Ep. 212: "There's My Ride"
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Hello.
Hi, John.
Hi, Merlin.
How's it going?
Good.
Why are you laughing?
Oh, I heard the squawk, squawk, squawk of seabirds.
Yeah.
They're probably fighting over a dead rat.
Yeah, good for them.
They're real nice seagulls.
They don't really eat anything.
I saw an infographic about possums the other day.
Oh, yeah?
Yeah, and it's basically said, hey, you know what?
Be nice to possums.
Yeah, they have a lot of disadvantages.
That's true.
We are privileged.
We should be aware of that.
They are blind and have rat tails and nobody likes their face.
Well, let's be honest.
They're monsters.
They're terrifying.
But apparently, it turns out, according to this infographic I found on Tumblr, which is never wrong, an opossum is an animal that will eat lots of nuisance animals.
I see.
It can eat ticks, and yet, it turns out, it is immune to Lyme disease.
It's like America's Little Garbage Man.
How do you survive on a diet of ticks?
Well, I think they eat lots of different... I could find the infographic if you want.
I think that's just part of their menu.
Here's an interesting fact about possums.
I may have told you this already.
But possums, cats will accept possums.
And possums accept cats as like co-habitators.
Like a cat, and I have seen this with my own eyes, a possum will enter a yard where there is previously a cat and the cat will just sit and lick its paws.
Is that right?
And the possum will just walk right on by, and the cat's just licking its paws.
And you're thinking, do your job, sir.
Yeah, I'm like, hello, cat.
Here is vermin.
Yeah.
And the cat says, no, this is my brethren, the possum, the humble possum I consider a friend.
John, are there other kinds of pairings like this in nature?
Are there situations in the biome where two seemingly incompatible creatures can find some kind of common cause?
I feel like whale sharks and remora.
A remora will just attach itself to a whale shark.
It's nature's inept purchase.
That's right, exactly.
When we were making our eel analogy...
You know, I was thinking of the sort of leech-like quality of certain kinds of eels, primarily remora, but I didn't want to confuse people.
Eel is much better.
No, I think that's clear.
It's like flammable and inflammable.
That's right.
They both mean the same thing.
That's a really unfortunate, confusing thing.
It is confusing.
Well, it's like...
It's like regardless and irregardless.
Is that a word?
I like that as a word.
I don't think it's a word.
Irregardless?
Yeah.
No, I'm afraid it's not.
What about braggadocious?
Is that a word?
Absolutely.
Braggadocious?
And braggadocio.
I know braggadocio.
Yeah.
It's a spicy meatball.
Braggadocious is something that rhymes with supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.
Oh, man.
You know what you have?
You have great flow.
Yeah.
Word.
Something I've always admired about you.
Well... Well, I'm John Roderick.
Your clothes look fresh.
I wonder where you got them.
Polyester pants with the big bell bottoms.
Big brim hat that makes me want to holler.
A monkey plaid jacket with a 20-foot collar.
Damn.
Oh, no, don't step on my toe with the platform shoes from the flashback store.
You make good money, so I don't understand why you dress like a shop out of garbage can.
Damn.
Damn.
I get stupid.
I shoot an arrow like Cupid.
I use a word that don't mean nothing like looped it.
Oh, looped it.
I'll say I'll do what you like in case you missed it.
I'm the one that said just grab them in the biscuits.
Give him the gas face.
Hammer.
Gas face.
I was a little late today.
Oh.
Oh.
You had your reasons.
I went to a lunch the other day.
The terrible thing in life is that every man has his reasons.
Everybody has his reasons.
I went to a lunch the other day.
Oh, there's my bride.
Oh, no.
Hello.
The super tanker pulls in.
Oh.
A nefarious white train pulls out.
I went to a lunch the other day, and I was there on time.
And I got out of my car, and I was like, on time, Charlie.
Look at me.
I'm going to go in there and get a table and wait for these other suckers to roll in.
A lot of people say there's no such thing as being on time.
You're only early or late.
Well, so that's right.
Exactly.
Although I was I felt like I was precisely on time.
And I walk in and here are these two M fuckers, if you will, who are sitting there at the table already.
And I walk over and I'm like, what's up, prompt?
And the one guy whose name is Derek Fadesco, and he's the bass player of the Murder City Devils and of Pretty Girls Make Graves.
Oh, so you're in talks.
And now of the cave singer.
There's going to be internet chatter about this.
Are you in talks?
Oh, just talking.
Just talking.
Yeah.
And he says, oh, yeah, being late is bullshit.
Don't give me any of that late shit.
Ooh, interesting.
And I was like, whoa.
Slow your roll, Johnny.
And then the other guy that we were having a lunch with, Brian Yeager, who's also a pretty rock and roll guitar player.
He says, oh, yeah, late.
Forget that.
Don't be late.
That's like the lamest thing.
And I was like, okay, all right, everybody slow down.
This sounds like a more you know video.
And then they both went back and forth a couple of times, realizing from my reaction that I was Lady McLaderson.
They were like...
I mean, you know, habitually, they're both like, man, people that are late, fuck those people.
That's uncool.
You got to be on time or early.
Those are the only options.
And I was like, shit, man, this lunch is off to a whiz-bang start.
Dressing me down.
You need to maintain an expectation, you know?
Don't you think?
You mean, you're talking about, like, maintain other people's expectations of me?
You gotta manage that shit.
Yeah, well, you know, who's the songwriter at that lunch?
That's my question.
Right?
Songwriters late.
Songwriters got deep thoughts to think.
Cold day in hell when I start taking notes from a fucking bass player.
I mean, I'll take notes like if I'm playing the bass.
Sure.
Somebody said to me that I started doing Snapchats.
Oh, right.
You're Snapchatting.
How's that going?
Well, I don't know.
It's very confusing still.
I've heard it's very confusing.
But somebody commented because the thing is people want to comment on your Snapchats, but the only place that they can do that is on Twitter.
So the only communication I get about my Snapchats is on other social media platforms.
That's confusing.
That's like getting footnotes in a separate book.
Exactly.
That's pretty small.
So like people are watching my snaps, but they have no in-app capability to respond at all.
What's the chat part mean?
You can send that person a snap, I guess.
You can snap back to them.
Oh, and that's regarded as a chat.
I guess so.
You're speaking visually.
Yeah, but I don't want anybody throwing snaps at me.
You can't heart me.
You can't re-ping me.
You can't do anything.
So I get tweets about the snaps, and somebody tweets me and says, your voice is a lot different than your snaps.
I'm like, what are you talking about?
Is this a video?
Yeah, I'm doing videos on snaps.
Oh, you're doing video snaps.
All right.
It's like Vine.
I'm doing Vines on snaps.
I see you snap your Vine.
Well, I'm Vining snaps is what I'm doing.
Yeah, I'm not snapping any Vines because I haven't made Vines in a long time.
Are you kidding me?
Nobody's doing that anymore.
Yeah, what are you making Vines about?
What are you, an internet comedian?
Dial it down.
I still click on links sometimes in Twitter that take me to Vines because I follow a lot of people in black Twitter.
Oh, is that right?
And that's different from weird Twitter.
Oh, very different.
I mean, there is some overlap of black Twitter and weird Twitter.
Is there a Venn diagram?
You get a little bit of overlap?
Is there a weird black Twitter?
You know, oh, there's not a weird black Twitter.
Oh, you're talking about, yes, there is a weird, well, I don't know.
I think weird Twitter, there are black Twitterers who work within weird Twitter.
And I don't think there's enough of that that there's actually like weird black Twitter.
Weird lives matter.
But I do feel that from black Twitter I get sent to Vines.
Oh, yeah.
Hashtags and Vines.
Yeah.
That's where I'm seeing Vines.
I get the feeling a lot of the hashtags made out of sentences are a black Twitter thing.
Is that right?
I don't see – I see hashtags out of sentences.
Yeah, like, oh, you know you're eating at McDonald's when five ways to end a bris or whatever.
Like, you get these – I see those in the trending, and I'm like, huh?
I feel like – well, there are a couple of black Twitters, let's be honest.
Okay, all right.
There are, like, 15 black Twitters, and I don't really get – I'm not into the, like, hashtag sentences world.
And if I see somebody that's hashtag sentencing me a lot in any Twitter world –
I generally move away from them towards someone else.
I've noticed in my Twitter feed, though, lately, I can't believe we're sitting here talking already this long about Twitter, but any more?
Nine out of ten tweets in my feed are links.
Right.
Links to elsewhere.
You know, like, here's the thing I saw.
Take a look at this.
