Ep. 179: "A Good Box"
Thank you.
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This week, they asked Paul and Storm to help me say hi to John.
Good morning, John.
What's going on?
How are things with you?
Gonna find out with John Roderick on the Line.
Roderick on the Line.
Hello.
Hi, John.
Merlin, man.
John, John, John, John, John.
Big bad John.
It's a cold maize and say one prison colon.
It's a nine cues.
Oh, prison colon.
It's a nine cues.
Oh, prison colon.
It's a nine cues.
Oh,
All right.
Great.
You know what?
Fuck you.
Oh, God.
Now it's going to be in my head all day.
That's all it takes.
You got that.
You got Dr. Worm.
He's not a real doctor, but he is.
And he thinks he's getting better on the drums.
He can handle criticism.
Oh, man.
Also, you know, another one from them.
Man, it's so loud in here.
Oh, yeah.
Lots of stuff.
Lots of stuff to get stuck in your head.
Another one from me last week.
It took me three days to get rid of Listen to What the Man Said.
Oh!
Which has so many hooks.
Well, the thing is, he said...
You know what?
Sopranos sax, I'll allow it.
I get in so many arguments about that era of Paul McCartney.
Now that song is unimpeachably great.
Absolutely wonderful.
200% wonderful.
Absolutely the best.
Completely conjures the 70s for me.
Makes me feel like a kid again.
Yep.
Nonsensical.
Oh, yeah.
Does not communicate any cogent thought.
I think he stopped doing a second pass on lyrics.
I mean, it's pure music.
Absolutely pure music means nothing.
Makes ELO lyrics...
Look like Chopper.
And if this ever-changing world in which we're living makes you give it.
That's terrible.
None of it works.
When I was little, I thought he was just high on prepositions.
I thought he said, in this ever-changing world in which we live in.
Yeah, I thought he said that too.
But even though he's not saying that, it's just as bad.
Yeah, man, they had a run.
Oh, so good.
So good.
But it requires that I think that music is supposed to do a different thing than I think it is supposed to do.
Which show is this?
It's a lot like Buddhism.
Oh, it really is.
It really is.
Did I tell you?
No.
Speaking of which, when I arrived at the office today, there was a box waiting for me.
Have you heard on my other show?
I do a sort of an unboxing segment.
Yeah, yeah.
I think your chemistry is having an up period right now.
Yeah.
Because you announced your office address.
Yeah.
And it was like 123 Make Believe Street, No Town, USA.
Yeah, that's right.
12345.
12345, Seattle Street.
Seattle Street.
Seattle Town, U.S.
America.
123 Trap Street, Seattle, America.
And so you announced on your other program, which I do listen to, you had announced that you want people to send you anything that's not dead with an asterisk.
Right.
And so people are doing that now.
Yeah, I said anybody that's a maker of things, that's making stuff.
Yeah, you're going to get a crucifix made of pubes.
And they want me to test it out.
They're like, I'm making these leather watch bands or I'm making this feathered headdress or I'm making these strange Mormon undergarments and I just want to get it out there in the world.
I'm just not sure how to do that.
Send it to me.
Send it to me and I will test that shit out for you.
And I'll talk about it on my program.
And the address here are my programs.
Oh, shit.
The address here, 815 Seattle Boulevard.
Oh, God.
Seattle, Washington.
Oh, God.
What are you doing?
98134.
Office 332.
Anytime USA.
So just send me your stuff.
I know you're working on things.
I know you're building banjos out there.
I know you are... Yeah, you're working with goods.
You're making some artisanal tea.
A banjo would be awesome.
Feathered headdress.
My goodness, I could see you wearing a feathered headdress.
Do you remember a fan of ours came up to us a couple of years ago and handed us two...
Banjos made out of cigar boxes?
Oh, yeah.
That was pretty sweet.
Yeah.
One of those, I still play all the time.
I tuned it to a kind of like, you know, raga tuning.
And I sit on the steps.
I play my daughter to sleep with this cigar box banjo.
Well, that's a horrifying vision.
I just drop-tuned my ukulele guitar, and I never looked back.
Oh, see.
Dropped it from an A to a G. Sounds very, very metal.
Kapow.
Now you can play Prison, Colin, Ensign, and Kuzel.
Prison, Colin, Ensign, and Kuzel.
All right.
Man, it's so loud in here.
Gun-ga-da-gun-ga-da-gun-ga-da-gun-ga-da-gun-ga-da-gun.
That's it.
You know, it's been a year or so since I've done my They Might Be Giants impersonation.
You ready?
Yeah.
That's it.
I'm done.
Do you want to know a funny thing?
I would love to know a funny thing.
Just don't give out any more personal information.
And stop mentioning your daughter.
I just looked under the keyboard of my computer, and there's an envelope.
Uh-oh.
This is how it starts.
This is it.
This is what you've been waiting for.
Well, see, and I don't understand how this would have happened.
It's post-dated the 3rd of November, so that's a while back.
Yeah.
And it's from Waltham, Massachusetts.
It's a purple envelope.
It's addressed to me at 815 Seattle Boulevard, office number 332.
I was in Waltham, Massachusetts not so long ago.
That is the home of the email marketing company Constant Contact.
Really, constant contact.
They make great tea.
They do.
They do.
And people are constantly contacting them on it.
Yep.
John Syracuse saw me talk there.
Waltham, Massachusetts, probably named after Waltham Abbey, a town north of London, England.
London town, England.
Waltham Abbey being an abbey.
Okay.
Purple, entirely purple envelope.
It's a purple envelope.
Is that culturally significant, John?
I know sometimes around the, I hope it's not ping pong to say Chinese New Year, you give out a red envelope.
That's got a gift in it.
You don't cut your hair.
Don't sweep the house.
Right?
Bad luck.
Oh, I see.
What's a purple envelope mean?
Well, I think in Waltham, Massachusetts, and a purple envelope, this particular envelope is the color of, let's say, a blackberry smoothie.
Okay.
And I think traditionally in the Massachusetts culture, a blackberry smoothie colored envelope means may you have many oysters this year.
Is that a harbinger or an omen?
I think it's a harbinger.
Okay.
If I had a letter where the envelope was portentous.
Oh, like if it had fur.
Something that indicated that there might be some, if I may say, animism.
If it was a black envelope with gold foil, right?
Yes.
You're going to get invited to a witch's mass.
Or an international government organization you've never heard of.
Hello.
I would open that shit right away and then maybe there would be a curse or maybe I would be a member of a secret institution.
I think you know what it would have is a clue.
Yeah.
It would have a clue that amounts to an elaborate puzzle.
Right.
Exactly.
I hope it didn't wait too long.
I hope it hasn't expired.
I hope it isn't like an offer code.
I'd have to go on an adventure.
Well, this is the thing.
I'm not sure whether I am obligated to not open these packages because it's a bit on my other show or whether every time I walk into my office, I should just unbox whatever it is.
John, this is your main show.
You can do whatever you want.
That's how you know it's working.
That's how you know it's a Roderick on the line because I don't have a cough button.
And you can't get your MP3s.
They're on the computer.
50,000 songs.
50,000 songs.
You get three computers and then they say you can't listen to your song.
You can't listen to AC Newman's first solo album.
Do you know how many replies I have already gotten to that?
Do you have any idea how easy that problem is to fix?
Oh, so many people are like... Listen, John Syracuse will be tearing out his hair.
It's so easy to fix.
I think part of the reason I'm here on Earth is to be a bugbear, literally a Dungeons & Dragons bugbear to John Syracuse's half orc.
Yeah.
I watched a really good internet video about the creatures of Lord of the Rings.
CGP Grey makes these videos that explain complicated things.
And so I learned about all the mini creatures of Lord of the Rings.
Has he ever made a video explaining why those dumb Star Wars movies got made?
No, but you know what he's great at?
His most famous one, I think his first one he got famous for, was explaining the difference between the UK, the British Isles, England.
I watched that.
It's a really good video.
He has a lot of personality in his voice.
Oh, he's terrific.
Well, he's justifiably famous.
He's very, very gifted.
But also he's done great ones about the history of monarchy.
In the UK, very good.
How you become the pope.
I did not know how you become a pope.
Very interesting.
Yeah, you got to move up through the ranks.
You become a priest.
If you're lucky, you make the cut.
You become a bishop.
Bishop, then you castle over.
Archbishop?
Sure, sure.
And eventually you become one of the cardinals.
And the cardinals meet.
They vote four times a day, six days a week.
They save a day of the week for praying.
And then they put some stuff in the chimney that makes it white, and you got a pope.
Yeah, yeah.
Isn't that nice?
