Ep. 82: "Yelling at Trees"
Hello.
Hey, John.
Hi, Merlin.
Hello.
You got what I need, but you say he's just a friend.
Biz Marquis?
Yes, Biz Marquis.
I was just listening to some Biz Marquis.
yeah yesterday i was listening to the butthole service and today i'm listening to biz marquee and just trying to i'm trying to go back and start over again returning to the classics i'm gonna take a different road this time yeah i'm gonna take the high road starting out fresh yeah i'm gonna start off fresh tabula rasa tabula rasa word up john blank slate have you been getting exposed to new music
Oh, well, you know, I was just at Seattle's Bumbershoot Festival and got exposed to a lot of new things.
I got exposed to some new music like The Breeders, Super Chunk, The Zombies.
What?
Death Cab for Cutie.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
All the big acts.
You saw Argent and the other guy.
argent and what's his name argent and and big voice that guy can still sing like hell can he he sings it's amazing he's like an angel he's a little old man and he's blowing he's blowing doors out with his with his incredible voice like first song first chorus and you're like how do you get how would you get there even at the end of your set how would you be so so warmed up that you could hit that note and he's right there
His solo record is really good.
Now, for some reason, I'm totally spacing on what his name is.
Colin.
Yeah, Colin Blundstone.
Blundstone.
Yeah.
They have a really good song that I think they might have even recorded after Odyssey and Oracle.
I think it's called Remember the Swan.
It's just soaring.
Yeah.
That record is, that's a melancholy record.
It is.
There's a lot of sadness being a zombie.
Hmm.
There's a song about World War I on there.
You know what?
There's a song about World War I on the second Keen album, too.
They don't want to talk about it.
That was controversial?
Did they pick the wrong side?
It's just that most Keen fans, you know, they want the songs to be about love.
Thematically, what would you say most Keen songs are about?
I would say most Keen songs are about longing for friendship.
Oh, that's like a bony kind of thing.
Longing for friendship.
It's proto-brony.
Lekeen was there before the bronies.
But yeah, it's about longing for friendship, just like everything.
Yeah.
Just like everything.
I remember, you know, back when I didn't want to be touched.
I didn't realize.
There was never a time when you did.
I don't believe that.
I didn't realize that what I really was doing was yearning to be touched.
You just wanted to hold hands and talk.
Yeah, you know.
Don't talk.
Put your head on my shoulder.
Pet my hair.
Pet sounds.
And that's what everybody wants.
You have nice hair.
Yeah.
So you saw the zombies?
You saw the breeders?
I've seen the breeders a couple times.
Back in the day, they put on a pretty good show.
I liked them better than Nirvana when I saw them.
Yeah, you know, they still put on a good show.
And I have to say, I was standing in the crowd.
The young lady I was with at the concert turned to me and said, do the breeders matter to you?
Are the breeders part of your thing?
Are they like part of your pantheon?
And I sighed and I slumped my shoulders and I said, yes, the breeders matter to me.
Well, what part of that was hard for you?
It's hard.
I don't know.
I remember at the time, the breeders, it just felt like...
It was that that moment in time where it's like, we don't even know how to play our instruments.
My sister doesn't even she never even picked up a guitar before.
And and now she's, you know, coming up with these cool guitar parts and we're a band and we don't even care.
And I was like, fuck all of that.
Yeah.
But in fact, they made really good music to me.
You know, like that music reaches me.
It's very cool.
Everything about them is cool, but I feel like it's legitimately cool.
It's not trying to be cool.
It is, and I think it's one of those instances where the Albini production was such a perfect match.
I mean, that man knows how to mic a bass.
Tim Midgett's bass is like a force of nature, the way he makes it sound and the way he does drums.
I got a copy of the cassette of Demos, mostly stuff that was on Pod and some stuff that would be on Last Splash.
in early versions, and it sounded great.
It was the kind of thing where you put this on, and if you were some dumbass record executive in the early 90s, who would have signed up in a pound of bacon?
Come on, kid.
Kid, we got plans for you.
We got to promote the hell out of this.
Poke, poke, poke.
I'll tell you, a pound of bacon is going to be huge.
The bacon just... We're in talks with Sub Pop.
Well, I have to say, though, you know how I feel about distortion, and I've been reflecting back on my life as a musician, and I feel like I have not...
I have not allowed myself to have distortion.
This is the problem.
I'm sorry, I'm lost.
You mean overdrive or confusion?
Hmm.
Hmm.
Do I?
No, no.
I mean, so what you don't, you got a boss or a rat or something.
Both things.
Both things.
I have a million overdrive pedals.
I have a, I actually have a, uh, there's an extension of my house just built out of the boxes that overdrive pedals came on.
We call it the boss swing.
Yeah.
But, you know, in the 90s, right, I had a – my amplifier was a Carvin 120-watt head on top of a 412 cabinet.
So that weighed about 600 pounds.
Yeah, that was – and it was one of those – Those Carvins were heavy.
It was so heavy.
And it had a parametric EQ on the front.
Yeah.
