Ep. 92: "Born on a Ball"
Hello.
Hey John.
Hi Merlin.
How's it going?
It's going pretty well.
Yeah.
Yeah, I've just been on the internet this morning arguing about the Beatles with some ding-a-lings.
Hmm.
I want to hear about that.
I thought you were explaining the universe to your daughter today.
Oh, well, I started doing that, and then it made me think that I needed, that what was more important was to straighten out some ding-a-lings on the top of the Beatles.
Yeah, I was trying to, you know, I got the globe out.
She said, where does the sun go?
And that seemed like a reasonable question.
So I got the globe out and I got a baseball and I said, here's the earth and here's where we live.
And the moon goes around the earth like this baseball, but the sun.
And then I put, I took a headlamp and I put the headlamp on and I stood far away from the globe and I was pointing the headlamp at Seattle.
And I said, when the sun shines on Seattle,
It's because it's a big fiery ball that's far away.
But then the globe turns and you're, you don't see the sun cause it's on the other side, but then the baseball of the moon can always see the sun.
And so the baseball, and then I'm shining the headlamp on the baseball.
I'm like, see Seattle's in the dark, but the baseball can see the sun.
And then she said, why do we live on a ball?
Um,
And I felt like that was a really good question.
And the more I thought about it, the less I even had a pithy answer for why we live on a ball.
And eventually I said, we were born on a ball and we will die on a ball.
And no one, every single person that you know, every single thing that you know was born on a ball.
No one knows why.
We'll all die on this ball without ever knowing why.
End of conversation.
No, I don't think so.
I think it's only the beginning.
She took that and looked thoughtful and kind of wandered off to think about it.
It kind of makes me see the appeal of the whole flat earth thing, though.
Well, yeah, sure.
I mean, I could sit and explain that the earth is a piece of paper.
And if you go to the ends, you'll fall off.
But that makes no more sense.
Yeah, but what about Santa?
Well, you bring up a good question because here's the problem.
On the one hand, I know that I am not smarter than everyone on earth.
But on the other hand, I don't actually believe that.
Which part?
The Santa part?
No, the fact that I'm not smarter than everybody on the earth.
So on the one hand, I feel like I am trying to reinvent Christmas.
And I know that I am one of many, many, many people throughout history who have said Christmas is dumb, but aspects of it are great.
I would just like to take those aspects that I like and revisit a kind of pagan animist solstice holiday.
But also, you know, like as Hodgman says...
slowly kill a tree in my house.
You know, practice Christmas in some of its splendor, but without succumbing to all the nightmare.
But at the same time, I know that hubristic people throughout history have tried to do this and they all end up at grandma's house opening package after package of socks and
While their children are showered with Barbies.
Yeah, that does seem pretty unfair.
It almost seems like there's nothing I can do.
We march knowingly into catastrophe because the only other option is that you completely reinvent the world and celebrate Festivus.
But anyway, has met Santa a couple of times.
Really?
And has not been particularly interested or thrilled.
Oh, my kid is very uninterested in hanging with Santa.
Well, here's the thing about Santa.
She did it once and it did not go well.
I don't know if you've noticed.
When you get up close to the real life Santas, the department store Santas,
I feel like most of the time they are old Jewish men and they are drunk.
It's the only way they can deal with that cognitive dissonance.
Yeah.
We went to Boeing Field the other day because Santa was coming.
And there were 2,000 kids there to see Santa arrive.
Yeah.
And I'm standing there, I'm like, well, Santa, there's going to be an airplane, which is going to be interesting.
But then Santa's going to get out and nobody's, I mean, like, my baby is not going to care.
And my baby's mother standing there said, I swear to you, what do you mean Santa's arriving in an airplane?
I said, do you think that they have figured out a way to get reindeer to fly?
Yeah.
What do you think is going to happen?
It's Seattle.
What would you expect?
Of course you'd arrive on a plane.
We're at the airport, and I honestly think that this adult woman had not fully considered what exactly was about to happen.
She maybe was holding out
Is this a seaplane?
No, it can be made into a seaplane, but the de Havilland Beaver is one of the great airplanes.
It is a Canadian airplane.
They don't make them anymore.
They're classic airplanes, but every one of them is still, everyone they ever made is still flying because all pilots recognize that this is the great, the de Havilland Beaver is the great bush plane.
I don't know how many of them they made, but I swear to you they are all still in the air because people polish them to within an inch of their lives because they're the perfect plane.
It's the Stradivarius of bush planes.
Exactly.
The Stradivarius of bush planes, the de Havilland Beaver, it has a rotary engine and nothing can compare to the sound of a rotary engine in full flight, in full song.
Anyway, this plane shows up.
Santa gets down out of the plane with Mrs. Claus.
And right away, you see Mrs. Claus's outfit does not match Santa's outfit.
They are different velvets.
Might be a second marriage.
Well, you have to figure, though, even if it's second Mrs. Claus, the first thing she's going to do, I mean, I don't know women 100%.
But 94%, I know, the first thing she's going to do is, if his Santa outfit was made by his first wife, she's going to make him a new one that matches hers.
You know what I mean?
Like, this is just basic Claus science.
So her velvet outfit and his Santa suit are different velvets, and right away... But was she foxy?
No, she was a little old lady, Mrs. Claus.
Second thing I noticed is that Santa is a Jewish man.
And I know that from, you know, from my studies of phrenology.
And that he's also drunk.
He wasn't piloting the Davlin, was he?
He wasn't piloting the plane.
And also, Santa was riding in the back.
He wasn't even co-piloting.
He was riding in the back like luggage.
Yeah.
And then his elves are just two children that are clearly his grandchildren.
Not elves at all, but children.
And so I'm thinking, I put on my hat for this.
I got out of my house, my comfortable house.
You can get away with a lot of shit when you're pretending to be Santa.
Yeah, so he comes, he works the line.
He's a great, he's very nice.
He tells everybody, you know, he's like pre-selling the like, are you going to come see me at the Santa thing?
You know, he doesn't really, he didn't really talk like my dad.
He talked like Santa, more like a Jewish Santa.
And I'm thinking, you know, I was more interested in the airplane.
And I am, too.
But then as he as he marches off, I'm back to thinking I'm caught in this world of like, do I?
I'm busy trying to explain to her that the moon is a baseball.
