Ep. 240: "Wrobbie Wrist"
Hello.
Hi, John.
Hi, Merlin.
How's it going?
It's a little bit tenuous.
Yeah, there's a little bit of tenuousness because...
My rig.
Oh.
My podcasting rig.
I think I'm getting it, though.
I think I'm getting the tenuosity out of it.
You sound tremendous.
Oh, thank you.
You do.
Boy, that feels good when someone says you sound tremendous.
Well, you sound like you might be inside of a costly shag rug.
You're very well buffeted.
you uh you sound good sometimes when you're at uh at your venice beach location it's a little echoey yeah in this case it sounds like you're inside of like a really expensive cardboard box it sounds good yes yes yes are you doing something different you know what every week is different because because i feel like so much the same and yet somehow different
Yeah, you know, here I am talking to my podcast pal, TM.
And, you know, I feel like every week we shuck off a certain amount of skin flakes.
Dander.
Right?
Things inside of us die and are replaced by other things.
Hakuna Matata.
Stuff cycles around.
It goes in.
It comes out.
Yeah.
And so why should I be podcasting from the same location, same fashion every week?
I'm barely the same person I was two weeks ago.
Yeah, yeah.
The you that you were two weeks ago is like in your air conditioning filter at this point.
Exactly.
Fingernails grow.
Fingernails get bitten off.
They grow again.
To everything, turn, turn, turn.
That's right.
My eyelashes go out into my mouth somehow, and then I, you know...
And so I try to keep it, you know, I try to keep it fresh.
I try to keep it new.
Yeah, I'm going to go live with my uncle and auntie in Bel Air.
Oh, sure, sure.
My parents have gone on a vacation.
Okay, I don't like to ask, you know, questions about things.
Those Duke boys.
Um, Flash.
Flash.
Flash was kind of the cousin Oliver of that show.
They brought him in late to kind of freshen things up.
He was the Scrappy-Doo.
And I don't want a Scrappy-Doo, you know?
Oh, but he was so cute.
I don't want a Scrappy-Doo.
He was better than most.
Yeah.
He was better than having some little kid with big glasses on the show.
Robbie Rist.
Robbie Wrist?
I think his name was Robbie Wrist, without a W. Oh, I was going to say Robbie Wrist.
That is a good... That's a good punk rock name.
It's a good punk rock name.
It's a good thing to call somebody that you catch masturbating.
Oh, look at him.
It's Robbie... You know what?
Thank you.
All right, that'll do.
What's up, Robbie Wrist?
Robbie Wrist.
Now, would you put a W in front of Robbie?
robbie w-r-i-s-t i think i just put a hat on a hat so if you google uh robbie wrist oh see i think he suffers from the same face hair malady that i have let's see here robbie wrist yeah see are you talking about the one that came on to hot happy days oh uh after chachi uh there was some there was some kid that was did the fawns adopt a kid
Robbie wrist without a W, huh?
Yeah.
Well, who was the one, the kid with the glasses that was incongruous given that, yeah, there he is.
And he was on which show?
He was on, if memory serves, I believe he was on the Brady Bunch.
The Brady Bunch, right.
And he's like a little, he looks exactly like John Denver, who was very popular on the charts.
Oh, that's a really good point.
He had that ubiquitous 70s haircut.
Which I had.
You had the helmet, you had the, what's his name, Tweaky?
What's his name?
Tweaky?
Spinner?
Tweaky.
And Dr. Theophilus, that I remember.
Bitty, bitty, bitty, bitty.
No, I always call that the haircut that your mom gives you.
Oh, the mom cut.
Yes.
And there were lots of Mason Reese.
I don't think he had that haircut.
But OK, so OK, born 1964, he's 52 years old.
So, you know, the show, you know, you start out in a certain place and then you go to a different place.
And, you know, the show by the, you know, it's like in Raising Arizona.
You know, you've got to get some new baby because these aren't, you know, as huggable anymore.
You need somebody cute, so you add a Robbie Rist.
You add a, like, the little girl in All in the Family.
Yep.
But I think, you know, they actually hear on the first page of Google that Cousin Oliver, Cousin Oliver Syndrome, I guess they're saying they're applying to Robbie Rist always being.
I think he is the widely regarded as the canonical example of the Scrappy-Doo problem.
Did Mason Reese, was he the, my baloney has a first name, it's M-A-Y-E-R?
He was the Borgesmord kid.
Oh, Borges Bored.
Oh, I love to eat it every day.
Mason Reese.
Oh, Mason Reese.
Go Google Mason Reese.
I just did already.
He looks like that.
Easy.
For somebody who gets mistaken for Bruce Valanche, you better be pretty goddamn careful.
You know, it's sort of like Mason Reese minus Bruce Valanche equals you.
No.
No.
It's the single thing in the entire world that gets under your skin and it still kills me.
Oh, Rodney Allen Rippey.
I forgot about Rodney Allen Rippey.
I always mistake the girl that came on to All in the Family and then went into the spinoff Archie's Place.
Yes, Danielle.
I always mistake her for the girl in Goodbye Girl.
You know, it's a movie I still haven't seen.
Oh, come on.
I know, I know.
You know, I'm putting it on the list.
Come on, go home and watch it right now.
It's where Richard Dreyfuss won his Academy Award.
Duke boys.
David Gates.
David Gates.
You don't hear from him anymore.
Oh, Paul Benedict.
Bentley was in that movie.
Quinn Cummings.
There you go.
Quinn Cummings.
Paul Benedict does... It's really a star turn.
He should have won an Academy Award.
He's awfully good.
He really is.
It's a shame that people mainly know him from...
from the jeffersons i mean he was great on the jeffersons for sure but uh he's very very funny well i'm just i'm just this guy this twisted old fruit i'm just i'm just as god made me sir he walks away with spinal taps those glasses those glasses are funny just as god made me i say it i say it at least once a week oh i say it all the time yeah i have two i have two pretty stock responses to a random backhanded compliment on twitter
One is, I'm just as God made me, sir.
And the other one is a line from a Smith song.
Some girls' mothers are bigger than other girls' mothers?
Same record.
I say, that's nothing.
You should hear me play piano.
Oh, sure.
Yeah.
Oh, sure.
I said, I know you and you cannot sing.
I said, that's nothing you should hear me play piano.
Now, funny enough, you and I quoted the first... My melodies have two notes.
I'm singing the third, singing the third.
Yeah, we just cited the first and last track on the 1986 album, The Queen is Dead.
1986, by which point in time, the tide had turned.
That was their best record.
We were on to something else by then.
yeah it has a valedictory kind of uh is that the word i'm looking for it has a uh yeah i mean and you know they did the what they do after that they did rank uh but no that was that's see now meet his murder i don't think that's that strong of a record it's got headmaster ritual one of the great songs agreed that it is not that strong of a record okay so see
There's cheese upon which we can all agree.
Yeah, we can agree upon the cheese that the Smiths are not very good.
You can't prove a negative.
