Ep. 503: "A Still Period"
Hello.
Hi, John.
Hi, Merlin.
How's it going?
Are you okay?
Are you in the middle of something?
No.
That's fine.
Okay.
It sounds like you're in the middle of something.
I had a little bite of a cookie, and then I needed to chase it with some coffee, and it all happened, and then you called it.
It all happened at once.
Okay.
Is there a better time?
No, no, no.
It's perfect.
It's just... Life goes on.
It does, and I'm doing something different.
I'm doing something new.
Can I inquire what that is?
Well...
Do you feel like your couches are quality?
Do you have a quality couch?
That's a complicated question.
We're in the market for a new couch.
I...
See, it's a former sponsor.
I don't want to be unkind.
But like, yeah, I like the one we've got.
But one time when I was having a lot of physical pain, I had a heating pad on and it burned a hole in a little bit.
Oh, no.
I mean, you know.
A long, tall heating pad.
I think a theme of this could be life goes on, you know.
It does.
Because I still have the pain, but now I also have a hole.
I feel like you just telling me that life goes on is maybe the most important thing that's happened to me in a while.
Thank you.
Thank you.
You're so welcome, John.
And thank you for, thank you for being here and thank you for hearing it because I think there are so many people who have not completely gotten hip to the fact that, that, you know, just keeps coming.
Life goes.
Yeah, you know, sometimes it's good.
I mean, whatever.
I don't want to, I'm not here to judge.
No, no, it's what I needed.
It's what I needed to hear.
I'll never have a couch I'm totally happy with because the couch I want, it's one of those things like, you know, like like partners or, you know, jobs where I mostly absolutely know what I don't want.
But that's not how we choose things in life.
That's how we that can be how we avoid things.
But, you know, sometimes the right couch comes along, you know, it's hard to choose what you don't want.
It's true.
Also, I have a lot of feelings about I want to get back to your couch, but I have a lot of feelings.
I think I'm realizing about the height of a couch, like how high off the ground it is.
How high?
When somebody says couch, you say how high?
How high?
How high is the couch, mama?
My mom, when she got promoted to being a big wig.
She got an office.
This is at the pipeline, the Alaska pipeline.
I kind of love that word.
She managed computer programmers, right?
She was a big, she had a big, she was a department head, you know, computers, and she got an office big.
This is, you know, in the 80s.
She got one of those offices where people can come in and be there.
Big office.
And one of the things that the office had was this cognac leather couch that was like nine feet long.
Is that in the parlance?
I don't think I know that phrase.
I love it.
She said that she took a nap on the couch every day, you know, because it's an office.
You can close the door and everybody can fuck off.
Oh, good for her.
And then, so then I started going in to see her at the office.
When I was in high school, my high school was next door to her office.
And the first three.
I don't think I ever knew that.
Yeah.
The Alyoska Pipeline headquarters and East High School were across the street from each other.
The thing is that it was, you know, 60s, 70s architecture, so it still was about a half a mile from door to door.
Yeah, right.
Across many long stretches.
But anyway, the first, probably the first week of high school was,
Every day at lunchtime, I would walk over to my mom's office and I would get one of those temporary badges and security would walk me through and I would go upstairs and have lunch in the employee lunchroom with her.
And after about day four or five.
You're 15 approximately.
I was 14, 14.
After the first four or five days, she said, you know, you can't come here anymore.
You can't just come have lunch here every day.
Go back to your school.
Why not?
Go back to your school.
Says who?
You're the manager.
And make friends.
She's Mrs. Manager.
She didn't want me there.
She was like, you know, you're cramping my style, kid.
Go back to your school.
You're insulting her pipeline game.
But years later, I would go in her office and sit in there, and I swear to you, the couch was amazing.
World class.
Perfect nap couch.
You lay down on it, you're asleep an instant.
Good length?
Good width?
So long, so perfectly deep.
Could you keep the cushions on it and still have a nap?
Well, the thing is, it wasn't cushions.
It was a leather couch, and it was like the old... Cognac leather.
It was the old Chesterfield style where it was like... Oh, I see more like a settee or a... What's that fancy English term people use?
Like a... I know what you're talking about, though.
Not minimalist necessarily, but it's got that mid-century sort of like, no, no, we don't got no cushions here.
This is a new century, the new frontier, as Donald Fagan says.
It was a mid-century hot take on a, like, yeah, like a classic sort of button tufted.
I can see it right this minute.
Oh, my God.
And she said when she left the pipe.
Devan.
That was the word I was looking for.
But long.
It's a long.
Long Devan.
Okay.
Long Devan.
And it's that's one word.
Longer van.
Longer van.
And and she said she said she said they when when she left the pipeline, you know, they gave her the retirement package.
She had it all figured out.
And she said what she should have done is take the couch.
That, that leaving the couch there was just to, was just to leave the couch to someone that would, would never appreciate it, never get it.
Leave the severance, take the cognac leather.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Well, no, she should have taken the severance too, but also just on the, on the day out, right.
Just be like, I am, I'm taking the couch.
Well, I have a couch here that it's green velvet couch and I, I love it very much.
It's not an uncommon couch.
I posted a picture of it once and, uh,
And a friend down in California immediately sent me a picture of her couch, which was also a velvet couch, but it was blue velvet couch.
It's got little round little tube pillows at the edge.
It's mid-century.
It's poofy.
It's stuffed with real feathers.
None of that artificial stuff from overseas for you.
No, it's not foam.
It's feathers, and the little feathers stick out sometimes.
Artisanal heritage birds.
Heritage birds.
I love putting the word heritage in front of things.
I'm growing green onions right now.
Are they heritage onions?
For some reason, the phrase heritage green onions went through my head, and it made me laugh.
I'm glad I could share it with you anyway.
These are heritage scallions.
I like heritage brands, and for Father's Day, I got a pair of heritage brand boots made in the U.S.A.
I don't want to drill it into a whole thing, but my family had a very fast trip to the East Coast this weekend.
Oh.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I saw a Duluth Trading Company store.
A store?
Yeah.
Like a brick and mortar store?
Did you know those exist?
I did not.
I sure did not.
It was online only.
I have looked at the Duluth Trading Company catalog, every aspect of it since the early 2000s, and it's been like penthouse forum to me the entire time.
And there's a store.
There's a store.
It's in New Jersey.
Whoa.
Yeah.
Of all the places.
That's a long way from Duluth.
Yeah, and they get Trader Joe's too.
There's almost no reason to live here anymore.
Okay.
So, okay.
But like, and so velvet, is it hot in the summer?
Oh, no.
It breathes.
It's part, you know, I think partly it's the heritage birds.
Yeah.
The heritage birds keep it breathable.
But I'm somebody who...
you know i when i go to a mexican restaurant i order a different thing every time i am not an order the same thing type of guy this is known yeah but when i walk into the living room i sit on the same place on the couch i just get my place it's usually to the right it's the right arm of the couch i am so deeply into this conversation and i have no idea how much i'm into this conversation i sit in my spot
Yeah.