Here's a thing I wrote.
Here's a blah, blah, blah, blah.
Linkity links.
And I'm like, where?
You know, and then I'll see somebody who's just using Twitter the way we used to do, which is like, here's a tweet I made.
Yeah.
And it's like, oh, what a refreshing breath of fresh air.
I miss that.
I miss bespoke Twitter.
Yeah.
It's just like, oh, this is a person who is still making tweets, not linking to something, not using it as a, you know, some diabolical thing.
Clearing house.
But they treat it like the last row of desks in a fifth grade class, which is what it should be.
Wow.
The last row of desks in a fifth grade class.
That's a great Morrissey song.
I really love your flow.
Thank you, man.
You're just like... Don't call it a comeback.
The last row of desks in a fifth grade class.
That's what Twitter is to my ass.
Sitting here joking while I'm on my ass.
I got lots of boogers and gum under my desk.
So a few things rhyme with desk.
Flow, flow, flow.
I got the rap flow.
I got the flow.
Rap, rap, rap.
Flow, flow, flow.
Bomb the bass.
And so you got a Snapchat.
I got a Snaps, right?
And somebody says, my voice sounds different.
And I said, you know, of course, because I can't let a comment like that go by.
I say, in exactly what way does my voice sound different on the one media versus the other?
Well, apparently my voice on the podcast is deeper and fuller and richer.
Whereas on the snaps, where my voice is being transmitted through the tiniest microphone ever made in history, my voice sounds thinner.
And I didn't want to go like 15 tweets deep into this.
But I'm like, yes, I am speaking into a professional microphone on the podcast.
going into a professional analog to digital converter.
Where I was on a Snapchat.
Right.
I'm not, you know.
Digital all the way down.
When I hear my voice, like when I'm making a video of my daughter, I actually talk faster in real life, which seems improbable.
And I sound like a four-year-old trying to play like a Charlie Parker solo.
On what?
On your nose?
On your nose.
Well, that's one of the things you can't unhear.
I want to say Philip Larkin.
I forget who it was, but somebody who was a critic of jazz says every Charlie Parker riff sounds like the Woody Woodpecker song.
Salt peanut, salt peanut.
I think that's strange because I thought the whole deal with all this social nonsense was it's all about the commenting.
I don't know anymore.
Are you enjoying it?
Are you enjoying the change?
Are you just snapping your chats?
It's interesting that snapping chats has inspired me to a different style.
Something I would not have done on Vine.
Which is, you know, I'm just walking along and I throw up the Snapchat and I go... Your voice sounds so different.
I know.
And I don't know why... You sound so much more like interstitial woodwind music.
I sound like that guy that I was in that band with briefly who played the flute and also talked into the flute as he went by.
He was scatting, not talking.
He was just like... I don't think I'd like that at all.
But not like a Thelonious Monk groaning along, but like it's part of the tune, like he's doing a Tuvan flute singing?
He's a scatter.
He's jazz scatting.
But he's doing it over the top of a flute, so all of the scatting also has like a accompaniment.
And then he'll do some flute riffing.
It's very jazz.
Oh, sure.
You know, jazz flute.
Oh, yeah.
What are you going to do?
What is that?
Is that Jean-Luc Ponte?
Isn't he the jazz flute guy?
I'm going to have to look that up.
That's my foul card on jazz flute.
I want to say it's Jean... Jean-Luc... Panthi?
Panthi?
Is he a flutist?
Panthi?
Isn't he the person who said... Oh, no, he plays the fiddle.
He plays the fiddle.
Oh, the fiddle.
And he whistles into it.
Panthi, Panthi, Panthi.
Allons-y.
Tell me, do you arrange, I'm asking this question and I know the answer already.
Do you arrange the keys on your keychain into a system?
Absolutely.
And how many keys are on your keychain right now?
Exactly two.
Yep, yep, yep.
What?
Yep, yep, yep.
Exactly two.
Telephone, telephone.
Cheeseburger, bang, bang.
Telephone, telephone.
I have a lot of keys on my ring right now.
And I, as you can imagine, arranged them.
But they somehow have become unarranged.
And it's because I took a couple of keys off to give to somebody while I was away.
And then another key had to go off and then back on.
And now every time I come to a door, I stand there like a fucking ape.
It's like starting over.
Yeah, it's like you handed five cue balls to an ape and asked him to play snooker.
Oh, that's rough.
Right?
Yeah.
Where it's like, what the?
And I'm standing there.
He's used to playing an eight ball.
He doesn't know anything.
He doesn't know from snooker.
Snooker?
Snooker is that little table.
He drinks some ale.
Little table with the little pylons.
Watch some cricket.
He's got five cue balls.
So I'm there.
I'm flipping through keys.
People are piling up behind me.
This is no way to live, John.
But now I'm all screwed up.
I'm baffled by the keys I have.
I don't know how to arrange them anymore.
I feel like left behind.
Everybody else is being raptured, and I'm standing here trying to find the fucking keys to the door.
Oh, what a miserable feeling.
Ugh.
Yeah, I... You have two keys, so that's not... You can't really call that a system.
It's a system.
Oh, it's a system, buddy.
I have a nice, strong... I don't know what you call that ring.
What do you call that ring with the overlap?
A keychain.
What do you call that?
There's got to be a name.
There's got to be a term of art for that.
Keyring.
Well, it's not the kind with a clasp.
It's the kind that's got the little—you put your thumbnail under there, and you open it up a little bit, and then you turn it and turn it and turn it.
It's double thickness.
Here's a life hack.
I think putting keys on a keychain is a lot like backing up a truck with a trailer.
You just have to tell your mind to do the opposite of what you think you should do.
You ever had that advice with backing up a trailer?
Well, yeah, right.
I mean, it's like—
Grab the bottom of the wheel and do everything backwards.
It's like if you're in a canoe and you're in an eddy, you're becalmed in an eddy, but you're going to enter the river, the stream, again, from the side.
You're going to go into the river.
You're in the river already, but you're becalmed.
You're eddied, and you're going to head in.
Because the thing is, it's not a thing where you can just gradually join the flow of the river.
You have to go straight in from the side.
Huh.
And if you lean up river, which every cell in your body is telling you to do, because you're going from calm to rapid, everything tells you lean up river.
If that happens, if you do that, you're going to flip that canoe.
Mm-hmm.
And the last thing you think to do, the last thing you want to do is lean down river when you enter into a river that way from the side.
That's not what you want to do.
Not only lean down river, but like stretch your oar out as far as you can down river.
And pull.
Huh.
That is not what your body wants to do.
It's counterintuitive.
It's a canoeing turns out.
That's right.
That's how you're going to survive that move.
I bet there's a lot of things like this.
I bet there is.
You know what I'm saying?
There's a lot of things where you should not listen to your instincts.
Yeah, it's like a possum and a cat.
It's a lot like a possum and a cat.
You've got to learn that sometimes your instincts are not just wrong.
They're the opposite.
And then you have to learn that's expertise.
You learn that.
That's right.
That's the opposite.
Yeah, like saying, when's the baby do?
Never say that.
Don't say, when's the baby do?
Oh, I've done it.
I've done it.
I did it.
This is not a bit.
I actually have done that.
And now I don't say that.
What happened?
She said, what the fuck are you talking about?
I'm not having a baby.
Yeah, that's no good.
Herbie Mann is a well-known jazz flautist.
Look at the Wikipedia page.
I'm trying to find if there's a name for scatting while you play flute.
Didn't Herbie Mann do all the music for Miami Vice?
Or did he do Rocket, Don't Stop It?
Okay, you just conflated three things in the most amazing way.
Michael Mann directed Miami Vice.
The guy from that Jeff Beck thing, Jan Hammer, did the music.
I see Jan Hammer.
And then Herbie Hancock did Rocket.
Oh, rock it.
Don't stop it.
I feel like the music of Jan Hammer.
Mm-hmm.
It holds up.
I had that record with him and Jeff Beck.
I'm trying to think.
What am I thinking of?
Oh, you know, it was great.
Was it him and Neil Schoen?
Lies.
No more lies.
Was it HSAS?
What was the one?
Jan Hammer and Neil... I think they did.
Didn't they do an album together and they're in a cage and he's playing like a keytar?
Schoen and Hammer.
Lies.
Lies.
No more lies.
Is that SHSAS?
lies lies lies yeah you're gonna get you oh no yeah yeah yeah here to stay by shonen hammer with the hit song no more lies you'll notice that lies were a big theme in 80s pop oh sing it sister what what is that song by berlin oh no no uh uh not berlin um missing persons they had a song about lies they had the walking nla they had um
They were a good band.
