Ep. 233: "Babies are Boring"
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Hello.
Hi, John.
Hi, Merlin.
How's it going?
Oh.
Oh.
Complicated.
Really?
It's going complicated.
Oh.
Hmm.
Hmm.
I am online shopping.
Really?
How exciting.
Yeah, I'm doing some online shopping.
What are you getting?
Let's see what I'm getting.
Let's see.
You know what?
We're good for right now.
I ordered a dingus for our plant that will tell us if it wants water or needs different light.
Will it tell you that via your phone?
Does it have an app?
I don't think so.
I got the cheap model.
Can you connect it to your nest?
Again, I don't have a nest, but if I did, I probably could.
You know, this is a wonderful time.
I got a clock.
This is a pilot project.
I'm going to try it because, as you know,
We can't have the kind of clock I would like where I would like it.
I'm not going to get into that.
But I did find a very cool-looking clock.
It's an analog clock, meaning it's got hands.
And it's got the radio signal, so it sets itself.
Oh, is it atomic?
Is it an atomic dustbin?
It's an atomic, technically an outdoor clock, so you can put it in the bathtub.
Is it an atomic punk?
Atomic punk, yep.
Oh, that's a Van Halen song.
Boing.
Boing.
And it's got temperature and humidity, also analog on it.
It's got little hands, like our president.
Or like a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Very much like a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
And in so doing, I want to hear about your complication.
I'm just giving you some time to think about it.
I know you love this phenomenon.
I've discussed this with some friends on another show recently.
I love the thing when you go to Amazon, and it has this section...
Kind of near the top of the page.
It's got a section called Frequently Bought Together.
Oh, yes.
Where, you know, it lets you know, you know, if people who bought this thing also bought these.
Oh, they sure did.
Yeah, yeah.
And in this case, it suggests that people like to buy three clocks.
Three different clocks.
Three different clocks, yeah.
This is a funny phenomenon to me.
Sometimes when you want to get a clock, it says, people who bought this clock also bought these other two clocks.
Yes, they did.
And I think maybe it's time to tune the algorithm a little bit when that happens.
Yeah, I see that too a lot where the frequently bought things, frequently bought together, no one ever would have bought those things together.
right i mean it seems like something you would catch like where you go like people who bought this washer dryer set also bought these other two washer dryer sets it's like no i i see i see why you think that but that's i don't think that's a thing honey honey i'm gonna buy three of these and we'll just send back the ones we don't like no so their their algorithm must be saying people were shopping for these three things yeah i i i've noticed a lot of
emails now from companies that i have gone to look at something oh yeah right they're very panicky about it and it looks like you left something in your cart yeah oh my goodness you know if you don't get that uh you won't have it you said you were interested in this hard drive but someone is everything okay is it me do we need to talk
Yeah.
Yeah.
A lot of very needy, very needy, very needy.
And and I and I feel, you know, I was I so I'm in a I'm in a situation now where every part of every part of my existence, both in California and here in Seattle, is starting to be governed by.
looking at real estate.
What?
Everybody's looking at real estate now.
All right.
Real estate, real estate, real estate.
Okay.
And I've long lived in a culture where I would periodically go on Zillow and kind of search around the area, see what's up, see what's going on, see some houses that are for sale, what the going rate is.
I have a good friend, my good friend Chadwick.
That's not really his name, but... That sounds like a made-up name.
Chadwick, yeah.
That sounds like the name of an AI.
Chadwick?
Chadwick.
Oh, Chadwick.
Chadwick plays Cinnamon by The Long Winters.
This beat is inexplicable.
Thank you, Chadwick.
Chadwick Chadley.
Let's call him Chadley.
Chadwick Chadley.
All right.
Chatterson.
He here in Seattle, he likes to go look at property and periodically he'll buy a house.
He'll just fucking go up straight up and buy a house.
He owns like four houses now.
How do people get money for these things?
Well, you know, you've got to be savvy.
He buys these houses that he can, because he looks at them all the time, he's like, this house is underpriced for the value.
But he also has a strong aesthetic, right?
So he doesn't buy houses that he doesn't like.
He's never bought a house where he didn't have a personal affection.
That's smart.
It's like they tell you, if you're a person who buys stock, they say buy stock in products that you believe in, use, and enjoy.
Exactly.
Don't buy stock in things that you think are terrible.
Warren Buffett says that, I think.
Oh, boy, I bet he does.
I bet Warren Buffett says the shit out of that.
Warren Buffett says you should buy things when they're not costly and then sell them when they're more costly.
Stop the presses.
Yeah, I think he's got a whole book about it.
Shizzle.
Shit dog.
She's nasty.
This is what I've been doing wrong.
I haven't been savvy.
So Chatterson... Chatterson, Chad Wickmandanson.
Chad Wickmandanson.
The thing he likes to do is get in his truck and drive around and look at stuff.
That's like number one thing he likes to do.
And the things he likes to look at are...
properties.
And it's not just that he's scoping them to buy them.
He just likes to look at other people's properties too.
You know, he just looking all the time.
That's one of the things he likes to look at.
I admire it, frankly.
He's like a real estate stalker.
Well, or just like, yeah, he just wants to see other people's compounds.
He wants to see what's going on.
Okay.
I see.
He's a land enthusiast.
Okay.
Yeah, there's no – he astonishes me because there's no road in all of King County that I would doubt for a second that Chad has been up.
You drive somewhere way out in the country with him, and you're like, oh, what's up that road?
And he goes, oh, there's a little – and you're like, you've been up that road?
Yeah, he has.
But so he periodically, as he's driving around, he'll see a house.
He'll be like, I like that house.
And he's not a rich guy.
But he's just savvy enough that he knows how to put together a down payment and he knows how to figure out this and that.
And he puts it and he's, you know, he's handy enough that he can kind of get the house in shape.
It's not like he it's not like he puts a new roof on it.
But, you know, he goes in there and he fixes it up and coat of paint on it.
But but because he likes it.
That work doesn't seem, it's not so onerous.
It's not like he's going around flipping garbage houses.
And now he's this guy my age who's got this strange little portfolio of four cute little shingled bungalows around the city.
And you go, what have I been doing with my life?
Yeah, I could see that.
You know, I'm sitting around.
I've got like 14 guitars.
What the hell do they do?
I mean, I like them, but they don't generate it.
I don't think you want to pull a thread on that sweater too hard.
You know, that's a lot of what you do, right?
It was.
Anyway, I was at an open house the other day, and it was one of those open houses.
I don't know how many open houses you go to, but there are some open houses where the realtor...
has really dressed the place up.
Oh, they call it staging.
Oh, they staged it.
You bake chocolate chip cookies, so it smells like cookies.
What house wouldn't you... If you made... In the morning, you make cookies, and then right before you open the house up, you make fried chicken.
Oh, that's such a good idea.
Yeah, and then everybody's like, whatever it costs.
They might bring in like a fried chicken candle.
Just because of the mess.
It would be funny.
You know, we all suffer from this thing where we like to solve the problem that we understand.
It'd be funny if you were a real estate agent that wasn't very good, but you liked to cook.
And your open houses just turned the place upside down.
It was like Thanksgiving dinner.
So can you tell me more about the guest bath?
Hang on a minute, hang on a minute.
I'm cutting up some time.
Yeah, you're there with your apron on and swiping your sweated brow.
John Roderick, I've been to, back in the day, I went to a lot of open houses because my mother was a real estate agent.
Oh, of course.
And so I did, this is in the pre-staging business.
Now, my understanding is today, if you're doing this and saying, I want to get back to your story and your complication, my understanding is you can have services that will come in.
They'll even bring in furniture, but it needs to look like a place that somebody would want to live.
You get some throw pillows, right?
You get some fried chicken.
You might make it look like a child who's happy lives there.
Yes, this is all true with the caveat that
That apparently, and we've been over this many times, and it still astonishes me, because I meet a lot of nice people.
You know what I mean?
Yes.
Like, I got into a cab this morning because my truck blew up.
Is that part of the complication?
Oh, well, it's just one of many complications, Merlin, every damn day, you know?
Am I right?
Yeah, you are right.
So I get into the cab, and I start talking to the driver, as you do.
And he's from Senegal.
And I said, what time did you start this morning?
He said, 4 a.m.
I said, 4 a.m.?
That's early.
And he said, yeah, but I have to get, you know, I live in Everett, which is a completely different town from here.
And a fairly long drive and an unpleasant one.
And he said, yeah, I got to get back to the house by noon because my wife starts working at her job at one and I have to care for our five month old.
Oh my God.
And then she gets off work at 11 and
And then I get the four hours of sleep between 11 and 4, and then I start the Uber or the cab driving.
Talk about complicated.
And I said, you know, not to get all up in your business, but that seems unsustainable.
And he said, ugh, it really is.
And I said, well, what's your long-term plan here?
You can't keep doing this.
You can't live like this.
And he said, I think I'm going to go back to Senegal.
Wow.
I was a civil engineer in Senegal.
And I just, you know, I got no, my folks aren't here.
I got no support network.
And frankly, babies are boring.
I don't want to sit around with a baby all day.
And I was like, you are talking my language now.
Babies are boring.
That's candid.
And we're driving along and ba-ba-da-ba-da, you know, hip-a-dip-a-derp.
And I'm like, I like this guy.
The number of people I meet in a typical day, which is between 5 and 50...
For the most part, I like them all.
They're all, you know.
So this guy and I, normally in a situation like that, in a conversation like that where somebody tells me, because this happens to me all the time, I'm going back to Senegal.
And I'm like, really?
You're going back to Senegal?
Because I believe in America.
Yes.
And I believe in America.
You raised your daughter.
That's right.
I believe in America as a place where someone from Senegal can come and with a little hard work and ingenuity and American stick to it, can plant a flag here.
Then look what happens.
Suspend a sentence.
Suspend a sentence.
you believe in america i do and so typically in a situation like that i am always i immediately go and this is you know this is why um this is why i i a lot of cab drivers will take me home for dinner with their family because we get into a conversation and they're like listen i don't want to drop you off we come back and talk to my wife and tell her about this america that you keep telling me about yes um and and so i would always i'd always be like well hey you know like let's strategize for a second here before this cab ride is over and see like what we can do to
To make your life more sustainable and get you to double down on America.
