Ep. 94: "Backburners to Infinity"
Hello.
Hey, John.
Hi, Merlin.
How's it going?
Pretty good.
Pretty good.
Pretty good.
A little bit sick.
It's a little early in the morning.
Oh, come on.
I thought we were over this.
You know, I thought so, too.
But, you know, I went to the Oregon coast.
I was walking on the beach in the winter, in the night.
And the sick mites got me.
It blew up my nose.
The flu seems.
But it's not the flu.
That's right.
But it's not so bad.
I feel like I'm kind of through the worst of it.
You sound pretty good, considering.
Yeah.
I woke up at... I went to bed at like... Like four o'clock in the morning, and I said...
Which is, you know, which is not doing too good.
But I felt confident.
It's a new year.
This four o'clock in the morning thing is not going to be the regular pattern.
And I was like, listen, I'm going to sleep till 11.
And that is going to be seven hours of sleep.
And that is fine.
That's a good, that's how I'm going to run tomorrow.
And then I woke up at 7.45 in the morning.
Just woke right up.
bolt upright yeah and i was like i woke right up and i was and i was humming a song by hole um it's world and it was no good and i was like ah i uh hate you forever for mentioning that because now it's in my head too i tried to go back to sleep but i made my bed i'll lie in it i made my bed so gross
But, you know, busy day.
I got a lot of stuff going on.
What are you doing?
What are you so busy with?
People are barely back at work and you're out there.
Is this part of the new political regime?
Is this your new media 3.0 career?
What's going on?
It's my media 3.0 career.
I decided that the last week of last year that I was going to hire somebody.
Oh!
You ready for this?
I can't wait to hear.
There's so many things you could use help with.
I decided that I needed help.
And that for so long, I've been waiting.
For help to arrive and help, you know, help would come around, help would come, help would be outside the fence and it would be kind of looking over the fence and I'd be inside the fence looking coy.
But like a kind of Mary Poppins, like just when you needed it.
Like something would show up with an umbrella and it would be just what you needed.
Exactly.
Except Mary Poppins never came through the fence.
And I think some of it was I never invited her in.
Some of it was that, you know, I pulled up the paving stones from the gate to the porch because I was going to redo it.
And then I didn't redo it.
And then it just became kind of a muddy bog.
I sense a message.
Yeah, it does.
It does.
I've had people come over and say, would you put down some bricks or paving stones or something?
It's just like the path from your gate to your house is like a trip through the Mekong Delta.
It's like maybe you should start by having a Mary Poppins who's a stonemason.
Somebody who could start and could really just do step zero.
Thank you.
That is step zero.
Somebody shows up at my house and builds their own path to my door.
Also, in my experience, any kind of professional help is a little bit like a vampire.
I mean, it'll be there, but you have to invite it in.
The only way you can let the vampire in is to say, please come into the house.
Exactly.
So at the end of last year, I was like, you know what?
I envy the people I know who have help.
I have all these things that are on...
Back burners.
I mean, my stove has so many back burners.
It's back burners to infinity.
And the front burners are just like, there's that teapot that I hardly ever use, only when guests are over.
And then the other pan has got bacon grease in it.
I think this is common for a lot of people.
I don't want to make you sound common, John.
I think a lot of people I know, including me, suffer from this.
And people who are trying to accomplish virtually anything, and especially virtually anything on their own, quote unquote, run into these things where you're like, eh, that can wait.
Right.
It's absolutely true.
And I know about myself that the thing that hobbles me each and every time is not the show.
I don't
I don't have any apprehension about getting up on stage and putting on a show.
The thing that inhibits me is the making of the phone call to the guy who's running the lights.
I don't want to make the phone call.
I don't want to talk to the guy that's running the lights.
And that is the phone call that stands in between me and putting on the show.
And so the show doesn't get put on because I don't want to call the guy that's doing the lights and talk to him for five minutes about the stupid light show.
That's the difference between a good show and a bad one.
And for me, it also then becomes the dread of taking on new enterprises that will require an inevitable waiting for a call from the light guy.
That's right.
And you think, okay, do I really want 10 more of these?
And so the dread is compounded by the fact that everybody I know that has a manager
spends twice as much time as they used to spend managing themselves, complaining about the poor job that the manager is doing.
And everybody I know that has an assistant spends half of the time, spends twice the time cleaning up after their assistant.
But there are a few examples of people that have incredibly collaborative relationships with somebody that helps them.
And the person that helps them is not also trying to be a songwriter.
or whatever the person that helps them is not also trying to manage michael buble you know there's somebody there's this person in the middle who's like the same scale as me the same realm as me we speak the same language but they are on the side that is like oh call the lighting guy are you kidding done boom
They got the mind for that kind of thing.
People got the mind for it.
They got the mind for it.
They love to do it.
My sister, if you have a complaint with a customer service agent, my sister will shoulder you out of the way to make the call for you because she loves dealing with customer service agents.
And if my sister and I got along better, she would be a great manager.
I wouldn't reject it out of hand.
Maybe you need somebody you don't get along with, but who understands the problem domain.
Well, and this is the thing.
Ten years ago, if I had it all to do over again.