You can't land on a fraction.
We've been working on fractions over here at the house.
You're kidding already?
Well, this is the problem.
She just had a birthday not too long ago.
Yeah, she did.
I feel like it's creepy to say happy birthday to people for their kids.
It's weird, but it was on my calendar.
So, you know, belated happy birthday.
I don't want to be a creep.
Oh, thank you.
Thank you.
I was aware of it.
I meditated upon it.
I went, holy God, how is John's child that old?
Did you say come Quatacama or whatever?
Come Quatacama.
Say what?
Could you call me?
We had a birthday and I said to her, would you like to go to the museum or to the zoo or to a wide open park?
And she said, no, I would like to go to the Family Fun Center.
which is a place here in Seattle that is kind of like being inside a pachinko game.
Oh, no.
Is it like a Charles E. Cheese?
It's worse.
Is it like Dave's and Buster's?
It's like the airport in Reno for kids.
It teaches them how to use slot machines.
It's like an overstimulation center.
It's just like... But there are also rides, like inside rides, things that, you know, those things that take you up high and then drop you down, but it's all inside a giant barn.
Okay, okay.
And there's a pizza parlor, and if you... And when you're playing these arcade games, it rewards you in tickets, and then you take the tickets over to the counter, and you... Buy a rubber fish or something.
Yeah, you beat a rubber fish.
And then outdoor...
Outdoors there's a miniature golf.
There's some big big rides and then gas-powered go-karts.
Oh my goodness and So she wanted to go I was like I really don't want to you know like we're trying to be we're trying to be good parents we're trying to present ourselves as parents that read
the read you stories at night about the you know the jewish diaspora we're not trying to be parents that are like we're having a birthday party at you know at the reno airport and so all of the moms and dads who go to our sort of uppity you don't want to take the places where there's a surpassing number of people vaping
Yeah.
Oh, my God.
You know, her birthday party is at now a venue where there are police officers stationed.
Well, you know, well, I won't come back to this, but the rumor was that there are rashes of fights that happen at Charles E. Cheese's.
There's been some research that doesn't exactly prove that, but these family fun centers are not always fun for the family, let alone for the center.
Boy, I'll say.
All kinds of reasons do they serve alcohol at the family fun center.
At this Funnelies Center, I do not know.
Okay.
I'm not sure.
But you didn't notice any too much adult grab-ass going on.
Oh, plenty.
Plenty of adult grab-ass.
I mean, there are cops not only parked out front with their, like, gang cars, their blacked-out gang cars, but there are, like, cops just leaning against the wall in there.
They're just, like, hanging out by Ms.
Pac-Man, making sure there's no monkey business going on.
Just hanging out.
Yeah.
And Miss Backman, you know, there was no such thing.
No, this was all like, throw the ball into the hoop.
Win a plastic football.
Yuck.
And a pizza parlor where they served pitchers of different fluorescent colored things.
juice, you know, like drank, basically, like green drank, yellow drank, purple drank.
In case you want to get screwed up or crunked down.
Yeah, so for months, every time her birthday would come up, which it came up all the time because, you know, it's a major thing on her horizon.
It competes with Christmas in terms of the looking forward to and how this will be different this next time.
Exactly.
It comes up a lot.
And I'm like,
So, birthday's coming up here.
So, what did we say?
In our house, it's like the day of my daughter's wedding.
It really is.
It's like the godfather is not allowed to say no.
This is where she tries to jam in the most over-the-top, nonsensical thing.
She says, when it's my birthday next time.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, we're going to get 100,000 pallets of strawberries.
Yeah.
I remember my senior year, the Anchorage Daily News sent a reporter and a photographer to document our senior class all the way through the year.
And so they showed up at the beginning of our senior year, and they picked a half a dozen seniors that they were going to follow all year long and document what happened.
And I was one of the seniors.
And one of the other seniors was sort of like the head cheerleader.
And the night of our prom, senior ball, at 2 o'clock in the morning, I had to go to work because I was a VJ on Anchorage's local music television station, Catch-22.
And so, you know, the photographer and the reporter, one of the things they did that night was they, you know, because I'm there at the dance.
And then after the dance, go to a big party.
My date and I are there, you know, kiss under the mistletoe or whatever you do on a senior ball.
And then I was like, sorry, I've got to go to work, which at the time seemed very baller, right?
Very like, I've got to go to work at the TV station.
Sorry, got to bail on your little high school party.
And so there's a picture of me in the newspaper in my tuxedo, like clocking into my job where there was no one else, right?
I ran that TV station all by myself in the middle of the night.
So quadruply cool, like, oh, they just handed over the TV station to this 17-year-old.
But the girl that was the head cheerleader, her mother...
On the night of the prom where she's getting dressed in some kind of thing from the top of a wedding cake, you know, like it's like Anna and Elsa, but bleached completely white.
Everything right.
She's getting dressed up.
I don't know if she had a tiara, but almost.
And her mother says to the reporters after her wedding day, tonight is the most important night of her life.
So we want to make everything perfect.
God.
and that sentence just like just reverberated even then you knew that was a little bit wackadoo it was just like wait a minute what who how like the prom no and i don't think that that is such a terrible it's alongside like these are the best years of your life like it's such a terrible message
Yeah, no, they are not.
No, they're not.
You need to hear the opposite.
It gets better, as Dan Savage says.
Like, do not.
Oh, my God.
Tell them.
You're in a period now that's like a terrible rounding error in your life that you will eventually get over.
You're seeing your ball.
No, no, it's no.
And then also like to compare it to the wedding.
How great is that?
Yeah, right.
Make a man happy.
This is your last time to be on a wedding cake by yourself.
The wedding, which is the most important.
Oh, obviously.
And the thing is, I think that my and this girl who at the time was, you know, she was a figure of fascination.
Me because she was in that other world, right?
She's the head cheerleader shit.
This is the 80s So her bangs went up like the cliffs of Dover Up above her head and were sprayed up into her hair was just this Like that front hair muffin thing where it kind of cascades over.
Oh, yeah Her senior photograph her hair is bigger than the rest of her.
Hmm
And, you know, and she had an even her name was a name that suggested a kind of like bubbly, vivacious, you know, go get her person.
And so she was both a figure of fascination and, you know, and somebody that I was like.
I stole her license plate.
She had a personalized license plate on her car.
Oh, dear.
Do you remember what was her name?
It was her name, yeah.
Oh, God.
And I put the license plate on the wall of my room in a place of pride, and she would come to me with her gang of seven girls and say, I want my license plate back.
I know you have it.
And I would stand there in my, like, smug tortoise shell glasses, proto-assholishness, and be like, listen, listen, I don't... You've got the wrong information.
She's like, I know you have my license plate on the wall in your room.
I've heard it from multiple... Anyway, I eventually gave her her license plate back because... Oh, you copped to it.
At the end of the year...
At the end of the year, I repaid all debts.
Today is a day where I repay all debts.
Oh, you settle all the family's business.