Back in the day, we guitar dudes would sit and really micro-adjust all the different frequencies of our tone.
This is for playing club shows where there are 60, 80 people, 150 people.
I had that, and then the other guitarist in the band also had a 412 cabinet and a 100-watt head.
We were just ripping people's faces off and every band did it.
And tons and tons of distortion.
It was, you know, we were rock and roll.
But my indie rock career, there are hardly any recordings of that whole decade.
And my indie rock career was...
It coincided with the whole quiet is the new loud apocalypse.
And the whole distortion is bad.
Fast tempos are bad.
Our music is just going to bore people into a state where all they want to do is buy the t-shirt.
Just gently strum a ukulele case.
Longing for friendship.
We're going to pet your vagina hair until you sleep, sleep, sleep.
And so, you know, so the first few Long Winners records were made in this era.
And by that point, I had lost my confidence in rock and roll a little bit, my personal confidence in it.
And I didn't know, I didn't understand what was happening.
And I was being shepherded through these recordings.
um and and i was on a label that was very uh that that you know also believed that hard rock and heavy rock had kind of run its course this was a new generation and so the so the long winters records are are softer than i would have had them really if if if if i had medicine cabinet pirate
Medicine Cabinet Pirate was an absolute fist fight to get it made.
There was one mix of Medicine Cabinet Pirate that was presented to me.
And this is late in the game.
We are mixing the record.
And a mix of Medicine Cabinet Pirate came over the bow that had no guitars on it.
Is this Mr. Walla?
Chris Walla was like, I just don't understand the guitars on this record.
I don't understand the guitar sounds.
And I really, this is what I'm hearing.
And it sounded like a Bjork mix.
It was like bass and drum machine.
Oh, that's got the Dr. Dre keyboard, right?
Yeah, right.
Just the outside elements and not the guitar.
Oh my god, that would sound so pretentious.
I know it's so funny because the guitars are face-searing and it's one of the most – I mean Car Parts is in its way like a mid-tempo manicured kind of song, beautifully my favorite Long Winter song.
But Medicine Cabinet Pirate is much more like visceral in some ways, don't you think?
Well, and Medicine Cabinet Pirate is as close to sounding like the music I made before The Long Winters as anything on those records.
But anyway, so I've been thinking, you know, so the last couple of years I have not been recording new music for public consumption, but I have been working on music at home, making tons and tons of music actually, and it all is characterized by this breeder's like distortion wash
The way you described some of the stuff you're doing, it sounded like MBV a little bit.
My Bloody Valentine, hugely influential.
Not directly, but spiritually.
That feeling you have when you put on the headphones or potentially driving in fog late at night when everybody else in the car is asleep...
And you have been eating mushrooms all day.
That feeling that you are falling into the sky is something that I'm always trying to capture.
And that's anyway, that's what I've been making.
And so listening to the breeders and going to that show for years, I was just like, I don't want to be influenced by the breeders.
That's not the story that I want.
You know, the story that I want to be telling is that I'm influenced by Judas Priest.
but in fact I'm more influenced by the breeders than, than I, than I've ever been comfortable admitting until now.
And it's, and it's because of that, like, because she's singing so down, she's so low, her, you know, her energy is just so low vibe and cool.
And the music is just washing over you.
And it's like, yeah, that's kind of what I'm into.
Yeah.
it's really you know it's it's great it's great it's like jeff buckley it's great music to have sex to girls that have tribal tattoos especially if she's dead oh no not in a bad way all right okay good dead in a good way but yeah i'm trying to understand why this makes you sad because i mean the the like the breeders thing is is uh is getting your dander up a little bit but but it sounds you're getting closer to thinking about a thing you'd like to do you know you know what it's like uh to be 25 merlin you've been 25
Yeah.
And when I was 25.
I was 25 for about 20 years.
When I was 20, I was 25 for about 11 minutes.
But when I was 25.
You were six.
I really felt already at 24 to 23 years old, I already felt like I was too old.
for punk music that that was for kids i felt like i was too old for pop music in a way like contemporary music was was already so dumb by 1991 that i was like i i made the mistake of thinking i was too sophisticated to be the age that i was in the time that i was and
And it was only later that I reflected back and, you know, because I never saw Nirvana.
Nirvana was playing shows all around me.
And I was like, ah, Nirvana, it's a bunch of kids music, a bunch of dumb, you know, dumb druggies.
And it was only later that...
that I allowed myself to be a fan of Nirvana after, you know, really after he died.
Two days before Kurt Cobain killed himself, if you had asked me if I liked Nirvana, I would have said, meh, yeah, I guess.
If you like that simple kids music.
And two weeks after Kurt Cobain died, I thought that the world had ended.
So the breeders, I have that, this is the problem with the breeders for me too.
At the time, I was like, pfft.
I will always have a soft spot for Smells Like Teen Spirit, but I think In Utero is a much better record.
Really?
Incesticide is the one for me.
I'm not familiar with that.
Incesticide is the singles B-sides?
I think the age is showing on Nevermind.
A little bit.
Production-wise.
But Incesticide was the stuff that it was released after Nevermind, but it was all recorded before.