What do I need to do to put you in this country today?
Yeah.
How do I get you into the driver's seat of an America today?
But talking to him and listening to him, I was like, hmm, I see where you're at.
I see where you're coming from.
And I made a little reference to the...
Yeah, the whole thing.
The current situation.
He was like, you know, my wife was born here.
She's Senegalese, but she was born here.
I'm a U.S.
citizen.
Like, none of this hullabaloo that's happening really affects me at all.
It's just... And also, I'm from Senegal.
I'm not from, you know, some other random country that has... A bad country like Syria.
Yeah, I'm not from a bad country.
But he said, I just, you know, I'm working all the time.
And he said, that's what I'm... You know, like...
And we're having one of those conversations where there's a lot of like, yeah, yeah.
Because he's like, I'm a man.
And I'm like, yeah.
And he said, yeah, I should be at work.
I should be doing hard work.
And I was like, hell yeah.
And he said, I'm an engineer, a civil engineer.
Yes, goddamn yes.
And, and so he's, you know, he's like, I don't want to sit around with the baby.
If I go back to Senegal, I got my family.
I got everybody there.
And I was like, listen, you know, I, I just met you, but it seems to me going back to Senegal is not the worst plan you ever had.
And, and he's like, yeah, you know, I mean, it's nice here.
I've been here 10 years.
And I said, well, what about France?
The Senegalese and France have a like a reciprocal.
You guys are like friend countries or Senegal was.
I mean, I guess when you talk about a post-colonial relationship, I guess you don't say friend country.
Probably complicated.
It's a little complicated.
Yeah, it's not exactly like that's not like friend cities or whatever.
It's not like swapping T-shirts in eighth grade.
Yeah, right.
It's like, oh, I mean, I happen to know that in Senegal, like in Morocco, like in some countries with a former colonial relationship with
France that the language of business there is French.
You know, if you're going to go down to a government office, you're going to be speaking French.
I said, wouldn't you, what about Paris?
What about France?
Would you go to France?
And he did.
What I have come to find is the typical African answer to that question, which is, no.
No, I do not want to go to France.
And I was like, tip of the hat.
Tip of the hat to you.
It sounds like Senegal may be in your future again.
He seems very focused.
It sounds like he knows what he wants in life.
Well, this is the thing.
This is the American dream.
This is why I'm always, when I meet somebody like that, I'm like,
Double down on America.
Come on.
Like you're the you are the exact the whole fact that you're here and not in Senegal is what makes you like the type of American that, you know, that makes America great.
Once once in future, you know, but but yeah in this you hate to lose you hate to lose a fella, you know At some point we had the rep were able to close the deal with the Senegalese man And you hate the idea that for whatever reason it's not working out you'd like to think hey We can save this relationship.
That's right.
That's exactly right And I'm like listen you're living in Everett you're driving a cab from five or four o'clock in the morning every day you got a five-month-old baby I know that babies are boring and
You don't want to be there.
When I had a baby, I had my mom there, and he was like, ah, see?
And I was like, I know, right?
You get your mom there, and you're like, hey, this baby's boring.
I'm going to go wash the car.
How long was this ride?
Well, you know, I mean, we get a lot done in a cab ride because I'm not somebody that – I don't sit in the back of a cab and look at my phone.
No, no.
You know, you get a chance to talk to somebody.
This is the reason that people don't believe that I'm an introvert is that if I get in the back of a cab – This is the reason?
Yeah.
If I get in the back of a cab and I've got someone –
who's basically trapped there with me, and they have a story they can tell me about themselves, it's the perfect climate, right?
Because this cab ride is going to last 15 to 20 minutes, right?
And so there's nothing, we're never going to get into a situation where they're never, unless they're a crazy person, they're not going to start talking to me about what they're feeling about a flat tax is.
Well, you know, there's an end to it.
Yeah.
You know, it's got a finite, it's got a beginning, it's got an end.
That's a nice feeling.
And I know how to interview a guy, right?
I mean, I know how to say, where are you from?
And then not drop the ball, because I know where places are.
So he says, Senegal, and I go, oh, you ever go to Burkina Faso?
And he's like, I went to college there.
And then, you know, we're off to the races.
And then I learned something.
I learned about a guy.
I learned about his problem.
I learned about his five-month-old, his wife.
So there's the thing.
His wife was home with the baby and he was working two jobs before.
And he was like, that was fine.
I like working two jobs.
But then after the baby's a few months old, my wife comes to me and says, I can't stand this.
I'm going crazy.
I want to go back to work.
This baby's driving me crazy.
And this baby's not a bad baby.
But babies are boring.
Babies are crazy-making if you have to just sit there and stare at it all day.
You can't even go wash the car.
Oh, I got a lot to say about this.
You know, there's a lot of pressure on women to not even show a crack, right?
They're supposed to take care of all this stuff.
I don't want to make this political by acting like I care about women.
But it is pretty crazy that they're expected to take care of all of that, to not be bored and to not be frustrated that they can't just have a glass of wine like a person anymore.
Yeah, and that whole business gets put on them of like, well, you're a woman.
This is what you're made to do.
You love this.
You love this, the little baby.
So his wife obviously is like a get going kind of gal, and she's like, I can't stay home all day staring at this baby.
I'm going to go back to work at my job.
And he's like, oh, okay.
Yeah.
I guess I'm... Now the baby's on the other foot.
I guess I'm working from...
4 a.m.
to noon, and then I'm sitting here staring at this baby, too?
That's the game.
So, yeah, by the time I got out of the car, I think we had agreed that it was at least a good tentative plan to go back to Senegal for a year or two.
And my sense is that if he goes back to Senegal for a year or two, he's going to want to stay.
His wife...
Unclear unclear whether she can he I think he'll go back there and he'll feel like he's He's he can find a valid existence for himself.
I'm not sure how she's gonna Did you get a sense of the country of origin of the boring baby was the baby born in the US?
Yes, now that's an interesting wrinkle right there.
Yes, but so was his wife Mm-hmm.
Oh wait, so Samara.
She's American well, but she's Senegalese, but she was born in America Interesting.
How did they meet?
Well, she was born in America, but then they went back to her family went back to Senegal when she was a little kid.
So she grew up in Senegal.
Huh.
But so and that's where they met.
But she had the option of going back to America for college, which she wanted to do.
And she said, listen, I want to go to college for a couple of years in America.
And he was like, I'll go with you.
Mm-hmm and then fast forward ten long years later and He's still here and he's and he says, you know as you do he says time flies and I was like Yeah, time does fly my if there's anything that time does it's flying it flies and flies and flies and flies
So, yeah, what can you say?
I mean, you know, the thing about Senegal, it's nice there.
It's nice.
It's got a beach.
It's got, you know, I don't know anything about Senegal.
I think they might make coffee, but I don't know anything about Senegal.
Do you know about the Paris to Dakar overland car race?
I do not.
So there's Dakar.
That's where Fabia Quistarcton is billeted.
Sure, that's where Dakar Noir is made.
I love the way she says, oh, is that right?
I used to get Dakar Noir.
One day I had some money from being a busboy, and I went to the mall in Tampa, and I bought a big-ass thing of Dakar Noir and a white Miami Vice jacket.
You did?
Same day.
Changed everything.
Now you're telling me...
Because you and I are about the same age.
Yeah, close enough.
As we get older, we're much closer.
Yeah, you've got the edge on me a little bit.
Sure do.
But you decided at some point during that time that you were just going to cast your dice with the Miami Vice.
I cast my dice with the Miami Vice, I did.
You forget that that show was lauded for a while.
Well, and you at least went to college down there.
I didn't go to college in Miami, but I watched TV.
I had NBC like a normal person.
And, you know, I was graduating to a more sophisticated scent.
This is pre Ralph Lauren Polo for me, but post like, you know, dad's Aramis.
Well, what about grandpa's high karate?
What about CK1?
CK1.
Did you ever fall for CK1?
No.
So CK1, my sense of CK1, Calvin Klein.
Yeah, right, right, right.
Was that CK1 was one of the first unisex fragrances.
Okay, I've got to look this up.
Because I had a girlfriend.
Is Calvin Klein for ladies the one that's real, like, spicy?
I think Calvin Klein 1.
Because, you know, you imprint.
Yeah.
You imprint on certain scents.
Yep.
Don't you think?
Yeah.
I'm afraid that I imprinted pretty heavily on obsession.
That's the one.
That's what I meant.
Calvin Klein.
Yes, it's the orange one.
Yes, my first college girlfriend used the Calvin Klein obsession, and that will always be that smell to me now.
A girl that I wanted to go out with.
Was it Lori Basler?
It wasn't.
No, Lori Basler by that point had already died.
No, it was a girl in college that I didn't... It's not the red-headed doctor we don't mention.
No, no, no.
It's not her.
No, this was all the way into college by now.
But it was a girl who went to my high school who then went to the same college as me.
And during high school, we had flirted a lot and hard...
But we had never put it together.
We'd never put ourselves together.
And part of it was that I was a late bloomer.
And part of it was that she was a very unusual girl.
An unusual girl who had the Calvin Klein obsession.
Yeah.
Yeah, do you remember the character in The Breakfast Club who put 40 sugars in her pop?
Was that Ally Sheedy?
I'm guessing you remember.
There weren't that many characters in... I figured by Processes of Elimination, I could get it down to either Ally Sheedy or your paramour who never responds to your tweets.
Is she still not responding to your tweets, Molly Ringwald?
Molly Ringwald has never responded to me, no.
I've given it a little bit of a rest.
Are you doing any better with Jane Wheatland?
No, no.
In fact, I thought – she came up in conversation the other day.
I thought about Jane.
No, I kind of – I figured ultimately I had a really good exchange and now kind of a –
Kind of a little bit of an Internet.
I can't really say friendship, but, you know, an Internet collision like like just Internet home slices with Martha Quinn.
A little bit of back and forth with Martha Quinn.
