Ep. 201: "Cowboy Hat Boss"
Hello.
Hi, John.
Hi, Merlin.
How's it going?
Good.
Good.
I was just watching the music video for In Excesses Mediate, which won the MTV Music Video Award for something.
Best video.
Back in the old...
Times, I don't know if you remember Mediate, the song, but it's the one where they just say words that rhyme with mediate all along.
It doesn't have a chorus.
And the video is them standing in some kind of industrial area doing the Bob Dylan Don't Look Back.
I was just going to say, it sounds like a subterranean, we didn't start the fire type situation.
That's exactly right.
But they actually cop the...
they're like word on a piece of paper flip thing that's fresh and uh and i remember they won an award and i remember and this is you know this is the era of course where they were also wearing like jeans strategically ripped knees and little round glasses
And the 60s were going to.
It was so awful.
And, you know, this is what passed for this was what passed for like like culture when we were we were just we were at the dawn of our lives.
We were sitting there just like what's going to happen to us?
What amazing thing is going to happen to us?
This was the best part of it.
I mean, I don't want to watch the video while we're recording.
I'm just going to guess.
Can I guess some words?
Okay, go ahead.
Watergate?
No, I don't think so.
Cheese grate?
Cheese grate, no.
Do you want me to read them to you?
Sure.
Hallucinate.
Okay.
Desegregate.
Hallucinate, desegregate.
Spelled desegregate.
Mediate, right?
That's the title of the song.
Mediate.
I remember the first time I heard this song.
I was listening.
I was like, all right, all right.
Desegregate.
I'm behind that.
Immediate.
And then the fifth thing it says, the fifth lyric is, try not to hate.
Try not to hate.
Try not to hate.
Try not to hate.
And that doesn't really rhyme with mediate.
Giving up kind of early on that one, aren't they?
I mean, it's like try not to hate, but not try not to hate.
Try not to hate.
Love your mate.
Don't suffocate on your own hate.
All right, we've already used hate in try not to hate.
don't suffocate on your own hate i mean for this for this to work it has to be a like a okay we'll take it as read these all need to rhyme with me yeah but like you got to build a little story out of that yeah yeah and like you don't want to be repeating a lot of stuff in the first act like that's not good storytelling
Designate your love as fate.
What the fuck does that mean?
Well, see, that's some Australian shit right there.
Designate your love as fate, Richard Nixon, Watergate, cheese, great, on a plate.
One world state.
Now it's getting a little bit creepy.
That's getting real now.
As human freight, the number eight.
Okay, it goes downhill from there.
I was hoping...
The reason I got started listening to the song is I was hoping that it said innovate.
Oh, sure.
Because come on.
I'm looking for every opportunity I can to get in on this innovation sphere.
Yeah.
And I wanted it to say innovate so that I could repurpose the song as a kind of
As a kind of pain to innovation.
Oh, this is not good.
Depreciate, fabricate, emulate the truth, dilate.
Yeah, like pretty Kate has sex ornate.
What?
Now devastate, appreciate?
Depreciate, fabricate, emulate the truth, dilate.
Yeah, then he starts to repeat because he feels like he's said it all.
liberate to liberate liberate liberate to annihilate atomic fate oh that's a little it gets a little bit of the cold war shit in there sure current is today's headlines yeah but uh but but but no innovate in all of that designate your love john what's the message of this song
Is it is it is it one of those like right now Van Halen type songs where it's just it feels like a right here right now.
Is it supposed to be like like shit is real.
This is happening.
Yeah, that's right.
I think that's exactly right.
It's it.
It's political without actually saying anything about what should be different, let alone what already is there.
Yeah, it touches on some things.
Desegregation.
It touches on one world government, which I'm not sure they fully understood what they were saying.
Gravitate the Earth's own weight.
There's a lot of pro-sex talk.
At 98, we all rotate?
And I don't know whether that was 1998 he meant or at 98 miles per second or at 98 degrees on the... I don't think this got a second pass, John.
I think this is... Barometric pressure?
Yeah.
Well, guilt debate.
The edge serrate.
a better rate the youth irate see it's got irate youth in there so it did it i think it was a time when you could just see a couple of years ago i don't know if you remember jonathan colton and i made a uh a christmas album i do we have your ornament and um oh you're you have one of the few ornaments that didn't break in shipping i bought uh we bought the box my daughter puts things in it isn't that nice but uh uh
we needed a Hanukkah song.
Oh, right.
Sure.
And so, uh, this is, this is the, the, the one truly great, uh, Hanukkah song.
Yeah.
The one truly great Hanukkah song other than, uh, dreidel, dreidel, dreidel is, um, which isn't a Hanukkah song.
I know, I know, I know.
Uh, uh,
We wrote Wikipedia Hanukkah, which was me reading the Wikipedia entry for Hanukkah over a funky jam.
And I thought in the spirit of In Excesses Mediate, this was going to be a smash hit.
Uh-huh.
And people accused me of phoning it in on that song.
That's the joke.
Yeah.
But also, I spent a lot of time learning how to pronounce those biblical era names of different tribes.
It's not like you just pulled it up in a browser in the studio and started reading.
You had to do some Talmudic scholarship.
I did.
I had to Talmud it.
And so I'm a little mad, actually, that NXS could get... I mean, they have a million and a half views of this song.
Look.
It doesn't even look like... I'm just looking at the thumbnail.
It's in color.
He's on the wrong side of the screen.
It doesn't look like Subterranean Homesick Blues, except...
At all.
And they've all got various denims on and various, like, you remember the band World Party?
No, he's got Carl Wallenheimer glasses.
Carl Wallenheimer glasses.
Wallinger?
Wallenhammer?
Wallingerhammer.
Send me from tomorrow.
I don't want to sail on this ship of fools.
That guy's great.
I love the Waterboys.
John, he was in the Waterboys.
That's the same guy from the Waterboys?
Not the same guy.
Mike Scott's the main guy.
Oh, because Comrade Stalin said they'd become too westernized.
That's Mike Scott.
You're telling me that the other guy from the Waterboys is the guy from World Party?
Uh-huh.
I had no idea.
The guy with the NXS glasses.
Whoa.
Yep.
Mind blown.
I thought World Party just came out of nowhere.
I just thought they were just like, you know, like.
World Waterboys were very, they had important music.
Their music was very important.
So in the seeds.
Yeah.
I think Hole of the Moon is one of the great songs.
It's a wonderful song.
I saw the crescent.
You know, there's a lot of jingle jangle in that.
Actually, you see him called Wallenheimer.
You can see him banging on the keyboard in that video.
My God, he's banging on the keyboard.
You see the hole of the moon.
Did you get the image I sent you?
Well, let me see here.
I can send it to you on Skype, but then you'd have to log in.
I don't see it in the papers I have here.
John's adjusting his papers.
I'm looking through my papers.
I don't see any images that you sent me.
I sent you on the text.
Oh, texting.
I stopped sending you things in Skype because it wants you to log in even though you're already using Skype, so I stopped sending things to you in Skype.
Oh, what is this here?
Yeah, look at that on the big screen.
Oh, dear.
Hello.
I'm so proud of my daughter for this project.
This is going to win a big award.
My daughter did every stitch of this herself.
Well, except for one important part.
Have you noticed the one thing?
She didn't also buy the black electrical tape or whatever.
No, she used my Gorilla tape.
I let her use some.
No, but this is... Okay, so she killed it with this.
Oh, my God.
Facts about arrow pointing to Amelia Earhart.
When she was a teen, she cut her hair inch by inch so her mom didn't notice.
So what John is looking at is a large poster board for her Amelia Earhart.
You have to do a project on somebody that's important to you.
And so she did it on Amelia Earhart.
And so I helped her out.
I helped her find some photos and stuff like that.
But I also...
I like her handwriting very much.
But do you appreciate there, just slightly right of center, what she taped onto the page?
Is it a... No, I'm not... It's the first page of Amelia Earhart's Wikipedia entry.
Oh, yeah, I know.
I did see that.
That was right out of my playbook.
Here's my report.
Yeah.
I mean, she did some original scholarship.
We watched the documentary.
She drew clouds.