That's a nice process.
It's a nice process.
It feels really homegrown.
It feels very authentic.
And that is the way that you kind of get to what God is thinking.
You watch enough of those videos, you learn some stuff.
Now, here's my question for you.
You mentioned this, I think, a little bit on the program with Dan.
What do you feel is your obligation or promise?
What is your commitment in terms of when people send you stuff, what's going to happen?
Do you write a thank you note?
Oh, it's hard for me to write a thank you note.
It's always bad.
I wrote a thank you note.
Somebody bought me something off my Amazon list.
I wrote an email the next day.
That's so good.
That's really good to do.
40th anniversary Monty Python and the Holy Grail Blu-ray box set.
Comes with a catapult and four animals.
Good grief.
Yeah, my daughter's loving it.
What a fantastic gift.
Yeah, it's fantastic.
Here's the thing that I don't know.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I think it was – I want to say Jared.
Thank you, Jared.
Thank you.
That was a great gift.
Monty Python box set.
So what is your internal or external – what's your feeling?
So it sounds like part of what you're offering is notes and commentary.
You're going to put this in a cultural context, which is something I think everybody could use.
That's right.
I feel like –
I am going to give an honest appraisal of the whole experience, right?
Like, here comes a box.
If I've talked to you in advance about this, I have already forgotten it.
So I have no idea what's in any box that arrives at my house.
I wish I had that printed on a card I could just give to people.
If I've talked to you about this in advance, I have already forgotten.
I've probably forgotten it, yeah.
So when I order stuff on eBay, when I order stuff at Amazon, when people tell me they're going to send me things, I immediately forget it.
And so every time I arrive home and there's a box on the doorstep, I have no idea what it is.
And it's a wonderful Christmas morning every time.
So I'll open the box on air.
And I will be surprised by what's inside.
And I'll describe the whole experience.
And then I will try to utilize the item as best I can.
And then explain my experience of using it.
Now, if I'm trying to use the thing and it's not useful...
I will probably describe that.
But I feel like a lot of our listeners are making things and they're making things well.
Some of it is in the category of art where it's now difficult to know how to use it.
You can only appreciate it.
Or not appreciate it.
But I will use all of my faculties to appraise the thing.
That's my promise to you.
Okay, well, as you know, I'm here.
I serve it your pleasure.
If you want to save that for your show with Dan, that's fine.
If you'd like to open it, that would be great, too.
I'm very curious about the envelope.
Well, that's the thing.
It's the envelope.
That feels more Roderick on the line.
You've got me saying envelope now, and I normally say envelope.
Ugh.
Is that a thing?
I don't know.
I still say aunt, like aunt and uncle, and I get corrected by my daughter all the time.
Oh, she says aunt?
Where is she from?
Oh, she goes to school in San Francisco.
Well, no.
I've talked about this before.
It's my wife's dumb family because they're from New England, so you say aunt.
Aunt.
Like that's a thing.
Weird.
Yeah.
No, it's aunt.
Envelope.
Envelope.
Is it not?
It's an envelope?
I guess.
Maybe.
This one seems like an envelope, though.
It's purple.
First of all, it's purple.
Second, it's from the Northeast, so it probably came as an envelope.
What if it's something in there you can't talk about?
Well, let's see.
Hang on.
I'm going to open the envelope.
John is addressing the envelope.
Here we go.
i'm using my ikea shears thank you to our two sponsors this week john is opening his mail here we go oh my goodness inside the purple envelope is a yellow piece of paper and the two colors contrast against one another delightfully so far so good it's a pretty long letter oh my goodness
So it's two pages, yellow pages.
And the first sentence is, as promised, I have no recollection of receiving any promise.
As promised, please find enclosed a few mementos from my recent trip overseas.
And here it is, Merlin.
It is a stack of Saudi Arabian money.
Saudi Arabian money and a Czechoslovakian stamp.
Not a Czech stamp or a Slovak stamp, but a Czechoslovakian stamp.
When did that stop being the Czech place?
When did they change the name on that?
Well, it would have happened after the Velvet Revolution of 1989 and they split up in the early 90s.
Okay.
Pretty fast because the Slovaks wanted away.
Slovaks wanted out from under that Czech dominion.
And they wanted to form what ended up being a totally repressive government.
While the Czechs flourished in their Vaclav Havel super state of poets and playwrights, the Slovaks were like, no, we're tired of being ruled by those damn Czechs.
And then they then they don't you remember life under Eugene O'Neill?
Yeah, they elevated a like despotic former communist assholio.
And then Slovakia just was like, oh, damn.
And I think they're recovering now.
I think the Slovaks are on their way.
But they handicapped themselves.
I'm looking at a picture here of a Saudi royale.
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, a real.
Real.
And it's got a picture of a fellow on it.
And I keep asking myself, is that the best picture they had?
Well, it's a pretty strange picture.
And I have to say it's got to be King...
FOD.
Oh, sure, sure, sure.
But then there's one of these four bills I have where it seems like the picture is of...
King – well, so I think that the three bills might be King Saud and then this is King Fahd, his son.
Then there's a kind of – kind of looks like Salieri with glasses.
Yeah.
I guess a different guy.
You know the famous Saudi ambassador to the United States who's like – F. Murray Abraham.
Yeah.
He's always been like a cultural attache and he's a very expansive personality and he's sort of the face of Saudi – long-time face of Saudi Arabia in the United States.
And I think he was recently recalled or banished.
Something happened, some intrigue.
Oh, yes.
And this picture kind of looks like him, but it's not because they wouldn't put him on the money.
Wouldn't that be embarrassing?
It's – you know, that's the thing about those dynasties, right?
There are so many princes in Saudi Arabia and which one is going to be the king is like –
There's a ton of intrigue there.
Anyway, so the letter reads on, I was in Saudi Arabia.
So it's very difficult to go to Saudi Arabia, I have learned.
You can't just get a visa.
One does not simply walk into Saudi Arabia.
No, because their mentality is we don't need Western tourism here.
We have all the money in the world.
And so why – you are going to come here and you're going to look askance at our –
at our veils and you're gonna try and use your western powers to screw with us uh locals only right locals only on this beach so why would we ask you to come here what do you bring we don't need your money so what else are you bringing we don't need your culture either so tell us why we should let you here
And very few people can pass that bar.
I think the people that do come are like, we are engineering professors or we are oil mucky mucks.
Anyway, so this person says, I was in Saudi Arabia for one week, which is extraordinary, for work.
I administer a fellowship for Saudi women at MIT.
Wow.
That's so cool.
We sponsor Saudi women PhDs to come to MIT to conduct research.
Wow.
That's wow.
We do a podcast.
We do.
We do do a podcast.
We're here almost every week.
We don't sponsor anyone.
I'm going to write that down.
We should have a scholarship.
We could change that.
That's right.
We're going to write it down right now.
We need a scholarship.
We could sponsor something.
I get the feeling that all of the applicants would be men in their early 20s from New Zealand.
But we could find work for them.
Germans love podcasts.
Germans do.
And Slovaks love podcasts.
Is that in the Balkans, John?
No.
Okay.
God, that's so cool.
What a neat project.
Well, it's wonderful.
And, you know, I have that collection of money from all over.
And I never would have thought I was going to get Saudi Arabian money.
But now I have some just in case.
It's really pretty and very complicated.
And what's nice is that, you know, a lot of money puts English on itself.
But, oh, I see.
Yeah.
They actually have.
I thought that this money was going to have no English on it.
It was all going to be in Arabic and a wonderful script.
But then on the back, it does say Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency.
King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saad, which is an awesome name.
It's a cool name.
I have 10 reals, 5 reals.
It must be hard when he gets high score on Stargate.
How so?
What do you put?
Oh, right.
You just put... You put poop.
You don't get four letters.
Oh, you put dick, D-I-K.
Oh, Assad's done it again.
Damn it.
Damn it.
He captured all the mutants.
He's right at the top.
So I haven't read deeply enough into the letter to know what the significance of the Czechoslovak stamp is, but I'm very excited by it.
Can I make a suggestion?
Yeah.
See, I like the idea.
I think you guys talked about this.
I know they do this on a TV podcast.
They always ask people to say where they're from.
On the TV podcast, you always have to say what your area code is.
I think two things would be helpful.
Where is that person from?
Yeah, MIT.
And is it okay to read it on the air?
Oh, may I read your letter on the air?
Or should you just say, if you send this to me, I'm going to read it on the air.
So don't make it weird.
Okay, that's right.
If you send me a weird letter, I'm going to read it on the air anyway.
This person has not expressly allowed that I can read this on the air.
And frankly, I don't even know if they are a podcast listener.
