked for me.
I did.
I was I was a Web producer.
And I did get a promotion to senior web producer.
Yeah.
So me and the other web producer both got to be senior web producers, even though we were the only two web producers.
Right.
So that's a kind of, what it's called, high king, king of kings.
Mm-hmm.
yeah that's a it's a you were a you were a you're an arch viscount i think it's vcon whatever you know what i love about you though i love that you know all of this shit so well no seriously no no no so setting aside your mispronunciation i'm sorry to correct you on that no no i think you mean i think you mean past the dutchy
But you've got – I don't know if I'm getting this right, but it seems to me that you know fucking shit tons about all of this stuff and you don't particularly love any of it.
Like you think it's probably silly that there would be a Duke and an Archduke, right?
Now what if Ferdinand had just been a Duke?
Would we have stayed out of trouble?
Oh, well, yeah, probably if he had just been a Duke.
He was next in line.
That was trumped up, right?
Wasn't that totally trumped up?
How do you mean?
Well, I don't know anything much about World War I, except that the geography of Europe used to be much more interesting before World War I. Then in World War I, you got a lot of that consolidation that was really confusing, and that we didn't go back to until the last few years, right?
Oh, well, after World War I, that was the big point.
The big point of Woodrow Wilson's
solution to world problems.
Multi-point plan.
That's right.
His 12-point plan was...
Woodrow Wilson, at the end of the war, said, here's the problem with the world.
All these different groups of people, all these ethnicities don't have autonomy.
They don't rule their own countries.
And so we're going to give everybody authority over themselves.
That was his initial idea.
And, of course, everyone else on the victorious side in World War I did not like that idea at all.
And they kind of thwarted him.
But it was the justification – they used it as a justification to do what they wanted.
They perverted his idea.
And Wilson was an innocent, and so he just got walked all over.
But before the war, there was – Austria was – Austro-Hungary controlled all of Central Europe.
and they just dismantled it they just took it apart they took hungary absolutely apart they gave part of hungary to slovakia part of hungary to ukraine part of hungary a big part of hungary to romania part of hungary to what became yugoslavia part of hungary they might have even given a part of hungary to austria and then france too france got sliced up like a fucking birthday cake right
Well, I mean, don't you have places like Saxony or you've got, not Saxony, but you've got like Cologne, which is kind of German, kind of French, right?
Strasbourg went back and forth many, many times.
After World War I, that area went back to France.
And then the Germans wanted it back in World War II.
It was a big part of, you know, when you talk to people in Hungary about World War II,
It's the most amazing kind of cultural disconnect.
Because you think, coming from America, you think everybody's got the same story about World War II, right?
The Germans were bad, and then we all fought them.
The end, right?
It's a story that we have taught to us from the very beginning.
And you don't really even have space in your American mind for many different narratives.
But there are so many different stories about World War II, depending on where you are.
And the Hungarians think of World War II as being a very, very, very minor story.
relative to World War I, which is the big war to them.
And World War II is just a continuation of it.
Because Hitler went to the Hungarians and said, I'm going to give you back all the land that they took from you.
And the Hungarians were like, whatever you say...
Because we are still really pissed about this.
Everybody's got... It's almost like, you know, if you go back far enough, setting aside, you know, like history is written by the victors or whatever.
Like, you know, you're not taking into account stuff like what?
Like Armenians and Turks.
You're not taking into account, like, all of these really...
really giant uh things that just affected millions and millions of people that everybody has it isn't like somebody went oh like you say hitler hitler was good hitler was bad i mean it's it is very nuanced i mean people who worked at bmw probably thought hitler was pretty great right well and also the germans that lived in the czech republic or lived in the czech part of czechoslovakia oh yeah they felt like they're going home huh
Yeah, they were like, hooray!
Like I was saying, my friend Grant, who is from, and by the way, this week I will have to change this into the history section from philosophy.
I wonder if I could do that every week.
I might do that.
But Grant, I said to Grant, when I first met him, you know, in 1986 or so, I was like, oh, yeah, you're from South Africa.
You guys must really love the ANC.
And he's like, well, actually, a lot of people, you know, think of them as a terrorist organization because a lot of what they did was blowing things up.
