Ep. 316: “Set Master to Relax”
Hello.
Hi, John.
Hi, Merlin.
How's it going?
Good.
Sometimes you have to...
Turn it off and turn it back on again.
Sometimes you have to turn it off and turn it back on again.
Have you tried turning it off and turning it back on again?
I hadn't, but I will now.
That would be good for your John Roderick inspiration quotes.
Turn it off again.
Turn it off, turn it on again.
That's stupid.
That's pretty good.
Turn it off, turn it on again.
Do-do-do-do.
Oh, it's early.
I've been working on some new integrations with my Amazon Echo devices.
Oh, are there new integrations?
Some new integrations, yeah.
How are you integrating it?
Well, I'm just reading a press release on Business Wire, a Berkshire Hathaway company, that tells me some of the new things that it can do.
So that's pretty cool.
So that's pretty, pretty cool.
I can have it answer my doorbell.
Like by ringing the doorbell back at them?
I ring you.
You don't ring me.
I ring you.
This is my house.
No, no.
I can activate the camera on my doorbell and see who's there.
Oh, I would think that that would be automatic.
Yeah, you think a lot of things.
Well, wait.
Now, wait, wait, wait.
So if you activate the camera, you're watching it where?
Well, on one of these Amazon devices that has a screen.
oh i didn't know amazon devices had a screen yeah they have um two items in their family that have screens and i have some of those and um so unfortunately the service behind my doorbell you know no shade no lemonade but it's pretty slow so i very rarely talk to somebody while they're still there they hear hey where you going coming from the doorbell i'm turning it off i'm turning it back on again hang on
It's got a web browser now.
Don't see myself using that a lot.
The Amazon Dingus has a browser?
Yes.
Yes.
And so you can do searches and stuff.
It's got a built-in browser.
It can do more recipe stuff.
Last night I asked how long to parboil potatoes, and it gave me straight boiling.
But that's okay.
I can understand the oversight.
Parboiling is what?
Parboiling is up there with percentages of power on the microwave as a great trick.
Oh.
You know like people who think you make ribs by throwing raw ribs on a grill?
They don't know you're supposed to cook them before you cook them?
Explain that.
Oh, boy.
It was a deep stack.
Well, if you're going to cook ribs, generally you do them at a low temperature in the oven for a while, and then you finish them on the grill.
But a lot of mooks who consider themselves home grilling geniuses don't know that.
You just put a bunch of sticky sauce in there, and then you basically just get burnt raw meat.
Oh, I don't want that.
Pass, hard pass.
You know, I eat ribs.
Oh, I eat the shit out of a rib.
Yeah.
I like a baby back rib.
I do, too.
We had baby back ribs at the steakhouse my horrible stepfather had.
He had a whole large bespoke dingus for making ribs, and they were incredible.
Perfect.
I order them in restaurants.
I don't blame you at all.
You get half rack.
Half rack of ribs is a good amount of ribs for a starter.
Half rack of ribs.
Half rack.
That's good, but you know what I like to do is I augment that with a little chili or a little macaroni because a half rack of ribs isn't quite the... Oh, no, no, no, no.
No, a real boy-sized portion would be a full rack.
A full rack, but that's $35.
Yeah, I know.
I don't know who has that kind of money.
I almost had chili this morning.
I sat there and looked at my chili and thought about having chili.
I'm down.
I'm down.
See, I've got two sides to my refrigerator.
Yeah.
I got the one side of the other side and the other side is it's it's it's funny how one side is full and the other side is empty.
And right now it's it tends to be.
And right now I'm in a situation where one side is full and the other side is empty.
But the side that's empty is the side that you would look in and like, oh, there's some food.
And the side that's full is the side that you look in and you go, yeah, okay.
This must be one of those bifurcated brain perception things.
Where it's like supposedly your brain comes up with reasons why your right and left hand are doing things.
I know that's been my case since the age of 14.
But no, supposedly that's a thing.
That's a thing.
And they've done this.
They've done experiments on people who, like they used to use, you know, as you know, I'm not a scientist, but they used to do a thing where they would, if you had like severe, I think schizophrenia, they could separate the two lobes and it helps out and you get all these weird things or somebody's in a bus accident.
No, no, this is more sophisticated than that.
But anyway, I'm interested in your—oh, by the way, parboiling is when you cook something by boiling a little bit before you finish it somewhere else.
So last night, we had roasted panatos with our spatchcock chicken, and so we chose to parboil the potatoes before we sliced them up and put the panatos in the oven.
What's a—
What's a Carhartt chicken?
Carhartt chicken, the spatchcock, it's really fun to say.
Oh, spatchcock.
Spatchcock chicken.
It'll change your game.
Is it a kind of a chicken or is it a kind of spatchcock?
Imagine, well, no, no, you spatchcocking is, I think, a gerund for chickens.
And as you know, I'm not an expert, but what a spatchcock is, is, you know, you usually get a chicken and it looks kind of like a football, right?
With spatchcocking, some genius has gone in and cut out all the bones and insides and made it mostly flat.
And so with the exception of like the bones and a little bit of cartilage, it's all edible.
You just slice it.
You just slice the breast into slices.
You pay a little bit more, but it's a high quality ass chicken.
So it's a de-boned chicken.
It's de-insided.
They take out the cavity stuff.
Right.
Yeah, well, sure, they take out all the little organs and whatnot.
But what you get is, imagine like a 3D printed chicken.
You get like a fairly flat chicken.
It cooks in about 20 minutes.
A flat chicken.
Flat chicken.
Come on.
Sounds like a yellow tango record.
Who doesn't want a flat chicken?
Flat chicken rules, man.
You could do chicken under a brick.
So you have that with some roasted potatoes.
Chicken under a brick.
Is that like Elf on a Shelf?
Mm-hmm.
Or is it Mench on a Bench?
You can get Mench on a Bench.
That's another one.
I saw that on Shark Tank.
Mitch on a bench.
Oh, did they fund it?
Yeah, mazel tov.
Yeah, now it's on end caps at Bed Bath & Beyond.
Oh.
And what even is Beyond?
Do we even know?
How far does this go?
I've never been into a Bed Bath & Beyond.
The devil you say.
I've been to the Beyond.
I've been in bed and I've been in a bath, but I've never.
I've been undressed by kings, and I've seen some things that a woman just ain't supposed to see.
I've seen the sea beams glitter off the shoulder of a lion.
Yo!
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I sure am, you son of a bitch.
Wow, for somebody with audio problems, you're doing real good today.
You're doing good.
Oh, yeah.
Well, you know, what happened was my thingus didn't recognize my dingus.
Oh, you had a mismatch between your thingus and your dingus.
I did, and I went in.
The corpus callusum, I think, is where it connects up.
That's the part they cut through, probably.
My apogee quartet was butterflied.
Oh, I see.
It was spatchcocked.
And what's nice about it... Somebody spatchcocked your DAW?
I don't know who.