Mm-hmm.
If I had it all to do over again, I would have bought Apple stock.
But if I had it all to do over again, I would have invited my sister to be my manager 20 years ago, and maybe we'd be in a different place now.
Because if that was actually her job, she would have woken me up the next day and been like, what the fuck are you doing?
Are you sleeping?
What are you sleeping for?
What am I supposed to manage?
I'm supposed to manage you sleeping?
Get up.
You know, and we would have been on a, we would have been, we'd be somewhere else now.
Anyway, so today I'm having a meeting with some people who are going to help me find some other people who are going to help me.
Ah.
This is exciting because I think you're doing something smart.
I was going to offer you advice, but you're way ahead of me.
I think one way a lot of these things go wrong, and I think you – we've talked about this.
You know this.
One thing that goes wrong sometimes is hiring – is being too abrupt about hiring a person who's either cheap, familiar, a fan –
But making some kind of a rookie mistake about bringing somebody in, and that's what leads you into having to manage a person.
If you went out to hire a plumber, you wouldn't care if they were familiar with your work.
You would get somebody who's just really good at dealing with poo.
And so in this case, you have a blue ribbon panel who's going to help you find the right person.
Are you looking, if I could ask, if you can say, if you know and can say, are you looking for more of a manager or more of an assistant?
Right.
Well, here's the thing.
So as I was conceiving of this person, I'm like, what do I want?
I want someone who is half the time an assistant and who does not balk at assistant work and yet aspires to
To grow with me into a position where they are doing managerial work.
And I know for a fact that the thing that inhibits me most about doing anything is the dread I feel about the process of finding a person.
That's miserable.
I don't want to think about it.
So, I called a friend that I knew was too busy to help me.
And I said, hello, friend.
Too busy to help me and yet is an office manager for a non-profit.
Right?
So has the skills.
And I said, hello, friend.
I know you are too busy to do this work.
Will you help me find somebody to help me do this work?
And this was like the type of thing that she excels at doing.
And so she is now embarking on a project of interviewing people
on my behalf, so that she can find three candidates that then I can talk to and pick one of.
Wow.
Right.
And so, what I'm looking for, and this is the thing, and the other thing I'm grappling with is that I have to be prepared to pay this person for the work that they do.
I have to be able to pay, I have to be, it's not an ability to pay, I have to be willing to pay them
And I have to discover the way that I'm going to pay them and the amount that I'm going to pay them that is commensurate with the work.
And it's all very new and exciting.
And the working conditions.
What do you mean working conditions?
Working conditions are fantastic.
That's true.
There is such a thing as hazard pay.
They get to talk to me and hear my ideas in the full freshness.
Wow.
The moment they are conceived.
That's a benefit.
Mm-hmm.
I knew a guy, and I can't decide if this is super douchey kind of smart or something else, but he embarked on this particular kind of experiment as well.
And for the first – if I'm remembering this correctly, I think what he did was hired – in your case, went out and hired all three for a month.
Uh-huh.
And then discovered fairly quickly – Pitted them against each other?
Made them fight shirtless in a pit.
Just threw a knife on the floor and said, one of you is going to be my manager.
First one of you to get the pool cue.
No, but I mean according – for most douchebags, everything works according to them.
But in this case, I'm not saying it's a douchebag.
But that's the kind of person that hires an assistant, let's be honest.
But if you were to hire several people, you would also learn fast.
You would learn fast how to deal with people and just give up the fact that for a month and a half, you're just going to be a manager.
You're going to be annoyed.
You will discover whether you can deal with this situation, but I'll bet you will discover within a week and a half at the outside which one of these people is most likely to work out for you and then consequently whether you could afford them because they're that good.
You know what I'm saying?
You could offer to give somebody – three people and dollars for even for two weeks.
Right.
Unless they're looking for some kind of bigger commitment.
But I mean you might learn a lot by doing that.
I mean the problem is it takes so – I hate that we're training people, but it takes so long to acclimate somebody to the way that you work.
Right.
Right.
And one distinction – this is really facile – but one distinction between an assistant and a manager.
An assistant is somebody who you pay to learn how to work for you and how to make – and how to do the stuff that you need them to do.
But a great manager in some ways is somebody who tells you what you need to be doing and then helps you to do it.
And the thing is, all the great managers that I have known –
are ones that came up with the band.
And they were the fifth Beatle.
Some of them are dicks.
Some of them are the worst.
Some of them are the fucking worst.
But there are a few of them who were just like... They were the roommate of...
of uh the guitar player and they didn't play guitar but they were like i'll i'll make the t-shirts or whatever and and they learn the whole process as the band is learning the process and so they learn the band's process as the band is learning it and they become incredibly effective managers because they're members of the family and
Absolutely.
And because they have a slightly different viewport into it being vis-a-vis they're looking for where the money is going to come from, they're able to introduce course corrections, sometimes painful course corrections, but to introduce those before it becomes a problem.
Right.
Instead of realizing, oh my gosh, we're not going to be able to finish this tour because we're not going to have enough money based on these gigs that got canceled.
They could find other gigs or they could say, well, here are your three options for how to deal with this next.
