Ep. 327: "Old Sunshine and the Bear"
Hey folks, how you doing?
Good hands together for Roderick on the Line!
We got some certificates of attaboy.
I don't know.
Merlin may not display this prominently in his home, but I will.
Maybe you can take both of ours.
No, but it's nice because it's got the headphone-y right on there.
You've got a 20-sided die.
There's a 20-sided die?
I'm going to see some of the sides because it's not 3D.
It says something in... This is nice.
Sometimes you need an attaboy.
I do need an attaboy.
I need one every damn day.
I totally agree.
There should be somebody there.
You should have an attaboy boy.
Have an attaboy boy.
Have an attaboy boy.
Yeah.
I could make him wear a fez.
He could be any size.
He'd be from Nebraska.
He'd be 29 years old.
He just needs to speak clearly.
A lot of these millenniums, you know, they bought all the avocados and now they need employment.
You could hire an attaboy, attagirl.
You could get whatever anybody could accommodate your needs.
Just give them an attaboy.
Atta boy.
It would be like Liberace's chauffeur.
I would have him dressed beautifully.
And he would just stand his attention.
In fur.
In fur.
When I came through in my robe, he would hand me my sword.
And he would say, Atta boy.
Oh, Quincy, Quincy, where's my sword?
Go get him.
Go get that neighborhood dog.
Isn't this nice?
Isn't this nice to be here?
Boy, we've been doing this show live at Sketchfest for...
Two decades.
At least there's tonight.
There was tonight, and yeah.
Did you get the cheese platter?
Did you get some of the cheese?
No.
I've never seen anything that looks so much like a thing for trapping human beings than the cheese platter back there.
You know how you buy the mouse traps?
This is not a bit.
You buy those mouse traps with the plastic thing that looks like cheese on it, and you're like, I mean, how is that going to fool a mouse unless they're from Switzerland?
That's so strange.
I'm not going to fool a mouse.
a sweet but not very bright person might grab that cheese because they say, hey, look, it's cheese.
It's like the world's most dangerous charcuterie.
I think that that cheese on the mousetrap is meant to help people know where to put the cheese.
You think it's for people?
Yeah.
I think the people look at it and they're like, where does this
cheese go because you could you could not make a convincing fake peanut butter personally i put peanut butter on there you put this because you made a dookie on there yeah you're saying the cheese and as an indicator put the peanut butter here yeah but the cheese in the back so we walk back there's a bullachex mix they're really nice place nice people in there it's so nice bullachex mix some water
And then, like a... A lot of water.
Like a surpassing amount.
Like a kidney-damaging amount of water.
But then there was a thing that wasn't quite a cutting board.
No.
It wasn't quite a Coke mirror.
And it had eight slices.
Foking slices of cheese in three rows.
Nothing else.
If I was in QAnon, I would think that it's something very meaningful, probably.
It seemed to be telling us something.
Three strikes, you're out.
What does it mean?
Get it.
Seven means three cheeses.
You know what I'm saying?
Merlin stared at it for a while, trying to figure out what the sub-message was.
Yeah, what the sub-message of the cheese was.
And then he said, I'm not going to touch that.
Other people touched it.
How long we got out here?
I think, well, we've been about 45 minutes, so let's go to questions.
Okay.
Okay.
Remind me to stop doing the show in 70 minutes.
I'll tap you when I'm ready.
Mine says hang on.
This is not going to be taken from the time of the performance.
I'm sorry, I apologize.
Go ahead.
Remind me to stop doing the program in 70 minutes.
Call Merlin.
Okay.
This one.
Tell John I'm busy doing the program.
No, stop.
Alexis, stop.
Siri, stop.
Tell Hot Rod I'm doing the program.
You go for Merlin.
Hi, Merlin.
It's John.
I'm calling you from my watch.
Okay, okay.
I still like it on the timer, so...
Remind me to stop doing the show in 70 minutes.
Oh, geez, now I'll get disconnected.
Call John Syracuse.
Tell Max Temkin to call John Syracuse.
Tell Max Temkin to call John Syracuse.
I hate this.
She's going to tap me when she's ready.
She heard me say, I hate this, and she said, I hate this.
I promise you none of this is going to be a take.
That doesn't sound good.
Oh, no.
Tell Matt Howey John Syracuse hasn't called me back.
This is the best content.
No, no, no.
She didn't understand that one.
Okay, hang on.
Can you guys remind me when it's been 70 minutes?
Did you mean Matt Dresner?
No, not Matt Dresner.
No.
Trent Rezner?
Call Trent Rezner.
Here are some movies matching Kong.
She's trying to get me to watch King Kong.
Call Matt Howie.
Wait, she doesn't know what Howie, because Howie spells his name Hoggie.
Call Matt Hoggie.
Uh-oh, I don't have a phone number for Matt Hoggie.
Open Matt Howie's garage door.
Anyway, I've been trying to use my watch instead of my phone.
Yes, we have not caught up on this.
How has that been going?
It sounds like it's been great.
The problem is if you want to use your watch instead of your phone, you can't bring your phone.
But if you don't bring your phone, there's going to be that 10% of the time when your watch isn't equal to the task.
But if you bring your phone...
10 to 29% of the time.
But if you bring your phone, you're not going to ever really commit to learning how to use your watch.
Right?
So I'm constantly in this thing where it's like, if I really believe I'm going to force myself to use this watch even when it doesn't work,
Or the watch is just a gigaw.
It's just a gizmo, and I don't need it.
That would kill you.
You would hate that.
It wouldn't kill you.
I spent the money on this thing.
I don't want to leave it in a drawer.
That's too much fucking money, John.
So you're on the horns of a dilemma.
I'm on the horns of a dilemma.
You've got to decide, am I going to really commit to this and really, really accept what a piece of shit this entire rat king of technology actually is by forcing myself to stick with it when it doesn't work?
So you're going to really learn the limitations.
My laptop burned out.
Okay.
Is that your video card?
My video card burned out on my laptop.
And my iMac bricked.
And when I told John Sircuso that my iMac bricked, he said, so it won't boot up?
And I said, no, it boots up.
It just sucks.
And he was like, that's not what bricked means.
But it effectively bricked.
It's so nice to be friends with John Sircuso.
Everything went to shit all at once.
And the only thing that really still works is this watch, which only works 71% of the time.
And it doesn't really work.
No.
It just taps you when it feels like it.
It's super frustrating.
And then they'll, yeah, and then you call it the wrong name and you feel bad.
But, I don't know.
Alexa, play Smashing Pumpkins.
Call Trent Reznor.
Sorry, I couldn't find Smashing Pumpkins.
I don't see Trent Reznor in your contacts.
Wait, yours is British?
Aw, I didn't know you could make it British.
Yeah, yeah.
It's problematic.
I'm not living my best life.
Um...
You remember last year at this show, I was like so sick.
You were so sick.
Is that when your child barfed on you?
Was it around that time?
Everyone was barfing on everyone then.
I think there was a short period.
Does anybody remember this?
I feel so much better now.
It's been a year.
It's been a slow recovery, but I feel good now.
A lot of fluids, forcing yourself to rest.
It's so good to do Roderick on the Line.
You know, you and I don't see each other in person very much anymore.
Until you make me come to things like this.
Yeah.
And I get on Muni, and an hour and a half later, I find my way here.
Somewhere along the line, you morphed into John Fogarty in 1987.
Yeah, this is... I'm super into it.
Center field.
Come in, coach.
I don't do things or go places.
When you learned that House of Prime Rib would deliver to your home, I think that was the final straw.
I just duct taped all the doors and windows.
Just put it through the slot.
One slice at a time.
But I would like to point out that you've started shining your shoes.
I started shining my shoes, and this has changed everything.
In a way, that's kind of antithetical to the whole world that we grew up in, where we're just dirty.
Oh, anything goes.
Bring your dog with you.
Everything's different.
But now you're like Mr... I'm a throwback.
I look like a fucking cop, man.
It's like having a ski rack on your car for feet.
But that seems like one of those paint jobs that you would get if you were a member of the lowrider culture.
You put more than one layer of...
I do a two-part process.
I also just realized as you're speaking that I think these shoes are the only thing I'm wearing that's not related to podcasting.
What, you mean everything else is schwag?
Fucking every single stitch of what I'm wearing is because of podcasting.
Schwag, schwag, schwag.
So let me guess.
Well, now what?
Who wants to venture?
It's got just the right, what?
What brand is your underpants?
No.
Yay.
Ding.
Oh, shit, dog.
What brand is Merlin's shirt?
Now this one's going to be a little bit tricky.
Yeah.
How do you get a free shirt in podcasting?
I never got a single free shirt.
It's not a box service.
It's said right there in red letters to not refer to it as a box service.
Bombfell.
Bombfell.
My shirt was chosen by Bombfell.
My socks are from the company that makes socks in your size.
And the jeans?
I had to buy them for Dubai Friday.
The challenge?
Buy pants.
Oh, if anybody remembers, anybody listening to Dubai Friday?
These are the ones Max likes to wear when he's riding his cool skateboard.
And apparently this is reflective.
I don't have a flashlight, but apparently these are reflective because they're commuter jeans.
Call Max Temkin.
Wait.
Max Temkin.
Tell Hot Rod to stop fucking around during the show.
Here we go.
Hello?
Hi, Max.
It's John Roderick.
Hi, John.
How are you?