You have a John shaped spot on your green velvet boy.
Now, every couch I've ever had, I have sat in my spot on the couch.
Yeah.
And I've had a lot of.
It's the equivalent of an aisle seat.
Yeah, that's right.
That's right.
I'm there.
I got my right elbow up on the edge.
Oh, me too.
That arm smells like me at this point.
If I scooch over a little bit, I can kind of lean back in the corner.
You keep the really pillows on all the time?
They end up on the floor, but I've got a lot of pillows on there now.
In fact, I even have a pillow from the Hello Pillow Company.
Hello?
Hello.
That's made of holes.
It's like nine pounds, this thing, or 19 pounds.
Anyway.
What I noticed was that I started to have one end of a couch that was more squashed.
Oh, it's incontrovertible whose area that is that's there all the time online.
It's comical.
It would be almost like stepping onto like a ferry.
And there's this one seat you always sit in that you barely sit in.
And after you leave, it still looks like you.
That's me.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because it's your spot.
John, I'm sorry.
It's your story.
It's okay.
But it's your spot, John.
It's my spot.
But although I like to sit in the same spot every day...
I don't want the Vietnamese to, I don't want the Viet Cong to smell my soap.
Right?
I don't want somebody to walk in.
I don't want some detective.
Do you know how many young men we lost because of that?
That's the thing.
I don't want a detective coming in here trying to solve a crime and go like, well, he clearly sits here.
All right, sounds good.
Just one more question.
I noticed one part here where it's got a very, very deep sink and pounce.
So you're saying you couldn't see the crime, but if you were sitting here, this is where you sit, isn't it?
A lot of USB cables on this side.
You would have been able to see it from here.
Am I right?
All right, all right.
That pretty much wraps it up.
I'm sitting here right now.
How tall are you?
Let me sit on a pillow.
You know, when I get home, my wife is always bugging me to move to a different part of the couch.
What?
We had a little bit of air.
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Because by the time Super Train arrives, it may already be too late for you.
Is that a chance you really want to take?
I'll put a house head there.
You like that?
That's good.
That's good.
Yeah.
All right.
So, so.
So.
So I flipped the cushion, but the cushion's not really as you were just getting to.
The cushions these days aren't meant to be.
That's about as useful as turning your underpants inside out.
And they're not meant to be flipped around like in the old days.
It's not like, oh my God, Jesus fucking Christ, John.
We had a couch where you could flip anything and it was always exactly the same.
You could flip anything, any direction, every cushion fit every place.
Yes.
And now- It was like Lego.
People understood things then.
So sometimes I'll take the cushions off and I'll punch, because they got feathers in them, I'll punch them real hard to try and get the feathers back.
Yeah.
And then I'm there.
I'm punching my couch.
I'm trying to get it back to wherever it is.
Yeah, I'm getting restored.
Showrooms shine, you know?
And so the other day I was cleaning up my house.
I was stacking books.
I was moving stuff around.
And I was like, you know, I want this couch to last long, a long time.
And it's not going to last a long time if I keep sitting in this one spot.
Because...
I can only flip this cushion so many times.
Eventually, I'm going to have a couch where all the water runs to the low spot.
And so I looked around the living room.
I mean, there's ways in which we've already identified the Colombo problem title.
But you may also be unintentionally, just because, again, life goes on, you might be causing OPSEC issues, some kind of security issues.
And certainly if you, as our friend John Shethuth says, moisture is the enemy of the homeowner.
And you're probably pretty moist sometimes.
Yeah.
Well, but except, you know, when I come in and I'm glowing, as we say, you know, I'll put a blanket down.
I don't want the glow to get on the, this isn't a leather couch.
That's classy.
It's not a cognac.
You can't wipe it down.
No, you can't wipe it down.
I've got a whole stack of Pendleton blankets here.
I just put blankets down.
The Pendletons can take it.
You know, they belong on a horse, those things.
Anyway, I looked around the living room and I was like, you know, there are two other chairs in this living room.
One of them is orange.
It's orange.
It's a swivel chair.
And one of them is green.
Okay, but like orange chair, is it like a jokey 60s chair?
Yeah.
Yeah, that's right.
It's a jokey 60s chair.
I can see it.
I can immediately see it.
Yeah, it looks like something that Captain Kirk would sit in in his private quarters.
It looks like something that Captain Kirk would have removed for a nicer chair.
And what's the other chair, please?
The other chair is a green velvet chair that matches the couch that I got at the same time.
Is it boxy and rigid?
It's boxy and rigid.
See, I don't like a chair like that.
but it's low and it has a dorm room chair.
No, no, no.
It has low arms.
It's a, it's a, well, and the thing is it's deep.
Yeah, it's your story, but I wanted to know how deep your couch is as well.
So that can be uncomfortable for somebody like me.
As you know, I have rise issues.
And in some ways, that's very heavily related to my poor leg length.
Well, that's why the little round pillows.
I look like the hedgehog and fantastic Mr. Fox with my little legs swinging off it, my little feet.
Well, that's why flying isn't so awful for you.
But that's what the little tube pillows are for.
You stick one of those there and it pushes you out a little bit.
if you need it sitting on a phone book at thanksgiving like sitting on a phone book so i said wait a minute wait just a cotton picking minute what if what if i moved my recording setup over to the green chair if i make the green chair look like me nobody will notice because there's not another side of it am i correctly identifying here that up until now you record in your living room sitting on a couch
Yes.
Oh.
Don't you have like a special audio dungeon?
Yes.
Okay, that's an obsec, right?
Well, no, I don't record Roderick on the Line the same place that I record.
You only record the good shows in the studio.
No, I record Roderick on the Line.
You record My Bloody Valentine inflected rock songs.
Downstairs.
And our Mormon friend comes over and you guys go down into the dungeon.
Downstairs.
That's right, downstairs.
You said it up there, my goodness.
Wow.
It's a living room show.
So I sit on the couch where I have my coffee, where my children play with their toys.
And I have my whole setup.
I got my little Apogee Quartet.
I've got my SM7.
I've got all my little bits and bobs.
and i just put them under the coffee table you break it down and then you stow it under your seat for landing that's right except for those times when i don't think anybody's going to come over and then i just leave it on the coffee table that also leaves you open to like ad hoc interviews like if the if your letter carrier or or some kind of uh like a somebody on a mission in like a white shirt where the tie comes over you could do an ad or a cowboy you've met you could do an ad hoc podcast
Well, there's a guy.
He came up to me at a swim meet the other day.
Yeah.
And he's, and I knew him.
He's Alaska Airlines pilot.
We flew Alaska.
Oh, that's a nice airline.
Love that airline.
Yeah.
And he's a, he's a guy that, you know, I, I tried to be friends with him and he was always like, yeah, sure, whatever, you know, kind of like, and I, and after a while I was like, well, I'll just stop trying to be.
Big time in you.
A little.
Yeah.
It was a big time in me.
A little.
But he came up to me at this swim meet and he was like, I got an idea for you.
And I was like, I love it when conversation starts with that.
Tell me what your idea for me is.
