Ep. 477: "Comedy Guitar"
Hello.
Hi, John.
Hi, Merlin.
How's it going?
Super duper.
I am in deep.
Are you on the internet?
I'm so on the internet right now.
I've been on the internet all weekend, and I had to share some things with you.
Would you say you were V on the internet?
I'm V online.
Extremely online.
Five texts ago, I said, I should save it for the show, but I am in the midst of a mighty... Send me five more texts.
I love it.
Pino Palladino.
Pino Palladino.
How do you waste Pino Palladino on that admittedly great song?
But Pino Palladino on the Paul Young song, not a, I mean, it's a good blue eyed soul song of its type, but I think he was mainly Paul Young.
Forgive me.
I assume he's alive or the Paul Young estate.
I'm sorry.
I think he's a pretty boy a little bit.
He's a little pretty.
But Robin George, Robin George is a pretty boy too, but he had a PC rich ears.
The thing, what we're talking about here.
What we're talking about here.
Oh, just to finish the thought, I should save it for the show.
Yeah.
I says to John, I says, what happened was I should save it for the show comma, but I'm in the midst of an all caps mighty reappraisal of eighties songs and videos.
Yes.
You're doing a deep dive.
It's, you know, it's not unlike my annual re-dive, if that's a word, into Sloan.
Just in this case, I'm going, hmm.
And I'm looking at a bunch of stuff and I'm calling it up and I'm defying God by doing that thing where I go, is this as good slash bad other as I remember?
Mm-hmm.
And I mean, there's a clear winner here, as I just said three texts ago.
There's a clear winner to all of this.
But just so you know where my head is at, that's why I'm watching the leadoff track from Robin George's 1985 album, Dangerous Music.
Let me just walk you back.
What precipitated it?
What prompted this?
There had to be an inciting incident, right?
You were doing something.
You heard a song.
You thought of a thing.
You were like, I'll go look at that.
And then something caught fire.
Right.
What was it?
It's a terrific question.
Well, I mean, as you certainly know about me, it takes very little provocation to do something kind of like this.
But I can almost guarantee you it's because YouTube mostly knows me.
And I'll get stuff in my recos that'll pop up.
But also, I do watch a lot of, I think I've previously tried to sell you on that English guy, Trash Theory, that does those amazing, you know.
Oh, yeah.
The guy who does, like, you know, how we got to Madchester.
Or I said, oh, yeah, of course.
I sent you that, like, 30-minute History of Power Pop, which I think is really outstanding.
And it was probably from YouTube recommendations.
But like, I hate to have my thumb on the scale here, John, but I kind of went into it knowing that the look of love part one by ABC is probably the greatest artifact of early MTV.
It's the look.
It's the look.
It's the look of love.
Sisters and brothers should help each other.
You know, what's the look?
If I don't know the answer to that question, if I knew I would tell you.
In this case, a straw boater at a garden party.
yeah current twitter bio me i go from one extreme to another me i go from one extreme to another martin fry man that guy had some hair that's what brought me into it probably it doesn't take a lot but then as a scientist uh you know uh like the minutemen said our band is scientist rock right no you're not a fan but i'm a scientist well i'm a i'm a scientist of rock
And I, that's where I am right now.
I really, John, I have to tell you something, bud.
I really like music.
Yeah, I know you do.
Yeah.
You are a scientist of rock.
I really like it a lot.
I don't know if I'm a scientist.
I think I'm an alchemist of rock or maybe a hobbyist of rock.
I don't know.
I really like it though.
The thing is you did, I think about this a lot and we've talked about it and I think it's still true.
You invested in an education.
You gave yourself a self-education in a thing that at the time seemed to us like it would always be as valuable as it was then.
John, it's Les Pauls all over again.
It's Les Pauls all the way down.
And so you are an absolute encyclopedic scientist of an era.
Did I have to look up whether Pino Palladino played on Robin George's Dangerous Games?
No, you did not.
I did not.
You were like, how did they get a BC rich bass player?
A, and B, how did they get it in the hands of Pino Palladino?
And then how did they turn it into an animated arrow that Robin George shoots?
He shoots a BC Rich as an arrow.
There's 50 years of American music history.
Well, let's say Western music history that you have the three by five cards, Merlin.
You've got the receipts.
Do you hate that about me?
No.
Not at all.
It's beautiful, but what I'm asking you, as the parent of a teen, does any of it have value today?
Are you now a scientist of...
Beep.
No.
Are you a scientist of a lost heart?
Was that like a Grey's Anatomy sound of the heart monitor?
Beep.
Are you a scientist of phrenology now?
Well, to steal from an album as recent as today's headlines by the Beths, I'm an expert in a dying field, like you and your Les Pauls.
But I would say, John, if I'm being honest here, that I think my ardor for music and the role that music has had in my life, and, you know, it's...
And I don't want to go over the top, and I certainly don't want you to write a mean article about how I'm bullshit, but it's a big part of my life and was at almost every point in my life a big part of who I am, like how I think about myself, right?
Yes.
that education and those index cards, or as you say, three by five cards, those cards are nothing but trouble for daddy right now.
Yeah.
Because first of all, let's be honest, at night, my main thing, I like watching TV with my family, but I mean, as you know, well, you have your daughter's mother partners like this.
I'm always like, what's that guy from?
What's that guy from?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, look at that.
The girl who's the new doctor on Grey's Anatomy also played Neff in
in the Anna Delvey, Anna Delvey Foundation.
She was the lady at the hotel in that, and that made me happy to... I'm always forever doing that.
And when I try to make some interesting point about how this is like that, nothing.
Now, okay, so first of all, and I'm willing, I'll do everything I can to help you avoid this thistle if I can, but here's the part that's funny, though.
Totally independently, because of bullshit like TikTok, my kids' musical education is outstanding.
It's not the...
I mean, can we just as a generation... Well, maybe not you.
I'm going to say as a generation, we need to let go of this whole getting mad at people for not liking something the way we did.
But the kid's not going to sit and listen to a whole album of anything.
You think I'm bad?
The first 10 seconds of a song?
Woof.
This kid thinks they know the plot to everything.
They know the song for everything.
But with that said, I think I've...
I can't say this publicly, but I think I've had an influence.
My kid likes Weezer.
Of course.
My kid, of course, my kid's bananas about the Beths.
I mean, all three of us are bananas about the Beths.
But yeah, like pop stuff.
But it really, I feel like it does get in the way because I've learned to try and keep my shit out of other people's shit.