Merlin is here on the show and he's bragging about some jeans you made him buy.
Wait, some jeans that I made Merlin buy?
Yeah, is that true?
Can we verify this story?
Well, I had noticed earlier this year that I knew a lot of cool people were wearing black jeans.
Oh, hi.
I'm sorry.
I'm on stage with Roderick.
You want to say hi to everybody in the audience at Roderick on the Line?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Hi, everybody in the audience at Roderick on the Line.
Well, thank you so much.
Max, Merlin is trying to steal our thunder over on the other side of the stage.
Is he wearing black jeans?
Millennials don't like getting calls like this, do they?
Is he cooler?
He's much cooler.
He looks like John Fogerty.
Listen, I'll let you go.
Thank you so much for doing it.
I really appreciate all the work you've done on Merlin Max.
I can't thank you enough.
I like that long winter.
It's been a really, really long time.
Alex likes the long winter.
Thanks, buddy.
I'll talk to you soon.
Okay, well, everyone here in the room says hi.
Say hi to Max.
Hi.
Okay, we'll talk to you soon.
Bye, John.
Bye.
Tell Max Temkin to quit fucking around with my program.
Oh, this is a good bit.
It's really great.
Who were you talking to?
I was talking to Alex, my co-host on Dubai Friday.
Where I got my pants!
Do you think Alex and Max were in the same room?
I really doubt it.
I always think of podcasters as all living together.
Like in a treehouse, right?
That would be really gross.
There's nobody that I want to live with, especially a podcaster.
How big would the house have to be for you and me to live together?
Okay.
Imagine the house.
Now you want it to be as small as possible.
B, I think it's a trick question.
A, how big would it need to be?
How much of your stuff is there?
Let's say I committed to reducing my stuff by 60%.
60% of what?
I only had 40% of my stuff there.
Oh, 40% of your stuff.
Well, that is a percentage.
Would it be a treehouse?
Could be a treehouse.
Okay.
But you're saying, is it connected by a Disneyland-style rule plan?
I'll allow it.
Okay, all right.
I don't know.
I think we could, I think there's a, what do they call math?
Logarithmic scale.
I think there's an amount of time we could spend in a small space and the longer the time was, the more we just couldn't be in the same space.
So a hotel room, we could do it for like an afternoon.
We could do it.
An afternoon?
Like where there's no, you got pants on?
We share a backstage pretty healthily.
I think so, yeah.
But like a year.
A year.
A year.
How big would it be?
Let's say that NASA,
asked us to go to Mars because no one else could quite communicate the experience to people the same way that you and I would.
You think it would take about a year?
Take about a year to get to Mars, then some time on Mars, walk around, see the sights, and then we'd have to take a year to get back.
Oh, boy, that's going to need to be a big ship.
Yeah, it'd be a big ship, wouldn't it?
Because, you know, you're going to want the comforts of home.
We need our privacy.
Yeah, I really need my privacy.
You would get tired of hearing some of my theories.
Would we become lovers?
Not in a bad way.
Okay, I imagine there's a way to turn off the radios.
The thing is, it feels like you would be scratchy to kiss.
And that's bad how?
Well, but I mean, you know what?
I'm soft.
It would be like caressing a scallop?
Yeah, like a cell.
Maybe that would be my pet name for you.
Lay down on a bed of de-shelled scallops.
Very soft.
If it was in the sun, it would get lame.
So moist.
It would be like humping in a hothouse.
But it feels like you'd be bristlier.
I'm not that bristly.
I shaved a little today with a Harry's razor.
Oh, God.
I've started to get very panicky about being put in confined spaces.
You?
The devil you say.
A little panicky about just the prospect of being put in confined spaces and the idea of being put in a spaceship even without you there.
causes me to get a little bit anxious if I think about it for too long.
This is tangentially related to being hooded in the back of a cop car?
Every single situation.
If NASA wanted me to go to Mars, I would assume the first thing they would do is put a hood over me and throw me in the back of a cop car.
And that cop car would take me to a spaceship.
And I would be put on the spaceship.
Ignition.
It would suck.
I don't like things I can't get out of.
Because sometimes I just need a bathroom.
And it doesn't matter why.
That's the thing about this yearly live.
You're like, I can't get out of it.
He asks me to do it in May.
But they would not have asked us unless they really needed us.
They probably have more qualified people who can handle it, but obviously they got to us.
Maybe there's some kind of a plague type situation, but they get to us.
Maybe it's the drug that makes your arms rot off.
You guys seen that yet?
Have you seen that?
What's it called?
Crocodiles?
You don't want to Google this.
You don't want to Google this.
But let's say the crocodile has made everybody's... Go look at it.
Crocodiles?
Don't look it up.
Don't use your phone.
That's very rude.
Oh, Jesus.
What is crocodiles?
Sounds like a diner on the Sunset Strip.
Crocodile?
Crocodile?
Call crocodiles.
I don't see crocodiles in your contacts.
Well, that's not what I asked for.
I said crocodiles.
but in any case uh for whatever reason let's just say that a lot of the normal spacemen and space persons space ladies all the space persons i would do it if i had to no i don't know i i don't i don't like getting on muni i just don't have that much ambition and i really would not want to be that famous and then a lot of people are talking about you and asking questions what's going on in space when we play a lot of board games
With the people that would go to space for a year, you absolutely would.
They would leave food behind.
Actually, clerics now can use them.
Bring settlers of Catan along.
We bought that and we never opened it.
You ever do that?
Sometimes I decide, well, certainly all of you, for me, it's all about the books because you love your books.
Book people.
I'm a book person.
Yeah, yeah.
One day I decided I was a board game person, and I bought The Settlers of Catan, and I bought The More You Make the Choo-Choo Go Around, and I bought all of those.
I bought Lords of Waterdeep, which is apparently a board game of Dungeons and Dragons.
It took my daughter and I three hours to take all the pieces out of the game.
No.
Stops and ends at Candyland.
That's all you need.
We do jigsaw puzzles at my house because we live in an illustration from the Saturday Evening Post.
How many pieces?
Well, I try to get the ones with a lot of pieces.
1,500 pieces.
Take up the whole dining room table.
Nobody can do anything for a week and a half.
You have to eat sitting on the floor.
Just like in space.
Everybody in the family has a different methodology.
There's the person that likes to do the outside.
There's the person that starts with major themes.
I'm somebody that really wants to focus on the areas that I think no one else wants to play with.
Really?
Yeah, all the stuff.
Because it's like, oh, there's one red balloon in the middle of the painting.
Of course, somebody's going to be like, I'm getting all the red balloons.
And I'm like, no, no, no.
Get me where the ocean meets the sky across the entire back of the puzzle where it all just is indistinguishable.
no one knows how far it goes yeah yeah so i'll just sit and work on that just contentedly never got into those my mom would make my mother had a very memorable puzzle this is not a good story but it's a memory she had a i think many many hundred piece puzzle of a coin of a coin of a coin of a coin of a coin it was a very large round puzzle of coin oh it was a round puzzle oh it was a big round puzzle of a coin now ask yourself yeah say to yourself
If you have a Liberty Head Nickel, ask yourself how much contrast you got on those pieces.
Liberty Head Nickel?
Liberty Head Nickel.
It's all the same color.
It's just silver.
I don't understand these things.
It's got little words on it, though.
Yeah.
I mean, very small.
A little Liberty, that kind of thing.
Yeah, a little Liberty.
I don't know.
So your family is brought together by a puzzle?
Does your mom get in on it?
Oh, yeah.
Everybody loves a puzzle.
Everybody loves it.
I mean, one time I got a 1,500-piece puzzle of Van Gogh's Starry Night.
Yeah.
Oh, man.
Which is an impossible puzzle to do because every brush stroke is the same.
It's like you got blue parts, yellow parts?
It's just blue parts, yellow parts.
Yeah.
And they're all, but it's not like... You got little check marks, but... It's not like you can look at a sworg and compare it to any other sworg or connect it to any sworgs.
And so we studied this thing.
It was on the dining room table for a month and a half before we had, as a collective unit, our family had to surrender.
And we all, each of us, just was like...
I give this to you, puzzle gods, and we put it all back in the box and got it out of the house.
And now that's got to be like a Ludovico thing for you.
Now you go, you see Van Gogh, you must get all twitchy.
Do I have to put that together?
I see Van Gogh.
So you go into those puzzle stores or children's stores that are for advanced children.
You know, like, oh, this is a store for advanced children.
Like, here's a toy that sucks.
Here's a toy that no kid would want to play with.
Where people who don't have kids go because they need to buy an $80 toy as a gift.
Yeah, right.
Do you have anything wooden that has the shape of food?
Yes, we do.
Let me introduce you to the world of Melissa and Doug.
This is a car that no child would ever enjoy playing with.
This tomato is velcroed together and comes with a false knife that's not sharp.
How much is it?
$80.
Yes, please.
The advanced child store.
You see these puzzles at the advanced child store, and there are a few that I look at and go, hmm, this is a puzzle meant to make even the smartest child develop some humility.
Yeah.
These are intentionally unsolvable things.
Oh, that's good.
It was like in sixth grade when my teacher got tired of me interrupting, and she said, you can sit in the corner and read, here's Tale of Two Cities.
And it felt like I was being given a gift until I opened and started to read Tale of Two Cities.
The beginning's catchy, but then there's the rest.
