Ep. 254: "One of My Favorite Actresses"
Hello.
Hi, John.
Hi, Merlin.
How's it going?
Super good.
Yeah, me too.
Oh, good.
Yeah.
Pretty good.
Good news.
Yeah.
It's nice to just have a normal day.
Yeah?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, I slept pretty well.
Sunday night is usually my best night of sleep.
Yeah, I mean, when I say I'm doing pretty good, today's not a normal day, and I guess I slept sort of well.
Oh, no.
Well, I mean, that's as good as it gets for me these days.
Really?
Yeah.
Hmm.
But I have to leave after our program to go be on the radio.
Oh, the radio.
The terrestrial radio, not our modern radio.
We should talk more about things that you do.
You, surprise, that's the wrong word.
I'm frequently surprised.
I'm buoyed to see that you go and perform places.
I saw a picture of you with long hair.
performing.
You played your song on the Brothers podcast.
You're still out there.
You're still getting stuff done.
Oh, you know, you got to get stuff done, Merlin.
If you don't get it done, how's it going to get done?
Who's going to do the stuff?
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, yeah.
What, can I ask, what kind of radio?
Is it a KEXP?
Is it a Luke Burbank?
What kind of situation you got?
None of the above.
It's a KUOW, which is our local public radio station.
And they have a culture panel where they sit around and discuss cultural moments.
Like relatively contemporaneous?
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay.
All right.
Yeah.
I mean, it's...
It's just filler.
It's filler, which is what 98% of all content is.
Oh, my goodness.
Really?
Oh, I think so about content.
Yeah.
You think most content is filler?
I really do.
You think it's insubstantial?
I think so.
Sure.
I mean, you know, like Izzy Azalea.
Let's just say that, for instance.
Why do you want to know anything about Iggy Azalea?
Well, she's so fancy.
She's fancy, but do you want to know anything about her?
I had to learn a little bit about her.
I don't want to take you off your topic.
I had to learn a little about her because I'm a fan of Charlie XCX, who's the lady who sings the good part of that one song.
Oh, sure.
The part where she's not acting like a black person from New Orleans.
The part where the English lady's going, I'm so fancy.
Which is a really good part of that song.
And then I heard there was some kind of dust up about her bona fides.
I should have known you were bad news.
With your bad boy demeanor and your tattoos.
Tattoos.
Nicki Minaj.
Monster.
Monster.
Everybody knows.
So the thing is, I don't know anything I don't think.
I'm really up on the rap these days.
I wouldn't describe it as rap.
I know a couple Kanye songs from a few years ago.
I like that monster song.
That's a really good song.
When I see that hotline bling.
Oh, hotline bling.
Then you got the one guy.
You got the guy who did the Marvin Gaye song.
That was popular a few years ago.
I'm definitely not doing this with you.
No?
You're not going to do updates and rap?
What if that comes up on your cultural panel?
What if you're expected to opine on the rap of the day?
Well, this is the danger for me now, because since I'm not on Twitter, I don't know what the of the day stuff is.
I did an of the day thing on the television a couple of days ago.
What do you think about... But it's all stuff that I wouldn't have encountered anyway.
You know, they'll hand you a piece of paper here at the King 5 breakfast show.
And it said...
There's a hotel for sale outside of Reno that's decorated 100% in clowns.
And you read the thing and you're like, oh, and then you get online or you get on the TV with them and they're like, what do you think about that?
And, you know, and people that are making pancakes.
Or people that are like getting the kids off to school or whatever it is that people do that watch those shows.
Yeah.
They're like, lol.
Or the other one was, there's a football player who was jet skiing and he crashed and he lost a $150,000 diamond earring.
What do we think about that?
Oh, boy.
He's got something to say about it.
John, I don't know a lot about producing content, but I think those are, as you say, problematic.
You don't start out with something that's already funny and then talk about it.
No.
Don't you think?
Well, the thing is, public radio is going to be a little bit... It's not going to be so... The humor is not going to be so broad, right?
They're actually going to say...
Here's an interesting thing.
Right.
The state legislature of Oklahoma says X. And then but, you know, it's not going to actually be like it's not going to be biting.
Right.
It's it's it's culture.
Gentle.
It's gentle.
But that's one of the many things I do, Merlin, in order to get stuff done, in order to make content for people and to ultimately, I guess, to be in the mix.
You've got to stay in the mix.
If you fall out of the mix, it's hard to get back in.
Oh, yeah, you can't get out of the mix.
It's not like riding a bike.
Mm-mm.
Because then the mix separates, right?
You don't want to break your sauce.
You don't want to break your sauce.
But this week is going to be a hot week for me because it's Seafair Week here in Seattle.
Oh, Seafair Week.
Is that like a Fleet Week type situation?
That's right.
Oh, really?
And I am the king of ZFARE.
Because of your military service.
Because, again, they need some content.
They need a certain number of cubic inches of content.
Right.
And John can provide that.
He can come in, wear his little Doctor Who suit, and you come in and you provide some content.
Will you get a crown?
I have a crown.
Oh, nice.
I want photos of this, please.
Well, they're on my Instagram account.
Oh, that's right.
You're still on the Instagram.
All right.
Yeah, use Instagram.
Crown, sword.
I have a tunic.
And so what you get in a situation like this is you get a lot of events.
I'm going to welcome the Blue Angels to town.
Oh, my goodness.
Oh, my goodness.
You've got a sash.
I do.
You've got epaulettes.
This is outstanding.
I was in a parade.
I was in a big parade.
150,000 people watched the parade.
Tremendous parade.
It was a big parade.
And then so this week I go.
I have dinner on the flagship, the U.S.
Navy Admiral, Pacific Admiral flagship boat.
I shake hands and kiss babies with the Blue Angels quite a few times.
A lot of events.
I go to the largest Rotary meeting in the Northwest, which they have every year at this time, because the Rotary is very involved.
Wow.
Some breakfasts, some dinners, and then I watch the
Oh, and throughout all of this, I'm doing ceremonial knightings.
Oh, my goodness.
You were born for this role, John.
Well, this is the thing.
This is the kind of content that I can freely give the city of Seattle.
Because without a king wearing a sash and a sword...
All you have is a bunch of guys in Navy uniforms milling around.
And then some Chamber of Commerce types and some Rotary types.
And, you know, the usual suspects.
But then you throw a guy in a sash in there.
And it's anybody's game at that point.
Well, you know, if you're going to have a monarchy, you should have a king.
Otherwise, aren't you going to have a power vacuum?
Well, it won't be a monarchy, will it?
The other day, I was asked... I'm sorry, I'm kind of distracted.
I don't look at Instagram, but now I'm looking at your Instagram.
You have all kinds of photos on here.
Yeah, that's right.
Look at you with the brothers.
There's you.
Oh, look at you and the little sweet baby brother.
Look at that.
Yeah.
Oh, did you get your Filson bag back?
No.
Okay.
Oh, is that you a Catwoman?
Yeah.
A cat woman and I were looking at some comics.
I was asking her some questions because she was running the she was running the booth.
I was like, hey, I don't see in here what I'm looking for.
And she came over.
Someone took a candid photograph.
Right.
You're looking for Oklahoma sex cat.
Oklahoma the sex cat?
Yeah.
I wasn't looking for that, but now that you remind me of Oklahoma the sex cat, I should add it.
I should add it to my list.
You should make an Apple note.