But it was just so important for me, for my kid to have good taste.
I remember.
I remember when they were very little and you were like, here's how... You must like Surfer Rosa.
You had a playlist for them when they were a little child.
Like a little child.
You already had playlists.
Well, and this affected... This is very related to... Andalusia!
I don't know about you, but I am Unshin!
Andalusia!
I am Unshin!
Oh, Spanish starts tomorrow.
So that might come in handy.
We're in quarter two now.
That's exciting.
My daughter, I just realized, has my brain and not her mother's because she loves the Harry Potter movies.
And I sat her down and we watched Ocean's 8.
I love Ocean's 8.
I think it's an underrated movie.
Heist film.
Very fun.
Very fun.
And at the end of the movie, I said, did you recognize anybody in the movie?
And she was like, what do you mean?
And I said, well, for instance, did you recognize Bellatrix Lestrange?
She was like, she was in this movie?
Exactly.
And I said, did you recognize Galadriel?
And she was like, she was in that movie?
And I said, or The Princess Bride?
And she knew all these guys, you know, like Bellatrix Lestrange.
She doesn't look – Helena Bonham Carter, you can't camouflage her.
She looks the same.
She's very distinctive.
And my kid just – right over her head.
She did not – she went right into the characters.
Or as Frank Costanza says, the girl from the bus.
You know, Sandra Bullock.
Yeah.
I was watching a movie.
I was watching a very interesting movie called The Net with that girl from the bus.
Yeah, that's me.
But I know that's me all the time.
So your kids got your rotten brain of not putting the faces together.
Right.
Useless in terms of remembering actors.
Meanwhile, her mother is over there like, that background actor wasn't, weren't they in an episode of Moonlighting?
And I'm like, what?
What the fuck?
Well, and you get that with the older actors sometimes.
Like, we're watching, we're currently in the midst of a big Better Call Saul run.
I see.
And I was like, the guy who plays Mike, who everybody loves, we also know him from Community.
He has a really funny, weird bit on Community.
I was like, you know, he used to be kind of a...
I guess I always thought of that guy whose name escapes me at the moment, but that actor, I always thought of him as, he's always like a heavy and kind of an idiot.
And I was like, I was like, I'm pretty sure he was in Beverly Hills Cop.
And of course I pull up a photo and he looks, it's Mike, but you know, 40 years younger.
And like that, that, that draws no water.
For anybody in the house.
Or I'll give you another Harry Potter that took me a while to get.
I don't know if you watched the Game of Thrones series, the OG.
But the wildling girl who's not precisely enslaved, you know who she is?
Yes, I do.
No.
Oh, wait, wait, wait.
No, no.
I did.
I went down this road.
She's not a major character, but she's in two or three of the movies at least.
Right.
And it's Annie DeFranco.
No.
Nymphadora Tonks.
Nymphadora Tonks, right.
And what are the other movies?
Because I think I did look this up.
Oh, well, she, so the girl who can change herself makes animal faces and stuff?
Yeah, animal faces.
I think it's poor Professor Lupin's girlfriend.
Okay.
Poor Professor Lupin's having a really rough look.
Okay.
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That's a great line reading, Daniel.
You know, full points.
I love that movie.
Anyway, New Fedora Tonks is also whatever the name of that wildling girl is.
The one who calls him Little Lord, which is why I call my kid Little Lord now.
Little Lord.
When you started hitting me this morning with- Sorry about that.
No, no, no.
With some heavy duty like one, two, three punches, Paul Young videos and so forth.
Scrolling back, scrolling back.
Okay, how did this start?
Oh, it started with me saying you should get a BC Rich earring.
And John, for our listeners who maybe are not people who craved guitars in the 80s, could you please give just a real quick and dirty on what a BC Rich guitar is and what's distinctive about it?
Well, you know, there were a lot of innovative... If you want to mention Paul Cantner, it's totally okay.
This is a safe space.
A lot of innovative guitar designs...
that started to come out after
The 1960s, right?
You get the Flying V. You get the Explorer.
Fender's having fun with the, God, still so gorgeous, classic kind of Mustang look.
But you start getting slightly wackadoo.
At some point, you get to what's called the Steinberger bass.
You start getting these very unusual designs.
Yes, that's right.
And it was a time when it felt understandably like the Telecaster and Les Paul were old.
They were mid-century modern guitars.
It was before we realized that they were the rare examples of things that were perfect from the inception.
The Telecaster is so brilliant because Les Paul wanted to come up with a guitar where you could detach the neck so you could put it in the trunk of a car.
Leo Fender.
What did I say?
You said Les Paul.
Oh, sorry.
I'm sorry.
Duh.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So it was Leo Fender.
And that was, it was a bolt, like a screw on neck instead of a, you know, a built in neck, which at the time was like, wait, you can't do that.
What are you doing?
You can't do any of these things.
The body's made out of a slab of wood.
The neck's made out of slab of wood.
Yeah.
No Floyd Rose.
You're going to have to retune that thing real good.
It was the first guitar and you can still, it's still, everyone has one.
It's still,
We didn't need any other ones.
It's the weirdest thing.
It's like the, it's like the 1972.
All the sounds we needed were done.
We had all the sounds that we needed.
The 1972 Ford F two 50, nothing there did not need to be a, a subsequent pickup truck, right?
That was the perfect pickup truck.
They could still be making them today.
Wow.
And you know, what, what does a new one have airbags?
Come on.
Who needs that?
Anyway, 1970s, BC Rich is a company, and I swear, I'm sure they're from California or somewhere else, but almost certainly Orange County, California, and they made a guitar that looked like the devil's hands, you know, like devil horns.
It was like if you took a stodgy old, like an ES...
What's an ES?
Like an ES3?
You take a classic double cutaway Gibson idea, right?
Where it's still very curvy and like... I would say it started with an SG and then you just... Exaggerate all of that.
You make it look more and more like something from Mordor.
It had four points.
Yeah, a lot of points.
And so one of them was called the Mockingbird, but the one that we really cared about was the BC rich bitch.
The bitch.
The rich bitch.
the rich bitch it didn't have a t in it though it was bitch b-i-c-h bitch and uh and then apparently they were really well made so then all of it wasn't like just a comedy guitar it became it became a thing that like metal dudes actually played but then in the 80s when things got very confusing for people am i metal am i pop and
Am I pop metal?
There are keyboards on this track.
Remembering now that if memory serves a BC rich was around a grand.
So this is not, this is not like buying harmonicas.