But with my other hand, I'm going to tell her that Santa Claus is real.
Well, I brought it up for a reason.
I think they both have a lot in common, especially in that there are certain facts in the world that grown-ups kind of know or learned people who are grown-ups know.
But honestly, in the case of the solar system – and I do like the fact that you were in fact the center of that solar system in your description –
Put a headlamp on.
Right.
But with both Santa and the solar system, it's only the grownups that are troubled, really troubled by not being able to explain all of the inconsistencies.
Yeah.
Right.
I think – I mean maybe it's different with the earth.
But I mean there's – kids every day, there's so much shit that a little kid does not understand.
Even if you explain something really simple flawlessly and there aren't that many things that are that simple that you can explain flawlessly.
Still, they still don't understand.
They're still going to have some great question, some kind of Steve Allen type question or Bill Cosby type question that's going to make you feel like a dumbass no matter what.
Yeah.
but you know they say they do say the darndest things but you know the um uh you know i just think about like the kind of like media that she consumes like she understands that like cartoon reality you know like what you can do to hit somebody with a mallet in a cartoon is not the same thing i hope that she could do to me with a mallet well your little girl is old enough to understand that my little girl still does not still would happily hit me with a mallet she believes in the single mallet theory
well the the thing i'm i guess i'm wrestling with as i have considered christmas is that when i was growing up even though we were a pretty secular house i mean my mom took us to church because church was a social thing in her own childhood and she didn't want to deprive us of like
Methodism or whatever.
She didn't want to deprive us of the hymns.
But I remember...
As a kid, you know, seven, eight, nine years old.
You know, during the 70s, obviously, Christianity was still in... It still pervaded the popular culture around Christmastime.
There was no prohibition against talking about the baby Jesus in primetime TV.
Right, and when you said Happy Holidays, you knew you really meant Merry Christmas.
You mean Merry Christmas, and...
And in fact, like, there was a tremendous amount of, like, sanctimonious religiosity in every... I mean, at the end of the Happy Days Christmas special or whatever, they all...
the camera zoomed in on the star at the top of the tree and there was some admonition that we should remember the reason for the season or whatever.
It was very, you know, Jesus was at the center of the game until the culture wars, uh, and the, and the, um, you know, the feminazis.
Yeah.
Uh, and the Islam and Nazis, uh,
Took Jesus away.
I guess so.
But I mean, even if you go back to – well, no, absolutely.
It's definitely the feminazis to blame.
But I mean, if you go back to the Charlie Brown Christmas and the way that they handle the shepherds abiding in the field, Jesus is not the center of even like Little Drummer Boy.
He is, but he's the center of it as like a little baby.
It's not that the Savior –
I mean, I guess it is in some sense, but it's always – I think it's always been coded because it's always been a little bit complicated.
But something interesting you said, though, I want to make sure not to lose, though, is that when you describe having to try and make your piece with some version of Christmas that isn't totally disgusting, I kind of think that's what everybody does, and I think it's kind of what everybody has always done.
Huh.
Well, so this is my challenge because some of my favorite memories as a kid are solitary moments that I spent in a dark room... Sitting with your disappointment and confusion.
Yeah, this applies throughout the year.
Some of my favorite moments are sitting alone in a dark room.
But around Christmas time, especially, like being there with the tree and the lights are off and the tree is blinking...
And it's quiet outside and maybe the snow is coming down.
But really striving inside myself to find, to access the sacred.
To find, I understood that it was a holiday about God and about the, you know, about the higher ups.
Like the higher up people.
ideas of selflessness and giving and sacrifice.
And even as a kid, I didn't have all the Judeo-Christian language, but I understood that that's what we were trying to, that that was the practice of Christmas and we were trying to access those ideas in ourselves and those feelings.
And the thing about December is it is, in a lot of ways, a very sacred feeling time.
It's the darkest day of the year.
We're very vulnerable in December.
Yeah.
And it is, in a way, the quietest month.
Everything is sleeping.
Yeah.
And so that feeling, which was connected to this goulash of culture, a little bit baby Jesus, a little bit star of Bethlehem, which it wasn't clear what the star of Bethlehem was exactly, but it was something in the sky that was both beautiful and also like awesome, and
And all these Middle Eastern stories, but also Santa and the stores and the bells and da-da-da-da-da.
And it all comes together to create this very powerful and, for me, very personal story.
uh thing that i wouldn't want to deprive my child of you know like that was the one time of year where i i would legitimately kind of sit myself down close my eyes turn my face to heaven and say are you there god it's me it's me
Margantha.
Marganthric.
You're open.
You're giving him a shot.
You're saying, here's your chance.
It's time to go to the big game.
And like opening the heart and saying, I want to be generous.
I want to love instead of hate.
I want to... You know, all these things.
I was reading this fascinating article the other day about...
a Japanese zero pilot during Pearl Harbor who crashed his plane on a Hawaiian Island after bombing Pearl Harbor crashed.
You know, he was like basically his plane was disabled and he crashed on this Hawaiian Island that did not have a telephone.
And there were about 150 native Hawaiians that lived on this Island.
And three Japanese people were,
Two of them born in America, one a Japanese immigrant who were living together with the Hawaiians on this island.
And this pilot crashes his plane there.
And they don't know about Pearl Harbor.
It hasn't... They haven't... They didn't get a phone call and it hasn't... You know, their shortwave radio has to wait until the... You know, until two o'clock in the morning to work or whatever.
And so this pilot crashes his plane and everybody's like, oh, how unfortunate...
We should help this person.
He doesn't speak English.
The Hawaiians didn't speak Japanese.
So they're like, let's help this downed pilot.
And they bring him into town.
And somebody's like, well, let's go fetch those Japanese people and maybe they can talk to him.
And so the Japanese who were living on the island come, talk to the pilot, figure out what happened.
The pilot enlists them in a scheme to get his papers back from the chief of the island and burn the plane.
And basically, these three Japanese conspire with the pilot.
It ends up in a battle.
between the native Hawaiians and the pilot and his conspirators.
And on the basis of this incident, this was the justification or part of the justification that the Department of War used to start talking about internment camps.
Because on Pearl Harbor Day...
an actual incident where a Japanese pilot crashed on an island and, and native, you know, like born in America, people of Japanese descent came to his aid against their neighbors.