I think this one is really good and I can help you do it.
And because they're not sitting there being the dumb drummer, God bless them, that could be somebody whose head's in a slightly different area of the business.
Well, so right now, I want to start doing a show a week.
here in seattle at the uh at the rendezvous at the rendezvous small show a week and here's what i need i need somebody to call the rendezvous and suggest this idea to them
That's a good test.
That's the first one, right?
And that is a job that is not exactly an assistant job because you have to call the place with a certain amount of proprietary arrogance.
You don't call a place like the Rendezvous, which is like a shitty little tiny dive bar, and beg them for a spot.
You have to call and say...
renowned international artist of stage and pod, John Roderick, wants to do a show here once a week.
I'm not saying that you guys should be grateful.
But that might be a place to start, a little gratitude that I'm calling you today.
You know, like you need to set the relationship up in the tone in the first phone call.
But I also need this person after they've – and I'm presuming that the rendezvous is going to be thrilled about this and they're going to agree.
Let's say come in and write it in the book like everyone else.
Yeah.
I think the book is gone.
I think it's online now.
It's all about computers now.
But then I need somebody to actually sit at the door and take the $5 from every person.
Work the merch table.
Get the names down in a book.
And run the ticket sales for the next show.
So it is a constellation of skill sets, right?
There's the merch table set, which is one thing, and there's the, you know, it's all in a family, right?
So I'm looking for somebody, and if I find this person, if I find this right person, I feel like I have so much stuff on the back burners, right?
that in the next six months I could say, okay, now what about this?
Now how can you handle this?
Now what about this?
Can you get this going?
An organized person could take all of that on and it would not need to be overwhelming for them.
Right.
And I feel like, I feel like they could double my income in a year.
Just because of all the money I leave lying around.
It's just like, oh, would you help me do this?
Yes, boom.
And so if they are able to double my income in a year, I would be into paying them a percentage of what I make.
I mean, I would be ready to start treating them like a manager.
Right.
Right away.
Because I think the.
I think the.
The fruit.
Would be right there.
It would be the platter of fruit.
In pretty short order.
But.
That said.
I've dealt with a lot of people.
And.
The right person.
is like you say, not maybe the person that knocks me out in the interview or maybe not the, you know, like it's a job you evolve into.
And I really, you know, the problem with this interview with three people is I'm going to do, I'm going to be my dad when I walk into that interview.
I am going to instantly try and charm them.
You know, the interview is going to be, I'm going to act as though
It is an audition, like a Hollywood audition of me.
I'm going to, I'm going to walk in and be like, hello, nice to meet you.
Well, sit down.
No, please make yourself comfortable.
I'm going to like be performing a version of myself for these kids, presumably kids, maybe, you know,
And my dad is a perfect example.
My mom was telling me.
I kind of hope there's at least one 62-year-old Chinese man there.
Well, that's the thing.
She said.
That would be so awesome.
My mom said, your father.
You're imagining 22-year-old girls with fingerless gloves.
But if there was a 60-something Chinese man, how awesome would you be?
With a green visor.
I was like, I already called the Ron DeFu.
I've already got more coffee coming up.
What do you need?
I know the guy.
My mom said, your father had throughout our life a succession of secretaries that saved his life over and over and over again.
Every penny he made, he made because he had...
He always had a great secretary and she always made the phone calls and she always, as he's rushing out the door, throwing on his, his trench coat and his hat, they always, you know, stopped him at her desk and said, David, David, I just need you to sign this one thing.
And he would go, huh?
Oh yeah.
And he'd sign it.
And that piece of paper would be the thing that kept the lights on.
Right.
And yeah,
When my dad was in his 70s, he had a secretary who was like, what's your retirement plan?
And my dad said, I don't know.
Well, I've got an Audi.
I could probably sell that.
And what else?
And she was like, seriously?
You have no retirement plan?
He was like, I'm going to live forever.
And she, in between her other work,
back in an era of licking stamps on envelopes, she put together that his wartime service, his time in the legislature, his time working for the federal government in Alaska, his time working for the Democratic Party in Washington, all of his work,
So much of it was government work that it, when you filled out all the forms, it added up to a government pension as though he had worked for the federal government for 45 years.
Wow.
And she did all this, you know, she wrote the Veterans Administration and asked for his records.
And it turned out that when he first enlisted in the Navy, when he first enlisted in the Naval ROTC, they spelled his name one way.
And when he joined the Navy, they spelled his name another way.
And so she had to find those two records and write the Department of the Navy and get them put together and
And wrote all these letters over the course of five years.
She's just always just constantly just sending letters to various government agencies.
And in the end, she put together his retirement that absolutely he, I mean, had it not been for her, my dad would have been living in a shopping cart.
I swear to you.
Or he would have been living in his Audi.
And as it was, you know, he retired and, you know, and of course he acted as though, oh yeah, sure, sure, government, you know, he like didn't, he was grateful to.
That takes a tremendous amount of initiative, synthesis, and follow through.
Yeah.
The initiative to like be aware of what's out there, synthesize that information, and then follow through with a freaking government agency to make sure you get what you need out of it.