I don't know who.
Somebody spatchcocked my DAW, and I had to go into the loopback.
Loopback?
You're using loopback?
I'm using loopback.
Loopback.
And loopback gave me a very nice little yellow triangle that said...
I don't see your thing.
So I went to the thing, and the thing didn't see itself.
Are you using Loopback the app by Rogue Amoeba?
I'm using Loopback the app by Rogue Amoeba.
I know those guys.
Oh, you do?
I'm friends with them.
It's a very good app.
Isn't it a good app?
That's helping me.
You're like Lily Tomlin at the operator switchboard.
You could just be moving cables around, make anything good anywhere.
If you had a soundboard, you can make fart noises now.
It makes it really easy, and I'd be able to hear them.
I don't.
That's amazing.
Well, what had happened was, I have three microphones in this room.
I have two that I use all the time, and then a third.
And at first, I could get the one to do the thing, but I couldn't get the other people.
Oh, I think I was there for that, as they say.
Oh, yeah, maybe so.
We almost had a guest, and then we had some problems with the Elijah microphone.
Yeah.
So I did a little bit of research.
I did a little bit of troubleshooting.
And what I came up with was Loopback.
Loopback.
So I got it.
I put it on.
I could have as many microphones as I want now.
Loopback is pretty baller.
I could have 15 people in here.
I could have that one group from... Polyphonic Spree.
Yeah, Denton, Texas.
That's exactly what I was going to talk about.
Best ever choral group out of Denton.
That's right.
They could all be in here in their robes.
Every single person could get a microphone.
Drop key metal band we call Requiem.
it's gonna be one of those days so spatchcocking is that you can parboil and then you can ask it uh you can ask it for recipes too so well now here's a here's a question yeah
I know that you are.
Now, I'm not going to say you're an Apple fanboy, because I feel like that's an insulting term.
I'd say I'm an Apple enthusiast.
Apple enthusiast, all right.
An Apple train spotter.
And my sense is, from listening to the press releases of the various different companies, that Apple really cares about your privacy.
Yes.
Yes, that is the thing that I have read lately.
On the internet.
And I know how you feel about privacy.
No, you don't.
Knowing that's how I feel about privacy.
I know that I know what I don't know about how you feel about privacy.
Okay.
There are known knowns.
There are unknown knowns.
There's the known unknowns.
And then there's the unknown unknowns.
We're not knowns.
I continue to believe that is one of the great quotes.
Okay.
of all time i think it's i the man's horrible he's he's gonna be is he dead is he dead is he living he's not dead no no no you gotta spell it for him i do i do if he's dead i'll know uh you know that movie that's coming out let me show you your trailer there's a movie coming out uh-huh vice that seems very fun and i didn't even recognize i didn't even recognize the dick cheney guy that's batman
It's Batman.
It's Batman.
It's a, it's the guy from the boxing guy.
Well, he's the guy with the, he yelled at somebody on set one time and that was a thing.
He's also in Henry V. He's in the great action court speech scene.
Didn't realize that.
He's like 15.
He's always just like a, like a young guy.
He's a youngster.
If memory serves, Henry V, uh, directed by Kenneth Branagh, I want to say it came out 88, 89.
That's a nice movie.
And it was just a real nice movie.
Be he near so vile, this day shall gentle his condition.
Mm-hmm.
So you've got... We marry a band of brothers.
We happy few.
For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.
Wow.
Merlin, go and see.
What's he who thinketh so?
How much time you got?
You sound like my grandfather whom I never met.
Welcome, Shakespeare Bot.
So you got a spot in your life for an unknown unknown, and that's your audio loopback.
I cut you off.
Oh, privacy, privacy.
Yeah, what I want to know is, see, I had Thanksgiving dinner over at a mutual friend of ours' house who occasionally writes songs about robots and zombies.
Okay.
Are you picturing the person?
Yeah, a misunderstood villain guy.
Yeah, a misunderstood villain songwriter.
Hear them howling, my hungry children.
He said, we're sitting in the living room, and he said, watch this.
He said, hey, Siri, make the lights in the living room blue.
And then we looked at each other, and then the lights all went blue.
And I was like, wow, why would you do that?
And he was like, don't ask.
Don't ask that.
That's the wrong question.
he said siri turn make the lights in the living room orange and we looked at each other and then the lights turned orange and i was like that's cool why why and he was like and then he asked siri to do some other things seriously and every once in a while during the dinner party somebody would say hey siri uh do something you know some portion of the time that thing happened
And I thought, oh, you can now talk to Siri like that in your house through a dingus.
And I, and I speculated, I bet Merlin is talking to Siri in his house, even though before he was talking to Alexa, but you've decided to go the distance with Alexa and get ones that answer your doorbell.
And I want to know why are you choosing Alexa over Siri?
Is Siri jealous?
Is Alexa like, or is this a Stockholm syndrome thing?
Or do you love Alexa because Alexa won't let you not love her?
I need to know some of these answers.
I can't quit her.
Because I don't have any of these dinguses.
I don't even – I have a nest in a box.
I have a mensch on a shinch.
But I haven't put the nest in because I'm afraid of Matt Howey's electric door.
Yes.
But I'm pursuing these things.
I've heard some tell on the internet about DVRs, locally recorded –
of things where you don't have to put it in the clued i don't know i need for cameras you mean yeah i need to get walked through all of this but you gotta start i'm so sorry to say you could not have picked a better person to talk to and i will i will take up the next two days of your life telling you every intricate detail of this hell world that i have chosen to live in will you do a robin hitchcock where you do the whole thing
in the voice of henry the henry the fifth yeah maybe like a peter gabriel walk like i'm mowing my lawn um okay well the short version is yes there are three primary voice driven systems in my ecosystem and i have dinguses from all of them those are by apple by amazon and by google and they each have their benefits and their downsides and
short version is The Google family of dingus is are very responsive and very fast and they answer questions Thank your lights.
Oh, yeah, they all do that They all do that Okay, I'd be happy to tell you reasons why you might want that although you probably don't but I'd be happy to tell you about that So yeah, the Apple one sucks The Siri is just easily the least reliable of all of them as you'd guess
Google and Amazon's products are both real pithy, and they really do work.
And all of the apps, in one way or another, have good integrations.
I think Alexa has the best... Oh, I almost did it!
Alexa, stop!
The Amazon Echo family of products.
Alexa, who is Mern Man?
Stop that!
Don't do that!
What?
Did that answer your question?
Yes, thank you.
Alexa, how do you parboil potatoes?
It's going to say 15 minutes, which is not correct.
The Amazon Echo family of products has many great integrations.
People can write their own.
It's real good.
I'm happy to get back to the privacy stuff.
Why would you want that light thing?
Well, we are fitted out with many of the lights that are compatible with such stuff, and it's super handy.
But you can't talk to them directly.
You can't just say, light, turn on.
Well, not per se, but part of the power comes out of having those all hooked up in the same system.