They may have contacted me separately.
and said, I would like to send you something.
And I said, yeah, by all means, send it to me.
It's going to be some awkward conversations by the Keurig machine at MIT tonight.
Send it to me at 815 Seattle Boulevard.
Anytime USA, 12345.
322.
Office 322.
So yeah, but I have a lot of fans and friends at MIT.
Sure.
You assume.
Of course, right?
They're working for DARPA, but they're really working for me.
Anyway, so that's wonderful.
That made my morning.
That's a nice gift.
Yeah.
And then that did feel, that felt appropriately connected to this program.
And then the box, whatever's in it.
Well, wait a minute now.
The box is from Amazon Prime.
That's not something somebody made.
Oh, could be a straight up present.
Might be a dildo.
Let me see.
You want to save it for Dan?
I'm going to shake the box.
I don't want to take your material for Dan.
This doesn't sound like a dildo.
What's your sense?
Can you do another shake?
Okay, here we go.
I think it's a book or possibly a Blu-ray box set.
It would be a very lightweight dildo.
And I think one of the criteria of a dildo is that it'd have a little heft.
It should have good hand feel.
Yeah, you don't want a dildo that's like, hmm, this doesn't approximate anything.
Well, I think if there's anything you don't want in a dildo, it's insubstantial.
Right.
Regardless of the size, I mean I think it should have some gravitas.
Yeah, right.
I mean a dildo ultimately – Nobody likes a light dildo.
It's like the field roast of penises.
What is field roast, John?
Is that like a land yeager?
Field roast is a product made here in Washington, made here in Seattle, Washington, which is a meat substitute.
So in some Seattle restaurants, you can get field roast meatloaf or field roast turkey dinner.
And it's just a combination of vegetables formed into the shape of a turkey.
Oh, look at that.
Field roast.
Looks like a big potato.
Yeah, and it's delightful.
It's not especially like meat, but it is something that you can eat instead of meat.
You can get it in Mexican Chipotle.
That's right.
And so when I think of a dildo, I mean a lot of dildos are exaggeratedly other.
They're made of glass.
They seem like somebody's making bongs and then a bong failed and they were like – You think a lot of dildo designs start as a bong?
I think probably someone's making glass bongs and the ones that don't really like –
they don't they're not filled with bong life right they collapse upon themselves or they're too honky they're just like right and they move that over to a separate place of the assembly line and there's somebody turning those misshapen bongs into dildos well that is smart operationally that is super smart plus you don't want to carb on your dildo unless that's your thing
Well, who doesn't?
Exactly.
I mean, although if you can put a carb on a dildo and then just be like, boom.
People love marijuana, John, and they like doing stuff with dildos.
I think there could be an opportunity in the market here.
You should talk to your friend at MIT.
See if there's something we get a grant for.
You know what?
People are going to listen to this program and they're going to change the way they are making bongs.
Also, another note, we need a grant.
They're going to go into a separate business.
Give scholarships, get grants.
But I do feel like dildos are the field roast of bongs.
But you know what I mean?
It's a meat substitute.
Yeah.
And so it has to approximate some of the qualities of the original item.
You can also get them in fun colors, a lot like a bong.
You can just buy yourself a purple dildo.
That's a thing.
You can get penises in a lot of colors.
That's true.
Hakuna Matata.
I'll say.
All right.
I'm opening this box.
Okay.
Once again, thank you very much to our two sponsors this week.
John is opening his dildo box.
All right.
So it's from Amazon Prime, our second sponsor.
Thank you.
It's full of little bags.
Airbags.
Airbags.
There it is.
Okay.
Here we go.
Ready?
First thing we have to do.
Pop the bags.
Inside is an actual wrapped box.
Oh, is it the blue wrapping paper?
Yeah, it's a gift wrap box.
Somebody paid extra to have that wrapped for you.
Isn't that nice?
Yeah, they did.
Is it dildo shaped?
No, it's just a square box.
At the bottom of the Amazon box is a different color yellow.
I'd say this one is orange.
An envelope that says, keep your gift a surprise.
That's your gift receipt.
Unwrap your present before opening this envelope.
So if I open this envelope, it will tell me what the gift is.
You don't want to do that.
And also, if you're going to use a dildo, you're going to really clean that up before you send it back.
Oh, right.
Sure.
Here, gentlemen.
I don't know.
Will they take that back?
I think they have to.
Okay.
That's the Magna Carta.
So now I'm back to – I have another conundrum.
Yeah.
Because –
There's a little – Flappy gift card?
Yeah, flappy note on the top.
And it's decorated with snowflakes, which means that this is a Christmas present.
Right?
I think you could open the flappy gift card and it will give you guidance.
All right.
Here we go.
it's it's not handwritten because it was done by you know there's like one crummy little text box you fill that in it always gets weird the line breaks are weird and Amazon should really fix that all right here we go hi John big fan of all the great shows nice nice reference here is something that works great for refreshing and cleaning guitar strings
I first read about it here, http colon forward slash forward slash bit.ly forward slash one capital M-M capital D-I-X exclamation point.
That's I, lowercase I, capital M, capital M, capital D, lowercase I, uppercase X. I think it's numeral one, M, M, D, and then unclear whether it's an I or an L. See, Amazon's got to get on this.
I think it's I, X, I, frankly.
Anyway, from Dimitri Petrajinski.
What a great name.
And it may even be Pariansky.
Parianskily.
No.
See, I can't read Amazon's handwriting.
This is terrible.
All right, so this is a guitar string refresher in the box.
Well, now I've given it away.
I have to open it.
Yeah.
From Dimitri.
Thank you once again to our three sponsors this week.
Amazon Prime.
There we go.
The sticker has kind of... I'm amazed we don't appear on more podcast lists.
Where the fuck is the AV Club for us?
The sticker has sort of defaced the box, which is a thing that really bothers me.
Well, I got notes for Amazon today.
You know, if you're sending me a box, I want it to be a reusable box.
I don't want your sticker gunk to deface the box.
No.
You know, they think about boxes as like, well, once the box gets there and it gets opened, it's going right in the recycling.
It's like, not necessarily.
Oh, not in my house.
I'm writing that down.
I don't talk about boxes.
Right?
You got to put the... Oh, see, now I'm just taking the stick-em off the box.
Now you're like a child just tearing into a box of Lucky Charms.
That's just sad.
I'm not going to be able to open the box until I get the stick-em off.
All right, I can open it.
John, is it an electronic device?
This is good podcasting.
What is it?
I haven't opened it yet.
Okay.
All right, here we go.
Opening the box.
It's really packaged in a way that...
indicates someone in a warehouse really cared paper here we go unwrapping it it is a can a little can that seems like it would be a seems like the kind of can that you would use to wax your cross-country skis is it aerosol or manual it's manual okay it's like yeah it's a manual can old-fashioned cross-country ski wax and it's called the zenith tibet almond stick
And then the label says it's also new.
It's not used.
Oh, that's nice.
Oh, I've seen this stuff.
Oh, yeah, you use this on tables.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Zenith Tibet Almond Stick.
Wipe out furniture and flooring.
Quick as a wink.
Quick as a wink.
And he is saying it refreshes guitar strings.
Well, I don't know.
Putting stuff on guitar strings to freshen it, I don't know.
Inside the little can is a further piece of wrapper.
Mm-hmm.
Oh, wow.
Strong smelling.
It has a very citrus smell.
Does it smell more like almonds or Tibet?
I've never been to Tibet.
It smells like it would work also as a breath freshener.
Well, thank you, Dimitri, for that wonderful gift.
I will try to put the floor wax on my guitar and see.
I'll experiment with a guitar I don't care about that much.
And if it works, if it slicks up my strings and refreshens them...
I will be very grateful to you.
Yeah, thanks, Dimitri.
This would really be a good segment for your show with Dan.
We had our annual – go ahead.
No, no.
I've been wondering lately how come we're not on more like best podcast list.
I keep seeing these things.
Best podcast.
The 50 best podcast.
I don't strictly want to be and yet I'm a little surprised that we're not because we're a very important program.
Well, right.
And what the hell are all these other programs?
I don't want a bunch of Johnny Com Lately Also Rans just showing up because they saw it on a website.
I think the people who need to find this will find this, provided that you people are telling them.
It's back to our listeners, right?
Yeah.
Everything always comes back to the listeners.
So we had our annual carnival this week.
And this is just a phenomenon I want to toss out.
And I'm going to see if I'm alone in this.
Wait, wait.
Who's we?
We, the school.
My wife was the co-chair of the carnival.
She put an extraordinary amount of work into having the carnival.