And he said.
Always open to that.
He said, I'm a, as you know, airline pilot.
And my nephew just got his airline pilot rating.
And you ought to do a podcast where you have us both on and we all talk about aviation together.
Is that similar or analogous to where you were as a young person with piloting?
No.
His young nephew has all his ratings and is now getting an instructor rating.
He's like well along.
Okay.
A good pilot.
That would be a very good program.
Well, and so my friend is saying, these days, kids these days.
Mm-hmm.
They don't have to join the Air Force.
You can be 24 years old and make $150,000.
He kept saying $150,000.
Like $150,000 this kid could be making.
And it's like the lifeguard shortage.
Apparently, if you want to be an airline pilot now, you can just go right out of college.
Oh, geez.
Sorry.
Aren't there people who learn a lot of stuff from video games too, though?
Aren't there people who actually get pretty good at pilot things from Microsoft Flight Simulator?
Isn't that a thing?
Well, that guy that stole the airplane and crashed it into that island, he'd never flown a plane before in his life.
The one that did the loop-de-loop.
Mm-hmm.
But so, so anyway, my, my character friend, so I say to him, well, who are you kidding?
We all know that all these airplanes just fly themselves now and you're just babysitting them.
And he, and he, he kind of leaned in and he was like, you're not wrong.
He said, we don't even land them half the time anymore.
If it's foggy, if it's a really bad, foggy day, we don't even touch them.
The plane lands itself.
And I was like, this is world-class podcasting we're doing right by the swimming pool here.
I have to tell you, I'm sorry.
We're into a new phase outside.
I'll send you a photo.
Sounds like a jackhammer.
Well, I think you're going to really enjoy the photo I sent you.
That's a saw.
Am I right?
A concrete saw?
No.
We have been occupied by this latest phase, and I'm so sorry for that.
I have to tell you there, John, the captain...
I just watched a wonderful episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm last night where Larry insists on calling the pilot the captain because he likes to be called the captain.
In this case, the captain.
I have to tell you, I'm very surprised knowing just a little bit I know about all kinds of people.
That seems like something he's probably not supposed to be talking about.
I think that it's just it's like becoming increasingly becoming common knowledge.
that the pilots are just being paid to watch the gauges.
And they don't even need a pilot to watch the gauges because they got a computer somewhere under a mountain in Colorado that's watching the gauges.
You know what computers are good at?
It's in the digital, watching gauges.
Yes.
Yes, they are.
And all the flight controls are fly-by-wire now.
It's all being run by computers.
Oh, absolutely.
Oh, are you kidding me?
It's all computers now.
You can fly one of those.
You can fly a 737.
I might have already flown one and just don't remember it.
That's right.
That's right.
Can I ask how old his nephew is?
Like 20s probably?
Yeah, early 20s.
I mean, the guy himself isn't that old.
Okay.
He's younger than me.
Probably 40.
Oh, okay.
And he's one of these characters.
He's like 40, but he's restoring a 60s like a Camaro.
Not a Camaro, like a Chevelle.
He's restoring a Chevelle.
And I grew up with a lot of people that had janky Chevelles.
I love that band.
This guy, the janky Chevelles, this guy is restoring a car that is a generation earlier than the hot rod he should be restoring.
I'm trying to remember.
I want to say Chevelle, obviously a GM, right?
It wasn't sort of an economical sports car.
Well, it was in the middle.
It was between, you know, it was between like Chevy Nova, which would have been the entry level one, and then Chevelle, and then... It had a big motor in it, right?
They all did.
You know, that's the thing.
The whole muscle car thing was take a Nova, which should be like a commuter car for a secretary, and then put a blown 400 and see what happens.
See how fast you can spin the tires.
Anyway, so he's a character.
And I feel like maybe I should.
Maybe I should.
I'll have them over, sit in the living room, pull out the microphone.
Would they sit next to each other on the couch side by side?
Or would one of them sit in the joke chair?
No, now that I'm sitting across in the green chair.
which today is the first day I had to move everything over here.
And now you're Dick Cavett.
Yeah, I haven't.
I've probably sat in this chair four times since the day I bought it.
It's just one of these.
I'm a bachelor.
If you had anecdotes, just a few too many anecdotes about Groucho Marx, you are this close to being Dick Cavett at this point.
I got my three-by-five cards here.
I'm going to let John Lennon co-host with me.
Sure, sure, sure.
I mean, I've never sat in the orange chair, as far as I can tell, and I've only sat at the other end of the green couch.
It would reflect your presence at a point.
Well, I don't even know what... Yeah, exactly.
What would I be looking at?
But here in the green chair, what I didn't realize was that I can survey the entire...
A room.
I'm looking out.
Are you considering a seating change in general?
Are you considering abdicating the John hole?
I'm testing this out.
And part of what you identified it really early in the show.
Part of it is this chair is deep.
And when we say deep, we're saying there's a Z axis that accommodates a lot of femoral length.
No one is this.
No one is so long that they need a chair this deep.
This chair is deep for other reasons.
Maybe like a model.
No, I'm taller than any model.
You'd have to be a basketball player to be.
You think you're tall.
OK, you think you have longer thighs than like, I don't know, I haven't followed the trades in a while, but say like a Mila Jovovich or a Claudia Schiffer.
I mean, they have very long legs relative to the rest of their size.
Proportion.
Yeah.
My legs are not the longest part of my body, as you know.
Well, weird flex.
It's actually become a problem.
I had to install a block and tackle and a rudimentary spool system of my own design.
Okay, three, two, one.
So no, so I'm sitting right now in the green chair, but I have some bolstering pillows behind me to just get me to the place in the chair where I belong.
I bet it keeps you alert if you're a little bolstered.
It does, I think.
Well, so we'll see.
I'll get a couple of pilots on the couch.
It's a physical thought technology.
Everything's changing.
And I feel like it's kind of like eating a different thing in a Mexican restaurant.
Yes, yes, yes.
I mean, part of it is there's only six ingredients in Mexican food.
Well, los otros comidas.
Cocina.
Cocina.
Oh, man, this is exciting.
I'm enjoying it, I have to say.
Thank you.
Well, I'm sure the acoustic properties are different.
I'm sitting in a corner now.
Yes, yes, yes.
With books all around instead of with my back to the glass.
Well, you know, as long as it's, I mean, and do the people who also enter and use your home.
I mean, would they be open to the idea?
It is your house, and that's why it's yours.
Right.
But is there... Because I'm imagining... See, I don't want you to go full... Here's what I'm thinking of, John.
I've told you about this.
I think I've told you about a restaurant that existed in Sarasota, Florida when I was in college.
And it was a somewhat well-known restaurant.
It was one of those deeply local restaurants.
It was in a place that used to be a chain fast food restaurant, a burger place.
And this guy... There was a guy...
Have I ever talked about this?
There's a guy there.
And the part that's kind of fun and germane somewhat is that you go in there and he'll make you a burger, but he makes the burgers the way that he likes them.
And luckily for me, it's also a way most of that.
He liked a real wet, really wet burger.