Then I realized, oh, this is a giant teacher hammer, and I'm not going to surrender first.
I'm going to fucking tough it out.
The phrasing is so important.
What was the phrasing of the teacher?
You can sit here and pay attention, or you can go back and read Tale of Two Cities.
There was never any in-between time of like, do you want to look at Nancy Comics or Encyclopedia Brown, right?
No, it was not a recognition that I had special needs.
It was an acknowledgement that she could no longer handle me, but she knew I would be fooled.
She would put a chair over there, a soft chair even.
Almost the opposite of special needs.
It just caused unspecial problems.
Just problematic John.
I sat back there, never having heard of the French Revolution, just like, I will not stop.
I will read this.
It traumatized me.
I don't think most people read books, especially the famous books.
I just don't think most people read them.
Because I don't.
How many people, by applause and don't lie, have read Moby Dick?
That's about right.
In a room this size, that smattering of applause feels legitimate, right?
There are a lot of people in here.
I had it for a class, and I read it.
We know the story of Moby Dick.
I skipped some of the extensive chapters about the whaling industry.
Ooh, postmodern.
No, not good.
By applause, have read Billy Budd.
Billy Budd.
A much smaller smattering.
That's a Melville?
Yeah.
What's the other one?
Tycoon?
Give me another one.
Typhoon?
What's another one?
What about Tristram Shandy?
Tristram Shandy?
That's all the books.
That's pretty much... No, I just... What do you got?
Oh, you brought a book.
It's the... Oh, John Scalzi from... You know him from the Cruz.
Oh, I do.
And that's Gabriel.
I know Gabriel from all around.
John Scalzi is a science fiction author.
Science fiction author.
He's very popular.
Did he do red shirts?
I know him well.
He did.
He did red shirts.
Not bad, huh?
He's a nice man.
Ask me if I've read it.
I read Night Shift by Stephen King.
Did you?
I saw Night Shift starring Henry Winkler.
I saw...
That's a terrific movie.
It is a great movie.
It's very unusual.
I haven't read it recently.
I haven't read Night Shift recently.
We're just having fun.
This is not going to cut into the time for the actual performance.
Merlin will cut this all out.
I'm trying to think of the actual last big boy book that I really read, read, read.
I've purchased a lot of books.
I had a friend that worked at one of the Seattle internet book retailer companies.
Okay.
Where you order books online and then they're sent to you.
You order them online.
And they're sent to you.
And they're physically sent to where you live?
It was a Seattle company.
It's a Seattle, okay.
And he had... Is Powell's in Portland?
Powell's is a Portland company.
Okay, it's a mnemonic.
Powell's is in Portland.
Powell's in Portland.
And then Washington reads.
Washington, the other company.
Okay.
You let them know there's a book you want to read, and then they send it to wherever you live.
Yeah, in the mail.
And you use a computer for this.
Right, or a phone or a watch.
Okay.
I'm not sure about the watch part.
Do they follow up to make sure you read it?
Not sure.
Sounds like it could be pretty successful.
They're not bugging you about it.
He worked in a part of the company where he had access to all these books.
Galleys.
He had galleys.
Lots of galleys.
And he took all the ones about history and old biographies and Hitler and the Beatles and
And he put them all over to the side in a box.
And then he would periodically bring me a box full of all these books.
Wow.
A galley is what they call uncorrected proof.
It's like when you're just about done with the book.
And then people read it to make sure there's no errors.
And they're like paper bound.
Perfect bound, I think.
Anyway, so I got in the habit of reading the first quarter.
of like 80 books, right?
I would just, I'd read into it until I'd get the gist.
That makes you very broadly almost well-read.
Yeah, exactly.
I'd be like, ah, John Adams.
I know the, I know the first quarter.
Well, let's just say that I'm pretty familiar with a lot of people up to their 20s.
But I couldn't man I could never get the I don't know what it is the intestinal fortitude or the attention span to just power through To ever get to the end of a single one of these grown-up adult books that I what does it get you?
It's not like you get a treat.
I mean, it's I just think that I'm sorry.
I know this is not a popular point of view I think you people are scared to say it I think you're scared to say y'all buy a bunch of books because it's cool to have books I think a lot of people don't read books.
They don't read them
They don't, okay.
Is there a way they could make sure that if you bought a book, you actually read it?
If you start to read an article in Wired.
Okay.
About some.
Which article?
Five a month.
How many have I got left?
About, that's right.
So you're on your third article of Wired.
Oh, shit.
But you've already clicked through, so you've already burned the read, right?
You don't get to go back and say, I didn't really want to read that one.
Okay, okay.
So you click through accidentally or whatever.
You're into it.
If you bail, you've already used it up.
Okay.
It's a feature article in Wired about something that you didn't know about the internet.
It's a turns out.
It's a turns out article.
Okay.
Turns out.
That's something I would almost read.
Right.
That's something I would add to Instapaper for sure.
But this is a long one.
How often do you read it all the way to the end?
Well...
We're talking about five pages.
All the way through the end.
Five pages of somebody writing about a thing that you are interested in in Wired.
All the way.
Right to the end.
All the way to the last sentence.
Well.
You never pull back on the joystick and fly out of the pattern.
Well, it for sure gets added to Instapaper.
So I have an app that I use for collecting all the articles that I... Instapaper, which was designed by our mutual friend Instapaper designer.
Yes.
Is Marco on your phone?
Can you call him?
Let me check.
No, please don't.
Call Marco Arment.
Did you mean Marco Collins?
Whoa.
Marco Collins?
You mean the famous rock and roll DJ from 107.7 The End?
Yes.
He did that Silkworm record.
Yeah.
Oh, and now she's just, she's faded.
Where's the band Silkworm?
I can search for who is the band Stilkram on your iPad.
Stilkram?
Are fans still Graham?
Is Graham being one of your daughter's friends?
Yeah.
We love Graham.
In fact, we just had a play date with Graham.
Oh, I love Graham.
You know, my little girl is kind of struggling this year.
Second grade is hard.
She's encountered at her new school some mean girls who are trying to exclude her from play.
We were having a tough time right around Christmas, and I was like, what can I do to make this any better?
She said, can we have a play date with Graham?
That sounds centering.
We hadn't seen Graham in several months, and so I called Graham's mom, and Graham's mom said, we have been wanting a play date with Marlo for so long
and they got a play date together, and they went right back at it, super tight, super friends, and it reminded her that she is not just living in a new world where everybody shuts her out.
Because the mean girls, they're like, come play with us.
You're our new best friend.
Now you can't play with us.
Now we never want you to
to play with us.
Yes, and it's this Petri dish where they are learning how to, they're basically learning how to be mistreated by others so that they can weaponize it against other people.
It's a very important laboratory of crashing children.
The children are all, everybody feels like, certainly like they're aggrieved.
I know I do.
But like, they're just banging into each other all the time.
And it's just constant power dissemination.
And like, you're right.
But that's the crazy part is like, in this context, we're super good friends.
And in that context.
Oh, no.
Once Kayla gets here, you are out, Missy.
Once Kayla's here, I do not know you.
But Graham still had a lot of love for Marlo, and she had a lot of love for Graham, and it made a big difference.
And then, immediately, she wanted to audition for the local community theater production of Jack and Annie.
And I said, I said, sweetie, there are going to be a lot of people at this audition.
Is Graham in the theater?
Graham's not.
This is something that she decided she was having trouble at school, and so the way to deal with social awkwardness is to become a theater person.
LAUGHTER
I'm not sure how the cart and horse on that works, but I think the story checks out.
And I was like, oh, sweetie, theater.
On the list of things that I don't want you to do, the number one thing is don't marry a skater.
Or a chuckle.
But the next thing is be very careful about entering the theater in any capacity.
And she was like, I want to audition for the play.
And so we got to the audition.
It was that easy?
What did her mom say?
Well, so her mom was in the theater.
Surprise.
She was one of the black jeans.
She was production.
She was like the one on the curtain or whatever.
She was like a maglite.
Okay, okay.
Pulling on the curtain and like... She's like a Leatherman girl.
Yeah, with the little thing.
She's like, okay, and you go.
Oh, God, that's sexy.
That's a good part of the theater.
That's a sexy role.
It's a sexy fucking role.
It wasn't the part... I never played that role.
I was always standing there in a newsboy cap going like... I remember my line.
I remember my one line.
And then there's another thing at the end where you go... Because you're out of breath at the end.
My goodness.
That's not even your final form, right?
What Pokemon are you?
You can't handle my final form.
Nobody knows what Ice Bear is capable of.
So we went to this audition.
There were 80 little girls there.
Was it like all that jazz?
They had to learn this whole routine.
They had a song.
They had a long, long dance.
I couldn't have remembered it.
Oh, the answer to bullying is to join the very competitive world of theater.
So it was seven-year-olds to 14-year-olds.
And there were these girls at 14 years old who had all the jazz hands.
They could do everything.
They already had a handkerchief in their hair.
They had to flourish already.
Already.
And so we go through this multiple-hour audition process where I'm sitting up there in the stands.
Oh, and the director said to the little girls,
um we're watching you the whole time you're here not just when you're auditioning but if you're sitting over waiting to audition and we see you look at your parents in the audience look at your at your parent for and communicate with them we'll know that you're not independent
And I was like, fuck.
And she blessed me.
Did you out of force of habit look at her?
And then she like turned into ashes?
No, we know the deal.
