Ep. 349: "The Beefs"
Hello.
Hi, John.
Oh, hi, Merlin.
Good morning.
How's it going?
Merlin, man.
John.
Things are okay.
You know, my startup disk is full.
Your startup disk is full.
You know, we could do a whole tech support episode.
Oh, yeah?
Well, I mean, I'm not sure how much the listeners would enjoy that.
But... Well, it's in the show.
It's in the show.
I don't have to tell you.
Your startup disc is full.
Yeah, you got too much stuff here.
You got a startup disc that's full.
Change for a dollar, huh?
Change for a dollar.
Oh!
Well, you could start by getting rid of something big.
Oh, okay.
All right.
Side mess, corner mess.
Things you don't see.
Oh, I want to get rid of things I don't see.
Try this.
When you download things, does it go to your downloads folder, desktop?
Where do things go?
I mean, if I remember to put it on the desktop, I'll tell it to do that.
But I often just tell it to, or I don't tell it to do something, and then it goes into the downloads folder.
All right.
Try this.
Go to Command-D or open your desktop.
Open my desktop.
So go to the Finder and hit Command-D.
Go to Finder and hit Command-D.
Okay.
It said it went to hide finder.
Okay.
You just want to open your desktop full.
Oh, God, this is terrible.
When you say open your desktop, do you just mean go to your desktop?
Or is there some kind of opening?
When you're on your desktop.
Okay, I'm on it now.
This is going to be to, we're going to do this episode in remembrance of John Syracuse's sanity.
So when you hit command, oh, God, what is it?
Command shift N. No, that's not it.
Command N. When you hit command N, it creates a new folder.
Command N. What folder are we looking at here?
Okay, command N, we're looking at, well, it created a new email.
Oh.
Okay.
All right, let me try it again.
Command, end.
No, no, no, no.
Oh, no, no, no.
It opened all my files.
All my files.
Okay.
Which is a hard drive.
Let's do this.
Do you see Finder up in the upper left?
Yes.
Okay, hit go.
Menu.
Go menu.
Pull down to desktop.
Go down to desktop.
Open desktop.
Oh, I see.
Desktop is also a file in addition to being the top of the desk.
This is a good point.
Desktop is the thing you see on the thing, but it is also a folder.
Hit command J. Oh, on desktop.
Command J. Okay.
You see a little poppy-uppy?
Yes.
Do you see a tick?
Yes.
That's the one.
Do you see a tick box for size?
Tick box.
I see arrange by and sort by text.
I see text size.
Further down, further down.
Tick box, tick box.
Show icon, show icon preview, show preview column.
Hmm.
Oh, oh, oh, oh.
So commit, hit command two.
Command two.
Two.
Oh.
Now it's a list?
Now there's a list of things.
Now you see a tick box for size?
Oh, I do, yes.
Is that ticked?
It is ticked.
Okay.
Now, do you see a column in your file list for size?
column in my file list.
You're looking at the lime and the coconut here.
Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.
Where would the file list be?
Do you see name, date modified, things like that?
Let's see, date modified, yeah.
Okay, do you see size?
Well, on the one that you just had me tick?
No, no.
Or that I was already ticked?
No, no, on the window boy.
Up at the top, we're going to want to sort by size.
Oh, sort by size, sort by size.
Do you need to... It's not up on the finder bar.
Okay, go to... Where is it?
See, I do all this with key commands.
Right.
And so how to sort by, go to sort, view, view menu.
View menu.
Sort by.
Sort by.
Size.
I see a range by.
So under view, you see like as icons, as lists, et cetera.
And then below that, do you see a sort by?
No, I see a range by, and I can arrange by size.
Oh.
Oh.
I see clean up, clean up by, both of which are ghosted.
Oh, you're in the finder still, right?
I'm in the finder.
You go to view, and you don't get us.
Jeez, how do I turn this on?
No, I go to view...
I got show tab bar, show path bar.
So above that, you don't see sort by and then a little arrow.
No, no.
Clean up by, arrange by.
Arrange by is the only option.
It's like when you're looking at the folder for your desktop window underneath the toolbar, do you see the names of the columns, like name and stuff?
Oh.
under the desktop of the... Hmm?
Let's see.
Let's see.
View options.
I can't preview.
I'm so sorry, John.
No, no, no.
John Syracuse.
I'm so sorry, John Syracuse.
What we want to do is be able to sort by size.
Yeah, we want to sort by size.
Oh, wait, wait.
Now, wait a minute.
Hold on now.
Up on the desktop thing where you originally had me... Yes, yes.
uh there is a arrange by sort by okay okay and i could go down the little drop down menu of that and go down to size try that size size okay now the things in the desktop folder are arranged differently okay do you see the number big uh is the biggest item at the top
It seems like the largest item is 1.66 gigabytes.
1.66 gigabytes.
That's a start.
Now, is there anything, you're going to look for some high numbers.
Do you see anything that's a high number and you go, ah, what is that?
Or ideally, I know I don't need that.
No.
These things are all things that I know and that I need.
All right.
We're going to cut the baby in half.
Okay.
All right.
Let's do it.
Omni disk sweeper.
Omni disk sweeper.
Let's see.
Go to your internet search engine.
Internet search engine.
Mm-hmm.
Okay, I'm using, well, should I not reveal what I use as an internet search engine?
It'd be better if you don't.
Okay, all right.
And search the internet for one word, Omni Disk Sweeper.
It's not one word, but all right.
I don't make the rules, John.
Sweeper.
And that should take you to, you can see a link for a website.
It's omnigroup.com.
I see omnidiscsweeper, omnigroup.com.
I'm going to go there.
All right, Omni Disk Sweeper.
Quickly find large unwanted files and sweep them into the trash.
Yeah, that's what I want to do.
And I believe this to be a, this is a company that I trust and have worked with, and I believe this to be a free application that you can download.
And what this will do is look at your hard drive, and it will show you graphically, very graphically,
nsfw don't go in there don't go any more than one level deep don't go in there stay out of my index um and uh which you so you have to do it now because it's been eight minutes of using a computer
But you can get there are other apps like that, including PayApps.
There's one called DaisyDisk that's very good.
I recommend you try OmniDisk Sweeper.
And what that'll do is identify large files.
Now, I can't promise you that there are things you can, will, or want to get rid of, but it's a start.
Right, right.
I see.
Now, what this has revealed to me.
Yes.
Wait, did you get it?
No, not yet.
Oh, geez.
Because what Omnidisc Sweeper first asks is, what are you running?
What are you running?
What OS are you running?
Go to the Apple upper left.
Oh, no, I know how to do that.
And I have discovered the version that I'm running is less than the top version.
Is it less than the bottom version?
No.
It's in the middle.
Okay, so you could pick your version based upon it.
But I'm wondering now, it's too bad that John Heracusa isn't here to yell at us.
It's always too bad.
Uh, because I don't know whether, see my, should I say when my computer was from?
No, you're going to go to your Apple and hit about this Mac.
Oh no, I have that.
But should I say it?
Should I say it out loud?
No.
Oh God, no.
Never say what your computer is.
Don't even say you have a computer.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
We've already probably said too much.
But if I had a computer that wasn't from now, which is the kind of clue I've given now.
All right.
It's not from now.
All right.
but I'm not running the highest of the high, should I upgrade?
No, come on.
Should I upgrade to the newest thing, the highest of the... Before you do this, Jiminy Christmas, no, you don't have room to download the OS update.
Oh, I see what you're saying.
You know what I'm saying?
You're locking the baby in the keys.
Sure, I need to do the sweeper before I can do the...
thing, but I'm always, when it says you could upgrade your thing, I go, I don't know.
I've been screwed before.
Well, this is, I'll tell you what I mostly do, and this is not advice, it is an observation or a fact, is I usually wait a year.
I get the updates.
I get the updates to the OS I have installed, but my main machine that I'm typing on right now, I usually wait a year.
My main machine.
My main machine.
Boom, boom, boom, boom.
Uh, well, but wait a minute, but what if I've waited a year?
I've waited several years because I'm, because not several.
Let's not, let's not exaggerate.
No, don't say that, no.
We can't change the past, John, but we can massage the future.
All right, here's another question.
When I woke up this morning... Do-do-do-do-do.
Mmm.
Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.