You know what I mean, right?
I do, I do.
My grandfather used to say, you go to Fisher's Big Boy and you got to wear a raincoat.
It's such a wet burger, right?
Yeah.
You got to wear a raincoat is something my grandfather used to say.
Yeah, you got to wear a raincoat.
That's one of the least racist things my grandfather ever said.
And you know what else he did?
He'd always put an egg on it.
Oh, sure.
Oh, sure.
You can come in and say you didn't want that.
And he'd say, well, why don't you go someplace else?
Now, I'm aligning the most interesting part of this to me anyway, which is when you enter this and it's a little bit like a dream, right?
Where you walk in and it looks like an Arby's or whatever.
It ain't been no Arby's and maybe a Sambo's in a real long time.
But then, you know, it had a counter like an Arby's.
And behind the counter, he had an... Because you know Americans love plush, giant, oversized furniture?
It's maddening to me.
He had a recliner behind the counter.
What?
So this is why I... Here's the thing.
Now see if I'd opened with recliner and then moved to wet burgers, it would have been a different tone.
Starting with wet burger, always egg.
I want you to know that first he would size you up about whether he wanted to get out of the recliner
get out of the recliner at all over the years I've developed so much sympathy for this man because he's basically got the career I've always dreamed of that recliner must have such a patina I think yes water would run right off well and we don't have time today the scope of this is too broad I think velvet bad idea
Cognac leather, maybe.
It was probably a lazy boy.
And he was not afraid to grab that handle, again, much like my grandfather, and go, and pull it up and get real high up.
Now, I'll send you a photo of my grandfather sitting in that particular chair, which he also slept in because he smoked for like 160 years.
Oh, you're talking about your grandfather's version.
My grandfather's chair, but this is not dissimilar.
I don't think this guy's from British Guiana, but I can't prove it.
The point is, you walk in, and he's watching TV, and he says... Wait a minute, your grandfather's from British Guiana?
My grandfather's family is from London, England, but they were colonialist industrial diamond people.
Not rich diamond people, but, you know, the kind of, like, you really ruin the land to make things for drill bits.
Do you and Grant Balfour talk about your... Oh, absolutely.
Okay.
And this is why I sometimes, much to the chagrin of my friends, pause a little bit on the phrase African-American.
Because Grant is possibly the whitest person I've ever met.
His skin is translucent.
His father... Hi, Grant.
I don't think he listens.
But Grant is nearly translucent.
He conducted my first wedding.
And Grant, we played in bands.
We were dear friends.
And his father and he were both tabloid journalists.
There's a great tradition of South African tabloid journalists.
Grant, as I think you know, used to be an editor at the Weekly World News.
The greatest tabloid of our time.
That's right.
It taught me about Monkey Boy or Rat Bat Boy.
Oh, it was Bat Boy.
It was a big one.
But here's the thing.
You go into this place and the TV's on very loud.
And there's a man.
It might surprise you to know he was a big fella.
Yep.
Nope.
He liked to be comfortable.
Sure.
He's in grandpa's recliner.
I can't picture how it fits, how the recliner fits behind it.
I think all the Harby's equipment had been relocated.
I see.
Okay.
It didn't take that much to make a wet burger in Sarasota, at least in the 80s.
Right, right.
Okay, okay.
So he wasn't using the whole kitchen.
The recliner.
The whole recliner.
The whole bass.
But anyway, I'm not saying that you're a big man in a recliner who likes a wet burger.
That's not my concern.
I'm a big man.
I do like a wet burger, but I'm not in a recliner.
I'm seeing you somewhere between that and like the...
the fossil in Alien that I believe is called the pilot.
I'm seeing you in this chair, and I'm seeing... The word I'm coming up with is apertures.
I'm seeing stands, maybe special lighting.
I don't know if you've got... What are these to call it?
What's the thing where they run the cables through on a show?
Not a rat, not a...
uh what's the thing what's the thing where you have the cables and it keeps them tidy you know talking about a yeah no i never used those one of those things yeah no no but the club the club and that way you get all your cables but i'm thinking i'm seeing you there and i'm seeing you comfortable but alert i'm seeing you bolstered i need one of those
Yeah, I forget.
Why can't I remember what it's called?
Yeah.
It's not a direct box.
That's for the base.
I didn't realize that I needed one until you just mentioned it.
But no, go watch Alien, the Ridley Scott movie from the 80s.
Oh, no, I know exactly who you're talking about, the pilot.
The pilot.
But you're there, and to say you're in your repose, I think would...
I think that, again, that gets around the fact that you're doing very important work talking to people there, but you are always ready.
I mean, if you fixed watches at your house, for example, you wouldn't pack that up and put it under the chair every time.
You'd have an area that you could, I mean, let's get to the obvious, which is you should be comfortable, but you shouldn't probably be able to fall asleep too easily at work.
Yeah.
Which is why you're not supine.
You're a gentleman.
Early days.
Early days.
I know.
You used to put a mic on your chest in.
I've seen photos of this.
Yes.
In bed.
And then I did a couple of shows from the bathtub.
There was a time when you were like.
You're such a fucking pioneer, John.
I know you don't listen to podcasts.
But my God, you're a pioneer.
There is a time I don't think you ever specifically say.
I watched the thing.
I watched the YouTube video about the history of folk and blues.
I watched some BBC specials in our hotel room over the weekend.
And you're Blind Lemon Jefferson is what you are.
I think so.
You don't even know how influential you are.
I don't know how many other podcasters have done shows from the bathtub.
And also you froze to death because you were drunk and fell down.
Well, that's not, it hasn't happened yet.
At one point, I think Dan expressed, he was so pleased, so chuffed that I was doing shows from the bathtub that he really encouraged me to do it.
Yeah, he liked, Dan likes a bit.
Yeah, he likes a bit.
Sometimes he likes a bit a little too much, but he likes a bit.
But over time, you know, you've been to people's podcast studios.
You know, if you go to do a podcast at MaxFun, you're in some airless booth where they turn the fans off and you're just like, why are we in here?
Couldn't we just be there?
And so I've... I mean, you can be too professional about something.
Yes, I've responded to that.
Because professionalization is the death of individuality.
Yeah, people come to you all the time and they're like, I'm starting a podcast.
Tell me the top 15 podcasts.
uh, gear items I need.
And I'm like, you need two things.
You need, you need a microphone and a thing to plug it into.
And you share with a deep Z axis.
Yeah.
And the fact is the mic doesn't even have to be good.
And the thing you plug it into doesn't have to be good.
You don't really don't, you don't need any of it.
I mean, I, right now I see, I know that Yoken is somewhere up above the Arctic circle going,
At least you could have 450K.
You know, somebody's mad about sound quality.
Oh, absolutely.
But what about Hertz?
You got Hertz, you got bit rate, you got all this stuff.
And these people, it's kind of like, I described this recently to somebody as being like, how 17 Magazine is an inspirational thing for 13-year-old girls.
And people, it's like me and guitar, guitar for the practicing musician, not really, because I learned tab.