Yeah, and that work had to be personally gratifying to her in a way that people that love spreadsheets, the act of tracking and researching, it's a librarian mentality of like, I'm going to find this and I know how to write the thing.
And I'm going to get it.
And then when I get it, I'm going to put it with this other thing.
But also a tremendous amount of love for him that she would have spent this time
you know, as, as she could have just been punching a clock on this job, but she's doing this work.
That's going to, you know, that, that is, that pays off for him after he's, after they've parted ways, like she's still alive.
I'm sure she's working somewhere.
Maybe she's retired, but she like did this work on behalf of my dad.
And according to my mom through his entire career, the one thing he knew how to do was hire a secretary and
that could run his business and his life.
And as she's telling me this, I'm like, fuck.
It's the one thing I need to learn how to do.
I don't need to learn how to call the rendezvous.
I need to learn how to hire his secretary.
Have you come up with a test?
Well, I was just thinking, I mean, one idea is to have a fairly simple to describe task that ends up having unseen complexities and then see how they handle it.
And I'm thinking here, hire zero.
Number one, you go out and get Jason Finn to pretend to be somebody and then have them have to deal with him.
Ha, ha, ha.
So, you know, there's a, you're the dog, here's the bird.
I need you to go and get whatever it is.
It could be that you need new uniforms for the band and he is the quote unquote, you know, uniform supply guy.
It could be that he runs the rendezvous.
It could be whatever it is, but you could come up with some kind of a basic challenge where he would respond in certain inscrutable ways and then you would see how they handled it.
And he could give you a frank, you know, recounting of how it went.
Well, that's a good idea, and he would definitely be a good... He could do that for a living.
He could just be inscrutable.
You know, as you said that, I pictured him suddenly with a tape measure around the neck of his shirt and a pair of glasses down on the end of his nose, and I realized that's what he actually is.
Jason Finn is actually a tailor.
He's like a tailor that fronts a shop that is really like an OSS, you know, like underground.
What?
He's the tailor of Panama.
You come in and you pull back on one of the mannequins and a big door opens and there's like a cave full of weapons.
Well, but the test, the litmus test...
what I fear is that, that I have to pass.
Right.
The test, which is like, I have a friend who has a very, very, very good relationship with his assistant who has now kind of transitioned into being his partner.
And when they first started working together, it was very much in this.
He, the assistant was very much in an assistant role.
Right.
And during that time, when the assistant was still young and precocious and wet behind the ears, the assistant did a lot of things that I, as a bystander, was like, ah, this kid is a, you know, he's callow.
This guy is... A ding-a-ling.
He's a ding-a-ling.
And my friend was like, yeah, well, he does these things for me, so whatever.
And then I was, you know, but I can never keep myself from giving an unsolicited opinion.
And so repeatedly I said to him, this assistant, you got to get rid of this guy.
He's just, he doesn't reflect well on you because he's a ding-a-ling.
Then my friend was much more sanguine.
He's like, yeah, well, he gets the stuff done.
So what, you know, doesn't matter to me.
I don't care if people think he's a ding-a-ling.
And there was one particular instance where the assistant got drunk, shit-faced drunk at an event.
And if it had been me, I would have read this kid the riot act the next day.
I would have embarrassed him up and down.
What the hell do you think you're doing getting drunk at a thing like that?
You know how that looks?
I would have taken it as an opportunity to teach this kid a life lesson.
And it would have left a bad taste in everybody's mouth and it would have been paternalistic.
And I would have been completely justified in doing it.
But what ended up happening is the kid was in actual life, this actual person, he realized on his own
without being yelled at, that he needed to get better.
And he became more professional pretty quickly as he grew into his job.
And now he is...
Now he is an incredibly professional, useful partner.
And part of that self-determination on his part and the self-actualization of himself in that role.
Self-awareness and humility.
Was entirely due to the fact that no one ever yelled at him and no one ever lectured him about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
He discovered in himself and that's how he grew and became a man.
And I watched that happen in this relationship with my friend and realized that I would have inserted myself into that process.
Right.
As a pedagogue over and over and I would have fucked it up.
I would have fucked the kid up.
I would have fucked the relationship up.
Because I would have been trying to micromanage his transition into adulthood or not micromanage, but like guide and shepherd and.
You would have made it all about your own emotions instead of what that person actually needed in terms of personal development.
Yeah, right.
This kid got drunk at an event.
So what?
The next day he was embarrassed.
And he talked to some other people about it and they were like, yeah, you were pretty wasted.
And he was embarrassed.
And when he went and talked to his boss, the guy who he works for, that guy didn't say anything about it.
He just was like, well, what do we have to get done today?
And the kid made his own move.
And the boss character in this role was relieved not only of the duty...
But of all the unhappiness.
And that is the interview that I don't know if I can pass.
How do I empower an assistant to make mistakes and not in my own way freak out and lose it?
So you're a little antsy about how it might go today because you want to make sure you're up to the task too.
Well, yeah, I mean, so everything that's happened in the last six months since I stopped eating wheat, since I went on an all kale diet, since I discovered Scientology, since Jesus came into my life, everything that's happened for the last six months, I have been wondering, I've been looking at myself and I've been saying, is, are you just in a manic phase?