Could have really used that in 1982.
Boy, I sure could have.
But in 2015, I had enough back and forth with Martha Quinn that I felt like, you know, I'm doing okay.
But Jane Wheatland, no.
I mean, maybe she replied to me one time, Molly Ringwald has never acknowledged my existence.
And I was following Molly Ringwald really early.
Yeah, before it was cool.
Yeah, when she had like 1,500 followers, I was like, first of all, A, I have more followers than Molly Ringwald.
And B, you know what?
I'm going to help her here.
I'm going to help her get into the internet.
This is the kind of thing you do as an American.
I think she's mostly French these days, if memory serves.
So you're out there and you're saying, bienvenue.
Although she's back now.
She's back in America.
That whole French thing was an interlude.
Oh, an entree new.
Yeah, that's right.
She's now in, I think she's pretty much back.
I bet she's in New York.
Yeah, New York.
That's my sense.
I had a big weekend.
I got retweeted by Katie Lang and Nico Case.
That's a nice feeling.
Really?
That is nice.
I went a little bit political this weekend.
I didn't feel great about it.
Racked up some big numbers, but I don't feel great about it.
Doesn't usually happen with you.
Nico Case, the word on the street, pretty reliable word on the street is that Nico Case doesn't like me very much.
Oh, she seems like she has strong opinions.
She does.
And you engender, if I could use the word, you engender strong opinions in people.
Yeah, yeah, I do.
You've always been like this.
It's a lot like a scent.
It's a lot like a Calvin Klein obsession.
You can see people have very strong reactions to these things.
And hopefully they imprint on me quite often.
Like Lawrence Duck.
Yeah, in this case, she imprinted on me in a way that she was like, I don't like that guy.
Which is too bad.
How do they say that in Africa?
Oh, je ne sais quoi.
No.
Spit.
Don't spit on the ground in Africa.
Nobody's going to like that.
Also, in Turkey, don't shake somebody's hand with your left hand.
To this day, I don't like it when somebody hands me their left hand.
I think it's problematic, as people say.
Don't hand somebody your left hand.
Especially if you're going to do that little like you're a French king thing where you just kind of hold your fingers out like you want your ring kissed.
But you never know who's Bob Dold.
Oh, no.
I'm open to that.
If I see something, I say something.
I would like to teach an online course on how to shake hands.
I would like to really help these millenniums understand how important it is to know how to shake someone's hand well.
But we can get back to that.
So you're dating Ali Sheedy's avatar.
She's got Calvin Klein obsession, and she's putting lots of sugar in her Pepsi.
Well, I wasn't dating her.
I was chasing her.
Sorry, let me check that.
Okay.
She was chasing me.
You were house hunting her.
But she used so much obsession.
I think it's like Ralph Lauren's polo for men.
I think you very quickly become, or patchouli, you become a nerd to how much you actually have on at a given time.
It's a neurons is what it is.
It's absolutely an neurons.
Yeah.
And that's what happened with her so much so that it was like on me, but also like in my it was just in my every it was in every pore and I couldn't shake it off.
It was me and Jovan Musk with one girl in eighth grade.
And I was stupefied by the way this woman smelled.
It was it laid me low.
She had worn a shirt of mine, I think, at one point, and it still smelled like that.
And I like I want to put it in like a Donald Trump case.
Like I was like, I want this smell to always be here.
I wanted to put it into a Donald Trump case is not a reference that I got.
Oh, you know, like when he comes out to speak, he's got his props like you'll have a red hat in a plexiglass case and things like that.
I guess I didn't follow him that closely.
This has been a really hard few months, John.
Yeah, I get it.
I know.
And I think we should, you know what?
We should give ourselves a phony award for being so good about not talking about politics on our program.
Here's to us.
High five, us.
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So I was at this house opening.
Open housing.
And two interesting things happened.
There was a partnership of two real estate agents.
And I was trying to decide if they were a romantic partnership.
You have to always wonder.
Yeah, doing real estate together or whether this was just completely a partnership.
I think a lot of those relationships start with a professional partnership.
Pretty soon, it's a fucking key party.
That's my guess.
They were working pretty closely together.
One of them was a man, mom.
age or a little yeah my age or a little older from India who was very you know very like suave and he kept saying things like you know one of the one of the ways that we conduct our business like one of our fundamental tenants is
of our business relationship is that we are very low pressure, no pressure at all.
So if you'll just sign into this iPad app that we have and, uh, and you know, and here's my business card and take, uh, also here's like my wallet.
I want you to hold it for me for a while.
Yes.
I'll come find you later when I need it.
And I was like, Hey, I'm just walking through here.
I'm not gonna, I'm not looking to buy a house.
I'm just, yeah, I'm not.
Not only am I not touching an iPad, I'm not even putting my fingerprints on the doorknobs here.
To quote myself, when my daughter and I come to my office, I'm not here.
I'm never here.
I'm not here right now.
That's what I would say to the Indian man.
I would say, with all due respect, I would say, I'm not here.
Listen, you're not seeing me.
I'm not here.
I'm not holding your wallet.
I don't even know what's going on.
I don't know what's happening.
But I'm definitely not going to touch an iPad, and I'm so not here.
Yeah, so that's what was happening with him.
The other guy had a sort of... The other guy?
The other guy was sort of a pale, stocky, shaved head, sort of like... He looked like a job?
Well, he wasn't like that stocky, but he was like a fraternity guy.
Also, not quite my age, but a little bit younger.
Somebody in his late 30s, early 40s.
Mm-hmm.
And so I so and not and this is the second guy not really in possession of any suavity whatsoever.
And I was so I was trying to put them together.
And I know that like opposites attract.
But this was this was very they were very far apart on the on the suave scale.
So I'm talking.
So the one the one guy is is giving me the hard sell about how he never gives somebody the hard sell.
The other guy was super nice, the fratty one, super nice, super chill.
And as we're leaving, they're actually walking down the front steps of the house with me.
I'm trying to shake them off a little bit like, okay, well, this was great.
Really great to meet you.
I love the way you guys set up a house.
And I'm out of here now.
I'm like already down the block, and they're just kind of coming with me.
I don't know how far we're going.
Oh, no, no, no.
I don't know whether they're getting in the car with me or not.
And the fratty guy says, yeah, well, ever since I was shot in Afghanistan, it's always a little bit harder for me to get down these stairs.
And I was like... So I stopped at that point and took about three steps back toward him.
Like, I wasn't leaving now.
And I was like... Really?
No.
That didn't read as a bit?
Oh, well, I didn't care.
I mean, it read as a bit.
He's pulling out the Afghanistan card.
He sure is.
But...
If somebody's going to pull out the shot in Afghanistan card, I'm there.
You'll draw from that stack.
I sure did.
I got back up to where the toe of my shoe was within a shoe length of the toe of his shoe.
And I said, tell me a guy getting shot in Afghanistan.
And he was like, well, it, yeah, it really, it was a long rehab.
And I said, it affected your balance?
Like, did you get shot in the spine?
And he turns around and he said, no, the bullet went in here, and he points to behind his ear.
Oh, God.
And it came out here, and he points to the other side of his head in his temple.
What?
And I was like, what?
What?
He's a medical anomaly?
Yeah.
How could that not... Just... And I said, so it went through your obnambula?
Yeah.
The obnambula, yeah.
And he said, you know, just missed it.
And I said, what kind of rehab was... Did you lose cognitive ability?
And he said, a little bit of memory issues.
But I had to learn to walk again and I'm still a little bit, you know, unstable.
And he's very, you know, if you got a bullet all the way through you like that.
Uh, yeah, I would talk about it too.
You know, I would find a way to, to bring that into conversation because that's pretty.
And so, and you can see the wounds in his head, which have healed.
Oh my God.
And he's like, you know, and I grew up in this neighborhood and I lived three blocks away and now I'm selling real estate here.
And, and the, you know, the Indian guy is like, yep.
And I'm, uh, you know, I've been a real estate agent for 30 years.
So our, our expertise really combines and,
And I said, listen, I didn't want to buy a house before, but now I do.
I want to buy a house from you because you seem like a good guy to keep around.
Like, holy cannolis.
And so then it's like...
I might as well have been in a cab with him because all I wanted to do was stand there and talk to him about this experience.
How do you think the Indian guy feels when he pulls out that story?
I think he thinks it's great because I was so close to signing into that iPad.
If he had said, listen, if you want to keep talking to him, you got to sign into the iPad.
I would have had a tough choice to make.
Yeah, they didn't.
You know, he didn't like.
But but he this was the reason that I thought maybe they were in a relationship because he was, you know, he seemed kind of proud of his partner.
proud of the story like he hadn't heard it enough times it was that's lovely yeah every time was new again because you don't there's no way you could contemplate that enough times like he I believe by his by his main by his general main that that this man was an officer in the in what I had to assume was the military mm-hmm
And I was so focused on his injury that I did not do the normal thing, which is what branch of service were you?
What rank were you?
What was your job?
What was your, you know, I didn't get into that because it seemed.
Oh, you want to make sure he's not stealing valor.
Well, I knew that I, unless this was a wound that he received working on the railroad, I feel like that's a hard wound to, to just like drum up, like sitting in the bar.
Like I was a Navy SEAL.
Really?
Yes, I got shot in the back of the head.
Yeah, show me your challenge coin, faker.
But it seemed at that moment, it seemed even small to ask what branch of the service he was in.
You know, like when somebody starts telling a story like that, you either got to leave the situation.
If you're going to stay, you got to just get out of the way.
Sure.
Right.
Because you're not going to say it like backtrack and say, OK, all right, let's set the scene.
Like, where did you go to college?
Which is normally how if somebody jumps into a thing, I'm like, all right, hold on, hold on, hold on.
Yeah.
Let me get situated.
Yeah.
There's a couple of things I need to know.
Where did you grow up?
And how did you get to the beginning of this story?
But I didn't care.
This was just a thing where the recovery from this injury, given I knew that I wasn't going to spend all day here.
The recovery from the injury was what was interesting about this story and how he got, how you got shot in the back of the head seems like a, that we'll get to that in the course of our friendship as in your capacity as my new real estate agent.