She drew, what's the name of that island?
The island, she brought, what's it called?
I forget the name of it.
Rikki-tikki-tavi.
Rikki-tikki-tavi, the island near Hawaii that looks like a stake.
That was a very small island.
That was a hard target to hit.
Stake Island, hard target.
But so I see this.
I walk in and I'm like, oh my God, you did everything on this except the letters.
Mommy helped you with the letters.
And she's like, no, she did the letters too.
And they're pretty good.
She used a one as an L.
I think they're great.
Isn't this a nice report?
It's nice, but what are you going to do about the fact that the page is just a copy from Wikipedia?
Well, now, if you go and read, Amelia, here's her report part.
She always liked, quote-unquote, boy stuff.
When she was a kid, she and the neighborhood kids made a roller coaster, etc.
I said, don't even correct the spelling.
This is perfect.
Put this up.
I love it.
But I do, it's funny, because like an idiot, I always forget about, when I'm printing, and I do print, I forget two things.
I forget about comments, and I forget about footnotes.
So I go to print a recipe, and I think, oh, no problem.
I can see this is like, well, it's going to be three, four pages.
I forget about the comments.
Oh, so it just starts printing and printing.
In this case, I forgot about footnotes.
So I printed out the 58 pages of Amelia Earhart's Wikipedia entry, just so we could refer to it and fact check.
Good.
Comments or footnotes.
It's a kind of footnote, I suppose.
I don't print...
It's one of those things you should know about me.
I didn't used to print, but I print now.
I don't print.
I don't fax.
I don't print, sign, and fax back.
Process, buy, sell, anything that's processed, printed, or faxed.
I don't collate.
I don't staple.
I don't... All I know is I can't figure it out tonight, sir.
I just want to hang with your daughter.
We watch... Hey, you know what's funny?
You know what we watched literally yesterday?
I'll tell you what we watched literally yesterday.
We watched Sad Sweetheart of the Rodeo featuring a young John Roderick.
Isn't that nice?
Oh, you did not.
Well, you see my pivot there.
I'm pivoting on Ioni Sky.
Yeah.
That's a very, very fun video.
It's a fun video.
I feel like if you watch the Sad Sweetheart of the Rodeo video, if you're following along the narrative at all,
You're going to notice right in the sort of center, the heart of the film.
The filmic experience.
There's a, you know, and that music video cost, are you ready?
$500,000.
Wow.
It looks expensive.
Well, the thing that sucks about it is the copy that's up is really kind of crappy quality.
But I remember I watched that from the first time I was aware of you and aware of Harvey Danger and your relationship and all that stuff.
I love that video.
I thought it was a great video.
That's a lot of money.
It's a lot of money.
That's London.
Was that London?
Oh, no.
Recoupable.
Recoupable.
Oh, shit.
It was at the very tail end of a time when you would spend $500,000 on a music video.
Wow.
And you would hire a Hollywood actress to be in it.
Hollywood actress in it.
And, you know, and the guy that was making the video, right?
It was like that was his year.
He was that he was getting he's getting paid.
Everybody was getting paid.
Yeah, I didn't get paid.
But right at the center of the film.
The narrative, of course, spoiler alert.
There's a woman who's daydreaming about having a different, better, more interesting life than the one she has.
And she keeps fantasizing.
They slowly introduce these elements that are a little magically real.
We're like more and more like she starts hallucinating things that about cowboys that are taking place in her office space.
Her bed, her office.
Everything's starting to get rodeoed.
Right.
Rodeoing out.
And so Ione Skye, current wife of Ben Lee, the Australian guitar player.
Currently, yeah.
And daughter, I don't know if you knew this, daughter of Donovan.
Who you're friends with on Facebook.
That's right.
And I'm friends with Ben and Ione, although I haven't seen her in a long time.
Not since she tied me up in this music video.
Yeah.
You get tied up in a lot of videos.
We watch Blue Diamonds after that.
You get tied up in Blue Diamonds, too.
I do get tied up in that video, actually.
The more I think about it, that should have been a theme running through all my videos, and now I'm super embarrassed that I didn't think of that 15 years ago.
You had the precedent.
There was.
I could have just been like, every video I'm tied up, that would have made my videos better because I wouldn't have been fucking dancing around.
Anyway.
Halfway through the video.
Right at the heart of the film, there's a moment when she opens the door to her boss's office and she's walking in to deliver some papers to her boss.
She opens the door, but instead of her boss's office, it's a long dirt walk across a rodeo field and her boss is sitting at his desk wearing a cowboy hat.
And she makes the walk
And puts the papers on his desk.
And then there's the scene switches or something.
That's a key moment in establishing the character of the boss.
The boss is me.
I am the boss.
And if you watch the video very closely, you see her walk across the field.
Why would you wear a short-sleeved shirt if you're the boss?
Well, because it's a cowboy boss.
When you're tied up to the end, you look like you work for NASA.
Well, so this is the problem, right?
You don't make a connection.
between cowboy boss in the middle of the film and the person getting tied up at the end.
The guy getting tied up at the end just seems like a co-worker.
I've seen this a dozen times.
I've never made that connection.
So there I am.
Are you in the scene with the cowboy hat as the boss?
I am the cowboy hat boss.
But you would never know it because the shot was made from like 80 feet away.
So she walks across the field.
She puts her papers on the desk.
The boss is sitting there with his hat on.
That's me.
I'm sitting there.
I spent an entire day sitting in that field for that two-second shot.
And I said at the time, you know, like I'm not a guy that's going to sit around a music video shoot and not offer a few suggestions.
I said, hey, I think you want one close-up shot on the boss.
and her putting the papers down on his desk to establish what's happening here because this is this this is a there's gonna be a callback later you're gonna want it to be clear who she's tying up at the end you can't even really see your face at the end either
It does not read as John Roderick.
What do they call that with the little three-point tie?
What's that called?
Not hog-tied.
What do they call that?
Yeah, hog-tied.
Yeah, but like when you tie the calves like three limbs together.
Hog-tied.
It doesn't read as you.
It does not read as cowboy hat boss.
And they didn't take your note on that.
The guy who was making the music video, who was about 11 hours older than I was, he had it all figured out.
He was a big-time Hollywood music video director, getting paid $500,000, and I was the keyboard player in the band.
And so, no, nobody took my note.
And then the video came out, and it was like, hey, good job.
There's no story here.
You had a story.
Now it's just a bunch of collected images all piled on top of each other.
That is a different video, because that is a story.
That is that she triumphs at the end, rather than just seeming like she's...
deranged exactly right because that became real if she's just tying up some co-worker who's standing in front of the copy machine then she's a lunatic you look more like an intern like she's tying up the intern yeah and this video is a tragedy whereas if you had established the boss character
then yes, this video is like a revenge fantasy.
She is the triumphant hero.
Not worth 500 grand, you know what I'm saying?
I know, I hear you.
That's rough.
That's recoupable.
Also, you know, there's the great tradition, whether you're talking about an 80s movie or an 80s video or many other 80s things, there's like the mean boss.
Now, I'm not just talking 9 to 5.
I'm talking about the kind of like, ooh, the dean who eventually jumps in the pool.
Dean Wartmer.
Theme warmer.
Like, you've got to establish that.
You've got to show her being oppressed by this guy.
If there's anyone who is the antagonist, if it exists, it's either her reality or maybe her boyfriend.
Because her boyfriend, you know, that she's sitting on the couch with.
He's pretty dull.
You know, Mike Squires is in that music video, and he gets a nice antagonistic moment.
How many takes did it take?
To get Mike Squires?
Sorry.
Just digging up old wounds.
Oh, I see.
Yeah.
He gets in there with his little like he gives her a covetous glance.
Oh, nice.
As they pass in the copy room.
He is a co-worker, a lascivious co-worker.
And looks at her salaciously.
And so he got a little star turn, Mike Squires.
Oh, nice.
But I was just a, you know, you could have had a paper doll in place of me.
Isn't that a shame?
It's just, it's a damn shame.
You have to really scrabble.
Yeah, sure.
To even see me.
I think we startled our daughter a little bit because there's a scene where Sean, my favorite part of the song, my favorite part of the video.