They raised a lot of money.
It was really great.
So I was on a cleanup crew.
And part of my job was breaking down boxes.
Like people bring stuff in a box.
Yeah.
like donations, baked goods, whatnot.
And then one of my jobs was to break down the boxes and put them in recycling, which I happen to love and I find very meditative.
But I also use it at home.
It's always an opportunity for me to look for what I will call a good box.
Oh, yes.
Do you have a feeling about good boxes?
Oh, I have a whole.
What do you think I keep this office for?
It's just for found boxes that I'm like, that's a good box.
I nest them.
I'm very meditative.
It's almost like Buddhism.
I meditatively will nest them like Russian dolls to get a good box inside of a larger good box because I love a good box.
Sometimes you come across a regular Amazon box.
You go, that's a pretty good box.
Sometimes maybe it's something that came from Costco.
Maybe it's something that's got a wax coating on it, but something that you could actually put like 250 wet swimsuits in and it wouldn't blink.
That's a good box.
You know who does not love good boxes?
My wife.
Oh, see.
Because I'm a collector of good boxes.
They don't understand.
I don't know.
There's times when I think it might be a guy thing.
I'm not sure.
And I don't want to stipulate that.
But you get that feeling?
I've got some really good boxes right here.
I keep just some.
I break them down and take them outside.
But then I like a good box because there's going to be a time when you need a good box.
And if you can use anything more than once, I think you're on the right side of history.
I get into this argument all the time, primarily with my mother and other people that I share a living space with.
We're like, can we get some of these boxes out of here?
They say it so simply, like it's just like, oh, hey.
That's like going to the refrigerator and saying, can we throw out half your produce?
That's what it's for.
It's a refrigerator.
We both agree, right, that there's too many boxes in here.
So we both agree that it's time to get rid of some of these.
And I'm like, wait a minute.
No.
No.
These aren't – these are the – so clearly those are the boxes that are headed out to the recycling.
These are the boxes that are organized and hence, no, they aren't – we're not going to get some of these boxes out of here.
These are important boxes and they're like, what?
Is there anything in them?
Not yet.
oh my god what a question what good what good are they what good are they that's like only keeping the pretty hundred dollar bills yes it's like you know the thing is like yes i mean i'm not an idiot i don't keep every box like that's not tenable like if something if it's like a generic oddly shaped box that electronics came in i'm more than happy to take that out to the curb right to the curb right to the curb but if you've got it if you've got it i'm talking about a heavy high gauge box that really flaps close right up you know
A nice square box, particularly a box that can hold an 11 by 17 piece of paper.
Oh, gosh.
There's so many things you could do with that now.
Right?
A nice, big, legal-sized piece of paper box.
But also I have a – so I also will pull over to the side of the road anytime I see –
Like an old road case, like a plywood road case that was maybe used to carry a surveying implement.
Oh, man.
Or some kind of, you know, a lot of them will have shaped foam inside where there was a telescope or there was some kind of like router inside.
That's practically equipment.
It's fucking equipment.
And these boxes are – a lot of them are really old.
They have a tremendous – like I hate to use the word patina.
I don't normally use that in – With regard to boxes?
Yeah.
Well, in regard to anything.
I'm not going to talk about something's patina.
Come on.
Yeah.
But they are beautifully worn and they have heavy gauge latches.
And I'll take those home.
I'll cross three lanes of traffic to pick one of those up off the street.
That's all I can do.
I'll go and pick my kid up from school every day and, you know, you see a lot of trash on the road.
It's all I can do not to go pick that up.
Because I know I'm going to bring it home and then I'm going to get grief about that.
Yeah.
And then it's like, what is that piece of junk?
And it's a piece of junk.
What happens if we need to carry like a surveying implement?
You know what?
I think part of it is, you know, I once sat down, as I often do in Microsoft Excel, to try and figure out how many times I moved over a certain period of time.
I just had a mental picture of you sitting down within Microsoft Excel.
And it was so beautiful.
It was just like that scene in Tron where you were just like, wow, and all of a sudden.
I love Microsoft Excel.
I find it very, very absorbing.
Yeah.
But I want to try to figure out how many times I move because all I'm trying to get at is that I think that part of the impetus for this is if you move enough, you learn some things.
And if you're in college, you got a lot of books.
You know what you learn when you got a lot of books?
You don't get a giant box of books.
There's a certain size.
I'm going to say roughly the size of a milk crate that's really good for carrying books around.
Precisement.
Yes.
Prizan, colon, ensign, accusal.
That's right.
You get the book box.
If you put too many boxes, if you have a big box and you put too many books in it, you can't carry the box.
No, people don't understand this who haven't moved a lot.
So I think in the back of my mind, corner of my eye, I'm always looking out.
I don't intend to move any.
I'm not going to move.
But at the same time, I still can't stop seeing it.
It's like seeing an attractive person or a quarter.
You kind of just want to pick it up.
Yeah, you're looking for a book box.
Yeah.
For me, I have a lot of
as you know mementos and i need memento boxes boxes that are just the right size for like photographs and little notes that people have left me and saudi arabian currency and czechoslovakian stamps and so the box doesn't have to be big but it does have to be pleasing yeah you don't want to put your mementos in a box that isn't pleasing
Yeah, I totally agree.
And I've bought boxes.
There are times when I think, well, I got to get my stuff put together.
So I get a lot of these.
What are they called?
Banker's boxes.
Oh, tell me about a banker's box.
Well, you know, it's cheating.
It's like buying Bitcoin instead of mining it.
I'll say to Amazon, send me a multi-pack of these folded up boxes.
You know a banker's box when you see it.
It's like when somebody gets fired and the security guard walks them out.
They're carrying that box with the handles.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And it comes with a nice lid.
Fits real nice.
And...
I found some of these recently, but they were smaller.
You can get them in different sizes, but it's a real good size box for all kinds of boxing.
But I would prefer – and I'll tell you what's nice about it.
As with books, it's nice to have boxes of the same size when you're moving that are labeled clearly.
I see.
I see.
But I don't know, man.
I think it's an affliction.
Well, here's this labeling that you just said.
Here's the thing where my mom and I differ.
My mom will write in black marker, indelible ink marker, right on the surface of a thing.
She will write what she's using the thing to store, right?
But directly on the box.
Directly on the box.
She'll write right on the box like mementos.
And sometimes she'll buy bags.
She'll buy things at a thrift store that are like a makeup bag or pencil bag.
Small bags.
And she'll write an indelible marker right on the bag.
Oh, that makes me uncomfortable.
Pens.
Oh, no.
Like a permanent marker.
Yeah, or drill bits.
Right on the outside of a bag that had formerly housed some Mac cosmetics.
And it drives me to distraction.
Yeah.
Right on the thing.
Because then I cannot repurpose it.
I cannot repurpose the thing.
And I'm sure there are listeners that are like, just put a label over it.
Just put a sticker over it.
But no, no, no.
You always know it's there.
You'll always know underneath the sticker where you wrote kitchen implements, there is indelible marker right on the box that says bags, right?
My mom used the box to hold bags.
Yeah, or like random junk.
Yeah, right.
And I'll always know it's there and it's just like, get that box out of my house because it's defiled.
It's defiled with permanent marker.
I cannot abide it.
I got a lot of feelings about boxes and bags.
I know.
I know you do.
Did you know I have the sort of hemp shopping bag thing?
What are those called?
Hemp shopping bags?
Yeah.
Okay.
The hemp shopping bags.
I have one of those from every South by Southwest I ever attended because they were the schwag bags.
And I use them as my like hippie go to the grocery store bags.
But I start to feel like some of those early South by Southwest 1999, I don't want to use that anymore at the Trader Joe's.
I want to keep that somewhere.
But it's not like you're going to frame it.
What do you do?
Then you have to have a box where you keep your special bags.
Well, I would put those in the super class of what I'm going to call floppy bags.
And the nice thing about floppy bag is you can put a bunch of floppy bags in another bag.
That's true.
Kind of a meta bag.
So I do that a lot.
So when we get a lot of bags of one kind, again, let's call it meta storage.
Meta storage.
So you got stuff you want to store.
That's why I nest my boxes.
Floppy bags, I try to have them in some kind.
I don't wad them up.
I'm not a monster.
Right.
But I will like fold them in some kind of a sensible way.
You should always be able to see which bag is which and you should be able to know like if I grab this much, I'm getting three of these.
It should be sensible.
That's nice.
Like a candy dish.
Yeah.
It makes me feel so much better to know that someone else shares this particular sort of – this particular wisdom.
Yeah.
Oh, man.
It's nice to know that it's there.
You know what, though?