Cause I'm buying a house in this neighborhood.
I don't know how, I don't, I don't know how I'm going to find the money.
I don't even want to live here, but I just want to, I want to have you over for breakfast.
So I didn't find out enough about that story that I can retell it as a good thing where I have the whole story all together.
But I think I'm going to go track him down.
For real, you're going to give it another throw.
You could take a meeting.
That feels...
That feels usurious to go, because all he wants to do is sell a house, right?
And to go pretend that I want to look at houses just to hear this bullet through the head story, because I actually don't intend to buy a house there.
But in the course of life, I will recognize those two if I see them.
I would recognize them each individually.
And if I get into a situation, because it also might be interesting to sequester his partner and say, so give me a little background here.
At what point did you guys meet?
Was he already back up on his feet?
Did you know him before?
Yeah, there's so much to this story.
But that's certainly put a complication.
More complications.
I mean, it all feels very complicated right now.
Yeah.
It feels very, very complicated.
And your truck blew up.
Truck blew up.
The trucks, plural, keep blowing up, plural.
And the following sentence escaped my lips yesterday.
As my dear mother...
rolled her eyes at me for the 10,000th time.
I said, you know what?
I'm just going to sell everything.
I'm going to sell everything.
I'm going to buy a Subaru.
And she lit up.
She was like, great idea.
I think that's a great idea.
Subaru.
You know, a new Subaru.
It's not going to break down.
It's not going to...
I'm never going to get a call where you suddenly need me to something.
You're just going to be... You're not going to have to sleep in it overnight with a child without heat.
That's right.
It's got all kinds of benefits.
It's going to be Joe, Mr. Man... Joe, Mr. Man, normal truck.
Normal truck.
Right.
You're just...
Drive around, you put a Namaste sticker on there.
You know, the Subaru's big with the lesbians.
Are you aware of this?
I do know that.
I heard a podcast about this.
It was very interesting.
They realized that the lesbians were loving Subarus, and instead of going, eh, they were like, hmm, let's embrace this.
What do I need to do to put this lesbian in a Subaru?
Yeah, we are now the lesbian car.
But it's also, my sense of them, when Subarus first came on the market in Anchorage,
They were an enormously popular car because they were a four-wheel drive.
It's almost like the opposite of an SUV.
People go out and buy SUVs so they can rep that there's somebody with an SUV.
Whereas the Subaru seemed like something people buy because they genuinely use the features of it to go places and camp and stuff like that.
Remember that iconic blue color of a Subaru?
Kind of a light blue Subaru?
The light blue Subaru...
came with cross-country skis already on it, already on a rack.
It was the car in Alaska that you drove if you coached a teen cross-country ski club, whereas the Volvo was much more the NPR car.
Yeah.
Volvo was the first car I knew of with heated seats.
Oh, interesting.
I love heated seats.
Volvo, the Volvos were always sold to us as like you could survive any accident because people in Alaska die all the time getting T-boned on icy roads.
And then I had a good friend whose mom got just creamed by a massive truck.
She was in her Volvo DL and
And just got completely just straight on T-shot on a major thoroughfare where a guy in a Ford Bronco didn't even see the light and just hit her going 55 miles an hour.
Oh, my God.
And she had to use the other door to get out of the car was basically the injury that she received.
It was a collision where the Bronco was wrecked.
And the Volvo was just a twisted hunk of metal, and she just got over into the passenger seat and got out and was like, huh, well, that wasn't very fun.
Like, no damage to her at all because the Volvo was some kind of miracle car.
Yeah, right, right, right.
Wasn't that like one of the original cars that rethought the idea of how you put the boxes together and all the right parts would crumple?
And if memory serves, it was always explained to me as if you hit a Volvo head-on,
This is not physics, but like a lot of the impact is distributed in a way that it doesn't get to the extent possible.
It doesn't get to where the cabin that you're in, but also like it transfers it to like just basically make the engine drop out.
Like it takes all the is it something like that?
Yeah, I think what happens is it gets transferred.
It gets transferred into solar energy.
Oh, you know what?
That's good.
It's clean.
It's renewable.
And then it gets transferred through some kind of Volvo proprietary process into a hydroponic farm.
And get some DRM probably.
Oh, yeah.
Absolutely right.
But the Subaru is now the national car of Seattle, which is increasingly becoming its own nation.
And so everywhere you go, there's a Subaru that either and they all have bumper stickers.
And the most common ones are coexist with each letter represented by the symbol of a different religion.
Oh, I have so many problems with that from a graphic design standpoint.
Coexist.
This is very troubling to me.
Totally unreadable unless you've looked at a thousand of them, which every one of us has.
Coexist.
And also coexist, I think, has some association with Bono.
Oh, that makes it even worse.
Yeah, so that every time I see that bumper sticker, also somehow now Bono is in my head a little bit.
This is not a rebel song.
He's just peeking around the corner in the hall like, I'm also here.
My glasses are yellow.
Don't mean to boog you, mister.
And then the other one that goes on every Subaru, everyone that doesn't have Coexist has Wag More, Bark Less.
Visualize World Peace.
Visualize World Peace.
And then there's one just here in the Northwest, Visualize Tacoma, which dates back to that era where it was like, wah, wackadoodle.
And that's gone, right, from the culture?
Mostly that kind of wackadoodle is gone?
Yeah.
Wouldn't you say there's nobody putting out, like, visualized Tacoma bumper stickers or keep Portland weird bumper stickers?
Yeah, we used to have more joy.
Does anybody remember laughter?
I know.
Does anybody remember laughter?
Did you know?
I don't know if we've talked about this.
But somebody asked Robert Plant in an interview, do you have any regrets in all the years?
You've done a lot of crazy things, I'm sure.
You've been in a jet airplane with a bunch of people that all died, and you were the only one to walk off.
Any regrets?
And he was like...
He said, the one thing I regret is that, does anybody remember laughter?
Are you kidding?
No.
And I was like, that would be what I regretted too.
I know, I know.
Just one thing you just kind of say out of nowhere and that's your thing now.
That's your thing, right?
And you have to imagine that when they were mixing that and when they were putting that out...
They said to him, you know, hey, you want to come by and check out the mix and just make sure that it all sounds good?
And he probably did that thing that I often do, which is like, I'm sure it sounds fine.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That'll be fine.
And then it came out, and subsequent to that, for 35 years, people have been walking up to him and going, does anybody remember that?
Oh, my God.
And, yeah, that's the one thing Robert Plant regrets.
It's the one thing he could think of.
Yeah.
You know, I got feelings about Robert Plant.
I think it's very sad what happened with his son.
And you think about, but now I genuinely feel sorry for Robert Plant.
I didn't see that coming this morning.
Mm-mm.
So you're looking at Subarus.
You're looking at land.
No, I definitely do not.
On one hand, I feel like a Subaru is an unimpeachable decision.
Like if I went and bought a Subaru...
It would be the kind of indignity that I could, like, what would happen is I would fall in everyone's esteem a little.
Really?
If you picture this scenario, I come on our podcast and you say, how's it going today?
And I go, oh, it's pretty good.
I just bought a Subaru.
Now think about the tweets I'm going to get.
There's going to be a lot of Subaru owners that tweet me positively like, welcome.
Have you checked out the Subaru?
Have you read your owner's manual yet?
Oh, I see.
You're expected to be in the Subaru community, you think?
Or at least I'd be welcomed there.
But there, I think, are a lot of listeners to our program that imagine that my next car will be some kind of anti-tank vehicle.
I think it stands to reason.
You know, my next car will be a three-man submarine or something.
You get a decommissioned Hammock or Schlemmer submarine?
Yeah, and put a massage chair in it.
Oh, nice.
And so to reveal myself to be like a real human being who's like, ah, Subaru was the best value or like, ah, it seems, you know, I've got a kid and it seems like a kid.
That's like finding out the Wizard of Oz eats at Arby's.
Yeah, precisely.
I can't because it's not just people that listen to our program.
Like I've got a rep around this town.
Yeah.
It's part of your brand, John.
It absolutely is.
I show up in a Subaru at something and people will be like, did you did you like steal that recently?
And I'm like, no, I bought it.
And it would just, no one would stop being my friend.
No one would think that I was any less of me.
But I would fall just that 3% in their esteem.
Yeah, that 3% could be a lot of percent.
It can.
And so as soon as my mom walked away, I was like, heck no, I'm buying an experimental helicopter.
And she turned around and was like, what did you say?
I was like, nothing.
Subaru, probably.
No.
But maybe I'll get one of those Subarus with a big, like, what appears to be like a blower on the front.
I know it's not a blower, but it's some kind of turbocharger.
It's like a hypercharger.
There are Subarus with a lot of warts on them because they're used in rally drifting, drift rallies.
But I feel like that's just that sort of that's that bolt on accessorizing that, again, I could I just I can't I can't quite stand up with pride with a Subaru patch on my jacket and say, like, yeah, I bolted on some extra.
Well, I don't I don't think you're also check your text.
I sent you something.
I don't think you are a watcher of the TV show Project Runway, but I'm going to tell you something I learned from Project Runway, which is there's a weekly challenge, okay?
And you have to really listen to what the spirit of the challenge is, because here's what they don't want you to do.
No matter what the challenge is, what they don't want you to do is take some Muslim, make a basic tank dress, and then put a bunch of shit on it.
Don't fucking make a basic tank dress out of Muslim.
Did I say Muslim?
I meant Muslim.
And then dress it up with a bunch of gigas.
Yeah, don't Sparkletron it.
Don't bejewel it.
No, your design is the design.
Make a thing.
Don't make a thing and then just put a bunch of fucking candy on it.
That's not a design.
And I feel like there's something similar going on here.
John is not going to be a guy who goes and buys a stock Subaru and then bedazzles it.
No, war is not the answer.
Peace also takes courage.
I'm from the Elizabeth Warren wing of the Democratic Party.
So what I'm saying... It's time to use our outside voices.
It really is.
Well-behaved women seldom make history.
They sure do.