Oh, there's your mom.
Look at your mom.
So, like, for instance, the other day, I think that when they asked me to be King Neptune, they had in mind that they wanted Seafair to be a little bit hipper than it's been.
Last year, the King Neptune was a, was a member of the Seattle Seahawks and, um, and he had a fun time with it when he bothered, but it was, that's, that was their typical, the typical mistake.
I think that, that, uh, you make in a situation like this where you're like, this is an, this is an honorary position and we're going to give it to an upstanding citizen.
And then you pick somebody that, that,
is in your own world.
You're a chamber of commerce-y kind of organization.
You pick somebody from that world.
Yeah, makes sense.
Somebody that's impressive in that world, like a Seahawk.
But that's not very fun.
You know what I mean?
Like you go to a Rotary meeting with a guy that has been to a lot of Rotary meetings.
It's very, it's just like, it's very internal.
And then you realize, oh, we're producing an event for the whole city and
But we're making the old mistake of just, like, it's a circle jerk.
You've got to hit them where they ain't.
Yes, you want drawing power, but obviously you want somebody who has respect for the service.
Someone with drawing power.
Somebody who loves the city of Seattle and who isn't just coasting.
Yeah, I also think you probably want somebody who's a good sport.
You got to be a good sport, right?
But there's the version of being King Neptune good sport where you stand there gamely with your sash and your crown on and they hand you a piece of paper and they say, read this.
And then we're going to knight this your fellow citizen and you gamely read it and everyone gamely applauds.
But then you have another option, which is swing for the fences.
And this year they said, why don't we try and make Seafair a little bit more fun?
And they asked me to be King Neptune.
And it's hard for me to tell.
I do know that I'm putting pressure on the organization by being a little too fun.
i don't know how much interesting it's kind of a footloose type situation where a little bit where they they bring you in because they say this guy's a good sport he looks great in an outfit and a crown but now now it's uh in the second act things are turning around a little bit and they're going oh is this guy is this guy going to be a pistol well a little bit of a pistol right so uh the seafare uh grand marshals of the parade who are it's another honorary position there are a lot of these
uh the grand marshals of the parade and a couple of years ago one of the grand marshals was duff mckagan my my good pal who is also a seattleite a very vociferous supporter of seattle yeah it's just what is it it's an honorary thing they hand you a scepter you go i hereby commence the parade and you know it's but it's a fun thing it's a nice honor well this year last year they had chris pratt
And an actress who everybody talks about very excitedly and who each time her name is mentioned, I can't
remember which one she is okay but but one that everybody was excited to meet last year now i would be very excited to meet chris pratt because he's my favorite actress yeah he's a very good actress and and i have to say just for what it's worth he's he also seems like a good sport super good sport right and so it was very exciting so this year again they tried to maybe maybe they tried to duplicate their success yet last year oh he brought along his lady friend and anna faris anna faris that's right and everybody's very excited about anna faris
This year, they got James Woke and Billy Burke of the television show Zoo.
What?
Which is on, I don't know what, the WB or CBS?
I don't know.
Oh, my goodness.
Zoo.
That's the Marshalls?
So these are these actors.
And what they are is some actors from a thing, a TV show.
Like if we were at Comic-Con.
Is this the James Patterson TV?
Yes.
Oh, I heard about this.
I mean, who knows?
Yeah, no, I've heard about this.
If it was at Comic-Con and I walked past these guys at a booth, I would go, sure, of course.
But here they are and they're presented to me as like, here are the grand marshals of the parade and you are meant to knight them.
Mm-hmm.
And then they commence the parade, and it's all this thing.
It's a little bit of some song and dance is what we're doing.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
So here they come, and I met this event, and there are quite a few admirals, which is very exciting.
I met the commander of the Coast Guard for the Pacific region.
I met the...
The admiral of the Stennis Strike Force fleet, aircraft carrier Strike Force.
Another admiral, a couple admirals.
I made some business with some admirals.
You know, I did a little some lulls with them.
Talk about game.
Those guys have to be game because they do a lot of this type of thing.
Anyway, so up they walk, and here comes Billy Burke, who's a guy clearly my age, but handsome guy.
Billy Burke, okay.
Billy Burke, he was in the Twilight series.
Oh.
Anyway, he's wearing sunglasses.
Oh, I know this guy.
I thought Billy Burke was the good queen in Wizard of Oz.
That's why I was confused.
That's a different Billy Burke.
Okay.
But he's wearing sunglasses.
He's got his hair, his dirty hair up in a man bun.
He's wearing a Seahawks t-shirt.
A dirty unzipped hoodie and some shorts.
And I'm like, seriously?
That doesn't bring much gravitas vis-a-vis marshalling.
No, somebody told you that you were going to be the grand marshal of a parade and you show up in your pajamas?
I was offended.
Did you try to keep it in?
No.
I'm standing in front of this group of local dignitaries, and I call them up, and as they walk up, I'm like, Billy, you didn't have to get dressed up all special for the parade.
And Billy Burke, he put on a strained smile, but I don't think he liked being roasted.
And then I said a few times as I was knighting him, like,
You know, Billy made a special effort to roll out of bed to come be the Grand Marshal of Seattle's Parade, and I think we should honor him with this great honor.
Oh, my goodness.
And the thing is, I'm not being hostile.
I'm being funny.
It's fun.
Billy Burke, 50-year-old Grand Marshal of a Parade.
And, you know, he should be able to take a little bit of this because he chose he chose that outfit, not you.
Yeah, that's right.
Because fuck you, Billy.
And the thing is, James Woke, a younger man, the star of the star of this TV show, James Woke, he showed up in a collared shirt with some pants.
Now, he didn't tuck his shirt in, but he's a young person.
And he was loving it.
He was loving that Billy was getting raked over the coals.
So it was a little bit of a roasty situation is what happened.
Now, that is not what is, I think, typical of this event.
Oh, so you unintentionally, or maybe you made it a little edgy.
I made it a little edgy.
You said, we're going to have some fun here.
We're going to have a little fun.
And since I established that tone, then I knighted a couple of admirals, and I gave them a little bit of the same kind of business.
Like, oh, here he is, the admiral of the Pacific Coast Guard fleet commander.
And I said, is Alaska part of your area?
And he said, no, they're a separate group.
And I said, oh, so then, like, you have Montana and Idaho, the two great coastal states.
Oh, boy.
And he was mad.
And then I realized, oh, right, the Missouri River, the Snake River, the Columbia River, like, the Coast Guard is also in the rivers.
Okay.
And so then I, you know, so I corrected myself, and I was like, oh, you also are all the waterways, all the great waterways.
Okay.
He and I made good friends, the Admiral and I, but I think the people at Seafair, the ones who have asked me to do this job, are now...
hopping up and down, not in anger, but in anxiety, because what is the king going to say next kind of thing, which is, I think, the exact kind of fun that they were hoping to have in just slightly smaller measure.
uh and so this is the this is the fun for me right this is a ceremonial position i'm not getting paid it's this is oh interesting this is a uh oh boy now what about chris pratt is he doing it for free everybody does this for free chris pratt brought his family to seattle and did this job for free yeah i mean you know i'm sure they put him up yeah but uh you should check that out that that sounds a little bit like a jam up to me
It's the type of thing that is, I think, it falls into the sort of general community service aspect of being famous.
You get honored with these things, and if you say yes, there's no...
What is Seafair going to give him?
