Ep. 53: "Kennebunkhead"
Hello.
Hey, John.
Hi, Merlin.
How's it going?
Oh, busy.
Busy.
Ooh, you all stacked up?
Oh, I'm so busy.
You're so busy.
I'm not used to it.
You know, I shouldn't say this, but I am not very busy in general, and when I get busy, it's extremely stressful to me.
Yeah, I'm not used to it.
And, you know, I read these, I was about to say I read autobiographies of important people, but that's a lie.
I read reviews of autobiographies in The New Yorker by important people of important people.
And all these biographies make important people sound like they are just going, going, going, going, going.
They do more in like a week than you and I could do in two lifetimes.
Yeah.
Important people are just, they're so busy.
People in Hollywood are busy.
They're pitching this.
They're writing a script.
I heard this.
I think I was half listening, which is really the only way to listen to NPR.
And I think they said that the sitting president has something like five campaign appearances in the next four hours.
I haven't been five places in 48 hours in my whole life.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Then they sleep four hours a day and they feel rested and vibrant and away they go.
I got up this morning at 7 o'clock in the morning and I got in a car, my car, and I drove into the town.
I saw this.
And all the people, the other people were also driving into the town.
The other people in their cars were...
and i i was appalled yeah they were using my roads first of all yeah but uh but all this busyness and and uh and then i had to go there and then the person i was i was seeing was like well can you come back this afternoon i was like no i'm busy i have i have a lot of busyness so i don't know if i don't know if i'm suited for this all this busyness i mean i know that that's what you have to do in order to
gets someone get the new yorker to write a review of your autobiography or your biography i guess i have no i have no interest in writing an autobiography you're gonna need an office for that and and as long as we're talking about it i'll just say that a lot of those people probably benjamin franklin notwithstanding a lot of those people have handlers they have handlers they have schedulers they have assistants and they've given themselves over and they just you know basic bill murray right what time and what do i wear they just show up and somebody points them somewhere clips a mic on them and they start talking
Yeah, you're exactly right.
Speaking of Ben Franklin.
You have my attention.
I was thinking, I was lying in bed last night, and I was thinking about our coinage.
As you do.
Oh, the numismatic coinage.
Numismatic coinage.
And I was thinking, the quarter has Washington on it.
That seems reasonable.
The nickel has Jefferson.
Eminently reasonable.
The penny is Lincoln.
The half dollar used to be Benjamin.
Dimes got Roosevelt, right?
Franklin.
And then...
And now it's Kennedy.
All that seems right.
The dime has Roosevelt.
Seems perfectly plausible.
Why not?
But then, do you remember the old silver dollar?
The big one?
The one that was the size of a coaster?
Not the Kennedy one.
No, that's a half dollar.
Oh, sorry.
The big one had Eisenhower on it.
What?
The biggest American coin ever minted.
That's like giving Duran Duran an Emmy or a Grammy Award.
Yeah, it had Eisenhower on it.
And my whole life I have accepted...
That the old silver dollar had Eisenhower on it.
And then last night I'm lying in bed and I was like, wait a minute, Eisenhower?
See, that's the kind of thing, like, I'm sorry, I'm typing.
That's the kind of thing that would send me flying out of bed to go and look it up because it seems so wrong.
Nothing against Eisenhower.
He was a good man.
I'm not opposed to Eisenhower either.
I totally remember this.
They were big.
They were very big.
They are the size of the woofer in a stereo speaker.
Eisenhower dollar.
Yeah, and I mean, although Eisenhower, I think, was a very fine president and a nice man, I can think of six presidents that should have been on that coin before Eisenhower.
So there must have been some horse trading, some post-war horse.
This sounds like a jam-up to me.
First of all, it was only 1971 to 1978.
I'm just saying that the decision had to have come before 1971.
The guy had been dead for, when did he die?
He died not too long after he left office, right?
Eisenhower?
No, I think he lived a little ways into the 60s.
Let's check out Ike.
Mamie Eisenhower stuck around.
But you know, you're right.
That was the era where... 1969.
He saw Vietnam.
Yeah, right.
Saw a man walk on the moon.
Eisenhower.
Almost.
Almost.
He missed it by three months, four months.
Isn't that a pity?
Oh, come on!
Doesn't that suck?
March 28th, 1969.
It was July.
Early July.
Was that right?
Yeah.
Who's running this show that Eisenhower didn't get to see a man walk on?
I got to tell you, John, this is, this is fucking ridiculous.
We've got a stack of problems here.
First of all, that guy should have gotten to see that.
I think, don't you think he mainly got on there for being a general?
Don't you think?
I think you're right.
I think that's exactly right.
I think he got a Ulysses S. Grant type situation.
He won world war two and that's why they put him on the big coin.
And then, you know, his eight years as president and all that, I mean, that's fine, too.
That really burnishes the image.
But you know what?
Retired general, that's what it was.
Retired general.
Well, it's beyond the purview of this show to do a lot of research, but to the best – okay –
I know from the past that you're somebody who's interested in becoming a CIA operative.
I know you're interested in what's really going on.
I'm also equally super interested in what's going on.
I want to know what the fuck happened.
I want to know who else was in the running.
I want to know who lost to Eisenhower.
Right.
Now, who else would have, you know?
You say there's probably, I mean, and, you know, Roosevelt, I think he got to give the guy props for longevity.
And for a guy who couldn't use his legs, he got a lot of tail.
I think you got to give him credit for that.
You know what?
And only three-term president.
That counts for something.
It was only three?
He didn't go four?
My mom said when she was a kid, Roosevelt was always president.
He was the president.
It was like being around when Victoria was queen, I think, for 250 years.
You just get used to it.
That's just the thing we do.
Yeah, but they don't talk about a Rooseveltian era like they do the Victorian era.
But she was queen a little longer.
I think she also stepped out on her spouse, as did Franklin.
Oh, well, back in the Victorian times, my God, everybody was lifting everybody else's skirt.
Do you think she was a tiger in the sack?
I think that she might have preferred the company of other ladies.
Do you have a different sack for that?
Do you have a Victorian sack?
Definitely have a different sack.
See, when you become Queen Victoria and you get an era named after you, I think you get as many rooms and as much discretion as you like.
Sure, you get to have Zulu chambermaids.
Wow, Zulu chambermaid.
Did Josh just sign them?
Yeah.
That's amazing.
I was about to make a Zulu sound, but I don't know what that is.
I, for one, would be very interested in having a Zulu chambermaid.
I'd like to at least look into it.
You know, I would like to, boy, what I would do with a couple of Zulu chambermaids.
A chambermaid changes the sheets.
They do things with beds.
Is that right?
Correct.
Yeah, they're there with the wash basin.
They're there with the, what's the name of the wash basin where you go poop in the night?
Chamberpot.
Chamberpot.
Do you think she has to, the chambermaid, Zulu or otherwise, do they have to deal with the chamberpot?
I'm pretty sure if you are a maid and there is a pot and your title says chamber and the pot says chamber, that is what chamber is a euphemism for.
Chamber is a euphemism not for room, but for poop.
Let me put it this way.
If I were a chambermaid, which is a great Robin Hitchcock song,
And I had been on the payroll for a while.
I had some credibility.
And there was an opening.
And they were bringing in, say, a new scullery maid.
I would personally lobby to have the name of that change to the scullery pot.
Because I think that's an opportunity to maybe take one of the less pleasant parts of your jobs and shunt it off to someone else.
But scullery maid is the one who's washing your cutlery and your bowls and stuff.
She's down there scrubbing, scrubbing.
Oh, I see.
You don't want her washing your poop pot.
Cross-contamination.
Yeah, that's bottom of the house stuff, and chambermaid is top of the house.
Bottom of the house.
We should stay away from scullery maids, probably.
But seriously, though, I feel like John Adams should have a coin.
I feel like there are a couple of presidents that I would – I was going to ask you.
You said you thought maybe what, like five or six?
There's five or six.
You put Wilson.
I guess, as we know, Wilson's on the $100,000 bill.
Yeah, and I frankly –
Frankly, I have some misgivings about Wilson, but TR?
There's no Teddy Roosevelt coin?
Mm-hmm.
Is that a PETA thing, you think?
I think it might be.
I think people might have a hard time.
He's a little robust for today's culture, don't you think?
He is.
I think people would blanch.
You're kind of like the TR of your time in a lot of ways.
Oh, that's sweet of you.
No one's ever named a stuffed bear after me.