So there are fairly simple ones.
Like when I leave the house, I can say, hey, dingus, turn everything off.
And it turns off all the items on the network.
It turns everything off.
29 lights in my case.
Whoa, no, not 29 lights.
Yep, because each of the five bulbs in the strip in the hallway is a separate addressable light.
That is, well, first of all, that's one of the major Marine Corps bases in California.
Is that right?
29 Lights.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I've been to that in.
29 Lights was a Bob Fosse musical.
All of the lights.
All of the lights.
All of the lights.
If you have a single light fixture, like in a Bob Fosse dressing room light fixture that has like 40 lights in it, and you make each one individually addressable, what is the coolest thing you can do?
Have them turn on and off and flash at different rates.
Well, I mean, it's not nothing.
Nothing about it is.
I mean, so the gee whiz stuff like make my lights blue.
Like, I don't find that by itself surpassingly useful.
But they can do several things.
You can have a connected devices through through this.
A service like if this, then that, you can have it when this kind of thing happens cause that kind of thing to happen.
So for example, I have my air quality monitor is writing out rows every five minutes to a Google sheet.
If I ever want to run stats on that, that doesn't come.
Okay.
Okay.
All right.
All right.
I have a costly air filter and a separate device that tracks how well the air is doing.
Yeah, you might run some stats.
But you can also do stuff like, say, you can create speaker groups.
So I have a speaker group called Everywhere, which plays it on every echo speaker in the house.
And I have another one called Upstairs, which is all but my daughter's room because she hates when I play NPR in the morning.
I can do that kind of stuff.
Let me try one here.
I'm going to pause for just a second.
Okay.
I'm trying to find the one.
At one point, I had gotten... Oh, I'm sorry.
I forget what the incantation was, but I had it say... Oh, let me try it again.
Alexa.
Home again, home again, jiggity-jig.
I'd rather not answer that.
Yeah.
I'd rather not hear it answered.
Alexa, go home.
I had programmed for that, and it would say, welcome, JW.
You know, anyway.
So, but here's what's cool.
Here's what's cool is the grouping.
So, grouping of speakers is very handy.
That's not cool.
That's pretty cool.
Well, there's lots of cool stuff.
Like, there's one where I talk to in the morning, and I say, what's one?
I've got one called Light It Up.
That turns on all the lights in my bedroom, including the Seasonal Affective Disorder light, and it plays KQED at Volume 3.
Oh, I would love to walk into a room and say, Alexa, light it up.
Yep.
We also got one called Morning Lights.
It does a similar thing.
Oh, could you make one that says light this candle?
Won't you light my candle?
Sure.
No, no, no.
No, no, no.
Let's light this candle.
What is that?
Oh, I'm in.
It's a right stuff reference.
Let's light this candle.
Oh, sure, sure, sure.
Light the candle.
God, I say that all the time still.
Let's light this candle.
I'll try to keep this short because it's not very interesting.
It's a Saturn V. Oh, no, no, no.
I saw that rocket and watching.
That's a big-ass rocket.
It's not a Saturn V thing because it's not an Apollo.
Wait a minute.
You saw Saturn V?
I don't know which part to laugh at.
I'm so confused.
Because you were a child.
You were a child.
No, no.
No, no.
I saw it at the Air and Space Museum, I think, last summer.
No.
No, it wasn't summer because we skipped out of school.
It was, yeah, sometime earlier.
You weren't living in Florida during the Saturn V years, were you?
I don't think so.
You didn't move down there until the late 70s?
Correct.
Early 80s?
Yes, 79, yeah.
Well, the Saturn Vs weren't operating.
I wonder if any of our listeners would like to tweet us about having seen a Saturn V when they were young.
I'd enjoy that.
That would be an interesting thing to hear those stories.
There's another nice one.
You can have groups.
So you have rooms in your house.
Those rooms have lights.
And you can also group lights or rooms, which is really cool.
So when my family's gone to sleep and I'm going to go watch YouTube for an hour, I say, hey, dingus,
What do I say?
I'm trying to avoid saying the incantation.
I say, hey, dingus, turn off the west lights.
And so it turns off all the lights on the west side of the house.
West lights.
Are the west lights aware that they're lights?
Or if you refer to them as lights, do they stop?
Are they just like, I'm not sure what you're talking about.
Well, and it's also cool because you can say stuff like, hey, dingus, set master to relax.
Or set Ellie to bright.
Oh, if I had a dingus.
Set master to relax.
Set master to relax.
Title.
I would sit on my yacht, and I would say it, and master would relax.
Hey, dingus.
Bossy bottom.
Bossy bottom.
And so what that does is that knows that I'm addressing the room called master, and it is applying the setting called relax.
Now, let's say you were down in the Embarcadero.
Okay.
You picked up your phone and you said, set master to relax.
Would it set the master to relax in your own home?
Yes.
So you could mess around with the environment of your home while other people were there.
Yes, that's considered a form of stalking, but yes, you can do that.
You could just be like, turn off all the lights.
Yeah, I mean, there's all kinds of dumb bullshit people do.
Like, there's some of these, like, if this, then that.
We'll say things like, oh, you know, make my lights blink blue when it's going to rain.
And, like, that's really a silly use of that technology.
But, you know, but you can do that.
Why is that considered stalking?
Oh, so if you have a, let's say, a former domestic partner and you know the passwords to their stuff, you could Matt Howie them really hard.
It's kind of a creepy thing to do.
That is terrible.
Turn the microwave on.
I would say to you, you don't need all of this.
If you want to get into this, I would start with just a simple smart switch.
A simple smart switch with an app would be if there's something you want to be turning on and off.
But I think it would drive you completely nuts to be talking to your lights.
Seems like a simple smart switch is a contradiction in terms.
Simple in that it does not require a hub.
Smart in that it is a smart home device.
So you can get freestanding plugs that just work with an app.
They can still be controlled remotely.
I'm just trying to avoid getting you into the hub lifestyle.
I don't want any kind of lights that aren't connected to an intuitive switch.
Well, you know, Lutron makes a nice switch that we have a couple of that you can put on with standard light bulbs.
You put it on where you have a dimmer.
And so that is get to a bull by the network.
And it also has like the theater lighting thing where you can go up and down little steps.
Dim the lights.
This is a shame that we lost Kanye, isn't it?
That's a good record.
That's a very, very good record.
Yeah.
Everybody knows I'm a motherfucking monster.
It's a really good record.
I'm a closet Kanye fan, and I don't talk about it.
Yeah, yeah.
And I think it's good for me for both of those.
I feel like the rock show that he played where he was on a hovering, like, monolith, and all the lights pointed down and you couldn't really see him, and it floated around the stadium, that was killer.
Kind of like about Gary Newman.
That was one of the killerest things I ever saw.
Hmm.
But yeah, the rest of it I'm not so sure about.
As far as the privacy, I don't... Oh, now here's what I want.
Yes.