Inspirational and aspirational.
I'm sorry I meant aspirational but like where are you and your chair is literally aspirational but you cut that out and I'm trying to find pictures of you on a couch while I'm talking to you I just sent you one I don't know if that's the couch I'm on a couch a lot that's one of the things about me I think I just sent it to you I wish you still had I'm seeing your motorhome here I wish you still had that that would be an incredible podcast studio
Oh, it sure would.
No, this couch that you have me sitting on, that's a whole different operation, that couch.
Wow, they have really torn up the street.
John, what do you think of that picture of the road?
What are they looking for?
It looks like a volcano erupted.
It might be Atlantis or possibly Curly's Gold.
I know what's under there.
Sand!
They're not going to find anything.
It's the sunset!
It's all sand.
It's all sand.
You go to the north part of town.
Guess what?
Shipwrecks.
You live on top of a shipwreck.
You know that, right?
Yeah, yeah.
You know all the ships.
Oh, who is it?
Was it Ulysses?
You burn the ships so people can't go home.
I forget who.
But in this case, what do you think of that road, John?
That's Taravall Street right here in the Sunset District.
What do you think of that?
There was a train track.
I think it's train track related.
Oh, that's incredible.
But you know how it is.
Well, that's the thing.
Imagine if you and I had soundproof booths.
There's no way you're going to keep the jackhammers and the concrete saws out.
Oh, you get as professional as you want.
But see, that's the thing.
John, I hate to repeat myself, except that I don't.
Life goes on.
Yes.
Whatever is happening on Terra Ball Street is in the show.
Yes.
Yes, Terra Ball Street is a character in the show.
I muted it a second ago, but I think we should just let it rip.
So I guess what I'm saying is, I'm sorry to belabor this.
I want to talk more about couches.
I love all of this, but I also just feel like an area, a bespoke area that increasingly evolves into... Yeah.
Can I just point one thing out, John?
If you did that, if you decided you were happy with this chair, maybe there's some things, maybe you get fresh feathers for the chair.
You get some heritage feathers for the chair.
I don't know.
Maybe you get it like relined or something, reblocked like a hat.
But the point is, John, few things in this world will make it clear to everybody who enters in your home where your spot is than if you're the pilot.
Yeah.
Well, and that's the thing I need.
What I do need now is a small table next to the chair because everywhere I look.
Oh, that's nothing for you.
That's nothing, right?
A small table.
A small table.
I just need a small table.
You've got more small tables than I've had hot meals.
That's exactly right.
I've got a little amplifier.
Give me occasional tables because I don't know what that is.
Ha no, I've always loved the phrase and I still I'm thinking an occasional table might be too cute You don't want anything baroque.
You want something functional and you want something to them You know an occasional table often is a nesting table table We had those nesting was huge when I was a child and you pull those out and then those are occasional tables because the rest of the time they're not tables They are part of a nest
They come out of their nest.
They fledge.
You have them there for a party.
Do they alight?
And then they go back.
Well, it depends on the table.
But then they go back into the nest and they wait for the next party.
Send me, not now, but whenever.
Just send me a picture of your couch.
I won't share it, but it would help me a lot.
But anyway, you know what is right.
And it's like I always say to my kid, you know who you are in this world better than anyone ever will.
Yeah.
And, you know, everybody knows what they're turning into, whether they want to admit it or not.
Usually, usually they don't.
But like, I think you know who you are and you know what kind of Z axis you need in order to interview some pilots.
And if you had that permanently set up.
Yeah.
Talk about a flex.
Wow.
Lifestyle podcaster.
I'm not sure that I still like to tear it down a little bit because I like the space to be multipurpose.
But the other day, after we did our last show, I heard from a lot of people.
People love it when we talk about our mental difficulties.
Oh, gosh, I hope that went okay.
I felt an odd amount of relief confiding to our listeners how my brain is, which is weird.
And they like it, too.
They like to hear it.
Okay, good.
Well, that's where I am in life, and you're not going to get anything else from me, so, you know.
Um, well, so, so, you know, those things, well, you know, when you, when you have a, uh, well, oh, well, people were just like, oh, this really sounds like me.
Or people were like, that doesn't sound like me, but it lets me know.
And now that is the perfect reaction.
I was just worried people weren't, we're going to go John and Merlin.
They would say a true thing, which is that we are inflexible old men who are sometimes, uh, uh,
Allergic to a certain kind of compulsory modernity or contemporary anity.
I don't hate the future, but I don't like people telling me what it is when they don't know themselves.
I mean, we know our audience, so there were some people that recommended certain... I know some of them.
I know Jason.
There were people that recommended certain books.
There were people that espoused certain medications.
There were people that had some recommendations about how to meditate.
All of it.
Tell no one.
But also a lot of people that were like, oh, you know, like when we used to talk about depression a lot and people were like, now I finally know why my sister is like she is.
You know, it was like that kind of reaction.
That makes me so happy.
But your new best friend, Jason Finn, asked me out to lunch, which he hardly ever does.
And he sat me down and he said, I, I am going to...
find you a secretary and hire them for you.
And just for folks who hadn't heard that or just tuning in, John, I think you correct me if I get this wrong.
My sense was that you and I were talking about, in different ways, about different things, and I hope that's clear, but we were both talking about a personal, emotional difficulty with...
How would you put it?
With the, to me, like the fractal complexity of accomplishing almost anything and the help that we would need from, you made a really good point of saying you're getting to a point in life where you're trying to get better about asking people for help, especially people, I assume, who have offered help.
And you say, like, here's the thing I need the help with.
And if I understand, a friend of the show, Jason Finn, is saying he's going to set you up with somebody who can help you with the things you're not that great at.
I think what he realized in listening to the show.
And don't just, you know, John, can you just tell the secretary he's here today, don't just bring me the phone number because that doesn't help.
Well, this is the thing.
Jason, I think after all these years, heard on that show for the first time, he didn't say this specifically, but I'm guessing, heard for the first time, oh, wait.
He doesn't need a secretary.
He needs someone to get him a secretary.
If I give him the name on the phone number of the secretary finding place, that's the same as flushing those things down the toilet.
I feel like I need a phalanx of moms.
Well, and that's what I said to him, like, what are you going to do?
What kind?
And he was like, that's the thing.
The more I tell you about it, the worse it is.
Oh, okay, okay, okay, okay.
You know what?
On the one hand, first of all, in first blush, this feels like exactly the thing you don't need, which is another person, A, telling you what you need.
It isn't really helping.
As I said last week, I said a thing I liked, which is unusual, which was that, like, you have a problem I don't have, and I have a solution you don't need, which I may want tattooed on wherever my ashes are left.
Right.
I like, oh, here's here's how I understand what I think your problem is.
That's wrong in every way.
But what's something much more subtle happening here, which is neither one of us knows how to hire.
I don't love the word secretary, but neither one of us is saying, oh, I'm going to go hire a secretary.
You're saying you're going to Jason is saying, if I understand, he's going to hook you up with the person who know who can figure out what you need and then staff accordingly.