Five grand?
I mean, that's not something Chris Pratt's going to put his family in.
I've seen that he does.
I don't know how much of this is image management, but I've seen tons of delightful pictures of him visiting kids in hospitals and bringing them Lego and doing things in costume, and he seems like kind of a mensch.
I don't know if that's a Rock the Dwayne Johnson type situation where he's just doing image management.
Who knows?
But he seems like he'd be a pretty cool guy.
Maybe just because I really like him on Parks and Rec, but who knows?
It's the reason why he's one of my favorite actresses.
But I think past a certain point, what this will be is Chris Pratt probably has a foundation, and then he'll do this in return for the opportunity to put...
His foundation for kids on the masthead of some other... You know what I mean?
I do.
It's a different kind... Currency is the wrong word, but for lack of a better word, it's a different kind of currency.
It's a kind of social tokens that we pass back and forth.
We're trying to do the right thing.
And these are the... This is what the Rotary Club is all about, right?
The Rotary Club sends some students to Kobe, Japan.
And Kobe, Japan sends some students to...
And one of those students one day goes to college and majors in business management and ends up being the deputy director of the port.
And Rotary pins a star on him or her.
And the star then goes up on a piece of wood on the wall of a place.
And, you know, it's like there is a world of honorarium.
a world of, um, and everyone is very proud.
There's a lot of like pride in the work that they do.
It feels meaningful.
It feels like it spreads, uh, fraternity.
The, the whole sister city notion of like, and now someone who's here from our sister city in Uzbekistan and they brought an entourage and, you know, uh,
And being – like being is even tangentially involved in this kind of world, like I have to –
I have to also realize they're creating content for their own markets.
Sure.
Again, it's a kind of, not invisible, but a kind of, yes, I see what you're saying.
It's content, and it's a kind of reputational Wuffy tokens.
It's interesting.
You're moving kind of invisible resources around.
Yeah, and I think what...
What the benefit of these things is to the people that are knee deep in it is like this is where after you've awarded the blue ribbon for the state's largest cow or after you've sent 25 kids to college in Antarctica for the semester, then as you're standing around at the end of the meeting, somebody like my dad says, hey, Bill, I want to meet Tony.
Tony goes, hey, Bill, how's it going?
I'm the guy that's trying to get the permits to build the 65-story office tower on the land adjacent to where you are trying to also build a tower, and you are holding up my permits.
Why don't we figure that out?
It's like, oh, you're a Rotarian?
Wow.
That kind of handshake-y thing is what
uh, people that aren't in the room and what, you know, what, uh, democratic socialists, uh, what makes them so suspicious and angry because it seems like that's where all the chummy.
Yeah.
That's where all the deals are getting made.
And that's why those organizations exist now being inside them.
Right.
I see like, oh, that's not why they exist, but it is a, it is an element.
It is a fringe of,
Benefit of it that the people that are invited are the ones that are seen to need to be there and then that's how things get done and it's a It's not very creative and it's not very It's not it's not fun by any standard that that we have like it's not like the things that are supposed to be funny aren't funny the things that are supposed to be neat aren't neat and
There are a lot of PowerPoint demonstrations where people are showing slideshows of all the kids that they've helped.
But it really does come from, I don't know, a place in those people that is altruistic, a desire to help.
And I have no idea how.
But I now am on the, not on the, I'm in the anteroom of these people because I'm, because whatever they pick me out as somebody that's game, that'll come to these things and be a little roasty and be a little bit, because the thing is in a group where the admirals are standing around, right?
There's a lot of respect for the admirals.
And the admirals are standing around, used to being respected.
It's their number one job description.
Respect these guys.
Right?
Like every single room they've ever walked into, from the time that they were a lieutenant junior grade, some large proportion of the people in that room are respecting them.
No one ever disrespects them.
Except maybe... And part of it is you learn so early on that you get respect by giving respect.
Right.
Respect is the currency, right?
But the admirals in this situation, they go to a lot of rotary meetings.
They behave respectfully, but you don't get the sense that they... Part of respect, sad to say, is...
That you are impressed and maybe a little afraid, right?
I mean, certainly the respect they're used to commanding has a healthy element of fear in it.
Because the people that are like, yes, sir, are ones that can be in big trouble.
if they say, yes, sir, wrong.
And so the admirals are in this thing and there are a lot of Rotarians and people from the city and the admirals aren't really very afraid of them.
You know, it's not like somebody from Seattle is going to say, we're not giving the Navy permits to park their boats here this year because we're making, I mean, it's possible if we elected a mayor that was a real radical, but ultimately the Navy's not worried about Seattle.
Yeah.
But in a situation like that, you know, my job, as I see it, is to, because a lot of these admirals aren't that much older than me.
Right?
I know.
I know.
They're 54.
And so, although I respect the office and I respect the Navy, let's say, I don't have a lot of social fear.
Because what is an admiral going to do to me?
What are any of these people going to do to me?
And so no one ever roasts admirals, particularly not at a thing like this that's so low weight.
These are low power events for these people.
The seafare parade, you know, they don't come expecting to be ribbed publicly.
And I think personally that they love it.
I think it's fun for them.
I think that everybody likes to be roasted a little.
And it's like nobody ever sidles up to them and says, so tell me, don't you get tired of wearing these uniforms that are half polyester?
I mean, couldn't you have a uniform tailored?
Do you think they like that?
I think they do.
Because it's a kind of banter that they, it's the sort of banter that I would lay on you.
And they do have those feelings.
Like, so I'm standing next to the King County Sheriff, who is a big deal here.
And we're watching the opening remarks.
And there's a young deputy standing next to him who basically looks like his son and is sort of acting like his son.
And I don't think he's a bodyguard.
He's probably his aide-de-camp.
They call it his body man, or his bag man.
Yeah, he's the guy that's going to lean over.
He carries his purse, he gets his Leviathan, and if he needs a magnifying glass, he knows where to pull it out.
Right.
So I'm standing next to these guys.
Aide-de-camp, what a great term.
Aide-de-camp.
It's got to be what he is.
And I look over, and the King County Sheriff has a sidearm.
And the sidearm
uh you know it's unlikely that this 60 year old man is ever going to draw his sidearm again but it's there because it's part of the uniform and i look down and it has a single piece of scotch tape wrapped around the handle wrapped around the grip and i look at it and i kind of think about it for a second and i walk over and i say sheriff
And he looks at me, and I'm wearing a crown.
Yeah.
Right?
Yes.
So he's not going to say, hello, citizen.
He's going to say, what the fuck is this now?
And I said, Sheriff, I can't help but notice that your sidearm is held together with scotch tape.
Can you, and he starts to laugh, and his aide to camp starts to laugh.
And I said, can you give me some explanation for why the sheriff of King County can't
Find a screw for his or whatever.
And he says, well, you know, the grip is a little bit wiggly.
And so I fixed it.
And you're the first person that's ever said anything about it.
And now my aide to camp is laughing at me.
So thanks very much for that.
Wow.
I figured either his kid put it on there and he kept it on because it was sweet.
Because, you know, you get a lot of that.
Your kid puts stuff on your things.
I figured it was that.
Or it was maybe so he could get his fingerprints off there if he needed to.
No, just a single piece of scotch tape.
All right.
And and so I said, well, you know, sheriff, that's wonderful because I'm going to be able now to report to the citizens of King County that you are not wasting precious county resources on doing things like fixing the grip of your gun.