It isn't that we think – it isn't that we're sitting here and we're white people and we love or hate black people.
It's a lot more complicated than that because you might be really pulling for apartheid to go away, but then your shit gets blown up.
There's a lot more to it than that.
Yeah.
Oh, I mean, the politics in South Africa, that keeps me up at night.
There's so much to not understand about that part of the world.
You know who I blame?
Can I be honest?
The Dutch.
Wow.
One of the numerous reasons I do not want to get started on the Dutch.
Strong words.
I keep thinking about that lady in the window.
It really haunts me.
As I'm sure, as I imagine, it haunts you.
You're lady number two.
I don't want to bring this up again, but you're lady number two from Amsterdam.
Yeah.
What else were we going to talk about besides my pinched nerve?
There was one other thing we were going to talk about.
I don't want to talk about my pinched nerve.
But there was something else we were going to talk about.
Tubas.
Tubas.
You're the one with the note cards.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I've been trying to listen.
Listen carefully.
I don't write it all down.
Trains on time.
Virginians.
Yeah.
According to that book, picking Richmond as the capital was kind of a weird idea.
It was hard to defend.
But, you know, then – and again, in Richmond, you know what?
We shouldn't talk about poop.
But –
I don't mind hotels.
I sometimes think too much about hotels.
But, you know, if you're... You know what I like?
I like a place.
I like a Marriott.
I love a Marriott.
You know what?
Sure, there's going to be bad Marriott.
There's bad everythings run by Mormons.
You ever notice there's that big portrait of the two Mormons in every Marriott?
I hadn't noticed that.
I hardly ever stay at a Marriott.
Is that right?
Where do you like to stay?
Well, you know, I've been turned on to these Climpton hotels recently.
Climpton?
Climpton.
They run all the hotels where you walk in and there's like a... There's not just one superfluous tube-shaped...
fuck pillow.
There are like four.
Oh, it's a boutique hotel.
It's a boutique hotel with four furry fuck pillows per room.
It's not quite ironic art, but it's like a framed tarot card on the wall.
Oh, God.
It looks like... Oh, God.
What's that magazine where it's all horizontal wood?
Oh, dwell.
It looks like dwell.
No, it's not.
That's the thing.
It's not dwell.
because there are too many fuck pillows it's uh it's like baroque baroque dwell right so it's you just blew my mind so first of all there's a there's a definitely a tubular fuck pillow indicator where you can walk into i9 we know you enjoy a pillow and and so you you can go in there first of all there's these pillows all over the bed and so that's part of what distinguishes is it architectural is there a level of service i'm just saying on the home page there is a picture of a man very happily drizzling honey from a very high height onto what looks like a lobster leg
And it's super creepy.
Ooh la la.
Kempton.
It's Kempton hotels and restaurants.
Kempton.
Kempton.
Yeah.
So it's a chain of like, ah, yeah.
Boutique-y hotels.
Is it the W kind of thing where they get a urine-soaked hobo hotel and then clean it up and put in some green apples?
Yeah, that's the thing.
Same thing.
Sometimes they'll have a bust of Benjamin Franklin, but they'll paint it orange.
Oh, they took it and they turned it.
Right.
Whoa, what?
It's orange.
So is it, is it, is it?
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Wait, this is May, right?
This is May?
The month?
Yeah.
That we're in right now?
Okay, good, because I can say it.
Is it postmodern?
Yeah.
How do you feel about postmodern?
Boy, I don't even know.
You know, when you just said that, I don't even know what that means anymore.
I don't think I ever knew what it means.
I used to feel like I really knew what that meant.
Of course you did.
But you just said that in that way, and I don't have any idea what postmodern means anymore.
I'm not sure I knew what it meant in 1988, but I'm definitely sure I don't know what it means now.
I think that it doesn't mean anything anymore.
I think it's like Farfagnugan.
Well, perfect nook means the joy of driving.
Yeah, but I mean, that's a pretty fucking elastic resource, John.
What about Hospitaliano?
Is it like Hospitaliano?
See, now, I don't think I ever knew what Hospitaliano means, but I didn't.
You know, until very recently, I'd never been to Miami.