Okay.
And in some cases recorded even before... Is it more bleachy?
It's super bleachy, but some of it's even pre-bleach.
And so what it is, is it's like, do you remember that late 80s?
Obviously, duh, you remember.
But the late 80s up here, there was not a tremendous distinction between hippie psychedelia, metal, and punk.
Well, and this is what's frustrating about the fucking grunge thing.
It's like, I mean, how do you take a combination of the Raincoats influence and the Black Sabbath influence and kind of act like that's the same thing?
Right.
And some of the stuff on Incesticide is Nirvana, like, tripping out, kind of.
Like, trippy, I mean, it's still all Nirvana-y, it's grungy, but it's like, they're...
They haven't quite figured out short, fast, or even loud, soft.
It's just like... And it's... I don't know.
And this is before Dave Grohl?
As a stoner.
It is a lot of it before Dave Grohl.
So, yeah.
So it's a little less like... And much more like...
Wow.
I would like to publicly analyze you.
Oh.
Yes.
So it'll take a minute.
Should I say ah?
Well, it'd be nice if you could maybe just recline a little bit.
You ready?
Okay.
How does that make you feel?
It's interesting to me based on many, many hundreds of conversations we've had that we – I think we both have a background in a certain kind of really visceral like crunchy music, playing the tennis racket kind of music.
I mean the stuff that – I know for myself and I think based on what you said, I mean the thing that got you excited about making the leap from being a music consumer to being a music producer was partly that something welling up inside of you that started with this appreciation for – to use that word again, visceral.
Like very – like physical.
Like you could feel it.
Or whatever.
Yeah.
The first time that you sit and saw away at a guitar until you have forgotten everything, and you're just there, eyes closed, sweat pouring down, and you're just hammering on this guitar...
I could play Sweet Leaf at rehearsal for hours.
It's just so fun.
That little like – it's just so fun to play.
You feel like in your gut.
Now, here's the analysis is that you're a thinker.
You think a lot and it's – the interesting thing to me is that you seem to be at war with yourself about this one side of you that absolutely knows what you like.
Like not even like what influence you'd want to point to, but it seems to me like you have a pretty good feeling for like whether it's something that's like in your pantheon or something you could take or leave or something that should be killed with fire.
But you think a lot.
I think that's very interesting.
And I wonder if that thinking get in the way of what you'd like to make.
Yes, it does.
It does.
And I've been reflecting ever since.
So I've been thinking about it a lot.
So we're coming up.
Well, actually, no, we're over it.
It's been a month now that I have adopted this new way of eating no sugar.
And it's extraordinary.
You're still feeling a difference.
absolutely i mean because because in the course of the month now i've had a couple of opportunities to like okay i'm not you know i'm not living in a dictatorship here i'm gonna have a piece of pie on saturday because what the hell and i had a i've been good well and it was it was much more like i'm i'm in this for the long haul it's not like i'm never gonna have a piece of pie again i have to figure out how to have one and then go back to eating right and
That's the problem.
It is the problem.
It's not that different from, like, an unopened bottle of bourbon.
Sure.
Or, like, if I could have a cigarette and then on Monday go back to not having cigarettes, I would still be having cigarettes sometimes.
But, you know, I am not able to do that.
Did I interrupt you?
A month.
One month.
Well, so I've had the occasion to have a slice of pie.
And not only did I leap off into this sugar super buzz, but my nose started running.
My sinuses got clogged.
I mean, I'm talking about within 45 minutes.
Whoa.
And I'm, I'm sneezing and I'm like, and then, and then I'm plummeting off the, off the edge.
And then it's three o'clock in the morning and I'm wide awake, drumming my fingers on the bed.
And I'm like, Whoa, that was, that was one piece of pie.
And admittedly three chocolate chip cookies and a Palmer, but one zoom.
And then, and then just, it wasn't just like buzz and crash.
It was, it's just, it was back to bonkers.
Like,
But anyway, so here I am a month into this.
My energy is for the most part like stabilized and calm.
And I'm really able to recognize, I look around my life and I recognize I am presently at 44 years old, almost 45, presently in some indefinable feud with 24 people.
24 people I can name.
And now that you have the clarity of mind, you could actually write them all down and keep them straight and organized.
Yeah, that's right.
And I'm not talking about all the people that I'm in.
In other words, it's not a My Bloody Valentine fog of nemeses.
You've got a clearer idea of exactly who you're not square with right now.
Absolutely.
There are people on the list that I have not spoken to in five years.
There are people on the list I haven't spoken to in six months.
There are people on the list that are just recently added to the list.
Wow.
There are people that have been on the list for 18 years.
But I can tell you, you know, like, and those are not the people that I see around town that I'm like, I hate that guy.
I don't even know his name.
I just don't like him.
These are 24 people I can name.
And I'm realizing, like, I think myself into, on a daily basis, I think myself into Buchenwalds.
I'm in 24 different Buchenwalds of the mind.
I need four cards.
I don't know.