What I want?
You favorited my picture of the Godfather in the orange.
That's a holiday tradition.
Ellie did it herself this year.
She puts up the Godfather ornament, she puts an orange next to it, and then she has Daryl from The Walking Dead point a bow at him.
So beautiful.
So beautiful.
And what I love about that is the Godfather is a Christmas movie.
Everything's a Christmas movie.
Really, anything can be a Christmas movie.
The other day I was over to friends and she was like, you want to watch a movie?
And I was like, yeah, sure.
I mean, I like watching movies and she has one of those bigger TVs, although not a big TV, which when she got it, it was like, that's a big TV.
But now it's like a hotel room size TV.
Yeah, or maybe even a little bigger.
But I feel like she's got a space that could contain a much larger TV.
And every time I'm there, I'm like, why don't you make it a bigger TV?
They're getting cheaper.
Yeah, TVs are cheap now, and you can get a way bigger.
And she's like, I don't want to just have a TV for the sake of... It changes the valence of the room.
It really does.
Well, this is a TV room.
Oh, it's a bespoke room for TV.
The room has no other purpose than the TV.
Oh, fuck that.
She should get it way bigger.
She should get a 65-inch TV.
Yeah, she's one of these affluent urbanites.
Oh, she should get an 80-inch TV.
That's what I said.
She should get like a...
Like an Ozymandias type situation.
She should get a big bunch of screens where she could monitor her empire.
Yeah.
I'm like, you can have a TV.
We could be answering the front door right now.
And so the other day, we were watching the TV, and she was having a really hard time getting it to Amazon was not linking very well.
You were watching Amazon Prime.
yeah and she said you know what it's the tv it's not amazon it's not the internet it's the tv is not and i was like because the tvs have apps now john yeah time to get apps the inch tv that has a web browser and can answer your doorbell but anyway she was like let's watch reindeer games and i said oh is that a harrison ford like spy thriller
Because I remember the name coming out at the time, and I thought it was like, I didn't see it, but I was pretty sure it was like a spy thrill.
Reindeer Games.
Reindeer Games.
And she said, no, it's not a spy thrill.
Is that Nathan Fillion?
Oh, no, Ben Affleck.
Ben Affleck.
Oh, you hate Ben Affleck.
Well, so she was like, it's a Ben Affleck movie.
And I was like, why are you doing that to me?
Don't you follow my program?
She was like, no, no, no, no, no.
I saw it at the time.
Did you talk about his toupee for two hours and four minutes?
Yeah.
And it's a really good toupee in this movie, but not his best.
There's actually a scene where he turns to the mirror and he, like, musses his hair.
He, like, he musses his hair.
But it's so...
It's such a contrivance because he puts his hand in the center of his hair and he kind of musses it in a way that no one... Like a Ricky Jay kind of thing?
Yeah, just like, you are not seeing what you think you're seeing.
He was like, oh, I'm so young.
This is definitely my hair I'm mussing.
But he does it in this way that it's very contained.
His fingers do not then go into the rest of his hair.
I get it, I get it, I get it.
They just stay in the area and are like... It's a Christian side hug of hair mussing.
Christian Heidsug.
Mm-hmm.
John Frankenheimer, directed by John Frankenheimer.
That's right.
So the movie comes on, and I'm like, all right, Reindeer Games, it's from a certain era.
It's got Charlize Theron, who I am a massive fan of.
Yeah, nothing wrong with that.
And Gary Sinise, who I feel like, yeah, I go both ways on Gary Sinise.
He's Uncle Dan from the movie where the guy runs all the time.
Yep, yep, yep.
And so it comes on.
Terrible movie.
It's awful.
But what I was interested in was the fact that the integration of the product with the Alexa was incomplete.
And I was like, where are we on this?
Because she talks to those things.
She talks to the dinguses.
Oh, she might have an Amazon Fire stick or an Amazon Fire TV.
Or she could be using the built-in app.
I imagine that could work.
Yeah, talking to the Amazon to control your TV, it probably works for some people.
Does all this work with your Sonos?
Because that's another system.
See, I actually have a Sonos system.
Sonos is frustrating.
Because Sonos has put out a new line of speakers.
I bought one.
It's really frustrating.
I mean, yeah, it will do speaker stuff when you talk to it.
But there's a whole range of the really juicy, cool Amazon Echo stuff that most non-Echo devices can't handle.
Oh, the juicy stuff that I want.
I want the juice.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You can't do a bunch of the stuff.
And you can't make it part of your speaker groups with the Echo app.
That's terrible.
Why not?
That seems like a primary shit.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
Yeah, I don't know.
I think Sonos is going to have this is turning into a tech show.
I think Sonos is going to have a tough road ahead of them because if this turned into a tech show, would it become more profitable?
I'd piss on a spark plug if I thought it'd do any good.
If people if people go those are hot takes.
Well, if people go and buy an Alexa right now, will I get some money?
I don't think so.
I'd have to check.
Okay, don't do that yet if anybody was thinking of doing it until we figure out a way to connect it to our... Can I tell you the name of John Frankenheimer's wife from 1963 to 2002?
Is it Mrs. Frankenheimer?
Even better.
Ready?
Yes.
Her name?
Evans Evans.
Evans Evans.
Evans Evans.
Is she Linda Evans' sister?
She's Evans Evans.
She's 82 years old, born in Bluefield, West Virginia.
She's 82 years old?
She was born on my birthday.
Look at that.
Except she's 82.
How old is John Frankenheimer?
I think he passed in 2002, looks like, at the age of diddly 82.
Wait, 72?
He was 82 when he made... Maybe 72.
Reindeer Games?
That explains a lot.
Since here, he died July 6, 2002.
So that was not long after making Reindeer Games, which I feel like was deeply flawed.
That was his last movie?
Oh, God, he also did Island of Dr. Moreau, the 96 one, the one with the mini-me.
Frankenheimer's last theatrical film, 2000's Reindeer Games, starring Ben Affleck, underperformed.
Yeah.
See, it's like Peter Sellers.
Like, you want to remember Peter Sellers' last movie as being there.
His last movie is technically the fiendish plot of Dr. Fu Manchu.
Oh, really?
I believe so.
I believe I saw that movie when it came out.
I think it's got the Michelle Pfeiffer in it.
The fiendish plot of Dr. Fu Manchu.
Yes, it's very problematic.
Being There is a very interesting movie.
I think about it all the time.
It's a weird, weird, good movie.
My dog was named after Being There.
The college dog.
Was it named being there?
Chauncey Gardner.
Being there.
Being there.
Oh, Chauncey Gardner is good.
Did you say its full name every time you called it?
No, we just called him Chauncey.
He was real stupid.
Chauncey Gardner, Chauncey Gardner.
People name things.
What are you going to do?
Here's what I want to do.
What I want.
What do you want?
So anyway, yeah.
So once you're all hooked up, you could do things from different places.
Well, I don't want to do that.