Like you're pretty committed.
If you want, like, if you're going to, if you get a, if you're really into like Brian Seltzer type stuff and you get a Gretsch, you're good to go.
If you really like John Jett, you might get a melody maker.
Right.
But you're sort of committed to,
When you commit to that guitar, if you get an SG, you're Angus Young, right?
Or Pete Townsend at a certain time.
You know what I'm saying, though?
Like, you're committed, almost committed to the kind of genre you play, because if you show up at the New Wave bar, you know, playing the wrong guitar, like, it's going to seem weird.
Or metal.
Like, if you're a metal guy and you come out and play a Telecaster, what are you, Merle Haggard?
Yeah, it was weird, although, you know, then you see, I mean, the Telecaster is so flexible, like John 5 from Marilyn Manson played a Telecaster.
And Townsend played a kind of Telecaster.
I mean, he played Schechter.
I think his was pretty souped up and probably had some double coil action going.
It was the wonderful thing about indie rock that the Jazzmaster, which Fender had designed for jazz players, and jazz players completely rejected it.
Um, and it just kind of sat there as a surf rock guitar for a long time, but Jay masses.
And then all of the, and the, and Sonic youth.
started playing the Jazzmaster, and I guess that's from television, right?
I mean, they... That sounds like Tom Verlaine or Richard Lloyd, right?
Yeah, I think of a Telecaster, that kind of Telecaster sound.
Well, there's also that thin, the tele, at least usually, stock tele, has fewer windings, it's not as loud, it's got a twang to it usually, and obviously you can distort it and stuff like that.
But yeah, that was... You cannot distort it.
I have this wonderful, wonderful,
1968 Telecaster that I traded some bullshit for.
It had a built in Bigsby and I loved it.
It was this beautiful thing.
And I, and I was in the Western state hurricanes at the time and I brought it into the practice space.
this gorgeous, you know, it was maybe the first, I had owned a 68 335 that I bought for 500 bucks in the eighties and it had gotten stolen and I was super bummed.
And then this guitar came into my life and I was like, this is it.
You know, I finally got like a truly vintage, beautiful thing and I plugged it into my rig and
which at the time was a Trainer YBA-1.
I don't know what that is.
Is that like a rehearsal amp?
No, no, it's a giant Canadian bass head that weighs 80 pounds and 100,000 watts on top of a Carvin 412 cabinet.
Oh, wow.
That's rustic.
That's a very rustic look.
It was hot.
I plugged this Telecaster into it, and it just went, ah!
And I couldn't, there was no amount of EQing.
Three windings were full open.
And then I would play a chord.
No palm muted for you.
And so I played it for like two weeks.
And it was just, it was completely out of control.
Like somebody was spinning donuts on a motorcycle.
And eventually I had to trade it back.
And now I went into the guitar shop.
Uh, not very long ago when I was talking to the owner and I was like, oh yeah, I remember when I traded that 68 Tele for that, whatever that other thing.
And he was like, oh yeah, well the guitar you traded it for, you know,
which you still have is worth $5,000.
And I was like, yeah, I mean, some prices gone up.
He was like, that telly is worth about $30,000.
And I was like, ah, because I'm the big, this was the Bigsby.
We're talking about Bigsby tremolo, right?
Yeah.
Is that stock?
It was.
And it also had a bound body.
So it was, it was double bound.
It was a, it was made for the, it was made during that Chet Atkins, Bakersfield, binka, binka, binka.
Yeah, sure.
Era.
And I was just like, right, in 1998, the difference between a $600 guitar and a $700 guitar was just like, oh, durr.
And now it's like, no, this one's $5,000 and that's $35,000.
I'm not trying to help anybody here.
But also, it was not until you think about the post-CBS Fenders when they started doing the Squire and stuff like that.
But the truth is, if you got a name brand –
Mostly a Gibson or a Fender, but there were others.
But, you know, but I mean, like, what was the cheap guitar?
Like a Sears guitar or maybe kind of a Dan Electro?
Yeah, Dan Electro.
But like there was not.
All those Japanese guitars.
All those, you know, the Greco.
But if you could, it was like having a PV amp.
I mean, it was like, if you wanted to really feel like you'd arrived, these name brand guitars were really costly, even at the time.
But all I'm trying to say is like, unless you got a, what was the Sears one?
Silvertone.
Like, unless you got like a really inexpensive Japanese guitar, I mean, there was, there was not a lot in the middle.
There was not, like, for example, that Epiphone I bought in the 90s and still have, I think it's, you know, Gibson knockoff, obviously, by the, you know, Epiphone's part of Gibson.
But anyway, I think it was like, it was less than $300 out the door.
Yeah.
Like, that was, you couldn't, you were not, I mean, a Strat, when I was in high school, I think a Strat was like 800 bucks.
800 bucks.
Yeah.
New, new, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, so,
The reason that your text thread kind of hit me in a way that I could reply with my own little video, like one-two punch, was because I went to see Elton John last night.
You blew my mind, you piece of shit.
I went to see Elton John.
You're shitting me.
I took all the ladies.
It was one of these things where it was his last tour ever.
Oh, I love that guy.
And the shows got announced back in the spring and I was not going to shows then, but I anticipated a time when I would go to shows and
And, and I knew the promoter.
So I called the promoter and I was like, Hey, you know, Elton John tickets.
And they were like, ah, this is one of those.
Yeah.
This is one of those.
This is one of those.
Yeah.
There's no, like one of those show box shows where what's your house name at, uh, Chad, like, no, sorry.
I can't do it for this one.
Yeah.
No friends, no, no discounts, no friends, no family.
And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I know.
I know.
I know.
But come on, come on, come on.
Call me closer.
Tiny dancer.
And, you know, and I went online and looked and it was, and all the tickets all get sold immediately to American express or whatever.
And then they're on the resale market and they're all $900.
I'm like, look, I'm not gonna pay $900.
I want to take my mom.
I want to take all the girls.
And so, so I, you know, this way, that way, this way.
And I get into this system where it's like, okay, you send an email to this person.
This person's going to reply to you with an email that doesn't make any sense.
You just reply to them, and then you'll be in the pipeline for the special tickets that something, something, something.
You'll still have to pay money.
This really sounds like a jam up already.
Yeah, and I was like, okay, fine.
And so I sent an email to a person.
I got a cryptic answer back.