You've been on this train your whole life.
Six months on, six months off.
And when you are manic, you sleep four hours a night and every idea seems great.
And you go out in the yard and you plant tulips everywhere.
And then six months later, it all turns to shit.
And your yard is just this riot of unpruned tulips.
And you're just in the bathtub like Whistling Dixie.
How do I know that I'm not... How do I know I'm not just setting up a bunch of manic, like, sandcastles?
And I'm going to get this assistant.
I'm going to get all this stuff going on.
And then I'm... And in reality, I'm just having an episode.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, yeah, because thinking about what it is that you really want to do, you're talking about – it's almost like – I don't want to say being a parent, but you're looking for an opportunity to get some help but also grow in some ways.
In my own words, what I would say is that I've realized that I'm not a good manager –
I would theoretically like to be a better manager, but every time I've tried to do anything management-related, I've failed horribly because it's really boring.
It's not fun.
It's not what I like to do, and I feel like it's a huge derail from everything I should be doing, so I do nothing instead, and then life's all backburners again.
But to get the right person for this job, you need somebody who's not just – I mean in my tiny bit of experience with this –
I could write almost every failure down to the fact that I just did not do a good job of training and communicating and re-communicating and retraining and not correcting but just showing like, well, more like this, less like that.
It's really simple, right?
I mean if somebody worked in your restaurant and didn't know how to cook, you wouldn't just yell at them all the time.
You wouldn't just let them make crap.
You'd say, not so much salt.
More like this, less like that.
For what you're really trying to work towards, which is somebody who's on the track to becoming a management or partner type person someday, it really requires you to have a certain kind of personality, but also to know what it is that you want.
Because if you find somebody who's super organized and really likes Excel spreadsheets, they're going to get really frustrated if you're constantly changing the game or not answering the phone or something like that.
It is clear I need help.
But what I need most is that I am helpable.
And that is what I don't know.
Can I be helped?
The project is really to make you helpable.
Can I hire somebody to teach me to be helpable?
John, that's a win for everybody.
It would be.
If you became more... Think about it.
Not you, but all of us.
If we all became more...
Yeah.
Well, this is the thing about your and my program.
We are trying to help people.
Yes.
And we have seen over and over that some people are very helpable and some people are less helpable.
Yeah.
But it's not going to deter us from helping the people who can and should be helped.
But really...
What we really want is to help the people that can't be helped.
Oh, I think that's really deep in your DNA, is to help the unhelpful.
It is.
Somewhere inside me, I need to help the people that cannot be helped.
I'll let you know when we're done talking.
And I am realizing I am one of those people.
I need to learn to be helped.
Oh, the call was coming from inside the john.
That's really something.
Criminy Pete.
So today is going to be very interesting.
It's going to be a big day.
I'm going to go sit in a coffee shop, my native environment, and I'm going to have people who know how to make phone calls and turn on computers.
I'm going to have them tell me that there is a plan.
And then I'm going to try and figure out what I need to do.
What do I need to do?
And maybe the answer is nothing yet.
You know, maybe what I do next is nothing yet.
Because you're not ready.
You're not helpable enough yet.
Yeah.
What is happening now?
What's happening is that I am watching things unfold and things are going to, you know, like, and yet I am not, I'm not waiting anymore.
Right.
You know, like, I want this to happen.
I'm in a go-forward posture.
Well, I'm not crazy about people who are really into, like, tricky interviews and tricky questions and, you know, Kobayashi Maru situations.
Chinese finger traps.
Now, if you got a 62-year-old Chinese man...
I don't want to be ping pong.
But you know what?
One thing you could say, you don't want to be too cute, but one thing you could say, especially if you're interviewing one person at a time, is to say, hey, look, I'm new to this.
I'm not saying that to avoid criticism.
I'm saying that to ask for help.
What are you most worried about?
If you took this job, what do you think would be the biggest pain in the ass in dealing with me?
And then how could you help me get better at that?
Because how they respond could be kind of instructive.
You see how honest they are.
It's one of those people like, what's your biggest fault?
Oh, it's really that I'm so good at everything.
I'm too generous.
If anything, I think it's that I really don't pay attention to how many things I truly am quite outstanding at.
It's a fault, I have to admit.
I don't know.
I don't know.
But the problem is like it's maybe the higher three people and get them to talk to Jason Finn, the Panama Taylor.
Maybe that's a good step stage, too.
But you need to first find your own comfort level.
You need to you need to be you need to, you know, inhabit the coffee shop of your mind and make sure that you're comfortable with who you're dealing with, because you don't want to make it a thing.
You don't want this to turn out shitty.
And then you don't want to do it again.
And now you're back in your ride of tulips.
Right, right, right.
That's not what I want.
Nobody wants that.
Nobody benefits from that.
That's not growth.
I want to – and the thing is that part of my ambition is that this is one of these middle-aged problems where I wake up now and the first thought that comes into my head now, it's no longer like, I'm going to write a rock opera that's going to make every woman in the world see how wrong she was.
Yeah.
That's a noble, that's a Kickstarter.