Sean, you know, Sean, God, he's such a performer.
He can't not be performing.
He's so big.
And he's tall.
He sits down on the couch.
And as one, my wife and I, we haven't listened to this song on purpose.
Not because we don't like it, just because it hasn't come up in a while.
But as one, we both go, the Marlboro Man died of cancer.
And he wasn't a rocket scientist when he was alive.
Ha ha ha.
And my daughter looked at us like we were out of our minds.
a lot of flavor he's got a lot of flavor puts a lot of spin on the ball oh then we watched you guys this is the weirdest lineup a lineup of you guys and you were hugging some lady it was for a seattle tv show what it was a weird fucking lineup it was you sean michael on drums and handsome guy on bass yeah i don't know what now when is that from
so a couple years ago why wasn't eric why wasn't oh this is oh this is the redux it's the redux that's why no eric okay yeah it's the 2016 no 2013 i never remember his name but he was always nice and very handsome he's very very handsome what tell me his name are you sure you don't remember his name
Hasn't he stayed at your house?
Yes.
Bobby?
No.
His name is Andy Fitz.
He's one of the great musicians of Seattle.
Andy Fitz has played on a lot of records.
He's so calm.
He's calm and calming.
He's a wonderful guy.
He's going through a little bit of a hard time right now.
Oh, no, I'm sorry.
I'm meeting him later today as a matter of fact.
Oh, please tell him I said hi.
So I have a problem.
The problem is last night I got an email from a friend you may know, you may have heard of, George Meyer.
Founder of The Simpsons.
Oh, yeah, right.
He's sick, right?
No, no, no.
That's the other founder of The Simpsons, and he passed away.
Great tragedy.
George was his friend, but also one of the developers of The Simpsons.
Yeah, right.
He sent me a nice email.
He said, you want to go to a baseball game?
I said, yeah, I do want to go to a baseball game.
He said, great.
Any day this week, good.
And I said, you know what?
Any day this week, I will go to a baseball game.
And he said, great.
I'll get right back to you when I take a look at the schedule.
And I said, awesome.
And then I was very excited.
I was going to a baseball game with George.
Nothing wrong with that.
Walked around for a few hours thinking about the baseball game with George I was going to go to sometime this week.
Then I get a message from my friend Andy Fitz, who's one of my favorite musicians, a lovely man.
He said, going through a little bit of a thing.
Want to get together for some fun?
something something and i was like of course i want to be there for my friend andy i want to meet up want to get maybe a bowl of pho talk about some stuff throw it around two guys mono and mono so i was like well let's get together tomorrow it seems like we should you know like the the conversation should just get commenced upon right yeah and somebody's like having a time extremely long here i'm kind of scared where this is going
immediately i get an email from george saying you want to go to the baseball game tomorrow night and i'm like but i just made a plan i didn't have anything to do all week this is how it always happens i just made a plan to go hang out with my friend who's going through a patch and now that's the exact time that george wants to go to the baseball game and now oh no
Right?
Because I don't want to, you know, you don't want to say no to anybody.
You don't want to go, you don't want to call your friend who's having a hard time and say, can you postpone your hard time?
Well, and it sounds like the reason you're going to give him sounds like you're trying to get out of it.
Yeah, right.
Oh, my friend's having a hard time.
I told him I had to go hang out.
George is going to be like, I thought you said you were free all week.
It's like you couldn't bring yourself to say my kid's sick.
Like that's too late.
Oh, you haven't.
Yeah.
Like some friend of mine's whatever.
Why didn't you just say you didn't want to go to the baseball game?
So then he offers me the second option, which is Friday night, which is the beginning of Memorial Day.
And that is, I didn't even think that Friday was in play.
I was like, I'm available every day this week, by which I meant Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.
Because Friday, Memorial Day, it's going to be in the RV on the open road.
So he comes back with, George comes back with two baseball game opportunities and all of a sudden I'm just like, der.
So I have to write him back and say, what I meant was Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.
And then I sound like a ding-a-ling.
You do, you do.
But I can't cancel on Andy and I can't, you know, I can't change Memorial Day.
So...
It went from, I went from walking around on my tippy toes, thinking I'm going to the baseball game with George, to here I am again.
Here I am again on my own, going down the only road I've ever known.
Yeah.
Which is the road of sorrow.
Like a drifter, you're born to walk alone.
I was born to walk alone.
Yeah, that's alone, alone.
It's an alone, alone rhyme.
Mediate, cheese grate, water gate, conflagrate.
Innovate.
Innovate.
Entrepreneurate.
We didn't start the 60s.
You know that I'm an in-excess defender, but I'm also one of the big-time in-excess haters.
Yeah, it's one of those many things I avoid.
Talking to me about NXS or talking about NXS or listening to NXS?
Which one would make you happier?
I'm not a huge fan.
You don't like NXS.
I didn't say that.
I didn't say that.
For years, you dined out on that whole, like, I'm not a fan thing.
And now you're a fan of everything now.
Don't get me wrong.
I'm a huge Bob Dylan fan.
Really?
Yeah.
See?
Now the tides have turned.
You are the old crutchy guy who doesn't like things, and I love everything.
Oh, my God.
I sold my combs.
Ooh, ha, ha.
I know.
Oh, Captain America.
Oh, Captain My America.
Superstar superhero.
I love it.
All of them.
That was effective.
No, it's just that.
I super schmooper like...
Almost half a half a dozen of their songs.
And then I just kind of really don't like a bunch of them.
We talked about it one time and it got a little ugly.
Between you and me or with our listeners?
No, this one was with me.
So you and I were talking about NXS and it got ugly?
Well, no, I avoided it before it got too ugly.
I like the one thing.
That's a great song.
I like the dream on white girl, white boy, black girl, white boy.
I like that song a lot.
It has a different title because it was the 80s and you give a title that wasn't in the song.
There's that.
I like that song.
Shabooshaba.
Shabooshaba.
I like Shabooshaba.
You know, I didn't like Soup and Salad Bar like I didn't like that era.
You know, Soup and Salad Bar.
Suicide Blonde didn't like that one.
No, that's not very good.
No.
Okay, so... So, Never Tear Us Apart is a great song.
Yeah, okay.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know what?
I wouldn't look... That's good.
They're good.
Come on.
That's a really good song, and that's later, period.
So, the thing you want to do with NXS is, say, like R.E.M., oh, all the shit in the early days was good, and all the later stuff is bad.
You pull a Depeche Mode.
Right, but that does not work with NXS because there is garbage in and garbage out.
There's terrible songs at the beginning, terrible songs at the end, but then how do you account for the great songs at the beginning and...
and the great songs at the end.
You can't account for them.
Unless you make an actual study of this, you gotta really get in there, you gotta put on some gloves, hazmat suit, you wade into the NXS.
And the thing about it is, my impression of NXS is that they wrote democratically.
They never kicked the drummer out.
There's no change.
It's in excess the entire time, all of the bros.
And nobody steps forward and is like, well, I'm kind of the genius here.
Well, the media song has one writer on it who is a man called Andrew Ferris with two R's and two S's.
Okay, so he's a member of the band.
Yes.
Andrew Ferris.
I think he's a guitar player, right?
Is he the guy with the glasses?
No.
He's a singer.
Singer?
Singer.
No, Michael Hutchins is the singer.
Oh, Michael Hutchins.
Famous Michael Hutchins.
And Michael Hutchins, everybody acknowledges... Is he alive?
Did he take his own life?
No, he... Well, it's not clear.
He died... Oh, he had one of those kung fu situations.
Yeah.
Yeah, okay.
All right, enough said.
Um...
But you got the impression that they really worked as a band.
Don't Change.
I like Don't Change.
Oh, my God.
It's one of the great songs.
That's a great song.
I still walk along thinking, Don't Change.
And the thing about the Don't Change music video is that they had a really good idea, really good idea, which was that they were going to play –
They're going to get into the back of a pickup truck and drive away while still playing the song.
But what do you do with the drummer?
Right?
So everybody gets in, all the bass player jumps in, the guitar player, they're all still playing the song.
Is he like hitting the fender or something?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He's like drumming on the side of the truck.
And that just doesn't work.