Yeah.
Which you're unlikely to draw.
And so then he's like, oh, here's I got a live one here.
And we sit and chat because in a way that kind of banter establishes.
It establishes that my lack of fear is a kind of peer.
I'm establishing a peer relationship.
I am clearly not a peer of the King County Sheriff in any respect.
Not in the sort of classic sense.
Not in the classic sense.
But I'm also not intimidated by him.
And that's unusual for him.
Right.
I mean, the only people that aren't intimidated by the King County Sheriff are his wife and his kids, probably, because everybody else that he meets in the course of this situation is either someone who reports to him or someone who needs him.
needs his political support.
Because, I mean, I don't mean this disparagingly, but that's a managerial job.
Big time.
Right?
I mean, I wouldn't diminish it.
I'm sure that he would be happy to jump in and grab a broom if he needed to.
But his job is a high-level administrative job.
He manages other managers.
And he came up through the ranks.
And Dave Reichert, who was a former King County Sheriff, became a U.S.
congressman.
So it's a political job.
Okay.
All right.
And he goes to these events and everything that we're looking at at this event is within his jurisdiction.
He is the sheriff of all of this.
And so everybody at this thing is like, sheriff, you know, thanks for coming.
And also, we, you know, we're looking for your help today.
next year at the whatchamacallit thing.
And so no one ever comes up and says, what's the deal with your broken gun, ding-a-ling?
Yeah, what's up with that?
And he likes it, right?
Everybody likes that.
Everybody wants somebody to come up and take the steam out of him, or at least everybody who's normal.
I'm sure there's a sheriff somewhere who's like,
move along, citizen.
I would put it this way.
I mean, in my estimation, that is less bothersome to people who are both powerful and confident.
Right.
There are people in positions of power that are not that confident.
I'm not naming any names here.
And then there are other people who are very confident but don't have power.
And that kind of thing, if you haven't gotten through the ranks and moved up, feels like a slight that must be addressed in the moment, much like you would on a playground.
Right.
But in this situation, power, you can you can laugh it off because, you know, that stuff's not going to bother you.
Well, and he is a he's a he's a politician ultimately.
And so he's not going to get to that job and be good at it if he doesn't have a sense of humor, because it's you've got to you've got to be fielding a lot of crazy shit all day.
And a few minutes later, I'm standing with the King County executive, who is the sheriff's boss nominally.
Hmm.
who's a young guy and actually a friend of mine, like somebody that I know socially.
And he's, I think, the greatest politician in the state by a large margin, and everybody thinks so.
His name is Dow Constantine, and he's just a great politician.
And he's a liberal, and he gets things done, and he's also a cool guy, right?
He's at this event...
He's dressed appropriately, except he's wearing Converse because he's a Justin Trudeau.
Oh, he's having a little fun.
He's having a little fun because it's a fun time.
But he's also got a blazer on and he's he he found in his collection of accoutrements all his little seafare pins and buttons that he's received over the years is various like every one of these little things that some King Neptune has given him like I hereby proclaim that you are the king of the day and they hand you a little pin.
Dow has them arranged somewhere so that when he's coming to this, some assistant says, and here are your Seafair pins.
And he puts them on his blazer so that it's just like and that's how you're a good politician.
You know, you show up at this and you're wearing the right pins.
And so, you know, that's let me pause you for a second, because I like that phrase.
What was the phrase?
Knowing the right pins.
That's really that's kind of a really good way to put it, because it also encompasses a lot of the different kinds of things we're talking about, whether that's Rotary Club or your father, you know, a counselor, you know, like knowing all of the ways to like where the right pin becomes very important in these situations.
Right.
Remember, remember how politicians were being bullied into wearing American flag pins during the Bush administration?
Right.
Oh, and it was this, I remember after, I want to say after 9-11, there was this whole thing of like, which late night talk show host will be the first to stop wearing a flag pin?
Yeah, and if you appear, there was a while there where if you appeared as a public figure without a flag pin on, it was cause for censure.
Especially if you were a...
A public servant.
And I think I think you will still see an awful lot of flag pins on the lapels of I mean, I don't think there's a single Republican congressperson that doesn't have a flag.
A lot of them wear that that goofy, slightly oversized badge that congresspersons get that looks a little silly, because when I see I'm talking on the MSNBC, it looks a little bit like like a pog.
Maybe or something, you know, there's a big pin trading culture at theme parks.
Sure.
I think this is how that the sheriff with the cowboy hat got a lot of his Mad Max or Morton Joe pins is just trading with other cowboy sheriffs.
Yeah, there's this whole pin trading culture.
And I think that's part of what you're describing here, knowing the right pin.
But also it encompasses the things like the things that I look at and see as magical, like the ability to remember people's names and
Remember what they do, what they used to do, who they know, who their family is.
And to do that without going, ah, like I do, you know, that's I look at that and I just look at somebody like that sheriff and I just go, man, that guy's got it wired right.
Well, and you think about you think about Dow, how many different events he goes to where they hand him a pin.
And he goes home and somehow puts that pin into a system where he says, the next time I go to the King County Reservoir Maintenance Director's Jamboree, I'm going to be able to put this pin on my lapel.
And when I arrive and they see it, they are going to be chuffed.
You can tell I'm excited.
This is my fifth one of these.
Look at my lapel.
I'm wearing my flight of pins.
It's phenomenal.
That ability and the knowledge that that is a thing that you need to do.
So I'm standing there and Dow and I are just talking about our families and we're talking about our lives.
And a guy walks up and he's one of the people I have honored that day who runs an organization that supports the Navy.
And he says...
Hey, sorry to interrupt.
Dow just wanted to say hi.
Just wanted to say thank you.
Dow remembers his name.
Dow knows who he is.
And he says, just wanted to make sure you got my email inviting you to the event that we're doing.
And it's a little bit of a... Oh, I know.
I know.
I know that message.
I've gotten that message.
And this is a protocol breach because we're at a thing.
Dow's wearing his fun shoes.
But you can tell that this man is very earnest about his work.
And as part of that earnestness, he does not recognize social...
Whatever the wiggle room is between this is an event where you say something like that, this is not.
Slightly cringey breach of protocol.
A little bit.
But Dow is very, very graceful.
Sure.
And Dow says, you know, I don't have any staff members with me right now.
And then he makes the self-effacement joke.
And he says, and you know, honestly, I just go where they tell me.
So I don't know.
I don't, you know, it's his kind of way of saying, I don't answer my own email when it is things like this.
But when I get back to the office, I'll ask them to make sure that I am, you know.
Did he write it down?
Nope.
He just remembers.
Just remembers.
And the guy kind of presses his attack a little bit.
Well, we'd like you to be at the event.
And, you know, it's very important because we're doing it for the Navy and support our troops.
And Dow says, you know, as soon as I get back, I'm going to I'm going to talk to my staff about it and just sort of gracefully does his thing.
But that is what is happening at these things, whether it is overt like that or whether.
A person walks up and says, hey, great to see you, Dow.
And Dow knows that this person wants them at their at his event.
And he's able to send a coded message to them like, hey, great.
Well, I'll see you.
I'll see you in a week.
And it's in a situation like that.
It's a little bit.
The phrase comes to mind is holding court, where if you actually think about a regent sitting in some kind of a room where people come in and come in, you know, talk to them about things in that kind of situation.
Dow is his name.