I wrote them what I was told to say, and then months went by.
and i just had faith you know had faith and then then about two months ago i got a email that said uh elton john and then a series of letters and numbers and you know and dates mysterious dates and runes and i was like okay yes and then a month went by and then they said okay we're processing you know because i'd given them my credit card we're processing your credit card and
they processed it to the tune of some serious dollars.
Okay.
But, but was it with, was, so just, I'm sorry.
So was this something like, were you bidding or how, how did you, so you, did you know how much it was going to be costing?
Oh shit.
Did you set a limit?
No.
Oh God.
What happened was, what had happened was there is some, of course, some promoters, promoters, promoters list.
And, and,
There is some way, some wiggle way.
And, but once you enter into that dark cavern, once you begin that adventure with that dungeon master.
You have no say anymore.
Oh, you're in, you're like, you're like after, um, after Anakin kills the younglings, like now you're committed.
And, and the thing is the emails are coming from like an anonymous account.
I'm not even, I can't even email somebody and go like, Hey, Brenda about that.
You know, it's just like, it's like really, and also because I called in some favors to get this.
There's, I can't go back to my friends and be like, Hey, what the fuck is going on with this?
Because they're going to be like, Hey, I, you know, you asked and I washed my hands of it.
Right.
There was no, now I'm in the middle somewhere where there's no appeal.
And then this charge goes up on my credit card.
That's like, Oh, that's more than I paid for my first car, but okay.
And then nothing, silence, silence.
And about like eight days ago, boom, in my inbox, like here's five tickets to Elton John.
You know, they're like, you didn't hear it from me.
They're boom right here.
You're going to get covered with confetti at the end.
So be ready for that.
It's going to get right here in Elton splash.
And it's like, exactly.
Bring a tarp.
Oh,
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So we go.
And, you know, my mom couldn't go.
She tripped.
She hurt her legs.
So I ended up giving the ticket to a gal who's really close to my sister and to my daughter's mother.
So it's five of you?
Five.
Okay.
They are all of them dressed to the nines wearing their sparkles.
And then you get in there and you realize –
Average age 50, a lot of 60 and 70 year olds.
Average age.
Yeah.
And everyone is wearing sequins and feathers.
It's like a dress up party.
Uh,
And it was, and it's phenomenal.
You know, they're, it's wonderful to see everybody in sequins and feathers.
My daughter at one point people were walking by and she said that leather police hat.
Is that, why is that a thing?
Uh,
Oh, don't worry, honey.
We'll talk about it later.
He's a leather policeman.
I said, well, the leather police hat.
He's a leather bobby.
You know, it's very, police are very, you know, like boyish, right?
Rawr.
And she was like, yeah.
And I said, and if you're gay, what do you like?
Do you like a boy?
I mean, maybe if you do.
And so, but she's like, but that one's pink and has sparkles.
And I was like, exactly.
Right.
So it's a little bit of a, and she, her mind is just spinning like police hat.
Yeah.
You know, good response to something like that is just to say, you know what?
Everybody likes a different flower.
Everybody likes a different, there were a lot of flowers.
So many different flowers.
So he comes out.
He's Sir Elton.
He's 75 years old.
You know, he's like a, he's very cute.
He's, he, he's has a snap on to pay.
Oh yeah.
Okay.
Um, and you can tell he's, he's, he's old.
He, he has a hard time moving around.
Uh, you know, when he walks, he kind of walks, walks like Churchill.
Um,
And it's a... Hey, John, John, John, he's not a present for your friends to open.
No, he's not.
But he... And a big set like that, my God, it's exhausting, you know, and you can tell he's tired.
It's just tiring.
They make it look easy, but like with all the... There must be so many cues and different things to be thinking about.
Well, and like when you see those big legacy acts, you realize...
They're not, there's no computers, you know, they're just out there rocking.
When I saw Queen with, uh, with, um, Adam Lambert.
I talked to some tech people after the show, and I was like, I mean, you know, they've got two drum kits, one of them on the other side of the stadium.
I mean, how many different click tracks are they listening to?
And my friend was like, there's no click.
What?
They're just playing.
How do they synchronize lights and stuff?
Old school?
They just look at each other, and the lighting guy is also 70 years old, and he's out there like...
With a cigarette hanging out of the side of his mouth like, all right, here comes the solo.
Now you can tell if he goes like this, he's going to go like that.
These are my original heat-proof gloves.
It was incredible.
I bet.
And so Elton, they were playing pretty free.
They would jam a little bit.
They had some jammy parts.
But you're going to see Elton John, right?
And so you expect, I go in preloaded to be like, this is emotional.
Is it especially owing to the notion that this might be his last tour?
Well, not that as much as just like, I've never seen Elton John.
Right.
And in my life, in your and my life, there were precious few years in the very early days where there was no Elton John.
And since then...
It's been all Elton John all the time.
He had sort of a, I mean, I think probably at the height of some of his substance stuff, he had kind of a spotty period after, say, don't go breaking my heart up till now.
Obviously, I'm still standing.
I think he had a pretty rough patch.
And then in the late 80s, there was another time when it wasn't happening.
But there's probably a whole generation that just knows him from Lion King, even.
Well, that's the thing, right?
He's got Oscar after Oscar for the 10 Disney movies he made.
But if you think about our childhood...
We, Elton John had seven number one albums in a row.
And some of those records.
And broad appeal, real broad appeal.
Yeah.
And some of them had three or four singles.
And so you and I, five years old, toddling around.
Mm-hmm.
Elton John's coming out of every AM radio in every car that's driving by.
I mean, we just know that music to the depths of our core.
Mm-hmm.
And then all the thousands and thousands of times you've heard Rocketman since 1999.
So I was preloaded to be like, oh man, I'm going to, this is going to be emotional because
because I've been to concerts before and I'm affected by them in, in, in similar, but different ways to the way you are affected by music.
Right.
Of course.
Of course.
Uh, it lands in a certain way and it is, it, it, uh, it brings it all up for me.
Right.
And I can be, I, I've told you the story, right.
Where Sean Nelson and I got asked to open for, they might be giants.
And it was before I'd,
I mean, this was when we met them.
And you came out to the show.
I was there.
I was at Great American.
Yeah.
And we were headed down.
Do you remember that?
Sean and I took the Amtrak down.
Is that when you had the convertible?
Yeah, we rented the convertible.
I remember that.
Yeah, we took the Amtrak down.
At one point, Sean said, after we left San Francisco, we were down driving through Lodi.
And Sean was like, pull over.
Let's get our hair washed.
Pull over here.
Let's get our hair washed.