The nurses all gathered round.
There's a lot of pretty women.
I woke up to an 11-year-old girl in my house that I didn't know was going to be in my house.
Oh, so not the regular one?
No, it's the backup girl.
They only wake me for the important meetings or the visits from other 11-year-olds.
And she goes, I hear, hi!
And I go, oh, hey!
What's up?
You're a... What's...
it's you hey i saw i know you you're one of her dear friends i what do you what's happening she's just real casually taking out her earphones and saying you know good morning and i'm like oh yeah i'm under a blanket so keep moving and keep moving kid just really stay in school drink your milk i got a text this morning they don't tell me things they just don't they just don't tell me things you're not you're not on the list you're not on the distribution list
I got a text this morning before I was even out of bed from my daughter's mother who said, there's a strange bike at the end of my driveway.
Oh, that's how they get you.
Wait, do you have some clue as to what the story of the strange bike is?
Oh, my automatic thought is Ocean's Eleven.
There's some kind of a heist that's about to happen.
Wait a minute.
We've got a more informed source here.
Go ahead.
So the boy that lives down the street parked his bike here in order to go to Jacob and Dylan's house?
Okay.
And then never came back for his bike?
No, he did.
Because he just left.
I saw him.
Just now?
Yeah.
Oh, well, the bike question is solved.
Thank you.
See, nobody tells me when there's going to be surprise children.
Tell you what.
Well, apparently now this house is some kind of way station on the way to Jacob and Dylan's.
Between Jared's and Kayla's and Jacob and Dylan's.
Do you have any Aiden's?
There are no Aedans.
You don't have any Aedans?
We have so many Aedans.
No Aedans, no Draydans, no K. I think we've actually, we've, there's a, they call it, John Syracuse would call it namespace pollution, where you get Aedans.
And so what do you think?
You think you're smart.
You start saying Aedan L, Aedan K. But the problem is there's so, there's so many Aedans that even the surname initials are running out.
There are already two Aedan Ls?
Yeah, you have to start going with Big A and Little Aedan.
Big Aedan L?
Big Aedan K.
That's a Jerry Lewis name.
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Aiden now!
Hi, Ivan.
Parking the bike with the Jacob Bob Dylan.
Let me check the source here.
Do you know an Aiden...
You do?
How many Aedans do you know?
She says she knows two Aedans.
I know a Daenerys.
No, you do not.
A living one?
Yeah.
Oh, well, yeah.
I mean, yeah, yeah.
That's the thing.
Is it younger than my kid?
It was a kid in her class's little sister.
And that's before I was super into the show.
I did know the name from the TV program.
Right.
But, you know, you've got to be careful what you name a kid.
I still think it's a great character.
But, you know, that's got some baggage now.
Right.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah, sure.
Well, you know.
Little Ramsey Bolton.
You're halfway through the show.
Little Ramsey B. Sure, don't name your kid Ramsey B. He loves sausage.
Yeah.
So I've got another issue here.
See, I woke up... I feel like we haven't really resolved anything yet, John.
Is that okay?
No, but you're going to resolve this, I hope.
Okay.
Which is that my mail program...
You know, on the Macintosh devices, it has a little stamp of a raptor of some kind, right?
That's its logo.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's a bird of prey.
A little tile?
I think.
I don't use that app, but I'm familiar with it.
Oh, I see.
You use a separate... Oh, I see.
Yeah, yeah.
It's still on the stamp.
Look at that.
You use an outboard mail server.
It says, hello from California.
Yeah.
Well, so this one that I have, I also, I use other mail programs and I port them through.
So they all arrive here.
You port them through, okay.
At the stamp.
I port them.
Okay.
I used a pop.
An iPop.
Oh, using iPop?
Is that a fully mapped iPop?
Yeah, it's an iMap iPop.
Okay.
Anyway, so I had two problems.
One, I talked to you about, I have an email account that's not, that emails aren't going through.
Yeah, we're working on that.
You speculated it was a spam was an issue.
I just, yeah, it says that, well, there's something, something, something got a little silly and we don't know what it is.
And it's hard to keep eyes on everything all the time.
No, you only get two eyes.
You got two eyes, that's right.
Two eyes, one mouth.
Full heart can't lose.
What had happened was I went to the retailer that you go to that sends things to your house, like, for instance, toilet paper or fizzy water.
but all but they and this is from my phone device they said oh you need to put your password in now i don't i shouldn't have to but but now i do and so i i tried every email address i ever had and i tried every password i ever had going back all the way to you know you know in your head
a two lowercase b i one one you're so leet seven four i changed it i added a dash and uh and none of them worked none of them worked and then the amazon oh i i said i said their name
Oh, yeah, it's on fire, I heard.
Yeah, so what they said was, oh, but nobody knows about it.
It's on fire, but there's no media coverage of it.
Yeah, why are we talking about this?
I don't know.
I didn't know about it.
Yeah, put down the fucking chicken sandwich and save everything.
Wait, look, save everything.
Oh, yeah, this is happening.
This is happening.
So anyway, they said, well, why don't we send your recovery password to
to your email address.
Okay, but you got to know the email address.
And so I was like, all right, I guess this is the email address I used to sign up.
It's a living.
And they were like, okay, we sent you a thing, and it didn't come.
Ah, no, ah, no, I hate that.
You've locked the keys and the baby in the keys.
Oh, no.
I hate that.
The keys are in the baby.
The baby is in the keys.
The keys are in a box.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, just because she ate the fly.
So anyway, that's out there.
But here's the other thing that happened this morning.
There's a little number four indicating a little red number four in the corner, the upper right corner of the bird stamp that's indicating that I have four unread messages.
So now when I go over to the mailboxes, my inbox has no unread messages.
But a subset of the inbox is not a file.
It's what looks like a box that would sit on the desk.
of an old office, like an inbox, for instance, and then there would be a second one that was out.
And people would come and they'd put a bunch of envelopes in the inn or a bunch of documents, and you'd have to get through them in the course of a day.
On your desktop, yeah.
Yeah, and then the papers in the inbox would go down in a sort of stop-motion fashion.
Yeah, sometimes they'd be stacked.
Yeah, and then they would go up in the outbox, and that's how you would know that you were doing your job.
Yeah, right, right, right.
You want to see some movement, yeah.
It's like my daughter's T-shirts.
Yeah, your daughter's T-shirts, they go down.
It's basically a 3D infographic.
Except in this case, it's not even 2D.
It's a computer.
Right.
But you know a box when you see a box.
Where's my mail?
Where's my mail?
Now, a young person might look at that and think it's an envelope.
They wouldn't see it as a three-dimensional box.
They wouldn't see it as a two-dimensional or one-dimensional envelope.
All right, I'll open the app so I can see.
But it's really a box.
I hate this app so much.
Yeah.
Here it comes.
Oh, there they are.
Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.
You know what it is?
You know why?
I know why, because it's foreshortened.
That's a foreshortened box.
That's exactly what it is.
It's foreshortening.
What might make you think it's an envelope.
It looks like a bad envelope.
Yeah, but it's really a graphical box.
Yeah, it's true.
So underneath my inbox, there's another couple of boxes for other things.
For different accounts, yeah.
Yeah, one of them is iCloud, which I've never used once in my life.
Mm-hmm.
But I don't have an option there.
iCloud follows me everywhere.
And then the other is the Googs.
Your primary Goog?
Now, the Goog.
Primary Goog.
The Goog box says I have four unread messages.
Okay.
Now, the inbox doesn't.
Just the Goog subset of the inbox.
Right.
I'm with you.
I'm with you.
It's getting granular.
So I scroll down through the Goog box.
I don't see four unread messages.
I'm all the way back now to July.
There's no unread messages in here.
Sorting by unread?
Oh, no.
How do I do that?
Clicky lozenge.
So you're clicked on the Goog.
Got the Goog.
Okay, here's the lodge.
You see lozenge says sort by?
No.
Where would that be?
Where would the lozenge of sort by be?
So you got the toolbar, you got the bookmarks, and then you got the sort by above the top most message.
Oh, sort by date.
Oh, I never saw that before.
Try sort by unread.
Sort by unread.
All right, let's see what these are.
All right, so now I have five.
Oh, boy.