Sheriff Dow.
No, the sheriff is not Dow.
Who's Dow?
Dow is the executive.
Oh, I'm sorry.
Dow is the executive who's the nominal boss.
He's the mayor.
If that person has the opportunity to say at that point to this person, oh, by the way, I got your note.
I haven't had a chance to respond to it, but I feel pretty sure we can get that on the schedule.
He has the opportunity where he could say that, but if he didn't say that, you asking him about it, you're basically doing that thing where you say, did you get my email about your email?
Don't do that.
Don't do that to people, especially in social situations.
It's such a...
It's such a PR, bad PR person thing to do that whole, like, well, if I do it in public and I'm smiling, like you have to be nice to me.
Yeah.
Well, and it's how I, it's how a PR person justifies their, uh, their bowl of cereal, right?
Because they get to, that's my job.
Yeah.
That's their job.
And they're trying to get those Glenn Gary leads all the time.
Um, and,
But at an event like this, every single person in there is holding court simultaneously.
There are no people in there that are not either, I mean, everybody had stars on their collars.
And the sheriff has four stars on his collar, but he reports to Dow, who is wearing Converse.
Fun shoes.
Yeah, but Dow's got stars on his collar, too, and everybody knows it.
It's just Dow's stars are Seafair pins because he knows how to do that.
The only people in there that don't have stars on their collars are Billy Burke and James Woke.
Who are there because they're rich Hollywood handsoms.
And then me.
And I'm wearing a fucking crown.
Yeah.
That speaks for itself.
It really does.
Right.
A crown like you because the crown suggests I am ceremonially the boss of everyone here.
Obviously, we all know that that is not true.
Well, I think for the purposes of this event, if that has been conferred on you, I think people should be deferential to you.
And they are.
And that is part of the fun.
Every one of these admirals said, do I bow?
And each time I say, yes.
Bend the knee.
As they do.
Two of these admirals got down on their knees.
John, that's a good sport.
It's a fucking good sport because they're politicians too.
You don't get to be a three-star...
General or Admiral without being political.
It's a little bit of what one might call social power exchange.
You're having fun with it.
Fucking A. The only thing I lack is a clown nose because that's what the crown is, right?
Come on.
And I went to great lengths.
You have a lot of dignity.
I would not call that a clown nose.
You have an excess of dignity.
Thank you.
I grew my beard a little bit long so that I look like King Neptune a little bit more.
But I feel like the job description that the Seafair people had in mind was business casual plus a sash and a crown.
That's what they expect.
Okay.
And I have spent the last month putting together a pretty good replica of like Tsar Nicholas II's tunic from just before the World War.
I have all the elements.
I have the, you know, I have the Star of Constantine and I have the
the additional gold braid and the gigantic epaulets and the you've done some you've done your work here the sword belt and i mean if you take a picture of me and my tunic and you put it up next to sar necklace he's got a lot more bling um and one of the nice things about being a czar is that you can have knee-high patent leather boots made for yourself that's a good look which would be that's an investment that i'm like
I'm frankly teetering on making.
Me too.
I just saw Atomic Blonde this weekend.
But so I'm there in a tunic befitting a czar.
And that is not what Seafair expected.
They're not displeased.
It certainly is inhabiting the role.
What they expected was you come in...
looking like a golf dad basically they want a golf dad with a sash la la la and um and that's but they got they got a little more than they bargained for they they they wanted to reach a younger demo they brought in a new king with some with some fresh energy and he uh he brought a whole outfit yeah right and it's a you know like the outfit oh it's so fun to wear it's so fun to to march around in this outfit with the you know the epaulets really
The epaulets really communicate not only that you have broad shoulders, but that those broad shoulders are covered with Cthulhu's of gold, which is, you know, like the fucking admirals who are marching around this thing have giant gold epaulets.
It's just that style has changed and the epaulets now are flat and have a lot of stars on them, but they're still freaking gold epaulets.
And my epaulets are just what they would have worn 100 years ago.
You're a little bit more Gilbert and Sullivan.
Yeah, I mean, there's a... You know, I don't want to look like the Nutcracker.
I'm imitating... I'm imitating real... Why'd you put that image in my head?
That's funny.
That'd be funny if you came like the Nutcracker with some homemade makeup.
I am essentially there as the Nutcracker.
The... You know, the...
I mean, initially what I wanted was to come dressed as master and commander.
And it was very difficult to put that outfit together so that it looked good with a crown.
And the problem of the crown is that it's very important to see fair.
Because...
That's what they made.
They made a crown and they thought they were having fun with that.
And that's an example of like, we are fun and we're having fun with this and we made a crown and a sash for our king.
And it's an easy thing to put on somebody who's wearing business casual and make the event fun.
It's like instant king, just add crown.
Right.
You can walk in and you're wearing a suit from Men's Warehouse and they put the sash on you, you put a crown on and then unite somebody.
Everybody has a good laugh.
Yeah.
But Seafair, when I was a kid...
was one of these regional festivals that used to happen in every town, every small town, every local, every town that wasn't.
Because the country didn't have a unified culture.
Seafair was an event where Seattle went off.
Went bananas like King Neptune had an entourage of 20 people.
Oh, my goodness.
They were all wearing giant hats with feathers in them.
Everyone was drunk.
It was there were parties.
People would really get into the spirit.
Oh, my God.
I mean, my mom talks about it.
She's she's like Seafair was the event of the season.
There were multiple parades.
There was a giant parade to kick it off.
Then there was a giant parade in the middle.
And then there was a giant parade at the end.
That's kind of an event my late father would call a grab ass.
It was a huge grab ass.
And everyone came from miles around.
The mayor and, you know, and Neptune was a big deal, right?
During that time, during the seafare month, King Neptune never bought a drink in any bar in the city.
there are seafare pirates and seafare clowns and they would they would come into bars and restaurants and just start singing their bawdy songs and they would take you know food off of people's plates and everybody had a grand old ribald time and i'm sure at that during that era right there was also a lot of impropriety that wouldn't fly these days oh i would feel fairly certain about that and so that you know that is kind of
taken out of it right as time goes on the mayor does not get publicly drunk during seafare but watching them in old black and white photos like watching the town just go nuts and when i got when i was appointed king neptune my brother bart sent me a text and he said dad would be so proud oh that's nice dad loved seafare and this is a you know this is an example of the kind of
honorary position in the city of Seattle that my dad thrived on.
And no member of my family, even in all of their many splendors, no one ever was King Neptune before.
My dad and my uncle Al and my uncle Junius and George Alfred Caldwell Rochester before him, none of them ever were afforded or accorded this honor.
So I don't want to show up in business casual and have a crown.
I wanted to come dressed as Russell Crowe in Master and Commander.
But you can't take that big Napoleon hat off and put a crown on.
You just look dumb.
But you can come as Tsar Nicholas or King George V or a little bit less Kaiser Wilhelm.
But you can come as those guys.
And it looks the part, right?
Because they were obviously like commanders of their navies, too.
You knew that Tsar Nicholas...
George V and Kaiser Wilhelm were all first cousins, right?
In thinking about what you were saying, in my head, something was swinging around about Germans.
Isn't there a lot of Germanic things running through a lot of different countries, like a lot of the royal family has roots in Germany?
Yeah.
Well, they're all related, right?
The British royal family is a German house.
I seem to remember in The Crown, I remember that being kind of a big deal.