And so this is cited as like,
A little known incident, but that was in all the memos that went to Washington that were like, you know, the Japanese in San Francisco, if there's an invasion, can we can we trust them or whatever?
Does this turn into a happy Christmas story?
Because it sounds... Up until about 90 seconds ago, you really had me.
I thought what was going to happen was he would land, he would get out, he would realize... He'd see the star in the sky.
Well, let's not oversimplify it.
He would crash land lightly and think, okay, I need to repair my plane.
But for now, I'm going to dress up as a Dickensian character and fit in.
And while he was waiting for his part to arrive...
uh from from tokyo uh that he would learn the true meaning of christmas and that he would be embraced and it would be kind of like uh the grinch meets torah torah torah there is there actually is a uh there is there is a version of that story coming
Out of the end of this story.
And Tora Tora Tora actually figures into it.
Because it's three hours long.
Because as I was researching this story and feeling like, wow, this complicates matters for me now.
This complicates this story that we've been telling ourselves for the last 70 years, which was that, I mean, obviously the internment camps were an abomination.
Right.
But this is an incident that actually happened, and the aid and succor that the three local Japanese provided this Zero Pilot was not incidental.
Like, they actually took up arms against their neighbors immediately.
And, you know, this affected people.
Well, anyway, so in the course of further researching this story to make sure that it's not just some propagandized revisionism, I learned that the pilot who led the assault on Pearl Harbor, the lead guy in the air,
And he is the man who actually said Torah, Torah, Torah into his microphone.
That's his quote.
And I forget his name.
He went on to be in the Battle of Midway.
He fought in Burma.
He was a hero in Japan.
And after the war, as the American government was prosecuting
Japanese higher ups for war crimes.
This pilot took offense at the idea because he said, you know, this is this is common in war.
And surely the Americans tortured all their Japanese captives just as we tortured our American captives.
And so he set about after the war to go interview all of the Japanese prisoners of war as they were repatriated.
And as he did, he found them all – he realized that their reports were that, in fact, no, they had not been tortured.
They had been treated with tremendous kindness by their captors and fed and treated as well as American soldiers –
...were being treated, except they were, you know, obviously they were in prison camps, but they weren't tortured, they weren't starved, they weren't... Death-marched.
They weren't death-marched.
And this pilot's after-war experiences, it was so alien to his notion of the central importance of revenge...
as one of his core beliefs, like vengeance is how you get justice.
And if someone murders your family, you have a bond of vengeance with them.
And until you achieve that vengeance, your ancestors can't rest or whatever.
And he was contrasting that with what he took to be the overtly Christian idea of forgive your enemy,
And love your enemy.
And the experience was so profound that he became an evangelical Christian.
What?
And spent the rest of his life traveling the world.
This is the guy who spearheaded the Pearl Harbor attack, spent the rest of his life traveling the world speaking...
As a pretty powerful public speaker, like, yes, I bombed Pearl Harbor, and now I have learned to turn the other cheek and love my enemy.
Wow.
So, yeah.
It's a Christmas miracle.
It was a Christmas miracle, and December 7th was just a couple of weeks before Christmas.
Maybe that's the Christmas story.
Maybe that's the version of Christmas I need to introduce to my daughter.
It's not really a Jesus story.
It's more about this Japanese Zero pilot.
Right.
Well, I don't know.
Well, you can lead a huge surprise invasion in a time of peace and then get away with it by changing religions.
It's certainly an option.
Interesting story, though.
Interesting contrast.
Very, very, very interesting indeed.
And I think my instinct, as we have covered it many times, my instinct is for vengeance.
But I aspire to have my instinct be toward love.
And...
Anyway, this time of year was always the one time of year when I would really make a concerted effort to... And I think it's true for a lot of us.
Get in the spirit of the season and get some love flowing.
And I don't know how to integrate that.
This is the problem with not believing in ghosts but being scared of ghosts.
How do you integrate this message of altruism and also connection with the higher power and tree worship?
How do you find a way to all of that?
Outside of institutional religious practice.
I don't think it's that hard.
I mean, it's again, these are all things that are only problematic if you think it all needs to make sense.
i think i mean you know who cares what anybody else wants to do for christmas i mean you should do what makes your relatives happy or whatever i guess that i think okay so here's one one thing with this and i don't want to obsess about christmas but the the uh i think that the people who act as though this has always been a solemn event about celebrating the birth of
of the savior of the christian you know the christian savior jesus baby yeah but i mean like what is okay so when you get to the crux of what people what what is the stick everybody has up their butt about christmas and not being honored correctly at the heart of it it seems like what they're saying is you guys keep forgetting that christmas is really all about celebrating the birth of jesus who will eventually in a few years become the savior of humanity and who was actually born in september probably
Well, but in that framework, I think what they're trying to say is those people are – understandably – I mean if that's what they believe, I get that.
The problem is I think that history is not in their favor.
I think one reason people are nominally in a – have years for – nominally been – had their panties in a lot about Christmas is because it was excellent cover to drink.
Yeah.
And if they didn't have that supernal buy-in, then they would just seem like a bunch of drunks.
But I mean, you look at what has Christmas been for like 200 years in the West.
It's been about parties, really.
Certainly, it's been about – to a certain extent, it's been about charity and stuff like that.
But I mean –
The birth of the Christian Savior has not been at the center of Christmas for over a century, and to act any differently is just not sensible or historically accurate.
There's always been people who are very loud about being mad that it's not more that way, but I don't think that's the way most people do it.
Sure, there's tons of Jesus.
You've got Jesus everywhere.
But actually, can I just say in passing, my wife has a really wackadoodle name for the manger scene I'd never heard.
She calls it a creche.
Yeah, that's the name for it.
I've never heard that.
I was totally a Christian and I'd never heard that.
Kresch?
Really?
Yeah, I thought that was the guy at the compound.
No, no, no, not Koresh.
Kresch.
Yeah.
Never heard it.
We had one in our home as Christians.
It's a thing that the Kresch became one of the bones of contention in the last 20 years because it used to be that you would have a Kresch in front of every small town city hall.
As you do.
And then people were mad because it was government property and government-sponsored crash.
And I have actually seen a few in small towns where – They're very abstract.
Instead of taking it away – Have you seen the very abstract ones?