And one of them arrived at the top, and it is a marketing mail from Propellerhead Software asking me if I want to make music the way that I want.
How are you going to respond?
Well, I'm going to delete it.
I assume you do want to do that.
It says, big changes are coming to the Reason Rack.
Take your favorite instrument.
Was that Alexa or was that Siri?
We kicked off the thing somehow.
I don't know what I said.
I don't know what I said, but I started talking.
Anyway, Reason, Propellerhead, at the end of this marketing email,
It actually says, wait for it, be our friend, exclamation point.
Be our friend.
Be our friend.
Be our friend.
It's not already your friend.
It wants to help you make music your way, but now you need to increase your level of engagement?
Yeah, it wants me to be our friend.
Interviews, tutorials, news, special offers.
Stay updated using your channel of choice.
So which would you think I would prefer to get Propellerhead information from?
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or YouTube?
Oh, okay.
I'm going to say, if you chose to do this, I'm going to say you probably want, is email one of the options?
No.
Because you're already doing that.
Yeah.
We're trying to increase the engagement here.
Is that right?
That's right.
Okay.
That's right.
They want me to be their friend.
See, email is just what you send for business.
Was Instagram one of the options?
Instagram is one of the options.
Yeah, you like Instagram.
I do.
I use it.
Although, I'm in that situation that John Hodgman used to be with Tumblr, where he preferred to interact with the world through Tumblr.
Yeah, no, you got a lot of Instagram on Main.
That's right.
Well, you've been asking about, I think, NASA a lot lately, but your Instagram gets ported through to your... It gets ported.
It gets ported through your main feed, yeah.
Gets ported into the feed.
And I don't know how many people on Twitter ever follow the links to what I'm talking about on Instagram.
It would be nice if Twitter... I think Twitter deliberately does not show the image, which is a little frustrating.
It's super frustrating.
Because what you get is the first little... You get the first little bit of what somebody typed.
on the instantaneous gramophone, but you don't get to see the image unless you click.
And if you're like me and you don't have an Instagram account, it's a little frustrating.
It's super frustrating.
And this was, I used to yell at Hodgman about this on his Tumblr.
Because he wanted Tumblr to be his main.
And so he reported through to his main feed.
I don't want to deal with your Tumblr.
Um, so if you want to be on Tumblr, just go be on Tumblr for people that are on Tumblr.
And he would say, well, I only have like 5,000 followers on Tumblr.
Yeah.
But I have like a million followers over on Twitter.
And I'm like, so be on Twitter and not on Tumblr.
And he's like, but I like Tumblr better.
You know, we would, we used to just come up with reasons to yell at each other.
But now I feel you keep person up all night for sure.
But now I feel the same problem because I'm over on Instagram.
I like it over there.
I want to post some pictures.
I don't even remember how to post a picture on Twitter.
Oh,
Uh, but, uh, but I feel like people on Twitter are like, God, this guy with his Instagram, like, leave it, leave it.
Anyway, so I'm going to delete this propeller head, but all that did sorting by size was that it, or sorting by unread was it just brought a new one to the fore, but now it's sorted by unread.
And with descending, sort of descending by unread, and I still have four unreads within the Goog, and now I got no eyes on them.
I can't find them.
What happens if I do that?
No.
Get mail.
Oh, I said I sorted by ascending, and look, I have an email in here from 2004.
Oh my God.
The first email is from the Gmail team.
It says John Simpson, Morgan Roderick.
You had your inbox has an email from 2004 in it.
It says it's the original welcome to Gmail email.
Yeah.
Welcome to Gmail.
And then my second email is from you.
Oh, my God.
First of all, what did I say?
What did I say?
Well, it says you get these, and then there's a bunch of photos of the Long Winters taken in 2004 that were, I think, pretty clearly taken with a film camera and then scanned in.
Is it back when I did the curtain flash, the rock and roll filter?
I'll bet it is.
These came from an email address called Rain in Athens.com.
hmm at aol.com hmm so this is someone that you that sent them to you probably or that you found rain in athens at aol so everybody don't send rain in athens at aol any spams in athens all right in athens so that's somebody that you knew must have been these must have been taken in athens it is it is um i'm wearing my fiverr t-shirt
Fiverr?
Fiverr the band.
I'm wearing my Fiverr the band t-shirt.
I'm playing my Rickenbacker.
Oh, in the photograph.
In the photographs.
I have long sideburns and no other facial hair.
And then Eric Corson is at one point also playing the Rickenbacker, which means that we are playing Blue Diamonds.
That was the only time he ever played that.
What is it?
360?
What is it?
The classic one?
The pretty one?
Yeah.
I love that.
That's so good.
Yes, I miss it.
Rain in Athens.
Rain in Athens.
Rain in Athens.
Long winter's tour dates.
That's the first.
5, 2004.
Oh, there.
Okay.
So what are all, what is this from?
Is this from the forum?
What is happening?
Notify list.
I don't even remember.
We used to have too much internet, you know, don't you think?
I mean, maybe we have too much internet now in a different way.
I wonder what my oldest email is.
Can I even find out?
Oh, here's Eric Corson is my third oldest email.
Okay.
He says, I was wondering if you could send me the Christmas song if it's possible.
Okay.
Also, I talked to Babs and she said we have plenty of time on the Posies song.
Okay.
What's the Posies song?
What song is that?
Babs used to do these benefit shows where she'd have every band in town come play one song at an event.
And I think we were doing some Posies song.
And then the bottom of Eric's email, he says, P.S.
Merlin says hi.
Hey, how's it going?
Eric didn't capitalize any letters in his email.
Yeah, he's a youth.
I got a lot going on right here.
I can't find anything.
I'm going to close this app.
Oh, now my fourth email is from someone named Eric.
Yeah.
Different Eric.
It says, hey, I said I'd email you some stuff.
So here it is.
Okay.
It's just a couple of snippets, but it's pretty fun.
You should be able to play them on the iTunes.
Oh, wait.
Can you hear that?
No.
Oh, well, never mind then.
Are we going to try and fix your disk?
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay, yes.
Anyway, so here I am.
So you found the number that corresponds.
You looked on your Apple, and you know what your number is, and you can know what version to get.
Oh, you're talking about... Now, are we back to talking about cleaning up the disk, full disk?
Well, here's the thing.
I'm worried.
I want to figure out what these four Goog messages are.
Okay.
Should we focus on that?
Well, yeah, for now.
I feel like I can't download the sweeper until after...
The show is over because I think it would.
Well, people are always yelling at me about the degrading sound quality, and I don't want to have any kind of thing fill up the tube.
Okay.
So that my voice doesn't have its basso profundo that one in 10,000 listeners feels like.
The squeeze feels like the Skype squeeze takes all the cello-like resonance out of my voice, and they just can't bear it.
The cello is very close to the human voice, and so is yours.
Isn't that true?
My voice is very close to the human voice.
If you go to the Googs in your web browser, do you see the messages?
I knew this was going to be the next thing you did.
Well, I'm trying.
Go to the Goog in your web browser, I knew you would say.
Okay, here we go.
Just try to isolate things.
Well, all right.
So how would I find them here?
Yeah, I used to write really long emails.
I don't do that anymore.
Back then, I would write a very long email.
Yeah.
Yeah, that was a thing.
That was a thing.
where there would be a greeting and a how are you and da-da-da-da.
And then there'd be somewhere in there, there'd be like a little nugget of something new and you sign it off and then you have a signature at the bottom about like where your, you know, what your AOL handle was and stuff.
As we did.
I just had to snap my fingers at my little girl who was looking over my shoulder as I was opening things.
Is she shoulder surfing, John?
Is she trying to get your password?
She was shoulder surfing.
And that's like, hey, get out of here.
Oh, I do that all the time.
My daughter will be...
holding an ios device that is her ios device she'll ask me to try to find something on my on my ios device i'll find it and then she'll take my ios device and i'll say look why don't you look it up on your ios device or i can send it to her through the cloud yeah you don't need it now now quit don't look at things to stop so you got to stay out of my indexes okay now here speaking of staying out of your indexes so i'm now on the goog on the line and
and there are no unread messages here, I went and found the way to say mark all as read, which I did.
There are no unread messages.
There's a good keyboard command for that.
Asterisk A, capital IE.