They sure don't.
Save our bees.
Save our bees, John.
Wild women don't get the blues, Merlin.
That's right.
I've known a lot of wild women, and I've known a lot of women with the blues, and those Venn diagrams do not overlap.
You show me.
You show me.
A woman with the blues, and she will not be wild.
And conversely, when I meet a wild woman, I know she does not have the blues of snapping three times.
And in my dating life, it was always one from column A, then one from column B. So the photo that I sent you of this car that is frequently near our house parked in this handicapped space.
Oh, this is a photo that you took.
This isn't a thing from the Internet.
No, this is by my house.
Now, first of all, see, I have real mixed feelings about this.
Because, first of all, this person is there a lot.
This is at a police station.
Oh, the person is there.
This car is there a lot, and it always makes me laugh every time I walk by it.
It's covered in that way that only hippies with no taste can do.
It has slapped bumper stickers onto the painted part of this car.
And on top of one another.
I realize it's supposed to be maybe a little bit situationist punk rock to do it this way, but they did mostly bother to try and get them horizontally aligned,
Right.
It isn't it isn't totally crazy.
It isn't like covering your laptop with band stickers in like a haphazard way.
Like it started out with a little bit of like and then also notice, for example.
OK, so I want to get one thing out of the way.
They are parked in a handicapped space.
They do have they do have a hang tag.
But I also want to stipulate for the record that San Francisco has a redonkulously high rate of abuse.
Fake hang tag.
Because guess what you get to do when you get a hang tag?
You don't have to pay parking meters.
Yeah, that's right.
So you walk down Terraval Street, buddy.
You can do whatever the heck you want.
Oh, it's just solid, solid.
Anyway, I'll find an article I'll send you.
Did they get a hang tag because they also had a fake comfort horse?
I don't know.
I don't know.
I'm coming around on that.
But I also want to point out, some of these, they have bubbles.
They didn't really put much care into putting it on here.
Corporations are not people.
Corporations are not money out, Bernie in.
Bernie in.
But also, look at that back fender, buddy.
Save our bees.
Don't just look at the design of the stickers.
Notice how many dents and dings and scuffs.
This person is hitting a lot of cars.
Oh, they are.
Do you see what I'm saying?
It's a hybrid car.
Yeah.
So it does it in a fundamentally sound way.
It's a Civic.
Civic hybrid, yeah.
But notice on that top level, like across the word advocate, do you see how torn up that sticker is?
That's because they just keep hitting things with the car.
Yeah, we are Citizens United.
I love the little yellow one, which seems very new, which is... The system isn't broken.
It's fixed.
It's fixed.
What is that?
Strong... Oh, get money... Getting money out of politics?
Strong money out of politics?
Stomp money.
Climate voter, my voice, my value is my vote.
But the system isn't broken thing, which is new, is slapped over the top of the save the Arctic anti-shell and...
Which is itself on top of Save Our Bees.
Yes, but the shell symbol is half shell oil symbol with a devil horn, half polar bear face, half cartoon polar bear face.
There's so much confused messaging on here.
And then when you zoom in that far to look at that, then you see how damaged that bumper is.
Oh, it's super damaged.
The bumper is trashed.
This person is my spirit animal.
It isn't like they had one oopsie.
While they were parallel parking?
No, this is a serial car hitter.
And they seem like an awful person.
Also, their tag was expired.
Was it really?
Well, they don't need that because they have a handicap.
No, they're handicapable.
I feel like those are the people that yell at me on the internet a lot.
And they're people that ostensibly I share politics with.
People with expired tabs.
People who have, like, really a very bad bumper sticker aesthetic.
Oh, okay.
I'm really glad you went in that direction.
Thank you.
Yes, I totally agree.
This is aesthetically... And, you know, if this was on the back of, like, a minibus, I don't want to sound... I don't want to be... That's racist against Volkswagen.
I don't want to be anything-ist.
But, you know, on this particular, like, late model...
And John, I mean, how old is this car?
Maybe three, four years old.
Look at this.
It's a new car.
Newish car.
And they've just been banging the shit out of other cars.
It's mostly on that left side.
And the thing is, I'm not going to put this up because I don't want to shame this person.
But the fender is, what do you call the fender?
The bumper.
The bumper is scuffed everywhere.
It is broken in parts.
And they've shredded their own stickers from hitting things so often with this car.
And this car may be the last thing you ever see.
It reminds me exactly of my old guitar case, which I, you know, I constantly slapped other band stickers and, you know, you're out there in the world and you play with a band and they're like, here's our sticker.
And you slap it on your guitar case.
And it's a way of you do it right in front of them.
So you're like, yeah, I love playing this show with you.
And then you you put your fiber sticker on your on your guitar.
Yeah.
But the way that the sticker or the way that the guitars fit into the van.
required that eric corson our chief boy he wasn't he he was gifted at that wasn't he yeah he was chief jigsaw operator he always my guitar was always the last thing to go in the in the truck and and as a consequence it got crammed in uh to a space that was just slightly too small for it
And so the stickers on my guitar case were both compressed into the case and also like ground, kind of shredded.
And as time went on, I just put more stickers on top of the shredded stickers.
And it's just chaos looking.
And it looks kind of like the back bumper of that garbage car.
Is this your Rickenbacker?
Yeah, the Rickenbacker.
Boy, I love that guitar.
Yeah, the case.
I get such a feeling when I see a Rickenbacker.
It gives you that Rickenbacker feeling.
I had one.
I told you this.
I had one.
I had to sell it for rent.
Yeah, that's the worst.
I had a 12-string.
It's the worst.
You don't want to have to sell things for rent.
That's college, man.
That's what you do.
It's everything.
It's complicated, to be honest.
You're not always able to go back to Senegal.
Sometimes you have to...
Plant your feet and say, I'm selling my guitar.
Don't go back to Rockville.
So... Waste another year.
That is a great... You know, if you need a campfire song, buddy, if you're at a spaghetti party in Romania, campfire spaghetti party, that's a good one to pull out.
Don't go back to Rockville.
I...
So Peter Buck famously said, you know, every time I play and I don't remember what he said this in an interview or whether he's I think he actually said this to me.
Yeah, he's always saying things to me.
Well, you know, we were somewhere and I said Peter is very literal.
Hmm.
uh uh person you know yeah he's interesting um in in my experience so i i know a few people in rem yes let's say everybody except for the singer uh no i have uh know him well enough that that um
I mean, he doesn't waltz up and say John, but he has said John to me.
So he has known your name at some point?
Yes.
That's nice.
The only one of everyone in the band that is an original member and even some of the later members that is at all what you would call figurative is Mills.
Hmm.
Ken Stringfellow's literal.
No, Ken is extremely figurative, but he's a late addition.
Oh, sorry, sorry, I took your point.
And he's not in the band anymore.
Was Scott McCoy kind of an R.E.M.
at some point?
He's been an R.E.M.
for years, and he is still in the band, and Scott is also figurative.
But, like, Michael and Peter both seem very pretty literal.
I mean, even given... This is very surprising to me.
Even given Stipe's, like, I think one of the things about his original lyrics was that they were so figurative as to be meaningless...
As he got as his lyrics got more and more mixed forward and he felt more and more empowered to make them make sense We saw that they that the literality of them Was a little bit of a problem right like I needed to chew my leg off the type of type of lyrics Not as much but anyway
Peter said, but now I'm thinking he absolutely said this.
You think he literally had his spine in his orange crush?
Well, I mean, that's, that's the question.
He's got my, I've got my spine.
I've got my orange crush.
I don't think he says I've got my spine in my orange crush.
Okay.
And I think he does have his spine and he does have his orange crush.
Okay.
This is the thing, right?
You can't like, Oh, does that mean something?
Maybe.
Or maybe he's just saying some things that he has.
Oh, you figure it out.
Yeah.
But Peter said every for years and years and still to this day, there's always a group of dudes standing right in front of me, watching me play guitar, trying to figure out the secret.
And he said, here's the secret.
D-G-E-C-F.
Yeah.
And he's like, every time I get on stage, I'm like, sorry, group of dudes who think that there's a secret.
It's just these chords played into a guitar that's plugged straight into the amp.
And maybe there's a tube screamer.
And it's true, right?
When you really watch what he does.
I mean, he's got that fast picking.
Yeah, he's an arpeggiator.
He's an arpeggiator.
But that's all it is.
That's the whole trick.
Arpeggiations.
Peep Bucks like Pixar.
I think one of the ways... I admire a lot about Pixar.
One of the things that I love about Pixar is that in addition to having kind of the most baller technology at any given time with animation, they were also canny about always... This is a truism that I'm not creating this.
This is just a truism.
They were always really good at saying, well...
Like, we can't really make people look anything but creepy, so let's make toys.
Like, we can do the surfaces of toys.
And all along the way, like, you know, we can do hair and water now.
And there's all these things where, like, the stories changed as they were able to do more things.
And even then, though, you didn't watch the movie and go, oh, I get it.
Now they can do hair.
So they do Monsters, Inc.
And I feel that way a little bit about Pete Buck, where he's very forthcoming about saying, like, hey, I barely, I was working in a record store, like, I barely knew how to play anything on a guitar in the early days.
And I always liked the fact that, like, he kind of went with his strengths.
And one thing he got pretty good at was having pretty good rhythm and pickiness for playing, like, open chords.
And he made it work.
And then a little bit of piano, you get a camera out of that.
Like, he's not Liberace, but camera's a pretty fucking great song.
He picked up the mandolin and all of a sudden it's a best-selling album, right?
Yeah, I don't know.
Mitch Easter said, because I played a show with Mitch Easter.
Really?
Yeah, one time, Mitch Easter and his band, which included his wife.
Let's Active.
Let's Active.
Played a show.
Opened for REM.
Oh, you did.
Back in the day, yep.
Let's Active opened for Ken Stringfellow on the tour that he and I did together.
What?
Uh...
And this was the same tour where you and I met.
Yep, Oakland.
Let's Active opened for us in some kind of Georgia town.
Wow.
Some weird little Georgia hole in the wall.