Is that considered a hot seat of Hospitaliano?
What?
What'd you call me?
I don't know what Hospitaliano is.
Hospitaliano, I think, is the spirit of what they would like you to think you're getting at an Olive Garden.
oh it's an olive garden it's an olive garden thing and and as my friend uh i'm trying to remember which one of my friends i think it was ape lad but somebody recently pointed out i had never noticed this in 20 some years of going to olive garden in your head can you imagine what the sign slash logo looks like it says olive garden and kind of like green letters olives around it or an olive leaf right you're thinking it's got olives right no those are fucking grapes
Uh-huh.
So think about that for a minute.
Whoa.
Mm-hmm.
An olive garden.
Mm-hmm.
But there are no olives.
See, no, it's got a... I'm looking now at the internet website for them.
Oh, my God, this place.
Ugh.
Now, let me just say, you may find this hard to believe, but I have only ever been...
to the Olive Garden one time.
You are dangerously close to that guy right now.
I know.
I don't own a TV.
Turns out.
It turns out.
Is that something I need a TV to know about?
Olive Gardens are not... I don't think there was an Olive Garden in Alaska.
In fact, I know that there wasn't because we would have gone to it.
It would have been more costly there in Hawaii anyway.
But, you know, I'm surprised with you.
I mean, you enjoy a hearty meal.
I do.
I think I mentioned this to you before when I was in college.
We discovered something that you could order, when I say off the menu, I mean, you know, what would you say, avant menu, as they would say in Germany.
You could order salad and breadsticks.
It was like six bucks, and it was unlimited salad and breadsticks.
You get a fucking bowl of Alfredo sauce for a buck or two, and for like $8, you get refills.
You sit there for four hours.
Yeah.
Just getting high on breadsticks and free salad refills.
And putting Alfredo sauce on your salad?
No, no, no, no.
That you said is a dipping sauce.
Oh, I see.
Oh, you just sit and eat it with a spoon, like a tablespoon.
No, no.
You dip your breadstick in it.
Don't be a jerk.
I'm just surprised because it seems to me that you're a man who can, if I may say, you're a man who can put away some groceries.
And I don't mean in a cabinet.
There's a place here in Seattle called, what the hell is that thing called?
di napoli di italiano restaurant is it a chain one pomodoro it's a chain one where they have you know they serve you big platters of spaghetti what's it called uh beppo
Yeah, that place is shit.
We had a You Look Nice Today Summit at the one here in town, and it was one of the silliest meals I've ever had in my life.
It's that fake high service thing.
I've eaten there a few times.
That is the Olive Garden equivalent.
Yes.
But it thinks it's putting on airs.
Well, not that Olive Garden isn't putting on airs, but that place was, when we went, when Adam and Scott and I went there, it was really expensive and it had that, don't even get me started on the fucking fake high service thing.
It makes me apoplectic.
But I really hate that whole, how's the meal?
Can I get you anything?
Yeah.
How about you refill literally everything on the table?
How about you just bring me more of everything without saying a word?
That's what I'd like more of, dickhead.
At Beppo, they do the thing where as they're seating you, they walk you through the kitchen.
Oh, come on.
Kind of like, Mr. Sinatra, let's take a walk through the kitchen and I'll show you where the raviolis get made.
We call this the tracking ashada.
Yeah, exactly.
You're made to feel like, hey.
Hey, get a table up front.
Hey, look, it's Henny Youngman.
Hey.
I hate that shit so much.
The floor is just, it's just worn down into a trough from all the badasses that walk through.
All the obese tourists walking through the quote-unquote kitchen.
A table up front, yeah.
Yeah, because you know what I really want to know is that a lot of strangers have passed where my food is being made.
People walking through there just sneezing.
Do they make you wash your hands before you go in?
No, no, no.
It's like right inside the front door.
Fuck that.
Like if you're, if you're like, if you're like at a dim sum place and you need to go to the bathroom, they're like, we don't really have a public question.
You go, no, but seriously, I have explosive diarrhea.
They go, sure.
You got to walk through the kitchen, right?
See, that's fine.
That's fine.
If you go in there, there's a mop bucket.
That's fine.
That's a real working kitchen.