If you hit asterisk A, capital IE, it selects all the messages in the current view, marks them as read, and archives them.
You probably don't have keyboard commands turned on.
Asterix is Shift 8.
Uh, yeah.
So shift 8.
So just see what happens.
If you hit asterisk A, do they all get selected?
I think you don't have keyboard commands on, I'm guessing.
I have to push shift just to get to asterisk, right?
That's okay.
It'll count that.
Okay, shift asterisk A. No, nothing happens.
Yeah, I think you don't have them turned on.
Yeah, thank God.
So, you know, the Goog's on the web.
You're good to go.
Everything looks red.
I think something, I think you might have a jam up.
A little bit of a jam up.
In the Raptor app.
I think in the Eagle Stamp.
You got a jam up in there somewhere.
Maybe you need to flush the cash.
Well, so right now, down here at the bottom of my Goog online, I have just one thing I've never seen before, which it's in a different category of thing.
Mm-hmm.
And it says Debbie Jane, and Debbie is spelled D-E-B-Y, Debbie Jane.
Mm-hmm.
is inviting you to a hangout okay is it in like a funny font uh well it's uh i mean that does have to be humorous but is it an unusual odd font well it's this isn't this isn't within the uh this isn't an email this is within the sidebar of the gmail oh and when i oh i bet i know i bet you got the thing turned on
When I hover over it, it says the email address is not Debbie Jane at all.
It's onitemi123 at gmail.com, onitemi.
And then it's an invite to a hangout, and it says, hello, how are you doing?
And doing is capitalized, and then two question marks.
Hello, how are you doing?
I think you have a thing turned on.
Who is Debbie Jane?
I don't want to.
I have no interest.
I thought Google Hangouts were gone.
Well, you might be getting a thing where it gives you another little column over on the right with some nonsense in it.
Now it's asking me, do I want to report or block Debbie Jane?
Yeah.
How do you feel?
How do you feel about that?
I feel like blocking Debbie Jane.
Fuck Debbie Jane.
Does it have a date on it?
Well, it just happened like 10 hours ago, it says.
Okay, and you don't know her at all, D-E-B-Y, you don't know her?
No, no.
Okay, why are you blocking her?
Oh, no, no, no.
I want to report her.
Oh, you want to report her.
You're going to call the cops on D bar.
What the heck are you doing in my thing?
How did you even get over there?
How did you get this number?
Exactly.
Like, what are you doing in my bar?
There's no other people's there.
Right, right.
Okay, report.
I think there's a way to turn that off.
I hope.
Let's go to settings.
So I deleted Debbie Jane, and the next thing that pops up in that space is a video call I was on in 2017.
So I don't know what that space is, but I want it to stop.
Yeah.
See, we're facing something that I feel like we computer people run into, as you say.
Computer people run into a lot, which is it's a funny situation where you've got your computer box set up a certain way,
And you don't know how much it differs from other people, let alone normal.
You don't know how it got there and you're not sure how to change it.
I mean, I know how to change things, but it would be like trying to explain to somebody where something in your house is and then be expected to give a reason for why you put it there.
You know what I mean?
It's difficult.
So we've got different operating systems, presumably.
We've got different versions, and we've got different configurations going on.
It's a bit of a soup, if we're honest.
Here's something that I just discovered that's not any good.
Somehow I flipped some stuff around.
And now I'm looking at emails from 2005.
I don't know why.
I don't know how I got here.
I didn't scroll or anything.
There's actually a mail from you, Merlin Mann, and your question is... I'm sorry I sent you so much mail, John.
I feel kind of bad about this.
This is actually a short email from you.
It says, the title is, mail okay?
And then the text is, you getting all your mail okay?
Okay.
So this is an ongoing problem.
So I locked another set of keys in a baby.
But then there's an email from my dad that's forwarded from my dad.
This is 2005.
And it's one of these things where old people are sending memes back and forth to one another.
Don Seeley sent out some mail to Judy Schumann and Marianne Ross and Casey Johnson and Dana McRae and Paul Poliak and Lorraine Van Horstig.
Yeah.
And it is that wonderful picture of Microsoft in its very earliest days where everyone's wearing weird shaded glasses frames and all the boys have long hair and beards, except for Bill, what's his name?
Yep.
And it says, Microsoft Corporation 1978, would you have invested, lol?
Oh, under the fact that they look kind of unusual.
Yeah.
This is pre-Lol.
Lol, I don't think exists yet.
It just says, would you have invested?
And my father replied to this, including me, linking me.
And he says, the tallest one is the spitting image of my son, John, Love Dave.
So if you go and find the Microsoft Corporation, would you have invested 1978 picture?
You've got Bill Gates in the bottom left.
You've got Paul Allen in the bottom right.
And then a large number of hippies that I'm sure computer people know who they are.
The tallest one who looks like the sheriff from Stranger Things and does not look anything like me.
He actually looks like Jeff Lynn from ELO if Jeff Lynn like worked out.
Oh, like a Buff Lynn.
He's a Buff Lynn.
He doesn't look at all like me, but he's got like very curly hair.
But my dad is like, he's the spitting image of my son, John.
That's sweet that you have that.
Oh, yeah.
I'm just so glad.
There's some pretty neat stuff you can do with searching in Google.
Twitter has some of this too, but Gmail's really good at this, where you can go in and say, for example, I just did a search for before colon 2002-12-01 just to try and find the oldest emails I've got.
July 18th, 2002 was my first Google email.
Oh, no kidding.
You're an early adopter.
You ready for this?
It's a receipt for something I bought from Omnigroup.
What is Omnigroup and what could you have bought from Omnigroup?
I bought a copy of Omni Outliner 2 for $29.95 American.
Whoa, that's a lot of money to have spent.
Now listen, they charge a lot, but they give a lot.
They have great support.
Yeah.
So I bought a one seat license for $29.95.
How long did that license, how long was it operative?
Oh, I give them a lot of money.
Then I started doing some work with them and they gave me freebies sometimes.
Is ascending or descending the one with it at the... Oh, I see.
Yeah.
Okay.
But if you ever need to find something from a specific time, this is a good way to do it, before colon and after colon.
Do you know who the latest email to me is from?
The latest email to you is from... Like, the first email to me is from you.
Is it Jason?
Hang on, is it me?
It's you.
It's me, and it's me saying we'll talk after the show to figure out why I think you're spamming people.
That's right.
My oldest and latest emails are both from you.
You bookend my entire email experience.
Let's just sit with that for a minute.
That's kind of nice.
Yeah, that is nice.
2004.
I bet people are going to think we're making this up for the program.
We never make an email.
That's 15 years.
That's 15 years of email.
15 years of email.
It's all in there.
It's all in your inbox.
Is that right?
I have 71,000 messages in my inbox.
Oh, geez.
Really?
Okay.
My inbox is not zero.
That's funny.
Not zero.
Like the magician?
I have more than 43 folders.
oh i just shat myself that is oh my shipment is on the way i just got oh good i just got an email that my shipment is on the way the bam stuff i bought for my daughter is on the way oh good yeah yeah you got some merch i got some merch we got a bureau balance uh zip up hoodie a shrimp heaven now poster yeah it's all coming
Let me just say one of the problems with my Bim Bam merch is that there's a lot of pirating.
Holy shit.
What is Redbubble?
And what are they getting away with on Redbubble?
Redbubble?
Redbubble?
You ever get Redbubbled?
Because, boy, they hit those boys hard with Redbubble.
People just go and make stuff and sell it.
People do it on Etsy, too.
Some of their best merch.
It's kind of crummy.
Some of the best Mabim Bam merch where you're like, that's a cool shirt.
Some of the most creative stuff.
They don't get a penny out of it.
And I think there's not enough policing.
There's not.
And I suspect that's one reason.
I think it was smart the way they did the McElroy family site.
I think it's smart for a variety of reasons.
Because now there are videos that they do for Monster Factory.
You can get there.
Updates on tours.
Merchandise.
That's really smart.
They got a hell of a racket going there.
Oh.
They got a good racket.
It's a really good racket.
Did I tell you that they really treated me well this year?
They treated you well this year?
The Mabim Bams, yeah, they did.
They're really, really nice people.
Yeah, they are.
I mean, you could tell just listening to their programs that they're fun.