But what I want to do is I want to say, lock all the doors.
Yeah.
Unlock all the doors.
August Locks will accommodate that.
August Locks.
I think it's August is the company.
Do you have that?
No.
Maybe.
No.
Now, if I were to do that, how can I ensure that A, the doors won't unlock on their own,
B, that no one else can hack it and unlock my doors for me.
C, that it won't, in the middle of the night when it's pouring down rain, lock me out.
You have finally reached the limits of my education.
I don't know how these things work.
I have not put one on because, I don't know, I really profoundly, I barely understand how mechanical locks work, and I super don't understand how these work.
I understand how mechanical locks work because it's one of my mother's strange skill sets.
She routinely takes apart...
the locks and layers of an onion with your mom i always think i've seen i think i've seen the real deal and there's always more there so i i over the course of my life like a set of tools and well she just uh she one of the great things about her and one of the things she taught me was a kind of fearlessness about just diving into shit so uh when i was young i would come home sometimes and she would have the doors
all disassembled and then she'd be then she'd reassemble them and i would be like what are we what are you doing she's like oh well the lock needed some maintenance or i'm changing the locks she would do that sometimes i'm changing the locks
And so the other day, I bought a new front door for the house.
We went to the salvage yard.
We were looking around.
Found a door.
Are doors mostly a standard size?
No.
Oh, my friend.
I'm thinking just, I mean, the first thing that occurs to me, obviously, is the, what would you call it, the perimeter, whatever, the this by that.
But also the depth must be really different.
Depth.
The amount of hang it could handle in terms of weight, it must really vary a lot.
So you got your height, you got your width, you got your depth.
You've got the side the hinges are on.
You can get them both ways.
Oh, yes, of course, of course.
Two hinge, four hinge.
Every single dimension can vary...
by inches multiple inches you can have super tall skinny doors you can have wide fat doors short doors you can have uh you know different different uh differently dimensioned doors you can have poly doors um
Pandors Pandors and a lot of times when you buy a new door you just buy it in the frame you buy the door in the frame and then I just take Yeah, you take the whole operation your old operation out you put the new operation in and it all sinks But here in the Roderick family, we don't like to do it that way.
We like to do it the hard way to roll your own Yeah, we like to measure once measure twice major thrice and then we go down to the salvage yard and
With our thrice measured space, and we look for the perfect door to fit that strange space, which is often like a sixteenth of an inch different than what it should be.
Because you're going to be living with that for years.
Yeah, well, you want it to swim.
Living with a weird door is not fun.
But but so my mom likes to rebuild lock sets.
What I like to do is hang doors and you will see me on my back shimming with tiny shimming with, you know, when when they show those Ginsu knives and they take a they take a cucumber.
You're going to slice the tomatoes so thin your in-laws will never come back.
Yes.
So so then you can read a book through it.
And I'm shimming these doors with these tiny like Polly with the garlic.
Like Polly with the garlic.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Listen to the pan.
Listen to the pan.
Only British people can fly.
So.
So.
Kiss the pan.
The pan kisses you.
Kiss the pan.
Kiss the pan.
So I bought it.
Okay.
All right.
What I did was I found a door, and I've been to the salvage yard many times with these thrice-measured spaces, and I have not found a door that would fit it that I also like, because it has to be a door you like.
Oh, 100%.
So I found doors that fit, but I didn't like, and I found doors I liked, but didn't fit.
But so here I found this door.
Now, what it was, it's a very nice door.
Whoever lived in the house where this door originated...
was a nice person.
They had nice things.
But it's an inside door.
Now wait, bear with me.
An inside door shouldn't work on the outside.
And in some ways this one maybe won't.
Most doors in commercial public buildings open out because fire.
See also who concert.
Most doors in a residency open in so you can't do stuff with the hinges and whatnot.
Well, yeah, so you can't do things with the hinges and also so that you can't block the door, right?
Like with an Amazon package.
With an Amazon package, exactly, or if it's a snowstorm.
Yes, well, sure.
This happened in Alaska a lot.
If your door opened out and it was like some big blizzard, you know, what are you going to do?
What can you do?
So anyway, this door, so, you know, so I, oh, also you have to find the hinges at the salvage yard that fit the door because they don't, they often don't have hinges on them most of the time.
So then you have to go over to the big, big, big bins of hinges and sort through hinges.
The hinges bins?
The hinges bins.
Then you pick up a hinge.
You're like, this looks right.
You walk over.
You're trying to fix it to the door.
You're like, no, not quite right.
Because hinges have different roundages and hinges have different screw patterns.
Yeah.
The more I think about this, I can't believe any door works.
There seems like there's so many variables on top of variables.
I can't believe there are any doors.
Hanging doors is a thing.
Hanging doors is also a great Wilco record.
But hanging doors, and this is why they often are replaced with the frame.
But hanging doors, especially if your house is old and has started to settle in some way.
Oh, now you're trying to put a square door in a round frame.
Like a little hobbit house.
Yeah.
And that's hard.
Anyway, so I get this door.
But the problem is it's an inside door from a rich people house.
So it's a nice door.
It's solid fur.
It's got divided lights in it.
Solid fur.
Solid fur.
Solid fur.
It's not a hollow core door.
Not a hollow door at all.
Okay.
It's a heavy door, but it also has divided lights, what we call divided lights.
Now, what makes it not an outside door is they're not double-pane divided lights, but they are tempered glass.
Uh-huh.
Anyway, the problem does it have the classic cross and open Bible type box configuration on the door?
No, I've heard that it may not actually be true, but you're talking about the colonial.
Well, yeah, every door, every door, pretty much the colonial classic door.
Huh?
Every door has a story, don't it?
Every door has a story, don't it?
It's supposedly the top part creates a cross with the negative image and the bottom part represents an open Bible.
Oh.
You ever notice how there's six squares on most doors?
Six squares on a door.
Look at the negative space.
It's not one of those.
Okay.
I don't have a color.
Where do the divided lights come into it?
Well, the divided lights, it's a door of divided lights.
Door of divided lights.
Okay.
So it's got... Like a holding cell?
Yeah.
Well, yeah.
I'm going to just have to look up divided lights door.
Divided lights door.
See what comes up.
Now I want to know what it says.
Oh, oh, oh.
Okay, that looks to me, what I'm seeing here is the kind of door you would have on a wine closet.
Like, it's mostly window.
It's mostly window, that's right.
You're getting a mostly window door?
I have a mostly window door made of fur.
Mostly window door made of solid fur.
Okay.
But here's the dill.
Here's the dill.
Okay, ready for the dill.
Back to the hinge bin.
The dill is, it's not outfitted for a bolt lock.
It only has a doorknob.
Again, because it's an inside door.
It's an inside door.
So in our world here, that's not going to work.
You're going to have to have a bolt put on that.
You want a lock that sends a message.
You want a lock that says, ah, ah, ah, ah.
Try the other guy.
That's what a lock says.