Slotchy.
Mm-hmm.
And so I went around.
I gave a girl.
Mo Green.
I gave a girl $200 in $1 bills, like two fat stacks of
of $1 bills because I owed her something.
And I was like... And I said... Oh, and I put it inside of a VHS cassette tape case.
This is so weird.
You put so much work into this.
I got a little present for you.
That's a lot of money back then.
Well, fuck, it was a huge amount of money.
But I was settling all scores because I was out of there.
I was leaving Alaska.
And I wanted everybody...
You get your license plate back.
Here's $200 in a VHS.
Here's your bicycle back.
I was going around.
I was a terrible, terrible, terrible teenager to my peers, right?
And so I had a lot of debts to repay.
Yeah.
I actually went over to a friend's house and, like, sheetrock and spackled a hole that I had made in the wall of his living room.
Oh, my goodness.
I had a lot of stuff to do.
I had a lot of debts to repay.
Wow.
Every once in a while, I'll post something on the Internet, some picture of me from high school, and I'll get three or four comments from people that I knew in high school that are just like, fuck you.
You were such a dick.
You made my life miserable.
You still suck.
You really.
Now that I see that picture of you, that old face of you, I remember how much I despise you.
But anyway, so this girl has become a good friend of mine.
She lives here in Seattle.
She's incredibly supportive.
Wait, the cheerleader?
Yeah.
No kidding.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
She's one of those people that remained like really...
vivacious and she's incredibly supportive like everybody that she knew back then she was rooting for them you know that's not the outcome I was hoping for I hate to say now I feel bad yeah you thought she was going to get some kind of like comeuppance but in fact she like
She lives in Bellevue.
I thought she'd end up doing meth in a Ford Escort.
No, she comes to long winter shows.
And it's not her milieu, right?
Wow, so she's really reaching out.
Yeah, her husband works at Microsoft.
They live in a big house.
They go to vacation in Arizona or whatever.
But she comes and she is like...
She's not only like at the show, but she's also spreading the word of how good it is to all of the people that in our high school.
It's like really delightful.
What a nice person she turned into.
And I also turned into a nice person.
So what do you know?
Right.
Like the niceness got on us somehow and can't shake it.
Which which step is the amends?
Somewhere.
Let's see.
Let's see.
And my life would become unmanageable and believe that the power of myself could restore me.
Step nine.
Yeah, nine all the way out there.
You got to make a list.
of all the people and then go around and make amends to them step eight you make a list of people who are harmed step nine you make a direct uh amends step step ten you don't talk about fight club direct amends where possible except when to do so would injure them or others yes and they needed to put that in there because think about it some people don't want to be amended
That's right, and all the asshole alcoholics who are nine steps into their recovery are like, you know what, I'm going to go to my fucking ex-girlfriend and I'm going to make amends to her whether she likes it or not.
I'm going to amend the shit out of this.
That's right.
You know, this is a good excuse to go back to that place that I was permanently barred from and make amends, and that restraining order won't apply because I'm making amends.
That's right.
There's an asterisk on every restraining order.
That's right.
Sorry.
That's not how it works.
Keep your amends positive.
You knew what you were getting into when you went with me.
You knew what I was like.
When you went with me.
When you went with me.
Did you go with somebody in high school?
The going with years.
Yeah.
Did you go with somebody?
I exclusively went with.
Oh, one person?
Well, no, I'm a serial monogamist.
I never dated.
Basically, to me, a date, in retrospect, is just an unsuccessful long-term relationship.
I mean, every date I ever had was a shit show.
But going back to seventh grade and being in military school and going to the cotillion with Elaine.
Poor Elaine.
Poor Elaine.
Yeah.
Did she have a bad time that night?
Oh, God, yes.
Were you wearing a sword?
Were you wearing a sword or a sash?
No, no, that's just the, I think the company guide on gets a sword.
I didn't get that.
No, no, but I had a double-breasted navy blue suit with patches and my rank, which was seaman navigator.
Seaman navigator.
I might have been a petty officer third class at that point.
I move quickly through the ranks.
Was this like the movie Taps?
As discussed previously, I always had a lot of problems with pretty much every military school movie in terms of some aspect that they got incredibly wrong.
Because on the one hand, the school that I went to was not...
a strictly a punishment school it was very costly but it was not it was not like the uh goddamn military school where you send the goddamn you know what's his name kid it was um but it also was not a prep i mean it was a prep school but it wasn't you know what i mean like when you see these portrayed in movies it's some combination of a place you send a bad kid like a donald trump to get straightened out or it's a place for rich military institute vmi junior yeah
And it wasn't really either of those, but it was very, it was very military.
I mean, in the sense that like you didn't get to have any kind of fucking Tom Cruise haircut when you were there.
Like you had to get your hair cut and you had to like, you had to shine your shoes and you know, like the proper way you couldn't cheat.
You couldn't like, you know, uh, put, uh, put, uh, what's that stuff we used to use?
Shining glow.
You like couldn't fake it.
You had to really shine your shoes.
You had to clean your room every morning.
You know, I was on drill team, so I marched even more than I needed to.
So you couldn't sit up in the top floor window like Tom Cruise with an M60 machine gun and shoot at tanks until they blew you up?
You can't go to the top window, I don't think, until you're an upperclassman.
So were there people in your school that fast-tracked into Annapolis?
I imagine so.
I was only there for seventh grade.
But no, I mean, who went there?
Oh, I think Ashton Kutcher went to my military school.
Really?
I think I'm on the page of alumni from this school.
I will find out.
Let's go find out.
Admiral Farragut Academy.
There's one in New Jersey.
Oh, it's a multi-thing.
And there's one in St.
Petersburg.
Okay, here we go.
Here's a few.
Oh, Spike Mendelsohn from Top Chef.
The singer and songwriter guitarist Stephen Stills.
Uh, really?
You know, I've met and performed with Stephen Stills.
According to Wikipedia, internet personality Merlin Mann attended at St.
Petersburg, where he was a member of Diplomacy Club.
Oh, Diplomacy Club.
That's all true.
Oh, Lorenzo Llamas.
Lorenzo Llamas.
Lorenzo Llamas, of course.
Famous alum Lorenzo Llamas.
Uh-huh.
So what happened to Elaine that night?
Well, here's the thing.
Was she just bored or did you spill the soup on her or what happened?
I mean, it was my first, like the closest thing to like an actual date that I had been on.
I was 13 years old.
And here's the thing.
So, so bad.
So there was this woman who was the widow of a contributor, major contributor to the school.
she taught dancing lessons.
And so you would go to dancing lessons.
If memory serves, it was in the building that was named after her husband.
He paid $45 for nine dance lessons.
You get a bunch of dorky boys over here from Admiral Farragut, and then they trucked in all of these girls from a different private school.
It was a total racket.
And there were dance classes.
And so you would go in dance classes, and you'd learn how to disco dance.
You'd learn how to waltz.
You know, you had to, like, touch a girl and dance.