You can still hear the kick drum in the recording.
I wasn't convinced.
Yeah, I don't like that.
Eodetic, right?
Non-eodetic music?
I don't like that.
If it's on the screen, you should be able to hear it and vice versa.
Yeah.
Precious Heart?
I don't know.
I need you tonight.
Gross.
There's so much bad stuff, though.
But I, you know... New sensation.
It's terrible.
It's terrible.
And yet... And I will go all the way to the mat...
I'm just looking at titles, and there's so many bad songs.
All the way, Devil Inside.
Devil Inside.
That's not good, but what you need, which a lot of people, I think if you were putting the REM overlay on NXS, what you need would be Orange Crush.
Right?
It's the first sign that the worm has turned.
And I don't mean the worm has turned in a Shakespearean sense.
I mean it in a tequila sense.
Literally in the bottle.
It's turned.
It's gone.
It has not turned on you.
It has turned...
to bad worm oh i see you're doing a little you're doing a little little fine language stuff here it's a little bit of fine language little fuko pendulum but i'm saying there are a lot of people that are going to go what you need is the beginning of bad and i'm going to say no bad and excess was there all along and good and excess was there all along and what you need actually is in the good and excess camp
I think I like when the, I'm not saying they're trying to do this, but I like when they, in my head, they're trying to sound like hoodoo gurus.
That's the one I like.
I like that in excess.
And then there's some where they seem like they're trying to sound more like, I don't know, like not Sisters of Mercy, but they get kind of like, he's singing too low.
Yeah, he's singing too low and it's got all the bam, bam kind of stuff.
I don't like the bam, bam stuff.
And that What You Need has more Bamp Bamp.
That's got a lot of Bamp Bamp.
Than almost any other song except Eurythmics Missionary Man.
Eurythmics Missionary Man has almost exactly the same amount of Bamp Bamp as NXS What You Need.
And they're contemporaneous.
And I think Missionary Man actually won an MTV music video.
Oh, that is a Bamp Bamp song.
Yeah.
Don't mess with the Missionary Man.
That's a killer jam.
Oh, and the guy in the music video for Missionary Man looks exactly like the guy from World Party.
Oh my goodness.
Go, go, go, go.
Look immediately.
I think it almost maybe is the guy from World Party.
It's hard to watch this without watching it.
Okay, I'm going to come back to this.
Have you ever explored the previous band of her and Dave Stewart, The Tourists?
Say what now?
They were in a new wave power pop band before that called The Tourists.
You're talking about Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart.
Yeah.
And they do a cover of I Only Want to Be With You.
That is one of the great things.
Let's look right now.
Let's go to... I only want to be with you.
That would be funny.
I only want to be with you.
Yeah, go look guys.
Go Google on the tourists.
I only want to be... No, not that version.
I want the other version.
It's a 2010 film starring Florian Henkel von Donnerschmark.
Oh, that's a Kraftwerk cover band.
Literally, Florian Henkel von Donnerschmark is the director of The Tourist starring somebody.
Angelina Jolie is in it.
The reason I print a lot is we print and we scan.
We scan things and we print things.
And I've started printing out photos.
Hmm.
Do you print out all your emails and put them in a file cabinet?
Of course I do.
It's the only way I can get inbox zero.
Beep boop.
Fuck you, world.
Wait, how many folders do you have?
Let me guess.
God damn it.
Duke boys.
I just went full on Roscoe, didn't I?
Remember they gave him a dog?
Remember Flash?
Flash!
They gave him a little hound dog.
They couldn't add a kid to the show, so they added a dog.
They gave him a little dog named Flash.
So now, have you ever noticed that Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane is proto-Bob Odenkirk?
Oh, yeah, right.
I see that.
Right?
Bob Odenkirk is doing Roscoe P. Coltrane.
Right.
About one-third of his characters.
That's, yeah.
You know, that's finally on the HBO again, on their little streaming channel.
So I watched a few.
Yeah, yeah.
I think that's one of those shows that didn't... Does that belong to HBO?
You know how it doesn't matter.
Anyway, I started watching Mr. Shows again.
It's still a delight.
Yeah, that's wonderful.
It comes up a lot on this program, and people probably don't know what we're talking about when we make Mr. Show jokes.
So this is one of those weird things where...
You know, I discovered this the other day.
I was talking to a close friend about some component of the alcohol recovery movement.
And I realized that she really didn't have an encyclopedic knowledge of, like, addiction issues.
dependency culture and literature there was a time when everything was 12-step that became like in the late 80s early 90s there was a giant self-help boom and part of that self-help boom like you go suddenly you go to the bookstore and there's this entire section of pink books out of nowhere remember you could always go right because it was mainly marketed at women and women love pink so there are all these pink books and everything was a uh called recovery you're in recovery they'd say recovery that's right they still say that today
I think so, yeah.
There are a lot of people in recovery still.
Although it's not – it doesn't feel like it's quite the cure-all that it once was.
But it was – I mean it got – I don't want to sound insensitive because it's helped a lot of people.
But I mean the template of AA, then you got into Narcotics Anonymous.
And then I think it became a lot about abuse.
Like it wasn't like recovering from like an abusive childhood.
That was a – That was a part of it.
And then it got to a point where you could use the tenants or rather it was –
It was promoted that you could use the tenets of Alcoholics Anonymous to address almost any issue so that you could be in recovery from television.
You could be from overwatching television.
You could be in recovery from television.
I mean, that was the point at which I got off the train.
But it was, and again, I'm not trying to be glib because it helps people, but it was as though anything that was traumatic and difficult.
Or compulsive.
Or anything that preoccupied your mind, basically.
Or caused you – I'm not exactly even sure because I didn't go all the way down.
But it became a punchline.
It became a punchline.
There's several punchlines about AA.
Not to make fun of AA, but just to say like admitting you have a problem.
That becomes a punchline.
Making amends.
That kind of becomes a punchline.
But this person I was talking to was a millennium.
And she did not, you know, the millenniums... The millenniums are going to make the teens look like... They're going to make Generation Y look like the greatest generation.
More like Generation Y, am I right?
Generation Y not.
So she... They, you know, didn't come up in this... They came up in post...
recovery irony era oh sure so she just doesn't even you know and I'm talking to her like oh yeah all this like all this 12 step ism that sort of is just in the water where I live and she's like it's almost in a way reset
Where the Millenniums are like, oh, alcoholics?
Aren't they like people that live under bridges?
It's like, no!
No, no!
We spent years and years trying to take away the stigma.
And now we neglected, we didn't tend that garden for a little while and now all the Millenniums are like, alcoholics?
That's gross.
It's like, oh boy, we have to start all over again.
We have to beat them all down with our alcoholism like cricket bats.
Alcoholism cricket bats.
Whack, whack, whack.
Two, three, four.
So a lot of language issues.
But I feel, did I ever tell you the story about the time I got a video, like I got texted a video from Dave Stewart?
No, I don't think I know that.
I'm also just inconsolable right now that it looks like the original MTV style version of this video is just not available.
The tourists.
Yeah, it used to be everywhere.
You'll still get the feeling of it, but it's really, it's a really cool 80s video.
So Dave Stewart texted you a video?
Well, yes.
So I had a friend who was working in the studio in Nashville with Dave Stewart producing.
And I was like, you got to be kidding me.
You got to be kidding me.
You're working with Dave Stewart.
I'm kind of a little bit of a super fan.
Yeah.
And the person I was talking to was also a millennium.
And they were like, oh, really?
Who?
You know, like he's the producer on the sesh.
I was like, he's the producer on the sesh.
I bet he is.
Really looking forward to the weekend, you guys.
But he's also like, you know, a major influence on me.
One of the greats.
Truly one of the greats.
And she was like, oh, do you want me to say hi to him for you?
And I was like, yes, I do.
I don't know why, but I do.
And so later on that night, I get a video.
of dave stewart very close to the camera and honestly a little soused good for him saying hello hello hello hello hello john what's all this thing keep keep being great peace and love whatever
Cheers, mate.
And then he turns around and, you know, he might even be wearing a chair.
He's standing in a hallway, turns around.
Maybe he's also wearing a top hat.