I think also this might be the proof that I'm crazy, but I think it also leads to this bigger thing of mine, which is about a certain kind of preparation.
I'm not just talking about travel here, but I'm talking about thinking through what's going to happen.
Right.
You always bring a jacket.
Do you have to go anywhere else?
Do you have to pick anything up along the way?
What will you have to do?
What's your encumbrance going to be at this point in the campaign?
You got to think about all that stuff.
And I sometimes I feel like I'm the only one thinking about that.
Well, this is why I'm this is why I don't like high heels.
Yeah.
Somebody said to me the other day, high heels.
And I was like, I don't know.
No high heels.
Find another way.
Because what if we have to climb a fence?
Yep.
And you never go to a fancy ball thinking later on tonight we're going to have to climb a fence.
But go to a fancy ball.
Something happens.
Something else happens.
Suddenly you're being chased up an alley by Rottweilers.
Yep.
What are you going to do?
Oh, your high heels.
Clack, clack, clack, clack.
Too bad.
Your Rottweiler food.
If they are tactical gear, it's the wrong kind of tactic when you're getting chased by a fucking Rottweiler.
That's right.
It'd be nice to have them a little pointy, though, for getting your feet into the fence.
Let's call it this.
Chased by Rottweilers across a drawbridge.
Oh, man.
You're doing some mental calculus.
Yeah.
The Rottweilers are not going to be happy on the drawbridge either, but they are not going to have to go all the way across the Rottweilers.
You know what the Rottweilers aren't wearing?
High heels.
And they're not going to have to go across the drawbridge because you and your high heels are going to be like one foot into the drawbridge and stuck.
Oh, God.
And you know, a lot of drawbridges have a grading.
Well, that's what I'm talking about.
Yeah, exactly.
Drawbridge grading.
You're not going to get across there in a fucking set of high heels.
Oh, man.
We have a lot to share.
When I walked out of the house today,
It's cold here in Seattle now, right?
The temperature has plunged.
And I'm walking out of the house.
I'm headed to my meeting with Merlin Mann at my office on Seattle Boulevard.
Yep.
One, two, three, four, five.
And I'm looking at my hat.
That's Office 322 in case you're keeping track.
I think it's 332.
332.
Which one?
Which one is it?
I don't want to confuse people.
Yeah, 332.
Sorry.
I'm walking out of the house.
I look at my basket of hats.
And I feel like it's a little early in the season, even though it's cold, a little early in the season to bust out a ski hat.
And I'd cycled through a lot of my medium temperature hats.
And I just reflexively...
I was feeling bold or something.
I reached over to my display, let's call it a Christmas tree, of vintage hats, men's hats, Tom Waits hats.
And these are hats that I have collected over time, but I very seldom wear because I just don't see myself as a guy who goes out into the world in a Tom Waits hat.
And this is the tension that
I love to, I love them.
I love to have them.
They're beautiful things, but I just can't, I just can't see myself as like walking around in a, in like a funky old hat very much.
I mean, I've done it, I've done it a certain amount, but it's just, it's a bridge too far.
I feel like you've described this well in the past with a couple different threads in the past.
One of them is that every day when you get up, there's a question, one of the many questions you ask yourself, what is the uniform of the day?
There's a question that you ask.
Okay, that's one part.
That's one thread.
It's a terrific question to ask on a lot of levels.
Right.
But then, if I may say, I think then the other question, the answer you're waiting for is, which hat will speak to me and tell me what the uniform of the day is?
And if they don't speak, it's like going to an Amish church.
As long as it takes, you just wait until somebody, the spirit moves them.
And maybe some days the hat's not going to talk.
That's absolutely right.
Like, for instance, if you are wearing an overcoat, I'm not talking about a jacket.
I'm talking about an overcoat.
You can't wear a ski hat.
The proportions are not right.
It's just not right.
Makes you look pinheaded.
You wear a ski hat with a jacket.
But this morning, so this is, and you're right, you're absolutely right.
Looking back in my thought process, what's the uniform of the day?
I put on a sweater and then I was like, I want to go a little bit, I want to go a little bit higher than a jacket.
And I put on an overcoat.
And the overcoat was the one that picked the hat.
Right?
And I wasn't aware of that.
I was walking around the house in an overcoat.
And I went for my basket of hats and the overcoat said, hey, pal, what the fuck are you doing?
And just guided me over to the Christmas tree of fedoras, the Christmas tree of Stetsons.
Stetsons.
Today feels like I can see a Hamburg.
It's 43 degrees and rainy.
Hamburg.
Well, so this is a wide brim Stetson.
It's an imperial Stetson.
And it was formerly owned by H.K.
Robbins.
And it was sold, this is the wonderful thing, it was sold at the Bernie Utz hat store at 310 Union Street, Seattle.
So the hat is original to Seattle, and Bernie Utz is still in business here.
The last haberdasher in downtown.
But this hat is from 1930.
Wow.
And it's very, very worn, but well, well worn.
And it's a wide brim, but the brim's turned up all the way around, right?
It's not like down.
It's not a come up and see me sometime, sweetheart hat.
It's more of a like Jim Norton hat.
It's like, hey!
Yeah, yeah.
That's a good look, but it's got a pretty broad brim, especially kind of in the front, right?
Yeah.
Well, all around, the brim is what?
Yeah.
Two and a half, three inches even?
Yeah.
And it's green.
It's kind of khaki green.
And it has a very wide...
ribbon around the brim that was once pink and has now darkened to like dusty rose and the whole hat is dusty sort of dusty like the tom petty uh video don't come around here no more well no the one where they they ride their motorcycles to the video game parlor in the desert in a post-apocalyptic landscape oh yeah which one is that um
It's sort of dusty like that.
But it's stylish but understated.
Well, so I walk out of the house.
Sorry, that would be You Got Lucky.
You Got Lucky, babe.
Great video, very much ahead of its time.
So I walk out and I'm wearing an overcoat and this hat that's just like – it's been crushed and mushed over the years and it just has so much character.
And I felt a little bit like, do I have this much character?
There's a lot of character here.
But –
I caught my reflection in a piece of plate glass window as I'm walking along and I'm like, I mean, yeah.
Could I go this way?
I'm a middle-aged guy now.
I could start wearing this kind of hat.
Nobody would blink an eye.
But somewhere inside myself I would be like, wow, this is pretty heavy.
This feels like something I should – if I was going to do this now, I should have been doing this all along.
I don't know.
It's hard to inhabit a hat.
But you went with it.
You got it there with you now.
I got it here.
I'm looking at it.
I'm so proud of it.
I love the hat as a thing.
These photos look beautiful.
Do you think you did the right thing?
You know what?
I'm going to walk out of here after we get done with our program.
I'm going to walk around the town in this overcoat and hat, and I'm going to see what happens.
How long is the overcoat?
So the overcoat itself is a beautiful thing.
It's a double-breasted overcoat, first of all.
It's also from the 40s.
He's like a retired pimp.
Right?
It's a peak lapel, double-breasted herringbone overcoat, but it's blue, a dark blue.
And it's a dynamite overcoat.
The whole thing is unimpeachable.
Nobody's – I mean the only looks I'm going to get are, whoa, whoa.
Hot.
I'm inside this space suit and I'm like, do I look like a swing dancer?
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That's not what I want to look like.
And here's Jessica Rabbit.
No, that's not what I want.
I want to look like a detective lost in time.
You know, I want to look like somebody that the years are irrelevant to.
Right?
Timeless.
Timeless.
Thank you.
And so, I mean, you know, I don't want to get out there and feel like somebody in a Brian Setzer video.
So I don't know.
You know, the jury's out, frankly.
You need to be comfortable in your own herringbone.
I think we can all agree on that for sure.
But at the same time, I look at your selfies and you're getting very stately.
I could totally see you in that particular uniform of the day.
I don't think it's weird.
It would be weird and creepy if like a Java programmer in his 20s dressed like that.
You're right.
You're right.
But you do you.
You know what's right for you.
The thing is a Java program in his 20s would be buying all this stuff on some kind of like Australian website, right?
It wouldn't be – I mean I've had this fedora.
Maybe he gets a box.
He gets a box delivered once a month with a thing in it.
It has a thing, right.
I've had this fedora for 25 years and I've worn it plenty of times but not that many times frankly.
In the 25 years I've owned it, I've probably worn it 25 times.
It's not like it was ever a regular part of my thing.
But I've had it and I look at it and I put it, you know what I do?
I put it on and I wear it around the house.
And then when it's time to go out of the door, I stop at the door and I'm like, maybe I should.