It was horrifying.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And this culminated in, this was all, like, preparation.
First of all, it padded this lady's purse quite nicely.
But then you end up going to the cotillion.
So the cotillion, you wear your dress blues.
You know, the girl's got a fancy dress and a corsage on her wrist.
And Elaine was probably, I got a picture here somewhere.
Elaine was probably a good six inches taller than me.
I don't think she liked me.
And I think she really barely suffered through the whole night.
She was a good sport, but I was not a good person to be on a date with.
And how were you paired?
You ask them, you know, back in dance class usually.
I see, I see.
And so did she appeal to you?
Yeah, I mean, I thought she was really cute.
She was a tall, slender, you know, Chinese-American girl.
And...
There was another girl in the class that I was desperately attracted to, but that was never going to happen.
She wore, like, you know, white jeans and one of those little, like, double belts.
Remember that look?
Oh, white jeans and a double belt.
Remember the double belt, the loop around belt?
Sure, of course.
That was a pretty hot look in 1979.
Yeah, it was.
It was a little bit like, yeah, it's not vacation.
But Elaine ended up being somewhat prototypical of my type in some ways.
Like, yeah, it's a slender, awkward bookish.
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
It wasn't terrible.
It ended okay.
There wasn't any kissing or anything.
There was no grab ass, as you say.
None.
Did you know the first six girls that I made it with all had red hair?
Is that an accident of history, John?
I didn't notice it until one day I was sitting reflecting
And said, wait a minute.
You're kidding.
I have only ever been with girls with red hair.
I was like, but that's not even, that's not even, it wasn't like red haired girls were not who I would have identified.
That's not your wheelhouse.
My type, right?
You're like a small, sturdy Jewess in combat boots, if memory serves.
Mm-hmm.
Sturdy Jewish.
You know, like ready to go.
I like a little Jewish or a little dark haired girl, right?
She can be Italian.
You like a good size nose.
Like a Latin girl or a Mediterranean girl or a Semitic girl.
Yes.
Ready to go, right?
Ready to climb a fence.
Climb a fence and she's got the right shoes.
Okay.
Yeah.
And, you know, and she knows her way around a pistol because she is a pistol, as my dad would say.
She's a pistol.
That's a terrific word.
Boy, she's a pistol.
That gal.
But red hair.
You know, my first girlfriend had hair like an Irish setter.
And then it was just like redheads, redheads, redheads.
Is this the doctor?
Yeah, okay.
Oh We stopped mentioning her name right cuz cuz people do Google her.
Yeah, we stopped mentioning her name.
Somebody sent me an email or text one time.
No, somebody sent a Twitter like a link to her bio at Princeton.
Well, she's fine.
She's you know, she'll be fine.
She walks around with a retinue of security officers.
That's a good idea.
But she sent me a text and she said do you still have
The pink leopard spot tuxedo that my mother made for you out of my father's wedding suit that we wore to the junior prom.
Her mother made us matching outfits at our request.
We went to a fabric store, she and I, because this is the type of thing you do in high school in Anchorage.
Go to the fabric store.
And we found pink leopard spot satin there.
And and my date and I bought a big roll of it and took it home to her mother, who was a seamstress.
And we said, we want our prom outfits made out of this pink satin.
And so her mother made her a strapless ball gown out of black, you know, taffeta and this pink leopard spot.
And then she took her her husband's wedding suit.
They'd been married in like 1960.
And so he had this he was.
He was my size, a little bit maybe leaner than I was, but he had this black, thin, thin lapel, three button cuffed pants, you know, 1959 wedding suit because they were married in Oklahoma and they didn't have tuxedos there.
And she put pink taffeta, pink, pink satin.
Leopard spot on the lapels.
She covered the buttons.
She put a stripe down the side of the pants.
God, that sounds atrocious.
She made a cummerbund and a bow tie and a pocket square and I think maybe even lined the jacket with this pink...
Pink lever spot.
That gal's a pistol.
What a gamer.
She was a pistol.
This was 1985.
Like, there was none more black.
Yeah, Animal Prince ran amok in 1985.
Yeah, and this was, you know, like, somebody was making this fabric, right?
So the presumption was it was going to get used somewhere.
Yeah.
Anyway, so I get a text from my high school girlfriend saying, my son is going to junior prom.
And he would like to wear your suit.
Turn, turn, turn.
My own father's wedding suit, which was then turned into your junior prom suit, which you... She's asking me if I still have it.
Not only do I still have it, I can still wear it.
Oh, come on.
Of course you still got it.
You're John Roderick.
Yeah, and I wore it to... You carried that through all of your moments in your 20s?
I wore it to Shawn Nelson's wedding.
Wow.
Wow.
I wear it all, you know, not all the time, but I would wear it to those events where it was like, you've got to come correct to this event.
And I'm like, oh, do you mean come correct like this perhaps?
Per chance?
Did you expect this?
No one expects the fucking Pink Leopard Spot Inquisition.
Uh-uh-uh.
So I'm packaging this up.
I still have it and all its accoutrements, all of the pocket square and the and the cummerbund and so forth.
And I'm sending it off to the to the northeast where this young man, the 16 year old second son, is going to wear it to his prom.
And then he's going to send it back to me, and then I guess when my daughter is ready for her prom, I'm going to ask my good friend to send her dress to me.
Oh my goodness.
And it will just go, and then we will die, but the suit and dress will continue to go from coast to coast ad infinitum.
This is suddenly strangely touching.
That's amazing.
Yeah.
They're sending it back to you.
I think it's very interesting.
I'm surprised she wouldn't keep it for her own collection.
Well, you know, the thing is that her father actually is.
is dying right now oh god and i thought that he they're down in central oregon i thought i would go down and visit him um god but then i remembered that he despised me okay the one thing that he would say to me whenever i would come over to the house which was all the time because she was my girlfriend i would come in and he would he would he had a you know he had a chair like every uh adult man in that era and
Right.
Like, that's dad's chair.
Right.
And he'd be sitting in his chair watching the McNeil Lair report.
These kids today don't understand.
Like, dad had a chair.
And he would say, as I would walk in the entryway, I'd be kicking the snow off my boots.
And he would say, don't let the doorknob hit you in the ass on the way out.
He'd be sitting in the chair when he said that.
He'd be sitting in the chair.
And I would go and then I would, because it was a split level house, because every house in Anchorage is a split level house.
I would just take the stairs down.
I would not take the stairs up.
His mom or her mom loved me.
They had a wiener dog, and the wiener dog was terrified of wire hangers.
I don't want to get into that.
That's a whole separate story.
Were they the original owner of the wiener dog?
yeah yeah yeah the wiener dog just hated wire hangers and the wiener dog's owner they were used for punishment at some point no no not at all they were they were these were lovely people okay but but uh my uh my girlfriend's mother was a kind of boy she was a pistol she really was a pistol and oh but you know she also she she sewed she was a seamstress she was a seamstress but also had been a reporter before she was married she was a journalist
But she had a devilish streak, and she loved the wiener dog, but she would also sometimes just for amusement take like four wire hangers out of the closet and just rattle them.