Missing Persons?
Missing Persons were a good band.
They suffered from 80s production, which I know we're not going to get into.
It's one of the things we don't talk about.
But they were great.
They were Lil Frank Sapa's band.
That's right.
That's right.
Dale Basio.
Dale Basio.
I've told you the Dale Basio story.
I remember it.
If you told me, tell me again.
No more lies.
Well, didn't I ever tell you about the time that I met Dale Basio?
To the sake of argument, no.
Tell me.
Are you telling me you met Dale Bosio?
Not only.
Oh, wait.
You saw her on the street.
Yeah.
Yes.
I saw her on the street.
And she wanted you to come to the show?
Was that it?
I saw her on the street.
I was riding a bicycle.
Right.
Which is not a thing I always do.
Mm-hmm.
And I'm riding along and here's this tiny little creature with, you know, sort of flamboyant hair, pink and blonde hair.
And this was before everybody was wearing pink hair, if you know what I'm saying.
It was like her and Citi Lapa, that's it.
I ride past her and I just, it's not a thing that I normally, I'm not walking around carrying Dale Basio's name in my head.
I get Dale and Terry.
It's confusing because... Is it Terry?
Dale.
Terry?
Dale.
You're talking about the two chipmunks?
Yeah, I think I am.
Terry and Dale?
Well, they were married, right?
Terry Bazio was the drummer in Zappa's band.
He's the famous drummer that's like... Look at that set.
Look at his set.
Oh, my goodness.
Everybody says, oh, Terry Bazio.
And then Dale... John, this is... He has five bass...
He has five kick drums.
Go watch – not right now, but go watch soon some videos of early missing persons because it's really one of those things where the drummer –
husband of the lead singer the drummer really does believe that he is the featured player yeah and um and he's probably overcompensating john he's got one two three he's got at least eight hi-hats in this photo i'm looking at he's got all these crash cymbals up over his head he's got more drums than any three normal people yeah he's got a lot of drums and he's and he plays them all he's famous for it
That's Terry Bozzio.
But, you know, Dale Bozzio and there were quite a few sort of punky new wave female lead performers.
I think a lot of the tone was set by Wendy O. Williams.
And that was exactly what I was about to say.
Sorry.
No, no, no.
It's another example of you're in my mind meld.
That video where Wendy O. Williams is riding on top of a semi truck and they crash through a wall of television sets.
Oh, yeah.
Where she has electrical tape over her nipples.
I do remember that, yes.
Boy, that really made a lasting impression.
I imprinted on that.
And, you know, you combine that with some Eurythmics and some Missing Persons and you really have a new, there was a new model.
Mm-hmm.
This was not something that, you know, none of these performers were going to be.
They weren't former Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders, if you know what I'm saying.
I totally know what you're saying.
They were new cut, a new cut of cloth.
And it made a definite and lasting impression on me.
The hair thing was important.
You had, like, for example, you had, what's your name, Alana from Thompson Twins.
She had the funny hair and a funny hat.
Oh, that hat was so awful.
I could not get, Alana, I could not follow.
Alana Miles, I think.
Yeah, that was not, that was not my jam.
But Bananarama had amazing hair.
God, I love me some Bananarama.
And there was obviously like one member of Bananarama, just as there was one member of TLC that I really fixated on.
Yeah, I think it's almost always because kind of the Dennis DeYoung problem or the Peter Cetera problem where you get this one person who kind of or maybe the Beyonce problem canonically, where there's one person who kind of becomes the front person.
It's happened with the guy Thor from the band Thor.
You get the person who becomes the front person.
Everybody's like, hey, what about me?
You know, I'm Tommy Shaw.
I saved this fucking band.
Yeah.
Hey, what about me?
I'm Tommy Shaw.
Yeah.
I'm the drummer from Styx.
I'm crazy on the cocaine.
What about me?
I'm dressed like a sailor.
Yeah, right.
Get this guy over here.
Exactly.
Where's my soup?
Here's the thing about Tommy Shaw.
I never liked his face.
Yeah, the 80s were a problem.
His hair and his face did not match his body and did not benefit from a white jumpsuit.
Okay.
That band had sartorial problems.
I mean, Paradise Theater, I think they finally decided they were going to wear funny outfits.
Paradise.
Rocking the paradise.
You got Dennis DeYoung.
He looks kind of like somebody who works on a Midway.
You got, what is it, John and Chuck Ponozo?
Oh, John and Chuck.
I forget to pay the electric bill, but I know these names.
And so you got him.
You got the coked up drinky drummer.
God bless him.
God rest his soul.
Right.
And he's wearing like, he's dressed like Commodore Schmidlap with short pants.
Schmidt lapping short pants Schmidt lapping I know I know it's serious then you got you got his brother playing the bass laconic bass player in a tie sure then the tie that was the one and it probably a leather tie right skinny red leather might have been a leather tie usually pretty sharp sort of a Billy Joel Billy Joel pioneered the skinny red leather tie am I right yeah what about a pair of old tab collars welcome back to the page of Josh
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Did you just give Billy Joel the gas face?
I gave him the...
You got J.Y.
J.Y.
was tall.
I remember J.Y.
was tall and had really, really unfortunate hair.
Oh, that hair.
That hair looked like, do you remember the loaf of bread that had butter in the top?
Sure, you got a split-top butter-top bread.
Split-top butter-top bread.
Totally remember that.
Butter-top, what was that stuff called?
Hidden Valley Ranch.
No, it's butter cleft.
It was vagina-top bread.
Yes, camel bread, camel toe.
And his hair looked like that, and then a set of curtains.
That's so true.
Right?
If you put a split-top loaf of bread on top of a car that had curtains in the windows.
And who's going to do that, really?
Yeah, no, you're right.
And then if I remember, and I'm just trying to remember here, I feel like then Tommy Shaw had like a white jumpsuit, and he was like Robin Zander-sized.
He was like a little guy.
Yeah, yeah, he's only 5'2".
Did you know that this exact thing happened to the posies?
Our good friends, the Posies.
Which exact thing?
Well, not the jumpsuit or the muffin top bread.
Okay.
But the Posies signed.
And the Posies, for those who are not familiar.
Oh, my gosh.
Were a band with two co-lead singers.
Oh, my gosh.
two co-songwriters and and both uh i mean we kid but my goodness i love the posies so much yeah well i mean like for for me like i was still taping stuff off the radio into the 90s and i remember catching my big mouth i know i told you this before but hearing my big mouth on the radio and like i was just blown away
The reason we talk so much about the posies on this program is that without the posies, there would be no John and Merlin.
Oh, my gosh.
This is true.
Oh, my goodness.
So it's that Gwyneth Paltrow movie with the subway.
Same thing.
Oh, my goodness.
You're right.
A butterfly flaps its wings in China.
Yeah, right.
And then pretty soon it's butterflies all the way down.
That's right.
And then you are in Oakland watching a Ken Strinkfellow show that nobody else attended.
You know, I met Scott Miller that night.
Did I ever mention that?
Yes, you did.
In any case, when the Posies signed to a major label... They signed to Warner Brothers.
Let's call it Warner Brothers.
For the sake of argument, let's call it Warner Brothers.
They decided that John Auer...
was well suited to be the front man and they pushed him forward in all the band photos really at that time how does how does one say uh he was a little more live and he had kind of like uh sort of handsome handsome boy good looks oh he was good looking and ken uh looked a little bit like a bottle opener
Ken was awkward, yeah, and had sort of a praying mantis that had been dipped in some frosting vibe.
If you took a praying mantis and dipped it in frosting.
That's how they got that title, praying mantis on the beater.
The praying mantis would not be into it.
No.
The frosting would not be becoming on the praying mantis.
And that was just like, wow.
And so John, our he's got, he's also, he's kind of got theater nerd written all over him.
Do you think a little bit like John with his, with his big, like a wonder stuff hair, he kind of had that like, you know, indie rock vibe.
Yeah.
John seemed like a guy who had never had sex before, but when he did have sex, look out world.
Oh, goodness.
Whereas, you know, whereas Ken, yeah, seemed like somebody who had had a lot of sort of awkward sex in squats, maybe, or like locker rooms.
I'm not sure.
I can't go back in time and reimagine the posies because it's all too threaded through the world.
Right.
But before he got his own sarcophagus, he was living in his mom's sarcophagus.
That's right.
That's right.
That's right.
Before he realized before he became immune to sunlight and garlic.
Yeah, he was, you know, and and and if you look at them when they had Robert Smith hair, John looks like Robert Smith.