Pfft.
As far as I know.
Unless they just took a knife to it and tore out all the stuffing.
You're drawn.
They took a knife to it, threw out all the stuffing, and packed it full of diamonds.
And then put it in their anus and carried it across an international border.
I love that movie.
Wow.
Wow.
And, you know, but here's the other thing.
Now, do you think it's obviously in some ways it's a huge honor to be on a on a shitty low denomination coin because there's more of them.
Right.
See, Lincoln is my favorite president, but I hate pennies.
You're a penny hater.
I'm one of those guys.
Wow.
I think we could get rid of the nickel too.
I think maybe we get Lincoln onto a better coin.
I think we could put Lincoln on a dime.
It would be fine.
You know what I think we should do?
We should put Roosevelt on maybe like $500 bill.
Okay.
What if we put Lincoln on the $3 bill?
Because he was homosexual, right?
Do you get a queers and Lincoln $3 bill?
Come on, am I working?
I hate pennies.
I hate them.
I can't understand how you can hate pennies.
Pennies are such a wonderful piece of numismatic history.
What do you do?
So is slavery.
What do you do with pennies?
put them in a jar and they just stack up and you keep them and do you ever cash them in or is it just talismanic i don't i don't cash them in because because as you know or maybe you don't know but you probably do know at a certain point they stopped making pennies out of pure copper because a penny the the copper in a penny was worth three and a half cents yeah it cost like two or three times as much as the coin
Yeah, so they started making pennies out of zinc and coating them with copper.
But most of the coins in circulation that have a precious metal value higher than their face value, people have combed through their pocket change.
You very seldom find silver.
But you can find pure copper pennies every time you pick up a handful of chains.
Does it have to be a wheat penny?
No.
No, no, no, no.
Any penny up until they switched over to zinc in the 90s, I think.
It's a Clinton thing.
Probably.
Yeah, it's like going off the gold standard, except it's going on to the zinc standard.
Can I tell you what my one thing in my brain, every time I hear the gold standard, I think of exactly the same thing.
And this tells you the power of media.
All I remember is Thurston Howell was mad that we'd gone off the gold standard.
Wow.
Really?
Mm-hmm.
Oh, wait a minute.
It was in the 60s, right?
Wasn't... Nixon took us off the gold standard, but wasn't Gilligan's Island early 60s?
It was the mid-60s.
I could be wrong.
I could be wrong.
You know what?
Even my one piece of incorrect information might be wrong.
Here's a question for you.
This is something you might know.
Gilligan's Island started off as a black and white TV show, and then it became a color TV show.
Correct.
How many other TV shows had that experience?
Did that happen to Bonanza?
It's a very good question.
I don't know about Bonanza.
Bonanza, I think, was always in color.
Gunsmoke, obviously.
Definitely started.
I had to explain this to my daughter the other night.
I had to explain black and white things to my daughter.
How did she take it?
How do you explain it to somebody?
It's very difficult.
One of her favorite phrases right now is, oh, brother, it's so boring.
Ah!
And that's like getting her hair brushed.
It's like anything.
Oh, it's so boring.
Oh, brother.
It's so boring.
And she doesn't like black and white things.
And it's funny because when it comes to comics and stuff, she always favors the more colorful thing over the more monochromatic thing.
I was trying to tell her that when I was a kid, when I was a kid...
We didn't have a color TV at our house.
They were around, but I think it was much more costly to make things in color.
Yeah, you had to watch TV through a periscope.
It was a really big deal because you remember, I'm thinking it wasn't Batman, but it would be like, they would say, whatever, Dragnet in color.
Because it was a really big deal.
It was like the, not the 3D of the time, but you know what I mean?
It was a huge deal.
I remember our first color TV.
In fact, I remember somebody, I don't know how this happened, but at some point in the 70s, I was given as a gift, and I'm talking about me personally, not my family, but I was given as a gift a portable color TV.
Oh, come on.
Which was the size of a milk crate.
and weighed 45 pounds but it was a color tv and portable and someone i don't remember how this came to be mine but it was this portable color tv and whenever someone would get whenever someone we knew would get sick or a relative would be bedridden my mom would like poke me in the ribs and say offer them your tv
And I would loan my portable color TV, which, of course, I had no independent control over.
It's not like I could go turn it on and watch it.
My mom would have been like, there was TV time at our house, and it was two hours long on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
But anyway, I would carry this.
The news and Mike Douglas, and then we turn it off.
Then you would turn it off and you'd get one scoop of ice cream, one scoop of vanilla ice cream, and then to bed.
But I would carry this color TV out to the car.
I would sit next to it on the back seat.
We would drive it over to whatever infirm person it was that wasn't lucky enough to have a TV.
Well, this is the thing because a TV was something that sat in the living room and they were in bed.
Right.
And it was – I don't know.
You're talking about being a kid, so I can relate.
It was always – it was weird when you started meeting people that had more than one TV.
It seemed really – to me, it always seemed like you were really rich if you had a color TV.
If you had two color TVs – because back then you had a TV in your living room that was a piece of furniture.
And then in maybe like a den or a family room, you would have usually a crappy black and white TV on a TV table.
Uh-huh.
Because you get that.
You get that from S&H Greenstamps and it had wheels and you can put your TV guides and whatnot underneath.
But you're right.
I don't remember the first person I met that had two TVs.
I think it was into the 80s before I knew somebody that had two TVs.
But except for this color portable TV.
That's very costly, John.
That's a heck of an item you had there.
Oh, and it was a prized possession.
Like I say, it's not like I turned it on.
That's like giving up your toothbrush or something.
That ride in the car must have been awful.
Well, but the thing is, I felt like I was doing it.
This was the kind of good deed Samaritan kind of thing that was instilled in me by my parents.
Like, you are doing a good thing.
You're taking this TV to help a sick person.
And I would sit proudly in the backseat and think, I am like a doctor.
Yeah.
I am a doctor of TV, of color TV delivery.
And, you know, and the little old lady, we'd set the TV up on her dinner tray, and she'd be like, oh, thank you so much.
It's so good.
What a nice TV.
It must have seemed like magic.
boy i was always envious i was i was filled with envy as a child i was not i was not generous like that is that right well no i was i was we didn't have a lot and i was selfish about what we had yeah and i really really really really in that instance i really like tv like if we went to loan him a crock pot pot i'd be like more power to you mom i'm not gonna miss that i
Unless we start getting happy days on the crockpot, you're good to go.
I think if I was ungenerous with my things, my mom would take it away from me.
If I was like, no, it's mine, she'd be like, no, it's nobody's.
Would she really do that?
One time, this is still a traumatic memory for me.
One time, she was always trying to get me to clean my room.
And I was one of those kind of passive kids that was like, I'm going to do it.
I'll do it in a second.
And she came in and she was like, I said, clean your room.
Oh, yeah, I was just about to do it.
And I could keep that game going for six months.
I'm just about to do it.
And one time I put all my toys in the closet, just kind of stuffed them in the closet and shut the door.
And my mom came in.
She was like, you cleaned your room.
And I was like, yeah.
She said, good boy, you know, and actually gave me like a reward, praise, which I received knowing I did not deserve it.
Oh.
And then later I was out running around the neighborhood and she went in my room and opened the closet door and discovered that I had stacked all my toys in the closet.
And her response was that she climbed in the closet and jumped up and down until the biggest piece of toy was like the size of a Roosevelt dime.
That's completely bananas.
She demolished them.
And these were models I had built.
These were like...
that's that's psychotic john and i did you do stuff like that a lot well not a lot this was this made quite an impression she didn't need to yeah that's right you only have to do that once decimation and she was like you know and i think what she was she was maddest that i had that i had uh misled her that i had portrayed the room as being clean and had accepted the congratulations oh
And she was like, this is what happens.
It is that all toys become atomized.
And now we're going to start over.
Now we're going to start at the beginning.
And maybe you'll get a toy at Christmas.
I was like, lesson learned.
I don't think I could do that.
I'll screw with my kid a little bit with stuff like that, but I would never actually break them.
Wow.
But it had an impact on you.
It was a different time.
The Soviets were right over the horizon.
People today don't understand.
They don't understand.
You couldn't muck around.
It was a more serious time.
It was.
You could make models, but you sure should better put them in the right place when they're made.
That's exactly right.
God, you must have been heartbroken.