And we drove into Lodi and found a nail salon.
Get our hair washed.
That stuck out in Lodi again, getting my hair washed.
And I was like, what are we doing?
And he was like, trust me.
And we went into this hair salon, nail salon.
They were never seen again.
In Lodi, California.
And I was just looking around like, what is happening?
And we walked in and he was like, we'd like two hair washes, please.
And then the nail salon ladies were like, sure, come on in.
And they did the whole, like, wash your hair thing that they do before they give you a haircut.
Right.
But it was just that.
So I remember when I very first heard about a place where you can just go mostly just get your hair blow dried.
You're telling me it's not unusual to walk in and be very specific.
To me, that would be like walking in and asking for a manicure of one nail.
Yeah, they didn't bat an eye at it.
That's amazing.
And I guess there are people...
There are people that walk around and they just go into hair salons and like, could you just wash my hair?
And it's like, sure.
You know, 15 bucks.
That sounds so relaxing to me.
It was great.
But anyway, as we're going to meet They Might Be Giants for the first time, I had not thought about They Might Be Giants since college, really.
Mm-hmm.
And so I was like, oh man, these, they might be giant shows.
These are going to be a laugh riot.
You know, these guys are, have you met Marty?
These guys are a clown act.
Their drummer is so rock and roll, but it's going to be just like, ah, this is like, ah, this is like a weird owl.
Yeah.
And Sean was like,
They Might Be Giants are geniuses, and their music is genius.
But that's coming.
Hey, Sean, I love you, bud.
But that's the kind of thing Sean might say.
He might say that about Robin George with the album Dangerous Music.
He's a fan, like me.
He was sitting in the seat next to me dressed like Pagliacci.
So, yeah, he was just like, you know.
But, Doctor, I am Sean Nelson.
They're amazing.
They're amazing.
And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, they're amazing.
They're amazing.
And so we pull in and we're sitting there at the Great American and they set up and start doing their sound check.
And they, you know, they're pulling out one hit after another.
And I realize I know the words to every one of their songs.
And I get so emotional and tears are streaming down my face.
And Sean is walking around.
I'm sitting there.
I'm hiding behind a column because I'm so embarrassed.
that i'm like you know you're like you're like nelson months i didn't think they were gonna do anna ang and then bang they did what's happening to me i don't even know what the song is called but why do i know every note of it and he walks by please pass the please i wasn't crying at that but come on but he comes and he looks at me and he's like oh clown act huh and i was like oh
who's the captain now but so i go to elton john i'm thinking oh you know i'm gonna get emotional i just don't know where it's gonna come i don't and i and i'm not looking forward to it you know like this is not what i'm here for i'm here because because of your kid or just because no no just because you know that kind of emotion like i you know i say all the time like when was the last time i cried when was the last time you cried i mean you do cry
I cry, yeah.
But, you know, I don't normally cry.
Things get, the pressure gets on.
It doesn't get older.
Like, for example, my brother-in-law, my wife's brother, he doesn't cry.
Well, I mean, he does cry at funerals, but he really cries when the Patriots lose.
See, I celebrate when the Patriots lose.
He ugly cries when the socks lose.
The only time I cry is to music.
And generally that's fast.
It's a fast, fast, fast trip to a quick cry for sure.
Yeah.
And, and it, and it usually happens in, in when I'm alone, like quietly, like I'll go, I'll put something on and, and it's a thing that, and it, you know, sometimes really set me off, you know, like.
Well, and that's, but John, here's the thing one realizes about crying.
It's one thing to like cry earlier in life.
And people, I've heard it said that crying is what happens when you've given up in some ways.
And not just giving up on keeping your composure, but where you're kind of at, you know, at sixes and sevens.
And the thing is, as you get older, this is such, sounds like I'm not making a good point, but I think it is a good point.
You don't know what's going to make you cry.
And that's the point.
So, you know what I'm saying?
The fact that you can't see it coming a lot of times is what makes the crying so abrupt, and you're so emotionally involved in it in a way you never could have anticipated.
Yeah, right.
It is precisely the sneak-upitude of it.
Yep, yep, yep.
And so, you know, and we're watching Elton, and he puts Rocketman in there pretty early in the set, and...
And, you know, and I feel a lot of emotion about it and I'm thinking about its place in history and in my life and this moment, his last show in Washington.
And you're there with your kid?
And my daughter loves it and knows every word and she's jumping up and down.
But I feel, you know, I feel appropriately misty about it.
But nothing, you know, I'm not, I have not lost any grip, right?
I'm just like, the rocket man.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then a few songs go by and they launch into Philadelphia Freedom.
What?
That's the one?
That's so fun.
It came out of left field for me, Philadelphia Freedom, because I hadn't heard it in a long time.
It used to be a rolling stone, you know.
You know.
Yeah.
And Philadelphia Freedom was a song that
I remember very distinctly dancing to in my room in 1975, right.
Or 1977, whatever that was, you know, it was, it was right around the bicentennial.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it was just, it was the hit of the summer or whatever.
And I remember it so clearly and I, and I knew every word and I, and it's a, it's a great dance tune.
Yeah.
And so I'm dancing and then all of a sudden I just get hit with that wall of like memory of what it felt like in the
in the seventies to be a kid at the time and the hope that we had for the future.
And we knew that we were going to have jet packs and we knew that, you know, you didn't know what you didn't know and the things you thought you knew about the future.
It's like, and then there's that, what I just call the toy story problem, which is the way you can watch toy story over the years and experience it on so many different levels.
And sorry, once you're a parent, it's really, it's really overwhelming to realize like, Oh,
All the parents in your family used to be kids.
And there's something that sounds so deeply biologically obvious.
And yet when it does land on you, you're like, oh, this is how my dad felt.
Or this is how his dad felt or whomever.
And I find it hard to gauge.
Don't know when it's coming.
And then when it hits, it really hits.
It's why I cried during that one episode of Doctor Who.
The biggest crier in my life is this one episode of Doctor Who where there's three different versions of Doctor Good.
I know this is corny and you're allowed to make fun of me, but there's something so poignant about meeting a version of yourself who knows and doesn't know certain things.
And there's one version of the doctor who basically had to destroy his own planet and kill all these kids.
And the other doctor, like, can't remember it.
But there's just something about that when you think about it.
And that's one reason also why time travel is so poignant to me.
Time travel is lonely, as John Van der Slye says.
But you know what I'm saying?
You don't know where it's coming from, but it's things that force you.