I've seen some where different characters have been added to try and take away the sting.
Well, I haven't seen that.
And so you end up with like – There's like a Wookiee there.
Yeah.
And, you know, Marilyn Monroe is there and pretty soon it's like, oh, there's – I don't know what's going on.
I don't know what's going on here.
I've seen ones where like I think they're trying to like get it in like under the radar screen where it used to be when I was a kid, you would have literal people –
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It was just like 18 bowling pins all arranged.
Exactly.
With a box and a camel.
I don't know if this is true.
I read a story the other day about, where was it?
I think it was Oklahoma.
They had successfully, basically, with private funding, had allowed a Ten Commandments.
Did you read about this?
A Ten Commandments to be put.
Oh, right in the center of the court or the statehouse, right?
Yeah.
And you hear it once equal time.
No.
Satanists.
Oh, they do.
They want their Ten Commandments of Satan in there?
Yeah, they're agreeing to raise twice as much money, $20,000 instead of $10,000, to put up their own thing to the memory of – or not to the memory, to the historical and literary Satan.
Oh, sure.
They're not talking about the fallen angel that used to sit at the right hand of God.
They are talking about the literary Satan.
Yeah.
I guess they could get a guy in a red suit with a pitchfork.
I don't know.
I know you're a thinker, and you think.
They believe in Jesus in Oklahoma big time.
Well, and that turns out – that's the irony is that in trying to railroad that through in this kind of snickering, ha-ha, now-we-really-got-em way, they've opened the door to all this other stuff.
But I don't know.
I mean I think it's – so two quick things in passing.
First of all, I've always – well, in my later adult years, I've always thought it's kind of strange that we have this incredibly solemn occasion in the dead of winter to celebrate the birth of Jesus.
And then you've got the Easter bunny and eggs and the vergency of spring to celebrate his truly, truly horrible crucifixion death.
Right, but he comes back.
That's true.
Yeah, and the thing about his birth... They brought back Brian the dog, too, on the Family Guy show you like.
The thing about his birth, of course, is that it is the shortest day of the year, and then the days start getting longer.
Like, he is born, and also the year is born.
We are, like, born again in the sun.
Sun is back, coming, slowly.
Oh, that's a good point.
It's a baby sun on December 25th, and then the sun is going to grow to become the adult sun of summer.
So it's all very tree forest chapel people.
It's very tree people.
Tree forest chapel people?
I love those guys.
And then, of course, in spring, that's when you really want to die a gruesome and disfiguring death in the sun and then be reborn three days later.
Yeah.
I mean that's just – I don't even have to explain what that's a metaphor for.
How about this?
Tell me if you're on board with this part two.
You think about sitting around in that dark room like feeling like an idiot going like where is – I'm opening myself up to the idea that there's this bigger thing and that I should be a better person and you open up and there's all that stuff.
I think a huge part of Christmas is feeling like shit.
I think what we must accept –
And not just purely from – strictly from like a, if you like, sane mental health standpoint, but I think we also need to realize there's something inherently extremely sad about Christmas.
There's something very – there's so much nostalgia that people – what do you think about who's dead and not there anymore?
I think that's what people don't acknowledge.
That's what's ironic to me in some ways is like, okay, well, believe what you want to believe.
If you want to go get deals on Amazon, get deals on Amazon, whatever, Black Friday, whatever it is you want to do.
Like if that's your thing, let that be your thing, Christmas lights, whatever that is.
But also let's acknowledge that it's a very depressing time of year for a lot of people.
And I think that's what gets lost.
To me, that's the unhealthy part is not that I can't get my college-educated brain around the idea of the –
The wizard in the sky sending his son down to save us then die.
It's much more like I think it's a bummer that we don't acknowledge how morose and yes, mawkish, but also just depressing.
Christmas is.
It's really depressing.
You'll never do it right.
My kid will never be happy enough.
We bought her as a gift.
She will never be into these things as much as would make me happy.
I would love for more of my family who's dead to be around to see this.
And I think that's what people aren't comfortable acknowledging.
They feel like they should be all up and peppy and wearing a silly sweater and feeling great all the time.
When I think most of us are stressed out
And freaky and depressed a lot of the time.
I mean I'm not a depressive person.
But it does make me very – not solemn.
What's the word?
Reflective about like what I've lost in life.
Melancholy.
Melancholy, yeah.
But kind of reflect on what I've lost and will never get back.
Merry Christmas.
That's what I think about.
And I think most people are uncomfortable admitting that because they feel like they're being a holiday karma suck.
I think that one of the themes, the running themes in my life... I got a card here.
Is that growing up in Alaska, there's always somebody who is more of an outdoorsman than you, right?
The greater Yeti theory.
There is always somebody who is...
Like, who has slept outside more nights.
And that is a hierarchy that goes all the way up to the literal grizzly Adamses who make a living trapping animals in the winter with homemade snares.
And so...
All you have to do is spend one night outside in the dead of winter in Alaska to realize that you... That living in the city, living in your house, you are not living the same life at all as someone who is living on the ragged edge of survival.
Oh, yeah.
And...
Although you prefer the comfort, the fact is that in those moments when you are outside at night in the wilderness, in the winter, there is a solemnity to life that we take great pains to eliminate.
We build houses, we heat them from inside, we leave the lights on all night, and all of that is to banish
This, this thing that we've talked about you and I many, many times, this feeling that the, that the stars are ambivalent to you, the feeling that you're going to fall off the earth, the feeling that, you know, and it isn't just, it isn't just a feeling of profound aloneness.
It is like the, it is the core feeling of profundity at its heart, you know, and these guys who are living out in the wilderness, they are in touch with,
the the immensity and the the immensity of creation but also the enormity of it and
being exposed to it as much as I have, which is not that much being, you know, an Alaskan and sort of like dragged out into the wilderness and then left standing rooted in spot, looking up at the Milky way and feeling like, Oh fuck.
Like not only is the Milky way there, but it's also 40 below zero and right.
And the, and the woods are full of predators and, uh,
And my friends have left me.
I am so out of the realm of Black Friday right now and into a very different kind of Black Friday, a black mass.
And so that solemnity is a thing that I want to impart, not just to the people who are close to me, but I want to share that with everybody I meet because I feel like most of us
who live in the present world are almost completely divorced from it.