And the wiener dog would, oh boy, run around, hide under the couch.
It was hilarious.
Lots of laughs torturing animals then.
It was before we realized animals had feelings.
I would do that.
I would play a harmonica to make my dog cry.
Dogs hate harmonicas.
It was funny.
First, he just turned his head like this.
He'd go, hmm?
He'd keep his head turned like this, and then he'd go, oh!
And he had the blues.
He sure did.
Yeah, you know, when you're coming into your last, what may be your last days, yeah, you shouldn't go burn too much of that guy's time.
Yeah, just be down like, hey, how are you, John?
Especially like, don't start showing up like twice a day.
Remember me?
Yeah, exactly.
But no, I assume that she'll send me the suit back
because because the suit in the hands of a 16 year old is you know I was a 16 year old that was fairly like already sentimental enough to know like this is my prom suit
I am going to keep this.
I'm going to wear it, but I'm going to wear it.
This is not a suit that I'm going to bleed in.
You're not going to be out popping wheelies.
No, I've got suits I'm going to bleed in.
This is not one of them.
You've made that distinction, though.
Yeah, sure.
You know you're going to bleed.
You know you're going to have suits.
And you say, across this line, you do not cross.
Yeah, I have definitely taken suits that over the course of a night went from a nice suit that I was wearing a suit, you know, to being a suit that could not be recovered.
Was it usually blood?
It could not be.
It was blood and it was, you know, just like matter.
Matter, yeah, yeah, sure.
Organic matter.
I mean, there was certainly blood on suits that could be dry cleaned out, but there were also suits that could not be saved.
That would be very upsetting to people.
Well, to some people, right?
Well, if you wore just a giant brown stain on the abdomen, it would be kind of disturbing.
Yeah, or splatter even worse.
Like, what happened?
But, you know, I think generally when you're getting ready to go out at night...
In most cases, if you're going to get blood on your suit, you have a premonition about it as you're getting dressed, right?
Like you're thinking, here's what I'm going to this event tonight.
Oh, you think maybe you smell trouble.
Yeah, you're not going to put on a white suit, for instance, if you think that maybe you're going to get it's going to get rough and tumble.
Uh, so you put on a suit that you're like, you know what, if this suit goes, if this suit gets blown up, but I don't know her son well enough to know if he feels that way.
And so him retaining the suit in through the rest of his teen years, he might wear it to some college fraternity party and get blood on the suit.
And that's, you know, like, uh,
That's not a thing that I'm prepared to risk.
But if he wears it to his prom, it remains a suit of fascination to him.
Mm-hmm.
I will keep the suit, again, meticulously.
And then when he is in middle age, if he's like, hey, my former bandmate is getting married.
I need a suit for the wedding.
Can I have the suit?
Then, of course, I will transfer ownership of the suit to him.
Because you sense that he would understand.
Don't bleed in this.
It will also be his prom suit as well as mine.
And it's his grandfather's wedding suit.
Mm-hmm.
And it passed through this crazy story on its way to him.
But I need to see a little bit of sign that this kid's got the maturity to handle that story.
Because that's a fucking head story, you know?
Yeah, not every kid is ready for a little leopard skin prom suit.
Well, and not everybody's ready to inherit that story.
No, now you're part of the legacy now.
Yeah, there are a lot of stories that you hand over to some young person and go, and now you inherit this story.
Cut a salami with your Hanzo blade?
I don't think so.
No, you don't.
You're not going to do that.
Don't spit into the wind.
This is the watch that your father carried in his anus throughout Hanoi Hilton.
Yeah, yeah.
You hand that watch over to some kid, and the kid takes it to a pawn shop and gets some cash to go to the best little whorehouse in Texas or whatever.
You leave it on the counter.
You send the little European girl to go back and get it.
Yeah, exactly.
And then Johnny Fontaine is going to the bathroom.
Mm-hmm.
I mean, the whole thing, it could have gone a lot of different ways.
Just to show I'm not a hard-hearted man.
She was the best piece of ass I ever had.
Yeah, it's a chopper, baby.
You know what I mean?
It's a chopper.
Said it's dead, baby.
Emerald Farragut Academy, perhaps most notable for graduating two of the 12 men who walked on the moon.
You ready for this?
Alan Shepard.
Alan Shepard.
Fucking Alan Shepard.
How many of these academies were there?
Two.
It started in New Jersey and then transmogrified down into St.
Pete.
I think St.
Pete is the only extant one at this point.
You got Alan Shepard and you got Charles Duke.
1972 became the 10th person to walk on the moon as part of Apollo 16.
Yeah, Chuck Duke of 16.
Chuck Duke.
You got William Colpaw, who defected to the Nazis in World War II.
Let's see.
You got Richard Marcinko, author and former commanding officer of U.S.
Navy SEAL Team 2.
SEAL Team 2, yeah.
You got Caspar Robert Van Dean, who was in Starship Troopers.
Okay.
All right.
So not actually in the military, but... Well, I mean, you know how Wikipedia works.
You go kind of in descending order.
Alan Shepard is the first famous alumni.
I'm the penultimate one.
I would expect.
The only one below me is philanthropist and business leader F. Chris Nelson.
Philanthropist and business leader F. Chris Nelson.
Now, see, he's almost... No, see, no.
No, I don't know him.
Oh, look at this.
You've got animator Andy Lucky went there.
Andy Lucky.
Andy Lucky.
Famous animator.
Famous animator.
Yeah, the rest of these I'm not so sure about.
Singer and actor Eduardo Adoni.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
He's a singer and an actor.
I'm right below Stephen Stills, so...
Well, see, you're in the show business.
Yeah.
But I asked you if this school is a pipeline to Annapolis, and I'm beginning to think, hell yes, it is.
I think it was.
Yeah.
You know?
Yeah.
Every ship is only as good as its captain.
Alan Shepard didn't come from, like, Tampa Community College.
Alan Shepard, no, he wants the one in New Jersey.
Alan Shepard hails from Derry, New Hampshire.
Derry.
Derry.
He passed in 1998, John.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember.
No, I celebrated his entire catalog.
I think Derry, New Hampshire was probably one of those towns that was named during a time when you named a town aspirationally.
Okay.
Like, you know, when you name a town like Gold Strike.
Right.
Or like, you know, Silver Vane, Nevada or whatever.
Silver Vane, sure.
And in New Hampshire at the time.
Good Schools, Florida.
Yeah, Old Good Schools, Florida.
What is that town in Florida that's called like Jubilee or...
Oh, yeah.
Jubilee is the fake community, right?
Yeah, like freaky town.
Freaky town, Florida.
Yeah, it's the places.
It's like the Disney-ish community.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Disney, but maybe Christian 2 or Jones.
Yeah.
Jubilee.
But in New Hampshire, that was the aspirate.