And I have to say, now I've got a little bit of clarity, I've got a little bit of calm, and I'm realizing, oh my God, I'm just at the beginning of trying to get my life back.
I don't even know how to go around...
At least 20 of those people I can't possibly apologize to because I don't remember what the problem was.
That's challenging.
It's really challenging.
I feel like calling people up and saying, hey, sorry about that, and this is the thing.
People are never thinking about you as much as you think they're thinking about you.
So probably 15 of those people would be like, what?
Oh, were we having a fight?
I have to remember who you are to know what we're fighting.
I just thought you stopped calling me because we didn't get along or because you were bored of me or something.
And I'm sitting over here like, no, I'm not bored of you.
I'm still super pissed at you about something.
So anyway, like this thinking, oh my God, thinking is such a albatross.
I feel like thinking past a certain point is a disability, like a genuine disability.
And where's my goddamn parade?
Yeah, well, let's say it's a handicap is what it is.
It's a handicap.
It's a handicapable like Charlie Brown cloud.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, it's... Pigpen cloud, you mean?
Well, I mean just to put a little bit of syrup on those pancakes, I guess I always thought that as I got older, people would make more sense to me.
And I'm embarrassed to say this because I'm certain it has either everything to do with what I didn't understand my entire life or everything to do with the fact that I'm a sociopath.
But like people make less sense to me just about every week or so.
I honestly feel like – on the one hand, I'm growing like really soft inside and sympathetic to how fucked up everybody can be and either not know it or not have access to changing it.
But I also just don't understand why people do what they do.
It's so perplexing to me and sometimes the more I feel that, the less I talk about it.
But there's so much stuff that almost everybody I know does that I just frankly do not understand.
Yeah.
And I keep it to myself because I don't want to argue about it.
That's part of my affliction.
I honestly thought that as I get older, I would become more sage and more wise and be able to have a certain amount of remove from these things by going, oh, well, obviously, I've worked with people enough now that everything makes sense.
And now I know how to manipulate people because I'm really good at that.
And I just – I feel like I'm around aliens more and more.
I mean I don't know if you get that but I mean that's a clarity thing for me.
I think in fact I was in a fog for a different kind of fog, maybe not a sugar fog, but for a long time of thinking that I understood what the fuck was going on.
And now I know that I don't and I know that my affliction, my handicap, my handicapable is I honestly don't understand about 80 percent of what everybody does.
People who are exactly like me, I don't understand what they do.
Me either.
Am I wrong?
Is this unrelated?
Because I think it's similar.
At this Bumbershoot, Bumbershoot is a time when people come from all around, lots of people, people I've known for years, people that I have known professionally, old friends, new friends.
It's a big gathering of people.
And I'm there with all the people and socializing and fun and times.
there was one problem, which was that I was headed backstage to the big backstage party show.
And, uh, this is, you know, a big festival.
So they hire, uh, they hire a lot of convicts.
They hire a lot of people who, um, who, uh, ate a lot of lead paint chips when they were kids.
Uh, the, the ultimate, the ultimate group, the people that live downwind from the smelter, uh,
Um, and those people are charged.
So, so there are people who are the least informed, the least capable, uh, people.
They don't hire them to personally measure status.
They hire them to make a zero or one decision.
That's probably a zero.
That's right.
They are given that they are given a mandate, which is, which is, which is basically like a bit in the movie Tron.
Like, are you on or off?
Yes, no, yes, no.
And so I'm in this large group of people.
It includes some very famous rock stars.
We're all moving along toward a doorway that is the doorway between the dummies, the 50,000 dummies who are out looking or dipping corn dogs in powdered sugar or whatever it is that people eat at things like this.
And then on the other side of this door, it is this rarefied backstage world where...
You look around and it's like everybody back here is wearing a gold cape.
And everybody back here has an MTV Music Video Award.
And we're just going to sit back here and put our pinky fingers up each other's butts.
And this is why we do it.
It's like douchebag Valhalla.
It is.
We're just going to sit back here and people are going to tell you that they love your album that they've never listened to before.
And people are going to introduce you to pretty girls that don't have any reason to be back there, but they're pretty.
Let's get the whole, it's the whole thing.
And this, this dummy, this guy, this guy who, you know, who is still at 55 years old studying for his GED is looking at everybody's past.
And earlier in the day,
I, in my pursuit of special privilege, had jumped over a barrier because I did not want to wait for another one of these guys, another one of these Dwayne the Rock Johnsons, to take the time to look through my bag or whatever.
And so I skirted this guy, and I did not get the little red stamp.
on my all-access pass.
Oh, there's another level above all access.
Oh, this is the thing.
There's all access.
The double secret access.
There's all access with a little red stamp on it.
Then there's all access with a little red stamp and a gold star on the back.
And then there's all access with a red stamp and two gold stars on the back.
You are literally making this up.
Not at all.
And then there's all access with a red stamp, three gold stars on the back, and one black line across the left bottom corner.
Yeah.
And I don't have the red stamp.
And so 20 people are going through this door.
And this little Nimrod, who basically is one of the puppets in Blade Runner, the one with the little captain's hat and the long nose.