Well, and so, and so I appreciate it.
Now it hasn't happened yet.
That's what he said.
It's a new Roderick group.
He said, here's what we're going to do.
We're going to get somebody for one hour a day.
We're going to pay them a certain amount of money.
We're going to give them an hourly rate.
But it's going to be one hour a day every week.
And it's going to be X number.
So what is that?
We're only talking about working days.
So what is that?
21 hours a month?
Something like that?
I assume.
Yeah.
21 hours a month at $30 an hour or something.
And I was like, I'm already confused.
And he was like, don't worry about it.
Exactly.
This is why I need help.
Yeah, don't worry about it.
And he said, and it's just going to be somebody that you call and you say, I don't understand why.
This is just somebody to help with your disordered thinking.
Yeah.
He said, you just say, I don't understand why this is happening.
Can you make it go away?
And the person goes, don't worry about it.
And then it, you know.
So I haven't gotten a follow-up phone call from him, but maybe that's good.
You're getting help for help for help.
I'm getting three kinds of help, yeah.
If, if.
He actually follows up and calls me and says, here is the not a list of names, but here is the next thing.
Precisely.
So, you know that thing when you when when for a long time you're like, I don't have a mental illness.
And then people say.
I do.
People say, well, what about these seven instances that perfectly describe this mental illness?
And you're like, oh, well, those are just normal activities.
It's just a coincidence.
I'm not saying other people don't have mental and emotional problem.
I'm not saying it doesn't exist.
I'm just saying, what?
So the other day I was here and I was like, you know, you know what I need?
I need some wind chimes.
You need some wind chimes.
Yeah.
I know a lot of people.
I know people fall on either side.
Some people like wind chimes.
Some people don't.
Oh, no.
I think it's like farts and wet burgers.
I think we hate other people's and we love our own.
Oh, I see.
I mean, don't you think, like, I think we don't like other people.
This should be the name of the book, the fifth book I don't finish.
Other people's wind chimes.
Other people's wind chimes.
I hate other people's wind chimes.
What the, why?
Turn your wind chimes off.
Like, I can handle the wind in life.
Yeah.
You know, and it's like, you know, it's like Jorah, not Jorah, but one of the Mormonts.
Like the guy says to Daenerys, I can't control the wind.
I can't control the wind.
I did not make the rat.
God made the rat.
Right.
Consider the lobster.
So I'm thinking, well, what I need is a couple of wind chimes.
I got this lady with the daycare center over here.
I got the people that I kind of want to irritate.
Your opening statement is, if I could say, and I'm not your helper, you do not need a fifth person on this project.
But have we ever talked about the XY problem?
I'm not sure.
This is something a friend of the show, John Zergusa, told me about.
And I think what he specifically was saying was, like, this is my problem.
One of my problems is I fall victim to the XY problem, which is I go to somebody asking for help with X instead of telling them that the result that I want is Y. Hmm.
And the thing is, just sit with it.
It's a thought technology that has been very powerful for me, which is... And you've run into this in your life.
Think about being a customer service person and the problem that somebody presents you with and it implies that they need help with a solution.
But the solution that they want...
It's like you buy a drill or you buy a hammer to put a hole in the wall.
You put a hole in the wall so you can have a nail.
You have a nail to put up fine art.
Why?
Because fine art makes you happy.
What you really want to say to this person is, I want to be happy.
You jump up one level from that and say, I think I have a situation that could be assisted by a couple wind chimes.
And then they say, well, let's work with that.
Let me coach you on that.
Let me walk you through that.
They could just go to Lowe's and buy some wind chimes, but they also might be able to connect you with somebody who could fix your artisanal feathers.
Like, is it really wind chimes?
Wind chimes is the instantiating incident, but like, where does this end?
We don't know because we haven't hired anyone yet.
And don't just give me a phone number.
Well, this was one of these things.
This is like two chemtrails crossing in the sky where you're like, wow, they're really blanketing the area.
I sat down and I said, I want some wind chimes.
And I went online, as you do these days.
And I started to do... You're going to get nothing but wind chimes ads for the next... You're going to be like Matt Howey with his porch lights.
I had the experience that we have of going down and researching wind chimes.
What are the best wind chimes?
Well, as you can guess in the AI universe... Best wind chimes.
Sexy wind chimes.
Wind chimes net worth.
Wind chimes feet.
50 websites that have 2023's best win charts.
Updated for June.
It's 2023.
And I read all the reviews.
And I was like, well, you know, this one comes up.
Seems oddly similar to the order of the best-selling items on Amazon.
That's awesome.
Yeah, look at this.
So interesting, interesting, interesting.
And then I went on Amazon.
And, you know, and I'm in attention deficit mode.
So I'm – and I see myself –
Getting into that thing that it happens all the time where I'm going to spend four hours researching wind chimes and then by none.
Right.
Right.
And so, uh, so I hand off to some, some other voice in my brain that's like, we're going to get this done.
Do you have a name or role that you identify with that particular voice?
Well, you know, I've got like 40 voices in my head, but the problem is... You know what?
I think I know that guy.
I have a version of that guy, and I don't know if this is your guy.
My version of that guy is, don't worry, I got this.
But then it doesn't at all.
Like I've just spent four hours on something.
I must have accomplished something.
Wind chimes, I'll get a couple wind chimes, and this is going to work out.
And then literally nothing happens.
As you know, I have bipolar disorder.
That's true.
And bipolar, it's not one person.
There's like a whole committee.
It's not monopolar, John.
It's a whole committee of people that are all under the influence of a couple of bipolar department heads.
Inside every person are two polos.
Two pollers.
Right.
And so anyway, the net result of us having had a long conversation about ADHD.
Very vulnerable conversation, yeah.
And then me thinking that I needed wind chimes and then getting into the internet and reading the reviews and then deciding I needed to hand it off to... Wind chimes reviews.
I needed to hand it off to a more capable adult to get this done.
Resulted in me.
I gave these to my grandson, and he didn't like them.
One star.
It resulted in me ordering 15 wind chimes.
See, John, I didn't say it, and I can't say it, but what I was going to say is my solution to that is to buy three.
I buy three of things.
And I have 15 wind chimes around the house now.
They are all different.
How many are deployed?
They're all different.
How many are in service?
Well, little by little, they're going up around the house.
And now the house is really- You're going to love that as the neighbors.
Everyone is going to love it because, you know, I bought them in different tunings and I'm placing them around in different- So some of them are like four feet long and some of them are just little pan flute size-
and some of them are hanging from the eaves.
Some of them are hanging from trees.
Oh, they're going to catch different winds.
They're going to catch different winds.
And they're going to, you know, John, they're going to, oh, this is so interesting.
If I could say, I don't know a lot about wind chimes, but it seems to me, I've been very annoyed by wind chimes.
Just, you know, just want to get that out.
But like, what thing is, you get your little wind chimes, you get those little pan pipes, that might a little breeze.