A lock should say, try the other guy.
Try the other guy.
Now, the thing about a divided light door, of course, is that it provides the thief or burglar with an opportunity to smash the light, which is closest to the lock.
We've tried to get key on both side lock installed here, and they tell us that that's not legal here.
That's not legal because if it's... If there's a fire or whatnot.
A fire problem.
Now, is that not legal there, too?
Oh, I don't think it would be legal anywhere.
Although... Really?
You gotta go... Like, you know, let's just say the private offices I've had have locks like that.
Yeah, well... But then you have a sign over the door that still says this is supposed to remain open during business hours.
My... Does it come with that?
It doesn't come with that.
Because it's an inside door.
My mom has had locks that don't have...
that don't have flippers, the keys on both sides locks.
She has been a scofflaw.
She's flouted the law.
I bet you can find a guy.
Oh, well, here's the thing.
My mom could do it.
Your mom's the guy.
Because she's the lock person.
But here's the thing between, here's the division of labor over here at the Roderick household.
I am the cut the hole for the lock in the door guy.
Yes.
She's the rebuild the lock guy.
I'm the cut the hole guy.
Okay.
And so now we've got a situation where there's a door on the front porch and all these things have to happen.
Now she is the get it done immediately guy and I am the why don't we wait until tomorrow guy.
So part of your portfolio.
It's a thing in the portfolio that needs to be done at some point.
So this is now a project.
But this is a tactile project.
This is not like, why don't I put out a new record someday?
We've got a
mean there's a perfectly good door in the space right now we don't have to do this yes and that is what allows it to that allows us to punch or that allows us to kick the ball down the field as they say yes but eventually all my excuses like ah it's really cold today or hmm it's raining eventually all those excuses will will not be there will be a sunny day yeah tears and rain a warm sunny day and I'm gonna have to go out and do this to the door
But I'm thinking, what about if it had a bleeper on?
Sure, you can get a bleeper.
Where I was just like... The August lock, I believe, is made to accommodate a standard lock hole, if there is such a thing.
Standard lock hole.
That sounds like the name of a 70s porn star.
Standard lock hole.
Standard lock hole.
Oh, if you had a son and named him Standard...
standard well that's a pretty cool waspy name from ye olden what's stan ridgeway that's short for standard i think stan lee stanard stan lee stan stan lee he was a friend of yours right oh there's yeah i've got that i saw a friend of yours stan lee uh standard stan ridgeway uh born april 5th 1954 standard standard
Standard Lockhole.
That's a really cool name.
Standard Lockhole is a killer name.
I'm writing that one down.
Standard?
Is it S-A-E?
Standard's frustrating.
It's the opposite of Roger Federer.
See, Standard, there sounds like there's not enough letters.
Roger Federer has way too many letters in his name.
Federer.
Is it S-T-A-N-A-R-D?
Are you talking about Ridgeway?
Yeah.
Wall of Voodoo.
Yeah.
S-T-A-N-A-R-D.
Standard Ridgeway.
No E in Ridgeway.
God damn it.
No E in Ridgeway.
Radio.
Radio.
Radio.
Radio.
I have this first syllable.
It's pretty good.
It's really good.
Just drive, she said.
He's one of those people that is somewhere now.
Yep.
Right?
I imagine.
He's 64 years old, born in Barstow, California.
He's only 64 years old.
How long have you been following this guy, the bellboy asked.
Not long enough, because he just got away.
The time he was one of those people that was like, wow.
He was an MTV OG.
That's a lot of letters.
Whereas his name lacks letters.
Apparently he made a record in 2016.
The devil you say.
Apparently.
And he's been on records by Roger McGinn, the Fibonacci's.
Fibonacci's.
uh the ray oh he's been on a frank black and the catholics record that's fun i don't know what he's doing what am i thinking what's the name of that song oh uh is it mexican radio is that the hit mexican radio he's the first singer i knew that uh that did a verse where he had his teeth clenched
That's a good way.
He's a clencher, Jerry, a clencher.
You know, you don't want to have a whole record, like a Strokes record, where your vocal style is just a thing and everything through your teeth.
But to do it one verse... Kanye did that.
Kanye did his first record with his jaw wired shut.
Through the wire.
Really?
Yes.
He just sang it through a straw?
Yeah, that's his song, Through the Wire.
Through the Wire?
Through the Wire.
He sings like this because he had a straw world shot.
Well, it's like that Bad Breaks record where H.R.
sang through the telephone because he was in jail.
H.R.
who?
H.R.
Puffinstein.
H.R.
Pickens?
H.R.
H.R.
Hufflepuff?
H.R.
H.R.
Guyger?
No.
H.R.
I typed in H.R.
Badbarian.
Human Resources Geiger, the famous Swiss artist.
The machine guessed, is it bad brain?
Oh, his name is Paul D. Hudson, so there's no H.R.
at all.
Paul D. Hudson.
From the Hudson Brothers?
Who are you talking about?
You know what it stands for?
It stands for human rights.
Thank you, Biko.
Stan Ridgway does not have enough letters in his name.
A lot of people don't.
Yeah.
Robeson is a name.
Oh, I know that name.
Well, so what's... Yeah, no, no, it's wrong.
It's lacking a noun.
Robeson.
What about Paul Robeson?
Robeson?
That's missing two letters.
Son of robe.
Standard keyhole.
Is it standard lockhole?
Standard lockhole.
Here he is.
Standard lockhole.
Putting like an August smart lock.
Standard lockhole.
Standard.
What a great name.
Standard is a fucking great name.
You know what?
Standard should be a boy's name.
That's a good name.
It could also be a girl's name.
Think about... Now, you wouldn't want to call her standard lockhole.
You'd call her Stanny.
It would be so cute.
Oh, standard.
Stanny.
Standard Robeson.
Standard Robeson.
Okay, let's try with ours.
Oh, Standard Roderick.
Or as Griffin says, it would be Standard Roderick.
Standard Roderick.
Standard Roderick.
That's got a lot of Ds.
If Standard is a girl's name.
No.
Come on.
Because I don't want to set up everybody's ding-eye.
What does that mean?
Because if I say it here, they're listening.
No, they're all listening in headphones.
Nobody's listening to this on an e-carder.
You're going to get letters.
Standard lockhole.
If I say the dingus' name out loud.
Jesus.
people are get upset about it because they're listening to this on their home stereo system do people listen to this on their home imagine imagine that you were sitting around um i don't know let's say listening to caress of steel and uh and suddenly your oven turned on you'd be frustrated you wouldn't you say those licks are hot but they're not that hot
Go buy yourself some right got Hemispheres I watched them.
I watched several YouTube videos about rush last night I got hemispheres on the brain now.
There are an awful lot There's so many videos about rush.
Well videos about rush.