And they came out and, you know, Ken loved to introduce me to those, you know, to people like that.
Yeah.
And so we're all sitting around and Mitch Easter said, REM was the only band I ever...
worked with where every single person in the band when they were listening to the mixes asked if I could turn their part down that's that's amazing isn't that something yeah that makes me so happy to hear each one of them was like could you put me could you mix me in a little bit and he's like that is just not and as he said it I was like that's not how people are Bill Barry gets his props
Because I think he's astonishing.
I throw props at him all the time because all you have to know is he left the band and then the records weren't good anymore.
Those first few albums, man.
He's coming up with such... I'm sorry, we're talking about R.E.M.
again.
But those three musicians have such different styles.
But you kind of can't imagine...
there's no other way there's no like chaos theory that would ever arrive at the chaos theory of rem because it's so crazy like the beats that bill barry comes up with are so weird and when you watch him play them they don't sound you don't hear them go oh that's strange or you don't think like oh my god mike mills's bass part on this is really really odd i think that his bass parts are weird sometimes i love them i love them so much me too me too i mean again for me you know me i'm the first the the first three records are my go-to
But like, you know, especially on, I'm going to say on Reckoning, like some of that stuff is bananas.
You know, we're such big fans.
And, you know, I talk about them in ways that I'm never sure if if.
If they happen to tune into one of these podcasts, which I'm not saying they don't.
Yeah, they won't.
Whether they would say, like, I don't like the way he's talking about us, but I couldn't love them more.
But it's just, you know, when you get close to, you get proximate, because I wouldn't ever say I was close, but I'm proximate to them.
And where people would compare the Longwinners to other bands, much to my, and I think your frustration, REM was a frequent comparison, although I never heard it.
I never heard it, but anybody that compared us to REM, I was like, thank you.
That's so much better than being compared to the guy that did Mr. Jones.
Was that a comparison?
For a little while, some record, some one person made a review in the Salt Lake City alternative paper.
It reminded me of if Wayne was to cover Van Morrison.
Yeah.
But his band, and what is that band called?
It's Dr. Funkenstein or whatever.
What are they called?
Who's that?
Oh, the Funk Doctors?
Mr. Jones band.
Mr. Jones, I know this.
Is that Counting Crows?
No. Is it? Okay, and it's not Jim Blossoms. No, it's not Jim Blossoms. Is it Counting Crows? It might be. Counting Crows. Counting Crows does a song that I like. Did I tell you this? Did I tell you this? Did I tell you this? Did I tell you this? Did I tell you this? Did I tell you this? Did I tell you this? Did I tell you this? Did I tell you this? Did I tell you this? Did I tell you this? Did I tell you this? Did I tell you this? Did I tell you this? Did I tell you this? Did I tell you this? Did I tell you this? Did I tell you this? Did I tell you this? Did I tell you this? Did I tell you this? Did I tell you this? Did I tell you this? Did I tell you this? Did I tell you this? Did I tell you this? Did I tell you this? Did I tell you this? Did I tell
It was years after it came out.
I heard it on the radio.
I was like, what the fuck is this?
It's believable.
It was really good.
Yeah, it is Counting Crows.
Counting Crows.
And I think Counting Crows has some... Who is not Hootie and the Blowfish.
That's a different band.
Counting Crows has some very redeeming features, I think.
I think that they...
are imaginative, and I think that they have good songs.
Angels of the Silences.
Is that a song that you have ever heard?
Angel of the Morning?
Angels of the Silences.
ah no i don't i mean if i heard it i might know it 1996 now is that the year that uh that year is that the one that existed or didn't exist no that's the one right before the one that didn't exist and i think 96 was pretty early in counting on the bubble almost not existing 96 i think i mean some stuff happened but it's not quite as like null as 97 but now when do you get uh when do you get the uh the uh the color and the shape
That's in the year that didn't exist, right?
Color and the Shape?
That's a good album.
It's pretty existed.
Yeah, that's a good album.
Did you know the other night, I don't know why this happened, but I went down an internet rabbit hole, as you do, and I came out all the way across my lawn.
I went down like a rabbit hole that was next to my fireplace, and all of a sudden, inexplicably, I'm out in my lawn, and it's not clear how I got there.
And you got no monk hole.
But where I was was in Joy Division.
And then, of course, as you do when you're in Joy Division.
I already know this rabbit hole.
You end up in New Order.
Yep.
And then I watched... At a certain point, you stop.
And then I watched every New Order video.
Oh, God, I love New Order so much.
And New Order has always been a very complicated listen for me.
Um...
One, because the singing is bad.
It just is.
It's just inarguably bad.
It's a little thin.
It's not in tune, which is a thing that is fine in the context of New Order because it works somehow.
You know what I mean?
Like you go, that wasn't in tune, but it's so New Order that it doesn't matter.
With that kind of a mopey vocal...
It kind of works.
Yeah, it kind of works.
It's like, oh, yeah, he doesn't need to be in tune.
I mean, Morrissey only uses three notes.
What does our friend say?
He always sings the third?
He always sings the third.
Yeah.
Who is that?
Was that Chad?
Not Chad.
It was Chet Atkins.
The country gentleman, we called him.
That's probably Morrissey.
He only ever sings the third.
Remember that time that we were all sitting around in Bakersfield?
Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Buck Owens.
You ever go down a Buck Owens hole?
You ever get into that?
You ever go down the Buckaroos?
I watched so many episodes of Key Hall.
Fucking conversations from years ago.
You must have gone down the Don Rich rabbit hole at some point.
Holy shit, that guy.
You know, Buck Owens, his heart was broken for years after he died.
I'll tell you what, so was mine.
Have you ever gone down a Barrett Martin rabbit hole?
Don't know Barrett Martin rabbit hole.
Barrett Martin is actually, I'm going to step way out.
And I know that people sometimes roll their eyes, just like my mom does, at the sort of celebrity, not celebrity, but like grunge rock era celebrity name dropping that I sometimes do on this program.
But Barrett Martin, I'm going to jump all the way out there and say he's actually a friend of mine.
He's not just somebody that I know.
Barrett Martin.
Barrett Martin.
And Barrett Martin has played in the following bands.
And it's otherwise known as Green and Barrett.
Grin and Barrett.
Barrett Martin?
Barrett Martin was in Screaming Trees.
Oh, in the Scream... I don't know them very well.
Oh, look at him.
He's a handsome guy.
Yeah, he was in Queens of the Stone Age.
Oh, no, I like that band.
He was the drummer of Mad Season.
He was in Skin Yard and Tuatara.
Oh, he's the 9 Dave Grohl drummer in that band?
no no but he so he's a guy that is such a good drummer that every one of these bands at a certain point i mean he you know like every one of these bands at a certain point was like we need a good drummer let's get not not like to like sometimes he's just playing like the other you can't get matt chamberlain you get a barrett martin
and he's like he was the he was the drummer of mad season and uh he was in skin yard but you know jason finn was in skin yard is that right does he have a tattoo of it uh he only has the one tattoo as far as i know okay uh he uh you know he he played um screaming trees walking papers to a tara was that was scott mccoy in that
uh peter buck and scott mccoy i think god damn it these guys are confusing yeah they're all together they're all jesus christ it's like it's like a rat king yeah and i think some of that was maybe session work he's a very good drummer now the minus five is that is that the thing that robin hitchcock and bob pollard did
You know, technically, I'm in the minus five.
Is that right?
Yeah, because Scott McCoy always said, if you've ever played, if you've ever been in the minus five, then you are still in the minus five, which I thought was a very... That's like being a Marine.
Yeah, that's right.
There's no such thing as a retired minus five.
Yeah.
So he said, you know, he says that pretty regularly, which is typical of Scott McCoy's generosity.
And so that enables me because there are a lot of people who have been on stage with the minus five.
Do you get like discounts and stuff like that?
Like when you go places?
You show your card?
No, because it's a thing where it's one thing for me to be in a bar in Brooklyn and say, I'm in the minus five.
Mm-hmm.
And it's another thing for me to walk up to Peter Buck and say, well, as you know, I'm in a band with you.
As you know, Bob.
You know, that's a little bit... You know, there are a lot of people that have played in the minus five, and you don't want to...
You don't want to just, you don't want to play that card too often.
You know what I'm saying?
You want to underplay that.
You want to underplay that card.
Okay.
It's like the Afghanistan card.
You don't want to pull it out all the time.
Yeah, right.
I mean, if I'm sitting in a hotel lobby with Mark Eitzel, I'll say, oh, yeah, you and I are both in the minus five, and Mark Eitzel will have to deal with it.
He's just got to sit with that.
Yeah, but I've never met Jeff Tweedy, which seems surprising, but I never have.
He seems to be a good sport.
Yeah, he does.
But if I rolled up on Jeff Tweedy...
You know, that actually might be my intro with him, too.
You would flip him a minus five challenge coin.
I might be like, you and I are in a band together, and he's like, uh-huh.
And I'd say, we're both in the minus five.
And he seems like the type of guy that would get that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He's made appearances on TV shows that I like, and he seems like a very good sport.
Yeah, he does.
When I saw that movie...
The Wilco movie?
Yeah, that was a bad time in my life, and I walked out of that theater with the taste of batteries in my mouth.
Ooh, dear.
But since then, I feel like I have come back around, and everybody I know.
You know, Hodgman is close with those guys somehow.
And everybody says he's astonishing.
So what can I say?
I agree.
Well, yeah, we're in a band together.
Yeah, right.
Sure.
I mean, you can't hate anybody that's been in the minus five except for Colin Malloy.
and i don't eat come on i'm kidding there's an episode of parks and recreation um all you really need to know about it is that it features a concert and that concert uh includes appearances by yola tango uh well they're in disguise as a different band but yola tango and the decemberists and a band featuring jeff tweedy now do you know anybody in yola tango no i met them outside an elevator at south by southwest and they were very gracious
Were you at South by Southwest doing a tech talk?
No.
Oh, you're so mad at me.
I didn't mean to make you mad.
No.
Oh, I ain't mad at you.
Okay.
I ain't mad at you.
Playa.
I ain't mad at you.