I don't remember.
Carrying a briefcase that's possibly handcuffed to his wrist.
And he walks slowly down the hall.
The top hat didn't fall off.
No, no, no.
It's a jaunty angle all the way to the end.
And then he turns to the left.
But he doesn't smooth it.
He gets to the end, stops, turns to the left.
proceeds off screen it's like a steampunk basic program yeah and i just i felt like wow that just made that just made my night that's nice no it's nice that the millennium uh thought to to to get the whole shot in like cover it all because the kid these kids today they tear away you don't get more than two seconds of video of anything if there's anything we learned in the age of the handycam it's that you gotta you gotta stay on one thing for a while
Right.
And they don't do that today.
The kids don't know that today.
This wasn't a Snapchat, right?
This was something else.
Yeah.
Wasn't a Vine, John?
This was a film that she was making just for me.
Wow.
And she understood that it was one old person communicating through the internet tubes to another old person, and she was just an intermediary, and she wasn't going to impose her millennium aesthetic on it because she knew that this old person was continuing to perform all the way down the hall.
And that the other old person on the other end of the line was going to keep watching this video even if he walked to infinity.
And she was like, I'm going to keep this camera rolling.
I don't know what you guys are doing.
I don't even know who you are.
I'm looking at images of the tourists now, and this is like, I didn't even think, Merlin, to Google young Annie Lennox.
That's how far off I was.
Have a nice week.
That's how far off I was.
Here's the thing you forget.
The thing you forget is that she's probably...
pushing 70.
So, A, she looks amazing.
Not that it matters.
She looks amazing today.
But, like, you know, she was in her 30s in the Eurythmics, I think.
Mm-hmm.
oh god i wish you could see that she's wearing like a little skirt and it's like there's new wave going on and there's it's a white it's got the it's got the it's a classic 80s video it's got the white background and they're like standing on like pedestals and stuff it's pedestals new wave pedestals you know the other day i was um you know we we sometimes talk about um linda ronstadt yeah
And then I was in a thrift store with a friend, and she brought over a copy of the Linda Ronstadt album from 1976 where she's actually on roller skis.
Ah, of course.
Is that something USA?
Something like that?
America USA.
America USA.
Cheeseburger Bang Bang.
And she's wearing...
She's got a satin jacket on, doesn't she?
Satin jacket and I'm pretty sure satin short shorts or satin gym trunks.
Or maybe they're terry cloth.
Either would be fine.
There's a part of me... Those are statement shorts.
I'm not even sure I've ever been with a woman who was wearing terry cloth
uh shorts with a little with little white bunting but that imprinted on me in 1976 as somewhat of the idea the feminine ideal and i've never i've i don't know why i haven't ever acted that play out yeah but in any case i realized that there's a huge difference for me between pre-perm linda ronstadt and post-perm oh sure and i was not pro-perm
I was anti-perm the entire time that perms were perms.
Perms were an affliction.
They were everywhere.
My best friend got a perm.
I didn't like perms.
13-year-old boy with a perm.
He deliberately got an afro.
It's crazy to think, you know, Clapton all through cream had a perm.
A giant perm.
What is happening?
now wait a minute i i clicked on the tourists and i got a bunch of images of fleetwood mac in the studio and i'm not sorry about that either yeah see google learns it learns from you this is such this is such an old old dude old day today george george myers george myers life mate yeah her oh okay hey nice double points you know who her father is
her father is i don't be creepy but just because i'm googling people on the internet her uh her father is lorenzo semple jr none other than the creator of batman alongside william dozier no you're kidding i'm not living in spain 1965 semple was approached by william dozier to develop the television series on the comic book wrote a pilot probably picked up series based on the air wrote the first four episodes also served as executive story editor fucking batman dude
This explains so much.
Dude, dude.
He worked on Three Days of the Condor.
He wrote the screenplay for Three Days of the Condor.
I had no idea.
You love that movie.
I do.
He wrote the screenplay for Papillon.
I am pretty good friends with Maria.
He just passed a couple years ago.
You know, she is a best-selling author.
Yeah, she did that movie.
She wrote Ivor Huckabees, right?
Yeah, I know her name.
I instantly saw her name.
I instantly recognized her name.
She wrote Where Did You Go Bernadette?
Okay.
Which was a New York Times bestselling book about being in Seattle.
She taught fiction writing at the Richard Hugo house.
It all comes around.
Next to which your van used to practice.
That's right.
I'm basically the founder of the Richard Hugo House.
It's basically named after me.
They had to throw you out to make it, didn't they?
Yeah.
They're going to make it after all.
Oh, my God.
Annie Lennox.
Annie Lennox of the tourists photographed in 1980 in some kind of little pearl-beaded...
sleeveless blue go-go dress yeah she's confident she's it's really wonderful those were the times look at her she's so look at dave look how skinny he is he's not anymore i know i know it happens happens to us well and you know he's a ginger too oh poor guy it's amazing amazing how he's gotten through it
Oh, here's why.
Because they blocked it.
Fucking... They blocked the vid?
The vids got blocked.
The whole sesh.
Why?
Why would they block the sesh?
The video contains content from SME, whatever that is, who has blocked it in your country on copy.
This is what it feels like to be Canadian.
To have things blocked?
Yeah, you just don't get stuff.
Is that true?
Oh, I hear about this.
Well, look at what's happening with our shirts.
We didn't know about this.
People were buying our shirts in other countries and having to pay all this extra money for customs and stuff.
I feel bad about that.
Well, this is the thing about commerce, right?
Yeah, that is the thing about commerce.
Commerce is a shit show.
It always involves money.
Almost always.
Well, it involves money, but it's like they are trying with these duties to protect themselves against something, right?
And rather than tax...
oil appropriately, or rather than tax people that are making billions, they're adding a 19% VAT to a single t-shirt that you're ordering from some ding-a-lings in America.
And it's like, really, that's how you're going to pay for your universal public health?
Yeah.
is what these fucking duties... And the thing is, most of the time they're just doing it because America has done a similar thing.
It's like, you talk about free trade, Bill Clinton.
You talk about free trade.
Free!
Free the trade!
By the time this episode comes out, there won't be much time left to buy a t-shirt, so I'm not going to say buy a t-shirt.
What I will say is thank you to the people who bought t-shirts.
As I look at this right now, John Roderick...
People have purchased 1,257 Roderick on the Line t-shirts.
Well done, people.
Thank you, everybody.
Wasn't that nice of people to do that?
Well, I wouldn't say nice because I think they're getting a wonderful thing.
I think they're getting a wonderful thing.
I made you so mad.
I made you so mad one time when I was like, John, quit making a big deal about this.
It's free money.
And you said, there's no such thing as free money.
Yeah.
Wait a minute.
Why are you imitating me in the voice of somebody who works in the boiler room of a submarine?
That's what you sound like when you're texting sometimes.
No, it's not.
Yeah.
I told you about that, did they?
See how I said it all calm?
Yeah.
There's no such thing as pretty much...
Put on your top hat.
Handcuff your briefcase to your arm.
Everybody who ordered a Roderick on the line t-shirt got great t-shirt value for their money.
That's true.
And now they're going to be able to wear those shirts out.
It's going to improve their chances of mating.
They're going to get more tail than Sinatra.
Right?
Because they're going to be wearing the shirt.
Someone is going to look at them from across a crowded dance floor.
And they're going to say...
There is a Roderick on the line listener.
I, too, am a Roderick on the line listener.
That's absolutely right.
Let's make whoopee.
Yeah.
Right?
There's going to be a lot of finger banging, just based on this one shirt, I think.
Who knows?
Who knows what people do?
I don't care whose finger it is and where you're putting it.
I'm just glad we got you the shirt that's going to put you in that situation where you can say yay or nay.
I have learned that a lot of our listeners are millenniums and they have all kinds of weird sex with each other.
You're telling me about this.
They have butt sex and they keep their virginity.
You told me about this twice already.
I keep talking about it because I think it's great.
I've been thinking about it a lot.
I've been thinking about it a lot.
It's really a new age.
It is a new age.
Think of all the virgins out there.
You walk around and you're like, these kids are really sophisticated, but they're still virgins.