Home again, home again, chick.
He says, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Hey, buddy, you don't have the red stamp.
And I'm like, listen, doesn't matter.
I'm going through this door.
And he's like, I have been charged with one task in my entire life.
My wife does not respect me.
My children don't love me.
My parents are dead.
You shall not pass.
And I'm standing there, and this is the thing about- And they're walking away.
Nobody's going to help you out.
They can't help you out.
This is the thing about rock musicians, right?
Yeah.
It is just like they turn around, and if they had looked back, and somebody had doused me with oil- And was literally building a ghetto brick wall around you.
Holding a highway flare in their hand, and they were like, will one man vouch for this person?
They would be like, see you later, buddy.
and and i would be immolated so i'm standing there and i'm like i know not to appeal to the to the the kids flowing through the door because like it's already uncool don't make it more uncool by calling attention to yourself so now that that reads as low status yeah you don't want to sit there and be like hey you guys would you call the tour manager you know like the door's already shutting so now i'm standing here talking to this guy and i'm like listen i know that you have this one thing that you're supposed to do but you have to in this moment
Just think for yourself and realize that I am not, I'm standing here with an all access pass and I did not get the stamp for whatever reason, but you should know by my main, by my manner, by the energy that I have, the energy of a star that you need to let me through this door right now.
Otherwise, it's going to get terrible here.
The atmosphere in your little corner of this stadium is going to get really bad for a little bit.
And he says, you got to have the red stamp.
How did the atmosphere go?
The atmosphere got really bad right there.
What was your, uh, he kept, he kept, you know, he kept like explaining about how he had been told about the red stamp.
And at one point I put my finger to his lips and I said, that's enough.
Oh, John.
Like I, it got bad there because I understand that he'd been told you get real focused in a moment like that.
I understand what he had been told.
Yeah.
And I said that to him.
I understand what you've been told.
But this is a moment where like if you do not recognize the king when he is wearing street clothes, like there is no forgiveness later.
And so that set off a chain of events where I needed to confront.
This was the universe.
At this point, it's not really so much about getting in the door anymore.
Now it's gone to a different level, right?
You know what?
I don't want to see this fucking show anymore.
It's accelerating.
You're going to turbo at this point.
I do not want to stand next to Bob Mould and talk about the news of the day and talk about Bear Week at Provincetown.
I am on a completely different level now.
I'm flying.
I'm SR-71 now, looking down.
And in a way, the worm turned.
Like, my incredible day went to blackness because of nobody's fault.
Like, this guy is doing his job, just escorting people into the ovens.
And I didn't get the stamp because of some hubris on my part earlier in the day.
Like, this is the gods on Mount Olympus saying, let us...
Let us guide the path of this arrow right into the heel of Achilles.
And I'm standing there just bathed in my fury at, after all these years, not having the right laminate.
And I'm just like, what is next?
What is next for me?
I cannot be more wrong here.
You know, I can, my anger.
I mean, did you realize that at some point during the evening?
Yeah.
Wow.
That's pretty fast.
My anger here is the wrong anger directed at all the wrong things.
But it is so real, so profound, my feeling that there should be, that there are sneetches with stars on their bellies.
There are sneetches with no stars on their bellies.
And then there is me, the Lorax.
you speak for the butter i speak for all the motherfuckers and that is wrong that's incorrect that is not a correct assessment of the situation and and there are there are so many ways to handle these you know like to to navigate the world
Where you do not, you know, where you just wait in line long enough and you realize when you get there, like, oh, there's a red stamp that I'm going to need later.
Or whatever.
Or the guy says, I'm not allowed to let you through the door.
And you go, okay, I'm going home.
Or I don't know what you do.
I honestly, this is the problem.
I honestly don't know what you do.
Because all I know how to do in that moment is to be stinged.
Or Stuart Copeland, worse.
You know, like the guy who's just like throwing his drumsticks at some Schmedrick who's employed by a subsidiary of Halliburton.
So, whew, suffice to say.
Yeah.
No Bob Mould.
Well, no, eventually somebody... Somebody came out and saved you.
Eventually some other employee...
of the Super Stadium.
While I'm standing there, I'm just towering over this guy and I'm like, listen, there's a lot of bad things that are going to happen to you on Christmas Eve this year.
Does Christmas matter to you?
Is Christmas a thing in your house?
Mark this day well.
Because there are only 115 more anxiety days.
But you didn't storm straight to a higher authority.
Did you pull out your phone and fake call people?
My phone was dead.
Okay, I see.
No, no, no.
Because this guy... The thing is, at a certain point, these guys turned to stone.
There's nothing... He does not have the capacity... Well, they're not hiring out of Yale, obviously.
But not only that, but he does not have the capacity to think on his feet.
And once it gets hostile...
Well, there's a classic thing when I go and talk to companies.
I mean this is an old thing that people said for a long time, but you can tell a lot about somebody in their position, how much power they have because do they have the power to say no or how much power and about which things do they have the power to say yes?
Because true power is the ability to say yes.
It's not the power to say no.