I just got an issue.
Why was I there?
I've done two things at South by Southwest, I think.
And they're only nominally tech-related.
But I was at my hotel.
And I mean, you know, here's the thing.
Above all, I am a fan.
Unlike you, I am a fan.
I develop very, very strong, almost creepy feelings about certain bands.
And one of those is Yellow Tango.
Are you ready for this?
My introduction to Yellow Tango was Fakebook.
A weird first record.
A guy that I was in a band with gave me a cassette.
He's like, you should check this out.
And I was like, oh my God, this band's incredible.
Sounded absolutely nothing like what Yellow Tango actually.
It was just covers, acoustic covers.
Anyway, doesn't really matter.
But Ira and Georgia were waiting for the same elevator.
And I was like, uh-oh.
There they are.
No, and I do my usual.
I think I said, I just really enjoy your work.
Thank you for doing what you do.
Yeah, you do say that.
No, then you make sure not to get in the elevator with them.
Yeah, then you pull your wallet out and say, hello?
Hello?
I literally can't hear anything you're saying.
Can you hear me now?
That's not my line.
Yeah, no.
That was, I remember you, I mean, you are one of a small handful of people who have put Yola Tango in front of me.
I've sat down at the dinner table.
I've tucked into the table.
I've put my napkin.
It's a slow burn.
It's not a same-day enterprise to get into Yola Tango.
Yeah, then you put the plate down, and there's Yola Tango on it, and I go, ah.
And Dave Bazan is another one with the Yola Tango.
Eat your vegetables, John.
I have never had a bad experience with Yola Tango.
No.
But as you know, I just sort of like, I have consumed them quite a bit and I have enjoyed them quite a bit.
It helps to have been there.
If you're there when it happened, it's different.
I mean, like you and all these Screaming Trees type bands, like when you were there, like that's a different kind of thing.
And I never... That's the thing.
I never played with them.
I never stood on the side of the stage and absorbed it from that standpoint.
And that's usually how I get to be close with the... Oh, they do a good live show.
They do a very good live show.
I saw them with... I want to say with Lamb Chop.
At one of those terrible shows, The Great American, where you have to sit at a table.
I've spent a lot of time with Lamb Chop.
That's a hell of a band.
Yeah, we played a lot of shows.
Again, adjacent...
Is there anybody else that you'd like to mention that you've met?
Boy, so many people.
Let me think.
I mean, you know, really, I mean, it doesn't have to be a headliner.
Who?
Nothing.
What?
I met Jeffrey Jones.
Is that the guy that killed all those people with the TV party tonight?
That's right.
TV party.
TV party.
All right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Institutionalized.
I'm not crazy.
Yeah, I met a lot of people.
I met John Roderick.
I remember.
I was there.
Yeah.
I read the Scott Miller book.
There's a book about Scott Miller.
I read that.
I'm afraid that I used to be a lot more reticent about just sitting on this program and just throwing names around.
Really?
Seems like you've always been pretty comfortable with it.
What about John Wesley Harding?
You ever met him?
It feels like lately we've been doing it more, and I feel like it's coming from me, and I don't know what.
John, everything that's in the show is in the show.
That's always been true.
Why can't people just understand that?
If stuff comes up, you know what?
It comes up.
It comes up.
And then it's in the show.
That's how you know it's in the show, is it's part of the show.
Yeah, nobody ever called Pablo Picasso an asshole.
That's right.
Not me.
No.
I think that... That's a John Cale song, right?
John Cale.
John Cale.
He does that song.
You know that song?
Paris 1919.
Do you know that song?
Yeah.
The one that goes, come on, come on, come on now, touch me, baby.
How'd you see that I'm not afraid?
Ray Manzarek.
Ray Manzarek.
He produced X, and I've met John Doe.
I spent a little time with John Doe.
Isn't he a nice man?
Are we missing anybody?
Who else have we met?
John Doe, very handsome.
Very handsome.
Very handsome.
And he's always very nice to my daughter when we see him.
He's a sweet, sweet, sweet man.
No, Pablo Picasso was a Jonathan Richman song.
I think it's a cover of a John Kale song.
It was produced by John Kale.
Pablo...
You ever go back to Jonathan Richman?
You ever go back to the Modern Lovers?
I do.
I keep thinking the next time I listen to it is going to be the time I'm not that into it.
But I'm frequently surprised by how much I still really enjoy his not... I mean, I still like his jokey stuff.
But something like Hospital, that's still a really good song.
So many good songs and so many good...
like tones um like the tones are never what you expect and and i what was it i was i was listening to the other day where the thing that that always astonishes me about tones is when a clean guitar fulfills the function of a distorted guitar it's not just a neutered rock and roll guitar
No, it's like a hot, cool, treble-kicking... But it's still got thump to it without needing to be distorted.
And it comes in, in a track, and goes like, kerang.
But it bumps the song up just as... It just comes in and it's like, let me just get this straightened out.
It just comes right fucking straight down the center of the room.
Exactly.
I know exactly what you mean.
My instinct would always be to be, and I think it's an incorrect instinct, would be to put a bunch of like on it, a bunch of sort of overdrive, distorto.
You can have a loud guitar that is not distorted.
A lot of people, I think, either don't know that or they forget that, and they think that it's got to have the distortion.
You can have a very loud, very clear guitar sound that could just knock somebody right in the chest, and it's very compelling.
So you get to the end of I'm straight.
Mm-hmm.
I'm straight!
Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
And that guitar is just clean as shit.
Hippie Johnny.
But it lifts the tune so much, and you're like, ah, hooray!
And every tone on it, I just...
Every tone just feels so good.
It just feels so good.
Real-time follow-up, you are correct.
According to Wikipedia, which is never wrong, Pablo Picasso has a song written by Jonathan Richman, deedly, deedly, deedly, you're right, produced by John Kiel.
Now, here's the thing, and this is what tripped me up.
This is what trips me up.
So that was recorded in 72, released in 76.
John Kiel did cover the Jonathan Richman song, Pablo Picasso.
And released on his Helena Troy album, 1975, turns out.
Oh, so the original recording was by Cale, because it didn't come out by Richmond until much later.
Yeah, right.
I've never met John Cale.
No, me either.
I've never met Jonathan Richmond, but he played at...
Bumbershoot not very long ago.
And I've seen him a couple of times now.
I've introduced myself to him many times.
And he's a very, very interesting person.
He loves talking about buses.
Oh.
I love talking about buses.
You should talk to him.
Oh, look at him.
He looks great.
He's 65 and he looks terrific.
He's a terrific-looking guy, I think.
He's still wearing the striped shirts.
God, I love this guy.
The famous story about him making his drummer play with rolled-up newspapers at an old folks' home is one that I cannot ever...
I cannot forget that story because it makes me feel like maybe I should have been more crazy with my bandmates instead of always wondering whether I should have been less crazy.
You've made a lot of irrational demands of the people in your life, but they're all irrational within normal parameters.
Have you ever thought about maybe getting out beyond that?
You might want to get the band back together just to see how you can fuck with them.
Well, that's what I'm saying.
Nobody play any Fs tonight.
I remember, yeah, No Symbols, which was another great, like, No Symbols, says Peter Gabriel.
Is that right?
No Symbols?
No Symbols.
There's one of those Peter Gabriel albums that has no symbols.
Put that into your thought machine for a second.
He said, you know what?
He's up on Salisbury Hill.
He says, I'll show that.
I'll show that, Phil Collins.
No Symbols allowed.
No Symbols allowed.
No.
No jacket required.
I fucked it up.
God damn it.
No symbols allowed.
Let's roll through it again.
More like no symbols required.
Am I right?
No symbols on deck.
No symbolism.
Rambo.
I've never met Rambo.
I feel like, no, he was dead before we came along.
But I feel like there was, there's enough problems, you know?
But for Peter Gabriel, one of the problems was too many symbols.
And his answer was no symbols.
That's extreme.
That's extreme.
I could do with fewer symbols, I think.
I would like, here's what I'd like to do.
I'm going to do a Donald Trump here.
From now on, every time you, how about this?
I want twice as much floor Tom and half as much symbol.
That's what I'm going to... I'm going to make it even harder.
I'm going to give you an algebra problem.
Yeah.
I'd like to hear a lot more floor tom.
Here's what I'm going to say.
Take the floor tom and the cymbals away.
Here's what you got.
Kick drum, snare.
Okay.
That's it.
The end.
Are you allowed to sit down?
Yeah.
We can sit.
Kick drum, snare.
They call it throne.
Go for it.
Go for it, Phil Collins.
He'd kill it.
Oh, he would.
He would.
You know, I've come around a little bit on him.
I don't think you can hate on Phil Collins, even though you absolutely can hate on some of his choices.
Well, I think also my gut is that like Jeff Tweedy, I think he's probably a stand-up dude.
I heard him on some NPR show, and he sounded totally charming.
Yeah, he might be a bastard in addition to being totally charming, but that's never stopped us from liking somebody.
Life is hard on people, John.
It's complicated.
He never should have covered You Can't Hurry, Love.
I just wish he hadn't done that.
What about Illegal Alien?
I mean, that definitely falls into the category of problematic.
Problematic.
But at the time, it was also awful, but...
But there it was.
Here's a question for you.
Here's the thing about Phil Collins.
How is it that Peter Gabriel, for all of his eccentricity, never made a novelty song?
But like Phil Collins made a half a dozen novelty songs.
Oh, interesting.
And like the biggest Dire Straits hit, clearly a novelty song.
Yeah.
Right?
Like a lot in the 80s, a lot of novelty music.
was right up there on the charts but peter gabriel for all of his like like it's not a novelty song somehow right like everybody ever did a topical song like something about the ayatollah or something yeah like
On the Evening News.
He never said Smuggler's Blues.
On the Evening News.
Yeah.
Can't believe what I'm seeing.
Saddam Hussein's in a spiral hole.
Support our troops and we'll love them all.
I mean, even Shock the Monkey is one of the darkest fucking songs that ever was.
Mm-hmm.
Games Without Frontiers.