They have this, they have this made so that you couldn't, you can't get your hands out to touch the food.
It's one, it's one of those like, and here is where Jefferson slept.
Keep moving, keep moving.
You know, there's like a red.
Have you seen our orange Franklin?
There's a, there's a, uh, like a red velvet rope.
You know, John, I know you don't feel as strongly.
I suspect that you do not feel anywhere near as strongly as I do, but there, you know, all the things where you get really heated up, this is absolutely on my list.
And it, it, it makes me, it makes me completely crazy.
Mm-hmm.
Because, you know, it's uniformly like a shitty hotel, a shitty chain hotel, a shitty chain restaurant will cut corners on every conceivable thing and then act like they're doing you a favor.
You know, and it's all fucking microwaved, you know?
Anyway, it's got fucking people.
I find it very hard to eat in a chain restaurant, but here in Seattle... So, for instance, there is no...
There is no Outback Steakhouse or Red Lobster or Sizzler or Claim Jumpers.
Claim Jumpers.
Any of those places.
There are none of those places in Seattle proper, but they are all located just south of town in the South Center Mall area.
What about, do you have a sclerotic McStuffington's?
No.
What about DJ Angina?
Yeah, there's a Sherry's, there's a Cherries, there's a Terry's.
There's an Applebee's, there's an Appleton's.
They're all on the same road.
Yes, it's like auto malls.
It's like an auto mall, right?
You got all the shitty, like, bourbon chicken places all in one fucking pathetic district.
Exactly.
If you can tell me the difference between a Claim Jumpers and an Outback Steakhouse, I will put in with you.
But they're right next to each other.
You don't like an Outback Steakhouse?
Well, you know, you walk into an Outback Steakhouse and it's this exact same thing.
The girl's like, hi, welcome to the place.
Sit down now.
What is the first load of shit I can sell you in the next 45 minutes where I'm going to be super friendly to you as I try and foist Bloomin' Onions on you?
Yes.
And upgrade you to a mud pie milkshake and then get you the fuck out of here so I can get another load of fat asses.
We want four turnovers tonight.
Fair dinkum.
So, you know, going into those places, it's just like, it's more damage to my psyche than... I mean, the food isn't terrible.
I mean, I eat a steak at Outback Steakhouse, whatever.
But...
Yeah, but you know Seattle, buddy.
I hate that.
I don't want to keep bringing this up.
But, you know, first of all, our family needs to come to Seattle and visit you.
Yes, please do.
But, you know, can I give you a letter?
Artisanal steaks.
El Gaucho.
Yeah, we got artisanal steaks.
We got El Gaucho.
Oh, my God.
I was out the other night with some mutual friends of yours and mine, some rock musicians.
Yeah.
Are they still my mutual friends?
Yeah, absolutely.
In fact, your name came up with one of the mutual friends.
He was like, I'm going to call Merlin.
I miss Merlin.
But we had just gotten out of the movie.
We went to see the Avengers at the big Paul Allen-owned superplex.
Oh, is that the one with the funny letters you took a picture of?
Cinerama?
Cinerama, yeah.
Right, right, right.
And we were out on the street and it was like, hey, we're four guys.
We're four bachelor guys out on the road.
Let's get some steaks.
And I said, let's go to El Gaucho.
But it was midnight.
Oh, God.
Couldn't go to El Gaucho.
So we went up to this, one of these new fancy restaurants where the waitresses have neck tattoos.
But the steaks are like $45.
Ha, ha, ha.
And this is this new thing.
It writes itself.
I mean, well, obviously.
It's a new thing.
It's like, all right, I get you where you're coming from, I guess.
I had a $45 steak at 12 o'clock at night, and it was no El Gaucho.
There was no man in a tuxedo who was cooking that steak on a cigar like you get El Gaucho.
How does it compare to 13 Coins?
Is 13 Coins going downhill?
It's mostly rappers there in the middle of the night at 13 Coins, right?
13 Coins is definitely like the clientele is part of the fun.
But
But you can get a full fake fancy meal at 3 in the morning, right?
3 in the morning.
You can get steak Oscar with crab.
And they're wearing tuxedos and suits and stuff, right?