He does, kind of, yeah.
And it looks like, remember that weird game where it was like a game that your parents would buy you if you were going on a long road trip, where you could use a pen and magnetize, use the pen to draw on a character of a man.
Oh, yeah, the fuzzy guy with the metal shavings.
Yeah, with the metal shavings.
Sure.
Kind of looked like a skinny one of those.
Interesting.
Anyway, because John Auer was a great guitar player.
And also, here's the terrible part.
wrote the pop songs, wrote the hits.
Ken wrote all the difficult material.
Oh, interesting.
So here's John.
So Golden Slumbers, that's John.
I cannot go down the Posies catalog and tell you who wrote what because they both sing on every song.
And they sound so much the same.
And then what's great is...
I have a live recording of them in France doing Surrender.
And it seems obvious to me that they are going to try and outdo who can take it up a fifth, an octave, another fifth, another octave.
And they keep finding new impossible harmonies until it's utterly unlistenable.
And it's awesome.
Okay, so he's the rock guy.
If you look at the pictures from that certain era, that initial era, John is so far in front
of the other dudes and the thing is I'm sure when the photographer was taking the pictures he was like now Ken you step forward you know now Musburger you step forward but all of those other photos ended up in the garbage and the only ones the label wanted were the ones with our way forward so far forward that the other guys are like blurry
Oh, no, that is not good for morale.
Right.
And so and so Ken was like, but, but, but like co-singer, co-songwriter, co-front person, they really share the duties on stage.
but uh during that era and you know as time went on ken became more of a you know of a living uh became more of a real boy he became a little bit more of a real boy and john you know suffered a little some aging related issues got some cats but um but yeah i i think about that all the time when i think about this this sort of who i mean because
Yeah, I think it inspired a lot of unhealthy competition in those guys that already had a lot of competition motivating them.
Because what are you gonna, I mean, I would hate to be in a band where I wasn't the sex symbol.
Luckily, I was always the sex symbol in every band I was in.
That's true, but your band photos, hmm.
They never really quite did you guys justice, but... Come on, let's not talk about them.
I'm so embarrassed by them.
No, they weren't bad, but they didn't really... I hate them so much.
No, but they just didn't really do justice to the vibe.
I think my photos of you... Terrible.
My photos of you guys, I think... A photo of you guys in Muni.
I think you're making a face and Sean's staring off in the distance.
I think that should be the band photo.
You were a great photographer, Merlin, and some of your photos I still turn to as examples of how I wish to be represented.
Mr. Roderick, the photo you sent, you're in a cape smoking a cigar pursued by police.
Is that an accident?
No, I'd like that to be the photo that we use for all the promo.
All right.
Could you send us literally anything else?
We did use that as promo.
I dealt with Barsouk on that.
And they were like, hey, we're going to use this.
And they used it.
Give me the high quality.
So I gave them high quality.
That was a fun night.
Who do you think?
That was a fun night.
When people listen to this podcast, I think there are people who...
think that I'm the sex symbol of this podcast, and there are people who think that you're the sex symbol.
We are the posies of podcasts.
Oh, you think there's John people and Merlin people.
Do you ever get communications from people where it's evident that they are like, I would like to sex you, Merlin?
No.
I used to get something more like that, but not really, no.
I think I had a good 10-day period when I was about 20, and I didn't utilize it.
And it's just been a rough road ever since.
I swear to you, that picture of you in that Air Force fatigue jacket.
Oh, the Henderson jacket.
With the Henderson jacket, which I still have.
And the blonde mustache, where you're kind of crouching in a subway station, but you're looking up at the camera, and you look like the prince from The Princess Bride.
Oh, yeah.
You see, I used to look like Carrie Elwes.
People don't believe that.
I used to look a little like Carrie Elwes and a little bit like Michael Palin.
Nobody would believe that now.
I'm a grotesquerie now.
Just exactly like him.
And I think of that photo all the time, like, oh, Merlin.
Really?
That's like your picture of me.
my picture of young merlin before i met merlin when he's out there playing in bacon ray and going to new york sometimes yeah and wearing a henderson jacket wearing the henderson jacket and i'm just like oh you must have really that's what i look like i had i had pretty weird i had like three different haircuts josiah bear would not like my hair i had like three different haircuts
Yeah, I think of you, the thing is sometimes, like I've been pals with you for a while.
I'd never seen you not wearing jokey rock star glasses and with a beard.
And then I saw, when you first started sleeping at my house in your underwear, and I'd see you without your glasses, you look so different without your glasses.
And now I see photos of you as a kid without glasses, and I think it's like the weirdest thing in the world.
Do I look like myself as a kid?
No.
Not really, because as you know, you have a beard-shaped face.
Yeah, that's right.
People say all the time about my daughter that she looks exactly like me.
She looks so much like me, but better.
She's just a little child, and she's also a girl, and I don't look like that anymore.
I looked like that when I was a baby, but how do you see any resemblance?
Oh, there's a huge resemblance.
That's good.
That's very flattering to me, because I think that she's a beautiful little girl.
She is beautiful.
A little bit impatient in parades.
She wants to get to the end of the parade sometimes.
Three quarters of the way through the parade, she's looking to the end of the parade.
It's like clowns, John.
I think people misremember what was fun during childhood.
There are people who still hire clowns to do things or put their kids in proximity to clowns and act like there's anybody who's ever enjoyed a clown.
Same with parades.
A parade is... I don't know.
Has that ever been that fun for a kid?
Even to be in a parade?
Yeah, let alone to sit on the sidewalk all day.
Some clowns rolled up on us.
Is that right?
And they came right up and they wanted to put a button on her.
And they wanted to talk to her.
And she was like, I'm not having any clowns.
And then the one clown was like, come on, I'm a clown.
And she said, yeah, all right, you're a clown.
Like, OK, I'm not, you know, like, I'm not scared.
I'm not going to, like, recoil from you.
i'm not gonna cry i wouldn't give you the i wouldn't give you the cry i'm just gonna she just eyeballed them she just stared them down until the clowns like slowly backed away yeah and i said maybe you know like clowns they're just trying to have fun they're just uh clowns just want to have fun yeah it's just fun times you know they're just like joking and she's like i don't like clowns i was like
Oh, wow, you know yourself a lot better than I did when I was your age, because at your age, I felt obligated to like clowns.
That was a different time.
You called people sir, and you acted like you enjoyed clowns.
That's just what you did.
Yeah, because adults were like, hey, this is the one day a year when we're going to look at you and say that it's time for you to have fun, and look what we did.
We got a bunch of clowns, and so you better fucking enjoy it.
Oh, yes, for you, buddy.
I was like, okay.
Don't be a dick.
Okay, I don't want them to touch me, but okay.
I remember very distinctly going to a birthday party where there were clowns and it left a lasting negative impression.
Well, I mean, I don't want to beat it to death, but I feel like if you're going to be a responsible clown college faculty member, I think the first thing you teach first day, you're sitting there in the multipurpose room talking to all the future clowns.
I think the first thing you have to make clear is look, as you may know, or maybe you fucking don't know, not everybody loves clowns.
So it's like the Hippocratic Clown Oath.
Number one, do no harm.
Fucking gauge what the kid wants.
Do no harm.
Because the thing is, if you were any other adult, imagine everything a clown does being done by a middle-aged man without makeup, and it's horrifying.
What makes dressing like a fucking clown make that better?
Oh, stop it.
Don't get up in a kid's face and give him a balloon.
What are you?
No, I don't want a balloon.
You get like 60 of them coming out of a white van?
Well, I like that.
My feeling about a clown is this.
All clowns are only there to contextualize the sad clowns.
Oh.
I don't want any happy clowns.
No.
Except to frame the sad clowns.
The few sad clowns are the only clowns that matter.
And all the happy clowns are just the noise that
And it's like the soft focus or it's like the penthouse magazine lens where you've got the Vaseline smeared around the lens so all you can see is the sad clown in the middle.
Because I'll interact with a sad clown all day.
Oh, I like a sad clown.
You know, you get into the classic clown and you get the three kinds of clowns.
There's a lot of artfulness in that.
I like that.
The three clowns you meet in heaven.
Clowning as a French art, like, okay, fine.
That's cool, but there's a lot of French art I think you shouldn't force on to preschool-aged kids.
Pointillism is not going to be appreciated.
They don't understand enough about light and contrast.
That's true.
I think that what kids want to see is knife-throwing.
Yeah.
There's not a kid in the world that doesn't understand knife throwing.
I think also whip cracking.
That's fun.