I mean having said that, this guy's whole job is about saying no.
The whole reason he's hired is like I say, he's not there to like parse out whether you should be –
behind the pipe and drape.
He's there to basically be this valve where nobody gets through except for this extremely small number of people.
And the single metric for his entire job is whether he got every single one of those right.
Yeah, basically he is a laser pointer made out of meat.
Yeah, he does.
He's just it's just on or off.
But, you know, five minutes later, some some woman who also works for a subsidiary of Halliburton comes through the door, looks at me and goes, oh, hi, I recognize you from earlier.
And I was like, is that so?
And she turns to the guy and she's like, oh, I know this guy.
And then I'm like, with one hand, I am giving this woman a sweet caress down the side of her shoulder.
And with the other hand, I'm giving the other guy the double nickels on the dime, like...
fuck you middle finger right in his little, his little long nose face.
And it was just like a, it was just the sort of, it was sort of a synchronized swimming move, like petting the one lady fuck off right in the other guy's face.
And then I'm down the stairs.
Like a Janice of a kind.
See you later.
So it all ends up – but the problem is then the rest of the night through my friend's big show and through all the socializing, I am chewing the data.
I am crunching the numbers in my head.
It's so easy.
It's so difficult to shake that off.
The adrenaline is so high.
But the numbers, you know, I'm reviewing the math and the numbers are telling me over and over, you are the problem here.
You are the agent of, you are the bad actor in this scenario because you're basically just yelling at trees.
Like, you are...
You are yelling out the car window, all alone driving in the dark.
And there's no... And what do you hope to achieve?
Like, what is wrong with you, ultimately?
So what do you – in retrospect, what do you – if you could – Monday morning quarterback it.
If you could Tuesday evening quarterback it.
What – maybe not specifically where did you go wrong, but like if you could redo some of that knowing what you know, what would you have done differently?
Like where would – what was the earliest thing you would have changed if you could Groundhog Day that way?
Would you have waited in line for your stamp?
No.
What am I, some fucking monkey?
Some dog waiting for a snack?
Waiting for the chuck wagon to come out from under the sink?
You're such a complicated person.
Drive across the kitchen floor into the cupboard?
No.
What am I, a little car?
You turn the key and I go in a circle?
What the fuck?
No, the problem was that I, somewhere along the line here, have lost confidence.
In myself to the point that I was sincerely concerned with being in this group of famous people, being one of them, being part of the social center of a group of people.
artists that I admired or that I understood that I was meant to admire and that this is where I'm meant to where I think I should belong where I'm meant to belong in this group and
That has nothing to do with me.
I do not care, ultimately.
The experience of being down in that room in the mutual admiration society, the experience of being backstage is entirely a status and belonging issue.
I could have just walked around the corner from where I was standing and
and have gone into the stadium and watched the rock concert.
Like, the rock concert was not the issue.
Well, I don't want to defend or try to say anything, but what I do know about you is that, well, yeah, I mean, but that...
And socializing, if you want to call it that, is kind of part of your work.
It's what you do.
And the only reason I mention that is I've been to lots of places with you where people open their arms and their red ropes to you.
It's very – it's not unusual for you to be the guy who goes backstage at things because that's just a thing that you do.
And you don't go back there and have a good douche.
But I mean that's just a thing that happens.
But that reaction –
That reaction was a reaction.
The reaction I had was coming from a place of entitlement.
Yeah, but it just pokes a hole in the fun.
It's like, you know, it's it does.
It does.
But that's the thing.
But but that that that automaton in a uniform was not the problem.
I cannot be mad at the system.
I can't be mad at the guy, 15 guys up, who decided to hire a bunch of dummies to work security because everybody's doing their job.
Who am I mad at?
It's like being a member of the Tea Party and you're mad at the government.
What is the fucking government?
It's like yelling at rain.
Yeah, right.
There is no the government.
There's nobody in charge.
Everybody's just doing their little corner of their work.
And the guy that's upped the chain far enough to make a decision, he doesn't care.
He doesn't care whether I get in or not, and I can't be mad at him for it.
He's got bigger fish to fry.
He's trying to keep the power on in the building.
So all of it was all of it was back to entitlement.
Now, if I was if I had come to that door with the like remembering that I am just invited everywhere, I'm lucky to be anywhere.
We're all just lucky to be anywhere.
And this guy's like, you don't have the red stamp.
What I should have said was, oh, where do you get the red stamp?
And he'd say, oh, you had to get it on the moon.
And it's like, oh, well, can you get on your walkie-talkie and ask when the next ship to the moon is?
And he probably would have gotten on his walkie-talkie and said something, and somebody would have been there with a red stamp in a minute and a half.
But...
That's not the direction I went because that would have been inconceivable to me.
In fact, it only occurs to me now that that's what I should have done.
Oh, you need a red stamp?
Oh, how do I do that?
How do I fulfill this?
How do I do the dance right?
uh but but my my sense of entitlement is so strong and at the end at this point in my life belonging to that group matters so much to me because i am not making new music and i am insecure about myself
So all of a sudden, you know, as Bob Mould walks down the hall and looks back over his shoulder and goes, who is that guy again?