13 coins is the go-to.
For me, if I want to bring somebody from out of town and show them a restaurant where at 3 in the morning, you can get steak Sinatra with fried clams and cheese poured over it.
While the guy sitting at the table next to you is wearing a pink suit with a fedora.
The booths are very private.
You can't see who's in a booth until you're right next to it.
And staring into the booth is very awkward, but it will frequently be like a small entourage that is obviously there with somebody who is or considers himself a rapper.
Yeah, a rapper or a sports star.
Or perhaps a sex professional management person.
A sex management professional?
Yeah, you often see girls in very tall lucite shoes.
Sometimes lucite shoes that actually have live goldfish in them.
Do they still do that?
Can you still do that?
I don't know.
I've always wanted a pair.
I've been there with you, I think, maybe twice.
And I'm always really, really struck.
But it's very civil.
Yeah, everybody's on their best behavior.
But lately I have felt that the quality of the food has declined from its former glory of one quart of half and half in everything.
I don't know.
I'd like a Spanish omelet, please.
Oh, all right.
Let's put a quart of half and half in that.
You know what's beautiful, though?
The half and half part is it's half beef and literally half cream.
It's like cow two ways.
I feel like they've started to skimp on the half and half.
Oh, that's no good.
But that could have just been an off night.
How to compare to Neck Tattoo Joe's.
Well, the thing about neck tattoo Joe's is I walked in.
This is the thing about Capitol Hill.
You walk into a place, and my foot wasn't even in the door before somebody was like, John, hey!
So I'm walking down the... Not just simply because you're a rock and roll celebrity, because that's like your old neighborhood.
The old neighborhood, and if it's a new restaurant with $45 steaks and the waitresses have neck tattoos, it's a pretty safe bet that that's going to be full of people.
They probably know and or hate you.
Yeah.
You know, I actually had a very interesting experience later on at night where I was standing out in front of a rock club and people were pouring out.
And then a little group of people gathered who decided that they actually constituted a club.
which was the I Hate John Roderick Club.
There was a little three or four guys who were like, we all hate you.
But they didn't leave.
They wouldn't go away.
They stood there and wanted attention.
That's so creepy.
We're mad at you.
I don't like that type.
I don't know what you're talking about.
We talked about this before.
Like the dude who wrote you the creepy email.
I get this at places, and it's like the person who's like, hey, how's it going?
I know everything you do, and here's four jokes about that, but you're a dick.
Well, it's really nice meeting you, but I have to go kill myself in another part of the building right now.
I'm going to – here's the thing.
This is really – it's great to meet you.
I'm so glad you've taken the time, but I'm going to feign a stroke in a minute, and I would like you to go get fake help, and then I'm going to run away because it wasn't a stroke, and you're insane.
Yeah.
That's nice.
Now, the thing is, John, here's the thing.
Oh, boy, I was about to say something.
I'm not going to say it.
It has been said.
Turns out.
Turns out.
It has been said, not by me.
Let's put it this way.
Yeah.
I'm talking about women, but I'm going to say it's all about all people.
That sometimes people, one way that you can get to somebody, whether it's to make them pay attention to you.
This is a classic kind of those fucktards in the seduction community.
You don't have to make somebody like you or love you.
You just have to make somebody feel strongly about you.
Yeah.
This is one thing, and this is probably why so many women have the terrible taste to be obsessed with you.
I mean, for everybody involved, it's a terrible, terrible idea to be obsessed with you.
But you know what I'm saying?
And you've certainly had this experience.
I mean, because a lot of people...
Well, you try and reach a person by saying, oh, I'm going to give you this one pole of the feeling strong thing.
I'm trying to make you love me.
But the thing is, you know, the opposite of love is indifference.
You know, it's not hate.
Right.
And so if you make somebody – but you get somebody good and fucking mad.
In this case, you got these little motorcycle boys out here trying to act all tough about you.
But really?
You're going to fucking have like a He-Man John Roderick haters club?
Like that takes a lot of goddamn work.
What are you, the secretary treasurer?
Pull up your pants, asshole.
Take off that fucking hat.
What are you doing?
The problem with the John Roderick Haters Club is that the focus of your anger, in this case, nominally, John Roderick, doesn't care.