Well, I was, but the lesson, I think, the long-term lesson was don't get attached to stuff.
yeah that's very wise well it is except that right i'm sorry i'm speaking to you now live from a room that uh that looks like an outtake from storage wars where um where the guy emptied out a like a 50 foot storage container full of broken music equipment and old hats
You're like the end of Citizen Kane, except you've actually taken everything out of all the boxes.
I made a terrible mistake a few years ago when my sort of casual hobby of popping into thrift stores and browsing around looking for a couple of choice items became a dedicated pursuit of thrifting as a...
As a way of keeping the demon dogs off my trail.
You know what I mean?
This is a formulation that I use a lot.
But I feel like everybody's got... Or not everybody.
There are some people with no demon dogs at all.
But those of us that have demon dogs nipping at our heels, we do things to keep them at bay.
And at a certain point, I put all my demon dog eggs in the basket...
That I bought at a thrift store.
The thrift store basket that I bought at a thrift store.
And I go to them now as a form of retail therapy and as a form of like... I use it like other people use going to the movies or eating.
It's a kind of entertainment.
I go and I paw through these bins...
And the inevitable consequence of that is that little by little, and I mean, I often go to a thrift store and don't buy a thing, but little by little, I have filled up my house with crap, other people's detritus.
And...
And it's untenable.
Particularly because having bought all this stuff at thrift stores, I know the crevices are packed with other people's dander.
Most of these things have not been properly de-dandered.
Well, I mean, I try and de-dander them as much as you can, but as you know, there's a little bit of DNA left on a lot of this stuff, I have to guess.
Yeah.
I found a couple of leather-bound, leather-coated globe bookends that look like ye olde globes that are bookends.
They're covered with dander, I bet.
I read a thing the other day about how people in England don't wash their hands.
Like, one in four people in England has poop on their hands.
And about how even just, like, entering a room, like, there's elements of your personal dander that can be in that room for, like, weeks.
You know?
So...
But let me just say this.
I see – I have my own demon dogs at my own heels, and so I appreciate this.
I think for me right now, that's comics.
But what you're talking about, I see the appeal of this in so many ways just on an existential level.
I mean first of all, there's the thing of like, well, retail therapy, as you say.
But you're not going out and buying like coach purses or something.
You're not going out and saying, I just need to spend $400 to feel whole today.
It's much more complex than that.
Right.
Because you've also introduced a discriminating taste.
You've introduced – not chance exactly, but it's almost like – But there is an element of treasure hunting or chance.
Oh, no, no.
Absolutely.
But this is the big thing of it.
And it's neat.
I mean like it's fun with me and my comics.
I like just like leafing through them and organizing them and doing all that kind of stuff, which you get to do and de-dandering.
Right.
But there's also – when you get into that, if you're honest about it, I think it becomes like – if you're honest with yourself, you realize there's some puzzle.
Like you don't have the cover of the box.
All you know is that there are pieces of some puzzle that you're discovering and you're not even sure what puzzle it goes to.
But somehow this piece feels right and this piece does not.
But I'm going to put it over here just in case it – and I think that's what happens.
When you become a collector and you become like a thrift shopper, I think you get into a groove.
You talked about this with one of your ladies who was like a serious hardcore thrift shopper and the types that do this.
But I think there's an existential puzzle that you're probably unintentionally trying to solve.
Yeah.
Well, there is, and I remember when I crossed the threshold of having more than 40 brass candlesticks, the people in my life closest to me started to do that little side-to-side dance that people do right before they're going to stage an intervention.
I bet you've seen that dance a lot.
Hi!
God, hi!
Oh, what's in the bag?
Oh!
Oh, more candlesticks.
And I was like, yeah, check this one out.
This one's clearly 110 years old.
And they were just about to intervene and say, listen, something's wrong with you that you have this many candlesticks.
And I reached a point where I had every brass candlestick
I had every kind of brass candlestick that I could think of.
And I started to go to thrift stores and I would see racks of brass candlesticks and I would just be like, those are junk.
I don't need any of that.
And I haven't bought a brass candlestick in two years.
So the puzzle was completed.
The puzzle was completed, and I have no idea what candlestick it was that I finally got that was like, ta-da, there it is, the missing one.
So it isn't a thing where you have to have every brass candlestick you find.
It isn't that you've got to drive to different towns to make sure that this one, whatever, 1938 Superman comic version of a candlestick is out there.
Mm-hmm.
A day came along, and you realized.
Now, what about other things?
Globes?
Are you where you need to be with globes, do you think?
I'm where I need to be.
Like I saw a globe the other day that was pretty cool, 80 years old, and very, very weathered, and the patina was what made it cool.
But as I looked at it, I realized...
No, it's not.
Again, like you're saying, it is not the puzzle shape that I need to fit into.
All of these collections are... Everything that I acquire, there is a docking port still open for the next cool thing.
But I've never been a completist.
Like I need to have every issue or I need to have every one of a certain kind of thing.
I'm looking for things.
That's a different kind of collecting OCD probably.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I don't know what it is.
But I think what needs to happen.
The other thing is that because I find these things for very, very cheap, I'm so reluctant to sell them.
That's what I was going to say.
I mean, some people who are not hoarders, but collectors, they'll start kind of saying, okay, this is how much space I have for my collection to be public.
This is an area where I put stuff that's, you know, like a museum, right?
You don't have everything on display all the time.
But you know that in this box, these are my other 14 Iron Man figures or whatever.
And then you get a new Iron Man figure that's really cool.
And like you might take your least cool Iron Man figure and get rid of it.
Sell it off or take the least interesting one in the box and sell that.
You know what I mean?
But this question of value is at the heart of the thing.
Because I go to a place and this thing is 50 cents, but I know it's worth $50.
And then I get it and I bring it home and I put it on the desk and I go, that's worth $50 and I got it for 50 cents.
But I don't really think it's worth $50 because I got it for 50 cents.
To sell it for $50 feels...
wrong, but it cheapens the... I would much rather take the things that I am done with, the Iron Man figure that is the least important to me, and just put it back into the river.
Just take it down to the thrift store in a box and give it back to the thrift store.
Because somebody will want that, absolutely.
Yeah, and I feel like the thrift store... That might be somebody else's puzzle piece.
It's kind of a Gaia figure.
It's a Mother Earth.
And the Mother Earth has these big forested teats, which she provides mana to us through.
And part of that mana is this constant steady flow of brass tchotchkes.
Yeah.
That issue forth from her teats.
And so I... She should probably have that looked at.
I take the cornucopia that I have unloaded and I fill it up with old stuff and I take it back to the Mother Gaia store.
That's a lot of metaphors.
I've heard people say – it is said that if you're truly a collector, it only becomes a collection when you have more than two and you put them somewhere and take care of them, right?
Well, I'm clearly not a collector of wives.
Yeah.
For any variety.
I think you failed at every test on that one.
Will it take care of it?
What?
Public.
Put it somewhere.
That's not my responsibility.
Why would I tell anybody who that is?
That's weird.
But, you know, and so, like, for example, my friend, my very good friend, Dennis Gephardt, back in Florida, very, very interesting guy.
I might have mentioned him to you.
He...
He was very tidy.
He had very – he kind of treasured everything that he had and didn't have things he didn't treasure.
He's not one of those guys – there are those guys who will buy 25 pairs of shoes and they're all over the floor or those guys who have 25 pairs of shoes and they're all in plexiglass.
Like he would have five well-maintained pairs of shoes like a gentleman.
Oh, I admire that.
I admire that.
I think that's the way to be.
That's the way to be.
And Dennis was, I believe, of the one-in, one-out school.
It's an overused word, but to curate your belongings –
Yeah, it's an art.
It's absolutely an art.
Here's why I look to Dennis as a paragon of so many things.
We went to college together and we're eventually roommates in Florida and in Tallahassee.
But one of the best guys I've ever known and he collected many interesting things.
He collected – before it was fashionable and ironic, he collected like – Humanize.
Yeah.
I call them co-ed orbs.
But he would collect, for example, like what you might call outsider art, which in this case was like things people had painted themselves that he found.
Sure, that's big down into the Tallahassee.
Well, now it's a thing.
But what he collected is his primary collection.
And I knew this when we went to college together.
And I'd heard about it.
And the first time I saw it, first time I met Dennis, he's probably 6'2".
And he was wearing overalls.
He's from Arkansas.
He's a very colorful guy.
I like this guy.
Very interesting guy.
Now he works on Wall Street.