And I told my daughter yesterday, because my daughter is so into the Adventure Zone right now.
It's upsetting.
That's all she listens to.
Does she play the dragons on her own?
Well, we paint miniatures and we have the books.
She's rolled some characters for herself, but mainly she just loves those good, good boys.
But you've never gone on an adventure?
She and I?
Yeah.
No, not yet.
Not yet.
I was going to start with shoulder surfing at the hobby shop, which is a terrific Morrissey song.
We would go and like watch.
It was a critical save.
She, a natural 20.
I loved them plenty.
I thought we might shoulder surf some at the hobby shop just to get a feel for it.
Her new middle school has a D&D club that she's considering joining.
Authorized?
Like by Wizards of the Coast?
I don't know.
Well, they're not worried about kids going down in the sewers and worshiping Satan?
Oh, yeah, that's a good question.
I don't think they worry about that as much, and we seal up the sewers real good here.
I see that.
But, you know, you could go to the dog park.
Could get a little weird.
LARPing in the dog park.
LARPing in the dog park.
So that's good.
And anyways, and I said to her, I said, you know, I do feel sometimes like a terrible creep because it's not restricted to the McElroys, although I think they are the most extreme example.
But there are people that I feel, you must get this with your programs.
There are people where I feel extremely close to people who don't know me at all.
I mean, I know them very lightly through the internet.
They're aware of me.
But I'm not pals with them.
No, but they're very aware of Merlin Mann.
Well, I adore them and their stuff.
But I said, I do feel like a little bit of a creep.
The amount of stuff I know about how...
Griffin got a UTI that time he went to Coachella when he was working for Tommy Smurl.
I know too much about them, and it's creepy.
Now, you say they were nice to you.
Do you have kindness?
The thing is, Merlin, you could know them a lot better.
No, but see, I don't want to trigger them.
It would only require that you ever leave your house to go do an event.
Okay, I do leave my house.
I was unable to go to the last two shows because plans were made for me to be out of town when they were here.
Sure, sure, sure.
I understand.
I get a little bit of a rap.
I'm not informed about 11-year-old girls in my bedroom.
And I only find out when I'm traveling after Paul's already contacted me to say, do you want to have dinner with the boys?
And I say, I can't because I have to go be in another place.
It happens twice.
We can arrange where those good, good boys and you are in the same place.
I don't want to upset them.
But here's the thing.
They are also so anxious about appearing to be a fan of someone and creeping them out.
this is the worst no it's it but it's fine it's fine i mean i respect it because like you don't but like it's like you know like they always say just ask her dummy like you know it's not a lady zoo but at the same time if you're crushing on somebody just ask him dummy and i feel like we all need that advice sometimes but then we also have our friend john john hodgman who says it always hurts to ask so i'm at sixes and sevens it always hurts to ask
Remember that?
Remember how you heard him say that?
He said, people say it never hurts to ask.
And the truth is, it always hurts to ask.
It always hurts to ask.
So they did you a kindness.
You know, they mentioned your name.
In the older episodes, they mentioned this program.
Well, you know, the other day, it wasn't very many days ago, but it was a few days ago.
Let's say it was less than 300 days, more than 100 days.
I was in a situation.
You're doing a kind of Gmail search on your memory at this point.
Yeah, somewhere in there.
You're providing a date range that you can port through.
I was there and the three brothers were standing around on one side of a party.
And friend of the show, good old pal friend of the show, John Flansburg was on the other side of the party.
And Justin came over.
Justin, which is the oldest brother of those following along at home, came over to me and he said, listen, don't look over there.
But I would like to meet John Flansburg.
But I don't know how.
And I don't want to make him uncomfortable.
And I said, go ahead.
Keep talking.
And I very definitely didn't look over.
So we're not looking at Flansburg.
Flansburg's over there, you know, talking and spilling his drink and stuff.
He's fixing a lot of stuff.
He's fixing a lot of people's problems they didn't know needed fixing.
There's some people over there that are enthralled for Flansburg.
He's so awesome.
He's such a big human.
He's telling them what they need to do to finish their album.
And so Travis is like, I'm sorry, Justin.
Travis would never do this.
Travis would just walk right over.
Yeah, Magnus rushes in, yeah.
He'd stand on the tip of his shoes.
He doesn't seem to suffer from quite the level of social anxiety the other two do.
He'd put his tongue right at your mouth.
But Justin and Griffin, they have some social rules, right?
They're not just going to do something like that.
Anyway, so he says, so I would like to meet
John Flansburg.
And so I don't know what you can do to put this into – and he's like, I don't want to bother you either.
I don't want to take you away from whatever you were doing.
And all I was doing was sitting and eating shrimp.
He's so polite.
He's like a zero impact, no footprint human.
He just doesn't want to bother anybody.
And so I said, why don't we walk over there right now and meet him?
And Justin was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
And I said, no, no, no, it's okay.
We should just go do it now.
Let's not prolong the agony.
And he was like, I just, I, I am, I'm already pulling him through the crowd.
I've got his hand.
I'm holding his hand and I'm pulling him through the crowd.
And he's like dragging his feet.
Oh, geez.
Oh, geez.
Oh, geez.
We walked over to Flansburg.
Flansburg, uh, you know, turned.
I said, uh, John Flansburg, this is Justin McElroy from the McElroy brothers.
And Flansburg was like, oh, you know, sort of like, I don't know.
I don't know what that is, but yes.
And Justin did the thing.
Flansburg listens to this show, but not their show.
Yes, I think.
I mean, maybe Flansburg listens to their show now.
I think he'd enjoy that.
Flans isn't very Dungeons and Dragons, if you know what it is.
No, but like the main show.
The other one.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't monitor Flansburg's intake.
I understand.
I understand.
I'm grateful.
Listen, John, I'm grateful that anybody listens to this show.
Can I be super clear about that?
I'll tell you what.
I'm grateful, too.
And I'm really super grateful about who doesn't listen, if you know what I'm saying.
I do know.
I can think of two people that I'm so glad don't listen to the show.
Oh boy, I can think of a dozen.
I gotta ask about your mom.
I can think of a dozen kinds of people I'm glad that don't listen to.
Oh, Jiminy, Christmas.
Thank God these things are hard to get into.
Could you imagine if this was easy to get into, how many problems we'd have?
Do you realize how much shit from like 2012 we would still have to explain to people?
Which should I listen to first?
The early episodes or the latest episodes?
Just don't listen to it.
Read a book.
A lot of people are like, oh, you need to start at the beginning.
Anyway, so then Justin does this thing, which is one of the things that causes you to fall in love with him the most, which is he said to Flansburg, well, oh no, I'm sorry.
Wait a minute.
This is the best part.
Robin Goldwasser.
John Flansburg's wife is standing there.
Who's the best?
She's empirically the best.
She's the best.
Justin turns to her.
And says, Robin, I really loved.
And then he references an obscure project.
You told me this.
Yes, yes, yes.
That Robin worked on in 2002.
Yes.
And Justin not only knows it, but loves it.
And then speaks about it in, you know, with like... He did not all the great shows, sir.
He knew whereof he spoke.
And Robin was so, like, just, wow.
Like, flattered and appreciative and...
And then he turns to Flans and says, anyway, I'm a super big fan.
But you know what?
He just gave himself the golden ticket.
Because a lot of people go up to John Flansburg and go, hey, I'm a really big fan.
But very few people go up and speak immediately to his wife and tell her that they're really big fans of a thing that she did that no one's ever heard.
You meet her, you're going to fall in love immediately.
Those are two big humans.
You and she fell in love immediately.
The first time.
You were running around the basement.
We talked about Jerry Lewis for so long.
It was at the, well, not the Great American Music Hall.
No, it was Great American.
You're opening for like... Oh, I guess they might be giants.
They might be giants.
You guys were running around like kids throwing water balloons at each other.
It was like a playground.
She was so gracious.
She can hold her drinks.
She's very, very funny and fast.
That was back when we all smoked cigarettes.
People used to smoke.
Think about that for a minute.
We smoked so much.
I remember Robin and I sitting on...
your front steps, smoking cigarettes because we couldn't smoke in the house, of course.
This is before there were children involved.
Sitting out on the steps, smoking cigarettes, talking about how hard everything was.
All true.
At your house, we used to do that a lot.