Exactly.
Yes.
You know what?
If I had any idea who you are, I might have to consider whether this is something I need to think about.
I'm pretty sure that this is not going to impede my progress down the sidewalk.
It's like a cat.
The cat is like, please notice me so I can ignore you.
The cat comes into the room and will not be happy until you notice it so that it can intransitively ignore you.
And that's the same thing with these little boys.
Now, how old are they?
These little indie rockers?
Oh, no, no, no.
The young indie rockers don't... The young indie rockers are mostly respectful.
You're like their Orange Franklin.
Yeah, that's right.
These are the middle-aged indie rockers who have lived long enough to imagine that they have some beef with me.
That I did something to them at some point.
Oh, they're trying to make you steam.
Well, they're just trying... They're trying to express the thing... They're trying to express the, like...
I remember when your band opened for my band, Energy.
Oh, that is not what I expect.
I'm sorry.
I apologize.
I thought these were going to be kids in skinny jeans.
You're talking about people who have profound personal problems and may smell like cats.
The young kids in skinny jeans, they come up and give me one white rose.
I mean, they're all very good.
As a symbol of the French Resistance, right?
Yeah, even if they go home and they're like...
mad about music or something.
They appreciate that.
Are you considered an elder statesman in Seattle, John?
I'm genuinely an old man to them.
They're just like, oh, Swami.
Oh, hello.
Old person.
I brought you a flower.
It's like Dylan going to visit Woody Guthrie.
No, it's just the guys that are 35 to 45 who have been playing guitar for a long time.
And some of them have been very successful.
But for whatever reason, they feel like... And it isn't even a case where I stole their girlfriend.
It's just a case of like... I shouldn't have...
I shouldn't be entitled to be the way I am.
Let me just be clear.
There should be rules.
There are people whose girlfriends I have stolen.
I just want to be very clear that this is not the case here.
Probably not the case.
Now, while you're dining partner, can you imagine how it must be for him?
Because it becomes so hip.
I don't even know if the kids say hip anymore.
They probably say, you know, pussalicious or something.
They say hip, but when they text it, they put like seven Ps at the end.
Hip, hip, hip, hip, hip, hip, hip, hip.
See, I could see them actually having one P, but it's all lowercase and has 14 H's.
Have you noticed them doing that?
Have you noticed this about kids now?
I don't understand what is so fucking hard about using sentence case.
Yeah.
Are they talking about multiple letters?
Multiple letters.
They're doing this thing where every word has like, so a word like hip, which has three letters, they write it with 15 letters, but they're all just H-H-H-H-H-I-I-I-I-I.
But it doesn't, it isn't, I don't think, meant to note.
Is that like a rage comic fuck thing?
Hip.
No, I don't think it is.
I don't think it's meant to be like... But no, it would be hip-a-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa.
Damn!
It sounds like they're describing the medical privacy law.
Hip-a-pa-pa-pa-pa.
Hip-a-pa-pa-pa.
I don't understand it, but I see it all the time now in the young people.
But when you talk to them, they speak like normal humans.
Is that right?
I think it's... I got to tell you, I never saw this coming, John.
It was a tough transition, but I'm so happy to be at a point where I'm going to look down my nose at this stuff.
Mm-hmm.
It feels so good.
It feels so – it's like becoming – you know, they say a lot of women don't really discover their – I'm not going to say women.
They say a lot of people don't really discover their true power in life until they stop being in the game based on their sexual attraction.
That a lot of people –
and i mean women uh they get super powerful after they get to like menopause she's like you know what fuck everybody fuck you and i'm totally i love that i love that when women get to an age where they're like rather than the ones who are like hanging out with the loose side heels and they're like pulling their face back like the lady in brazil you know yeah yeah yeah i love the fuck you lady in her 50s i fucking love that
Well, see, now this is the problem.
Maybe one of the problems with being a guy is that as you get older, as a man, particularly a man with a certain stature, you get more attractive because your gray hair and the wisdom that's in your face... But you also get crazier.
It makes you more appealing.
So you're never free.
You're never free at being a...
Sexual, sexual, highly sexualized, sexually charged object of being a highly sexually charged.