He's got a lot of issues, but it's not like Roy Wood doing Christmas songs.
No, and it's not like ball of confusion.
That's what the world is today.
Hey, hey.
No.
No, that's not, you can't do that.
I'm using novelty songs, so I don't know.
I guess I think more of like, you know, Winchester Cathedral or something like that.
I think of it being like a bit, like Snoopy and the Red Baron or something.
That's not a great song.
Right.
Snoopy and the Red Baron is a great song.
It was right up there on the charts.
But what would you say?
80 men tried, 80 men died.
That's right.
Would you say that Sugar Sugar?
was a novelty song oh boy it bumps right up against it doesn't it but it's such a great song that's the question like like uh when when bands do a like an idiomatic song like when billy joel does like like doo-wop it's not novelty i'm gonna bring you around i'm billy joel so hard
In the sunset grill.
The politics of contraband.
When Billy Joel does doo-wop, it's not novelty because it's so in Billy Joel.
It's more novelty when Billy Joel isn't doing doo-wop.
What about, how about this one?
How do you pronounce this?
Jamaica.
Is that a novelty song?
They change it enough, but I mean, the name is bad.
That's a pun.
But they change it, yeah, and you should never name a song with a pun.
Well, also, I'll often counsel my kids, until you really know what you're doing, never make more than one joke at a time.
Mm-hmm.
Right?
And so, Jamaica, and the joke is that it's kind of like a slightly reggae-ish song.
Well, how will people know this song?
Oh, it's up on song.
But I read the news that it told me and made me sad, sad, sad.
Look at you.
That's so good.
What?
I never heard of him.
What?
I feel like, okay, let me ask you this.
When the Hollies did Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress.
Oh, yeah.
Is that, because that's not their normal sound.
Absolutely.
I'll see you and raise you.
What about a He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother?
Yeah.
That's not what I mean, that's fine.
But like, to me, the stuff that nobody knows anymore today.
I mean, you get stuff like what?
Obviously, like bus stop, Carrie Ann, like any of the like, truly classic, like Holly stuff.
But also, how do you do long, cool woman in a black dress and the air that I breathe?
Oh, the air that I breathe.
All I need is the air.
I mean, that's into your cocaine rock.
That's so cocaine-y.
But Long Cool Woman, it's like such a great rock song, but you want it to be... It sounds like it should be like a CCR song or something.
Yeah, exactly.
It's like in a style...
That should be by somebody else, right?
Yeah.
The Air That I Breathe should be a song by... I'm going to say Bread.
Bread!
Is that who you're thinking of?
No.
America?
I might be thinking of America or bread.
You know how I feel about America.
I don't.
I don't.
I feel like America is so, like if you took the lyrics of America, let's say, here we are.
We're back in the day.
Plants and birds and rocks and things.
America are still in Europe.
They're the two friends that met at the American school in Paris or whatever, however, whatever their foundation story is, which is something like that, right?
Really?
Were they rich kids?
They met in Europe.
And it was some kind of thing where they were in prep school.
There was some reason they were both in Europe.
And they met there.
But they were Americans.
And they wrote these songs that sounded like Los Angeles.
Mm-hmm.
Especially a certain Canadian that was living in Los Angeles.
Jesus Christ.
If you could go back, if you could take me back to them...
And say, you guys, hey, songs sound great.
Let me take a look at those spiral bound notebooks.
Let me just go over these lyrics with you for a second.
Right, right, right.
Let's just do a quick second pass on these.
If you could just put me there and give me those notebooks and just let me comb through them.
And just take out the alligator lizards in the air, in the air.
Just let me just change that.
Same melody, same like in the air hook.
But just let me take alligator lizards out and replace it with something else that has other words.
You know what I mean?
Like I don't want to change anything except put other words in.
And every one of their songs has a moment like that where you're like, I'm listening to this.
I'm going through the desert on a horse with no name.
It's so good to get out of the rain.
The first thing I met was a fly with a buzz and the sky with no clouds.
The heat was hot and the ground was dry, but the air was full of sound.
Mm-hmm.
Let me just take one pass at that.
Yeah.
Just give me one pass.
You go get a coffee and come back.
And I'm just going to wordsmith this a little bit.
You know what?
You're not even going to notice.
Ventura Highway in the sunshine.
No, it's still going to make no fucking sense.
But it's going to make no sense in a way that's more amusing.
Yeah.
When the days are longer and the nights are stronger than moonshine.
Let me just get in there just one time.
Just comb through it.
If you really walk through the metaphors, the analogy, if you really walk through it, what do you come up with?
Because you don't really go anywhere with these.
Right.
It's like saying, oh, she was as beautiful as a pile of paper.
Where you'd be like, okay, I guess that's a metaphor, but what?
It just doesn't go anywhere.
Yeah, she was as beautiful as a pile of paper.
Yeah.
La la la.
America, you can use that.
And I feel like they really...
Their songs are really good.
I'll fight anybody.
I'll fight anybody that says Sister Golden Hair isn't a great tune.
That's a good tune.
But you can't give me a bunch of... I will not stand there and defend the lyrics of Sister Golden Hair.
at all i would i would agree with you i if it was just if it was just the lyrics i would i would i would say i'll i'm definitely i'm not going to fight you and also let's go get a drink do you remember their comeback you remember you can do magic you can do magic wait a minute that's america i think that's their big comeback circa 82 83 no
What?
Yeah, you know darn well.
Oh, I know the tune.
I just didn't realize it was America.
That's America.
When you cast your spell, you will get your way.
When you hypnotize with your eyes, a heart of stone can turn to clay.
Doot, doot, doot.
A heart of stone can turn to clay.
And if that happened metaphorically, what would that mean?
It means you're going to need to see a fucking cardiologist really soon.
Clay heart.
So Sister Golden Hair, the reason I reference it is it is a song that gets so close.
I looked it up here so I can quote it.
Well, I tried to make it Sunday, but I got so damn depressed that I set my sights on Monday and I got myself undressed.
I think that's pretty good.
That's pretty good.
That's C plus Dylan right there.
Yeah.
As a lyricist, I'm going to say like, I would, I'd let that absolutely go.
It's got a nice structure to it.
It's got the, and then the, all right.
He got so damn depressed that he's going to decide somebody.
I ain't ready for the altar, but I do agree.
There's times when a woman sure can be a friend of mine.
Let's roll that back.
All right.
Oh, I, and I would take another, I'd take another slice at it, but it's not a Windsor.
It's a lyric.
There are always going to be lyrics that are like, but it's not too wincy.
Here we go into the chorus.
Well, I keep on thinking about you, Sister Golden Hair.
Surprise.
The surprise there.
It's got flow, though.
It does, but the surprise could be a lot of things there.
Because he's setting it up to say, the surprise is only there to set up, and I just can't live without you.
Can't you see it in my eyes?
That rhymes.
And that's not so bad, but surprise, you got to wiggle it a little.
That doesn't, golden hair surprise, that isn't good enough.
Yeah.
And here's a, this is a great lyric.
I love this lyric.
I've been one poor correspondent, and I've been too, too hard to find.
A lot of nice vowel sounds there.
Yeah.
But it doesn't mean you ain't been on my mind.
And now all of a sudden, Carl Wilson comes flying in in a jetpack for the shitty, shitty chorus.
Will you meet me in the middle?
Will you meet me in the air?
No!
Will you meet me in the middle?
Will you meet me in the air?
Will you love me just a little?
Just enough to show you care.
That's how much you want to be loved.
Yeah, just like meeting you in the air.
Yeah, and so that's where the record scratches, and you say, I let you get away with golden hair surprise.
That was your mulligan, America.
Yeah, you're not meeting her in the air.
That's not where you meet people.
You see, I look at that, though, and I go, I bet the original lyric was, will you meet me in the middle?
Will you meet me in the end?
I bet that was the original, because that's what it wants to be.
It wants to be, will you meet me in the middle?
Oh, my God, Merlin, you're absolutely right.
That's what it should be.
Will you love me just a little?
Just enough to make me bend?
Or just enough to not pretend?
Oh!
God, you're saving careers, my friend.
Will you meet me in the middle?
Will you meet me in the end?
Will you love me just a little?
We're doing the poor job of just enough to not pretend.
We haven't had a Skype jam in a while.
And so there it is.
And that is the song of their catalog that has the best lyrics.
It's the best jumping off point.
And we just solved the problem.
This is their Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll.
Really, just line after line of magnifique.
Well, you know the great story of the Neil Young song.
We all think it says long enough to repaint, but old enough to sell, or whatever.
Oh, you're talking about the... Yeah, yeah.
Wait, hang on.
I forgot.
Yeah.
Old enough to repay, but young enough to sell.
Yeah, that's right.
That's the lyric.
Yeah.
And what it turns out.
Oh, God, I love that song.
Yeah, but turns out the actual lyric is not old enough to repaint, which is the greatest lyric.
But old enough to repay.
I always heard repay.
Oh, you did?
Repaint would be better.
It's such a good line.
Old enough to repaint and young enough to sell.
Boom.
You just wrote the greatest lyric of all time.
But he wrote old enough to repay and young enough to sell, which is like, okay, all right.
It's complicated, maybe unnecessarily so.
But that's just so much not as good.
And you almost wish that the first time somebody said, oh, that's nice, old enough to repaint, that he just, and this isn't something Neil Young would ever do, but if he just sat there for a second and nodded and said, yeah, thanks, and then immediately set about crossing off Repay and writing Repaint on everything and just hope nobody ever noticed.
He's got the resources.
He could put it out at a high bit rate.
But I feel like he probably heard that he probably heard that within a week of writing it.
And I think that I think I've read a thing where he said.
You're right, that is a better lyric.
Stipe has done this.
Stipe has famously changed lyrics because he liked other people's versions better.
And that's what I'm saying.
He heard it, he agreed it was better, but then he did that Neil Young like he just chuckled and said, oh well.
Anyway, moving on to the next song.
He gave him an African no.
And yeah, he said like, kids are boring.
I'm not going to Paris.
Stupid babies.
Hy-Vee to Senegal.
This is too fucking long.
I'm going to end this.