There have been plenty of times where I've worn it out the door and then taken it off to get in my car and thrown it on the backseat of the car and then it rode around with me for a couple of weeks.
And I never was like, I should wear the hat out of the car, right?
Anyway, so here I am.
It's a bold new world.
But somebody said to me the other day, whatever happened to your hoodies?
You used to wear hoodies all the time.
And now you're always dressed up like in a tie.
I'm like, oh, I kind of changed gears a little bit.
And they expressed a desire to see some hoodies in the mix.
And I was like, oh wow, somebody out in the world wants me to be a little casual sometimes.
And if one person says it, then 10 people are thinking it.
Yeah, but the thing about you, it seems to me, is the level of thought and the level of commitment.
where it isn't like you just put on the same sweatpants you wore yesterday and now that's casual wear.
It seems to me that even when you're choosing sportswear or if you're going to be yachting or pretending to yacht, whatever it is that you're going to do, you put a lot of care into that and deciding what casual look you'll be going for.
You select from different pieces and parts.
You say, what is the uniform of the day, you ask aloud.
And then the answer comes to you.
Well, somebody was teasing me.
in a separate conversation some other number of days ago where they said, how long did it take you to put that outfit together?
And one of the other keys to me is that you should never spend more than five minutes thinking about your ensemble.
You don't want to be precious.
No, so you wake up in the morning, you say, what's the uniform of the day?
And then you immediately move toward it.
And you're putting it, you're compiling, you're composing rather.
Composing?
You're composing that uniform of the day as you also make your way through your house making some microwave coffee.
It's like a painting made of garments.
Right.
You're snacking on something and you're like, what's the, you know, what goes over the shirt?
What goes, what is the tie?
But five minutes is all you should put into that.
Pow, pow, pow, pow, pow.
And then you walk out the door and you're committed to what you've done.
You put together a thing.
It's very impressionistic.
And then you enjoy the day.
And today, I went that extra.
Something happened.
The coat picked the hat.
And then I was on to a different thing.
Maybe this is some kind of turn.
Yeah.
I think it's a great way to go.
I think confidence is a nice thing to have.
Confidence in knowing that even if it's not perfect, you can live with your decisions in a way that you're not constantly looking back.
That to me is a form of confidence.
It doesn't mean that you're always right.
It means that you have a level of commitment to say, this is the thing that I'm going to do.
It may not be perfect, but I'm not going to second guess myself all day.
You can't second guess yourself.
A guy in a hat should not be second guessing himself.
Absolutely not.
People will see that.
They'll see that a mile away.
Oh, that guy hasn't earned that hat or he doesn't think he has.
There's this quote I just looked up.
I remember reading this in college in one of the Tom Wolfe essays.
His accent arrived mysteriously one day in a box from London.
Intrigued, he slapped it into his mouth like a set of teeth.
It seemed right.
That's how I feel when I wear a hat.
That's nice.
Hello, governor.
The thing about an overcoat, too, is...
You can wear an overcoat in a John Bender way.
You've got an overcoat, fingerless gloves.
John Bender.
John Bender from The Breakfast Club.
Oh, Bender, sure.
Bender.
Yeah, yeah.
Right?
You've got an overcoat on, but you're wearing fingerless gloves and a hoodie.
So that's a whole different – you're going a different direction.
You're not going to put a fedora on with that.
He's almost like a druid or a goth.
Not a goth, but a druid.
I mean, he's got the motorcycle boots.
He's got the... Yeah, he's in a... That's a different kind of overcoat.
And frankly, a very 80s overcoat.
Because that was the same overcoat I've got here.
It was from the 40s or 50s, but it was being reappropriated in the 80s as a punk rock item.
Remember when you could walk into a good... I hate to bring this up again...
But do you remember that?
Do you remember?
You could walk into a Goodwill and it was a question of which overcoat that fit you from the 50s you were going to spend $4 to $6 on.
Do I remember?
Maybe $10.
But I mean, I just remember I didn't have a lot of dough at the time that I was going to thrift stores, which is a nice combination.
But I would go in there and I'd buy a lot of shirts that I would wear a punk rock T-shirt and then some kind of a slightly ironic vintage shirt over it.
And this is me in 1986.
And I rarely paid more than $2 for a shirt.
Well, and I think what's happening to me now at age 47, which let that reverberate for a minute.
In 10 days, I'll be 49.
49.
Just listen to that.
47.
Pow, pow, pow.
What is that?
47, 49.
What kind of ages are these?
Those are ages approximating 50, which is some kind of thing I never thought I would see.
We're like Archie Bunker aged.
Right.
We're getting there.
At any other time in history, we would be fully vested as men trending to old men.
Yep.
Any other age, we'd be old men.
Right.
We would be sitting on a ragged couch with one hand down the front of our pants and a cigar, and we'd be yelling at somebody.
Yeah.
But here we are not doing that.
Anyway, I think what's happening to me is that all through the 80s, I was buying those John F. Kennedy suits at thrift stores for $2.
And then I didn't know what to do with them.
And I put them in the closet.
And because I never throw anything away, I got to be 47 years old.
I opened this old cedar chest.
And I had 25 Kennedy suits in there.
And all these fedoras that I've been collecting at thrift stores my whole life, collecting them as just like, oh, that's a beautiful old thing.
It's only $2.
I'll buy it.
But I'm actually walking around town in hoodies.
So I put it in a cedar chest, and then when I move, I carry the cedar chest from place to place, and it's like a sarcophagus filled with the garment history of the United States.
I got to be in my mid-40s, and I was like, I can still wear all these clothes that I bought in high school.
I'm the same size.
And so I started wearing them.
I started wearing this stuff that I'd been schlepping.
And so I think part of the fun of it is that these garments, even though they're very old and predated me, they've also been with me for years.
Well, they're double old.
They're double old.
That's right.
I've been trying these things on and walking around my own house and going like, isn't this a cool thing?
And then taking it off and putting on a hoodie.
And walking out of the house.
And I finally was like, I'm just going to walk out of the house in these things.
And then all of a sudden, I was Mr. Fancy.
And it's pretty fun.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I hope you come to find more comfort with your habits.
You should be comfortable with yourself.
Clearly, I am.
But I'm also, the problem is, Merlin, that thinking is not our friend.
Mm-mm.
I've been trying to ask you not to think for a while now.
Thinking is a bad thing.
Thinking never helped anybody.
God, it just takes up all the, it just burns all the fuel and it produces nothing but steam.
Yeah.
No, people, one of the big problems with thinking is people rarely do thinking at the time it would be most useful.
No, I mean, honestly, I mean, you know, people like to say, well, I'm thinking about it.
Well, you know, thinking about stuff is useful a long time ago.
Like once something's already a thing, thinking about it is, it can be, it's better than not thinking about it.
But really a lot of, a lot of thinking that would have led into different decisions would have been better a while back.
That's right.
But in this case, it's like aging wine or something.
It's like in this case, you've got these things and it's not ready yet.
The match is not there yet.
You have not found the meal to pair that wine with.
Or in this case, maybe the herringbone just isn't ready.
And now it's ready.
It's ready.
Take it out.
Pop it out.
Jump it in.
I'm thinking back to a time when I was 12 years old.
And so in Anchorage in the 70s,
I think I've talked about this before, but the culture, American culture arrived in Anchorage with a considerable time lag.
So in 1978, it was like 1976 everywhere else.
And in 1980, it was still kind of 1978.
Oh, I get it.
I get it.
You know what I mean?
Like we were not on the bleeding edge of culture.
And so in 1980, down in Girdwood, Alaska, at the Alyeska Hotel, underneath the Sitzmark Bar and Lounge,
There was a multipurpose room and the hotel never quite knew what to do with it.
And they opened a youth disco in 1980.
Hmm.
And on Friday and Saturday nights, it was— That sounds like something was poorly translated from Russian.
That's right.
Many of the young people and their companions had spent the evening at the youth disco.
Youth disco.
And I swear to you, right now, somewhere in Bratislava, Slovakia, there is a place that says youth disco outside.
Is it one word?
Maybe.
Maybe it's disco with a K. But it's absolutely youth disco.
And so this was the youth disco.
It was 80.
And so most of us were at least a little bit conscious of the fact that disco also sucked by now, right?
The world had turned against disco.
But this was a thing.
No one had ever thought to give the youth of Mount Alieska a
anything to do on weekend nights.
And I think that's why most of us were getting drunk and stealing our parents' cars.
And so somebody said, hey, that multipurpose room at the bottom of the hotel, let's turn it into a youth disco.
And for a couple of years, maybe 80 to 82, it was a youth disco and it actually attracted kids.
And they would play disco music.
And we would all go and we would dance.