What kind of statute do you need for that to really become a problem?
More than I have, I think.
You're sandbagging.
You're sandbagging.
More stature.
I think you need a larger stature.
I think your problem, it's not a problem, I think your challenge is that you make a lot of men, and by men I mean people, but you make a lot of men feel strong feelings and they may not understand their strong feelings and they confuse them.
They say that a lot of people, by which I mean women and men, confuse their strong emotions and therefore what starts as hate can feel like love.
Or vice versa.
You just blew my mind.
Right.
Right.
Indifference.
So this whole group of people that's like, I hate John Roderick Club.
They all have chubbies.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, you know, as much as they can in those tight pants.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But I mean, how do you have a club about indifference?
I guess that'd be the Senate.
A club about indifference.
Waka, waka, waka.
What?
Have you heard?
What are the, what is going on with these nut jobs in Congress?
Am I right?
Yeah.
hotel soaps really oh but you have to sound angrier come on so you're saying you're saying you could take like a yelling match and by doing it in a slightly different tone of voice you do it turns into bad stand-up comedy yeah right like for instance you sent me this a royal and noble ranks sure now i'm gonna read it to you as though i'm angry
Traditional rank among European royalty, peers, and nobility?
It's rooted in late antiquity in the Middle Ages.
It's basically stand-up comedy.
It's funny.
It all becomes stand-up comedy.
You just read something, you read anything or say anything, like you're really mad.
Like somebody just hit your brand new car.
That's just stand-up all of a sudden.
Bad stand-up.
I have historically thought that the catchphrase, and I've got to stop looking at this, the Olive Garden page has something called a slider, which is, if you've ever seen this, you land on a webpage and there's a picture that keeps changing, and I think I might be having a grand mal seizure.
Now, what's the little one?
Grandma seizure?
Is that her name?
What's the other one?
What's the little seizure?
Petit mal?
Petit mal seizure.
What's the one that's French for orgasm?
Petit mal?
A grand mal seizure is just under an archduke.
And what's a petite mort seizure?
That's when a little Jewish guy comes.
Petit mal.
Uh, when you listen back, you're going to laugh at that.
So Olive Garden, I thought historically, okay, you're laughing on the inside, like a, like a clown.
Which one is that?
The, um, Congress.
So Olive Garden, my back, I have such a pain in my back right now.
Olive Garden, I thought that their catchphrase or their, whatever their service mark was hospitaliano exclamation point.
I'm seeing now here on the page and this, with this epileptic website of theirs, uh,
This is the registered trademark next to their logo.
When you're here, you're family.
Which I think, by extension, means, and when you leave, fuck you in the eye.
As long as you're here, you're family, buddy.
When you leave here, don't let the door hit your ass, you know?
Well, that's why they're trying to get you out, because while you're there, you're family.
You know, it's all about turnovers.
That's what it is.
Keep moving.
Not popovers, but turnovers.
I just put Hospital Italiano into Google, just because I've never... I have no idea what this means.
First thing that comes up...
Olive Garden.
Hospitaliano!
Registered trademark.
Oh, look at that.
It goes to the... Oh, boy.
Oh, boy, oh, boy, oh, boy.
Here's everything that's wrong with almost everything.
There's a Hospitaliano man?
That sounds like the worst superhero I've ever heard of.
Hospitaliano man!
Would you like more breadsticks?
It says in the Urban Dictionary that...
You give somebody a Hospitaliano.
Okay, here's what you do.
You stick your finger into their pasta and turn it around.
Then all your friends jump out of the closet and shit on her chest.
And then everybody goes, Hospitaliano!
Now leave, because you're not family anymore.
Well, apparently Hospitaliano is a subset of Authenticante.
What?
Which is derogatory slang referring to the average American commercial idea of what Mexican food should taste like.
Is this Olive Garden or Umberto Eco?
We're on an urban dictionary now.
Okay.
And Hospitaliano is a subset of that along with Bulaversament.
I don't even know what the fuck.
How do you pronounce that?
Blumpkin?
That's a Blumpkin.
Stop there.
That's it.
No, no, no, no.
We're done now.
Oh, Blumpkin.