This is like a very dry intellectual way to put this deeply emotional issue.
But when you're forced to confront two seemingly incompatible matrices that both have an emotional valence, boy, there's going to be a good cry coming.
Well, and that was that, that was, I just saw a Ryan Reynolds movie where he meets his younger self and it really failed to do the thing that you're talking about.
Like I was so primed to.
Yeah.
I thought the kid was a good actor though.
The kid was a good actor and the, and Ryan Reynolds is funny and it's fun.
It was fun.
It was a fun movie.
I like when he threatens the, threatens the bully.
I thought that was funny.
Yeah, that was good, but you know, they played it, they played it for laughs or Ryan Reynolds is being like snarky.
And it's like, dude, you're meeting your young, your, your 10 year old self.
And all you can do is like, Hey kid, get out, get out of my light.
You're blocking my, you know, I was just like, wow, weird.
Anyway, Philadelphia freedom.
I had a great time.
I cried, but they were kind of tears of joy and longing, you know, a little bit of that.
I think about it a lot.
How much the jet age was still in effect when we were little.
and how much we still 2001 a space odyssey still seemed like like real there was there wasn't a space shuttle yet there were still people walking on the moon it was and then and elton john's music and and and david bowie's music was was accompanying it in a weird way yeah so so then i'm fine then i've had my little you know cry then we're back to dancing then you know the then there's some ballads and whatnot
And then out of no place, I guess it's not out of no place.
It's just in his set.
He starts to play Someone Save My Life Tonight.
Oh, it's such a good song.
Which I didn't realize was a song that apparently means the world to me.
And hearing it, it's not playing on the radio in your car in the way you've heard.
Like, you're there.
It's happening.
I'm vice president of the really obvious.
But you're there.
It's happening around you.
Can I just underscore again?
Your fucking family is standing there with you.
Your family, like you and your sister was probably too young to like any of those songs.
Well, in the way that you did at the time.
And now you're all doing this together.
And then, so what did you...
It never occurred to you that this was a big one for you.
No.
And so, and I had done the, I'd done the honorable thing as we walked into the, to our row of seats, you know, every it's, it's a thing in a group of people like this, who is sitting next to who, and it's not like a cool thing.
It's like, everybody kind of want to sit, wants to sit next to the little girl.
but they also have a lot of stuff to say to each other, but everybody kind of wants to talk to me too a little bit.
And I said, here, I'll sit at the end.
You guys sit close to this, closer to the stage than me.
And I will sit here at the, not, not at the aisle, but I'll sit, sit at the end of our little group.
And so, and anyway, they're all facing the stage, looking away from me.
I'm at the back, in other words.
And, um,
And then it just, someone saved my life tonight.
And you know, that song's got a gut.
There's a lot of information in it, but also I remember distinctly getting very emotional to that song 20, 30 years ago.
And I was, and I, and I, and I had super interesting.
Yeah.
I'd forgotten about, you know, because it's a, it's a song of desperation.
It's a song of being like, I'm at my wits end.
And then someone, some, someone, a sugar bear.
Comes in and saves your life.
And butterflies are free to fly.
How does it start?
It's the, you know, like a lot of.
Boy, the piano part on that is so pretty in my head.
Well, then that's the other thing about Elton John.
every song sounds the same when he starts it, you know, it's his distinctive, it's his distinctive chords.
He tinkles them out.
Yeah.
You're like, Oh, well, which one is this?
I kind of remember it.
And then quarter notes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's something about East end lights at the start.
You know, he's talking about his, his light or it's early life.
Oh, she, she packed my bags and I pre-flight.
No, that's rocket man.
Yeah.
Um,
And, and, uh, yeah.
And then, then I was just like, so you're sitting on the end and I'm just sobbing, just sobbing, tears streaming down my face and I'm singing, you know, I'm also singing at the top of my lungs.
You don't seem like you sing at the show kind of guy.
I am though at the, in this moment.
Sure.
I love it.
Like really belting it out, but it's a very loud show.
Nobody can hear me.
None of my family ever.
Butterflies are free to fly.
Fly away.
Yeah, they are.
Fly away.
Bye.
Bye.
I can locate that very much.
I want to almost say 75 because I feel like it's around the same time I was obsessed with listening to what the man said.
Yeah.
This was a time when I was very into AM radio.
It is 75.
Okay.
You got to listen to what the man said.
He said.
And then he's not afraid to put a little bit of soprano sax on there.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Well, and he's, Elton's on tour with, like,
three guys from his original band everybody on stage is 75 years old but they're all totally rocking out like they've you know they've it's it's a superstar fun really fun and so then but you know then so i managed the song is over and i and i collect all the pieces of myself back together and reshape them into a form that basically looks like me again
And no one in my... Dry up all your puddles.
Yeah, exactly.
But pat them out with the towel.
And no one in my group has ever looked back.
None of them noticed at all.
And the people all around me are all engaged in the show.
Nobody's paying any attention to me.
I'm just standing in a room with 30,000 of my closest friends just like losing my shit.
And so...
It was a kind of catharsis that I was prepared to have and was guarding against, and yet it still snuck in and got me.
That's how they get you.
That's how they get you.
And then, you know, of course, I had the wonderful experience, the version that you were saying about –
about all this information that we have about guitars and old bands that's not useful anymore really nobody cares but what i do know how to do marilyn yeah is get my family out of a venue at the end of a show
while everyone else is crowded in a fire trap stampede situation by the three empty doors you've got some ancient wisdom that still is useful i do and all i looked at them all and they were like we have to go to the bathroom and i was like okay how many people have to go to the bathroom everybody three people have to go to the ladies bathroom four people have to go to the ladies room and then there's and then there's daddy
And I look up and the, and those, the aisles are crammed full of people.
Nobody's moving.
I can see up at the top that they've literally chained the exits closed.
Like they're, they're 75 year old ladies who are, who are making a human chain going, you can't go out this way.
Hmm.
And I was like, listen, there are death traps all around us.
You have no idea how serious this situation is.
This seems to you to be just the end of the concert, and we're going to go to the potty.
But that's not what this is right now.
I'm about to turn you into a hero.
This is where people die right now.
Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely.
And so follow me.
If you want to leave.
Yeah.
If you want to live, follow me.
And I got them completely out.
You know, we just never stopped moving.
It was just like snake, snake, snake down onto the thing back in through the, there are not loading dock and boom, boom, boom.
Found a bathroom.
There are nobody in out the door.
And then right down the middle of the street, the cops had blocked off the street, of course.