Yes people have many things to say about rush they do and you know one time I said something about rush and it was misinterpreted and
by people in the universe as being against rush now what it was was teasing it was teasing rush it was affectionate teasing and there are a lot of us in the rock and roll game yes let's just call it that the rock and roll game that tease rush because there are a lot of other people in the rock and roll game that don't tease rush
And a lot of those are drummers and bass players.
And if you're going to tease those guys, which is fun to do.
Super fun.
You can tease them about Rush.
So I made the mistake of carrying that Rush tease out of the rock and roll game into the world game, into the larger game.
Without the context.
Right.
I made a Rush tease.
And then there was a certain world on the internet that believed that I didn't like Rush, and they needed to explain Rush to me.
Didn't you guys used to play a Rush song to warm up or do sound checks?
Absolutely.
You did the spirit of radio, right?
My band could have played 2112.
Eric knows all of the songs.
And so does Nabeel.
Fuck.
And, you know, Darius knew every Rush song inside and out.
He could, you know, Eric Corson can sit and air drum to Rush songs in a way that you believe he's actually playing the song.
A, awesome.
B, how do you not make fun of that?
Well, it's very funny.
And Rush is very funny.
But Rush also is a little bit like what?
In some ways, Rush is to hard rock and pop prog, whatever you want to call it, is to that kind of music like, say, Robert Frost is to poems.
Go on.
Well, I mean, I think a lot of the people who are extremely into Robert Frost are not super deep catalog on a lot of other American poets.
Yeah, okay, I get you.
I get you.
It could be very into, like, say, Edgar A. Guest.
I don't know.
But no, there's nothing wrong with that.
They're not fans of Richard Hugo in other words.
God, don't get me started on Richard Hugo.
Rush is a little bit of a fetish band.
People who like Rush, it's almost like fish.
They both end with shit.
People get real, real into them.
Well, here's what's weird, and I don't know if people in America know this.
Because in America, Rush is considered somewhat of an intellectual metal band.
And if you're if you're listening to Rush, you probably also have a you also have a GS.
They're neither intellectual nor metal.
If you have like a like a like a grand sport motorcycle or you drive some kind of I don't you know, like Rush fans in America do not drive Ford F250s.
Right.
They tend to drive.
Russian America is somewhat Pan Man adjacent.
It's a little Pan Man.
It's a little bit.
I'm going to say Pan Man adjacent.
It's not quite like a Gaffietti level.
But, you know.
But here is the thing that I've come to learn.
Now, you're saying internationally, are they regarded differently?
Well, in Canada.
Now, internationally, who knows?
In Germany, I'm sure Russia is considered like, you know, like Der Totenhausen.
I don't know what that means.
But in Canada, Rush is regarded as like dumb Hesher music.
Hesher music, yeah.
Like dumb bully Hesher music.
Is that right?
Yeah, when I talk to people in Canada.
If you were into a Kids in the Hall sketch, Rush would be portrayed as like a Bruce McCullough character was into it.
Yeah, it's it's not Bob and Doug because Bob and Doug are mostly benign.
It's like it's like we talk to you talk about Rush to to certain people up there who like say Sloan and the Sloan fans will be like, oh, Rush, like the guys that like Rush.
drive f-250s and they kick your ass after school okay got it i was like really rush but then i thought about it growing up in alaska uh the guy that most like rush was also the guy that on halloween broke a raw egg on my head that's not good
well no it wasn't and i never made the connection i was never like rushes for bullies not all comes together yeah it's the the i mean like what do you say the lyrics i mean it's well it's you know it's ayn rand it's bad it's bad well and it's a it's a it's a music of privilege
Well, let's see.
Here's the problem.
We're going to get letters now because they don't realize that, of course, we love Rush.
I love Rush.
You know what?
But the thing is, watching several YouTube countdowns of the best Rush albums last night, some of which were very long, I realize what a normie I am.
Did Roll the Bones appear on any of those lists?
There, but low.
Yeah, low.
But to me, this is how fucking old and normie I am.
There are two Rush albums, above all others, that no questions asked, are there two best albums in my mind?
And it makes me realize what a normie I am, because for me, that's got to be Permanent Waves and Moving Pictures.
Because I'm of that age.
I'm of that age where I loved those albums.
Well, and also those are good albums.
But then there's one, they had some kind of steampunk theme album a few years ago that sometimes gets pegged as their...
best album oh come on i shit you not rush albums now somebody the person who's writing you that letter is screaming right now yeah they are they're like that record is called class clockwork angels 2012 clockwork angels
Given one of their, that's rated as one of their best records.
It is up there with Hemispheres, 2112, Moving Pictures, not so much Crested Steel, up there with what people say is, oh, Farewell to Kings, that's a good album.
Um...
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
A lot of people don't realize, a lot of people who haven't watched all these documentaries that you and I have watched don't realize that Rush started in 1968.
They're like the Pink Floyd of Canada.
They've been around a while.
I love their first record, Rush's first record.
The John Ruzzi era.
John Ruzzi.
John Ruzzi.
Is that Working Man?
It's a commodity.
Not Working Man.
No, it's their eponymous album.
No, I mean, what's the fucking hit from it?
There's the... Oh, yeah.
God, I'm a Working Man.
Yeah, yeah, Working Man.
That's a heavy, heavy tune, man.
It is.
It's heavy.
One thing I share with Rush is Rush...
Rush has won a SOCAN award.
SOCAN, the Southern Canadian.
Is that it?
What's SOCAN?
Southern Canadian.
No, it's the Society of Composers, Authors, and Music Publishers of Canada.
Oh, oh.
It's the Canadian Grammy Award.
Is it for Canadian music?
Because they like to grade on that curve.
Now, wait a minute.
No, the Juno Award is the Canadian Grammy Award.
The Socan Award is the Canadian Rock and Roll Oscar Award.
No, it's the... Emmys TV.
You got NASCAR.
That's the one who administers the rights, right?
What are they called?
NASCAR.
Racer car?
What's it called?
Who's the one?
NASCAP.
NASDAP.
NASDAP.
Okay.
NASDAQ.
NASRAP.
I hate this show so much.
It's making me stupid.
All right, so you and Rush won a Canadian award.
We both won a SOCAN award.
SOCAN!
So SoCAN is the result of a merger that took place in 1990 between Capac and ProCAN.
What?
Capac and ProCAN.
No, no, no.
Really?
So SoCAN is the NASDAQ of...
I think this is their NASDAQ or their NASCAR.
Isn't it?
Do they administer rights?
They serve music creators, music publishers, and visual artists.
They ensure users are licensed.
Aha!
This is NASCAR.
No, it is NASDAQ.
It is Abacab.
It's NASDAQ.
Right.
When you show it.
Have you tried turning it off and on again?
Okay.
Well, what is About Us?
Do they have About Us?
Here it is in France.
Well, I believe it is the other thing.
About SoCan.
And anyway, I won one of their awards.
Oh, nice.
But here's the thing.
Was it for music?
It was for music because I co-wrote, and that was very generous of her, but I co-wrote a song with Kathleen Edwards.