I do like that.
Physical, but I mean like physical, weird physical skills that could be extremely dangerous are very hypnotic to a lot of kids.
What was the last time you saw somebody get a pie in the face?
Oh, like outside of like a TV show?
Yeah, like an actual pie in the face right in front of you.
And I'm not talking about some Harlem Globetrotters like bucket of confetti.
Oh, yeah.
I'm talking about like Taylor.
You know, the Harlem Globetrotters used to do that game.
They're throwing water on you.
Like, oh, my God, here comes a big bucket of water.
Oh, it's sparkles.
As I sit here right now, I'll be 50 in a few months.
I can't tell you the last time I saw somebody hit with a pie.
It wasn't a protest or on a comedy show.
A pie in the face.
Now, think about if you and I resurrected the pie in the face.
Now, I know this isn't your scene.
I want to hear you out.
Well, I'm just saying...
Everybody's, you know, particularly in this contemporary world where it's like, how do you distinguish yourself in a world of millions and millions of people taking vines of themselves every day?
Right.
I mean, also Python, I think that'd be technically macroaggression.
It's absolutely a full-on aggression, except it's an aggression featuring banana cream.
That's true.
Now, what if, and the pie throwing big time follows your clown precept, which is do not throw a pie at somebody that you don't feel is ready to have a pie thrown at them.
They'll let you know.
They'll let you know.
They're like computer programmers and cats.
Let them come to you.
A woman said to me the other day, why is it that men feel like it's acceptable to play air drums
at a woman and stare at them while they're doing it.
Oh, making like a doo-doo face?
Well, no, just like, doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo, you know, or like play an air bass when there's a song playing on the radio.
Uh-huh.
And I was like, I don't know, men want to show off, and that's, I mean, it's embarrassing.
Yeah, they know all the parts.
It's humiliating when you really shine a light on it, but, you know, it seems, she was like, no, I think it's really sexually aggressive.
Sexually aggressive to air drum at a lady.
To don't air drum at a lady.
And I was like, I was like, I'm totally backing out of this conversation.
Literally every day I'm learning things.
There's a time when I would have thought that was totally appropriate.
And now I see that that's probably not a nice thing to do.
I guess not.
Don't air musician at somebody directly.
And so banana cream pie.
You've got one, let's say.
Yeah.
You look around the room.
There are two criteria.
Somebody has to deserve somehow a banana cream pie in the face, but also they have to be ready to take a banana cream pie.
Can they take it?
And make sure you pie up.
Don't pie down.
You want to pie up because if you pie down, you're going to lose half the pie.
I mean, this is Arthur Kessler's whole theory of creativity.
When an old lady slips on the ice, it's not funny.
But when a male presidential candidate falls on the ice, it's hilarious.
Because you're taking somebody down a peg.
You've got to find the person that needs the pie and then also know that that person's not going to be...
You can't destroy somebody with a pie.
But let's say we started banana cream pieing people.
Okay.
That's going to make the newspapers.
That would make the newspapers.
So somebody should be pie-neating, and they shouldn't mind it too much.
Like if I took a pie in the face.
Yeah.
Let's say I'm just out there in the course of my daily life, and somebody's like, hey, Roderick, and I turn around, pie in the face.
Banana cream everywhere.
I feel like I would take that with pretty good grace.
Like, I take myself pretty seriously.
I'm out in the world.
But a pie in the face?
Kind of got to give it up for that.
Like, what if you were dressed up kind of fancy?
Because then you've got to explain why you've got pie on you.
I feel like it would depend.
If I was dressed up fancy but had done something right in the immediate time and place that deserved a pie and then got a pie, I'd have to say, like,
Oh, you know, that was the universe telling you something.
I earned a pie right there.
You earned the pie.
Yeah, you were pie-neating.
If I'm just walking down the street being nice to people today and I get a pie for something I did four years ago, that's not a pie.
What if it's a pie from a stranger?
Does that change it?
You're talking about somebody that doesn't even know me that's just out, like, putting pies in people's face?
Yeah, it's like that pavement song, Pie from a Stranger.
Like, when that happens, when you get a, now it's going to hurt, it's like criticism.
Like, if it's coming from a friend, are you going to feel like you're more pie-needin'?
Does it matter?
It seems to me like you're saying just existentially, you got a pie coming today, be a good sport.
Because inherent in the pie is a sense of the other person feeling like you are capable of taking this pie with grace.
There's a compliment inherent in getting hit with a pie.
Oh, it's like getting roasted.
That's exactly right.
I get it now.
So they are paying you the hat tip of like,
You deserve a pie, but you can take a pie.
And that's sort of the kind of guy I aspire to be.
Somebody who can take a pie.
And I know a lot of people are like on the fence about whether or not that's true.
Can Roderick take a pie?
Or is he going to be like... You might be Barbra Streisanding yourself a little here.
How do you mean?
Well, you know, the Streisand effect.
You don't want to make it... I mean, are you opening the door?
Are you saying, come at me?
No, no, no.
Don't fucking throw a pie at me, you sons of bitches.
You need to check yourself before you wreck yourself.
That's right.
If somebody listening to this program is right now filling up a banana cream pie with banana cream,
Put that shit in the refrigerator and leave it there.
Don't put a pie at me.
But I do want to, you know, like one day, let's say one time in your life, if you get a pie, I'd put that right up there.
I'd say that belongs on your Wikipedia page.
I think most men have these fantasies about how they would do in a street fight, like if they had to defend someone's honor or save a baby, and they get all these fantasies about that.
I think this is a much more evolved middle-aged version of that, which is, you know, let it begin with me.
If I'm in a pie-needing state of mind and I get a pie, I want to be a gentleman about it.
That's right.
I feel like every single man in the world who has thought about what they would do in the event of a street fight is wrong about what they would actually do.
So many ways.
You're not ever going to perform the way that you have multiply fantasized.
Everybody's got a plan until they get punched in the face.
That's right.
Isn't that the quote?
Yeah, was that Buzz Aldrin?
Yeah.
Info Wars.
Buzz Aldrin, he punched somebody, didn't he?
He did.
Who'd he punch?
Fucking ding-a-ling that was like, the moon landing was faked.
Admit you're a liar.
Punch.
And he was like, get the fuck out of my face.
And the guy was like, kept coming back at him.
Just like clocked him.
Wow.
So good.
So good.
The guy really deserved it.
He's a pine-eating guy.
I've been thinking about this self-seriousness quite a bit, though, because somebody very close to me recently said that the amount of bravado that I display in my public persona, you know, the thing that...
You talked about this like two months ago.
You're still thinking about this?
Well, no.
This is now a reinforcing comment that said, you know, you don't reveal your insecurities in your public persona.
You are exactly yourself.
The only thing missing that you don't reveal is your vulnerability.
And I was like, I reveal my vulnerability all the time.
And they were like, ah...
And I sat and thought about it.
And then I was like, well, why the fuck would you reveal your vulnerability to people?
Not to talk out of school, but the handful of times you and I have come to words, that's been often the topic.
Not just you.
Obviously, I have a role in this.
But you would say, hey, you know, I'm vulnerable here.
I got feelings about this stuff, too.
And I would think, what are you talking about?
You're John Roderick.
You don't have feelings about anything.
And you would be...
very hurt.
And I would go like, wow, I need to really keep that in mind.
So then I said, everybody's insecure, right?
I mean, can you name a person that isn't insecure?
Everybody's insecure.
My security's fantastic.
Everybody says so.
Yours is, yeah.
Believe me.
Believe me.
Oh, yeah.
Everybody, yeah.
Everybody thinks my hands are normal size.
Have you done the printout yet?
No.
Oh, God, it's so great.
It's on a refrigerator.
Donald Trump was cast for a Madame Tussauds thing a few years, like in the 80s, which I think has since been taken down.
But somebody at a Madame Tussauds somewhere found an imprint of his hand.
and then you can print it out at your home and see how you compare.
I'm not interested.
Oh, but this reminds me.
Mine's bigger.
I'm sure it is.
Well, everything about you is bigger.
Everybody says so.
I had the most profound experience last night.
Yeah.
So I held up my hands.
I want you to do this right now.
Don't look at them right now.
Inside or outside?
Outside, the backs of your hands.
Oh, that's going to mean I'm gay, right?
No.
Remember that?
Remember that on the playground?
You say, look at your nails.
Yeah, they pumped 15 gallons of sperm out of my stomach.
And it was full of spider eggs.
And a gerbil.
Hold up your two hands.
Got them.
You're looking at the backs of the hands.
Got them.
Now, is one...