You know.
And so for, bless her little heart, for two and a half hours, she sat on the side of the stage and did not look at me the entire time.
And I was like, I'm not looking at you either.
We're cool.
We're cool.
And she went through this.
She learned the whole thing.
She did this dance and sang the song.
And then as we're in the car driving home, she says,
I'm pretty sure I'm going to get the role of Annie.
And I was like, sweetie.
The titular Annie?
Yeah.
And I said, sweetie, you know, there's like 80 other kids auditioning.
Some of them are teenagers in high school.
The director may have a different idea.
And she said, well, no, I look like Annie and I'm pretty perfect as Annie.
I can't imagine they would cast anyone else.
And I said, well, the director might want to do something.
You know, the director might want to cast a little boy as Annie.
Like the director could do a lot of things.
And she thought about that and she said, if I get any one of the top four speaking roles, I won't be too disappointed.
She's being realistic.
And I said, sweetheart, one of the things about the theater is that it's there to crush your soul.
And this is a good learning experience, right?
This is a thing that you need to be aware that when you try, life will slap you down.
Yeah.
First it'll make you weird, and then if you're lucky, it'll make you feel good about being weird.
Right, right, right, right.
And I said, you know, I reached in my pocket, and I was like, this is a clove cigarette.
Yeah.
It doesn't mean it has cloves in it.
It's clove oil on the cigarette.
Just smell it.
Just hold it in your hand.
Get familiar with it.
It may reappear in your life at a later date.
This is a CD by the Cocteau Twins.
You're going to want to smoke your clove to this.
But we just got the letter from the theater people that she did not get cast in the play.
And the letter suggested that if she wanted to audition for a future play that maybe she should take some classes.
because I don't know if you know about people that direct community theater plays but they're pretty serious pretty serious just about the whole theater thing they're pretty serious about what's happening they don't want seven year olds just auditioning over and over until they've had some classes
Maybe that's part of the process.
I think it is.
I don't know why my shoulder's doing this, but I'm thinking maybe that's part of the fun, is that you get rejected a few times, and you get a scarf.
You become more and more colorful.
Did you do plays?
Yes.
Some plays.
Some plays.
Yeah, no.
Yes.
What was your big moment?
Well, no, I mean, it wasn't musical.
I mean, it was musical, but not musical.
Bacon Ray was great, though.
Thank you.
We...
He's memorized one thing about me.
He taught me that on the guitar.
I had a very large banjo that I could play.
He was like, you've never ever, he did baritone banjo.
I was like, how the fuck did you play that?
And he's like, let me show you.
He showed me a riff I played every time I pick up the guitar.
that's right for 15 years oh that one sure i touch on three riffs uh uh no but i was in drama club in uh 12th grade but like i did not like being yelled at 12th grade i was put into mini i was instructed to be in many things uh because my mom wanted me to be decent and well-rounded i had to take accordion lessons when i was 10.
When I was 10... Your mom really had her finger on the pulse.
She could see.
The Decembrists were not on the horizon, but the problem was... She was like, if you're ever going to play at the Ukrainian workers' hall, you're going to need to know a few things.
You can always fall back on oud.
No, it was really just a trail, not a trail of tears.
It was a trail of terrible music.
Then another one was, I think this one fell in the end of the ages of like, it'd be good for you to have some order.
She put me into this drum and bugle core run by this psychotic, made the whiplash guy look like, you know, Michelin man.
This guy was rough.
He was mean.
And they didn't teach you anything.
They just yelled.
That was one.
What is the drum and bugle?
Well, there's two instruments.
It's a thing.
But is it a thing that happens at firemen's funerals?
It depends.
Who's hiring?
Who would like some very, very sad fifth-grade children with hats?
Bum bum.
Bum bum.
Horns up.
Bum bum.
They didn't mention the flags.
They should have really called it Drum and Beagle and Flag Corps because there were flags, but this man was very, very angry.
Maybe it's just me.
Music teachers, they get very, very angry.
Did Dad have played trombone for a while?
The bugle is the angriest instrument.
Really, it's like a little pipsqueak.
It's like Bonaparte.
Like your mother says, Bonaparte.
It's the Bonaparte of instruments.
It's small.
It feels a little bit.
But it ends up taking over all of you.
A little fire plug of an angry fucking instrument.
And were you drum or bugle?
I mean, theoretically, I had a borrowed bugle.
I had a used mouthpiece.
Did you ever put lip to bugle, or did you just stand there and get yelled at?
Yeah, but you have to understand, imagine the dreams that you have had.
The literal nighttime dreams where something impossible happens, where you could explain it to somebody, where you go, well, I imagine that there was two circles and one of them was blue, but they were impossible to reconcile or explain.
And then somehow I was in the mouse, but I was the mouse.
It was like that for like two hours a week.
Hit the sea, the sea.
And I'm like, I don't know which one of them.
Am I the mouse or am I the mouse?
I don't know if I'm the circle.
But they didn't teach us anything.
There wasn't even a thing with, I don't know, some kind of finger thing or something to show you how to make it.
They just came in assuming you knew how to play a trumpet.
But is it a bugle or a trumpet?
It was a trumpet.
It was Ohio.
We have different names.
Bag, sack, that kind of thing.
But no, it's very, very unpleasant.
Almost all of my experiences with a formal, like, go be entertaining atmosphere has been abysmal, all terrible.
Choir, church choir was nice.
So your mom said, I want my son to grow up to be well-rounded.
I want him to play the accordion.
Any variety of extremely loud instruments.
I want him to be able to play the trumpet or the bugle in an organized fashion with a lot of other kids marching.
He should be in church choir and as a senior in high school, join theater.
Yes.
As you can see, she had a plan from the beginning.
Did she want you to be able to throw or catch a ball?
Did she want you to... A ball.
The other children had balls.
I didn't envy their balls.
I'm glad they're happy with what they have.
She let you make a ball out of wax?
I mean, I could draw a ball on my music staff paper.
No, I just, I don't know, man.
It just seems like, see, I don't want to say anything unkind.
I don't want to do anything that's going to hurt anybody's feelings.
But a lot of the people who get into the arts aren't happy.
I mean, there's a lot of extremely happy comedians, I'm sure.
But there are so many people in the arts that are just really not very happy.
Have you ever encountered this at all, John?
You were in a band.
Yeah, I was.
And you've traveled.
You've done comedy.
I know comedians.
You've got several podcasts.
You've met a lot of people.
You've met Reggie Watts.
I've met a lot of people.
You've met a lot of people.
I've met a lot of Reggie Watts.
Yeah.
How many people are here for the entire Sketch Fest going to see many shows?
Really?
Oh, so it's really mostly just a Roderick on the Line audience that's come in from Mendocino.
Oh, look at that.
Oh, no, I'm really sorry.
Wow.
How many of you live in Mill Valley?
Mill Valley.
Ooh.
Whoa, see?
We're a podcast of the people.
Okay, what about Kent?
Anybody from Kent?
Yeah?
All right.
Where?
Other cities in the North Bay.
Oh, other cities.
Doesn't matter.
East Bay.
East Bay.
East Bay.
Yeah, see?
See?
We're the real deal.
Going to do your East Bay dance?
Where are you going?
Yeah.
Why is your microphone sticky?
Oh, Golden State Warriors.
This is the jersey that you're talking to me about, about the guy that he throws the basketball really well.
Oh, look at that.
Durant.
Kevin Durant, basketball sharpshooter.
Six foot 11 and agile, just like KD.
Well, but as you were saying, I mean, I've been here for the weekend doing Sketchfest.
I've met a lot of comedians.
One of the things that powers comedy is inner suffering, self-loathing, right?
Enjoying as well as producing.
Yeah, right.
But you really need it to produce.
No, I think a lot of people enjoy comedy just because it presents itself as fun.
And so you don't have to go into it saying, like, I hate myself.
I'm going to go watch another person who hates himself.
You're right.
People who like comedy are way better than people who make it.
People that like comedy are pretty well adjusted.
People that make comedy are terrible, terrible, terrible.
But if you met somebody who made food, like for a restaurant,
there's probably a chance that they genuinely enjoyed eating as well.
So why are comedians terrible?
Why are they all so bad?
You know, doing comedy is like... It's a form of... It's anthropological.
It's philosophical.
They're looking at everybody.
They're having a take.
And as you know, anybody can have a take now.
But to have a good take, you have to be coming at it from a place.
And if you're coming at it from a place...
You have to have been some places.
You have to have seen some things to be in a place, to speak from that place.
And in order to do that, you have to have not wanted to be in the place you were before.
And that goes all the way down.
And that's made all the difference.
Yeah, that's right.
And then you have to go out from a bunch of strangers and fundamentally change the way they feel.
You have to have some kind of insight into the human psyche to be able to come out there, obviously just filled with a lot of personal pain and turmoil.
And then you're going to entertain these people with some japes.
You have to reach down and pick the crowd up.
Is that R. Kelly?
What is that?
Reach down and pick the crowd up.
It's a, that's that one.
It's the record that, uh, that Chris Cornell wrote about, uh, Andrew Wood.
This was before Eddie Vedder was famous.
He was new to town and Chris Cornell very generously said, Hey, new guy, come sing on this record.
I'm making for my best friend and former roommate, Andrew Wood.
Is that right?
It's called Temple of the Dog.
Temple of the Dog.
And I feel like the song, the big hit from it, which was That's not the good one.