Love Kathleen Edwards.
I met her at your house.
She's a delight.
She's a wonderful singer and songwriter.
And a good hang.
She's very good hang.
She's really fucking cool.
She's high fives.
I would not say that I co-wrote it.
She wrote this wonderful song, and I just added a few little extra flibbity jibs.
Uh-huh.
But she gave me songwriting credit on it.
That's very generous.
It was very generous.
And so then that song won a SoCan Award.
And I was like, you know, mad props, mad props.
And it was some kind, you know, the SoCan Award is some kind of crystal thing that sits on your mantelpiece.
I was going to say, does it come with any kind of like a trophy?
Well, yeah, it's got a whole thing.
There was a ceremony and all this.
And I didn't want to, you know, it was a stage in my life.
I don't know why, but I didn't want to go up to Canada.
Actually, I wasn't really interested.
Well, I wouldn't have gone if I had been.
Here I am.
But, you know, I may buy the gun, but the thing is, you know, it's like, it was nice to be asked.
But then later on, I realized that I don't have, I never want anything.
You want to have phony?
I did win a headphone.
But, you know, I wanted that wall that had some things on it, right?
Because at the time I didn't have a college degree.
Nothing sadder than an empty trophy room.
Yeah.
And I did have that best tweet of 2010 award from the Seattle Weekly.
And I had a couple of certificates of participation, right?
I had some white ribbons.
But I didn't, I never, you know, like you would think at some point in a person's life they would have won something.
But then I realized I had won like a SoCAN award.
That's a merger of CapHack with Brokane.
It's a major award.
It's a major award in Amazon.
what if there was a what if there was a trophy you should you should like send them a letter find out if you can get a trophy so i wrote the people at my label did christopher get it and i was like no christopher and i don't talk anymore but i was but uh but i wrote a letter and i was like hey uh can you guys look into this so can award
That sound of fake typing.
Oh, yeah.
We're looking at it right now.
Maybe there's a statue or at least a certificate.
And they did.
They were like, we're going to look into this.
I'm typing into my invisible typewriter.
And then about a year and a half later, I wrote him again.
And I was like, hey, whatever happened with that?
Where are we staying with that?
Yeah.
With the Silcan Award.
And they were like, oh, yeah.
We talked to somebody, but...
We're just getting an update now.
So it's still out there in the world.
There's a SoCAN award, maybe with my name on it.
Maybe with your name on it.
It's like in the Indiana Jones room somewhere.
Kathleen was very generous, but SoCAN doesn't know that.
SoCAN might think that, for all they know, Kathleen was very stingy, right?
For all they know, I wrote the whole damn thing.
Now, of course, I didn't.
She wrote the song, and I just added a few flippity jivities.
But that could be worth the statute.
And so he could definitely be worth a statue.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, it's a no Patty fucking Smith who I love She gets a she gets a credit on because the night and I believe she changed literally one line She changed like an arrangement of words in one line because the night How did that come about
uh i think they were the story goes that they were rehearsing in adjacent spaces and somebody heard it and something's happened and somebody said patty should sing this and something like that uh-huh that happens that type of thing i don't know that i don't remember the story i'm not up on my springsteeniana but uh that that that believes so but i mean i i'm not i don't mean to throw shade at patty smith no but i i believe she changed an arrangement of words
That would count as a sprinkling of flippity-jibbity, at least in New Jersey it sure would.
I think that that's an example of Springsteen being also generous because Springsteen's a generous guy.
I got a feeling he's a good guy.
He seems like a good guy.
He seems like a genuinely good down-to-earth guy.
You know what I knew that for sure is when he put out that Girls in Their Summer Clothes song, and you could tell that he really liked magnetic fields.
that's when i felt like i felt like you know what i think that guy's all right because you know i came up in the 80s i know you and and so i had been i was listening i had a cassette of born to run yeah at the time at the time born in the usa came out and i was like you know the circuit's good but it's you know it's no nebraska oh no mr state trooper it's pretty mooky
Oh, yeah.
It came across as Mookie.
We didn't understand some of the nuances.
Yeah, sure.
Well, you needed to turn it off and turn it on.
You ever heard that song, Girls in a Summer Clothes?
You ever heard that song?
It sounds like Magnetic Fields.
It's really good.
You know who Wesley Stace is, right?
John Wesley Harden?
Yes, it's your friend.
Yes.
Well, he, because he's one of those zealigs, he knows Bruce Springsteen.
He knows him enough that he's been to his house.
And he says that his house is this giant, giant estate that has horses and stuff in New Jersey.
It's Garden State.
They sit around.
They sit around.
They sit out on the porch.
They drink – I don't know what they drink.
They probably don't drink beer because nobody drinks beer anymore.
No.
They probably drink tea.
And they look out across the verdant fields.
It's called Garden State.
Yeah.
They look out across the gardens.
Horses eating the garden.
And Bruce is just a normal guy that wants to sit and shoot the shit.
I guess he works out every day.
He goes to the gym.
I believe it.
You know, I bet he does that for him.
He does it for himself.
He does it because... He's not looking to get jacked.
No, but he recognizes that this is a thing that I keep forgetting, which is that periodically someone takes a picture of me and puts it somewhere.
Oh, sure.
Bruce understands that people are going to be taking pictures of him.
Yeah.
And he doesn't want to look... He doesn't.
I mean, I get to stage manage it, get the light the way that he wants, make sure it's the right side.
He's got to suck in like a Harry Houdini.
He's got to suck in his gut.
Yeah.
He doesn't want to look like a Harry Scallop.
I look like a Harry Scallop, and he looks like... It's no standard lockhole.
Harry Scallop.
Harry Scallop is the opposite of standard lockhole.
Here's what happens.
Standard lockhole is sitting behind his desk behind a frosted glass door, and then Harry Scallop walks in, and he needs to hire standard lockhole.
My wife is cheating on me.
LAUGHTER
Is Harry Scallop a little guy?
Is he kind of small, you think?
Well, he's small but wide.
Harry Scallop is perspiring.
Harry Scallop is patting his forehead with a towel.
But he might have played a mobster in a movie, maybe.
Except I'm imagining he's the size of Kristen Chenoweth.
He's kind of a little guy, but almost round.
The thing is, he comes into Standard Lockhole's office, he's got a story, which is his wife is cheating on him.
But later, at the end of the film, we realized that Harry Scallop set up the whole thing.
His wife wasn't cheating on him.
Oh, I see.
What's that one called?
The Embellishment Clause.
What's the movie with Fred McMurray with Barbara Stanwyck?
What's that called?
It's called Double Indemnity.
Double Indemnity.
It's a noir.
You're saying Standard Lockhole's in a noir.
I'm saying that Mrs. Scallop was in on it.
She was in on the grift.
It was a big grift and Standard Lockhole was just a dupe.
Forget it, Jake.
It's Lockhole Town.
Stupid show.
That was so stupid.