Like, what are we going to name our town?
Isn't Derry, isn't that in Ireland?
Yeah.
Oh, well, how's it spelled?
D-E-R-R-Y.
Oh, dairy.
I thought it was spelled D-A-I-R-Y.
Oh, like we're going to try and attract some retiree cows.
Yeah, or just like, hey, come to our town.
We have milk.
Butterton.
Right?
Butterton.
Milk's butter.
It's not, you know, this isn't a gold rush per se.
No.
But cheese never goes out of style, if you know what I mean.
That's true.
That's the New Hampshire slogan.
Right?
Like a silver vein is going to run dry.
The load is going to run dry.
They call him Cheesehead.
You have the old man of the cheese rock.
I heard he fell off.
Didn't part of the old man fall off?
The old man of cheese rock fell off.
Didn't he fall off?
His eyebrows fell off.
New Hampshire rock rock.
Rock face.
He's the old man of the mountain.
Oh, yeah, he fell off.
The old man, the rock face, fell off.
He's still on the quarter, but his face slid off the cliff.
Say what, man?
Are you aware of the old man?
See, I had a lady friend, and one of my serial monogamies was with a woman from Kentucky, New Hampshire.
So she's the one who taught me about the old man of the mountain.
Oh, this is really sad.
Old man on the rock face, and that old man is me.
Old man on the rock face.
go ahead go ahead caller yes sorry long time listener first time stone face yeah it's complicated because you know you want to name something it's like when you name a kid it's very very complicated stuff because then you know you won't one does not really go through this and so much exactly like so many things in life it doesn't really happen until it happens
Because when it happens, it really, really happens.
It does.
They stand there and they say, what's the name of this child?
I have to write it on this piece of paper.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, it's the same way that all of the best experts on what to do with a child are people who have never had a child.
They know it all.
They said that I could not leave the hospital with my child until I told them the name of the child.
See, that's the government.
That's the government right there.
And I said, is that true?
No, isn't that a Judaism thing, too?
Is that a who?
I'm sorry.
I apologize.
Isn't that a Semitic law?
Isn't there a thing like you can't name it?
You can't name it.
You're not supposed to name a kid before it's born.
Because that's bad Jewish luck.
But don't you have to name it in a certain number of days or you've got to return it?
Is that how it works?
You have to name a child before you roll a set of dice.
Okay.
It's like a nominal saving throw.
Yeah, right.
You roll a 20-sided dreidel, and if it comes up, you get all the gild.
Don't look out a window after sunset before you name the child, unless you light a candle and drink a cup of milk.
I think that's right in the Torah.
Yep, yep, yep, yep.
It's why they don't eat shrimp.
Precisely.
Precisely.
Precisely.
So, yeah.
Naming is hard.
We went around and around and I tried to be scientific about it.
And so I came up with my first pick for name was the name that I had somewhat arbitrarily decided was the best name because it's a pretty neutral name.
But, best of all, it is a name from which many, many names could be derived if you have a preference over the prime name.
Elizabeth.
Elizabeth.
Did I tell you this?
No, but Elizabeth is the ultimate girl's name because you can call her anything.
Hey, good for me.
Yeah, that was my first pick.
The name my daughter got was the second.
You can call her Beth.
You could be practically anything.
Yeah, Beth, you can be Liz, you can be my cousin.
Her name is Elizabeth.
We call her Libby.
Oh, Libby, you could be a Betty.
But here's the thing, and this is the way it works when you have a partner.
It got nixed for one reason, and it's a good reason.
Have you ever met anybody good named Liz?
Be honest.
Be honest.
One of the redheads that figured in one of these earlier stories that I was telling today.
Her name was Liz.
Okay, then I'll just stipulate that maybe not all Liz's, but I'm just going to say almost every Liz is bad.
Also, Jonathan Colton's sister-in-law, who sort of doubles as a sister-wife, her name is also Liz's.
Okay, so not all Liz's, but I'm just here to say... Not all Liz's.
Hey, listen, not all Liz's.
But my lady friend who, you know, got at least an equal vote, she technically had the, you know, she gets naming rights.
Yeah, you're not going to name a child over the wishes of the mother.
No, no, no.
She had been pseudo-bullied by a Liz in her youth because most Liz's, let's be honest, most Liz's are bullies.
Yeah, they're a little tough.
If you're going to avoid somebody at school and it's a girl because she's going to beat you up by your locker...
You know what I'm saying?
Liz.
Yeah, I'm going to give you three to one.
It's a Liz.
Or a Moira.
Moira.
They're tough, Moiras.
I have a soft spot for Moiras, though.
But the thing is, the name that you chose for your child is extraordinary.
It's a little bit on trend in a way I didn't precisely realize.
Because, of course, I went to websites and I looked all these things up.
And she has what I would call an old lady name.
Yeah.
Which are kind of in vogue.
But one of the nice ones, not like Maud or... Yeah, Murgatroyd or something.
Murgatroyd.
Heavens to Murgatroyd.
Yeah.
Heavens to Murgatroyd even.
But then when I tell her why I like that name, I kind of fall short.
I'm like, oh, there's this really good Beatles song about a horribly lonely woman.
Oh, there's, you know, there's the lady in help, you know, Eleanor Braun.
And, you know, there's Eleanor Roosevelt who kind of looked like a statue of a horse, but she was a great lady.
She was a great lady.
There are some, there are also some Eleanors in our larger circle, right?
A couple of our friends named there.
Yes, I share.
I did not know.
I did not know.
Speaking of our mutual friend, I did not know that he had an Eleanor.
Yeah, well, and also our other Theophilus, right?
Yeah, that's right.
We have another friend who is a former religious rock musician.
What?
Now a secular rock musician who also has a daughter.
Oh, come on.
So I often get in situations where... Wait, wait, wait.
Really?
Yeah, and she's the same age.
She's exactly the same age as your two children.
That's a pretty name.
Yeah, it's a beautiful name, but I'm often in situations where I am socializing with one of my friends, and the daughter arrives, and the thing is, all three of these young ladies, yours and the one and then the other, they're all, like, among my favorite people in the world, right?
They're all...
Between, you know, between 8 and 10 or whatever.
You stop.
And they're just, they're, you know, three of my favorite people.
And so I'm all confronted with a situation where a young lady will walk into the room and I will say to myself, Eleanor, but can this truly be
I second guess whether or not it's one of the Eleanors.
Oh, sure.
You're reaching that age.
Yeah.
Well, and also because there are a couple of Madelines, including one Madeline who was named for...
Another prominent Madeline.
Also, the other problem with being a Madeline, as I have learned, is this is something that my friend Marco Arment, what does he call it?
He calls it the snap-to-grid problem, where if you have a name that sounds like a much better-known name, or if you have a name that sounds like a name that's very familiar to someone else, there's a lot of people who have names, like me.
Like, I'm always a Marvin or a Mel or something like that because I have an unusual name.
My Madeline, for much of her life, would get called Natalie.
Really?