That's not the good one.
The good one is... So that's the song.
Are you saying they're happy?
None of them were happy.
Okay.
For different reasons.
Almost none of them survived.
But Eddie Vedder lives on.
Yeah.
He seems nice.
He seems nice.
And he's nice.
He seems happier than most comedians for shizzle.
He's pretty happy.
Why are they all so sad?
They're so sad.
You know what?
This is the wrong place to talk about this.
You guys came out here to laugh, not to hear about society and culture.
Yeah, and you picked the right two guys to make you laugh.
Old sunshine and the bear.
Yeah.
Well, it looks like old Sunshine the bear got themselves into quite a pickle of the bear.
You got to get this course.
Oh, shit, it's smoky.
Oh, you got to pedal the... No, I'm Bill Cosby.
I can't.
We've got the pedal to the metal with the situation and the truck is moving with the beers.
My wife Camille is making the face.
25 years, that was the most hilarious go-to impression you had.
It's so hard.
And now it's gone.
You can't use it.
The chocolate cake behind you.
No, you can't do that.
No.
Oh, you laughed.
You remember.
You don't think Bill Cosby himself was good?
It was really good.
Come on!
It was so good.
All that's left is a Christopher Walken impression.
It's the only one you can do.
Oh, man.
Please let us have Christopher.
Do you have a Christopher Walken impression?
No, not that I would do.
Gosh, but you sure do look at everybody and go, no, please not him.
Captain Kangaroo.
What I appreciate about people that come to our shows is that they tend to be, I think, shy.
They sure don't laugh.
How many people... A lot of them are very... You guys can't see yourselves, but you're very fucking still.
I know some of this is funny, at least.
No, no, don't laugh now.
There's no point.
You've already ruined it for everyone.
By applause, how many people in here would self-describe as shy?
Now, don't lie.
How many people are shy?
See, they don't want to applaud.
They're scared to applaud.
That was a sato voce applause.
All right.
Who hears extroverted?
Let's hear applause from extroverts.
Oh, come on.
Look at that.
And you notice the extroverts are all sitting in the front.
Hey, there's nobody sitting in the front.
That's me.
Must have been holding that seat for me.
I think there's a role for me to participate in this.
Introverts are still standing in the back like, well, maybe those seats are for someone else.
I'll just stand back here.
I probably paid for the wrong show.
Yeah, you talked me into this.
I used to think that I was an extrovert, and then you gave me your very strange theory of extroversion.
Would you like to reiterate that?
Don't you have a theory of introversion?
I have so many.
I feel like you do have a lot of theories.
We'll discuss them in space.
But I feel like the kind of dumbed down Merlin version of it was that you can decide or determine who is an extrovert according to how much energy they generate by being around other people.
If you get energy from being in the company of other people, if that charges you up.
You might be an extrovert.
You're more extroverted.
And if being around other people drains you, and you can do it, but when you're done, you need to go be alone to recharge.
So alone for a while.
And you're an introvert.
So alone.
It's a very simplistic theory.
It doesn't apply to everyone.
I'm sure someone in the room is like, but I do the opposite.
I have a theory about this.
I have a theory about extroversion.
I'm on Reddit and I have other friends that agree.
People on Reddit don't have friends.
People mistake me for an extrovert.
You.
That's a mistake people make.
I love people.
I love getting out there.
I love the culture.
I love times.
I love music.
I love sex.
I love...
food.
You sound like a man waiting to be fed grapes and it's freaking me out.
I'm just tactile person.
I love to cover myself with margarine.
Just really get out in the fucking traffic and dance.
Just fuck on the ground of trash.
We're just rolling around on this filthy fucking ball.
It's like a men's room floor.
You might as well dig in.
Then I need to go home and recharge.
When I get done with that, I pick myself up off the men's room floor.
I squeegee all the margarine off, and then I have to just go sit in a quiet room and recover.
Pick all the marrow of life out of your teeth.
Why do I taste like a goldfish?
But you know, our mutual friend, Ken Stringfellow, the man who's actually responsible for us being here together today, it was Ken Stringfellow of the Posies that brought us together.
Merlin liked the Posies.
Yes.
Had never heard of the Long Winters.
Well.
Well, you were talked about on LiveJournal.
I was talked about on LiveJournal.
Yeah, you were topic on LiveJournal.
But me personally, I was... Before he had pound signs.
I think you were a keyword.
But Ken Stringfellow has never, ever wanted to go back to the hotel room.
If you're like, let's go... He's on.
We're leaving tonight for Azerbaijan.
Yeah.
Ken is like...
He's already at the ticket counter buying a ticket.
He's perma-on, though.
He's on, on, on.
Okay.
And you and I, you know, we both need to turn off.
Well, you also, didn't you also have, I don't, I feel like you had another theory you came along with.
One time you talked about, you talked about,
I don't know how to
But I was thinking, you had a theory at one point, which was somewhere in between, which is like about this little hard pivot.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, is there a hard pivot?
The in-between theory.
The hard pivot theory.
Well, yeah, maybe it didn't.
I feel like you did.
Describe the hard pivot theory as you recall.
40 seconds later, stop.
Must look at the phone for two hours with no one talking to me.
No one talking to me.
I could have a TV on and looking at the phone, but no one should talk to me.
My daughter shouldn't talk to me.
No one should talk to me.
Shh.
And then I build back up, and six to nine weeks later, I can go out again.
And I get right here in the room with you in my Kevin Durant jersey and my fancy dance.
I can enjoy this, but after I leave, we'll talk for a while, but then I'm going to go home and have spatchcocked chicken and lay on the bed very, very quietly.
because that's my hard pivot my hard pivot is sure it's fun for a while you have a little hand sanitizer you roll around the men's room before pick the marrow out of your teeth but you got to get back to your house and look at your fucking phone what I've noticed about you in the last several years is that when you enter a situation like you did tonight the first thing you started talking about tonight when you arrived at the venue empty venue was the spatchcock chicken that you have coming up tonight
It's Sunday night, spatchcock chicken.
But the thing about it is you lay out the spatchcock chicken a few times.
That's what makes it spatchcock.
Every subsequent person that came in, you said something about the spatchcock chicken.
Spatchcock chicken.
So what you've done is you've laid the groundwork for later when someone's like, Merlin, hey, why don't we go to, you're like, ah.
aforementioned spatchcocked chicken that I said when you first walked in.
Is there a reason he mentioned that it takes 40 minutes to cook?
Yeah, so it's not an excuse because you pre-focused it.
It's a reason.
Yeah, that's right.
It's not an excuse, it's a reason.
So now you found a way to say spatchcocked to them so that afterwards when they're trying to shake your hand and you're just...
covering it with sanitizer.
I'll shake the shit out of your hand.
And you're like, ah, but... I'll overwhelm you with my enthusiasm for a few minutes.
Spatchcock chicken.
Spatchcock chicken.
Gotta go.
Gotta get going.
Gotta get going.
Gotta get going.
I'm gonna make a little Fred Flintstone Muni sounds.
Get on the way to Muni.
Look, I paid seven bucks for that chicken.
It's not going to waste.
Oh, it ain't no $7 chicken.
Anybody, you guys ever have a spatchcock chicken?
Okay.
Would you agree it's a pretty strong bird?
Apparently it's a butterflied chicken.
Is that right?
It's a butterflied chicken.
You eviscerate it.
You take the inside out.
With all due respect to chicken Americans.
I shouldn't say.
Also, you also were clear to say to everyone as you were describing the Spatchcock chicken, you said, it's really great if you like chicken.
You said that to every person.
And I was like, what is the significance of that in the Merlin laying out the groundwork thing?
I
I like to give a proviso.
You don't want somebody to be like, well, if you like chicken.
You need about one more year on the internet before you start saying stupid shit like that too.
Hoping feebly it will prevent you from something.
Hey, you know what's really great?
Spatchcock chicken.
Oh, I don't like chicken.
Okay, then that's probably not for you.
Oh, delete your account.
Oh, oh.
You should have mentioned that Spatchcock chicken is chicken.
Oh.
I was just sharing a thing that seemed like it might make someone have.
Oh.
In the early middle period of Twitter, when Twitter was first, you know, when we were first having fun, when we had a good time on there.
Yes, when it was good.
I had a friend that worked at Twitter.
You know him, too.
He was a good pal.
Later sent us speakers.
Later sent us some Sonos equipment.
He was a good man.
I didn't wear any Sonos equipment tonight, which is good because I can't do all the Alexa commands.
He was the first one that wrote me and said, like, would you like a blue checkmark?
And I was like, don't know what that is, but always...
If it's some form of attaboy, please give it to me.
That's like asking a Kentucky colonel if he wants a goatee.
Oh, yes, I reckon I would.
He's like, I have this.
You know the way I can wear my privilege on a larger piece of clothing?
A blue checkmark, my stars and garners.
Well, I reckon so.
Can I have two?
How many checks are available?
I was going to be one of those people that put a blue checkmark on his avatar because they wouldn't give it to him and then have a real one.
I only have one checkmark.
When do I get more?
But he was going to send me, he was like, I can give you three peacock feathers or a blue checkmark.
And I was like...
And he ended up sending me both.
That's nice.
But no, at that point in time, Colin Malloy joined Twitter.
And somebody at Twitter, not our friend, but a different person, clearly an unfriend, put Colin Malloy in the who to follow if you're new to Twitter.