They're butt-banging, but they're virgins.
Butt-banging, butt-banging virgins.
Now that's an InXS record.
If I had an InXS record, butt-banging virgins, I would reevaluate their whole career, but it's too late now.
You can feel it in your gut.
You'll be banging in the butt.
Bump-bump.
wow wow that's what you need did you like hoodoo gurus they were hot for a while i think they're australian uh yeah well hoodoo gurus were one of those bands that were like proto band they were like rootsy they would like uh it was a rootsy kind of thing it was in the rootsy era
Rootsie era.
Yeah, you got like Zeitgeist slash The Reavers.
You got all those bands that are doing like a Rootsie thing.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Like Lone Justice.
You got a Lone Justice?
Oh, boy, she's something, isn't she?
We've talked about her.
We've talked about her.
But I feel like...
I feel like this is one of those things where you are just a couple of years older than me, not even just two years older than me, maybe.
I grew up with Star Wars.
You grew up with that Empire Strikes Back shit.
Exactly.
You were listening to, this is the, the Hoodoo Gurus is right in this key little keyhole.
Yeah, the age difference right there.
You would not have been exposed to that like I would have been exposed to that.
You were one year ahead of me in some stuff like that.
So like Mitch Easter's band and stuff like that.
Let's Active.
I love Let's Active.
You were already digging into Let's Active at a time when I was like...
I was an R.E.M.
fanatic.
Anything that was related to R.E.M., I sought out.
Everything that starts with Peter Buck wearing a Husker Du shirt.
I got to check out Husker Du.
To Michael Stipe singing with those two ladies.
The Doctor of Divinity.
Indigo Girls.
Yes.
And believe me, I was all over the Indigo Girls.
All over Indigo Girls like some wet cellophane.
But I was... Is that what that's called, John?
Portrait of Rasputin and a beard down to his knee.
The thing about a dental dam is it's not going to prevent the spread of STDs.
At least it needs braces.
Dental dam!
I was also still listening to Billy Squire at this point.
Oh, man.
He was well and truly into his silly dance.
He was.
Have you watched Rock Me Tonight in the last 10 years?
Yes, I have.
You need to...
Okay.
I mean, have you really watched it?
Because you just can't even believe, even in the first 20, you cannot believe this video ever existed.
It's so much worse than I remember.
I had quite a bit of, I mean, Billy Squire was very problematic for me because I really liked those first two records.
And then it started to get really, really strange over in the Billy Squire camp.
Yeah.
It did, and I think that video, it's kind of a meme.
I think that video was hard on him.
The Rock Me Tonight video ruined his career.
I've read oral histories of that video.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But also, it wasn't just the video.
He came out with some kind of strange... He started appearing with a signature model guitar, which was like a pastel-colored... Was it a Schecter?
It was like a modified Telecaster.
Some kind of Tele.
I don't think it was a Schecter.
Some guitar that also was not very hard rock.
How did Fender not hire him to use a Squire Tele?
Different spelling, I know.
Why have I never thought of that?
It's brilliant.
I mean, it's money on the table.
It's free money.
Why the hell didn't they do that?
Free money.
I never made the connection.
I loved the In the Dark record.
In the dark.
In the dark.
That's a great record.
It's got monster drums on it.
So Emotions in Motion is the one we're talking about, right?
Emotions in Motion is a great, great tune.
No, Rock Me Tonight came after... Oh, Rock Me Tonight, that's the album.
That's the titular track.
Well, no, it's from Signs of Life.
Signs of Life, 1984.
Oh, you're absolutely right.
Whereas Emotions in Motion...
From the album Emotions in Motion.
That record, I think, is bulletproof.
Emotions in motion.
My girlfriend at the time and first serious partner downstairs, there were two people, two men that she regarded as the height of sexy.
And that was Billy Idol and Billy Square.
They're both named Billy.
You know, Billy is also some kind of Cockney rhyming slang for penis.
Yeah, when you say Billy Corgan, it just means penis.
Penis Corgan.
Smartest kid.
Have you seen him lately?
Billy Corgan?
I see him all the time because we're both members of the chemtrail, some secret chemtrail office.
He and John Mayer and I sometimes drive out into the desert.
He's turned into a Bond villain.
He was always the worst.
I remember in 1992, a guy from Anchorage came down and was living in the house that I was already crashing in.
He showed up.
He was a guy I went to high school with.
He was actually a guy.
He's in some ways...
He was one of those keep your friends close and your enemies closer guys.
He and I have the exact same birthday.
His name was David.
Exact same birthday.
We were born on the same day in history.
Same birth date.
Same birth date.
September 13th.
That's an important distinction.
1968.
Yes.
But he was a year younger in school.
He was a junior when I was a senior.
And he was very handsome.
He looked like a young Tom Selleck, which I know doesn't sound very good, but he had like super dimples.
And he was cute and he was like, he was GQ.
But that made him old for his grade and made you young for your grade.
I was very young for my grade.
He was very old for his grade.
And I read a thing the other day that said that kids born during the summer typically have –
Typically, this is the new metric, apparently.
I read this all the time now as a way of tracking kids' progress.
But kids born in the summer are less likely, significantly less likely to become CEOs, which is the American standard of achievement.
No kidding.
Because they're the youngest kid in their grade.
And so if you're born in July or something, then you're much younger than kids that are born in April.
Because if you're born in July, you're, you know, you are, you're in the class of, you know, you turn five and then you are in school.
Like if you're born during the school year, what becomes the school year, you get to have normal birthday parties.
Right.
But you get a summer birthday.
What are you going to do?
You're going to give you a half birthday?
I mean, that's weird.
But I was born in September, and I went into the grade school.
I went into grade as though I were one of these.
I was four when I started kindergarten.
So talk about less likely to be a CEO.
You could not be more disadvantaged than me in this capacity.
A kid born two days later would have been held back a year.
I should have been helping.
But doesn't that give you grit?
Don't you have to have grit to be a CEO?
Do I have grit?
Yes, I do have grit.
I'm still not a CEO, but I'm still a young man.
Yeah.
Anyway, David, so I probably told you this before, but I decided when I was a junior that I'd never had a girlfriend and I had never, I was succeeding in high school and
in the sense that I was making a name for myself as a kind of an anti-authoritarian clown Blutarski.
But I was not succeeding in high school on high school's terms.
And in my junior year, at the very beginning of my junior year, I said, you know what?
I'm not going to do this.
I am not going to go through high school being a dork.
I am going to...
I'm going to do something about it.
And I remember I had my dad or my mom.
Actually, this sounds like something my mom had done.
She bought me one of those desk blotters.
Oh, nice.
Like with a calendar?
With a calendar.
Oh, those are terrific.
Well, yeah, but I mean, talk about a 10th grader who's pretty much destined to be a dork all through high school.
I had a desk blotter.
Sure.
And I'm sitting there at my desk blotter.
Before junior year starts and I'm plotting, how am I going to do this?
How am I going to overcome?
Because I'm sitting in the back of the class right now.
I'm covered in dandruff.
I don't chew tobacco.
I've never kissed a girl.
I'm a year younger than everybody else.
You're like the world's saddest Merle Haggard son.
Yeah.
I'm shaped like one of those logs of cookie dough.
Yeah.
And I smell like one of those logs of cookie dough because when I come home from school, I eat about a half a log of cookie dough uncooked because it's the greatest thing in history.
I am just, I am like, I am the worst.
You're realizing you got to change your game a little bit.
Yeah.
I got to check yourself before you wreck yourself.
What do I do?
And I wrote down because my dad was born in 1921 and he used a lexicon that even in the early 1980s was no longer being used.
But I wrote big man on campus.
All right.
BMOC.
BMOC on the top of my desk blotter.
And I looked at the words.
I studied the words and I was like big man on campus.
How does one become a big man on campus?
Because my dad would talk about...
at the fraternities in 1938, the big man on campus.
He tied a crew sweater around his neck, and he swung a tennis racket everywhere he went, and he was a member of the crew team, and he drove a Model A jalopy with a raccoon tail hanging from the antenna.
That right there is a big man on campus.
It's a big man on campus.