But he has – he collects – now when I say that he collects ETs, your first thought might be, oh, he goes out and he gets like little ET figurines and he's got 100 of them on a shelf.
No.
That was my first thought.
That's your first thought as you do.
But he doesn't just collect ETs.
He – and –
He collects, like, ceramic ETs.
He creates ETs that people have, like, made out of craft projects.
But he only collects unlicensed, like, homemade ceramic ETs.
This is like the velvet painting of Elvis that is done really badly.
Oh, the five-second mix.
But the thing is, it's not really just purely ironic.
He really genuinely loves these things.
But the thing is, he's got, like, eight or nine of them.
Uh-huh.
But it was great because he'd walk in the house and all his ETs were in a cabinet in the corner.
But the nice thing is now if he just collected ETs, you'd walk up and you go, oh, that's really cool.
You got like 100 ETs.
And I'll look at that one.
That one's got a little nick on it.
It looks like a kid bit.
That one.
No!
These are all incredibly fucked up looking because ETs are super weird looking to begin with.
Right.
But these are like painted – they look like maybe special people made them.
And they're all super shiny because they're like ceramic.
Right.
Now, I admire this because the thing is it would have been real easy for him to go, I collect ET stuff, and then he's just a weirdo with a bunch of stuff in boxes.
But he has a collection.
It's taken him 30 years to put together, and it's got like nine items in it, right?
He's still – because it gets harder and harder over the years to find a good outsider ET.
But that's the kind of collecting I admire because he goes to thrift stores.
He'll get things.
Of course, he gets rid of other things.
But to me, that's like – that's a gentleman.
If you're collecting off-brand unlicensed ETs and then displaying them, I admire that.
What is the name for the Japanese little porcelain figures that are sort of a –
a big a big part of of japanese culture i mean i guess every every little shotski is a kind of part of the kind of like rock around like we like uh weebles uh they i don't think they are they are weebles exactly no i don't i don't think i know this no there there was a book about them i know about i know about erasers that look like food my kid loves those
Erasers that look like food.
Huge.
You know, another guy like that is Scott Plouffe, the drummer of Built to Spill.
In Seattle, every restaurant you walk into has an ironic collection of bad paintings on the walls.
$700 each.
But Scott has this collection of portraits, naive portraits, in a room in his house.
You walk in and you look at the wall and your first thought is like, oh, it's like a hipster bar anywhere in the Northwest where there's a bunch of thrift store paintings.
But then as you look at the paintings, one after another, you realize that he probably has eight of them.
And there is no way but that they represent a lifetime of cultivating this collection.
Because each one of these paintings, they're clearly thrift store paintings, each one of them is the greatest thrift store painting you ever saw.
Oh, like well executed.
Incredible.
Not just well executed, but like...
captures an ineffable aspect of the human condition.
You know what I mean?
Each portrait is not just a great representation of a person, but also an actual work of art that...
By the style and by the frame you know was also found for a dollar by someone.
And the only way to have those eight paintings together in a room is to have yourself bought and have been given 400 paintings in the course of your life.
And you got rid of 300...
and 92 of them wow in order to have in order to have these eight you know like some he's just he's a magnet but he's also he has this incredible aesthetic and he's a drummer so i mean you know it's not like he's really overcome a lot you'd never you'd never know it by looking at him but oh my god this collection of paintings you know belongs in a museum and in fact it his house is like that so
I really admire that.
You could do that.
Now, this could be a project.
Here's the other thing.
I mean, like you say, demon dogs.
Like with me and with comics, it's easy because there's always another comic you need to fill in this part, to learn this part.
And with me, this is so simple because I could just buy it online.
I could get it off the internet or whatever.
But in your case, I mean, you have puzzles inside of puzzles.
Yeah, I need to get – I think the next puzzle for me is the puzzle of –
of getting rid of stuff it is the it's the agony in the ecstasy idea of chipping away all the stone that isn't michelangelo's david i need to get rid of that you should check you look i do have the agony in the ecstasy here somewhere now between you might have a david you know it might be inside some of that dander sandwiched between the joys of yiddish and american aircraft world war ii volume one
uh yeah like i'm just looking at my bookshelves now and i'm thinking i have a lot of books and 90 of them could go into a pyre and the remaining 10 would be an awesome collection of books but oh that's too much to take on i'm i'm did i mention i'm a really busy guy right now yeah is it busy with our thing
Oh, that among other things.
I made a Christmas record with Jonathan Colton.
Are you guys touring on that?
We're doing a tour in the winter.
And I'm going back to MaxFunCon this weekend.
Oh, dude.
That's a lot.
Okay, here's the thing.
Now, you and I, slackers like us, we can sit around and talk about how we're busy, but let's be honest.
I mean, most of the time, not now, most of the time, we're busy with stuff that nobody could fucking give a shit about and wouldn't know if it never happened.
Right.
For me, I can go, oh, there's this thing I really wanted to do, or there's no public humiliation involved if it's a day late.
But it sounds like you've got time-sensitive stuff where you really are busy like a fucking normal man.
I'm busy.
I have to get on an airplane.
You've got to get on a couple airplanes, don't you?
And I have to have that stuff done.
So, yes.
You've got to get us a car.
You've got to get craft services.
I've got to do that.
I'm flying.
I'm going to Europe in November.
I'm doing some shows.
I'm performing in a reenactment of The Last Waltz in San Francisco.
What?
Is it on Thanksgiving?
The end of November.
It's very close to Thanksgiving.
Oh, my God.
And all of these things.
Who do you play?
I'm going to be Neil Diamond.
What does he sing?
What does he sing in The Last Waltz?
Of all the ones that come out, even more than... I think he sings Ricky Don't Lose That Number.
That would be funny.
That's the only one you want.
Even though the song would not come out for another five years.
But it's one of these things where all the things that I have to do, they're all stacking up.
So I fly to Edinburgh, Scotland.
And then I go to Ireland.
And then I fly back from Ireland to San Francisco, where I play a show the next night.
And then I fly from there to San Diego, where I join Jonathan Colton for a tour across America.
Is this the bus tour?
Jonathan Colton has a bus, so it's going to be one of those things.
That's so sweet.
Well, it's sweet, except, as you know, I am an oversized person.
Well, compared to what?
You mean compared to a normal person?
Compared to Rivers Cuomo, I am an oversized person.
Compared to Daniel Craig, James Bond, I am an oversized person because he is not a big person.
Is that right?
Yeah, because you see these pictures of him walking the red carpet next to his leading lady, whom you know to be 5'2".
Right.
And he is the same height.
Is that right?
Yeah, yeah.
Because movie actors, they don't want him to be too big because they make everybody else look good.
I think Humphrey Bogart was pretty short, too.
He had very small feet.
Daniel Craig is 5'10".
No, he's not.
That's a total publicist lie.
You think so?
5'10".
That's baloney.
Baloney.
But in any case, he's a handsome man.
Very handsome man.
But in any case, I get onto these tour buses and I get into the bunk, which is scaled for a normal-sized person, and my toes are touching and my head is touching.
And I feel like I am, I feel like I am, um, like I have been put, like I've been put into a cigar box and I'm about to be buried in some kid's backyard.
Well, I don't want, I don't want to bring it up, you know, bring up an old thing, but you, you don't, you don't like being, you don't want to be buried alive.
You don't like being in a closed space.
No, I don't want to be buried alive and I don't want to be.
I mean, nobody wants to be buried alive.
Right.
But I really don't.
Maybe Germans.
There's probably some Germans that want to be buried alive.
There are some Germans.
They call it Barry Scheissen.
Yeah.
But I don't want to be buried alive, and I don't want to be in a tiny bunk when my tour bus rolls on the interstate and I'm crushed into this space that was already too small for me.
So anyway, touring on a bus is kind of a mixed bag.
I have slept many, many nights on a...
on an open train car hurtling through the mountains and i'm more comfortable on one of those than i am in a bunk on a tour bus so so you're dreading it a little bit no it's one of those like i know i know that i'm going to be tired for six weeks and
And that is absolutely endurable, considering all the great times, the wonderful, fun times that will make up for not really getting a good night's sleep.
All those people you're going to get to hug?
A lot of hugs.
A lot of people touching you.
A lot of touching.
A lot of people looking at me.
Some people looking at their phones.
I think I'm going to see a few people looking at their phones.
But I like going to the UK.
I know that you, earlier in the show...
stipulated that one in four people in Britain has poo on their hands.