And, you know, it's a ski resort.
It's freezing cold outside.
You had to wear your Sorrels over to the disco.
And quite a few of the kids, like, didn't have a change of shoes.
So we're dancing in Sorrels.
But that was all we knew.
And one night on my way to the youth disco, I'm, what, 12 years old.
I'm deciding what the outfit of the day is.
And I put on a deerstalker hat.
Now, a deerstalker.
Is that an Elmer Fudd hat?
Well, yeah.
A deerstalker is the Elmer Fudd, the Sherlock Holmes.
Sherlock Holmes or a Ignatius Reilly?
No, no.
Sherlock Holmes.
Bill in the front, Bill in the back.
Whoa.
12 years old in a Sherlock Holmes hat.
And ear flaps the tie on the top with a ribbon.
And this particular one was made out of tweed.
But in addition to being made out of tweed, it was made out of patches of tweed.
So all the patches were slightly different colors and types of tweed.
And a little ribbon ties on top.
It was a patchwork of tweed in a deerstalker with the ribbon that ties on top.
And there was one of those around our house because my dad was a little bit of an eclectic kook and I'm sure he bought it in Ireland.
He brought it home.
He never wore it.
And I'm walking out of the house.
I'm going to the youth disco.
The outfit of the day has got a crackle.
I've got my moon boots on.
Some of us were in Sorrells.
A lot of us were in moon boots, and I was in moon boots.
I've got my moon boots on, and I put on the deerstalker.
And I head into the youth disco, and I'm standing there, and I realize that the deerstalker is not very disco.
Right?
It's not.
A little too eclectic.
The moon boots I could own.
Mm-hmm.
But the Deerstalker just isn't, it's not saying disco to anybody.
But even at that age, I felt like, look, you walked into this disco in a fucking Deerstalker and you're going to walk out of this disco in a Deerstalker.
You're not – there's nowhere to put it.
You're not going to take it off and stuff it somewhere.
And that's what – There's no hat check at the youth disco.
Right?
And that is what any normal kid would do.
Any normal kid who made it as far as the front door of the disco in a deerstalker, which is not very many normal kids, but any normal kid at that point would say –
Deerstalker off.
20 minutes from now, nobody's going to remember it.
But I was like, fuck that.
I'm here.
I'm queer.
Get used to it.
And I spent that whole night dancing in that Deerstalker hat.
And it was going well.
Like I was even, I was dancing with a girl.
She had not remarked upon it.
I felt like this is great.
And I'm looking around and I'm having a good time.
And there's a kid, maybe a little bit older than me, 14.
And he's making out with his girlfriend.
And that was kind of, that was astonishing.
You know, like publicly making out at the youth disco was a little bit of a big deal.
And so I was looking at him.
We're dancing.
I'm looking at him.
Hey, they're fucking making out.
That's like almost having sex.
And the guy looks, he's making out with her.
He looks over, sees me looking at him, walks over.
on the dance floor, and says, hey, Sherlock, why don't you investigate somebody else?
Ooh, that is good.
Right?
14 years old, and this guy's got that kind of fucking kapow?
Now, he's probably still working on a ski lift right now.
That guy's 50 years old, and he's running a ski lift.
But at the time, he burned me.
He singed me.
And he was right.
I was fucking Sherlock.
And I should have been investigating somebody else.
I should have been investigating the girl I was dancing with.
He really, really gave you something to think about.
He did.
And, you know, and what he did was he that that deerstalker was already covered in a ectoplasm of shame.
But he then walked over and set that ectoplasm on fire, and I didn't even know it would burn.
I didn't even know it would burn.
Never saw it coming.
And so I walked out of there just steam coming off that hat, and I never was able to, you know, it went back into my dad's, like, hat, his own Christmas tree of hats, and it just sat there, and every time I'd walk past it, it would sing that little song to me.
Hey, Sherlock.
I was just like, oh, fucking hell.
But that's part of the problem.
You seem like you're not wearing a lot of novelty bits today.
I would have to say the deerstalker – let's put it this way.
If there is a kind of hat that is so closely associated with a person, character or even occupation that you can call it that, that might be a little gimmicky.
That hat just has one purpose.
To make you look like Sherlock Holmes.
That's right.
So then you got the Elmer Fudd hat.
You got the flaps.
You got the Jughead hat with the little crown.
Can't really wear a Jughead hat.
You can wear an Elmer Fudd because it can also be Ignatius J. Reilly.
That's true.
That's a great look.
But you're not doing that, though.
I mean, who do you look like, Andre Brower?
Like, that's a good look.
I would look like Andre Brower in a heartbeat.
Yeah.
That guy can wear the shit out of a hat.
In the hat that I'm wearing presently, there are enough people out there.
I mean, I thought about it on the way to the show, and I actually tweeted about it before we started, that when you go to the tattoo parlor and you get your 25th tattoo, they're obligated to give you a fedora.
It's part of the culture.
And so there are plenty of people walking around with a fedora with an upturned brim.
And very few of them have as much story behind their hat as I have.
It's just that I don't see myself as one of those people.
I'm not wearing creepers.
And a watch on a chain.
So I have to be coming from a very different place with it, and frankly, it's unclear what that place is.
You don't want to look like you're in a ska band.
Right.
I am not a saxophone player.
Oh, we need to get grants and offer scholarships.
As I understand it, the key to getting grants is to have a grant writer.
Yep.
And write themselves.
And I meet people all the time when I say, hey, nice to meet you.
What do you do?
I'm a grant writer.
And I just fucking drop the scissors, right?
I'm like, you're a grant writer?
That's fantastic.
I'm meeting you in the rye?
Like, I should...
We should collaborate.
I need grants.
And they go, oh, well, you know, typically I write medical grants or I write, you know, burp-a-derp-a-derp.
And I'm like, doesn't matter if you can write a grant.
And probably a lot of it's like knowing how to format a Microsoft Word.
Yeah.
Don't you think?
It's just filling out a form.
It's like if you're a script writer, like no matter how good your script is, if it's not in the format that a script needs to be in, nobody's even going to read past the first page.
That's right.
In this case, it just needs to look like a grant.
Now, whether that's for MIT's program for women from Saudi Arabia or, you know, whatever it is we would ask for money for.
I think it's a lot.
You know, intern program for New Zealand youth.
Related activities, special projects.
We could use a fund for special projects.
So who would we be asking for?
I have to imagine the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
That's nice.
Or the Evan Sarah Williams Foundation.
The MacArthur Foundation.
MacArthur Geniuses.
MacArthur's Genius Grant.
There's a lot of places that we could go.
I don't think they like it being called a genius grant.
I think that puts them off their beer a little bit.
You know, every once in a while, the United States realizes that they never gave any medals of honor to any African-American soldiers in World War I, and they try to right that injustice.
And they posthumously decide that four different African-American soldiers from World War I actually deserved medals of honor and didn't receive them because of
systemic racism, and then they are retroactively awarded the Medal of Honor, and it's handed to their grandchildren in a ceremony at the White House.
Thank you for your service.
That's right.
Thank you for, you know, like, we are righting a historic wrong.
It's, in the comments, you call it retroactive continuity.
Oh, exactly.
You go back and you change the story.
You say, you know, actually, no, Magneto was at Auschwitz.
Exactly.
Or as the Mormons do, like, we are retroactively baptizing all of your dead relatives into the Mormon church so that they can stop being in whatever Mormon purgatory they're in.
I think it's called Utah.
That's right.
And now they can enter into the kingdom of heaven, even though they've been dead for— Huge, huge retcon.
Now, do you sponsor people for that?
Don't you have to sponsor people for that?
I think so.
I think there's some—you go into the temple and you do something.
There are curtains—
Maybe there's like a duck pond.
You come and you pick a duck, and it's got the name of somebody on there.
Oh, wow.
Okay.
All right.
And then that's who you sponsor.
You've got John Johansson of Provo, Utah, and you've got to sponsor him.
You know what?
I think it's a duck pond, but really you stand on the shore and you try and throw a ring around the neck of the duck.
That's like a duck coit program.
Yeah.
So you're hooking rings, and then you get a ring around a duck.
You pull the duck, and the name that's taped to the underside of the duck is the person that gets into heaven.
I mean, I don't know all the doctrine of the Mormon Church, but it seems like that's... No, there's a lot of reading.
That's why they have so many kids.
They split up the books between the different individuals.
That's a lot of scholarship.
The Book of Raymond, the Book of... Phil.
Book of Phil.
Yeah, but people love carnival games.
I saw it all on Saturday.
People love carnival games.
They love coits or ducks.
I know they do.