Tickle, tickle, tickle, tickle.
little breeze comes through yeah yeah yeah but then you get your four foot long boys yeah it looks like something that neil neil neil neil park do we see pert pert i say pert i'm not sure but the kind of neil pert would hit really hard with a hammer and closer to the heart yeah you should get so closer to the heart wind chimes that would make a lot of a lot of memories for a lot of people i might already have them for all i know and so of course then you must be the one to start my family comes over and they're like what the
It's so fucking loud.
I got wind chimes all over.
I got wind chimes on the table.
I got wind chimes on the couch, wind chimes on the orange chair.
And of course, and they're like, oh no, he's gone off his meds.
No, come on.
Because look at him.
This is something that used to happen when he would buy four cars and two of them would set on fire.
Or he decided to go to like maybe Denmark to a purported wind chimes factory.
And I'm standing there like a doc in Back to the Future going, no, no, no, it's fine.
It's fine.
This is perfectly normal.
We need wind chimes.
And I bought some for you, too.
And I did.
I had wind chimes for everybody.
Oh, now you're going to Elvis mode.
Elvis likes a pickup truck.
Everybody gets a pickup truck.
Everybody gets a pickup truck.
Elvis wanted a mobile home.
Red and all the boys, they had to all live in mobile homes in a kind of, what would you call it, like a compound.
Like a compound.
So you're like the Elvis of...
The Elves of Wind Chimes.
Yes.
Sorry.
I went around to all of the houses of my people, and I hung wind chimes up on their houses, too.
Your Johnny Wind Chimes-y.
Little tinkle-y wind chimes.
Oh, my God.
Tickle, tickle, tickle.
I bought one for Ari that is like little blue beach glass wind chimes.
Oh, that sounds really annoying.
No, no, no, no.
It's wonderful.
Oh, are they lovely?
Does she love them?
So everybody is humoring me and telling me that they love the wind chimes.
That's kind of like giving a toddler drums, isn't it?
So when that jackhammer started in your yard, I realized from my new position in the green chair, I can see like four different sets of wind chimes and they're all still today because it's not a breezy day.
How do you do that?
How do you ameliorate that?
Would you like to hear more chimes?
Because chimes become dependable.
When your wind chimes, if your Neil Peart chimes really start kicking up, you know there's a gale coming through, right?
Well, what I don't know, because I bought these wind chimes during a still period, I put all these wind chimes up and it hasn't been windy.
So I don't know what they sound like.
I'm surrounded by silent chimes.
What do you mean when I bought a rain gauge?
Hmm.
It just never ringed.
Well, you know, you can calibrate it with like a cup and stuff, but you're just sitting there like an asshole waiting, waiting to know if your gauge works.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And you put them outside, you're hanging them from Eves, you got them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Got up on some ladders, hung them from places.
This might be something your future secretary can help you with.
Well, what I'm interested in is we're going to be doing a show one time, sometime in the future, assuming that a comet doesn't wipe out the Earth.
And there are going to be wind chimes going all around us.
Are they going to make it into the mics?
I don't know.
You're saying we rehabilitate.
We start going back to these insufferable live comedy things.
And everyone is so unhappy.
Really miss that.
And you're saying maybe we show up and they put us in the gorilla section at that museum again where you're yelling at people.
Don't remember that.
And they're in the cocktail party.
Right.
And you put one chimes on an Ibex, which is a terrific got it by voices EP.
And you and but like people would be able to enjoy that throughout the show.
And then the listener would think, oh, man, I wish I'd been there.
Maybe we recorded in stereo or or Dolby Atmos.
So, you know what it's like to be John in that chair surrounded by the chimes.
So you're saying that wind chimes could conceivably become like a motif of the show.
And everywhere we go, we could just bring.
It's like when I used to get on the Harvey Danger bus and have that theme song on my little board.
Yeah, the little.
The way you described it was like you kind of come and stick your head around the corner.
And then people go, oh, no, here comes John.
And then you play that little sample, right?
Yeah.
I put the little keyboard through the curtain and... Uh-oh.
Here he comes.
Here he is.
It's Hong Kong Booey.
Number one super guy.
Okay, well.
So that's the future.
So you've got your jackhammers back.
Yes.
I'm going to be Mr. Chim Chime.
At least they call me Mr. Chim Chime.
Until it's determined that maybe no.
You could also make them fight.
There could be like a battle royale where over time, but think about this.
Think about this.
Okay, so I've always kind of felt like, I've had different feelings about this in life, but I
I remember the first time I feel like that I met somebody who had a thing.
Like we had a neighbor who had a thing and her thing was elephants.
And for every occasion, people would give her an elephant.
Right.
And this could be true for you.
Don't talk about there's people who have their thing.
Oh, oh, if you go to Gatlinburg, get me a souvenir spoon or whatever.
Right.
You become like that.
Maybe now you are.
What are you?
What are you?
Jimmy Chimchime?
What's your name?
Mr. Chimchime.
Not Jimmy, but yeah.
No, James.
James.
Jimmy used to sit in the Lazy Boy chair eating a wet egg.
A dry burger is not a burger.
I'm not getting up for that.
What I wonder, though, is if it's too much, if having 15 wind chimes around your house is too much,
You tell me, what if I move the wind chimes to the trees at the back of the property closest to the neighbors that I don't like?
How much of a violation of a human code is it to put wind chimes around the perimeter—
as a kind of keep ghosts away.
No, it's like one of those signs with all the spiky things.
Nothing dignified has ever happened here.
This is a nuclear waste site kind of sign.
Right, right, right.
But also, do you have any concerns about entering into, if I may say, I don't want to trigger anybody, a wind chimes sort of cold war?
Well, but they aren't close to me.
The one with the weird son?
Like, do you think, what if they brought in some, like, let's see, Carl Palmer style percussion?
Like, what if this became some kind of a, like, pop prog chime war?
Do you have any concerns about that?
Hey, have a little fire scarecrow.
I know where chimes go.
Do you worry about that?
Targeted sound violence, like a brown sound.
But it sounds to me like a brown sound.
But again, back to General McClellan, what a fuck up that guy was.
I'm just thinking like, and this is, if you're describing this the way I think you are, you have this property, oh, dispute is probably too strong a word, but you have this thing with your neighbors.
You have access to an area that's closer to where they hear things than they have access to an area where you hear things.
That's right.
And I think I could put it, I could put, say for instance, the really loud four foot long bells.
I think I could, I think I could conceal them in trees in such a way that like your cameras, they couldn't ever really figure out where the sound was coming from.
Oh,
It's like trying to find a cricket.
They'd be looking out the window and they would hear, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
Or Taurus pedals would be nice every time they step out of there.
But I would just be hearing it as a sweet sort of sound in the distance.
They're your chimes, John, a priori.
So they're not bothering me.
They're your chimes.
You like your chimes.
You like your farts.
You like your chimes.
You like your own chimes.
Everybody likes their own chimes.
Coming from your neighbor's house, they're still your chimes.
Have a big potato with butter and chimes.
But they're not going to like my chimes.
They're not going to like your chimes at all.
They're my chimes.
They're going to call up their barrister.