And a lot of people have never experienced it or they have experienced it in that one time somebody drove the car up a dirt road and turned the lights off and they all got out of the car and looked at the stars for a minute.
But it's kind of bleakness tourism.
Right.
Or you're just like, oh, and it's even more scary and awesome because you have no context for it.
And then you're like, get back in the car, turn the heater on and turn the fucking radio on and get me back to the world that I understand, which is one with a roof on it.
Mm-hmm.
And so that solemnity, whatever that is, that connection with that feeling of smallness and the feeling of like the yawning truth that we live on a ball and we don't know why.
And to not think about that every day is just a factor of having drowned that out with a lot of high-pitched noise.
You know, that 200 years ago, we would have been confronted with it every day because we would have been out plowing it.
Or if we wanted to go somewhere after dark, we would have... You know, you can hear the wolves at the edge of town.
And now we have drowned it out, but we've drowned it out almost entirely with static.
And to miss it, to miss out on it, is to miss out on...
The thing about us, something very, very core about us, something as real as can be, that maybe isn't even there in the summer, or is there in a different way in the summer.
It's definitely much harder to get access to.
And in winter, you can leave your – like we don't have screens in our windows in San Francisco.
You just open up your windows, whatever you feel like it, and stuff can come in.
But that sense of like – I mean in a way, to use that word again, you're talking about a kind of abstraction where we get more and more layers of comfort and security that can make us – on the one hand, make us feel safe and secure and warm and all of those things.
But also –
Yeah.
that's like that, you know, the kind of like that's the cold is like water in that sense.
It's like, you don't realize like how incredibly harsh the world is natively, how harsh our existence ultimately is.
And so, you know, if you get enough Christmas sweaters, eventually you won't have to think about it.
Well, and imagine all the people that we know who are astronomy buffs, space nerds who interact with space and,
Primarily by looking at Hubble photos on the internet.
Or, you know, and how, although those Hubble photos and space photos and episodes of Cosmos are all...
extraordinary the difference between looking at the most detailed photo you know color enhanced photograph of distant nebula is compared to standing out on a cold night and peering into a telescope at a blurry picture of set or blurry view of saturn
Which is, in some ways, like, pales in comparison, but on the other hand, if you've ever stood out in the cold, shivering, looking at Saturn through a telescope, you know that it is, in a way, infinitely more profound than
than looking at these pictures of deep space on a computer because you're actually conscious of the distance and you're conscious of the void and of the fact that it's real.
It's not a special effect.
It's not a game.
I can't look up into the night sky without feeling...
terror i guess and it's not a it's not a terror that's uncomfortable it's like a it's like a terror in a in a greek sense of like why do we not all feel terror all the time why why shouldn't we we should be terrified we live on a freaking ball and that should be a lot scarier
And I feel like it was scary.
It was very scary until very recently.
Well, you've got, in describing that, you've got a lot of the core realization that people get in a religious setting without the supernal influence.
You've got that sense of immensity, the God that's bigger than God.
That there's something that we can't get a name for that's bigger than, you know, not to be able...
but something that's bigger if it's if we can imagine it that's not the thing it's something bigger than that it's something that has so much enormity and and if you don't feel small you're not thinking hard enough so and it's one of the reasons that i couldn't it's one of the reasons that when i when i think to myself i should have been a physicist it was the thing that i wanted to do and
And what stopped me was that in such quick succession, it was so easy to get myself into a place where I was asking questions that couldn't be answered.
And that I had to content myself with discovering answers to questions that were further up the food chain.
Like...
And I couldn't be content seeking the small flagstones.
But that's really where I would want to be.
And it's so sad.
It's so sad to know that we won't know, that we cannot know.
Yeah.
It's such a...
I mean, the melancholy in feeling like there are – that we just can't know even the next scale up, right?
Yeah, totally.
And the more you know, the more you realize you can't know.
Yeah, the bacteria that creates champagne.
It's what makes physics like religion for atheists in some ways.
Yeah, right.
But, ugh, I don't know.
Yeah.
I feel like maybe I should just turn on my MP3 player and see if Kings of Leon have a new track.
I thought they had long hair.
I'm really confused.
They might have cut it.
I saw them on the Saturday Night Live, and I think they must have lost their hair at JFK or something.
They were very shorn.
You know, I had long hair a couple of years ago, and then I cut it because it seemed like the only thing I was supposed to do that day.
Like, huh, what was I supposed to do today?
Oh, right, cut off this hair.
And now I feel like, oh, what a dummy.
I would have four feet of hair right now.
Your long hair, with all due respect to a man that I really respect, just sartorially, really in every way, your hair got creepy.
Creepy?
Creepy.
Is creepy the word that you want to use?
Not crazy or cool?
Are you sure it's not cool, the word you're looking for?
Yeah, probably cool.
That's probably, you know, six of one, creepy of the other.
Creepy, though.
I mean, creepy?
Well, it was the tooth also, John.
Yeah, okay.
The missing tooth was creepy.
You know, it's, you know, if you got the baking soda and you got the vinegar, and as long as you keep them apart, you don't have a volcano.
But you, man, that combination, that picture of you with my daughter is still one of my favorite things.
And you kind of parted it in the middle in a real Jesus kind of way, too.
Uh-huh.
When you get a lot of hair, it parts itself in the middle.
That's the thing.
Is that right?
Yeah.
Just because of the weight?
Yeah, you can try and part it different places, but eventually it's going to fall into that Rosanna, Rosanna, Dana.
Huh.
Oh.
You know, I've been playing at having slightly longer hair, and it's really not working out.
Really?
Yeah, I mean, it just does not look good on a man my age.
Not long hair, not long hair, but I couldn't, I don't think I could get to long hair.
I just, I couldn't take it.
I'm not kissing your ass when I say this, but I have never seen you with a hairstyle or a version of like scruffy scruff that I didn't think was...
Cool looking.
God, thank you, John.
That means the world to me.
My hair is atrocious right now.
Sometimes your hair is short.
Sometimes it's long.
Sometimes it's mussy.
Sometimes it's mussier.
I got serious communication problems with my operator.
And I hate to say it.
I have to go, I think, look at some other options.
You mean the man who sits in a little chair and drives the Merlin from inside?
I can't talk about Doctor Who.
No, the lady who cuts my hair.