Yeah, because that's the snap-to-grid problem.
You don't have this, because you have a canonical name.
I do, yeah.
I think your name's in the Torah.
It's right next to Shrimp.
It absolutely is.
It absolutely is in the Torah.
It goes all the way back.
There was God, and then there was Adam and Eve.
There was Methuselah.
Methuselah, there was... Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego.
But John was like right up there, right after.
There was already way too many Johns back then.
It was probably really confusing.
And they say, what is the John of which you speak?
Is this John of the guy who used to live near the burning bush?
It's John B., the guy with the sloop.
Oh, that's a good point.
But I've always been John R. Then he took and he ate up all of my corn.
That's right.
That's right.
I still don't know what that means.
Worst trip I've ever been on.
Really?
Then he took and he ate up all of my corn.
Yeah, well.
What does that mean, John?
When you go out on a sloop, you get issued a certain amount of corn.
Okay, so you got a fox, a chicken, and a Slip John B. of corn, and you got a cross.
Now, how do you do it?
It's one of the things about being on a sloop, and a lot of people haven't been on a sloop, so they don't know about the corn.
Get on the corn, and then you're out for a trip, which is how you describe going on a sloop.
It's called a trip.
So it depends.
You could have one trip.
You could have two trips.
You could be on a three-trip sloop.
Oh, okay.
And the thing is, you only get a certain amount of corn.
So if someone else eats up all your corn, I mean, think about it.
Well, I think everybody gets, if you're going to start out, it's sort of like when you're learning sailing at Farragut.
You know, you start out on a little puffer.
You work your way up.
You start on a Sloop John A. Sloop John B is your last chance.
You go from a puffer to a Sloop John A. So the pork hook, he caught the fits.
Yes, he did.
And threw away all my grits.
See, that's what happens.
And he ate up all of my corn.
Right.
Well, how do you make grits?
You know what?
I'm totally from the South.
Sloop John B. Now, nobody's going to say, oh, it's Sloop Bobby B. Or Sloop... See, I can't even do a snap to grit on your name because it's the canonical name.
Well, so John B., let's say, is it John Bartholomew?
Is it John Barleycorn?
John Barleycorn must die.
Should he live or die?
I never remember.
The thing about John Barleycorn is he was born old.
Who is that?
Scott McCoy has a song about that.
John Barleycorn Must Live.
Isn't he referencing a song by The Fall?
I think there's something that goes John Barleycorn Must Die.
I think Scott McCoy takes it and he turns it.
He makes it into John Barleycorn Must Live.
Yeah, John Barleycorn is a way of describing sour mash.
Okay, it's a kind of Cockney rhyming slang.
When you want to say my wife, you say John Barleycorn.
Yeah, that's right.
John Barleycorn.
Here she comes.
With my fiddles and bits.
Ixnay on the X-talk, on the X-sock.
Here comes John Barleycorn.
The thing is, I feel in my life that I am caught between Eleanor's and Madeline's.
I have Eleanor's and Madeline's on all sides.
Yeah, well, you know, it's funny.
I mistake one for the other in my own house, which I think is, you know, somewhat normal.
I'm dropping a lot of mental bits these days, I got to be honest with you.
A lot of mental bits.
A lot of mental bits, yeah.
But also frequently, I'm trying to think which one happens more often, is people will refer to my daughter by my wife's name.
Yeah.
That happens.
Yeah.
Well, because, yeah, right?
In a way, Eleanor seems like an older name than Madeline.
But, you know, here's the funny thing, though.
And this is, you know, this is the way this stuff goes.
You think you're ahead of the game.
You go in and you say, oh, like, show me the rankings and the Social Security charts and show me, like, you know...
Right, but everybody's looking at the same list on that.
Exactly right.
Oh, suddenly everybody's named Latricia Chantrell.
Yes.
Or Jean-Luc Morel or any other kind of mushroom-based name.
That's a very common thing.
So you think, now here's the funny thing.
My daughter's class, 23 kids, three different Aidens.
Well, now let me ask you this.
Of the 23 kids, does a single one of them have what we would have described in the 70s and 80s as a normal name?
Oh, good question.
Are there any Pauls, Peters?
So given our neighborhood... Mm-hmm.
he said archly uh there are i would say it's more common for a boy to have a normal name most of the girls have some kind of a wackadoo name yeah i think it's more common you still you still you still get it but like some of them have like i don't say too much i'm talking about other people's kids but like you have a sturdy irish name for for this kid yeah like seamus
Actually, she goes to school with a Seamus, yeah.
She has a Seamus, she has a Kean, she has lots of Irish kids with big faces.
They're the best.
Yeah, because their father works at the fire station.
That's right.
And they're taking all the factories down, the graduations hang on the wall.
That's right.
That's right.
If it weren't for the Nibs being so good at building ships, we'd still have the...
if a frog had wings he wouldn't bump his ass a hopping yes but there are some i mean i don't like you know this is an old bit of mine and i've got to stop doing it because it's like a tattoo like once you've named your kid even if it's a stupid fucking dumb name like that's the kid's a kid and that's their name and you can't make fun of a little kid
You want to make fun of the parents for, like, making a name that you have to spell.
This is my main thing.
And we're a little bit, you know, ours requires a little bit of spelling if you aren't familiar with the name, but it's not that hard.
But a name that you like, like a Jennifer, like, or something, like a name that you, like, have to spell.
Like Robbie Rist.
Right.
Like like like a Robert wrist with two W's.
Right.
Right.
Right.
My daughter's name has a name that has three spellings.
Yes.
And it's got a snap to grid problem because it's very close to, like, for example, Dan's daughter's real name.
Right.
Dan has renamed his daughter after a Spider-Man character, but she does have another name that's very similar to yours.
Yes, and also it's very confusing to people who are used to gendered names with a vowel at the end.
So there's sometimes a kind of like, do you mean blank instead of blank?
And then you have to say like, no, sorry, it's a different kind of thing.
It's coming from a different zone.
You should have named her George Sand.
Well, you know, I was just sitting here thinking, first of all, yes.
That's an awesome name for a little girl.
Just name her George Sand.
Well, I could have named her Mick George, which is, I think, one of the great names.
Mick George Bundy.
Mick George, right.
Mick George.
Mick George sounds a little bit like, it's got a little Curious George vibe to it.
What about Latouche?
Latouche.
That's different from LaGrange.
Now, if you had twins, Latouche and LaGrange would be adorable.
What I am wondering is, when was the last time you met a Meredith?
I know a Meredith.
She works at Genentech.
She is the spouse of a guy that I know.
Is Genentech a genetics technical company?
Bing.
Aha!
They're big.
They're big.
Can't get one past me.
Janentech.
Janentech.
Janentech.
What if you named a little girl Janentech?
Oh, that'd be adorable.
Right, except spelt it J-E-A-N-E.
Okay, you know, here's what you do.
Here's how you really fuck this kid up.
So, like, immensely imagine the names Janine and Teach, right?