He would cram a bunch of undergraduates into a phone booth.
Ugh.
He was the guy.
He was the guy.
It's like swallow goldfish, that kind of thing.
That's right.
So how do I get to be a big man on campus?
I'm studying this thing and I was like, just studying the words, big man on campus.
I've got to get a girlfriend.
That's one of the things.
You've got to get a girlfriend.
I was like, how does one get a girlfriend?
I have no earthly idea.
Girls terrify me.
I don't know how to go about doing this.
I feel like you need to exercise maybe in order to get a girlfriend.
Maybe?
Not sure.
So I went to school in the beginning of my junior year, and I was like, you could tell just by the way people treated me that I was being – I was definitely on a track to –
be excluded.
And I already preferred to be in the band room at lunch.
So I was headed there, hard.
Like my preference was to align myself with my peers, who were people that sat in the band room at lunch,
and practice the clarinet or sat in the dark room of the student newspaper and like i mean i had a friend who was the one of the photographers of the student newspaper who would just take surreptitious photographs of the cheerleaders and then develop them and like i don't know what he would do with the pictures i mean it's not like they were panty up upskirt shots yeah but he's applying himself yeah he would just sit across the just focus on the cheerleaders weirdo
But I decided I needed a girlfriend, so I started.
I got to school at the beginning of junior year, and I was like, who is going to be my girlfriend?
Who's the lucky girl?
Who is going to be the one?
And I picked Kelly Kiefer.
I've talked about her on the show before.
Oh, she's a red-haired girl.
That's right.
Red-haired girl, and she was the class president, and I chased her.
I chased her.
I chased her relentlessly.
Yes.
And then I won her affections and then we were like a couple and she was a big wheel and then I was a big wheel.
I was big man on campus all of a sudden largely because I had coupled with this very accomplished lady.
And –
And I genuinely loved her.
I mean, she was in my thoughts all the time.
Wasn't she kind of your Diane Cork?
Was she a little bit out of your league?
She was totally out of my league, and she said so multiple times in notes that she would pass me in class that said literally, I am out of your league.
Stop harassing me.
You dander-covered log.
And I would say, I know that this is just a code for how much you love and adore me.
And she would say, you are a log.
I'm a very important woman.
I have important business to attend to, which includes getting good grades and being popular.
And just the fact that I'm passing you these notes is diminishing my stature.
And I was like, I love you too, baby.
Anyway, Kelly Kiefer and I broke up during the summer between junior year and senior year, largely because...
After we were in a relationship, she was like, here's what relationships look like.
And I didn't understand that and still don't.
I was like, what?
You mean we just spend all our time together?
Just you and me all the time?
She was like, that's right.
That's what boys and girls do when they become in a relationship.
That's not what you're expecting.
Yeah.
I was like, I thought that what you did was you guys went out together and did crimes or whatever.
You were leaders of a gang.
Wouldn't you be Pinky Custodaro to my Fonzie?
Pinky and Fonzie didn't just hole up all the time and watch Ferris Bueller's Day Off on VHS.
No, they were like hanging with their gangs, their respective gangs.
You got adventures.
You go on adventures, but your gang has pink satin jackets.
My gang is apparently Richie and Potsy, which is weird.
Wouldn't Fonzie have like a cool guy gang?
Yes.
Anyway, we broke up during the summer.
Beginning of senior year, Kelly starts going out with David.
David, David, you're your friend of me.
That's right.
The guy who has the same birthday as me.
Exactly.
We're exactly the same age, but he's a year younger.
That's no accident.
He's a year younger and he's all fashionable.
He's like super fashionable.
He's where he's got a guest watch.
Yeah, he's where he's wearing a guest clothes.
And he's got his hair is all perfect.
You're sewing your own alligator on things.
I'm sewing an extra alligator humping the one alligator.
Like the alligator on the shirt and then you have an extra alligator because I'm living out some movie that I am writing as I go.
And I was so appalled.
I was so, I was appalled.
That's what it was.
I was like, why are you, why are you, Kelly, why are you debasing yourself by going out with this child who's the same age as me?
She was like, I don't know, he's really handsome.
So David, years later, moved into the same house I was living in down here in Seattle.
I wasn't paying rent.
I was sleeping on the couch.
He moved in and actually started paying rent, took one of the rooms.
Oh, that's not fair.
That's not cricket.
Well, no.
So now his status in this house, in this grunge house is higher than mine.
Like, you know what I mean?
Like if you're a rent payer.
Oh, absolutely.
You get to have preferences.
Well, sure.
You get a shelf in the cupboard that's for your canned food.
The couch boy does.
Couch boy with the, you know, the kid who's a log.
He doesn't get that.
I'm the log again.
You're the dander log.
Yeah.
I'm the log and I'm stealing cans of ravioli out of the kitchen that don't even belong to me.
Not because I can't.
Well, I couldn't afford a can of ravioli of my own.
But if I could, I wouldn't have even had a shelf.
Right.
oh so many levels it's very confusing sure is so uh did she come around who oh sorry kelly you guys got back together didn't you not really oh no she's like a doctor now right yeah i you know oh we talked about this one time and then some kid chastised me on the internet because i said where she worked three times or something like that
But so now I can barely bring myself to utter her name.
But no, she ended up, she got her revenge on me.
She got her revenge on me for sure.
Not just for dating David.
but you know, like other things she would.
Yeah.
She came to visit me in college one time, came to visit me at my weird Northwestern Catholic school.
And she sort of traipsed and you know, I took a year off before I went to college.
So I was now a grade under her.
I was a freshman and she was a sophomore at a big time East coast university.
And she came to my college and waltzed around the dorm.
Basically looking indoors like, what are you kids doing here?
I was just like, ugh.
Why are you doing this to me?
But you don't want to call her bluff on it.
Because I kind of want to say, what's your game here, Kelly?
What's your game?
I did not have the ability to call...
girls on their game until just recently.
Oh, really?
That's super interesting.
I was 41 before I could say, hey, what's your game here?
Did you do it on purpose or did you just find yourself calling someone on their game?
No, no, no.
Did you make a study of it and say, I'm going to go call this girl on her game?
I'd been studying it for 26 years and I think maybe at age 41 I had a new desk blotter and I had written at the top of it some other acronym.
And I was like, you know what?
You're not going to make it in this life if you keep playing.
Boys can't play games on me.
It's just girls that are playing games on me, and I keep taking them at their word.
You keep giving them the keys, the keys to your mind box.
I'm like, oh, okay.
Is that the er, derp, derp, derp, derp, derp?
Yeah, yeah.
And so I finally was like, wait a minute, what's your game?
What is your game?
And it was very effective.
Because you'd never done it before.
Well, I'd never done it before, and I didn't realize it.
It would be like conjuring an orb.
Like, all of a sudden, John knows how to call somebody in a game.
It's like you've got a third eye now, my friend.
Yeah, you don't even need to know what their game is.
You just say, what's your game?
And then they feel like, oh.
That's a whole different skill.
That's a whole different later skill.
But at least knowing there's a game there, it's like you're the one who said, no, you're gaslighting me.
Right.
And they're like, the jig is up.
I don't know what you're doing, but I know you're doing something.
I don't know what you're doing, but I know you're doing something.
And all of a sudden, it all turned around.
Or not all.
So no, I was not capable of calling Kelly on her game, and she gamed the shit on me.
A, because she was a year older than me.
B, well, no.
She would say she wasn't a year older.
But it's like a kid with a magnifying glass and some ants.
The kid does not have a good reason for sizzling the ants.
He's doing it because he can.
I think Kelly was doing it because she could.
I'm not saying Kelly's a bad person.
She's probably a great doctor.
But the fact that she's doing that because she knows you got your little dinosaur arm you're trying to fight back with.
You got no chance against Kelly.
I feel like this is true of all humans.
Yeah, I know you do.
Destroy all humanoids at one level.
At another level, I love all people.
You do.
And this is very challenging for people sometimes to understand that I all... You're a humanist, John.
You love humans.
I love all humans and I want to destroy all humans.
What?
No, I don't see.
That's not necessarily incompatible.
I don't see how that's incompatible.
That's just like McNamara says, right?