And it's a $12 haircut.
And believe me, she does not owe me a nickel.
Anyway, I should do something about it.
But see, this is the beauty of you being a professional entertainer is you can do things like that and it will be entertaining to people if you get long hair.
Yeah, well, and the thing about long hair on a man my size is it instantly conjures a Rasputin-like severity.
I think that's your personality.
No, I mean not in a bad way, but – You might be right.
No, no, no.
I mean I think it's very flattering.
I think you have a very intimidating presence to begin with.
But when you have a deliberately missing tooth and like shoulder-length hair –
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think people start really imagining themselves in a garbage bag, you know, when they see that coming.
Yeah.
Although I wouldn't waste a garbage bag on most people.
No.
Is that right?
Yeah.
I feel like the garbage bag is just something that the raccoons are going to have to tear through.
You might as well just save everybody the pollution.
Yeah.
And just put the body in a river.
Oh, that's so nice.
An environmental Rasputin.
Yeah, I've been thinking a lot about the life of an entertainer lately.
Because unfortunately, or rather fortunately, I have a lot of big plans now.
I'm feeling better.
I'm feeling like engaging.
But as you know, feeling like engaging and engaging are different.
And engaging even.
Engagement is a process.
It's an everyday process.
I wake up yesterday and I engage.
And then I wake up today and I forget to.
You're not feeling quite as engagey.
And then it's like, oh, fuck, I have to do this every day?
Are you talking about, like, one reason our listeners may not know we haven't had a recording in a while is partly because you've been traveling a lot.
I've been working.
Well, yeah, traveling for work.
I think you're always working in some way, John.
Thank you, Marilyn.
I think you're out there plowing the fields even if there's no crop, really.
You show up every day, right?
I do.
I show up.
One of the things our listeners should be made aware of is that you and I are going to do a live version of Roderick on the Line.
Let me take a minute to tell you a little bit about our sponsor today.
Yeah, we're going to do that now.
I should write down the dates for that.
San Francisco's Sketch Fest.
We are going to be underpaid and overused at Sketch Fest.
Well, that's just the nature of a festival.
Really, of all festivals.
Until you reach a certain point where you are overpaid and underused.
That's why Carnies really just do it for the love of the craft.
That's right.
They love the game.
Do you have those... I mean, we're kind of breaking the fifth or sixth wall here.
But when is that?
We should tell people about this.
Oh, it's at the end of January.
So we're doing two shows, the 30th and the 31st, in San Francisco, live.
But it has...
The idea of agreeing to do those shows has, in me, ignited a feeling that, you know, and you and I have talked about it, a feeling that we should start to think about live performance as one of the things that we do.
We should do this show.
We should do this show live in different locations.
Let's not go crazy.
I agree.
I agree.
I don't like to pre-announce, but I think that's a very good idea.
I think this is a great way to kick off our Jubilee year, 2014.
It's going to be a huge year.
But this has then suggested to me that I should do a regular show.
Because playing these Long Winters reunion shows has reminded me that I am an electric guitar player.
And for the last few years, I've been getting by strumming my acoustic guitar and singing, which is a thing I enjoy.
But I am an electric guitar player.
Especially when you say it that way.
I play the electric guitar.
No, you play the guitar electrically is what you do.
I play the shit out of the electric guitar.
Yes.
And the thing about having a rock band is it's very expensive to house and feed all these people.
You have to feed them.
You have to give them a place to sleep.
They have to have their medicine.
They have to have their medicine.
You have to talk nicely to them at a certain point every day to remind them that you like them and care about them.
Have to live with a constant expectation of apologies.
Yeah.
And sometimes somebody has to go to the bathroom and everybody else doesn't have to go to the bathroom.
But what are you going to do?
Tell them you can't go to the bathroom?
No.
You have to pull over.
But all of that is necessary if you want to play the shit out of the electric guitar in front of people because nobody wants to see you do that in front of a drum machine.
Anyway...
So I'm trying to think of like, okay, here we are.
It's a brand new year.
We're starting a new year.
This is going to be Jubilee year.
Want to start getting out there.
Want to start performing.
And then that just brings the whole, it's just the whole glacier of performance starts calving off into the Bristol Bay of my ennui.
I had a little moment there.
Wow.
Where's my orange bell?
Somebody stole my orange bell!
Quit traveling and working.
Who's been in my house?
But you know, if you do it enough and you're getting paid for it, then it's like a job.
The pain in the ass part is where, in my experience, the pain in the ass part is like having to go somewhere for like a day.
Yeah, well, see, I'm trying to... I'm trying to...
Boy, this is the hard part.
Trying to lower my expectations about money and return to a time when what I believed in was art.
And I remember many, many long, long, passionate conversations with people in cafes over a pack of Export A cigarettes and 40 cups of coffee.
where we were talking about art and we meant it.
It was serious business.
And somewhere along the line there, the word art got quotation marks around it because it was unseemly to talk about art if you were in the pop vernacular.
And then quotation marks got put around everything for many years there.
And now I'm trying to clear away this like snowstorm of quotation marks and find whatever is there, whatever is behind this blizzard.
And I want to, you know, like, I want to care about art and entertainment and figure, once again, as I used to figure, that not only will the money follow, but even appreciation will follow.
People don't appreciate it at first.
Some people do.
Well, I think I accidentally derailed you.
So you're not going to be like Santana just showing up and doing solos for your electrical guitar playing.
What's your plan for doing a regular show?
What's that guy that plays all the – that guy at the Largo?
That kind of thing?
Oh, right.
The John Bryan thing.
Is that what you would do?
Would you host an event?
I don't think – Was that – were you just doing Allentown?
Yeah.
This is the thing.
I don't know.
So there's a venue here in Seattle called the rendezvous, which is a very small room.
It was built originally as a screening room because Seattle was a town where Hollywood movies in the 20s and 30s, they would screen those movies here in Seattle before they went into wide release.
And so Seattle had a whole little constellation of tiny theaters that were built just to show Errol Flynn movies.
to a select crowd and judging on their, you know, based on their reaction, then they would do another edit or whatever.
Oh, it was like a test mark.
You're like beta testers for Errol Flynn movies.
Right.
And so there used to be a whole slew of these little like 50 to 80 capacity theaters that were done in high Egyptian style.