Yeah.
Anyway, so that was just a moment where Justin just proved what a darling, darling person he is.
But no, they treated me well earlier this year because, you know, they'd been using my song.
John Roderick and the Long Winters and their song, It's a Departure.
That's right.
And then they came to me this year and they said, let's legitimize this.
No!
Are you serious?
They said, you let us use that song for free for all these years.
Are you kidding me?
Why don't we just professionalize this arrangement?
Oh!
That's, wow, that's, I mean, am I reading this right?
That seems like a nice thing to do.
Because it got bigger than they expected, probably.
Because when they came to me, I was like, three brothers from West Virginia have a podcast where they answer mail?
Yeah, those are all words, but they don't make a ton of sense.
This was back before I even knew what a podcast was.
You were telling me, oh, yeah, podcast.
I don't know if I even did that.
We might have even had one by that point.
I still didn't know what it was.
Yeah, I did, yeah.
How do you look nice today, yeah.
And they were like, can we use your song, sir?
And I said, yeah, sure.
Professor Ryder.
I was like, stay in school.
Drink the milk.
And here it is.
Mind your coal.
Whatever, eight years later.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And they run a media empire.
Oh, yeah.
What the heck was that?
Live from NDR News in Washington, I'm Lachs.
Oh, that's sick.
What?
Alexa, be quiet.
It's Lakshmi Singh.
Alexa, stop.
Alexa, stop.
Oh, wait.
We don't call her Alexa, do we?
Computer?
Amazon.
Yell at her.
No, we don't call it Amazon.
We can pick that, you know.
It's a terrible idea.
Computer, stop.
It's just not listening at all.
Whoa.
Yeah, nuclear option.
Way to go, babe.
Did she unplug it?
She just unplugged it.
Unplugged it and threw it in the toilet.
Oh, that kid's got it, man.
She does.
She understands.
Oh, there's a little thing that popped up on my computer here that says disk is full.
I also like the name Hansi Lo Wong.
I like that one a lot.
Oh, there's one lady that has like four names.
She has a really baller name.
And she does the weekend news sometimes.
Oh, you know, I don't listen to radio.
At all?
You don't listen to terrestrial radio?
No, I don't listen to any of it.
How did you start playing the news update on NPR?
Who knows?
I said something to you and it started talking.
Yeah, well, my phone was talking to me.
Anyway, that's nice to hear.
It's nice when people are nice.
It's good.
It was professional.
It was the way it should be.
I mean, for sure, there were a lot of years there where it was like, oh boy, the show's popular.
But eventually they were like, let's just make it right.
Let's talk real talk here, John.
Should I be paying you for sugar from sand?
No.
No, no, no.
I still think Josh is wrong.
I still think that's a terrific song.
I like the lyrics.
And it's a goddamn homemade American shame that people have only ever heard the ba-da-ba at the beginning of this show.
It's a goddamn shame.
You gave it to me a long time ago to listen to.
I said, this is a hit.
Josh Rosenfeld said, no, this is not a hit.
I said, this is a hit.
Robot Armies.
They're fast lyrics, but I like them a lot.
Try to throw my weight around.
Come on!
It's a hit!
Throw my weight around.
I still listen.
No one that listens to the show has ever heard it.
You should release it.
Do you like keeping them in suspense?
Would you ever put out that, what, would you call it a demo or a rough mix?
What would you call it?
It seems crazy to get any joy from keeping people in suspense for over 10 years.
That seems like.
The Roderick Gunn-the-Line theme song never made it.
yet maybe it'll make it onto an odds and sods for a spotify special who knows but but i i i chose if memory serves the song for this program that you hear the beginning of before the skype beep because i think it is a great lost long winter song and it's a goddamn homemade american shame that you let that bastard josh rosenfeld run your life and tell you that that was not a hit
Well, you know, there are a couple of Lost Long Winter songs that I think are great.
There's one called Pound Sign Seven, which used to be a way that we would do in old voicemail.
Pound 7 was what?
Delete or Archive?
Oh, that's good.
I don't know if I've heard that.
Pound 7.
Pound Sign 7, I don't think you've heard.
I think there are a couple more.
There was half a record that didn't ever get released.
And then, of course, there was an entire record.
Was it around the time of Ultimatum?
I feel like you had... I heard the original...
I feel like I heard, I don't know if I heard the rocked out version or the famous version first, but you had some really good tunes.
And I sat there and I listened to the first 10 seconds of every song, which you found frustrating.
Yeah.
Still do.
Any updates on Western State Hurricanes?
oh well yes in fact if you can say i'm not going to say anything about anything except to say wow this week uh oh no i'm sorry next week i'm uh going in to master the western state hurricanes record with ed brooks ed brooks who has mastered every uh the long winters is he the guy who brought you the bad news about the previous version the the previous uh shaggy version
No, Ed never got all the way to hearing the earlier version.
That was John Goodmanson.
Goodmanson.
Another terrific Jerry Lewis name.
He's wonderful.
Goodmanson.
No, Ed Brooks is going to master it.
And then once it's mastered, then we're compiling the liner notes.
Now, did I talk to you about the oral history project?
what happened was no where it was left was that you had spent some money uh on this and you'd worked you'd done you described on the show uh in a terrific two-part episode that a lot of folks have enjoyed um uh oh god who complimented me on that oh my friend my friend dr wave like that episode those two episodes um they call him dr wave well on on a pretty much every console game uh griffin's username is pencil rain how cute is that
oh that's nice um the pencil rain and anyway uh so you described the process of the arduous process of midiifying the drums and uh playing the bass through big speakers to get a better rune sound and you described all of that and it was left at somebody's name escapes me thinks you should put it out on vinyl for some reason that's right vinyl that was where we left it a few months ago before the summer silly season
Well, so there was initiated some kind of an oral history project, which involved emailing a lot of the people who were in the Seattle scene in 1998 who are still alive.
Right.
And it's surprising.
Still willing to talk to anybody else.
And emailing them with a questionnaire that said that tried to elicit some stories from from 1998, 99.
And a lot of the people replied with with some of them just replied with answers to the questions.
Some of them understood that we were trying to get stories out of them.
A lot of people were like, I don't remember anything from then, and then didn't reply.
Never call me again.
And a lot of them were like, you know, like grouchy about it.
And I think part of that is that the emails came from like an account that they were not – they felt like this was some kind of –
This was spam or it was some kind of illegitimate way to, you know, like Jonathan Poneman over at Sub Pop isn't just going to reply to anybody's email asking him for his reminiscences.
So we got a lot of people who were like didn't reply, but we got a lot of people that did.
And the idea behind the questionnaire was not like the idea was.
can we use the Western, the lost Western state hurricanes record as a, um, as a gathering point to tell the story of the Seattle music scene in 19, in the late nineties.
Um, because this was a, you know, it was a band that was both galvanizing and divisive.
Every band is divisive.
There's always going to be some quadrant of a scene.
That's like, I hate those guys.
Uh, but there, you know, but it was a time, uh,
That there were a lot of good bands, most of them never, most of them no one's ever heard, right?
I mean, most of them were local, it was a local time.
It was back when you could have a really vibrant team.
You get something like a flop.
You get a flop, right.
Or all the way up to something like a Fastbacks, which is like deeply famous in a very narrow slice of pie.
Right.
But you're going to also get like Nevada Bachelors and Carmine and bands that, you know, that never, you know, Nevada Bachelors made two albums that are great pop music.
I don't know them.
No one's ever heard of them.
Okay.
Because they never went, you know, they were on Pop Llama or whatever.
But it was before music was, it was before somebody in Slobovia.
Wait, Mike Squires was in them?
Mike Squires was, yeah.
Oh, wow.
He played on the second record.
Wait, and then Jason?
So on.
Jason also on the second record.
Oh, shit.
The first record was just a three-piece.
Rob Benson as the lead singer.
Dusty Hayes as the drummer.
And Ben Brunn as the bass player.
They were just a three-piece.
And they were... I remember watching them.
This is pre... This is like Bunn Family Players era.
Carrots and so on.
Carrots and so on.
That's a great name for a record.
I remember watching them at a house party.
And thinking to myself, well, there's no better band than this.
All of their popular songs on Spotify in the popular section have fewer than a thousand plays.
Yeah.