And the door shuts.
And I'm arguing with a chess piece over whether or not I have a statement.
Over an impression in red ink.
When you put in those terms, it is pretty brutal.
You know what I mean?
He's a little clay figurine that somebody made to put into the grave with the Chinese horse general.
But he did his job.
but he did his job.
And when he went home and the problem is I made him feel like shit.
I don't, I don't, Marilyn, I don't know if you can convey to our audience what it is like to be in a small room with me when I am, uh, when I am like, it's so fun to be in any room with you, like really honestly, almost all the time, but sometimes, yeah, I mean, things happen and, and then it's not Christmas anymore.
No, the vibration comes off of me and you feel it in your... It's just another cold, cold day in December.
And Santa is pissed.
You know, he went home... You get very, to use an overused word, you get intense.
I get intense.
I mean, is that fair to say?
Yeah.
And so this guy at the end of the night... It's fun to watch when it's not me.
He goes home.
He opens a Keystone Light.
He turns on Madagascar 2 because it's his favorite movie.
He loves Alex.
And he's sitting watching Madagascar, but he is still...
And some part of himself is still sad or mad or like it didn't go well.
He was doing his job and he feels like satisfied, but he also is like, I diminished him.
and that and why and that it was not for my i didn't do it i don't i don't feel better for having done it i did it because i was in this ego posture of of uh of of like what what the what you know you know what i mean and it's just like i i totally do and i i mean i'm three seconds away from saying do you know who i am i mean it's as bad as google me
It's – and it's one of my deep, deep shame spots is when I do that and I don't know quite what it is.
Again, I want to say the part of it is getting older.
It's becoming more difficult for me to write off the things like what you're describing as somebody else's fault or it's getting harder for me to find a good reason for why I behave badly.
when there's this feeling inside of me that's telling me intensely over and over again, perhaps over a period of days, you know, you, you really fuck that up.
Yeah.
And it's, uh, it's, it's, it's becoming harder for me to just slap that off and be, be a funny guy about it.
And I realized how harmful that can be.
And, um, and, and then I, to be honest, I realized how much, I don't know if this is useful at all, but I realized how toxic, uh,
to my system it is to put the amount of energy needed into thinking about that in a way where it's not my fault.
It takes a tremendous amount of effort and energy to hold that misconception in a way that I can live with.
Because I know – I mean I'm not that stupid.
I can look at the facts.
I can do the playback.
I can remember specific things I said.
I can remember like looking like some kind of supporting cast member in like a mafia movie and thinking that it looked cool.
And going, is that who you want to be?
Like is that – there was like five things about what I did there.
And this is not your parlance but mine.
It starts – in that situation you just described, if that were me in your position and it very much could be, it would be because my emotions –
um went somewhere i didn't realize it i didn't catch it and the more my emotions got velcroed into that situation the less chance i had of of coming out of it looking like anything but like a complete dick yeah because i was being a complete dick and to me that emotion thing is huge because like you just described now with now with however many four three four five seven days away from that you can go oh well you know what if i'd ask that guy you know the thing is it's the oldest con in the world is ask something as a favor
That guy is in a position to get on the walkie and talk to Moonbase Alpha and find out if there's some way for you to get the stamp.
That's right.
And then he's probably empowered to do you a quiet favor that doesn't break the rule, but he's absolutely not empowered because you know how it is.
You just escalated with him the one thing that he is uniquely trained to deal with having been escalated.
Yeah, I turned to – the precipitate turned to a crystal as soon as I applied heat.
It's a little bit like a cop where if you just seem like a normal citizen, if you seem like you've got a little bit of a buzz, you might be able to work your way out of it.
But if you start – not you, but probably you at some point.
But if you start screaming about how you know the district attorney, you know Harvey Dent and you start yelling, like that is when the cop is going to flip in – like the visor is going to come down on the armor and that's it.
Now we're in a different place.
The funny thing is that I think it is rooted, like the insecurity in me is rooted in a feeling that there is this line, this place always ahead of me, always out of my reach, where once I have accomplished enough, once I am well-known enough or acclaimed enough, that I will be on the other side of this line.
And there will either be a helper there or things will be taken care of in advance or I will be recognized.
You will arrive.
I will arrive and I will not have this problem.
But there are two things that I know about that.
And one is, well, in this particular instance, I'm standing out in front of this door arguing with this guy about my pass.
And standing...
four feet away are three former Saturday night live cast members and two members of the upright citizens brigade, original cast, all of whom also do not have the right pass.
And none of whom are, and they're just standing there waiting for the next thing to happen.
Like they also want to be through the door and,
but they know their passes are wrong.
So they are, and they're, it's not like they're calling anybody.
They're just waiting for somebody to, they're waiting for the next thing to happen.
And they're, they're talking to each other and they're kind of watching me.
And in this moment, I'm looking at them and saying, well, yeah, okay.