And most of them are gone, but this one remains called the Jewel Box Theater at the Rendezvous.
And it's a tiny little room.
And it's where my music career got started.
My first shows were all in this room because the way you would book it is you would walk into the bar and there'd be like four sailors and like two 60-year-old floozies.
Yeah.
All, you know, sitting at the bar.
One guy would be smoking.
Because it's a Tom Waits song.
It was absolutely a Tom Waits bar.
And you would walk in and there was a book on a lectern.
And you would flip the book to like an open date and you just write your name on it.
And that was how you booked a show in this bar.
You're like, we're playing here on Tuesday.
And like the bartender wouldn't even nod at you.
They just...
And then you would show up.
You would have to collect the money.
You'd have to have somebody stand at the door collecting money.
And then you'd play the show.
And then the bar didn't... They didn't ask for a cut or whatever.
They just figured that all of the gimlets they were serving...
was more than enough pay this is really something from another century it was a great deal and a wonderful thing for the town and I think even now they've fixed up the jewel box a little bit but I think even now it's not that hard to just walk in and say like I'm playing here but I've been thinking I should do a show there once a week but I don't know what it would be Merlin I honestly don't know what kind of show to do
Should I rant for an hour or should I rant for 15 minutes and then play the electric guitar for an hour?
Just let yourself regroup.
Should I rant for 20 minutes, play for 20 minutes, rant for 20 more minutes?
I think this is not complicated.
God, at some point, John, I would like to have a role in life of showing you that things are not as complicated as they seem.
I think you should go and do a show and see how it goes and then try a different thing if that didn't work.
But a real easy one would be to just go and do a show and see how it goes.
I told you off the record, and we'll cut this out, not really, is that it would be fun for us to alternate between our two cities every month.
San Francisco and Seattle?
Yeah.
At a similar sized theater.
I think just go and do it.
You just sighed a sigh of like...
i just said that didn't i i know i don't like to announce things but no but but in your case i mean this is part of your art where you're not going to put quotation marks around it right uh is that you just just go and do it just go and do it see what happens i mean you you you can do some storytelling you can do some song stuff you know it's you know what part of it is is that like there's such a in my head anyway and i suspect in a lot of
people of a similar age it's your idea of like what a rock and roll show is which is it's a place where you go and like two to five bands play it starts late it's really loud it's a rock and roll show and the thing is it doesn't need to be just that or it doesn't need to be some kind of ironic bow tie event like there could be something in between that you know it gets its own definition based on who's doing the show and who starts coming to it a lot
You know what I mean?
I think if the expectations are that low, which is good, the expectations should be low.
There shouldn't be any thought that it's going to be sword swallowers and shit.
But you could go and do some songs and do some storytelling, have a guest.
You could interview someone.
There are various things that you could do.
It could be a John Roderick show.
Yeah, I was thinking about calling it John Roderick's Rendezvous.
Hmm.
Is it Rendezvous?
Rendezvous.
Okay.
Because you keep pronouncing it Rendezvous, and I like the idea that it's like an old whore named Ronda.
Rendezvous?
Rendezvous.
Yeah, exactly.
Think about it.
Oh, Rendezvous.
No, Rendezvous.
Well, I feel like the word rendezvous is a word with a great, it has a great pedigree in Alaska because we have the fur rendezvous every winter where all the fur trappers come to town.
And, well, they used to come to town and sell their furs.
Sounds like a drag event.
Actually, there is a drag component.
Are you coming to the fur rendezvous?
There's a thing called the Miners and Trappers Ball.
Which is, I swear to you, the absolute highlight of the Alaska social year.
Do they bring their homemade snares?
Well, if you can get a ticket to the Miner and Trapper's Ball now, I'll put in with you.
It's like a heavy ticket.
Right now, the Miner and Trapper's Ball... Are these serious guys that look like Nanook of the North or they're wearing the Filson jackets?
This is hardcore stuff?
Well, but it's become a socialite event.
Like, all of the big heavy hitters up there all go in their big wolf jackets.
Like, you're supposed to wear your full-on Alaska finery, but they're all in tuxedos.
They're just in fur tuxedos.
It's a wolf tuxed.
Yeah, it's a wolf tuxed.
But yeah, it's a big deal up there.
But For Rendezvous has become a huge festival in Alaska.
They build an ice castle.
They used to have this amazing thing, which was they would build big snow berms in the streets downtown.
And they would have vintage car races.
on ice through the center of town and the way they kept the cars from crashing into buildings was they just built snow berms up the side of the buildings that's thoughtful it was really it was pretty amazing i don't know if they do that anymore how about john davu
Is that too clever by half?
It's a little cute.
Yeah, I feel it's a little cute.
That might be a thing that fans say.
Are you going to the John DeVue?
Oh, that's good.
But I would have to keep it straight.
I would have to be like John Roderick's Rendezvous.
I like the idea of you in a wolf tuxedo, though.
You know, this is so infuriating to me.
A really good friend of mine, a childhood friend of mine, her father...
had a wolf, a full-on knee-length wolf jacket.
I have no context for what wolf looks like when it's made into a wearable pelt.
Is it like a dog?
It's like dog fur, basically.
It's dog fur.
It absolutely is.
You're going to buy your fancy dog fur coat?
It's very full.
In most cases, kind of gray, white, speckled.
It's still got the marks where people were petting it.
But it's a much thicker pelt than a dog.
Sure.
Yeah, but it's a dog, basically.
It's a dog coat.
A full-length dog coat would be pretty sweet.
He had a full-length wolf coat, and it was a vintage coat.
He bought it in the 70s, and I think he bought it from David Green, Master Furrier.
And it was already an old coat.
Anyway, so he's got this coat...
And I was like, you know, I had my eye on this coat for many years.
Sure.
Who wouldn't?
And I talked to my friend and she's like, oh, my dad is selling his wolf coat.
And I said, he's what?
Like, am I not like a son to him?
And so I contact him and I'm like, so the wolf coat.
Like, let's wrap.
Yeah.
And here's what he says.
You couldn't afford it.
Ooh, wrong thing.
And I was like, I beg your pardon.
And then he puts it on eBay, and he was right.
I could not have afforded it.
Was it over $1,000?
It was.
Apparently, a full-length vintage wolf parka is an item of some price.
Oh, my goodness.
I just Googled it.