That's bad.
I find people in the UK are definitely like window peepers and panty sniffers, but I think they're wonderful.
I love the country.
I'm not even in Britain.
I'm in Scotland and Ireland.
They're wonderful people.
They're like the Canada of England, right?
Who?
Scotland?
They're like the Canada of England if Canada was Sparta.
Hmm.
What's Wales?
Does Wales count?
Is that even still country?
Wales is a country.
Increasingly, it is more and more a country all the time.
They are regaining their autonomy.
And Wales is like...
I think that successive waves of invaders came into Wales, and the Welsh did their old trick, which was to go up in the mountains and throw rocks down.
Ah, the old Welsh trick.
The old Welsh trick of throwing rocks down from the mountains.
And so it was very hard to subdue them because... Bryn Mawr, Baclavin, it's time for you to learn the old Welsh trick.
Come with me, Morgan.
You mean the one where you go up the mountain and throw rocks down?
Oh, yeah.
I guess you've heard.
They could subdue the Welsh that got caught down around the water.
Mm-hmm.
But as soon as the Romans turned their backs or the Britons or the Danes turned their backs, those Welshmen went up in the mountains and started throwing rocks down on them too.
So I think both the Welsh and the Scots have that in common, at least, that they were hard to subdue, although the Welsh were finally subdued before the Scots.
Well, I mean, we should probably have an offline about this.
We're probably going to have to go on hiatus for a little while.
It sounds like you're going to be pretty busy.
Oh, no.
We can continue to do the podcast.
We'll just have to do it now.
Or telegraph or something?
Well, I have an iPhone 5 now.
Oh, wow.
So you don't have a shitty phone anymore.
Well, I'm not prepared to say that because I've been trying to use my iPhone 5 and it did not import all my text message history.
Oh, yeah.
It didn't do all these things.
And so I'm like, you know, I look at it.
I'm looking at it across the room.
At least you can take pictures now.
Right.
I can take nice pictures.
I can...
I'm not sure what else it allows me to do.
Oh, I can talk to Siri if I want to.
That can be a little frustrating.
Still trying to figure out.
I think I was prepped for the upgrade to be a transformation in my life.
And really, it just works like I wanted my 3GS to work.
It's like a 3GS except it works.
Right, right, right.
It works like the 3GS did when I got it.
Getting all that stuff to sync and work together is definitely the hard part.
My concern is for your health.
I just want to make sure.
I'm worried about... I'm going to lay this out.
I don't want to be controversial.
I'm worried about the poop.
I'm worried about the bunk.
And I don't want you to get stress bumps.
I want you to make sure that you're taking lysine.
Thank you.
And getting sleep when you can.
That's important.
Is Jonathan's whole band a goofy band of his coming?
Yeah, Jonathan's band and his extended staff.
They're like a Hanna-Barbera cartoon.
Including Jonathan's manager, Coom Merchguy, whom you got along with so well.
We've mended fences.
Okay, good, good.
But anyway, Merlin, doing this podcast with you is like a healthful draught of draught.
How do you fucking pronounce that?
Draft.
of uh of mead it's a healthy a glass of vitamin enriched mead honey beer that i that i look forward to every week i wouldn't i would not uh well john if it helps at all i i quaff deep upon thine mead also too i do i do i i don't i don't see any way we could possibly do this while you're gone i just want to make sure you take care of yourself
That's thoughtful.
Well, I'm serious, and also make sure you don't get screwed on your phone when you go over there.
They'll take you to the cleaners over there.
I thought you were going to say don't get screwed by Jonathan and his capitalistic business practices.
I thought you were learning from him.
I thought you were learning how to make money from Jonathan Colton.
We are both learning how to make money from one another.
Oh, really?
In as much as you can say without making it sound like you guys want to make a living, so you help each other out.
You're able to give each other notes where the other has shortcomings, deficits, areas for improvement.
Well, here's the funny thing.
Jonathan Colton is the person who reinvented the music business a few years ago.
I read that in the New York Times.
Yeah, and then a lot of people were like, well, now the cat is out of the bag.
The music business, it's all just put it on the internet for free and let people, and then they buy your t-shirts.
Problem solved.
And then three or four years went by and everybody went, oh, that only, A, only works for Jonathan Colton, and B, increasingly doesn't work for anybody.
And so my experience in the actual music business,
has started to come in handy with us because as we, as we, uh, as we are making a Christmas record and trying to promote it, um, we have a guaranteed audience on one hand of people who will buy anything Jonathan Colton puts out, but we want, we want to get this record into other people's hands too.
And just putting it for free on the internet doesn't, it isn't really enough anymore, you know?
Um,
So, anyway, we are working in concert, if you will, to make money as performing artists.
Changing the game.
It is a game-changing change gamer over here.
It's been funny to watch that from...
From sometimes nearby but mostly a middle distance where Jonathan is the poster child for all of this stuff.
Like anything like this though, it's really – it's funny how the air of – like having democracy in the air gets people so excited but then they realize it's still really fucking hard.
Yeah.
Where people go like, oh, I would have recorded this song if only I had a 64-track studio.
Well, now you've got a fucking recording studio in your pocket.
Like, what have you made?
Or, you know what I mean?
It's like, oh, well, look at him.
He's a half millionaire, and all he had to do was write a zombie song.
It's like, well, all he had to do and then tour relentlessly.
Well, and ultimately practice his guitar for 15 years in order to write a zombie song.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
You know where to put the mark on the big machine, right?
But yeah, I don't know.
That drives me a little crazy.
But this has been driving me crazy more and more, the proximity that we all have to people who never have to work again.
You know, you saw that and see it all the time in your tech world where, you know, you have... I don't know that many people who never have to work again.
I know probably half a dozen people who never have to work again.
But that's a lot, you know, like a half a dozen people who never have to work again.
Compared to normal people, that's fine for Merlin.
That's fine for Merlin.
But, I mean, I know a half a dozen people in rock and roll, or a dozen maybe, who don't have to work again.
Ever.
Again.
And now that I'm meeting people in Hollywood who don't have to work...
it does a job on you.
I'm glad that I didn't go to prep school.
I'm glad I did not meet rich people.
I mean, like family money rich people.
Oh, you mean like perma-rich people?
Perma-rich people.
I'm glad I did not know them when I was a young person because I think that permanently scars you to be around people who just never had to or have to think about money.
You think so?
I find them very relaxed.
Oh, I know, but at least if you have my mind, I would just be churning, churning, churning.
And I think they seem very relaxed.
It would be me that could never relax.
I mean, as it was growing up... I'm sorry, if you were perma-rich, you'd never relax?
If I had grown up around perma-rich people but was like I am.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know, growing up around middle-class people, it's like, well, we're all going to have to get a job, so...
Yeah, it's one thing to have a TV.
It's another thing to have a color TV.
It's another thing to have the color TV and a black and white TV.
It's another thing to have five TVs, and it's another thing to know that if you wanted to, you could buy every TV.
Yeah, right.
Or to have servants or whatever.
I mean, I think our friend Sean Nelson, former singer of Harvey Danger, he went to Episcopal High School in Virginia.
And a lot of his classmates— Wow, there's like three things about that that are rough.
Right?
A lot of his classmates were— Episcopals are the fake Catholics, right?
Yeah.
Episcopals are the Catholics in everything but name because of Henry VIII.
Mm-hmm.
But they were the real, like, sweater knotted around the neck set there.
And Sean, although not a poor kid, did not come from this kind of storybook money, this, like, house in Maine...
built on a rock promontory that looks out over Kennebunkhead.
And I think that kind of exposure to preppy millions worked its magic on him.
In the sense of feeling, boy, this is hard not to project, like never quite fully arrived?
Yeah, never quite fully realized as a person almost.
I mean, I don't know.
Speaking in the abstract, of course.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I had this experience going to the HBO Emmy party where guys are walking around with Emmys in their hands.
which are surprisingly big statues.
And after about the 16th guy, like nebbishy 35-year-old guy in a tuxedo walked past holding an Emmy, I started to say, where's my fucking Emmy?
I want an Emmy.
I mean, these guys aren't any smarter than I am, and they got an Emmy.
They're going to put that Emmy up on the mantle, and it's going to sit there the rest of their lives.
And the day they die...
the first thing the obituary is going to say is that they won an Emmy.
You know, it's a kind of like...
You got that taken care of at least.