Those people are like TV famous, but this is my town and this is my goddamn town.
backstage door you know like i did not even wrecking i i the fact that there were people from saturday night live standing there also who could not get in the door meant nothing to me um and the reality is alec baldwin does this shit all the time
Alec Baldwin, who by all metrics has arrived, is recognizable, does have the money.
Famous people all the time behave this way.
Mel Gibson.
You mean the entitled don't-you-know-who-I-am stuff?
The tantrum.
Right.
When somebody asks them to put their iPad away on a phone or when somebody says, sir, I think you've had enough red wine on this flight and they start throwing yogurt around the plane.
There's some friction introduced that they think that they feel is not applicable to them.
That's more like friction for the rabble.
And I think what that is evidence of is that
Somewhere inside Alec Baldwin, there is this insecurity, this feeling that he doesn't belong, and that it comes out in this exact same expression, which is just like, what?
How dare you?
Well, it's... I mean, I...
I try to keep the show sophisticated, but it's you can't sit at our lunch table.
That's what it is.
It's that feeling.
I mean, tell me I'm wrong, but like that's exactly – to me, that's what the feeling is.
If I were to sit down and go through some Freudian analysis, that's where it would end up at.
It would end up at some feeling of either like a sense of abandonment or when you're little or a sense that you thought that –
You thought that you were in, but you weren't really in.
And then the pig's blood gets dumped on your head.
And so with the clarity of not being on a pasta roller coaster...
I'm starting to examine myself in the sense that the fog of war is starting to lift a little bit.
And I still feel, just as assailed, I still feel like Westmoreland.
But I'm starting to also see that I am... I mean, I've always known that I was ridiculous, but I'm starting to see how simple the ridiculousness is and that ultimately it's like a...
Oh, that's an awful, what an awful feeling.
But I mean, it's a focal length problem where you're like, oh my God, that is the most incredible diorama train set I've ever seen.
And then it's like, oh no, it's a, that's, I'm sorry, that's an app.
And what it really is, is a picture out my hotel window of a street.
And you're like, oh, fuck.
It's just, but, but actually like that's, I mean, that's a relief in some ways because, because reality is restored a little bit.
Like a second ago, you were amazed, but you were amazed.
And, and also it was a little scary.
That there are people out there so crazy and talented to have made a diorama of your city that looks so good.
And then you're like, oh, it's just a trick.
And I'm starting to peel away some of the mind tricks I've been playing on myself.
But honestly, I don't know what to do.
I am at war with so many of my friends.
And honestly, Merlin, I have to say...
when you and I started doing this podcast, I was like, Oh my God, I, I am so looking forward to this, but it's probably going to last a month because Merlin and I are going to get into a fight.
And then, well, you know, it wasn't, it's not the craziest three fights ever.
I know, but like that, but you and I are both mercurial.
This was a, this was an instance.
You're mercurial.
Yeah.
Well, this was the thing where we were going to do a thing.
What the fuck are you talking about?
I know.
And I think it's to our credit that we have never let money intrude.
It's the only thing that keeps us sane, John.
If we didn't do this, we would be yelling at chess pieces all the time.
It's absolutely true.
But so many of my close friends right now, I'm like, he's against me.
it's like well why is he against you well because he didn't answer my text well what did your text say well it said fuck off why would he answer it oh well because he should know what that means he should know that fuck off means hi this is your last chance winter is coming no no crazy crazy crazy crazy oh man this is this shit's getting real man
Yeah, so I think I'm going to spend... It's basically the healing power of bacon.
I feel like I should go stand on the sidewalk in front of Dan Benjamin's house in a white robe.
I think that would really freak him out.
Chant his name.
I think it would.
They're not booing.
They're saying Dan.
You said something in a video.
Well, you said it on stage while you were being videotaped.
Somebody asked you about a great line for picking up nerdy girls or something.
And you said something along the lines of, I still haven't assumed my ultimate form.
Right.
Is that from the Chicken McNugget video?
Yeah.
Is that where you got that?
No, that's a, uh, that's a Pokemon.
Oh, have you seen the chicken video?
No.
Um, can I spoil it for you a little bit?
Yeah.
It's like a security tape video.
It's got to be fake, but I think it might be real.
A woman goes to, a woman goes to the drive-thru window at McDonald's and it begins with her screaming at the screen.
screaming at the person i think this is germane screaming at the person inside the slidey window about why the fuck they don't have chicken mcnuggets she said they go ma'am it's 10 30 a.m we don't have chicken mcnuggets right now and she she disagrees and says that they do have chicken mcnuggets she gets out she starts hitting the person she gets out of her car starts hitting the person screaming obscenities and saying all kinds of like crazy like lord of the rings shit like i don't even know what she's talking about at one point she says don't make me assume
my ultimate form.
And then she breaks the window and hilarity ensues.
That's the same reference.
Pokemon.
If not Pokemon, then it's like Goku.
Oh, sure.
That's where lots of guys come on a lady.
That's seppuku.
Seppuku?
No, seppuku is when you stick your sword in and twist it around.
Like I said.
You're thinking of hentai.
I think that's when you tie up a schoolgirl.
No, hentai is when a chicken wears a necktie.