Janine and teach, but you hyphenate it, and you demand that people call her Janentech.
Yeah, it's pronounced Janentech.
It's from the French.
Janentech.
This is my daughter, Janentech.
Janentech.
Yeah, but then, like, so you have, like, Bernstein, Bernstein...
Yeah, sure.
So why is that in the Torah, John?
Why is it such a big deal to be Steen or Stein?
Honest question.
As they say on Twitter, honest question.
Why is that a big deal?
I feel like that's more than just, here's how my name is pronounced.
Is there something peculiarly Jew-y about making sure it's pronounced a certain way?
Like you don't want it to sound over-Semitic or under-Semitic?
Well, this is a very, very, very good question that has never really been posed to me, even though it is something— You've seen it, though, right?
Well, it's absolutely like, why do they not put a dot on the top of USB cables that says, this is the top?
Sort of like the diuresis when New Yorker says, coordinating.
Coordinating.
Coordinating.
Co-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-
like russia uh belarus oh it's a ukraine ukraine the ukraine thing uh right where it comes in and then the assimilated germanized jews had a one-way and then okay
Or it may be, I don't think it's an Ellis Island thing.
I think it's before that, but this is a great question, and I bet you one of our listeners is going to say, one way or the other, something definitive.
We'll hear a voice coming up from the well, actually.
Yeah, someone is going to say, here's the simple explanation for this, but I've never heard it explained, and it always is a question, right?
Stein or steen comes from the German meaning stone or rock.
Right.
You got Stein.
You also got, what, height is head, right?
Right.
Like Einheit, the band.
Einheit.
Right, Einheit means one head.
You've got die Totenhausen.
Die Totenhausen.
Which means the pantyhose of death.
Okay, you've got cat butt.
yeah cap was real you've got uh what are some other ones there's some other oh you know what you got your weiss you got vice and you got what's the other one uh what's the opposite of vice uh you've got um uh shoes shoes shoes shoes you got you got schutz schutz no but what's oh vice is white oh i know this i know this oh it's killing me what is black and german
Oh, it's Schwartz.
Schwartz.
Schwartz and Weiss.
Schwartz and Weiss.
Schwartz and Weiss.
Yeah.
They changed it at Ellis Island.
You got Wald.
What's Wald?
Wald is forest.
Oh, really?
Wald.
So the Black Forest is the Schwarzwald.
Man, German's a crazy language, but it is cool that you can mostly figure out what it means.
What does Wehrmacht mean?
I mean, I know what it represents.
That means the regular German army, as they say, right?
Yeah.
But what does the word mean?
I can just look it up, I guess.
Yeah, I guess.
Macht means... Machtchau, Machtchau.
Yeah, it means... Make war.
Oh, it probably means make war.
I bet it means make war.
Ooh, Wehrmacht.
Wehrmacht.
I'll bet.
Make fair.
Make fair.
Make war.
I like that.
If there's not a German word for make war, I'm going to eat the hat that I'm looking at right now.
Is that hoot?
The hat says chick magnet on it, and I'm going to eat it if there's not a German word for make war.
Wehrmacht.
I'm sure you've been hearing about it.
Have you had a chance to look at the... Luftwaffe.
Luftwaffe.
Air.
Luft is air.
Yeah.
Like a Luftballoon.
It's the waffling of the air.
Okay.
Waffe means... I don't know what waffe means.
Lufthansa.
Lufthansa means it's the last heist as long as we don't get caught.
Oh, right.
Samuel L. Jackson's the one who screwed that one up.
A lot of people don't know he's the one that screwed that up.
You know, it's called a royale with cheese.
Oh, yeah, right.
Paul didn't move fast.
He didn't have to move fast.
Have you had a chance?
Are you aware of the recently released, out of translation, the new book Blitzed?
You certainly have heard about this book, yes?
Yeah, but I'm not aware of the – I'm not aware of the – exactly.
So why don't you give me the little – Well, it's so desperately on the nose for our program that we should probably just cut this out.
I will just leave it at this.
If you have the long opportunity, you should check out a book called Blitzed.
It's about the use and abuse systematically of drugs in the Third Reich and then with special regard to the drugs that Hitler specifically got from his crazy personal physician.
Oh, yes.
And in the short term, if you just want to shorty, I'll send you a link to a good Fresh Air interview with the author.
But basically, they were giving the army meth twice a day.
And they could fight for like a week without sleeping.
Give your army meth twice a day.
This is an adage.
This is a German adage.
I don't know how to say it in German.
That's what Benjamin Franklin said it.
Give your army meth twice a day.
If you don't know what it's for, they will.
Yeah.
Speaking of which, you know what the French were getting?
You know what they were issued?
Wine.
Red wine.
Yeah, wine and mushrooms.
Wow.
And that just goes to show.
Is that that guy with the beard from Miami?
Iron and wine and mushrooms.
You're not going to blitzkrieg on wine and mushrooms, if you know what I'm saying.
You're not even going to be able to defend a wall.
He took and he ate up all of my corn.
The thing is, the Germans actually have a holiday, we've talked about it before, called Schutzenfest, which is just shooting fest.
It's just a festival where they shoot.
Shoot.
Yeah, it's a holiday.
You get it off of school.
Yeah, is that a tuba-based holiday?
It absolutely is.
There really are a lot of tuba-based holidays there and a lot of beer holidays.
Well, you know, you got to dance with the one that brung you.
One of the interesting things about Germany is, of course, it was the cradle of the Reformation.
And so really, Merlin, there are two Germanys.
There's Catholic Germany and there's Protestant Germany.
Still.
And you really.
Is that right?
Yeah.
And as you because, of course, there wasn't a Germany.
Right.
There wasn't really a 20th century thing or late 19th century thing.
Right.
Well, pretty much, let's call it a 20th century thing, because there was a Prussia right up until, you know, right up until 1920.
When I was playing diplomacy at Admiral Farragut Academy.
That's right.
It was all broken up into different parts of World War I. Sure.
Prussia, Prussia, Prussia, Prussia.
Austro-Hungary.
So Germany is really a modern conflation.
But the thing is, all these little provinces and duchies and margravates...
And, you know, like bishoprics, they all as the Reformation went percolating through the German little little pockets and little castles.
Basically, everywhere there was a castle, there was somebody up on the top of the castle.
And that person controlled a certain amount of land around them.
And some had big land and some had small land.
But here comes the Reformation percling through like coffee through grounds.
And this castle guy says, I believe, yes, I'm going to go with these 90 plus theses.
And I'm going to say, like, leaving the church behind, I'm going to have a direct connection with my Lord and Savior.
And then the castle next door says, hell no, we won't go.
They say nine.
Yeah, they say nicked.
And they stay with the El Popo in El Romo.
And for a while they're, of course, in Avignon.
Yeah, Avignon, backup Pope.
Yeah, on a dance, on a dance.
Mm-hmm.
Sur la oeuf sans la mer.
Right.
Precisement.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.