Like one of her relatives still mostly spoke German and stuff like that.
Well, sure.
And the thing is, the leaders of those three nations at that time, 1914, the King of England... Is George V Elizabeth's father?
George V. He's Elizabeth's grandfather.
Okay.
Right?
I think.
Yeah, all right.
Well, they were all... So all three of those leaders... Oh, yeah, I see.
You're right.
I'm sorry.
Yeah, I think you're right.
The Kaiser of Prussia, the Tsar of Russia, and the King of England were all first cousins, and they were all grandsons of Queen Victoria.
Wow.
Wow.
And while Queen Victoria was alive, they were all like, oh, and they look almost exactly alike.
Like George V and Sir Nicholas look like twins.
You see them next to each other.
Twins, twins, twins.
And nobody in the family liked Kaiser Wilhelm.
He was the cousin that nobody liked.
How come?
He was a jerk.
Okay.
He was like, I think that he had, when he was being bornded, there was a complication.
And, you know, it was olden times, so they weren't able to solve complications in being bornded, like, on the spot.
And one of the results was that the Kaiser had a deformed arm.
Okay.
It was like Gary Berghoff, right?
He had one hand that he didn't like to show.
Herb's palsy.
Gary Berghoff had an arm situation?
Gary Berghoff, if you, I mean, in the 10 years that we all watched MASH every day, we never, ever noticed that Gary Berghoff has one hand that is...
I think much smaller than the other.
I had no.
Oh, my God.
There it is.
I had no idea.
And he Gary Burkhoff, who is by all accounts a reprehensible person.
Oh, no, I'm so sorry to hear that is also a great drummer.
I've learned so much.
He's a phenomenal drummer.
So you weren't around, maybe your attention was elsewhere, you were probably watching Apple announcement events, developer conferences.
But at some point in the early-mid Twitter period, Gary Berghoff appeared on Twitter.
And he was one of those people that went from having 50 followers to 15,000 followers in two days.
Because he was on Twitter just taking a dump on Alan Alda every day.
Oh, I see.
He was doing a James Woods.
He was just going crazy.
Oh, no, this is not good.
It sounds like he might have had some drinks.
It was the type of thing where Andy Richter was...
Right in there.
You know, like everybody was enjoying Gary Burkhoff imploding online.
A bit of a Charlie Sheen.
I most of all, right?
But it caused me then to read some oral histories of M.A.S.H.,
And my favorite quote was somebody I don't know who said Gary Berghoff was by far the best actor on MASH.
He was doing a genius performance because he was creating a character that was beloved by everyone in the country when he himself was like the most awful man alive.
He's going after Charles Nelson Reilly, Hervé Villachez.
No one is spared.
Who goes after Charles Nelson Reilly?
That's no good.
Well, it's like Gary also is not a tall man, and I think he probably thought he was lumped in there.
But so I think the Kaiser, because of his damaged arm, had a chip on his shoulder.
And the czar and the king looked so much alike and were very chummy.
Like they vacationed together.
There was a lot of slap and tickle happening.
And the Kaiser felt left out.
But they all stayed very, they all stayed very, you know, like pally.
Because all three of them loved Queen Victoria, their grandmother.
And there are all these pictures of them kind of like curled up at her feet while she pets their hair.
And when she died, almost immediately, the cousins were like, they all squared off.
And of course, they started a world war not that long after.
And so the Kaiser and the King and the Tsar are fucking first cousins.
And they're fighting this enormous conflict where millions died over some stupid shit.
And halfway through the war, the czar is deposed by a revolution.
And then at the end of the war, the Kaiser loses his crown, and there is no monarch of Germany anymore.
It becomes a, whatever, a semi-functional republic.
And the king of England is the last man standing.
So I guess really I'm dressing like King George V. I don't want to end up like the Tsar.
Mm-mm.
It's going to be a busy week.
I have like six events a day.
Oh, my goodness.
That's too many events.
I have six events a day, Merlin, and Wednesday is supposed to be 103 degrees in Seattle.
That's a hot day to be the king.
Well, see, I don't want to wear my tunic on that day.
That's the day that I'm going business casual.
Mm-hmm.
I'm going cruise ship casual on Wednesday.
This is another nice thing, though, is that you are... I mean, obviously, you've put a lot of your own special preparation into this particular costume, but you've got a lot of stuff just sitting around that would be appropriate for almost any event.
You seem like you're pretty good to go.
Yeah, as long as no one... I think that I have put myself now, finally, in a place...
that I've been shooting for my whole life, which is a place, particularly in wardrobe terms, where whatever the invitation says is the wardrobe.
I know that not only can I meet their expectations, but that I will be able to show up in my own version of a thing that
Like if it says cocktail formal or if it says semi-formal or if it says, I mean, no one ever does an event that says formal and means actual formal.
Like the nicest event in the country you can show up to in a rented tuxedo anymore.
But you might say black tie or white tie, right?
I do not think that you will ever see a thing where you are invited white tie.
I mean, unless it's a royal wedding, which no one's.
No one listening to this podcast is likely to get invited to, at least of all me.
Although you never know.
You never know.
I mean, maybe Boris Johnson is listening to this podcast.
I think a lot of times the dress code they give is a combination of two things.
On the one hand, it's like...
Hey, you don't want to look like a ding-a-ling, so make sure you dress at least up to this bar.
But it's also a kind of like a consolation of saying, don't worry, you don't have to wear a necktie to this.
I think they're trying to give you something to say, to provide comfort ultimately, to say if you're in the range of this kind of garb, you'll be fine.
Right.
And that is antithetical to the idea of having a dress code.
Right.
I mean, that's a that is a modern that's a modern problem to say, like, here's the dress code.
Don't feel bad.
You get to where you have to wear it up to this point.
But don't worry, you can you won't be uncomfortable, poor person.
And after an hour, you can take your shoes off.
Yeah.
And in the past, right, a dress code was almost impossible.
almost explicitly like, you are going to be incredibly uncomfortable.
This is not negotiable.
Here is what the expectation is, and you will come correct.
And that's gone from the world, unless you're invited to something hosted at the White House or something, right?
Like,
Like you go, you go to a wedding where the, where the people are putting on the wedding and they want everybody to be like really, really formal.
And you see a bunch of guys in blue suits.
Yeah.
I mean, if it doesn't, if the, if the title of the event, you know, you look out for words like gala, gala is a good indication.
You should up your game a little bit.
Right.
But for a lot of people in the world, that is a blue suit.
That's as high as they go.
Blue suit with the tie.
Blue suit ceiling.
It doesn't go any higher than that.
Or a rented tux.
An ill-fitting rented tux.
Yeah.
But in most cases, I think formal involves actual formal at night is white tie, white waistcoat.
Like, when was the last time you saw that?
That wasn't a member of a wedding party.
Well, and you have to be careful that you don't get into jokey frat-brother-style formality.
Right, the plaid tie.
Like, black tie is after six.
Is that right?
Well... White tie is, like, the super formal one, right?
White tie.
In olden times, white tie was for dinner, and black tie was, like, what you wore...
like in the i mean a morning coat oh this is when you wear white ties when you wear like a jiminy cricket outfit yeah at dinner every night i mean this is like this is like old like 1910 in england but you didn't show up with a black tie tuxedo at night uh at a at a gala for for sure but now you do now that's the that's the peak um
And there are all kinds of rules, right?
You don't wear a white dinner jacket unless you're in the tropics.