And they're so good.
They're so good.
Rob Benson, an incredible songwriter.
And those records are just, they're fun.
It's the kind of pop rock band.
Rock that you just go.
I mean, I swear to you at this house party, I was like, well, everybody in the town should just put their stupid guitars down because the Nevada bachelors have just they have just tied up the whole.
The whole game, the whole game.
Yeah.
Sunset Valley.
Sunset Valley is another example.
I've had this feeling there are bands that would tour through the South.
You get a band like, like if I mentioned the Atlanta band donkey today, most people are like, what are you talking about?
Donkey is one of those bands that had exponent, literally exponential growth in Tallahassee.
The first time they came through town, it was the bartenders that saw them.
The second time there was five people, you know what I mean?
And so forth and so until they become one of the hugest draws, you know what I'm saying?
There's those bands where you're like, but then you just never hear about them again.
It seems you become so intensely, like you at Nevada Bachelors, which I cannot wait to listen to, you become so intensely emotionally provoked by this music, and you're like, this is going to be a song like, you know, Flop's Sister Anne.
Like, that is, oh my god, the incandescence of that power pop still gives me shivers.
Sister Ann's in the garden watering her mother's dahlias.
It's perfect.
And now it's like nobody knows who these people are.
You're like, what happened?
What the fuck happened?
The Sunset Valley record Ice Pond came out.
And I went to them and I said, listen, this was when I was established enough that I could make this move.
I said, listen, I'll play second guitar.
They were also a three piece.
I'll play second guitar in this band for nothing.
I'll just play the chords behind the chords.
Because the thing is, it was a complicated record.
It needed more than just three players.
It needed a fatter sound.
I was like, I'll pay for my own hotel.
I'll ride along on a skateboard behind the van.
You guys just let me be in this band, please.
And they were like, thanks.
But we got it covered.
And I was like, so disappointed.
Oh, please just let me be in this band because I liked that record, Ice Pond, so much.
And the record before that, which has a song called Jackass Crusher,
which is such... Jackass Crusher is the last good song.
I do remember this name because I would go to John Vanderslice's MP3s page and reload it constantly, and Sunset Valley was one of the bands up there with Beulah and such.
Yeah, exactly.
I did know these.
Anyway, so this oral history project...
is conceived as a kind of accompanying document that goes along with the Western State record, because releasing it feels like, hey, this was 20 years ago, and 20 years ago it was of a time and a place.
The Seattle music scene was small, and every once in a while it rubbed up against the Portland scene or the San Francisco scene when you really got sophisticated.
Well, yeah, but Vanderslice was very mobbed up with some of these bands.
That's right.
That's right.
And Vanderslice was one of the people that brought the two worlds together during this era.
And, I mean, I remember the first time we played San Francisco, how exciting it was that we were somewhere else, you know, played the bottom of the hill.
Oh, gosh.
I know, right?
That's where I met my wife.
I know.
That's where, you know, like I remember, I think that might be, no, wait a minute.
Well, I certainly have a lot of pictures of you and Maddie and me at the bottom of the hill.
Yeah, we met at a thinking fellow show.
Yeah, there were a couple of times when there were cameras there and we all, and that was back when you were taking pictures with your like smeary.
You have to yell at me to stop, take the flash photos.
No, no, no, but you were doing the smeary thing with the flash.
I know, the rock and roll filter.
So good, the Charles Petersons.
So anyway, I'm going to take over that oral history project for a little bit and see if I can elicit some more stories from people.
So just to be clear, it's the Western State Hurricanes and the Times?
And the Times, right.
It's just about the Weird Time.
The Weird Times.
What was going on in the scene at the time?
Because there was a punk faction...
And this was this was during the era of the like painting your fingernails with white out and wearing super wearing like black stay pressed jeans.
So there was a lot of that.
The Romulan period.
It was the Romulans.
Exactly.
There was a lot of that going on.
But there was also, you know, the like jingle jangle power pop indie pre indie pop.
This is before Death Cab broke big.
This is like around the time it was an all-time quarterback had happened.
Just a little bit of that.
There were a couple of famous shows.
They were not a world-beating band that first year or two.
Something about airplanes.
I have a poster I could give you that has Western State at the top.
Death Cab in the middle, Nevada Bachelors at the bottom.
Wow.
We played several shows together in that configuration of bands.
I remember before the big one at the OK Hotel, Death Cab went to the Bachelors, which is what we called them.
And Death Cab said, well, you guys, would you mind?
This is how indie rock indie rock up here was.
They said, would you mind if we went first?
Because we've all got to get back to Bellingham and go to work in the morning.
So is it cool if even though we're second on the bill, if we open and the bachelors are like, that's fine.
So in studied contrast to how things were in Seattle just a few years before.
Where the attitude of bands was like, how big do you think your draw is tonight?
I mean, the thing is, it was it was a typical three band bill, which at least in Florida would start at 10 or 11.
I mean, it might as well have been first class business class and coach.
Yes, it was super clear that somebody who had in that case had paid for first class would not be happy being seated in coach.
Not at all.
There's a lot of dignity involved.
Tuesday night, if you were going on at 1 a.m., which you would think would be a form of punishment, in fact, you were very proud that you were the headline.
Yeah.
It was only later that we realized, hey, wait a minute.
Everybody leaves.
Everybody leaves.
This is terrible.
Yes, it's true.
Anyway, so we'll see if we can get... Because what I don't want is people just...
I don't – there's a certain amount of rehashing of the battles of 1998, the culture battles then that I think is kind of funny because our world was so small that it was like, oh, well, that guy thought that this guy was no cool and then I was –
There was a big thread on the TV show Succession last night that, without spoilers, involves a vendetta that goes all the way back to one article someone wrote about the wine that was served at a party that might now cause a completely unnecessary multi-billion dollar merger battle.
And I bet it's just, as you say, small beer stuff, probably, but I'll bet you there's still some significant beef
that people maybe aren't talking about, but I'll bet you there's still some really sore spots.
Well, the beefs...
The beefs live on.
Well, the beefs live on.
Oh, that's Sonny and Cher.
That's right.
Hey, I cleared the Goog.
How did you fix it?
Well, I just quit mail and then restarted it.
Oh, good.
Come on.
Your family knows what's what.
Come on.
Come on.
Anyway, the beefs.
Here's how the beefs persist.
The beefs persist.
These are the beefs.
The beefs, the beefs, the beefs.
Beef it up, beef it up, beef it up.
Beef down.
Beef street.
The king of the beefs.
See, fucking that beef from across the street.
Smells like meat.
Okay.
The thing about the beefs is that there are a lot of people.
This is the thing.
What happened was.
If you're in a band.
Yeah.
And you're part of a scene of bands.
And a very few of the bands go on to a different level of being a band.
Most bands don't.
Most bands don't go on to even, they don't even go to a second location.
They don't even, you know what I mean?
They don't achieve escape velocity.
You never even, you don't talk about their phone number and use the area code.
You know, like it's just, you just give the, you just five, five, five, one, two, one, two.
You don't even say 206.
You don't need to, yep, yep, yep, yep.
No one from out of town is ever going to call.
Mm-hmm.
But,
It's so capricious why this band should ever, like, leave town and that band shouldn't.
And you've seen this.
A lot of these great bands that we're talking about.
Like, talking about, like, Beulah or Creeper Lagoon, two that come straight to mind.
Creeper Lagoon, I'm always, you know, bugging you about Creeper Lagoon, the first San Francisco band CD I ever bought when I came here in 1997.
It's like, I know they had some issues, some personal stuff and some substance things, but, like, you're like, what the fuck?
In 98, they had only came out in 98 or 99.
I think it was on a major.
I think they had one or maybe two on a major.
But you're like, what happened?
What happened with Beulah?
What happened with these bands that were so much better than other bands and just seemed like they had to be destined for, if not critical and financial acclaim and profit, would at least be better known?
Yeah.
Well, and those bands are bands that got out, right?
Beulah and Creeper Lagoon were both big bands in 98.
Yeah, yeah.
The scene, though, is populated by dozens of bands that never even got a Friday night headlining show at the Crocodile.
And a lot of those bands, the guitar player was a better guitar player than me.
And the singer was better looking than me.
And the shows were more exciting than, or maybe, I mean, that's arguable, but, but you know what I mean?