The first thought that pops into my head now is, you're going to be sad that you were mean to me that time in 1988.
All women are going to be sad that that one woman was mean to me.
No, the first thought that pops into my head now is, if I don't get these thoughts out of my head, I will die and they will go to my grave with me.
No pressure.
I have seen some shit.
I have seen attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.
That's right.
Tears in the rain.
I do not want... There's some of that stuff.
I don't want to have lost...
You're saying something kind of important here.
You're saying that you're starting to actually take your work more seriously.
You're taking the quotation marks off of the art, and you want to be a fucking gentleman about making some stuff, but you can't do that as long as you've got too many tulips on the back burner.
Well, this is the thing about being a maker of things.
I'm always engaged in this conversation with people.
Somebody asked me to write an article for Esquire the other day.
Did they work there?
They did.
They said, it seems like the internet is getting worse.
You seem like just the kind of crank that would have an opinion about that.
Would you write an article about how the internet is getting worse?
Oh, boy.
I said, would I ever.
That's right in your wheelhouse.
You know, if there's anything we need, we need more podcasts about comics and more articles about what's wrong with the internet.
Yes.
Magazine articles on Esquire.com.
You take one, I'll take the other.
Okay.
so i'm writing this thing and it's the you know and i'm just i'm i'm i'm playing the singing saw again of how there was a time about how how the internet's getting worse and now you know like talking about art is not making art and you know and i realized like
Are you even considering writing an article for Esquire magazine related to the internet about how talking about art is not making art?
Are you fucking kidding me?
Not only am I considering it, I have done it.
Okay.
I'll look forward to that.
But I'm thinking as I'm doing it and I'm like...
Here I am again.
What is it that I make?
Like, what do I make?
I watch these videos online all the time about, you know, like you go talk to Billy Duffy from the cult about his guitar rig.
And he's standing on a darkened stage with some guy holding a microphone at him.
And the guy is like, so tell us about your pedal board.
And Billy Duffy's like, oh, well, I got a distortion box over here.
He kicks it with his foot.
And then a delay pedal.
And, you know, Billy Duffy, that's what Billy Duffy does.
He plays the guitar.
Sorry, what band is this?
The Cult.
Oh, sorry, him.
And, you know... You're talking about that little major-scale descending thing he does on She's Soul Sanctuary?
Yeah, I can tell you.
Now I know exactly the amp and pedals that he... Wow.
And this is my other chorus.
That's right.
He uses a rolling...
that's that signature sound but you know what I could stand up there if somebody pointed a camera at me I could stand up there and tell you about my pedal board and that would be and I'd happily do it but there are other things I want to tell people about too and how do I do it and does it is what I do is what I have to say next does it rise to the level of art or is it craft or is it
Is it just like Art Buchwald?
Is it Gene Shalit?
Larry King.
Is it Larry King?
Like all of these guys, I mean, there are guys who have made a life for themselves being sort of in this pundit class and nothing they have done
really will survive the test of time.
Right?
I mean, Gene Shallott's writing about film is not going to survive 200 years.
But it was...
It was a valid life for a man, you know?
It used his skills.
Like, there are all kinds of pundits and talkers and thinkers of their time, of their moment, whose work does not last.
But they were still important and valid in their era, right?
And guys like Dave Barry or... That's exactly who I was thinking of, Dave Barry.
Right.
Like, will they read Dave Barry 200 years from now?
Who knows?
Like, Shalom Aleichem.
People read him now.
Is that a person?
Yeah, he's like the... He was the Jewish Mark Twain.
But bigger, better.
Not better, but he was the first guy to write colloquially in Yiddish.
But treating it like it was literature.
Literature in Yiddish.
He wrote Fiddler on the Roof.
Not the musical, but he wrote the story of Tevye and
incredibly influential writer but also a vernacular writer like a like a a guy writing in his time of his time not trying to he's not trying to be melville he was trying to just write for his people but his work rose to the level of you know it transcended its its humble uh craft and
Dave Barry, PJ O'Rourke, are these guys going to, 200 years from now, are people going to be like, Dave Barry was the 20th century writer that best captured the sound of the street and the thoughts of the average guy.
Maybe.
Who knows?
Nobody liked Melville in his time, really.
You know, nobody read Moby Dick until after he was dead.
And I think the day he died, if you had said Moby Dick is going to be required reading in Western lit.
I still think it's a prank.
Nobody would have believed it.
Not in a million years, I still can't believe it.
Have you read Billy Budd?
It is a prank.
Moby Dick, my God.
Yeah.
I mean I guess if you call it postmodern, it makes it more interesting.
So let me understand something.
So let me try to get to the core of this.
It's partly that if I understand what you're saying that you're – the question that you're asking is you've got people who are like – whether you like them or not –
They're indisputably primary creators of the primary culture.
So the Beatles wrote and recorded these songs that people will listen to for a long time.
Mozart wrote this music.
James Joyce wrote these novels or whatever your example that is.
Now, somebody who is a famous critic of James Joyce might do great work.
But will they be remembered as well as the person upon whose source material?
In the same way that somebody on Twitter cracking jokes about Lost, it's not the same as the person who made Lost.
Right.