How did you find this out?
And you were on that for a while, weren't you?
I would.
That's why, guys.
Who to follow.
So every person that joined Twitter auto-followed Colin Malloy.
Why?
I'm like a blow-in card in a magazine.
I'm like a fucking, I don't know, a keychain in your conference bag.
Who to follow?
Rain on your wedding day.
I never asked for that.
I never said, please, please put me on the list.
Please put me on the Colin Molloy list.
I never asked for that.
I didn't want it.
Well, so during that period, Colin had arrived at Twitter.
Because then people just get mad.
It's like having a party of people you know are guaranteed to dislike you.
But, but, but, but, but, but.
Which is a party.
He tweeted one time, and it was something like, it was something like.
What was his voice like when he did it?
No, his first tweet was like, meat is murder.
Meh.
And this was at a time when I was just... Belligerent goons run Manchester schools.
Spineless bastards all.
Post.
I was working so hard to do my 140... Oh, you sweat it out.
I was busted.
Get in the minds.
Just come up with words.
The comma, taking out the comma makes it wrong, but now it fits.
But I have to live with this.
It has to be grammatically contract.
Start over.
Comedy must be true.
The comma must be correct.
Every day I would log on and Colin Malloy would have 20,000 more followers.
You hate that.
You hate that so much.
I hate it so much.
And even today, I would trade all the people screaming at me to delete my account for just the satisfaction of having one more follower than Colin.
Just so that he had to wake up in the morning and realize he was chasing me.
See, now when you ask for that, you sound needy.
I'm fucking needy as shit.
Yeah, I know.
That's what I'm saying.
It's terrible.
You should be able to ask people for more unearned privilege without sounding like a dick.
Why does everybody have to make it such a big... You're just asking for a little bit more privilege.
A little more something you never deserved in the first place.
Why is this bad for me to do?
Imagine if I had a million followers, the good I could bring to the world.
Like good followers.
Right?
A million real followers.
Like a million fucking good followers.
Quality followers.
People who just hit the star and don't say anything.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Fave and retweet.
Is this so much to ask for more of things other people don't?
You know what, frankly, if everybody in this room just faved and retweeted everything I said, I would be a much bigger star.
It doesn't seem... I feel like you guys are leaving a lot of faves and retweets on the table.
Yeah.
How he's going to beat Colin Malloy?
How's that going to happen?
Yeah.
How am I going to get extra special treatment?
Colin Malloy of the Decembrists once called John Gauche.
Are you aware of this?
How'd you get back at him, John?
Continue to be gauche?
For decades after?
You somethinged his house with his own something.
Oh, that was much later.
That was for a different reason.
Well, okay.
Surely, no one is in this audience.
Wait a minute, this is a good one.
Who is in this audience who has never once heard Roderick on the line?
By applause.
Thank you for coming, and I'm sorry.
So wonderful.
Your significant other made you come, is that correct?
And how long have, on average, how long have they been trying to get you to listen to Roderick on the line?
No, I'm so sorry.
Three years, and yet you've never succumbed.
You've never once said... He did the song from a bim-bam.
Yeah, no, he doesn't care about that either.
So that is so wonderful that you would come to this show, but you wouldn't ever just listen to the show once to make your significant other happy.
It would be like somebody says, oh, I want you to, my friend of mine's in this movie, and you go, and it turns out to be a really hardcore porn movie.
It'd be so weird to go, and you're like, wait, how do you know this person?
You'd be like, shh, just watch the movie.
Just watch the movie.
How do you take, I don't know how many of you got a bunch of episodes and they make fuck all, like no sense.
Like no sense.
And you bring somebody out to this.
A friend?
A friend you bring to this.
Thank you for doing that.
That is so kind of you.
Let me hear by applause.
Oh, here we go.
Is anyone here just accidentally?
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Like you couldn't get into Blue Man Group when you came here.
Okay, so nobody.
Everybody's here with at least like a modicum of intention.
Well, somebody meant to be here.
They might have gotten a ticket that somebody dropped because they want to be warm for a while or something.
They want to come in, right?
Do you want to do any more Vox Pop here?
You want to ask any more questions?
Yeah.
Oh, right, right, right.
I was breaking the fourth wall.
No, that's fine.
It's already done.
The wall's broken.
Early on in the show, when you and I would talk to the audience on our podcast, if we would ever refer to the audience, address them, suggest that there was anyone listening, I would get mail from people saying, please do not talk to us.
Don't break the little world.
Don't break the little world.
I'm listening to you.
You are not aware of me.
Nope.
And that, like I took that to heart.
I understood better what we were doing at that point.
Well, I mean, if you're like a voyeur and part of your fun is watching without being seen, you don't want the people to like point out that you have cute shoes.
You want to be not noticed.
You go into the background.
That's why you're the voyeur.
You're not the participator.
You're not the one on the Mars rover.
You know what I mean?
I'm sorry for everyone who had to come.
It's a real shame.
Anyway, we're having spatchcock chicken tonight.
The thing is, we don't spatchcock it ourselves.
We have it spatchcocked by others.
The thing is, as time has gone on, I have tried to make myself more and more present, ubiquitous.
I've always wanted to have my picture in the newspaper.
Just amongst people.
I'm doing things all the time.
I'm trying to be out there.
You're accepting invitations.
You're agreeing to go places.
I'm recognizing that at my age, if I stop doing things now, you're at that crossroads where at 50 years old, you can become an old person very fast if you stop
If you stop trying to skateboard.
If you stop trying to learn new things.
If you don't learn a sick ollie.
Yeah, if you don't put your hat on sideways.
People will stop coming to your skate show.
And say like, hello fellow students.
Yes.
There are people at what?
You can retire from the armed forces at 50?
Oh, my high school girlfriend retired years ago.
Yeah, retire.
My high school girlfriend retired 12 years ago.
Yeah, you could be like playing shuffleboard somewhere.
She retired 12 years ago.
Like what is it?
AARP, how old do you have to be?
It's like 50 and older, right?
Give me a fucking break.
I've been AARP.
I've got more AARP.
Flyers and you've had hot meals.
Yeah, I've been in.
They keep sending me stuff.
But on the other side of the coin, it's like there are all those people that are on European beaches wearing banana hammock swimsuits who are like, I'll never die.
Are they the skateboarders or the other ones?
They're the ones that are still trying to live, still trying to eat it up.
Oh, okay.
They're still sucking the marrow out of their teeth.
They're still sucking the marrow out of the bones.
I'm still trying to rock some kind of fold your cuffs up on your suit jacket thing, which I feel like is going to catch on.
Okay.
Oh, I hadn't noticed that.
It'll be traced back to me.
That's definitely a look.
You ever get it over a sweater?
That's a smart look.
You've got a basketball t-shirt over a free shirt.
I'll just show my support for the team.
Warriors, am I right?
Basketball.
I feel like seeing you in person is becoming more and more like catching a magic Pokemon.
Oh, I'm like Salinger meets a Sasquatch.
Everybody here, they can never take this away from you.
No.
You saw Merlin.
This could be it.
This could be the last one.
You might touch him tonight.
You might touch me tonight.
He's got a spatchcock chicken.
This is my Sound of Music moment.
Before Max has to shuttle me off the stage.
Whereas I think as I get older, I just become more and more touchable.
You're going to become more ubiquitous.
You think you're going to be out there more.
I'm trying.
I'm trying to get out there.
Does anybody want John to be out there more?
Would you like that?
Would you like being out there more?
If you have ideas, maybe ideas for ways that you could be more out there.
Who wants me to be out there less?
Wow.
Only the introverts.
But there were a lot of people that didn't applaud, right?
The ones in the middle that were like, it's about enough.
Could he phrase that more clearly?
Because I think I have a strong feeling about it.
Yeah.
No, no, no.
I feel like 2019, I'm going to be like a blanket of fresh snow in a state that doesn't often get snow.
Whew.
I'm gonna be like snow in Decatur, Georgia where it's like shit.
There's snow indicator.
There's snow.
There's snow in Decatur.
There's snow.
It's John Roderick.
It's John.
He's here to do a thing.
Snowing through 2019.
What's he gonna do?
Yeah, what's he gonna do?
Is he gonna be on cruise?
Is he got another podcast?
Another podcast?
Oh, he's got a podcast coming out with his sister.
How's he find the time?
Are you doing that?
Do you want to know the truth?
Yeah.
So Susan...
Susan for a long time has been saying, I want to do a podcast.
But Susan, you know, Susan has, I don't know if any of you follow my sister on the internet.
A lot of balls in the air.
But Susan has, she's leading a bunch of meditation retreats.
She just put a meditation retreat on sale.
You can go with her to Nepal.
and uh meditate this is gonna be like a fire fest kind of thing no no no it's like she's already done this clothes if she's crossing your palm she's done this she's taken one to cuba she's taking one to costa rica you can't go with her to nepal because it's sold out in one day too late bitches but she wants to have a podcast and the thing about her she wants the devil you say so she wanted to have a podcast where she uh and i and i helped her get all set up i gave her all the equipment i set her all up
You got her all set up for a podcast.
I teched it out for her.
Who told you?
I hooked up all the cables.
I plugged it in.
SM57.
Plugged in the wall.
SM58.
Powered it up.
Check, check, one, two.
Taught her how to record it right in the GarageBand.
Get it up on iTunes.