And there are 10,000 people trying to walk on the sidewalks.
And I was like, and you know, my daughter doesn't like to disobey the rules.
Oh, me neither.
But sometimes with my kid, I'm like, look, it's so much more important.
Yes, traffic signals matter.
Walk and don't walk signs matter.
That's all one-fifteenth as important as situational awareness.
And the situational awareness of this right now is you need to get away from these fucking sheeple.
Yes.
You got a break from the pack.
I said, hold my hand, sweetheart.
And she was like, but, but.
And I said, just watch.
And we walked out to the...
The freaking dotted yellow line down the middle of the road.
And I was like, do you see way up there?
Three blocks away.
The police have blocked it off.
Now look behind us way back there.
Three blocks away.
The police have blocked it off.
There's nothing.
This street is just, we could be having a freaking Mardi Gras out here.
And now look at the people that are, that are elbowing each other, jostling down the sidewalk on either side.
So let's just show them.
Can we just show them?
Let's just walk with our arms all the way wide.
Let's just, oh, it's a, it's a hands across America as we walk down the,
free and clear down the center of this, this blocked street.
And she, I think she really got it because it was so freaking obvious.
And then of course people are like, Hey, wait a minute.
Why aren't we walking in?
Well, and by you, by you, Oh, you've opened a hole.
Now other people can, can move better.
That's fewer people now that are in that.
If we would all dispense in sensible ways against situational awareness, that's good for everybody.
You're not cheating.
You're leading.
That's right.
I'm not blocking you.
I'm not, you know, this is a merge situation, a zipper merge.
Zipper merge.
Yeah.
Anyway, I got home last night, and of course I wanted to know about every Elton John record.
I wanted to know the singles chronology.
I wanted to know who played percussion on every song.
And it was then that I found the absolute Merlin Mann super crush.
There's so many things you brought me in life, John, but one of the things, there's a thing, you don't bring me as much as some of my other pals, not flowers, but it's not that often...
going to our relationship maybe you don't bring me a zinger surprise hey were you aware that this person is that person a la your partner mother partner daughter mother person and it is not my it's my not my core competency like hey marlin here's
Hey, yeah, you split my head in half, you piece of shit.
What the fuck?
Here's a pop culture thing.
Confidential to John Tercusa.
Keep your ears open for this one, buddy, because it's going to blow your mind.
So one of the last singles that Elton John had in our core era, maybe the last.
It's got to be from, what, 86?
86.
It feels very Billy Joel plays in Moscow era.
Yeah, and this was when we were so fascinated by the Soviet Union, we'd been threatened with nuclear war our entire lives.
Then we realized, well, we're not so different, you and I. Hey, yeah, that's right.
Do the Russians love their children too?
Do they?
You know, spies like us, spies like us.
Well, there was so much, there was so much, it was so ripe for, I don't know, I don't know why.
I mean, there's not a ton in 1968.
This is not Glassnose.
This is two years before Glassnose.
Two years before, right.
But there was definitely, maybe we were starting to transition out of the pants shitting fear of nuclear war, but there was a certain, certainly like an, uh, uh,
it was a kind of fascination with Russia or Soviet Union opening up and like, even in small ways.
And, you know, if William Joel can go there, you know, yeah, it was, it was weird.
It was like, they were a fetish item for us.
Yeah.
Anyway, Elton John, you know, having had a few pretty good hits in the eighties, but still very much on cocaine.
He, he comes out with a song, Nikita,
With about his, uh, his unrequited love for a Russian border guard and the video at the time, and he did not play Nikita at the show.
This is just part of my, like, I'm going through.
He did not, uh, he did not play it.
But, but when that video came out, it was a ridiculous video on the face of it.
elton john in a bright kind it didn't kind of suffer from the like this is a this is a serious or like this is a very artistic statement well but yes it did it was like this is a serious serious music video that probably cost a million dollars to make and it's but what was what was crazy about it was by then we all knew elton john was gay and he was still like he had a
That was the period he had a wife maybe like it was Elton John is in a red Bentley convertible wearing a, uh, a straw boater and a hat or a, and a jacket made out of feathers or whatever.
And we are asked watching the video.
To believe that he's developed a fast crush.
He's infatuated with a 22-year-old Russian border guard who's like flirting with him crazy.
Now, what I learned in my research was that Nikita...
is a man's name in Russian.
And when Elton was asked in an interview, well, now wait a minute.
Oh, it's one of those names like Misha.
Like Misha, I knew, the Mishas I've known were girls, but apparently it's Russian Michael.
Nikita is a Russian boy's name.
And when asked in an interview about it at the time, Elton said, yeah, I know.
Thanks, Sherlock.
And so he wrote the song.
You solved my riddle.
Please listen closely.
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he wrote the song about falling in love with a male russian bodyguard who was flirting him up at the border who was flirting him up with the border but the guy that came along and sold the video treatment to the label said we got to put a foxy girl in russell mckay he's not going to touch this and so elton was like okay you know like yeah it's pop music and i'm on cocaine so yeah let's put a girl in there that's fine and so through the whole music video you can tell he could not be less interested in this girl
She's a very attractive woman.
She's extremely attractive, and he is just flat affect through the entire thing.
Yeah.
And that was obvious to me as a 16-year-old, but I was in love with her to my very soul.
Your femme Nikita.
She was my femme Nikita.
Mm-hmm.
and so i had to watch the video because i just remember watching it so uh avidly at the time i i was very specific about crushes i mean i was attracted to all of the the three girls in sharp dressed man but i did have a specific favorite like i was i was i was very specifically horny in the 1980s i could get extremely specific nikita from the music video looked very much like the obermeyer ski girl
Oh.
And the Obermeyer ski girl was, of course, my ultimate crush.
Obermeyer ski girl.
The Obermeyer ski girl was the girl that they used to advertise Obermeyer ski wear.
In magazine ads on the back page of like ski magazine or, you know, it was a time mid eighties when skiing was really popular.
Luxurious long haired brunette.
She was.
No, no, no, no.
Have to be a blonde, right?
No.
Here's the thing.
The, if you look up the Obermeyer ski girl, you're going to get a different one.
Yeah, because there was a more famous one that came later.
One that looks kind of like Shalom Harlow, which looks a little late for your vintage.
Yeah.
The one that I'm talking about was very early 80s.
And she looks very much like the girl in the Nikita ski.
I'm not not ski Nikita music video.
So, of course, I say, who was that wonderful person?