Are they all this pimpy?
Well, see, so this one was an Alaska wolf.
This is not made from a single wolf.
No, no, no.
A lot of wolves had to die to make the coat.
Yes.
A lot of wolves had to be snared in the snow and gradually chew on their paws until they died to make a coat that beautiful.
My goodness.
There's a lot of wolves in this coat, it looks like.
Yeah, and so it's an extraordinary garment.
It is not a thing that you're going to wear around.
When you wear the wolf coat, you are communicating to everybody that you are a fucking lunatic.
It seems like it would be kind of like wearing a kilt.
I've always thought that to wear the Utila kilt, you must primarily – step zero.
You must be a person who enjoys talking about wearing a Utila kilt, which in my experience, 100% Venn diagram overflow.
It seems to me like if you wear a wolf coat, you would be pretty into talking about your wolf coat.
Well, yeah, unless you were also like swinging a baton or whatever.
Like the wolf coat is either like, come talk to me about my wolf coat.
Like somebody on the drill team?
Or get the fuck out of my way.
Right.
Oh, like a big stick.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm talking about like you're basically carrying a cattle prod or whatever.
Like a wolf coat is not even a thing that you would like get in and out of a car wearing.
You just show up in the wolf coat.
Nobody knows how you got there.
And when you leave at the end of the night, you disappear into the mist.
It'd be kind of cool if you were pulled along on some kind of a carriage by fearful wolves.
Or you had some... The bottoms of your shoes were like little waxed snowboards, and you just walked out and just...
I think it sounds like a DC villain.
It sounds like a Batman villain, where you're basically like a fetishist.
Batman has bat everything.
You know what I'm saying?
The Riddler's got question marks.
You could be like Wolfman.
Yeah, you have two wolves tied up out in front of the club.
Your shoes are snowboards.
You're gnawing on a wolf.
You grab ahold of their reins, and they just start pulling you down the street.
Out of respect.
Yeah.
Oh, my goodness.
And do you have a sense of what it really finally went for?
Some of these auctions, it's hard to tell.
So it's definitely over $1,000.
Do you think it's $10,000?
This one was a primo wolf coat.
And I mean, honestly, I have to admit that I would be...
I would be hard-pressed to have an occasion to wear it, and I would be a little ashamed to wear it.
But the idea that this wolf coat, which had been basically in my extended family, would go to some stranger.
It's nice to be asked.
Yeah, some person in Chicago who's like, I'm going to wear a wolf coat.
Elon Musk, Paul Allen.
Yeah, some jag off.
If I was a billionaire entrepreneur, I would probably have a collection of very overpriced, embarrassing, silly things that I didn't tell anybody about.
I could see having like a whole vault somewhere just full of exotic animal pelts.
Well, you know, I hate to say this.
I really do.
I'm ashamed of myself for saying this right now.
But the Mega Millions Lotto, Merlin, is up to $550 million.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I went to the gas station...
I was driving in my car, and I was like, the lotto is $555.
I thought that was in Florida.
Well, it's throughout the country now.
Oh, anywhere you can just go buy one of those tickets.
Yeah, it's just that most of the winners are in Florida.
Well, some of the losers.
Because an overwhelming number of people who buy lottery tickets live in Florida.
Turns out.
So several years ago, I had a thing where when the lottery would get above $300 million,
I would say, you know, I don't play the lottery, but let's say $300 million is my threshold, where if it's above $300 million, I'm going to buy a lottery ticket just because that is crazy money.
That is hilarious money.
And to win it would just be fucking hilarious.
It might as well be you.
Somebody's got to win it, right?
So anyway, it's at $550 million.
I'm driving down the street in my car and I'm like... That's like five times what we gave to the Contras, isn't it?
It's an unfathomable amount of money.
Even if you take the cash option and after taxes, you're still going to have $300 million.
That's a lot of money.
So I drive, I'm driving down the street and I'm like, I'm, it's over the 300 million threshold and I'm just going to go buy a lottery ticket.
I'm just going to do it.
I don't, I, I'm embarrassed.
I'm ashamed of myself alone in the car, but here I go.
And I went into the gas station and the guy didn't look up from his phone.
He knew you were there.
He was, he was playing Angry Birds and I was like, I want to buy a lottery ticket.
And he was like, uh-huh.
How much?
And I, because I like to have everything explained to me every time I was like, why don't you explain to me how it works?
And he like, seriously, never raised his eyes up from the phone.
He was like dollar a ticket.
And I said, so not, not many people just go in and buy one for fun.
He, they there, it's an investment in their future.
Right.
And, and so I'm like, so if I buy $1 gets me one number and $2 gets me two numbers.
And he's like, that's right.
And honestly, my first thought is I know that the guy who sells me the ticket, the gas station that sells me the ticket, that guy gets a cut.
And I'm already resenting the money that I'm going to have to get.
I'm already resenting the fucking $20 million that this guy's going to get if he sells me the winning ticket because he's not even participating in this with me.
But then I do an even crazier thing.
I say five bucks and I get five tickets.
That's not that crazy.
I mean, it's stupid to buy lottery tickets at all.
But if you're going to do it, you might as well buy a hundred.
Well, but this is the problem because... How do you think they get the 500 million?
That's right.
They get it from people going in and spending their paychecks on it.
But I'm thinking if you're going to buy a symbolic lottery ticket...
How do you buy five symbolic lottery tickets?
You have just cut the symbolism in fifths.
But it's still the same size pie.
What?
Wait, so you're saying that's not enough for too many.
You think you should just get one?
I think you should just get one because it's symbolic lottery tickets.
Right.
The chances of winning are not the point.
Oh, and you're pissing right in the eye of luck.
You're saying, you know, I don't even fucking care if I win.
It's just that it's reached the point where it's nominally sensible for me to try and make $300 million by going to the gas station.
So I will go ahead and kick in $1.
I'm not an idiot.
I'm not going to buy $5.
And you're not going to go buy a block.
with other folks from your office.
If you're trying to reduce your odds or whatever, you could buy a million of them and still have no chance of winning.
I don't even take coupons at Walgreens.
My daughter and I were chased out of the store yesterday by the guy at the counter because he'd given me something something $10 coupon.
There's never been a coupon that wasn't for suckers.
Was this a they live test?
I don't have my glasses with me.