But the podcast that she was doing, it was hard to get started because she didn't have a partner.
It's in the self-improvement space, the self-help space.
Yeah, where she was just like, you need to recognize that you're a good person, you're a strong person, and what you want to do, you're worth it, this type of thing.
But it's hard to just say that into a microphone.
It's a crowded field, too.
It's a very crowded field.
You can't just say it into the air.
It doesn't quite reverberate the same way.
And so we were talking about it, talking about it, talking about it.
But another thing that we talked about all the time is how fucking terrible everybody is on the highway.
This was an early thing that you and I used to yell about.
Keep moving it out of the way.
So she confided in me.
She's like, I spent all my time trying to be like Buddhist and...
You can always talk to other people about how other people drive.
Right.
And she's like, I... Nobody doesn't have an opinion.
Even if you don't have an automobile, you still have an opinion about how other people drive.
But she has worked so hard to not be angry, to not be frustrated, to have acceptance, right?
To keep her heart nest, keep the eggs in her heart nest safe.
But she gets in her car and she's like, fucking move, idiot!
And both of those are Susan.
Right.
Right?
And there's not one of those that's not Susan.
Unlike me, she rolls her window down all the time and goes, is this your first day?
LAUGHTER
But she does it all the time.
And now they're thinking about it.
Is this my first day?
Is this my first day?
Is this my first day?
Is she on to something?
And so we're sitting and talking and she's like, I've spent so much work on my inner life, but inside the car,
Somehow I feel something happens.
And this anger, this frustration, it all comes out.
And I was like, hold that thought.
And I pushed record.
You didn't.
And was like, so let's go over this again.
And so we started doing a podcast where she talks about...
We talk every week about the most recent incident where she rolled down the window and said, get the fuck moving, you fucking idiot.
And then I say, so how does that work with the rest of your... And then she works on her universe.
This should have always existed.
It's perfect.
And then I say, well, I was behind a guy the other day, and guess what he did?
And then she gets mad on my behalf.
LAUGHTER
This is your sister.
You may remember from previous episodes.
This is John's sister.
If you ever have any kind of like a customer service problem, if you ever need to get something worked out, you call the killer.
I get into problems with the cable company just so I can... Just so you can unleash the Kraken.
Susan is the Kraken.
Anyway, we've been doing this show.
We've never released an episode.
We've been doing it for about six months.
What?
And it has...
It has brought us so much closer together.
That's so cool.
Because we talk about our parents, we talk about my dad and our mom, and we talk about our lives and our friends, and we often refer to our friends by name who are bad drivers.
who are part of the problem.
We talk about our parents, who were also part of the problem, but they taught us how to recognize the problem.
Yes.
And then we talk about our anger, and we talk about trying to be better people.
And it's really... I don't know where this podcast will land or what home it will find, but we're like...
It's really great.
And the problem is I have fucking too many podcasts.
I never wanted to be that guy.
And you don't like podcasts.
No.
No.
That's the thing is I like podcasts and have four podcasts.
John doesn't like podcasts and has four podcasts.
I like making podcasts.
It's not difficult.
I can't imagine listening to a podcast.
Some of them are very long.
You know, you say all the time, like, oh, good podcast, or like, nice podcast.
To who?
Well, just generally, I hear it come, that's a good podcast.
Oh, I'm a fan.
Oh, I'm recommending all the time.
I like that podcast.
ABC, yeah.
I'll do a podcast, you'll say, that's a good podcast.
That's a good podcast.
And I feel... I give you ideas for your podcast.
Yeah, you say, here's an idea for a podcast.
Korean fan death.
Korean fan death.
Korean fan death needs to be on... One enthusiastic clap.
Thank you.
Okay, let's do the Venn diagram.
Anybody else think Omnibus needs to cover Korean fan death?
Guess who didn't know what Korean fan death was?
This guy.
Two thumbs.
Am I doing this right?
But you know, Ken Jennings lived in Korea.
He grew up in Korea.
So he's got Korean fan death.
I watched a YouTube video of Ken the other night.
What was he doing?
He was winning a game show with the guy from Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
i think it's called uh money or no money oh money or no money money don't take the money uh who wants to have money for a brief who wants to have money who wants to have money and then there's a question you you wager whether you'll be able to answer the question from the guy at brooklyn 99 who wants to have money who wants to have money starring ken jennings well you know i've also been working on a podcast you got a fifth podcast fifth podcast what's it gonna be what's it gonna
No, it's with your mom, and it's called Roderick on the Line.
Doesn't that have to happen?
Okay, so between us, because this is never air, John's got to travel a lot, blah, blah, blah, who fucking cares.
How great would it be if we keep calling it Roderick on the Lawn while John's away?
Not Roderick on the Lawn, Roderick on the Line, and I interview his mom.
And my sister.
You know what would be great is if you interviewed my cousin Libby Roderick.
Wait, Libby?
Libby Roderick.
Libby who teaches intersectionality at the University of Alaska.
I could use that.
I'm one section.
Libby will... I have two sections and they're identical.
I'm a white dude and they're like just... Oh, it's really hard.
They rub against each other.
They should have used a different word.
That's a feeling I have.
But I feel like I could use some intersectionality.
Oh, it feels like... Because I'm rubbing sticks together and no fire's happening.
It feels like the world's tiniest violin you're doing there.
Mirrors of you.
So, I think those would be good shows.
I will make a list... My watch isn't allowed to tell me, but it's not... Oh, shut up!
Go home!
I will make a list of all the Rodericks who are still extant.
Because, you know, we're one of those families where we're a branch of the... We'll send this.
Branch.
We're a branch of the Rodericks.
Call Merlin Mann.
Call Hot Roderick.
A catapult.
Sorry, I didn't quite get that.
Which shall I use for Merlin Mann?
You got an American on yours?
The Rodericks that, my branch of the Rodericks are, oh, incoming call.
Hello?
Oh, that's one of the things that's nice about this.
They get to ask questions.
Are we at the end of the program?
Yeah, that's true.
All right.
Well, I'm going to hang up and get back to the show.
All right.
No, you hang up first.
You hang up together, okay?
Okay.
One.
Two.
Three.
Bye.
Love you.
Yeah, so if so all of the Roderick's of my line all had daughters and so there was a while there where it seemed like if if we use the normal method of
patrilineal name droppage, that there would be... That's a technical term.
Yeah.
Patrilineal name droppage, that there would be no Rodericks after a point.
Because of gender.
Right.
But then it turned out... In society.
In society.
All of the daughters of our line, none of them took anyone else's name.
So they continue to be Rodericks into the middle distance.
Huh.
And maybe it will be the daughters that continue.
No boys allowed.
No.
So anyway, for a while there, I was like, I feel kind of a responsibility to repopulate the earth.
Duh.
Just to put as many Rodericks in the space as you can.
I think you've known that for a while.
I think your repopulation mandate has weighed heavy on your shoulders for many years.
You know, I feel a lot of responsibility for the future.
Man in a bathrobe does not carry a sword unless he wants to do some fucking repopulating.
Man in a bathrobe, I know, I know.
It's cereal.
He's defending his borders, doing the best he can, la la la.
Hey!
Hey, everybody, how are you?
Clap, clap, clap, clap.
Come on, clap!
Thank you.
Fill the room with your applause.
Come on, get extroverted.
Who's ready to get extroverted?
Who wants to make a million dollars?
You should have said that this was about chicken.
I don't know if we have... You don't want to use this one to talk.
We have plenty of time.
We'll repeat your question when you yell it into the room.
If you're super shy, tell a loud person next to you to yell your question.
Who's got a question?
Yes.
Obviously not shy.
Did it change you in any way?
It did.
I did a report on it, and then she assigned me Moby Dick.
So she was not going to give me a single attaboy.
She was just like...
That book kept you quiet for four weeks and now another book was going to keep you quiet.
There's punishments to make you good and there's punishment to make you sad.
That's punishment to make you sad.
The risk was that I would not like books.
The risk was that it would turn me into I don't know what the alternative was.
But it didn't keep me off books.
It just made, and frankly, I would have rather have done that than just being in the class.
Do you remember the internet intelligence test?
Which might be before your time.
Did it test the intelligence of the internet?
Well, I'll tell you, it changed things for me.
The internet intelligence test.
Sometimes things change things for me.
In the early days of the internet, there was a thing that was probably just a simple CGI bin.
This thing called the internet intelligence test.
And you go and it says, okay, we're going to ask you questions to see how intelligent you are.
And you say, well, I'm game for that because I'm pretty intelligent.
And so you take the test.
It says, here's a question.
Are you doing lines?
Are you doing bumps?
Don't abuse my mints.
It's for children.
So the question says, here's a question, ABCD.
You say ABCD, you pick.
It gives you another question.
You say, oh, this is great.
I'm so in on this.
Now, as we know from the web, you learn how to drop people into these things.
Now, here's what they're not going to tell you.
They're not going to tell you that unless you just stop doing the test for some reason, you will literally have it forever.
You will keep taking the test for 11 years until your computer dies because it didn't get a firmware upgrade.
There's no end to the internet intelligence test because the point of the internet intelligence test is to see how long you'll take the test.
That had an impact on me.
That's smart.
How long did you take the test?
Too long the first time.
The second time I did better.
But it makes me think a lot.
Is somebody trying to pull a fast one on me here?
We're always conscious of being gaslit.
Oh, sister.