And I think that that is... In the sense of, I'm sorry, in the sense of like the canapé tray passed me or in the sense of like, wow, now I really, really want one of those and I'm going to go work for it.
Well, that's an excellent question.
I mean, am I going to go... Do I want an Emmy so badly that I'm going to go work for one?
No.
But has the concept of not having an Emmy being a disappointment now been introduced?
Has that been introduced into my mind?
Yes.
Yes.
And so this is, it goes back to this question of like, I mean, to get an Emmy, one must chase an Emmy, but it doesn't keep you from sitting around kind of, you know, grousing or internally feeling that there is something missing from your life or your career.
And that's why I feel like working in LA would be so, even being down there for a week.
How can you be anything but perpetually broken?
Yeah.
It's so crazy because you're – The whole culture there is about how nobody – it seems like – I'm going to apologize in advance to my very, very good friends who live there.
But the whole culture seems predicated on the idea that everybody wants more and everybody wants to look like they've got more than somebody else.
And it's perpetually looking over the shoulder of the person you're talking to to kind of upgrade.
Yeah.
And it's just – in San Francisco, there's douchebag conversations to be certain.
But there are things about like what school your kid goes to or stuff.
But I just – the giantness of class dissatisfaction amongst rich people in LA is staggering to me.
It seems like everybody wants to be on a better VIP list in LA.
I think that's true, but lately I've been spending a little bit more time down there and interacting with the creative class, which is to say the aspirational young people who are trying to get their scripts looked at and made.
Mm-hmm.
And, you know, it's like anybody.
It's like young bands that start off and then one of them becomes successful.
You've got six guys sitting around the table.
They're all trying to get their scripts made, except for this guy over here who just won an Oscar.
And the level of achievement, the level of possible achievement is so...
is so much greater.
You know, like, it just seems to me that having won an Oscar, and I mean, this is looking at it from the outside, once you've won an Oscar, I guess you have to get up the next day and brush your teeth and, you know, wipe your butt like anybody.
Like, I met Lee Unkrich, who won an Oscar for Toy Story 3.
And I met him in the context of a party where I was standing there talking to him for a half an hour and
before it was made known to me by someone else that he had just recently won an Oscar for Toy Story 3.
This was last year, the year before.
And...
You know, he's our age and a super nice guy, like a mellow dude.
And it's not just that he won an Oscar, but that he made a thing of such consummate beauty.
One of my favorite movies of all time.
As Toy Story 3.
Yeah, it's a tremendous movie.
And so all of a sudden I'm standing there and I'm saying...
Oh, you and I have been talking about our dads for the last half hour, but right now I'm just going to completely switch gears and start talking about the incredible Holocaust metaphor in the form of a children's cartoon.
Oh, thank you, John.
That you made.
I'm so tired of having to A, bring that up at a party, to B, have somebody tell me it's not true, to C, then have to make the entire room cry after an hour of explaining how Toy Story 3 is about the Holocaust.
Yeah, I'm sitting... Have we discussed this before?
Oh, I don't think so.
Oh, this is the thing I do at every party.
It's written in the fabric of the movie.
You can't possibly miss it.
Really?
The fire at the end?
Come on.
You're hiding them in an attic?
If you don't cry at the end of Toy Story 3, then there's something dead inside you.
And I'm saying this to this guy like, so you made this wonderful thing, like an amazing thing, like a thing that has all of the depth and breadth of 15 years of The Simpsons.
And also, like, the tragedy of... A Russian novel.
Yeah, right.
It's a profound cartoon.
And he's like, oh, thanks, man.
And I'm like, right, well, there's nothing more for me to say about that except, like, high five and let's talk about... What were you looking for?
Were you looking for a whiff of his success, Musk?
No, no, no.
But a sense of, like... Well, I guess the takeaway was that...
Having made a thing like that, his only thought was about the next thing he was going to make.
I think that's very – I'm happy to say that I think that is not typical.
But I think that's one of the laudatory – one of the things I really like about people like that is that it isn't like they want to arrive and then get their statue and run the next thing.
I have to say a lot of people I know who work at Pixar and DreamWorks are like this.
They think a lot about like, okay –
well, you know, we got another good one.
Now let's make another, like now the next thing, the next thing.
And they're, you know, they're always working a little bit on different projects and they're constantly looking, you know, learning the new tools because that's critical to what they do.
And they're craftsmen.
You know, they're, they're people who are just constantly thinking about like, how do we keep building on this and making something great?
Okay.
Now we've learned how to do hair.
Now we've learned how to do the water.
Now we know how to make the hair move with the wind and look good when it's wet.
Now we're ready to make Incredibles.
Now, you know what I mean?
And it's, I, as, as a, as a Pixar Uber fan, I,
and nerd, I have so much respect for that process.
You know what I mean?
And it's, you can, you can tell it's like, you know, like you say, like the fuck stains, you know, who learn guitar to meet girls.
It's so distinct.
I'm not going to say LA, but it's so distinct from this culture of like sucking up to the right people.
So, you know what, this is unkind.
I'm not going to say it.
I'm not going to say it, but there's a meritocracy there.
It's a hard place to work.
Everybody's constantly kicking your ass to do things a hundred times better.
It's a very Steve Jobs-y kind of company where,
ridiculous perfection is expected of everybody and innovation but this is the thing that I am carrying around with me a lot lately which is that I do not I do not locate in myself that drive when I search when I search my C drive
Comma.
And I say, what files are here?
Gleep Glorp.
I do not.
Locate motivation.
I do not.
Will to create.
Ampersand.
I'm searching through all these different folders marked like, relax, chill out, take a break.
Whatever, whatever two, whatever three.
Test, test, whatever, final, final, 36.
And then I'm scrolling through JPEGs at the bottom of like, whatever, whatever, whatever, whatever.
And then there's a JPEG that's like, hey, untitled 72.
And then there's one that says, just do it, thumbs up.
And I click on it.
I click on it, and it's a thumbnail picture.
It's 16 by 5.
I can't even see it.
Oh, no, no, no.
Yes, yes, yes.
And I'm wondering if it's just a vitamin D deficit.
Yeah.
Sunshine, you might need sun.
But it does not, but all of that does not give me any relief when I look across the room at an Emmy Award sitting on a table in front of some Schmedrick, and I think, what the fuck?
What is that?
The only way I can deal with that demon dog is to stay out of the room.
I just don't enjoy – actually, I'm not going to talk too much about this, but you know how I feel about the divide.
I'm uncomfortable with the divide.
And when I feel myself like moving toward this like, ooh, there's this more famous person over there.
Well, like what the fuck?
Why do they want to meet me?
And what would I say if they did?
Mm-hmm.
And like, you know, on the other hand, there might be somebody over there that does want to meet me who might be really super cool.
It's just that I don't know what they're famous.
They're not a famous Smedrick, you know?
And then I always feel like if I do meet somebody like this on Chris Guy, who you've said before, sounds really nice.
I'm going to totally go into like dumb Chris Farley mode.
Right.
Where it's going to be like, you know, the thing where what he writes on the post-it note, we never see what the address was.
That was awesome.
Yeah.
If you look really close and zoom in, the dinosaur looks a lot like a plastic dinosaur.
It's really good how you did that.
I mean, you know, I have the advantage or at least the trait of feeling like everybody is going to be interested in me because I'm passive.
Thank you, Dad.
And so going into a room full of famous people, I never feel cowed by it because it's like, oh, yeah, they're going to be really interested.
You found your pole.
You detected the pole.
Once they really start listening to me, they're going to stop looking over my shoulder.
But, of course, that is this fallacy of thinking that all it takes to rise in the meritocracy is to be intrinsically meritorious.
rather than to do good work.
You know, that is the fallacy of, I think...
Part of the truth is that in L.A., and this is why I cut myself off because I didn't want to sound like a dick, but you really do have to know people.
You can't freeze a Rolodex from 1981 and expect to have the same level of success today.
You have to know people, but you have to know things and you have to be working your ass off.
I think the thing I struggle against is walking into a room and feeling like, I am here.
And let the awards flow.
Let the spice flow.
The awards must flow.
And realizing that there are a lot of people in this room just as talented who have also been working hard.
And they are more deserving.
And that is a thing that I could have tattooed on my fingers and look at every day and still not...
And still not feel.
No, I, I, I totally appreciate that.
Yeah.
Did you see, um, there's a series Jerry Seinfeld does.
It's called something like, uh, something like getting coffee with comedians or something like that.
Comedians in cars and something like that.