Bigger than the other.
I can tell you with my feet, it's definitely true.
My feet used to seem much more symmetrical.
I'm not talking about your feet right now.
I'm talking about look at your hands.
Well, I mean, my fingers are different lengths, kind of.
Yeah.
Are one set of fingers fatter than the other set of fingers?
Oh.
Not that I can tell.
Do you have that?
But you've got broken fingers.
I mean, it doesn't count.
This is why I held up my hand because I was like, ah, this finger is broken and it's a little bit fatter than the other finger.
And I held it up and I looked at my index fingers and the one that was broken was like visibly fatter than the other finger.
And I'm looking at them, and I've done this several times to compare the two index fingers.
And then I looked at the middle finger.
I was like, wait a minute.
On the broken finger hand, my middle finger is fatter.
And then I was like, because all of the fingers on my right hand are fatter than the fingers on my left hand.
But then, increasing the horror, the fingers on my left hand are longer than the fingers on my right hand.
Oh, no.
And then...
looking at them longer, I realized that it is like I had an arm replacement surgery because my left hand does not resemble my right hand in any way.
Oh, that's so disturbing.
You got like a monkey hand.
They are completely different.
Oh, no.
I mean, they're completely different.
The right hand, which is my dominant hand, the fingers are much larger, but the hand itself is slightly smaller.
And it's like a catcher's mitt.
And the left hand is like a fucking spider.
I can spread the fingers on the left hand wider than I can on the right hand.
Like, they're utterly different tools.
Oh, my God.
And this has, you know, as a guitar player, I have really struggled because my left hand has
Almost no dexterity and I can't train it to you know I've been working on getting my left hand fingers To even move reliably according to what my brain asks them to do and they barely can you know like if I'm drumming them on a table like That's as good as I can do on the right hand
Oh, you're like Terry Bosio.
On the right hand, I'm fucking 24 Terry Bosios.
I have so many hi-hats on my right hand, I can't even keep it straight.
You don't even have to think about it.
It's like shooting Stuart Copeland's out of a confetti cannon.
But my left hand, which I have to say now, looking at them side by side, the left hand is a much more elegant hand.
The right hand is just like a meat claw.
Do you think it's partly because of the unusual length of the fingers on the hand?
Perhaps, although I don't know if they're on you.
Maybe synaptically, it's taking a little bit longer.
You're losing some signal.
Maybe.
I mean, the fingers are much more elegant.
They're thinner and more tapered.
But looking at the two hands, I feel like the left hand is aesthetically much better than the right hand.
The right hand is all like, like, I'm working.
I got work to do.
I do the writing.
This just doesn't add up.
I do all the stuff.
I do all the nose picking.
I do everything except the butt wiping.
Yeah.
And the left hand is like, sometimes I play guitar solos that are kind of ham-handed.
And the right hand's like, I'm the ham hand.
And the left hand's like, yes, but I get to, I'm the featured player.
In one instance only, which is guitaring.
You're just over there with the pick.
I'm over here bending the note.
Yeah, I'm the one that's going, and the right hand's like, God, if I could be the note bender hand, we'd be out of here.
We'd be at John Mayer level.
I'd be in Bozeman, Montana, making people uncomfortable in a bar.
Oh, you got a John Auer on the left hand.
You got a Ken Strinkfeld on the right hand.
Other way around.
Other way around.
Yeah.
Okay.
Oh, now it's all in focus.
Okay.
So I can't account for this.
Mostly, I cannot account for the fact that I have lived my entire life without noticing that the two hands don't even belong on the same person.
And what am I meant to do with that?
What am I meant to do with that information?
And where does it end?
exactly it's like John Sarkis says it's evolutionary biology and this could be an adaptation and who knows what you're adapting to maybe yeah I mean I think the universe is trying to tell you something maybe the left hand is so much more elegant because it's going to be asked to interface with some kind of UFO technology when I'm promoted to Anchorman oh right you put your left hand in the machine you shake it all about it turns out that's the one that actually controls the alien technology
I don't know.
That's evolution.
You're like Cinderella.
So, I mean, what else is different?
Am I hemispherical?
Is half of my penis good and half of it is too delicate to live?
I've felt that way a lot, yeah.
The sides are warring.
The warring sides?
The warring penis sides.
You know, my left knee is the one that I blew out and I have had surgery on.
The right knee is now supporting my entire body in almost every activity.
Well, this gets back to an old issue of mine, which is just the lack of symmetry.
Where the millennials don't understand.
They don't understand they're not always going to be symmetrical.
Oh, my God.
My feet are different, too.
My feet are so different.
The right big toe is much bigger and shorter than the left big toe.
What does this symbolize?
See, that seems to be hemispherical.
Oh, no.
A very good friend of mine wrote me a text this morning.
She lives in the Carolinas.
In a mountain town in the Carolinas.
And she said, I had a dream last night where you appeared to me and you were holding, you had in your front pocket a frog baby.
And the frog baby, when the frog baby was sort of half human, half frog.
And when the baby was in human form, it was kind of a maladapted baby.
But then when it went into frog form, it was a very, very elegant frog.
Oh, that's profound.
And I was like, hmm.
And so I wrote her back and was like, how prophetic are your prophetic dreams?
Do they tend to be fairly prophetic?
Or do they skew more to the metaphoric?
Because obviously, right, frog baby in your front pocket is a metaphor for something.
Well, and especially when it takes on a different form qualitatively.
Right.
And she said I had in my front pocket a habitat.
Right.
And it was a frog baby habitat.
And when the baby was in the frog habitat in my pocket, she was happy.
And it was a female frog baby.
She was happy in the frog baby habitat in my pocket.
But when she was out of the habitat,
She was just like, ugh, awkward, wouldn't make eye contact.
Her legs didn't work very well.
Yeah, I think that's about life.
Yeah, and it's almost like you're a little bit like a mommy kangaroo with a joey.
Like, you got a whole biome in your pocket, and that's where the frog baby's happy.
The girl frog baby's happy.
When she comes out, she's got a deal.
She's like a pubescent.
baby has to come out and like deal with the world and wants to be back in mom's pouch and she but she knew so but it wasn't like she was seeing she just it's one of those dream things where you're like and i knew that you had a habitat in your pocket for the frog baby i have to guess right that she just that that it's not like she dove into the habitat and was exploring it that's for the frog it's not for her that's right it's the frog's habitat oh i i like this a lot and she showed she texted to share this with you
Yeah.
Right.
All the way from the Carolinas where it's like, I don't know how she must have had somebody run the message downhill with an envelope and then telegraph it.
Yeah.
But now I'm looking at my hands and I'm thinking frog baby.
Is that me?
Was I the frog baby?
Did she specify which pocket it was?
I mean, I have to assume front pocket, so left.
But probably your string fellow hand is the one that pulls the girl frog baby out.
Oh, sure.
Well, no, wait a minute.
Your elegant left hand is what you would use to remove the frog baby from the habitat.
No, I think you reach across.
If you have something in your left pocket, you reach across with your right hand.
Like a cowboy, okay.
Yeah, so it would be my John Auer hand reaching for frog baby.
Oh, interesting.
And yet your foot is bigger on one side than your hand on the other.
No, they're the same.
Oh, so there's consistency.
The toe size is concomitant.
Is it a lengthy toe or you made it sound like a wide, like a broad toe?
I'm saying my right hand and my left or my right hand and my right foot.
Okay.
suffer from the same condition, which is they are bulkier and more working class.
Yeah.
And the left hand and the left foot are more, let's say, elegant and refined, more white Russian.
Okay.
After the Tsar was deposed, they escaped to Paris.
Right.
But now are somewhat useless.
Because of the thin blood.
Yeah.
They have thin blood.
Right.
And they keep like they keep hanging around like the aristocratic class.
Right.
They still got the connections to some extent.
That's right.
And they're invited there because they're an archduke of some kind.
Right.
But they don't have any money.
And so.
Yes.
Yes.
I understand.
So you get the ham fisted right side.
You have the elegant left side.
The ham-fisted right side that basically owns some textile factories and is rich, rich, you know, rich, not aristocratic rich.
Uh-huh.
Well, but maybe even richer.
You know what it is?
Your body's having a civil war.
You got the Scots-Irish over on the right side that have the farms.
And on the left side, you got the effete New Englanders up here.
That's right.
From those... It's brother against brother.
It's essentially like...
From those who have the most to those who have the least, right?
Yes.
The means of production are like being exploited by the left hand.
And they're keeping the workers down.
You have to throw yourself upon the gears.
I have no idea what good my left hand is.