Yeah.
You don't want to get gaslit.
I hate being gaslit.
I know.
I know.
Unfortunately, we're friends and I'm a gaslighter.
Why is this relevant?
It's relevant because of the books.
And I sometimes feel like, you know, okay, like, for example, in the Mideast, you're supposed to say something three times before somebody accepts a gift, right?
Namaste, namaste, namaste.
Yeah, that kind of thing.
Same idea.
But there's various kinds of, like, rituals and mores that involve this kind of repetition.
Like, are you
Are you sure you want iced tea?
You gotta keep asking and that kind of stuff.
I think a lot of that goes on.
I wonder, could this be some kind of a Mr. Miyagi type situation where you say, I reject the book.
It was the education ever at a point where you're supposed to say to the teacher, are you following me on this?
They're assigning you the books, but what if you just keep reading the books like a fucking cock?
Are you ever supposed to push back and say, no, I'm done with the books?
And they say, congratulations, Domini, Domini.
You just passed the internet book intelligence test.
You refused my book and solved my riddle.
What I stopped doing was the book report.
I kept reading the book.
I stopped doing the book report.
You cut half of the baby in half.
Yeah, right.
But if you never do the book report, how do they know whether you read the book or not?
There's nothing to give you an F for.
There's no line in that spreadsheet.
What are you going to do?
I didn't do it.
You can't give me an F. I didn't do it.
Why did I never do that before?
That's so good.
Yeah, they give you the complete and affect your credit.
Anybody ask anything they want to ask about?
Yes.
Oh, I don't know.
I'm just, James Harden plays basketball, and he's very, very good.
I don't know what any of those words mean, but James Harden is very, no, he's very, listen, you guys, he's very, very good.
Were you brought to this event by someone else?
Yeah.
Let's see, anyone else?
I should take the jersey off.
Yes, you there.
So I was going to be in Whistler.
And it turned out I have a friend in Anchorage who at a young age got into some questionable banking.
Is this the crab guy?
No, different guy.
He now owns a house in Aruba.
He reached out to my sister, now he was my friend, but he reached out to my sister and said, would you make a video of my house in Aruba so I can put it on Aruba B&B.
Aruby and B. My sister said, I'll come make a video
He... Specifically... He chose you... He's in Alaska?
He's in Alaska.
He chose you out of everywhere in the world to go to a... He chose Susan.
Chose Susan to make a video.
Susan said, I'll go to Aruba to make the video if my brother comes.
He's my friend.
But he said, why would I bring your brother?
Susan said, I won't do it without John.
So he was like, all right, I'll bring you to Aruba.
So I was going to be in Whistler, and I realized I could go from the Couve, which is what we call Vancouver, to the Arubes.
From the Couve to the Arubes.
And I was like, this really appeals to me.
But then at the end of the Aruba trip, I realized that was the first day of the Jonathan Colton cruise.
Now, I wasn't going to go on the cruise this year.
But when I saw that I was going from the Couve to the Arub, I realized I could go from the Couve to the Arub to the cruise.
And so I called Jonathan Colton and I said, I know it's only like three weeks until a cruise, but can I come on the cruise?
You can just put me anywhere.
I won't do anything.
It's too late for me to do a show or anything, but you can just put me in steerage or something.
I mean, no.
Are you sure all this happened?
Put me in a deluxe suite is what I said.
If I look at your phone, would I see documentation that all these things have actually happened?
No, I don't want to look at your phone.
So then I realized Whistler to the Couve, to the Arub, to the Cruz, that's going to be a problem for me doing my five podcasts a week.
So I sent an email to all of my co-hosts, and I said, I'm not going to be around for a few weeks.
You guys work it out.
It's reminiscent of the great Japanese film Battle Royale.
So me and Dan and Benjamin and Ken Jennings can fight over time.
So anyway, that's... You guys let me know.
You're like, yeah, you're like Mitch McConnell.
Just come back when you guys figure it out.
What I haven't quite figured out is how I'm going to apportion up who all is paying for my plane tickets.
Oh.
So I'm going to have to figure out how much... Because there's a limit, right?
At a certain point, somebody's going to be like, that's a really big plane ticket.
Well, if they know each other, they're going to want to check in.
You ask everybody for full freight, it's going to catch up with you.
What I need is $1,800 from everybody.
Okay.
So anyway, it's not actually 100% booked, but it's booked up here.
Anyone else?
Yes, Gabriel.
Update on that.
Oh, Gabriel is asking John Roderick for an update on his diploma.
John received a diploma-shaped envelope from the college that he went to.
And if memory serves, you decided not to open it.
I didn't open it for a year.
Didn't open it for a year.
You knew it had a return address on it that you accidentally put on Instagram.
But all the information was there.
It was a diploma-shaped envelope from a school.
So after a year, everybody, and I mentioned it, so people were like, well, just put the unopened envelope in a frame.
People were mad.
Yeah, but I wasn't going to do that.
It was on the table next to the kitchen.
Then it was on the bar of the kitchen.
It moved around.
After a while, I felt like there were a lot of people who were like, burn it.
I was like, you do not know me at all.
But then one night, I got really frustrated with myself, and I had purchased years before a frame, a diploma-shaped frame, in the event that I ever got a diploma.
You're both characters in Gift of the Magi.
Yeah, that's right.
So I went and I got the frame.
I brought it down.
I put the frame next to the envelope.
Both things had been waiting to meet for many years.
I'd kept them apart.
I brought them together.
And I was all by myself.
There was no ceremony.
I didn't have people over.
All the things that I had planned on doing.
Have a barbecue.
Graduation day.
Like you do.
It was just me, 4 o'clock in the morning.
Come to my envelope opening party.
Bring a dip or something you can share.
Come to my party.
I'm going to open this envelope.
Open the envelope.
What the fuck?
It's come.
But it was like 4 a.m.
It was like either I'm going to cut my hair right now or I'm going to open this envelope.
Was it your certificate for officially being a goth?
So I opened the employer and I pulled the piece of paper out and it was face down.
So I put it on the bar and then I walked away.
And so for about a month and a half, the paper sat on the bar face down.
A breeze could have flipped it?
It was just sitting there.
I knew it was there.
Anybody could have put their coffee down on it, it would have been ruined.
But it just sat there.
And then again, in the middle of the night, I was like, this is so fucking, this is so frustrating.
I could use a trick.
So I opened up the frame.
Shh.
I put the diploma in the frame, face down, sealed it up, and then put the framed piece of paper on the dining room table face down.
And it sat there for a long time until one day I was sitting talking to my mom about Ohio in the 50s.
Roots.
Root talk.
And she said, what's this?
And picked it up and looked at it.
And I said, you tell me.
And she said, it looks like you graduated from college.
And I said, can you be certain?
And I asked her some questions about it.
And she said, do you want me to turn it around so you can see it?
And I said, not yet.
What's the rush?
I'm not done asking questions.
I asked her some questions.
She described it fairly accurately and at a certain point I realized it was a college diploma.
I had graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in the... Thank you.
A degree in the comparative history of ideas and... That's actually their seal.
It doesn't have words.
It's just an animated gif of someone going like this.
Six is one is half dozen other is.
It's like one of those old neon signs outside of a pawn shop.
It's like one little dollar sign goes up and down.
It's not comparative ideas.
It's not the history of ideas.
It's the comparative history of ideas.
That's too many things.
It's a lot of things.
What are the letters of your degree?
Well, so they call it chid.
But that's like ID for ideas.
Oh, because of that name.
Yeah.
Okay.
All right.
What is your, is it a Bachelor of Arts?
It should be Choi, right?
Choi.
Choi.
Choi.
Choi.
Of ideas.
What is it?
Oh, it's a Bachelor of Arts.
Bachelor of Arts.
A Bachelor of Arts, you guys.
Yeah, Bachelor of Arts.
I could have studied a lot of things.
Sociology, whatever.
Sure.
Communications.
You're interested in the history of ideas, but in order to really penetrate that and interrogate it, you need to have to compare the history of ideas.
Yeah, you compare the ideas, you compare the history, you compare the history of ideas.
It's the comparative history of ideas.
So you don't just compare the ideas.
You compare the history of ideas.
But you have to have the history before you can compare it.
You need more than one.
You start at the start.
You can't have one idea.
It's just like this show.
You start with somebody who's made a history of ideas and then other people who've done that and then you compare them.
What's in the history of ideas is in the history of ideas.
Anyway, so I finally looked at it.
I looked at it.
It was beautiful, this thing.
And then I said to my mom, the same question I asked you, Merlin, which was, what do you do with this now?
Well, what do you do with the diploma?
what do you do?
And I said to her, do you hang this up?
If it was a graduation, you could hang it on the wall like in Allentown.
That's right.
But what did that do?
Did it stop the disintegration?
It never really helped it at all.
I think not.
So she said, no, you don't hang it up anywhere.
And I said, where's your diploma?
She said, in a drawer somewhere.
And this was what I had feared all these years.
That it was...
It wasn't anything.
This attaboy here is much more... This is maybe even more meaningful.
The kerning's probably better, too.
This looks pretty good.
No, what ended up happening was that it went in its frame back on the dining room table where it remains today.
Where it becomes a riddle for all of your guests.
You can do this bit with everybody.
It'd be fun.
You can put your coffee down on it because it's under glass.
Hey, everybody.
Thanks for coming out tonight.
Woo!