Sometimes you have to destroy humanity to save it.
That's exactly right.
I love humans so much, and I believe in humans, but I believe that they should be destroyed.
At all costs because they're a plague.
And they're a plague unto one another first.
Oh, what's the worst kind of plague?
A plague that gives its own plague to a plague.
That's right.
That's terrible.
You got to terraform that shit.
You got to drop the Gaia bomb.
It's a plague that reproduces by plaguing itself.
It makes plagues with plagues through plagues.
Mm-hmm.
But plagued by proxy, right?
So it keeps injecting the poop into itself.
Yeah, sure, sure.
Yeah.
That's a kind of evolution.
So what I want to do is basically what if it rained for like 40 days?
Okay, would it rain at night too?
Rain at night.
Okay.
Rain all day and all night.
Okay.
So 40 days and 40 nights.
Okay.
Let's call it that.
Okay.
Rain that entire time.
Just rained.
Okay.
I got a mind picture.
And I'm talking- A lot of rain.
You're talking about like a lot of rain.
A lot of rain and everywhere, right?
Now we're talking about the entire earth-
40 days and 40 nights.
Rain.
Okay.
Okay.
It's raining in Antarctica.
It's raining in the Gobi Desert.
It's raining everywhere.
So first, there's lots of articles in the local paper about how this is good.
We've been having a drought.
That's right.
It's nice that it's been raining for eight days and eight nights.
Eight whole days.
Imagine what would happen in Los Angeles, California, if it rained for eight straight days.
The entire city would skid.
I don't know if you've been to LA recently.
No, sir.
They want, they're desperate for rain.
Yeah, but that's like people saying they want wisdom.
They don't really want wisdom.
They just want to be smart.
You're talking about a conflagration here.
You're talking about a disruptive... See, the thing is now, you've got your sewers, your roads are going to expel all the oils.
You're going to sog up all the golf courses.
There's not going to be anywhere for that water to go, and it's just going to accumulate.
The L.A.
River is going to overflow its banks.
The L.A.
River is going to make the...
So, but it's not just raining in L.A.
in this scenario.
You're seeing literally the entire earth.
The earth.
It's raining on earth.
For 40 days.
Now, right away.
And at night.
And at night.
There's no let up.
No, it doesn't let up.
Right away, the weather channel is going to note this, right?
Because normally, if it's raining one place, it's not raining another place.
Oh, so CNN starts having a countdown clock.
Like, what's the longest it's ever rained?
Tick, tock, tick, tock.
Except moment one, two minutes into this phenomenon, somebody's going to go on the weather channel and go, I'm sorry to break in.
But it's literally raining everywhere.
It's literally raining everywhere.
It's the first time there's actually a 100% chance of rain because it's literally raining everywhere.
And this is meteorologically impossible.
So we're going to the computers right now.
We'll get back to you in a minute.
Peter Jennings is like, wait a minute.
Stop the presses.
Is he still on TV?
He might be dead.
But I remember Peter Jennings during 9-11.
I'd like to see Peter Jennings doing 40 days of rain coverage.
It's like a reverse Ted Koppel.
Did you watch him during the 9-11?
I lucked upon him.
I chanced upon him.
as i was switching through the channels and he did he was the greatest american even though he's a canadian yeah he was the greatest american all americans now he was very he's very calm very centered very solemn but he wasn't being overly dramatic and he was not full of shit like everybody else was and at a certain point i don't know if you remember this and i wish that i'm i've never googled it on the day
on the day on the day when it felt like by 10 that morning our time it felt like literally anything could happen yeah and it did and also was like will somebody take charge of this situation there's no way i mean i'm i mean i just have that i remember that feeling my wife uh i was working at home in those days and my boss called unlike now i have an office
where i quote unquote work but that was seven something in the morning you wake up you go out you're watching like holy shit this doesn't look like an accident and then you hear like there's stuff going on in pennsylvania etc and then when the other plane hit the tower you're like okay literally anything could happen right now you could not make a plausible movie of this there's no way that this could actually be happening so i slept till 10 o'clock in the morning that morning
Yeah.
And then I woke up to my mom sitting on my bed, which never happened.
Oh, my God.
With her hand on my knee, which never happened.
And I was like, what is going on?
Did you think it was your dad?
No.
Something worse.
Who knows?
What would prompt my mom to wake me up, A?
She's in affection mode.
By sitting on my bed, B, and touching my knee, C. And I was like, what is going on?
That's pretty familiar.
She said, I have bad news.
Oh, man.
Shit.
She was like, somebody flew two planes into the World Trade Center and blew them up.
And I was like, I had just returned from New York, right?
I had been at the top of the World Trade Center on August 30th.
I'd been in Seattle for a week.
You remember that elevator?
Your ears would pop on the elevator, right?
Oh, yeah.
It was a fast-moving elevator full of people.
And it took minutes.
When I was there in letter 89, you're like, there's no way this elevator ride could be this long.
It's a very tall building.
Yeah.
So she turns on the TV, and there's one tower on the TV smoking and one tower standing.
And I was like, what are you talking about, Mom?
There's one plane.
And she said, no, I've seen this footage over and over by now.
Just watch.
And then because they're replaying it over and over and over again.
So she had already taken the sting.
She had already somewhat, like, spoiler alerted me,
Before I actually saw it.
So I didn't see it in real time.
I got the I got the CliffsNotes and then I watched.
Right.
But Peter Jennings at one point said as he was reporting that President Bush and his entourage were mysteriously just flying in circles around America.
I don't know if you remember.
I do.
I don't mean to beat this to death, but the thing that you can't overstate is that when the first one happened, you're like, this is the craziest news of the last 20 years or whatever.
Because at first, you're going, there's no way that's what happened.
There's no way that a plane... Because the thing is, you don't need to know a lot about aeronautics and aviation.
It's pretty hard to hit a building with a plane.
Weird coincidence.
Well, the first one, even the first one that's happening, and you're like, and the reports are coming up, and we're not sure where Dick Cheney is, and there's all this stuff going on.
And even in that, there's that period, and then when the other one hit, is that the one that blew the hole through?
Yeah.
And you're just like, wait a minute.
There's got to be a mistake.
That's got to be an error.
There's no way that happened twice.
And now, of course, we've had all these years to think about it and ruminate on it, but as it was happening, it felt like the most... And then you start hearing the reports of other things happening, and you're like... And I just remember very distinctly by noon that day thinking...
fucking anything could happen today if we found out those that this was like i mean i'm not trying to sound glib but like if we found out there was some kind of like bizarre virus or alien invasion at this point i would not be that surprised or if you turn on the tv and you were like houston was just destroyed in a in a nuclear explosion every time i saw a plane for two or three weeks because then there was the thing oh now the golden gate bridge is going to be next of course they all look like
bombs didn't they you just all use i would hear a plane and i would have to look out and i wasn't even traumatized by this in the way that you know me and my friends in other places were i didn't have the personal experience of this but i just for a few weeks you're like who fucking knows what's going to happen yeah they all look like so peter sorry peter jennings so at one point in the in the late afternoon he gets visibly frustrated on air and says when will the president
make a statement or in some way take charge of the situation because the president needs to appear now.
And he was in hiding, not hiding, but you know, it's been hours and hours and the vice president is in an undisclosed location, but the president is just flying around in the sky and making no public statement.
And he was like, it was shocking how, how,
How visibly frustrated he was and how much he was speaking the truth from in his own voice on the air.
And it and it was it was the moment that I realized that George W. Bush was a chicken shit and that everything he did subsequent to that moment was a chicken shit move.
Like I lost through Peter Jennings's eyes.
I realized that George Bush was was a chicken shit and he should never have been elected president.
He should never have survived his teen years.
And I still have a space for him.
Down in the vault?
I still have a bed.
You walk by sometimes, look at old room number six and think, oh boy.
I still have three squares and a chair.
G-Dub.
Because we're going to find out the depth of his chicken shittedness.
Mm-hmm.
But that... Let your bed start shrinking, buddy.
Wait till the dimensions of your room start being a little bit more oblique.
All right.
I think that'll do.
Did you know that I own undisclosedlocation.com?
No.
Shh.