Do people read H.L.
Mankin?
Secondary and tertiary levels.
We're also talking about essayists, which is kind of a different thing.
Everybody can quote the name Montaigne, but not that many people are actually reading him.
Yeah, but people are reading Pepe's diaries.
Yeah, they put it on Twitter.
Phil Guyford put it on Twitter, yeah.
But this is the problem.
When you're a young man, when you're a young artist, you do not want to be...
Anything less than one of the great – primary creators though.
Primary creator, a canonical creator.
Is that a silly distinction?
I think there's a difference.
I think – like I hear you in my head anyway saying, well, writing about the internet for Esquire, is that the same as writing Shapes?
Right.
Performing shapes.
Those are those are one of those is undeniably like like a temple of primary culture making.
And another one is, you know, writing about stuff.
Right.
But as I as I approach middle age, I mean, one of the things I have reckoned with as a creative person is, am I like, does my work justify?
Or I mean, there are lots of bands.
And am I meant to do this or that?
Am I meant to be a primary creator of like, and I believe I am.
But what is that next thing that I want to do?
I don't think it is writing essays for Esquire about the internet.
That is a thing that I do because somebody sends me an email and I don't have a manager.
So I go, yeah, sure, I'll write that.
And, you know, oh, sure, that's, you know, that's like... I bet that pays pretty well.
Yeah, that's the thing.
I've written for major magazines, and I've sometimes been pretty surprised by what you get paid for those things.
Well, and so as we got closer to January 1st, you know, I have this amount of money that I have, this arbitrary amount of money I decided a few years ago I had to make every year.
And it's completely arbitrary.
If I make it or don't, it doesn't matter.
If I consistently don't make that much money for like five years, I'm going to be in trouble.
But the amount, the target is like fairly imaginary.
And as we were getting close to New Year's, I was like $2,000 short of this imaginary amount.
And I was like, it's January 29th.
I'm not going to get it.
I'm not going to make my target.
December 29th?
I'm sorry.
December 29th.
I'm not going to make it.
And it wasn't a big deal.
And I had a couple of people who were like, oh, I owe you that $1,500.
I'll get that to you.
But it wasn't fresh money.
You needed a little bit of fresh, real primary money.
That's right.
And so I agreed to do this.
I agreed to write another thing for somebody.
I agreed to all these things at the end of the year.
And then January 31st, I got an email from my...
publishers who were like, Oh, settling up at the end of the year.
Uh, we forgot, you know, we owe you 2,500 bucks or whatever.
Boom.
And I was like, Hey, arbitrary.
Yay.
I made the arbitrary amount.
But anyway, back to the, back to the other thing.
Like, uh, I cannot think about my place in the, uh,
in the library.
I just have to make the next thing and I have to make it with passion.
I have to make the thing that I'm here to make.
I hope you believe that, John, because I think that would be very good advice for you to take.
Don't worry about the library.
The library will take care of itself.
If you make enough stuff, it'll show up in the library.
Don't worry.
The only time I spend worrying about the library is when I'm not actually making stuff.
If I'm making stuff... Faulkner was a problem drinker when he wasn't writing.
If you're making stuff, you're not thinking about where it goes.
You're just making it.
Where it goes is just get it out of in front of me so I can make the next thing.
And this is why you need to hire Mr. Lee.
I need to hire Mr. Lee.
And he's going to, you know what?
He's going to sit next to me.
And every time I pull a, pull a page out of the typewriter, like James C. Cannell.
A credit sequence at the end.
At the end of cheers.
Sit, Ubu, sit.
Good dog.
The guy with the little green visor is going to take the piece of paper and he's going to put it on the stack.
And he's going to say, I'm taking this somewhere.
Or maybe, you know, whatever.
He could be lying to me.
He could be just burning them in the yard.
The point is, you're getting stuff done.
The point is, I'm getting stuff done.
So the other day...
In the pursuit of this new idea, which may be a manic episode, the entire thing.
John, time and tide.
You may not even exist, Merle.
This may all be... I may be sitting in a...
You're telling me that you may not actually have a podcast in which you discuss your feelings of unwellness about whether you're creating art by having written an Esquire piece about whether the internet is getting worse?
Yeah, I could be the character in Metallica's One.
I could be sitting in a VA hospital somewhere.
imagining this whole life john roderick got his gun but i so the other day i bought a macbook air oh right we have so much to talk about and you've got to go hire somebody well sorry so you like did you get the extra ram so i got the extra ram okay but what is amazing to me about this is that macintosh and i don't think this is just something that's happening in me i bought this computer and
And something has happened.
Macintosh... Apple has made this... They have made this device, which is a cultural device.
They have made a thing.
They have made a box now for so long...
purports to do these things for us that is this magic box.
And I have bought enough of these magic boxes over the years and have turned them on each time with a dewy anticipation.
Full of hope and expectations.
I am going to make a film that
of all of my photos and i'm going to put it into my calendar and i'm going to and i'm going to add it add it to my contacts and this is going to streamline my process and i'm just going to sit here it's like it's like the coffee maker or the automatic light this is going to be the thing that changes everything right this new tool is going to fix it all
And what was amazing is I bought this MacBook Air, and I came home, and I threw the box with the computer in it unopened on the table, and I went about the rest of my day.