But people love the look of white dinner jackets.
And so now you see white dinner jackets above the tropics.
And also you don't wear a white dinner jacket in the winter.
But people do now because... It's more of a costume for people.
It's a costume.
People are having fun with it.
Right.
They don't know what the...
They don't know that it actually signifies some kind of like archaic social order.
But so if I'm invited to anything up to white tie, which I cannot accomplish, like Paul F. Tompkins can accomplish white tie and wears it sometimes differently.
I mean, wears it always as a costume.
So he wears it inappropriately in that it's too formal for some events he goes to.
But that's his bit.
He's like a friendly children's television host.
Yeah, that is.
That's his bit.
But almost anything else that you would invite me to, I can come not only appropriately, but also in my own way.
Vernacular.
Right.
In my own vernacular, precisely.
So, you know, I can come to a black tie event...
In 1959, or in 1977, or then also the one that is just the appropriate one.
Can I read you the description of white tie from the Internet Science site?
Let me hear it.
According to the British Etiquette Guide, DeBretz, of which I do not own a copy, the central components or components of full evening dress for men are a white tie.
marcella shirt which is a kind of like a weave of shirt marcella shirt with the detachable wing collar and single cuffs fastened with studs and cufflinks the eponymous white marcella bow tie is worn around the collar while a low-cut marcella waistcoat is worn over the shirt over this is worn a black single-breasted barathea that's like a very game of thrones name barathea wool or ultra fine herringbone tailcoat
With silk peak lapels, we're not done.
The trousers have double braiding down the outside of both legs, while the correct shoes are patent leather or highly polished black dress shoes.
Although a white scarf remains popular in winter, the traditional white gloves, top hats, canes, and cloaks are now rare.
That's the end of the men's section.
Yes, and so you lose the canes and cloaks because canes and cloaks now seem...
It's two costumes.
You look a little bit like the Monopoly man.
It looks like the Monopoly man.
Single cuffs, not French cuffs.
There are a lot of mistakes that we make in thinking that the thing that is more ornate is also the most fancy.
You'll see a lot of men wear their wingtips and
to wingtips with a tux because the wingtips have more fancy on them.
They got more bling.
They got more bling.
But in fact, when you get up to this level, the fanciest is the plainest.
So you're not meant to wear wingtips with a tux.
You want your plainest black shoes.
They should be more like slippers, right?
Like slippers.
That's right.
And not French cuffs, but single cuffs and so forth and so on.
And all this stuff is like, it all signals whether or not you know.
And that's a huge part of
What dress codes and what dress even is.
It signals whether or not you know what things are.
And now, of course, we think, oh, those things are unimportant or worse, those things are enforcing a social hierarchy that we abhor.
Mm-hmm.
But those things are also part of our, and this is the word, you know, this is the bell ringing word, right?
It's part of our patrimony.
Pound sign, not all tuxedos.
Right.
Pound signs, you know, where's, why is it patrimony?
Pound sign, yeah.
But it's, that stuff interests me, not just because it's like cultural heritage, but also because I love codes.
You know, I love social codes.
I love in I love interpreting codes.
I love seeing when other people like Dow Constantine wearing those fucking ribbons is and the converse is expressing a knowledge of of ultimately of people and of stories and of the stories that people want to tell.
And that's what all this stuff is about.
I admire it when I see it.
Honestly, I feel like the single piece of scotch tape on the sheriff's gun was a thing that he initially put on there because a screw fell out of his pistol, and then he liked what it symbolized.
he's a man of the people he has a piece of tape on his gun and no one has said anything about it he's been wearing that tape on his gun for fucking ever i bet because looking at the tape it had been on there a long time it was all it was all used and it was put on there very you know not not with any attempt to be neat it was very like slap on some tape he'd been wearing that like a pin on his lapel
As a way of signaling so many things, and someone finally said something about it, and he was thrilled, and his deputy was thrilled.
All these little flags that we have, all these flag lapels, flag pins on our lapels that are ways of saying like,
This is me.
Like, a sheriff can't bling out his outfit.
It already is completely composed.
No sheriffs, yeah.
You know, he doesn't have any, there's no opportunity for him to put even a flower in his lapel, because he'd be out of uniform.
But he can put a little tape on the handle of his gun.
Like a lace brassiere.
Now, at some point, don't you think he should get that fixed?
Ha!
Ha!
I mean, it's fun.
He's having fun with it, which I like.
I like that he's doing some bling and he's got his version of a black brassiere.
But at a certain point, shouldn't a police officer make sure his gun doesn't have tape on it?
Unless it's a throwaway piece, I think they call it.
I'm hoping that this sheriff has enough...
insulating sheriffs around him.
He has three or four.
There are the deputies you see and there are the deputies you don't see.
And in Seattle, at least in palling around with Dow, his driver and the deputy that is assigned to shadow Dow is always a woman.
And at this event, standing sort of back with my crown on, that's another fun game, is to pick out the people who are there because they are carrying guns, because they're shadowing somebody.
Because a lot of the people at this event have a shadow.
And the shadow isn't standing at their elbow.
The shadow is standing in a corner somewhere.
And they will have an earpiece or they won't.
But they will definitely have... Kind of with a little twirly cable on it, like a Secret Service type situation?
Yeah, so there were four of those people at this event.
But there were also other people that didn't have twirlies, but that had bulges in their jackets.
And in King County, at least, it seems like often the...
The secret detectives, the ones who are standing at one remove are women.
Because I think the county recognizes that bad guys are... The goal of somebody standing there with a pistol is that they not be noticed.
And bad guys are going to be less likely to think that the sheriff is being shadowed by a deputy who's a woman.
And that that's an extra layer of badassery.
That's super badass.
Like pussy galore.
Like you have your whole squad of action people.
That's really cool.
And so when the gang was all finally arrayed on our big parade of Corvettes, which is how we were going through the parade, and the mayor, the beleaguered mayor of Seattle also arrived...
and got in his Corvette.
And I was very interested to know, because it's a parade, and there's very little separation between you and the crowd in a parade.
Yeah.
Is he still having a rough time?
Well, I mean, what he is accused of, he will never not have a rough time.
I mean, I know you've been acquainted with him.
I'm trying to be classy about it.
But he's had kind of some challenge.
Our current mayor did not run for re-election, even though he was
Until this scandal presumed to be a shoe-in, he bowed out of the race.
And now there are 21 people running for mayor of Seattle.
And I should have done it.
I should have done it.
No, no, no.
Please don't.
Please don't.
So he's in the parade.
Dow is in a parade.
They're both riding sort of next to each other in their Corvettes.
Oh, it's awkward.
Yeah.
And it's very awkward because Dow is a very successful politician who will be a national politician at one point in his life, for sure.
I mean, unless he makes a real misstep, which I don't foresee him making.
But so I walk up in my tunic to their cars to say, good luck, gentlemen.
Have a great parade on behalf of King Neptune of Seafair.
You know, have a good time in your parade.
And as I step to their car, you notice the secret people, the secret deputies.
I like the secret people.
I like the secret people.
They reveal themselves because out of the scrum of people who are kind of milling around, I walk up to these cars fairly quickly and
Um, because I'm just like, mayor, good luck.
Have a good race.
You know, Dow, good luck.
Have a, have a, have a fun, have a fun time.
I'm just sort of moving quickly to these cars, which are, which are surrounded with a bubble of nobody in them.