Tell me more about her.
That I spent a lot of time kind of gazing into her light-colored eyes and wishing that I were trying to get across the East German border in my red Bentley convertible.
Oh, I see what you're saying.
You're saying you'd like to march toward her Stalingrad.
Exactly.
And I then learned that she...
Was the same woman as appears... Are you ready?
This is the same actress as appeared in something else.
Should we give people a second to sit with it?
Yeah, let's just let everybody think about it for a second.
The same...
actor that appears in the 1984 Mac ad.
The girl who throws the javelin at Big Brother.
She throws the hammer.
The hammer at Big Brother.
At Big Brother.
Her name is Anya Major.
Anya Major.
Anya Major Roderick.
Anya Major Roderick would be a pretty name.
They chose her to...
to throw the hammer because they auditioned a lot of uh of like comely actresses and none of them could throw the hammer one of them like threw a hammer on the back of the and back of your glossy it'll have stuff like i can do american sign language and ride a horse and i can throw a fucking hammer she threw that hammer and when you look at the video now everyone go could i have the room please everyone except on you yeah go yeah on you thank you everyone everybody but on you
Um, and she throws the shit out of that hammer in that ad.
She was, you know, she's an athletic person.
She's super mad about PCs.
So they, so she's from England and they, uh, they, uh, they auditioned her.
She threw the hammer in the ad and then somebody was like, let's cast her in this Nikita video.
And I mean, so much cocaine for my money.
She should have been president of the United States, but she was English.
She couldn't do it.
Oh, right.
Okay, I see what you're saying.
But she could have served in Congress.
She could have served in Congress.
Have you done a Where Are They Now honor?
I think she's living happily somewhere.
She's got a nice partner and some children's and, you know, time marches on.
They got better health care there.
Like you and me, right?
Happy with some children.
Yes, happy.
Happy as could be expected, sure.
Time has changed us hardly at all.
And, you know, probably if I really looked at her Wikipedia page, she's like two years older than us or something.
You know what I mean?
Like she's probably not.
She says here she's become the new model for the National Front.
No!
Oh, V. Gates.
I've been watching so much Hitler.
Oh my God, Merlin, she's your age.
She was born in 1966.
Well, she's practically your age.
She was born in 1966.
Don't piss from the high ground about numbers with me, young man.
That's two years older than me.
And apparently the Macintosh ad only ever screened twice on American television.
Did you know this?
No.
It screened once right before the 1 a.m.
show.
Color bars right before the national anthem played.
Oh, sure.
On KMVT in Twin Falls, Idaho.
Oldest memory.
They rolled it out.
They rolled it out like we got to show this in order to be eligible for a Clio.
Oh, they did a Netflix before Netflix.
Yeah.
Oh, shit, dog.
It was some random December night.
They played it once in Twin Falls.
Well, what they did was they slipped it in.
I mean, not the black flag style, but they got it in under the radar.
Who's going to be watching?
You should see the flags and the missiles and whatnot.
Maybe that's North Korea.
But in any case, right before the anthem plays, huh, 1984 is not going to be like 1984.
Yeah.
1984 is not going to be like 1984.
They had better technology in 1984.
There's telescreens, huh?
It was still possible we were going to live on space stations in 1984.
I know.
It doesn't seem possible.
We'll go back to the work of Elton John.
That's where we were.
There's no reason to think not to.
Maybe we're having a little anoregonum from sending peoples to the moon.
But certainly we'll be doing this again.
Look at this.
Look at this.
They just launched a goddamn space plane off the back of a Boeing.
Remember that when you first saw the space shuttle on the back of the piggybacking on the plane?
I was in my grandparents' house when that first happened.
I was like, this is truly the future.
This is it.
It's going to happen.
It's happening.
It's happening all around us.
Did you ever think that short of a nuclear war that there would not be a Soviet Union?
No, absolutely not.
I mean, yeah.
I mean, talk about the big bads.
Yeah.
It was so handy to have a big bad.
They were instrumental to our education, as I've told you before.
When I first went into high school in 1982, you would hear about Mr. Sherwood.
who was a retired army colonel.
And according to my friend DJ's grandfather, a double dipper, because he was working as a teacher as well as getting his colonel money.
But he was famous for the class he would take in senior year, which was American history.
And people would say, call it a VC.
And not ABC, AVC.
And I said, what's AVC?
And they say Americanism versus communism.
I said, oh, so it's like pretty, you know, politically.
No, the class is called American History, colon, Americanism versus communism.
Americanism.
Versus Americanism, which is not a thing.
It's not a thing.
Americanism.
He served.
Yeah, sure.
Now he's double dipping.
There are members of Congress right now.
He used to wear those cool Cuban shirts like Senior Chang.
He'd wear those cool like Capybara shirts, whatever they're called.
And yeah, and he would say first day, he said, listen, one thing you got to know about this class, it's my way or the highway.
And I wrote that on the front of my red folder.
One of many quotes from Robert Sherwood, who wrote my recommendation for New College.
Good man.
My way or the highway.
It's my way or the highway.
He said, mines are like parachutes.
They function best when open.
I wrote that down on my red folder, too.
He wrote me a really nice recommendation.
I really, you know, these days.
AVC, John.
You could not go into a class as a teacher on the first day and say, it's my way or the highway.
I don't think a public school is going to welcome that.
No, I really wish you could, though, because it's the one thing that keeps me from being a teacher.
If you could say that on the first day, I'd go be a teacher right now.
You should be able to lay down a truthful law.
When I say lay down the law, I don't mean just be imperious.
But I think you should be able to say, hey, look.
So, like, I'm telling you.
Whatever bullshit you're getting on the other two floors of Gulf Comprehensive High School in the year 1984, I just need to be real square with you right up front.
I am a retired colonel.
I do double dip.
I made up the word Americanism, and it's super clear.
It's very important that all of you know that it is my way or the highway.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
This is how it's going to go.
Hint, you don't want the highway.
It's 2023.
I am your teacher, Mr. Roderick.
Meet me.
Call me Mr. Roderick.
You're never even going to know my first name.
They call me Mr. Roderick.
You're never going to know my first name.
No.
For all you know, it's Klee Klorp.
NTK.
NTK.
I have a need to know first name.
Here's all you need to know.
Here's the syllabus.
My way or the highway.
Oh, yeah.
All right.
Open your books to page one.
Okay.
Half of you just failed.
Look to your left and look to your right.
None of you will graduate.
I got chunks of guys like you in my stool.