And the next day, my lady friend was over here, and she said, I can't believe you bought a new laptop, and you haven't even opened it.
And I looked over, and I was like, oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'll open that today probably.
And I was astonished to discover that I had no excitement.
That I was not in the least bit thrilled about my new computer.
That I knew I needed it, and I bought it so that I could take it places and write on it.
But opening it and discovering the new operating system and syncing my contacts and uploading my data to the cloud...
It all, like the thrill was gone.
You picked some good examples of bad examples.
Those are good examples of things that are not so great and fun to use.
As you know.
When I finally did open the box and I turned on the computer...
and it went boom, bing, and the lights come on, and here's the computer, and I look at it, and I go, oh, wow, awesome, and I touch it with my hand.
The first thing that pops up
is a the itunes what's your apple id no the itunes agreement has changed please click accept please click agree and then the second thing it was like you need to download new new software or you need to you know update your update your os so the thing that came in the box didn't even have the it wasn't it needed to be updated
And the first three hours I spent with the new machine was just doing administrative clicking.
I agree on 25 because every single piece of software that needed to be updated.
Also, I needed to click a new Apple agreement.
Yes.
Enter your password and enter my password.
And I was just like,
They have finally done it.
They have made this creativity box that is supposed to, and not only is supposed to, but has successfully freed us all from the drudgery of having to get up in the morning and chop wood and go to the bathroom in an outdoor toilet and iron our pillowcases.
It's all gone now because we're all artists and geniuses and we all have this amazing, powerful box that can...
They can collate our work and they have made it now into a drudgery.
And buying this computer, I was just like, I've just got to go out and chop some wood to heat up the stove in the privy so that I can take a shit on a wooden toilet seat.
And I was so, it was just like,
What next?
How now, brown cow?
Yeah.
I'm sorry, John.
I wish I had something to say about making it easier.
It's all right.
I think once I get my contacts synced, I'm going to be a lot happier.
It's going to be a lot easier for me.
Yeah, that'll take an hour or two.
Don't worry.
You'll be done with that in no time.
My wife has had 14 versions of every contact for three years.
No matter what we've ever done to fix this, she comes right back and she gets 14, 14 copies.
I've counted.
I've counted.
Plus, I have my guy I know named Jason Santamaria is in my contacts as Jason Santa, Santa, Santa, Santa, Santa, Santa, Santa, Santa, Santa Maria.
Because it just works.
Oh, the best part was I went – so this computer didn't give me an option.
It was going to upgrade to 10.9 or whatever.
But I went – the computer that I'm talking to you on now, I was like, oh, now I've got a new computer.
I've got to sync it with my old computer.
You didn't do that?
You didn't start by pulling that over?
But I can't because my old computer is running, ready, 10.6.
They still make that?
No, they don't.
And so I went online and I was like, okay, I'm going to upgrade to 10.9, I guess.
And before I clicked on the button, I started reading the reviews.
One star, one star, one star.
This is a garbage OS.
Don't read the reviews.
Garbage OS, garbage OS.
This is going to ruin your life.
And the thing is,
I have post-traumatic stress disorder because I have upgraded, you know, on my little iPhone or whatever.
I've put the new OS on there multiple times.
And every time it just turns, it just bricks it.
Bet it never crashes.
I've never had so many crashes on any phone I've ever owned than I have in the last maybe month and a half.
And when it wakes up, do you get that when it wakes up and you just get the little white apple?
Because you use your phone a lot.
I mean, you really use it, right?
I use the shit out of my phone, and my phone is so... There is a ghost in the machine now.
And so what happened was, I was on Grand Bahama, as you do, earlier this year.
Is that a message board?
No, it's an island.
I was on one of the Bahaman islands.
Got it.
And I was riding a scooter around the island, as you do.
And I was on the very far end of the island.
And I got caught in a Caribbean rainstorm.
And I was wearing white linen pants and a white linen shirt, which look smashing when they're dry.
But when they're wet, you basically look like a mozzarella.
Yeah.
I'm so wet.
And so I'm riding through this beautiful tropical paradise.
And the clothes get longer and bigger when they're wet.
I'm just a sweaty cheese.
You can see every dimple on me.
It's casual, Mon.
Ha, ha, ha, ha.
And I'm driving fast because I'm on this scooter.
Like a Vespa type scooter?
Yeah, a little Vespa.
And I had my phone in my pocket.
And that amount of wet...
a bahamanian linen pocket wet is a lot of wet it's a lot of wet and it was enough wet it's not like i dropped it in the in the toilet like my phone i would consider this to be normal use but the phone i know for a fact whatever that little button is inside that turns colors yep they can tell that it's really got really wet they can tell it got that you know about the uh yeah and then they just shake their head at you and they're like there's nothing we can do
And so the thing is like fritzing on the frim jam, flipping on the plots.
I mean, every time I turn it on, the first thing it does is it types 40 J's and K's in a, you know, just like, just kidding.
I'll open it up and it's just like JK, JK, JK, JK, JK.
And I have to reset it.