Because, again, sort of the presumption is like there's a bubble around these people.
An abundance of caution.
And so out of the crowd that's on the periphery, I step to these cars and those four people step forward one step.
And it's not a thing you would notice.
Mm-hmm.
Unless you were conscious of them being there already and knowing that they are all four of them vigilant enough to say, who's this fucking guy?
You move and they move.
You start moving toward Daenerys on the crown and a few people are going to change position.
That's right.
They all change position to get a little bit better sight line.
And they see the mayor recognize me and put out his hand and say, hey, thanks.
And the way our mayor is, he's like...
You know, we don't know each other exactly socially, but certainly we know each other.
And he's like, hi, great to see you.
Thanks for your support.
He didn't actually say that.
Oh, no, really?
No, that's just in his eyes.
It's all he knows how to do.
And then Dow is like, thanks.
You know, and so the sheriffs take a step forward or the secret people take a step forward, but they know they don't have to take a second step forward because they see that I'm being acknowledged and recognized and welcomed by the people.
You're good.
Mm-hmm.
If they I think I probably almost certainly that Dow and the mayor both have a way of posturing themselves, which says secret people, would you.
arrive with a quickness, you know, stiffen up a little bit or something and they know it's go time.
Yeah.
They stiffen up or they look over their shoulder or in some way that recoil, uh, where the, where the deputies will arrive on the scene, but all of that dance, it's so, it's just so interesting.
And so, um, you know what the hierarchy among people with stars on their collars is, um,
There were two admirals, and I wanted to know who reported to the other.
And so I walked up to one admiral, and I said, you both have three stars, so who's the kahuna?
And the guy's like, what?
And I'm like, well, he controls a carrier strike group.
You are commander of Pacific Fleet operations.
Who gets the bigger slice of cake at the reception?
And the guy that I'm talking to, his wife starts to laugh.
And he said, well, we're indifferent.
We are different.
We report to different.
We both report to the same guy.
Like, he doesn't report to me.
I don't report to him.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But what's the real story?
Exactly.
I said, yeah, okay.
So he brings his carrier strike force into your base.
If you're mad at him, do you get to say, like, all right, well, sorry, we're out of macaroni and cheese.
We're not going to resupply you because of something?
And his wife is just fucking cracking up at this point.
And he's like, well, no.
First of all, I'm not in charge of macaroni and cheese.
But yes, second of all.
And he's having, you know, he's having fun.
This is something he never gets asked.
And I said, so what?
So.
It's the military.
There's no equal.
No one's equal to anybody.
That's what makes it the military.
It's like it's like when you get a pack of dogs.
You can't have any question.
You got to know, like, here's your nose.
Here's this.
But let's go.
And so finally, he says, well, he has seniority.
And I said, you mean he enlisted first or he was promoted to admiral first?
Boy, you're not going to let it go, are you?
No, fuck no.
I want to know.
And his wife is having the best time.
And he is... He may not have thought of this for a long time.
It's so unconscious in them that he might not have had to break this down.
But he says both.
He joined before I did, and he was promoted before I did.
Before I was.
And I said, but doesn't that make you the wunderkind?
Like, you're younger than him and promoted to the same rank as him.
You're an outside agitator, John Roderick.
And he shows no emotion except just the slightest crinkle in his eye.
Just the slightest flash at being complimented and at being recognized as...
as having made that accomplishment at a younger age.
But he said, that's not how it works.
It's seniority works according to age.
And I said, thank you, Admiral.
You've clarified things for me today.
And the thing is, both of these guys are sitting in the backseat of their Corvettes.
I'm walking down the line.
They can't get away, and they're kind of not supposed to say, I don't want to talk to you anymore.
No, because I'm the fucking
You're the king.
They have to talk to you.
And they're both sitting next to their wives, which is a different power dynamic.
Oh, 100%.
Right?
Yeah, I mean, we're all doing our little boys thing together.
Our men talking to men thing.
Nobody's going to pierce, but they each have their own court jester that actually is running the court.
And the wives are really enjoying this kind of thing, right?
Making this noise a lot.
They're just taking the piss out of their husbands in the same moment.
And they've got to be gracious about it.
Yeah, they do.
They're the admiral, except not at home.
Not at home, I'm not.
I'm sure that's true.
I'm sure that's their long-running gag, but I'm also sure it's probably true.
You know, every single one of them owes their wife so much.
Can you imagine all the bullshit that their family has gone through so that they could have that career?
Well, all you have to do is watch the right stuff, right?
Oh, brother.
We were talking about that just this morning.
Now wait, was Sam Shepard in that?
Yes.
Okay, that's why I mentioned it this morning, because I was saying to Allie, she loves Apollo 13, but we've never seen the right stuff.
And I was like, we've got to watch that movie.
It's long, but it's so good.
It's really long.
Those ladies are tough.
Those are tough ladies.
They are tough, and they were tough in precisely the era where they were expected to behave a certain way that didn't allow them really to...
to be assertive, publicly assertive.
It was a... But, like, for generations or even millennia, like, they self-organize.
Not they, but any group like that, like, self-organizes in this way where, like, this is, you know, this is how the village gets things accomplished.
Yeah.
Oh, yes.
Still very related.
Very related structures.
And, like, in your anecdote about the admirals and the corvettes, you know, it's like... The part that makes it awkward is that...
they know the answer to that question i'll bet i mean they oh they feel it oh yeah i mean they feel it in there you walk into a room and anybody you give any of those guys two drinks and he could force rank that entire room without even thinking about it he could he could fully force rank that room and and i'll bet you most people in the room could do the exact same thing people given the same amount of information and expertise could go up absolutely top guy second guy third guy third guy
all the way down the line.
It's just that it's awkward to talk about it.
And then how would you, if they were to say that to you, how would they support that in a way that didn't sound like mumbo-jumbo?
Well, and there are people who are listening right now who are in the United States Armed Forces and who are officers and who will probably report to us in greater detail.
But I wonder whether when those two admirals meet coming through the rye,
Whether the junior admiral salutes first.
Because they both know.
Like, I'm pretty sure all the three stars out there, and I think they are lieutenant admirals or something.
I don't know exactly which it is.
I'll get yelled at about that.
Yeah.
I think they probably all know each other.
Almost certainly they know each other.
They're interacting with each other socially and professionally.
And when they see one another, whether the junior one, even junior by two days, whether they know to salute first.
I don't know.
That's a level of military protocol I don't know.
But in this little corral that I was in, there's the mayor.
who is used to being the top guy in the city.
There's Dow Constantine, who is the executive of the county, and the county incorporates the city.
But those two have a relationship that is defined.
The protocol of that relationship has been defined for decades.
But still, Dow is the more successful of the two politicians, the one who will be in office next year.
Oh, interesting.
So how does that work?
Now, the Navy is in town, and these guys are high-ranking Navy officers.
How do they interact with a mayor of a city?
Right.
Right.
Right.
Right.
Different kind of stuff.
And then you waltz and then you plop down in the middle of all of this a rich person.
So let's say there's a billionaire.
And like maybe an influential person.
Let's say it's Jeff Bezos comes to the event.
So now Jeff Bezos is in the middle.
Suddenly the whole picture changes for me.
He's just cackling maniacally.
He's there and he's in a hyperbaric chamber.
That's also a hovercraft.
Thank you for your service.
But...
Ha ha ha ha ha!