Yeah.
It's like a Gary Newman song.
Yeah.
What is the deal?
We are driving in cars, and the coffee is here.
What's the deal with this lid?
I keep hearing about this show, but I haven't seen it yet.
Well, I only mention it because it's cute.
He seems like a nice...
humble guy it's cool but there's a great one where he goes over to rob reiner's house and then rob reiner talks about how mel brooks comes to his house every night and and they they eat deli food off tv trays and watch jeopardy on the ti-vo and he and so he actually asked jerry if he wants to come and tag along and so it's truly truly for like something like whatever 30 40 50 years mel brooks comes over to carl reiner's house every night and they watch tv together
Which is a wonderful image to begin with.
But then really, there they are.
They're sitting there eating shit tons of deli food on TV trays and watching TV.
And it becomes... Can you imagine what that room smells like?
Mongo like candy.
These two guys with their hands down the front of their pants eating off a deli tray.
But it's adorable.
They're really old and they're still really funny and they're super Jewish.
But it becomes, in my reading of the show, it becomes apparent that Mel Brooks is familiar with.
with Jerry Seinfeld, but he's not super duper familiar.
And he's, he's being a gentleman about it, but I got the sense from watching it that he has not like sat down.
It wasn't like he instantly said to him, Oh, I really liked the one with the soup Nazi or something.
And I, that was just my reading of it, but there's something about that that seems to go to, to this discussion, which was like, you know, is there anybody who by most metrics has been a more successful, uh,
person in comedy in the last 30 years than jerry seinfeld like the guy did pretty well for himself sure but the guy who's like probably one of his biggest heroes is not no that's not that super into it yeah no brooks is an egot he's an egot he has what does that mean what does that mean grammy oh oh like uh like rita moreno like rita moreno he's one of 10 living people or 10 people in history that are an egot
I never knew that term.
Now I have something else to be envious about.
Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony.
And as soon as I learned it, I was like, well, why don't I have an EGOT?
You love Broadway.
I have a fucking Tony Award.
When you're a jet, you're a jet all the way.
Didn't you ever see my one-man show?
Guy sits at the end of a bar and writes in his journal?
I can't believe you and Sean aren't working together anymore.
No.
That must have been a crowded van.
Too many hurt feelings.
Really?
Can you believe it?
Anyway, I'm just saying, even Bono's got a boss, to quote a wise man.
There's always somebody everybody else is looking to and going, if I were Jerry Seinfeld, I would probably laugh that off too.
And again, I might be reading that scene wrong, but I didn't get the sense that he was like, Jerry Seinfeld, we hang all the time.
And
And that's the thing is everybody looks at everybody else, what everybody else has got, and they're always seeing something amorphous about them that represents the last puzzle piece in their particular thrift store collection.
And I don't think that exists.
Well, it doesn't because – Lee Unkrich could be out on his ass without a dime in his pocket and he'd probably still want to go make a really good cartoon.
Well, you keep climbing up that tree and you finally get up to what is the meaning of this?
What is the meaning of life?
And is it just that you succeed?
You know, I think about this all the time.
The people that I have known who have devoted their lives to pursuing adventure sports.
who are like... Is that like rock climbing or something?
Oh, they snowboard in the winter and they surf in the summer.
Or they snowboard in the winter and then in the summer they fly down to South America and snowboard.
And, you know, I know a lot of these people personally from growing up with them and the idea... Doubt has never been introduced into their mind that this is anything other than an awesome way to spend your life.
And I wonder whether they don't have a greater store of wisdom somehow or they haven't been around the karma loop a few more times than I have or something that they are so effortlessly able to…
enjoy life and not care that the only mark they're making on the earth is their snow track that's going to get... But maybe that's their duck.
Since introducing that term a few weeks ago, to me and to the world, I think about that a lot now.
I think a lot about finding your duck.
To be honest, really.
And I think that's kind of what you're talking about.
This entire conversation is about there's this thing out there that I, in my jeans, my jeans are telling me that there's this thing out there that I should be seeking out.
Your dad jeans?
Listen, they're comfortable.
They are telling me eat more pie.
I'm wearing my like uncle jeans today.
I'm wearing like my 34s or 35s.
But yeah, I see what you're saying.
You have a feeling of predestination.
Here's the problem, and this is the problem at the heart of the finding your duck problem, is that just because you know that there's something out there for you, and just because you know you want something, that may be that or not, intensely, and you know what I mean?
There's all these things that can be extremely intense.
The gestalt of that is not actually all that useful, right?
Until you know what the duck is.
Now, part of finding the duck might be that you not need to be an EGOT.
You might want to just be a guh.
Or a tuh.
And you say, well, I'm just going to work the shit out of getting something on Broadway.
My concern is that my duck is to be discontent.
That's a Jewish thing, I think.
It is.
And I don't even have that advantage.
Nobody likes a dissatisfied Caucasian.
The reason that Mel Brooks is a little bit less impressed with Jerry Seinfeld is that in the third inner room in every Jewish temple, there's like a little mound and the top-ranking ones sit higher up on the mound.
So it's all some inner workings thing.
Are you serious?
Is this a Protocols of the Elders of Zion thing?
Yeah, I'm just making it up.
There's no mound.
Inner mound.
There's not even a third inner room.
Nice try.
I'm going to look it up, and I'm going to learn about these mounds.
There's a tabernacle.
It's covered with a cloth.
It's a mound.
You have to wear a special – you have to wear special underwear.
You got to put a wire around it?
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
So – I don't know.
The duck – all I'm saying, John, don't change the subject because I think – Still looking for my duck.
I really am.
The duck.
The duck is because, you know, I mean I felt this way.
I have to be honest.
I don't consider myself a writer anymore because I don't like writing for a job that much.
I really like writing.
And I feel certain that within the next few months or years, it's something that I will want to do more earnestly after I've burned off some of the bad karma of my writing experiences in the last few years.
I love doing it.
It's just that that wasn't my duck.
I thought that was my duck, and I made myself very unhappy because I was convinced that I was the hunter of that duck.
And it took a different kind of thinking.
I'm not saying this is you, but for me, it took me getting to the point where I went, fuck it.
This is not...
I'm ready to let go of my pride and say that I'm somebody who likes doing this, but that is not who I am, and it made me so much happier.
I'm still trying to figure out what my duck is.
This is kind of my duck.
Isn't that sad?
I don't know.
It's not sad.
It's wonderful.
This is a good duck.
This could be a worse duck, but that's what we all face.
We all face that every day, and then the thing is if we have our idea of the false duck, we're rejecting a lot of good stuff.
along the way i'm doing my thing now but i think my duck is to is to uh help people is to be helpful to people uh largely people who cannot be helped and there's you help the unhelpable there's i mean if if my duck was to make mother theresa with the train mother theresa that's exactly right except i don't want dirty little sick kids touching me the brown ones
I don't care what color they are.
If they're dirty and sick and poor... My friend, you may want to rethink your trip to the Isle.
You're saying that there are a lot of dirty little sick poor kids.
They spell feces really weird there.
They put an A in it.
I don't think that Ireland and Scotland are still the Ireland and Scotland that you are thinking of from Christmas carols.
laughter laughter
they have made some dramatic improvements uh-huh since victoria i'm trying to think of what i specifically know now you're right when i think about christmas carols i think a lot about the the aisle of what we've now called the uk i'm trying to think of what specifically i know about irish christmases and scottish christmases that isn't simply going to be like a sid caesar bit yeah
They would get coal in their stockings and they would be overjoyed because it's the first square meal that they've had in a week.
Because now they can put their stocking back on.
I'm a future coal center.
Heart to tire.
Heart to tire.
uh-huh oh god i can't believe you're gonna do that so starting so in some ways i guess starting with max fun con through our thing which we should probably mention um maybe should we make that the sponsor this week yeah we should we should make that the sponsor our big show uh at the show box on monday
The 29th of October, 2012.
It's going to be a hilarious show.
Largely improvised by very talented improvisers.
Five white men in brown tuxedos.
Yeah, you, me, Scott Simpson.
And the others.
And the rest.
And the other two guys.
I can't remember their names.
And the rest.
I know that you didn't like the brown tuxedo idea.
I didn't like the tuxedo idea.
Frankly, when that was all going down at a certain point, Hodgman felt like they had reached a quorum.
But I don't think that was actually true.
I have learned that I treasure my friends and I pick my fights.