My entire youth, I spent at the carnival throwing darts at balloons.
You wanted that stretchy Pepsi bottle.
I wanted the stretchy Pepsi bottle.
I wanted the dog leash with the invisible dog.
Remember the Invisible Dog?
Of course.
We talked about it like 20 times.
And I wanted the Coke mirror that said... Hang in there, Baby Friday's coming.
Well, that one, or I was pretty into the band Heart.
And I was like, Coke mirror with heart?
That's so weird.
I totally had Barracuda in my head all morning.
And a coke mirror with heart and dreamboat Annie on it.
I'd fucking throw darts at a balloon all afternoon.
But I feel like retroactively, we're going to get some kind of award.
When our fans get off their asses and stop sending us weird tweets and start putting that energy into giving us iTunes recommendations.
Yeah, we get some kind of Irving Thalberg Award version for podcasting.
Exactly.
It's going to be like, hey, you know what?
These guys invented a thing which was a slightly different modification on a previous thing.
And actually, longstanding thing.
But their mod turned, it was like nobody wanted to buy a Segway, but you turn the Segway into one of those hoverboards.
And now all of a sudden, there are two guys in my neighborhood who drive those hoverboards around.
They aren't even in sidewalks.
And they act like it's normal.
They're just like, I'm off on my hoverboard with ground effects lights.
Rolling around the neighborhood, and I'm like, you wouldn't be on a Segway to save your life.
But you take the handlebars off of it, and all of a sudden, that's the mod.
Now there are Norwegian guys going through airports on them.
The kids in my neighborhood in the hoodies are rolling around on hoverboards.
You think that's like us?
Yeah.
I think we are the hoverboard of the segue of podcasting.
Very, very well put.
Thank you for our service is all I'd like to say.
Please don't wait until we die.
Don't give it to our ancestors.
Give it to us.
And then let us share that with others through our grant program that will do something theoretically.
Imagine trotting out Merlin Mann's grandkids and John Roderick's grandkids and saying, hey, thank you for your grandparents' service.
You know what it is?
It's like Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.
There's going to be Clarence Clemens and George Carlin sitting up doing this weird ritual waving of their hands in a windmill of a guitar motion.
Yes.
And they're going to be saying, thank you.
Thank you, lords and masters.
And we're going to be like, what good does that do us?
We're fucking dead.
Our brains are in a jar.
I was just saying the other day, like I'd always known the name Alan Toussaint.
Toussaint?
Toussaint.
And, you know, I knew the name.
I knew he was kind of famous.
I never knew why.
And then I heard two different, you know, posthumous interviews with him in the same day last week.
And I was like, God damn it.
God fucking damn it.
Not only did this guy write tons of songs that I really like, he's obviously an incredible gentleman.
Like a desperately talented man with amazing range.
Yeah.
And the ability to play just anything.
Read his Wikipedia page.
It's like a history of Western music.
Oh my gosh.
It's amazing.
You know, he wrote Whipped Cream.
Mm-hmm.
Made famous by Herb Alpert.
Dating game song.
Yeah, the dating game song.
He wrote that.
And then I was like, God damn it.
Why do I only ever learn about these interesting people after they die and then Terry Gross is out for the day?
That makes me so sad.
Don't do that with us.
Don't do that.
Don't wait till we die.
I was fortunate enough to get introduced to Elaine Toussaint by Elvis Costello.
who did a tour.
Oh, yeah.
A lot of people were recommending the album he did.
And so I was at Bonnaroo, I guess, and they played at Bonnaroo, and I was on the side of the stage.
And he was an incredible piano player, too.
And Elvis was – you can say a lot of things about Elvis Costello, but one of the great things about him is that he definitely –
puts the spotlight on people that he admires.
Oh, like his thing with Burt Bacharach?
He's so gracious about that.
So he was just like, on stage, just like, check out the man.
And there was no denying it.
And then I was transformed by that.
But you're absolutely right.
I mean, you and I do not toot our own horn.
Let's be honest.
I don't even have a horn.
But here's the thing.
The people that should be tooting our horn are not tooting loud enough.
They're out there.
I don't know where they're tooting.
They're tooting to each other.
And it's like, yeah, you guys already know.
You guys know.
You should go down to the student center and you should be wearing a sandwich board.
It says Roderick on the line.
Yep.
And you should be handing out flyers.
People are going to be asking you some questions about why you're wearing a sandwich board, and you can explain.
Yeah.
You can say, listen, I'm not here to tell you about Jehovah.
I'm here to tell you about a different kind of Jehovah.
Yes, from now, somebody with a better marketing plan is probably going to be the one who's on the Wikipedia page for thought technology.
It's not going to be you.
It'll be some pinheaded briefcase-carrying doofus academic.
Yeah.
It's going to be whereisourparade.com, and they're going to be making dollars hand over fist.
Or I hear it all the time.
People are walking around all the great shows and I'm like, what the fuck are you talking about?
All the great shows.
Putting it on a t-shirt.
Try looking at an empty inbox on your phone.
Where's my bell?
Fuck.
Somebody came up to me the other day and they were like, and then they leaned in, whispered.
This is my good friend, Cal McAllister.
Leaned in, whispered in my ear.
You would know the answer to this.
Is inbox zero still a thing?
Yeah.
What did you tell him?
What did you tell Cal?
Well, I was like, I think there are a lot of people who still aspire to inbox zero.
I think it entered into the culture and it became a thing.
It became an aspirational thing, sort of like losing 10 pounds.
And all the people who are like, I've really got to lose 10 pounds and this is the year.
It's like, I've really got to inbox zero.
It's a lot like communism.
I mean, a lot of people have heard about it, but they've never bothered to read anything about what it actually means, and so they're just mad.
I thought about this the other day.
The strength of a religion is in how it is translated to people who are not paying attention, who are not prepared to read the book, and who are not – who want – they're looking for a religion –
And they want one that the garbled translation makes sense.
Oh.
Right?
So where the messaging, the branding, the bullet points, the elevator pitch can all make it through the mangling of some dingling who doesn't really understand it.
That's right.
Because every religion is basically a game of telephone.
And the original story, then you whisper it to somebody, they whisper it to the guy next to them, and pretty soon it's like, oh, well, apparently you threw a ring around the neck of a duck and you're... You save somebody from purgatory.
Yeah, your grandfather goes to heaven.
It's your underwear.
If that makes sense to people, then the religion takes off.
Yeah.
Because nobody is reading the book.
And if you think about all the religions in the world right now, they're all like the product of a game of telephone from the original story.
And you just go, wow, that's fascinating.
If I were going to start a religion, and that's the problem with Scientology.
Oh, boy.
I know you hate it.
I know you hate it.
Hour and 20, John.
I know you're pulling the blinds down on your office.
And you're like, listen, I can cut this show right now.
I can go back to the last ding.
Before Roderick said the word Scientology, because they've got a scrawbler that's listening to every podcast.
We made it so far this week.
Somebody pulls up outside of your house in a Lincoln Continental, and they're like, we'd like to talk to you for a second.
Pretty soon I'm scrubbing floors in a trailer in Florida.
The problem with Scientology is the original book sounds like a game of Scientology.
And so how is that going to translate?
Yeah, well, you just got to work up your OT levels.
You're not ready to hear it yet.
You know, when you get to OT4, do you have any idea?
You get to OT4, OT5, do you have any idea?
This is knowledge that will destroy you, John.
OT4?
That seems really early.
I think OT5, I feel like that's when they really open the books.
Yeah, that's when they've got their version of the Dark Knight of the Soul, and you find out what's really going on with the Jets and stuff.
And this is where the – yeah, right.
So that's pretty early in the game, right?
How many OTs are there?
He added a lot over time.
There's a lot of OT inflation.
It's like as soon as Mickey Mouse is about to go out of copyright, they always extend copyright.
Like as soon as Tom Cruise needs a little goose, I think they add some more OTs.
Okay.
And this is the thing I never understood about the Masons.
Again, to your example, it's like giving a sixth star to General George Washington.
Did they do that?
Yeah, they gave him a six-star.
You ever go look on the page?
I'm sure you have.
Obviously, I know you have.
You go to the page on U.S.
generals, and it'll tell you the whole history of all the stars.
The five-star generals, you know, not many five-star generals.
You have to be general of the army.
Yeah, we don't mint those anymore, but six stars, come on, fuck you.
Yeah, they had to make up a design for it.
That's baloney.
That's baloney.
I don't endorse it.
You don't?
I don't.
I don't endorse it.
Where does it end?
Where does it end?
You know how many stars George Washington had?
Fuck you, stars.
Done here.
Oh my God, I barely got out of that.