I know what good my left foot is because it is an alternate to the right foot.
Which one's the bad knee?
Left.
Ah, that's a shame.
So, you know, so it just, I just sort of hobble along like a sleigh stack.
Yeah.
But my left hand, what is, I mean, if I fall to the left, I guess I use my left hand to brace.
That'd be a shame, though.
You want to keep that one nice.
That's very nice.
Let's say I was in a pistol battle and I had two pistols.
Okay.
If you're in a pistol battle and you have two pistols, do you keep the left pistol in the left hand and shoot wildly and indiscriminately with it?
Or do you reserve the left pistol until the right pistol is out of ammunition and then switch it over to the right hand, which can do the job?
Well, let me respond with a nursery rhyme that might be relevant here.
Froggy went a courtin' and he did ride, uh-huh.
Froggy went a courtin' and he did ride a sword and a pistol by his side.
Whistling
Mm-hmm.
So, I'm just saying.
Maybe one side's for sword.
I think left side's for sword, right side for pistol.
And then you've got a frog in the pocket somewhere.
The thing is, here you are.
Yeah.
You're going to courting.
You're a frog.
Coming through the rye.
You got a pistol, right?
Frog and a frog coming through the rye.
Yep.
And so here you are.
You got your pistol.
You pull the pistol out with your right hand.
Pow, pow, pow until you're out of bullets.
Throw the pistol down.
Then grab the sword with the right hand.
Oh, you cross over.
The sword in the left hand.
It's less than useless.
Now, if you have a sword and you pull it out of the scabbard or the scabbard, I think you do keep the scabbard in your left hand because you're sorting with your right hand.
You get a defensive scabbard.
Right.
If somebody swings at you, the left hand can at least put up the scabbard to block them.
You could be like Inigo Montoyo and learn how to do both.
Get your man who can do both, left and right.
That's right, because you start out and you're like, ching, ching, ching, I am a left-handed sword.
But I have a secret.
That's right.
And then it is not my dominant hand.
And now you're in big trouble because I've been kicking your ass with my left hand.
Unless you are Prince, whatchamacallit.
yeah the other guy who also was well so so maybe you know this is something for you to be aware of i mean obviously you need to be thinking about pies but i mean on the other hand and of course you know the lady frog but i mean this is this is uh this is a way for you to start thinking a little bit differently now what about your eyes do your eyes differ oh yeah i mean but my eyes are falling apart merlin yeah i always was worried about do you see differently do you have different are you differently afflicted i don't want to be ableist but do you see poorly differently with the two eyes
Yeah, if you're lying in bed in the middle of the night reading a book or anymore looking at your phone,
Do you squint?
Do you close one eye?
I take off.
I have, no, no.
I'm okay mostly up close.
I have a lot of trouble at a distance, but I do have different prescriptions in the two eyes.
When I read, and this has been true my whole life, I close my left eye.
Oh, dear.
Well, it's going to give you lines.
Then I'll be aware of it, and I'll go, whoa, whoa, oh, shit.
And I'll open both eyes, and I'll kind of move the book more into the center of my face.
So you look like a learned Popeye.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Gives me my spinaches.
Mm hmm.
But then gradually I will close the left eye and I'll move the book over to the right.
And that's where that's how I read.
So.
Oh, my gosh.
And I feel like all the information out of the book is going into the left hemisphere of my brain only.
And the right hemisphere is being reserved.
Oh, see.
OK, this changes everything.
And then the hemispheres also they control the opposite side.
Yes.
Right.
So your feet left hand is controlled by the right side of your brain.
That's the creative.
And then on your other hemisphere, you got your ham-fisted gun hand.
Yeah.
So I got meat hand over here.
Okay.
And I'm reading with my right eye, which I guess is the dominant eye.
And all that information is going into the left side of the brain and being analyzed, which is useless for the most part.
That's your rational, less creative side, according to science.
And then the right-hand side of my brain is just sitting around some Archduke's palace.
It's starved.
Yeah.
Yeah, just like, uh, can I have another bowl of caviar?
Yeah, what am I, Anastasia?
Right, that's the only kind of food I know how to eat.
Oh my God.
No, Anastasia's buried in a hole somewhere, I'm sorry to say.
Now, you think that's really true?
Yeah, Anastasia didn't think of that.
Wasn't there talking for her maybe sneaking out?
Sure, but that was just another one of these white Russian tricks.
All these minor nobility ladies were like, I'm Anastasia.
You should give me more caviar.
I will live with you for a while.
Right.
And it's like, no, you're just some, you know, you're some minor nobility.
And they'd cut your caviar off after a certain point.
But if you're like, I'm Anastasia.
Oh, you've worn out your welcome.
Yeah, they did that.
They did that all the time.
But no, Anastasia with the rest of them was killed by the Reds.
Night before last, I had a dream.
And it was kind of one of those stress dreams, like, you know, you didn't study for the test, naked in class, where I was suddenly called upon to DJ a wedding reception.
And there's a very confusing computer.
That is very stressful.
Yeah.
There's a confusing computer and the mixer wasn't really working.
And I had to co-DJ the wedding reception with a two-foot-tall Frank Sinatra.
Now, wait a minute.
You've done this before because everything you're saying is creating a lot of anxiety in me.
Yeah.
The mixer doesn't work.
There's a two-foot-tall scale Frank Sinatra.
who's kind of mad that we have to do this together.
And he used to work with a guy named Carlos.
And Carlos understood how this whole system worked.
I was not doing well.
I couldn't get the crossfader to work.
And so Frank Sinatra said, Carlos never minded the fader.
Oh, Carlos never minded the fader.
So I wrote that down.
Two foot tall Frank Sinatra.
What a horrible size for Frank Sinatra.
Think about it.
Well, imagine a two-foot-tall Frank Sinatra yelling at Mario Puzo in a restaurant.
Oh, my gosh.
Would he stand on a chair, John?
It changes the whole vibe of that scene, right?
Like, he's yelling at Mario Puzo because he thinks he's the character in The Godfather.
Oh.
Oh, he's Johnny Fontaine.
He thinks he's Johnny Fontaine.
Oh.
And so he meets Mario Puzo in a restaurant somewhere.
I have to assume in Staten Island or New Jersey.
It's Trent, right?
Yeah.
They're in a restaurant.
Mario Puzo walks into a spaghetti restaurant in Trenton, New Jersey.
Frank Sinatra comes over and starts screaming at him.
And this was the era when Frank Sinatra could scream at a guy in a restaurant.
And the restaurant owner would be like, it's a fucking honor.
It's an honor to have Frank Sinatra.
They'd bring him a glass of water so he didn't hurt his pipes.
Screaming at a guy.
Screaming at Mario Puzo.
Because, you know, the mob made...
made them take the words Cosa Nostra and mafia out of that movie.
That's right.
And so he's screaming at him because he's like, I don't, you know, Johnny Fontaine, fuck you.
I never did any of that stuff.
And Puzo is probably both saying like, you're kind of proving the point right here with your weird mafia tantrum.
But also Puzo says over and over, that's not, you're not Johnny Fontaine.
Mm-hmm.
Well, it's not you.
Sure reads like that, doesn't it?
A little bit.
But it wasn't you.
I was saying that it was, you know, it was who?
Guy Fieri or some other... Jackie Diamond or... It was Jackie Diamond.
Mack the Knife, yeah.
I think it's a Romana Clay, as they say.
I'm pretty sure that's supposed to be Frank Sinatra.
And I think specifically From Here to Eternity was the movie.
Where they have intercourse in the tides.
Now, wait a minute.
I thought it was... Well, that wasn't Frank Sinatra.
No, that was Montgomery Clift?
No, I think it was... Oh, Burt Lancaster.
Burt Lancaster.
And is it Deborah Carr?
You're just outside of my... She was beautiful.
She was young.
She was innocent.
She was the greatest piece of ass I ever had.
And I had them all over the world.
See, I thought it was the man with the golden hand.
Oh, the man with the golden arm.
The golden arm.
I think that's when Frank Sinatra was chasing the dragon.
He was Chasing the Dragon, and I thought that was the movie that made him.
Oh, that was his serious movie.
And then he did those concept albums.
He retired for a while, and then he came back, and he did the summer years and all that kind of stuff.
Because he wasn't a teeny bopper anymore.
Now he's a serious artist.
That's right.
And he got a better piece.
He stopped wearing the hat as much.
But I'm starting to think, if he was two feet tall through all of that,
Right.
Think about think about the think about the meat hand on that guy.
Oh, that's a good point.