And so I'm going to have, I'm going to put chimes all over.
The forest is going to be some magical, like, I'm going to summon.
Chimes all the way down, no question.
Gnomes, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Living out there.
Chimes going all the time.
I just don't know.
Can you come up with, will you have a cover story for it?
Will there be something about, oh, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.
And can I speak in general terms here?
I'll cut this out.
No, I won't cut this out.
Who am I fooling?
Do you remember the whole like, yeah, but my dog died and that's sacred land.
Remember that?
Yeah, yeah, sure, sure, sure.
Maybe the chimes are because of somebody who's dead.
Maybe it's a, well, wait, oh, oh, oh, when I was ordering chimes and reading all the reviews.
Oh, so there's some of them in memoriam.
There's a whole subset of the chime community.
That are making chimes in memoriam.
Oh my goodness.
You buy chimes and engrave them with the information about your dead friend or your pet or your relative.
On the actual chime?
On the chime.
And then you hang the chime.
So if there'd been like a bus accident, God forbid, you could get a fuck ton of chimes.
150 chimes.
So many chimes, and we miss all of them so much.
Don't say a word against my chimes.
That used to be people on a bus.
This is all people that I loved.
And because I'm a Mormon, I have them for people going back several generations.
Well, you have to.
Otherwise, you can't get into Valhalla or whatever they have.
And this was not a thing I knew about.
Is there John Valhalla?
Is there Jell-O?
Yes, for sure.
I mean, Mormon Valhalla, right?
Every Valhalla is different, right?
You get the Valhalla you deserve.
You get the beard your face deserves and the Valhalla that your people would want to sit down and tuck into.
I did.
I love this idea.
But, like, is it too neat?
I bought a memorial chime.
I bought one from the memorial sites.
Can I ask for who?
Was it for your dad?
No, I didn't have anything engraved on it.
I just was like, well, that's the chime I want.
And you can call it memorial, but I'm going to call it something else.
It's your journey.
But maybe I do.
Maybe if they write and say, what the hell is going on?
I say, I hung that for your dead dogs.
Don't say it, but do you know the dog's name?
No.
I would assume it's Rufus.
I think Rufus would be a good name for that dog.
I think your dog's name is Rufus, and here's wind chimes.
I think the dog died in the 80s.
I don't think they remember it at all.
Also, if it was in the 80s, it was probably inbred.
Less about them and more about me now.
making the world look and feel like I want it to.
You're standing in your truth and speaking your chimes.
My worry, of course, is that I'm the baddie.
Of course.
It's always the worry.
You got that skull on your hat.
What if it was for people like you've enjoyed in the community who, you know...
too soon, too young.
Maybe it's all, you have different chimes for people who died when they were 27 or front of a grunge band.
Otherwise you got chimes for all of them.
And now it also becomes a place.
Now you got traffic coming through there.
Maybe Paul Allen sets up a gift shop for you and you can, people can come in and get test chimes or, or it's like build a bear where you could come in and like you could, this could be a whole cottage industry for you.
You're inside recording podcasts outside five to 11 secretaries are working in your gift shop, custom engraving chimes for the dead and
And there's a lot of cars, maybe some buses coming through.
You know, I was out driving with my daughter the other day and we were in the Denny Blaine neighborhood in Seattle, which is an old fancy neighborhood where Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love bought like a ludicrously nice old mansion to live in.
And they just didn't know what they were doing.
They had never had money before.
That's probably 93-ish?
Yeah.
They bought the wrong house in the wrong neighborhood.
They should have hired a secretary to figure it out.
They should have.
Jason Finn, man.
Jason could start a whole thing with this.
He becomes the fixer.
Yeah, they could have bought a warehouse downtown and they could have put a sex wing in it.
Whatever they could have done, this was the wrong house.
He ended up killing himself there.
And right next to the house,
There's a park and it was the park where he was last seen alive.
And there's a park bench where he was last seen sitting.
Oh, no.
And people go there and get photographed on and make a peace sign or something.
They do.
And the park bench.
And this is in a very nice neighborhood that is very not into people parking their cars on the sidewalk to go get their picture taken on this particular park bench.
And now... Yeah, or like the Robin Williams neighborhood here.
I mean, sorry, but I think it's called, what's it called?
Not Seaside, but Seacliff.
There's a neighborhood here in town that's crazy.
It's the least population-dense area in all of San Francisco, right?
Because they're all basically crazy nice mansions.
And they do not cotton to the idea of folks just rolling up there and taking photos of Robin Williams' house.
Well, and this is a situation where literal tour buses do drive by.
They're full of people who are visiting from other countries and they're taking crazy.
And the tour bus stops in the middle of this tiny little road.
It becomes like Little Graceland.
Well, and so the bench itself now is like a pear chase Jim Morrison's grave.
It's covered with graffiti.
It's got candles all melted on it.
It's like this crazy thing surrounded by lakefront homes that are made out of weathered cedar shingles.
And then here's this thing.
It's in the wrong neighborhood now.
I know.
And they never should have.
Yes, the day they bought that house, it was like, what are you doing?
You got a little bit of money.
Go live on a boat.
Like, this is wrong.
Anyway, maybe I should take some chimes and go tie them up in the trees there.
As part of my, and this doesn't sound like I have bipolar disorder at all, but I'm going to go around and put chimes.
I'm going to be Johnny Chimer, Chimer, Chim, Chim, Chim, Chim.
Chim, Chim.
In order to keep it from being had on a hat, I mean, in some ways, sure, you could, if you want, I'm going to say it again, life goes on, it's your journey.
You hang whatever the fuck chimes you want, but what I'm saying is you could also just bring in, maybe one of them is for like Millard Fillmore or something.
Or, you know what I mean?
Like great, great, great evenings with Mr. Disney or whatever.
Just sort of piggybacking on the thing.
Well, I mean, shouldn't everybody be remembered?
Especially the ones we don't like.
So maybe there's one for Pol Pot.
You do some Pol Pot chimes.
Sure.
He had a family.
Sure.
You know, opinions and assholes.
Everybody's got one.
But you start hanging chimes around that.
But you know what?
Let it begin with me, which in this case is you.
And I think it starts to harassing is such a strong word when you actively memorialize with chimes on your property line.
That is your property.
And I don't know how things worked out with the whole thing.
But like, it seems to me that unless there's something I don't know in your covenant.
Your house, your chimes.
Your house, your chimes.
What do you think?
Is this a project you might want to consider?
I'm really, so what I need to know first is what these chimes sound like around here.
I need to get some wind.
Oh, you don't want to be hoisted by your own batard.
Yeah, I don't want chimes.
I don't want to put chimes somewhere where I have... Yeah, again, that would be like giving somebody in the next apartment a clarinet.
Well, and it might be that when all 15 chimes are going, I make the perfect chord that pleases the Lord.
Oh, shit, dog.
My house could levitate off its foundation, and I could be like... You're the Steve Reich of, like, memorial chimes.
Yeah, I could be like the cover of Boston's first album.
Like, I could be... Cool the engines.
Out of here.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.