And sometimes I keep picking them after I thought it healed.
The fight heals, but I keep picking it.
And there's something you've got to let go of.
Brown tuxedos.
I think it's a little gimmicky, and it's a lot of dough, and it introduces entropy.
And it's too late for any of that to matter, because now we're running brown tuxedos.
Yeah, we're running brown tuxedos.
It's going to be amazing.
It'll be handsome.
They're going to come to the show.
They're going to be like, what?
Oh, my God.
Even though I heard about this on a podcast, I didn't believe it until I saw it.
Can you really play guitar in a tuxedo?
Oh, sure.
I've played a lot of guitars in tuxedos.
I think they did that on the Brady Bunch.
How the guitar got in my tuxedo, I'll never know.
Waka, waka, waka.
Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.
So I'm going to MaxFunCon, then I'm coming back.
The next day, we're doing our show.
Yeah.
And then there's some time in there.
Then it all fucking falls apart.
But now you've got to get ready.
You've got to get your papers in order.
And then I fly to Scotland, and then I fly to Ireland, and then I fly to San Francisco.
Then I go across the country with Jonathan Colton, and then I end...
in New York where we're playing a Christmas show, a Christmas pageant in New York, second week of December.
So between now and then, I'm going to have fewer baths, probably more, I'm going to say more meatball sandwiches.
But you can have less control over them.
That's right.
It's going to be fewer baths.
I'm going to have almost no meatball sandwiches in the bath.
And then it's going to be Christmas.
And then I have to get up on New Year's Day and start all over again.
Start making my nut.
Your duck nut.
I have to start making that nut every year now because now I'm doing this.
I don't have to make money.
I have to make money to live.
Is this a new thing you're picking up on?
Well, for years, until I was 30, I never made more than $900 a month.
Because I had adjusted every expectation in every aspect of my life to fit comfortably in a $900 a month economy.
So I had a $300 a month apartment, which was a loft that had no bathroom.
Ample milk jugs.
And I got my mail and did all of my socializing.
And I mean, basically, my living room was a cafe where I knew everybody that worked there.
And they treated me like I lived there, basically.
And then I worked about 20 hours a week.
And I spent the rest of the time playing rock and roll and chasing girls.
And then for the last 10 years, I have been... For the first seven years of my 30s, I was in a van the whole time.
Driving around, staying in hotels and playing in rock clubs.
And then I made a little bit of money, and then I spent four years sitting on my ass.
And now, I'm 44 years old, and I have to figure out how to make...
Does this sound familiar?
Yeah.
Except for all the other parts.
Everything else about it was completely different.
Not a single bit of that was me until the last part, and that's me.
It's kind of everybody, but it's especially me.
I'm envious of the people who are secure.
Yeah.
I'm envious of the people who are like, yeah, I'll just go do this thing.
And I'm like, how do you go do that thing?
You just go do that thing?
Don't you have to plan a lot for that?
Don't you have to move a lot of stuff around to do that?
So that starts on January 1st.
We should put that on our calendar.
What, making money?
Making money day.
It starts...
You know, we should.
We should start next year.
Next year should be we're making money year.
Whoa.
And that's why you think that's something as we help ourselves.
Well, let's be honest.
We're helping ourselves with this show, too.
Well, obviously, we could be helping other people, too.
We give people opportunities.
We show them things.
Show them ducks they weren't even aware.
That's right.
As we start making – Seemingly extinct ducks.
People are going to say, if those two ding-dongs can make money, I can make money.
Hmm.
Right.
John, I got to be honest with you.
I'll cut this out, but there's a shit ton of money to be made in telling people how they can make money.
Oh, I know.
It's really, it's, I'm not, I'm just saying it's getting tight.
We're getting old.
Like you understand we're all, it's all downhill from here.
It's not, we're not going to have years to get better.
So we may have to resort to helping people quote unquote, get quote unquote rich quote unquote.
Right.
Get rich.
Get, you know what?
It's, you have to work smarter before you work harder.
Right.
You have to work smarter before you work harder.
But what if you could be smarter and harder and not have to work?
What if I could be smart and hard and not have to work?
I like this.
I like where this is going.
Before you answer, let me ask you this.
I want to run a seminar where I teach people to be retired directors of the CIA.
Wait a minute.
This is it.
You found it.
You found your end run.
You found your flanking maneuver.
So the problem, as I understand it, is you want to be a retired senator or retired general, but that requires you being a senator and or general in order to become retired.
Exactly.
But there's nothing to stop you from teaching other people how to do it.
hello oh wait a minute and i think this is something i think that already you have lit a fire amongst our listeners about the worlds of possibility that are out there whether they like it or not and there's no reason there's no fucking reason that you couldn't fill up the ballroom at a motel six with people who are interested in learning more about how to become the thing that you're not but kind of want to be
Right.
Do you think they'll pay $125 for a packet?
They'll borrow it.
I mean, you know, you quit getting lottery tickets and cools for a month.
You can come in and really learn how to become a gentleman with John.
Become a gentleman with John.
All of those fortunes are packet-based fortunes.
You know, you have to sell people a packet.
Yeah, it helps to have – look who I'm telling this to.
You've worked with Jonathan Colton.
You've got to have a merch table in the back.
I've gotten to see one of the preeminent self-help gurus of the century, and he had a place in the back.
He was selling baseball hats.
You could sell baseball hats.
You could sell CDs.
You could sell all kinds of stuff.
You're a – whatever the opposite of a commodity is.
I guess I'm a struggling musician.
I'm a non-commodity.
You're especially little guys, but you are.
God, that bus is going to be stinky.
Is it going to be, what is it going to be, the five of you?
Any bus is stinky.
I mean, it's right in the name, bus.
And it has windows and stuff.
Now, is this a coach?
Is this going to be like one of those, like, hey, look, it's Willie Nelson kind of buses?
No, no, no, no.
It's a bus with a living room.
Okay, no, that's what I mean, though.
It's going to be like being in a spaceship.
Yeah, it's like being in a spaceship.
And the thing is, you got five, six guys who are all in their 40s.
It's a different kind of smell than five or six guys all in their 20s.
In a good way?
Well, I don't know.
I mean, which do you like better?
I guess it's pick your... I really don't care for either of them.
So I'm thinking it's like an RV, but a lot nicer.
Bigger, right?
Bigger and nicer.
But how do you bathe?
Is there one shower?
No, you pull into a town and get a hotel room and everybody uses it as like a way station.
Okay, but it's got a pooper though, right?
You can hit the can in the bus, right?
You don't poop in the bus.
What?
The first bus I ever toured on.
Wait, this changes everything.
You can't poop on it?
I walked into the bus, the first bus I had ever been on.
I was like, oh my God.
I had my suitcase.
I had my guitar case.
I picked my bunk and I went into the toilet and there was a big sign over the toilet that said, no mud pickles.
That takes a lot of the value off it for me.
I'd rather deal with dissipating the After Effects than not having that.
To me, that takes it all.
That's like not having seats in it as far as I'm concerned.
Yeah.
Well, the reason you don't go poo on the bus is that no matter – I mean, we can put a man on the moon.
We can make a sports car that runs on electric power.
A guy can jump out of a balloon in outer space and fall to Earth, but you cannot make a mobile toilet that doesn't stink up the whole bus with poo.
You know, I don't care if the toilet is just a hole in the floor of the bus and the poo just goes right out on the pavement.
Mm-hmm.
Somehow, psychologically, that poo will stay there with you as you go down the road.
It's like a portalette.
It's got the portalette problem of... It's all about collection.
It's not about dissipation.
Yeah, and you just can't have that.
All the other smells that are happening, all the other... The close proximity, the, like, I'm tired of seeing you guys... Let's be honest.
The onanism.
That's going to have to be something you guys work out.
There's some of that.
Everybody in their bunks at night pretending that they're asleep.
Do you have white noise or how do you cover that up?
The bus is loud.
Because the thing is, guys, it better be.
Because guys in their 20s can finish that quick.
But you guys, you know, you might need to warm up, do some stretching exercises.
You're saying that guys in their 40s when they masturbate are louder than guys in their 20s?
No, I'm not a scientist, but it seems to me your memory's not as good.
You're certainly not as coordinated.
You're kind of talking to yourself like, huh.
I saw a lady at the... Turn around.
Turn around.
I saw her at the... That Denny's.
What was her name?
What was I doing?
What was I doing?
Mabel!
Mabel.
Masturbating is complicated.