Like the, the painting of that band suggested that it would, that it had, you know, seven out of 10 of the elements that would, that would propel it far further down the field than the long winters or the Western state hurricanes.
Yeah.
And for whatever reason, you know, through the hook by hooker crook, like I ended up having, you know, and again, like low, low level indie rock career.
What's your phrase?
A successful dental practice?
Successful dental practice.
But a lot of those bands, guys that had practiced and practiced, people that were living the life, really, truly living the rock life.
Yeah.
And they didn't.
And so there's – for some – for most people, what was happening in the Seattle scene in 1998 does not matter to them now at all, including people that were in it because they – because whatever happened to them, they moved along, right?
Life kept going.
but if you had a super cool rock band in Seattle from 1994 to 1998 and you had fans and you had t-shirts and your tapes were for sale and you guys all bought a van and you had a practice space that was decorated with Christmas lights and you, you know, and you decided that your look was bell bottom corduroys or whatever.
And by 2001, like,
Indie rock had swept in and nobody cared anymore.
The times had changed.
It is seductive to try to find a reason for why that happened.
Or didn't happen.
And often the reason that you look for is that there was some kind of conspiracy.
It wasn't that your band was good.
It was that you sucked off the right people.
It wasn't that you guys were that good.
It was that...
You know, that you that it was all they sold out or that you wrote songs that weren't honest in order to try and make it or you had the right.
I mean, you know, it's an there's an infinite number of reasons why this band is got popular and that band didn't.
And 90 percent of the infinite number of reasons are generated by the band that didn't make it because they're looking for a reason.
History is written by the losers.
History.
Well, history within, you know, like I'm talking about there are rec rooms right now where where there's a group of 50 year old guys who are still wearing corduroy bell bottoms, but they work at somewhere and they're all sitting there half drunk and they're like, remember.
Remember the time that that now successful band opened for us?
Yeah.
And then they sold out or whatever.
And it was a lot easier to point to small things back then and say that they were sellout moves.
It doesn't happen like that now because nobody's worried about that.
I remember when the – a little later, but New Slang by the Shins appeared in that McDonald's commercial.
And we were all – we were livid.
Everybody in LiveJournal, we were livid and felt so utterly betrayed that – or the time – there's the story of Superchunk, like doing the British Knights thing because they were either going to like get paid or it was going to get ripped off by lawyers close enough that they wouldn't be able to like –
Do anything about it?
They're like, well, we can buy a van now.
And that was the thinking in the early days before this became like a normal way for having a revenue stream in the absence of record sales.
But yeah, the idea was that we put new slang with a guy feeding a French fry to his baby.
And you're like, at the time though, I remember arguing with Dan from LiveJournal.
You remember Dan Cohen?
Like going back and forth about this.
I was a fucking 35-year-old man and I was livid.
I felt so betrayed by them.
Yeah, I mean, I felt such a, that song just was in my bones.
And when that commercial came on my TiVo, and it was a man feeding a french fry to a baby, I was like, oh my god, this is like something from a very sad textbook.
Well, but let me say that that moment, new slang in the McDonald's commercial freed us all.
Yeah.
Were you in like a Mini Cooper commercial or something?
What was that?
Miller?
What was one of the early ones for you?
I never was in a Miller commercial, but there were a lot of commercials that we never would have been able to accept until the Shins, who everybody loved, accepted a McDonald's commercial, which was the ultimate.
You couldn't sell out harder.
I mean, I suppose they could have done like Exxon.
but like McDonald's and they did it.
And when everybody, when, when the whole world came crashing down and everybody pointed their fingers and said, they went, huh?
I mean, they just, they, it was water off a duck's back and the, and the, and the clouds parted and it was like, wait, we can get, we can get paid money for our music.
It was, it was great.
But what I'm hoping with this oral history is that some of those people will come out of the woodwork and they will rehash those old grievances and
And they'll use the Western State record as a way of just sort of transport.
Because when you listen to it, it just sounds like Seattle in 1998.
And this is a band that didn't make it.
Now, I made it out, but this band didn't.
And it was a popular band.
Everybody thought it was going to.
get out, you know, popular within the, within the small, this small world.
And it will just be a place that we can all just sort of tell that story and, and have it, have it be maybe like, um, maybe it will tell the story of a lot of people, people in Tallahassee, right.
That you can read it and be like, Oh, I remember what it was like before, what it was like back when in order to hear a band, you had to get their tape and
Right.
Like that just feels like a thing that that story hasn't been told exactly.
And it partly because who cares?
No, it doesn't have this.
It doesn't have like that Elton John movie.
There's a lot of sex in that.
You're just what you're describing when you say something that sounds like doesn't sound as profound as it is.
You had to get their tape.
Well, how did you get their tape?
You might have gotten their tape because you went to see you were like felt obligated.
Like your friend comes to your shows.
So you would go to your friend's show and you like, like, like their band.
Okay.
But you want to be supportive and Hey, wait a minute.
Now they're getting more popular than I might prefer, but Hey, there was this band that opened for them because I was kind of compelled to go to that show and I paid five bucks for their tape and I really liked it.
And you know what I'm saying?
It was like, there was a lot of, um,
The dissemination was by little, not even teaspoons, more like eyedroppers of how stuff would get passed around.
And there was the stuff you'd see in whatever, spin or pitchfork.
But that was really, at least in our circles, or CMJ, those folks were playing on another level.
We got mentioned once in CMJ, and it seemed...
huge, because that was, at least in our circles, that was the good one.
Sure, how could you not?
Yeah, yeah, I mean, like, you know, spin had gotten stupid by that point, but my point being that, like, you had this system where, like, now you go on to Spotify, and I'm not trying to be an old man about this, but it is, it's amazing to me, like, I'll just go on Spotify and
especially when I get sick of Twitter and I need a break.
And I'll just have a day where I go and try and discover bands I've heard of, bands I haven't heard of.
I just go to the fans of this band like section and just start clicking and clicking and clicking.
And it really is like, you know, you and I have talked a lot about like what the internet could have been in our heads.
I know that nobody's getting paid and that sucks.
But on the other hand, like that is what a different world.
It used to be you got paid because people did buy your cassettes.
Now you maybe don't get paid, but people can find out about you.
You can be...
You could be in West Virginia and discover a band from Seattle without having read about it, heard about it.
You just tumble across it, and it's such a different world.
I would love to hear that story told, because someplace else in America, I was living that at the same time.
I was watching some of the bands in our group, like I've told you before, that band, Darth Vader's Church.
DVC was a death metal band that was touring in Germany.
They've been relatively successful in Florida and the US.
They're a really good death metal band.
And they got big.
My friend's band, Flanders, got kind of regionally big.
And you would see the success of a lot of the bands from North Carolina and Georgia coming through on that circuit that had been dug by Black Flag and the Minutemen.
There's still the remnants of that.
Oh, I got to get a show in Tallahassee so that I can make it to Gainesville, to make it to Orlando, to make it to Miami.
And will we be able to do all those shows?
And it was all still very handmade in so many ways.
I, you know, I would love to hear that story.
It's almost like a very regional, our band could be your life.
Yeah, that's right.
That's right.
And hopefully, hopefully this is all, I mean, like everything now, like all content is,
this Western state record is going to come out, and 10 days later, it will be over.
It's like the equivalent of dropping a season on Netflix and nobody's talking about it in three days.
Yeah, for three days, people are like, wow, that's cool.
Somebody spent a year on this.
And then they go, do you have anything else?
Is there any more content?
Nobody even thanked mom for making dinner.
They just wolf it down.
And so, I have no illusions that this is anything more than just a click-through, but...
Uh, but it will be, it's already been super fun for me and for us.
And, you know, like adding more things to it just seems more fun until all of, until my whole basement full of like old posters and tapes till I've just, um, I've emptied it out just like, okay, uh, I don't have to store these things anymore.
They've just gone out into the world and like, we'll, we'll play, we'll play two shows in the spring and we'll sell those posters at the show and maybe they'll
Maybe they'll stop being this albatross that follows me everywhere.
I got a copy of Sugar and Sand sitting in iTunes.
Will you let me know if you ever want to pull the trigger?
80s punk.
That's right.
Neck and shoulders.
All right.