I'm from now on, when I think about that scene of him yelling at Mario Puzo.
Yeah.
I'm going to imagine him being two foot tall and the entire thing is going to it's completely symbolic of another.
We're talking about, let's be clear now, we're talking about like maybe like definitely smaller than Kenny Baker, probably smaller than the mini me guy.
I think his name is Vern Troyer.
We're talking about a very small Frank Sinatra and he had a hat and a suit.
But you said he was to scale.
Yeah, but see that I'm saying he's proportional.
I'm saying he wasn't.
He was proportional.
He was like he was like if somebody he was like, you know, you get like a three quarter sized cello or something.
In this case, it was basically like a one third scale model of Frank Sinatra.
He was not a little person.
Oh, no, no.
That's what was disturbing.
He was a magical creature, somewhat like a hobbit.
He was a wedding DJ, yeah.
And he missed Carlos.
I'm not sure why Carlos couldn't make it.
What does Carlos represent?
Carlos knew how the fader works.
You ever work on like a Radio Shack?
You ever get a really crappy mixer and you get that noise in the pots and everything?
Of course I have.
And also I didn't know how to work the computer.
Show up to a DJ gig and the cassettes, I'm talking about the needles, the little cartridges.
Yes.
The cartridges are completely trashed and worn out and the wedding people or the people that hired you to be a DJ...
I look at you and they say, you didn't bring your own cartridges?
Oh, also, I forgot to mention, all the music was New Order and American Standards.
I don't remember what his preference was.
I would guess for the standards.
I want to go to this wedding.
Every time I see you falling, I get down on my knees and pray.
I want to go to a wedding that you're the wedding DJ at.
It never occurred to me to hire you to do that job.
My God, thank you, man.
After disappointing Frank Sinatra, I feel like I could really use the goose.
No, no, no.
You know, you would DJ so well.
Yeah.
I'd read the room.
I'd really read the room.
And you'd be like, everybody's dancing.
Now I'm going to slow it down a little bit.
Now I'm going to do the featured dance, the bride and her stepfather.
Yeah.
Because her father left early in her life.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And her stepfather was the one that really got her into swimming.
He really stepped up to the plate.
And that's why she's in the Olympics.
He didn't have to do that, but he did.
He stepped up to the plate.
He would drive her to swim practice.
Over and over.
And then her father, her fucking deadbeat father, shows up at the wedding.
He thinks he can just show up.
He thinks after years of phoning it in, he can show up and act like nothing's changed.
But her stepfather has the grace...
to, you know, to not be jealous of this.
And the daughter loves her father, even though he's a deadbeat.
She'll always, she'll always love him.
Yeah.
And so she wants to dance with him too in the father-daughter dance.
And so the stepfather, the father walks out, taps the stepfather on the shoulder and the stepfather gracefully bows out.
Oh my God.
I love that guy.
And then the father and daughter, you know, like conclude the dance.
How does it feel?
everybody is so touched by that but but the thing is even though i'm playing mostly american standards and new order i i'm i'll play the macarena you know what i mean i mean if it's on the computer i just let the dogs out now what's a hot wedding song now
Is it... I mean, because, you know, there's always novelty songs at dances.
Right.
For, like, you know, at the reception, there's novelty songs.
For a long time, it was Achy Breaky Heart because you had to come out and do the boot scoot.
The boot scootin'.
Right.
I think Macarena was around for a long time.
are we in a period right now where there are no universal novelty song well here's the thing this is an excellent point and possibly a career changer for you because number one oh i bet hey ya hey ya might be a big one but that's already that's what that's
13 years old still a terrific song here's what i'm saying first of all you get that bullshit like i hope you dance no shut it off shut that stuff off but we do need a new catchy novelty wedding song yes something that's like uh what about uh what about that cover of mac the knife
Bobby Darin?
No.
Who was the guy from the New York Dolls that had a career in the 80s?
Oh, David Johansson.
David Johansson.
And didn't he do some good covers of classics?
I think he did.
I think he kicked off that whole trend of people who were in the September of their years.
You know, you've got your Rod Stewart.
You've got all the aging folks come out and they start doing American Standards.
But how many of them have ever done an entire album of New Order covers is my question.
Wouldn't you love that?
What I want to see is Jon Bon Jovi do a standard, just a whole record of New Order covers with a big bang.
Just like...
With a fucking big band.
Oh, it was Buster Poindexter and his hit song Hot, Hot, Hot.
Hot, Hot, Hot.
He was also David Johansson.
David Johansson, Buster Poindexter.
Who I often confuse with Tim Curry.
Yeah, okay, they look the same.
Because they were both cross-dressed.
Yeah, but Tim Curry never had a late 80s or a mid-80s hit.
Like all English actors, I think he'll take the work he can get.
He was the clown in the sewer in It.
Have you ever seen The Clown in the Sewer?
Sure, The Clown in the Sewer.
I know, I know.
This has been so useful for me.
I'm learning so much and for you I feel like God John just the world is opening It's like an oyster just opening to you right now.
You've got so many options You got it.
You got a frog in your pocket You can think about what kind of weapon you want You have to think about what you could do with that ham fist and an entire career awaits you doing like a novelty rap song for weddings Maggie I wish I'd
So you're saying you're taking eternity.
Never seen your face.
You do an album of some faces and some Rod Stewart covers.
Gonna steal my daddy's cue and make a living out of playing pool.
You think?
Is that wedding song material?
You could do that all with MIDI.
You could MIDI all of that.
The problem is that that song is about a young guy having an affair with an older woman, and that is not a song that anybody once played at their wedding, even if it's applicable.
Oh.
Right?
Like, even if it is a May September wedding.
I don't know.
People can be pretty tone deaf to what the song is actually about.
you know well yeah did you ever finish your uh did you ever do the dave eggers thing did you ever do that oh i'm still working on still working on how's your song coming oh it's so good is it is it super american you want to know what's so weird about it i wrote the lyrics on my phone which i almost never have done and and i didn't then excuse me did not transcribe them out to a pad
And traditionally, when I'm rehearsing a song, I have a pad with the lyrics on it and I put the pad on the floor or somewhere.
You can scribble, you can circle, you can do all that kind of stuff.
I sit with the guitar and I run through the song and then I cross something out and I put it.
But I haven't done that yet with this.
The song only exists on my phone.
And so I'll play a verse and then I have to stop and scroll.
and play the next verse and then stop and scroll.
And I have yet to really get a vibe on the tune.
I've never played it all the way through.
Wow.
And I've been working on this song for, I don't know, a couple of weeks now.
And I've never actually played the song all the way through.
And I keep saying to myself, when I don't have a guitar, I'm walking around in the day and I go, why the fuck haven't I finished that song?
Oh, I need to write those lyrics out on a pad.
But then I just stop.
I keep forgetting to do it.
And I don't know why, it seems so simple.
Get a pad.
Yeah, but it could be your brain telling you something.
Maybe, you know, it sounds like last time we talked about this, I feel like I was hearing you say you were a little ambivalent because, first of all, it could be taken to be a jingoistic anthem, but also that maybe you were starting to kind of like it as a song.
You like singing it.
You like singing the histrionics, right?
Herp-a-derp a little bit.
You know what I mean?
You know what I mean when I say herp-a-derp?
I do.
I do.
Too well.
I feel a little bit like...
Over the years, I have done several rock and roll tunes and particularly rock and roll covers, right?
I have almost an entire album of covers waiting in the wings.
My, you know, my rock and roll, they might be giants cover.
I did a rock and roll cover of some, like, a tune by Nico.
I've done quite a few rock and roll covers.
And every time I have presented them to my record label, and admittedly a record label that is generally opposed to rock and roll, but they have responded with sort of a meh.
And I'm a little bit worried about,
that all these rock and roll tunes that I think are great, like the rock and roll version of Ultimatum,
on my award-winning album, my phony award-winning album, putting the days together.
That's a good version of that.
Well, but I get a lot of email.
I get a lot of letters from people saying, why did you remake that song?
It was fine already as it was.
And I was like, I made it because I wrote it and I can do what I want.
And people don't accept that.
So I'm beginning to feel like maybe I have a little bit of a deficit in knowing and understanding
what people want and whether or not they want rock music from me.
Listen to the hands.
The hands will tell you.
But the meat hand and the Russian hand are telling me different things.
That's the nature of the hands.
They're both trying to tell you something.
And you, as the master of the hemispheres, have to figure out how to square that circle.
Listen to the pan.
Listen to the pan.
Touch the pan.
What is the pan telling you?
No!
Only English people can fly.
That's one for the books.